25355	----	None 
19485	----	THE LONG NIGHT BY STANLEY WEYMAN AUTHOR OF "A GENTLEMAN OF FRANCE," ETC. _SECOND IMPRESSION_ LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON AND BOMBAY 1903 WORKS BY STANLEY WEYMAN. The House of the Wolf. The New Rector. The Story of Francis Cludde. A Gentleman of France. The Man in Black. Under the Red Robe. My Lady Rotha. The Red Cockade. Shrewsbury. Sophia. The Castle Inn. From the Memoirs of a Minister of France. Count Hannibal. In Kings' Byways. The Long Night. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. A Student of Theology 1 II. The House on the Ramparts 16 III. The Quintessential Stone 31 IV. Cæsar Basterga 45 V. The Elixir Vitæ 59 VI. To Take or Leave 74 VII. A Second Tissot 88 VIII. On the Threshold 102 IX. Melusina 116 X. Auctio Fit: Venit Vita 129 XI. By This or That 143 XII. The Cup and the Lip 157 XIII. A Mystery Solved 172 XIV. "And Only One Dose in all the World!" 185 XV. On the Bridge 200 XVI. A Glove and What Came of It 215 XVII. The _Remedium_ 227 XVIII. The Bargain Struck 242 XIX. The Departure of the Rats 257 XX. In the Darkened Room 271 XXI. The _Remedium_ 285 XXII. Two Nails in the Wall 301 XXIII. In Two Characters 318 XXIV. Armes! Armes! 335 XXV. Basterga at Argos 350 XXVI. The Dawn 365 CHAPTER I. A STUDENT OF THEOLOGY. They were about to shut the Porte St. Gervais, the north gate of Geneva. The sergeant of the gate had given his men the word to close; but at the last moment, shading his eyes from the low light of the sun, he happened to look along the dusty road which led to the Pays de Gex, and he bade the men wait. Afar off a traveller could be seen hurrying two donkeys towards the gate, with now a blow on this side, and now on that, and now a shrill cry. The sergeant knew him for Jehan Brosse, the bandy-legged tailor of the passage off the Corraterie, a sound burgher and a good man whom it were a shame to exclude. Jehan had gone out that morning to fetch his grapes from Möens; and the sergeant had pity on him. He waited, therefore; and presently he was sorry that he had waited. Behind Jehan, a long way behind him, appeared a second wayfarer; a young man covered with dust who approached rapidly on long legs, a bundle jumping and bumping at his shoulders as he ran. The favour of the gate was not for such as he--a stranger; and the sergeant anxious to bar, yet unwilling to shut out Jehan, watched his progress with disgust. As he feared, too, it turned out. Young legs caught up old ones: the stranger overtook Jehan, overtook the donkeys. A moment, and he passed under the arch abreast of them, a broad smile of acknowledgment on his heated face. He appeared to think that the gate had been kept open out of kindness to him. And to be grateful. The war with Savoy--Italian Savoy which, like an octopus, wreathed clutching arms about the free city of Geneva--had come to an end some months before. But a State so small that the frontier of its inveterate enemy lies but two short leagues from its gates, has need of watch and ward, and curfews and the like, so that he was fortunate who found the gates of Geneva open after sunset in that year, 1602; and the stranger seemed to know this. As the great doors clanged together and two of the watch wound up the creaking drawbridge, he turned to the sergeant, the smile still on his face. "I feared that you would shut me out!" he panted, still holding his sides. "I would not have given much for my chance of a bed a minute ago." The sergeant answered only by a grunt. "If this good fellow had not been in front----" This time the sergeant cut him short with an imperious gesture, and the young man seeing that the guard also had fallen stiffly into rank, turned to the tailor. He was overflowing with good nature: he must speak to some one. "If you had not been in front," he began, "I----" But the tailor also cut him short--frowning and laying his finger to his lip and pointing mysteriously to the ground. The stranger stooped to look more closely, but saw nothing: and it was only when the others dropped on their knees that he understood the hint and hastened to follow the example. The soldiers bent their heads while the sergeant recited a prayer for the safety of the city. He did this reverently, while the evening light--which fell grey between walls and sobered those who had that moment left the open sky and the open country--cast its solemn mantle about the party. Such was the pious usage observed in that age at the opening and the closing of the gates of Geneva: nor had it yet sunk to a form. The nearness of the frontier and the shadow of those clutching arms, ever extended to smother the free State, gave a reality to the faith of those who opened and shut, and with arms in their hands looked back on ten years of constant warfare. Many a night during those ten years had Geneva gazed from her watch-towers on burning farms and smouldering homesteads; many a day seen the smoke of Chablais hamlets float a dark trail across her lake. What wonder if, when none knew what a night might bring forth, and the fury of Antwerp was still a new tale in men's ears, the Genevese held Providence higher and His workings more near than men are prone to hold them in happier times? Whether the stranger's reverent bearing during the prayer gained the sergeant's favour, or the sword tied to his bundle and the bulging corners of squat books which stuffed out the cloak gave a new notion of his condition, it is certain that the officer eyed him more kindly when all rose from their knees. "You can pass in now, young sir," he said nodding. "But another time remember, if you please, the earlier here the warmer welcome!" "I will bear it in mind," the young traveller answered, smiling. "Perhaps you can tell me where I can get a night's lodging?" "You come to study, perhaps?" The sergeant puffed himself out as he spoke, for the fame of Geneva's college and its great professor, Theodore Beza, was a source of glory to all within the city walls. Learning, too, was a thing in high repute in that day. The learned tongues still lived and were passports opening all countries to scholars. The names of Erasmus and Scaliger were still in the mouths of men. "Yes," the youth answered, "and I have the name of a lodging in which I hope to place myself. But for to-night it is late, and an inn were more convenient." "Go then to the 'Bible and Hand,'" the sergeant answered. "It is a decent house, as are all in Geneva. If you think to find here a roistering, drinking, swearing tavern, such as you'd find in Dijon----" "I come to study, not to drink," the young man answered eagerly. "Well, the 'Bible and Hand,' then! It will answer your purpose well. Cross the bridge and go straight on. It is in the Bourg du Four." The youth thanked him with a pleased air, and turning his back on the gate proceeded briskly towards the heart of the city. Though it was not Sunday the inhabitants were pouring out from the evening preaching as plentifully as if it had been the first day of the week; and as he scanned their grave and thoughtful faces--faces not seldom touched with sternness or the scars of war--as he passed between the gabled steep-roofed houses and marked their order and cleanliness, as he saw above him and above them the two great towers of the cathedral, he felt a youthful fervour and an enthusiasm not to be comprehended in our age. To many of us the name and memory of Geneva stand for anything but freedom. But to the Huguenot of that generation and day, the name of Geneva stood for freedom; for a fighting aggressive freedom, a full freedom in the State, a sober measured freedom in the Church. The city was the outpost, southwards, of the Reformed religion and the Reformed learning; it sowed its ministers over half Europe, and where they went, they spread abroad not only its doctrines but its praise and its honour. If, even to the men of that day there appeared at times a something too stiff in its attitude, a something too near the Papal in its decrees, they knew with what foes and against what odds it fought, and how little consistent with the ferocity of that struggle were the compromises of life or the courtesies of the lists. At any rate, in some such colours as these, framed in such a halo, Claude Mercier saw the Free City as he walked its narrow streets that evening, seeking the "Bible and Hand". In some such colours had his father, bred under Calvin to the ministry, depicted it: and the young man, half French, half Vaudois, sought nothing better, set nothing higher, than to form a part of its life, and eventually to contribute to its fame. Good intentions and honest hopes tumbled over one another in his brain as he walked. The ardour of a new life, to be begun this day, possessed him. He saw all things through the pure atmosphere of his own happy nature: and if it remained to him to discover how Geneva would stand the test of a closer intimacy, at this moment, the youth took the city to his heart with no jot of misgiving. To follow in the steps of Theodore Beza, a Frenchman like himself and gently bred, to devote himself, in these surroundings to the Bible and the Sword, and find in them salvation for himself and help for others--this seemed an end simple and sufficing: the end too, which all men in Geneva appeared to him to be pursuing that summer evening. By-and-by a grave citizen, a psalm-book in his hand, directed him to the inn in the Bourg du Four; a tall house turning the carved ends of two steep gables to the street. On either side of the porch a long low casement suggested the comfort that was to be found within; nor was the pledge unfulfilled. In a trice the student found himself seated at a shining table before a simple meal and a flagon of cool white wine with a sprig of green floating on the surface. His companions were two merchants of Lyons, a vintner of Dijon, and a taciturn, soberly clad professor. The four elders talked gravely of the late war, of the prevalence of drunkenness in Zurich, of a sad case of witchcraft at Basle, and of the state of trade in Lausanne and the Pays de Vaud; while the student, listening with respect, contrasted the quietude of this house, looking on the grey evening street, with the bustle and chatter and buffoonery of the inns at which he had lain on his way from Chatillon. He was in a mood to appraise at the highest all about him, from the demure maid who served them to the cloaked burghers who from time to time passed the window wrapped in meditation. From a house hard by the sound of the evening psalms came to his ears. There are moods and places in which to be good seems of the easiest; to err, a thing well-nigh impossible. The professor was the first to rise and retire; on which the two merchants drew up their seats to the table with an air of relief. The vintner looked after the retreating figure. "Of Lausanne, I should judge?" he said, with a jerk of the elbow. "Probably," one of the others answered. "Is he not of Geneva, then?" our student asked. He had listened with interest to the professor's talk and between whiles had wondered if it would be his lot to sit under him. "No, or he would not be here!" one of the merchants replied, shrugging his shoulders. "Why not, sir?" "Why not?" The merchant fixed the questioner with eyes of surprise. "Don't you know, young man, that those who live in Geneva may not frequent Geneva taverns?" "Indeed?" Mercier answered, somewhat startled. "Is that so?" "It is very much so," the other returned with something of a sneer. "And they do not!" quoth the vintner with a faint smile. "Well, professors do not!" the merchant answered with a grimace. "I say nothing of others. Let the Venerable Company of Pastors see to it. It is their business." At this point the host brought in lights. After closing the shutters he was in the act of retiring when a door near at hand--on the farther side of the passage if the sound could be trusted--flew open with a clatter. Its opening let out a burst of laughter, nor was that the worst: alas, above the laughter rang an oath--the ribald word of some one who had caught his foot in the step. The landlord uttered an exclamation and went out hurriedly, closing the door behind him. A moment and his voice could be heard, scolding and persuading in the passage. "Umph!" the vintner muttered, looking from one to the other with a humorous eye. "It seems to me that the Venerable Company of Pastors have not yet expelled the old Adam." Open flew the door and cut short the word. But it had been heard, "Pastors?" a raucous voice cried. "Passers and Flinchers is what I call them!" And a stout heavy man, whose small pointed grey beard did but emphasise the coarse virility of the face above it, appeared on the threshold, glaring at the four. "Pastors?" he repeated defiantly. "Passers and Flinchers, I say!" "In Heaven's name, Messer Grio!" the landlord protested, hovering at his shoulder, "these are strangers----" "Strangers? Ay, and flinchers, they too!" the intruder retorted, heedless of the remonstrance. And he lurched into the room, a bulky, reeling figure in stained green and tarnished lace. "Four flinchers! But I'll make them drink a cup with me or I'll prick their hides! Do you think we shed blood for you and are to be stinted of our liquor!" "Messer Grio! Messer Grio!" the landlord cried, wringing his hands. "You will be my ruin!" "No fear!" "But I do fear!" the host retorted sharply, going so far as to lay a hand on his shoulder. "I do fear." Behind the man in green his boon-fellows, flushed with drink, had gathered, and were staring half curious, half in alarm into the room. The landlord turned and appealed to them. "For Heaven's sake get him away quietly!" he muttered. "I shall lose my living if this be known. And you will suffer too! Gentlemen," he turned to the party at the table, "this is a quiet house, a quiet house in general, but----" "Tut-tut!" said the vintner good-naturedly. "We'll drink a cup with the gentleman if he wishes it!" "You'll drink or be pricked!" quoth Messer Grio; he was one of those who grow offensive in their cups. And while his friends laughed, he swished out a sword of huge length, and flourished it. "Ça! Ça! Now let me see any man refuse his liquor!" The landlord groaned, but thinking apparently that soonest broken was soonest mended, he vanished, to return in a marvellously short space of time with four tall glasses and a flask of Neuchatel. "'Tis good wine," he muttered anxiously. "Good wine, gentlemen, I warrant you. And Messer Grio here has served the State, so that some little indulgence----" "What art muttering?" cried the bully, who spoke French with an accent new and strange in the student's ears. "Let be! Let be, I say! Let them drink, or be pricked!" The merchants and the vintner took their glasses without demur: and, perhaps, though they shrugged their shoulders, were as willing as they looked. The young man hesitated, took with a curling lip the glass which was presented to him, and then, a blush rising to his eyes, pushed it from him. "'Tis good wine," the landlord repeated. "And no charge. Drink, young sir, and----" "I drink not on compulsion!" the student answered. Messer Grio stared. "What?" he roared. "You----" "I drink not on compulsion," the young man repeated, and this time he spoke clearly and firmly. "Had the gentleman asked me courteously to drink with him, that were another matter. But----" "Sho!" the vintner muttered, nudging him in pure kindness. "Drink, man, and a fico for his courtesy so the wine be old! When the drink is in, the sense is out, and," lowering his voice, "he'll let you blood to a certainty, if you will not humour him." But the grinning faces in the doorway hardened the student in his resolution. "I drink not on compulsion," he repeated stubbornly. And he rose from his seat. "You drink not?" Grio exclaimed. "You drink not? Then by the living----" "For Heaven's sake!" the landlord cried, and threw himself between them. "Messer Grio! Gentlemen!" But the bully, drunk and wilful, twitched him aside. "Under compulsion, eh!" he sneered. "You drink not under compulsion, don't you, my lad? Let me tell you," he continued with ferocity, "you will drink when I please, and where I please, and as often as I please, and as much as I please, you meal-worm! You half-weaned puppy! Take that glass, d'you hear, and say after me, Devil take----" "Messer Grio!" cried the horrified landlord. "Devil take"--for a moment a hiccough gave him pause--"all flinchers! Take the glass, young man. That is well! I see you will come to it! Now say after me, Devil take----" "That!" the student retorted, and flung the wine in the bully's face. The landlord shrieked; the other guests rose hurriedly from their seats, and got aside. Fortunately the wine blinded the man for a moment, and he recoiled, spitting curses and darting his sword hither and thither in impotent rage. By the time he had cleared his eyes the youth had got to his bundle, and, freeing his blade, placed himself in a posture of defence. His face was pale, but with the pallor of excitement rather than of fear; and the firm set of his mouth and the smouldering fire in his eyes as he confronted the drunken bravo, no less than the manner in which he handled his weapon, showed him as ready to pursue as he had been hardy to undertake the quarrel. He gave proof of forethought, too. "Witness all, he drew first!" he cried; and his glance quitting Grio for the briefest instant sought to meet the merchants' eyes. "I am on my defence. I call all here to witness that he has thrust this quarrel upon me!" The landlord wrung his hands. "Oh dear! oh dear!" he cried. "In Heaven's name, gentlemen, put up! put up! Stop them! Will no one stop them!" And in despair, seeing no one move to arrest them, he made as if he would stand between them. But the bully flourished his blade about his ears, and with a cry the goodman saved himself "Out, skinker!" Grio cried grimly. "And you, say your prayers, puppy. Before you are five minutes older I will spit you like a partridge though I cross the frontier for it. You have basted me with wine! I will baste you after another fashion! On guard! On guard, and----" "_What is this?_" The voice stayed Grio's tongue and checked his foot in the very instant of assault. The student, watching his blade and awaiting the attack, was surprised to see his point waver and drop. Was it a trick, he wondered? A stratagem? No, for a silence fell on the room, while those who held the floor hastened to efface themselves against the wall, as if they at any rate had nothing to do with the fracas. And next moment Grio shrugged his shoulders, and with a half-stifled curse stood back. "What is this?" The same question in the same tone. This time the student saw whose voice it was had stayed Grio's arm. Within the door a pace in front of two or three attendants, who had displaced the roisterers on the threshold, appeared a spare dry-looking man of middle height, wearing his hat, and displaying a gold chain of office across the breast of his black velvet cloak. In age about sixty, he had nothing that at a first glance seemed to call for a second: his small pinched features, and the downward curl of the lip, which his moustache and clipped beard failed to hide, indicated a nature peevish and severe rather than powerful. On nearer observation the restless eyes, keen and piercing, asserted themselves and redeemed the face from insignificance. When, as on this occasion, their glances were supported by the terrors of the State, it was not difficult to understand why Messer Blondel, the Syndic, though no great man to look upon, had both weight with the masses, and a hold not to be denied over his colleagues in the Council. No one took on himself to answer the question he had put, and in a voice thin and querulous, but with a lurking venom in its tone, "What is this?" the great man repeated, looking from one to another. "Are we in Geneva, or in Venice? Under the skirts of the scarlet woman, or where the magistrates bear not the sword in vain? Good Mr. Landlord, are these your professions? Your bailmen should sleep ill to-night, for they are likely to answer roundly for this! And whom have we sparking it here? Brawling and swearing and turning into a profligate's tavern a place that should be for the sober entertainment of travellers? Whom have we here--eh! Let me see them! Ah!" He paused rather suddenly, as his eyes met Grio's: and a little of his dignity fell from him with the pause. His manner underwent a subtle change from the judicial to the paternal. When he resumed, he wagged his head tolerantly, and a modicum of sorrow mingled with his anger. "Ah, Messer Grio! Messer Grio!" he said, "it is you, is it? For shame! For shame! This is sad, this is lamentable! Some indulgence, it is true"--he coughed--"may be due after late events, and to certain who have borne part in them. But this goes too far! Too far by a long way!" "It was not I began it!" the bully muttered sullenly, a mixture of bravado and apology in his bearing. He sheathed his blade, and thrust the long scabbard behind him. "He threw a glass of wine in my face, Syndic--that is the truth. Is an old soldier who has shed blood for Geneva to swallow that, and give God thanks?" The Syndic turned to the student, and licked his lips, his features more pinched than usual. "Are these your manners?" he said. "If so, they are not the manners of Geneva! Your name, young man, and your dwelling place?" "My name is Claude Mercier, last from Chatillon in Burgundy," the young man answered firmly. "For the rest, I did no otherwise than you, sir, must have done in my case!" The magistrate snorted. "I!" "Being treated as I was!" the young man protested. "He would have me drink whether I would or no! And in terms no man of honour could bear." "Honour?" the Syndic retorted, and on the word exploded in great wrath. "Honour, say you? Then I know who is in fault. When men of your race talk of honour 'tis easy to saddle the horse. I will teach you that we know naught of honour in Geneva, but only of service! And naught of punctilios but much of modest behaviour! It is such hot blood as yours that is at the root of brawlings and disorders and such-like, to the scandal of the community: and to cool it I will commit you to the town jail until to-morrow! Convey him thither," he continued, turning sharply to his followers, "and see him safely bestowed in the stocks. To-morrow I will hear if he be penitent, and perhaps, if he be in a cooler temper----" But the young man, aghast at this sudden disgrace, could be silent no longer. "But, sir," he broke in passionately, "I had no choice. It was no quarrel of my beginning. I did but refuse to drink, and when he----" "Silence, sirrah!" the Syndic cried, and cut him short. "You will do well to be quiet!" And he was turning to bid his people bear their prisoner out without more ado when one of the merchants ventured to put in a word. "May I say," he interposed timidly, "that until this happened, Messer Blondel, the young man's conduct was all that could be desired?" "Are you of his company?" "No, sir." "Then best keep out of it!" the magistrate retorted sharply. "And you," to his followers, "did you hear me? Away with him!" But as the men advanced to execute the order, the young man stepped forward. "One moment!" he said. "A moment only, sir. I caught the name of Blondel. Am I speaking to Messer Philibert Blondel?" The Syndic nodded ungraciously. "Yes," he said, "I am he. What of it?" "Only this, that I have a letter for him," the student answered, groping with trembling fingers in his pouch. "From my uncle, the Sieur de Beauvais of Nocle, by Dijon." "The Sieur de Beauvais?" "Yes." "He is your uncle?" "Yes." "So! Well, I remember now," Blondel continued, nodding. "His name was Mercier. Certainly, it was. Well, give me the letter." His tone was still harsh, but it was not the same; and when he had broken the seal and read the letter--with a look half contemptuous, half uneasy--his brow cleared a little. "It were well young people knew better what became them," he cried, peevishly shrugging his shoulders. "It would save us all a great deal. However, for this time as you are a stranger and well credited, I find, you may go. But let it be a lesson to you, do you hear? Let it be a lesson to you, young man. Geneva," pompously, "is no place for brawling, and if you come hither for that, you will quickly find yourself behind bars. See that you go to a fit lodging to-morrow, and do you, Mr. Landlord, have a care that he leaves you." The young man's heart was full, but he had the wisdom to keep his temper and to say no more. The Syndic on his part was glad, on second thoughts, to be free of the matter. He was turning to go when it seemed to strike him that he owed something more to the bearer of the letter. He turned back. "Yes," he said, "I had forgotten. This week I am busy. But next week, on some convenient day, come to me, young sir, and I may be able to give you a word of advice. In the forenoon will be best. Until then--see to your behaviour!" The young man bowed and waited, standing where he was, until the bustle attending the Syndic's departure had quite died away. Then he turned. "Now, Messer Grio," he said briskly, "for my part I am ready." But Messer Grio had slipped away some minutes before. CHAPTER II. THE HOUSE ON THE RAMPARTS. The affair at the inn which had threatened to turn out so unpleasantly for our hero, should have gone some way towards destroying the illusions with which he had entered Geneva. But faith is strong in the young, and hope stronger. The traditions of his boyhood and his fireside, and the stories, animate with affection for the cradle of the faith, to which he had listened at his father's knee, were not to be over-ridden by the shadow of an injustice, which in the end had not fallen. When the young man went abroad next morning and viewed the tall towers of St. Peter, of which his father had spoken--when, from those walls which had defied through so many months the daily and nightly threats of an ever-present enemy, he looked on the sites of conflicts still famous and on farmsteads but half risen from their ruins--when, above all, he remembered for what those walls stood, and that here, on the borders of the blue lake, and within sight of the glittering peaks which charmed his eyes--if in any one place in Europe--the battle of knowledge and freedom had been fought, and the rule of the monk and the Inquisitor cast down, his old enthusiasm revived. He thirsted for fresh conflicts, for new occasions: and it is to be feared dreamt more of the Sword than of the sacred Book, which he had come to study, and which, in Geneva, went hand in hand with it. In the fervour of such thoughts and in the multitude of new interests which opened before him, he had well-nigh forgotten the Syndic's tyranny before he had walked a mile: nor might he have given a second thought to it but for the need which lay upon him of finding a new lodging before night. In pursuit of this he presently took his way to the Corraterie, a row of gabled houses, at the western end of the High Town, built within the ramparts, and enjoying over them a view of the open country, and the Jura. The houses ran for some distance parallel with the rampart, then retired inwards, and again came down to it; in this way enclosing a triangular open space or terrace. They formed of themselves an inner line of defence, pierced at the point farthest from the rampart by the Porte Tertasse: a gate it is true, which was often open even at night, for the wall in front of the Corraterie, though low on the town side, looked down from a great height on the ditch and the low meadows that fringed the Rhone. Trees planted along the rampart shaded the triangular space, and made it a favourite lounge from which the inhabitants of that quarter of the town could view the mountains and the sunset while tasting the freshness of the evening air. A score of times had Claude Mercier listened to a description of this row of lofty houses dominating the ramparts. Now he saw it, and, charmed by the position and the aspect, he trembled lest he should fail to secure a lodging in the house which had sheltered his father's youth. Heedless of the suspicious glances shot at him by the watch at the Porte Tertasse, he consulted the rough plan which his father had made for him--consulted it rather to assure himself against error than because he felt doubt. The precaution taken, he made for a house a little to the right of the Tertasse gate as one looks to the country. He mounted by four steep steps to the door and knocked on it. It was opened so quickly as to disconcert him. A lanky youth about his own age bounced out and confronted him. The lad wore a cap and carried two or three books under his arm as if he had been starting forth when the summons came. The two gazed at one another a moment: then, "Does Madame Royaume live here?" Claude asked. The other, who had light hair and light eyes, said curtly that she did. "Do you know if she has a vacant room?" Mercier asked timidly. "She will have one to-night!" the youth answered with temper in his tone: and he dashed down the steps and went off along the street without ceremony or explanation. Viewed from behind he had a thin neck which agreed well with a small retreating chin. The door remained open, and after hesitating a moment Claude tapped once and again with his foot. Receiving no answer he ventured over the threshold, and found himself in the living-room of the house. It was cool, spacious and well-ordered. On the left of the entrance a wooden settle flanked a wide fireplace, in front of which stood a small heavy table. Another table a little bigger occupied the middle of the room; in one corner the boarded-up stairs leading to the higher floors bulked largely. Two or three dark prints--one a portrait of Calvin--with a framed copy of the Geneva catechism, and a small shelf of books, took something from the plainness and added something to the comfort of the apartment, which boasted besides a couple of old oaken dressers, highly polished and gleaming, with long rows of pewter ware. Two doors stood opposite the entrance and appeared to lead--for one of them stood open--to a couple of closets: bedrooms they could hardly be called, yet in one of them Claude knew that his father had slept. And his heart warmed to it. The house was still; the room was somewhat dark, for the windows were low and long, strongly barred, and shaded by the trees, through the cool greenery of which the light filtered in. The young man stood a moment, and hearing no footstep or movement wondered what he should do. At length he ventured to the door of the staircase and, opening it, coughed. Still no one answered or came, and unwilling to intrude farther he turned about and waited on the hearth. In a corner behind the settle he noticed two half pikes and a long-handled sword; on the seat of the settle itself lay a thin folio bound in stained sheepskin. A log smouldered on the hearth, and below the great black pot which hung over it two or three pans and pipkins sat deep among the white ashes. Save for these there was no sign in the room of a woman's hand or use. And he wondered. Certainly the young man who had departed so hurriedly had said it was Madame Royaume's. There could be no mistake. Well, he would go and come again. But even as he formed the resolution, and turned towards the outer door--which he had left open--he heard a faint sound above, a step light but slow. It seemed to start from the uppermost floor of all, so long was it in descending; so long was it before, waiting on the hearth cap in hand, he saw a shadow darken the line below the staircase door. A second later the door opened and a young girl entered and closed it behind her. She did not see him; unconscious of his presence she crossed the floor and shut the outer door. There was a something in her bearing which went to the heart of the young man who stood and saw her for the first time; a depression, a dejection, an I know not what, so much at odds with her youth and her slender grace, that it scarcely needed the sigh with which she turned to draw him a pace nearer. As he moved their eyes met. She, who had not known of his presence, recoiled with a low cry and stared wide-eyed: he began hurriedly to speak. "I am the son of M. Gaston Mercier, of Chatillon," he said, "who lodged here formerly. At least," he stammered, beginning to doubt, "if this be the house of Madame Royaume, he lodged here. A young man who met me at the door said that Madame lived here, and had a room." "He admitted you? The young man who went out?" "Yes." She gazed hard at him a moment, as if she doubted or suspected him. Then, "We have no room," she said. "But you will have one to-night," he answered "I do not know." "But--but from what he said," Claude persisted doggedly, "he meant that his own room would be vacant, I think." "It may be," she answered dully, the heaviness which surprise had lifted for a moment settling on her afresh. "But we shall take no new lodgers. Presently you would go," with a cold smile, "as he goes to-day." "My father lodged here three years," Claude answered, raising his head with pride. "He did not go until he returned to France. I ask nothing better than to lodge where my father lodged. Madame Royaume will know my name. When she hears that I am the son of M. Gaston Mercier, who often speaks of her----" "He fell sick here, I think?" the girl said. She scanned him anew with the first show of interest that had escaped her. Yet reluctantly, it seemed; with a kind of ungraciousness hard to explain. "He had the plague in the year M. Chausse, the pastor of St. Gervais, died of it," Claude answered eagerly. "When it was so bad. And Madame nursed him and saved his life. He often speaks of it and of Madame with gratitude. If Madame Royaume would see me?" "It is useless," she answered with an impatient shrug. "Quite useless, sir. I tell you we have no room. And--I wish you good-morning." On the word she turned from him with a curt gesture of dismissal, and kneeling beside the embers began to occupy herself with the cooking pots; stirring one and tasting another, and raising a third a little aslant at the level of her eyes that she might peer into it the better. He lingered, watching her, expecting her to turn. But when she had skimmed the last jar and set it back, and screwed it down among the embers, she remained on her knees, staring absently at a thin flame which had sprung up under the black pot. She had forgotten his presence, forgotten him utterly; forgotten him, he judged, in thoughts as deep and gloomy as the wide dark cavern of chimney which yawned above her head and dwarfed the slight figure kneeling Cinderella-like among the ashes. Claude Mercier looked and looked, and wondered, and at last longed: longed to comfort, to cherish, to draw to himself and shelter the budding womanhood before him, so fragile now, so full of promise for the future. And quick as the flame had sprung up under her breath, a magic flame awoke in his heart, and burned high and hot. If he did not lodge here, The sky might fall, fish fly, and sheep pursue The tawny monarch of the Libyan strand! But he would lodge here. He coughed. She started and turned, and seeing him, seeing that he had not gone, she rose with a frown. "What is it?" she said. "For what are you waiting, sir?" "I have something in charge for Madame Royaume," he answered. "I will give it her," she returned sharply. "Why did you not say so at once?" And she held out her hand. "No," he said hardily. "I have it in charge for her hand only." "I am her daughter." He shook his head stubbornly. What she would have done on that--her face was hard and promised nothing--is uncertain. Fortunately for the young man's hopes, a dull report as of a stick striking the floor in some room above reached their ears; he saw her eyes flicker, alter, grow soft. "Wait!" she said imperiously; and stooping to take one of the pipkins from the fire, she poured its contents into a wooden bowl which stood beside her on the table. She added a horn-spoon and a pinch of salt, fetched a slice of coarse bread from a cupboard in one of the dressers, and taking all in skilled steady hands, hands childishly small, though brown as nuts, she disappeared through the door of the staircase. He waited, looking about the room, and at this, and at that, with a new interest. He took up the book which lay on the settle: it was a learned volume, part of the works of Paracelsus, with strange figures and diagrams interwoven with the crabbed Latin text. A passage which he deciphered, abashed him by its profundity, and he laid the book down, and went from one to another of the black-framed engravings; from these to an oval piece in coarse Limoges enamel, which hung over the little shelf of books. At length he heard a step descending from the upper floors, and presently she appeared in the doorway. "My mother will see you," she said, her tone as ungracious as her look. "But you will say nothing of lodging here, if it please you. Do you hear?" she added, her voice rising to a more imperious note. He nodded. She turned on the lowest step. "She is bed-ridden," she muttered, as if she felt the need of explanation. "She is not to be disturbed with house matters, or who comes or goes. You understand that, do you?" He nodded, with a mental reservation, and followed her up the confined staircase. Turning sharply at the head of the first flight he saw before him a long narrow passage, lighted by a window that looked to the back. On the left of the passage which led to a second set of stairs, were two doors, one near the head of the lower flight, the other at the foot of the second. She led him past both--they were closed--and up the second stairs and into a room under the tiles, a room of good size but with a roof which sloped in unexpected places. A woman lay there, not uncomely; rather comely with the beauty of advancing years, though weak and frail if not ill. It was the woman of whom he had so often heard his father speak with gratitude and respect. It was neither of his father, however, nor of her, that Claude Mercier thought as he stood holding Madame Royaume's hand and looking down at her. For the girl who had gone before him into the room had passed to the other side of the bed, and the glance which she and her mother exchanged as the daughter leant over the couch, the message of love and protection on one side, of love and confidence on the other--that message and the tone, wondrous gentle, in which the girl, so curt and abrupt below, named him--these revealed a bond and an affection for which the life of his own family furnished him with no precedent. For his mother had many children, and his father still lived. But these two, his heart told him as he held Madame Royaume's shrivelled hand in his, were alone. They had each but the other, and lived each in the other, in this room under the tiles with the deep-set dormer windows that looked across the Pays de Gex to the Jura. For how much that prospect of vale and mountain stood in their lives, how often they rose to it from the same bed, how often looked at it in sunshine and shadow with the house still and quiet below them, he seemed to know--to guess. He had a swift mental vision of their lives, and then Madame Royaume's voice recalled him to himself. "You are newly come to Geneva?" she said, gazing at him. "I arrived yesterday." "Yes, yes, of course," she answered. She spoke quickly and nervously. "Yes, you told me so." And she turned to her daughter and laid her hand on hers as if she talked more easily so. "Your father, Monsieur Mercier," with an obvious effort, "is well, I hope?" "Perfectly, and he begged me to convey his grateful remembrances. Those of my mother also," the young man added warmly. "Yes, he was a good man! I remember when, when he was ill, and M. Chausse--the pastor, you know"--the reminiscence appeared to agitate her--"was ill also----" The girl leant over her quickly. "Monsieur Mercier has brought something for you, mother," she said. "Ah?" "His grateful remembrances and this letter," Claude murmured with a blush. He knew that the letter contained no more than he had already said; compliments, and the hope that Madame Royaume might be able to receive the son as she had received the father. "Ah!" Madame Royaume repeated, taking the letter with fingers that shook a little. "You shall read it when Monsieur Mercier is gone," her daughter said. With that she looked across at the young man. Her eyes commanded him to take his leave. But he was resolute. "My father expresses the hope," he said, "that you will grant me the same privilege of living under your roof, Madame, which was so highly prized by him." "Of course, of course," she answered eagerly, her eyes lighting up. "I am not myself, sir, able to overlook the house--but, Anne, you will see to--to this being done?" "My dear mother, we have no room!" the girl replied; and stooping, hid her face while she whispered in her mother's ear. Then aloud, "We are so full, so--it goes so well," she continued gaily. "We never have any room. I am sure, sir,"--again she faced him across the bed--"it is a disappointment to my mother, but it cannot be helped." "Dear, dear, it is unfortunate!" Madame Royaume exclaimed; and then with a fond look at her daughter, "Anne manages so well!" "Yet if there be a room at any time vacant?" "You shall assuredly have it." "But, mother dear," the girl cried, "M. Grio and M. Basterga are permanent on the floor below. And Esau and Louis are now with us, and have but just entered on their course at college. And you know," she continued softly, "no one ever leaves your house before they are obliged to leave it, mother dear!" The mother patted the daughter's hand. "No," she said proudly. "It is true. And we cannot turn any one away. And yet," looking up at Anne, "the son of Messer Mercier? You do not think--do you think that we could put him----" "A closet however small!" Claude cried. "Unfortunately the room beyond this can only be entered through this one." "It is out of the question!" the girl responded quickly; and for the first time her tone rang a little hard. The next instant she seemed to repent of her petulance; she stooped and kissed the thin face sunk in the pillow's softness. Then, rising, "I am sorry," she continued stiffly and decidedly. "But it is impossible!" "Still--if a vacancy should occur?" he pleaded. Her eyes met his defiantly. "We will inform you," she said. "Thank you," he answered humbly. "Perhaps I am fatiguing your mother?" "I think you are a little tired, dear," the girl said, stooping over her. "A little fatigues you." Madame's cheeks were flushed; her eyes shone brightly, even feverishly. Claude saw this, and having pushed his plea and his suit as far as he dared, he hastened to take his leave. His thoughts had been busy with his chances all the time, his eyes with the woman's face; yet he bore away with him a curiously vivid picture of the room, of the bow-pot blooming in the farther dormer, of the brass skillet beside the green boughs which filled the hearth, of the spinning wheel in the middle of the floor, and the great Bible on the linen chest beside the bed, of the sloping roof, and a queer triangular cupboard which filled one corner. At the time, as he followed the girl downstairs, he thought of none of these things. He only asked himself what mystery lay in the bosom of this quiet house, and what he should say when he stood in the room below at bay before her. Of one thing he was still sure--sure, ay and surer, since he had seen her with her mother, The sky might fall, fish fly, and sheep pursue The tawny monarch of the Libyan strand! but he lodged here. The mention of his adversary of last night, which had not escaped his ear, had only hardened him in his resolution. The room of Esau--or was it Louis' room--must be his! He must be Jacob the Supplanter. She did not speak as she preceded him down the stairs, and before they emerged one after the other into the living-room, which was still unoccupied, he had formed his plan. When she moved towards the outer door to open it he refused to follow: he stood still. "Pardon me," he said, "would you mind giving me the name of the young man who admitted me?" "I do not see----" "I only want his name." "Esau Tissot." "And his room? Which was it?" Grudgingly she pointed to the nearer of the two closets, that of which the door stood open. "That one?" "Yes." He stepped quickly into it, and surveyed it carefully. Then he laid his cap on the low truckle-bed. "Very good," he said, raising his voice and speaking through the open door, "I will take it." And he came out again. The girl's eyes sparkled. "If you think," she cried, her temper showing in her face, "that that will do you any good----" "I don't think," he said, cutting her short, "I take it. Your mother undertook that I should have the first vacant room. Tissot resigned this room this morning. I take it. I consider myself fortunate--most fortunate." Her colour came and went. "If you were a boor," she cried, "you could not behave worse!" "Then I am a boor!" "But you will find," she continued, "that you cannot force your way into a house like this. You will find that such things are not done in Geneva. I will have you put out!" "Why?" he asked, craftily resorting to argument. "When I ask only to remain and be quiet? Why, when you have, or to-night will have, an empty room? Why, when you lodged Tissot, will you not lodge me? In what am I worse than Tissot or Grio," he continued, "or--I forget the other's name? Have I the plague, or the falling sickness? Am I Papist or Arian? What have I done that I may not lie in Geneva, may not lie in your house? Tell me, give me a reason, show me the cause, and I will go." Her anger had died down while he spoke and while she listened. Instead, the lowness of heart to which she had yielded when she thought herself alone before the hearth showed in every line of her figure. "You do not know what you are doing," she said sadly. And she turned and looked through the casement. "You do not know what you are asking, or to what you are coming." "Did Tissot know when he came?" "You are not Tissot," she answered in a low tone, "and may fare worse." "Or better," he answered gaily. "And at worst----" "Worse or better you will repent it," she retorted. "You will repent it bitterly!" "I may," he answered. "But at least you never shall." She turned and looked at him at that; looked at him as if the curtain of apathy fell from her eyes and she saw him for the first time as he was, a young man, upright and not uncomely. She looked at him with her mind as well as her eyes, and seeing felt curiosity about him, pity for him, felt her own pulses stirred by his presence and his aspect. A faint colour, softer than the storm-flag which had fluttered there a minute before, rose to her cheeks; her lips began to tremble. He feared that she was going to weep, and "That is settled!" he said cheerfully. "Good!" and he went into the little room and brought out his cap. "I lay last night at the 'Bible and Hand,' and I must fetch my cloak and pack." She stayed him by a gesture. "One moment," she said. "You are determined to--to do this? To lodge here?" "Firmly," he answered, smiling. "Then wait." She passed by him and, moving to the fireplace, raised the lid of the great black pot. The broth inside was boiling and bubbling to within an inch of the lip, the steam rose from it in a fragrant cloud. She took an iron spoon and looked at him, a strange look in her eyes. "Stand where you are," she said, "and I will try you, if you are fit to come to us or no. Stand, do you hear," she repeated, a note of excitation, almost of mockery, in her voice, "where you are whatever happens! You understand?" "Yes, I am to stand here, whatever happens," he answered, wondering. What was she going to do? She was going to do a thing outside the limits of his imagination. She dipped the iron spoon in the pot and, extending her left arm, deliberately allowed some drops of the scalding liquor to fall on the bare flesh. He saw the arm wince, saw red blisters spring out on the white skin, he caught the sharp indraw of her breath, but he did not move. Again she dipped the spoon, looking at him with defiant eyes, and with the same deliberation she let the stuff fall on the living flesh. This time the perspiration sprang out on her brow, her face burned suddenly hot, her whole frame shrank under the torture. "Don't!" he cried hoarsely. "I will not bear it! Don't!" And he uttered a cry half-articulate, like a beast's. "Stand there!" she said. And still he stood: stood, his hands clenched and his lips drawn back from his teeth, while she dipped the spoon again, and--though her arm shook now like an aspen and there were tears of pain in her eyes--let the dreadful stuff fall a third time. She was white when she turned to him. "If you do it again," he cried furiously, "I will upset--the cursed pot." "I have done," she said, smiling faintly. "I am not very brave--after all!" And going to the dresser, her knees trembling under her, she poured out some water and drank it greedily. Then she turned to him, "Do you understand?" she said with a long tense look. "Are you prepared? If you come here, you will see me suffer worse things, things a hundred times, a thousand times worse than that. You will see me suffer, and you will have to stand and see it. You will have to stand and suffer it. You will have to stand! If you cannot, do not come." "I stood it," he answered doggedly. "But there are things flesh and blood cannot stand. There is a limit----" "The limit I shall fix," she said proudly. "Not you." "But you will fix it?" "Perhaps. At any rate, that is the bargain. You may accept or refuse. You do not know where I stand, and I do. You must see and be blind, feel and be dumb, hear and make no answer, unless I speak--if you are to come here." "But you will speak--sometime?" "I do not know," she answered wearily, and her whole form wilting she looked away from him. "I do not know. Go now, if you please--and remember!" CHAPTER III. THE QUINTESSENTIAL STONE. The old town of Geneva, pent in the angle between lake and river, and cramped for many generations by the narrow corselet of its walls, was not large; it was still high noon when Mercier, after paying his reckoning at the "Bible and Hand," and collecting his possessions, found himself again in the Corraterie. A pleasant breeze stirred the leafy branches which shaded the ramparts, and he stood a moment beside one of the small steep-roofed watch-towers, and resting his burden on the breast-high wall, gazed across the hazy landscape to the mountains, beyond which lay Chatillon and his home. Yet it was not of his home he was thinking as he gazed; nor was it his mother's or his father's face that the dancing heat of mid-day mirrored for him as he dreamed. Oh, happy days of youth when an hour and a face change all, and a glance from shy eyes, or the pout of strange lips blinds to the world and the world's ambitions! Happy youth! But alas for the studies this youth had come so far to pursue, for the theology he had crossed those mountains to imbibe--at the pure source and fount of evangelical doctrine! Alas for the venerable Beza, pillar and pattern of the faith, whom he had thirsted to see, and the grave of Calvin, aim and end of his pilgrimage! All Geneva held but one face for him now, one presence, one gracious personality. A scarlet blister on a round white arm, the quiver of a girl's lip a-tremble on the verge of tears--these and no longing for home, these and no memory of father or mother or the days of childhood, filled his heart to overflowing. He dreamed with his eyes on the hills, but it was not Of Providence, foreknowledge, will and fate, Fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute, the things he had come to study; but of a woman's trouble and the secret life of the house behind him, of which he was about to form part. At length the call of a sentry at the Porte Tertasse startled him from his thoughts. He roused himself, and uncertain how long he had lingered he took up his cloak and bag and, turning, hastened across the street to the door at the head of the four steps. He found it on the latch, and with a confident air, which belied his real feelings, he pushed it open and presented himself. For a moment he fancied that the room held only one person. This was a young man who sat at the table in the middle of the room and, surprised by the appearance of a stranger, suspended his spoon in the air that he might the better gaze at him. But when Claude had set down his bag behind the door, and turned to salute the other, he discovered his error; and despite himself he paused in the act of advancing, unable to hide his concern. At the table on the hearth, staring at him in silence, sat two other men. And one of the two was Grio. Mercier paused we have said; he expected an outburst of anger if not an assault. But a second glance at the old ruffian's face relieved him: a stare of vacant wonder made it plain that Grio sober retained little of the doings of Grio drunk. Nevertheless, the silent gaze of the three--for no one greeted him--took Claude aback; and it was but awkwardly and with embarrassment that he approached the table, and prepared to add himself to the party. Something in their looks as well as their silence whispered him unwelcome. He blushed, and addressing the young man at the larger table-- "I have taken Tissot's room," he said shyly. "This is his seat, I suppose. May I take it?" And indicating an empty bowl and spoon on the nearer side of the table, he made as if he would sit down before them. In place of answering, the young man looked from him to the two on the hearth, and laughed--a foolish, frightened laugh. The sound led Mercier's eyes in the same direction, and he appreciated for the first time the aspect of the man who sat with Grio; a man of great height and vast bulk, with a large plump face and small grey eyes. It struck Mercier as he met the fixed stare of those eyes, that he had entered with less ceremony than was becoming, and that he ought to make amends for it; and, in the act of sitting down in the vacant seat, he turned and bowed politely to the two at the other table. "Tissotius timuit, jam peregrinus adest!" the big man murmured in a voice at once silky and sonorous. Then ignoring Mercier, but looking blandly at the young man who sat facing him at the table, "What is this of Tissot?" he continued. "Can it be," with a side-glance at the newcomer, "that we have lost our--I may not call him our quintessence or alcahest--rather shall I say our baser ore, that at the virgin touch of our philosophical stone blushed into ruddy gold? And burned ever brighter and hotter in her presence! Tissot gone, and with him all those fair experiments! Is it possible?" The young man's grin showed that he savoured a jest. But, "I know nothing," he muttered sheepishly. "'Tis new to me." "Tissot gone!" the big man repeated in a tone humorously melancholy. "No more shall we Upon his viler metal test our purest pure, And see him transmutations three endure! Tissot gone! And you, sir, come in his place. What change is here! A stranger, I believe?" "In Geneva, yes," Claude answered, wondering and a little abashed. The man spoke with an air of power and weight. "And a student, doubtless in our Academia? Like our Tissot? Yes. It may be," he continued in the same smooth tones wherein ridicule and politeness appeared to be so nicely mingled that it was difficult to judge if he spoke in jest or earnest, "like him in other things! It may be that we have gained and not lost. And that qualities finer and more susceptible underlie an exterior more polished and an ease more complete," he bowed, "than our poor Tissot could boast! But here is Our stone angelical whereby All secret potencies to light are brought! Doubtless"--with a wave of the hand he indicated the girl who had that moment entered--"you have met before?" "I could not otherwise," Claude answered coldly--he began to resent both the man and his manner--"have engaged the lodging." And he rose to take from the girl's hand the broth she was bringing him. She, on her side, made no sign that she noticed a change, or that it was no longer Tissot she served. She gave him what he needed, mechanically and without meeting his eyes. Then turning to the others, she waited on them after the same fashion. For a minute or two there was silence in the room. A strange silence, Claude thought, listening and wondering: as strange and embarrassing as the talk of the man who shared with Grio the table by the fireplace: as strange as the atmosphere about them, which hung heavy, to his fancy, and oppressive, fraught with unintelligible railleries, with subtle jests and sneers. The girl went to and fro, from one to another, her face pale, her manner quiet. And had he not seen her earlier with another look in her eyes, had he not detected a sinister something underlying the big man's good humour, he would have learned nothing from her; he would have fancied that all was as it should be in the house and in the company. As it was he understood nothing. But he felt that a something was wrong, that a something overhung the party. Seated as he was he could not without turning see the faces of the two at the other table, nor watch the girl when she waited on them. But the suspicion of a smile which hovered on the lips of the young man who sat opposite him--whom he could see--kept him on his guard. Was a trick in preparation? Were they about to make him pay his footing? No, for they had no notice of his coming. They could not have laid the mine. Then why that smile? And why this silence? On a sudden he caught the sound of a movement behind him, the swirl of a petticoat, and the clang of a pewter plate as it fell noisily to the floor. His companion looked up swiftly, the smile on his face broadening to a snigger. Claude turned too as quickly as he could and looked, his face hot, his mind suspecting some prank to be played on him; to his astonishment he discovered nothing to account for the laugh. The girl appeared to be bending over the embers on the hearth, the men to be engaged with their meal; and baffled and perplexed he turned again and, his ears burning, bent over his plate. He was glad when the stout man broke the silence for the second time. "Agrippa," he said, "has this of amalgams. That whereas gold, silver, tin are valuable in themselves, they attain when mixed with mercury to a certain light and sparkling character, as who should say the bubbles on wine, or the light resistance of beauty, which in the one case and the other add to the charm. Such to our simple pleasures"--he continued with a rumble of deep laughter--"our simple pleasures, which I must now also call our pleasures of the past, was our Tissot! Who, running fluid hither and thither, where resistance might be least of use, was as it were the ultimate sting of enjoyment. Is it possible that we have in our friend a new Tissot?" The young man at the table giggled. "I did not know Tissot!" Claude replied sharply and with a burning face--they were certainly laughing at him. "And therefore I cannot say." "Mercury, which completes the amalgam," the stout man muttered absently and as if to himself, "when heated sublimes over!" Then turning after a moment's silence to the girl, "What says our Quintessential Stone to this?" he continued. "Her Tissot gone will she still work her wonders? Still of base Grios and the weak alloys red bridegrooms make? Still--kind Anne, your hand!" Silence! Silence again. What were they doing? Claude, full of suspicion, turned to see what it meant; turned to learn what it was on which the greedy eyes of his table-fellow were fixed so intently. And now he saw, more or less. The stout man and Grio had their heads together and their faces bent over the girl's hand, which the former held. On them, however, Claude scarcely bestowed a glance. It was the girl's face which caught and held his eyes, nay, made them burn. Had it blushed, had it showed white, he had borne the thing more lightly, he had understood it better. But her face showed dull and apathetic; as she stood looking down at the men, suffering them to do what they would with her hand, a strange passivity was its sole expression. When the big man (whose name Claude learned later was Basterga), after inspecting the palm, kissed it with mock passion, and so surrendered it to Grio, who also pressed his coarse lips to it, while the young man beside Claude laughed, no change came over her. Released, she turned again to the hearth, impassive. And Claude, his heart beating, recognised that this was the hundredth performance; that so far from being a new thing it was a thing so old as to be stale to her, moving her less, though there were insult and derision in every glance of the men's eyes, than it moved him. And noting this he began in a dim way to understand. This was the thing which Tissot had not been able to bear; which in the end had driven the young man with the small chin from the house. This was the pleasantry to which his feeble resistance, his outbursts of anger, of jealousy, or of protest had but added piquancy, the ultimate sting of pleasure to the jaded palate of the performers. This was the obsession under which she lay, the trial and persecution which she had warned him he would find it hard to witness. Hard? He believed her, trifling as was the thing he had seen. For behind it he had a glimpse of other and worse things, and behind all of some shadowy brooding mystery which compelled her to suffer them and forbade her to complain. What that was he could not conceive, what it could be he could not conceive: nor had he long to consider the question. He found the shifty eyes of his table-fellow fixed upon him, and, though the moment his own eyes met them they were averted, he fancied that they sped a glance of intelligence to the table behind him, and he hastened to curb, if not his feelings, at least the show of them. He had his warning. It was not as Tissot he must act if he would help her, but more warily, more patiently, biding her time, and letting the blow, when the time came, precede the word. Unwarned, he had acted it is probable as Tissot had acted, weakly and stormily: warned, he had no excuse if he failed her. Young as he was he saw this. The fault lay with him if he made the position worse instead of better. Whether, do what he would, his feelings made themselves known--for the shoulders can speak, and eloquently, on occasion--or the reverse was the case, and his failure to rise to the bait disappointed the tormentor, the big man, Basterga, presently resumed the attack. "Tissotius pereat, Tissotianus adest!" he muttered with a sneer. "But perhaps, young sir, Latinity is not one of your subjects. The tongue of the immortal Cicero----" "I speak it a little," Claude answered quietly. "It were foolish to approach the door of learning without the key." "Oh, you are a wit, young sir! Well, with your wit and your Latinity can you construe this:-- Stultitiam expellas, furca tamen usque recurret Tissotius periit terque quaterque redit!" "I think so," Claude replied gravely. "Good, if it please you! And the meaning?" "Tissot was a fool, and you are another!" the young man returned. "Will you now solve me one, reverend sir, with all submission?" "Said and done!" the big man answered disdainfully. "Nec volucres plumæ faciunt nec cuspis Achillem! Construe me that then if you will!" Basterga shrugged his shoulders. "Fine feathers do not make fine birds!" he said. "If you apply it to me," he continued with a contemptuous face, "I----" "Oh, no, to your company," Claude answered. Self-control comes hardly to the young, and he had already forgotten his _rôle_. "Ask him what happened last night at the 'Bible and Hand,'" he continued, pointing to Grio, "and how he stands now with his friend the Syndic!" "The Syndic?" "The Syndic Blondel!" The moment the words had passed his lips, Claude repented. He saw that he had struck a note more serious than he intended. The big man did not move, but over his fat face crept a watching expression; he was plainly startled. His eyes, reduced almost to pin-points, seemed for an instant the eyes of a cat about to spring. The effect was so evident indeed that it bewildered Claude and so completely diverted his attention from Grio, the real target, that when the bully, who had listened stupidly to the exchange of wit, proved by a brutal oath his comprehension of the reference to himself, the young man scarcely heard him. "The Syndic Blondel?" Basterga muttered after a pregnant pause. "What know you of him, pray?" Before the young man could answer, Grio broke in. "So you have followed me here, have you?" he cried, striking his jug on the table and glaring across the board at the offender. "You weren't content to escape last night it seems. Now----" "Enough!" Basterga muttered, the keen expression of his face unchanged. "Softly! Softly! Where are we? I don't understand. What is this? Last night----" "I want not to rake up bygones if you will let them be," Claude answered with a sulky air, half assumed. "It was you who attacked me." "You puppy!" Grio roared. "Do you think----" "Enough!" Basterga said again: and his eyes leaving the young man fixed themselves on his companion. "I begin to understand," he murmured, his voice low, but not the less menacing for that, or for the cat-like purr in it. "I begin to comprehend. This is one of your tricks, Messer Grio. One of the clever tricks you play in your cups! Some day you'll do that in them will--No!" repressing the bully as he attempted to rise. "Have done now and let us understand. The 'Bible and Hand,' eh? 'Twas there, I suppose, you and this youth met, and----" "Quarrelled," said Claude sullenly. "That's all." "And you followed him hither?" "No, I did not." "No? Then how come you here?" Basterga asked, his eyes still watchful. "In this house, I mean? 'Tis not easy to find." "My father lodged here," Claude vouchsafed. And he shrugged his shoulders, thinking that with that the matter was clear. But Basterga continued to eye him with something that was not far removed from suspicion. "Oh," he said. "That is it, is it? Your father lodged here. And the Syndic--Blondel, was it you said? How comes he into it? Grio was prating of him, I suppose?" For an instant, while he waited the answer to the question, his eyes shrank again to pin-points. "He came in and found us at sword-play," Claude answered. "Or just falling to it. And though the fault was not mine, he would have sent me to prison if I had not had a letter for him." "Oh!" And returning with a manifest effort to the tone and manner of a few minutes before:-- "Impiger, Iracundus, Inexorabilis, acer Jura neget sibi nata, nihil non arroget armis," he hummed. "I doubt if such manners will be appreciated in Geneva, young man," and furtively he wiped his brow. "To old stagers like my friend here who has given his proofs of fidelity to the State, some indulgence is granted----" "I see that," Claude answered with sarcasm. "I am saying it. But you, if you will not be warned, will soon find or make the town too hot for you." "He will find this house too hot for him!" growled his companion, who had made more than one vain attempt to assert himself. "And that to-day! To-day! Perdition, I know him now," he continued, fixing his bloodshot eyes on the young man, "and if he crows here as he crowed last night, his comb must be cut! As well soon as late, for there will be no living with him! There, don't hold me, man! Let me at him!" And he tried to rise. "Fool, have done!" Basterga replied, still restraining him, but only by the exertion of considerable force. And then in a lower tone but one partially audible, "Do you want to draw the eyes of all Geneva this way?" he continued. "Do you want the house marked and watched and every gossip's tongue wagging about it? You did harm enough last night, I'll answer, and well if no worse comes of it! Have done, I say, or I shall speak, you know to whom!" "Why does he come here? Why does he follow me?" the sot complained. "Cannot you hear that his father lodged here?" "A lie!" Grio cried vehemently. "He is spying on us! First at the 'Bible and Hand' last night, and then here! It is you who are the fool, man. Let me go! Let me at him, I say!" "I shall not!" the big man answered firmly. And he whispered in the other's ear something which Claude could not catch. Whatever it was it cooled Grio's rage. He ceased to struggle, nodded sulkily and sat back. He stretched out his hand, took a long draught, and having emptied his jug, "Here's Geneva!" he said, wiping his lips with the air of a man who had given a toast. "Only don't let him cross me! That is all. Where is the wench?" "She has gone upstairs," Basterga answered with one eye on Claude. He seemed to be unable to shake off a secret doubt of him. "Then let her come down," Grio answered with a grin, half drunken, half brutal, "and make her show sport. Here, you there," to the young man who shared Claude's table, "call her down and----" "Sit still!" Basterga growled, and he trod--Claude was almost sure of it--on the bully's foot. "It is late, and these young gentlemen should be at their themes. Theology, young sir," he turned to Claude with the slightest shade of over-civility in his pompous tone, "like the pursuit of the Alcahest, which some call the Quintessence of the Elements, allows no rival near its throne!" "I attend my first lecture to-morrow," Claude answered drily. And he kept his seat. His face was red and his hand trembled. They would call her down for their sport, would they! Not in his presence, nor again in his absence, if he could avoid it. Grio struck the table. "Call her down!" he ordered in a tone which betrayed the influence of his last draught. "Do you hear!" And he looked fiercely at Louis Gentilis, the young man who sat opposite Claude. But Louis only looked at Basterga and grinned. And Basterga it was plain was not in the mood to amuse himself. Whatever the reason, the big man was no longer at his ease in Mercier's company. Some unpleasant thought, some suspicion, born of the incident at the "Bible and Hand," seemed to rankle in his mind, and, strive as he would, betrayed its presence in the tone of his voice and the glance of his eye. He was uneasy, nor could he hide his uneasiness. To the look which Gentilis shot at him he replied by one which imperatively bade the young man keep his seat. "Enough fooling for to-day," he said, and stealthily he repressed Grio's resistance. "Enough! Enough! I see that the young gentleman does not altogether understand our humours. He will come to them in time, in time," his voice almost fawning, "and see we mean no harm. Did I understand," he continued, addressing Claude directly, "that your father knew Messer Blondel?" "Who is now Syndic? My uncle did," Claude answered rather curtly. He was more and more puzzled by the change in Basterga's manner. Was the big man a poltroon whom the bold front shown to Grio brought to heel? Or was there something behind, some secret upon which his words had unwittingly touched? "He is a good man," Basterga said. "And of the first in Geneva. His brother too, who is Procureur-General. Their father died for the State, and the sons, the Syndic in particular, served with high honour in the war. Savoy has no stouter foe than Philibert Blondel, nor Geneva a more devoted son." And he drank as if he drank a toast to them. Claude nodded. "A man of great parts too. Probably you will wait on him?" "Next week. I was near waiting on him after another fashion," Claude continued rather grimly. "Between him and your friend there," with a glance at Grio, who had relapsed into a moody glaring silence, "I was like to get more gyves than justice." The big man laughed. "Our friend here has served the State," he remarked, "and does what another may not. Come, Messer Grio," he continued, clapping him on the shoulder, as he rose from his seat. "We have sat long enough. If the young ones will not stir, it becomes the old ones to set an example. Will you to my room and view the precipitation of which I told you?" Grio gave a snarling assent, and got to his feet; and the party broke up with no more words. Claude took his cap and prepared to withdraw, well content with himself and the line he had taken. But he did not leave the house until his ears assured him that the two who had ascended the stairs together had actually repaired to Basterga's room on the first floor, and there shut themselves up. CHAPTER IV. CÆSAR BASTERGA. Had it been Mercier's eye in place of his ear which attended the two men to the upper room, he would have remarked--perhaps with surprise, since he had gained some knowledge of Grio's temper--that in proportion as they mounted the staircase, the toper's crest drooped, and his arrogance ebbed away; until at the door of Basterga's chamber, it was but a sneaking and awkward man who crossed the threshold. Nor was the reason far to seek. Whatever the standpoint of the two men in public, their relations to one another in private were delivered up, stamped and sealed in that moment of entrance. While Basterga, leaving the other to close the door, strode across the room to the window and stood gazing out, his very back stern and contemptuous, Grio fidgeted and frowned, waiting with ill-concealed penitence, until the other chose to address him. At length Basterga turned, and his gleaming eyes, his moon-face pale with anger, withered his companion. "Again! Again!" he growled--it seemed he dare not lift his voice. "Will you never be satisfied until we are broken on the wheel? You dog, you! The sooner you are broken the better, were that all! Ay, and were that all, I could watch the bar fall with pleasure! But do you think I will see the fruit of years of planning, do you think that I will see the reward of this brain--this! this, you brainless idiot, who know not what a brain is"--and he tapped his brow repeatedly with an earnestness almost grotesque--"do you think that I will see this cast away, because you swill, swine that you are! Swill and prate in your cups!" "'Fore God, I said nothing!" Grio whined. "I said nothing! It was only that he would not drink and I----" "Made him?" "No, he would not, I say, and we were coming to blows. And then----" "He gave back, did he?" "No, Messer Blondel came in." Cæsar Basterga stretched out his huge arms. "Fool! Fool! Fool!" he hissed, with a gesture of despair. "There it is! And Blondel, who should have sent you to the whipping-post, or out of Geneva, has to cloak you! And men ask why, and what there is between our most upright Syndic and a drunken, bragging----" "Softly," Grio muttered, with a flash of sullen resentment. "Softly, Messer Basterga! I----" "A drunken, swilling, prating pig!" the other persisted. "A broken soldier living on an hour of chance service? Pooh, man," with contempt, "do not threaten me! Do you think that I do not know you more than half craven? The lad below there would cut your comb yet, did I suffer it. But that is not the point. The point is that you must needs advertise the world that you and the Syndic, who has charge of the walls, are hail-fellows, and the world will ask why! Or he must deal with you as you deserve and out you go from Geneva!" "Per Bacco! I am not the only soldier," Grio muttered, "who ruffles it here!" "No! And is not that half our battle?" Basterga rejoined, gazing on him with massive scorn. "To make use of them and their grumbling, and their distaste for the Venerable Company of Pastors who rule us! Such men are our tools; but tools only, and senseless tools, for Geneva won for the Grand Duke, and what will they be the better, save in the way of a little more licence and a little more drink? But for you I had something better! Is the little farm in Piedmont not worth a month's abstinence? Is drink-money for your old age, when else you must starve or stab in the purlieus of Genoa, not worth one month's sobriety? But you must needs for the sake of a single night's debauch ruin me and get yourself broken on the wheel!" Grio shrank under his eye. "There is no harm done," he muttered at last. "Nobody suspects what is between us." "How do you know that?" came the retort. "What? You think it is natural Blondel should favour such as you?" "It will not be the first time Geneva cloak has covered Genoa velvet!" "Velvet!" Basterga repeated with a sneer. "Rags rather!" And then more quickly, "But that is not all, nor the half. Do you think Blondel, who is on the point, Blondel, who will and will not and on whom all must turn, Blondel the upright, the impeccable, the patriotic, without whom we can do nothing, and who, I tell you, hangs in the balance--do you think he likes it, blockhead? Or is the more inclined to trust his life with us when he sees us brawlers, toss-pots, common swillers? Do you think he on whom I am bringing to bear all the resources of this brain--this!"--and again the big man tapped his forehead with tragic earnestness--"and whom you could as much move to side with us as you could move yonder peak of the Jura from its base--do you think he will deem better of our part for this?" "Well, no." "No! No, a thousand times!" "But I count drunk the same as sober for that!" Grio cried, plucking up spirit and speaking with a gleam of defiance in his eye. "For it is my opinion that you have no more chance of moving him than I have! And so to be plain you have it, Messer Basterga. For how are you going to move him? With what? Tell me that!" "Ah!" "With money?" Grio continued with a fluency which showed he spoke on a subject to which he had given much thought. "He is rich and ten thousand crowns would not buy him. And the Grand Duke, much as he craves Geneva, will not spend over boldly." "No, I shall not move him with money." "With power and rank, then? Will the Grand Duke make him Governor of Geneva? No, for he dare not trust him. And less than that, what is it to Syndic Blondel, whose word to-day is all but law in Geneva?" "No, nor with power," Basterga answered quietly. "Is it with revenge, then? There are men I know who love revenge. But he is not of the south, and at such a risk revenge were dearly bought." "No, nor with revenge," Basterga replied. "A woman, then? For that is all that is left," Grio rejoined in triumph. Once he had spoken out, he had put himself on a level with his master; he had worsted him, or he was much mistaken. "Perhaps, from the way you have played with the little prude below, it is a woman. But they are plenty, even in Geneva, and he is rich and old." "No, nor with a woman." "Then with what?" "With this!" Basterga replied. And for the third time, drawing himself up to his full height, he tapped his brow. "Do you doubt its power?" For answer Grio shrugged his shoulders, his manner sullen and contemptuous. "You do?" "I don't see how it works, Messer Basterga," the veteran muttered. "I say not you have not good wits. You have, I grant it. But the best of wits must have their means and method. It is not by wishing and willing----" "How know you that?" "Eh?" "How know you that?" Basterga repeated with sudden energy, and he shook a massive finger before the other's eyes. "But how know you anything," he continued with disdain, as he dropped the hand again, and turned on his heel, "dolt, imbecile, rudiment that you are? Ay, and blind to boot, for it was but the other day I worked a miracle before you, and you learned nothing from it." "It is no question of miracles," the other muttered doggedly. "But of how you will persuade the Syndic Blondel to betray Geneva to Savoy!" "Is it so? Then tell me this: the girl below who smacked your face a month back because you laid a hand upon her wrist, and who would have had you put to the door the same day--how did I tame her? Can you answer me that?" Grio's face fell remarkably. "No, master," he said, nodding thoughtfully. "I grant it. I cannot. A wilder filly was never handled." "So! And yet I tamed her. And she suffers you! She's sport for us within bounds. Yet do you think she likes it when you paw her hand or lay your dirty arm about her waist, or steal a kiss? Think you the blood mounts and ebbs for nothing? Or the tears rise and the lip trembles and the limbs shake for sheer pleasure. I tell you, if eyes could slay, you had breathed your last some weeks ago." "I know," Grio answered, nodding thoughtfully. "I have wondered and wondered, ay, many a time, how you did it." "Yet I did it? You grant that?" "Yes." "And you do not understand--with what?" Grio shook his head. "Then why mistrust me now, blockhead," the other retorted, "when I say that as I charmed her, I can charm Blondel? Ay, and more easily. You know not how I did the one, nor how I shall do the other," the big man continued. "But what of that?" And in a louder voice, and with a gusto which showed how genuine was his delight in the metre, "Pauci quos æquus amavit Jupiter aut ardens evexit ad æthera virtus Dis geniti potuere," he mouthed. "But that," he added, looking scornfully at his confederate, "is Greek to you!" Grio's altered aspect, his crestfallen air owned the virtue of the argument if not of the citation; which he did not understand. He drew a deep breath. "Per Bacco," he said, "if you succeed in doing it, Messer Basterga----" "I shall do it," Basterga retorted, "if you do not spoil all with your drunken tricks!" Grio was silent a moment, sunk plainly in reflection. Presently his bloodshot eyes began to travel respectfully and even timidly over the objects about him. In truth the room in which he found himself was worthy of inspection, for it was no common room, either in aspect or furnishing. It boasted, it is true, none of the weird properties, the skulls and corpse-lights, dead hands, and waxen masks with which the necromancer of that day sought to impress the vulgar mind. But in place of these a multitude of objects, quaint, curious, or valuable, filled that half of the room which was farther from the fire-hearth. On the wall, flanked by a lute and some odd-looking rubrical calendars, were three or four silver discs, engraved with the signs of the Zodiac; these were hung in such a position as to catch the light which entered through the heavily leaded casement. On the window-seat below them, a pile of Plantins and Elzevirs threatened to bury a steel casket. On the table, several rolls of vellum and papyrus, peeping from metal cylinders, leant against a row of brass-bound folios. A handsome fur covering masked the truckle-bed, but this, too, bore its share of books, as did two or three long trunks covered with stamped and gilded leather which stood against the wall and were so long that the ladies of the day had the credit of hiding their gallants in them. On stools lay more books, and yet more books, with a medley of other things: a silver flagon, and some weapons, a chess-board, an enamelled triptych and the like. In a word, this half of the room wore the aspect of a library, low-roofed, dark and richly furnished. The other half, partly divided from it by a curtain, struck the eye differently. A stove of peculiar fashion, equipped with a powerful bellows, cumbered the hearth; before this on a long table were ranged a profusion of phials and retorts, glass vessels of odd shapes, and earthen pots. Crucibles and alembics stood in the ashes before the stove, and on a sideboard placed under the window were scattered a set of silver scales, a chemist's mask, and a number of similar objects. Cards bearing abstruse calculations hung everywhere on the walls; and over the fireplace, inscribed in gold and black letters, the Greek word "EUREKA" was conspicuous. The existence of such a room in the quiet house in the Corraterie was little suspected by the neighbours, and if known would have struck them with amazement. To Grio its aspect was familiar: but in this case familiarity had not removed his awe of the unknown and the magical. He looked about him now, and after a pause:-- "I suppose you do it--with these," he murmured, and with an almost imperceptible shiver he pointed to the crucibles. "With those?" Basterga exclaimed, and had the other ascribed supernatural virtues to the cinders or the bellows he could not have thrown greater scorn into his words. "Do you think I ply this base mechanic art for aught but to profit by the ignorance of the vulgar? Or think by pots and pans and mixing vile substances to make this, which by nature is this, into that which by nature it is not! I, a scholar? A scholar? No, I tell you, there was never alchemist yet could transmute but one thing--poor into rich, rich into poor!" "But," Grio murmured with a look and in a voice of disappointment, "is not that the true transmutation which a thousand have died seeking, and one here and there, it is rumoured, has found? From lead to gold, Messer Basterga?" "Ay, but the lead is the poor alchemist, who gets gold from his patron by his trick. And the gold is the poor fool who finds him in his living, and being sucked, turns to lead! There you have your transmutation." "Yet----" "There is no yet!" "But Agrippa," Grio persisted, "Cornelius Agrippa, who sojourned here in Geneva and of whom, master, you speak daily--was he not a learned man?" "Ay, even as I am!" Cæsar Basterga answered, swelling visibly with pride. "But constrained, even as I am, to ply the baser trade and stoop to that we see and touch and smell! Faugh! What lot more cursed than to quit the pure ether of Latinity for the lower region of matter? And in place of cultivating the _literæ humaniores_, which is the true cultivation of the mind, and sets a man, mark you, on a level with princes, to stoop to handle virgin milk and dragon's blood, as they style their vile mixtures; or else grope in dead men's bodies for the thing which killed them. Which is a pure handicraft and cheirergon, unworthy a scholar, who stoops of right to naught but the goose-quill!" "And yet, master, by these same things----" "Men grow rich," Basterga continued with a sneer, "and get power? Ay, and the bastard sits in the chair of the legitimate; and pure learning goes bare while the seekers after the Stone and the Elixir (who, in these days are descending to invent even lesser things and smaller advantages that in the learned tongues have not so much as names) grow in princes' favour and draw on their treasuries! But what says Seneca? 'It is not the office of Philosophy to teach men to use their hands. The object of her lessons is to form the soul and the taste.' And Aldus Manucius, vir doctissimus, magister noster," here he raised his hand to his head as if he would uncover, "says also the same, but in a Latinity more pure and translucent, as is his custom." Grio scratched his head. The other's vehemence, whether he sneered or praised, flew high above his dull understanding. He had his share of the reverence for learning which marked the ignorant of that age: but to what better end, he pondered stupidly, could learning be directed than to the discovery of that which must make its owner the most enviable of mortals, the master of wealth and youth and pleasure! It was not to this, however, that he directed his objection: the _argumentum ad hominem_ came more easily to him. "But you do this?" he said, pointing to the paraphernalia about the stove. "Ay," Basterga rejoined with vehemence. "And why, my friend? Because the noble rewards and the consideration which former times bestowed on learning are to-day diverted to baser pursuits! Erasmus was the friend of princes, and the correspondent of kings. Della Scala was the companion of an emperor; Morus, the Englishman, was the right arm of a king. And I, Cæsar Basterga of Padua, bred in the pure Latinity of our Master Manucius, yield to none of these. Yet am I, if I would live, forced to stoop 'ad vulgus captandum!' I must kneel that I may rise! I must wade through the mire of this base pursuit that I may reach the firm ground of wealth and learned ease. But think you that I am the dupe of the art wherewith I dupe others? Or, that once I have my foot on firm ground I will stoop again to the things of matter and sense? No, by Hercules!" the big man continued, his eye kindling, his form dilating. "This scheme once successful, this feat that should supply me for life, once performed, Cæsar Basterga of Padua will know how to add, to those laurels which he has already gained, The bays of Scala and the wreath of More, Erasmus' palm and that which Lipsius wore." And in a kind of frenzy of enthusiasm the scholar fell to pacing the floor, now mouthing hexameters, now spurning with his foot a pot or an alembic which had the ill-luck to lie in his path. Grio watched him, and watching him, grew only more puzzled--and more puzzled. He could have understood a moral shrinking from the enterprise on which they were both embarked--the betrayal of the city that gave them shelter. He could have understood--he had superstition enough--a moral distaste for alchemy and those practices of the black art which his mind connected with it. But this superiority of the scholar, this aloofness, not from the treachery, but from the handicraft, was beyond him. For that reason it imposed on him the more. Not the less, however, was he importunate to know wherein Basterga trusted. To rave of Scholarship and Scaliger was one thing, to bring Blondel into the plot which was to transfer Geneva to Savoy and strike the heaviest blow at the Reformed that had been struck in that generation, was another thing and one remote. The Syndic was a trifle discontented and inclined to intrigue; that was true, Grio knew it. But to parley with the Grand Duke's emissaries, and strive to get and give not, that was one thing; while to betray the town and deliver it tied and bound into the hands of its arch-enemy, was another and a far more weighty matter. One, too, to which in Grio's judgment--and in the dark lanes of life he had seen and weighed many men--the magistrate would never be brought. "Shall you need my aid with him?" he asked after a while, seeing the scholar still wrapt in thought. The question was not lacking in craft. "Your aid? With whom?" "With Messer Blondel." "Pshaw, man," Basterga answered, rousing himself from his reverie. "I had forgotten him and was thinking of that villain Scioppius and his tract against Joseph Justus. Do you know," he continued with a snort of indignation, "that in his _Hyperbolimæus_, not content with the statement that Joseph Justus left his laundress's bill at Louvain unpaid, he alleges that I--I, Cæsar Basterga of Padua--was broken on the wheel at Munster a year ago for the murder of a gentleman!" Grio turned a shade paler. "If this business miscarry," he said, "the statement may prove within a year of the mark. Or nearer, at any rate, than may please us." Basterga smiled disdainfully. "Think it not!" he answered, extending his arms and yawning with unaffected sincerity. "There was never scholar yet died on the wheel." "No?" "No, friend, no. Nor will, unless it be Scioppius, and he is unworthy of the name of scholar. No, we have our disease, and die of it, but it is not that. Nevertheless," he continued with magnanimity, "I will not deny that when Master Pert-Tongue downstairs put our names together so pat, it scared me. It scared me. For how many chances were there against such an accident? Or what room to think it an accident, when he spoke clearly with the _animus pugnandi_? No, I'll not deny he touched me home." Grio nodded grimly. "I would we were rid of him!" he growled. "The young viper! I foresee danger from him." "Possibly," Basterga replied. "Possibly. In that case measures must be taken. But I hope there may be no necessity. And now, I expect Messer Blondel in an hour, and have need, my friend, of thought and solitude before he comes. Knock at my door at eight this evening and I may have news for you." "You don't think to resolve him to-night?" Grio muttered with a look of incredulity. "It may be. I do not know. In the meantime silence, and keep sober!" "Ay, ay!" "But it is more than ay, ay!" Basterga retorted with irritation; with something of the temper, indeed, which he had betrayed at the beginning of the interview. "Scholars die otherwise, but many a broken soldier has come to the wheel! So do you have a care of it! If you do not----" "I have said I will!" Grio cried sharply. "Enough scolding, master. I've a notion you'll find your own task a little beyond your hand. See if I am not right!" he added. And with this show of temper on his side, he went out and shut the door loudly behind him. Basterga stood a few moments in thought. At length, "Dimidium facti, qui bene c[oe]pit, habet!" he muttered. And shrugging his shoulders he looked about him, judging with an artistic eye the effect which the room would have on a stranger. Apparently he was not perfectly content with it, for, stepping to one of the long trunks, he drew from it a gold chain, some medals and a jewelled dagger, and flung these carelessly on a box in a corner. He set up the alembics and pipkins which he had overturned, and here and there he opened a black-lettered folio, discovered an inch or two of crabbed Hebrew, or the corner of an illuminated script. A cameo dropped in one place, a clay figure of Minerva set up in another, completed the picture. His next proceeding was less intelligible. He unearthed from the pile of duo-decimos on the window-seat the steel casket which has been mentioned. It was about twelve inches long and as many wide; and as deep as it was broad. Wrought in high relief on the front appeared an elaborate representation of Christ healing the sick; on each end, below a massive ring, appeared a similar design. The box had an appearance of strength out of proportion to its size; and was furnished with two locks, protected and partly hidden by tiny shields. Basterga handling it gently polished it awhile with a cloth, then bearing it to the inner end of the room he set it on a bracket beside the hearth. This place was evidently made for it, for on either side of the bracket hung a steel chain and padlock; with which, and the rings, the scholar proceeded to secure the casket to the wall. This done, he stepped back and contemplated the arrangement with a smile of contemptuous amusement. "It is neither so large as the Horse of Troy," he murmured complacently, "nor so small as the Wafer that purchased Paris. It is neither so deep as hell, nor so high as heaven, nor so craftily fastened a wise man may not open it, nor so strong a fool may not smash it. But it may suffice. Messer Blondel is no Solomon, and may swallow this as well as another thing. In which event, Ave atque vale, Geneva! But here he comes. And now to cast the bait!" CHAPTER V. THE ELIXIR VITÆ. As the Syndic crossed the threshold of the scholar's room, he uncovered with an air of condescension that, do what he would, was not free from uneasiness. He had persuaded himself--he had been all the morning persuading himself--that any man might pay a visit to a learned scholar--why not? Moreover, that a magistrate in paying such a visit was but in the performance of his duty, and might plume himself accordingly on the act. Yet two things like worms in the bud would gnaw at his peace. The first was conscience: if the Syndic did not know he had reason to suspect that Basterga bore the Grand Duke's commission, and was in Geneva to further his master's ends. The second source of his uneasiness he did not acknowledge even to himself, and yet it was the more powerful: it was a suspicion--a strong suspicion, though he had met Basterga but twice--that in parleying with the scholar he was dealing with a man for whom he was no match, puff himself out as he might; and who secretly despised him. Perhaps the fact that the latter feeling ceased to vex him before he had been a minute in the room, was the best testimony to Basterga's tact we could desire. Not that the scholar was either effusive or abject. It was rather by a frank address which took equality for granted, and by an easy assumption that the visit had no importance, that he calmed Messer Blondel's nerves and soothed his pride. Presently, "If I do not the honour of my poor apartment so pressingly as some," he said, "it is out of no lack of respect, Messer Syndic. But because, having had much experience of visitors, I know that nothing fits them so well as to be left at liberty, nothing irks them so much as to be over-pressed. Here now I have some things that are thought to be curious, even in Padua, but I do not know whether they will interest you." "Manuscripts?" "Yes, manuscripts and the like. This," Basterga lifted one from the table and placed it in his visitor's hands, "is a facsimile, prepared with the utmost care, of the 'Codex Vaticanus,' the most ancient manuscript of the New Testament. Of interest in Geneva, where by the hands of your great printer, Stephens, M. de Beza has done so much to advance the knowledge of the sacred text. But you are looking at that chart?" "Yes. What is it, if it please you?" "It is a plan of the ancient city of Aurelia," Basterga replied, "which Cæsar, in the first book of his Commentaries places in Switzerland, but which, some say, should be rather in Savoy." "Indeed, Aurelia?" the Syndic muttered, turning it about. It was a plan beautifully and elaborately finished, but, like most of the plans of that day, it was without names. "Aurelia?" "Yes, Aurelia." "But I seem to--is this water?" "Yes, a lake," Basterga replied, stooping with a faint smile to the plan. "And this a river?" "Yes." "Aurelia? But--I seem to know the line of this wall, and these bastions. Why, it is--Messer Basterga," in a tone of surprise, not unmingled with anger--"you play with me! it is Geneva!" Basterga permitted his smile to become more apparent. "Oh no, Aurelia," he said lightly and almost jocosely. "Aurelia in Savoy, I assure you. Whatever it is, however, we have no need to take it to heart, Messer Blondel. Believe me, it comes from, and is not on its way to, the Grand Duke's library at Turin." The Syndic showed his displeasure by putting the map from him. "Your taste is rather for other things," Basterga continued, affecting to misunderstand the act. "This illuminated manuscript, now, may interest you? It is in characters which are probably strange to you?" "Is it Hebrew?" the Syndic muttered stiffly, his temper still asserting itself. "No, it is in the ancient Arabic character; that into which the works of Aristotle were translated as far back as the ninth century of our era. It is a curious treatise by the Arabic sage, Ibn Jasher, who was the teacher of Ibn Zohr, who was the teacher of Averroes. It was carried from Spain to Rome about the year 1000 by the learned Pope Sylvester the Second, who spoke Arabic and of whose library it formed part." "Indeed!" Blondel responded, staring at it. "It must be of great value. How came it into your possession, Messer Basterga?" Basterga opened his mouth and shut it again. "I do not think I can tell you that," he said. "It contains, I suppose, many curious things?" "Curious?" Basterga replied impulsively, "I should say so! Why, it was in that volume I found----" And there in apparent confusion he broke off. He laughed awkwardly, and then, "Well, you know," he resumed, "we students find many things interest us which would fail to touch the man of affairs". As if he wished to change the subject, he took the manuscript from the Syndic's hand and threw it carelessly on the table. Messer Blondel thought the carelessness overdone, and, his interest aroused, he followed the manuscript, he scarcely knew why, with his eyes. "I think I have heard the name of Averroes?" he said. "Was he not a physician?" "He was many things," Basterga answered negligently. "As a physician he was, I believe, rather visionary than practical. I have his _Colliget_, his most famous work in that line, but for my part, in the case of an ordinary disease, I would rather trust myself," with a shrug of contempt, "to the Grand Duke's physician." "But in the case of an extraordinary disease?" the Syndic asked shrewdly. Basterga frowned. "I meant in any disease," he said. "Did I say extraordinary?" "Yes," Messer Blondel answered stoutly. The frown had not escaped him. "But I take it, you are something of a physician yourself?" "I have studied in the school of Fallopius, the chirurgeon of Padua," the scholar answered coldly. "But I am a scholar, Messer Blondel, not a physician, much less a practitioner of the ancillary art, which I take to be but a base and mechanical handicraft." "Yet, chemistry--you pursue that?" the other rejoined with a glance at the farther table and its load of strange-looking phials and retorts. "As an amusement," Basterga replied with a gesture of haughty deprecation. "A parergon, if you please. I take it, a man may dip into the mystical writings of Paracelsus without prejudice to his Latinity; and into the cabalistic lore of the school of Cordova without losing his taste for the pure oratory of the immortal Cicero. Virgil himself, if we may believe Helinandus, gave the weight of his great name to such sports. And Cornelius Agrippa, my learned forerunner in Geneva----" "Went something farther than that!" the Syndic struck in with a meaning nod, twice repeated. "It was whispered, and more than whispered--I had it from my father--that he raised the devil here, Messer Blondel; the very same that at Louvain strangled one of Agrippa's scholars who broke in on him before he could sink through the floor." Basterga's face took on an expression of supreme scorn. "Idle tales!" he said. "Fit only for women! Surely you do not believe them, Messer Blondel?" "I?" "Yes, you, Messer Syndic." "But this, at any rate, you'll not deny," Blondel retorted eagerly, "that he discovered the Philosopher's Stone?" "And lived poor, and died no richer?" Basterga rejoined in a tone of increasing scorn. "Well, for the matter of that," the Syndic answered more slowly, "that may be explained." "How?" "They say, and you must have heard it, that the gold he made in that way turned in three days to egg-shells and parings of horn." "Yet having it three days," Basterga asked with a sneer, "might he not buy all he wanted?" "Well, I can only say that my father, who saw him more than once in the street, always told me--and I do not know any one who should have known better----" "Pshaw, Messer Blondel, you amaze me!" the scholar struck in, rising from his seat and adopting a tone at once contemptuous and dictatorial. "Do you not know," he continued, "that the Philosopher's Stone was and is but a figure of speech, which stands as some say for the perfect element in nature, or as others say for the vital principle--that vivifying power which evades and ever must evade the search of men? Do you not know that the sages whose speculations took that direction were endangered by accusations of witchcraft; and that it was to evade these and to give their researches such an aspect as would command the confidence of the vulgar, that they gave out that they were seeking either the Philosopher's Stone, which would make all men rich, or the Elixir Vitæ, which would confer immortality. Believe me, they were themselves no slaves to these expressions; nor were the initiated among their followers. But as time went on, tyros, tempted by sounds, and caught by theories of transmutation, began to interpret them literally, and, straying aside, spent their lives in the vain pursuit of wealth or youth. Poor fools!" Messer Blondel stared. Had Basterga, assailing him from a different side, broached the precise story to which, in the case of Agrippa or Albertus Magnus, the Syndic was prepared to give credence, he had certainly received the overture with suspicion if not with contempt. He had certainly been very far from staking good florins upon it. But when the experimenter in the midst of the apparatus of science, and surrounded by things which imposed on the vulgar, denied their value, and laughed at the legends of wealth and strength obtained by their means--this fact of itself went very far towards convincing him that Basterga had made a discovery and was keeping it back. The vital principle, the essential element, the final good, these were fine phrases, though they had a pagan ring. But men, the Syndic argued, did not spend money, and read much and live laborious days, merely to coin phrases. Men did not surround themselves with costly apparatus only to prove a theory that had no practical value. "He has discovered something," Blondel concluded in his mind, "if it be not the Philosopher's Stone or the Elixir of Life. I am sure he has discovered something." And with eyes grown sharp and greedy, the magistrate raked the room. The scholar stood thoughtful where he had paused, and did not seem to notice him. "Then do you mean," Blondel resumed after a while, "that all your work there"--he indicated by a nod the chemical half of the room--"has been thrown away?" "Well----" "Not quite, I think?" the Syndic said, his small eyes twinkling. "Eh, Messer Basterga, not quite? Now be candid." "Well, I would not say," Basterga answered coldly, and as it seemed unwillingly, "that I have not derived something from the researches with which I have amused my leisure. But nothing of value to the general." "Yet something of value to yourself," Blondel said, his head on one side. Basterga frowned, then shrugged his shoulders. "Well, yes," he said at length, "as it happens, I have. But a thing of no use to any one else, for the simple reason----" "That you have only enough for yourself!" The scholar looked astonished and a little offended. "I do not know how you learned that," he said curtly, "but you are right. I had no intention of telling you as much, but, as you have guessed that, I do not mind adding that it is a remedy for a disease which the most learned physicians do not pretend to cure." "A remedy?" "Yes, vital and certain." "And you discovered it?" "No, I did not discover it," Basterga replied modestly. "But the story is so long that I will ask you to excuse me." "I shall not excuse you if you do not favour me with it," the Syndic answered eagerly. As he leaned forward there was a light in his eyes that had not been in them a few minutes before. His hand, too, shook as he moved it from the arm of his chair to his knee. "Nay, but, I pray you, indulge me," he continued, in a tone anxious and almost submissive. "I shall not betray your secrets. I am no philosopher, and no physician, and, had I the will, I could make no use of your confidence." "That is true," Basterga replied. "And, after all, the matter is simple. I do not know why I should refuse to oblige you. I have said that I did not discover this remedy. That is so. But it happened that in trying, by way of amusement, certain precipitations, I obtained not that which I sought--nor had I expected," he continued, smiling, "to obtain that, for it was the Elixir of Life, which, as I have told you, does not exist--but a substance new in my experience, and which seemed to me to possess some peculiar properties. I tested it in all the ways known to me, but without benefit or enlightenment; and in the end I was about to cast it aside, when I chanced on a passage in the manuscript of Ibn Jasher--the same, in fact, that I showed you a few minutes ago." "And you found?" The Syndic's attitude as he leaned forward, with parted lips and a hand on each knee, betrayed an interest so abnormal that it was odd that Basterga did not notice it. Instead, "I found that he had made," the scholar replied quietly, "as far back as the tenth century the same experiment which I had just completed. And with the same result." "He obtained the substance?" Basterga nodded. "And discovered? What?" Blondel asked eagerly. "Its use?" "A certain use," the other replied cautiously. "Or, rather, it was not he, but an associate, called by him the Physician of Aleppo, who discovered it. This man was the pupil of the learned Rhazes, and the tutor of the equally learned Avicenna, the link, in fact, between them; but his name, for some reason, perhaps because he mixed with his practice a greater degree of mysticism than was approved by the Arabian schools of the next generation, has not come down to us. This man identified the product which had defied Ibn Jasher's tests with a substance even then considered by most to be fabulous, or to be extracted only from the horn of the unicorn if that animal existed. That it had some of the properties of the fabled substance, he proceeded to prove to the satisfaction of Ibn Jasher by curing of a certain incurable disease five persons." "No more than five?" "No." "Why?" "The substance was exhausted." Blondel gasped. "Why did he not make more?" he cried. His voice was querulous, almost savage. "The experiment," Basterga answered, "of which it was the product was costly." Blondel's face turned purple. "Costly?" he cried. "Costly? When the lives of men hung in the balance." "True," Basterga replied with a smile; "but I was about to say that, costly as it was, it was not its price which hindered the production of a further supply. The reason was more simple. He could not extract it." "Could not? But he had made it once?" "Precisely." "Then why could he not make it again?" the Syndic asked. He was genuinely, honestly angry. It was strange how much he took the matter to heart. "He could not," Basterga answered. "He repeated the process again and again, but the peculiar product, which at the first trial had resulted from the precipitation, was not obtained." "There was something lacking!" "There was something lacking," Basterga answered. "But what that was which was lacking, or how it had entered into the alembic in the first instance, could not be discovered. The sage tried the experiment under all known conditions, and particularly when the moon was in the same quarter and when the sun was in the same house. He tried it, indeed, thrice on the corresponding day of the year, but--the product did not issue." "How do you account for that?" "Probably, in the first instance, an impurity in one of the drugs introduced a foreign substance into the alembic. That chance never occurred again, as far as I can learn, until, amusing myself with the same precipitation, I--I, Cæsar Basterga of Padua," the scholar continued, not boastfully but in a tone thoughtful and almost absent, "in the last year of the last century, hit at length upon the same result." The Syndic leaned forward; his hands gripped his knees more tightly. "And you," he said, "can repeat it?" Basterga shook his head sorrowfully. "No," he said, "I cannot. Not that I have myself essayed the experiment more than thrice. I could not afford it. But a correspondent, M. de Laurens, of Paris, physician to the King, has, at the expense of a wealthy patient, spent more than fifteen thousand florins in essays. Alas, without result." The big man spoke with his eyes on the floor. Had he turned them on the Syndic he must have seen that he was greatly agitated. Beads of moisture stood on his brow, his face was red, he swallowed often and with difficulty. At length, with an effort at composure, "Possibly your product--is not, after all, the same as Ibn Jasher's?" he said. "I tested it in the same way," Basterga answered quietly. "What? By curing persons of that disease?" "Yes," Basterga rejoined. "And I would to Heaven," he continued, with the first spirt of feeling which he had allowed to escape him, "that I had held my hand after the first proof. Instead, I must needs try it again and again, and again." "For nothing?" Basterga shrugged his shoulders. "No," he said, "not for nothing." By a gesture he indicated the objects about him. "I am not a poor man now, Messer Blondel. Not for nothing, but too cheaply. And so often that I have now remaining but one portion of that substance which all the science of Padua cannot renew. One portion, only, alas!" he repeated with regret. "Enough to cure one person?" the Syndic exclaimed. "Yes." "And the disease?" Blondel rose as he spoke. "The disease?" he repeated. He extended his trembling arms to the other. No longer, even if he wished it, could Basterga feign himself blind to the agitation which shook, which almost convulsed, the Syndic's meagre frame. "The disease? Is it not that which men call the Scholar's? Is it not that? But I know it is." Basterga with something of astonishment in his face inclined his head. "And I have that disease! I!" the Syndic cried, standing before him a piteous figure. He raised his hands above his head in a gesture which challenged the compassion of gods and men. "I! In two years----" His voice failed, he could not go on. "Believe me, Messer Blondel," Basterga answered after a long and sorrowful pause, "I am grieved. Deeply grieved," he continued in a tone of feeling, "to hear this. Do the physicians give no hope?" "Sons of the Horse-Leech!" the Syndic cried, a new passion shaking him in its turn. "They give me two years! Two years! And it may be less. Less!" he cried, raising his voice. "I, who go to and fro here and there, like other men with no mark upon me! I, who walk the streets in sunshine and rain like other men! Yet, for them the sky is bright, and they have years to live. For me, one more summer, and--night! Two more years at the most--and night! And I, but fifty-eight!" The big man looked at him with eyes of compassion. "It may be," he said, after a pause, "that the physicians are wrong, Messer Blondel. I have known such a case." "They are, they shall be wrong!" Blondel replied. "For you will give me your remedy! It was God led me here to-day, it was God put it in your heart to tell me this. You will give me your remedy and I shall live! You will, will you not? Man, you can pity!" And joining his hands he made as if he would kneel at the other's feet. "You can pity, and you will?" "Alas, alas," Basterga replied, much and strongly moved. "I cannot." "Cannot?" "Cannot." The Syndic glared at him. "Why?" he cried, "Why not? If I give you----" "If you were to give me the half of your fortune," Basterga answered solemnly, "it were useless! I myself have the first symptoms of the disease." "You?" "Yes, I." The Syndic fell back in his chair. A groan broke from him that bore witness at once to the bitterness of his soul and the finality of the argument. He seemed in a moment shrunk to half his size. In a moment disease and the shadow of death clouded his features; his cheeks were leaden; his eyes, without light or understanding, conveyed no meaning to his brain. "You, too!" he muttered mechanically. "You, too!" "Yes," Basterga replied in a sorrowful voice. "I, too. No wonder I feel for you. I have not known it long, nor has it proceeded far in my case. I have even hopes, at least there are times when I have hopes, that the physicians may be mistaken." Blondel's small eyes bulged suddenly larger. "In that event?" he cried hoarsely. "In that event surely----" "Even in that event I cannot aid you," the big man answered, spreading out his hands. "I am pledged by the most solemn oath to retain the one portion I have for the use of the Grand Duke, my patron. And apart from that oath, the benefits I have received at his hand are such as to give him a claim second only to my necessity. A claim, Messer Blondel, which--I say it sorrowfully--I dare not set aside for any private feeling or private gain." Blondel rose violently, his hands clawing the air. "And I must die?" he cried, his voice thick with rage. "I must die because he _may_ be ill? Because--because----" He stopped, struggling with himself, unable, it seemed, to articulate. By-and-by it became apparent that the pause had another origin, for when he spoke he had conquered his passion. "Pardon me," he said, still hoarsely, but in a different tone--the tone of one who saw that violence could not help him. "I was forgetting myself. Life--life is sweet to all, Messer Basterga, and we cannot lightly see it pass from us. To have life within sight, to know it within this room, perhaps within reach----" "Not quite that," Basterga murmured, his eyes wandering to the steel casket, chained to the wall beside the hearth. "Still, I understand; and, believe me," he added in a tone of sympathy, "I feel for you, Messer Blondel. I feel deeply for you." "Feel?" the Syndic muttered. For an instant his eyes gleamed savagely, the veins of his temples swelled. "Feel!" "But what can I do?" Blondel could have answered, but to what advantage? What could words profit him, seeing that it was a life for a life, and that, as all that a man hath he will give for his life, so there is nothing another hath that he will take for it. Argument was useless; prayer, in view of the other's confession, beside the mark. The magistrate saw this, and made an effort to resume his dignity. "We will talk another day," he murmured, pressing his hand to his brow, "another day!" And he turned to the door. "You will not mention what I have said to you, Messer Basterga?" "Not a syllable," his host answered, as he followed him out. The abruptness of the departure did not surprise him. "Believe me, I feel for you, Messer Blondel." The Syndic acknowledged the phrase by a gesture not without pathos, and, passing out, stumbled blindly down the narrow stairs. Basterga attended him with respect to the outer door, and there they parted in silence. The magistrate, his shoulders bowed, walked slowly to the left, where, turning into the town through the inner gate, the Porte Tertasse, he disappeared. The big man waited a while, sunning himself on the steps, his face towards the ramparts. "He will come back, oh, yes, he will come back," he purred, smiling all over his large face. "For I, Cæsar Basterga, have a brain. And 'tis better a brain than thews and sinews, gold or lands, seeing that it has all these at command when I need them. The fish is hooked. It will be strange if I do not land him before the year is out. But the bribe to his physician--it was a happy thought: a happy thought of this brain of Cæsar Basterga, graduate of Padua, _viri valde periti, doctissimique_!" CHAPTER VI. TO TAKE OR LEAVE. The house in the Corraterie, near the Porte Tertasse, differed in no outward respect from its neighbours. The same row of chestnut trees darkened its lower windows, the same breezy view of the Rhone meadows, the sloping vineyards and the far-off Jura lightened its upper rooms. A kindred life, a life apparently as quiet and demure, moved within its walls. Yet was the house a house apart. Silently and secretly, it had absorbed and sucked and drawn into itself the hearts and souls and minds of two men. It held for the one that which the old prize above all things in the world--life; and for the other, that which the young set above life--love. Life? The Syndic did not doubt; the bait had been dangled before his eyes with too much cunning, too much skill. In a casket, in a room in that house in the Corraterie, his life lay hidden; his life, and he could not come at it! His life? Was it a marvel that waking or sleeping he saw only that house, and that room, and that casket chained to the wall; that he saw at one time the four steps rising to the door, and the placid front with its three tiers of windows; at another time, the room itself with its litter of scripts and dark-bound books, and rich furnishings, and phials and jars and strangely shaped alembics? Was it a marvel that in the dreams of the night the sick man toiled up and up and up the narrow staircase, of which every point remained fixed in his mind; or that waking, whatever his task, or wherever he might be, alone or in company, in his parlour or in the Town House, he still fell a-dreaming of the room and the box--the room and the box that held his life? Had this been the worst! But it was not. There were times, bitter times, dark hours, when the pains were upon him, and he saw his fate clear before him; for he had known men die of the disease which held him in its clutches, and he knew how they had died. And then he must needs lock himself into his room that other eyes might not witness the passionate fits of revolt, of rage and horror, and weak weeping, into which the knowledge cast him. And out of which he presently came back to--_the house_. His life lay there, in that room, in that house, and he could not come at it! He could not come at it! But he would! He would! It issued in that always; in some plan or scheme for gaining possession of the philtre. Some of the plans that occurred to him were wild and desperate; dangerous and hopeless on the face of them. Others were merely violent; others again, of which craft was the mainspring, held out a prospect of success. For a whole day the notion of arresting Basterga on a charge of treason, and seizing the steel casket together with his papers, was uppermost. It seemed feasible, and was feasible; nay, it was more than feasible, it was easy; for already there were rumours of the man abroad, and his name had been mentioned at the council table. The Syndic had only to give the word, and the arrest would be made, the search instituted, the papers and casket seized. Nay, if he did not give the word, it was possible that others might. But when he thought of that step, that irrevocable step, he knew that he would not have the courage to take it. For if Basterga had so much as two minutes' notice, if his ear so much as caught the tread of those who came to take him, he might, in pure malignity, pour the medicine on the floor, or he might so hide it as to defy search. And at the thought--at the thought of the destruction of that wherein lay his only chance of life, his only hope of seeing the sun and feeling again the balmy breath of spring, the Syndic trembled and shook and sweated with rage and fear. No, he would not have the courage. He would not dare. For a week and more after the thought occurred to him, he dared not approach the scholar's lodging, or be seen in the neighbourhood, so great was his fear of arousing Basterga's suspicions and setting him on his guard. At the end of a fortnight or so, the choice of ways was presented to him in a concrete form; and with an abruptness which placed him on the edge of perplexity. It was at a morning meeting of the smaller council. The day was dull, the chamber warm, the business to be transacted monotonous; and Blondel, far from well and interested in one thing only--beside which the most important affairs of Geneva seemed small as the doings of an ant-hill viewed through a glass--had fallen asleep, or nearly asleep. Naturally a restless and wakeful man, of thin habit and nervous temperament, he had never done such a thing before: and it was unfortunate that he succumbed on this occasion, for while he drowsed the current of business changed. The debate grew serious, even vital. Finally he awoke to the knowledge of place and time with a name ringing in his ears; a name so fixed in his waking thoughts that, before he knew where he was or what he was doing, he repeated it in a tone that drew all eyes upon him. "Basterga!" Some knew he had slept and smiled; more had not noticed it, and turned, struck by the strange tone in which he echoed the name. Fabri, the First Syndic, who sat two places from him, and had just taken a letter from the secretary, leaned forward so as to view him. "Ay, Basterga," he said, "an Italian, I take it. Do you know him, Messer Blondel?" He was awake now, but, confused and startled, inclined to believe that he was on his trial; and that the faint parleyings with treason, small things hard to define, to which he had stooped, were known. Mechanically, to gain time, he repeated the name: "Basterga?" "Yes," Fabri repeated. "Do you know him?" "Cæsar Basterga, is it?" "That is his name." He was himself now, though his nerves still shook; himself so far as he could be, while ignorant of what had passed, and how he came to be challenged. "Yes, I know him," he said slowly, "if you mean a Paduan, a scholar of some note, I believe. Who applied to me--I dare say it would be six weeks back--for a licence to stay a while in the town." "Which you granted?" "In the usual course. He had letters from"--Blondel shrugged his shoulders--"I forget from whom. What of him?" with a steady look at Baudichon the councillor, his life-long rival, and the quarter whence if trouble were brewing it was to be expected. "What of him?" he repeated, throwing himself back in his chair, and tapping the table with his fingers. "This," Fabri answered, waving the letter which he had in his hands. "But I do not know what that is," Blondel replied coolly. "I am afraid"--he looked at his neighbour on either side--"was I asleep?" "I fear so," said one, while the other smiled. They were his very good friends and allies. "Well, it is not like me. I can say that I am not often," with a keen look at Baudichon, "caught napping! And now, M. Fabri," he continued with his usual practical air, "I have delayed the business long enough. What is it? And what is that?" He pointed to the letter in the First Syndic's hands. "Well, it is really your affair in the main," Fabri answered, "since as Fourth Syndic you are responsible for the guard and the city's safety; and ours afterwards. It is a warning," he continued, his eyes reverting to the page before him, "from our secret agent in Turin, whose name I need not mention"--Blondel nodded--"informing us of a fresh attempt to be made on the city before Christmas; by means of rafts formed of hurdles and capable of transporting whole companies of soldiers. These he has seen tried in the River Po, and they performed the work. Having reached the walls by their means the assailants are to mount by ladders which are being made to fit into one another. They are covered with black cloth, and can be laid against the wall without noise. It sounds--circumstantial?" Fabri commented, breaking off and looking at Blondel. The Syndic nodded thoughtfully. "Yes," he said, "I think so. I think also," he continued, "that with the aid of my friend, Captain Blandano, I shall be able to give a good account of the rafts and the ladders." Baudichon the councillor interposed. "But that is not all," he muttered, rolling ponderously in his chair as he spoke. He was a stout man with a double chin and a weighty manner; honest, but slow, and the spokesman of the more wealthy burghers. His neighbour Petitot, a man of singular appearance, lean, with a long thin drooping nose, commonly supported him. Petitot, who bore the nickname of "the Inquisitor," represented the Venerable Company of Pastors, and was viewed with especial distaste by the turbulent spirits whom the war had left in the city, as well as by the lower ranks, who upheld Blondel. In sense and vigour the Fourth Syndic was more than a match for the two precisians: but honesty of purpose has a weight of its own that slowly makes itself felt. "That is not all," Baudichon repeated after a glance at his neighbour and ally Petitot, "I want to know----" "One moment, M. Baudichon, if you please," Fabri said, cutting him short, amid a partial titter; the phrase "I want to know" was so often on the councillor's lips that it had become ridiculous. "One moment; as you say, that is not all. The writer proceeds to warn us that the Grand Duke's lieutenant, M. d'Albigny, has taken a house on the Italian side of the frontier, and is there constructing a huge petard on wheels which is to be dragged up to the gate----" "With the ladders and rafts?" "They seem to belong to another scheme," Fabri said, as he turned back and conned the letter afresh. "With M. d'Albigny at the bottom of both?" "Yes." "Well, if he be not more successful with this," Blondel answered contemptuously, "than he was with the attempt to mine the Arsenal--which ended in supplying us with two or three casks of powder--I think Captain Blandano and I may deal with him." A murmur of assent approved the boast; but it did not proceed from all. There were men at the table who had children, who had wives, who had daughters, whose faces were grave. Just thirty years had passed over the world since the horrors of the massacre of St. Bartholomew--to be speedily followed by the sack of Antwerp--had paled the cheek of Europe. Just thirty years were to elapse and the sack of Magdeburg was to prove a match and more than a match for both in horror and cruelty. That the Papists, if they entered, would deal more gently with Geneva, the head and front of offence, or extend to the Mother of Heretics mercy which they had refused to her children, these men did not believe. The presence of an enemy ever lurking within a league of their gates, ever threatening them by night and by day, had shaken their nerves. They feared everything, they feared always. In fitful sleep, in the small hours, they heard their doors smashed in; their dreams were disturbed by cries and shrieks, by the din of bells, and the clash of weapons. To these men Blondel seemed over confident. But no one took on himself to gainsay him in his particular province, the superintendence of the guard; and though Baudichon sighed and Petitot shook his head, the word was left with him. "Is that all, Messer Fabri?" he asked. "Yes, if we lay it to heart." "But I want to know," Baudichon struck in, puffing pompously, "what is to be done about--Basterga." "Basterga? To be sure I was forgetting him," Fabri answered. "What is to be done? What do you say, Messer Blondel? What are we to do about him?" "I will tell you if you will tell me what the point is that touches him. You forget, Messer Syndic"--with a somewhat sickly smile--"that I was asleep." "The letter," Fabri replied, returning to it, "touches him seriously. It asserts that a person of that name is here in the Grand Duke's interest, that he is in the secret of these plots, and that we should do well to expel him, if we do not seize and imprison him." "And you want to know----" "I want to know," Baudichon answered, rolling in his chair as was his habit when delivering himself, "what you know of him, Messer Blondel." Blondel turned rudely on him, perhaps to hide a slight ebb of colour from his cheeks. "What I know?" he said. "Ay, ay." "No more than you know!" "But," Petitot retorted in his dry, thin voice, "it was you, Messer Blondel, not Messer Baudichon, who gave him permission to reside in the town." "And I want to know," Baudichon chimed in remorselessly, "what credentials he had. That is what I want to know!" "Credentials? Oh, something formal! I don't know what," Blondel replied rudely. He looked to the secretary who sat at the foot of the table. "Do you know?" he asked. "No, Messer Syndic," the man replied. "I remember that a licence was granted to him in the name of Cæsar Basterga, graduate of Padua; and doubtless--for licences to reside are not granted without such--he had letters, but I do not recall from whom. They would be returned to him with the licence." "And that is all," Petitot said, his long nose drooping, his inquisitive eyes looking over his glasses, "that you know about him, Messer Blondel?" Did they know anything, and, if so, what did they know? Blondel hesitated. This persistence, this continual harping on one point, began to alarm him. But he carried it bravely. "Do you mean as to his convictions?" he asked with a sneer. "No, I mean at all!" "I want to know," Baudichon added--the parrot phrase began to carry to Blondel's ears the note of fate--"what you know about him." This time a pause betrayed Blondel's hesitation. Should he admit that he had been to Basterga's lodging; or dared he deny a fact that might imply an intimacy greater than he had acknowledged? A faint perspiration rose on his brow as he decided that he dare not. "I know that he lives in a house in the Corraterie," he answered, "a house beside the Porte Tertasse, and that he is a scholar--I believe of some repute. I know so much," he continued boldly, "because he wrote to thank me for the licence, and, by way of acknowledgment, invited me to visit his lodging to view a rare manuscript of the Scriptures. I did so, and remained a few minutes with him. That is all I know of him. I suppose," with a grim look at Baudichon and the Inquisitor, who had exchanged meaning glances, "it is not alleged that I am in the plot with him? Or that he has confided to me the Grand Duke's plans?" Fabri laughed heartily at the notion, and the laugh, which was echoed by four-fifths of those at the table, cleared the air. Petitot, it is true, limited himself to a smile, and Baudichon shrugged his shoulders. But for the moment the challenge silenced them. The game passed to Blondel's hands, and his spirits rose. "If M. Baudichon wants to know more about him," he said contemptuously, "I dare say that the information can be obtained." "The point is," Fabri answered, "what are we to do?" "As to--what?" "As to expelling him or seizing him." "Oh!" The exclamation fell from Blondel's lips before he could stay it. He saw what was coming, and the dilemma in which he was to be placed. "We have the letter before us," the First Syndic continued, "and apart from it, we know nothing for this person or against him." He looked round the table and met assenting glances. "I think, therefore, that it will be well, to leave it to Messer Blondel. He is responsible for the safety of the city, and it should be for him to say what is to be done." "Yes, yes," several voices agreed. "Leave it to Messer Blondel." "You assent to that, Messer Baudichon?" "I suppose so," the councillor muttered reluctantly. "Very good," said Fabri. "Then, Messer Blondel, it remains with you to say what is to be done." The Fourth Syndic hesitated, and with reason; had Baudichon, had the Inquisitor known the whole, they could hardly have placed him in a more awkward dilemma. If he took the course that prudence in his own interests dictated, and shielded Basterga, his action might lay him open to future criticism. If, on the other hand, he gave the word to expel or seize him, he broke at once and for ever with the man who held his last chance of life in the hollow of his hand. And yet, if he dared adopt the latter course, if he dared give the word to seize, there was a chance, and a good chance, that he would find the _remedium_ in the casket; for with a little arrangement Basterga might be arrested out of doors, or be allured to a particular place and there be set upon. But in that way lay risk; a risk that chilled the current of the Syndic's blood. There was the chance that the attempt might fail; the chance that Basterga might escape; the chance that he might have the _remedium_ about him--and destroy it; the chance that he might have hidden it. There were so many chances, in a word, that the Syndic's heart stood still as he enumerated them, and pictured the crash of his last hope of life. He could not face the risk. He could not. Though duty, though courage dictated the venture, craven fear--fear for the loss of the new-born hope that for a week had buoyed him up--carried it. Hurriedly at last, as if he feared that he might change his mind, he pronounced his decision. "I doubt the wisdom of touching him," he said. "To seize him if he be guilty proclaims our knowledge of the plot; it will be laid aside, and another, of which we may not be informed, will be hatched. But let him be watched, and it will be hard if with the knowledge we have we cannot do something more than frustrate his scheme." After an interval of silence, "Well," Fabri said, drawing a deep breath and looking round, "I believe you are right. What do you say, Messer Baudichon?" "Messer Blondel knows the man," Baudichon answered drily. "He is, therefore, the best judge." Blondel reddened. "I see you are determined to lay the responsibility on me," he cried. "The responsibility is on you already!" Petitot retorted. "You have decided. I trust it may turn out as you expect." "And as you do not expect!" "No; but you see"--and again the Inquisitor looked over his glasses--"you know the man, have been to his lodging, have conversed with him, and are the best judge what he is! I have had naught to do with him. By the way," he turned to Fabri, "he is at Mère Royaume's, is he not? Is there not a Spaniard of the name of Grio lodging there?" Blondel did not answer and the secretary looked up from his register. "An old soldier, Messer Petitot?" he said. "Yes, there is." "Perhaps you know him also, Messer Blondel?" "Yes, I know him. He served the State," Blondel answered quietly. He had winked at more than one irregularity on the part of Grio, and at the sound of the name anger gave place to caution. "I have also," he continued, "my eye upon him, as I shall have it upon Basterga. Will that satisfy you, Messer Petitot?" The councillor leaned forward. "Fac salvam Genevam!" he replied in a voice low and not quite steady. "Do that, keep Geneva safe--guard well our faith, our wives and little ones--and I care not what you do!" And he rose from his seat. The Fourth Syndic did not answer. Those few words that in a moment raised the discussion from the low level of detail on which the Inquisitor commonly wasted himself, and set it on the true plane of patriotism--for with all his faults Petitot was a patriot--silenced Blondel while they irritated and puzzled him. Why did the man assume such airs? Why talk as if he and he alone cared for Geneva? Why bear himself as if he and he alone had shed and was prepared to shed his blood for the State? Why, indeed? Blondel snarled his indignation, but made no other answer. A few minutes later, as he descended the stairs, he laughed at the momentary annoyance which he had felt. What did it matter to him, a dying man, who had the better or who the worse, who posed, or who believed in the pose? It was of moment indeed that his enemies had contrived to fix him with the responsibility of arresting Basterga, or of leaving him at large: that they had contrived to connect him with the Paduan, and made him accountable to an extent which did not please him for the man's future behaviour. But yet again what did that matter--after all? Of what moment was it--after all? He was a dying man. Was anything of moment to him except the one thing which Basterga had it in his power to grant or to withhold, to give or to deny? Nothing! Nothing! He pondered on what had passed, and wondered if he had not done foolishly. Certainly he had let slip a grand, a unique opportunity of seizing the man and of snatching the _remedium_. He had put the chance from him at the risk of future blame. Now he was of two minds about it. Of two minds: but of one mind only about another thing. As he veered this way and that in his mind, now cursing his cowardice, and now thanking God that he had not taken the irrevocable step, Opportunity That work'st our thoughts into desires, desires To resolutions, kindled in him a burning impatience to act. If he did not act, if he were not going to act, if he were not going to take some surer and safer step, he had been foolish and trebly foolish to let slip the opportunity that had been his. But he would act. For a fortnight he had abstained from visiting Basterga, and had even absented himself from the neighbourhood of the house lest the scholar's suspicions should be wakened. But to what purpose if he were not going to act? If he were not going to build on the ground so carefully prepared, to what end this wariness and this abstention? Within an hour the Syndic, long so wary, had worked himself into a fever and, rather than remain inactive, was ripe for any step, however venturesome, provided it led to the _remedium_. He had still the prudence to postpone action until night; but when darkness had fairly set in and the bell of St. Peter, inviting the townsfolk to the evening preaching, had ceased to sound--an indication that he would meet few in the streets--he cloaked himself, and, issuing forth, bent his steps across the Bourg du Four in the direction of the Corraterie. Even now he had no plan in his mind. But amid the medley of schemes that for a week had been hatching in his brain, he hoped to be guided by circumstances to that one which gave surest promise of success. Nor was his courage as deeply rooted as he fancied: the day had told on his nerves; he shivered in the breeze and started at a sound. Yet as often as he paused or hesitated, the words "A dying man! A dying man!" rang in his ears and urged him on. CHAPTER VII. A SECOND TISSOT. Messer Blondel's sagacity in forbearing completely and for so long a period the neighbourhood of Basterga proved an unpleasant surprise to one man; and that was the man most concerned. For a day or two the scholar lived in a fool's paradise, and hugging himself on certain success, anticipated with confidence the entertainment which he would derive from the antics of the fish as it played about the bait, now advancing and now retreating. He had formed a low opinion of the magistrate's astuteness, and forgetting that there is a cunning which is rudimentary and of the primitives, he entertained for some time no misgiving. But when day after day passed by and still, though more than a week had elapsed, Blondel did not appear, nor make any overture, when, watch he never so carefully in the dusk of the evening or at the quiet hours of the day, he caught no glimpse of the Syndic's lurking figure, he began to doubt. He began to fear. He began to wait about the door himself in the hope of detecting the other: and a dozen times between dawn and dark he was on his feet at the upper window, looking warily down, on the chance of seeing him in the Corraterie. At last, slowly and against his will, the fear that the fish would not bite began to take hold of him. Either the Syndic was honest, or he was patient as well as cunning. In no other way could Basterga explain his dupe's inaction. And presently, when he had almost brought himself to accept the former conclusion, on an evening something more than a week later, a thing happened that added sharpness to his anxiety. He was crossing the bridge from the Quarter of St. Gervais, when a man cloaked to the eyes slipped from the shadow of the mills, a little before him, and with a slight but unmistakable gesture of invitation proceeded in front of him without turning his head. There was mist on the face of the river that rushed in a cataract below; a steady rain was falling, and darkness itself was not far off. There were few abroad, and those were going their ways without looking behind them. A better time for a secret rendezvous could not be, and Messer Basterga's heart leapt up and his spirits rose as he followed the cloaked figure. At the end of the bridge the man turned leftwards on to a deserted wharf between two mills; Basterga followed. Near the water's edge the projecting upper floor of a granary promised shelter from the rain; under this the stranger halted, and turning, lowered with a brusque gesture his cloak from his face. Alas, the eager "Why, Messer Blondel----" that leapt to Basterga's lips died on them. He stood speechless with disappointment, choking with chagrin. The stranger noted it and laughed. "Well," he said in French, his tone dry and sarcastic, "you do not seem overpleased to see me, Monsieur Basterga! Nor am I surprised. Large promises have ever small fulfilments!" "His Highness has discovered that?" Basterga replied, in a tone no less sarcastic. For his temper was roused. The stranger's eyes flickered, as if the other's words touched a sore. "His Highness is growing impatient!" he returned, his tone somewhat warmer. "That is what he has sent me to say. He has waited long, and he bids me convey to you that if he is to wait longer he must have some security that you are likely to succeed in your design." "Or he will employ other means?" "Precisely. Had he followed my advice," the stranger continued with an air of lofty arrogance, "he would have done so long ago." "M. d'Albigny," Basterga answered, spreading out his hands with an ironical gesture, "would prefer to dig mines under the Tour du Pin near the College, and under the Porte Neuve! To smuggle fireworks into the Arsenal and the Town House; and then, on the eve of execution, to fail as utterly as he failed last time! More utterly than my plan can fail, for I shall not put Geneva on its guard--as he did! Nor set every enemy of the Grand Duke talking--as he did!" M. d'Albigny--for he it was--let drop an oath. "Are you doing anything at all?" he asked savagely, dropping the thin veil of irony that shrouded his temper. "That is the question. Are you moving?" "That will appear." "When? When, man? That is what his Highness wants to know. At present there is no appearance of anything." "No," Basterga replied with fine irony. "There is not. I know it. It is only when the fireworks are discovered and the mines opened and the engineers are flying for their lives--that there is really an appearance of something." "And that is the answer I am to carry to the Grand Duke?" d'Albigny retorted in a tone which betrayed how deeply he resented such taunts at the lips of his inferior. "That is all you have to tell him?" Basterga was silent awhile. When he spoke again, it was in a lower and more cautious tone. "No; you may tell his Highness this," he said, after glancing warily behind him. "You may tell him this. The longest night in the year is approaching. Not many weeks divide us from it. Let him give me until that night. Then let him bring his troops and ladders and the rest of it--the care whereof is your lordship's, not mine--to a part of the walls which I will indicate, and he shall find the guards withdrawn, and Geneva at his feet." "The longest night? But that is some weeks distant," d'Albigny answered in a grumbling tone. Still it was evident that he was impressed by the precision of the other's promise. "Was Rome built in a day? Or can Geneva be destroyed in a day?" Basterga retorted. "If I had my hand on it!" d'Albigny answered truculently, "the task would not take more than a day!" He was a Southern Frenchman and an ardent Catholic; an officer of high rank in the employ of Savoy; for the rest, proud, brave, and difficult. "Ay, but you have not your hand on it, M. d'Albigny!" Basterga retorted coolly. "Nor will you ever have your hand on it, without help from me." "And that is all you have to say?" "At present." "Very good," d'Albigny replied, nodding contemptuously. "If his Highness be wise----" "He is wise. At least," Basterga continued drily, "he is wiser than M. d'Albigny. He knows that it is better to wait and win, than leap and lose." "But what of the discontented you were to bring to a head?" d'Albigny retorted, remembering with relief another head of complaint, on which he had been charged to deliver himself. "The old soldiers and rufflers whom the peace has left unemployed, and with whom the man Grio was to aid you? Surely waiting will not help you with them! There should be some in Geneva who like not the rule of the Pastors and the drone of psalms and hymns! Men who, if I know them, must be on fire for a change! Come, Monsieur Basterga, is no use to be made of them?" "Ay," Basterga answered, after stepping back a pace to assure himself by a careful look that no one was remarking a colloquy which the time and the weather rendered suspicious. "Use them if you please. Let them drink and swear and raise petty riots, and keep the Syndics on their guard! It is all they are good for, M. d'Albigny; and I cannot say that aught keeps back the cause so much as Grio's friends and their line of conduct!" "So! that is your opinion, is it, Monsieur Basterga?" d'Albigny answered. "And with it I must go as I came! I am of no use here, it seems?" "Of great use presently, of none now," Basterga replied with greater respect than he had hitherto exhibited. "Frankly, M. d'Albigny, they fear you and suspect you. But if President Rochette of Chambery, who has the confidence of the Pastors, were to visit us on some pretext or other, say to settle such small matters as the peace has left in doubt, it might soothe their spirits and allay their suspicions. He, rather than M. d'Albigny, is the helper I need at present." D'Albigny grunted, but it was evident that the other's boldness impressed him. "You think, then, that they suspect us?" he said. "How should they not? Tell me that. How should they not? Rochette's task must be to lull those suspicions to sleep. In the meantime I----" "Yes?" "Will be at work," Basterga replied. He laughed drily as if it pleased him to baulk the other's curiosity. Softly he added under his breath, "Captique dolis, lacrimisque coactis, Quos neque Tydides, nec Larrissæus Achilles Non anni domuere decem, non mille carinæ! D'Albigny nodded. "Well, I trust you are really counting on something solid," he answered. "For you are taking a great deal upon yourself, Monsieur Basterga. I hope you understand that," he added with a searching look. "I take all on myself," the big man answered. The Frenchman was far from content, but he argued no more. He reflected a moment, considering whether he had forgotten anything: then, muttering that he would convey Basterga's views to the Grand Duke, he pulled his cloak more closely about his face, and with a curt nod of farewell, he turned on his heel and was gone. A moment, and he was lost to sight between the wooden mills and sheds which flanked the bridge on either side, and rendered it at once as narrow and as picturesque as were most of the bridges of the day. Basterga, left solitary, waited a while before he left his shelter. Satisfied at length that the coast was clear, he continued his way into the town, and thinking deeply as he went came presently to the Corraterie. It cannot be said that his meditations were of the most pleasant; and perhaps for this reason he walked slowly. When he entered the house, shaking the moisture from his cloak and cap, he found the others seated at table and well advanced in their meal. He was twenty minutes late. He was a clever man. But at times, in moments of irritation, the sense of his cleverness and of his superiority to the mass of men led him to do the thing which he had better have left undone. It was so this evening. Face to face with d'Albigny, he had put a bold face on the difficulties which surrounded him: he had let no sign of doubt or uncertainty, no word of fear respecting the outcome escape him. But the moment he found himself at liberty, the critical situation of his affairs, if the Syndic refused to take the bait, recurred to his mind, and harassed him. He had no _confidante_, no one to whom he could breathe his fears, no one to whom he could explain the situation, or with whom he could take credit for his coolness: and the curb of silence, while it exasperated his temper, augmented a hundredfold the contempt in which he held the unconscious companions among whom chance and his mission had thrown him. A spiteful desire to show that contempt sparkled in his eyes as he took his seat at the table this evening; but for a minute or two after he had begun his meal he kept silence. On a mind such as his, outward things have small effect; otherwise the cheerful homeliness of the scene must have soothed him. The lamp, telling of present autumn and approaching winter, had been lit: a wood-fire crackled pleasantly in the great fireplace and was reflected in rows of pewter plates on either dresser: a fragrant stew scented the air; all that a philosopher of the true type could have asked was at his service. But Basterga belonged rather to the fifteenth century, the century of the south, which was expiring, than to the century of the north which was opening. Splendour rather than comfort, the gorgeousness of Venice, of red-haired dames, stiff-clad in Titian velvets, of tables gleaming with silk and gold and ruby glass, rather than the plain homeliness which Geneva shared with the Dutch cities, held his mind. To-night in particular his lip curled as he looked round. To-night in particular ill-pleased and ill-content he found the place and the company well matched, the one and the other mean and contemptible! One there--Gentilis--marked the great man's mood, and, cringing, after his kind, kept his eyes low on his platter. Grio, too, knew enough to seek refuge in sullen silence. Claude alone, impatient of the constraint which descended on the party at the great man's coming, continued to talk in a raised voice. "Good soup to-night, Anne," he said cheerfully. For days past he had been using himself to speak to her easily and lightly, as if she were no more to him than to the others. She did not answer--she seldom did. But "Good?" Basterga sneered in his most cutting tone. "Ay, for schoolboys! And such as have no palate save for pap!" Claude being young took the thrust a little to heart. He returned it with a boy's impertinence. "We none of us grow thin on it," he said with a glance at the other's bulk. Basterga's eyes gleamed. "Grease and dish-washings," he exclaimed. And then, as if he knew where he could most easily wound his antagonist, he turned to the girl. "If Hebe had brought such liquor to Jupiter," he sneered, "do you think he had given her Hercules for a husband, as I shall presently give you Grio? Ha! You flush at the prospect, do you? You colour and tremble," he continued mockingly, "as if it were the wedding-day. You'll sleep little to-night, I see, for thinking of your Hercules!" With grim irony he pointed to his loutish companion, whose gross purple face seemed the coarser for the small peaked beard that, after the fashion of the day, adorned his lower lip. "Hercules, do I call him? Adonis rather." "Why not Bacchus?" Claude muttered, his eyes on his plate. In spite of the strongest resolutions, he could not keep silence. "Bacchus? And why, boy?" frowning darkly. "He were better bestowed on a tun of wine," the youth retorted, without looking up. "That you might take his place, I suppose?" Basterga retorted swiftly. "What say you, girl? Will you have him?" And when she did not answer, "Bread, do you hear?" he cried harshly and imperiously. "Bread, I say!" And having forced her to come within reach to serve him, "What do you say to it?" he continued, his hand on the trencher, his eyes on her face. "Answer me, girl, will you have him?" She did not answer, but that which he had quite falsely attributed to her before, a blush, slowly and painfully darkened her cheeks and neck. He seized her brutally by the chin, and forced her to raise her face. "Blushing, I see?" he continued. "Blushing, blushing, eh? So it is for him you thrill, and lie awake, and dream of kisses, is it? For this new youth and not for Grio? Nay, struggle not! Wrest not yourself away! Let Grio, too, see you!" Claude, his back to the scene, drove his nails into the palms of his hands. He would not turn. He would not, he dared not see what was passing, or how they were handling her, lest the fury in his breast sweep all away, and he rise up and disobey her! When a movement told him that Basterga had released her--with a last ugly taunt aimed as much at him as at her--he still sat bearing it, curbing, drilling, compelling himself to be silent. Ay, and still to be silent, though the voice that so cruelly wounded her was scarcely mute before it began again. "Tissot, indeed!" Basterga cried in the same tone of bitter jeering. "A fig for Tissot! No more shall we Upon his viler metal test our purest pure, And see him transmutations three endure! And why? Because a mightier than Tissot is here! Because," with a coarse laugh, "Our stone angelical whereby All secret potencies to light are brought has itself suffered a transmutation! A transmutation do I say! Rather an eclipse, a darkening! He, whom matrons for their maidens fear, has come, has seen, has conquered! And we poor mortals bow before him." Still Claude, his face burning, his ears tingling, put force upon himself and sat mute, his eyes on the board. He would not look round, he would not acknowledge what was passing. Basterga's tone conveyed a meaning coarser and more offensive than the words he spoke; and Claude knew it, and knew that the girl, at whom he dared not look knew it, as she stood helpless, a butt, a target for their gloating eyes. He would not look for he remembered. He saw the scalding liquid blister the skin, saw the rounded arm quiver with pain; and remembering and seeing, he was resolved that the lesson should not be lost on him. If it was only by suffering he could serve her, he would serve her. He dared not look even at Gentilis, who sat opposite him; and who was staring in gross rapture at the girl's confusion, and the burning blushes, so long banished from her pale features. For to look at that mean mask of a man was the same thing as to strike! Unfortunately, as it happened, his silence and lack of spirit had a result which he had not foreseen. It encouraged the others to carry their brutality to greater and even greater lengths. Grio flung a gross jest in the girl's face: Basterga asked her mockingly how long she had loved. They got no answer; on which the big man asked his question again, his voice grown menacing; and still she would not answer. She had taken refuge from Grio's coarseness in the farthest corner of the hearth: where stooping over a pot, she hid her burning face. Had they gone too far at last? So far, that in despair she had made up her mind to resist? Claude wondered. He hoped that they had. Basterga, too, thought it possible; but he smiled wickedly, in the pride of his resources. He struck the table sharply with his knife-haft. "What?" he cried. "You don't answer me, girl? You withstand me, do you? To heel! To heel! Stand out in front of me, you jade, and answer me at once. There! Stand there! Do you hear?" With a mocking eye he indicated with his knife the spot that took his fancy. She hesitated a moment, scarlet revolt in her face; she hesitated for a long moment; and the lad thought that surely the time had come. But then she obeyed. She obeyed! And at that Claude at last looked up; he could look up safely now for something, even as she obeyed, had put a bridle on his rage and given him control over it. That something was doubt. Why did she comply? Why obey, endure, suffer at this man's hands that which it was a shame a woman should suffer at any man's? What was his hold over her? What was his power? Was it possible, ah, was it possible that she had done anything to give him power? Was it possible---- "Stand there!" Basterga repeated, licking his lips. He was in a cruel temper: harassed himself, he would make some one suffer. "Remember who you are, wench, and where you are! And answer me! How long have you loved him?" The face no longer burned: her blushes had sunk behind the mask of apathy, the pallid mask, hiding terror and the shame of her sex, which her face had worn before, which had become habitual to her. "I have not loved him," she answered in a low voice. "Louder!" "I have not loved him." "You do not love him?" "No." She did not look at Claude, but dully, mechanically, she stared straight before her. Grio laughed boisterously. "A dose for young Hopeful!" he cried. "Ho! Ho! How do you feel now, Master Jackanapes?" The big man smiled. "Galle, quid insanis? inquit, Tua cura Lycoris Perque nives alium perque horrida castra secuta est!" he murmured. He bowed ironically in Claude's direction. "The gentleman passes beyond the jurisdiction of the court," he said. "She will have none of him, it seems; nor we either! He is dismissed." Claude, his eyes burning, shrugged his shoulders and did not budge. If they thought to rid themselves of him by this fooling they would learn their mistake. They wished him to go: the greater reason he should stay. A little thing--the sight of a small brown hand twitching painfully, while her face and all the rest of her was still and impassive, had expelled his doubts for the time--had driven all but love and pity and burning indignation from his breast. All but these, and the memory of her lesson and her will. He had promised and he must suffer. Whether Basterga was deceived by his inaction, or of set purpose was minded to try how far they could go with him, the big man turned again to his victim. "With you, my girl," he said, "it is otherwise. The soup was bad, and you are mutinous. Two faults that must be paid for. There was something of this, I remember, when Tissot--our good Tissot, who amused us so much--first came. And we tamed you then. You paid forfeit, I think. You kissed Tissot, I think; or Tissot kissed you." "No, it was I kissed her," Gentilis said with a smirk. "She chose me." "Under compulsion," Basterga retorted drily. "Will you ransom her again?" "Willingly! But it should be two this time," Gentilis said grinning. "Being for the second offence, a double----" "Pain," quoth Basterga. "Very good. Do you hear, my girl? Go to Gentilis, and see you let him kiss you twice! And see we see and hear it. And have a care! Have a care! Or next time your modesty may not escape so easily! To him at once, and----" "No!" The cry came from Claude. He was on his feet, his face on fire. "No!" he repeated passionately. "No?" "Not while I am here! Not under compulsion," the young man cried. "Shame on you!" He turned to the others, generous wrath in his face. "Shame on you to torture a woman so--a woman alone! And you three to one!" Basterga's face grew dark. "You are right! We are three," he muttered, his hand slowly seeking a weapon in the corner behind him. "You speak truth there, we are three--to one! And----" "You maybe twenty, I will not suffer it!" the lad cried gallantly. "You may be a hundred----" But on that word, in the full tide of speech he stopped. His voice died as suddenly as it had been raised, he stammered, his whole bearing changed. He had met her eyes: he had read in them reproach, warning, rebuke. Too late he had remembered his promise. The big man leaned forward. "What may we be?" he asked. "You were going, I think, to say that we might be--that we might be----" But Claude did not answer. He was passing through a moment of such misery as he had never experienced. To give way to them now, to lower his flag before them after he had challenged them! To abandon her to them, to see her--oh, it was more than he could do, more than he could suffer! It was---- "Pray go on," Basterga sneered, "if you have not said your say. Do not think of us!" Oh, bitter! But he remembered how the scalding liquor had fallen on the tender skin. "I have said it," he muttered hoarsely. "I have said it," and by a movement of his hand, pathetic enough had any understood it, he seemed to withdraw himself and his opposition. But when, obedient to Basterga's eye, the girl moved to Gentilis' side and bent her cheek--which flamed, not by reason of Gentilis or the coming kisses, but of Claude's presence and his cry for her--he could not bear it. He could not stay and see it, though to go was to abandon her perhaps to worse treatment. He rose with a cry and snatched his cap, and tore open the door. With rage in his heart and their laughter, their mocking, triumphant laughter, in his ears, he sprang down the steps. A coward! That was what he must seem to them. A coward's part, that was the part they had seen him play. Into the darkness, into the night, what mattered whither, when such fierce anger boiled within him? Such self-contempt. What mattered whither when he knew how he had failed! Ay, failed and played the Tissot! The Tissot and the weakling! CHAPTER VIII. ON THE THRESHOLD. He hurried along the ramparts in a rage with those whom he had left, in a still greater rage with himself. He had played the Tissot with a vengeance. He had flown at them in weak passion, he had recoiled as weakly, he had left them to call him coward. Now, even now, he was fleeing from them, and they were jeering at him. Ay, jeering at him; their laughter followed him, and burned his ears. The rain that beat on his fevered face, the moist wind from the Rhone Valley below, could not wipe out _that_--the defeat and the shame. The darkness through which he hurried could not hide it from his eyes. Thus had Tissot begun, flying out at them, fleeing from them, a thing of mingled fury and weakness. He knew how they had regarded Tissot. So they now regarded him. And the girl? What shame lay on his manhood who had abandoned her, who had left her to be their sport! His rage boiled over as he thought of her, and with the rain-laden wind buffeting his brow he halted and made as if he would return. But to what end if she would not have his aid, to what end if she would not suffer him? With a furious gesture, he hurried on afresh, only to be arrested, by-and-by, at the corner of the ramparts near the Bourg du Four, by a dreadful thought. What if he had deceived himself? What if he had given back before them, not because she had willed it, not because she had looked at him, not in compliance with her wishes; but in face of the odds against him, and by virtue of some streak of cowardice latent in his nature? The more he thought of it, the more he doubted if she had looked at him; the more likely it seemed that the look had been a straw, at which his craven soul had grasped! The thought maddened him. But it was too late to return, too late to undo his act. He must have left them a full half-hour. The town was growing quiet, the sound of the evening psalms was ceasing. The rustle of the wind among the branches covered the tread of the sentries as they walked the wall between the Porte Neuve and the Mint tower; only their harsh voices as they met midway and challenged came at intervals to his ears. It must be hard on ten o'clock. Or, no, there was the bell of St. Peter's proclaiming the half-hour after nine. He was ashamed to return to the house, yet he must return; and by-and-by, reluctantly and doggedly, he set his face that way. The wind and rain had cooled his brow, but not his brain, and he was still in a fever of resentment and shame when his lagging feet brought him to the house. He passed it irresolutely once, unable to make up his mind to enter and face them. Then, cursing himself for a poltroon, he turned again and made for the door. He was within half a dozen strides of it when a dark figure detached itself from the doorway, and stumbled down the steps. Its aim seemed to be to escape, and leaping to the conclusion that it was Gentilis, and that some trick was being prepared for him, Claude sprang forward. His hand shot out, he grasped the other's neck. His wrath blazed up. "You rogue!" he said. "I'll teach you to lie in wait for me!" And shifting his grasp from the man's neck to his shoulder, he turned him round regardless of his struggles. As he did so the man's hat fell off. With amazement Claude recognised the features of the Syndic Blondel. The young man's arm fell, and he stared, open-mouthed and aghast, the passion with which he had seized the stranger whelmed in astonishment. The Syndic, on the other hand, behaved with a strange composure. Breathing rather quickly, but vouchsafing no word of explanation, he straightened the crumpled linen about his neck, and set right his coat. He was proceeding, still in silence, to pick up his hat, when Claude, anticipating the action, secured the hat and restored it to him. "Thank you," he said. And then, stiffly, "Come with me," he continued. He turned as he spoke and led the way to a spot at some distance from the house, yet within sight of the door; there he wheeled about. "I was coming to see you," he said, steadfastly confronting Claude. "Why have you not called upon me, young man, in accordance with the invitation I gave you?" Claude stared. The Syndic's matter-of-factness and the ease with which he ignored what had just passed staggered him. Perhaps after all Blondel had come for this, and had been startled while waiting at the door by the quickness of his approach. "I--I had overlooked it," he murmured, trying to accept the situation. "Then," the Syndic answered shrewdly, "I can see that you have not wanted anything." "No." "You lodge there?" Blondel continued, pointing to the house. "But I know you do. And keep late hours, I fear. You are not alone in the house, I think?" "No," Claude replied; and on a sudden, as his mind went back to the house and those in it, there leapt into it the temptation to tell all to this man, a magistrate, and appeal to him in the girl's behalf. He could not speak to a more proper person, if he sought the city through; and here was the opportunity, brought unsought, to his door. But then he had not the girl's leave to speak; could he speak without her leave? He shifted his feet, and to gain time, "No," he said slowly, "there are two or three who lodge in the house." "Is not the person with whom you quarrelled at the inn one of them?" the Syndic asked. "Eh? Is not he one?" "Yes," Claude answered; and the recollection of the scene and of the support which the Syndic had given to Grio checked the impulse to speak. Perhaps after all the girl knew best. "And a person of the name of Basterga, I think?" Claude nodded. He dared not trust himself to speak now. Could it be that a whisper of what was passing in the house had reached the magistrates? The Syndic coughed. He glanced from the distant door, now a mere blur in the obscurity, to his companion's face and back again to the door--of which he seemed reluctant to lose sight. For a moment he seemed at a loss how to proceed. When he did speak, after a long pause, it was in a dry curt tone. "It is about him I wish to hear something," he said. "I look to you as a good citizen to afford such information as the State requires. The matter is more important than you think. I ask you what you know of that man." "Messer Basterga!" "Yes." Claude stared. "I know no good," he answered, more and more surprised. "I do not like him, Messer Syndic." "But he is a learned man, I believe. He passes for such, does he not?" "Yes." "Yet you do not like him. Why?" Claude's face burned. "He puts his learning to no good use," he blurted out. "He uses it to--to torture women. If I could tell you all--all, Messer Blondel," the young man continued, in growing excitement, "you would understand me better! He gains power over people, a strange power, and abuses it." "Power? What do you mean? What kind of power?" "God knows." The Syndic stared a moment, his face expressive of contempt. This was not the line he had meant his questions to take. What did it matter to him how the man treated women? Pshaw! Then suddenly a light--as of satisfaction, or discovery--gleamed in his eyes. "Do you mean," he muttered, lowering his voice, "by sorcery?" "God knows." "By evil arts?" The young man shook his head. "I do not know," he answered, almost pettishly. "How should I? But he has a power. A secret power! I do not understand him or it!" The Syndic looked at him darkly thoughtful. "You did not know that that was said of him?" he asked. "That he----" "Has magical arts?" Claude shook his head. "Nor that he has a laboratory upstairs?" Blondel continued, fixing the young man gravely with his eyes. "A laboratory in which he reads much in unknown tongues? And speaks much when no one is present? And tries experiments with strange substances?" Claude shook his head. "No!" he said. "Never! I never heard it." He never had; but in his eyes dawned none the less a look of horror. No man in those days doubted the existence of the devilish arts at which Blondel hinted--arts by the use of which one being could make himself master of the will and person of another. No man doubted their existence: and that they were rare, were difficult, were seldom brought within a man's experience, made them only the more hateful without making them seem to the men of that day the less probable. That they were often exercised at the cost of the innocent and pure, who in this way were added to the accursed brood--few doubted this too; but the full horror of it could be known only to the man who loved, and who reverenced where he loved. Fortunately, men who never doubted the reality of witchcraft, seldom conceived of it as touching those about them; and it was only slowly that Claude took in the meaning of the Syndic's suggestion, or discerned how perfectly it accounted for a thing otherwise unaccountable--the mysterious sway which the scholar held over the young girl. But he reached, he came to that point at last; and his silence and agitation were more eloquent than words. The Syndic, who had not shot his bolt wholly at a venture--for to accuse Basterga of the black art had passed through his mind before--saw that he had hit the mark; and he pushed his advantage. "Have you noted aught," he asked, "to bear out the idea that he is given to such practices?" Claude was silent in sheer horror: horror of the thing suggested to him, horror of the punishment in which he might involve the innocent. "I don't know!" he stammered at last, and almost incoherently. "I know nothing! Don't ask me! God grant it be not so!" And he covered his face. "Amen! Amen, indeed," Blondel answered gravely. "But now for the woman, over whom you said he had power?" "I said?" "Aye, you, a minute ago! Who is she? Is she one of the household? Come, young man, you must answer me," the Syndic continued with severity proportioned to the other's hesitation. "I know much, and a little more light may enable us to act and to bring the guilty to punishment. Does she live in the house?" Only the darkness hid Claude's pallor. "There is a woman," he muttered reluctantly, "who lives in the house. But I know nothing! I have no proof! Nothing, nothing!" "But you suspect! You suspect, young man," the Syndic continued, eyeing him sternly, "and suspecting you would leave her in the clutches of the devil whose she must become, body and soul! For shame!" "But I do not believe it!" Claude cried fiercely. "I do not believe it!" "Of her?" "Of her? No! _Mon dieu!_ No! She is a child! She is innocent! Innocent as----" "The day! you would say?" the Syndic struck in, almost solemnly. "The likelier prey? The choicest are ever the devil's morsels." "And you think that she----" "God help her, if she be in his power! This man," the Syndic continued, laying his hand on the other's arm, "has ruined hundreds by his secret arts, by his foul practices, by his sorceries. He has made Venice too hot for him. In Padua they will have him no more. Genoa has driven him forth. If you doubt this character of him there is an easy proof; for it is whispered, nay, it is almost certain, in what his power lies. Do you know his room?" "No." "No?" in a tone of dismay. "But is it not on a level with yours?" "No," Claude answered, shivering; "it is over mine." "No matter, there is an easy mode of proving him," the Syndic replied; and despite himself his tone was eager. "If he be the man they say he is, there is in his room a box of steel chained to the wall. It contains the spell he uses. By means of it he can enter where he pleases, he can enslave women to his will, he----" "And you do not seize it?" Claude cried in a tone of horror. "He has the Grand Duke's protection," the Syndic answered smoothly, "and to touch him without clear proof might cause much trouble to the State." "And for that you suffer him," Claude exclaimed, his voice trembling. "You suffer him to work his will? You suffer him----" "I must follow the law," Blondel answered, shaking his head. He looked warily round; the dark ramparts were quiet. "I act but as a magistrate. Were I a mere man and knew him, as I know him now, for what he is--a foul magician weaving his spells about the young, ensnaring, with his sorceries, the souls of innocent women, corrupting--but what is it, young man?" "He is within?" "No; he left the house a minute or so before you arrived. But what is it?" Seizing the young man's arm he restrained him. "Where are you going?" "To his room!" Claude answered between his set teeth. "Be he man or devil--to his room!" "You dare?" "I dare and I will!" Resisting the Syndic's feigned efforts to hold him back, he strode towards the door. "That spell shall not be his another hour." But Blondel terrified by his sudden success, and loth, now the time was come, to put all on a cast, kept his hand on him. "Stay! Stay!" he babbled, dragging him back. "Do not be rash!" "Stay, and leave him to ruin her!" "Still, listen! Whatever you do, listen!" the Syndic answered; and insisted, clinging to him. His agitation was such, that had Claude retained his powers of observation, he must have found something strange in this anxiety. "Listen! If you find the casket, on your life touch nothing in it! On your life!" Blondel repeated, his hands clinging more tightly to the other's arm. "Bring it entire--touch nothing! If you do not promise me I will raise the alarm here and now! To open it, I warn you, is to risk all!" "I will bring it!" Claude answered, his foot on the steps, his hand on the latch. "I will bring it!" "Ay, but you do not know what hangs on it! You will bring it as you find it?" His persistence was so strange, he clung to the young man's arm with so complete an abandonment of his ordinary manner, that, with the latch half raised, Claude looked at him in wonder. "Very well, I will bring it as I find it!" he muttered. Then, notwithstanding a movement which the Syndic made to restrain him, he pushed the door. It was not locked, and, in a moment, he stood in the living-room which he had left little more than an hour before. It was untenanted, but not in darkness; a rushlight, set in an earthen vessel on the hearth, flung long shadows on the walls and ceiling, and gave to the room, so homely in its every-day aspect, a sinister look. The door of Gentilis' room was shut; probably he was asleep. That at the foot of the staircase was also shut. Claude stood a moment, frowning; then he crossed the floor towards the staircase door. But though his mind was fixed, the spell of the other's excitement told on him: the flicker of the rushlight made him start; and half-way across the room a sound at his elbow brought him up as if he had been stabbed. He turned his head, expecting to find the big man's eyes bent on him from some corner. He found instead the Syndic, who had stolen in after him, and with a dark anxious face was standing like a shadow of guilt between him and the door. The young man resented the alarm which the other had caused him. "If you are going, go," he muttered. "And if you will do it yourself, Messer Syndic, so much the better." He pointed to the door of the staircase. The Syndic recoiled, his beard wagging senilely. "No, no," he babbled. "No, I will go back." It was no longer the formal magistrate, but a frightened man who stood at Claude's elbow. And this was so clear that superstition, which is of all things the most infectious, began to shake the young man's resolution. Desperately he threw it off, and went to open the door. Then he reflected that it would be dark upstairs, he must have a light; and re-crossing the floor he brought the rushlight from the hearth. Holding it aloft he opened the creaking door and began to ascend the stairs. With every step the awe of the other world grew on him; while the shadow, which he had found at his elbow below, followed him upwards. When he paused at the head of the flight the Syndic's face was on a level with his knee, the Syndic's eyes were fixed on his. Claude did not understand this; but the man's company was welcome now; and the sight of Basterga's door, not three paces from the place where he stood, diverted his thoughts. He had not been above stairs since the day of his arrival, but he knew that Basterga's room was the nearest to the stairs. That was the door then; behind that door the Italian wrought his devilish spells! His light, smoky and wavering, cast black shadows on the walls of the passage as he moved. The air seemed heavy, laden with some strange drug; the house was still, with the stillness which precedes horror. Not many men of his time, suspecting what he suspected, would have opened that door, or at that hour of the night would have entered that room. But Claude, though he feared, though he shuddered, though unearthly terrors pressed upon him, possessed a charm that supported his courage: the memory of the scene in the room below, of the scalding drops falling on the white skin, of the girl looking at him with that face of pain. The devil was strong, but there was a stronger; and in the strength of love the young man approached the door and tried it. It was locked. Somehow the fact augmented his courage. "Where the devil is, is no need of locks," he muttered, and he felt above the door, then, stooping, groped under it. In the latter place he found the key, thrust out of sight between door and floor, where doubtless it was Basterga's custom to hide it. He drew it out, and with a grim face set it in the lock. "Quick!" muttered a voice in his ear, and turning he saw that the Syndic was trembling with eagerness. "Quick, quick! Or he may return!" Claude smiled. If he did not fear the devil he certainly did not fear Basterga. He was about to turn the key in the lock when a sound stayed his hand, ay, and rooted him to the spot. Yet it was only a laugh--but a laugh such as his ears had never caught before, a laugh full of ghastly, shrill, unearthly mirth. It rang through the passage, through the house, through the night; but whence it proceeded, whether from some being at his elbow, or from above stairs, or below, it was impossible to say; and the blood gone from his face, Claude stood, peering over his shoulder into the dark corners of the passage. Again that laugh rose, shrill, mocking, unearthly; and this time his hand fell from the lock. The Syndic, utterly unmanned, leant sweating against the wall. He called upon the name of his Maker. "My God!" he muttered. "My God!" "_There is no God!