Her hand was on the latch of the inner door. Another second and, swayed by his will, she would have gone up and got the thing he needed, and the stout door would have shielded them, and within the staircase he might have taken it from her and no one been the wiser. But as she turned, there came a second attack on the door, so loud, so persistent, so furious, that she faltered, remembering that the duplicate key of Basterga’s chamber was in her mother’s room, and that she must mount to the top of the house for it.
He saw her hesitation, and, shaken by the face which had looked in out of the night, and which still might be watching his movements, his resolution gave way. The habit of a life of formalism prevailed. The thing was as good as his, she would get it presently. Why, then, cause talk and scandal by keeping these persons — whoever they were — outside, when the thing might be had without talk?
“To-night!” he cried rapidly. “Get it to-night, then! Do you hear, girl? You will be sure to get it?” His eyes flitted from her to the door and back again. “Basterga will not return until to-morrow. You will get it to-night!”
She murmured some form of assent.
“Then open the door! open the door!” he urged impatiently. And with a stifled oath, “A little more and they will rouse the town!”
She ran to obey, the door flew open, and into the room bundled first Louis without his cap; and then on his heels and gripping him by the nape, Claude Mercier. Nor did the latter seem in the least degree abashed by the presence in which he found himself. On the contrary, he looked at the Syndic, his head high; as if he, and not the magistrate, had the right to an explanation.
But Blondel had recovered himself. “Come, come!” he said sternly. “What is this, young man? Are you drunk?”
“Why was the door locked?”
“That you might not interrupt me,” Blondel replied severely, “while I asked some questions. I have it in my mind to ask you some also. You took him to my house?” he continued, addressing Louis.
Louis whined that he had.
“You were late then?” His cold eye returned to Claude. “You were late, I warrant. Attend me to-morrow at nine, young man. Do you hear? Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“Then have a care you are there, or the officers will fetch you. And you,” he continued, turning more graciously to Anne, “see, young woman, you keep counsel. A still tongue buys friends, and is a service to the State. With that — good-night.”
He looked from one to the other with a sour smile, nodded, and passed out.
He left Claude staring, and something bewildered in the middle of the room. The love, the pity, the admiration of which the lad’s heart had been full an hour before, still hungered for expression; but it was not easy to vent such feelings before Louis, nor at a moment when the Syndic’s cold eye and the puzzle of his presence there chilled for the time the atmosphere of the room.
Claude, indeed, was utterly perplexed by what he had seen; and before he could decide what he would do, Anne, ignoring the need of explanation, had taken the matter into her own hands. She had begun to set out the meal; and Louis, smiling maliciously, had seated himself in his place. To speak with any effect then, or to find words adequate to the feelings that had moved him a while before, was impossible. A moment later, the opportunity was gone.
“You must please to wait on yourselves,” the girl said wearily. “My mother is not well, and I may not come down again this evening.” As she spoke, she lifted from the table the little tray which she had prepared.
He was in time to open the door for her; and even then, had she glanced at him, his eyes must have told her much, perhaps enough. But she did not look at him. She was preoccupied with her own thoughts; pressing thoughts they must have been. She passed him as if he had been a stranger, her eyes on the tray. Worshipping, he stood, and saw her turn the corner at the head of the flight; then with a full heart he went back to his place. His time would come.
And she? At the door of Basterga’s room she paused and stood long in thought, gazing at the rushlight she carried on the tray — yet seeing nothing. A sentence, one sentence of all those which Blondel had poured forth — not Blondel the austere Syndic, who had set the lads aside as if they had been schoolboys, but Blondel the man, trembling, holding out suppliant hands — rang again and again in her ears.
“It is health of body, though you be dying as I am, and health of mind, though you be possessed of devils!” Health of body! Health of mind! Health of body! Health of mind! The words wrote themselves before her eyes in letters of fire. Health of Body! Health of Mind!
And only one dose in all the world. Only one dose in all the world! She recalled that too.
CHAPTER XV.
ON THE BRIDGE.
To say that the Syndic, as soon as he had withdrawn, repented of his weakness and wished with all his heart that he had not opened until the remedium was in his hand, is only to say that he was human. He did more than this, indeed. When he had advanced some paces in the direction of the Porte Tertasse he returned, and for a full minute he stood before the Royaumes’ door irresolute; half-minded to knock and, casting the fear of publicity to the winds, to say that he must have at once that for which he had come. He would get it, if he did, he was certain of that. And for the rest, what the young men said or thought, or what others who heard their story might say or think, mattered not a straw now that he came to consider it; since he could have Basterga seized on the morrow, and all would pass for a part of his affair.
