Historical Romances: Under the Red Robe, Count Hannibal, A Gentleman of France

"No, monsieur, I need only to be alone a little! Only to be alone," she repeated, her face averted; and believing this he sent the men away, and, taking the boat himself, he crossed over, took in Madame St. Lo and Carlat, and rowed them to the ferry. Here the wildest rumours were current. One held that the Huguenot had gone out of his senses; another, that he had watched for this opportunity of avenging his brethren; a third, that his intention had been to carry off the Countess and hold her to ransom. Only Tavannes himself, from his position on the farther bank, had seen the packet of letters, and the hand which withheld them; and he said nothing. Nay, when some of the men would have crossed to search for the fugitive, he forbade them, he scarcely knew why, save that it might please her; and when the women would have hurried to join her and hear the tale from her lips he forbade them also.

"She wishes to be alone," he said curtly.

"Alone?" Madame St. Lo cried, in a fever of curiosity. "You'll find her dead, or worse! What? Leave a woman alone after such a fright as that!"

"She wishes it."

Madame laughed cynically; and the laugh brought a tinge of colour to his brow. "Oh, does she?" she sneered. "Then I understand! Have a care, have a care, or one of these days, monsieur, when you leave her alone, you'll find them together!"

"Be silent!"

"With pleasure," she returned. "Only when it happens don't say that you were not warned. You think that she does not hear from him-"

"How can she hear?" The words were wrung from him.

Madame St. Lo's contempt passed all limits. "How can she!" she retorted. "You trail a woman across France, and let her sit by herself, and lie by herself, and all but drown by herself, and you ask how she hears from her lover? You leave her old servants about her, and you ask how she communicates with him?"

"You know nothing!" he snarled.

"I know this," she retorted. "I saw her sitting this morning, and smiling and weeping at the same time! Was she thinking of you, monsieur? Or of him? She was looking at the hills through tears; a blue mist hung over them, and I'll wager she saw some one's eyes gazing and some one's hand beckoning out of the blue!"

"Curse you!" he cried, tormented in spite of himself. "You love to make mischief!"

"No!" she answered swiftly. "For 'twas not I made the match. But go your way, go your way, monsieur, and see what kind of a welcome you'll get!"

"I will," Count Hannibal growled. And he started along the bank to rejoin his wife.

The light in his eyes had died down. Yet would they have been more sombre, and his face more harsh, had he known the mind of the woman to whom he was hastening. The Countess had begged to be left alone; alone, she found the solitude she had craved a cruel gift. She had saved the packet. She had fulfilled her trust. But only to experience, the moment it was too late, the full poignancy of remorse. Before the act, while the choice had lain with her, the betrayal of her husband had loomed large; now she saw that to treat him as she had treated him was the true betrayal, and that even for his own sake, and to save him from a fearful sin, it had become her to destroy the letters.

Now, it was no longer her duty to him which loomed large, but her duty to the innocent, to the victims of the massacre which she might have stayed, to the people of her faith whom she had abandoned, to the women and children whose death-warrant she had preserved. Now, she perceived that a part more divine had never fallen to woman, nor a responsibility so heavy been laid upon woman. Nor guilt more dread!

She writhed in misery, thinking of it. What had she done? She could hear afar off the sounds of the camp; an occasional outcry, a snatch of laughter. And the cry and the laughter rang in her ears, a bitter mockery. This summer camp, to what was it the prelude? This forbearance on her husband's part, in what would it end? Were not the one and the other cruel make-believes? Two days, and the men who laughed beside the water would slay and torture with equal zest. A little, and the husband who now chose to be generous would show himself in his true colours. And it was for the sake of such as these that she had played the coward. That she had laid up for herself endless remorse. That henceforth the cries of the innocent would haunt her dreams.

Racked by such thoughts she did not hear his step, and it was his shadow falling across her feet which first warned her of his presence. She looked up, saw him, and involuntarily recoiled. Then, seeing the change in his face, "Oh! monsieur," she stammered affrighted, her hand pressed to her side, "I ask your pardon! You startled me!"

"So it seems," he answered. And he stood over her regarding her drily.

"I am not quite-myself yet," she murmured. His look told her that her start had betrayed her feelings.

