"I will tell you what I think you are!"
"By your leave?"
"_A fat hog!_" the Syndic shrieked. "And as brainless as a hog fit for the butcher! That for you! and your like!"
And before the astounded Baudichon, whose brain was slow to take in new facts, had grasped the full enormity of the insult flung at him, the Syndic was a dozen paces distant. He had eased his mind, and that for the moment was much; though he still ground his teeth, and, had Baudichon followed him, would have struck the Councillor without thought or hesitation. The pigs! The hogs! To press him with their wretched affairs: to press him at this moment when the grave yawned at his feet, and the coffin opened for him!
To be sure he might now do with Basterga as he pleased without thought or drawback; but for their benefit--never! He paused at his door, and cast a haggard glance up and down; at the irregular line of gables which he had known from childhood, the steep, red roofs, the cobble pavement, the bakers" signs that hung here and there and with the wide eaves darkened the way; and he cursed all he saw in the frenzy of his rage. Let Basterga, Savoy, d"Albigny do their worst! What was it to him?
Why should he move? He went into his house despairing.
Unto this last hour a little hope had shone through the darkness. At times the odds had seemed to be against him, at one time Heaven itself had seemed to declare itself his foe. But the _remedium_ had existed, the thing was still possible, the light burned, though distant, feeble, flickering. He had told himself that he despaired; but he had not known what real despair was until this moment, until he sat, as he saw now, among the Dead Sea splendours of his parlour, the fingers of his right hand drumming on the arm of the abbot"s chair, his s.h.a.ggy eyelids drooping over his brooding eyes.
Ah, G.o.d! If he had stayed to take the stuff when it lay in his power! If he had refused to open until he held it in his hand! If, even after that act of folly, he had refused to go until she gave it him! How inconceivable his madness seemed now, his fear of scandal, his thought of others! Others? There was one of whom he dared not think; for when he did his head began to tremble on his shoulders; and he had to clutch the arms of the chair to stay the palsy that shook him. If _she_, the girl who had destroyed him, thought it was all one to him whom the drug advantaged, or who lived or who died, he would teach her--before he died! He would teach her! There was no extremity of pain or shame she should not taste, accursed witch, accursed thief, as she was! But he must not think of that, or of her, now; or he would die before his time.
He had a little time yet, if he were careful, if he were cool, if he were left a brief s.p.a.ce to recover himself. A little, a very little time!
Whose were that foot and that voice? Basterga"s? The Syndic"s eyes gleamed, he raised his head. There was another score he had to pay! His own score, not Baudichon"s. Fool, to have left his treasure unguarded for every thieving wench to take! Fool, thrice and again, for putting his neck back into the lion"s mouth. Stealthily Blondel pulled the handbell nearer to him and covered it with his cloak. He would have added a weapon, but there was no arm within reach, and while he hesitated between his chair and the door of the small inner room, the outer door opened, and Basterga appeared and advanced, smiling, towards him.
"Your servant, Messer Syndic," he said. "I heard that you had been inquiring for me in my absence, and I am here to place myself at your disposition. You are not looking----" he stopped short, in feigned surprise. "There is nothing wrong, I hope?"
Had the scholar been such a man as Baudichon, Blondel"s answer would have been one frenzied shriek of insults and reproaches. But face to face with Basterga"s ma.s.sive quietude, with his giant bulk, with that air, at once masterful and cynical, which proclaimed to those with whom he talked that he gave them but half his mind while reading theirs, the wrath of the smaller man cooled. A moment his lips writhed, without sound; then, "Wrong?" he cried, his voice harsh and broken. "Wrong? All is wrong!"
"You are not well?" Basterga said, eyeing him with concern.
"Well? I shall never be better! Never!" Blondel shrieked. And after a pause, "Curse you!" he added. "It is your doing!"
Basterga stared. He was in the dark as to what had happened, though the Syndic"s manner on leaving the bridge had prepared him for something.
"My doing, Messer Blondel?" he said. "Why? What have I done?"
"Done?"
"Ay, done! It was not my fault," the scholar continued, with a touch of sternness, "that I could not offer you the _remedium_ on easy terms. Nor mine, that hard as the terms were, you did not accept them. Besides," he continued, slowly and with meaning,
"Terque quaterque redit!
You remember the Sibylline books? How often they were offered, and the terms? It is not too late, Messer Blondel--even now. While there is life there is hope, there is more than hope. There is certainty."
"Is there?" Blondel cried; he extended a lean hand, shaking with vindictive pa.s.sion. "Is there? Go and look in your casket, fool! Go and look in your steel box!" he hissed. "Go! And see if it be not too late!"
