The Long Night Part 40

Alone with two women whom the worst of fates threatened! Whose pains and ultimate lot the brawl in which he had taken part foreshadowed too clearly. For thus and with as little cause perished in those days thousands of the helpless and the friendless. Alone with these two, under the roof from which all others had fled, barred with them behind the gloomy shutters until the hour came, and their fellows, shuddering, cast them out--what chance had he of escaping their lot?

Or what desire to escape it? None, he told himself. None! But he who fights best when blows are to be struck and things can be done finds it hard to sit still where it is the inevitable that must be faced. And while Claude told himself that he had no desire to escape, since escape for her was impossible, his mind sought desperately the means of saving all. The frontier lay but a league away. Conceivably they might lower themselves from the wall by night; conceivably his strength might avail to carry her mother to the frontier. But, alas! the crime of witchcraft knew no frontier; the reputation of a witch once thrown abroad, flew fast as the swiftest horse. Before they had been three days in Savoy, the women would be reported, seized and examined; and their fate at Faucigny or Bonneville would be no less tragic than in the Bourg du Four of Geneva.

Yet, something must be done, something could surely be done. But what?

The bravest caught in a net struggles the most desperately, and involves himself the most hopelessly. And Claude felt himself caught in a net. He felt the deadly meshes cling about his limbs, the ropes fetter and benumb him. From the sunshine of youth, from freedom, from a life without care, he had pa.s.sed in a few days into the grip of this [Greek: anagke], this dire necessity, this dark ante-chamber of death. Was it wonderful that for a moment, recognising the sacrifice he was called upon to make and its inefficacy to save, he rebelled against the love that had drawn him to this fate, that had led him to this, that in others' eyes had ruined him? Ay, but for a moment only. Then with a heart bursting with pity for her, with love for her, he was himself. If it must be, it must be. The prospect was dark as the room in which he stood, confined and stifling, sordid and shameful; the end one which would make his name a marvel and an astonishment. But the prospect and the end were hers too; they would face them together. Haply he might spare her some one pang, haply he might give her some one moment of happiness, the support of one at least who knew her pure and spotless.

And while he thought of it--surprise of surprises--he bowed his head on his folded arms and wept.

Not in pity for himself, but for her. It was the thought of her gentleness, her loving nature, her harmlessness--and the end this, the reward this--which overcame him; which swelled his breast until only tears could relieve it. He saw her as a dove struggling in cruel hands; and the pity which, had there been chance or hope, or any to smite, would have been rage, could find no other outlet. He wept like a woman; but it was for her.

And she, who had descended unheard, and stood even now at the door, with a something almost divine in her face--a something that was neither love nor compa.s.sion, maid's fancy nor mother's care, but a mingling of all these, saw. And her heart bled for him; her arms in fancy went round him, in fancy his head was on her breast, she comforted him. She, who a moment before had almost sunk down on the stairs, worn out by her sufferings and the strain of hiding them from her mother's eyes, forgot her weakness in thought for him.

She had no contempt for his tears. She had seen him stand between herself and her tormentors, she had seen the flash of his eye, heard his voice, knew him brave. But the fate, for which long thought and hours on her knees had prepared her--so that it seemed but a black and bitter pa.s.sage with peace beyond--appalled her for him; and might well appal him. The courage of men is active, of women pa.s.sive; with a woman's instinct she knew this, allowed for it, and allowed, too, for another thing--that he was fasting.

When he looked up, startled by the tinkle of pewter and the rustle of her skirt, she was kneeling between the settle and the fire, preparing food. He flattered himself that in the dark she had not seen him, and when he had regained his self-control he stepped to the settle-back and looked over it.

"You did not see me?" he said.

She did not answer at once, but finished what she was doing. Then she stood up and handed him a bowl. "The bread is on the table," she said, indicating it. She was a woman, and, dark as it was, she kept the disfigured cheek turned from him.

He would have replied, but she made a sign to him to eat, and, seating herself on a stool in the corner with her plate on her lap, she set him an example. Apart from her weary att.i.tude, and the droop of her head, he might have deemed the scene in which they had taken part a figment of his brain. But round them was the gloom of the closed room!

"You did not see me?" he repeated presently.

