Bonne's first thought when her brother darted to the stranger's rescue was to seek aid from Ampoule, who, it will be remembered, sat drinking beside the fire in the outer hall. But the man's coarse address, and the nature of his employment at the moment, checked the impulse; and the girl returned to the window, and, flattening her face against the panes, sought to learn what fortune her brother had. The fire, still burning high, cast its light as far as the gateway. But the tower to which Roger had hastened, being in a line with the window, was not visible, and though Bonne pressed her face as closely as possible against the panes, she could discover nothing. Yet her brother did not come back. The murmur of jeers and laughter persisted, but he did not appear.
She turned at last, impelled to seek aid from some one. But at sight of the room, womanish panic took her by the throat, and the hysterical fit almost overcame her. For what help, what hope of help, lay in any of those whom she saw round her? The Countess indeed had crept to her side, and cast her arm about her, but she was a child, and ashake already. For the others, the Vicomte sat sunk in lethargy, heeding no one, ignorant apparently that his son had left the room; and Fulbert, whose wits had exhausted themselves in the effort that had saved his mistress, stood faithful indeed, but brainless, dull, dumb. Only Solomon, who leant against the wall beside the door, his old face gloomy, his eyebrows knit, only to him could she look for a spark of comfort or suggestion. He, it was clear, appreciated the crisis, for he was listening intently, his head inclined, his hand on a weapon. But he was old, and there was not a man of Vlaye's troopers who was not more than a match for him foot to foot.
Still, he was her only hope, if her brother did not return. And she turned again to the casement, and, scarcely breathing, listened with a keenness of anxiety almost indescribable. If only Roger would return! Roger, who had seemed so weak a prop a few minutes before, and who, now that she had lost him, seemed everything! But the voices of Ampoule and his companion disputing in the outer hall rose louder, drowning more distant sounds; and the minutes were passing. And still Roger did not return.
Then a thought came to her; or rather two thoughts. The first was that all now hung on her--and that steadied her. The second, that he whose grasp had brought the blood to her cheeks that morning had bidden her hold out to the last, fight to the last, play the man to the last; and this moved her to action. Better do anything than succumb like her father. She flew to Solomon, dragging the Countess with her.
"We are not safe here," she said. "These men are drinking. They have kept Roger, and that bodes us no good. Were it not better to go upstairs to the Tower Room?"
"It were the best course," the old man answered slowly, with his eyes on the Vicomte. "Out and away the best course, mademoiselle. Fulbert and I could guard the stairs awhile at any rate."
"Then let us go!"
But he looked at the Vicomte. "If my lord says so," he answered. All his life the Vicomte's word had been his law.
In a moment she was at her father's side. "The Countess will be safer upstairs, sir," she said, speaking with a boldness that surprised herself--but who could long remain in fear of the failing old man whose leaden eyes met hers with scarce a gleam of meaning? "The Countess is frightened here, sir," she continued. "If you would guard us upstairs----"
"Have done!" he struck at her with feeble passion, and waved her off. "Let me alone."
"But----"
"Peace, girl, I say!" he repeated irascibly. "Who are you to fix comings and goings? Get to your stool and your needle. God knows," in a burst of childish petulance, "what the world is coming to--when children order their elders! But since--there, begone! Begone!"
She wrung her hands in despair. Outside, fuel was beginning to fail, the fire was burning low, the court growing dark. Within, the two guttering candles showed only the Vicomte's figure sunk low in his chair, and here and there a pale face projected from the shadow. But the noise of riot and disorder did not slacken, rather it grew more menacing; and what was she to do? Desperate, she returned to the attack.
"Sir," she said, "there is no one to escort the Countess of Rochechouart to her room. She wishes to retire, and it is late."
He got abruptly to his feet, and looked about him with something of his ordinary air. "Where is the Countess?" he asked peevishly. And then addressing Solomon, "Take candles! Take candles!" he continued. "And you, sirrah, light the way! Don't you know your duty? The Countess to her room! Mordieu, girl, we are fallen low indeed if we don't know how to behave to our guests. Madame--or, to be sure, Mademoiselle la Comtesse," with a puzzled look at the shrinking child, "let me have the honour. Things are out of gear to-night, and we must do the best we can. But to-morrow--to-morrow all shall be in order."
He marshalled Solomon out and followed, bowing the young Countess before him. Bonne overjoyed went next; Fulbert, like a patient dog, brought up the rear. All was not done yet, however, as Bonne knew; and she nerved herself for the effort. On the landing her father would have stopped, but she passed him lightly and opened the door that led by way of the roof, to the Tower Chamber. "This way!" she muttered to Solomon, as he hesitated. "The Countess is timid to-night, sir," she continued aloud, "and craves leave to lie in the Tower as the room is empty."
He frowned. "Still this silliness!" he exclaimed, and then passing his hand over his brow, "There was something said about it, I remember. But I thought I----"
"Gave permission, sir? Yes!" Bonne murmured, pushing the girl steadily forward. "Solomon, do you hear? Light along the leads!"
Great as was his fear of the Vicomte, the old porter succumbed to her will, and all were on the point of following, when a door on the landing opened, and the Abbess appeared on the threshold of her room. She held a light above her head, and with a sneer on her handsome face, contemplated the group.
"What is this?" she asked. And then, gathering their intention from their looks--possibly she had had some inkling of it, "You do not mean to tell me," she continued, partly in temper, and partly in feigned surprise, "that a half-dozen of roystering troopers, sir, are driving the Vicomte de Villeneuve from his own chamber? To take refuge among the owls and bats? For shame, sir, for shame!"
Bonne tried to stay her by a gesture.
In vain. "A fine tale they will have to tell to-morrow!" the elder sister continued in tones of savage raillery. "M. de Villeneuve afraid of a handful of rascals, whom their master keeps within bounds with a stick! The Lord of Villeneuve bearded in his own house by a scum of riders!"
"Peace, daughter!" the Vicomte cried; he even raised his hand in anger. "You lie! It is not I"--his head trembling--"I indeed, but the Countess! You don't see her. The Countess of Rochechouart----"
"Oh!" said the Abbess. And, the light she held shining on her arrogant beauty, she swept a great curtsy, as if she had not seen her intended guest before; as if her scornful eyes had not from the first descried the girl; as if the small beginnings of hate, hate that scarcely knew itself, were not already in her breast. "Oh," she said again, "it is the Countess of Rochechouart, is it, who is afraid?"
