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 westering 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 lamblike 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 Vendôme, 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 Vendôme 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 rose-bush 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, recognising 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.
The impulse of La Tribe's foot as he landed had driven the boat into the stream. It drifted slowly downward, and if naught intervened would take the ground on Count Hannibal's side, a hundred and fifty yards below him. He saw this, and walked along the bank, keeping pace with it, while the Countess sat motionless, crouching in the stern of the craft, her fingers strained about the fatal packet. The slow glide of the boat, as almost imperceptibly it approached the low bank; the stillness of the mirror-like surface on which it moved, leaving only the faintest ripple behind it; the silence--for under the influence of emotion Count Hannibal too was mute--all were in tremendous contrast with the storm which raged in her breast.
Should she--should she even now, with his eyes on her, drop the letters over the side? It needed but a movement. She had only to extend her hand, to relax the tension of her fingers, and the deed was done. It needed only that; but the golden sands of opportunity were running out--were running out fast. Slowly and more slowly, silently and more silently, the boat slid in towards the bank on which he stood, and still she hesitated. The stillness, and the waiting figure, and the watching eyes now but a few feet distant, weighed on her and seemed to paralyse her will. A foot, another foot! A moment and it would be too late, the last of the sands would have run out. The bow of the boat rustled softly through the rushes; it kissed the bank. And her hand still held the letters.
"You are not hurt?" he asked curtly.
"No."
"The scoundrel might have drowned you. Was he mad?"
She was silent. He held out his hand, and she gave him the packet. "I owe you much," he said, a ring of gaiety, almost of triumph, in his tone. "More than you guess, Madame. God made you for a soldier's wife, and a mother of soldiers. What? You are not well, I am afraid?"
"If I could sit down a minute," she faltered. She was swaying on her feet.
He supported her across the belt of meadow which fringed the bank, and made her recline against a tree. Then as his men began to come up--for the alarm had reached them--he would have sent two of them in the boat to fetch Madame St. Lo to her. But she would not let him. "Your maid, then?" he said.
"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.
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."
"The bucket rises through a trap?"
"In the gallery? To be sure, monsieur. In the corner beyond the fourth door. There shall he fall into the pit which he dug for others, and the evil that he planned rebound on his own head!"
La Tribe was silent. "What think you of it?" Tignonville asked.
"That it is cleverly planned," the minister answered.
"No more than that!"
"No more until I have eaten."
"Get him something!" Tignonville replied in a surly tone. "And we may as well eat, ourselves. Lead the horses into the wood. And do you, Perrot, call Tuez-les-Moines, who is forward. Two hours' riding should bring us to La Flèche. We need not leave here, therefore, until the sun is low. To dinner! To dinner!"
Probably he did not feel the indifference he affected, for his face as he ate grew darker, and from time to time he shot a glance, barbed with suspicion, at the minister. La Tribe on his side remained silent, although the men ate apart. He was in doubt, indeed, as to his own feelings. His instinct and his reason were at odds. Through all, however, a single purpose, the rescue of Angers, held good, and gradually other things fell into their places. When the meal was at an end, and Tignonville challenged him, he was ready.
"Your enthusiasm seems to have waned," the younger man said with a sneer, "since we met, monsieur! May I ask now if you find any fault with the plan?"
"With the plan, none."
"If it was Providence brought us together, was it not Providence furnished me with Perrot who knows La Flèche? If it was Providence brought the danger of the faithful in Angers to your knowledge, was it not Providence set us on the road--without whom you had been powerless?"
"I believe it!"
"Then, in His name, what is the matter?" Tignonville rejoined with a passion of which the other's manner seemed an inadequate cause. "What will you? What is it?"
"I would take your place," La Tribe answered quietly.
"My place?"
"Yes."
"What, are we too many?"
"We are enough without you, M. Tignonville," the minister answered. "These men, who have wrongs to avenge, God will justify them."
Tignonville's eyes sparkled with anger. "And have I no wrongs to avenge?" he cried. "Is it nothing to lose my mistress, to be robbed of my wife, to see the woman I love dragged off to be a slave and a toy? Are these no wrongs?"
"He spared your life, if he did not save it," the minister said solemnly. "And hers. And her servants."
"To suit himself."
La Tribe spread out his hands.
"To suit himself! And for that you wish him to go free?" Tignonville cried in a voice half-choked with rage. "Do you know that this man, and this man alone, stood forth in the great Hall of the Louvre, and when even the King flinched, justified the murder of our people? After that is he to go free?"
"At your hands," La Tribe answered quietly. "You alone of our people must not pursue him." He would have added more, but Tignonville would not listen.
Brooding on his wrongs behind the wall of the Arsenal, he had let hatred eat away his more generous instincts. Vain and conceited, he fancied that the world laughed at the poor figure he had cut; and the wound in his vanity festered until nothing would serve but to see the downfall of his enemy. Instant pursuit, instant vengeance--only these, he fancied, could restore him in his fellows' eyes.
In his heart he knew what would become him better. But vanity is a potent motive: and his conscience, even when supported by La Tribe, struggled but weakly. From neither would he hear more. "You have travelled with him, until you side with him!" he cried violently. "Have a care, monsieur, have a care lest we think you papist!" And walking over to the men he bade them saddle; adding a sour word which turned their eyes, in no friendly gaze, on the minister.
After that La Tribe said no more. Of what use would it have been?
But as darkness came on and cloaked the little troop, and the storm which the men had foreseen began to rumble in the west, his distaste for the business waxed. The summer lightning which presently began to play across the sky revealed not only the broad gleaming stream, between which and a wooded hill their road ran, but the faces of his companions; and these in their turn shed a grisly light on the bloody enterprise towards which they were set. Nervous and ill at ease, the minister's mind dwelt on the stages of that enterprise; the stealthy entrance through the waterway, the ascent through the trap, the surprise, the slaughter in the sleeping-chamber. And either because he had lived for days in the victim's company, or was swayed by the arguments he had addressed to another, the prospect shook his soul.
In vain he told himself that this was the oppressor; he saw only the man, fresh roused from sleep, with the horror of impending dissolution in his eyes. And when the rider, behind whom he sat, pointed to a faint spark of light, at no great distance before them, and whispered that it was St. Agnes 's Chapel, hard by the inn, he could have cried with the best Catholic of them all, "Inter pontem et fontem, Domine!" Nay, some such words did pass his lips.
For the man before him turned half-way in his saddle. "What?" he asked.
But the Huguenot did not explain.