The Abbess Of Vlaye Part 24

"He is there--alone apparently."

"Alone?"

The Bat's eyes sought the wall and gazed on it stonily. "There are more fools than one in the world," he said gruffly.

Des Ageaux pondered an instant. Then, "I will see him," he said. "But first," he turned courteously to the Vicomte, "I have to provide for your safety, M. le Vicomte, and that of your family. I can only ensure it, I fear, by removing you from here. I have not sufficient force to hold the chateau, and short of that I see no way of protecting you from the Captain of Vlaye's resentment."

The Vicomte, who had aged years in the last few days, as the old sometimes do, sat down weakly on a bed. "Go--from here?" he muttered, his hands moving nervously on his knees. "From my house?"

"It is necessary."

"Why?" A younger and stronger voice flung the question at des Ageaux.

The Abbess stood forward beside her father. "Why?" she repeated imperiously. "Why should we go from here--from our own house? Or why should we fear M. de Vlaye?"

"To the latter question--because he does not lightly forgive, mademoiselle," des Ageaux replied drily. "To the former because I have neither men nor means to defend this house. To both, because you have with you"--he pointed to the Countess--"this lady, whom it is not consonant with the Vicomte's honour either to abandon or to surrender.

To be plain, M. de Vlaye's plans have been thwarted and his men routed, and to-morrow's sun will not be an hour high before he takes the road. To remain here were to abide the utmost of his power; which," he added drily, "is at present of importance, however it may stand in a week's time."

She looked at him darkly beautiful, temper and high disdain in her face. And as she looked there began to take shape in her mind the wish to destroy him; a wish that even as she looked, in a s.p.a.ce of time too short to be measured by our clumsy methods, became a fixed thought.

Why had he intervened? Who had invited him to intervene? With a woman's inconsistency she left out of sight the wrong M. de Vlaye would have done her, she forgot the child-Countess, she overlooked all except that this man was the enemy of the man she loved. She felt that but for him all would have been well! But for him--for even that she laid at his door--and his hostility the Captain of Vlaye had never been driven to think of that other way of securing his fortunes.

These thoughts pa.s.sed through her mind in a pause so short that the listeners scarcely marked it for a pause. Then, "And if we will not go?" she cried.

"All in the house will go," he replied.

"Whither?"

"I shall decide that," he answered coldly. And he turned from her.

Before she could retort he was giving orders, and men were coming and going and calling to one another, and lights were flitting in all directions through the house, and all about her was hubbub and stir and confusion. She saw that resistance was vain. Her father was pa.s.sive, her brothers were des Ageaux's most eager ministrants. The servants were awed into silence, or, like old Solomon, who for once was mute on the glories of the race, were anxious to escape for their own sakes.

Then into her hatred of him entered a little of that leaven of fear which makes hatred active. For amid the confusion he was cool. His voice was firm, his eye commanded on this side, his hand beckoned on that, men ran for him. She knew the dread in which M. de Vlaye was held. But this she saw was not the awe in which men hold him whose caprice it may be to punish, but the awe in which men stand of him who is just; whose nature it is out of chaos to create order, and who to that end will spend himself and all. A man cold of face and something pa.s.sionless; even hard, we have seen, when a rope, a bough, and a villain forced themselves on his attention.

She would not have known him had she seen him leaning over Joyeuse a few minutes later, while his lean subaltern held a shaded taper on the other side of the makeshift pallet. The door was locked on them, they had the room to themselves, and between them the Duke lay in the dead sleep of exhaustion. "I do not think that we can move him," des Ageaux muttered, his brow clouded by care.

The Bat, with the light touch of one who had handled many a dying man, felt the Duke's pulse, without rousing him. "He will bear it," he said, "in a litter."

"Over that road? Think what a road it is!"

"Needs must!"

"He brought the money, found me gone, and followed," des Ageaux murmured in a voice softening by feeling. "You think we dare take him?"

"To leave him to the Captain of Vlaye were worse."

"Worse for us," des Ageaux muttered doubtfully. "That is true."

"Worse for all," the Bat grunted. He took liberties in private that for all the world he would not have had suspected.

Still his master, who had been so firm above-stairs, hung undecided over the sick man's couch. "M. de Vlaye would not be so foolish as to harm him," he said.

"He would only pluck him!" the Bat retorted. "And wing us with the first feather, the Lady Countess with the second, the Crocans with the third, and the King with the fourth." He stopped. It was a long speech for him.

Des Ageaux a.s.sented. "Yes, he is the master-card," he said slowly. "I suppose we must take him. But Heavens knows how we shall get him there."

"Leave that to me!" said the Bat, undertaking more than he knew. Nor did he guess with whose a.s.sistance he was to perform the task.

CHAPTER XI.

THE CHAPEL BY THE FORD.

