The Abbess Of Vlaye Page 9

  CHAPTER VII.

  A SOLDIERS' FROLIC.

  A few hours later the chateau of Villeneuve, buried in the lonelywoods, wore a strange and unusual aspect.

  To all things there comes an end, even to long silences and the marchof uneventful years. Summer evening after summer evening had lookedits last through darkening tree-tops on the house of Villeneuve, andmarked but a spare taper burning here and there in its recesses.Winter evening after winter evening had fallen on the dripping woodsand listened in vain for the sounds of revelry that had once beaconedthe lost wayfarer, and held wolves doubting on the extremest edge ofpasture. Night after night for well-nigh a generation--with the oneexception of the historic night of Coutras, when the pursuers feastedin its hall--the house had stood shadowy and silent in the dim spacesof its clearing, and prowling beasts had haunted without fear itsthreshold. A rotten branch, falling in the depth of the forest, nowscared more than its loudest orgy; nay, the dead lords, at rest in thedecaying graveyard where the Abbey had stood, made as much impressionon the night--for often the will o' the wisp burned there--as theirfallen descendants in his darkling house.

  Until this night, when the wild things of the wood saw with wonder theglow in the tree-tops and cowered in their lairs, and the owl mousingin the uplands beyond the river shrank from the light in the meadows,and flew to shelter. Beside the well in the courtyard blazed such abonfire as frightened the sparrows from the ivy; and the wolf had beenbrave indeed that ventured within half a mile of the singers, whosevoices woke the echoes of the ancient towers.

  "Les femmes ne portent pas moustache, Mordieu, Marion! Les femmes ne portent pas moustache!

  C'etait des mures qu'ell' mangeait Mon dieu, mon ami! C'etait des mures qu'ell' mangeait!"

  As the troopers, seated, some on the well-curb, and some on logs andbuckets, beat out the chorus, or broke off to quarrel across theflames, a chance passer might have thought the night of the greatbattle come again. Old Solomon, listening to the roar of the wood, andwatching the train of sparks fly upwards, trembled for his haystacks;nor would the man of peace have been a coward who, looking in at theopen gate, preferred a bed in the greenwood to the peril of entrance.The more timid of the serving-men had hidden themselves with sunset;the dogs had fled to kennel with drooping tails. The noise was suchthat but for one thing a stranger must have supposed that a mutiny wason the point of breaking out. This was the cool demeanour of Ampoule,M. de Vlaye's lieutenant; who with a couple of confidants sat drinkingin the outer hall, where the flames of an unwonted fire shone on tornpennons and dusty head-pieces. When asked by Roger to reduce the mento order, as the women could not sleep, he had shown himself offhandto the point of insolence, curt to the point of brutality. "Have acare of yourselves, and I'll have a care of my men!" he said. "You goto your own!" And he would hear no more.

  The Vicomte for a while noticed none of these things. The events ofthe morning had aged and shaken him, and for hours he sat speechless,with dull eyes, thinking of God knows what--perhaps of the son he hadcast off, or of his own fallen estate, or of the peril of his guest.In vain did Roger and his younger daughter try to rouse him from hisreverie--try to gain some counsel, some comfort from him. They couldnot. But that which their timid efforts failed to effect, the risingtempest of joviality at last and suddenly wrought.

  "Where is Solomon?" he cried, lifting his head as one awakened fromsleep. And he looked about him in great wrath. "Where is Solomon? Whydoes he not put a stop to this babel? 'Sdeath, man, am I to put upwith this? Do you hear me?" looking round. "Do you want them to bringthe Abbess downstairs?"

  Bonne and Roger, who were crouching with the little Countess in one ofthe two window-recesses that overlooked the courtyard, rose to go tohim. But Solomon, who had been hiding in the shadows about the door,was before them. "To be sure, my lord, to be sure!" the old servantsaid gallantly, though his troubled face and twitching beard bespokehis knowledge of the real position. "To be sure, my lord, it is notthe first time by a many hundred the knaves have forgot themselves,and I've had to go with a stirrup-leather and bring them to theirsenses! The liquor that has run in this house"--he lifted his hands inadmiration--"'tis no wonder, my lord, it goes sometimes to the head!"

  "Go out, man! Go out and put a stop to it!" the Vicomte retortedpassionately. "Your chattering does but add to it!"

  "To be sure, my lord, I am going," Solomon answered bravely. But hiseyes asked Roger a question. "To be sure it is like old days, my lord,and I thought that may-be you would like them to have their way awhile."

  "I should like it, fool?"

  "You might think it better----"

  "Begone!"

  "Nay," Roger said, approaching the Vicomte. "Nay, if any one goes,sir, I must. Solomon is old, and they may mishandle him."

