The Long Night Part 36

"Why not?"

She did not answer, but she did not make way.

"Why not? I will tell you, if you please," he said. "And it will make you pipe to another tune. You have given her, young woman, that which will make her worse, and not better!"

"She is better!"

"For an hour, or for twelve hours!" he retorted. "That certainly. Then worse."

"No!"

"No? But I see what it is," he continued--and, alas, his voice strengthened the fear that like a dead hand was closing on her heart and staying it; deepened the terror that like a veil was falling before her eyes and darkening the room; so that she had much ado, gripping finger-nails into palms, to keep her feet and let herself from fainting.

"I see what it is. You would fain play Providence," he continued--"that is it, is it? You would play Providence? Then come! Come then, and see what kind of Providence it is you have played. We will see if you are right or I am right! And if she be well, or if she be ill!" And again he moved towards the staircase.

But she stood obstinately between him and the door. "No," she said. "You do not go up!" She was resolute. The fear that as she listened to his gibing tones had driven the colour from her face, had hardened it too.

For, if he were right? If for that fear there were foundation? If that which the Syndic had led her to give and that which she had given, proved--though for a few hours it had seemed to impart marvellous vigour--useless or worse than useless? Then the need to keep these men from her mother was the greater, the more desperate. How they could be kept, for how long it was possible to keep them, she did not pause to consider, any more than the she-wolf that crouches, snarling, between her whelps and the hunt, counts odds. It was enough for her that if they were right the worst had come, and naught lay between her mother's weakness and their cruel eyes and judgments but her own feeble strength.

Or no! she was wrong in that; she had forgotten! As she spoke, and as Basterga with a scowl repeated the order to stand aside, Claude put her gently but irresistibly by, and took her place. The young man's eyes were bright, his colour high. "You will not go up!" he said, a mocking note of challenge, replying to Basterga's tone, in his voice. "You will not go up."

"Fool! Will you prevent us?"

"You will not go up! No!"

In the very act of falling on the lad, Basterga recoiled. Claude had not been idle while the others disputed. He had gone to the corner for his sword, and it was the glittering point, suddenly whipped out and flickered before his eyes that gave the scholar pause, and made him leap back. "Pollux!" he cried, "are you mad? Put down! Put down! Do you see the Syndic? Do you know," he continued, stamping his foot, "that it is penal to draw in Geneva?"

"I know that you are not going upstairs!" Claude answered gently. He was radiant. He would not have exchanged his position for a crown. She was looking, and he was going to fight.

"You fool," Basterga returned, "we have but to call the watch from the Terta.s.se and you will be haled to the lock-up, and jailed and whipped, if not worse! And that jade with you! _Stultus es?_ Do you hear? Messer Syndic, will you be thwarted in this fas.h.i.+on? Call these lawbreakers to order and bid them have done!"

"Put up!" the Syndic cried, hoa.r.s.e with rage. He was beside himself, when he thought of the position in which he had placed himself. He looked at the two as if he would fain have slain them where they stood.

"Or I call the watch, and it will be the worse for you," he continued.

"Do you hear me? Put up?"

"He shall not go upstairs!" Claude answered, breathing quickly. He was pale, but utterly and fixedly resolved. If Basterga made a movement to attack him, he would run him through whatever the consequences.

"Then, fool, I will call the watch!" Blondel babbled, fairly beside himself.

Claude had no answer to that; only they should not go up. It was the girl's readier wit furnished the answer.

"Call them!" she cried, in a clear voice. "Call the watch, Messer Syndic, and I will tell them the whole story. What Messer Blondel would have had me do, and get, and give."

"It was for the State!" the Syndic hissed.

"And is it for the State that you come to-day with that man?" she retorted, and with her outstretched finger she accused Basterga of unspoken things. "That man! Last night you would have had me rob him.

The day before he was a traitor. To-day he and you are one. Are one!

What are you plotting together?"

The Syndic shrank from the other's side under the stab of her words--words that, uttered at random, flew, straight as the arrow that slew Ahab, to the joint of his armour. "To-day you and that man are one," she repeated. "One! What are you plotting together?"

She knew as much as that, did she? She knew that they were one, and that they were plotting together; while in the Council men were clamouring for the Paduan's arrest, and were growing suspicious because he was not arrested--Baudichon, whom he had called a fat hog, and Pet.i.tot, that slow, plodding sleuth-hound of a patriot. What if light fell on the true state of things--and less than the girl had said might cast that light?

Then the warrant might go, not for the Paduan only, but for himself. Ay, for him! For with an enemy ever lying within a league of the gates warrants flew quickly in Geneva. Men who sleep ill of nights, and take the c.o.c.k-crow for war's alarum, are suspicious, and, once roused, without ruth or mercy.

There was the joint in his harness. Once let his name be published with Basterga's,--as must happen if the watch were summoned and the girl spoke out--and no one could say where the matter might end, or what suspicions might not be awakened. Nay, the matter was worse, more perilous and more lightly balanced; for, setting himself aside, none the less was a brawl that brought up Basterga's name, a thing to be shunned.

