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

heart of the man. An infinite tenderness, a tenderness which swelled his breast to bursting, a yearning that, man as he was, stopped little short of tears, these were his, these it was thrilled his soul to the point of pain. The room in which he stood, homely as it showed, plain as it was, seemed glorified, the hearth transfigured. He could have knelt and kissed the floor which the girl had trodden, coming and going, serving and making ready--under that burden; the burden that dignified and hallowed the bearer. What had it not cost her--that burden? What had it not meant to her, what suspense by day, what terror of nights, what haggard awakenings--such as that of which he had been the ignorant witness--what watches above, what slights and insults below! Was it a marvel that the cheeks had lost their colour, the eyes their light, the whole face its life and meaning? Nay, the wonder was that she had borne the weight so long, always expecting, always dreading, stabbed in the tenderest affection; with for confidant an enemy and for stay an ignorant! Viewed through the medium of the man's love, which can so easily idealise where it rests, the love of the daughter for the mother, that must have touched and softened the hardest--or so, but for the case of Basterga, one would have judged--seemed so holy, so beautiful, so pure a thing that the young man felt that, having known it, he must be the better for it all his life.

And then his mind turned to another point in the story, and he recalled what had passed above stairs on that day when he had entered a stranger, and gone up. With what a smiling face of love had she leant over her mother's bed. With what cheerfulness had she lied of that which passed below, what a countenance had she put on all--no house more prosperous, no life more gay--how bravely had she carried it! The peace and neatness and comfort of the room with its windows looking over the Rhone valley, and its spinning-wheel and linen chest and blooming bow-pot, all came back to him; so that he understood many things which had passed before him then, and then had roused but a passing and a trifling wonder.

Her anxiety lest he should take lodging there and add one more to the chances of espial, one more to the witnesses of her misery; her secret nods and looks, and that gently checked outburst of excitement on Madame Royaume's part, which even at the time had seemed odd--all were plain now. Ay, plain; but suffused with a light so beautiful, set in an atmosphere so pure and high, that no view of God's earth, even from the eyrie of those lofty windows, and though dawn or sunset flung its fairest glamour over the scene, could so fill the heart of man with gratitude and admiration!

Up and down in the days gone by, his thoughts followed her through the house. Now he saw her ascend and enter, and finding all well, mask--but at what a cost--her aching heart under smiles and cheerful looks and soft laughter. He heard the voice that was so seldom heard downstairs murmur loving words, and little jests, and dear foolish trifles; heard it for the hundredth time reiterate the false assurances that affection hallowed. He was witness to the patient tendance, the pious offices, the tireless service of hand and eye, that went on in that room under the tiles; witness to the long communion hand in hand, with the world shut out; to the anxious scrutiny, to the daily departure. A sad departure, though daily and more than daily taken; for she who descended carried a weight of fear and anxiety. As she came down the weary stairs, stage by stage, he saw the brightness die from eye and lip, and pale fear or dull despair seize on its place. He saw--and his heart was full--the slender figure, the pallid face enter the room in which he stood--it might be at the dawning when the cold shadow of the night still lay on all, from the dead ashes on the hearth to the fallen pot and displaced bench; or it might be at mid-day, to meet sneers and taunts and ignoble looks; and his heart was full. His face burned, his eyes filled, he could have kissed the floor she had walked over, the wooden spoon her hand had touched, the trencher-edge--done any foolish thing to prove his love.

Love? It was a deeper thing than love, a holier, purer thing--that which he felt. Such a feeling as the rough spearsmen of the Orleannais had for Joan the maid; or the great Florentine for the girl whom he saw for the first time at the banquet in the house of the Portinari; or as that man, who carried to his grave the Queen's glove, yet had never touched it with his bare hand.

Alas, that such feelings cannot last, nor such moments endure; that in the footsteps of the priest, be he never so holy, treads ever the grinning acolyte with his mind on sweet things. They pass, these feelings, and too quickly. But once to have had them, once to have lived such moments, once to have known a woman and loved her in such wise leaves no man as he was before; leaves him at the least with a memory of a higher life.

That the acolyte in Claude's case took the form of Louis Gentilis made him no more welcome. Claude was still dreaming on his feet, still viewing in a kind of happy amaze the simple things about him, things that for him wore

The light that never was on land or sea,

and that this world puts on but once for each of us, when Gentilis opened the door and entered, bringing with him a rush of rain, and a gust of night air. He breathed quickly as if he had been running, yet having closed the door, he paused before he advanced into the room; and he seemed surprised, and at a nonplus. After a moment, "Supper is not ready?" he said.