_" The words, each syllable of them clear, though spoken in a voice shrill and cracked and strange, and such as neither of them had ever heard before, were beyond doubt. Close on them followed a shriek of weird laughter, and then the blasphemy repeated in the same tone of mockery. The hair crept on Claude's head, the blood withdrew to his heart. The key which he had drawn out of the lock fell from the hand it seemed to freeze. With distended eyes he glared down the passage. The words were still in the air, the laughter echoed in his brain, the shadows cast by the shaking rushlight danced and took weird shapes. A rustling as of black wings gathered about him, unseen shapes hovered closer and closer--was it his fancy or did he hear them? He tried to disbelieve, he strove to withstand his terror; and a moment his fortitude held. Then, as the Syndic, shaking as with the palsy, tottered, with a hand on either wall down the stairs, and moaning aloud in his terror, felt his way across the room below, Claude's courage, too, gave way; not in face of that he saw, but of that which he fancied. He turned too, and with a greater show of composure, and still carrying the light, he stumbled down the stairs and into the room below. There, for an instant sense and nerve returned, and he stood. He turned even, and made as if he would re-ascend the staircase. But he had no sooner thrust his head into it, and paused an instant to listen ere he ventured, than a faint echo of the same mirthless laughter reached him, and he turned shuddering, and fled--fled out of the room, out of the house, out of the light, to the same spot under the trees whence he had started with so bold a heart a few minutes earlier. The Syndic was there before him--or no, not the Syndic, but a stricken man, clinging to a tree; seized now and again with a fresh fit of trembling. "Take me home," he babbled. "There is no hope! There is no hope. Take me home!" His house was not far off, and Claude, when he had a little recovered himself, assented, gave the tottering man his arm and supported him--he needed support--until they reached the dwelling in the Bourg du Four. Still a wreck Blondel was by this time a little more coherent. He foresaw solitude, and dreaded it; and would have had the other enter and pass the night with him. But the young man, already ashamed of his weakness, already doubting and questioning, refused, and would say no more than that he would return on the morrow. With an aspect apparently composed, he insisted on taking his leave, turned from the door and retraced his steps to the Corraterie. But when he came to the house, he lacked, brave as he was, the heart to enter; and passing it, he spent the time until daybreak, in walking up and down the rampart within hearing of the sentries. His mind grown somewhat calmer, he set himself to recall, precisely and exactly, the thing that had happened. But recall it as he might, he could not account for it. The words of blasphemy that had scorched his ears as the key entered the lock, had been uttered, he was sure, in no voice known to him; nay more, in no voice of human intonation. How could he explain them? How account for them save in one way? How defend his cowardice save on one ground? He shuddered, gazing at the house, and murmuring now a prayer, and now a word of exorcism. But the day had come, the sky was red, and the sun was near its rising before he took courage and dared to cross the threshold. CHAPTER IX. MELUSINA. Even then, with the daylight about him, he crept into the house under a weight of awe and dread. He left the door ajar that the daylight might enter with him and dispel the shadows: and when he had crossed the threshold it was with a pale and frowning face that he advanced to the middle of the floor, and stood peering round the deserted living-room. No one was stirring above or below, the house and all within it slept: the rushlight stand, its wick long extinguished, remained where he had set it down in the panic of his flight. With that exception--he eyed it darkly--no trace of the mysterious event of the night was visible. The room wore, or minute by minute assumed, its daylight aspect. Nor had he stood long gazing upon it before he breathed more freely and felt his heart lightened. What was to be thought, what could be thought in the circumstances, he was not prepared to say. But the panic of the night was gone with the darkness; and with it all thought--if in the depths he had really sunk so low--of relinquishing the woman he loved to the powers of evil. To the powers of evil! To a fate as much worse than death as the soul and the mind are higher than the body! Was he really face to face with that? Was this house, so quiet, so peaceful, so commonplace, in reality the theatre of one of those manifestations of Satan's power which were the horror of the age? His senses affirmed it, and yet he doubted. Such things were, he did not deny it. Few men of the time denied it. But presented to him, brought within his experience, they shocked him to the point of disbelief. He found that from the thing which he was prepared to admit in the general, he dissented fiercely and instinctively in the particular. What, the woman he loved! Was he to believe her delivered, soul and body, to the power of Satan? Never! All that was sane and wholesome and courageous in the man rebelled against the thought. He would not believe it. The pots and pans on the hearth, the simple implements of work and life, on which his eyes alighted wherever he turned them, and to none of which her hand was stranger, his memory of the love that was between her and her mother, his picture of the sacred life led by those two above stairs, all gave the lie to it! Her subjection to Basterga, her submission to contumely and to insult--there must be a reason for these, a natural and innocent reason could he hit on it. The strange occurrences of the night, the blasphemous words, the mocking laughter, at the worst they might not import a mastery over her. He shuddered as he recalled them, they rang in his ears and brain, the vividness of his memory of them was remarkable. But they might not have relation to her. He stood long in moody thought, but his ears never for an instant relaxed their vigil, their hearkening for he knew not what. At length he passed into his bedcloset, and cooled his hot face with water and repaired his dress. Coming out again, he found the house still quiet, the door as he had left it, the daylight pouring in through the aperture. No one was moving, he was still safe from interruption; and a curiosity to visit the passage above and learn if aught abnormal was to be seen, took possession of him. It was just possible that Basterga had not returned; that the key still lay where he had dropped it! He opened the door of the staircase and listened. He heard nothing, and he stole half-way up the flight and again stood. Still all was silent. He mounted more boldly then, and he was within four steps of the top--whence, turning his head a little, he could command the passage--when a sound arrested him. It was a sound easily explicable though it startled him; for a moment later Anne Royaume appeared at the foot of the upper flight of stairs, and moved along the passage towards him. She did not see him, and he could have escaped unnoticed, had he retired at once. But he stood fixed to the spot by something in her appearance; a something that, as she moved slowly towards him, fancying herself alone, filled him with dread, and with something worse than dread--suspicion. For if ever woman looked as if she had come from a witch's Sabbath, if ever girl, scarce more than child, walked as if she had plucked the fruit of the Tree and savoured it bitter, it was the girl before him. Despair--it seemed to him--rode her like a hag. Dejection, fear, misery, were in her whole bearing. Her eyes looked out from black hollows, her cheeks were pallid, her mouth was nerveless. Three sleepless nights, he thought, could not have changed a woman thus--no, nor thrice three; and he who had seen her last night and saw her now, gazed fascinated and bewildered, asking himself what had happened, what it meant. Alas, for answer there rose the spectre which he had been striving to lay; the spectre that had for the men of that day so appalling, so shocking a reality. Witchcraft! The word rang in his brain. Witchcraft would account for this, ay, for all; for her long submission to vile behests and viler men; for that which he had heard in this house at midnight; for that which the Syndic had whispered of Basterga; for that which he noted in her now! Would account for it; ay, but by fixing her with a guilt, not of this world, terrible, abnormal: by fixing her with a love of things vile, unspeakable, monstrous, a love that must deprive her life of all joy, all sweetness, all truth, all purity! A guilt and a love that showed her thus! But thus, for a moment only. The next she espied his face above the landing-edge, perceived that he watched her, detected, perhaps, something of his feeling. With startling abruptness her features underwent a change. Her cheeks flamed high, her eyes sparkled with resentment. "You!" she cried--and her causeless anger, her impatience of his presence, confirmed the dreadful idea he had conceived. "You!" she repeated. "How dare you come here? How dare you? What are you doing here? Your room is below. Go down, sir!" He did not move, but he met her eyes; he tried to read her soul, his own quaking. And his look, sombre and stern--for he saw a gulf opening at his feet--should have given her pause. Instead, her anger faced him down and mastered him. "Do you hear me?" she flung at him. "Do you hear me? If you have aught to say, if you are not as those others, go down! Go down, and I will hear you there!" He went down then, giving way to her, and she followed him. She closed the staircase door behind them; and that done, in the living-room with her he would have spoken. But with a glance at Gentilis' door, she silenced him, and led the way through the outer door to the open air. The hour was still early, the sun was barely risen. Save for a sentry sleeping at his post on the ramparts, there was no one within sight, and she crossed the open space to the low wall that looked down upon the Rhone. There, in a spot where the partly stripped branches which shaded the rampart hid them from the windows, she turned to him. "Now," she said--there was a smouldering fire in her eyes--"if you have aught to say to me, say it. Say it now!" He hesitated. He had had time to think, and he found the burden laid upon him heavy. "I do not know," he answered, "that I have any right to speak to you." "Right!" she cried; and let her bitterness have way in that word. "Right! Does any stay for that where I am concerned? Or ask my leave, or crave my will, sir? Right? You have the same right to flout and jeer and scorn me, the same right to watch and play the spy on me, to hearken at my door, and follow me, that they have! Ay, and the same right to bid me come and go, and answer at your will, that others have! Do you scruple a little at beginning?" she continued mockingly. "It will wear off. It will come easy by-and-by! For you are like the others!" "No!" "You are as the others! You begin as they began!" she repeated, giving the reins to her indignation. "The day you came, last night even, I thought you different. I deemed you"--she pressed her hand to her bosom as if she stilled a pain--"other than you are! I confess it. But you are their fellow. You begin as they began, by listening on stairs and at doors, by dogging me and playing eavesdropper, by hearkening to what I say and do. Right?" she repeated the word bitterly, mockingly, with fierce unhappiness. "You have the right that they have! The same right!" "Have I?" he asked slowly. His face was sombre and strangely old. "Yes!" "Then how did I gain it?" he retorted with a dark look. "How"--his tone was as gloomy as his face--"did they gain it? Or--he?" "He?" The flame was gone from her face. She trembled a little. "Yes, he--Basterga," he replied, his eyes losing no whit of the change in her. "How did he gain the right which he has handed on to others, the right to shame you, to lay hand on you, to treat you as he does? This is a free city. Women are no slaves here. What then is the secret between you and him?" Claude continued grimly. "What is your secret?" "My secret!" Her passion dwindled under his eyes, under his words. "Ay," Claude answered, "and his! His secret and yours. What is the thing between you and him?" he continued, his eyes fixed on her, "so dark, so weighty, so dangerous, you must needs for it suffer his touch, bear his look, be smooth to him though you loathe him? What is it?" "Perhaps--love," she muttered, with a forced smile. But it did not deceive him. "You loathe him!" he said. "I may have loved him--once," she faltered. "You never loved him," he retorted. All the shyness of youth, all the bashfulness of man with maiden were gone. Under the weight of that thought, that dreadful thought, he had grown old in a few minutes. His tone was hard, his manner pitiless. "You never loved him!" he repeated, the very immodesty of her excuse confirming his fears. "And I ask you, what is it? What is it that is between you and him? What is it that gives him this power over you?" "Nothing," she stammered, pale to the lips. "Nothing! And was it for nothing that you were startled when you found me upstairs? When you found me watching you five minutes ago, was it for nothing that you flamed with rage----" "You had no right to be there." "No? Yet it was an innocent thing enough--to be there," he answered. "To be there, this morning." And then, giving the words all the meaning of which his voice was capable, "To have been there last night," he continued, "were a different thing perhaps." "Were you there?" Her voice was barely audible. "I was." It was dreadful to see how she sank under that, how she cringed before him, her anger gone, her colour gone, the light fled from her eyes--eyes grown suddenly secretive. It was a minute, it seemed a minute at least, before she could frame a word, a single word. Then, "What do you know?" she whispered. But for the wall against which she leant, she must have fallen. "What do I know?" She nodded, unable to repeat the words. "I was at the door of Basterga's room last night." "Last night!" "Yes. I had the key of his room in my hand. I was putting it into the lock when I heard----" "Hush!" She stepped forward, she would have put her hand over his mouth. "Hush! Hush!" The terror of her eyes, the glance she cast behind her, echoed the word more clearly than her lips. "Hush! Hush!" He could not bear to look at her. Her voice, her terror, the very defence she had striven to make confirmed him in his worst suspicions. The thing was too certain, too apparent; in mercy to himself as well as to her, he averted his eyes. They fell on the hills on which he had gazed that morning barely a fortnight earlier, when the autumn haze had mirrored her face; and all his thoughts, his heart, his fancy had been hers, her prize, her easy capture. And now he dared not look on her face. He could not bear to see it distorted by the terrors of an evil conscience. Even her words when she spoke again jarred on him. "You knew the voice?" she whispered. "I did not know it," he answered brokenly. "I knew--whose it was." "Mine?" "Yes." He scarcely breathed the word. She did not cry "Hush!" this time, but she caught her breath; and after a moment's pause, "Still--you did not recognise it?" she murmured. "You did not know that it was my voice?" Could it be that after all she hoped to blind him? "I did not." "Thank God!" "Thank God?" He stared at her, echoing the words in his astonishment. How dared she name the sacred name? She read his thoughts. "Yes," she said hardily, "why not?" He turned on her. "Why not?" he cried. "Why not? You dare to thank Him, who last night denied Him? You dare to name His name in the light, who in the darkness----You! And you are not afraid?" "Afraid?" she repeated. There was a strange light, almost a smile he would have deemed it had he thought that possible, in her face, "Nay, perhaps; perhaps. For even the devils, we are told, believe and tremble." His jaw fell; for a moment he gazed at her in sheer bewilderment. Then, as the full import of her words and her look overwhelmed him, he turned to the wall and bowed his face on his arms. His whole being shook, his soul was sick. What was he to say to her? What was he to do? Flee from her presence as from the presence of Antichrist? Avoid her henceforth as he valued his soul? Pluck even the memory of her from his mind? Or wrestle with her, argue with her, snatch her from the foul spells and enchantments that now held her, the tool and chosen instrument of the evil one, in their fiendish grip? He felt a Churchman's horror--Protestant as he was--at the thought of a woman possessed. But for that reason, and because he was in the way of becoming a minister, was it not his duty to measure his strength with the Adversary? Alas! he could conceive of no words, no thoughts, no arguments adequate to that strife. Had he been a Papist he might have turned with hope, even with pious confidence, to the Holy Stoup, the Bell and Book and Candle, to the Relics, and hundred Exorcisms of his Church. But the colder and more abstract faith of Calvin, while it admitted the possibility of such possessions, supplied no weapons of a material kind. He groaned in his impotence, stifled by the unwholesome atmosphere of his thoughts. He dared not even ponder too long on what she was who stood beside him; nor peer too closely through the murky veil that hid her being. To do so might be to risk his soul, to become a partner in her guilt. He might conjecture what dark thoughts and dreadful aptitudes lurked behind the girl's gentle mask, he might strive to learn by what black arts she had been seduced, what power over visible things had been the price of her apostasy, what Sabbath-mark, seal and pledge of that apostasy she bore--but at what peril! At what risk of soul and body! His brain reeled, his blood raced at the thought. Such things had lately been, he knew. Had there not been a dreadful outbreak in Alsace--Alsace, the neighbour almost of Geneva--within the last few years. In Thann and Turckheim, places within a couple of days' journey of Geneva, scores had suffered for such practices; and some of these not old and ugly, but young and handsome, girls and pages of the Court and young wives! Had not the most unlikely persons confessed to practices the most dreadful? The most innocent in appearance to things unspeakable! But--with a sudden revulsion of feeling--that was in Alsace, he told himself. That was in Alsace! Such things did not happen here at men's elbows! He must have been mad to think it or dream it. And, lifting his head, he looked about him. The sun had risen higher, the rich vale of the Rhone, extended at his feet, lay bathed in air and light and brightness. The burnished hills, the brown, tilled slopes, the gleaming river, the fairness of that rare landscape clad in morning freshness, gave the lie to the suspicions he had been indulging, gave the lie, there and then, to possibilities he dared not have denied in school or pulpit. Nature spoke to his heart, and with smiling face denied the unnatural. In Bamberg and Wurzburg and Alsace, but not here! In Magdeburg, but not here! In Edinburgh, but not here! The world of beauty and light and growth on which he looked would have none of the dark devil's world of which he had been dreaming: the dark devil's world which the sophists and churchmen and the weak-witted of twoscore generations had built up! He turned and looked at her, the scales fallen from his eyes. Though she was still pale, she had recovered her composure and she met his gaze without blenching. But now, behind the passive defiance, grave rather than sullen, which she presented to his attack, the weakness, the helplessness, the heart pain of the woman were plain. He discerned them, and while he hungered for a more explicit denial, for a cry of indignant protest, for a passionate repudiation, he found some comfort in that look. And his heart spoke. "I do not believe it!" he cried impetuously, in perfect forgetfulness of the fact that he had not put his charge into words. "I do not--I will not! Only say that it is false! And I will say no more." Her answer was as cold water thrown upon him. "I will tell you nothing," she answered. "Why not? Why not?" he cried. "You ask why not," she answered slowly. "Are you so short of memory? Is it so long since, against my will and prayers, you came into yonder house--that you forget what I said and what I did? And what you promised?" "My God!" he cried in excitement. "You do not know where you stand! You do not know what perils threaten you. This is no time," he continued, holding out his hands to her in growing agitation, "for sticking on scruples or raising trifles. Tell me all!" "I will tell you nothing!" she replied with the same quiet firmness. "I have suffered. I suffer. Can you not suffer a little?" "Not blasphemy!" he said. "Not that! Tell me"--his voice, his face grew suppliant--"tell me only that it was not your voice, Anne. Tell me that it was not you who spoke! Tell me--but that." "I will tell you nothing!" she answered in the same tone. "You do not know----" "I know what it is you have in your mind!" she replied. "What it is you are thinking of me. That they will burn me in the Bourg du Four presently, as they burned the girl in Aix last year! As they burned the woman in Besançon not many months since; I have seen those who saw it. As they did to two women in Zurich--my mother was there! As they did to five hundred people in Geneva in my grandfather's time. It is that," she continued, a strange wild light in her eyes, "that you think they will do to me?" "God forbid!" he cried. "Nay, you may do it, too, if you choose," she answered, gravely regarding him. "But I do not think you will, for you are young, almost as young as I am, and, having done it, you would have many years to live and think. You would remember in those years that it was my mother who nursed your father, that it was you who came to us not we to you, that it was you who promised to aid us, not I who sought your aid! You would remember all these things of a morning when you awoke early: and this--that in the end you gave me up to the law and burned me." "God forbid!" he cried, and hid his face with his hands. The very quietness of her speech set an edge on horror. "God forbid!" "Ay, but men allow!" she answered drearily. "What if I was mad last night, and in my madness denied my Maker? I am sane to-day, but I must burn, if it be known! I must burn!" "Not by my mouth!" he cried, his brow damp with sweat. "Never, I swear it! If there be guilt, on my head be the guilt!" "You mean it? You mean that?" she said. "I do." "You will be silent?" "I will." Her lips parted, hope in her eyes shone--hope which showed how deep her despair had been. "And you will ask no questions?" she whispered. "I will ask no questions," he answered. He stifled a sigh. She drew a deep breath of relief, but she did not thank him. It was a thing for which no thanks could be given. She stood a while, sad and thoughtful, reflecting, it seemed, on what had passed; then she turned slowly and left him, crossed the open space, and entered the house, walking as one under a heavy burden. And he? He remained, troubled at one time by the yearning to follow and comfort and cherish her; cast at another into a cold sweat by the recollection of that voice in the night, and the strange ties which bound her to Basterga. Innocent, it seemed to him, that connection could not be. Based on aught but evil it could hardly be. Yet he must endure, witness, cloak it. He must wait, helpless and inactive, the issue of it. He must lie on the rack, drawn one way by love of her, drawn the other by daily and hourly suspicions, suspicions so strong and so terrible that even love could hardly cast them out. For the voice he had heard at midnight, and the horrid laughter, which greeted the words of sacrilege--were facts. And her subjection to Basterga, the man of evil past the evil name, was a fact. And her terror and her avowal were facts. He could not doubt, he could not deny them. Only--he loved her. He loved her even while he doubted her, even while he admitted that women as young and as innocent had been guilty of the blackest practices and the most evil arts. He loved her and he suffered: doubting, though he could not abandon her. The air was fresh about him, the world lay sunlit under his eyes. But the beauty of the world had not saved young and tender women, who on such mornings had walked barefoot, none comforting them, to the fiery expiation of their crimes. Perhaps--perhaps among the thousands who had witnessed their last agony, one man hidden in the crowd, had vainly closed ears and eyes, one man had died a hundred deaths in one. CHAPTER X. AUCTIO FIT: VENIT VITA. In his spacious chestnut-panelled parlour, in a high-backed oaken chair that had throned for centuries the Abbots of Bellerive, Messer Blondel sat brooding with his chin upon his breast. The chestnut-panelled parlour was new. The shields of the Cantons which formed a frieze above the panels shone brightly, the or and azure, gules and argent of their quarterings, undimmed by time or wood-smoke. The innumerable panes of the long heavily leaded windows which looked out on the Bourg du Four were still rain-proof; the light which they admitted still found something garish in the portrait of the Syndic--by Schouten--that formed the central panel of the mantelpiece. New and stately, the room had not its pair in Geneva; and dear to its owner's heart had it been a short, a very short time before. He had anticipated no more lasting pleasure, looked forward to no safer gratification for his declining years, than to sit, as he now sat, surrounded by its grandeur. In due time--not at once, lest the people take alarm or his enemies occasion--he had determined to rebuild the whole house after the same fashion. The plans of the oaken gallery, the staircase and dining-chamber, prepared by a trusty craftsman of Basle, lay at this moment in the drawer of the bureau beside his chair. 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 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 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 added, 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." "No," Basterga answered, with something of asperity and even contempt in his tone. "He does not ask thousands for it, Messer Blondel. But he asks, none the less, something you cannot give." "Money?" "No." "Then--what is it?" Blondel leant forward in growing fury. "Why do you fence with me? What is it, man?" Basterga did not answer for a moment. At length, shrugging his shoulders, and speaking between jest and earnest, "The town of Geneva," he said. "No more, no less." The Syndic started violently, then was still. But the hand which in the first instant of surprise he had raised to shield his eyes, trembled; and behind it great drops of sweat rose on his brow, and bore witness to the conflict in his breast. "You are jesting," he said presently, without removing his hand. "It is no jest," Basterga answered soberly. "You know the Grand Duke's keen desire. We have talked of it before. And were it only a matter," he shrugged his shoulders, "of the how--of ways and means in fact--there need be no impossibility, your position being what it is. But I know the feeling you entertain on the subject, Messer Blondel; and though I do not agree with you, for we look at the thing from different sides, I had no hope that you would come to it." "Never!" "No. So much so, that I had it in my mind to keep the condition to myself. But----" "Why did you not, then?" "Hope against hope," the big man answered, with a shrug and a laugh. "After all, a live dog is better than a dead lion--only you will not see it. We are ruled, the most of us, by our feelings, and die for our side without asking ourselves whether a single person would be a ducat the worse if the other side won. It is not philosophical," with another shrug. "That is all." Apparently Blondel was not listening, for "The Duke must be mad!" he ejaculated, as the other uttered his last word. "Oh no." "Mad!" the Syndic repeated harshly, his eyes still shaded by his hand. "Does he think," with bitterness, "that I am the man to run through the streets crying 'Viva Savoia!' To raise a hopeless _émeute_ at the head of the drunken ruffians who, since the war, have been the curse of the place! And be thrown into the common jail, and hurried thence to the scaffold! If he looks for that----" "He does not." "He is mad." "He does not," Basterga repeated, unmoved. "The Grand Duke is as sane as I am." "Then what does he expect?" But the big man laughed. "No, no, Messer Blondel," he said. "You push me too far. You mean nothing, and meaning nothing, all's said and done. I wish," he continued, rising to his feet, and reverting to the tone of sympathy which he had for the moment laid aside, "I wish I might endeavour to show you the thing as I see it, in a word, as a philosopher sees it, and as men of culture in all ages, rising above the prejudices of the vulgar, have seen it. For after all, as Persius says, Live while thou liv'st! for death will make us all, A name, a nothing, but an old wife's tale. But I must not," reluctantly. "I know that." The Syndic had lowered his hand; but he still sat with his eyes averted, gazing sullenly at the corner of the floor. "I knew it when I came," Basterga resumed after a pause, "and therefore I was loth to speak to you." "Yes." "You understand, I am sure?" The Syndic moved in his chair, but did not speak, and Basterga took up his cap with a sigh. "I would I had brought you better news, Messer Blondel," he said, as he rose and turned to go. "But _Cor ne edito!_ I am the happier for speaking, though I have done no good!" And with a gesture of farewell, not without its dignity, he bowed, opened the door, and went out, leaving the Syndic to his reflections. CHAPTER XI. BY THIS OR THAT. Long after Basterga, with an exultant smile and the words "I have limed him!" on his lips, had passed into the Bourg du Four and gone to his lodging, the Syndic sat frowning in his chair. From time to time a sigh deep and heart-rending, a sigh that must have melted even Petitot, even Baudichon, swelled his breast; and more than once he raised his eyes to his painted effigy over the mantel, and cast on it a look that claimed the pity of men and Heaven. Nevertheless with each sigh and glance, though sigh and glance lost no whit of their fervour, it might have been observed that his face grew brighter; and that little by little, as he reflected on what had passed, he sat more firmly and strongly in his chair. Not that he purposed buying his life at the price which Basterga had put on it. Never! But when a ship is on the lee-shore it is pleasant to know that if one anchor fails to hold there is a second, albeit a borrowed one. The knowledge steadies the nerves and enables the mind to deal more firmly with the crisis. Or--to put the image in a shape nearer to the fact--though the power to escape by a shameful surrender may sap the courage of the garrison, it may also enable it to array its defences without panic. The Syndic, for the present at least, entertained no thought of saving himself by a shameful compliance; it was indeed because the compliance was so shameful, and the impossibility of stooping to it so complete, that he sighed thus deeply, and raised eyes so piteous to his own portrait. He who stood almost in the position of Pater Patriæ to Geneva, to betray Geneva! He the father of his country to betray his country! Perish the thought! But, alas, he too must perish, unless he could hit on some other way of winning the _remedium_. Still, it is not to be gainsaid that the Syndic went about the search for this other way in a more cheerful spirit; and revolved this plan and that plan in a mind more at ease. The ominous shadow of the night, the sequent gloom of the morning were gone; in their place rode an almost giddy hopefulness to which no scheme seemed too fanciful, no plan without its promise. Betray his country! Never, never! Though, be it noted, there was small scope in the Republic for such a man as himself, and he had received and could receive but a tithe of the honour he deserved! While other men, Baudichon and Petitot for instance, to say nothing of Fabri and Du Pin, reaped where they had not sown. That, by the way; for it had naught to do with the matter in hand--the discovery of a scheme which would place the _remedium_ within his grasp. He thought awhile of the young student. He might make a second attempt to coerce him. But Claude's flat refusal to go farther with the matter, a refusal on which, up to the time of Basterga's abrupt entrance, the Syndic had made no impression, was a factor; and reluctantly, after some thought, Blondel put him out of his mind. To do the thing himself was his next idea. But the scare of the night before had given him a distaste for the house; and he shrank from the attempt with a timidity he did not understand. He held the room in abhorrence, the house in dread; and though he told himself that in the last resort--perhaps he meant the last but one--he should venture, while there was any other way he put that plan aside. And there was another way: there were others through whom the thing could be done. Grio, indeed, who had access to the room and the box, was Basterga's creature; and the Syndic dared not tamper with him. But there was a third lodger, a young fellow, of whom the inquiries he had made respecting the house had apprised him. Blondel had met Gentilis more than once, and marked him; and the lad's weak chin and shifty eyes, no less than the servility with which he saluted the magistrate had not been lost on the observer. The youth, granted he was not under Basterga's thumb, was unlikely to refuse a request backed by authority. As he reflected, the very person who was in his thoughts passed the window, moving with the shuffling gait and sidelong look which betrayed his character. The Syndic took his presence for an omen: tempted by it, he rose precipitately, seized his head-gear and cane, and hurried into the street. He glanced up and down, and saw Louis in the distance moving in the direction of the College. He followed. Three or four youths, bearing books, were hastening in the same direction through the narrow street of the Coppersmiths, and the Syndic fell in behind them. He dared not hasten over-much, for a dozen curious eyes watched him from the noisy beetle-browed stalls on either side; and presently, finding that he did not gain, he was making up his mind to await a better occasion, when Louis, abandoning a companion who had just joined him, dived into one of the brassfounders' shops. The Syndic walked on slowly, returning here and there a reverential salute. He was nearly at the gate of the College, when Louis, late and in haste, overtook him, and hurried by him. Blondel doubted an instant what he should do; doubted now the moment for action was come the wisdom of the step he had in his mind. But a feverish desire to act had seized upon him, and after a moment's hesitation he raised his voice. "Young man," he said, "a moment! Here!" Louis, not quite out of earshot, turned, found the magistrate's eye upon him, wavered, and at last came to him. He cringed low, wondering what he had done amiss. "I know your face," Blondel said, fixing him with a penetrating look. "Do you not lodge, my lad, in a house in the Corraterie? Near the Porte Tertasse?" "Yes, Messer Syndic," Louis answered, overpowered by the honour of the great man's address, and still wondering what evil was in store for him. "The Mère Royaume's?" "Yes, Messer Syndic." "Then you can do me--or rather"--with an expression of growing severity--"you can do the State a service. Step this way, and listen to me, young man!" And his asperity increased by the fear that he was taking an unwise step, he told the youth, in curt stiff sentences, such facts as he thought necessary. The young student listened thunderstruck, his mouth open, and an expression of fatuous alarm on his face. "Letters?" he muttered, when the Syndic had come to a certain point in the story he had decided to tell. "Yes, papers of importance to the State," the Syndic replied weightily, "of which it is necessary that possession should be taken as quietly as possible." "And they are----" "They are in the steel box chained to the wall of his apartment. Be it your task, young man, to bring the box and the letters unread and untouched to me. Opportunities of securing them in Messer Basterga's absence cannot but occur," he continued more benignly. "Choose one wisely, use it boldly, and the care of your fortunes will be in better hands than yours! A word to Basterga, on the other hand," Blondel continued slowly, and with a deadly look--he had not failed to notice that Louis winced at the name of Basterga--"and you will find yourself in the prison of the Two Hundred, destined to share the fate of the conspirators." The young man began to shake. "Conspirators?" he cried faintly. The word brought vividly before him the horrors of the scaffold and the wheel. "Oh, Lord! Oh, Lord! Why did I go to that house to lodge?" "Do your duty," the Syndic said, "and you need fear nothing." "But if I cannot--do it?" the youth stammered, his teeth chattering. He to penetrate to Basterga's room unbidden! He to rob the formidable man and perhaps be caught in the act! He to deceive him and meet his eye at meals! Impossible! "But if I cannot--do it?" he repeated, cowering. "The State knows no such word!" the Syndic returned grimly. "Cannot," he continued slowly, "means will not. Do your duty and fear nothing. Do it not, pause, hesitate, breathe but a syllable of that which I have told you, and you will have all to fear. All!" He saw too late that it was he himself who had all to fear; that in taking the lad before him into his confidence, he had placed himself in the hands of a craven. But he had done it. He had gone too far, moved by the foolish impulse of the moment, to retreat. His sole chance lay in showing the lad on which side danger pressed him most closely; on frightening him completely. And when Louis did not reply:-- "You do not answer me?" Blondel said in his sternest tones. "You do not reply? Am I to understand that you decline? That you refuse to perform the task which the State assigns to you? In that case be sure you will perish with those whom the Two Hundred know to be the enemies of Geneva, and for whom the rack and the wheel are at this moment prepared." "No!" Louis cried passionately; he almost fell on his knees in the open street. "No, no! I will go anywhere, do anything, Messer Syndic! I swear I will; I am no enemy! No conspirator!" "You may be no enemy. But you must show yourself a friend!" "I will! I will indeed." "And no syllable of this will pass your lips?" "As I live, Messer Syndic! Nothing! Nothing!" When he had repeated this several times with the earnestness of extreme terror, and appeared to have laid to heart such particulars as Blondel thought he should know, the Syndic dismissed him, letting him go with a last injunction to be silent and a last threat. By mere force of habit the lad would have gone forward and entered the College; but on the threshold he felt how unfit he was to meet his fellows' eyes, and he turned and hastened as fast as his trembling limbs would carry him towards his home. The streets, to his excited imagination, were full of spies; he fancied his every movement watched, his footsteps counted. If he lingered they might suppose him lukewarm, if he paused they might think him ill-affected. His speed must show his zeal. His poor little heart beat in his breast as if it would spring from it, but he did not stay nor look aside until the door of the house in the Corraterie closed behind him. Then within the house there fell upon him--alas! what a thing it is to be a coward--a new fear. The fear was not the fear of Basterga, the bully and cynic, whom he had known and fawned on and flattered; but of Basterga the dark and dangerous conspirator, of whom he now heard, ready to repay with the dagger the least attempt to penetrate his secrets! On his entrance he had flung himself face downward on his pallet in the little closet in which he slept; but at that thought he sprang up, suffocated by it; already he fancied himself in the hands of the desperadoes whom he had betrayed, already he pictured slow and lingering deaths. But again, at the remembrance of the task laid upon him, he flung himself prostrate, writhing, and cursing his fate, and shedding tears of panic. He to beard Basterga! He to betray him! Impossible! Yet if he failed, the rack and the wheel awaited him. Either way lay danger, on either side yawned torture and death. And he was a coward. He wept and shuddered, abandoning himself to a very paroxysm of terror. When his door was pushed open a minute later, he did not hear the movement; with his head buried in the pillow he did not see the face of wonder, mingled with alarm, which viewed him from the doorway. He had forgotten that it was Anne Royaume's custom to attend to the young men's rooms during their absence at the afternoon lecture; and when her voice, asking in startled accents what was amiss and if he were ill, reached his ears, he sought, with a smothered shriek, to cover his head with the bedclothes. He fancied that Basterga was upon him! "What is the matter?" she repeated, advancing slowly to the side of the bed. Then, getting no answer, she dragged the coverlet off him. "What is it? Don't you know me?" He sat up then, saw who it was and came gradually to himself, but with many sighs and tears. She stood, looking down on him with contempt. "Has some one been beating you?" she asked, and searched with hard eyes--he had been no friend to her--for signs of ill-treatment. He shook his head. "Worse," he sobbed. "Far worse! Oh, what will become of me? What will become of me? Lord, have mercy upon me! Lord, have mercy upon me!" Her lip curled. Perhaps she was comparing him with another youth who had spoken to her that morning in a different strain. "I don't think it matters much," she said scornfully, "what becomes of you." "Matters?" he exclaimed. "If you are such a coward as this! Tell me what it is. What has happened? If it is not that some one has beaten you, I don't know what it is--unless you have been doing something wrong, and they have put you out of the University? Is it that?" "No!" he cried fretfully. "Worse, worse! And do you leave me! You can do nothing! No one can do anything!" She had her own troubles, and to-day was almost sinking under them. But this was not her way of bearing them. She shrugged her shoulders contemptuously. "Very well," she said, "I will go if I can do nothing." "Do?" he cried vehemently. "What can you do?" And then, in the act of turning from him, she stood; so startling was the change, so marvellous the transformation which she saw come over his face. "Do," he repeated, trembling violently, and speaking in a tone as much altered as his expression. He rose to his feet. "Do? Perhaps you--you can do something--still. Wait. Please wait a minute! I--I was not quite myself." He passed his hand across his brow. She did not know that behind his face of frightened stupor his mind was working cunningly, following up the idea that had occurred to him. She began to think him mad. But though she held him in distaste, she had no fear of him; and even when he closed the door with a cringing air, and a look that implored indulgence, she held her ground. "Only, you need not close the door," she said coldly. "There is no one in the house except my mother." "Messer Basterga?" "He has gone out. Is it of him," in sudden enlightenment, "that you are afraid?" He nodded sullenly. "Yes," he said; and then he paused, eyeing her in doubt if he could trust her. At last, "It is, but, if you dared do it, I know how I could draw his teeth! How I could"--with the cruel grin of the coward--"squeeze him! squeeze him!" and he went through the act with his nervous, shaking fingers. "I could hold him like that! I could hold him powerless as the dog that would bite and dare not!" She stared at him. "You?" she said; it was hard to say whether incredulity or scorn were written more plainly on her face. "You?" "I! I!" he replied, with the same gesture of holding something. "And I know how to put him in your power also!" "In my power!" "Ay." Her face grew hard as if she too held her enemy passive in her grip. Then her lip curled, and she laughed in scorn. "Ay! And what must I do to bring that about? Something, I suppose, you dare not, Louis?" "Something you can do more easily than I," he answered doggedly. "A small thing, too," he continued, clasping his hands in his eagerness and looking at her with imploring eyes. "A nothing, a mere nothing!" "And yet it will do so much?" "I swear it will." "Then," she retorted, eyeing him shrewdly, "if it is so easy to do why were you undone a minute ago? And puling like a child in arms?" "Because," he said, flushing under her eyes, "it--it is not easy for me to do. And I did not see my way." "It looked like it." "But I see it now if you will help me. You have only to take a packet of letters from his room--and you go there when you please--and he is yours! While you have the letters he dare not stir hand or foot, lest you bring him to the scaffold!" "Bring him to the scaffold?" "Get the letters, give them to me, and I will answer for the rest." Louis' voice was low, but he shook with excitement. "See!" he continued, his eyes at all times prominent, almost starting from his head, "it might be done this minute. This minute!" "It might," the girl replied, watching him coldly. "But it will not be done either this minute or at all unless you tell me what is in the letters, and how you come to know about them." Should he tell her? He fancied that he had no choice. "Messer Blondel the Syndic wants the letters," he answered sullenly. And, urged farther by her expression of disbelief, he told the astonished girl the story which Blondel had told him. The fact that he believed it went far with her; why, for the rest, doubt a story so extraordinary that it seemed to bear the stamp of truth? "And that is all?" she said when he came to the end. "Is it not enough?" "It may be enough," she replied, her resolute manner in strange contrast with his cowardly haste. "Only there is a thing not clear. If the Syndic knows what is in the letters, why does he not seize them and Basterga with them--the traitor with the proof of his treason?" "Because he is afraid of the Grand Duke," Louis cried. "If he seize Basterga and miss the proof of his treason, what then?" "Then he is not sure that the letters are there?" Anne replied keenly. "He is not sure that they would be there when he came to seize them," Louis answered. "Basterga might have a dozen confederates in the house ready at a sign to destroy the letters." She nodded. "And that is what they will make us out to be," he continued, his voice sinking as his fears returned upon him. "The Syndic threatened as much; and such things have happened a hundred times. I tell you, if we do not do something, we shall suffer with him. But do it, and he is in your power! And if he has any hold on you, it is gone!" The blood surged to her face. Hold upon her? Ah! Rage--or was it hope?--lightened in her eyes and transformed her face. She was thinking, he guessed, of the hundred insults she had undergone at Basterga's hands, of the shame-compelling taunts to which she had been forced to listen, of the loathed touch she had been forced to bear. If there was aught in her mind beyond this, any motive deeper or more divine, he did not perceive it; enough, that he saw that she wavered, and he pressed her. "You will be free," he cried passionately. "Freed from him! Freed from fear of him! Say you will do it! Say that you will do it," he continued fervently, and he made as if he would kneel before her. "Do it, and I swear that never shall a word to displease you pass my lips." With a glance of scorn that pierced even his selfishness, "Swear only," she said, "that you have told me the truth! I ask no more." "I swear it on my salvation!" She drew a deep breath. "I will do it," she said. "The steel box which is chained to the wall?" "Yes, yes," he panted, "you cannot mistake it. The key----" "I know where he keeps it." She said no more, but turned, and regarding his thanks as little as if they had been the wind passing by her, she opened the door, crossed the living-room, and vanished up the staircase. He followed her as far as the foot of the stairs, and there stood listening and shifting his feet and biting his nails in an agony of suspense. She had not deigned to bid him watch for Basterga's coming, but he did so; his eyes on the outer door, through which the scholar must enter, and his tongue and feet in readiness to warn her or save himself, according as the pressure of danger directed the one or the other step. Meanwhile his ears were on the stretch to catch what she did. He heard her try the door of the room. It was locked. He heard her shake it. Then he guessed that she fetched a key, for after an interval, which seemed an age, he caught the grating of the wards in the lock. After that, she was quiet so long, that but for the apprehensions of Basterga's coming, which weighed on his coward soul, he must have gone up in sheer jealousy so see what she was doing. Not that he distrusted her. Even while he waited, and while the thing hung in the balance, he smiled to think how cleverly he had contrived it. On the side of the authorities he would gain favour by delivering the letters: on the other side, if Basterga retained power to harm, it was not he who had taken the letters, nor he who would be exposed to the first blast of vengeance--but the girl. The blame for her, the credit for him! From the nettle danger his wits had plucked the flower safety. But for his fears he could have chuckled; and then he heard her leave the room, and relock the door. With a gasp of relief, he retired a pace or two, and waited, his eyes fixed on the doorway through which she must enter. She was long in coming, and when she came his hand, extended to receive the letters, fell by his side, the whispered question died on his lips. Her face told him that she had failed. It might have told him also that she had built far more on the attempt than she had let him perceive. But what was that to him? It was enough for him that she had not the letters. He could have torn her with his hands. "Where are they? Where are they?" he cried, advancing upon her. "You have not got them?" "Got them?" And then she straightened herself, and with a passionate glance at the door, "No! And he has not come in time to take me in the act, it seems. As I have no doubt you planned, you villain! That I might be more and deeper in his power!" "No! No!" he cried, recoiling. "I never thought of it!" "Yes, yes!" she retorted. He wrung his hands. How was he to make her understand? "I swear," he cried, and he fell on his knees with uplifted hands. "I swear on my knees I thought of no such thing. The tale I told you was true! True, every word of it! And the letters----" "There are no letters!" she said. "In the box?" "None." He sprang to his feet. He shook his fist at her in low ignoble rage. "You lie!" he cried. "You have not looked. You have played with me. You have gone into the room and come out again, but you have not looked, you have not dared to look." "I have looked," she answered quietly. "In the box that is chained to the wall. There are no papers in it. There is nothing in it except a small phial." "A phial?" "Of some golden liquid." "That is all?" "All!" Louis Gentilis stared at her, open-mouthed. Had the Syndic deceived him? Or had some one deceived the Syndic? CHAPTER XII. THE CUP AND THE LIP. Blondel could not hide the agitation he felt as he listened to his unexpected visitors, and saw whither their errand tended. Fabri, who was leader of the deputation of three who had come upon him without warning, discerned this; much more Baudichon and Petitot, whose eyes were on the watch for the least sign of weakness. And Blondel was conscious that they saw it, and on that account strove the more to mask his feelings under a show of decision. "I have little doubt that I shall have news within the hour," he said. "Before night, I must have news." And nodding with the air of a man who knew much which he could not impart, he leant back in the old abbot's chair. But Fabri had not come for that, nor was he to be satisfied with that; and, after a pause, "Yes," he replied, "I know. That may be so. But you see, Messer Blondel, this affair is not quite where it was yesterday, or we should not have come to you to-day. The King of France--I am sure we are much indebted to him--does not write on light occasions, and his warning is explicit. From Paris, then, we get the same story as from Turin. And this being so, and the King's tale agreeing with our agent's----" "He does not mention Basterga!" Blondel objected. He repented the moment he had said it. "By name, no. But he says----" "Enough for any one with eyes!" Petitot exclaimed. "He says," Fabri repeated, requesting the other by a gesture to be silent, "that the Grand Duke's emissary is a Paduan expelled from Venice or from Genoa. That is near enough. And I confess, were I in your place, Messer Blondel----" "With your responsibilities," Petitot muttered through closed teeth. "I should want to know--more about him." This from Baudichon. Fabri nodded assent. "I think so," he said. "I really think so. In fact, I may go farther and say that were I in your place, Messer Blondel, I should seize him to-day." "Ay, within the hour!" "This minute!" said Baudichon, last of the three. And all three, their ultimatum delivered, looked at Blondel, a challenge in their eyes. If he stood out longer, if he still declined to take the step which prudence demanded, the step on which they were all agreed, they would know that there was something behind, something of which he had not told them. Blondel read the look, and it perturbed him. But not to the point of sapping the resolution which he had formed at the Council Table, and to which, once formed, he clung with the obstinacy of an obstinate man. The _remedium_ first; afterwards what they would, but the _remedium_ first. He was not going to risk life, warm life, the vista of sunny unending to-morrows, of springs and summers and the melting of snows, for a craze, a scare, an imaginary danger! Why at that very minute the lad whom he had commissioned to seize the thing might be on the way with it. At any minute a step might sound on the threshold, and herald the promise of life. And then--then they might deal with Basterga as they pleased. Then they might hang the Paduan high as Haman, if they pleased. But until then--his mind was made up. "I do not agree with you," he said, his underlip thrust out, his head trembling a little. "You will not arrest him?" "No, I shall not arrest him," he replied, hardening himself to meet their protestant and indignant eyes. "Nor would you," he continued with bravado, "in my place. If you knew as much as I do." "But if you know," Baudichon said, "I would like to know also." "The responsibility is mine." Blondel swayed himself from side to side in his chair as he said it. "The responsibility is mine, and I am willing to bear it. It is the old difference of policy between us," he continued, addressing Petitot. "You are willing to grasp at every petty advantage, I am willing----" "To risk much to gain much," Petitot exclaimed. "To take some risk to gain a real advantage," Blondel retorted, correcting him with an eye to Fabri; whom alone, as the one impartial hearer, he feared. "For to what does the course which you are so eager to take amount? You seize Basterga: later, you will release him at the Grand Duke's request. What are we the better? What is gained?" "Safety." "No, on the other hand, danger. Danger! For, warned that we have detected their plot, they will hatch another plot, and instead of working as at present under our eyes, they will work below the surface with augmented care and secrecy: and will, perhaps, deceive us. No, my friends"--throwing himself back in his chair with an air of patronage, almost of contempt--for by dint of repeating his argument he had come to believe it, and to plume himself upon it--"I look farther ahead than you do, and for the sake of future gain am willing to take--present responsibility." They were silent awhile: his old mastery was beginning to assert itself. Then Petitot spoke. "You take a heavy responsibility," he said, "a heavy charge, Messer Blondel. What if harm come of it?" Blondel shrugged his shoulders. "You have no wife, Messer Blondel." The Fourth Syndic stared. What did the man mean? "You have no daughters," Petitot continued, a slight quaver in his tone. "You have no little children, you sleep well of nights, the fall of wood-ash does not rouse you, you do not listen when you awake. You do not----" he paused, the last barrier of reserve broken down, the tears standing openly in his eyes--"it is foolish perhaps--you do not yearn, Messer Blondel, to take all you love in your arms, and shelter them and cover them from the horrors that threaten us, the horrors that may fall on us--any night! You do not"--he looked at Baudichon and the stout man's face grew pale, he averted his eyes--"you do not dream of these things, Messer Blondel, nor awake to fancy them, but we do. We do!" he repeated in accents which went to the hearts of all, "day and night, rising and lying down, waking and sleeping. And we--dare run no risks." In the silence which followed Blondel's fingers tapped restlessly on the table. He cleared his throat and voice. "But there, I tell you there are no risks," he said. He was moved nevertheless. Petitot bowed, humbly for him. "Very good," he said. "I do not say that you are not right. But----" "And moment by moment I expect news. It might come at this minute, it might come at any minute," the Syndic continued. With a glance at the window he moved his chair, as if to shake off the spell that Petitot had cast over him. "Besides--you do not expect the town to be taken in an hour from now?" "No." "In broad daylight?" Petitot shook his head, "God knows what I expect!" he murmured despondently. "When the information we have points to a night attack?" Fabri nodded. "That is true," he said. "And the walls are well guarded at night." Fabri nodded again. "Yes," he said, "it is true. I think, Messer Petitot," he went on, turning to him, "we are a little over-fearful." The two others were silent, and Blondel eyed them harshly, aware that he had mastered them, yet hating them. Petitot's appeal to his feelings--which had touched and moved Blondel even while he resented it as something cruel and unfair--had lacked but a little of success. But missing, failing by ever so little, it left the three ill-equipped to continue the struggle on lower grounds. They sat silent, Fabri almost convinced, the others dejected: and Blondel sat silent also, hardened by his victory, and hating them for the manner of it. Was not his life as dear to him as their wives and children were to them? And was it not at stake? Yet he did not whine and pule to them. God! they whine, they complain, who had long years to live and rose of mornings without counting the days, and, at the worst and were Geneva taken, had but the common risks to run and many a chance of escape! While he--yet he did not pule to them! He did not stab them unfairly, cruelly, striving to reach their tender spots, to take advantage of their kindness of heart. He had no thought, no notion of betraying them; but, had he such, it would serve them right! It would repay them selfishness for selfishness, greed for greed! In his place they would not hesitate. He could see at what a price they set their petty lives, and how little they would scruple to buy them in the dearest market. Well was it for Geneva that it was he and not they whom God saw fit to try. And he glowered at them. Wives and daughters! What were wives and daughters beside life, warm life, life stretching forward pleasantly, indefinitely, morning after morning, day after day--life and a continuance of good things? Immersed as he was in this train of thought, it was none the less he who first caught the sound of a foot on the threshold, and a summons at the door. He rose to his feet. Already in his mind's eye he saw Basterga cast to the lions: and why not? The sooner the better if the _remedium_ were really at the door. "There may be news even now," he said, striving to master his emotion, and to speak with the superiority of a few minutes before. "One moment, by your leave! I will see and let you know if it be so, Messer Fabri." "Do by all means," Fabri answered earnestly. "You will greatly relieve me." "Ay, indeed, I hope it is so," Petitot murmured. "I will see, and--and return," Blondel repeated, beginning to stammer. "I--I shall not be a minute." The struggle for composure was vain; his head was on fire, his limbs twitched. Had it come? Yet when he reached the door he paused, afraid to open. What if it were not the _remedium_, what if it were some trifle? What if--but as he hesitated, his hand, half eager, half reluctant, rested on the latch, the door slid ajar, and his eyes met the complacent smirking face of his messenger. He fancied that he read success in Gentilis' looks, and his heart leapt up. "I shall be back in a moment," he babbled, speaking over his shoulder to those whom he left. "In a moment, gentlemen, one moment!" And going out he closed the door behind him--closed it jealously, that they might not hear. "I hope he has news will decide him," Petitot muttered lowering his voice involuntarily. "Messer Blondel is over-courageous for me!" He shook his head dismally. "He is very courageous," Fabri assented in the same undertone. "Perhaps even--a little rash." Baudichon grunted. "Rash!" he repeated. "I would like to know what he expects? I would like to know----" A cry as of a wild beast cut short the word: a blow, a shriek of pain followed, the door flew open; as they rose to their feet in wonder, into the room fell a lad--it was Louis--a red weal across his face, his arm raised to protect his head. Close on him, his eyes flaming, his cane quivering in the air, pressed Messer Blondel. In their presence he aimed another blow at the lad: but the blow fell short, and before he could raise his stick a third time the astonished looks of the three in the room reminded him where he was, and in a measure sobered him. But he was still unable to articulate: and the poor smarting wretch cowering behind the magistrates was not more deeply or more visibly moved. "Steady, steady, Messer Blondel!" Fabri said. "I fear something untoward has happened. What is it?" And he put himself more decidedly between them. "He has ruined us!" "Not that, I hope?" "Ruined us! Ruined us!" Blondel panted, his rage almost choking him. "He had it in his hands and let it go. He let it go!" "That which you----" "That which I"--a pause--"commissioned him to get." "But you did not! Oh, worshipful gentlemen," Gentilis wailed, turning to them, "indeed, he did not tell me to bring aught but papers! I swear he did not." "Whatever was there, I said! Whatever was there!" the Syndic screamed. "No, worshipful sir!" amid a storm of sobs. "No, no! Indeed no! And how was I to know? There was naught but that in the box, and who would think treason lay in a----" "Mischief lay in it!" "In a bottle!" "And treason," Blondel thundered, drowning his last word, "for aught you knew! Who are you to judge where treason lies, or may lie? Oh, pig, dog, fool," he continued, carried away by a fresh paroxysm of rage, at the thought that he had had it in his grasp and let it go! "If I could score your back!" And he brandished his cane. "You have scored his face pretty fairly," Baudichon muttered. "To score his back too----" "Were nothing for the offence! Nothing! As you would say if you knew it," Blondel panted. "Indeed?" "Ay." "Then I would like to know it. What is it he has done?" "He has left undone that which he was ordered to do," Blondel answered more soberly than he had yet spoken. He had recovered something of his power to reason. "That is what he has done. But for his default we should at this moment be in a position to seize Basterga." "Ay?" "Ay, and to seize him with proof of his guilt! Proof and to spare." "But I could not know," Louis whimpered. "Worshipful gentlemen, I could not know. I could not know what it was you wanted." "I told you to bring the contents of the box." "Letters, ay! Letters, worthy sir, but not----" "Silence, and go into that room!" Blondel pointed with a shaking finger to a small inner serving-room at the end of the parlour. "Go!" he repeated peremptorily, "and stay there until I come to you." Then, but not until the lad had taken his tear-bedabbled face into the closet and had closed the door behind him, the Syndic turned to the three. "I ask your pardon," he said, making no attempt to disguise the agitation which still moved him. "But it was enough, it was more than enough, to try me." He paused and wiped his brow, on which the sweat stood in beads. "He had under his hand the papers," looking at them a little askance as if he doubted whether the explanation would pass, "that we need! The papers that would convict Basterga. And because they did not wear the appearance he expected--because they were disguised, you understand--they were in a bottle in fact--and were not precisely what he expected----" "He left them?" "He left them." There was something like a tear, a leaden drop, in the corner of the Fourth Syndic's eye. "Still if he had access to them once," Petitot suggested briskly, "what has been done once may be done twice. He may gain access to them again. Why not?" "He may, but he may not. Still, I should have thought of that and--and made allowance," Blondel answered with a fair show of candour. "But too often an occasion let slip does not return, as you well know. The least disorder in the box he searched may put Basterga on the alert, and wreck my plans." They did not answer. They felt one and all, Petitot and Baudichon no less than Fabri, that they had done this man an injustice. His passion, his chagrin, his singleness of aim, the depth of his disappointment, disarmed even those who were in the daily habit of differing from him. Was this--this the man whom they had secretly accused of lukewarmness? And to whom they had hesitated to entrust the safety of the city? They had done him wrong. They had not credited him with a tithe of the feeling, the single-mindedness, the patriotism which it was plain he possessed. They stood silent, while Blondel, aware of the precipice, to the verge of which his improvident passion had drawn him, watched them out of the corner of his eye, uncertain how far their comprehension of the scene had gone. He trembled to think how nearly he had betrayed his secret; and took the more shame to himself, inasmuch as in cooler blood he saw the lad's error to be far from irremediable. As Petitot said, that which could be done so easily and quickly could be done a second time. If only he had not struck the lad! If only he had commanded himself, and spoken him fairly and sent him back! Almost by this time the _remedium_ might be here. Ay, here, in the palm of his hand! The reflection stabbed Blondel so poignantly, the sense of his folly went so deep, he groaned aloud. That groan fairly won over Baudichon, who was by nature of a kind heart. "Tut, tut," he said; "you must not take it to heart, Messer Blondel. Try again." "Unless, indeed," Petitot murmured, but with respect, "Messer Blondel knows the mistake to be fraught with consequences more grave than we suppose." The Fourth Syndic smiled awry: that was precisely what he did know. But "No," he said, "the thing can be cured. I am sorry I lost my temper. Not a moment must be wasted, however. I will see this young man: if he raises any difficulty, I have still another agent whom I can employ. And by to-morrow at latest----" "You may still have the thing in your hands." "I think so. I certainly think so." "Good. Then till to-morrow," Fabri answered, as he took his cap from the table and with the others turned towards the door. "Good luck, Messer Blondel. We are reassured. We feel that our interests are in good hands." "Yes," said Petitot almost warmly. "Still, caution, caution! Messer Blondel. One bad man within the gates----" "May be hung!" Blondel cried gaily. "Ay, may be! But unhung is a graver foe than five hundred men without! It is that I would have you bear in mind." "I will bear it in mind," the Fourth Syndic answered. "And when I can hang him," with a vindictive look, "be sure I will--and high as Haman!" He attended them with solicitude to the door, being set by what had happened a little more upon his behaviour. That done and the outer door closed upon them, he returned to the parlour, but did not at once seek the young man, upon whom he had taken the precaution of turning the key. Instead he stood a while, pondering with a pale face; a haggard, paler replica he seemed of the stiff, hard portrait on the panel over the mantel. He was wondering why he had let himself go so foolishly; he was recognising with a sinking heart that it was to his illness he owed it that he had so frequently of late lost control of himself. For a man to discover that the power of self-mastery is passing from him is only a degree less appalling than the consciousness of insanity itself; and Blondel cowered, trembling under the thought. If aught could strengthen his purpose it was the suspicion that the insidious disease from which he suffered was already sapping the outworks of that mind on whose clever combinations he depended for his one chance of cure. Yet while the thought strengthened, it terrified him. "I must make no second mistake--no second mistake!" he muttered, his eyes on the door of the serving-room. "No second mistake!" And he waited a while considering the matter in all its aspects. Should he tell Louis more than he had told him already? It seemed needless. To send the lad with curt, stern words to fetch that which he had omitted to bring--this seemed the more straight-forward way: and the more certain, too, since the lad had now seen the other magistrates, and could have no doubt of their concurrence or of the importance of the task entrusted to him. Blondel decided on that course, and advancing to the door he opened it and called to his prisoner to come out. To his credit be it said the sight of the lad's wealed face gave the Syndic something of a shock. He was soon to be more gravely shaken. Instigated partly by curiosity, partly by the desire to fix Louis' scared faculties, he began by asking what was the aspect of the phial which the lad had omitted to bring. "What was its colour and size, and how full was it?" he proceeded, striving to speak gently and to make allowance for the cowering weakness of the youth before him. "Do you hear?" he urged. "Of what shape was it? You can tell that at least. You handled it, I suppose? You took it out of the metal box?" Louis burst into tears. Blondel had much ado--for it was true, he had small command of himself--not to strike the lad again. Instead, "Fool," he said, "what do your tears help you or advance me? Speak, I tell you, and answer my question! What was the appearance of this flask or bottle, or what it was--that you left there?" The lad sank to his knees. Fear and pain had robbed him of the petty cunning he possessed. He no longer knew what to tell nor what to withhold. And in a breath the truth was out. "Don't strike me!" he wailed, guarding his smarting face with his arm. "And I'll tell you all! I will indeed!" The Syndic knew then that there was more to learn. "All?" he repeated, aghast. "Ay, the truth. All the truth," Louis moaned. "I didn't see it. I did not go to it! I dared not! I swear I dared not.'" "You did not see it?" the Syndic said slowly. "The phial? You did not see the phial?" "No." This time Messer Blondel did not strike. He leant heavily upon the table; his face, which a moment before had been swollen with impatience, turned a sickly white. "You--you didn't see it?" he muttered--his tone had sunk to a whisper. "You didn't see it? Then all you told me was a lie? There was nothing--no bottle in the box? But how, then, did you know anything of a bottle? Did he"--with a sharp spasm of pain--"send you here to tell me this?" "No, no! She told me. She looked--for me in the box." "Who?" "Anne. Anne Royaume! I was afraid," the lad continued, speaking with a little more confidence, as he saw that the Syndic made no movement to strike him, "and she said that she would look for me. She could go to his room, and run little risk. But if he had caught me there he would have killed me! Indeed he would!" Louis repeated desperately, as he read the storm-signs that began to darken the Syndic's face. "You told her then?" "I could not do it myself! I could not indeed." He cowered lower; but he fared better than he expected. The Syndic drew a long fluttering breath, a breath of returning life, of returning hope. The colour, too, began to come back to his cheeks. After all, it might have been worse. He had thought it worse. He had thought himself discovered, tricked, discomfited by the man against whom he had pitted his wits, with his life for stake. Whereas--it seemed a small thing in comparison--this meant only the inclusion of one more in the secret, the running of one more risk, the hazarding another tongue. And the lad had not been so unwise. She had easier access to the room than he, and ran less risk of suspicion or detection. Why not employ her in place of the lad? The youth grovelling before him wondered to see him calm, and plucking up spirit stood upright. "You must go back to her, and ask her to get it for you," Blondel said firmly. "You can be back within the half-hour, bringing it." Louis began to shrink. His eyes sank. "She will not give it me," he muttered. "No?" Blondel, as he repeated the word, wondered at his own moderation. But the shock had been heavy; he felt the effect of it. He was languid, almost half-hearted. Moreover, a new idea had taken root in his mind. "You can try her," he said. "I can try her, but she will not give it me," Louis repeated with a new obstinacy. As the Syndic grew mild he grew sullen. The change was in the other, not in himself. Subtly he knew that the Syndic was no longer in the mood to strike. Blondel ruminated. It might be better, it might even be safer, if he saw the girl himself. The story--of treason and a bottle--which had imposed on his colleagues might not move her much. It might be wiser to attack her on other grounds, grounds on which women lay more open. And self-pity whispered with a tear that the truth, than which he could conceive nothing more moving, nothing more sublimely sad, might go farther with a woman than bribes or threats or the most skilful inventions. He made up his mind. He would tell the truth, or something like it, something as like it as he dared tell her. "Very well," he said, "you can go! But be silent! A word to him--I shall learn it sooner or later--and you perish on the wheel! You can go now. I shall put the matter in other hands." CHAPTER XIII. A MYSTERY SOLVED. Whether Basterga, seeing that Claude was less pliant than he had looked to find him, shunned occasion of collision with him, or the Paduan being in better spirits was less prone to fall foul of his companions, certain it is that life for a time after the outbreak at supper ran more quietly in the house in the Corraterie. Claude's gloomy face--he had not forgiven--bade beware of him; and little save on the subject of Louis' disfigured cheek--of which the most pointed questions could extract no explanation--passed among them at table. But outward peace was preserved and a show of ease. Grio's brutal nature broke out once or twice when he had had wine; but discouraged by Basterga, he subsided quickly. And Louis, starting at a voice and trembling at a knock, with the fear of the Syndic always upon him, showed a nervousness which more than once drew the Italian's eye to him. But on the whole a calm prevailed; a stranger entering at noon or during the evening meal might have deemed the party ill-assorted and silent, but lacking neither in amity nor ease. Meantime, under cover of this calm, destined to be short-lived and holding in suspense the makings of a storm of no mean violence, two persons were drawing nearer to one another. A confidence, even a confidence not perfect, is a tie above most. Nor does love play at any time a higher part than when it repeats "I do not understand--I trust". By the common light of day, which showed Anne moving to and fro about her household tasks, at once the minister and the providence of the home, the dark suspicion that had for a moment--a moment only!--mastered Claude's judgment, lost shape and reality. It was impossible to see her bending over the hearth, or arranging her mother's simple meal, it was impossible to witness her patience, her industry, her deftness, to behold her, ever gentle yet supporting with a man's fortitude the trials of her position, trials of the bitterness of which she had given him proof--it was impossible, in a word, to watch her in her daily life, without perceiving the wickedness as well as the folly of the thought which had possessed him. True, the more he saw of her the graver seemed the mystery; and the more deeply he wondered. But he no longer dreaded the answer to the riddle; nor did he fear to meet at some turn or corner a Megæra head that should freeze his soul. Wickedness there might be, cruelty there might be, and shame; but the blood ran too briskly in his veins and he had looked too often into the girl's candid eyes--reading something there which had not been there formerly--to fear to find either at her door. He had taken to coming to the living-room a little before nightfall; there he would seat himself beside the hearth while she prepared the evening meal. The glow of the wood-fire, reflected in rows of burnished pewters, or given back by the night-backed casements, the savour of the coming meal, the bubbling of the black pot between which and the table her nimble feet carried her a dozen times in as many minutes, the pleasant, homely room with its touches of refinement and its winter comfort, these were excuses enough had he not brought the book which lay unheeded on his knee. But in truth he offered her no excuse. With scarce a word an understanding had grown up between them that not a million words could have made more clear. Each played the appropriated part. He looked and she bore the look, and if she blushed the fire was warrant, and if he stared it was the blind man's hour between day and night, and why should he not sit idle as well as another? Soon there was not a turn of her head or a line of her figure that he did not know; not a trick of her walk, not a pose of her hand as she waited for a pot to boil that he could not see in the dark; not a gleam from her hair as she stooped to the blaze, nor a turn of her wrist as she shielded her face that was not as familiar to him as if he had known her from childhood. In these hours she let the mask fall. The apathy, which had been the least natural as it had been the most common garb of her young face, and which had grown to be the cover and veil of her feelings, dropped from her. Seated in the shadow, while she moved, now in the glow of the burning embers, now obscured, he read her mind without disguise--save in one dark nook--watched unrebuked the eye fall and the lip tremble, or in rarer moments saw the shy smile dimple the corner of her cheek. Not seldom she stood before him sad: sad without disguise, her bowed head and drooping shoulders the proof of gloomy thoughts, that strayed, he fancied, far from her work or her companion. And sometimes a tear fell and she wiped it away, making no attempt to hide it; and sometimes she would shiver and sigh as if in pain or fear. At these times he longed for Basterga's throat; and the blood of old Enguerrande de Beauvais, his ancestor, dust these four hundred years at "Damietta of the South," raced in him, and he choked with rage and grief, and for the time could scarcely see. Yet with this pulse of wrath were mingled delicious thrills. The tear which she did not hide from him was his gage of love. The brooding eye, the infrequent smile, the start, the reverie were for him only, and for no other. They were the gift to him of her secret life, her inmost heart. It was an odd love-making, and bizarre. To Grio, even to men more delicate and more finely wrought, it might have seemed no love-making at all. But the wood-smoke that perfumed the air, sweetened it, the firelight wrapped it about, the pots and pans and simple things of life, amid which it passed, hallowed it. His eyes attending her hither and thither without reserve, without concealment, unabashed, laid his heart at her feet, not once, but a hundred times in the evening; and as often, her endurance of the look, more rarely her sudden blush or smile, accepted the offering. And scarce a word said: for though they had the room to themselves, they knew that they were never alone or unheeded. Basterga, indeed, sat above stairs and only descended to his meals; and Grio also was above when he was not at the tavern. But Louis sulked in his closet beside them, divided from them only by a door, whence he might emerge at any minute. As a fact he would have emerged many times, but for two things. The first was his marked face, which he was chary of showing; the second, the notion which he had got that the balance of things in the house was changing, and the reign of petty bullying, in which he had so much delighted, approaching its end. With Basterga exposed to arrest, and the girl's help become of value to the authorities, it needed little acumen to discern this. He still feared Basterga; nay, he lived in such terror, lest the part he had played should come to the scholar's ears, that he prayed for his arrest night and morning, and whenever during the day an especial fit of dread seized him. But he feared Anne also, for she might betray him to Basterga; and of young Mercier's quality--that he was no Tissot to be brow-beaten, or thrust aside--he had had proof on the night of the fracas at supper. Essentially a coward, Louis' aim was to be on the stronger side; and once persuaded that this was the side on which they stood, he let them be. On several consecutive evenings the two passed 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 passionately. "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 passage, 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 passed 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 passed 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 passed before him then, and then had roused but a passing 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 God'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 gratitude 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 assurances 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 ignoble 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 Orléannais 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 pass, 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. "Any harm! If harm be done, I say, I shall then have you at hand to pay me for it. So--both or neither!" For a moment Louis' hang-dog face--none the handsomer for the mark of the Syndic's cane--spelt refusal. Then he changed his mind. He nodded sulkily. "Very well," he said. "But it is raining, and I have no great wish to--Hush! What is that?" He raised his hand in the attitude of one listening and his eyes sought his companion's. "What is that? Did you not hear something--like a scream upstairs?" "I hear something like a fool downstairs!" Claude retorted gruffly. "But it was--I certainly heard something!" Louis persisted, raising his hand again. "It sounded----" "If we are to go, let us go!" Claude cried with temper. "Come, if you want me to go! It is not my expedition," he continued, moving noisily hither and thither in search of his staff and cloak. "It is your affair, and--where is my cap?" "I should think it is in your room," Louis answered meekly. "It was only that I thought it might be Anne. That there might be----" "Two fools in the house instead of one!" Claude broke in, emerging noisily, and slamming the door of his closet behind him. "There, come, and we may hope to be back to supper some time to-night! Do you hear?" And jealously shepherding the other out of the house, he withdrew the key when both had passed the threshold. Locking the door on the outside, he thrust the key under it. "There!" he said, smiling at his cleverness, "now, who enters--knocks!" CHAPTER XIV. "AND ONLY ONE DOSE IN ALL THE WORLD!" In his picture of the life led by the two women on the upper floor of the house in the Corraterie, that picture which by a singular intuition he had conceived on the day of his arrival, Claude had not gone far astray. In all respects but one the picture was truly drawn. Than the love between mother and daughter, no tie could be imagined at once more simple and more holy; no union more real and pure than that which bound together these two women, left lonely in days of war and trouble in the midst of a city permanently besieged and menaced by an enduring peril. Almost forgotten by the world below, which had its own cares, its alarums and excursions, its strivings and aims, they lived for one another. The weak health of the one and the brave spirit of the other had gradually inverted their positions; and the younger was mother, the elder, daughter. Yet each retained, in addition, the pious instincts of the original relation. To each the welfare of the other was the prime thought. To give the other the better portion, be it of food or wine, of freedom from care, or ease of mind, and to take the worse, was to each the ground plan of life, as it was its chiefest joy. In their eyrie above the anxious city they led an existence all their own. Between them were a hundred jests, Greek to others; and whimsical ways, and fond sayings and old smiles a thousand times repeated. And things that must be done after one fashion or the sky would fall; and others that must be done after another fashion or the world would end. When the house was empty of boarders, or nearly empty--though at such times the cupboard also was apt to be bare--there were long hours spent upstairs and surveys of household gear, carried up with difficulty, and reviews of linen and much talk of it, and small meals, taken at the open windows that looked over the Rhone valley and commanded the sunset view. Such times were times of gaiety though not of prosperity, and far from the worst hours of life--had they but persisted. But in the March of 1601 a great calamity fell on these two. A fire, which consumed several houses near the Corraterie, and flung wide through the streets the rumour that the enemy had entered, struck the bedridden woman--aroused at midnight by shouts and the glare of flames--with so dire a terror, not on her own account but on her daughter's, that she was never the same again. For weeks at a time she appeared to be as of old, save for some increase of weakness and tremulousness. But below the surface the brain was out of poise, and under the least pressure of excitement she betrayed the change in a manner so appalling--by the loud negation of those beliefs which in saner moments were most dear to her, and especially by a denial of the Providence and goodness of God--that even her child, even the being who knew her and loved her best, shuddered lest Satan, visible and triumphant, should rise to confront her. Fortunately the fits of this mysterious malady were short as they were appalling, and to the minds of that day, suspicious. And in the beginning Anne had the support of an old physician, well-nigh their only intimate. True, even he was scared by a form of disease, new and beyond his science; but he prescribed a sedative and he kept counsel. He went further: for sufficiently enlightened himself to believe in the innocence of these attacks, he none the less explained to the daughter the peril to which her mother's aberrations must expose her were they known to the vulgar; and he bade her hide them with all the care imaginable. Anne, on this would fain have adopted the safest course and kept the house empty; to the end that to the horror of her mother's fits of delirium might not be added the chance of eavesdropping. But to do this was to starve, as well as to reveal to Madame Royaume the fact of those seizures of which no one in the world was more ignorant than the good woman who suffered under them. It followed that to Anne's burden of dread by reason of the outer world, whom she must at all costs deceive, was added the weight of concealment from the one from whom she had never kept anything in her life. A thing which augmented immeasurably the loneliness of her position and the weight of her load. Presently the drama, always pitiful, increased in intensity. The old leech who had been her stay and helper died, and left her to face the danger alone. A month later Basterga discovered the secret and henceforth held it over her. From this time she led a life of which Claude, in his dreams upon the hearth, exaggerated neither the tragedy nor the beauty. The load had been heavy before. Now to fear was added contumely, and to vague apprehensions the immediate prospect of discovery and peril. The grip of the big scholar, subtle, cruel, tightening day by day and hour by hour, was on her youth; slowly it paralysed in her all joy, all spirit, all the impulses of life and hope, that were natural to her age. That through all she showed an indomitable spirit, we know. We have seen how she bore herself when threatened from an unexpected quarter on the morning when Claude Mercier, after overhearing her mother's ravings, had his doubts confirmed by the sight of her depression on the stairs. How boldly she met his attack, unforeseen as it was, how bravely she shielded her other and dearer self, how deftly she made use of the chance which the young man's soberer sense afforded her, will be remembered. But not even in that pinch, no, nor in that worse hour when Basterga, having discovered his knowledge to her, gave her--as a cat plays with a mouse which it is presently to tear to pieces--a little law and a little space, did she come so near to despair as on this evening when the echo of her mother's insane laughter drew her from the living-room at an hour without precedent. For hitherto Madame Royaume's attacks had come on in the night only. With a regularity not unknown in the morbid world they occurred about midnight, an hour when her daughter could attend to her and when the house below lay wrapped in sleep. A change in this respect doubled the danger, therefore. It did more: the prospect of being summoned at any hour shook, if it did not break, the last remains of Anne's strength. To be liable at all times to such interruptions, to tremble while serving a meal or making a bed lest the dreadful sound arise and reveal all, to listen below and above and never to feel safe for a minute, never! never!--who could face, who could endure, who could lie down and rise up under this burden? It could not be. As Anne ascended the stairs she felt that the end was coming, was come. Strive as she might, war as she might, with all the instinct, all the ferocity, of a mother defending her young, the end was come. The secret could not be kept long. Even while she administered the medicine with shaking hands, while with tears in her voice she strove to still the patient and silence her wild words, even while she restrained by force the feeble strength that would and could not, while in a word she omitted no precaution, relaxed no effort, her heart told her with every pulsation that the end was come. And presently, when Madame was quiet and slept, the girl bowed her head over the unconscious object of her love and wept, bitterly, passionately, wetting with her tears the long grey hair that strewed the pillow, as she recalled with pitiful clearness all the stages of concealment, all the things which she had done to avert this end. Vainly, futilely, for it was come. The dark mornings of winter recurred to her mind, those mornings when she had risen and dressed herself by rushlight, with this fear redoubling the chill gloom of the cold house; the nights, too, when all had been well, and in the last hour before sleep, finding her mother sane and cheerful, she had nursed the hope that the latest attack might be the last. The evenings brightened by that hope, the mornings darkened by its extinction, the rare hours of brooding, the days and weeks of brave struggle, of tendance never failing, of smiles veiling a sick heart--she lived all these again, looking pitifully back, straining tenderly in her arms the dear being she loved. And then, stabbing her back to life in the midst of her exhaustion, the thought pierced her that even now she was hastening the end by her absence. They would be asking for her below; they must be asking for her already. The supper-time was come, was past, perhaps; and she was not there! She tried to picture what would happen, what already must be happening; and rising and dashing the tears from her face she stood listening. Perhaps Claude would make some excuse to the others; or, perhaps--how much had he guessed? Her mother was passive now, sunk in the torpor which followed the attack and from which the poor woman would awake in happy unconsciousness of the whole. Anne saw that her charge might be left, and hastily smoothing the tangle of luxuriant hair which had fallen about her face, she opened the door. Another might have stayed to allay the fever of her cheeks, to remove the traces of her tears, to stay the quivering of her hands; but such small cares were not for her, nor for the occasion. She could form no idea of the length of time she had spent upstairs, a half-hour, or an hour and a half; and without more ado she raised the latch, slipped out, and turning the key on her patient ran down the upper flight of stairs. She anticipated many things, but not that which she encountered--silence on the upper landing, and below when she had descended and opened the staircase door--an empty room. The place was vacant; the tables were as she had left them, half laid; the pot was gently simmering over the fire. What had happened? The supper-hour was past, yet none of the four who should have sat down to the meal were here. Had they overheard her mother's terrible cry--those words which voiced the woman's despair on finding, as she fancied, the city betrayed? And were they gone to denounce her? The thought was discarded as soon as formed; and before she could hit on a second explanation a hasty knocking on the door turned her eyes that way. The four who lodged in the house were not in the habit of knocking, for the door was only locked at night when the last retired. She approached it then, wondering, hesitated an instant, and at last, collecting her courage, raised the latch. The door resisted her impulse. It was locked. She tried it twice, and it was only as she drew back the second time that she saw the key lying at the foot of the door. That deepened the mystery. Why had they locked her in? Why, when they had done so, had they thrust the key under the door and so placed it in her power? Had Claude Mercier done it that the others might not enter to hear what he had heard and discover what he had discovered? Possibly. In which case the knocker--who at that instant made a second and more earnest attack upon the door--must be one of the others, and the sooner she opened the door the less would be the suspicion created. With an apology trembling on her lips she hastened to open. Then she stood bewildered; she saw before her, not one of the lodgers, but Messer Blondel. "I wish to speak to you," the magistrate said with firmness. Before she knew what was happening he had motioned to her to go before him into the house, and following had locked the door behind them. She knew him by sight, as did all Geneva; and the blood, which surprise at the sight of a stranger had brought to her cheeks, fled as she recognised the Syndic. Had they betrayed her, then, while she lingered upstairs? Had they locked her in while they summoned the magistrate? And was he here to make inquiries about--something he had heard? His voice cut short her thoughts without allaying her fears. "I wish to speak to you alone," he said. "Are you alone, girl?" His manner was quiet, but masked excitement. His eyes scrutinised her and searched the room by turns. She nodded, unable to speak. "There is no one in the house with you?" "Only my mother," she murmured. "She is bedridden, is she not? She cannot hear us?" he added, frowning. "No, but I am expecting the others to return." "Messer Basterga?" "Yes." "He will not return before morning," the Syndic replied with decision, "nor his companion. The two young men are safe also. If you are alone, therefore, I wish to speak to you." She bowed her head, trembling and wondering, fearing what the next moment might disclose. "The young man who lodges here--of the name of Gentilis--he came to you some time ago and told you that the State needed certain letters which the man Basterga kept in a steel box upstairs? That is so, is it not?" "Yes, Messer Syndic." "And you looked for them?" "Yes, I--I was told that you desired them." "You found a phial? You found a phial?" the Syndic repeated, passing his tongue over his lips. His face was flushed; his eyes shone with a peculiar brightness. "I found a small bottle," she answered slowly. "There was nothing else." He raised his hand. If she had known how the delay of a second tortured him! "Describe it to me!" he said. "What was it like?" Wondering, the girl tried to describe it. "It was small and of a strange shape, of thin glass, Messer Syndic," she said. "Shot with gold, or there was gold afloat in the liquid inside. I do not know which." "It was not empty?" "No, it was three parts full." His hand went to his mouth, to hide the working of his lips. "And there was with it--a paper, I think?" "No." "A scrap of parchment then? Some words, some figures?" His voice rose as he read a negative in her face. "There was something, surely?" "There was nothing," she said. "Had there been a scrap even of writing----" "Yes, yes?" He could not control his impatience. "I should have sent it to you. I should have thought," she continued earnestly, "that it was that you needed, Messer Syndic; that it was that the State needed. But there was nothing." "Well, be there papers with it or be there not, I must have that phial!" Anne stared. "But I do not think"--she ventured with hesitation--and then as she gained courage, she went on more firmly--"that I can take it! I dare not, Messer Syndic." "Why not?" "Papers for the State--were one thing," she stammered in confusion; "but to take this--a bottle--would be stealing!" The Syndic's eyes sparkled. His passion overcame him. "Girl, don't play with me!" he cried. "Don't dare to play with me!" And then as she shrank back alarmed by his tone, and shocked by this sudden peeping forth of the tragic and the real, lo, in a twinkling he was another man, trembling, and holding out shaking hands to her. "Get it for me!" he said. "Get it for me, girl! I will tell you what it is! If I had told you before, I had had it now, and I should be whole and well! whole and well. You have a heart and can pity! Women can pity. Then pity me! I am rich, but I am dying! I am a dying man, rising up and lying down, counting the days as I walk the streets, and seeing the shroud rise higher and higher upon my breast!" He paused for breath, endeavouring to gain some command of himself; while she, carried off her feet by this rush of words, stared at him in stupefaction. Before he came he had made up his mind to tell her the truth--or something like the truth. But he had not intended to tell the truth in this way until, face to face with her and met by her scruples, he let the impulse to tell the whole carry him away. He steadied his lips with a shaking hand. "You know now why I want it," he resumed, speaking huskily and with restrained emotion. "'Tis life! Life, girl! In that"--he fought with himself before he could bring out the word--"in that phial is my life! Is life for whoever takes it! It is the _remedium_, it is strength, life, youth, and but one--but one dose in all the world! Do you wonder--I am dying!--that I want it? Do you wonder--I am dying!--that I will have it? But"--with a strange grimace intended to reassure her--"I frighten you, I frighten you." "No!" she said, though in truth she had unconsciously retreated almost to the door of the staircase before his extended hands. "But I--I scarcely understand, Messer Blondel. If you will please to tell me----" "Yes, yes!" "What Messer Basterga--how he comes to have this?" She must parley with him until she could collect her thoughts; until she could make up her mind whether he was sane or mad and what it behoved her to do. "Comes to have it!" he cried vehemently. "God knows! And what matter? 'Tis the _remedium_, I tell you, whoever has it! It is life, strength, youth!" he repeated, his eyes glittering, his face working, and the impulse to tell her not the truth only, but more even than the truth, if he might thereby dazzle her, carrying him away. "It is health of body, though you be dying, as I am! And health of mind though you be possessed of devils! It is a cure for all ills, for all weaknesses, all diseases, even," with a queer grimace, "for the Scholar's evil! Think you, if it were not rare, if it were not something above the common, if it were not what leeches seek in vain, I should be here! I should have more than enough to buy it, I, Messer Blondel of Geneva!" He ceased, lacking breath. "But," she said timidly, "will not Messer Basterga give it to you? Or sell it to you?" "Give it to me? Sell it to me? He?" Blondel's hands flew out and clawed the air as if he had the Paduan before him, and would tear it from him. "He give it me? No, he will not. Nor sell it! He is keeping it for the Grand Duke! The Grand Duke? Curse him; why should he escape more than another?" Anne stared. Was she dreaming or had her brain given way? Or was this really Messer Blondel the austere Syndic, this man standing before her, shaking in his limbs as he poured forth this strange farrago of _remedia_ and scholars and princes and the rest? Or if she were not mad was he mad? Or could there be truth, any truth, any fact in the medley? His clammy face, his trembling hands, answered for his belief in it. But could there be such a thing in nature as this of which he spoke? She had heard of panaceas, things which cured all ills alike; but hitherto they had found no place in her simple creed. Yet that he believed she could not doubt; and how much more he knew than she did! Such things might be; in the cabinets of princes, perhaps, purchasable by a huge fortune and by the labour, the engrossment, the devotion of a life. She did not know; and for him his acts spoke. "It was this that Louis Gentilis was seeking?" she murmured. "What else?" he retorted, opening and shutting his hands. "Had I told him the truth, as I have told you, the thing had been in my grasp now!" "But are you sure," she ventured to ask with respect, "that it will do these things, Messer Blondel?" He flung up his hands in a gesture of impatience. "And more! And more!" he cried. "It is life and strength, I tell you! Health and youth! For body or mind, for the old or the young! But enough! Enough, girl!" he resumed in an altered tone, a tone grown peremptory and urgent. "Get it me! Do you hear? Stand no longer talking! At any moment they may return, and--and it may be too late." Too late! It was too late already. The door shook even as he spoke under an angry summons. As he stiffened where he stood, his eyes fixed upon it, his hand still pointing her to his bidding, a face showed white at the window and vanished again. An instant he imagined it Basterga's; and hand, voice, eyes, all hung frozen. Then he saw his mistake--to whomsoever the face belonged, it was not Basterga's; and finding voice and breath again, "Quick!" he muttered fiercely, "do you hear, girl? Get it! Get it before they enter!" Her hand was on the latch of the inner door. Another second and, swayed by his will, she would have gone up and got the thing he needed, and the stout door would have shielded them, and within the staircase he might have taken it from her and no one been the wiser. But as she turned, there came a second attack on the door, so loud, so persistent, so furious, that she faltered, remembering that the duplicate key of Basterga's chamber was in her mother's room, and that she must mount to the top of the house for it. He saw her hesitation, and, shaken by the face which had looked in out of the night, and which still might be watching his movements, his resolution gave way. The habit of a life of formalism prevailed. The thing was as good as his, she would get it presently. Why, then, cause talk and scandal by keeping these persons--whoever they were--outside, when the thing might be had without talk? "To-night!" he cried rapidly. "Get it to-night, then! Do you hear, girl? You will be sure to get it?" His eyes flitted from her to the door and back again. "Basterga will not return until to-morrow. You will get it to-night!" She murmured some form of assent. "Then open the door! open the door!" he urged impatiently. And with a stifled oath, "A little more and they will rouse the town!" She ran to obey, the door flew open, and into the room bundled first Louis without his cap; and then on his heels and gripping him by the nape, Claude Mercier. Nor did the latter seem in the least degree abashed by the presence in which he found himself. On the contrary, he looked at the Syndic, his head high; as if he, and not the magistrate, had the right to an explanation. But Blondel had recovered himself. "Come, come!" he said sternly. "What is this, young man? Are you drunk?" "Why was the door locked?" "That you might not interrupt me," Blondel replied severely, "while I asked some questions. I have it in my mind to ask you some also. You took him to my house?" he continued, addressing Louis. Louis whined that he had. "You were late then?" His cold eye returned to Claude. "You were late, I warrant. Attend me to-morrow at nine, young man. Do you hear? Do you understand?" "Yes." "Then have a care you are there, or the officers will fetch you. And you," he continued, turning more graciously to Anne, "see, young woman, you keep counsel. A still tongue buys friends, and is a service to the State. With that--good-night." He looked from one to the other with a sour smile, nodded, and passed out. He left Claude staring, and something bewildered in the middle of the room. The love, the pity, the admiration of which the lad's heart had been full an hour before, still hungered for expression; but it was not easy to vent such feelings before Louis, nor at a moment when the Syndic's cold eye and the puzzle of his presence there chilled for the time the atmosphere of the room. Claude, indeed, was utterly perplexed by what he had seen; and before he could decide what he would do, Anne, ignoring the need of explanation, had taken the matter into her own hands. She had begun to set out the meal; and Louis, smiling maliciously, had seated himself in his place. To speak with any effect then, or to find words adequate to the feelings that had moved him a while before, was impossible. A moment later, the opportunity was gone. "You must please to wait on yourselves," the girl said wearily. "My mother is not well, and I may not come down again this evening." As she spoke, she lifted from the table the little tray which she had prepared. He was in time to open the door for her; and even then, had she glanced at him, his eyes must have told her much, perhaps enough. But she did not look at him. She was preoccupied with her own thoughts; pressing thoughts they must have been. She passed him as if he had been a stranger, her eyes on the tray. Worshipping, he stood, and saw her turn the corner at the head of the flight; then with a full heart he went back to his place. His time would come. And she? At the door of Basterga's room she paused and stood long in thought, gazing at the rushlight she carried on the tray--yet seeing nothing. A sentence, one sentence of all those which Blondel had poured forth--not Blondel the austere Syndic, who had set the lads aside as if they had been schoolboys, but Blondel the man, trembling, holding out suppliant hands--rang again and again in her ears. "It is health of body, though you be dying as I am, and health of mind, though you be possessed of devils!" Health of body! Health of mind! Health of body! Health of mind! The words wrote themselves before her eyes in letters of fire. Health of Body! Health of Mind! And only one dose in all the world. Only one dose in all the world! She recalled that too. CHAPTER XV. ON THE BRIDGE. To say that the Syndic, as soon as he had withdrawn, repented of his weakness and wished with all his heart that he had not opened until the _remedium_ was in his hand, is only to say that he was human. He did more than this, indeed. When he had advanced some paces in the direction of the Porte Tertasse he returned, and for a full minute he stood before the Royaumes' door irresolute; half-minded to knock and, casting the fear of publicity to the winds, to say that he must have at once that for which he had come. He would get it, if he did, he was certain of that. And for the rest, what the young men said or thought, or what others who heard their story might say or think, mattered not a straw now that he came to consider it; since he could have Basterga seized on the morrow, and all would pass for a part of his affair. Yet he did not knock. A downward step on the slope of indecision is hard to retrace. He reflected that he would get the _remedium_ in the morning. He would certainly get it. The girl was won over, Basterga was away. Practically, he had no one to fear. And to make a stir when the matter could be arranged without a stir was not the part of a wise man in the position of a magistrate. Slowly he turned and walked away. But, as if his good angel touched him on the shoulder, under the Porte Tertasse he had qualms; and again he stood. And when, after a shorter interval and with less indecision, he resumed his course, it was by no means with the air of a victor. He would receive what he needed in the morning: he dared not admit a doubt of that. And yet--was it a vague presentiment that weighed on him as he walked, or only the wintry night wind that caused the blood to run more slowly and more tamely in his veins? He had not fared ill in his venture, he had made success certain. And yet he was unreasonably, he was unaccountably, he was undefinably depressed. He grew more cheerful when he had had his supper and seated before a half-flagon of wine gave the reins to his imagination. For the space of a golden hour he held the _remedium_ in his grasp, he felt its life-giving influence course through his frame, he tasted again of health and strength and manhood, he saw before him years of success and power and triumph! In comparison to it the bath of Pelias, though endowed with the virtues which lying Medea attributed to it, had not seemed more desirable, nor the elixir of life, nor the herb of Anticyra. Nor was it until he had taken the magic draught once and twice and thrice in fancy, and as often hugged himself on health renewed and life restored that a thought, which had visited him at an earlier period of the evening, recurred and little by little sobered him. This was the reflection that he knew nothing of the quantity of the potion which he must take, nothing of the time or of the manner of taking it. Was it to be taken all at once, or in doses? Pure, or diluted with wine, or with water, or with _aqua vitæ_? At any hour, or at midnight, or at a particular epoch of the moon's age, or when this or that star was in the ascendant? The question bulked larger as he considered it; for in life no trouble is surmounted but another appears to confront us; nor is the most perfect success of an imperfect world without its drawback. Now that he held the elixir his, now that in fancy he had it in his grasp, the problem of the mode and the quantity which had seemed trivial and negligible a few days or hours before, grew to formidable dimensions; nor could he of himself discover any solution of it. He had counted on finding with the potion some scrap of writing, some memorandum, some hieroglyphics at least, that, interpreted by such skill as he could command, would give him the clue he sought. But if there was nothing, as the girl asserted, not a line nor a sign, the matter could be resolved in one way only. He must resort to pressure. With the potion and the man in his possession, he must force the secret from Basterga; force it by threats or promises or aught that would weigh with a man who lay helpless and in a dungeon. It would not be difficult to get the truth in that way: not at all difficult. It seemed, indeed, as if Providence--and Fabri and Petitot and Baudichon--had arranged to put the man in his power _ad hoc_. He hugged this thought to him, and grew so enamoured of it that he wondered that he had not had the courage to seize Basterga in the beginning. He had allowed himself to be disturbed by phantoms; there lay the truth. He should have seen that the scholar dared not for his own sake destroy a thing so precious, a thing by which he might, at the worst, ransom his life. The Syndic wondered that he had not discerned that point before: and still in sanguine humour he retired to bed, and slept better than he had slept for weeks, ay, for months. The elixir was his, as good as his; if he did not presently have Messer Basterga by the nape he was much mistaken. He had had the scholar watched and knew whither he was gone and that he would not return before noon. At nine o'clock, therefore, the hour at which he had directed Claude to come to him at his house, he approached the Royaumes' door. Pluming himself on the stratagem by which twice in the twenty-four hours he had rid himself of an inconvenient witness, he opened the door boldly and entered. On the hearth, cap in hand, stood not Claude, but Louis. The lad wore the sneaking air as of one surprised in a shameful action, which such characters wear even when innocently employed. But his actions proved that he was not surprised. With finger on his lip, and eyes enjoining caution, he signed to the Syndic to be silent, and with head aside set the example of listening. The Syndic was not the man to suffer fools gladly, and he opened his mouth. He closed it--all but too late. All but too late, if--the thought sent cold shivers down his back--if Basterga had returned. With an air almost as furtive as that of the lad before him, he signed to him to approach. Louis crossed the room with a show of caution the more strange as the early December sun was shining and all without was cheerful. "Has he come back?" Blondel whispered. "Claude?" "Fool!" Low as the Syndic pitched his tone it expressed a world of contempt. "No, Basterga?" The youth shook his head, and again laying his finger to his lips listened. "What! He has not?" Blondel's colour returned, his eyes bulged out with passion. What did the imbecile mean? Because he knew certain things did he think himself privileged to play the fool? The Syndic's fingers tingled. Another second and he had broken the silence with a vengeance, when-- "You are--too late!" Louis muttered. "Too late!" he repeated with protruded lips. Blondel glared at him as if he would annihilate him. Too late? What did this creature know? Or how could it be too late, if Basterga had not returned? Yet the Syndic was shaken. His fingers no longer tingled for the other's cheek; he no longer panted to break the silence in a way that should startle him. On the contrary, he listened; while his eyes passed swiftly round the room, to gather what was amiss. But all seemed in order. The lads' bowls and spoons stood on the table, the great roll of brown bread lay beside them, and a book, probably Claude's, lay face downwards on the board. The door of one of the bedrooms stood open. The Syndic's suspicious gaze halted at the closed door. He pointed to it. Louis shook his head; then, seeing that this was not enough, "There is no one there," he whispered. "But I cannot tell you here. I will follow you, honoured sir, to----" "The Porte Tertasse." "Mercier would meet us, by your leave," Louis rejoined with a faint grin. The magistrate glared at the tool who on a sudden was turned adviser. Still, for the time he must humour him. "The mills, then, on the bridge," he muttered. And he opened the door with care and went out. With a dreadful sense of coming evil he went along the Corraterie and took his way down the steep to the bridge which, far below, curbed the blue rushing waters of the Rhone. The roar of the icy torrent and of the busy mills, stupendous as it was, was not loud enough to deaden the two words that clung to his ears, "Too late! Too late!" Nor did the frosty sunshine, gloriously reflected from the line of snowy peaks to eastward, avail to pierce the gloom in which he walked. For Louis Gentilis, if it should turn out that he had inflicted this penance for naught, there was preparing an evil hour. The magistrate turned aside on a part of the bridge between two mills. With his back to the wind-swept lake and its wide expanse of ruffled waves, he stood a little apart from the current of crossers, on a space kept clear of loiterers by the keen breeze. He seemed, if any curious eye fell on him, to be engaged in watching the swirling torrent pour from the narrow channel beneath him, as in warmer weather many a one stood to watch it. Here two minutes later Louis found him; and if Blondel still cherished hope, if he still fought against fear, or maintained courage, the lad's smirking face was enough to end all. For a moment, such was the effect on him, Blondel could not speak. At last, with an effort, "What is it?" he said. "What has happened?" "Much," Louis replied glibly. "Last night, after you had gone, honoured sir, I judged by this and that, that there was something afoot. And being devoted to your interests, and seeking only to serve you----" "The point! The point!" the Syndic ejaculated. "What has happened?" "Treachery," the young man answered, mouthing his words with enjoyment; it was for him a happy moment. "Black, wicked treachery!" with a glance behind him. "The worst, sir, the worst, if I rightly apprehend the matter." "Curse you," Blondel cried, contrary to his custom, for he was no swearer, "you will kill me, if you do not speak." "But----" "What has happened. What has happened, man!" "I was going to tell you, honoured sir, that I watched her----" "Anne? The girl?" "Yes, and an hour before midnight she took that which you wished me to get--the bottle. She went to Basterga's room, and----" "Took it! Well? Well?" The Syndic's face, grey a moment before, was dangerously suffused with blood. The cane that had inflicted the bruise Louis still wore across his visage, quivered ominously. Public as the bridge was, open to obloquy and remark as an assault must lay him, Blondel was within an inch of striking the lad again. "Well? Well?" he repeated. "Is that all you have to tell me?" "Would it were!" Louis replied, raising his open hands with sanctimonious fervour. "Alas, sir!" "You watched her?" "I watched her back to her room." "Upstairs?" "Yes, the room which she occupies with her mother. And kneeling and listening, and seeing what I could for your sake," the knave continued, not a feature evincing the shame he should have felt, "I saw her handle the phial at a little table opposite the door, but hidden by a curtain from the bed." The Syndic's eyes conveyed the question his lips refused to frame. No man, submitted to the torture, has ever suffered more than he was suffering. But Louis had as much mind to avenge himself as the bravest, if he could do so safely; and he would not be hurried. "She held it to the light," he said, dwelling on every syllable, "and turned it this way and that, and I could see bubbles as of gold----" "Ah!" "Whirling and leaping up and down in it as if they lived--God guard us from the evil one! Then she knelt----" The Syndic uttered an involuntary cry. "And prayed," Louis continued, confirming his astonishing statement by a nod. "But whether to it--'twas on the table before her--or to the devil, or otherwise, I know not. Only"--with damnatory candour--"it had a strange aspect. Certainly she knelt, and it was on the table in front of her, and her forehead rested on her hands, and----" "What then? What then? By Heaven, the point!" gasped Blondel, writhing in torture. "What then? blind worm that you are, can you not see that you are killing me? What did she do with it? Tell me!" "She poured it into a glass, and----" "She drank it?" "No, she carried it to her mother," Louis replied as slowly as he dared. Fawning on the hand that had struck him, he would fain bite it if he could do so safely. "I did not see what followed," he went on, "they were behind the screen. But I heard her say that it was Madame's medicine. And I made out enough----" "Ah!" "To be sure that her mother drank it." Blondel stared at him a moment, wide-eyed; then, with a cry of despair, bitter, final, indescribable, the Syndic turned and hurried away. He did not hear the timid remonstrances which Louis, who followed a few paces behind, ventured to utter. He did not heed the wondering looks of those whom he jostled as he plunged into the current of passers and thrust his way across the bridge in the direction whence he had come. The one impulse in his blind brain was to get home, that he might be alone, to think and moan and bewail himself unwatched; even as the first instinct of the wounded beast is to seek its lair and lie hidden, there to await with piteous eyes and the divine patience of animals the coming of death. But this man had the instinct only, not the patience. In his case would come with thought wild rages, gnawings of regret, tears of blood. That he might have, and had not, that he had failed by so little, that he had been worsted by his own tools--these things and the bitter irony of life's chances would madden and torment him. In an hour he would live a lifetime of remorse; yet find in his worst moments no thought more poignant than the reflection that had he played the game with courage, had he grasped the nettle boldly, had he seized Basterga while it was yet time, he might have lived! He might have lived! Ah, God! Meanwhile Louis, though consumed with desire to see what would happen, remained on the bridge. He had tasted a fearful joy and would fain savour more of it if he could do so with a whole skin. But to follow seemed perilous; he held the Syndic's mood in too great awe for that. He did the next best thing. He hastened to a projecting part of the bridge a few paces from the spot where they had conferred; there he raised himself on the parapet that he might see which way Blondel turned at the end of the bridge. If he entered the town no more could be made of it: but if he turned right-handed and by the rampart to the Corraterie, Louis' mind was made up to risk something. He would follow to the Royaumes' house. The magistrate could hardly blame him for going to his own lodging! It was a busy hour, and, cold as it was, a fair number of people were passing between the island and the upper town. For a moment, look as he might, he could not discern the Syndic's spare figure; and he was beginning to think that he had missed him when he saw something that in a twinkling turned his thoughts. On the bank a little beside the end of the bridge stood Claude Mercier. He carried a heavy stick in his hand, and he was waiting: waiting, with his eyes fixed on our friend, and a look in those eyes that even at that distance raised a gentle sweat on Louis' brow. It required little imagination to follow Claude's past movements. He had gone to the Syndic's house at nine, and finding himself tricked a second time had returned hot-foot to the Corraterie. Thence he had tracked the two to this place. But how long had he been waiting, Louis wondered; and how much had he seen? Something for certain. His face announced that; and Louis, hot all over, despite the keen wind and frosty air, augured the worst. Cowards however have always one course open. The way was clear behind him. He could cross the island to the St. Gervais bank, and if he were nimble he might give his pursuer the slip in the maze of small streets beside the water. It was odd if the lapse of a few hours did not cool young Mercier's wrath, and restore him to a frame of mind in which he might be brought to hear reason. No sooner planned than done. Or rather it would have been done if turning to see that the way was clear behind him, Louis had not discovered a second watcher, who from a spot on the edge of the island was marking his movements with grim attention. This watcher was Basterga. Moreover the glance which apprised Louis of this showed him that the scholar's face was as black as thunder. Then, if the gods looked down that day upon any mortal with pity, they must have looked down on this young man; who was a coward. At the one end of the bridge, Claude, with an ugly weapon and a face to match! At the other, Basterga, with a black brow and Heaven alone could say how much knowledge of his treachery! The scholar could not know of the loss of the phial, indeed, for it was clear that he had just returned to the city by the St. Gervais gate. But that he soon would know of it, that he knew something already, that he had been a witness to the colloquy with the Syndic--this was certain. At any rate Louis thought so, and his knees trembled under him. He had no longer a way of retreat, and out of the corner of his eye he saw Claude beginning to advance. What was he to do? The perspiration burst out on him. He turned this way and that, now casting wild eyes at the whirling current below, now piteous eyes--the eyes of a calf on its way to the shambles, and as little regarded--on the thin stream of passers. How could they go on their way and leave him to the mercies of this madman? He smothered a shriek as Claude, now less than twenty paces away, sped a look at him. Claude, indeed, was thinking of Anne and her wrongs; and of a certain kiss. His face told this so plainly, and that passion was his master, that Louis' cheek grew white. What if the ruffian threw him into the river? What if--and then like every coward, he chose the remoter danger. With Claude at hand, he turned and fled, dashed blindly through the passers on the bridge, flung himself on Basterga, and, seizing the big scholar by the arm, strove to shelter himself behind him. "He is mad!" he gasped. "Mad! Save me! He is going to throw me over!" "Steady!" Basterga answered; and he opposed his huge form to Claude's rush. "What is this, young man? Coming to blows in the street? For shame! For shame!" He moved again so as still to confront him. "Give him up!" Claude panted, scarcely preventing himself from attacking both. "Give him up, I say, and----" "Not till I have heard what he has done! Steady, young man, keep your distance!" "I will tell you everything! Everything!" Louis whined, clinging to his arm. "Do you hear what he says?" Basterga replied. "In the meantime, I tell you to keep your distance, young man. I am not used to be jostled!" Claude hesitated a moment, scowling. Then, "Very well!" he said, drawing off with a gesture of menace. "It is only put off: I shall pay him another time. It is waiting for you, sneak, bear that in mind!" And shrugging his shoulders he turned with as much dignity as he could and moved off. Basterga wheeled from him to the other. "So!" he said. "You have something to tell me, it seems?" And taking the trembling Louis by the arm, he drew him aside, a few paces from the approach of the bridge. In doing this he hung a moment searching the bridge and the farther bank with a keen gaze. He knew, and for some hours had known, on what a narrow edge of peril he stood, and that only Blondel's influence protected him from arrest. Yet he had returned: he had not hesitated to put his head again into the lion's mouth. Still if Louis' words meant that certain arrest awaited him, he was not too proud to save himself. He could discern no officers on the bridge, and satisfied on the point of immediate danger, he turned to his shivering ally. "Well, what is it?" he said. "Speak!" "I'll tell you the truth," Louis gabbled. "You had better!" Basterga replied, in a tone that meant much more than he said. "Or you will find me worse to deal with than yonder hot-head! I will answer for that." "Messer Blondel has been at the house," Louis murmured glibly, his mind centred on the question how much he should tell. "Last night and again this morning. He has been closeted with Anne and Mercier. And there has been some talk--of a box or a bottle." "Were they in my room?" Basterga asked, his brow contracting. "No, downstairs." "Did they get--the box or the bottle?" There was a dangerous note in Basterga's voice; and a look in his eyes that scared the lad. Louis, as his instinct was, lied again, fleeing the more pressing peril. "Not to my knowledge," he said. "And you?" The scholar eyed him with bland suavity. "You had nothing to do--with all this, I suppose?" "I listened. I was in my room, but they thought I was out. When I went," the liar continued, "they discovered me; and Messer Blondel followed me and overtook me on the bridge and threatened--that he would have me arrested if I were not silent." "You refused to be silent, of course?" But Louis was too acute to be caught in a trap so patent. He knew that Basterga would not believe in his courage, if he swore to it. "No, I said I would be silent," he answered. "And I should have been," he continued with candour, "if I had not run into your arms." "But if you assented to his wish," Basterga retorted, eyeing him keenly, "why did he depart after that fashion?" "Something happened to him," Louis said. "I do not know what. He seemed to be in distress, or to be ill." "I could see that," the scholar answered dryly. "But Master Claude? What of him? And why was he so enamoured of you that he could not be parted from you?" "It was to punish me for listening. They followed me different ways." "I see. And that is the truth, is it?" "I swear it is!" The scholar saw no reason why it should not be the truth. Louis, a facile tool, had always been of his, the stronger, party. If Blondel tampered with any one, he would naturally, if he knew aught of the house, suborn Claude or Anne. And Louis, spying and fleeing, and when overtaken, promising silence, was quite in the picture. The only thing, indeed, which stood out awkwardly, and refused to fall into place, was the fashion in which the Syndic had turned and gone off the bridge. And for that there might be reasons. He might have been seized with a sudden attack of his illness, or he might have perceived Basterga watching him from the farther bank. On the whole, the scholar, forgetting that cowards are ever liars, saw no reason to doubt Louis' story. It did but add one more to the motives he had for action: immediate, decisive, striking action, if he would save his neck, if he would succeed in his plans. That the Syndic alone stood between him and arrest, that by the Syndic alone he lived, he had learned at a meeting at which he had been present the previous night at the Grand Duke's country house four leagues distant. D'Albigny had been there, and Brunaulieu, Captain of the Grand Duke's Guards, and Father Alexander, who dreamed of the Episcopate of Geneva, and others--the chiefs of the plot, his patrons. To his mortification they had been able to tell him things he had not learned, though he was within the city, and they without. Among others, that the Council had certain knowledge of him and his plans, and but for the urgency of Blondel would have arrested him a fortnight before. His companions at the midnight supper had detected his dismay, and had derided him, thinking that with that there was an end of the mysterious scheme which he had refused to impart. They fancied that he would not return to the city, or venture his head a second time within the lion's jaws. But they reckoned without their man, Basterga with all his faults was brave; and he had failed in too many schemes to resign this one lightly. "Si fractus illabatur orbis Impavidum ferient ruinæ," he murmured; and he had ventured, he had passed the gates, he was here. Here, with his eyes open to the peril, and open to the necessity of immediate action if the slender thread by which all hung were not to snap untimely. Blondel! He lived by Blondel. And Blondel--why had he left the bridge in that strange fashion? Abruptly, desperately, as if something had befallen him. Why? He must learn, and that quickly. CHAPTER XVI. A GLOVE AND WHAT CAME OF IT. Meanwhile, Claude, robbed of his prey, had gone into the town in great disgust. As he passed from the bridge, and paused before he entered the huddle of narrow streets that climbed the hill, he had on his left the glittering heights of snow, rising ridge above ridge to the blue; and most distant among them Mont Blanc itself, etherealised by the frosty sunshine and clear air of a December morning. But Mont Blanc might have been a marsh, the Rhone, pouring its icy volume from the lake, might have been a brook, for him. Aware, at length, of the peril in which Anne stood, and not doubting that these colloquies of Messers Blondel and Louis, these man[oe]uvrings to be rid of his presence, were part of a conspiracy against her, he burned with the desire to thwart it. They had made a puppet of him; they had sent him to and fro at their will and pleasure; and they had done this, no doubt, in order that in his absence they might work--Heaven knew what vile and miserable work! But he would know, too! He was going to know! He would not be so tricked thrice. His indignation went beyond the Syndic. The smug-faced towns-folk whom he met and jostled in the narrow ways, and whose grave starched looks he countered with hot defiant glances--he included them in his anathema. He extended to them the contempt in which he held Blondel and Louis and the rest. They were all of a breed, a bigoted breed; all dull, blind worms, insensible to the beauty of self-sacrifice, or the purity of affection. All, self-sufficient dolts, as far removed, as immeasurably divided from her whom he loved, as the gloomy lanes of this close city lay below the clear loveliness of the snow-peaks! For, after all, he had lifted his eyes to the mountains. One thing only perplexed him. He understood the attitude of Basterga and Grio and Louis towards the girl. He discerned the sword of Damocles that they held over her, the fear of a charge of witchcraft, or of some vile heresy, in which they kept her. But how came Blondel in the plot? What was his part, what his object? If he had been sincere in that attempt on Basterga's secrets, which Madame's delirious words had frustrated, was he sincere now? Was his object now as then--the suppression of the devilish practices of which he had warned Claude, and in the punishment of which he had threatened to include the girl with her tempter? Presumably it was, and he was still trying to reach the goal by other ways, using Louis as he had used Claude, or tried to use him. And yet Claude doubted. He began to suspect--for love is jealous--that Blondel had behind this a more secret, a more personal, a more selfish aim. Had the young girl, still in her teens, caught the fancy of the man of sixty? There was nothing unnatural in the idea; such things were, even in Geneva; and Louis was a go-between, not above the task. In that case she who had showed a brave front to Basterga all these months, who had not blenched before the daily and hourly persecution to which she had been exposed in her home, was not likely to succumb to the senile advances of a man who might be her grandfather! If he did not hold her secret. But if he did hold it? If he did hold it, and the cruel power it gave? If he held it, he who had only to lift his hand to consign her to duress on a charge so dark and dangerous that innocence itself was no protection against it? So plausible that even her lover had for a short time held it true? What then? Claude, who had by this time reached the Tertasse gate and passed through it from the town side, paused on the ramparts and bared his head. What then? He had his answer. Framed in the immensity of sky and earth that lay before him, he saw his loneliness and hers, his insignificance and hers, his helplessness and hers; he, a foreigner, young, without name or reputation, or aught but a strong right hand; she, almost a child, alone or worse than alone, in this great city--one of the weak things which the world's car daily and hourly crushes into the mud, their very cries unheard and unheeded. Of no more account than the straw which the turbid Rhone, bore one moment on its swirling tide, and the next swallowed from sight beneath its current! They were two--and a mad woman! And against them were Blondel and Basterga and Grio and Louis, and presently all the town of Geneva! All these gloomy, narrow, righteous men, and shrieking, frightened women--frightened lest any drop of the pitch fall on them and destroy them! Love is a marvellous educator. Almost as clearly as we of a later day, he saw how outbreaks of superstition, such as that which he dreaded, began, and came to a head, and ended. A chance word at a door, a spiteful rumour or a sick child, the charge, the torture, the widening net of accusation, the fire in the market-place. So it had been in Bamberg and Wurzburg, in Geneva two generations back, in Alsace scarce as many years back: at Edinburgh in Scotland where thirty persons had suffered in one day--ten years ago that; in the district of Como, where a round thousand had suffered! Nobility had not availed to save some, nor court-favour others; nor wealth, nor youth, nor beauty. And what had he or she to urge, what had they to put forward that would in the smallest degree avail them? That could even for a moment stem or avert the current of popular madness which power itself had striven in vain to dam. Nothing! And yet he did not blench, nor would he; being half French and of good blood, at a time when good French blood ran the more generously for a half century of war. He would not have blenched, even if he had not, from the sunlit view of God's earth and heaven which lay before his eyes, drawn other thoughts than that one of his own littleness and insignificance. As this view of vale and mountain had once before lifted his judgment above the miasma of a cruel superstition, so it raised him now above creeping fears and filled him with confidence in something more stable than magistrates or mobs. Love, like the sunlight, shone aslant the dark places of the prospect and filled them with warmth. Sacrifice for her he loved took on the beauty of the peaks, cold but lovely; and hope and courage, like the clear blue of the vault above, looked smiling down on the brief dangers and the brief troubles of man's making. The clock of St. Gervais was striking eleven as, still in exalted mood, he turned his back on the view and entered the house in the Corraterie. He had entered on his return from his fruitless visit to Blondel, and had satisfied himself that Anne was safe. Doubtless she was still safe, for the house was quiet. In his new mood he was almost inclined to quarrel with this. In the ardour of his passion he would gladly have seen the danger immediate, the peril present, that he might prove to her how much he loved her, how deeply he felt for her, what he would dare for her. To die on the hearth of the living-room, at her feet and saving her, seemed for a moment the thing most desirable--the purest happiness! That was denied him. The house was quiet, as in a morning it commonly was. So quiet that he recalled without effort the dreams which he had dreamed on that spot, and the thoughts which had filled his heart to bursting a few hours before. The great pot was there, simmering on its hook; and on the small table beside it, the table that Basterga and Grio occupied, stood a platter with a few dried herbs and a knife fresh from her hand. Claude made sure that he was unobserved, and raising the knife to his lips, kissed the haft gently and reverently, thinking what she had suffered many a day while using it! What fear, and grief and humiliation, and---- He stood erect, his face red: he listened intently. Upstairs, breaking the long silence of the house, opening as it were a window to admit the sun, a voice had uplifted itself in song. The voice had some of the tones of Anne's voice, and something that reminded him of her voice. But when had he heard her sing? When had aught so clear, so mirthful, or so young fallen from her as this; this melody, laden with life and youth and abundance, that rose and fell and floated to his ears through the half-open door of the staircase? He crept to the staircase door and listened; yes, it was her voice, but not such as he had ever heard it. It was her voice as he could fancy it in another life, a life in which she was as other girls, darkened by no fear, pinched by no anxiety, crushed by no contumely; such as her voice might have been, uplifted in the garden of his old home on the French border, amid bees and flowers and fresh-scented herbs. Her voice, doubtless, it was; but it sorted so ill with the thoughts he had been thinking, that with his astonishment was mingled something of shock and of loss. He had dreamed of dying for her or with her, and she sang! He was prepared for peril, and her voice vied with the lark's in joyous trills. Leaning forward to hear more clearly, he touched the door. It was ajar, and before he could hinder it, it closed with a sharp sound. The singing ceased with an abruptness that told, or he was much mistaken, of self-remembrance. And presently, after an interval of no more than a few seconds, during which he pictured the singer listening, he heard her begin to descend. Two men may do the same thing from motives as far apart as the poles. Claude did what Louis would have done. As the foot drew near the staircase door, treading, less willingly, less lightly, more like that of Anne with every step, he slid into his closet, and stood. Through the crack between the hinges of the open door, he would be able to view her face when she appeared. A second later she came, and he saw. The light of the song was still in her eyes, but mingled, as she looked round the room to learn who was there, with something of exaltation and defiance. Christian maidens might have worn some such aspect, he thought--but he was in love--as they passed to the lions. Or Esther, when she went unbidden into the inner court of the King's House, and before the golden sceptre moved. Something had happened to her. But what? She did not see him, and after standing a moment to assure herself that she was alone, she passed to the hearth. She lifted the lid of the pot, bent over it, and slowly stirred the broth; then, having covered it again, she began to chop the dried herbs on the platter. Even in her manner of doing this, he fancied a change; a something unlike the Anne he had known, the Anne he had come to love. The face was more animated, the action quicker, the step lighter, the carriage more free. She began to sing, and stopped; fell into a reverie, with the knife in her hand, and the herb half cut; again roused herself to finish her task; finally having slid the herbs from the platter to the pot, she stood in a second reverie, with her eyes fixed on the window. He began to feel the falseness of his position. It was too late to show himself, and if she discovered him what would she think of him? Would she believe that in spying upon her he had some evil purpose, some low motive, such as Louis might have had? His cheek grew hot. And then--he forgot himself. Her eyes had left the window and fallen to the window-seat. It was the thing she did then which drew him out of himself. Moving to the window--he had to stoop forward to keep her within the range of his sight--she took from it a glove, held it a moment, regarding it; then with a tender, yet whimsical laugh, a laugh half happiness, half ridicule of herself, she kissed it. It was Claude's glove. And if, with that before his eyes he could have restrained himself, the option was not his. She turned in the act, and saw him; with a startled cry she put--none too soon--the table between them. They faced one another across it, he flushed, eager, with love in his eyes, and on his lips; she blushing but not ashamed, her new-found joy in her eyes, and in the pose of her head. "Anne!" he cried. "I know now! I know! I have seen and you cannot deceive me!" "In what?" she said, a smile trembling on her lips. "And of what, Messer Claude, are you so certain, if you please?" "That you love me!" he replied. "But not a hundredth part"--he stretched his arms across the table towards her "as much as I love you and have loved you for weeks! As I loved you even before I learned last night----" "What?" Into her face--that had not found one hard look to rebuke his boldness--came something of her old silent, watchful self. "What did you learn last night?" "Your secret!" "I have none!" Quick as thought the words came from her lips. "I have none! God is merciful," with a gesture of her open arms, as if she put something from her, "and it is gone! If you know, if you guess aught of what it was"--her eyes questioned his and read in them if not that which he knew, that which he thought of her. "I ask you to be silent." "I will, after I have----" "Now! Always!" "Not till I have spoken once!" he cried. "Not till I have told you once what I think of you! Last night I heard. And I understood. I saw what you had gone through, what you had feared, what had been your life all these weeks, rising and lying down! I saw what you meant when you bade me go anywhere but here, and why you suffered what you did at their hands, and why they dared to treat you--so! And had they been here I would have killed them!" he added, his eyes sparkling. "And had you been here----" "Yes?" she did not seek to check him now. Her bearing was changed, her eyes, soft and tender, met his as no eyes had ever met his. "I should have worshipped you! I should have knelt as I kneel now!" he cried. And sinking on his knees he extended his arms across the table and took her unresisting hands. "If you no longer have a secret, you had one, and I bless God for it! For without it I might not have known you, Anne! I might not have----" "Perhaps you do not know me now," she said; but she did not withdraw her hands or her eyes. Only into the latter grew a shade of trouble. "I have done--you do not know what I have done. I am a thief." "Pah!" "It is true. I am a thief." "What is it to me?" He laughed a laugh as tender as her eyes. "You are a thief, for you have stolen my heart. For the rest, do you think that I do not know you now? That I can be twice deceived? Twice take gold for dross, and my own for another thing? I know you!" "But you do not know," she said tremulously, "what I have done--what I did last night--or what may come of it." "I know that what comes of it will happen, not to one but to two," he replied bravely. "And that is all I ask to know. That, and that you are content it shall be so?" "Content?" "Yes." "Content!" There are things, other than wine, that bring truth to the surface. That which had happened to the girl in the last few hours, that which had melted her into unwonted song, was of these things; and the tone of her voice as she repeated the word "Content!" the surrender of her eyes that placed her heart in his keeping, as frankly as she left her hands in his, proclaimed it. The reserves of her sex, the tricks of coyness and reticence men look for in maids, were shaken from her; and as man to man her eyes told him the truth, told him that if she had ever doubted she no longer doubted that she loved him. In the heart which a single passion, the purest of which men and women are capable, had engrossed so long, Nature, who, expel her as you will, will still return, had won her right and carved her kingdom. And she knew that it was well with her--whatever the upshot of last night. To be lonely no more; to be no longer the protector, but the protected; to know the comfort of the strong arm as well as of the following eye, the joy of receiving as well as of giving; to know that, however dark the future might lower, she had no longer to face it alone, no longer to plan and hope and fear and suffer alone, but with _him_--the sense of these things so mingled with her gratitude on her mother's account that the new affection, instead of weakening the old became as it were part of it; while the old stretched onwards its pious hand to bless the new. If Claude did not read all this in her eyes, and in that one word "Content?" he read so much that never devotee before relic rose more gently or more reverently to his feet. Because all was his he would take nothing. "As I stand by you, may God stand by me," he said, still holding her hands in his, and with the table between them. "I have no fear," she replied in a low voice. "Yet--if you fail, may He forgive you as fully as I must forgive you. What shall I say to you on my part, Messer Claude?" "That you love me." "I love you," she murmured with an intonation which ravished the young man's heart and brought the blood to his cheeks. "I love you. What more?" "There is no more," he cried. "There can be no more. If that be true, nothing matters." "No!" she said, beginning to tremble under a weight of emotion too heavy for her, following as it did the excitement of the night. "No!" she continued, raising her eyes which had fallen before the ardour of his gaze. "But there must be something you wish to ask me. You must wish to know----" "I have heard what I wished to know." "But----" "Tell me what you please." She stood in thought an instant: then, with a sigh, "He came to me last evening," she said, "when you were at his house." "Messer Blondel?" "Yes. He wished me to procure for him a certain drug that Messer Basterga kept in his room." Claude stared. "In a steel casket chained to the wall?" he asked. "Yes," she whispered with some surprise. "You knew of it, then? He had tried to procure it through Louis, and on the pretence that the box contained papers needed by the State. Failing in that he came last evening to me, and told me the truth." "The truth?" Claude asked, wondering. "But was it the truth?" "It was." Her eyes, like stars on a rainy night, shone softly. "I have proved it." Again, with a ring of exultation in her voice, "I have proved it!" she cried. "How?" "There was in the box a drug, he told me, possessed of an almost miraculous power over disease of body and mind; so rare and so wonderful that none could buy it, and he knew of but this one dose, of which Messer Basterga had possessed himself. He begged me to take it and to give it to him. He had on him, he said, a fatal illness, and if he did not get this--he must die." Her voice shook. "He must die! Now God help him!" "You took it." "I took it." Her face, as her eyes dropped before his, betrayed trouble and doubt. "I took it," she continued, trembling. "If I have done wrong, God forgive me. For I stole it." His face betrayed his amazement, but he did not release her hands. "Why?" he said. "To give it to her," she answered. "To my mother. I thought then that it was right--it was a chance. I thought--now I don't know, I don't know!" she repeated. The shade on her face grew deeper. "I thought I was right then. Now--I--I am frightened." She looked at him with eyes in which her doubts were mirrored. She shivered, she who had been so joyous a moment before, and her hands, which hitherto had lain passive in his, returned his pressure feverishly. "I fear now!" she exclaimed. "I fear! What is it? What has happened--in the last minute?" He would have drawn her to him, seeing that her nerves were shaken; but the table was between them, and before he could pass round it, a sound caught his ear, a shadow fell between them, and looking up he discovered Basterga's face peering through the nearer casement. It was pressed against the small leaded panes, and possibly it was this which by flattening the huge features imparted to them a look of malignity. Or the look--which startled Claude, albeit he was no coward--might have been only the natural expression of one, who suspected what was afoot between them and came to mar it. Whatever it meant, the girl's cry of dismay found an echo on Claude's lips. Involuntarily he dropped her hands; but--and the action was symbolical of the change in her life--he stepped at the same moment between her and the door. Whatever she had done, right or wrong, was his concern now. CHAPTER XVII. THE _REMEDIUM_. We have seen that for Claude, as he hurried from the bridge, the faces he met in the narrow streets of the old town were altered by the medium through which he viewed them; and appeared gloomy, sordid and fanatical. In the eyes of Blondel, who had passed that way before him, the same faces wore a look of selfishness, stupendously and heartlessly cruel. And not the faces only; the very houses and ways, the blue sky overhead, and the snow-peaks--when for an instant he caught sight of them--bore the same aspect. All wore their every-day air, and mocked the despair in his heart. All flung in his teeth the fact, the incredible fact, that whether he died or lived, stayed or went, the world would proceed; that the eternal hills, ay, and the insensate bricks and mortar, that had seen his father pass, would see him pass, and would be standing when he was gone into the darkness. There are few things that to the mind of man in his despondent moods are more strange, or more shocking, than the permanence of trifles. The small things to which his brain and his hand have given shape, which he can, if he will, crush out of form, and resolve into their primitive atoms, outlive him! They lie on the table when he is gone, are unchanged by his removal, serve another master as they have served him, preach to another generation the same lesson. The face is dust, but the canvas smiles from the wall. The hand is withered, but the pencil is still in the tray and is used by another. There are times when the irony of this thought bites deep into the mind, and goads the mortal to revolt. Had Blondel, as he climbed the hill, possessed the power of Orimanes to blast at will, few of those whom he met, few on whom he turned the gloomy fire of his eyes, would have reached their houses that day or seen another sun. He was within a hundred paces of his home, when a big man, passing along the Bourg du Four, but on the other side of the way, saw him and came across the road to intercept him. It was Baudichon, his double chin more pendulent, his massive face more dully wistful than ordinary; for the times had got upon the Councillor's nerves, and day by day he grew more anxious, slept worse of nights, and listened much before he went to bed. "Messer Blondel," he called out, in a voice more peremptory than was often addressed to the Fourth Syndic's ear. "Messer Syndic! One moment, if you please!" Blondel stopped and turned to him. Outwardly the Syndic was cool, inwardly he was at a white heat that at any moment might impel him to the wildest action. "Well?" he said. "What is it, M. Baudichon?" "I want to know----" "Of course!" The sneer was savage and undisguised. "What, this time, if I may be so bold?" Baudichon breathed quickly, partly with the haste he had made across the road, partly in irritation at the gibe. "This only," he said. "How far you purpose to try our patience? A week ago you were for delaying the arrest you know of--for a day. It was a matter of hours then." "It was." "But days have passed, and are passing! and we have no explanation; nothing is done. And every night we run a fresh risk, and every morning--so far--we thank God that our throats are still whole; and every day we strive to see you, and you are out, or engaged, or about to do it, or awaiting news! But this cannot go on for ever! Nor," puffing out his cheeks, "shall we always bear it!" "Messer Baudichon!" Blondel retorted, the passion he had so far restrained gleaming in his eyes, and imparting a tremor to his voice, "are you Fourth Syndic or am I?" "You! You, certainly. Who denies it?" the stout man said. "But----" "But what? But what?" "We would know what you think we are, that we can bear this suspense." "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 shaggy eyelids drooping over his brooding eyes. Ah, God! 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 space 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 massive 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 passion. "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 cock-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 compassionate. "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 attitude 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. The scholar laughed contemptuously. "Then is the test easy," he said. "If it be the _remedium_ you will find her mother, who has not left her bed for three years, grown strong and well and vigorous, and like to him who lifted up his bed and walked. But if it be the love-philtre, you have but to come with me, and you will find her----" He did not finish the sentence, but a shrug of his shoulders and a mysterious smile filled the gap. Imperceptibly Blondel had raised himself in his chair. The gleam of hope, once lighted in his eyes, was growing bright. "How?" he asked. "How shall we find her? If it be the philtre only that she has taken--as you say?" "If it be the philtre? The mother, you mean?" "Yes." "Mad! Mad!" Basterga repeated with decision, "and beside herself. As you had been," he continued grimly, "had you by any chance taken the _aqua Medeæ_." "That you kept in the steel box?" "Ay." "You are sure it was not the _remedium_?" Blondel leaned forward. If only he could believe it, if only it were the truth, how great the difference! No wonder that the muscles of his lean throat swelled, and his hands closed convulsively on the arms of his great chair, as he strove to read the other's mind. He had as soon read a printed page without light. The scholar saw that it needed but a little to convince him, and took his line with confidence; nor without some pride in the wits that had saved him. "The _remedium_?" he repeated with impatient wonder. "Do you know that the _remedium_ is unique? That it is a man's life? That in the world's history it scarce appears once in five hundred years? That all the wealth of kings cannot produce it, nor the Spanish Indies furnish it? Do you remember these things, Messer Blondel, and do you ask if I keep it like a common philtre in a box in my lodgings?" He snorted in contempt, and going disdainfully to the hearth spat in the fire as if he could not brook the idea. Then returning to the Syndic's side, he took up his story in a different tone. "The _remedium_," he said, "my good friend, is in the Grand Duke's Treasury at Turin. It is in a steel box, it is true, but in one with three locks and three keys, sealed with the Grand Duke's private signet and with mine; and laid where the Treasurer himself cannot meddle with it." The Syndic sat up straight, and with his eyes fixed sullenly on the floor fingered his beard. He was almost persuaded, but not quite. Could it be, could it really be that the thing still existed? That it was still to be obtained, that life by its means was still possible? "Well?" Basterga said, when the silence had lasted some time. "The proof!" Blondel retorted, excitement once more over-mastering him. "Let me have the proof! Let me see, man, if the woman be mad." But the scholar, leaning Atlas-like, against the wall beside the long low window, with his arms crossed, and his great head sunk on his breast, did not move. He saw that this was his hour and he must use it. "To what purpose?" he answered slowly: and he shrugged his shoulders. "Why go to the trouble? The _remedium_ is in Turin. And if it be not, it is the Grand Duke's affair only, and mine, since you will not come to his terms. I would, I confess," he continued, in a more kindly tone, "that it were your affair also, Messer Blondel. I would I could have made you see things as they are and as I see them. As, believe me, Messer Petitot would see them were he in your place; as Messer Fabri and Messer Baudichon--I warrant it--do see them; as--pardon me--all who rank themselves among the wise and the illuminate, see them. For all such, believe me, these are times of enlightening, when the words which past generations have woven into shackles for men's minds fall from them, and are seen to be but the straw they are; when men move, like children awaking from foolish dreams, and life----" The Syndic's eyes glowed dully. "Life," Basterga continued sonorously, "is seen to be that which it is, the one thing needful which makes all other things of use, and without which all other things are superfluities! Bethink you a minute, Messer Blondel! Would Petitot give his life to save yours?" The Syndic smiled after a sickly fashion. Petitot? The stickling pedant! The thin, niggling whipster! "Or Messer Fabri?" Blondel shook his head. "Or Messer Baudichon?" "I called him but now--a fat hog!" It was Basterga's turn to shake his head. "He is not one to forget," he said gravely. "I fear you will hear of that again, Messer Blondel. I fear it will make trouble for you. But if these will not, is there any man in Geneva, any man you can name, who would give his life for you?" "Do men give life so easily?" Blondel answered, moving painfully in his chair. "Yet you will give yours for them! You will give yours! And who will be a ducat the better?" "I shall at least die for freedom," the Syndic muttered, gnawing his moustache. "A word!" "For the religion, then." "It is that which men make it!" the scholar retorted. "There have been good men of all religions, though we dare not say as much in public, or in Geneva. 'Tis not the religion. 'Tis the way men live it! Was John Bernardino of Assisi, whom some call St. Francis, a worse man than Arnold of Brescia, the Reformer? Or is your Beza a better man than Messer Francis of Sales? Or would the heavens fall if Geneva embraced the faith of the good Archbishop of Milan? Words, Messer Blondel, believe me, words!" "Yet men die for them!" "Not wise men. And when you have died for them, who will thank you?" The Syndic groaned. "Who will know, or style you martyr?" Basterga continued forcibly. "Baudichon, whom you have called a fat hog? He will sit in your seat. Petitot--he said but a little while ago that he would buy this house if he lived long enough." "He did?" The Syndic came to his feet as if a spring had raised him. "Certainly. And he is a rich man, you know." "May the Bise search his bones!" Blondel cried, trembling with fury. For this was the realisation of his worst fears. Petitot to live in his house, lie warm in his bed, sneer at his memory across the table that had been his, rule in the Council where he had been first! Petitot, that miserable crawler who had clogged his efforts for years, who had shared, without deserving, his honours, who had spied on him and carped at him day by day and hour by hour! Petitot to succeed him! To be all and own all, and sun himself in the popular eye, and say "Geneva, it is I!" While he, Blondel, lay rotting and forgotten, stark, beneath snow and rain, winter wind and summer drought! Perish Geneva first! Perish friend and foe alike! The Syndic wavered. His hand shook, his thin dry cheek burned with fever, his lips moved unceasingly. Why should he die? They would not die for him. Nay, they would not thank him, they would not praise him. A traitor? To live he must turn traitor? Ay, but try Petitot, and see if he would not do the same! Or Baudichon, who could not sleep of nights for fear--how would he act with death staring him in the face? The bravest soldiers when disarmed, or called upon to surrender or die, capitulate without blame. And that was his position. Life, too; dear, warm life! Life that might hold much for him still. Hitherto these men and their fellows had hampered and thwarted him, marred his plans and balked his efforts. Freed from them and supported by an enlightened and ambitious prince, he might rise to heights hitherto invisible. He might lift up and cast down at will, might rule the Council as his creatures, might live to see Berne and the Cantons at his feet, might leave Geneva the capital of a great and wealthy country. All this, at his will; or he might die! Die and rot and be forgotten like a dog that is cast out. He did not believe in his heart that faith and honour were words; fetters woven by wise men to hamper fools. He did not believe that all religions were alike, and good or bad as men made them. But on the one side was life, and on the other death. And he longed to live. "I would that I could make you see things as I see them," Basterga resumed, in a gentle tone. Patiently waiting the other's pleasure he had not missed an expression of his countenance, and, thinking the moment ripe, he used his last argument. "Believe me, I have the will, all the will, to help you. And the terms are not mine. Only I would have you remember this, Messer Blondel: that others may do what you will not, so that after all you may find that you have cast life away, and no one the better. Baudichon, for instance, plays the Brutus in public. But he is a fearful man, and a timid; and to save himself and his family--he thinks much of his family--he would do what you will not." "He would do it!" the Syndic cried passionately. And he struck the table. "He would, curse him!" "And he would not forget," Basterga continued, with a meaning nod, "that you had miscalled him!" "No! But I will be before him!" The Syndic was on his feet again, shaking like a leaf. "Ay?" Basterga blew his nose to hide the flash of triumph that shone in his eyes. "You will be wise in time? Well, I am not surprised. I thought that you would not be so mad--that no man could be so mad as to throw away life for a shadow!" "But mind you," Blondel snarled, "the proof. I must have the proof," he repeated. He was anxious to persuade himself that his surrender depended on a condition; he would fain hide his shame under a show of bargaining. "The proof, man, or I will not take a step." "You shall have it." "To-day?" "Within the hour." "And if she be not mad--I believe you are deceiving me, and it was the _remedium_ the girl took--if she be not mad----" The Syndic, stammering and repeating himself, broke off there. He could not meet the other's eyes; between a shame new to him and the overpowering sense of what he had done, he was in a pitiable state. "Curse you," with violence, "I believe you have laid a trap for me!" he cried. "I say if she be not mad, I have done." "Let it stand so," Basterga answered placidly. "Trust me, if she has taken the philtre she will be mad enough. Which reminds me that I also have a crow to pick with Mistress Anne." "Curse her!" "We will do more than that," Basterga murmured. "If she be not very good we will burn her, my friend. Uritur infelix Dido, totaque videtur Urbe furens!" His eyes were cruel, and he licked his lips as he applied the quotation. CHAPTER XVIII. THE BARGAIN STRUCK. Claude, at the first sign of peril, had put himself between Anne and the door; and, had not the fear which seized the girl at the sight of Basterga robbed her of the power to think, she must have thrilled with a new and delicious sensation. She, who had not for years known what it was to be sheltered behind another, was now to know the bliss of being protected. Nor did her lover remain on the defensive. It was he who challenged the intruders. "What is it?" he asked, as the Syndic crossed the threshold; which was darkened a moment later by the scholar's huge form. "What is your business here, Messer Syndic, if it please you?" "With you, none!" Blondel answered; and pausing a little within the door, he cast a look, cold and searching, round the apartment. His outward composure hid a tumult of warring passions; shame and rage were at odds within him, and rising above both was a venomous desire to exact retribution from some one. "Nothing with you!" he repeated. "You may stand aside, young man, or, better, go to your classes. What do you here at this hour, and idle, were the fitting question; and not, what is my business! Do you hear, sirrah?" with a rap of his staff of office on the floor. "Begone to your work!" But Claude, who had been thirsting this hour past for realms to conquer and dragons to subdue, and who, with his mistress beside him, felt himself a match for any ten, was not to be put aside. His manhood rebelled against the notion of leaving Anne with men whose looks boded the worst. "I am at home," he replied, breathing a little more quickly, and aware that in defying the Syndic he was casting away the scabbard. "I am at home in this house. I have done no wrong. I am in no inn now, and I know of no right which you have to expel me without cause from my own lodging." Blondel's lean face grew darker. "You beard me?" he cried. "I beard no one," Claude answered hardily. "I am at home here, that is all. If you have lawful business here, do it. I am no hindrance to you. If you have no lawful business--and as to that," he continued, recalling with indignation the tricks which had been employed to remove him, "I have my opinion--I have as much right to be here as you! The more, as it is not very long," he went on, with a glance of defiance, directed at Basterga, "since you gave the man who now accompanies you the foulest of characters! Since you would have me rob him! Since you called him reprobate of the reprobate! Is he reprobate now?" "Silence!" "A corrupter of women, as you called him?" "Liar!" the Syndic cried, trembling with passion. "Be silent!" The blow found him unprepared. "He lies!" he stammered, turning to his ally. Basterga laughed softly. He had guessed as much: none the less he thought it time to interfere, lest his tool be put too much out of countenance. "Gently, young man," he said, "or perhaps you may go too far. I know you." "He is a liar!" Blondel repeated. "Probably," Basterga said, "but it matters not. It is enough that our business here lies not with him, but with this young woman. You seem to have taken her under your protection," he continued, addressing Claude, "and may choose, if you please, whether you will see her haled through the streets, or will suffer her to answer our questions here. As you please." "Your questions?" Claude cried, recalling with rage the occasions on which he had heard this man insult her. "Hear me one moment, and I will very quickly prove----" He was silent with the word on his lips. Her hand on his sleeve recalled the necessity of prudence. He bit his lip and stood glowering at them. It was she who spoke. "What do you wish?" she asked in a low voice. Naturally courageous as she was, she could not have spoken but for the support of her lover. For the unexpected conjunction of these two, and their entrance together, smote her with fear. "What is your desire?" she repeated. "To see your mother," Basterga answered. "We have no business with you--at present," he added, after a perceptible pause, and with a slight emphasis. She caught her breath. "You want to see my mother?" she faltered. "I spoke plainly," Basterga replied with sternness. "That was what I said." "What do you want with her?" "That is our affair." Pale to the lips, she hesitated. Yet, after all, why should they not go up and see her mother? Things were not to-day as they had been yesterday: or she had done in vain that which she had done, had sinned in vain if she had sinned. And that was a thing not to be considered. If they found her mother as she had left her, if they found the promise of the morning fulfilled, even their unexpected entrance would do no harm. Her mother was sane to-day: sane and well as other people, thank God! It was on that account she had let her heart rise like a bird's to her lips. Yet, when she opened her mouth to assent, she found the words with difficulty. "I do not know what you want," she said faintly. "Still if you wish to see her you can go up." "Good!" Basterga replied, and advancing, he opened the staircase door, then stood aside for the Syndic to ascend first. "Good! The uppermost floor, Messer Blondel," he continued, holding the door wide. "The stairs are narrow, but I think I can promise you that at the top you will find what you want." He could not divest his tone of the triumph he felt. Slight as the warning was, it sufficed; while the last word was still on his lips, she snatched the door from his grasp, closed it and stood panting before it. What inward monition had spoken to her, what she had seen, what she had heard, besides that note of triumph in Basterga's voice, matters not. Her mind was changed. "No!" she cried. "You do not go up! No!" "You will not let us see her?" Basterga exclaimed. "No!" Her breast heaving, she confronted them without fear. In his surprise at her action the scholar had recoiled a step: he was fiercely angry. "Come, girl, no nonsense," he said roughly and brutally. "Make way! Or we shall have a little to say to you of what you did in my room last night! Do you mark me?" he continued. "I might have you punished for it, wench! I might have you whipped and branded for it! Do you mind me? You robbed me, and that which you took----" "I took at his instigation!" she retorted, pointing an accusing finger at Blondel, who stood gnawing his beard, hating the part he was playing, and hating still more this white-faced girl who had come so near to ruining, if she had not ruined, his last chance of life. Hate her? The Syndic hated her for the hour of anguish through which he had just passed, hated her for the price--he shuddered to think of it--which he must now pay for his life. He hated her for his present humiliation, he hated her for his future shame. She seemed to blame for all. "You took it," Basterga answered, acknowledging her words only by a disdainful shrug, "and gave it to your mother. Why, I care not. Now that you see we know so much, will you let us go up!" "No!" She faced him bravely and steadfastly. "No. If you know so much, you know also why I took it, and why I gave it to her." And then, the radiance of unselfish love illuminating her pallid face, "I would do it again were it to do," she said. "And again, and yet again! For you, I have done you wrong; I have robbed you, and you may punish me. I must bear it. But as to him," pointing to Messer Blondel, "I am innocent! Innocent," she repeated firmly. "For he would have done it himself and for himself; it was he who would have me do it. And if I have done it, I have done it for another. I have robbed you, if need be I must pay the price; but that man has naught against me in this! And for the rest, my mother is well." "Ah?" "Ay, well! well!" she repeated, the light of joy softening her eyes as she repeated the word. "Well! and I fear nothing." Basterga laughed cruelly. "Well?" he said. "Well, is she? Then let us go up and see her. If she be well, why not?" "No!" "Why not?" She did not answer, but she did not make way. "Why not? I will tell you, if you please," he said. "And it will make you pipe to another tune. You have given her, young woman, that which will make her worse, and not better!" "She is better!" "For an hour, or for twelve hours!" he retorted. "That certainly. Then worse." "No!" "No? But I see what it is," he continued--and, alas, his voice strengthened the fear that like a dead hand was closing on her heart and staying it; deepened the terror that like a veil was falling before her eyes and darkening the room; so that she had much ado, gripping finger-nails into palms, to keep her feet and let herself from fainting. "I see what it is. You would fain play Providence," he continued--"that is it, is it? You would play Providence? Then come! Come then, and see what kind of Providence it is you have played. We will see if you are right or I am right! And if she be well, or if she be ill!" And again he moved towards the staircase. But she stood obstinately between him and the door. "No," she said. "You do not go up!" She was resolute. The fear that as she listened to his gibing tones had driven the colour from her face, had hardened it too. For, if he were right? If for that fear there were foundation? If that which the Syndic had led her to give and that which she had given, proved--though for a few hours it had seemed to impart marvellous vigour--useless or worse than useless? Then the need to keep these men from her mother was the greater, the more desperate. How they could be kept, for how long it was possible to keep them, she did not pause to consider, any more than the she-wolf that crouches, snarling, between her whelps and the hunt, counts odds. It was enough for her that if they were right the worst had come, and naught lay between her mother's weakness and their cruel eyes and judgments but her own feeble strength. Or no! she was wrong in that; she had forgotten! As she spoke, and as Basterga with a scowl repeated the order to stand aside, Claude put her gently but irresistibly by, and took her place. The young man's eyes were bright, his colour high. "You will not go up!" he said, a mocking note of challenge, replying to Basterga's tone, in his voice. "You will not go up." "Fool! Will you prevent us?" "You will not go up! No!" In the very act of falling on the lad, Basterga recoiled. Claude had not been idle while the others disputed. He had gone to the corner for his sword, and it was the glittering point, suddenly whipped out and flickered before his eyes that gave the scholar pause, and made him leap back. "Pollux!" he cried, "are you mad? Put down! Put down! Do you see the Syndic? Do you know," he continued, stamping his foot, "that it is penal to draw in Geneva?" "I know that you are not going upstairs!" Claude answered gently. He was radiant. He would not have exchanged his position for a crown. She was looking, and he was going to fight. "You fool," Basterga returned, "we have but to call the watch from the Tertasse and you will be haled to the lock-up, and jailed and whipped, if not worse! And that jade with you! _Stultus es?_ Do you hear? Messer Syndic, will you be thwarted in this fashion? Call these lawbreakers to order and bid them have done!" "Put up!" the Syndic cried, hoarse with rage. He was beside himself, when he thought of the position in which he had placed himself. He looked at the two as if he would fain have slain them where they stood. "Or I call the watch, and it will be the worse for you," he continued. "Do you hear me? Put up?" "He shall not go upstairs!" Claude answered, breathing quickly. He was pale, but utterly and fixedly resolved. If Basterga made a movement to attack him, he would run him through whatever the consequences. "Then, fool, I will call the watch!" Blondel babbled, fairly beside himself. Claude had no answer to that; only they should not go up. It was the girl's readier wit furnished the answer. "Call them!" she cried, in a clear voice. "Call the watch, Messer Syndic, and I will tell them the whole story. What Messer Blondel would have had me do, and get, and give." "It was for the State!" the Syndic hissed. "And is it for the State that you come to-day with that man?" she retorted, and with her outstretched finger she accused Basterga of unspoken things. "That man! Last night you would have had me rob him. The day before he was a traitor. To-day he and you are one. Are one! What are you plotting together?" The Syndic shrank from the other's side under the stab of her words--words that, uttered at random, flew, straight as the arrow that slew Ahab, to the joint of his armour. "To-day you and that man are one," she repeated. "One! What are you plotting together?" She knew as much as that, did she? She knew that they were one, and that they were plotting together; while in the Council men were clamouring for the Paduan's arrest, and were growing suspicious because he was not arrested--Baudichon, whom he had called a fat hog, and Petitot, that slow, plodding sleuth-hound of a patriot. What if light fell on the true state of things--and less than the girl had said might cast that light? Then the warrant might go, not for the Paduan only, but for himself. Ay, for him! For with an enemy ever lying within a league of the gates warrants flew quickly in Geneva. Men who sleep ill of nights, and take the cock-crow for war's alarum, are suspicious, and, once roused, without ruth or mercy. There was the joint in his harness. Once let his name be published with Basterga's,--as must happen if the watch were summoned and the girl spoke out--and no one could say where the matter might end, or what suspicions might not be awakened. Nay, the matter was worse, more perilous and more lightly balanced; for, setting himself aside, none the less was a brawl that brought up Basterga's name, a thing to be shunned. The least thing might precipitate the scholar's arrest; his arrest must lead to the loss of the _remedium_, if it existed; and the loss of the _remedium_ to the loss of that which Messer Blondel had come to value the more dearly the more he sacrificed to keep it--the Syndic's life. He dared not call the watch, and he dared not use violence. As he awoke to those two facts, he stood blinking in dismayed silence, swallowing his rage, and hating the girl and hating the man with a dumb hatred. Though the reasons which weighed with him were unknown to the two, they could not be blind to his fear and his baffled mien; and had he been alone they might have taken victory for certain. But Basterga was not one to be so lightly thwarted. His intellect, his wit, his very mass intimidated. Therefore it was with as much relief as surprise that Anne read in his face the reflection of the other's doubts, and saw that he, too, gave back. "You are two fools!" he said. "Two great, big fools!" There was resignation, there was something that was almost approval in his tones. "You do not know what you are doing! Is there no way of making you hear reason?" "You cannot go up," Anne said. She had won, it seemed, without knowing how she had won. Basterga grunted; and then, "Ah, well," he said, addressing Claude, "if I had you in the fields, my lad, it would not be that bit of metal would save you!" And he spouted with appropriate gesture-- "--Illum fidi aequales, genua aegra trahentem Jactantemque utroque caput, crassumque cruorem Ore ejectantem mixtosque in sanguine dentes Ducunt ad navis! Half an hour in my company, and you would not be so bold." Claude smiled with pardonable contempt, but made no reply, nor did he change his attitude. "Come!" Blondel muttered, addressing his ally with his eyes averted. "I have reasons at present for letting them be!" They were strange reasons, to judge by the hang-dog look of the proud magistrate. "But I shall know how to deal with them by-and-by. Come, man, come!" he repeated impatiently. And he turned towards the door and unlocked it. Basterga moved reluctantly after him. "Ay, we go now," he said, with a look full of menace. "But wait a while! Cæsar Basterga does not forget, and his turn will come! Where is my cap?" He had let it fall on the floor, and he turned to pick it up, stooping slowly and with difficulty as stout men do. As he raised himself, his head still low, he butted it suddenly and with an activity for which no one would have given him credit full into Claude's chest. The unlucky young man, who had lowered his weapon the instant before, fell back with a "sough" against the wall, and leant there, pale and breathless. Anne uttered one scream, then the scholar's huge arm enfolded her neck and drew her backwards against his breast. "Up! up! Messer Blondel!" he cried. "Now is your chance! Up and surprise her!" And with his disengaged hand he gripped Claude, for further safety, by the collar. "Up; I will keep them quiet!" The Syndic wasted a moment in astonishment, then he took in the situation and the other's cleverness. Before Basterga had ceased to speak, he was at the door of the staircase, and had dragged it open. But as he set his foot on the lowest stair, Anne, held as she was against Basterga's breast, and almost stifled by the arm which covered her mouth, managed to clutch the Syndic by his skirts, and, once having taken hold, held him with the strength of despair. In vain he struggled and strove and wrestled to jerk himself free; in vain Basterga, hampered by Claude, tried to drag the girl away--Blondel came away with her! She clung to him, and even, freeing her mouth for a moment, succeeded in uttering a scream. "Curse her!" Basterga foamed: and had he had a hand to spare, he would have struck her down. "Pull, man, have you no strength! Let go, you vixen! Let go, or----" He tried to press her throat, but in changing his hold allowed her to utter a second scream, louder, more shrill, more full of passion than the other. At the same instant a chair, knocked down by Blondel in his efforts, fell with a crash, throwing down a pewter platter; and Claude, white and breathless as he was, began to struggle, seeing his mistress so handled. The four swayed to and fro. Another moment, and either the Syndic must have jerked himself free, or the contest must have attained to dimensions that could not escape the notice of the neighbours, when a sound--a sound from within, from upstairs--stayed the tumult as by magic. Blondel ceased to struggle, and stood aghast. Basterga relaxed his hold upon his prisoners and listened. Claude leant back against the wall. The girl alone--she alone moved. Without speaking, without looking, as a bird flies to its young, she sprang to the stairs and fled up them. The maniacal laugh, the crazy words--a moment only, they heard them: and then the door above, which the poor woman, so long bedridden, had contrived in her frenzy of fear to open, closed on the sounds and stifled them. But enough had been heard: enough to convince Blondel, enough to justify Basterga, enough to change the fortunes of more than one in the room. The scholar's eyes met the Syndic's. "Are you satisfied?" he asked, in a low voice. Blondel, breathing hard, nodded. "You heard?" He nodded a second time. He looked scared. "Then you have enough to burn the old witch and the young one with her!" Basterga replied. He turned his small eyes, sparkling with malignity, on the young man, who stood against the wall, pale, and but half recovered from the blow he had sustained. "You thought to thwart me, did you, Messer Claude? You thought yourself clever enough to play with Cæsar Basterga, did you? To hold at bay--oh, clever fellow--a magistrate and a scholar! And defy us both! Now I will tell you what will come of it!" He shook his great finger in front of the young man. "Your pretty bit of pink and white will burn! Burn, see you! A show for the little boys, a holiday for the young men and the young women, a treat for the old men, who will see her white limbs writhe in the smoke! Ha!" as Claude, with a face of horror, would have waved him away, "that touches you, does it? You had not thought of that? Nay, you had not thought of other things. I tell you, before the sun sets this evening, this house shall be anathema! Before night what we have heard will be known abroad, and there will be much added to it. There was a child died in the fourth house from this on Sunday! It will be odd if she did not overlook it. And the young wife of the Lieutenant at the Porte Tertasse, who has ailed since her marriage--a pale thing; who knows but he looked this way once and Mistress Anne thought ill of his defection? Ha! Ha! You would cross Cæsar Basterga, would you? No, Messer Claude," he set his huge foot on the fallen sword which Claude had made a movement to recover. "I fight with other weapons than that! And if you lay a finger on me"--he extended his arms to their widest extent--"I will crush the life out of you. That is better," as Claude stood glaring helplessly at him--"I teach you prudence, at any rate. And as," with a sneer, "you are so apt at learning, I will do you, if you choose, a greater kindness that man ever did you, or woman either!" The young man, breathing quickly, did not speak. Perhaps his eyes were watching for an opening; at the least appearance of one he would have flung himself upon his enemy. "You do not choose. And yet, I will do it. In one word--Go! Teque his, puer, eripe flammis!" He pointed to the door with a gesture tragic enough. "Go and live, for if you stay you die! Wait not until the chain is drawn before the door, until boards darken the windows, and men cross the street when they would pass! Until women hide their heads as they go by, and the market will not sell, nor the water run for you! For then, as surely as she will perish, you will perish with her!" "So be it!" Claude cried. And in his turn he pointed, not without dignity, to the door. "Go you, and our blood be upon your head!" Basterga shrugged his shoulders, and in one moment put the thing and his grand manner away from him. "Enough! we will go," he said. "You are satisfied, Messer Syndic? Yes. Farewell, young sir, you have my last word." And while the young man stood glowering at him, he opened the street door, and the two passed out. "You will not go on with this?" Blondel muttered with a backward gesture, as the two paused. "Nothing," Basterga answered in a low voice, "will suit our purpose better. It will amuse Geneva and fill men's mouths till the time come. For you too, Messer Blondel," he continued, with a piercing look, "will live and not die, I take it?" The other knew then that the hour had come to set his seal to the bargain: and equally, that if at this eleventh hour he would return, the path was open. But _facilis_--known is the rest, and the grip which a strong nature gains on a weaker, and how hardly fear, once admitted, is cast out. Within the Syndic's sight rose one of the gates, almost within touch rose the rampart of the city, long his own, which he was asked to betray. The mountains of his native land, pure, cold and sunlit, stood up against the blue depth of winter sky, eloquent of the permanence of things, and the insignificance of men. The contemplation of them turned his cheek a shade paler and struck terror to his heart; but did not stay him. His eyes avoiding the other's gaze, his face shrinking and pitiable, shame already his portion, he nodded. "Precisely," Basterga said. "Then nothing can better serve our purpose than this. Let your officers know what you have heard, and know that you would hear more--of this house. That, and a hint of evil practices and witch's spells dropped here and there, will give your townsfolk something to talk of and stare at and swallow--till our time come." "But if I bid them watch this house," Blondel muttered weakly--how fast, how fast the thing was passing out of his hands!--"attention will be called to you, and then, Messer Basterga----" "My work is done here," Basterga replied calmly. "I have crossed that threshold for the last time. When I leave you--and it is time we parted--I go out of the gates, not again to return until--until things have been brought to the point at which we would have them, Messer Blondel." "And that," the Syndic said with a shudder, "will be?" "Towards the longest night. Say, in a week or so from now. The precise moment--that and other things, I will let you know by a safe mouth." "But the _remedium_? That first!" the Syndic muttered, a scowl, for a second, darkening his face. Basterga smiled. "Have no fear," he replied. "That first, by all means. And afterwards--Geneva." CHAPTER XIX. THE DEPARTURE OF THE RATS. The wood-ash on the hearth had sunk lower and grown whiter. The last flame that had licked the black sides of the great pot had died down among the expiring embers. Only under the largest log glowed a tiny cavern, carbuncle-hued; and still Claude walked restlessly from the window to the door, or listened with a frowning face at the foot of the stairs. One hour, two hours had passed since the Syndic's departure with Basterga; and still Anne remained with her mother and made no sign. Once, spurred by anxiety and the thought that he might be of use, Claude had determined to mount and seek her; but half-way up the stairs his courage had failed he had recoiled from a scene so tender, and so sacred. He had descended and fallen again to moving to and fro, and listening, and staring remorsefully at the weapon--it lay where he had dropped it on the floor--that had failed him in his need. He had their threats in his ears, and by-and-by the horror of inaction, the horror of sitting still and awaiting the worst with folded hands, overcame him; and in a panic planning flight for them all, flight, however hopeless, however desperate, he hurried into his bed-closet, and began to pack his possessions. He packed impulsively until even the fat text-books bulked in his bundle, and the folly of flying for life with a Cæsar and Melancthon on his back struck him. Then he turned all out on the floor in a fury of haste lest she should surprise him, and think that he had had it in his mind to desert her. Back he went on that to the living-room with its dying fire and lengthening shadows; and there he resumed his solitary pacing. The room lay silent, the house lay silent; even the rampart without, which the biting wind kept clear of passers. He tried to reason on the position, to settle what would happen, what steps Basterga and Blondel would take, how the blow they threatened would fall. Would the officers of the Syndic enter and seize the two helpless women and drag them to the guard-house? In that case, what should he do, what could he do, since it was most unlikely that he would be allowed to go with them or see them? For a time the desperate notion of bolting and barring the house and holding it against the law possessed his mind; but only to be quickly dismissed. He was not yet mad enough for that. In the meantime was there any one to whom he could appeal? Any course he could adopt? The sound of the latch rising in its socket drew his eyes to the outer door. It opened, and he saw Louis Gentilis on the threshold. Holding the door ajar, the young man peered in. Meeting Claude's eyes, he looked to the stairs, as if to seek the protection of Anne's presence; failing to find her, he made for an instant as if he would shut the door again, and go. But apparently he saw that Claude, thoroughly dispirited, was making no motion to carry out his threats of vengeance; and he thought better of it. He came in slowly, and closed the door after him. Turning his cap in his hand, and with his eyes slyly fixed on Claude, he made without a word for his bed-closet, entered it, and closed the door behind him. His silence was strange, and his furtive manner impressed Claude unpleasantly. They seemed to imply a knowledge that boded ill; nor was the impression they made weakened when, two minutes later, the closet door opened again, and he came out. "What is it?" Claude asked, speaking sharply. He was not going to put up with mystery of this sort. For answer Louis' eyes met his a moment; then the young man, without speaking, slid across the room to a chair on which lay a book. He took up the volume; it was his. Next he discovered another possession--or so it seemed--approached it and took seisin of it in the same dumb way; and so with another and another. Finally, blinking and looking askance, he passed his eyes from side to side to learn if he had overlooked anything. But Claude's patience, though prolonged by curiosity, was at an end. He took a step forward, and had the satisfaction of seeing Louis drop his air of mystery, and recoil two paces. "If you don't speak," Claude cried, "I will break every bone in your body! Do you hear, you sneaking rogue? Do you forget that you are in my debt already? Tell me in two words what this dumb show means, or I will have payment for all!" Master Louis cringed, divided between the desire to flee and the fear of losing his property. "You will be foolish if you make any fuss here," he muttered, his arm raised to ward off a blow. "Besides, I'm going," he continued, swallowing nervously as he spoke. "Let me go." "Going?" "Yes." "Do you mean," Claude exclaimed in astonishment, "that you are going for good?" "Yes, and if you will take my advice"--with a look of sinister meaning--"you will go too. That is all." "Why? Why?" Claude repeated. Louis' only answer was a shudder, which told Claude that if the other did not know all, he knew much. Dismayed and confounded, Mercier stepped back, and, with a secret grin of satisfaction, Louis turned again to his task of searching the room. He found presently that for which he had been looking--his cloak. He disentangled it, with a peculiar look, from a woman's hood, contact with which he avoided with care. That done, he cast it over his arm, and got back into his closet. Claude heard him moving there, and presently he emerged a second time. Precisely as he did so Claude caught the sound of a light footstep on the stairs, the stair door opened, and Anne, her face weary, but composed, came in. Her first glance fell on Louis, who, with his sack and cloak on his arm, was in the act of closing the closet door. Habit carried her second look to the hearth. "You have let the fire go out," she said. Then, turning to Louis, in a voice cold and free from emotion, "Are you going?" she asked. He muttered that he was, his face a medley of fear and spite and shame. She nodded, but to Claude's astonishment expressed no surprise. Meanwhile Louis, after dropping first his cloak and then his sack, in his haste to be gone, shuffled his way to the door. The two looked on, without moving or speaking, while he opened it, carried out his bag, and, turning about, closed the door upon himself. They heard his footsteps move away. At length Claude spoke. "The rats, I see, are leaving," he muttered. "Yes, the rats!" she echoed, and carried for a moment her eyes to his. Then she knelt on the hearth, and uncovering the under side of the log, where a little fire still smouldered, she fed it with two or three fir-cones, and, stooping low, blew steadily on them until they caught fire and blazed. He stood looking down at her, and marvelled at the strength of mind that allowed her to stoop to trifles, or to think of fires at such a time as this. He forgot that habit is of all stays the strongest, and that to women a thousand trifles make up--God reward them for it--the work of life: a work which instinct moves them to pursue, though the heavens fall. Several hours had elapsed since he had entered hotfoot to see her; and the day was beginning to wane. The flame of the blazing fir-cones, a hundred times reflected in the rows of pewter plates and the surface of the old oaken dressers, left the corners of the room in shadow. Immediately within the windows, indeed, the daylight held its own; but when she rose and turned to him her back was towards the casement, and the firelight which lit up her face flickered uncertainly, and left him in doubt whether she were moved or not. "You have eaten nothing!" she said, while he stood pondering what she would say. "And it is four o'clock! I am sorry!" Her tone, which took shame to herself, gave him a new surprise. He stopped her as she turned to the dresser. "Your mother is better?" he said gently. "She is herself now," she replied, with a slight quaver, and without looking at him. And she went about her work. Did she know? Did she understand? In his world was only one fact, in his mind only one tremendous thought: the fact of their position, the thought of their isolation and peril. In her treatment of Louis she had seemed to show knowledge and a comprehension as wide as his own. But if she knew all, could she be as calm as she was? Could she go about her daily tasks? Could she cut and lay and fetch with busy fingers, and all in silence? He thought not; and though he longed to consult her, to assure her and comfort her, to tell her that the very isolation, the very peril in which they stood were a happiness and a joy to him, whatever the issue, because he shared them with her, he would not, by reason of that doubt. He did not yet know the courage which underlies the gentlest natures: nor did he guess that even as it was a joy to him to stand beside her in peril, so it was a joy to her, even in that hour, to come and go for him, to cut his bread and lay for him, to draw his wine from the great cask under the stairs, and pour for him in the tall horn mug. And little said. By him, because he shrank from opening her eyes to the danger of their position; by her, because her mind was full and she could not trust herself to speak calmly. But he knew that she, too, had fasted since morning, and he made her eat with him: and it was in the thoughts of each that they had never eaten together before. For commonly Anne took her meal with her mother, or ate as the women of her time often ate, standing, alone, when others had finished. There are moments when the simplest things put on the beauty and significance of rites, and this first eating together at the small table on the fire-lit hearth was one of such moments. He saw that she did eat; and this care for her, and the reverence of his manner, so moved her, that at last tears rose and choked her, and to give her time and to hide his own feelings, he stood up and affected to get something from the fireside. Before he turned again, the latch rattled and the door flew open. The freezing draught that entered, arrested him between the table and the fire. The intruder was Grio. He stood an instant scowling on them, then he entered and closed the door. He eyed the two with a sneering laugh, and, turning, flung his cloak on a chair. It was ill-aimed and fell to the ground. "Why the devil don't you light?" he cried violently. "Eh?" He added something in which the words "Old hag's devilry!" were alone audible. "Do you hear?" he continued, more coherently. "Why don't you light? What black games are you playing, I'd like to know? I want my things!" Claude's fingers tingled, but danger and responsibility are sure teachers, and he restrained himself. Neither of them answered, but Anne fetched the lamp, and kindling a splinter of wood lighted it, and placed it on the table. Then bringing the Spaniard's rushlight from the three or four that stood on the dresser, she lighted it and held it out to him. "Set it down!" he said, with tipsy insolence. He was not quite sober. "Set it down! I am not going to--hic!--risk my salvation! Avaunt, Satan! It is possible to palm the evil one, like a card I am told, and--hic!--soul out, devil in, all lost as easy as candle goes out!" He had taken his candle with an unsteady hand, and unconsciously had blown it out himself. She restrained Claude by a look, and patiently taking the rushlight from Grio, she re-lit it and set it on the table for him to take. "As a candle goes out!" he repeated, eyeing it with drunken wisdom. "Candle out, devil in, soul lost, there you have it in three words--clever as any of your long-winded preachers! But I want my things. I am going before it is too late. Advise you to go too, young man," he hiccoughed, "before you are overlooked. She is a witch! She's the devil's mark on her, I tell you! I'd like to have the finding it!" And with an ugly leer he advanced a step as if he would lay hands on her. She shrank back, and Claude's eyes blazed. Fortunately, the bully's mind passed to the first object of his coming; or it may be that he was sober enough to read a warning in the younger man's face. "Oh! time enough," he said. "You are not so nice always, I'll be bound. And things come--hic!