The least thing might precipitate the scholar's arrest; his arrest must lead to the loss of the _remedium_, if it existed; and the loss of the _remedium_ to the loss of that which Messer Blondel had come to value the more dearly the more he sacrificed to keep it--the Syndic's life.

He dared not call the watch, and he dared not use violence. As he awoke to those two facts, he stood blinking in dismayed silence, swallowing his rage, and hating the girl and hating the man with a dumb hatred.

Though the reasons which weighed with him were unknown to the two, they could not be blind to his fear and his baffled mien; and had he been alone they might have taken victory for certain. But Basterga was not one to be so lightly thwarted. His intellect, his wit, his very ma.s.s intimidated. Therefore it was with as much relief as surprise that Anne read in his face the reflection of the other's doubts, and saw that he, too, gave back.

"You are two fools!" he said. "Two great, big fools!" There was resignation, there was something that was almost approval in his tones.

"You do not know what you are doing! Is there no way of making you hear reason?"

"You cannot go up," Anne said. She had won, it seemed, without knowing how she had won.

Basterga grunted; and then, "Ah, well," he said, addressing Claude, "if I had you in the fields, my lad, it would not be that bit of metal would save you!" And he spouted with appropriate gesture--

"--Illum fidi aequales, genua aegra trahentem Jactantemque utroque caput, cra.s.sumque cruorem Ore ejectantem mixtosque in sanguine dentes Duc.u.n.t ad navis!

Half an hour in my company, and you would not be so bold."

Claude smiled with pardonable contempt, but made no reply, nor did he change his att.i.tude.

"Come!" Blondel muttered, addressing his ally with his eyes averted. "I have reasons at present for letting them be!" They were strange reasons, to judge by the hang-dog look of the proud magistrate. "But I shall know how to deal with them by-and-by. Come, man, come!" he repeated impatiently. And he turned towards the door and unlocked it.

Basterga moved reluctantly after him. "Ay, we go now," he said, with a look full of menace. "But wait a while! Caesar Basterga does not forget, and his turn will come! Where is my cap?"

He had let it fall on the floor, and he turned to pick it up, stooping slowly and with difficulty as stout men do. As he raised himself, his head still low, he b.u.t.ted it suddenly and with an activity for which no one would have given him credit full into Claude's chest. The unlucky young man, who had lowered his weapon the instant before, fell back with a "sough" against the wall, and leant there, pale and breathless. Anne uttered one scream, then the scholar's huge arm enfolded her neck and drew her backwards against his breast.

"Up! up! Messer Blondel!" he cried. "Now is your chance! Up and surprise her!" And with his disengaged hand he gripped Claude, for further safety, by the collar. "Up; I will keep them quiet!"

The Syndic wasted a moment in astonishment, then he took in the situation and the other's cleverness. Before Basterga had ceased to speak, he was at the door of the staircase, and had dragged it open. But as he set his foot on the lowest stair, Anne, held as she was against Basterga's breast, and almost stifled by the arm which covered her mouth, managed to clutch the Syndic by his skirts, and, once having taken hold, held him with the strength of despair. In vain he struggled and strove and wrestled to jerk himself free; in vain Basterga, hampered by Claude, tried to drag the girl away--Blondel came away with her! She clung to him, and even, freeing her mouth for a moment, succeeded in uttering a scream.

"Curse her!" Basterga foamed: and had he had a hand to spare, he would have struck her down. "Pull, man, have you no strength! Let go, you vixen! Let go, or----"

He tried to press her throat, but in changing his hold allowed her to utter a second scream, louder, more shrill, more full of pa.s.sion than the other. At the same instant a chair, knocked down by Blondel in his efforts, fell with a crash, throwing down a pewter platter; and Claude, white and breathless as he was, began to struggle, seeing his mistress so handled. The four swayed to and fro. Another moment, and either the Syndic must have jerked himself free, or the contest must have attained to dimensions that could not escape the notice of the neighbours, when a sound--a sound from within, from upstairs--stayed the tumult as by magic.

Blondel ceased to struggle, and stood aghast. Basterga relaxed his hold upon his prisoners and listened. Claude leant back against the wall. The girl alone--she alone moved. Without speaking, without looking, as a bird flies to its young, she sprang to the stairs and fled up them.

The maniacal laugh, the crazy words--a moment only, they heard them: and then the door above, which the poor woman, so long bedridden, had contrived in her frenzy of fear to open, closed on the sounds and stifled them. But enough had been heard: enough to convince Blondel, enough to justify Basterga, enough to change the fortunes of more than one in the room. The scholar's eyes met the Syndic's.

"Are you satisfied?" he asked, in a low voice.

Blondel, breathing hard, nodded.

"You heard?"

He nodded a second time. He looked scared.

"Then you have enough to burn the old witch and the young one with her!"