The Abbess Of Vlaye

Des Ageaux assented. "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 assistance 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 passed 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. "Pass the word back, lad. Ask who is with her."

Presently, "She is not with us," Roger passed 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 passage 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 protégé 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. By her!

The sweetness of such a revenge only a woman can understand. Her lover had fancied the Rochechouart's influence necessary to his safety, and to gain that influence he had been ready to repudiate his love. What a sweet savour of triumph if she-she whom he was ready to abandon-could save him by this greater influence, and in the act show him that a mightier than he was at her feet!

She had heard stories of the Duke's character, which promised well for her schemes. At the time of her short sojourn at Court, he had but lately left his cloister, drawn forth by the tragical death of his brother. He was then entering upon that career of extravagance, eccentricity, and vice which, along with his reputation for eloquence and for strange fits of repentance, astonished even the dissolute circles of the Court. His name and his fame were in all mouths; a man quick to love, quick to hate, report had it; a man in whom remorse followed sharp on sin, and sin on remorse. A man easy to win, she supposed, if a woman were beautiful and knew how to go about it.

Ay, if she knew; but there was the difficulty. For he was no common man, no man of narrow experience, and the ordinary bait of beauty might not by itself avail. The Abbess, high as her opinion of her charm stood, perceived this. She recognised that in the circle; in which he had moved of late beauty was plentiful, and she bent her wits to the point. After that she might have been riding in daylight, for all she saw of her surroundings. She passed through the ford and in her deep thinking saw it not. The long, dark hill on her left, and the low woods on her right with their strange night noises, and their teeming evidences of that tragedy of death which fills the world, did not exist for her. The gleam of the star-lit river caught her eye, but failed to reach her brain. And if she fell back slowly and gradually until she found herself but a few paces before the litter and its convoy, it was not by design only, but in obedience to a subtle attraction at work within her.

When her women presently roused her by their complaints that she was being left behind with the litter, she took it for an omen, and smiled in the darkness. They, on the contrary, were frightened, nor without reason. The road they pursued followed the bank of the river; but the wide vale had been left behind. They had passed into a valley more strait and gloomy; a winding trough, close pressed by long, hog-shaped hills, between which the travellers became every moment more deeply engaged. The stars were fading from the sky, the darkness which comes before the dawn was on them, and with the darkness a chill.

This change alarmed the women. But it did not terrify them one half as much as the marked anxiety of the litter-party. More than once des Ageaux' voice could be heard adjuring the bearers to move faster. More than once a rider passed between them and the main body, and on each of these occasions men fell back and took the places of the old carriers. But still the cry was "Faster! Faster!"

In truth the day was on the point of breaking, and the fugitives were still little more than two leagues from Villeneuve. At any moment they might be overtaken, when the danger of an attack would be great, since the light must reveal the paucity of their numbers. In this pinch even the Lieutenant's stoicism failed him, and moment by moment he trembled lest the sound of galloping horses reach his ear. Less than an hour's riding at speed would place his charges in safety; yet for the sake of a wounded man he must risk all. No wonder that he cried again, "Faster, men, faster!" and pressed the porters to their utmost speed.

Soon out of the darkness ahead loomed the Bat. "This will never do, my lord," he said, reining in his horse beside his leader. He spoke in a low voice, but the Abbess, a dozen paces ahead, could hear his words, and even the heavy breathing of the carriers. "To go on at this pace is to hazard all."

"You must go forward with the main body!" des Ageaux replied shortly. "Let the women who are with us ride on and join the others, and do you-but, no, that will not do."

"For certain it will not do!" the Bat answered. "It is I must stay, for the fault is mine. But for me you would have left him, my lord."

"Do you think we could support him on a horse?"

"It would kill him!" the Bat rejoined. "But it is not two hundred paces to the chapel by the ford that you remarked this morning. If we leave him there, and M. de Vlaye finds him, he will be as anxious to keep life in him as we are. If, on the other hand, M. de Vlaye overlooks him, we can bring him in to-morrow."

"If it must be," des Ageaux answered reluctantly, "we must leave him. But we cannot leave him without some assistance. Who will stay with him?"

"Diable!" the Bat muttered.

"I will not leave him without some one," des Ageaux repeated firmly. "Some one must stay."

Out of the darkness came the answer. "I," the Abbess said, "will stay with him!"

