The Vicomte gasped; it was evident, it was certain, that M. de Vlaye knew all. What was he to say, what to do? While Bonne, though her ear hung upon his reply, was conscious only of a desperate search, a wild groping, after some method of giving the alarm to those whom it concerned--to Charles lurking in the barn beside the water, to the Countess making hay for sport and thinking no evil. She had heard of a woman who in such a strait sent a feather which put quick wits on the alert. But she had no feather, she had nothing, and if she had, at her first word of withdrawing M. de Vlaye, she knew, would interpose. At last--
"It must be!" the Vicomte exclaimed, taking anew line with some presence of mind. "But I would not believe it!"
"It must be? what must be, sir?" his daughter Odette rejoined.
"It must be the Countess!" the Vicomte repeated in a tone of surprise and conviction, not ill feigned. He saw that to persist in denying the truth--with the hayfield in sight--would not serve, and in the end must cover him with confusion. "Dressed in that fashion," he continued, "and with no attendant save one rough clown, I--I could not credit her story. The Countess of Rochechouart! It seems incredible even now!"
"Yes, the Countess of Rochechouart," M. de Vlaye replied in a tone which proved that the Vicomte's sudden frankness did not deceive him. "With your permission we will wait on her, M. le Vicomte," he continued in the same tone, "and as soon as horses can be provided, I will escort her to a place of safety."
The Vicomte's face was a study of perplexity. "If you will alight," he said, slowly, "I will send and announce to the Countess--if Countess she really be--that you are here."
For an instant Bonne's heart stood still. If M. de Vlaye dismounted and entered, all things were possible. But the hope was dashed to the ground forthwith. "I thank you," Vlaye answered somewhat grimly, "but with your permission, M. le Vicomte, to business first. We will go to the meadows at once. It is not fitting that the Countess should be left for a minute longer than is necessary in a place so ill guarded. And, for the matter of that, things lost once are sometimes lost twice."
The Vicomte's nose twitched with rage; he was not a meek man. He understood M. de Vlaye's insinuation, he knew that M. de Vlaye knew; but he was helpless. On the threshold of his own house, on the spot where his ancestors' word had been law for generations--or a blow had followed the word--he stood impotent before this clever, upstart soldier who held him at mercy. And this the Abbess, had her affection for him been warm or her nature delicate, must have felt. Without a word spoken or a syllable of explanation, she must have perceived that she was witnessing her family's shame, and that her part in the scene was not with them.
But she, of them all, was the most in the dark, and her thoughts were otherwise bent. "You are very fearful for the young lady, M. de Vlaye," she said, turning to him, and speaking in a tone of mock offence. "I do not remember that you have ever been so over careful for me."
He bent his head and muttered something of which her sister caught not a word. Then, "But we must not waste time," he continued briskly. "Let us--with the Vicomte's permission--to the field! To the field!" And he turned his horse as he spoke into the sled-road that led around the courtyard wall; and by a gesture he bade his men follow. It was evident to Bonne, evident to her father, that he had had a spy on the house, and knew where his quarry harboured.
The girl wondered whether by flying through the house and dropping from the corner of the garden wall she could even now give the alarm. Then M. le Vicomte spoke. "I will come with you," he said in a surly tone that betrayed his sense of his position. "The times are indeed out of joint, and persons out of their places, but--Solomon, my staff! Daughter," to the Abbess, "a hold of your stirrup-leather! It is but a step, and I can still walk so far. If the field be unsafe for the guest,"--he added grimly--"it is fit the host should share the danger."
Bonne could have blessed him for the thought, for his offer bound the party to a walking pace, and something might happen. Vlaye, beyond doubt, had the same thought. But without breaking openly with the Vicomte--which for various reasons he was loth to do--he could not reject his company nor outpace him.
He raised no objection, therefore, and in displeased silence the Vicomte walked beside his daughter's horse, Bonne accompanying him on the other hand. She knew more than he, and had reason to fear more; she was almost sick with anxiety. But he, perhaps, suffered more. Forced on his own ground to do that which he did not wish to do, forced to play a sorry farce, he felt, as he trudged in the van of the party, that he walked the captive in a Roman triumph. And he could have smitten the Captain of Vlaye across the face.
They passed only too quickly from the shelter of the house to the open meadows and the hot sunshine, and so over the stone bridge. Bonne knew that at this point they must become visible to the workers in the hay-field, and she counted on an interval of a few minutes during which the fugitives might take steps to hide themselves, or even to get over the river and bury themselves in the woods. She could have cried, therefore, when, without apparent order, a party from the rear cantered past the leaders and, putting their horses into a sharp hand-gallop, preceded them in their advance upon the panic-stricken haymakers, in the midst of whom they drew rein in something less than a minute.
The Vicomte halted as the meaning of the manœuvre broke upon him, and, striking his staff into the ground, he followed them with his eyes. "You seem fearful indeed," he growled, his high nose wrinkled with anger.
"Things happen very quickly at times," Vlaye answered, ignoring the tone.
"Take care, sir, take care!" the Abbess of Vlaye cried, addressing her lover. She little thought in her easy insouciance how near the truth she was treading. "If you show yourself so very anxious for the Countess's safety, I warn you I shall grow jealous."
"You have seen her," M. de Vlaye answered in a low tone, meant only for her ear; and he hung slightly towards her. "You know how little cause you have to fear."
"Fear?" the Abbess retorted rather sharply. "Know, sir," with a quick defiant glance, "that I fear no one!"
Apparently the handful of riders who had preceded the main body had no order but to stand guard over the workers. For having halted in the midst of the startled servants, who gazed on them in stupefaction, they remained motionless in their saddles. Meanwhile the Vicomte, with a surly face, was drawing slowly up to them. When no more than thirty or forty paces divided the two parties, the leader of the van wheeled about, and trotting to M. de Vlaye's side, saluted him.
"I do not see them, my lord," he muttered in a low tone.
The captain of Vlaye reined in his horse, and sitting at ease, cast an eagle glance over the terrified haymakers, who had instinctively fallen into three or four groups. In one part of the field the hay had been got into heaps, but these were of small size, and barely adequate to the hiding of a child. Nevertheless, look where he would--and his lowering brow bespoke his disappointment--he could detect no one at all resembling a Countess. A moment, and his glance passed from the open meadow to the ruined buildings, which stood on the brink of the stream. It remained fixed on them.
