Count Hannibal Part 23

"She would have called you an insolent!" the young man replied hotly.

"And I--"

"No matter what you would have done!" Tavannes said. "Suffice it that she would have answered as you suggest. Yet to-day she has given me her promise."

"Yes," the young man retorted, "in circ.u.mstances in which no man of honour--"

"Let us say in peculiar circ.u.mstances."

"Well?"

"Which still exist! Mark me, M. de Tignonville," Count Hannibal continued, leaning forward and eyeing the young man with meaning, "_which still exist_! And may have the same effect on another's will as on hers!

Listen! Do you hear?" And rising from his seat with a darkening face, he pointed to the partly shuttered window, through which the measured tramp of a body of men came heavily to the ear. "Do you hear, Monsieur?

Do you understand? As it was yesterday it is to-day! They killed the President La Place this morning! And they are searching! They are still searching! The river is not yet full, nor the gibbet glutted! I have but to open that window and denounce you, and your life would hang by no stronger thread than the life of a mad dog which they chase through the streets!"

The younger man had risen also. He stood confronting Tavannes, the cowl fallen back from his face, his eyes dilated.

"You think to frighten me!" he cried. "You think that I am craven enough to sacrifice her to save myself. You--"

"You were craven enough to draw back yesterday, when you stood at this window and waited for death!" Count Hannibal answered brutally. "You flinched then, and may flinch again!"

"Try me!" Tignonville retorted, trembling with pa.s.sion. "Try me!" And then, as the other stared at him and made no movement, "But you dare not!" he cried. "You dare not!"

"No?"

"No! For if I die you lose her!" Tignonville replied in a voice of triumph. "Ha, ha! I touch you there!" he continued. "You dare not, for my safety is part of the price, and is more to you than it is to myself!

You may threaten, M. de Tavannes, you may bl.u.s.ter, and shout and point to the window"--and he mocked, with a disdainful mimicry, the other's gesture--"but my safety is more to you than to me! And 'twill end there!"

"You believe that?"

"I know it!"

In two strides Count Hannibal was at the window. He seized a great piece of the boarding which closed one-half of the opening; he wrenched it away. A flood of evening light burst in through the aperture, and fell on and heightened the flushed pa.s.sion of his features, as he turned again to his opponent.

"Then if you know it," he cried vehemently, "in G.o.d's name act upon it!"

And he pointed to the window.

"Act upon it?"

"Ay, act upon it!" Tavannes repeated, with a glance of flame. "The road is open! If you would save your mistress, behold the way! If you would save her from the embrace she abhors, from the eyes under which she trembles, from the hand of a master, there lies the way! And it is not her glove only you will save, but herself, her soul, her body! So," he continued, with a certain wildness, and in a tone wherein contempt and bitterness were mingled, "to the lions, brave lover! Will you your life for her honour? Will you death that she may live a maid? Will you your head to save her finger? Then, leap down! leap down! The lists are open, the sand is strewed! Out of your own mouth I have it that if you perish she is saved! Then out, Monsieur! Cry 'I am a Huguenot!' And G.o.d's will be done!"

Tignonville was livid. "Rather, your will!" he panted. "Your will, you devil! Nevertheless--"

"You will go! Ha! ha! You will go!"

For an instant it seemed that he would go. Stung by the challenge, wrought on by the contempt in which Tavannes held him, he shot a look of hate at the tempter; he caught his breath, and laid his hand on the edge of the shuttering as if he would leap out.

But it goes hard with him who has once turned back from the foe. The evening light, glancing cold on the burnished pike-points of a group of archers who stood near, caught his eye and went chill to his heart.

Death, not in the arena, not in the sight of shouting thousands, but in this darkening street, with an enemy laughing from the window, death with no revenge to follow, with no certainty that after all she would be safe, such a death could be compa.s.sed only by pure love--the love of a child for a parent, of a parent for a child, of a man for the one woman in the world!

He recoiled. "You would not spare her!" he cried, his face damp with sweat--for he knew now that he would not go. "You want to be rid of me!

You would fool me, and then--"

"Out of your own mouth you are convict!" Count Hannibal retorted gravely.

"It was you who said it! But still I swear it! Shall I swear it to you?"

But Tignonville recoiled another step and was silent.

"No? O _preux chevalier_, O gallant knight! I knew it! Do you think that I did not know with whom I had to deal?" And Count Hannibal burst into harsh laughter, turning his back on the other, as if he no longer counted. "You will neither die with her nor for her! You were better in her petticoats and she in your breeches! Or no, you are best as you are, good father! Take my advice, M. de Tignonville, have done with arms; and with a string of beads, and soft words, and talk of Holy Mother Church, you will fool the women as surely as the best of them! They are not all like my cousin, a flouting, gibing, jeering woman--you had poor fortune there, I fear?"

"If I had a sword!" Tignonville hissed, his face livid with rage. "You call me coward, because I will not die to please you. But give me a sword, and I will show you if I am a coward!"

Tavannes stood still. "You are there, are you?" he said in an altered tone. "I--"

"Give me a sword," Tignonville repeated, holding out his open trembling hands. "A sword! A sword! 'Tis easy taunting an unarmed man, but--"

"You wish to fight?"

"I ask no more! No more! Give me a sword," he urged, his voice quivering with eagerness. "It is you who are the coward!"

Count Hannibal stared at him. "And what am I to get by fighting you?" he reasoned slowly. "You are in my power. I can do with you as I please. I can call from this window and denounce you, or I can summon my men--"

"Coward! Coward!"

"Ay? Well, I will tell you what I will do," with a subtle smile. "I will give you a sword, M. de Tignonville, and I will meet you foot to foot here, in this room, on a condition."

"What is it? What is it?" the young man cried with incredible eagerness.

"Name your condition!"

"That if I get the better of you, you find me a minister."

"I find you a--"

"A minister. Yes, that is it. Or tell me where I can find one."

The young man recoiled. "Never!" he said.

"You know where to find one."

"Never! Never!"

"You can lay your hand on one in five minutes, you know."

"I will not."

"Then I shall not fight you!" Count Hannibal answered coolly; and he turned from him, and back again. "You will pardon me if I say, M. de Tignonville, that you are in as many minds about fighting as about dying!

I do not think that you would have made your fortune at Court. Moreover, there is a thing which I fancy you have not considered. If we fight you may kill me, in which case the condition will not help me much. Or I--which is more likely--" he added, with a harsh smile, "may kill you, and again I am no better placed."

The young man's pallid features betrayed the conflict in his breast. To do him justice, his hand itched for the sword-hilt--he was brave enough for that; he hated, and only so could he avenge himself. But the penalty if he had the worse! And yet what of it? He was in h.e.l.l now, in a h.e.l.l of humiliation, shame, defeat, tormented by this fiend! 'Twas only to risk a lower h.e.l.l.