"And with reason," Bonne answered, intervening hurriedly, but in a low voice. "The men are drinking and growing violent. Roger went to them some time ago, and has not come back."
"Roger!" the Abbess ejaculated, shrugging her shoulders. "Did you think that he could do anything?"
But she who of all those present seemed least likely to interfere spoke up at that. Whether the young Countess resented--Heaven knows why she should--the sneer at Roger's expense, or only the contempt of herself which the Abbess's manner expressed, she plucked up a spirit. After all she was not only a Rochechouart, but she was a woman; and there is in all women, even the meekest, a spark of temper that, being fanned by one of their own sex, blazes up. "It is true," she replied coldly, her face faintly pink. "It is I who am afraid, mademoiselle. But it is not of the men downstairs. It is their master whom I fear."
"You fear M. de Vlaye?" the Abbess repeated. And she laughed aloud, a little over merrily, at the absurdity of the notion. "You--fear M. de Vlaye? Why? If I may venture to ask?"
"Why?" the Countess replied. She had learned somewhat during the day, and was too young to hide her knowledge, being provoked. "Do you ask why, mademoiselle? Because, to be plain, I fear that which it may be you do not fear."
The Abbess flushed crimson to her very throat. "And what, to be plain, do you mean by that?" she retorted in a tone that shook with passion. "If you think that this story is true that they tell----"
"That M. de Vlaye waylaid and would have seized me?" the little Countess retorted undismayed. "It is quite true."
"You say that!" The young Abbess was pale and red by turns. "How do you know? What do you know?"
"I know the Captain of Vlaye," the girl answered firmly. "I have seen him more than once at Angoulême, His mask fell yesterday, and I could not be mistaken. It was he!"
The Abbess bit her lip until the blood came in the vain attempt to mask feelings which her temper rendered her impotent to control. She no longer doubted the story. She saw that it was true; and jealousy, rage, and amazement--amazement at Vlaye's treachery, amazement at the discovery of a rival in one so insignificant in all save rank--deprived her of the power of speech. Fortunately at this moment the clash of steel reached Solomon's ears, and, startled, the porter gave the alarm.
"My lord, they are fighting!" he cried. And then emboldened by the emergency, "Were it not well," he continued, "to put the ladies in a place of safety?"
The Vicomte, urged up the steps by the women, leant over the parapet, and learned the truth for himself. Bonne, the Countess, the Abbess and her women, all followed, and in a twinkling were standing on the roof in the dark night, the round tower rising beside them, and the croaking of the frogs coming up to them from below.
But the brief clash of weapons was over, and they could make out no more than a group of figures gathered about two prostrate men. The movement of the lights, now here now there, augmented the difficulty of seeing, and for a while Bonne's heart stood still. She made no lamentations, for she came of the old blood, but she thought Roger dead. And then a man raised a light, and she distinguished his figure leaning over one of the injured men.
"Thank God!" she murmured. "There is Roger. He is not hurt!"
"Who are they? Who are they?" the Vicomte babbled, clinging to the parapet. "Eh? Who are they? Cannot any one see?"
But no one could see, and the Abbess's women began to cry. She paid no heed to them. She leant with the others over the parapet, and she listened with them to the shuffling feet of the men below, as slowly in a double line they bore the cloaked form towards the house. But whether their thoughts were her thoughts, their anxiety her anxiety, whether she was wrapt, as they were, in the scene that passed below, or chewed instead the cud of other and more bitter reflections, was known only to herself. Her proud spirit, whose worst failings hitherto had not gone beyond selfishness and vanity, hung, it may be, during those moments between good and evil, the better and the worse; took, perhaps, the turn that must decide its life; flung from it, perhaps, in passionate abandonment the last heart-strings that bound it to the purer and more generous affections.
Perhaps; but none of those who stood beside her had an inkling of her mood. For the troopers had passed with their mysterious burden into the house, and no sooner were they gone than one of the Abbess's women cried in a panic that they would be murdered, and in a trice all, succumbing to the impulse, made for the Tower Chamber, and herded into it pell-mell, some shrugging their shoulders and showing that they gave way to the more timid, and the men not knowing from whom to take orders. In the chamber were already two or three of the house-women, who had sought that refuge earlier in the evening, and these, seeing the Vicomte, looked for nothing but slaughter, and by their shrill lamentations added to the confusion.
The security of all depended entirely on their holding the way across the leads, and here the men should have remained; but the women would not part with them and all entered together. Some one locked the outer door, and there they were, in all eleven or twelve persons, in the great, dreary chamber, where a few feeble candles that served to make darkness visible disclosed their blanched faces. At the slightest sound the women shrieked or clung to one another, and with every second the boldest expected to hear the tramp of feet without, and the clatter of weapons on the oak.
There was something ridiculous in this noisy panic; yet something terrifying also to those who, like Bonne, kept their heads. She strove in vain to make herself heard; her voice was drowned; the disorder overwhelmed her as a flood overwhelms a strong swimmer. She seized a girl by the arm to silence her: the wench took it for a fresh alarm and squalled the louder. She flew to her father and begged him to interpose; flurried, he fell into a rage with her, and stormed at her as if it were she who caused the confusion. For the others the young Countess, though quiet, was scared; and Odette, seated at a distance, noticed her companions only at intervals in the dark current of her thoughts--and then with a look of disdain.
At length Bonne betook herself to Solomon. "Some one should hold the roof!" she said.
He shrugged his shoulders. "Ay, ay, mademoiselle," he said, "but we have no orders and the door is locked, and he has the key."
"You could do something there?"
"Ay, if we had orders."
She flew to the Vicomte at that. "Some one should be holding the roof, sir," she said. "Solomon and Fulbert could maintain it awhile. Could you not give them orders?"
He swore at her. "We are mad to be here," he exclaimed, veering about on an instant. "This comes of letting women have a voice! Silence, you hell-babes!" he continued, turning with his staff raised upon two of the women, who had chosen that moment to raise a new outcry. "We are all mad! Mad, I say!"
"I will silence them, sir," she answered. And stepping on a bed, "Listen! Listen to me!" she cried stoutly. "We are in little danger here if we are quiet. Therefore let us make no noise. They will not then know where to find us. And let the men go to the door, and the maids to the other end of the room. And----"
Shrieks stopped her. The two whom the Vicomte had upbraided flung themselves screaming on Solomon. "The window! The window!" they cried, glaring over their shoulders. And before the astonished old man could free himself, or the Vicomte give vent to his passion, "The window! They are coming in!" they shrieked.
