Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman

by Stanley J Weyman

  To Tignonville, all that had happened, all that was happening, seemed a dream: a dream his entrance under the gentle impulsion of this man who dominated him; a dream Mademoiselle standing behind the table with blanched face and stony eyes; a dream the cowering servants huddled in a corner beyond her; a dream his silence, her silence, the moment of waiting before Count Hannibal spoke.

  When he did speak it was to count the servants. “One, two, three, four, five,” he said. “And two of them women. Mademoiselle is but poorly attended. Are there not” — and he turned to her— “some lacking?”

  The girl opened her lips twice, but no sound issued. The third time —

  “Two went out,” she muttered in a hoarse, strangled voice, “and have not returned.”

  “And have not returned?” he answered, raising his eyebrows. “Then I fear we must not wait for them. We might wait long!” And turning sharply to the panic-stricken servants, “Go you to your places! Do you not see that Mademoiselle waits to be served?”

  The girl shuddered and spoke.

  “Do you wish me,” she muttered, in the same strangled tone, “to play this farce — to the end?”

  “The end may be better, Mademoiselle, than you think,” he answered, bowing. And then to the miserable servants, who hung back afraid to leave the shelter of their mistress’s skirts, “To your places!” he cried. “Set Mademoiselle’s chair. Are you so remiss on other days? If so,” with a look of terrible meaning, “you will be the less loss! Now, Mademoiselle, may I have the honour? And when we are at table we can talk.”

  He extended his hand, and, obedient to his gesture, she moved to the place at the head of the table, but without letting her fingers come into contact with his. He gave no sign that he noticed this, but he strode to the place on her right, and signed to Tignonville to take that on her left.

  “Will you not be seated?” he continued. For she kept her feet.

  She turned her head stiffly, until for the first time her eyes looked into his. A shudder more violent than the last shook her.

  “Had you not better — kill us at once?” she whispered. The blood had forsaken even her lips. Her face was the face of a statue — white, beautiful, lifeless.

  “I think not,” he said gravely. “Be seated, and let us hope for the best. And you, sir,” he continued, turning to Carlat, “serve your mistress with wine. She needs it.”

  The steward filled for her, and then for each of the men, his shaking hand spilling as much as it poured. Nor was this strange. Above the din and uproar of the street, above the crash of distant doors, above the tocsin that still rang from the reeling steeple of St. Germain’s, the great bell of the Palais on the island had just begun to hurl its note of doom upon the town. A woman crouching at the end of the chamber burst into hysterical weeping, but, at a glance from Tavannes’ terrible eye, was mute again.

  Tignonville found voice at last. “Have they — killed the Admiral?” he muttered, his eyes on the table.

  “M. Coligny? An hour ago.”

  “And Teligny?”

  “Him also.”

  “M. de Rochefoucauld?”

  “They are dealing with M. le Comte now, I believe,” Tavannes answered. “He had his chance and cast it away.” And he began to eat.

  The man at the table shuddered. The woman continued to look before her, but her lips moved as if she prayed. Suddenly a rush of feet, a roar of voices surged past the window; for a moment the glare of the torches, which danced ruddily on the walls of the room, showed a severed head borne above the multitude on a pike. Mademoiselle, with a low cry, made an effort to rise, but Count Hannibal grasped her wrist, and she sank back half fainting. Then the nearer clamour sank a little, and the bells, unchallenged, flung their iron tongues above the maddened city. In the east the dawn was growing; soon its grey light would fall on cold hearths, on battered doors and shattered weapons, on hordes of wretches drunk with greed and hate.

  When he could be heard, “What are you going to do with us?” the man asked hoarsely.

  “That depends,” Count Hannibal replied, after a moment’s thought.

  “On what?”

  “On Mademoiselle de Vrillac.”

  The other’s eyes gleamed with passion. He leaned forward.

  “What has she to do with it?” he cried. And he stood up and sat down again in a breath.

  Tavannes raised his eyebrows with a blandness that seemed at odds with his harsh visage.

