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 Patriae 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 Mere 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?