Noémi, Page 2

  CHAPTER II.

  WHO IS THE FOOL NOW?

  THERE boiled up in the youth's heart a feeling of wrath and indignationagainst the girl who in sheer wantonness had imperiled her life and hadgiven to him a moment of spasm of apprehension.

  Looking full into her glittering brown eyes, he said--

  "You have cast at me ill names. I have been to you but clown and fool; Ihave done nothing to merit such titles; I should never have thrown athought away on you, but have gone on scraping my shaft, had not youdone a silly thing--a silly thing. Acted like a fool, and a fool only!"

  "You dare not do what I have done."

  "If there be a need I will do it. If I do it for a purpose there is nofolly in it. That is folly where there is recklessness for no purpose."

  "I had a purpose!"

  "A purpose?--what? To call my attention to you, to make me admire yourdaring, all to no end. Or was it in mere inconsiderate prank? A man isnot brave merely because he is so stupid that he does not see theconsequences before him. A blind man may walk where I should shrink fromtreading. And stupidity blinds some eyes that they run into danger andneither see nor care for the danger or for the consequences that willensue on their rashness."

  The girl flushed with anger.

  "I am not accustomed to be spoken to thus," she said, and stamped herfoot on the pavement of the platform.

  "All the better for you that it is spoken at last."

  "And who are you that dare say it?"

  "I--I am Jean del' Peyra."

  The girl laughed contemptuously. "I never heard the name."

  "I have told you my name, what is yours?" asked the boy, and he pickedup his staff and began once more to point it.

  There was indifference in his tone, indifference in the act, thatexasperated the girl.

  "You do not care--I will not say."

  "No," he answered, scraping leisurely at the wood. "I do not greatlycare. Why should I? You have shown me to-day that you do not valueyourself, and you do not suppose, then, that I can esteem one who doesnot esteem herself."

  "You dare say that!" The girl flared into fury. She stooped to pick upthe hammer. Jean put his foot on it.

  "No," said he. "You would use that, I suppose, to knock out my brains,because I show you no homage, because I say that you have acted as afool, that your bravery is that of a fool, that your thoughts--aye, yourthoughts of plunder and murder against the Bishop of Sarlat, your oldowl--towhit, towhoo! are the thoughts of a fool. No--I do not care forthe name of a fool."

  "Why did you run up the steps? Why did you cry to me to desist fromknocking out the posts? Why concern yourself a mite about me, if you sodespise me?" gasped the girl, and it seemed as though the words shotlike flames from her lips.

  "Because we are of like blood--that is all!" answered Jean, coolly.

  "Like blood! Hear him--hear him! He and I--_he_--he and I of like blood,and he a del' Peyra! And I--I am a Noemi!"

  "So--Noemi! That is your name?"

  "And I," continued the girl in her raging wrath, "I--learn this--I amthe child of Le Gros Guillem. Have you ever heard of the Gros Guillem?"she asked in a tone of triumph, like the blast of a victor's trumpet.

  Jean lowered his staff, and looked steadily at her. His brows werecontracted, his lips were set firm.

  "So!" he said, after a pause. "The daughter of Gros Guillem?"

  "Aye--have you heard of him?"

  "Of course I have heard of him."

  "And of the del' Peyras who ever heard?" asked the girl with mockery andscorn, and snapped her fingers.

  "No--God be thanked!--of the del' Peyras you have never heard as of theGros Guillem."

  "The grapes--the grapes are sour!" scoffed the girl.

  "I wonder at nothing you have done," said the boy sternly, "since youhave told me whence you come. Of the thorn--thorns; of thenettle--stings; of the thistle--thistles--all after their kind. No! Godbe praised!" The boy took off his cap and looked up. "The Gros Guillemand my father, Ogier del' Peyra, are not to be spoken of in one sentencehere, nor will be from the White Throne on the Day of Doom."

