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

hemming her in, she was thinking of the mother whom she had sheltered so long.

"Let me go! Let me go!" she repeated.

"Witch, you shall go!" they answered ruthlessly. "To hell!"

"Ay, with her dam! To the water with her! To the water!"

"Look for the devil's mark! Search her! Again, Martha! Bring her down! Bring her down, and we'll soon see whether----"

Then he reached them. The man, one of the few present, who had bidden them search her fell headlong on his face in the gutter, struck behind as by a thunder-bolt. The great Bible flew one way, the hag's stick flew another--and in its flight felled a second woman. In a twinkling Claude was on the steps, and in the heart of the crowd stood two people, not one; in a twinkling his arm was round the girl, his pale, furious face confronted her tormentors, his blazing eyes beat down theirs! More than all, his iron bar, brandished recklessly this way and that, threatened the brains of the man or the woman who was bold enough to withstand him.

For he was beside himself with rage. He learned in that moment that he was of those who fight with joy and rejoicing, and laugh where others shake. The sight of that white, bleeding face, of that hanging hair, of that suppliant arm, above all, the sound of that patient "Let me go! Let me go!" that expected nothing and hoped nothing, had turned his blood to fire. The more numerous his opponents--if they were men--the better he would be pleased; and if they were women, such women, unsexed by hate and superstition, as he saw before him, women looking a millionfold more like witches than the girl they accused, the worse for them! His arm would not falter!

It seemed of steel indeed. The bar quivered like a reed in his grasp, his eyes darted hither and thither, he stood an inch taller than at other times. He was like the war-horse that sniffs the battle.

And yet he was cool after a fashion. He must get her home, and to do so he must not lose a moment. The vantage of the steps on which they stood, raised a hand's breath above their assailants, was a thing to be weighed; but it would not serve them if these cursed women mustered, and the cowardly crew before him throve to a mob. He must home with her. But the door was locked, and she could only go in as he had come out. Still, she must go.

He thought all this between one stride and another--and other thoughts thick as leaves falling in a wind. Then, "Fools!" he thundered, and had her down the steps, and was dragging her towards her door before they awoke from their surprise, or thought of attacking him. The woman with the big Bible had had her fill--though he had not struck her but her stick--and sat where she had fallen in the mud. The other woman hugged herself in pain. The man was in no hurry to be up, having once felt Claude's knee in the small of his back. For a few seconds no one moved; and when they recovered themselves he was half-way to the Royaumes' door.

They snatched up mud, then, and flung it after the pair with shrill execrations. And the woman who had picked up the stick hurled it in a frenzy after them, but wide of the mark. A dozen stones fell round them, and the cry of "The Witch! The Witch!"--cry so ominous, so cruel, cry fraught with death for so many poor creatures--followed hard on them. But they were within five paces of the door now, and if he could lift her to the window----

"The key," she murmured in his ear. "The key is in the lock!"

She had her wits, too, then, and her courage! He felt a glow of pride, his arm pressed her more closely to him. "Unlock it!" he answered, and leaving her to it, having now no fear that she would faint or fall, he turned on the rabble with his bar.

But they were for words, not blows, a rabble of cowards and women. They turned tail with screams and fled to a distance, more than one falling in the sudden _volte-face_. He made no attempt to pursue them along the rampart, but looked behind him, and found that she had opened the door. She had taken out the key, and was waiting for him to enter.

He went up the steps, entered, and she closed the door quickly. It shut out in a moment the hootings of the returning women. While she locked it on the inside, he raised the bars and slid them into their places. Then, not till then, he turned to her.

Her face averted, she was staunching the blood which trickled from her cheek. "It was the child's mother!" she faltered, a sob in her voice. "I went to her. I thought--that she would believe. Get me some water, please! I must go upstairs. My mother will be frightened."

He was astonished: on fire himself, with every pulse beating madly, he was prepared for her to faint, to fall, to fling herself into his arms in gratitude; prepared for everything but this self-forgetfulness. "Water?" he said doubtfully, "but had you not better--take some wine, Anne?"

"To wash! To wash!" she replied sharply, almost angrily. "How can I go to her in this state? And do you shut the shutters."

