She seemed to be in trouble, and Bonne, melted, would have gone to her. But a sound stayed the elder girl at the door. The murmur in the peasants’ quarter had risen to a louder note; and borne on this — as treble on base — came to the ear the shrill screech that tells of fanaticism. Such a sound has terrors for the boldest; for, irrational itself, it deprives others of reason. It gathers up all that is weak, all that is nighty, all that is cruel, even all that is cowardly, and hurls the whole, imbued with its own qualities, against whatever excites its rage. Bonne, who had never heard that note before, but knew by intuition its danger, stood transfixed, staring with terrified eyes at the distant huts. She was picturing what one instant of time, one savage blow, one shot at hazard, might work under that bright morning sky! She saw des Ageaux alone, hemmed in, surrounded by the ignorant crowd which the enthusiast was stirring to madness! She saw their lowering brows, their cruel countenances, their small, fierce eyes under matted locks; and she looked trembling to the Bat, who, stationed a few paces from her, was also listening to the shrill voice.
Had he sworn she had borne it better. But his compressed lips told of a more tense emotion; of fidelity strained to the utmost. Even this iron man shook, then! Even he to whom his master’s orders were heaven’s first law felt anxiety! She could bear no more in silence.
“Go!” she murmured. “Oh, go! Surely twenty men might ride through them!”
He did not look at her. “Orders!” he muttered hoarsely. “Orders!” But the perspiration stood on his brow.
She saw that, and that his sinewy hands gripped nail to palm; and as the distant roar gathered volume, and the note of peril in it grew more acute, “Oh, go!” she cried, holding out her hands to him. “Go, Roger! Some one!” wildly. “Will you let them tear him limb from limb!”
Still “Orders! Orders!” the Bat muttered. And though his eyes flickered an instant in the direction of the waiting troopers, he set his teeth. And then in a flash, in a second, the roar died down and was followed by silence.
Silence; no one moved, no one spoke. As if fascinated every eye remained glued to the low, irregular line of huts that hid from sight the inner part of the peasants’ camp. What had happened, what was passing there? On the earthen ramparts high overhead were men, Charles among them, who could see, and must know; but so taken up were the group below, from Bonne to the troopers, in looking for what was to come, that no one diverted eye or thought to these men who knew. And though either the abrupt cessation of sound, or the subtle excitement in the air, drew the Abbess at this moment from the Duke’s hut, no one noted her appearance, or the Duke’s pale eager face peering over her shoulder. What had happened? What had happened behind the line of hovels, under the morning sunshine that filled the camp and rendered only more grim the fear, the suspense, the tragedy that darkened all?
Something more than a minute they spent in that absorbed gazing. Then a deep blush dyed Bonne’s cheeks. The Bat, who had not sworn, swore. The Duke laughed softly. The troopers, if their officer had not raised his hand to check them, would have cheered. Des Ageaux had shown himself in one of the openings that pierced the peasants’ town. He was on horseback, giving directions, with gestures on this side and that. A score of naked urchins ran before him, gazing up at him; and a couple of men at his bridle were taking orders from him.
He was safe, he had conquered. And Bonne, uncertain what she had said in her anxiety, but certain that she had said too much, cast a shamed look at the Bat. Fortunately his eye was on the troopers; and it was not his look but her sister’s smile which drove the girl from the scene. She remembered the Countess: she bethought her that, in the solitude of her hut, the child might be suffering. Bonne hastened to her, with the less scruple as the two shared a hut.
The impulse that moved her was wholly generous. Yet when her hasty entrance surprised the young girl in the act of rising from her knees, there entered into the embarrassment which checked her one gleam of triumph. While the other had prayed for her lover, she had acted. She had acted!
The next moment she quelled the mean thought. The girl before her looked so wan, so miserable, so forlorn, that it was impossible to think of her hardly, or judge her strictly. “I am afraid that I scared you,” Bonne said, and stooped and kissed her. “But all is well, I bring you good news. He is safe! You can see him if you look from the door of the hut.”
