The Abbess Of Vlaye

"This morning, my lady?" he exclaimed in his shrill voice. "Strange dog? No, not I! Has one frightened you? Dog? Few dogs I see these sad days," he continued, with a gesture scornful of the present. "Dogs, indeed? Times were when we had packs for everything, for boars, and wolves, and deer, and hares, and vermin, and" – pausing in sheer inability to think of any other possible pack-"ay, each a pack, and more to them than I could ever count, or the huntsman either!"

"Yes, I know, Solomon. I have heard you say so at least. But you have not seen a strange dog this morning?"

"The morn! No, no, my lady! But last night I mind one-was't a deer-hound?"

"Yes, a deer-hound."

"Well, then, I can tell you," with a mysterious nod, "and no one else. It was with the riders who brought the young lady. But I'm mum," winking. "Not a word will they get out of me. Secrets? Ay, I'm the man can keep a secret. Why, I remember, talking of secrets and lives-and often they are all one-"

"But what became of the deer-hound?" she asked, ruthlessly cutting him short.

"Became of the dog?" – more shrilly than usual-he was a little hurt. "Is that all you want? It went with them as brought it, I do suppose. It didn't stop, anywise. But as I was saying about secrets-the secrets I have kept in old days-when there was no family had so many as ours-"

But she was gone. She had discovered what she wanted. And she was midway across the courtyard when the shrill sound of a hawk-whistle caught her ear. Turning she went through the gate again, and listened-not without a nervous feeling. Presently she could distinguish the dull tramp of a number of horses moving on the sward, the gay jingle of bit and spur, and mingled with these sounds the voices of a number of persons talking at their ease.

Warmly as the sun shone, she was aware of a shiver; of a presentiment that gripped and chilled her. Whatever it portended, however, whatever misfortune was in the air, the risk could not now be evaded. Already bright patches of moving colour glanced among the trees at the end of the approach, and steel points glittered amid the foliage, and feathers waved gaily above the undergrowth. She had barely time to tell Solomon to run and apprise her father of the arrival, when the head of the cavalcade wheeled, talking and laughing, into the avenue, and her sister, who rode in the van by the side of M. de Vlaye, espied her standing before the gate and waved a greeting.

Behind the Abbess rode a couple of women, one in the lay costume, liberally interpreted, of her order, the other of the world confessed; following close on their heels half a dozen horsemen completed the first party. The young Abbess bore a hooded hawk on her wrist, and the tinkle of its light silver bells mingled with the ripple of her voice as she approached, while two or three pairs of coupled hounds ran at her horse's heels. A little behind, separated from this select company by an interval of two score yards, followed the main body, a troop of some forty horse, in steel caps and corslets, with long swords swinging, and pistols in their holsters.

A more picturesque or more gallant company, as they swept by threes and fours into sight between the two grey pillars and rode towards the house under sun and shade, or a band that moved with a lordlier air, it had been hard to find, even in those days of show and pageantry, when men wore their fortunes on their backs. The Captain of Vlaye, stooping his sinewy figure to his companion, well became a horse that moved as he moved, and caracoled because he allowed it. His dark, keen face would have been as handsome as his form but for a blemish. In some skirmish of his youth he had lost the sight of an eye, and the blind orb gave his face a hard look which, so his enemies said, brought it into consonance with his character. He wore upturned moustaches without a beard, therein departing from the mode of the day. But his hunting-dress of white doeskin, with a fawn hat and belt, was in the fashion, and his horse's trappings shone almost as fine as the riding-dress of green and silver which set off his companion's tall figure and haughty face. In first youth a nose, too like her father's, and something over large in Odette de Villeneuve's frame, had foreshadowed charms not of the most feminine or the first order. But three years had supplied the carriage and the ripened and fuller contours that made her what she now was. To-day, if it pleased her to have at her beck one whose will was law, and whose stern manners invited few to intimacy-and in truth her infatuation for the successful adventurer knew no limits-he on his side found his account in parading, where he went, a woman whose beauty exceeded even her birth, and fell little short of her pride.

And she was content; she at least aimed at no more than setting on a safer basis the power she looked to share. It was she who, ignorant that her brother had joined them, had mentioned to her sister Vlaye's plan of suppressing the Crocans. That he had any other plan, that his views rose higher than a union with herself, that he hoped by a bold and secret stroke not only to secure what he had gained but to treble his resources-that his ambition, passing by a Villeneuve, dared to dream of an alliance with the ducal house of Longueville-of these things she had, as yet, no inkling. Not a jot, not a tittle. Nor was she likely to believe in their existence, save on evidence the clearest and most overwhelming.

