The Long Night: Chapter 14

Chapter 14

"AND ONLY ONE DOSE IN ALL THE WORLD!"

In his picture of the life led by the two women on the upper floor of
the house in the Corraterie, that picture which by a singular intuition
he had conceived on the day of his arrival, Claude had not gone far
astray. In all respects but one the picture was truly drawn. Than the
love between mother and daughter, no tie could be imagined at once more
simple and more holy; no union more real and pure than that which bound
together these two women, left lonely in days of war and trouble in the
midst of a city permanently besieged and menaced by an enduring peril.
Almost forgotten by the world below, which had its own cares, its
alarums and excursions, its strivings and aims, they lived for one
another. The weak health of the one and the brave spirit of the other
had gradually inverted their positions; and the younger was mother, the
elder, daughter. Yet each retained, in addition, the pious instincts of
the original relation. To each the welfare of the other was the prime
thought. To give the other the better portion, be it of food or wine, of
freedom from care, or ease of mind, and to take the worse, was to each
the ground plan of life, as it was its chiefest joy.

In their eyrie above the anxious city they led an existence all their
own. Between them were a hundred jests, Greek to others; and whimsical
ways, and fond sayings and old smiles a thousand times repeated. And
things that must be done after one fashion or the sky would fall; and
others that must be done after another fashion or the world would end.
When the house was empty of boarders, or nearly empty--though at such
times the cupboard also was apt to be bare--there were long hours spent
upstairs and surveys of household gear, carried up with difficulty, and
reviews of linen and much talk of it, and small meals, taken at the open
windows that looked over the Rhone valley and commanded the sunset view.
Such times were times of gaiety though not of prosperity, and far from
the worst hours of life--had they but persisted.

But in the March of 1601 a great calamity fell on these two. A fire,
which consumed several houses near the Corraterie, and flung wide
through the streets the rumour that the enemy had entered, struck the
bedridden woman--aroused at midnight by shouts and the glare of
flames--with so dire a terror, not on her own account but on her
daughter's, that she was never the same again. For weeks at a time she
appeared to be as of old, save for some increase of weakness and
tremulousness. But below the surface the brain was out of poise, and
under the least pressure of excitement she betrayed the change in a
manner so appalling--by the loud negation of those beliefs which in
saner moments were most dear to her, and especially by a denial of the
Providence and goodness of God--that even her child, even the being who
knew her and loved her best, shuddered lest Satan, visible and
triumphant, should rise to confront her.

Fortunately the fits of this mysterious malady were short as they were
appalling, and to the minds of that day, suspicious. And in the
beginning Anne had the support of an old physician, well-nigh their only
intimate. True, even he was scared by a form of disease, new and beyond
his science; but he prescribed a sedative and he kept counsel. He went
further: for sufficiently enlightened himself to believe in the
innocence of these attacks, he none the less explained to the daughter
the peril to which her mother's aberrations must expose her were they
known to the vulgar; and he bade her hide them with all the care
imaginable.

Anne, on this would fain have adopted the safest course and kept the
house empty; to the end that to the horror of her mother's fits of
delirium might not be added the chance of eavesdropping. But to do this
was to starve, as well as to reveal to Madame Royaume the fact of those
seizures of which no one in the world was more ignorant than the good
woman who suffered under them. It followed that to Anne's burden of
dread by reason of the outer world, whom she must at all costs deceive,
was added the weight of concealment from the one from whom she had never
kept anything in her life. A thing which augmented immeasurably the
loneliness of her position and the weight of her load.

Presently the drama, always pitiful, increased in intensity. The old
leech who had been her stay and helper died, and left her to face the
danger alone. A month later Basterga discovered the secret and
henceforth held it over her. From this time she led a life of which
Claude, in his dreams upon the hearth, exaggerated neither the tragedy
nor the beauty. The load had been heavy before. Now to fear was added
contumely, and to vague apprehensions the immediate prospect of
discovery and peril. The grip of the big scholar, subtle, cruel,
tightening day by day and hour by hour, was on her youth; slowly it
paralysed in her all joy, all spirit, all the impulses of life and hope,
that were natural to her age.