She thought that the child would spring to the door and feast her eyes on the happy assurance of his safety. But the young Countess did not move. She stared at Bonne as if she had a difficulty in taking in the meaning of her words. “Safe?” she stammered. “Who is safe?”
“Who?” Bonne ejaculated.
The young girl passed her hand over her brow. “I am very sorry,” she replied humbly. “I did not understand. You said that some one was safe?”
“M. des Ageaux, of course!”
“Of course! I am very glad.”
“Glad?” Bonne repeated, with indignation she could not control. “Glad? Only that?”
The girl, her lip trembling, her face working, cast a frightened look at her, and then with a piteous gesture, as if she could no longer control herself, she turned from her and burst into tears.
Bonne stared. What did this mean? Relief? Joy? The relaxation of nerves too tightly strained? No. She should have thought of it before. It was not likely, it was not possible that this child had already conceived for des Ageaux such an affection as casts out fear. It was not she, but he, who had to gain by the marriage; and prepared as the Countess might be to look favourably on his suit, ready as she might be to give her heart, she had not yet given it.
“You are overwrought!” Bonne said, to soothe her. “You have been frightened.”
“Frightened!” the girl replied through her sobs. “I shall die — if I have to go through it again! And I have to go through it, I must go through it. And I shall die! Oh, the night I have spent listening and waiting and” — she cowered away, with a stifled scream. “What was that?” She stared at the door, her eyes wild with terror. “What was that?” she repeated, seizing Bonne, and clinging to her.
“Nothing! Nothing!” Bonne answered gently, seeing that the girl was thoroughly shaken and unnerved. “It was only a horse neighing.”
The Countess controlled her sobs, but her scared eyes and white face revealed the impression which the suspense of the night had made on one not bold by nature, and only supported by the pride of rank. “A horse neighing?” she repeated. “Was it only that? I thought — oh! if you knew what it was to hear them creeping and crawling, and rustling and whispering every hour of the night! To fancy them coming, and to sit up gasping! And then to lie down again and wait and wait, expecting to feel their hands on your throat! Ah, I tell you” — she hid her face on Bonne’s shoulder and clasped her to her passionately— “every minute was an hour, and every hour a day!”
Bonne held her to her full of pity. And presently, “But he was near you?” she ventured. “Did not his — his neighbourhood — —”
“The Lieutenant’s?”
“Yes. Did not that” — Bonne spoke with averted eyes: she would know for certain now if the child loved him!— “did not that make you feel safer?”
“One man!” the Countess’s voice rang querulous. “What could one man do? What could he have done if they had come? Besides they would have killed him first. I did not think of him. I thought of myself. Of my throat!” She clasped it with a sudden movement of her two hands — it was white and very slender. “I thought of that, and the knife, and how it would feel — all night! All night, do you understand? And I could have screamed! I could have screamed every minute. I wonder I did not.”
Bonne saw that the child had gone to the ordeal, and passed through it, in the face of a terror that would have turned brave men. And she felt no contempt for her. She saw indeed that the child did not love; for love, as Bonne’s maiden fancy painted it, was an all-powerful impervious armour. She was sure that in the other’s pl
ace she would have known fear, but it would have been fear on his account, not on her own. She might have shuddered as she thought of the steel, but it would have been of the steel at his breast. Whereas the Countess — no, the Countess did not love.
“And I must go again! I must go again!” the child wailed, in the same abandonment of terror. “Oh, how shall I do it? How shall I do it?”
The cry went to Bonne’s heart. “You shall not do it,” she said. “If you feel about it like this, you shall not do it. It is not right nor fit.”
“But I cannot refuse!” the Countess shook violently as she said it. “I dare not refuse. Afraid and a Rochechouart! A Rochechouart and a coward! No, I must go. I must die of fear there; or of shame here.”
“Perhaps it may not be necessary,” Bonne murmured.
