The Long Night - Stanley Weyman (free novel 24 .txt) 📗

two this time," Gentilis said grinning. "Being for the second offence, a double----"

"Pain," quoth Basterga. "Very good. Do you hear, my girl? Go to Gentilis, and see you let him kiss you twice! And see we see and hear it. And have a care! Have a care! Or next time your modesty may not escape so easily! To him at once, and----"

"No!" The cry came from Claude. He was on his feet, his face on fire. "No!" he repeated passionately.

"No?"

"Not while I am here! Not under compulsion," the young man cried. "Shame on you!" He turned to the others, generous wrath in his face. "Shame on you to torture a woman so--a woman alone! And you three to one!"

Basterga's face grew dark. "You are right! We are three," he muttered, his hand slowly seeking a weapon in the corner behind him. "You speak truth there, we are three--to one! And----"

"You maybe twenty, I will not suffer it!" the lad cried gallantly. "You may be a hundred----"

But on that word, in the full tide of speech he stopped. His voice died as suddenly as it had been raised, he stammered, his whole bearing changed. He had met her eyes: he had read in them reproach, warning, rebuke. Too late he had remembered his promise.

The big man leaned forward. "What may we be?" he asked. "You were going, I think, to say that we might be--that we might be----"

But Claude did not answer. He was passing through a moment of such misery as he had never experienced. To give way to them now, to lower his flag before them after he had challenged them! To abandon her to them, to see her--oh, it was more than he could do, more than he could suffer! It was----

"Pray go on," Basterga sneered, "if you have not said your say. Do not think of us!"

Oh, bitter! But he remembered how the scalding liquor had fallen on the tender skin. "I have said it," he muttered hoarsely. "I have said it," and by a movement of his hand, pathetic enough had any understood it, he seemed to withdraw himself and his opposition.

But when, obedient to Basterga's eye, the girl moved to Gentilis' side and bent her cheek--which flamed, not by reason of Gentilis or the coming kisses, but of Claude's presence and his cry for her--he could not bear it. He could not stay and see it, though to go was to abandon her perhaps to worse treatment. He rose with a cry and snatched his cap, and tore open the door. With rage in his heart and their laughter, their mocking, triumphant laughter, in his ears, he sprang down the steps.

A coward! That was what he must seem to them. A coward's part, that was the part they had seen him play. Into the darkness, into the night, what mattered whither, when such fierce anger boiled within him? Such self-contempt. What mattered whither when he knew how he had failed! Ay, failed and played the Tissot! The Tissot and the weakling!


CHAPTER VIII.

ON THE THRESHOLD.

He hurried along the ramparts in a rage with those whom he had left, in a still greater rage with himself. He had played the Tissot with a vengeance. He had flown at them in weak passion, he had recoiled as weakly, he had left them to call him coward. Now, even now, he was fleeing from them, and they were jeering at him. Ay, jeering at him; their laughter followed him, and burned his ears.

The rain that beat on his fevered face, the moist wind from the Rhone Valley below, could not wipe out _that_--the defeat and the shame. The darkness through which he hurried could not hide it from his eyes. Thus had Tissot begun, flying out at them, fleeing from them, a thing of mingled fury and weakness. He knew how they had regarded Tissot. So they now regarded him.

And the girl? What shame lay on his manhood who had abandoned her, who had left her to be their sport! His rage boiled over as he thought of her, and with the rain-laden wind buffeting his brow he halted and made as if he would return. But to what end if she would not have his aid, to what end if she would not suffer him? With a furious gesture, he hurried on afresh, only to be arrested, by-and-by, at the corner of the ramparts near the Bourg du Four, by a dreadful thought. What if he had deceived himself? What if he had given back before them, not because she had willed it, not because she had looked at him, not in compliance with her wishes; but in face of the odds against him, and by virtue of some streak of cowardice latent in his nature? The more he thought of it, the more he doubted if she had looked at him; the more likely it seemed that the look had been a straw, at which his craven soul had grasped!

The thought maddened him. But it was too late to return, too late to undo his act. He must have left them a full half-hour. The town was growing quiet, the sound of the evening psalms was ceasing. The rustle of the wind among the branches covered the tread of the sentries as they walked the wall between the Porte Neuve and the Mint tower; only their harsh voices as they met midway and challenged came at intervals to his ears. It must be hard on ten o'clock. Or, no, there was the bell of St. Peter's proclaiming the half-hour after nine.