Bonne knew more. She knew these things; and, as she went forward to meet the party, and after greeting her sister turned to her cavalier, the word "Welcome" stuck in her throat. She was conscious that her cheek grew a shade paler as she forced the word, that her knees shook. Her fear was that he would read the signs.

Ordinarily he would not have remarked them; partly because he was inured to meeting cowed looks, and partly because a careless scorn-masked where the Vicomte was concerned by a veneer of respect-was all to which he ever treated the Abbess's impoverished family. Crook-backed brother, tongue-tied sister, and the other fool, whose restive dislike had sometimes amused him-he held them all in equal and supreme contempt. But to-day he had his reasons for noting the girl more particularly; and the shadow of ill-temper that darkened his face lifted as her timid eye and fluttering colour confirmed his surmises.

"I thank you, I will not alight," he replied. "Your father is coming to the gate? M. le Vicomte is too kind, mademoiselle. But that being so, I will await him here."

The Abbess, with an air of patronage, touched Bonne's hair with the tip of her riding-switch. "Child, did you sleep in your clothes last night?" she said. "Or are you making hay with the kitchen-maids? See her blush, M. de Vlaye! What would you give me if I could blush as naïvely?" And her eyes rallied him, seeking a compliment in his. "But Abbesses who have been to Court-"

"Carry a court wherever they go," he replied. But his look did not leave Bonne's face. The Abbess's women and the rest of the company had drawn rein out of earshot, their horses making long necks that they might reach the grass, or poking their heads to crop a tender shoot. "I cannot alight," he continued, "for we are on an adventure, mademoiselle. I might almost say a pursuit."

"Do you know, child," her sister chimed in, "that Mademoiselle de Rochechouart never came to me last night? But you know nothing here-even, I daresay, that I expected her. How should you? You might as well live in a hole in the ground."

"She never came?" Bonne faltered, for the sake of saying something. The blush had subsided, leaving her paler than before.

"No, did I not say so? And she has not arrived today," the Abbess continued, flicking her horse's mane with her jewelled switch. "But some of her people were in by daylight this morning-from Heaven knows where-some hiding-place in the woods, I believe-making such a to-do as you would not credit. If they are to be believed, they were attacked near nightfall by the Crocans-"

"By the Crocans," M. de Vlaye repeated, nodding darkly at Bonne. He knew more than the Abbess knew of Charles's desperate venture.

"And M. de Vlaye," the Abbess continued, speaking in the negligent fashion, a trifle distant, in which she always addressed her family in his presence, "has most kindly sent out parties in search of her. Moreover, as I came this way on the same errand, he fell in with me, and came on-more, I believe, for her sake than mine" – with a look that called for contradiction-"to make inquiries in this direction. But on the way-but here is my father. Good morning, sir. M. de Vlaye-"

"Has been waiting some time, I fear," the Vicomte said hurriedly. He, too, was not free from embarrassment, but he hid it with fair success. "Why do you not alight and enter, my dear?"

"Because we have business, by your leave, sir," Vlaye answered, his politeness scarcely covering an undertone of meaning. And he told in a few words-while Bonne stood listening in an agony of suspense-what the Abbess had told her. "Fortunately, after I fell in with your daughter this morning," he proceeded, "I had news of the Countess. And where do you think, M. le Vicomte, we are told that she is?" he continued.

Fortunately the Vicomte, whose hands were beginning to tremble, and whose colour was mounting to his wrinkled cheek, could not immediately find his voice. It was his elder daughter who took on herself to answer. "Where do you think, sir?" she cried gaily. "In your hay-meadows-so M. de Vlaye says."

"Mademoiselle de Rochechouart? In my hay-meadows?" the Vicomte faltered.

"Yes."

"In my hay-meadows? It cannot be."

"It is so-or so we are told."

CHAPTER VI.

IN THE HAY-FIELD

The Vicomte gasped; it was evident, it was certain, that M. de Vlaye knew all. What was he to say, what to do? While Bonne, though her ear hung upon his reply, was conscious only of a desperate search, a wild groping, after some method of giving the alarm to those whom it concerned-to Charles lurking in the barn beside the water, to the Countess making hay for sport and thinking no evil. She had heard of a woman who in such a strait sent a feather which put quick wits on the alert. But she had no feather, she had nothing, and if she had, at her first word of withdrawing M. de Vlaye, she knew, would interpose. At last-

"It must be!" the Vicomte exclaimed, taking anew line with some presence of mind. "But I would not believe it!"

"It must be? what must be, sir?" his daughter Odette rejoined.

