"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 s.n.a.t.c.h 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 promise 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 coa.r.s.ely. 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 embarra.s.sment, 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 s.n.a.t.c.hed 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 a.s.suredly, 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 e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed 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."