The Abbess Of Vlaye Part 27

"Ay, that man!"

"For what?"

"That we may burn him," the savage answered, his face lit up by a gleam of frightful cruelty. "That we may do to him as he has done to us and our little ones. That we may burn him as he and his have burned us, from father to son, father to son, by the light of our own thatch.

They have smoked us in our holes," he continued with ferocity, "as they smoke foxes; and we will smoke him. He has done to us that! And that!" He turned, and at a sign two of his five fellows stepped forward and held aloft the maimed and ghastly stumps of their arms.

"And that! And that!" Again two stepped forward and pointed to their eyeless sockets. "And what he has done to us we will do to him!"

The Abbess turned sick at the sight. But des Ageaux answered with quietness. "Yet what has he done to you, old man," he asked, "that you stand foremost?"

"He has blinded me there!" the madman answered, and with a strangely dramatic gesture pointed to his brow. "I am dark at times, and boys mock me! But to-day I am whole and well!"

"I will not give him up to you!" the Lieutenant replied with calm decision. "But if he has done the things of which you tell me, I will judge him myself and punish him. Nay"--staying them sternly as they began to cry out upon him, "listen to me now! I have listened to you.

For all who come in to me, and cease from pillage, and burning, and murder. I give my warrant that the past shall be overlooked. They shall be free to go back to their villages, or if they dare not go back they shall be settled elsewhere, with pardon for life and limb.

But for those who do not come in, the burden of all will fall upon them! The law will pa.s.s upon them without mercy, and their gibbets will be on every road!"

"Not so!" the other cried, raising himself to his full height and flinging his lean arms to heaven. "Not so, lord, for the time is full!

Hear me, too, man of blood. We know you. You speak softly because the time is full, and you would fain cast in your lot with us and escape.

But you are of those who ride in blood, and who trust in the strength of your armour, and who eat of the fat and drink of the strong, while the poor man perishes under the feet of your horses, while the earth groans under the load of your wickedness, and G.o.d is mocked. But the time is full, and there comes an end of your gyves and your gibbets, your wheels and your molten lead! The fire is kindled that shall burn you. Is there one of you for ten of us? Can your horses bear you through the sea when the fire fills all the land? Nay, three months have we burned all ways, and no man has been able to withstand our fire! For it grows! It grows!"

The fierce murmurings of the madman's fellows almost drowned des Ageaux' voice when he went to answer. "Your blood be on your own heads!" he said solemnly. "I have spoken you fairly, I have given you the choice of good and of evil."

"Nought but evil," the other cried, "can proceed out of your mouth!

Now give us our man!"

"Never!"

"Then will we burn you for him," the madman shrieked, in sudden frenzy, "when you fall into our hands. You and these--women with b.r.e.a.s.t.s of flint and hearts of the rock-core, who bathe in the blood of our infants, and make a holiday of our torments! Beware, for when next we meet, you die!"

"Be it so!" des Ageaux replied, sternly restraining his men, who would have fallen on the hideous group. "But begone!"

They turned away, mopping and mowing--one was a leper--and lifting hands of imprecation. And the Abbess, while the litter was being lifted, was left for a moment with des Ageaux. She hated him, but she did not understand him; and it was the desire to understand him that led her to speak.

"Why did you not seize the wretches," she asked, "and punish them?"

"Their turn will come," he replied coldly. "I would have saved them if I could."

"Saved them?" she exclaimed. "Why?"

"Who knows what they have suffered to bring them to this?"

She laughed in scorn of his weakness--who fancied himself a match for the Captain of Vlaye! His cold words, his even manner, had somewhat deceived her. But now she saw that he was a fool, a fool. She saw that if she detached Joyeuse there was nothing in this man M. de Vlaye need fear.

She left him then. She had had no sleep the previous night, and loth as she was to lose sight of the Duke or to give another the chance of supplanting her, she knew that she must rest. So weary was she after she had eaten that the rough couch in the hut set apart for her--her women after the mode of the day slept across the door or where they could--might have been a chamber in the heart of some guarded palace instead of a nook sheltered from curious eyes only by a wall of boughs. She had that healthiness which makes nerves and even conscience superfluous, and could not anywhere have slept better or been less aware of the wild life about her. The slow tramp of armed men, the voices of the watch upon the earth-wall, that to waking ears told of danger and suspicion--these were no more to her in her fatigue than the silent march of the summer stars across the sky.

When she awoke on the following morning, refreshed and full of energy, the sun was an hour high, and the peasants' camp was astir. In one place the Bat was drilling his three score men as if he had never ceased; in another food was being apportioned, and forage a.s.signed.

Neither des Ageaux nor her brothers were visible, but hard by her door the Vicomte, attended by Bonne and Solomon, sat with a hand on either knee, and gazed piteously on the abnormal scene.

The uppermost feeling in the old man's mind was a querulous wonder; first that he had allowed himself to be dragged from his house, secondly that, even since Coutras, things were suffered to come to this pa.s.s. How things had come to this, why his life and home had been broken up, why he had had no voice in the matter, and why his sons, even crooked-back Roger, went, and came, and ordered, without so much as a _by your leave_ or an _if you please_--these were points that by turns puzzled and enraged him, and in the consideration of which he found no comfort so great as that which Solomon a.s.siduously administered.