Yet he did not knock. A downward step on the slope of indecision is hard to retrace. He reflected that he would get the remedium in the morning. He would certainly get it. The girl was won over, Basterga was away. Practically, he had no one to fear. And to make a stir when the matter could be arranged without a stir was not the part of a wise man in the position of a magistrate. Slowly he turned and walked away.
But, as if his good angel touched him on the shoulder, under the Porte Tertasse he had qualms; and again he stood. And when, after a shorter interval and with less indecision, he resumed his course, it was by no means with the air of a victor. He would receive what he needed in the morning: he dared not admit a doubt of that. And yet — was it a vague presentiment that weighed on him as he walked, or only the wintry night wind that caused the blood to run more slowly and more tamely in his veins? He had not fared ill in his venture, he had made success certain. And yet he was unreasonably, he was unaccountably, he was undefinably depressed.
He grew more cheerful when he had had his supper and seated before a half-flagon of wine gave the reins to his imagination. For the space of a golden hour he held the remedium in his grasp, he felt its life-giving influence course through his frame, he tasted again of health and strength and manhood, he saw before him years of success and power and triumph! In comparison to it the bath of Pelias, though endowed with the virtues which lying Medea attributed to it, had not seemed more desirable, nor the elixir of life, nor the herb of Anticyra. Nor was it until he had taken the magic draught once and twice and thrice in fancy, and as often hugged himself on health renewed and life restored that a thought, which had visited him at an earlier period of the evening, recurred and little by little sobered him.
This was the reflection that he knew nothing of the quantity of the potion which he must take, nothing of the time or of the manner of taking it. Was it to be taken all at once, or in doses? Pure, or diluted with wine, or with water, or with aqua vitæ? At any hour, or at midnight, or at a particular epoch of the moon’s age, or when this or that star was in the ascendant?
The question bulked larger as he considered it; for in life no trouble is surmounted but another appears to confront us; nor is the most perfect success of an imperfect world without its drawback. Now that he held the elixir his, now that in fancy he had it in his grasp, the problem of the mode and the quantity which had seemed trivial and negligible a few days or hours before, grew to formidable dimensions; nor could he of himself discover any solut
ion of it. He had counted on finding with the potion some scrap of writing, some memorandum, some hieroglyphics at least, that, interpreted by such skill as he could command, would give him the clue he sought. But if there was nothing, as the girl asserted, not a line nor a sign, the matter could be resolved in one way only. He must resort to pressure. With the potion and the man in his possession, he must force the secret from Basterga; force it by threats or promises or aught that would weigh with a man who lay helpless and in a dungeon. It would not be difficult to get the truth in that way: not at all difficult. It seemed, indeed, as if Providence — and Fabri and Petitot and Baudichon — had arranged to put the man in his power ad hoc.
He hugged this thought to him, and grew so enamoured of it that he wondered that he had not had the courage to seize Basterga in the beginning. He had allowed himself to be disturbed by phantoms; there lay the truth. He should have seen that the scholar dared not for his own sake destroy a thing so precious, a thing by which he might, at the worst, ransom his life. The Syndic wondered that he had not discerned that point before: and still in sanguine humour he retired to bed, and slept better than he had slept for weeks, ay, for months. The elixir was his, as good as his; if he did not presently have Messer Basterga by the nape he was much mistaken.
He had had the scholar watched and knew whither he was gone and that he would not return before noon. At nine o’clock, therefore, the hour at which he had directed Claude to come to him at his house, he approached the Royaumes’ door. Pluming himself on the stratagem by which twice in the twenty-four hours he had rid himself of an inconvenient witness, he opened the door boldly and entered.
On the hearth, cap in hand, stood not Claude, but Louis. The lad wore the sneaking air as of one surprised in a shameful action, which such characters wear even when innocently employed. But his actions proved that he was not surprised. With finger on his lip, and eyes enjoining caution, he signed to the Syndic to be silent, and with head aside set the example of listening.
The Syndic was not the man to suffer fools gladly, and he opened his mouth. He closed it — all but too late. All but too late, if — the thought sent cold shivers down his back — if Basterga had returned. With an air almost as furtive as that of the lad before him, he signed to him to approach.
Louis crossed the room with a show of caution the more strange as the early December sun was shining and all without was cheerful. “Has he come back?” Blondel whispered.
“Claude?”
“Fool!” Low as the Syndic pitched his tone it expressed a world of contempt. “No, Basterga?”
The youth shook his head, and again laying his finger to his lips listened.