He was ashamed to return to the house, yet he must return; and by-and-by, reluctantly and doggedly, he set his face that way. The wind and rain had cooled his brow, but not his brain, and he was still in a fever of resentment and shame when his lagging feet brought him to the house. He passed it irresolutely once, unable to make up his mind to enter and face them. Then, cursing himself for a poltroon, he turned again and made for the door.

He was within half a dozen strides of it when a dark figure detached itself from the doorway, and stumbled down the steps. Its aim seemed to be to escape, and leaping to the conclusion that it was Gentilis, and that some trick was being prepared for him, Claude sprang forward. His hand shot out, he grasped the other's neck. His wrath blazed up.

"You rogue!" he said. "I'll teach you to lie in wait for me!" And shifting his grasp from the man's neck to his shoulder, he turned him round regardless of his struggles. As he did so the man's hat fell off. With amazement Claude recognised the features of the Syndic Blondel.

The young man's arm fell, and he stared, open-mouthed and aghast, the passion with which he had seized the stranger whelmed in astonishment.

The Syndic, on the other hand, behaved with a strange composure. Breathing rather quickly, but vouchsafing no word of explanation, he straightened the crumpled linen about his neck, and set right his coat. He was proceeding, still in silence, to pick up his hat, when Claude, anticipating the action, secured the hat and restored it to him.

"Thank you," he said. And then, stiffly, "Come with me," he continued.

He turned as he spoke and led the way to a spot at some distance from the house, yet within sight of the door; there he wheeled about. "I was coming to see you," he said, steadfastly confronting Claude. "Why have you not called upon me, young man, in accordance with the invitation I gave you?"

Claude stared. The Syndic's matter-of-factness and the ease with which he ignored what had just passed staggered him. Perhaps after all Blondel had come for this, and had been startled while waiting at the door by the quickness of his approach. "I--I had overlooked it," he murmured, trying to accept the situation.

"Then," the Syndic answered shrewdly, "I can see that you have not wanted anything."

"No."

"You lodge there?" Blondel continued, pointing to the house. "But I know you do. And keep late hours, I fear. You are not alone in the house, I think?"

"No," Claude replied; and on a sudden, as his mind went back to the house and those in it, there leapt into it the temptation to tell all to this man, a magistrate, and appeal to him in the girl's behalf. He could not speak to a more proper person, if he sought the city through; and here was the opportunity, brought unsought, to his door. But then he had not the girl's leave to speak; could he speak without her leave? He shifted his feet, and to gain time, "No," he said slowly, "there are two or three who lodge in the house."

"Is not the person with whom you quarrelled at the inn one of them?" the Syndic asked. "Eh? Is not he one?"

"Yes," Claude answered; and the recollection of the scene and of the support which the Syndic had given to Grio checked the impulse to speak. Perhaps after all the girl knew best.

"And a person of the name of Basterga, I think?"

Claude nodded. He dared not trust himself to speak now. Could it be that a whisper of what was passing in the house had reached the magistrates?

The Syndic coughed. He glanced from the distant door, now a mere blur in the obscurity, to his companion's face and back again to the door--of which he seemed reluctant to lose sight. For a moment he seemed at a loss how to proceed. When he did speak, after a long pause, it was in a dry curt tone. "It is about him I wish to hear something," he said. "I look to you as a good citizen to afford such information as the State requires. The matter is more important than you think. I ask you what you know of that man."

"Messer Basterga!"

"Yes."

Claude stared. "I know no good," he answered, more and more surprised. "I do not like him, Messer Syndic."

"But he is a learned man, I believe. He passes for such, does he not?"

"Yes."

"Yet you do not like him. Why?"

Claude's face burned. "He puts his learning to no good use," he blurted out. "He uses it to--to torture women. If I could tell you all--all, Messer Blondel," the young man continued, in growing excitement, "you would understand me better! He gains power over people, a strange power, and abuses it."

"Power? What do you mean? What kind of power?"

"God knows."

The Syndic stared a moment, his face expressive of contempt. This was not the line he had meant his questions to take. What did it matter to him how the man treated women? Pshaw! Then suddenly a light--as of satisfaction, or discovery--gleamed in his eyes. "Do you mean," he muttered, lowering his voice, "by sorcery?"

"God knows."

"By evil arts?"

The young man shook his head. "I do not know," he answered, almost pettishly. "How should I? But he has a power. A secret power! I do not understand him or it!"

The Syndic looked at him darkly thoughtful. "You did not know that that was said of him?" he asked.

"That he----"

"Has magical arts?"

Claude shook his head.

"Nor that he has a laboratory upstairs?" Blondel continued, fixing the young man gravely with his eyes. "A laboratory in which