Stanley J. Weyman

“ You would have done better had you trusted me. I am no bundle of sawdust, Mademoiselle, but a man: a man with an arm to shield and a brain to serve, and—as I am going to teach you—a heart also!’
She shivered.
‘In the orange-coloured sachet that you lost I believe that there were eighteen stones of great value?’
She made no answer, but she looked at me as if I fascinated her. Her very breath seemed to pause and wait on my words. She was so little conscious of anything else, of anything outside ourselves, that a score of men might have come up behind her unseen and unnoticed. ”

“ Slowly the footsteps and voices receded along the lane; slowly, until silence swallowed them, and on the quivering strained senses of the two who remained behind, descended the gentle influence of twilight and the sweet scent of the new-mown hay on which they lay.
La Tribe turned to his companion, his eyes shining. “Our soul is escaped,” he murmured, “even as a bird out of the snare of the fowler. The snare is broken and we are delivered!” His voice shook as he whispered the ancient words of triumph.
But when they came to look in the nest at Tignonville’s feet there was no egg! ”

“ It was a warm night, and she wore nothing over her white dress. I could see her tall, shapely figure and shining eyes, and the firm contour of her beautiful face; which, if any fault might be found with it, erred in being too regular. She looked like a woman formed by nature to meet dangers and difficulties; and even here, at midnight, in the midst of these desperate men, she seemed in place. It was possible that under her queenly exterior, and behind the contemptuous laugh with which she heard the landlord’s story, there lurked a woman’s soul capable of folly and tenderness. ”

“ I rode towards her. She wore her mask, so that I lost the expression of her face as I approached, but the manner in which she turned her horse’s head uncompromisingly towards her brother, and looked past me—as if I were merely a log in the road—was full of meaning. I felt the ground suddenly cut from under me. I saluted her, trembling. ‘Mademoiselle,’ I said, ‘will you grant me the privilege of your company for a few minutes, as we ride.’
‘To what purpose, Sir?’ she answered, in the coldest voice in which I think, a woman ever spoke to a man. ”

“ He fell behind, and I strode back through the sunshine and flowers, and along the grass-grown paths, to the door by which I had come I walked fast, but his shadow kept pace with me, driving out the unaccustomed thoughts in which I had been indulging. Slowly but surely it darkened my mood. After all, this was a little, little place; the people who lived here—I shrugged my shoulders. France, power, pleasure, life, lay yonder in the great city. A boy might wreck himself here for a fancy; a man of the world, never. ”

“ Do you know that he is here on the same errand which brings us here—to arrest M. de Cocheforêt? Do you know that while we go about the business openly and in soldier fashion, it is his part to worm himself into your confidence, to sneak into Madame’s intimacy, to listen at your door, to follow your footsteps, to hang on your lips, to track you—track you until you betray yourselves and the man? Do you know this, and that all his sympathy is a lie, Mademoiselle? His help, so much bait to catch the secret? ”

“ But I knew, or thought that I knew, all now, and the moment he was out of sight I set off towards the Palais Royal like a hound let loose, heeding neither those against whom I bumped in the straiter ways, nor the danger I ran of recognition, nor the miserable aspect I wore, I forgot all save my news, even my own wretchedness, and never halted or stayed to take breath until I stood panting in the doorway of the lodge at the Palais, and met my father-in-law's gaze of disgust and astonishment. ”

“ As Tavannes, after leaving Mademoiselle, rode through the paved lanes, beneath the gabled houses, and under the shadow of the Gothic spires of his day, he saw a score of sights, moving to pity, or wrath, or wonder. He saw Paris as a city sacked; a slaughter-house, where for a week a masque had moved to stately music; blood on the nailed doors and the close-set window bars; and at the corners of the ways strewn garments, broken weapons, the livid dead in heaps. But he saw all with eyes which in all and everywhere, among living and dead, sought only Tignonville ”

“ I nodded, and he guided me through several dim passages to a parlour with an open door, through which the sun shone gaily on the floor. Cheered by the morning air and this sudden change to pleasantness and life, I stepped lightly out.
The two ladies were walking up and down a wide path which bisected the garden. The weeds grew rankly in the gravel underfoot, the rose bushes which bordered the walk thrust their branches here and there in untrained freedom, a dark yew hedge which formed the background bristled with rough shoots and sadly needed trimming. ”

“ Even the rude men at the farthest fire stilled their voices at times; awed, they knew not why, by the silence and vastness of the night.
The Countess long remembered that vigil—for she lay late awake; the cool gloom, the faint wood-rustlings, the distant cry of fox or wolf, the soft glow of the expiring fires that at last left the world to darkness and the stars; above all, the silent wheeling of the planets, which spoke indeed of a supreme Ruler, but crushed the heart under a sense of its insignificance, and of the insignificance of all human revolutions. ”

