Count Hannibal/Chapter 18
CHAPTER XVIII.
ANDROMEDA, PERSEUS BEING ABSENT.
Little by little—while they fought below—the gloom had thickened, and night had fallen in the room above. But Mademoiselle would not have candles brought. Seated in the darkness, on the uppermost step of the stairs, her hands clasped about her knees, she listened and listened, as if by that action she could avert misfortune; or as if, by going so far forward to meet it, she could turn aside the worst. The women shivering in the darkness about her would fain have struck a light and drawn her back into the room, for they felt safer there. But she was not to be moved. The laughter and chatter of the men in the guard-room, the coming and going of Bigot as he passed, below but out of sight, had no terrors for her; nay, she breathed more freely on the bare open landing of the staircase than in the close confines of a room which her fears made hateful to her. Here at least she could listen, her face unseen; and listening she bore the suspense more easily.
A turn in the staircase, with the noise which proceeded from the guard-room, rendered it difficult to hear what happened in the closed room below. But she thought that if an alarm were raised there she must hear it; and as the moments passed and nothing happened, she began to feel confident that her lover had made good his escape by the window.
Presently she got a fright. Three or four men came from the guard-room and went, as it seemed to her, to the door of the room with the shattered casement. She told herself that she had rejoiced too soon, and her heart stood still. She waited for a rush of feet, a cry, a struggle. But except an uncertain muffled sound which lasted for some minutes, and was followed by a dull shock, she heard nothing more. And presently the men went back whispering, the noise in the guard-room which had been partially hushed broke forth anew, and perplexed but relieved she breathed again. Surely he had escaped by this time. Surely by this time he was far away, in the Arsenal, or in some place of refuge! And she might take courage, and feel that for this day the peril was overpast.
“Mademoiselle will have the lights now?” one of the women ventured.
“No! no!” she answered feverishly, and she continued to crouch where she was on the stairs, bathing herself and her burning face in the darkness and coolness of the stairway. The air entered freely through a window at her elbow, and the place was fresher, were that all, than the room she had left. Javette began to whimper, but she paid no heed to her; a man came and went along the passage below, and she heard the outer door unbarred, and the jarring tread of three or four men who passed through it. But all without disturbance; and afterwards the house was quiet again. And as on this Monday evening the prime virulence of the massacre had begun to abate—though it held after a fashion to the end of the week—Paris without was quiet also. The sounds which had chilled her heart at intervals during two days were no longer heard. A feeling almost of peace, almost of comfort—a drowsy feeling, that was three parts a reaction from excitement—took possession of her. In the darkness her head sank lower and lower on her knees. And half an hour passed, while Javette whimpered, and Madame Carlat slumbered, her broad back propped against the wall.
Suddenly Mademoiselle opened her eyes, and saw, three steps below her, a strange man whose upward way she barred. Behind him came Carlat, and behind him Bigot, lighting both; and in the confusion of her thoughts as she rose to her feet the three, all staring at her in a common amazement, seemed a company. The air entering through the open window beside her blew the flame of the candle this way and that, and added to the nightmare character of the scene; for by the shifting light the men seemed to laugh one moment and scowl the next, and their shadows were now high and now low on the wall. In truth, they were as much amazed at coming on her in that place as she at their appearance; but they were awake, and she newly roused from sleep; and the advantage was with them.
“What is it?” she cried in a panic. “What is it?”
“If Mademoiselle will return to her room?” one of the men said courteously.
“But—what is it?” She was frightened.
“If Mademoiselle”
Then she turned without more and went back into the room, and the three followed, and her woman and Madame Carlat. She stood resting one hand on the table while Javette with shaking fingers lighted the candles. Then—
“Now, Monsieur,” she said in a hard voice, “if you will tell me your business?”
“You do not know me?” The stranger’s eyes dwelt kindly and pitifully on her.
She looked at him steadily, crushing down the fears which knocked at her heart.
“No,” she said. “And yet I think I have seen you.”
“You saw me a week last Sunday,” the stranger answered sorrowfully. “My name is La Tribe. I preached that day, Mademoiselle, before the King of Navarre. I believe that you were there.”
For a moment she stared at him in silence, her lips parted. Then she laughed, a laugh which set the teeth on edge.
“Oh, he is clever!” she cried. “He has the wit of the priests! Or the devil! But you come too late, Monsieur! You come too late! The bird has flown.”
“Mademoiselle”
“I tell you the bird has flown!” she repeated vehemently. And her laugh of joyless triumph rang through the room. “He is clever, but I have outwitted him! I have”
She paused and stared about her wildly, struck by the silence; struck too by something solemn, something pitiful in the faces that were turned on her. And her lip began to quiver.
“What?” she muttered. “Why do you look at me so? He has not”—she turned from one to another—“he has not been taken?”
