Count Hannibal Part 13

Then he fell back as if he had been shot! For the wearer of the skirt, she whom he had kissed, was Madame St. Lo's woman, and behind her stood Madame herself, laughing, laughing, laughing with all the gay abandonment of her light little heart.

"Oh, the gallant gentleman!" she cried, and clapped her hands effusively.

"Was ever recovery so rapid? Or triumph so speedy? Suzanne, my child; you surpa.s.s Venus. Your charms conquer before they are seen!"

M. de Tignonville had put poor Suzanne from him as if she burned; and hot and embarra.s.sed, cursing his haste, he stood looking awkwardly at them.

"Madame," he stammered at last, "you know quite well that--"

"Seeing is believing!"

"That I thought it was you!"

"Oh, what I have lost!" she replied. And she looked archly at Suzanne, who giggled and tossed her head.

He was growing angry. "But, Madame," he protested, "you know--"

"I know what I know, and I have seen what I have seen!" Madame answered merrily. And she hummed,

"'Ce fut le plus grand jour d'este Que m'embra.s.sa la belle Suzanne!'

Oh yes, I know what I know!" she repeated. And she fell again to laughing immoderately; while the pretty piece of mischief beside her hung her head, and, putting a finger in her mouth, mocked him with an affectation of modesty.

The young man glowered at them between rage and embarra.s.sment. This was not the reception, nor this the hero's return to which he had looked forward. And a doubt began to take form in his mind. The mistress he had pictured would not laugh at kisses given to another; nor forget in a twinkling the straits through which he had come to her, the h.e.l.l from which he had plucked himself! Possibly the court ladies held love as cheap as this, and lovers but as playthings, b.u.t.ts for their wit, and pegs on which to hang their laughter. But--but he began to doubt, and, perplexed and irritated, he showed his feelings.

"Madame," he said stiffly, "a jest is an excellent thing. But pardon me if I say that it is ill played on a fasting man."

Madame desisted from laughter that she might speak. "A fasting man?" she cried. "And he has eaten two partridges!"

"Fasting from love, Madame."

Madame St. Lo held up her hands. "And it's not two minutes since he took a kiss!"

He winced, was silent a moment, and then seeing that he got nothing by the tone he had adopted he cried for quarter.

"A little mercy, Madame, as you are beautiful," he said, wooing her with his eyes. "Do not plague me beyond what a man can bear. Dismiss, I pray you, this good creature--whose charms do but set off yours as the star leads the eye to the moon--and make me the happiest man in the world by so much of your company as you will vouchsafe to give me."

"That may be but a very little," she answered, letting her eyes fall coyly, and affecting to handle the tucker of her low ruff. But he saw that her lip twitched; and he could have sworn that she mocked him to Suzanne, for the girl giggled.

Still by an effort he controlled his feelings. "Why so cruel?" he murmured, in a tone meant for her alone, and with a look to match. "You were not so hard when I spoke with you in the gallery, two evenings ago, Madame."

"Was I not?" she asked. "Did I look like this? And this?" And, languis.h.i.+ng, she looked at him very sweetly after two fas.h.i.+ons.

"Something."

"Oh, then I meant nothing!" she retorted with sudden vivacity. And she made a face at him, laughing under his nose. "I do that when I mean nothing, Monsieur! Do you see? But you are Gascon, and given, I fear, to flatter yourself."

Then he saw clearly that she played with him: and resentment, chagrin, pique got the better of his courtesy.

"I flatter myself?" he cried, his voice choked with rage. "It may be I do now, Madame, but did I flatter myself when you wrote me this note?"

And he drew it out and flourished it in her face. "Did I imagine when I read this? Or is it not in your hand? It is a forgery, perhaps," he continued bitterly. "Or it means nothing? Nothing, this note bidding me be at Madame St. Lo's at an hour before midnight--it means nothing? At an hour before midnight, Madame!"

"On Sat.u.r.day night? The night before last night?"

"On Sat.u.r.day night, the night before last night! But Madame knows nothing of it? Nothing, I suppose?"

She shrugged her shoulders and smiled cheerfully on him. "Oh yes, I wrote it," she said. "But what of that, M. de Tignonville?"

"What of that?"

"Yes, Monsieur, what of that? Did you think it was written out of love for you?"

He was staggered for the moment by her coolness. "Out of what, then?" he cried hoa.r.s.ely. "Out of what, then, if not out of love?"

"Why, out of pity, my little gentleman!" she answered sharply. "And trouble thrown away, it seems. Love!" And she laughed so merrily and spontaneously it cut him to the heart. "No; but you said a dainty thing or two, and smiled a smile; and like a fool, and like a woman, I was sorry for the innocent calf that bleated so prettily on its way to the butcher's! And I would lock you up, and save your life, I thought, until the blood-letting was over. Now you have it, M. de Tignonville, and I hope you like it."

Like it, when every word she uttered stripped him of the selfish illusions in which he had wrapped himself against the blasts of ill-fortune? Like it, when the prospect of her charms had bribed him from the path of fort.i.tude, when for her sake he had been false to his mistress, to his friends, to his faith, to his cause? Like it, when he knew as he listened that all was lost, and nothing gained, not even this poor, unworthy, shameful compensation? Like it? No wonder that words failed him, and he glared at her in rage, in misery, in shame.

"Oh, if you don't like it," she continued, tossing her head after a momentary pause, "then you should not have come! It is of no profit to glower at me, Monsieur. You do not frighten me."

"I would--I would to G.o.d I had not come!" he groaned.

"And, I dare say, that you had never seen me--since you cannot win me!"

"That too," he exclaimed.

She was of an extraordinary levity, and at that, after staring at him a moment, she broke into shrill laughter.

"A little more, and I'll send you to my cousin Hannibal!" she said. "You do not know how anxious he is to see you. Have you a mind," with a waggish look, "to play bride's man, M. de Tignonville? Or will you give away the bride? It is not too late, though soon it will be!"

He winced, and from red grew pale. "What do you mean?" he stammered; and, averting his eyes in shame, seeing now all the littleness, all the baseness of his position, "Has he--married her?" he continued.

"Ho, ho!" she cried in triumph. "I've hit you now, have I, Monsieur?

I've hit you!" And mocking him, "Has he--married her?" she lisped. "No; but he will marry her, have no fear of that! He will marry her. He waits but to get a priest. Would you like to see what he says?" she continued, playing with him as a cat plays with a mouse. "I had a note from him yesterday. Would you like to see how welcome you'll be at the wedding?" And she flaunted a piece of paper before his eyes.

"Give it me," he said.

She let him seize it the while she shrugged her shoulders. "It's your affair, not mine," she said. "See it if you like, and keep it if you like. Cousin Hannibal wastes few words."

That was true, for the paper contained but a dozen or fifteen words, and an initial by way of signature.

"I may need your shaveling to-morrow afternoon. Send him, and Tignonville in safeguard if he come.--H."

"I can guess what use he has for a priest," she said. "It is not to confess him, I warrant. It's long, I fear, since Hannibal told his beads."

M. de Tignonville swore. "I would I had the confessing of him!" he said between his teeth.

She clapped her hands in glee. "Why should you not?" she cried. "Why should you not? 'Tis time yet, since I am to send to-day and have not sent. Will you be the shaveling to go confess or marry him?" And she laughed recklessly. "Will you, M. de Tignonville? The cowl will mask you as well as another, and pa.s.s you through the streets better than a cut sleeve. He will have both his wishes, lover and clerk in one then.

And it will be pull monk, pull Hannibal with a vengeance."