CHAPTER XXXVI.
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 passionateness. “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. “God 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 eyeballs, 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 its 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 all that had gone before, with all that had passed 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 passed 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 passed 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 some one 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 lanthorn, 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 God!”
“Blessed be God!” the minister wept. And from the passage 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 God, 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 passed 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.”
Bigot’s eyes sparkled with joy.
The minister hesitated. “No more, Madame?” he faltered. He was tender-hearted, and Tignonville was of his people.
“No more,” she said gravely, bowing her head. “It is not M. de Tignonville I have to thank, but Heaven’s mercy, that I do not stand here at this moment unhappy as I entered—a woman accursed, to be pointed at while I live. And the dead”—she pointed solemnly through the dark casement to the shore—“the dead lie there.”
La Tribe went.
She stood a moment in thought, and then took the keys from the rough stone window-ledge on which she had laid them when she entered. As the cold iron touched her fingers she shuddered. The contact awoke again the horror and misery in which she had groped, a lost thing, when she last felt that chill.
“Take them,” she said; and she gave them to Bigot. “Until my lord can leave his couch they will remain in your charge, and you will answer for all to him. Go, now, take the light; and in half an hour send Madame Carlat to me.”
A wave broke heavily on the causeway and ran down seething to the sea; and another and another, filling the room with rhythmical thunders. But the voice of the sea was no longer the same in the darkness, where the Countess knelt in silence beside the bed—knelt, her head bowed on her clasped hands, as she had knelt before, but with a mind how different, with what different thoughts! Count Hannibal could see her head but dimly, for the light shed upwards by the spume of the sea fell only on the rafters. But he knew she was there, and he would fain, for his heart was full, have laid his hand on her hair.
And yet he would not. He would not, out of pride. Instead he bit on his harsh beard, and lay looking upward to the rafters, waiting what would come. He who had held her at his will now lay at hers, and waited. He who had spared her life at a price now took his own a gift at her hands, and bore it.
“Afterwards, Madame de Tavannes”
His mind went back by some chance to those words—the words he had neither meant nor fulfilled. It passed from them to the marriage and the blow; to the scene in the meadow beside the river; to the last ride between La Flèche and Angers—the ride during which he had played with her fears and hugged himself on the figure he would make on the morrow. The figure? Alas! of all his plans for dazzling her had come—this! Angers had defeated him, a priest had worsted him. In place of releasing Tignonville after the fashion of Bayard and the Paladins, and in the teeth of snarling thousands, he had come near to releasing him after another fashion and at his own expense. Instead of dazzling her by his mastery and winning her by his magnanimity, he lay here, owing her his life, and so weak, so broken, that the tears of childhood welled up in his eyes.
Out of the darkness a hand, cool and firm, slid into his, clasped it tightly, drew it to warm lips, carried it to a woman’s bosom.
“My lord,” she murmured, “I was the captive of your sword, and you spared me. Him I loved you took and spared him too—not once or twice. Angers, also, and my people you would have saved for my sake. And you thought I could do this! Oh! shame, shame!” But her hand held his always.
“You loved him,” he muttered.
“Yes, I loved him,” she answered slowly and thoughtfully. “I loved him.” And she fell silent a minute. Then, “And I feared you,” she added, her voice low. “Oh, how I feared you—and hated you!”
“And now?”
“I do not fear him,” she answered, smiling in the darkness. “Nor hate him. And for you, my lord, I am your wife and must do your bidding, whether I will or no. I have no choice.”
He was silent.
“Is that not so?” she asked.
He tried weakly to withdraw his hand.
But she clung to it. “I must bear your blows or your kisses. I must be as you will and do as you will, and go happy or sad, lonely or with you, as you will! As you will, my lord! For I am your chattel, your property, your own. Have you not told me so?”
“But your heart,” he cried fiercely, “is his! Your heart, which you told me in the meadow could never be mine!”
“I lied,” she murmured, laughing tearfully, and her hands hovered over him. “It has come back! And it is on my lips.”
And she leant over and kissed him. And Count Hannibal knew that he had entered into his kingdom, the sovereignty of a woman’s heart.
•••••
An hour later there was a stir in the village on the mainland. Lanthorns began to flit to and fro. Sulkily men were saddling and preparing for the road. It was far to Challans, farther to Lège—more than one day, and many a weary league to Ponts de Cé and the Loire. The men who had ridden gaily southwards on the scent of spoil and revenge turned their backs on the castle with many a sullen oath and word. They burned a hovel or two, and stripped such as they spared, after the fashion of the day; and it had gone ill with the peasant woman who fell into their hands. Fortunately, under cover of the previous night every soul had escaped from the village, some to sea, and the rest to take shelter among the sand-dunes; and as the troopers rode up the path from the beach, and through the green valley, where their horses shied from the bodies of the men they had slain, there was not an eye to see them go.
Or to mark the man who rode last, the man of the white face—scarred on the temple—and the burning eyes, who paused on the brow of the hill, and, before he passed beyond, cursed with quivering lips the foe who had escaped him. The words were lost, as soon as spoken, in the murmur of the sea on the causeway; the sea, fit emblem of the Eternal, which rolled its tide regardless of blessing or cursing, good or ill will, nor spared one jot of ebb or flow because a puny creature had spoken to the night.
THE END.
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