She stood up. "I would I had never seen you!" she cried; and her anguished tone bore witness to the truth of her words. "It is the worst, it is the bitterest thing of all! of all!" she repeated. The settle was between them, and she rested her hands on the back of it. He stooped, and, in the darkness, covered them with kisses, while his breast heaved with the swell of the storm which her entrance had cut short. "For all but that I was prepared," she continued; "I was ready. I have seen for weeks the hopelessness of it, the certain end, the fate before us. I have counted the cost, and I have learned to look beyond for--for all we desire. It is a sharp pa.s.sage, and peace. But you"--her voice rested on the same tragic note of monotony--"are outside the sum, and spoil all. A little suffering will kill my mother, a little, a very little fear. I doubt if she will live to be taken hence. And I--I can suffer. I have known all, I have foreseen all--long! I have learned to think of it, and I can learn by G.o.d's help to bear it! And in a little while, a very little while, it will be over, and I shall be at rest. But you--you, my love----"

Her voice broke, her head sunk forward. His lips met hers in a first kiss; a kiss, salted by the tears that ran unchecked down his face. For a long minute there was silence in the room, a silence broken only by the low, inarticulate murmur of his love--love whispered brokenly on her tear-wet lips, on her cold, closed eyelids. She made no attempt to withdraw her face, and presently the murmur grew to words of defiance, of love that mocked at peril, mocked at shame, mocked at death, having a.s.surance of its own, having a.s.surance of her.

They fell on her ears as warm thaw-rain on frozen sward; and slowly into the pallor of her face, the whiteness of her closed eyelids, crept a tender blush. Strange that for a few brief moments they were happy; strange, proof marvellous of the dominance of the inner life over the outer, of love over death.

"My love, my love!"

"Again!"--he murmured.

"My love, my love!"

But at length she came to herself, she remembered. "You will go?" she said. She put him from her and held him fondly at arm's length, her hands on his shoulders. "You will go? It is all you can do for me. You will go and live?"

"Without you?"

"Yes. Better, a hundred times better so--for me."

"And for me? Why may I not save you and her?"

"It is impossible!"

"Nothing is impossible to love," he answered. "The nights are long, the wall is not too high! No wall is too high for love! It is but a league to the frontier, and I am strong."

"Who would receive us?" she asked sadly. "Who would shelter us? In Savoy, if we were not held for sorcery, we should be delivered to the Inquisition."

"We might gain friends?"

"With what? No," she continued, her hands cleaving more tightly to him; "you must go, dear love! Dear love! You must go! It is all you can do for me, and it is much! Oh, indeed, it is much! It is very much!"

He drew her to him as near as the settle would permit, until she was kneeling on it, and in spite of her faint resistance he could look into her eyes. "Were you in my place, would you leave me?" he asked.

"Yes," she lied bravely, "I would."

But the flash of resentment in her eyes gave her voice the lie, and he laughed joyfully. "You would not!" he said. "You would not leave me on this side of death!"

She tried to protest.

"Nor will I you," he continued, stopping her mouth with fresh kisses.

"Nor will I you till death! Did you think me a coward?" He held her from him and looked into her reproachful eyes. "Or a Tissot? Tissot left you.

Or Louis Gentilis?"

But she made him know that he was none of these in a way that satisfied him; and a moment later her mother's voice called her from the room. He thought, having no experience of a woman's will, that he had done with that; and in her absence he betook himself to examining the defences of the house. He replaced the bar which he had wrested from the window; wedging it into its socket with a morsel or two of molten lead. The windows of the bedrooms, his own and Louis', looked into a narrow lane, the Rue de la Cite, that ran at the back of the Corraterie in a line with the ramparts; but not only were they almost too small to permit the pa.s.sage of a full-grown man, they were strongly barred. Against such a rabble, as had a.s.saulted Anne, or even a more formidable mob, the house was secure. But if the law intervened neither bar nor bolt could save them.

He fell to thinking of this, and stood, arrested in the middle of the darkened room that, as the hours went by, was beginning to take on a familiar look. The day was pa.s.sing, all without remained quiet, nothing had happened. Was it possible that nothing would happen? Was it possible that the girl through long brooding exaggerated the peril? And that the worst to be feared was such an outbreak as had occurred that morning?

Such an outbreak as might not take place again, since mobs were fickle things.

