“But it was from her, I fear, that he learned where the child — she is little more — could be surprised.”
The Vicomte glared at her without speaking. The Lieutenant, who had listened, not without admiration of the girl’s sense and firmness, seized the opening to intervene. “Were it not well, sir,” he said, his matter-of-fact tone calming the Vicomte’s temper, “if mademoiselle told us as nearly as possible what she has heard? And, as she has been somewhat shaken, perhaps you will permit her to sit down! She will then, I think, be able to tell us more quickly what we want.”
The Vicomte gave a surly assent, and the Lieutenant himself placed a stool for the girl where she could lean upon the table. Her father opened his eyes at the attention, but something in des Ageaux’s face silenced the sneer on his lips, and he waited until Bonne began.
“The Countess lay at Pons last night, sir,” she said in a low tone. “There the lady who was formerly her gouvernante, and still rules her household, fell ill. The plague is in Western Poitou, and though the Countess would have stayed, her physician insisted that she should proceed. Accordingly she left the invalid in his charge and that of some of her people, while she herself pursued her way through Jonsac and Barbesieux with a train reduced to fourteen persons, of whom eight were well armed.”
“This is what comes of travelling in such a fashion,” the Vicomte said contemptuously. “I remember when I never passed the gates without — but go on!”
“She now thinks that the gouvernante’s food was tampered with. Be that as it may, her company passed our ford in the afternoon, and an hour later reached the ascent a league this side of Vlaye. They were midway on the ascent, when half a dozen shots were fired. Several of their horses were struck, and the rest seized by a number of men who sprang from the undergrowth. In the panic those who were at the rear attempted to turn, but found their retreat cut off. The Countess alone, who rode in the middle with her steward, escaped through the devotion of a servant, who thrust his horse before the leader of the bandits and brought him down. Fulbert, her steward, saw the opportunity, seized her rein, and, plunging into the undergrowth, reached by good luck the bottom of the hill, and, hidden by the wood, gained a start. He knew, however, that her strength would not hold out, and at the first sound of pursuit he alighted in a coppice, drove on the horses, and crept away with her through the underwood. He hoped to take shelter here, but passed the entrance in the darkness and walked into the midst of a party of men encamped at the ford. Then he thought all lost, deeming them the band that had waylaid the Countess — —”
“And who were they, if they were not?” the Vicomte asked, unable to restrain his curiosity. “Eh? They were camping at the ford?”
“Some riders belonging to the household of the Lieutenant of Périgord, sir, on their way to join him in his government. They were so honest as to guard the Countess hither — —”
“And go again? The good Lord!” the Vicomte cried irritably. “Why?”
“I do not know, sir.”
“Go on, then. Why do you break off? But — enough!” The Vicomte looked at the other listeners with an air of triumph. “Where is Vlaye in this? Because it was within a league of his castle, you put it on him, you baggage?”
“No, sir, indeed!” Bonne cried anxiously. “But Fulbert the steward knows M. de Vlaye well, and recognised him. He wore a mask, it seems, but when his horse fell, the mask slipped, and Fulbert saw his face and knew him. Moreover — —”
“Well?”
“One of the band rode a bald-faced black horse, which the steward saw in M. de Vlaye’s troop at Angoulême two months back, and to which he says he could swear among ten thousand.”
The Vicomte swore as one among a large number. But at length, “And what is this to do with me?” he fumed. “What is this to me? Time was, before Coutras, when I might have been expected to — to keep the roads, and stay such things! But now — body of Satan, what is it to me?”
No one spoke, and he looked about him angrily, resenting their silence. “What is it?” he snarled. “What are you keeping back?”
“Nothing, sir,” Bonne answered.
“Then what would you?”
“If,” Bonne ventured desperately, “M. de Vlaye come to-morrow with my sister — with the Abbess, sir, as is not unlikely — and find the Countess here, will she be safe?”
The Vicomte’s mouth opened, and slowly consternation settled upon his features. “Mon Dieu!” he muttered. “I had not thought of that. But here — no, no, he would not dare! He would not dare!”
