第74章 THE GREAT NORTH ROAD(16)

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a person measuring and valuing another -and,to clench the false impression,that his glance was instantly and guiltily withdrawn.The blood beat back upon her heart and leaped again;her obscure thoughts flashed clear before her;she flew in fancy straight to his arms like a wanton,and fled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 embarrassment,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 fashion,though a little tumbled by his passage 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 DEM'AFFUBLER D'UN TITRE QUE LA MAUVAISE FORTUNE DE MON ROI NEME PERMET PAS DE PORTER COMMA IL SIED.JE M'APPELLE,POURVOUS SERVIR,BLAIR DE BALMILE TOUT COURT.'[My lord,I have not the effrontery to cumber myself with a title 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 BALMAIL,'replied the newcomer,'LE NOM N'Y FAIT RIEN,ET L'ON CONNAIT VOSBEAUX 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 unobserved 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 passing 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 passionate 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 bluster of the mistral,with which he had been combating some hours,had not suspended,though it had embittered,that predominant passion.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 passed 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 succumbed 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.