“What! He has not?” Blondel’s colour returned, his eyes bulged out with passion. What did the imbecile mean? Because he knew certain things did he think himself privileged to play the fool? The Syndic’s fingers tingled. Another second and he had broken the silence with a vengeance, when —
“You are — too late!” Louis muttered. “Too late!” he repeated with protruded lips.
Blondel glared at him as if he would annihilate him. Too late? What did this creature know? Or how could it be too late, if Basterga had not returned? Yet the Syndic was shaken. His fingers no longer tingled for the other’s cheek; he no longer panted to break the silence in a way that should startle him. On the contrary, he listened; while his eyes passed swiftly round the room, to gather what was amiss. But all seemed in order. The lads’ bowls and spoons stood on the table, the great roll of brown bread lay beside them, and a book, probably Claude’s, lay face downwards on the board. The door of one of the bedrooms stood open. The Syndic’s suspicious gaze halted at the closed door. He pointed to it.
Louis shook his head; then, seeing that this was not enough, “There is no one there,” he whispered. “But I cannot tell you here. I will follow you, honoured sir, to — —”
“The Porte Tertasse.”
“Mercier would meet us, by your leave,” Louis rejoined with a faint grin.
The magistrate glared at the tool who on a sudden was turned adviser. Still, for the time he must humour him. “The mills, then, on the bridge,” he muttered. And he opened the door with care and went out. With a dreadful sense of coming evil he went along the Corraterie and took his way down the steep to the bridge which, far below, curbed the blue rushing waters of the Rhone. The roar of the icy torrent and of the busy mills, stupendous as it was, was not loud enough to deaden the two words that clung to his ears, “Too late! Too late!” Nor did the frosty sunshine, gloriously reflected from the line of snowy peaks to eastward, avail to pierce the gloom in which he walked. For Louis Gentilis, if it should turn out that he had inflicted this penance for naught, there was preparing an evil hour.
The magistrate turned aside on a part of the bridge between two mills. With his back to the wind-swept lake and its wide expanse of ruffled waves, he stood a little apart from the current of crossers, on a space kept clear of loiterers by the keen breeze. He seemed, if any curious eye fell on him, to be engaged in watching the swirling torrent pour from the narrow channel beneath him, as in warmer weather many a one stood to watch it. Here two minutes later Louis found him; and if Blondel still cherished hope, if he still fought against fear, or maintained courage, the lad’s smirking face was enough to end all.
For a moment, such was the effect on him, Blondel could not speak. At last, with an effort, “What is it?” he said. “What has happened?”
“Much,” Louis replied glibly. “Last night, after you had gone, honoured sir, I judged by this and that, that there was something afoot. And being devoted to your interests, and seeking only to serve you — —”
“The point! The point!” the Syndic ejaculated. “What has happened?”
“Treachery,” the young man answered, mouthing his words with enjoyment; it was for him a happy moment. “Black, wicked treachery!” with a glance behind him. “The worst, sir, the worst, if I rightly apprehend the matter.”
“Curse you,” Blondel cried, contrary to his custom, for he was no swearer, “you will kill me, if you do not speak.”
“But — —”
“What has happened. What has happened, man!”
“I was going to tell you, honoured sir, that I watched her — —”
“Anne? The girl?”
“Yes, and an hour before midnight she took that which you wished me to get — the bottle. She went to Basterga’s room, and — —”
“Took it! Well? Well?” The Syndic’s face, grey a moment before, was dangerously suffused with blood. The cane that had inflicted the bruise Louis still wore across his visage, quivered ominously. Public as the bridge was, open to obloquy and remark as an assault must lay him, Blondel was within an inch of striking the lad again. “Well? Well?” he repeated. “Is that all you have to tell me?”
“Would it were!” Louis replied, raising his open hands with sanctimonious fervour. “Alas, sir!”
“You watched her?”
“I watched her back to her room.”
“Upstairs?”
“Yes, the room which she occupies with her mother. And kneeling and listening, and seeing what I could for your sake,” the knave continued, not a feature evincing the shame he should have felt, “I saw her handle the phial at a little table opposite the door, but hidden by a curtain from the bed.”
The Syndic’s eyes conveyed the question his lips refused to frame. No man, submitted to the torture, has ever suffered more than he was suffering.
But Louis had as much mind to avenge himself as the bravest, if he could do so safely; and he would not be hurried. “She held it to the light,” he said, dwelling on every syllable, “and turned it this way and that, and I could see bubbles as of gold — —”
“Ah!”
“Whirling and leaping up and down in it as if they lived — God guard us from the evil one! Then she knelt — —”
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 know not. 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.
Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman Page 418