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 cas.e.m.e.nt to the sh.o.r.e--"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 pa.s.sed from them to the marriage and the blow; to the scene in the meadow beside the river; to the last ride between La Fleche 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.
Lanterns began to flit to and fro. Sulkily men were saddling and preparing for the road. It was far to Challans, farther to Lege--more than one day, and many a weary league to Ponts de Ce 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 pa.s.sed 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.
A GENTLEMAN OF FRANCE
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER
I. The Sport of Fools.
II. The King of Navarre.
III. Boot And Saddle.
IV. Mademoiselle de la Vire.
V. The Road to Blois.
VI. My Mother"s Lodging.
VII. Simon Fleix.
VIII. An Empty Room.
IX. The House in the Ruelle d"Arcy.
X. The Fight on the Stairs.
XI. The Man at the Door.
XII. Maximilian de Bethune, Baron de Rosny.
XIII. At Rosny.