The Syndic uttered an involuntary cry.
"And prayed," Louis continued, confirming his astonishing statement by a nod. "But whether to it—'twas on the table before her—or to the devil, or otherwise, I knownot. Only"—with damnatory candour—"it had a strange aspect. Certainly she knelt, and it was on the table in front of her, and her forehead rested on her hands, and——"
"What then? What then? By Heaven, the point!" gasped Blondel, writhing in torture. "What then? blind worm that you are, can you not see that you are killing me? What did she do with it? Tell me!"
"She poured it into a glass, and——"
"She drank it?"
"No, she carried it to her mother," Louis replied as slowly as he dared. Fawning on the hand that had struck him, he would fain bite it if he could do so safely. "I did not see what followed," he went on, "they were behind the screen. But I heard her say that it was Madame's medicine. And I made out enough——"
"Ah!"
"To be sure that her mother drank it."
Blondel stared at him a moment, wide-eyed; then, with a cry of despair, bitter, final, indescribable, the Syndic turned and hurried away. He did not hear the timid remonstrances which Louis, who followed a few paces behind, ventured to utter. He did not heed the wondering looks of those whom he jostled as he plunged into the current of passers and thrust his way across the bridge in the direction whence he had come. The one impulse in his blind brain was to get home, that he might be alone, to think and moan and bewail himself unwatched; even as the first instinct of the wounded beast is to seek its lair and lie hidden, there to await with piteous eyes and the divine patience of animals the coming of death.
But this man had the instinct only, not the patience. In his case would come with thought wild rages, gnawings of regret, tears of blood. That he might have, andhad not, that he had failed by so little, that he had been worsted by his own tools—these things and the bitter irony of life's chances would madden and torment him. In an hour he would live a lifetime of remorse; yet find in his worst moments no thought more poignant than the reflection that had he played the game with courage, had he grasped the nettle boldly, had he seized Basterga while it was yet time, he might have lived! He might have lived! Ah, God!
Meanwhile Louis, though consumed with desire to see what would happen, remained on the bridge. He had tasted a fearful joy and would fain savour more of it if he could do so with a whole skin. But to follow seemed perilous; he held the Syndic's mood in too great awe for that. He did the next best thing. He hastened to a projecting part of the bridge a few paces from the spot where they had conferred; there he raised himself on the parapet that he might see which way Blondel turned at the end of the bridge. If he entered the town no more could be made of it: but if he turned right-handed and by the rampart to the Corraterie, Louis' mind was made up to risk something. He would follow to the Royaumes' house. The magistrate could hardly blame him for going to his own lodging!
It was a busy hour, and, cold as it was, a fair number of people were passing between the island and the upper town. For a moment, look as he might, he could not discern the Syndic's spare figure; and he was beginning to think that he had missed him when he saw something that in a twinkling turned his thoughts. On the bank a little beside the end of the bridge stood Claude Mercier. He carried a heavy stick in his hand, and he was waiting: waiting, with his eyes fixed on our friend, and a look in those eyes that even at that distance raised a gentle sweat on Louis' brow.
It required little imagination to follow Claude's past movements. He had gone to the Syndic's house at nine, and finding himself tricked a second time had returned hot-foot to the Corraterie. Thence he had tracked the two to this place. But how long had he been waiting, Louis wondered; and how much had he seen? Something for certain. His face announced that; and Louis, hot all over, despite the keen wind and frosty air, augured the worst. Cowards however have always one course open. The way was clear behind him. He could cross the island to the St. Gervais bank, and if he were nimble he might give his pursuer the slip in the maze of small streets beside the water. It was odd if the lapse of a few hours did not cool young Mercier's wrath, and restore him to a frame of mind in which he might be brought to hear reason.
No sooner planned than done. Or rather it would have been done if turning to see that the way was clear behind him, Louis had not discovered a second watcher, who from a spot on the edge of the island was marking his movements with grim attention. This watcher was Basterga. Moreover the glance which apprised Louis of this showed him that the scholar's face was as black as thunder.
Then, if the gods looked down that day upon any mortal with pity, they must have looked down on this young man; who was a coward. At the one end of the bridge, Claude, with an ugly weapon and a face to match! At the other, Basterga, with a black brow and Heaven alone could say how much knowledge of his treachery! The scholar could not know of the loss of the phial, indeed, for it was clear that he had just returned to the city by the St. Gervais gate. But that he soon would know of it, that he knew something already, that he had been a witness to the colloquy with the Syndic—this was certain.
