Count Hannibal

"'Tis not the bell!" he cried, seizing her hand as if to focus her

attention. "It is the mob you hear. They are returning. We have but to

stand a moment at this open window, we have but to show ourselves to

them, and we need live no longer! Mademoiselle! Clotilde!--if you mean

what you say, if you are in earnest, the way is open!"

"And we shall die--together!"

"Yes, together. But have you the courage?"

"The courage?" she cried, a brave smile lighting the whiteness of her

face. "The courage were needed to live. The courage were needed to do

that. I am ready, quite ready. It can be no sin! To live with that in

front of me were the sin! Come!" For the moment she had forgotten her

people, her promise, all! It seemed to her that death would absolve her

from all. "Come!"

He moved with her under the impulse of her hand until they stood at the

gaping window. The murmur, which he had heard indistinctly a moment

before, had grown to a roar of voices. The mob, on its return eastward

along the Rue St. Honore, was nearing the house. He stood, his arm

supporting her, and they waited, a little within the window. Suddenly he

stooped, his face hardly less white than hers: their eyes met; he would

have kissed her.

She did not withdraw from his arm, but she drew back her face, her eyes

half shut.

"No!" she murmured. "No! While I live I am his. But we die together,

Tignonville! We die together. It will not last long, will it? And

afterwards--"

She did not finish the sentence, but her lips moved in prayer, and over

her features came a far-away look; such a look as that which on the face

of another Huguenot lady, Philippa de Luns--vilely done to death in the

Place Maubert fourteen years before--silenced the ribald jests of the

lowest rabble in the world. An hour or two earlier, awed by the

abruptness of the outburst, Mademoiselle had shrunk from her fate; she

had known fear. Now that she stood out voluntarily to meet it, she, like

many a woman before and since, feared no longer. She was lifted out of

and above herself.

But death was long in coming. Some cause beyond their knowledge stayed

the onrush of the mob along the street. The din, indeed, persisted,

deafened, shook them; but the crowd seemed to be at a stand a few doors

down the Rue St. Honore. For a half-minute, a long half-minute, which

appeared an age, it drew no nearer. Would it draw nearer? Would it come

on? Or would it turn again?

The doubt, so much worse than despair, began to sap that courage of the

man which is always better fitted to do than to suffer. The sweat rose

on Tignonville's brow as he stood listening, his arm round the girl--as

he stood listening and waiting. It is possible that when he had said a

minute or two earlier that he would rather die a thousand times than live

thus shamed, he had spoken beyond the mark. Or it is possible that he

had meant his words to the full. But in this case he had not pictured

what was to come, he had not gauged correctly his power of passive

endurance. He was as brave as the ordinary man, as the ordinary soldier;

but martyrdom, the apotheosis of resignation, comes more naturally to

women than to men, more hardly to men than to women. Yet had the crisis

come quickly he might have met it. But he had to wait, and to wait with

that howling of wild beasts in his ears; and for this he was not

prepared. A woman might be content to die after this fashion; but a man?

His colour went and came, his eyes began to rove hither and thither. Was

it even now too late to escape? Too late to avoid the consequences of

the girl's silly persistence? Too late to--? Her eyes were closed, she

hung half lifeless on his arm. She would not know, she need not know

until afterwards. And afterwards she would thank him!

Afterwards--meantime the window was open, the street was empty, and still

the crowd hung back and did not come.