  “I will answer that question by another question,” he replied. “How many are there in the house, my friend?”

  “You can count.”

  Tavannes counted again. “Seven?” he said. Tignonville nodded impatiently.

  “Seven lives?”

  “Well?”

  “Well, Monsieur, you know the King’s will?”

  “I can guess it,” the other replied furiously. And he cursed the King, and the King’s mother, calling her Jezebel.

  “You can guess it?” Tavannes answered; and then with sudden heat, as if that which he had to say could not be said even by him in cold blood, “Nay, you know it! You heard it from the archer at the door. You heard him say, ‘No favour, no quarter for man, for woman, or for child. So says the King.’ You heard it, but you fence with me. Foucauld, with whom his Majesty played to-night, hand to hand and face to face — Foucauld is dead! And you think to live? You?” he continued, lashing himself into passion. “I know not by what chance you came where I saw you an hour gone, nor by what chance you came by that and that” — pointing with accusing finger to the badges the Huguenot wore. “But this I know! I have but to cry your name from yonder casement, nay, Monsieur, I have but to stand aside when the mob go their rounds from house to house, as they will go presently, and you will perish as certainly as you have hitherto escaped!”

  For the second time Mademoiselle turned and looked at him.

  “Then,” she whispered, with white lips, “to what end this — mockery?”

  “To the end that seven lives may be saved, Mademoiselle,” he answered, bowing.

  “At a price?” she muttered.

  “At a price,” he answered. “A price which women do not find it hard to pay — at Court. ’Tis paid every day for pleasure or a whim, for rank or the entrée, for robes and gewgaws. Few, Mademoiselle, are privileged to buy a life; still fewer, seven!”

  She began to tremble. “I would rather die — seven times!” she cried, her voice quivering. And she tried to rise, but sat down again.

  “And these?” he said, indicating the servants.

  “Far, far rather!” she repeated passionately.

  “And Monsieur? And Monsieur?” he urged with stern persistence, while his eyes passed lightly from her to Tignonville and back to her again, their depths inscrutable. “If you love Monsieur, Mademoiselle, and I believe you do—”

  “I can die with him!” she cried.

  “And he with you?”

  She writhed in her chair.

  “And he with you?” Count Hannibal repeated, with emphasis; and he thrust forward his head. “For that is the question. Think, think, Mademoiselle. It is in my power to save from death him whom you love; to save you; to save this canaille, if it so please you. It is in my power to save him, to save you, to save all; and I will save all — at a price! If, on the other hand, you deny me that price, I will as certainly leave all to perish, as perish they will, before the sun that is now rising sets to-night!”

  Mademoiselle looked straight before her, the flicker of a dreadful prescience in her eyes.

  “And the price?” she muttered. “The price?”

  “You, Mademoiselle.”

  “I?”

  “Yes, you! Nay, why fence with me?” he continued gently. “You knew it, you have said it. You have read it in my eyes these seven days.”

  She did not speak, or move, or seem to breathe. As he said, she had foreseen, she had known the answer. But Tignonville, it seemed, had not. He sprang to his feet.

&
nbsp; “M. de Tavannes,” he cried, “you are a villain!”

  “Monsieur?”

  “You are a villain! But you shall pay for this!” the young man continued vehemently. “You shall not leave this room alive! You shall pay for this insult!”

  “Insult?” Tavannes answered in apparent surprise; and then, as if comprehension broke upon him, “Ah! Monsieur mistakes me,” he said, with a broad sweep of the hand. “And Mademoiselle also, perhaps? Oh! be content, she shall have bell, book, and candle; she shall be tied as tight as Holy Church can tie her! Or, if she please, and one survive, she shall have a priest of her own church — you call it a church? She shall have whichever of the two will serve her better. ’Tis one to me! But for paying me, Monsieur,” he continued, with irony in voice and manner; “when, I pray you? In Eternity? For if you refuse my offer, you have done with time. Now? I have but to sound this whistle” — he touched a silver whistle which hung at his breast— “and there are those within hearing will do your business before you make two passes. Dismiss the notion, sir, and understand. You are in my power. Paris runs with blood, as noble as yours, as innocent as hers. If you would not perish with the rest, decide! And quickly! For what you have seen are but the forerunners, what you have heard are but the gentle whispers that predict the gale. Do not parley too long; so long that even I may no longer save you.”