At any rate Louis thought so, and his knees trembled under him. He had no longer a way of retreat, and out of the corner of his eye he saw Claude beginning to advance. What was he to do? The perspiration burst out on him. He turned this way and that, now casting wild eyes at the whirling current below, now piteous eyes—the eyes of a calf on its way to the shambles, and as little regarded—on the thin stream of passers. How could they go on their way and leave him to the mercies of this madman?
He smothered a shriek as Claude, now less than twenty paces away, sped a look at him. Claude, indeed, was thinking of Anne and her wrongs; and of a certain kiss. His face told this so plainly, and that passion was his master, that Louis' cheek grew white. What if the ruffian threw him into the river? What if—and then like every coward, he chose the remoter danger. With Claude at hand, he turned and fled, dashed blindly through the passers on the bridge, flung himself on Basterga, and, seizing the big scholar by the arm, strove to shelter himself behind him.
"He is mad!" he gasped. "Mad! Save me! He is going to throw me over!"
"Steady!" Basterga answered; and he opposed his huge form to Claude's rush. "What is this, young man? Coming to blows in the street? For shame! For shame!" He moved again so as still to confront him.
"Give him up!" Claude panted, scarcely preventing himself from attacking both. "Give him up, I say, and——"
"Not till I have heard what he has done! Steady, young man, keep your distance!"
"I will tell you everything! Everything!" Louis whined, clinging to his arm.
"Do you hear what he says?" Basterga replied. "Inthe meantime, I tell you to keep your distance, young man. I am not used to be jostled!"
Claude hesitated a moment, scowling. Then, "Very well!" he said, drawing off with a gesture of menace. "It is only put off: I shall pay him another time. It is waiting for you, sneak, bear that in mind!" And shrugging his shoulders he turned with as much dignity as he could and moved off.
Basterga wheeled from him to the other. "So!" he said. "You have something to tell me, it seems?" And taking the trembling Louis by the arm, he drew him aside, a few paces from the approach of the bridge. In doing this he hung a moment searching the bridge and the farther bank with a keen gaze. He knew, and for some hours had known, on what a narrow edge of peril he stood, and that only Blondel's influence protected him from arrest. Yet he had returned: he had not hesitated to put his head again into the lion's mouth. Still if Louis' words meant that certain arrest awaited him, he was not too proud to save himself.
He could discern no officers on the bridge, and satisfied on the point of immediate danger, he turned to his shivering ally. "Well, what is it?" he said. "Speak!"
"I'll tell you the truth," Louis gabbled.
"You had better!" Basterga replied, in a tone that meant much more than he said. "Or you will find me worse to deal with than yonder hot-head! I will answer for that."
"Messer Blondel has been at the house," Louis murmured glibly, his mind centred on the question how much he should tell. "Last night and again this morning. He has been closeted with Anne and Mercier. And there has been some talk—of a box or a bottle."
"Were they in my room?" Basterga asked, his brow contracting.
"No, downstairs."
"Did they get—the box or the bottle?" There was a dangerous note in Basterga's voice; and a look in his eyes that scared the lad.
Louis, as his instinct was, lied again, fleeing the more pressing peril. "Not to my knowledge," he said.
"And you?" The scholar eyed him with bland suavity. "You had nothing to do—with all this, I suppose?"
"I listened. I was in my room, but they thought I was out. When I went," the liar continued, "they discovered me; and Messer Blondel followed me and overtook me on the bridge and threatened—that he would have me arrested if I were not silent."
"You refused to be silent, of course?"
But Louis was too acute to be caught in a trap so patent. He knew that Basterga would not believe in his courage, if he swore to it. "No, I said I would be silent," he answered. "And I should have been," he continued with candour, "if I had not run into your arms."
"But if you assented to his wish," Basterga retorted, eyeing him keenly, "why did he depart after that fashion?"
"Something happened to him," Louis said. "I do not know what. He seemed to be in distress, or to be ill."
"I could see that," the scholar answered dryly. "But Master Claude? What of him? And why was he so enamoured of you that he could not be parted from you?"
"It was to punish me for listening. They followed me different ways."
"I see. And that is the truth, is it?"
"I swear it is!"
