CHAPTER XVI.
A GLOVE AND WHAT CAME OF IT.
Meanwhile, Claude, robbed of his prey, had gone into the town in greatdisgust. As he passed from the bridge, and paused before he entered thehuddle of narrow streets that climbed the hill, he had on his left theglittering heights of snow, rising ridge above ridge to the blue; andmost distant among them Mont Blanc itself, etherealised by the frostysunshine and clear air of a December morning. But Mont Blanc might havebeen a marsh, the Rhone, pouring its icy volume from the lake, mighthave been a brook, for him. Aware, at length, of the peril in which Annestood, and not doubting that these colloquies of Messers Blondel andLouis, these man[oe]uvrings to be rid of his presence, were part of aconspiracy against her, he burned with the desire to thwart it. They hadmade a puppet of him; they had sent him to and fro at their will andpleasure; and they had done this, no doubt, in order that in his absencethey might work--Heaven knew what vile and miserable work! But he wouldknow, too! He was going to know! He would not be so tricked thrice.
His indignation went beyond the Syndic. The smug-faced towns-folk whomhe met and jostled in the narrow ways, and whose grave starched looks hecountered with hot defiant glances--he included them in his anathema. Heextended to them the contempt in which he held Blondel and Louis and therest. They were all of a breed, 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 fromher whom he loved, as the gloomy lanes of this close city lay below theclear loveliness of the snow-peaks! For, after all, he had lifted hiseyes to the mountains.
One thing only perplexed him. He understood the attitude of Basterga andGrio and Louis towards the girl. He discerned the sword of Damocles thatthey held over her, the fear of a charge of witchcraft, or of some vileheresy, in which they kept her. But how came Blondel in the plot? Whatwas his part, what his object? If he had been sincere in that attempt onBasterga's secrets, which Madame's delirious words had frustrated, washe sincere now? Was his object now as then--the suppression of thedevilish practices of which he had warned Claude, and in the punishmentof which he had threatened to include the girl with her tempter?Presumably it was, and he was still trying to reach the goal by otherways, using Louis as he had used Claude, or tried to use him.
And yet Claude doubted. He began to suspect--for love is jealous--thatBlondel had behind this a more secret, a more personal, a more selfishaim. Had the young girl, still in her teens, caught the fancy of the manof 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 thatcase she who had showed a brave front to Basterga all these months, whohad not blenched before the daily and hourly persecution to which shehad been exposed in her home, was not likely to succumb to the senileadvances of a man who might be her grandfather!
If he did not hold her secret. But if he did hold it? If he did holdit, and the cruel power it gave? If he held it, he who had only to lifthis hand to consign her to duress on a charge so dark and dangerous thatinnocence itself was no protection against it? So plausible that evenher lover had for a short time held it true? What then?
Claude, who had by this time reached the Tertasse gate and passedthrough it from the town side, paused on the ramparts and bared hishead. What then?
He had his answer. Framed in the immensity of sky and earth that laybefore him, he saw his loneliness and hers, his insignificance and hers,his helplessness and hers; he, a foreigner, young, without name orreputation, or aught but a strong right hand; she, almost a child, aloneor worse than alone, in this great city--one of the weak things whichthe world's car daily and hourly crushes into the mud, their very criesunheard and unheeded. Of no more account than the straw which the turbidRhone, bore one moment on its swirling tide, and the next swallowed fromsight beneath its current!
They were two--and a mad woman! And against them were Blondel andBasterga and Grio and Louis, and presently all the town of Geneva! Allthese gloomy, narrow, righteous men, and shrieking, frightenedwomen--frightened lest any drop of the pitch fall on them and destroythem! Love is a marvellous educator. Almost as clearly as we of a laterday, he saw how outbreaks of superstition, such as that which hedreaded, 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 wideningnet of accusation, the fire in the market-place. So it had been inBamberg and Wurzburg, in Geneva two generations back, in Alsace scarceas many years back: at Edinburgh in Scotland where thirty persons hadsuffered in one day--ten years ago that; in the district of Como, wherea round thousand had suffered!
Nobility had not availed to save some, nor court-favour others; norwealth, nor youth, nor beauty. And what had he or she to urge, what hadthey to put forward that would in the smallest degree avail them? Thatcould even for a moment stem or avert the current of popular madnesswhich power itself had striven in vain to dam. Nothing!
And yet he did not blench, nor would he; being half French and of goodblood, at a time when good French blood ran the more generously for ahalf 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 hiseyes, drawn other thoughts than that one of his own littleness andinsignificance. As this view of vale and mountain had once before liftedhis judgment above the miasma of a cruel superstition, so it raised himnow above creeping fears and filled him with confidence in somethingmore stable than magistrates or mobs. Love, like the sunlight, shoneaslant the dark places of the prospect and filled them with warmth.Sacrifice for her he loved took on the beauty of the peaks, cold butlovely; 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'smaking.