  “I would rather die!” Mademoiselle moaned, her face covered. “I would rather die!”

  “And see him die?” he answered quietly. “And see these die? Think, think, child!”

  “You will not do it!” she gasped. She shook from head to foot.

  “I shall do nothing,” he answered firmly. “I shall but leave you to your fate, and these to theirs. In the King’s teeth I dare save my wife and her people; but no others. You must choose — and quickly.”

  One of the frightened women — it was Mademoiselle’s tiring-maid, a girl called Javette — made a movement, as if to throw herself at her mistress’s feet. Tignonville drove her to her place with a word. He turned to Count Hannibal.

  “But, M. le Comte,” he said, “you must be mad! Mad, to wish to marry her in this way! You do not love her. You do not want her. What is she to you more than other women?”

  “What is she to you more than other women?” Tavannes retorted, in a tone so sharp and incisive that Tignonville started, and a faint touch of colour crept into the wan cheek of the girl, who sat between them, the prize of the contest. “What is she more to you than other women? Is she more? And yet — you want her!”

  “She is more to me,” Tignonville answered.

  “Is she?” the other retorted, with a ring of keen meaning. “Is she? But we bandy words and the storm is rising, as I warned you it would rise. Enough for you that I do want her. Enough for you that I will have her. She shall be the wife, the willing wife, of Hannibal de Tavannes — or I leave her to her fate, and you to yours!”

  “Ah, God!” she moaned. “The willing wife!”

  “Ay, Mademoiselle, the willing wife,” he answered sternly. “Or no man’s wife!”

  CHAPTER VI. WHO TOUCHES TAVANNES?

  In saying that the storm was rising Count Hannibal had said no more than the truth. A new mob had a minute before burst from the eastward into the Rue St. Honoré; and the roar of its thousand voices swelled louder than the importunate clangour of the bells. Behind its moving masses the dawn of a new day — Sunday, the 24th of August, the feast of St. Bartholomew — was breaking over the Bastille, as if to aid the crowd in its cruel work. The gabled streets, the lanes, and gothic courts, the stifling wynds, where the work awaited the workers, still lay in twilight; still the gleam of the torches, falling on the house-fronts, heralded the coming of the crowd. But the dawn was growing, the sun was about to rise. Soon the day would be here, giving up the lurking fugitive whom darkness, more pitiful, had spared, and stamping with legality the horrors that night had striven to hide.

  And with day, with the full light, killing would grow more easy, escape more hard. Already they were killing on the bridge where the rich goldsmiths lived, on the wharves, on the river. They were killing at the Louvre, in the courtyard under the King’s eyes, and below the windows of the Médicis. They were killing in St. Martin and St. Denis and St. Antoine; wherever hate, or bigotry, or private malice impelled the hand. From the whole city went up a din of lamentation, and wrath, and foreboding. From the Cour des Miracles, from the markets, from the Boucherie, from every haunt of crime and misery, hordes of wretched creatures poured forth; some to rob on their own account, and where they listed, none gainsaying; more to join themselves to one of the armed bands whose business it was to go from street to street, and house to house, quelling resistance, and executing through Paris the high justice of the King.

  It was one of these swollen bands which had entered the street while Tavannes spoke; nor could he have called to his aid a more powerful advocate. As the deep “A bas! A bas!” rolled like thunder along the fronts of the houses, as the more strident “Tuez! Tuez!” drew nearer and nearer, and the lights of the oncoming multitude began to flicker on the shuttered gables, the fortitude of the servants gave way. Madame Carlat, shivering in every limb, burst into moaning; the tiring-maid, Javette, flung herself in terror at Mademoiselle’s knees, and, writhing herself about them, shrieked to her to save her, only to save her! One of the men moved forward on impulse, as if he would close the shutters; and only old Carlat remained silent, praying mutely with moving lips and a stern, set face.

