"The Savoyards are in Geneva."
She started incredulously. "In Geneva? Here?" she exclaimed. "The enemy?"
He nodded.
"Here? In Geneva?" she repeated. She could not have heard aright.
"Yes."
But she still looked at him; she could not reconcile his words with his manner. This, the greatest calamity that could happen, this which she had been brought up to fear as the worst and most awful of catastrophes--could he talk of it, could he announce it after this fashion? With a smile, in a tone of pleasantry? He must be playing with her. She pa.s.sed her hand over her eyes, and tried to be calm. "But all is quiet?" she said.
"All is quiet now," he answered. "After midnight the trouble will begin."
Still she could not understand him. His face said one thing, his voice another. Besides, the town was quiet: no sound of riot or disturbance, no clash of steel, no tramp of feet penetrated the walls. And the house stood on the ramparts where the first alarm must be given. "Do you mean," she asked at last, her eyes fixed steadfastly on him, "that they are going to attack the town after midnight?"
"They are here now," he replied, shrugging his shoulders. "They scaled the wall after the guard had gone round at eleven, and they are lying by tens and twenties along the outer side of the Corraterie, waiting for the hour and the signal."
She pa.s.sed her hand across her closed eyes, and looked again, perplexedly. "And you," she said, "you? I do not understand. If this be so, what are you doing here?"
"Here?"
"Ay, here! Why have you not given the alarm in the town?"
"Why should I give the alarm?" he retorted coolly. "To save those who hounded you through the streets two days ago? To save those who to-morrow may put you to the torture and burn you like the vilest of creatures? Save them?" with a grim smile. "No, let them save themselves!"
"But----"
"I would save you! not them! I would save your mother! not them! And it is done. Let the Grand Duke triumph to-night, let Savoy take Geneva, and our good townsfolk will have other matters to occupy their thoughts to-morrow! Ay, and through many and many a morrow to come! Save them?"
with a grim note in his voice; "no, I save you. Let them save themselves! It is G.o.d"s mercy on us, and His judgment on them! Or why happens it to-night? To-night of all nights in the year?"
She was very pale, and for a moment remained silent: whether she felt the temptation to which he had succ.u.mbed, or was seeking what she should say to move him, is uncertain. At last, "It is impossible," she murmured, in a low voice. "You have not thought of the women and children, of the fathers and mothers who will suffer."
"And your mother!"
"Is one. G.o.d forbid that I should save her at the expense of all! G.o.d forbid!" she wailed, as if she feared her own strength, as if the temptation almost overcame her. And then laying her hand on his arm and looking up to him--his face was set so hard--"You will not do this!" she said. "You will not do this! Could we be happy after? Could we be happy with blood on our heads, and on our hands, and on our hearts! Happy, oh no! Claude, dear heart, dear husband, we cannot buy happiness so, or life so, or love so! We cannot save ourselves--so! We cannot play G.o.d"s part--so!"
"It is not we who do it," he answered stubbornly.
"It is we who may prevent it!" she answered, leaning more heavily on his arm, looking up to him more earnestly; with pleading eyes which it was hard to refuse. "Would you, to save us, have betrayed Geneva?"
He groaned--she had moved him. "G.o.d knows!" he answered. "To save you--I think I would!"
"You would not! You would not!" she repeated. "Neither must you do this!
Honour, faith, duty, all forbid it!"
"And love?" he cried.
"And love!" she answered. "For who would love dishonoured? Who would love in shame? No; go as you have come, and give the alarm! And do, and help! Go, as you have come! But how"--with a startled look as she thought of the trap-door--"did you come?"
"By the Terta.s.se Gate," he explained. "There were but two men on guard, and they were asleep. I pa.s.sed them unseen, climbed the stairs to the leads--I have been up twice before--and crossed the roofs. I knew I could come this way unseen, and if I had come by the door----"
She understood and cut him short. "Then go as you came and rouse the watch in the gate!" she cried feverishly. "Rouse them and all, and Heaven grant you be not too late! Go, Claude, for the love of me, for the love of G.o.d, go quickly!" Her hands on his arm shook with eagerness.
"So that, if there be treachery here----"
"There is treachery!" he said darkly. "Grio----"
"We at least shall have no part in it! You will go? You will go?" she repeated, clinging to his arm, trembling against him, looking up to him with eyes which he could not resist. Love wrestled here, on the higher, the n.o.bler, the unselfish side, and came the stronger out of the contest. There were tears in his eyes as he answered.
"I will go. You are right, Anne. But you will be alone."