Alas, the plan of taking a woman by force has drawbacks, and among others this one: that he must be a sanguine husband who deems her heart his, and a husband without jealousy, whose suspicions are not aroused by the faintest flush or the lightest word. He knows that she is his unwillingly, a victim, not a mistress; and behind every bush beside the road and behind every mask in the crowd be espies a rival.

Moreover, where women are in question, who is always strong? Or who can say how long he will pursue this plan or that? A man of sternest temper, Count Hannibal had set out on a path of conduct carefully and deliberately chosen; knowing-and he still knew-that if he abandoned it he had little to hope, if the less to fear. But the proof of fidelity which the Countess had just given him had blown to a white heat the smouldering flame in his heart, and Madame St. Lo's gibes, which should have fallen as cold water alike on his hopes and his passion, had but fed the desire to know the best. For all that, he might not have spoken now, if he had not caught her look of affright; strange as it sounds, that look, which of all things should have silenced him and warned him that the time was not yet, stung him out of patience. Suddenly the man in him carried him away.

"You still fear me, then!" he said, in a voice hoarse and unnatural. "Is it for what I do or for what I leave undone that you hate me, Madame? Tell me, I beg, for-"

"For neither!" she said, trembling. His eyes, hot and passionate, were on her, and the blood had mounted to his brow. "For neither! I do not hate you, monsieur!"

"You fear me then! I am right in that."

"I fear-that which you carry with you," she stammered, speaking on impulse and scarcely knowing what she said.

He started, and his expression changed. "So?" he exclaimed. "So? You know what I carry, do you? And from whom? From whom?" he continued in a tone of menace, "if you please, did you get that knowledge?"

"From M. La Tribe," she muttered. She had not meant to tell him. Why had she told him?

He nodded. "I might have known it," he said. "I more than suspected it. Therefore I should be the more beholden to you for saving the letters. But" – he paused and laughed harshly-"it was out of no love for me you saved them. That, too, I know."

She did not answer or protest; and when he had waited a moment in vain expectation of her protest, a cruel look crept into his eyes. "Madame," he said slowly, "do you never reflect that you may push the part you play too far? That the patience, even of the worst of men, does not endure for ever?"

"I have your word!" she answered.

"And you do not fear?"

"I have your word," she repeated. And now she looked him bravely in the face, her eyes full of the courage of her race.

The lines of his mouth hardened as he met her look. "And what have I of yours?" he said in a low voice. "What have I of yours?"

Her face began to burn at that, her eyes fell and she faltered. "My gratitude," she murmured, with an upward look that craved for pity. "God knows, monsieur, you have that!"

"God knows I do not want it!" he answered. And he laughed derisively. "Your gratitude!" And he mocked her tone rudely and coarsely. "Your gratitude?" Then for a minute-for so long a time that she began to wonder and to quake-he was silent. At last, "A fig for your gratitude," he said. "I want your love! I suppose-cold as you are, and a Huguenot-you can love like other women!"

It was the first, the very first time he had used the word to her; and though it fell from his lips like a threat, though he used it as a man presents a pistol, she flushed anew from throat to brow. But she did not quail. "It is not mine to give," she said.

"It is his!"

"Yes, monsieur," she answered, wondering at her courage, at her audacity, her madness. "It is his."

"And it cannot be mine-at any time?"

She shook her head, trembling.

"Never?" And, suddenly reaching forward, he gripped her wrist in an iron grasp. There was passion in his tone. His eyes burned her.

Whether it was that set her on another track, or pure despair, or the cry in her ears of little children and of helpless women, something in a moment inspired her, flashed in her eyes and altered her voice. She raised her head and looked him firmly in the face. "What," she said, "do you mean by love?"

"You!" he answered brutally.

"Then-it may be, monsieur," she returned. "There is a way if you will."

"Away!"

"If you will!" As she spoke she rose slowly to her feet; for in his surprise he had released her wrist. He rose with her, and they stood confronting one another on the strip of grass between the river and the poplars.

"If I will?" His form seemed to dilate, his eyes devoured her. "If I will?"

"Yes," she replied. "If you will give me the letters that are in your belt, the packet which I saved to-day-that I may destroy them-I will be yours freely and willingly."

He drew a deep breath, still devouring her with his eyes. "You mean it?" he said at last.

"I do." She looked him in the face as she spoke, and her cheeks were white, not red. "Only-the letters! Give me the letters."