The words were the signal for a wild rush towards the door. Two or three of the candles were knocked down, the Vicomte was well-nigh carried off his legs, the Abbess, who tried to rise, was pinned where she was by her women; who flung themselves on their knees before her and hid their faces in her robe. Only Bonne, interrupted in the midst of her appeal, retained both her presence of mind and her freedom of action. After obeying the generous instinct which bade her thrust the young Countess behind her, she remained motionless, staring intently at the window--staring in a mixture of hope and fear.
The hope was justified. They were the faces of friends that showed in the dark opening of the window. They were friends who entered--Charles first, that the alarm might be the sooner quelled, des Ageaux second; if first and second they could be called, when the feet of the two touched the floor almost at the same instant. But Charles wore a new and radiant face, and des Ageaux a look of command, that to Bonne after what she had gone through was as wine to a fainting man. There were some whom that look did not reach, but even these--women with their faces hidden--stilled their cries, and raised their heads when he spoke. For a trumpet could not have rung more firm in that panic-laden air.
"We are friends!" he said. "And we are in time! M. le Vicomte, we must act and ask your leave afterwards." Turning again to the window he spoke to the night.
Not in vain. At the word troopers came tumbling in man after man; the foremost, a lean, lank-visaged veteran, who looked neither to right nor left, but in three strides, and with one salute in the Vicomte's direction, put himself at the door and on guard. He had a long, odd-looking sword with a steel basket hilt, with which he signed to the men to stand here or there.
For they continued to come in, until the Vicomte, stunned by the sight of his son, awoke to fresh wonder; and, speechless, counted a round dozen and three to boot, besides his guest and Charles. Moreover they were men of a certain stamp, quiet but grim, who, being bidden, did and asked no questions.
When they had all filed through the group of staring women now fallen silent, and had ranged themselves beside the Bat--for he it was--at the door, des Ageaux spoke.
"Do you hear them?"
"No, my lord."
"Unlock softly, then, but do not open! And wait the word! M. le Vicomte"--he turned courteously to the old man--"the occasion presses, or I would ask your pardon. Mademoiselle"--but as he turned to Bonne he lowered his voice, and what he said escaped other ears. Not her ears, for from brow to neck, though he had but praised her courage and firmness, she blushed vividly.
"I did only what I could," she replied, lifting her eyes once to his and as quickly dropping them. "Roger----"
"Ha! What of Roger?"
She told him as concisely as she could.
He knit his brows. "That was not of my contrivance," he said. And then with a gleam of humour in his eyes, "Masked was he? Another knight-errant, it seems, and less fortunate than the first! You do not lack supporters in your misfortunes, mademoiselle. But--what is it?"
"They come, my lord," the Bat answered, raising his hand to gain attention.
All, at the word, listened with quickened pulses, and in the silence the harsh rending of wood came to the ear, a little dulled by distance. Then a murmur of voices, then another crash! The men about the door poised themselves, each with a foot advanced, and his weapon ready; their strained muscles and gleaming eyes told of their excitement. A moment and they would be let loose! A moment--and then, too late, Bonne saw Charles beside the Bat.
Too late; but it mattered nothing. She might have spoken, but he, panting for the fight, exulting in the occasion, would not have heeded if an angel had spoken. And before she could find words, the thing was done. The Bat flung the door open, and with a roar of defiance the mob of men charged out and across the roof, Charles among the foremost.
A shot, a scream, a tumult of cries, the jarring of steel on steel, and the fight rolled down through the house in a whirl of strident voices. The candles, long-wicked and guttering, flamed wildly in the wind; the room was half in shadow, half in light. The Vicomte, who had seen all in a maze of stupefaction, stiffened himself--as the old war-horse that scents the battle. Bonne hid her face and prayed.
Not so the Abbess. She sat unmoved, a sneer on her face, a dark look in her eyes. And so Bonne, glancing up, saw her; and a strange pang shot through the younger girl's breast. If he had praised her courage--and that with a look and in a tone that had brought the blood to her cheeks--what would he think of her handsome sister? How could he fail to admire her, not for her beauty only, but for her stately pride, for the composure that not even this could alter, for the challenge that shone in her haughty eyes?
The next moment Bonne reproached herself for entertaining such a thought, while Charles's life and perhaps Roger's hung in the balance, and the cries of men in direst straits still rung in her ears. What a worm she was, what a crawling thing! God pardon her! God protect them!
The Abbess's voice--she had risen at last and moved--cut short her supplications. "Who is he?" Odette de Villeneuve muttered in a fierce whisper. "Who is he, girl?" She pointed to des Ageaux, who kept his station on the threshold, his ear following the course of the fight. "Who is that man? They call him my lord! Who is he?"
"I do not know," Bonne said.
"You do not know?"
"No."
The candles flared higher. The Lieutenant turned and saw the two sisters standing together looking at him.
He crossed the room to them, halting midway to listen, his attention divided between them and the conflict below. His eyes dwelt awhile on the Abbess, but settled, as he drew nearer, on Bonne. He desired to reassure her. "Have no fear, mademoiselle," he said quietly. "Your brother runs little risk. They were taken by surprise. By this time it is over."
The Vicomte heard and his lips trembled, but no words came. It was the Abbess who spoke for him. "And what next?" she asked harshly.
Des Ageaux, still lending an ear to the sounds below, looked at her with attention, but did not answer.
"What next?" she repeated. "You have entered forcibly. By what right?"
"The right, mademoiselle," he replied, "that every man has to resist a wrong. The right that every man has to protect women, and to save his friends. If you desire more than this," he continued, with a change of tone that answered the challenge of her eyes, "in the King's name, mademoiselle, and my own!"
"And you are?"
"His Majesty's Lieutenant in Périgord," he answered, bowing. His attention was fixed on her, yet he was vividly conscious of the colour that mounted suddenly to Bonne's cheeks, dyed her brows, shone in her eyes.
"Of Périgord?" the Abbess repeated in astonishment.
"Of Périgord," he replied, bowing again. "It is true," he continued, shrugging his shoulders, "that I am a league or two beyond my border, but great wrongs beget little ones, mademoiselle."
