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

by Stanley John Weyman

  CHAPTER XXI.

  SHE WOULD, AND WOULD NOT.

  We noted some way back the ease with which women use one concession asa stepping-stone to a second; and the lack of magnanimity, amountingalmost to unscrupulousness, which the best display in their dealingswith a retiring foe. But there are concessions which touch even a goodwoman's conscience; and Madame de Tavannes, free by the tenure of ablow, and with that exception treated from hour to hour with ruggedcourtesy, shrank appalled before the task which confronted her.

  To ignore what La Tribe had told her, to remain passive when amovement on her part might save men, women, and children from death,and a whole city from massacre--this was a line of conduct so craven,so selfish that from the first she knew herself incapable of it. Butto take the only other course open to her, to betray her husband androb him of that, the loss of which might ruin him, this needed notcourage only, not devotion only, but a hardness proof againstreproaches as well as against punishment. And the Countess was nofanatic. No haze of bigotry glorified the thing she contemplated, ordressed it in colours other than its own. Even while she acknowledgedthe necessity of the act and its ultimate righteousness, even whileshe owned the obligation which lay upon her to perform it, she saw itas he would see it, and saw herself as he would see her.

  True, he had done her a great wrong; and this in the eyes of somemight pass for punishment. But he had saved her life where many hadperished; and, the wrong done, he had behaved to her with fantasticgenerosity. In return for which she was to ruin him! It was not hardto imagine what he would say of her, and of the reward with which shehad requited him.

  She pondered over it as they rode that evening, with the westering sunin their eyes and the lengthening shadows of the oaks falling athwartthe bracken which fringed the track. Across breezy heaths and overdowns, through green bottoms and by hamlets, from which every humancreature fled at their approach, they ambled on by twos and threes;riding in a world of their own, so remote, so different from the realworld--from which they came and to which they must return--that shecould have wept in anguish, cursing God for the wickedness of manwhich lay so heavy on creation. The gaunt troopers riding at ease withswinging legs and swaying stirrups--and singing now a refrain fromRonsard, and now one of those verses of Marot's psalms which all theworld had sung three decades before--wore their most lamblike aspect.Behind them Madame St. Lo chattered to Suzanne of a riding mask whichhad not been brought, or planned expedients, if nothing sufficientlyin the mode could be found at Angers. And the other women talked andgiggled, screamed when they came to fords, and made much of steepplaces, where the men must help them. In time of war death's shadowcovers but a day, and sorrow out of sight is out of mind. Of all thetroop whom the sinking sun left within sight of the lofty towers andvine-clad hills of Vendome, three only wore faces attuned to the cruelAugust week just ending; three only, like dark beads strung far aparton a gay nun's rosary, rode, brooding and silent, in their places. TheCountess was one; the others were the two men whose thoughts shefilled, and whose eyes now and again sought her, La Tribe's withsombre fire in their depths, Count Hannibal's fraught with a gloomyspeculation, which belied his brave words to Madame St. Lo.

  He, moreover, as he rode, had other thoughts; dark ones, which did nottouch her. And she, too, had other thoughts at times, dreams of heryoung lover, spasms of regret, a wild revolt of heart, a cry out ofthe darkness which had suddenly whelmed her. So that of the three onlyLa Tribe was single-minded.

  This day they rode a long league after sunset, through a scatteredoak-wood, where the rabbits sprang up under their horses' heads andthe squirrels made angry faces at them from the lower branches. Nightwas hard upon them when they reached the southern edge of the forest,and looked across the dusky open slopes to a distant light or twowhich marked where Vendome stood. "Another league," Count Hannibalmuttered; and he bade the men light fires where they were, and unloadthe packhorses. "'Tis pure and dry here," he said. "Set a watch,Bigot, and let two men go down for water. I hear frogs below. You donot fear to be moonstruck, Madame!"

  "I prefer this," she answered in a low voice.

  "Houses are for monks and nuns!" he rejoined heartily. "Give me God'sheaven."

  "The earth is His, but we deface it," she murmured, reverting to herthoughts, and unconscious that it was to him she spoke.

  He looked at her sharply, but the fire was not yet kindled; and in thegloaming her face was a pale blot undecipherable. He stood a moment,but she did not speak again; and Madame St. Lo bustling up, he movedaway to give an order. By-and-by the fires burned up, and showed thepillared aisle in which, they sat, small groups dotted here and thereon the floor of Nature's cathedral. Through the shadowy Gothicvaulting, the groining of many boughs which met overhead, a rare startwinkled, as through some clerestory window; and from the dell belowrose in the night, now the monotonous chanting of the frogs, and now,as some great bull-frog took the note, a diapason worthy of a Brescianorgan. The darkness walled all in; the night was still; a fallingcaterpillar sounded. Even the rude men at the farthest fire stilledtheir voices at times; awed, they knew not why, by the silence andvastness of the night.

