Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman

by Stanley J Weyman

  She glanced at him, startled for the moment out of her rôle. The Duke was shaking with merriment. Confused, not understanding, she rose. “My lord,” she said, half offended, “what is it? What moves you?”

  “A rare joke,” he answered. “I was loth to interrupt your thoughts, fair sister, but ’twas too much for me.” He fell to laughing again.

  “You will injure yourself, my lord,” she said, chiding him gently, “if you laugh so violently.”

  “Oh, but — —” The litter shook under him.

  “At least,” she said, with a look more tender and less saintly than she had yet permitted herself, “you will tell me what it is! What — —”

  “Raise that — the cloak!” he said. He pointed with his hand. “Remove it, I mean, and you will see what — what you will see!”

  She obeyed and immediately recoiled with a low cry, the cloak in her hand. “Mon Dieu!” she whispered, with the colour gone from her cheeks. “Who — who is he? Who is he?” She shuddered.

  The man her act had revealed rose from his hiding-place, his face whiter than hers, his haggard, shifty eyes betraying his terror.

  “My lord!” he cried, “you will not betray me? My lord, you passed your word!”

  “Pah, coward, be silent!” the Duke answered. He turned to the Abbess, his eyes dancing. “Do you know him?” he asked.

  “He is M. de Vlaye’s man,” she said. “The prisoner!” She was pale and she frowned, her hands pressed to her breast.

  “Whom they are so anxious to hang!” the Duke replied, chuckling. “And whom des Ageaux is so anxious to have under his hand! Ha! ha! Those were his words! Under his hand! When he touched the cloak I thought I should have died. And you, rascal, what did you think? You thought you were going to die, I’ll be sworn!”

  “My lord — my lord!” the man faltered the words, holding out imploring hands.

  “Ay, I’ll wager you did!” Joyeuse replied. “Wished you had let me confess you then, I’ll be sworn! He’d not have it, good sister, when I offered it, because it was too like the end — the rope and the tree!”

  “My lord! My lord!” Fear had driven all but those two words from the man’s mouth.

  And certainly if man had ever ground for fear, he had. In that hut of wattle, open to the sky, open in a dozen places to the curious eye, he had heard the voices, the cries, the threats of his pursuers. The first that entered must see him, even if this mad lord who played with his life as lightly as he had in the beginning shielded it did not summon them to take him.

  Verily, as he stood, the cloak plucked from him, with every opening in the hut’s walls an eye, he tasted the bitterness of death. And in the amused face of his protector, in the girl’s cold frowning gaze, what of sympathy, of feeling, of pity? Not a jot. Not a sign. To the one a jest, to the other a peril, he was to neither akin.

  As it seemed. But a few seconds saw a change. The Abbess, in the first flush of amazement, had come near to forgetting her part. Under other circumstances the trembling wretch before her might have claimed and gained her sympathy, for he was one of Vlaye’s men. At any rate, his punishment by des Ageaux would have added one more to the list of the Lieutenant’s offences. But as it was she saw in him only a root, so long as he lay hidden, of utmost peril to all her party; a thing to be cast to the wolves, if she and those who rode in the chariot with her were to escape. Her first feeling, therefore — and her face must have betrayed it had the Duke looked at her at the first — had been one of fierce repulsion. Her natural impulse had been the impulse to call for help and give the man up!

  But in time, with a kind of shock of the mind that turned her hot, she remembered. The Duke was not one to see his will or his whim thwarted lightly. And she, the saint, whose book of offices still lay where it had fallen at her feet, she to lend herself to harshness! She to show herself void of pity! Hurriedly she forced words to her lips, and did what she could to match her face to their meaning.

  “My lord, blessed are the merciful,” she murmured with a slight but irrepressible shudder. “You who” — her words stuck a little— “have been spared so lately should be mercy itself.”

  “My sister,” the Duke said slowly, “you are more than mercy!” And he looked at her, his lips still smiling, but his eyes grave. He knew — was ever Frenchman who did not know — the value of his own courage. He knew that to act as a mere whim led him to act was not in many, where life was in question; and to see a woman rise thus to his level, ay, and rise in a moment and unasked, touched him with a new and ardent admiration. His eyes, as he looked, grew tender.

