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.