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

a glance of defiance, directed at Basterga, "since you gave the man who now accompanies you the foulest of characters! Since you would have me rob him! Since you called him reprobate of the reprobate! Is he reprobate now?"

"Silence!"

"A corrupter of women, as you called him?"

"Liar!" the Syndic cried, trembling with passion. "Be silent!" The blow found him unprepared. "He lies!" he stammered, turning to his ally.

Basterga laughed softly. He had guessed as much: none the less he thought it time to interfere, lest his tool be put too much out of countenance. "Gently, young man," he said, "or perhaps you may go too far. I know you."

"He is a liar!" Blondel repeated.

"Probably," Basterga said, "but it matters not. It is enough that our business here lies not with him, but with this young woman. You seem to have taken her under your protection," he continued, addressing Claude, "and may choose, if you please, whether you will see her haled through the streets, or will suffer her to answer our questions here. As you please."

"Your questions?" Claude cried, recalling with rage the occasions on which he had heard this man insult her. "Hear me one moment, and I will very quickly prove----"

He was silent with the word on his lips. Her hand on his sleeve recalled the necessity of prudence. He bit his lip and stood glowering at them. It was she who spoke.

"What do you wish?" she asked in a low voice.

Naturally courageous as she was, she could not have spoken but for the support of her lover. For the unexpected conjunction of these two, and their entrance together, smote her with fear. "What is your desire?" she repeated.

"To see your mother," Basterga answered. "We have no business with you--at present," he added, after a perceptible pause, and with a slight emphasis.

She caught her breath. "You want to see my mother?" she faltered.

"I spoke plainly," Basterga replied with sternness. "That was what I said."

"What do you want with her?"

"That is our affair."

Pale to the lips, she hesitated. Yet, after all, why should they not go up and see her mother? Things were not to-day as they had been yesterday: or she had done in vain that which she had done, had sinned in vain if she had sinned. And that was a thing not to be considered. If they found her mother as she had left her, if they found the promise of the morning fulfilled, even their unexpected entrance would do no harm. Her mother was sane to-day: sane and well as other people, thank God! It was on that account she had let her heart rise like a bird's to her lips.

Yet, when she opened her mouth to assent, she found the words with difficulty. "I do not know what you want," she said faintly. "Still if you wish to see her you can go up."

"Good!" Basterga replied, and advancing, he opened the staircase door, then stood aside for the Syndic to ascend first. "Good! The uppermost floor, Messer Blondel," he continued, holding the door wide. "The stairs are narrow, but I think I can promise you that at the top you will find what you want."

He could not divest his tone of the triumph he felt. Slight as the warning was, it sufficed; while the last word was still on his lips, she snatched the door from his grasp, closed it and stood panting before it. What inward monition had spoken to her, what she had seen, what she had heard, besides that note of triumph in Basterga's voice, matters not. Her mind was changed.

"No!" she cried. "You do not go up! No!"

"You will not let us see her?" Basterga exclaimed.

"No!" Her breast heaving, she confronted them without fear.

In his surprise at her action the scholar had recoiled a step: he was fiercely angry. "Come, girl, no nonsense," he said roughly and brutally. "Make way! Or we shall have a little to say to you of what you did in my room last night! Do you mark me?" he continued. "I might have you punished for it, wench! I might have you whipped and branded for it! Do you mind me? You robbed me, and that which you took----"

"I took at his instigation!" she retorted, pointing an accusing finger at Blondel, who stood gnawing his beard, hating the part he was playing, and hating still more this white-faced girl who had come so near to ruining, if she had not ruined, his last chance of life. Hate her? The Syndic hated her for the hour of anguish through which he had just passed, hated her for the price--he shuddered to think of it--which he must now pay for his life. He hated her for his present humiliation, he hated her for his future shame. She seemed to blame for all.

"You took it," Basterga answered, acknowledging her words only by a disdainful shrug, "and gave it to your mother. Why, I care not. Now that you see we know so much, will you let us go up!"

"No!" She faced him bravely and steadfastly. "No. If you know so much, you know also why I took it, and why I gave it to her." And then, the radiance of unselfish love illuminating her pallid face, "I would do it again were it to do," she said. "And again, and yet again! For you, I have done you wrong; I have robbed you, and you may punish me. I must bear it. But as to him," pointing to Messer Blondel, "I am innocent! Innocent," she repeated firmly. "For he would have done it himself and for himself; it was he who would have me do it. And if I have done it, I have done it for another. I have robbed you, if need be I must pay the price; but that man has naught against me in this! And for the rest, my mother is well."

