Count Hannibal: Chapter 21

Chapter 21

SHE WOULD, AND WOULD NOT.

We noted some way back the ease with which women use one concession as a
stepping-stone to a second; and the lack of magnanimity, amounting almost
to unscrupulousness, which the best display in their dealings with a
retiring foe. But there are concessions which touch even a good woman's
conscience; and Madame de Tavannes, free by the tenure of a blow, and
with that exception treated from hour to hour with rugged courtesy,
shrank appalled before the task which confronted her.

To ignore what La Tribe had told her, to remain passive when a movement
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. But to take the
only other course open to her, to betray her husband and rob him of that,
the loss of which might ruin him, this needed not courage only, not
devotion only, but a hardness proof against reproaches as well as against
punishment. And the Countess was no fanatic. No haze of bigotry
glorified the thing she contemplated, or dressed it in colours other than
its own. Even while she acknowledged the necessity of the act and its
ultimate righteousness, even while she owned the obligation which lay
upon her to perform it, she saw it as 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 some might
pass for punishment. But he had saved her life where many had perished;
and, the wrong done, he had behaved to her with fantastic generosity. In
return for which she was to ruin him? It was not hard to imagine what he
would say of her, and of the reward with which she had requited him.

She pondered over it as they rode that evening, with the weltering sun in
their eyes and the lengthening shadows of the oaks falling athwart the
bracken which fringed the track. Across breezy heaths and over downs,
through green bottoms and by hamlets, from which every human creature
fled at their approach, they ambled on by twos and threes; riding in a
world of their own, so remote, so different from the real world--from
which they came and to which they must return--that she could have wept
in anguish, cursing God for the wickedness of man which lay so heavy on
creation. The gaunt troopers riding at ease with swinging legs and
swaying stirrups--and singing now a refrain from Ronsard, and now one of
those verses of Marot's psalms which all the world had sung three decades
before--wore their most lamb-like aspect. Behind them Madame St. Lo
chattered to Suzanne of a riding mask which had not been brought, or
planned expedients, if nothing sufficiently in the mode could be found at
Angers. And the other women talked and giggled, screamed when they came
to fords, and made much of steep places, where the men must help them. In
time of war death's shadow covers but a day, and sorrow out of sight is
out of mind. Of all the troop whom the sinking sun left within sight of
the lofty towers and vine-clad hills of Vendome, three only wore faces
attuned to the cruel August week just ending; three only, like dark beads
strung far apart on a gay nun's rosary, rode, brooding and silent, in
their places. The Countess was one--the others were the two men whose
thoughts she filled, and whose eyes now and again sought her, La Tribe's
with sombre fire in their depths, Count Hannibal's fraught with a gloomy
speculation, which belied his brave words to Madame St. Lo.

He, moreover, as he rode, had other thoughts; dark ones, which did not
touch her. And she, too, had other thoughts at times, dreams of her
young lover, spasms of regret, a wild revolt of heart, a cry out of the
darkness which had suddenly whelmed her. So that of the three only La
Tribe was single-minded.

This day they rode a long league after sunset, through a scattered oak-
wood, where the rabbits sprang up under their horses' heads and the
squirrels made angry faces at them from the lower branches. Night was
hard upon them when they reached the southern edge of the forest, and
looked across the dusky open slopes to a distant light or two which
marked where Vendome stood.

"Another league," Count Hannibal muttered; and he bade the men light
fires where they were, and unload the 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 do not 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's
heaven."

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

He looked at her sharply, but the fire was not yet kindled; and in the
gloaming her face was a pale blot undecipherable. He stood a moment, but
she did not speak again; and Madame St. Lo bustling up, he moved away to
give an order. By-and-by the fires burned up, and showed the pillared
aisle in which they sat, small groups dotted here and there on the floor
of Nature's cathedral. Through the shadowy Gothic vaulting, the groining
of many boughs which met overhead, a rare star twinkled, as through some
clerestory window; and from the dell below rose 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 Brescian organ. The darkness walled all
in; the night was still; a falling caterpillar sounded. Even the rude
men at the farthest fire stilled their voices at times; awed, they knew
not why, by the silence and vastness of the night.

