The Abbess Of Vlaye Part 41

"No," she said with simple dignity. "There is something more to be said, M. le Vicomte. If it be a question of M. des Ageaux' life, I will go to the Captain of Vlaye."

"You will go?" the Vicomte cried, astounded. "You, mademoiselle?"

"Yes," she replied slowly, and with a little hardening of her childish features. "I will go. Not willingly, G.o.d knows! But rather than M. des Ageaux should die, I will go."

They cried out upon her, those most loudly who were least interested in her decision. But the one for whose protest she listened--Roger--was silent. She marked that; for she was a woman, and Roger's timid attentions had not pa.s.sed unnoticed, nor, it may be, unappreciated. And the Abbess was silent. She, whose heart this latest proof of her lover's infidelity served but to harden, she whose soul revolted from the possibility that the deed which she had done to separate Vlaye from the Countess might cast the girl into his arms, was silent in sheer rage. Into far different arms had she thought to cast the Countess! Now, if this were to be the end of her scheme, the devil had indeed mocked her!

Nor did Bonne speak, though her heart was full. For her feelings dragged her two ways, and she would not, nay, she could not speak.

That much she owed to her lover. Yet the idea of sacrificing a woman to save a man shocked her deeply, shocked alike her womanliness and her courage; and not by a word, not by so much as the raising of a finger would she press the girl, whose very rank and power left her friendless among them, and made her for the time their sport. But neither--though her heart was racked with pity and shame--would she dissuade her. In any other circ.u.mstances which she could conceive, she had cast her arms about the child and withheld her by force. But her lover--her lover was at stake. How could she sacrifice him? How prefer another to him? And after all--she, too, acknowledged, she, too, felt the force of the argument--after all, the Countess would be only where she would have been but for her. But for her the young girl would be already in Vlaye's power; or worse, in the peasants' hands. If she went now she did but a.s.sume her own perils, take her own part, stand on her own feet.

"I shall go the rather," the Countess continued coldly, using that very argument, "since I should be already in his power had I gone myself to the peasants' camp!"

"You shall not go! You cannot go!" the Vicomte repeated with stupid iteration.

"M. le Vicomte," she answered, "I am the Countess of Rochechouart."

And the little figure, the infantine face, a.s.sumed a sudden dignity.

"It is unbecoming!"

"It becomes me less to let a gallant gentleman die."

"But you will be in Vlaye's power."

"G.o.d willing," she replied, her spirit still sustaining her. Was not the Abbess, whom she was beginning to hate, looking at her?

Ay, looking at her with such eyes, with such thought, as would have overwhelmed her could she have read them. Bitter indeed, were Odette's reflections at this moment--bitter! She had stained her hands and the end was this. She had stooped to a vile plot, to an act that might have cost her sister her life, and with this for reward. The triumph was her rival's. Before her eyes and by her act this silly chit, with heroics on her lips, was being forced into his arms! And she, Odette, stood powerless to check the issue of her deed, impotent to interfere, unable even to vent the words of hatred that trembled on her lips.

For the Duke was listening, and she had still enough prudence, enough self-control, to remember that she must not expose her feelings in his presence. On him depended what remained: the possibility of vengeance, the chances of ambition. She knew that she could not speak without destroying the image of herself which she had wrought so patiently to form. And even when he added his remonstrances to her father's, and hot words imputing immodesty rose to the Abbess's lips--words that must have brought the blood to the Countess's cheeks and might have stung her to the renunciation of her project, she dared not utter them. She swallowed her pa.s.sion, and showed only a cold mask of surprise.

Not that the Duke said much. For after a while, "Well, perhaps it is best," he said. "What if she pa.s.s into his power! It is better a woman marry than a man die. We can make the one a widow; whereas to bring the other to life would puzzle the best swordsman in France!"

The Vicomte persisted. "But there is no burden laid on the Countess to do this," he said. "And I for one will be no party to it! What? Have it said that I surrendered the Countess of Rochechouart who sought my protection?"

"Sir," the girl replied, trembling slightly, "no one surrenders the Countess save the Countess. But that the less may be said to your injury, my own people shall attend me thither, and----"

"They will avail you nothing!" the Vicomte replied with a frankness that verged on brutality. "You do not understand, mademoiselle. You are scarcely more than a child, and do not know to what you are going.

You have been wont to be safe in your own resources, and now, were a fortnight given you to gather your power, you could perhaps make M. de Vlaye tremble. But you go from here, in three hours you will be there, and then you will be as much in his power, despite your thirty or forty spears, as my daughter was this morning!"

"I count on nothing else," she said. But her face burned. And Bonne, who suffered with her, Bonne who was dragged this way and that, and would and would not, in whom love struggled with pity and shame with joy, into her face, too, crept a faint colour. How cowardly, oh, how cowardly seemed her conduct! How base in her to buy her happiness at the price of this child's misery! To ransom her lover at a woman's cost! It was a bargain that in another's case she had repudiated with scorn, with pride, almost with loathing. But she loved, she loved. And who that loved could hesitate? One here and there perhaps, some woman of a rare and n.o.ble nature, cast in a higher mould than herself. But not Bonne de Villeneuve.

Yet the word she would not utter trembled on her tongue. And once, twice the thought of Roger shook her. He, too, loved, yet he bore in silence to see his mistress delivered, tied and bound, to his rival!

How, she asked herself, how could he do it, how could he suffer it?

How could he stand by and see this innocent depart to such a fate, to such a lot!