He dwelt a while on this more hopeful view of things. Then he recalled Basterga's threats, the Syndic's face, the departure of Louis and Grio; and his heart sank as lead sinks. The rumour so quickly spread--by what hints, what innuendoes, what cunning inquiries, what references to the old, invisible, bedridden woman, he could but guess--that rumour bore witness to a malice and a thirst for revenge which were not likely to stop at words. And Louis' flight? And Grio's? And Basterga's?--for he did not return. To believe that all these, taken together, these and the outrage of the morning, portended anything but danger, anything but the worst, demanded a hopefulness that even his youth and his love could not compa.s.s.

Yet when she descended he met her with brave looks.

CHAPTER XXI.

THE _REMEDIUM_.

Blondel's thin lips were warrant--to such of the world as had eyes to see--that in the ordinary things of life he would have been one of the last to put faith in a man of Basterga's stamp: and one of the first, had the case been other than his own, to laugh at the credulity he was displaying. He would have seen--no one more clearly--that, in making the bargain he had made, he was in the position of a drowning man who clutches at a straw; not because he believes that the straw will support him, but because he has no other hope, and is loth to sink.

He would have seen, too, another thing, which indeed he did see dimly.

This was that, talk as he might, make terms as he might, repeat as firmly as he pleased, "The _remedium_ first and then Geneva," he would be forced when the time came to take the word for the deed. If he dared not trust Basterga, neither dared the scholar trust him. Once safe, once s.n.a.t.c.hed from the dark fate that scared him, he would laugh at the notion of betraying the city. He would snap his fingers in the Paduan's face; and Basterga knew it. The scholar, therefore, dared not trust him; and either there was an end of the matter or he must trust Basterga, must eat his own words, and, content with the possession of something, must wait for proof of its efficacy until the die was cast!

In his heart he knew this. He knew that on the brink of the extremity to which circ.u.mstances and Basterga were slowly pushing him it might not be in his power to check himself: that he must trust, whether he would or no, and where instinct bade him place no trust. And this doubt, this suspicion that when all was done he might find himself tricked, and learn that for nothing he had given all, added immeasurably to the torment of his mind; to the misery of his reflections when he awoke in the small hours and saw things coldly and clearly, and to the fever and suspense in which he pa.s.sed his days.

He clung to one thought and got what consolation he could from it; a bitter and saturnine comfort it was. The thought was this: if it turned out that, after all, he had been tricked, he could but die; and die he must if he made no bargain. And to a dead man what matter was it what price he had paid that he might live! What matter who won or who lost Geneva, who lived, who died, who were slaves, who free!

And again, the very easiness of the thing he was asked to do tempted him. It was a thing that to one in his position presented no difficulty and scarcely any danger. He had but to withdraw the guards, or the greater part of them, from a portion of the wall, and to stop on one pretext or another--the bitter cold of the wintry weather would avail--the rounds that at stated intervals visited the various posts.

That was all; as a man of tried loyalty, intrusted with the safeguarding of the city, and to whom the officer of the watch was answerable, he might make the necessary arrangements without incurring, even after the catastrophe, more than a pa.s.sing odium, a breath of suspicion.

And Baudichon and Pet.i.tot? He tasted, when he thought of them, the only moments of comfort, of pleasure, of ease, that fell to his lot throughout these days. They would thwart him no more. Petty worms, whose vision went no farther than the walls of the city, he would have done with them when the flag of Savoy fluttered above St. Pierre; and when for the confines of a petty canton was subst.i.tuted, for those who had eyes to see and courage to adapt themselves, the wide horizon of the Italian Kingdom. When he thought of them--and then only--he warmed to the task before him; then only he could think of it without a shiver and without distaste. And not the less because on that side, in their suspicion, in their grudging jealousy, in their unwinking integrity, lay the one difficulty.

A difficulty exasperated by the insult that, in a moment of bitter disappointment, he had flung in Baudichon's face. That hasty word had revealed to the speaker a lack of self-control that terrified him, even as it had revealed to Baudichon a glimpse of something underneath the Fourth Syndic's dry exterior that might well set a man thinking as well as talking. This matter Blondel saw plainly he must deal with at once, or it might do harm. To absent himself from the next day's council might rouse a storm beyond his power to weather, or short of that might give rise at a later period to a dangerous amount of gossip and conjecture.