  And Count Hannibal? As the glare of the links in the street grew brighter, and ousted the sickly daylight, his form seemed to dilate. He stilled the shrieking woman by a glance.

  “Choose! Mademoiselle, and quickly!” he said. “For I can only save my wife and her people! Quick, for the pinch is coming, and ‘twill be no boy’s play.”

  A shot, a scream from the street, a rush of racing feet before the window seconded his words.

  “Quick, Mademoiselle!” he cried. And his breath came a little faster. “Quick, before it be too late! Will you save life, or will you kill?”

  She looked at her lover with eyes of agony, dumbly questioning him. But he made no sign, and only Tavannes marked the look.

  “Monsieur has done what he can to save himself,” he said, with a sneer. “He has donned the livery of the King’s servants; he has said, ‘Whoever perishes, I will live!’ But—”

  “Curse you!” the young man cried, and, stung to madness, he tore the cross from his cap and flung it on the ground. He seized his white sleeve and ripped it from shoulder to elbow. Then, when it hung by the string only, he held his hand.

  “Curse you!” he cried furiously. “I will not at your bidding! I may save her yet! I will save her!”

  “Fool!” Tavannes answered — but his words were barely audible above the deafening uproar. “Can you fight a thousand? Look! Look!” and seizing the other’s wrist he pointed to the window.

  The street glowed like a furnace in the red light of torches, raised on poles above a sea of heads; an endless sea of heads, and gaping faces, and tossing arms which swept on and on, and on and by. For a while it seemed that the torrent would flow past them and would leave them safe. Then came a check, a confused outcry, a surging this way and that; the torches reeled to and fro, and finally, with a dull roar of “Open! Open!” the mob faced about to the house and the lighted window.

  For a second it seemed that even Count Hannibal’s iron nerves shook a little. He stood between the sullen group that surrounded the disordered table and the maddened rabble, that gloated on the victims before they tore them to pieces. “Open! Open!” the mob howled: and a man dashed in the window with his pike.

  In that crisis Mademoiselle’s eyes met Tavannes’ for the fraction of a second. She did not speak; nor, had she retained the power to frame the words, would they have been audible. But something she must have looked, and something of import, though no other than he marked or understood it. For in a flash he was at
the window and his hand was raised for silence.

  “Back!” he thundered. “Back, knaves!” And he whistled shrilly. “Do what you will,” he went on in the same tone, “but not here! Pass on! Pass on! — do you hear?”

  But the crowd were not to be lightly diverted. With a persistence brutal and unquestioning they continued to howl, “Open! Open!” while the man who had broken the window the moment before, Jehan, the cripple with the hideous face, seized the lead-work, and tore away a great piece of it. Then, laying hold of a bar, he tried to drag it out, setting one foot against the wall below. Tavannes saw what he did, and his frame seemed to dilate with the fury and violence of his character.

  “Dogs!” he shouted, “must I call out my riders and scatter you? Must I flog you through the streets with stirrup-leathers? I am Tavannes; beware of me! I have claws and teeth and I bite!” he continued, the scorn in his words exceeding even the rage of the crowd, at which he flung them. “Kill where you please, rob where you please, but not where I am! Or I will hang you by the heels on Montfaucon, man by man! I will flay your backs. Go! Go! I am Tavannes!”

  But the mob, cowed for a moment by the thunder of his voice, by his arrogance and recklessness, showed at this that their patience was exhausted. With a yell which drowned his tones they swayed forward; a dozen thundered on the door, crying, “In the King’s name!” As many more tore out the remainder of the casement, seized the bars of the window, and strove to pull them out or to climb between them. Jehan, the cripple, with whom Tignonville had rubbed elbows at the rendezvous, led the way.