“M. Tignonville?”
She nodded.
“He is below.”
“Ah!” she said.
They expected to see her break down, perhaps to see her fall. But she only groped blindly for a chair and sat. And for a moment there was silence in the room. It was the Huguenot minister who broke it in a tone formal and solemn.
“Listen, all present!” he said slowly. “The ways of God are past finding out. For two days in the midst of great perils I have been preserved by His hand and fed by His bounty, and I am told that I shall live if, in this matter, I do the will of those who hold me in their power. But be assured—and hearken all,” he continued, lowering his voice to a sterner note. “Rather than marry this woman to this man against her will—if indeed in His sight such marriage can be—rather than save my life by such base compliance, I will die not once but ten times! See. I am ready! I will make no defence!” And he opened his arms as if to welcome the stroke. “If there be trickery here, if there has been practising below, where they told me this and that, it shall not avail! Until I hear from Mademoiselle’s own lips that she is willing, I will not say over her so much as Yea, yea, or Nay, nay!”
“She is willing!”
La Tribe turned sharply, and beheld the speaker. It was Count Hannibal, who had entered a few seconds earlier, and had taken his stand within the door.
“She is willing!” Tavannes repeated quietly. And if, in this moment of the fruition of his schemes, he felt his triumph, he masked it under a face of sombre purpose. “Do you doubt me, man?”
“From her own lips!” the other replied, undaunted—and few could say as much—by that harsh presence. “From no other’s!”
“Sirrah, you”
“I can die. And you can no more, my lord!” the minister answered bravely. “You have no threat can move me.”
“I am not sure of that,” Tavannes answered, more blandly. “But had you listened to me and been less anxious to be brave, M. La Tribe, where no danger is, you had learned that here is no call for heroics! Mademoiselle is willing, and will tell you so.”
“With her own lips?”
Count Hannibal raised his eyebrows. “With her own lips, if you will,” he said. And then, advancing a step and addressing her, with unusual gravity, “Mademoiselle de Vrillac,” he said, “you hear what this gentleman requires. Will you be pleased to confirm what I have said?”
She did not answer, and in the intense silence which held the room in its freezing grasp a woman choked, another broke into weeping. The colour ebbed from the cheeks of more than one; the men fidgeted on their feet.
Count Hannibal looked round, his head high. “There is no call for tears,” he said; and whether he spoke in irony or in a strange obtuseness was known only to himself. “Mademoiselle is in no hurry—and rightly—to answer a question so momentous. Under the pressure of utmost peril, she passed her word; the more reason that, now the time has come to redeem it, she should do so at leisure and after thought. Since she gave her promise, Monsieur, she has had more than one opportunity of evading its fulfilment. But she is a Vrillac, and I know that nothing is farther from her thoughts.”
He was silent a moment; and then, “Mademoiselle,” he said, “I would not hurry you.”
Her eyes were closed, but at that her lips moved. “I am—willing,” she whispered. And a fluttering sigh, of relief, of pity, of God knows what, filled the room.
“You are satisfied, M. La Tribe?”
“I do not”
“Man!” With a growl as of a tiger, Count Hannibal dropped the mask. In two strides he was at the minister’s side, his hand gripped his shoulder; his face, flushed with passion, glared into his. “Will you play with lives?” he hissed. “If you do not value your own, have you no thought of others? Of these? Look and count! Have you no bowels? If she will save them, will not you?”
“My own I do not value.”
“Curse your own!” Tavannes cried in furious scorn. And he shook the other to and fro. “Who thought of your life? Will you doom these? Will you give them to the butcher?”
“My lord,” La Tribe answered, shaken in spite of himself, “if she be willing”
“She is willing.”
“I have nought to say. But I caught her words indistinctly. And without her consent”
“She shall speak more plainly. Mademoiselle”
She anticipated him. She had risen, and stood looking straight before her, seeing nothing.
“I am willing,” she muttered with a strange gesture, “if it must be.”
He did not answer.
“If it must be,” she repeated slowly, and with a heavy sigh. And her chin dropped on her breast. Then, abruptly, suddenly—it was a strange thing to see—she looked up. A change as complete as the change which had come over Count Hannibal a minute before came over her. She sprang to his side; she clutched his arm and devoured his face with her eyes. “You are not deceiving me?” she cried. “You have Tignonville below? You—oh, no, no!” And she fell back from him, her eyes distended, her voice grown suddenly shrill and defiant, “You have not! You are deceiving me! He has escaped, and you have lied to me!”
“I?”
“Yes, you have lied to me!” It was the last fierce flicker of hope when hope seemed dead: the last clutch of the drowning at the straw that floated before the eyes.