"It must be the Countess!" the Vicomte repeated in a tone of surprise and conviction, not ill feigned. He saw that to persist in denying the truth-with the hayfield in sight-would not serve, and in the end must cover him with confusion. "Dressed in that fashion," he continued, "and with no attendant save one rough clown, I-I could not credit her story. The Countess of Rochechouart! It seems incredible even now!"

"Yes, the Countess of Rochechouart," M. de Vlaye replied in a tone which proved that the Vicomte's sudden frankness did not deceive him. "With your permission we will wait on her, M. le Vicomte," he continued in the same tone, "and as soon as horses can be provided, I will escort her to a place of safety."

The Vicomte's face was a study of perplexity. "If you will alight," he said, slowly, "I will send and announce to the Countess-if Countess she really be-that you are here."

For an instant Bonne's heart stood still. If M. de Vlaye dismounted and entered, all things were possible. But the hope was dashed to the ground forthwith. "I thank you," Vlaye answered somewhat grimly, "but with your permission, M. le Vicomte, to business first. We will go to the meadows at once. It is not fitting that the Countess should be left for a minute longer than is necessary in a place so ill guarded. And, for the matter of that, things lost once are sometimes lost twice."

The Vicomte's nose twitched with rage; he was not a meek man. He understood M. de Vlaye's insinuation, he knew that M. de Vlaye knew; but he was helpless. On the threshold of his own house, on the spot where his ancestors' word had been law for generations-or a blow had followed the word-he stood impotent before this clever, upstart soldier who held him at mercy. And this the Abbess, had her affection for him been warm or her nature delicate, must have felt. Without a word spoken or a syllable of explanation, she must have perceived that she was witnessing her family's shame, and that her part in the scene was not with them.

But she, of them all, was the most in the dark, and her thoughts were otherwise bent. "You are very fearful for the young lady, M. de Vlaye," she said, turning to him, and speaking in a tone of mock offence. "I do not remember that you have ever been so over careful for me."

He bent his head and muttered something of which her sister caught not a word. Then, "But we must not waste time," he continued briskly. "Let us-with the Vicomte's permission-to the field! To the field!" And he turned his horse as he spoke into the sled-road that led around the courtyard wall; and by a gesture he bade his men follow. It was evident to Bonne, evident to her father, that he had had a spy on the house, and knew where his quarry harboured.

The girl wondered whether by flying through the house and dropping from the corner of the garden wall she could even now give the alarm. Then M. le Vicomte spoke. "I will come with you," he said in a surly tone that betrayed his sense of his position. "The times are indeed out of joint, and persons out of their places, but-Solomon, my staff! Daughter," to the Abbess, "a hold of your stirrup-leather! It is but a step, and I can still walk so far. If the field be unsafe for the guest," – he added grimly-"it is fit the host should share the danger."

Bonne could have blessed him for the thought, for his offer bound the party to a walking pace, and something might happen. Vlaye, beyond doubt, had the same thought. But without breaking openly with the Vicomte-which for various reasons he was loth to do-he could not reject his company nor outpace him.

He raised no objection, therefore, and in displeased silence the Vicomte walked beside his daughter's horse, Bonne accompanying him on the other hand. She knew more than he, and had reason to fear more; she was almost sick with anxiety. But he, perhaps, suffered more. Forced on his own ground to do that which he did not wish to do, forced to play a sorry farce, he felt, as he trudged in the van of the party, that he walked the captive in a Roman triumph. And he could have smitten the Captain of Vlaye across the face.

They passed only too quickly from the shelter of the house to the open meadows and the hot sunshine, and so over the stone bridge. Bonne knew that at this point they must become visible to the workers in the hay-field, and she counted on an interval of a few minutes during which the fugitives might take steps to hide themselves, or even to get over the river and bury themselves in the woods. She could have cried, therefore, when, without apparent order, a party from the rear cantered past the leaders and, putting their horses into a sharp hand-gallop, preceded them in their advance upon the panic-stricken haymakers, in the midst of whom they drew rein in something less than a minute.

The Vicomte halted as the meaning of the manœuvre broke upon him, and, striking his staff into the ground, he followed them with his eyes. "You seem fearful indeed," he growled, his high nose wrinkled with anger.

"Things happen very quickly at times," Vlaye answered, ignoring the tone.

"Take care, sir, take care!" the Abbess of Vlaye cried, addressing her lover. She little thought in her easy insouciance how near the truth she was treading. "If you show yourself so very anxious for the Countess's safety, I warn you I shall grow jealous."

"You have seen her," M. de Vlaye answered in a low tone, meant only for her ear; and he hung slightly towards her. "You know how little cause you have to fear."

"Fear?" the Abbess retorted rather sharply. "Know, sir," with a quick defiant glance, "that I fear no one!"