She hated him. As he stood there successful, she hated him. But she had not found an answer, nor had Bonne stilled the fluttering, half painful, half pleasant, of her heart, when the tread of returning feet heralded news. The Bat and two others entered, bearing a lanthorn that lit up their damp swarthy faces. The first was Roger.
He was wildly excited. "Great news!" he cried, waving his hand. "Great news! I have downstairs----"
One look from des Ageaux's eyes silenced him. Des Ageaux looked from him to the Bat. "What have you done?" he asked curtly.
"Taken two unwounded, three wounded," the tall man answered as briefly. "The others escaped."
"Their horses?"
"We have their horses."
Des Ageaux paused an instant. Then, "You have closed the gates?"
"And set a guard, my lord!" the Bat answered. "We have no wounded, but----"
"The Duke of Joyeuse lies below, and is wounded!" Roger cried in a breath. He could restrain himself no longer.
If his object was to shatter des Ageaux's indifference, he succeeded to a marvel. "The Duke of Joyeuse?" the Lieutenant exclaimed in stupefaction. "Impossible!"
"But no!" Roger retorted. "He is lying below--wounded. It is not impossible!"
"But he was not--of those?" des Ageaux returned, indicating by a gesture the men whom they had just expelled. For an instant the notion that he had attacked and routed friends instead of foes darkened his face.
"No!" Roger explained fluently--excitement had rid him of his diffidence. "No! He was the man who rode into the courtyard--but you have not heard? They were going to maltreat him, and he killed their leader, Ampoule--that was before you came!" Roger's eyes shone; it was evident that he had transferred his allegiance.
Des Ageaux's look sought the Bat and asked a question. "There is a dead man below," the Bat answered. "He had it through the throat."
"And the Duke of Joyeuse?"
"He is there--alone apparently."
"Alone?"
The Bat's eyes sought the wall and gazed on it stonily. "There are more fools than one in the world," he said gruffly.
Des Ageaux pondered an instant. Then, "I will see him," he said. "But first," he turned courteously to the Vicomte, "I have to provide for your safety, M. le Vicomte, and that of your family. I can only ensure it, I fear, by removing you from here. I have not sufficient force to hold the château, and short of that I see no way of protecting you from the Captain of Vlaye's resentment."
The Vicomte, who had aged years in the last few days, as the old sometimes do, sat down weakly on a bed. "Go--from here?" he muttered, his hands moving nervously on his knees. "From my house?"
"It is necessary."
"Why?" A younger and stronger voice flung the question at des Ageaux. The Abbess stood forward beside her father. "Why?" she repeated imperiously. "Why should we go from here--from our own house? Or why should we fear M. de Vlaye?"
"To the latter question--because he does not lightly forgive, mademoiselle," des Ageaux replied drily. "To the former because I have neither men nor means to defend this house. To both, because you have with you"--he pointed to the Countess--"this lady, whom it is not consonant with the Vicomte's honour either to abandon or to surrender. To be plain, M. de Vlaye's plans have been thwarted and his men routed, and to-morrow's sun will not be an hour high before he takes the road. To remain here were to abide the utmost of his power; which," he added drily, "is at present of importance, however it may stand in a week's time."
She looked at him darkly beautiful, temper and high disdain in her face. And as she looked there began to take shape in her mind the wish to destroy him; a wish that even as she looked, in a space of time too short to be measured by our clumsy methods, became a fixed thought. Why had he intervened? Who had invited him to intervene? With a woman's inconsistency she left out of sight the wrong M. de Vlaye would have done her, she forgot the child-Countess, she overlooked all except that this man was the enemy of the man she loved. She felt that but for him all would have been well! But for him--for even that she laid at his door--and his hostility the Captain of Vlaye had never been driven to think of that other way of securing his fortunes.
These thoughts passed through her mind in a pause so short that the listeners scarcely marked it for a pause. Then, "And if we will not go?" she cried.
"All in the house will go," he replied.
"Whither?"
"I shall decide that," he answered coldly. And he turned from her. Before she could retort he was giving orders, and men were coming and going and calling to one another, and lights were flitting in all directions through the house, and all about her was hubbub and stir and confusion. She saw that resistance was vain. Her father was passive, her brothers were des Ageaux's most eager ministrants. The servants were awed into silence, or, like old Solomon, who for once was mute on the glories of the race, were anxious to escape for their own sakes.
Then into her hatred of him entered a little of that leaven of fear which makes hatred active. For amid the confusion he was cool. His voice was firm, his eye commanded on this side, his hand beckoned on that, men ran for him. She knew the dread in which M. de Vlaye was held. But this she saw was not the awe in which men hold him whose caprice it may be to punish, but the awe in which men stand of him who is just; whose nature it is out of chaos to create order, and who to that end will spend himself and all. A man cold of face and something passionless; even hard, we have seen, when a rope, a bough, and a villain forced themselves on his attention.
She would not have known him had she seen him leaning over Joyeuse a few minutes later, while his lean subaltern held a shaded taper on the other side of the makeshift pallet. The door was locked on them, they had the room to themselves, and between them the Duke lay in the dead sleep of exhaustion. "I do not think that we can move him," des Ageaux muttered, his brow clouded by care.
The Bat, with the light touch of one who had handled many a dying man, felt the Duke's pulse, without rousing him. "He will bear it," he said, "in a litter."
"Over that road? Think what a road it is!"
"Needs must!"
"He brought the money, found me gone, and followed," des Ageaux murmured in a voice softening by feeling. "You think we dare take him?"
"To leave him to the Captain of Vlaye were worse."
"Worse for us," des Ageaux muttered doubtfully. "That is true."
"Worse for all," the Bat grunted. He took liberties in private that for all the world he would not have had suspected.
Still his master, who had been so firm above-stairs, hung undecided over the sick man's couch. "M. de Vlaye would not be so foolish as to harm him," he said.
"He would only pluck him!" the Bat retorted. "And wing us with the first feather, the Lady Countess with the second, the Crocans with the third, and the King with the fourth." He stopped. It was a long speech for him.
Des Ageaux assented. "Yes, he is the master-card," he said slowly. "I suppose we must take him. But Heavens knows how we shall get him there."
"Leave that to me!" said the Bat, undertaking more than he knew. Nor did he guess with whose assistance he was to perform the task.