The scholar saw no reason why it should not be the truth. Louis, a facile tool, had always been of his, thestronger, party. If Blondel tampered with any one, he would naturally, if he knew aught of the house, suborn Claude or Anne. And Louis, spying and fleeing, and when overtaken, promising silence, was quite in the picture. The only thing, indeed, which stood out awkwardly, and refused to fall into place, was the fashion in which the Syndic had turned and gone off the bridge. And for that there might be reasons. He might have been seized with a sudden attack of his illness, or he might have perceived Basterga watching him from the farther bank.
On the whole, the scholar, forgetting that cowards are ever liars, saw no reason to doubt Louis' story. It did but add one more to the motives he had for action: immediate, decisive, striking action, if he would save his neck, if he would succeed in his plans. That the Syndic alone stood between him and arrest, that by the Syndic alone he lived, he had learned at a meeting at which he had been present the previous night at the Grand Duke's country house four leagues distant. D'Albigny had been there, and Brunaulieu, Captain of the Grand Duke's Guards, and Father Alexander, who dreamed of the Episcopate of Geneva, and others—the chiefs of the plot, his patrons. To his mortification they had been able to tell him things he had not learned, though he was within the city, and they without. Among others, that the Council had certain knowledge of him and his plans, and but for the urgency of Blondel would have arrested him a fortnight before.
His companions at the midnight supper had detected his dismay, and had derided him, thinking that with that there was an end of the mysterious scheme which he had refused to impart. They fancied that he would not return to the city, or venture his head a second time within the lion's jaws. But they reckoned without their man,Basterga with all his faults was brave; and he had failed in too many schemes to resign this one lightly.
"Si fractus illabatur orbisImpavidum ferient ruinæ,"
"Si fractus illabatur orbisImpavidum ferient ruinæ,"
he murmured; and he had ventured, he had passed the gates, he was here. Here, with his eyes open to the peril, and open to the necessity of immediate action if the slender thread by which all hung were not to snap untimely.
Blondel! He lived by Blondel. And Blondel—why had he left the bridge in that strange fashion? Abruptly, desperately, as if something had befallen him. Why? He must learn, and that quickly.
Meanwhile, Claude, robbed of his prey, had gone into the town in great disgust. As he passed from the bridge, and paused before he entered the huddle of narrow streets that climbed the hill, he had on his left the glittering heights of snow, rising ridge above ridge to the blue; and most distant among them Mont Blanc itself, etherealised by the frosty sunshine and clear air of a December morning. But Mont Blanc might have been a marsh, the Rhone, pouring its icy volume from the lake, might have been a brook, for him. Aware, at length, of the peril in which Anne stood, and not doubting that these colloquies of Messers Blondel and Louis, these manœuvrings to be rid of his presence, were part of a conspiracy against her, he burned with the desire to thwart it. They had made a puppet of him; they had sent him to and fro at their will and pleasure; and they had done this, no doubt, in order that in his absence they might work—Heaven knew what vile and miserable work! But he would know, too! He was going to know! He would not be so tricked thrice.
His indignation went beyond the Syndic. The smug-faced towns-folk whom he met and jostled in the narrow ways, and whose grave starched looks he countered with hot defiant glances—he included them in his anathema. He extended to them the contempt in which he held Blondel and Louis and the rest. They were all of abreed, a bigoted breed; all dull, blind worms, insensible to the beauty of self-sacrifice, or the purity of affection. All, self-sufficient dolts, as far removed, as immeasurably divided from her whom he loved, as the gloomy lanes of this close city lay below the clear loveliness of the snow-peaks! For, after all, he had lifted his eyes to the mountains.
One thing only perplexed him. He understood the attitude of Basterga and Grio and Louis towards the girl. He discerned the sword of Damocles that they held over her, the fear of a charge of witchcraft, or of some vile heresy, in which they kept her. But how came Blondel in the plot? What was his part, what his object? If he had been sincere in that attempt on Basterga's secrets, which Madame's delirious words had frustrated, was he sincere now? Was his object now as then—the suppression of the devilish practices of which he had warned Claude, and in the punishment of which he had threatened to include the girl with her tempter? Presumably it was, and he was still trying to reach the goal by other ways, using Louis as he had used Claude, or tried to use him.