--to those who wait! I don't belong to your Sabbaths, I suppose, or you'd be freer! But I want my things, and I am going to have them! I defy thee, Satan! And all thy works!" Still growling under his breath he burst open the staircase door, and stumbled noisily upwards, the light wavering in his hand. Anne's eyes followed him; she had advanced to the foot of the stairs, and Claude understood the apprehension that held her. But the sounds did not penetrate to the room on the upper floor, or Madame Royaume did not take the alarm; perhaps she slept. And after assuring herself that Grio had entered his room the girl returned to the table. The Spaniard had spoken with brutal plainness; it was no longer possible to ignore what he had said, or to lie under any illusion as to the girl's knowledge of her peril. Claude's eyes met hers: and for a moment the anguished human soul peered through the mask of constancy, for a moment the woman in her, shrinking from the ordeal and the fire, from shame and death, thrust aside the veil, and held out quivering, piteous hands to him. But it was for a moment only. Before he could speak she was brave as before, quiet as he had ever seen her, patient, mistress of herself. "It is as you said," she muttered, smiling wanly, "the rats are leaving us." "Vermin!" he whispered. He could not trust himself to say more. His voice shook, his eyes were full. "They have not lost time," she continued in a low tone. She did not cease to listen, nor did her eyes leave the staircase door. "Louis first, and now Grio. How has it reached them so quickly, do you think?" "Louis is hand in glove with the Syndic," he murmured. "And Grio?" "With Basterga." She nodded. "What do you think they will do--first?" she whispered. And again--it went to his heart--the woman's face, fear-drawn, showed as it were beneath the mask with which love and faith and a noble resignation had armed her. "Do you think they will denounce us at once?" He shook his head in sheer inability to foresee; and then, seeing that she continued to look anxiously for his answer, that answer which he knew to be of no value, for minute by minute the sense of his helplessness was weighing upon him, "It may be," he muttered. "God knows. When Grio is gone we will talk about it." She began, but always with a listening ear and an eye to the open door, to remove from the table the remains of their meal. Midway in her task, she glanced askance at the window, under the impression that some one was looking through it; and in any case now the lamp was lit it exposed them to the curiosity of the rampart. She was going to close the shutters when Claude interposed, raised the heavy shutters and bolted and barred them. He was turning from them when Grio's step was heard descending. Strange to say the Spaniard's first glance was at the windows, and he looked genuinely taken aback when he saw that they were closed. "Why the devil did you shut?" he exclaimed, in a rage; and passing Anne with a sidelong movement, he flung a heavy bundle on the floor by the door. As he turned to ascend again he met her eyes, and backing from her he made with two of his fingers the ancient sign which southern people still use to ward off the evil eye. Then, half shamefacedly, half recklessly, he blundered upstairs again. A moment, and he came stumbling down; but this time he was careful to keep the great bundle he bore between himself and her eyes, until he had got the door open. That precaution taken, as if he thought the free cold air which entered would protect him from spells, he showed himself at his ease, threw down his bundle and faced her with an air of bravado. "I need not have feared," he said with a tipsy grin, "but I had forgotten what I carry. I have a hocus-pocus here "--he touched his breast--"written by a wise man in Ravenna, and sealed with a dead Goth's hand, that is proof against devil or dam! And I defy thee, mistress." "Why?" she cried. "Why?" And the note of indignation in her voice, the passionate challenge of her eyes, enforced the question. In the human mind is a desire for justice that will not be denied; and even from this drunken ruffian a sudden impulse bade her demand it. "Why should you defy me or fear me? What have I done to you, what have I done to any one," she continued, with noble resentment, "that you should spread this of me? You have eaten and drunk at my hand a hundred times; have I poisoned or injured you? I have looked at you a hundred times; have I overlooked you? You have lain down under this roof by night a hundred times; have I harmed you sleeping or waking, full moon or no moon?" For answer he leered at her slyly. "Not a whit," he said. "No." "No?" Her colour rose. "No; but you see"--with a grin--"it never leaves me, my girl." He touched his breast. "While I wear that I am safe." She gasped. "Do you mean that I----" "I do not know what you would have done--but for that!" he retorted. "Maimed me or wizened me, perhaps! Or, may be, made me waste away as you did the child that died three doors away last Sunday!" Her face changed slowly. Prepared as she had been for the worst by many an hour of vigil beside her mother's bed, the horror of this precise accusation--and such an accusation--overcame her. "What?" she cried. "You dare to say that I--that I----" She could not finish. But her eyes lightened, her form dilated with passion; and tipsy, ignorant, brutish as he was, the Spaniard could not be blind to the indignation, the resentment, the very wonder which stopped her breath and choked her utterance. At the sight some touch of shame, some touch of pity, made itself felt in the dull recesses even of that brain. "I don't say it," he muttered awkwardly. "It is what they are saying in the street." "In the street?" "Ay, where else?" He knew who said it, for he knew whence his orders came: but he was not going to tell her. Yet the spark of kindliness which she had kindled still lived--how could it be otherwise in presence of her youth and gentleness? "If you'll take my advice," he continued roughly, "you'll not show yourself in the streets unless you wish to be mishandled, my girl. It will be time enough when the time comes. Even now, if you were to leave your old witch of a mother and get good protection, there is no knowing but you might be got clear! You are a fair bit of red and white," with a grin. "And it is not far to Savoy! Will you come if I risk it?" A gesture, half refusal, half loathing, answered him. "Oh, very well!" he said. The short-lived fit of pity passed from him; he scowled. "You'll think differently when they have the handling of you. I'm glad to be going, for where there's one fire there are apt to be more; and I am a Christian, no matter who's not! Let who will burn, I'll not!" He picked up one bundle and, carrying it out, raised his voice. A man, who had shrunk, it seemed, from entering the house, showed his face in the light which streamed from the door. To this fellow he gave the bundle, and shouldering the other, he went heavily out, leaving the door wide open behind him. Claude strode to it and closed it; but not so quickly that he had not a glimpse of three or four pairs of eyes staring in out of the darkness; eyes so curious, so fearful, so quickly and noiselessly withdrawn--for even while he looked, they were gone--that he went back to the hearth with a shiver of apprehension. Fortunately, she had not seen them. She stood where he had left her, in the same attitude of amazement into which Grio's accusation had cast her. As she met his gaze--then, at last, she melted. The lamplight showed her eyes brimming over with tears; her lips quivered, her breast heaved under the storm of resentment. "How dare they say it?" she cried. "How dare they? That I would harm a child? A child?" And, unable to go on, she held out protesting hands to him. "And my mother? My mother, who never injured any one or harmed a hair of any one's head! That she--that they should say that of her! That they should set that to her! But I will go this instant," impetuously, "to the child's mother. She will hear me. She will know and believe me. A mother? Yes, I will go to her!" "Not now," he said. "Not now, Anne!" "Yes, now," she persisted, deaf to his voice. She snatched up her hood from the ground on which it had fallen, and began to put it on. He seized her arm. "No, not now," he said firmly. "You shall not go now. Wait until daylight. She will listen to you more coolly then." She resisted him. "Why?" she said. "Why?" "People fancy things at night," he urged. "I know it is so. If she saw you enter out of the darkness"--the girl with her burning eyes, her wet cheeks, her disordered hair looked wild enough--"she might refuse to believe you. Besides----" "What?" "I will not have you go now," he said firmly. That instant it had flashed upon him that one of the faces he had seen outside was the face of the dead child's mother. "I will not let you go," he repeated. "Go in the daylight. Go to-morrow morning. Go then, if you will!" He did not choose to tell her that he feared for her instant safety if she went now; that, if he had his will, the streets would see her no more for many a day. She gave way. She took off her hood, and laid it on the table. But for several minutes she stood, brooding darkly and stormily, her hands fingering the strings. To foresee is not always to be forearmed. She had lived for months in daily and hourly expectation of the blow which had fallen; but not the more easily for that could she brook the concrete charge. Her heart burned, her soul was on fire. Justice, give us justice though the heavens fall, is an instinct planted deep in man's nature! Of the Mysterious Passion of our Lord our finite minds find no part worse than the anguish of innocence condemned. A child? She to hurt a child? And her mother? Her mother, so harmless, so ignorant, so tormented! She to hurt a child? After a time, nevertheless, the storm began to subside. But with it died the hope which is inherent in revolt; in proportion as she grew more calm the forlornness of her situation rose more clearly before her. At last that had happened which she had so long expected to happen. The thing was known. Soon the full consequences would be upon her, the consequences on which she dared not dwell. Shudderingly she tried to close her eyes to the things that might lie before her, to the things at which Grio had hinted, the things of which she had lain thinking--even while they were distant and uncertain--through many a night of bitter fear and fevered anticipation. They were at hand now, and though she averted her thoughts, she knew it. But the wind is tempered to the shorn. Even as the prospect of future ill can dominate the present, embitter the sweetest cup, and render thorny the softest bed, so, sometimes, present good has the power to obscure the future evil. As Anne sank back on the settle, her trembling limbs almost declining to bear her, her eyes fell on her companion. Failing to rouse her, he had seated himself on the other side of the hearth, his elbows on his knees, his chin on his hands, in an attitude of deep thought. And little by little, as she looked at him, her cheeks grew, if not red, less pale, her eyes lost their tense and hopeless gaze. She heaved a quivering sigh, and slowly carried her look round the room. Its homely comfort, augmented by the hour and the firelight, seemed to lap them round. The door was locked, the shutters were closed, the lamp burned cheerfully. And he sat opposite--sat as if they had been long married. The colour grew deeper in her face as she gazed; she breathed more quickly; her eyes shone. What evil cannot be softened, what misfortune cannot be lightened to a woman by the knowledge that she is loved by the man she loves? That where all have fled, he remains, and that neither fear of death nor word of man can keep him from her side? He looked up in the end, and caught the look on her face, the look that a woman bestows on one man only in her life. In a moment he was on his knees beside her, holding her hands, covering them with kisses, vowing to save her, to save her--or to die with her! CHAPTER XX. IN THE DARKENED ROOM. Claude flung the cloak from his head and shoulders, and sat up. It was morning--morning, after that long, dear sitting together--and he stared confusedly about him. He had been dreaming; all night he had slept uneasily. But the cry that had roused him, the cry that had started that quick beating of the heart, the cry that still rang in his waking ears and frightened him, was no dream. As he rose to his feet, his senses began to take in the scene; he remembered what had happened and where he was. The shutters were lowered and open. The cold grey light of the early morning at this deadest season of the year fell cheerlessly on the living-room; in which for the greater safety of the house he had insisted on passing the night. Anne, whose daily task it was to open the shutters, had been down then: she must have been down, or whence the pile of fresh cones and splinters that crackled, and spirted flame about the turned log. Perhaps it was her mother's cry that had roused him; and she had re-ascended to her room. He strode to the staircase door, opened it softly and listened. No, all was silent above; and then a new notion struck him, and he glanced round. Her hood was gone. It was not on the table on which he had seen it last night. It was so unlikely, however, that she had gone out without telling him, that he dismissed the notion; and, something recovered from the strange agitation into which the cry had cast him, he yawned. He returned to the hearth and knelt and re-arranged the sticks so that the air might have freer access to the fire. Presently he would draw the water for her, and fill the great kettle, and sweep the floor. The future might be gloomy, the prospect might lower, but the present was not without its pleasures. All his life his slowness to guess the truth on this occasion was a puzzle to him. For the materials were his. Slowly, gradually, as he crouched sleepily before the fire, it grew upon him that there was a noise in the air; a confused sound, not of one cry, but of many, that came from the street, from the rampart. A noise, now swelling a little, now sinking a little, that seemed as he listened not so distant as it had sounded a while ago. Not distant at all, indeed; quite close--now! A sound of rushing water, rather soothing; or, as it swelled, a sound of a crowd, a gibing, mocking crowd. Yes, a crowd. And then in one instant the change was wrought. He was on his feet; he was at the door. He, who a moment before had nodded over the fire, watching the flames grow, was transformed in five seconds into a furious man, tugging at the door, wrestling madly with the unyielding oak. Wrestling, and still the noise rose! And still he strained in vain, back and sinew, strained until with a cry of despair he found that he could not win. The door was locked, the key was gone! He was a prisoner! And still the noise that maddened him, rose. He sprang to the right-hand window, the window nearest the commotion. He tore open a panel of the small leaded panes, and thrust his head between the bars. He saw a crowd; for an instant, in the heart of the crowd and raised above it, he saw an uplifted arm and a white woman's face from which blood was flowing. He drew in his head, and laid his hands to one of the bars and flung his weight this way and that, flung it desperately, heedless of injury. But in vain. The lead that soldered the bar into the strong stone mullion held, and would have held against the strength of four. With heaving breast, and hands from which the blood was starting, he stood back, glared round him, then with a cry flung himself upon the other window, tore it open and seized a bar--the middle one of the three. It was loose he remembered. God! why had he not thought of it before? Why had he wasted time? He wasted no more, with those shouts of cruel glee in his ears. The bar came out in his hands. He thrust himself feet first through the aperture. Slight as he was, it was small for him, and he stuck fast at the hips, and had to turn on his side. The rough edges of the bars scraped the skin, but he was through, and had dropped to his feet, the bar which he had plucked out still in his hands. For a fraction of a second, as he alighted, his eyes took in the crowd, and the girl at bay against the wall. She was raised a little above her tormentors by the steps on which she had taken refuge. On one side her hair hung loose, and the cheek beneath it was cut and bleeding, giving her a piteous and tragic aspect. Four out of five of her assailants were women; one of these had torn her face with her nails. Streaks of mud were mingled with the blood which ran down her neck; and even as Claude recovered himself after the drop from the window, a missile, eluding the bent arm with which she strove to shield her face, struck and bespattered her throat where the collar of her frock had been torn open--perhaps by the same rough clutch which had dragged down her hair. The ring about her--like all crowds in the beginning--were strangely silent; but a yell of derision greeted this success, and a stone flew, narrowly missing her, and another, and another. A woman, holding a heavy Bible after the fashion of a shield, was stooping and striking at her knees with a stick, striving to bring her to the ground; and with the cruel laughter that hailed the hag's ungainly efforts were mingled other and more ugly sounds, low curses, execrations, and always one fatal word, "Witch! Witch!"--fatal word spat at her by writhing mouths, hissed at her by pale lips, tossed broadcast on the cold morning wind, to breed wherever it flew fear and hate and suspicion. For, even while they mocked her they feared her, and shielded themselves against her power with signs and crossings and the Holy Book. To all, curse and blow and threat, she had only one word. Striving patiently to shield her face, "Let me go!" she wailed pitifully. "Let me go! Let me go!" Strange to say, she cried even that but softly; as who should say, "If you will not, kill me quietly, kill me without noise!" Ay, even then, with the blood running down her face, and with those eyes more cruel than men's eyes hemming her in, she was thinking of the mother whom she had sheltered so long. "Let me go! Let me go!" she repeated. "Witch, you shall go!" they answered ruthlessly. "To hell!" "Ay, with her dam! To the water with her! To the water!" "Look for the devil's mark! Search her! Again, Martha! Bring her down! Bring her down, and we'll soon see whether----" Then he reached them. The man, one of the few present, who had bidden them search her fell headlong on his face in the gutter, struck behind as by a thunder-bolt. The great Bible flew one way, the hag's stick flew another--and in its flight felled a second woman. In a twinkling Claude was on the steps, and in the heart of the crowd stood two people, not one; in a twinkling his arm was round the girl, his pale, furious face confronted her tormentors, his blazing eyes beat down theirs! More than all, his iron bar, brandished recklessly this way and that, threatened the brains of the man or the woman who was bold enough to withstand him. For he was beside himself with rage. He learned in that moment that he was of those who fight with joy and rejoicing, and laugh where others shake. The sight of that white, bleeding face, of that hanging hair, of that suppliant arm, above all, the sound of that patient "Let me go! Let me go!" that expected nothing and hoped nothing, had turned his blood to fire. The more numerous his opponents--if they were men--the better he would be pleased; and if they were women, such women, unsexed by hate and superstition, as he saw before him, women looking a millionfold more like witches than the girl they accused, the worse for them! His arm would not falter! It seemed of steel indeed. The bar quivered like a reed in his grasp, his eyes darted hither and thither, he stood an inch taller than at other times. He was like the war-horse that sniffs the battle. And yet he was cool after a fashion. He must get her home, and to do so he must not lose a moment. The vantage of the steps on which they stood, raised a hand's breath above their assailants, was a thing to be weighed; but it would not serve them if these cursed women mustered, and the cowardly crew before him throve to a mob. He must home with her. But the door was locked, and she could only go in as he had come out. Still, she must go. He thought all this between one stride and another--and other thoughts thick as leaves falling in a wind. Then, "Fools!" he thundered, and had her down the steps, and was dragging her towards her door before they awoke from their surprise, or thought of attacking him. The woman with the big Bible had had her fill--though he had not struck her but her stick--and sat where she had fallen in the mud. The other woman hugged herself in pain. The man was in no hurry to be up, having once felt Claude's knee in the small of his back. For a few seconds no one moved; and when they recovered themselves he was half-way to the Royaumes' door. They snatched up mud, then, and flung it after the pair with shrill execrations. And the woman who had picked up the stick hurled it in a frenzy after them, but wide of the mark. A dozen stones fell round them, and the cry of "The Witch! The Witch!"--cry so ominous, so cruel, cry fraught with death for so many poor creatures--followed hard on them. But they were within five paces of the door now, and if he could lift her to the window---- "The key," she murmured in his ear. "The key is in the lock!" She had her wits, too, then, and her courage! He felt a glow of pride, his arm pressed her more closely to him. "Unlock it!" he answered, and leaving her to it, having now no fear that she would faint or fall, he turned on the rabble with his bar. But they were for words, not blows, a rabble of cowards and women. They turned tail with screams and fled to a distance, more than one falling in the sudden _volte-face_. He made no attempt to pursue them along the rampart, but looked behind him, and found that she had opened the door. She had taken out the key, and was waiting for him to enter. He went up the steps, entered, and she closed the door quickly. It shut out in a moment the hootings of the returning women. While she locked it on the inside, he raised the bars and slid them into their places. Then, not till then, he turned to her. Her face averted, she was staunching the blood which trickled from her cheek. "It was the child's mother!" she faltered, a sob in her voice. "I went to her. I thought--that she would believe. Get me some water, please! I must go upstairs. My mother will be frightened." He was astonished: on fire himself, with every pulse beating madly, he was prepared for her to faint, to fall, to fling herself into his arms in gratitude; prepared for everything but this self-forgetfulness. "Water?" he said doubtfully, "but had you not better--take some wine, Anne?" "To wash! To wash!" she replied sharply, almost angrily. "How can I go to her in this state? And do you shut the shutters." A stone had that moment passed through a pane of one of the windows. The rout of women were gathering before the house; the step she advised was plainly necessary. Fortunately the Royaumes' house, like all in the Corraterie--which formed an inner line of defence pierced by the Tertasse gate--had outside shutters of massive thickness, capable of being lowered from within. He closed these in haste and found, when he turned from the task and looked for her--a small round hole in each shutter made things dimly visible--that she was gone to soothe her mother. He could not but love her the more for it. He could not but respect her the more for her courage, for her thoughtfulness, her self-denial. But when the heart is full and would unburden itself, when the brain teems with pent-up thoughts, when the excitement of action and of peril wanes and the mind would fain tell and hear and compare and remember--then to be alone, to be solitary, is to sink below one's self. For a time, while his pulses still beat high, while the heat of battle still wrought in him, and the noise without continued, and there seemed a prospect of things to be done, he stood up against this. Thump! Thump! They were stoning the shutters. Let them! He placed the settle across the hearth, and in this way cut off the firelight that might have betrayed those in the room to eyes peeping through the holes. By-and-by the shrill vixenish cries rose louder, he caught the sound of voices in altercation, and of hoarse orders: and slowly and reluctantly the babel seemed to pass away. An anxious moment followed: fearfully he listened for the knock of the law, the official summons which must make all his efforts useless. But it did not come. It was when the silence which ensued had lasted some minutes that the strangeness and aloofness of his position in this darkened room began to weigh on his spirits. His eyes had adapted themselves to the gloom, and he could make out the shapes of the furniture. But it was morning! It was day! Outside, the city was beginning to go about its ordinary work, its ordinary life. The streets were filling, the classes were mustering. And he sat here in the dark! The longer he stared into the strange, depressing gloom, the farther he seemed from life; the more solitary, the more hopeless, the more ominous seemed the position. Alone with two women whom the worst of fates threatened! Whose pains and ultimate lot the brawl in which he had taken part foreshadowed too clearly. For thus and with as little cause perished in those days thousands of the helpless and the friendless. Alone with these two, under the roof from which all others had fled, barred with them behind the gloomy shutters until the hour came, and their fellows, shuddering, cast them out--what chance had he of escaping their lot? Or what desire to escape it? None, he told himself. None! But he who fights best when blows are to be struck and things can be done finds it hard to sit still where it is the inevitable that must be faced. And while Claude told himself that he had no desire to escape, since escape for her was impossible, his mind sought desperately the means of saving all. The frontier lay but a league away. Conceivably they might lower themselves from the wall by night; conceivably his strength might avail to carry her mother to the frontier. But, alas! the crime of witchcraft knew no frontier; the reputation of a witch once thrown abroad, flew fast as the swiftest horse. Before they had been three days in Savoy, the women would be reported, seized and examined; and their fate at Faucigny or Bonneville would be no less tragic than in the Bourg du Four of Geneva. Yet, something must be done, something could surely be done. But what? The bravest caught in a net struggles the most desperately, and involves himself the most hopelessly. And Claude felt himself caught in a net. He felt the deadly meshes cling about his limbs, the ropes fetter and benumb him. From the sunshine of youth, from freedom, from a life without care, he had passed in a few days into the grip of this [Greek: anagkê], this dire necessity, this dark ante-chamber of death. Was it wonderful that for a moment, recognising the sacrifice he was called upon to make and its inefficacy to save, he rebelled against the love that had drawn him to this fate, that had led him to this, that in others' eyes had ruined him? Ay, but for a moment only. Then with a heart bursting with pity for her, with love for her, he was himself. If it must be, it must be. The prospect was dark as the room in which he stood, confined and stifling, sordid and shameful; the end one which would make his name a marvel and an astonishment. But the prospect and the end were hers too; they would face them together. Haply he might spare her some one pang, haply he might give her some one moment of happiness, the support of one at least who knew her pure and spotless. And while he thought of it--surprise of surprises--he bowed his head on his folded arms and wept. Not in pity for himself, but for her. It was the thought of her gentleness, her loving nature, her harmlessness--and the end this, the reward this--which overcame him; which swelled his breast until only tears could relieve it. He saw her as a dove struggling in cruel hands; and the pity which, had there been chance or hope, or any to smite, would have been rage, could find no other outlet. He wept like a woman; but it was for her. And she, who had descended unheard, and stood even now at the door, with a something almost divine in her face--a something that was neither love nor compassion, maid's fancy nor mother's care, but a mingling of all these, saw. And her heart bled for him; her arms in fancy went round him, in fancy his head was on her breast, she comforted him. She, who a moment before had almost sunk down on the stairs, worn out by her sufferings and the strain of hiding them from her mother's eyes, forgot her weakness in thought for him. She had no contempt for his tears. She had seen him stand between herself and her tormentors, she had seen the flash of his eye, heard his voice, knew him brave. But the fate, for which long thought and hours on her knees had prepared her--so that it seemed but a black and bitter passage with peace beyond--appalled her for him; and might well appal him. The courage of men is active, of women passive; with a woman's instinct she knew this, allowed for it, and allowed, too, for another thing--that he was fasting. When he looked up, startled by the tinkle of pewter and the rustle of her skirt, she was kneeling between the settle and the fire, preparing food. He flattered himself that in the dark she had not seen him, and when he had regained his self-control he stepped to the settle-back and looked over it. "You did not see me?" he said. She did not answer at once, but finished what she was doing. Then she stood up and handed him a bowl. "The bread is on the table," she said, indicating it. She was a woman, and, dark as it was, she kept the disfigured cheek turned from him. He would have replied, but she made a sign to him to eat, and, seating herself on a stool in the corner with her plate on her lap, she set him an example. Apart from her weary attitude, and the droop of her head, he might have deemed the scene in which they had taken part a figment of his brain. But round them was the gloom of the closed room! "You did not see me?" he repeated presently. She stood up. "I would I had never seen you!" she cried; and her anguished tone bore witness to the truth of her words. "It is the worst, it is the bitterest thing of all! of all!" she repeated. The settle was between them, and she rested her hands on the back of it. He stooped, and, in the darkness, covered them with kisses, while his breast heaved with the swell of the storm which her entrance had cut short. "For all but that I was prepared," she continued; "I was ready. I have seen for weeks the hopelessness of it, the certain end, the fate before us. I have counted the cost, and I have learned to look beyond for--for all we desire. It is a sharp passage, and peace. But you"--her voice rested on the same tragic note of monotony--"are outside the sum, and spoil all. A little suffering will kill my mother, a little, a very little fear. I doubt if she will live to be taken hence. And I--I can suffer. I have known all, I have foreseen all--long! I have learned to think of it, and I can learn by God's help to bear it! And in a little while, a very little while, it will be over, and I shall be at rest. But you--you, my love----" Her voice broke, her head sunk forward. His lips met hers in a first kiss; a kiss, salted by the tears that ran unchecked down his face. For a long minute there was silence in the room, a silence broken only by the low, inarticulate murmur of his love--love whispered brokenly on her tear-wet lips, on her cold, closed eyelids. She made no attempt to withdraw her face, and presently the murmur grew to words of defiance, of love that mocked at peril, mocked at shame, mocked at death, having assurance of its own, having assurance of her. They fell on her ears as warm thaw-rain on frozen sward; and slowly into the pallor of her face, the whiteness of her closed eyelids, crept a tender blush. Strange that for a few brief moments they were happy; strange, proof marvellous of the dominance of the inner life over the outer, of love over death. "My love, my love!" "Again!"--he murmured. "My love, my love!" But at length she came to herself, she remembered. "You will go?" she said. She put him from her and held him fondly at arm's length, her hands on his shoulders. "You will go? It is all you can do for me. You will go and live?" "Without you?" "Yes. Better, a hundred times better so--for me." "And for me? Why may I not save you and her?" "It is impossible!" "Nothing is impossible to love," he answered. "The nights are long, the wall is not too high! No wall is too high for love! It is but a league to the frontier, and I am strong." "Who would receive us?" she asked sadly. "Who would shelter us? In Savoy, if we were not held for sorcery, we should be delivered to the Inquisition." "We might gain friends?" "With what? No," she continued, her hands cleaving more tightly to him; "you must go, dear love! Dear love! You must go! It is all you can do for me, and it is much! Oh, indeed, it is much! It is very much!" He drew her to him as near as the settle would permit, until she was kneeling on it, and in spite of her faint resistance he could look into her eyes. "Were you in my place, would you leave me?" he asked. "Yes," she lied bravely, "I would." But the flash of resentment in her eyes gave her voice the lie, and he laughed joyfully. "You would not!" he said. "You would not leave me on this side of death!" She tried to protest. "Nor will I you," he continued, stopping her mouth with fresh kisses. "Nor will I you till death! Did you think me a coward?" He held her from him and looked into her reproachful eyes. "Or a Tissot? Tissot left you. Or Louis Gentilis?" But she made him know that he was none of these in a way that satisfied him; and a moment later her mother's voice called her from the room. He thought, having no experience of a woman's will, that he had done with that; and in her absence he betook himself to examining the defences of the house. He replaced the bar which he had wrested from the window; wedging it into its socket with a morsel or two of molten lead. The windows of the bedrooms, his own and Louis', looked into a narrow lane, the Rue de la Cité, that ran at the back of the Corraterie in a line with the ramparts; but not only were they almost too small to permit the passage of a full-grown man, they were strongly barred. Against such a rabble, as had assaulted Anne, or even a more formidable mob, the house was secure. But if the law intervened neither bar nor bolt could save them. He fell to thinking of this, and stood, arrested in the middle of the darkened room that, as the hours went by, was beginning to take on a familiar look. The day was passing, all without remained quiet, nothing had happened. Was it possible that nothing would happen? Was it possible that the girl through long brooding exaggerated the peril? And that the worst to be feared was such an outbreak as had occurred that morning? Such an outbreak as might not take place again, since mobs were fickle things. He dwelt a while on this more hopeful view of things. Then he recalled Basterga's threats, the Syndic's face, the departure of Louis and Grio; and his heart sank as lead sinks. The rumour so quickly spread--by what hints, what innuendoes, what cunning inquiries, what references to the old, invisible, bedridden woman, he could but guess--that rumour bore witness to a malice and a thirst for revenge which were not likely to stop at words. And Louis' flight? And Grio's? And Basterga's?--for he did not return. To believe that all these, taken together, these and the outrage of the morning, portended anything but danger, anything but the worst, demanded a hopefulness that even his youth and his love could not compass. Yet when she descended he met her with brave looks. CHAPTER XXI. THE _REMEDIUM_. Blondel's thin lips were warrant--to such of the world as had eyes to see--that in the ordinary things of life he would have been one of the last to put faith in a man of Basterga's stamp: and one of the first, had the case been other than his own, to laugh at the credulity he was displaying. He would have seen--no one more clearly--that, in making the bargain he had made, he was in the position of a drowning man who clutches at a straw; not because he believes that the straw will support him, but because he has no other hope, and is loth to sink. He would have seen, too, another thing, which indeed he did see dimly. This was that, talk as he might, make terms as he might, repeat as firmly as he pleased, "The _remedium_ first and then Geneva," he would be forced when the time came to take the word for the deed. If he dared not trust Basterga, neither dared the scholar trust him. Once safe, once snatched from the dark fate that scared him, he would laugh at the notion of betraying the city. He would snap his fingers in the Paduan's face; and Basterga knew it. The scholar, therefore, dared not trust him; and either there was an end of the matter or he must trust Basterga, must eat his own words, and, content with the possession of something, must wait for proof of its efficacy until the die was cast! In his heart he knew this. He knew that on the brink of the extremity to which circumstances and Basterga were slowly pushing him it might not be in his power to check himself: that he must trust, whether he would or no, and where instinct bade him place no trust. And this doubt, this suspicion that when all was done he might find himself tricked, and learn that for nothing he had given all, added immeasurably to the torment of his mind; to the misery of his reflections when he awoke in the small hours and saw things coldly and clearly, and to the fever and suspense in which he passed his days. He clung to one thought and got what consolation he could from it; a bitter and saturnine comfort it was. The thought was this: if it turned out that, after all, he had been tricked, he could but die; and die he must if he made no bargain. And to a dead man what matter was it what price he had paid that he might live! What matter who won or who lost Geneva, who lived, who died, who were slaves, who free! And again, the very easiness of the thing he was asked to do tempted him. It was a thing that to one in his position presented no difficulty and scarcely any danger. He had but to withdraw the guards, or the greater part of them, from a portion of the wall, and to stop on one pretext or another--the bitter cold of the wintry weather would avail--the rounds that at stated intervals visited the various posts. That was all; as a man of tried loyalty, intrusted with the safeguarding of the city, and to whom the officer of the watch was answerable, he might make the necessary arrangements without incurring, even after the catastrophe, more than a passing odium, a breath of suspicion. And Baudichon and Petitot? He tasted, when he thought of them, the only moments of comfort, of pleasure, of ease, that fell to his lot throughout these days. They would thwart him no more. Petty worms, whose vision went no farther than the walls of the city, he would have done with them when the flag of Savoy fluttered above St. Pierre; and when for the confines of a petty canton was substituted, for those who had eyes to see and courage to adapt themselves, the wide horizon of the Italian Kingdom. When he thought of them--and then only--he warmed to the task before him; then only he could think of it without a shiver and without distaste. And not the less because on that side, in their suspicion, in their grudging jealousy, in their unwinking integrity, lay the one difficulty. A difficulty exasperated by the insult that, in a moment of bitter disappointment, he had flung in Baudichon's face. That hasty word had revealed to the speaker a lack of self-control that terrified him, even as it had revealed to Baudichon a glimpse of something underneath the Fourth Syndic's dry exterior that might well set a man thinking as well as talking. This matter Blondel saw plainly he must deal with at once, or it might do harm. To absent himself from the next day's council might rouse a storm beyond his power to weather, or short of that might give rise at a later period to a dangerous amount of gossip and conjecture. He was early at the meeting, therefore, but to his surprise found it in session before the hour. This, and the fact that the hubbub of voices and discussion died down at his entrance--died down and was succeeded by a chilling silence--put him on his guard. He had not come unprepared for opposition; to meet it he had wound himself to a pitch, telling himself that after this all would be easy; that he had this one peril to face, this one obstacle to surmount, and having succeeded might rest. Nevertheless, as he passed up the Great Council Chamber amid that silence, and met strange looks on faces which were wont to smile, his courage for one moment, even in that familiar scene--conscience makes cowards of all--wavered. His smile grew sickly, his nerves seemed suddenly unstrung, his knees shook under him. It was a dreadful instant of physical weakness, of mental terror, under the eyes of all. To himself, he seemed to stand still; to be self-betrayed, self-convicted! Then--and so brief was the moment of weakness no eye detected it--he moved on to his place, and with his usual coolness took his seat. He looked round. "You are early," he said, ignoring the glances, hostile or doubtful, that met his gaze. "The hour has barely struck, I believe?" "We were of opinion," Fabri answered, with a dry cough, "that minutes were of value." "Ah!" "That not even one must be lost, Messer Blondel!" "In doing?" Blondel asked in a negligent tone, well calculated to annoy those who were eager in the matter. "In doing what, if I may ask?" "In doing, Messer Syndic," Petitot answered sharply, "that which should have been done a week ago; and better still a fortnight ago. In issuing a warrant for the arrest of the person whose name has been several times in question here." "Messer Basterga?" "The same." "You may save yourselves the trouble," the Syndic replied, with a little contempt. "The warrant has been issued. It was issued yesterday, and would have been executed in the afternoon, if he had not got wind of it, and left the town. And on this let me say one more word," Blondel continued, leaning forward and speaking in sudden heat, before any one could take up the question. "That word is this. If it had not been for the importunity of some who are here, the warrant had _not_ been issued, the man had still been within the walls, and we had been able still to trace his plans! We had not been as we now are, and as I foretold we should be, in the dark, ignorant from which quarter the blow may fall, and not a whit the wiser for the hint given us." "You have let him escape!" The words were Petitot's. "I? No! I have not let him escape, but those who forced my hand!" Blondel retorted in passion, so real, or so well simulated, that it swept away the majority of his listeners. "They have let him escape! Those who had no patience or craft! Those whose only notion of statesmanship, whose only method of making use of the document we had under our hand was to tear it up. Only yesterday morning I was with him----" "Ay?" Baudichon cried, his eyes glowing with dull passion. "You were with him! And he went in the afternoon! Mark that!" He turned quickly to his fellows. "He went in the afternoon! Now, I would like to know----" Blondel stood up. "Whether I am a traitor?" he said, in a tone of fury; and he extended his arms in protest. "Whether I am in league with this Italian, I, Philibert Blondel of Geneva? That is what you ask, what you wish to know! Whether I sought him yesterday in the hope of worming his secrets from him, and doing what I could for the benefit of the State in a matter too delicate to be left to underlings? Or went there, one with him, to betray my country? To sell the Free City? That--that is what you ask?" His passion was full, overpowering, convincing; so convincing--it almost stopped his speech--that he believed in it himself, so convincing that it swept away all but his steady and professed opponents. "No, no!" cried a dozen voices, in tones that reflected his indignation. "No, no! Shame!" "No?" Blondel took up the word, his eyes sparkling, his adust complexion heated and full of fire. "But it is--yes, they say! Yes, they say whom you have to thank if we have lost our clue, they who met me going to him but yesterday and threatened me! Threatened me!" he repeated, in a voice of astonishment. "Me, who desired only, sought only, was going only to do my duty! I used, I admit the fault," he allowed his voice to drop to a tone more like his own, "words on that occasion that I now regret. But is blood water? Does no man besides Councillor Baudichon love his country? Is the suspicion, the open suspicion of such an one, no insult, that he must cavil if he be repaid in insult? I have given my proofs. If any man can be trusted to sound the enemy, it is I! But I have done! Had Messer Baudichon not pressed me to issue the warrant, not driven me beyond my patience, it had not been issued yesterday. It had been in the office, and the man within the walls! Ay, and not only within the walls, but fresh from a conference with the Sieur d'Albigny, primed with all we need to know, and in doubt by which side he could most profit!" "It was about that you saw him?" Petitot said slowly, his eyes fixed like gimlets to the other's face. "It was about that I saw him," Blondel answered. "And I think in a few hours more I had won him. But in the street he had some secret word or warning; for when I handed the warrant--against my better sense--to the officers, they, who had never lost sight of him between gate and gate, answered that he had crossed the bridge and left the town an hour before. Mon Dieu!"--he struck his two hands together and snapped his teeth--"when I think how foolish I was to be over-ridden, I could--I could say more, Messer Baudichon"--with a saturnine look--"than I said yesterday!" "At any rate the bird is flown!" Baudichon replied, with sullen temper. "That is certain! And it was you who were set to catch him!" "But it was not I who scared him," Blondel rejoined. "I don't know what you would have had of him!" "Oh, I see that plainly enough," said Fabri. He was an honest man, without prejudice, and long the peace-maker between the two parties. "I thank you," Blondel replied dryly. "But, by your leave, I will make it clear to Messer Baudichon also, who will doubtless like to know. I would have had of him the time and place and circumstance of the attack, if such be in preparation. And then, when I knew all, I would have made dispositions, not only to safeguard the city, but to give the enemy such a reception that Italy should ring with it! Ay, and such as should put an end for the rest of our lives to these treacherous attacks!" The picture which he drew thus briefly of a millennium of safety, charmed not only his own adherents, but all who were neutral, all who wavered. They saw how easily the thing might have been done, how completely the treacherous blow might have been parried and returned. Veering about they eyed Baudichon, on whom the odium of the lost opportunity seemed to rest, with resentment--as an honest man, but a simpleton, a dullard, a block! And when Blondel added, after a pause, "But there, I have done! The office of Fourth Syndic I leave to you to fill," they barely allowed him to finish. "No! No!" came from almost all mouths, and from every part of the council table. "No," Fabri said, when silence was made. "There is no provision for a change, unless a definite accusation be laid." "But Messer Baudichon may have one to make," Blondel said proudly. "In that case, let him speak." Baudichon breathed hard, and seemed to be on the point of pouring forth a torrent of words. But he said nothing. Instinct told him that his enemy was not to be trusted, but he had the wit to discern that Blondel had forestalled him, and had drawn the sting from his charges. He could have wept in dull, honest indignation; but for accusations, he saw that the other held the game, and he was silent. "Fat hog!" the man had called him. "Fat hog!" A tear gathered slowly in his eye as he recalled it. Fabri gave him time to speak; and then with evident relief, "He has none to make, I am sure," he said. "Let him understand, then," Blondel replied firmly, "let all understand, that while I will do my duty I am no longer in the position to guard against sudden strokes, in which I should have been, had I been allowed to go my own way. If a misfortune happen, it is not on me the blame must rest." He spoke solemnly, laughing in his sleeve at the cleverness with which he was turning his enemy's petard against him. "All that man can do in the dark shall be done," he continued. "And I do not--I am free to confess that--anticipate anything while the negotiations with the President Rochette are in progress." "No, it is when they are broken off, they will fall back on the other plan," one of the councillors said with an air of much wisdom. "I think that is so. Nor do I think that anything will be done during the present severe weather." "They like it no better than we do!" "But the roads are good in this frost," Fabri said. "If it be a question of moving guns or wagons----" "But it is not, by your leave, Messer Fabri, as I am informed," the man who had spoken before objected; supporting his opinion simply because he had voiced it, a thing seen every day in such assemblies. Fabri replied on him in the other sense: and presently Blondel had the satisfaction of listening to a discussion in which the one party said a dozen things that he saw would be of use to him--some day. One only said not a word, and that was Petitot. He listened to all with a puzzled look. He resented the insult which Blondel had flung at his friend Baudichon, but he saw all going against them, and no chance of redress; nay, capital was being made out of that which should have been a disadvantage. Worst of all, he was uneasy, fancying--he was very shrewd--that he caught a glimpse, under the Fourth Syndic's manner, of another man: that he detected signs of emotion, a feverishness and imperiousness not quite explained by the circumstances. He got the notion from this that the Fourth Syndic had learned more from Basterga than he had disclosed. His notion, even so, went no further than the suspicion that Blondel was hiding knowledge out of a desire to reap all the glory. But he did not like it. "He was always for risking, for risking!" he thought. "This is another case of it. God grant it go well!" His wife, his children, his daughters, rose in a picture before him, and he hated Blondel, who had none of these. He would have put him to death for running the tithe of a risk. When the council broke up, Fabri drew Blondel aside. "The bird is flown, but what of the nest?" he asked. "Has he left nothing?" "Between you and me," Blondel replied under his breath, as his eyes sought the other's, "I hope to make him speak yet. But not a word!" "Ah!" "Not a word! But there is just a chance. And it will be everything to us if I can induce him to speak." "I see that. But the house? Could you not search it?" "That would be to scare him finally." "You have made no perquisition there?" "None. I have heard," Blondel continued, hesitating as if he had not quite made up his mind to speak, "some things--strange things in respect to the house. But I will tell you more of that when I know more." He was too clever to state that he held the house in suspicion for sorcery and kindred things. Charges such as that spread, he knew, upwards from the lower classes, not downwards to them. The poison, disseminated as he had known how to disseminate it, by hints and innuendoes dropped among his officers and ushers, was already in the air, and would do its work. Fabri, a man of sense, might laugh to-day, and to-morrow; but the third day, when the report came to him from a dozen quarters, mainly by women's mouths, he would not laugh. And presently he would shrug his shoulders and stand aside, and leave the matter in more earnest hands. Blondel dropped no more than that hint, therefore, and as he passed homeward applauded his discretion. He was proud of the turn things had taken at the Council; elated by the part he had played, and the proof he had given of his mastery, he felt able to carry anything through. His mind, leaping over the immediate future, pictured a wider theatre, in which his powers would have full scope, and a larger stage on which he might aspire to play the first part. He saw himself not only wealthy, but ennobled, the fount of honour, the favourite, and, in time, the master of princes. Such as he was to-day the Medicis had been, and many another whom the world held noble. He had but to live and to dare; only to live and to dare! Only in order to do the one he must--it was no choice of his--do the other! Before he was five minutes older he was reminded of the necessity. At the door of his house the pains of the disease from which he suffered--aggravated, perhaps, by the excitement through which he had just passed, or by the cold of the weather--seized him with unusual violence. He leant, pale and almost fainting, against the door-jamb, unable at the moment to do so much as raise the latch. The golden dreams in which he had lost himself by the way, the visions of power and fame, vanished as he had so many times seen the after-glow vanish from the snow-peaks; leaving only cold images of death and desolation. Presently, with an effort, he staggered within doors, poured out such medicine as he had, and, bent double and almost without breath, swallowed it; and so, by-and-by, a wan and wild-eyed image of himself came out of the fit. He told himself in after days that it was that decided him; that but for that sharp fit of pain and the prospect of others like it, he would not have yielded to the temptation, no, not to be the Grand Duke's favourite, not to be Minister of Savoy! He ignored, in his looking backward, the visions of glory and ambition in which he had revelled. He saw himself on the rack, with life and immunity from pain drawing him one way, the prospect of a miserable death the other; and he pleaded that no man would have decided otherwise. After that experience the straw did not float, so thin that he was not ready to grasp it rather than die, rather than suffer again. Nor did the fact that the straw at that moment lay on the table beside him go for much. It did lie there. When he felt a little stronger and began to look about him, he found a note at his elbow. It was a small, common-looking letter, sealed with a B, that might signify Blondel or Basterga, or, for the matter of that, Baudichon. He did not know the handwriting, and he opened it idly, in the scorn of small things that pain induced. He had not read a line of the contents, before his countenance changed. The letter was from Basterga, and cunningly contrived. It gave him the directions he needed, yet it was so worded that even after the event it might pass for a trifling communication from a physician. The place and the hour were specified--the latter so near that for a moment his cheek grew pale. On that ensued the part which interested him most; but as the whole was brief, the whole may be given. "Sir" (here followed a cabalistic sign such as physicians were in the habit of using to impose on the vulgar). "After paying a visit in the Corraterie, where I have an appointment on Saturday evening next between late and early, I will be with you. But the mixture with the necessary directions shall be sent to you twelve hours in advance, so that before my visit you may experience its good effects. As surely as the wrong potion in the case you wot of deprived of reason, so surely (as I hope for salvation) will this potion have the desired effect. "The Physician of Aleppo." "Saturday next, between late and early!" Blondel muttered, gazing at the words with fascinated eyes. "It is for the day after to-morrow! The day after to-morrow!" And in his thoughts he passed again over the road he had travelled since his first visit to Basterga's room, since the hour when the scholar had unrolled before him the map of the town he called "Aurelia," and had told him the story of Ibn Jasher and the Physician of Aleppo. "No, I am not well," he answered. He sat, warmly wrapped up, in the high chair in his parlour, his face so drawn with want of sleep that Captain Blandano of the city guard, who had come to take his orders, had no difficulty in believing him. "I am not well," he repeated peevishly. "It is the weather." He had some soup before him. Beside it stood a tiny phial of medicine; a phial strangely shaped and strange looking, containing something not unlike the green cordial of the Carthusians. "It troubles me a good deal, too," Blandano said. "There are seven men absent in the fourth ward. And two men, whose wives are urgent with me that they should have leave." "Leave?" the Syndic cried. "Do they think naught"--leaning forward in a passion--"of the safety of the city? If I were not ill, I would take service on the wall myself to set an example!" "There is no need of that," the Captain answered respectfully, "if I might have permission to withdraw a few men from the west side so as to fill the places on the east----" "Ay, ay!" "From the Rhone side of the town----" "From the Corraterie? That is least open to assault." "Yes, from that part perhaps would be best," Blandano assented, nodding. "Yes, I think so. If I might do that, I think I could manage." "Well, then do it," Blondel answered. "And make a note that I assented to your suggestion to take them from the Corraterie and put them on the lower part of the wall. After all, the nights are very bitter now, and there are limits. Do the men grumble much?" "It is as much as I can do to make them go the rounds," Blandano answered. "Some plead the weather; and some argue that, with President Rochette, whose word is as good as his bond, on the point of coming to an agreement with us, the rounds are a farce!" The Syndic shrugged his shoulders. "Well!" he muttered, rubbing his chin and looking thoughtfully before him, "we must not wear the men out. There is no moon now, is there?" "No." "And the enemy can attempt nothing without light," Blondel continued, thinking aloud. "See here, Blandano, we must not put too heavy a burden on our people. I see that. As it is so cold, I think you may pass the word to pretermit the rounds to-night--save two. At what hours would you suggest?" Blandano considered his own comfort--as the other expected he would--and answered, "Early and late, say an hour before midnight and an hour before dawn". "Then let be it as you suggest. But see"--with returning asperity--"that those rounds go, and at their hours. Let there be no remissness. I will make a note," he continued, "of the hours fixed. An hour before midnight and an hour before dawn". He extended his arm and drew the ink-horn towards him. Midway in the act, whether it was that his hand shook by reason of his illness, or that he was in a hurry to close an interview which tried him more severely than appeared, his sleeve caught the little phial of green water that stood beside the soup on the table. It reeled an instant on its edge, toppled on its side, and rolling, in one-tenth of the time it takes to tell the tale, to the verge of the table--fell over. Messer Blondel made a strange noise in his throat. But the Captain had seen what was happening. Dexterously he caught the bottle in his huge palm, and with an air of modest achievement was going to set it on the table, when he saw that the Syndic had fallen back in his chair, his face ghastly. Blandano was more used to death in the field than in the house; and in a panic he took two steps towards the door to call for help. Before he could take a third, Blondel gasped, and made an uncertain movement with his hand, as if he would reassure him. Blandano returned and leant over him. "You are ill, Messer Syndic," he said anxiously. "Let me call some one." The Syndic could not speak, but he pointed to the table. And when Blandano, unable to make out what he wanted, and suspecting a stroke of a mortal disease, turned again to the door, persisting in his intention of getting aid, the Syndic found strength to seize his sleeve, and almost instantly regained his speech. "There!" he gasped, "there! The phial! Put it down!" Captain Blandano placed it on the table, wondering much. "I was afraid you were ill, Messer Blondel," he said. "I was ill," the Syndic answered; and he pushed his chair back so that no part of him was in contact with the table. He looked at the little bottle with fascinated eyes, and slowly, as he looked, the colour returned to his face. "I--was ill," he repeated, with a sigh that seemed to relieve his breast. "I had a fright!" "You thought it was broken?" Blandano said, wondering much, and looking in his turn at the phial. "Yes, I thought that it was broken. I am much obliged to you. Much, very much obliged to you," the Syndic repeated, with a deep sigh, his hands still moving nervously about his dress. Then, after a moment's pause, "Will you ring the bell?" he said. The Captain, marvelling much, rang the hand-bell which lay on a neighbouring table. He marvelled still more when he heard Messer Blondel order the servant to place six bottles of his best wine in a basket and take them to the Captain's lodging. Blandano stared. He knew the wine to be choice and valuable; and he eyed the tiny phial respectfully. "It is something rare, I expect?" he said. The Syndic nodded. "And costly too, I doubt not?" with an admiring glance. "Costly?" Messer Blondel repeated the word, and when he had done so turned on the other a look that led the Captain to think that he was going to be ill again. Then, "It cost me--it will cost me"--again a spasm contorted the Syndic's face--"I don't know what it will not have cost me before it is paid for, Messer Blandano!" CHAPTER XXII. TWO NAILS IN THE WALL. The long day during which the lovers had drained a cup at once so sweet and so bitter, and one of the two had felt alike the throb of pain and the thrill of kisses, came to an end at last; and without further incident. Encouraged by the respite--for who that is mortal does not hope against hope--they ventured on the following morning to lower the shutters, and this to a great extent restored the house to its normal aspect. Anne would have gone so far as to attend the morning preaching at St. Pierre, for it was Friday; but her mother awoke low and nervous, the girl dared not quit her side, and Claude had no field for the urgent dissuasions which he had prepared himself to use. The greater part of the day she remained above stairs, busied in the petty offices, and moving to and fro--he could hear her tread--upon the errands of love, to see her in the midst of which might well have confuted the slanders that crept abroad. But there were times in the day when Madame Royaume slept; and then, who can blame Anne, if she stole down and sat hand in hand with Claude on the settle, whispering sometimes of those things of which lovers whisper, and will whisper to the world's end; but more often of the direr things before these two lovers, and so of faith and hope and the love that does not die. For the most part it was she who talked. She had so much to tell him of the long nightmare, the nightmare of months, that had oppressed her; of her prayers, and fears and fits of terror; of Basterga's discovery of the secret and the cruel use he had made of it; of the slow-growing resignation, the steadfast resolve, the onward look to something, beyond that which the world could do to her, that had come to be hers. With her face hidden on his breast she told him of her thoughts upon her knees, of the pain and obloquy through which, if the worst came, she knew she must pass, and of her trust that she would be able to bear them; speaking in such terms, so simply, so bravely, and with so lofty a contemplation, that he who listened, and had been but a week before a young man as other young men, grew as he listened to another stature, and thought for himself thoughts that no man can have and remain as he was, before the tongues of fire touched his heart. And then again, once--but that was in the darkening of the Friday evening when the wound in her cheek burned and smarted and recalled the wretched moment of infliction--she showed him another side; as if she would have him know that she was not all heroic. Without warning, she broke down; overcome by the prospect of death, she clung to him, weeping and shuddering, and begging him and imploring him to save her. To save her! Only to save her! At that sight and at those sounds, under the despairing grasp of her arms about his neck, the young man's heart was red-hot; his eyes burned. Vainly he held her closer and closer to him; vainly he tried to comfort her. Vainly he shed tears of blood. He felt her writhe and shudder in his arms. And what could he do? He strove to argue with her. He strove to show her that accusation of her mother, condemnation of her mother, dreadful as they must be to her, so dreadful that he scarcely dared speak of them, need not involve her own condemnation. She was young, of blameless life, and without enemies. What could any cast up against her, what adduce in proof of a charge so dark, so improbable, so abnormal? For answer she touched the pulsing wound in her cheek. "And this?" she said. "And the child that I killed?"--with a bitter laugh unlike her own. "If they say so much already, if they say that to-day, what will they say to-morrow? What will they say when they have heard her ravings? Will it not be, the old and the young, the witch and her brood--to the fire? To the fire?" The spasm that shook her as she spoke defied his efforts to soothe her. And how could he comfort her? He knew the thing to be too likely, the argument too reasonable, as men reasoned then; strange and foolish as their reasoning seems to us now. But what could he do. What? He who sat there alone with her, a prisoner with her, witness to her agony, scalded by her tears, tortured by her anguish, burning with pity, sorrow, indignation--what could he do to help her or save her? He had wild thoughts, but none of them effectual; the old thoughts of defending the house, or of escaping by night over the town wall; and some new ones. He weighed the possibility of Madame Royaume's death before the arrest; surely, then, he could save the girl, and they two, young, active and of ordinary aspect, might escape some whither? Again, he thought of appealing to Beza, the aged divine, whom Geneva revered and Calvinism placed second only to Calvin. He was a Frenchman, a man of culture and of noble birth; he might stand above the common superstition, he might listen, discern, defend. But, alas, he was so old as to be bed-ridden and almost childish. It was improbable, nay, it was most unlikely, that he could be induced to interfere. All these thoughts Anne drove out of his head by begging him, in moving terms of self-reproach, to forgive her her weakness. She had regained her composure as abruptly, if not as completely, as she had lost it; and would have had him believe that the passion he had witnessed was less deep than it seemed, and rather a womanish need of tears than a proof of suffering. A minute later she was quietly preparing the evening meal, while he, with a sick heart, raised the shutters and lighted the lamp. As he looked up from the latter task, he found her eyes fixed upon him, with a peculiar intentness: and for a while afterwards he remarked that she wore an absent air. But she said nothing, and by-and-by, promising to return before bed-time, she went upstairs to her mother. The nights were at their longest, and the two had closed and lighted before five. Outside the cold stillness of a winter night and a freezing sky settled down on Geneva; within, Claude sat with sad eyes fixed on the smouldering fire. What could he do? What could he do? Wait and see her innocence outraged, her tenderness racked, her gentle body given up to unspeakable torments? The collapse which he had witnessed gave him as it were a foretaste, a bitter savour of the trials to come. It did not seem to him that he could bear even the anticipation of them. He rose, he sat down, he rose again, unable to endure the intolerable thought. He flung out his arms; his eyes, cast upwards, called God to witness that it was too much! It was too much! Some way of escape there must be. Heaven could not look down on, could not suffer such deeds in a Christian land. But men and women, girls and young children had suffered these things; had appealed and called Heaven to witness, and gone to death, and Heaven had not moved, nor the angels descended! But it could not be in her case. Some way of escape there must be. There must be. Why should she not leave her mother to her fate? A fate that could not be evaded? Why need she, whose capacity for suffering was so great, who had so much of life and love and all good things before her, remain to share the pains of one whose span in any case was nearing its end? Of one who had no longer power--or so it seemed--to meet the smallest shock, and must succumb before she knew more of suffering than the name. One whom a rude word might almost extinguish, and a rough push thrust out of life? Why remain, when to remain was to sacrifice two lives in lieu of one, to give and get nothing, to die for a prejudice? Why remain, when by remaining she could not save her mother, but, on the contrary, must inflict the sharpest pang of all, since she destroyed the being who was dearest to her mother, the being whom her mother would die to save? He grew heated as he dwelt on it. Of what use to any, the feeble flickering light upstairs, that must go out were it left for a moment untended? The light that would have gone out this long time back had she not fostered it and cherished it and sheltered it in her bosom? Of what avail that weak existence? Or, if it were of avail, why, for its sake, waste this other and more precious life that still could not redeem it? Why? He must speak to her. He must persuade her, press her, convince her; carry her off by force were it necessary. It was his duty, his clear call. He rose and walked the room in excitement, as he thought of it. He had pity for the old, abandoned and left to suffer alone; and an enlightening glimpse of the weight that the girl must carry through life by reason of this desertion. But no doubt, no hesitation--he told himself--no scruple. To die that her mother might live was one thing. To die--and so to die--merely that her mother's last hours might be sheltered and comforted, was another, and a thing unreasonable. He must speak to her. He would not hesitate to tell her what he thought. But he did hesitate. When she descended half an hour later, and paused at the foot of the stairs to assure herself that her passage downstairs had not roused her mother from sleep, the light fell on her listening face and tender eyes; and he read that in them which checked the words on his lips; that which, whether it were folly or wisdom--a wisdom higher than the serpent's, more perfect than the most accurate calculation of values and chances--drove for ever from his mind the thought that she would desert her charge. He said not a word of what he had thought; the indignant reasoning, the hot, conclusive arguments fell from him and left him bare. With her hands in his, seeking no more to move her or convince her, he sat silent; and by mute looks and dumb love--more potent than eloquence or oratory--strove to support and console her. She, too, was silent. Stillness had fallen on both of them. But her hands clung to his, and now and again pressed them convulsively; and now and again, too, she would lift her eyes to his, and gaze at him with a pathetic intentness, as if she would stamp his likeness on her brain. But when he returned the look, and tried to read her meaning in her eyes, she smiled. "You are afraid of me?" she whispered. "No, I shall not be weak again." But even as she reassured him he detected a flicker of pain in her eyes, he felt that her hands were cold; and but that he feared to shake her composure he would not have rested content with her answer. This sudden silence, this new way of looking at him, were the only things that perplexed him. In all else, silent as they sat, their communion was perfect. It was in the mind of each that the women might be arrested on the morrow; in the mind of each that this was their last evening together, the last of few, yet not so few that they did not seem to the man and the girl to bulk large in their lives. On that hearth they had met, there she had proved to him what she was, there he had spoken, there spent the clouded never-to-be-forgotten days of their troubled courtship. No wonder that as they sat hand in hand, their hair almost mingling, their eyes on the red glow of the smouldering log, and, not daring to look forward, looked back--no wonder that their love grew to be something other than the common love of man and maid, something higher and more beautiful, touched--as the hills are touched at sunset--by the evening glow of parting and self-sacrifice. Silent amid the silence of the house; living moments never to be forgotten; welcoming together the twin companions, love and death. But from the darkest outlook of the mind, as of the eye, morning dispels some shadows; into the most depressing atmosphere daylight brings hope, brings actuality, brings at least the need to be doing. Claude's heart, as he slipped from his couch on the settle next morning, and admitted the light and turned the log and stirred the embers, was sad and full of foreboding. But as the room, its disorder abated, took on a more pleasant aspect, as the fire crackled and blazed on the hearth, and the flush of sunrise spread over the east, he grew--he could not but grow, for he was young--more cheerful also. He swept the floor and filled the kettle and let in the air; and had done almost all he knew how to do, before he heard Anne's foot upon the stairs. She had slept little and looked pale and haggard; almost more pale and wan than he had ever seen her look. And this must have sunk his heart to zero, if a certain item in her aspect had not at the same time diverted his attention. "You are not going out?" he cried in astonishment. She wore her hood. "I am not going to defend myself again," she answered, smiling sadly. "Have no fear. I shall not repeat that mistake. I am only going----" "You are not going anywhere!" he answered firmly. She shook her head with the same wan smile. "We must live," she said. "Well?" "And to live must have water." "I have filled the kettle." "And emptied the water-pot," she retorted. "True," he said. "But surely it will be time to refill it when we want it." "I shall attract less attention now," she answered quietly, "than later in the day. There are few abroad. I will draw my hood about my face, and no one will heed me." He laughed in tender derision. "You will not go!" he said. "Did you think that I would let you run a risk rather than fetch the water from the conduit." "You will go?" "Where is the pot?" He fetched the jar from its place under the stairs, snatched up his cap, and turning the key in the lock was in the act of passing out when she seized his arm. "Kiss me," she murmured. She lifted her face to his, her eyes half closed. He drew her to him, but her lips were cold; and as he released her she sank passively from his embrace, and was near falling. He hesitated. "You are not afraid to be left?" he said. "You are sure?" "I am afraid of nothing if I know you safe," she answered faintly. "Go! go quickly, and God be with you!" "Tut! I run no danger," he rejoined. "I have a strong arm and they will leave me alone." He thought that she was overwrought, that the strain was telling on her; his thoughts did not go beyond that. "I shall be back in five minutes," he continued cheerfully. And he went, bidding her lock the door behind him and open only at his knock. He made the more haste for her fears, passed into the town through the Porte Tertasse, and hastened to the conduit. The open space in front of the fountain, which a little later in the day would be the favourite resort of gossips and idlers, was a desert; the bitter morning wind saw to that. But about the fountain itself three or four women closely muffled were waiting their turns to draw. One looked up, and, as he fancied, recognised him, for she nudged her neighbour. And then first the one woman and then the other, looking askance, muttered something; it might have been a prayer, or a charm, or a mere word of gossip. But he liked neither the glance nor the action, nor the furtive, curious looks of the women; and as quickly as he could he filled his pot and carried it away. He had splashed his fingers, and the cold wind quickly numbed them. At the Tertasse Gate, where the view commanding the river valley opened before him, he was glad to set down the vessel and change hands. On his left, the watch at the Porte Neuve, the gate in the ramparts which admitted from the country to the Corraterie--as the Tertasse admitted from the Corraterie to the town proper--was being changed, and he paused an instant, gazing on the scene. Then remembering himself, and the need of haste, he snatched up his jar and, turning to the right, hurried to the steps before the Royaumes' door, swung up them and, with his eyes on the windows, set down his burden. He knocked gently, sure that she would not keep him waiting. But she did not come at once; and by-and-by, seeing that a woman at an open door a little farther down the Corraterie was watching him with scowling eyes--and that strange look, half fear, half loathing, which he was growing to know--he knocked more loudly, and stamped to warm his feet. Still, to his astonishment, she did not come; he waited, and waited, and she did not come. He would have begun to feel alarmed for her, but, what with the cold and the early hour, the place was deserted; no idle gazers such as a commotion leaves behind it were to be seen. The wind, however, began to pierce his clothes; he had not brought his cloak, and he shivered. He knocked more loudly. Perhaps she had been called to her mother? That must be it. She had gone upstairs and could not on the instant leave her charge. He clothed himself in reproaches; but they did not warm him, and he was beginning to stamp his feet again when, happening to look down, he saw beside the water-can and partly hidden by its bulge, a packet about the size of a letter, but a little thicker. If he had not mounted the steps with his eyes on the windows, searching for her face, he would have seen it at once, and spared himself these minutes of waiting. He took it up in bewilderment, and turned it in his numbed hands; it was heavy, and from it, leaving only a piece of paper in his grasp, his purse fell to the ground. More and more astonished, he picked up the purse, and put it in his pocket. He looked at the window, but no one showed; then at the paper in his hand. Inside the letter were three lines of writing. His face fell as he read them. "_I shall not admit you_," they ran. "_If you try to enter, you will attract notice and destroy me. Go, and God bless and reward you. You cannot save me, and to see you perish were a worse pang than the worst._" The words swam before his eyes. "I will beat down the door," he muttered, tears in his voice, tears welling up in his heart and choking him. And he raised his hand. "I will----" But he did nothing. "_You will attract notice and destroy me._" Ah, she had thought it out too well. Too well, out of the wisdom of great love, she had known how to bridle him. He dared not do anything that would direct notice to the house. But desert her? Never; and after a moment's thought he drew off, his plans formed. As he retired, when he had gone some yards from the door, he heard the window closed sharply behind him. He looked back and saw his cloak lying on the ground. Tears rose again to his eyes, as he returned, took it up, donned it, and with a last lingering look at the window, turned away. She would think that he had taken her at her word; but no matter! He walked along the Corraterie, and passing the four square watch-towers with pointed roofs that stood at intervals along the wall, he came to the two projecting demilunes, or bastions, that marked the angle where the ramparts met the Rhone; a point from which the wall descended to the bridge. In one of these bastions he ensconced himself; and selecting a place whence he could, without being seen, command the length of the Corraterie, he set himself to watch the Royaumes' house. By-and-by he would go into the town and procure food, and, returning, keep guard until nightfall. After dark, if the day passed without event, he would find his way into the house by force or fraud. In a rapture of anticipation he pictured his entrance, her reluctant joy, her tears and smiles, and fond reproaches. As he loved her, as he must love her the more for the trick she had played him, she must love him the more for his return in her teeth. And the next day was Sunday, when it was unlikely that any steps would be taken. That whole day he would have with her, through it he would sit with her! A whole day without fear? It seemed an age. He did not, he would not look beyond it! He had not broken his fast, and hunger presently drove him into the town. But within half an hour he was at his post again. A glance at the Royaumes' house showed him that nothing had happened, and, resuming his seat in the deserted bastion, he began a watch that as long as he lived stood clear in his memory of the past. The day was cold and bright, and frosty with a nipping wind. Mont Blanc and the long range of snow-clad summits that flanked it rose dazzlingly bright against the blue sky. The most distant object seemed near; the wavelets on the unfrozen water of the lake gave to the surface, usually so blue, a rough, grey aspect. The breeze which produced this appearance kept the ramparts clear of loiterers; and even those who were abroad preferred the more sheltered streets, or went hurriedly about their business. The guards were content to shiver in the guardrooms of the gate-towers, and if Claude blessed once the kind afterthought which had dropped his cloak from the window, he blessed it a dozen times. Wrapt in its thick folds, it was all he could do to hold his ground against the cold. Without it he must have withdrawn or succumbed. Through the morning he watched the house jealously, trembling at every movement which took place at the Tertasse Gate; lest it herald the approach of the officers to arrest the women. But nothing happened, and as the day wore on he grew more hopeful. He might, indeed, have begun to think Anne over-timid and his fears unwarranted, if he had not seen, a little before sunset, a thing which opened his eyes. Two women and some children came out of a house not far from the bastion. They passed towards the Tertasse Gate, and he watched them. Before they came to the Royaumes' house, the children paused, flung their cloaks over their heads, and, thus protected, ran past the house. The women followed, more slowly, but gave the house a wide berth, and each passed with a flap of her hood held between her face and the windows; when they had gone by they exchanged signals of abhorrence. The sight was no more than of a piece with the outrage on Anne; but, coming when it did, coming when he was beginning to think that he had been mistaken, when he was beginning to hope, it depressed Claude dismally. For comfort he looked forward to the hour when it would be dark. "By hook or by crook," he muttered, "I shall enter then." He had barely finished the sentence, when he observed moving along the ramparts towards him a figure he knew. It was Grio. There was nothing strange in the man's presence in that place, for he was an idler and a sot; but Claude did not wish to meet him, and debated in his mind whether he should retreat before the other came up. Pride said one thing, discretion another. He wanted no fracas, and he was still hanging doubtful, measuring the distance between them, when--away went his thoughts. What was Grio doing? The Spaniard had come to a stand, and was leaning on the wall, looking idly into the fosse. The posture would have been the most natural in the world on a warm day. On that day it caught Claude's attention; and--was he mistaken, or were the hands that, under cover of Grio's cloak, rested on the wall busy about something? In any case he must make up his mind whether he moved or stayed. For Grio was coming on again. Claude hesitated a moment. Then he determined to stay. The next he was glad he had so determined, for Grio after strolling on in seeming carelessness to a point not twenty yards from him, and well commanded from his seat, leant again on the wall, and seemed to be enjoying the view. This time Claude was sure, from the movement of his shoulders, that his hands were employed. "In what?" The young man asked himself the question; and noted that beside Grio's left heel lay a piece of broken tile of a peculiar colour. The next moment he had an inspiration. He drew up his feet on the seat, drew his cloak over his head and affected to be asleep. What Grio, when he came upon him, thought of a man who chose to sleep in the open in such weather he did not learn, for after standing a while--as Claude's ears told him--opposite the sleeper, the Spaniard turned and walked back the way he had come. This time, and though he now had the wind at his back, he walked briskly; as a man would walk in such weather, or as a man might walk who had done his business. Claude waited until his coarse, heavy figure had disappeared through the Porte Tertasse; nay, he waited until the light began to fail. Then, while he could still pick out the red potsherd, he approached the wall, leant over it, and, failing to detect anything with his eyes, passed his fingers down the stones. They alighted on a nail; a nail thrust lightly into the mortar below the coping stone. For what purpose? His blood beginning to move more quickly Claude asked himself the question. To support a rope? And so to enable some one to leave the town? The nail, barely pushed into the mortar, would hardly support the weight of a dozen yards of twine. Perhaps the nail was there by chance, and Grio had naught to do with it. He could settle that doubt. In a few moments he had settled it. Under cover of the growing darkness, he walked to the place at which he had seen Grio pause for the first time. A short search discovered a second nail as lightly secured as the other. Had he not been careful it would have fallen beneath his touch. What did the nails there? Claude was not stupid, yet he was long in hitting on an explanation. It was a fanciful, extravagant notion when he got it, but one that set his chilled blood running, and his hands tingling, one that might mean much to himself and to others. It was unlikely, it was improbable, it was out of the common; but it was an explanation. It was a mighty thing to hang upon two weak nails; but such as it was--and he turned it over and over in his mind before he dared entertain it--he could find no other. And presently, his eyes alight, his pulses riotous, his foot dancing, he walked down the Corraterie--with scarce a look at the house which had held his thoughts all day--and passed into the town. As he passed through the gateway he hung an instant and cast an inquisitive eye into the guard-room of the Tertasse. It was nearly empty. Two men sat drowsing before the fire, their boot-heels among the embers, a black jack between them. The fact weighed something in the balance of probabilities: and in growing excitement, Claude hurried on, sought the cookshop at which he had broken his fast--a humble place, licensed for the scholars--and ate his supper, not knowing what he ate, nor with whom he ate it. It was only by chance that his ear caught, at a certain moment, a new tone in the goodwife's voice; and that he looked up, and saw her greet her husband. "Ay!" the man said, putting off his bandoleer, and answering the exclamation of surprise which his entrance had evoked. "It's bed for me to-night. It's so cold they will send but half the rounds." "Whose order is that?" asked a scholar at Claude's table. "Messer Blondel's." "Shows his sense!" the goodwife cried roundly. "A good man, and knows when to watch and when to ha' done!" Claude said nothing, but he rose with burning cheeks, paid his share--it was seven o'clock--and, passing out, made his way back. It should be said that in addition to the Tertasse Gate, two lesser gates, the Treille on the one hand and the Monnaye on the other, led from the town proper to the Corraterie; and this time he chose to go out by the Treille. Having ascertained that the guard-room there also was almost denuded of men, he passed along the Corraterie to his bastion, hugging the houses on his right, and giving the wall a wide berth. Although the cold wind blew in his face he paused several times to listen, nor did he enter his bastion until he had patiently made certain that it was untenanted. The night was very dark: it was the night of December the 12th, old style, the longest and deadest of the year. Far below him in the black abyss on which the wall looked down, a few oil lamps marked the island and the town beyond the Rhone. Behind him, on his left, a glimmer escaping here and there from the upper windows marked the line of the Corraterie, of which the width is greatest at the end farthest from the river. Near the far extremity of the rampart a bright light marked the Porte Neuve, distant about two hundred yards from his post, and about seventy or eighty from the Porte Tertasse, the inner gate which corresponded with it. Straight from him to the Porte Neuve ran the rampart a few feet high on the inner side, some thirty feet high on the outer, but shrouded for the present in a black gloom that defied his keenest vision. He waited more than an hour, his ears on the alert. At the end of that time, he drew a deep breath of relief. A step that might have been the step of a sentry pacing the rampart, and now pausing, now moving on, began to approach him. It came on, paused, came on, paused--this time close at hand. Two or three dull sounds followed, then the sharper noise of a falling stone. Immediately the foot of the sentry, if sentry it was, began to retreat. Claude drove his nails into the palms of his hands and waited, waited through an eternity, waited until the retreating foot had almost reached, as he judged, the Porte Tertasse. Then he stole out, groped his way to the wall, and passed his hand along the outer side until he came to the nail. He found it. It had been made secure, and from it depended a thin string. He set to work at once to draw up the string. There was a small weight attached to it, which rose slowly until it reached his hand. It was a stone about as large as the fist, and of a whitish colour. CHAPTER XXIII. IN TWO CHARACTERS. After the wave, the trough of the wave; after action, passion. Not to sink a little after rising to the pitch of self-sacrifice, not to shed, when the deed is done, some bitter tears of regret and self-pity, were to be cast in a mould above the human. When the cloak--dear garment!--had slipped from her hands and the head bent that its owner might raise the cloak had passed from sight--when Anne had fled to the farther side of the room, to the farther side of the settle, and had heard his step die away, she would have given the world to see him again, to feel his arm about her, to hear the sound of his voice. The tears streamed down her face; in vain she tried to stay them with her hands, in vain she chid herself for her weakness. "It is for him! for him!" she moaned, and hid her face in her hands. But words stay no tears; and on the hearth which his coming had changed for her, standing where she had first seen him, where she had heard his first words of love, where she had tried him, she wept bitter tears for him. The storm died away at last--for after every storm falls a calm--but it left the empty house, the empty heart, silence. Her mother? She had still her mother, and with lagging footsteps she went upstairs to her. But she found her in a deep sleep, and she descended again, and going to his room began to put together his few belongings, the clothes he had worn, the books he had read; that if the house were entered they might not be lost to him. She buried her face in his garments and kissed them, fondly, tenderly, passionately, lingering over the task, and at last putting the things from her with reluctance. A knot of ribbon which she had seen him wear in the neck of his shirt on holidays she took and hid in her bosom, and fetching a length of her own ribbon she put it in place of the other. This she thought she could do without fear of bringing suspicion on him, for he alone would discern the exchange. Would he notice it? Would he weep when he found the ribbon as she wept now? And fondle it tenderly? At the thought her tears gushed forth. The day wore on. Supported by the knowledge that even a slight shock might cast her mother into one of her fits, Anne hid her fears from her, though the effort was as the lifting of a great weight. On the pretext that the light hurt the invalid's sight, she shaded the window, and so hid the hollows under her eyes and the wan looks that must have betrayed the forced nature of her cheerfulness. As a rule Madame Royaume's eyes, quickened by love, were keen; but this day she slept much, and the night was fairly advanced when Anne, in the act of preparing to lie down, turned and saw her mother sitting erect in the bed. The old woman's eyes were strangely bright. Her face wore an intent expression which arrested her daughter where she stood. "Mother, what is it?" she cried. "Listen!" Madame Royaume answered. "What is that?" "I hear nothing," Anne said, hoping to soothe her. And she approached the bed. "I hear much," her mother retorted. "Go! Go and see, child, what it is!" She pointed to the door, but, before Anne could reach it, she raised her hand for silence. "They are crossing the ditch," she muttered, her eyes dilated. "One, two, many, many of them! Many of them! They are throwing down hurdles, and wattles, and crossing on them! And there is a priest with them----" "Mother!" "A priest!" Her voice dropped a little. "The ladders are black," she whispered. "Black ladders! Ay, swathed in black cloth; and now they set them against the wall. The priest absolves them, and they begin to mount. They are mounting! They are mounting now." "Mother!" There was sharp pain in Anne's voice. Who does not know the heartache with which it is seen that the mind of a loved one is wandering from us? And yet she was puzzled. She dreaded one of those scenes in which her young strength was barely sufficient to control and soothe the frail form before her. But they did not begin as a rule in this fashion; here, though the mind wandered, was an absence of the wildness to which she had become inured. Here--and yet as she listened, as she looked, now at her mother, now into the dimly lighted corners of the room, where those dilated eyes seemed to see things unseen by her, black things, she found this phase no less disquieting than the other. "Hush!" Madame Royaume continued, heeding her daughter's interruption no farther than by that word and an impatient movement of the hand. "A stone has fallen and struck one down. They raise him, he is lifeless! No, he moves, he rises. They set other ladders against the wall. They mount now by tens and twenties--and--it is growing dark--dark, child. Dark!" She seemed to try to put away a curtain with her hands. "Mother!" Anne cried, bending over the bed and taking her mother's hand. "Don't, dear! Don't! You frighten me." The old woman raised her hand for silence, and continued to gaze before her. Anne's arm was round her; the girl marked with astonishment, almost with awe, how strongly and stiffly she sat up. She marvelled still more when her mother murmured in the same tone, "I can see no more," sighed, and sank gently back. Anne bent over her. "I can--see no more," Madame Royaume repeated; "I can----" She was asleep! Anne bent over her, and after listening a while to her easy breathing, heaved a deep sigh of relief. Her mother had been talking in her sleep; and she, Anne had alarmed herself for nothing. Nevertheless, as she turned from the bed she looked nervously over her shoulder. The other's wandering or dream, or what it was, had left a vague disquiet in her mind, and presently she took the lamp and, opening the door, passed out, and, with her hands still on the latch, listened. Suddenly her heart bounded, her startled eyes leapt upward to the ceiling. Close to her, above her, she heard a sound. It came from a trap-door that led to the tiles; a trap that even as her eyes reached it, lifted itself with a rending sound. Save for the bedridden woman, Anne was alone in the house; and for one instant it was a question whether she held her ground or fled shrieking into the room she had left. For an instant; then the instinct to shield her mother won the day, and with fascinated eyes she watched the legs of a man drop through the aperture, watched a body follow, and--and at last a face! Claude's face! But changed. Even while she sank gasping against the wall--for the surprise was too much for her--even while he took the lamp from her shaking hand and supported her, and relief and joy began to run like wine through her veins, she knew it. The forceful look, the tightened lips, the eyes gleaming with determination--all were new to her. They gave him an aspect so old, so strange, that when he had kissed her once she put him from her. "What is it?" she said. "Oh, Claude! What is it? What has happened?" Letting a smile appear--but such a smile as did not reassure her--he signed to her to go before him downstairs. She complied; but at the foot of the first flight she stopped, unable to bear the suspense longer. She turned to him again. "What is it?" she cried. "Something has happened?" "Something is happening," he answered. His eyes shone, exultant. "But it is a matter for others! We may be easy!" "What is it?" "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 passed 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 passed 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 God'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 succumbed, 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. God forbid that I should save her at the expense of all! God 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 God'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. "God 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 Tertasse Gate," he explained. "There were but two men on guard, and they were asleep. I passed 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 God, 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 nobler, 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 hell of force and fire and blood; and her arms clung to him as if she could not let him go. Then, "Go, and God 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 casements 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 Tertasse 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 Tertasse. 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 God'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!" "It is so!" Claude urged. "Believe me, it is so! And we must be wary." "You lie, young man! And I'll--hic--I'll prove it! See here! Savoy on the wall, indeed! Savoy? And we on guard?" He lurched in two strides to the outer door, seized it, and supported himself by it. Claude leant forward to stop him, but could not reach, being on the other side of the table. He called to the other to do so. "Stop him!" he said. "Stop him!" The man might have done so, but he did not stir; and "Stop him?" the sot answered, his hand on the door. "Not--two of you--will stop him! Now, then! Savoy, indeed! On the wall? I'll show you!" He let the door go, and reeled three paces into the darkness outside, waving his hands as if he drove chickens. "Savoy! Savoy!" he cried; but whether in drunken bravado, in derision, or in pure disbelief, God only knows! For the word had barely passed his lips the second time before a gurgling scream followed, freezing the hearts of the two listeners; and, before the second guard could close the door or move from his place on the hearth, four men sprang in out of the darkness, and bore him back. Before he had struck a blow they had pinned him against the wall. Claude owed his escape to his position behind the door. They did not see him as they sprang in, intent on the one they did see. He knew resistance to be futile, and a bound carried him into the darkness of the cork-screw staircase. Once there, he dared not move. Thence he saw and heard what followed. The man pinned against the wall, with the point of a knife flickering before his eyes, begged piteously for his life. "Then silence!" Basterga answered--for the foremost who had entered was he. "A word and you die!" "Better let me finish him at once!" Grio growled. The prisoner's face was ashen, his eyes were starting from his head. "Dead men give no alarms." "Mercy! Mercy!" the man gasped. "Ay, ay, let him live," Basterga said good-naturedly. "But he must be gagged. Turn your face to the wall, my man!" The poor wretch complied with gratitude. In a twinkling the Paduan's huge fingers closed round his neck, and over his wind-pipe. "Now strike," the big man hissed. "He will make no noise!" With a sickening thud Grio's knife sank between the shoulders, a moment the body writhed in Basterga's herculean grip, then it sank lifeless to the floor. "Had you struck him, fool," Basterga muttered wrathfully, wiping a little blood from his sleeve, "as you wanted to strike him, he had squealed like a pig! Now 'tis the same, and no noise. Ha! Seize him!" He spoke too late. Claude had seen his opportunity, and as the treacherous blow was struck had crept forth. At the moment the other saw him he bounded over the threshold. Even as his feet touched the ground a man who stood outside lunged at him with a pike but missed him--a chance, for Claude had not seen the striker. The next moment the young man had launched himself into the darkness and was running for his life across the Corraterie in the direction of the Porte Neuve. He knew that his foes were lying on every side of him, and the cry of "Seize him! Seize him!" went with him, making every step a separate peril. He could not see a yard, but he was young and fleet and active; and the darkness covering him, the men were confused. Over more than one black object he bounded like a deer. Once a man rising in front of him brought him heavily to the ground, but by good fortune it was his foot struck the man, and on the head, and the fellow lay still and let him rise. A moment later another gripped him, but Claude and he fell together, and the younger man, rolling nimbly sideways, got clear and to his feet again, made for the wall on his right, turned left again, and already thought himself over the threshold of the Porte Neuve. The cry "Aux Armes! Aux Armes!" was already on his lips, he thought he had succeeded, when between his eyes and the faintly lighted gateway a dozen forms rose as by magic and poured in before him--so near to him that, unable to check himself, he jostled the hindmost. He might have entered with them, so near was he. But he saw that he was too late; he guessed that the outcry behind him had precipitated the attack, and, arresting himself outside the ring of light, but within a few paces of the gateway, he threw himself on the ground and awaited the event. It was not long in declaring itself. For a few seconds a dull roar of shots and shouts and curses filled the gate. Then out again, helter-skelter, with a flash of exploding powder and a whirl of steel and blows, came defenders and assailants in a crowd, the former bent on escaping, the latter on cutting them off from the Porte Tertasse and the town. For an instant after they had poured out the gate seemed quiet, and with his eyes upon it, Claude rose, first to his knees and then to his feet, paused a moment in doubt, then darted in and entered the guard-room. The firelight--the other lights in the small, dingy chamber had been trampled under foot--showed him two wounded men groaning on the floor, and the body of a third who lay apparently dead. Claude bent over one, found what he wanted--a half-pike--and glided to the door of the stairs that led to the roof. It was in the same position as in the Tertasse. He opened it, passed through it, mounted two steps, and in the darkness came plump against some one who seized him by the throat. The man had no weapon--at any rate he did not strike; and Claude, taken by surprise, could not level his pike in the narrow stairway. For a moment they wrestled, Claude striving to bring his weapon to bear on his foe, the latter trying to strangle him. But the advantage of the stairs lay with the first comer, who was the uppermost, and gradually he bore Claude back and back. The young man, however, would not let go such hold as he had, and both were on the point of falling out on the floor of the guard-room when the light disclosed Claude's face. "You are of us!" his opponent panted. And abruptly he released his grip. "Geneva!" "I know you!" The man was one of the guard who, in the alarm, had escaped into the stairway. "I know you! You live in the Corraterie!" Claude wasted not a second. "Up!" he cried. "We can hold the roof! Up, man, for your life! For your life! It is our only chance!" With the fear of death upon him, the other needed no second telling. He turned, and groped upwards in haste; and Claude followed, treading on his heels; nor a moment too soon. While they were still within the staircase, which their elbows rubbed on either side, they heard the enemy swarm into the room below. Cries of triumph, of "Savoy! Savoy!" of "Ville gagnée! gagnée!" hummed dully up to them, and proclaimed the narrowness of their escape. Then the night air met their faces, they bent their heads and passed out upon the leads; they had above them the stars, and below them all the world of night, with its tramp of hidden feet, its swaying lights so tiny and distant, and here and there its cry of "Savoy! Savoy!" that showed that the enemy, relying on their capture of the Porte Neuve, were casting off disguise. Claude heard and saw all, but lost not a moment. He had not made this haste for his life only: before he had risen to his knees or set foot in the gate, he had formed his plan. "The Portcullis!" he cried. "The Portcullis! Where are the chains? On this side?" Less than a week before he had stood and watched the guard as they released it and raised it again for practice. The soldier, familiar with the tower, should have been able to go to the chains at once. But though he had struggled for his life and was ready to struggle for it again, he had not recovered his nerve, and he shrank from leaving the stairs, in holding which their one chance consisted. He muttered, however, that the winch was on such and such a side, and, with his head in the stairway, indicated the direction with his hand. Claude groped his way to the spot, his breath coming fast; fortunately he laid his hand almost at once on the chains and felt for the spike, which he knew he must draw or knock out. That done, the winch would fly round, and the huge machine fall by its own weight. On a sudden, "They are coming!" the soldier cried in a terrified whisper. "My God, they are coming! Come back! Come back!" For Claude had their only weapon, and the guard was defenceless. Defenceless by the side of the stairs up which the foe was climbing! The hair rose on Claude's head, but he set his teeth; though the man died, though he died, the portcullis must fall! More than his own life, more than the lives of both of them, more than lives a hundred or a thousand hung on that bolt; the fate of millions yet unborn, the freedom and the future of a country hung on that bolt which would not give way--though now he had found it and was hammering it. Grinding his teeth, the sweat on his brow, he beat on it with the pike, struck the iron with the strength of despair, stooped to see what was amiss--still with the frenzied prayers of the other in his ears--saw it, and struck again and again--and again! Whirr! The winch flew round, barely missing his head. With a harsh, grinding sound that rose with incredible swiftness to a scream, piercing the night, the ponderous grating slid down, crashed home and barred all entrance--closed the Porte Neuve. It did more, though Claude did not know it. It cut off the engineer from the outer gate, of which the keys were at the Town Hall, and against which in another minute, another sixty seconds, he had set his petard. That set and exploded, Geneva had lain open to its enemies. As it was, so small was the margin, so fatally accurate the closing, that when the day rose, it disclosed a portent. When the victors came to examine the spot they found beneath the portcullis the mangled form of one of the engineers, and beside him lay his petard. CHAPTER XXIV. ARMES! ARMES! Claude did not know all that he had done, or the narrow margin of time by which he had succeeded. But he did know that he had saved the gate; that gate on the outer side of which four thousand of the picked troops of Savoy were waiting the word to enter. He knew that he had done it with death at his elbow and with the cries of his panic-stricken comrade in his ears. And in the moment of success he rose above the common level. He felt himself master of fear, lord of death; in the exultation of his triumph he thought nothing too hard or too dangerous for him. It was well perhaps that he had this feeling, for he had not a moment to waste if he would save himself. As the portcullis struck the ground with a thunderous crash and rebounded, and he turned from the winch to the stairhead, a last warning, cut short in the utterance, reached him, and he saw through the gloom that his companion was already in the grip of a figure which had succeeded in passing out of the staircase. Claude did not hesitate. With a roar of rage he ran like a bull at the enemy, struck him full under the arm with his pike, and drove him doubled up into the stairhead, with such force that the Genevese had much ado to free himself. The man was struck helpless--dead for aught that appeared at the moment. But the pike coming in contact with the edge of his corselet had not penetrated, and Claude recovered it quickly, and levelled it in waiting for the next comer. At the same time he adjured his comrade to secure the fallen man's weapon. The guard seized it, and the two waited, with suspended breath, for the sally which they were sure must come. But the stairs were narrow, the fallen body blocked the outlet, and possibly the assailants had expected no resistance. Finding it, they thought better of it. A moment and they could be heard beating a retreat. "Pardieu! they are going!" the guard exclaimed; and he began to shake. "Ay, but they will return!" Claude answered grimly. "Have no fear of that! The portcullis is down, and the only way to raise it, is up these stairs. But it will be hard if, armed as we are now, we cannot baffle them! Has he no pistol?" Marcadel--that was the soldier's name--felt about the prostrate man, but found none; and bidding him listen and not move for his life--but there was little need of the injunction--Claude passed over to the inner edge of the roof, facing the Corraterie. Here he raised his voice and shouted the alarm with all the force of his lungs, hoping thus to supplement the cries which here and there had been raised by the Savoyards. "Aux Armes! Armes!" he cried. "The enemy is at the gate! To arms! To arms!" A man ran out of the gateway at the sound of his shouting, levelled a musket and fired at him. The slugs flew wide, and Claude, lifted above himself, yelled defiance, knowing that the more shots were fired the more quickly and widely would the alarm be spread. That it was spreading, that it was being taken up, his position on the gateway enabled him to discern, distant as the Porte Neuve lay from the heart of the town. A flare of light at the rear of the Tertasse, and a confused hub-bub in that quarter, seemed to show that, though the Savoyards had seized the gate, they had not penetrated beyond it. Away on his extreme left, where the Porte de la Monnaye, hard by his old bastion, overlooked the Rhone and the island, were lights again, and a sound of a commotion as though there too the enemy held the gate, but found farther progress closed against them. On the Treille to his right, the most westerly of the three inner gates, and the nearest to the Town Hall, the enemy seemed to be preparing an attack, for as he ceased to shout, muskets exploded in that direction; and as far as he could judge the shots were aimed outwards. With such alarms at three inner points--to say nothing of the noise at the more distant Porte Neuve--it seemed impossible that any part of the city could remain in ignorance of the attack. In truth, as he stood peering down into the dark Corraterie, and listening to the heavy tramp of unseen feet, now here, now there, and the orders that rose from unseen throats--even as he prepared to turn, summoned by a warning cry from Marcadel, the first note of the alarm-bell smote his ear. One moment and the air hummed with its heavy challenge, and all of Geneva that still slept awoke and stood upright. Men ran half naked from their houses. Boys in their teens snatched arms and sallied forth. White faces looked into the night from barred windows or lofty dormers; and across narrow wynds and under dark Gothic entries men dragged huge chains and hooked them, and hurried on to where the alarm seemed loudest and the risk most pressing. In an instant in pitch-dark alleys lights gleamed and steel jarred on stone; out of the darkness deep voices shouted questions, or answered or gave orders, and from a thousand houses, alike in the wealthy Bourg du Four with its three-storied piles and in the sordid lanes about the water and the bridges, went up one wail of horror and despair. Men who had dreamed of this night for years, and feared it as they feared God's day, awoke to find their dream a fact, and never while they lived forgot that awakening. While women left alone in their homes bolted and barred and fell to prayers; or clasped to their breasts babes who prattled, not understanding the turmoil, or why their mothers looked strangely on them. Something of this, something of the horror of that sudden awakening, and of the confusion in the narrow streets, where voices cried that the enemy were here or there or in a third place, and the bravest knew not which way to turn, penetrated to Claude on the roof of the tower; and at the thought of Anne and the perils that encircled her--for about the house in the Corraterie the uproar rose loudest--his heart melted. But he had not long to dwell on her peril; not long to dwell on anything. Before the great bell had hurled its warning abroad three times he had to go. Marcadel's voice, urgent, insistent, summoned him to the stairhead. "They are mustering at the bottom!" the man whispered over his shoulder. He was on his knees, his head in the hood of the staircase. The wounded man, breathing stertorously, still cumbered the upper steps. Marcadel rested one hand on him. Claude thrust in his head and listened. He could hear, above the thick breathing of the Savoyard, the stir of men muttering and moving in the darkness below; and now the stealthy shuffle of feet, and again the faint clang of a weapon against the wall. Doubtless it had dawned on some one in command below, that here on this tower lay the keys of Geneva: that by themselves three hundred men could not take, nor hold if they took, a town manned by five or six thousand; consequently that if Savoy would succeed in the enterprise so boldly begun, she must by hook or crook raise this portcullis and open this gate. As a fact, Brunaulieu, the captain of the forlorn hope, had passed the word that the tower must be taken at any cost; and had come himself from the Porte Tertasse, where a brisk conflict was beginning, to see the thing done. Claude did not know this, but had he known it, it would not have reduced his courage. "Yes, I hear them," he whispered in answer to the soldier's words. "But they have not mounted far yet. And when they come, if two pikes cannot hold this doorway which they can pass but one at a time, there is no truth in Thermopylæ!" "I know naught of that," the other answered, rising nervously to his feet. "I don't favour heights. Give me the lee of a wall and fair odds----" "Odds?" Claude echoed vain-gloriously--but only the stars attended to him--"I would not have another man!" Marcadel seized him by the sleeve. His voice rose almost to a scream. "But, by Heaven, there is another man!" he cried. "There!" He pointed with a shaking hand to the outer corner of the leads, in the neighbourhood of the place where the winch of the portcullis stood. "We are betrayed! We are dead men!" he babbled. Claude made out a dim figure, crouching against the battlement; and the thought, which was also in Marcadel's mind, that the enemy had set a ladder against the wall and outflanked them, rendered him desperate. At any rate there was but one on the roof as yet: and quick as thought the young man lowered his pike and charged the figure. With a shrill scream the man fell on his knees before him. "Mercy!" cried a voice he knew. "Mercy! Don't kill me! Don't kill me!" It was Louis Gentilis. Claude halted, looked at him in amazement, spurned him with his foot. "Up, coward, and fight for your life then!" he said. "Or others will kill you. How come you here?" The lad still grovelled. "I was in the guard-room," he whimpered. "I had come with a message--from the Syndic." "The Syndic Blondel?" "Yes! To remind the Captain that he was to go the rounds at eleven exactly. It was late when I got there and they--oh, this dreadful night--they broke in, and I, hid on the stairs." "Well, you can hide no longer. You have got to fight now!" Claude answered grimly, "There are no more stairs for any of us except to heaven! I advise you to find something, and do your worst. Take the winch-bar if you can find nothing else! And----" He broke off. Marcadel, who had remained at the stairhead, was calling to him in a voice that could no longer be resisted--a voice of despair. Claude ran to him. He found him with his head in the stairway, but with his pike shortened to strike. "They are coming!" he muttered over his shoulder. "They are more than half-way up now. Be ready and keep your eyes open. Be ready!" he continued after a pause. "They are nearly--here now!" His breath began to come quickly; at last stepping back a pace and bringing his point to the charge. "They are here!" he shouted. "On guard!" Claude stooped an inch lower, and with gleaming eyes, and feet set warily apart, waited the onset; waited with suspended breath for the charge that must come. He could hear the gasps of the wounded man who lay on the uppermost step; and once close to him he caught a sound of shuffling, moving feet, that sent his heart into his mouth. But seconds passed, and more seconds, and glare as he might into the black mouth of the staircase, from which the hood averted even the light of the stars, he could make out nothing, no movement, no sign of life! The suspense was growing intolerable. And all the time behind him the alarm-bell was flinging "Doom! Doom!" down on the city, and a thousand sounds of fear and strife clutched at his mind and strove to draw it from the dark gap at which he waited, as a dog waits for a rat at the mouth of its hole. His breath began to come quickly, his knees shook. He heard his companion gasp--human nerves could stand it no longer. And then, just as he felt that, come what might, he must plunge his pike into the darkness, and settle the question, the shuffling sound came anew and steadied him, and he set his teeth and waited--waited still. But nothing happened, nothing moved. Again the seconds, almost the minutes passed, and the deep note of the alarm-bell swelled louder and heavier, filling all the air, all the night, all the world, with its iron tongue--setting the tower reeling, the head swimming. In spite of himself, in spite of the fact that he knew his life hung on his vigilance, his thoughts wandered; wandered to Anne, alone and defenceless in that hell below him, from which such wild sounds were beginning to rise; to his own fate if he and Marcadel got the worst; to the advantage a light properly shaded would have given them, had they had it. But, alas, they had no light. And then, while he thought of that, the world was all light. A sheet of flame burst from the hood, dazzled, blinded, scorched him; a crashing report filled his ears; he recoiled. The ball had missed him, had gone between him and Marcadel and struck neither. But for a moment in pure amazement, he stood gaping. That moment had been his last had the defence lain with him only, or even with him and Marcadel. It was the senseless form that cumbered the uppermost step which saved them. The man who had fired tripped over it as he sprang out. He fell his length on the roof. The next man, less hasty or less brave, sank down on the obstacle, and blocked the way for others. Before either could rise all was over. Claude brought down his pike on the head of the first to issue, and laid him lifeless on the leads. The guard, who was a better man at a pinch than in the anticipation of it, drove the other back--as he tried to rise--with a wound in the face. Then with a yell, assured that in the narrow stairhead the enemy could not use their weapons, the two charged their pikes into the obscurity, and thrust and thrust, and thrust again, in the cruelty of rage and fear. What they struck, or where they struck, they could not see; but their ears told them that they did not strike in vain. A shrill scream and the gurgling cry of a dying man proved it, and the wild struggle that ensued on the stairs; where the uppermost, weighed down by the fallen men, turned in a panic on those below and fought with them to force them to descend. Claude shuddered as he listened, as he waited, his pike still levelled; shuddered at the pitiful groaning that issued from the blackness, shuddered at the blows he had struck, and the scream that still echoed in his ears. He had not trembled when he fought, but he trembled at the thought of it. "They are beaten," he muttered huskily. "Ay, they are beaten!" Marcadel--he who had trembled before the fight--answered with exultation. "You were right. We wanted no more men! But it was near. If this rogue had not tripped our throats would have suffered." "He was a brave man," Claude answered, leaning heavily on his pike. He needed its support. Marcadel knelt down and felt the man over. "Ay," he said, "he was, to give the devil his due! And that reminds me. We've a skulker here who has escaped so far. He shall play his part now. We must have their arms, but it is dirty work groping in the dark for them; and maybe life enough in one of them to drive a dagger between one's ribs. He shall do it. Where is he?" Claude was feeling the reaction which ensues upon intense excitement. He did not answer. Nor did he interfere when Marcadel, pouncing on Louis, where he crouched in the darkest corner, forced him forward to the head of the staircase. There the lad fell on his knees weeping futilely, wailing prayers. But the guard kicked him forward. "In!" he said. "You know what you have to do! In, and strip them! Do you hear? And if you leave as much as a knife----" "I won't! I daren't!" Louis screamed. And grovelling on his face on the leads he clung to whatever offered itself. But men who have just passed through a life and death struggle, are hard. "You won't?" Marcadel answered, applying his boot brutally, but without effect. "You will! Or you will feel my pike between your ribs! In! In, my lad!" A scream answered each repetition of the word, and proved that the threat was no empty one. Claude might have intervened, but he remembered Anne and the humiliations she had suffered in this craven's presence. "In!" Marcadel repeated a third time. "And if you leave so much as a knife upon them I will throw you off the tower. You understand, do you? Then in, and strip them!" And driven by sheer torture--for the pike had thrice drawn blood from his writhing body--Louis crept, weeping and quaking, into the staircase; and on one of her tormentors Anne was avenged. But Claude was thinking more of her present peril than of this; he had moved from the stairhead. A swell in the volume of sound which rose from the Corraterie had drawn him to that side of the tower, where shaking off the exhaustion which for a time had overcome him, he was straining his eyes to learn what was passing in the babel below. The sight was a singular one. The Monnaye Gate far to the left, the Tertasse immediately before him, and the Treille on his right, were the centres of separate conflagrations. In one place a house, fired by the petard employed to force the door, was actually alight. In other places so great was the conflux of torches, the flash and gleam of weapons, and the babel of sounds that it wrought on the mind the impression of a fire blazing up in the night. Behind the Porte Tertasse, in the narrow streets of the Tertasse and the Cité--immediately, therefore, behind the Royaumes' house--the conflict seemed to rage most hotly, the shots to be most frequent, the uproar greatest, even the light strongest; for the reflection of the combat below bathed the Tertasse tower in a lurid glow. Claude could distinguish the roof of the Royaumes' house; and to see so much yet to be cut off as completely as if he stood a hundred miles away, to be so near yet so hopelessly divided, stung him to a new impatience and a greater daring. He returned to Marcadel. "Are we going to stay on this tower?" he cried. "Shut up here, while this goes forward and we may be of use?" "I think we have done our part," the other answered soberly. "If any man has saved Geneva, it is you! There, man, I give you the credit," he continued, in a burst of generosity, "and it is no small thing! For it might make my fortune. But I have done some little too!" "Ay! But cannot we----" "What would you have us do more?" the man continued, and with reason. "Leave the roof to them? 'Tis all they want! Leave them to raise the old iron grate, and let in--what I hear yonder?" He indicated the darker outer plain below the wall, whence rose the murmur of halted battalions, waiting baffled, and uncertain, the opening of the gate. "Ay, but if we descend?" "May we not win the gate from a score?" Marcadel answered, between contempt and admiration. "Is that what you mean? And when we have won it, hold it? No, not if each of us were Gaston of Foix, Bayard, and M. de Crillon rolled into one! But what is this? We are winning or we are losing! Which is it?" From the Treille Gate had burst a rabble of men; a struggling crowd illumined by the glare of three or four lights. Pikes and halberds flashed in the heart of the mob as it swirled and struggled down the Corraterie in the direction of the gate from which the two men viewed it. Half-way thither, in the open, its progress seemed to be checked; it hung and paused, swaying this way and that; it recoiled. But at length, with a roar of triumph, it rolled on anew over half a dozen prostrate forms, and in a trice burst about the base of the Porte Neuve, swept, as it seemed to those above, into the gateway, and--in a twinkling broke back, repelled by a crashing volley that shook the tower. "They are our people!" cried Claude. "Ay!" "And now is our time!" The lad waved his weapon. "A diversion in the rear--and 'tis done!" "In Heaven's name stop!" cried Marcadel, and he gripped Claude's sleeve. "A diversion, ay!" he continued. "But a moment too soon or a moment too late--and where will we be?" He spoke in vain. His words were wasted on the air. Claude, not to be restrained, had entered the staircase. Pike in hand he felt his way over the bodies that choked it; by this time he was half-way down the stairs. Marcadel hesitated, waited a moment, listened; then, partly because success begets success, and courage courage, partly because he would not have the triumph taken from him, he too risked all. He snatched from Gentilis' feeble hands a long pistol, part of the spoils of the staircase; and, staying only to assure himself that a portion of the priming still lay in the pan, he hurried after his leader. By this time Claude was within four stairs of the guard-room. The low door that admitted to it stood open; and towards it a man, hearing the hasty tread of feet, had that moment turned a startled face. There was no room for anything but audacity, and Claude did not flinch. In two bounds, he hurled himself through the door on to the man, missed him with his pike--but was himself missed. In a flash the two were rolling together on the floor. In their fall they brought down a third man, who, swearing horribly, made repeated stabs at Claude with a dagger. But the only light in the room came from the fire, the three were interlaced, and Claude was young and agile as an eel: he evaded the first thrust, and the second. The third went home in his shoulder, but desperate with pain he seized the hand that held the poniard, and clung to it; and before the man who had been the first to fall could regain his pike, or a third man who was present, but who was wounded, could drag himself, swearing horribly, to the spot, Marcadel fired from the stairs, and killed the wounded man. The next instant with a yell of "Geneva!" he sprang on the others under cover of the smoke that filled the room. The combat was still but of two to two; and without the guard-room but almost within arm's length, were a dozen Savoyards, headed by Picot the engineer; any one of whom might, by entering, turn the scale. But the pistol-shot had come to the ears of the attacking party: that instant, guessing that they had allies within, they rallied and with loud cries returned to the attack. Even while Marcadel having disposed of one more, stood over the struggling pair on the floor, doubting where to strike, the burghers burst a second time into the gateway--on which the guard-room opened--struck down Picot, and, hacking and hewing, with cries of "Porte Gagnée! Porte Gagnée!" bore the Savoyards back. For the half of a minute the low-groined archway was a whirl of arms and steel and flame. Half a dozen single combats were in progress at once; amid yells and groans, and the jar and clash of a score of weapons. But the burghers, fighting bareheaded for their wives and hearths, were not to be denied; by-and-by the Savoyards gave back, broke, and saved themselves. One fierce group cut its way out and fled into the darkness of the Corraterie. Of the others four men remained on the ground, while two turned and tried to retreat into the guard-room. But on the threshold they met Claude, vicious and wounded, his eyes in a flame; and he struck and killed the foremost. The other fell under the blows of the pursuing burghers, and across the two bodies Claude and Marcadel met their allies, the leaders of the assault. Strange to say, the foremost and the midmost of these was a bandy-legged tailor, with a great two-handed sword, red to the hilt; to such a place can valour on such a night raise a man. On his right stood Blandano, Captain of the Guard, bareheaded and black with powder; on his left Baudichon the councillor, panting, breathless, his fat face running with sweat and blood--for he bore an ugly wound--but with unquenchable courage in his eyes. A man may be fat and yet a lion. It was a moment in the lives of the five men who thus met which none of them ever forgot. "Was it one of you two who lowered the portcullis?" Blandano gasped, as he leaned an instant on his sword. "He did," Marcadel answered, laying his hand on Claude's shoulder. "And I helped him." "Then he has saved Geneva, and you have helped him!" Blandano rejoined bluntly. "Your name, young man." Claude told him. "Good!" Blandano answered. "If I live to see the morning light, it shall not be forgotten!" Baudichon leant across the dead, and shook Claude's hand. "For the women and children!" he said, his fat face shaking like a jelly; though no man had fought that night with a more desperate valour. "If I live to see the morning inquire for Baudichon of the council." Jehan Brosse, the bandy-legged tailor with the huge sword--he was but five feet high and no one up to that night had known him for a hero--squared his shoulders and looked at Claude, as one who takes another under his protection. "Baudichon the councillor, whom all men know in Geneva," he said with an affectionate look at the great man--he was proud of the company to which his prowess had raised him. "You will not forget the name! no fear of that! And now on!" "Ay, on!" Blandano answered, looking round on his panting followers, of whom some were staunching their wounds and some, with dark faces and gleaming eyeballs, were loading and priming their arms. "But I think the worst is over and we shall win through now. We have this gate safe, and it is the key, as I told you. If all be well elsewhere, and the main guards be held----" "Ay, but are they?" Baudichon muttered nervously: he reeled a little, for the loss of blood was beginning to tell upon him. "That is the question!" CHAPTER XXV. BASTERGA AT ARGOS. The fear that Blandano might postpone the night-round, to a time which would involve discovery, haunted Blondel; and late on this eventful evening he despatched Louis, as we have seen, to the Porte Neuve to remind the Captain of his orders. That done--it was all he could do--the Syndic sat down in his great chair, and prepared himself to wait. He knew that he had before him some hours of uncertainty almost intolerable; and a peril, a hundred times more hard to face, because in the pinch of it he must play two parts; he must run with the hare and hunt with the hounds, and, a traitor standing forward for the city he had betrayed, he must have an eye to his reputation as well as his life. He had no doubt of the success of Savoy, the walls once passed. Moreover, the genius of Basterga had imposed itself upon him as that of a man unlikely to fail. But some resistance there must be, some bloodshed--for the town held many devoted men; one hour at least of butchery, and that followed, he shuddered to think it, by more than one hour of excess, of cruelty, of rapine. From such things the captured cities of that day rarely escaped. In all that happened, the resistance and the peril, he must, he knew, show himself; he must take his part and run his risk if he would not be known for what he was, if he would not leave a name that men would spit on! Strangely enough it was the moment of discovery and his conduct in that moment--it was the anticipation of this, that weighed most heavily on his guilty mind as he sat in his parlour, his hour of retiring long past, his household in bed. The city slept round him; how long would it sleep? And when it awoke, how long dared he, how long would it be natural for him to ignore the first murmur, the succeeding outcry, the rising alarm? It was not his cue to do overmuch, to precipitate discovery, or to assume at once the truth to be the truth. But on the other hand he must not be too backward. Try as he would he could not divert his thoughts from this. He saw himself skulking in his house, listening with a white face to the rush of armed men along the street. He heard the tumult rising on all sides, and saw himself stand, guilty and irresolute, between hearth and door, uncertain if the time had come to go forth. Finally, and before he had made up his mind to go out, he fancied himself confronted by an entering face, and in an instant detected. And this it was, this initial difficulty, oddly enough--and not the subsequent hours of horror, confusion and danger, of dying men and wailing women--that rode his mind, dwelt on him and shook his nerves as the crisis approached. One consolation he had, and one only; but a measureless one. Basterga had kept his word. He was cured. Six hours earlier he had taken the _remedium_ according to the directions, and with every hour that had elapsed since he had felt new life course through his veins. He had had no return of pain, no paroxysm; but a singular lightness of body, eloquent of the change wrought in him and the youth and strength that were to come, had done what could be done to combat the terrors of the soul, natural in his situation. Pale he was, despite the potion; in spite of it he trembled and sweated. But he knew himself changed, and sick at heart as he was, he could only guess at the depths of nervous despair to which he must have fallen had he not taken the wondrous draught. There was that to the good. That to the good. He would live. And life was the great thing after all; life and health, and strength. If he had sold his soul, his country, his friends, at least he would live--if naught happened to him to-night. If naught--but ah, the thought pierced him to the heart. He who had proved himself in old days no mean soldier in the field, who had won honour in more than one fight, felt his brow grow damp, his knees grow flaccid, knew himself a coward. For the life which he must risk was not the old life, but the new one which he had bought so dearly; the new one for which he had given his soul, his country, and his friends. And he dared not risk that! He dared not let the winds of heaven blow too roughly on that! If aught befel him this night, the irony of it! The mockery of it! The deadly, deadly folly of it! He sweated at the thought. He cursed, cursed frantically his folly in omitting to give himself out for worse than he was; in omitting to take to his bed early in the day! Then he might have kept it through the night, through the fight; then he might have avoided risks. Now he felt that every ball discharged at a venture must strike him; that if he showed so much as his face at a window death must find its opportunity. He would not have dared to pass through a street on a windy day now--for if a tile fell it must fall on him. And he must fight! He must fight! His manhood shrivelled within him at the thought. He shuddered. He was still shuddering, when on the shutter which masked the casement came a knock, thrice repeated. A cautious knock of which the mere sound implied an understanding. The Syndic remained motionless, glaring at the window. Everything on a night like this, and to an uneasy conscience, menaced danger. At length it occurred to him that the applicant might be Louis, whom he had sent with the message to the Porte Neuve: and he took the lamp and went to admit him, albeit reluctantly, for what did the booby mean by returning? It was late, and only to open at this hour might, in the light cast by after events, raise suspicions. But it was not Louis. The lamp flickering in the draught of the doorway disclosed a huge dusky form, glimmering metallic here and there, that in a trice pushed him back, passed by him, entered. It was Basterga. The Syndic shut the door, and staggered rather than walked after him to the parlour. There the Syndic set down the lamp, and turned to the scholar, his face a picture of guilty terror. "What is it?" he muttered. "What has happened? Is--the thing put off?" The other's aspect answered his question. A black corselet with shoulder pieces, and a feathered steel cap raised Basterga's huge stature almost to the gigantic. Nor did it need this to render him singular; to draw the eye to him a second time and a third. The man himself in this hour of his success, this moment of conscious daring, of reliance on his star and his strength, towered in the room like a demi-god. "No," he answered, with a ponderous, exultant smile, slow to come, slow to go. "No, Messer Blondel. Far from it. It has not been put off." "Something has been discovered?" "No. We are here. That is all." The Syndic supported himself by a hand pressed hard against the table behind him. "Here?" he gasped. "You are here? You have the town already? It is impossible." "We have three hundred men in the Corraterie," Basterga answered. "We hold the Tertasse Gate, and the Monnaye. The Porte Neuve is cut off, and at our mercy; it will be taken when we give the signal. Beyond it four thousand men are waiting to enter. We hold Geneva in our grip at last--at last!" And in an accent half tragic, half ironic, he declaimed:-- "Venit summa dies et ineluctabile tempus Dardaniae! Fuimus Troes, fuit Ilium et ingens Gloria Teucrorum! Ferus omnia Jupiter Argos Transtulit!" And then more lightly, "If you doubt me, how am I here?" he asked. And he extended his huge arms in the pride of his strength. "Exercise your warrant now--if you can, Messer Syndic. Syndic," he continued in a tone of mockery, "where is your warrant now? I have but this moment," he pointed to wet stains on his corselet, "slain one of your guards. Do justice, Syndic! I have seized one of your gates by force. Avenge it, Syndic! Syndic? ha! ha! Here is an end of Syndics." The Syndic gasped. He was a hard man, not to say an arrogant one, little used to opposition; one who, times and again, had ridden rough-shod over the views of his fellows. To be jeered at, after this fashion, to be scorned and mocked by this man who in the beginning had talked so silkily, moved so humbly, evinced so much respect, played the poor scholar so well, was a bitter pill. He asked himself if it was for this he had betrayed his city; if it was for this he had sold his friends. And then--then he remembered that it was not for this--not for this, but for life, dear life, warm life, that he had done this thing. And, swallowing the rage that was rising within him, he calmed himself. "It is better to cease to be Syndic than cease to live," he said coldly. But the other had no mind to return to their former relations. "True, O sage!" he answered contemptuously. "But why not both? Because--shall I tell you?" "I hear----" "Yes, and I hear too! The city is rising!" Basterga listened a moment. "Presently they will ring the alarm-bell, and----" "If you stay here some one may find you!" "And find me with you?" Basterga rejoined. He knew that he ought to go, for his own sake as well as the Syndic's. He knew that nothing was to be made and much might be lost by the disclosure that was on his tongue. But he was intoxicated with the success which he had gained; with the clang of arms, and the glitter of his armed presence. The true spirit of the man, as happens in intoxication of another kind, rose to the surface, cruel, waggish, insolent--of an insolence long restrained, the insolence of the scholar, who always in secret, now in the light, panted to repay the slights he had suffered, the patronage of leaders, the scoffs of power. "Ay," he continued, "they may find me with you! But if you do not mind, I need not. And I was just asking you--why not both? Life and power, my friend?" "You know," Blondel answered, breathing quickly. How he hated the man! How gladly would he have laid him dead at his feet! For if the fool stayed here prating, if he were found here by those who within a few moments would come with the alarm, he was himself a lost man. All would be known. That was the fear in Blondel's mind; the alarm was growing louder each moment, and drawing nearer. And then in a twinkling, in two or three sentences, Basterga put that fear into the second place, and set in its seat emotions that brooked no rival. "Why not both?" he said, jeering. "Live and be Syndic, both? Because you had the scholar's ill, eh, Messer Blondel? Or because your physician _said_ you had it--to whom I paid a good price--for the advice?" The devil seemed to look out of the man's eyes, as he spoke in short sentences, each pointed, each conveying a heart-stab to its hearer. "To whom--you gave?" Blondel muttered, his eyes dilated. "A good price--for the advice! A good price to tell you, you had it." The magistrate's face swelled till it was almost purple, his hands gripped the front of his coat, and pressed hard against his breast. "But--the pains?" he muttered. "Did you--but no," with a frightful grimace, "you lie! you lie!" "Did I bribe him--to give you those too?" the other answered, with a ruthless laugh. "You have alighted on it, most grave and reverend sage. You have alighted on the exact fact, so clever are you! That was precisely what I did some months back, after I heard that you, being fearful as rich men are, had been to him for some fancied ill. You had two medicines? You remember? The one gave, the other soothed your trouble. And now that you understand, now that your mind is free from care, and you can sleep without fear of the scholar's ill--will you not thank me for your cure, Messer Blondel?" "Thank you?" the magistrate panted. "Thank you?" He stepped back two paces, groping with his hands, as if he sought to support himself by the table from which he had advanced. "Ay, thank me!" "No, but I will pay you!" and with the word Blondel snatched from the table a pistol which he had laid within his reach an hour earlier. Before the giant, confident in his size, discovered his danger, the muzzle was at his breast. It was too late to move then--three paces divided the men; but, in his haste to raise the pistol, Blondel had not shaken from it the handkerchief under which he had hidden it, and the lock fell on a morsel of the stuff. The next moment Basterga's huge hand struck aside the useless weapon, and flung Blondel gasping against the wall. "Fool!" the scholar cried, towering above the baffled, shrinking man whose attempt had placed him at his mercy. "Think you that Cæsar Basterga was born to perish by your hand? That the gods made me what I am, I who carry to-night the fortunes of a nation and the fate of a king, that I might fall by so pitiful a creature as you! Ay, 'tis the alarm-bell, you are right. And by-and-by your friends will be here. It is a wonder," he continued, with a cruel look, "that they are not here already; but perhaps they have enough to fill their hands! And come or stay--if they be like you, poor fool, weak in body as in wit--I care not! I, Cæsar Basterga, this night lord of Geneva, and in the time to come, and thanks to you----" "Curse you!" Blondel gasped. "That which I dare be sworn you have dreamt of being!"--the scholar continued with a subtle smile. "The Grand Duke's _alter ego_, Mayor of the Palace, Adviser to his Highness! Yes, I hit you there? I touch you there! Oh, vanity of little men, I thought so! "He broke off and listened, as sharp on one another two gun-shots rang out at no great distance from the house. A third followed as he hearkened: and on it a swelling wave of sound that rose with each second louder and nearer. "Ay, 'tis known now!" Basterga resumed, in a tone more quiet, but not less confident. "And I must go, my dear friend--who thought a minute ago to speed me for ever. Know that it lies not in hands mean as yours to harm Cæsar Basterga of Padua! And that to-night, of all nights, I bear a charmed life! I carry, Syndic, a kingdom and its fortunes!" He seemed to swell with the thought, and in comparison of the sickly man scowling darkly on him from the wall, he did indeed look a king, as he turned to the door, flung it wide and passed into the passage. With only the street door between him and the hub-bub that was beginning to fill the night, he could measure the situation. He had stayed late. The beat of many feet hastening one way--towards the Porte Tertasse--the clatter of weapons as here and there a man trailed his pike on the stones, the roar of rising voices, the rattle of metal as some one hauled a chain across the end of the Bourg du Four and hooked it--sounds such as these might have alarmed an ordinary man who knew himself cut off from his party, and isolated among foes. But Basterga did not quail. His belief in his star was genuine; he was intoxicated with the success which he fancied lay within his grasp. He carried Cæsar and his fortunes! was it in mean men to harm him? Nay, so confident was he, that when he had opened the door he stood an instant on the threshold viewing the strange scene, and quoted with an appreciation as strange-- "At domus interior gemitu miseroque tumultu Miscetur, penitusque cavae plangoribus aedes Femineis ululant; ferit aurea sidera clamor"-- from his favourite poet. After which without hesitation but also without hurry he turned and plunged into the stream of passers that was hurrying towards the Porte Tertasse. He had been right not to quail. In the medley of light and shadow which filled the Bourg du Four and the streets about the Town Hall, in the confusion, in the rush of all in one direction and with one intent, no one paid heed to him, or supposed him to belong to the enemy. Some cried "To the Treille! They are there! To the Treille!" And these wheeled that way. But more, guided by the sounds of conflict, held on to the point where the short, narrow street of the Tertasse turned left-handed out of the equally narrow Rue de la Cité--the latter leading onwards to the Porte de la Monnaye, and the bridges. Here, at the meeting of the two confined lanes, overhung by timbered houses, and old gables of strange shapes, a desperate conflict was being fought. The Savoyards, masters of the gate, had undertaken to push their way into the town by the Rue Tertasse; not doubting that they would be supported by-and-by, upon the entrance of their main body through the Porte Neuve. They had proceeded no farther, however, than the junction with the Rue de la Cité--a point where darkness was made visible by two dim oil lamps--before, the alarm being given, they found themselves confronted by a dozen half-clad townsfolk, fresh from their beds; of whom five or six were at once laid low. The survivors, however, fought with desperation, giving back, foot by foot; and as the alarm flew abroad and the city rose, every moment brought the defenders a reinforcement--some father just roused from sleep, armed with the chance weapon that came to hand, or some youth panting for his first fight. The assailants, therefore, found themselves stayed; slowly they were driven back into the narrow gullet of the Tertasse. Even there they were put to it to hold their ground against an ever-increasing swarm of citizens, whom despair and the knowledge that they were fighting on their hearths, for their wives, and for their children, brought up in renewed strength. In the Tertasse, however, where it was not possible to outflank them, and no dark side-alley, vomiting now and again a desperate man, gave one to death, a score could hold out against a hundred. Here then, with the gateway at their backs--whence three or four could fire over their heads--the Savoyards stood stubbornly at bay, awaiting the reinforcements which they were sure would come from the Porte Neuve. They were picked troops not easily discouraged; and they had no fear that aught serious had happened. But they asked impatiently why D'Albigny with the main body did not come; why Brunaulieu with the Monnaye in his hands did not see that the time was opportune. They chafed at the delay. Give the city time to array itself, let it recover from its first surprise, and all their forces might scarcely avail to crush opposition. It was at this moment, when the burghers had drawn back a little that they might deliver a decisive attack, that Basterga came up. Fabri the Syndic had taken the command, and had shouted to all who had windows looking on the lane to light them. He had arrayed his men in some sort of order and was on the point of giving the word to charge, when he heard the steps of Basterga and some others coming up; he waited to allow them to join him. The instant they arrived he gave the word, and followed by some thirty burghers armed with half-pikes, halberds, anything the men had been able to snatch up, he charged the Savoyards bravely. In the narrow lane but four or five could fight abreast, and the Grand Duke's men were clad in steel and well armed. Nevertheless Fabri bore back the first line, pressed on them stoutly, and amid a wild _mêlée_ of struggling men and waving weapons, began to drive the troop, in spite of a fierce resistance, into the gate. If he could do this and enter with them, even though he lost half his men, he might save the city. But the Savoyards, though they gave back, gave back slowly. Within twenty paces of the gate the advance wavered, stopped, hung an instant. Of that instant Basterga took advantage. He had moved on undetected, with the rearmost burghers: now he saw his opportunity and seized it. He flung to either side the man to right and left of him. He struck down, almost with the same movement, the man in front. He rushed on Fabri, who in the middle of the first line was supporting, though far from young, a single combat with one of the Savoyard leaders. On him Basterga's coward weapon alighted without warning, and laid him low. To strike down another, and turning, range himself in the van of the foreigners with a mighty "Savoy! Savoy!" was Basterga's next action; and it sufficed. The panic-stricken burghers, apprised of treason in their ranks, gave back every way. The Savoyards saw their advantage, rallied, and pressed them. Speedily the Italians regained the ground they had lost, and with the tall form of their champion fighting in the van, began to sweep the towns-folk back into the Rue de la Cité. But arrived at the meeting of the ways, Basterga's followers paused, hesitating to expose their flank by entering this second street. The Genevese saw this, rallied in their turn, and for a moment seemed to be holding their own. But three or four of their doughtiest fighters lay stark in the kennel, they had no longer a leader, they were poorly armed and hastily collected; and devoted as they were, it needed little to renew the panic and start them in utter rout. Basterga saw this, and when his men still hung back, neglecting the golden opportunity, he rushed forward, almost alone, until he stood conspicuous between the two bands--the one hesitating to come on, the other hesitating to fly. "Savoy!" he thundered, "Ville gagnée! The city is ours! Cowards, come on!" And waving his halberd above his head, he beckoned to his followers to advance. Had they done so, had they charged on the instant, they had changed all for him, and perhaps all for Geneva. But they hung a moment, and the next, as in shame they drew themselves together for the charge, their champion stooped forward with a shrill scream. The next instant he received full on his nape a heavy iron pot, that descending with tremendous force from a window above him, rolled from him broken into three pieces. He went down under the blow as if a sledge-hammer had struck him; and so sudden, so dramatic was the fall--his armour clanging about him--that for an instant the two bands held their hands and stood staring, as indifferent crowds stand and gaze in the street. A dozen on the patriots' side knew the house from which the _marmite_ fell, and marked it; and half as many saw at the small window whence it came the grey locks and stern wrinkled face of an aged woman. The effect on the burghers was magical. As if the act symbolised not only the loved ones for whom they fought, but the dire distress to which they were come, they rushed on the foreign men-at-arms with a spirit and a fury hitherto unknown. With a ringing shout of "Mère Royaume! Mère Royaume!"--raised by those who knew the old woman, and taken up by many who did not--they swept the foe, shaken by the fall of their leader, along the narrow Tertasse, pressed on them, and, still shouting the new war-cry, entered the gateway along with them. "Mère Royaume! Mère Royaume!" The name rang savagely in the groining of the arch, echoed dully in the obscurity in which the fierce struggle went on. And men struck to its rhythm, and men died to it. And men who heard it thus and lived never forgot it, nor ever went back in their minds to that night without recalling it. To one man, flurried already, and a coward at heart, the name carried a paralysing assurance of doom. He had seen Basterga fall--by this woman's hand of all hands in the world--and he had been the first to flee. But in the lane he tripped over Fabri, he fell headlong, and only raised himself in time to gain the gateway a few feet in front of the avenging pikes. Still, he might escape, he hoped to escape, through the gate and into the open Corraterie. But the first to reach the gates had taken in hand to shut them, and so to prevent the townsfolk reaching the Corraterie. One of the great doors, half-closed, blocked his way, and instinctively--ignorant how far behind him the pike-points were--he sprang aside into the guard-room. His one chance now--for he was cut off, and knew it--lay in reaching the staircase and mounting to the roof. A bound carried him to the door, he grasped the handle. But a fugitive who had only a second before saved himself that way, took him for a pursuer, dragged the door close and held it--held it in spite of his efforts and his imprecations. Five seconds, ten, perhaps, Grio--for he it was--wasted in struggling vainly with the door. The man on the other side clung to it with a despair equal to his own. Five seconds, ten, perhaps; but in that space of time, short as it was, the man paid smartly for the sins of his life. When the time of grace had elapsed, with a pike-point a few inches from his back and the gleaming eyes of an avenging burgher behind it, he fled shrieking round the table. He might even yet have escaped by a chance; for all was confusion, and though there was a glare there was no light. But he stumbled over the body of the man whom he had slain without pity a few hours before. He fell writhing, and died on the floor, under a dozen blows, as beasts die in the shambles. "Mère Royaume! Mère Royaume!" The cry--the last cry he heard--swelled louder and louder. It swept through the gate, it passed through to the open, and bore far along the Corraterie, far along the ramparts, ay, to the open country, the earnest of victory, the earnest of vengeance. Geneva was saved. He who would have betrayed it, slain like Pyrrhus the Epirote by a woman's hand, lay dead in the dark lane behind the house in which he had lived. CHAPTER XXVI. THE DAWN. Anne was but one of some thousands of women who passed through the trial of that night; who heard the vague sounds of disquiet that roused them at midnight grow to sharp alarms, and these again--to the dull, pulsing music of the tocsin--swell to the uproar of a deadly conflict waged by desperate men in narrow streets. She was but one of thousands who that night heard fate knocking at their hearts; who praying, sick with fear, for the return of their men, showed white faces at barred windows, and by every tossing light that passed along the lane viewed long years of loneliness or widowhood. But Anne had this burden also; that she had of herself sent her man into danger; her man, who, but for her pleading, but for her bidding, might not have gone. And that thought, though she had done her duty, laid a cold grip upon her heart. Her work it was if he lay at this moment stark in some dark alley, the first victim of the assault; or, sorely wounded, cried for water; or waited in pain where none but the stricken heard him. The thought bowed her to the ground, sent her to her prayers, took from her alike all memory of the danger that had menaced her this morning, and all consciousness of that which now threatened her, a helpless woman, if the town were taken. The house, having its back on the Rue de la Cité, at the point where that street joined the Tertasse, stood in the heart of the conflict; and almost from the moment of the first attack on the Porte Neuve, which Claude was in time to witness, was a centre of fierce and deadly fighting. Anne dared not leave her mother, who, strange to say, slept through the early alarms; and it was bowed on the edge of her mother's bed--that bed beside which she had tasted so much of happiness and so much of grief--that she passed, not knowing what the turning page might show, the first hour of anxiety and suspense. The report of a shot shook her frame. A scream stabbed her like a knife. Lower and lower she thrust her face amid the bed-clothes, striving to shut out sound and knowledge; or, woman-like, she raised her pale, beseeching face that she might listen, that she might hope. If he fell would they tell her? And how he fell, and where? Or would they hold her strange to him? Would she never hear? Suddenly her mother opened her eyes, lay a while listening, then slowly sat up and looked at her. Anne saw the awakening alarm in the dear face, that in some mysterious way recalled its youth; and she fancied that to her other troubles, the misery of one of the old paroxysms was going to be added. At such an hour, with such sounds of terror filling the night, with such a glare dancing on the ceiling the first attack had come on, years before. Then the alarm had been fictitious; to-night the calamity which the poor woman had imagined, was happening with every circumstance of peril and alarm. But Madame Royaume's face, though anxious and serious, retained to an astonishing extent its sanity. Whether the strange dream which she had had earlier in the night had prepared her for the state of things to which she awoke, or the weeks and months which had elapsed since that old alarm of fire dropped in some inexplicable way from her--and as one shock had upset, another restored the balance of her mind--certain it is that Anne, watching her with a painful interest, found her sane. Nor did Madame Royaume's first words dispel the impression. "They hold out?" she asked, grasping her daughter's hand and pressing it. "They hold out?" "Yes, yes, they hold out," Anne answered, hoping to soothe her. And she patted the hand that clasped hers. "Have no fear, dear, all will go well." "If they have faith and hold out," the aged woman replied, listening to the strange medley of sounds that rose to them. "They will, they will," Anne faltered. "But there is need of every one!" "They are gone, dear," the girl answered, repressing a sob with difficulty. "We are alone in the house." "So it should be," Madame Royaume replied, with sternness. "The man to the wall, the maid to the pall! It was ever so!" A low cry burst from Anne's lips. "God forbid!" she wailed. "God forbid! God have mercy!" The next moment she could have bitten out her tongue; she knew that such words and such a cry were of all others the most likely to excite her patient. But after some obscure fashion their positions seemed this night to be reversed. It was the mother who in her turn patted her daughter's hand and sought to soothe her. "Ay, God forbid," she said softly. "But man must do his part. I mind when----" She paused. Her eyes travelling round the room, fixed their gaze on the fireplace. She seemed to be perplexed by something she saw there, and Anne, still fearing a recurrence of her illness, asked her hurriedly what it was. "What is it; mother?" she said, leaning over her, and following the direction of her eyes. "Is it the great pot you are looking at?" "Ay," Madame Royaume answered slowly. "How comes it here?" "There was no one below," Anne explained. "I brought it up this morning. Don't you remember? There is no fire below." "No?" "That is all, mother. You saw me bring it up." "Ay?" And then after a pause: "Let it down a hook." "But----" "Let it down, child!" And when Anne, to soothe her, had obeyed and let the great pot down until the fire licked its sides, "Is it full?" Madame asked. "Half-full, mother." "It will do." And for a time the woman in the bed was silent. Outside there was noise enough. The windows in the room looked into the Corraterie, from which side no more than passing sounds of conflict rose to them; the pounding of running feet, sharp orders, a shot, and then another. But the landing without the bedroom door looked down by a high-set window into the narrow Tertasse; and from this, though the door was shut, rose an inferno of noise, the clash of steel, the cries of the wounded, the shouts of the fighters. The townsfolk, rallying from their first alarm, were driving the enemy out of the Rue de la Cité, penning him into the Tertasse, and preparing to carry that street. On a sudden there came, not a cessation of the uproar, but a change in its character. It was as if the current of a river were momentarily stayed and pent up; and then with a mighty crashing of timbers and shifting of pebbles, and a din as of the world's end, began to run the other way. Anne's face turned a shade paler; so appalling was the noise, she would fain have stopped her ears. But her mother sat up. "What is it?" she asked eagerly. "What is it?" "Dear mother, do not fret! It must be----" "Go and see, child! Go to the window in the passage, and see!" Madame Royaume persisted. Anne had no wish to go, no wish to see. She pictured her lover in the _mêlée_ whence rose those appalling cries; and gladly would she have hidden her head in the bedclothes and poured out her heart in prayer for him. But Madame persisted, and she yielded, went into the passage and opened the small window. With the cold air entered a fresh volume of sound. On the walls and timbered gables opposite her--and so near that she could well-nigh touch them with her extended arm--strange lights played luridly; and here and there, at dormers on a level with her, pale faces showed and vanished by turns. She looked down. For a moment, in the confusion, in the medley of moving forms, she could discern little or nothing. Then, as her eyes became more accustomed to the sight, she made out that the tide of conflict was running inward into the town, a sign that the invaders were gaining the mastery. "Well?" Madame Royaume asked, her voice querulous. Anne strove to say something that would soothe her mother. But a sob choked her, and when she regained her speech she felt herself impelled, she knew not why, to tell the truth. "I fear our people are falling back," she murmured, trembling so violently that she could barely stand. "How far? Where are they, child?" Her mother's voice was eager. "Where are they?" "They are almost under the window!" And then withdrawing her head with a shudder, while she clung for support to the frame of the window: "They are fighting underneath me now," she said. "God pity them!" "And who is--are we still getting the worst of it?" Forced by a kind of fascination, Anne looked out again. "Yes, there is one man, a big man, leads them on," she said, in the voice of one who, painfully absorbed in a sight, reports it involuntarily. "He is driving our people before him. Ah! he has struck one down this moment. He is almost underneath us now. But his people will not follow him! They are standing. He--he waves them on!" "He is beneath us?" Madame's voice sounded strangely near, strangely insistent. But Anne, wrapt in what she saw, did not heed it. "Yes! He is a dozen paces in front of his men. He is underneath us now. He urges them to follow him! He towers above them! He is----" She broke off; close to her sounded a heavy breathing, that even above the babel of the street caught her ear. She drew in her head, looked, and, overwrought by that which she had been witnessing, she shrieked aloud. Beside her, bending under the weight of the great steaming pot, stood her mother! Her mother, who had scarcely left her bedroom twice in a twelvemonth, nor crossed it as many times in a week. But it was her mother; endowed at this pass, and for the instant, with supernatural strength. For even as Anne recoiled thunderstruck, the old woman lifted the huge _marmite_, half-full and steaming as it was, to the ledge of the window, steadied it there an instant, and then, with the gleaming eyes and set pale face of an avenging prophetess, thrust it forth. A second they gazed at one another with suspended breath. Then from the street below rose a wild shriek, a crash, and lo, the huge pot lay shattered in the kennel beside the man whom, Heaven directed, it had slain. As if the shock of its fall stayed for an instant even the movement of the world, a silence fell on all: then, as the roar of conflict rose again, louder, more vengeful, with a new note in it, she caught her mother in her arms. "Mother! Mother!" she cried. "Mother!" The elder woman was white to the lips. "Get me to bed!" she muttered. "Get me to bed!" She had lost the power even to stand. That she had ever borne, even for a yard, the great pot which it taxed Anne's utmost strength to carry upstairs was a miracle. But a miracle were all the circumstances connected with the act. Anne carried her back and laid her on the bed, greatly fearing for her. And thenceforth for a while the girl's horizon, so wide and stormy an instant before, was narrowed to the bed beside which she stood, narrowed to the dear face on which the lamplight fell, disclosing its death-like pallor. For the time Anne forgot even her lover, was deaf to the struggle outside, was unmindful of the flight of the hours. For her, Geneva might have lain at peace, the night been as other nights, the house below been heavy with the breathing of tired sleepers. She looked neither to the right nor the left, until under her loving hands Madame Royaume revived, opened her eyes and smiled--the smile she had for one face only in the world. By that time Anne had lost count of the time. It might be hard on morning, it might be a little after midnight. One thing only was clear, the lamp required oil, and to get it she must descend to the ground floor. She opened the door and listened, wondering dully how the conflict had gone. She had lost count of that also. The small window at the head of the stairs remained open as they had left it; and through it a ceaseless hum, as of a hive of bees swarming, poured in from the night, and told of multitudes astir. The alarm-bell had ceased to ring, the wilder sounds of conflict had died down; in the parts about the Tertasse the combat appeared to be at an end. But this might be either because resistance had ceased, or because the battle had rolled away to other quarters, or--which she scarcely dared to hope--because the foe had been driven out. As she stood listening, she shivered in the cold air that came from the window. She felt as if she had been beaten, and knew that this came of the shocks she had suffered and the long strain. She feared for her nerves, and hated to go down into the dark parts of the house as if some danger lurked there. She longed for morning, for the light; and thought of Claude and his fate, and wondered why the thought of his danger did not move her to weeping, as it had moved her a few hours earlier. In truth she was worn out. The effort to revive her mother had cost her the last remains of strength. Her feet as she descended the stairs were of lead, the brazen notes of the alarm-bell hummed in her ears. When she reached the living-room she set the lamp on one of the tables and sat down wearily, with her eyes on the cold, empty hearth and on the settle where she had sat with his arms about her. And now, if ever, she must weep; but she could not. The lamp burned low, and cast smoky shadows on the ceiling and the walls. The shuttered windows showed their dead faces. The cheerful soul of the room had passed from it with the fire, leaving the shell gloomy, lifeless, repellent. Anne drowsed a moment in sheer exhaustion, and would have slept, if the lamp on the point of expiring had not emitted a sound and roused her. She rose reluctantly, dragged herself to the great cupboard under the stairs, and, having lighted a rushlight at the dying flame, put out the lamp and refilled it. She was about to re-light it, and had taken the rushlight in her hand for the purpose, when she heard through the shuttered windows and the barred door a growing clamour; the tramp of heavy feet, the hum of many voices, the buzz of a crowd that, almost as soon as she awoke to its near presence, came to a stand before the house. The tumult of voices raised all at once in different keys did not entirely drown the clash of arms; and while she stood, sullenly regarding the door, and resigned to the inevitable, whatever it might be, thin shafts of light pierced the shutters and stabbed the gloom about her. With that a hail-storm of knocks fell on the door and on the shutters. A dozen voices cried, "Open! Open!" The jangle of a halberd as its bearer let the butt drop heavily on the stone steps added force to the summons. Anne's first impulse was to retreat upstairs, and leave them to do their worst. Her next--she was in a state of collapse in which resistance seemed useless--was to open. She moved to the door, and with cold hands removed the huge bars and let down the chain. It was only when she had done so much, when it remained only to unlock, that she wavered; that she trembled to think on what the crowd might be bent, and what might be her fate at their hands. She paused then, with her fingers on the key; but not for long. She remembered that, before she descended, she had heard neither shot nor cry. Resistance therefore had ceased, and that of a single house, held by two helpless women, could avail nothing, could but excite to fury and reprisals. She turned the key and opened. The lights dazzled her. The doorway, as she stood faltering, almost fainting, before it, seemed to be full of grotesque dancing faces, some swathed in bandages, others powder-blackened, some hot with excitement, others pallid with fatigue. They were such faces, piled one above the other, as are seen in bad dreams. On the intruders' side, those who pressed in first saw a girl strangely quiet, who held the door wide for them. "My mother is ill," she said in a voice that strove for composure; if they were the enemy, her only hope, her only safety, lay in courage. "And she is old," she continued. "Do not harm her." "We come to do harm neither to you nor to her," a voice replied. And the foremost of the troop, a thick dwarfish man with a huge two-handed sword, stood aside. "Messer Baudichon," he said to one behind him, "this is the daughter." She knew the fat, sturdy councillor--who in Geneva did not?--and through her stupor she recognised him, although a great bandage swathed half his head, and he was pale. And, beginning to have an inkling that things were well, she began also to tremble. By his side stood Messer Petitot--she knew him, too, he had been Syndic the year before--and a man in hacked and blood-stained armour with his arm in a sling and his face black with powder. These three, and behind them a dozen others--men whom she had seen on high days robed in velvet, but who now wore, one and all, the ugly marks of that night's work--looked on her with a strange benevolence. And Baudichon took her hand. "We do not come to harm you," he said. "On the contrary we come to thank you and yours. In the name of the city of Geneva, and of all those here with me----" "Ay! Ay!" shouted Jehan Brosse, the tailor. And he rang his sword on the doorstep. "Ay! Ay!" "We come to thank you for the blow struck this night from this house! That it rid us of one of our worst foes was a small thing, girl. But that it put heart into our burghers and strength into their arms at a critical moment was another and a greater thing. Which shall not, if Geneva stand--as stand by God's pleasure she shall, the stronger for this night's work--be forgotten! The name of Mère Royaume will at the next meeting of the Greater Council be inscribed among the names of those whom the Free City thanks for their services this night!" A murmur of stern approval that began with those in the house rolled through the doorway and was echoed by the waiting throng that filled the street. She was weeping. All it meant, all it might mean, what warranty of powerful friends, what fame beyond the reach of dark stories, or a woman's spite, she could not yet understand, she could not yet appreciate. But something, the city's safety, the city's gratitude, the countenance of these men who came to her door blood-stained, dark with smoke, reeling with fatigue--came that they might thank her mother and do her honour--something of this she did grasp as she wept before them. She had but one thing to ask, to desire; and in a moment it was given her. "Nor is that all!" The voice that broke in was harsher and blunter than Baudichon's. "If it be true, as I am told, that a young man of the name of Mercier lives here? He does, does he? Ay, he lives, my girl. He is safe, have no fear. For the matter of that he has nine lives, and"--Captain Blandano continued with an oath--"he has had need of all this night, God forgive me for the word! But, as I said, that is not all. For if there is any one man who has saved Geneva, it is he, the man who let down the portcullis. And if the city does not dower you, my girl----" "The city shall dower her!" The speaker's voice came from somewhere in the neighbourhood of the doorway, and was something tremulous and uncertain. But what it lacked in strength it made up in haste and eagerness. "The city shall dower her! If not, I will!" "Good, Messer Blondel, and spoken like you!" Blandano answered heartily. And though one or two of the foremost, on hearing Blondel's voice, looked askance at one another, and here and there a whisper passed of "The Syndic of the guard? How came----" the majority drowned such murmurings under a chorus of applause. "We are of one mind, I think!" Baudichon said. And with that he turned to the door. "Now, good friends," he continued, "it wants but little of daylight, and some of us were best in our beds. Let us go. That we lie down in peace and honour"--he went on, solemnly raising his hand over the happy weeping girl beside him, as if he blessed her--"that our wives and children lie safe within our walls is due, under God, to this roof. And I call all here to witness that while I live the city of Geneva shall never forget the debt that is due to this house and to the name of Royaume!" "Ay, ay!" cried the bandy-legged tailor. "I too! The small with the great, the rich with the poor, as we have fought this night!" "Ay! Ay!" Some shook her by the hand, and some called Heaven to bless her, and some with tears running down their faces--for no man there was his common everyday self--did naught but look on her with kindness. And so, each having done after his fashion, they trooped out again into the street. A moment later, as the winter sun began to colour the distant snows, and the second Sunday in December of the year 1602 broke on Geneva, the voices of the multitude rose in the one hundred and twenty-fourth psalm; to the solemn thunder of which, poured from thankful hearts, the assembly accompanied Baudichon to his home a little farther down the Corraterie. Anne was about to close the door and secure it after them--with feelings how different from those with which she had opened that door!--when it resisted her shaking hands. She did not on the instant understand the reason or what was the matter. She pushed more strongly, still it came back on her, it opened widely and more widely. And then one who had heard all, yet had not shown himself, one who had entered with Baudichon's company, but had held himself hidden in the background, pushed in, uninvited. Uninvited? The rushlight still burned low and smokily, and she had not relighted the lamp. The corners were dark with shadows, the hearth was cold and empty and ugly, the shutters still blinded the windows. But the coming of this uninvited one--love comes ever unexpected and uninvited--how strangely, how marvellously, how beautifully did it change all for her, light all, fill all. As she felt his arms about her, as she clung to him, and sobbed on his shoulder, as she strove for words and could not utter them for the happiness of her heart, as she felt his kisses rain on her face in joy and safety, who had not left her in sorrow, no, nor in the shadow of death, nor for any fears of what man could do to him--let it be said that her reward was as her trial. Madame Royaume lived four years after that famous attack on the Free City of Geneva which is called the Escalade; and during that time she experienced no return of the mysterious malady that came with one shock, and passed from her with another. Nor, so far as can be ascertained at the distant time at which I write, did the suspicions which the night of the Escalade found in the bud survive it. Probably the Corraterie and the neighbouring quarter, ay, and the whole city of Geneva, had for many a week to come matter for gossip and to spare. It is certain, at any rate, that whatever whispers were current in this house or that, no tongue wagged openly against the favourites of the council, who were also the favourites of the crowd. For Mère Royaume's act hit marvellously the public fancy, and, passing from mouth to mouth, and from generation to generation, is still the first, the best loved, and the most picturesque of the legends of Geneva. And Messer Blondel? Did he evade the penalty of his act? Ask any man in the streets of Geneva, even to-day, and he will tell you the fate of Philibert Blondel, Fourth Syndic. He will tell you how the magistrate triumphed for a time, as he had triumphed in the council before, how he closed the mouths of his accusers, how not once, but twice and thrice, by the sheer force and skill of a man working in a medium which he understood, he won his acquittal from his compeers. But though punishment be slow to overtake, it does overtake at last; nor has the world witnessed many instances more pertinent or more famous than that of Messer Blondel. Strive as he might, tongues would wag within the council, and without. Silence as he might Baudichon and Petitot, smaller men would talk; and their talk persisted and grew, and was vigorous when months and even years had passed. What the great did not know the small knew or guessed, and fixed greedy eyes on the head of the man who had dared to sell Geneva. The end came four years after the Escalade. To conceal the old negotiation he committed a further crime, and being betrayed by the tool he employed was seized and convicted. On the 1st September, 1606, he lost his head on a scaffold erected before his own house in the Bourg du Four. The Merciers had at least one son--probably he was the eldest, for he bore his father's name--who lived into middle life, and proved himself their worthy descendant. For precisely fifty years after the date of these events a poor woman of the name of Michée Chauderon was put to death in Geneva, on a charge of sorcery; and among those--and they were not few--who strove most manfully and most obstinately to save her, we find the name of a physician of great note in the Canton at that time--one Claude Mercier. He did not prevail, though he struggled bravely; the long night of superstition, though nearing its close, still reigned; that woman suffered. But he carried it so far and so boldly that from that day to this--and the city may be proud of the fact--no person has suffered death in Geneva on that dreadful charge. THE END. THE ABERDEEN UNIVERSITY PRESS LIMITED 