It was after midnight, and the young moon had set when they came, a long procession of riders, to the ford in which des Ageaux had laved his horse's legs on the evening of his arrival. But the night was starlight, and behind them the bonfire, which the men had rekindled that its blaze might aid their preparations, was reflected in a faint glow above the trees. As they splashed through the shallows the frogs fell silent, scared by the invasion, but an owl that was mousing on the slope of the downs between them and the dim lifted horizon continued its melancholy hooting. The women shivered as the cool air embraced them, and one here and there, as her horse, deceived by the waving weeds, set a foot wrong, shrieked low.
But no one hesitated, for the Bat had put fear into them.
He had told them in the fewest possible words that in ninety minutes M. de Vlaye would be knocking at the gate they left! And how long the pursuit would tarry after that he left to their imaginations. The result justified his course; the ford, that in daylight was a terror to the timid, was passed without demur. One by one their horses stepped from its dark smooth-sliding water, turned right-handed, and falling into line set their heads up-stream towards the broken hills and obscure winding valleys whence the river flowed.
Hampered by the wounded man's litter and the night, they could not hope to make more than a league in the hour, and with the first morning light might expect to be overtaken. But des Ageaux considered that the Captain of Vlaye, ignorant of his force, would not dare to follow at speed. And in the beginning all went well.
Over smooth turf, they made for half a league good progress, the long bulk of the chalk hill accompanying them on the left, while on the right the vague gloom of the wooded valley, teeming with mysterious rustlings and shrill night cries, drew many a woman's eyes over her shoulder. But, as the bearers of the litter could only proceed at a walking pace, the long line of shadowy riders had not progressed far before a gap appeared in its ranks and insensibly grew wider. Presently the two bodies were moving a hundred yards apart, and henceforward the rugged surface of the road, which was such as to hamper the litter without delaying the riders, quickly augmented the interval.
The Vicomte was mounted on his own grizzled pony, and with his two daughters and Roger rode at the head of the first party. They had not proceeded far before Bonne remarked that her sister was missing. She was sure that the Abbess had been at her side when she crossed the ford, and for a short time afterwards. Why had she left them? And where was she?
Not in front, for only the Bat and Charles, who had attached himself to the veteran, and was drinking in gruff tales of leaguer at his lips, were in front. Behind, then?
Bonne turned her head and strove to learn. But the light of the stars and the night--June nights are at no hour quite dark--allowed her to see only the persons who rode immediately behind her. They were Roger and the Countess. On their heels came two more--men for certain. The rest were shadows, bobbing vaguely along, dim one moment, lost the next.
Presently Charles, also, missed the Abbess, and asked where she was.
Roger could only answer: "To the rear somewhere."
"Learn where she is," Charles returned. "Pass the word back, lad. Ask who is with her."
Presently, "She is not with us," Roger passed back word. "She is with the litter, they say. And it has fallen behind. But the Lieutenant is with it, so that she is safe there."
"She were better here," Charles answered shortly. "She is not wanted there, I'll be sworn!"
Wanted or not, the Abbess had not put herself where she was without design. Her passage of arms with des Ageaux had not tended to soften her feelings. She was now bent on his punishment. The end she knew; the means were to seek. But with the confidence of a woman who knew herself beautiful, she doubted not that she would find or create them. Bitterly, bitterly should he rue the day when he had forced her to take part against the man she loved. And if she could involve in his fall this child, this puling girl on whom the Captain of Vlaye had stooped an eye, not in love or adoration, but solely to escape the toils in which they were seeking to destroy him--so much the better! The two were linked inseparably in her mind. The guilt was theirs, the cunning was theirs, the bait was theirs; and M. de Vlaye's the misfortune only. So women reason when they love.
If she could effect the ruin of these two, and at the same time save the man she adored, her triumph would be complete. If--but, alas, in that word lay the difficulty; nor as she rode with a dark face of offence had she a notion how to set about her task. But women's wits are better than their logic. Men spoke in her hearing of the litter and of the delay it caused, and in a flash the Abbess saw the means she lacked, and the man she must win. In the litter lay the one and the other.
For the motives that led des Ageaux to bear it with him at the cost of trouble, of delay, of danger, were no secret to a quick mind. The man who lay in it was the key to the situation. She came near to divining the very phrase--a master-card--which des Ageaux had used to the Bat in the security of the locked room. A master-card he was; a card that at all costs must be kept in the Lieutenant's hands, and out of Vlaye's power.
Therefore, even in this midnight flight they must burden themselves with his litter. A Duke, a Marshal of France, in favour at Court, and lord of a fourth of Languedoc, he had but to say the word, and Vlaye was saved--for this time at any rate. The Duke need but give some orders, speak to some in power, call on some of those to whom his will was law, and hisprotégéwould not fall for lack of means. Up to this point indeed, after a fashion which the Abbess did not understand--for the man had fallen from the clouds--he was ranged against her friend. But if he could be put into Vlaye's hands, or fairly or foully led to take Vlaye's side, then the Captain of Vlaye would be saved. And if she could effect this, would be saved by her. By her!
The sweetness of such a revenge only a woman can understand. Her lover had fancied the Rochechouart's influence necessary to his safety, and to gain that influence he had been ready to repudiate his love. What a sweet savour of triumph if she--she whom he was ready to abandon--could save him by this greater influence, and in the act show him that a mightier than he was at her feet!
She had heard stories of the Duke's character, which promised well for her schemes. At the time of her short sojourn at Court, he had but lately left his cloister, drawn forth by the tragical death of his brother. He was then entering upon that career of extravagance, eccentricity, and vice which, along with his reputation for eloquence and for strange fits of repentance, astonished even the dissolute circles of the Court. His name and his fame were in all mouths; a man quick to love, quick to hate, report had it; a man in whom remorse followed sharp on sin, and sin on remorse. A man easy to win, she supposed, if a woman were beautiful and knew how to go about it.
Ay, if she knew; but there was the difficulty. For he was no common man, no man of narrow experience, and the ordinary bait of beauty might not by itself avail. The Abbess, high as her opinion of her charm stood, perceived this. She recognised that in the circle; in which he had moved of late beauty was plentiful, and she bent her wits to the point. After that she might have been riding in daylight, for all she saw of her surroundings. She passed through the ford and in her deep thinking saw it not. The long, dark hill on her left, and the low woods on her right with their strange night noises, and their teeming evidences of that tragedy of death which fills the world, did not exist for her. The gleam of the star-lit river caught her eye, but failed to reach her brain. And if she fell back slowly and gradually until she found herself but a few paces before the litter and its convoy, it was not by design only, but in obedience to a subtle attraction at work within her.
