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

young man scarcely heard him.

"The Syndic Blondel?" Basterga muttered after a pregnant pause. "What know you of him, pray?"

Before the young man could answer, Grio broke in. "So you have followed me here, have you?" he cried, striking his jug on the table and glaring across the board at the offender. "You weren't content to escape last night it seems. Now----"

"Enough!" Basterga muttered, the keen expression of his face unchanged. "Softly! Softly! Where are we? I don't understand. What is this? Last night----"

"I want not to rake up bygones if you will let them be," Claude answered with a sulky air, half assumed. "It was you who attacked me."

"You puppy!" Grio roared. "Do you think----"

"Enough!" Basterga said again: and his eyes leaving the young man fixed themselves on his companion. "I begin to understand," he murmured, his voice low, but not the less menacing for that, or for the cat-like purr in it. "I begin to comprehend. This is one of your tricks, Messer Grio. One of the clever tricks you play in your cups! Some day you'll do that in them will--No!" repressing the bully as he attempted to rise. "Have done now and let us understand. The 'Bible and Hand,' eh? 'Twas there, I suppose, you and this youth met, and----"

"Quarrelled," said Claude sullenly. "That's all."

"And you followed him hither?"

"No, I did not."

"No? Then how come you here?" Basterga asked, his eyes still watchful. "In this house, I mean? 'Tis not easy to find."

"My father lodged here," Claude vouchsafed. And he shrugged his shoulders, thinking that with that the matter was clear.

But Basterga continued to eye him with something that was not far removed from suspicion. "Oh," he said. "That is it, is it? Your father lodged here. And the Syndic--Blondel, was it you said? How comes he into it? Grio was prating of him, I suppose?" For an instant, while he waited the answer to the question, his eyes shrank again to pin-points.

"He came in and found us at sword-play," Claude answered. "Or just falling to it. And though the fault was not mine, he would have sent me to prison if I had not had a letter for him."

"Oh!" And returning with a manifest effort to the tone and manner of a few minutes before:--

"Impiger, Iracundus, Inexorabilis, acer Jura neget sibi nata, nihil non arroget armis,"

he hummed. "I doubt if such manners will be appreciated in Geneva, young man," and furtively he wiped his brow. "To old stagers like my friend here who has given his proofs of fidelity to the State, some indulgence is granted----"

"I see that," Claude answered with sarcasm.

"I am saying it. But you, if you will not be warned, will soon find or make the town too hot for you."

"He will find this house too hot for him!" growled his companion, who had made more than one vain attempt to assert himself. "And that to-day! To-day! Perdition, I know him now," he continued, fixing his bloodshot eyes on the young man, "and if he crows here as he crowed last night, his comb must be cut! As well soon as late, for there will be no living with him! There, don't hold me, man! Let me at him!" And he tried to rise.

"Fool, have done!" Basterga replied, still restraining him, but only by the exertion of considerable force. And then in a lower tone but one partially audible, "Do you want to draw the eyes of all Geneva this way?" he continued. "Do you want the house marked and watched and every gossip's tongue wagging about it? You did harm enough last night, I'll answer, and well if no worse comes of it! Have done, I say, or I shall speak, you know to whom!"

"Why does he come here? Why does he follow me?" the sot complained.

"Cannot you hear that his father lodged here?"

"A lie!" Grio cried vehemently. "He is spying on us! First at the 'Bible and Hand' last night, and then here! It is you who are the fool, man. Let me go! Let me at him, I say!"

"I shall not!" the big man answered firmly. And he whispered in the other's ear something which Claude could not catch. Whatever it was it cooled Grio's rage. He ceased to struggle, nodded sulkily and sat back. He stretched out his hand, took a long draught, and having emptied his jug, "Here's Geneva!" he said, wiping his lips with the air of a man who had given a toast. "Only don't let him cross me! That is all. Where is the wench?"

"She has gone upstairs," Basterga answered with one eye on Claude. He seemed to be unable to shake off a secret doubt of him.

"Then let her come down," Grio answered with a grin, half drunken, half brutal, "and make her show sport. Here, you there," to the young man who shared Claude's table, "call her down and----"

"Sit still!" Basterga growled, and he trod--Claude was almost sure of it--on the bully's foot. "It is late, and these young gentlemen should be at their themes. Theology, young sir," he turned to Claude with the slightest shade of over-civility in his pompous tone, "like the pursuit of the Alcahest, which some call the Quintessence of the Elements, allows no rival near its throne!"

"I attend my first lecture to-morrow," Claude answered drily. And he kept his seat. His face was red and his hand trembled. They would call her down for their sport, would they! Not in his presence, nor again in his absence, if he could avoid it.