And yet Claude doubted. He began to suspect—for love is jealous—that Blondel had behind this a more secret, a more personal, a more selfish aim. Had the young girl, still in her teens, caught the fancy of the man of sixty? There was nothing unnatural in the idea; such things were, even in Geneva; and Louis was a go-between, not above the task. In that case she who had showed a brave front to Basterga all these months, who had not blenched before the daily and hourly persecution to which she had been exposed in her home, was not likely to succumb to the senile advances of a man who might be her grandfather!
If he did not hold her secret. But if he did hold it?If he did hold it, and the cruel power it gave? If he held it, he who had only to lift his hand to consign her to duress on a charge so dark and dangerous that innocence itself was no protection against it? So plausible that even her lover had for a short time held it true? What then?
Claude, who had by this time reached the Tertasse gate and passed through it from the town side, paused on the ramparts and bared his head. What then?
He had his answer. Framed in the immensity of sky and earth that lay before him, he saw his loneliness and hers, his insignificance and hers, his helplessness and hers; he, a foreigner, young, without name or reputation, or aught but a strong right hand; she, almost a child, alone or worse than alone, in this great city—one of the weak things which the world's car daily and hourly crushes into the mud, their very cries unheard and unheeded. Of no more account than the straw which the turbid Rhone, bore one moment on its swirling tide, and the next swallowed from sight beneath its current!
They were two—and a mad woman! And against them were Blondel and Basterga and Grio and Louis, and presently all the town of Geneva! All these gloomy, narrow, righteous men, and shrieking, frightened women—frightened lest any drop of the pitch fall on them and destroy them! Love is a marvellous educator. Almost as clearly as we of a later day, he saw how outbreaks of superstition, such as that which he dreaded, began, and came to a head, and ended. A chance word at a door, a spiteful rumour or a sick child, the charge, the torture, the widening net of accusation, the fire in the market-place. So it had been in Bamberg and Wurzburg, in Geneva two generations back, in Alsace scarce as many years back: at Edinburgh in Scotland where thirty persons had suffered in one day—ten years ago that;in the district of Como, where a round thousand had suffered!
Nobility had not availed to save some, nor court-favour others; nor wealth, nor youth, nor beauty. And what had he or she to urge, what had they to put forward that would in the smallest degree avail them? That could even for a moment stem or avert the current of popular madness which power itself had striven in vain to dam. Nothing!
And yet he did not blench, nor would he; being half French and of good blood, at a time when good French blood ran the more generously for a half century of war. He would not have blenched, even if he had not, from the sunlit view of God's earth and heaven which lay before his eyes, drawn other thoughts than that one of his own littleness and insignificance. As this view of vale and mountain had once before lifted his judgment above the miasma of a cruel superstition, so it raised him now above creeping fears and filled him with confidence in something more stable than magistrates or mobs. Love, like the sunlight, shone aslant the dark places of the prospect and filled them with warmth. Sacrifice for her he loved took on the beauty of the peaks, cold but lovely; and hope and courage, like the clear blue of the vault above, looked smiling down on the brief dangers and the brief troubles of man's making.
The clock of St. Gervais was striking eleven as, still in exalted mood, he turned his back on the view and entered the house in the Corraterie. He had entered on his return from his fruitless visit to Blondel, and had satisfied himself that Anne was safe. Doubtless she was still safe, for the house was quiet.
In his new mood he was almost inclined to quarrel with this. In the ardour of his passion he would gladly have seen the danger immediate, the peril present, thathe might prove to her how much he loved her, how deeply he felt for her, what he would dare for her. To die on the hearth of the living-room, at her feet and saving her, seemed for a moment the thing most desirable—the purest happiness!
That was denied him. The house was quiet, as in a morning it commonly was. So quiet that he recalled without effort the dreams which he had dreamed on that spot, and the thoughts which had filled his heart to bursting a few hours before. The great pot was there, simmering on its hook; and on the small table beside it, the table that Basterga and Grio occupied, stood a platter with a few dried herbs and a knife fresh from her hand. Claude made sure that he was unobserved, and raising the knife to his lips, kissed the haft gently and reverently, thinking what she had suffered many a day while using it! What fear, and grief and humiliation, and——
He stood erect, his face red: he listened intently. Upstairs, breaking the long silence of the house, opening as it were a window to admit the sun, a voice had uplifted itself in song. The voice had some of the tones of Anne's voice, and something that reminded him of her voice. But when had he heard her sing? When had aught so clear, so mirthful, or so young fallen from her as this; this melody, laden with life and youth and abundance, that rose and fell and floated to his ears through the half-open door of the staircase?
