The Abbess Of Vlaye

"Something," the Duke murmured near her ear, "has interrupted the even current of your thoughts, mademoiselle. What is it, I pray?"

"I feel the heat," she answered, holding her hand to her brow, that behind its shelter she might recover her composure. "Do not you?"

"It is like an oven," he answered, "within these earth-walls."

"How I hate them!" she cried, unable to repress the spirit of irritation.

"Do you? Well, so do I," he replied. "But within them-it is nowhere cooler than here."

"I will put that to the proof, my lord," she returned with a smile. And, gliding from him, in spite of the effort he made to detain her, she crossed the grass to her father. Sinking on the sward beside his stool, she began to fan herself.

The Vicomte was in an ill-humour of some days' standing; nor without reason. Dragged, will he nill he, from the house in which his whim had been law, he found himself not only without his comforts, but a cipher in the camp. Not once, but three or four times he had let his judgment be known, and he had looked to see it followed. He might have spoken to the winds. No one, not even his sons, though they listened respectfully, took heed of it. It followed that he saw himself exposed to dangers against which he was not allowed to guard himself, and to a catastrophe which he must await in inaction; while all he possessed stood risked on a venture that for him had neither interest nor motive.

In such a position a man of easier temper and less vanity might be pardoned if he complained. For the Vicomte, fits of senile rage shook him two or three times a day. He learned what it was to be thwarted: and if he hated any one or anything more than the filthy peasants on whom his breeding taught him to look with loathing, it was the man with whose success his safety was bound up, the man who had forced him into this ignominious position.

Of him he could believe no good. When the Abbess, after fanning herself in silence, mentioned the arrival of the Countess's troopers, and asked him if he thought that the Lieutenant was now strong enough to attack, he derided the notion.

"M. de Vlaye will blow this rabble to the winds," he said, with a contemptuous gesture. "We may grill here as long as we please, but the moment we show ourselves outside, pouf! It will be over! What can a handful of riders do against five hundred men as good as themselves?"

"But the peasants?" she suggested, willing to know the worst. "There are some hundreds of them."

"Food for steel!" he answered, with the same contemptuous pantomime.

"Then you think-we were wrong to come here?"

"I think, girl, that we were mad to come here. But not so mad," he continued spitefully, "as those who brought us!"

"Yet Charles thinks that the Governor of Périgord will prevail."

"Charles had his own neck in the noose," the Vicomte growled, "and was glad of company. Since Coutras it is the young lead the old, and the issue you will see. Lieutenant of Périgord? What has the Lieutenant of Périgord or any other governor to do with canaille such as this?"

Odette heaved a sigh of relief and her face lightened. "It will be better so," she said softly. "M. de Vlaye knows, sir, that we had no desire to hurt him, and he will not reckon it against us."

The Vicomte fidgeted in his stool. "I wish I could think so," he answered with a groan. "Curse him! Who is more to blame? If he had left the Countess alone, this would not have happened. They are no better one than the other! But what is this? Faugh!" And he spat on the ground.

There was excuse for his disgust. Across the open ground a group of men were making their way in the direction of the Lieutenant's quarters. They were the same men who had met him at the entrance on his return with the Abbess and Joyeuse: nor had the lapse of four or five days lessened the foulness of their aspect, or robbed them of the slinking yet savage bearing-as of beasts of prey half tamed-which bade beware of them. They shambled forward until they neared des Ageaux, who was writing at an improvised table not far from the Vicomte; then cringing they saluted him. Their eyes squinting this way and that from under matted locks-as if at a gesture they were ready to leap back-added to their beast-like appearance.

The Lieutenant's voice, as he asked the men with asperity what they needed, came clearly to the ears of the group about the Vicomte. But the Old Crocans' answer, expressed at length in a patois of the country, was not audible.

"Foul carrion!" the Vicomte muttered. "What do they here?" while the Abbess and Bonne, who had joined her, contemplated them with eyes of shuddering dislike.

"What, indeed?" Bonne muttered, her cheek pale. She seemed to be unable to take her eyes from them. "They frighten me! Oh, I hope they will not be suffered to remain in the camp!"

"Is it that they wish?" the Vicomte asked.

"Yes, my lord," Solomon answered: he had gone forward, listened awhile and returned. "They say that eleven more of their people were surprised by Vlaye's men three hours ago, and cut to pieces. This is the second time it has happened. They think that they are no longer safe on the hill, and wish to join us."

"God forbid!" Bonne cried, with a strange insistence.

The Abbess looked at her. "Why so frightened?" she said contemptuously. "One might suppose you were in greater danger than others, girl!"

Bonne did not answer, but her distended eyes betrayed the impression which the wretches' appearance made on her. Nor when Charles-who was seldom off the ridge which was his special charge-remarked that after all a man was a man, and they had not too many, could she refrain from a word. "But not those!" she murmured. "Not those!"

Charles, who in these days saw more of the Bat than of any one else, shrugged his shoulders. "I shall be surprised if he does not receive them," he answered. "They are vermin and may give us trouble. But we must run the risk. If we are to succeed we must run some risks."

Not that risk, however, it appeared. For he had scarcely uttered the words when des Ageaux was seen to raise his hand, and point with stern meaning to the entrance. "No," he said, his voice high and clear. "Begone to your own and look to yourselves! You chose to go your own way and a bloody one! Now your blood be on your own heads! Here is no place for you, nor will I cover you!"