30647	----	[Transcriber's Notes: The Greek phrase on the title page has been transliterated and placed between +plus marks+. Every effort has been made to replicate this text as closely as possible, including most inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation. A list of examples of the above, as well as a list of changes (corrections of spelling and punctuation) made to the original text appears at the end of this book. ] * * * * * MYSTERY AT GENEVA An improbable tale of singular happenings by ROSE MACAULAY Author of "Dangerous Ages," "Potterism," etc. +hostis toia echei en hêdonê echei en hêdonê toia.+ LONDON: 48 PALL MALL W. COLLINS SONS & CO. LTD. GLASGOW MELBOURNE AUCKLAND Copyright 1922. LONDON AND GLASGOW: W. COLLINS SONS AND CO. LTD. MYSTERY AT GENEVA NEW NOVELS TYLER OF BARNET BERNARD GILBERT PILGRIM'S REST F. BRETT YOUNG PIRACY MICHAEL ARLEN BEANSTALK MRS. HENRY DUDENEY ROSEANNE E. MARIA ALBANESI BIG PETER ARCHIBALD MARSHALL NOTE As I have observed among readers and critics a tendency to discern satire where none is intended, I should like to say that this book is simply a straightforward mystery story, devoid of irony, moral or meaning. It has for its setting an imaginary session of the League of Nations Assembly, but it is in no sense a study of, still less a skit on, actual conditions at Geneva, of which indeed I know little, the only connection I have ever had with the League being membership of its Union. 1 Henry, looking disgusted, as well he might, picked his way down the dark and dirty corkscrew stairway of the dilapidated fifteenth century house where he had rooms during the fourth (or possibly it was the fifth) Assembly of the League of Nations. The stairway, smelling of fish and worse, opened out on to a narrow cobbled alley that ran between lofty mediæval houses down from the Rue du Temple to the Quai du Seujet, in the ancient wharfside quarter of Saint Gervais. Henry, pale and melancholy, his soft hat slouched over his face, looked what he was, a badly paid newspaper correspondent lodging in unclean rooms. He looked hungry; he looked embittered; he looked like one of the under dogs, whose time had not come yet, would, indeed, never come. He looked, however, a gentleman, which, in the usual sense of the word, he was not. He was of middle height, slim and not inelegant of build; his trousers, though shiny, were creased in the right place; his coat fitted him though it lacked two buttons, and he dangled a monocle, which he screwed impartially now into one brown eye, now into the other. If any one would know, as they very properly might, whether Henry was a bad man or a good, I can only reply that we are all of us mixed, and most of us not very well mixed. Henry was, in fact, at the moment a journalist, and wrote for the _British Bolshevist_, a revolutionary paper with a startlingly small circulation; and now the reader knows the very worst of Henry, which is to say a great deal, but must, all the same, be said. Such as he was, Henry, on this fine Sunday morning in September, strolled down the Allée Petit Chat, which did not seem to him, as it seems to most English visitors, in the least picturesque, for Henry was a quarter Italian, and preferred new streets, and buildings to old. Having arrived at the Quai du Mont Blanc, he walked along it, brooding on this and that, gazing with a bitter kind of envy at the hotels which were even now opening their portals to those more fortunate than he--the Bergues, the Paix, the Beau Rivage, the Angleterre, the Russie, the Richemond. All these hostels were, on this Sunday morning before the opening of the Assembly, receiving the delegates of the nations, their staffs and secretaries, and even journalists. Crowds of little grave-faced Japs processed into the Hotel de la Paix; the entrance hall of Les Bergues was alive with the splendid, full-throated converse of Latin Americans ("Ah, they live, those Spaniards!" Henry sighed); while at the Beau Rivage the British Empire and the Dominions hastened, with the morbid ardour of their race, to plunge into baths after their night journey. Baths, thought Henry bitterly. There were no baths in the Allée Petit Chat. All his bathing must be done in the lake--and cold comfort that was. Henry was no lover of cold water: he preferred it warm. These full-fed, well-housed, nobly cleaned delegates.... Henry quite untruly reported to his newspaper, which resented the high living of others, that some of them occupied as many as half a dozen rooms apiece in the hotels, with their typists, their secretaries, and their sycophantic suites. Even the journalists, lodging less proudly in smaller hotels, or in apartments, all lodged cleanly, all decently, excepting only Henry, the accredited representative of the _British Bolshevist_. Bitterly and proudly, with a faint sneer twisting his lips, Henry, leaning against the lake-side parapet, watched the tumultuous arrival of the organisers of peace on earth. The makers of the new world. What new world? Where tarried it? How slow were its makers at their creative task! Slow and unsure, thought Henry, whose newspaper was not of those who approved the League. With a sardonic smile Henry turned on his heel and pursued his way along the Quai towards that immense hotel where the League Secretariat lived and moved and had its being. He would interview some one there and try to secure a good place in the press gallery. The Secretariat officials were kind to journalists, even to journalists on the _British Bolshevist_, a newspaper which was of no use to the League, and which the Secretariat despised, as they might despise the yapping of a tiresome and insignificant small dog. 2 The Secretariat were in a state of disturbance and expectation. The annual break in their toilsome and rather tedious year was upon them. For a month their labours would be, indeed, increased, but life would also move. One wearied of Geneva, its small and segregated society, its official gossip, the Calvinistic atmosphere of the natives, its dreary winter, its oppressive summer, its eternal lake and distant mountains, its horrid little steamboats rushing perpetually across and across from one side of the water to the other--one wearied of Geneva as a place of residence. What was it (though it had its own charm) as a dwelling-place for those of civilised and cosmopolitan minds? Vienna, now, would be better; or Brussels: even the poor old Hague, with its ill-fated traditions. Or, said the French members of the staff, Paris. For the French nation and government were increasingly attached to the League, and had long thought that Paris was its fitting home. It would be safer there. However, it was at Geneva, and it was very dull except at Assembly time, or when the Council were in session. Assembly time was stimulating and entertaining. One saw then people from the outside world; things hummed. Old friends gathered together, new friends were made. The nations met, the Assembly assembled, committees committeed, the Council councilled, grievances were aired and either remedied or not; questions were raised and sometimes solved; governments were petitioned, commissions were sent to investigate, quarrels were pursued, judgments pronounced, current wars deplored, the year's work reviewed. Eloquence rang from that world-platform, to be heard at large, through the vastly various voices of a thousand newspapers, in a hundred rather apathetic countries. In spite of the great eloquence, industry, intelligence, and many activities of the delegates, there was, in that cosmopolitan and cynical body, the Secretariat, a tendency to regard them, _en masse_, rather as children to be kept in order, though to be given a reasonable amount of liberty in such harmless amusements as talking on platforms. Treats, dinners and excursions were arranged for them; the Secretariat liked to see them having a good time. They would meet in the Assembly Hall each morning to talk, before an audience; noble sentiments would then exalt and move the nations and be flashed across Europe by journalists. But in the afternoons they would cross the lake again to the Palais des Nations, and meet in Rooms A, B, C, or D, round tables (magic phrase! magic arrangement of furniture and human beings!) in large or small groups, and do the work. The Assembly Hall was, so to speak, the front window, where the goods were displayed, but where one got away with the goods was in the back parlour. There, too, the fiercest international questions boiled up, boiled over, and were cooled by the calming temperature of the table and the sweet but firm reasonableness of some of the representatives of the more considerable powers. The committee meetings were, in fact, not only more effective than the Assembly meetings, but more stimulating, more amusing. Henry, entering the Palais des Nations, found it in a state of brilliant bustle. The big hall hummed with animated talk and cheerful greetings in many tongues, and members of the continental races shook one another ardently and frequently by the hand. How dull it would be, thought Henry, if ever the Esperanto people got their way, and the flavour of the richly various speech of the nations was lost in one colourless, absurd and inorganic language, stumblingly spoken and ill understood. Henry entered a lift, was enclosed with a cynical American, a brilliant-looking Spaniard, a tall and elegant woman of assurance and beauty, and an intelligent-faced cosmopolitan who looked like a British-Italian-Latin-American-Finn, which, in point of fact, he was. Alighting at the third floor, Henry found his way to the department he required and introduced himself to one of its officials, who gave him a pink card assigning him to a seat in the press gallery, which he felt would not be one he would really like. "You've not been out here before, have you," said the official, and Henry agreed that this was so. "Well, of course we don't expect much of a show from your fanatical paper...." The official was good-humoured, friendly, and tolerant. The Secretariat were, indeed, sincerely indifferent to the commentary on their proceedings both of the _Morning Post_ and the _British Bolshevist_, for both could be taken for granted. One of these journals feared that the League sought disarmament, the other that it did not; to one it was a league of cranks, conscientious objectors, and (fearful and sinister word) internationals, come not to destroy but to fulfil the Covenant, bent on carrying out Article 8, substituting judiciary arbitration for force, and treating Germany as a brother; to the other it was a league of militarist and capitalist states, an extension of the Supreme Allied Council, bent on destroying Article 18 and other inconvenient articles of the Covenant, and treating Germany as a dog. To both it was, in one word, Poppycock. Sincerely, honestly, and ardently, both these journals thought like that. They could not help it; it was temperamental, and the way they saw things. 3 Henry descended the broad and shallow double stairway of the Palais des Nations, up and down which tripped the gay crowds who knew one another but knew not him, and so out to lunch, which he had poorly, inexpensively, obscurely and alone, at a low eating-house near the Secretariat. After lunch he had coffee at a higher eating-house, on the Quai, and sat under the pavement awning reading the papers, listening to the band, looking at the mountain view across the lake, and waiting until the other visitors to Geneva, having finished their more considerable luncheons, should emerge from their hotels and begin to walk or drive along the Quai. Meanwhile he read _L'Humeur_, which he found on the table before him. But _L'Humeur_ is not really very funny. It has only one joke, only one type of comic picture: a woman incompletely dressed. Was that, Henry speculated, really funny? It happens, after all, to nearly all women at least every morning and every evening. Was it really funny even when to the lady thus unattired there entered a gentleman, either M. l'Amant or M. le Mari? _Was_ only one thing funny, as some persons believed? Was it indeed really funny at all? Henry, who honestly desired to brighten his life, tried hard to think so, but failed, and relapsed into gloom. He could not see that it was funnier that a female should not yet have completed her toilet than that a male should not. Neither was funny. Nothing, perhaps, was funny. The League of Nations was not funny. Life was not funny, and probably not death. Even the _British Bolshevist_, which he was reduced to reading, wasn't funny, though it did have on the front page a column headed "Widow's Leap Saves Cat from Burning House." A young man sat down at Henry's little table and ordered drink; a bright, neat, brisk young man, with an alert manner. Glancing at the _British Bolshevist_, he made a conversational opening which elicited the fact that Henry represented this journal at Geneva. For himself, he was, it transpired, correspondent of the _Daily Sale_, a paper to which the _British Bolshevist_ was politically opposed but temperamentally sympathetic; they had the same cosy, chatty touch on life. The two correspondents amused themselves by watching the delegates and other foreign arrivals strolling to and fro along the elegant spaciousness of the Quai, chatting with one another. They noticed little things to write to their papers about, such as hats, spats, ways of carrying umbrellas and sticks, and so forth. They overheard fragments of conversation in many tongues. For, clustering round about the Assembly, were the representatives, official and unofficial, of nearly all the world's nations, so that Henry heard in the space of ten minutes British, French, Italians, Russians, Poles, Turks, Americans, Armenians, Dutch, Irish, Lithuanians, Serb-Croat-Slovenes, Czecho-Slovakians, the dwellers in Dalmatia and Istria, and in the parts of Latin America about Brazil, Assyrio-Chaldeans, and newspaper correspondents, all speaking in their tongues the wonderful works of God. Geneva was like Pentecost, or the Tower of Babel. There were represented there very many societies, which regularly settled in Geneva for the period of the Assembly in order to send it messages, trusting thus to bring before the League in session the good causes they had at heart. The Women's International League was there, and the Esperanto League, and the Non-Alcoholic Drink Society, and the Mormons, and the Y.M.C.A. and the Union of Free Churches, and the Unprotected Armenians, and the Catholic Association, and the Orthodox Church Union, and the Ethical Society, and the Bolshevik Refugees (for it was in Russia, at the moment, the turn of the other side), and the Save the Children Committee, and the Freemasons, and the Constructive Birth Control Society, and the Feathered Friends Protection Society, and the Negro Equality League, and the Anti-Divorce Union, and the Humanitarian Society, and the Eugenic Society, and the Orangemen's Union, and the Sinn Feiners, and the Zionists, and the Saloon Restoration League, and the S.P.G. And hundreds of Unprotected Minorities, irresistibly (or so they hoped) moving in their appeals. Many of the representatives of these eager sections of humanity walked on the Quai du Mont Blanc on this fine Sunday afternoon and listened to the band, and buttonholed delegates and their secretaries, and chatted, and spat. The Czecho-Slovakians spat hardest, the Costa-Ricans loudest, the Unprotected Armenians most frequently, and the Serb-Croat-Slovenes most accurately, but the Assyrio-Chaldeans spat farthest. The Zionists did not walk on the Quai. They were holding meetings together and drawing up hundreds of petitions, so that the Assembly might receive at least one an hour from to-morrow onwards. Zionists do these things thoroughly. Motor-cars hummed to and fro between the hotels and the Secretariat, and inside them one saw delegates. Flags flew and music played, and the _jet d'eau_ sprang, an immense crystalline tree of life, a snowy angel, up from the azure lake into the azure heavens. Henry gave a little sigh of pleasure. He liked the scene. "Will there be treats?" he asked his companion. "I like treats." "Treats? Who for? The delegates get treats all right, if you mean that." "For us, I meant." "Oh, yes, the correspondents get a free trip or a free feed now and then too. I usually get out of them myself; official beanos bore me. The town's very good to us; it wants the support of the press against rival claimants, such as Brussels." "I should enjoy a lake trip very much," said Henry, beginning to feel that it was good to be there. "Well, don't forget to hand in your address then, so that it gets on the list." Henry was damped. 24 Allée Petit Chat, Saint Gervais--it sounded rotten, and would sound worse still to the Genevan syndics, who knew just where it was and what, and were even now engaged in plans for pulling down and rebuilding all the old wharfside quarter. No; he could not hand in that address.... "I suppose you've got to crab the show, whatever it does, haven't you," said the _Daily Sale_ man presently. "Now I'm out to pat it on the back--this year. I like that better. It's dull being disagreeable all the time; so obvious, too." "My paper _is_ obvious," Henry owned gloomily. "Truth always is. You can't get round that." "Oh, well, come," the other journalist couldn't stand that--"it's a bit thick for one of your lot to start talking about truth. The lies you tell daily--they have ours beat to a frazzle. Why, you couldn't give a straight account of a bus accident!" "We could not. That is to say, we would not," Henry admitted. "But we lie about points of fact because our principles are true. They're so true that everything has to be made to square with them. If you notice, our principles affect _all_ our facts. Yours don't, quite all. You'd report the bus accident from pure love of sensation. We, in reporting it, would prove that it happened because buses aren't nationalised, or because the driver was underpaid, or the fares too high, or because coal has gone up more than wages, or something true of that sort. We waste nothing; we use all that happens. We're propagandists all the time, you're only propagandists part of the time; and commercialists the rest." "Oh, certainly no one would accuse you of being commercialists," agreed the _Sale_ man kindly. "Hallo, what's up?" Henry had stiffened suddenly, and sat straight and rigid, like a dog who dislikes another dog. His companion followed his tense gaze, and saw a very neat, agreeable-looking and gentlemanly fellow, exquisitely cleaned, shaved, and what novelists call _groomed_ (one supposes this to be a kind of rubbing-down process, to make the skin glossy), with gray spats, a malacca cane, and a refined gray suit with a faint stripe and creases like knife-blades. This gentleman was strolling by in company with the senior British delegate, who had what foreigners considered a curious and morbid fad for walking rather than driving, even for short distances. "Which troubles you?" inquired the representative of the _Daily Sale_. "Our only Lord B., or that Secretariat fellow?" "That Secretariat fellow," Henry replied rather faintly. The other put on his glasses, the better to observe the neat, supercilious figure. He laughed a little. "Charles Wilbraham. Our Gilbert. The perfect knut. The type that does us credit abroad. Makes up for the seedy delegates and journalists, what?... He is said to have immense and offensive private wealth. In fact, it is obvious that he could scarcely present that unobtrusively opulent appearance on his official salary. They don't really get much, you know, poor fellows; not for an expensive place like this.... The queer thing is that no one seems to know where Wilbraham gets his money from; he never says. A very close, discreet chap; a regular civil servant. Do you know him, then?" Henry hesitated for a moment, appearing to think. He then replied, in the pained and reserved tone in which Mr. Wickham might have commented upon Mr. Darcy, "Slightly. Very slightly. As well as I wish. In fact, rather better. He wouldn't remember me. But I'll tell you one thing. But for a series of trivial circumstances, I too might have been ... oh, well, never mind. Not, of course, that for any consideration I would serve in this ludicrous and impotent machine set up by the corrupt states of the world. Wilbraham can: I could not. My soul, at least, is my own." "Oh, come," remonstrated the other journalist. "Come, come. Surely not.... But I must go and look up a few people. See you later on." Henry remained for a minute, broodingly watching the neat receding back of Charles Wilbraham. How happy and how proud it looked, that serene and elegant back! How proud and how pleased Henry knew Charles Wilbraham to be, walking with the senior British delegate, whom every one admired, along the Quai du Mont Blanc! As proud and as happy as a prince. Henry knew better than most others Charles Wilbraham's profound capacity for proud and princely pleasure. He loved these assemblies of important persons; loved to walk and talk with the great. He had, ever since the armistice, contracted a habit of being present at those happy little gatherings which had been, so far, a periodic feature of the great peace, and showed as yet no signs of abating. To Paris Charles Wilbraham had gone in 1919 (and how near Henry had been to doing the same; how near, and yet how far!). To San Remo he had been, to Barcelona and to Brussels; to Spa, to Genoa, even to Venice in the autumn of 1922. Besides all the League of Nations Assemblies. Where the eagles were gathered together, there, always, would Charles Wilbraham be. Henry winced at the thought of Charles's so great happiness. But let him wait; only let Charles wait. "Holy Mother of God!" (for Henry was a Roman Catholic), "only let him wait!" 4 The Assembly Hall was, as seen from the Press Gallery, a study in black and white. White sheets of paper laid on the desks, black coats, white or black heads. Young and old, black and white, the delegates stood and walked about the hall, waiting for the session of the League of Nations Assembly to begin. The hum of talk rose up and filled the hall; it was as if a swarm of bees were hiving. What a very great deal, thought Henry, had the human race to say, always! Only the little Japs at the back sat in silent rows, scores and scores of them (for Japanese are no use by ones), immobile, impassive, with their strange little masks and slanting eyes, waiting patiently for the business of the day to begin. When it began, their reporters would take down everything that was said, writing widdershins, very diligently, very slowly, in their solemn picture language. There was something a little sinister, a little macabre, a little Grand Guignolish about the grave, polite, mysterious little Japs. The Yellow Peril. Perilous because of their immense waiting patience, that would, in the end, tire the restless Western peoples out. How they stored their energy, sitting quiet in rows, and how the Westerners expended theirs! What conversations, what gesticulations, what laughter filled the hall! The delegates greeting one another, shaking one another by the hand, making their alliances and friendships for the session, arranging meals together, kindly, good-humoured, and polite, the best of friends in private for all their bitter and wordy squabbles in public. The chief Russian delegate, M. Kratzky, a small, trim little ex-Bolshevik, turned Monarchist by the recent _coup d'état_, was engaged in a genial conversation with the second French delegate. France had loudly and firmly voted last year against the admission of Russia to the League, but when the _coup d'état_ restored the Monarchist Government (a government no less, if no more, corrupt than the Bolshevik rule which had preceded it, but more acceptable to Europe in general), France held out to her old ally fraternal arms. The only delegates who cut the Russians were the Germans, and among the several delegates who cut the Germans were the Russians, for, as new members, these delegates were jealous one of the other. The Turkish delegates, also recently admitted, were meanwhile delightful to the Armenians, as if to prove how they loved these unhappy people, and how small was the truth of the tales that were told concerning their home life together. The two Irish delegates, O'Shane from the Free State and Macdermott from Ulster, were personally great friends, though they did not get on well together on platforms, as both kept getting and reading aloud telegrams from Ireland about crimes committed there by the other's political associates. This business of getting telegrams happens all the time to delegates, and is a cause of a good deal of disagreeableness. On this, the first morning of the Assembly, telegrams shot in in a regular barrage, and nearly every delegate stopped several. Many came from America. The trouble about America was that every nation in the League had compatriots there, American by citizenship, but something else by birth and sympathy, so that the Ukrainian congregation of Woodlands, Pa., would telegraph to request the League to save their relations in Ukraine from the atrocities of the Poles, and the Polish settlement in Milwaukee would wire and entreat that their sisters and their cousins and their aunts might be delivered from the marauding Ukrainians, and Baptist congregations in the Middle West wired to the Roumanian delegation to bring up before the Assembly the persecution of Roumanian Baptists. And the Albanian delegate (a benign bishop) had telegrams daily from Albania about the violation of Albanian frontiers by the Serbs, and the Serbian delegate had even more telegrams about the invasions and depredations of the Albanians. And the German and Polish delegates had telegrams from Silesia, and the Central and South American delegates had telegrams about troubles with neighbouring republics. And the Armenians had desperate messages from home about the Turks, for the Turks, despite the assignment to Armenia of a national home, followed them there with instruments of torture and of death, making bonfires of the adults, tossing the infants on pikes, and behaving in the manner customarily adopted by these people towards neighbours. There is this about Armenians: every one who lives near them feels he must assault and injure them. There is this about Turks: they feel they must assault and injure any one who lives near them. So that the contiguity of Turks and Armenians has been even more unfortunate than are most contiguities. Neither of these nations ought to be near any other, least of all each other. Meanwhile the Negro Equality League wired, "Do not forget the coloured races," and the Constructive Birth Control Society urged, "Make the world safe from babies" (this, anyhow, was the possibly inaccurate form in which this telegram arrived), and the Blackpool Methodist Union said, "The Lord be with your efforts after a World Peace, watched by all Methodists with hope, faith and prayer," and the Blue Cross Society said, "Remember our dumb friends," and Guatemala (which was not there) telegraphed, "Do not believe a word uttered by the delegate from Nicaragua, who is highly unreliable." As for the Bolshevik refugees, they sent messages about the Russian delegation which were couched in language too unbalanced to be made public either in the Assembly Journal or in these pages, but they would be put in the Secretariat Library for people to read quietly by themselves. This also occurred to a telegram from the Non-Co-operatives of India, who wired with reference to the freedom of their country from British rule, a topic unsuited to discussion from a world platform. All this fusillade of telegrams made but small impression on the recipients, who found in them nothing new. As one of the British delegates regretfully observed, "_Denique nullum est jam dictum quod non sit dictum prius._" But one telegram there was, addressed to the acting-President of the League, and handed in to him in the hall before the session began, which aroused some interest. It remarked, tersely and scripturally, in the English tongue, "I went by and lo he was not." It had been despatched from Geneva, and was unsigned. "And who," said the acting-President meditatively to those round him (he was an acute, courteous, and gentle Chinaman), "is this Lo? It is a name" (for so, indeed, it seemed to him), "but it is not my name. Does the sender, all the same, refer to the undoubted fact that I, who shall open this Assembly as its President, shall, after the first day's session, retire in favour of the newly elected President? Is it, perhaps, a taunt from some one who wishes to remind me of the transience of my office? Possibly from some gentleman of Japan ... or America ... who knows? or does it, perhaps, refer not to myself, but to some other person or persons, system or systems, who will, so the sender foresees, have their day and cease to be?" The acting-President was a scholar, and well read in English poetry. But, as his knowledge did not extend to the English translation of the Hebrew Psalms, he added, "It reads, this wire, like a quotation from literature?" One of the British delegates gave him its source and explained that, in this context, "lo" was less a name than an ejaculation, and would probably, but for the limitations of the telegraphic code, have had after it a point of exclamation. "The telegram," added the British delegate, who was something of a biblical student, "seems to be a combination of the Bible and Prayer Book translations of the verse in question. The Revised Version of the Bible has again another translation, a rather unhappy compromise. I believe the correct rendering----" "It is sarcasm," interrupted a French Secretariat official, "_C'est l'ironie._ The sender means that we are of so little use that in his eyes we don't exist. _C'est tout._ We're used to these gibes." "I expect it means," said another member of the Secretariat hopefully (he was sick of Geneva), "that the fellow thinks the League will soon be moved to Brussels." "Is Maxse visiting Geneva by any chance?" inquired one of the delegates from Central Africa. "It has rather his touch. But then Maxse would always sign his name. He's unashamed.... I dare say this is merely some religious maniac reminding us that _sic transit gloria mundi_. Very likely a Jew.... Look, I have a much better one than that from the Non-Alcoholics...." So they proceeded in their leisurely, attached, and pleasant way to discuss these outpourings from eager human hearts all over the globe. But the second French delegate, after brooding a while, said suddenly, "Ce télégramme-là, celui qui dit 'j'ai traversé par là, et voici, il est biffé!' les Boches l'ont expédié. Oui, justement. Tous les Boches veulent détruire la Société des Nations; ils le désirent d'autant plus depuis que l'Allemagne est admise dans la Société des Nations. C'est une chose tout à fait certaine." The French would talk like that about the Germans: you could not stop them. They had not, and possibly never would have, what is called a League mind. Central Africa, who had remonstrated gently but to no effect, pointing out that Germans would probably not be acquainted with the English version of the Psalms, either Prayer Book or Bible. To prevent international emotion from running high, the acting-President caused the bell to be rung and the Assembly to be summoned to their seats. 5 So here, thought Henry of the _British Bolshevist_, was this great world federation in session. He could not help being excited, for he was naturally excitable, and it was his first (and, had he known it, his last) Assembly. He was annoyed by the noisy moving and chattering of the people behind him in the gallery, which prevented his hearing the opening speech so well as he otherwise would have done. Foreigners--how noisy they were! They were for ever passing to and fro, shaking hands with one another, exchanging vivacious comments. Young French widows, in their heavy crape, gayest, most resigned, most elegant of creatures, tripped by on their pin-like heels, sweetly smiling their patient smiles. How different from young British widows, who, from their dress, might just as well have only lost a parent or brother. All widows are wonderful: Henry knew this, for always he had heard "Dear so-and-so is being simply wonderful" said of bereaved wives, and knew that it merely and in point of fact meant bereaved; but French widows are widows indeed. However, Henry wished they would sit still. Henry was at the end of a row of English journalists. On his right, across a little gangway, were Germans. "At close quarters," reflected Henry, "one is not attracted by this unfortunate nation. It lacks--or is it rather that it has--a _je ne sais quoi_.... It is perhaps more favourably viewed from a distance: but even so not really favourably. Possibly, like many other nations, it is seen to greatest advantage at home. I must visit Germany." For Henry was anxious to acquire a broad, wise, unbiased international mind. The acting-President was speaking, in his charming and faultless English. He was saying what a great deal the League had done since the preceding Assembly. It did indeed seem, as he lightly touched on it, a very great deal. It had grappled with disease and drugs, economics, sanitation, prostitution, and education; it had through its Court of Justice arbitrated several times in international disputes and averted several wars; other wars it had deplored; it had wrestled with unemployment and even with disarmament ... ("not, perhaps, quite happily put," murmured one British delegate to another). It had had great tasks entrusted to it and had performed them with success. It hoped to have, in the future, greater tasks yet; ... it had admitted to membership several new nations, to whom it had extended the heartiest fraternal welcome; ... above all it had survived in the face of all its enemies and detractors.... This present session was faced with a large and important programme. But before getting on to it there must be elections, votings, committees, a new President, and so forth. The speaker sat down amid the applause proper to the occasion, and the interpreter rose to translate him into French. An elderly English clergyman behind Henry tapped his shoulder with a pencil and said, "What paper do you represent? I am reporting for the _Challenge_. The Churches have not taken enough interest in the League. One must stir them up. I preach about nothing else, in these days. The Church of England is sadly apathetic." "It is a fault churches have," said Henry. "All the same, the Pope has telegraphed a blessing." Those who would fain follow the French interpreter hushed them. Henry leant over, and watched Latin America conferring among itself, looking excited and full of purpose. Latin America obviously had something on its mind. "What interests them so much?" he wondered aloud, and the journalist next him enlightened him. "They've made up their minds to have a Latin American President again. They say they make a third of the Assembly, and it's disgraceful that they don't have one every year. They don't want Edwardes again; they want one who'll let the Spanish-Americans get on their legs every few minutes. Edwardes had lived abroad too long and was too cosmopolitan for them. They're going to put up a really suitable candidate this time, and jolly well see he gets it. He won't, of course. But there may be the hell of a row." "That will be very amusing," said Henry hopefully. They were taking the votes of the delegates for the committee on the credentials of delegates. Suppose, thought Henry, that in that hall there were one or more delegates whose credentials were impeachable; delegates, perhaps who had come here by ruse with forged authority, or by force, having stolen the credentials from the rightful owner.... It might be done: it surely could be done, by some unprincipled adventurer from a far country. Perhaps it had been done, and perhaps the committee would never be the wiser. Or perhaps there would be a public _exposé_.... That would be interesting. Public _exposés_ were always interesting. Henry's drifting glance strayed to the platform, where the Secretariat staff sat, or went in and out through the folding door. There, standing by the door and watching the animated scene, was Charles Wilbraham, composed, pleased, serene, looking like a theatrical producer on the first night of a well-staged play. Yes, public _exposés_ were interesting.... The committee was elected and the Assembly dispersed for lunch, over which they would occupy themselves in lobbying for the Presidential election in the afternoon. Henry saw Charles Wilbraham go out in company with one of the delegates from Central Africa. No doubt but that the fellow had arranged to be seen lunching with this mainstay of the League. To lunch with the important ... that should be the daily goal of those for whom life is not a playground but a ladder. It was Charles Wilbraham's daily goal: Henry remembered that from old days. 6 At the afternoon session the Assembly voted for a President and six Vice-Presidents. It took a long time, and considerable feeling was involved. Five candidates were proposed: Roumania suggested a French delegate, Great Britain an Albanian bishop, Japan the senior British delegate, Central Africa an eminent Norwegian explorer, and the Latin Americans put up, between them, three of their own race. Owing to unfortunate temporary differences between various of these small republics they could not all agree on one candidate. After what seemed to Henry, unversed in these matters, a great deal of unnecessary voting on the part of the Assembly and of the Council, it was announced that the delegate for Norway, Dr. Svensen, was elected President. Amid cheers from those delegates who were pleased, from those who had self-control enough to conceal their vexation, and from the public in the galleries (for Dr. Svensen was the most widely popular figure in the Assembly), the new President took his place and made the appropriate speech, in his sonorous English. Many in the hall were bored, some because the new President was known to be in with the English, who are not always liked by other nations; some because he spoke English readily and French ill, and most of them understood French readily and English not at all; others because he was of the party which was bent on carrying out certain measures in Europe for which they saw no necessity. However, Dr. Svensen, a brief person and no word-waster, did not detain his audience long. At six o'clock the Assembly adjourned. 7 Henry despatched a short scornful story of the proceedings to his newspaper (which would not, he knew, print a long or effusive one), and dined with another English journalist in a café in the old _cité_. The other journalist, Grattan, came from Paris, and was bored with the League and with Geneva. He preferred to report crime and blood, something, as he said, with guts in it. Statesmen assembled together made him yawn. For his part, he wished something would happen during the Assembly worth writing home about--some _crime passionnel_, some blood and thunder melodrama. "Perhaps," said Henry, hopefully, "it will." "Well, it may. All these hot-blooded Latins and Slavs herded together ought to be able to produce something.... I bet you the Spanish Americans are hatching something to-night over there...." He waved his hand in the direction of the other side of the lake, where the great hotels blazed their thousand windows into the night. Behind those windows burnt who knew what of passion and of plot? 8 Dr. Svensen, strolling at a late hour across the Pont du Mont Blanc (he was returning from dinner at the Beau Rivage to his own hotel), was disturbed by a whimpering noise behind him, like the mewing of a little cat. Turning round, he saw a small and ragged form padding barefoot after him, its knuckles in its eyes. The Norwegian explorer, unlike most great men, was tender-hearted to children. Bending down to the crying urchin, he inquired of it the cause of its trouble. Its answer was in Russian, and to the effect that it was very hungry. Dr. Svensen softened yet more. A hungry Russian child! That was an object of pity which he never could resist. Russia was full of them; this one was probably an exiled Bolshevik. He felt in his pockets for coins, but the hungry Russian infant tugged at his coat. "Come," it said, and Dr. Svensen gathered from it that there were yet more hungry Russians where this came from. He followed.... 9 The morning session of the Assembly was supposed to begin at ten, and at this hour next morning the unsophisticated Henry Beechtree took his seat in the Press Gallery. He soon perceived his mistake. The show obviously was not going to begin for ages. No self-respecting delegate or journalist would come into the hall on the stroke of the hour. The superior thing, in this as in other departments of life, was to be late. Lateness showed that serene contempt for the illusion we call time which is so necessary to ensure the respect of others and oneself. Only the servile are punctual.... But "Nothing to swank about in being late," thought Henry morosely; "only means they've spent too long over their coffee and bread and honey, the gluttons. I could have done the same myself." Indeed, he wished that he had, for he fell again into the hands of the elderly clergyman who had addressed him yesterday, and who was, of course, punctual too. "I see," said the clergyman, "that you have one of the French comic papers with you. A pity their humour is so much spoilt by suggestiveness." Suggestiveness. Henry could never understand that word as applied in condemnation. Should not everything be suggestive? Or should all literature, art, and humour be a cul-de-sac, suggesting no idea whatsoever? Henry did not want to be uncharitable, but he could not but think that those who used this word in this sense laid themselves open to the suspicion (in this case, at least, quite unjustified), that their minds were only receptive of one kind of suggestion, and that a coarse one. "I expect," he replied, "that you mean coarseness. People often do when they use that word, I notice. Anyhow, the papers are not very funny, I find." "Suggestiveness," said the clergyman, "is seldom amusing." Before Henry had time to argue again about this word, he hurried on. "I sent yesterday a long message to the _Church Times_, the _Guardian_, the _Commonwealth_, and the _Challenge_ about the first meeting. It is most important that these papers should set before their readers the part that the Church ought to play in promoting international goodwill." "Indeed," said Henry, who did not see Anglican journals. He added vaguely, "The Pope sent a telegram...." For when people spoke to him of Church life, he said "the Pope" mechanically; it was his natural reaction to the subject. "You interest me," said the English clergyman. "For the second time you have mentioned the Pope to me. Are you, perhaps, a Roman Catholic?" "I suppose," Henry absently agreed, "that is what you would call it." "We do, you know," the clergyman apologised. "Forgive me if it seems discourteous.... You know, then, of course, who that is, opposite?" Henry looked across the hall to the opposite gallery, and perceived that his companion was referring to a small, delicate-looking elderly man, with the face of a priest and the clothes of a layman, who had just taken his seat there. "I do not indeed." "He is the ex-cardinal Franchi. You know him by reputation, of course." "Wasn't he suspended for heresy? I have, I think, seen some of his books." "He is a great scholar and a delightful writer. No one has gone more deeply into mediæval Church history and modern theological criticism. So I am told, but I have not read him myself, as he prefers to write in Italian, though he has a perfect command of several other tongues." "Nor I, as I am not very much interested in Church history or theological criticism. Besides, his writings are, I suppose, heretical." "I don't know as to that; I am no judge. But he was, I believe, as you say, retired for heresy. And now he lives in the most delightful of mediæval châteaux at Monet, a little village up the lake. I have been to see him there. If I may, I will introduce you. He enjoys making the acquaintance of his co-religionists. In this Calvinistic part of the world the educated classes are nearly all Protestants. The ex-cardinal does not care for Protestants; he finds them parvenus and bourgeois. He is a delightfully courteous host, however, even to those, and a wonderful talker. And his heart is in the League. A wit, a scholar, an aristocrat, a _bon-viveur_, and a philanthropist. If your Church retains many priests as good as those she expels, she is to be congratulated." "She is," Henry agreed. "She can afford to fling out one or two by the way. Yes; I would like to know him, the ex-cardinal; he looks witty and shrewd, and at the same time an idealist.... But how late they are in beginning. My watch is seldom right, but I imagine it must be after ten-thirty." The young man Grattan, with whom Henry had dined last night, lounged in, with his cynical smile. "You're very young and innocent, Beechtree. I suppose you've been here since ten. It's just on eleven now. The President's not to hand and no one seems to know where he is. Oh, well, it's not his fault; people spoil him. His head's turned, poor Svensen. I expect he made a night of it and is lying in this morning. I don't blame him. We don't need a President. But there seems to be some unrest among the Secretariat." This seemed, indeed, to be so. The members of this body, standing about the hall and platform, were animated and perturbed; the more irresponsible juniors seemed amused, others anxious. The Secretary-General was talking gravely to another high official. The correspondent of the _Daily Insurance_, who had been talking in the hall to the delegates and Secretariat, watched by Henry from above with some envy, at this point entered the Press Gallery, edged his way to his seat, picked up the papers he had deposited there earlier, and made rapidly for the exit. "Got a story already?" Grattan said to him. "No, but there may be one any moment. They've sent round to the Metropole, and Svensen didn't sleep in his bed. He never came in last night after dinner." He was off. Grattan whistled, and looked more cheerful. "That's good enough. That's a story in itself. Didn't sleep in his bed. That's a headline all right. Good old Svensen. Here, I'm going down to hear more. Mustn't let Jefferson get ahead of us. Come along, Beechtree, and nose things out. This will be nuts for our readers. Even your crabbed paper will have to give a column to Svensen Not Sleeping in his Bed. Can't you see all the little eyes lighting up?" He rushed away, and Henry followed. Meanwhile the bell was rung and MM. les Délégués took their seats. The deputy-President, the delegate for Belgium, took the chair. The President, he announced, was unfortunately not yet in attendance. Pending his arrival, the Assembly would, since time pressed, proceed with the order of the day, which was the election of committees.... The Assembly, always ready to vote, began to do so. It would keep them busy for some time. 10 Meanwhile Henry stood about in the lobby, where a greater excitement and buzz of talk than usual went on. Where was Dr. Svensen? The other members of the Norwegian delegation could throw no light on the question. He had dined last night at the Beau Rivage, with the British delegation; he had left that hotel soon after eleven, on foot; he had meant, presumably, to walk back to the Metropole, which stood behind the Jardin Anglais, on the Mont Blanc side. The hall porter at the Metropole asserted that he had never returned there. The Norwegian delegation, not seeing him in the morning, had presumed that he had gone out early; but now the hotel staff declared that he had not spent the night in the hotel. "He probably thought he would go for a long walk; the night was fine," Jefferson, who knew his habits, suggested. "Or for a row up the lake. The sort of thing Svensen _would_ do." "In that case he's drowned," said Grattan, who was of a forthright manner of speech. "He's a business-like fellow, Svensen. He'd have turned up in time for the show if he could, even after a night out." The next thing was to inquire of the boat-keepers, and messengers were despatched to do this. "I am afraid it looks rather serious," remarked a soft, grave, important voice behind Henry's back. "I am pretty intimate with Svensen; I was lunching with him only yesterday, as it happens. He didn't say a word then of any plan for a night expedition, I am afraid it looks sadly like an accident of some sort." "Perspicacious fellow," muttered Jefferson, who did not like Charles Wilbraham. Henry edged away: neither did he like Charles Wilbraham. He did not even turn his face towards him. He jostled into his friend the English clergyman, who said, "Ah, Mr. Beechtree. I want to introduce you to Dr. Franchi." He led Henry by the arm to the corner where the alert-looking ex-cardinal stood, talking with the Spaniard whom Henry had noticed in the lift at the Secretariat buildings. "Mr. Beechtree, Your Eminence," said the Reverend Cyril Waring, who chose by the use of this title to show at once his respect for the ex-cardinal, his contempt for the bigotry which had unfrocked him, and his disgust at the scandalous tongues which whispered that the reason for his unfrocking had been less heresy than the possession of a wife, or even wives. If Canon Waring had heard these spiteful _on-dits_, he paid no attention to them; he was a high-minded enthusiast, and knew a gentleman and a scholar when he saw one. "The correspondent of the _British Bolshevist_," he added, "and a co-religionist of Your Eminence's." The ex-cardinal gave Henry his delicate hand, and a shrewd and agreeable smile. "I am glad to meet you, Mr. Beechtree. You must come and see me one day, if you will, at my lake villa. It is a pleasant expedition, and a beautiful spot." He spoke excellent English with a slight accent. A thousand pities, thought Henry, that such a delightful person should be a heretic--such a heretic as to have been unfrocked. Why, indeed, should any one be a heretic? Atheism was natural enough, but heresy seemed strange. For, surely, if one could believe anything, one could believe everything. For his part, he believed everything.... Nevertheless, he accepted the invitation with pleasure. It would be a trip, and Henry loved trips, particularly up lakes. Dr. Franchi, observing the young journalist with approbation, liking his sensitive and polite face, saw it grow suddenly sullen, even spiteful, at the sound of a voice raised in conversation not far from him. "Perhaps you will do me the honour of lunching with me, M. Kratzky. I have a little party coming, including Suliman Bey...." M. Kratzky was, in his way, the most deeply and profusely blood-stained of Russians. One of the restored Monarchist government, he it was who had organised and converted the Tche-ka to Monarchist use, till they became in his hands an instrument of perfect and deadly efficiency, sparing neither age, infancy, nor ill-health. M. Kratzky had devised a system of espionage so thorough, of penalties so drastic, that few indeed were safe from torture, confinement, or death, and most experienced all three. One would scarcely say that the White tyranny was worse than the Red had been, or worse than the White before that (one would indeed scarcely say that any Russian government was appreciably worse than any other); but it was to the full as bad, and Kratzky (the Butcher of Odessa, as his nickname was), was its chief tyrant. And here was Charles Wilbraham taking the butcher's blood-stained hand and asking him to lunch. What Mr. Wickham Steed used to feel of those who asked the Bolsheviks to lunch at Genoa in April, 1922, Henry now felt of Charles Wilbraham, only more so. And Suliman Bey too ... a ghastly Turk; for Turk (whatever you might think of Russians) _were_ ghastly; the very thought of them, for all their agreeable manners, turned Henry, who was squeamish about physical cruelty, sick. God, what a lunch party! "You know our friend Mr. Wilbraham, I expect," said Dr. Franchi. "Scarcely," said Henry. "He wouldn't know me." "A very efficient young man. He has that air." "He has. But not really very clever, you know. It's largely put on.... I'm told. He likes to _seem_ to know everything ... so I've heard." "A common peccadillo." The ex-cardinal waved it aside with a large and tolerant gesture. "But we do not, most of us, succeed in it." "Oh, Wilbraham doesn't succeed. Indeed no. Most people see at once that he is just a solemn ass. That face, you know ... like a mushroom...." "Ah, that is a Bernard Shaw phrase. A bad play, that, but excellent dialogue.... But he is good-looking, Mr. Wilbraham." Henry moodily supposed that he was. "In a sort of smug, cold way," he admitted. "E cosa fa tra questo bel giovanotto e quel Charles Wilbraham?" wondered the ex-cardinal, within himself. 11 Henry left the Salle de la Reformation and went out into the town to look for further light on the mystery. How proud he would be if he should collect more information about it than the other journalists! Than Jefferson, for instance, who was always ahead in these things, interviewing statesmen, getting statements made to him.... No one made statements to Henry; he never liked to ask for them. But he was, he flattered himself, as good as any one else at nosing out news stories, mysteries, and so forth. Musing deeply, he walked to the ice-cream café, close to the Assembly Hall. There he ordered an ice of mixed framboise, pistachio, and coffee, and some iced raspberry syrup, and sat outside under the awning, slowly enjoying the ice, sucking the syrup through straws, and thinking. He always thought best while eating well too; with him, as with many others, high living and high thinking went together, or would have, only lack of the necessary financial and cerebral means precluded much practice of either. While yet in the middle of the raspberry syrup he suddenly lifted his mouth from the straws, ejaculated softly, and laughed. "It is a possibility," he muttered. "A possibility, worth following up.... Odder things have happened ... are happening, all the time.... In fact, this is not at all an odd thing...." Decisively he rapped on the table for his bill, paid for his meal, and rose to go, not forgetting first to finish his raspberry syrup. He walked briskly along the side of the lake to the Molard jetty, where he found a _mouette_ in act to start for the other side. How he loved these _mouette_ rides, the quick rush through blue water, half Geneva on either side, and the narrow shave under the Pont du Mont Blanc. He was always afraid that one day they would not quite manage it, but would hit the bridge; it was a fear of which he could not get rid. He always held his breath as they rushed under the bridge, and let it out in relief as they emerged safely beyond it. How cheap it was: a lake trip for fifteen centimes! Henry was sorry when they reached the other side. He walked thoughtfully up from the landing stage to the Secretariat, where he ascended to the room of Mr. Wilbraham. Mr. Wilbraham was not, of course, there; he was over at the Assembly Hall. But his secretary was there; a cheerful young lady typing letters with extraordinary efficiency and rapidity. "Oh," said Henry, "I'm sorry. I thought Mr. Wilbraham might possibly be here." "No," said the young lady agreeably. "He is over at the Assembly. Will you leave a message?" Henry laid his hat and cane on a table, and strode about the room. A large pleasant room it was, with a good carpet; the kind of room that Charles Wilbraham would have, and always did have. "No. No, I'll look in again. Or I'll see him over there this afternoon." He looked at his watch. "Lunch time. How quickly the morning has gone. It always does; don't you find that? And more so than usual when it's an exciting morning like this." "It is exciting, isn't it. Have they found him yet? I do admire him, don't you?" "Completely. No, they haven't found him. Mr. Wilbraham says it looks sadly like an accident of some sort." She acknowledged his imitation of Mr. Wilbraham's voice with a smile. "That would be tragic. Svensen, of all the delegates! One wouldn't mind most of them disappearing a bit. Some of them would be good riddances." "Well," said Henry, changing the subject, "if we're both going out to lunch, can't we lunch together? I'm Beechtree, of the _British Bolshevist_." Miss Doris Wembley looked at Beechtree, rather liked him, and said, "Right. But I must finish one letter first." She proceeded with her efficient, rapid, and noisy labours. She did not need to look at the keyboard, she was like that type of knitter who knits the while she gazes into space; she had learnt "Now is the time for all good men to come to the help of the party." Henry, strolling round the room, observing details, had time to speculate absently on the wonderful race of typists. He had in the past known many of them well, and felt towards them a regard untouched by glamour. How, he had often thought, they took life for granted, unquestioning, unwondering, accepting, busy eternally with labours they understood so little, performed so well, rattling out their fusillade of notes that formed words they knew not of, sentences that, uncomprehended, yet did not puzzle them or give them pause, on topics which they knew only as occasioning cascades of words. To them one word was the same, very nearly the same, as another of similar length; words had features, but no souls; did they fail to decipher the features of one of them, another of the same dimensions would do. And what commas they wielded, what colons, what semis, what stops! But efficient they were, all the same, for they were usually approximately right, and always incredibly quick. Henry knew that those stenographers who had been taken out to Geneva were, in the main, of a more sophisticated order, of a higher intellectual equipment. But Charles Wilbraham's secretary was of the ingenuous type. Probably the more sophisticated would not stay with him. A pretty girl she was, with a round brown face, kind dark eyes, and a wide, sweet, and dimpling mouth. Henry, like every one else, liked a girl to be pretty, but, quite unlike most young men, he preferred her to be witty. The beauty of the dull bored him very soon; Henry had his eccentricities. He did not think that Miss Wembley was going to be amusing, but still, he intended to cultivate her acquaintance. Henry looked at his watch. It was twelve forty-five. "Can't the rest wait?" he said. "I'm just on done. It's a re-type I'm doing. I spelt parliament with a small p, and Mr. Wilbraham said he couldn't send it, not even if I rubbed it out with the eraser. He said it would show, and it was to the F.O., who are very particular." "My God," Henry ejaculated, in a low yet violent tone, and gave a bitter laugh. His eyes gleamed fiercely. "I can imagine," he said, with restraint, "that Mr. Wilbraham might be particular. He _looks_ particular." "Well, he is, rather. But he's quite right, I suppose. Messy letters look too awful. Some men will sign simply anything. I don't like that.... There, now I've done." "Come along then," said Henry rapidly. 12 The Assembly met again at four o'clock, and proceeded under the Deputy President with the order of the day. But it was a half-hearted business. No one was really interested in anything except the fate of Dr. Svensen, who, it had transpired from inquiry among the boat-keepers, had not taken a boat on the lake last night. "Foul play," said the journalist Grattan, hopefully. "Obviously foul play." "Ask the Bolshevist refugees," the _Times_ correspondent said with a shrug. For he had no opinion of these people, and believed them to be engaged in a continuous plot against the peace of the world, in combination with the Germans. The _Morning Post_ was inclined to agree, but held that O'Shane, the delegate from the Irish Free State, was in it too. Whenever any unpleasant incident occurred, at home or abroad (such as murders, robberies, bank failures, higher income tax, Balkan wars, strikes, troubles in Ireland, or cocaine orgies), the _Times_ said, "Ask the Bolshevists and the Germans," and the _Morning Post_ said, "Ask the Bolshevists and the Germans by all means, but more particularly ask Sinn Fein," just as the _Daily Herald_ said, "Ask the capitalists and Scotland Yard," and some eminent _littérateurs_, "Ask the Jews." We must all have our whipping-boys, our criminal suspects; without them sin and disaster would be too tragically diffused for our comfort. Henry Beechtree's suspect was Charles Wilbraham. He knew that he suspected Charles Wilbraham too readily; Wilbraham could not conceivably have committed all the sins of which Henry was fain to believe him guilty. Henry knew this, and kept a guard on his own over-readiness, lest it should betray him into rash accusation. Information; evidence; that was what he had to collect. The question was, as an intelligent member of the Secretariat pointed out, who stood to benefit by the disappearance of Svensen from the scenes? Find the motive for a deed, and very shortly you will find the doer. Had Svensen a private enemy? No one knew. Many persons disapproved of the line he was apt to take in public affairs: he wanted to waste money on feeding hungry Russians ("No one is sorrier than my tender-hearted nation for starving persons," the other delegates would say, "but we have no money to send them, and are not Russians always hungry?") and was in an indecent hurry about disarmament, which should be a slow and patient process. ("No one is more anxious than my humane nation for peace," said the delegates, "but there is a dignified caution to be observed.") Yes; many persons disagreed with Svensen as to the management of the affairs of the world; but surely no one would make away with him on that account. Far more likely did it seem that he had inadvertently stumbled into the lake, after dining well. What an end to so great and good a man! 13 Lord Burnley, the senior British delegate, that distinguished, notable, and engaging figure in the League, had, as has been said earlier, a strange addiction to walking. This afternoon, having parted from his friends outside the Assembly Hall, he started, as was a favourite pastime of his, to walk through the older and more picturesque streets of the city, for which he had a great taste. As he strolled in his leisurely manner up the Rue de la Cité, stopping now and then to look at its antique and curious shops, he came to a book shop, whose outside shelf was stocked with miscellaneous literature. Lord Burnley, who could seldom pass an old bookshop without pausing, stopped to glance at the row of paper-backs, and was caught by a familiar large bound book among them. Familiar indeed, for was it not one of his own works? He put on his glasses and looked closer. Yes: the volume was inscribed _Scepticism as a Basis for Faith_, by George Burnley. And printed on a paper label below the title, was the inscription, "Special Edition, recently annotated by the Author." Strange! Lord Burnley was puzzled. For neither recently nor at any other time was he conscious of having issued a special annotated edition of this work. For a minute or two he pondered, standing on the pavement. Then, deciding to inquire further into this thing, he stooped his head and shoulders and passed under the low lintel into the little dark shop. 14 Henry, having left the Assembly, sent off his message to his newspaper (it was entirely about the disappearance of Dr. Svensen), glanced into his pigeon-hole on his way out, and found there, among various superfluous documents, a note addressed to him by the ex-cardinal Franchi, suggesting that, if he should not find himself better employed, he should give the writer his company at dinner at eight o'clock that evening, at his villa at Monet, two miles up the lake. He would find a small electric launch waiting for him at seven-thirty at the Eaux-Vives jetty, in which would be Dr. Franchi's niece, who had been attending the Assembly that afternoon. "Excellent," thought Henry. "I will go." For he was greatly attracted by Dr. Franchi, and liked also to dine out, and to have a trip up to Monet in a motor launch. He went back to his indigent rooms in the Allée Petit Chat, and washed and dressed. (Fortunately, he had at no time a heavy beard, so did not have to shave in the evenings.) Well-dressed he was not, even in his evening clothes, which were a cast-off of his brother's, and not, as evening clothes should be, faultless; but still they passed, and Henry always looked rather nice. "Not a bad face," he reflected, surveying it in the dusty speckled glass. "A trifle weak perhaps. I _am_ a trifle weak; that is so. But, on the whole, the face of a gentleman and a decent fellow. And not devoid of intelligence.... Interesting, to see one's own face. Especially in this odd glass. Now I must be off. Hat, stick, overcoat, scarf--that is everything." He walked down to the Eaux-Vives jetty, where a smart electric launch did indeed await him, and in it a young lady of handsome appearance, who regarded him with friendly interest and said, in pronounced American with an Italian accent, "I'm real pleased to meet you, Mr. Beechtree. Step right in. We'll start at once." Henry stepped right in, and sat down by this prepossessing girl. "I must introduce myself," she said. "My name is Gina Longfellow, and I'm Dr. Franchi's niece." "What excellent English you talk," said Henry politely. "American," she corrected him. "My father was a native of Joliet, Ill. Are you acquainted with the Middle West?" "I've travelled there," said Henry, and repressed a shudder, for he had found the Middle West deplorable. He preferred South America. "I am related to the poet," said Miss Longfellow. "That great poet who wrote _Hiawatha_, _Evangeline_, and _The Psalm of Life_. Possibly you came across him out in the States?" "No," said Henry. "I fancy he was even then dead. You are a descendant of his?" "A descendant--yes. I remember now; he died, poor nonno.... The lake pleases you, Mr. Beechtree?" "Indeed, yes. It is very beautiful." Miss Longfellow's fine dark eyes had a momentary flicker of resentment. Most young men looked at her, but Mr. Beechtree at the lake, with his melancholy brooding eyes. Henry liked handsome young women well enough, but he admired scenery more. The smooth shimmer of the twilight waters, still holding the flash of sunset, the twinkling city of lights they were swiftly leaving behind them at the lake's head, the smaller constellations of the lakeside villages on either hand--these made on Henry, whose æsthetic nerve was sensitive, an unsteadying impression. Miss Longfellow recalled his attention. "Do you think the League will last?" she inquired sharply. "Do you like Geneva? Do you think the League will be moved somewhere else? Isn't it a real pity the French are so obstructionist? Will the Americans come in?" Henry adjusted his monocle and looked at her in some surprise. "Well," she said impatiently, "I guess you're used to those questions by now." "But you've left out the latest," Henry said. "What do you think can have happened to Svensen?" "Ah, there you have us all guessing," she amiably returned. "Poor Svensen. Who'd have thought it of him?" "Thought what?" "Why, this. He always seemed such a white man. My, isn't it queer what people will do?" Henry, who had been brought up on Dr. Svensen's narrations of his Arctic explorations, and greatly revered him, said, "But I don't believe he's done anything." "Not done a get-away, you mean? Well now, why should he, after all? Perhaps he fell right into this deep lake after dining, and couldn't get out, poveretto. Yet he was a real fine swimmer they say." "Most improbable," said Henry, who had dismissed that hypothesis already. He leant forward and spoke discreetly. "I fancy, Miss Longfellow, there are those in Geneva who could throw some light on this affair if they chose." "You don't say! Dio mio! Now isn't that quite a notion!" Miss Longfellow was interested. "Why, Mr. Beechtree, you don't suspect foul play, do you?" Henry nodded. "I suppose I rather easily suspect foul play," he candidly admitted. "It's more interesting, and I'm a journalist. But in this case there are reasons----" "Now isn't this too terribly exciting! Reasons! Just you tell me all you know, Mr. Beechtree, if it's not indiscreet. Non son' giornalista, io!" "I don't _know_ anything. Except that there are people who might be glad to get Svensen out of the way." "But who are they? I thought every one respected him ever so!" "Respect is akin to fear," said Henry. On that dictum, the launch took a swift turn to the right, and dashed towards a jetty which bore on a board above it the words, "Château Léman. Defense." "A private jetty," said Henry. "Yes. The village jetty is beyond. This is my uncle's. That path only leads up to the Château." They disembarked, and climbed up a steep path which led through a wrought iron gate into a walled garden that ran down to the lake's edge. Henry, who was romantic, said, "How very delightful. How old is the Château?" "Chi sa? Real old, I can tell you. Ask Uncle Silvio. He's great on history. He's for ever writing historical books. History and heresy--Dio mio! That is why they turned him out of the Church, you know." "So I heard.... Are you a Catholic, Miss Longfellow?" She gave a little shrug. "I was brought up Catholic. Women believe what they are taught, as a rule, don't they?" "I hadn't observed it," Henry said, "particularly. Are women so unlike men then?" "That's quite a question, isn't it. What do you think?" "I can't think in large sections and masses of people," Henry replied. "Women are so different one from another. So are men. That's all I can see, when people talk of the sexes." "_Macchè!_ You don't say!" said Miss Longfellow, looking at him inquiringly. "Most people always think in large masses of people. They find it easier, more convenient, more picturesque." "It is indeed so," Henry admitted. "But less accurate. Accuracy--do you agree with me?--is of an importance very greatly underestimated by the majority of persons." "I guess," said Miss Longfellow, not interested, "you're quite a clever young man." Henry replied truthfully, "Indeed, no," and at this point they turned a bend in the path and the château was before them in the evening light; an arcaded, balconied, white-washed building, vine-covered and red-roofed, with queer outside staircases and green-shuttered windows, many of which were lit. Certainly old, though restored. A little way from it was a small belfried chapel. "Charming," said Henry, removing his eyeglass the better to look. "Amazingly charming." A big door stood open and through this they passed into a hall lit by large hanging lamps and full of dogs, or so it seemed to Henry, for on all sides they rose to stare at him, to sniff at his ankles, for the most part with the air of distaste commonly adopted towards Henry by these friends of man. "You're not a dog lover?" Miss Longfellow suggested, and Henry again replied that he could not like or dislike his fellows in large sections; some dogs he liked, others not, as with men, women, and children. "But I guess they don't like you very much," she returned, shrewdly observing their manners to him. "Now isn't that cute, how they take to some people and not to others. They all love Uncle Silvio on sight. Stray dogs follow him in the road and won't leave him. Half these are strays.... They know he likes them, that's what it is. Dogs always know, they say, don't they." "Know what?" asked Henry, suspicious that she meant that dogs know a good character from a bad, which was what "they" ("they" meaning the great collection of noodles who constitute the public) do actually say. The things "they" say! They even say that children too (the most foolish of God's creatures) have this intuitive knowledge; they say that to drink hot tea makes you cooler, that it is more tiring going down-hill than up, that honesty is the best policy, that love makes the world go round, that "literally" bears the same meaning as "metaphorically" ("she was literally a mother to him," they will say), that an apple a day keeps the doctor away, that those who say least feel most, that one must live. There is truly no limit to what "they," in their folly, will say. So Henry, wincing among the suspicious dogs, moodily, and not for the first time, reflected. Miss Longfellow did not answer his inquiry, but stood in the hall and cried, "Zio!" in a voice like a May cuckoo's. A door opened, and in a moment Dr. Franchi, small and frail and charming, came forward with a sweet smile and hand outstretched, through a throng of fawning, grinning dogs. "A pleasure indeed, Mr. Beechtree." "He is like Leo XIII.," was Henry's thought. "Strange, that he should be a heretic!" 15 They sat at dinner on a terrace, under hanging lamps, looking out at the lake through vine-festooned arches. The moon rose, like the segment of an orange, sending a softly glowing path to them across black water. Here and there the prow lanterns of boats rosily gleamed. The rest was violet shadow. How Henry, after his recent experiences of cheap cafés, again enjoyed eating a meal fit for a gentleman. Radiant silver, napery like snow (for, in the old fashion still in use on the continent, Dr. Franchi had a fair linen cloth spread over his dinner-table; there is no doubt but that this extravagant habit gives an old-world charm to a meal), food and wines of the most agreeable, conversation to the liking of all three talkers (which is, after all, the most that can be said of any conversation), one of the loveliest views in Europe, and gentle night air--Henry was indeed fortunate. How kind, he reflected, was this ex-cardinal, who, having met him but once, asked him to such a pleasant entertainment. Why was it? He must try to be worthy of it, to seem cultivated and agreeable and intelligent. But Henry knew that he was none of these things; continually he had to be playing a part, trying to hide his folly under a pretence of being like other people, sensible and informed and amusing, whereas really he was more like an animal, interested in the foolish and fleeting impressions of the moment. He was not fit for a gentleman's dinner-table. The conversation was of all manner of things. They spoke, of course, of the League. "It has a great future," said Dr. Franchi, "by saying which I by no means wish to underrate its present." "Rather capitalist in tendency, perhaps?" the correspondent of the _British Bolshevist_ suggested. "A little too much in the hands of the major states?" But he did not really care. "You misjudge it," Dr. Franchi said. "It is a very fair association of equal states. A true democracy: little brothers and great, hand in hand. Oh, it will do great things; is, indeed, doing great things now. One cannot afford to be cynical about such an attempt. Anything which encourages the nations to take an interest in one another's concerns----" "There has surely," said Henry, still rather apathetically voicing his paper, "always been too much of that already. Hence wars. Nations should keep themselves to themselves. International impertinence ... it's a great evil. Live and let live." "You don't then agree that we should attempt a world-cosmogony? That the nations should be as brothers, and concern themselves with one another's famines, one another's revolutions, one another's frontiers? But why this curious insistence on the nation as a unit? Why select nationality, rather than the ego, the family, the township, the province, the continent, the hemisphere, the planet, the solar system, or even the universe? Isn't it just a little arbitrary, this stress we lay on nationalism, patriotism, love of one particular country, of the territories united fortuitously under one particular government? What is a government, that we should regard it as a connecting link? What is a race, that queer, far-flung thing whose boundaries march with those of no nation? And when we say we love a country, do we mean its soil, the people under its government, or the scattered peoples everywhere sharing some of the same blood and talking approximately the same tongue? What, in fact, is this _patriotism_, this love of country, that we all feel, and that we nearly all exalt as if it were a virtue? We don't praise egoism, or pride of family, or love of a particular town or province, in the same way. What magic is there in the ring that embraces a country, that we admire it as precious metal and call the other rings foolish or base? You will admit that it is a queer convention." "All conventions are queer, I think," Henry said indifferently. "But there they are. One accepts them. It is less trouble." "It makes more trouble in the end, my young friend.... I will tell you one thing from my heart. If the League of Nations should fail, should go to pieces, it will be from excess of this patriotism. Every country out for its own hand. That has always been the trouble with the world, since we were hordes of savages grouped in tribes one against the other--as, indeed, we still are." "Well, zio mio," said Miss Longfellow breezily, "if you don't look out for number one, no one else will, you may be dead sure. And _then_ where are you? In the soup, sure thing. Nel zuppo!" She gave a gay, chiming, cuckooish laugh. A cheerful girl, thought Henry. "Viva the League of Nations!" she cried, and drank brightly of her marsala. Dr. Franchi, with an indulgent smile for youthful exuberance, drank too. "The hope for the world," he said. "You don't drink this toast, Mr. Beechtree?" "My paper," said Henry, "believes that such hope for the world as there may be lies elsewhere." "Ah, your paper. And you yourself?" "I? I see no hope for the world. No hope, that is to say, that it will ever be an appreciably better world than it is at present. Before that occurs, I imagine that it will have broken its string, as it were, and dashed off into space, and so an end." "And my hopes for it are two--an extension of country-love into world-love, and a purified version of the Christian faith." "Purified...." Henry recollected that Dr. Franchi was a modernist and a heretic. "A queer word," he mused. "I am not sure that I know what it means." "Ah. You are orthodox Catholic, no doubt. You admit no possible impurities in the faith." "I have never thought about it. I do not even know what an impurity is. One thing does not seem to me much more pure than another, and not much more odd. For my part, I accept the teaching of the Church wholesale. It seems simpler." "Until you come to think about it," said the ex-cardinal. "Then it ceases to be simple, and becomes difficult and elaborate to a high degree. Too difficult for a simple soul like myself. For my part, I have been expelled from the bosom of my mother the Church, and am now, having completed immense replies to the decree Lamentabili Sane and to the encyclical Pascendi Gregis, writing a History of the Doctrine of Transubstantiation. Does the topic interest you?" "I am no theologian," said Henry. "And I have been told that if one inquires too closely into these mysteries, faith wilts. I should not like that. So I do not inquire. It is better so. I should not wish to be an atheist. I have known an atheist whom I have very greatly disliked." The thought of this person shadowed his brow faintly with a scowl, not unobserved by his host and hostess. "But," he added, "he became a worse thing; he is now an atheist turned Catholic...." "There I am with you," the ex-cardinal agreed. "About the Catholic convert there is often a quite peculiar lack of distinction.... But we will not talk about these." 16 They were now eating fruit. Melon, apricots, pears, walnuts, figs, and fat purple grapes. The night ever deepened into a greater loveliness. In the steep, sweet garden below the terrace nightingales sang. "On such a night as this," said Dr. Franchi, cracking a walnut, "it is difficult to be an atheist." "Why so?" asked Henry dreamily, biting a ripe black fig, and wishing that the ex-cardinal had not thought it necessary to give so lovely and familiar an opening phrase so tedious an end. "Don't tell me," he added quickly, repenting his thoughtless question. "What nightingales! What figs! And what apricocks!" (for so he always called this fruit). He hated to talk about atheists, and about how God had fashioned so beautiful a world. It might be so, but the world, on such a night, was enough in itself. Dr. Franchi's keen, gentle eyes, the eyes of a shrewd weigher of men, observed him and his distastes. "An æsthete," he judged. "God has given him intuition rather than reason. And not very much even of that. He might easily be misled, this youth." Aloud he said, "All I meant was that "'Holy joy about the earth is shed, And Holiness upon the deep,' as one of your Edwardian poets has sung. That was a gifted generation: may it rest in peace. For I think it mostly perished in that calamitous war we had.... But your Georgians--they too are a gifted generation, is it not so?" "You mean by Georgians those persons who are now flourishing under the sovereignty of King George the Fifth of England? Such as myself? I do not really know. How could it be that gifts go in generations? A generation, surely, is merely chronological. Gifts are sporadic. No, I find no generation, as such, gifted. Except, of course, with the gifts common to all humanity.... People speak of the Victorians, and endow them with special qualities, evil or good. They were all black recently; now they are being white-washed--or rather enamelled. I think they had no qualities, as a generation (or rather as several generations, which, of course, they were); men and women then were, in the main, the same as men and women to-day, I see nothing but individuals. The rest is all the fantasy of the foolish, who love to generalise, till they cannot see the trees for the wood. Generalisations make me dizzy. I see nothing but the separate trees. There _is_ nothing else...." Dreamily Henry wandered on, happy and fluent with wine and figs. A ripe black fig, gaping to show its scarlet maw--what could be more lovely, and more luscious to the palate? As to Miss Longfellow, she was eating her dessert so rapidly and with such relish that she had no time for conversation. All she contributed to it was, between bites, a cheerful nod now and then at Henry to show that she agreed with him. "Yours," said Dr. Franchi, "is not, perhaps, the most natural view of life. It is more natural to see people in large groups, with definite characteristic markings, according to period, age, nationality, sex, or what not. Also, such a view has its truth, though, like all truths, it may be over-stressed.... But here comes our coffee. After we have drunk it, Gina will leave us perhaps and you and I will smoke our cigars and have a little talk on political questions, and matters outside a woman's interests. Our Italian women do not take the same interest in affairs which your English women do." "No," Miss Longfellow readily agreed. "We don't like the New Woman over here. Perhaps Mr. Beechtree admires her though." "The New Woman?" Henry doubtfully queried. "Is there a new woman? I don't know the phrase, except from old Victorian _Punch_ Pictures.... Thank you, yes; a little cherry brandy." "Ah, is the woman question, then, over in your country--died out? Fought to a finish, perhaps, with honours to the victorious sex?" "The woman question, sir? What woman question? I know no more of woman questions than of man questions, I am afraid. There is an infinity of questions you may ask about all human beings. People ask them all the time. Personally, I don't; it is less trouble not to. There people are; you can take them or leave them, for what they're worth. Why ask questions about them? There is never a satisfactory answer." "A rather difficult youth to talk to," the ex-cardinal reflected. "He fails to follow up, or, apparently, even to understand, any of the usual conversational gambits. Is he very ignorant, or merely perverse?" As to Miss Longfellow, she gave Henry up as being not quite all there, and anyhow a bloodless kind of creature, who took very little notice of her. So she went indoors and played the piano. "I am failing," thought Henry. "She does not like me. I am not being intelligent. They will talk of things above my head, things I cannot understand." Apathy held him, drinking cherry brandy under the moon, and he could not care. Woman question? Man question? What was all this prating? 17 "And now," said Dr. Franchi, as he enjoyed a cigar and Henry a cigarette and both their liqueurs, "let us talk of this mysterious business of poor Svensen." "Yes, do let's," said Henry, for this was much more in his line. "I may misjudge you, Mr. Beechtree, but I have made a guess that you entertain certain suspicions in this matter. Is that the case? Ah, I see I am right. No, tell me nothing you do not wish. In fact, tell me nothing at all. It would be, at this point, indiscreet. Instead, let us go through all the possible alternatives." He paused, and puffed at his cigar for a while in thoughtful silence. "First of all," he presently resumed, "poor Svensen may have met with an accident. He may have fallen into the lake and have been drowned. But this we will set aside as improbable. Geneva is seldom quite deserted at night, and he would have attracted attention. Besides which, I have heard that he is an excellent swimmer. No; an improbable contingency. What remains? Foul play. Some person or persons have attacked him in a deserted spot and either murdered or kidnapped him. But who? And for what purpose? Robbery? Personal enmity? Revenge? Or an impersonal motive, such as a desire, for some reason, to damage and retard the doings of the Assembly? It might be any of these.... Let us for a moment take the hypothesis that it is the last. To whom, then, might such a desire be attributed? Unfortunately, my dear Mr. Beechtree, to many different persons." "But more to some than to others," Henry brightly pointed out. "Certainly more to some than to others. More to the Poles than to the Lithuanians, for instance, for is it not to the Polish interest to hold up the proceedings of the Assembly while the present violation of the Lithuanian frontier by Polish hordes continues? Well they know that any inquiry into that matter set on foot by the League would end in their discomfiture. Every day that they can retard the appointment of a committee of inquiry is to the good, from their point of view. "Again, take Russia. The question of the persecution of the Bolsheviks is to be brought up in the Assembly early. Naturally the Russian delegation are not anxious for the exposure of their governmental methods which would accompany this. And then there are the Bolshevik refugees themselves--a murderous gang, who would readily dispose of any one, from mere habit. Nor can Argentine be supposed to be anxious for the inquiry into her dispute with Paraguay which the Paraguay delegation intend to bring forward. The Argentine delegation may well have orders to delay this inquiry as long as possible, in order that the dispute may arrange itself domestically, in Argentine interests, without the intervention of the League. There is, too, the Graeco-Turkish war, which both the Greeks and the Turks desire to carry on in peace. There are also several questions of humanitarian legislation, which by no means all the members of the League desire to see proceeded with--the traffic in women, for instance, and that in certain drugs. And what about the Irish delegates? Are they not both, for their different reasons, full of anger and discontent against Great Britain and against Europe in general, and may they not well intend, in the determined manner of their race, to hold up the association of nations at the pistol's mouth, so to speak, until it considers their grievances and adjudicates in their favour? And then we must not exclude from suspicion the natives of this city and canton. Calvinists are, in my experience, capable of any malicious crime. A dour, jealous, unpleasant people. They might (and often have they done so) perpetrate any wickedness in the name of the curious God they worship." "Indeed, yes," said Henry. "How confusing it all is, to be sure! But you haven't mentioned the biggest stumbling-block of all, sir--disarmament." "Ah, yes; disarmament. As you say, the most tremendous issue of all. And it is, as every one knows, going to be, during this session of the League, decisively dealt with by the Council. Many a nation, militant from terror, from avarice, from arrogance, or from habit, many a political faction, and many a big business, has a vital interest in hindering disarmament discussions. You think then, that----" "I will tell you," said Henry, leaning forward eagerly and lowering his rather high voice, "what I think. I think that there are those not far from us who have a great deal of money in armaments, and who get nervy whenever the subject comes up. There are things that I know.... I came out here knowing them, and meaning to speak when the time came. Not because it was my duty, which is why (I understand) most people expose others, but because I had a very great desire to. There is some one towards whom I feel a dislike--a very great dislike; I may say hate. He deserves it. He is a most disagreeable person, and has done me, personally, a great injury"--(Henry was feeling the expansive influence of the cherry brandy)--"and naturally I wish to do him one in my turn. I have wished it for several years; to be exact, since the year 1919. I have waited and watched. I have always known him to be detestable, but until recently I thought that he was also detestably and invariably in the right--or, anyhow, that he could not be proved in the wrong. Lately I learnt something that altered this opinion. I discovered a thing about him which would, if it were known (having regard to the position he occupies), utterly shame and discredit him. I am now, I have a feeling, on the track of discovering yet another and a worse thing--that he has done away with the elected President of the Assembly, in order to wreck the proceedings so that the armament question should not come up." "The armament question?" Henry gazed at the ex-cardinal with the wide, ferocious stare of the slightly intoxicated. "What would you say if I told you that a certain highly placed official on the League of Nations Secretariat has enormous sums of money invested in an armaments business? That he derives nearly all his income from it? That he is the son-in-law of the head of the business, and has in it vast sums which increase at every rumour of war and which would dwindle away if any extensive disarmament scheme should ever really be seriously contemplated by the nations? That his father-in-law, this munitions prince, is even now in Geneva, privately visiting his daughter and son-in-law and holding a watching brief on the Assembly proceedings? I ask you, what would the League staff say of one of their members of which this should be revealed? Would he be regarded as a fit incumbent of the office he holds? Wouldn't he be dismissed, kicked out as incompetent--as unscrupulous, I mean," Henry amended quickly. His voice had risen in a shrill and trembling crescendo of dislike. Dr. Franchi, leaning placidly back in his chair, his delicate fingers stroking a large Persian cat on his knee, shrewdly watched him. "I had better say," he observed, in his temperate and calming manner, "that I believe I know to whom you allude. I have guessed, since I saw you this morning when a certain individual was speaking near you, that you took no favourable view of him. And now I perceive that you are justified. You will be doubly justified if we can prove, what I am trying to agree with you is not improbable, that he has indeed made away with this unfortunate Svensen. I am tempted to share your view of this unpleasing person. Among other things he is a Catholic convert; as to these we have already exchanged our views.... Do you know what I think? This; that Svensen's will not be the only disappearance at Geneva. For what would be the use of getting rid of one man only, however prominent? The Assembly, after the first shock, would proceed with its doings. But what if man after man were to disappear? What if the whole fabric of Assembly, Council, and Committees should be disintegrated, till no one could have thoughts for anything but the mysterious disappearances and how to solve the riddle, and how, still more, to preserve each one himself from a like fate? Could any work be continued in such circumstances, in such an atmosphere? No. The Assembly would become merely a collection of bewildered and nervous individuals turning themselves into amateur detectives, and, incidentally, the laughing-stock of the world. The League might never recover such prestige as it has, after such a disastrous session. Mark my words; there will be further attempts on the persons of prominent delegates. Whether they will be successful attempts or not is a question. Who is responsible for them is another question. You say (and I am half with you) our friend of the Secretariat, who had better be nameless until we can bring him to book. Others will say other things. Many will be suspected. Notably, no doubt, the Spanish Americans, who lend themselves readily to such suspicions; they have that air, and human life is believed not to be unduly sacred to them. Besides, they never got on with Svensen, who is reported to have alluded to them not infrequently as 'those damned Red Indians.' The Scandinavian temperament and theirs are so different. I do not even feel sure myself that they are not implicated. The initiation of the affair by our Secretariat friend would not, in fact, preclude their participation in it. I had nearly said, show me a Spanish-American, still worse a Portuguese, and I will show you a scoundrel. Nearly, but not quite, for it is a mistake to say such things of one's brothers in the League. Besides, I like them. They are pleasing, amusing fellows, and do not rasp one's nerves like the Germans and many others. One can forgive them much; indeed, one has to. Many people, again, would be glad to put responsibility on the Germans. An unfortunate race, for nothing is so unfortunate as to be unloved. We must discover the truth, Mr. Beechtree. You have a line of inquiry to follow?" "I am making friends with the fellow's secretary," said Henry. "She likes me, I may say. And she talks quite a lot. She would not consciously betray her chief's confidence, though she does not like him; but all the same I get many clues from her.... Oh, my God----!" The ejaculation, which was made under his breath, was shocked involuntarily out of him by the sight of Dr. Franchi's Persian cat extracting with its paw from a bowl that stood on the terrace balustrade a large gold-fish and devouring it. After the first glance Henry looked away, leaning back in his chair, momentarily overcome with a feeling of nausea, which made his face glisten white and damp, and caused the sweat to break hotly on his brow, while the lake swayed and darkened before his eyes. It was a feeling to which he was unfortunately subject when he saw the smaller of God's creatures suffering these mischances at the hands of their larger brethren. His nerves were not strong, and he had an excessive dislike of witnessing unpleasant sights. "You don't feel well?" Dr. Franchi solicitously inquired. "The gold-fish," his guest murmured. "Eaten alive ... what an end!" Dr. Franchi's delicate, dark Latin brows rose. "The gold-fish? Ah, my wicked Pellico.... I cannot keep him from the bowl, the rascal. I regret that he so upset you. But the sensibility of gold-fish is not great, surely? As the peasants say, non son chretiani loro!" "Forgive me. To see a live fish devoured ... it took me unawares.... I shall be all right soon...." As from a great distance Henry, still fighting the sensation of nausea, was half aware of the ex-cardinal's piercing eyes fixed on him with extraordinary intensity. "I am all right now," said Henry. "A momentary faintness--quite absurd.... I expect gold-fish do not really feel either emotion or pain. They say that fish do not feel hooks. Or worms, either.... They say all sorts of comforting things about this distressing world, don't they. One should try to believe them all...." "You are," said Dr. Franchi quietly, "if I may say so, a decidedly unusual young man." "Indeed, no," said Henry. "But I have encroached on you long enough. I must go." 18 The motor-launch churned its foaming path down the moonlit lake. Henry sat in the stern, trailing his fingers in cool, phosphorescent water, happy, drowsy, and well fed. What a delightful evening! What a charming old man! What a divine way of being taken home! And now he had the warm, encouraged feeling of not pursuing a lone trail, for the ex-cardinal's last words to him had been: "Coraggio! Follow every clue; push home every piece of evidence. Between us we will yet lay this enemy of the public good by the heel." The very thought that they would yet do that flushed Henry's cheek and kindled his eye. Assuredly the wicked should not always flourish like the bay tree. "I went by, and lo he was not," thought Henry, quoting the queer message received by the President before the first session of the Assembly. The launch dashed up to the Quai du Seujet, and Henry presented a franc to the pilot, and stepped off, trying to emulate this gentleman's air of never having visited such a low wharf before. "You have brought me rather too far," he said. "But I will walk back." But, now he came to think of it, Dr. Franchi's man must obviously know where he lived, so camouflage was unavailing. He had intended (only, lost in thought, he had let the moment pass) to be set down at the Paquis, as if he had been staying on the Quai du Mont Blanc or thereabouts. But he had said nothing, and, without doubt or hesitation, this disagreeable chauffeur (or whatever an electric launch man was called) had made for the Quai du Seujet and drawn up at it, as if he knew, as doubtless he did, that Henry's lodging was in one of the squalid alleys off it. It could not be helped. Things do get about; Henry knew that of old. However, to maintain the effect of his words to the man, he started to walk away from the St. Gervais quarter towards the Mont Blanc bridge, until the launch was foaming on its homeward way. Then he retraced his steps. As he passed the end of the bridge, he saw a well-known and characteristic figure, small, trim, elegant, the colour of ivory, clad in faultless evening dress, beneath an equally faultless light coat, standing by the parapet. Some one was with him, talking to him--an equally characteristic figure, less well known to the world at large, but not less well known to Henry. Henry stopped abruptly, and stood in the shadow of a newspaper kiosk. He was not in the least surprised. Any hour of the day or night did for Charles Wilbraham to talk to the great. He would leave a dinner at the same time as the most important person present, in order to accompany him on his way. He would waylay cabinet ministers in streets, bishops (though himself not of their faith) in closes, and royal personages incognito. He would impede their progress, or walk delicately beside them, talking softly, respectfully, with that perfect propriety of diction and address which he had always at command. "Soapy Sam," muttered Henry from behind the kiosk. The two on the bridge moved on. They came towards Henry, strolling slowly and talking. The well-known personage was apparently telling an amusing story, for Charles was all attention and all smiles. "As Chang was saying to me the other night," Henry prospectively and unctuously quoted Charles. They left the bridge, and turned along the Quai du Mont Blanc. Charles's rather high laugh sounded above the current of their talk. They paused at the Hotel des Bergues. The eminent person mounted its steps; Charles accompanied him up the steps and inside. Probably the eminent person wished, by calling on some one there, to shake off Charles before going to his own hotel. But he had not shaken off Charles, who was of a tenacious habit. "Calling on the Latin Americans," Henry commented. "Wants to have a drink and a chat without Charles. Won't get it, poor chap. Well, I shall sleuth around till they come out. I'm going to trail Charles home to his bed, if it takes all night." He settled himself on the parapet of the Quai and watched the hotel entrance. He did not have to wait long. In some minutes Charles came out alone. He looked, thought Henry, observing him furtively from under his pulled down hat brim, a little less elated than he had appeared five minutes earlier. His self-esteem had suffered some blow, thought Henry, who knew Charles's mentality. Mentality: that was the word one used about Charles, as if he had been a German during the late war (Germans having, as all readers of newspapers will remember, mentalities). Charles walked rapidly across the bridge, towards the road that led to his own châlet, a mile out of the town. Henry, keeping his distance, hurried after him, through the steep, silent, sleeping city, up on to the dusty, tram-lined, residential road above it, till Charles stopped at a villa gate and let himself in. Then Henry turned back, and tramped drowsily down the dusty road beneath the moonless sky, and down through the steep, sleeping city, and across the Pont des Bergues, and so to the Quai du Seujet and the Allée Petit Chat, which lay dense and black and warm in shadow, and was full of miawling cats, strange sounds, and queer acrid smells. The drainage system of the St. Gervais quarter was crude. In the stifling bedroom of his crazy tenement, Henry undressed and sleepily tumbled into bed as the city clock struck two. In the dawn, below the miawling of lean cats and the yelping of dogs, he heard the lapping and shuffling of water, and thought of boats and beating oars. 19 To what cold seas of inchoate regret, of passionate agnosticism as to the world's meanings, if any, does one too often wake, and know not why! Henry, on some mornings, would wake humming (as the queer phrase goes) with prosperity, and spring, warm and alive, to welcome the new day. On other mornings it would be as if he shivered perplexed on the brink of a fathomless abyss, and life engulfed him like chill waters, and he would strive, defensively, to divest himself of himself and be but as one of millions of the ant-like creatures that scurry over the earth's face, of no more significance to himself than were the myriad others. He could just achieve this state of impersonality while he lay in bed. But when he got up, stood on the floor, looked at the world no longer from beyond its rim but from within its coils, he became again enmeshed, a creature crying "I, I, I," a child wanting Pears' soap and never getting it, a pilgrim here on earth and stranger. Then the seas of desolation would swamp him and he would sink and sink, tumbled in their bitter waves. In such a mood of causeless sorrow he woke late on the morning after he had dined with Dr. Franchi. To keep it at arms' length he lay and stared at his crazy, broken shutters, off which the old paint flaked, and thought of the infinite strangeness of all life, a pastime which very often engaged him. Then he thought of some one whom he very greatly loved, and was refreshed by that thought; and, indeed, to love and be loved very greatly is the one stake to cling to in these troubled seas, the one unfailing life-buoy. Then, turning his mind into practical channels, he thought of hate, and of Charles Wilbraham, and of how best to strive that day to compass him about with ruin. So meditating, he splashed himself from head to foot with cold water, dressed, and sallied forth from his squalid abode to the nearest café. Coffee and rolls and the Swiss morning papers and the clear jolly air of the September morning put heart into him, as he sat outside the café by the lake. Opening his paper, he read of "Femme coupée en morceaux" and "L'Affaire Svensen," and then a large heading, "Disparition de Lord Burnley." Henry started. Here was news indeed. And he had failed to get hold of it for his paper. Lord Burnley, it seemed, had been strolling alone about the city in the late afternoon; many people had seen him in the Rue de la Cité and the neighbourhood. He had even been observed to enter a bookshop. The rest was silence. From that bookshop he had not been seen to emerge. The bookseller affirmed that he had left after spending a few minutes in the shop. No further information was to hand. "_Cherchez la femme_," one comic paper had the audacity to remark, à propos l'affaire Svensen and Burnley. Even Svensen and Burnley, so pure-hearted, so public-spirited, so League-minded, were not immune from such ill-bred aspersions. 20 The elegant and scholarly Spaniard, Luiz Vaga, strolled by. He wore a canary-coloured waistcoat and walked like a fastidious and graceful bullfinch. He stopped beside Henry's breakfast-table, cocked his head on one side, and said, "Hallo. Good-morning. Heard the latest news?" Henry admitted that he had heard no news later than that in the morning press. "Chang's gone now," said Vaga. "Gone to join Svensen and Burnley. I regret to say that he was last seen, late last night, paying a call on my fellow-countrymen from South America at Les Bergues hotel. Serious suspicion rests on these gentlemen, for poor Chang has not been heard of since." "Somehow," Henry said thoughtfully, "I am not surprised. L'addition, s'il vous plaît. No, I cannot say I am surprised. I rather thought that there would be more disappearances very shortly. Burnley and Chang. A good haul.... Who saw him going into the Bergues?" "Our friend Wilbraham, who was out late with him last night. And the Bergues people don't deny it. But they say he left again, soon after midnight. The hall porter, who has, it is presumed, been corrupted, confirms this. But he never returned to his hotel. Poor Burnley and Chang! Two good talkers, scholars, and charming fellows. There are few such, in this vulgar age. It is taking the best, this unseen hand that strikes down our delegates in their prime. So many could be spared.... But God's will must be done. These South Americans are its very fitting tools, for they don't care what they do, reckless fellows. Mind you, I don't accuse them. Personally I should be more inclined to suspect the Zionists, or the Bolshevik refugees, or your Irishmen, or some of the Unprotected Minorities, or the Poles, or the Anti-Vivisection League, who are very fierce. But, for choice, the Poles; anyhow as regards Burnley. There were certain words once publicly spoken by Burnley to the Polish delegation about General Zeligowsky which have rankled ever since. Zeligowsky has many wild disbanded soldiers at his command.... However--Chang, anyhow, went to see the South Americans, and has not emerged. There we are." "There we are," Henry thoughtfully agreed, as they strolled over the Pont du Mont Blanc. "And what, then, is Wilbraham's explanation of the affair Chang?" Vaga shrugged his shoulders. "Our friend Wilbraham is too discreet to make allegations. He merely states the fact--that he saw Chang into the Bergues between twelve and one and left him there.... I gather that he accompanied him into the hotel, but did not stay there long himself. I can detect a slight acrimony in his manner on the subject, and deduce from it that he was not perhaps encouraged by Dr. Chang or his hosts to linger. I flatter myself I know Wilbraham's mentality fairly well--if one may be permitted that rather opprobrious word." "Yes, indeed," Henry said. "It is precisely what Wilbraham has. I know it well." "In that case, I believe if you had heard Wilbraham on this matter of his call at Les Bergues that you would agree with me that his importance suffered there some trifling eclipse." "There may be other reasons," said Henry, "in this case, for the manner you speak of.... But I won't say any more now." He bit off the stream of libel that had risen to his lips and armed himself in a careful silence, while the Spaniard cocked an inquiring dark eye at his brooding profile. In the Jardin Anglais they overtook Dr. Franchi and his niece, making their way to the Assembly Hall. The ex-cardinal was greatly moved. "Poor Dr. Chang," he lamented, "and Burnley too, of all men! A wit, a scholar, a philosopher, a metaphysician, a theologian, a man of affairs. In fine, a man one could talk to. What a mind! I am greatly attached to Lord Burnley. They must be found, gentlemen. Alive or (unthinkable thought) dead, they must be found. The Assembly must do nothing else until this sinister mystery is unravelled. We must employ detectives. We must follow every clue." Miss Longfellow said, "My! Isn't it all quite too terribly sinister! Don't you think so, Mr. Beechtree?" Henry said he did. 21 They reached the Assembly Hall. The lobby, buzzing with delegates, Secretariat, journalists, Genevan syndics, and excitement, was like a startled hive. The delegates from Cuba, Chili, Bolivia, and Paraguay, temporarily at one, were informing the eager throng who crowded round them that Dr. Chang had left the Bergues hotel, after a chat and a whisky with the delegate from Paraguay, at twelve-thirty precisely. The delegate from Paraguay had gone out with him and had left him on the Pont des Bergues. He had said that he was going to cross this bridge and stroll round the old _cité_ before going to bed, as he greatly admired the picturesque night aspect of these ancient streets and houses that clustered round the cathedral. He had then, presumably, made his way to this old, tortuous and unsafe maze of streets, so full of dark archways, trap-doors, cellars, winding stairways, evil smells, and obscure alleys. ("These alleys," as a local guide-book coldly puts it, "are not well inhabited, but the visitor may safely go through those of houses 5 and 17." Had Dr. Chang, perhaps, been through, part of the way through, numbers 4 or 16 instead?) "That's right; put it on the _cité_," muttered Grattan, who was fond of this part of Geneva, for he often dined there, and who admired the representatives of the South American states as hopeful agents of crime and mystery. No evidence, it seemed, was forthcoming that any one had seen Dr. Chang in the _cité_, but then, as the delegate from Paraguay remarked, even the inhabitants of the _cité_ must sleep sometimes. Police and detectives had early been put to work to search the cathedral quarter. Systematically they were making inquiries in it, street by street, house by house. Systematically, too, others were making inquiries in the old St. Gervais quarter. "But police detective work is never any good," as Henry, a well-read person in some respects, remarked. "It is well known that one requires non-constabulary talent." 22 The bell rang, and a shaken and disorganised Assembly assembled in the hall. The Deputy-President, in an impassioned speech, lamented the sinister disappearance of his three so eminent colleagues. As he remarked, this would not do. Some evil forces were at work, assaulting the very life of the League, for it must now be apparent that these disappearances were not coincidences, but links in a connected chain of crime. What and whose was the unseen hand behind these dastardly deeds? What secret enemies of the League were so cunningly and assiduously at work? Was murder their object, or merely abduction? Whose turn would it be next? (At this last inquiry a shudder rippled over the already agitated assembly.) But MM. les Délégués might rest assured that what could be done was being done, both for the discovery of their eminent colleagues, the detection of the assaulters, and the aversion of such disasters in future. At this point the delegate for Greece leapt to his feet. "_What_," he demanded, "is being done with this last object? What provision is being made for the safety of our persons?" His question was vigorously applauded, while the English interpreter, quite unheard, explained it to those in the hall who lacked adequate knowledge of the French language. The Deputy-President was understood to reply that it was uncertain as yet what effective steps could be taken, but that all the forces of law and order in Geneva had been invoked, and that MM. les Délégués were hereby warned not to go about alone by night, or, indeed, much by day, and not to venture into obscure streets or doubtful-looking shops. Mademoiselle the delegate from Roumania demanded the word. Mademoiselle the delegate for Roumania was a large and buxom lady with a soft, mellifluous voice that cooed like a turtle-dove's when she spoke eloquently from platforms of the wrongs of unhappy women and poor children. This delegate was female indeed. Not hers the blue-stocking sexlessness of the Scandinavian lady delegates, with their university degrees, their benign, bumpy foreheads, and their committee manners. She had been a mistress of kings; she was a very woman, full of the _élan_ of sex. When she swam on to the platform and turned her eyes to the ceiling, it was seen that they brimmed with tears. "Mon Dieu, M. le Vice-Président," she ejaculated. "Mon Dieu!" And proceeded in her rich, voluptuous voice to dwell on the iniquities of the traffic in women and children all over the world. The nets of these traffickers were spread even in Geneva--that city of good works--and who would more greatly desire to make away with the good men of the League of Nations than these wicked traffickers? How well it was known among them that Lord Burnley, Dr. Svensen, and Dr. Chang held strong opinions on this subject.... At this point a French delegate leaped to his feet and made strong and rapid objection to these accusations. No one more strongly than his pure and humane nation disliked this iniquitous traffic in flesh and blood, but the devil should have his due, and there was no proof that the traffickers were guilty of the crimes now under discussion. Much might be allowed a lady speaker in the height of her womanly indignation, which did credit to her heart and sex, but scarcely so much as that. For a moment it looked like a general squabble, for other delegates sprang to their feet and called out, and the interpreters, dashing round the hall with notebooks, could scarcely keep pace, and every one was excited except the Japanese, who sat solemnly in rows and watched. For the hold, usually so firm, exercised by the chair over the Assembly, had given way under the stress of these strange events, and in vain did the Deputy-President knock on the table with his hammer and cry "Messieurs! Messieurs! La parole est à Mademoiselle la Déléguée de la Roumanie!" But he could not repress those who called out vehemently that "Il ne s'agit pas à present de la traite des femmes; il s'agit seulement de la disparition de Messieurs les Délégués!" And something unconsidered was added about those states more recently admitted to the League, which had to be hastily suppressed. Mademoiselle la Déléguée on the platform continued meanwhile to coo to heaven her indignation at the iniquitous traffic in these unhappy women, until the Deputy-President, in his courteous and charming manner, suggested in her ear that she should, for the sake of peace, desist, whereupon she smiled and bowed and swept down into the hall, to be surrounded by congratulating friends shaking her by the hand. "M. Menavitch demande la parole," announced the Deputy-President, who should have known better. The delegate for the Serb-Croat-Slovene state stood up in his place (it was scarcely worth while to ascend the platform for his brief comments) and remarked spitefully that he had just (as so often) had a telegram from Belgrade to the effect that a thousand marauding Albanians had crossed their frontier and were invading Serbia, and that, to his personal knowledge, there was a gang of these marauders in Geneva, and, in his view, the responsibility for any ruffianly crime committed in this city was not far to seek. He then sat down, amid loud applause from the Greeks and cries of "shame" from the English-speaking delegates. A placid Albanian bishop rose calmly to reply. He, too, it seemed, had had a telegram from the seat of his government, and his was about the Serbs, but before he had time to state its contents the Deputy-President stayed the proceedings. "The session," he said, "cannot be allowed to degenerate into an exchange of international personalities." "And why not?" inquired the Belfast voice of the delegate from Ulster. "I'd say the Pope of Rome had some knowledge of this. I wouldn't put it past him to have plotted the whole thing." "Ask the Black and Tans," his Free State colleague was naturally moved to retort. "My God," whispered the Secretary-General to the Deputy-President. "If the Irish are off.... We must stop this." Fortunately, here the delegates for Paraguay eased the situation by proposing that the question of the disappearance of delegates should be referred to a committee to be elected for that purpose, and that the voting for that committee should begin forthwith. (The South American delegates always welcomed the appointment of committees, for they always hoped to be on them.) Lord John Lester, one of the delegates from Central Africa, who was less addicted to committees, thinking that their methods lacked expedition, rose to protest, but was overruled. The Assembly as a whole would obviously feel happier about this affair if it were in committee hands, so the elections were proceeded with at once. The delegate for Central Africa resigned himself, only remarking that he hoped at least that the sessions of the committee would be public, for as he had often said, publicity was the life blood of the League. Journalists in the Press Gallery breathed a sigh of disappointment. "In another minute," said the _Times_ to Henry, "we should have had the Poles accusing the Lithuanians, the Greeks the Turks, the Turks the Armenians, and every one the Germans. Already the French are running round with a tale about the Germans having done it out of revenge for the Silesian decision. Probably it's quite true. Only I back the Bolshevik refugees to have had a hand in it somewhere too. Well, I shall go lobbying, and hear the latest." Henry too went lobbying. In the lobby something of a fracas was proceeding between a member of the Russian delegation and a Bolshevik refugee. It seemed that the latter was accusing the former of having been responsible for the disappearance of Dr. Svensen, who had always had such a kind heart for starving Russians, and who had irritated the Whites in old days by sending money to the Bolshevik government for their relief. The accusing refugee, who looked a hairy ruffian indeed, was supported by applause from a claque of Finns, Ruthenians, Lithuanians, Esthonians, Latvians, and others who had a dislike for the Russian Empire. M. Kratzky's well-earned nickname, "Butcher of Odessa," was freely hurled at him, and the Slavs present were all in an uproar, as Slavs will be if you excite them. Gravely, from a little way off, a group of Japanese looked on. "Obviously," the _Times_ murmured discreetly, "the Bolshies think attack the best form of self-defence. I'm much mistaken if they don't know something of this business." For it was well known that the exiled Bolsheviks were vexed at the admission of monarchist Russia to the League, and might take almost any means (Russians, whether White or Red, being like that) of showing it. "An enemy hath done this thing," murmured the gentle voice of Dr. Silvio Franchi to Lord John Lester, who had walked impatiently out of the Assembly Hall when the voting began, because he did not believe that a committee was going to be of the least use in finding his friends. He turned courteously towards the ex-cardinal, whom he greatly liked. "What discord, where all was harmony and brotherhood!" continued Dr. Franchi sadly. "Not quite all. Never quite all, even before," corrected Lord John, who, though an idealist, faced facts. "There were always elements of ... But we were on the way; we were progressing. And now--this." He waved his hand impatiently at the vociferous Slavs, and then at the door of the Assembly Hall. "All at one another's throats; all hurling accusations; all getting telegrams from home about each other; all playing the fool. And there are some people who say there is no need for a League of Nations in such a world!" 23 Impatiently Lord John Lester pushed his way through the chattering crowds in the lobby, and out into the street. He wanted to breathe, and to get away from the people who regarded the recent disasters mainly as an excitement, a news story, or a justification for their international distastes. To him they were pure horror and grief. They were his friends who had disappeared; it was his League which was threatened. Moodily he walked along the paths of the Jardin Anglais; broodingly he seated himself upon a bench and stared frowning at the _jet d'eau_, and suspected, against his will, the Spanish and Portuguese Americans. A large lady in purple, walking on high-heeled shoes as on stilts, and panting a little from the effort, stopped opposite him. "Such a favour!" she murmured. "I told my husband it was too much to ask. But no, he would have it. He made me come and speak to you. I've left him over there by the fountain." She creaked and sat down on the bench, and Lord John, who had risen as she addressed him, sat down too, wondering how most quickly to get away. "The Union," said the lady; and at that word Lord John bent towards her more attentively. "Lakeside branches. We're starting them, my husband and I, in all the lake villages. So important; so necessary. These villages are terribly behind the times. They simply _live_ in the past. And what a past! Picturesque if you will--but not progressive--oh, no! So some of us have decided that there _must_ be a branch of the Union in every lake village. We have brought a little band of organisers over to Geneva to-day, to attend the Assembly. But the Assembly is occupied this morning in electing committees. Necessary, of course; but no mention of the broader principles on which the League rests can be made until the voting is over. So we are having a little business meeting in an office off the Rue Croix d'Or. And when my husband and I caught sight of you he said to me, 'If only we could get Lord John to come right away now and address a few words to our little gathering--oh, but really quite a few--its dead bones would live!' Now, do I ask too much, Lord John?" "My dear lady," said Lord John, "I'm really sorry, but I simply haven't the time, I wish you all the luck in the world, but----" The purple lady profoundly sighed. "I _told_ my husband so. It was too much to ask. He's a colonel, you know--an Anglo-Indian--and always goes straight for what he wants, never hesitating. He _would_ make me ask you; ... but at least we have your good wishes, Lord John, haven't we?" "Indeed, yes." "The motto of our little village branches," she added as she rose, "is _Si vis pacem, para bellum_. Or, in some villages, _Si vis bellum, para pacem_. Both so true, aren't they? Now which do you think is the best?" Lord John Lester looked down at her in silence, momentarily at a loss for an answer. "Really, my dear lady, ... I'm afraid I don't like either at all. In fact, neither in any way expresses the ideals or principles of the League." She looked disappointed. "Now, you _don't_ say so! But those are the lines we're founding our branches on. One has to be so careful, don't you think, or a branch may get on the wrong lines, with all these peace cranks about. And every branch has its influence. They're ignorant in these lake villages, but they do mean well, and they're only anxious to learn. If only you would come and tell our little organising band how we _ought_ to start them!" Lord John, having taken the lady in, from her topmost purple feathers to her pin-like heels, decided that, in all probability, she had not got a League mind. And she and the Anglo-Indian colonel (who probably had not got this type of mind either, for Anglo-Indian colonels so exceedingly often have another) were going to start branches of the League of Nations Union all up the lake, to be so many centres of noxious, watered-down, meaningless League velleity, of the type which he, Lord John, found peculiarly repugnant. Perhaps, after all, it might be his duty to go and say a few wholesome words to the little organising band assembled in the office off the Rue Croix d'Or. Yes; it was obviously his duty, and not to be shirked. With a sigh he looked at his watch. It need not take him more than half an hour, all told. "Very well," he said. "If you would find a very few words of any use----" She gave a joyful pant. "You're _too_ good, Lord John! _How_ grateful we shall all be! You shall tell us _all_ about how we ought to do it, and give us some really _good_ mottoes!... I remember helping with branches of the National Service League before the war, and they had such a nice motto--'The path of duty is the way to safety.' ... _That_ would be a good Union motto, don't you think? Or '_Festina lente_'--for we mustn't be impatient, must we? Or, 'Hands across the sea!' For _nothing_ is so important as keeping our _entente_ with France intact, is it.... The people of this country will not stand any weakening ... _you_ know.... My husband reads me that out of the paper at breakfast.... There he is ... Frederick, isn't this good of Lord John...." 24 Professor Arnold Inglis, that most gentle, high-minded and engaging of scholars, who most unfittingly represented part of a wild, hot, uncultured, tropical continent on the League, strolled out after lunch before the meeting of Committee 9 to see the flowers and fruit in the market-place. He was sad, because, like his fellow-delegate and friend, Lord John Lester, he hated this sort of disturbance. Like Lord John, he resented this violence which was assaulting the calm and useful progress of the Assembly, and was torn with anxiety for the fate of the three delegates. He wished he had Lord John with him this afternoon, that they might discuss the situation, but he had not seen him since he had left the Assembly that morning, so characteristically impatient at the prospect of the appointment of Committee 9. Professor Inglis stood by a fruit-stall and looked down absently at the lovely mass of brilliant fruit and vegetables that lay on it. Presently he became aware that some one at his side was pouring forth a stream of not unbeautiful language in a low, frightened voice. Looking round, he saw a small, ugly, malaria-yellow woman, gazing at him with frightened black eyes and clasped hands, and talking rapidly in a curious blend of ancient and modern Greek. What she appeared to be saying was:-- "I am persecuted by Turks; I beg you to succour me!" "But what," said Professor Inglis, also speaking in a blend, but with more of the ancient tongue in it that had hers, for he was more at home in classical than in modern Greek, "can I do? Can you not appeal to the police?" "I dare not," she replied. "I am in a minority in my house; I am an unprotected serving-woman, and there are three Turks in the same house who leave me no peace. Even now one of them is waiting for me with a stick because I had a misfortune and broke his hookah." "It is certainly," said the Professor, "a case for the police. If you do not like to inform them, I will do so myself. Tell me where you live." "Just round the corner here, in a house in that passage," she said. "Come with me and see for yourself, sir, if you doubt my word as to my sufferings." Professor Inglis hesitated for a moment, not wishing to be drawn into city brawls, but when she added, "I appealed to you, sir, because I have been told how you are always on the side of the unprotected, and also love the Greeks," his heart melted in him, and he forgot that, though he did indeed love the ancient Greeks, he did not very much care for the moderns of that race (such, for example, as M. Lapoulis, the Greek delegate), and only remembered that here did indeed seem to be a very Unprotected Minority (towards which persons his heart was always soft), and that the Minority was a woman, poor, ill-favoured, and malarial, talking a Greek more ancient than was customary with her race, and persecuted by Turks, which nation Professor Inglis, in spite of his League mind, could not induce himself to like. All these things he recollected as he stood hesitating by the fruit stall, and he reflected also that, until he had in some degree verified the woman's tale, he would not care to trouble the already much burdened police with it; so, with a little sigh, he turned to the poor woman and told her he would come with her to her house and see for himself, and would then assist her to take steps to protect herself. She thanked him profusely, and led the way to the passage which she had mentioned. 25 Chivalry, pity for the unprotected, love of the Greek tongue, dislike of Turks--by all these quite creditable emotions was Professor Inglis betrayed, as you may imagine, to his fate. 26 Henry Beechtree, when he left the Assembly Hall, had, for his part, fish to fry in the Secretariat, and thither he made his rapid way. He had arranged to meet Miss Doris Wembley, the secretary of Charles Wilbraham, that morning in her chief's room, and then to lunch with her. Henry was getting to know Miss Wembley very well. It seemed to him as if he had always known her, as, indeed, he had. He knew the things she would say before she said them. He knew which were the subjects she would expand on, and which would land her, puzzled and uninterested, in inward non-comprehension and verbal assent. She was a nice girl, a jolly girl, an efficient girl, and a very pretty girl. She liked Henry, whom she thought amusing, shabby, and queer. They began, of course, by talking of the fresh disappearances. "We've got bets in the Secretariat on who will be the next," she told him. "I've put my money on Branting. I don't know why, but I somehow feel he'll go soon. But some people say it'll be the S.G. himself.... Isn't it too awful for their wives, poor things? Poor little Madame Chang! They say she's being simply wonderful." "Wonderful," repeated Henry. "That's what widows are, isn't it? But is it, I wonder, enough to make one wonderful that one's husband should disappear alive? You see, they may not be dead, these poor delegates; they may exist, hidden away somewhere." "Oh, dear, yes, I hope so. Isn't it all too weird? Have you _any_ theories, Mr. Beechtree?" Henry looked non-committal and said that doubtless every one in Geneva had their private suspicions (often, for that matter, made public), and that he was no exception. He then turned the conversation on to Wilbraham's father-in-law, who was staying so privately in Geneva, and they had much fruitful talk on this and other subjects. 27 The Assembly, having elected the committee, and listened to a long speech from a Persian prince about the horrors of modern warfare, and a poem of praise from an eminent Italian Swiss on the beauties of the poet Dante, whose birthday was approaching, broke up for lunch. The committee (which was to be called Committee 9) was to meet at the Secretariat that afternoon and consider what steps should next be taken. It was a rather large committee, because nearly every one had been anxious to be on it. It consisted of delegates from France, Great Britain, Italy, Norway, Central Africa, Sweden, Belgium, Holland, Spain, Albania, Serbia, Brazil, Chili, Bolivia, Panama, Paraguay, Uruguay, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Greece, Poland, Lithuania, and Haiti. Its sessions were to be in private, in spite of the strongly expressed contrary desire of Lord John Lester. The chairman was the delegate for Paraguay. It was expected that he would carefully and skilfully guide the lines on which the committee should work so that the regrettable suspicions which had accidentally fallen on certain Latin Americans should be diverted into other and more deserving channels. 28 The proceedings of the first meeting of Committee No. 9 can be best reported in the words of the Assembly Journal for the following day. This journal, with its terse and yet detailed accounts of current happenings, its polite yet lucid style, and its red-hot topicality (for it is truly a journal), makes admirable reading for those who like their literature up-to-date. Those who attend the meetings of the Assembly are, as a matter of fact, excellently well-provided by the enterprise of the Secretariat with literature. A delegated or a journalist's pigeon-hole is far better than a circulating library. New every morning is the supply, and those who, in their spare hours, like a nice lie down and a nice read (all in two languages) shall have for their entertainment the Assembly Journal for the day, the Verbatim Record of the last meetings of the Assembly and Committees, selected press opinions of the affair (these are often very entertaining, and journalists approach them with the additional interest engendered by the hope that the comments they themselves have sent home to their papers may have been selected for quotation: in passing it may be observed that Henry Beechtree had, in this matter, no luck), and all kinds of documents dealing with every kind of matter--the Traffic in Women, Children, and Opium, the admission of a new State to the League, international disputes, disagreeable telegrams from one country about another, the cost of living in Geneva, the organisation of International Statistics, International Health, or International Education, the Economic Weapon of the League, the status or the frontiers of a Central European state, the desirability of a greater or a less great publicity, messages from the Esperanto Congress, and so on and so forth; every kind of taste is, in fact, catered for. To quote, then, the Journal for the day after the first meeting of the Committee for Dealing with the Disappearance of Delegates:-- "Committee No. IX. met yesterday, Wednesday, Sept. 8th, at 3.30 p.m., under the chairmanship of M. Croza (Paraguay). "The Chairman pointed out that the agenda before the Committee fell under several heads:-- "1. Deprecation of baseless suspicions and malicious aspersions. "2. Investigation into possible or probable motives for the assaults. "3. Consideration of the adoption of precautionary measures to safeguard in future the persons of delegates. "4. Organisation of complete house to house search of the city of Geneva by police. "5. Consideration of various suspicions based on reason and common sense. "In order to carry on these lines of inquiry, five sub-committees were appointed, each of which would report to the plenary committee day by day. "All the sittings of the sub-committees would be in private, as the publicity which had been demanded by one of the delegates from Central Africa would vitiate, in this case, the effectiveness of the inquiry. "Before the sub-committees separated, several members addressed the committee. M. Gomez (Panama) proposed that special attention should be given to the fact that Geneva at all times, but particularly during the sessions of the Assembly, was a centre of pestilential societies, among whom were to be found in large numbers Socialists, Bolshevists, Freemasons, and Jews. In his opinion, the headquarters of all these societies should be raided. Above all, it should be remembered that the delegates were all brothers in friendship, and as such were above the suspicion of any but the basest minds. "M. Chapelle (France) said this was indeed true of the delegates, but that it would be a mistake if the committee should not keep its mind open to all possibilities, and it must be remembered that some of the nations most recently admitted to the League had bands of their fellow-countrymen in Geneva, who were undoubtedly sore in spirit over recent economic and political decisions, and might (without, well understood, the sanction of their delegates) have been guilty of this attack on the personnel of the League by way of revenge. "Signor Nelli (Italy) strongly deprecated the suggestion of M. Chapelle as unworthy of the spirit of fraternity between nations which should animate members of the League. "After some further discussion of Item 5 of the agenda, it was agreed to leave it to the sub-committee appointed to consider it, and the committee then broke up into five sub-committees." The Journal, always discreet, sheltered under the words "further discussion of Item 5" a good deal of consideration of various suspicions based on reason and common sense. Most members of the committee, in fact, had their suggestions to make; in committee people always felt they could speak more freely than in the Assembly, and did so. Bolshevist refugees, bands of marauding Poles disbanded from General Zeligowski's army, Sinn Feiners, Orangemen, Albanians, Turks, unprotected Armenians, Jugo-Slavs, women-traffickers, opium merchants, Greeks, Zionists, emissaries from Frau Krupp, Mormons, Americans, Indians, and hired assassins from _l'Intransigeant_ and the _Morning Post_--all these had their accusers. Finally Mr. Macdermott (Ulster) said he would like to point out what might not be generally known, that there was a very widespread Catholic society of dubious morals and indomitable fanaticism, which undoubtedly had established a branch in Geneva for the Assembly, and much might be attributable to this. It was this suggestion which finally caused the chairman to break the committee hastily up into its sub-committees. And, as has been said, none of this discussion found its way into the very well-edited Journal, though it would appear after some days in the _procès-verbaux_. 29 After the committee broke up, Fergus Macdermott from Belfast, who was not on one of the sub-committees, walked briskly away from the Secretariat, and had tea in company with the young man who represented the _Morning Post_, and who was an old school-fellow of his. Excited by his own utterances on the subject of Catholics, Fergus Macdermott suddenly remembered, while drinking his tea, what day it was. "My God," he remarked, profoundly moved, to Mr. Garth of the _Morning Post_, "it's the 8th of September." "What then?" inquired Mr. Garth, who was an Englishman and knew not days, except those on which university matches were to be played or races run or armistices celebrated. "What's the 8th?" The blue eyes of Mr. Macdermott gazed at him with a kind of kindling Orange stare. "The 8th," he replied, "is a day we keep in Ulster." "Do you? How?" "By throwing stones," said Mr. Macdermott, simply and fervently. "At processions, you know. It's a great Catholic day--like August 15th--I forget why. Some Catholic foolery. The birthday of the Virgin Mary, I fancy. Anyhow we throw stones.... I wonder will there be any processions here?" "You can't throw stones if there are," his more discreet friend admonished him. "Pull yourself together, Fergus, and don't look so fell. These things simply aren't done outside your maniac country, you know. Remember where and what you are." The wild blue fire still leapt in Mr. Macdermott's Celtic eyes. His mind obviously still hovered round processions. "Of course," he explained, "one couldn't throw stones. Not abroad. But one might go and look on...." "Certainly not. Not if I can prevent you. You'll disgrace the League by shouting: 'To hell with the Pope.' I know you. If a procession is anywhere in the offing, it will make you feel so at home that you'll lose your head entirely. Go and find O'Shane and punch his head if you want to let off steam. He'll be game, particularly as it's one of his home festivals too. You're neither of you safe to have loose on the Nativity of the B.V.M., if that's what it is." Macdermott gazed at the lake with eyes that dreamed of home. "It'd be a queer thing," he murmured, "if there wouldn't be a procession somewhere to-day, even in this godly Protestant city...." "Well, in case there should, and to keep you safe, you'd better come and dine with me at eight at my inn. Don't dress. I must go and send off my stuff now. See you later, then." Fergus Macdermott, left alone, strolled along towards his own hotel, but when he was half-way to it a clashing of bells struck on his ear, and reminded him that the Catholic Church of Notre Dame was only a few streets away. No harm to walk that way, and see if anything was doing. He did so. On the door of the church a notice announced that the procession in honour of the Nativity of Our Lady would leave the church at eight o'clock and pursue a route, which was given in detail. "Well, I can't see it," said Fergus Macdermott. "I shall be having dinner." He went back to his hotel and typed out a manifesto, or petition, as he called it, for presentation to the Assembly when quieter times should supervene and make the consideration of general problems possible again. The manifesto was on the subject of the tyranny exercised over Ulster by the Southern Free State Government. At the same moment, in his room at the same hotel, Denis O'Shane, the Free State delegate, was typing _his_ manifesto, which was about the tyranny exercised over South Ireland by Ulster. At 7.45 Macdermott finished his document, read it through with satisfaction and remembered that he had to go and dine with Garth. He left his hotel with this intention, and could not have said at what point his more profound, his indeed innate intention, which was to go to the Church of Notre Dame, asserted itself. Anyhow, at eight o'clock, there he was in the Place Cornavin, arriving at the outskirts of the crowd which was watching the white-robed crucifer and acolytes leading the procession out of the open church doors and down the steps. Macdermott, blocked by the crowd, could hardly see. He felt in an inferior position towards this procession, barred from it by a kindly and reverent crowd of onlookers. In his native city things were different. He had here no moral support for his just contempt of Popish flummery. He did not want to do anything to the procession, merely to stare it down with the disgust it deserved, but this was difficult when he could only see it above bared heads. A voice just above him said, in French: "Monsieur cannot see. He would get a better view from this window here. I beg of you to come in, monsieur." Looking up, Macdermott saw the face of a kindly old woman looking down at him from the first-floor window of the high house behind him. Certainly, he admitted, he could not see, and he would rather like to. He entered the hospitable open door, which led into a shop, and ascended a flight of stone steps. On the top step, in the darkness of a narrow passage, a chloroformed towel was flung and held tight over his head and face, and he was borne to the ground. 30 Thus this young Irishman's strong religious convictions, which did him credit, betrayed him to his doom. But, incomprehensibly, doom in the sense (whatever sense that was) in which it had overtaken his fellow-delegates, was after all averted. He did not disappear into silence as they had. On the contrary, the kindly old woman who had rushed from the front window and bent over him as he lay unconscious on the stair-head, saw him presently open his eyes and stir, and heard the faint, bewildered murmur of "to hell with the Pope," which is what Orangemen say mechanically when they come to, as others may say, "Where am I?" Very soon he sat up, dizzily. "I was chloroformed," he said, "by some damned Republican. Where is the chap? Don't let him make off." But he was informed that this person had already disappeared. When the old lady of the house, hearing him fall, had come out and found him, there had been no trace of either his assaulter or of the chloroformed towel. The kindly old lady was almost inclined to think that monsieur must have fainted, and fancied the Republican, the chloroform, and the attack. Fergus Macdermott, who never either fainted or fancied, assured her that this was by no means the case. "It's part, no doubt," he said, "of this Sinn Fein plot against delegates. Why they didn't put it through in my case I can't say. I suppose they heard you coming.... But what on earth did they _mean_ to do with me? Now, madame, we must promptly descend and make inquiries as to who was seen to leave your front door just now. There is no time to be lost.... Only I feel so infernally giddy...." The inquiries he made resulted in little. Some standers-by had seen two men leave the house a few minutes since, but had observed nothing, neither what they were like nor where they went. No, it had not been observed that they were of South Irish aspect. It seemed hopeless to track them. The old lady said that she lived there alone with her husband, above the shop; but that, of course, any scoundrel might stray into it while the door stood open, and lurk in ambush. "How did they guess that the old lady was going to invite me in?" Macdermott wondered. "If they did guess, that is, and if it was really part of the anti-delegate campaign. Of course, if not, they may merely have guessed she should ask some one (it may be her habit), and hidden in ambush to rob whoever it might be. But they didn't rob me.... It could be that this good old lady was in the plot herself, no less, for all she speaks so civil. But who is to prove that, I ask you? It's queer and strange...." Thus pondering, Fergus Macdermott took a cab and drove to the hotel where he was to dine with Garth, the representative of the _Morning Post_. He would be doing Garth a good turn to let him get in with the tale before the other papers; he would be able to wire it home straight away. The _Morning Post_ deserved that: a sound paper it was, and at times the only one in England that got hold of and stated the Truth. This attack on Macdermott proved conclusively to his mind, what he and the _Morning Post_ had from the first suspected and said, that the Irish Republicans were at the back of the whole business, helped, as usual, by German and Bolshevik money. "Ah, this proves it," said Macdermott, his blue eyes very bright in his white face as he drove along. As to the procession, he had forgotten all about it. 31 Mademoiselle Bjornsen, substitute delegate for one of the Scandinavian countries, a doctor of medicine, and a woman of high purpose and degree, of the type which used to be called, in the old days when it flourished in Great Britain, _feminist_, often walked out in the evening for a purpose which did her great credit. She was of those good and disinterested women who care greatly for the troubles of their less fortunate, less well-educated and less well-principled sisters, and who often patrol streets in whatever city they happen to find themselves, with a view to extending the hand of succour to those of their sex who appear to be in error or in need. On this evening of the 8th of September, Mlle. Bjornsen was starting out, after her dinner at the Hôtel Richemond, on her nightly patrol, when she was joined by Mlle. Binesco from Roumania, a lady whose rich and exuberant personality was not, perhaps, wholly in accord with her own more austere temperament, but whom she acknowledged to abound in good intentions and sisterly pity for the unfortunate of her sex. For her part, Mlle. Binesco did not regard Mlle. Bjornsen as a very womanly woman, but respected her integrity and business-like methods, and felt her to be, perhaps, an effective foil to herself. It may be observed that there are in this world mental females, mental males, and mental neutrals. You may know them by their conversation. The mental females, or womanly women, are apt to talk about clothes, children, domestics, the prices of household commodities, love affairs, or personal gossip. Theirs is rather a difficult type of conversation to join in, as it is above one's head. Mental males, or manly men, talk about sport, finance, business, animals, crops, or how things are made. Theirs is also a difficult type of conversation to join in, being also above one's head. Male men as a rule, like female women, and vice versa; they do not converse, but each supplies the other with something they lack, so they gravitate together and make happy marriages. In between these is the No-Man's Land, filled with mental neutrals of both sexes. They talk about all the other things, such as books, jokes, politics, love (as distinct from love affairs), people, places, religion (in which, though they talk more about it, they do not, as a rule, believe so unquestioningly as do the males and the females, who have never thought about it and are rather shocked if it is mentioned), plays, music, current fads and scandals, public persons and events, newspapers, life, and anything else which turns up. Their conversation is easy to join in, as it is not above one's head. They gravitate together, and often marry each other, and are very happy. If one of them makes a mistake and marries a mental male or a mental female, the marriage is not happy, for they demand conversation and interest in things in general, and are answered only by sex; they tell what they think is a funny story, and meet the absent eye and mechanical smile of one who is thinking how to turn a heel or a wheel, how to sew a frock or a field, how most cheaply to buy shoes or shares. And they themselves are thought tiresome, queer, unsympathetic, unwomanly or unmanly, by the more fully sexed partner they have been betrayed by love's blindness into taking unto themselves. This is one of life's more frequent tragedies, but had not affected either Mlle. Binesco, who was womanly, and had always married (so to speak) manly men, or Mlle. Bjornsen, who was neutral, and had not married any one, having been much too busy. Anyhow, these two ladies were at one in their quest to-night. Both, whatever their minds might be like, had warm feminine hearts. Geneva, that godly Calvinist city, was a poor hunting-ground on the whole for them. But they turned their steps to the old _cité_, rightly believing that among those ancient and narrow streets vice might, if anywhere, flit by night. "These wicked traffickers in human flesh and blood," observed Mlle. Binesco sighing (for she was rather stout), as they ascended the Rue de la Cité; "do not tell me they are not somehow behind the mysterious assaults on our unhappy comrades of the League. Never tell me so, for I will not believe it." "I will not tell you so," Mlle. Bjornsen, an accurate person, replied, "for I know nothing at all about it, nor does any one else. But to me it seems improbable, I sometimes think, mademoiselle, that there is some danger that the preoccupation which women like ourselves naturally feel with the suppression of this cruel trade and the rescue of its victims, may at times lead us into obsession or exaggeration. I try to guard myself against that. Moderation and exactitude are important." "Ah, there speaks the north. For me, mademoiselle, I cannot be moderate; it is a quality alien to my perhaps over-impetuous temperament. I have never been cautious--neither in love, hate, nor in the taking of risks. You will realise, Mademoiselle, that the risk you and I are taking to-night is considerable. Have we not been warned not to penetrate into the more squalid parts of the city by night? And we are not only delegates, but women. At any moment we might be attacked and carried off to some dwelling of infamy, there to wait deportation to another land." "I do not expect it," replied the Scandinavian lady, who had a sense of humour. A shrill giggle broke on their ears from a side street. Glancing down it, they saw a young girl, wearing like flags the paint and manner of her profession, and uttering at intervals its peculiar cry--that shrill, harsh laugh which had drawn the ladies' attention. "Ah!" a coo of satisfaction came from Mlle. Binesco. "_Voilà une pauvre petite!_" As the girl saw them, she darted away from them down the alley, obviously suspicious of their intentions. Quickly they followed; here, obviously, was a case for assistance and rescue. The kind mouth of Mlle. Bjornsen set in determination; her intelligent eyes beamed behind their glasses. The girl fluttered in front of them, still uttering the peculiar cry of her species, which to the good ladies was a desperate appeal for help, till she suddenly bolted beneath a low, dark archway. The ladies hesitated. Then, "I must follow her, poor girl," Mlle. Bjornsen remarked simply, for the courage of a thousand Scandinavian heroes beat in her blood. "And where you adventure, my dear friend," cried Mlle. Binesco, "I, a Roumanian woman and a friend of kings, will not be behind! We advance, then, in the name of humanity and of our unhappy sex!" 32 Humanity, compassion, womanly sympathy, and devotion to the cause of virtue--by these noble qualities these two poor ladies were lured to their fate. For it should be by now superfluous to say that, though they entered that archway, they did not emerge from it. 33 There also disappeared that night the good Albanian bishop, betrayed by who knew what of episcopal charity and response to appeals for succour from his fellow-countrymen, the helpless sheep of his flock, threatened by the wolfish atrocities of the ineffable Serb-Croat-Slovenes. It did indeed seem that this unseen hand was taking the highest types of delegate for its purposes so mysterious and presumably so fell. 34 Every one turned next morning with interest to the day's issue of "Press Opinions" to discover what the world's newspapers were saying of the tragic and extraordinary state of affairs in Geneva. They were saying, it seemed, on the whole, very much what might be expected of them. The American press, for instance, observed that the League, without the support of the United States, was obviously falling into the state of disruption and disintegration which had long since been prophesied. What was to be expected, when the Monroe Doctrine was being threatened continually by the bringing before the League of disputes between the South and Central American republics, disputes which, being purely American, could not possibly be settled by European intervention in any shape or form? On this question of the Monroe Doctrine, the security and utility of the whole League rested.... It was rumoured that it was the shaky attitude of the League on this point that was responsible for its present collapse.... ("Seems very like saying that America is behind the whole game," commented many readers.) The French press commented on the fact that no one had yet dared to lay a hand on the French delegates. "Whatever," it said, "may be thought of the other delegates, the whole world has agreed to see in France a nation so strong, so beneficent, and so humane, that it merits the confidence of humanity at large. Without it, no affairs could flourish. The tribute to the prestige of France evinced by this notable omission of assault cannot but be gratifying to all who love France. With the tragic disappearance of several English-speaking delegates, it might perhaps be natural to dispense with the tedious use of two languages where only one is necessary. No one listens to the interpretations into English of French speakers; the general chatter of voices and movement which immediately starts when the English interpreter begins, is surely sign enough of the general feeling on this point...." The more nationalist section of the Italian press--the _Popolo d'Italia_, for instance--prophesied, with tragic accuracy, that the Albanian delegate would very soon be among the victims of this criminal plot, in which it was not, surely, malicious to detect Yugo-Slav agency. It also spoke with admiration of the poet Dante. The Swiss press, in much distress, urged the clearing up of this tragic mystery, which so foully stained the records of the noble city of Geneva, so beautiful in structure, so chaste in habits, so idealistic in outlook, the centre of the intellectual thought of Europe, and, above all, so cheap to live in. For their part (so said _La Suisse_), they attributed these outrages to criminal agents from the hotels and shops of Brussels, Vienna, and other cities which might be mentioned, who had been sent to discredit Geneva as a safe and suitable home for the League. Fortunately, however, such discrediting was impossible: on the contrary, the cities discredited were the above-mentioned, which had hatched and put into execution such a wicked plot. The extracts selected from the British press spoke with various voices. The _Morning Post_ commented, without much distress, on the obvious disintegration and collapse of the League, which had always had within itself the seeds of ruin and now was meeting its expected Nemesis. Such preposterous houses of cards, said the _Morning Post_, cannot expect to last long in a world which is, in the main, a sensible place. It did not now seem probable that, as some said, Bolshevists were behind these outrages; on further consideration it was not even likely to be Irish traitors; for these sections of the public would doubtless approve the League, typical as it was of the folly which so strongly actuated themselves. Far more likely was it that their assaults were the work, misguided but surely excusable, of the Plain Man, irritated at last to execute judgment on these frenzied and incompetent efforts after that unprofitable dream of the visionary, a world peace. It was well known that the question of disarmament was imminent.... The _British Bolshevist_ (its leader, not its correspondent, who seldom got quoted by the _Press Bulletin_) agreed with the _Morning Post_ that the house of cards was collapsing because of its inherent vices, but was inclined to think that the special vice for which it was suffering retribution was its failure to deal faithfully with Article 18 of the Covenant, which concerned the publicity of treaties. The _British Bolshevist_ always had Article 18 a good deal on its mind. The _Times_ said that these strange happenings showed the importance of keeping on frank and friendly terms (the _Times_ often used these two incompatible adjectives as if they were synonymous) with France. They served to emphasise and confirm that _entente_ of which the British people were resolved to suffer no infringement. The _Daily News_ thought that the enemies of disarmament and of the various humanitarian efforts of the League were responsible for these assaults. The _Manchester Guardian_ correspondent said that at last the Assembly, formerly a little dull, had taken on all the interest of a blood and thunder melodrama.... 35 The days went by, and the nights. Why dwell on them, or, in detail, on the strange--or rather the now familiar, but none the less sinister--events which marked each? One could tell of the disappearance, one after another, of the prominent members of the Council--of the decoy of Signor Nelli, the chief Italian delegate, by messengers as from Fiume with strange rumours of Jugo-Slav misdeeds; of the sudden disappearance of Latin Americans from the Casino, whither they had gone to chat, to drink, and to play; of the silent stealing away of rows upon rows of Japanese, none knew how or why; of how Kristna, the distinguished Indian, was lured to meet a supposed revealer of a Ghandi anti-League plot. As full-juiced apples, waxing over-mellow, drop in a silent autumn night, so dropped these unhappy persons, delegate by delegate, to their unguessed at doom. And it would indeed appear as if there were some carefully deliberated design against the welfare of the League, for gradually it appeared that those taken had, on the whole, this welfare more at heart than those left; their ideals were more pacific, their hearts more single, their minds more League. The Turkish delegation, for example, did not disappear. Nor the Russian, nor the German, nor the Greek, nor the Serb-Croat-Slovene. In the hands of those left, the Assembly and its committees were less dangerous to the wars of the world than they had been before. The best, from a League stand-point, were gone. What, for instance, would happen to the disarmament question should it be brought up, with the most ardent members of the disarmament committee thus removed from the scene? But, indeed, how could that or any other question be brought up, in the present state of agitation, when all minds were set on the one problem, on how to solve this appalling mystery that spread its tentacles further every day? The only committee which sat, or attempted any business, was Committee 9, on the Disappearance of Delegates--and that was signally impotent to do more than meet, pass resolutions, and report on unavailing measures taken. The other committees, on humanitarian questions, on intellectual, financial, economic, political, and transit questions, were struck helpless. Not a frontier dispute, not an epidemic, not a drug, not so much as a White Slave, could be discussed. Truly the very League itself seemed struck to the heart. All the Assembly could do was meet, vote, pass resolutions, and make speeches about the horrors of the next war and the necessity of thwarting the foul plot against the wellbeing of the League. Meanwhile Central Europe rumbled, as usual, indeed as always, with disputes that might at any moment become blows. Affairs in Jugo-Slavia, in Hungary, in Greece, in Albania, in Czecho-Slovakia, in Poland, and in Russia, were not quiet. Greece and Turkey were hideously at war. Nor were the South and Central American republics free from unrest. Russia was reaching out its evil White hands to grasp and weld again into a vast unhappy whole its former constituent republics of Ukraine, Lithuania, Latvia, Esthonia, Tauride, and White Russia. There seemed every chance that it would shortly succeed in doing so. The nations growled everywhere like sullen dogs on fragile chains. Never had the League of Nations, in all its brief career, been more necessary, never less available. Not a grievance could be given that public airing from what is called a world platform, which is so beneficial to the airers, so apt at promoting fraternal feeling, so harmless to all concerned. Instead, grievances festered and went bad, and blood-poisoning was rapidly setting in. Not a voice could be raised, as many voices would have been raised, from that world-platform, to urge contending parties to refer their differences to the Court of International Justice, so ready and eager to adjudicate, to apply international conventions, whether general or particular, international custom as evidence for a general practice accepted as law, and teachings of the most highly qualified publicists as subsidiary means for the determination of rules of law. For all this is what these aged and wise judges sitting at the Hague were equipped and ready to do, if only the nations would ask them to do it. But it was not to be expected that the nations should make use of such a strange procedure for themselves, unless prompted and even urged thereto by the weight of opinion in the Assembly. Yes, Europe, and indeed the world, was, as always, in a parlous state, rushing on ruin with no hand raised to give it pause, even as in the evil old days before the conception and foundation of the League. The journalists were as busy as, and more profoundly happy than, they would have been had the Assembly been running its appointed course. They ran about picking up clues, Marconi-graphing messages to their papers about the latest disappearances, the latest theories, the newest rumours. Each became a private detective, pursuing a lone trail. Other journalists flocked to the scene; where they had come in their tens, they now came in their hundreds, for here was News. The Assembly of the League of Nations is not News, until it stumbles on mystery and disaster, becoming material for a shocker. The meeting together of organisations for the betterment of the world is not News, in the sense that their failure is. Deeply Henry, going about his secret and private business, intent and absorbed, pondered this question of News, what it is and what it is not. Crime is News; divorce is News; girl mothers are News; fabric gloves and dolls' eyes are, for some unaccountable reason, News; centenaries of famous men are, for some still stranger reason, News; railway accidents are News; the wrong-doing of clergymen is News; strangest of all, women are, inherently and with no activities on their part, News, in a way that men are not. Henry had often thought this very singular. He had read in accounts of public gatherings (such as criminal trials, tennis tournaments, boxing matches, etc.), such statements as "There were many well-dressed women present." These women had done nothing to deserve their fame; they were merely present, just as men were. But never had Henry read, "There were many well-dressed men present," for men were not News. To be News in oneself, without taking any preliminary action--that was very exciting for women. A further question arose: were women News to their own sex, or only to men? And were men perhaps News to women? "There were many well-dressed men present." ... Ah, that would be exciting reading for women, and perhaps a woman reporter would thrill to it and set it down. But men do not care how many men were present, or how well they were dressed, or what colour their hats and suits were. All sorts of articles and letters appear in the papers about women. Profound questions are raised concerning them. Should they smoke? Should they work? Vote? Take Orders? Marry? Exist? Are not their skirts too short, or their sleeves? Have they a sense of humour, of honour, of direction? Are spinsters superfluous? But how seldom similar inquiries are propounded about men. How few persons discuss superfluous bachelors, or whether the male arm or leg is an immodest sight, or whether men should vote. For men are not News. Anyhow, thought Henry, anyhow delegates became News the moment they disappeared. If you do wrong you are News, and if you have a bad accident, you are News, but if you mysteriously disappear, you are doubly and trebly News. To be News once in one's life--that is something for a man. Though sometimes it comes too late to be enjoyed. 36 In and out of the maze of ancient streets that are Old Geneva, to and fro along the alleys that lead through balconied, leaning houses, up and down obscure and sudden flights of stone steps, Henry wandered under the September moon. All day he had, with the help of Charles Wilbraham's unwitting secretary, tracked Charles Wilbraham. He knew how Charles had begun the morning by dictating proud and ponderous documents in his proud and ponderous voice, and talking to people who came in and out of his room; how he had then gone to the Assembly Hall and chatted in the lobby to every one of sufficient importance to be worth his while, including ex-Cardinal Franchi, who had of late been making friends with him, and with whom he had dined last night at the Château Léman; how then Charles had lunched with two Russians, a Greek, and a Pole, and Sir John Levis, his father-in-law, at the Café du Nord, hatching Henry did not know what (for the Nord was much too expensive for him) of anti-League mischief and crime; how after lunch Charles had attended the meetings of the sub-committees on the Disappearance of Delegates, going from one to another looking business-like and smug and as if he were at strictly private meetings, as indeed he was. Then up to his room for his tea (Charles never missed this meal) and down again to see how Sub-Committee 5 ("Consideration of Various Suspicions based on Reason and Common Sense") was getting on, and then up again to do some more work. (For there was this about Charles, as even Henry had to admit--he worked hard. Ambition, the last infirmity of noble minds, offensive and irritating quality as it is, has at least this one good fruit.) Then Charles had been to a large dinner given by the Canadian delegation to members of the Secretariat, and had made a facetious speech; and now, at eleven-thirty, he was walking about the old city, followed at some distance by Henry Beechtree. Charles was not alone. He had with him M. Kratzky from Russia, Sir John Levis, and a small, quiet Calvinist minister, whom Henry had lately seen about Geneva. The four gentlemen turned out of the Rue du Perron down the narrow, ancient and curious Passage de Monnetier, and out of that into a deep arched alley running through a house into another street. Henry, watching from the corner of the Passage de Monnetier, did not dare to follow nearer for some moments. When he had given them a little time, he softly tiptoed to the mouth of the alley. It was one of those deep cobbled passages that run through many houses in the old quarter. It was profoundly dark; Henry could only faintly discern the three figures half-way down it. They seemed to have stopped, and to be bending down as if looking for something on the ground. The spark of an electric torch gleamed suddenly, directed by the little clergyman; its faint disc of light swam over the dirty floor of the passage, till it came to rest on an iron ring that lay flat to the ground. The clergyman seized this ring and jerked at it; after a moment it left the ground in his hand, and with it the flap of a trap-door. Whispers inaudible to Henry passed between the members of the party; then, one by one, the three figures descended through the open trap into the bowels of the earth, and the lid closed upon them. Henry tiptoed forward; should he follow? On the whole--no. On the whole he would wait until Wilbraham, his father-in-law, M. Kratzky, and the clergyman emerged. What, after all, would be the use of finding oneself underground with desperate, detected criminals, whose habit it apparently was to stick at nothing? What, after all, could he do? Henry was shivering, less from fear than excitement. Here, indeed, was a clue. Were they kept immured underground, these unfortunate captive delegates? And did Wilbraham and his criminal associates visit them from time to time with food and drink? Or without? With nothing, perhaps, but taunts? And how many more in Geneva knew of this trap-door and its secret? There were, every one knew, a number of these old _trappons_ in the city, leading usually to disused cellars; their presence excited no suspicion. Probably no one ever used the obscure and hidden trap in this dark alley. It was queer, how sure Henry felt that this curious nocturnal expedition on the part of Charles, his father-in-law, M. Kratzky and the Calvinist pastor had to do with the mystery of the delegates. He knew it beyond a doubt. Nor was he surprised. It came as a consummation of his suspicion and his hopes. Of Charles Wilbraham's villainy he had long been all but sure; of the villainy of M. Kratzky all the world knew; of the villainy of an ammunitions knight and a Calvinist pastor there needed little to convince Henry. But he knew that he must make sure. He must not go to the police, or to the committee, with an unproved tale. He must wait and investigate and prove. He waited, in the dark archway beneath the crazy jumble of houses, with the sudden voices and footfalls of the midnight city echoing from time to time in the dark streets beyond. He waited and waited and waited. Now and then a dog or a cat rushed by him, startling him. Then, after twenty minutes or so, he wearied of waiting. Weariness and curiosity defeated caution; he pulled up the trap-door by its ring and peered down into blackness. Blackness, stillness, emptiness, and a queer, mouldy smell. Henry sat on the hole's edge for a full minute, dangling his legs. Then, catching his breath a little (it may or may not have been mentioned that Henry was not very brave), he swung himself down on to a hard, earthy floor. It was a tunnel he was in; a passage about six feet high and four feet wide. How many feet or yards long was a more difficult and a much more interesting question. Feet? Yards? It might be miles. Henry's imagination bored through the impenetrable dark in front of the little moon thrown by his electric torch; through and along, through and along, towards what? The horrid four who had preceded him--where were they? Did they lurk, planning some evil, farther along the tunnel, just out of earshot? Or had they emerged by some other exit? Or were they even now returning, to meet Henry in a moment face to face, to brush by him as he pressed against the damp brick wall, to turn on him suddenly that swimming moon of light ... and then what? Charles Wilbraham was no taker of human life, Henry felt assured. He was too prudent, too respectable, too much the civil servant. M. Kratzky, on the other hand, _was_ a taker of human life--he did it as naturally as others would slay midges; while he breathed he slew. If Henry should be discovered spying, M. Kratzky's counsels would be all for making forthwith an end of Henry. Sir John Levis was an armament knight: members of the staff of the _British Bolshevist_ needed not to know more of him than that: the Calvinist minister was either a Calvinist minister, and that was bad, or a master-criminal of the underworld disguised as a Calvinist minister, and that was worse. Or both of these. Four master-criminals of the underworld--these intriguing, appalling creatures, so common in the best fiction, so rare even in the worst life--if one were to meet four of them together in a subterranean passage.... Could human flesh and nerves endure it? Henry, with his shuddering dislike of seeing even a goldfish injured or slain, shrank far more shudderingly from being injured or slain himself. The horrid wrench that physical assault was--and then, perhaps, the sharp break with life, the plunge into a blank unknown--and never to see again on this earth the person whom one very greatly loved.... As has been said, Henry was not brave. But he was, after all, a journalist on the scent of a story, and that takes one far; he was also a hunter in pursuit of a hated quarry, and that takes one farther. Henry crossed himself, muttered a prayer and advanced down the passage, his torch a lantern before his feet, his nerves shivering like telegraph wires in a winter wind, but fortunately not making the same sound. 37 On and on and on. It was cold down there, like death, and bitter like death, and dark. Rats scuffled and leaped. Once Henry trod on one of them; it squeaked and fled, leaving him sick and cold. His imagination was held and haunted by the small quiet pastor; he seemed, on the whole, the worst of the four miscreants. A sinister air of deadly badness there had been about him.... Lines ran in and out of Henry's memory like cold mice. Something about "a grim Genevan minister walked by with anxious scowl." ... Horrid.... It made you sweat to think of him. Then on the passage there opened another passage, running sharply into it from the right. That was odd. Which should be followed? Henry swung his flashlight up each in turn, and both seemed the same narrow blackness. He advanced a few steps, and on his left yet another turning struck out from the main tunnel. "My God," Henry reflected, "the place is a regular catacomb." If one should lose oneself therein, one might wander for days, as one did in catacombs.... Having no tallow candle, but only an electric torch, one might eat one's boots ... the very rats.... Not repressing a shudder, Henry stood hesitating at the cross-roads, looking this way and that, his ears strained to listen for sounds. And presently, turning a corner, he perceived that there were sounds--footsteps and low voices, advancing down the left-hand passage towards him. Quickly shutting his light, he stepped back till he came to the right-hand turning, and went a little way up it, to where it sharply bent. Just round the corner he stopped, and stood hidden. He was gambling on the chance that whoever was coming would advance, back or forward, along the main tunnel when they struck into it. If, on the other hand, they crossed this and turned up his passage, he could hastily recede before them until perhaps another turning came, or possibly some exit, or until they turned on him that horrid moon of light and caught him.... Well, life is a gamble at all times, and more particularly to those who play the spy. Henry listened. The steps came nearer. They had a queer, hollow sound on the earthy floor. Low voices murmured. It came to Henry suddenly that these were not the voices of Charles Wilbraham, of Sir John Levis, of M. Kratzky, or, presumably then, of the little pastor. These were voices more human, less deadly. The footsteps reached the main passage, and then halted. "Here's a puzzle," said a voice. "Which way, then? Will we divide, or take the one road?" And then Henry, though he loved not Ulster, thanked God and came forward. At the sound of his advance a flashlight was swung upon him, and the Ulster voice said, "Put them up!" Henry put them up. "It's all right, man. It's only Beechtree," said another voice, after a moment's inspection, and Henry, though he loved not the _Morning Post_, blessed its correspondent. "Good Lord, you're right.... What are you doing here, Beechtree? Is your paper in this damned Republican plot, as well as Sinn Fein, Bolsheviks, Germans, and the Pope? I wouldn't put it past the _British Bolshevist_ to have a finger in it----" "Indeed, no," said Henry. "You are quite mistaken, Macdermott. This plot is being run by armament profiteers, White Russia, and Protestant ministers. They're all down here doing it now. I am tracking them. And His Holiness, you remember, sent an encouraging message to the Assembly----" "The sort of flummery he _would_ encourage.... I beg your pardon, Beechtree. We will not discuss religion: not to-night. Time is short. How did _you_ get into this rat-trap? And whom, precisely, are you tracking?" "Through a _trappon_ in an archway off the Passage de Monnetier. And I am tracking Wilbraham, Sir John Levis, M. Kratzky, and a Protestant clergyman, who all preceded me through it. But I don't know in the least where they have got to. There are so many ramifications in this affair. I took it for a single tunnel, but it seems to be a regular system." "It is," said Garth. "It extends on the other side of the water too. We got into it this evening through that house in the Place Cornavin where Macdermott was bilked by a Sinn Feiner." "We had our suspicions of that house ever since," Macdermott went on; "so we went exploring this evening, and by the luck of God they'd gone out and left the door on the latch, so we slipped in and searched around, and found a trap-door in a cupboard--where they'd have shoved me down if they hadn't given up the idea half-way. It lets you down into a passage just like this, that runs down to the water and comes out in the courtyard of one of those tumble-down old pigeon-cotes by the Quai du Seujet. We came out there, and then tried over this side, through a trap by the Molard jetty I'd noticed before, and it led us here. There are dozens of these _trappons_ on both sides. Lots of them are inside houses. I always thought they led only to cellars.... As to your four chaps, wherever they've got to, no doubt they're exploring too. Wilbraham in a plot! Likely." "It is," said Henry. "Very likely indeed. There are plenty of facts about Wilbraham you don't know. I've been finding them out for several years. I shall lay them before Committee 9 to-morrow." The other two looked at him with the good-natured pity due to the correspondent of the _British Bolshevist_. "Your lunatic paper has turned your brain, my son," Garth said. "Well, let's be getting on," Macdermott impatiently urged. "Which way did your plotters take, Beechtree? We may as well be getting after them, anyhow." "I don't know. I've lost them. I didn't follow at once, you see; I waited, thinking they would come out presently. When they didn't, I came down too. But by that time they'd got a long start. And, as there are other exits, they may have got out anywhere." "Well, let's come along and look. We'll each take a different passage; we'll explore every avenue, like Cabinet Ministers. I'll go straight ahead; one of you two take that right-hand road, and the other the next turning, whenever it comes. We'll each get out where and how we can. Come on." Garth turned up to the right. Henry went on with Macdermott for some way, till another turning branched off, running left. "Ah, there's yours," said the Ulster delegate. "I shall keep straight on, whatever alluring avenues open on either side to tempt me. To-morrow (if we get out of this) we'll bring a gang of police down and do the thing thoroughly. Good luck, Beechtree. Don't scrag honest civil servants or good clergymen on sight. And don't let old Kratzky scrag you. Politically he's on the right side (that's why he'd want to scrag you, and quite right, too), but personally he's what you might call a trifle unprincipled, and that's why he'd do it as soon as look at you." 38 Henry walked alone again. The passage oozed water. The silence was chilly and deep. Against it and far above it, occasional sounds beat, as the world's sounds beat downwards into graves. Geneva was amazing. How many people knew that it was under-run by this so intricate tunnel system? Did the town authorities know? Surely yes. And, knowing, had they not thought, when the recent troubles began, to explore these avenues? (How that horrid phrase always stuck in one's mind; one could not get away from it, as many a statesman, many an orator daily proved.) But possibly they had explored them with no result. Possibly Sub-section 4 (Organisation of Search) of Committee 9 knew all about them. What that sub-section did not yet know was that Charles Wilbraham, hand in glove with autocrat Russia, armament kings, and the Calvinist church, lurked and plotted in the avenues by night, like the spider in her web waiting for flies. There were turnings here and there, to one side or the other, but Henry kept a straight course. At last he was brought up sharp, nearly running his face into a rough clay wall, and above him he saw a trap-door. Here, then, was his exit. The door was only just above his head; he pushed at it with his hands; it gave not at all. After all, one would expect a trap-door to be bolted. He wondered if it would be of any use to knock. Did it give on to a street, a courtyard, or a house? He rapped on it with the end of his electric torch, softly and then loudly. He went on rapping, and knew the fear that assails the assaulter of impregnable, unyielding silence, the panic of him who calls aloud in an empty house and is answered only by the tiny sounds of creaking, scuffling, and whispering that cause the skin to creep, the blood to curdle, the marrow to freeze, the heart to stop, and the spirit to be poured out like water. Strange and horrid symptoms! Curdled blood, frozen marrow, unbeating heart ... who first discovered that this is what occurs to these organs when fear assaults the brain? Have physiologists said so, or is it a mere amateur guess at truth, another of the foolish things "they" say? In these speculations Henry's mind engaged while he stood in the black bowels of the earth and beat for entry at the world's closed door. At last he heard sounds as of advancing steps. Bolts were drawn heavily back; the trap-door was raised, and a face peered down; a brownish face with a small black moustache and a smooth skin stretched tightly over fat. A glimmer of light struggled with the darkness. "Chi c'è?" said a harsh voice, whispering. "Sst! son'io." Henry thought this the best answer. His nerves had relaxed on hearing the Italian language, a tongue not spoken habitually by Wilbraham, M. Kratzky, Sir John Levis, or Calvinist pastors. It is a reassuring tongue; one feels, but how erroneously, that those speaking it cannot be very far out of the path of human goodness. And to Henry it was partly native. The very sight of the plump, smooth, Italian face made him feel at ease. The face peered down into the darkness, and a stump of candle burning in a saucer threw a wavering beam on to Henry's face looking up. "Già," the voice assented to Henry's rather obvious statement. "Voul scendere, forse?" Henry said he did, and a stool was handed down to him. In another minute he stood on the stone floor of a largish cellar, almost completely blocked with casks and wood stacks. From it steps ran up to another floor. The owner of the plump Italian face had a small plump figure clad in shirt, trousers, and slippers. His bright dark eyes stared at his visitor, heavy with sleep. He had obviously been roused from bed. Surprise, however, he did not show; probably he was used to it. He talked to Henry in Italian. "You roused me from sleep. You have a message, perhaps? You wish something done?" Henry, not knowing whether this Italian Swiss knew more than he ought to know, or whether he was merely assisting the police investigations, answered warily, "No message. But I have been down there on the business, and had to return this way. I must now go as quickly as possible in to the town." He added, at a venture, glancing sideways at the other, "Signor Wilbraham was down there with his colleagues." The man started, and the saucer wavered in his hand. Signor Wilbraham was obviously either to him a suspect name, or else his master and leader in intrigue. He was frightened of Wilbraham. "Where is he now?" he asked. "Will he come here?" "I think not. Be at ease. He has disappeared in another direction. Have the kindness to show me the way out." The man led the way to the steps and up them, into a tiny ground-floor bedroom, and through that into a passage. As he unbolted a side door, Henry said to him, "You know something about Signor Wilbraham, then?" The plump little figure shrugged. "A good deal too much, certainly." "Good," said Henry. "Later you shall tell what you know. Don't be afraid. He can't hurt you." As to that the raised eyebrows showed doubt. Wilbraham, it was apparent, inspired a deep mistrust. The fat little man was shivering, either from fear or cold or thwarted sleep, as he opened the door for Henry to pass out. "The will of God will be done," was what he regretfully said, "unless his dear Mother can by any means avert it. For me, I escape, if necessary, where they cannot find me. Good-night, Signore." He shut the door softly behind Henry, who found himself outside a block of old houses at the lake end of the Rue Muzy, under a setting moon, as the city clocks struck two. The night, which had seemed to Henry already so long, was yet, as nights of action go, young. Henry, as he walked homewards by the lake's edge, wondered where and in what manner Macdermott and Garth had emerged, or would emerge, to the earth's face. The earth's face! Never, on any of the lovely nights in that most lovely place, had it seemed to Henry fairer than it seemed this night, as he walked along the Quai des Eaux Vives, the clean, cool air filling his lungs and gently fanning his damp forehead, the dark and shining water lapping softly against its stone bounds. How far better was the earth's face than its inside! Henry, tired and chilled, had now no thought but sleep. To-morrow early he would go to the President of Committee 9 with his report. Also he would wire the story early to his paper. As he lay in bed, too much excited, after all, to sleep (for Henry suffered from nervous excitement in excess) he composed his press story. Anti-disarmament, anti-peace fiends, plotting with Russian Monarchists to wreck the League ... all this had the _British Bolshevist_ many a time suggested, but now it could speak with no uncertain voice. Names might even be given.... Then, in the evening, when the police had explored the avenues, investigated the mystery, and proved the facts, a second telegram, more detailed, could be despatched. What a scoop! After all, thought Henry, tossing wakeful and wide-eyed in the warm dawn, after all he was proving himself a good journalist. No one could say after this that he was not a good journalist. 39 M. Fernandez Croza, delegate from Paraguay, and President of the Committee on the Disappearance of Delegates, sat after breakfast with his private secretary and his stenographer in his sitting-room at the Hotel des Bergues, dictating a speech he meant to deliver at that morning's session of the Assembly on the beauties of a world peace. It was a very creditable and noble speech, and he meant to deliver it in Spanish, as a protest, though his English and French were faultless. M. Croza was a graceful person, young for a delegate, slightly built, aquiline, brown skinned, black haired, shaved clean in the English and American manner, which Latins seldom use, and which he had picked up, among other things, in the course of an Oxford education. The private secretary and the stenographer were a swarthy young man and woman with full lips and small moustaches. M. Croza was clever, determined, and patriotic; he believed firmly in the future of the Latin American republics, and particularly in that of Paraguay; in the necessity of imbuing into the staff of the League of Nations more Latin American blood, and in the desirability of making Spanish a third official language in the Assembly. He disliked the Secretariat as at present constituted, thinking it European, narrow, and conceited, and he could, when orating on topics less noble and more imminent than a world peace, make a very relevant and acute speech. To him, already thus busy at ten o'clock in the morning, entered a hotel messenger with a card bearing the name of the correspondent of the _British Bolshevist_, and the words "Urgent and private business." "I suppose he wants a statement on the Paraguay attitude towards Argentine meat," M. Croza commented. "I had better see him." He turned to his stenographer, and said (in Spanish, in which tongue, it may be observed, it sounded even better than in the English rendering): "And so the gentle doves of peace comma pursued down stormy skies by the hawks of war comma shall find at length ... shall find at length.... Alvarez, please finish that sentence later on. That will do for the present, señorita.... Admit Mr. Beechtree, messenger." Mr. Beechtree was admitted. The slim, pale, shabby and yet somehow elegant young man, with his monocle, so useless, so foppish, dangling on its black ribbon, pleased, on the whole, M. Croza's fastidious taste. After introductions, courtesies, apologies, and seatings, Mr. Beechtree got to business. "I have," he began, in his soft, light, tired voice, "a curious story to tell. I am in a position, after much search, to throw a good deal of light on the recent mysterious disappearances. I have evidence of a very serious nature indeed...." M. Croza, in his capacity of President of Committee 9, had become used to such evidence of late. But he always welcomed it, and did so now, with an encouraging nod. Perhaps the nod, though encouraging, had an air of habit, for Mr. Beechtree added quickly, "What I have to tell you is most unusual. It implicates persons not usually implicated. Indeed, never before. I am not here to hurl random accusations against persons for whom I happen to feel a distaste. I am here with solid, documentary evidence. I have it in this case." He opened his shabby dispatch case, and showed it full of papers. "It implicates," he continued, "an individual who holds a distinguished position on the staff of the Secretariat." M. Croza leant forward, interested, stimulated, not displeased. "You amaze me," he said. "Take a note, Alvarez, if you please." "Some years ago," said Henry, gratified by the delegate's attention and the secretary's poised pencil, "before the League of Nations, so-called----" "It _is_ the League of Nations," said the delegate, with a little frown. "To be sure it is," Henry recollected himself. He had merely used "so-called" as a term indicative of contempt, like "sic," forgetting that he was not addressing the readers of the _British Bolshevist_. "Well, before the League of Nations existed--to be exact, in the year 1919--I had occasion, by chance, to discover some things about this individual. I learnt that his wife was the daughter of an armaments knight, and that he himself had a great deal of money in the business. There was no great harm in this, from his point of view; he never, in those days, professed to be a pacifist, for, though he wielded throughout the war a pen in preference to a sword, he truly believed it to be mightier; he was, in fact, in the Ministry of Information. He was not inconsistent in those days, though he was, I imagine, never easy in his mind about this money he had, and held his shares under his wife's name only. But when the League Secretariat was formed, he was one of the first to receive an appointment on it. It was not generally known where he got his income from, and he found himself in a prominent position on the staff of a League, one of whose objects, if only one among many, is to end war. So there he was, his fortune dependent on the continuation of the very thing he was officially working to suppress. It wasn't to be expected that he should be pleased at the prospect of the disarmament question coming up before the Assembly; or at the prospect of the various disputes going on now in the world being discussed in the Assembly and referred to judicial arbitration. Much better for him if the rumours and threats of war should continue." "Continue," stated the delegate, "they always will. That, Mr. Beechtree, we may take as certain, in this imperfect world. Yes.... He's an Englishman, I assume, this friend of yours?" "An Englishman, yes. Intensely an Englishman." Henry paused a moment. "I had better tell you at once; he is Charles Wilbraham." "Wilbraham!" M. Croza was startled. He felt no love for Wilbraham, who, for his part, felt and showed little for the Latin American republics. M. Croza bitterly remembered various sneers which had been repeated to him.... Besides, it was Wilbraham who had cast suspicion on Paraguay. Further, he had been at Oxford with Wilbraham, and had disliked him there. "Go on, sir," he said gravely and yet ardently. "So," said Henry, "Wilbraham hatches a scheme. Or, possibly it is hatched by his father-in-law, Sir John Levis (he's one of the directors of Pottle & Kett's, the great armament firm), and Wilbraham is persuaded to carry it out; it doesn't matter which. Levis has been in Geneva now for some days. He has lain rather low and has not been staying at Wilbraham's house, but I've evidence from his secretary that they have been constantly together. They cast around to find convenient colleagues, unscrupulous enough to do desperate things, and with their own reasons for wishing to nullify the work of the League and to hold up discussion of international affairs while disturbances come to a head." "Such colleagues," mused M. Croza, "would not be hard to find." "Whom do they pitch on? There are a number of possibly suitable helpers, and I can't say how many of them are involved. But what I have evidence of is that they brought in the Russian delegate to their councils--Kratzky, who is a byword even among Russians for sticking at nothing. If Kratzky could stave off discussion of European politics and paralyse the Assembly until Russia should be ready and able to pounce on and hold by force the new Russian republics--well, naturally monarchist Russia would be pleased. I have evidence that Wilbraham and Levis have been continually meeting and conferring with Kratzky since the Assembly began. Kratzky, that bloody butcher...." M. Croza, whose sympathy was all with small republics against major powers, agreed about Kratzky. "You haven't," he suggested, "notes of what has actually passed between Wilbraham and Kratzky on the subject?" "I regret that I have not. I could never get near enough.... But I have evidence of continual meetings, continual lunches and conferences. This I have obtained from Wilbraham's secretary. She has to keep his engagements for him. I have obtained possession of the little pocket-book in which she notes them. I have it here. See: 'Saturday, Lunch, Café du Nord, Kratzky and Sir John. Sunday, Up Salève, with Kratzky. Monday, 8 a.m., Bathe, Kra----' No, that can't be Kratzky; he wouldn't bathe; that must be some one else. And so on, and so on. Now, I ask you, what would one talk about to Kratzky all that time except some iniquitous intrigue? It's all Kratzky knows about. So, you see, when I began to suspect all this, I took to tracking Wilbraham, following him about. It's been, I can tell you, a most tiring job. Wilbraham is such a very tedious man. A most frightful bore. His very voice makes me sick.... But I followed him. I tracked him. All over the shop I tracked him. And last night he trapesed round the town with Levis and Kratzky and a horrid little Calvinist clergyman who must be in it too. I hate Calvinists, don't you?" "Intolerable persons," agreed the delegate from Paraguay. "Well, at last they hared down a trap-door in an archway into the bowels of the earth. I saw them into it. After some time I went down too. I couldn't find them, but I found an extraordinary system of tunnelling--a regular catacomb. You get in and out of it all over the town, through _trappons_, mostly in old houses, I think. I didn't discover where half the tunnels ended. But obviously Wilbraham and his friends know all about it. And that's what they've done with the delegates. Either hidden them somewhere alive down there, or killed them. When Kratzky's in an affair, the people up against him don't, as a rule, come out alive.... I don't know how much the police know about this tunnel business, but they must make a complete investigation, of course." "Obviously, without delay.... A singular story, Mr. Beechtree; very singular." "Life is singular," said Henry. "There you are very right." ... But M. Croza, used to the political life of South American republics, found no stories of plots and intrigues really singular. "You have reason," he added, "to think badly of Mr. Wilbraham, I infer?" "Grave reasons. I know him for a very ugly character. It is high time he was exposed." M. Croza thought so too. As has been said, he did not care for Charles Wilbraham. And what a counter-charge to Wilbraham's accusations again the residents at the Hotel des Bergues! "One of these Catholic converts," he reflectively commented. "I do not like them. To be born a Catholic, that is one thing, and who can help it? After all, it is the true faith. To become a Catholic--that is quite another thing, and seems to us in Paraguay to denote either feebleness of intellect or a dishonest mind. In a man, that is. Women, of course, are different, not having intellect, and being naturally _dévotes_. So, anyhow, we believe in Paraguay. But perhaps one is unfair." "It is difficult not to be unfair to these," Henry agreed. "But it is more than difficult, it is impossible, to be unfair to Wilbraham. Nothing we think or say of him can be in excess of the truth. Such is Wilbraham. He always has been.... Now, if you will, sir, I will show you the documents I have with me which corroborate my story." The delegate beckoned to his secretary. "Go through Mr. Beechtree's papers, Alvarez. I must be getting to the Assembly. It is past the hour.... At this afternoon's meeting of Committee 9, Mr. Beechtree, I will lay these suggestions of yours before my colleagues, and we will consider what action shall be taken. You will be present. Meanwhile, Alvarez, have orders taken to the police to explore the subterranean passages. Mr. Beechtree, you will be able to direct them to the means of entry, will you not." "I shouldn't wonder," said Henry, "if they are being explored. Macdermott, from Ulster, and Garth of the _Morning Post_, were down there last night. I don't know if they ever got out or not, but if they did they'll be doing something about it this morning. They take a different view from mine, I may say. Macdermott suspects Sinn Feiners (Ulster has only one idea, you know), and Garth agrees with him, but adds Bolsheviks and Germans. Neither of them would suspect either Wilbraham or Kratzky without absolute proof. They do not like Wilbraham. No one does. But they are obsessed with their pet ideas." "To every man his own scapegoat; it's the law of life. Now, Mr. Beechtree, I must leave you. We meet again at three o'clock. Here is a card of entry to the committee meeting. Till then I shall say nothing to any one. I will lay your story before the committee for what it is worth, but I do not, you must remember, commit myself to it. It is merely a basis for inquiry, and the committee shall undoubtedly have the facts before them. But care and discretion are advisable.... Your paper, I think, is not celebrated for its love either for the League of Nations and its Secretariat, or of monarchist Russia, or of armament princes? We must be prepared for the imputation to you of prejudice." "It would be," Henry admitted, "not unjustified. My paper is prejudiced. So am I. To be prejudiced is the privilege of the thinking human being. After all, we are not animals, to judge everything by its smell and taste as it comes before us, irrespective of preconceived theories. The open mind is the empty mind. The pre-judgment is often the deliberate and considered judgment, based on reason, whereas the post-judgment is a hasty makeshift affair, based on the impressions of the moment. Fortunately, however, the two are apt, in the same mind, to concur----" "Quite so, quite so." M. Croza, who was in a hurry, nodded affably but decidedly, and Henry, who was apt, in the interests of discussion, to forget himself, left him. 40 Henry despatched straightway a long message to the _British Bolshevist_, guarded in language but sinister in implication, and hinting that further developments and more definite revelations were imminent. In the journalists' lobby he encountered Garth, who had also been sending a message. "Oh, hallo," said Garth, "so you got out all right. So did Macdermott. I had the devil of a time. I tried one exit that didn't work; must have been bolted on the outside, I suppose. Anyhow, I hammered away and nothing happened. Then I struck another avenue and came to another trap which gave after mighty efforts on my part, and I came up into that book-shop which Burnley disappeared into, and which told the police so firmly that he left again in a few minutes. The trap was hidden away under the counter. I didn't stop; I thought it probably wasn't healthy, so I unbolted the front door and crept off home to bed. First thing this morning I put the police on the track, and they're getting busy now asking the bookseller questions and sending gangs to work the catacombs. One thing I've discovered; that book-shop is a meeting-place for Bolshie refugees and German anarchists. They meet in the old chap's back parlour and do their plotting there and send gold to the trade-unions." "How do you know?" Henry asked, interested. "Well, it's quite obvious. Too busy to go into the evidence now. I must look in at the Assembly and see what's doing...." Henry perceived that the correspondent of the _Morning Post_ was actuated, in the matter of Bolshevists, Germans, trade-unions, and gold, rather by a deliberate and considered pre-judgment than by the hasty and makeshift impressions of the moment, or, anyhow, that the two had in his mind concurred. He asked after Macdermott. "Oh, Macdermott found Sinn Fein plots all over the place. He had a hair-raising time. He went miles and miles, he says, and came up at last against a wall. There was no trap-door: it was merely a cul-de-sac. So he retraced his steps and took a by-path, and emerged finally in a brothel close to the cathedral. Of course, the advantage of a brothel is that it's alive and humming even at dead of night; anyhow it was morning by that time, so he had no difficulty in making himself heard. He couldn't get anything out of the people; they were German Swiss, and pretended to be merely stupid. But they're being sorted by the police this morning." "And where do the Sinn Feiners come in?" "Oh, I don't know. They meet there to plot, Macdermott said. Together with Germans. Probably they've a bomb-cache in the tunnels too. He told O'Shane about it, and O'Shane said republicans would never make use of a disorderly house, not even for the best patriotic purposes. He's rather sick that he wasn't on to this catacombs business too; he'd have found Orange plots down there. I left them at it.... What's going on within, Jefferson?" "That damned little Greek holding forth on the importance of disarming Turkey. We've just had Paraguay on the beauties of a world peace and the peaceful influence of the South American republics." "Well," said Garth, "I shall go in and hear the Greek. He always makes things hum." Henry, too, went in and heard the Greek, whose manner of oratory he enjoyed. 