He crept to the staircase door and listened; yes, it was her voice, but not such as he had ever heard it. It was her voice as he could fancy it in another life, a life in which she was as other girls, darkened by no fear, pinched by no anxiety, crushed by no contumely; such as her voice might have been, uplifted in the garden of his old home on the French border, amid bees and flowersand fresh-scented herbs. Her voice, doubtless, it was; but it sorted so ill with the thoughts he had been thinking, that with his astonishment was mingled something of shock and of loss. He had dreamed of dying for her or with her, and she sang! He was prepared for peril, and her voice vied with the lark's in joyous trills.
Leaning forward to hear more clearly, he touched the door. It was ajar, and before he could hinder it, it closed with a sharp sound. The singing ceased with an abruptness that told, or he was much mistaken, of self-remembrance. And presently, after an interval of no more than a few seconds, during which he pictured the singer listening, he heard her begin to descend.
Two men may do the same thing from motives as far apart as the poles. Claude did what Louis would have done. As the foot drew near the staircase door, treading, less willingly, less lightly, more like that of Anne with every step, he slid into his closet, and stood. Through the crack between the hinges of the open door, he would be able to view her face when she appeared.
A second later she came, and he saw. The light of the song was still in her eyes, but mingled, as she looked round the room to learn who was there, with something of exaltation and defiance. Christian maidens might have worn some such aspect, he thought—but he was in love—as they passed to the lions. Or Esther, when she went unbidden into the inner court of the King's House, and before the golden sceptre moved. Something had happened to her. But what?
She did not see him, and after standing a moment to assure herself that she was alone, she passed to the hearth. She lifted the lid of the pot, bent over it, and slowly stirred the broth; then, having covered it again, she began to chop the dried herbs on the platter. Even in her manner of doing this, he fancied a change;a something unlike the Anne he had known, the Anne he had come to love. The face was more animated, the action quicker, the step lighter, the carriage more free. She began to sing, and stopped; fell into a reverie, with the knife in her hand, and the herb half cut; again roused herself to finish her task; finally having slid the herbs from the platter to the pot, she stood in a second reverie, with her eyes fixed on the window.
He began to feel the falseness of his position. It was too late to show himself, and if she discovered him what would she think of him? Would she believe that in spying upon her he had some evil purpose, some low motive, such as Louis might have had? His cheek grew hot. And then—he forgot himself.
Her eyes had left the window and fallen to the window-seat. It was the thing she did then which drew him out of himself. Moving to the window—he had to stoop forward to keep her within the range of his sight—she took from it a glove, held it a moment, regarding it; then with a tender, yet whimsical laugh, a laugh half happiness, half ridicule of herself, she kissed it.
It was Claude's glove. And if, with that before his eyes he could have restrained himself, the option was not his. She turned in the act, and saw him; with a startled cry she put—none too soon—the table between them.
They faced one another across it, he flushed, eager, with love in his eyes, and on his lips; she blushing but not ashamed, her new-found joy in her eyes, and in the pose of her head.
"Anne!" he cried. "I know now! I know! I have seen and you cannot deceive me!"
"In what?" she said, a smile trembling on her lips. "And of what, Messer Claude, are you so certain, if you please?"
"That you love me!" he replied. "But not a hundredth part"—he stretched his arms across the table towards her "as much as I love you and have loved you for weeks! As I loved you even before I learned last night——"
"What?" Into her face—that had not found one hard look to rebuke his boldness—came something of her old silent, watchful self. "What did you learn last night?"
"Your secret!"
"I have none!" Quick as thought the words came from her lips. "I have none! God is merciful," with a gesture of her open arms, as if she put something from her, "and it is gone! If you know, if you guess aught of what it was"—her eyes questioned his and read in them if not that which he knew, that which he thought of her.
"I ask you to be silent."
"I will, after I have——"
"Now! Always!"
"Not till I have spoken once!" he cried. "Not till I have told you once what I think of you! Last night I heard. And I understood. I saw what you had gone through, what you had feared, what had been your life all these weeks, rising and lying down! I saw what you meant when you bade me go anywhere but here, and why you suffered what you did at their hands, and why they dared to treat you—so! And had they been here I would have killed them!" he added, his eyes sparkling. "And had you been here——"
"Yes?" she did not seek to check him now. Her bearing was changed, her eyes, soft and tender, met his as no eyes had ever met his.
