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A Pagan Of The South
by
Immediately a murmur was heard: “A spy, an English spy!” From the mouths of absinthe-drinking liberes it passed to the mouths of rum-drinking recidivistes. It did not escape Blake Shorland’s ears, but he betrayed no sign. He sipped his coffee and appeared absorbed in his paper, thinking carefully of the difficulties of his position. He knew that to rise now and make for the door would be of no advantage, for a number of the excited crowd were between him and it. To show fear might precipitate a catastrophe with this drunken mob. He had nerve and coolness.
Presently a dirty outcast passed him and rudely jostled his arm as he drank his coffee. He begged the other’s pardon conventionally in French, and went on reading. A moment later the paper was snatched from his hand, and a red-faced unkempt scoundrel yelled in his face: “Spy of the devil! English thief!”
Then he rose quickly and stepped back to the wall, feeling for the spring in the sword-stick which he held closely pressed to his side. This same sword-stick had been of use to him on the Fly River in New Guinea.
“Down with the English spy!” rang through the room, joined to vile French oaths. Meanwhile the woman had not changed her position, but closely watched the tumult which she herself had roused. She did not stir when she saw a glass hurled at the unoffending Englishman’s head. A hand reached over and seized a bottle behind her. The bottle was raised and still she did not move, though her fingers pressed her cheeks with a spasmodic quickness. Three times Shorland had said, in well-controlled tones: “Frenchmen, I am no spy,” but they gave him the lie with increasing uproar. Had not Gabrielle Rouget said that he was an English spy? As the bottle was poised in the air with a fiendish cry of “A baptism! a baptism!” and Shorland was debating on his chances of avoiding it, and on the wisdom of now drawing his weapon and cutting his way through the mob, there came from the door a call of “Hold! hold!” and a young officer dashed in, his arm raised against the brutal missile in the hands of the ticket-of-leave man, whose Chauvinism was a matter of absinthe, natural evil, and Gabrielle Rouget. “Wretches! scum of France!” he cried: “what is this here? And you, Gabrielle, do you sleep? Do you permit murder?”
The woman met the fire in his eyes without flinching, and some one answered for her. “He is an English spy.”
“Take care, Gabrielle,” the young officer went on, “take care–you go too far!” Waving back the sullen crowd, now joined by the woman who had not yet spoken, he said: “Who are you, monsieur? What is the trouble?”
Shorland drew from his pocket his letters and credentials. Gabrielle now stood at the young officer’s elbow. As the papers were handed over, a photograph dropped from among them and fell to the floor face upward. Shorland stooped to pick it up, but, as he did so, he heard a low exclamation from Gabrielle. He looked up. She pointed to the portrait, and said gaspingly: “My God–look! look!” She leaned forward and touched the portrait in his hand. “Look! look!” she said again. And then she paused, and a moment after laughed. But there was no mirth in her laughter–it was hollow and nervous. Meanwhile the young officer had glanced at the papers, and now handed them back, with the words: “All is right, monsieur–eh, Gabrielle, well, what is the matter?” But she drew back, keeping her eyes fixed on the Englishman, and did not answer.
The young officer stretched out his hand. “I am Alencon Barre, lieutenant, at your service. Let us go, monsieur.”
But there was some unusual devilry working in that drunken crowd. The sight of an officer was not sufficient to awe them into obedience. Bad blood had been fired, and it was fed by some cause unknown to Alencon Barre, but to be understood fully hereafter. The mass surged forward, with cries of “Down with the Englishman!”