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 Larrissaeus Achilles
Non anni domuere decem, non mille carinae!
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!