BLACK MAGIC. Bowen Marjorie
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bit hisforefinger.
“Nay, for we have but little money and know all these pedants can teach us. ’Tis time we began to lay the corner-stones of our fortune.”
Theirry rose, twisting his fingers together.
“Talk not to me of fortunes. I have set my soul in deadly peril. I cannot pray, I cannot take the names of holy things upon my lips.”
“Is this your courage?” said Dirk softly. “Is this your ambition, your loyalty to me? Would you run whining to a priest with a secret that is mine as well as yours? Is this, O noble youth, what all your dreams have faded to?”
Theirry groaned.
“I know not. I know not.”
Dirk came slowly nearer.
“Is this to be the end of comradeship — our league?”
He took the other’s slack hand in his, and as he seldom offered or suffered a touch, Theirry thrilled at it as a great mark of affection, and at the feel of the smooth, cool fingers, the fascination, the temptation that this youth stood for stirred his pulses; still he could not forget the stern angel he thought he had seep upon the altar, and the way his tongue had refused to move when he had striven to pray.
“Belike, I have gone too far to turn back,” he panted, with questioning eyes.
Dirk dropped his hand.
“Be of me or not with me,” he said coldly. “Surely I can stand alone.”
“Nay,” answered Theirry. “Certes, I love thee, Dirk, as I have never cared for any do I care for thee . . . ”
Dirk stepped back and looked at him out of half-closed eyes.
“Well, do not stop to palter with talk of priests. Certainly I will be faithful to you unto death and damnation, and be you true to me.”
Theirry made a movement to answer, but a sudden and violent knock on the door checked him. They looked at each other, and the same swift thoughts came to each; the students had suspected, had come to take them by surprise — and the consequences —
For a second Dirk shook with suppressed wrath.
“Curse the Magian spell!” he muttered. “Curse Zerdusht and his foul brews, for we are trapped and undone!”
Theirry sprang up and tried the inner door.
“’Tis secure,” he said; he was now quite calm. “I have the key.” Dirk laid his hand on his breast, then snatched a couple of volumes from the shelf and flung them on the table. The knock was repeated.
“Unbolt the door,” said Theirry; he seated himself at the table and opened one of the volumes.
Dirk slipped the bolt, the door sprang back and a number of students, headed by a monk bearing a crucifix, surged into the room.
“What do you want?” demanded Dirk, fronting them quietly. “You interrupt our studies.” The priest answered sternly —
“There are strange and horrible accusations against you, my son, that you must disprove.”
Theirry slowly closed his book and slowly rose; all the terror and remorse of a few moments ago had changed into wrath and defiance, and the glow his animal courage sent through his body at the prospect of an encounter; he saw the eager, excited faces of his fellow-students, crowding in the doorway, the hard and unforgiving countenance of the monk, and he felt unaccountably justified in his own eyes; he did not see his antagonists standing for Good, and himself for Evil, he saw mere men whose evident enmity roused his own.
“What accusations?” asked Dirk; his demeanour appeared to have changed as completely as Theirry’s had done; he had lost his assured calm; his defiant bearing was maintained by an obvious effort, and his lips twitched with agitation.
The students murmured and forced further into the room; the monk answered ——“Ye are suspected of procuring the dire illness of Joris of Thuringia by spells.”
“It is a lie,” said Dirk faintly, and without conviction, but Theirry replied boldly ——“Upon what do you base this charge, father?”
The monk was ready.
“Upon your strange and close behaviour — the two of you, upon our ignorance of whence you came — upon the suddenness of the youth’s illness after words passed between him and Master Dirk.”
“Ay,” put in one of the students eagerly. “And he lapped water like a dog.”
“I have seen a light here well into the night,” said another.
“And why left they before the vespers were finished?” demanded a third.
Theirry smiled; he felt that they were discovered, but fear was far from him.
“These are childish accusations,” he answered. “Get you gone to find a better.”
Dirk, who had retreated behind the table, spoke now. “Ye smirch us with wanton words,” he said pantingly. “It is a lie.”
“Will you swear to that?” asked the monk quickly.
Theirry interposed.
“Search the chamber, my father — I warrant you have already been peering through mine.” “Yea.”
“And you found —?”
“Nothing.”
“Then are you not content?” cried Dirk.
The murmur of the students swelled into an angry cry.
“Nay — can ye not spirit away your implements if ye be wizards?”
“Great skill do you credit us with,” smiled Theirry. “But on nothing you can prove nothing.” Although he knew that he could never allay their suspicions, it occurred to him that it might be possible to prevent the discovery of what the locked room held, and in that case, though they might have to leave the college, their lives would be safe; he snatched up the lantern and held it aloft.
“See you anything here?”
They stared round the bare walls with eager, straining eyes; one came to the table and turned over the volumes there.
“Seneca!” he flung them down with disappointment; the priest advanced and gazed about him; Dirk stood silent and scornful, Theirry was bold to defy them all.
“I see no holy thing,” said the monk. “Neither Virgin, nor saint, nor prie-Dieu, nor holy water.” Dirk’s eyes flashed fiercely.
“Here is my breviary;” he pointed to it on the table.
One of the students cried —
“Where is the key? To the inner chamber!”
There were three or four of them about the door; Dirk, turning to see them striving with the handle, went ghastly pale and could not speak, but Theirry broke out into great wrath. “The room is disused. No affair of mine or Dirk. We know nothing of it.”
“Will you swear?” asked the priest.
“Certes — I will swear.”
But the student struggling with the door cried out —
“Dirk Renswoude asked for this room for his studies! I do know it, and he had the key.” Dirk gave a great start.
“Nay, nay,” he said hurriedly, “I have no key.”
“Search, my sons,” said the priest.
Their blood was up; some ten or twelve had crowded into the chamber; they hurled the books off the shelf, scattered the garments out of the coffer, pulled the quilt off the bed and turned up the mattress.
Finding nothing they turned on Dirk.
“He