The Long Night | Page 4

he lurched into the room, a bulky, reeling figure in stained green and tarnished lace. "Four flinchers! But I'll make them drink a cup with me or I'll prick their hides! Do you think we shed blood for you and are to be stinted of our liquor!"
"Messer Grio! Messer Grio!" the landlord cried, wringing his hands. "You will be my ruin!"
"No fear!"
"But I do fear!" the host retorted sharply, going so far as to lay a hand on his shoulder. "I do fear." Behind the man in green his boon-fellows, flushed with drink, had gathered, and were staring half curious, half in alarm into the room. The landlord turned and appealed to them. "For Heaven's sake get him away quietly!" he muttered. "I shall lose my living if this be known. And you will suffer too! Gentlemen," he turned to the party at the table, "this is a quiet house, a quiet house in general, but----"
"Tut-tut!" said the vintner good-naturedly. "We'll drink a cup with the gentleman if he wishes it!"
"You'll drink or be pricked!" quoth Messer Grio; he was one of those who grow offensive in their cups. And while his friends laughed, he swished out a sword of huge length, and flourished it. "?a! ?a! Now let me see any man refuse his liquor!"
The landlord groaned, but thinking apparently that soonest broken was soonest mended, he vanished, to return in a marvellously short space of time with four tall glasses and a flask of Neuchatel. "'Tis good wine," he muttered anxiously. "Good wine, gentlemen, I warrant you. And Messer Grio here has served the State, so that some little indulgence----"
"What art muttering?" cried the bully, who spoke French with an accent new and strange in the student's ears. "Let be! Let be, I say! Let them drink, or be pricked!"
The merchants and the vintner took their glasses without demur: and, perhaps, though they shrugged their shoulders, were as willing as they looked. The young man hesitated, took with a curling lip the glass which was presented to him, and then, a blush rising to his eyes, pushed it from him.
"'Tis good wine," the landlord repeated. "And no charge. Drink, young sir, and----"
"I drink not on compulsion!" the student answered.
Messer Grio stared. "What?" he roared. "You----"
"I drink not on compulsion," the young man repeated, and this time he spoke clearly and firmly. "Had the gentleman asked me courteously to drink with him, that were another matter. But----"
"Sho!" the vintner muttered, nudging him in pure kindness. "Drink, man, and a fico for his courtesy so the wine be old! When the drink is in, the sense is out, and," lowering his voice, "he'll let you blood to a certainty, if you will not humour him."
But the grinning faces in the doorway hardened the student in his resolution. "I drink not on compulsion," he repeated stubbornly. And he rose from his seat.
"You drink not?" Grio exclaimed. "You drink not? Then by the living----"
"For Heaven's sake!" the landlord cried, and threw himself between them. "Messer Grio! Gentlemen!"
But the bully, drunk and wilful, twitched him aside. "Under compulsion, eh!" he sneered. "You drink not under compulsion, don't you, my lad? Let me tell you," he continued with ferocity, "you will drink when I please, and where I please, and as often as I please, and as much as I please, you meal-worm! You half-weaned puppy! Take that glass, d'you hear, and say after me, Devil take----"
"Messer Grio!" cried the horrified landlord.
"Devil take"--for a moment a hiccough gave him pause--"all flinchers! Take the glass, young man. That is well! I see you will come to it! Now say after me, Devil take----"
"That!" the student retorted, and flung the wine in the bully's face.
The landlord shrieked; the other guests rose hurriedly from their seats, and got aside. Fortunately the wine blinded the man for a moment, and he recoiled, spitting curses and darting his sword hither and thither in impotent rage. By the time he had cleared his eyes the youth had got to his bundle, and, freeing his blade, placed himself in a posture of defence. His face was pale, but with the pallor of excitement rather than of fear; and the firm set of his mouth and the smouldering fire in his eyes as he confronted the drunken bravo, no less than the manner in which he handled his weapon, showed him as ready to pursue as he had been hardy to undertake the quarrel.
He gave proof of forethought, too. "Witness all, he drew first!" he cried; and his glance quitting Grio for the briefest instant sought to meet the merchants' eyes. "I am on my defence. I call all here to witness that he has thrust this quarrel upon me!"
The landlord wrung his hands. "Oh dear! oh dear!" he cried. "In Heaven's