"'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.