"Search that!" he said in a low tone. And raising his hand he pointed to the old barn. "They must be there! Go about it carefully, Ampoule."
The man he addressed turned, and summoning his party, cantered across the sward--never so green as after mowing--towards the building. As the riders drew near the river, Bonne could command herself no longer. She uttered a low groan. Her face bespoke her anguish.
M. de Vlaye did not see her face--it was turned from him--but he caught the sound and understood it. "The sun is hot," he said in a tone of polite irony. "You find it so, mademoiselle? Doubtless the Countess has sought protection from it--in the barn. She will be there, take my word for it!"
Bonne made no reply. She could not have spoken for her life; and he and they watched, shading their eyes from the sun, she, poor girl, with a hand which shook. The horsemen were by this time near the end of the building, and all but one proceeded to alight. The rest were in the act of delivering up their reins, and one had already vanished within the building, when in full view of the company, who were watching from the middle of the field, a man sprang from an opening at the other end of the barn, reached in three bounds the brink of the stream, and even as Vlaye's shout of warning startled the field, plunged from the bank, and was lost to sight.
"Holà! Holà!" M. de Vlaye cried in stentorian tones, and, with his rowels in his horse's flanks, he was away racing to the spot before his followers had taken the alarm. The next moment they were thundering emulously at his heels, their charge shaking the earth. Even the men who had alighted beside the barn, and as yet knew nothing of the evasion, saw that something was wrong, took the alarm, and hurried round the building to the river.
"He is there!" cried one, as they pulled up along the bank of the stream. And the speaker, in his desire to show his zeal, wheeled his horse about so suddenly that he well-nigh knocked down his neighbour.
"No, there! There!" cried another. And "There!" cried a third, as the fugitive dived, otter fashion, the willows of the stream affording him some protection.
Suddenly M. de Vlaye's voice rang above all. "After him!" he cried. "After him, fools, and seize him on the other side!"
In a twinkling three or four of the more courageous forced their horses into the stream, and began to swim across. Sixty yards below the spot where he had entered the water, the swimmer's head could be seen. He was being borne on a current towards a willow-bed which projected from the opposite bank, and offered a hiding-place. With wild cries those who had not entered the stream followed him along the bank, jostling and crossing one another, and marked him here and marked him there, while the baying of the excited hounds, restrained by their couples, filled the woods beyond the river with the fierce music of the chase.
Meantime the Vicomte and his younger daughter remained alone in the middle of the meadow; for the Abbess's horse had carried her after the others, whether she would or no, with her hawk clinging and screaming on her sleeve. Of the two who remained, the Vicomte was in a high rage. To be used after this fashion by his guests! To see strangers taking the law into their own hands on his land! To be afoot while hireling troopers spurned his own clods in his face, and all without leave or license, all where he and his forebears had exercised the low justice and the high for centuries! It was too much!
"What is it? Who is it?" he cried, adding in his passion oaths and execrations then too common. "That is not the Countess! Are they mad?"
"It is Charles," she answered, weeping bitterly. "He was hiding there. And he thought that they were in search of him. Oh, they will kill him! They will kill him!"
"Charles?" the Vicomte exclaimed, and stood turned to stone. "Charles?"
"Yes!" she panted. "And, oh, sir, a word! He is your son, and a word may save him! He has done nothing--nothing that they should hunt him like a rat!"
But the Vicomte was another man now, moved, wrought on by Heaven knows what devils of pride and shame. "My son!" he cried, his rage diverted. "That my son? You lie, girl!" coarsely. "He is no son of mine. You wander. It is some skulking Crocan they have unharboured. Son of mine? Hiding on my land? No! You rave, girl!"
"Oh, sir!" she panted.
"Not a word!" He gripped her wrist fiercely and forced her to silence. "Do you hear me? Not a word. He is no son of mine!"
She clung to him, still imploring him, still trying to soften him. But he shook her off, roughly, brutally, raising his stick to her; and, blinded by her tears, unable to do more, she sank to the ground and buried her face, that she might not see, in a mass of hay. He, without a word, turned his back on her, on the crowd beside the river, on the groups of frightened haymakers--turned his back on all and strode away in the direction of the château, with those devils of shame and pride, which he had pampered so long, riding him hard. He had drained at last the cup of humiliation to the dregs. He had seen his son hunted like a beast of vermin on his own land in his presence. And his one desire was to be gone. Rage with the cause of this last and worst disgrace dried up all natural feeling, all thought for his flesh and blood, all pity. He cared not whether his son lived or died. His only longing was to escape in his own person; to be gone from the place and scene of degradation, to set himself once more in a position, to--to be himself!
There are tones of the voice that in the lowest depth inspire something of confidence. Bonne, as she lay crushed under the weight of her misery, with the merciless sun beating down upon her neck, heard such a tone whispering low in her ear.
"Lie still, mademoiselle," it murmured. "Lie still! Where you are, you are unseen, and I must speak to you. The man, whoever he is, is taken. They have seized him."
She tried to rise. He laid his hand on her shoulder and held her down.
"I must go!" she gasped, still struggling to rise. "I must go! It is my brother!"
The Lieutenant--for he it was--muttered, it is to be feared, an oath. "Your brother!" he said. "It is your brother, is it? Ah, if you had trusted me! But all is not lost! Listen!" he continued urgently. "M. de Vlaye has bidden the men who have taken him--on the farther side of the river--to convey him along that bank to the ford, and so by the road to Vlaye. And--will you trust me now, mademoiselle?"
"I will, I will!" she sobbed. She showed him for one moment her tear-stained, impassioned face. "If you will help me! If you will help my brother!"
"I will!" he said, and then, and abruptly, he laid his hand on her and violently pressed her down. "Be still!" he muttered in a tone of sharp warning. "I have no more wish to be seen by Vlaye than your brother had!" Lying beside her, he peeped warily over the hay by which he was partly hidden; a slight hollow in which that particular cock rested served to shelter them somewhat, but the screen was slight. "I fear they are coming this way," he continued, his voice not quite steady. "I would I had my horse here, and sound, and I would trouble them little. But all is not lost, all is not lost," he repeated slowly, "till their hands are on us! Nor, may-be, even then!"
She understood, and lay trembling and hiding her face, unable to face this new terror. The thunder of hoofs, coming nearer and nearer, once more shook the earth. The horsemen were returning from the river.