  Looking steadily at the girl seething with anger, with mortified pride,and with desire to exasperate him, he said--

  "I should never have thought that you sprang from the Gros Guillem. Thelikeness must be in the heart, it is not in the face."

  "Have you seen my father?" asked the girl.

  "I have never seen him, but I have heard of him."

  "What have you heard?"

  "That he is very tall and spider-like in build; they call him 'le gros'in jest, for he is not stout, but very meagre. He has long hands andfeet, and a long head with red hair, and pale face with sunspots, andvery faint blue eyes, under thick red brows. That is what I am told LeGros Guillem is like. But you----"

  "Describe me--go on!"

  "No!" answered Jean. "There is no need. You see yourself every day inthe glass. When there is no glass you look at yourself in the water;when no water, you look at yourself in your nails."

  "When there is no water, I look at myself in your eyes, and see a littlebrown creature there--that is me. _Allons!_"

  She began to laugh. Much of her bad temper had flown; she was a girl ofrapidly changing moods.

  It was true that she was mirrored in Jean del' Peyra's eyes. He wasobserving her attentively. Never before had he seen so handsome a girl,with olive, transparent skin, through which the flush of colour ran likesummer lightning in a summer cloud--such red lips, such rounded cheekand chin; such an easy, graceful figure! The magnificent burnished blackhair was loose and flowing over her shoulders; and her eyes!--they hadthe fire of ten thousand flints lurking in them and flashing out at aword.

  "How come you here?" asked Jean, in a voice less hard and in a tone lessindifferent than before. "This place, La Roque Gageac, is not one for adaughter of Le Gros Guillem. Here we are French. At Domme they areEnglish, and that is the place for your father."

  "Ah!" said the girl in reply, "among us women French or English are allthe same. We are both and we are neither. I suppose you are French?"

  "Yes, I am French."

  "And a Bishop's man?"

  "I live on our own land--Del Peyraland, at Ste. Soure."

  "And I am with my aunt here. My father considers Domme a little toorough a place for a girl. He has sent me hither. At the gates they didnot ask me if I were French or English. They let me through, but not myfather's men. They had to ride back to Domme."

  "He cannot come and see you here?"

  The girl laughed. "If he were to venture here, they would hang him--notgive him half an hour to make his peace with Heaven!--hang him--hang himas a dog!"

  "So!--and you are even proud of such a father!"

  "So!--and even I am proud to belong to one whose name is known. I thankmy good star I do not belong to a nobody of whom none talk, even as anOgier del' Peyra."

  "You are proud of your father--of Le Gros Guillem!" exclaimed Jean; andnow his brow flushed with anger, and his eye sparkled. "Proud of that_routier_ and _rouffien_,[2] who is the scourge, the curse of thecountry round! Proud of the man that has desolated our land, has madehappy wives into wailing widows, and glad children into despairingorphans; who has wrecked churches, and drunk--blaspheming God at thetime--out of the gold chalices; who has driven his sword into the bowelsof his own Mother Country, and has scorched her beautiful face with hisfirebrands! I know of Le Gros Guillem--who does not?--know of him by thecurses that are raised by his ill deeds, the hatred he has sown, thevows of vengeance that are registered----"

  [2] A _routier_, a brigand who harassed the roads; a _rouffien_, a dweller in the rocks, _rouffes_.

  "Which he laughs at," interrupted Noemi.

  "Which he laughs at now," pursued the boy angrily, and anger gavefluency to his tongue. "But do you not suppose that a day of reckoningwill arrive? Is Heaven deaf to the cries of the sufferers? Is Humanityall-enduring, and
never likely to revolt--and, when she does, to exact aterrible revenge? The labourer asks for naught but to plough his land inpeace, the merchant nothing but to be allowed to go on his journeyunmolested, the priest has no higher desire than to say his Mass intranquillity. And all this might be but for Le Gros Guillem and the likeof him. Let the English keep their cities and their provinces; theybelong to them by right. But is Le Gros Guillem English? Was Perducatd'Albret English? What of Le petit Mesquin? of the Archpriest? ofCervolle? Were they English? Are those real English faces that we fearand hate? Are they not the faces of our own countrymen, who callthemselves English, that they may plunder and murder theirfellow-countrymen and soak with blood and blast with fire the soil thatreared them?"