  “You, too, will protect him?” he said.

  “Who am I that I should do otherwise?” she answered. She spoke the words so well she seemed to him an angel. And to the man ——

  The man fell at her feet, seized the hem of her robe, kissed it, clung to it, sobbed broken words of thanks over it, gave way to transports of gratitude. To him, too, she was an angel. And while she reflected, “I can still give him up if I think better of it,” the Duke watched her with moist eyes, finding that holy in her case which in his own had been but a jest, the freak of a man in love with danger, and proud of seeking it by every road.

  Presently “Now, man, to your cloak!” he said. “And you, sister,” he continued, willing to hear the words again, “you are sure that you are not afraid?”

  “I am no more afraid,” she replied, with downcast eyes and hands crossed upon her breast, “than I was when I stayed alone with you by the river, my lord. There was no other who could stay.”

  “Say instead, who dared to stay.”

  “There is no other now who can shelter him!”

  “Mon Dieu!” he whispered.

  He followed her with his eyes after that, all his impressions confirmed; and as it was rare in those days to find the good also the beautiful, the imprint made on him was deep. She thrilled him as no woman had thrilled him since the days of his boyhood and his first gallantries. His feeling for her elevated him, purified him. As he watched her moving to and fro in his service, a great content stole over him. Once, when she bent to his couch to do him some office, he contrived to touch her hand with his. So might an anchorite have touched the wood of the true Cross — so reverent, so humble, so full of adoration and worship was the touch.

  But it was the first step — that touch — and she knew it. She went back to her bench, and veiling her eyes with her long lashes that he might not read the triumph which shone in them, she fell again to her devotions — but with content in her breast. A little more, a little while, and she would have him at her beck, she would have him on his knees; and then it should not be long before his alliance with des Ageaux was broken, and his lances sent home. Not long! But meanwhile time pressed. There was the trouble; time pressed, yet she dared not be hasty. He was no simple boy, and one false move might open his eyes. He might see that she was no angel, but of the same clay as those of whom he had made toys all his life!

  As she pondered, the near prospect of success set the possibility of failure, through some accident, through some mischance, in a more terrible aspect. She hated the trembling fugitive cowering in his hiding-place behind the Duke’s bed; she wished to heaven he were in des Ageaux’ hands again. The danger of a mutiny on his account, a danger that despite her courage chilled her, would then be at an end. True, such a mutiny menaced the Lieutenant in the first place and the Countess in the second; and she could spare them. But she could not be sure that it would go no farther. She could not be sure that its burning breath would not lap all in the camp. Had she been sure — that had been another matter. And behold, as she thought of it, from some cell of the brain leapt full-grown a plan; a plan wicked enough, cruel enough, terrible enough, to shock even her, but a clever plan if it could be executed!

  She had little doubt that the Lieutenant would overcome the difficulty of the morning and succeed in persuading the peasants that he was guiltless of the escape of the prisoner. Suppose he succeeded, what
would happen if it leaked out later that the prisoner had been hidden all the time in the Lieutenant’s huts? Particularly if it leaked out at a time when the Lieutenant and the Countess lay in the peasants’ power in the peasants’ camp? And for choice after the arrival of the first batch of spears had secured the rest of the party from danger? What would happen to des Ageaux and the Countess in that event?

  It was a black thought. The beautiful face bent over the book of offices grew perceptibly harder. But what better fate did they deserve who took on themselves to mar and meddle? They who incited her very brothers, clownish hobbledehoys, and her mawkish sister to rise up against her and against him? If fault there was, the fault lay with those who threw down the glove. The Lieutenant was come for naught else but her lover’s destruction: and if he fell into the pit that he digged for another he could blame himself only. As for the girl, the white-faced puling child whose help M. de Vlaye’s enemies were driving him to seek, if she, with her castles and her wealth, her lands and horse and foot, could not protect herself, the issue was her affair! Of a surety it was not her rival’s!