"I should have worshipped you! I should have knelt as I kneel now!" he cried. And sinking on his knees he extended his arms across the table and took her unresisting hands. "If you no longer have a secret, youhad one, and I bless God for it! For without it I might not have known you, Anne! I might not have——"
"Perhaps you do not know me now," she said; but she did not withdraw her hands or her eyes. Only into the latter grew a shade of trouble. "I have done—you do not know what I have done. I am a thief."
"Pah!"
"It is true. I am a thief."
"What is it to me?" He laughed a laugh as tender as her eyes. "You are a thief, for you have stolen my heart. For the rest, do you think that I do not know you now? That I can be twice deceived? Twice take gold for dross, and my own for another thing? I know you!"
"But you do not know," she said tremulously, "what I have done—what I did last night—or what may come of it."
"I know that what comes of it will happen, not to one but to two," he replied bravely. "And that is all I ask to know. That, and that you are content it shall be so?"
"Content?"
"Yes."
"Content!"
There are things, other than wine, that bring truth to the surface. That which had happened to the girl in the last few hours, that which had melted her into unwonted song, was of these things; and the tone of her voice as she repeated the word "Content!" the surrender of her eyes that placed her heart in his keeping, as frankly as she left her hands in his, proclaimed it. The reserves of her sex, the tricks of coyness and reticence men look for in maids, were shaken from her; and as man to man her eyes told him the truth, told him that if she had ever doubted she no longer doubted that she loved him. In the heart which a single passion, the purest of which menand women are capable, had engrossed so long, Nature, who, expel her as you will, will still return, had won her right and carved her kingdom.
And she knew that it was well with her—whatever the upshot of last night. To be lonely no more; to be no longer the protector, but the protected; to know the comfort of the strong arm as well as of the following eye, the joy of receiving as well as of giving; to know that, however dark the future might lower, she had no longer to face it alone, no longer to plan and hope and fear and suffer alone, but withhim—the sense of these things so mingled with her gratitude on her mother's account that the new affection, instead of weakening the old became as it were part of it; while the old stretched onwards its pious hand to bless the new.
If Claude did not read all this in her eyes, and in that one word "Content?" he read so much that never devotee before relic rose more gently or more reverently to his feet. Because all was his he would take nothing. "As I stand by you, may God stand by me," he said, still holding her hands in his, and with the table between them.
"I have no fear," she replied in a low voice. "Yet—if you fail, may He forgive you as fully as I must forgive you. What shall I say to you on my part, Messer Claude?"
"That you love me."
"I love you," she murmured with an intonation which ravished the young man's heart and brought the blood to his cheeks. "I love you. What more?"
"There is no more," he cried. "There can be no more. If that be true, nothing matters."
"No!" she said, beginning to tremble under a weight of emotion too heavy for her, following as it did the excitement of the night. "No!" she continued, raisingher eyes which had fallen before the ardour of his gaze. "But there must be something you wish to ask me. You must wish to know——"
"I have heard what I wished to know."
"But——"
"Tell me what you please."
She stood in thought an instant: then, with a sigh, "He came to me last evening," she said, "when you were at his house."
"Messer Blondel?"
"Yes. He wished me to procure for him a certain drug that Messer Basterga kept in his room."
Claude stared. "In a steel casket chained to the wall?" he asked.
"Yes," she whispered with some surprise. "You knew of it, then? He had tried to procure it through Louis, and on the pretence that the box contained papers needed by the State. Failing in that he came last evening to me, and told me the truth."
"The truth?" Claude asked, wondering. "But was it the truth?"
"It was." Her eyes, like stars on a rainy night, shone softly. "I have proved it." Again, with a ring of exultation in her voice, "I have proved it!" she cried.
"How?"
"There was in the box a drug, he told me, possessed of an almost miraculous power over disease of body and mind; so rare and so wonderful that none could buy it, and he knew of but this one dose, of which Messer Basterga had possessed himself. He begged me to take it and to give it to him. He had on him, he said, a fatal illness, and if he did not get this—he must die." Her voice shook. "He must die! Now God help him!"
"You took it."
