On several consecutive evenings the two pa.s.sed an hour or more in this silent communion. On the last the door of Louis" room stood open, the young man had not come in, and for the first time they were really alone. But the fact did not at once loosen Claude"s tongue; and if the girl noticed it, or expected aught to come of it, more than had come of their companionship on other evenings, she hid her feelings with a woman"s ease. He remarked, however, that she was more thoughtful and downcast than usual, and several times he saw her break off in the middle of a task and listen nervously as for something she expected.
Presently:--
"Are you listening for Louis?" he asked.
She turned on him, her eyes less kind than usual. "No," she said, almost defiantly. "Was I listening?"
"I thought so," he said.
She turned away again, and went on with her work. But by-and-by as she stooped over the fire a tear fell and pattered audibly in the wood-ash on the hearth; and another. With an impatient gesture she wiped away a third. He saw all--she made no attempt to hide them--and he bit his lip and drove his finger-ends into his palms in the effort to be silent.
Presently he had his reward.
"I am sorry," she said in a low tone. "I was listening, and I knew I was. I do not know why I deceived you."
"Why will you not tell me all?" he cried.
"I cannot!" she answered, her breast heaving pa.s.sionately. "I cannot!"
For the first time in his knowledge of her, she broke down completely, and sinking on a bench with her back to the table she sobbed bitterly, her face in her hands. For some minutes she rocked herself to and fro in a paroxysm of trouble.
He had risen and stood watching her awkwardly, longing to comfort her, but ignorant how to go about it, and feeling acutely his helplessness and his _gaucherie_. Sad she had always been, and at her best despondent, with gleams of cheerfulness as fitful as brief. But this evening her abandonment to her grief convinced him that something more than ordinary was amiss, that some danger more serious than ordinary threatened. He felt no surprise therefore when, a little later, she arrested her sobbing, raised her head, and with suspended breath and tear-stained face listened with that scared intentness which had impressed him before.
She feared! He could not be mistaken. Fear looked out of her strained eyes, fear hung breathless on her parted lips. He was sure of it. And "Is it Basterga?" he cried. "Is it of him that you are afraid? If you are----"
"Hush!" she cried, raising her hand in warning. "Hush!" And then, "You did not--hear anything?" she asked. For an instant her eyes met his.
"No." He met her look, puzzled; and, obeying her gesture, he listened afresh. "No, I heard nothing. But----"
He heard nothing even now, nothing; but whatever it was sharpened her hearing to an abnormal pitch, it was clear that she did. She was on her feet; with a startled cry she was round the table and half-way across the room, while he stared, the word suspended on his lips. A second, and her hand was on the latch of the staircase door. Then as she opened it, he sprang forward to accompany her, to help her, to protect her if necessary. "Let me come!" he said. "Let me help you. Whatever it is, I can do something."
She turned on him fiercely. "Go back!" she said. All the confidence, the gentleness, the docility of the last three days were gone; and in their place suspicion glared at him from eyes grown spiteful as a cat"s.
"Go back!" she repeated. "I do not want you! I do not want any one, or any help! Or any protection! Go, do you hear, and let me be!"
As she ceased to speak, a sound from above stairs--a sound which this time, the door being open, did reach his ears, froze the words on his lips. It was the sound of a voice, yet no common voice, Heaven be thanked! A moment she continued to confront him, her face one mute, despairing denial! Then she slammed the door in his teeth, and he heard her panting breath and fleeing footsteps speed up the stairs and along the pa.s.sage, and--more faintly now--he heard her ascend the upper flight. Then--silence.