That through all she showed an indomitable spirit, we know. We have seen
how she bore herself when threatened from an unexpected quarter on the
morning when Claude Mercier, after overhearing her mother's ravings, had
his doubts confirmed by the sight of her depression on the stairs. How
boldly she met his attack, unforeseen as it was, how bravely she
shielded her other and dearer self, how deftly she made use of the
chance which the young man's soberer sense afforded her, will be
remembered. But not even in that pinch, no, nor in that worse hour when
Basterga, having discovered his knowledge to her, gave her--as a cat
plays with a mouse which it is presently to tear to pieces--a little law
and a little space, did she come so near to despair as on this evening
when the echo of her mother's insane laughter drew her from the
living-room at an hour without precedent.

For hitherto Madame Royaume's attacks had come on in the night only.
With a regularity not unknown in the morbid world they occurred about
midnight, an hour when her daughter could attend to her and when the
house below lay wrapped in sleep. A change in this respect doubled the
danger, therefore. It did more: the prospect of being summoned at any
hour shook, if it did not break, the last remains of Anne's strength. To
be liable at all times to such interruptions, to tremble while serving a
meal or making a bed lest the dreadful sound arise and reveal all, to
listen below and above and never to feel safe for a minute, never!
never!--who could face, who could endure, who could lie down and rise up
under this burden?

It could not be. As Anne ascended the stairs she felt that the end was
coming, was come. Strive as she might, war as she might, with all the
instinct, all the ferocity, of a mother defending her young, the end was
come. The secret could not be kept long. Even while she administered the
medicine with shaking hands, while with tears in her voice she strove
to still the patient and silence her wild words, even while she
restrained by force the feeble strength that would and could not, while
in a word she omitted no precaution, relaxed no effort, her heart told
her with every pulsation that the end was come.

And presently, when Madame was quiet and slept, the girl bowed her head
over the unconscious object of her love and wept, bitterly,
passionately, wetting with her tears the long grey hair that strewed the
pillow, as she recalled with pitiful clearness all the stages of
concealment, all the things which she had done to avert this end.
Vainly, futilely, for it was come. The dark mornings of winter recurred
to her mind, those mornings when she had risen and dressed herself by
rushlight, with this fear redoubling the chill gloom of the cold house;
the nights, too, when all had been well, and in the last hour before
sleep, finding her mother sane and cheerful, she had nursed the hope
that the latest attack might be the last. The evenings brightened by
that hope, the mornings darkened by its extinction, the rare hours of
brooding, the days and weeks of brave struggle, of tendance never
failing, of smiles veiling a sick heart--she lived all these again,
looking pitifully back, straining tenderly in her arms the dear being
she loved.

And then, stabbing her back to life in the midst of her exhaustion, the
thought pierced her that even now she was hastening the end by her
absence. They would be asking for her below; they must be asking for her
already. The supper-time was come, was past, perhaps; and she was not
there! She tried to picture what would happen, what already must be
happening; and rising and dashing the tears from her face she stood
listening. Perhaps Claude would make some excuse to the others; or,
perhaps--how much had he guessed?

Her mother was passive now, sunk in the torpor which followed the
attack and from which the poor woman would awake in happy
unconsciousness of the whole. Anne saw that her charge might be left,
and hastily smoothing the tangle of luxuriant hair which had fallen
about her face, she opened the door. Another might have stayed to allay
the fever of her cheeks, to remove the traces of her tears, to stay the
quivering of her hands; but such small cares were not for her, nor for
the occasion. She could form no idea of the length of time she had spent
upstairs, a half-hour, or an hour and a half; and without more ado she
raised the latch, slipped out, and turning the key on her patient ran
down the upper flight of stairs.

She anticipated many things, but not that which she encountered--silence
on the upper landing, and below when she had descended and opened the
staircase door--an empty room. The place was vacant; the tables were as
she had left them, half laid; the pot was gently simmering over the
fire.

What had happened? The supper-hour was past, yet none of the four who
should have sat down to the meal were here. Had they overheard her
mother's terrible cry--those words which voiced the woman's despair on
finding, as she fancied, the city betrayed? And were they gone to
denounce her? The thought was discarded as soon as formed; and before
she could hit on a second explanation a hasty knocking on the door
turned her eyes that way.

