Now all was changed. A fiat had gone forth, which placed him alike beyond the envy of his friends, and the hatred of his foes. He must die. He must die, and leave these pleasant things, this goodly room, that future of which he had dreamed. Another man would lie warm in the chamber he had prepared; another would be Syndic and bear his wand. The years of stately plenty which he had foreseen, were already as last year’s harvest. No wonder that the sheen of portrait and panel, the pride of echoing oak, were fled; or that the eyes with which he gazed on the things about him were dull and lifeless.
Dull and lifeless at one moment, and clouded by the apathy of despair; at another bright with the fierce fever of revolt. In the one phase or the other he had passed many hours of late, some of them amid the dead-sea grandeur of this room. And he had had his hours of hope also. A fortnight back a ray of hope, bright as the goblin light which shines the more brilliantly the darker be the night, had shone on him and amused and enchanted him. And then, in one moment, God and man — or if not God, the devil — had joined to quench the hope; and this morning he sat sunk in deepest despair, all in and around him dark. Hitherto he had regarded appearances. He had hidden alike his malady and his fears, his apathy and his mad revolt; he had lived as usual. But this morning he was beyond that. He could not rouse himself, he could not be doing. His servants, wondering why he did not go abroad or betake himself to some task, came and peeped at him, and went away whispering and pointing and nudging one another. And he knew it. But he paid no heed to them or to anything, until it happened that his eyes, resting dully on the street, marked a man who paused before the door and looked at the house, in doubt it seemed, whether he should seek to enter or should pass on.
For an appreciable time the Syndic watched the loiterer without seeing him. What did it matter to a dying man — a man whom heaven, impassive, abandoned to the evil powers — who came or who went? But by-and-by his eyes conveyed the identity of the man to his brain; and he rose to his feet, laying his hands on a bell which stood on the table beside him. In the act of ringing he changed his mind, and laying the bell down, he strode himself to the outer door, the house door, and opened it. The man was still in the street. Scarcely showing himself, Blondel caught his eye, signed to him to enter, and held the door while he did so.
Claude Mercier — for he it was — entered awkwardly. He followed the Syndic into the parlour, and standing with his cap in his hand, began shamefacedly to explain that he had come to learn how the Syndic was, after — after that which had happened —— He did not finish the sentence.
For that matter, Blondel did not allow him to finish. He had passed at sight of the youth into the other of the two conditions between which his days were divided. His eyes glittered, his hands trembled. “Have you done anything?” he asked eagerly; and the voice in which he said it surprised the young man. “Have you done anything?”
“As to Basterga, do you mean, Messer Syndic?”
“As to what else? What else?”
“No, Messer Blondel, I have not.”
“Nor learned anything?”
“No, nothing.”
“But you don’t mean — to leave it there?” Blondel cried, his voice rising high. And he sat down and rose up again. “You have done nothing, but you are going to do something? What will it be? What?” And then as he discerned the other’s surprise, and read suspicion in his eyes, he curbed himself, lowered his tone, and with an effort was himself. “Young man,” he said, wiping his brow, “I am still ridden — by what happened last night. I have lain, since we parted, under an overwhelming sense of the presence of evil. Of evil,” he repeated, still speaking a little wildly, “such as this God-fearing town should not know even by repute! You think me over-anxious? But I have felt the hot blast of the furnace on my cheek, my head bears even now the smell of the burning. Hell gapes near us!” He was beginning to tremble afresh, partly with impatience of this parleying, partly with anxiety to pluck from the other his answer. The glitter was returning to his eyes. “Hell gapes near us,” he repeated. “And I ask you, young man, what are you going to do?”
“I?”
“Yes, you!”
Claude stared. “What would you have me do?” he asked.
“What would you have done last night?” the Syndic retorted. “Did you ask me then? Did you wait for my permission? Did you wait even for my presence?”
“No, but — —”
“But what?”
“Things are changed.”
“Changed? How?” Blondel’s tone sank to one of unnatural calm; but his frame shook and his face was purple with the pressure he put upon himself. “What is changed? Who has changed it?” he continued; to see his chance of life hang on the will of this imbecile was almost more than he could bear. “Speak out! Let me know what has happened.”
“You know what happened as well as I do,” Claude answered slowly. He had given his word to the girl that he would not interfere, but he began to see difficulties of which he had not thought. “It was enough for me! He may be all you said he was, Messer Syndic, but — —”
“But you no longer burn to break the spell?” Blondel cried. “You no longer desire to snatch from him the woman you love? You will stand by and see her perish body and soul in this web of iniquity? You are frightened, and will leave her to the law!” He thrust out his thin flushed face, his pointed beard wagging malignantly. “For that is what will come of it! To the law, you understand! I warn you, the magistrates in Geneva bear not the sword in vain.”
The young man’s brow grew damp. The crisis was nearer than he had feared. “But — she has done nothing!” he faltered.
“The tool with the hand that uses it! The idol and him who made it!” the Syndic cried, swaying himself to and fro.
