“Ay, but it is she who has the riders who are coming!” the smith retorted shrewdly. “It is her we want and it is her we’ll have! We’ll do her no harm, and she may have her own hut on our side, and her woman with her, and a man if she pleases. And you may have a hut beside hers, if one,” with a wink, “won’t do for the two.”
“But, man,” des Ageaux cried, his brow dark, “how can I take Vlaye and his castle while I lie a hostage?”
“Oh, you shall go to and fro, to and fro, Sir Governor!” the smith answered lightly. “We’ll not be too strict if you are there of nights. And we will know ourselves safe. And as we live by bread,” he continued stoutly, “we’ll do her no harm if faith be kept with us!”
Des Ageaux endeavoured to hide his emotion, but the sweat stood on his brow. Defeat is bitter to all. To the man who has long been successful most bitter.
Suddenly, “I will go!” said the Countess bravely. And she stepped forward by the Lieutenant’s side, a little figure, shrinking, yet resolute. “I will go,” she repeated, trembling with excitement, yet facing the men.
“No!” Roger cried — and then was silent. It was not for him to speak. What could he do?
“We will all go!” Bonne said.
“Nay, but that will not do,” the smith replied, with a sly grimace. “For then they” — he pointed to the little knot of troopers who waited with sullen faces a short arrow-shot away— “would be coming as well. The lady may bring a woman if she pleases, and her man there, as I said.” He nodded towards Fulbert. “But no more, or we are no gainers!”
To the Lieutenant that moment was one of the bitterest of his life. He, the King’s Governor, who had acted as master, who had forced the Vicomte and his party to come into his plans, whether they would or no, stood out-generalled by a mob of peasants, whom he had thought to use as tools! And not only that, but the young Countess, whose safety he had made the pretext for the abandonment of the château, must surrender herself to a risk more serious — ay, far more serious, than that from which he had made this ado to save her!
Humiliation could scarcely go farther. It was to his credit, it was perhaps some proof of his capacity for government that, seeing the thing inevitable, he refrained from useless words or protest, and sternly agreed. He and the Countess would remove to the farther side of the camp in the course of the day.
“With a man and a maid only?” the smith persisted, knitting his brows. Having got what he had asked he doubted.
“The Countess of Rochechouart will be so attended,” the Lieutenant answered sternly. “And you, Sir Governor?”
“I am a soldier,” he retorted, so curtly that they were abashed. With some muttering they began to melt away. Awhile they stood in groups, discussing the matter. Then gradually they retired across the rivulet to their quarters.
The Lieutenant had been almost happy had that ended it. But he had to face those whom he had led into this trap, those whom he had forced to trust him, those whom he had carried from their home. He was not long in learning their views.
“A soldier!” the Vicomte repeated, taking up his last word in a voice shaking with passion. “You call yourself a soldier and you bring us to this! To this!” With loathing he described the outline of the camp with his staff. “You a soldier, and cast women to these devils! Pah! Since Coutras there may be such soldiers! But in my time, no!”
He did not reply: and the Abbess took up the tale. “Excellent!” she said, with bitterest irony. “We are all now assured of your prudence and sagacity, sir! The safety and freedom which we enjoy here, the ease of mind which the Countess will doubtless enjoy tonight — —”
“Do not frighten her, mademoiselle!” he said, repressing himself. Then, as if an impulse moved him, he turned slowly to Bonne. “Have you nothing to add, mademoiselle?” he asked, in a peculiar tone.
“Nothing!” she answered bravely. And then — it needed some courage to speak before her father and sister, “Were I in the Countess’s place I should not fear. I am sure she will be safe with you.”
“Safe!” Odette cried, her eyes flashing. In the excitement of the moment the plans she had so recently made were forgotten. “Ay, as safe as a lamb among wolves! As safe as a nun among robbers! So safe that I for one am for leaving this moment. Ay, for leaving, and now!” she continued, stamping her foot on the sward “What is it to us if this gentleman, who calls himself the Governor of Périgord — and may be such, I care not whether he is or not — has a quarrel with M. de Vlaye and would fain use us in it as he uses these brute beasts? What, I say, is it to us? Or why do we take part? M. le Vicomte” — she turned to her father— “if you are still master of Villeneuve, you will order our horses and take us thither. We have naught to fear, I say it again, we have naught to fear at M. de Vlaye’s hands; and if we fall into them between this and Villeneuve, so much the better! But if we stay here we have all to fear.” In truth she was honestly frightened. She thought the case desperate.
“Mademoiselle — —”
“No, sir!” she retorted, turning from him. “I did not speak to you; but to you, M. le Vicomte! Sir, you hear me? Is it not your will that we order the horses and go from here?”