The four who lodged in the house were not in the habit of knocking, for
the door was only locked at night when the last retired. She approached
it then, wondering, hesitated an instant, and at last, collecting her
courage, raised the latch. The door resisted her impulse. It was locked.

She tried it twice, and it was only as she drew back the second time
that she saw the key lying at the foot of the door. That deepened the
mystery. Why had they locked her in? Why, when they had done so, had
they thrust the key under the door and so placed it in her power? Had
Claude Mercier done it that the others might not enter to hear what he
had heard and discover what he had discovered? Possibly. In which case
the knocker--who at that instant made a second and more earnest attack
upon the door--must be one of the others, and the sooner she opened the
door the less would be the suspicion created.

With an apology trembling on her lips she hastened to open. Then she
stood bewildered; she saw before her, not one of the lodgers, but Messer
Blondel. "I wish to speak to you," the magistrate said with firmness.
Before she knew what was happening he had motioned to her to go before
him into the house, and following had locked the door behind them.

She knew him by sight, as did all Geneva; and the blood, which surprise
at the sight of a stranger had brought to her cheeks, fled as she
recognised the Syndic. Had they betrayed her, then, while she lingered
upstairs? Had they locked her in while they summoned the magistrate? And
was he here to make inquiries about--something he had heard?

His voice cut short her thoughts without allaying her fears. "I wish to
speak to you alone," he said. "Are you alone, girl?" His manner was
quiet, but masked excitement. His eyes scrutinised her and searched the
room by turns.

She nodded, unable to speak.

"There is no one in the house with you?"

"Only my mother," she murmured.

"She is bedridden, is she not? She cannot hear us?" he added, frowning.

"No, but I am expecting the others to return."

"Messer Basterga?"

"Yes."

"He will not return before morning," the Syndic replied with decision,
"nor his companion. The two young men are safe also. If you are alone,
therefore, I wish to speak to you."

She bowed her head, trembling and wondering, fearing what the next
moment might disclose.

"The young man who lodges here--of the name of Gentilis--he came to you
some time ago and told you that the State needed certain letters which
the man Basterga kept in a steel box upstairs? That is so, is it not?"

"Yes, Messer Syndic."

"And you looked for them?"

"Yes, I--I was told that you desired them."

"You found a phial? You found a phial?" the Syndic repeated, passing his
tongue over his lips. His face was flushed; his eyes shone with a
peculiar brightness.

"I found a small bottle," she answered slowly. "There was nothing else."

He raised his hand. If she had known how the delay of a second tortured
him! "Describe it to me!" he said. "What was it like?"

Wondering, the girl tried to describe it. "It was small and of a strange
shape, of thin glass, Messer Syndic," she said. "Shot with gold, or
there was gold afloat in the liquid inside. I do not know which."

"It was not empty?"

"No, it was three parts full."

His hand went to his mouth, to hide the working of his lips. "And there
was with it--a paper, I think?"

"No."

"A scrap of parchment then? Some words, some figures?" His voice rose
as he read a negative in her face. "There was something, surely?"

"There was nothing," she said. "Had there been a scrap even of
writing----"

"Yes, yes?" He could not control his impatience.

"I should have sent it to you. I should have thought," she continued
earnestly, "that it was that you needed, Messer Syndic; that it was that
the State needed. But there was nothing."

"Well, be there papers with it or be there not, I must have that phial!"

Anne stared. "But I do not think"--she ventured with hesitation--and
then as she gained courage, she went on more firmly--"that I can take
it! I dare not, Messer Syndic."

"Why not?"

"Papers for the State--were one thing," she stammered in confusion; "but
to take this--a bottle--would be stealing!"

The Syndic's eyes sparkled. His passion overcame him. "Girl, don't play
with me!" he cried. "Don't dare to play with me!" And then as she shrank
back alarmed by his tone, and shocked by this sudden peeping forth of
the tragic and the real, lo, in a twinkling he was another man,
trembling, and holding out shaking hands to her. "Get it for me!" he
said. "Get it for me, girl! I will tell you what it is! If I had told
you before, I had had it now, and I should be whole and well! whole and
well. You have a heart and can pity! Women can pity. Then pity me! I am
rich, but I am dying! I am a dying man, rising up and lying down,
counting the days as I walk the streets, and seeing the shroud rise
higher and higher upon my breast!"