When her women presently roused her by their complaints that she was being left behind with the litter, she took it for an omen, and smiled in the darkness. They, on the contrary, were frightened, nor without reason. The road they pursued followed the bank of the river; but the wide vale had been left behind. They had passed into a valley more strait and gloomy; a winding trough, close pressed by long, hog-shaped hills, between which the travellers became every moment more deeply engaged. The stars were fading from the sky, the darkness which comes before the dawn was on them, and with the darkness a chill.
This change alarmed the women. But it did not terrify them one half as much as the marked anxiety of the litter-party. More than once des Ageaux' voice could be heard adjuring the bearers to move faster. More than once a rider passed between them and the main body, and on each of these occasions men fell back and took the places of the old carriers. But still the cry was "Faster! Faster!"
In truth the day was on the point of breaking, and the fugitives were still little more than two leagues from Villeneuve. At any moment they might be overtaken, when the danger of an attack would be great, since the light must reveal the paucity of their numbers. In this pinch even the Lieutenant's stoicism failed him, and moment by moment he trembled lest the sound of galloping horses reach his ear. Less than an hour's riding at speed would place his charges in safety; yet for the sake of a wounded man he must risk all. No wonder that he cried again, "Faster, men, faster!" and pressed the porters to their utmost speed.
Soon out of the darkness ahead loomed the Bat. "This will never do, my lord," he said, reining in his horse beside his leader. He spoke in a low voice, but the Abbess, a dozen paces ahead, could hear his words, and even the heavy breathing of the carriers. "To go on at this pace is to hazard all."
"You must go forward with the main body!" des Ageaux replied shortly. "Let the women who are with us ride on and join the others, and do you--but, no, that will not do."
"For certain it will not do!" the Bat answered. "It is I must stay, for the fault is mine. But for me you would have left him, my lord."
"Do you think we could support him on a horse?"
"It would kill him!" the Bat rejoined. "But it is not two hundred paces to the chapel by the ford that you remarked this morning. If we leave him there, and M. de Vlaye finds him, he will be as anxious to keep life in him as we are. If, on the other hand, M. de Vlaye overlooks him, we can bring him in to-morrow."
"If it must be," des Ageaux answered reluctantly, "we must leave him. But we cannot leave him without some assistance. Who will stay with him?"
"Diable!" the Bat muttered.
"I will not leave him without some one," des Ageaux repeated firmly. "Some one must stay."
Out of the darkness came the answer. "I," the Abbess said, "will stay with him!"
"You, mademoiselle?" in a tone of astonishment.
"I," she repeated, "and my women. I," she continued haughtily, "have nothing to fear from the Captain of Vlaye or his men."
"And mademoiselle's robe," the Bat muttered with the faintest suspicion of irony in his tone, "protects her."
Charles, who had joined them with the Bat, thoughtlessly assented. "To be sure!" he cried. "Let my sister stay! She can stay without danger."
Alone of the three des Ageaux remained silent--pondering. He had seen enough of the Abbess to suspect that it was not humanity alone which dictated her offer. Probably she desired to rejoin her admirer. In that case, did she know enough of the fugitives' plans and strength to render her defection formidable?
He thought not. At any rate it seemed well to take the chance. He was taking, he was beginning to see that he was taking a good many chances. "It seems a good plan, if mademoiselle be indeed willing," he said. He wished that he could see her face.
"I have said," she replied coldly, "that I am willing."
But her women showed forthwith that they were not. What? Remain in this wilderness in the dark with a dying man? They would be eaten by wolves, they would be strangled by witches, they would be ravished by thieves! Never! And in a trice one was in hysterics, deaf to her mistress's threats and to the Bat's grim hints. The other, after a conflict, allowed herself to be browbeaten, and sullenly, and with tears, yielded. But not until the water of the ford rippled about their horses' hoofs, and the tiny spark of light that through the open door beaconed the shallows shone in their eyes.
Had it been day they would have had before them a scene at once wild and peaceful. On their right, below the ford--which was formed by the passage of the stream from one side of the narrow valley to the other--a lofty bluff overhung a black pool. Above the ford, on the level meadow, and a stone's-throw from the track--if track that could be called which was not used by a hundred persons in a year--stood a tiny chapel and cell, which some hermit in past ages had built with his own hands. The approach of the Crocans had driven his latest successor from his post; but des Ageaux, passing that way in the day, had noted the chapel, and with the forethought of the soldier who expected to return in the dark he had seen the earthen lamp relit. Its light, he knew, would, in case of need, direct him to the ford.
At present that lamp, a tiny spark in the blackness, was all they saw. They made for it through the shallows and over a bed of shingle across which the horses clattered noisily. In haste they reached the door of the chapel, and there in a trice--for if the thing was to be done it must be done quickly--they aided the Abbess and the lay sister to alight, bore in the litter with the wounded man, and closed the door on all; this last, that the light might no longer be visible from the ford. Then they, the men, got themselves to horse again, and away at a round trot.
Not without repugnance on the part of several; not without regret and misgiving. Des Ageaux's heart smote him as his horse's feet carried him farther and farther away; it seemed so cowardly a thing to leave women to bear in that wild and lonely place the brunt of whatever might befall. And Charles, ready as he had been to acclaim the notion, wondered if he had erred in leaving his sister thus lightly. But in truth they were embarked in an enterprise whose full perils it lay with time to disclose. And other and more pressing anxieties soon had possession of their minds.
They had been less troubled had they been able to witness the Abbess's demeanour in her solitude. While her companion, overcome by her fears, sank down in a fit of hysterical weeping, Odette de Villeneuve remained standing within the low doorway, and with head erect listened frowning until the last sound of the horses' hoofs died to the ear. Then she drew a deep breath, and, turning slowly, she allowed her eyes to take stock of the place in which she so strangely found herself.
It was a tiny building of rough-hewn stones, with an altar and crucifix, also of stone, erected at the end remote from the door. Along either wall ran a stone bench, on one or other of which the good fathers must have spent many a summer day watching the ford; for at a certain point the stone was polished and worn by friction. The litter and the wounded man filled half the open space, leaving visible only a floor of trodden earth foul with the droppings of birds and sheep, and betraying in other respects the results of neglect. Here and there on some stone larger than its fellows, and particularly on the lintel, a prentice hand had carved symbols; but, this notwithstanding, the whole wore by the light of the smoky lamp an aspect far from sacred.