He laughed harshly. “You will be my wife in five minutes,” he said, “and you give me the lie? A week, and you will know me better! A month, and—but we will talk of that another time. For the present,” he continued, turning to La Tribe, “do you, sir, tell her that the gentleman is below. Perhaps she will believe you. For you know him.”
La Tribe looked at her sorrowfully; his heart bled for her. “I have seen M. de Tignonville,” he said. “And M. le Comte says truly. He is in the same case with ourselves, a prisoner.”
“You have seen him?” she wailed.
“I left him in the room below, when I mounted the stairs.”
Count Hannibal laughed, the grim mocking laugh which seemed to revel in the pain it inflicted.
“Will you have him for a witness?” he cried. “There could not be a better, for he will not forget. Shall I fetch him?”
She bowed her head, shivering. “Spare me that,” she said. And she pressed her hands to her eyes while an uncontrollable shudder passed over her frame. Then she stepped forward: “I am ready,” she whispered. “Do with me as you will!”
•••••
When they had all gone out and closed the door behind them, and the two whom the minister had joined were left together, Count Hannibal continued for a time to pace the room, his hands clasped at his back, and his head sunk somewhat on his chest. His thoughts appeared to run in a new channel, and one, strange to say, widely diverted from his bride and from that which he had just done. For he did not look her way, or, for a time, speak to her. He stood once to snuff a candle, doing it with an absent face: and once to look, but still absently, and as if he read no word of it, at the marriage writing which lay, the ink still wet, upon the table. After each of these interruptions he resumed his steady pacing to and fro, to and fro, nor did his eye wander once in the direction of her chair.
And she waited. The conflict of emotions, the strife between hope and fear, the final defeat had stunned her; had left her exhausted, almost apathetic. Yet not quite, nor wholly. For when in his walk he came a little nearer to her, a chill perspiration broke out on her brow, and shudderings crept over her; and when he passed farther from her—and then only, it seemed—she breathed again. But the change lay beneath the surface, and cheated the eye. Into her attitude, as she sat, her hands clasped on her lap, her eyes fixed, came no apparent change or shadow of movement.
Suddenly, with a dull shock, she became aware that he was speaking.
“There was need of haste,” he said, his tone strangely low and free from emotion, “for I am under bond to leave Paris to-morrow for Angers, whither I bear letters from the King. And as matters stood, there was no one with whom I could leave you. I trust Bigot; he is faithful, and you may trust him, Madame, fair or foul! But he is not quick-witted. Badelon, also, you may trust. Bear it in mind. Your woman Javette is not faithful; but as her life is guaranteed she must stay with us until she can be securely placed. Indeed, I must take all with me—with one exception—for the priests and monks rule Paris, and they do not love me, nor would spare aught at my word.”
He was silent a few moments. Then he resumed in the same tone, “You ought to know how we, Tavannes, stand. It is by Monsieur and the Queen-Mother; and contra the Guises. We have all been in this matter; but the latter push and we are pushed, and the old crack will reopen. As it is, I cannot answer for much beyond the reach of my arm. Therefore, we take all with us except M. de Tignonville, who desires to be conducted to the Arsenal.”
She had begun to listen with averted eyes. But as he continued to speak surprise awoke in her, and something stronger than surprise—amazement, stupefaction. Slowly her eyes came to him, and when he ceased to speak—
“Why do you tell me these things?” she muttered, her dry lips framing the words with difficulty.
“Because it behoves you to know them,” he answered, thoughtfully tapping the table. “I have no one, save my brother, whom I can trust.”
She would not ask him why he trusted her, nor why he thought he could trust her. For a moment or two she watched him, while he, with his eyes lowered, stood in deep thought. At last he looked up and his eyes met hers.
“Come!” he said abruptly, and in a different tone, “we must end this! Is it to be a kiss or a blow between us?”
She rose, though her knees shook under her; and they stood face to face, her face white as paper.
“What—do you mean?” she whispered.
“Is it to be a kiss or a blow?” he repeated. “A husband must be a lover, Madame, or a master, or both! I am content to be the one or the other, or both, as it shall please you. But the one I will be.”
“Then, a thousand times, a blow,” she cried, her eyes flaming, “from you!”
He wondered at her courage, but he hid his wonder. “So be it!” he answered. And before she knew what he would be at, he struck her sharply across the cheek with the glove which he held in his hand. She recoiled with a low cry, and her cheek blazed scarlet where he had struck it.
“So be it!” he continued sombrely. “The choice shall be yours, but you will come to me daily for the one or the other. If I cannot be lover, Madame, I will be master. And by this sign I will have you know it, daily, and daily remember it.”
She stared at him, her bosom rising and falling, in an astonishment too deep for words. But he did not heed her. He did not look at her again. He had already turned to the door, and while she looked he passed through it, he closed it behind him. And she was alone.