He paused for breath, endeavouring to gain some command of himself;
while she, carried off her feet by this rush of words, stared at him in
stupefaction. Before he came he had made up his mind to tell her the
truth--or something like the truth. But he had not intended to tell the
truth in this way until, face to face with her and met by her scruples,
he let the impulse to tell the whole carry him away.

He steadied his lips with a shaking hand. "You know now why I want it,"
he resumed, speaking huskily and with restrained emotion. "'Tis life!
Life, girl! In that"--he fought with himself before he could bring out
the word--"in that phial is my life! Is life for whoever takes it! It is
the _remedium_, it is strength, life, youth, and but one--but one dose
in all the world! Do you wonder--I am dying!--that I want it? Do you
wonder--I am dying!--that I will have it? But"--with a strange grimace
intended to reassure her--"I frighten you, I frighten you."

"No!" she said, though in truth she had unconsciously retreated almost
to the door of the staircase before his extended hands. "But I--I
scarcely understand, Messer Blondel. If you will please to tell me----"

"Yes, yes!"

"What Messer Basterga--how he comes to have this?" She must parley with
him until she could collect her thoughts; until she could make up her
mind whether he was sane or mad and what it behoved her to do.

"Comes to have it!" he cried vehemently. "God knows! And what matter?
'Tis the _remedium_, I tell you, whoever has it! It is life, strength,
youth!" he repeated, his eyes glittering, his face working, and the
impulse to tell her not the truth only, but more even than the truth, if
he might thereby dazzle her, carrying him away. "It is health of body,
though you be dying, as I am! And health of mind though you be
possessed of devils! It is a cure for all ills, for all weaknesses, all
diseases, even," with a queer grimace, "for the Scholar's evil! Think
you, if it were not rare, if it were not something above the common, if
it were not what leeches seek in vain, I should be here! I should have
more than enough to buy it, I, Messer Blondel of Geneva!" He ceased,
lacking breath.

"But," she said timidly, "will not Messer Basterga give it to you? Or
sell it to you?"

"Give it to me? Sell it to me? He?" Blondel's hands flew out and clawed
the air as if he had the Paduan before him, and would tear it from him.
"He give it me? No, he will not. Nor sell it! He is keeping it for the
Grand Duke! The Grand Duke? Curse him; why should he escape more than
another?"

Anne stared. Was she dreaming or had her brain given way? Or was this
really Messer Blondel the austere Syndic, this man standing before her,
shaking in his limbs as he poured forth this strange farrago of
_remedia_ and scholars and princes and the rest? Or if she were not mad
was he mad? Or could there be truth, any truth, any fact in the medley?
His clammy face, his trembling hands, answered for his belief in it. But
could there be such a thing in nature as this of which he spoke? She had
heard of panaceas, things which cured all ills alike; but hitherto they
had found no place in her simple creed. Yet that he believed she could
not doubt; and how much more he knew than she did! Such things might be;
in the cabinets of princes, perhaps, purchasable by a huge fortune and
by the labour, the engrossment, the devotion of a life. She did not
know; and for him his acts spoke.

"It was this that Louis Gentilis was seeking?" she murmured.

"What else?" he retorted, opening and shutting his hands. "Had I told
him the truth, as I have told you, the thing had been in my grasp now!"

"But are you sure," she ventured to ask with respect, "that it will do
these things, Messer Blondel?"

He flung up his hands in a gesture of impatience. "And more! And more!"
he cried. "It is life and strength, I tell you! Health and youth! For
body or mind, for the old or the young! But enough! Enough, girl!" he
resumed in an altered tone, a tone grown peremptory and urgent. "Get it
me! Do you hear? Stand no longer talking! At any moment they may return,
and--and it may be too late."

Too late! It was too late already. The door shook even as he spoke under
an angry summons. As he stiffened where he stood, his eyes fixed upon
it, his hand still pointing her to his bidding, a face showed white at
the window and vanished again. An instant he imagined it Basterga's; and
hand, voice, eyes, all hung frozen. Then he saw his mistake--to
whomsoever the face belonged, it was not Basterga's; and finding voice
and breath again, "Quick!" he muttered fiercely, "do you hear, girl? Get
it! Get it before they enter!"