“He went very far to-day, sir,” Bonne objected, gaining courage from his face. “So far that he must go farther to ensure himself from the consequences.”
The Vicomte was silent.
The Lieutenant coughed. “If his object,” he said, “be to force a marriage with the Countess — —”
The Vicomte, with an oath, cut him short. “A marriage?” he said. “A marriage? When he and my daughter the Abbess are — but who said aught of the kind? Who said aught of a marriage?”
The Lieutenant did not answer, and the Vicomte, after growling in his beard, turned to him. “Why,” he demanded in a tone that, though ungracious, was no longer violent, “why do you say that that was his object?”
“Because,” the Lieutenant answered, “I happen to know that M. de Longueville, who is her guardian, has his hands full. His wife and children are prisoners with the Spaniards, and he is moving heaven and earth and the court to procure their release. He has no thought to spare for the Countess, his cousin; and were she once married, however violently, I doubt if he or any would venture to dispute her possessions with a Vlaye, whose resources her wealth would treble. Such knights-errant,” he continued drily, “are not very common, M. le Vicomte. Set M. de Vlaye’s strength at three hundred men-at-arms — —”
“Four!” the Vicomte muttered, despite himself.
“Then double the four — as such a marriage, however effected, would double them — and I doubt,” with a courteous bow, “if even a Villeneuve would find it easy to avenge a wrong!”
The Vicomte fidgeted in his seat. “You seem to know a vast deal about it, sir,” he said, with ill-feigned contempt.
“I should feel it an honour,” the Lieutenant answered politely, “to be permitted to join in the defence.”
“Defence!” the Vicomte exclaimed, staring at him in astonishment. “You go fast, sir! Defence? What do you mean?”
“If M. de Vlaye learn that the Countess has taken refuge here — I fear it will come to that.”
“Pooh! Impossible! Defence, indeed! What are you dreaming of?”
But the guest continued to look grave, and the Vicomte, after muttering incoherently, and drumming on the table with his fingers, condescended to ask with a sneer what he would do — in the circumstances.
“I should keep her presence from him,” des Ageaux answered. “I have no right, I know,” he continued, in a more conciliatory tone, “to give counsel to one of your experience, M. le Vicomte. But I see no choice save to do what I suggest, or to pull up the drawbridge.”
The Vicomte sat up straight. Pull up the drawbridge? Was he dreaming — he who had sat down to sup without a thought of misfortune? He with four hundred yards of wall to guard, and some seven pikes to hold it — to defy Vlaye and his four hundred ruffians? Body of Satan, he was not mad! Defy Vlaye, whom he feared even while he sneered at him as an adventurer? Vlaye, in whose star he believed even while he sneered. Or would he have dreamed of giving him his daughter? Pull up the drawbridge? Never!
“I am not mad,” he said coldly. But his hands trembled.
“Then, M. le Vicomte, it remains to keep it from him.”
“How? You talk at random,” the exasperated man answered. “Can I close the mouth of every gossip in the house? Can I cut out every woman’s tongue, beginning with that girl’s? How can I keep out his men, or stop their ears over the wine-pot?”
“Could you not admit him only?”
“And proclaim from the housetop,” the Vicomte retorted with contempt, “that I have something to hide?”
The Lieutenant did not reply at once, and it was plain that he was puzzled by this view of the position. “Certainly that has to be borne in mind,” he said. “You are quite right.”
“To be sure it has!” the Vicomte answered brusquely, glad to have the opportunity of putting this overzealous adviser in his right place. But the satisfaction of triumph faded quickly, and left him face to face with the situation. He cursed Vlaye for placing him in the dilemma. He cursed the Countess — why could she not have taken refuge elsewhere? Last of all, he cursed his guest, who, after showing himself offensively able to teach him his duty, failed the moment it came to finding an expedient.
The solution of the riddle came from a quarter whence — at any rate by the Vicomte — it was least expected. “May I say something?” Roger ventured timidly.
His father glared at him. “You?” he exclaimed. And then ungraciously, “Say on!” he growled.