"Lie low!" he repeated, more coolly. "They have spied the Countess. I feared they would. And they are hot foot after her--so ho! And we are saved! Yes," he continued, peeping again and more boldly, "we are saved, I think. They have stopped her, just as Roger and her man--clever Roger, he will make a general yet--were about to pass her over the bridge. Another minute and they had got her to cover in the house, and it had been my fate to be taken."
She did not answer, her agitation was too great. And after a brief silence during which the Lieutenant watched what went forward at the end of the meadow: "Now, mademoiselle," he said in a more gentle tone, "it is for the Countess I want your help. I will answer for your brother. If no accident befall him he shall be free before many hours are over his head. Remember that! But with Mademoiselle de Rochechouart--if she be once removed to Vlaye, and cast into this man's power, it will go hard. She is a child, little able to resist. Do you go to her, support her, speak for her, fight for her even--only gain time. Gain time! He will not resort to violence at once, or I am mistaken. He will not drag her away by force until he has exhausted all other means. He will suffer her to stay awhile if you play your part well. And you must play it well!"
"I will!" Bonne cried, all her forces rallied by hope. "I do not know who you are, but save my brother----"
"I will save him!"
"And I will bless you!"
"Do you save the Countess, and she will bless you!" he answered cheerfully. "Now to her, mademoiselle, and do not leave her. Go! Show yourself as brave there as here, and----"
He did not finish the sentence, but as she rose his hand, through some accident, or some impulse that surprised him--for such weaknesses were not in his nature--met hers through the hay and clasped it. The girl reddened to the brow, sprang up, and in a trice was hastening across the field towards the crowd that in a confused medley of horse and foot, peasants and troopers, was gathered about the stone bridge which spanned the brook. The sun beat hotly down on the little mob, but in the interest of the scene which was passing in their midst no one thought twice of the heat.
Bonne's spirits were in a tumult. She hardly knew what she thought or how she felt, or what she was going to do.
But one thing she knew. On one thing she set her foot with every step, and that was fear. A new courage, and a new feeling, filled the girl with an excitement half-painful, half-delightful. Whence this was she did not ask herself, nor why she rested so confidently on the guarantee of her brother's safety, which an untried stranger had given her. It was enough that he had given it. She did not go beyond that.
When she came, hot and panting, to the skirts of the crowd, she found that she must push her way between the horses of the troopers if she would see anything of what was passing. In the act she noticed that half the men were grinning, the others exchanging sly looks and winks. But she was through at last. Now she could see what was afoot.
On the bridge, three paces before her, stood M. de Vlaye with his back to her. He had dismounted, and had his hat in his hand. Beyond him, standing at bay, as it seemed, against the low side wall of the bridge, was the Countess, her small face white, and puckered, and sullen, and behind her again stood Roger, and Fulbert, the steward, with a wild-beast glare in his eyes.
"Surely, mademoiselle," Bonne heard M. de Vlaye say in honeyed accents, as she emerged from the crowd, "surely it were better you mounted here----"
"No!"
"And rode to the château. And then at your leisure----"
"No, I thank you. I will walk."
"But, Countess, you are not safe," he persisted, "on foot and in the open, after what has passed."
"Then I will go to the château," she replied, "but I can walk, I thank you." It was strange to see the firmness, ay, and dignity, that awoke in her in this extremity.
"That, of course," M, de Vlaye replied lightly. "Of course. But seeing the Abbess on horseback, I thought that you might prefer to ride with her----"
"It is but a step."
"And I am walking," Bonne struck in, pushing to the front. "I will go with the Countess to the house." She spoke with a firmness which surprised herself, and certainly surprised M. de Vlaye, who had not seen her at his elbow. He hesitated, and partly in view of the Countess's attitude, partly of the fact that he had not precisely defined his next step if he got her mounted--he gave way.
"By all means," he said. "And we will form your guard."
Bonne passed her arm round the young Countess. "Come," she said. "I see my sister has preceded us to the house. The sun is hot, and the sooner we are under cover the better."
It was not the heat of the sun, however, that had driven the Abbess from the scene, but a spirit of temper. She had no suspicion of the truth--as yet. But the fuss which M. de Vlaye seemed bent on making about the little countess piqued her, and after looking on a minute or two, and finding herself still left in the background, she had let her jealousy have vent, had struck spur to her horse and ridden back to the house in a rage. This was the last thing she would have done had her eyes been open. Had she guessed how welcome to her admirer her retreat at that moment was, she would have risked a hundred sunstrokes before she went!
She had no notion of the real situation, however, and Bonne, who had, and with a woman's wit saw in her a potent ally, was too late to call her back, though she longed to do it. Between the bridge and the house-gate lay three hundred yards, every yard, it seemed to Bonne, a yard of peril to her charge; and the girl nerved herself accordingly. For Vlaye's darkening face sufficiently declared his perplexity. At any instant, at any point, he might throw off the mask of courtesy, use force, and ride off with his prey. And what could she do?
Only with a brave face walk slowly, slowly, talking as she went! Talking and making believe to be at ease; repressing both the treacherous flutter of her own heart and the little Countess's tendency to start at every movement M. de Vlaye made--as the lamb starts when the wolf bares its teeth! Bonne felt that to let him see that they expected violence was to invite it; and though, if he made a movement to seize her companion, she was prepared to cling and scream and fight with her very nails--she knew that such methods were the last desperate resource, to resort to which portended defeat.
He walked abreast of them, his rein on his arm, his haughty head bent. A little behind them on the left side walked Roger and the Countess's steward. Behind these again, at a short distance, followed the mob of troopers, grinning and nudging one another, and scarce deigning to hide their amusement.
Bonne guessed all, yet she talked bravely. "It is quite an adventure!" she said brightly. "We did but half believe it, M. de Vlaye! Until you told us, we thought mademoiselle must be romancing. That she could not be--oh, no, it seemed impossible that she could be the real Countess!"
"Indeed?" M. de Vlaye answered, measuring with his keen eye the distance to the corner of the courtyard. The girl's chatter embarrassed him. He could not weigh quite coolly the chances and the risks.
"It was after nine o'clock--yes, it must have been nearer midnight!" Bonne continued, with that woman's power of dissembling which puts men's acting to shame. "It was quite an alarm when she came! We thought we were to be robbed."
