Historical Romances: Under the Red Robe, Count Hannibal, A Gentleman of France Part 60

"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 gra.s.s 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 G.o.d 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 pa.s.sion, 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 pa.s.sionate 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 pa.s.sion. 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 gra.s.ses.

CHAPTER XXIII.

A MIND, AND NOT A MIND.

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 ma.s.s 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 gra.s.s 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 G.o.d 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 gra.s.s. 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 p.r.i.c.ked ears of the horse. At last,

"M. de Tignonville!" the minister e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed.

"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 a.r.s.enal. 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.