Historical Romances: Under the Red Robe, Count Hannibal, A Gentleman of France Part 79

In that posture he slept after a time, watched over by Bigot with looks of rage and pity. And on the room fell a long silence. The sun had lacked three hours of setting when he fell asleep. When he reopened his eyes, and, after lying for a few minutes between sleep and waking, became conscious of his position, of the day, of the things which had happened, and his helplessness--an awakening which wrung from him an involuntary groan--the light in the room was still strong, and even bright. He fancied for a moment that he had merely dozed off and awaked again; and he continued to lie with his face to the wall, courting a return of slumber.

But sleep did not come, and little by little, as he lay listening and thinking and growing more restless, he got the fancy that he was alone. The light fell brightly on the wall to which his face was turned; how could that be if Bigot's broad shoulders still blocked the loophole? Presently, to a.s.sure himself, he called the man by name.

He got no answer.

"Badelon!" he muttered. "Badelon!"

Had he gone, too, the old and faithful? It seemed so, for again no answer came.

He had been accustomed all his life to instant service; to see the act follow the word ere the word ceased to sound. And nothing which had gone before, nothing which he had suffered since his defeat at Angers, had brought him to feel his impotence and his position--and that the end of his power was indeed come--as sharply as this. The blood rushed to his head; almost the tears to eyes which had not shed them since boyhood, and would not shed them now, weak as he was! He rose on his elbow and looked with a full heart; it was as he had fancied.

Badelon's stool was empty; the embrasure--that was empty too. Through its narrow outlet he had a tiny view of the sh.o.r.e and the low rocky hill, of which the summit shone warm in the last rays of the setting sun.

The setting sun! Ay, for the lower part of the hill was growing cold; the sh.o.r.e at its foot was grey. Then he had slept long, and the time was come. He drew a deep breath and listened. But on all within and without lay silence, a silence marked, rather than broken, by the dull fall of a wave on the causeway. The day had been calm, but with the sunset a light breeze was rising.

He set his teeth hard, and continued to listen. An hour before sunset was the time they had named for the exchange. What did it mean? In five minutes the sun would be below the horizon; already the zone of warmth on the hillside was moving and retreating upwards. And Bigot and old Badelon? Why had they left him while he slept? An hour before sunset! Why, the room was growing grey, grey and dark in the corners, and--what was that?

He started, so violently that he jarred his leg, and the pain wrung a groan from him. At the foot of the bed, overlooked until then, a woman lay p.r.o.ne on the floor, her face resting on her outstretched arms. She lay without motion, her head and her clasped hands towards the loophole, her thick, clubbed hair hiding her neck. A woman! Count Hannibal stared, and, fancying he dreamed, closed his eyes, then looked again. It was no phantasm. It was the Countess; it was his wife!

He drew a deep breath, but he did not speak, though the colour rose slowly to his cheek. And slowly his eyes devoured her from head to foot, from the hands lying white in the light below the window to the shod feet; unchecked he took his fill, of that which he had so much desired--the seeing her! A woman p.r.o.ne, with all of her hidden but her hands: a hundred acquainted with her would not have known her. But he knew her, and would have known her from a hundred, nay from a thousand, by her hands alone.

What was she doing here, and in this guise? He pondered; then he looked from her for an instant and saw that while he had gazed at her the sun had set, the light had pa.s.sed from the top of the hill; the world without and the room within were growing cold. Was that the cause she no longer lay quiet? He saw a shudder run through her, and a second; then it seemed to him--or was he going mad?--that she moaned, and prayed in half-heard words, and, wrestling with herself, beat her forehead on her arms, and then was still again, as still as death. By the time the paroxysm had pa.s.sed, the last flush of sunset had faded from the sky, and the hills were growing dark.

CHAPTER x.x.xVI.

HIS KINGDOM.

Count Hannibal could not have said why he did not speak to her at once. Warned by an instinct vague and ill-understood, he remained silent, his eyes riveted on her, until she rose from the floor. A moment later she met his gaze, and he looked to see her start. Instead she stood quiet and thoughtful, regarding him with a kind of sad solemnity, as if she saw not him only, but the dead; while first one tremor and then a second shook her frame.

At length, "It is over!" she whispered. "Patience, monsieur; have no fear, I will be brave. But I must give a little to him."

"To him!" Count Hannibal muttered, his face extraordinarily pale.

She smiled with an odd pa.s.sionateness. "Who was my lover!" she cried, her voice a-thrill. "Who will ever be my lover, though I have denied him, though I have left him to die! It was just. He who has so tried me knows it was just! He whom I have sacrificed--he knows it too, now!

But it is hard to be--just," with a quavering smile. "You who take all may give him a little, may pardon me a little, may have--patience!"

Count Hannibal uttered a strangled cry, between a moan and a roar. A moment he beat the coverlid with his hands in impotence. Then he sank back on the bed. "Water!" he muttered. "Water!"

She fetched it hurriedly, and, raising his head on her arm, held it to his lips. He drank, and lay back again with closed eyes. He lay so still and so long that she thought that he had fainted; but after a pause he spoke. "You have done that?" he whispered, "you have done that?"

