CHAPTER XXVI.
TEMPER.
It was his gaiety, that strange unusual gaiety, still continuing, which on the following day began by perplexing and ended by terrifying the Countess. She could not doubt that he had missed the packet on which so much hung and of which he had indicated the importance. But if he had missed it, why, she asked herself, did he not speak? Why did he not cry the alarm, search and question and pursue? Why did he not give her that opening to tell the truth, without which even her courage failed, her resolution died within her?
Above all, what was the secret of his strange merriment? Of the snatches of song which broke from him, only to be hushed by her look of astonishment? Of the parades which his horse, catching the infection, made under him, as he tossed his riding-cane high in the air and caught it?
Ay, what? Why, when he had suffered so great a loss, when he had been robbed of that of which he must give account—why did he cast off his melancholy and ride like the youngest? She wondered what the men thought, and looking, saw them stare, saw that they watched him stealthily, saw that they laid their heads together. What were they thinking of it? She could not tell; and slowly a terror, more insistent than any to which the extremity of violence would have reduced her, began to grip her heart.
Twenty hours of rest had lifted her from the state of collapse into which the events of the night had cast her; still her limbs at starting had shaken under her. But the cool freshness of the early summer morning, and the sight of the green landscape and the winding Loir, beside which their road ran, had not failed to revive her spirits; and if he had shown himself merely gloomy, merely sunk in revengeful thoughts, or darting hither and thither the glance of suspicion, she felt that she could have faced him, and on the first opportunity could have told him the truth.
But his new mood veiled she knew not what. It seemed, if she comprehended it at all, the herald of some bizarre, some dreadful vengeance, in harmony with his fierce and mocking spirit. Before it her heart became as water. Even her colour little by little left her cheeks. She knew that he had only to look at her now to read the truth; that it was written in her face, in her shrinking figure, in the eyes which now guiltily sought and now avoided his. And feeling sure that he did read it and know it, she fancied that he licked his lips, as the cat which plays with the mouse; she fancied that he gloated on her terror and her perplexity.
This, though the day and the road were warrants for all cheerful thoughts. On one side vineyards clothed the warm red slopes, and rose in steps from the valley to the white buildings of a convent. On the other the stream wound through green flats where the black cattle stood knee-deep in grass, watched by wild-eyed and half-naked youths. Again the travellers lost sight of the Loir, and crossing a shoulder, rode through the dim aisles of a beech-forest, through deep rustling drifts of last year’s leaves. And out again and down again they passed, and turning aside from the gateway, trailed along beneath the brown machicolated wall of an old town, from the crumbling battlements of which faces half-sleepy, half-suspicious, watched them as they moved below through the glare and heat. Down to the river-level again, where a squalid anchorite, seated at the mouth of a cave dug in the bank, begged of them, and the bell of a monastery on the farther bank tolled slumberously the hour of Nones.
And still he said nothing, and she, cowed by his mysterious gaiety, yet spurning herself for her cowardice, was silent also. He hoped to arrive at Angers before nightfall. What, she wondered, shivering, would happen there? What was he planning to do to her? How would he punish her? Brave as she was, she was a woman, with a woman’s nerves; and fear and anticipation got upon them; and his silence—his silence which must mean a thing worse than words!
And then on a sudden, piercing all, a new thought. Was it possible that he had other letters? If his bearing were consistent with anything, it was consistent with that. Had he other genuine letters, or had he duplicate letters, so that he had lost nothing, but instead had gained the right to rack and torture her, to taunt and despise her?
That thought stung her into sudden self-betrayal. They were riding along a broad dusty track which bordered a stone causey raised above the level of winter floods. Impulsively she turned to him.
“You have other letters!” she cried. “You have other letters!” And freed for the moment from her terror, she fixed her eyes on his and strove to read his face.
He looked at her, his mouth grown hard. “What do you mean, Madame?” he asked,
“You have other letters?”
“For whom?”
“From the King, for Angers!”
He saw that she was going to confess, that she was going to derange his cherished plan; and unreasonable anger awoke in the man who had been more than willing to forgive a real injury.
“Will you explain?” he said between his teeth. And his eyes glittered unpleasantly. “What do you mean?”
“You have other letters,” she cried, “besides those which I stole.”
“Which you stole?” He repeated the words without passion. Enraged by this unexpected turn, he hardly knew how to take it.
“Yes, I!” she cried. “I! I took them from under your pillow!”
He was silent a minute. Then he laughed and shook his head.
“It will not do, Madame,” he said, his lip curling. “You are clever, but you do not deceive me.”
“Deceive you?”
“Yes.”
“You do not believe that I took the letters?” she cried in great amazement.
“No,” he answered, “and for a good reason.” He had hardened his heart now. He had chosen his line, and he would not spare her.
