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

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.

But this man had the instinct only, not the patience. In his case would come with thought wild rages, gnawings of regret, tears of blood. That he might have, and had not, that he had failed by so little, that he had been worsted by his own tools--these things and the bitter irony of life's chances would madden and torment him. In an hour he would live a lifetime of remorse; yet find in his worst moments no thought more poignant than the reflection that had he played the game with courage, had he grasped the nettle boldly, had he seized Basterga while it was yet time, he might have lived! He might have lived! Ah, God!

Meanwhile Louis, though consumed with desire to see what would happen, remained on the bridge. He had tasted a fearful joy and would fain savour more of it if he could do so with a whole skin. But to follow seemed perilous; he held the Syndic's mood in too great awe for that. He did the next best thing. He hastened to a projecting part of the bridge a few paces from the spot where they had conferred; there he raised himself on the parapet that he might see which way Blondel turned at the end of the bridge. If he entered the town no more could be made of it: but if he turned right-handed and by the rampart to the Corraterie, Louis' mind was made up to risk something. He would follow to the Royaumes' house. The magistrate could hardly blame him for going to his own lodging!

It was a busy hour, and, cold as it was, a fair number of people were passing between the island and the upper town. For a moment, look as he might, he could not discern the Syndic's spare figure; and he was beginning to think that he had missed him when he saw something that in a twinkling turned his thoughts. On the bank a little beside the end of the bridge stood Claude Mercier. He carried a heavy stick in his hand, and he was waiting: waiting, with his eyes fixed on our friend, and a look in those eyes that even at that distance raised a gentle sweat on Louis' brow.

It required little imagination to follow Claude's past movements. He had gone to the Syndic's house at nine, and finding himself tricked a second time had returned hot-foot to the Corraterie. Thence he had tracked the two to this place. But how long had he been waiting, Louis wondered; and how much had he seen? Something for certain. His face announced that; and Louis, hot all over, despite the keen wind and frosty air, augured the worst. Cowards however have always one course open. The way was clear behind him. He could cross the island to the St. Gervais bank, and if he were nimble he might give his pursuer the slip in the maze of small streets beside the water. It was odd if the lapse of a few hours did not cool young Mercier's wrath, and restore him to a frame of mind in which he might be brought to hear reason.

No sooner planned than done. Or rather it would have been done if turning to see that the way was clear behind him, Louis had not discovered a second watcher, who from a spot on the edge of the island was marking his movements with grim attention. This watcher was Basterga. Moreover the glance which apprised Louis of this showed him that the scholar's face was as black as thunder.

Then, if the gods looked down that day upon any mortal with pity, they must have looked down on this young man; who was a coward. At the one end of the bridge, Claude, with an ugly weapon and a face to match! At the other, Basterga, with a black brow and Heaven alone could say how much knowledge of his treachery! The scholar could not know of the loss of the phial, indeed, for it was clear that he had just returned to the city by the St. Gervais gate. But that he soon would know of it, that he knew something already, that he had been a witness to the colloquy with the Syndic--this was certain.

At any rate Louis thought so, and his knees trembled under him. He had no longer a way of retreat, and out of the corner of his eye he saw Claude beginning to advance. What was he to do? The perspiration burst out on him. He turned this way and that, now casting wild eyes at the whirling current below, now piteous eyes--the eyes of a calf on its way to the shambles, and as little regarded--on the thin stream of passers. How could they go on their way and leave him to the mercies of this madman?

He smothered a shriek as Claude, now less than twenty paces away, sped a look at him. Claude, indeed, was thinking of Anne and her wrongs; and of a certain kiss. His face told this so plainly, and that passion was his master, that Louis' cheek grew white. What if the ruffian threw him into the river? What if--and then like every coward, he chose the remoter danger. With Claude at hand, he turned and fled, dashed blindly through the passers on the bridge, flung himself on Basterga, and, seizing the big scholar by the arm, strove to shelter himself behind him.

"He is mad!" he gasped. "Mad! Save me! He is going to throw me over!"

"Steady!" Basterga answered; and he opposed his huge form to Claude's rush. "What is this, young man? Coming to blows in the street? For shame! For shame!" He moved again so as still to confront him.

"Give him up!" Claude panted, scarcely preventing himself from attacking both. "Give him up, I say, and----"

"Not till I have heard what he has done! Steady, young man, keep your distance!"

"I will tell you everything! Everything!" Louis whined, clinging to his arm.