Count Hannibal Part 25

"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, crus.h.i.+ng 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 G.o.d 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 a.s.sured--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 pa.s.sed 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 G.o.d 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 pa.s.sion, 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 antic.i.p.ated 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?"