The Abbess Of Vlaye

"The least imprudence!"

"Certainly."

The Duke laughed softly-at nothing that appeared. "So!" he said. "The least imprudence may destroy us, may it? The least imprudence!" And then, suddenly sobered, he fixed his eyes on the Lieutenant. "But what of letting your prisoner go, eh? What of that? Was not that an imprudence, most wise Solomon?"

"A very great one!" des Ageaux replied with a sigh.

"What shall you do when, to-morrow morning, they claim his trial?"

"What I can," the Lieutenant answered, frowning and sitting more erect. "See that the Countess returns early to this side; where the Bat must make the best dispositions he can for your safety. Meanwhile, I shall tell them and make them see reason if I can!"

"Lord!" the Duke said with genuine gusto, "I wish I were in your place!"

"I wish you were," des Ageaux replied. "And still more that I had the rogue by the leg again."

"Do you?"

"Do I?" the Lieutenant repeated in astonishment. "I do indeed. The odds are they will maintain that we released him on purpose, and dearly we may pay for it!"

For a moment the Duke, flat on his back, looked thoughtful. Then, "Umph!" he said, "you think so? But you were always a croaker, des Ageaux, and you are making the worst of it! Still-you would like to lay your hand on him, would you?"

"I would indeed!"

The Duke rose on his elbow. "Would you mind giving me-I am a little cold-that cloak?" he said. "No," as des Ageaux moved to do it, "not that one under your hand-the small one! Thank you. I-"

He could not finish. He was shaking with laughter-which he vainly tried to repress. Des Ageaux stared. And then, "What have I done to amuse you so much, my lord?" he asked coldly, as he rose.

"Much and little," the Duke answered, still shaking.

"Much or little," des Ageaux retorted, "you will do yourself no good by laughing so violently. If your wound, my lord, sets to bleeding again-"

"Pray for the soul of Henry, Duke of Joyeuse, Count of Bouchage!" the Duke replied lightly. Yet on the instant, and by a transition so abrupt as to sound incredible to men of these days, he composed his face, groped for his rosary, and began to say his offices. The suddenness of the change, the fervour of his manner, the earnestness of his voice astonished the Lieutenant, intimately as he knew this strange man. Awhile he waited, then he rose and made for the door.

But Joyeuse-not the Duke of three minutes before, but Frère Ange of the Capuchin convent-stopped him with a movement of his eyes. "And why not," said he, "to-day as well as to-morrow? No man need be afraid to die who prepares himself. The soldier above all, Lieutenant, for the true secret of courage is to repent. Ay, to repent," he continued in a voice, sweet and thrilling, and with a look in his eyes strangely gentle and compelling. "Friend, are you prepared? Have you confessed lately? If not, kneel down! Kneel, man, and let us say a dozen aves, and a couple of Paternosters! It will be no time wasted," he continued anxiously. "No man has sinned more than I have. No man, no man! Yet I face death like one in a thousand! And why? Why, man? Because it is not I, but-"

But there are things too high for the level of such narrations as this, and too grave for such treatment as is here essayed. The character of this man was so abnormal, he played with so much enthusiasm his alternate rôles, that without this passing glimpse of his rarer side-that side which in the intervals of wild revelry led him to dying beds and sick men's couches-but one-half of him could be understood. Not that he was quite alone in the possession of this trait. It was a characteristic of the age to combine the most flagrant sins with the strictest observances; and a few like M. de Joyeuse added to both a real, if intermittent and hysterical, repentance.

On this occasion it was not long before he showed his other face. The Abbess, after waiting without and fretting much-for she had returned to the purpose momentarily abandoned, and the length of the interview alarmed her-won entrance at last. She exchanged a cold greeting with the departing Lieutenant, then took his place, book in hand, on the green bench. For a while there was silence. She had so far played her part with success. The Duke knew not whether to call her saint or woman; and that he might remain in that doubt she now left it to him to speak. At the same time she left him at liberty to look: for she knew that bending thus at her devotions she must appear more striking to his jaded senses. And he, for a time, was mute also, and thoughtful; so much he gave to the scene just ended.

It is possible that the silence was prolonged by the chance of considering her at leisure which she was careful to afford him. He was still weak, the better side of him was still uppermost; and handsome as she was, he saw her through a medium of his own, in a halo of meekness and goodness and purity. Thus viewed she fell in with his higher mood, she was a part of it, she prolonged it. A time would come, would most certainly come, when one of the wildest libertines of his day would see her otherwise, and in the woman forget the saint. But it had not yet come. And the Abbess, with her pure, cold profile, bent over her book, and, with her thoughts apparently in heaven, knew also that her time had not yet come.

Though her face betrayed nothing, she was in an angry mood. She had gained little by the altercation with des Ageaux; and though the simplicity which he had betrayed in his dealings with the peasants excited her boundless contempt-he, to pit himself against M. de Vlaye! – the peril which it brought upon all heightened that contempt to anger. If the peril had been his only, or included the Countess only, if it had threatened those only whom she could so well spare, and towards whose undoing her brain was busily working, she could have borne it bravely and gaily.