That puzzled her. She could understand the acquiescence of the others; of her sister, whom M. de Vlaye's inconstancy must have alienated, of Joyeuse, who was under an obligation to des Ageaux, of the Vicomte, who, affecting to take the Countess's part, thought in truth only of himself. But Roger? In his place she felt that she must have spoken whatever came of it, that she must have acted whatever the issue.

Yet Roger, n.o.ble, generous Roger--for even while she blamed him with one half of her mind, she blessed him with the other--stood silent.

Silent, even when the Countess with a quivering lip and a fleeting glance in his direction--perhaps she, too, had looked for something else at his hands--went out, her surrender a settled thing; and it became necessary to give orders to her servants, to communicate with the Bat, and to make such preparations as the withdrawal of her men made necessary. The Duke's spears were expected that day or the next, but it needed no sharp eye to discern that Vlaye's capture of the Lieutenant had taken much of the spirit out of the attack. The Countess's men must now be counted on the Captain of Vlaye's side; while the peasants, weakened by the slaughter which Vlaye had inflicted on them at the mill, and by the distrust which their treachery must cause, no longer stood for much in the reckoning. It was possible that the Lieutenant's release might reanimate the forces of the law, that a second attempt to use the peasants might fare better than the first, that Joyeuse's aid might in time place des Ageaux in a position to cope with his opponent. But these were possibilities only, and the Vicomte for one put no faith in them.

He was utterly disgusted, indeed, with the turn which things were taking. Nor was his disgust at any time greater than when he stood an hour later and viewed the Countess and her escort marching out of the camp. If his life since Coutras had been obscure and ign.o.ble, at least it had been safe. While his neighbours had suffered at the Captain of Vlaye's hands, he had been favoured. He had sunk something of his pride, and counted in return on an alliance for his daughter, solid if not splendid. Now, by the act of this meddling Lieutenant--for he ignored Vlaye's treatment both of his daughter and the Countess--all was changed. He had naught to expect now but Vlaye's enmity; Villeneuve would no longer be safe for him. He must go or he must humble himself to the ground. He had taken, he had been forced by his children to take, the wrong side in the struggle. And the time was fast approaching when he must pay for it, and smartly.

CHAPTER XX.

THE ABBESS MOVES.

That Bonne failed to read the dark scroll of her sister's thoughts need not surprise us; since apart from the tie of blood the two women had nothing in common. But that she failed also to interpret Roger's inaction; that, blaming herself for an acquiescence which love made inevitable, she did not spare him, whom love should have moved in the opposite direction--this was more remarkable. For a closer bond never united brother and sister. But misery is a grand engrosser. She had her lover in her thoughts, the poor girl whom she sacrificed on her mind; and she left the Duke's quarters without that last look at her brother which might have enlightened her.

Had she questioned him he had discovered his mind. She did not, and she had barely pa.s.sed from sight before he was outside and had got a fresh horse saddled. One thing only it was prevented his leaving the camp in advance of the Countess, whose people were not ready. His foot was raised to the stirrup when he bethought him of this thing. He left the horse in charge of a trooper and hurried back to the Duke's quarters, found him alone and put his question.

"You made a man fight the other night against his will," he said, his head high. "Tell me, my lord, how I can do the same thing."

The Duke stared, then laughed. "Is it that you want?" he answered.

"Tell me first whom it is you would fight, my lad?"

"The Captain of Vlaye."

"Ah?"

"You said a while ago," Roger continued, his eyes sparkling, "that you would presently make her a widow. Better a widow before she is wed, I say!"

The Duke smiled whimsically. "Sits the wind in that quarter?" he answered. "You have no mind to see her wed at all, my lad? That is it, is it? I had some notion of it."

"Tell me how I can make him fight," Roger replied, sticking to his question and refusing even to blush.

"Tell me how I can get the moon!" Joyeuse answered, but not unkindly.

"Why should he risk his life to rid himself of you, who are no drawback to him? Tell me that! Or why should he surrender the advantage of his strong place and his four hundred spears to enter the lists with a man who is naught to him?"

"Because if he does not I will kill him where I find him!" Roger replied with pa.s.sion. And the mode of the day, which was not nice in the punctilios of the duel, and forgave the most irregular a.s.sault if it were successful, which cast small blame on Guise for the murder of St. Pol, or on Montsoreau for the murder of Bussy, justified the threat. "I will kill him!" he repeated. "Fair or foul, light or dark----"

"He shall not wed her!" the Duke cried in a mocking tone and with an extravagant gesture. But in truth the raillery was on the surface only. The lad's spirit touched the corresponding note in his own nature. None the less he shook his head. "Brave words, brave words, young man," he continued; "but you are not Vitaux, who counted his life for nothing, and whose sword was a terror to all."

"But if I count my life for nothing?"

"Ay, if! If!"

"And why should I not?" Roger retorted, his soul rising to his lips.

"Tell me, my lord, why should I count it for more? What am I, the son of a poor gentleman, misshapen, rough, untutored, that I should hold my life dear? That I should spare it, and save it, as a thing so valuable? What have I in prospect of all the things other men look to?

Glory? See me! Fine I should be," with a bitter laugh covering tears, "in a triumph, or marching up the aisle to a Te Deum! Court favour?

Ay, I might be the dwarf in a masque or the fool in motley! Naught besides! Naught besides, my lord! And for love?" He laughed still more bitterly. "I tell you my own father winces when he sees me! My own sister and my own brother--well, they are blind perhaps. They, they only, and old Solomon, and the woman who nursed me and dropped me--see in me a man like other men. Leave them out, and, as I live, until this man came----"

"Des Ageaux?"