“Why, then?” she cried. “Why?”
“For the best of all reasons,” he answered. “Because the person who stole the letters was seized in the act of making his escape, and is now in my power.”
“The person—who stole the letters?” she faltered.
“Yes, Madame.”
“Do you mean M. de Tignonville?”
“You have said it.”
She turned white to the lips, and trembling, could with difficulty sit her horse. With an effort she pulled it up, and he stopped also. Their attendants were some way ahead.
“And you have the letters?” she whispered, her eyes meeting his. “You have the letters?”
“No, but I have the thief!” Count Hannibal answered with sinister meaning. “As I think you knew, Madame,” he continued ironically, “a while back before you spoke.”
“I? Oh no, no!” and she swayed in her saddle. “What—what are you—going to do?” she muttered after a moment’s stricken silence.
“To him?”
“Yes.”
“The magistrates will decide, at Angers.”
“But he did not do it! I swear he did not.”
Count Hannibal shook his head coldly.
“I swear, Monsieur, I took the letters!” she repeated piteously. “Punish me!” Her figure, bowed like an old woman’s over the neck of her horse, seemed to crave his mercy.
Count Hannibal smiled.
“You do not believe me?”
“No,” he said. And then, in a tone which chilled her, “If I did believe you,” he continued, “I should still punish him!” She was broken; but he would see if he could not break her further. He would try if there were no weak spot in her armour. He would rack her now, since in the end she must go free. “Understand, Madame,” he continued in his harshest tone, “I have had enough of your lover. He has crossed my path too often. You are my wife, I am your husband. In a day or two there shall be an end of this farce and of him.”
“He did not take them!” she wailed, her face sinking lower on her breast. “He did not take them! Have mercy!”
“Any way, Madame, they are gone!” Tavannes answered. “You have taken them between you; and as I do not choose that you should pay, he will pay the price.”
If the discovery that Tignonville had fallen into her husband’s hands had not sufficed to crush her, Count Hannibal’s tone must have done so. The shoot of new life which had raised its head after those dreadful days in Paris, and—for she was young—had supported her under the weight which the peril of Angers had cast on her shoulders, died, withered under the heel of his brutality. The pride which had supported her, which had won Tavannes’ admiration and exacted his respect, sank, as she sank herself, bowed to her horse’s neck, weeping bitter tears before him. She abandoned herself to her misery, as she had once abandoned herself in the upper room in Paris.
And he looked at her. He had willed to crush her; he had his will, and he was not satisfied. He had bowed her so low that his magnanimity would now have its full effect, would shine as the sun into a dark world; and yet he was not happy. He could look forward to the morrow, and say, “She will understand me, she will know me!” and, lo, the thought that she wept for her lover stabbed him, and stabbed him anew; and he thought, “Rather would she death from him, than life from me! Though I give her creation, it will not alter her! Though I strike the stars with my head, it is he who fills her world.”
The thought spurred him to further cruelty, impelled him to try if, prostrate as she was, he could not draw a prayer from her.
“You don’t ask after him?” he scoffed. “He may be before or behind? Or wounded or well? Would you not know, Madame? And what message he sent you? And what he fears, and what hope he has? And his last wishes? And—for while there is life there is hope—would you not learn where the key of his prison lies to-night? How much for the key to-night, Madame?”
Each question fell on her like the lash of a whip; but as one who has been flogged into insensibility, she did not wince. That drove him on: he felt a mad desire to hear her prayers, to force her lower, to bring her to her knees. And he sought about for a keener taunt. Their attendants were almost out of sight before them; the sun, declining apace, was in their eyes.
“In two hours we shall be in Angers,” he said. “Mon Dieu, Madame, it was a pity, when you two were taking letters, you did not go a step farther. You were surprised, or I doubt if I should be alive to-day!”
Then she did look up. She raised her head and met his gaze with such wonder in her eyes, such reproach in her tear-stained face, that his voice sank on the last word.
“You mean—that I would have murdered you?” she said. “I would have cut off my hand first. What I did”—and now her voice was as firm as it was low—“what I did, I did to save my people. And if it were to be done again, I would do it again!”
“You dare to tell me that to my face?” he cried, hiding feelings which almost choked him. “You would do it again, would you? Mon Dieu, Madame, you need to be taught a lesson!”
And by chance, meaning only to make the horses move on again, he raised his whip. She thought that he was going to strike her, and she flinched at last. The whip fell smartly on her horse’s quarters, and it sprang forward. Count Hannibal swore between his teeth.
He had turned pale, she red as fire. “Get on! Get on!” he cried harshly. “We are falling behind!” And riding at her heels, flipping her horse now and then, he forced her to trot on until they overtook the servants.