41 Committee 9 met at three o'clock in the spacious and sunny saloon known as Committee Room C. The only portion of the public admitted was the correspondent of the _British Bolshevist_, who sat behind the President's chair with a portfolio full of papers, looking pale, shabby, and tired, but exalted, like one whose great moment is at hand. After the minutes of the last meeting had been read, the President rose to address the committee, in French. He had, he said, some fresh and important facts to communicate. A quite new line of inquiry had that day been suggested to him by one who had for some time been secretly pursuing investigations. The facts revealed were so startling, so amazing, that very substantial evidence would be necessary to persuade committee members of their truth. It could at present be only a tentative theory that was set before the committee; but let the committee remember that _magna est veritas et prevalebit_; that they were there to fulfil a great duty, and not to be deterred by any fears, any reluctances, any personal friendships, any dread of scandal, from seeking to draw out truth from her well. He asked his colleagues to listen while he told them a strange story. The story, as he told it, gained from his more important presence, his more eloquent and yet more impartial manner, a plausibility which Henry's had lacked. His very air, of one making a painful and tentative revelation, was better than Henry's rather shrill eagerness. Every now and then he paused and waved his hand at Henry sitting behind him, and said, "My friend Mr. Beechtree here has documentary evidence of this, which I will lay before the committee shortly." When, after long working up to it, he gave the suspected member of the Secretariat the name of Wilbraham, it fell on the tense attention of the whole table. Henry, looking up to watch its reception, saw surprise on many faces, incredulity on several, pleasure on more, amusement on a few. He met also the blue eyes of Mr. Macdermott fixed on him with a smile of cynical admiration. Macdermott would doubtless have something to say when the President had done. But what he was now thinking was that the correspondent of the _British Bolshevist_ had more journalistic gifts than one would have given him credit for. "Where, you may demand of me," proceeded the President, "is M. Wilbraham now? That I cannot tell you. He entered this system of secret passages last night in company with those who are suspected by Mr. Beechtree of being his fellow conspirators, and he has not been seen since. Have they, possibly, escaped, their evil work done? Whither have they gone? Who was that Protestant pastor? What doings, gentlemen, engage the attentions of M. Kratzky of Russia, that enemy of small republics, Sir John Levis of Pottle and Kett, that enemy of peace, a _soi-disant_ Protestant pastor, the presumed enemy of true religion, and M. Wilbraham of the Secretariat? Mind, gentlemen, I impute nothing. I merely inquire." A murmur of applause broke from the Latin Americans. As it died down, Henry, looking up, saw standing by the door Charles Wilbraham, cool, immaculate, attentive, and unperturbed, and the _soi-disant_ Protestant pastor at his elbow. 42 Henry allowed himself a smile. Here, then, arrived after all the years of waiting, was the hour. The hour of reckoning; the hour in which he, brought face to face with Charles Wilbraham, should expose him before men for what he was. The hour when Charles Wilbraham should face him, reduced at last to impotent silence, deflated to limp nothingness like a gas balloon, and find no word of defence. Shamed and dishonoured, he would slink away, at long last in the wrong. In the wrong himself, after all these years of putting others there. Truly, Henry's hour had arrived. The President, too, had seen the new-comers now. He paused in his speaking; he was for a moment at a loss. Then, "Gentlemen, excuse me, but this is a strictly private session," he said clearly across the large room, in his faultless Oxford English. Charles Wilbraham bowed slightly and advanced. "Forgive me, sir, but I have a card of admittance. Also for my friend here, Signor Angelo Cristofero." "Angelo Cristofero"--the name seemed to ripple over a section of the committee like a wind on waters. "Who is he?" asked Henry, of an Italian Swiss, and the answer came pat. "The greatest detective at present alive. An Italian, but at home in all countries, all languages, and all disguises. Really a marvellous genius. Nothing balks him." "We have, you see," continued Wilbraham, in his disagreeable, sneering voice, "some rather important information to communicate to the committee, if you will pardon the interruption. Presently I will ask Signor Cristofero to communicate it. But for the moment might I be allowed to ask for a little personal explanation? Since I entered the room I heard a remark or two relating to myself and various friends of mine which struck me as somewhat strange...." M. Croza courteously bowed to him, with hostile eyes. "You have a right to an explanation, sir. As you have entered at what I can but call such a very inopportune moment, you heard what I was saying--words uttered, need I say, in no malicious spirit, but in a sincere and public-spirited desire to discover the truth. I was accusing and do accuse, no one; I was merely laying before the committee information communicated to me this morning by Mr. Henry Beechtree." "Mr. Henry Beechtree?" Charles Wilbraham turned on this gentleman the indifferent and contemptuous regard with which one might look at and dismiss some small and irrelevant insect. "And who, if I may ask, is Mr. Henry Beechtree?" "The correspondent, sir, of one of the newspapers of your country--the _British Bolshevist_." Charles laughed. "Indeed? Hardly, perhaps, an organ which commands much influence. However, by all means let me hear Mr. Beechtree's information. I am, I infer, from what I overheard, engaged in some kind of conspiracy, together with my friends M. Kratzky, Sir John Levis, and this gentleman here. May I know further details, or are they for the private edification of the committee only?" Charles heavily sarcastic, ponderously ironic--how well Henry remembered it. "Are we," he went on, "supposed to have spirited away, or even murdered, the missing delegates, may I ask?" "That," said M. Croza politely, "was Mr. Beechtree's suggestion--only, of course, a suggestion, based on various facts which had come to his knowledge. You can, doubtless, disprove these facts, sir, or account for them in some other way. No one will be more delighted than the committee over which I preside." "Might I hear these sinister facts?" Charles was getting smoother, more unctuous, more happy, all the time. It was the little curl of his lip, so hateful, so familiar, with which he said these words, which seemed to snap something in Henry's brain. He pushed back his chair and sprang to his feet, breathless and dizzy and hot. He regarded not the cries of "Order," from the chair and the table; order or not, he must speak now to Charles. "You shall hear them, sir," he said, and his voice rang shrilly up and up to a high and quivering note. "There is one, at least which you will not be able to deny. That is that you have shares, large and numerous, in the armaments firm of Pottle and Kett, of which Sir John Levis, your father-in-law, is chief director." Charles fixed on him a surprised stare. He put on his pince-nez, the better to look. "I do not think," he said, in his calm, smooth voice, "that I am called upon to discuss with you the sources of my income. In fact, I'm afraid I don't quite see how you come into this affair at all--er--Mr. Beechtree. But, since your statement has been made in public, perhaps I may inform the committee that it is wholly erroneous. I had once such shares as this--er--gentleman mentioned. It ought to be unnecessary to inform this committee that I sold them all on my appointment to the Secretariat of the League, since to hold them would, I thought, be obviously inconsistent with League principles. If it interests the committee to know, such money that I possess is now mostly in beer. Mr.--er--Beechtree's information, Mr. President, is just a little behind the times. Such a stirring organ as the _British Bolshevist_ should, perhaps, have a more up-to-date correspondent. Will you, Mr. President, request Mr. Beechtree to be seated? I fear I find myself unable to discuss my affairs with--er--him personally." Charles's eyes, staring at Henry through his pince-nez, became like blue glass. For a moment silence held the room. Henry flushed, paled, wilted, wavered as he stood. Thrusting desperately his monocle into his eye, he strove to return stare for stare. After a moment Charles's high complacent laugh sounded disagreeably. He had made quite sure. "How do you do, Miss Montana? We haven't, I think, met since January, 1919." He turned to the puzzled committee. "Miss Montana, a former lady secretary of mine in the Ministry of Information, Mr. President. Dismissed by me for incompetence. What she is doing here in this disguise I do not know; that is between her and the newspaper which, so she says, employs her. May Signor Cristofero now be permitted to lay his rather important information before the committee? We waste time, and time is precious at this juncture." 43 The situation was of an unprecedented unusualness. The President of Committee 9 hardly knew how to deal with it. All eyes gazed at Henry, who said quietly, "That is a damned lie," felt giddy, and sat down, leaning back in his chair and turning paler. The monocle dropped from his eye and hung limply from its ribbon. Henry literally could not, after his tiring night, his exhausting day, the emotional strain of the last hour, stand up to Charles Wilbraham any more. If he could have a dose of sal volatile--a cocktail--anything ... as it was, he wilted, all but crumpled up; all he was able for was to sit, as composed as might be, under a deadly fire of eyes. The pause was ended by Fergus Macdermott, who heaved largely from his chair and remarked, "I would like to second Mr. Wilbraham's suggestion that we will hear Mr. Cristofero's communication. May I also suggest that the income of Mr. Wilbraham is between himself and his bankers, and the sex of Mr. Beechtree between him and his God, and that both are irrelevant to the business before this committee and need not be discussed." The committee applauded this, though they felt a keen interest in both the irrelevant topics. The President called on Signor Cristofero to address the committee, and beckoned Mr. Wilbraham to a chair. The little _soi-disant_ pastor stepped forward. He was a spare, small, elderly man, with a white face and gentian-blue eyes and a mouth that could make up as anything. During the last few days it had been a prim and rather smug button. Now it had relaxed in shrewder, wider lines. He showed to Committee 9 the face not of the Calvinist pastor but of the great detective. He spoke the Italian of the Lombardy Alps, the French of Marseilles, the English of New York, the German of Alsace, the Russian of Odessa, the Yiddish of the Roman Ghetto, the Serbian of Dalmatia, the Turkish of the Levant, the Greek of the Dodacenese, and many other of the world's useful tongues. He addressed the committee in French, speaking rapidly and clearly, illustrating his story with those gestures of the hands which in reality (though it is not commonly admitted) make nothing clearer, but are merely a luxury indulged in by speakers, who thus elucidate and emphasise their meaning to themselves and to no one else. However, Signor Cristofero's words were so admirably clear that his confusing gestures did not matter. He had, so he said, been sent for three weeks ago from New York, where he had been engaged on a piece of work which he had just concluded, by Mr. Charles Wilbraham, who had requested him to come immediately to Geneva and investigate this strange matter of the disappearing delegates. He had not known Mr. Wilbraham, but he had recognised the importance of this matter. He had arrived incognito, assumed the costume in which they now saw him, which is one the least calculated to arouse suspicion in Geneva, and set to work. After careful secret inquiries and investigations, he had found that the suspicions he had had from the outset were confirmed. He had long known of a secret society which was at work to wreck the League of Nations. Its activities were so multifarious, so skilful, so obscure, and often so entirely legitimate, that it was impossible to check them. The society had its agents all over the world, in all countries. Some were paid, others worked out of good will. This society objected to the League partly because it was afraid of the decrease of armaments, and ultimately of wars. Unlikely as this prospect sounded, the society was taking no chances. Among its members were the directors of armament firms, inventors, professional soldiers of high rank, War Office officials, those who hoped to get some advantage for themselves or their countries out of wars, and those who genuinely thought the League a dangerous and foolish thing calculated to upset the peace of the world. Many of its members also objected to the League on all kinds of other grounds, disliking its humanitarian enterprises, its interference with nefarious traffickings, such as those in women, opium, and cocaine. Powerful patent medicine manufacturers were exasperated by its anti-epidemic efforts; many great financiers objected to the way it spent its money; some great powers thought they would be freer in their dealings with smaller powers without it. And so on and so forth. All over the world, in every department of life, there were to be found those who, for one reason or another, rightly or wrongly, reasonably or unreasonably, objected to the League. And so this society had been formed. It collected its agents as it could, and employed them as occasion served. It was considered by the society specially important to prevent the success of this present session of the Assembly, which had a large and varied agenda before it, including the renewed discussion of the reduction of armaments, which was, it was believed, to be pressed with great earnestness by certain delegates, so that some issue could scarcely be evaded. Besides which, the society had come to the conclusion that to make, once, a complete fool of the League Assembly and Council before the world, so that its constitution would be disintegrated and its achievements would be as dust before the wind, would deal the prestige of the League such a heavy blow as permanently to discredit it. To this end, after much cogitation, the society had got hold of a very brilliant and accomplished agent indeed; an agent who cared not what he did nor for what side he fought, so long as he was largely enough paid. To him, to this unscrupulous and able man, the society had said, "Hold up and discredit the coming Assembly somehow. The method we leave to you. You have _carte blanche_ in the matter of money, and you shall be paid an immense sum for success." "This man," said Signor Cristofero, "undertook the mission. With unparalleled skill, scheming and ingenuity, he decoyed and entrapped member after member of the Assembly, luring each one by some suitable bait to some spot where there was a trap-door giving on to the system of underground passages which runs, as is well known to the authorities, beneath part of Geneva. What the authorities did _not_ know, is the number of trap-door entries to these passages, and where they ultimately lead. I have been exploring them now for some days. Last night I conducted Mr. Wilbraham through them, together with his friends M. Kratzky and Sir John Levis. At a certain point in one of the tunnels one appears to come up against an earth wall; it seems to be a cul-de-sac. I made the discovery that it is not a cul-de-sac. The earth wall is a skilful disguise; it swings back, and the passage continues. It continues, gentlemen, on and on, far outside the city, running beside the lake, till it ends at last in a cellar. What cellar, you demand? Gentlemen, it is the cellar of a château two miles up the lake. A large and ancient château, inhabited by a former cardinal of the church. He was retired from this office some years ago; he said and says it was for heretical opinions expressed in books. In reality it was less for this (though this too had its influence in the decision of the Church) than for a plethora of wives. The wives without the heresies might have been winked at, for the Church has a wise blind side and knows that its children are but dust; even (though this is less probable) the heresies without the wives might have been ignored; but the combination was excessive. The cardinal had to go. Since then he has been living in this château, writing vast and abstruse works on theology and enjoying the loveliness of the scenery, the beauty of his house and garden, the amenities of such witty and scholarly society as he could collect around him, and the companionship of a lady whom he inaccurately calls his niece. His name--gentlemen, many of you know it and him--is Franchi, Dr. Silvio Franchi. Here, indeed, was a sharp tool ready to the hands of our society. They send for him; he accepts the commission; he conceives the ingenious scheme of secretly extending the underground tunnels to his château and adding trap-door entries to them in houses and courtyards where he could command the services of the owners, who were generously paid. One by one he lures the delegates into these houses, these alleys. Lord Burnley he decoys with the display of a book of his own, strangely inscribed; that we know. The baits offered to the other gentlemen and ladies we do not yet know fully of, though a few have come to my knowledge. We shall doubtless eventually have the story of each. Anyhow, one after another, and each in his appropriate manner, the delegates disappear underground. They are then conveyed by Dr. Franchi's employees either underground all the way to the château or to an exit close to the lake, whence they can be secretly embarked by covered boat. By whatever means, they arrive at the château, and are there accommodated in what is known as the Keep Wing, which has the appearance of a large, commodious and many-roomed guest house, but which is as strongly guarded as a prison. They are not ill-treated; they are made comfortable; often they dine in company with Dr. Franchi, who enjoys their society and keeps them well amused. I learnt this yesterday from Dr. Franchi's trusted servant, a scoundrel of a Roumanian Baptist, who was moved at last by the persecution of his co-religionists and relatives in Roumania, touchingly set before him by Mademoiselle the Roumanian delegate, to give the League a chance. After many years' faithful service this ruffian betrayed his master and is assisting me to arrest him. The human heart is truly a strange mixture. "I have myself, last night, together with the three gentlemen I mentioned, been along the tunnel as far as the château cellar. We could not, of course, then enter it, and we returned the way we came. Dr. Franchi does not know that his secret has been discovered. I have arranged to call on him, with a detachment of police, to-day, in order to inform him of it, arrest him, and release the prisoners. That is all I have to tell you, gentlemen." 44 Murmurs indicative of the utmost interest broke out round the table directly Signor Cristofero stopped speaking. Interest mingled here and there with a little disappointment, for many a cherished theory had to be abandoned or modified. Mr. Macdermott, for instance, had not yet found a place for Sinn Fein in the plot as at present revealed, nor Mr. O'Shane for Ulster. The Lithuanian delegate was, to say the least of it, surprised that the affair was not more largely due to disbanded Polish soldiers of Zeligowski's army, and the delegates of more than one nation found it strange that the Germans appeared to be out of this thing. But, after all, Dr. Franchi had been only the agent; he might be backed by any one in the world, and doubtless was. Also, he must have had many ruffians in his employ to do the executive work. So no doubt really and in the main things were pretty much as each member of the committee had suspected. The members who looked most gratified were the Latin Americans, from whom suspicion was now honourably lifted (though they regretted that Charles Wilbraham was no longer a suspect), and the Serb-Croat-Slovene delegate, who stared at his Italian colleague with a rather malicious smile. Had he not always said that Italians (unless it were Albanians) had done this thing? The President, after thanking Signor Cristofero much for his highly interesting and important information, asked if any other gentleman would like to say anything. The delegate from Bolivia begged to propose that the committee should accompany Signor Cristofero and the police on the visit to the château, as they certainly ought to be present on the occasion. This suggestion was received with universal acclamation, and it was decided that a steamer should take them all up to Monet at six-thirty. A subdued voice from beside the President's chair inquired whether the press would also be permitted on the expedition. In the excitement, astonishment, and disappointment of Signor Cristofero's story and the prospect of such a stimulating lake trip, the correspondent of the _British Bolshevist_ had temporarily forgotten his (or her, as the case might be) own troubles. The inquiry focused the attention of the committee again on Mr. Beechtree, that dubious, if irrelevant, problem. A smile ran round the room. The President said that undoubtedly correspondents would be permitted to accompany the expedition, for reports of the day's discoveries and events must as soon as possible be communicated to the press. 45 Mr. Beechtree, feeling uncomfortable under the general interest and in the intolerable presence of Mr. Wilbraham, slipped away. He wanted privacy to think, to hide from the fire of eyes. More, he wanted coffee. And perhaps a raspberry ice-cream soda with it. There was one place he knew of.... Dashing down to the Paquis, he just caught a _mouette_ for the Eaux Vives jetty. From there to the ice-cream café was but a short way. He hurried to it, and soon was enjoying the comfort of coffee, a raspberry ice-cream soda, and meringues. After all, there was always that, however bitter a defeat one might suffer at the hands of life. He also had a cocktail. He drank, ate, and imbibed through straw, to give himself a little courage and cheerfulness in the black bitterness of defeat. Black bitterness it was, for his long-laid scheme of revenge had toppled, crashing on the top of him, and Charles Wilbraham, eyeing the ruins, hatefully and superciliously smiled, for ever and always in the right.... Charles Wilbraham towered, with his hateful rightness, before Henry's drowsy eyes (how long it was since he had slept!), and he slipped for a moment into a dream, the straw falling from his mouth. He woke with a start, hastily ate a meringue, called for his bill, and looked at his watch. It was nearly six o'clock. In half an hour the steamer would start for Monet. Well, that at least would be interesting. Henry was all for getting what joy he could out of this uneven life. He walked across the Jardin Anglais, and saw at the pier the party of pleasure crowding on to a pleasant-looking white steamer called _Jean Jacques_. Pulling his soft hat over his eyes, Henry slipped in among the throng, and embarked on what might well prove to be his last official lake trip. He felt rather shy, for he had become, though in a minor way, News. Women were News; and women disguised as men were doubly and trebly News (and Henry felt sure that Charles Wilbraham would be believed on this point rather than he, who had said it was a damned lie). He slipped through the crowd and took up a nonchalant attitude in the bows, smoking cigarettes and looking at the view. 46 They were a happy and expectant party. The decks hummed with happy and excited talk. All feuds seemed to be healed by the common interest. The committee seemed truly a League of Brothers. This is the value of parties of pleasure. The only people who looked sullen were the group of policemen, for Swiss policemen habitually wear this air. From group to group, with M. Kratzky at his elbow, moved Charles Wilbraham, complacent, proud, triumphant, like a conjurer who has done a successful trick. "Here is the rabbit, gentlemen," he seemed to be saying. His colleagues on the Secretariat watched him cynically. Wilbraham had put this job through very well, but how bad it had been for him! Emphatically they did not like Wilbraham. "And the man who really did the trick has forgotten all about it, and is talking to every one in their own language about the affairs of their own countries," as Vaga the Spaniard remarked. He had a peculiar distaste for Charles. Grattan came up grinning to Henry. "Hallo, Beechtree. You seem to have provided one of the sensations of the day. I didn't know you had it in you. I'm sorry your sporting effort to upset our friend Wilbraham failed." "So am I," Henry gloomily returned. "He deserves to be upset. And I'm not even now sure he hadn't a hand in it all.... But of course it's no use saying so. No one will ever believe it of him now that I've mucked it so. They'll believe nothing I say.... Did you hear what he said about me at the committee meeting? I suppose every one has." "Well, I imagine it's got about more or less. Is it true, by the way?" "On the contrary, a complete and idiotic lie." The expressionless detachment of Henry's voice and face moved Grattan to mirth. "That's all right, then; I'll put it about. You keep on smiling, old bean. No one's going to worry, even if it wasn't a lie, you know." "Wilbraham will worry. He will, no doubt, take steps to have me excluded from the Press Gallery as a disreputable character. I don't particularly mind. What I do mind is that it isn't Wilbraham who's going to get run in for this business, but poor old Franchi. I _like_ Franchi. He's delightful, however many delegates he's kidnapped." "Oh, the more the better. A jolly old sportsman. My word, what a brain! Talk of master criminals, ... and to think that I once thought the Assembly scarcely worth coming for. Live and learn. I shall never miss another." He called to Garth, who was passing. "I say, Garth, Beechtree says he's not a lady and that Wilbraham's a liar. Spread it about, there's a good chap." Garth nodded. He, like Grattan, believed Wilbraham on this point and not Henry, but it was more comfortable to take Henry at his own valuation. After all, if the chap _was_ a woman, whose concern was it but his own? Rather a caddish trick on Wilbraham's part to have publicly accused him. Though, to be sure, he had just been by him publicly accused, so perhaps they were quits. But, poor girl (if she was a girl), she must be feeling up a tree now. She seemed a nice enough person, too; a bit of a fool, of course, but then any one who'd write for the _British Bolshevist_, that pestilential rag, would need to be either a fool or a knave, or both. So, on the whole, Henry was not acutely uncomfortable among his colleagues of the press. Once Wilbraham passed close to him talking to the second British delegate, and fixed him with a glassy stare. Henry, refusing to be embarrassed, put up his monocle and stared back, as if surprised at the ill-breeding of this person. So they came to the Monet pier, as the village church clock chimed seven. 47 The scheme of action had been carefully planned and organised by Signor Cristofero, with the help of the perfidious Roumanian Baptist at the château, who now, terrified at his own treachery, only longed for his master to be removed from the scene. The ex-cardinal, this Baptist had said, meant to dine that night, as he often did when he had not company, with his prisoners in the Keep Wing. He would be there when the detective, the police, the committee, and the press arrived at the château, and the party would be conducted there at once, to surprise the host and his guests at meat. The delegate from Costa Rica had asked the detective if they should all bring weapons, but Signor Cristofero had said no. "Quite unnecessary. Franchi does not go armed. He does not go in for bloodshed, except for some necessary purpose. When he sees he is trapped, he will throw down his hand with resignation. After all, the penalty for the abduction without injury, even of many delegates, is not very heavy. A term of imprisonment, then he will be free again. He intended, of course, to make his escape from the neighbourhood when he released his prisoners, and so be beyond reach of capture when the truth came out. He will be mortified at the failure of his plan--in so far as it has failed--but for himself he will not very greatly care. I know Dr. Franchi of old." So revolvers were only taken by delegates and journalists of those nations which regard these weapons as a natural part of the human equipment for facing society. As they trailed up from the Monet pier through the village, the party had the innocuous, cheerful, plebeian, only-man-is-vile air of all large parties of pleasure in beautiful country. They approached the château by its public drive, which turned off the road beyond the village. Signor Cristofero knocked on the front door, which was opened by a villainous looking young man whom the party presumed to be the repentant Roumanian Baptist, and whom Signor Cristofero addressed fluently in a tongue even stranger than are most tongues. The young man replied in the same. "Dr. Franchi is in the Keep Wing, dining with the delegates," Signor Cristofero informed his companions. "This man will conduct us there and admit us. He has the pass keys." The party, led by the scowling Baptist, trooped into the château like a party of eager tourists ciceroned by a sulky guide. They passed through the hall, through the company of dogs who seemed to like everybody except Henry and the delegate from Haiti, and thence along a sunny, airy corridor which led up to a nail-studded, triple-locked oak door, behind an ecclesiastical leather curtain. The Roumanian produced three keys, unlocked the door, and led the way along a further passage, this time only lighted by high, small windows. Here began the Keep Wing. At the farther end of this corridor was another oak door, this time only once locked. From beyond it came the sound of cheerful voices raised in talk and laughter. The Roumanian hung back. He obviously did not desire to lead the way any farther. After a short, low-toned conversation with Signor Cristofero, he went back through the triple-locked door. "He fears his master," the detective remarked, with a shrug. "He is going to make his escape from the château, lest the other servants execute vengeance on him. No matter. We are now arrived." Having with a gesture summoned round him the police, he opened the door and led the way into the room beyond. It was a large refectory, with a long table down the middle. At the near end of it sat Dr. Franchi, with lifted glass; down the sides were ranged the lost delegates. One of them--perhaps Lord Burnley, who sat on his host's right--seemed to have been telling an amusing story, for all at the near end of the table were laughing. Or rather, nearly all: for, resolute in its gravity, its air of protest, the face of Lord John Lester, the mainstay of the League, was bent sadly over a dish of salted almonds. The ex-cardinal had barely time to look round at the noise of entry before three policemen seized him firmly and snapped handcuffs on his wrists. 48 It was a scene the like of which, it is safe to say, had never before been seen among all the strange scenes which had been enacted along the shores of that most lovely lake. A strange scene, and a strange company. The faces of some thirty delegates, interrupted in their meal, were turned, with varying expressions, upon the new-comers. Lord John Lester sprang to his feet, with an impatient cry of "At last!" which was, however, drowned by the ecstatic croon of Mademoiselle the delegate for Roumania, "Ah! mon Dieu! Nous sommes sauvés! Un jour de plus, et nous serions deportées," and a loud cry from Miss Gina Longfellow, who sprang from her seat at the other end of the table. "Dio mio! We sure are copped!" "Arrest the lady also, as an accomplice," remarked Signor Cristofero quietly. Dr. Franchi suddenly began to struggle violently, thus engaging the attention of the police. As suddenly, he ceased to struggle, and said calmly, "Ebbene. E scappata," and it was apparent that Miss Longfellow had vanished. "You will not find her now," said her uncle. "She knows where to hide. Besides, what has she done, the innocent?" "The passages are guarded," Signor Cristofero remarked. "Not, I think, my dear Angelo," said Dr. Franchi, looking at him for the first time, "the passage she will take.... So, Angelo, this is your work. I might have guessed. Gentlemen, my only and distinguished brother." With a bow he introduced Signor Cristofero to his guests. The detective smiled grimly at him, and addressed him in the Italian of the Lombardy Alps. "This point is mine, I think, Silvio. It is a long war between us, in which you often score, but this point is mine." "I grant it you, my dear Angelo, without rancour. Your abilities have always been so near the level of my own that I can take defeat at your hands without mortification. You will at least pay me the tribute of acknowledging the ingenuity and partial success of my scheme." "That tribute I always pay you, Silvio. But, as has occasionally happened before, your ingenuity broke down at one point. You yielded to a whimsical impulse, and sent to the officials of the League a certain telegram couched in the words of the English version of a Hebrew psalm. When I heard this, I, remembering your addiction to the English translation of the psalms, identified you at once.... But this is no time for conversation. Later, a statement will be demanded of you. At present my business is to deliver you over to the law, and to give these gentlemen their liberty." "You will find no difficulty in either, my dear brother.... This, then, gentlemen and ladies, is good-bye. I must apologise for any inconvenience that may have been caused by your detention, either to yourselves or to the society which you represent, and I must thank you for the great pleasure you have afforded me by your company. I think that, at least, you will be able to report that you have suffered no great discomforts while my guests." "We have been most excellently entertained," Lord Burnley replied, and a murmur of assent ran round the table. The Albanian Bishop rose to his feet, lifting his glass. "Your health, sir," he said, and the other delegates drank the toast. (All except Lord John Lester, who impatiently muttered "Pshaw!") "Indeed," said Mlle. Binesco, "Dr. Franchi has been more than kind. Another few days, and we might have fallen into the hands of the iniquitous traffickers behind him and been deported overseas--but he personally has been most good to us. _All_ we could want...." Fergus Macdermott had pushed to the front of the interested onlookers. "I'd like to ask you one question, sir. Why didn't your people finish the job they began on myself--if it was your people, and not, as I suspect, some Sinn Fein scoundrels?" The ex-cardinal gave his kindly smile. "It was certainly my people, Mr. Macdermott. But, in attacking you, they made a mistake. When they perceived who you were, they desisted. They had, you see, orders not to remove certain delegates, of whom you and your colleague from South Ireland were two, from the scene. It was considered that the Irish delegates would serve the cause I have the honour to represent better by their presence at the Assembly than by their absence from it." "Enough talk," Signor Cristofero put in. "It is time we went." "Brief and to the point as ever, dear brother. Good-bye, then, gentlemen and ladies. I regret, Lord Burnley, not to have had time in which to finish the interesting conversation we began last night on the subject of my present book. It will have to keep for happier days. Meanwhile, I hope to have a quiet little time in which to meditate on and complete the book." As he passed Henry Beechtree on his way to the door, he stopped. "Ah, my dear young man. Luck did not favour our little plan, did it?" "That person," said the disagreeable voice of Charles Wilbraham, "is, if I may be allowed to mention it, a young woman, Dr. Franchi." The ex-cardinal turned to him a cold face. "I have known that, Mr. Wilbraham, a good deal longer than you have." He smiled sweetly at Henry. "Yes, my young friend. There was an incident, you may recollect, of a goldfish.... I have several--er--nephews and nieces--and have watched them grow up. Never yet have I seen the boys disturbed by such episodes. Masculine nerves are, as a rule, more robust. You should remember this in future.... You will pardon my having noticed the incident. I would never have referred to it had not the subject been raised. Some day you shall dine with me again, if you will.... But my good brother grows impatient. Good-bye again, my friends. A rivederci." He was led away. He would be taken to Geneva in a police launch, with the detective, the police, and the arrested servants. The delegates and press were to follow in the steamer. 49 The return journey of the rescuers and the rescued was a happy one indeed. If fraternity had prevailed on the outward voyage, now far more were all (or most) hearts knit together. What happy greetings were exchanged, what stories related, what mysteries made clear! The happy press were told the tale of each captured delegate; they learnt of the pursuit after vice of the two public-spirited ladies, and their consequent entrapment, of the decoy of Lord John Lester through his devotion to the Union of the League, of how Professor Inglis had been betrayed through his pity for the poor Greek woman, of how Dr. Chang, leaving the Bergues hotel at midnight, had taken a walk through the Saint Gervais quarter, and been led by the smell of opium to investigate a mysterious opium den whose floor had failed beneath his feet and dropped him into an underground passage, along which he had been conducted to an exit close to the Seujet Wharf, hustled into a covered boat, and carried up the lake. Many such strange tales the released captives told, and the journalists took down breathlessly on their writing-pads. Geneva, one perceived, must be full of the paid agents of the ex-cardinal and the society which employed him. Not that Dr. Franchi had told his captives anything of this society; he had merely said that he was anxious for good company, and had therefore taken the liberty of capturing the pick of the eminent persons present at Geneva and entertaining them as his guests. "If you knew, gentlemen," he had said, "how one wearies for a little intelligence, a little wit, a little _bonhomie_, in this dour country!" Naturally, they had not believed him, but some of them had been, all the same, a little flattered at their own selection. They had had, it seemed, a delightful time. Books, newspapers, delicate food and wines, games, conversation, everything except liberty, had been provided for their delectation. "One can't help, in some ways, being even a little sorry it is at an end," Lord Burnley murmured, as he watched the lights of the château recede, and thought of the dusty days of labour which were to follow. "If only it's not too late--if only irretrievable damage has not been done," muttered Lord John Lester, frowning at the same lights, thinking of the vast agenda for the session, and of the growling nations of the world. "I think," the voice of Charles Wilbraham came, high and conceited, to Henry Beechtree as he lurked disgraced in a corner and listened and watched, "I think we may say we have put a spoke in the wheel of these scoundrels this time. Yes; _I_ think we may say that...." 50 Henry that night packed his things. He was leaving next day. He was not going to wait to be dismissed by his paper. He knew that, if he did not go, he would with ignominy be removed. So he packed, in his small hot room after dinner, with the cats and dogs uttering their cries in the courtyard below, and beyond them the small whispering cry of water beating and shuffling against the wharf. His adventure was over. In fact, Henry must now be called Miss Montana, for such was, in truth, her name, and such, as Charles Wilbraham had truly said, her sex. How superciliously had he said it, how superciliously staring her down the while. As, long ago, he had superciliously stared her down when he had said to his secretary, "This cannot go on, Miss Montana. I must make another arrangement. Particularly in view of Paris...." Particularly in view of Paris. Ah, yes, that was the sting. Who would have wanted to go on being Charles Wilbraham's secretary but for Paris? For to that heaven of secretaries, the Paris Peace Conference, Charles had been called, and was going that month, January, 1919. She had been going with him. What delight! What a world of joy had opened before her when she heard it! What a peace! It would make up for all the weary years of war, all the desolating months of servitude to Charles Wilbraham. And now, within a fortnight of starting, Charles said he must make another arrangement. For his secretary had shown gross carelessness, hopeless incompetence: she had done a frightful thing. She had put a Foreign Office letter into an envelope addressed to the Archbishop of Westminster, and vice versa, and so despatched them. It was the climax, so Charles told her, of a long series of misdeeds. Also, she was slow on the typewriter, spelt Parliament with a small p, and used the eraser too frequently, and you could, said Charles, see the smudge made by that a mile off. So--in fine, Charles must make another arrangement and must in fact, in point of fact, he unctuously told her, ask her forthwith to take a minute to the establishment, bidding them obtain for him another secretary. The bitterness of that moment swept back to Henry now across the years. She remembered how, wordless, sullen, and fighting that dizziness that attacked her in moments of stress, she had stood before him, loathing his smooth voice, his lofty choice of words, his whole arrogant, pompous presence. Then he had dictated the minute. "_From_ Mr. Wilbraham. "_To_ the Establishment Branch. "I find I have to make other arrangements about a secretary. I shall be glad if you will transfer Miss Montana to other work, and send some one to me more thoroughly efficient. It would be well if I could have a selection up for interview and make a choice, preferably after a preliminary trial. The work will be responsible, as I am going out to the Peace Conference in a fortnight. "8.1.1919." "Kindly see," Charles had ordered her, "that that is typed and goes down immediately. I shall be glad to have it for initialing in not more than five minutes from now." That had been the way Charles had always addressed his secretaries; Charles was like that. Courtesy to a subordinate was, in his view, wholly wasted. He kept all he had of it for his superiors. "The only really rude man in the Ministry," Henry had heard him called by the typists, and typists always know. Miss Montana had been subsequently transferred to the Establishment Branch, where she had spent her time typing chits about other people's salaries and appointments. Finally, when the staff was reduced, she was the first to be dismissed. She had never been to Paris; never seen the Peace Conference. Charles, with first one bullied secretary, now another, had moved on his triumphant way from conference to conference, a tour unbroken by his appointment to the staff of the League of Nations Secretariat. Miss Montana had never been to a conference in her life. In her loafing, idle and poor, about London, with her idle and poor brother and her Irish journalist lover, bitterness had grown more bitter. No money, no prospects, no career. Only chance bits of freelance journalism, not enough to pay the rent of decent rooms. She had vowed to be revenged on Charles, but no way presented itself. She had prayed God to send her to some bright continental place with a sunny climate and if possible with some sort of conference going on, but no ladder thereto reared itself for her climbing. Her lover, a young man from Dublin, who wrote for, among other papers, the _British Bolshevist_, went out to represent this journal at the League Assembly at Geneva one year. He fell foul there of Charles Wilbraham, who objected to his messages, which, indeed, were not in the best of taste; but, as he said, if you write for vulgar papers you must send vulgar messages sometimes or they won't print you. Charles had him boycotted from public dinners, and otherwise annoyed. Hearing of it, Miss Montana consecrated afresh her vow to be revenged on Charles. The next year this journalist was to have gone to Geneva again, but instead he encountered an Orange bullet while reporting a riot in Belfast on August 15th, and was still laid up with the effects at the beginning of September. Then Miss Montana had conceived her brilliant idea. She would take his place. She would get back on Charles. She would disguise herself so that he would not know her if they met, and somehow she would be avenged. Incidentally, she would have a conference, in a bright continental climate, and earn some money. Eventually she had persuaded the young man to write to the _Bolshevist_ telling them that he had a journalist friend already in Geneva, one Henry Beechtree, who might safely be entrusted with the not onerous job of reporting the proceedings of the Assembly for them. The _Bolshevist_ did not really much care who did this job, or how it was done, so they accepted the services of this Mr. Beechtree. Thus, for Miss Montana, opened out at once an entertaining adventure, a temporary and scanty means of livelihood, and a chance of revenge. Surely now, knowing what she knew of Charles (for she had worked hard to collect injurious facts), she could somehow bring him to indignity and disgrace. How she had worked for this end! How patiently she had schemed, waited, watched, prayed, made friends with a dull girl, followed Charles about.... Let him wait, she had said; only let Charles wait. And now had come her hour, and it had, after all, turned on her and proved to be, as always, the hour not of herself, but of Charles. Charles was in the right; she was in the wrong. Charles (she might have known it) had done nothing so unseemly as to retain armament shares while entering the staff of the League; Charles had transferred his money to beer. Charles had not conspired against the League. Rather had Charles conceived the clever idea of engaging a famous detective to solve the mystery, and triumphantly he had had it solved. Charles emerged from this business, as always from every business, with credit; Charles was triumphantly in the right. It came to Miss Montana afresh, what she had really always known, that the Charleses of this world always are in the right. You cannot put them in the wrong. They put you in the wrong, for ever and ever. They may be all wrong, within and without, but they cannot be in the wrong. The wrong is in them, not they in it. However false, selfish, complacent, arrogant, and abominable a life Charles might have led, one would know that at the Judgment Day he would somehow be in the right.... Right with God, Charles would be, and contemptuously and without surprise he would watch his neighbours' condemnation. Had he not joined the True Church to make sure of this ultimate rightness, and because it was fashionable just now? Much Charles cared for religion! If Catholics were once more to be persecuted instead of admired, how soon would Charles leave them! Yes, Charles would always be in the right with the best people.... The heart and soul of Miss Montana went out passionately across land and sea to her wild journalist lover in Dublin, that poor and reckless failure, with whom nothing went right, who had scarcely a shilling to his name nor an ounce of health in his body. He was more than all the Charles Wilbrahams of the world together; infinitely more brilliant, more valuable, more alive; but never did he succeed, for life was not on his side. And now he would lose his job on the _British Bolshevist_ (not that that mattered much), and be further discredited, for perpetrating this fraud which had been so unfortunately exposed. He would go under, deeper and deeper under, and so would she. The underworld, that vague and fearful place, would receive them. His generous and trusting love for her had joined with his love of a joke to sink him. Together they would sink, and over their bodies Charles Wilbraham would climb, as on stepping-stones, to higher things. Higher and higher, plumping with prosperity like a filbert in the sun, while his eyes dropped fatness, and his corn and wine and oil increased.... Thus bitterly mused Miss Montana, sitting in her grimy room by her shabby gladstone bag, throwing therein her pyjamas, her socks, her collars, her safety razor, her passport (the passport was about Denis O'Neill, but it had served Henry Beechtree well enough; there is one advantage about passports: the nonsensical story on them is seldom read, nor the foolish portrait glanced at). To-morrow she would walk once more about the romantic, clean, and noble city, look her last on the most lovely lake, visit the ice-cream café and perhaps go up Salève, which she had not yet had time to do. Or up the lake to Nyons. She would not visit the Assembly Hall or the Secretariat, for by those she encountered there she would be looked at askance. She had made a fool of herself and been made a fool of, and she had, it would be supposed, tried to make a fool of Committee 9 in order to spite Charles Wilbraham. She would be thought no gentleman, even no lady. And yet, did they but know it, she had accused Charles in good faith, though with such rancour as they would be amazed to know of, such rancour as Serb-Croat-Slovenes scarce feel against Albanians, or Bolsheviks against Bourgeoisie. Miss Montana, past laughter, past tears, past sleep, and even now past hate, considered for a while where comfort could best be sought, then crept down the crazy winding staircase of her lodgings and so to the lake's edge. She would take a boat and have a last moonlight row. 51 The September days went by, and once again, on the shores of that most lovely lake, the nations assembled and talked. * * * * * GLASGOW: W. COLLINS SONS AND CO. LTD. Messrs. COLLINS' Latest Novels [Illustration] _Messrs. COLLINS will always be glad to send their book lists regularly to readers who will send name and address._ PIRACY Michael Arlen This is the story of Ivor Pelham Marlay between the ages of 18 and 32, and the period is London, 1910-1922. It is the history of England, two loves, and an ideal. Mr. Arlen deals with all the types of London Society, and he likes to bring out the queer and unexpected sides of his characters. No one who read Mr. Arlen's first book, _A London Venture_, or his delightful short stories, _A Romantic Lady_, needs to be told that he writes wittily and well. TYLER OF BARNET Bernard Gilbert Author of _Old England_ This long, powerful novel shows the dilemma of a middle-aged man with an invalid wife and grown-up children, who falls passionately in love for the first time. As he is a man of iron self-control he represses his passion till it bursts all bounds, with a tragic result. No one now writing knows so well or describes so vividly life in the English countryside as does Bernard Gilbert. THE PIT-PROP SYNDICATE Freeman Wills Crofts Another brilliantly ingenious detective story by the author of _The Ponson Case_. The mystery of the real business of the syndicate utterly baffled the clever young "amateurs" who tried to solve it, and it took all the experience and perseverance of the "professionals" to break up the dangerous and murderous gang. THE BEAUTIFUL AND DAMNED F. Scott Fitzgerald This book has caused an even greater sensation in America than _This Side of Paradise_. It is a long, searching, and absolutely convincing study of degeneration, that degeneration which ruins so many of the rich, young, idle people. The "smart set" of New York is hurled into the limelight and mercilessly revealed. A witty, pungent, and entirely original book. DANDELION DAYS Henry Williamson This is the tale of a boy's last terms at a public school, a very sensitive, unusual boy, and it is in a sense a sequel to _The Beautiful Years_. It is the work of a very clever young writer whose nature essays have attracted the widest attention here and in America, and is utterly unlike the usual "school story." It is a subtle and beautifully written study of character. BEANSTALK Mrs. Henry Dudeney A charmingly told novel of Sussex. The theme is Motherhood, and all the emotional subtleties of the desire for children. PENDER AMONG THE RESIDENTS Forrest Reid This is an episode in the life of Rex Pender, who inherited and came to live at Ballycastle. It is the story of the curious spiritual experience which came to him there. It is in a sense a "ghost story," but it is told by an artist and a stylist. "The Residents," moreover, are admirably contrasted, and in some cases deliciously humorously drawn. A charming, enigmatic, "different" book. THE DEAVES AFFAIR Hulbert Footner This is a story of Evan Weir's wooing, and a very strenuous and original pursuit it proved. In fact the lady of his choice so far dissembled her love, as frequently to threaten his further existence. At the time, Evan was acting as secretary to old Simeon Deaves, famed as the possessor of the "tightest wad" in New York. Now certain individuals had designs upon old Simeon and his hoard, and amongst them was the forcible and beautiful object of Evan's affections. Like _The Owl Taxi_, it goes with a splendid snap, and is packed with exciting and humorous incidents. ROSEANNE Madame Albanesi The author calls this an "old-fashioned story." It does not concern itself with sex or any other problems, but is just a lively, well-told life of a very fascinating heroine who has plenty of adventures sentimental and otherwise. Collins' 'First Novel' Library Autumn Titles EXPERIENCE Catherine Cotton This charming chronicle has no "plot." It is an attempt to present a happy, witty, simple-minded woman who attracted love because she gave it out. This is a very difficult type of book to write. The attention of the reader must be aroused and held by the sheer merit of the writing, and the publishers believe they have found in Catherine Cotton a writer with just the right gifts of wit, sympathy, and understanding. DOMENICO H. M. Anderson This is the story of a Cardinal of Rome, a member of one of the great noble families. In his youth something had happened which had thrown a shadow over his life. There are three great crises in his life, one of them due to this shadow, one to the contrast between his conscience and his ambition, and the third when, an exile in England, he falls in love. Miss Anderson shows much skill in drawing the character of this great and tragic figure. [Transcriber's Notes and Amendments: In addition to the listed inconsistencies in hyphenation or spelling, nationalities in general are inconsistently hyphenated and were left as printed. Hotel / Hôtel lake-side / lakeside world-platform / world platform Costa Rica / Costa-Rica Spanish American / Spanish-American(s) deputy-President / Deputy President / Deputy-President bookshop / book-shop / book shop motor launch / motor-launch gold-fish / goldfish Zeligowski / Zeligowsky Jugo-Slav / Yugo-Slav master criminals / master-criminals The following is a list of corrections made to the original. Ch. 4, p. 29, 'télégramme là' to 'télégramme-là'. ("Ce télégramme-là, celui qui dit 'j'ai traversé par là,) Ch. 9, p. 44, added close double quote after 'ten-thirty'. (ten-thirty.") Ch. 11, p. 56, 'If' to 'if'. ("if we're both going out to) Ch. 11, p. 56, 'Wembly' to 'Wembley'. (Miss Doris Wembley looked at Beechtree) Ch. 14, p. 65, added close double quote after 'everything'. (scarf--that is everything.") Ch. 15, p. 75, added period after 'moment'. (moment. He was not fit) Ch. 15, p. 78, 'Beech-tree' to 'Beechtree'. ("You don't drink this toast, Mr. Beechtree?") Ch. 17, p. 94, changed nested double quotes to single quotes. ('those damned Red Indians.') Ch. 22, p. 118, changed 'hwy' to 'why'. ("And why not?" inquired the Belfast voice) Ch. 22, p. 121, added open double quote before 'There'. ("There were always elements of) Ch. 23, p. 124, added close single quote after 'live!'. (would live!' Now, do I ask too much) Ch. 23, p. 124, added open double quote before 'is'. (she added as she rose, "is) Ch. 35, p. 168, changed 'news' to 'News'. (For men are not News.) Ch. 39, p. 199, changed double quote to single quote. (Monday, 8 a.m., Bathe, Kra----') Ch. 42, p. 214, added period after 'Mr'. ("And who, if I may ask, is Mr. Henry Beechtree?") Ch. 43, p. 225, removed extra 'you' in 'you many of you'. (many of you know it and him) Ch. 45, p. 231, changed 'Jaques' to 'Jacques'. (Jacques_. Pulling his soft hat over his eyes) Ch. 46, p. 234, changed 'if' to 'it'. (What I do mind is that it isn't Wilbraham) The following Italian errors have been retained: Ch. 15, p. 78, retained 'Nel zuppo'. (In the soup, sure thing. Nel zuppo!) Ch. 17, p. 97, retained 'chretiani'. (non son chretiani loro!") Ch. 38, p. 187, retained 'Voul'. ("Voul scendere, forse?") ] 
42973	----	Google Books (Harvard University) Transcriber's Notes: 1. Page scan source: Google Books http://books.google.com/books?id=E08YAAAAYAAJ (Harvard University) THE HOUSE OF THE WHITE SHADOWS By B. L. FARJEON _Author of_ Samuel Boyd of Catchpole Square Grif, Toilers of Babylon, etc. R. F. FENNO & COMPANY PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK: 1904 [Illustration] Copyright, 1903, by New Amsterdam Book Co. _The House of the White Shadows_. BENJAMIN LEOPOLD FARJEON We regret to learn that since this book was sent to press in this country, its gifted author has passed away in London at the ripe age of 70 years. It seems appropriate and indeed necessary to preface "The House of the White Shadows," on its appearance in America, with a brief account of Mr. Farjeon's life and literary career. Considering his popularity it is astonishing how very little is generally known regarding this author's personality. The ordinary reference books, if not altogether silent respecting him, have but a line or two, giving the date of his birth with perhaps a list of two or three of his principal novels. It is sincerely to be hoped that a competent biography will ultimately appear, affording to his very many admirers some satisfactory account of a man who has given the world more than twenty-five remarkable works of fiction. Mr. Farjeon was an Englishman, having been born in London in 1833. At an early age he went to Australia and from thence to New Zealand. It would be exceedingly interesting to learn how he employed himself in those colonies. We know that he engaged in a journalistic venture in Dunedin, but how long it continued or how he fed his intellectual life during the years which intervened, until he published his first novel in London, we know little or nothing. At all events he returned home and launched his first literary venture in London in 1870. It was called "Grif, a Story of Australian Life." This story proved to be eminently successful, and probably determined its author's future career. He produced "Joshua Marvel" in 1871; "London's Heart" in 1873; "Jessie Trim" in 1874, and a long list of powerful novels ending with "Samuel Boyd of Catchpole Square," published only two or three years ago. Some of these works, like "Blade o' Grass," "Bread and Cheese and Kisses," "Great Porter Square," etc., have been very popular both in England and the United States, passing through many editions. Mr. Farjeon's style is remarkable for its vivid realism. The London "Athenæum" in a long and appreciative review styles him "a master of realistic fiction." On account of his sentiment and minute characterization he is regarded as a follower of the method of Dickens. No writer since that master can picture like Farjeon the touching and pathetic type of innocent childhood, pure in spite of miserable and squalid surroundings. He can paint, too, a scene of sombre horror so vividly that even Dickens himself could scarcely emulate its realism. Mr. Farjeon visited the United States several times during his long life. Americans have always regarded him with kindly feelings. Perhaps this kindliness was somewhat increased when it became generally known that he had married a daughter of America's genial actor, Joseph Jefferson. "The House of the White Shadows" is published in this country by arrangement with Messrs. Hutchinson & Co., of London, who have been Mr. Farjeon's publishers in Great Britain for many years. THE PUBLISHERS. CONTENTS CHAPTER Book I.--The Trial of Gautran. I.--Only a Flower-girl, II.--The Arrival of the Advocate, III.--The Advocate's Wife Insists upon Having her Way, IV.--Jacob Hartrich, the Baker, Gives his Reasons for Believing Gautran the Woodman Guilty of the Murder of Madeline, V.--Fritz the Fool, VI.--Mistress and Maid, VII.--A Visit from Pierre Lamont--Dreams of Love, VIII.--The Interview in Prison, IX.--The Advocate Undertakes a Strange Case, X.--Two Letters--From Friend to Friend, from Lover to Lover, XI.--Fire and Snow--Fool Fritz Informs Pierre Lamont, where Actual Love Commences, XII.--The Struggle of Love and Duty, XIII.--The Trial of Gautran, XIV.--The Evidence of Witnesses, XV.--The Widow Joseph Gives Evidence Respecting a Mysterious Visitor, XVI.--The Conclusion of the Prosecution, XVII.--The Advocate's Defense--The Verdict, Book II.--The Confession. I.--A Letter from John Vanbrugh, II.--A Startling Interruption, III.--In the Dead of Night, IV.--The Confession, Book III.--The Grave of Honour. I.--Preparations for a Visitor, II.--A Love Story of the Past, III.--A Mother's Treachery, IV.--Husband and Wife, V.--The Gathering of the Storm, VI.--The Grave of Honour, VII.--Husband and Wife, VIII.--The Compact, IX.--Mother Denise Has Strange Fancies in the Night, X.--Christian Almer's Child-life, XI.--Beatrice Almer Gives a Promise to Her Son, XII.--The Last Meeting between Husband and Wife, XIII.--The Arrival of Christian Almer, Book IV.--The Battle with Conscience. I.--Lawyer and Priest, II.--The White Shadow, III.--The Watch on the Hill, IV.--The Silent Voice, V.--Gautran Finds a Refuge, VI.--Pierre Lamont Reads Love-verses to Fritz the Fool, VII.--Mistress and Maid, VIII.--In the Home of His Childhood, IX.--Christian Almer Receives Two Visitors, X.--A Brief Survey of the Web, XI.--A Crisis, XII.--Self-justification, XIII.--Shadows, XIV.--The Advocate Fears he has Created a Monster, XV.--Gautran and the Advocate, XVI.--Pierre Lamont Seeks the Hospitality of the House of White Shadows, XVII.--Fritz the Fool Relates a Strange Dream to Pierre Lamont, Book V.--The Doom Of Gautran. I.--Adelaide Strives to Propitiate Pierre Lamont, II.--Gautran Seeks John Vanbrugh, III.--Gautran Resolves on a Plan of Escape, IV.--Heaven's Judgment, V.--Father Capel Discovers Gautran in His Peril, VI.--The Written Confession, Book VI.--A Record Of The Past. I.--The Discovery of the Manuscript, II.--Christian Almer's Father, III.--A Dishonourable Concealment, IV.--M. Gabriel is Dismissed, V.--The Thief in the Night, VI.--The Hidden Crime, VII.--False Wife, False Friend, Book VII.--Retribution. I.--John Vanbrugh and the Advocate, II.--A Terrible Revelation, III.--Pauline, IV.--Onward--to Death, V.--The Doom of the House of White Shadows, THE HOUSE OF WHITE SHADOWS. _BOOK I.--THE TRIAL OF GAUTRAN_. CHAPTER I ONLY A FLOWER-GIRL. The feverish state of excitement into which Geneva was thrown was not caused by a proclamation of war, a royal visit, a social revolution, a religious wave, or an avalanche. It was simply that a man was on his trial for murder. There is generally in Geneva a rational if not a philosophic foundation for a social upheaving; unlike the people of most other countries, the population do not care to play a blind game of follow my leader. They prefer to think for themselves, and their leaders must be men of mark. Intellect is passionately welcomed; pretenders find their proper level. What, then, in a simple trial for murder, had caused the excitement? Had the accused moved in a high station, was he a poet, a renowned soldier, a philanthropist, a philosopher, or a priest loved for his charities, and the purity of his life? None of these; he was Gautran, a woodman, and a vagabond of the lowest type. It would be natural, therefore, to seek for an explanation in the social standing of his victim. A princess, probably, or at least a lady of quality? On the contrary. A common flower-girl, who had not two pair of shoes to her feet. Seldom had a trial taken place in which the interest manifested had been so absorbing. While it was proceeding, the questions which men and women asked freely of each other were: "What news from the court-house?" "How many days longer is it likely to last?" "Has the monster confessed?" "What will the verdict be?" "Do you think it possible he can escape?" "Why did the famous Advocate undertake the defence?" In fashionable assemblies, and in _cafés_ where the people drank their lager and red wine; in clubs and workshops; on steamboats and diligences; in the fields and vineyards; on high-roads and bye-roads--the trial of Gautran formed the principal topic of conversation and debate, to the almost utter exclusion of trade, and science, and politics, and of a new fashion in hats which was setting the women of adjacent countries crazy. So animated were the discussions that the girl lying in her grave might have been supposed to be closely related to half the inhabitants of Geneva, instead of having been, as she was, a comparative stranger in the town, with no claim upon any living Genevese on the score of kinship. The evidence against the prisoner was overwhelming, and it appeared as though a spirit of personal hatred had guided its preparation. With deadly patience and skill the prosecution had blocked every loophole of escape. Gautran was fast in the meshes, and it was observed that his counsel, the Advocate, in the line he adopted, elicited precisely the kind of evidence which--in the judgment of those who listened to him now for the first time-strengthened the case against the man he was defending. "Ah," said those observers, "this great Advocate shares the horror of the murderer and his crime, and has undertaken the defence for the purpose of ensuring a conviction." A conclusion which could only occur to uninformed minds. There were others--among them the prosecuting counsel, the judge, and the members of the legal profession who thronged the court who, with a better knowledge of the Advocate's marvellous resources, and the subtle quality of his intellect, were inspired with the gravest doubts as to the result of the trial. This remarkable man, who gazed before him with calm, thoughtful eyes, whose face was a mask upon which no trace of inward emotion could be detected, was to them at once a source of perplexity and admiration. Instances were cited of trials in which he had been engaged, in the course of which he had seemed to play so directly into the hands of his antagonists that defeat was not dreamt of until they were startled by the discovery that he had led them into an ambush where, at the supreme moment, victory was snatched from their grasp. And, when it was too late to repair their error, they were galled by the reflection that the Advocate had so blinded their judgment, and so cloaked his designs, that he had compelled them to contribute largely to their own discomfiture. It was in the acknowledgment of these extraordinary powers that the doubt arose whether Gautran would not slip through the hands of justice. Every feature of the case and the proceedings, whether picturesque or horrible, that afforded scope for illustration by pen and pencil was pressed into the service of the public--whose appetite for such fare is regarded as immoderate and not over-nice--by special correspondents and artists. Descriptions and sketches of the river and its banks, of the poor home of the unfortunate flower-girl, of the room in which she had slept, of her habits and demeanour, of her dress, of her appearance alive and dead; and, as a contrast, of Gautran and his vile surroundings--not a detail was allowed to escape. It was impossible, without favour or influence, to obtain admission to the court in which the trial was held, and, could seats have been purchased, a higher price would willingly have been paid for them than the most celebrated actress or prima donna could have commanded. Murders are common enough, but this crime had feverishly stirred the heart of the community, and its strangest feature was that the excitement was caused, not so much by the murder itself, as by an accidental connection which imparted to it its unparalleled interest. The victim was a young girl seventeen years of age, who, until a few months before her cruel and untimely death, had been a stranger in the neighbourhood. Nothing was known of the story of her life. When she first appeared in the suburbs of Geneva she was accompanied by a woman much older than herself, and two facts made themselves immediately apparent. That a strong attachment existed between the new-comers, and that they were very poor. The last circumstance was regarded as a sufficient indication that they belonged to the lower classes. The name of the younger of the women was Madeline, the name of the elder Pauline. That they became known simply by these names, Madeline and Pauline, was not considered singular by those with whom they consorted; as they presented themselves, so they were accepted. Some said they came from the mountains, some from the plains, but this was guess-work. Their dress did not proclaim their canton, and they brought nothing with them to betray them. To the question asked of them, "What are you?" Pauline replied, "Cannot you see? We are common working people." They hired a room in a small cottage for three francs a month, and paid the first month's rent in advance, and their landlady was correct in her surmise that these three francs constituted nearly the whole of their wealth. She was curious to know how they were going to live, for although they called themselves working people, the younger of the two did not seem to be fitted for hard work, or to be accustomed to it. For a few days they did nothing, and then their choice of avocation was made. They sold flowers in the streets and _cafés_ of Geneva, and gained no more than a scanty living thereby. The woman in whose cottage they lived said she was surprised that they did not make a deal of money, as much because of Madeline's beauty as of their exquisite skill in arranging their posies. Had Pauline traded alone it is likely that failure would have attended her, for notwithstanding that she was both comely and straight-made, there was always in her eyes the watchful look of one who mistrusts honeyed words from strangers, and sees a snare in complimentary phrases. It was otherwise with Madeline, in whose young life Nature's fairest season was opening, and it would have been strange indeed if her smiling face and winning manners had not attracted custom. This smiling face and these winning manners were not an intentional part of the trade she followed; they were natural gifts. Admiration pursued her, not only from those in her own station in life, but from some who occupied a higher, and many an insidious proposal was whispered in her ear whose poisonous flattery would have beguiled her to her ruin. If she had not had in Pauline a staunch and devoted protector, it is hard to say whether she could have resisted temptation, for her nature was singularly gentle and confiding; but her faithful companion was ever on the alert, and no false wooer could hope to win his way to Madeline's heart while Pauline was near. One gave gold for flowers, and was about to depart with a smile at the success of his first move, when Pauline, with her hand on his sleeve, stopped his way. "You have made a mistake," she said, tendering the gold; "the flowers you have taken are worth but half-a-franc." "There is no mistake," he said airily; "the gold is yours for beauty's sake." "I prefer silver," she said, gazing steadily at him, "for fair dealing's sake." He took back his gold and gave her silver, with a taunting remark that she was a poor hand at her trade. She made no reply to this, but there was a world of meaning in her eyes as she turned to Madeline with a look of mingled anxiety and tenderness. And yet she desired money, yearningly desired it, for the sake of her young charge; but she would only earn it honestly, or receive it from those of whom she had a right to ask. She guarded Madeline as a mother guards her young, and their affection for each other grew into a proverb. Certainly no harm could befall the young flower-girl while Pauline was by her side. Unhappily a day arrived when the elder of the women was called away for a while. They parted with tears and kisses, never to meet again! CHAPTER II THE ARRIVAL OF THE ADVOCATE Among those whom Madeline's beauty had attracted was a man in a common way of life, Gautran, a woodman, who followed her with dogged persistence. That his company was distasteful to this bright young creature could not be doubted, but he was not to be shaken off, and his ferocity of character deterred others from approaching the girl when he was present. Many times had he been heard to say, "Madeline belongs to me; let me see who is bold enough to dispute it." And again and again that it would go hard with the man who stepped between him and the girl he loved. Even Pauline was loth to anger him, and seemed to stand in fear of him. This was singular enough, for when he and Madeline were seen together, people would say, "There go the wolf and the lamb." This wretch it was who stood accused of the murder of the pretty flower-girl. Her body had been found in the River Rhone, with marks of violence upon it, and a handkerchief tightly twisted round its neck. The proofs of a cruel murder were incontestable, and suspicion fell immediately upon Gautran, who was the last person known to be in Madeline's company. Evidence of his guilt was soon forthcoming. He was madly, brutally in love with her, and madly, brutally jealous of her. On the night of the murder they had been seen walking together on the bank of the river; Gautran had been heard to speak in a high tone, and his exclamation, "I will kill you! I will kill you!" was sworn to by witnesses; and the handkerchief round her neck belonged to him. A thousand damning details were swiftly accumulated, all pointing to the wretch's guilt, and it was well for him that he did not fall into the hands of the populace. So incensed were they against him that they would have torn him to pieces. Not in all Geneva could there be found a man or a woman who, by the holding up of a finger, would have besought mercy for him. Regret was openly expressed that the death punishment for murder was not lawful, some satisfaction, however, being derived from the reflection that in times gone by certain heinous crimes had brought upon the criminals a punishment more terrible than death. "They should chain the monster by the waist," said a man, "so that he cannot lie down, and can only move one step from the stake. Gautran deserves worse than that." But while he lay in prison, awaiting the day of trial, there arrived in Geneva an Advocate of renown, who had travelled thither with his wife in search of much needed repose from years of continuous mental toil. This man was famous in many countries; he was an indefatigable and earnest worker, and so important were his services deemed that phenomenal fees were frequently paid to secure them. But notwithstanding the exceeding value of his time he had been known to refuse large sums of money in cases offered to him, in order to devote himself to others which held out no prospect of pecuniary reward. Wealthy, and held in almost exaggerated esteem, both for his abilities and the cold purity of his life, it was confidently predicted that the highest honours of the state were in store for him, and it was ungrudgingly admitted--so far above his peers did he stand--that the loftiest office would be dignified by association with his name. The position he had attained was due as much to his intense enthusiasm in the cause he championed as to his wondrous capacity for guiding it to victory. As leader of a forlorn hope he was unrivalled. He had an insatiable appetite for obstacles; criminal cases of great moment, in which life and liberty were in imminent peril, and in which there was a dark mystery to be solved, possessed an irresistible fascination for him. Labour such as this was a labour of love, and afforded him the keenest pleasure. The more intricate the task the closer his study of it; the deeper the mystery the greater his patience in the unravelling of it; the more powerful the odds against him the more determined his exertions to win the battle. His microscopic, penetrating mind detected the minutest flaw, seized the smallest detail likely to be of advantage to him, and frequently from the most trivial thread he spun a strand so strong as to drag the ship that was falling to pieces to a safe and secure haven. His satisfaction at these achievements was unbounded, but he rarely allowed an expression of exultation to escape him. His outward tranquillity, even in supreme crises, was little less than marvellous. His nerve was of iron, and to his most intimate associates his inner life was a sealed book. Accompanied by his wife, the Advocate entered Geneva, and alighted at one of the principal hotels, four days before that on which the trial of Gautran was to commence. CHAPTER III THE ADVOCATE'S WIFE INSISTS UPON HAVING HER WAY Their arrival was expected. The moment they were shown into a private room the proprietor of the hotel waited upon them, and with obsequious bows welcomed them to Geneva. "A letter has been awaiting my lord," said this magnate, the whiteness of whose linen was dazzling; he had been considering all the morning whether he should address the great Advocate as "your lordship," or "your eminence," or "your highness," and had decided upon the first, "since yesterday evening." The Advocate in silence received the letter, in silence read it, then handed it to his wife, who also read it, with a careless and supercilious air which deeply impressed the landlord. "Will my lord and my lady," said this official, "honour us by remaining long in our town? The best rooms in the establishment are at their disposal." The Advocate glanced at his wife, who answered for him: "We shall remain for a few hours only." Despair was expressed in the landlord's face as he left the room, overwhelmed with the desolation caused by this announcement. The letter which he had delivered to the Advocate ran as follows: "Comrade, whom I have never seen, but intimately know, Welcome. Were it not that I am a cripple, and physically but half a man--represented, fortunately, by the upper moiety of my body--I should come in person to shake you by the hand. As it is, I must wait till you take up your quarters in Christian Almer's villa in our quiet village, where I spend my days and nights, extracting what amusement I can from the foibles and weaknesses of my neighbours. My father was steward to Christian Almer's father, and I succeeded him, for the reason that the office, during the latter years and after the death of the elder Almer, was a sinecure. Otherwise, another steward would have had to be found, for my labours lay elsewhere. But since the day on which I became a mere bit of animated lumber, unable of my own will to move about, and confined within the narrow limits of this sleepy valley, I have regarded the sinecure as an important slice of good fortune, albeit there was nothing whatever to do except to cause myself to be wheeled past Christian Almer's villa on fine days, for the purpose of satisfying myself that no thief had run away with its rusty gates. Then came an urgent letter from young Almer, whom I have not beheld since he was a lad of nine or ten, begging of me to put the house in order for you and your lady, to whom I, as an old gallant, am already in spirit devoted. And when I heard that it was for you the work was to be done, doubly did I deem myself fortunate in not having thrown up the stewardship in my years of active life. All, then, is ready in the old house, which will be the more interesting to you from the fact of its not having been inhabited for nearly a generation. Comedies and tragedies have been enacted within its walls, as you doubtless know. Does Christian Almer come with you, and has he grown into the likeness of his father?--Your servant and brother, "Pierre Lamont." "Who is this Pierre Lamont?" asked his wife. "Once a famous lawyer," replied the Advocate; "compelled some years ago to relinquish the pursuit of his profession by reason of an accident which crippled him for life. You do not wish to stop in Geneva, then?" "No," said the beautiful woman who stood before him, his junior by five-and-twenty years; "there is nothing new to be seen here, and I am dying with impatience to take possession of Mr. Almer's villa. I have been thinking of nothing else for the last week." "Captivated by the name it bears." "Perhaps. The House of White Shadows! Could anything be more enticing? Why was it so called?" "I cannot tell you. Until lately, indeed when this holiday was decided upon"--he sighed as he uttered the word "holiday"; an indication that he was not accepting it in a glad spirit--"I was not aware that Almer owned a villa hereabouts. Do not forget, Adelaide, that he cautioned you against accepting an offer made in a rash moment." "What more was needed to set me longing for it? 'Here is a very beautiful book,' said Mr. Almer, 'full of wonderful pictures; it is yours, if you like--but, beware, you must not open it.' Think of saying that to a woman!" "You are a true daughter of Eve. Almer's offer was unwise; his caution still more unwise." "The moment he warned me against the villa, I fell in love with it. I shall discover a romance there." "I, too, would warn you against it----" "You are but whetting my curiosity," she interrupted playfully. "Seriously, though. Master Lamont, in his letter, says that the house has not been inhabited for nearly a generation----" "There must be ghosts there," she said, again interrupting him. "It will be delightful." "And Master Lamont's remark," continued the Advocate, "that there have been comedies and tragedies enacted within its walls is not a recommendation." "I have heard you say, Edward, that they are enacted within the walls of the commonest houses." "But this particular house has been for so long a time deserted! I am in ignorance of the stories attached to it; that they are in some sense unpleasant is proved by Almer's avoidance of the place. What occurs to me is that, were it entirely desirable, Almer would not have made it a point to shun it." "Christian Almer is different from other men; that is your own opinion of him." "True; he is a man dominated by sentiment; yet there appears to be something deeper than mere sentiment in his consistent avoidance of the singularly named House of White Shadows." "According to Master Lamont's letter he has been to some trouble to make it agreeable to us. Indeed, Edward, you cannot argue me out of having my own way." "If the house is gloomy, Adelaide----" "I will brighten it. Can I not?" she asked in a tone so winning that it brought a light into his grave face. "You can, for me, Adelaide," he replied; "but I am not thinking of myself. I would not willingly sadden a heart as joyous as yours. You must promise, if you are not happy there, to seek with me a more cheerful retreat." "You can dismiss your fears, Edward. I shall be happy there. All last night I was dreaming of white shadows. Did they sadden me? No. I woke up this morning in delightful spirits. Is that an answer to your forebodings?" "When did you not contrive to have your own way? I have some banking business to do in Geneva, and I must leave you for an hour." She nodded and smiled at him. Before he reached the door he turned and said: "Are you still resolved to send your maid away? She knows your wants so well, and you are so accustomed to her, that her absence might put you to inconvenience. Had you not better keep her with you till you see whether you are likely to be suited at Almer's house?" "Edward," she said gaily, "have I not told you a hundred times, and have you not found out for yourself a hundred and a hundred times again, that your wife is a very wilful woman? I shall love to be inconvenienced; it will set my wits to work. But indeed I happen to know that there is a pretty girl in the villa, the old housekeeper's granddaughter, who was born to do everything I wish done in just the way I wish it done." "Child of impulse and fancy," he said, kissing her hand, and then her lips, in response to a pouting invitation, "it is well for you that you have a husband as serious as myself to keep guard and watch over you. What is the thought that has suddenly entered your head?" "Can you read a woman's thoughts?" she asked in her lightest manner. "I can judge by signs. What was your thought, Adelaide?" "A foolish thought. To keep guard and watch over me, you said. The things are so different. The first is a proof of love, the second of suspicion." "A logician, too," he said with a pleased smile; "the air here agrees with you." So saying he left her, and the moment he was beyond the reach of her personal influence his native manner asserted itself, and his features assumed their usual grave expression. As he was descending the stairs of the hotel he was accosted by a woman, the maid he had advised his wife to keep. "I beg your pardon, sir," she said; "but may I ask why I am discharged?" "Certainly not of me," he replied stiffly; "you are my wife's servant. She has her reasons." "She has not made me acquainted with them," said the woman discontentedly. "Will you?" He saw that she was in an ill-temper, and although he was not a man to tolerate insolence, he was attentive to trifles. "I do not interfere with my wife's domestics. She engages whom she pleases, and discharges whom she pleases." "But to do right, sir, that is everyone's affair. I am discharged suddenly, without notice, and without having committed a fault. Until this morning I am perfection; no one can dress my lady like me, no one can arrange her hair so admirably. That is what she says to me continually. Why, then, am I discharged? I ask my lady why, and she says, for her convenience." "She has paid you, has she not?" "Oh yes, and has given me money to return home. But it is not that. It is that it hurts me to be suddenly discharged. It is to my injury when I seek another situation. I shall be asked why I left my last. To speak the truth, I must say that I did not leave, that I was discharged. I shall be asked why, and I shall not be able to say." "Has she not given you a character?" "Yes; it is not that I complain of; it is being suddenly discharged." "I cannot interfere, mistress. You have no reasonable cause for complaint. You have a character, and you are well paid; that should content you." He turned from her, and she sent her parting words after him: "My lady has her reasons! I hope they will be found to be good ones, and that you will find them so. Do you hear?--that you will find them so!" He paid no further heed to her, and entering his carriage drove to the Rue de la Corraterie, to the business house of Jacob Hartrich, and was at once admitted to the banker's private room. CHAPTER IV JACOB HARTRICH, THE BANKER, GIVES HIS REASONS FOR BELIEVING GAUTRAN THE WOODMAN GUILTY OF THE MURDER OF MADELINE Jacob Hartrich, by birth a Jew, had reached his sixtieth year, and was as hale and strong as a man of forty. His face was bland and full-fleshed, his eyes bright and, at times, joyous, his voice mellow, his hands fat and finely-shaped, and given to a caressing petting of each other, denoting satisfaction with themselves and the world in general. His manners were easy and self-possessed--a characteristic of his race. He was a gentleman and a man of education. He gazed at the Advocate with admiration; he had an intense respect for men who had achieved fame by force of intellect. "Mr. Almer," he said, "prepared me for your arrival, and is anxious that I should forward your views in every possible way. I shall be happy to do so, and, if it is in my power, to contribute to the pleasure of your visit." "I thank you," said the Advocate, with a courteous inclination of his head. "When did you last see Mr. Almer?" "He called upon me this day three weeks--for a few minutes only, and only concerning your business." "He is always thoughtful and considerate. I suppose he was on his road to Paris when he called upon you." "No; he had no intention of going to Paris. I believe he had been for some time in the neighbourhood of Geneva before he favoured me with a visit. He is still here." "Here!" exclaimed the Advocate, in a tone of pleasure and surprise. "At least in Switzerland." "In what part?" "I cannot inform you, but from the remarks he let fall, I should say in the mountains, where tourists are not likely to penetrate." He paused a moment before he continued: "Mr. Almer spoke of you, in terms it was pleasant to hear, as his closest, dearest friend." "We are friends in the truest sense of the word." "Then I may speak freely to you. During the time he was with me I was impressed by an unusual strangeness in him. He was restless and ill at ease; his manner denoted that he was either dissatisfied with himself or was under some evil influence. I expressed my surprise to him that he had been for some time in this neighbourhood without calling upon me, but he did not offer any explanation of his neglect. He told me, however, that he was tired of the light, the gaiety, and the bustle of cities, and that it was his intention to seek some solitude to endeavour to rid himself of a terror which had taken possession of him. No sooner had he made this strange declaration than he strove, in hurried words, to make light of it, evidently anxious that it should leave no impression upon my mind. I need scarcely say he did not succeed. I have frequently thought of that declaration and of Christian Almer in connection with it." The Advocate smiled and shook his head. "Mr. Almer is given to fantastic expression. If you knew him as well as I do you would be aware that he is prone to magnify trifles, and likely to raise ghosts of the conscience for the mere pleasure of laying them. His nature is of that order which suffers keenly, but I am not disposed on that account to pity him. There are men who would be most unhappy unless they suffered." "My dear sir," said Jacob Hartrich, "I have known Christian Almer since he was a child. I knew his father, a gentleman of great attainments, and his mother, a refined and exquisitely beautiful woman. His child-life probably made a sad impression upon him, but he has mixed with the world, and there is a bridge of twenty years between then and now. A great change has taken place in him, and not for the better. There is certainly something on his mind." "There is something on most men's minds. I have remarked no change in Mr. Almer to cause me uneasiness. He is the same high-minded gentleman I have ever known him to be. He is exquisitely sensitive, responsive to the lightest touch; those who are imbued with such qualities suffer keenly and enjoy keenly." "The thought occurred to me that he might have sustained a monetary loss, but I dismissed it." "A monetary loss would rather exalt than depress him. He is rich--it would have been a great happiness for him if he had been poor. What are termed misfortunes are sometimes real blessings; many fine natures are made to halt on their way by worldly prosperity. Had Christian Almer been born in the lower classes he would have found a worthy occupation; he would have made a name for himself, and in all probability would have won a wife--who would have idolised him. He is a man whom a woman might worship." "You have given me a clue," said Jacob Hartrich; "he has met with a disappointment in love." "I think not; had he met with such a disappointment I should most surely have heard of it from his own lips." Interesting as this conversation was to both the speakers it had now come to a natural break, and Jacob Hartrich, diverging from it, inquired whether the Advocate's visit was likely to be a long one. "I have pledged myself," said the Advocate somewhat wearily, "to remain here for at least three months." "Rest is a necessary medicine." The Advocate nodded absently. "Pray excuse me while I attend to your affairs. Here are the local and other papers." He left the room, and returning soon afterwards found the Advocate engaged in the perusal of a newspaper in which he appeared to be deeply interested. "Your business," said Jacob Hartrich, "will occupy about twenty minutes. There are some trifling formalities to be gone through with respect to signatures and stamps. If you are pressed for time I will send to you at your hotel." "With your permission I will wait," said the Advocate, laying aside the paper with a thoughtful air. Jacob Hartrich glanced at the paper, and saw the heading of the column which the Advocate had perused, "The Murder of Madeline the Flower-girl." "You have been reading the particulars of this shocking deed." "I have read what is there written." "But you are familiar with the particulars; everybody has read them." "I am the exception, then. I have seen very few newspapers lately." "It was a foul and wicked murder." "It appears so, from this bare recital." "The foulest and most horrible within my remembrance. Ah! where will not the passions of men lead them?" "A wide contemplation. Were men to measure the consequences of their acts before they committed them, certain channels of human events which are now exceedingly wide and turbulent would become narrow and peaceful. It was a girl who was murdered?" "Yes." "Young?" "Barely seventeen." "Pretty?" "Very pretty." "Had she no father to protect her?" "No." "Nor mother?" "No--as far as is known." "A flower-girl, I gather from the account." "Yes. I have occasionally bought a posy of her--poor child!" "Did she trade alone?" "She had a companion, an elderly woman, who, unhappily, left her a few days before the murder." "Deserted her?" "No; it was an amicable parting, intended to last but a short time, I believe. It is not known what called her away." "This young flower-girl--was she virtuous?" "Undoubtedly, in my belief. She was most modest and child-like." "But susceptible to flattery. You hesitate. Why? Do you not judge human passions by human standards? She was young, pretty, in humble circumstances; her very opposite would be susceptible to flattery; therefore, she." "Why, yes, of course; I hesitated because it would pain me to say anything concerning her which might be construed into a reproach." "In such matters there is but one goal to steer for--the truth. I perceive that a man, Gautran, is in prison, charged with the murder." "A man?" exclaimed Jacob Hartrich, with indignant warmth. "A monster, rather! Some refined punishment should be devised to punish him for his crime." "His crime! I have, then, been reading an old paper." The Advocate referred to the date. "No--it is this morning's." "I see your point, but the proofs of the monster's guilt are irrefragable." "What proofs? The statements of newspaper reporters--the idle and mischievous tattle of persons who cannot be put into the witness-box?" "It is well that you express yourself to me privately on this matter. In public it would not be credited that you were in earnest." "Then the facts are lost sight of that the man has to be tried, that his guilt or innocence has yet to be established." "The law cannot destroy facts." "The law establishes facts, which are often in danger of being perverted by man's sympathies and prejudices. Are you acquainted with this Gautran?" "I have no knowledge of him except from report." "And having no knowledge of him, except from report, you form an opinion upon hearsay, and condemn him offhand. It is justice itself, therefore, that is on its trial, not a man accused of a frightful deed. _He_ is already judged. It is stated in the newspaper that the man's appearance is repulsive." "He is hideous." "Then you _have_ seen him." "No." "Calmly consider what value can be placed upon your judgment under the circumstances. You say the girl was pretty. Her engaging manners have tempted you to buy posies of her, not always when you needed them. In making this statement of a fact which, trivial as it appears to be, is of importance, I judge a human action by a human standard. Thus, beauty on one side, and a forbidding countenance on the other, may be the means of contributing--nay, of leading--to a direct miscarriage of justice. This should be prevented; justice must have a clear course, which must not be blocked and choked up by passion and prejudice. The opinion you express of Gautran's guilt may be entertained by others to whom he is also a stranger." "My opinion is universal." "The man, therefore, is universally condemned before he is called upon to answer the charge brought against him. Amidst this storm, in the wild fury of which reason has lost its proper functions, where shall a jury be found to calmly weigh the evidence on either side, and to judge, with ordinary fairness, a miserable wretch accused of a foul crime?" "Gautran is a vagabond," said Jacob Hartrich feebly, feeling as though the ground were giving way under his feet, "of the lowest type." "He is poor." "Necessarily." "And cannot afford to pay for independent legal aid." "It is fortunate. He will meet with his deserts more surely and swiftly." "You can doubtless call to mind instances of innocent persons being accused of crimes they did not commit, and being made to suffer." "There is no fear in the case of Gautran." "Let us hope not," said the Advocate, whose voice during the conversation had been perfectly passionless, "and in the meantime, do not lose sight of this principle. Were Gautran the meanest creature that breathes, were he the most repulsive being on earth, he is an innocent man until he is declared guilty by the law. Equally so were he a man gifted with exceeding beauty of person, and bearing an honoured name. And of those two extremes, supposing both were found guilty of equal crimes, it is worthy of consideration, whether he who walks the gutters be not better entitled to a merciful sentence than he who lives on the heights." At this moment a clerk brought some papers into the room. Jacob Hartrich looked over them, and handed them, with a roll of notes, to the Advocate, who rose and prepared to go. "Have you a permanent address?" asked the banker. "We take up our quarters at once," replied the Advocate, "at the House of White Shadows." Jacob Hartrich gazed at him in consternation. "Christian Almer's villa! He made no mention of it to me." "It was an arrangement entered into some time since. I have a letter from Master Pierre Lamont informing me that the villa is ready for us." "It has been uninhabited for years, except by servants who have been kept there to preserve it from falling into decay. There are strange stories connected with that house." "I have heard as much, but have not inquired into them. The probability is that they arise from credulity or ignorance, the foundation of all superstition." With that remark the Advocate took his leave. CHAPTER V FRITZ THE FOOL As the little wooden clock in the parlour of the inn of The Seven Liars struck the hour of five, Fritz the Fool ran through the open door, from which an array of bottles and glasses could be seen, and cried: "They are coming--they are coming--the great Advocate and his lady--and will arrive before the cook can toss me up an omelette!" And having thus delivered himself, Fritz ran out of the inn to the House of White Shadows, and swinging open the gates, cried still more loudly: "Mother Denise! Dionetta, my pearl of pearls! Haste--haste! They are on the road, and will be here a lifetime before old Martin can straighten his crooked back!" Within five minutes of this summons, there stood at the door of the inn of The Seven Liars, the customers who had been tippling therein, the host and hostess and their three children; and ten yards off, at the gates of the villa. Mother Denise, her pretty granddaughter, Dionetta, and old Martin, whose breathing came short and quick at the haste he had made to be in time to welcome the Advocate and his lady. The refrain of the breaking-up song sung in the little village school was dying away, and the children trooped out, and waited to witness the arrival. The schoolmaster was also there, with a look of relief on his face, and stood with his hand on the head of his favourite pupil. The news had spread quickly, and when the carriage made its appearance at the end of the lane, which shelved downward to the House of White Shadows, a number of villagers had assembled, curious to see the great lord and lady who intended to reside in the haunted house. As the carriage drove up at the gates, the courier jumped down from his seat next to the driver, and opened the carriage door. The villagers pressed forward, and gazed in admiration at the beautiful lady, and in awe at the stern-faced gentleman who had selected the House of White Shadows for a holiday residence. There were those among them who, poor as they were, would not have undertaken to sleep in any one of the rooms in the villa for the value of all the watches in Geneva. There were, however, three persons in the small concourse of people who had no fears of the house. These were Mother Denise, the old housekeeper, her husband Martin, and Fritz the Fool. Mother Denise, the oldest servant of the house, had been born there, and was ghost and shadow proof; so was her husband, now in his eighty-fifth year, whose body was like a bent bow stretched for the flight of the arrow, his soul. Not for a single night in sixty-eight years had Mother Denise slept outside the walls of the House of White Shadows; nothing did she know of the great world beyond, and nothing did she care; a staunch, faithful servant of the Almer family, conversant with its secret history, her duty was sufficient for her, and she had no desire to travel beyond the space which encompassed it. For forty-three years her husband had kept her company, and to neither, as they had frequently declared, had a supernatural visitant ever appeared. They had no belief whatever in the ghostly gossip. Fool Fritz, on the contrary, averred that there was no mistake about the spiritual visitants; they appeared to him frequently, but he had no fear of them; indeed, he appeared to rather enjoy them. "They may come, and welcome," he said. "They don't strike, they don't bite, they don't burn. They reveal secrets which you would like nobody to find out. If it had not been for them, how should I have known about Karl and Mina kissing and courting at the back of the schoolhouse when everybody was asleep, or about Dame Walther and her sly bottle, or about Wolf Constans coming home at three in the morning with a dead lamb on his back--ah, and about many things you try and keep to yourselves? I don't mind the shadows, not I." There was little in the village that Fritz did not know; all the scandal, all the love-making, all the family quarrels, all the secret doings--it was hard to keep anything from him; and the mystery was how he came to the knowledge of these matters. "He is in affinity with the spirits," said the village schoolmaster; "he is himself a ghost, with a fleshly embodiment. That is why the fool is not afraid." Truly Fritz the Fool was ghostlike in appearance, for his skin was singularly white, and his head was covered with shaggy white hair which hung low down upon his shoulders. From a distance he looked like an old man, but he had not reached his thirtieth year, and so clear were his eyes and complexion that, on a closer observance, he might have passed for a lad of half the years he bore. A shrewd knave, despite his title of fool. Pretty Dionetta did not share his defiance of ghostly visitors. The House of White Shadows was her home, and many a night had she awoke in terror and listened with a beating heart to soft footsteps in the passage outside her room, and buried her head in the sheets to shut out the light of the moon which shone in at her window. Fritz alone sympathised with her. "Two hours before midnight," he would say to her; "then it was you heard them creeping past your door. You were afraid, of course--when one is all alone; I can prescribe a remedy for that--not yet, Dionetta, by-and-by. Till then, keep all men at a distance; avoid them; there is danger in them. If they look at you, frown, and lower your eyes. And to-night, when you go to bed, lock your door tight, and listen. If the spirits come again, I will charm them away; shortly after you hear their footsteps, I will sing a stave outside to trick them from your door. Then sleep in peace, and rely on Fritz the Fool." Very timid and fearful of the supernatural was this country beauty, whom all the louts in the neighbourhood wanted to marry, and she alone, of those who lived in the House of White Shadows, welcomed the Advocate and his wife with genuine delight. Fool Fritz thought of secretly-enjoyed pleasures which might now be disturbed, Martin was too old not to dislike change, and Mother Denise was by no means prepared to rejoice at the arrival of strangers; she would have been better pleased had they never shown their faces at the gates. The Advocate and his wife stood looking around them, he with observant eyes and in silence, she with undisguised pleasure and admiration. She began to speak the moment she alighted. "Charming! beautiful! I am positively in love with it. This morning it was but a fancy picture, now it is real. Could anything be more perfect? So peaceful, and quaint, and sweet! Look at those children peeping from behind their mother's gown--she can be no other than their mother--dirty, but how picturesque!--and the woman herself, how original! It is worth while being a woman like that, to stand as she does, with her children clinging to her. Why does Mr. Almer not like to live here? It is inexplicable, quite inexplicable. I could be happy here for ever--yes, for ever! Do you catch the perfume of the limes? It is delicious--delicious! It comes from the grounds; there must be a lime-tree walk there. And you," she said to the pretty girl at the gates, "you are Dionetta." "Yes, my lady," said Dionetta, and marvelled how her name could have become known to the beautiful woman, whose face was more lovely than the face of the Madonna over the altar of the tiny chapel in which she daily prayed. It was not difficult to divine her thought, for Dionetta was Nature's child. "You wonder who told me your name," said the Advocate's wife, smiling, and patting the girl's cheek with her gloved hand. "Yes, my lady." "It was a little bird, Dionetta." "A little bird, my lady!" exclaimed Dionetta, her wonderment and admiration growing fast into worship. The lady's graceful figure, her pink and white face, her pearly teeth, her lovely laughing mouth, her eyes, blue as the most beautiful summer's cloud--Dionetta had never seen the like before. "You," said the Advocate's wife, turning to the grandmother, "are Mother Denise." "Yes, my lady," said the old woman; "this is my husband, Martin. Come forward, Martin, come forward. He is not as young as he was, my lady." "I know, I know; my little bird was very communicative. You are Fritz." "The Fool," said the white-haired young man, approaching closer to the lady, and consequently closer to Dionetta, "Fritz the Fool. But that needn't tell against me, unless you please. I can be useful, if I care to be, and faithful, too, if I care to be." "It depends upon yourself, then," said the lady, accepting the independent speech in good part, "not upon others." "Mainly upon myself; but I have springs that can be set in motion, if one can only find out how to play upon them. I was told you were coming." "Indeed!" with an air of pleasant surprise. "By whom, and when?" "By whom? The white shadows. When? In my dreams." "The white shadows! They exist then! Edward, do you hear?" "It is not so, my lady," interposed Mother Denise, in ill-humour at the turn the conversation was taking; "the shadows do not exist, despite what people say. Fritz is over-fond of fooling." "It is my trade," retorted Fritz. "I know what I know, grandmother." "Is Fritz your grandson, then?" asked the Advocate's wife, of Mother Denise. "Heaven forbid!" exclaimed Mother Denise. "What is not," remarked Fritz sententiously, "may be. Bear that in mind, grandmother; I may remind you of it one day." The Advocate, upon whom not a word that had passed had been lost, fixed his eyes upon Fritz, and said: "A delusion can be turned to profit. You make use of these shadows." "The saints forbid! They would burn me in brimstone. Yet," with a look both sly and vacant, "it would be a pity to waste them." "You like to be called a fool. It pleases you." "Why not?" "Why, rather?" "I might answer in your own words, that it can be turned to profit. But I am too great a fool to see in what way." "You answer wisely. Why do you close your eyes?" "I can see in the dark what I choose to see. When my eyes are open, I am their slave. When they are closed, they are mine--unless I dream." The Advocate gazed for a moment or two in silence upon the white face with its closed eyes raised to his, and then said to his wife: "Come, Adelaide, we will look at the house." They passed into the grounds, accompanied by Mother Denise, Martin, and Dionetta. Fritz remained outside the gate, with his eyes still closed, and a smile upon his lips. "Fritz," said the host of the inn of The Seven Liars, "do you know anything of the great man?" Fritz rubbed his brows softly and opened his eyes. "Take the advice of a fool, Peter Schelt. Speak low when you speak of him." "You think he can hear us. Why, he is a hundred yards off by this time!" Fritz pointed with a waving finger to the air above him. "There are magnetic lines, neighbours, connecting him with everything he once sets eyes on. He can see without seeing, and hear without hearing." "You speak in riddles, Fritz." "Put it down to your own dulness, Peter Schelt, that you cannot understand me. Master Lamont, now--what would you say about him? That he lacks brains?" "A long way from it. Master Lamont is the cleverest man in the valley." "Not now," said Fritz, pointing with his thumb over his shoulder in the direction taken by the Advocate; "his master has come. Master Lamont is a great lawyer, but we have now a greater, one who is a more skilful cobbler with his tongue than Hans here is with his awl; he can so patch an old boot as to make it better than a new one, and look as close as you may, you will not see the seams. Listen, Master Schelt. When I stood there with my eyes shut I had a dream of a stranger who was found murdered in your house. An awful dream, Peter. Gather round, neighbours, gather round. There lay the stranger dead on his bed, and over him stood you, Peter Schelt, with a bloody knife in your hand. People say you murdered him for his money, and it really seemed so, for a purse stuffed with gold and notes was found in your possession; you had the stranger's silver watch, too. Suspicious, was it not? It was looking so black against you that you begged the great man who has come among us to plead for you at your trial. You were safe enough, then. He told a rare tale. Forty years ago the stranger robbed your father; suddenly he was struck with remorse, and seeking you out, gave you back the money, and his silver watch in the bargain. He proved to everybody's satisfaction that, though you committed the murder, it was impossible you could be guilty. Don't be alarmed, Madame Schelt, it was only a dream." "But are you sure I did it?" asked Peter Schelt, in no way disturbed by the bad light in which he was placed by Fritz's fancies. "What matters? The great man got you off, and that is all you cared for. Look here, neighbours; if any of you have black goats that you wish changed into white, go to him; he can do it for you. Or an old hen that cackles and won't lay, go to him; she will cackle less, and lay you six eggs a day. He is, of all, the greatest." "Ah," said a neighbour, "and what do you know of his lady wife?" "What all of you should know, but cannot see, though it stares you in the face." "Let us have it, Fritz." "She is too fair. Christine," to a stout young woman close to him, "give thanks to the Virgin to-night that you were sent into the world with a cast in your eye, and that your legs grow thicker and crookeder every day. _You_ will never drive a man out of his senses with your beauty." Fritz was compelled to beat a swift retreat, for Christine's arms were as thick as her legs, and they were raised to smite. Up the lane flew the fool, and Christine after him, amid the laughter of the villagers. CHAPTER VI MISTRESS AND MAID In the meantime the Advocate and his wife strolled through the grounds. Although it was evident that much labour had been bestowed upon them, there were signs of decay here and there which showed the need of a master mind; but as these traces were only to be met with at some distance from the villa itself, it was clear that they would not interfere with the comfort of the new arrivals. The house lay low, and the immediate grounds surrounding it were in good condition. There were orchards stocked with fruit-trees, and gardens bright with flowers. At a short distance from the house was an old châlet which had been built with great taste; it was newly painted, and much care had been bestowed upon a covered pathway which led to it from a side entrance to the House of White Shadows. The principal room in this châlet was a large studio, the walls of which were black. On the left wall--in letters which once were white, but which had grown yellow with age--was inscribed the legend, "The Grave of Honour." "How singular!" exclaimed the Advocate's wife. "'The Grave of Honour!' What can be the meaning of it?" But Mother Denise did not volunteer an explanation. Near the end of the studio was an alcove, the space beyond being screened by a dead crimson curtain. Holding back the curtain, a large number of pictures were seen piled against the walls. "Family pictures?" asked the Advocate's wife, of Mother Denise. "No, my lady," was the reply; "they were painted by an artist, who resided and worked here for a year or so in the lifetime of the old master." By the desire of the lady the housekeeper brought a few of the pictures into the light. One represented a pleasure party of ladies and gentlemen dallying in summer woods; another, a lady lying in a hammock and reaching out her arm to pluck some roses; two were companion pictures, the first subject being two persons who might have been lovers, standing among strewn flowers in the sunshine--the second subject showing the same figures in a different aspect; a cold grey sea divided them, on the near shore of which the man stood in an attitude of despair gazing across the waters to the opposite shore, on which stood the woman with a pale, grief-stricken face. "The sentiment is strained," observed the Advocate, "but the artist had talent." "A story could be woven out of them," said his wife; "I feel as if they were connected with the house." Upon leaving the châlet they continued their tour through the grounds. Already the Advocate felt the beneficial effects of a healthy change. His eyes were clearer, his back straighter, he moved with a brisker step. Mother Denise walked in front, pointing out this and that, Martin hobbled behind, and Dionetta, encouraged thereto, walked by her new mistress's side. "Dionetta," said the Advocate's wife, "do you know that you have the prettiest name in the world?" "Have I, my lady? I have never thought of it, but it is, if you say so." "But perhaps," said the Advocate's wife, with a glance at the girl's bright face, "a man would not think of your name when he looked at you." "I am sure I cannot say, my lady; he would not think of me at all." "You little simpleton! I wish I had such a name; they ought to wait till we grow up, so that we might choose our own names. I should not have chosen Adelaide for myself." "Is that your name, my lady?" "Yes--they could not have given me an uglier." "Nay," said Dionetta, raising her eyes in mute appeal for forgiveness for the contradiction, "it is very sweet." "Repeat it, then. Adelaide." "May I, my lady?" "Of course you may, if I wish you to. Let me hear you speak it." "Adelaide! Adelaide!" murmured Dionetta softly. The permission was as precious as the gift of a silver chain would have been. "My lady, it is pretty." "Shall we change?" asked the Advocate's wife gaily. "Can we?" inquired Dionetta in a solemn tone. "I would not mind if you wish it, and if it is right. I will ask the priest." "No, do not trouble. Would you really like to change?" "It would be so strange--and it might be a sin! If we cannot, it is of no use thinking of it." "There is no sin in thinking of things; if there were, the world would be full of sin, and I--dear me, how much I should have to answer for! I should not like everyone to know my thoughts. What a quiet life you must live here, Dionetta!" "Yes, my lady, it is quiet." "Would you not prefer to live in a city?" "I should be frightened, my lady. I have been only twice to Geneva, and there was no room in the streets to move about. I was glad to get back." "No room to move about, simplicity! That is the delight of it. There are theatres, and music, and light, and life. You would not be frightened if you were with me?" "Oh, no, my lady; that would be happiness." "Are you not happy here?" "Oh, yes, very happy." "But you wish for something?" "No, my lady; I have everything I want." "Everything--positively everything?" "Yes, my lady." "There is one thing you must want, Dionetta, if you have it not already." "May I know what it is?" "Yes, child. Love." Dionetta blushed crimson from forehead to throat, and the Advocate's wife laughed, and tapped her cheek. "You are very pretty, Dionetta; it is right you should have a pretty name. Do you mean to tell me you have not a lover?" "I have been asked, my lady," said the girl, in a tone so low that it could only just be heard. "And you said 'yes'? Little one, I have caught you." "My lady, I did not say 'yes.'" "And the men were contented? They must be dolts. Really and truly, you have not a lover?" "What can I say, my lady?" murmured Dionetta, her head bent down. "There are some who say they--love me." "But you do not love them?" "No, my lady." "You would like to have one you could love?" "One day, my lady, if I am so fortunate." "I promise you," said the Advocate's wife with a blithe laugh, "that one day you will be so fortunate. Women were made for love--and men, too, or where would be the use? It is the only thing in life worth living for. Blushing again! I would give my jewel-case to be able to blush like you." "I cannot help it, my lady. My face often grows red when I am quite alone." "And thinking of love," added the Advocate's wife; "for what else should make it red? So you do think of things! I can see, Dionetta, that you and I are going to be great friends." "You are very good, my lady, but I am only a poor peasant. I will serve you as well as I can." "You knew, before I came, that you were to be my maid?" "Yes, my lady. Master Lamont said it was likely. Grandmother did not seem to care that it should be so, but I wished for it, and now that she has seen you she must be glad for me to serve you." "Why should she be glad, Dionetta?" "My lady, it could not be otherwise," said Dionetta very earnestly; "you are so good and beautiful." "Flatterer! Master Lamont--he is an old man?" "Yes, my lady." "There are some old men who are very handsome." "He is not. He is small, and thin, and shrivelled up." "Those are not the men for us, are they, little one?" "But he has a voice like honey. I have heard many say so." "That is something in his favour--or would be, if women were blind. So from this day you are my maid. You will be faithful, I am sure, and will keep my secrets. Mind that, Dionetta. You must keep my secrets." "Have you any?" said Dionetta, "and shall you tell them to me?" "Every woman in the world has secrets, and every woman in the world must have someone to whom she can whisper them. You will find that out for yourself in time. Yes, child, I have secrets--one, a very precious one. If ever you guess it without my telling you, keep it buried in your heart, and do not speak of it to a living soul." "I would not dare, my lady." They walked a little apart from the others during this dialogue. The concluding words brought them to the steps of the House of White Shadows. "Edward," said the Advocate's wife to him, as they entered the house, "I have found a treasure. My new maid is charming." "I am pleased to hear it. She has an ingenuous face, but you will be able to judge better when you know more of her." "You do not trust many persons, Edward." "Not many, Adelaide." "Me?" she asked archly. "Implicitly." "And another, I think." "Certainly, one other." "I should not be far out if I were to name Christian Almer." "It is to him I refer." "I have sometimes wondered," she said, with an artless look, "why you should be so partial to him. He is so unlike you." "We are frequently drawn to our unlikes; but Almer and I have one quality in common with each other." "What quality, Edward?" "The quality of the dog--faithfulness. Almer's friendship is precious to me, and mine to him, because we are each to the other faithful." "The quality of the dog! How odd that sounds! Though when one thinks of it there is really something noble in it. And friendship--it is almost as if you placed it higher than love." "It is far higher. Love too frequently changes, as the seasons change. Friendship is, of the two, the more likely to endure, being less liable to storms. But even a faithful friendship is rare." "And faithful love much rarer, according to your ideas. Yet, Mr. Almer, having this quality of the dog, would be certain, you believe, to be faithful both in love and friendship." "To the death." "You are thorough in your opinions, Edward." "I do not believe in half-heartedness, Adelaide." The arrangements within the house were complete and admirable. For the Advocate's wife, a boudoir and reception-rooms into which new fashions had been introduced with judgment so good as not to jar with the old furnishings which had adorned them for many generations. For the Advocate a study, with a library which won from him cordial approval; a spacious and commodious apartment, neither overloaded with furniture nor oppressive with bare spaces; with an outlook from one window to the snow regions of Mont Blanc, from another to the city of Geneva, which was now bathed in a soft, mellow light. This tender evidence of departing day was creeping slowly downwards into the valleys from mount and city, a moving picture of infinite beauty. They visited the study last; Adelaide had been loud in her praises of the house and its arrangement, commending this and that, and declaring that everything was perfect. While she was examining the furniture in the study the Advocate turned to the principal writing-table, upon which lay a pile of newspapers. He took up the first of these, and instinctively searched for the subject which had not left his mind since his visit to the banker, Jacob Hartrich--the murder of Madeline the flower-girl. He was deep in the perusal of fresh details, confirmatory of Gautran's guilt, when he was aroused by a stifled cry of alarm from Adelaide. With the newspaper still in his hand, he looked up and asked what had alarmed her. She laughed nervously, and pointed to an old sideboard upon which a number of hideous faces were carved. To some of the faces bodies were attached, and the whole of this ancient work of art was extravagant enough to have had for its inspiration the imaginings of a madman's brain. "I thought I saw them moving," said Adelaide. The Advocate smiled, and said: "It is the play of light over the figures that created the delusion; they are harmless, Adelaide." The glow of sunset shone through a painted window upon the faces, which to a nervous mind might have seemed to be animated with living colour. "Look at that frightful head," said Adelaide; "it is really stained with blood." "And now," observed the Advocate, "the blood-stain fades away, and in the darker light the expression grows sad and solemn." "I should be frightened of this room at night," said Adelaide, with a slight shiver; "I should fancy those hideous beings were only waiting an opportunity to steal out upon me for an evil purpose." A noise in the passage outside diverted their attention. "Gently, Fritz, gently," cried a voice, "unless you wish to make holes in the sound part of me." The Advocate moved to the door, and opened it. A strange sight came into view. CHAPTER VII A VISIT FROM PIERRE LAMONT--DREAMS OF LOVE At the door stood Fritz the Fool, carrying in his arms what in the gathering dusk looked like a bundle. This bundle was human--a man who was but half a man. Embracing Fritz, with one arm tightly clutching the Fool's neck, the figure commenced to speak the moment the door was opened. "I only am to blame; learning that you were in the study, I insisted upon being brought here immediately; carry me in gently, Fool, and set me in that chair." The chair indicated was close to the writing-table, by which the Advocate was standing. "Fritz made me acquainted with your arrival," continued the intruder, "and I hastened here without delay. When I tell you that I live two miles off, eight hundred feet above the level of this valley, you will realise the jolting I have had in my wheeled chair. Fritz, you can leave us; but be within call, as you must help to get me home again. Is there any need for me to introduce myself?" he asked. "Master Lamont," said the Advocate. "As much as is left of me; but I manage to exist. I have proved that a man can live without legs. You received my letter?" "Yes; and I thank you for your attention. My wife," said the Advocate, introducing Adelaide. Attracted by the dulcet voice of Pierre Lamont, she had come out of the deeper shadows of the room. Dionetta had spoken truly; this thin, shrivelled wreck of mortality had a voice as sweet as honey. "I cannot rise to pay my respects to you," said Pierre Lamont, his lynx eyes resting with profound admiration upon the beautiful woman, "but I beg you to believe that I am your devoted slave." Adelaide bent her head gracefully, and smiled upon the old lawyer. "One of my great anxieties is to know whether I have arranged the villa to your satisfaction. Christian Almer was most desirous that the place should be made pleasant and attractive, and I have endeavoured to carry out his instructions." "We owe you a debt of gratitude," said Adelaide; "everything has been charmingly done." "I am repaid for my labour," said Pierre Lamont gallantly. "You must be fatigued after your journey. Do not let me detain you. I shall remain with the Advocate but a very few minutes, and I trust you will allow me to make another and a longer visit." "We shall always be happy to see you," said Adelaide, as she bowed and left the room. "You are fortunate, comrade," said Pierre Lamont, "both in love and war. Your lady is the most beautiful I have ever beheld. I am selfishly in hopes that you will make a long stay with us; it will put some life into this sleepy valley. Is Christian Almer with you?" "No; but I may induce him to come. It is to you," said the Advocate, pointing to the pile of newspapers, "that I am indebted for these." "I thought you would find something in them to interest you. I see you have one of the papers in your hand, and that you were reading it before I intruded upon you. May I look at it? Ah! you have caught up the scent. It was the murder of the flower-girl I meant." "Have you formed an opinion upon the case?" "Scarcely yet; it is so surrounded with mystery. In my enforced retirement I amuse myself by taking up any important criminal case that occurs; and trying it in my solitude, acting at once the parts of judge and counsel for the prosecution and defence. A poor substitute for the reality; but I make it serve--not to my satisfaction, I confess, although I may show ingenuity in some of my conclusions. But I miss the cream, which lies in the personality of the persons concerned. This case of Gautran interests and perplexes me; were I able to take an active part, it is not unlikely I should move in it. I envy you, brother; I should feel proud if I could break a lance with you; but we do not live in an age of miracles, so I must be content, perforce, with my hermit life. What I read does not always please me; points are missed--almost wilfully missed, as it seems to me--strong links allowed to fall, disused, false inferences drawn, and, in the end, a verdict and sentence which half make me believe that justice limps on crutches. 'Fools, fools, fools!' I cry; 'if I were among you this should not be.' But what can an old cripple do? Grumble? Yes; and extract a morsel of satisfaction from his discontent--which tickles his vanity. That men's deserts are not meted out to them troubles me more now than it used to do. The times are too lenient of folly and crime. I would have the old law revived. 'To the doer as he hath done'--thus saith the thrice ancient word--so runs the 'Agamemnon.' If my neighbour kill my ass, I would knock his on the head. And this Gautran, if he be guilty, deserves the death; if he be innocent, deserves to live and be set free. But to allow a poor wretch to be judged by public passions--Heaven send us a beneficent change!" The voice of the speaker was so sweet, and the arguments so palatable to the Advocate, and so much in accordance with his own views, that he listened with pleasure to this outburst. He recognised in the cripple huddled up in the chair one whose pre-eminence in his craft had been worthily attained. "I am pleased we have met," he said, and the eyes of Pierre Lamont glistened. He soon brought his visit to a close, and while Fritz the Fool was being summoned, he said that in the morning he would send the Advocate all the papers he could gather which might help to throw a light on the case of Gautran. "You have spoken with Fritz, he tells me." "I have; he appears to me worth studying." "There is salt in the knave; he has occasionally managed to overreach me. Fool as he is, he has a head with brains in it. Farewell." Now, although the old lawyer, while he was with the Advocate, seemed to think of nothing but his more celebrated legal brother, it was far different as he was carried in his wheeled chair to his home on the heights. He had his own servant to propel him; Fritz walked by his side. "You were right, Fritz, you were right," said Pierre Lamont, and he smacked his lips, and his eyes kindled with the fire of youth, "she is a rare piece of flesh and blood--as fair as a lily, as ripe as a peach ready to drop from the wall. With passions of her own, Fritz; her veins are warm. To live in the heart of such a woman would be to live a perpetual summer. What say you, Fritz?" "Nothing." "That is a fool's answer." "Then the fools are the real wise men, for there is wisdom in silence. But I say nothing because I am thinking." "A mouse in labour. Beware of bringing forth a mountain; it will rend you to pieces." Fritz softly hummed a tune as they climbed the hills. Only once did he speak till they arrived at Pierre Lamont's house; it was in reply to the old lawyer, who said: "It is easier going up the hills than coming down." "That depends," said Fritz, "upon whether it is the mule or the man on his back." Pierre Lamont laughed quietly; he had a full enjoyment of Fritz's humour. "I have been thinking," said Fritz when the journey was completed---- "Ah, ah!" interrupted Pierre Lamont; "now for the mountain." "--Upon the reason that made so fair a lady--young, and warm, and ripe--marry an icicle." "There is hidden fire, Fritz; you may get it from a stone." "I forgot," said Fritz, with a sly chuckle, "that I was speaking to an old man." "Rogue!" cried Pierre Lamont, raising his stick. "Never stretch out your hand," said Fritz, darting away, "for what you cannot reach." "Fritz, Fritz, come here!" "You will not strike?" "No." "I will trust you. There are lawyers I would not, though every word they uttered was framed in gold." "So, you have been thinking of the reason that made so fair a lady marry an icicle?" "Yes." "The icicle is celebrated." "That is of no account." "He is rich." "That is good." "He is much older than she. He may die, and leave her a young widow." "That is better." "Then she may marry again--a younger man." "That is best Master Lamont, you have a head." "And your own love-affair, Fritz, is that flourishing, eh? Have the pretty red lips kissed a 'Yes' yet?" "The pretty red lips have not been asked. I bide my time. My peach is not as ripe as the icicle's. I'll go and look after it, Master Lamont. It needs careful watching; there are poachers about." Fritz departed to look after his peach, and Pierre Lamont was carried into his study, where he sat until late in the night, surrounded by books and papers. The Advocate was also in his study until two hours past midnight, searching newspaper after newspaper for particulars and details of the murder of the unfortunate girl whose body had been found in the wildly rushing Rhone. And while he pondered and mused, and ofttimes paced the room with thoughtful face, his wife lay sleeping in her holiday home, with smiles on her lips, and joy in her heart, for she was dreaming of one far away. And her dream was of love. And Dionetta, the pretty maid, also slept, with her hands clasped at the back of her head; and her lady was saying to her: "Really and truly, Dionetta, you have not a lover? Women are made for love. It is the only thing in life worth living for." And a blush, even in her sleep, stole over her fair face and bosom. For her dream was of love. And Pierre Lamont lived over again the days of his youth, and smirked and languished, and made fine speeches, and moved amidst a paradise of fair faces, all of which bore the likeness of one whom he had but just seen for the first time. And, old as he was, his dream was of love. And Fritz the Fool tossed in his bed, and muttered: "Too fair! too fair! If I were rich she might tempt me to be false to one, and make me vow I would lay down my life for her. It is a good thing for me that I am a fool." And Gautran in his prison cell writhed upon his hard bed in the midst of the darkness; for by his side lay the phantom of the murdered girl, and his despair was deep and awful. And in the mountains, two hundred miles distant from the House of White Shadows, roamed Christian Almer in the moonlight, struggling with all his mental might with a terror which possessed him. The spot he had flown to was ten thousand feet above the level of the sea, and his sleeping-room was in the hut of a peasant, mountain-born and mountain-reared, who lived a life of dull contentment with his goats, and wife, and children. Far away in the heights immense forests of fir-trees were grouped in dark, solemn masses. Not a branch stirred; a profound repose reigned within their depths, while the sleepless waterfalls in the lower heights, leaping, and creeping, and dashing over chasm and precipice, proclaimed the eternal wakefulness of Nature. The solitary man gazed upon these majestic signs in awe and despair. "There is no such thing as oblivion," he muttered; "there is no such thing as forgetfulness. These solitudes, upon which no living creature but myself is to be seen, are full of accusing voices. My God! to die and be blotted out for ever and ever were better than this agony! I strive and strive, and cannot rid myself of the sin. I will conquer it--I will--I will--I will!" But even as he spoke there gleamed upon him from a laughing cascade the vision of a face so beautiful as to force a groan from his lips. He turned from the vision, and it shone upon him with a tender wooing in every waterfall that met his sight. Trembling with the force of a passion he found it impossible to resist, he walked to his mountain home, and threw himself upon his couch. He was exhausted with sleepless nights, and in a short time he fell into a deep slumber. And a calm stole over his troubled soul, for his dreams were of love! CHAPTER VIII THE INTERVIEW IN THE PRISON "Arise, Gautran." At this command Gautran rose slowly from the floor of his prison-cell, upon which he had been lying at full length, and shaking himself like a dog, stood before the gaoler. "Can't you let me alone?" he asked, in a coarse, savage voice. "Scum of the gutter!" replied the gaoler. "Speak civilly while you have the power, and be thankful your tongue is not dragged out by the roots." "You would do it if you dared." "Ay--and a thousand honest men would rejoice to help me." "Is it to tell me this you disturbed me?" "No, murderer!" "What do you want of me?" The gaoler laughed at him in mockery. "You look more like beast than man." "That's how I've been treated," growled Gautran. "Better than you deserve. So, you have influential friends, it seems." "Have I?" with a venomous flash at the taunt. "One will be here to see you directly." "Let him keep from me. I care to see no one." "That may be, but the choice is not yours. This gentleman is not to be denied." "A gentleman, eh?" exclaimed Gautran, with some slight show of interest. "Yes, a gentleman." "Who is he, and what is his business with me?" "He is a great lawyer, who has sent murderers to their doom----" "Ah!" and Gautran drew a long vindictive breath through closed teeth. "And has set some free, I've heard." "Is he going to do that for me?" asked Gautran, and a light of fierce hope shone in his eyes. "He will earn Heaven's curse if he does, and man's as well. Here he is. Silence." The door was opened, and the Advocate entered the cell. "This is Gautran?" he asked of the gaoler. "This is he," replied the gaoler. "Leave me alone with him." "It is against my orders, sir." "Here is your authority." He handed to the gaoler a paper, which gave him permission to hold free and uninterrupted converse with Gautran, accused of the murder of Madeline the flower-girl. The interview not to last longer than an hour. The gaoler prepared to depart, but before he left the cell he said in an undertone: "Be careful of the man; he is a savage, and not to be trusted." "There is nothing to fear," said the Advocate. The gaoler lingered a moment, and then retired. The cell was but dimly lighted, and the Advocate, coming into it from the full sunlight of a bright day, could not see clearly for a little while. On the other hand. Gautran, whose eyes were accustomed to the gloom, had a distinct view of the Advocate, and in a furtive, hangdog fashion he closely inspected the features of his visitor. The man who stood before him could obtain his condemnation or his acquittal. Dull-witted as he was, this conviction was as much an intuition as an impression gained from the gaoler's remarks. "You are a woodman?" said the Advocate. "Aye, a woodman. It is well known." "Have you parents?" "They are dead." "Any brothers or sisters?" "None. I was the only one." "Friends?" "No." "Have you wife or children?" "Neither." "How much money have you?" "Not a sou." "What about this murder?" asked the Advocate abruptly. "What about it, then?" demanded Gautran. The questions asked by the Advocate were more judicial than friendly, and he assumed an air of defiance. "Speak in a different tone. I am here to assist you, if I see my way. You have no lawyer to defend you?" "How should I get one? What lawyer works without pay, and where should I find the money to pay him?" "Heed what I say. I do not ask you if you are innocent or guilty of the crime of which you stand charged, for that is a formula and, guilty or not guilty, you would return but one answer. Have you anything to tell me?" "I can't think of anything." "You have led an evil life." "Not my fault. Can a man choose his own parents and his country? The life I have led I was born into; and that is to stand against me." "Are there any witnesses who would come forward and speak in your favour?" "None that I know of." "Is it true that you were walking with the girl on the night she was murdered?" "No man has heard me deny it," said Gautran, shuddering. "Why do you shudder?" "Master, you asked me just now whether I had a wife, and I told you I had none. This girl was to have been my wife. I loved her, and we were to have been married." "That is disputed." "Everything is disputed that would tell in my favour. The truth is of no use to a poor devil caught in a trap as I am. Have you heard any good of me, master?" "Not any; all that I have heard is against you." "That is the way of it. Well, then, judge for yourself." "Can you indicate anyone who would be likely to murder the girl? You shudder again." "I cannot help it. Master, put yourself in this cell, as I am put, without light, without hope, without money, without a friend. You would need a strong nerve to stand it. You want to know if I can point out anyone who could have done the deed but me? Well, if I were free, and came face to face with him, I might. Not that I could say anything, or swear to anything for certain, for I did not see it done. No, master, I will not lie to you. Where would be the use? You are clever enough to find me out. But I had good reason to suspect, aye, to know, that the girl had other lovers, who pressed her hard, I dare say; some who were rich, while I was poor; some who were almost mad for her. She was followed by a dozen and more. She told me so herself, and used to laugh about it; but she never mentioned a name to me. You know something of women, master; they like the men to follow them--the best of them do--ladies as well as peasants. They were sent into the world to drive us to perdition. I was jealous of her, yes, I was jealous. Am I guilty because of that? How could I help being jealous when I loved her? It is in a man's blood. Well, then, what more can I say?" In his intent observance of Gautran's manner the Advocate seemed to weigh every word that fell from the man's lips. "At what time did you leave the girl on the last night you saw her alive?" "At ten o'clock." "She was alone at that hour?" "Yes." "Did you see her again after that?" "No." "Did you have reason to suspect that she was to meet any other man on that night?" "If I had thought it, I should have stopped with her." "For what purpose?" "To see the man she had appointed to meet." "And having seen him?" "He would have had to answer to me. I am hot-blooded, master, and can stand up for my rights." "Would you have harmed the girl?" "No, unless she had driven me out of my senses." "Were you in that state on the night of her death?" "No--I knew what I was about." "You were heard to quarrel with her." "I don't deny it." "You were heard to say you would kill her." "True enough. I told her if ever I found out that she was false to me, I would kill her." "Had she bound herself to marry you?" "She had sworn to marry me." "The handkerchief round her neck, when her body was discovered in the river, is proved to have been yours." "It was mine; I gave it to her. I had not much to give." "When you were arrested you were searched?" "Yes." "Was anything taken from you?" "My knife." "Had you and the girl's secret lover--supposing she had one--met on that night, you might have used your knife." "That is speaking beforehand. I can't say what might have happened." "Come here into the light. Let me look at your hands." "What trick are you going to play me, master?" asked Gautran, in a suspicious tone. "No trick," replied the Advocate sternly. "Obey me, or I leave you." Gautran debated with himself in silence for a full minute; then, with an impatient movement, as though it could not matter one way or another, he moved into the light, and held out his hands. The Advocate, taking a powerful glass from his pocket, examined the prisoner's fingers and nails and wrists with the utmost minuteness, Gautran, the while, wrapped in wonder at the strange proceeding. "Now," said the Advocate, "hold your head back, so that the light may shine on your face." Gautran obeyed, warily holding himself in readiness to spring upon the Advocate in case of an attack. By the aid of his glass the Advocate examined Gautran's face and neck with as much care as he had bestowed upon the hands, and then said: "That will do." "What is it all for, master?" asked Gautran. "I am here to ask questions, not to answer them. Since your arrest, have you been examined as I have examined you?" "No, master." "Has any examination whatever been made of you by doctors or gaolers or lawyers?" "None at all." "How long had you known the girl?" "Ever since she came into the neighbourhood." "Were you not acquainted with her before?" "No." "From what part of the country did she come?" "I can't say." "Not knowing?" "Not knowing." "But being intimate with her, you could scarcely avoid asking her the question." "I did ask her, and I was curious to find out. She would not satisfy me; and when I pressed her, she said the other one--Pauline--had made her promise not to tell." "You don't know, then, where she was born?" "No." "Her refusal to tell you--was it lightly or seriously uttered?" "Seriously." "As though there was a secret in her life she wished to conceal?" "I never thought of it in that way, but I can see now it must have been so." "Something discreditable, then?" "Most likely. Master, you go deeper than I do." "What relationship existed between Pauline and Madeline?" "Some said they were sisters, but there was a big difference in their ages. Others said that Pauline was her mother, but I don't believe it, for they never spoke together in that way. Master, I don't know what to say about it; it used to puzzle me; but it was no business of mine." "Did you never hear Pauline address Madeline as her child?" "Never." "They addressed each other by their Christian names?" "Yes." "Did they resemble each other in feature?" "There was something of a likeness between them." "Why did Pauline leave the girl?" "No one knew." "That is all you can tell me?" "That is all." Then after a slight pause, the Advocate asked: "Do you value your liberty?" "Yes, master," replied Gautran excitedly. "Let no person know what has passed between us, and do not repeat one word I have said to you." "I understand; you may depend upon me. But master, will you not tell me something more? Am I to be set free or not?" "You are to be tried; what is brought against you at your trial will establish either your innocence or your guilt." He knocked at the door of the prison cell, and the gaoler opened it for him and let him out. "Well, Gautran?" said the gaoler, but Gautran, wrapped in contemplation of the door through which the Advocate had taken his departure, paid no attention to him. "Do you hear me?" cried the gaoler, shaking his prisoner with no gentle hand. "What now?" "Is the great lawyer going to defend you?" "You want to know too much," said Gautran, and refused to speak another word on the subject. During the whole of the day there were but two figures in his mind--those of the Advocate and the murdered girl. The latter presented itself in various accusing aspects, and he vainly strove to rid himself of the spectre. Its hair hung in wild disorder over neck and bosom, its white lips moved, its mournful eyes struck terror to his soul. The figure of the Advocate presented itself in far different aspects; it was always terrible, Satanic, and damning in its suggestions. "What matter," muttered Gautran, "if he gets me off? I can do as I please then." In the evening, when the small window in his cell was dark, the gaoler heard him crying out loudly. He entered, and demanded what ailed the wretch. "Light--light!" implored Gautran; "give me light!" "Beast in human shape," said the gaoler; "you have light enough. You'll get no more. Stop your howling, or I'll stop it for you!" "Light! light! light!" moaned Gautran, clasping his hands over his eyes. But he could not shut out the phantom of the murdered girl, which from that moment never left him. So he lay and writhed during the night, and would have dashed his head against the wall to put an end to his misery had he not been afraid of death. CHAPTER IX THE ADVOCATE UNDERTAKES A STRANGE TASK. It was on the evening of this day, the third since the arrival of the Advocate in Geneva, that he said to his wife over the dinner-table: "I shall in all likelihood be up the whole of to-night in my study. Do not let me be disturbed." "Who should disturb you?" asked Adelaide languidly. "There are only you and I in the villa; of course I would not venture to intrude upon you without permission." "You misunderstand me, Adelaide; it is because we are in a strange house that I thought it best to tell you." "As if there were anything unusual in your shutting yourself up all night in your study! Our notions of the way to lead an agreeable life are so different! Take your own course, Edward; you are older and wiser than I; but you must not wonder that I think it strange. You come to the country for rest, and you are as hard at work as ever." "I cannot live without work; aimless days would send me to my grave. If you are lonely, Adelaide----" "Oh, no, I am not," she cried vivaciously, "at least, not yet. There is so much in the neighbourhood that is interesting. Dionetta and I have been out all day seeing the sights. On the road to Master Lamont's house there is the loveliest rustic bridge. And the wild flowers are the most beautiful I have ever seen. We met a priest, Father Capel, a gentle-looking man, with the kindest face! He said he intended to call upon you, and hoped to be permitted. I said, of course, you would be charmed. I had a good mind to visit Master Lamont, but his house was too far up the hills. Fool Fritz joined us; he is very amusing, with his efforts to be wise. I was delighted everywhere with the people. I went into some of their cottages, and the women were very respectful; and the children--upon my word, Edward, they stare at me as if I were a picture." The Advocate looked up at this, and regarded his wife with fond admiration. In his private life two influences were dominant--love for his wife, and friendship for Christian Almer. He had love for no other woman, and friendship for no other man, and his trust in both was a perfect trust. "I do not wonder that the children stare at you," he said; "you must be a new and pleasant experience to them." "I believe they take me for a saint," she said, laughing gaily; "and I need not tell _you_ that I am very far from being one." "You are, as we all are, human; and very beautiful, Adelaide." She gazed at him in surprise. "It is not often you pay me compliments." "Do you need them from me? To be sure of my affection--is not that sufficient?" "But I am fond of compliments." "I must commence a new study, then," he said gravely; it was difficult for him to indulge in light themes for many minutes together. "So you are making yourself acquainted with the neighbours. I hope you will not soon tire of them." "When I do I must seek out some other amusement. You have also discovered something since you came here in which you appear to be wonderfully interested." "Yes; a criminal case----" "A criminal case!" she echoed pettishly. "In which there is a great mystery. I do not trouble you with these law matters; long ago you expressed weariness of such themes." Her humour changed again. "A mystery!" she exclaimed with child-like vivacity, "in a place where news is so scarce! It must be delightful. What is it about? There is a woman in it, of course. There always is." "Yes; a young woman, whose body was found in the Rhone." "Murdered?" "Murdered, as it at present seems." "The wretch! Have they caught him? For of course it is a man who committed the dreadful deed." "One is in prison, charged with the crime. I visited him to-day." "Surely you are not going to defend him?" "It is probable. I shall decide to-night." "But why, Edward, why? If the man is guilty, should he not be punished?" "Undoubtedly he should. And if he is innocent, he should not be made to suffer. He is poor and friendless; it will be a relief for me to take up the case, should I believe him to be unjustly accused." "Is he young--handsome--and was it done through jealousy?" "I have told you the case is shrouded in mystery. As for the man charged with the crime, he is very common and repulsive-looking." "And you intend to defend such a creature?" "Most likely." She shrugged her shoulders with a slight gesture of contempt. She had no understanding of his motives, no sympathy in his labours, no pride in his victories. When he retired to his study he did not immediately proceed to the investigation of the case of Gautran, as it was set forth in the numerous papers which lay on the table. These papers, in accordance with the given promise, had been sent to him by Pierre Lamont, and it was his intention to employ the hours of the night in a careful study of the details of the affair, and of the conjectures and opinions of editors and correspondents. But he held his purpose back for a while, and for nearly half-an-hour paced the floor slowly in deep thought. Suddenly he went out, and sought his wife's private room. "It did not occur to me before," he said, "to tell you that a friend of Christian Almer's--Mr. Hartrich, the banker--in a conversation I had with him, expressed his belief that Almer was suffering." "Ill!" she cried in an agitated tone. "In mind, not in body. You have received letters from him lately, I believe?" "Yes, three or four--the last a fortnight ago." "Does he say he is unwell?" "No; but now I think of it, he does not write in his usual good spirits." "You have his address?" "Yes; he is in Switzerland, you know." "So Mr. Hartrich informed me--somewhere in the mountains, endeavouring to extract peace of mind from silence and solitude. That is well enough for a few days, and intellectual men are always grateful for such a change; but, if it is prolonged, there is danger of its bringing a mental disease of a serious and enduring nature upon a man brooding upon unhealthy fancies. I value Almer too highly to lose sight of him, or to allow him to drift. He has no family ties, and is in a certain sense a lonely man. Why should he not come and remain with us during our stay in the village? I had an idea that he himself would have proposed doing so." "He might have considered it indelicate," said Adelaide with a bright colour in her face, "the house being his. As if he had a right to be here." "It is by no means likely," said the Advocate, shaking his head, "that Almer would ever be swayed by other than generous and large-minded considerations. Write to him to-night, and ask him to leave his solitude, and make his home with us. He will be company for you, and your bright and cheerful ways will do him good. The prospect of his visit has already excited you, I see. I am afraid," he said, with a regretful pathos in his voice, "that my society affords you but poor enjoyment; yet I never thought otherwise, when you honoured me by accepting my proposal of marriage, than that you loved me." "I hope you do not think otherwise now," she said in a low tone. "Why, no," he said with a sigh of relief; "what reason have I to think otherwise? We had time to study each other's characters, and I did not present myself in a false light. But we are forgetting Almer. Can you divine any cause for unusual melancholy in him?" She seemed to consider, and answered: "No, she could not imagine why he should be melancholy." "Mr. Hartrich," continued the Advocate, "suggested that he might have experienced a disappointment in love, but I could not entertain the suggestion. Almer and I have for years exchanged confidences in which much of men's inner natures is revealed, and had he met with such a disappointment, he would have confided in me. I may be mistaken, however; your opinion would be valuable here; in these delicate matters, women are keen observers." "Mr. Hartrich's suggestion is absurd; I am convinced Mr. Almer has not met with a disappointment in love. He is so bright and attractive----" "That any woman," said the Advocate, taking up the thread, for Adelaide seemed somewhat at a loss for words, "might be proud to win him. That is your thought, Adelaide." "Yes." "I agree with you. I have never in my life known a man more likely to inspire love in a woman's heart than Christian Almer, and I have sometimes wondered that he had not met with one to whom he was drawn; it would be a powerful influence over him for good. Of an impure passion I believe him incapable. Write to him to-night, and urge him to come to us." "If you wrote to him, also, it would be as well." "I will do so; you can enclose my letter in yours. How does your new maid suit you?" "Admirably. She is perfection." "Which does not exist." "If I could induce her grandmother to part with her, I should like to keep her with me always." "Do not tempt her, Adelaide. For a simple maid a country life is the happiest and best--indeed, for any maid, or any man, young or old." "How seldom practice and precept agree! Why do you not adopt a country life?" "Too late. A man must follow his star. I should die of inaction in the country; and you--I smile when I think what would become of you were I to condemn you to it." "You are not always right. I adore the country!" "For an hour and a day. Adelaide, you could not exist out of society." Until the Alpine peaks were tipped with the fire of the rising sun, the Advocate remained in his study, investigating and considering the case of Gautran. Only once did he leave it to give his wife the letter he wrote to Christian Almer. Newspaper after newspaper was read and laid aside, until the long labour came to its end. Then the Advocate rose, with no trace of fatigue on his countenance, and according to his wont, walked slowly up and down in deep thought. His eyes rested occasionally upon the grotesque and hideous figures carved on the old sideboard, which, had they been sentient and endowed with the power of speech, might have warned him that he had already, within the past few hours, woven one tragic link in his life, and have held him back from weaving another. But he saw no warning in their fantastic faces, and before he retired to rest he had formed his resolve. On the following day all Geneva was startled by the news that the celebrated Advocate, who had travelled thither for rest from years of arduous toil, had undertaken the defence of a wretch upon whose soul, in the opinion of nearly every thinking man and woman, the guilt of blood lay heavily. The trial of Gautran was instantly invested with an importance which elevated it into an absorbing theme with every class of society. CHAPTER X TWO LETTERS--FROM FRIEND TO FRIEND, FROM LOVER TO LOVER I "My Dear Almer,--We have been here three days, and are comfortably established in your singularly-named villa, the House of White Shadows. It is a perfect country residence, and the scenery around it is, I am told, charming. As you are aware, I have no eyes for the beauties of Nature; human nature and human motive alone interest me, and my impressions of the neighbourhood are derived from the descriptions of my wife, who enjoys novelty with the impulsive enjoyment of a child. It appears that she was enchanted when she heard from your lips that your house was supposed to be haunted by shadows, and although you cautioned her immediately afterwards, she was not to be deterred from accepting your invitation. Up to this time, no ghost has appeared to her, nor has my composure been disturbed by supernatural visions. I am a non-believer in visions from the spiritual world; she is only too ready to believe. It is the human interest attached to such fancies--for which, of course, there must be some foundation--which fascinates and arrests the general attention. There, for me, the interest ends; I do not travel beyond reality. "I am supposed to have come for rest and repose. The physicians who laid this burden upon me know little of my nature; idleness is more irksome, and I believe more injurious, to me than the severest labour; and it is a relief, therefore, to me to find myself interested in a startling criminal case which is shortly coming on for trial in Geneva. It is a case of murder, and a man is in prison, charged with its commission. He has no friends, he has no means, he is a vicious creature of the commonest and lowest type. There is nothing in him to recommend him to favour; he is a being to be avoided--but these are not the points to be considered. Is the man guilty or not guilty? He is pronounced guilty by universal public opinion, and the jury which will be empannelled to try him will be ready to convict upon the slightest evidence, or, indeed, without evidence. The trial will be a mockery of justice unless the accused is defended by one who is not influenced by passion and prejudice. There is a feature in the case which has taken powerful possession of me, and which, as far as I can judge, has not occurred to others. I intend to devote the whole of to-night to a study of the details of the crime, and it is likely that I shall undertake the defence of this repulsive creature--no doubt much to his astonishment. I have, with this object in view, already had an interview with him in his prison-cell, and the trouble I had to obtain permission to see him is a sufficient indication of the popular temper. When, therefore, you hear--if in the mountain fastness in which you are intrenched, you have the opportunity of hearing any news at all from the world at your feet--that I have undertaken the defence of a man named Gautran, accused of the murder of a flower-girl named Madeline, do not be surprised. "What is most troubling me at the present moment is--what is my wife to do, how is she to occupy her time, during our stay in the House of White Shadows? At present she is full of animation and delight; the new faces and scenery by which she is surrounded are very attractive to her; but the novelty will wear off and then she will grow dull. Save me from self-reproach and uneasiness by taking up your residence with us, if not for the whole of the time we remain here, which I should much prefer, at least for a few weeks. By so doing you will confer a service upon us all. My wife enjoys your society; you know the feeling I entertain for you; and personal association with sincere friends will be of real benefit to you. I urge it earnestly upon you, for I have an impression that you are brooding over unhealthy fancies, and that you have sought solitude for the purpose of battling with one of those ordinary maladies of the mind to which sensitive natures are prone. If it be so, Christian, you are committing a grave error; the battle is unequal; silence and seclusion will not help you to a victory over yourself. Come and unbosom yourself to me, if you have anything to unbosom, and do not fear that I shall intrude either myself or my advice upon you against your inclination. If you have a grief, meet it in the society of those who love you. There is a medicine in a friendly smile, in a friendly word, which you cannot find in solitude. One needs sometimes, not the sunshine of fair weather, but the sunshine of the soul. Here it awaits you, and should you bring dark vapours with you I promise you they will soon be dispelled. I am disposed--out of purest friendliness--to insist upon your coming, and to be so uncharitable as to accept it as an act of weakness if you refuse me. When the case of Gautran is at an end I shall be an idle man; you, and only you, can avert the injurious effect idleness will have upon me. We will find occupation together, and create reminiscences for future pleasant thought. It may be a long time, if ever, before another opportunity so favourable occurs for passing a few weeks in each other's society, undisturbed by professional cares and duties. You see I am taking a selfish view of the matter. Add an inestimable value to your hospitality by coming here at once and sweetening my leisure. "Your friend, "Edward." II "My Own,--My husband is uneasy about you, and has imposed a task upon me. You shall judge for yourself whether it is a disagreeable one. I am to write to you immediately, to insist upon your coming to us without an hour's delay. You have not the option of refusal. The Advocate insists upon it, and I also insist upon it. You must come. Upon the receipt of this letter you will pack up your portmanteau, and travel hither in the swiftest possible way, by the shortest possible route. Be sure that you do not disobey me. You are to come instantly, without an hour's--nay, without a moment's delay. If you fail I will not answer for the consequences, and upon you will rest the responsibility of all that follows. For what reason, do you suppose, did I accept the offer of your villa in this strangely quiet valley, unless it was in the hope and the belief that we should be near each other? And now that I _am_ here, pledged to remain, unable to leave without an exhibition of the most dreadful vacillation--which would not matter were I to have my own way, and were everything to be exactly as I wish it--you are bound to fly swiftly to the side of one who entertains for you the very sincerest affection. Do not be angry with me for my disregard of your caution to be careful in my manner of writing to you. I cannot help it. I think of you continually, and if you wish me not to write what you fear other eyes than ours might see, you must come and talk to me. I shall count the minutes till you are here. The Advocate is uneasy about you, and is, indeed and indeed, most anxious that you should be with us. He seems to have an idea that you have some cause for melancholy, and that you are brooding over it. Could anything be more absurd? Cause for melancholy! Just as if you were alone in the world! You do not need to be told that there is one being who will care for you till she is an old, old woman. Think of me as I shall be then. An old woman, with white hair, walking with a crutch-stick, as they do on the stage. If you _are_ sad, it is a just punishment upon you. There was nothing in the world to prevent your travelling with us. What do you think a friend of yours, a banker in Geneva, suggested to the Advocate? He said that it was probable that you had experienced a disappointment in love. Now, this sets me thinking. Why have you chosen to hide yourself in the mountains, a hundred and a hundred miles away? Have you been there before? Is there some pretty girl to attract you, from whom you find it impossible to tear yourself? If it is so, let her beware of me. You have no idea of what I should be capable if you gave me cause for jealousy. What is her disposition--pensive or gay? She is younger than I am, I suppose--though I am not so old, sir!--with hands---- Ah, I am easier in my mind; her hands must be coarse, for she is a peasant. I am almost reconciled; you could never fall in love with a peasant. They may be pretty and fresh for a month or two, but they cannot help being coarse, and I know how anything coarse grates upon you. But a peasant-girl might fall in love with you--there are more unlikely things than that. Shall I tell you what the Advocate said of you this evening? It will make you vain, but never mind. 'I have never in my life known a man more likely to inspire love in a woman's heart than Christian Almer.' There, sir, his very words. How true they are! Ah, how cruel was the chance that separated us from each other, and brought us together again when I was another man's wife! Oh, if I had only known! If some kind fairy had told me that the man who, when I was a child, enthralled me with his beautiful fancies, and won my heart, and who then, as it seemed, passed out of my life--if I had suspected that, after many years, he would return home from his wanderings with the resolve to seek out the child and make her his wife, do you for one moment suppose I would not have waited for him? Do you think it possible I could ever have accepted the hand of another man? No, it could not have been, for even as a child I used to dream of you, and held you in my heart above all other human beings. But you were gone--I never thought of seeing you again--and I was so young that I could have had no foreshadowing of what was to come. "Have you ever considered how utterly different my life might have been had you not crossed it? Not that I reproach you--do not think that; but how strangely things turn out, without the principal actor having anything to do with them! It is exactly like sitting down quietly by yourself, and seeing all sorts of wonderful things happen in which you have no hand, though if you were not in existence they could never have occurred. Just think for a moment. If it had not happened that you knew me when I was a child, and was fond of me then, as you have told me I don't know how many times--if it had not happened that your restless spirit drove you abroad where you remained for years and years and years--if it had not happened that, tired of leading a wandering life, you resolved to come home and seek out the child you used to pet and make love to (but she did not know the meaning of love then)--if it had not happened that, entirely ignorant of what was passing in your mind, the child, grown into a pretty woman (I think I may say that, without vanity), was persuaded by her friends that to refuse an offer of marriage made to her by a great lawyer, famous and rich, was something too shocking to contemplate--if it had not happened that she, knowing nothing of her own heart, knowing nothing of the world, allowed herself to be guided by these cold calculating friends to accept a man utterly unsuited to her, and with whom she has never had an hour's real happiness--if it had not happened by the strangest chance, that this man and you were friends---- There, my dear, follow it out for yourself, and reflect how different our lives might have been if everything had happened in the way it ought to have done. I was cheated and tricked into a marriage with a man whose heart has room for only one sentiment--ambition. I am bound to him for life, but I am yours till death--although the bond which unites us is, as you have taught me, but a spiritual bond. "Are you angry with me for putting all this on paper? You must not be, for I cannot help it if I am not wise. Wisdom belongs to men. Come, then, and give me wise counsel, and prevent me from committing indiscretions. For I declare to you, upon my heart and honour, if you do not very soon present yourself at the House of White Shadows, I will steal from it in the night and make my way to the mountains to see what wonderful attraction it is that separates us. What food for scandal! What wagging and shaking of heads! How the women's tongues would run! I can imagine it all. Save me from exposure as you are a true man. "You have made the villa beautiful. As I walk about the house and grounds I am filled with delight to think that you have effected such a magic change for my sake. Master Lamont has shown really exquisite taste. What a singular old man he is. I can't decide whether I like him or not. But how strange that you should have had it all done by deputy, and that you have not set foot in the house since you were a child. You see I know a great deal. Who tells me? My new maid Dionetta. Do you remember, in one of the letters you showed me from your steward, that he spoke about the old housekeeper, Mother Denise, and a pretty granddaughter? I made up my mind at the time that the pretty granddaughter should be my maid. And she is, and her name is Dionetta. Is it not pretty?--but not prettier than the owner. Will that tempt you? I have sent my town maid away, much to her displeasure; she spoke to the Advocate in complaint, but he did not mention it to me; I found it out for myself. He is as close as the grave. So I am here absolutely alone, with none but strangers around me. "I am very much interested in the pictures in the studio of the old châlet, especially in a pair which represents, the first, two lovers with the sun shining on them; the second, the lovers parted by a cold grey sea. They stand on opposite shores, gazing despairingly at each other. He must have been a weak-minded man indeed; he should have taken a boat, and rowed across to her; and if he was afraid to do that, she should have gone to him. That would have been the most sensible thing. "I could continue my gossip till daylight breaks, but I have already lost an hour of my beauty sleep, and I want you, upon your arrival, to see me at my best. "My heart goes with this letter; bring it swiftly back to me." "Yours for ever, "Adelaide." CHAPTER XI FIRE AND SNOW--FOOL FRITZ INFORMS PIERRE LAMONT WHERE ACTUAL LOVE COMMENCES "News, Master Lamont, news!" "Of what nature, Fritz?" "Of a diabolical nature. Satan is busy." "He is never idle--for which the priests, if they have any gratitude in them, should be thankful." "You are not fond of the priests, Master Lamont." "I do not hate them." "Still you are not fond of them." "I do not love them. Your news, fool--concerning whom?" "A greater than you, or you do not speak the truth." "The Advocate, then?" "The same. You are a good guesser." "Fritz, your news is stale." "I am unlucky; I thought to be the first. You have heard the news?" "Not I." "You have read a letter, informing you of it." "You are a bad guesser. I have neither received nor read a letter to-day." "You have heard nothing, you have read nothing; and yet you know." "As surely as you stand before me. Fritz, you are not a scholar, but I will give you a sum any fool can do. Add one to one--what do you make of it?" "Why, that is easy enough, Master Lamont." "The answer then, fool?" "One." "Good. You shall smart for it, in the most vulnerable part of man. You receive from me, every week, one franc. I owe you, for last week, one franc; I owe you, for this, one." "That is so." "Last week, one; this week, one. I discharge the liability." And Pierre Lamont handed a franc to Fritz. Fritz weighed the coin in the palm of his hand, spun it in the air and smiled. "Master Lamont, here is a fair challenge. If I prove to you that one and one are one, this franc you have given me shall not count off what you owe me." "I agree." "When one man and one woman are joined in matrimony, they become one flesh. Therefore, one and one are one. "You have earned the franc, fool. Here are the two I owe you." "Now, perhaps, you will tell _me_ what I came here to tell you." "The Advocate intends to defend Gautran, who stands charged with the murder of the flower-girl." "You are a master worth serving. I have half a mind to give you back your franc." "Make it a whole mind, Fritz." "No; second thoughts are best. My pockets are not as warm as yours. They are not so well lined. How did you guess, Master Lamont?" "By means of a golden rule, an infallible rule, by the Rule of One--which, intelligibly interpreted to shallow minds--no offence, Fritz, I hope----" "Don't mind me, Master Lamont; I am a fool and used to hard knocks." "Then by the Rule of One, which means the rule of human nature--as, for example, that makes the drunkard stagger to the wine-shop and the sluggard to his bed--I guessed that the Advocate could not withstand so tempting a chance to prove the truth of the scriptural words that all men are liars. What will be palatable information to me is the manner in which the news has been received." "Heaven keep me from ever being so received! The Advocate has not added to the number of his friends. People are gazing at each other in amazement, and asking for reasons which none are able to give." "And his wife, Fritz, his wife?" "Takes as much interest in his doings as a bee does in the crawling of a snail." "Rogue, you have cheated me! How about one and one being one?" "There are marriages and marriages. This was not made in Heaven; when it came about there was a confusion in the pairing, and another couple are as badly off. There will be a natural end to both." "How brought about, fool?" "By your own rule, the rule of human nature." "When a jumper jumps, he first measures his distance with his eye. Do they quarrel?" "No." "Does she look coldly upon him, or he upon her?" "No." "Is there silence between them?" "No." "You are a bad jumper, Fritz. You have not measured your distance." "See, Master Lamont, I will prove it to you by a figure of speech. There travels from the south a flame of fire. There travels from the north a lump of snow. They meet. What happens? Either that the snow extinguishes the fire and it dies, or that the fire puts an end to the snow." "Fairly illustrated, Fritz. Fire and snow! Truly a most unfortunate conjunction." "She was in the mood to visit you yesterday had you lived a mile nearer the valley." "You were out together." "She and Dionetta were walking, and I met them and accompanied them. She spoke graciously to the villagers, and went into the cottages, and drank more than one cup of milk. She was sweeter than sugar, Master Lamont, and won the hearts of some of the women and of all the men. As for the children, they would have followed her to the world's end, I do believe, out of pure admiration. They carry now in their little heads the vision of the beautiful lady. Even Father Capel was struck by her beauty." "Priests are mortals, Fritz. On which side did you walk--next to my lady or Dionetta?" "I should be wrecked in a tempest. I sail only in quiet lakes." "And the maid--did she object to your walking close to her?--for you are other than I take you to be if you did not walk close." "Why should she object? Am I not a man? Women rather like fools." "How stands the pretty maid with her new mistress?" "In high favour, if one can judge from fingers." "Fritz, your wit resembles a tide that is for ever flowing. Favour me with your parable." "It is a delicate point to decide where actual love commences. Have you ever considered it, Master Lamont?" "Not deeply, fool. In my young days I was a mad-brain; you are a philosopher. Like a bee, I took what fell in my way, and did not puzzle myself or the flower with questions. Where love commences? In the heart." "No." "In the brain." "No." "In the eye." "No." "Where, then?" "In the finger-tips. Dionetta and I, walking side by side, shoulder to shoulder, our arms hanging down, brought into close contact our finger-tips. What wonder that they touched!" "Natural magnetism, Fritz." "With our finger-tips touching, we walked along, and if her heart palpitated as mine did, she must have experienced an inward commotion. Master Lamont, this is a confession for your ears only. I should be base and ungrateful to hide it from you." "Your confidence shall be respected." "It leads to an answer to your question as to how Dionetta stands with her new mistress. First the finger-tips, then the fingers, and her little hand was clasped in mine. It was then I felt the ring upon her finger." "Ah!" "Now, Dionetta never till yesterday owned a ring. I felt it, as a man who is curious would do, and suddenly her hand was snatched from mine. A moment or two afterwards, her hand was in mine again, but the ring was gone. A fine piece of conjuring. A man is no match for a woman in these small ways. To-day I saw her for about as long as I could count three. 'Who gave you the ring?' I asked. 'My lady,' she answered. 