"Ah!" the old servant remarked more than once, as he surveyed with a jaundiced eye the crowded camp beyond the rivulet, "they are full of themselves! But I mind the day--it was when you entertained the Governors, my lord--when they'd have looked a few beside the servants we had to supper in the courtyard! A few they'd look. I'd sixty-two men, all men of their hands, and not naked gipsies like these, to my own table!"

Which was true; but Solomon forgot to add that it was the only table.

"Ay!" the Vicomte said, pleased, though he knew that Solomon was lying. "Times are changed."

"Since Coutras--devil take them!" Solomon rejoined, wagging his beard.

"There were men then. 'Twas a word and a blow, and if we didn't run fast enough it was to the bilboes with us, and we smarted. Your lordship remembers. But now, Heaven help us," he continued with growing despondency as his eye alighted on des Ageaux, who had just appeared in the distance, "the men might be women! Might be women, and mealy-mouthed at that!"

The Vicomte laughed an elderly cackling laugh. "You didn't think, man, that the Villeneuves would come to this?" he said.

"Never! And would no wise ha' believed it!"

"Who were once masters of all from Barbesieux to Vlaye!"

"And many a mile further!" Solomon cried, leaping on the proffered hobby. "There were the twenty manors of Pa.s.sirac"--he began to count on his hands. "And the farms of Perneuil, more than I have fingers and toes. And the twenty manors of Corde, and the great mill there--the five wind-mills of Pa.s.sirac I don't think worth mentioning, though they would make many a younger son a portion. Then the Abbey lands of Vlaye, and the great mill there that took in toll as much as would keep a vicomte of these times, saving your lordship's presence. And then at Brenan----"

Bonne, listening idly, heard so much. Then the Abbess, who, unnoticed, had joined the group, touched her elbow, and muttered in her ear: "Do you see?"

"What?" Bonne asked innocently.

The Abbess raised her hand. "Why he has dragged us all here," she said.

Bonne followed the direction of her sister's hand, and slowly the colour mounted to her cheeks. But, "Why?" she asked, "I don't understand."

"You don't understand," Odette answered, "don't you? It is plain enough--for the blind." And she pointed again to the Lieutenant, who was standing at same distance from the group in close talk with the Countess. "The Lieutenant of Perigord is a great man while the King pleases, and when the King no longer pleases is an adventurer like another! A broken officer living at ordinaries," with a sneer, "at other men's charges. Such another as the creature they call the Bat!

No better and no worse! But the Lieutenant of Perigord with the lands and lordships of Rochechouart were another and a different person. And none sees that more clearly than the Lieutenant of Perigord. He has made his opportunity, and he is not going to waste it. He has brought her here, and not for nothing."

Bonne had an easy retort. "At least he is not the first to see his interest there!" lay ready to her tongue. But she did not utter it.

She was silent. Her colour fluttered, as the tender, weakling hope that she had been harbouring, for a few hours, died within her. Of course she should have known it! The prize that had attracted the Captain of Vlaye, the charm that had ousted her handsome sister from his heart--was it likely that M. des Ageaux would be proof against these--proof against them when she herself had no prior claim nor such counter-claims as beauty and brilliance? When she was but plain, homely, and country-bred, as her father often told her? She had been foolish; foolish in harbouring the unmaidenly hope, the forward thought; foolish now in feeling so sharp and numbing a pain.

But perhaps most foolish in her inability to await his coming. For he and the little Countess were approaching the group, at a slow pace; the girl talking with an animation that showed she had quite forgotten her shyness. Bonne marked the manner, the smile, the confiding upward look, the lifted hand; and she muttered something, and escaped before the two came within earshot.

She wanted to be alone, quite alone, to have this out with herself; and she made for a tiny cup in the hillside, hidden from the camp by the thick branches of the plane-tree. She had discovered it the day before, but when she gained it now, there in the hollow sat Roger, looking down on the scene below.

He nodded as if he were not in the best of tempers; which was strange, for he had been in high spirits an hour before. She sat down beside him, having no choice, but some minutes elapsed before he opened his mouth. Then, "Lord," he exclaimed, with something between a groan and a laugh, "what a fool a man can be!"

She did not answer; perhaps for the word "man" she was subst.i.tuting the word "woman." He moved irritably in his seat. "Hang it!" he exclaimed. "Say something, Bonne! Of course it seems funny to you that because she thanked me prettily the day I tried to cover her retreat to the house and--and because she talked to me the night before last as we rode--as if she liked it, I mean--I should forget who she is!"

"Who she is," Bonne repeated quietly, thinking of some one else who had forgotten.

"And who I am!" he answered. "As if the Vicomte had not ground it into me enough! If I were Charles, she would still be--who she is, and meat for my master. But as I am what I am," he laughed ruefully, "would you have thought I could be such a fool, Bonne?"

"Poor Roger," she said gently.

"She clung to me that day, when I ran with her. But, dash it"--rubbing his head--"I must not think of it. I suppose she would have clung to old Solomon just the same!"

"I am afraid so!" Bonne said, smiling faintly. It was certain that she had not clung to any one. Yet there were a.n.a.logies.