The Abbess Of Vlaye

But his excitement overreached itself. His movement warned the other that he had spoken too freely. With an uneasy look-what had he done? – he refused to say more, and backed to the door. "I have said too much already," he muttered sullenly.

"But-"

"Don't answer him!" commanded the man in the passage. "And hurry! You have stayed too long as it is! I would not be in your shoes for something if the Captain comes to know."

Des Ageaux stepped forward, pressing him again to speak. But the man, sobered and frightened, was obdurate. "I've said too much already," he answered with a resentful scowl. "What is it to you, my lord?" And he slipped out hurriedly, and secured the door behind him.

Des Ageaux remained glaring at the closed door. Bonne de Villeneuve had been taken with him. Bonne de Villeneuve also was a prisoner. Was it possible that she had become by force or willingly Vlaye's bride? Possible? Ah, God, it must be so! And, if so, by force surely! Surely, by force; his faith in her told him that! But if by force, what consolation could he draw from that? For that, if he loved her, were worst of all, most cruel of all! That were a thing intolerable by God or man!

So it seemed to this man, who only a few days before had not known what love was. But who now, stung with sudden passion, flung himself from wall to wall of his narrow prison. Now, when he saw it snatched from him, now, when he saw himself denuded of that solace at which he had grasped, but for which he had not been sufficiently thankful, now he learned what love was, its pains as well as its promise, its burning fevers, its heart-stabbing pity! He lost himself in rage. He who for years had practised himself in calmness, who had made it his aim to hide his heart, forgot his lesson, flung to the night his habit. He seized the iron bars of his window and shook them in a paroxysm of fury, as if only by violence he could retain his sanity. When the bars, which would have resisted the strength of ten, declined to leave the stone, he flung himself on the door, and beat on it and shouted, maddened by the thought that she was under the same roof, that she was within call, yet he could not help her! He called Vlaye by dreadful names, challenging him, and defying him, and promising him terrible deaths. And only when echo and silence answered all and the iron sense of his helplessness settled down slowly upon him and numbed his faculties did he, too, fall silent and, covering his face with his hands, stagger to a seat and sit in a stupor of despair.

He had put love aside, he had despised it through years-for this! He had held it cheap when it promised to be his-for this! He had accepted it grudgingly, and when all else was like to fail him-for this! He was punished, and sorely. She was near him. He pictured her in the man's power, in the man's hands, in the man's arms! And he could not help her.

Had his impotent cries and threats been heard they had only covered him with humiliation. Fortunately they were not heard: the merry-making was at its height, and no one came near him. The Captain of Vlaye, aware that his marriage could not be hidden from his own men-for he had made no secret of it beforehand-had not ventured to forbid some indulgence. He could make it known that the man who named his bride outside the gate would lose his tongue; but, that arranged, he must wink-for every despotism is tempered by something-at a few hours of riot, and affect not to see things that at another time had called for swift retribution.

The men had used his permission to the full. They had brought in some gipsies to make sport for them, a treble allowance of wine was on draught, and the hour that saw des Ageaux beating in impotent fury on his door saw the license and uproar of which he had marked the beginning grown to a head. In the great hall the higher officers, their banquet finished, were deep in their cups. In the cavernous kitchens drunken cooks probed cauldrons for the stray capon that still floated amid the spume; or half-naked scullions thrust a forgotten duck or widgeon on the spit at the request of a hungry friend. About the fires in the courtyard were dancing and singing and some romping; for there were women within the walls, and others had come in with the gipsies. Here a crowd surrounded the bear, and laid furious bets for or against; while yelps and growls and fierce barkings deafened all within hearing. There a girl, the centre of a leering ring, danced to the music of her tambour; and there again a lad tumbled, and climbed a pole at risk of his limbs. Everywhere, save in the dark garden under the "demoiselle's" windows, where a sentry walked, and at the great gates, where were some sober men picked for the purpose, wantonness and jollity held reign, and the noise of brawling and riot cast fear on the town that listened and quaked below.

A stranger entering the castle would have judged the reins quite fallen, all discipline fled, all control lost. But he had been wrong. Not only did a sentry walk the garden path-and soberly and shrewdly too-but no man in his wildest and tipsiest moment ventured a foot within the railing that fenced the lime avenue, or even approached the gates that led to it without lowering his voice and returning to something like his normal state. For in the rooms looking over the garden M. de Vlaye entertained his bride of two days-and he had relaxed, not loosed, the reins.

They sat supping in the room in which they had been wedded, and, unmoved by the sounds of uproar that came fitfully to their ears, discussed their plans; she, glowing and handsome, animated by present love and future hope; he, content, if not enraptured, conquered by her wit, and almost persuaded that all was for the best-that her charms and beauty would secure him more than the dowry of her rival. Their brief honeymoon over, they were to part on the morrow; she to pursue her plans for the Duke's detachment, he to take the field and strike such a blow as should scatter the peasants and dissipate what strength remained in them. They were to part; and some shadow of the coming separation had been natural. But her nerves as well as his were strong, and the gloom of parting had not yet fallen on them. The lights that filled the room were not brighter than her eyes; the snowy linen that covered the round table at which they sat was not whiter than her uncovered shoulders. He had given her jewels, the spoils of many an enterprise; and they glittered on her queenly neck and in her ears, gleamed through the thin lace of her dress, and on her round and beautiful arms. He called her his Abbess and his nun in fond derision; and she, in answering badinage, rallied him on his passion for the Countess and his skill in abduction. So cleverly had she wrought on him, so well managed him, that she dared even that.