'Don't tell grandmother that I have got a ring.' Therefore, Master Lamont, Dionetta stands well with her mistress." "Logically carried out, Fritz. The saints prosper your wooing." CHAPTER XII THE STRUGGLE OF LOVE AND DUTY In his lonely room in the mountain hut in which he had taken up his quarters, Christian Almer sat writing. It was early morning; he had risen before the sun. During the past week he had struggled earnestly with the terror which oppressed him; his suffering had been great, but he believed he was conquering. The task he had imposed upon himself of setting his duty before him in clear terms afforded him consolation. The book in which he was writing contained the record of a love which had filled him with unrest, and threatened to bring dishonor into his life. * * * * * * "I thank Heaven," he wrote, "that I am calmer than I have been for several days. Separation has proved an inestimable blessing. The day may come when I shall look upon my love as dead, and shall be able to think of it as one thinks of a beloved being whom death has snatched away. "Even now, as I think of her, there is no fever in the thought. I have not betrayed my friend. "How would he regard me if he were acquainted with my mad passion--if he knew that the woman he adored looked upon him with aversion, and gave her love to the friend whom he trusted as a brother? "There was the error. To listen to her confession of love, and to make confession of my own. "That a man should so forget himself--should be so completely the slave of his passions! "How came it about? When were the first words spoken? "She sat by my side, radiant and beautiful. Admiring glances from every part of the theatre were cast upon her. In a corner of the box sat her husband, silent and thoughtful, heedless of the brilliant scene before him, heedless of her, as it seemed, heedless of the music and the singers. "Royalty was there, immediately facing us, and princes levelled their opera-glasses at her. "There are moments of intoxication when reason and conscience desert us. "We were stepping into the carriage when a note was delivered to him. He read it, and said, 'I cannot go with you; I am called away. You will not miss me, as I do not dance. I will join you in a couple of hours." "So we went alone, we two together, and her hand rested lightly upon mine. And in the dance the words were spoken--words never to be recalled. "What demon prompted them? Why did not an angel whisper to me, 'Remember. There is a to-morrow.' "But in the present the morrow is forgotten. A false sense of security shuts out all thoughts of the consequences of our actions. A selfish delight enthrals us, and we do not see the figure of Retribution hovering above us. "It is only when we are alone with our conscience that this figure is visible. Then it is that we tremble; then it is that we hear words which appal us. "Again and again has this occurred to me, and I have vowed to myself that I would tear myself from her--a vow as worthless as the gambler's resolve to play no more. Drawn irresistibly forward, and finding in every meeting a shameful justification in the delusion that I was seeing her for the last time; and leaving her with a promise to come again soon. Incredible infatuation! But to listen to the recital of her sorrows and unhappiness without sympathising with her--it was not possible; and to hear her whisper, 'I love you, and only you,' without being thrilled by the confession--a man would need to be made of stone. "How often has she said to me, when speaking of her husband, 'He has no heart!' "Can I then, aver with any semblance of honesty that I have not betrayed my friend? Basely have I betrayed him. "If I were sure that she would not suffer--if I were sure that she would forget me! Coldness, neglect, indifference--they are sharp weapons, but I deserve to bleed. "Still, I cry out against my fate. I have committed no crime. Love came to me and tortured me. But a man must perform a man's duty. I will strive to perform mine. Then in years to come I may be able to think of the past without shame, even with pride at having conquered. "I have destroyed her portrait. I could not look upon her face and forget her." * * * * * * A voice from an adjoining room caused him to lay aside his pen. It was the peasant, the master of the hut, calling to him, and asking if he was ready. He went out to the man. "I heard you stirring," said the peasant, "and my young ones are waiting to show you where the edelweiss can be found." The children, a boy and a girl, looked eagerly at Christian Almer. It had been arranged on the previous day that the three should go for a mountain excursion in search of the flower that brings good luck and good fortune to the finder. The children were sturdy-limbed and ruddy-faced, and were impatient to be off. "Breakfast first," said Christian Almer, pinching the little girl's cheek. Brown bread, honey, goat's milk, and an omelette were on the table, and the stranger, who had been as a godsend to the poor family, enjoyed the homely fare. The peasant had already calculated that if his lodger lived a year in the hut, they could save five hundred francs--a fortune. Christian Almer had been generous to the children, in whose eyes he was something more than mortal. Money is a magic power. "Will the day be fine?" asked Christian. "Yes," said the peasant; "but there will be a change in the evening. The little ones will know--you can trust to them." Young as they were, they could read the signs on Nature's face, and could teach their gentleman friend wise things, great and rich as he was. The father accompanied them for a couple of miles; he was a goat-herd, and, unlike others of his class, was by no means a silent man. "You live a happy life here," said Christian Almer. "Why, yes," said the peasant; "it is happy enough. We have to eat, but not to spare; there is the trouble. Still, God be thanked. The children are strong and healthy; that is another reason for thankfulness." "Is your wife, as you are, mountain born?" "Yes; and could tell you stories. And there," said the peasant, pointing upwards afar off, "as though it knew my wife were being talked of, there is the lämmergeier." An enormous vulture, which seemed to have suddenly grown out of the air, was suspended in the clouds. So motionless was it that it might have been likened to a sculptured work, wrought by an angel's hand, and fixed in heaven as a sign. It could not have measured less than ten feet from wing to wing. Its colour was brown, with bright edges and white quills, and its fiery eyes were encircled by broad orange-shaded rings. "My wife," said the peasant, "has reason to remember the lämmergeier. When she was three years old her father took her to a part of the mountains where they were hay-making, and not being able to work and attend to her at the same time, he set her down by the side of a hut. It was a fine sunny day, and Anna fell asleep. Her father, seeing her sleeping calmly, covered her face with a straw hat, and continued his work. Two hours afterwards he went to the spot, and Anna was gone. He searched for her everywhere, and all the haymakers assisted in the search, but Anna was nowhere to be found. My father and I--I was a mere lad at the time, five years older than Anna--were walking towards a mountain stream, three miles from where Anna had been sleeping, when I heard the cry of a child. It came from a precipice, and above this precipice a vulture was flying. We went in the direction of the cry, and found Anna lying on the edge of the precipice, clinging to the roots with her little hand. She was slipping down, and would have slipped to certain death had we been three minutes later. It was a difficult task to rescue her as it was, but we managed it, and carried her to her father. She had no cap to her head, and no shoes or stockings on her feet; she had lost them in her flight through the air in the vulture's beak. She has a scar on her left arm to this day as a remembrance of her acquaintance with the lämmergeier. So it fell out afterwards, when she was a young woman, that I married her." Ever and again, as they walked onwards, Christian Almer turned to look upon the vulture, which remained perfectly still, with its wings outstretched, until it was hid from his sight by the peculiar formation of the valleys they were traversing. Hitherto their course had lain amidst masses of the most beautiful flowers; gentians with purple bells, others spotted and yellow, with brilliant whorls of bloom, the lilac-flowered campanula, the anemone, the blue columbine and starwort, the lovely forget-me-not--which Christian Almer mentally likened to bits of heaven dropped down--and the Alpine rose, the queen of Alpine flowers. Now all was changed. The track was bare of foliage; not a blade of grass peeped up from the barren rocks. "There is good reason for it," said the peasant; "here, long years ago, a man killed his brother in cold blood. Since that day no flowers will grow upon the spot. There are nights on which the spirit of the murderer wanders mournfully about these rocks; a black dog accompanies him, whose bark you can sometimes hear. This valley is accursed." Soon afterwards the peasant left Christian Almer to the guidance of the children, and with them the young man spent the day, sharing contentedly with them the black bread and hard sausage they had brought for dinner. This mid-day meal was eaten as they sat beside a lake, in the waters of which there was not a sign of life, and Christian Almer noticed that, as the children ate, they watched the bosom of this lake with a strange and singular interest. "What are you gazing at?" he asked, curious to learn. "For the dead white trout," answered the boy. "Whenever a priest dies it floats upon the lake." In the lower heights, where the fir-trees stretched their feathery tips to the clouds, they found the flower they were in search of, and the children were wild with delight. The sun was setting when they returned to the hut, tired and gratified with their day's wanderings. The peasant's wife smiled as she saw the edelweiss. "A lucky love-flower," she said to Christian Almer. These simple words proved to him how hard was the lesson of forgetfulness he was striving to learn; he was profoundly agitated by them. Night fell, and the clouds grew black. "The wind is rising," said the peasant; "an ill night for travellers. Here is one coming towards us." It proved to be a guide who lived in the nearest post village, and who, duly commissioned for the service, brought to Christian Almer the letters of the Advocate and his wife. "A storm is gathering," said the guide; "I must find shelter on the heights to-night." In his lonely room Christian Almer broke the seals, and by the dull light of a single candle read the lines written by friend to friend, by lover to lover. The thunder rolled over the mountains; the lightning flashed through the small window; the storm was upon him. He read the letters once only, but every word was impressed clearly upon his brain. For an hour he sat in silence, gazing vacantly at the edelweiss on the table, the lucky love-flower. The peasant's wife called to him, and asked if he wanted anything. "Nothing," he replied, in a voice that sounded strange to him. "I will leave the bread and milk on the table," she said. "Good-night." He did not answer her, nor did he respond to the children's good-night. Their voices, the children's especially, seemed to his ears to come from a great distance. A drop of rain fell from the roof upon the candle, and extinguished the light. For a long while he remained in darkness, until all in the hut were sleeping; then he went out into the wild night, clutching the letters tight in his hand. He staggered almost blindly onwards, and in the course of half an hour found himself standing on a narrow and perilous bridge, from which the few travellers who passed that way could obtain a view of a torrent which dashed with sublime and terrific force over a precipice upon the rocks below, a thousand feet down. "If I were to grow dizzy now!" he muttered, with a reckless laugh; and he tempted fate by leaning over the narrow bridge, and gazing downwards into the dark depths. Indistinct shapes grew out of the mighty and eternal waterfall. Of hosts of angry men battling with each other; of rushing horses; of armies of vultures swooping down for prey; of accusing and beautiful faces; of smiling mouths and white teeth flashing; and, amidst the whirl, sounds of shrieks and laughter. Suddenly he straightened himself, and tearing Adelaide's letter into a thousand pieces, flung the evidence of a treacherous love into the furious torrent of waters; and as he did so he thought that there were times in a man's life when death were the best blessing which Heaven could bestow upon him! CHAPTER XIII THE TRIAL OF GAUTRAN The trial of Gautran was proceeding, and the court was thronged with an excited gathering of men and women, upon whom not a word in the story of the tragic drama was thrown away. Impressed by the great powers of the Advocate who had undertaken to appear for the accused, the most effective measures had been adopted to prove Gautran's guilt, and obtain a conviction. It was a legal battle, fought with all the subtle weapons at the disposal of the law. Gautran's prosecutors fought with faces unmasked, and with their hands displayed; the Advocate, on the contrary, was pursuing a course which none could fathom; nor did he give a clue to it. Long before the case was closed the jury were ready to deliver their verdict; but, calm and unmoved, the Advocate, with amazing patience, followed out his secret theory, the revelation of which was awaited, by those who knew him best and feared him most, with intense and painful curiosity. Every disreputable circumstance in Gautran's life was raked up to display the odiousness of his character; his infamous career was tracked from his childhood to the hour of his arrest. A creature more debased, with features more hideous, it would have been difficult to drag forward from the worst haunts of crime and shame. Degraded he was born, degraded he had lived, degraded he stood before his judges. It was a horror to gaze upon his face as he stood in the dock, convulsively clutching the rails. For eight days had he so stood, execrated and condemned by all. For eight days he had endured the anguish of a thousand deaths, of a myriad agonising fears. His soul had been harrowed by the most awful visions--visions of which none but himself had any conception. In his cell with the gaolers watching his every movement; in the court with the glare of daylight upon him; in the dusky corridors he traversed morning and evening he saw the phantom of the girl with whose murder he was charged, and by her side the phantom of himself standing on the threshold of a future in which there was no mercy or pity. No communication passed between him and the lawyer who was fighting for him; not once did the Advocate turn to the prisoner or address a word to him; it was as though he were battling for a victory in which Gautran was in no wise concerned. But if indeed he desired to win, he adopted the strangest tactics to accomplish his desire. Not a question he asked the witnesses, not an observation he made to the judge, but tended to fix more surely the prisoner's degradation, and gradually there stole into Gautran's heart a deadly hatred and animosity against his defender. "He defends me to ruin me," this was Gautran's thought; "he is seeking to destroy me, body and soul." His own replies to the questions put to him by the judge were sufficient to convict him. He equivocated and lied in the most barefaced manner, and when he was exposed and reproved, evinced no shame--preserving either a dogged silence, or obstinately exclaiming that the whole world was leagued against him. Apart from the question whether he was lying or speaking the truth, there was a certain consistency in his method which would have been of service to him had his cause been good. This was especially noticeable when he was being interrogated with respect to his relations with the murdered girl. "You insist," said the judge, "that Madeline accepted you as her lover?" "Yes," replied Gautran, "I insist upon it." "Evidence will be brought forward to prove that it was not so. What, then, will you answer?" "That whoever denies it is a liar." "And if a dozen or twenty deny it?" "They lie, the lot of them." "What should make them speak falsely instead of truly?" "Because they are all against me." "There is no other evidence except your bare statement that Madeline and you were affianced." "That is my misfortune. If she were alive she could speak for me." "It is a safe remark, the poor child being in her grave. It is the rule for young girls to love men whose appearance is not repulsive." "Is this," cried Gautran, smiting his face with his fist, "to stand as a witness against me, too?" "No; but a girl has generally a cause for falling in love. If the man be not attractive in appearance, it is almost certain he will possess some other quality to attract her. He may be clever, and this may win her." "I do not pretend to be clever." "His manners may be engaging. His nature may be kind and affectionate, and she may have had proof of it." "_My_ nature is kind and affectionate. It may have been that, if you are determined upon having a reason for her fondness for me." "She was fond of you?" "Aye." "Did she tell you so, and when?" "Always when we were alone." "We cannot have Madeline's evidence as to the feelings she entertained for you; but we can have the evidence of others who knew you both. Are you acquainted with Katherine Scherrer?" "Not too well; we were never very intimate." "She is a young woman a few years older than Madeline, and she warned Madeline against you. She herself had received instances of your brutality. Before you saw Madeline you made advances towards Katherine Scherrer." "False. She made advances towards me. She asked me to be her lover, and now she speaks against me out of revenge." "She has not spoken yet, but she will. Madeline told her that she trembled at the sight of you, and had entreated you not to follow her; but that you would not be shaken off." "It is my way; I will never be baulked." "It is true, therefore; you paid no attention to this poor girl's entreaties because it is your way not to allow yourself to be baulked." "I did not mean that; I was thinking of other matters." "Katherine Scherrer has a mother." "Yes; a woman of no account." "Some time ago this mother informed you, if you did not cease to pester Katherine with your insulting proposals, that she would have you beaten." "I should like to see the man who would have attempted it." "That is savagely spoken for one whose nature is kind and affectionate." "May not a man defend himself? I don't say I am kind and affectionate to men; but I am to women." "The murdered girl found you so. Hearing from her daughter that Madeline was frightened of you, and did not wish you to follow her, Katherine's mother desired you to let the girl alone." "She lies." "They all lie who utter a word against you?" "Every one of them." "You never courted Katherine Scherrer?" "Never." "Her mother never spoke to you about either her daughter or Madeline?" "Never." "Do you know the Widow Joseph?" "No." "Madeline lodged in her house." "What is that to me?" "Did she never speak to you concerning Madeline?" "Never." "Attend. Four nights before Madeline met her death you were seen prowling outside Widow Joseph's house." "I was not there." "The Widow Joseph came out and asked you what you wanted." "She did not." "You said you must see Madeline. The Widow Joseph went into the house, and returned with the message that Madeline would not see you. Upon that you tried to force your way into the house, and struck the woman because she prevented you. Madeline came down, alarmed at the sounds of the struggle, and begged you to go away, and you said you would, now that you had seen her, as you had made up your mind to. What have you to say to this?" "A batch of lies. Twenty women could not have prevented me getting into the house." "You think yourself a match for twenty women?" "Aye." "And for as many men?" "For one man, whoever he may be. Give me the chance of proving it." "Do you know Heinrich Heitz?" "No." "He is, like yourself, a woodcutter." "There are thousands of woodcutters." "Did you and he not work together as partners?" "We did not." "Were you not continually quarrelling, and did he not wish to break the partnership?" "No." "In consequence of this, did you not threaten to murder him?" "No." "Did you not strike him with a weapon, and cut his forehead open?" "No." "How many women have you loved?" "One." "Her name?" "Madeline." "You never loved another?" "Never." "Have you been married?" "No." "Have you ever lived with a woman who should have been your wife?" "Never." "Did you not continually beat this poor woman until her life became a burden to her, and she was compelled to fly from you to another part of the country?" "No." "Do you expect to be believed in the answers you have given?" "No." "It is said that you possess great strength." "It has served me in good stead." "That you are a man of violent passions." "I have my feelings. I would never submit to be trampled on." "You were always kind to Madeline?" "Always." "On the night of her murder?" "Yes." "Witnesses will prove that you were heard to say, 'I will kill you! I will kill you!' Do you deny saying so?" "No." "How does that cruel threat accord with a mild and affectionate nature?" "I was asking her whether she had another lover, and I said if she had, and encouraged him, that I would kill her." "The handkerchief found round her neck was yours." "I gave it to her as a love-gift." "A terrible love-gift. It was not wound loosely round her neck; it was tight, almost to strangulation." "She must have made it so in her struggles, or----" "Or?" "The man who killed her must have attempted to strangle her with it." "That is your explanation?" "Yes." "Your face is bathed in perspiration; your eyes glare wildly." "Change places with me, and see how you would feel." "Such signs, then, are the signs of innocence?" "What else should they be?" During this long examination, Gautran's limbs trembled violently, and there passed over his face the most frightful expressions. CHAPTER XIV. THE EVIDENCE OF WITNESSES Among the first witnesses called was Heinrich Heitz, a wood-cutter, who had been for some time in partnership with Gautran, and of whom Gautran had denied any knowledge whatever. On his forehead was the red scar of a wound inflicted some time before. "Look at the prisoner. Do you know him?" "I have reason to." "His name?" "Gautran." "How did he get his living?" "By wood-cutting." "You and he were comrades for a time?" "We were." "For how long?" "For three years; we were partners." "During the time you worked with him, did he know you as Heinrich Heitz?" "By no other name. I never bore another." "Was the partnership an agreeable one?" "Not to me; it was infernally disagreeable. I never want another partner like him." "Why?" "Because I don't want another savage beast for a partner." "You did not get along well with him?" "Quite the reverse." "For what reasons?" "Well, for one, I am a hard-working man; he is an indolent bully. The master he works for once does not want to employ him again. When we worked together on a task, the profits of which were to be equally divided between us, he shirked his share of the work, and left me to do the lot." "Did you endeavour to separate from him?" "I did; and he swore he would murder me; and once, when I was more than usually determined, he marked me on my forehead. You can see the scar; I shall never get rid of it." "Did he use a weapon against you?" "Yes; a knife." "His temper is ungovernable?" "He has not the slightest control over it." "He is a man of great strength?" "He is very powerful." "Possessed with an idea which he was determined to carry out, is it likely that anything would soften him?" "Nothing could soften him." "How would opposition affect him?" "It would infuriate him. I have seen him, when crossed, behave as if he were a mad tiger instead of a human being." "At such times, would it be likely that he would show any coolness or cunning?" "He would have no time to think; he would be carried away by his passion." "You were acquainted with him when he was a lad?" "I was." "Was he noted for his cruel disposition in his childhood?" "He was; it was the common talk." "Did he take a pleasure in inflicting physical pain upon those weaker than himself?" "He did." "And in prolonging that pain?" "Yes." "In his paroxysms of fury would not an appeal to his humanity have a softening effect upon him?" "He has no humanity." "You were acquainted with Madeline?" "I was." "Was she an amiable girl?" "Most amiable." "She was very gentle?" "As gentle as a child." "But she was capable of being aroused?" "Of course she was." "She had many admirers?" "I have heard so." "You yourself admired her?" "I did." "You made love to her?" "I suppose I did." "Did she encourage you?" "I cannot say she did." "Did you ever attempt to embrace her?" The witness did not reply to this question, and upon its being repeated, still preserved silence. Admonished by the judge, and ordered to reply, he said: "Yes, I have attempted to embrace her." "On more than one occasion." "Only on one occasion." "Did she permit the embrace?" "No." "She resisted you?" "Yes." "There must have been a struggle. Did she strike you?" "She scratched my face." "She resisted you successfully?" "Yes." "Gentle as she was, she possessed strength?" "Oh yes, more than one would have supposed." "Strength which she would exert to protect herself from insult?" "Yes." "Her disposition was a happy one?" "That was easy to see. She was always singing to herself, and smiling." "You believe she was fond of life?" "Why yes--who is not?" "And would not have welcomed a violent and sudden death?" "Certainly not. What a question!" "Threatened with such a fate, she would have resisted?" "Aye, with all her strength. It would be but natural." "Knowing Madeline somewhat intimately, you must have known Pauline?" "Yes, I knew her." "It is unfortunate and inexplicable that we cannot call her as a witness, and are ignorant of the reason why she left Madeline alone. Can you furnish any clue, even the slightest, which might enable us to find her?" "I cannot; I do not know where she has gone." "Were they sisters, or mother and daughter?" "I cannot say." "Do you know where they came from?" "I do not." "Reflect. During your intimacy, was any chance word or remark made by either of the women which, followed up, might furnish the information?" "I can remember none. But something was said, a few days before Pauline left, which surprised me." "Relate it, and do not fear to weary the court. Omit nothing." "I made love to Madeline, as I have said, and she did not encourage me. Then, for perhaps a month or two, I said nothing more to her than good-morning or good-evening. But afterwards, when I was told that Gautran was following her up, I thought to myself, 'I am better than he; why should I be discouraged because she said "No" to me once?' Well, then it was that I mustered up courage to speak to Pauline, thinking to win her to my side. I did not, though. Pauline was angry and impatient with me, and as much as told me that when Madeline married it would be to a better man than I was. I was angry, also, because it seemed as if she looked down on me. 'You think she will marry a gentleman,' said I. 'It might be so,' she answered. 'A fine idea that,' said I, 'for a peasant. But perhaps she isn't a peasant: perhaps she is a lady in disguise.' I suppose I spoke scornfully, for Pauline fired up, and asked whether Madeline was not good enough, and pretty enough, and gentle enough for a lady; and said, too, that those who believed her to be a peasant might one day find out their mistake. And then all at once she stopped suddenly, with red fire in her face, and I saw she had said that which she had rather left unspoken." This last piece of evidence supplied a new feature of interest in the case. It furnished a clue to a tempting mystery as to the social position of Pauline and Madeline; but it was a clue which could not be followed to a satisfactory result, although another unexpected revelation was made in the course of the trial which appeared to have some connection with it. Much of the evidence given by Heinrich Heitz was elicited by the Advocate--especially those particulars which related to Gautran's strength and ferocity, and to Madeline's love of life and the way in which she met an insult. It was not easy to see what good could be done for Gautran by the stress which the Advocate laid upon these points. Katherine Scherrer was called and examined. She testified that Gautran had made advances towards her, and had pressed her to become his wife; that she refused him, and that he threatened her; that as he persisted in following her, her mother had spoken to him, and had warned him, if he did not cease persecuting her daughter, that she would have him beaten. This evidence was corroborated by Katherine's mother, who testified that she had cautioned Gautran not to persecute Madeline with his attentions and proposals. Madeline had expressed to both these women her abhorrence of Gautran and her fear of him, but nothing could induce him to relinquish his pursuit of her. The only evidence elicited from these witnesses by the Advocate related to Gautran's strength and ferocity. Following Katherine Scherrer and her mother came a witness whose appearance provoked murmurs of compassion. It was a poor, wretched woman, half demented, who had lived with Gautran in another part of the country, and who had been so brutally treated by him that her reason had become impaired. If her appearance provoked compassion, the story of her wrongs, as it was skilfully drawn from her by kindly examination, stirred the court into strong indignation, and threw a lurid light upon the character of the man arraigned at the bar of justice. In the presence of this poor creature the judge interrogated Gautran. "You denied having ever lived with a woman who should have been your wife. Do you still deny it?" "Yes." "Shameless obstinacy! Look at this poor woman, whom your cruelty has reduced to a state of imbecility. Do you not know her?" "I know nothing of her." "You never lived with her?" "Never." "You will even go so far as to declare that you never saw her before to-day?" "Yes; I never saw her before to-day." "To question you farther would be useless. You have shown yourself in your true colours." To which Gautran made answer: "I can't help my colours. They're not of my choosing." The Widow Joseph was next called. CHAPTER XV THE WIDOW JOSEPH GIVES EVIDENCE RESPECTING A MYSTERIOUS VISITOR The appearance of this woman was looked forward to by the spectators with lively curiosity, and her evidence was listened to with deep attention. "Your name is Joseph?" "That was my husband's first name. While he lived I was known as Mistress Joseph; since his death I have been called the Widow Joseph." "The poor child, Madeline, and her companion, Pauline, lived in your house?" "Yes, from the first day they came into this part of the country. 'We have come a great distance,' said Pauline to me, 'and want a room to sleep in.' I showed her the room, and said it would be twelve francs a month. She paid me twelve francs, and remained with me till she left to go on a journey." "Did you ask her where she came from?" "Yes; and she answered that it was of no consequence." "Did she pay the rent regularly?" "Yes; and always without being asked for it." "Did she tell you she was poor?" "She said she had but little money." "Did they have any settled plan of gaining a livelihood?" "I do not think they had at first. Pauline asked me whether I thought it likely they could earn a living by selling flowers. I looked at Madeline, and said that I thought they were certain to do well." "You looked at Madeline. Why?" "She was a very pretty girl." "And you thought, because she was very pretty, that she would have a greater chance of disposing of her flowers." "Yes. Gentlemen like to buy of pretty girls." "That is not said to Madeline's disparagement?" "No. Madeline was a good girl. She was full of gaiety, but it was innocent gaiety." "What were your impressions of them? As to their social position? Did you believe them to be humbly born?" "Pauline certainly; she was a peasant the same as myself. But there was something superior about Madeline which puzzled me." "How? In what way?" "It was only an impression. Yet there were signs. Pauline's hands were hard and coarse; and from remarks she made from time to time I knew that she was peasant-born. Madeline's hands were soft and delicate, and she had not been accustomed to toil, which all peasants are, from their infancy almost." "From this do you infer that they were not related to each other?" "I am sure they were related to each other. Perhaps few had the opportunities of judging as well as I could. When they were in a quiet mood I have seen expressions upon their faces so exactly alike as to leave no doubt that they were closely related." "Sisters?" "I cannot say." "Or mother and daughter?" "I wish to tell everything I know, but to say nothing that might be turned into a reproach against them." "We have every confidence in you. Judgment can be formed from the bearing of persons towards each other. Pauline loved Madeline?" "Devotedly." "There is a distinctive quality in the attachment of a loving mother for her child which can scarcely be mistaken; it is far different, in certain visible manifestations--especially on occasions where there is any slight disagreement--between sisters. Distinctive, also, is the tenderness which accompanies the exercise of a mother's authority. Bearing this in mind, and recalling to the best of your ability those particulars of their intercourse which came within your cognisance, which hypothesis would you be the more ready to believe--that they were sisters or mother and child?" "That they were mother and child." "We recognise your anxiety to assist us. Pauline's hands, you say, were coarse, while Madeline's were soft and delicate. Ordinarily, a peasant woman brings up her child as a peasant, with no false notions; in this instance, however, Pauline brought Madeline up with some idea that the young girl was superior to her own station in life. Else why the unusual care of the child? Supposing this line of argument to be correct, it appears not to be likely that the attentions of a man like Gautran would be encouraged." "They were not encouraged." "Do you know that they were not encouraged from statements made to you by Pauline and Madeline?" "Yes." "Then Gautran's declaration that he was Madeline's accepted lover is false?" "Quite false." "He speaks falsely when he says that Madeline promised to marry him?" "It is impossible." "Four nights before Madeline met her death, was Gautran outside your house?" "Yes; he was prowling about there with his evil face, for a long time." "Did you go to him, and ask him what he wanted?" "Yes." "Did he tell you that he must see Madeline?" "Yes, and I went into the house, and informed the girl. She said she would not see him, and I went down to Gautran and told him so. He then tried to force himself into the house, and I stood in his way. He struck me, and Madeline, frightened by my cries, ran to the door, and begged him to go away." "It is a fact that he was often seen in Madeline's company?" "Yes; do what they would, they could not get rid of him; and they were frightened, if they angered him too much, that he would commit an act of violence." "As he did?" "As he did. It is written on Madeline's grave." "Had the poor girl any other lovers?" "None that I should call lovers. But she was greatly admired." "Was any one of these lovers especially favoured?" "Not that I knew of." "Did any of them visit the house?" "No--but may I speak?" "Certainly." "It was not what I should call a visit. A gentleman came once to the door, and before I could get there, Pauline was with him. All that I heard was this: 'It is useless,' Pauline said to him; 'I will not allow you to see her, and if you persecute us with your attentions I will appeal for help to those who will teach you a lesson.' 'What is your objection to me?' he asked, and he was smiling all the time he spoke. 'Am I not a gentleman?' 'Yes,' she answered; 'and it is because of that, that I will not permit you to address her. Gentlemen! I have had enough of gentlemen!' 'You are a foolish woman,' he said, and he went away. That is all, and that is the only time--except when I saw Pauline in conversation with a man. He might have been a gentleman, but his clothes were not the clothes of one; neither were they the clothes of a peasant. They were conversing at a little distance from the house. I did not hear what they said, not a word, and half an hour afterwards Pauline came home. There was a look on her face such as I had never observed--a look of triumph and doubt. But she made no remark to me, nor I to her." "Where was Madeline at this time?" "In the house." "Did you see this man again?" "A second time, two evenings after. A third time, within the same week. He and Pauline spoke together very earnestly, and when anyone approached them always moved out of hearing. During the second week he came to the house, and inquired for Pauline. She ran downstairs and accompanied him into the open road. This occurred to my knowledge five or six times, until Pauline said to me, 'To-morrow I am going on a journey. Before long I may be able to reward you well for the kindness you have shown us.' The following day she left, and I have not seen her since." "Did she say how long she would be likely to be away?" "I understood not longer than three weeks." "That time has passed, and still she does not appear. Since she left, have you seen the man who was so frequently with her?" "No." "He has not been to the house to make inquiries?" "No." "Is it not possible that he may have been Pauline's lover?" "There was nothing of the lover in his manner towards her." "There was, however, some secret between them?" "Evidently." "And Madeline--was she acquainted with it?" "It is impossible to say." "You have no reason to suppose, when Pauline went away, that she had no intention of returning?" "I am positive she intended to return." "And with good news, for she promised to reward you for your kindness?" "Yes, she did so." "Is it not probable that she, also, may have met with foul play?" "It is probable; but Heaven alone knows!" CHAPTER XVI THE CONCLUSION OF THE PROSECUTION It length the case for the prosecution was concluded, with an expression of regret on the part of counsel at the absence of Pauline, who might have been able to supply additional evidence, if any were needed, of the guilt of the prisoner. "Every effort has been made," said counsel, "to trace and produce this woman, but when she parted from the murdered girl no person knew whither she was directing her steps; even the Widow Joseph, the one living person besides the mysterious male visitor who was in frequent consultation with her, can furnish us with no clue. The victim of this foul and horrible crime could most likely have told us, but her lips are sealed by the murderer's hand, the murderous wretch who stands before you. "It has been suggested that Pauline has met with foul play. It may be so; otherwise, it is humanly impossible to divine the cause that could keep her from this trial. "Neither have we been able to trace the man who was in her confidence, and between whom and herself a secret of a strange nature existed. "In my own mind I do not doubt that this secret related to Madeline, but whether it did do so or not cannot affect the issue of this trial; neither can the absence of Pauline and her mysterious friend affect it. The proofs of the cruel, ruthless murder are complete and irrefragable, and nothing is wanting, not a link, in the chain of evidence to enable you to return a verdict which will deprive of the opportunity of committing further crime a wretch as infamous as ever walked the earth. He declares his innocence; if the value of that declaration is to be gauged by the tissue of falsehoods he has uttered, by his shameless effrontery and denials, by his revolting revelations of the degradation of his nature, he stands self-convicted. "But it needs not that; had he not spoken, the issue would be the same; for painful and shocking as is the spectacle, you have but to glance at him to assure yourself of his guilt. If that is not sufficient to move you unhesitatingly to your duty, cast him from your thoughts and weigh only the evidence of truth which has been laid unfolded to you. "As I speak, a picture of that terrible night, in the darkness of which the fearful deed was committed, rises before me. "I see the river's bank in a mist of shadows; I see two forms moving onward, one a monster in human shape, the other that of a child who had never wronged a fellow creature, a child whose spirit was joyous and whose amiable disposition won every heart. "It is not with her willing consent that this monster is in her company. He has followed her stealthily until he finds an opportunity to be alone with her, at a time when she is least likely to have friends near her; and in a place where she is entirely at his mercy. He forces his attentions upon her; she repulses him. She turns towards her home; he thrusts her roughly back. Enraged at her obstinacy, he threatens to kill her; his threats are heard by persons returning home along the river's bank, and, until the sound of their footsteps has died away and they are out of hearing, he keeps his victim silent by force. "Being alone with her once more, he renews his infamous suit. She still repulses him, and then commences a struggle which must have made the angels weep to witness. "In vain his victim pleads, in vain she struggles; she clings to him and begs for her life in tones that might melt the stoniest heart; but this demon has no heart. He winds his handkerchief round her neck, he beats and tears her, as is proved by the bruises on her poor body. The frightful struggle ends, and the deed is accomplished which condemns the wretch to life-long torture in this world and to perdition in the next. "Do not lose sight of this picture and of the evidence which establishes it; and let me warn you not to be diverted by sophistry or specious reasoning from the duty which you are here to perform. "A most vile and horrible crime has been committed; the life of a child has been cruelly, remorselessly, wickedly sacrificed; her blood calls for justice on her murderer; and upon you rests the solemn responsibility of not permitting the escape of a wretch whose guilt has been proven by evidence so convincing as to leave no room for doubt in the mind of any human being who reasons in accordance with facts. "I cannot refrain from impressing upon you the stern necessity of allowing no other considerations than those supplied by a calm judgment to guide you in the delivery of your verdict. I should be wanting in my duty if I did not warn you that there have been cases in which the guilty have unfortunately escaped by the raising of side issues which had but the remotest bearing upon the crimes of which they stood accused. It is not by specious logic that a guilty man can be proved innocent. Innocence can only be established by facts, and the facts laid before you are fatal in the conclusion to be deduced from them. Bear these facts in mind, and do not allow your judgment to be clouded even by the highest triumphs of eloquence. I know of no greater reproach from which men of sensibility can suffer than that which proceeds from the consciousness that, in an unguarded moment, they have allowed themselves to be turned aside from the performance of a solemn duty. May you have no cause for such a reproach! May you have no cause to lament that you have allowed your judgment to be warped by a display of passionate and fevered oratory! Let a sense of justice alone be your guide. Justice we all desire, nothing more and nothing less. The law demands it of you; society demands it of you. The safety of your fellow citizens, the honour of young girls, of your sisters, your daughters, and others dear to you, depend upon your verdict. For if wretches like the prisoner are permitted to walk in our midst, to pursue their savage courses, to live their evil lives, unchecked, life and honour are in fatal peril. The duty you have to perform is a sacred duty--see that you perform it righteously and conscientiously, and bear in mind that the eyes of the Eternal are upon you." This appeal, delivered with intense earnestness, produced a profound impression. In the faces of the jury was written the fate of Gautran. They looked at each other with stern resolution. Under these circumstances, when the result of the trial appeared to be a foregone conclusion, it might have been expected, the climax of interest having apparently been reached, that the rising of the Advocate to speak for the defence would have attracted but slight attention. It was not so. At that moment the excitement reached a painful pitch, and every person in the court, with the exception of the jury and the judges, leant forward with eager and absorbed expectation. CHAPTER XVII THE ADVOCATES DEFENCE--THE VERDICT He spoke in a calm and passionless voice, the clear tones of which had an effect resembling that of a current of cold air through an over-heated atmosphere. The audience had been led to expect a display of fevered and passionate oratory; but neither in the Advocate's speech nor in his manner of delivering it was there any fire or passion; it was chiefly remarkable for earnestness and simplicity. His first words were a panegyric of justice, the right of dispensing which had been placed in mortal hands by a Supreme Power which watched its dispensation with a jealous eye. He claimed for himself that the leading principle of his life, not only in his judicial, but in his private career, had been a desire for justice, in small matters as well as in great, for the lowliest equally with the loftiest of human beings. Before the bar of justice, prince and peasant, the most ignorant and the most highly cultured, the meanest and the most noble in form and feature, were equal. They had been told that justice was demanded from them by law and by society. He would supply a strange omission in this appeal, and he would tell them that, primarily and before every other consideration, the prisoner it was who demanded justice from them. "That an innocent girl has been done to death," said the Advocate, "is most unfortunately true, and as true that a man who inspires horror is charged with her murder. You have been told that you have but to glance at him to assure yourself of his guilt. These are lamentable words to be used in an argument of accusation. The facts that the victim was of attractive, and that the accused is of repulsive appearance, should not weigh with you, even by a hair's weight, to the prejudice of the prisoner. If it does, I call upon you to remember that justice is blind to external impressions. And moreover, if in your minds you harbour a feeling such as exists outside this court against the degraded creature who stands before you, I charge you to dismiss it. "All the evidence presented to you which bears directly upon the crime is circumstantial. A murder has been committed--no person saw it committed. The last person proved to have been in the murdered girl's company, is Gautran, her lover, as he declares himself to have been. "And here I would say that I do not expect you to place the slightest credence upon the statements of this man. His unblushing, astonishing falsehoods prove that in him the moral sense is deadened, if indeed it ever existed. But his own statement that, after the manner of his brutal nature, he loved the girl, may be accepted as probable. It has been sufficiently proved that the girl had other lovers, who were passionately enamoured of her. She was left to herself, deprived of the protection and counsel of a devoted woman, who, unhappily, was absent at the fatal crisis in her life. She was easily persuaded and easily led. Who can divine by what influences she was surrounded, by what temptations she was beset, temptations and influences which may have brought upon her an untimely death? "Gautran was hear to say, 'I will kill you--I will kill you!' He had threatened her before, and she lived to speak of it to her companions, and to permit him, without break or interruption in their intimacy, to continue to associate with her. What more probable than that this was one of his usual threats in his moments of passion, when he jealously believed that a rival was endeavouring to supplant him in her affections? "The handkerchief found about her neck belonged to Gautran. The gift of a handkerchief among the lower classes is not uncommon, and it is frequently worn round the neck. Easy, then, for any murderer to pull it tight during the commission of the crime. But apart from this, the handkerchief does not fix the crime of murder upon Gautran or any other accused, for you have had it proved that the girl did not die by strangulation, but by drowning. These are bare facts, and I present them to you in bare form, without needless comment. I do not base my defence upon them, but upon what I am now about to say. "If in a case of circumstantial evidence there is reasonable cause to believe that the evidence furnished is of insufficient weight to convict; and if on the other side, on the side of the accused, evidence is adduced which directly proves, according to the best judgment we are enabled to form of human action in supreme moments--as to the course it would take and the manner in which it would be displayed--that it is almost beyond the bounds of possibility and nature that the person can have committed the deed, you have no option, unless you yourselves are bent upon judicial murder, than to acquit that person, however vile his character may be, however degraded his career and antecedents. It is evidence of this description which I intend to submit to you at the conclusion of my remarks. "The character of Gautran has been exposed and laid bare in all its vileness; the minuteness of the evidence is surprising; not the smallest detail has been overlooked or omitted to complete the picture of a ferocious, ignorant, and infamous being. Guilty, he deserves no mercy; innocent, he is not to be condemned because he is vile. "In the world's history there are records of countries and times in which it was the brutal fashion to bring four-footed animals to the bar of justice, there solemnly to try them for witchcraft and evil deeds; and you will find upon examination of those records of man's incredible folly and ignorance, that occasionally even these beasts of the earth--pigs and such-like--have been declared innocent of the crimes of which they have been charged. I ask no more for Gautran than the principle involved in these trials. Judge him, if you will, as you would an animal, but judge him in accordance with the principles of justice, which neither extenuates nor maliciously and unreasonably condemns. "The single accusation of the murder of Madeline, a flower-girl, is the point to be determined, and you must not travel beyond it to other crimes and other misdeeds of which Gautran may have been guilty. "It has been proved that the prisoner is possessed of great strength, that he is violent in his actions, uncontrollable in his passions, and fond of inflicting pain and prolonging it. He has not a redeeming feature in his coarse, animal nature. Thwarted, he makes the person who thwarts him suffer without mercy. An appeal to his humanity would be useless--he has no humanity; when crossed, he has been seen to behave like a wild beast. All this is in evidence, and has been strongly dwelt upon as proof of guilt. Most important is this evidence, and I charge you not for one moment to lose sight of it. "I come now to the depiction of the murdered girl, as it has been presented to you. Pretty, admired, gentle in her manners, and poor. Although the fact of a person being poor is no proof of morality, we may accept it in this instance as a proof of the girl's virtue. She was fond of life: her disposition was a happy one; she was in the habit of singing to herself. "Thus we have the presentment of a young girl whose nature was joyous, and to whom life was sweet. "Another important piece of evidence must be borne in mind. She possessed strength, greater strength than would have been supposed in a form so slight. This strength she would use to protect herself from injury: it has been proved that she used it successfully to protect herself from insult. In the whole of this case nothing has been more forcibly insisted upon than that she resisted her murder, and that there was a long and horrible struggle in which she received many injuries, wounds, bruises, and scratches, and in which her clothes were rent and torn. "This struggle, in the natural order of things, could not have been a silent one; accompanying the conflict there must have been outcries, frenzied appeals for mercy, screams of terror and anguish. No witness has been called who heard such sounds, and therefore it must be a fact that the murder must have been committed some time after Gautran's threat, 'I will kill you, I will kill you!' was heard by persons who passed along the bank of the river in the darkness of that fatal night. Time enough for Gautran to have left her; time enough for another--lover or stranger--to meet her; time enough for murder by another hand than that of the prisoner who stands charged with the commission of the crime. "I assert, with all the force of my experience of human nature, that it is impossible that Gautran could have committed the deed. There was a long and terrible struggle--a struggle in which the murdered girl's clothes were torn, in which her face, her hands, her arms, her neck, her sides were bruised and wounded in a hundred cruel ways. Can you for one moment entertain the belief that, in this desperate fight in which two persons were engaged, only one should bear the marks of a contest so horrible? If you bring yourselves to this belief it must be by the aid of prejudice, not of reason. Attend to what follows. "On the very morning after the murder, within four hours of the body being discovered in the river, Gautran was arrested. He wore the same clothes he had worn for months past, the only clothes he possessed. In these clothes there was not a rent or tear, nor any indication of a recent rent having been mended. How, then, could this man have been engaged in a violent and prolonged hand-to-hand conflict? It is manifestly impossible, opposed to all reasonable conjecture, that his garments could have escaped some injury, however slight, at the hands of a girl to whom life was very sweet, who was strong and capable of resistance, and who saw before her the shadow of an awful fate. "Picture to yourselves this struggle already so vividly painted, so graphically portrayed. The unhappy girl clung to her destroyer, she clutched his dress, his hands, his body in her wild despair--a despair which inspired her with strength beyond her ordinary capacity. And of still greater weight is the fact that there was not to be found on any part of Gautran's body a scratch, a wound, or a bruise of any description. "What, then, becomes of the evidence of a terrible life and death struggle in which it is said he was engaged? Upon this point alone the entire theory of the prosecution breaks down. The absence from Gautran's clothes and person of any mark or identification of a physical contest is the strongest testimony of his innocence of this ruthless, diabolical crime; and, wretched and degraded as is the spectacle he presents, justice demands from you his acquittal. "Still one other proof of his innocence remains to be spoken of; I will touch upon it lightly, but it bears a very strange aspect, as though the prosecution were fearful that its introduction would fatally injure their case. "When Gautran was searched a knife was found upon him--the knife, without doubt, with which he inflicted upon the face of a comrade a wound which he will bear to the grave. Throughout the whole of the evidence for the prosecution I waited and looked for the production of that knife; I expected to see upon it a blood proof of guilt. But it was not produced; no mention has been made of it. Why? Because there is upon its blade no mark of blood. "Do you believe that a ruffian like Gautran would have refrained from using his knife upon the body of his victim, to shorten the terrible struggle? Even in light quarrels men in his condition of life threaten freely with their knives, and use them recklessly. To suppose that with so swift and sure a means at hand to put an end to the horrible affair, Gautran, in the heat and fury of the time, refrained from availing himself of it, is to suppose a thing contrary and opposed to reason. "Remember the answer given by one of the witnesses who knows the nature of the man well, when I asked him whether in his passionate moods Gautran would be likely to show coolness or cunning. 'He would have no time to think; he would be carried away by his passion.' His is the nature of a brute, governed by brute laws. You are here to try, not the prisoner's general character, not his repulsive appearance, not his brutish nature, but a charge of murder of which he is accused, and of which, in the clear light of human motive and action, it is impossible he can be guilty." The Advocate's speech, of which this is but a brief and imperfect summary, occupied seven hours, and was delivered throughout with a cold impressive earnestness and with an absence of passion which gradually and effectually turned the current which had set so fatally against the prisoner. The disgust and abhorrence he inspired were in no wise modified, but the Advocate had instilled into the minds of his auditors the strongest doubts of Gautran's guilt. Two witnesses were called, one a surgeon of eminence, the other a nurse in an hospital. They deposed that there were no marks of an encounter upon the prisoner's person, that upon his skin was no abrasion, that his clothes exhibited no traces of recent tear or repair, and that it was scarcely possible he could have been engaged in a violent personal struggle. Upon the conclusion of this evidence, which cross-examination did not shake, the jury asked that Gautran should be examined by independent experts. This was done by thoroughly qualified men, whose evidence strengthened that of the witnesses for the defence. The jury asked, also, that the knife found upon Gautran should be produced. It was brought into court, and carefully examined, and it was found that its blade was entirely free from blood-stain. The jury, astounded at the turn the affair had taken, listened attentively to the speech of the judge, who dwelt with great care upon every feature in the case. The court sat late to give its decision, and when the verdict was pronounced, Gautran was a free man. Free, to enjoy the sunlight, and the seasons as they passed; free, to continue his life of crime and shame; free, to murder again! BOOK II.--THE CONFESSION. CHAPTER I A LETTER FROM JOHN VANBRUGH For a little while Gautran scarcely comprehended that he was at liberty to wander forth. He had so completely given himself up as lost that he was stupefied by the announcement that his liberty was restored to him. He gazed vacantly before him, and the announcement had to be twice repeated before he arrived at an understanding of its purport; then his attitude changed. A spasm of joy passed into his face, followed immediately by a spasm of fear; those who observed him would indeed have been amazed had they known what was passing through his mind. "Free, am I?" he asked. "You have been told so twice," a warder answered. "It astonishes you. Well, you are not the only one." As the warders fell from his side he watched them warily, fearing they were setting a trap which might prove his destruction. From where he stood he could not see the Advocate, who was preparing to depart. Distasteful as the verdict was to every person in court, with the exception of Gautran and his counsel, those members of the legal profession who had not taken an active part in the trial were filled with professional admiration at the skill the Advocate had displayed. An eminent member of the bar remarked to him: "It is a veritable triumph, the greatest and most surprising I have ever witnessed. None but yourself could have accomplished it. Yet I cannot believe in the man's innocence." This lawyer held too high and honourable a position for the Advocate to remain silent. "The man is innocent," he said. "You know him to be so?" "I know him to be so. I stake my reputation upon it." "You almost convince me. It would be fatal to any reputation were Gautran, after what has passed, to be proved guilty. But that, of course, is impossible." "Quite impossible," said the Advocate somewhat haughtily. "Exactly so. There can be no room for doubt, after your statement that you know the man to be innocent." With no wish to continue the conversation, the Advocate turned to leave the court when an officer presented himself. "He wishes to speak to you, sir." "He! Who?" asked the Advocate. He was impatient to be gone, his interest at the trial being at an end. The victory was gained; there was nothing more to be done. "The prisoner, sir. He desired me to tell you." "The prisoner!" said the Advocate. "You forget. The man is free." He walked towards Gautran, and for the first time during the long days of the trial gazed directly in his client's face. The magnetism in the Advocate's eyes arrested Gautran's speech. His own dilated, and he appeared to forget what he had intended to say. They looked at each other in silence for a few moments, the expression on the face of the Advocate cold, keen, and searching, that on the face of Gautran as of a man entranced; and then the Advocate turned sternly away, without a word having been spoken between them. When Gautran looked again for his defender he was gone. Gautran still lingered; the court was nearly empty. "Be off," said the warder, who had been his chief attendant in his cell; "we have done with you for the present." But Gautran made no effort to leave. The warder laid his hand upon the ruffian's shoulder, with the intention of expelling him from the court. Gautran shook him off with the snarl of a wild beast. "Touch me again," he cried, "and I'll strangle you! I can do it easily enough--two of you at a time!" And, indeed, so ferocious was his manner that it seemed as if he were disposed to carry his threat into execution. "Women are more in your way," said the warder tauntingly. "Look you, Gautran; if Madeline had been my daughter, your life would not be worth an hour's purchase, despite the verdict gained by your clever Advocate." "You would not dare to say that to me if you and I were alone," retorted Gautran, scowling at the sullen faces of the officers about him. "Away with you!" exclaimed the warder, "at once, or we will throw you into the streets!" "I will go when I get my property." "What property?" "The knife you took from me when you dragged me to prison. I don't move without it." They deemed it best to comply with this demand, the right being on his side, and his knife was restored to him. It was an old knife, with a keen blade and a stout handle, and it opened and closed with a sharp click. Gautran tried it three or four times with savage satisfaction and then, with another interchange of threatening glances, he slunk from the court. The Advocate's carriage was at the door, ready to convey him to Christian Almer's villa. But after his long confinement in the close court, he felt the need of physical exercise, and he dismissed his coachman, saying he intended to walk home. As the carriage drove off, a person plucked him by the sleeve, and pressed a letter into his hand. It was dusk, and the Advocate, although he looked quickly around, could not discover the giver. His sight was short and strong, and standing beneath the light of a street-lamp he opened and read the letter. "Old Friend, "It will doubtless surprise you to see my handwriting, it is so long since we met. The sight of it may displease you, but that is of small consequence to me. When a man is in a desperate strait, he is occasionally driven to desperate courses. When needs must, as you are aware, the devil drives. I have been but an hour in Geneva, and I have heard of your victory; I congratulate you upon it. I must see you--soon. I know the House of White Shadows in the pretty valley yonder. At a short distance from the gates--but far enough off, and so situated as to enable a man to hide with safety if he desires--is a hill upon which I will wait for your signal to come to you, which shall be the waving of a white handkerchief from your study window. At midnight and alone will be best. You see how ready I am to oblige you. I shall wait till sunrise for the signal. If you are too busy to-night, let it be tomorrow night, or the next, or any night this week. "I am, as ever, your friend, "John Vanbrugh." The Advocate placed the letter in his pocket, and murmured as he walked through the streets of Geneva: "John Vanbrugh! Has he risen from his grave? He would see me at midnight and alone! He must be mad, or drunk, to make such a request. He may keep his vigil, undisturbed. Of such a friendship there can be no renewal. The gulf that separates us is too wide to be bridged over by sentimental memories. John Vanbrugh, the vagabond! I can imagine him, and the depth to which he has sunk. Every man must bear the consequences of his actions. Let him bear his, and make the best, or the worst, of them." CHAPTER II A STARTLING INTERRUPTION The news of the acquittal of Gautran spread swiftly through the town, and the people gathered in front of the _cafés_ and lingered in the streets, to gaze upon the celebrated Advocate who had worked the marvel. "He has a face like the Sphynx," said one. "With just as much feeling," said another. "Do you believe Gautran was innocent?" "Not I--though he made it appear so." "Neither do I believe it, but I confess I am puzzled." "If Gautran did not murder the girl, who did?" asked one, a waverer, who formed an exception to the general rule. "That is for the law to find out." "It was found out, and the murderer has been set loose. We shall have to take care of ourselves on dark nights." "Would you condemn a man upon insufficient evidence?" "I would condemn such as Gautran on any evidence. When you want to get rid of vermin it does not do to be over particular." "The law must be respected." "Life must be protected. That is the first law." "Hush! Here he is. Best not let him overhear you." There was but little diversity of opinion. Even in the inn of The Seven Liars, to which Fritz the Fool--who had attended the court every day of the trial, and who had the fleetest foot of any man for a dozen miles round--had already conveyed the news of Gautran's acquittal, the discussion was loud and animated; the women regarding the result as an outrage on their sex, the men more disposed to put Gautran out of the question, and to throw upon the Advocate the opprobrium of the verdict. "Did I not tell you," said Fritz, "that he could turn black into white? A great man--a great man! If we had more like him, murdering would be a fine trade." There were, doubtless, among those who thronged the streets to see the Advocate pass, some sinners whose consciences tormented them, and who secretly hoped, if exposure ever overtook them, that Heaven would send them such a defender. His reception, indeed, partook of the character of an ovation. These tributes to his powers made no impression upon him; he pursued his way steadily onward, looking neither to the right nor to the left, and soon the gaily-lighted shops and _cafés_ of Geneva were far behind him. His thoughts were upon John Vanbrugh, who had been one of his boy friends, and whom for many years he had believed to be dead. In his lonely walk to the House of White Shadows he recalled the image of Vanbrugh, and dwelt, with idle curiosity, upon the recollection of their youthful lives. He had determined not to see Vanbrugh, and was resolved not to renew a friendship which, during its existence, had been lacking in those sterling qualities necessary for endurance. That it was pleasant while it lasted was the best that could be said of it. When he and Vanbrugh grew to manhood there was a wide divergence in their paths. One walked with firm unfaltering step the road which leads to honour and renown, sparing no labour, throwing aside seductive temptation when it presented itself to him, as it did in its most alluring forms, giving all his mental might to the cause to which he had devoted himself, studying by day and night so earnestly that his bright and strong intellect became stronger and clearer, and he could scarcely miss success. Only once in his younger days had he allowed himself, for a brief period, to be seduced from this path, and it was John Vanbrugh who had tempted him. The other threw himself upon pleasure's tide, and, blind to earnest duty, drank the sunshine of life's springtime in draughts so intemperate that he became intoxicated with poisonous fire, and, falling into the arms of the knaves who thrive on human weakness and depravity, his moral sense, like theirs, grew warped, and he ripened into a knave himself. Something of this, but not in its fulness, had reached the Advocate's ears, making but small impression upon him, and exciting no surprise, for by that time his judgment was matured, and human character was an open book to him; and when, some little while afterwards, he heard that John Vanbrugh was dead, he said, "He is better dead," and scarcely gave his once friend another thought. He was a man who had no pity for the weak, and no forgiveness for the erring. He walked slowly, with a calm enjoyment of the solitude and the quiet night, and presently entered a narrow lane, dotted with orchards. It was now dark, and he could not see a dozen yards before him. He was fond of darkness; it contained mysterious possibilities, he had been heard to say. There was an ineffable charm in the stillness which encompassed him, and he enjoyed it to its full. There were cottages here and there, lying back from the road, but no light or movement in them; the inmates were asleep. Soft sighs proceeded from the drowsy trees, and slender boughs waved solemnly, while the only sounds from the farmyards were, at intervals, a muffled shaking of wings, and the barking of dogs whom his footsteps had aroused. As he passed a high wooden gate, through the bars of which he could dimly discern a line of tall trees standing like sentinels of the night, the perfume of limes was wafted towards him, and he softly breathed the words: "My wife!" He yielded up his senses to the thralldom of a delicious languor, in which the only image was that of the fair and beautiful woman who was waiting for him in their holiday home. Had any person seen the tender light in his eyes, and heard the tone in which the words were whispered, he could not have doubted that the woman they referred to was passionately adored. Not for long was he permitted to muse upon the image of a being the thought of whom appeared to transform a passionless man into an ardent lover; a harsher interruption than sweet perfume floating on a breeze recalled him to his sterner self. "Stop!" "For what reason?" "The best. Money!" The summons proceeded from one in whom, as his voice betrayed, the worst passions were dominant. CHAPTER III IN THE DEAD OF NIGHT There lived not in the world a man more fearless than the Advocate. At this threatening demand, which meant violence, perhaps murder, he exhibited as little trepidation as he would have done at an acquaintance asking him, in broad daylight, for a pinch of snuff. Indeed, he was so perfectly unembarrassed that his voice assumed a lightness foreign to its usual serious tones. "Money, my friend! How much?" "All you've got." "Terse, and to the point. If I refuse?" "I am desperate. Look to yourself." The Advocate smiled, and purposely deepened the airiness of his tones. "This is a serious business, then?" "You'll find it so, if you trifle with me." "Are you hungry?" "I am starving." "You have a powerful voice for a starving man." "Don't play with me, master. I mean to have what I ask for." "How can you, if I do not possess it? How will you if, possessing it, I refuse to give it you?" The reply was a crashing blow at an overhanging branch, which broke it to the ground. It was evident that the man carried a stout weapon, and that he meant to use it, with murderous effect, if driven to extremes. They spoke at arm's-length; neither was quite within the other's grasp. "A strong argument," said the Advocate, without blenching, "and a savage one. You have a staff in your hand, and, probably, a knife in your pocket." "Ah, I have, and a sharp blade to it." "I thought as much. Would not that do your business more effectually?" "Perhaps. But I've learnt a lesson to-day about knives, which teaches me not to use mine too freely." The Advocate frowned. "Other scoundrels would run less risk of the gaol if their proceeding's were as logical. Do you know me?" "How should I?" "It might be, then," continued the Advocate, secretly taking a box of matches from his pocket, "that, like yourself, I am both a thief and a would-be murderer." As he uttered the last words he flung a lighted match straight at the man's face, and for a moment the glare revealed the ruffian's features. He staggered back, repeating the word "Murderer!" in a hoarse startled whisper. The Advocate strode swiftly to his side, and striking another match, held it up to his own face. "Look at me, Gautran," he said. The man looked up, and recognising the Advocate, recoiled, muttering: "Aye, aye--I see who it is." "And you would rob me, wretch!" "Not now, master, not now. Your voice--it was the voice of another man. I crave your pardon, humbly." "So--you recommence work early, Gautran. Have you not had enough of the gaol?" "More than enough. Don't be hard on me, master; call me mad if you like." "Mad or sane, Gautran, every man is properly made accountable for his acts. Take this to heart." "It won't do me any good. What is a poor wretch to do with nothing but empty pockets?" "You are a dull-witted knave, or you would be aware it is useless to lie to me. Gautran, I can read your soul. You wished to speak to me in the court. Here is your opportunity. Say what you had to say." "Give me breathing time. You've the knack of driving the thoughts clean out of a man's head. Have you got a bit of something that a poor fellow can chew--the end of a cigar, or a nip of tobacco?" "I have nothing about me but money, which you can't chew, and should not have if you could. Hearken, my friend. When you said you were starving, you lied to me." "How do you know it?" "Fool! Are there not fruit-trees here, laden with wholesome food, within any thief's grasp? Your pockets at this moment are filled with fruit." "You have a gift," said Gautran with a cringing movement of his body. "It would be an act of charity to put me in the way of it." "What would you purchase?" asked the advocate ironically. "Gold, for wine, and pleasure, and fine clothes?" "Aye, master," replied Gautran with eager voice. "Power, to crush those you hate, and make them smart and bleed?" "Aye, master. That would be fine." "Gautran, these things are precious, and have their price. What are you ready to pay for them?" "Anything--anything but money!" "Something of less worth--your soul?" Gautran shuddered and crossed himself. "No, no," he muttered; "not that--not that!" "Strange," said the Advocate with a contemptuous smile, "the value we place upon an unknown quantity! We cannot bargain, friend. Say now what you desire to say, and as briefly as you can." But it was some time before Gautran could sufficiently recover himself to speak with composure. "I want to know," he said at length, with a clicking in his throat, "whether you've been paid for what you did for me?" "At your trial?" "Aye, master." "I have not been paid for what I did for you." "When they told me yonder," said Gautran after another pause, pointing in the direction of Geneva, where the prison lay, "that you were to appear for me, they asked me how I managed it, but I couldn't tell them, and I'm beating my head now to find out, without getting any nearer to it. There must be a reason." "You strike a key-note, my friend." "Someone has promised to pay you." "No one has promised to pay me." "You puzzle and confuse me, master. You're a stranger in Geneva, I'm told." "It is true." "I've lived about here half my life. I was born in Sierre. My father worked in the foundry, my mother in the fields. You are not a stranger in Sierre." "I am a stranger there; I never visited the town." "My father was born in Martigny. You knew my father." "I did not know your father." "My mother--her father once owned a vineyard. You knew her." "I did not know her." Once more was Gautran silent. What he desired now to say raised up images so terrifying that he had not the courage to give it utterance. "You are in deep shadow, my friend," said the Advocate, "body and soul. Shall I tell you what is in your mind?" "You can do that?" "You wish to know if I was acquainted with the unhappy girl with whose murder you were charged." "Is there another in the world like you?" asked Gautran, with fear in his voice. "Yes, that is what I want to know." "I was not acquainted with her." Gautran retreated a step or two, in positive terror. "Then what," he exclaimed, "in the fiend's name made you come forward?" "At length," said the Advocate, "we arrive at an interesting point in our conversation. I thank you for the opportunity you afford me in questioning my inner self. What made me come forward to the assistance of such a scoundrel? Humanity? No. Sympathy? No. What, then, was my motive? Indeed, friend, you strike home. Shall I say I was prompted by a desire to assist the course of justice--or by a contemptible feeling of vanity to engage in a contest for the simple purpose of proving myself the victor? It was something of both, mayhap. Do you know, Gautran, a kind of self-despisal stirs within me at the present moment? You do not understand me? I will give you a close illustration. You are a thief." "Yes, master." "You steal sometimes from habit, to keep your hand in as it were, and you feel a certain satisfaction at having accomplished your theft in a workmanlike manner. We are all of us but gross and earthly patches. It is simply a question of degree, and it is because I am in an idle mood--indeed, I am grateful to you for this playful hour--that I make a confession to you which would not elevate me in the eyes of better men. You were anxious to know whether I have been paid for my services. I now acknowledge payment. I accept as my fee the recreation you have afforded me." "I shall be obliged to you, master," said Gautran, "if you will leave your mysteries, and come back to my trial." "I will oblige you. I read the particulars of the case for the first time on my arrival here, and it appeared to me almost impossible you could escape conviction. It was simply that. I examined you, and saw the legal point which, villain as you are, proclaimed your innocence. That laugh of yours, Gautran, has no mirth in it. I am beginning to be dangerously shaken. I will do, I said then, for this wretch what I believe no other man can do. I will perform a miracle." "You have done it!" cried Gautran, falling on his knees in a paroxysm of fear, and kissing the Advocate's hand, which was instantly snatched away. "You are great--you are the greatest! You knew the truth!" "The truth!" echoed the Advocate, and his face grew ashen white. "Aye, the truth--and you were sent to save me. You can read the soul; nothing is hidden from you. But you have not finished your work. You can save me entirely--you can, you can! Oh, master, finish your work, and I will be your slave to the last hour of my life!" "Save you! From what?" demanded the Advocate. He was compelled to exercise great control over himself, for a horror was stealing upon him. The trembling wretch rose, and pointed to the opposite roadside. "From shadows--from dreams--from the wild eyes of Madeline! Look there--look there!" The Advocate turned in the direction of Gautran's outstretched trembling hand. A pale light was coining into the sky, and weird shadows were on the earth. "What are you gazing on?" "You ask me to torture me," moaned Gautran. "She dogs me like my shadow--I cannot shake her off! I have threatened her, but she does not heed me. She is waiting--there--there--to follow me when I am alone--to put her arms about me--to breathe upon my face, and turn my heart to ice! If I could hold her, I would tear her piecemeal! You _must_ have known her, you who can read what passes in a man's soul--you who knew the truth when you came to me in my cell! She will not obey me, but she will you. Command her, compel her to leave me, or she will drive me mad!" With amazing strength the Advocate placed his hands on Gautran's shoulders, and twisted the man's face so close to his own that not an inch of space divided them. Their eyes met, Gautran's wavering and dilating with fear, the Advocate's fixed and stern, and with a fire in them terrible to behold. "Recall," said the Advocate, in a clear voice that rang through the night like a bell, "what passed between you and Madeline on the last night of her life. Speak!" CHAPTER IV THE CONFESSION "I sought her in the Quartier St. Gervais," said I Gautran, speaking like a man in a dream, "and found her at eight o'clock in the company of a man. I watched them, and kept out of their sight. "He was speaking to her softly, and some things he said to her made her smile; and every time she showed her white teeth I swore that she should be mine and mine alone. They remained together for an hour, and then they parted, he going one way, Madeline another. "I followed her along the banks of the river, and when no one was near us I spoke to her. She was not pleased with my company, and bade me leave her, but I replied that I had something particular to say to her, and did not intend to go till it was spoken. "It was a dark night; there was no moon. "I told her I had been watching her, and that I knew she had another lover. 'Do you mean to give me up?' I said, and she answered that she had never accepted me, and that after that night she would never see me again. I said it might happen, and that it might be the last night we should ever see each other. She asked me if I was going away, and I said no, it might be her that was going away on the longest journey she had ever taken. 'What journey?' she asked, and I answered, a journey with Death for the coachman, for I had sworn a dozen times that night that if she would not swear upon her cross to be true and faithful to me, I would kill her. "I said it twice, and some persons passed and turned to look at us, but there was not light enough to see us clearly. "Madeline would have cried to them for help, but I held my hand over her mouth, and whispered that if she uttered a word it would be her last, and that she need not be frightened, for I loved her too well to do her any harm. "But when we were alone again, and no soul was near us, I told her again that as sure as there was a sky above us I would kill her, unless she swore to give up her other lover, and be true to me. She said she would promise, and she put her little hand in mine and pressed it, and said: "'Gautran, I will be only yours; now let us go back.' "But I told her it was not enough; that she must kneel, and swear upon the holy cross that she would have nothing to do with any man but me. I forced her upon her knees, and knelt by her side, and put the cross to her lips; and then she began to sob and tremble. She dared not put her soul in peril, she said; she did not love me--how could she swear to be true to me? "I said it was that or death, and that it would be the blackest hour of my life to kill her, but that I meant to do it if she would not give in to me. I asked her for the last time whether she would take the oath, and she said she daren't. Then I told her to say a prayer, for she had not five minutes to live. She started to her feet and ran along the bank. I ran after her, and she stumbled and fell to the ground, and before she could escape me again I had her in my arms to fling her into the river. "She did not scratch or bite me, but clung to me, and her tears fell all about my face. I said to her: "'You love me, kissing me so; swear then; it is not too late!' "But she cried: "No, no! I kiss you so that you may not have the heart to kill me!' "Soon she got weak, and her arms had no power in them, and I lifted her high in the air, and flung her far from me into the river. "I waited a minute or two, and thought she was dead, but then I heard a bubbling and a scratching, and, looking down, saw that by a miracle she had got back to the river's brink, and that there was yet life in her. I pulled her out, and she clung to me in a weak way, and whispered, nearly choked the while, that the Virgin Mary would not let me kill her. "Will you take the oath?' I asked, and she shook her head from side to side. "'No! no! no!' "I took my handkerchief, and tied it tight round her neck, and she smiled in my face. Then I lifted her up, and threw her into the river again. "I saw her no more that night!" * * * * * * The Advocate removed his eyes, with a shudder, from the eyes of the wretch who had made this horrible confession, and who now sank to the ground, quivering in every limb, crying: "Save me, master, save me!" "Monster!" exclaimed the Advocate. "Live and die accursed!" But the terror-stricken man did not hear the words, and the Advocate, upon whose features, during Gautran's narration, a deep gloom had settled, strode swiftly from him through the peaceful narrow lane, fragrant with the perfume of limes, at the end of which the lights in the House of White Shadows were shining a welcome to him. BOOK III.--THE GRAVE OF HONOUR. CHAPTER I PREPARATIONS FOR A VISITOR At noon the same day the old housekeeper, Mother Denise, and her pretty granddaughter Dionetta were busily employed setting in order and arranging the furniture in a suite of rooms intended for an expected visitor. There were but two floors in the House of White Shadows, and the rooms in which Mother Denise and Dionetta were busy were situated on the upper floor. "I think they will do now," said Mother Denise, wiping imaginary dust away with her apron. "All but the flowers." said Dionetta. "No, grandmother, that desk is wrong; it is my lady's own desk, and is to be placed exactly in this corner, by the window. There--it is right now. Be sure that everything is in its proper place, and that the rooms are sweet and bright--be sure--be sure! She has said that twenty times this week." "Ah," said Mother Denise testily, "as if butterflies could teach bees how to work! My lady is turning your head, Dionetta, it is easy to see that; she has bewitched half the people in the village. Here is father, with the flowers. Haste, Martin, haste!" "Easy to say, hard to do," grumbled Martin, entering slowly with a basket of cut flowers. "My bones get more obstinate every day. Here's my lady been teasing me out of my life to cut every flower worth looking at. She would have made the garden a wilderness, and spoilt every bed, if I had not argued with her." "And what did she say," asked Mother Denise, "when you argued with her?" "Say? Smiled, and showed all her white teeth at once. I never saw such teeth in my young days, nor such eyes, nor such hair, nor such hands--enough to drive a young man crazy." "Or an old one either," interrupted Mother Denise. "She smiled as sweet as honey--you silly old man--and wheedled you, and wheedled you, till she got what she wanted." "Pretty well, pretty well. You see, Dionetta, there are two ways of getting a thing done, a soft way and a hard way." "There, there, there!" cried Mother Denise impatiently. "Do your work with a still tongue, and let us do ours. Get back to the garden, and repair the mischief my lady has caused you to do. What does a man want with a room full of roses?" she muttered, when Martin, quick to obey his domestic tyrant, had gone. "It is a welcome home," said Dionetta. "If I were absent from my place a long, long while, it would make me feel glad when I returned, to see my rooms as bright as this. It is as though the very roses remembered you." "You are young," said Mother Denise, "and your thoughts go the way of roses. I can't blame you, Dionetta." "It was ten years since the master was here, you have told me, grandmother." "Yes, Dionetta, yes, ten years ago this summer, and even then he did not sleep in the house. Christian Almer hates the place, and of all the rooms in the villa, this is the room he would be most anxious to avoid." "But why, grandmother?" asked Dionetta, her eyes growing larger and rounder with wonder; "and does my lady know it?" "My lady is a headstrong woman; she would not listen to me when I advised her to select other rooms for the young master, and she declares--in a light way to be sure, but these are not things to make light of--that she is very disappointed to find that the villa is not haunted. Haunted! I have never seen anything, nor has Martin, nor you, Dionetta." "Oh, grandmother!" said the girl, in a timid voice, "I don't know whether I have or not. Sometimes I have fancied----" "Of course you have fancied, and that is all; and you have woke up in the night, and been frightened by nothing. Mark me, Dionetta, if you do no wrong, and think no wrong, you will never see anything of the White Shadows of this house." "I am certain," said Dionetta, more positively, "when I have been almost falling asleep, that I have heard them creeping, creeping past the door. I have listened to them over and over again, without daring to move in bed. Indeed I have." "I am certain," retorted Mother Denise, "that you have heard nothing of the kind. You are a foolish, silly girl to speak of such things. You put me quite out of patience, child." "But Fritz says----" "Fritz is a fool, a cunning, lazy fool. If I were the owner of this property I would pack him off. There's no telling which master he serves--Christian Almer or Master Pierre Lamont. He likes his bread buttered on both sides, and accepts money from both gentlemen. That is not the conduct of a faithful servant. If I acted in such a manner I should consider myself disgraced." "I am sure," murmured Dionetta, "that Fritz has done nothing to disgrace himself." "Let those who are older than you," said Mother Denise, in a sharp tone, "be judges of that. Fritz is good for nothing but to chatter like a magpie and idle round the place from morning to night. When there's work to do, as there has been this week, carrying furniture and moving heavy things about, he must run away to the city, to the court-house where that murderer is being tried. Dionetta, I am not in love with the Advocate or his lady. The Advocate is trying to get a murderer off; it may be the work of a clever man, but it is not the work of a good man. If I had a son, I would sooner have him good than clever; and I would sooner you married a good man than a clever one, I hope you are not thinking of marrying a fool." "Oh, grandmother, whoever thinks of marrying?" "Not you, of course, child--would you have me believe that? When I was your age I thought of nothing else, and when you are my age you will see the folly of it. No, I am not in love with the Advocate. He is performing unholy work down there in Geneva. The priest says as much. If that murderer escapes from justice, the guilt of blood will weigh upon the Advocate's soul." "Oh, grandmother! If my lady heard you she would never forgive you." "If she hears it, it will not be from my tongue. Dionetta, it was a young girl who was murdered, about the same age as yourself. It might have been you--ah, you may well turn white--and this clever lawyer, this stranger it is, who comes among us to prevent justice being done upon a murderous wretch. He will be punished for it, mark my words." Dionetta, who knew how useless it was to oppose her grandmother's opinions, endeavoured to change the subject by saying: "Tell me, grandmother, why Mr. Almer should be more anxious to avoid this room than any other room in the house? I think it is the prettiest of all." Mother Denise did not reply. She looked round her with the air of a woman recalling a picture of long ago. "The story connected with this part of the house," she presently said, "gave to the villa the name of the House of White Shadows. You are old enough to hear it. Let me see, let me see. Christian Almer is now thirty-one years old--yes, thirty-one on his last birthday. How time passes! I remember well the day he was born----" "Hush, grandmother," said Dionetta, holding up her hand. "My lady." The Advocate's wife had entered the room quietly, and was regarding the arrangements with approval. "It is excellently done," she said, "exactly as I wished. Dionetta, it was you who arranged the flowers?" "Yes, my lady." "You have exquisite taste, really exquisite. Mother Denise, I am really obliged to you." "I have done nothing," said Mother Denise, "that it was not my duty to do." "Such an unpleasant way of putting it; for there is a way of doing things----" "Just what grandfather said," cried Dionetta, gleefully, "a hard way and a soft way." And then becoming suddenly aware of her rudeness in interrupting her mistress, she curtsied, and with a bright colour in her face, said, "I beg your pardon, my lady." "There's no occasion, child," said Adelaide graciously. "Grandfather is quite right, and everything in this room has been done beautifully." She held a framed picture in her hand, a coloured cabinet photograph of herself, and she looked round the walls to find a place for it. "This will do," she said, and she took down the picture of a child which hung immediately above her desk, and put her own in its stead. "It is nice," she said to Mother Denise, smiling, "to see the faces of old friends about us. Mr. Almer and I are very old friends." "The picture you have taken down," said Mother Denise, "is of Christian Almer when he was a child." "Indeed! How old was he then?" "Five years, my lady." "He was a handsome boy. His hair and eyes are darker now. You were speaking of him, Mother Denise, as I entered. You were saying he was thirty-one last birthday, and that you remember the day he was born." "Yes, my lady." "And you were about to tell Dionetta why this villa was called the House of White Shadows. Give me the privilege of hearing the story." "I would rather not relate it, my lady." "Nonsense, nonsense! If Dionetta may hear it, there can be no objection to me. Mr. Almer would be quite angry if he knew you refused me so simple a thing. Listen to what he says in his last letter," and Adelaide took a letter from her pocket, and read: "'Mother Denise, the housekeeper, and the most faithful servant of the house, will do everything in her power to make you comfortable and happy. She will carry out your wishes to the letter--tell her, if necessary, that it is my desire, and that she is to refuse you nothing.' Now, you dear old soul, are you satisfied?" "Well, my lady, if you insist----" "Of course I insist, you dear creature. I am sure there is no one in the village who can tell a story half as well as you. Come and stand by me, Dionetta, for fear of ghosts." She seated herself before the desk, upon which she laid the picture of the lad, and Mother Denise, who was really by no means loth to recall old reminiscences, and who, as she proceeded, derived great enjoyment herself from her narration, thus commenced: CHAPTER II A LOVE STORY OF THE PAST "I was born in this house, my lady; my mother was housekeeper here before me. I am sixty-eight years old, and I have never slept a night away from the villa; I hope to die here. Until your arrival the house has not been inhabited for more than twenty years. I dare say if Mr. Christian Almer, the present master, had the power to sell the estate, he would have done so long ago, but he is bound by his father's will not to dispose of it while he lives. So it has been left to our care all these years. "Christian Almer's father lived here, and courted his young wife here; a very beautiful lady. That is her portrait hanging on the wall. It was painted by M. Gabriel, and is a faithful likeness of Mr. Christian Almer's mother. His father, perhaps he may have told you, was a distinguished author; there are books upon the library shelves written by him. I will speak of him, if you please, as Mr. Almer, and my present master I will call Master Christian; it will make the story easier to tell. "When Mr. Almer came into his property, which consisted of this villa and many houses and much land in other parts, all of which have been sold--this is the only portion of the old estates which remains in the family--there were at least twenty servants employed here. He was fond of passing days and nights shut up with his books and papers, but he liked to see company about him. He had numerous friends and acquaintances, and money was freely spent; he would invite a dozen, twenty at a time, who used to come and go as they pleased, living in the house as if it were their own. Mr. Almer and his friends understood each other, and the master was seldom intruded upon. In his solitude he was very, very quiet, but when he came among his guests he was full of life and spirits. He seemed to forget his books, and his studies, and it was hard to believe he was the same gentleman who appeared to be so happy when he was in solitude. He was a good master, and although he appeared to pay no attention to what was passing around him, there was really very little that escaped his notice. "At the time I speak of he was not a young man; he was forty-five years of age, and everybody wondered why he did not marry. He laughed, and shook his head when it was mentioned, and said sometimes that he was too old, sometimes that he was happy enough with his books, sometimes that if a man married without loving and being loved he deserved every kind of misfortune that could happen to him; and then he would say that, cold as he might appear, he worshipped beauty, and that it was not possible he could marry any but a young and beautiful woman. I have heard the remark made to him that the world was full of young and beautiful women, and have heard him reply that it was not likely one would fall at the feet of a man of his age. "My mother and I were privileged servants--my mother had been his nurse, and he had an affection for her--so that we had opportunities of hearing and knowing more than the others. "One summer there came to the villa, among the visitors, an old gentleman and his wife, and their daughter. The young lady's name was Beatrice. "She was one of the brightest beings I have ever beheld, with the happiest face and the happiest laugh, and a step as light as a fairy's. I do not know how many people fell in love with her--I think all who saw her. My master, Mr. Almer, was one of these, but, unlike her other admirers, he shunned rather than followed her. He shut himself up with his books for longer periods, and took less part than ever in the gaieties and excursions which were going on day after day. No one would have supposed that her beauty and her winning ways had made any impression upon him. "It is not for me to say whether the young lady, observing this, as she could scarcely help doing, resolved to attract him to her. When we are young we act from impulse, and do not stop to consider consequences. It happened, however, and she succeeded in wooing him from his books. But there was no love-making on his part, as far as anybody could see, and his conduct gave occasion for no remarks; but I remember it was spoken of among the guests that the young lady was in love with our master, and we all wondered what would come of it. "Soon afterwards a dreadful accident occurred. "The gentlemen were out riding, and were not expected home till evening, but they had not been away more than two hours before Mr. Almer galloped back in a state of great agitation. He sought Mdlle. Beatrice's mother, and communicated the news to her, in a gentle manner you may be sure. Her husband had been thrown from his horse, and was being carried to the villa dreadfully hurt and in a state of insensibility. Mr. Almer's great anxiety was to keep the news from Mdlle. Beatrice, but he did not succeed. She rushed into the room and heard all. "She was like one distracted. She flew out of the villa in her white dress, and ran along the road the horsemen had taken. Her movements were so quick that they could not stop her, but Mr. Almer ran after her, and brought her back to the house in a fainting condition. A few minutes afterwards the old gentleman was brought in, and the house was a house of mourning. No dancing, no music, no singing; all was changed; we spoke in whispers, and moved about slowly, just as if a funeral was about to take place. The doctors gave no hopes; they said he might linger in a helpless state for weeks, but that it was impossible he could recover. "Of course this put an end to all the festivities, and one after another the guests took their departure, until in a little while the only visitors remaining were the family upon whom such a heavy blow had fallen. "Mr. Almer no longer locked himself up in his study, but devoted the whole of his time to Mdlle. Beatrice and her parents. He asked me to wait upon Mdlle. Beatrice, and to see that her slightest wish was gratified. I found her very quiet and very gentle; she spoke but little, and the only thing she showed any obstinacy in was in insisting upon sitting by her father's bedside a few hours every day. I had occasion, not very long afterwards, to learn that when she set her mind upon a thing, it was not easy to turn her from it. These gentle, delicate creatures, sometimes, are capable of as great determination as the strongest man. "'Denise,' said Mr. Almer to me, 'the doctors say that if Mdlle. Beatrice does not take exercise she will herself become seriously ill. Prevail upon her to enjoy fresh air: walk with her in the garden an hour or so every day, and amuse her with light talk; a nature like hers requires sunshine.' "I did my best to please Mr. Almer; the weather was fine, and not a day passed that Mdlle. Beatrice did not walk with me in the grounds. And here Mr. Almer was in the habit of joining us. When he came, I fell back, and he and Mdlle. Beatrice walked side by side, sometimes arm in arm, and I a few yards behind. "I could not help noticing the wonderful kindness of his manner towards her; it was such as a father might show for a daughter he loved very dearly. 'Well, well!' I thought. I seemed to see how it would all end, and I believed it would be a good ending, although there were such a number of years between them--he forty-five, and she seventeen. "A month passed in this way, and the old gentleman's condition became so critical that we expected every moment to hear of his death. The accident had deprived him of his senses, and it was only two days before his death that his mind became clear. Then a long private interview took place between him and Mr. Almer, which left my master more than ever serious, and more than ever gentle towards Mdlle. Beatrice. "I was present when the old gentleman died. He had lost the power of speech; his wife was sitting by his bedside holding his hand; his daughter was on her knees with her face buried in the bed-clothes; Mr. Almer was standing close, looking down upon them; I was at the end of the room waiting to attend upon Mdlle. Beatrice. She was overwhelmed with grief, but her mother's trouble, it appeared to me, was purely selfish. She seemed to be thinking of what would become of her when her husband was gone. The dying gentleman suddenly looked into my master's face, and then turned his eyes upon his daughter, and my master inclined his head gravely, as though he was answering a question. A peaceful expression came upon the sufferer's face, and in a very little while he breathed his last." Here Mother Denise paused and broke off in her story, saying: "I did not know it would take so long a-telling; I have wearied you, my lady." "Indeed not," said the Advocate's wife; "I don't know when I have been so much interested. It is just like reading a novel. I am sure there is something startling to come. You must go on to the end, Mother Denise, if you please." "With your permission, my lady," said Mother Denise, and smoothing down her apron, she continued the narrative. CHAPTER III A MOTHER'S TREACHERY "Two days after Mdlle. Beatrice's father was buried, Mr. Almer said to me: "'Denise, I am compelled to go away on business, and I shall be absent a fortnight at least. I leave Mdlle. Beatrice in your care. As a mark of faithful service to me, be sure that nothing is left undone to comfort both her and her mother in their great trouble.' "I understood without his telling me that it was really Mdlle. Beatrice he was anxious about; everyone who had any experience of the old lady knew that she was very well able to take care of herself. "On the same day a long conversation took place between my master and the widow, and before sundown he departed. "It got to be known that he had gone to look after the affairs of the gentleman who died here, and that the ladies, instead of being rich, as we had supposed them to be, were in reality very poor, and likely to be thrown upon the world in a state of poverty, unless they accepted assistance from Mr. Almer. They were much worse off than poor people; having been brought up as ladies, they could do nothing to help themselves. "While Mr. Almer was away, Mdlle. Beatrice and I became almost friends, I may say. She took great notice of me, and appeared to be glad to have me with her. The poor young lady had no one else, for there was not much love lost between her and her mother. The selfish old lady did nothing but bewail her own hard fate, and spoke to her daughter as if the young lady could have nothing to grieve at in being deprived of a father's love. "But sorrow does not last forever, my lady, even with the old, and the young shake it off much more readily. So it was, to my mind, quite natural, when Mr. Almer returned, which he did after an absence of fifteen days, that he should find Mdlle. Beatrice much more cheerful than when he left. He was pleased to say that it was my doing, and that I should have no cause to regret it to the last day of my life. I had done so little that the great store he set upon it made me think more and more of the ending to it all. There could be but one natural ending, a marriage, and yet never for one moment had I seen him conduct himself toward Mdlle. Beatrice as a lover. He brought bad news back with him, and when he communicated it to the old lady she walked about the grounds like a distracted person, moaning and wringing her hands. "I got to know about it, through my young lady. We were out walking in the lanes when we overtook two wretched-looking women, one old and one young. They were in rags, and their white faces and slow, painful steps, as they dragged one foot after another, would have led anybody to suppose that they had not eaten a meal for days. They were truly misery's children. "Mdlle. Beatrice asked in a whisper, as they turned and looked pitifully at her: "'Who are they, Denise?' "'They are beggars,' I answered. "She took out her purse, and spoke to them, and gave them some money. They thanked her gratefully, and crawled away, Mdlle. Beatrice looking after them with an expression of thoughtfulness and curiosity in her lovely face. "Denise,' she said presently, 'Mr. Almer, who, before my father's death, promised to look after his affairs, has told us we are beggars.' "I was very, very sorry to hear it, but I could not reconcile the appearance of the bright young creature standing before me with that of the wretched beings who had just left us; and although she spoke gravely, and said the news was shocking, she did not seem to feel it as much as her words would have led one to believe. It was a singular thing, my lady, that Mdlle. Beatrice wore black for her father for only one day. There was quite a scene between her and her mother on the subject, but the young lady had her way, and only wore her black dress for a few hours. "'I hate it,' she said; 'it makes me feel as if I were dead.' "I am sure it was not because she did not love her father that she refused to put on mourning for him. Never, except on that one day, did I see her wear any dress but white, and the only bits of colour she put on were sometimes a light pink or a light blue ribbon. That is how it got to be said, when she was seen from a distance walking in the grounds: "'She looks like a white shadow.' "So when she told me she was a beggar, and stood before me, fair and beautiful, dressed in soft white, with a pink ribbon at her throat, and long coral earrings in her ears, I could not understand how it was possible she could be what she said. It was true, though; she and her mother had not a franc, and Mr. Almer, who brought the news, did not seem to be sorry for it. The widow cried for days and days--did nothing but cry and cry, but that, of course, could not go on forever, and in time she became, to all appearance, consoled. No guests were invited to the villa, and my master was alone with Mdlle. Beatrice and her mother. "It seemed to me, after a time, that he made many attempts to get back into his old groove; but he was not his own master, and could not do as he pleased. Now it was Mdlle. Beatrice who wanted him, now it was her mother, and as they were in a measure dependent upon him he could not deny himself to them. He might have done so had they been rich; he could not do so as they were poor. I soon saw that when Mdlle. Beatrice intruded herself upon him it was at the instigation of her mother, and that, had she consulted her own inclination, she would have retired as far into the background as he himself desired to be. The old lady, however, had set her heart upon a scheme, and she left no stone unturned to bring it about. Oh, she was cunning and clever, and they were not a match for her, neither her daughter, who knew nothing of the world, nor Mr. Almer, who, deeply read as he was, and clever, and wise in many things, knew as little of worldly ways as the young lady he loved and was holding aloof from. For this was clear to me and to others, though I dare say our master had no idea that his secret was known--indeed, that it was common talk. "One morning I had occasion to go into Geneva to purchase things for the house, which I was to bring back with me in the afternoon. As I was stepping into the waggon, Mdlle. Beatrice came out of the gates and said: "'Denise, will you pass the post-office in Geneva?' "'Yes, mademoiselle,' I replied. "'Here is a letter,' she then said, 'I have just written, and I want it posted there at once. Will you do it for me?' "'Certainly I will,' I said, and I took the letter. "'Be sure you do not forget, Denise,' she said, as she turned away. "'I will not forget, mademoiselle,' I said. "There was no harm in looking at the envelope; it was addressed to a M. Gabriel. I was not half a mile on the road to Geneva before I heard coming on behind me very fast the wheels of a carriage. We drove aside to let it pass; it was one of our own carriages, and the old lady was in it. "'Ah, Denise,' she said, are you going to Geneva?' "'Yes, my lady.' "'I shall be there an hour before you; I am going to the post-office to get some letters.' As she said that I could not help glancing at the letter Mdlle. Beatrice had given me, which I held in my hand for safety. 'It is a letter my daughter has given you to post,' she said. "'Yes, my lady,' I could say nothing else. "'Give it to me,' she said, 'I know she wants it posted immediately. It does not matter who posts a letter.' "She said this impatiently and haughtily, for I think I was hesitating. However, I could do nothing but give her the letter, and as I did not suspect anything wrong I said nothing of the adventure to Mdlle. Beatrice, especially as she did not speak of the letter to me. Had she done so, I might have explained that her mother had taken it from me to post, and quite likely--although I hope I am mistaken--the strange and dreadful events that occurred before three years passed by might have been avoided. "'The old lady was very civil to me after this, and would continually question me about my master. "'He has a great deal of property?' she asked. "'Yes, madame.' "'He is very rich, Denise?' "'Yes, madame.' "'And comes from an old family?' "'Yes, madame.' "'It is a pity he writes books; but he is highly respected, is he not, Denise?' "'No gentleman stands higher, madame.' "'His nature, Denise--though it is exceedingly wrong in me to ask, for I have had experience of it--his nature is very kind?' "'Very kind, madame, and very noble.' "A hundred questions of this kind were put to me, sometimes when the young lady was present, sometimes when the mother and I were alone. While this was going on, I often noticed that Mdlle. Beatrice came from her mother's room in great agitation. From a man these signs can be hidden; from a woman, no; man is too often blind to the ways of women. I am sure Mr. Almer knew nothing of what was passing between mother and daughter; but even if he had known he would not have understood the meaning of it--I did not at the time. "Well, all at once the old lady made her appearance among us with a face in which the greatest delight was expressed. She talked to the servants quite graciously, and nodded and smiled, and didn't know what to do to show how amiable she was. 'What a change in the weather!' we all said. The reason was soon forthcoming. Our master and her daughter were engaged to be married. "We were none of us sorry; we all liked Mdlle. Beatrice, and it was sad to think that a good old race would die out if Mr. Almer remained single all the days of his life. Yes, we talked over the approaching marriage, as did everybody in the village, with real pleasure, and if good feeling and sincere wishes could bring happiness, Mr. Almer and his young and beautiful wife that was to be could not have failed to enjoy it. "'It is true, mademoiselle, is it not?' I asked of her. 'I may congratulate you?' "'I am engaged to be married to Mr. Almer,' she said, 'if that is what you mean.' "'You will have a good man for your husband, mademoiselle,' I said; 'you will be very happy.' "But here was something in her manner that made me hope the approaching change in her condition would not make her proud. It was cold and distant--different from the way she had hitherto behaved to me. "So the old house was gay again; improvements and alterations were made, and very soon we were thronged with visitors, who came and went, and laughed and danced, as though life were a perpetual holiday. "But Mdlle. Beatrice was not as light-hearted as before; she moved about more slowly, and with a certain sadness. It was noticed by many. I thought, perhaps, that the contemplation of the change in her life made her more serious, or that she had not yet recovered the shock of her father's death. The old lady was in her glory, ordering here and ordering there, and giving herself such airs that one might have supposed it was she who was going to get married, and not her daughter. "Mr. Almer gave Mdlle. Beatrice no cause for disquiet; he was entirely and most completely devoted to her, and I am sure that no other woman in the world ever had a more faithful lover. He watched her every step, and followed her about with his eyes in a way that would have made any ordinary woman proud. As for presents, he did not know how to do enough for the beautiful girl who was soon to be his wife. I never saw such beautiful jewelry as he had made for her, and he seemed to be continually studying what to do to give her pleasure. If ever a woman ought to have been happy, she ought to have been." CHAPTER IV HUSBAND AND WIFE "Well, they were married, and the day was never forgotten in the village. Mr. Almer made everybody merry, the children, the grown-up people, the poor, and the well-to-do. New dresses, ribbons, flags, flowers, music and feasting from morning to night--there was never seen anything like it. The bride, in her white dress and veil, was as beautiful as an angel, and Mr. Almer's face had a light in it such as I had never seen before--it shone with pride, and joy, and happiness. "In the afternoon they departed on their honeymoon tour, and the old lady was left mistress of the villa during the absence of the newly-married pair. She exercised her authority in a way that was not pleasing to us. No wonder, therefore, that we looked upon her with dislike, and spoke of it as an evil day when she came among us; but that did not lessen our horror at an accident which befell her, and which led to her death. "Mr. and Mrs. Almer had been absent barely three weeks when the old lady going into a distant part of the grounds where workmen were employed in building up some rocks to serve as an artificial waterfall, fell into a pit, and was so frightfully bruised and shaken that, when she was taken up, the doctors declared she could not live another twenty-four hours. Letters were immediately sent off to Mr. Almer, but there was no chance of his receiving them before the unfortunate old lady breathed her last. We did everything we could for her, and she took it into her head that she would have no one to attend to her but me. "'My daughter is fond of you,' she said on her deathbed, 'and will be pleased that I have chosen you before the other servants. Keep them all away from me.' "It was many hours before she could be made to believe that there was no hope for her, and when the conviction was forced upon her, she cried, in a tone of great bitterness: "'This is a fatal house! First my husband--now me! Will Beatrice be the next?' "And then she bemoaned her hard fate that she should have to die just at the time that a life of pleasure was spread before her. Yes, she spoke in that way, just as if she was a young girl, instead of an old woman with white hair. A life of pleasure! Do some people never think of another life, a life of rewards and punishments, according to their actions in this world? The old lady was one of these, I am afraid. Three or four hours before she died she said she must speak to me quite alone, and the doctors accordingly left the room. "'I want you to tell me the truth, Denise,' she said; I had to place my ear quite close to her lips to hear her. "'I will tell you,' I said. "'It would be a terrible sin to deceive a dying woman,' she said. "I answered I knew it was, and I would not deceive her. "'Beatrice ought to be happy,' she said; 'I have done my best to make her so--against her own wishes! But is it likely she should know better than her mother? You believe she will be happy, do you not, Denise?' "I replied that I could not doubt it; that she had married a good man, against whom no person could breathe a word, a man who commanded respect, and who was looked upon by the poor as a benefactor--as indeed he was. "'That is what I thought,' said the dying woman; 'that is what I told her over and over again. A good man, a kind man, a rich man, very rich man! And then we were under obligations to him; had Beatrice refused him he might have humiliated us. There was no other way to repay him.' "I could not help saying to her then that when Mr. Almer rendered a service to anyone he did not look for repayment. "'Ah,' she said impatiently, 'but we are of noble descent, and we never receive a favour without returning it. All I thought of was my daughter's happiness. And there was the future--hers as well as mine--it was dreadful to look forward to. Denise, did my daughter ever complain to you?' "'Never!' I answered. "'Did she ever say I was a hard mother to her--that I was leading her wrong--that I was selfish, and thought only of myself? Did she? Answer me truly.' "'Never,' I said, and I wondered very much to hear her speak in that way. 'She never spoke a single word against you. If she had any such thoughts it would not have been proper for her to have confided them to me. I am only a servant.' "'That is true,' she muttered. 'Beatrice has pride--yes, thank God, she has pride, and if she suffers can suffer in silence. But why should she suffer? She has everything--everything! I torment myself without cause. You remember the letter my daughter gave you to post--the one to M. Gabriel?' "'Yes, madame; you took it from me on the road. I hope I did not do wrong in parting with it. Mademoiselle Beatrice desired me to post it with my own hands.' "'You did right,' she said. 'It does not matter who posts a letter. You did not tell my daughter I took it from you?' "'No, madame.' "'You are faithful and judicious,' she said, but her praise gave me no pleasure. 'If I had lived I would have rewarded you. You must not repeat to my daughter or to Mr. Almer what I have been saying to you. Promise me.' "I gave her the promise, and then she said that perhaps she would give me a message to deliver to her daughter, her last message; but she must think of it first, and if she forgot it I was to ask her for it. After that she was quiet, and spoke to no one. A couple of hours passed, and I asked the doctors whether she had long to live. They said she could not live another hour. I then told them that she had asked me to remind her of a message she wished me to give to her daughter, and whether it was right I should disturb her. They said that the wishes of the dying should be respected, and that I should try to make her understand that death was very near. I put my face again very close to hers. "'Can you hear me?' I asked. "'Who are you?' she said. "Her words were but a breath, and I could only understand them by watching the movements of her lips. "'I am Denise.' "'Ah, yes,' she replied. 'Denise, that my daughter is fond of.' "'You wished to give me a message to your daughter.' "'I don't know what it was. I have done everything for the best--yes, everything. And she was foolish enough to rebel, and to tell me that I might live to repent my work; but see how wrong she was. And presently she said: 'Denise, when my daughter comes home ask her to forgive me.' "These were her last words. Before the sun rose the next morning she was dead. "Mr. and Mrs. Almer arrived at the villa before she was buried. It was a shocking interruption to their honeymoon, and their appearance showed how much they suffered. It was as if the whole course of their lives had been turned; tears took the place of smiles, sorrow of joy. And how different was the appearance of the village! No feasting, no music and dancing; everybody was serious and sad. "And all within one short month! "I gave Mrs. Almer her mother's dying message. When she heard the words such a smile came upon her lips as I hope never again to see upon a human face, it was so bitterly scornful and despairing. "'It is too late for forgiveness,' she said, and not another word passed between us on the subject. "Mrs. Almer did not wear mourning for her mother, nor did her husband wish her to do so. I remember his saying to her: "With some races, white is the emblem of mourning; not for that reason, Beatrice, but because it so well becomes you, I like you best in white.' "Now, as time went on, we all thought that the sadness which weighed upon Mrs. Almer's heart, and which seemed to put lead into her feet, would naturally pass away, but weeks and months elapsed, and she remained the same. There used to be colour in her cheeks; it was all gone now--her face was as white as milk. Her eyes used to sparkle and brighten, but now there was never to be seen any gladness in them; and she, who used to smile so often, now smiled no more. She moved about like one who was walking slowly to her grave. "Mr. Almer made great efforts to arouse her, but she met him with coldness, and when he spoke to her she simply answered 'yes' or 'no,' and she did nothing whatever to make his home cheerful and happy. "This weighed upon his spirits, as it would upon the spirits of any man, and during those times I often saw him gazing upon her from a distance, when she was walking in the grounds, with a look in his eyes which denoted how troubled he was. Then, as if some thought had suddenly occurred to him, he would join her, and endeavour to entice her into conversation; but she answered him only when she was compelled, and he became so chilled by her manner that soon he would himself grow silent, and they would pace the garden round and round for an hour together in the most complete silence. It hurt one to see it. They were never heard to quarrel, and the little they said to each other was said in a gentle way; but that seemed to make matters worse. Much better to have spoken outright, so that they might have known what was in each other's minds. A storm now and then is naturally good; it clears the air, and the sun always shines when it is over; but here a silent storm was brooding which never burst, and the only signs of it were seen in the sad faces of those who were suffering, and who did not deserve to suffer. "Imagine what the house was, my lady, and how we all felt, who loved our master, and would have loved our lady too, if she had allowed us. Cold as she was to us, we could not help pitying her. For my own part I used to think I would rather live in a hut with a quarrelsome husband who would beat and starve me, than lead such a life as my master and mistress were leading. "Once more, after many months has passed in this dreadful way, my master suddenly resolved to make another attempt to alter things for the better. He locked up his study, and courted his wife with the perseverance and the love of a lover. It was really so, my lady. He gathered posies for her, and placed them on her desk and dressing-table; he spoke cheerfully to her, taking no apparent notice of her silence and reserve; he strove in a thousand little delicate ways to bring pleasure into her life. "'We will ride out to-day,' he would say. "'Very well,' she would answer. "He would assist her into the saddle, and they would ride away, they two alone, he animated by but one desire--to make her happy; and they would return after some hours, the master with an expression of suffering in his face which he would strive in vain to hide, and she, sad, resigned, and uncomplaining. But that silence of hers! That voice so seldom heard, and, when heard, so gentle, and soft, and pathetic! I would rather have been beaten with an oak stick every day of my life than have been compelled to endure it, as he was compelled. For there was no relief or escape for him except in the doing of what it was not in his nature to do--to be downright cruel to her, or to find another woman to love him. He would have had no difficulty in this, had he been so minded. "Still he did not relax his efforts to alter things for the better. He bought beautiful books, and pictures, and dresses, and pet animals for her; he forgot nothing that a man could possibly thing of to please a woman. He had frequently spoken to her of inviting friends to the villa, but she had never encouraged him to do so. Now, however, without consulting her, he called friends and acquaintances around him, and in a short time we were again overrun with company. She was the mistress of the house, and it would have been sinful in her to have neglected her duties as Mr. Almer's wife. Many young people came to the villa, and among them one day appeared M. Gabriel, the artist who painted the picture." CHAPTER V THE GATHERING OF THE STORM "At about this time it was generally known that Mr. Almer expected to become a father within three or four months, and some people considered it strange that he should have selected the eve of an event so important for the celebration of social festivities. For my own part I thought it a proof of his wisdom that he should desire his wife to be surrounded by an atmosphere of cheerfulness on such an occasion. Innocent laughter, music, pleasant society--what better kind of medicine is there in the world? But it did not do my lady good. She moved about listlessly, without heart and without spirit, and not until M. Gabriel appeared was any change observable in her. The manner in which she received him was sufficiently remarkable. My lady was giving me some instructions as Mr. Almer and a strange gentleman came towards us. "'Beatrice,' said Mr. Almer, 'let me introduce M. Gabriel to you. A friend whom I have not seen for years.' "She looked at M. Gabriel, and bowed, and when she raised her head, her face and neck were crimson; her eyes, too, had an angry light in them. M. Gabriel, also, whose natural complexion was florid, turned deathly white as his eyes fell upon her. "Whether Mr. Almer observed these signs I cannot say; they were plain enough to me, and I did not need anyone to tell me that those two had met before. "My lady turned from her husband and M. Gabriel in silence, and taking my arm walked into a retired part of the grounds. She could not have walked without assistance, for she was trembling violently; the moment we were alone her strength failed her, and she swooned dead away. I thought it prudent not to call or run for assistance, and I attended to her myself. Presently she recovered, and looking around with a frightened air, asked if any person but myself had seen her swoon. I answered 'No,' and for a moment I thought she had some intention of confiding in me, but she said nothing more than 'Thank you, Denise; do not speak of my fainting to any person; it is only that I am weak, and that the least thing overcomes me. Be sure that no one hears of it.' 'No one shall from me, my lady,' I said. She thanked me again, and pressed my hand, and then we went into the house. "After that, there was no perceptible difference in her manner toward M. Gabriel than towards her other guests, but I, whose eyes were in a certain way opened, could not help observing that M. Gabriel watched with anxiety her every movement and every expression. The summer-house in which all those pictures are stored away was given to M. Gabriel for a studio, and there he painted and passed a great deal of his time. Mr. Almer often joined him there, and if appearances went for anything, they spent many happy hours together. About three weeks after M. Gabriel came to the villa my master took his wife into the studio, and they remained there for some time. It was understood that my lady had been prevailed upon to allow M. Gabriel to paint her portrait. From that time my lady's visits to the summer-house were frequent, at first always in her husband's company, but afterwards occasionally alone. One day she said to me: "'Denise, I have often wished to ask you a question, but till lately have not thought it worth while.' "'I am ready to answer anything, my lady,' I said. "'One morning,' she said, after a pause, 'shortly after my dear father died, I gave you a letter to post for me in Geneva.' "'Yes, my lady,' I said, and it flashed upon me like a stroke of lightning that the letter she referred to was addressed to M. Gabriel. Never till that moment had I thought of it. "'Did you post the letter for me, Denise, as I desired you? Did you do so with your own hands? Do not tremble. Mistakes often happen without our being able to prevent them--even fatal mistakes sometimes. I saw you drive away with the letter in your hand. You did not lose it?' "'No, my lady; but before I had gone a mile on the road to Geneva, your mother overtook me, and said she knew you had given it to me to post immediately in Geneva, and that as she would be at the post-office a good hour before me--which was true--she would put it into the post with other letters.' "'And you gave her the letter, Denise?' "'Yes, my lady.' "'Did my mother desire you not to mention to me that she had taken the letter from you?' "'No, my lady, but on her deathbed----' "I hesitated, and my mistress said. 'Do not fear, Denise; you did no wrong. How should you know that a mother would conspire against her daughter's happiness? On her deathbed my mother spoke to you of that letter?' "'Yes, my lady, and asked me if I had told you that she had taken it from me. I answered no, and she said I had done right. My lady, in telling you this. I am breaking the promise I gave her; I hope to be forgiven.' "'It is right that you should tell me the truth, when I desire you, about an affair I entrusted to you. Had you told me of your own account, it might have been a sin.' "'I can see, my lady, that I should not have parted with the letter. I am truly sorry.' "'The fault was not yours, Denise: the wrong-doing was not yours. I should have instructed you not to part with the letter to anyone; although even then it could not have been prevented; you could not have refused my mother. The past is lost to us forever.' Her eyes filled with tears, and she said, 'We will not speak of this again, Denise.' "And it was never mentioned again by either of us, though we both thought of it often enough. "It was easy for me to arrive at an understanding of it. M. Gabriel and my mistress had been lovers, and had been parted and kept apart by my lady's mother. The old lady had played a false and treacherous part towards her daughter, and by so doing had destroyed the happiness of her life. "Whether my young lady thought that Mr. Almer had joined in the plot against her--that was what puzzled me a great deal at the time; but I was certain that he was innocent in the matter, as much a victim to the arts and wiles of a scheming old woman as the unfortunate lady he had married. "The motive of the treachery was plain enough. M. Gabriel was poor, a struggling artist, with his place to make in the world. My master was rich; money and estates were his, and the old woman believed she would live to enjoy them if she could bring about a marriage between him and her daughter. "She succeeded--too well did she succeed, and she met with her punishment. Though she was dead in her grave I had no pity for her, and her daughter, also, thought of her with bitterness. What misery is brought about by the mad worship of money which fills some persons' souls! As though hearts count for nothing! "I understood it all now--my lady's unhappiness, her silence, the estrangement between her and her husband. How often did I repeat the sad words she had uttered! 'The past is lost to us forever.' Yes, it was indeed true. Sunshine had fled; a gloomy future was before her. Which was the most to be pitied--my lady, or her innocent, devoted husband, who lived in ignorance of the wrong which had been done? "After the conversation I have just related, the behaviour of my mistress toward M. Gabriel underwent a change; she was gracious and familiar with him, and sometimes, as I noticed with grief, even tender. They walked frequently together; she was often in his studio when her husband was absent. Following out in my mind the course of events, I felt sure that explanations had passed between them, and that they were satisfied that neither had been intentionally false to the other. It was natural that this should have happened; but what good could come of this better understanding? Mischief was in the air, and no one saw it but myself. "My lady recovered her cheerfulness; the colour came back to her face; her eyes were brighter, life once more appeared enjoyable to her. Mr. Almer was delighted and unsuspicious; but behind these fair clouds I seemed to hear the muttering of the thunder, and I dreaded the moment when my master's suspicions should be aroused. "As my lady's time to become a mother drew near, many of the guests took their departure; but M. Gabriel remained. He and Mr. Almer were the closest friends, and they would talk with the greatest animation about pictures and books. M. Gabriel was very clever; the rapidity with which he would paint used to surprise us; his sketches were beautiful, and were hung everywhere about the house. Everybody sang his praises. He had a very sweet voice, he was a fine musician, there was not a subject he was not ready to converse upon. If it came to deep scholarship and learning I have no doubt that Mr. Almer held the first place, but my master was never eager, as M. Gabriel was, to display his gifts, and to show off his brilliant qualities in society. Certainly he could not win ladies' hearts as easily as M. Gabriel. These things are in the nature of a man, and one will play for the mere pleasure of winning, while another does not consider it worth his while to try. Of two such men I know which is the better and more deserving of love. "Rapid worker as M. Gabriel was with his paintings and sketches, my lady's portrait hung upon his hands; he did not seem to be able to satisfy himself, and he was continually making alterations. When Master Christian was born, his mother's picture was still unfinished in M. Gabriel's studio." CHAPTER VI THE GRAVE OF HONOUR "The birth of the heir was now the most important event; everything gave way to it. Congratulations poured in from all quarters, and it really seemed as if a better era had dawned. I believe I was the only one who mistrusted appearances; I should have been easier in my mind had M. Gabriel left the villa. But he remained, and as long as he and my lady were near each other I knew that the storm-clouds were not far off. "In a few weeks my lady got about again; she was never strong, and now she was so delicate and weak that the doctors would not allow her to nurse her child. I was very sorry for this; had her baby drawn life from her breast it might have diverted her attention from M. Gabriel. "It is hard to believe that so joyful an event as the birth of her first child should not have softened her heart towards her husband. It is the truth, however; they were no nearer to each other than they had been before. Mr. Almer was not to blame; he did all in his power to win his wife to more affectionate ways, but he might as well have hoped for a miracle as to hope to win a love that was given to another. "The child throve, and it was not till he was a year old that the portrait of his mother was finished--the picture that is hanging on the wall before me. It was greatly admired, and my master set great store upon it. "'It is in every way your finest work,' he said to M. Gabriel. 'Were it not that I object to my wife's beauty being made a subject of criticism, I should persuade you to exhibit the portrait.' "Not long afterwards, M. Gabriel was called away. I thanked God for it. The danger I feared was removed; but he returned in the course of a few weeks, and began to paint again in the summer-house. While he was absent my lady fell into her former habits of listlessness; when he returned she became animated and joyous. Truly he was to her as the sun is to the flower. This change in her mood, from sadness to gaiety, was so sudden that it frightened me, for I felt that Mr. Almer must be the blindest of the blind if it did not force itself upon his attention. It did not escape his notice; I saw that, from a certain alteration in his manner toward his wife and his friend. It was not that he was colder or less friendly; but when he looked at them he seemed to be pondering upon something which perplexed him. He said nothing to them, however, to express disapproval of their intimacy. He was not an impulsive man, and I never knew him to commit himself to an important act without deliberation. "In the midst of his perplexity the storm burst. I was an accidental witness of the occurrence which led to the tragic events of which I have yet to speak. "There was at this time among our guests an old dowager, who did nothing but tittle-tattle from morning till night about her friends and acquaintances, and who seemed to be always hunting for an opportunity to make ill-natured remarks. A piece of scandal was a great delight to her. Heaven save me from ever meeting with another such a lady. "I was in one of the wooded walks at some distance from the house, gathering balsam for a fellow-servant whose hand had been wounded, when the voice of this old dowager reached my ears. She was speaking to a lady companion, and I should not have stopped to listen had not Mrs. Almer's name been mentioned in a tone which set my blood tingling. "'It is scandalous, my dear,' the old dowager was saying, 'the way she goes on with M. Gabriel. Of course, I wouldn't mention it to another soul in the world but you, for it is not my affair. Not that it is not natural, for she is young, and he is young, and Mr. Almer is old enough to be their father; but they really should be more discreet. I can't make up my mind whether Mr. Almer sees it, and considers it best to take no notice, or whether he is really blind to what is going on. Anyway, that does not alter the affair, so far as his wife and M. Gabriel are concerned. Such looks at each other, my dear!--such pressing of hands!--such sighs! One can almost hear them. It is easy to see they are in love with each other.' "And a great deal more to the same effect until they walked away from the spot and were out of hearing. "I was all of a tremble, and I was worrying myself as to what it was best to do when I heard another step close to me. "It was my master, who must also have been within hearing. His face was stern and white, and there was blood on his lips as though he had bitten them through. "He walked my way and saw me. "'How long have you been here, Denise?' he asked. "I could not tell him a falsehood, and I had not the courage to answer him. "'It is enough,' he said; 'you have heard what I have heard. Not to a living being must a word of what you have heard pass your lips. I have always believed that you had a regard for the honour of my house and name, and it is for that reason I have placed confidence in you. I shall continue to trust you until you give me cause to doubt your good faith. Hasten after that lady and her companion who have been conversing here, and ask them to favour me with an interview. While I speak to them, remain out of hearing.' "I obeyed him in silence, and conducted the ladies to my master's presence. I am in ignorance of what he said to them, but that evening an excuse was made for their sudden departure from the villa. They left, and did not appear again. "Grateful as I was at the removal of this source of danger, I soon saw that the time I dreaded had arrived. My master was in doubt whether his wife was faithful to him. "A more cruel suspicion never entered the mind of man, and as false as it was cruel. Mrs. Almer was a pure woman; basely wronged as she had been, she was a virtuous wife. As I hope for salvation this is my firm belief. "But how can I blame my master? Smarting with a grief which had sucked all the light out of his days, which had poisoned his life and his hopes, trusting as he had trusted, deceived as he had been deceived, with every offer of love refused and despised, and with, as he believed, dishonour staring him in the face--he might well be pardoned for the doubt which now took possession of him. "He planned out a course, and steadily followed it. Without betraying himself, he watched his wife and his friend, and he could not fail to see that the feelings they entertained for each other were stronger than the ordinary feelings of friendship which may properly be allowed between a man and a woman. I know, also, that he discovered that my lady, before she married him, had accepted M. Gabriel as her lover. This in itself was sufficient for him. "Under such circumstances it was, in his opinion, a sin for any woman to plight her faith and duty to another. To my master the words used at the altar were, in the meaning they conveyed, most sacred, solemn and binding. For a woman to utter them, with the image of another man in her heart, was a fearful and unpardonable crime. "These perjuries are common enough, I believe, in the great world which moves at a distance from this quiet spot, but that they are common does not excuse them. Mr. Almer had strict and stern views of the duties of life, and roused as he was roused, he carried them out with cruel effect. "Gradually he got rid of all his guests, with the exception of M. Gabriel; and then, one fatal morning, he surprised my lady and M. Gabriel as they sat together in the summer-house. There was no guilt between them; they were conversing innocently enough, but my lady was in tears, and M. Gabriel was endeavouring to console her. Sufficient, certainly, to work a husband into a furious state. "None of us knew what passed or what words were spoken; something terrible must have been uttered, for my lady, with a face like the face of death, tottered from the summer-house to this very room, where she lay in a fainting condition for hours. Her husband did not come near her, nor did he make any inquiries after her, but in the course of an hour he gave me instructions to have every sketch and painting made by M. Gabriel taken from the walls of the villa, and conveyed to the summer-house. I obeyed him, and all were removed except this portrait of my lady; it seemed to me that I ought not to allow it to be touched without her permission, and she was not in a fit condition to be disturbed. "While this work was being accomplished no servant but myself was allowed to enter the studio. Two strange men carried the pictures into the summer-house, and these men, who had paint-pots and brushes with them, remained with Mr. Almer the whole of the afternoon. "Dinner was served, but no one sat down to it. My lady was in her chamber, her husband was still in the summer-house, and M. Gabriel was wandering restlessly about. In the evening he addressed me. "'Where is Mr. Almer?' he asked. "'In the summer-house,' I replied. "'Go to him,' he said, 'and say I desire to have a few words with him.' "In a few minutes they confronted each other on the steps which led to the studio. "'Enter,' said my master; 'you also, Denise, so that you may hear what I have to say to M. Gabriel, and what he has to say to me.' "I entered with them, and could scarcely believe my eyes. The walls of the studio had been painted a deep black. Not only the walls, but the woodwork of the windows which gave light to the room. The place resembled a tomb. "M. Gabriel's face was like the face of a corpse as he gazed around. "'This is your doing,' he said to my master, pointing to the black walls. "'Pardon me,' said my master; 'it is none of my work. _You_ are the artist here, and this is the picture you have painted on my heart and life. Denise, are all M. Gabriel's sketches and paintings in this studio?' "'They are all here, sir,' I replied. "There was a sense of guilt at my heart, for I thought of my lady's portrait. Fortunately for me my master did not refer to it. "'M. Gabriel,' said my master to the artist, 'these paintings are your property, and are at your disposal for one week from this day. Within that time remove them from my house. You will have no other opportunity. At the end of the week this summer-house will be securely locked and fastened, and thereafter, during my lifetime, no person will be allowed to enter it. For yourself a carriage is now waiting for you at the gates. I cannot permit you to sleep another night under my roof.' "'I had no intention of doing so,' said M. Gabriel, 'nor should I have remained here so long had it not been that I was determined not to leave without an interview with you.' "'What do you require of me?' "'Satisfaction.' "'Satisfaction!' exclaimed my master, with a scornful smile. 'Is it not I rather should demand it?' "'Demand it, then,' cried M. Gabriel. 'I am ready to give it to you.' "'I am afraid,' said my master coldly, 'that it is out of your power to afford me satisfaction. Were you a man of honour events might take a different course. It is only lately that I have seen you in your true colours; to afford you the satisfaction you demand would be, on my part, an admission that you are my equal. You are not; you are the basest of cowards. Depart at once, and do not compel me to call my servants to force you from my gates.' "'Endeavour to evade me,' said M. Gabriel, as he walked to the door, 'in every way you can, you shall not escape the consequences of your conduct.' "He carried it with a high hand, this fine gentleman who had brought misery into this house; had I been a man I should have had a difficulty in preventing myself from striking him. "When he was gone my master said: "'You are at liberty to repeat to your lady what has passed between me and M. Gabriel.' "I did not repeat it: there was such a dreadful significance in the black walls, and in my master's words, that that was the picture M. Gabriel had painted on his heart and life, that I could not be so cruel to my lady as to tell her what had passed between the two gentlemen who held her fate in their hands. "But she herself, on the following day, questioned me: "'You were present yesterday,' she said, 'at an interview between M. Gabriel and my husband?' "'Yes, my lady,' I answered. "'Did they meet in anger, Denise?' "'M. Gabriel was angry, my lady,' I said. "'And my husband?' she asked. "'Appeared to be suffering, my lady.' "'Did they part in anger?' "'On M. Gabriel's side, my lady, yes.' "'Is M. Gabriel in the villa?' "'No, my lady. He departed last night. "'Of his own accord?' "'My master bade him go, and M. Gabriel said he intended to leave without being bidden.' "'It could not be otherwise. My husband is here?' "'Yes, my lady.' "That was all that was said on that day. The next day my lady asked me again if her husband was in the villa and I answered 'Yes.' The next day she asked me the same question, and I gave the same reply. The fourth day and the fifth she repeated the question, and my reply that my master had not been outside the gates afforded her relief. The fear in her mind was that my master and M. Gabriel would fight a duel, and that one would be killed. "During these days my lady did not leave her chamber, nor did her husband visit her. "From the window of this room the summer-house can be seen, and my lady for an hour or two each day sat at the window, gazing vacantly out. "On the evening of the fifth day my lady said: "'Denise, there have been workmen busily engaged about the summer-house. What are they doing?' "I bore in mind my master's remark to me that I was at liberty to repeat to my lady what had been said by him and M. Gabriel in their last interview. It was evident that he wished her to be made acquainted with it, and it was my duty to be faithful to him as well as to my lady. I informed her of my master's resolve to fasten the doors of the summer-house and never to allow them to be opened during his lifetime. "'There are only two more days,' she said, 'to-morrow and the next.' "I prayed silently that she would not take the fancy in her head to visit the summer-house before it was fastened up, knowing the shock that the sight of the black walls would cause her. "The next day she did not refer to the subject, but the next, which was the last, she sat at the window watching the workmen bring their tools and bars and bolts to complete the work for which they had been engaged. "'Come with me, Denise,' she said. 'A voice whispers to me that there is something concealed in the summer-house which I must see before it is too late.' "'My lady,' I said, trembling, 'I would not go if I were in your place.' "I could not have chosen worse words. "'You would not go if you were in my place!' she repeated. 'Then there _is_ something concealed there which it is necessary for me to see. Unless,' she added, looking at me for an answer, 'my husband prohibits it.' "'He has not prohibited it, my lady.' "'And yet you would not go if you were in my place! Cannot you see that I should be false to myself if I allowed that place to be sealed forever against me, before making myself acquainted with something that has taken place therein? You need not accompany me, Denise, unless you choose.' "'I will go with you, my lady,' I said, and we went out of the villa together. "We entered the summer-house, my lady first, I a few steps behind her. "She placed her hands upon her eyes and shuddered, the moment she saw the black walls. She understood what was meant by this sign. "But there was more to come, of which, up to that day, I had been ignorant. On one of the walls was painted in white, the words, "'The Grave Of Honour.' "It was like an inscription on a tomb. "When my lady opened her eyes they fell upon these cruel words. For many minutes she stood in silence, with eyes fixed on the wall, and then she turned towards me, and by a motion of her hand, ordered me to leave the place with her. Never, never, had I seen such an expression of anguish on a face as rested on hers. It was as though her own heart, her own good name, her own honour, were lying dead in that room! There are deeds which can never be atoned for. This deed of my master's was one." CHAPTER VII HUSBAND AND WIFE "Remain with me, Denise,' said my lady, as we walked back to the house. 'I am weak, and may need you." "Then, for the first time, I noticed what gave me hope. She took her baby boy in her arms, and pressed him passionately to her bosom, murmuring: "'I have only you--I have only you!' "It was not that hitherto she had been wanting in tenderness, but that in my presence she had never so yearningly displayed it. It gladdened me also to think that her child was a comfort to her in this grave crisis. "But the hope I indulged in was doomed to disappointment. In the evening my lady bade me ascertain whether her husband was in the villa. "I went to him, and made the inquiry. "'Tell my wife,' he said, in a gentle tone, 'that I am ready to wait upon her whenever she desires it.' "It was late in the night when my lady called me to assist her to dress. I did so, wondering at the strange proceeding. She chose her prettiest dress, one which she had worn in her maiden days. She wore no ornaments, or flowers or ribbons of any colour. Simply a white dress, with white lace for her head and shoulders. "'Now go to your master,' she said, 'and say I desire to see him.' "I gave him the message, and he accompanied me to this room, where my lady was waiting to receive him, with as much ceremony as if he had been a stranger guest. "I am here at your bidding,' he said, and turning to me, 'You can go, Denise.' "'You will stay, Denise,' said my lady. "The manner of both was stern, but there was more decision in my lady's voice than in his. I hesitated, not knowing which of them to obey. "'Stay, then, Denise,' said my master, 'as your mistress desires it.' "I retreated to a corner of the room, as far away from them as I could get. I was really afraid of what was coming. Within the hearts of husband and wife a storm was raging, all the more terrible because of the outward calm with which they confronted each other. "'You know,' said my lady, 'for what reason I desired to see you.' "'I know,' he replied,' that I expected you would send for me. If you had not, I should not have presented myself.' "'You have in your mind,' she said, 'matters which concern us both, of which it is necessary you should speak.' "'It is more than necessary--it is imperative that I should speak of the matters you refer to.' "'The opportunity is yours. I also have something to say when you have finished. The sooner our minds are unburdened the better it will be--for you and me.' "'It were preferable,' he added, 'that what we say to each other should be said without witnesses. Consider whether it will not be best that Denise should retire.' "'There is no best or worst for me,' she rejoined; 'my course is decided, and no arguments of yours can alter it. Denise will remain, as I bade her, and what you have to say must be spoken in her presence.' "'Be it so. Denise is the most trusted servant of my house; I have every confidence in her. Otherwise, I should insist upon her leaving the room.' "'It is right,' said my lady, 'that you should be made acquainted with a resolution I have come to within the last few hours. After this night I will never open my lips to you, nor, willingly, will I ever listen to your voice. I swear most solemnly that I am in earnest--as truly in earnest as if I were on my death-bed!' "I shuddered; her voice and manner carried conviction with them. My master turned to me, and said: "'What you hear must never pass your lips while your mistress and I are alive.' "'It never shall,' I said, shaking like a leaf. "'When we are dead, Denise, you can please yourself.' He stood again face to face with his wife. 'Madame, it is necessary that I should recall the past. When I spoke to your lady mother on the subject of my love for you--being encouraged and in a measure urged to do so by herself--I was frank and open with her. There was nothing in my life which I concealed, which I had occasion to conceal. I had grave doubts as to the suitability of a marriage with you, doubts which did not place you at a disadvantage. I had not the grace of youth to recommend me; there was a serious difference in our ages; my habits of life were staid and serious. You were fit to be the wife of a prince; your youth, your beauty, your accomplishments, entitled you to more than I could offer--which was simply a life of ease and the homage of a faithful heart. Only in one respect were we equal--in respect of birth. Had I not been encouraged by your mother, I should not have had the temerity to give expression to my feelings; but I spoke, and for me there was no retreating. I begged your lady mother not to encourage me with false hopes, but to be as frank with me as I was with her. Of the doubts which disturbed me, one was paramount. You had moved in the world--you had been idolised in society--and it scarcely seemed possible that your heart could be disengaged. In that case, I informed your lady mother that no earthly consideration could induce me to step between you and your affections; nay, with all the force which earnestness could convey, I offered to do all in my power--if it were possible that my services could avail-- to aid in bringing your life to its happiest pass. At such a moment as this, a solemn one, madame, which shall never be forgotten by you or by me, I may throw aside false delicacy, and may explain the meaning of these last words to your mother. Having had in my hands the settlement of your father's affairs, I knew that you were poor, and my meaning was, that if any money of mine could assist in bringing about a union between you and the object of your affections--did any such exist--it was ready, cheerfully offered and cheerfully given for such a purpose. I made but one stipulation in the matter--that it should never, directly or indirectly, be brought to your knowledge.' "He paused, in the expectation that his wife would speak, and she said coldly: "'You are doubtless stating the truth.' "'The simple truth, madame, neither more nor less; and believe it or not, as you will, it was your welfare, not mine, that was uppermost in my mind. Your lady mother assured me that before you came to the villa your heart was entirely free, but that since you honoured me by becoming my guest, you had fixed your affections upon myself. My astonishment was great; I could scarcely believe the evidence of my senses. I entreated your lady mother not to mislead me, and she proved to me--to me, to whom the workings of a woman's heart were as a sealed book--in a hundred different ways, which she said I might have discovered for myself if I had had the wit--that you most truly loved me. She professed to be honoured by my proposal, which she accepted for you, and which she said you would joyfully accept for yourself. But she warned me not to be disappointed in the manner in which you would receive me; that your pride and shame might impel you to appear reluctant instead of joyful, and that it behoved me, as a wise man--Heaven help me!--to put a right and sensible construction on the natural maidenly reserve of a young girl. The rest you know. The wise man, madame, has been sadly at fault; it has been fatally proved to him that he knows little of the workings of the human heart.' "She held up her hand as a sign that she wished to speak, and he paused. A little thing struck me at the time, which has never passed out of my mind. She held up her hand in front of the lamp, and the light shone through the thin, delicate fingers. Seldom do I think of my lady without seeing that slight, beautiful hand, with the pink light shining through it. "'My mother,' she said, 'did not speak the truth. M. Gabriel and I were affianced before I became your guest.' "'Your information comes too late,' said my master; 'you should have told me so much when I offered you my name. It would have been sufficient. I should not have forced myself upon you, and shame and sin would have been avoided.' "'There has been no sin,' said my lady, 'and who links me with shame brings shame upon himself. I have been wronged beyond the hope of reparation in this life. Before you spoke to me of marriage I wrote to M. Gabriel frequently from this villa. My letters were intercepted----' "He interrupted her. 'To my knowledge no letters were intercepted; I had no suspicion of such a proceeding.' "I do not say you had; I am making you acquainted with a fact. Hurt and vexed at receiving no reply to my letters, and being able to account for it only on the supposition that they had not come into his possession, I wrote one and gave it to Denise to post for me. That also, as I learnt after my mother's death, was intercepted, and never reached its destination. In the meantime, false information was given to me respecting M. Gabriel; shameful stories were related to me, in which he was the principal actor. He was vile and false, as I was led to believe; and you were held up to me as his very opposite, as noble, chivalrous, generous, disinterested----' "'In all of which you will bear in mind, I was in no way inculpated, being entirely ignorant of what was going on under my roof.' "'And I was, besides, led to believe by my mother that you had laid us under such obligations that there was but one repayment of them----' "'Plainly speaking,' he interposed, 'that, in any kindness I had shown, I was deliberately making a purchase, that in every friendly office I performed, I had but one cowardly end in view. It needed this to complete the story.' "'My heart was almost broken,' she continued, making no comment on his bitter interruption; 'but it was pointed out to me that I could at least answer the call of gratitude and duty. Doubly did my mother deceive me.' "'And doubly,' said my master, 'did you deceive me.' "'When, some time after our unhappy marriage, you introduced M. Gabriel into this house, I was both angry and humiliated. It looked as though you intended to insult me, and Denise was a witness of my agitation. It was not unnatural that, remaining here, your guest--bidden by you, not by me--for so long a time explanations should pass between M. Gabriel and myself. Then it was that my eyes were really opened to the pit into which I had been deliberately dragged.' "'Not by me were you dragged into this pit.' "'Let it pass for a moment,' she said, in a disdainful voice. 'When my eyes were opened to the truth, how was I to know that you had not shared in the plot against me? How am I to know it now?' "'By my denial. Doubt me if you will, and believe that I tricked to obtain you. I shall not attempt to undeceive you. No good purpose would be served by a successful endeavour to soften your feelings towards me; I do not, indeed, desire that they should be softened, for no link of love can ever unite us. It never did, and never can, and I am not a man to live upon shams. If I tricked to obtain you, you will not deny that I have my reward--a rich reward, the rank fruit of which will cling to me and abide with me till the last moment of my life.' "'I went into the summer-house this afternoon,' she said. "'I know it.' "'It was your intention that I should visit it.' "'It was not exactly my intention; I left it to chance.' "'You have made it a memorial of shame, of a cruel declaration against me!' "'I have made it a memorial of my own deep unhappiness. That studio will never again be opened during your life and mine. Madame, in all that you have said--and I have followed you attentively--you have not succeeded in making me believe that I have anything to reproach myself for. My blindness was deplorable, but it is not a reproach. My actions were distinguished at least by absolute candour and frankness. Can you assert the same? You loved M. Gabriel before you met me--was I to blame for that? You were made to believe he was false to you--was I to blame for that? You revenged yourself upon him by accepting my hand, and I, unversed in woman's ways, believed that no pure-minded woman would marry a man unless she loved him. I still believe so. When we stood before the altar, I was happy in the belief that your heart was mine; and certainly from that moment, your faith, your honour, were pledged to me, as mine was pledged to you. M. Gabriel was my friend. I was a man when he was a boy, and I became interested in him, and assisted him in his career. We had not met for years: he knew that I had married----' "'But he did not know,' interrupted my lady, 'that you had married _me!_' "'Granted. Was I to blame for that? After our marriage you fell into melancholy moods, which I at first ascribed to the tragic fate of your parents. Most sincerely did I sympathise with you. Day after day, night after night, did I ponder and consider how I could bring the smile to your lips, how I could gladden your young heart. Reflect upon this, madame, in the days that are before you, and reflect upon the manner in which you received my attentions. At one time, when I had invited to the villa a number of joyous spirits in the hope that their liveliness and gaiety would have a beneficial effect upon you, I received a letter from M. Gabriel with reference to a picture he was painting. I invited him here, and he came. What was his duty, what was yours, when you and he met in my presence, when I introduced you to each other, for the first time as I thought? Madame, if not before him, at least before you, there was but one honest course. Did you pursue it? No; you received M. Gabriel as a stranger, and you permitted me to rest in the belief that until that day you had been unconscious of his existence. Without referring to my previous sufferings--which, madame, were very great--in what position did I, the husband, stand in relation to my wife and friend, who, in that moment of introduction, tacitly conspired against my honour, and who, after explanations had passed between them, met and conversed as lovers? Their guilt was the more heinous because of its secrecy--and utterly, utterly unpardonable because of their treachery towards him who trusted in them both. A double betrayal! But at length the husband's suspicions were aroused. In a conversation which he accidentally overheard between two ladies who were visiting him--the name of his wife--your name, madame--was mentioned in connection with that of M. Gabriel; and from their conversation he learnt that their too friendly intimacy had become a subject for common talk. Jealous of his honour, and of his name, upon which there had hitherto been no blot, he silenced the scandal-mongers; but from that day he more carefully observed his wife and his friend, until the truth was revealed. Then came retribution, and a black chapter in the lives of three human beings was closed--though the book itself is not yet completed.' "He paused, a long time as it seemed to me, before he spoke again. The silence was awful, and in the faces of the husband and the wife there were no signs of relenting. They bore themselves as two persons might have done who had inflicted upon each other a mortal wrong for which there was no earthly forgiveness. From my heart I pitied them both." CHAPTER VIII THE COMPACT "You sent for me, madame,' he said presently, 'because it was necessary that some explanation should be given of the occurrences that have taken place in my family, of which you are a member. Each of us has reason to regret an alliance which has caused us so much suffering. Unfortunately for our happiness and our peace of mind the truth has been spoken too late; but it were idle now to waste time in lamentations. There are in life certain bitter trials which must be accepted; in that light I accept the calamity which has fallen upon us, and which, had I known before our marriage what I know now, would most surely have been averted. It was in your power to avert it; you did not do so, but led me blindly into the whirlpool. You have informed me that, after this night, you will never open your lips to me, nor ever again listen to my voice.' "'Nor will I,' she said, 'from the rising of to-morrow's sun.' "'I shall do nothing to woo you from that resolve. But you bear my name, and to some extent my honour is still in your keeping.' "'Have you, then,' she asked, 'any commands to give me?' "'It will depend,' he replied, 'upon what I hear from you. So far as my honour is concerned I intend to exercise control over you; no farther.' "'Your honour is safe with me, as it has always been." "'I will not debate the point with you. You say that you have decided on your course, and that no arguments of mine will turn you from it.' "'Yes; my course is decided. Am I free to go from your house?' "'You are not free to go. Only one thing shall part us--death!' "'We have a child,' she said, and her voice, for that moment, insensibly softened. "'Is he asleep?' "'Yes.' "He went into the inner room, and remained there for several minutes, and my lady, with a white and tearless face, waited for his return. "I thought I heard the sound of kisses in the bedroom, but I could not be sure. There was, however, a tender light in my master's eyes when he came back, a light which showed that his heart was touched. "'Our child shall remain with you,' he said to my lady, 'if you wish.' "'I do wish it," she said. "'I will not take him from you, only that I must sometimes see him.' "'He shall be brought to you every day.' "'I am content. Let him grow up to love me or hate me, as the prompting of his nature and your teaching shall direct. From my lips he shall never hear a disparaging word of his mother.' "'Nor shall he, from my lips, of his father.' "He bowed to her as he would have bowed to a princess, and said: "'I thank you. But little, then, remains to be said. We are bound to each other irrevocably, and we cannot part without disgrace. We have brought our griefs upon ourselves, and we must bear them in silence. The currents of my life are changed, and these gates shall never again be opened to friends. I have done with friendship as I have done with love. I ask you what course you have determined upon?' "'I propose,' said my lady, 'to make these rooms my home, if you will give them to me to live in.' "'They are yours,' he replied. 'Unless I am compelled by duty, or by circumstances which I do not at present foresee, I will never enter them during your lifetime.' "'It is as I would have it,' she said. 'In daylight I shall not leave them. If I walk in the grounds it shall be at nightfall. Outside your gates I will never more be seen, nor will I allow a friend or an acquaintance to visit me. Will you allow Denise to wait upon me?' "'She is your servant, and yours only, from this moment. I am pleased that you have selected her.' "'Denise,' said my lady to me, 'are you willing to serve me?' "'Yes, my lady,' I answered. I was almost choked with sobs, while they were outwardly calm and unmoved. "'Then there is nothing more to be said--except farewell.' And my lady looked towards the door. "He did not linger a moment. He bowed to her ceremoniously, and left the room. "When he was gone I felt as if some sudden and fearful shock must surely take place, as if a thunderbolt would fall and destroy us, or as if my lady would fall dead at my feet, the silence that ensued was so unearthly. But nothing occurred, and when I had courage to look up I saw my lady sitting in a chair, white and still, with a resigned and determined expression on her face. It would have been a great relief to me if she had cried, but there was not a tear in her eyes. "'Do you believe me guilty, Denise?' she asked. "'The saints forbid,' I cried, 'that such a wicked thought should enter my mind! I know you to be an innocent, suffering lady.' "'You will do as you have been bidden to do, Denise. While my husband and I are living you will not speak of what has passed within this room.' "'I will not, my lady.' "And never again was the subject referred to by either of us. She did not make the slightest allusion to it, and I did not dare to do so." CHAPTER IX MOTHER DENISE HAS STRANGE FANCIES IN THE NIGHT "A new life now commenced for us--a new and dreadful life. Mr. Almer gave orders that no person was to be admitted to the villa without his express permission. He denied himself to every chance visitor, and from that time until you came, my lady, no friend of the family, except a great banker, and occasionally Master Pierre Lamont, both of whom came upon business, ever entered the gates. The doctor, of course, when he was needed; but no one else. "Mr. Almer passed most of his time in his study, writing and reading, and pacing to and fro as he used to do in times gone by. He did not make any enquiries about my lady, nor did she about him. She lived in these rooms, and, in my remembrance, did not stir out of them during the day. Master Christian slept in the inner room there, and was free to roam about as he pleased. "Every morning I took the child to his father, who sometimes would kiss him and send him back to my lady, and sometimes would say: "'You can leave him with me, Denise, for an hour.' "Then he would take the child into the study, and lock the door, and nurse and sing to him. I was in the habit of seeing him thus engaged as I walked backwards and forwards in the grounds in front of the study, waiting for his summons to carry master Christian to his mother. "His was not a happy childhood, for when he began ta speak and think, the estrangement between his parents puzzled him deeply, and made him sad. He was continually asking questions to which he received replies which perplexed him more and more. With childlike, innocent cunning he strove to draw them to each other. When he was with my lady, it was: "'Mamma, why do you not go and speak to papa? There he is walking in the garden. Come out with me, mamma--come quickly, or papa will be gone.' "And when he was with his father he would say: "'Papa, I have a message for you.' "'Yes, Christian,' my master would say. "'You are to take hold of my hand, and come with me immediately to mamma. Yes, papa, indeed, immediately! She wants to speak to you.' "Mr. Almer knew that this was nothing but invention on the child's part. "What they learnt of each other's health and doings came through Master Christian; it is very hard, my lady, to stop a child's innocent prattle. "'Papa, I wish to tell you something.' "'Tell me, Christian.' "'Mamma has a bad headache--such a bad, bad headache! I have been smoothing her forehead with my hand, but it will not go away for me. You cured my headache last week; come and cure mamma.' "And at another time: "'Papa, is not this beautiful?' "'Yes, Christian, it is very pretty.' "'Mamma painted it for me. Do you know, papa, she has painted me--yes, my portrait, and has put it in a book. It is exactly like--you could not tell it from me myself. Shall I ask her to give it to you--or will you come and ask for it yourself?' "With my lady it was the same. "'Mamma, papa has been writing all day long. I peeped through the window, and he looked so tired--just as you look sometimes. Now, mamma, tell me--do you think papa is happy?' "'Mamma, see what papa has given me--a musical-box! Only because I said to him I should like a musical-box! Is he not good?' "And so it went on day after day, week after week, but the child's eager, anxious love brought them no nearer to each other. "In the dark nights when the weather permitted, my lady walked in the grounds. At first I offered to accompany her, but she refused my company. "'I will walk alone, Denise.' "The servants used to say, as the moonlight fell on her white dress: "'She looks like a white ghost.' "And at other times: "'She is like a white shadow moving in the moon's light.' "Her husband was careful to keep out of her sight when she indulged in these lonely rambles. They would not make the slightest advance to each other. "I must not forget to tell you what occurred about a month after this estrangement. The duties of my attendance on my lady did not keep me with her during the night unless she was ill, and was likely to require my services. Generally I waited till I saw her abed and asleep. She retired early, and this afforded me an opportunity of looking after the room occupied by my husband and myself. "I remember that on this night I drew the blind aside after I was undressed, and looked toward my master's study. There were lights in the windows, as usual. I was not surprised, for Mr. Almer frequently sat up the whole night through. "I went to bed, and soon fell asleep. "Quite contrary to my usual habit, I woke up while it was dark, and heard the sound of the clock striking the hour. I counted the strokes, from one to twelve. It was midnight. "I was such a good sleeper--seldom waking till the morning, when it was time to get up--that I wondered to myself what it was that awoke me. The striking of the clock? Hardly--for that was no new sound. What, then? Gusts of wind were sweeping round the walls of the villa. 'Ah,' I thought, 'it was the wind that disturbed me;' and I settled myself for sleep again, when suddenly another sound--an unusual one this time--made me jump up in bed. The sound was like that of a heavy object jumping, or falling, from a height within the grounds. "'Can it be robbers,' I thought, 'who have climbed the gates, and missed their footing?' "The thought alarmed me, and I woke my husband, and told him what I had heard. He rose, and looked out of the window. "'Mr. Almer is up and awake,' said he. 'If there were any cause for alarm he would not be sitting quietly in his study, poring over his books. What you heard is the wind. Robbers, indeed! I pity the thief who tries to pass our dogs; he would be torn to pieces. There! let me get to sleep, and don't disturb me again with your foolish fancies; and get to sleep yourself as quick as you can. Now your head is stirring, you'll be imagining all sorts of things.' "That was all the satisfaction I could get out of him; the next moment he was fast asleep again. "It was no easy thing for me to follow his example. I lay thinking and thinking for an hour or more. I was glad my husband had mentioned the dogs; in my alarm I had forgotten them. Martin was quite right. Any stranger who attempted to pass them would have been torn to pieces. "Well, but there _was_ somebody walking on the gravelpaths! I heard soft footsteps crunching the stones, stepping cautiously, as though fearful of disturbing the people in the house. These sounds came to my ears between the gusts of wind, which were growing stronger and stronger. "I was on the point of rousing my husband again when it occurred to me that it might be my master, who, restless as usual, was walking about the grounds. "This explanation quieted me, and I was soon asleep. For how long I cannot say, for suddenly I found myself sitting up in bed, wide awake, listening to the wind, which was shaking the house to its foundations. And yet the impression was so strong upon me that it was not the storm that had frightened me, that I went to the window and looked out, expecting to see Heaven only knows what. Nothing was to be seen, and presently I reasoned myself out of my fears, and was not again disturbed during the night. "In the morning a strange discovery was made. A servant came running to me before I was dressed, with the information that our two dogs were dead. I hurried to the kennel and saw their bodies stretched out, cold and stiff. "Mr. Almer was very fond of these dogs, and I went to him and told him what had occurred. There was a strange, wild look in his eyes which I attributed to want of sleep. But stranger than this weary, wild expression was the smile on his lips when he heard the news. "He followed me to the kennel, and stooped down. "'They are quite dead, Denise,' he said. "'Yes, sir,' I said, 'but who could have done such a cruel thing?' "'The dogs have been poisoned,' he said, 'here is the meat that was thrown to them. There is still some white powder upon it.' "'Poisoned!' I cried. 'The wretches.' "'Whoever did this deed,' said my master, 'deserved to die. It is as bad as killing a human creature in cold blood.' "'Are you sure, sir,' I said, 'there has been nothing stolen from the house?' "'You can go and see, Denise.' "I made an examination of the rooms. Nothing had been taken from them. I tried the door of my master's study to examine that room also, but it was locked. When I returned my master was still kneeling by the dogs. "'It does not appear that anything has been taken,' I said, 'but the sounds I heard in the night prove that there have been robbers here.' "'What sounds did you hear?' asked my master, looking up. "I told him of my alarm, and of my waking my husband, and of my fancies. "'Fancies!' he said; 'yes--it could have been nothing but imagination. I have been up the whole night, and had there been an attempt at robbery, I must surely have known it. Were any of the other servants disturbed?" "'No, sir.' "I had already questioned them, but they had all slept soundly and had heard nothing. I had been also with my lady for a few moments, but she had not been disturbed during the night by anything but the howling of the wind. "'Let the matter rest,' said my master; 'it will be best. It is my wish that you do not speak of it. The dogs are dead, and nothing can restore them to life. Evil deeds carry their own punishment with them! The next time you are frightened by fancies in the night, and see a light in my study, you may be satisfied that all is well.' "So the dogs were buried, and no action was taken to punish their murderers; and in a little while the whole affair was forgotten." CHAPTER X CHRISTIAN ALMER'S CHILD-LIFE "The years went by in the lonely villa without any change, except that my lady grew into the habit of taking her walks in the grounds later in the night. Not a word was exchanged between her and her husband; had seas divided them they could not have been further apart from each other. "A dreadful, dreary monotony of days. The direction and control of the house was left entirely to me; my master took not the slightest interest in what was going on. I should have asked to be relieved from the service, had it not been for my affection for my mistress. To live with her--as I did for years, attending upon her daily--without loving her was not possible. Her gentleness, her resignation, her resolution, her patience, were almost beyond belief with those who were not constant witnesses of her lonely, blameless, suffering life. "She never wrote or received a letter. She severed herself entirely from the world, and these rooms were her living grave. "She loved her child, but she did not give way to any violent demonstration of feeling. I observed, as the lad grew up, that he became more and more perplexed by the relations which existed between his parents. Had one or the other been unkind to him, he might have been able to put a reasonable construction upon the estrangement, but they were equally affectionate, equally tender towards him. He continued to exercise the prettiest cunning to bring them together, but without avail. Without avail, also, the entreaties he used. "'Mamma, the sun is shining beautifully. Do come out with me and speak to papa. Do, mamma, do! See, he is walking in the garden.' "'Mamma, may I bring papa into your room? Say yes. I am sure he would be glad.' "'Papa, mamma is really very ill. I do so wish you would see her and speak to her! There, papa, I have hold of your hand. Come, papa, come!' "It was heart-breaking to hear the lad, who loved both, who received love from both. "'Mamma,' he said, 'are you rich?' "'In what way, dear child?' she asked, I have no doubt wondering at his question; 'in money? Do you mean that?' "'Yes, mamma, I mean that.' "'We are not in want of money, Christian.' "'Then you can buy whatever you want, mamma.' "'I want very little, Christian.' "'But if you wanted a great deal,' he persisted, 'you have money to pay for it?' "'Yes, Christian.' "'And papa, too?' "'Yes, and papa too.' "'I can't make it out,' he said. 'Yesterday, I saw a poor little girl crying. I asked her what she was crying for, and she said her mamma was in great trouble because they had no money. I asked her if money would make her mamma happy, and she said yes. Then why does it not make you happy?' "'Would you like some money, Christian,' said my lady, 'to give to this poor girl's mamma?' "'Yes, mamma.' "Here is my purse. Denise will go with you at once.' "We went to the cottage, and found that the family were in deep distress. The father was in arrears with his rent, having been unable to work, through illness, for a good many weeks; he was now strong enough to return to his employment, but he was plunged into such difficulties that all his courage had deserted him. The mother was weak with overpowering anxiety, and the children were in want of food. "I saw that the family were deserving of assistance, and I directed Master Christian what to give them. He visited them daily for a week and more, and the roses came back to the children's cheeks, and the hearts of the father and mother were filled with hope and gladness. "'Mamma,' said Master Christian, 'you have no idea how happy they are--and all because I gave them a little money. They play and sing together--yes, mamma, all of them; it is beautiful to see them. They call me their good angel.' "'I am very glad you have made them happy, my dear,' said my lady. "'Mamma, they are happy because they love each other, and because they laugh and sing together. Let me be your good angel, mamma, and papa's. Tell me what to do, so that we may live like those poor people!' "These were hard things for parents to hear, and harder because no answers could be given to them. "We went out for a stroll every fine day for an hour or so, and when Master Christian saw a child walking between father and mother, who smiled at each other and their little one, and spoke pleasantly and kindly one to the other, his eyes would fill with tears. He would peep through cottage windows--nay, he would go into the cottages, where he was always welcome, and would furnish himself with proofs of domestic happiness which never gladdened his heart in his own home. With scanty food, with ragged clothes, the common peasant children were enjoying what was denied to him. "He had one especial friend, a delicate child, who at length was laid on a bed of sickness from which he never rose. Master Christian, for a few weeks before this child died, visited him daily in my company, and took the poor little fellow many comforting things, for which the humble family were very grateful. My young master would stand by the bedside of the sick child, and witness, in silent pain, the evidences of paternal love which lightened the load of the little sufferer. "The day before the child died we approached the cottage, and Master Christian peeped through the window. The child was dying, and by his bedside sat the sorrowing parents. The man's arm was round the woman's waist, and her head was resting on her husband's shoulder. We entered the cottage, and remained an hour, and as we walked home Master Christian said: "'If I were dying, would my mamma and papa sit like that?' "I could find no words to answer this question, which showed what was passing in Master Christian's mind. "'Cannot you tell me,' said Master Christian, 'whether my rich parents would do for me what that little boy's poor parents are doing for him? It is so very much, Denise--so very, very much! It is more than money, for money is no use in Heaven, where he is going to. I wish my mamma and papa had been poor; then they would have lived together and have loved each other. Denise, tell me what it all means.' "'Hush, Master Christian,' I said, trying to soothe him, for his little bosom was swelling with grief. 'When you are a man you will understand.' "'I want to understand now--I want to understand now!' he cried. 'There is something very wicked about our house. I hate it--I hate it!' "And he stamped his foot, and broke into a fit of sobbing so charged with sorrow that I could not help sobbing with him. "Something of this must have reached his parents' ears, and how they suffered only themselves could have known. My master grew thin and wan; dark circles came round his eyes, and they often had a wild look in them which made me fear he was losing his senses. And my lady drooped and drooped, like a flower planted in unwholesome soil. Paler and quieter she grew every day; sweeter and more resigned, if that were possible, with every setting of the sun; so weak at last that she could not take her walk in the grounds. "Sitting by the window, looking at the lovely sky, she said to me one peaceful evening: "'I shall soon be there, Denise.' "'Oh, my lady!' was all I could say. "'It rejoices me to think,' she said, 'that this long agony is coming to an end. I pray that the dear child I shall leave behind me will not suffer as I have suffered, that his life may be happy, and his end be peaceful. Denise, my mother is in that invisible spirit-land to which I am going. When she sees me coming, will she not be frightened to meet me? for, if it had not been for her, all this misery would have been averted.' "'My lady,' I said--so saint-like was her appearance that I could have knelt to her, 'let me go to my master and bring him to you.' "'He would not come,' she said, 'at your bidding, Denise. Has he not been often entreated by our child?' "Believing that this was a sign of relenting on her part, I said: "'He knows that I dare not deceive him. He will come if I say you sent for him.' "'Perhaps, perhaps,' she said; 'but I would not have him come yet. When I summon him here he will not refuse me.' "'You will send for him one day, my lady?' "'Yes, Denise, unless I die suddenly in my sleep--an end I have often prayed for. But this great blessing may be denied to me.' "Ah, how sad were the days! It fills me with grief, even now, to speak of them. All kinds of strange notions entered my head during that time. I used to think it would be a mercy if a terrible flood were to come, or if someone would set fire to the villa. It would bring these two unhappy beings together for a few minutes at least. But nothing happened; the days were all alike, except that I saw very plainly that my lady could not live through another summer. She was fading away before my eyes. "The end came at last, when Master Christian was nearly nine years old." CHAPTER XI BEATRICE ALMER GIVES A PROMISE TO HER SON "It was a spring morning, and my lady was alone. Master Christian was in the woods with his father; he was to be home at noon, and my lady was watching for him at her window. "Exactly at noon the lad returned, beaming with delight; the hours he spent with his father were memorable hours in his life. "'You have enjoyed yourself, Christian,' said my lady, drawing her boy to her side, and smoothing his hair. 'It does you good to go out with papa.' "'Yes, mamma,' said the lad, in his eager, excited voice. 'There is no one in the world like papa--no man, I mean. He knows everything--yes, mamma, everything! There isn't a thing you ask him that he can't tell you all about it. We have had such a beautiful walk; the forests are full of birds and squirrels. Papa knows the name of every bird and flower. See, mamma, all these are wild flowers--papa helped me to gather them, and showed me where some of the prettiest are to be found. You should hear him talk about the flowers! He has told me such wonderful, wonderful things about them! I believe they live, as we do, and that they have a language of their own. Papa smiled when I said I thought the flowers were alive, and he told me that the world was full of the loveliest mysteries, and that, although men thought themselves very wise, they really knew very little. Perhaps it is so--with all men but papa. It is because he isn't vain and proud that he doesn't set himself above other men. In the middle of the woods papa stopped and said, as he waved his hand around, "This, Christian, is Nature's book. Not all the wisdom of all the men in all the world could write one line of it. That little bird flying in the air to the nest which it has built for its young, and which is so small that I could hold it in the palm of my hand, is in itself a greater and more marvellous work than the united wisdom of all mankind shall ever be able to produce." There, mamma, you would hardly believe that I should remember papa's words; but I repeated them to myself over and over again as we walked along--they sounded so wonderful! Mamma, are there flowers in heaven?' "'Yes, my dear,' she answered, gazing upwards, 'forever blooming.' "'Then it is always summer there, mamma?' "'Yes, dear child--it is the better land on which we dwell in hope. Peace is there, and love.' "'We shall all go there, mamma?' "'Yes, dear child--one day.' "'And shall live there in peace and love?' "'Yes, Christian.' "'Mamma,' said the child solemnly, 'I shall be glad when the day comes on which you and papa and I shall be together there, in peace and love. Mamma, you are crying. I have not hurt you, have I?' "'No, dear child, no. To hear you speak gives me great joy.' "'Ah, but I can't speak like papa. He has told me of that better world, and though I can't understand all he says, I know it must be very beautiful. Papa is a good man. I love him more than any other man--and I love you, mamma, better than any other woman. Papa is a good man, is he not, mamma?' "'Yes, my child,' said my lady, 'your father is a good and a just man.' "My heart leapt into my throat as I heard her speak these words of her husband. Was it possible that this dreadful estrangement was to end, and that my master and his wife would at length be reconciled, after all these weary years? "My lady was lying back in her chair, gazing now at her boy, now at the bright clouds which were floating in the heavens. Ah, my lady, if we were but to follow God's teaching, and learn the lessons He sends us every day and every hour, how much unhappiness should we be spared! But it seems as if there was a wicked spirit within us which is continually dropping poison into the fairest things, for the mere pleasure of destroying their beauty and making us wretched. "There was an angelic expression on my lady's face as she encouraged her boy to speak of his father. "'I have often wished to tell you,' said Master Christian, 'that papa is not strong--not as strong as I am. He soon gets tired, while I can run about all day. This morning he often stopped to rest, and once he threw himself upon the ground, and fell fast asleep. I sat by his side and listened to the birds, who were all so happy, while papa's face was filled with pain. Yes, mamma, he was in great pain, and he sighed, oh, so heavily! as though sleep was hurting him instead of doing him good. And he spoke in his sleep, and his words made me tremble. "I call God to witness"--that was what he said, mamma--"I call God to witness that there was in my mind no design to do wrong." And then he said something about sin and sorrow springing from the flower of innocence. A bird was flying near us, stopping to look at us, and not at all frightened, because I was so very, very quiet. "Little bird," I whispered, "that my father could hold in the palm of his hand, do you know what he is dreaming of, and will you, because he is my father and a good man, do something to make him happy?" Oh, mamma, the bird at that very moment began to sing, and papa smiled in his sleep, and all the pain in his face disappeared. That bird, mamma, was a fairy-bird, and knew that papa ought not to suffer. And presently papa awoke, and folded me tight in his arms, and we sat there quite still, for a long, long time, listening to the singing of the bird. Oh, mamma, mamma! why will you not love papa as I do?' "Who could resist such pleading? My lady could not. "'My child,' she said, 'I will send for papa to-morrow.' "'You will--you will!' cried the child. 'Oh, how glad I am! Papa will be here to-morrow, and we shall live together as poor people do, and be happy, as they are!' He sprang from her side, ready to fly out of the room. 'Shall I go and tell papa now? Yes, I may, I may--say that I may, mamma!' "'Not till to-morrow, Christian. Come and sit quietly by me, and talk to me.' "He obeyed her, though it was difficult for him to control himself, his joy was so great. He devised numberless schemes in which he and his parents were to take part. They were to go here, and to go there--always together. His friends were to be their friends, and they were to share each other's pleasures. Rambles in the woods, hunting for wild flowers, visits to poor cottages--he planned all these things in the delight of his heart. "So they passed the day, the mother and child, and when night came he begged again to be allowed to go to his father and tell him what was in store for him. But my lady was firm. "'No, Christian,' she said, 'you must wait yet for a few hours. They will soon pass away. You are tired, dear child. Go to bed and sleep well.' "Good mamma! beautiful mamma!' said the lad, caressing his mother and stroking her face. 'I shall dream all night long of to-morrow!' "She never kissed her child with deeper tenderness than she did on this night. He knelt at her knees and said his prayers, and of his own accord ended with the words: 'And make my papa and my mamma love each other to-morrow!' "'Good-night, dear child.' "'Good-night, dear mamma. I want to-morrow to come quickly. Good-night, Denise.' "'Good-night, Master Christian.' "In a few minutes he was asleep. Then my lady called me to her, and spoke gratefully of the manner in which I had performed my services to her. "'You have been a good and faithful servant to me,' she said, 'and you have helped to comfort me. Your duties have been difficult, and you have performed them well.' "'My lady,' I said sobbing; I could not keep back my tears, she was so gracious and sweet. 'I have done nothing to deserve such thanks. If what you have said to Master Christian comes true I shall be very happy. Forgive me for asking, but is it really true that you will send for my master to-morrow?' "'It will be so, Denise, unless God in His mercy takes me to-night. We are in His hands, and I wait for His summons. His will be done! Denise, wear this cross in remembrance of me. I kiss it before I give it to you--and I kiss you, Denise!' "And as she put the cross round my neck, which she took from her own, she kissed me on the lips. Her touch was like an angel's touch. "Then she said, pointing to the posy which had been gathered in the woods by her husband and her child: "'Give me those flowers, you faithful woman.' "Do not think me vain or proud for repeating the words she spoke to me. They were very, very precious to me, and the sweetness has not died out of them, though she who uttered them is dust. "I gave her the flowers, and she held them to her heart, and encouraged me to sit with her later than usual. Two or three times in the midst of our conversation, she asked me to go to Master Christian's room to see if he was asleep, and when I told her he was sleeping beautifully, and that he looked like an angel, she smiled, and thanked me. "'He will grow into a noble man,' she said, 'and will, I trust, think of me with tenderness. I often look forward and wonder what his life will be.' "'A happy one, I am sure,' I said. "'I pray that it may be so, and that he will meet with a woman who will truly and faithfully love him.' "Then she asked me if there was a light in her husband's study, and going out into the balcony to look, I said there was, and said, moreover, that my master often sat up the whole night through, reading and studying. "'You have been in his service a long time, Denise,' said my lady. "'Yes, my lady. I was born in this house, and my mother lived and died here.' "'Was your master always a student, Denise?' "Always, my lady. Even when he was a boy he would shut himself up with his books. He is not like other men. From his youngest days we used to speak of him with wonder.' "'He is very learned,' said my lady. 'How shall one be forgiven for breaking up his life?' "'Ah, my lady,' I said, 'if I dared to speak!' "'Speak freely, Denise!' "And then I described to her what a favourite my master was when he was a lad, and how everybody admired him, although he held himself aloof from people. I spoke of his gentleness, of his kindness, of his goodness to the poor, whom he used to visit and help in secret. I told her that never did woman have a more faithful and devoted lover than my master was to her, nor a man with a nobler heart, nor one who stood more highly in the world's esteem. "She listened in silence, and did not chide me for my boldness, and when I was done, she said she would retire to rest. But she was so weak that she could scarcely rise from her chair. "'I had best remain with you to-night, my lady,' I said; 'you may need my services.' "'It is not necessary," she said; 'I shall require nothing, and I shall be better to-morrow.' "I considered it my duty to make my master acquainted with his wife's condition, but I did not tell him of her intention to ask him to come to her to-morrow for fear that she should alter her mind. There had been disappointment and vexation enough in the house, and I would not add to it. "I could not rest, I was so anxious about my lady, and an hour after I was abed, I rose and dressed myself and went to her room. She was on her knees, praying by the bedside of her child, and I stole softly away without disturbing her. "Again, later in the night, I went to her room. She was sleeping calmly, but her breathing was so light that I could scarcely hear it. In the morning I helped her to dress, and afterwards assisted her to her favourite seat by the window. "Master Christian was already up and about, and shortly after his mother was dressed he came in loaded with flowers, to make the room look beautiful, he said, on this happy day. "It was a day he was never to forget." CHAPTER XII THE LAST MEETING BETWEEN HUSBAND AND WIFE "The morning passed, and my lady made no sign. Master Christian, flitting restlessly in and out and about the room, waited impatiently for his mother's instructions to bring her husband to her. I offered her food, but she could not eat it. On the previous day the doctor, who regularly attended her, had said that his services were required at a great distance from the villa, and that he should not be able to visit my lady on the morrow. She had replied: "'Do not trouble, doctor; you can do nothing for me.' "And, indeed, there appeared to be no special necessity for his presence. My lady was not in pain; she looked happy and contented. But she was so quiet, so very, very quiet! Not a word of complaint or suffering, not a moan, not a sigh. Why, therefore, did my heart sink as I gazed at her? "At length Master Christian was compelled to speak; he could no longer control his impatience. "'Mamma, do you like the way I have arranged the flowers? The room looks pretty, does it not?' "'Yes, my child.' "'I wanted it to look very bright to-day. So did you, did you not, mamma? Papa will be pleased when he comes.' "'I hope so, my dear.' "'And I shall tell him that it is not so every day, and that it is done for him. Shall I go for him now?' "'Presently, my dear. Wait yet a little while.' "'But, mamma, it was to be to-day, you know, and it is nearly afternoon. Just look at the clock, mamma, it is nearly two---- Ah, but you are tired, and I am worrying you! Now I will sit quite still, and when the clock strikes two, you shall tell me to go for papa. Say yes, or look it, mamma.' "'Yes, my dear, at two o'clock you shall go. Denise will accompany you, for perhaps, Christian, your papa will think that the message comes from your affectionate heart, and not from me.' "'That,' said Master Christian,' is because I have tried to bring papa to you before. But I did it out of love, mamma.' "'I know, my dear, I know. If, when you were a little baby, and could not speak or think of things, I had reflected, it might all have been different. Perhaps I have been to blame.' "'No, mamma, you shall not say that; I will not let you say that. You can't do anything wrong, and papa can't do anything wrong. Now I shall be quite still, and watch the clock, and I will not say another word till it strikes.' "He sat, as he had promised, quite still, with his eyes fixed on the clock, and I saw by the motion of his lips that he was counting the seconds. Slowly, oh, so slowly, the hands moved round till they reached the hour, and then the silver chimes were heard. First, the four divisions of the hour, then the hour itself. One, Two. In my ears it was like the chapel bell calling the people to prayer. "'Now, mamma!' cried Master Christian, starting up. "She took his pretty face between her hands, and drew it close to hers. She kissed his lips and his forehead, and then her hands fell to her side. "'May I go now, mamma?' "He saw in her eyes that she was willing he should bring his father, and he embraced her joyfully, and ran out of the room crying: "'Come, Denise, come! Papa, papa!' "He did not wait for me, and when I arrived at the study door, the father and son were standing together, and Master Christian was trying to pull my master along. "'This little fellow here,' said my master, striving to speak cheerfully, but his lips trembled, and his voice was husky, 'has a strong imagination, and his heart is so full of love that it runs away with his tongue.' "'It does not, papa, it does not,' cried Master Christian very earnestly. 