“No? Why, even if my men come I must go! If they come to-day I must still go to-night. And lie trembling, and starting, and dying a death at every sound!”
“But perhaps — —”
“Don’t — don’t!” the Countess cried, moving feverishly in her arms. “And, ah, God, I was cold a moment ago, and now I am hot! Oh, I am so hot! So hot! Let me go.” Her parched lips and bright eyes told of the fever of fear that ran through her veins.
But Bonne still held her.
“It may not be necessary,” she murmured. “Tell me, did you see M. des Ageaux — after you went from here last night?”
“See him?” querulously. “No! He has his hut and I mine. I see no one! No one!”
“And he does not come and talk to you?”
“Talk? No. Talk? You do not know what it is like. I am alone, I tell you, alone!”
“Then if I were to take your place he would not find it out?”
The Countess started violently — and then was still. “Take my place?” she echoed in a different tone. “In their camp, do you mean?”
“Yes.”
“But you would not,” the other retorted. “You would not.” Then before Bonne could answer, “What do you mean? Do you mean anything?” she cried. “Do you mean you would go?”
“Yes.”
“In my place?”
“If you will let me,” Bonne replied. She flushed a little, conscience telling her that it was not entirely, not quite entirely for the other’s sake that she was willing to do this. “If you will let me I will go,” she continued. “I am bigger than you, but I can stoop, and in a riding-cloak and hood I think I can pass for you. And it will be dusk too. I am sure I can pass for you.”
The Countess shivered. The boon was so great, the gift so tremendous, if she could accept it! But she was Rochechouart. What would men say if they discovered that she had not gone, that she had let another take her place and run her risk? She pondered with parted lips. If it might be!
“You are not fit to go,” Bonne continued. “You will faint or fall. You are ill now.”
“But they will find out!” the Countess wailed, hiding her face on Bonne’s shoulder. “They will find out!”
“They will not find out,” Bonne replied firmly. “And I — why should I not go? You have done one night. I will do one.”
“Oh, if you would! But will you — not be afraid?” The Countess’s eyes were full of longing. If only she could accept with honour!
“I shall not be afraid,” Bonne answered confidently. “And no one need know, no one shall know. M. des Ageaux does not talk to you?”
“No. But if it be found out, everybody — ah, I shall die of shame! Your brother, Roger, too — and everybody!”
“No one shall know,” Bonne answered stoutly. “No one. Besides, you have been once. It is not as if you had not been!”
And the child, with the memory of the night pressing upon her, jumped at that. “Then I shall go to-morrow night,” she said. “I shall go to-morrow night.”
Bonne was clear that she was not fit to go again. But she let that be for the moment. “That shall be as you wish,” she answered comfortably. “We will talk about that to-morrow. For to-night it is settled. And now you must try if you cannot go to sleep. If you do not sleep you will be ill.”
CHAPTER XVI.
TO DO OR NOT TO DO?
To do or not to do? How many a one has turned the question in his mind; this one in the solitude of his locked room, seated with frowning face and eyes fixed on nothingness; that one amid the babble of voices and laughter, masking anxious thought under set smiles. How many a one has viewed the act she meditated this way and that, askance and across, in the hope of making the worse appear the better, and so of doing her pleasure with a light heart. Others again, trampling the scruple under foot, have none the less hesitated, counting the cost and striving to view dispassionately — with eyes that, the thing done, will never see it in that light again — how it will be with them afterwards, how much better outwardly, how much worse inwardly, and so to strike a balance for or against — to do or not to do. And some with burning eyes, and minds unswervingly bent on the thing they desire have yet felt hands pluck at them, and something — be it God or the last instinct of good — whispering them to pause — to pause, and not to do!