"It is for that reason," Vlaye said smoothly, "I wish the Countess to be placed in safety."
"Or that it was the Crocans----"
"Precisely--it might have been. And therefore I wish her to place herself without delay----"
"In proper clothes!" Bonne exclaimed cheerfully. "Of course! So she must, M. de Vlaye, and this minute! To think of the Countess of Rochechouart"--she laughed, and affectionately drew the girl nearer to her--"making hay in a waiting-woman's clothes! No wonder that she did not wish to be seen!"
M. de Vlaye looked at the chatterer askance, and mechanically gnawed his moustache. He believed, nay, he was almost sure that she knew all and was playing with him. If so she was playing so successfully that here they were at the corner of the courtyard and he no nearer a decision. They had but to pass along one wall, turn, and in forty paces they would be at the gate. He must make up his mind promptly, then! And, curse her! she talked so fast that he could not bring his mind to it, or weigh the emergencies. If he seized the girl here----
"Roger should not have let her try to cross the brook, M. de Vlaye, should he?" Bonne babbled. "He should have known better. Now she has wet her feet and must change her shoes! Yes," playfully, "you must, mademoiselle."
"I will," the Countess muttered with shaking lips.
One of the troopers who had been of the expedition the day before, and whom the situation tickled, laughed on a sudden outright. M. de Vlaye half halted, turned and looked back in wrath. Was he going to give the signal? Bonne's arm shook. But no, he turned again. And they were almost at the second corner; now they turned it, and her eyes sought the gate greedily, to learn who awaited them there. If the Vicomte was there, and her sister, it was so much in her favour. He would hardly dare to carry the girl off by force under their eyes.
But they were not there. Even Solomon was invisible; probably he had taken the Abbess's horse to the stable. Bonne was left to her own resources, therefore, to her own wits; and at the gate, at the moment of interest, at the last moment, the pinch would come.
And still, but with a dry throat, she talked. "To leave the sun for the shade!" she cried with a prodigious sigh as the western wall of the courtyard intervened and protected them from the sun's heat. "Is it not delightful! It was almost worth while to be so hot, to feel so cool! Are you cool, M. de Vlaye?"
"Yes," he replied grimly, "but----"
"Sommes-nous au milieu du bois?"
"Sommes-nous au milieu du bois?"
she sang, cutting him short--they were within seven or eight paces of the gateway, and she fancied that his face was growing hard, that she detected the movements of a man preparing to make his leap--
"Sommes-nous à la rive?Sommes-nous au milieu du bois?Sommes-nous à la rive?
"Sommes-nous à la rive?
Sommes-nous au milieu du bois?
Sommes-nous à la rive?
A la rive? A la rive!" she chanted, her arm closing more tightly about the Countess. "A la rive!"
With the last word--Pouf!--she thrust the child towards the open gateway, and by the same movement dropped on her knees in front of M. de Vlaye, completely thwarting his first instinctive impulse, which was to snatch at the Countess. "It is my pin!" she cried, rising as quickly as she had knelt--the whole seemed but one movement. "Pardon, M. de Vlaye," she continued, but by that time the Countess was twenty paces away, and half-way across the court. "Did I interrupt you? How lucky to find it! I must have lost it yesterday!"
He did not speak, but his eyes betrayed his rage--rage not the less that his men had witnessed and understood the manœuvre; nay, dared by a titter to betray their amusement. For an instant he was tempted to seize her and crush the cursed pride out of her--he to be outwitted before his people by a woman! Or why should he not take her a hostage in the other's room?
Then he remembered that he needed no hostage; he had one already. In a voice that drove the blood from her cheeks, "Take care! Take care, mademoiselle!" he muttered. "Sometimes one pays too much for such a trifle as a pin. You might have hurt yourself, stooping so suddenly! Or hurt--your brother!"
Roger could no longer keep silence. "I can take care of myself, M. de Vlaye," he said, "and of my sister also, I would have you know."
But M. de Vlaye had himself in hand again. "It was not to you I referred," he said coldly and contemptuously. "Take me to your father."
They found the Vicomte awaiting them on the drawbridge at the farther side of the court. But the Countess had vanished; she had not lost a moment in hiding herself in the recesses of her room. For the first time in their intercourse M. de Vlaye approached his host without ceremony or greeting.
"The Countess must come with me," he said roughly and roundly. "She cannot stay here. This place," with a look of naked scorn, "is no place for her. Give orders, if you please, that she prepare to accompany me."
The Vicomte, shaken by the events of the morning, stood thunderstruck. His hand trembled on his staff, and for a moment he could not speak. At last--
"The Countess is in my care, and under my protection," he said, in a voice shrill with emotion.
"Neither of which would avail her in the least," M. de Vlaye answered brutally, "in the event of danger! But it is not to enter into an argument that I am here. I care nothing for the number of your household, or the strength of your house, M. le Vicomte, or," with a sneer, "what was the condition of either--before Coutras. The point is, this is no place for one in the Countess of Rochechouart's position. It is my duty to see her placed in a position of greater safety, and I intend to perform that duty!"
The Vicomte, powerless as he was, shook with passion. "Since when," he exclaimed, "has that duty been laid upon you?"
"It is laid on me," the Captain of Vlaye answered contemptuously, "by the fact that there is no one else in the district who can perform it."
"You will perform it at your peril," the Vicomte said.
"I shall perform it."
"But if the Countess prefers to stay here?" Roger cried, interfering hotly.
"It is a question of her safety, and not of her preference," Vlaye retorted, standing grim and cold before them. "She must come."
A dozen of his troopers had ridden into the courtyard, and from their saddles were watching the group on the drawbridge. The group consisted, besides the Vicomte, of Roger and his sister, old Solomon the porter, and the wild-looking steward. Roger, his heart bursting with indignation, measured with his eye the distance across the courtyard, and had thoughts of flinging himself upon Vlaye, bearing him to the ground, and making his life the price of his men's withdrawal. But he had no weapon, Solomon and Fulbert were in the like case, and the Captain of Vlaye, a man in the prime of life, and armed, was likely to prove a match for all three.
