Part 16 (1/2)
She stood within the counter, her hands clasped behind her back, her shoulders pressed against the wall, her feet braced out. Her face was bright with the wind and her own thoughts; as a fire in a similar day of tempest glows and brightens on a hearth, so she seemed to glow, standing there, and to breathe out energy. It was the first time Ballantrae had visited that wine-seller's, the first time he had seen the wife; and his eyes were true to her.
'I perceive your reason for carrying me to this very draughty tavern,' he said at last.
'I believe it is propinquity,' returned Balmile.
'You play dark,' said Ballantrae, 'but have a care! Be more frank with me, or I will cut you out. I go through no form of qualifying my threat, which would be commonplace and not conscientious. There is only one point in these campaigns: that is the degree of admiration offered by the man; and to our hostess I am in a posture to make victorious love.'
'If you think you have the time, or the game worth the candle,' replied the other with a shrug.
'One would suppose you were never at the pains to observe her,' said Ballantrae.
'I am not very observant,' said Balmile. 'She seems comely.'
'You very dear and dull dog!' cried Ballantrae; 'chast.i.ty is the most besotting of the virtues. Why, she has a look in her face beyond singing! I believe, if you was to push me hard, I might trace it home to a trifle of a squint. What matters? The height of beauty is in the touch that's wrong, that's the modulation in a tune. 'Tis the devil we all love; I owe many a conquest to my mole'-he touched it as he spoke with a smile, and his eyes glittered;-'we are all hunchbacks, and beauty is only that kind of deformity that I happen to admire. But come!
Because you are chaste, for which I am sure I pay you my respects, that is no reason why you should be blind. Look at her, look at the delicious nose of her, look at her cheek, look at her ear, look at her hand and wrist-look at the whole baggage from heels to crown, and tell me if she wouldn't melt on a man's tongue.'
As Ballantrae spoke, half jesting, half enthusiastic, Balmile was constrained to do as he was bidden. He looked at the woman, admired her excellences, and was at the same time ashamed for himself and his companion. So it befell that when Marie-Madeleine raised her eyes, she met those of the subject of her contemplations fixed directly on herself with a look that is unmistakable, the look of a person measuring and valuing another-and, to clench the false impression, that his glance was instantly and guiltily withdrawn. The blood beat back upon her heart and leaped again; her obscure thoughts flashed clear before her; she flew in fancy straight to his arms like a wanton, and fled again on the instant like a nymph.And at that moment there chanced an interruption, which not only spared her embarra.s.sment, but set the last consecration on her now articulate love.
Into the wine-shop there came a French gentleman, arrayed in the last refinement of the fas.h.i.+on, though a little tumbled by his pa.s.sage in the wind. It was to be judged he had come from the same formal gathering at which the others had preceded him; and perhaps that he had gone there in the hope to meet with them, for he came up to Ballantrae with unceremonious eagerness.
'At last, here you are!' he cried in French. 'I thought I was to miss you altogether.'
The Scotsmen rose, and Ballantrae, after the first greetings, laid his hand on his companion's shoulder.
'My lord,' said he, 'allow me to present to you one of my best friends and one of our best soldiers, the Lord Viscount Gladsmuir.'
The two bowed with the elaborate elegance of the period.
'_Monseigneur_,' said Balmile, '_je n'ai pas la pretention de m'affubler d'un t.i.tre que la mauvaise fortune de mon roi ne me permet pas de porter comma il sied_. _Je m'appelle_, _pour vous servir_, _Blair de Balmile tout court_.' [My lord, I have not the effrontery to c.u.mber myself with a t.i.tle which the ill fortunes of my king will not suffer me to bear the way it should be. I call myself, at your service, plain Blair of Balmile.]
'_Monsieur le Vicomte ou monsieur Bler' de Balmal_,' replied the newcomer, '_le nom n'y fait rien_, _et l'on connait vos beaux faits_.'
[The name matters nothing, your gallant actions are known.]
A few more ceremonies, and these three, sitting down together to the table, called for wine. It was the happiness of Marie-Madeleine to wait un.o.bserved upon the prince of her desires. She poured the wine, he drank of it; and that link between them seemed to her, for the moment, close as a caress. Though they lowered their tones, she surprised great names pa.s.sing in their conversation, names of kings, the names of de Gesvre and Belle-Isle; and the man who dealt in these high matters, and she who was now coupled with him in her own thoughts, seemed to swim in mid air in a transfiguration. Love is a crude core, but it has singular and far-reaching fringes; in that pa.s.sionate attraction for the stranger that now swayed and mastered her, his harsh incomprehensible language, and these names of grandees in his talk, were each an element.
The Frenchman stayed not long, but it was plain he left behind him matter of much interest to his companions; they spoke together earnestly, their heads down, the woman of the wine-shop totally forgotten; and they were still so occupied when Paradou returned.
This man's love was unsleeping. The even bl.u.s.ter of the mistral, with which he had been combating some hours, had not suspended, though it had embittered, that predominant pa.s.sion. His first look was for his wife, a look of hope and suspicion, menace and humility and love, that made the over-blooming brute appear for the moment almost beautiful. She returned his glance, at first as though she knew him not, then with a swiftly waxing coldness of intent; and at last, without changing their direction, she had closed her eyes.
There pa.s.sed across her mind during that period much that Paradou could not have understood had it been told to him in words: chiefly the sense of an enlightening contrast betwixt the man who talked of kings and the man who kept a wine-shop, betwixt the love she yearned for and that to which she had been long exposed like a victim bound upon the altar.
There swelled upon her, swifter than the Rhone, a tide of abhorrence and disgust. She had succ.u.mbed to the monster, humbling herself below animals; and now she loved a hero, aspiring to the semi-divine. It was in the pang of that humiliating thought that she had closed her eyes.
Paradou-quick as beasts are quick, to translate silence-felt the insult through his blood; his inarticulate soul bellowed within him for revenge.
He glanced about the shop. He saw the two indifferent gentlemen deep in talk, and pa.s.sed them over: his fancy flying not so high. There was but one other present, a country lout who stood swallowing his wine, equally un.o.bserved by all and un.o.bserving-to him he dealt a glance of murderous suspicion, and turned direct upon his wife. The wine-shop had lain hitherto, a s.p.a.ce of shelter, the scene of a few ceremonial pa.s.sages and some whispered conversation, in the howling river of the wind; the clock had not yet ticked a score of times since Paradou's appearance; and now, as he suddenly gave tongue, it seemed as though the mistral had entered at his heels.
'What ails you, woman?' he cried, smiting on the counter.