Читать книгу The Long Night - Stanley John Weyman - Страница 11

Table of Contents

Had it been Mercier's eye in place of his ear which attended the two men to the upper room, he would have remarked—perhaps with surprise, since he had gained some knowledge of Grio's temper—that in proportion as they mounted the staircase, the toper's crest drooped, and his arrogance ebbed away; until at the door of Basterga's chamber, it was but a sneaking and awkward man who crossed the threshold.

Nor was the reason far to seek. Whatever the standpoint of the two men in public, their relations to one another in private were delivered up, stamped and sealed in that moment of entrance. While Basterga, leaving the other to close the door, strode across the room to the window and stood gazing out, his very back stern and contemptuous, Grio fidgeted and frowned, waiting with ill-concealed penitence, until the other chose to address him. At length Basterga turned, and his gleaming eyes, his moon-face pale with anger, withered his companion.

"Again! Again!" he growled—it seemed he dare not lift his voice. "Will you never be satisfied until we are broken on the wheel? You dog, you! The sooner you are broken the better, were that all! Ay, and were that all, I could watch the bar fall with pleasure! But do you think I will see the fruit of years of planning, do you think that I will see the reward of this brain—this! this, you brainless idiot, who know not what a brain is"—and he tapped his brow repeatedly with an earnestness almost grotesque—"do you think that I will see this cast away, because you swill, swine that you are! Swill and prate in your cups!"

"'Fore God, I said nothing!" Grio whined. "I said nothing! It was only that he would not drink and I——"

"Made him?"

"No, he would not, I say, and we were coming to blows. And then——"

"He gave back, did he?"

"No, Messer Blondel came in."

Cæsar Basterga stretched out his huge arms. "Fool! Fool! Fool!" he hissed, with a gesture of despair. "There it is! And Blondel, who should have sent you to the whipping-post, or out of Geneva, has to cloak you! And men ask why, and what there is between our most upright Syndic and a drunken, bragging——"

"Softly," Grio muttered, with a flash of sullen resentment. "Softly, Messer Basterga! I——"

"A drunken, swilling, prating pig!" the other persisted. "A broken soldier living on an hour of chance service? Pooh, man," with contempt, "do not threaten me! Do you think that I do not know you more than half craven? The lad below there would cut your comb yet, did I suffer it. But that is not the point. The point is that you must needs advertise the world that you and the Syndic, who has charge of the walls, are hail-fellows, and the world will ask why! Or he must deal with you as you deserve and out you go from Geneva!"

"Per Bacco! I am not the only soldier," Grio muttered, "who ruffles it here!"

"No! And is not that half our battle?" Basterga rejoined, gazing on him with massive scorn. "To make use of them and their grumbling, and their distaste for the Venerable Company of Pastors who rule us! Such men are our tools; but tools only, and senseless tools, for Geneva won for the Grand Duke, and what will they be the better, save in the way of a little more licence and a little more drink? But for you I had something better! Is the little farm in Piedmont not worth a month's abstinence? Is drink-money for your old age, when else you must starve or stab in the purlieus of Genoa, not worth one month's sobriety? But you must needs for the sake of a single night's debauch ruin me and get yourself broken on the wheel!"

Grio shrank under his eye. "There is no harm done," he muttered at last. "Nobody suspects what is between us."

"How do you know that?" came the retort. "What? You think it is natural Blondel should favour such as you?"

"It will not be the first time Geneva cloak has covered Genoa velvet!"

"Velvet!" Basterga repeated with a sneer. "Rags rather!" And then more quickly, "But that is not all, nor the half. Do you think Blondel, who is on the point, Blondel, who will and will not and on whom all must turn, Blondel the upright, the impeccable, the patriotic, without whom we can do nothing, and who, I tell you, hangs in the balance—do you think he likes it, blockhead? Or is the more inclined to trust his life with us when he sees us brawlers, toss-pots, common swillers? Do you think he on whom I am bringing to bear all the resources of this brain—this!"—and again the big man tapped his forehead with tragic earnestness—"and whom you could as much move to side with us as you could move yonder peak of the Jura from its base—do you think he will deem better of our part for this?"

"Well, no."

"No! No, a thousand times!"

"But I count drunk the same as sober for that!" Grio cried, plucking up spirit and speaking with a gleam of defiance in his eye. "For it is my opinion that you have no more chance of moving him than I have! And so to be plain you have it, Messer Basterga. For how are you going to move him? With what? Tell me that!"

"Ah!"

"With money?" Grio continued with a fluency which showed he spoke on a subject to which he had given much thought. "He is rich and ten thousand crowns would not buy him. And the Grand Duke, much as he craves Geneva, will not spend over boldly."

"No, I shall not move him with money."

"With power and rank, then? Will the Grand Duke make him Governor of Geneva? No, for he dare not trust him. And less than that, what is it to Syndic Blondel, whose word to-day is all but law in Geneva?"

"No, nor with power," Basterga answered quietly.

"Is it with revenge, then? There are men I know who love revenge. But he is not of the south, and at such a risk revenge were dearly bought."

"No, nor with revenge," Basterga replied.

"A woman, then? For that is all that is left," Grio rejoined in triumph. Once he had spoken out, he had put himself on a level with his master; he had worsted him, or he was much mistaken. "Perhaps, from the way you have played with the little prude below, it is a woman. But they are plenty, even in Geneva, and he is rich and old."

"No, nor with a woman."

"Then with what?"

"With this!" Basterga replied. And for the third time, drawing himself up to his full height, he tapped his brow. "Do you doubt its power?"

For answer Grio shrugged his shoulders, his manner sullen and contemptuous.

"You do?"

"I don't see how it works, Messer Basterga," the veteran muttered. "I say not you have not good wits. You have, I grant it. But the best of wits must have their means and method. It is not by wishing and willing——"

"How know you that?"

"Eh?"

"How know you that?" Basterga repeated with sudden energy, and he shook a massive finger before the other's eyes. "But how know you anything," he continued with disdain, as he dropped the hand again, and turned on his heel, "dolt, imbecile, rudiment that you are? Ay, and blind to boot, for it was but the other day I worked a miracle before you, and you learned nothing from it."

"It is no question of miracles," the other muttered doggedly. "But of how you will persuade the Syndic Blondel to betray Geneva to Savoy!"

"Is it so? Then tell me this: the girl below who smacked your face a month back because you laid a hand upon her wrist, and who would have had you put to the door the same day—how did I tame her? Can you answer me that?"

Grio's face fell remarkably. "No, master," he said, nodding thoughtfully. "I grant it. I cannot. A wilder filly was never handled."

"So! And yet I tamed her. And she suffers you! She's sport for us within bounds. Yet do you think she likes it when you paw her hand or lay your dirty arm about her waist, or steal a kiss? Think you the blood mounts and ebbs for nothing? Or the tears rise and the lip trembles and the limbs shake for sheer pleasure. I tell you, if eyes could slay, you had breathed your last some weeks ago."

"I know," Grio answered, nodding thoughtfully. "I have wondered and wondered, ay, many a time, how you did it."

"Yet I did it? You grant that?"

"Yes."

"And you do not understand—with what?"

Grio shook his head.

"Then why mistrust me now, blockhead," the other retorted, "when I say that as I charmed her, I can charm Blondel? Ay, and more easily. You know not how I did the one, nor how I shall do the other," the big man continued. "But what of that?" And in a louder voice, and with a gusto which showed how genuine was his delight in the metre,