Yet the prospect of spending several hours in so poor a place did not appear to depress the Abbess. Her inspection finished, she nodded an answer to her thoughts, and sitting down on the bench beside the litter, rested her elbow on her knee and her chin on her hand, and fixing her large dark eyes on the wounded man, gave herself up, as completely as if she had been in her own chamber, to her thoughts.
Her woman, whose complaining, half fractious, half fearful, had sunk to an occasional sob, presently looked at her, and fascinated by that gloomy absorption--which might have dealt with the mysteries of the faith, but turned in fact on the faithlessness of man--she could not look away. And moments passed; the first pale glimmer of dawn appeared, and still the two women faced one another across the insensible man whose heavy breathing, broken from time to time by some obstruction, was the one sound that vied with the low murmur of the stream.
Suddenly the Abbess lifted her head. Mingled with the water's chatter was a harsher sound--a sound of rattling stones, of jingling steel and, a second later, of men's voices. She rose slowly to her feet, and as the other woman, alarmed by the expression of her features, would have screamed, she silenced her by a fierce gesture. Then she stood, her hand resting against the wall beside her, and listened.
She had no doubt that it was he. Her parted lips her eyes, half fierce, half tender, told as much. It was he, and she had but to open the door, she had but to show herself in the lighted doorway, and he would come to her! As the voices of the riders grew, and the rattle of hoofs among the pebbles ceased, she pictured him abreast of the hermitage; she fancied, but it must have been fancy, that she could distinguish his voice. Or no, he would not be speaking. He would be riding, silent, alone, his hand on his hip, the grey light of morning falling on his stern face. And at that, at that picture of him, his deeds and his career, his greatness who had made himself, his firmness whom no obstacle stayed, rose before her embodied in the solitary figure riding foremost through the dawn. Her breast rose and fell tumultuously. The hand that rested on the wall shook. She had only to open the door, she had only to cry his name aloud, only to show herself, and he would be at her side! And she would be no longer against him but with him, no longer would be ranked with his foes--who were so many--but for him against the world!
The temptation was so strong that her form seemed to droop and sway as if a physical charm drew her in the direction of the man she loved, the man to whom, in spite of his faults, or by reason of them, she clung in the face of defection. But powerful as was the spell laid upon her, pride--pride and her will proved stronger. She stiffened herself; for an instant she did not seem to breathe. Nor was it until the last faint clink of iron died away that she turned feverish eyes in search of some crevice, some loophole, some fissure, through which she might yet see him; yet see, if it were but the waving of his plume.
She found none. The only windows, two tiny arrow-slits that had never known glass, were in the wall remote from the track. On that she set her teeth to control the moan of disappointment that rose from her heart; and slowly she sank into her old seat.
But not into her old reverie. The eyes which she bent on the sick man were no longer dreamy. On the contrary, they were fixed in a gaze of eager scrutiny that sought to drag from the Duke's pallid features the secret of his weakness and waywardness, of his strange nature and bizarre fame. And unconsciously as she gazed, she bent nearer and nearer to him; her look grew sharper and more imperious. All hung on him now--all! Her mind was made up. Fortune had not cast him so timely in her path, fate had not afforded her the opportunity of which she had dreamed, without intending her to profit by it, without proposing to crown the scheme with success. The spell of her lover's presence, the spell that had obsessed her so short a time before that the interval could be reckoned by seconds, was broken! Never should it be hers to play that creeping part, to regain him that way, to return to him tamely, empty-handed, a suppliant for his love! No, not while it might be hers to return a conqueror, an equal, with a greater than the Captain of Vlaye in her toils!
She rose to her feet, and tasting triumph in advance, she smiled. With a firm hand, disregarding her woman's remonstrance, she extinguished the lamp. The pale light of early morning stole in through the narrow slits, and then for a brief instant the Abbess held her breath; for the light falling on the Duke's face so sharpened his thin temples and nervous features, showed him so livid and wan and death-like, that she thought him gone. He was not gone, but she acted upon the hint. If he died, where were her schemes and the clever combinations she had been forming? Quickly she drew from the litter a flagon of broth that had been mixed with a cunning cordial; and first moistening his lips with the liquor, by-and-by she contrived to make him swallow some. In the act he opened his eyes, and they were clear and sensible; but it was only to close them again with a sigh, half of satisfaction, half of weakness. Nevertheless, from this time his state was rather one of sleep, the sleep craved by exhausted nature, than of insensibility or fever, and with every hour the forces of his youth and constitution wrought at the task of restoration.
Odette, brooding over him, watched with satisfaction the return of a more healthy colour to his cheeks. Time passed, and presently, while the light was still cold and young, there came an interruption. A murmur of voices, and the jingle of spur and bit, warned her that M. de Vlaye, baffled in his attempt to cut off the fugitives before they found refuge, was returning through the valley. This time, how different were her sensations. She started to her feet and listened, and her face grew hard, but under pressure of suspense, not of desire. Suspense--for if they turned aside, if they entered the deserted chapel and discovered her, her plan--and her very soul was now set on its success--perished still-born.
It was a trying moment, but it passed. Probably Vlaye knew the chapel of old, and knew that the good father had fled from it. At any rate he passed by it, and rode on his way. She heard the trampling of the horses break the singing of the ford; and then she heard only the murmur of the water and the morning hymn of a lark that, startled by the passage of the riders, soared above the glen, and with the sunshine on its throbbing breast, hailed the warm rising of another day.
Whether the lark's song appealed to the softer strain in her, or she began to hate the sordid interior with its grey half-light, the moment she was sure that the riders had gone on their way she opened the door and went out. The sun was peeping into the valley and all nature was astir. The laughing waters of the ford, the steep bluff, darksome by night, now clad in waving tree-tops, the floor of meadow emerald-green, all reflected the brightness of a sky in which not one but half a dozen songsters trilled forth the joy of life. After the gloom, the vigil, the danger of the night, the scene appealed to her strongly; and for a brief time, while she stood gazing on the vale unmarred by human works or human presence, she felt a compunction; such a feeling as in a similar scene invades the breast of the veteran hunter, and whispers to him that to carry death into the haunts of nature is but a sorry task.
A feeling as quickly suppressed in the one case as in the other. A few minutes later the Abbess appeared in the doorway, and beckoned to the woman to join her outside.