If the Vicomte's ancestors in the pride of their day and power had been deaf to the poor man's cry, if the justice-elm without the castle gates had received in the centuries past the last sighs of the innocent, if the towers of the old house had been built in groaning and cemented with blood, some part of the debt was paid this day on the drawbridge. To see the sacred rights of hospitality deforced, to stand by while the guest whom he could not protect--and that guest a woman of his rank and kind--was torn from his hearth, to be set for a laughing-stock to this canaille of troopers--such a humiliation should have slain the last of the Villeneuves where he stood.
Yet the Vicomte lived--lived, it is true, with twitching lips and shaking hands--but lived, and, after a few seconds of moody silence, stooped to parry the blow which he could not return.
"To-morrow--if you will wait until to-morrow," he muttered, "she may be better prepared to--take the journey."
"To-morrow?"
"Yes, if you will give us till to-morrow"--reluctantly--"we may persuade her."
M. de Vlaye's answer was as unexpected as it was decisive. "Be it so!" he said. "She shall have till to-morrow." He spoke more graciously, more courteously, than he had yet spoken. "I have been--it is possible that in my anxiety for her safety, M. le Vicomte, I have been hasty. Once a soldier, always a soldier! Forgive me, and you, mademoiselle, the same; and I, on my side, will say to-morrow. There, I am not unreasonable," with a poor attempt at joviality. "Only I must leave with you ten or a dozen troopers for her safe keeping. And beyond to-morrow, in the present state of the country, I cannot spare them."
At the mention of the troopers the Vicomte's jaw fell. He stared.
"Will not that suit you?" M. de Vlaye said gaily. He had recovered his usual spirits. He spoke in his old tone.
"It must," the Vicomte answered sullenly. "But I could answer for her without your troopers."
M. de Vlaye shook his head. "Ah, no," he said. "I can say no better than that. With the Crocans so near, and growing in boldness every day, I am bound to be careful. I am told," with a peculiar smile, "that some ne'er-do-wells of birth have joined them in these parts. The worse for them!"
"Well, be it so," the Vicomte said with a ghastly smile. "Be it so! Be it so!"
"Good," Vlaye answered cheerfully--he grew more at his ease with every word. Some might have thought that he had gained all he wanted or saw a new and easy way to it. "Good, and as I must be returning, I will give the necessary orders at once."
He turned as he spoke, and crossing the courtyard, conferred awhile with Ampoule, his second in command. Hurriedly men were told off to this hand and that, some trotting briskly under the archway--where the hay of more peaceful days deadened the sound of hoofs, and the cobwebs almost swept their heads--and others entering by the same road. Presently M. de Vlaye, whose horse had been brought to him, got to his saddle, rode a few paces nearer the drawbridge, and raised his hat.
"I have done as you wish," he said. "Until tomorrow, M. le Vicomte! Mademoiselle, I kiss your hands!" And wilfully blind to the coldness of the salutation made in return, he wheeled his horse gracefully, called a man to his side, and rode out of the court.
The Vicomte let his chin fall upon his breast, and beyond a doubt his reflections were of the bitterest. But soon he remembered that there were strange eyes upon him, and he turned and went heavily into his house, the house that others now had in keeping. Old Solomon followed him with an anxious face, and Fulbert, ever desirous to be with his mistress, vanished in their train. The troopers, after one or two glances at the two who remained on the drawbridge, and a jest at which some laughed outright and some made covert gestures of derision, began to lead their horses into the long stable.
Roger's eye met Bonne's in a glance of flame. "Do you see?" he said. "He was to leave twelve--at the most. He has left eighteen. Do you understand?"
She shook her head.
"I do!" he said. "I do! We may go to our prayers!"
A few hours later the château of Villeneuve, buried in the lonely woods, wore a strange and unusual aspect.
To all things there comes an end, even to long silences and the march of uneventful years. Summer evening after summer evening had looked its last through darkening tree-tops on the house of Villeneuve, and marked but a spare taper burning here and there in its recesses. Winter evening after winter evening had fallen on the dripping woods and listened in vain for the sounds of revelry that had once beaconed the lost wayfarer, and held wolves doubting on the extremest edge of pasture. Night after night for well-nigh a generation--with the one exception of the historic night of Coutras, when the pursuers feasted in its hall--the house had stood shadowy and silent in the dim spaces of its clearing, and prowling beasts had haunted without fear its threshold. A rotten branch, falling in the depth of the forest, now scared more than its loudest orgy; nay, the dead lords, at rest in the decaying graveyard where the Abbey had stood, made as much impression on the night--for often the will o' the wisp burned there--as their fallen descendants in his darkling house.
Until this night, when the wild things of the wood saw with wonder the glow in the tree-tops and cowered in their lairs, and the owl mousing in the uplands beyond the river shrank from the light in the meadows, and flew to shelter. Beside the well in the courtyard blazed such a bonfire as frightened the sparrows from the ivy; and the wolf had been brave indeed that ventured within half a mile of the singers, whose voices woke the echoes of the ancient towers.
"Les femmes ne portent pas moustache,Mordieu, Marion!Les femmes ne portent pas moustache!C'était des mûres qu'ell' mangeaitMon dieu, mon ami!C'était des mûres qu'ell' mangeait!"
"Les femmes ne portent pas moustache,
Mordieu, Marion!
Les femmes ne portent pas moustache!
C'était des mûres qu'ell' mangeait
Mon dieu, mon ami!
C'était des mûres qu'ell' mangeait!"
As the troopers, seated, some on the well-curb, and some on logs and buckets, beat out the chorus, or broke off to quarrel across the flames, a chance passer might have thought the night of the great battle come again. Old Solomon, listening to the roar of the wood, and watching the train of sparks fly upwards, trembled for his haystacks; nor would the man of peace have been a coward who, looking in at the open gate, preferred a bed in the greenwood to the peril of entrance. The more timid of the serving-men had hidden themselves with sunset; the dogs had fled to kennel with drooping tails. The noise was such that but for one thing a stranger must have supposed that a mutiny was on the point of breaking out. This was the cool demeanour of Ampoule, M. de Vlaye's lieutenant; who with a couple of confidants sat drinking in the outer hall, where the flames of an unwonted fire shone on torn pennons and dusty head-pieces. When asked by Roger to reduce the men to order, as the women could not sleep, he had shown himself offhand to the point of insolence, curt to the point of brutality. "Have a care of yourselves, and I'll have a care of my men!" he said. "You go to your own!" And he would hear no more.
