第60章

He leapt high into the air as my whip cut him again. He swung round, his face twisted with pain, his flabby cheeks white with fear, and his eyes wild with anger, for as yet the full force of the situation had not been borne in upon him. Then, seeing me there, and catching something of the awful passion that must have been stamped upon my face, he dropped on his knees and cried out something that I did not understand for I was past understanding much just then.

The lash whistled through the air again and caught him about the shoulders. He writhed and roared in his anguish of both flesh and spirit. But I was pitiless. He had ruined my life for me with his talking, and, as God lived, he should pay the only price that it lay in his power to pay - the price of physical suffering. Again and again my whip hissed about his head and cut into his soft white flesh, whilst roaring for mercy he moved and rocked on his knees before me. Instinctively he approached me to hamper my movements, whilst I moved back to give my lash the better play. He held out his arms and joined his fat hands in supplication, but the lash caught them in its sinuous tormenting embrace, and started a red wheal across their whiteness. He tucked them into his armpits with a scream, and fell prone upon the ground.

Then I remember that some of my men essayed to restrain me, which to my passion was as the wind to a blaze. I cracked my whip about their heads, commanding them to keep their distance lest they were minded to share his castigation. And so fearful an air must Ihave worn, that, daunted, they hung back and watched their leader's punishment in silence.

When I think of it now, I take no little shame at the memory of how I beat him. It is, indeed, with deep reluctance and yet deeper shame that I have brought myself to write of it. If I offend you with this account of that horsewhipping, let necessity be my apology;for the horsewhipping itself I have, unfortunately, no apology, save the blind fury that obsessed me-which is no apology at all.

Upon the morrow I repented me already with much bitterness. But in that hour I knew no reason. I was mad, and of my madness was born this harsh brutality.

"You would talk of me and my affairs in a tavern, you hound!" Icried, out of breath both by virtue of my passion and my exertions.

"Let the memory of this act as a curb upon your poisonous tongue in future.""Monseigneur!" he screamed. "Misericorde, monseigneur!""Aye, you shall have mercy - just so much mercy as you deserve.

Have I trusted you all these years, and did my father trust you before me, for this? Have you grown sleek and fat and smug in my service that you should requite me thus? Sangdieu, Rodenard! My father had hanged you for the half of the talking that you have done this night. You dog! You miserable knave!""Monseigneur," he shrieked again, "forgive! For your sainted mother's sake, forgive! Monseigneur, I did not know - ""But you are learning, cur; you are learning by the pain of your fat carcase; is it not so, carrion?"He sank down, his strength exhausted, a limp, moaning, bleeding mass of flesh, into which my whip still cut relentlessly.

I have a picture m my mind of that ill-lighted room, of the startled faces on which the flickering glimmer of the candles shed odd shadows; of the humming and cracking of my whip; of my own voice raised in oaths and epithets of contempt; of Rodenard's screams; of the cries raised here and there in remonstrance or in entreaty, and of some more bold that called shame upon me. Then others took up that cry of "Shame!" so that at last I paused and stood there drawn up to my full height, as if in challenge. Towering above the heads of any in that room, I held my whip menacingly. I was unused to criticism, and their expressions of condemnation roused me.

"Who questions my right?" I demanded arrogantly, whereupon they one and all fell silent. "If any here be bold enough to step out, he shall have my answer." Then, as none responded, I signified my contempt for them by a laugh.

"Monseigneur!" wailed Rodenard at my feet, his voice growing feeble.

By way of answer, I gave him a final cut, then I flung the whip -which had grown ragged in the fray - back to the ostler from whom Ihad borrowed it.

"Let that suffice you, Rodenard," I said, touching him with my foot.

"See that I never set eyes upon you again, if you cherish your miserable life!""Not that, monseigneur." groaned the wretch. "Oh, not that! You have punished me; you have whipped me until I cannot stand; forgive me, monseigneur, forgive me now!""I have forgiven you, but I never wish to see you again, lest Ishould forget that I have forgiven you. Take him away, some of you,"I bade my men, and in swift, silent obedience two of them stepped forward and bore the groaning, sobbing fellow from the room. When that was done "Host," I commanded, "prepare me a room. Attend me, a couple of you."I gave orders thereafter for the disposal of my baggage, some of which my lacqueys brought up to the chamber that the landlord had in haste made ready for me. In that chamber I sat until very late;a prey to the utmost misery and despair. My rage being spent, Imight have taken some thought for poor Ganymede and his condition, but my own affairs crowded over-heavily upon my mind, and sat the undisputed rulers of my thoughts that night.

At one moment I considered journeying to Lavedan, only to dismiss the idea the next. What could it avail me now? Would Roxalanne believe the tale I had to tell? Would she not think, naturally enough, that I was but making the best of the situation, and that my avowal of the truth of a story which it was not in my power to deny was not spontaneous, but forced from me by circumstances? No, there was nothing more to be done. A score of amours had claimed my attention in the past and received it; yet there was not one of those affairs whose miscarriage would have afforded me the slightest concern or mortification. It seemed like an irony, like a Dies ire, that it should have been left to this first true passion of my life to have gone awry.