The Abbess Of Vlaye Part 47

He did not understand her, and though he trembled he was silent.

"You too treat me as a child," she continued. "You talk as if food made up for friends and no one was lonely save when alone! Think what it must be to be always alone, in a crowd! Bargained for by one, s.n.a.t.c.hed at by another, fawned on by a third, a prize for the boldest!

And not one--not one thinking of me!" pathetically. And then, as he rose, "What is it?"

"I think I hear some one moving," Roger faltered. "I will tell the men!" And without waiting for her answer, he stumbled away. For, in truth, he could listen no longer. If he listened longer, if he stayed, he must speak! And she was a child, she did not know. She did not know that she was tempting him, trying him, putting him to a test beyond his strength. He stumbled away into the darkness, and steering for the place where the horses were tethered he called the men by name.

One answered sleepily that all was well. The other, who was resting, snored. Roger, his face on fire, hesitated, not knowing what to do. To bid the man who watched come nearer and keep the lady company would be absurd, would be out of reason; and so it would be to bid him stand guard over them while they talked. The man would think him mad. The only alternative, if he would remove himself from temptation, was to remain at a distance from her. And this he must do.

He found, therefore, a seat a score of paces away, and he sat down, his head between his hands. But his heart cried--cried pitifully that he was losing moments that would never recur--moments on which he would look back all his life with regret. And besides his heart, other things spoke to him; the warm stillness of the summer night, the low murmur of the water at his feet, the whispering breeze, the wood-nymphs--ay, and the old song that recurred to his memory and mocked him--

"Je ris de moi, je ris de toi, Je ris de ta sottise!"

Here, indeed, was his opportunity, here was such a chance as few men had, and no man would let slip. But he was not as other men--there it was. He was crook-backed, poor, unknown! And so thinking, so telling himself, he fixed himself in his resolve, he strove to harden his heart, he covered his ears with his hands. For she was a child, a child! She did not understand!

He would have played the hero perfectly but for one fatal thought that presently came to him--a thought fatal to his rect.i.tude. She would take fright! Left alone, ignorant of the feeling that drove him from her--what if she moved from the place where he had left her, and lost herself in the wood, or fell into the river, or--and just then she called him.

"Monsieur Roger! Where are you?"

He went back to her slowly, almost sullenly; partly in surrender to his own impulse, partly in response to her call. But he did not again sit down beside her. "Yes," he said. "You are quite safe, mademoiselle. I shall not be out of earshot. You are quite safe."

"Why did you go away?"

"Away?" he faltered.

"Are you afraid of me?" gently.

"Afraid of you?" He tried to speak gaily.

"Pray," she said in a queer, stiff tone, "do not repeat all my words.

I asked if you were afraid of me, Monsieur Roger?"

"No," he faltered, "but--but I thought that you would rather be alone."

"I?" in a tone that went to poor Roger's heart. "I, who have told you that I am always alone? Who have told you that I have not"--her voice shook--"a friend--one real friend in the world!"

"You are tired now," Roger faltered, finding no other words than those he had used before.

"Not one real friend!" she repeated piteously. "Not one!"

He was not proof against that. He bent towards her in the darkness--almost in spite of himself. "Yes, one," he said, in a voice as unsteady as hers. "One you have, mademoiselle, who would die for you and ask not a look in return! Who would set, and will ever set, your honour and your happiness above the prizes of the world! Who asks only to serve you at a distance, by day and dark, now and always! If it be a comfort for you to know that you have a friend, know it!

Know----"

"I do not know," she struck in, in a voice both incredulous and ironical, "where I am to find such an one save in books! In the Seven Champions or in Amadis of Gaul--perhaps. But in the world--where?"

He was silent. He had said too much already. Too much, too much!

"Where?" she repeated.

Still he did not answer.

Then, "Do you mean yourself, Monsieur Roger?"

She spoke with a certain keenness of tone that was near to, ay, that threatened offence.

He stood, his hands hanging by his side. "Yes," he faltered. "But no one knows better than myself that I cannot help you, mademoiselle.