'And it is not imagination. Mamma wants you to come and love her.' "My master turned his enquiring eyes to my face. "'My lady wishes you to come to her, sir,' I said simply. "I knew that the fewer words I spoke at such a time the better it would be. "He did not question me. He was satisfied that I spoke the truth. "His agitation was great, and he walked a few steps from me, holding Master Christian by the hand, and then stood still for quite a minute. Then he stooped and kissed his son, and suffered himself to be led to my lady's room. "I followed them at a little distance, and remained outside my lady's room, while they entered and closed the door behind them. It was not right that any eyes but theirs should witness so sacred a meeting; but though I denied myself the pleasure of being present, my heart was in my ears. It was proper that I should be within call. In my lady's weak state, my services might be required. "From where I stood, I heard Master Christian's eager, happy voice: "'Mamma, mamma--here is papa! He is come at last, mamma! Speak to him, and love him, as I do! Papa, put your arms around mamma's neck, and kiss her.' "Then all was quiet--so quiet, so quiet! Not a sound, not a breath. Ah, Holy Mother! I can _hear_ the silence now:--I can _feel_ it about me! It was in this very room, and my lady was sitting in the chair in which you are seated. "Suddenly the silence was broken. My master was calling loudly for me. "'Denise--Denise! Where are you? Come quickly, for God's sake!' "Before the words were out of his lips, I was in the room. My master was looking wildly upon his wife and child. The lad, with his arms about his mother, was kissing her passionately, and crying over her. "'Mamma, mamma! why do you not speak? Here is papa waiting for you. Oh, mamma, say only one word!' "'Is it true,' my master whispered to me, 'that your lady sent you for me?' "'It is true, sir,' I replied in a low tone. "'What, then, is the meaning of this?' he asked, still in the same unnatural whisper. 'I have spoken to her--she will not answer me. She will not even look at me!' "A sudden fear smote my heart. I stepped softly to my lady's side. I gently unwound Master Christian's arms from his mother's neck. I took her hand in mine, and pressed it. The pressure was not returned. Her fingers, though still warm, were motionless. "'What is it, Denise?' my master asked hoarsely. 'The truth--the truth!' "He read the answer in my eyes. We were gazing on the face of a dead woman! "Yes, she was dead, and no word had been exchanged between them--no look of affection--no token of forgiveness. How truly, how prophetically, had she spoken to her husband in their last interview on this spot, eight years before! 'After this night I will never open my lips to you, nor, willingly, will I ever again listen to your voice!' "From that hour to this he had never heard the sound of her voice, and now that, after their long agony--for there is no doubt that his sufferings were as great as hers--she had summoned him to her, she was dead! Ah, if she had only lived to say: "'Mine was the fault; it was not only I who was betrayed; let there be peace and forgiveness between us!' "Did she know, when she called him to her, that he would look upon her dead face? Could she so measure her moments upon earth as to be certain that her heart would cease to beat as he entered the room at her bidding? No, it could not have been, for this premeditation would have proclaimed her capable of vindictive passion. She was full of tender feeling and sweet compassion, and the influence of her child _must_ have softened her heart towards the man who had loved and married her, and had done her no wrong. "That she knew she was dying was certain, and she was willing--nay more than willing, wishful to forgive and to ask forgiveness as she stood upon the brink of another world. The sight of his worn and wasted face may have shocked her and caused her sudden death. But it remained a mystery whether she had seen him--whether her spirit had not taken flight before her husband presented himself to her. It was a question none could answer. "I am aware that there are people who would say that my lady deliberately designed this last bitter blow to her husband. My master did not think so. When the first shock of his grief was spent, his face expressed nothing but sorrow and compassion. He kissed her once--on her forehead, not on her lips--and after her eyes were closed and she lay, white and beautiful, upon her bed, he sat by her side the whole of the day and night--for a great part of the time with Master Christian in his arms. "There were those in the villa who declared that on the night of her death the white shadow of my lady was seen gliding about the grounds, and from that day the place was supposed to be haunted. For my own part I knew that these were foolish fancies, but you cannot reason people out of them. "The next day my master made preparations for the funeral. His strange manner of conducting it strengthened the superstition. He would not have any of his old friends at the funeral, although many wrote to him. Only himself and Master Christian and the servants followed my lady to her grave. He would not allow any black crape to be worn, and all the female servants of the house were dressed in white. "It caused a great deal of talk, a good many people saying that it was a sinful proceeding on the part of my master, and that it was a sign of joy at his wife's death. They must have been blind to the grief in his face--so plainly written there that the tears came to my eyes as I looked at it--when they uttered this slander. And yet, if the truth were told, if it were deeply searched for among the ashes in his heart, it is not unlikely that my master was sorrowfully grateful that his wife's martyrdom was at an end. For her sake, not for his own, did he experience this sad feeling of gratitude. It was entirely in accordance with his stern sense of justice--in the exercise of which he was least likely to spare himself of all people in the world--that, while he was bowed down to the earth in grief, he should be glad that his wife was dead. "All kinds of rumours were afloat concerning the house and the family. The gossips declared that on certain nights the grounds were filled with white shadows, mournfully following each other in a long funeral train. That is how the villa grew to be called The House of Shadows. "It was like a tomb. Not a person was permitted to pass the gates. Not a servant could be prevailed upon to stop. All of them left, with the exception of Martin and myself, and my daughter, Dionetta's mother. Dionetta was not born at the time. We were glad to take Fritz the Fool into the place, to run of errands and do odd jobs. He was a young lad then, an orphan, and has been hanging about ever since. But for all the good he is, he might as well be at the other end of the world. "The rumours spread into distant quarters, and one day a priest, who had travelled scores of miles for the purpose of seeing my master, presented himself at the gates, which were always kept locked by my master's orders. I asked the priest what he wanted, and he said he must speak to Mr. Almer. I told him that no person was admitted, and that my master would see none, but he insisted that I should give his errand. I did so, and my master accompanied me to the gates. "'You have received your answer from my servant,' said my master. 'Why do you persist in your attempts to force yourself upon me?' "'My errand is a solemn one,' said the priest; 'I am bidden by Heaven to come to you.' "My master smiled scornfully. 'What deeds in my life,' he said, 'I shall be called upon to answer for before a divine tribunal, concern me, and me only. Were you an officer of justice you should be admitted; but you are a priest, and I do not need you. I am my own priest. Begone.' "He was importunate, and was not so easily got rid of. Day after day, for two weeks, he made his appearance at the gates, but he could not obtain admittance, and at length he was compelled to forego his mission, whatever it might have been, and to leave without having any further speech with my master. "Soon after he left, my master took Master Christian to school, at a great distance from the village, and returning alone, resumed his solitary habits. "How well do I remember the evening on which he desired me not to disturb him on any account whatever, and to come to his study at four o'clock on the afternoon of the following day. At that hour, I knocked at the door, and received no answer. I knocked several times, and, becoming alarmed, tried the handle of the door. It was unlocked, and I stepped into the study, and said: "'It is I, sir, Denise; you bade me come at this hour.' "I spoke to deaf ears. On the floor lay my master stone dead! "He had not killed himself; he died a natural death, and must have been forewarned that his moments on earth were numbered. "That is all I have to tell, my lady." CHAPTER XIII THE ARRIVAL OF CHRISTIAN ALMER "And you have really told it very well, Mother Denise," said the Advocate's wife; "with such sentiment, and in such beautiful language! It is a great talent: I don't know when I have been so interested. Why, in some parts you actually gave me the creeps! And here is Dionetta, as white as a lily. What a comfort it must have been to the poor lady to have had a good soul like you about her! If such a misfortune happened to me, I should like to have just such a servant as you were to her." "Heaven forbid, my lady," said Mother Denise, raising her hands, "that such an unhappy lot should be yours!" "Well, to tell you the truth," said Adelaide, with a bright smile, "I do not think it at all likely to happen. Of course, there is no telling what one might have to go through. Men are such strange creatures, and lead such strange lives! They may do anything--absolutely anything!--fight, gamble, make love without the least sincerity, deceive poor women and forsake them--yes, they may do all that, and the world will smile indulgently upon them. But if one of us, Mother Denise, makes the slightest trip, dear me! what a fuss is made about it--how shocked everybody is! A perfect carnival for the scandal-mongers! 'Isn't it altogether too dreadful.' 'Did you ever hear of such a thing?' 'Would you have believed it of her?' That is what is said by all sorts of people. But if _I_ happened to be treated badly I should not submit to it tamely--nor between you and me, Mother Denise, in my opinion, did the lady whose story you have just related." "Everything occurred," said Mother Denise stiffly, "exactly as I have described it." "With a small allowance," said Adelaide archly, "for exaggeration, and with here and there a chapter left out. Come, you must admit that!" "I have omitted nothing, my lady. I am angry with myself for having told so much. I doubt whether I have not done wrong." "Mr. Christian Almer, whom I expect every minute"--and Adelaide looked at her watch--"would have been seriously annoyed with you if you had not satisfied my curiosity. Where is the harm? To be living here, with such an interesting tale untold, would have been inexcusable, perfectly inexcusable. But I am certain that you have purposely passed over more than one chapter, and I admire you for it. It is highly to your credit not to have told all you know, though it could hurt no one at this distance of time." "What do you think I have concealed, my lady?" "There was a certain M. Gabriel," said Adelaide, "who played a most important part in the story--a good many people would say, the most important part. If it had not been for him, there would have been no story to tell worth the hearing; there would have been no quarrel between husband and wife, and the foolish young lady would not have died, and I should not be here, listening to her story, and ready to cry my eyes out in pity for her. M. Gabriel must have been a very handsome young fellow, or there would not have been such a fuss made about him. There! I declare you have never even given me a description of him. Of course he was handsome." She was full of vivacity, and as she leaned forward towards the old housekeeper, it appeared as if, in her estimation, nothing connected with the story she had heard was of so much importance as this question, which she repeated anxiously, "Tell me, Mother Denise, was he handsome?" "He was exceedingly good-looking," Mother Denise was constrained to reply, "but not so distinguished in his bearing as my unhappy master." "Tall?" "Yes, tall, my lady." "Dark or fair? But I think you gave me the impression that he was dark." "Yes, my lady, he was dark," replied Mother Denise, coldly, more and more displeased at the frivolity of the questions. "And young, of course--much younger than Mr. Almer?" "Much younger, my lady." "There would be no sense in the matter otherwise; anyone might guess that he was young and handsome and fascinating. Well, as I was about to say--I hope you will forgive me for flying off as I do; my head gets so full of ideas that they tumble over one another--all at once this M. Gabriel drops clean out of the story, and we hear nothing more of him. If there is one thing more inexplicable than another in the affair, it is that nothing more should be heard of M. Gabriel." "We live out of the gay world, my lady; far removed from it, I am happy to think. It is not at all strange that in this quiet village we should not know what became of him." "That is assuming that M. Gabriel went back into the gay world, as you call it, which is not such a bad place, I assure you, Mother Denise." "He could not have stopped in the village, my lady, without its being known." "Probably not; but, you dear old soul!" said Adelaide, her manner becoming more animated as that of Mother Denise became more frigid, "you dear old soul, they always come back! When lovers are dismissed, as M. Gabriel was, they always come back. They think they never will--they vow they never will--but they cannot help themselves. They are not their own masters. It is the story of the moth and the candle over again." "You mean, my lady," said Mother Denise, very gravely, "that M. Gabriel returned to the villa." "That is my meaning exactly. What else could he do?" "I will not say whether I am glad or sorry to disappoint you, my lady, but M. Gabriel, after the summer-house was barred up, never made his appearance again in the village." "Of course, under the circumstances, he could not show himself to everybody. It was necessary that he should be cautious. He had to come quietly--secretly, if you like." "He never came, my lady," said Mother Denise, with determination. "But he wrote, and sent his letters by a confidential messenger; he did that at least." "I told you, my lady, that while my poor mistress lived in these rooms she never received or wrote a letter." "If that is so, his letters to her must have been intercepted." "There were no letters," said Mother Denise, stubbornly. "There were," said Adelaide, smiling a reproof to Mother Denise. "I know the ways of men better than you do." "By whom, my lady, do you suppose these imaginary letters were intercepted?" "By her husband, of course, you dear, simple soul!" "Mr. Almer could not have been guilty of such an act." The Advocate's wife gazed admiringly at the housekeeper. "Dionetta," she exclaimed, "never be tempted to betray your mistress's secrets; take pattern by your grandmother." "She might do worse, my lady," said Mother Denise, still unbending. "Indeed she might. I am thinking of something. On the night you were aroused from your sleep, and heard the sound of a man falling to the ground----" "I only fancied it was a man, my lady; we never learnt the truth." "It was a man, and he climbed the wall. And he chose a dark and stormy night for his adventure. He was a brave fellow. I quite admire him." "Admire a thief!" exclaimed Mother Denise, in horror. "My dear old soul, you _must_ know it was not a thief. The house was not robbed, was it?" "No, my lady, nothing was taken; but what is the use of speaking of it?" "When once I get an idea into my head," said Adelaide, "it carries me along, whether I like it or not. So, then--some time after you heard a man falling or jumping from the wall, you heard the sound of someone walking in the paths outside. He was fearful of disturbing anyone in the house, and he trod very, very softly. I should have done just the same. Now can't you guess the name of that man?" "No, my lady, it was never discovered. He was a villain, whoever he was, to poison our dogs." "That was a small matter. What is the life of a dog--of a thousand dogs--when a man is in love?" "My lady!" cried Mother Denise. "What is it you are saying?" "Nothing will deter him," continued Adelaide, with an intense enjoyment of the old woman's uneasiness, "nothing will frighten him, if he is brave and earnest, as M. Gabriel was. You dear old soul, the man you heard in the grounds that night was M. Gabriel, and he came to see your mistress--perhaps to carry her off! This window is not very high; I could almost jump from it myself." Mother Denise pressed her hand to her side, as though to relieve a sudden pain; her face was white with a newly born apprehension. "Do you really believe, my lady," she asked in trembling tones, "that M. Gabriel would have dared to enter the grounds in the dead of night, like a thief, after what had occurred?" "I certainly believe it; it was the daring of a lover, not of a thief. Were any traces of blood discovered in the grounds?" "None were discovered; but if blood was spilt, the rain would have washed it away." "Or it could have been wiped away in the dark night!" "Is it possible," said Mother Denise under her breath, "that you can be right, and that my master and M. Gabriel met on that night!" "The most probable occurrence in the world," said Adelaide, with a pleasant smile. "What should have made your old master so anxious that you should not speak of the sounds you heard? He had a motive, depend upon it." Mother Denise, who had sunk into a chair in great agitation, suddenly rose, and said abruptly: "My lady, this is very painful to me. Will you allow me to go?" "Certainly; do not let me detain you a moment. I cannot express to you the obligations you have laid me under by relating the history of this house and family. There is nothing more to do in these rooms, I believe. How very, very pretty they look! We must do everything in our power to make the place pleasant to the young master who is coming. But I think I can promise he will be happy here." Not even Adelaide's smiles and good-humour could smooth Mother Denise's temper for the rest of the day. "Mark my words, Martin," she said to her husband, "something wrong will happen before the Advocate and his fine lady leave the villa. She has put such horrible ideas into my head! Ah, but I will not think of them; it is treason, rank treason! We shall rue the day she came among us." "Ha, ha!" chuckled the old man slyly. "You're jealous, Denise, you're jealous! She is the pleasantest lady, and the sweetest spoken, and the most generous, and the handsomest, for twenty miles round. The whole village is in love with her." "And you as well as the rest, I suppose," snapped Mother Denise. "I don't say that--I don't say that," piped Martin, with a childish laugh. "Never kiss and tell, Denise, never kiss and tell! If I was young and straight----" "But you're old and crooked," retorted Mother Denise, "and your mind's going, if it hasn't gone already. You grow sillier and sillier every day." A reproach the old man received with gleeful laughs and tiresome coughs. His worship of the beautiful lady was not to be lightly disturbed. "The sweetest and the handsomest!" he chuckled, as he hobbled away, at the rate of half a mile an hour. "I'd walk twenty mile to serve her--twenty mile--twenty mile!" "And this is actually the room," said Adelaide, walking about it, "in which that poor lady spent so many unhappy years! Her prison! Her grave! Dionetta, my pretty one, when the chance of happiness is offered to you, do not throw it away. Life is short. Enjoy it. A great many people moralise and preach, but if you were to see what they do, and put it in by the side of what they say, you would understand what fools those people must be who believe in their moralising and preaching. The persecuted lady whose story your grandmother has told us--what happiness did she enjoy in her life? None. Do you know why, Dionetta? Because it was life without love. Love is life's sunshine. Better to be dead than to live without it! Hark! Is not that a carriage driving up at the gates?" She ran swiftly from the room, down the stairs, into the grounds. The gates were thrown open. A young man, just alighted, came towards her. She ran forward to meet him, with outstretched hands, with face beaming with joy. He took her hands in his. "Welcome, Mr. Almer," she said aloud, so that those around her could hear her. "You have had a pleasant journey, I hope." And then, in a whisper, "Christian!" "Adelaide!" he said, in a tone as low as hers. "Now I am the happiest woman!" she murmured. "It is an eternity since I saw you. How could you have kept away from me so long?" _BOOK IV.--THE BATTLE WITH CONSCIENCE_ CHAPTER I LAWYER AND PRIEST It happened that certain persons had selected this evening as a suitable occasion for a friendly visit to the House of White Shadows; Jacob Hartrich, the banker, was one of these. The banker was accompanied by his wife, a handsome and dignified woman, and by his two daughters, whose personal attractions, enhanced by their father's wealth and their consequent expectations, would have created a sensation in fashionable circles. Although in his religious observances Jacob Hartrich was by no means orthodox, he did not consider himself less a true Jew on that account. It is recognised by the most intelligent and liberal-minded of his race in the civilised countries of the world that the carrying-out of the Mosaic law in its integrity would not only debar them from social relations, but would check their social advancement. It is a consequence of the recognition of this undoubted fact that the severe ordinances of the Jewish religion should become relaxed in their fulfilment. Jacob Hartrich was a member of this band of reformers, and though his conscience occasionally gave him a twinge, he was none the less devoted, in a curiously jealous and illogical spirit, to the faith of his forefathers, to which he clung with the greater tenacity because his daily habits compelled him to act, to some extent, in antagonism with the decrees they had laid down. Master Pierre Lamont was also at the villa. His bodily ailments were more severe than usual, and the jolting over the rough roads, as he was drawn from his house in his hand-carriage, had caused him excruciating suffering. He bore it with grins and grimaces, scorning to give pain an open triumph over him. Fritz was not by his side to amuse him with his humour; the Fool was at the court, on this last day of Gautran's trial, as he had been on every previous day, hastening thence every evening to Pierre Lamont, to give him an account of the day's proceedings. Father Capel was there--a simple and learned ecclesiastic, with a smile and a pleasant greeting for old and young, for rich and poor alike. A benevolent, sweet-natured man, who, when trouble came to his door, received it with cheerful resignation; universally beloved; a man whose course through life was strewn with flowers of charity and kindness. The visit of these and other guests was unexpected by Adelaide, and she inwardly resented the interruption to a contemplated quiet evening with Christian Almer; but outwardly she was all affability. The principal topic of conversation was the trial of Gautran, and Pierre Lamont was enthusiastic on the theme. "The trial will end this evening," he said, "and intellect will triumph." "Truth, I trust, will triumph," said Jacob Hartrich, gravely. "Intellect is truth's best champion," said Pierre Lamont. "But some mortals believe themselves to be omniscient, and set up a standard of truth which is independent of proof. I understood that you were to have been on the jury at the trial." "I was excused," said Jacob Hartrich, "on the ground that I had already formed so strong a view of the guilt of the prisoner that no testimony could affect it." "Decidedly," observed Pierre Lamont, "an unfit frame of mind to take part in a judicial inquiry of great difficulty. For my own part, I would willingly have given a year of my life, which cannot have too many years to run, to have been able to be in Geneva these last few days. It will be long before another trial so celebrated will take place in our courts." "I am happy to think so." "It has always been a puzzle to me," said Adelaide, whose feelings towards Pierre Lamont were of the most contradictory character--now inclining her to be exceedingly partial to him, now to detest him--"how such vulgar cases can excite the interest they do." "It is surprising," was Pierre Lamont's comment, "that the wife of an Advocate so celebrated should express such an opinion." "There are stranger things than that in the world, Master Lamont." "Truly, truly," said Pierre Lamont, regarding her with curiosity; "but cannot you understand how even these vulgar cases become, at least for a time, great and grand when the highest qualities of the mind are engaged in unravelling the threads which bind them?" "No, I cannot understand it," she replied with an amiable smile. "I believe that you lawyers are only happy when people are murdering and robbing each other." "My friend the Advocate," said Pierre Lamont, bending gallantly, an exertion which sent a twinge of pain through his body, "is at least happy in one other respect--that of being the husband of a lady whom none can see without admiring--if I were a younger man I should say without loving." "Pierre Lamont," said Jacob Hartrich, "gives us here a proof that love and law can go hand in hand." "Nay," said Pierre Lamont, whose eyes and mind were industriously studying the face of his beautiful hostess, "such proof from me is not needed. The Advocate has supplied it, and words cannot strengthen the case." And he waved his hand courteously towards Adelaide. These compliments were not wasted upon her, and Pierre Lamont laughed secretly as he observed their effect. "You are worth studying, fair dame," he thought, "with your smiling face, and your heart of vanity, and your lack of sympathy with your husband's triumphs. If not with his triumphs, then not with him! Feeling you _must_ have, though it is born of selfishness. Ah! the curtain is drawn aside. Which one, which one, you beautiful animal?" His eyes travelled from one to the other in the room, until they fell upon Christian Almer, whose eyes at that moment met those of Adelaide. "Ah!" and he drew a deep breath of enjoyment. "Are you the favoured one, my master of this House of Shadows! Then we must take you into the game, for it cannot be played without you." The old lawyer was in his element, probing character and motive, and submitting them to mental analysis. Physically he was helpless amidst the animated life around him; curled up in his invalid chair he was dependent for every movement upon his fellow-creatures; despite his intellect, he was at the mercy of a hind; but he was nevertheless the strongest man in all that throng, the man most to be feared by those who had anything to conceal, any secret which it behoved them to hide from the knowledge of men. "How such vulgar cases," he said aloud, to the astonishment of the Advocate's wife, who deemed the subject dismissed, "can excite the interest they do! It surprises you. But there is not one of these cases which does not contain elements of human sympathy and affinity with ourselves. This very case of Gautran--what is its leading feature? Love--the theme of minstrel and poet, the sentiment without which human and divine affairs would be plunged into darkness. Crimes for which Gautran is being tried are caused by the human passions and emotions which direct our own movements. The balance in our favour is so heavy when our desires and wishes clash with the desires and wishes of other men, that we easily find justification for our misdeeds. Father Capel is listening to me with more than ordinary attention. He perceives the justice of my argument." "We travel by different roads," said Father Capel. "You do not take into account the prompting of evil spirits, ever on the alert to promote discord and instigate to crime. It is that consideration which makes me tolerant of human error, which makes me pity it, which makes me forgive it." "I dispute your spiritual basis. All motive for crime springs from within ourselves." "Nay, nay," gently remonstrated Father Capel. "Pardon me for restraining you. I was about to say that not only does all motive for human crime spring from within ourselves, but all motive for human goodness as well. If your thesis that evil spirits prompt us to crime is correct, it must be equally correct that good spirits prompt us to deeds of mercy, and charity, and kindness. Then there is no merit in performing a good action. You rob life of its grace, and you virtually declare that it is an injustice to punish a man for murdering his fellow-creature. Plainly stated, you establish the doctrine of irresponsibility. I will not do you the injustice of believing that you are in earnest. Your tolerance of human error, and your pity and forgiveness for it, spring from natural kindliness, as my tolerance of it, and my lack of pity and forgiveness for it, spring from a natural hardness of heart, begot of much study of the weakness, perverseness, and selfishness of my species. In the rank soil of these imperfections grows that wondrous, necessary tree known by the name of Law, whose wide-spreading branches at once smite and protect. You may thank this tree for preserving to some extent the decencies of society." "Well expressed, Pierre Lamont," said Jacob Hartrich approvingly. "I regret that the Advocate is not present to listen to your eloquence." "Ah," said Pierre Lamont, with a scarcely perceptible sneer, "does your endorsement spring from judgment or self-interest?" "You strike both friend and foe," said Father Capel, with much gentleness. "It is as dangerous to agree with you as to dissent from you. But in your extravagant laudation of the profession of which you are a representative you lose sight of a mightier engine than Law, towering far above it in usefulness, and as a protection, no less than a solace to mankind. Without Religion, Law would be powerless, and the world a world of wild beasts. It softens, humanizes----" "Invents," sneered Pierre Lamont, with undisguised contempt, "fables which sober reason rejects." "If you will have it so, yes. Fables to divert men's minds from sordid materialism into purer channels. Be thankful for Religion if you practise it not. In the Sabbath's holy peace, in the hush and calm of one day out of the turbulent seven, in the influences which touch you closely, though you do not acknowledge them, in the restraint imposed by fear, in the charitable feelings inspired by love, in the unseen spirit which softens and subdues, in the yearning hope which chastens grief when one dear to you is lost, lie the safeguard of your days and much of the happiness you enjoy. So much for your body. For your soul, I will pray to-night." "Father Capel," said Pierre Lamont in a voice of honey, "if all priests were like you, I would wear a hair-shirt to-morrow." "What need, my son," asked Father Capel, "if you have a conscience?" "Let me pay for my sins," said Pierre Lamont, handing his purse to the priest. Father Capel took a few francs from the purse. "For the poor," he said. "In their name I bless you!" "The priest has the best of it," said Adelaide to Christian Almer. "I hate these dry arguments! It is altogether too bad that I should be called upon to entertain a set of musty old men. How much happier we should be, we two alone, even in the mountains where you have been hiding yourself from me!" "You are in better health and spirits," said Jacob Hartrich, drawing Almer aside, "than when I last saw you. The mountain air has done you good. It is strange to see you in the old house; I thought it would never be opened again to receive guests." "It is many years since we were together under this roof," said Christian Almer thoughtfully. "You were so young at the time," rejoined the banker, "that you can scarcely have a remembrance of it." "My remembrance is very keen. I could have been scarcely six years of age, and we had no visitors. I remember that my curiosity was excited because you were admitted." "I came on business," said Jacob Hartrich, and then, unwilling to revive the sad reminiscences of the young man's childhood, he said abruptly: "Almer, you should marry." His eyes wandered to his two comely daughters. "What is that you are saying?" interposed the Advocate's wife; "that Mr. Almer should marry? If I were a man--how I wish I were!--nothing, nothing in the world would tempt me to marry. I would live a life without chain or shackle." "So, so, my fair dame," thought Pierre Lamont, who had overheard this remark. "Bright as you appear, there is a skeleton in your cupboard. Chains and shackles! But you are sufficiently self-willed to throw these off." And he said aloud: "Can you ascertain for me if Fritz the Fool has returned from Geneva?" "Certainly," replied Adelaide, and Dionetta being in the room, she sent her out to inquire. "If he has returned," said Pierre Lamont, "the trial is over. I miss the fool's nightly report of the proceedings, which he has given me regularly since the commencement of the inquiry." "If the trial is over," said Christian Almer, "the Advocate should be here." "You need not expect him so soon," said Pierre Lamont; "after such exertion as he has gone through, an hour's solitude is imperative. Besides, Fritz can travel faster than our slow-going horses; he is as fleet as a hare." "A favourite of yours, evidently." "I have the highest respect for him. This particular fool is the wisest fool in my acquaintance." Dionetta entered the room with Fritz at her heels. "Well, Fritz," called out Pierre Lamont, "is the trial over?" "Yes, Master Lamont, and we're ready for the next." "The verdict, Fritz, the verdict?" eagerly inquired Pierre Lamont, and everybody in the room listened anxiously for the reply. "If I were a bandy-legged man," said Fritz, ignoring the question, "I would hire some scoundrel to do a deed, so that you might be on one side and my lord the Advocate on the other. Then we should witness a fine battle of brains." "Come, Fritz--the verdict!" repeated Pierre Lamont impatiently. "On second thoughts," said Fritz quietly, "you would be no match for the greatest lawyer living. I would not have you on my side. It is as well that your pleading days are ended." "No fooling, Fritz. The verdict; Acquitted?" "What else? Washed white as driven snow." "I knew it would be so," cried the old lawyer triumphantly. "How was it received?" "The town is mad about it. The women are furious, and the men thunderstruck. You should have heard the speech! Such a thing was never known. Men's minds were twisted inside out, and the jury were convinced against their convictions. Why, Master Lamont, even Gautran himself for a few minutes believed himself to be innocent!" "Enough," said Christian Almer sternly. "Leave the room." Fritz darted a sharp look at the newly returned master, and with a low bow quitted the apartment. The next moment the Advocate made his appearance, and all eyes were turned towards him. CHAPTER II THE WHITE SHADOW He entered the room with a cloud upon his face. Gautran's horrible confession had deeply moved him, and, almost for the first time in his life, he found himself at fault. His heart was heavy, and his mind was troubled; but he had never yet lost his power of self-control, and the moment he saw his guests the mask fell over his features, and they assumed their usual tranquil expression. He greeted one and another with calmness and courtesy, leaving his wife and Christian Almer to the last. "I am happy to tell you, Adelaide," he said, "that the trial is over." "Oh, we have already had the news," she said coldly. "Fool Fritz has given us a glowing account of it, and the excitement the verdict created." "Did it create excitement?" he asked. "I was not aware of it." "I take no interest in such cases, as you are aware," she rejoined. "You knew the man was innocent, or you would not have defended him. It is a pity the monster is set free." "Last, but not least," said the Advocate, turning to Christian Almer, and cordially pressing his hand. "Welcome, and again welcome! You have come to stay?" Adelaide answered for him: "Certainly he has: I have his promise." "That is well," said the Advocate. "I am glad to see you looking so bright, Christian." "You have not derived much benefit from your holiday," said Christian Almer, gazing at the Advocate's pale face. "Was it wise to take upon yourself the weight of so harassing a trial?" "Do we always do what is wise?" asked the Advocate, with a smile in which there was no light. "But seldom, I should say," replied Almer. "I once had great faith in the power of Will; but I am beginning to believe that we are as completely slaves to independent forces as feathers in a fierce wind: driven this way or that in spite of ourselves. Not inward, but outward magnetism rules us. Perhaps the best plan is to submit without a struggle." "Of course it is," said Adelaide with a bright look, "if it is pleasant to submit. It is ridiculous to make one's head ache over things. I can teach you, in a word, a wiser lesson than either of you have ever learnt." "What is that word, Adelaide?" asked the Advocate. "Enjoy," she replied. "A butterfly's philosophy. What say you, Christian? Shall we follow the teaching of this Solon in petticoats?" "May I join you?" said Pierre Lamont, who had caused himself to be drawn to this group. "My infirmities make me a privileged person, and unless I thrust myself forward, I might be left to languish like a decrepit spider in a ruined web." "Ill-natured people," remarked Adelaide, "might say that your figure of speech is a dangerous one for a lawyer to employ." "Fairest of dames," said Pierre Lamont, "your arrows are sugar-tipped; there is no poison in them. Use me as your target, I beg. You put new life into this old frame." "The old school can teach the new," said Christian Almer. "You should open a class of gallantry, Master Lamont." "I! with my useless limbs! You mock me!" "He will not allow me to be angry with him," said Adelaide, smiling on the lawyer. Then Pierre Lamont drew the Advocate into a conversation on the trial which the Advocate would gladly have avoided, could he have done so without being considered guilty of a breach of courtesy. But Pierre Lamont was not a man to be denied, and the Advocate was fain to answer the questions put to him until the old lawyer was acquainted with every detail of the line of defence. "Excellent--excellent!" he exclaimed. "A masterstroke! You do not share my enthusiasm," he said, addressing Jacob Hartrich, who had stood silently by, listening to the conversation. "You have no understanding of the intense, the fierce delight of such a battle and such a victory." "The last word is not spoken here on earth," said Jacob Hartrich. "There is a higher tribunal." "Well said, my son," said Father Capel. "Son!" said Pierre Lamont to the banker, with a little scornful laugh. "Resent the familiarity, man of another faith." "Better any faith than none," warmly remarked Jacob Hartrich, cordially taking the hand which Father Capel held out to him. "Good! good! good!" cried Pierre Lamont. "I stand renounced by church and synagogue." "You are uncharitable only to yourself," said Father Capel. "I, for one, will not take you at your word." Pierre Lamont lowered his eyes. "You teach me humility," he said. "Profit by it," rejoined Father Capel. "You formed the opinion that Gautran was guilty," said Pierre Lamont to the banker. "Upon what evidence?" "Inward conviction," briefly replied Jacob Hartrich. "You, at least," said Pierre Lamont, turning his wily face to Father Capel, "although you look at human affairs through Divine light, have a respect for the law." "Undoubtedly," was the reply. "But this man of finance," said Pierre Lamont, "would destroy its very fabric when it clashes with his inward conviction. Argue with him, and your words fall against a steel wall, impenetrable to logic, reason, natural deduction, and even common sense--and behind this wall lurks a self-sufficient imp which he calls Inward Conviction. Useful enough, nay, necessary, in religion, for it needs no proof. Faith answers for all. Accept, and rest content. I congratulate you, Jacob Hartrich. But does it not occur to you that others, besides yourself, may have inward convictions antagonistic to yours, and that occasionally theirs may be the true conviction and yours the false? Our friend the Advocate, for instance. Do you think it barely possible that he would have undertaken the defence of Gautran unless he had an inward conviction, formed upon a sure foundation, that the man was innocent of the crime imputed to him?" It was with some indignation that Jacob Hartrich replied, "That a man of honour would voluntarily come forward as a defender under any conditions than that of the firmest belief in the prisoner's innocence is incredible." "We agree upon this point I am happy to know, and upon another--that in the profession to which I have the honour to belong, there are men whose actions are guided by the highest and finest principles, and whose motives spring from what I conceive to be the most ennobling of all impulse, a desire for justice." "Who can doubt it?" "How, then, stands the case as between you and my brother the Advocate? You have an inward conviction of Gautran's guilt--he an inward conviction of Gautran's innocence. Up to a certain time you and he are on an equality; your knowledge of the crime is derived from hearsay and newspaper reports. Upon that evidence you rest; you have your business to attend to--the value of money, the fluctuations of the Exchanges, the public movements which affect securities, in addition to the anxieties springing from your private transactions. The Advocate cannot afford to depend upon hearsay and the newspapers. It is his business to investigate, to unearth, to bring together the scattered bones and fit them one with another, to reason, to argue, to deduce. As all the powers of your mind are brought to bear upon your business, which is money, so all the powers of his mind are brought to bear upon his, which is Gautran, in connection with the crime of which he stands accused. His inward conviction of the man's innocence is strengthened no less by the facts which come to light than by the presumptive evidence he is enabled by his patience and application to bring forward in favour of his client. You and he are no longer on an equality. He is a man informed, you remain in ignorance. He has dissected the body, and all the arteries of the crime are exposed to his sight and judgment. You merely raise up a picture--a dark night, a river, a girl vainly struggling with her fate, a murderer (with veiled face) flying from the spot, or looking with brutal calmness upon his victim. That is the entire extent of your knowledge. You seize a brush--you throw light upon the darkness--you paint the river and the girl--you paint the portrait of the murderer, Gautran. All is clear to you. You have formed your own court of justice, imagination affords the proof, and prejudice is the judge. It is an easy and agreeable task to find the prisoner guilty. You are satisfied. You believe you have fulfilled a duty, whereas you have been but a stumbling-block in the path of justice." "Notwithstanding which," said Jacob Hartrich, who had thoroughly recovered his good humour, "I have as firm a conviction as ever in the guilt of Gautran the woodman." "Admonish this member of a stiff-necked race, Father Capel," said Pierre Lamont, "and tell him why reason was given to man." Earnest as the old lawyer was in the discussion, and apparently engaged in it to the exclusion of all other subjects, he had eyes and ears for everything that passed in the room. Retirement from the active practice of his profession had by no means rusted his powers; on the contrary, indeed, for it had developed in him a finer and more subtle capacity of observation. It gave him time, also, to devote himself to matters which, at an earlier period of his life, he would have considered trivial. Thus, when he moved in private circles, freed from larger duties, there lurked in him always a possible danger, and although he would not do mischief for mischief's sake, he was irresistibly drawn in its direction. The quality of his mind was such as to seek out for itself, and unerringly detect, human blemish. He was ready, when it was presented to him, to recognise personal goodness, but while he recognised he did not admire it. The good man was in his eyes a negative character, pithless, uninteresting; his dominant qualities, being on the surface, presented no field for study. He himself, as has already been seen, was not loth to bestow money in charity, but he was destitute of benevolence; his soul never glowed with pity, nor did the sight of suffering touch his heart. While goodness did not attract him, he took no interest in the profligate or dissolute. His magnet was of the Machiavellian type. Cunning, craft, duplicity, guile--here he was at home in his glory. As easy to throw him off the scent as a bloodhound. Chiefly on this occasion was his attention given to the Advocate's wife. Not a movement, not a gesture, not a varying shade of expression escaped him. Any person, noting his observance of her, would have detected in it nothing but admiration; and to this conclusion Adelaide herself--she knew when she was admired--was by no means averse. But his eye was upon her when she was not aware of it. "Have I not heard of a case," asked a guest of Pierre Lamont, "in which a lawyer defended a murderer, knowing him to be guilty?" "Yes," said Pierre Lamont, "there was such a case. The murder was a ruthless murder; the lawyer a man of great attainments. His speech to the court was eloquent and thrilling, and in it he declared his solemn belief in the prisoner's innocence, and made an appeal to God to strengthen the declaration. It created a profound impression. But the evidence was conclusive, and the prisoner was found guilty. It then transpired that the accused, in his cell, had confessed to his advocate that he had perpetrated the murder." "Confessed before his trial?" "Yes, before the trial." "What became of the lawyer?" "He was ruined, socially and professionally. A great career was blighted." "A deserved punishment," remarked Father Capel. "Yet it is an open question," said Pierre Lamont, "whether the secrets of the prison-cell should not be held as sacred as those of the confessional." "Nothing can justify," said Father Capel, "the employment of such an appeal, used to frustrate the ends of justice." "Then," said Pierre Lamont with malicious emphasis, "you admit the doctrine of responsibility. Your prompting of evil spirits, what becomes of it?" Father Capel did not have time to reply, for a cry of terror from a visitor gave an unexpected turn to the gossip of the evening, and diverted it into a common channel. The person who had uttered this cry was the youngest daughter of Jacob Hartrich. She had been standing at a window, the heavy curtains of which she had held aside, in an idle moment, to look out upon the grounds, which were wrapped in a pall of deep darkness. Upon the utterance of her terrified scream she had retreated into the room, and was now gazing with affrighted eyes at the curtains, which her loosened hold had allowed to fall over the window. Her mother and sister hurried to her side, and most of the other guests clustered around her. What had occasioned her alarm? When she had sufficiently recovered she gave an explanation of it. She was looking out, without any purpose in her mind, "thinking of nothing," as she expressed it, when, in a distant part of the grounds, there suddenly appeared a bright light, which moved slowly onward, and within the radius of this light, of which it seemed to form a part, she saw distinctly a white figure, like a spirit. The curtains of the window were drawn aside, and all within the room, with the exception of Pierre Lamont, who was left without an audience, peered into the grounds below. Nothing was to be seen; no glimpse of light or white shadow; no movement but the slight stir of leaf and branch, but the young lady vehemently persisted in her statement, and, questioned more closely, declared that the figure was that of a woman; she had seen her face, her hair, her white robe. The three persons whom her story most deeply impressed were the Advocate's wife, Christian Almer, and Father Capel. With the Advocate it was a simple delusion of the senses; with Jacob Hartrich, "nerves." Christian Almer and Father Capel went out to search the grounds, and when they returned reported that nothing was to be seen. During this excitement Pierre Lamont was absolutely unnoticed, and it was not till a groan proceeded from the part of the room where he sat huddled up in the wheeled chair in which he was imprisoned that attention was directed to him. He was evidently in great pain; his features were contracted with the spasms which darted through his limbs. "It almost masters me," he said to the Advocate, as he laughed and winced, "this physical anguish. I will not allow it to conquer me, but I must humour it. I am tempted to ask you to give me a bed to-night." "Stop with us by all means," said the Advocate; "the night is too dark, and your house too far, for you to leave while you are suffering." So it was arranged, and within half an hour all the other guests had taken their departure. CHAPTER III THE WATCH ON THE HILL For more than twenty years the House of White Shadows may be said to have been without a history. Its last eventful chapter ended with the death of Christian Almer's father, the tragic story of whose life has been related by Mother Denise. Then followed a blank--a dull uniformity of days and months and years, without the occurrence of a single event worthy of record in the annals of the family who had held the estate for four generations. The doors and windows of the villa were but seldom opened, and on those rare occasions only by Mother Denise, who had too strict a regard for the faithful discharge of her duties to allow the costly furniture to fall into decay. Suddenly all this was altered. Light and life reigned again. Startling was the transformation. Within a few short weeks the House of White Shadows had become the centre of a chain of events, in which the affections which sway and the passions which dominate mankind were displayed in all their strangest variety. At a short distance from the gate, on this dark night, upon the rise of a hill which commanded a view of the villa, sometimes stood and sometimes lay a man in the prime of life. Not a well-looking man, nor a desirable man, and yet one who in his better days might have passed for a gentleman. Even now, with the aid of fine feathers, he might have reached such a height in the judgment of those who were not given to close observation. His feathers at the present time were anything but fine--a sad fall, for they have been once such as fine birds wear; no barn-door fowl's, but of the partridge's quality. So that, between the man and his garments, there was something of an affinity. He was tall and fairly presentable, and he bore himself with a certain air which, in the eyes of the vulgar, would have passed for grace. But his swagger spoilt him; and his sensual mouth, which had begot a coarseness from long and unrestrained indulgence, spoilt him; and the blotches on his face spoilt him. His hands were white, and rings would have looked well on them, if rings ever looked well on the hands of a man--which may be doubted. As he stood, or lay, his eyes were for the chief part of his time fixed on the House of White Shadows. Following with precision his line of sight, it would have been discovered that the point which claimed his attention were the windows of the Advocate's study. There was a light in them, but no movement. "Yet he is there," muttered the man, whose name was John Vanbrugh, "for I see his shadow." His sight unassisted would not have enabled him to speak with authority upon this, but he held in his hand a field-glass, and he saw by its aid what would otherwise have been hidden from him. "His guests have gone," continued John Vanbrugh, "and he has time to attend to me. I have that to sell, Edward, which it is worth your while to purchase--nay, which it is vital you should purchase. Every hour's delay increases its price. It must be near midnight, and still no sign. Well, I can wait--I can wait." He had no watch to take count of the time, which passed slowly; but he waited patiently nevertheless, until the sound of footsteps, approaching in his direction, diverted his attention. They came nearer, nearer, until this other wanderer of the night was close upon him. "Who," he thought, "has taken it into his head to come my way? This is no time for honest men to be about." And then he said aloud--for the intruder had paused within a yard of him: "What particular business brings you here, friend, and why do you not pass on?" A sigh of intense relief escaped the breast of the newcomer, who was none other than Gautran. With the cuff of his shirt he wiped the perspiration from his forehead, and muttered in a grateful tone: "A man's voice! That is something to be thankful for." The sound of this muttering, but not the words, reached Vanbrugh's ears. "Well, friend?" said Vanbrugh, who, being unarmed, felt himself at a disadvantage. "Well?" repeated Gautran. "Are you meditating an attack upon me? I am not worth the risk, upon my honour. If you are poor, behold in me a brother in misfortune. Go to a more profitable market." "I don't want to hurt you." "I'll take your word for it. Pass on, then. The way is clear for you." He stepped aside, and observed that Gautran took step with him instead of from him. "Are _you_ going to pass on?" asked Gautran. "Upon my soul this is getting amusing, and I should enjoy it if I were not angry. Am I going to pass on? No, I am not going to pass on." "Neither am I." "In the name of all that is mischievous," cried Vanbrugh, "what is it you want?" "Company," was the answer, "till daylight. That is all. You need not be afraid of me." "Company!" exclaimed Vanbrugh. "My company?" "Yours or any man's. Something human--something living. And you must talk to me. I'm not going to be driven mad by silence." "You are a cool customer, with your this and that. Are you aware that you are robbing me?" "I don't want to rob you." "But you are--of solitude. And you appropriate it! No further fooling. Leave me." "Not till daylight." "There is something strange in your resolve. Let me have a better look at you." He laid his hand upon Gautran's shoulder, and the man did not resent the movement. In the evening, when he had arrived in Geneva, he had made an unsuccessful attempt to enter the court-house; therefore, Gautran being otherwise a stranger to him, he did not recognise in the face of the man he was now looking into, and which he could but dimly see in consequence of the darkness of the night, the prisoner whose trial for murder had caused so great an excitement. "If I am any judge of human nature," he said, "you are in a bad way. I can see sufficient of you to discern that from a social point of view you are a ruin, a very wreck of respectability, if your lines ever crossed in that direction. In which respect I, who was once a gentleman, and am still, cannot deny that there is something of moral kinship between us. This confers distinction upon you--upon me, a touch of obloquy. But I am old enough not to be squeamish. We must take the world as we find it--a villainous world! What say you?" "A villainous world! Go on talking." Vanbrugh stood with his face towards the House of White Shadows, watching for the signal he had asked the Advocate to give him. Gautran, facing the man upon whom he had forced his company, stood, therefore, with his back to the villa, the lights in which he had not yet seen. "Our condition may be borne," continued Vanbrugh, "with greater or lesser equanimity, so long as we feed the body--the quality of our food being really of no great importance, so far as the tissues are concerned; but when the mind is thrown off its balance, as I see by your eyes is the case with you, the condition of the man becomes serious. What is it you fear?" "Nothing human." "Yet you are at war with society." "I was; but I am a free man now." "You have been in peril, then--plainly speaking, a gaol-bird. What matters? The world is apt to be too censorious; I find no fault with you for your misfortune. Such things happen to the best of us. But you are free now, you say, and you fear nothing in human shape. What is it, then, you do fear?" "Were you ever followed by a spirit?" asked Gautran, in a hoarse whisper. "A moment," said Vanbrugh. "Your question startles me. I have about me two mouthfuls of an elixir without which life would not be worth the living. Share and share alike." He produced a bottle containing about a quarter of a pint of brandy, and saying, "Your health, friend," put it to his lips. Gautran watched him greedily, and, when he received the bottle, drained it with a gasp of savage satisfaction. "That is fine, that is fine!" he said; "I wish there were more of it." "To echo your wish is the extent of my power in the direction of fulfilment. Now we can continue. Was I ever followed by a spirit? Of what kind?" "Of a woman," replied Gautran with a shudder. "Being a spirit, necessarily a dead woman!" "Aye, a dead woman--one who was murdered." A look of sudden and newly-awakened intelligence flashed into Vanbrugh's face. He placed his hand again upon Gautran's shoulder. "A young woman?" he said. "Aye," responded Gautran. "Fair and beautiful?" "Yes." "Who met her death in the river Rhone?' "Aye--it is known to all the world." "One who sold flowers in the streets of Geneva--whose name was Madeline?" The utterance of the name conjured up the phantom of the murdered girl, and Gautran, with violent shudders, gazed upon the spectre. "She is there--she is there!" he muttered, in a voice of agony. "Will she never, never leave me?" These words confirmed Vanbrugh's suspicion. It was Gautran who stood before him. "Another winning card," he said, in a tone of triumph, and with a strange smile. "The man is guilty, else why should he fear? Vanbrugh, a life of ease is yours once more. Away with these rags, this money-pinch which has nipped you for years. Days of pleasure, of luxury, are yours to enjoy. You step once more into the ranks of gentlemen. What would the great Advocate in yonder study think of this chance encounter, knowing--what he has yet to learn--that I hold in my hands what he prizes most--his fame and honour?" Gautran heard the words; he turned, and followed the direction of Vanbrugh's gaze. "There is but one great Advocate, the man who set me free. He lives yonder, then?" "You know it, rogue," replied Vanbrugh. "There are the lights in his study window. Gautran, you and I must be better acquainted." But he was compelled to submit to a postponement of his wish, for the next moment he was alone. Gautran had disappeared. CHAPTER IV THE SILENT VOICE Alone in his study the Advocate had time to review his position. His first feeling, when he listened to Gautran's confession, had been one of unutterable horror, and this feeling was upon him when he entered the villa. From his outward demeanour no person could have guessed how terrible was his inward agitation. Self-repression was in him a second nature. The habit of concealing his thoughts had been of incalculable value in his profession, and had materially assisted in many of his great victories. But now he was alone, and when he had locked the study-door, he threw off the mask. He had been proud of this victory; it was the greatest he had ever achieved. He knew that it would increase his fame, and that it was an important step in the ladder it had been the delight of his life to climb. Cold as he appeared, and apparently indifferent to success, his ambition was vast, overpowering. His one great aim had been not only to achieve the highest distinction while he lived, but to leave behind him a name which should be placed at the head of all his class--a clear and unsullied name which men in after times would quote as a symbol of the triumph of intellect. It was the sublimity of egoism, contemptible when allied with intellectual inferiority and weakness of character, but justifiable in his case because it was in association with a force of mental gifts little short of marvellous. In the exercise of his public duties he had been careful never to take a false step. Before he committed himself to a task he invariably made a study of its minutest detail; conned it over and over, stripped it of its outward coverings, probed it to its very heart, added facets to it which lay not only within the region of probability, but possibility; and the result had been that his triumphs were spoken of with wonderment, as something almost higher than human, and within the capacity of no other man. It had sometimes occurred that the public voice was against a prisoner whose defence he had undertaken, but it was never raised against himself, and perhaps the sweetest reward which was ever bestowed upon him was when, in an unpopular cause which he had conducted to victory, it was afterwards proved that the man he had championed--whose very name was an offence--was in honest truth a victim instead of a wronger. It had grown into a fashion to say, "He must have right on his side, or the Advocate would not defend him." Here, then, was a triple alliance of justice, truth, and humanity--and he, their champion and the vindicator and upholder of right. In another sphere of life, and in times when the dragon of oppression was weighing heavily upon a people's liberties, such achievements as his would have caused the champion to be worshipped as a saint--certainly as a hero imbued with kingly qualities. No man really deserves this altitude, though it be sometimes reached. Human nature is too imperfect, its undercurrents are not sufficiently translucent for truth's face to be reflected as in a crystal. But we judge the deed, not the doer, and the man is frequently crowned, the working of whose inner life, were it laid bare, would shock and disgust. It was when he was at the height of his fame that the Advocate met Adelaide. Hitherto he had seen but little of women, or, seeing them, had passed them lightly by, but there comes a time in the lives of most men, even of the greatest, when they are abruptly arrested by an influence which insensibly masters them. Only once in his life had the Advocate wandered from the path he had formed for himself; but it was an idle wandering, partly prompted by a small and unworthy desire to prove himself of two men, the superior, and he had swiftly and effectually thrown the folly aside, never again to be indulged in or renewed. That was many years ago, and had been long forgotten, when Adelaide appeared to him, a star of loveliness, which proved, what few would have believed, that he had a heart. The new revelation was to him at first a source of infinite gladness, and he yielded to the enchantment. But after a time he questioned himself as to the wisdom of this infatuation. It was then, however, too late. The spell was upon him, and it did not lay in his power to remove it. And when he found that this sweet pleasure did not--as it would have done with most men--interfere with his active duties, nay, that it seemed to infuse a keener relish into their fulfilment, he asked himself the question, "Why not?" In the simple prompting of the question lay the answer. He possessed an immense power of concentration. With many subjects claiming close attention he could dismiss them all but the one to which it was necessary he should devote himself, and after much self-communing he satisfied himself that love would be no block to ambition. And indeed so it proved. Adelaide, dazzled by the attentions of a man who stood so high, accepted his worship, and, warned by friends not to be exigent, made no demands upon his time which interfered with his duties. He was a devoted but not a passionate lover. On all sides she was congratulated--it gratified her. By many she was envied--it delighted her; and she took pleasure in showing how easily she could lead this man, who to all other women was cold as ice. In those days it was out of her own vanity and thirst for conquest that she evolved pleasure from the association of her name with his. After their marriage he strove to interest her in the cases upon which he was engaged, but, discovering that her taste did not lie in that direction, he did not persist in his endeavour. It did not lessen his love for her, nor her hold upon him. She was to him on this night as she had ever been, a sweet, affectionate, pure woman, who gave him as much love and honour as a man so much older than herself could reasonably expect. Something of what has been here expressed passed through his mind as he reflected upon the events of the day. How should he deal with Gautran's confession? That was the point he debated. When he undertook the defence he had a firm belief in the man's innocence. He had drawn the picture of Gautran exactly as he had conceived it. Vile, degraded, brutal, without a redeeming feature--but not the murderer of Madeline the flower-girl. He reviewed the case again carefully, to see whether he could have arrived at any other conclusion. He could not perceive a single defect in his theory. He was justified in his own eyes. He knew that the entire public sentiment was against him, and that he had convinced men against their will. He knew that there was imported into this matter a feeling of resentment at his successful efforts to set Gautran free. What, then, had induced him to come forward voluntarily in defence of this monster? He asked the question of himself aloud, and he answered it aloud: A reverence for justice. He had not indulged in self-deception when he declared to Gautran's judges that the leading principle of his life had been a desire for justice in small matters as well as great, for the meanest equally with the loftiest of his fellow-creatures. That it did not clash with his ambition was his good fortune. It was not tainted because of this human coincidence. So far, then, he was justified in his own estimation. Rut he must be justified also in the eyes of the world. And here intruded the torturing doubt whether this were possible. If he made it known to the world that Gautran was guilty, the answer would be: "We know it, and knew it, as we believe you yourself did while you were working to set him free. Why did you prevent justice being done upon a murderer?" "But I believed him innocent," he would say. "Only now do I know him to be guilty!" "Upon what grounds?" would be asked. "Upon Gautran's own confession, given to me, alone, on a lonely road, within an hour after the delivery of the verdict." He saw the incredulous looks with which this would be received. He put himself in the place of the public, and he asked: "Why, at such a time, in such a spot, did Gautran confess to you? What motive had he? You are not a priest, and the high road is not a confessional." He could supply to this question no answer which common-sense would accept. And say that Gautran were questioned, as he would assuredly be. He would deny the statement point-blank. Liberty is sweet to all men. Then it would be one man's statement against another's; he would be on an equality with Gautran, reduced to his level; and in the judgment of numbers of people Gautran would have the advantage over him. Sides would be taken; he himself, in a certain sense, would be placed upon his trial, and public resentment, which now was smothered and would soon be quite hushed, would break out against him. Was he strong enough to withstand this? Could he arrest the furious torrent and stand unwounded on the shore, pure and scatheless in the eyes of men? He doubted. He was too profound a student of human nature not to know that his fair fame would be blotted, and that there would be a stain upon his reputation which would cling to him to the last day of his life. Still he questioned himself. Should he dare it, and brave it, and bow his head? Who humbles himself lays himself open to the blow--and men are not merciful when the chance is offered to them. But he would stand clear in his own eyes; his conscience would approve. To none but himself would this be known. Inward approval would be his sole reward, his sole compensation. A hero's work, however. For a moment or two he glowed at the contemplation. He soon cooled down, and with a smile, partly of self-pity, partly of self-contempt, proceeded to the calmer consideration of the matter. The meaner qualities came into play. The world did not know; what reason was there that it should be enlightened--that he should enlighten it, to his own injury? The secret belonged to two men--to himself and Gautran. It was not likely that Gautran would blurt it out to others; he valued his liberty too highly. So that it was as safe as though it were buried in a deep grave. As for the wrong done, it was a silent wrong. To ruin one's self for a sentiment would be madness; no one really suffered. The unfortunate girl was at rest. She was a stranger; no person knew her, or was interested in her except for her beauty; she left no family, no father, mother, or sisters, to mourn her cruel death. There was certainly the woman spoken of as Pauline, but she had disappeared, and was probably in no way related to Madeline. What more likely than that the elder woman's association with the younger arose out of a desire to trade upon the girl's beauty, and appropriate the profits to her own use? A base view of the matter, but natural, human. And having reaped a certain profit out of their trade in flowers, larger than was suspected, the crafty woman of the world had deliberately deserted Madeline and left her to her fate. Why, then, should he step forward as her avenger, to the destruction of the great name he had spent the best fruits of his mind and the best years of his life to build up? To think of such a thing was Quixotism run mad. One of the threads of these reflections--that which forced itself upon him as the toughest and the most prominent--was contempt of himself for permitting his thoughts to wander into currents so base. But that was his concern; it affected no other person, so long as he chose to hold his own counsel. The difficulty into which he was plunged was not of his seeking. Fate had dealt him a hard stroke; he received it on his shield instead of on his body. Who would say that that was not wise? What other man, having the option, would not have done as he was about to do? "Cunning sophist, cunning sophist!" his conscience whispered to him; "think not that, wandering in these crooked paths of reasoning, you can find the talisman which will transform wrong into right, or remove the stain which will rest upon your soul." He answered his conscience: "To none but myself is my soul visible. Who, then, can see the stain?" His conscience replied: "God!" "I will confess to Him." he said, "but not to man." "There is but one right course," his conscience said; "juggle as you may, you know that there is but one right course." "I know it," he said boldly, "but I am cast in human mould, and am not heroic enough for the sacrifice you would impose upon me." "Listen," said his conscience, "a voice from the grave is calling to you." He heard the voice: "Blood for Blood." He stood transfixed. The images raised by that, silent voice were appalling. They culminated in the impalpable shape of a girl, with pallid face, gazing sadly at him, over whose form seemed to be traced in the air the lurid words, "Blood For Blood!" Heaven's decree. The vision lasted but for a brief space. In the light of his strong will such airy terrors could not long exist. Blood for blood! It once held undisputed sway, but there are great and good men who look upon the fulfilment of the stern decree as a crime. Mercy, humanity, and all the higher laws of civilisation were on their side. But he could not quite stifle the voice. He took another view. Say that he yielded to the whisperings of his conscience--say that, braving all the consequences of his action, he denounced Gautran. The man had already been tried for murder, and could not be tried again. Set this aside. Say that a way was discovered to bring Gautran again to the bar of earthly justice, of what value was the new evidence that could be brought against him? His own bare word--his recital of an interview of which he held no proof, and which Gautran's simple denial would be sufficient to destroy. Place this new evidence against the evidence he himself had established in proof of Gautran's innocence, and it became a feather-weight. A lawyer of mediocre attainments would blow away such evidence with a breath. It would injure only him who brought it forward. He decided. The matter must rest where it was. In silence lay safety. There was still another argument in favour of this conclusion. The time for making public the horrible knowledge of which he had become possessed was passed. After he had received Gautran's confession he should not have lost a moment in communicating with the authorities. Not only had he allowed the hours to slip by without taking action, but in the conversation initiated that evening by Pierre Lamont, in which he had joined, he had tacitly committed himself to the continuance of a belief in Gautran's innocence. He saw no way out of the fatal construction which all who knew him, as well as all who knew him not, would place upon this line of conduct. He had been caught in a trap of his own setting, but he could hide his wounds. Yes; the question was answered. He must preserve silence. This long self-communing had exhausted him. He could not sleep; he could neither read nor study. His mind required relief and solace in companionship. His wife was doubtless asleep; he would not disturb her. He would go to his friend's chamber; Christian Almer would be awake, and they would pass an hour in sympathising converse. Almer had asked him, when they bade each other good-night, whether he intended immediately to retire to rest, and he had answered that he had much to do in his study, and should probably be up till late in the night. "I will not disturb you," Almer had said, "but I, too, am in no mood for sleep. I have letters to write, and if you happen to need society, come to my room, and we will have one of our old chats." As he quitted the study to seek his friend the soft silvery chimes of a clock on the mantel proclaimed the hour. He counted the strokes. It was midnight. CHAPTER V GAUTRAN FINDS A REFUGE When John Vanbrugh found himself alone he cried: "What! Tired of my company already? That is a fine compliment to pay to a gentleman of my breeding. Gautran! Gautran!" He listened; no answer came. "A capital disappearance," he continued; "in its way dramatic. The scene, the time, all agreeing. It does not please me. Do you hear me, Gautran," he shouted. "It does not please me. If I were not tied to this spot in the execution of a most important mission, I would after you, my friend, and teach you better manners. He drank my brandy, too, the ungrateful rogue. A waste of good liquor--a sheer waste! He gets no more without paying its equivalent." Vanbrugh indulged in this soliloquy without allowing his wrath to interfere with his watch; not for a single moment did he shift his gaze from the windows of the Advocate's study. "Now what induced him," he said after a pause, "to spirit himself away so mysteriously? From the violent fancy he expressed for my company I regarded him as a fixture; one would have supposed he intended to stick to me like a limpet to a rock. Suddenly, without rhyme or reason, and just as the conversation was getting interesting, he takes French leave, and makes himself scarce. "I hope he has not left his ghost behind him--the ghost of pretty Madeline. Not likely, though. When a partnership such as that is entered into--uncommonly unpleasant and inconvenient it must be--it is not dissolved so easily. "Perhaps he was spirited away--wanted, after the fashion of our dear Lothario, Don Giovanni. There was no blue fire about, however, and I smell no brimstone. No--he disappeared of his own prompting; it will repay thinking over. He saw his phantom--even my presence could not keep her from him. He murdered her--not a doubt of it--and the Advocate has proved his innocence. "Were it not a double tragedy I should feel disposed to laugh. "We were speaking of the Advocate when he darted off. But you cannot escape me, Gautran; we shall meet again. An acquaintanceship so happily commenced must not be allowed to drop--nor shall it, while it suits my purpose. "At length, John Vanbrugh, you are learning to be wise. You allowed yourself to be fleeced, sucked dry, and being thrown upon the rocks, stripped of fortune and the means to woo it, you strove to live as knaves live, upon the folly of others like yourself. But you were a poor hand at the trade; you were never cut out for a knave, and you passed through a succession of reverses so hard as almost to break an honest man's heart. It is all over now. I see the sun; bright days are before you, John, the old days over again; but you will spend your money more prudently, my lad; no squandering; exact its value; be wise, bold, determined, and you shall not go down with sorrow to the grave. Edward, my friend, if I had the liquor I would drink to you. As it is----" As it was, he wafted a mocking kiss towards the House of White Shadows, and patiently continued his watch. Meanwhile Gautran had not been idle. Upon quitting Vanbrugh, the direction he took was from the House of White Shadows, but when he was at a safe distance from Vanbrugh, out of sight and hearing, he paused, and deliberately set his face towards the villa. He skirted the hill at its base, and walking with great caution, pausing frequently to assure himself that he was alone and was not being followed, arrived at the gates of the villa. He tried the gates--they were locked. Could he climb over them? He would have risked the danger--they were set with sharp spikes--had he not known that it would take some time, and feared that some person passing along the high road might detect him. He made his way to the back of the villa, and carefully examined the walls. His eyes were accustomed to darkness, and he could see pretty clearly; it was a long time before he discovered a means of ingress, afforded by an old elm which grew within a few yards of the wall, and the far-spreading branches of which stretched over the grounds. He climbed the tree, and crept like a cat along the stoutest branch he could find. It bent beneath his weight as he hung suspended from it. It was a fall of twenty feet, but he risked it. He unloosed his hands, and dropped to the earth. He was shaken, but not bruised. His purpose, thus far, was accomplished. He was within the grounds of the villa. All was quiet. When he had recovered from the shock of the fall, he stepped warily towards the house. Now and then he was startled and alarmed at the shadows of the trees which moved athwart his path, but he mastered these terrors, and crept on and on till he heard the soft sound of a clock striking the hour. He paused, as the Advocate had done, and counted the strokes. Midnight. When the sound had quite died away, he stepped forward, and saw the lights in the study windows. Was anybody there? He guessed shrewdly enough that if the room was occupied it would be by no other person than the Advocate. Well, it was the Advocate he came to see; he had no design of robbery in his mind. He stealthily approached a window, and blessed his good fortune to find that it was partly open. He peered into the study; it was empty. He climbed the sill, and dropped safely into the room. What a grand apartment! What costly pictures and vases, what an array of books and papers! Beautiful objects met his eyes whichever way he turned. There was the Advocate's chair, there the table at which he wrote. The Advocate had left the room for a while--this was Gautran's correct surmise--and intended to return. The lamps fully turned up were proof of this. He looked at the papers on the table. Could he have read, he would have seen that many of them bore his own name. On a massive sideboard there were bottles filled with liquor, and glasses. He drank three or four glasses rapidly, and then, coiling himself up in a corner of the room, in a few moments was fast asleep. CHAPTER VI PIERRE LAMONT READS LOVE-VERSES TO FRITZ THE FOOL The bedroom allotted to Pierre Lamont by Mother Denise was situated on the first floor, and adjoined the apartments prepared for Christian Almer. As he was unable to walk a step it was necessary that the old lawyer should be carried upstairs. His body-servant, expressly engaged to wheel him about and attend to his wants, was ready to perform his duties, but into Pierre Lamont's head had entered the whim that he would be assisted to his room by no person but Fritz the Fool. The servant was sent in search of Fritz, who could not easily be found. It was quite half an hour before the fool made his appearance, and by that time all the guests, with the exception of Pierre Lamont, had left the House of White Shadows. Out of sympathy with Pierre Lamont's sufferings Father Capel had remained to chat with him until Fritz arrived. But the priest was suddenly called away. Mother Denise, entering the room, informed him that a peasant who lived ten miles from the House of White Shadows urgently desired to see him. Father Capel was about to go out to the man, when Adelaide suggested that he should be brought in, and the peasant accordingly disclosed his errand in the presence of the Advocate and his wife, Pierre Lamont, and Christian Almer. "I have been to your house," said the peasant, standing, cap in hand, in humble admiration of the grandeur by which he was surrounded, "and was directed here. There is a woman dying in my hut." "What is her name, and where does she come from?" "I know not. She has been with us for over three weeks, and it is a sore burden upon us. It happened in this way, reverend father. My hut, you know, is in the cleft of a rock, at the foot of the Burger Pass, a dangerous spot for those who are not familiar with the track. Some twenty-four days ago it was that my wife in the night roused me with the tale of a frightful scream, which, proceeding from one in agony near my hut, pierced her very marrow, and woke her from sleep. I sprang from my bed, and went into the open, and a few yards down I found a woman who had fallen from a height, and was lying in delirious pain upon the sharp stones. I raised her in my arms; she was bleeding terribly, and I feared she was hurt to death. I did the best I could, and carried her into my hut, where my wife nursed and tended her. But from that night to this we have been unable to get one sensible word from her, and she is now at death's door. She needs your priestly offices, reverend father, and therefore I have come for you." "How interesting!" exclaimed Adelaide. "Who will pay you for your goodness to this poor creature?" "God," said Father Capel, replying for the peasant. "It is the poor who help the poor, and in the Kingdom of Heaven our Gracious Lord rewards them." "I am content," said the peasant. "But in the contemplation of the Hereafter," said Pierre Lamont, "let us not forget the present. There are many whose loads are too heavy--for instance, asses. There are a few whose loads are too light--scoffers, like myself. You have had occasion to rebuke me, this night, Father Capel, and were I not a hardened sinner I should be groaning in tribulation. That to the last hour of my life I shall deserve your rebukes, proves me, I fear, beyond hope of redemption. Still I bear in mind the asses' burden. You have used my purse once, in penance; use it again, and pay this man for the loss inflicted upon him by his endeavours to earn the great spiritual reward--which, in all humility I say it, does not put bread into human stomachs." Father Capel accepted Pierre Lamont's purse, and said: "I judge not by words, but by works; your offering shall be justly administered. Come, let us hasten to this unfortunate woman." When he and the peasant had departed, Pierre Lamont said, with mock enthusiasm: "A good man! a good man! Virtue such as his is a severe burden, but I doubt not he enjoys it. I prefer to earn my seat in heaven vicariously, to which end my gold will materially assist. It is as though paradise can be bought by weight or measure; the longer the purse the greater the chance of salvation. Ah, here is Fritz. Good-night, good-night. Bright dreams to all. Gently, Fritz, gently," continued the old lawyer, as he was being carried up the stairs, "my bones are brittle." "Brittle enough I should say," rejoined Fritz; "chicken bones they might be from the weight of you." "Are diamonds heavy, fool?" "Ha, ha!" laughed Fritz, "if I had the selling of you, Master Lamont, I should like to make you the valuer. I should get a rare good price for you at that rate." In the bedroom Pierre Lamont retained Fritz to prepare him for bed. The old lawyer, undressed, was a veritable skeleton; there was not an ounce of superfluous flesh on his shrivelled bones. "What would you have done in the age of giants?" asked Fritz, making merry over Pierre Lamont's attenuated form. "This would have served," replied Pierre Lamont, tapping his forehead with his forefinger. "I should have contrived so as to be a match for them. Bring that small table close to the bedside. Now place the lamp on it. Put your hand into the tail-pocket of my coat; you will find a silk handkerchief there." He tied the handkerchief--the colour of which was yellow--about his head; and as the small, thin face peeped out of it, brown-skinned and hairless, it looked like the face of a mummy. Fritz gazed at him, and laughed immoderately, and Pierre Lamont nodded and nodded at the fool, with a smile of much humour on his lips. "Enjoy yourself, fool, enjoy yourself," he said kindly; "but don't pass your life in laughter; it is destructive of brain power. What do you think of the spirit, Fritz, the appearance of which so alarmed one of the young ladies in our merry party to-night?" "What do you think of it?" asked Fritz in return, with a quivering of his right eyelid, which suspiciously resembled a wink. "Ah, ah, knave!" cried Pierre Lamont, chuckling. "I half suspected you." "You will not tell on me, Master Lamont?" "Not I, fool. How did you contrive it?" "With a white sheet and a lantern. I thought it a pity that my lady should be disappointed. Should she leave the place without some warranty that spirits are here, the house would lose its character. Then there is the young master, your Christian Almer. He spoke to me very much as if I were a beast of the field instead of a--fool. So I thought I would give him food for thought." "A dangerous trick, Fritz. Your secret is safe with me, but I would not try it too often. Are there any books in the room? Look about, Fritz, look about." "For books!" exclaimed Fritz. "People go to bed to sleep." "I go to bed to think," retorted Pierre Lamont, "and read. People are idiots--they don't know how to use the nights." "Men are not owls," said Fritz. "There are no books in the room." "How shall I pass the night?" grumbled Pierre Lamont. "Open that drawer; there may be something to read in it." Fritz opened the drawer; it was filled with books. Pierre Lamont uttered a cry of delight. "Bring half-a-dozen of them--quick. Now I am happy." He opened the books which Fritz handed to him, and placed them by his side on the bed. They were in various languages. Lavater, Zimmermann, a Latin book on Demonology, poems of Lope da Vega, Klingemann's tragedies, Italian poems by Zappi, Filicaja, Cassiani, and others. "You understand all these books, Master Lamont?" "Of course, fool." "What language is this?" "Latin." "And this?" "Spanish." "And this?" "Italian. No common mind collected these books, Fritz." "The master that's dead--father of him who sleeps in the next room." "Ha, ha!" interposed Pierre Lamont, turning over the pages as he spoke. "He sleeps there, does he? "Yes. His father was a great scholar, I've heard." "A various scholar, Fritz, if these books are an epitome of his mind. Love, philosophy, gloomy wanderings in dark paths--here we have them all. The lights and shadows of life. Which way runs your taste, fool?" "I love the light, of course. What use in being a fool if you don't know how to take advantage of your opportunities?" "Well said. Let us indulge a little. These poets are sly rascals. They take unconscionable liberties, and play with women's beauty as other men dare not do." Fritz's eyes twinkled. "It does not escape even you, Master Lamont." "What does not escape me, fool?" "Woman's beauty, Master Lamont." "Have I not eyes in my head and blood in my veins?" asked Pierre Lamont. "It warms me like wine to know that I and the loveliest woman for a hundred miles round are caged within the same roof." Fritz indulged in another fit of laughter, and then exclaimed: "She has caught you too, eh? Now, who would have thought it? Two of the cleverest lawyers in the world fixed with one arrow! Beauty is a divine gift, Master Lamont. To possess it is almost as good as being born a fool." "I shall lie awake and read love-verses. Listen to Zappi, fool." And in a voice really tender, Pierre Lamont read from the book: "A hundred pretty little loves, in fun, Were romping; laughing, rioting one day." "A hundred!" cried Fritz, chuckling and rubbing his hands. "A hundred--pretty--little loves! If Father Capel were to hear you, his face would grow as long as my arm. "Wrong, Fritz, wrong. His face would beam, and he would listen for the continuation of the poem." And Pierre Lamont resumed: "'Let's fly a little now,' said one, 'I pray.' 'Whither?' 'To beauty's face.' 'Agreed--'tis done.' "Faster than bees to flowers they wing their way To lovely maids--to mine, the sweetest one; And to her hair and panting lips they run-- Now here, now there, now everywhere they stray. "My love so full of loves--delightful sight! Two with their torches in her eyes, and two Upon her eyelids with their bows alight." "You read rarely, Master Lamont," said Fritz. "It is true, is it not, that, when you were in practice, you were called the lawyer with the silver tongue?" "It has been said of me, Fritz." The picture of this withered, dried-up old lawyer, sitting up in bed, with a yellow handkerchief for a night-cap tied round his head, reading languishing verses in a tender voice, and striving to bring into his weazened features an expression in harmony with them, was truly a comical one. "Why, Master Lamont," said Fritz in admiration, "you were cut out for a gallant. Had you recited those lines in the drawing-room, you would have had all the ladies at your feet--supposing," he added, with a broad grin, "they had all been blind." "Ah me!" said Pierre Lamont, throwing aside the book with a mocking sigh. "Too old--too old!" "And shrunken," said Fritz. "It is not to be denied, Fritz. And shrunken." "And ugly." "You stick daggers into me. Yes--and ugly. Ah!" and with simulated wrath he shook his fist in the air, "if I were but like my brother the Advocate! Eh, Fritz--eh?" Fritz shook his head slowly. "If I were not a fool, I should say I would much rather be as you are, old, and withered, and ugly, and a cripple, than be standing in the place of your brother the Advocate. And so would you, Master Lamont, for all your love-songs." "I can teach you nothing, fool. Push the lamp a little nearer to me. Give me my waistcoat. Here is a gold piece for you. I owe you as much, I think. We will keep our own counsel, Fritz. Good-night." "Good--night, Master Lamont. I am sorry that trial is over. It was rare fun!" CHAPTER VII MISTRESS AND MAID "Dionetta?" "Yes, my lady." The maid and her mistress were in Adelaide's dressing-room, and Dionetta was brushing her lady's hair, which hung down in rich, heavy waves. She smiled at herself in the glass before which she was sitting, and her mood became more joyous as she noted the whiteness of her teeth and the beautiful expression of her mouth when she smiled. There was an irresistible fascination in her smile; it flashed into all her features, like a laughing sunrise. She was never tired of admiring her beauty; it was to her a most precious possession of which nothing but time could rob her. "To-day is mine," she frequently said to herself, and she wished with all her heart that there were no to-morrow. Yes, to-day was hers, and she was beautiful, and, gazing at the reflection of her fair self, she thought that she did not look more than eighteen. "Do you think I do, child?" she asked of Dionetta. "Think you do what, my lady?" inquired Dionetta. Adelaide laughed, a musical, child-like laugh which any man, hearing, would have judged to be an expression of pure innocent delight. She derived pleasure even from this pleasant sound. "I was thinking to myself, and I believed I was speaking aloud. Do you think I look twenty-five?" "No, indeed, my lady, not by many years. You look younger than I do." "And you are not eighteen, Dionetta." "Not yet, my lady." Adelaide's eyes sparkled. It was indeed true that she looked younger than her maid, who was in herself a beauty and young-looking. "Dionetta," she said, presently, after a pause, "I have had a curious dream." "I saw you close your eyes for a moment, my lady." "I dreamt I was the most beautiful woman in all this wide world." "You are, my lady." The words were uttered in perfect honesty and simplicity. Her mistress was truly the most beautiful woman she had ever seen. "Nonsense, child, nonsense--there are others as fair, although I should not fear to stand beside them. It was only a dream, and this but the commencement of it. I was the most beautiful woman in the world. I had the handsomest features, the loveliest figure, and a shape that sculptors would have called perfection. I had the most exquisite dresses that ever were worn, and everything in that way a woman's heart could desire." "A happy dream, my lady!" "Wait. I had a palace to live in, in a land where it was summer the whole year through. Such gardens, Dionetta, and such flowers as one only sees in dreams. I had rings enough to cover my fingers a dozen times over; diamonds in profusion for my hair, and neck, and arms,--trunks full of them, and of old lace, and of the most wonderful jewels the mind can conceive. Would you believe it, child, in spite of all this, I was the most miserable woman in the universe?" "It is hard to believe, my lady." "Not when I tell you the reason. Dionetta, I was absolutely alone. There was not a single person near me, old or young--not one to look at me, to envy me, to admire me, to love me. What was the use of beauty, diamonds, flowers, dresses? The brightest eyes, the loveliest complexion, the whitest skin--all were thrown away. It would have been just as well if I had been dressed in rags, and were old and wrinkled as Pierre Lamont. Now, what I learn from my dream is this--that beauty is not worth having unless it is admired and loved, and unless other people can see it as well as yourself." "Everybody sees that you are beautiful, my lady; it is spoken of everywhere." "Is it, Dionetta, really, now, is it?" "Yes, my lady. And you are admired and loved." "I think I am, child; I know I am. So that my dream goes for nothing. A foolish fancy, was it not, Dionetta?--but women are never satisfied. I should never be tired--never, never, of hearing the man I love say, 'I love you, I love you! You are the most beautiful, the dearest, the sweetest!'" She leant forward and looked closely at herself in the glass, and then sank back in her chair and smiled, and half-closed her eyes. "Dionetta," she said presently, "what makes you so pale?" "It is the Shadow, my lady, that was seen to-night," replied Dionetta in a whisper; "I cannot get it out of my mind." "But you did not see it?" "No, my lady; but it was there." "You believe in ghosts?" "Yes, my lady." "You would not have the courage to go where one was to be seen?" "Not for all the gold in the world, my lady." "But the other servants are more courageous?" "They may be, but they would not dare to go; they said so to-night, all of them." "They have been speaking of it, then?" "Oh, yes; of scarcely anything else. Grandmother said to-night that if you had not come to the villa, the belief in the shadows would have died away altogether." "That is too ridiculous," interrupted Adelaide. "What can I have to do with them?" "If you had not come," said Dionetta, "grandmother said our young master would not be here. It is because he is in the house, sleeping here for the first night for so many, many years, that the spirit of his mother appeared to him." "But your grandmother has told me she did not believe in the shadows." "My lady, I think she is changing her opinion--else she would never have said what she did. It is long since I have seen her so disturbed." Adelaide rose from her chair, the fairest picture of womanhood eyes ever gazed upon. A picture an artist would have contemplated with delight. She stood still for a few moments, her hand resting on her writing-desk. "Your grandmother does not like me, Dionetta." "She has not said so, my lady," said Dionetta after an awkward pause. "Not directly, child," said Adelaide, "and I have no reason to complain of want of respect in her. But one always knows whether one is really liked or not." "She is growing old," murmured Dionetta apologetically, "and has seen very little of ladies." "Neither have you, child. Yet you do not dislike me." "My lady, if I dare to say it, I love you." "There is no daring in it, child. I love to be loved--and I would sooner be loved by the young than the old. Come here, pretty one. Your ears are like little pink shells, and deserve something better than those common rings in them. Put these in their place." She took from a jewel-case a pair of earrings, turquoise and small diamonds, and with her own hands made the exchange. "Oh, my lady," sighed Dionetta with a rose-light in her face. "They are too grand for me! What shall I say when people see them?" The girl's heart was beating quick with ecstasy. She looked at herself in the glass, and uttered a cry of joy. "Say that I gave them to you because I love you. I never had a maid who pleased me half as much. Does this prove it?" and she put her lips to Dionetta's face. The girl's eyes filled with tears, and she kissed Adelaide's hand in a passion of gratitude. "I love you, Dionetta, because you love me, and because I can trust you." "You can, my lady. I will serve you with all my heart and soul. But I have done nothing for you that any other girl could not have done." "Would you like to do something for me that I would trust no other to do?" "Yes, my lady," eagerly answered Dionetta. "I should be proud." "And you will tell no one?' "Not a soul, my lady, if you command me." "I do command you. It is easy to do--merely to deliver a note, and to say: 'This is from my mistress.'" "Oh, my lady, that is no task at all. It is so simple." "Simple as it is, I do not wish even your grandmother to hear of it." "She shall not--nor any person. I swear it." In the extravagance of her gratitude and joy, she kissed a little cross that hung from her neck. "You have made me your friend for life," said Adelaide, "the best friend you ever had, or ever will have." She sat down to her desk, and on a sheet of note-paper wrote these words: "Dear Christian: "I cannot sleep until I wish you good-night, with no horrid people around us. Let me see you for one minute only. "Adelaide." Placing the sheet of note-paper in an envelope, she gave it to Dionetta, saying: "Take this to Mr. Almer's room, and give it to him. It is nothing of any importance, but he will be pleased to receive it." Dionetta, marvelling why her lady should place any value upon so slight a service, went upstairs with the note, and returned with the information that Christian Almer was not in his room. "But his door is open, my lady," she said, "and the lamps are burning." "Go then, again," said Adelaide, "and place the note on his desk. There is no harm, child; he cannot see you, as he is not there, and if he were, he would not be angry." Dionetta obeyed without fear, and when she told her mistress that the note was placed where Christian Almer was sure to see it, Adelaide kissed her again, and wished her "Good-night." CHAPTER VIII IN THE HOME OF HIS CHILDHOOD Upon no person had the supposed appearance of a phantom in the grounds of the House of White Shadows produced so profound an impression as upon Christian Almer. This was but natural. Even supposing him not to have been a man of susceptibility, the young lady's terror, as she gazed at the shadow, could not have failed to make an impression upon him. It was the first night of his return, after an absence of many years, to the house in which he had been born and had passed his unhappy childhood's life: and the origin of the belief in these white shadows which were said to haunt his estate was so closely woven into his personal history as almost to form a part of himself. He had never submitted his mind to a rigid test of belief or disbelief in these signs; one of the principal aims of his life had been, not only to avoid the villa, but to shut out all thought of the tragic events which had led to the death of his parents. He loved them both with an equal love. When he thought of his mother he saw a woman patient in suffering, of a temper exquisitely sweet, whose every word and act towards her child was fraught with tenderness. When he thought of his father he saw a man high-principled and just, inflexible in matters of right and conscience, patient also in suffering, and bearing in silence, as his mother did, a grief which had poisoned his life and hers. Neither of his parents had ever spoken a word against the other; the mystery which kept this tender, loving woman, and this just, high-principled man, apart, was never disclosed to their child. On this subject they entrenched themselves behind a barrier of silence which the child's love and winning ways could not penetrate. Only when his mother's eyes were closed and her lips sealed by death was he privileged to witness how deeply his father had loved her. Much of what had been disclosed to the Advocate's wife by Mother Denise was absolutely unknown to him. Doubtless he could have learned every particular of the circumstances which had led to the separation of his parents, had his wish lain in that direction; but a delicate instinct whispered to him not to lift the veil, and he would permit no person to approach the subject in his presence. The bright appearance of his sitting-room cheered him when he entered it, after bidding the Advocate good-night. But this pleasurable sense was not unalloyed. His heart and his conscience were disturbed, and as he took up a handful of roses which had been thrown loose into a bowl and inhaled their fragrance, a guilty thrill shot through his veins. With the roses in his hand he stood before the picture of Adelaide, which she had hung above his desk. How bright and beautiful was the face, how lovely the smile with which she greeted him! It was almost as if she were speaking to him, telling him that she loved him, and asking him to assure her once more that her love was returned. For a moment the fancy came upon him that Adelaide and he were like two stars wandering through a dark and dangerous path, and that before them lay death, and worse than death--dishonour and irretrievable ruin; and that she, the brighter star, holding him tightly by the hand, was whispering: "I will guide you safely; only love me!" There was one means of escape--death! A coward's refuge, which might not even afford him a release from dishonour, for Adelaide in her despair might let their secret escape her. Why, then, should he torture himself unnecessarily? It was not in his power to avert the inevitable. He had not deliberately chosen his course. Fate had driven him into it. Was it not best, after all, to do as he had said to the Advocate that night, to submit without a struggle? Men were not masters, but slaves. When the image of the Advocate, of his friend, presented itself to him, he thrust it sadly from him. But it came again and again, like the ghost of Banquo; conscience refused to be tricked. Crumbling the roses in his hand, and strewing the floor with the leaves, he turned, and saw, gazing wistfully at him, the eyes of his mother. The artist who had painted her picture had not chosen to depict her in her most joyous mood. In _his_ heart also, as she sat before him, love's fever was burning, and he knew, while his brush was fixing her beauty on the canvas, that his love was returned, though treachery had parted them. He had striven, not unsuccessfully, to portray in her features the expression of one who loved and to whom love was denied. The look in her eyes was wistful rather than hopeless, and conveyed, to those who knew her history, the idea of one who hoped to find in another world the happiness she had lost in this. Sad and tender reminiscences of the years he had lived with his mother in these very rooms stole into Christian Almer's mind, and he allowed his thoughts to dwell upon the question, "Why had she been unhappy?" She was young, beautiful, amiable, rich; her husband was a man honoured and esteemed, with a character above reproach. What secret would be revealed if the heart of this mystery were laid bare to his sight? If it were in his power to ascertain the truth, might not the revelation cause him additional sorrow? Better, then, to let the matter rest. No good purpose could be served by raking up the ashes of a melancholy past. His parents were dead---- And here occurred a sudden revulsion. His mother was dead--and, but a few short minutes since, her spirit was supposed to have appeared in the grounds of the villa. Almost upon the thought, he hurriedly left the room, and made his way into the gardens. * * * * * * "My neighbour, and master of this house," said Pierre Lamont, who was lying wide awake in the adjoining room, "does not seem inclined to rest. Something disturbs him." Pierre Lamont was alone; Fritz the Fool had left him for the night, and the old lawyer, himself in no mood for sleep, was reading and listening to the movements around him. There was little to hear, only an occasional muffled sound which the listener interpreted as best he could; but Christian Almer, when he left his room, had to pass Pierre Lamont's door in his progress to the grounds, and it was the clearer sound of his footsteps which led Pierre Lamont to his correct conclusion. "He is going out of the house," continued Pierre Lamont. "For what? To look for his mother's ghost, perhaps. Fool Fritz, in raising this particular ghost, did not foresee what it might lead to. Ghosts! And fools still live who believe in them! Well, well, but for the world's delusions there would be little work for busy minds to accomplish. As a fantastic piece of imagery I might conjure up an army of men sweeping the world with brooms made of brains--of knavery, folly, trickery, and delusion. What is that? A footstep! Human? No. Too light for any but the feet of a cat!" But here Pierre Lamont was at fault. It was Dionetta who passed his door in the passage, conveying to Christian Almer's room the note written by the Advocate's wife. Before the arrival of her new mistress, Dionetta had always worn thick boots, and the sound of her footstep was plain to hear; but Adelaide's nerves could not endure the creaking and clattering, and she had supplied her maid with shoes. Besides, Dionetta had naturally a light step. * * * * * * Christian Almer met with nothing in the grounds to disturb him. No airy shadow appeared to warn him of the danger which threatened him. Were it possible for the spirits of the dead to make themselves seen and heard, assuredly the spirit of his mother would have appeared and implored him to fly from the house without delay. Happy for him would it have been were he one of the credulous fools Pierre Lamont held in despisal--happy for him could he have formed, out of the shadows which moved around him, a spirit in which he would have believed, and could he have heard, in the sighing of the breeze, a voice which would have impressed him with a true sense of the peril in which he stood. But he heard and saw nothing for which he could not naturally account, and within a few minutes of midnight he re-entered his room. * * * * * * "My neighbour has returned," said Pierre Lamont, "after his nocturnal ramble in search of the spirit of his dead mother. Hark! That sound again! As of some living thing stepping cautiously on the boards. If I were not a cripple I would satisfy myself whether this villa is tormented by restless cats as well as haunted by unholy spirits. When will science supply mankind with the means of seeing, as well as hearing, what is transpiring on the other side of stone and wooden walls? "Ah, that door of his is creaking. It opens--shuts. I hear a murmur of voices, but cannot catch a word. Almer's voice of course--and the Advocate's. No--the other voice and the soft footsteps are in partnership. Not the Advocate's, nor any man's. Men don't tread like cats. It was a woman who passed my door, and who has been admitted into that room. Being a woman, what woman? If Fool Fritz were here, we would ferret it out between us before we were five minutes older. "Still talking--talking--like the soft murmur of peaceful waves. Ah! a laugh! By all that's natural, a woman's laugh! It is a woman! And I should know that silvery sound. There is a special music in a laugh which cannot be mistaken. It is distinctive--characteristic. "Ah, my lady, my lady! Fair face, false heart--but woman, woman all over!" And Pierre Lamont rubbed his hands, and also laughed--but his laugh was like his speech, silent, voiceless. CHAPTER IX CHRISTIAN ALMER RECEIVES TWO VISITORS Upon Christian Almer's desk lay the note written by Adelaide. He saw it the moment he entered the room, and knew, therefore, that some person had called during his absence. At first he thought it must have been the Advocate, who, not finding him in his room, had left the note for him; but as he opened the envelope a faint perfume floated from it. "It is from Adelaide," he murmured. "How often and how vainly have I warned her!" He read the note: "Dear Christian: "I cannot sleep until I wish you good-night, with no horrid people around us. Let me see you for one minute only. "Adelaide." To comply with her request at such an hour would be simple folly; infatuated as he was he would not deliberately commit himself to such an act. "Surely she cannot have been here," he thought. "But if another hand placed this note upon my desk, another person must share the secret which it is imperative should never be revealed. I must be firm with her. There must be an end to this imprudence. Fortunately there is no place in Edward's nature for suspicion." He blushed with shame at the unworthy thought. Five years ago, could he have seen--he who up to that time never had stooped to meanness and deceit--the position in which he now stood, he would have rejected the mere suspicion of its possibility with indignation. But by what fatally easy steps had he reached it! In the midst of these reflections his heart almost stopped beating at the sound of a light footstep without. He listened, and heard a soft tapping on the door, not with the knuckles, but with the finger-tips; he opened the door, and Adelaide stood smiling before him. With her finger at her lips she stepped into the room, and closed the door behind her. "It would not do for me to be seen," she whispered. "Do not be alarmed; I shall not be here longer than one little minute. I have only come to wish you good-night. Give me a chair, or I shall sink to the ground. I am really very, very frightened. Quick; bring me a chair. Do you not see how weak I am?" He drew a chair towards Her, and she sank languidly into it. "As you would not come to me," she said, "I was compelled to come to you." "Compelled!" he said. They spoke in low tones, fearful lest their voices should travel beyond the room. "Yes, compelled. I was urged by a spirit." His face grew white. "A spirit!" "How you echo me, Christian. Yes, by a spirit, to which you yourself shall give a name. Shall we call it a spirit of restlessness, or jealousy, or love?" She gazed at him with an arch smile. "Adelaide," he said, "your imprudence will ruin us." "Nonsense, Christian, nonsense," she said lightly; "ruined because I happened to utter one little word! To be sure I ought, so as to prove myself an apt pupil, to put a longer word before it, and call it platonic love. How unreasonable you are! What harm is there in our having a moment's chat? We are old friends, are we not? No, I will not let you interrupt me; I know what you are going to say. You are going to say, Think of the hour! I decline to think of the hour. I think of nothing but you. And instead of looking delighted, as you should do, as any other man would do, there you stand as serious as an owl. Now, answer me, sir. Why did you not come to me the moment you received my note?" "I had but just read it when you tapped at my door." "I forgive you. Where have you been? With the Advocate?" "No; I have been walking in the grounds." "You saw nothing, Christian?" she asked with a little shiver. "Nothing to alarm or disturb me." "There was a light in the Advocate's study, was there not?" "Yes." "He will remain up late, and then he will retire to his room. My life is a very bright and beautiful life with him. He is so tender in his ways--so fond of pleasure--pays me so much attention, and _such_ compliments--is so light--hearted and joyous--sings to me, dances with me! Oh, you don't know him, you don't indeed. I remember asking him to join in a cotillon; you should have seen the look he gave me!" She laughed out loud, and clapped her hand on her mouth to stifle the sound. "I wonder whether he was ever young, like you and me. What a wonderful child he must have been--with scientific toys, and books always under his arm--yes, a wonderful child, holding in disdain little girls who wished him to join in their innocent games. What is your real opinion of him, Christian?" "It pains me to hear you speak of him in that way." "It should please you; but men are never satisfied. I speak lightly, do I not, but there are moments when I shudder at my fate. Confess, it is not a happy one." "It is not," he replied, after a pause, "but if I had not crossed your path, life would be full of joy for you." It was not this he intended to say, but there was such compelling power in her lightest words that his very thoughts seemed to be under her dominion. "There would have been no joy in my life," she said, "without you. We will not discuss it. What is, is. Sometimes when I think of things they make my head ache. Then I say, I will think of them no longer. If everybody did the same, would not this world be a great deal pleasanter than it is? Oh, you must not forget what the Advocate called me to-night in your presence--a philosopher in petticoats. Don't you see that even he is on my side, though it is against himself? Of course one can't help respecting him. He is a very learned man. He should have married a very learned woman. What a pity it is that I am not wise! But that is not my fault. I hate learning, I hate science, I hate theories. What is the good of them? They say, this is not right, that is not right. And all we poor creatures can do is to look on in a state of bewilderment, and wonder what they mean. If people would only let the world alone, they would find it a very beautiful world. But they will _not_ let it alone; they _will_ meddle. A flower, now--is it not sweet--is it not enough that it is sent to give us pleasure? But these disagreeable people say, 'Of what is this flower composed--is it as good as other flowers--has it qualities, and what qualities?' What do I care? I put it in my hair, and I am happy because it becomes me, because it is pretty, because Nature sent it to me to enjoy. Why, I have actually made you smile!" "Because there is a great deal of natural wisdom in what you are saying----" "Natural wisdom! There now, does it not prove I am right? Thank you, Christian. It comes to you to say exactly the right thing exactly at the right time. I shall begin to feel proud." "And," continued Almer, "if you were only to talk to me like that in the middle of the day instead of the middle of the night----" She interrupted him again: "You have undone it all with your 'ifs.' What does it matter if it is in the middle of the day or the middle of the night? What is right, is right, is it not, without thinking of the time? Don't get disagreeable; but indeed I will not allow you to be anything but nice to me. You have made me forget everything I was going to say." "Except one thing," he said gravely, "which you came to say, 'Good-night.'" "The minute is not gone yet," she said with a silvery laugh. "Many minutes, many minutes," he said helplessly, "and every minute is fraught with danger." "I will protect you," she said with supreme assurance. "Do not fear. I see quite plainly that if there is a dragon to kill I shall have to be the St. George. Well, I am ready. Danger is sweet when you are with me." He was powerless against her; he resigned himself to his fate. "Who brought your letter to my room?" he asked. "Dionetta." "Have you confided in her?" "She knows nothing, and she is devoted to me. If the simple maid thought of the letter at all--as to what was in it, I mean--she thought, of course, that it was something I wanted you to do for me to-morrow, and had forgotten to tell you. But even here I was prudent, although you do not give me credit for prudence. I made her promise not to tell a soul, not even her grandmother, that queer, good old Mother Denise, that she had taken a letter from me to you. She did more than promise--she swore she would not tell. I bribed her, Christian--I gave her things, and to-night I gave her a pair of earrings. You should have witnessed her delight! I would wager that she is at this moment no more asleep than I am. She is looking at herself in the glass, shaking her pretty little head to make the diamonds glisten." "Diamonds, Adelaide! A simple maid like Dionetta with diamond earrings! What will the folks say?" "Oh, they all know I am fond of her----" They started to their feet with a simultaneous movement. "Footsteps!" whispered Almer. "The Advocate's," said Adelaide, and she glided to the door, and turned the key as softly as if it were made of velvet. "He will see a light in the room," said Christian. "He has come to talk with me. What shall we do?" She gazed at him with a bright smile. His face was white with apprehension; hers, red with excitement and exaltation. "I am St. George," she whispered; "but really there is no dragon to kill; we have only to send him to sleep. Of course you must see him. I will conceal myself in the inner room, and you will lock me in, and put the key in your pocket, so that I shall be quite safe. Do not be uneasy about me; I can amuse myself with books and pictures, and I will turn over the leaves so quietly that even a butterfly would not be disturbed. And when the dragon is gone I will run away immediately. I am almost sorry I came, it has distressed you so." She kissed the tips of her fingers to him, and entered the adjoining room. Then, turning the key in the door Christian Almer admitted the Advocate. CHAPTER X A BRIEF SURVEY OF THE WEB Pause we here a moment, and contemplate the threads of the web which Chance, Fate, or Retribution was weaving round this man. With the exception of a few idle weeks in his youth, his life had been a life of honour and renown. His ambition was a worthy one, and success had not been attained without unwearying labour and devotion. Close study and application, zeal, earnestness, unflagging industry, these were the steps in the ladder he had climbed. Had it not been for his keen intellect these qualities would not have been sufficient to conduct him to the goal he had in view. Good luck is not to be despised, but unless it is allied with brain power of a high order only an ephemeral success can be achieved. Never, to outward appearance, was a great reputation more stable or better deserved. His wonderful talents, and the victories he had gained in the face of formidable odds, had destroyed all the petty jealousies with which he had to cope in the outset of his career, and he stood now upon a lofty pinnacle, acknowledged by all as a master in his craft. Wealth and distinction were his, and higher honours lay within his grasp; and, in addition, he had won for his wife one of the most beautiful of women. It seemed as if the world had nothing to add to his happiness. And yet destruction stared him in the face. The fabric he had raised, on a foundation so secure that it appeared as if nothing could shake it, was tottering, and might fall, destroying him and all he had worked for in the ruins. He stood at the door of the only man in the world to whom he had given the full measure of his friendship. With all the strength of his nature he believed in Christian Almer. In the gravest crisis of his life he would have called this friend to his side, and would have placed in his hands, without hesitation, his life, his reputation, and his honour. To Almer, in their conversation, he had revealed what may be termed his inner life, that life the workings of which were concealed from all other men. And in this friend's chamber his wife was concealed; and dishonour hung over him by the slenderest thread. Not only dishonour, but unutterable grief, for he loved this woman with a most complete undoubting love. Little time had he for dalliance; but he believed in his wife implicitly. His trust in her was a perfect trust. Within the room at the door of which he was waiting, stood his one friend, with white face and guilty conscience, about to admit him and grasp his hand. Had the heart of this friend been laid bare to him, he would have shrunk from it in horror and loathing, and from that moment to the last moment of his life the sentiment of friendship would have been to him the bitterest mockery and delusion with which man could be cursed. Not five yards from where he stood lay Pierre Lamont, listening and watching for proofs of the perfidy which would bring disgrace upon him--which would cause men and women to speak of him in terms of derision for his blindness and scorn for his weakness--which would make a byeword of him--of him, the great Advocate, who had played his part in many celebrated cases in which woman's faithlessness and disloyalty were the prominent features--and which would cause him to regard the sentiment of love as the falsest delusion with which mankind was ever afflicted. In the study he had left but a few minutes since slept a man who, in a certain sense, claimed comradeship with him, a man whom he had championed and set free, a self-confessed murderer, a wretch so vile that he had fled from him in horror at the act he had himself accomplished. And in the open air, upon a hill, a hundred yards from the House of White Shadows, lay John Vanbrugh, a friend of his youth, a man disgraced by his career, watching for the signal which would warrant him in coming forward and divulging what was in his mind. If what John Vanbrugh had disclosed in his mutterings during his lonely watch was true, he held in his hands the key to a mystery, which, revealed, would overwhelm the Advocate with shame and infamy. Thus was he threatened on all sides by friend and foe alike. CHAPTER XI A CRISIS "Have I disturbed you, Christian?" asked the Advocate, entering the room. "I hesitated a moment or two, hearing no sound, but seeing your lamp was lighted, I thought you were up, and might be expecting me." "I had an idea you would come," said Almer, with a feeling of relief at the Advocate's statement that he had heard no sound; and then he said, so that he might be certain of his ground, "You have not been to my room before to-night?" "No; for the last two hours I have not left my study. Half an hour's converse with you will do me good. I am terribly jaded." "The reaction of the excitement of the long trial in which you have been engaged." "Probably; though I have endured fatigue as great without feeling as jaded as I do now." "You must take rest. Your doctors who prescribed repose for you would be angry if they were aware of the strain you have put upon your mind." "They do know. The physician I place the greatest faith in writes to me that I must have been mad to have undertaken Gautran's defence. It might have been better if I had not entered into that trial." "You have one consolation. Defended by a lawyer less eminent than yourself, an unfortunate man might have been convicted of a crime he did not commit." "Yes," said the Advocate slowly, "that is true." "You compel admiration, Edward. With frightful odds against you, with the public voice against you, you voluntarily engage in a contest from which nothing is to be gained, and come out triumphant. I do not envy the feelings of the lawyers on the other side." "At least, Christian, as you have said, they have the public voice with them." "And you, Edward, have justice on your side, and the consciousness of right. The higher height is yours; you must regard these narrower minds with a feeling of pity." "I have no feeling whatever for them; they do not trouble me. Christian, we will quit the subject of Gautran; you can well understand that I have had enough of him. Let us speak of yourself. I am an older man than you, and there is something of a fatherly interest in the friendship I entertain for you. Since my marriage I have sometimes thought if I had a son I should have been pleased if his nature resembled yours, and if I had a daughter it would be in the hands of such a man as yourself I should wish to place her happiness." "You esteem me too highly," said Almer, in a tone of sadness. "I esteem you as you deserve, friend. Within your nature are possibilities you do not recognise. It is needful to be bold in this world, Christian; not arrogant, or over-confident, or vain-glorious, but modestly bold. Unless a man assert himself his powers will lie dormant; and not to use the gifts with which we are endowed is a distinct reproach upon us. I have heard able men say it is a crime to neglect our powers, for great gifts are bestowed upon us for others' good as well as for our own. Besides, it is healthy in every way to lead a busy life, to set our minds upon the accomplishment of certain tasks. If we fail--well, failure is very often more honourable than success. We have at least striven to mount the hill which rises above the pettiness and selfishness of our everyday life; we have at least proved ourselves worthy of the spiritual influences which prompt the execution of noble deeds. You did not reply to the letter I sent you in the mountains; but Adelaide heard from you, and that is sufficient. Sufficient, also, that you are here with us, and that we know we have a true friend in the house. You were many weeks in the mountains." "Yes." "Were you engaged on any work? Did you paint or write?" "I made a few sketches, which pleased me one day and displeased me the next, so I tore them up and threw them away. There is enough indifferent work in the world." "Nothing short of perfection will satisfy you," said the Advocate with a serious smile; "but some men must march in the ranks." "I am not worthy even of that position," said Almer moodily. The Advocate regarded him with thoughtful eyes. "If your mind is not deeply reflective, if your power of observation applies only to the surface of things, you are capable of imparting what some call tenderness and I call soul, to every subject which presents itself to you. I have detected this in your letters and conversation. It is a valuable quality. I grant that you may be unfit to cope with practical matters, but in your study you would be able to produce works which would charm if they did not instruct. There is in you a heart instinct which, as it forms part of your nature, would display itself in everything you wrote." "Useless, Edward, useless! My father was an author; it brought him no happiness." "How do you know? It may have afforded him consolation, and that is happiness. But I was not speaking of happiness. The true artist does not look to results. He has only one aim and one desire--to produce a perfect work. His task being done--not that he produces a perfect work, but the ennoblement lies in the aspiration and the earnest application--that being done, he has accomplished something worthy, whatever its degree of excellence. The day upon which a man first devotes himself to such labour he awakes within his being a new and delightful life, the life of creative thought. Fresh wonders continually reveal themselves--quaint suggestions, exquisite fancies, and he makes use of them according to the strength of his intellect. He enriches the world." "And if he is a poor man, starves." "Maybe; but he wears the crown. You, however, are rich." "Nothing to be grateful for. I had no incentive to effort, therefore I stand to-day an idle, aimless man. You have spoken of books. When I looked at crowded bookshelves, I should blush at the thought of adding to them any rubbish of my own creation." "I find no fault with you for that. Blush if you like--but work, produce." "And let the world call me vain and presumptuous." "Give it the chance of judging; it may be the other way. Perhaps the greatest difficulty we have to encounter in life is in the discovery of that kind of work for which we are best fitted. Fortunate the man who gravitates to it naturally, and who, having the capacity to become a fine shoemaker, is not clapped upon a watchmaker's bench instead of a cobbler's stool. Being fitted, he is certain to acquire some kind of distinction. Believe me, Christian, it is not out of idleness, or for the mere purpose of making conversation that I open up this subject. It would afford me great pleasure if you were in a more settled frame of mind. You cannot disguise from me that you are uneasy, perhaps unhappy. I see it this very moment in your wandering glances, and in the difficulty you experience in fixing your attention upon what I am saying. You are not satisfied with yourself. You have probably arrived at that stage when a man questions himself as to what is before him--when he reviews the past, and discovers that he has allowed the years to slip by without having made an effort to use them to a worthy end. You ask yourself, 'Is it for this I am here? Are there not certain duties which I ought to perform? If I allow the future to slip away as the past has done, without having accomplished a man's work in the world, I shall find myself one day an old man, of whom it may be said, "He lived only for himself; he had no thought, no desire beyond himself; the struggles of humanity, the advance of civilisation, the progress and development of thought which have effected such marvellous changes in the aspects of society, the exposing of error--these things touched him not; he bore no part in them, but stood idly by, a careless observer, whose only ambition it was to utilise the hours to his own selfish pleasures."' A heavy charge, Christian. What you want is occupation. Politics--your inclinations do not lead that way; trade is abhorrent to you. You are not sufficiently frivolous to develop into a butterfly leader of fashion. Law is distasteful to you. Science demands qualities which you do not possess. For a literary life you are specially adapted. I say to you, turn your attention to it for a while. If it disappoint you, it is easy to relinquish it. It will be but an attempt made in the right direction. But understand, Christian, without earnestness, without devotion, without application, it will be useless to make the attempt." "And that is precisely the reason why I hesitate to make it. I am wanting in firmness of purpose. I doubt myself; I should have begun earlier." "But you will think over what I have said?" "Yes, I will think of it, and I cordially thank you." "And now tell me how you enjoyed yourself in the mountains." "Passably well. It was a negative sort of life. There was no pleasure in it, and no pain. One day was so exactly like another, that I should scarcely have been surprised if I had awoke one morning and discovered that in the dull uniformity of the hours my hair had grown white and I into an old man. The principal subject of interest was the weather, and that palled so soon that sunshine or storm became a matter of indifference to me." "Look at me a moment, Christian." They sat gazing at each other in silence for a little while. There was an unusual tenderness in the Advocate's eyes which pierced Christian Almer to the heart. During the whole of this interview the thought never left his mind: "If he knew the part I am playing towards him--if he suspected that simply by listening at this inner door he could hear his wife's soft breathing--in what way would he call me to account for my treachery?" He dreaded every moment that something would occur to betray him. Adelaide was careless, reckless. If she made a movement to attract attention, if she overturned a chair, if she let a book fall, what was he to say in answer to the Advocate's questioning look? But all was quiet within; he was tortured only by the whisperings of his conscience. "You are suffering, Christian," said the Advocate. Almer knew intuitively that on this point, as on many others, it would be useless to attempt to deceive the Advocate. To return an evasive answer might arouse suspicion. He said simply: "Yes, I am suffering." "It is not bodily suffering, though your pulse is feverish." He had taken Almer's wrist, and his fingers were on the pulse. "Your disease is mental." He paused, but Almer did not speak. "It is no breach of confidence," continued the Advocate, "to tell you that on the first day of my entering Geneva, Jacob Hartrich and I had a conversation about you. There was nothing said that need be kept private. We conversed as two men might converse concerning an absent friend in whom both took an affectionate interest. He had noticed a change in you which I have noticed since I entered this room. When you visited him he was impressed by an unusual strangeness in your manner. That strangeness of manner, without your being aware of it, is upon you now. He said that you were restless and ill at ease. You are at this moment restless and ill at ease. The muscles of your face, your eyes, your hands, are not under your control. They respond to the mental disease which causes you to suffer. You will forgive me for saying that you convey to me the impression that you would be more at ease at the present time if I were not with you." "I entreat you," said Almer eagerly, "not to think so." "I accept your assurance, which, nevertheless, does not convince me that I am wrong in my impression. The friendship which exists between us is too close and binding--I may even go so far as to say, too sacred--for me, a colder and more experienced man than yourself, to allow it to be affected by any matter outside its boundary. Deprive it of sympathy, and friendship is an unmeaning word. I sympathise with you deeply, sincerely, without knowing how to relieve you. I ask you frankly, however, one question which you may freely answer. Have you fixed your affections upon a woman who does not reciprocate your love?" The Advocate was seated by the desk upon which Almer had, after reading it, carelessly thrown the note written to him by Adelaide, and as he put the question to his friend, he involuntarily laid his hand upon this damning evidence of his wife's disloyalty. CHAPTER XII SELF-JUSTIFICATION The slight action and the significant question presented a coincidence so startling that Christian Almer was fascinated by it. That there was premeditation or design in the coincidence, or that the Advocate had cunningly led the conversation to this point for the purpose of confounding him and bringing him face to face with his treachery, did not suggest itself to his mind. He was, indeed, incapable of reasoning coherently. All that he was momentarily conscious of was, that discovery was imminent, that the sword hung over him, suspended by a hair. Would it fall, and in its fall compel into a definite course the conflicting passions by which he was tortured? It would, perhaps, be better so. Already did he experience a feeling of relief at this suggestion, and it appeared to him as if he were bending his head for the welcome blow. But all was still and quiet, and through the dim mist before his eyes he saw the Advocate gazing kindly upon him. Then there stole upon him a wild prompting, a mad impulse, to expedite discovery by his own voluntary act--to say to the Advocate: "I have betrayed you. Read that note beneath your hand; take this key, and open yonder door; find there your wife. What do you propose to do?" The words did actually shape themselves in his mind, and he half believed that he had uttered them. They did not, however, escape his lips. He was instinctively restrained by the consideration that in his punishment Adelaide would be involved. What right had he deliberately to ruin and expose her? A cowardly act thus to sacrifice a woman who in this crisis relied upon him for protection. In a humiliating, shameful sense it is true, but none the less was she under his direct protection at this moment. Self-tortured as he was he could still show that he had some spark of manliness left in him. To recklessly dispose of the fate of the woman whose only crime was that she loved him--this he dared not do. His mood changed. Arrived at this conclusion, his fear now was that he had betrayed himself--that in some indefinite way he had given the Advocate the key to his thoughts, or that he had, by look or expression, conveyed to his friend a sense of the terrible importance of the perfumed note which lay upon the desk. "You do not answer me, Christian," said the Advocate. But Almer could not speak. His eyes were fixed upon Adelaide's note, and he found it impossible to divert his attention from the idle movements of the Advocate's fingers. His unreasoning impulse to hasten discovery was gone, and he was afflicted now by a feeling of apprehension. It was his imperative duty to protect Adelaide; while the Advocate's hand rested upon the envelope which contained her secret she was not safe. At all risks, even at the hazard of his life, must she be held blameless. Had the Advocate lifted the envelope from the desk, Almer would have torn it from him. "Why do you not speak?" asked the Advocate. "Surely there is nothing offensive in such a question between friends like ourselves." "I can offer you no explanation of what I am about to say," replied Almer: "it may sound childish, trivial, pitiful, but my thoughts are not under my own control while your hand is upon that letter." With the slightest expression of surprise the Advocate handed Almer the envelope, scarcely looking at it as it passed from his possession. "Why did you not speak of it before?" he said. "But when a mind is unbalanced, trifling matters are magnified into importance." "I can only ask you to forgive me," said Almer, placing the envelope in his pocket-book. "I have no doubt in the course of your career you have met with many small incidents quite as inexplicable." Then an excuse which would surely be accepted occurred to him. "It may be sufficient for me to say that this is the first night of my return to the house in which I was born and passed a not too happy boyhood, and that in this room my mother died." The Advocate pressed Almer's hand. "There is no need for another word. You have been looking over some old family papers, and they have aroused melancholy reminiscences. I should have been more thoughtful; I was wrong in coming to you. It will be best to say good-night." But Almer, anxious to avoid the slightest cause for suspicion in the right direction, said: "Nay, stay with me a few minutes longer, or I shall reproach myself for having behaved unreasonably. You were asking----" "A delicate question. Whether you love without being loved in return?" "No, Edward, that is not the case with me." "You have no intention of marrying?" "No." "Then your heart is still free. You reassure me. You are not suffering from what has been described as the most exquisite of all human sufferings--unrequited love. Neither have you experienced a disappointment in friendship?" "No. I have scarcely a friend with the exception of yourself." "And my wife. You must not forget her. She takes a cordial interest in you." "Yes, and your wife." "It was Jacob Hartrich who suggested that you might have met with a disappointment in love or friendship. I disputed it, in the belief that had it been unhappily so you would have confided in me. I am glad that I was right. Shall I continue?" "Yes." "The banker, who entertains the most kindly sentiments towards you, based all his conjectures upon a certain remark which made a strong impression upon him. You told him you were weary of the gaiety and the light and bustle of cities, and that it was your intention to seek some solitude where, by a happy chance, you might rid yourself of a terror which possessed you. I can understand your weariness of the false glare of fashionable city life; it can never for any long period satisfy the intellect. But neither can it instil a terror into a man's soul. That would spring from another and a deeper cause." "The words were hastily spoken. Look upon them as an exaggeration." "I certainly regard them in that light, but they were not an invention, and there must have been a serious motive for them. It is not in vain that I have studied your character, although I feel that I did not master the study. I am subjecting you, Christian, to a kind of mental analysis, in an endeavour to arrive at a conclusion which will enable me to be of assistance to you. And I do not disguise from you that, were it in my power, I would assist you even against your will. Our friendship, and my age and more varied experience, would justify me. I do not seek to force your confidence, but I ask you in the spirit of true friendship to consider--not at present, but in a few days, when your mind is in a calmer state--whether such counsel and guidance as it may be in my power to offer will not be a real help to you. Do not lightly reject my assistance in probing a painful wound. I will use my knife gently. There was a time when I believed there was nothing that could happen to either of us which we should be unwilling to confide each to the other, freely and without restraint. I find I am not too old to learn the lesson that the strongest beliefs, the firmest convictions, may be seriously weakened by the occurrence of circumstances for which the wisest foresight could not have provided. Keep, then, your secret, if you are so resolved, and bear in mind that on the day you come to me and say, 'Edward, help me, guide me,' you will find me ready. I shall not fail you, Christian, in any crisis." Almer rose and slowly paced the room, while the Advocate sat back in his chair, and watched his friend with affectionate solicitude. "Does this lesson," presently said Almer, "which you are not too old to learn, spring entirely from the newer impressions you are receiving of my character, or has something in your mind which you have not disclosed helped to lead you to it?" It was a chance shot, but it strangely hit the mark. The question brought forcibly to the Advocate's mind the position in which he himself was placed by Gautran's confession, and by his subsequent resolve to conceal the knowledge of Gautran's crime. "What a web is the world!" he thought. "How the lines which here are widely apart, but a short space beyond cross and are linked in closest companionship!" Both Christian and himself had something to conceal, and it would be acting in bad faith to his friend were he to return an evasive answer. "It is not entirely from the newer impressions you speak of that I learn the lesson. It springs partly from a matter which disturbs my mind." "Referring to me?" "No, to myself. You are not concerned in it." In his turn Almer now became the questioner. "A new experience of your own, Edward?" "Yes." "Which must have occurred to you since we were last together?" "It originated during your absence." "Which came upon you unaware--for which your foresight could not have provided?" "At all events it did not." "You speak seriously, Edward, and your face is clouded." "It is a very serious matter." "Can I help you? Is it likely that my advice would be of assistance?" "I can speak of it to no one." "You also have a secret then?" "Yes, I also have a secret." Christian Almer appeared to gather strength--a warranty, as it were, for his own wrong-doing--from the singular direction the conversation had taken. It was as though part of a burden was lifted from him. He was not the only one who was suffering--he was not the only one who was standing on a dangerous brink--he was not the only one who had drifted into dangerous waters. Even this strong-brained man, this Advocate who had seemingly held aloof from pleasure, whose days and nights had been given up to study, whose powerful intellect could pierce dark mysteries and bring them into clear light, who was the last man in the world who could be suspected of yielding to a prompting of which his judgment and conscience could not approve--even he had a secret which he was guarding with jealous care. Was it likely then, that he, the younger and the more impressionable of the two, could escape snares into which the Advocate had fallen? The fatalist's creed recurred to him. All these matters of life were preordained. What folly--what worse than folly, what presumption, for one weak man to attempt to stem the irresistible current! It was delivering himself up to destruction. Better to yield and float upon the smooth tide and accept what good or ill fate has in store for him. What use to infuse into the sunlight, and the balmy air, and into all the sweets of life, the poison of self-torture? The confession he had extracted from the Advocate was in a certain sense a justification of himself. He would pursue the subject still further. As he had been questioned, so he would question. It was but just. "To judge from your manner, Edward, your secret is no light one." "It is of most serious import." "I almost fear to ask a question which occurs to me." "Ask freely. I have been candid with you, in my desire to ascertain how I could help you in your trouble. Be equally candid with me." "But it may be misconstrued. I am ashamed that it should have suggested itself--for which, of course, the worser part of me is responsible. No--it shall remain unspoken." "I should prefer that you asked it--nay, I desire you to do so. There is no fear of misconstruction. Do you think I wish to stand in your eyes as a perfect man? That would be arrogant, indeed. Or that I do not know that you and I and all men are possessed of contradictions which, viewed in certain aspects, may degrade the most noble? The purest of us--men and women alike--have undignified thoughts, unworthy imaginings, to which we would be loth to give utterance. But sometimes, as in this instance, it becomes a duty. I have had occasion quite lately to question myself closely, and I have fallen in my own estimation. There is more baseness in me than I imagined. Hesitate no longer. Ask your question, and as many more as may arise from it; these things are frequently hydra-headed. I shall know how far to answer without disclosing what I desire shall remain buried." Almer put his question boldly. "Is the fate of a woman involved in your secret?" An almost imperceptible start revealed to Almer's eyes that another chance arrow had hit the mark. Truly, a woman's fate formed the kernel of the Advocate's secret--a virtuous, innocent woman who had been most foully murdered. He answered in set words, without any attempt at evasion. "Yes, a woman's fate is involved in it." "Your wife's?" Had his life depended upon it, Almer could not have kept back the words. "No, not my wife's." "In that case," said Almer slowly, "a man's honour is concerned." "You guess aright--a man's honour is concerned." "Yours?" "Mine." For a few moments neither of them spoke, and then the Advocate said: "To men suspicious of each other--as most men naturally are, and generally with reason--such a turn in our conversation, and indeed the entire conversation in which we have indulged, might be twisted to fatal disadvantage. In the way of conjecture I mean--as to what is the essence of the secret which I do not reveal to my dearest friend, and the essence of that which my dearest friend does not reveal to me. It is fortunate, Christian, that you and I stand higher than most. We have rarely hesitated to speak heart to heart and soul to soul; and if, by some strange course of events, there has arisen in each of our inner lives a mystery which we have decided not to reveal, it will not weaken the feeling of affection we entertain for each other. Is that so, Christian?" "Yes, it is so, Edward." "Men of action, of deep thought, of strong passion, of sensitive natures, are less their own masters than peasants who take no part in the turmoil of the world. An uneventful life presents fewer temptations, and there is therefore more freedom in it. We live in an atmosphere of wine, and often miss our way. Well, we must be indulgent to each other, and be sometimes ready to say, 'The position of difficulty into which you have been thrust, the error you have committed, the sin--yes, even the sin--of which you have been guilty, may have fallen to my lot had I been placed in similar circumstances. It is not I who will be the first to condemn you.'" "Even," said Almer, "if that error or that sin may be a grievous wrong inflicted against yourself. Even then you would be ready to excuse and forgive?" "Yes, even in that case. I should be taking a narrow view of an argument if I applied to all the world what I hesitated to apply to myself." "So that the committal of a great wrong may be justified by circumstances?" "Yes, I will go as far as that. The fault of the child or the fault of the man, is but a question of degree. Some err deliberately, some are hurried into error by passions which master them." "By natural passions?" "All such passions are natural, although it is the fashion to condemn them when they clash with the conditions of social life. The workings of the moral and sympathetic affections are beyond our own control." "Of those who have erred with deliberate intention and those who have been hurried blindly into error, which should you be most ready to forgive?" "The latter," replied the Advocate, conscious that in his answer he was condemning himself; "they are comparatively innocent, having less power over, and being less able to retrace their steps." "You pause," said Almer, a sudden thrill agitating his veins. "Why?" "I thought I heard a sound--like a suppressed laugh! Did you not hear it?" "No. I heard nothing." Almer's teeth met in scorn of himself as he uttered this falsehood. The sound of the laugh was low but distinct, and it proceeded from the room in which Adelaide was concealed. The Advocate stepped to the door by which he had entered, and looked up and down the passage, to which two lamps gave light. It was quiet and deserted. "My fancy," he said, standing within the half-open door. "My physicians know more of the state of my nerves than I do myself. It is interesting, however, to observe one's own mental delusions. But I was wrong in mixing myself up with that trial." Still that trial. Always that trial. It seemed to him as if he could never forget it, as if it would forever abide with him. It coloured his thoughts, it gave form to his arguments. Would it end by changing his very nature? "You are over-wrought, Edward," said Almer. "If you were to seek what I have sought, solitude, it might be more beneficial to you than it has been to me." "There is solitude enough for me in this retired village," said the Advocate, "and had I not undertaken the defence of Gautran, my health by this time might have been completely established. We are here sufficiently removed from the fierce passions of the world--they cannot touch us in this primitive birthplace of yours. Do you recognise how truly I spoke when I said that men like ourselves are the slaves, and peasants the free men? Besides, Christian, there is a medicine in friendship such as yours which I defy the doctors to rival. Even though there has been a veil over our confidences to-night, I feel that this last hour has been of benefit to me. You know that I am much given to thinking to myself. As a rule, at those times, one walks in a narrow groove; if he argues, the contradiction he receives is of that mild character that it can be easily proved wrong. No wonder, when the thinker creates it for the purpose of proving himself right. It is seldom healthy, this solitary communionship--it leads rarely to just conclusions. But in conversation new byeroads reveal themselves, in which we wander pleasantly--new vistas appear--new suggestions arise, to give variety to the argument and to show that it has more than one selfish side. He who leads entirely a life of thought lives a dead life. Good-night, Christian. I have kept you from your rest. Good-night. Sleep well." CHAPTER XIII SHADOWS Christian Almer stood at the door, gazing at the retreating figure of the Advocate. It passed through the clear light of the lamps, became blurred, was merged in the darkness. The corridor was long, and before the Advocate reached the end he was a shadow among shadows. In Almer's excited mood the slightest impressions became the medium for distorted reflection. The dim form of the Advocate was pregnant with meaning, and when it was finally lost to sight, Almer's eyes followed an invisible figure moving, not through space, but through events in which he and his friend and Adelaide were the principal actors. A wild whirl of images crowded to his mind, presenting in the midst of their confusion defined and distinct pictures, the leading features of which were the consequences arising from the double betrayal of love and friendship. Violent struggles, deadly embraces--in houses, in forests, on the brinks of precipices, in the torrents of furious rivers. The proportions of these images were vast, titanic. The forests were interminable, the trees rose to an immense height, the rivers resembled raging seas, the presentments of animated life were of unnatural magnitude. Even when he and Adelaide were flying through a trackless wood, and were overtaken by the Advocate, this impression of gigantic growth prevailed, as though there were room in the world for naught but themselves and the passions by which they were swayed. He was recalled to himself by a soft tapping at the door of the inner room. He instantly unlocked it, and released Adelaide, who raised her eyes, beaming with animation, to his. He was overcome with astonishment. He thought to see her pale, frightened, trembling. Never had he beheld her more radiant. "He is gone," she said in a gay tone. "Hush!" whispered Almer, "he may return." "He will not," she said. "You will see him no more to-night." "Thank Heaven the danger is averted! I feel as if I had been guilty of some horrible crime." "Whereas you have simply indulged poor innocent me in a harmless fancy. Christian, I heard every word." "I thought you would have fallen asleep. How could you have been so imprudent, so reckless, as to laugh?" "How can I help being a woman of impulse? Were you very much frightened? I was not--I rather enjoyed it. Christian, there is not a single thing my immaculate husband does which does not convince me he has no heart. Just think what might have happened if he had come to the right door and thrown it open and seen me! There! You look so horrified that I feel I have said something wrong again. Christian, what did you mean by saying to him, 'My thoughts are not under my control while you have your hand on that letter'? What letter was it?" "Your note, which Dionetta left in the room. He was sitting by the desk upon which I had laid it, and his hand was upon it." "And it made you nervous? To think that he had but to open that innocent bit of paper! What a scene there would have been! I should have gloried in the situation--yes, indeed. There is no pleasure in life like the excitement of danger. Those who say women are weak know nothing of us. We are braver than men, a thousand, thousand times braver. I tried to peep through the door, but there wasn't a single friendly crevice. What a shock it would have given him if I had suddenly called out as he held the letter: 'Open it, my love, open it and read it!'" "That is what you call being prudent?" said Almer in despair. "Tyrant! I cannot promise you not to think. I have a good mind to be angry with you. You are positively ungrateful. You shut me up in a room all by myself, where I quietly remain, the very soul of discretion--you did not so much as hear me breathe--only forgetting myself once when my feelings overcame me, and you don't give me one word of praise. Tell me instantly, sir, that I am a brave little woman." "You are the personification of rashness." "How ungrateful! Did you think of me, Christian, while I was locked up there?" "My thoughts did not wander from you for a moment." "If you had only given me a handful of these roseleaves so that I might have buried my face in them and imagined I was not tied to a man who loves another woman than his wife! You seem amazed. Do you forget already what has passed between you? If it had happened that I loved him, after his confession to-night I should hate him. But it is indifferent to me upon whom he has set his affections--with all my heart I pity the unfortunate creature he loves. She need not fear me; I shall not harm her. You got at the heart of his secret when you asked him if a woman was involved in it; and you compelled him to confess that his honour--and of course hers; mine does not matter--was at stake in his miserable love-affair. He loves a woman who is not his wife; with all his evasions he could not help admitting it. And this is the man who holds his head so high above all other men--the man who was never known to commit an indiscretion! Of course he must keep his secret close--of course he could not speak of it to his friend, whom he tries to hoodwink with professions and twisted words! He married me, I suppose, to satisfy his vanity; he wanted the world to see that old as he was, grave as he was, no woman could resist him. And I allowed myself to be persuaded by worldly friends! Is it not a proof of my never having loved him, that, instead of hating him when in my hearing he confesses he loves another, I simply laugh at him and despise him? I should not shed a tear over him if he died to-night. He has insulted me--and what woman ever forgets or forgives an insult? But he has done me a good service, too, and I thank him. How sleepy I am! Good-night. My minute is up, and I cannot stay longer; I must think of my complexion. Goodnight, Christian; that is all I came to say." CHAPTER XIV THE ADVOCATE FEARS HE HAS CREATED A MONSTER The Advocate did not immediately return to his study. Darkness was more congenial to his mood, and he spent a few minutes in the gardens of the villa. Although he had stated to Christian Almer that the conversation which had passed between them had been of benefit to him, he felt, now that he was alone, that there was much in it to give rise to disturbing thought and conjecture. He had not foreseen the difficulty, in social intercourse, of avoiding the subject uppermost in his mind. A morbid self-consciousness, at present in its germ, and from which he had hitherto been entirely free, seemed to unlock all roads in its direction. It was, as it were, the converging-point of all matters, even the most trivial, affecting himself. Having put the seal upon his resolution with respect to Gautran's confession, he became painfully aware that he had committed himself to a line of action from which he could not now recede without laying himself open to such suspicion, from friend and foe alike, as might fatally injure his reputation. He was a lawyer, and he knew what powerful use he could make of such a weapon against any man, high or low. If it could be turned against another it could be turned against himself. He must not, therefore, waver in his resolution. Only his conscience could call him to account. Well, he would reckon with that. It was a passive, not an active accuser. Gautran would seek some new locality, in which he would be lost to sight. As a matter of common prudence, it was more than likely he would change his name. The suspicion which attached itself to him, and the horror with which he was regarded in the neighbourhood in which he had lived, would compel him to fly to other pastures. In this, and in the silence of time, lay the Advocate's safety, for every day that passed would weaken the fever of excitement created by the trial. After a few weeks, if it even happened that Gautran were insanely to make a public declaration of his guilt, and to add to this confession a statement that the Advocate was aware of it during the trial, by whom would he be believed? Certainly not by the majority of the better classes of the people; and in the event of such a contingency, he could quote with effect the poet's words: "Be thou chaste as ice, and pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny." So much, then, for himself: but he was more than ever anxious and ill at ease regarding Christian Almer. The secret which his friend dared not divulge to him was evidently of the gravest import--probably as terrible in its way as that which lay heavily on the Advocate's soul; and the profound mystery in which it was wrapt invested it with a significance so unusual, even in the Advocate's varied experience of human nature, that he could not keep from brooding upon it. Was it a secret in which honour was involved? He could not bring himself to believe that Almer could be guilty of a dishonourable act--but a man might be dragged into a difficulty against his will, and might have a burden of shame unexpectedly thrust upon him which he could not openly fling off without disgrace. And yet--and yet--that he should be so careful in concealing it from the knowledge of the truest of friends--it was inexplicable. Ponder as long as he might, the Advocate could arrive at no explanation of it, nor could his logical mind obtain the slightest clue to the mystery. The cool air in the gardens refreshed him, and he walked about, always within view of the lights in his study windows, with his head uncovered. It was during the first five minutes of his solitude that an impression stole upon him that he was not alone. He searched the avenues, he listened, he asked aloud: "Is any person near, and does he wish to speak to me?" No voice answered him. The gardens, with the exception of the soft rustling of leaf and branch, were as silent as the grave. Towards the end of his solitary rambling, and as he was contemplating leaving the grounds, this impression again stole upon him. Was it the actual sound of muffled footsteps, or the spiritual influence of an unseen presence, which disturbed him? He could not decide. Again he searched the avenues, again he listened, again he asked a question aloud. All was silent. This was the third time during the night that he had allowed himself to be beguiled. Once in Christian Almer's room, when he thought he had heard a laugh, and now twice in the solitude of the grounds. He set it down as an unreasoning fancy springing from the agitation into which he had been thrown by his interview with Gautran, and he breathed a wish that the next fortnight were passed, when his mind would almost certainly have recovered its equilibrium. The moment the wish was born, he smiled in contempt of his own weakness. It opened another vein in the psychological examination to which he was subjecting himself. He entered his study, and did not perceive Gautran, who was asleep in the darkest corner of the room. But his quick observant eye immediately fell upon the glass out of which Gautran had drunk the wine. The glass was on his writing-table; it was not there when he left his study. He glanced at the wine-bottles on the sideboard; they had been disturbed. "Some person has been here in my absence," he thought. "Who--and for what purpose?" He hastily examined his manuscripts and, missing none, raised the wine-glass and held it mouth downwards. As a couple of drops of red liquor fell to the ground, he heard behind him the sound of heavy breathing. An ordinary man would have let the glass fall from his hand in sudden alarm, for the breathing was so deep, and strong, and hoarse, that it might have proceeded from the throat of a wild beast who was preparing to spring upon him. But the Advocate was not easily alarmed. He carefully replaced the glass, and wheeled in the direction of the breathing. He saw the outlines of a form stretched upon the ground in a distant corner; he stepped towards it, and stooping, recognised Gautran. He was not startled. It seemed to be in keeping with what had previously transpired, that Gautran should be lying there slumbering at his feet. He stood quite still, regarding the sleeping figure of the murderer in silence. He had risen to his full height; one hand rested upon the back of a massive oak chair: his face was grave and pale; his head was downwards bent. So he stood for many minutes almost motionless. Not the slightest agitation was observable in him; he was calmly engaged in reflecting upon the position of affairs, as though they related not to himself, but to a client in whose case he was interested, and he was evolving from them, by perfectly natural reasoning, the most extraordinary complications and results. In all his experience he had never been engaged in a case presenting so many rare possibilities, and he was in a certain sense fascinated by the powerful use he could make of the threads of the web in which he had become so strangely and unexpectedly entangled. Gautran's features were not clearly visible to him; they were too much in shadow. He took from his writing-table a lamp with a soft strong light, and set it near to the sleeping man. It brought the ruffian into full view. His unshaven face, his coarse, matted hair, his brutal sensual mouth, his bushy eyebrows, his large ears, his bared neck, his soiled and torn clothes, the perspiration in which he was bathed, presented a spectacle of human degradation as revolting as any the Advocate had ever gazed upon. "By what means," he thought, "did this villain obtain information of my movements and residence, and what is his motive in coming here? When he accosted me tonight he did not know where I lived--of that I am convinced, for he had no wish to meet me, and believed he was threatening another man than myself on the high road. That was a chance meeting. Is this, also, a chance encounter? No; there is premeditation in it. Had he entered another house he would have laid his hands on something valuable and decamped, his purpose being served. He would not dare to rob me, but he dares to thrust his company upon me. Of all men, I am the man he should be most anxious to avoid, for only I know him to be guilty. Have I created a monster who is destined to be the terror and torture of my life? Is he shrewd enough, clever enough, cunning enough, to use his power as I should use it were I in his place, and he in mine? That is not to be borne, but what is the alternative? I could put life into the grotesque oaken features upon which my hand is resting, and they might suggest a remedy. The branches of the tree within which these faces grew in some old forest waved doubtless over many a mystery, but this in which I am at present engaged matches the deepest of them. Some demon seems to be whispering at my elbow. Speak, then; what would you urge me to do?" The Unseen: "Gautran entered unobserved." The Advocate: "That is apparent, or he would not be lying here with the hand of Fate above him." The Unseen: "No person saw him--no person is aware that he is in your study, at your mercy." The Advocate: "At my mercy! You could have found a better word to express your meaning." The Unseen: "You know him to be a murderer." The Advocate: "True." The Unseen: "He deserves death! You have already heard the whisperings of the voice which urged you to fulfil the divine law, Blood for blood!" The Advocate: "Speak not of what is Divine. Tempter, have you not the courage to come straight to the point?" The Unseen: "Kill him where he lies! He will not be missed. It is night--black night. Every living being in the house, with the exception of yourself, is asleep. You have twisted justice from its rightful course. The wrong you did you can repair. Kill him where he lies!" The Advocate: "And have the crime of murder upon my soul?" The Unseen: "It is not murder. Standing as you are standing now, knowing what you know, you are justified." The Advocate: "I will have no juggling. If I kill him it is not in the cause of justice. Speak plainly. Why should he die at my hands?" The Unseen: "His death is necessary for your safety." The Advocate: "Ah, that is better. No talk of justice now. We come to the coarse selfishness of things, which will justify the deadliest crimes. His death is necessary for my safety! How am I endangered? Say that his presence here is a threat. Am I not strong enough to avoid the peril? How vile am I that I should allow such thoughts to suggest themselves! Christian, my friend, whatever is the terror which has taken possession of you, and from which you vainly strive to fly, your secret is pure in comparison with mine. If it were possible that the secret which oppresses you concerned your dearest friend, concerned me, whom perchance it has in some hidden way wronged, how could I withhold from you pity and forgiveness, knowing how sorely my own actions need pity and forgiveness? For the first time in my life I am brought face to face with my soul, and I see how base it is. Has my life, then, been surrounded by dreams, and do I now awake to find how low and abominable are the inner workings of my nature? I must arouse this monster. He shall hide nothing from me." He spurned Gautran with his foot. It was with no gentle touch, and Gautran sprang to his feet, and would have thrown himself upon the Advocate had he not suddenly recognised him. CHAPTER XV GAUTRAN AND THE ADVOCATE "How long have I been asleep?" muttered Gautran, shaking himself and rubbing his eyes. "It seems but a minute." The clock on the mantel struck the hour of two. "I counted twelve when I was in the grounds; I have been here two hours. You might have let me sleep longer. It is the first I have enjoyed for weeks--a sleep without a dream. As I used to sleep before----" He shuddered, and did not complete the sentence. "Give me something to drink, master." "You have been helping yourself to my wine," said the Advocate. "You know everything, master. Yes, it was wine I drank, as mild as milk. It went down like water. Good for gentlemen, perhaps, but not for us. I must have something stronger." He looked anxiously round the room, and sighed and smiled; no appalling vision greeted his sight. "Ah," he said, "I am safe here. Give me some brandy." "You will have none, Gautran," said the Advocate sternly. "Ah, master," implored Gautran, "think better of it, I must have brandy--I must!" "Must!" echoed the Advocate, with a frown. "Yes, master, must; I shall not be able to talk else. My throat is parched--you can hear for yourself that it is as dry as a raven's. I must have drink, and it mustn't be milk-wine. I am not quite a fool, master. If that horrible shadow were never to appear to me again, I would show those who have been hard on me a trick or two that would astonish them. If you've a spark of compassion in you, master, give a poor wretch a glass of brandy." The Advocate considered a moment, and then unlocked a small cupboard, from which he took a bottle of brandy. He filled a glass, and gave it to Gautran. "Here's confusion to our enemies," said Gautran. "Ah, this is fine! I have never tasted such before. It puts life into a man." "What makes you drink to _our_ enemies, Gautran?" asked the Advocate. "Why, master, are not my enemies yours, and yours mine? We row in the same boat. If they found us out, it would be as bad for you as it would be for me. Worse, master, worse, for you have much to lose; I have nothing. You see, master, I have been thinking over things since we met in the lane yonder." "You are bold and impudent. What if I were to summon my servants and have you marched off to gaol?" "What would you accuse me of? I have not stolen anything; you may search me if you like. No, no, master, I will take nothing from you. What you give I shall be grateful for; but rob you? No--you are mistaken in me. I owe you too much already. I am bound to you for life." "You do not seem afraid of the gaol, Gautran." "Not when you threaten me with it, master, for you are jesting with me. It is not worth your while; I am a poor creature to make sport of." "Yet I am dangerously near handing you over to justice." "For what, master, for what? For coming into your room, and not finding you there, throwing myself in a corner like a dog?" "It is sufficient--and you have stolen my wine. These are crimes which the law is ready to punish, especially in men with evil reputations." "You are right, I've no doubt; you know more about the law than I do. I don't intend to dispute with you, master. But when they got hold of me they would question me, and my tongue would be loosened against my will. I say again, you are jesting with me. How warm and comfortable it is in this grand room, and how miserable outside! Ah, why wasn't I born rich? It was a most unfortunate accident." "Your tongue would be loosened against your will! What could you say?" "What everybody suspects, but could not prove, master, thanks to you. They owe me a grudge in the prison yonder--lawyers and judges and gaolers--and nothing would please them better than to hear what I could tell them--that I killed the girl, and that you knew I killed her. You don't look pleased, master. You drove me to say it." "You slanderous villain!" "I don't mind what you call me, master. I can bear anything from you. I am your slave, and there is nothing you could set me to do that I am not ready to perform. I mean it, master. Try me--only try me! Think of something fearful, something it would take a bold, desperate man to do, and see if I shrink from it. The gaoler was right when he said I was a lucky dog to get such an Advocate as you to defend me. You knew the truth--you knew I did the deed--you knew no one else could save me--and you wanted to show them how clever you were, and what a fool any lawyer was to think he could stand against you. And you did it, master, you did it. How mad they must be with you! I wonder how much they would give to cry Quits! And you've done even more than that, master. The spirit which has been with me night and day, in prison and out of prison, lying by me in bed, standing by my side in the court--you saw it there, master--dogging me through the streets and lanes, hiding behind trees and gliding upon me when I thought I had escaped it--it is gone, master, it is gone! It will not come where you are. It is afraid of you. I don't care whether it is a holy or an unholy power you possess, I am your slave, and you can do with me as you will. But you must not send me to prison again--no, you must not do that! Why, master, simple as I am, and ignorant of the law, I feel that you are joking with me, when you threaten to summon your servants to march me off to gaol for coming into your house. I should say to them, 'You are a pack of fools. Don't you see he is jesting with you? Here have we been talking together for half an hour, and he has given me his best brandy as a mark of friendship. There is the bottle--feel the rim of it, and you will find it wet. Look at the glass, if you don't believe me. Smell it--smell my breath.' Why, then they would ask you again if you were in earnest, and you would have to send them away. Master, I was never taught to read or write, and there is very little I know--but I know well that there is a time to do a thing and a time not to do it, and that unless a thing is done at the proper time, there is no use afterwards attempting it. I will tell you something, though I dare say I might save myself the trouble, for you can read what is in me. If Madeline, when she ran from me along the river's bank, had escaped me, it is likely she would be alive at this moment, for the fiend that spurred me on to kill her might never again have been so strong within me, might never again have had such power over me as he had that night. But he was too strong for me, and that was the time to do the deed, and she had to die. Do you think I don't pity her? I do, when she is not tormenting me. But when she follows me, as she has done to-night, when she stands looking at me with eyes in which there is fire, but no light, I feel that I could kill her over again if I dared, and if I could get a good grip of her. Are all spirits silent? Have they no voice to speak? It is terrible, terrible! I must buy masses for her soul, and then, perhaps, she will rest in peace. Master, give me another glass of that rare brandy of yours. Talking is dry work." "You'll get no more till you leave me." "I am to leave you, then?" "When I have done with you--when our conversation is at an end." "I must obey you, master. You could crush me if you liked." "I could kill you if I liked," said the Advocate, in a voice so cold and determined that Gautran shuddered. "You could, master--I know it well enough. Not with your hands; I am your match there. Few men can equal me in strength. But you would not trust to that; you are too wise. You would scorch and wither me with a lightning touch. I should be a fool to doubt it. If you will not give me brandy, give me a biscuit or some bread and meat. Since noon I have had nothing to eat but a few apples, to which I helped myself. The gaolers robbed me of my dinner in the middle of the day, and put before me only a slice of dry bread. I would cut off two of my fingers to be even with them." In the cupboard which contained the brandy and other liquors was a silver basket containing biscuits, which the Advocate brought forward and placed before Gautran, who ate them greedily and filled his pockets with them. During the silence the Advocate's mind was busy with Gautran's words. Ignorant as the man was, and confessed himself to be, there was an undisputable logic in the position he assumed. Shrink from it as he might, the Advocate could not avoid confessing that between this man, who was little better than an animal, and himself, who had risen so high above his fellows--that in these extremes of intellectual degradation and superiority--existed a strange and, in its suggestiveness, an awful, equality. And what afforded him food for serious reflection, from an abstract point of view, was that, though they travelled upon roads so widely apart, they both arrived at the same goal. This was proved by Gautran's reasoning upon the Advocate's threat to put him in prison for breaking into the House of White Shadows. "Sound logic," thought the Advocate, "learnt in a school in which the common laws of nature are the teachers. A decided kinship exists between this murderer and myself. Am I, then, as low as he, and do the best of us, in our pride of winning the crown, indulge in self-delusions at which a child might feel ashamed? Or is it that, strive as he may, the most earnest man cannot lift himself above the grovelling motives which set in motion every action of a human life?" "Now, master," said Gautran, having finished munching. "Now, Gautran," said the Advocate, "why do you come to me?" "I belong to you," replied Gautran. "You gave me my life and my liberty. You had some meaning in it. I don't ask you what it is, for you will tell me only what you choose to tell me. I am yours, master, body and soul." "And soul?" questioned the Advocate ironically. "So long," said Gautran, crossing himself, "as you do not ask me to do anything to imperil my salvation." "Is it not already imperilled? Murderer!" "I have done nothing that I cannot buy off with masses. Ask the priests. If I could not get money any other way, to save myself I would rob a church." "Admirable!" exclaimed the Advocate. "You interest me, Gautran. How did you obtain admission into the grounds?" "Over the wall at the back. It is a mercy I did not break my bones." "And into this room--how did you enter?" "Through the window." "Knowing it was my room?" "Yes, master." "How did you gain that knowledge?" "I was told--and told, as well, that you lived in this house." "By whom were you told?" "As I ran from Madeline--she has left me forever, I hope--I came upon a man who, for some purpose of his own, was lingering on a hill a little distance from here. I sought company, and was glad of his. I made up my mind to pass my night near something human, and did not intend to leave him. But when he said that yonder was the house in which the great Advocate lived, and when he pointed out your study window, I gave him the slip, knowing I could do better than remain with him. That is the truth, master." "Are you acquainted with this man?" "No, I never saw him before; I saw but little of him as it was, the night was so dark; but I know voices when I hear them. His voice was strange to me." "How happened it, then, that you conversed about me?" "I can't remember exactly how it came about. He gave me some brandy out of a flask--not such liquor as yours, master, but I was thankful for it--and I asked him if he had ever been followed by the spirit of a dead woman. He questioned me about this woman, asking if she was fair and beautiful, whether she had met her death in the Rhone, whether her name was Madeline. Yes, he called her up before me and I was spellbound. When I came to my proper senses he was talking to himself about a great Advocate in the house he was staring at, and I said there was only one great Advocate--you who set me free--and I asked him if you lived in the house. He said yes, and that the lights I saw were the lights in your study windows. Upon that I left him, suddenly and secretly, and made my way here." "Was the man watching this house?" "It had the look of it. He is no friend of yours, that I can tell you. When he spoke of you it was with the voice of a man who could make you wince if he pleased. You have served him some trick, and he wants to be revenged, I suppose. But you can take care of yourself, master." "That will do. Leave me and leave this house, and as you value your life, enter it no more." "Then, you will see me elsewhere. Where, master, and when?" "I will see you in no place and at no time. I understand the meaning of looks, Gautran, and there is a threat in your eyes. Beware! I have means to punish you. You have escaped the penalty of your crime, but there is no safety for you here. You do not wish to die; the guilt of blood is on your soul, and you are afraid of death. Well may you be afraid of it. Such terrors await you in the life beyond as you cannot dream of. Live, then, and repent; or die, and be eternally lost! Dare to intrude yourself upon me, and death will be your portion, and you will go straight to your punishment. Here, and at this moment only, you have the choice of either fate. Choose, and swiftly." The cold, stern, impressive voice, the commanding figure, had their effect upon Gautran. He shook with fear; he was thoroughly subdued. "If I am not safe here, master, where shall I find safety?" "In a distant part of the country where you are not known." "How am I to get there? I have no money." "I will give you sufficient for flight and subsistence. Here are five gold pieces. Now, go, and let me never see your murderous face again." "Master," said Gautran humbly, as he turned the money over in his hand and counted it. "I must have more--not for myself, but to pay for masses for the repose of Madeline's soul. Then I may hope for forgiveness--then she will leave me in peace!" The Advocate emptied his purse into Gautran's open palm, saying, "Let no man see you. Depart as secretly as you came." But Gautran lingered still. "You promised me some more brandy, master." The Advocate filled the glass, and Gautran, with fierce eagerness, drank the brandy. "You will not give me another glass, master?" "No, murderer. I have spoken my last word to you." Gautran spoke no more, but with head sunk upon his breast, left the room and the house. "A vulgar expedient," mused the Advocate, when he was alone, "but the only one likely to prove effective with such a monster. It is perhaps best that it has happened. This man watching upon the hill is none other than John Vanbrugh. I had almost forgotten him. He does not come in friendship. Let him watch and wait. I will not see him." CHAPTER XVI PIERRE LAMONT SEEKS THE HOSPITALITY OF THE HOUSE OF WHITE SHADOWS. The following day Pierre Lamont did not leave his bed, and was visited in his room by the Advocate and Christian Almer. To the Advocate he said: "I trust I shall not incommode you, for I am compelled to throw myself upon your hospitality." "Get well, then," said the Advocate, "and enjoy it--which you cannot do, thus confined." "I do not know--I do not know," said the old lawyer, gazing at the Advocate, and wondering how it was possible that this profound thinker and observer could be blind to the drama which was being acted at his very door, "one can still follow the world. Have you read the papers this morning?" "No--I have not troubled myself to look at them." "Here is one that will interest you. What is called the freedom of the press is growing into a scandal. Editors and critics abuse their charter, and need some wholesome check. But you are not likely to be moved by what they say." He handed a newspaper to the Advocate, who walked to the window and read the editorial comments upon the trial and the part he had played in it. "The trial of Gautran is over, and the monster whom all believe to be guilty of a foul murder is set free. The victim, unavenged, is in her grave, and a heavy responsibility lies not only upon the city, but upon the nation. Neither for good nor ill can the words we write affect the future of Gautran. Released, by the law, he is universally condemned. Justice is not satisfied. In all Switzerland there is but one man who in his soul believes the degraded wretch to be innocent, and that this man should be right and all others wrong we refuse to believe. Never in a cause so weighty have we felt it our duty to raise our voice against a verdict reluctantly wrung from the citizens whose lot it was to judge a human being accused--and we insist, righteously accused--of a horrible crime. The verdict cannot be disturbed. Gautran is free! There is a frightful significance in these words--Gautran is free! "Removed from the feverish excitement of the court in which the trial took place, the report of the proceedings reads more like a stage drama than an episode of real life. All the elements which led to the shameful result are eminently dramatic, and were, without doubt, planned by the great Advocate who defended the accused with an eye to dramatic effect. It would scarcely surprise us were the climax now reached to be followed by an anti-climax in which Gautran's champion of yesterday would become his accuser of to-day. Our courts of justice are becoming accustomed to this kind of theatrical display. Consider the profound sensation which would be produced by the great lawyer coming forward and saying, 'Yesterday, after a long and exciting struggle, I proved to you that Gautran was innocent, and by my efforts he was let loose upon society. To-day I propose to prove to you that he is guilty, and I ask you to mete out to him his just punishment.' A dangerous temptation, indeed, to one who studies effect. But there is a safeguard against such a course. It would so blacken the fame of any man who adopted it, however high that man might stand in the estimation of his peers and the people, that he could never hope to rise from the depths of shame into which his own act had plunged him. "Many persons who believe that way will doubtless argue that there is something providential in the history of this ruthless murder of an unfortunate innocent being. She is slain. Not a soul comes forward to claim kinship with her. None the less is she a child of God. Human reason leads to the arrest and imprisonment of Gautran. Providence brings upon the scene a great lawyer, who, unsolicited, undertakes the defence of a monster, association with whom is defilement. The wretch is set free, and Justice stands appalled at what has been done in the name of the law. But this is not the end. Providence may have something yet in store which will bring punishment to the guilty and unravel this tangled skein. What, then, will the great Advocate have to say who deliberately and voluntarily brought about a miscarriage of justice so flagrant as to cause every honest heart to thrill with indignation?" The Advocate did not read any further, but laid the paper aside and said: "Men who take part in public matters are open to attacks of this kind. There is nothing to complain of." "And yet," thought Pierre Lamont, when the Advocate left him, "there was in his face, as he read the article, an expression denoting that he was moved. Well,--well--men are but human, even the greatest." Later in the day he was visited by Christian Almer, to whom he repeated his apologies. "I have one of my bad attacks on me. They frequently last for days. At such times it is dangerous for me to be moved about." "Then do not be moved about," said Almer, with a smile. But despite this smile. Almer was inwardly disquieted. He had not been aware on the previous night that Pierre Lamont occupied the next room to his. After the departure of the Advocate, Adelaide had not been careful; her voice had been frequently raised, and Almer was anxious to ascertain whether it had reached the old lawyer's ears. "You slept well, I hope," he said. "Yes, until the early morning, a little after sunrise. I am a very deep sleeper for four or five hours. The moment I close my eyes sleep claims me, and holds me so securely that, were the house on fire, it would be difficult to arouse me. But the moment the sunshine peeps into my room, my rest is at an end. When I had the use of my limbs I was an early riser." Almer's mind was relieved. "Sleeping in a strange bed is often not conducive to repose." "I have slept in so many strange beds." And Pierre Lamont thought as he spoke: "But never in a stranger bed than this." "You can still find occupation," said Almer, pointing to the books on table and bed. "Ah, books, books, books!" said Pierre Lamont. "What would the world do without them? How did it ever do without them? But I am old, and I am talking to a young man." "My father was a bookworm and a student," said Almer. "Were he alive, he would be disappointed that I do not tread in his footsteps." "Perhaps not. He was a wise man, with a comprehensive mind. It would not do for us all to be monks." CHAPTER XVII FRITZ THE FOOL RELATES A STRANGE DREAM TO PIERRE LAMONT Half-a-dozen times in the course of the day Pierre Lamont had sent in search of Fritz the Fool, and it was not till the afternoon that Fritz made his appearance. "You should have come earlier, fool," said Pierre Lamont with a frown. "I was better engaged," said Fritz coolly. "You fired me with those love-verses last night, and I have been studying what to say to my peach." "The pretty Dionetta! Rehearse, then; I am dull." "Ah, I have much to tell you. I am thinking of saying to the peach, 'Dionetta, place your hand in mine, and we will both serve Pierre Lamont. He will give us a home; he will pay us liberally; and when he dies he will not leave us unprovided for.'" "And if the peach should laugh in your face?" "I would reason with it. I would say, 'Look you now; you cannot be always ripe, you cannot be always mellow and luscious. Do not waste the precious sunshine of life, but give yourself to a clever fool, who cares quite as much for your fair face and beautiful skin as he does for the diamond baubles in your ears.'" "Diamond earrings, Fritz! Are you dreaming?" "Not at this moment--though I had a dream last night after I left you which I may tell you if I don't repent of it before I disclose it. Yes, Master Lamont, diamond earrings--as I'm a living fool, diamonds of value. See, Master Lamont, I don't want this peach to be gathered yet. It is well placed, it is in favour; it is making itself in some way useful, not to finer, but to richer fruit. Heaven only knows what may be rained upon it when the very first summer shower brings a diamond finger-ring, and the second a pair of diamond earrings. A diamond brooch, perhaps; money for certain, if it will take a fool's advice. And of course it will do that if, seeing that the fool is a proper fool, the peach says kindly, 'I am yours.' That is the way of it, is it not, Master Lamont?" "I am waiting to hear more, Fritz," said Pierre Lamont, with a full enjoyment of Fritz's loquacity. "Behind the summer-house, Master Lamont, lies a lovely lake, clear as crystal in parts where it is not covered with fairy lilies. I am as good as a pair of eyes to you to tell you of these beauties. The water is white and shining and at one part there is a mass of willows bending over; then there is a break, clear of the shadow of branch and leaf; then there is another mass of willows. From a distance you would think that there was no break in the foliage; you have to go close to it to make the discovery, and once you are there you are completely hidden from sight. Not more than two hours ago I was passing this spot at the back of the willows, when I heard a voice--a girl's voice, Master Lamont--saying quite softly, 'Oh, how lovely! how beautiful--how beautiful!' It was Dionetta's voice; I should know it among a thousand. Through the willows I crept with the foot of a cat till I came to the break, and there was Dionetta herself, bending over the water, and sighing, 'Oh, how lovely! how beautiful!' She could not see me, for her back was towards me, and I took care she did not hear me. She was shaking her pretty head over the water, and I shouldn't deserve to be called a fool if I had not felt curious to see what it was in the lake that was so lovely and beautiful. Perhaps it was her own face she was admiring. Well, she had a perfect right, and I was ready to join in the chorus. I crept up to her as still as a mouse, and looked over her shoulder. She gave a great scream when she saw my face in the lake, and I caught hold of her to prevent her from falling in. Then I saw what almost took away my breath. In her ears there flashed a pair of diamond earrings, the like of which I never in my life beheld in our village. Her face got as red as a sunset as I gazed at her. 