"I took it." Her face, as her eyes dropped before his,betrayed trouble and doubt. "I took it," she continued, trembling. "If I have done wrong, God forgive me. For I stole it."
His face betrayed his amazement, but he did not release her hands. "Why?" he said.
"To give it to her," she answered. "To my mother. I thought then that it was right—it was a chance. I thought—now I don't know, I don't know!" she repeated. The shade on her face grew deeper. "I thought I was right then. Now—I—I am frightened." She looked at him with eyes in which her doubts were mirrored. She shivered, she who had been so joyous a moment before, and her hands, which hitherto had lain passive in his, returned his pressure feverishly. "I fear now!" she exclaimed. "I fear! What is it? What has happened—in the last minute?"
He would have drawn her to him, seeing that her nerves were shaken; but the table was between them, and before he could pass round it, a sound caught his ear, a shadow fell between them, and looking up he discovered Basterga's face peering through the nearer casement. It was pressed against the small leaded panes, and possibly it was this which by flattening the huge features imparted to them a look of malignity. Or the look—which startled Claude, albeit he was no coward—might have been only the natural expression of one, who suspected what was afoot between them and came to mar it. Whatever it meant, the girl's cry of dismay found an echo on Claude's lips. Involuntarily he dropped her hands; but—and the action was symbolical of the change in her life—he stepped at the same moment between her and the door. Whatever she had done, right or wrong, was his concern now.
Wehave seen that for Claude, as he hurried from the bridge, the faces he met in the narrow streets of the old town were altered by the medium through which he viewed them; and appeared gloomy, sordid and fanatical. In the eyes of Blondel, who had passed that way before him, the same faces wore a look of selfishness, stupendously and heartlessly cruel. And not the faces only; the very houses and ways, the blue sky overhead, and the snow-peaks—when for an instant he caught sight of them—bore the same aspect. All wore their every-day air, and mocked the despair in his heart. All flung in his teeth the fact, the incredible fact, that whether he died or lived, stayed or went, the world would proceed; that the eternal hills, ay, and the insensate bricks and mortar, that had seen his father pass, would see him pass, and would be standing when he was gone into the darkness.
There are few things that to the mind of man in his despondent moods are more strange, or more shocking, than the permanence of trifles. The small things to which his brain and his hand have given shape, which he can, if he will, crush out of form, and resolve into their primitive atoms, outlive him! They lie on the table when he is gone, are unchanged by his removal, serve another master as they have served him, preach to another generation the same lesson. The face is dust, but the canvas smiles from the wall. The handis withered, but the pencil is still in the tray and is used by another. There are times when the irony of this thought bites deep into the mind, and goads the mortal to revolt. Had Blondel, as he climbed the hill, possessed the power of Orimanes to blast at will, few of those whom he met, few on whom he turned the gloomy fire of his eyes, would have reached their houses that day or seen another sun.
He was within a hundred paces of his home, when a big man, passing along the Bourg du Four, but on the other side of the way, saw him and came across the road to intercept him. It was Baudichon, his double chin more pendulent, his massive face more dully wistful than ordinary; for the times had got upon the Councillor's nerves, and day by day he grew more anxious, slept worse of nights, and listened much before he went to bed.
"Messer Blondel," he called out, in a voice more peremptory than was often addressed to the Fourth Syndic's ear. "Messer Syndic! One moment, if you please!"
Blondel stopped and turned to him. Outwardly the Syndic was cool, inwardly he was at a white heat that at any moment might impel him to the wildest action. "Well?" he said. "What is it, M. Baudichon?"
"I want to know——"
"Of course!" The sneer was savage and undisguised. "What, this time, if I may be so bold?"
Baudichon breathed quickly, partly with the haste he had made across the road, partly in irritation at the gibe. "This only," he said. "How far you purpose to try our patience? A week ago you were for delaying the arrest you know of—for a day. It was a matter of hours then."
"It was."
"But days have passed, and are passing! and we haveno explanation; nothing is done. And every night we run a fresh risk, and every morning—so far—we thank God that our throats are still whole; and every day we strive to see you, and you are out, or engaged, or about to do it, or awaiting news! But this cannot go on for ever! Nor," puffing out his cheeks, "shall we always bear it!"
"Messer Baudichon!" Blondel retorted, the passion he had so far restrained gleaming in his eyes, and imparting a tremor to his voice, "are you Fourth Syndic or am I?"
