We noted some way back the ease with which women use one concession as a
stepping-stone to a second; and the lack of magnanimity, amounting almost
to unscrupulousness, which the best display in their dealings with a
retiring foe. But there are concessions which touch even a good woman's
conscience; and Madame de Tavannes, free by the tenure of a blow, and
with that exception treated from hour to hour with rugged courtesy,
shrank appalled before the task which confronted her.
To ignore what La Tribe had told her, to remain passive when a movement
on her part might save men, women, and children from death, and a whole
city from massacre--this was a line of conduct so craven, so selfish,
that from the first she knew herself incapable of it. But to take the
only other course open to her, to betray her husband and rob him of that,
the loss of which might ruin him, this needed not courage only, not
devotion only, but a hardness proof against reproaches as well as against
punishment. And the Countess was no fanatic. No haze of bigotry
glorified the thing she contemplated, or dressed it in colours other than
its own. Even while she acknowledged the necessity of the act and its
ultimate righteousness, even while she owned the obligation which lay
upon her to perform it, she saw it as he would see it, and saw herself as
he would see her.
True, he had done her a great wrong; and this in the eyes of some might
pass for punishment. But he had saved her life where many had perished;
and, the wrong done, he had behaved to her with fantastic generosity. In
return for which she was to ruin him? It was not hard to imagine what he
would say of her, and of the reward with which she had requited him.
She pondered over it as they rode that evening, with the weltering sun in
their eyes and the lengthening shadows of the oaks falling athwart the
bracken which fringed the track. Across breezy heaths and over downs,
through green bottoms and by hamlets, from which every human creature
fled at their approach, they ambled on by twos and threes; riding in a
world of their own, so remote, so different from the real world--from
which they came and to which they must return--that she could have wept
in anguish, cursing God for the wickedness of man which lay so heavy on
creation. The gaunt troopers riding at ease with swinging legs and
swaying stirrups--and singing now a refrain from Ronsard, and now one of
those verses of Marot's psalms which all the world had sung three decades
before--wore their most lamb-like aspect. Behind them Madame St. Lo
chattered to Suzanne of a riding mask which had not been brought, or
planned expedients, if nothing sufficiently in the mode could be found at
Angers. And the other women talked and giggled, screamed when they came
to fords, and made much of steep places, where the men must help them. In
time of war death's shadow covers but a day, and sorrow out of sight is
out of mind. Of all the troop whom the sinking sun left within sight of
the lofty towers and vine-clad hills of Vendome, three only wore faces
attuned to the cruel August week just ending; three only, like dark beads
strung far apart on a gay nun's rosary, rode, brooding and silent, in
their places. The Countess was one--the others were the two men whose
thoughts she filled, and whose eyes now and again sought her, La Tribe's
with sombre fire in their depths, Count Hannibal's fraught with a gloomy
speculation, which belied his brave words to Madame St. Lo.