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.