"My lord!" one cried in protest. "My lord, hear us!"

"No!" the Lieutenant replied harshly. "You had your warning and did not heed it! M. de Villeneuve, when he came to you, warned you, and I warned you. It was your own will to withdraw yourselves. You would have naught but blood. You would burn and kill! Now, on your own heads," he concluded with severity, "be your blood!"

They would have protested anew, but he dismissed them with a gesture which permitted no denial. And sullenly, with stealthy gestures of menace, they retreated towards the entrance; and gabbling more loudly as they approached it, seemed to be imprecating vengeance on those who cast them out. In the gate they lingered awhile, turning about and scolding the man on guard. Then they passed out of sight, and were gone.

As the last of them disappeared des Ageaux, who had kept a vigilant eye on their retreat, approached the group about the Vicomte. The old man, though he approved the action, could not refrain from giving his temper vent.

"You are sure that you can do without them," he said, with a sneer. His shaking hand betrayed his dislike of the man to whom he spoke.

"I believe I can," the Lieutenant answered. He spoke with unusual gravity, but the next moment a smile-smiles had been rare with him of late-curved the corners of his mouth. His eyes travelled from one to another, and in a low voice, but one that betrayed his relief, "I will tell you why, if you wish to know, M. le Vicomte."

"Why?"

Des Ageaux' smile grew broader, but his tone remained low. "Because I have news," he returned. "And it is good news. I have had word within the last hour that I may expect M. de Joyeuse's levies about nightfall to-morrow, and a day or two later a reinforcement beyond my hope-fifty men-at-arms whom the Governor of Agen has lent me, and fifty from my garrison of Périgueux. With those we should have enough-though not too many."

They received the news with words of congratulation or with grunts of disdain, according as each felt about it. And all began to discuss the tidings, though still in the tone of caution which the Lieutenant's look enjoined. One only was silent, and with averted face saw the cup of respite dashed from her lips. A hundred men beyond those looked for! Such an accession must change hope to certainty, hazard to surety. A few days would enable the Lieutenant to match rider for rider with Vlaye, and still boast a reserve of four or five hundred undisciplined allies. While jubilant voices hummed in her ears, and those whom she was ready to kill because they hated him rejoiced, the Abbess rose slowly and, detaching herself from the group, walked away.

No one followed her even with the eye; for the Duke, fatigued, and a little hurt that she did not return, had retired into his quarters. Nor would the most watchful have learned much from her movements, or, unless jealous beyond the ordinary, have found aught to suspect in what she did.

She strolled very slowly along the foot of the slope, as if in pure idleness or to stretch limbs cramped by over-long sitting. Presently she came to some tethered horses, and stood and patted them, and looked them over; nor could any but the horses tell-and they could not speak-that while her hand was on them her eyes were roving the camp. Perhaps she found what she sought; perhaps it was chance only that guided her steps in the direction of the tall young man with pale eyes, whose violence had raised him to a certain leadership among the peasants.

It must have been chance, for when she reached his neighbourhood she did not address him. She stooped and-what could be more womanly or more natural? – she spoke to a naked child that rolled on the trampled turf within arm's length of him. What she said-in French or patois, or that infant language of which no woman's tongue is ignorant-the baby could not say, for, like the horses, it could not speak. Yet it must have found something unusual in her face, for it cowered from her, as in terror. And what she said could have no interest for the man who lounged near, though he seemed disturbed by it.

She toyed with the shrinking child a moment, then turned and walked slowly back to the Vicomte's quarters. Her manner was careless, but her face was pale. No wonder. For she had taken a step-and she knew it-which she could never retrace. She had done that which she could not undo. Between her and Bonne and Roger and Charles was a gulf henceforth, though they might not know it. And the Duke? She winced a little, recognising more plainly than before how far she stood below the notion he had of her.

Yet she felt no remorse. On the contrary, the uppermost feeling in her mind-and it ran riot there-was a stormy exultation. They who had dragged her at their chariot wheels would learn that in forcing her to take part against her lover they had made the most fatal of mistakes. They triumphed now. They counted on sure success now. They thought to hang him, as they would hang any low-bred thief! Very good! Let them wait until morning, and talk then of hanging!

Once or twice, indeed, in the afternoon she was visited by misgivings. The man she had seen was a mere savage; he might not have understood. Or he might betray her, though that could hurt her little since no one would believe him. Or the peasants, though wrought to fury, might recoil at the last like the cowards they were!

But these and the like doubts arose not from compunction, but from mistrust. Compunction was to come later, when evening fell and from the door of the Duke's quarters she viewed the scene, now familiar, of the hostages' departure in the dusk-saw the horses drawn up and the two whom she was dooming in act to mount. It was then that a sudden horror of what she was about seized her-she was young, a mere girl-and she rose with a stifled cry from her stool. It was not yet too late. A cry, a word would save them. Would save them still! Impulsively she moved a pace towards them, intending-ay, for a moment, intending to say that word.

But she stopped. A word would save them, but-she was forgetting-it would doom her lover! And on that thought, and to reinforce it, there rose before her mind's eye the pale puling features of the Countess-her rival! Was she to be put aside for a thing like that? Was it to such a half-formed child as that she must surrender her lover? She pressed her hands together, and, returning to her seat, she turned it about that her eyes might not see them as they went through the dusk.