But the case was far other; and something she regretted that she had not bowed to her first impulse in the chapel and called to M. de Vlaye, and gone to him-ay, gone to him empty-handed as she was, without the triumph of which she had dreamed. For the jeopardy in which she and all her family now stood put her in a dilemma. If the Lieutenant kept faith with the peasants and all went well, it would go ill with her lover. If, on the contrary, M. des Ageaux failed to restrain the peasants, it might go ill with herself.

It came always to this: she must win over the Duke. Of the allies against Vlaye, he, with his hundred and fifty horse, due to arrive on the Wednesday, with the larger support which he could summon if it were necessary, and with his favour at Court, was by far the most formidable. Detach him, and the Lieutenant with his handful of riders, backed though he might be by the Countess's men, and the peasant rout would be very likely to fail. It came back then always to this: she must win the Duke. As she pondered, with her eyes on her book, as she considered again and anew this resolution, the noises of the camp, the Bat's sharp word of command-for he had fallen imperturbably to drilling as if that were the one thing necessary-the Vicomte's querulous voice, and the more distant babel of the peasants' quarter, all added weight to her thoughts. And then on a sudden an alien sound broke the current. The man lying beside her laughed.

She glanced at him, startled for the moment out of her rôle. The Duke was shaking with merriment. Confused, not understanding, she rose. "My lord," she said, half offended, "what is it? What moves you?"

"A rare joke," he answered. "I was loth to interrupt your thoughts, fair sister, but 'twas too much for me." He fell to laughing again.

"You will injure yourself, my lord," she said, chiding him gently, "if you laugh so violently."

"Oh, but-" The litter shook under him.

"At least," she said, with a look more tender and less saintly than she had yet permitted herself, "you will tell me what it is! What-"

"Raise that-the cloak!" he said. He pointed with his hand. "Remove it, I mean, and you will see what-what you will see!"

She obeyed and immediately recoiled with a low cry, the cloak in her hand. "Mon Dieu!" she whispered, with the colour gone from her cheeks. "Who-who is he? Who is he?" She shuddered.

The man her act had revealed rose from his hiding-place, his face whiter than hers, his haggard, shifty eyes betraying his terror.

"My lord!" he cried, "you will not betray me? My lord, you passed your word!"

"Pah, coward, be silent!" the Duke answered. He turned to the Abbess, his eyes dancing. "Do you know him?" he asked.

"He is M. de Vlaye's man," she said. "The prisoner!" She was pale and she frowned, her hands pressed to her breast.

"Whom they are so anxious to hang!" the Duke replied, chuckling. "And whom des Ageaux is so anxious to have under his hand! Ha! ha! Those were his words! Under his hand! When he touched the cloak I thought I should have died. And you, rascal, what did you think? You thought you were going to die, I'll be sworn!"

"My lord-my lord!" the man faltered the words, holding out imploring hands.

"Ay, I'll wager you did!" Joyeuse replied. "Wished you had let me confess you then, I'll be sworn! He'd not have it, good sister, when I offered it, because it was too like the end-the rope and the tree!"

"My lord! My lord!" Fear had driven all but those two words from the man's mouth.

And certainly if man had ever ground for fear, he had. In that hut of wattle, open to the sky, open in a dozen places to the curious eye, he had heard the voices, the cries, the threats of his pursuers. The first that entered must see him, even if this mad lord who played with his life as lightly as he had in the beginning shielded it did not summon them to take him.

Verily, as he stood, the cloak plucked from him, with every opening in the hut's walls an eye, he tasted the bitterness of death. And in the amused face of his protector, in the girl's cold frowning gaze, what of sympathy, of feeling, of pity? Not a jot. Not a sign. To the one a jest, to the other a peril, he was to neither akin.

As it seemed. But a few seconds saw a change. The Abbess, in the first flush of amazement, had come near to forgetting her part. Under other circumstances the trembling wretch before her might have claimed and gained her sympathy, for he was one of Vlaye's men. At any rate, his punishment by des Ageaux would have added one more to the list of the Lieutenant's offences. But as it was she saw in him only a root, so long as he lay hidden, of utmost peril to all her party; a thing to be cast to the wolves, if she and those who rode in the chariot with her were to escape. Her first feeling, therefore-and her face must have betrayed it had the Duke looked at her at the first-had been one of fierce repulsion. Her natural impulse had been the impulse to call for help and give the man up!

But in time, with a kind of shock of the mind that turned her hot, she remembered. The Duke was not one to see his will or his whim thwarted lightly. And she, the saint, whose book of offices still lay where it had fallen at her feet, she to lend herself to harshness! She to show herself void of pity! Hurriedly she forced words to her lips, and did what she could to match her face to their meaning.