The Countess long remembered that vigil--for she lay late awake; the cool
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 to darkness and
the stars; above all, the silent wheeling of the planets, which spoke
indeed of a supreme Ruler, but crushed the heart under a sense of its
insignificance, and of the insignificance of all human revolutions.

"Yet, I believe!" she cried, wrestling upwards, wrestling with 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 from which
her soul shrank! The woman, indeed, within her continued to cry out
against this tragedy ever renewed in her path, against this necessity for
choosing evil, or good, ease for herself or life for others. But the
moving heavens, pointing onward to a time when good and evil alike should
be past, strengthened a nature essentially noble; and before she slept no
shame and no suffering seemed--for the moment at least--too great a price
to pay for the lives of little children. Love had been taken from her
life; the pride which would fain answer generosity with generosity--that
must go, too!

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

Presently Madame St. Lo espied the boat, clapped her hands and must have
it. The poplars threw no shade, the flies teased her, the life of a
hermit--in a meadow--was no longer to her taste.

"Let us go on the water!" she cried. "Presently you will go to bathe,
Monsieur, and leave 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, and were
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 fell on
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 the boat for
Madame St. Lo to enter, he gave it to the Countess, as he had given it to
her yesterday. "Have a care of it, Madame," he said in a low voice, "and
do not let it pass out of your hands. To lose it may be to lose my
head."

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

"He is bathing."

"Let him bathe afterwards."

"No," he answered almost harshly; he found a species of pleasure in
showing 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 she turned
towards the boat. La Tribe stood beside the stern, holding it for her to
enter, and as her fingers rested an instant on his arm their eyes met.
His were alight, his arm even quivered; and she shuddered.

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

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

"The sun has caught you, _ma mie_," Madame St. Lo said. "You should ride
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. He
was beckoning to her behind Carlat's back, pointing imperiously to the
water, making signs to her to drop the packet over the side. When she
did not obey--she felt sick and faint--she saw through a mist his brow
grow 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 the stream
was beginning to rise more boldly above the water, and at the head of the
steep thus formed she had espied a late rosebush in bloom; nothing would
now serve but she must land at once and plunder it. The boat was put in
therefore, she jumped ashore, and began to scale 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 died half-born on
her lips; and when the steward looked at her, uncertain what she had
said, she nodded.

"Yes, go!" she muttered. She was pale.

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

The next second the craft floated from the bank, and began to drift
downwards. La Tribe waited until a tree interposed and hid them from the
two whom they had left; then he leaned forward.

"Now, Madame!" he cried 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 beside
himself with impatience. "Why steal it? It is in your hands! You have
it! It is Heaven's own opportunity, it is God's opportunity given to
you!"

For he could not read her mind nor comprehend the scruple which held her
hand. He was single-minded. He had but one aim, one object. He saw the
haggard faces of brave men hopeless; he heard the dying cries of women
and children. Such an opportunity of saving God's elect, of redeeming
the innocent, was in his eyes a gift from Heaven. And having these
thoughts and seeing her hesitate--hesitate when every movement caused him
agony, so imperative was haste, so precious the opportunity--he could
bear the suspense no longer. When she did not answer he stooped forward,
until his knees touched the thwart on which Carlat 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 she
would have done it. But, thus attacked, she resisted instinctively; she
clung to the letters.

"No!" she cried. "No! Let go, Monsieur!" And she tried to drag the
packet from him.

"Give it me!"

"Let go, Monsieur! Do you hear?" she repeated. And, with a vigorous
jerk, she forced it from him--he had caught it by the edge only--and held
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 idea only, was
no longer master of himself. "Go back to your place!"

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

A cry uttered wholly in rage answered hers; it came from Carlat. La
Tribe, however, whose whole mind was fixed on the packet, did not heed,
nor would have heeded, the steward. But the next moment a second cry,
fierce as that of a wild beast, clove the air from the lower and farther
bank; and the Huguenot, recognizing Count Hannibal's voice, involuntarily
desisted and stood erect. A moment the boat rocked perilously under him;
then--for unheeded it had been drifting that way--it softly touched the
bank on which Carlat stood staring and aghast.

La Tribe's chance was gone; he saw that the steward must reach him before
he could succeed in a second attempt. On the other hand, the undergrowth
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 the
Countess's heart, he sprang ashore, plunged among the alders, and in a
moment was gone.

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

Back to chapter list of: Count Hannibal