The Abbess Of Vlaye Part 50

"I knew it."

"You knew it? You knew, madam," he repeated, his face darkening, "on what a narrow edge I stood, and you dashed away my one holdfast?"

"To replace it by another," she replied, her figure welling with confidence. "I tell you, sir, I come not to you empty-handed, if I come unasked. I bring my dowry."

He eyed her gloomily. "It should be a large one," he muttered, "if it is to take the place of that I have lost."

"It is a large one," she answered. "But," with a change to gentleness, "do me credit. I have not puled nor wept. I have uttered no cry, I have made no complaint. But I have righted myself, doing what not one woman in a hundred would have dared to do! I have wit that has tricked you, and courage that has not quailed before you. And henceforward I claim to be no puppet for your play, no doll for your dull hours! But your equal, my lord, and your mate; deepest in your counsels, the heart of your plans, your other brain, your other soul! Make me this, hold me thus--close to you, and----

"Is that the thing you bring me?" he said, with sarcasm. Yet she had moved him.

"No!" She fell a little from her height, she looked appeal. "My dowry is different. But say first, sir, I shall be this!"

"Bring me the spears," he answered, his eyes gleaming, "and you shall be that and more. Bring me the spears, and----" He made as if he would take her forcibly in his arms.

She recoiled, but her eyes shone. "I am yours," she said, "when you will! Do you not know it? But, for the present, listen. I have a husband, but I have also a lover. A lover of whom"--she continued more slowly, marking with joy how he started at the word--"my lord and master has no need to be jealous. He has not touched of me more than the tips of my fingers; yet if I raise but those fingers he has spears and to spare--five hundred and five hundred to that!--and I have but to play the laggard a little, and dangle a hope, and they dance to my piping."

He understood. A deep flush tinged the brown of his lean face. "You have brought," he said, "the Duke to parley."

"To parley!" She pointed superbly to the floor. "Nay, but to my feet!

What will you of him? Spears, his good word, his intercession with the King, a post? Name what you will, and it shall be yours."

He looked at her shrewdly, with a new admiration, a new and stronger esteem. Already she filled the place which she had claimed, already she was to him what she had prayed to be. "You are sure?" he said.

"In a week, had I not loved you, I had had him and his Duchy, and all those spears! And mills and manors and lordships and governments, all had been mine, sir! Mine, had I wished this man; mine, had I been willing to take him! But I"--letting her arms fall by her sides and standing submissive before him--"am more faithful than my master!"

He stood staring at her. "But if this be so," he said at last, his brows coming together, "what of it? How does it help us? You are now my wife?"

"He need not know that yet."

"No?"

"He need not know it," she continued firmly, "until he has played his part, and wrung your pardon from the King! Or at the least--for that may take time--until he has drawn off his power and left you to face those whom you can easily match!"

"He would have wedded you?" he asked, eyeing her in wonder.

"For certain."

"But, sweet----"

"I am sweet now!" she said, with tender raillery.

"To do this you must go to him?"

"He shall touch of me no more than the tips of my fingers," she answered smiling. "Nor"--and at the word a blush stole upward from her neck to her brow, "need I go on the instant, if your men can be trusted not to talk, my lord."

"He is soon without a tongue," he replied grimly, "who talks too fast here! You should know that of old."

She lowered her eyes, the colour mounting anew to her brow. "Yes,"

she murmured. "I know that your people can be silent. But the Lieutenant of Perigord is here. You have not"--with a quick, frightened look--"injured him?"

"Have no fear."

"For that were fatal," she continued anxiously. "Fatal! If things go wrong, he may prove our safety."

"Pooh, I know it well," Vlaye replied, with a nod of intelligence.

"None better, my girl. But have no fear, he will hear naught of our doings. Not, I suppose"--with a searching look, half humorous, half suspicious--"that he is also a captive of your bow and spear."

"I hate him," she answered.

Her tone, vehement, yet low, struck the corresponding chord in his nature. He took her into his arms with a reckless laugh. "You were right and I was wrong!" he cried, as he fondled her. "You will bring me more than a clump of spears, my beauty! More than that foolish child! G.o.d! In a month I had strangled her! But you and I--you and I, sweet, will go far together! And now, to supper! To supper! And the devil take to-morrow and our cares!"

CHAPTER XXIV.

FORS L'AMOUR.

Though it was not des Ageaux' fate to lie in one of those underground dungeons, noisome and dark, which the lords of an earlier century had provided in the foundations of the castle, he was not greatly the better for the immunity. The humiliations of the mind are sometimes sharper than the pains of the body; and the Lieutenant of Perigord, defeated and a prisoner, was little the happier though a dry strong-room looking on a tiny inner court held him, and though he suffered nothing from cold or the slimy companionship of the newt and frog. On the ambitious man defeat sits more heavily than chains; into the nature that would fain be at work inaction gnaws deeper than a shackle-bolt. Never while he lived would des Ageaux forget the long hours which he spent, gazing drearily on the blank wall that faced his window, while his mind measured a hundred times over the depth and the completeness of his fall.