“We have cut half the grass in the long meadow,” the lad answered. “And to-morrow we ought to be both cutting and making, while it is fine. Last year, as we were short-handed, the women helped. If you were to order all but Solomon to the hay-field to-morrow — it is the farthest from here, beside the river — there would be no one to talk or tell, sir.”
Des Ageaux struck his leg in approbation. “The lad has it!” he said. “With your permission, M. le Vicomte, what could be better?”
“Better?” the Vicomte retorted, throwing himself back in his chair. “What? I am to open my gate with my own hands?”
“Solomon would open. And he can be trusted.”
“Receive my daughter without man or maid?” the Vicomte cried. “Show myself to strangers without my people? Appear like one of the base-born beggarly ploughmen with mud in their veins, with whom you love to mix? What mean you, sirrah, by such a suggestion? Shame on you, unnatural fool!”
“But, M. le Vicomte,” the Lieutenant remonstrated, “if you will not do that — —”
“Never! Never!”
“Then,” des Ageaux answered, more stiffly, “it remains only to pull up the drawbridge. Since, I presume,” he continued, his tone taking insensibly a note of disdain, “you do not propose to give up the young lady, or to turn her from your door.”
“Turn her from my door?”
“That being at once to help M. de Vlaye to this marriage, and to drag the name of Villeneuve in the mud! But” — breaking off with a bow— “I am sure that the honour of the family is safe in your hands, M. le Vicomte.”
“It is well you said that!” the Vicomte cried, his face purple, his hands palsied with rage. “It is well you broke off, sir, or I would have proved to you that my honour is safe with me. Body of Satan, am I to be preached to by everybody — every brainless lad,” he continued, prudently diverting his tirade to the head of the unlucky Roger, “who chooses to prate before his elders! Mon Dieu! There was a time when children sat mute instead of preaching. But that was before Coutras!” — bitterly— “when most things came to an end.”
This time des Ageaux had the shrewdness to be silent, and he garnered the reward of his reticence. The Vicomte, rant as wildly as he might, was no fool, though vanity was hourly putting foolish things into his mouth. He was not blind — had he not “since Coutras” always on his lips? — to the changes which time had wrought in the world, and he knew that face to face with his formidable neighbour he was helpless. Nor was he in the dark on Vlaye’s character. So far the adventurer had respected him, and in presence, and at a distance, had maintained an observance and a regard that was flattering to the decayed gentleman. But the Vicomte had seen the fate of others who crossed the Captain of Vlaye. He knew how impotent the law had proved to save them, how slack their friends — in a word, how quickly the waters had rolled over them. And he was astute enough to see, with all his conceit, that as it had been with them, it might be with him, if he stood in M. de Vlaye’s way.
On the other hand, had he been mean enough to deliver up the Countess, he dared not. In the first place, to do so would, at the best, be hazardous; she had powerful friends, and whether she escaped or married her captor she might not forgive him. In the second place, he did not lightly resign the plan, which he had conceived, of uniting his favourite daughter to the rising adventurer. True, M. de Vlaye’s position was anomalous, was precarious. But a day, a bribe, a turn of the cards might legalise it and place him high in Court favour. And then ——
The Vicomte’s train of thought ran no farther in silence. With an oath and an ill grace he bade them do as they would. “Things,” he cried, “are come to a pass indeed when guests — —”
“A thousand pardons, M. le Vicomte!”
“And children dictate what is to be done and what to be left undone!” He looked older as he spoke; more broken and more peevish. “But since Coutras the devil has all, I think.”
CHAPTER V.
THE CAPTAIN OF VLAYE.
