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

to her. He must persuade her, press her, convince her; carry her off by force were it necessary. It was his duty, his clear call. He rose and walked the room in excitement, as he thought of it. He had pity for the old, abandoned and left to suffer alone; and an enlightening glimpse of the weight that the girl must carry through life by reason of this desertion. But no doubt, no hesitation--he told himself--no scruple. To die that her mother might live was one thing. To die--and so to die--merely that her mother's last hours might be sheltered and comforted, was another, and a thing unreasonable.

He must speak to her. He would not hesitate to tell her what he thought.

But he did hesitate. When she descended half an hour later, and paused at the foot of the stairs to assure herself that her passage downstairs had not roused her mother from sleep, the light fell on her listening face and tender eyes; and he read that in them which checked the words on his lips; that which, whether it were folly or wisdom--a wisdom higher than the serpent's, more perfect than the most accurate calculation of values and chances--drove for ever from his mind the thought that she would desert her charge. He said not a word of what he had thought; the indignant reasoning, the hot, conclusive arguments fell from him and left him bare. With her hands in his, seeking no more to move her or convince her, he sat silent; and by mute looks and dumb love--more potent than eloquence or oratory--strove to support and console her.

She, too, was silent. Stillness had fallen on both of them. But her hands clung to his, and now and again pressed them convulsively; and now and again, too, she would lift her eyes to his, and gaze at him with a pathetic intentness, as if she would stamp his likeness on her brain. But when he returned the look, and tried to read her meaning in her eyes, she smiled. "You are afraid of me?" she whispered. "No, I shall not be weak again."

But even as she reassured him he detected a flicker of pain in her eyes, he felt that her hands were cold; and but that he feared to shake her composure he would not have rested content with her answer.

This sudden silence, this new way of looking at him, were the only things that perplexed him. In all else, silent as they sat, their communion was perfect. It was in the mind of each that the women might be arrested on the morrow; in the mind of each that this was their last evening together, the last of few, yet not so few that they did not seem to the man and the girl to bulk large in their lives. On that hearth they had met, there she had proved to him what she was, there he had spoken, there spent the clouded never-to-be-forgotten days of their troubled courtship. No wonder that as they sat hand in hand, their hair almost mingling, their eyes on the red glow of the smouldering log, and, not daring to look forward, looked back--no wonder that their love grew to be something other than the common love of man and maid, something higher and more beautiful, touched--as the hills are touched at sunset--by the evening glow of parting and self-sacrifice.

Silent amid the silence of the house; living moments never to be forgotten; welcoming together the twin companions, love and death.

But from the darkest outlook of the mind, as of the eye, morning dispels some shadows; into the most depressing atmosphere daylight brings hope, brings actuality, brings at least the need to be doing. Claude's heart, as he slipped from his couch on the settle next morning, and admitted the light and turned the log and stirred the embers, was sad and full of foreboding. But as the room, its disorder abated, took on a more pleasant aspect, as the fire crackled and blazed on the hearth, and the flush of sunrise spread over the east, he grew--he could not but grow, for he was young--more cheerful also. He swept the floor and filled the kettle and let in the air; and had done almost all he knew how to do, before he heard Anne's foot upon the stairs.

She had slept little and looked pale and haggard; almost more pale and wan than he had ever seen her look. And this must have sunk his heart to zero, if a certain item in her aspect had not at the same time diverted his attention. "You are not going out?" he cried in astonishment. She wore her hood.

"I am not going to defend myself again," she answered, smiling sadly. "Have no fear. I shall not repeat that mistake. I am only going----"

"You are not going anywhere!" he answered firmly.

She shook her head with the same wan smile. "We must live," she said.

"Well?"

"And to live must have water."

"I have filled the kettle."

"And emptied the water-pot," she retorted.

"True," he said. "But surely it will be time to refill it when we want it."

"I shall attract less attention now," she answered quietly, "than later in the day. There are few abroad. I will draw my hood about my face, and no one will heed me."

He laughed in tender derision. "You will not go!" he said. "Did you think that I would let you run a risk rather than fetch the water from the conduit."

"You will go?"

"Where is the pot?"

He fetched the jar from its place under the stairs, snatched up his cap, and turning the key in the lock was in the act of passing out when she seized his arm. "Kiss me," she murmured. She lifted her face to his, her eyes half closed.