The Abbess pondered, while the Duke, reclining in the opening of his hut, from which the screen had been drawn back that he might enjoy the air, had no more accurate notion of her thoughts than had the Lieutenant’s dog sleeping a few paces away. The missal had fallen from her hands and lay in her lap. Her eyes fixed on the green slope before her betrayed naught that was not dove-like; while the profound stillness of her form which permitted the Duke to gaze at will breathed only the peace of the cloister and the altar, the peace that no change of outward things can long disturb. Or so the Duke fancied; and eyeing her with secret rapture, felt himself uplifted in her presence. He felt that here was a being congenial with his better self, and a beauty as far above the beauty to which he had been a slave all his life as his higher moods rose above his worst excesses.
He had gained strength in the three days which had elapsed since his arrival in the camp. He could now sit up for a short time and even stand, though giddily and with precaution. Nor were these the only changes which the short interval had produced. The Countess’s spears, to the number of thirty, were here, and their presence augmented the safety of the Vicomte’s party. But indirectly, in so far as it fed the peasants’ suspicions, it had a contrary effect. The Crocans submitted indeed to be drilled, sometimes by the Bat, sometimes by his master; and reasonable orders were not openly disobeyed. But the fear of treachery which a life-time of ill-usage had instilled was deepened by the presence of the Countess’s men. The slightest movements on des Ageaux’ part were scanned with jealousy. If he conferred too long with the Villeneuves or the Countess men exchanged black looks, or muttered in their beards. If he strayed a hundred paces down the valley a score were at his heels. Nor were there wanting those who, moving secretly between the camp and the savage horde upon the hill — the Old Crocans, as they were called — kept these apprised of their doubts and fears.
To eyes that could see, the position was critical, even dangerous. Nor was it rendered more easy by a feat of M. de Vlaye’s men, who, reconnoitring up to the gates one evening, cut off a dozen peasants. The morning light discovered the bodies of six of these hanged on a tree below the Old Crocans’ station, and well within view from the ridge about the camp. That the disaster might not have occurred had des Ageaux been in his quarters, instead of being a virtual prisoner, went for nothing. He bore the blame, some even thought him privy to the matter. From that hour the gloom grew deeper. Everywhere, and at all times, the more fanatical or the more suspicious drew together in corners, and while simpler clowns cursed low or muttered of treachery, darker spirits whispered devilish plans. Those who had their eyes open noted the more frequent presence of the Old Crocans, who wandered by twos and threes through the camp; and though these, when des Ageaux’ eye fell on them, fawned and cringed, or hastened to withdraw themselves, they spat when his back was turned, and with stealthy gestures
they gave him to hideous deaths.
In a word, fear like a dark presence lay upon the camp; and to add to the prevailing irritation, the heat was great. The giant earth-wall which permitted the Lieutenant to mature his plans and await his reinforcements shut out the evening breezes. Noon grilled his men as in a frying-pan; all night the air was hot and heavy. The peasants sighed for the cool streams of Brantôme and the voices of the frogs. The troopers, accustomed to lord it and impatient of discomfort, were quick with word and hand, and prone to strike, when a blow was as dangerous as a light behind a powder screen. Without was Vlaye, within was fear; while, like ravens waiting for the carnage, the horde of Old Crocans on the hill looked down from their filthy eyrie.
No one knew better than the Abbess that the least thing might serve for a spark. And she pondered. Not for an hour since its birth had the plan she had imagined been out of her mind; and still — there was so much good in her, so much truth — she recoiled. The two whom she doomed, if she acted, were her enemies; and yet she hesitated. Her own safety, her father’s, her sister’s, the safety of all, those two excepted, was secured by the Rochechouart reinforcement. Only her enemies would perish, and perhaps the poor fool whose presence she must disclose. And yet she could not make up her mind. To do or not to do?
It might suffice to detach Joyeuse. But the time was short, and the Duke’s opinion of her high; and she shrank from risking it by a premature move. He had placed her on a pinnacle and worshipped her: if she descended from the pinnacle he might worship no longer. Meantime, if she waited until his troopers rode in, and on their heels a second levy from Rochechouart, it might be too late to act, too late to detach him, too late to save Vlaye. To do or not to do?
Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman Page 456