'How you frightened me, Fritz!' she said. I set the earrings swinging with my fingers and said, 'Where did you get these wonderful things from?' She answered me pat. 'My lady gave them to me.' 'They are yours, then?' I asked. 'Yes, Fritz,' she said, 'they are mine, and I came here to see how I look in them. They are so grand that I am ashamed to put them on unless I am alone. Don't tell anybody, will you, Fritz? If grandmother knew I had them, she would take them from me. She would never, never let me wear them. Don't tell anybody.' Why, of course I said I would not, and then I asked why my lady gave them to her, and she said it was because my lady loved her. So, so! thought I, as I left my peach--I would like to have given her just one kiss, but I did not dare to try--so, so! my lady gives her maid a pair of diamond earrings that are as suitable to her as a crown of gold to an ass's head. There is something more than common between lady and maid. What is it, Master Lamont, what is it?" "A secret, fool, which, if you get your peach to tell, will be worth much to you. And as you and I are going to keep our own counsel, learn from me that this secret has but one of two kernels. Love or jealousy. Set your wits at work, Fritz, set your wits at work, and keep your eyes open. I may help you to your peach, fool. And now about that dream of yours. Were you asleep or awake at the time?" Fritz stepped cautiously to the door, opened it, looked along the passage, closed the door, and came close to the bedside. "Master Lamont," he said, "what I dreamt is something so strange that it will take a great deal of thinking over. Do you know why I tell you things?" "I might guess wrong, Fritz. Save me the trouble." "You have never been but one way with me; you have never given me a hard word; you have never given me a blow. When I was a boy--twenty years ago and more, Master Lamont--you were the only man who spoke kind words to me, who used to pat my head and pity me. For, if you remember, Master Lamont, I was nothing but a castaway, living on charity, and everybody but you made me feel it. Cuffed by this one and that one, kicked, and laughed at--but never by you. Even a fool can bear these things in mind." "Well, well, Fritz, go on with your dream. You are making me hungry." "It came nearly two hours after midnight. At that time I was in the grounds. All was dark. There was nobody about but me, until the Advocate came. Then I slipped aside and watched him. He walked up and down, like a machine. It was not as if a man was walking, but a figure of steel. It was enough to drive me crazy, it was so like clockwork. Twice he almost discovered me. He looked about him, he searched the grounds, still with the same measured step, he called aloud, and asked if anybody was near. Then he went into the house and into the study. I knew he was there by the shifting of the lights in the room. Being alone with the shadows, your love-verses came into my mind, and you may believe me, Master Lament, I made my way to the window of the room in which Dionetta sleeps, and stood there looking up at it. I should have been right down ashamed of myself if I hadn't been dreaming. Is it the way of lovers, Master Lamont? 'Faster than bees to flowers they wing their way;' that is how the line runs, is it not? Well, there stood I, a bee, dreaming in the dark night, before the window of my flower. An invisible flower, unfortunately. But thoughts are free; you can't put chains on them. So there stood I, for how many minutes I cannot say, imagining my flower. Now, if I had known that her pretty head was lying on the pillow, with great diamond earrings in her ears--for that is a certainty--I might not perhaps have been able to tear myself away. Luckily for my dream, that knowledge had still to come to me, so I wandered off, and found myself once more staring at the lights in the Advocate's study windows. Now, what made me step quite close to them, and put my eye to a pane which the curtains did not quite cover? I could see clear into the room. Imagine my surprise, Master Lamont, when I discovered that the Advocate was not alone! Master Lamont, you know every man in the village, but I would give you a thousand guesses, and you would not hit upon the name of the Advocate's friend. From where I stood I could not hear a word that was said, but I saw everything. I saw the Advocate go to a cupboard, and give this man liquor; he poured it out for him himself. Then they talked--then the Advocate brought forward a silver basket of biscuits, and the man ate some, and stuffed some into his pockets. They were on the very best of terms with each other. The Advocate gave his friend some money--pieces of gold, Master Lamont; I saw them glitter. The man counted them, and by his action, asked for more; and more was given; the Advocate emptied his purse into the man's hand. Then, after further conversation, the man turned to leave the room. It was time for me to scuttle from my peep-hole. Presently the man was in the grounds stepping almost as softly as I stepped after him. For I was not going to lose him, Master Lamont; my curiosity was whetted to that degree that it would have taken a great deal to prevent me from following this friend of the Advocate's. 'How will he get out?' thought I; 'the gates are locked; he will hardly venture to scale them.' Two or three times he stopped, and looked behind him; he did not see me. He arrived at the wall which stretches at the back; he climbed the wall; so did I, in another and an easier part; he dropped down with a thud and a groan; I let myself to the ground without disturbing a leaf. Presently he picked himself up and walked off, with more haste than before. I followed him. He stopped; I stopped; he walked on again, and so did I. Again he stopped and cried aloud: 'I hear you follow me! Is not one killing enough for you?' And then he gave a scream so awful that the hair rose on my head. 'She is here!' he screamed; 'she is here, and is driving me to madness!' With that he took to his heels and tore through field and forest really like a madman. I could not keep up with him, and after an hour's running I completely lost sight of him. There was nothing for me to do but to get back to the villa. I returned the way I came--I had plenty to think about on the road--and I was once more before the windows of the Advocate's study. The lights were still there. The Advocate, I believe, can live without sleep. I peeped through the window, and there he was, sitting at his table reading, with an expression of power in his face which might well make any man tremble who dared to oppose him. That is the end of my dream, Master Lamont." "But the man, Fritz, the man!" exclaimed Pierre, Lamont. "I am still in ignorance as to who this strange, nocturnal visitor can be." "There lies the pith of my dream. If I were to tell you that this man who makes his way secretly into the grounds in the darkness of the night--who is closeted with the Advocate for an hour at least--who is treated to wine and cake--who is presented with money, and grumblingly asks for more, and gets it--if I were to tell you that this man is Gautran, who was tried for the murder of Madeline, the flower-girl, and who was set free by the Advocate--what would you say, Master Lamont?" "I should say," replied Pierre Lamont with some difficulty controlling his excitement, "that you were mad, fool Fritz." "Nevertheless," said Fritz with great composure, "it is so. I have related my dream as it occurred. The man was Gautran and no other. Can you explain that to me in one word?" "No," said Pierre Lamont, gazing sharply at Fritz. "You are not fooling me, Fritz?" "If it were my last word it would make no difference. I have told you the truth." "You know Gautran's face well?" "I was in the court every day of the trial, and there is no chance of my being mistaken. See here, Master Lamont. I can do many things that would surprise people. I can draw faces. Give me a pencil and some paper." With a few rapid strokes he produced the very image of Pierre Lamont, sitting up in bed, with thin, cadaverous face, with high forehead and large nose; even the glitter of the old lawyer's eyes was depicted. Pierre Lamont examined the portrait with admiration. "I am proud of you, Fritz," he said; "you have the true artist's touch." Fritz was busy with the pencil again. "Who may this be?" he asked, holding another sketch before Pierre Lamont. "The Advocate. To the life, Fritz, to the life." "This is also to the life," said Fritz, producing a third portrait. "This is Gautran. It is all I can draw, Master Lamont--human faces; I could do it when I was a boy. There is murder in Gautran's face; there was murder in the words I heard him speak as I followed him: 'Is not one killing enough for you?' There is only one meaning to such words. I leave you to puzzle it all out, Master Lamont. You have a wise head; I am a fool. Mother Denise may be right, after all, when she said--not knowing I was within hearing--that it was an evil day when my lady, the Advocate's wife, set foot in the grounds of the House of White Shadows. But it is no business of mine; only I must look after my peach, or it may suddenly be spirited away on a broomstick. Unholy work, Master Lamont, unholy work! What do you say to letting Father Capel into the mystery?" "Not for worlds!" cried Pierre Lamont. "Priests in such matters are the rarest bunglers. No--the secret is ours, yours and mine; you shall be well paid for your share in it. Without my permission you will not speak of it--do you hear me, Fritz?" "I hear you, and will obey you." "Good lad! Ah, what would I give if I had the use of my limbs! But you shall be my limbs and my eyes--my second self. Help me to dress, Fritz--quick, quick!" "Master Lamont," said Fritz with a sly laugh, "be careful of your precious self. You are ill, you know, very, very ill! You must keep your bed. I cannot run the risk of losing so good a master." "I have a dozen years of life in me yet, fool. This dried-up old skin, these withered limbs, this lack of fat, are my protection. If I were a stout, fine man I might go off at any moment. As it is, I may live to a hundred--old enough to see your grandchildren, Fritz. But yes, yes, yes--I am indeed very ill and weak! Let everybody know it--so weak and ill that it is not possible for me to leave this hospitable house for many, many days. The medicine I require is the fresh air of the gardens. With my own eyes I must see what I can of the comedy that is being played under our very noses. I, also, had dreams last night, Fritz, rare dreams! Ah--what a comedy, what a comedy! But there are tragic veins in it, fool, which make it all the more human." _BOOK V.--THE DOOM OF GAUTRAN_. CHAPTER I ADELAIDE STRIVES TO PROPITIATE PIERRE LAMONT The following night was even darker than the preceding one had been. In the afternoon portents of a coming storm were apparent in the sky. Low mutterings of thunder in the distance travelled faintly to the ears of the occupants of the House of White Shadows. The Advocate's wife shuddered as she heard the sounds. "There are only two things in the world I am afraid of," she said to Pierre Lamont, "and those are thunder and lightning. When I was a little child a dreadful thing occurred to me. I was playing in a garden when a storm came on. I was all alone, and it was some distance to the house. The storm broke so suddenly that I had not time to reach shelter without getting myself drenched. I dare say, though, I should have run through it had I not been frightened by the flashes of lightning that seemed to want to cut me in two. I flew behind a tree, and stood there trembling. Every time a flash came I shut my eyes tight and screamed. But the storm did not allow my cries to be heard. You can imagine the state I was in. It would not have mattered, except for the wetting, had I kept my eyes closed, but like a little fool, I opened them once, and just at that moment a flash seemed to strike the tree behind which I stood. I can almost hear the shriek I gave, as I fell and fainted dead away. There, lying on the wet grass, I was found. A dreadful looking object I must have been! They carried me into the house, and when I was conscious of what was passing around me, I asked why they did not light the gas. The fact is I was quite blind, and remained so for several days. Was it not shocking? I shall never, never forget my fright. Can you imagine anything more dreadful than being struck blind? To be born blind cannot be half as bad, for one does not know what one loses--never having seen the flowers, and the fields, and the beautiful skies. But to enjoy them, and then to lose them! It is altogether too horrible to think of." She was very gracious to the old lawyer during the afternoon. "Do you know," she said, "I can't quite make up my mind whether to be fond or frightened of you." "Be fond of me," said Pierre Lamont, with a queer look. "I shall see how you behave. I am afraid you are very clever. I don't like clever people, they are so suspicious, pretending to know everything always." "I am very simple," said Pierre Lamont, laughing inwardly. He knew that she wanted to propitiate him; "and beauty can lead me by a silken thread." "Is that another of your compliments? I declare, you speak as if you were a young man." She did, indeed, desire to win Pierre Lamont entirely to her, and she would have endured much to make him her friend instead of her enemy. Christian Almer had told her that the old lawyer had slept in the next room to his, and she had set herself the task of sounding the old fellow to ascertain whether his suspicions were aroused, and whether she had anything to fear from him. She could not help saying to herself what a fool Mother Denise--who looked after the household arrangements--was to put him so close to Christian. "I do believe," thought Adelaide, "that she did it to spite me." Her mind, however, was quite at ease after chatting with the old lawyer. "I am so glad we are friends," she said to him; "it is altogether so much nicer." Pierre Lamont looked reproachfully at her, and asked how she could ever have supposed he was anything but her most devoted admirer. "Lawyers are so fond of mischief," she replied, "that if it does not come to them ready-made they manufacture it for themselves." "I am no longer a lawyer," he said; "if I were twenty years younger I should call myself a lover." "If you were twenty years younger," she rejoined gaily, "I should not sit and listen to your nonsense." Being called from his side she turned and gave him an arch look. "All that only makes the case stronger, my lady," he said inwardly. "You cannot deceive me with your wiles." CHAPTER II GAUTRAN SEEKS JOHN VANBRUGH During the chief part of the day Gautran concealed himself in the woods. Twice had he ventured to present himself to his fellow--creatures. He was hungry, and in sore need of food, and he went to a wayside inn, and called for cold meat and bread and brandy. "Can you pay for it?" asked the innkeeper suspiciously. Gautran threw down a gold piece. The innkeeper took it, bit it, turned it over and over, rang it on the wooden table, and then set the food before Gautran. The murderer ate ravenously; it was the first sufficient meal he had eaten for days. The innkeeper gave him his change, and he ordered more meat and brandy, and paid for them. While he was disposing of this, two men came up, eyed him, and passed into the inn; Gautran was eating at a little table in the open air. Presently the innkeeper came out and looked at him; then the innkeeper's wife did the same; then other men and women came and cast wrathful glances upon him. At first he was not conscious that he was being thus observed, he was so ravenously engaged; but his hunger being appeased, he raised his head, and saw seven or eight persons standing at a little distance from him, and all with their eyes fixed upon his face. "What are you staring at?" he cried. "Did you never see a hungry man eat before?" They did not answer him, but stood whispering among themselves. The idea occurred to Gautran to take away with him a supply of food, and he called to the innkeeper to bring it to him. Instead of doing so, the innkeeper removed the plates and glasses in which the meal had been served. Having done this, he joined the group, and stood apart from Gautran, without addressing a word to him. "Do you hear me?" shouted Gautran. "Are you deaf and dumb?" "Neither deaf nor dumb," replied the innkeeper; "we hear you plain enough." "Bring me the bread and meat, then," he said. "Not another morsel," said the innkeeper. "Be off with you." "When I get the food." "You will get none here--nor would you have had bite or sup if I had known." "Known what?" demanded Gautran fiercely. "Is not my money as good as another man's?" "No." "Why?" "Because there is blood upon it." If this did not convince him that his name was known and execrated, what next transpired would have enlightened him. The innkeeper's wife came out with a glass and two plates in her hands. "Are these the things," she asked of her husband, "the monster has been eating out of?" "Yes," replied the innkeeper. She dashed them to the ground and shivered them to pieces, and the onlookers applauded the act. "Why do you do that, Mistress?" cried Gautran. "So that honest men shall not be poisoned," was the answer, "by eating out of a murderer's dish or putting their lips to a murderer's glass." And the onlookers again applauded her, and kicked away the pieces. Gautran glared at the men and women, and asked: "Who do you take me for?" "For Gautran. There is but one such monster. If you do not know your own face, look upon it there." She pointed to the window, and there he beheld his own portrait, cut out of an illustrated newspaper, and beneath it his name--"GAUTRAN," to which had been added, in writing, the words, "The Murderer of Madeline, the Flower-Girl." He could not read the inscription, but he correctly divined its nature. The moment before he saw his portrait, it had entered his mind to deny himself; he recognised now how futile the attempt would be. "What if I am Gautran?" he exclaimed. "Do you think the law would set me free if I was guilty?" To which the innkeeper's wife replied: "You have escaped by a quibble. You are a murderer, and you know yourself to be one." "Mistress," he said, "if I had you alone I would make you smart." "How does that sound, men?" cried the innkeeper's wife with excited gestures. "Is it the speech of an innocent man? He would like to get me alone. Yes, he got one poor girl alone, and we know what became of her. The coward! the murderer! Hunt him away, neighbours. It is a disgrace to look upon him." They advanced towards Gautran threateningly, and he drew his knife and snapped it open. "Who will be the first?" he asked savagely, and seeing that they held together, he retreated backwards, with his face to them, until a turn in the road hid them from his sight. Then he fled into the woods, and with wild cries slashed the trees with his knife, which he had sharpened in the early morning. On the second occasion he presented himself at a cottage door, with the intention of begging or buying some food. He knocked at the door, and not receiving an answer, lifted the latch. In the room were two children--a baby in a cradle, and a five-year-old boy sitting on the floor, playing with a little wooden soldier. Looking up, and seeing the features of the ruffian, the boy scrambled to his feet, and rushing past Gautran, ran screaming down the road. Enraged almost to madness, Gautran ran after the child, and catching him, tossed him in the air, shouting: "What! you, too, brat? This for your pains!" And standing over the child, was about to stamp upon him, when he found himself seized by the throat. It was the father, who, hearing the child's screams, came up just in time to save him. Then ensued a desperate struggle, and Gautran, despite his boast to the Advocate, found that he had met more than his match. He was beaten to the ground, lifted, and thrown into the air, as he had thrown the child. He rose, bruised and bleeding, and was slinking off, when the man cried: "Holy Mother! it is the murderer, Gautran!" Some labourers who were coming across the fields, were attracted by the scuffle, and the father called out to them: "Here is Gautran the murderer, and he has tried to murder my child!" This was enough for them. They were armed with reaping-hooks, and they raced towards Gautran with loud threats. They chased him for full a mile, but he was fleeter of foot than they, and despair gave him strength. He escaped them, and sank, panting, to the ground. The Advocate had spoken truly. There was no safety for him. He was known for miles round, and the people were eager for vengeance. He would hide in the woods for the rest of the day. There was but one means of escape for him. He must seek some distant spot, where he and his crime were unknown. But to get there he would be compelled to pass through villages in which he would be recognised. It was necessary that he should disguise himself. In what way could this be done? He pondered upon it for hours. In the afternoon he heard the muttering of the thunder in the distant mountains. "There's a storm coming," he said, and he raised his burning face to meet the welcome rain. But only a few heavy drops fell, and the wind moaned through the woods as if in pain. Night stole upon him swiftly, and wrapt him in horrible darkness. He bit his lips, he clenched his hands, his body shook with fear. Solitude was worse than death to him. He tried to sleep; in vain. Terrible images crowded upon him. Company he must have, at all hazards. Suddenly he thought of John Vanbrugh, the man he had met the night before on the hill not far from the Advocate's house. This man had not avoided him. He would seek him again, and, if he found him, would pass the night with him. So resolving, he walked with feverish steps towards the hill on which John Vanbrugh was keeping watch. CHAPTER III GAUTRAN RESOLVES ON A PLAN OF ESCAPE The distance was longer than Gautran had calculated, and he did not shorten it by the devious tracks he took in his anxiety to avoid meeting with his enemies. The rainstorm still kept off, but, in spite of the occasional flashes of lightning, the darkness seemed to grow thicker and thicker, and he frequently missed his way. He kept on doggedly, however, and although the shadow of his crime waited upon his steps, and made itself felt in the sighing and moaning of the wind, in the bending of every branch, and in the fluttering of every leaf, the craving for human companionship in which there was something of sympathy, and from which he would not be hunted like a dog, imbued him with courage to fight these terrors. Often, indeed, did he pause and threaten with fearful words the spectre of the girl he had murdered; and sometimes he implored her to leave him, and told her he was going to pay for masses for the repose of her soul. Occasionally he was compelled to take the high road, and then he was grateful for the darkness, for it prevented his face from being seen. At those times he slunk close to the hedges, as though dreading that the slightest contact with a human being would lead to discovery. Terrible as the night was to him, he feared the approach of day, when it would be more difficult to conceal himself from his pursuers. He knew that his life was not safe while he remained in this fatal neighbourhood. He _must_ escape, and in disguise, before he was many hours older. How was this to be accomplished? Once, in the roadway, he followed with stealthy steps two men who were conversing. He would have avoided them, as he had avoided others, had it not been that he heard his name mentioned, and was morbidly curious to hear what they were saying about him. Said one: "I have not set eyes upon this man-monster, but I shall know him if I meet him in the light." To which the other replied: "How will you manage that, if you have never seen his face?" "You ask a foolish question. Have not full descriptions of the murderer been put about everywhere? His features, the colour of his hair, his clothes, from his cap to his boots--all is known. His face he might disguise by a slash of his knife, if he has courage enough for it, or he might stain it--and in that way, too, he might change the colour of his hair. But his clothes would remain. The shirt he wears is one in a thousand, and there's no mistaking it. It is blue, with broad yellow bands, which encircle his villainous body like rings. Let him get another shirt if he can. The country is aroused for twenty miles round, and men are resolved to take justice into their own hands. The law has allowed him to slip through its fingers; he shall not slip through ours. Why, he said to a woman this morning that he would know how to serve her if he had her alone, and not long afterwards he tried to murder a child! Shall such a monster be allowed to remain at liberty to strike women down and murder the helpless? No--we don't intend to let him escape. Men are on the watch for him everywhere, and when he is caught he will be beaten to death, or hung upon the nearest tree. There is another end for him, if he chooses to take it. He can hide in the woods and starve, and when his body is found, we'll drive a stake through it. Take my word for it, Gautran, the murderer, has not long to live." Gautran shook with fear and rage. "I could spring upon them with my knife," he thought, "but they are two to one." And then, when the men were out of hearing, he shook his fist at them, and muttered: "Curse you! I will cheat you yet!" But how? The description given of his shirt was a faithful one; the broad yellow bands were there, and he remembered that, two days before the end of his trial, the gaolers had taken it from his cell in the night, and returned it to him in the morning, washed, with the yellow colour brighter than it had been for months. He knew now that this had been done out of malice, in case he should be acquitted, so that he might be the more readily recognised and shunned, or the more easily tracked and caught if he was again wanted. There loomed upon him a way to foil those who had vowed to kill him. The man he was seeking had spoken in a reckless manner; he had complained of the world, and was doubtless in want of money. He had gold which the Advocate had given him; he would offer to buy the man's clothes, and would give him his own, and one, two, or even three gold pieces in exchange; An easy thing to accomplish. But if the man would not consent to the bargain! He smiled savagely, and felt the edge of his knife. He was thoroughly desperate. He would sacrifice a thousand lives to save his own. Out of this murderous alternative--and out of the words uttered by the man he had overheard, "His face he might disguise by a slash of his knife if he has courage for it"--grew ideas which, as he plodded on gradually arranged themselves into a scheme which would ensure him an almost sure escape from those who had leagued themselves against him. Its entire success depended upon certain physical attributes in John Vanbrugh--but he would risk it even if these were not as he wished them to be. The plan was horrible in its design, and needed strength and cunning. He had both, and would use them without mercy, to ensure his safety. John Vanbrugh, with whose name he was not acquainted, was probably a stranger in the locality; something in Vanbrugh's speech caused him to suspect this. He would assure himself first of the fact, and then the rest was easy. Vanbrugh was about his own height and build; he had stood by his side and knew this to be so. Gautran should die this night in the person of another man, and should be found in the morning, murdered, with features so battered as to defy recognition. But he would be attired in Gautran's clothes, and would by those means be instantly identified. Then he, the true Gautran, would be forever safe. In John Vanbrugh's garments he could make his way to a distant part of the country, and take another name. No one would suspect him, for Gautran would be dead; and he would buy masses for the repose of Madeline's soul, and so purge himself of blood-guiltiness. As to this second contemplated crime he gave it no thought, except that it was necessary, and must be done. CHAPTER IV HEAVEN'S JUDGMENT Within half an hour of midnight he arrived at the hill, and saw the shadow of a man who was leaning against a tree. Gautran had been walking for nearly three hours, and during the whole time the storm of thunder and lightning had continued at intervals, now retreating, now advancing; but its full force had been spent many miles away, and it did not seem likely to approach much nearer to the House of White Shadows. "The man is there," muttered Gautran, "with his face still towards the Advocate's window. What is his purpose?" He was curious about that, too, and thought he would endeavour to ferret it out. It might be useful to him in the future, for it concerned the Advocate. There was plenty of time before him to accomplish his own murderous design. John Vanbrugh heard Gautran's footsteps. "Who comes this way?" he cried. "A friend," replied Gautran. "That is easily said," cried Vanbrugh. "I am not in a trustful mood. Hold off a bit, or I may do you mischief." "Do you not know me?" asked Gautran, approaching closer, and measuring himself with the dark form of Vanbrugh. They were of exactly the same height. "What, Gautran!" exclaimed Vanbrugh in a gay tone. "Yes, Gautran." "Welcome, friend, welcome," said Vanbrugh, with a laugh. "Give me your hand. Veritable flesh and blood. You have a powerful grip, Gautran. I thought we should meet again. What caused you to make yourself scarce so suddenly last night? You vanished like a cloud." "I had business to do. Have you got any more of that brandy about you?" "I am not sure whether you deserve it. After emptying my flask, you may make off again. A poor return for hospitality, my friend." "I promise to remain with you--it is what I came for--if you give me brandy." "I take your word," said Vanbrugh, producing a flask. "Drink, but not too greedily." Gautran took a long draught and returned the flask, saying, "You have no food, I suppose?" "Why, yes, I have. Warned by previous experiences I supplied myself liberally for this night's watch. I'll not refuse you, though I spent my last franc on it." "Ah," said Gautran, with some eagerness, for an amicable exchange of clothing would render the more villainous part of his task easier of accomplishment, "you are poor, then?" "Poor? Yes, but not for long, Gautran. The days of full purses are coming. Here is the food. Eat, rogue, eat. It is honest bread and meat, bought and paid for; but none the sweeter for that. We know which fruit is the sweetest. So you had business to do when you took French leave of me! How runs the matter? I had just pointed out the Advocate's window to you--your own special Advocate, my friend, to whom you have so much reason to be grateful--when you disappeared like an arrow from a bow. What follows then? That, leaving me so abruptly, your business was important, and that it concerned the Advocate. Right or wrong, rogue?" "Right," replied Gautran, as he devoured the food. "Come, that's candid of you, and spoken like a friend. You did not know, before I informed you, that he lived in the villa yonder?" "I did not." "I begin to have hopes of you. And learning it from me, you made up your mind on the spur of the moment--your business being so important--to pay him a friendly visit, despite the strangeness of the hour for a familiar call?" "You've hit it," said Gautran. John Vanbrugh pondered a while. These direct answers, given without hesitation, puzzled him. He had expected to meet with prevarication, and he was receiving, instead, straightforward confidence. "You are not afraid," he said, "to speak the truth to me, Gautran?" "I am not." "But I am a stranger to you." "That's true." "Why, then, do you confide in me?" It was Gautran's turn now to pause, but he soon replied, with a sinister look which John Vanbrugh, in the darkness, could not see: "Because, after what passes between us this night, I am sure you will not betray me." "Good," said Vanbrugh; "then it is plain you sought me deliberately, because you think I can in some way serve you." "Yes, because you can in some way serve me--that is why I am here." "Then you intend to hide nothing from me?" "Nothing--for the reason I have given." A flash of lightning seemed to strike the spot on which he and Gautran were conversing, and he waited for the thunder. It came--long, deep, and threatening. "There is a terrible storm somewhere," he said. "It does not matter," rejoined Gautran, with a shudder, "so long as a man is not alone. Don't mind my coming so close. I have walked many a mile to find you. I have not a friend in the world but you." "Not even the Advocate?" "Not even him. He will see me no more." "He told you that last night?" "Yes." "But how did you get to him, Gautran? You did not enter by the gates." "No; I dropped over the wall at the back. Tell me. It is but fair; I answer you honestly enough. What are you watching his house for? A man does not do as you are doing, on such black nights as this, for idle pastime." "No, indeed, Gautran! I also have business with him. And strangely enough, you, whom I met in the flesh for the first time within these last twenty-four hours, are indirectly concerned in it." "Am I? Strange enough, as you say. But it will not matter after to-night." Some hidden meaning in Gautran's tone struck warningly upon John Vanbrugh, and caused him to bestow a clearer observance upon Gautran's movements from this moment. "There is a thing I wish to know, Gautran," he said. "Between vagabonds like ourselves there is no need for concealment. It is a delicate question, but you have been so frank with me that I will venture to ask it. Besides, there are no witnesses, and you will not, therefore, incriminate yourself. This girl, Madeline, whose spirit follows you----" Vanbrugh hesitated. The question he was about to ask trembled on his lips, and he scarcely knew how to give it shape in words that would not provoke an outbreak on the part of Gautran. He had no desire to come into open collision with this ruffian, of whose designs upon himself he was inwardly warned. Gautran, with brutal recklessness, assisted him. "You want to know if I killed her?" "Why, yes--though you put it roughly." "What matter? Well, then, she died at my hands." John Vanbrugh recoiled from the murderer in horror, and in a suppressed tone asked: "When the Advocate defended you, did he know you were guilty?" "Aye. We kept the secret to ourselves. It was cleverly worked, was it not?" "And last night," continued John Vanbrugh, "he received you in his study?" "Aye--and gave me liquor, and food, and money. Listen to it." He rattled the gold pieces in the palms of his hands. "Look you. I have answered questions enough. I answer no more for a while. It is my turn now." "Proceed, Gautran," said Vanbrugh; "I may satisfy you or not, according to my whim." "You'll satisfy me, or I'll know the reason why. There is no harm in what I am going to say. You are a stranger in these parts--there is no offence in that, is there?" "None. Yes, I am a stranger in these parts. Heavens! what a flash! The storm is coming nearer." "All the better. You will hardly believe that I have been bothering myself about the colour of your hair. I hate red-haired men. Yours, now. Is there any offence in asking the colour of it?" "None. My hair is black." Gautran's eyes glittered and a flash of lightning illuminated his face, and revealed to Vanbrugh the savage and ruthless look which shone there. "And your height and build, about the same as mine," said Gautran. "Let us strike a bargain. I have gold--you have none. I have taken a fancy to your clothes; I will buy them of you. Two gold pieces in exchange for them, and mine thrown in." "The clothes of a murderer," said Vanbrugh, slowly retreating as Gautran advanced upon him. "Thank you for nothing. Not for two hundred gold pieces, poor as I am. Keep off. Do not come so near to me." "Why not? You are no better than I. Three gold pieces! That should content you." "You have my answer, Gautran. Leave me, I have had enough of you." "You will have had more than enough before I have done with you," said Gautran, and Vanbrugh was satisfied now, from the man's brutal tones, that it was a deadly foe who stood within a few inches of him, "if you do not do as I bid you. Say, done and done; you had better. By fair means or foul I mean to have what I want." "Not by fair means, you murderous villain. Be warned. I am on my guard." "If you will have it, then!" cried Gautran, and with a savage shout he threw himself upon Vanbrugh. So sudden and fierce was the attack that Vanbrugh could not escape from it; but although he was no match for Gautran in strength, he had had, in former years, some experience in wrestling which came to his aid now in this terrible crisis. The struggle that ensued was prolonged and deadly, and while the men were locked in each other's arms, the storm broke immediately over their heads. The thunder pealed above them, the lightning played about their forms. "You villain!" gasped Vanbrugh, as he felt himself growing weaker. "Have you been paid by the Advocate to do this deed?" "Yes," answered Gautran, between his clenched teeth; "he is the fiend's agent, and I am his! He bade me kill you. Your last moment has come!" "Not yet," cried Vanbrugh, and by a supreme and despairing effort he threw Gautran clear from him, and stood again on the defensive. Simultaneously with the movement a flash of forked lightning struck the tree against which Vanbrugh had been leaning when Gautran first accosted him, and cleft it in twain; and as Gautran was about to spring forward, a huge mass of timber fell upon him with fatal force, and bore him to the earth--where he lay imprisoned, crushed and bleeding to death. CHAPTER V FATHER CAPEL DISCOVERS GAUTRAN IN HIS PERIL Father Capel was wending his way slowly over the hill from the bedside of the sick woman whom he had attended for two nights in succession. On the first night she was in a state of delirium, and Father Capel could not arouse her to a consciousness of surrounding things. In her delirium she had repeatedly uttered a name which had powerfully interested him. "Madeline! Madeline! my Madeline," she moaned again and again. "Is it possible," thought the priest, "that the girl whose name she utters with agonised affection is the poor child who was so ruthlessly murdered?" On this, the second night, the woman whose last minutes on earth were approaching, was conscious, and she made certain disclosures to Father Capel which, veiled as they were, had grievously disturbed his usually serene mood. She had, also, given him a mission to perform which did not tend to compose his mind. He had promised faithfully to obey her, and they were to meet again within a few hours. To his earnest request that she would pray with him, she had impatiently answered: "There will be time enough after I have seen the man you have promised to bring with you. I shall live till then." So he had knelt by her bedside and had prayed for her and for himself, and for all the erring. His compassionate heart had room for them all. For twenty miles around there was no man better loved than he. His life had been reproachless, and his tender nature never turned from the performance of a good deed, though it entailed suffering and privation upon himself. These were matters not to be considered when duty beckoned to him. A poor man, and one who very often deprived himself of a meal in the cause of charity. A priest in the truest sense of the word. Seldom, in the course of a long, merciful, and charitable career, had he met with so much cause to grieve as on the present occasion. In the first place, because it was an added proof to the many he had received that a false step in life, in the taking of which one human being caused another to suffer, was certain to bring at some time or other its own bitter punishment; in the second place, because in this particular instance, the punishment, and the remorse that must surely follow, were as terrible as the mind of man could conceive. His road lay towards the hill upon which the desperate conflict between John Vanbrugh and Gautran was taking place. There was no occasion for him to cross this hill; by skirting its base he could follow the road he intended to take. But as he approached the spot, the wind bore to him, in moments when the fury of the storm was lulled, cries which sounded in his ears like cries of pain and despair They were faint, and difficult to ascribe to any precise definite cause; they might be the cries of an animal, but even in that case it was more than likely that Father Capel would have proceeded in their direction. Presently, however, he heard a human cry for help; the word was distinct, and it decided his movements. Without hesitation he began to climb the hill. As he approached nearer and nearer to the spot on which the struggle was proceeding, there was no longer room to doubt its nature. "Holy Mother!" murmured the priest, quickening his steps, "will the evil passions of men never be stilled? It seems as if murder were being done here. Grant that I am not too late to avert the crime!" Then came the terrific lightning-flash, followed immediately by Gautran's piercing scream as he was struck down by the tree. "Who calls for help?" cried Father Capel, in a loud voice, but his words were lost in the peals of thunder which shook the earth and made it tremble beneath his feet. When comparative silence reigned, he shouted again: "Who calls for help? I am a priest, and tender it." Gautran's voice answered him: "Here--here! I am crushed and dying!" This appeal was not coherently made, but the groans which accompanied it guided Father Capel to the spot upon which Gautran lay. He felt amid the darkness and shuddered at the touch of blood, and then he clasped Gautran's right hand. The tree had fallen across the murderer's legs, and had so crushed them into the earth that he could not move the lower part of his body; his chest and arms were free. A heavy branch had inflicted a terrible gash on his forehead, and it was from this wound that he was bleeding to death. "Who are you?" said Father Capel, kneeling by the dying man, "that lies here in this sad condition? I cannot see you. Is this Heaven's deed, or man's?" "It is Heaven's," gasped Gautran, "and I am justly punished." "I heard the sounds of a struggle between two men. Are you one of those who were fighting in the midst of this awful darkness?" "Yes, I am one." "And the design," continued Father Capel, "was murder. You do not answer me; your silence is sufficient confirmation. Are you hurt much?" "I am hurt to death. In a few minutes I shall be in eternal fire unless you grant me absolution and forgiveness for my crimes." "Speak first the truth. Were you set upon, or were you the attacker in this evil combat?" "I attacked him first." "Then he may be dead!" exclaimed Father Capel, and rising hastily to his feet, he peered into the darkness, and felt about with his hands, and called aloud to know if the other man was conscious. "This is horrible," said the priest, in deep perplexity, scarcely knowing what it was best to do; "one man dying, another in all likelihood dead." He turned as if about to go, and Gautran, divining his intention, cried in a tone of agony: "Do not leave me, father, do not leave me!" "Truly," murmured the priest, "it seems to me that my present duty is more with the living than the dead." He knelt again by the side of Gautran. "Miserable wretch, if the man you attacked be dead, you have murdered him, and you have been smitten for your crime. It may not be the only sin that lies upon your soul." "It is not, it is not," groaned Gautran. "My strength is deserting me; I can hardly speak. Father, is there hope for a murderer? Do not let me die yet. Give me something to revive me. I am fainting." "I have nothing with me to restore your strength. To go for wine, and for assistance to remove this heavy timber which imprisons you--my weak arms cannot stir it--cannot be accomplished in less than half an hour. It will be best, perhaps, for me to take this course; in the meantime, pray, miserable man, with all the earnestness of your heart and soul, for Divine forgiveness. What is your name?" "I am Gautran," faintly answered the murderer. Father Capel's frame shook under the influence of a strong agitation. "From the bedside of the woman I have left within the hour," he murmured, "to this poor sinner who has but a few minutes to live! The hand of God is visible in it." He addressed himself to the dying man: "You are he who was tried for the murder of Madeline, the flower-girl?" "I am he," moaned Gautran. "Hearken to me," said Father Capel. "For that crime you were tried and acquitted by an earthly tribunal, which pronounced you innocent. But you are now about to appear before the Divine throne for judgment; and from God nothing can be hidden. He sees into the hearts of men. Who is ready--as you but now admitted to me--to commit one murder, and who, perhaps, has committed it, for, from the silence, I infer that the body of your victim lies at no great distance, will not shrink from committing two. Answer me truly, as you hope for mercy. Were you guilty or innocent of the murder of Madeline?" "I was guilty," groaned Gautran. "Wretch that I am, I killed her. I loved her, father--I loved her!" Gautran, from whose lips these words had come amid gasps of agony, could say no more; his senses were fast leaving him. "Ah me--ah me!" sighed Father Capel; "how shall such a crime be expiated?" "Father," moaned Gautran, rallying a little, "had I lived till to-morrow, I intended to buy masses for the repose of her soul. I will buy them now, and for my own soul too. I have money. Feel in my pocket; there is gold. Take it all--all--every piece--and tell me I am forgiven." Father Capel did not attempt to take the money. "Stolen gold will not buy absolution or the soul's repose," he said sadly. "Crime upon crime--sin upon sin! Gautran, evil spirits have been luring you to destruction." "I did not steal the gold," gasped Gautran. "It was given to me--freely given." "Forgiveness you cannot hope for," said Father Capel, "if in these awful moments you swerve from the truth by a hair's-breadth. Confess you stole the gold, and tell me from whom, so that it may be restored." "May eternal torments be mine if I stole it! Believe me, father--believe me. I speak the truth." "Who gave it to you, then?" "The Advocate." "The Advocate! He who defended you, and so blinded the judgment of men as to cause them to set a murderer loose?" "Yes; he, and no other man." "From what motive, Gautran--compassion?" "No, from fear." "What reason has he to fear you?" "I have his secret, as he had mine, and he wished to get rid of me, so that he and I should never meet again. It was for that he gave me the gold." "What is the nature of this secret which made him fear your presence?" "He knew me to be guilty." "What do you say? When he defended you, he knew you to be guilty?" "Aye, he knew it well." "Incredible--horrible!" exclaimed Father Capel, raising his hands. "He shared, then, your crime. Yes; though he committed not the deed, his guilt is as heavy as the guilt of the murderer. How will he atone for it?--how _can_ atone for it? And if what I otherwise fear to be true, what pangs of remorse await him!" A frightful scream from Gautran arrested his further speech. "Save me, father--save me!" shrieked the wretch. "Send her away! Tell her I repent. See, there--there!--she is creeping upon me, along the tree!" "What is it you behold amidst the darkness of this appalling night?" asked Father Capel, crossing himself. "It is Madeline--her spirit that will never, never leave me! Will you not be satisfied, you, with my punishment? Is not my death enough for you? You fiend--you fiend! I will strangle you if you come closer. Have mercy--mercy! You are a priest; have you no power over her? Then what is the use of prayer? It is a mockery--a mockery! My eyes are filled with blood! Ah!" Then all was silent. "Gautran," whispered Father Capel, "take this cross in your hand; put it to your lips and repeat the words I say. Gautran, do you hear me? No sound--no sound! He has gone to his account, unrepentant and unforgiven!" Father Capel rose to his feet. "I will seek assistance at once; there is another to be searched for. Ah, terrible, terrible night! Heaven have mercy upon us!" And with a heart overburdened with grief, the good priest left the spot to seek for help. CHAPTER VI THE WRITTEN CONFESSION During the whole of this interview John Vanbrugh had lain concealed within two or three yards of the fallen tree, and had heard every word that had passed between Gautran and Father Capel. For a few moments after he had thrown Gautran from him he was dazed and exhausted by the struggle in which he had been engaged, and by the crashing of the timber which had saved him from his deadly foe. Gradually he realised what had occurred, and when Father Capel's voice reached his ears he resolved not to discover himself, and to be a silent witness of what transpired. In this decision lay safety for himself and absolute immunity, for Gautran knew nothing of him, not even his name, and to be dragged into the light, to be made to give evidence of the scene in which he had been a principal actor, would have seriously interfered with his plan of action respecting the Advocate. Favoured by the night, he had no difficulty in concealing himself, and he derived an inward satisfaction from the reflection that he might turn even the tragic and unexpected event that had occurred to his own immediate advantage. He had not been seriously hurt in the conflict; a few bruises and scratches comprised the injuries he had received. Among his small gifts lay the gift of mimicry; he could imitate another man's voice to perfection; and when Father Capel left Gautran for the purpose of obtaining assistance, an idea crossed his mind which he determined to carry out. He waited until he was assured that Father Capel was entirely out of hearing, and then he stepped from his hiding-place, and knelt by the side of Gautran. Having now no fear of his enemy, he placed his ear to Gautran's heart and listened. "He breathes," he muttered, "there is yet a little life left in him." He raised Gautran's head upon his knee, and taking his flask of brandy from his pocket, he poured some of the liquor down the dying man's throat. It revived him; he opened his eyes languidly; but he had not strength enough left in him to utter more than a word or two at the time. "I have returned, Gautran," said John Vanbrugh, imitating the voice of the priest; "I had it not in my heart to desert you in your last moments. The man you fought with is dead, and in his pocket I found this flask of brandy. It serves one good purpose; it will give you time to earn salvation. You have two murders upon your soul. Are you prepared to do as I bid you?" "Yes," replied Gautran. "Answer my questions, then. What do you know of the man whom you have slain?" "Nothing." "Was he, then, an absolute stranger to you?" "Yes." "You do not even know his name?" "No." "There is no time to inquire into your reasons for attacking him, for I perceive from your breathing that your end is very near, and the precious moments must not be wasted. It is your soul--your soul--that has to be saved! And there is only one way--the guilty must be punished. You have met your punishment. Heaven's lightning has struck you down. These gold pieces which I now take from your pocket shall be expended in masses. Rest easy, rest easy, Gautran. There is but one thing for you to do--and then you will have made atonement. You hear me--you understand me?" "Yes--quick--quick!" "To die, leaving behind you no record of the guilt of your associate--of the Advocate who, knowing you to be a murderer, deliberately defeated the ends of justice--will be to provoke Divine anger against you. There is no hope for pardon in that case. Can you write?" "No." "Your name, with my assistance, you could trace?" "Perhaps." "I will write a confession which you must sign. Then you shall receive absolution." He poured a few drops of brandy into Gautran's mouth, and they were swallowed with difficulty. After this he allowed Gautran's head to rest upon the earth, and tore from his pocket-book some sheets of blank paper, upon which, with much labour, he wrote the following: "I, Gautran, the woodman, lately tried for the murder of Madeline, the flower-girl, being now upon the point of death, and conscious that I have only a few minutes to live, and being in full possession of my reason, hereby make oath, and swear: "That being thrown into prison, awaiting my trial. I believed there was no escape from the doom I justly merited, for the reason that I was guilty of the murder. "That some days before my trial was to take place, the Advocate who defended me voluntarily undertook to prove to my judges that I was innocent of the crime I committed. "That with this full knowledge he conducted my case with such ability that I was set free and pronounced innocent. "That on the night of my acquittal, after midnight had struck, and when every person but himself in the House of White Shadows was asleep, I secretly visited him in his study, and remained with him some time. "That he gave me food and money, and bade me go my way. "That I am ignorant of the motives which induced him to whom I was a perfect stranger, to deliberately defeat the ends of justice. "That the proof that he knew me to be guilty lies in the fact that I made a full confession to him. "To which I solemnly swear, being about to appear before a just God to answer for my crime. I pray for forgiveness and mercy. "Signed----." And here John Vanbrugh left a space for Gautran's name. He read the statement to Gautran, who was now fast sinking, and then he raised the dying man's head in his arms, and holding the pencil in the almost nerveless fingers, assisted him to trace the name "Gautran." This was no sooner accomplished than Gautran, with a wild scream, fell back. John Vanbrugh lost not another moment. With an exultant smile he placed the fatal evidence in his pocket, and prepared to depart. As he did so he heard the voices of men who were ascending the hill. "This paper," thought Vanbrugh, as he crept softly away in an opposite direction, "is worth, I should say, at least half the Advocate's fortune. It is the ruin of his life and career, and, if he does not purchase it of me on my own terms, let him look to himself." When Father Capel, with the men he had summoned to his assistance, arrived at the spot upon which Gautran lay, the murderer was dead. _BOOK VI.--A RECORD OF THE PAST_ CHAPTER I THE DISCOVERY OF THE MANUSCRIPT All was silent in the House of White Shadows. Strange as was the drama that was in progress within its walls it found no open expression, and to the Advocate, seated alone in his study, was about to be unfolded a record of events long buried in the past, the disclosure of which had not, up to this moment, been revealed to man. During the afternoon, the Advocate had said to Christian Almer: "Now that I have leisure, I intend, with your permission, to devote some time to your father's works. In his day, certainly for a number of years, he was celebrated, and well known in many countries, and I have heard surprise expressed that a career which promised to shed lasting lustre upon the name you bear seemed suddenly to come to an end. Of this abrupt break in the labours of an eminent man there is no explanation--as to what led to it, and in what way it was broken off. I may chance upon the reason of a singular and complete diversion from a pursuit which he loved. It will interest me, if you will give me permission to search among his papers." "A permission," rejoined Christian Almer, "freely accorded. Everything in the study is at your disposal. For my own part the impressions of my childhood are of such a nature as to render distasteful the records of my father's labours. But you are a student and a man of deeper observation and research than myself. You may unearth something of value. I place all my father's manuscripts at your unreserved disposal. Pray, read them if you care to do so, and use them in any way you may desire." Thus it happened that, two hours before midnight, the Advocate, after looking through a number of manuscripts, most of them in an incomplete shape, came upon some written pages, the opening lines of which exercised upon him a powerful fascination. The only heading of these pages was, "A FAITHFUL RECORD." And it was made in the following strain: CHAPTER II CHRISTIAN ALMER'S FATHER "It devolves upon me, Ernest Christian Almer, as a duty, to set down here, in a brief form, before I die, the record of certain events in my life which led me to the commission of a crime. Whether justifiable or not--whether this which I call a crime may be otherwise designated as an accident or as the execution of a just punishment for trust and friendship betrayed--is for others to determine. "It is probable that no human eye will read what I am about to write until I am dead; but if it should be brought to light in my lifetime I am ready to bear the consequences of my act. The reason why I myself do nothing to assist directly in the discovery (except in so far as making this record and placing it without concealment among my manuscripts) is that I may in that way be assisting in bringing into the life of my dear son, Christian Almer, a stigma and a reproach which will be a cause of suffering to him. If it should happen that many years elapse before these lines fall into the hands of a human being, if may perhaps be for the best. What is done is done, and cannot be recalled. Even had I the power to bring the dead to life I doubt whether I should avail myself of it. "My name is not unknown to the small world in which I live and move, and I once cherished a hope that I should succeed in making it famous. That hope is now like a flower burnt to ashes, never more to blossom. It proves the vanity of ambition upon which we pride ourselves and which we imbue with false nobility. "As a lad I was almost morbidly tender in my nature; I shrank from giving pain to living creature; the ordinary pursuits of childhood, in which cruelty to insects forms so prominent a feature, were to me revolting; to strip even a flower of its leaves was in my eyes a cruel proceeding. And yet I have lived to take a human life. "My earliest aspiration was to win a name in literature. Every book I read and admired assisted in making this youthful aspiration a fixed purpose when I became a man. Often, as I read the last words of a book which had fired my imagination, would I think, and sometimes say aloud, 'Gladly would I die were I capable of writing a work so good, so grand as this.' "My parents were rich, and allowed me to follow my bent. When they died I was left sole heir to their wealth. I had not to struggle as poorer men in the profession to which I resolved to devote myself have had to do. So much the worse for me perhaps--but that now matters little. Whether the books I hoped to write would be eagerly sought after or not was of no moment to me. What I desired was to produce; for the rest, as to being successful or unsuccessful, I was equal to either fortune. "I made many friends and acquaintances, who grew to learn that they could use and enjoy my house as their own. In setting this down I lay no claim to unusual generosity; it was on my part simply the outcome of a nature that refused to become a slave to rigid forms of hospitality. The trouble entailed would have been too great, and I declined to undertake it. I chose to employ my hours after my own fashion--the fashion of solitude. I found great pleasure in it, and to see my friends around me without feeling myself called upon to sacrifice my time for their enjoyment, knowing (as they well knew) that they were welcome to the best my wealth and means could supply them with--this added to my pleasure a peculiar charm. They were satisfied, and so was I; and only in one instance was my hospitality abused and my friendship betrayed. But had I been wise, this one instance would never have occurred to destroy the hopes of my life. "Although it is running somewhat ahead of the sequence of events, I may mention here the name of the man who proved false to friendship. It was M. Gabriel. He was almost young enough to be my son, and when I first knew him he was a boy and I was a man. He was an artist, with rare talents, and at the outset of his career I assisted him, for, like the majority of artists, he was poor. This simple mention of him will be sufficient for the present. "As when I was a lad I took no delight in the pleasures of lads of my own age, so when I was a man I did not go the way of men in that absorbing passion to which is given the name of Love. Those around me were drawn into the net which natural impulse and desire spread for mankind. There was no credit in this; it was simply that it did not happen. I was by no means a woman-hater, but it would seem as if the pursuits to which I was devoted were too engrossing to admit of a rival. So I may say what few can say--that I had passed my fortieth year, and had never loved. "My turn came, however. "Among my guests were the lady who afterwards became my wife, and her parents. A sweet and beautiful lady, twenty-five years my junior. My unhappiness and ruin sprang from the chance which brought us together--as did her wretchedness and misery. In this I was more to blame than she--much more to blame. In the ordinary course of a life which had reached beyond its middle age I should have acquired sufficient experience to learn that youth should mate with youth--that nature has its laws which it is dangerous to trifle with. But such experience did not come to me. At forty-five years of age I was as unlearned as a child in matters of the heart; I had no thought of love or marriage, and the youngest man of my acquaintance would have laughed at my simplicity had the opportunity been afforded him of seeing my inner life. It was not the fault of the young lady that she knew nothing of this simplicity. No claim whatever had I to demand to be judged by special and exceptional rules. She had a perfect right to judge me as any other man of my age would have been judged. All that can be said of it was that it was most unfortunate for her and for me. If it should happen (which is not unlikely, for the unforeseen is always occurring) that these pages should be read by a man who is contemplating marriage with one young enough to be his daughter, I would advise him to pause and submit his case to the test of natural reason; for if both live, there must come a time when nature will take its revenge for the transgression. The glamour of the present is very alluring, but it is the duty of the wiser and the riper of the twain to consider the future, which will press more hardly upon the woman than upon the man. With the fashion of things as regards the coupling of the sexes I have nothing to do; fashions are artificial and often most mischievous. Frequently, when the deeper laws of nature are involved, they are destructive and fatal. "It was my misfortune that during the visit of the young lady and her parents, the father, an old and harmless gentleman, met his death through an accident while he, I, and other gentlemen were riding. In my house he died. "It occasioned me distress and profound sorrow, and I felt myself in some way accountable, though the fault was none of mine. Before his death he and I had private confidences, in which he asked me to look after his affairs, and if, as he feared, they were in an embarrassed state, to act as protector to his daughter. I gave him the promise readily, and, when he died, I took a journey for the purpose of ascertaining how the widow and the orphan were circumstanced. I found that they were literally beggars. As gently as I could I broke the news to them. The mother understood it; the daughter scarcely knew its meaning. Her charming, artless ignorance of the consequences of poverty deeply interested me, and I resolved in my mind how I could best serve her and render her future a happy one. "Speaking as I am in a measure to my own soul, I will descend to no duplicity. That I was entirely unselfish in my desire that her life should be bright and free from anxieties with which she could not cope is true; but none the less true is it that, for the first time, I felt myself under the dominion of a passion deeper and more significant than I had ever felt for woman. It was love, I believe, but love in which there was reason. For I took myself to task; I set my age and hers before me; I did this on paper, and as I gazed at the figures I said. Absurd; it is not in nature, and I must fight it down.' I did wrestle with it, and although I did not succeed in vanquishing it, I was sufficiently master of myself to keep the struggle hidden in my own breast. "How, then, did this hapless lady become my wife? Not, in the first instance, through any steps voluntarily and unreasoningly taken by myself. I had firmly resolved to hold my feelings in check. It was the mother who accomplished that upon which she had set her heart. I may speak freely. This worldly mother has been long dead, and my confession cannot harm her. It was she who ruined at least the happiness of one life, and made me what I am. "Needless here to recount the arts by which she worked to the end she desired; needless to speak of the deceits she practised to make me believe her daughter loved me. It may be that the fault was mine, and that I was too ready to believe. Sufficient to say that we fell into the snare she prepared for us; that, intoxicated by the prospect of an earthly heaven, I accepted the meanings she put on her daughter's reserve and apparent coldness, and that, once engaged in the enterprise, I was animated by the ardour of my own heart, in which I allowed the flower of love to grow to fruition. So we were married, and with no doubt of the future I set out with my wife on our bridal tour. She was both child and wife to me, and I solemnly resolved and most earnestly desired to do my duty by her. "Before we were many days away news arrived that my wife's mother had met with an accident, in a part of the grounds which was being beautified by my workmen according to plans I had prepared for the pleasure of my young bride--an accident so serious that death could not be averted. In sadness we returned to the villa. My wife's coldness I ascribed to grief--to no other cause. And, indeed, apart from the sorrow I felt at the dreadful news, I was myself overwhelmed for a time by the fatality which had deprived my wife of her parents within so short a time on my estate, and while they were my guests. 'But it will pass away,' I thought, 'and I will be parents, lover, husband, to the sweet flower who has given her happiness into my keeping.' When we arrived at the villa, her mother was dead. "I allowed my wife's grief to take its natural course; seeing that she wished for solitude, I did not intrude upon her sorrow. I had to study this young girl's feelings and impulses; it was my duty to be tender and considerate to her. I was wise, and thoughtful, and loving, as I believed, and I spared no effort to comfort without disturbing her. 'Time will console her,' I thought, 'and then we will begin a new life. She will learn to look upon me not only as a husband, but as a protector who will fully supply the place of those she has lost.' I was patient--very patient--and I waited for the change. It never came. "She grew more and more reserved towards me; and still I waited, and still was patient. Not for a moment did I lose sight of my duty. "But after a long time had passed I began to question myself--I began to doubt whether I had not allowed myself to be deceived. Is it possible, I asked myself, that she married me without loving me? When this torturing doubt arose I thrust it indignantly from me; it was as though I was casting a stain upon her truth and purity." CHAPTER III A DISHONOURABLE CONCEALMENT "I will not recount the continual endeavours I made to win my wife to cheerfulness and a better frame of mind. Sufficient to say that they were unsuccessful, and that many and many a time I gave up the attempt in despair, to renew it again under the influence of false hopes. Unhappy and disheartened, the pursuits in which I had always taken delight afforded me now no pleasure, and though I sought relief in solitude and study, I did not find it. My peace of mind was utterly wrecked. There was, however, in the midst of my wretchedness, one ray of light. In the course of a little while a child would be born to us, and this child might effect what I was unable to accomplish. When my wife pressed her baby to her breast, when it drew life from her bosom, she might be recalled to a sense of duty and of some kind of affection which I was ready to accept in the place of that thorough devoted love which I bore to her, and which I had hoped she would bear to me. "Considering this matter with as much wisdom as I could bring to my aid, I recognised the desirability of surrounding my wife with signs of pleasant and even joyful life. Gloomy parents are cursed with gloomy children. I would fill my house once more with friends; my wife should move in an atmosphere of cheerfulness; there should be music, laughter, sunny looks, happy voices. These could not fail to influence for good both my wife and our little one soon to be born. "I called friends around me, and I took special care that there should be many young people among them. Their presence, however, did not at first arouse my wife from her melancholy, and it was not until the man whose name I have already mentioned--M. Gabriel--arrived that I noticed in her any change for the better. "He came, and I introduced him to my wife, believing them to have been hitherto strangers to each other. I had no reason to believe otherwise when I presented M. Gabriel to her; had they met before, it would have been but honest that one or both should have made me acquainted with the fact. They did not, by direct or indirect word, and I had, therefore, no cause for suspicion. "Things went on as usual for a week or two after M. Gabriel's arrival, and then I noticed with joy that my wife was beginning to grow more cheerful. My happiness was great. I have been too impatient, I thought, with this young girl. The shock of losing her parents, one after another, under circumstances so distressing, was sufficient to upset a stronger mind than hers. How unwise in me that I should have tormented myself as I had been doing for so many months past! And how unjust to her that, because she was sorrowful and silent, I should have doubted her love for me! But all was well now: comfort had come to her bruised heart, and the book of happiness was not closed to me as I had feared. A terrible weight, a gnawing grief, were lifted from me. For I could imagine no blacker treason than that a woman should deliberately deceive a man into the belief that she loved him, and that she should marry him under such conditions. My wife had not done this; I had wronged her. Most fervently did I thank Heaven that I had discovered my error before it was too late to repair it. "I saw that my wife took pleasure in M. Gabriel's society, and I made him as free of my house as if it had been his own. He had commissions to execute, pictures to paint. "'Paint them here,' I said to him, 'you bring happiness to us. I look upon you as though you belonged to my family.' "In the summer-house was a room which he used as a studio; no artist could have desired a better, and M. Gabriel said he had never been able to paint as well as he was doing in my house. It gladdened me to observe that my wife, who had for a little while been reserved towards M. Gabriel, looked upon him now as a sister might look upon a brother. I encouraged their intimacy, and was grateful to M. Gabriel for accepting my hospitality in the free spirit in which it was tendered. He expressed a wish to paint my wife's portrait, and I readily consented. My wife gave him frequent sittings, sometimes in my company, sometimes alone. And still no word was spoken to acquaint me with the fact that my wife and he had known each other before they met in my house. "My child was born--a boy. My happiness would have been complete had my wife shown me a little more affection; but again, after the birth of our child, it dawned upon me that she cared very little for me, and that the feelings she entertained for me in no wise resembled those which a loving woman should feel towards a husband who was indefatigable, as indeed I was, in his efforts to promote her happiness. Even then it did not strike me that she was happier in M. Gabriel's society than she was in mine. The truth, however, was now to be made known to me. It reached me through the idle tittle-tattling of one of my guests; of my own prompting I doubt whether I should ever have discovered it. I overheard this lady making some injurious observations respecting my wife; no man's name was mentioned, but I heard enough to cause me to resolve to hear more, and to put an end at once to the utterances of a malicious tongue. "During my life, in matters of great moment, I have seldom acted upon impulse, and the value of calm deliberation after sudden excitement of feeling has frequently been made apparent to me. "I sought this lady, and told her that I had overheard the remarks she had made on the previous day; that I was profoundly impressed by them, and intended to know what foundation there was for even a breath of scandal. I had some difficulty in bringing her to the point, but I was determined, and would be satisfied with no evasions. "'I love my wife, madam,' I said, 'too well to be content with half words and innuendoes, which in their effect are worse than open accusations.' "'Accusations!' exclaimed the lady. 'Good Heavens! I have brought none.' "'It is for that reason I complain,' I said; 'accusations can be met, and are by no means so much to be feared as idle words which affect the honour of those who are the subject of them.' "'I merely repeated,' then said the lady, 'what others have been saying for a long time past.' "'And what have others been saying for a long time past, madam?' I asked, with an outward calmness which deceived her into the belief that I was not taking the matter seriously to heart. "'I am sure it is very foolish of them,' said the lady, 'and that there is nothing in it. But people are so mischievous, and place such dreadful constructions upon things! It is, after all, only natural that when, after a long separation, young lovers meet, they should feel a little tender towards each other, even though one of them has got married in the interval. We all go through such foolish experiences, and when we grow as old as you and I are, we laugh at them.' "'Probably, madam,' I said, still with exceeding calmness; 'but before we can laugh with any genuineness or enjoyment, it is necessary to have some knowledge of the cause of our mirth. When young lovers meet, you said, after a long separation, it is natural they should feel a tenderness towards each other. But we are speaking of my wife.' "'Yes,' she replied, 'of your wife, and I am sure you are too sensible a man--so much older than that sweet creature!--to make any unnecessary bother about it.' "She knew well how to plant daggers in my heart. "'My wife, then, is one of those young lovers? You really must answer me, madam. These are, after all, but foolish experiences.' "'I am glad you are taking it so sensibly,' she rejoined. 'Yes, your wife is one of the young lovers.' "'And the other, madam.' "'Why, who else should it be but M. Gabriel?' "I did not speak for a few moments. The shock was so severe that I required time to recover some semblance of composure. "'My mind is much relieved,' I said. 'There is not the slightest foundation for scandal, and I trust that this interview will put an effectual stop to it. My wife and M. Gabriel have not been long acquainted. They met each other for the first time in this house.' "'Ah,' cried the lady very vivaciously, 'you want to deceive me now; but it is nonsense. Your wife and M. Gabriel have known each other for many years. They were once affianced. Had you not stepped in, there is no knowing what might have occurred. It is much better as it is--I am sure you think so. What can be worse for a young and beautiful creature than to marry a poor and struggling artist? M. Gabriel is very talented, but he is very poor. By the time he is a middle-aged man he may have made his way in the world, and then his little romance will be forgotten--quite forgotten. I dare say you can look back to the time when you were as young as he is, and can recall somebody you were madly in love with, but of whom you never think, except by the merest chance. These things are so common, you see. And now don't let us talk any more about it.' "I had no desire to exchange another word with the lady on the subject; I allowed her to rest in the belief that I had been acquainted with the whole affair, and did not wish it to get about. She promised me never to speak of it again to her friends in any injurious way, said it was a real pleasure to see what a sensible view I took of the matter, and our interview was at an end. "I had learnt all. At length, at length my eyes were opened, and the perfidy which had been practised towards me was revealed. All was explained. My wife's constant coldness, her insensibility to the affectionate advances I had made towards her, her pleasure at meeting her lover--the unworthy picture lay before my sight. There was no longer any opportunity for self-deception. Had I not recognised and acknowledged the full extent of the treason, I should have become base in my own esteem. It was not that they had been lovers--that knowledge in itself would have been hard to bear--but that they should have concealed it from me, that they should have met in my presence as strangers, that they should have tacitly agreed to trick me!--for hours I could not think with calmness upon these aspects of the misery which had been forced upon me. For she, my wife, was in the first instance responsible for our marriage; she could have refused me. I was in utter ignorance of a love which, during all these years, had been burning in her heart, and making her life and mine a torture. Had she been honest, had she been true, she would have said to me: 'I love another; how, then, can I accept the love you offer me, and how can you hope for a return? If circumstances compel me to marry you there must be no concealment, no treason. You must take me as I am, and never, never make my coldness the cause of reproach or unhappiness.' Yes, this much she might have said to me when I offered her my name--a name upon which there had hitherto been no stain and no dishonour. I should not have married her; I should have acted as a father towards her; I should have conducted her to the arms of her lover, and into their lives and mine would not have crept this infamy, this blight, this shame which even death cannot efface. "Of such a nature were my thoughts during the day. "Then came the resolve to be sure before I took action in the matter. The evidence of my own senses should convince me that in my own house my wife and her lover were playing a base part, were systematically deceiving me and laughing at me. "Of this man, this friend, whom I had taken to my heart, my horror and disgust were complete. I, whose humane instincts had in my youth been made the sport of my companions, who shrank from inflicting the slightest injury upon the meanest creature that crawled upon the earth, who would not even strip the leaves from a flower, found myself now transformed. Had M. Gabriel been in my presence at any moment during these hours of agonising thought, I should have torn him limb from limb and rejoiced in my cruelty. So little do we know ourselves." CHAPTER IV M. GABRIEL IS DISMISSED "I was up the whole of the night; I did not close my eyes, and when morning broke I had schooled myself to the task before me--to assure myself of the truth and the extent of the shame. "I kept watch, and did not betray myself to them, and what I saw filled me with amazement at my blindness and credulity. That my wife was not guilty, that she was not faithless to me in the ordinary acceptation of the term, was no palliation of her conduct. "Steadfastly I kept before me one unalterable resolve. In the eyes of the world the name I bore should not be dishonoured, if by any means it could be prevented. We would keep our shame and our deep unhappiness within our own walls. In the light of this resolve it was impossible that I could challenge M. Gabriel; he must go unpunished by me. My name should not be dragged through the mire, to become a byeword for pity. "By degrees, upon one excuse and another, I got rid of my visitors, and there remained in the villa only I, my wife and child, and M. Gabriel. Then, in M. Gabriel's studio, I broke in upon the lovers, and found my wife in tears. "For a moment or two I gazed upon them in silence, and they, who had risen in confusion when I presented myself, confronted me also in silence, waiting for the storm of anger which they expected to burst from me, an outraged husband. They were mistaken; I was outwardly calm. "'Madam,' I inquired, addressing my wife, 'may I inquire the cause of your tears?' "She did not reply; M. Gabriel did. 'Let me explain,' he said, but I would not allow him to proceed. "'I do not need you,' I said, 'to interpose between man and wife. I may presently have something to say to you. Till then, be silent.' Again I addressed my wife, and asked her why she was weeping. "'They are not the first tears I have shed,' she replied, 'since I entered this unhappy house.' "'I am aware of it, madam,' I replied; 'yet the house was not an unhappy one before you entered it. Honour, and truth, and faithfulness were its characteristics, and towards no man or woman who has received hospitality within these walls has any kind of treachery been practised by me, its master and your husband. Tears are a sign of grief, and suffering from it, as I perceive you are, I ask you why have you not sought consolation from the man whose name you bear, and whose life since you and he first met has had but one aim--to render you happy.' "'You cannot comfort me,' she said. "'Can he?' I asked, pointing to M. Gabriel. "'You insult me,' she said with great dignity. 'I will leave you. We can speak of this in private.' "'You will not leave me,' I said, 'and we will not speak of this in private, until after some kind of explanation is afforded me from your own lips and the lips of your friend. In saying I insult you, there is surely a mistaken idea in your mind as to what is due from you to me. M. Gabriel, whom I once called a friend, is here, enjoying my hospitality, of which I trust he has had no reason to complain. I find you in tears by his side, and he, by his attitude, endeavouring to console you. When I ask you, in his presence, why, being in grief, you do not come to me for consolation, you reply that I cannot comfort you. Yet you were accepting comfort from him, who is not your husband. It suggests itself to me that if an insult has been passed it has been passed upon me. I do not, however, receive it as such, for if an insult has been offered to me, M. Gabriel is partly responsible for it, and it is only between equals that such an indignity can be offered.' "'Equals!' cried M. Gabriel; he understood my words in the sense in which I intended them. 'I am certainly your equal.' "'It has to be proved,' I retorted. 'I use the term in so far as it affects honour and upright conduct between man and man. You can bring against me no accusation of having failed in those respects in my behaviour towards you. It has to be seen whether I can in truth bring such an accusation against you, and if I can substantiate it by evidence which the commonest mind would not reject, you are not my equal. I see that this plain and honest reasoning disturbs you; it should not without sufficient cause. Something more. If in addition I can prove that you have violated my hospitality, you are not only not my equal, but you have descended to a depth of baseness to describe which I can find no fitting terms.' "He grew hot at this. 'I decline to be present any longer,' he said, 'at an interview conducted in such a manner.' And he attempted to leave me, but I stood in his way, and would not permit him to pass. "'From this moment,' I said, 'I discharge myself of all duties towards you as your host. You are no longer my guest, and you will remain at this interview during my pleasure.' "He made another attempt to leave the room, and as he accompanied it by violence, I seized his arms, and threw him to the ground. He rose, and stood trembling before me. "'I make no excuse, madam,' I said to my wife, 'for the turn this scene has taken. It is unseemly for men to brawl in presence of a lady, but there are occasions when of two evils the least must be chosen. Should I find myself mistaken, I shall give to M. Gabriel the amplest apology he could desire. Let me recall to your mind the day on which M. Gabriel first entered my gates as my guest. I brought him to you, and presented him to you as a friend whom I esteemed, and whom I wished you also to esteem. You received him as a stranger, and I had no reason to suspect that he and you had been intimate friends, and that you were already well known to each other. You allowed me to remain in ignorance of this fact. Was it honest?' "'It was not honest,' she replied. "'It made me happy,' I continued, 'to see, after the lapse of a few days, that you found pleasure in his society, and I regarded him in the light of a brother to you. I trusted him implicitly, and although, madam, you and I have been most unhappy, I had no suspicion that there was any guilt in this, as I believed, newly-formed friendship.' "'There was no guilt in it,' she said very firmly. "'I receive your assurance, and believe it in the sense in which you offer it. But in my estimation the word I use is the proper word. In the concealment from me of a fact with which you or he should have hastened to make me acquainted; in the secret confidences necessarily involved in the carrying out of such an intimacy as yours; there was treachery from wife to husband, from friend to friend, and in that treachery there was guilt. By an accident, within the past month, a knowledge has come to me of a shameful scandal which, had I not nipped it in the bud, would have brought open disgrace upon my name and house--but the secret disgrace remains, and you have brought it into my family.' "'A shameful scandal!' she exclaimed, and her white face grew whiter. 'Who has dared----' "'The world has dared, madam, the world over whose tongue we have no control. The nature of the intimacy existing between you and M. Gabriel, far exceeding the limits of friendship, has provoked remark and comment from many of your guests, and we who should have been the first to know it, have been the last. From a lady stopping in my house I learnt that you and M. Gabriel were lovers before you and I met--that you were affianced. Madam, had you informed me of this fact you would have spared yourself the deepest unhappiness under which any human being can suffer. For then you and I would not have been bound to each other by a tie which death alone can sever. I have, at all events, the solace which right doing sometimes sheds upon a wounded heart; that solace cannot unhappily be yours. You have erred consciously, and innocent though you proclaim yourself, you have brought shame upon yourself and me. I pity you, but cannot help you further than by the action I intend to take of preventing the occurrence of a deeper shame and a deeper disgrace falling upon me. For M. Gabriel I have no feelings but those of utter abhorrence. I request him to remove himself immediately from my presence and from this house. This evening he will send for his paintings, which shall be delivered to his order. They will be placed in this summer-house. And in your presence madam, I give M. Gabriel the warning that if at any time, or under any circumstances, he intrudes himself within these walls, he will do so at his own peril. The protection which my honour--not safe in your keeping, madam--needs I shall while I live be able to supply.' "This, in substance, is all that took place while my wife was with us. When she was gone I gave instructions that M. Gabriel's paintings and property should be brought to the summer-house immediately, and I informed him of my intentions regarding them and the room he had used as a study. He replied that I would have to give him a more satisfactory explanation of my conduct. I took no notice of the threat, and I carried out my resolve--which converted the study into a tomb in which my honour was buried. And on the walls of the study I caused to be inscribed the words 'The Grave of Honour.' "On the evening of that day my wife sent for me, and in the presence of Denise, our faithful servant, heard my resolve with reference to our future life, and acquainted me with her own. The gates would never again be opened to friends. Our life was to be utterly secluded, and she had determined never to quit her rooms unless for exercise in the grounds at such times as I was absent from them. "'After to-night,' she said, 'I will never open my lips to you, nor, willingly, will I ever again listen to your voice.' "In this interview I learnt the snare, set by my wife's mother, into which we both had fallen. "I left my wife, and our new life commenced--a life with hearts shut to love or forgiveness. But I had done my duty, and would bear with strength and resignation the unmerited misfortunes with which I was visited. Not my wife's, I repeat, the fault alone. I should have been wiser, and should have known--apart from any consideration of M. Gabriel--that my habits, my character, my tastes, my age, were entirely unsuitable to the fair girl I had married. I come now to the event which has rendered this record necessary." CHAPTER V THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT "The impressions left upon me by the tragic occurrence I am about to narrate have, strangely enough, given me a confused idea as to the exact date upon which it took place, but I am correct in saying that it was within a month of the agreement entered into between my wife and myself that we should live separate lives under the same roof. "I expected to receive a challenge from M. Gabriel, a challenge which for the reason I have given--that I would not afford the world an opportunity of discussing my private affairs--I firmly resolved not to accept. To my surprise no such challenge reached me, and I indulged the hope that M. Gabriel had removed himself forever from us. It was not so. "The night was wild and dark. The wind was sweeping round the house; the rain was falling. I had resumed my old habits, and was awake in my study, in which I am now writing. I did no intelligent work during those sad days. If I forced myself to write, I invariably tore up the sheets when I read them with a clearer mind. My studies afforded me neither profit nor relief. The occupation which claimed me was that of brooding over the circumstances attendant upon my wooing and my marriage. For ever brooding. Walking to and fro, dwelling upon each little detail of my intimacy with my girl-wife, and revolving in my mind whether I could have prevented what had occurred--whether, if I had done this or that, I could have averted the misery in which our lives were wrapt. It was a profitless occupation, but I could not tear myself from it. There was a morbid fascination in it which held me fast. That it harrowed me, tortured me, made me smart and bleed, mattered not. It clung to me, and I to it. Thus do we hug our misery to our bosoms, and inflict upon ourselves the most intolerable sufferings. "I strove to escape from it, to fix my mind upon some abstruse subject, upon some difficult study, but, like a demon to whom I had sold my soul, it would not be denied. There intruded always this one picture--the face of a baby-boy, mine, my dear son, lying asleep in his mother's arms. Let me say here that I never harboured the thought of depriving my wife of this precious consolation, that never by the slightest effort have I endeavoured to estrange him from her. The love he bore to me--and I thank Heaven that he grew to love me--sprang from his own heart, which also must have been sorely perplexed and have endured great pain in the estrangement that existed between his parents. Well, this pretty baby-face always intruded itself--this soul which I had brought into life lay ever before me, weighted with myriad mysterious and strange suggestions. It might live to accomplish great and noble deeds--it might live to inspire to worthy deeds--it might become a saviour of men, a patriot, an emancipator. And but for me, it would never have been. Even the supreme tribulation of his parents' lives might be productive of some great actions which would bring a blessing upon mankind. In that case it was good to suffer. "After some time--not in those days, but later on--this thought became a consolation to me, although it troubled and perplexed me to think whether the birth of a soul which was destined to shine as a star among men was altogether a matter of chance. "A dark, stormy night. I created voices in the sweeping of the wind. They spoke to me in groans, in whispers, in loud shrieks. Was it fancy that inspired the wail, 'To-night, to-night shall be your undoing!' "Midnight struck. I paced to and fro, listening to the voices of the wind. Presently another sound--a sound not created by my imagination--came to my ears. It was as though something heavy had fallen in the grounds. Perhaps a tree had been blown down. Or did it proceed from another cause, which warned me of danger? "I hastened immediately into the grounds. The sense of danger exhilarated me. I was in a mood which courted death as a boon. Willingly would I have gone out to meet it, as a certain cure for the anguish of my soul. Thus I believe it is sometimes with soldiers, and they become heroes by force of desperation. "I could see nothing. I was about to return, when a moving object arrested my purpose. I sprang towards it--threw myself upon it. And in my arms I clasped the body of a man, just recovering consciousness from a physical hurt. "I did not speak a word. I lifted the body in my arms--it had not yet sufficient strength to repel me--and carried it into my study. The moment the light of my lamps shone on the face of the man I recognised him. It was M. Gabriel. "I laughed with savage delight as I placed him on a couch. 'You villain--you villain!' I muttered. 'Your last hour, or mine, has come. This night, one or both of us shall die!' "I drew my chair before the couch, so that his eyes, when he opened them, should rest upon my face. He was recovering consciousness, but very slowly. 'I could kill you here,' I said aloud, 'and no man would be the wiser. But I will first have speech with you.' His eyelids quivered, opened, and we were gazing at each other face to face. The sight of me confounded him for a while, but presently he realised the position of affairs and he strove to rise. I thrust him back fiercely. "'Stay you there,' I said, 'until I learn your purpose. You have entered my house as a thief, and you have given your life into my hands. I told you, if you ever intruded yourself within these walls, that you would do so at your peril. What brought you here? Are you a would-be thief or murderer? You foul betrayer and coward! So--you climb walls in the dark in pursuance of your villainous schemes! Answer me--do you come here by appointment, and are you devil enough to strive to make me believe that a pure and misguided girl would be weak enough to throw herself into your arms? Fill up the measure of your baseness, and declare as much.' "'No,' he replied; 'I alone am culpable. No one knew of my coming--no one suspected it. I could not rest.' "I interrupted him. 'After to-night,' I said gloomily, 'you will rest quietly. Men such as you must be removed from the earth. You steal into my house, you thief and coward, with no regard for the fair fame of the woman you profess to love--reckless what infamy you cast upon her and of the life-long shame you would deliberately fling upon one who has been doubly betrayed. You have not the courage to suffer in silence, but you would proclaim to all the world that you are a martyr to love, the very name of which becomes degraded when placed in association with natures like yours. You belong to the class of miserable sentimentalists who bring ruin upon the unhappy women whom they entangle with their maudlin theories. Mischief enough have you accomplished--this night will put an end to your power to work further ill.' "'What do you intend to do with me?' he asked. "'I intend to kill you,' I replied; 'not in cold blood--not as a murderer, but as an avenger. Stand up.' "He obeyed me. His fall had stunned him for a time; he was not otherwise injured. "'I will take no advantage of you,' I said. 'Here is wine to give you a false courage. Drink, and prepare yourself for what is to come. As surely as you have delivered yourself into my hands, so surely shall you die!" CHAPTER VI THE HIDDEN CRIME "He drank the wine, not wisely or temperately as a cool-headed man whose life was at stake would have done, but hastily, feverishly, and with an air of desperation. "'You are a good fencer,' I said, 'the best among all the friends who visited me during the days of your treachery. You were proud of showing your skill, as you were of exhibiting every admirable quality with which you are gifted. Something of the mountebank in this.' "'At least,' he said, rallying his courage, 'do not insult me.' "'Why not? Have you not outraged what is most honourable and sacred? Here are rapiers ready to our hands.' "'A duel!' he cried. 'Here, and now?' "'Yes,' I replied, 'a duel, here and now. There is no fear of interruption. The sound of clashing steel will not fall upon other ears than ours.' "'It will not be a fair combat,' he said. 'You are no match for me with the rapier. Let me depart. Do not compel me to become your murderer.' "'You will nevermore set foot outside these walls,' I said; 'here you will find your grave.' "It was my firm belief. I saw him already lying dead at my feet. "'If I should kill you,' he said, 'how shall I escape?' "'As best you may,' I replied. 'You are an adept at climbing walls. If you kill me, what happens to you thereafter is scarcely likely to interest me. But do not allow that thought to trouble you. What will take place to-night is ordained!' "I began to move the furniture from the centre of the room, so as to afford a clear space for the duel. The tone in which he next spoke convinced me that I had impressed him. Indeed, my words were uttered with the certainty of conviction, and a fear stole upon him that he had come to his death. "'I will not fight with you,' he said; 'the duel you propose is barbarous, and I decline to meet you unless witnesses are present.' "'So that we may openly involve the fair name of a lady in our quarrel,' I retorted quietly. 'No; that will not be. Before witnesses it is I who would decline to meet you. Are you a coward?' "'It matters little what you call me,' he said, 'as no other person is near. You cannot force me to fight you.' "'I think I can,' I said, and I struck him in the face, and proceeded with my work. "My back was towards him; a loaded gun was hanging on the wall; unperceived by me he unslung it, and fired at me. "I did not know whether I was hit or not. Maddened by the cowardly act, I turned, and lifting him in the air, dashed him to the ground. His head struck against one of the legs of my writing-table; he groaned but once, and then lay perfectly still. It was the work of a moment, and the end had come. He lay dead before me. "I had no feeling of pity for him, and I was neither startled nor deeply moved. His punishment was a just punishment, and my honour was safe from the babble of idle and malicious tongues. All that devolved upon me now was to keep the events of this night from the knowledge of men. "There was, however, one danger. A gun had been fired. The sound might have aroused my wife or some of the servants, in which case an explanation would have to be given. At any moment they might appear. What lay on the floor must not be seen by other eyes than mine. "I dragged a cloth from a table and threw it over the body, and with as little noise as possible swiftly replaced the furniture in its original position. Then I sat on my chair and waited. For a few minutes I was in a state of great agitation, but after I had sat for an hour without being disturbed I knew that my secret was safe. "I removed the cloth from the face of the dead man and gazed at it. Strange to say, the features wore an expression of peacefulness. Death must have been instantaneous. Gradually, as I gazed upon the form of the man I had killed, the selfish contemplation in which I had been engaged during the last hour of suspense--a contemplation devoted solely to a consideration of the consequences of discovery, so far as I was concerned, and in which the fate of the dead man formed no part--became merged in the contemplation of the act itself apart from its earthly consequences. "I had taken a human life. I, whose nature had been proverbially humane, was, in a direct sense of the word, a murderer. That the deed was done in a moment of passion was no excuse; a man is responsible for his acts. The blood I had shed shone in my eyes. "What hopes, what yearnings, what ambitions, were here destroyed by me! For, setting aside the unhappy sentiment which had conducted events to this end, M. Gabriel was a man of genius, of whose career high expectations had been formed. I had not only destroyed a human being, I had destroyed art. Would it have been better had I allowed myself to be killed? Were death preferable to a life weighed down by a crime such as mine? "For a short time these reflections had sway over me, but presently I steadily argued them down. I would not allow them to unman me. This coward and traitor had met a just doom. "What remained for me now to do was to complete the concealment. The body must be hidden. After to-night--unless chance or the hand of Providence led to its discovery--the lifeless clay at my feet must never more be seen. "There was a part of my grounds seldom, if ever, intruded upon by the servants--that portion in which, for the gratification of my wife, I had at the time of our marriage commenced improvements which had never been completed. There it was that my wife's mother had met with the accident which resulted in her death. I thought of a pit deep enough for the concealment of the bodies of fifty men. Into this pit I would throw the body of M. Gabriel, and would cover it with earth and stones. The task accomplished, there would be little fear of discovery. "First satisfying myself that all was quiet and still in the villa, and that I was not being watched, I raised the body of M. Gabriel in my arms. As I did so, a horror and loathing of myself took possession of me; I shuddered in disgust; the work I was performing seemed to be the work of a butcher. "However, what I resolved to do was done. In the dead of night, with darkness surrounding me, with the rain beating upon me, and the accusing wind shrieking in my ears, I consigned to its last resting-place the body of the man I had killed. "Years have passed since that night. My name has not been dragged into the light for scandal-mongers to make sport of. Open shame and derision have been avoided--but at what a price! From the day following that upon which I forbade M. Gabriel my house, not a single word was exchanged between my wife and myself. She sent for me before she died, but she knew she would be dead before I arrived. A fearful gloom settled upon our lives, and will cover me to my last hour. This domestic estrangement, this mystery of silence between those whom he grew to love and honour, weighed heavily upon my son Christian. His child's soul must have suffered much, and at times I have fancied I see in him the germs of a combination of sweetness and weakness which may lead to suffering. But suffer as he may, if honour be his guide I am content. I shall not live to see him as a man; my days are numbered. "In the time to come--in the light of a purer existence--I may learn whether the deed I have done is or is not a crime. "But one thing is clear to me. Had it not been for my folly, shame would not have threatened me, misery would not have attended me, and I should not have taken a human life. The misery and the shame did not affect me alone; they waited upon a young life and blighted its promise. It is I who am culpable, I who am responsible for what has occurred. It is impossible, without courting unhappiness, to divert the currents of being from their natural channels: youth needs youth, is attracted to youth, seeks youth, as flowers seek the sun. Roses do not grow in ice. "Mine, then, the sin--a sin too late to expiate. "I would have my son marry when he is young, as in the course of nature he will love when he is young. It is the happier fate, because it is in accordance with natural laws. "If he into whose hands these pages may fall can discern a lesson applicable to himself in the events I have recorded, let him profit by them. If the circumstances of his life in any way resemble mine, I warn him to bear with wisdom and patience the penalty he has brought upon himself, and not to add, in the person of another being to whom he is bound and who is bound to him, to an unhappiness--most probably a secret unhappiness--of his own creating. "And I ask him to consider well whether any good purpose will be served by dragging into the open day the particulars of a crime, the publishing of which cannot injure the dead or benefit the living. It cannot afford him any consolation to think, if my son be alive, that needless suffering will be brought to the door of the innocent. Let him, then, be merciful and pitiful." CHAPTER VII FALSE WIFE, FALSE FRIEND Thus abruptly the record closed. To the last written page there were several added, as though the writer had more to say, and intended to say it. But the pages were blank. The intention, if intention there were, had never been carried out. The reading of the record occupied the Advocate over an hour, and when he had finished, he sat gazing upon the manuscript. For a quarter of an hour he did not move. Then he rose--not quickly, as one would rise who was stirred by a sudden impulse, but slowly, with the air of a man who found a difficulty in arranging his thoughts. With uneven steps he paced the study, to and fro, to and fro, pausing occasionally to handle in an aimless way a rare vase, which he turned about in his hands, and gazed at with vacant eyes. Occasionally, also, he paused before the manuscript and searched in its pages for words which his memory had not correctly retained. He did this with a consciousness which forced itself upon him, and which he vainly strove to ignore, that what he sought was applicable to himself. It was not compassion, it was not tenderness, it was not horror, that moved him thus strangely, for he was a man who had been but rarely, if ever, moved as he was at the present time. It was the curious and disquieting associations between the dead man who had written and the living man who had read the record. And yet, although he could, if he had chosen, have reasoned this out, and have placed it mentally before him in parallel lines, his only distinct thought was to avoid the comparison. That he was unsuccessful in this did not tend to compose him. Upon a bracket lay a bronze, the model of a woman's hand, from the life. A beautiful hand, slender but shapely. It reminded him of his wife. He took it from the bracket and examined it, and after a little while thus passed, the words came involuntarily from his lips: "Perfect--but cold." The spoken words annoyed him; they were the evidence of a lack of self-control. He replaced the bronze hastily, and when he passed it again would not look at it. Suddenly he left the study, and went towards his wife's rooms. He had not proceeded more than half a dozen yards before his purpose, whatever it might have been, was relinquished as swiftly as it had been formed. He retraced his steps, and lingered irresolutely at the door of the study. With an impatient movement of his head--it was the action of a man who wrestled with thought as he would have done with a palpable being--he once more proceeded in the direction of his wife's apartments. At the commencement of the passage which led to the study was a lobby, opening from the principal entrance. A noble staircase in the centre of the lobby led to the rooms occupied by Christian Almer and Pierre Lamont. On the same floor as the study, beyond the staircase, were his wife's boudoir and private rooms. This part of the house was but dimly lighted; one rose-lamp only was alight. On the landing above, where the staircase terminated, three lamps in a cluster were burning, and shed a soft and clear light around. When he reached the lobby and was about to pass the staircase, the Advocate's progress was arrested by the sound of voices which fell upon his ears. These voices proceeded from the top of the staircase. He looked up, and saw, standing close together, his wife and Christian Almer. Instinctively he retreated into the deeper shadows, and stood there in silence with his eyes fixed upon the figures above him. His wife's hand was resting on Almer's shoulder, and her fingers occasionally touched his hair. She was speaking almost in a whisper, and her face was bright and animated. Almer was replying to her in monosyllables, and even in the midst of the torture of this discovery, the Advocate observed that the face of his friend wore a troubled expression. The Advocate remembered that his wife had wished him good-night before ten o'clock, and that when he made the observation that she was retiring early, she replied that she was so overpowered with fatigue that she could not keep her eyes open one minute longer. And here, nearly two hours after this statement, he found her conversing clandestinely with his friend in undisguised gaiety of spirits! Never had he seen her look so happy. There was a tender expression in her eyes as she gazed upon Christian Almer which she had never bestowed upon him from the first days of their courtship. A grave, dignified courtship, in which each was studiously kind and courteous to the other; a courtship without romance, in which there was no spring. A bitter smile rested upon his lips as this remembrance impressed itself significantly upon him. He watched and waited, motionless as a statue. Midnight struck, and still the couple on the staircase lingered. Presently, however, and manifestly on Almer's urging, Adelaide consented to leave him. Smilingly she offered him her hand, and held his for a longer time than friendship warranted. They parted; he ascending to his room, she descending to hers. When she was at the foot of the staircase she looked up and threw a kiss to Almer, and her face, with the light of the rose-lamp upon it, was inexpressibly beautiful. The next minute the Advocate was alone. He listened for the shutting of their chamber-doors. So softly was this done both by his friend and his wife that it was difficult to catch the faint sound. He smiled again--a bitter smile of confirmation. It was in his legal mind a fatal item of evidence against them. Slowly he returned to his study, and the first act of which he was conscious was that of standing on a certain spot and saying audibly as he looked down: "It was here M. Gabriel fell!" He knelt upon the carpet, and thought that on the boards beneath, even at this distance of time, stains of blood might be discerned, the blood of a treacherous friend. It was impossible for him to control the working of his mind; impossible to dwell upon the train of thought it was necessary he should follow out before he could decide upon a line of action. One o'clock, two o'clock struck, and he was still in this condition. All he could think of was the fate of M. Gabriel, and over and over again he muttered: "It was here he fell--it was here he fell!" There was a harmony in the storm which raged without. The peals of thunder, the lightning flashing through the windows, were in consonance with his mood. He knew that he was standing on the brink of a fatal precipice. "Which would be best," he asked mentally of himself, "that lightning should destroy three beings in this unhappy house, or that the routine of a nine-days' wonder should be allowed to take its course? All that is wanting to complete the wreck would be some evidence to damn me in connection with Gautran and the unhappy girl he foully murdered." As if in answer to his thought, he heard a distinct tapping on one of his study windows. He hailed it with eagerness; anything in the shape of action was welcome to him. He stepped to the window, and drawing up the blind saw darkly the form of a man without. "Whom do you seek?" he asked. "You," was the answer. "Your mission must be an urgent one," said the Advocate, throwing up the window. "Is it murder or robbery?" "Neither. Something of far greater importance." "Concerning me?" "Most vitally concerning you." "Indeed. Then I should welcome you." With strange recklessness he held out his hand to assist his visitor into the room. The man accepted the assistance, and climbing over the window-sill sprang into the study. He was bloody, and splashed from head to foot with mud. "Have you a name?" inquired the Advocate. "Naturally." "Favour me with it." "John Vanbrugh." _BOOK VII.--RETRIBUTION_ CHAPTER I JOHN VANBRUGH AND THE ADVOCATE "A stormy night to seek you out," said John Vanbrugh, "and to renew an old friendship----" "Stop there," interrupted the Advocate. "I admit no idea of a renewal of friendship between us." "You reject my friendship?" asked Vanbrugh, wiping the blood and dirt from his face. "Distinctly." "So be it. Our interview shall be conducted without a thought of friendship, though some reference to the old days cannot be avoided. I make no apology for presenting myself in this condition. Man can no more rule the storm than he can the circumstances of his life. I have run some distance through the rain, and I have been attacked and almost killed. You perceive that I am exhausted, yet you do not offer me wine. You have it, I know, in that snug cupboard there. May I help myself? Thank you. Ah, there's a smack of youth in this liquor. It is life to one who has passed through such dangers as have encompassed me. You received my letter asking for an interview? I gave it myself into your hands on the last evening of the trial." "I received it." "Yet you were unwilling to accord me an interview." "I had no desire to meet you again." "It was ungrateful of you, for it is upon your own business--yours and no other man's--that I wished to speak with you. It was cold work out on the hill yonder, watching the lights in your study window, watching for the simple waving of a handkerchief, which would mean infinitely more to you than to me, as you will presently confess. Dreary cold work, not likely to put a man like myself in an amiable mood. I am not on good terms with the world, as you may plainly perceive. I have had rough times since the days you deemed it no disgrace to shake hands with me. I have sunk very low by easy descents; you have risen to a giddy height. I wonder whether you have ever feared the fall. Men as great as you have met with such a misfortune. Things do not last for ever, Edward--pardon me. it was a slip of the tongue." "Do you come to beg?" "No--for a reason. If I came on such an errand, I might spare myself the trouble." "Likely enough," said the Advocate, who was too well acquainted with human nature not to be convinced, from Vanbrugh's manner, that his was no idle visit. "You were never renowned for your charities. And on the other hand I am poor, but I am not a beggar. I am frank enough to tell you I would prefer to steal. It is more independent, and not half so disgraceful. It may happen that the world would take an interest in a thief, but never in a beggar." "Is it to favour me with your philosophies that you pay me this visit?" "I should be the veriest dolt. No, I will air my opinions when I am rich." "You intend, poor as you confess yourself, to become rich?" "With your help, old friend." "Not with my help. You will receive none from me." "You are mistaken. Forgive me for the contradiction, but I speak on sure ground. Ah, how I have heard you spoken of! With what admiration and esteem! Almost with awe by some. Your talents, of themselves, could not have won this universal eulogy; it is your spotless character that has set the seal upon your fame. There is not a stain upon it; you have no weaknesses, no blemishes; you are absolutely pure. Other men have something to conceal--some family difficulty, some domestic disgrace, some slip in the path of virtue, which, were it known, would turn the current against them. But against you there is not a breath; scandal has never soiled you. In this lies the strength of your position--in this lies its danger. Let shame, with cause, point its finger at you--old friend, the result is unpleasant to contemplate. For when a man such as you falls, he does not fall gradually. He topples over suddenly, and to-day he is as low in the gutter as yesterday he was high in the clouds." "You have said enough. I do not care to listen to you further. The tone you assume is offensive to me--such as I would brook from no man. You can go the way you came." And with a scornful gesture the Advocate pointed to the window. "When I inform you which way I came," said Vanbrugh, with easy insolence, "you will not be so ready to tell me to leave you before you learn the errand which brought me." "Which way, then, did you come?" asked the Advocate, in a tone of contempt. "The way Gautran came--somewhat earlier than this, it is true, but not earlier than midnight." The Advocate grasped the back of a chair; it was a slight action, but sufficient to show that he was taken off his guard. "You know that?" he said. "Aye, I know that, and also that you feasted him, and gave him money." "Are you accomplices, you two knaves?" "If so, I have at present the best of the bargain. But your surmise is not made with shrewdness. I never set eyes on Gautran until after he was pronounced innocent of the murder of Madeline. On that night I--shall we say providentially?--made his acquaintance." "You have met him since then?" "Yes--this very night; our interview was one never to be forgotten. Come, I have been frank with you; I have used no disguises. I say to you honestly, the world has gone hard with me; I have known want and privation, and I am in a state of destitution. That is a condition of affairs sufficient not only to depress a man's spirits, but to make him disgusted with the world and mankind. I have, however, still some capacity for enjoyment left in me, and I would give the world another trial, not as a penniless rogue, but as a gentleman." "Hard to accomplish," observed the Advocate, with a cynical smile. "Not with a full purse. No music like the jingling of gold, and the world will dance to the tune. Well, I present myself to you, and ask you, who are rich and can spare what will be the making of me, to hand me from your full store as much as will convert a poor devil into a respectable member of society." "I appreciate your confidence. I leave you to supply the answer." "You will give me nothing?" "Nothing." "Mind--I do not ask it of your charity; I ask it of your prudence. It will be worth your while." "That has to be proved." "Good. We have made a commencement. Your reputation is worth much--in sober truth as much as it has brought you. But I am not greedy. It lies at my mercy, and I shall be content with a share." "That is generous of you," said the Advocate, who by this time had regained his composure; "but I warn you--my patience is beginning to be exhausted." "Only beginning? That is well. I advise you to keep a tight rein over it, and to ask yourself whether it is likely--considering the difference of our positions--that I should be here talking in this bold tone unless I held a power over you? I put it to you as a lawyer of eminence." "There is reason in what you say." "Let me see. What have I to sell? The security of your reputation? The power to prevent your name being uttered with horror? Your fame--your honour? Yes, I have quite that to dispose of, and as a man of business, which I never was until now, I recognise the importance of being precise. First--I have to sell my knowledge that, after midnight, you received Gautran in your study, that you treated him as a friend, and filled his pockets with gold. How much is that worth?" "Nothing. My word against his, against yours, against a hundred such as you and he." "You would deny it?" "Assuredly--to protect myself." As he made this answer, it seemed to the Advocate as if the principle of honour by which his actions had been guided until within the last few days were slipping from him, and as if the vilest wretch that breathed had a right to call him his equal. "We will pass that by," said Vanbrugh, helping himself to wine. "Really, your wine is exquisite. In some respects you are a man to be envied. It is worth much to a man not only to possess the best of everything the world can give, but to know that he has the means and the power to purchase it. With that consciousness within him, he walks with his head in the air. You used to be fond of discussing these niceties; I had no taste for them. I left the deeper subtleties of life to those of thinner blood than mine. Pleasure was more in my way--and will be again." "You are wandering from the point," said the Advocate. "There is a meaning in everything I say; I will clip my wings. Your word against a hundred men such as I and Gautran? I am afraid you are right. We are vagabonds--you are a gentleman. So, then, my knowledge of the fact that you treated Gautran as a friend after you had procured his acquittal is worth nothing. Admitted. But put that knowledge and that fact in connection with another and a sterner knowledge and fact--that you knew Gautran to be guilty of the murder. How then? Does it begin to assume a value? Your silence gives me hopes that my visit will not be fruitless. Between men who once were equals and friends, and who, after a lapse of years, come together as we have come together now, candour is a useful attribute. Let us exercise it. I am not here on your account, nor do I hold you in such regard that I would trouble myself to move a finger to save your reputation. The master I am working for is Self; the end I am working for is an easy life, a life of pleasure. This accomplished by your aid, I have nothing more to do with you or your affairs. The business is an unpleasant one, and I shall be glad to forget it. Refuse what I ask, and you will sink lower than I have ever sunk. There are actions which the world will forgive in the ignorant, but not in men of ripe intellect." He paused and gazed negligently at the Advocate, who during the latter part of Vanbrugh's speech, was considering the dangers of his position. The secret of Gautran's guilt belonged not alone to himself and Gautran; this man Vanbrugh had been admitted into it, and he was an enemy more to be dreaded than Gautran. He saw his peril, and that he unconsciously acknowledged it to be imminent was proved by the thought which intruded itself--against his will, as it seemed--whether it would be wise to buy Vanbrugh off, to purchase his silence. "It is easy," he said, "to invent tales. You and a dozen men, in conjunction with the monster Gautran----" "As you say," interrupted Vanbrugh, gently nodding his head, "the monster Gautran. But why should you call him so unless you knew him to be guilty? Were you assured of his innocence, you would speak of him pityingly, as one undeservedly oppressed and persecuted. 'The monster Gautran!' Thank you. It is an admission." "----May invent," continued the Advocate, not heeding the interruption, but impressed by its logic, "may invent any horrible tale you please of any man you please. The difficulty will be to get the world to believe it." "Exactly. But in this case there is no difficulty, although the murderer be dead." "Gautran! Dead!" exclaimed the Advocate, surprised out of himself. Gautran was dead! Encompassed as he was by danger and treachery, the news was a relief to him. "Yes, dead," replied Vanbrugh, purposely assuming a careless tone. "Did I not tell you before? Singular that it should have escaped me. But I have so much to say, and in my brightest hours I was always losing the sequence of things." "And you," said the Advocate, "meeting this man by chance----" "Pardon me. I asked you whether I should consider our meeting providential." "It matters not. You, meeting this man, come to me after his death, for the purpose of extracting money from me. You will fail." "I shall succeed." "You killed Gautran, and want money to escape." "No. He was killed by a higher agency, and I want no money to escape. You will hear to-morrow how he met his death, for all the towns and villages will be ringing with it. I continue. Say that Gautran at the point of death made a dying confession, on oath, not only of his guilt, but of your knowledge of it when you defended him;--say that this confession exists in writing, duly signed. Would that paper, in conjunction with what I have already offered for sale, be worth your purchase? Take time to consider. You are dealing with a man in desperate circumstances, one who, if you drive him to it, will pull you down, high as you are. You will help me, old friend." "It may be. Have you possession of the paper you speak of?" "I have. Would you like to hear it?" "Yes." Vanbrugh moved, so that a table was between him and the Advocate, and taking Gautran's confession from his pocket read in a clear voice: "I, Gautran the woodman, lately tried for the murder of Madeline the flower-girl, being now at the point of death, and conscious that I have only a few minutes to live, and being also in the full possession of my reason, hereby make oath and swear: "That being thrown into prison, awaiting my trial, I believed there was no escape from the doom I justly merited, for the reason that I was guilty of the murder. "That some days before my trial was to take place, the Advocate who defended me voluntarily undertook to prove to my judges that I was innocent of the crime I committed. "That with this full knowledge, he conducted my case with such ability that I was set free and pronounced innocent. "That on the night of my acquittal, after midnight had struck, and when every person but himself in the House of White Shadows was asleep, I secretly visited him in his study, and remained with him for some time. "That he gave me food and money, and bade me go my way. "That I am ignorant of the motives which induced him, to whom I was a perfect stranger, to deliberately defeat the ends of justice. "That the proof that he knew me to be guilty lies in the fact that I made a full confession to him. "To which I solemnly swear, being about to appear before a just God to answer for my crime. I pray for forgiveness and mercy. "Signed, Gautran." Without comment, John Vanbrugh folded the paper, and replaced it carefully in his pocket. "The confession may be forged," said the Advocate. "Gautran's signature," said Vanbrugh, "will refute such a charge. He could write only his name, and documents can certainly be found bearing his signature, which can be compared with this." "With that document in your possession," said the Advocate, speaking very slowly, "are you not afraid to be here with me--alone--knowing, if it state the truth, how much I have at stake?" "Excellent!" exclaimed Vanbrugh. "What likenesses there are in human nature, and how thin the line that divides the base from the noble! Afraid? No--for if you lay a hand upon me, for whom you are no more than a match, I will rouse the house and denounce you. Restrain yourself and hear me out. I have that to say which will prove to you the necessity, if you have the slightest regard for your honour, of dealing handsomely with me. It relates to the girl whose murderer you set free--to Madeline the flower-girl and to yourself." CHAPTER II A TERRIBLE REVELATION Without requesting permission, John Vanbrugh filled his glass with wine, which he drank leisurely with his eyes fixed on the Advocate's pale face the while. When he spoke, it did not escape the Advocate that he seemed to fling aside the flippancy of manner which had hitherto characterised him, and that his voice was unusually earnest. "I do not ask you to excuse me," he said, "for recalling the memory of a time when you did not despise my companionship. It is necessary for my purpose. We were, indeed, more than companions--we were friends. What it was that made you consort with me is just now a mystery to me. The contrast in our characters may have tempted you. I, a careless, light-hearted fellow who loved to enjoy the hours; you, a serious, cold-hearted student, dreaming perhaps of the position you have attained. It may be that you deliberately made a study of me to see what use you could make of my weakness. However it was, I lived in the present, you in the future. The case is now reversed, and it is I who live in the future. "I have said you were cold-hearted, and I do not suppose you will trouble yourself to deny it. Such as you are formed to rise, while we impulsive, reckless devils are pretty sure to tumble in the mud. But I never had such a fall as you are threatened with, and scapegrace, vagabond as I am, I am thankful not to have on my conscience what you have on yours. "Now for certain facts. "I contemplated--no, I mistake, I never contemplated--I settled to go on a tour for a few weeks, and scramble through bits of France, Switzerland, and Italy. You will remember my mentioning it to you. Yes, I see in your face that you are following me, and I shall feel obliged by your correcting me if in my statement of facts I should happen to trip. The story I am telling needs no effort of the imagination to embellish it. It is in its bare aspect sufficiently ghastly and cruel. "When I was about to start on my tour, you, of your own accord, offered to accompany me. You had been studying too hard, and a wise doctor recommended you to rest a while, if you did not care to have brain-fever, and also recommended you to seek new scenes in the company of a cheerful friend whose light spirits would be a good medicine for an overworked brain. You took the doctor's advice, and you did me the honour to choose me for a companion. So we started on our little tour of pleasure. "To shorten what I have to say I will not dwell upon the details of our jaunt, but I fix myself, with you, at Zermatt, where we stayed for three weeks. The attraction--what was it? The green valleys--the grandeur of the scenery? No. A woman. More correctly speaking, two women. Young, lovely, inexperienced, innocent. Daughters of a peasant, whose cottage door was always open to us, and who was by no means unwilling to receive small presents of money from liberal gentlemen like ourselves. Again I slip details--the story becomes trite. We captivated the hearts of the simple peasant maidens, and amused ourselves with them. In me that was natural; it was my way. But in you this circumstance was something to be astonished at. For just as long as you remained at Zermatt you were a transformed being. I don't think, until that time, I had ever heard you laugh heartily. Well, suddenly you disappeared; getting up one morning, I found that my friend had deserted me. "It was shabby behaviour, at the best. However, it did not seriously trouble me; every man is his own master, and I think we were beginning to tire a little of each other. It was awkward, though, to be asked by one of our pretty peasant friends where my handsome friend had gone, and when he would return, and not be able to give a sensible answer. "This girl, who had been in your presence always bright and joyous and happy, grew sad and quiet and anxious-looking in your absence, and appeared to have a secret on her mind that was making her wretched. I stayed on at Zermatt for another month, and then I bade good-bye to my sweetheart, promising to come again in a year. I kept my promise, but when I asked for her in Zermatt I heard that she was dead, and that her sister and father had left the village, and had gone no one knew whither. "It will be as well for me here to remind you that during our stay in Zermatt we gave no home address, and that no one knew where we came from or where we lived. So prudent were we that we acted as if we were ashamed of our names. "Three years afterwards in another part of Switzerland I met the woman to whom you had made love; she had lost her father, but was not without a companion. She had a little daughter--your child!" "A lie!" said the Advocate, with difficulty controlling himself; "a monstrous fabrication!" "A solemn truth," replied Vanbrugh, "verified by the mother's oath, and the certificate of birth. To dispute it will be a waste of breath and time. Hear me to the end. The mother had but one anxiety--to forget you and your treachery, and to be able to live so that her shame should be concealed. To accomplish this it was necessary that she should live among strangers, and it was for this reason she had left her native village. She asked me about you, and I--well, I played your game. I told her you had gone to a distant part of the world, and that I knew nothing of you. We were still friends, you and I, although our friendship was cooling. When I next saw you I had it in my mind to relate the circumstance to you; but you will remember that just at that time you took it into your head to put an end to our intimacy. We had a few words, I think, and you were pleased to tell me that you disapproved of my habits of life, and that you intended we should henceforth be strangers. I was not in an amiable mood when I left you, and I resolved, on the first opportunity, to seek the woman you had brought to shame, and advise her to take such steps against you as would bring disgrace to your door. It would be paying you in your own coin, I thought. However, good fortune stood your friend at that time. My own difficulties or pleasures, or both combined, claimed my attention, and occupied me for many months, and when next I went to the village in which I had last seen your peasant sweetheart and your child, they were not to be found. I made inquiries, but could learn nothing of them, so I gave it up as a bad job, and forgot all about the matter. Since then very many years have passed, and I sank and sank, and you rose and rose. We did not meet again; but I confess, when I used to read accounts of your triumphs and your rising fame, that I would not have neglected an opportunity to have done you an ill turn had it been in my power. I was at the lowest ebb, everything was against me, and I was wondering how I should manage to extricate myself from the desperate position into which bad luck had driven me, when, not many weeks since, I met in the streets of Geneva two women. They were hawking nosegays, and the moment I set eyes upon the elder of these women I recognised in her your old sweetheart from Zermatt. You appear to be faint. Shall I pause a while before I continue?" "No," said the Advocate, and he drank with feverish eagerness two glasses of wine; "go on to the end." "It was your sweetheart from Zermatt, and no other. And the younger of these women, one of the loveliest creatures I ever beheld, was known as Madeline the flower-girl." The Advocate, with a sudden movement, turned his chair, so that his face was hidden from Vanbrugh. "They were poor--and I was poor. If what I suspected, when I gazed at Madeline, was correct, I saw not only an opportunity for revenge upon you, but a certainty of being able to obtain money from you. The secret to such a man as you, married to a young and beautiful woman, was worth a fair sum, which I resolved should be divided between Pauline--that was the name adopted by the mother of your child--and myself. You cannot accuse me of a want of frankness. I discovered where they lived--I had secret speech with Pauline. My suspicion was no longer a suspicion--it was a fact. Madeline the flower-girl was your daughter." He paused, but the Advocate made no movement, and did not speak. "How," continued Vanbrugh, "to turn that fact to advantage? How, and in what way, to make it worth a sum sufficiently large to satisfy me? That was what now occupied my thoughts. Madeline and her mother were even poorer than I supposed, and from Pauline's lips did I hear how anxious she was to remove her daughter from the temptations by which she was surrounded. In dealing with you, I knew it was necessary to be well prepared. You are a powerful antagonist to cope with, and one must have sure cards in his hand to have even a chance of winning any game he is playing with such a man as yourself. Pauline and I spoke frequently together, and gradually I unfolded to her the plan I had resolved upon. Without disclosing your name I told her sufficiently to convince her that, by my aid, she might obtain a sum of money from the man who had wronged her which would enable her to place herself and her daughter in a safer position--a position in which a girl as beautiful as Madeline would almost certainly meet with a lover of good social position whom she would marry and with whom she would lead a happy life. Thus would she escape the snare into which she herself fell when she met you. This was the mother's dream. Satisfied that I could guide her to this end, Pauline signed an agreement, which is in my possession, by which she bound herself to pay me half the money she obtained from you in compensation for your wrong. Only one thing was to remain untouched by her and me--a sum which I resolved to obtain from you as a marriage portion for your daughter. Probably, under other circumstances, you would not have given me credit for so much consideration, but viewed in the light of the position in which you are placed, you may believe me. If you doubt it, I can show you the clause in black and white. This being settled between Pauline and me, I told her who you were--how rich you were, how famous you had grown, and how that you had lately married a young and beautiful woman. The affairs of a man as eminent as yourself are public property, and the newspapers delight in recording every particular, be it ever so trivial, connected with the lives of men of your rank. It was then necessary to ascertain what proof we held that you were the father of Madeline. Our visit to Zermatt could be proved--her oath and mine, in connection with dates, would suffice. Then there would, in all likelihood, be living in Zermatt men and women whose testimony would be valuable. The great point was the birth of the child and the date, and to my discomfiture I learnt that Pauline had lost the certificate of her daughter's birth. But the record existed elsewhere, and it was to obtain a copy of this record, and to collect other evidence, that Pauline left her daughter. Her mission was a secret one, necessarily, and thus no person, not even Madeline, had any knowledge of its purport. What, now, remains to be told? Nothing that you do not know--except that when Pauline left her daughter for a few weeks, it was arranged that she and I should meet in Geneva on a certain date, to commence our plan of operations, and that I, having business elsewhere, was a couple of hundred miles away when Gautran murdered your hapless child. I arrived in Geneva on the last day of Gautran's trial; and on that evening, as you came out of the court-house, I placed in your hands the letter asking you to give me an interview. I will say nothing of my feelings when I heard that you had successfully defended, and had set free, the murderer of your child. What I had to look after was myself and my own interest. And now you, who at the beginning of this interview rejected a renewal of the old friendship which existed between us, may probably inwardly acknowledge that had you accepted the hand I offered you, it is not I who would have been the gainer." Again he paused, and again, neither by word or movement, did the Advocate break the silence. "It will be as well," presently said Vanbrugh, "to recapitulate what I have to sell. First, the fact that you, a man of spotless character--so believed--deliberately betrayed a simple innocent girl, and then deserted her. Inconceivable, the world would say, in such a man, unless the proofs were incontestable. The proofs are incontestable. Next, the birth of your child, and your brutal--pardon me, there is no other word to express it, and it is one which would be freely used--negligence to ascertain whether your conduct had brought open shame and ruin upon the girl you betrayed. Next, the knowledge of the life of poverty and suffering led by the mother and the child, while you were in the possession of great wealth. Next, the murder of your child by a man whose name is uttered with execration. Next, your voluntary espousal of his cause, and your successful defence of a monster whom all men knew to be guilty of the foul crime. Next, your knowledge, at the time you defended him, that he was guilty of the murder of your own child. Next, in corroboration of this knowledge, the dying declaration of Gautran, solemnly sworn to and signed by him. A strong hand. No stronger has ever been held by any man's enemy, and until you come to my terms, I am your enemy. If you refuse to purchase of me what I have to sell--the documents in my possession, and my sacred silence to the last day of my life upon the matters which affect you--and for such a sum as will make my future an easy one, I give you my word I will use my power against you, and will drag you down from the height upon which you stand. I cannot speak in more distinct terms. You can rescue me from poverty, I can rescue you from ignominy." The Advocate turned his face to Vanbrugh, who saw that, in the few minutes during which it had been hidden from his sight, it had assumed a hue of deadly whiteness. All the sternness had departed from it, and the cold, piercing eyes wavered as they looked first at Vanbrugh, then at the objects in the study. It was as though the Advocate were gazing, for the first time, upon the familiar things by which he was surrounded. Strange to say, this change in him seemed to make him more human--seemed to declare, "Stern and cold-hearted as I have appeared to the world, I am susceptible to tenderness." The mask had fallen from his face, and he stood now revealed--a man with human passions and human weaknesses, to whom a fatal sin in his younger days had brought a retribution as awful as it was ever the lot of a human being to suffer. There was something pitiable in this new presentment of a strong, earnest, self-confident nature, and even Vanbrugh was touched by it. During the last half-hour the full force of the storm had burst over the House of White Shadows. The rain poured down with terrific power, and the thunder shook the building to its foundations. The Advocate listened with a singular and curious intentness to the terrible sounds, and when Vanbrugh remarked, "A fearful night," he smiled in reply. But it was the smile of a man whose heart was tortured to the extreme limits of human endurance. Once again he filled a glass with wine, and raised it to his mouth, but as the liquor touched his lips, he shuddered, and holding the glass upright in his hand, he turned it slowly over and poured it on the ground; then, with much gentleness, he replaced the glass upon the table. "What has become of the woman you speak of as Pauline?" he asked. His very voice was changed. It was such as would proceed from one who had been prostrated by long and almost mortal sickness. "I do not know," replied Vanbrugh. "I have neither seen nor heard from her since the day before she left her daughter." "Say that I was disposed," said the Advocate, speaking very slowly, and pausing occasionally, as though he was apprehensive that he would lose control of speech, "to purchase your silence, do you think I should be safe in the event of her appearing on the scene? Would not her despair urge her to seek revenge upon the man who betrayed and deserted her, and who set her daughter's murderer free?" "It might be so--but at all events she would be ignorant of your knowledge of Gautran's guilt. This danger at least would be averted. The secret is ours at present, and ours only." "True. You believe that I knew Gautran to be guilty when I defended him?" "I am forced to believe it. Explain, otherwise, why you permitted him to visit you secretly in the dead of night, and why you filled his pockets with gold." "It cannot be explained. Yet what motive could I have had in setting him free?" "It is not for me to say. What I know, I know. I pretend to nothing further." "Do you suppose I care for money?" As the Advocate asked the question, he opened a drawer in the escritoire, and produced a roll of notes. "Take them; they are yours. But I do not purchase your silence with them. I give the money to you as a gift." "And I thank you for it. But I must have more." "Wait--wait. This story of yours has yet to be concluded." "Is it my fancy," said Vanbrugh, "or is it a real sound I hear? The ringing of a bell--and now, a beating at the gates without, and a man's voice calling loudly?" Without hesitation, the Advocate went from his study into the grounds. The fury of the storm made it difficult for him to keep his feet, but he succeeded in reaching the gate and opening it. A hand grasped his, and a man clung to him for support. The Advocate could not see the face of his visitor, nor, although he heard a voice speaking to him, did the words of the answer fall upon his ears. Staggering blindly through the grounds, they arrived at the door of the villa, and stumbled into the passage. There, by the aid of the rose lamp which hung in the hall, he distinguished the features of his visitor. It was Father Capel. "Have you come to see me?" asked the Advocate, "or are you seeking shelter from the storm?" "I have come to see you," replied Father Capel. "I hardly hoped to find you up, but perceived lights in your study windows, and they gave me confidence to make the attempt to speak with you. I have been beating at the gates for fully half an hour." He spoke in his usual gentle tones, and gazed at the Advocate's white face with a look of kindly and pitying penetration. "You are wet to the skin," said the Advocate. "I must find a change of clothing for you." "No, my son," said the priest; "I need none. It is not the storm without I dread--it is the storm within." As though desirous this remark should sink into the Advocate's heart, he paused a few moments before he spoke again. "I fear this storm of Nature will do much harm. Trees are being uprooted and buildings thrown down. There is danger of a flood which may devastate the village, and bring misery to the poor. But there is a gracious God above us"--he looked up reverently--"and if a man's conscience is clear, all is well." "There is a significance in the words you utter," said the Advocate, conducting the priest to his study, "which impresses me. Your mission is an important one." "Most important; it concerns the soul, not the body." "A friend of mine," said the Advocate, pointing to Vanbrugh, who was standing when they entered, "who has visited me to-night for the first time for many years, on a mission as grave as yours. It was he who heard your voice at the gates." Father Capel inclined his head to Vanbrugh, who returned the courtesy. "I wish to confer with you privately," said the priest. "It will be best that we should be alone." "Nay," said the Advocate, "you may speak freely in his presence. I have but one secret from him and all men. I beg you to proceed." CHAPTER III PAULINE "I have no choice but to obey you," said Father Capel, "for time presses, and a life is hanging in the balance. I should have been here before had it not been that my duty called me most awfully and suddenly to a man who has been smitten to death by the hand of God. The man you defended--Gautran, charged with the murder of an innocent girl--is dead. Of him I may not speak at present. Death-bed confessions are sacred, and apart from that, not even in the presence of your dearest friend can I say one further word concerning the sinner whose soul is now before its Creator. I came to you from a dying woman, who is known by the name of Pauline." Both Vanbrugh and the Advocate started at the mention of the name. "Fate is merciful," said the Advocate in a low tone; "its blows are sharp and swift." "Before I left her I promised to bring you to her tomorrow," continued the priest, "but Providence, which directed me to Gautran in his dying moments, impels me to break that promise. She may die before to-morrow, and she has that to say which vitally concerns you, and which you must hear, if she has strength enough to speak. I ask you to come with me to her without a moment's delay, through this storm, which has been sent as a visitation for human crime." "I am ready to accompany you," said the Advocate. "And I," said Vanbrugh. "No," said the priest, "only he and I. Who you are I do not seek to know, but you cannot accompany us." "Remain here," said the Advocate to Vanbrugh; "when I return I will hide nothing from you. Now, Father Capel." It was not possible for them to engage in conversation. The roaring of the wind prevented a word from being heard. For mutual safety they clasped hands and proceeded on their way. They encountered many dangers, but escaped them. Torrents of water poured down from the ranges--great branches snapped from the trees and fell across their path--the valleys were in places knee-deep in water--and occasionally they fancied they heard cries of human distress in the distance. If the priest had not been perfectly familiar with the locality, they would not have arrived at their destination, but he guided his companion through the storm, and they stood at length before the cottage in which Pauline lay. Father Capel lifted the latch, and pulled the Advocate after him into the room. There were but two apartments in the cottage. Pauline lay in the room at the back. In a corner of the room in which they found themselves a man lay asleep; his wife was sitting in a chair, watching and waiting. She rose wearily as the priest and the Advocate entered. "I am glad you have come, father," she said, "she has been very restless, and once she gave a shriek, like a death-shriek, which curdled my blood. She woke and frightened my child." She pointed to a baby-girl, scarcely eighteen months old, who was lying by her father with her eyes wide open. The child, startled by the entrance of strangers, ran to her mother, who took her on her lap, saying petulantly, "There, there--be quiet. The gentlemen won't hurt you." "Is Pauline awake now?" asked Father Capel. The woman went to the inner room and returned. "She is sleeping," she said, "and is very quiet." Father Capel beckoned to the Advocate, who followed him to the bedside of the dying woman. She lay so still that the priest lowered his head to hers to ascertain whether she was breathing. "Life appears to be ebbing away," he whispered to the Advocate; "she may die in her sleep." Quiet as she was, there was no peace in her face; an expression of exquisite suffering rested on it. The sign of suffering, denoting how sorely her heart had been wrung, caused the Advocate's lips to quiver. "It is I who have brought her to this," he thought. "But for me she would not be lying in a dying state before me." He was tortured not only by remorse, but by a terror of himself. Notwithstanding that so many years had passed since he last gazed upon her, she was not so much changed that he did not recognise in her the blooming peasant girl of Zermatt. Since then he had won honour and renown and the admiration and esteem of men; the best that life could offer was his, or had been his until the fatal day upon which he resolved to undertake the defence of Gautran. And now--how stood the account? He was the accomplice of the murderer of his own child--the mother of his child was dying in suffering--his wife was false to him--his one friend had betrayed him. The monument of greatness he had raised had crumbled away, and in a very little while the world would know him for what he was. His bitterest enemy could not have held him in deeper despisal than he held himself. "You recognise her?" said the priest. "Yes." "And her child, Madeline, was yours?" "I am fain to believe it," said the Advocate; "but the proof is not too clear." "The proof is there," said the priest, pointing to Pauline; "she has sworn it. Do you think--knowing that death's door is open for her to enter--knowing that her child, the only being she loved on earth, is waiting for her in the eternal land--that she would, by swearing falsely, and with no end in view that could possibly benefit herself, imperil the salvation of her soul? It is opposed to human reason." "It is. I am forced to believe what I would give my life to know was false." "Unhappy man! Unhappy man!" said the priest, sinking--on his knees. "I will pray for you, and for the woman whose life you blighted." The Advocate did not join the priest in prayer. His stern sense of justice restrained him. The punishment he had brought upon himself he would bear as best he might, and he would not inflict upon himself the shameful humiliation of striving to believe that, by prayers and tears, he could suddenly atone for a crime as terrible as that of which he was guilty. "Father Capel," he said, when the priest rose from his knees, "from what you have said, I gather that the man Gautran made confession to you before he died. I do not seek to know what that confession was, but with absolute certainty I can divine its nature. The man you saw in my study brought to me Gautran's dying declaration, signed by Gautran himself, which charges me with a crime so horrible that, were I guilty of it, laden as I am with the consequences of a sin which I do not repudiate, I should deserve the worst punishment. Are you aware of the existence of this document?" "I hear of its existence now for the first time," replied the priest. "When I left the bedside of this unhappy woman, and while I was wending my way home through the storm, I heard cries and screams for help on a hill near the House of White Shadows, as though two men were engaged in a deadly struggle. I proceeded in the direction of the conflict, and discovered only Gautran, who had been crushed to the earth by the falling of a tree which had been split by the storm. He admitted that he and another man were fighting, and that the design was murder. I made search, both then and afterwards, for the other man, but did not succeed in finding him. I left Gautran for the purpose of obtaining assistance to extricate him, for the tree had fallen across his body, and he could not move. When I returned he was dead, and some gold which he had asked me to take from his pocket was gone; an indication that, during my absence, human hands had been busy about him. If Gautran's dying declaration be authentic, it must have been obtained while I was away to seek for assistance." "I can piece the circumstances," said the Advocate. "The man you saw in my study was the man who was engaged in the struggle with Gautran. It was he who obtained the confession, and he who stole the gold. In that confession I am charged with undertaking the defence of Gautran with the knowledge that he was guilty. It is not true. When I defended him I believed him to be innocent; and if he made a similar declaration to you, he has gone to his account with a black lie upon his soul. That will not clear me, I know, and I do not mention it to you for the purpose of exciting your pity for me. It is simply because it is just that you should hear my denial of the charge; and it is also just that you should hear something more. Up to the hour of Gautran's acquittal I believed him, degraded and vile as he was, to be innocent of the murder; but that night, as I was walking to the House of White Shadows, I met Gautran, who, in the darkness, supposing me to be a stranger, would have robbed me, and probably taken my life. I made myself known to him, and he, overcome with terror at the imaginary shadow of his victim which his remorse and ignorance had conjured up, voluntarily confessed to me that he was guilty. My error--call it by what strange name you will--dated from that moment. Knowing that the public voice was against me, I had not the honesty to take the right course. But if I," he added, with a gloomy recollection of his wife and friend, "had not by my own act rendered valueless the fruits of a life of earnest endeavour, it would have been done for me by those in whom I placed a sacred trust." For several hours Father Capel and the Advocate remained by the bedside of Pauline, who lay unconscious, as if indeed, as the priest had said, life was ebbing away in her sleep. The storm continued and increased in intensity, and had it not been that the little hut which sheltered them was protected by the position in which it stood, it would have been swept away by the wind. From time to time the peasant gave them particulars of the devastation created by the floods, which were rushing in torrents from every hill, but their duty chained them to the bedside of Pauline. An hour before noon she opened her eyes, and they rested upon the face of the Advocate. "You have come," she sighed. He knelt by the bed, and addressed her, but it was with difficulty he caught the words she spoke. Death was very near. "Was Madeline my daughter?" he asked. "Yes," answered Pauline, "as I am about to appear before my God!" The effort exhausted her, and she lay still for many minutes. Then her hand feebly sought her pillow, and the Advocate, perceiving that she wished to obtain something from under it, searched and found a small packet. He knew immediately, when she motioned that she desired him to retain it, that it contained the certificate of his daughter's birth. The priest prayed audibly for the departing soul. Pauline's lips moved; the Advocate placed his ear close. She breathed the words: "We shall meet again soon! Pray for forgiveness!" Then death claimed her, and her earthly sorrows were ended. CHAPTER IV ONWARD--TO DEATH Late in the afternoon the Advocate was stumbling, almost blindly, through the tempest towards the House of White Shadows. Father Capel had striven in vain to dissuade him from making the attempt to reach the villa. "There is safety only in the sheltered heights," said the priest. "By this time the valleys are submerged, and the dwellings therein are being swept away. Ah me--ah me! how many of my poor are ruined; how many dead! Not in my experience have I seen a storm as terrible as this. It is sent as a warning and a punishment. Only the strongest houses in the villages that lie in the valleys will be able to withstand its fury. Be persuaded, and remain here until its force is spent." He spoke to one who was deaf to reason. It seemed to the Advocate as though the end of his life had come, as though his hold upon the world might at any moment be sapped; but while he yet lived there was before him a task which it was incumbent upon him to perform. It was imperative that he should have speech with his wife and Christian Almer. "I have work to do," he said to the priest, "and it must be done to-day." An unaccustomed note in his voice caused Father Capel to regard him with even a more serious attention than he had hitherto bestowed upon him. "There are men," said the priest, "who, when sudden misfortune overtakes them, adopt a desperate expedient to put an end to all worldly trouble, and thus add sin to sin." "Have no fear for me," said the Advocate. "I am not contemplating suicide. What fate has in store for me I will meet without repining. You caution me against the storm, yet I perceive you yourself are preparing to face it." "I go to my duty," said the priest. "And I to mine," rejoined the Advocate. Thus they parted, each going his separate way. The Advocate had not calculated the difficulties he was to encounter; his progress was slow, and he had to make wide detours on the road, and frequently to retrace his steps for a considerable distance, in order to escape being swept to death by the floods. From the ranges all around the village in which the House of White Shadows was situated the water was pouring in torrents, which swirled furiously through the lower heights, carrying almost certain destruction to those who had not already availed themselves of the chances of escape. Terrific as was the tempest, he took no heed of it. It was not the storm of Nature, but the storm within his soul which absorbed him. He met villagers on the road flying for safety. With terror-struck movements they hurried past, men, women, and children, uttering cries of alarm at the visitation. Now and then one and another called upon him to turn back. "If you proceed," they said, "you will be engulfed in the rapids. Turn back if you wish to live." He did not answer them, but doggedly pursued his way. "My punishment has come," he thought. "I have no wish to live, nor do I desire to outlast this day." Once only, of his own prompting, did he pause. A woman, with little children clinging to her, passed him, sobbing bitterly. His eyes happening to light upon her face, he saw in it some likeness to the peasant girl whom in years gone by he had betrayed. The likeness might or might not have been there, but it existed certainly in his fancy. He stopped and questioned her, and learned that she had been utterly ruined by the storm, her cottage destroyed, her small savings lost, and all her hopes blasted. He emptied his pockets of money, and gave her what valuables he had about him. "Sell them," he said; "they will help to purchase you a new home." She called down blessings on his head. "If she knew me for what I am," he muttered as he left her, "she would curse me." On and on he struggled and seemed to make no progress. The afternoon was waning, and the clouds were growing blacker and thicker, when he saw a man staggering towards him. He was about to put a question to him respecting the locality of the House of White Shadows--his course had been so devious that he scarcely knew in what direction it lay--when a closer approach to the man showed him to be no other than John Vanbrugh. "Ah!" cried Vanbrugh, seizing the Advocate's arm, and thus arresting his steps, "I feared we had lost you. A fine time I have had of it down in your villa yonder! Had it not been for the storm, I should have been bundled before a magistrate on a charge of interloping; but everybody had enough to do to look after himself. It was a case of the devil take the hindmost. A scurvy trick, though, of yours, to desert a comrade; still, for my sake, I am glad to see you in the land of the living." "Have you come straight from the villa?" asked the Advocate. "Straight!" cried Vanbrugh with a derisive laugh. "I defy the soberest saint to walk straight for fifty yards in such a hurricane. Three bottles of wine would not make me so unsteady as this cursed wind--enough to stop one's breath for good or ill. What! you are not going on?" "I am. What should hinder me?" "Some small love of life--a trivial but human sentiment. There is no one in your house. It is by this time deserted by all but the rats." "My wife----" "Was the last to leave, with a friend of yours, Christian Almer by name. He and I had some words together. Let me tell you. I happened to drop a remark concerning you which he considered disparaging, and had I been guilty of all the cardinal sins he could not have been more angered. A true friend--but probably he does not know what I know. Well for you that I did not enlighten him. You will meet them a little lower down on the road, but I advise you not to go too far. The valleys are rivers, carrying everything, headlong, in their course." "There was an old lawyer in the house. Do you know what has become of him?" "I saw him perched on the back of a fool, and by their side a girl with the sweetest face, and an old woman I should take to be her grandmother." "Farewell," said the Advocate, wrenching himself free. "Should we meet again I will pay you for your friendly services." "Well said," replied Vanbrugh. "I am content. No man ever knew you to be false to your word. A woman perhaps--but that lies in the past. Ah, what a storm! It is as though the end of the world had come." "To those whose minutes are numbered," said the Advocate between his set teeth, "the end of the world has come. Farewell once more." "Farewell then," cried Vanbrugh, proceeding onward. "For my sake be careful of yourself. If this be not the Second Deluge I will seek you to-morrow." "For me," muttered the Advocate, as he left Vanbrugh, "there may be no to-morrow." Bearing in mind the words of Vanbrugh that he would meet his wife and Christian Almer lower down on the road, he looked out for them. He saw no trace of them, and presently he began to blunder in his course; he searched in vain for a familiar landmark, and he knew not in which direction the House of White Shadows was situated. Evening was fast approaching when he heard himself hailed by loud shouts. The sounds proceeded from a strongly-built stone hut, protected on three sides from wind and rain, and so placed that the water from the ranges rolled past without injuring it. Standing within the doorway was Fritz the Fool. Thinking his wife might have sought shelter there, the Advocate made his way to it, and found therein assembled, in addition to Fritz, old Pierre Lamont, Mother Denise and her husband Martin, and their pretty granddaughter Dionetta. "Welcome, comrade, welcome," cried Pierre Lamont. "It is pleasant to see a familiar face. We were compelled to fly from the villa, and Fritz here conveyed us here to this hospitable hut, where we shall be compelled to stay till the storm ceases. Where is 'your fair lady?" "It is a question I would ask of you," said the Advocate. "She is not here, then?" "No. She left the villa before we did, in the company of your friend"--the slight involuntary accent he placed upon the word caused the Advocate to start as though he had received a blow--"Christian Almer. They have doubtless found another shelter as secure as this. We wished them to stop for us, but they preferred not to wait. Fritz had a hard job of it carrying me to this hut, which he claims as his own, and which is stored with provisions sufficient for a month's siege. I have robbed the old house of its servants--Dionetta here, for whom" (he dropped his voice) "the fool has a fancy, and her grandmother, whom I shall pension off, and Fritz himself--an invaluable fool. Fritz, open a bottle of wine; do the honours of your mansion. The Advocate is exhausted." The Advocate did not refuse the wine; he felt its need to sustain his strength for the work he had yet to perform. He glanced round the walls. "Is there an inner room?" he asked. "Yes; there is the door." "May I crave privacy for a few minutes?" Pierre Lamont waved his hand, and the Advocate walked to the inner room, and closed the door upon himself. "What has come over this man?" mused Pierre Lamont. "There is in his face, since yesterday, such a change as it is rare in life's experience to see. It is not produced by fatigue. Has he made discovery of his wife's faithlessness and his friend's treachery. And should I not behave honestly to him, and make him as wise as I am on events within my knowledge? What use? What use? But at least he shall know that the secret of Gautran's guilt is not his alone." In the meantime the Advocate was taking advantage of the solitude for which he had been yearning since he left the bedside of Pauline. It was not until this moment that he could find an opportunity to examine the packet she had given him. It contained what he imagined--the certificate of the birth of his child. He read it and mentally took note of the date and also of certain words written on the back, in confirmation of the story related to him by John Vanbrugh. No room was there for doubt. Madeline was his child, and by his means her murderer had escaped from justice. "A just Heaven smote him down," he thought; "so should retribution fall upon me. I am partner in his crime. Upon my soul lies guilt heavier than his." Within the certificate of birth was a smaller packet, which he had laid aside. He took it up now, and removed the paper covering. It was the portrait of his daughter, Madeline the flower-girl. The picture was that of a young girl just budding into womanhood--a girl whose laughing mouth and sparkling eyes conveyed to his heart so keen a torture that he gave utterance to a groan, and covered his eyes with his hand to shut out the reproach. But in the darkness he saw a vision which sent violent shudders through him--such a vision as had pursued Gautran in the lonely woods, as he had seen in the waving of branch and leaf, as had hovered over him in his prison cell, as he stood by his side in the courthouse during the trial from which he emerged a free man. Bitterly was this man, who had reached a height so lofty that it seemed as if calumny could not touch him, bitterly was he expiating the error of his youth. He folded the portrait of his child within the certificate of birth, and replaced them in his pocket. Then, with an effort, he succeeded in summoning some kind of composure to his features, and the next minute he rejoined Pierre Lamont. "You will remain with me," said the old lawyer; "it will be best." "Nay," responded the Advocate, "a plain duty lies before me. I must seek my wife." "She herself is doubtless in a place of shelter," said Pierre Lamont, "and while this tempest is raging, devastating the land in every direction, you can scarcely hope to find her." "I shall find her," said the Advocate in a tone of conviction. "Stern fate, which has dogged my steps since I arrived in Geneva, and brought me to a pass which, were you acquainted with the details, would appear incredible to you, will conduct me to her side. Were I otherwise convinced I must not shrink from my duty." "Outside these walls," urged Pierre Lamont, "death stares you in the face." "There are worse things than death," said the Advocate, with an air of gloomy and invincible resolution. "Useless to argue with such a man as yourself," said Pierre Lamont. He turned to Fritz. "Go, you and your friends, into the inner room for a while. I wish to speak in private with my friend." "One moment," said the Advocate to the fool as he was preparing to obey Pierre Lamont. "You were the last to leave the House of White Shadows." "We were the last humans," replied Fritz. "In what condition was it at the time?" "In a most perilous condition. The waters were rising around the walls. It had, I should say, not twelve hours to live." "To live!" echoed Pierre Lamont, striving to impart lightness to his voice, and signally failing. "How do you apply that, Fritz?" "Trees live!" replied Fritz, "and their life goes with the houses they help to build. If the walls of the old house we have run from could talk, mysteries would be brought to light." "You have been my wife's maid," said the Advocate to Dionetta, as she was about to pass him. Dionetta curtsied. "Has she discharged you?" Dionetta cast a nervous glance at Pierre Lamont, and another at Mother Denise. The old grandmother answered for her. "I thought it as well," said Mother Denise, "in all respect and humility, that so simple a child as Dionetta should be kept to her simple life. My lady was good enough to give Dionetta a pair of diamond earrings and a diamond finger-ring, which we have left behind us." Fritz made a grimace. "These things are not fit for poor peasants, and the pleasure they convey is a dangerous pleasure." "You are not favourably disposed towards my wife," said the Advocate. Mother Denise was silent. "But you are right in what you say. Diamonds are not fit gifts for simple maids. I wish you well, you and your grandchild. It might have been----" The thought of his own child, of the same age as Dionetta, and as beautiful, crossed his mind. He brushed his hand across his eyes, and when he looked round the room again, he and Pierre Lamont were alone. "A fool of fools," said Pierre Lamont, looking after Fritz. "If he and the pretty Dionetta wed--it will be a suitable match for beauty to mate with folly--he will be father to a family of fools who may, in their way, be wiser in their generation than you and I. Your decision is irrevocable?" "It is irrevocable." "If you do not find your wife you will endeavour to return to us?" "I shall find her." "And then?" asked Pierre Lamont with a singular puckering of his brows. "And then?" echoed the Advocate absently, and added: "Who can tell what may happen from one hour to another?" "How much does he know?" thought Pierre Lamont; "or are his suspicions but just aroused? There is a weight upon his soul which taxes all his strength. It is grand to see a strong man suffer as he is suffering. Is there a mystery in his trouble with which I am not acquainted? His wife--I know about her. Gautran--I know about him. But the stranger he left in his study in the middle of the night--a broken-down gentleman--vagabond, with a spice of wickedness in him--who is he, and what was his mission? Of one thing I must satisfy myself before I am assured that he is worthy of my compassion." Then he spoke aloud. "You said just now there are worse things than death." "Aye." "Disgrace?" "In a certain form that may be borne, and life yet be worth the having." "Good. Dishonour?" "It matters little," said the Advocate; "but were the time not precious, I should be curious to learn why you desire to get at the heart of my secrets." "The argument would be too long," said Pierre Lamont with earnestness, "but I can justify myself. There are worse things than death. Pardon me--an older man than yourself, and one who is well disposed towards you--for asking you bluntly whether such things have come to you?" "They have. You can read the signs in my face." "But if you have a secret, the revealing of which would be hurtful to you, cannot the mischief be averted? As far as I can expect you have been frank with me. Frankness for frankness. Say that the secret refers to Gautran and to your defence of him?" "I have been living in a fool's paradise," said the Advocate with a scornful smile. "To whom is this known?" "To Fritz the Fool, and to me, through him. He saw Gautran in your study after the trial----" "Have I been watched?" "The discovery was accidental. He was moved by some love-verses I read to him, and becoming sentimental, he dallied outside Dionetta's window, after the manner of foolish lovers. Then the lights of your study window attracted him, and he peeped through. When Gautran left the villa, Fritz followed him, and heard him in his terrified soliloquies proclaim his guilt. Were this to go out to the world, it would, according to its fashion, construe it in a manner which might be fatal to you. But Gautran is dead, and I can be silent, and can put a lock on Fritz's tongue--for in my soul I believe you were not aware the wretch was guilty when you defended him." "I thank you. I believed him to be innocent." "Why, then, my mind is easy. Friend, shake hands." He held the Advocate's hand in his thin fingers, and with something of wistfulness, said: "I would give a year of my life if I could prevail upon you to remain with us." "You cannot prevail upon me. So much being said between us, more is necessary. The avowal of my ignorance of Gautran's guilt at the time I defended him--I learnt it after the trial, mind you--will not avail me. A written confession,--sworn upon his dying oath, exists, which accuses me of that which the world will be ready to believe. Strange to say, this is my lightest trouble. There are others of graver moment which more vitally concern me--unknown to you, unless, indeed, you possess a wizard's art of divination." "Comrade," said Pierre Lamont, slowly and with emphasis, "there breathes not in the world a woman worth the breaking of a man's heart." "Stop!" cried the Advocate in a voice of agony. In silence he and Pierre Lamont gazed upon each other, and in the old lawyer's face the Advocate saw that his wife's faithlessness and his friend's treachery were known. "Enough," he said; "there is for me no deeper shame, no deeper dishonour." And he turned abruptly from Pierre Lamont, and left the hut staggering like a drunken man. "Fritz, Fritz!" cried Pierre Lamont. "Come quickly!" Fritz instantly made his appearance from the inner room. "Look you, Fritz," said the old lawyer, in hurried, excited tones, "the Advocate has gone upon his mad errand--has gone alone. After him at once, and if you can save him from the consequences of his desperate resolve--if you can advise, assist him, do so for my sake. Quick, Fritz, quick!" "Master Lamont," said Fritz, "are you asking me to do a man's work?' "Yes, Fritz--you can do no more." "Well and good. As far as a man dare go, I will go; but if a madman persists in rushing upon certain death, it will not help him for a fool to follow his example. I am fond of life, Master Lamont, doubly fond of it just now, for reasons." He jerked his thumb over his shoulder to the room which contained Dionetta. "But I will do what can be done. You may depend upon me." He was gone at least two hours, and when he returned he was exhausted and panting for breath. "I was never born to be drowned," he said, and he threw himself into a chair, and sat there, gasping. "Well, Fritz, well?" cried Pierre Lamont. "Wait till I get my breath. I followed this great Advocate as you desired, and for some time, so deep was he in his dreams, he did not know I was with him. But once, when he was waist high in water--not that he cared, it was as though he was inviting death--and I, who was acquainted with the road through which he was wading, pulled him suddenly back and so saved his life, he turned upon me savagely, and demanded who I was. He recognised me the moment he spoke the words--I will say this of him, that in the presence of another man he never loses his self-possession, and that, in my belief he would be a match for Death, if it presented itself to him in a visible, palpable shape. 'Ah,' said he, 'you are Fritz the Fool; why do you dog me?' 'I do not dog you,' I replied; 'Master Lamont bade me guide and assist you, if you needed guidance and assistance. He is the only man for whom I would risk my life.' 'Honesty is a rare virtue,' he said; 'keep with me, then, for just as long as you think yourself to be safe. You saw my wife and Mr. Almer leave the House of White Shadows. Is it likely they took this road?' 'They could take no other, and live,' I said, 'but there is no trace of them. They must have turned back to the villa.' 'Could they reach it, do you think?' he asked. 'A brave man can do wonders,' I replied; 'some hours ago they may have reached it; but they could not stop in the lower rooms, which even at that time must have been below water-mark. I will not answer for the upper part of the house at this moment, and before morning it will be swept away.' 'Guide me as far on the road as you care to accompany me,' said he, 'and when you leave me point me out the way I should go.' I did so, and we encountered dangers, and but for me he would not have been alive when I left him. We came to the bridge which spans the ravine of pines, two miles this side of the House of White Shadows. A great part of it had been torn away, and down below a torrent was rushing fierce enough to beat the life out of any living being, human or animal. 'There is no other way but this,' I said, 'to the House of White Shadows. I shall not cross the bridge.' He said no word, but struggled on to the bridge, which--all that was left of it--consisted of three slender trunks half hanging over the ravine. It was nothing short of a miracle that he got across; no sooner was he upon the other side than the remaining portion of the bridge fell into the ravine. He waved his hand to me, and I soon lost sight of him in the darkness. I stumbled here as well as I could. Master Lamont, I never want another journey such as that; had not the saints watched over me I should not be here to tell the tale. This is the blackest night in my remembrance." "Do you think he can escape, Fritz?" asked Pierre Lamont. "His life is not worth a straw," replied Fritz. "Look you here, Master Lamont. If I were to see him tomorrow, or any other day, alive, I should know that he is in league with the Evil One. No human power can save him." "Peace be with him," said Pierre Lamont. "A great man is lost to us--a noble mind has gone." "Master Lamont," said Fritz sententiously, "there is such a thing as being too clever. Better to be a simpleton than to be over-wise or over-confident. I intend to remain a fool to the end of my days. I have no pity for such a man. Who climbs must risk the fall. Not rocky peaks, but level ground, with bits of soft moss, for Fritz the Fool." He slept well and soundly, but Pierre Lamont tossed about the whole of the night, thinking with sadness and regret upon the downfall of the Advocate. CHAPTER V THE DOOM OF THE HOUSE OF WHITE SHADOWS An unerring instinct guided him; a superhuman power possessed him; and at midnight--though he could keep no count of time--he found himself within the gates of the House of White Shadows. Upon his lips, contracted and spasmodic with pain and suffering, appeared a pitiable smile as he gazed at a window on the upper floor, and saw a light. It was reflected from the window of Christian Almer's room. "There they are," he muttered; "I shall not die unavenged." The water was breast high. He battled through it, and reached the open door of the villa. Slowly he ascended the stairs until he arrived at the landing above. He listened at Christian Almer's door, but heard no sound. Enraged at the thought that they might, after all, have escaped him, he dashed into the room, and called out the names of his wife and friend. Silence answered him. He staggered towards the lamp, which stood on a table covered with a shade which threw the light downward. Before the lamp was a sheet of paper, with writing upon it, and bending over it the Advocate saw that it was addressed to him, and was intended for his perusal. A steadier survey of the room brought its revelations. At the extreme end of the apartment lay a woman, still and motionless. He crept towards her, knelt by her, and lowered his face to hers. It was his wife, cold and dead! A rosy tint was in her cheeks; a smile was on her lips; her death had brought no suffering with it. "Fair and false," he said. "Beauty is a sinful possession." Her clothes were wet, and he knew that she had been drowned. Then, turning, he saw what had before escaped his notice--the body of Christian Almer, lying near the table. He put his ear to Almer's heart and felt a slight beating. "He can wait," muttered the Advocate. "I will first read what he has written." He was about to sit at the table when he heard a surging sound without. He stepped into the passage, and saw the waters swaying beneath him. "It is well," he thought. "In a little while all will be over for those who have sinned." This reflection softened him somewhat toward those who lay within the room, and by whom he believed himself to have been wronged. Was he not himself the greatest sinner in that fatal house? He returned to the table and read what Christian Almer had written. "Edward: "I pray that these words may reach your eyes. Above all things on earth have I valued your friendship, and my heart is wrung with anguish by the reproach that I have not been worthy of it. Last night, when your wife and I parted, I knew that you had discovered the weak and treacherous part I have played towards you, for as I turned towards my room--at that very moment, looking downward, I saw you below. I did not dare to come to you--I did not dare to show my face to the man I had wronged. It was my intention to fly this morning from your presence and hers, and never to see you more; and also to write to you the words to which, by the memory of all that I hold sacred, I now solemnly swear--that the wrong I have done you is compassed by sentiment. I do not seek to excuse myself; I know that treachery in thought is as base between you and me, as treachery in act. Yet in all humbleness I implore you to endeavour to find some palliation, though but the slightest, of my conduct in the reflection that sometimes in the strongest men--even in such a man as yourself, whose mind and life are most pure and noble--error cannot be avoided. We are hurried into wrong by subtle forces which wither one's earnest endeavours to step in the right path. Thus it has been with me. If you will recall certain words which were spoken in our conversation at midnight in the room in which this is written, you will understand what was meant when I said that I flew to the mountains to rid myself, by a happy chance, of a terror which possessed me. You who have never erred, you who have never sinned, may not be able to find it in your heart to forgive me. If it be so, I bow my head to your judgment--which is just, as in all your actions you are known to be. But if you cannot forgive me, I entreat you to pity me. "You were not in the house to-day when we endeavoured to escape to a place of shelter in which we should be protected from this terrible inundation. We did not succeed--we were beaten back; and being engulfed in a sudden rush of waters, I could not save your wife. The utmost I could do was to bear her lifeless body back to this fatal house. It was I who should have died, not she; but my last moments are approaching. Think kindly of her if you can. "Christian Almer." Had he not been absorbed, not only in the last words written by Christian Almer, but by the reflections which they engendered, the Advocate would have known that the floods were increasing in volume, and that, in the short time he had been in the house, the waters had risen several feet. But he was living an inner life--a life in which the spiritual part of himself was dominant. He stepped to the body of his wife and said: "Poor child! Mine the error." Then he knelt by the side of Christian Almer, and raised him in his arms. Aroused to consciousness by the action, Almer opened his eyes. They rested upon the Advocate's face vacantly, but presently they dilated in terror. "Be not afraid," said the Advocate, "I have read what you have written. I know all." "I am very weak," murmured Christian Almer. "Do not torture me; say that you pity me." "I pity and forgive you, Christian," replied the Advocate in a very gentle voice. "Thank God! Thank God!" said Almer, and closed his eyes, from which the warm tears gushed. "God be merciful to sinners!" murmured the Advocate. When daylight broke, the House of White Shadows, and all that it contained, had been swept from the face of the earth. A bare waste was all that remained to mark the record of human love and human ambition.