"I run no greater risk than others," she answered. He held her to him, and their lips met once. And in that instant, her heart beating against his, she comprehended to what she was sending him, into what peril of life, into what a dark h.e.l.l of force and fire and blood; and her arms clung to him as if she could not let him go. Then, "Go, and G.o.d keep you!" she murmured in a choked voice. And she thrust him from her.
A moment later he was on the roof, and she was kneeling where he had left her, bowed down, with her face on the bare stairs in an agony of prayer for him. But not for long; she had her part to do. She hurried down to the living-room and made sure that the strong shutters were secured; then up to Basterga"s room and to Grio"s, and as far as her strength went she piled the furniture against the iron-barred cas.e.m.e.nts that looked on to the ramparts. While she worked her ears listened for the alarm, but, until she had finished and was ascending with the light to her mother"s room she heard nothing. Then a distant cry, a faint challenge, the drum-drum of running feet, a second cry--and silence. It might be his death-cry she had heard; and she stood with a white face, shivering, waiting, bearing the woman"s burden of suspense. To lie down by her mother was impossible; rapine, murder, fire, all the horrors, all the perils of a city taken by surprise, crowded into her mind. Yet they moved her not so much as the dangers he ran, whom she had sent forth to confront them, whom she had plucked from her own breast that he might face them!
Meanwhile, Claude, after gaining the tiles, paused a moment to consider his next step. Far below him, on the narrow, black triangle of the Corraterie, lay the Savoyards, some three hundred in number, who had scaled the wall. Out of the darkness of the plain, beyond and below them, rose the faint, distant quacking of alarmed ducks, proving that others of the enemy moved there. Even as he listened, the whirr of a wild goose winging its flight over the city came to his ear. On his left, with a dim oil lamp marking, here or there, the meeting of four ways, the town slept unsuspicious, recking nothing of the fate prepared for it.
It was a solemn moment, and Claude on the roof under the night sky, felt it to be so. Restored to his higher self, he breathed a prayer for guidance and for her, and was as eager now as he had before been cold.
But not the less for that did he ply the wits that, working freely in this hour of peril, proved him one of those whom battle owns for master.
He had gathered enough, lying on his face in the bastion, to feel sure that the forlorn hope which had gained a footing on the wall would not move until the arrival of the main body whom it was its plan to admit by the Porte Neuve. To carry the alarm to the Porte Neuve, therefore, and secure that gate, seemed to be the first and most urgent step; since to secure the Terta.s.se and the other inner gates would be of little avail, if the main body of the enemy were once in possession of the ramparts.
The course that at first sight seemed the most obvious--to enter the town, give the alarm at the town hall, and set the tocsin ringing--he rejected; for while the town was arming, the three hundred who had entered might seize the Porte Neuve, and so secure the entrance of the main body.
These calculations occupied no more than a few seconds: then, his mind made up to the course he must pursue, he crawled as quickly, but also as quietly, as he could along the dark parapets until he gained the leads of the Terta.s.se. Safe so far, he proceeded, with equal or greater caution, to descend the narrow cork-screw staircase, that led to the guard-room on the ground floor.
He forgot that it is more easy to ascend without noise than to descend.
With all his care he stumbled when he was within three steps of the bottom. He tried to save himself, but fell against the half-open door, flung it wide, and, barely keeping his feet, found himself face to face with the two watchmen, who, startled by the noise, had sprung to their feet, thinking the devil was upon them. One, with an oath upon his lips, reached for his half-pike; his fellow, less sober, steadied himself by resting a hand on the table.
If they gave the alarm, his plan was gone. The enemy, finding themselves discovered, would seize the Porte Neuve. "One minute!" he cried breathlessly. "Let me explain!"
"You!" the more sober retorted, glaring fiercely at him. "Who the devil are you? And where have you been?"
"Quiet, man, quiet!"
"What is it?"
"Treason!" Claude answered, imploring silence by a gesture. "Treason!
That is what it is! But for G.o.d"s sake, no noise! No noise, man, or our throats are as good as cut! Savoy has the wall!"
The man stared, and no wonder. "You are mad," he said, "or drunk!
Savoy----"
"Fool, it is so!" Claude cried, beside himself with impatience.
"Savoy?"
"They are under the trees on the ramparts within a few yards of us now!
Three hundred of them! A word and you will feel their pikes in your breast! Listen to me!"
But with a laugh of derision the drunken man cut him short. "Savoy here--on the wall!" he hiccoughed. "And we on guard!"