His reception was something more than damning. Théroigne, with a cry of rage, met the impact tooth and nail, and following on the rebound, became in her turn the furious aggressor. A devil possessed her fierce mouth and vigorous young arms. Her victim, wailing with terror, tried to protect his face, from which the blood ran in rivulets. For a moment or two she had everything to herself. The others stood paralysed about her where they had got to their feet. Then St Denys seized and struggled to draw her away. Even at that she resisted, worrying her prey and gabbling like a thing demented.
“Leave the brute his life!” cried M. le Président. “It is not he, after all, that is most to blame. Do you hear, Théroigne? I will twist your arm out of its socket, but you shall come!”
She uttered a shriek of physical pain, and, releasing her hold, stood panting. On the grass the wretched creature nursed his wounds, and sobbed and wriggled. His comrade, sobered beyond belief, dumbly glowered in the background.
Ned took off his hat in a shameless manner of politeness.
“These fraternal orgies,” said he, “are a little difficult of digestion to a stomach prescriptive. On the whole, I think, I prefer the despotism of savoir-vivre. With monsieur’s permission I will e’en back to Méricourt.”
“We must bear in mind that he is an Englishman,” said the sizar. “His traditions are not of the licence of good-fellowship.”
CHAPTER VIII.
It was characteristic enough of M. de St Denys to bear his guest no grudge for the fiasco, chiefly brought about, it must be admitted, by that guest’s malfeasance. With no man was the evil of the day more sufficient to itself; and he would be the last to insist upon that discipline of conscience that burdens each successive dawn with a new heritage of regrets. Moreover, the dog had the right humour, when he was restored to it, to properly appreciate Ned’s immediate comprehension of rule one and only of the Brotherhood; and on his way home with Théroigne, the comedy of the situation did gradually so slake the turmoil of his soul as that he must try to win over his companion to regard the matter from anything but a tragic standpoint. In this he was but partly successful; for woman has a cast in her humorous perceptives that deprives her of the sense of proportion.
“Is it so little a thing?” she said hotly. “But it was thy honour I fought to maintain. And no wonder, then, that men will take sport of that in us which they hold so cheap in themselves.”
However, his mended view of the affair impressed her so far as that, meeting with the Englishman by the village fountain on the morning following the orgy, she condescended to some distant notice of, and speech with, him. For, indeed, with her sex, to punish with silence is to wield a scourge of hand-stinging adders.