  "Mishandle him?" the Vicomte said, opening his eyes in astonishment."Mishandle my steward? My----" He broke off, his hands feelingtremulously for the arms of his chair; he found them and sank back init. "I--I had forgotten!" he muttered, his head sinking on his breast."I had forgotten. I dreamt, and now I am awake. I dreamt," hecontinued, speaking with increasing bitterness, "that I was Seigneurand Vicomte of Villeneuve, and Baron of Vlaye! With swords at my will,and steeds in stall, and a lusty son to take him by the beard whocrossed me! And I am a beggar! A beggar, with no son to call a son,with no sword but that old fool's blade! Mishandle him?" gloomily."Ay, they may mishandle him!" he continued feebly, his head sinkingyet lower on his breast. "But there. It is over. Let them do what theywill!"

  He continued to mutter, but incoherently, and Roger, signing toSolomon to go to his place again, slunk back to the window recess. Thelad had no hope of effecting more with Ampoule, a brutal man whererein was given him; and he crouched once more where he could see thedark figures carousing in the glare that reached to the range ofstables. In order that those in the room might see without being seen,Solomon had lighted no more than two candles, and these were notbehind the window, where Roger and the two girls sat in the shadow.They could therefore look out unchecked.

  The day had been--and not many hours past--when the lad's cheek wouldhave burned under the sneer just flung at him. Now, though a strangerand a girl had heard it, he was unmoved. For petty feelings of thatkind his mind had no longer space. The conduct of the man whomVlaye had left on guard, the increasing disorder and babel of thehalf-drunken troopers, awoke in him neither indignation nor anger, norastonishment, but only fear. Not a fear that unmanned him, though hefaced his first real peril, nor a fear that disarmed him, but one thatbraced him to do his best, that enabled him to think, and plan, anddetermine--crook-shouldered as he was--with a coolness which some day,as des Ageaux had said, might make of him a commander of men.

  He was convinced that the men's unruliness was a thing planned andarranged. The Captain of Vlaye had conceived the wickedness of doingby others what he dared not do himself. The men, unless Roger wasmistaken, would pass still more out of hand; the officer would professhimself impotent. Then, it might not be this evening, but to-morrow,or to-morrow evening at latest, the men would burst all bounds, castaside respect, seize the young Countess, and bear her off. At theford, or where you will, Vlaye would encounter them, rescue her, andwhile he gained a hold on her gratitude, would effect that which hehad shrunk from doing openly.

  It was a wicked, nay, a devilish plan, because in the course of itsexecution there must come a moment when all in the house--and not theyoung girl only at whom the plan was aimed--would lie at the men'smercy. For a time the men, half-drunk, must be masters. A moment theremust be of extreme danger, threatening all, embracing all; and he, alad, stood alone to meet it. Alone, save for one old man; for theVicomte was past such work, and the servants had fled. And thoughBonne, to whom as well as to the young Countess he had disclosed hisfears, persisted in the hope of rescue, and based that hope on theirstrange guest'
s promise, he had little or no hope.

  As he crouched with the two girls in the dark window recess, he facedthe danger coolly, though the scene was one to depress an older heart.The scanty rays of the two candles which lighted a small part of thechamber fell full on the Vicomte, where he sat sunk low in his chair,a shiver passing now and again over his inert and feeble limbs. Theonly figure visible against the gloomy, dust-coloured hangings, heseemed the type of a race fallen hopelessly; his features, onceimperious, hung flaccid, his hands clung weakly to the arms of hischair. He was capable still of one brief, foolish outburst, onepassionate stroke; but no help or wise counsel could be expected fromhim. He was astonishingly aged in one day; even his power to wound themind seemed near its end.

  In contrast with that drooping figure, seated amid the shadows of theroom in which generations of Villeneuves had lorded it royally, thescene without struck with an appalling sense of virility. The lustytroopers lolling in the hot blaze of the bonfire, on which one oranother constantly flung fresh wood, and now roaring out somegutter-stave, now flinging coarse badinage hither and thither, weresuch as years of license and cruel campaigning had made them; men suchas it took a Vlaye or a Montluc to curb. And had the lad who watchedthem with burning eyes and a beating heart lacked one jot of theperfect courage, he had as soon thought of pitting himself againstthem as of raising dead bones to life.

  But he had that thought, and even planned and plotted as he watchedthem. "Where is Odette?" he asked in a whisper. He had Bonne's hand inhis, her other arm held the Countess to her. "They may be afraid ofher. If she spoke to the officer, he might listen to her."