A stone had that moment passed through a pane of one of the windows. The rout of women were gathering before the house; the step she advised was plainly necessary. Fortunately the Royaumes' house, like all in the Corraterie--which formed an inner line of defence pierced by the Tertasse gate--had outside shutters of massive thickness, capable of being lowered from within. He closed these in haste and found, when he turned from the task and looked for her--a small round hole in each shutter made things dimly visible--that she was gone to soothe her mother.

He could not but love her the more for it. He could not but respect her the more for her courage, for her thoughtfulness, her self-denial. But when the heart is full and would unburden itself, when the brain teems with pent-up thoughts, when the excitement of action and of peril wanes and the mind would fain tell and hear and compare and remember--then to be alone, to be solitary, is to sink below one's self.

For a time, while his pulses still beat high, while the heat of battle still wrought in him, and the noise without continued, and there seemed a prospect of things to be done, he stood up against this. Thump! Thump! They were stoning the shutters. Let them! He placed the settle across the hearth, and in this way cut off the firelight that might have betrayed those in the room to eyes peeping through the holes. By-and-by the shrill vixenish cries rose louder, he caught the sound of voices in altercation, and of hoarse orders: and slowly and reluctantly the babel seemed to pass away. An anxious moment followed: fearfully he listened for the knock of the law, the official summons which must make all his efforts useless. But it did not come.

It was when the silence which ensued had lasted some minutes that the strangeness and aloofness of his position in this darkened room began to weigh on his spirits. His eyes had adapted themselves to the gloom, and he could make out the shapes of the furniture. But it was morning! It was day! Outside, the city was beginning to go about its ordinary work, its ordinary life. The streets were filling, the classes were mustering. And he sat here in the dark! The longer he stared into the strange, depressing gloom, the farther he seemed from life; the more solitary, the more hopeless, the more ominous seemed the position.

Alone with two women whom the worst of fates threatened! Whose pains and ultimate lot the brawl in which he had taken part foreshadowed too clearly. For thus and with as little cause perished in those days thousands of the helpless and the friendless. Alone with these two, under the roof from which all others had fled, barred with them behind the gloomy shutters until the hour came, and their fellows, shuddering, cast them out--what chance had he of escaping their lot?

Or what desire to escape it? None, he told himself. None! But he who fights best when blows are to be struck and things can be done finds it hard to sit still where it is the inevitable that must be faced. And while Claude told himself that he had no desire to escape, since escape for her was impossible, his mind sought desperately the means of saving all. The frontier lay but a league away. Conceivably they might lower themselves from the wall by night; conceivably his strength might avail to carry her mother to the frontier. But, alas! the crime of witchcraft knew no frontier; the reputation of a witch once thrown abroad, flew fast as the swiftest horse. Before they had been three days in Savoy, the women would be reported, seized and examined; and their fate at Faucigny or Bonneville would be no less tragic than in the Bourg du Four of Geneva.

Yet, something must be done, something could surely be done. But what? The bravest caught in a net struggles the most desperately, and involves himself the most hopelessly. And Claude felt himself caught in a net. He felt the deadly meshes cling about his limbs, the ropes fetter and benumb him. From the sunshine of youth, from freedom, from a life without care, he had passed in a few days into the grip of this [Greek: anagke], this dire necessity, this dark ante-chamber of death. Was it wonderful that for a moment, recognising the sacrifice he was called upon to make and its inefficacy to save, he rebelled against the love that had drawn him to this fate, that had led him to this, that in others' eyes had ruined him? Ay, but for a moment only. Then with a heart bursting with pity for her, with love for her, he was himself. If it must be, it must be. The prospect was dark as the room in which he stood, confined and stifling, sordid and shameful; the end one which would make his name a marvel and an astonishment. But the prospect and the end were hers too; they would face them together. Haply he might spare her some one pang, haply he might give her some one moment of happiness, the support of one at least who knew her pure and spotless. And while he thought of it--surprise of surprises--he bowed his head on his folded arms and wept.

Not in pity for himself, but for her. It was the thought of her gentleness, her loving nature, her harmlessness--and the end this, the reward this--which overcame him; which swelled his breast until only tears could relieve it. He saw her as a dove struggling in cruel hands; and the pity which, had there been chance or hope, or any to smite, would have been rage, could find no other outlet. He wept like a woman; but it was for her.

And she, who had descended unheard, and stood even now at the door, with a something almost divine in her face--a something that was neither love nor compassion, maid's fancy nor mother's care, but a mingling of all these, saw. And her heart bled for him; her arms in fancy went round him, in fancy his head was on her