  The Countess long remembered that vigil--for she lay late awake; thecool gloom, the faint wood-rustlings, the distant cry of fox or wolf,the soft glow of the expiring fires that at last left the world todarkness and the stars; above all, the silent wheeling of the planets,which spoke indeed of a supreme Ruler, but crushed the heart under asense of its insignificance, and of the insignificance of all humanrevolutions. "Yet, I believe!" she cried, wrestling upwards, wrestlingwith herself. "Though I have seen what I have seen, yet I believe!"

  And though she had to bear what she had to bear, and do that fromwhich her soul shrank! The woman, indeed, within her continued to cryout against this tragedy ever renewed in her path, against thisnecessity for choosing evil or good, ease for herself or life forothers. But the moving heavens, pointing onward to a time when goodand evil alike should be past, strengthened a nature essentiallynoble; and before she slept no shame and no suffering seemed--for themoment at least--too great a price to pay for the lives of littlechildren. Love had been taken from her life; the pride which wouldfain answer generosity with generosity--that must go, too!

  She felt no otherwise when the day came, and the bustle of the startand the common round of the journey put to flight the ideals of thenight. But things fell out in a manner she had not pictured. Theyhalted before noon on the north bank of the Loir, in a level meadowwith lines of poplars running this way and that, and filling all theplace with the soft shimmer of leaves. Blue succory, tiny mirrors ofthe summer sky, flecked the long grass, and the women picked bunchesof them, or, Italian fashion, twined the blossoms in their hair. Aroad ran across the meadow to a ferry, but the ferryman, alarmed bythe aspect of the party, had conveyed his boat to the other side andhidden himself.

  Presently Madame St. Lo espied the boat, clapped her hands and musthave it. The poplars threw no shade, the flies teased her, the life ofa hermit--in a meadow--was no longer to her taste. "Let us go on thewater!" she cried. "Presently you will go to bathe, monsieur, andleave us to grill!"

  "Two livres to the man who will fetch the boat!" Count Hannibal cried.In less than half a minute three men had thrown off their boots, andwere swimming across, amid the laughter and shouts of their fellows.In five minutes the boat was brought.

  It was not large and would hold no more than four. Tavannes' eye fellon Carlat. "You understand a boat," he said. "Go with Madame St. Lo.And you, M. La Tribe."

  "But you are coming?" Madame St. Lo cried, turning to the Countess."Oh, Madame," with a curtsey, "you are not? You----"

  "Yes, I will come," the Countess answered.

  "I shall bathe a short distance up the stream," Count Hannibal said.He took from his belt the packet of letters, and as Carlat held theboat for Madame St. Lo to enter, he gave it to the Countess, as he hadgiven it to her yesterday. "Have a c
are of it, Madame," he said in alow voice, "and do not let it pass out of your hands. To lose it maybe to lose my head."

  The colour ebbed from her cheeks. In spite of herself her shaking handput back the packet. "Had you not better then--give it to Bigot?" shefaltered.

  "He is bathing."

  "Let him bathe afterwards."

  "No," he answered almost harshly; he found a species of pleasure inshowing her that, strange as their relations were, he trusted her."No; take it, Madame. Only have a care of it."

  She took it then, hid it in her dress, and he turned away; and sheturned towards the boat. La Tribe stood beside the stern, holding itfor her to enter, and as her fingers rested an instant on his armtheir eyes met. His were alight, his arm even quivered; and sheshuddered.

  She avoided looking at him a second time, and this was easy, since hetook his seat in the bows beyond Carlat, who handled the oars.Silently the boat glided out on the surface of the stream, and floateddownwards, Carlat now and again touching an oar, and Madame St. Lochattering gaily in a voice which carried far on the water. Now it wasa flowering rush she must have, now a green bough to shield her facefrom the sun's reflection; and now they must lie in some cool, shadowypool under fern-clad banks, where the fish rose heavily, and thetrickle of a rivulet fell down over stones.

  It was idyllic. But not to the Countess. Her face burned, her templesthrobbed, her fingers gripped the side of the boat in the vain attemptto steady her pulses. The packet within her dress scorched her. Thegreat city and its danger, Tavannes and his faith in her, the need ofaction, the irrevocableness of action hurried through her brain. Theknowledge that she must act now--or never--pressed upon her withdistracting force. Her hand felt the packet, and fell again nerveless.