Silence! But he had heard enough. He paused a moment irresolute, uncertain, his hand raised to the latch. Then the hand fell to his side, he turned, and went softly--very softly back to the hearth. The firelight playing on his face showed it much moved; moved and softened almost to the semblance of a woman"s. For there were tears in his eyes--eyes singularly bright; and his features worked, as if he had some ado to repress a sob. In truth he had. In a breath, in the time it takes to utter a single sound, he had hit on the secret, he had come to the bottom of the mystery, he had learnt that which Basterga, favoured by the position of his room on the upper floor, had learned two months before, that which Grio might have learned, had he been anything but the dull gross toper he was! He had learned, or in a moment of intuition guessed--all. The power of Basterga, that power over the girl which had so much puzzled and perplexed him, was his also now, to use or misuse, hold or resign.
Yet his first feeling was not one of joy; nor for that matter his second. The impression went deeper, went to the heart of the man. An infinite tenderness, a tenderness which swelled his breast to bursting, a yearning that, man as he was, stopped little short of tears, these were his, these it was thrilled his soul to the point of pain. The room in which he stood, homely as it showed, plain as it was, seemed glorified, the hearth transfigured. He could have knelt and kissed the floor which the girl had trodden, coming and going, serving and making ready--under that burden; the burden that dignified and hallowed the bearer. What had it not cost her--that burden? What had it not meant to her, what suspense by day, what terror of nights, what haggard awakenings--such as that of which he had been the ignorant witness--what watches above, what slights and insults below! Was it a marvel that the cheeks had lost their colour, the eyes their light, the whole face its life and meaning? Nay, the wonder was that she had borne the weight so long, always expecting, always dreading, stabbed in the tenderest affection; with for confidant an enemy and for stay an ignorant! Viewed through the medium of the man"s love, which can so easily idealise where it rests, the love of the daughter for the mother, that must have touched and softened the hardest--or so, but for the case of Basterga, one would have judged--seemed so holy, so beautiful, so pure a thing that the young man felt that, having known it, he must be the better for it all his life.
And then his mind turned to another point in the story, and he recalled what had pa.s.sed above stairs on that day when he had entered a stranger, and gone up. With what a smiling face of love had she leant over her mother"s bed. With what cheerfulness had she lied of that which pa.s.sed below, what a countenance had she put on all--no house more prosperous, no life more gay--how bravely had she carried it! The peace and neatness and comfort of the room with its windows looking over the Rhone valley, and its spinning-wheel and linen chest and blooming bow-pot, all came back to him; so that he understood many things which had pa.s.sed before him then, and then had roused but a pa.s.sing and a trifling wonder.
Her anxiety lest he should take lodging there and add one more to the chances of espial, one more to the witnesses of her misery; her secret nods and looks, and that gently checked outburst of excitement on Madame Royaume"s part, which even at the time had seemed odd--all were plain now. Ay, plain; but suffused with a light so beautiful, set in an atmosphere so pure and high, that no view of G.o.d"s earth, even from the eyrie of those lofty windows, and though dawn or sunset flung its fairest glamour over the scene, could so fill the heart of man with grat.i.tude and admiration!
Up and down in the days gone by, his thoughts followed her through the house. Now he saw her ascend and enter, and finding all well, mask--but at what a cost--her aching heart under smiles and cheerful looks and soft laughter. He heard the voice that was so seldom heard downstairs murmur loving words, and little jests, and dear foolish trifles; heard it for the hundredth time reiterate the false a.s.surances that affection hallowed. He was witness to the patient tendance, the pious offices, the tireless service of hand and eye, that went on in that room under the tiles; witness to the long communion hand in hand, with the world shut out; to the anxious scrutiny, to the daily departure. A sad departure, though daily and more than daily taken; for she who descended carried a weight of fear and anxiety. As she came down the weary stairs, stage by stage, he saw the brightness die from eye and lip, and pale fear or dull despair seize on its place. He saw--and his heart was full--the slender figure, the pallid face enter the room in which he stood--it might be at the dawning when the cold shadow of the night still lay on all, from the dead ashes on the hearth to the fallen pot and displaced bench; or it might be at mid-day, to meet sneers and taunts and ign.o.ble looks; and his heart was full. His face burned, his eyes filled, he could have kissed the floor she had walked over, the wooden spoon her hand had touched, the trencher-edge--done any foolish thing to prove his love.