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, andhad 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 theardour of his passion he would gladly have seen the danger immediate,the peril present, that he might prove to her how much he loved her,how deeply he felt for her, what he would dare for her. To die on thehearth of the living-room, at her feet and saving her, seemed for amoment the thing most desirable--the purest happiness!
That was denied him. The house was quiet, as in a morning it commonlywas. So quiet that he recalled without effort the dreams which he haddreamed on that spot, and the thoughts which had filled his heart tobursting a few hours before. The great pot was there, simmering on itshook; and on the small table beside it, the table that Basterga and Griooccupied, stood a platter with a few dried herbs and a knife fresh fromher hand. Claude made sure that he was unobserved, and raising the knifeto his lips, kissed the haft gently and reverently, thinking what shehad suffered many a day while using it! What fear, and grief andhumiliation, and----
He stood erect, his face red: he listened intently. Upstairs, breakingthe long silence of the house, opening as it were a window to admit thesun, a voice had uplifted itself in song. The voice had some of thetones of Anne's voice, and something that reminded him of her voice. Butwhen had he heard her sing? When had aught so clear, so mirthful, or soyoung fallen from her as this; this melody, laden with life and youthand abundance, that rose and fell and floated to his ears through thehalf-open door of the staircase?
He crept to the staircase door and listened; yes, it was her voice, butnot such as he had ever heard it. It was her voice as he could fancy itin another life, a life in which she was as other girls, darkened by nofear, pinched by no anxiety, crushed by no contumely; such as her voicemight have been, uplifted in the garden of his old home on the Frenchborder, amid bees and flowers and fresh-scented herbs. Her voice,doubtless, it was; but it sorted so ill with the thoughts he had beenthinking, that with his astonishment was
mingled something of shock andof loss. He had dreamed of dying for her or with her, and she sang! Hewas prepared for peril, and her voice vied with the lark's in joyoustrills.
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 singingceased with an abruptness that told, or he was much mistaken, ofself-remembrance. And presently, after an interval of no more than a fewseconds, during which he pictured the singer listening, he heard herbegin 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 thestaircase door, treading, less willingly, less lightly, more like thatof Anne with every step, he slid into his closet, and stood. Through thecrack between the hinges of the open door, he would be able to view herface when she appeared.
A second later she came, and he saw. The light of the song was still inher eyes, but mingled, as she looked round the room to learn who wasthere, with something of exaltation and defiance. Christian maidensmight have worn some such aspect, he thought--but he was in love--asthey passed to the lions. Or Esther, when she went unbidden into theinner 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 thatshe 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 itagain, she began to chop the dried herbs on the platter. Even in hermanner of doing this, he fancied a change; a something unlike the Annehe 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 beganto 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; finallyhaving slid the herbs from the platter to the pot, she stood in a secondreverie, with her eyes fixed on the window.
He began to feel the falseness of his position. It was too late to showhimself, and if she discovered him what would she think of him? Wouldshe believe that in spying upon her he had some evil purpose, some lowmotive, such as Louis might have had? His cheek grew hot. And then--heforgot himself.
Her eyes had left the window and fallen to the window-seat. It was thething she did then which drew him out of himself. Moving to thewindow--he had to stoop forward to keep her within the range of hissight--she took from it a glove, held it a moment, regarding it; thenwith a tender, yet whimsical laugh, a laugh half happiness, halfridicule of herself, she kissed it.
It was Claude's glove. And if, with that before his eyes he could haverestrained himself, the option was not his. She turned in the act, andsaw him; with a startled cry she put--none too soon--the table betweenthem.
They faced one another across it, he flushed, eager, with love in hiseyes, and on his lips; she blushing but not ashamed, her new-found joyin her eyes, and in the pose of her head.
"Anne!" he cried. "I know now! I know! I have seen and you cannotdeceive me!"
"In what?" she said, a smile trembling on her lips. "And of what, MesserClaude, are you so certain, if you please?"
"That you love me!" he replied. "But not a hundredth part"--he stretchedhis arms across the table towards her "as much as I love you and haveloved you for weeks! As I loved you even before I learned lastnight----"
"What?" Into her face--that had not found one hard look to rebuke hisboldness--came something of her old silent, watchful self. "What did youlearn last night?"
"Your secret!"