He feared little for his life if he deigned to fear at all. He knew that he was a prize too valuable to be wasted. In the last resort, indeed, when all hopes had failed the Captain of Vlaye, and ruin stared him in the face, he might wreak his vengeance on the King's governor. But short of that moment--and it depended upon many things--the Lieutenant accounted himself safe. Safe as to life, but a beaten man, a prisoner, a failure; a blot, every moment he lay there, on the King's dignity, whose deputy he was; an unfortunate, whose ill hap would never be forgiven by the powers he had represented so ill.

The misfortune was great, and, to a proud man, well-nigh intolerable.

Moreover, this man was so formed that he loved the order which it was his mission to extend, and the good government which it was his to impose. To make straight the crooked--gently, if it might be, but by the strong hand if it must be--was his part in life, and one which he pursued with the utmost zest. Every breach of order, therefore, every trespa.s.s in his province, every outrage wounded him. But the breach and the trespa.s.s which abased in his person the King's name--he writhed, he groaned as he thought of this! Even the blow to his career, fatal as it promised to be, scarce hurt him worse or cut him so deeply.

The more as that career which had been all in all to him yesterday was not quite all in all to him to-day. Bonne's voice, the touch of her hands as she appealed to him, the contact of her figure with his as he carried her, these haunted him, and moved him, in his solitude and his humiliation. Her courage, her constancy, her appeal to him, when all seemed lost, he could not think of them--he who had thought of naught but himself for years--without a softening of his features, without a flood of colour invading the darkness of his face. Strong, he had estranged himself from the tender emotions, only to own their sway now. With half his mind he dwelt upon his mishap; the other half, the better half, found consolation in the prospect of her sympathy, of her fidelity, of her gentle eyes and quivering lips--who loved him. He found it strange to remember that he filled all a woman's thoughts; that, as he sat there brooding in his prison, she was thinking of him and dreaming of him, and perhaps praying for him!

It is not gladly, it is never without a pang that the man of affairs sees the world pa.s.s from him. And if there be nothing left, it is bad for him. Des Ageaux acknowledged that he had something left. A hand he could trust would lie in his, and one brave heart, when all others forsook him would accompany him whither he went. He might no longer aspire to government and the rule of men, the work of his life was over; but Bonne would hold to him none the less, would love him none the less, would believe in him truly. The cares of power would no longer trouble his head, or keep it sleepless; but her gentle breast would pillow it, her smiles would comfort him, her company replace the knot of followers to whom he had become accustomed. He told himself that he was content. He more than half believed it.

In the present, however, he had not her company; and the present was very miserable. He did not fear for his life, but he lay in ignorance of all that had happened since his capture, of all that went forward; and the tedium of imprisonment tried him. He knew that he might lie there weeks and months and come forth at last--for the world moved quickly in this period of transition--to find himself forgotten.

Seventy years earlier, a king, misnamed the Great, standing where he stood, had said that all was lost but honour--and had hastened to throw that also away. For him all was lost but love. All!

He had pa.s.sed four days--they seemed to him a fortnight--in this weary inaction, and on the last evening of the four he was expecting his supper with impatience, when it occurred to him that the place was more noisy than ordinary. For some time sounds had reached him without making any definite impression on his mind; now they resolved themselves into echoes of distant merry-making. Little spirts of laughter, the catch of a drinking-song, the shrill squeal of a maid pinched or kissed, the lilt of a hautboy--he began with quickened ears to make these out. And straightway that notion which is never out of a prisoner's mind and which the least departure from routine fosters raised its head. Escape! Ah, if he could escape! Freedom would set him where he had been, freedom would undo the worst of his mishap. It might even give him the victory he had counted lost.

But the grated window or the barred door, the paved floor or the oaken roof--one of these must be pierced; or the gaoler, who never visited him without precautions and company, must be overcome and robbed of his keys. And even then, with that done which was well-nigh impossible, he would be little nearer to freedom than before. He would be still in the heart of his enemy's fortress, with no knowledge of the pa.s.sages or the turnings, no clue to the stone labyrinth about him, no accomplice.

Yet, beyond doubt, there was merry-making afoot--such merry-making as accounted for the tarrying of his supper. Probably the man had forgotten him. By-and-by the notes of the hautboy rose louder and fuller, and on the wave of sound bursts of applause and laughter came to him. He made up his mind that some were dancing and others were looking on and encouraging them. Could it be that the Captain of Vlaye had surprised the peasants' camp? and that this was his way of celebrating his success? Or was it merely some common-place orgie, held, it might be, in the Captain's absence? Or---- But while he turned this and that in his thoughts the footsteps he had been expecting sounded at the end of the stone pa.s.sage and approached. A light shone under the door, a key turned in the lock, and the man who brought him his meals appeared on the threshold. He entered, his hands full, while his comrade, who had opened for him, remained in the pa.s.sage.

"You are gay this evening?" the Lieutenant said as the man set down his light.

The fellow grinned. "Ay, my lord," he replied good-humouredly, "you may say it. Wedding-bells and the rest of it!" He was not drunk, but he was flushed with wine. "That is the way the world goes--and comes."

"A wedding?" des Ageaux exclaimed. The news was strange.

"To be sure, my lord.