He drew her to him, but her lips were cold; and as he released her she sank passively from his embrace, and was near falling. He hesitated. "You are not afraid to be left?" he said. "You are sure?"

"I am afraid of nothing if I know you safe," she answered faintly. "Go! go quickly, and God be with you!"

"Tut! I run no danger," he rejoined. "I have a strong arm and they will leave me alone." He thought that she was overwrought, that the strain was telling on her; his thoughts did not go beyond that. "I shall be back in five minutes," he continued cheerfully. And he went, bidding her lock the door behind him and open only at his knock.

He made the more haste for her fears, passed into the town through the Porte Tertasse, and hastened to the conduit. The open space in front of the fountain, which a little later in the day would be the favourite resort of gossips and idlers, was a desert; the bitter morning wind saw to that. But about the fountain itself three or four women closely muffled were waiting their turns to draw. One looked up, and, as he fancied, recognised him, for she nudged her neighbour. And then first the one woman and then the other, looking askance, muttered something; it might have been a prayer, or a charm, or a mere word of gossip. But he liked neither the glance nor the action, nor the furtive, curious looks of the women; and as quickly as he could he filled his pot and carried it away.

He had splashed his fingers, and the cold wind quickly numbed them. At the Tertasse Gate, where the view commanding the river valley opened before him, he was glad to set down the vessel and change hands. On his left, the watch at the Porte Neuve, the gate in the ramparts which admitted from the country to the Corraterie--as the Tertasse admitted from the Corraterie to the town proper--was being changed, and he paused an instant, gazing on the scene. Then remembering himself, and the need of haste, he snatched up his jar and, turning to the right, hurried to the steps before the Royaumes' door, swung up them and, with his eyes on the windows, set down his burden.

He knocked gently, sure that she would not keep him waiting. But she did not come at once; and by-and-by, seeing that a woman at an open door a little farther down the Corraterie was watching him with scowling eyes--and that strange look, half fear, half loathing, which he was growing to know--he knocked more loudly, and stamped to warm his feet.

Still, to his astonishment, she did not come; he waited, and waited, and she did not come. He would have begun to feel alarmed for her, but, what with the cold and the early hour, the place was deserted; no idle gazers such as a commotion leaves behind it were to be seen. The wind, however, began to pierce his clothes; he had not brought his cloak, and he shivered. He knocked more loudly.

Perhaps she had been called to her mother? That must be it. She had gone upstairs and could not on the instant leave her charge. He clothed himself in reproaches; but they did not warm him, and he was beginning to stamp his feet again when, happening to look down, he saw beside the water-can and partly hidden by its bulge, a packet about the size of a letter, but a little thicker. If he had not mounted the steps with his eyes on the windows, searching for her face, he would have seen it at once, and spared himself these minutes of waiting. He took it up in bewilderment, and turned it in his numbed hands; it was heavy, and from it, leaving only a piece of paper in his grasp, his purse fell to the ground. More and more astonished, he picked up the purse, and put it in his pocket. He looked at the window, but no one showed; then at the paper in his hand. Inside the letter were three lines of writing.

His face fell as he read them. "_I shall not admit you_," they ran. "_If you try to enter, you will attract notice and destroy me. Go, and God bless and reward you. You cannot save me, and to see you perish were a worse pang than the worst._"

The words swam before his eyes. "I will beat down the door," he muttered, tears in his voice, tears welling up in his heart and choking him. And he raised his hand. "I will----"

But he did nothing. "_You will attract notice and destroy me._" Ah, she had thought it out too well. Too well, out of the wisdom of great love, she had known how to bridle him. He dared not do anything that would direct notice to the house.

But desert her? Never; and after a moment's thought he drew off, his plans formed. As he retired, when he had gone some yards from the door, he heard the window closed sharply behind him. He looked back and saw his cloak lying on the ground. Tears rose again to his eyes, as he returned, took it up, donned it, and with a last lingering look at the window, turned away. She would think that he had taken her at her word; but no matter!

He walked along the Corraterie, and passing the four square watch-towers with pointed roofs that stood at intervals along the wall, he came to the two projecting demilunes, or bastions, that marked the angle where the ramparts met the Rhone; a point from which the wall descended to the bridge. In one of these bastions he