"Give me your hood and veil," she said in a tone that forestalled demur. "And I need your outer robe! Don't stare, woman!" she continued fiercely. "Is there any one to see you? Can the hills hurt you? Obey. It is my pleasure to wear the dress of the order, and I have it not with me!"
"But, madam----"
"Obey, woman, and take my cloak!" the Abbess retorted. "Wrap yourself in that!" And when the change was made, and she had assumed over her dress the loose black and white robe of the order, "Now wait for me here," she said. "And if he call, as is possible, do not go to him, but fetch me!"
She departed towards the pool below the ford, and, disappearing behind a clump of low willows, made, using the still water for a mirror, some further changes in her toilet.
Not fruitlessly, for when she returned to the door of the chapel, the woman who awaited her stared, thinking that she had never seen her mistress show fairer in her silks than in this black and white, which she so seldom favoured. And soon there was another who thought--if not that thought, a similar one. The Duke, opening on the glory of sunshine and summer warmth, the eyes that had so nearly closed for good, saw at the foot of his litter a wondrous figure kneeling before the altar.
The face of the figure was turned from him, and for a time, between sleeping and waking, he considered her idly, supposing her now an angel interceding for him in the other life on which he had entered, now a nun praying beside his bier; for he took it for certain he was dead. By-and-by he passed over to the theory of the angel, for the figure moved, and the sunlight passing in through a tiny window-slit formed a nimbus about her head. And then again, moving afresh, as in an ecstacy of devotion, she lifted her eyes to the crucifix, and the hood falling back with the movement revealed a profile of a beauty and purity almost unearthly.
The Duke sighed. He had sighed before, but apparently, for the sigh had not changed her rapt expression, she had not heard. Now she did hear. She rose, and with a deep genuflection turned from the altar, and glided with downcast eyes to his side. Eyes softened to the meekness of a dove's looked into his, and found that he was awake. Then, angel or saint, or whatever she was, she made a sign to him not to speak; and producing, by magic as it seemed, ambrosial food, she fed him, and with a finger on his lip bade him in gentle accents, "Sleep!"
Sleep? To think he could sleep when an angel--and while he laughed in ridicule of the notion he slept, that heavenly face framed in its nun's hood, that drooping form with the hands crossed upon the breast moving before him into the land of visions. He was back again in those earliest days of his cloistered existence, when to live in an atmosphere, pure and apart, innocent of the passions and desires of the world, had been his dream. He had learned--only too soon--that that atmosphere and that innocence were not to be maintained, though the walls of a monastery be ten feet through. For the nature which the thought of such a life had charmed was of all natures the one most open to worldly fascinations. He had fallen; and he had presently replaced the vision of being good by the enthusiasm of doing good. He had lifted his voice, and the preaching of Père Ange had moved half Paris to a twenty-four hours' repentance. His own had lasted a little longer.
Now, weak and unnerved, he reverted at sight of this beautiful nun's face to his old visions of a saintly life; and in innocent adoration he dreamt of naught but her countenance. When he awoke again and found her still at her devotions, though the sun was high, still at his service when she found him waking, still moving dovelike and silent about her ministrations--he watched her everywhere. Several times he wished to speak, but she laid a finger on her lips, and covering her hands with her sleeves, sat on the bench beside him, reading her book of hours. And so during the hazy period of his return to consciousness he saw her. Awake or drowsing, stung to life by the smart of his hurt or lulled to sleep by the music of the stream, he had her face always before him.
At length there came a time, a little before high noon, when he awoke with a clearer eye and a mind capable of feeling surprise at his position. He saw her sitting beside him, but he saw also the rough grey walls, the altar, the crucifix; and to wonder succeeded curiosity. What had happened, and how came he there? His eyes sought her face and remained riveted to it.
"Where am I?" he whispered.
She marked that his eyes were clear and his strength greater, and, "You are in the chapel in the upper valley of the Dronne," she answered.
"But I----" He stopped and closed his eyes, brought up by some confusion in his thoughts. At last, "I fancied I fought with some one," he whispered. "It was in a courtyard--at night? And there were lights? It was one of Vlaye's men, and the place was----" He broke off in the painful effort to remember. His lips moved without sound.
"Villeneuve," she said.
"Villeneuve," he whispered gratefully. "But this is not Villeneuve?"
"We are two leagues from Villeneuve."
"How come I here?"
She told him, preserving the gentle placidity which, not without thought, she had adopted for herrôle. The repulse of Vlaye's men and the Lieutenant's decision to quit the château, that and the night retreat up to the arrival of the party at the ford--all were told. Then she broke off.
"But des Ageaux?" he murmured. "Where is he?" And again, that he might look round him, he tried to rise. "Where are they all?" he continued in wonder. "They have not left me?" with a querulous note in his voice.
"They are not here," she answered. And gently she induced him to lie back again. "Be still, I pray," she said. "Be still. You do yourself no good by moving."
He sighed. "Where are they?" he persisted.
"We were hard pressed at the ford," she answered with feigned reluctance. "And your litter delayed them. It was necessary to leave you or all had been lost."
He lay in silence awhile with closed eyes, considering what she had told him. At last, "And you stayed?" he murmured in so low a voice that the words were barely audible. "You stayed!"
"It was necessary," she answered.
"And you have been beside me all night?"
She bowed her head.
His eyes filled with tears, and his lips trembled, for he was very weak. He groped for her hand, and would have carried it to his lips, but as men kiss relics or the hands of saints--if she had not withheld it from him. Settling the thin coverings more comfortably round him, she gave him to drink again, softly chiding him and bidding him be silent--be silent and sleep.
But, "You have been beside me all night!" he repeated. "All night, alone here, and a woman! A woman!"
She did not tell him that she was not alone; that her woman was even then sitting outside, under strict orders not to show herself. For now she was assured that she was in the right path. She had had opportunities of studying his countenance while he slept, and she had traced in it those qualities of enthusiasm and weakness, of the libertine and the ascetic, which his career so remarkably displayed. The beauty which in ordinary circumstances his jaded eye, versed in woman's wiles, might neglect, would appeal with irresistible force in a garb of saintliness. Nay, more; as he recovered his strength and returned to his common feelings, it would prove, she felt sure, more provocative than the most worldly lures. Her resolve to carry the matter through was now fixed and immutable: and with her eye on the goal, she neglected no precaution that occurred to her mind.