"I have none!" Quick as thought the words came from her lips. "I havenone! God is merciful," with a gesture of her open arms, as if she putsomething from her, "and it is gone! If you know, if you guess aught ofwhat it was"--her eyes questioned his and read in them if not that whichhe 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 oncewhat I think of you! Last night I heard. And I understood. I saw whatyou had gone through, what you had feared, what had been your life allthese weeks, rising and lying down! I saw what you meant when you bademe go anywhere but here, and why you suffered what you did at theirhands, and why they dared to treat you--so! And had they been here Iwould have killed them!" he added, his eyes sparkling. "And had you beenhere----"
"Yes?" she did not seek to check him now. Her bearing was changed, hereyes, 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!" hecried. And sinking on his knees he extended his arms across the tableand 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 knownyou, Anne! I might not have----"
"Perhaps you do not know me now," she said; but she did not withdraw herhands or her eyes. Only into the latter grew a shade of trouble. "I havedone--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 athief, for you have stolen my heart. For the rest, do you think that Ido not know you now? That I can be twice deceived? Twice take gold fordross, and my own for another thing? I know you!"
"But you do not know," she said tremulously, "what I have done--what Idid last night--or what may come of it."
"I know that what comes of it will happen, not to one but to two," hereplied bravely. "And that is all I ask to know. That, and that you arecontent it shall be so?"
"Content?"
"Yes."
"Content!"
There are things, other than wine, that bring truth to the surface. Thatwhich had happened to the girl in the last few hours, that which hadmelted her into unwonted song, was of these things; and the tone of hervoice as she repeated the word "Content!" the surrender of her eyes thatplaced her heart in his keeping, as frankly as she left her hands inhis, proclaimed it. The reserves of her sex, the tricks of coyness andreticence men look for in maids, were shaken from her; and as man to manher eyes told him the truth, told him that if she had ever doubted sheno longer doubted that she loved him. In the heart which a singlepassion, the purest of which men and women are capable, had engrossedso long, Nature, who, expel her as you will, will still return, had wonher right and carved her kingdom.
And she knew that it was well with her--whatever the upshot of lastnight. To be lonely no more; to be no longer the protector, but theprotected; to know the comfort of the strong arm as well as of thefollowing 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 with_him_--the sense of these things so mingled with her gratitude on hermother's account that the new affection, instead of weakening the oldbecame as it were part of it; while the old stretched onwards its pioushand 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 moregently or more reverently to his feet. Because all was his he would takenothing. "As I stand by you, may God stand by me," he said, stillholding 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 Heforgive you as fully as I must forgive you. What shall I say to you onmy part, Messer Claude?"
"That you love me."
"I love you," she murmured with an intonation which ravished the youngman's heart and brought the blood to his cheeks. "I love you. Whatmore?"
"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 heavyfor her, following as it did the excitement of the night. "No!" shecontinued, raising her eyes which had fallen before the ardour of hisgaze. "But there must b
e something you wish to ask me. You must wish toknow----"
"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 lastevening," she said, "when you were at his house."
"Messer Blondel?"
"Yes. He wished me to procure for him a certain drug that MesserBasterga 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 hadtried to procure it through Louis, and on the pretence that the boxcontained papers needed by the State. Failing in that he came lastevening 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 haveproved it." Again, with a ring of exultation in her voice, "I haveproved it!" she cried.
"How?"
"There was in the box a drug, he told me, possessed of an almostmiraculous power over disease of body and mind; so rare and so wonderfulthat none could buy it, and he knew of but this one dose, of whichMesser Basterga had possessed himself. He begged me to take it and togive it to him. He had on him, he said, a fatal illness, and if he didnot get this--he must die." Her voice shook. "He must die! Now God helphim!"
"You took it."
"I took it." Her face, as her eyes dropped before his, betrayed troubleand 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 itwas 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 rightthen. Now--I--I am frightened." She looked at him with eyes in which herdoubts were mirrored. She shivered, she who had been so joyous a momentbefore, and her hands, which hitherto had lain passive in his, returnedhis pressure feverishly. "I fear now!" she exclaimed. "I fear! What isit? What has happened--in the last minute?"
He would have drawn her to him, seeing that her nerves were shaken; butthe table was between them, and before he could pass round it, a soundcaught his ear, a shadow fell between them, and looking up he discoveredBasterga's face peering through the nearer casement. It was pressedagainst the small leaded panes, and possibly it was this which byflattening the huge features imparted to them a look of malignity. Orthe look--which startled Claude, albeit he was no coward--might havebeen only the natural expression of one, who suspected what was afootbetween them and came to mar it. Whatever it meant, the girl's cry ofdismay found an echo on Claude's lips. Involuntarily he dropped herhands; but--and the action was symbolical of the change in her life--hestepped at the same moment between her and the door. Whatever she haddone, right or wrong, was his concern now.
The Long Night Page 16