That I can be no honour to you. For the Countess of Rochechouart to have a crook-backed knight at the tail of her train--it may make some laugh. It may make women laugh. Yet----" he paused on the word.

"Yet what, sir?"

"While he rides there," poor Roger whispered, "no man shall laugh."

She was silent quite a long time, as if she had not heard him. Then,

"Do you not know," she said, "that the Countess of Rochechouart can have but one friend--her husband?"

He winced. She was right; but if that was her feeling, why had she complained of the lack of friends?

"Only one friend, her husband," the Countess continued softly. "If you would be that friend--but perhaps you would not, Roger? Still, if you would, I say, you must be kind to her ever and gentle to her. You must not leave her alone in woods on dark nights. You must not slight her.

You must not,"--she was half laughing, half crying, and hanging towards him in the darkness, her childish hands held out in a gesture of appeal, irresistible had he seen it--but it was dark, or she had not dared--"you must not make anything too hard for her!"

He stepped one pace from her, shaking.

"I dare not! I dare not!" he said.

"Not if I dare?" she retorted gently. "Not if I dare, who am a coward?

Are you a coward, too, that when you have said so much and I have said so much you will still leave me alone and unprotected, and--and friendless? Or is it that you do not love me?"

"Not love you?" Roger cried, in a tone that betrayed more than a volume of words had told. And beaten out of his last defence by that shrewd dilemma, he threw his pride to the winds; he sank down beside her, and seized her hands and carried them to his lips--lips that were hot with the fever of sudden pa.s.sion. "Not love you, mademoiselle? Not love you?"

"So eloquent!" she murmured, with a last flicker of irony. "He does not even now say that he loves me. It is still his friends.h.i.+p, I suppose, that he offers me."

"Mademoiselle!"

"Or is it that you think me a nun because I wear this dress?"

He convinced her by means more eloquent than all the words lovers'

lips have framed that he did not so think her; that she was the heart of his heart, the desire of his desire. Not that she needed to be convinced. For when the delirium of his joy began to subside he ventured to put a certain question to her--that question which happy lovers never fail to put.

"Do you think women are blind?" she answered. "Did you think I did not see your big eyes following me in and out and up and down? That I did not see your blush when I spoke to you and your black brow when I walked with M. des Ageaux? Dear Roger, women are not so blind! I was not so blind that I did not know as much before you spoke as I know now."

And in the dark of the wood they talked, while the water glinted slowly by them and the frogs croaked among the waving weeds, and in the stillness under the trees the warmth of the summer night and of love wrapped them round. It was an hour between danger and danger, made more precious by uncertainty. For the moment the world held for each of them but one other person. The Lieutenant's peril, Bonne's suspense, the Abbess--all were forgotten until the moon rose above the trees and flung a chequered light on the dark moss and hart's-tongue and harebells about the lovers' feet. And with a shock of self-reproach the two rose to their feet.

They gave to inaction not a moment after that. With difficulty and some danger the river was forded by the pale light, and they resumed their journey by devious ways until, mounting from the lower ground that fringed the water, they gained the flank of the hills. Thence, crossing one shoulder after another by paths known to Roger, they reached the hill at the rear of the Old Crocans' town. In pa.s.sing by this and traversing the immediate neighbourhood of the peasants' camp lay their greatest danger. But the dawn was now at hand, the moon was fading; and in the cold, grey interval between dawn and daylight they slipped by within sight of the squalid walls, and with the fear of surprise on them approached the gate of the camp. Nor, though all went well with them, did they breathe freely until the challenge of the guard at the gate rang in their ears.

After that there came with safety the sense of their selfishness. They thought of poor Bonne, who, somewhere in the mist-wrapped basin before them, lay waiting and listening and praying. How were they to face her? with what heart tell her that her lover, that des Ageaux, still lay in his enemy's power. True, Vlaye had gone back on his word, and, in face of the Countess's surrender, had refused to release him; so that they were not to blame. But would Bonne believe this? Would she not rather set down the failure to the Countess's faint heart, to the Countess's withdrawal?