The Vicomte for a while noticed none of these things. The events of the morning had aged and shaken him, and for hours he sat speechless, with dull eyes, thinking of God knows what--perhaps of the son he had cast off, or of his own fallen estate, or of the peril of his guest. In vain did Roger and his younger daughter try to rouse him from his reverie--try to gain some counsel, some comfort from him. They could not. But that which their timid efforts failed to effect, the rising tempest of joviality at last and suddenly wrought.
"Where is Solomon?" he cried, lifting his head as one awakened from sleep. And he looked about him in great wrath. "Where is Solomon? Why does he not put a stop to this babel? 'Sdeath, man, am I to put up with this? Do you hear me?" looking round. "Do you want them to bring the Abbess downstairs?"
Bonne and Roger, who were crouching with the little Countess in one of the two window-recesses that overlooked the courtyard, rose to go to him. But Solomon, who had been hiding in the shadows about the door, was before them. "To be sure, my lord, to be sure!" the old servant said gallantly, though his troubled face and twitching beard bespoke his knowledge of the real position. "To be sure, my lord, it is not the first time by a many hundred the knaves have forgot themselves, and I've had to go with a stirrup-leather and bring them to their senses! The liquor that has run in this house"--he lifted his hands in admiration--"'tis no wonder, my lord, it goes sometimes to the head!"
"Go out, man! Go out and put a stop to it!" the Vicomte retorted passionately. "Your chattering does but add to it!"
"To be sure, my lord, I am going," Solomon answered bravely. But his eyes asked Roger a question. "To be sure it is like old days, my lord, and I thought that may-be you would like them to have their way a while."
"I should like it, fool?"
"You might think it better----"
"Begone!"
"Nay," Roger said, approaching the Vicomte. "Nay, if any one goes, sir, I must. Solomon is old, and they may mishandle him."
"Mishandle him?" the Vicomte said, opening his eyes in astonishment. "Mishandle my steward? My----" He broke off, his hands feeling tremulously for the arms of his chair; he found them and sank back in it. "I--I had forgotten!" he muttered, his head sinking on his breast. "I had forgotten. I dreamt, and now I am awake. I dreamt," he continued, speaking with increasing bitterness, "that I was Seigneur and Vicomte of Villeneuve, and Baron of Vlaye! With swords at my will, and steeds in stall, and a lusty son to take him by the beard who crossed me! And I am a beggar! A beggar, with no son to call a son, with no sword but that old fool's blade! Mishandle him?" gloomily. "Ay, they may mishandle him!" he continued feebly, his head sinking yet lower on his breast. "But there. It is over. Let them do what they will!"
He continued to mutter, but incoherently, and Roger, signing to Solomon to go to his place again, slunk back to the window recess. The lad had no hope of effecting more with Ampoule, a brutal man where rein was given him; and he crouched once more where he could see the dark figures carousing in the glare that reached to the range of stables. In order that those in the room might see without being seen, Solomon had lighted no more than two candles, and these were not behind the window, where Roger and the two girls sat in the shadow. They could therefore look out unchecked.
The day had been--and not many hours past--when the lad's cheek would have burned under the sneer just flung at him. Now, though a stranger and a girl had heard it, he was unmoved. For petty feelings of that kind his mind had no longer space. The conduct of the man whom Vlaye had left on guard, the increasing disorder and babel of the half-drunken troopers, awoke in him neither indignation nor anger, nor astonishment, but only fear. Not a fear that unmanned him, though he faced his first real peril, nor a fear that disarmed him, but one that braced him to do his best, that enabled him to think, and plan, and determine--crook-shouldered as he was--with a coolness which some day, as des Ageaux had said, might make of him a commander of men.
He was convinced that the men's unruliness was a thing planned and arranged. The Captain of Vlaye had conceived the wickedness of doing by others what he dared not do himself. The men, unless Roger was mistaken, would pass still more out of hand; the officer would profess himself impotent. Then, it might not be this evening, but to-morrow, or to-morrow evening at latest, the men would burst all bounds, cast aside respect, seize the young Countess, and bear her off. At the ford, or where you will, Vlaye would encounter them, rescue her, and while he gained a hold on her gratitude, would effect that which he had shrunk from doing openly.
It was a wicked, nay, a devilish plan, because in the course of its execution there must come a moment when all in the house--and not the young girl only at whom the plan was aimed--would lie at the men's mercy. For a time the men, half-drunk, must be masters. A moment there must be of extreme danger, threatening all, embracing all; and he, a lad, stood alone to meet it. Alone, save for one old man; for the Vicomte was past such work, and the servants had fled. And though Bonne, to whom as well as to the young Countess he had disclosed his fears, persisted in the hope of rescue, and based that hope on their strange guest's promise, he had little or no hope.
As he crouched with the two girls in the dark window recess, he faced the danger coolly, though the scene was one to depress an older heart. The scanty rays of the two candles which lighted a small part of the chamber fell full on the Vicomte, where he sat sunk low in his chair, a shiver passing now and again over his inert and feeble limbs. The only figure visible against the gloomy, dust-coloured hangings, he seemed the type of a race fallen hopelessly; his features, once imperious, hung flaccid, his hands clung weakly to the arms of his chair. He was capable still of one brief, foolish outburst, one passionate stroke; but no help or wise counsel could be expected from him. He was astonishingly aged in one day; even his power to wound the mind seemed near its end.
In contrast with that drooping figure, seated amid the shadows of the room in which generations of Villeneuves had lorded it royally, the scene without struck with an appalling sense of virility. The lusty troopers lolling in the hot blaze of the bonfire, on which one or another constantly flung fresh wood, and now roaring out some gutter-stave, now flinging coarse badinage hither and thither, were such as years of license and cruel campaigning had made them; men such as it took a Vlaye or a Montluc to curb. And had the lad who watched them with burning eyes and a beating heart lacked one jot of the perfect courage, he had as soon thought of pitting himself against them as of raising dead bones to life.
But he had that thought, and even planned and plotted as he watched them. "Where is Odette?" he asked in a whisper. He had Bonne's hand in his, her other arm held the Countess to her. "They may be afraid of her. If she spoke to the officer, he might listen to her."
"She will not believe there is danger," Bonne answered with something like a sob. "She will not hear a word. I began to explain about the Countess and she flew into a passion. She has shut herself up and says that we are all mad, stark mad from living alone, and afraid of our shadows. And she and her women have shut themselves up in her chamber. I have been to the door twice, but she will hear nothing."
