The Long Night Part 13

M. d'Albigny--for he it was--let drop an oath. "Are you doing anything at all?" he asked savagely, dropping the thin veil of irony that shrouded his temper. "That is the question. Are you moving?"

"That will appear."

"When? When, man? That is what his Highness wants to know. At present there is no appearance of anything."

"No," Basterga replied with fine irony. "There is not. I know it. It is only when the fireworks are discovered and the mines opened and the engineers are flying for their lives--that there is really an appearance of something."

"And that is the answer I am to carry to the Grand Duke?" d'Albigny retorted in a tone which betrayed how deeply he resented such taunts at the lips of his inferior. "That is all you have to tell him?"

Basterga was silent awhile. When he spoke again, it was in a lower and more cautious tone. "No; you may tell his Highness this," he said, after glancing warily behind him. "You may tell him this. The longest night in the year is approaching. Not many weeks divide us from it. Let him give me until that night. Then let him bring his troops and ladders and the rest of it--the care whereof is your lordship's, not mine--to a part of the walls which I will indicate, and he shall find the guards withdrawn, and Geneva at his feet."

"The longest night? But that is some weeks distant," d'Albigny answered in a grumbling tone. Still it was evident that he was impressed by the precision of the other's promise.

"Was Rome built in a day? Or can Geneva be destroyed in a day?" Basterga retorted.

"If I had my hand on it!" d'Albigny answered truculently, "the task would not take more than a day!" He was a Southern Frenchman and an ardent Catholic; an officer of high rank in the employ of Savoy; for the rest, proud, brave, and difficult.

"Ay, but you have not your hand on it, M. d'Albigny!" Basterga retorted coolly. "Nor will you ever have your hand on it, without help from me."

"And that is all you have to say?"

"At present."

"Very good," d'Albigny replied, nodding contemptuously. "If his Highness be wise----"

"He is wise. At least," Basterga continued drily, "he is wiser than M.

d'Albigny. He knows that it is better to wait and win, than leap and lose."

"But what of the discontented you were to bring to a head?" d'Albigny retorted, remembering with relief another head of complaint, on which he had been charged to deliver himself. "The old soldiers and rufflers whom the peace has left unemployed, and with whom the man Grio was to aid you? Surely waiting will not help you with them! There should be some in Geneva who like not the rule of the Pastors and the drone of psalms and hymns! Men who, if I know them, must be on fire for a change!

Come, Monsieur Basterga, is no use to be made of them?"

"Ay," Basterga answered, after stepping back a pace to a.s.sure himself by a careful look that no one was remarking a colloquy which the time and the weather rendered suspicious. "Use them if you please. Let them drink and swear and raise petty riots, and keep the Syndics on their guard! It is all they are good for, M. d'Albigny; and I cannot say that aught keeps back the cause so much as Grio's friends and their line of conduct!"

"So! that is your opinion, is it, Monsieur Basterga?" d'Albigny answered. "And with it I must go as I came! I am of no use here, it seems?"

"Of great use presently, of none now," Basterga replied with greater respect than he had hitherto exhibited. "Frankly, M. d'Albigny, they fear you and suspect you. But if President Rochette of Chambery, who has the confidence of the Pastors, were to visit us on some pretext or other, say to settle such small matters as the peace has left in doubt, it might soothe their spirits and allay their suspicions. He, rather than M. d'Albigny, is the helper I need at present."

D'Albigny grunted, but it was evident that the other's boldness impressed him. "You think, then, that they suspect us?" he said.

"How should they not? Tell me that. How should they not? Rochette's task must be to lull those suspicions to sleep. In the meantime I----"

"Yes?"

"Will be at work," Basterga replied. He laughed drily as if it pleased him to baulk the other's curiosity. Softly he added under his breath,

"Captique dolis, lacrimisque coactis, Quos neque Tydides, nec Larrissaeus Achilles Non anni domuere decem, non mille carinae!

D'Albigny nodded. "Well, I trust you are really counting on something solid," he answered. "For you are taking a great deal upon yourself, Monsieur Basterga. I hope you understand that," he added with a searching look.

"I take all on myself," the big man answered.

The Frenchman was far from content, but he argued no more. He reflected a moment, considering whether he had forgotten anything: then, muttering that he would convey Basterga's views to the Grand Duke, he pulled his cloak more closely about his face, and with a curt nod of farewell, he turned on his heel and was gone. A moment, and he was lost to sight between the wooden mills and sheds which flanked the bridge on either side, and rendered it at once as narrow and as picturesque as were most of the bridges of the day. Basterga, left solitary, waited a while before he left his shelter. Satisfied at length that the coast was clear, he continued his way into the town, and thinking deeply as he went came presently to the Corraterie. It cannot be said that his meditations were of the most pleasant; and perhaps for this reason he walked slowly. When he entered the house, shaking the moisture from his cloak and cap, he found the others seated at table and well advanced in their meal. He was twenty minutes late.

He was a clever man. But at times, in moments of irritation, the sense of his cleverness and of his superiority to the ma.s.s of men led him to do the thing which he had better have left undone. It was so this evening. Face to face with d'Albigny, he had put a bold face on the difficulties which surrounded him: he had let no sign of doubt or uncertainty, no word of fear respecting the outcome escape him. But the moment he found himself at liberty, the critical situation of his affairs, if the Syndic refused to take the bait, recurred to his mind, and hara.s.sed him. He had no _confidante_, no one to whom he could breathe his fears, no one to whom he could explain the situation, or with whom he could take credit for his coolness: and the curb of silence, while it exasperated his temper, augmented a hundredfold the contempt in which he held the unconscious companions among whom chance and his mission had thrown him. A spiteful desire to show that contempt sparkled in his eyes as he took his seat at the table this evening; but for a minute or two after he had begun his meal he kept silence.

