“I say,” cried Geoffrey, passionately, “you have no right to shame me so. I was in the wrong, and you know it. You’ve no right to keep me in the wrong forever.”
“D’you want me to call you out? Geoff, Geoff, what the devil’s the matter with you to-night?”
“The devil, perhaps, as you say. I’m not drunk. And strike you must, or that blow of mine will stand between us forever. If you of your generosity forget it, shall I—? Strike me, Will, strike me—hard.”
William raised his hand slowly, and slowly lowered it. “If you’re not drunk with wine, you are with something else, I think,” he said, roughly. “I cannot hit you when I’m not in a rage, and that’s the end of it. Go and get Simmons to pump on your head.”
“It’s not the end of it. Here, then, strike with this.” He caught up a heavy hunting-crop from the window-sill of the gun-room, and thrust it into William’s hand. “Strike with this.”
“I will not—”
“It would not be the first time you had thrashed me.”
“This is different, and you know it—”
“I know it.” He slipped off his coat, and stood. “Hit with that,” he said, between his teeth.
Fired by the fierier soul, William raised the whip and struck, hastily and heedlessly, all bewildered. It was a whip used for Monseigneur in his vicious moods, and a little flick of rending linen and a thread of scarlet followed across Geoffrey’s shoulders. William flung down the whip with an oath. “There, you madman,” he cried, “I’ll do no more,” and for an instant it seemed to the trembling boy that he had Geoffrey in his arms.