"And for them you will give me your love?"

Her eyes flickered, and involuntarily she shivered. A faint blush rose and dyed her cheeks. "Only God can give love," she said, her tone lower.

"And yours is given?"

"Yes."

"To another?"

"I have said it."

"It is his. And yet for these letters-"

"For these lives!" she cried proudly.

"You will give yourself?"

"I swear it," she answered, "if you will give them to me! If you will give them to me," she repeated. And she held out her hands; her face, full of passion, was bright with a strange light. A close observer might have thought her distraught; still excited by the struggle in the boat, and barely mistress of herself.

But the man whom she tempted, the man who held her price at his belt, after one searching look at her turned from her; perhaps because he could not trust himself to gaze on her. Count Hannibal walked a dozen paces from her and returned, and again a dozen paces and returned; and again a third time, with something fierce and passionate in his gait. At last he stopped before her.

"You have nothing to offer for them," he said, in a cold, hard tone. "Nothing that is not mine already, nothing that is not my right, nothing that I cannot take at my will. My word?" he continued, seeing her about to interrupt him. "True, Madame, you have it, you had it. But why need I keep my word to you, who tempt me to break my word to the King?"

She made a weak gesture with her hands. Her head had sunk on her breast-she seemed dazed by the shock of his contempt, dazed by his reception of her offer.

"You saved the letters?" he continued, interpreting her action. "True, but the letters are mine, and that which you offer for them is mine also. You have nothing to offer. For the rest, Madame," he went on, eyeing her cynically, "you surprise me! You, whose modesty and virtue are so great, would corrupt your husband, would sell yourself, would dishonour the love of which you boast so loudly, the love that only God gives!" He laughed derisively as he quoted her words. "Ay, and, after showing at how low a price you hold yourself, you still look, I doubt not, to me to respect you, and to keep my word. Madame!" in a terrible voice, "do not play with fire! You saved my letters, it is true! And for that, for this time, you shall go free, if God will help me to let you go! But tempt me not! Tempt me not!" he repeated, turning from her and turning back again with a gesture of despair, as if he mistrusted the strength of the restraint which he put upon himself. "I am no more than other men! Perhaps I am less. And you-you who prate of love, and know not what love is-could love! could love!"

He stopped on that word as if the word choked him-stopped, struggling with his passion. At last, with a half-stifled oath, he flung away from her, halted and hung a moment, then, with a swing of rage, went off again violently. His feet as he strode along the river-bank trampled the flowers, and slew the pale water forget-me-not, which grew among the grasses.

CHAPTER XXIII

A MIND, AND NOT A MIND

La Tribe tore through the thicket, imagining Carlat and Count Hannibal hot on his heels. He dared not pause even to listen. The underwood tripped him, the lissom branches of the alders whipped his face and blinded him; once he fell headlong over a moss-grown stone, and picked himself up groaning. But the hare hard-pushed takes no account of the briars, nor does the fox heed the mud through which it draws itself into covert. And for the time he was naught but a hunted beast. With elbows pinned to his sides, or with hands extended to ward off the boughs, with bursting lungs and crimson face, he plunged through the tangle, now slipping downwards, now leaping upwards, now all but prostrate, now breasting a mass of thorns. On and on he ran, until he came to the verge of the wood, saw before him an open meadow devoid of shelter or hiding-place, and with a groan of despair cast himself flat. He listened. How far were they behind him?

He heard nothing. Nothing, save the common noises of the wood, the angry chatter of a disturbed blackbird as it flew low into hiding, or the harsh notes of a flock of starlings as they rose from the meadow. The hum of bees filled the air, and the August flies buzzed about his sweating brow, for he had lost his cap. But behind him-nothing. Already the stillness of the wood had closed upon his track.

He was not the less panic-stricken. He supposed that Tavannes' people were getting to horse, and calculated that if they surrounded and beat the wood, he must be taken. At the thought, though he had barely got his breath, he rose, and keeping within the coppice crawled down the slope towards the river. Gently, when he reached it, he slipped into the water, and stooping below the level of the bank, his head and shoulders hidden by the bushes, he waded down stream until he had put another hundred and fifty yards between himself and pursuit. Then he paused and listened. Still he heard nothing, and he waded on again, until the water grew deep. At this point he marked a little below him a clump of trees on the farther side; and reflecting that that side-if he could reach it unseen-would be less suspect, he swam across, aiming for a thorn bush which grew low to the water. Under its shelter he crawled out, and, worming himself like a snake across the few yards of grass which intervened, he stood at length within the shadow of the trees. A moment he paused to shake himself, and then, remembering that he was still within a mile of the camp, he set off, now walking, and now running in the direction of the hills which his party had crossed that morning.