The room had been hung for her with tapestries brought from another part of the house; the windows more richly curtained; and a door, long closed, had been opened, through which and an ante-room the chambers connected with M. de Vlaye's apartments. Where the wedding robes had lain on the window-seat a ribboned lute and a gay music-book lay on rich draperies, and elbowed a gilded head-piece of Milanese work surmounted by M. de Vlaye's crest, which had been brought in for his lady's approval. A mighty jar of Provence roses scented the apartment; and intoxicated by their perfume or their meaning, she presently seized the lute, and gaily, between jest and earnest, broke into the old Angoumois song: -

"Si je suis renfermée.
Ah, c'est bien sans raison;
Ma plus belle journée,
Se pass'ra-z-en prison.
Mais mon amant sans peine
Pourra m'y venir voir,
Son cœur sait bien qu'il m'aime,
Il viendra'-z-au parloir!"

And he answered her-

"Oh, Madame l'Abbesse,
Qu'on tire les verrous,
Qu'on sorte ma maîtresse
Le plus beau des bijoux;
Car je suis capitaine,
Je suis son cher amant,
J'enfoncerai sans peine
Les portes du couvent!"

As he finished, disturbed by some noise, he turned his head. "I told your wench to go," he said, rising. "I suppose she took herself off?" With a frown, he strode to the screen that masked the door, and made sure by looking behind it that they had no listeners.

She smiled as she laid aside the lute. "I thought that your people obeyed at a word?" she said.

"They do, or they suffer," he answered.

"And is that to apply to me?" with a mocking grimace.

"When we come to have two wills, sweet, yes!" he retorted. "It will not be yet awhile. In the meantime I would this enterprise of yours were over. I doubt your success, though all looks well."

"If I had been half as sure of you two days ago as I am of him to-morrow!" she retorted.

"Yet you must not go too far with him."

She waved her finger-tips across the table. "So far, and no farther," she said lightly. "Have I not promised you? For the rest-what I have done I can do. Am I not armed?" And she rose from her seat, and stood before him in all the seduction of her charms. "Count it done, my master. Set Joyeuse aside. He is captive of my bow and spear. The question is, can you deal with the rest?"

"The peasants?"

"And what remains of des Ageaux' power? And the Countess's levies?"

"For certain, if the Duke be out of the reckoning," he answered. "He is a man. Remove him and des Ageaux-and the latter I have already-and there is no one. Your brothers-"

"Bah!" She dismissed them with a contemptuous gesture.

"Just so. And the Countess's people have no leader. The Vicomte is old. There is no one. Detach the Duke, and there will be a speedy end of them. And before a new governor can set to work to make head against me, many things may happen, my girl!"

"Many things will happen," she answered with confidence. "If I can win one man, why not another? If a Duke, why not" – she made an extraordinary face at him, half-sportive, half-serious-"why not a greater? Eh, my lord?"

He stared. "No!" he answered, striking the table with sudden violence. "No!" He knew well what she meant and whom she meant. "Not that! Even to make all good, not that!" Yet his eyes glittered as he looked at her; and it was plain that his thoughts travelled far and fast on the wings of her words. While she, in the pride of her mastery, returned his look fondly.

"No, not that-never that!" she replied in a voice that more than reassured him. "It is for you and only for you that I do this. I am yours, all and always-always! But, short of that, something may be done. And, with friends at Court, from Captain of Vlaye to Governor of Périgord is but a step!"

He nodded. "And a step that might save his Majesty much trouble," he said with a smile. "Do that- But I doubt your power, my girl."

"I have done that already should persuade you."

"You have tricked me," he said, smiling. "That is true. And it is no mean thing, I grant."

"More than that!" she retorted. The wine she had drunk had flushed her cheek and perhaps loosed her tongue. "More than that I have done! Who took the first step for you? Who put the Lieutenant in your hands-and my sister? And so, in place of my sister, the Countess?"

He looked at her in astonishment. "Who?" he rejoined. "Why, who but I myself? Did I not take them with my own hands-at the old windmill on the hill? What had you to do with that?"

"And who sent them to the windmill?"

"Why, the rabble to be sure, who seized them, took them as far as the ford."

"And who set the rabble on them?" As she asked the question she rose from her seat. In the excitement of her triumph, in the intoxication of her desire to please him she forgot the despair into which the act which she boasted had cast her but a week before. She forgot all except that she had done it for him whom she loved, for him who now was hers, and whose she was! "Who," she repeated, "set the rabble upon them?"

"You?" he murmured. "Not you?"

"I!" she said, "I!" – and held out her hands to him. "It was I who told the brute beasts that he-des Ageaux-had your man in hiding! It was I who wrought them to the attempt and listened while they did it! I thought, indeed, that it was your Countess who was with him. And I hated her! I was jealous of her! But, Countess or no Countess, 'twas done by me! – by me! And now do you think that there is anything I will not do for you? That there is anything I cannot do for you?"

He was not shocked; it took much to shock the Captain of Vlaye. But he was so much astonished, he marvelled so much that he was silent. And she, reading the astonishment in his face, and seeing it grow, felt a qualm-now she had spoken-and lost colour, and faltered. Had she been foolish to tell it? Perhaps. Had she passed some boundary, sacred to him, unknown to her? It must be so. For as she gazed, no word spoken, there came into his face a change, a strange hardening. He rose.

"My lord!" she cried, clapping her hands to her head, "what have I done?" She recoiled a pace, affrighted. "I did it for you!"