“ In a twinkling, he thrust a pistol into my face, and cried triumphantly, ‘You are my prisoner!’ while one of the sergeants raised a lanthorn and threw its light into my eyes.
‘What folly is this?’ I said savagely.
The lieutenant’s jaw fell, and he stood for half a minute, paralysed with astonishment. Less than an hour before he had left me at the Château. Thence he had come hither with the briefest delay; yet he found me here before him. He swore fearfully, his face black, his moustachios stiff with rage. ‘What is this? What is it?’ he cried. ‘Where is the man?’
‘What man?’ I said. ”

“ When he returned he found her seated, and outwardly more composed; her arms resting on the parapet-wall, her eyes bent steadily on the long stretch of hard sand which ran northward from the village. By that route her lover had many a time come to her; there she had ridden with him in the early days; and that way they had started for Paris on such a morning and at such an hour as this, with sunshine about them, and larks singing hope above the sand-dunes, and with wavelets creaming to the horses’ hoofs!
Of all which La Tribe, a stranger, knew nothing. ”

“ Why did we suffer him to stay in a suspected house bullying us, and taking your part from hour to hour?’
‘He has a sword, Monsieur,’ she answered with fine contempt.
‘Mille diables!’ he cried, snapping his fingers in a rage. ‘That for his sword! It was because he held the Cardinal’s commission, because he had equal authority with us; because we had no choice.’
‘And that being so, Monsieur, why are you now betraying him?’ she asked keenly.
He swore at that, feeling the stroke go home. ‘You must be mad!’ he said, glaring at her. ‘Mad, if you cannot see that the man is what I tell you he is. ”

“ But how was he to pursue it while those gibbets stood? While their shadows lay even on the chapter table, and darkened the faces of his most forward associates? That for a moment staggered the priest; and had not private hatred, ever renewed by the touch of the scar on his brow, fed the fire of bigotry he had yielded, as the rabble of Angers were yielding, reluctant and scowling, to the hand which held the city in its grip. But to have come so far on the wings of hate, and to do nothing! To have come avowedly to preach a crusade, and to sneak away cowed! ”

“ Monseigneur clapped his hands and swore freely, "Dieu bénisse!" he cried, "It is the dog, sure enough! Here, Flore! Flore!" Then, as the dog jumped on us and licked his hand, he turned to me, "Lucky for you, rascal!" he cried in good humour, "There shall be fifty crowns in your pocket, and your desk again!"
I gasped. "But the reward, Monseigneur?" I stammered.
He bent his black brows. "Reward! You villain!" he thundered, "Is it not enough that I spare you the gallows? Reward? For what do I pay you wages, do you think, except to do my work? And you ask rewards besides? Go and hang yourself! ”

“ Her face began to burn at that, her eyes fell and she faltered.
“My gratitude,” she murmured, with an upward look that prayed for pity. “God knows, Monsieur, you have that!”
“God knows I do not want it!” he answered. And he laughed derisively. “Your gratitude!” And he mocked her tone rudely and coarsely. “Your gratitude!” Then for a minute—for so long a time that she began to wonder and to quake—he was silent. At last, “A fig for your gratitude,” he said. “I want your love! I suppose—cold as you are, and a Huguenot—you can love like other women!” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ESCAPE. In a small back room on the second floor of the inn at Angers, a mean, dingy room which looked into a narrow lane, and commanded no prospect more informing than a blind wall, two men sat, fretting; or, rather, one man sat, his chin resting on his hand, while his companion, less patient or more sanguine, strode ceaselessly to and fro. In the first despair of capture—for they were prisoners—they had made up their minds to the worst, and the slow hours of two days had passed over their heads without kindling more than a faint spark of hope in their breasts. ”

“ 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 compassed 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! ”

“ Tignonville echoed, a look of hate darkening his face. “Do you ask why we follow——” But on the name he seemed to choke and was silent.
By this time his men had come up, and one answered for him.
“Why are we following Hannibal de Tavannes?” he said sternly. “To do to him as he has done to us! To rob him as he has robbed us—of more than gold! To kill him as he has killed ours, foully and by surprise! In his bed if we can! In the arms of his wife if God wills it!”
The speaker’s face was haggard from brooding and lack of sleep, but his eyes glowed and burned, as his fellows growled assent. ”

“ Why should we think to live? What does it matter how it fares with us? We cannot be happy. Happy?” she continued wildly. “Are any happy now? Or is the world all changed in a night? No, we could not be happy. And at least you will live, Tignonville. I have that to console me.”
“Live!” he responded vehemently. “I live? I would rather die a thousand times. A thousand times rather than live shamed! Than see you sacrificed to that devil! Than go out with a brand on my brow, for every man to point at me! I would rather die a thousand times!” ”