For a time he hurried on, thinking only of escape. But when he had covered a mile or two, and escape seemed probable, there began to mingle with his thankfulness a bitter-a something which grew more bitter with each moment. Why had he fled and left the work undone? Why had he given way to unworthy fear, when the letters were within his grasp? True, if he had lingered a few seconds longer, he would have failed to make good his escape; but what of that if in those seconds he had destroyed the letters, he had saved Angers, he had saved his brethren? Alas! he had played the coward. The terror of Tavannes' voice had unmanned him. He had saved himself and left the flock to perish; he, whom God had set apart by many and great signs for this work!

He had commonly courage enough. He could have died at the stake for his convictions. But he had not the presence of mind which is proof against a shock, nor the cool judgment which, in the face of death, sees to the end of two roads. He was no coward, but now he deemed himself one, and in an agony of remorse he flung himself on his face in the long grass. He had known trials and temptations, but hitherto he had held himself erect; now, like Peter, he had betrayed his Lord.

He lay an hour groaning in the misery of his heart, and then he fell on the text "Thou art Peter, and on this rock-" and he sat up. Peter had betrayed his trust through cowardice-as he had. But Peter had not been held unworthy. Might it not be so with him? He rose to his feet, a new light in his eyes. He would return! He would return, and at all costs, even at the cost of surrendering himself, he would obtain access to the letters. And then-not the fear of Count Hannibal, not the fear of instant death, should turn him from his duty.

He had cast himself down in a woodland glade which lay near the path along which he had ridden that morning. But the mental conflict from which he rose had shaken him so violently that he could not recall the side on which he had entered the clearing, and he turned himself about, endeavouring to remember. At that moment the light jingle of a bridle struck his ear; he caught through the green bushes the flash and sparkle of harness. They had tracked him then, they were here! So had he clear proof that this second chance was to be his. In a happy fervour he stood forward where the pursuers could not fail to see him.

Or so he thought. Yet the first horseman, riding carelessly with his face averted and his feet dangling, would have gone by and seen nothing if his horse, more watchful, had not shied. The man turned then; and for a moment the two stared at one another between the pricked ears of the horse. At last,

"M. de Tignonville!" the minister ejaculated.

"La Tribe!"

"It is truly you?"

"Well-I think so," the young man answered.

The minister lifted up his eyes and seemed to call the trees and the clouds and the birds to witness. "Now," he cried, "I know that I am chosen! And that we were instruments to do this thing from the day when the hen saved us in the hay-cart in Paris! Now I know that all is forgiven and all is ordained, and that the faithful of Angers shall to-morrow live and not die!" And with a face radiant, yet solemn, he walked to the young man's stirrup.

An instant Tignonville looked sharply before him. "How far ahead are they?" he asked. His tone, hard and matter-of-fact, was little in harmony with the other's enthusiasm.

"They are resting a league before you, at the ferry. You are in pursuit of them?"

"Yes."

"Not alone?"

"No." The young man's look as he spoke was grim. "I have five behind me-of your kidney, M. La Tribe. They are from the Arsenal. They have lost one his wife, and one his son. The three others-"

"Yes?"

"Sweethearts," Tignonville answered drily. And he cast a singular look at the minister.

But La Tribe's mind was so full of one matter, he could think only of that. "How did you hear of the letters?" he asked.

"The letters?"

"Yes."

"I do not know what you mean."

La Tribe stared. "Then why are you following him?" he asked.

"Why?" Tignonville echoed, a look of hate darkening his face. "Do you ask why we follow-" But on the name he seemed to choke and was silent.

By this time his men had come up, and one answered for him. "Why are we following Hannibal de Tavannes?" he said sternly. "To do to him as he has done to us! To rob him as he has robbed us-of more than gold! To kill him as he has killed ours, foully and by surprise! In his bed if we can! In the arms of his wife if God wills it!"