"You, mademoiselle?" in a tone of astonishment.

"I," she repeated, "and my women. I," she continued haughtily, "have nothing to fear from the Captain of Vlaye or his men."

"And mademoiselle's robe," the Bat muttered with the faintest suspicion of irony in his tone, "protects her."

Charles, who had joined them with the Bat, thoughtlessly assented. "To be sure!" he cried. "Let my sister stay! She can stay without danger."

Alone of the three des Ageaux remained silent-pondering. He had seen enough of the Abbess to suspect that it was not humanity alone which dictated her offer. Probably she desired to rejoin her admirer. In that case, did she know enough of the fugitives' plans and strength to render her defection formidable?

He thought not. At any rate it seemed well to take the chance. He was taking, he was beginning to see that he was taking a good many chances. "It seems a good plan, if mademoiselle be indeed willing," he said. He wished that he could see her face.

"I have said," she replied coldly, "that I am willing."

But her women showed forthwith that they were not. What? Remain in this wilderness in the dark with a dying man? They would be eaten by wolves, they would be strangled by witches, they would be ravished by thieves! Never! And in a trice one was in hysterics, deaf to her mistress's threats and to the Bat's grim hints. The other, after a conflict, allowed herself to be browbeaten, and sullenly, and with tears, yielded. But not until the water of the ford rippled about their horses' hoofs, and the tiny spark of light that through the open door beaconed the shallows shone in their eyes.

Had it been day they would have had before them a scene at once wild and peaceful. On their right, below the ford-which was formed by the passage of the stream from one side of the narrow valley to the other-a lofty bluff overhung a black pool. Above the ford, on the level meadow, and a stone's-throw from the track-if track that could be called which was not used by a hundred persons in a year-stood a tiny chapel and cell, which some hermit in past ages had built with his own hands. The approach of the Crocans had driven his latest successor from his post; but des Ageaux, passing that way in the day, had noted the chapel, and with the forethought of the soldier who expected to return in the dark he had seen the earthen lamp relit. Its light, he knew, would, in case of need, direct him to the ford.

At present that lamp, a tiny spark in the blackness, was all they saw. They made for it through the shallows and over a bed of shingle across which the horses clattered noisily. In haste they reached the door of the chapel, and there in a trice-for if the thing was to be done it must be done quickly-they aided the Abbess and the lay sister to alight, bore in the litter with the wounded man, and closed the door on all; this last, that the light might no longer be visible from the ford. Then they, the men, got themselves to horse again, and away at a round trot.

Not without repugnance on the part of several; not without regret and misgiving. Des Ageaux's heart smote him as his horse's feet carried him farther and farther away; it seemed so cowardly a thing to leave women to bear in that wild and lonely place the brunt of whatever might befall. And Charles, ready as he had been to acclaim the notion, wondered if he had erred in leaving his sister thus lightly. But in truth they were embarked in an enterprise whose full perils it lay with time to disclose. And other and more pressing anxieties soon had possession of their minds.

They had been less troubled had they been able to witness the Abbess's demeanour in her solitude. While her companion, overcome by her fears, sank down in a fit of hysterical weeping, Odette de Villeneuve remained standing within the low doorway, and with head erect listened frowning until the last sound of the horses' hoofs died to the ear. Then she drew a deep breath, and, turning slowly, she allowed her eyes to take stock of the place in which she so strangely found herself.

It was a tiny building of rough-hewn stones, with an altar and crucifix, also of stone, erected at the end remote from the door. Along either wall ran a stone bench, on one or other of which the good fathers must have spent many a summer day watching the ford; for at a certain point the stone was polished and worn by friction. The litter and the wounded man filled half the open space, leaving visible only a floor of trodden earth foul with the droppings of birds and sheep, and betraying in other respects the results of neglect. Here and there on some stone larger than its fellows, and particularly on the lintel, a prentice hand had carved symbols; but, this notwithstanding, the whole wore by the light of the smoky lamp an aspect far from sacred.

Yet the prospect of spending several hours in so poor a place did not appear to depress the Abbess. Her inspection finished, she nodded an answer to her thoughts, and sitting down on the bench beside the litter, rested her elbow on her knee and her chin on her hand, and fixing her large dark eyes on the wounded man, gave herself up, as completely as if she had been in her own chamber, to her thoughts.