"Ah?"

"Ay, well! well!" she repeated, the light of joy softening her eyes as she repeated the word. "Well! and I fear nothing."

Basterga laughed cruelly. "Well?" he said. "Well, is she? Then let us go up and see her. If she be well, why not?"

"No!"

"Why not?"

She did not answer, but she did not make way.

"Why not? I will tell you, if you please," he said. "And it will make you pipe to another tune. You have given her, young woman, that which will make her worse, and not better!"

"She is better!"

"For an hour, or for twelve hours!" he retorted. "That certainly. Then worse."

"No!"

"No? But I see what it is," he continued--and, alas, his voice strengthened the fear that like a dead hand was closing on her heart and staying it; deepened the terror that like a veil was falling before her eyes and darkening the room; so that she had much ado, gripping finger-nails into palms, to keep her feet and let herself from fainting. "I see what it is. You would fain play Providence," he continued--"that is it, is it? You would play Providence? Then come! Come then, and see what kind of Providence it is you have played. We will see if you are right or I am right! And if she be well, or if she be ill!" And again he moved towards the staircase.

But she stood obstinately between him and the door. "No," she said. "You do not go up!" She was resolute. The fear that as she listened to his gibing tones had driven the colour from her face, had hardened it too. For, if he were right? If for that fear there were foundation? If that which the Syndic had led her to give and that which she had given, proved--though for a few hours it had seemed to impart marvellous vigour--useless or worse than useless? Then the need to keep these men from her mother was the greater, the more desperate. How they could be kept, for how long it was possible to keep them, she did not pause to consider, any more than the she-wolf that crouches, snarling, between her whelps and the hunt, counts odds. It was enough for her that if they were right the worst had come, and naught lay between her mother's weakness and their cruel eyes and judgments but her own feeble strength.

Or no! she was wrong in that; she had forgotten! As she spoke, and as Basterga with a scowl repeated the order to stand aside, Claude put her gently but irresistibly by, and took her place. The young man's eyes were bright, his colour high. "You will not go up!" he said, a mocking note of challenge, replying to Basterga's tone, in his voice. "You will not go up."

"Fool! Will you prevent us?"

"You will not go up! No!"

In the very act of falling on the lad, Basterga recoiled. Claude had not been idle while the others disputed. He had gone to the corner for his sword, and it was the glittering point, suddenly whipped out and flickered before his eyes that gave the scholar pause, and made him leap back. "Pollux!" he cried, "are you mad? Put down! Put down! Do you see the Syndic? Do you know," he continued, stamping his foot, "that it is penal to draw in Geneva?"

"I know that you are not going upstairs!" Claude answered gently. He was radiant. He would not have exchanged his position for a crown. She was looking, and he was going to fight.

"You fool," Basterga returned, "we have but to call the watch from the Tertasse and you will be haled to the lock-up, and jailed and whipped, if not worse! And that jade with you! _Stultus es?_ Do you hear? Messer Syndic, will you be thwarted in this fashion? Call these lawbreakers to order and bid them have done!"

"Put up!" the Syndic cried, hoarse with rage. He was beside himself, when he thought of the position in which he had placed himself. He looked at the two as if he would fain have slain them where they stood. "Or I call the watch, and it will be the worse for you," he continued. "Do you hear me? Put up?"

"He shall not go upstairs!" Claude answered, breathing quickly. He was pale, but utterly and fixedly resolved. If Basterga made a movement to attack him, he would run him through whatever the consequences.

"Then, fool, I will call the watch!" Blondel babbled, fairly beside himself.

Claude had no answer to that; only they should not go up. It was the girl's readier wit furnished the answer.

"Call them!" she cried, in a clear voice. "Call the watch, Messer Syndic, and I will tell them the whole story. What Messer Blondel would have had me do, and get, and give."

"It was for the State!" the Syndic hissed.

"And is it for the State that you come to-day with that man?" she retorted, and with her outstretched finger she accused Basterga of unspoken things. "That man! Last night you would have had me rob him. The day before he was a traitor. To-day he and you are one. Are one! What are you plotting together?"

The Syndic shrank from the other's side under the stab of her words--words that, uttered at random, flew, straight as the arrow that slew Ahab, to the joint of his armour. "To-day you and that man are one," she repeated. "One! What are you plotting together?"

She