For a moment Basterga peered at him, his brow contracted, his eyes screwed up. The blow was unexpected. Then, "Have you taken the stuff?"
he muttered.
"I? No! But she has!" And on that, seeing the change in the other"s face--for, for once, the scholar"s mask slipped and suffered his consternation to appear--Blondel laughed triumphantly: in torture himself, he revelled in a disaster that touched another. "She has! She has!"
"She? Who?"
"The girl of the house! Anne you call her! Curse her! child of perdition, as she is! She!" And he clawed the air.
"She has taken it?" Basterga spoke incredulously, but his brow was damp, his cheeks were a shade more sallow than usual; he did not deceive the other"s penetration. "Impossible!" he continued, striving to rally his forces. "Why should she take it? She has no illness, no disease!
Try"--he swallowed something--"to be clear, man. Try to be clear. Who has told you this c.o.c.k-and-bull story?"
"It is the truth."
"She has taken it?"
"To give to her mother--yes."
"And she?"
"Has taken it? Yes."
The scholar, ordinarily so cool and self-contained, could not withhold an execration. His small eyes glittered, his face swelled with rage; for a moment he was within a little of an explosion. Of what mad, what insensate folly, unworthy of a schoolboy, worthy only of a sot, an imbecile, a Grio, had he been guilty! To leave the potion, that if it had not the virtues which he ascribed to it, had virtue--or it had not served his purpose of deceiving the Syndic during some days or hours--to leave the potion unprotected, at the mercy of a chance hand, of a treacherous girl! Safeguarded, in appearance only, and to blind his dupe! It seemed incredible that he could have been so careless!
True, he might replace the stuff at some expense; but not in a day or an hour. And how--with one dose in all the world!--keep up the farce? The dose consumed, the play was at an end. An end--or, no, was he losing his wits, his courage? On the instant, in the twinkling of an eye, he shaped a fresh course.
He cursed the girl anew, and apparently with the same fervour. "A month"s work it cost me!" he cried. "A month"s work! and ten gold pieces!"
The Syndic, pale, and almost in a state of collapse--for the bitter satisfaction of imparting the news no longer supported him--stared. "A month"s work?" he muttered. "A month? Years you told me! And a fortune!"
"I told you? Never!" Basterga opened his eyes in seeming amazement.
"Never, good sir, in all my life!" he repeated emphatically.
"But"--returning grimly to his former point--"ten gold pieces, or a fortune--no matter which, she shall pay dearly for it, the thieving jade!"
The Syndic sat heavily in his seat, and, with a hand on either arm of the abbot"s chair, stared dully at the other. "A fortune, you told me,"
he said, in a voice little above a whisper. "And years. Was it a fiction, all a fiction? About Ibn Jasher, and the Physician of Aleppo, and M. Laurens of Paris, and--and the rest?"
Basterga deliberately took a turn to the window, came back, and stood looking down at him. "Mon Dieu!" he muttered. "Is it possible?"
"Eh?"
"I can scarcely believe it!" The scholar spoke with a calmness half cynical, half compa.s.sionate. "But I suppose you really think that of me, though it seems incredible! You are under the impression that the drug this jade stole was the _remedium_ of Ibn Jasher, the one incomparable and sovereign result of long years of study and research? You believe that I kept this in a mere locked box, the key accessible by all who knew my habits, and the treasure at the mercy of the first thief! Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu! If I said it a thousand times I could not express my astonishment. I might be the vine grower of the proverb,
Cui saepe viator Cessisset magna compellans voce cucullum!"
The Syndic heard him without changing the att.i.tude of weakness and exhaustion into which he had fallen on sitting down. But midway in the other"s harangue, his lips parted, he held his breath, and in his eyes grew a faint light of dawning hope. "But if it be not so?" he muttered feebly. "If this be not so, why----"
"Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu!"
"Why did you look so startled a moment ago?"
"Why, man? Because ten pieces of gold are ten pieces! To me at least!
And the potion, which was made after a recipe of that same Messer Laurens of Paris, cost no less. It is a love-philtre, beneficent to the young, but if taken by the old so noxious, that had you swallowed it,"
with a grin, "you had not been long Syndic, Messer Blondel!"
Blondel shook his head. "You do not deceive me," he muttered. For though he was anxious to believe, as yet he could not. He could not; he had seen the other"s face. "It is the _remedium_ she has taken! I feel it."
"And given to her mother?"
Blondel inclined his head.