  "The sun has caught you, _ma mie_," Madame St. Lo said. "You shouldride in a mask as I do."

  "I have not one with me," she muttered, her eyes on the water.

  "And I but an old one. But at Angers----"

  The Countess heard no more; on that word she caught La Tribe's eye. Hewas beckoning to her behind Carlat's back, pointing imperiously to thewater, making signs to her to drop the packet over the side. When shedid not obey--she felt sick and faint--she saw through a mist his browgrow dark. He menaced her secretly. And still the packet scorched her;and twice her hand went to it, and dropped again empty.

  On a sudden Madame St. Lo cried out. The bank on one side of thestream was beginning to rise more boldly above the water, and at thehead of the steep thus formed she had espied a late rose-bush inbloom; nothing would now serve but she must land at once and plunderit. The boat was put in therefore, she jumped ashore, and began toscale the bank.

  "Go with Madame!" La Tribe cried, roughly nudging Carlat in the back."Do you not see that she cannot climb the bank! Up, man, up!"

  The Countess opened her mouth to cry "No!" but the word diedhalf-born on her lips; and when the steward looked at her, uncertainwhat she had said, she nodded. "Yes, go!" she muttered. She was pale.

  "Yes, man, go!" cried the minister, his eyes burning. And he almostpushed the other out of the boat.

  The next second the craft floated from the bank, and began to driftdownwards. La Tribe waited until a tree interposed and hid them fromthe two whom they had left; then he leaned forward. "Now, Madame!" hecried imperiously. "In God's name, now!"

  "Oh!" she cried. "Wait! Wait! I want to think."

  "To think?"

  "He trusted me!" she wailed. "He trusted me! How can I do it?"Nevertheless, and even while she spoke, she drew forth the packet.

  "Heaven has given you the opportunity!"

  "If I could have stolen it!" she answered.

  "Fool!" he returned rocking himself to and fro and fairly besidehimself with impatience. "Why steal it? It is in your hands! You haveit! It is Heaven's own opportunity, it is God's opportunity given toyou!"

  For he could not read her mind nor comprehend the scruple which heldher hand. He was single-minded. He had but one aim, one object. He sawthe haggard faces of brave men hopeless; he heard the dying cries ofwomen and children. Such an opportunity of saving God's elect, ofredeeming the innocent, was in his eyes a gift from Heaven. And havingthese thoughts and seeing her hesitate--hesitate when every movementcaused him agony, so imperative was haste, so precious theopportunity--he could bear the suspense no longer. When she did notanswer he stooped forward, until his knees touched the thwart on whichCarlat had sat; then without a word he flung himself forward, and,with one hand far extended, grasped the packet.

  Had he not moved, she would have done his will; almost certainly shewould have done it. But, thus attacked, she resisted instinctively;she clung to the letters. "No!" she cried. "No! Let go, monsieur!" Andshe tried to drag the packet from him.

  "Give it me!"

  "Let go, monsieur! Do you hear!" she repeated. And with a vigorousjerk she forced it from him--he had caught it by the edge only--andheld it behind her. "Go back, and----"

  "Give it me!" he panted.

  "I will not!"

  "Then throw it overboard!"

  "I will not!" she cried again, though his face, dark with passion,glared into hers, and it was clear that the man, possessed by one ideaonly, was no longer master of himself. "Go back to your place!"

  "Give it me," he gasped, "or I will upset the boat!" And seizing herby the shoulder he reached over her, striving to take hold of thepacket which she held behind her. The boat rocked; and as much in rageas fear she screamed.

  A cry uttered wholly in rage answered hers; it came from Carlat. LaTribe, however, whose whole mind was fixed on the packet, did notheed, nor would have heeded, the steward. But the next moment a secondcry, fierce as that of a wild beast, clove the air from the lower andfarther bank; and the Huguenot, recognising Count Hannibal's voice,involuntarily desisted and stood erect. A moment the boat rockedperilously under him; then--for unheeded it had been drifting thatway--it softly touched the bank on which Carlat stood staring andaghast.

  La Tribe's chance was gone; he saw that the steward must reach himbefore he could succeed in a second attempt. On the other hand, theundergrowth on the bank was thick, he could touch it with his hand,and if he fled at once he might escape.

  He hung an instant irresolute; then, with a look which went to theCountess's heart, he sprang ashore, plunged among the alders, and in amoment was gone.

  "After him! After him!" thundered Count Hannibal. "After him, man!"and Carlat, stumbling down the steep slope and through the roughbriars, did his best to obey. But in vain. Before he reached thewater's edge, the noise of the fugitive's retreat had grown faint. Afew seconds and it died away.