Love? It was a deeper thing than love, a holier, purer thing--that which he felt. Such a feeling as the rough spearsmen of the Orleannais had for Joan the maid; or the great Florentine for the girl whom he saw for the first time at the banquet in the house of the Portinari; or as that man, who carried to his grave the Queen"s glove, yet had never touched it with his bare hand.
Alas, that such feelings cannot last, nor such moments endure; that in the footsteps of the priest, be he never so holy, treads ever the grinning acolyte with his mind on sweet things. They pa.s.s, these feelings, and too quickly. But once to have had them, once to have lived such moments, once to have known a woman and loved her in such wise leaves no man as he was before; leaves him at the least with a memory of a higher life.
That the acolyte in Claude"s case took the form of Louis Gentilis made him no more welcome. Claude was still dreaming on his feet, still viewing in a kind of happy amaze the simple things about him, things that for him wore
The light that never was on land or sea,
and that this world puts on but once for each of us, when Gentilis opened the door and entered, bringing with him a rush of rain, and a gust of night air. He breathed quickly as if he had been running, yet having closed the door, he paused before he advanced into the room; and he seemed surprised, and at a nonplus. After a moment, "Supper is not ready?" he said.
"It is not time," Claude answered curtly. The vision of an angel does not necessarily purify at all points, and he had small stomach for Master Louis at any time.
The youth winced under the tone, but stood his ground.
"Where is Anne?" he asked, something sullenly.
"Upstairs. Why do you ask?"
"Messer Basterga is not coming to supper. Nor Grio. They bade me tell her. And that they would be late."
"Very well, I will tell her."
But it was evident that that was not all Louis had in his mind. He remained fidgeting by the door, his cap in his hand; and his face, had Claude marked it--but he had already turned a contemptuous shoulder on him--was a picture of doubt and indecision. At length, "I"ve a message for you," he muttered nervously. "From Messer Blondel the Syndic. He wants to see you--now."
Claude turned, and if he had not looked at the other before, he made up for it now. "Oh!" he said at last, after a stare that bespoke both surprise and suspicion. "He does, does he? And who made you his messenger?"
"He met me in the street--just now."
"He knows you, then?"
"He knows I live here," Louis muttered.
"He pays us a vast amount of attention," Claude replied with polite irony. "Nevertheless"--he turned again to the fire--"I cannot pleasure him," he continued curtly, "this time."
"But he wants to see you," Gentilis persisted desperately. It was plain that he was on pins and needles. "At his house. Cannot you believe me?"
in a querulous tone. "It is all fair and above board. I swear it is."
"Is it?"
"It is--I swear it is. He sent me. Do you doubt me?" he added with undisguised eagerness.
Claude was about to say, with no politeness at all, that he did, and to repeat his refusal in stronger terms, when his ear caught the same sound which had revealed so much to him a few minutes earlier at the foot of the stairs. It came more faintly this time, deadened by the closed door of the staircase, but to his enlightened senses it proclaimed so clearly what it was--the echo of a cracked, shrill voice, of a laugh insane, uncanny, elfish--that he trembled lest Louis should hear it also and gain the clue. That was a thing to be avoided at all costs; and even as this occurred to him he saw the way to avoid it. Basterga and Grio were absent: if this fool could be removed, even for an hour or two, Anne would have the house to herself, and by midnight the crisis might be overpast.
"I will come with you," he said.
Louis uttered a sigh of relief. He had expected--and he had very nearly received--another answer. "Good," he said. "But he does not want me."
"Both or neither," Claude replied coolly. "For all I know "tis an ambush."
"No, no!"
"In which event I shall see that you share it. Or it may be a scheme to draw me from here, and then if harm be done while I am away----"
"Harm? What harm?" Louis muttered.