Claude stared. “But you know nothing!” he made shift to say after a pause. “You have nothing against her, Messer Blondel. He may be all you say, but she — —”
“I have ears!”
The tone said more than the words, and Claude trembled. He knew the width of the net where witchcraft or blasphemy was in question. He knew that, were Basterga seized, all in the house would be taken with him, and though men often escaped for the fright, it was seldom that women went free so cheaply. The knowledge of this tied his tongue; and urgent as he felt the need to be, he could only glare helplessly at the magistrate.
Blondel, on his part, saw the effect of his words, and desperately resolved to force the young man to his will, he followed up the blow. “If you would see her burn, well and good!” he cried. “It is for you to choose. Either break the spell, bring me the box, and set her free; or see the law take its course! Last night — —”
“Last night,” Claude replied, hurt to the quick, “you were not so bold, Messer Blondel!”
The Syndic winced, but merged his wrath in an anxiety a thousand times deeper. “Last night is not to-day,” he answered. “Midnight is not daylight! I have told you where the spell is, where, at least, it is reputed to be, what it does, and under what sway it lays her; you who love her — and I see you do — you who have access to the house at all hours, who can watch him out — —”
“We watched him out last night!” Claude muttered.
“Ay, but day is day! In the daylight — —”
“But it is not laid on me to do this! I am not the only one — —”
“You love her!”
“Who has access to the house.”
“Are you a coward?”
Claude breathed hard. He was driven to the wall. Between his promise to her, and the Syndic’s demand, he found himself helpless. And the demand was not so unreasonable. For it was true that he loved her, and that he had access to the house; and if the plan suggested seemed unusual, if it was not the course most obvious or most natural, it was hardly for him to cavil at a scheme which promised to save her, not only from the evil influence which mysteriously swayed her, but from the law, and the danger of an accusation of witchcraft. Apart from his pro
mise he would have chosen this course; as it had been his first impulse to pursue it the evening before. But now he had given his word to her that he would not interfere, and he was conscious that he understood but in part how she stood. That being so ——
“A coward!” the Syndic repeated, savagely and coarsely. He had waited in intolerable suspense for the other’s answer. “That is what you are, with all your boasting! — A coward! Afraid of — why, man, of what are you afraid? Basterga?”
“It may be,” Claude answered sullenly.
“Basterga? Why — —” But on the word Blondel stopped; and over his face came a startling change. The rage died out of it and the flush; and fear, and a cringing embarrassment, took the place of them. In the same instant the change was made, and Claude saw that which caused it. Basterga himself stood in the half-open doorway, looking towards them.
For a few seconds no one spoke. The magistrate’s tongue clave to the roof of his mouth, as the scholar advanced, cap in hand, and bowed to one and the other. The florid politeness of his bearing thinly veiling the sarcasm of his address when he spoke.
“O mire conjunctio!” he said. “Happy is Geneva where age thinks no shame of consorting with youth! And youth, thrice happy, imbibes wisdom at the feet of age! Messer Blondel,” he continued, looking to him, and dropping in a degree the irony of his tone, “I have not seen you for so long, I feared that something was amiss, and I come to inquire. It is not so, I hope?”
The Syndic, unable to mask his confusion, forced a sickly phrase of denial. He had dreaded nothing so much as to be surprised by Basterga in the young man’s company: for his conscience warned him that to find him with Mercier and to read his plan, would be one and the same thing to the scholar’s astuteness. And here was the discovery made, and made so abruptly and at so unfortunate a moment that to carry it off was out of his power, though he knew that every halting word and guilty look bore witness against him.
“No? that is well,” Basterga answered, smiling broadly as he glanced from one face to the other. “That is well!” He had the air of a good-natured pedagogue who espies his boys in a venial offence, and will not notice it save by a sly word. “Very well! And you, my friend,” he continued, addressing Claude, “is it not true what I said,
Terque Quaterque redit!
You fled in haste last night, but we meet again! Your method in affairs is the reverse, I fear, of that which your friend here would advise: namely, that to carry out a plan one should begin slowly, and end quickly; thereby putting on the true helmet of Plato, as it has been called by a learned Englishman of our time.”
Claude glowered at him, almost as much at a loss as the Syndic, but for another reason. To exchange commonplaces with the man who held the woman he loved by an evil hold, who owned a power so baneful, so foul — to bandy words with such an one was beyond him. He could only glare at him in speechless indignation.
“You bear malice, I fear,” the big man said. There was no doubt that he was master of the situation. “Do you know that in the words of the same learned person whom I have cited — a marvellous exemplar amid that fog-headed people — vindictive persons live the life of witches, who as they are mischievous, so end they unfortunate.”
The blood left Claude’s face. “What do you mean?” he muttered, finding his voice at last.
“Who hates, burns. Who loves, burns also. But that is by the way.”
“Burns?”
“Ay,” with a grin, “burns! It seems to come home to you. Burns! Fie, young man; you hate, I fear, beyond measure, or love beyond measure, if you so fear the fire. What, you must leave us? It is not very mannerly,” with sarcasm, “to go while I speak!”