“If we can go safely — —”
“You cannot go safely!” des Ageaux said, with returning decision. “If you have nothing to fear from the Captain of Vlaye, the Countess has. Nor is that all. These men” — he pointed in the direction of the peasants, who were buzzing about their huts like a swarm of bees— “have forced my hand, but through fear and distrust, not in malice. They mean us no harm if we mean them none. But the Old Crocans, as they call themselves, in the town on the hill — if you fall into their hands, M. le Vicomte — and beyond the lines of this camp no one is safe from their prowling bands — then indeed God help you!”
“God help us whether or no!” the Vicomte answered in senile anger. “I wash my hands of it all, of it all! I am nothing here, and have been nothing! Let who will do! The world is mad!”
“Certainly we were mad when we trusted you!” the Abbess cried, addressing des Ageaux. “Never so mad! But if I mistake not, here is another with good news! Oh!” to the Bat, who, with a shamefaced air, was hovering on the skirts of the group, as if he were not sure of his reception, “speak, sir, without reserve! We all know” — in a tone of mockery— “how fair and safely we stand!”
Des Ageaux turned to his follower. “What is it?” he asked.
“The prisoner is missing, my lord.” The Abbess laughed bitterly. The others looked at the Bat with faces of dismay. “Missing? The man we have promised to hold for them. How?” des Ageaux exclaimed sternly. This was a fresh blow and a serious one.
“When I saw, my lord, that we were like to be in trouble here, I drew off the two men who were guarding him. He was bound, and — we had too few as it was.”
“But he cannot have passed the ramparts.”
“Anyway we cannot find him,” the Bat answered, looking ashamed and uncomfortable. “I’ve searched the huts, and — —”
“Is it known?”
“No, my lord.”
“Then set the guards as before over the hut in which you had him, and see that the matter does not leak out to-night.”
“But if,” the Bat objected, “they discover that he is gone while you are with them to-night, my lord, they are in an ugly mood, and — —”
“They must not discover it!” des Ageaux answered firmly. “Go, see to it yourself. And let two men whom you can trust continue the search, but as if they had lost something of their own.”
The Bat went on his errand; and the Abbess, with this fresh weapon in her quiver, prepared to resume the debate. But the Lieutenant would not have it. “Mademoiselle,” he said, with a look which silenced her, “if you say more to alarm the Countess, whose courage” — he bowed in the direction of the pale frightened girl— “is an example to us all, she will not dare to go this evening. And if she does not go, the lives of all will be in danger. An e
nd of this, if you please!”
And he turned on his heel, and left them.
CHAPTER XIV.
SAINT AND SINNER.
An hour later the Lieutenant was with the Duke in his quarters, and had imparted to him what he knew of the position. The Duke listened, not much affected; nay, with something approaching indifference.
“It is a question of four days then?” he rejoined, as he painfully moved himself on his litter. They had made him as comfortable as they could, screening the head of his couch, which was towards the hut door, with a screen of wattle. Against one wall, if wall that could be called which was of like make with the screen, ran a low bench of green turves, and on this des Ageaux was seated.
“Of four days — and nights,” the Lieutenant made answer, masking a slight shiver. He was not thinking of his own position, but of the young Countess; neither her fears nor the courage with which she controlled them were a secret from him. “To-day is Saturday. The Countess’s men should be here by Monday, your men, M. de Joyeuse, by Wednesday. All will be well then; and I doubt not with such support we can handle the Captain of Vlaye. But until then we run a double risk.”
“Of Vlaye, of course.”
“And of our own people if anything occur to exasperate them.”
Joyeuse laughed recklessly. “Vogue la galère!” he cried. “The plot grows thicker. I came for adventure, and I have it. Ah, man, if you had lived within the four walls of a convent!”
Des Ageaux shook his head. He knew the wanton courage of the man, who, sick and helpless, found joy in the peril that surrounded them. But he was very far from sharing the feeling. The dangers that threatened the party lay heavy on the man who was responsible for all. The tremors of the young girl who must share his risk that evening, the bitter reproaches of the Abbess and her father, even the confidence that Bonne’s eyes rather than her lips avowed, all tormented him; so that to see this man revelling in that which troubled him so sorely, insulted his reason.
“I fancy, my lord,” he said, a faint note of resentment in his tone, “if you had had to face these rogues this morning you had been less confident this evening.”
“Were they so spiteful?” The Duke raised himself on his elbow. “Well, I say again, you made a mistake. You should have run the spokesman through the throat! Ca! Sa!” He made a pass through the air. “And trust me, the rest of the knaves — —”
“Might have left none of us alive to tell the tale!” the Lieutenant retorted.
“I don’t know that!”
“But I suspect it!” des Ageaux replied warmly. “And I do beg you, my lord, to be guided in this. I am more than grateful for the impulse which led you to come to my assistance. But honestly I had been more glad if you had brought a couple of hundred spears with you. As it is, the least imprudence may cost us more than our own lives! And it behoves us all to remember that!”
“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.
Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman Page 454