"She will hear too much by and by!" Roger muttered.
Then a thing happened. The light cast by the bonfire embraced, it has been said, the whole of the courtyard. The men, confident in their strength, had left the gate open. As Roger ceased to speak, a single horseman emerged, silent as a spectre, from the low gateway, and advancing at a foot-pace three or four steps, drew rein, and gazed in astonishment at the scene of hilarity presented to him.
The three at the window were the first to see him. Roger's hand closed on his sister's; hers, so cold a moment before, grew on a sudden hot. "Who is it?" Roger muttered. "Who is it?" The court, which sloped a little from the house, was wide, but it might have been narrow and still he had asked, for the stranger wore--it was no uncommon fashion in those days--a mask. It was a slender thing, hiding only the upper part of the face, but it sufficed. "Who is it?" Roger repeated.
"M. des Voeux!" Bonne answered involuntarily. In their excitement the three rose to their feet.
Whether it were M. des Voeux or not, the masked man seemed in two minds about advancing. He had even turned his horse as if he would go out again, when some of the revellers espied him, and on the instant a silence, broken only by the crackling of the logs, and as striking as the previous din, proclaimed the fact.
The change seemed to encourage the stranger to advance. As he wheeled again and paced nearer, the men who sat on the farther side of the fire from him, and for that reason could not see him, rose and stood gaping at him through the smoke. He moved nearer to the outer ring.
"Who lives here, my good people?" he asked in a voice peculiarly sweet and clear; his tone smacked even a little womanish.
One of the men stifled a drunken laugh. Another turned, and after winking at his neighbours--who passed the joke round--advanced a pace or two, uncovered elaborately and bowed with ceremony to match. "M. le Vicomte de Villeneuve, if it please you, my lord--I should say your excellency!" with another low bow.
"Curse on it!" the stranger exclaimed.
The men's spokesman stared an instant, taken aback by the unexpected rejoinder. Then, aware that his reputation among his fellows was at stake, he recovered himself. "Did your excellency, my lord duke"--another delighted chuckle among the men--"please to speak?"
"Go and tell him I am here," the masked man answered, disregarding their horse-play; and he released his feet from the stirrups. The window of the dining-hall was open, and the three at it could mark him well, and hear every word of the dialogue.
"If your excellency--would enter?" the man rejoined with the same travesty of politeness. "The Vicomte would not wish you, I am sure, to await his coming."
"Very good. And do you, fellow, tell him that I crave the favour of a night's lodging. That I am alone, and my--but the rest I will tell him myself!"
The troopers nudged one another. "Go, Jasper," said the spokesman aloud, "and carry his excellency's commands to M. le Vicomte. Your horse, my lord duke, shall be taken care of! This way, if it please you my lord duke! And do some of you," turning, and making, unseen by the stranger, the motion of turning a key--"bring lights! Lights to the west tower, do you hear?"
The faces of the three within the window were pressed against the panes. "Who can he be?" Bonne muttered. "They call him----"
"They are fooling him!" Roger replied In wrath. "They know no more who he is than we do! He is not des Voeux. He has not his height, and not half his width. But what," angrily, "are they doing now? Where are they taking the man? Why are they taking him to the old tower?"
Why indeed?
Instead of conducting the guest over the bridge which led to the inhabited part of the house, the trooper, attended by four or five of his half-drunken comrades, was ushering him with ceremony to the lesser bridge which led to the western tower; the ground floor of which, a cold damp dungeon-like place, was used as a wood store. It had been opened a few hours before, that fagots might be taken from it, and this circumstance had perhaps suggested the joke to the prime conspirator.
"Lights are coming, my lord duke!" he said, taking a flaring brand from one of his comrades and holding it aloft. He was chuckling inwardly at the folly of the stranger in swallowing his egregious titles without demur. "The Vicomte shall be told. Beware of the step, my lord!" lowering his light that the other might see it. They were on the threshold now, and he pushed open the door that already stood ajar. "The step is somewhat awkward, your excellency! We have to go through the--it is somewhat old-fashioned, but craving your excellency's pardon for bringing you this way--Yah!"
With the word a sudden push thrust the unsuspecting stranger forward. Involuntarily he stumbled, tripped and with a cry of rage found himself on his hands and knees among the fagots. Before he could rise the door clanged horridly on him, the key grated in the lock, he was in darkness, a prisoner!
The men, reckless and half-drunk, roared with delight at the jest. "Welcome, my lord duke!" the ringleader cried, holding aloft his light, and bowing to the ground before the thick oaken door. "Welcome to Villeneuve!"
"Welcome!" cried the others, waving their lights, and clutching one another in fits of laughter. "Welcome to Villeneuve! A good night to you! An appetite to your supper, my lord duke!"
So they gibed awhile. Then, beginning to weary of it, they turned and, still shaking with laughter, discovered an addition to their party: Roger stood before them, his eyes glittering with excitement. The lad had not been able to look on and see the trick played on a guest; the more as that guest represented his one solitary, feeble hope of help. The men might still be sober enough to listen; at any rate he would try. Much against their wills he had broken away from the girls. He was here.
"Open that door!" he said.
The man to whom he spoke, the ringleader, looked almost as much astonished as he was. The others ceased to laugh, and waited to see what would happen.
"That door?" the man concerned answered slowly as soon as he could bring his thoughts to bear on the emergency.
"Yes, that door!" Roger cried imperiously, all the Villeneuve in him rising to the surface. "And instantly, fellow!"
"So be it, if you will have it so," the man replied, shrugging his shoulders. "But it was only a jest, and----"
"There is enough of the jest, and too much!" Roger retorted. He spoke so bravely that not a man remembered his crooked shoulders. "Open, I say!"
The man shook his head. "Best not," he said.
"It shall be done!"
"Well, you can open, if you please," the man replied. "But I am M. de Vlaye's man and take orders nowhere else!" And with an insolent gesture he flung the key on the ground.
To punish him for his insolence, when they were a score to one, was impossible. Roger took up the key, set it in the lock, turned, opened, and, tricked in his turn, plunged head first into the darkness, impelled by a treacherous thrust from behind. Crash! The door was shut on him.
But he knew naught of that. As he fell forward a savage blow from the front, from the darkness, hurled him breathless against a pile of fagots. At the same moment a voice cried in his ear, "There is one is spent, Deo Laus!" A hand groped for him, a foot was set hard against him, and something wrenched at his clothes.