  Noemi was somewhat awed by his vehemence, but she said--

  "Rather something to be talked about than a nothing at all."

  "Wrong, utterly wrong!" said Jean. "Rather be the storm that bursts andwrecks all things than be still beneficent Nature in her order whichbrings to perfection? Any fool can destroy; it takes a wise man to buildup. You--you fair and gay young spirit, tell me have you ever seen thatof which you speak so lightly, of which you jest as if it were a matterof pastime? Have you gone tripping after your father, treading in hisbloody footprints, holding up your skirts lest they should touch thefestering carcases on either side the path he has trod?"

  "No," answered the girl, and some of the colour went out of her face,leaving it the finest, purest olive in tint.

  "Then say no more about your wish to have a name as a _routier_ and tobe the terror of the countryside, till you have experienced what it isthat terrorises the land."

  "One must live," said Noemi.

  "One may live by helping others to live--as does the peasant, and theartisan, as the merchant; or by destroying the life of others--as doesthe _routier_ and the vulgar robber," answered Jean.

  Then Noemi caught his wrist and drew him aside under an archway. Herquick eye had seen the castellan coming that way; he had not been in thecastle in the face of the rock, but in the town; and he was now on hisway back. He would find the means of ascent broken, and must repair itbefore reaching his eyrie.

  "Who is the fool now?" said Jean del' Peyra. "You, who were knockingaway the steps below you, calculating that if you destroyed that stair,you could still descend by the custodian's rope and windlass. See--hewas not there. You would have been fast as a prisoner till the ladderwas restored; and small bones would have been made of you, GrosGuillem's daughter, for playing such a prank as that!"

  Unseen they watched the man storming, swearing, angrily gathering up thepegs and wedges and the hammer, and ascending the riskful flight ofsteps to replace the missing pieces of wood in their sockets, and pegthem firmly and sustainingly with their wedges.

  "What you did in your thoughtlessness, that your father and the like ofhim do in their viciousness, and do on a grander scale," said Jean."They are knocking away the pegs in the great human ladder, destroyingthe sower with his harvest, the merchant with his trade, the mason, thecarpenter, the weaver with their crafts, the scholar with his learning,the man of God with his lessons of peace and goodwill. And at last LeGros Guillem and such as he will be left alone, above a ruined world onthe wreckage of which he has mounted, to starve, when there is nothingmore to be got, because the honest getters have all been struck down.Who is the fool now?"

  "Have done!" said the girl impatiently. "You have moralised enough--youshould be a clerk!"

  "We are all made moralists when we see honesty trampled under foot. Wellfor you, Noemi, with your light head and bad heart----"

  "My bad heart!"

  "Aye, your bad heart. Well for you that you are a harmless girl and nota boy, or you would have followed quick in your father's steps and builtyourself up as hateful a name."

  "I, a harmless girl?"

  "Yes, a harmless girl. Your hands are feeble, and however malicious yourheart, you can do none a mischief, save your own self."

  "You are sure of that?"

  "Mercifully it is so. The will to hurt and ruin may be present, but youare weak and powerless to do the harm you would."

  "Is a woman so powerless?"

  "Certainly."

  She ran up a couple of steps, caught him by the shoulders, stooped, andkissed him on the lips, before he was aware what she was about to do.

  "Say that again! A woman is weak! A woman cannot ravage and burn, andmadden and wound--not with a sword and a firebrand, but----"

  She stooped. The boy was bewildered--his pulses leaping, his eye onfire, his head reeling. She kissed him again.

  "These are her weapons!" said Noemi. "Who is the fool now?"