Count Hannibal Part 28

"What is it?" she whispered, commanding herself with an effort. "What is it? If it have aught to do with M. Tignonville--"

"It has not!"

In her surprise--for although she had put the question she had felt no doubt of the answer--she started and turned to him.

"It has not?" she exclaimed almost incredulously.

"No."

"Then what is it, Monsieur?" she replied, a little haughtily. "What can there be that should move me so?"

"Life or death, Madame," he answered solemnly. "Nay, more; for since Providence has given me this chance of speaking to you, a thing of which I despaired, I know that the burden is laid on us, and that it is guilt or it is innocence, according as we refuse the burden or bear it."

"What is it, then?" she cried impatiently. "What is it?"

"I tried to speak to you this morning."

"Was it you, then, whom Madame St. Lo saw stalking me before dinner?

"It was."

She clasped her hands and heaved a sigh of relief. "Thank G.o.d, Monsieur!" she replied. "You have lifted a weight from me. I fear nothing in comparison of that. Nothing!"

"Alas!" he answered sombrely, "there is much to fear, for others if not for ourselves! Do you know what that is which M. de Tavannes bears always in his belt? What it is he carries with such care? What it was he handed to you to keep while he bathed to-day?"

"Letters from the King."

"Yes, but the import of those letters?"

"No."

"And yet, should they be written in letters of blood!" the minister exclaimed, his face kindling. "They should scorch the hands that hold them and blister the eyes that read them. They are the fire and the sword! They are the King's order to do at Angers as they have done in Paris. To slay all of the religion who are found there--and they are many! To spare none, to have mercy neither on the old man nor the unborn child! See yonder hawk!" he continued, pointing with a shaking hand to a falcon which hung light and graceful above the valley, the movement of its wings invisible. "How it disports itself in the face of the sun! How easy its way, how smooth its flight! But see, it drops upon its prey in the rushes beside the brook, and the end of its beauty is slaughter! So is it with yonder company!" His finger sank until it indicated the little camp seated toy-like in the green meadow four hundred feet below them, with every man and horse, and the very camp-kettle, clear-cut and visible, though diminished by distance to fairy-like proportions. "So it is with yonder company!" he repeated sternly. "They play and are merry, and one fishes and another sleeps! But at the end of the journey is death. Death for their victims, and for them the judgment!"

She stood, as he spoke, in the ruined gateway, a walled gra.s.s-plot behind her, and at her feet the stream, the smiling valley, the alders, and the little camp. The sky was cloudless, the scene drowsy with the stillness of an August afternoon. But his words went home so truly that the sunlit landscape before the eyes added one more horror to the picture he called up before the mind.

The Countess turned white and sick. "Are you sure?" she whispered at last.

"Quite sure."

"Ah, G.o.d!" she cried, "are we never to have peace?" And turning from the valley, she walked some distance into the gra.s.s court, and stood. After a time, she turned to him; he had followed her doggedly, pace for pace.

"What do you want me to do?" she cried, despair in her voice. "What can I do?"

"Were the letters he bears destroyed--"

"The letters?"

"Yes, were the letters destroyed," La Tribe answered relentlessly, "he could do nothing! Nothing! Without that authority the magistrates of Angers would not move. He could do nothing. And men and women and children--men and women and children whose blood will otherwise cry for vengeance, perhaps for vengeance on us who might have saved them--will live! Will live!" he repeated, with a softening eye. And with an all- embracing gesture he seemed to call to witness the open heavens, the sunshine and the summer breeze which wrapped them round. "Will live!"

She drew a deep breath. "And you have brought me here," she said, "to ask me to do this?"

"I was sent here to ask you to do this."

"Why me? Why me?" she wailed, and she held out her open hands to him, her face wan and colourless. "You come to me, a woman! Why to me?"

"You are his wife!"

"And he is my husband!"

"Therefore he trusts you," was the unyielding, the pitiless answer. "You, and you alone, have the opportunity of doing this."

She gazed at him in astonishment. "And it is you who say that?" she faltered, after a pause. "You who made us one, who now bid me betray him, whom I have sworn to love? To ruin him whom I have sworn to honour?"

"I do!" he answered solemnly. "On my head be the guilt, and on yours the merit."

"Nay, but--" she cried quickly, and her eyes glittered with pa.s.sion--"do you take both guilt and merit! You are a man," she continued, her words coming quickly in her excitement, "he is but a man! Why do you not call him aside, trick him apart on some pretence or other, and when there are but you two, man to man, wrench the warrant from him? Staking your life against his, with all those lives for prize? And save them or perish?

Why I, even I, a woman, could find it in my heart to do that, were he not my husband! Surely you, you who are a man, and young--"

"Am no match for him in strength or arms," the minister answered sadly.

"Else would I do it! Else would I stake my life, Heaven knows, as gladly to save their lives as I sit down to meat! But I should fail, and if I failed all were lost. Moreover," he continued solemnly, "I am certified that this task has been set for you. It was not for nothing, Madame, nor to save one poor household that you were joined to this man; but to ransom all these lives and this great city. To be the Judith of our faith, the saviour of Angers, the--"

"Fool! Fool!" she cried. "Will you be silent?" And she stamped the turf pa.s.sionately, while her eyes blazed in her white face. "I am no Judith, and no madwoman as you are fain to make me. Mad?" she continued, overwhelmed with agitation, "My G.o.d, I would I were, and I should be free from this!" And, turning, she walked a little way from him with the gesture of one under a crushing burden.

He waited a minute, two minutes, three minutes, and still she did not return. At length she came back, her bearing more composed; she looked at him, and her eyes seized his and seemed as if they would read his soul.

"Are you sure," she said, "of what you have told me? Will you swear that the contents of these letters are as you say?"

"As I live," he answered gravely. "As G.o.d lives."

"And you know--of no other way, Monsieur? Of no other way?" she repeated slowly and piteously.

"Of none, Madame, of none, I swear."

She sighed deeply, and stood sunk in thought. Then, "When do we reach Angers?" she asked heavily.

"The day after to-morrow."

"I have--until the day after to-morrow?"

"Yes. To-night we lie near Vendome."

"And to-morrow night?"

"Near a place called La Fleche. It is possible," he went on with hesitation--for he did not understand her--"that he may bathe to-morrow, and may hand the packet to you, as he did to-day when I vainly sought speech with you. If he does that--"

"Yes?" she said, her eyes on his face.

"The taking will be easy. But when he finds you have it not"--he faltered anew--"it may go hard with you."

She did not speak.