"Why," quoth the same voice a second later--the darkness was almost perfect--"did I not run the rascal through?"
"No!" Roger said, and as the stranger's sword, which had only passed through his clothes, was dragged clear, he nimbly shifted his place. "And I beg you will not," he continued hurriedly. "I was coming to your aid, and those treacherous dogs played the same trick on me!" "Then who are you?"
"I am Roger de Villeneuve, my father's son."
"Then itisVilleneuve, this place? They did not lie in that?"
"No, it is Villeneuve, but these scoundrels are Vlaye's people," Roger answered. He was in the depths of despair, for the girls were alone now and unprotected. "They are in possession here," he continued, almost weeping. "M. de Vlaye----"
"The Captain of Vlaye, do you mean?"
"Yes. He tried to seize the Countess of Rochechouart as she passed this way yesterday. She took refuge here and he did not dare to drag her away. So he left these men to guard her, as he said; but really to carry her off as soon as they should be drunk enough to venture on it." Poor Roger's voice shook. He was lamenting his folly, his dreadful folly, in leaving the women.
The stranger took the news, as was natural, after a different fashion, and one strange enough. First he swore with a deliberate fluency that shocked the country lad; and then he laughed with a light-hearted joyousness that was still more alien from the circumstances. "Well, it is an adventure!" he cried. "It is an adventure! And for what did I come? To the fool his folly! And one fool makes many! But do you think, my friend," he continued, speaking in a different strain, "that they will carry off the Countess while we lie here?"
Roger, raging in the dark, had no other thought. "Why not?" he cried. "Why not? And there are other women in the house." He groaned.
"Young?"
"Yes, yes."
"And one of them--lovely?" There was amusement in the stranger's tone.
"One of them is my sister," Roger retorted fiercely. And for an instant the other was silent.
Then, "With what attendance?" he asked. "Whom have they with them that you can trust?"
"The Countess's steward and one old man. And my father, but he is old also."
"Pheugh!" the stranger whistled. "An adventure indeed!" From the sound of the fagots it seemed that he was moving. "We must out of this," he said, "and to the rescue! But how? There is no other door than the one by which we entered?"
"There is one, but the key is lost, and it has not been opened for years."
"Then we must go out as we came in," the stranger answered gaily. "But how? But how? Let me think! Let me think, lad!"
The smell of damp earth mingled with rotting wood pervaded the darkness in which they stood. They could not see one another, but at a certain height from the ground a shaft of reddish light pierced the gloom and disclosed about a foot of the cobweb vault above them. This light entered through an arrow-slit which looked toward the bonfire, and apparently it suggested a plan, for presently the stranger could be heard stumbling and groping towards it.
"You cannot go out that way!" Roger said.
"No, but I can get them in!" the other answered drily, and from certain noises which came to his ear Roger judged that the man was piling wood under the opening that he might climb to it. He succeeded by-and-by; his head and shoulders became darkly visible at the window--if window that could be called which was but a span wide.
"There is some one in command?" he asked. "Who is it? His name, my friend?" And when Roger, who fortunately remembered Ampoule's name, had told him: "Do you pile," he said, "some wood behind the door, so that it cannot be opened to the full or too quickly. It is only to give us time to transact the punctilios."
Roger complied. He hoped--but with doubt--that the man was not mad. He supposed that out in the world men were of these odd and surprising kinds. The Lieutenant had impressed him. This strange man, who after coming within an ace of killing him jested, who laughed and blasphemed in a breath, and who was no sooner down than he was up, impressed him more vividly, though differently. And was to impress him still more. For when he had set the wood behind the door, the unknown, raised on his pile of fagots, thrust his face into the opening of the arrow-slit, and in a shrill voice of surprising timbre began to pour on the ill-starred Ampoule a stream of the grossest and most injurious abuse. Amid stinging gibes and scalding epithets, and words that blistered, the name rang out at intervals only to sink again under the torrent of vile charges and outrageous insinuations. The lad's ears burned as he listened; burned still more hotly as he reflected that the girls might be within hearing. As for the men at the fire, twenty seconds saw them silent with amazement. Their very laughter died out under that steady stream of epithets, for any one of which a man of honour must have cut his fellow's throat. A moment or two passed in this stark surprise; still the voice, ever attaining lower depths of abuse, went on.
At length, whether some one told him or he heard it himself, the lieutenant came out, and, flushed with drink, listened for a while incredulous. But when he caught his name, undoubtedly his name, "Ampoule! Ampoule!" again and again, and the tale was told him, and he began to comprehend that in the tower was a man who dared to say of him, Vlaye's right hand in many a dark adventure, of him who had cut many a young cock's comb--to say of him the things he heard--he stood an instant in the blaze of the fire and bellowed like a bull.
"His own sister, fifteen years old," the pitiless voice repeated. "Sold her to a Spanish Jew and divided the money with his mother!"
Ampoule's mouth opened wide, but this time breath failed him. He gasped.
"And being charged with it at Fontarabie," continued the voice, "as he returned, showed the white feather before four men at the inn, who took him and dipped him in a dye vat."
"Son of a dog!" Ampoule shrieked, getting his voice at last. "This is too much! This is----"
"Why, he never bullies when he is unsupported!" his tormentor went on. "But a craven he has always been when put to it! If he be not, let him say it now, and face me in a ring!"
The exasperated man ground his teeth and flung out his arms. "Face you!" he roared. "You! You! Face me, and I will cut out your heart!"
"Fine talk! Fine talk!" came the answer. "So you have said many a time and run! Meet me in a ring, foot to foot and fairly, in your shirt!"
"I'll meet you!" the lieutenant answered passionately. "I'll meet you, fool of the world. Little you know whom you have bearded. You must be mad; but mad or not, say your prayer, for 'twill be the last time!"
There was a momentary pause. Then "Promise me a ring and fair-play!" cried the high, delicate voice, "and a clear way of escape if I kill you!"
"Ay, ay! That will I! All that! And much good may it do you!"
"Nay, but swear it," the stranger persisted, "by--by our Lady of Rocamadour!"
"I swear it! I swear it!"
"Then," the stranger replied with a sneer, "it is for you to open. I've no key!" And he leapt lightly from his pile of fagots to the floor.