“Valentin, thou shalt not! It is mine! What right hast thou to rob and insult me?”
“The right that thou art a putain—a snake in the grass of a virgin community. Give it me, or I will break thy arm. Right, indeed! but every well-doer has a right to act the executive.”
“Thou shalt not take it!”
“You will prevent me? Oh, the strength of this conscious virtue! And does not thy refusal damn thee? Pull across, Charlot! I will wrench her arms out. It is another accursed whelp that she has strangled and would bury in the wood.”
“You vile, cruel beast!” cried the girl.
“Oh, hé—scream, then!” panted the other, while Charlot sniggered throatily. “There is no riggish lord now to justify thee in thy assaults on decent landholders. I will look, if only for the sake of that memory. Thou wert the prospective fine lady, wert thou? Oh, mon Dieu! and what ploughboy has ministered to thee for this in the bundle?”
Mr Murk, indignant but embarrassed, had stood so far uncertain as to his wise course of action. Now, however, a shriek of obvious pain that came from the girl decided him. He hurried round the intercepting corner and saw Mademoiselle Lambertine, blowsed and weeping, flung amongst the roots of a tree. Hard by, where the trunks opened out to the road-track, a couple of clowns, bent eagerly over a bundle they had torn from their victim, were discussing the contents of their prize—a few poor toilet affairs, some bright trinketry of lace and ribbons, a dozen apples, and a loaf of white cocket-bread.
All three lifted their heads, startled at the sound of his approach. Théroigne sat up; the boors got clumsily to their feet. In one of these loobies Ned had a sure thought that he recognised the fellow whose face had once been scored by those very feminine fingers that were now so desperately clutching and pulling at the grass amongst the tree-roots. He could see the red cheeks, he fancied, still chased with the marks of that reprehensible onset. The other rogue, he was equally certain, was of those that had baited a wretched Cagot on a morning nine months ago.
Here, then, was the right irony of event—a huntress Actæon torn by her own hounds. Ned stepped forward deliberately, but with every muscle of his body screwed tight as a fiddle-string.
Come over against the clodpoles: “You are pigs and cowards!” said he, and he gave the farmer an explosive smack on the jaw.