Danger, that by night sends forth a vanguard of fears, and quells the spirits before it delivers the attack, pursues a different course by day, seeking to surprise rather than to intimidate. Seldom had June sun shone on a fairer scene than that which the lifting of the river mists delivered to the eyes of the dwellers in the château on the following morning, or on one more fit to raise the despondent courage. The tract of meadow land that, enfolded by the river, formed the only clear ground about the house lay in breezy sunshine, which patches of shadow, flung on the sward by such of the surrounding trees as rose a little higher than the ordinary, did but heighten. The woods which enclosed this meadow land, here with a long straight wall of oaks, there with broken clumps of trees that left to view distant glades and alleys, sparkled, where the sun lighted their recesses, with unnumbered dew-drops, or with floating gossamers, harbingers of a fair day. The occasional caw of a rook flying fieldward over the open, or the low, steady coo of the pigeons in the great stone cote beside the gate, added the last touch of peace to the scene; a scene so innocent that it forbade the notion of danger and rendered it hard to believe that amid surroundings like these, and under the same sky of blue, man’s passions were, in parts not distant, turning an earthly heaven to a hell.
Access to these meadows was by a sled-road, which, starting from the great gate, wound round the wall of the courtyard, and then, turning its back on the house, passed by a small stone bridge over the brook which had once supplied the moat. From the bridge the track ran across the meadows to the abandoned farms which stood on the river bank half a mile from the château. The only building among these which retained a roof was a long wooden barn, still used to contain waste fodder and the like.
It was from this bridge, a narrow span of stone, that Bonne, the following morning, gazed on the scene, her hand raised to shade her eyes from the sun. The whole of the Vicomte’s household, with the exception of a deaf cook and of Solomon, who could be trusted, were gone to the hay-field; some with delight, as welcoming any change, and some with whispers and surmises. Thence their shrill voices and laughter were borne by the light breeze to the girl’s ears.
Nothing had been heard of the Countess’s train, and her concealment during the hours of danger had perplexed both the Vicomte and his advisers. His pride would not permit him to make her privy to the coming visit, or the precautions which it rendered needful. Yet without acknowledging his inability to protect her, it was not easy to confine her to one room. For, with the elasticity of youth, she had risen little the worse for her adventures.
The council sat long, and in the end the better course seemed to be to invite her to the hay-field. As it fell out, a small matter gave a natural turn to the proposal. Her riding-dress — and more of her dress than that — was so stained and torn as to be unwearable. And Bonne could not help her, for the child, though perfectly formed, and of a soft prettiness, was cast in a smaller mould. Here, then, was a Countess without so much as a stocking,
had not Bonne thought of a little waiting-girl of about the same shape and size. This girl’s holiday attire was borrowed, and found to be a charming fit — at least in the eyes of Roger. For the lad, because the Countess was shy, had become, after a sort, her protector.
The child’s timidity was at standing odds with her rank, and on first descending in this dress she had been on the point of tears, as infants cry when they think themselves the objects of ridicule. A very little and she had fled. But a moment later, whether she read something that was not ridicule in the lad’s eyes, as she walked up and down the terrace, or youth stirred in her and raised a childish pleasure in the masquerade, she preened herself, blushing, and presently she was showing herself off. So that at the first word she fell in with the notion of completing her make-believe by spending the day in the hay.
Fortunately, Fulbert, the steward, who attended her like a dog, and like a dog glared suspicion on all who approached her, raised no objection. And about three hours before noon the move was made. Bonne had gone with Mademoiselle as far as this bridge, where she now stood, and thence had sent her forward with Roger and Fulbert on the plea that she must herself attend to household cares. Nevertheless, as the three receded in the sun’s eye, she lingered awhile looking thoughtfully after them.
The dainty creature, tripping in her queer travesty between her foster-father and Roger’s misshapen form, showed like a fairy between two gnomes. Bonne watched and smiled, and presently the smile became a tear, for Roger’s sake. She had other and more pressing cares, other and heavier burdens this morning; but her heart was warm for him. She had been mother as well as sister to him, and the reflection that his deformity — once she had heard a peasant call him goblin — would probably for ever set him apart and deprive him of the joys of manhood touched her with grief as she stood.
The tear was still on her lid when she heard a step behind her, turned and saw des Ageaux — to her des Voeux. He read trouble in her clear, youthful face, fancied she was in fear, and paused to reassure her. “Why so sad, mademoiselle,” he asked, “when she” — with a good-humoured nod in the direction of the Countess— “who has so much more to fear, trips along gaily? She is another being to-day.”
Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman Page 441