"You! You, certainly. Who denies it?" the stout man said. "But——"
"But what? But what?"
"We would know what you think we are, that we can bear this suspense."
"I will tell you what I think you are!"
"By your leave?"
"A fat hog!" the Syndic shrieked. "And as brainless as a hog fit for the butcher! That for you! and your like!"
And before the astounded Baudichon, whose brain was slow to take in new facts, had grasped the full enormity of the insult flung at him, the Syndic was a dozen paces distant. He had eased his mind, and that for the moment was much; though he still ground his teeth, and, had Baudichon followed him, would have struck the Councillor without thought or hesitation. The pigs! The hogs! To press him with their wretched affairs: to press him at this moment when the grave yawned at his feet, and the coffin opened for him!
To be sure he might now do with Basterga as he pleased without thought or drawback; but for their benefit—never! He paused at his door, and cast a haggard glance up and down; at the irregular line ofgables which he had known from childhood, the steep, red roofs, the cobble pavement, the bakers' signs that hung here and there and with the wide eaves darkened the way; and he cursed all he saw in the frenzy of his rage. Let Basterga, Savoy, d'Albigny do their worst! What was it to him? Why should he move? He went into his house despairing.
Unto this last hour a little hope had shone through the darkness. At times the odds had seemed to be against him, at one time Heaven itself had seemed to declare itself his foe. But theremediumhad existed, the thing was still possible, the light burned, though distant, feeble, flickering. He had told himself that he despaired; but he had not known what real despair was until this moment, until he sat, as he saw now, among the Dead Sea splendours of his parlour, the fingers of his right hand drumming on the arm of the abbot's chair, his shaggy eyelids drooping over his brooding eyes.
Ah, God! If he had stayed to take the stuff when it lay in his power! If he had refused to open until he held it in his hand! If, even after that act of folly, he had refused to go until she gave it him! How inconceivable his madness seemed now, his fear of scandal, his thought of others! Others? There was one of whom he dared not think; for when he did his head began to tremble on his shoulders; and he had to clutch the arms of the chair to stay the palsy that shook him. Ifshe, the girl who had destroyed him, thought it was all one to him whom the drug advantaged, or who lived or who died, he would teach her—before he died! He would teach her! There was no extremity of pain or shame she should not taste, accursed witch, accursed thief, as she was! But he must not think of that, or of her, now; or he would die before his time. He had a little time yet, if he were careful, if he were cool, if he wereleft a brief space to recover himself. A little, a very little time!
Whose were that foot and that voice? Basterga's? The Syndic's eyes gleamed, he raised his head. There was another score he had to pay! His own score, not Baudichon's. Fool, to have left his treasure unguarded for every thieving wench to take! Fool, thrice and again, for putting his neck back into the lion's mouth. Stealthily Blondel pulled the handbell nearer to him and covered it with his cloak. He would have added a weapon, but there was no arm within reach, and while he hesitated between his chair and the door of the small inner room, the outer door opened, and Basterga appeared and advanced, smiling, towards him.
"Your servant, Messer Syndic," he said. "I heard that you had been inquiring for me in my absence, and I am here to place myself at your disposition. You are not looking——" he stopped short, in feigned surprise. "There is nothing wrong, I hope?"
Had the scholar been such a man as Baudichon, Blondel's answer would have been one frenzied shriek of insults and reproaches. But face to face with Basterga's massive quietude, with his giant bulk, with that air, at once masterful and cynical, which proclaimed to those with whom he talked that he gave them but half his mind while reading theirs, the wrath of the smaller man cooled. A moment his lips writhed, without sound; then, "Wrong?" he cried, his voice harsh and broken. "Wrong? All is wrong!"
"You are not well?" Basterga said, eyeing him with concern.
"Well? I shall never be better! Never!" Blondel shrieked. And after a pause, "Curse you!" he added. "It is your doing!"
Basterga stared. He was in the dark as to what hadhappened, though the Syndic's manner on leaving the bridge had prepared him for something. "My doing, Messer Blondel?" he said. "Why? What have I done?"
"Done?"
"Ay, done! It was not my fault," the scholar continued, with a touch of sternness, "that I could not offer you theremediumon easy terms. Nor mine, that hard as the terms were, you did not accept them. Besides," he continued, slowly and with meaning,