  Odette de Villeneuve’s breath came a little quickly, a fine dew stood on her white forehead. Meantime the Duke watched her and wondered in an enthusiasm of piety what prayer it was that so stirred that angelic breast, what aspirations for the good of her sinning and suffering sisters swelled that saintly bosom! A vision of an ascetic life spent by her side, of Fathers read page by page in her company, of the good and the noble pursued with her under cloistered yews, of an Order such as the modern Church had never seen — such a vision wrapt him for a few blissful minutes from the cold, lower world of sense.

  CHAPTER XV.

  FEARS.

  The Abbess was not present that evening when the hostages transferred themselves to the peasants’ side of the camp. Had she witnessed the scene she had found, it is possible, matter for reflection. Hard as he had struggled against the surrender, the Lieutenant struggled almost as hard, now it was inevitable, to put a good face on it. But his easy word and laugh fell flat in face of a crowd so watchful and so ominously silent that it was useless to pretend that the step was no more than a change from a hut in this part to a hut in that. He who knew that he must, in the morning, face the men and deny them their prisoner — knew this too well. But, in truth, the downcast faces of his troopers and the furtive glances of the Vicomte’s party were evidence that the matter meant much, and that these, also, recognised it; nor did the peasants, who fell in beside the two when they started, and accompanied them in an ever growing mob, seem unaware of the fact. The movement was their triumph; a sign of victory to the dullest as he ran and stared, and ran again. A section indeed there were who stood aloof and eyed the thing askance: but two of the Vicomte’s party, who recognised among these the men whom the Lieutenant had denounced in the morning — the tall, light-eyed fanatic and the dwarf — held it the worst sign of all; and had it lain in their power they would even at that late hour have called back their friends.

  Those two were Roger and his younger sister. With what feelings they saw des Ageaux and the Countess ride away to share a solitude full alike of danger and of alarm may be more easily imagined than described. But this is certain; whatever pangs of jealousy gnawed at Bonne’s heart or reddened her brother’s cheek, neither forgot the bargain they had made on the hill-side, or wished their rival aught but a safe deliverance.

  As it was, could the one or the other, by the lifting of a finger, have injured the person who stood in the way, they had not lifted it or desired to lift it. But — to be in her place! To be in his place! To share that solitude and that peril! To know that round them lay half a thousand savages, ready at the first sign of treachery to take their lives, and yet to know that to the other it was bliss to be there — this, to the two who remained in the Vicomte’s huts and gave their fancy rein, seemed happiness. Yet were they sorely anxious; anxious in view of the abiding risk of such a situation, more anxious in view of the crisis that must come when the peasants learned that the prisoner had escaped. Nevertheless, they did not talk of this, even to one another.

  If Roger kept vigil that night his sister did not know it. And if Bonne, whose secret was her own, started and trembled at every sound — and such a camp as that bred many a sound and some alarming ones — she told no one. But when the first grey light fell thin on the basin in the hills, disclosing here the shapeless mass of a hut, and there only the dark background of the encircling ridge, her pale face, as she peered from her lodging, confronted Roger’s as he paced the turf outside. The same thought, the same fear was in the mind of brother and sister, and had been since earliest cock-crow; and for Roger’s part he was not slow to confess it. Presently they found that there was another whom care kept waking. A moment and the Bat’s lank form loomed through the mist. He found the two standing side by side; and the old soldier’s heart warmed to them. He nodded his comprehension.

  “The trouble will not be yet awhile,” he said. “He will send the lady back before he tells them. I doubt” — he shrugged his shoulders with a glance at Bonne— “if she has had a bed of roses this night.”

  Bonne sighed involuntarily. “At what hour do you think she will be back?” Roger asked.

  “My orders are to send six riders for her half an hour after sunrise.”

  “A little earlier were no worse,” Roger returned, his face flushing slightly as he made the suggestion.

  “Nor better,” the Bat replied drily. “Orders are given to be obeyed, young sir.”

  “And the rest of your men?” Bonne asked timidly. “They will go to support M. des Ageaux as soon as she arrives, I suppose?”

  The Bat read amiss the motive that underlay her words. “Have no fear, mademoiselle,” he said, “we shall see to your safety. You know the Lieutenant little if you think he will look to his own before he has ensured that of others. My lady the Countess once back with us, not a man is to stir from here. And, with warning, and the bank behind us, it will be hard if with a score of pikes we cannot push back the attack of such a crew as this!”