"It is not time," Claude answered curtly. The vision of an angel does not necessarily purify at all points, and he had small stomach for Master Louis at any time.

The youth winced under the tone, but stood his ground.

"Where is Anne?" he asked, something sullenly.

"Upstairs. Why do you ask?"

"Messer Basterga is not coming to supper. Nor Grio. They bade me tell her. And that they would be late."

"Very well, I will tell her."

But it was evident that that was not all Louis had in his mind. He remained fidgeting by the door, his cap in his hand; and his face, had Claude marked it--but he had already turned a contemptuous shoulder on him--was a picture of doubt and indecision. At length, "I've a message for you," he muttered nervously. "From Messer Blondel the Syndic. He wants to see you--now."

Claude turned, and if he had not looked at the other before, he made up for it now. "Oh!" he said at last, after a stare that bespoke both surprise and suspicion. "He does, does he? And who made you his messenger?"

"He met me in the street--just now."

"He knows you, then?"

"He knows I live here," Louis muttered.

"He pays us a vast amount of attention," Claude replied with polite irony. "Nevertheless"--he turned again to the fire--"I cannot pleasure him," he continued curtly, "this time."

"But he wants to see you," Gentilis persisted desperately. It was plain that he was on pins and needles. "At his house. Cannot you believe me?" in a querulous tone. "It is all fair and above board. I swear it is."

"Is it?"

"It is--I swear it is. He sent me. Do you doubt me?" he added with undisguised eagerness.

Claude was about to say, with no politeness at all, that he did, and to repeat his refusal in stronger terms, when his ear caught the same sound which had revealed so much to him a few minutes earlier at the foot of the stairs. It came more faintly this time, deadened by the closed door of the staircase, but to his enlightened senses it proclaimed so clearly what it was--the echo of a cracked, shrill voice, of a laugh insane, uncanny, elfish--that he trembled lest Louis should hear it also and gain the clue. That was a thing to be avoided at all costs; and even as this occurred to him he saw the way to avoid it. Basterga and Grio were absent: if this fool could be removed, even for an hour or two, Anne would have the house to herself, and by midnight the crisis might be overpast.

"I will come with you," he said.

Louis uttered a sigh of relief. He had expected--and he had very nearly received--another answer. "Good," he said. "But he does not want me."

"Both or neither," Claude replied coolly. "For all I know 'tis an ambush."

"No, no!"

"In which event I shall see that you share it. Or it may be a scheme to draw me from here, and then if harm be done while I am away----"

"Harm? What harm?" Louis muttered.

"Any harm! If harm be done, I say, I shall then have you at hand to pay me for it. So--both or neither!"

For a moment Louis' hang-dog face--none the handsomer for the mark of the Syndic's cane--spelt refusal. Then he changed his mind. He nodded sulkily. "Very well," he said. "But it is raining, and I have no great wish to--Hush! What is that?" He raised his hand in the attitude of one listening and his eyes sought his companion's. "What is that? Did you not hear something--like a scream upstairs?"

"I hear something like a fool downstairs!" Claude retorted gruffly.

"But it was--I certainly heard something!" Louis persisted, raising his hand again. "It sounded----"

"If we are to go, let us go!" Claude cried with temper. "Come, if you want me to go! It is not my expedition," he continued, moving noisily hither and thither in search of his staff and cloak. "It is your affair, and--where is my cap?"

"I should think it is in your room," Louis answered meekly. "It was only that I thought it might be Anne. That there might be----"

"Two fools in the house instead of one!" Claude broke in, emerging noisily, and slamming the door of his closet behind him. "There, come, and we may hope to be back to supper some time to-night! Do you hear?" And jealously shepherding the other out of the house, he withdrew the key when both had passed the threshold. Locking the door on the outside, he thrust the key under it. "There!" he said, smiling at his cleverness, "now, who enters--knocks!"


CHAPTER XIV.

"AND ONLY ONE DOSE IN ALL THE WORLD!"

In his picture of the life led by the two women on the upper floor of the house in the Corraterie, that picture which by a singular intuition he had conceived on the day of his arrival, Claude had not gone far astray. In all respects but one the picture was truly drawn. Than the love between mother and daughter, no tie could be imagined at once more simple and more holy; no union more real and pure than that which bound together these two women, left lonely in days of war and trouble in the midst of a city permanently besieged and menaced by an enduring peril. Almost forgotten by