"My lord, blessed are the merciful," she murmured with a slight but irrepressible shudder. "You who" – her words stuck a little-"have been spared so lately should be mercy itself."

"My sister," the Duke said slowly, "you are more than mercy!" And he looked at her, his lips still smiling, but his eyes grave. He knew-was ever Frenchman who did not know-the value of his own courage. He knew that to act as a mere whim led him to act was not in many, where life was in question; and to see a woman rise thus to his level, ay, and rise in a moment and unasked, touched him with a new and ardent admiration. His eyes, as he looked, grew tender.

"You, too, will protect him?" he said.

"Who am I that I should do otherwise?" she answered. She spoke the words so well she seemed to him an angel. And to the man-

The man fell at her feet, seized the hem of her robe, kissed it, clung to it, sobbed broken words of thanks over it, gave way to transports of gratitude. To him, too, she was an angel. And while she reflected, "I can still give him up if I think better of it," the Duke watched her with moist eyes, finding that holy in her case which in his own had been but a jest, the freak of a man in love with danger, and proud of seeking it by every road.

Presently "Now, man, to your cloak!" he said. "And you, sister," he continued, willing to hear the words again, "you are sure that you are not afraid?"

"I am no more afraid," she replied, with downcast eyes and hands crossed upon her breast, "than I was when I stayed alone with you by the river, my lord. There was no other who could stay."

"Say instead, who dared to stay."

"There is no other now who can shelter him!"

"Mon Dieu!" he whispered.

He followed her with his eyes after that, all his impressions confirmed; and as it was rare in those days to find the good also the beautiful, the imprint made on him was deep. She thrilled him as no woman had thrilled him since the days of his boyhood and his first gallantries. His feeling for her elevated him, purified him. As he watched her moving to and fro in his service, a great content stole over him. Once, when she bent to his couch to do him some office, he contrived to touch her hand with his. So might an anchorite have touched the wood of the true Cross-so reverent, so humble, so full of adoration and worship was the touch.

But it was the first step-that touch-and she knew it. She went back to her bench, and veiling her eyes with her long lashes that he might not read the triumph which shone in them, she fell again to her devotions-but with content in her breast. A little more, a little while, and she would have him at her beck, she would have him on his knees; and then it should not be long before his alliance with des Ageaux was broken, and his lances sent home. Not long! But meanwhile time pressed. There was the trouble; time pressed, yet she dared not be hasty. He was no simple boy, and one false move might open his eyes. He might see that she was no angel, but of the same clay as those of whom he had made toys all his life!

As she pondered, the near prospect of success set the possibility of failure, through some accident, through some mischance, in a more terrible aspect. She hated the trembling fugitive cowering in his hiding-place behind the Duke's bed; she wished to heaven he were in des Ageaux' hands again. The danger of a mutiny on his account, a danger that despite her courage chilled her, would then be at an end. True, such a mutiny menaced the Lieutenant in the first place and the Countess in the second; and she could spare them. But she could not be sure that it would go no farther. She could not be sure that its burning breath would not lap all in the camp. Had she been sure-that had been another matter. And behold, as she thought of it, from some cell of the brain leapt full-grown a plan; a plan wicked enough, cruel enough, terrible enough, to shock even her, but a clever plan if it could be executed!

She had little doubt that the Lieutenant would overcome the difficulty of the morning and succeed in persuading the peasants that he was guiltless of the escape of the prisoner. Suppose he succeeded, what would happen if it leaked out later that the prisoner had been hidden all the time in the Lieutenant's huts? Particularly if it leaked out at a time when the Lieutenant and the Countess lay in the peasants' power in the peasants' camp? And for choice after the arrival of the first batch of spears had secured the rest of the party from danger? What would happen to des Ageaux and the Countess in that event?

It was a black thought. The beautiful face bent over the book of offices grew perceptibly harder. But what better fate did they deserve who took on themselves to mar and meddle? They who incited her very brothers, clownish hobbledehoys, and her mawkish sister to rise up against her and against him? If fault there was, the fault lay with those who threw down the glove. The Lieutenant was come for naught else but her lover's destruction: and if he fell into the pit that he digged for another he could blame himself only. As for the girl, the white-faced puling child whose help M. de Vlaye's enemies were driving him to seek, if she, with her castles and her wealth, her lands and horse and foot, could not protect herself, the issue was her affair! Of a surety it was not her rival's!

Odette de Villeneuve's breath came a little quickly, a fine dew stood on her white forehead. Meantime the Duke watched her and wondered in an enthusiasm of piety what prayer it was that so stirred that angelic breast, what aspirations for the good of her sinning and suffering sisters swelled that saintly bosom! A vision of an ascetic life spent by her side, of Fathers read page by page in her company, of the good and the noble pursued with her under cloistered yews, of an Order such as the modern Church had never seen-such a vision wrapt him for a few blissful minutes from the cold, lower world of sense.