It was after midnight, and the young moon had set when they came, a long procession of riders, to the ford in which des Ageaux had laved his horse's legs on the evening of his arrival. But the night was starlight, and behind them the bonfire, which the men had rekindled that its blaze might aid their preparations, was reflected in a faint glow above the trees. As they splashed through the shallows the frogs fell silent, scared by the invasion, but an owl that was mousing on the slope of the downs between them and the dim lifted horizon continued its melancholy hooting. The women shivered as the cool air embraced them, and one here and there, as her horse, deceived by the waving weeds, set a foot wrong, shrieked low.

But no one hesitated, for the Bat had put fear into them.

He had told them in the fewest possible words that in ninety minutes M. de Vlaye would be knocking at the gate they left! And how long the pursuit would tarry after that he left to their imaginations. The result justified his course; the ford, that in daylight was a terror to the timid, was pa.s.sed without demur. One by one their horses stepped from its dark smooth-sliding water, turned right-handed, and falling into line set their heads up-stream towards the broken hills and obscure winding valleys whence the river flowed.

Hampered by the wounded man's litter and the night, they could not hope to make more than a league in the hour, and with the first morning light might expect to be overtaken. But des Ageaux considered that the Captain of Vlaye, ignorant of his force, would not dare to follow at speed. And in the beginning all went well.

Over smooth turf, they made for half a league good progress, the long bulk of the chalk hill accompanying them on the left, while on the right the vague gloom of the wooded valley, teeming with mysterious rustlings and shrill night cries, drew many a woman's eyes over her shoulder. But, as the bearers of the litter could only proceed at a walking pace, the long line of shadowy riders had not progressed far before a gap appeared in its ranks and insensibly grew wider.

Presently the two bodies were moving a hundred yards apart, and henceforward the rugged surface of the road, which was such as to hamper the litter without delaying the riders, quickly augmented the interval.

The Vicomte was mounted on his own grizzled pony, and with his two daughters and Roger rode at the head of the first party. They had not proceeded far before Bonne remarked that her sister was missing. She was sure that the Abbess had been at her side when she crossed the ford, and for a short time afterwards. Why had she left them? And where was she?

Not in front, for only the Bat and Charles, who had attached himself to the veteran, and was drinking in gruff tales of leaguer at his lips, were in front. Behind, then?

Bonne turned her head and strove to learn. But the light of the stars and the night--June nights are at no hour quite dark--allowed her to see only the persons who rode immediately behind her. They were Roger and the Countess. On their heels came two more--men for certain. The rest were shadows, bobbing vaguely along, dim one moment, lost the next.

Presently Charles, also, missed the Abbess, and asked where she was.

Roger could only answer: "To the rear somewhere."

"Learn where she is," Charles returned. "Pa.s.s the word back, lad. Ask who is with her."

Presently, "She is not with us," Roger pa.s.sed back word. "She is with the litter, they say. And it has fallen behind. But the Lieutenant is with it, so that she is safe there."

"She were better here," Charles answered shortly. "She is not wanted there, I'll be sworn!"

Wanted or not, the Abbess had not put herself where she was without design. Her pa.s.sage of arms with des Ageaux had not tended to soften her feelings. She was now bent on his punishment. The end she knew; the means were to seek. But with the confidence of a woman who knew herself beautiful, she doubted not that she would find or create them.

Bitterly, bitterly should he rue the day when he had forced her to take part against the man she loved. And if she could involve in his fall this child, this puling girl on whom the Captain of Vlaye had stooped an eye, not in love or adoration, but solely to escape the toils in which they were seeking to destroy him--so much the better!

The two were linked inseparably in her mind. The guilt was theirs, the cunning was theirs, the bait was theirs; and M. de Vlaye's the misfortune only. So women reason when they love.

If she could effect the ruin of these two, and at the same time save the man she adored, her triumph would be complete. If--but, alas, in that word lay the difficulty; nor as she rode with a dark face of offence had she a notion how to set about her task. But women's wits are better than their logic. Men spoke in her hearing of the litter and of the delay it caused, and in a flash the Abbess saw the means she lacked, and the man she must win. In the litter lay the one and the other.

For the motives that led des Ageaux to bear it with him at the cost of trouble, of delay, of danger, were no secret to a quick mind. The man who lay in it was the key to the situation. She came near to divining the very phrase--a master-card--which des Ageaux had used to the Bat in the security of the locked room. A master-card he was; a card that at all costs must be kept in the Lieutenant's hands, and out of Vlaye's power.

Therefore, even in this midnight flight they must burden themselves with his litter. A Duke, a Marshal of France, in favour at Court, and lord of a fourth of Languedoc, he had but to say the word, and Vlaye was saved--for this time at any rate. The Duke need but give some orders, speak to some in power, call on some of those to whom his will was law, and his _protege_ would not fall for lack of means. Up to this point indeed, after a fashion which the Abbess did not understand--for the man had fallen from the clouds--he was ranged against her friend. But if he could be put into Vlaye's hands, or fairly or foully led to take Vlaye's side, then the Captain of Vlaye would be saved. And if she could effect this, would be saved by her.