But Claude could bear no more. He snatched his cap from the table, and with an incoherent word, aimed at the Syndic and meant for leave-taking, he made for the door, plucked it open and disappeared.
The scholar smiled as he looked after him. “A foolish young man,” he said, “who will assuredly, if he be not stayed, end unfortunate. It is the way of Frenchmen, Messer Blondel. They act without method and strike without intention, bear into age the follies of youth, and wear the gravity neither of the north nor of the south. But that reminds me,” he continued, speaking low and bending towards the other with a look of sympathy— “you are better, I hope?”
The words were harmless, but they conveyed more than their surface meaning, and they touched the Syndic to the quick. He had begun to compose himself; now he had much ado not to gnash his teeth in the scholar’s face. “Better?” he ejaculated bitterly. “What chance have I of being better? Better? Are you?” He began to tremble, his hands on the arms of his chair. “Otherwise, if you are not, you will soon have cause to know what I feel.”
“I am better,” Basterga answered with fervour. “I thank Heaven for it.”
Blondel rose to his feet, his hands still clutching the chair. “What!” he cried. “You — you have not tried the — —”
“The remedium?” The scholar shook his head. “No, on the contrary, I am relieved from my fears. The alarm was baseless. I have it not, I thank Heaven. I have not the disease. Nor, if there be any certainty in medicine, shall have it.”
The Syndic, alas for human nature, could have struck him in the face!
“You have it not?” he snarled. “You have it not?” And then regaining control of himself, “I suppose I ought,” with a forced and ghastly smile, “to felicitate you on your escape.”
“Rather to felicitate yourself,” Basterga answered. “Or so I had hoped two days ago.”
“Myself?”
“Yes,” Basterga replied lightly. “For as soon as I found that I had no need of the remedium, I thought of you. That was natural. And it occurred to me — nay, calm yourself!”
“Quick! Quick!
“Nay, calm yourself, my dear Messer Blondel,” Basterga repeated with outward solicitude and inward amusement. “Be calm, or you will do yourself an injury; you will indeed! In your state you should be prudent; you should govern yourself — one never knows. And besides, the thought, to which I refer — I see you recognise what it was — —”
“Yes! yes! Go on! Go on!”
“Proved futile.”
“Futile?”
“Yes, I am sorry to say it. Futile.”
“Futile!” The wretched man’s voice rose almost to a scream as he repeated the word. He rose and sat down again. “Then how did you — why did you — —” He stopped, fighting for words, and, unable to frame them, clutched the air with his hands. A moment he mouthed dumbly, then “Tell me!” he gasped. “Speak, man, speak! How was it? Cannot you see — that you are killing me?”
Basterga saw indeed that he had gone nearer to it than he had intended: for a moment the starting eyes and purple face alarmed him. In all haste, he gave up playing with the others fears. “It occurred to me,” he said, “that as I no longer needed the medicine myself, there was only the Grand Duke to be considered, I thought that he might be willing to waive his claim, since he is as yet free from the disease. And four days ago I despatched a messenger whom I could trust to him at Turin. I had hopes of a favourable reply, and in that event, I should not have lost a minute in waiting upon you. For I am bound to say, Messer Blondel” — the big man rubbed his chin and eyed the other benevolently— “your case appealed to me in an especial manner. I felt myself moved, I scarcely know why, to do all I could on your behalf. Alas, the answer dashed my hopes.”
“What was it?” Blondel’s voice sounded hollow and unnatural. Sunk in the high-backed chair, his chin fallen on his breast, it was in his eyes alone, peering from below bent brows, that he seemed to live.
“He would not waive his claim,” Basterga answered gently, “save on a — but in substance that was all.”
Blondel raised himself slowly and stiffly in the chair. His lips parted. “In substance?” he muttered hoarsely, “There was more then?”
Basterga shrugged his shoulders. “There was. Save, the Grand Duke adde
d, on the condition — but the condition which followed was inadmissible.”
Blondel gave vent to a cackling laugh. “Inadmissible?” he muttered. “Inadmissible.” And then, “You are not a dying man, Messer Basterga, or you would think — few things inadmissible.”
“Impossible, then.”
“What was it? What was it?” — with a gesture eloquent of the impatience that was choking him.
“He asked,” Basterga replied reluctantly, “a price.”
“A price?”
The big man nodded.
The Syndic rose up and sat down again. “Why did you not say so? Why did you not say so at once?” he cried fiercely. “Is it about that you have been fencing all this time? Is that what you were seeking? And I fancied — A price, eh? I suppose” — in a lower tone, and with a gleam of cunning in his eyes— “he does not really want — the impossible? I am not a very rich man, Messer Basterga — you know that; and I am sure you would tell him. You would tell him that men do not count wealth here as they do in Genoa or Venice, or even in Florence. I am sure you would put him right on that,” with a faint whine in his tone. “He would not strip a man to the last rag. He would not ask — thousands for it.”
Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman Page 412
