The Abbess Of Vlaye Part 33

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 embarra.s.sment 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 a.s.surance 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 e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed.

The young girl pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sionately--"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 pa.s.sed 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 place 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, G.o.d, 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 pa.s.s for you. And it will be dusk too. I am sure I can pa.s.s 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!"