"Yes," she answered, shuddering. "G.o.d forgive me! I have done that! I had to do that, or----"

"And is it too late--to undo it?"

"It is too late." A sob choked her voice.

Tears--tears incredible, unnatural--welled from under Count Hannibal's closed eyelids, and rolled sluggishly down his harsh cheek to the edge of his beard. "I would have gone," he muttered. "If you had spoken, I would have spared you this."

"I know," she answered unsteadily; "the men told me."

"And yet----"

"It was just. And you are my husband," she replied. "More, I am the captive of your sword, and as you spared me in your strength, my lord, I spared you in your weakness."

"Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu, madame!" he cried, "at what a cost!"

And that arrested, that touched her in the depths of her grief and her horror; even while the gibbet on the causeway, which had burned itself into her eyeb.a.l.l.s, hung before her. For she knew that it was the cost to her he was counting. She knew that for himself he had ever held life cheap, that he could have seen Tignonville suffer without a qualm. And the thoughtfulness for her, the value he placed on a thing--even on a rival's life--because it was dear to her, touched her home, moved her as few things could have moved her at that moment. She saw it of a piece with all that had gone before, with all that had pa.s.sed between them, since that fatal Sunday in Paris. But she made no sign. More than she had said she would not say; words of love, even of reconciliation, had no place on her lips while he whom she had sacrificed awaited his burial.

And meantime the man beside her lay and found it incredible. "It was just," she had said. And he knew it; Tignonville's folly--that and that only had led them into the snare and caused his own capture. But what had justice to do with the things of this world? In his experience, the strong hand--that was justice, in France; and possession--that was law. By the strong hand he had taken her, and by the strong hand she might have freed herself.

And she had not. There was the incredible thing. She had chosen instead to do justice! It pa.s.sed belief. Opening his eyes on a silence which had lasted some minutes, a silence rendered more solemn by the lapping water without, Tavannes saw her kneeling in the dusk of the chamber, her head bowed over his couch, her face hidden in her hands.

He knew that she prayed, and feebly he deemed the whole a dream. No scene akin to it had had place in his life; and, weakened and in pain, he prayed that the vision might last for ever, that he might never awake.

But by-and-by, wrestling with the dread thought of what she had done, and the horror which would return upon her by fits and spasms, she flung out a hand, and it fell on him. He started, and the movement, jarring the broken limb, wrung from him a cry of pain. She looked up and was going to speak, when a scuffling of feet under the gateway arch, and a confused sound of several voices raised at once, arrested the words on her lips. She rose to her feet and listened. Dimly he could see her face through the dusk. Her eyes were on the door, and she breathed quickly.

A moment or two pa.s.sed in this way, and then from the hurly-burly in the gateway the footsteps of two men--one limped--detached themselves and came nearer and nearer. They stopped without. A gleam of light shone under the door, and someone knocked.

She went to the door, and, withdrawing the bar, stepped quickly back to the bedside, where for an instant the light borne by those who entered blinded her. Then, above the lantern, the faces of La Tribe and Bigot broke upon her, and their shining eyes told her that they bore good news. It was well, for the men seemed tongue-tied. The minister's fluency was gone; he was very pale, and it was Bigot who in the end spoke for both. He stepped forward, and, kneeling, kissed her cold hand.

"My lady," he said, "you have gained all, and lost nothing. Blessed be G.o.d!"

"Blessed be G.o.d!" the minister wept. And from the pa.s.sage without came the sound of laughter and weeping and many voices, with a flutter of lights and flying skirts, and women's feet.

She stared at him wildly, doubtfully, her hand at her throat. "What?"

she said, "he is not dead--M. de Tignonville?"

"No, he is alive," La Tribe answered, "he is alive." And he lifted up his hands as if he gave thanks.

"Alive?" she cried. "Alive! Oh, heaven is merciful! You are sure! You are sure?"

"Sure, Madame, sure. He was not in their hands. He was dismounted in the first shock, it seems, and, coming to himself after a time, crept away and reached St. Gilles, and came hither in a boat. But the enemy learned that he had not entered with us, and of this the priest wove his snare. Blessed be G.o.d, who put it into your heart to escape it!"

The Countess stood motionless and, with closed eyes, pressed her hands to her temples. Once she swayed as if she would fall her length, and Bigot sprang forward to support and save her. But she opened her eyes at that, sighed very deeply, and seemed to recover herself.

"You are sure?" she said faintly. "It is no trick?"

"No, madame, it is no trick," La Tribe answered. "M. de Tignonville is alive, and here."

"Here!" She started at the word. The colour fluttered in her cheek.

"But the keys," she murmured. And she pa.s.sed her hand across her brow.

"I thought--that I had them."

"He has not entered," the minister answered, "for that reason. He is waiting at the postern, where he landed. He came, hoping to be of use to you."

She paused a moment, and when she spoke again her aspect had undergone a subtle change. Her head was high, a flush had risen to her cheeks, her eyes were bright. "Then," she said, addressing La Tribe, "do you, monsieur, go to him, and pray him in my name to retire to St. Gilles, if he can do so without peril. He has no place here--now; and if he can go safely to his home it will be well that he do so. Add, if you please, that Madame de Tavannes thanks him for his offer of aid, but in her husband's house she needs no other protection."