Grio struck the table. "Call her down!" he ordered in a tone which betrayed the influence of his last draught. "Do you hear!" And he looked fiercely at Louis Gentilis, the young man who sat opposite Claude.

But Louis only looked at Basterga and grinned.

And Basterga it was plain was not in the mood to amuse himself. Whatever the reason, the big man was no longer at his ease in Mercier's company. Some unpleasant thought, some suspicion, born of the incident at the "Bible and Hand," seemed to rankle in his mind, and, strive as he would, betrayed its presence in the tone of his voice and the glance of his eye. He was uneasy, nor could he hide his uneasiness. To the look which Gentilis shot at him he replied by one which imperatively bade the young man keep his seat. "Enough fooling for to-day," he said, and stealthily he repressed Grio's resistance. "Enough! Enough! I see that the young gentleman does not altogether understand our humours. He will come to them in time, in time," his voice almost fawning, "and see we mean no harm. Did I understand," he continued, addressing Claude directly, "that your father knew Messer Blondel?"

"Who is now Syndic? My uncle did," Claude answered rather curtly. He was more and more puzzled by the change in Basterga's manner. Was the big man a poltroon whom the bold front shown to Grio brought to heel? Or was there something behind, some secret upon which his words had unwittingly touched?

"He is a good man," Basterga said. "And of the first in Geneva. His brother too, who is Procureur-General. Their father died for the State, and the sons, the Syndic in particular, served with high honour in the war. Savoy has no stouter foe than Philibert Blondel, nor Geneva a more devoted son." And he drank as if he drank a toast to them.

Claude nodded.

"A man of great parts too. Probably you will wait on him?"

"Next week. I was near waiting on him after another fashion," Claude continued rather grimly. "Between him and your friend there," with a glance at Grio, who had relapsed into a moody glaring silence, "I was like to get more gyves than justice."

The big man laughed. "Our friend here has served the State," he remarked, "and does what another may not. Come, Messer Grio," he continued, clapping him on the shoulder, as he rose from his seat. "We have sat long enough. If the young ones will not stir, it becomes the old ones to set an example. Will you to my room and view the precipitation of which I told you?"

Grio gave a snarling assent, and got to his feet; and the party broke up with no more words. Claude took his cap and prepared to withdraw, well content with himself and the line he had taken. But he did not leave the house until his ears assured him that the two who had ascended the stairs together had actually repaired to Basterga's room on the first floor, and there shut themselves up.


CHAPTER IV.

CAESAR BASTERGA.

Had it been Mercier's eye in place of his ear which attended the two men to the upper room, he would have remarked--perhaps with surprise, since he had gained some knowledge of Grio's temper--that in proportion as they mounted the staircase, the toper's crest drooped, and his arrogance ebbed away; until at the door of Basterga's chamber, it was but a sneaking and awkward man who crossed the threshold.

Nor was the reason far to seek. Whatever the standpoint of the two men in public, their relations to one another in private were delivered up, stamped and sealed in that moment of entrance. While Basterga, leaving the other to close the door, strode across the room to the window and stood gazing out, his very back stern and contemptuous, Grio fidgeted and frowned, waiting with ill-concealed penitence, until the other chose to address him. At length Basterga turned, and his gleaming eyes, his moon-face pale with anger, withered his companion.

"Again! Again!" he growled--it seemed he dare not lift his voice. "Will you never be satisfied until we are broken on the wheel? You dog, you! The sooner you are broken the better, were that all! Ay, and were that all, I could watch the bar fall with pleasure! But do you think I will see the fruit of years of planning, do you think that I will see the reward of this brain--this! this, you brainless idiot, who know not what a brain is"--and he tapped his brow repeatedly with an earnestness almost grotesque--"do you think that I will see this cast away, because you swill, swine that you are! Swill and prate in your cups!"

"'Fore God, I said nothing!" Grio whined. "I said nothing! It was only that he would not drink and I----"

"Made him?"

"No, he would not, I say, and we were coming to blows. And then----"

"He gave back, did he?"

"No, Messer Blondel came in."

Caesar Basterga stretched out his huge arms. "Fool! Fool! Fool!" he hissed, with a gesture of despair. "There it is! And Blondel, who should have sent you to the whipping-post, or out of Geneva, has to cloak you! And men ask why, and what there is between our most upright Syndic and a drunken, bragging----"

"Softly," Grio muttered, with a flash of sullen resentment. "Softly, Messer Basterga! I----"

"A drunken, swilling, prating pig!" the other persisted. "A broken soldier living on an hour of chance service? Pooh, man," with contempt, "do not threaten me! Do you think that I do not know you more than half craven? The lad below there would cut your comb yet, did I suffer it. But that is not the point. The point is that you must needs advertise the world that you and the