  “But you do not mean,” Bonne cried, her eyes alight, “that you are going to leave M. des Ageaux alone — to face those savages?”

  “Those are my orders,” the Bat replied gently; for the girl’s face, scarlet with protest, negatived the idea of fear. “And orders where the Lieutenant commands, mademoiselle, are made to be obeyed; and are obeyed. Moreover,” he continued seriously, “in this case they are common sense, since with a score of pikes something may be done, but with half a score here, and half a score there” — shrugging his shoulders— “nothing! Which no one knows better than my lord!”

  “But — —”

  “The Lieutenant allows no ‘buts,’” the old soldier answered, smiling at her eagerness. “Were you with him, mademoiselle — were you under his orders, I mean — it would not be long before you learned that!”

  Poor Bonne was silenced. With a quivering lip she averted her face: and for a few moments no one spoke. Then, “I wish M. de Joyeuse were on his feet,” the Bat said thoughtfully. “He is worth a dozen men in such a pinch as this!”

  “The sun is up!” This from Roger.

  “Ah!”

  “How will you know when half an hour is past?”

  The Bat raised his eyebrows. “I can guess it within two or three minutes,” he said. “There is no hurry for a minute or two!”

  “No hurry?” Roger retorted. “But the Countess — won’t she be in peril?”

  The Bat looked curiously at him. “For the matter of that,” he said, “we are all in peril. And may-be we shall be in greater before the day is out. We must take the rough with the smooth, young sir. However — perhaps you would like to make one to fetch her?”

  Roger blushed. “I will go,” he said.

  “Very good,” the old soldier answered. “I don’t know that it is against orders. For you, mademoiselle, I fear that I cannot satisfy you so easily. Were I to send you,” he con
tinued with a sly smile, “to escort my lord back — —”

  “Could you not go yourself?” Bonne interrupted, her face reflecting the brightest colours of Roger’s blush.

  “I, indeed? No, mademoiselle. Orders! Orders!”

  They did not reply. By this time the dense grey mist, forerunner of heat, had risen and discovered the camp, which here and there stirred and awoke. The open ground about the rivulet, which formed a neutral space between the peasants’ hovels and the quarters assigned to the Vicomte, still showed untenanted, though marred and poached by the trampling of a thousand feet. But about the fringe of the huts that, low and mean as the shops of some Oriental bazaar, clustered along the foot of the bank, figures yawned and stretched, gazed up at the morning, or passed bending under infants, to fetch water. Everywhere a rising hum told of renewed life. And behind the Vicomte’s quarters the brisk jingle of bits and stirrups announced that the troopers were saddling.

  In those days of filthy streets, and founderous sloughy roads, the great went ever on horseback, if it were but to a house two doors distant. To ride was a sign of rank, no matter how short the journey. Across the street, across the camp it was the same; and Bonne, as she watched Roger and the five troopers proceeding with three led horses across the open, saw nothing strange in the arrangement.

  But when some minutes had passed, and the little troop did not emerge again from the ruck of hovels which had swallowed them, Bonne began to quake. Before her fears had time to take shape, however, the riders appeared; and the anxiety she still felt — for she knew that des Ageaux was not with them — gave way for a moment to a natural if jealous curiosity. How would she look, how would she carry herself, who had but this moment parted from him, who had shared through the night his solitude and his risk, his thoughts, perhaps, and his ambitions? Would happiness or anxiety or triumph be uppermost in her face?

  She looked; she saw. Her gaze left no shade of colour, no tremor of eye or lip unnoticed. And certainly for happiness or triumph she failed to find a trace of either in the Countess’s face. The young girl, pale and depressed, drooped in her saddle, drooped still more when she stood on her feet. No blush, no smile betrayed remembered words or looks, caresses or promises; and if it was anxiety that clouded her, she showed it strangely. For when she had alighted from her horse she did not wait. Although, as her feet touched the ground, a murmur rose from the distant huts, she did not heed it; but looking neither to right nor left, she hastened to hide herself in her quarters.