Her hand was on the latch of the inner door. Another second and, swayed
by his will, she would have gone up and got the thing he needed, and the
stout door would have shielded them, and within the staircase he might
have taken it from her and no one been the wiser. But as she turned,
there came a second attack on the door, so loud, so persistent, so
furious, that she faltered, remembering that the duplicate key of
Basterga's chamber was in her mother's room, and that she must mount to
the top of the house for it.

He saw her hesitation, and, shaken by the face which had looked in out
of the night, and which still might be watching his movements, his
resolution gave way. The habit of a life of formalism prevailed. The
thing was as good as his, she would get it presently. Why, then, cause
talk and scandal by keeping these persons--whoever they were--outside,
when the thing might be had without talk?

"To-night!" he cried rapidly. "Get it to-night, then! Do you hear, girl?
You will be sure to get it?" His eyes flitted from her to the door and
back again. "Basterga will not return until to-morrow. You will get it
to-night!"

She murmured some form of assent.

"Then open the door! open the door!" he urged impatiently. And with a
stifled oath, "A little more and they will rouse the town!"

She ran to obey, the door flew open, and into the room bundled first
Louis without his cap; and then on his heels and gripping him by the
nape, Claude Mercier. Nor did the latter seem in the least degree
abashed by the presence in which he found himself. On the contrary, he
looked at the Syndic, his head high; as if he, and not the magistrate,
had the right to an explanation.

But Blondel had recovered himself. "Come, come!" he said sternly. "What
is this, young man? Are you drunk?"

"Why was the door locked?"

"That you might not interrupt me," Blondel replied severely, "while I
asked some questions. I have it in my mind to ask you some also. You
took him to my house?" he continued, addressing Louis.

Louis whined that he had.

"You were late then?" His cold eye returned to Claude. "You were late, I
warrant. Attend me to-morrow at nine, young man. Do you hear? Do you
understand?"

"Yes."

"Then have a care you are there, or the officers will fetch you. And
you," he continued, turning more graciously to Anne, "see, young woman,
you keep counsel. A still tongue buys friends, and is a service to the
State. With that--good-night."

He looked from one to the other with a sour smile, nodded, and passed
out.

He left Claude staring, and something bewildered in the middle of the
room. The love, the pity, the admiration of which the lad's heart had
been full an hour before, still hungered for expression; but it was not
easy to vent such feelings before Louis, nor at a moment when the
Syndic's cold eye and the puzzle of his presence there chilled for the
time the atmosphere of the room.

Claude, indeed, was utterly perplexed by what he had seen; and before he
could decide what he would do, Anne, ignoring the need of explanation,
had taken the matter into her own hands. She had begun to set out the
meal; and Louis, smiling maliciously, had seated himself in his place.
To speak with any effect then, or to find words adequate to the feelings
that had moved him a while before, was impossible. A moment later, the
opportunity was gone.

"You must please to wait on yourselves," the girl said wearily. "My
mother is not well, and I may not come down again this evening." As she
spoke, she lifted from the table the little tray which she had prepared.

He was in time to open the door for her; and even then, had she glanced
at him, his eyes must have told her much, perhaps enough. But she did
not look at him. She was preoccupied with her own thoughts; pressing
thoughts they must have been. She passed him as if he had been a
stranger, her eyes on the tray. Worshipping, he stood, and saw her turn
the corner at the head of the flight; then with a full heart he went
back to his place. His time would come.

And she? At the door of Basterga's room she paused and stood long in
thought, gazing at the rushlight she carried on the tray--yet seeing
nothing. A sentence, one sentence of all those which Blondel had poured
forth--not Blondel the austere Syndic, who had set the lads aside as if
they had been schoolboys, but Blondel the man, trembling, holding out
suppliant hands--rang again and again in her ears.

"It is health of body, though you be dying as I am, and health of mind,
though you be possessed of devils!" Health of body! Health of mind!
Health of body! Health of mind! The words wrote themselves before her
eyes in letters of fire. Health of Body! Health of Mind!

And only one dose in all the world. Only one dose in all the world! She
recalled that too.

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