On a mind such as his, outward things have small effect; otherwise the cheerful homeliness of the scene must have soothed him. The lamp, telling of present autumn and approaching winter, had been lit: a wood-fire crackled pleasantly in the great fireplace and was reflected in rows of pewter plates on either dresser: a fragrant stew scented the air; all that a philosopher of the true type could have asked was at his service. But Basterga belonged rather to the fifteenth century, the century of the south, which was expiring, than to the century of the north which was opening. Splendour rather than comfort, the gorgeousness of Venice, of red-haired dames, stiff-clad in t.i.tian velvets, of tables gleaming with silk and gold and ruby gla.s.s, rather than the plain homeliness which Geneva shared with the Dutch cities, held his mind.

To-night in particular his lip curled as he looked round. To-night in particular ill-pleased and ill-content he found the place and the company well matched, the one and the other mean and contemptible!

One there--Gentilis--marked the great man's mood, and, cringing, after his kind, kept his eyes low on his platter. Grio, too, knew enough to seek refuge in sullen silence. Claude alone, impatient of the constraint which descended on the party at the great man's coming, continued to talk in a raised voice. "Good soup to-night, Anne," he said cheerfully.

For days past he had been using himself to speak to her easily and lightly, as if she were no more to him than to the others.

She did not answer--she seldom did. But "Good?" Basterga sneered in his most cutting tone. "Ay, for schoolboys! And such as have no palate save for pap!"

Claude being young took the thrust a little to heart. He returned it with a boy's impertinence. "We none of us grow thin on it," he said with a glance at the other's bulk.

Basterga's eyes gleamed. "Grease and dish-washings," he exclaimed. And then, as if he knew where he could most easily wound his antagonist, he turned to the girl.

"If Hebe had brought such liquor to Jupiter," he sneered, "do you think he had given her Hercules for a husband, as I shall presently give you Grio? Ha! You flush at the prospect, do you? You colour and tremble," he continued mockingly, "as if it were the wedding-day. You'll sleep little to-night, I see, for thinking of your Hercules!" With grim irony he pointed to his loutish companion, whose gross purple face seemed the coa.r.s.er for the small peaked beard that, after the fashion of the day, adorned his lower lip. "Hercules, do I call him? Adonis rather."

"Why not Bacchus?" Claude muttered, his eyes on his plate. In spite of the strongest resolutions, he could not keep silence.

"Bacchus? And why, boy?" frowning darkly.

"He were better bestowed on a tun of wine," the youth retorted, without looking up.

"That you might take his place, I suppose?" Basterga retorted swiftly.

"What say you, girl? Will you have him?" And when she did not answer, "Bread, do you hear?" he cried harshly and imperiously. "Bread, I say!"

And having forced her to come within reach to serve him, "What do you say to it?" he continued, his hand on the trencher, his eyes on her face. "Answer me, girl, will you have him?"

She did not answer, but that which he had quite falsely attributed to her before, a blush, slowly and painfully darkened her cheeks and neck.

He seized her brutally by the chin, and forced her to raise her face.

"Blushing, I see?" he continued. "Blushing, blushing, eh? So it is for him you thrill, and lie awake, and dream of kisses, is it? For this new youth and not for Grio? Nay, struggle not! Wrest not yourself away! Let Grio, too, see you!"

Claude, his back to the scene, drove his nails into the palms of his hands. He would not turn. He would not, he dared not see what was pa.s.sing, or how they were handling her, lest the fury in his breast sweep all away, and he rise up and disobey her! When a movement told him that Basterga had released her--with a last ugly taunt aimed as much at him as at her--he still sat bearing it, curbing, drilling, compelling himself to be silent. Ay, and still to be silent, though the voice that so cruelly wounded her was scarcely mute before it began again.

"Tissot, indeed!" Basterga cried in the same tone of bitter jeering. "A fig for Tissot! No more shall we

Upon his viler metal test our purest pure, And see him trans.m.u.tations three endure!

And why? Because a mightier than Tissot is here! Because," with a coa.r.s.e laugh,

"Our stone angelical whereby All secret potencies to light are brought

has itself suffered a trans.m.u.tation! A trans.m.u.tation do I say! Rather an eclipse, a darkening! He, whom matrons for their maidens fear, has come, has seen, has conquered! And we poor mortals bow before him."

Still Claude, his face burning, his ears tingling, put force upon himself and sat mute, his eyes on the board. He would not look round, he would not acknowledge what was pa.s.sing. Basterga's tone conveyed a meaning coa.r.s.er and more offensive than the words he spoke; and Claude knew it, and knew that the girl, at whom he dared not look knew it, as she stood helpless, a b.u.t.t, a target for their gloating eyes. He would not look for he remembered. He saw the scalding liquid blister the skin, saw the rounded arm quiver with pain; and remembering and seeing, he was resolved that the lesson should not be lost on him. If it was only by suffering he could serve her, he would serve her.

He dared not look even at Gentilis, who sat opposite him; and who was staring in gross rapture at the girl's confusion, and the burning blushes, so long banished from her pale features. For to look at that mean mask of a man was the same thing as to strike! Unfortunately, as it happened, his silence and lack of spirit had a result which he had not foreseen. It encouraged the others to carry their brutality to greater and even greater lengths. Grio flung a gross jest in the girl's face: Basterga asked her mockingly how long she had loved. They got no answer; on which the big man asked his question again, his voice grown menacing; and still she would not answer. She had taken refuge from Grio's coa.r.s.eness in the farthest corner of the hearth: where stooping over a pot, she hid her burning face. Had they gone too far at last? So far, that in despair she had made up her mind to resist? Claude wondered. He hoped that they had.