The speaker's face was haggard from brooding and lack of sleep, but his eyes glowed and burned, as his fellows growled assent.

"'Tis simple why we follow," a second put in. "Is there a man of our faith who will not, when he hears the tale, rise up and stab the nearest of this black brood-though it be his brother? If so, God's curse on him!"

"Amen! Amen!"

"So, and so only," cried the first, "shall there be faith in our land! And our children, our little maids, shall lie safe in their beds!"

"Amen! Amen!"

The speaker's chin sank on his breast, and with his last word the light died out of his eyes. La Tribe looked at him curiously, then at the others. Last of all at Tignonville, on whose face he fancied that he surprised a faint smile. Yet Tignonville's tone when he spoke was grave enough. "You have heard," he said. "Do you blame us?"

"I cannot," the minister answered, shivering. "I can not." He had been for a while beyond the range of these feelings; and in the greenwood, under God's heaven, with the sunshine about him, they jarred on him. Yet he could not blame men who had suffered as these had suffered; who were maddened, as these were maddened, by the gravest wrongs which it is possible for one man to inflict on another. "I dare not," he continued sorrowfully. "But in God's name I offer you a higher and a nobler errand."

"We need none," Tignonville muttered impatiently.

"Yet may others need you," La Tribe answered in a tone of rebuke. "You are not aware that the man you follow bears a packet from the King for the hands of the magistrates of Angers?"

"Ha! Does he?"

"Bidding them do at Angers as his Majesty has done in Paris?"

The men broke into cries of execration. "But he shall not see Angers!" they swore. "The blood that he has shed shall choke him by the way! And as he would do to others it shall be done to him."

La Tribe shuddered as he listened, as he looked. Try as he would, the thirst of these men for vengeance appalled him. "How?" he said. "He has a score and more with him: and you are only six."

"Seven now," Tignonville answered with a smile.

"True, but-"

"And he lies to-night at La Flèche? That is so!"

"It was his intention this morning."

"At the old King's Inn at the meeting of the great roads?"

"It was mentioned," La Tribe admitted, with a reluctance he did not comprehend. "But if the night be fair he is as like as not to lie in the fields."

One of the men pointed to the sky. A dark bank of cloud fresh risen from the ocean, and big with tempest, hung low in the west. "See! God will deliver him into our hands!" he cried.

Tignonville nodded. "If he lie there," he said, "He will." And then to one of his followers, as he dismounted, "Do you ride on," he said, "and stand guard that we be not surprised. And do you, Perrot, tell monsieur. Perrot here, as God wills it," he added with a faint smile which did not escape the minister's eye, "married his wife from the great inn at La Flèche, and he knows the place."

"None better," the man growled. He was a sullen, brooding knave, whose eyes when he looked up surprised by their savage fire.

La Tribe shook his head. "I know it, too," he said. "'Tis strong as a fortress, with a walled court, and all the windows look inwards. The gates are closed an hour after sunset, no matter who is without. If you think, M. de Tignonville, to take him there-"

"Patience, monsieur, you have not heard me," Perrot interposed. "I know it after another fashion. Do you remember a rill of water which runs through the great yard and the stables?"

La Tribe nodded.

"Grated with iron at either end, and no passage for so much as a dog? You do? Well, monsieur, I have hunted rats there, and where the water passes under the wall is a culvert, a man's height in length. In it is a stone, one of those which frame the grating at the entrance, which a strong man can remove-and the man is in!"

"Ay, in! But where!" La Tribe asked, his eyebrows drawn together.

"Well said, monsieur, where?" Perrot rejoined in a tone of triumph. "There lies the point. In the stables, where will be sleeping men, and a snorer on every truss? No, but in a fairway between two stables where the water at its entrance runs clear in a stone channel; a channel deepened in one place that they may draw for the chambers above with a rope and a bucket. The rooms above are the best in the house, four in one row, opening all on the gallery; which was uncovered, in the common fashion, until Queen-Mother Jezebel, passing that way to Nantes, two years back, found the chambers draughty; and that end of the gallery was closed in against her return. Now, monsieur, he and his madame will lie there; and he will feel safe, for there is but one way to those four rooms-through the door which shuts off the covered gallery from the open part. But-" he glanced up an instant and La Tribe caught the smouldering fire in his eyes-"we shall not go in by the door."