  "She will not believe there is danger," Bonne answered with somethinglike a sob. "She will not hear a word. I began to explain about theCountess and she flew into a passion. She has shut herself up and saysthat we are all mad, stark mad from living alone, and afraid of ourshadows. And she and her women have shut themselves up in her chamber.I have been to the door twice, but she will hear nothing."

  "She will hear too much by and by!" Roger muttered.

  Then a thing happened. The light cast by the bonfire embraced, it hasbeen said, the whole of the courtyard. The men, confident in theirstrength, had left the gate open. As Roger ceased to speak, a singlehorseman emerged, silent as a spectre, from the low gateway, andadvancing at a foot-pace three or four steps, drew rein, and gazed inastonishment at the scene of hilarity presented to him.

  The three at the window were the first to see him. Roger's hand closedon his sister's; hers, so cold a moment before, grew on a sudden hot."Who is it?" Roger muttered. "Who is it?" The court, which sloped alittle from the house, was wide, but it might have been narrow andstill he had asked, for the stranger wore--it was no uncommon fashionin those days--a mask. It was a slender thing, hiding only the upperpart of the face, but it sufficed. "Who is it?" Roger repeated.

  "M. des Voeux!" Bonne answered involuntarily. In their excitement thethree rose to their feet.

  Whether it were M. des Voeux or not, the masked man seemed in twominds about advancing. He had even turned his horse as if he would goout again, when some of the revellers espied him, and on the instant asilence, broken only by the crackling of the logs, and as striking asthe previous din, proclaimed the fact.

  The change seemed to encourage the stranger to advance. As he wheeledagain and paced nearer, the men who sat on the farther side of thefire from him, and for that reason could not see him, rose and stoodgaping at him through the smoke. He moved nearer to the outer ring.

  "Who lives here, my good people?" he asked in a voice peculiarly sweetand clear; his tone smacked even a little womanish.

  One of the men stifled a drunken laugh. Another turned, and afterwinking at his neighbours--who passed the joke round--advanced a paceor two, uncovered elaborately and bowed with ceremony to match. "M. leVicomte de Villeneuve, if it please you, my lord--I should say yourexcellency!" with another low bow.

  "Curse on it!" the stranger exclaimed.

  The men's spokesman stared an instant, taken aback by the unexpectedrejoinder. Then, aware that his reputation among his fellows wasat stake, he recovered himself. "Did your excellency, my lordduke"--another delighted chuckle among the men--"please to speak?"

  "Go and tell him I am here," the masked man answered, disregardingtheir horse-play; and he released his feet from the stirrups. Thewindow of the dining-hall was open, and the three at it could mark himwell, and hear every word of the dialogue.

  "If your excellency--would enter?" the man rejoined with the sametravesty of politeness. "The Vicomte would not wish you, I am sure, toawait his coming."

  "Very good. And do you, fellow, tell him that I crave the favour of anight's lodging. That I am alone, and my--but the rest I will tell himmyself!"

  The troopers nudged one another. "Go, Jasper," said the spokesmanaloud, "and carry his excellency's commands to M. le Vicomte. Yourhorse, my lord duke, shall be taken care of! This way, if it pleaseyou my lord duke! And do some of you," turning, and making, unseen bythe stranger, the motion of turning a key--"bring lights! Lights tothe west tower, do you hear?"

  The faces of the three within the window were pressed against thepanes. "Who can he be?" Bonne muttered. "They call him----"

  "They are fooling him!" Roger replied In wrath. "They know no more whohe is than we do! He is not des Voeux. He has not his height, and nothalf his width. But what," angrily, "are they doing now? Where arethey taking the man? Why are they taking him to the old tower?"

  Why indeed?

  Instead of conducting the guest over the bridge which led to theinhabited part of the house, the trooper, attended by four or five ofhis half-drunken comrades, was ushering him with ceremony to thelesser bridge which led to the western tower; the ground floor ofwhich, a cold damp dungeon-like place, was used as a wood store. Ithad been opened a few hours before, that fagots might be taken fromit, and this circumstance had perhaps suggested the joke to the primeconspirator.

  "Lights are coming, my lord duke!" he said, taking a flaring brandfrom one of his comrades and holding it aloft. He was chucklinginwardly at the folly of the stranger in swallowing his egregioustitles without demur. "The Vicomte shall be told. Beware of the step,my lord!" lowering his light that the other might see it. They were onthe threshold now, and he pushed open the door that already stoodajar. "The step is somewhat awkward, your excellency! We have to gothrough the--it is somewhat old-fashioned, but craving yourexcellency's pardon for bringing you this way--Yah!"

  With the word a sudden push thrust the unsuspecting stranger forward.Involuntarily he stumbled, tripped and with a cry of rage foundhimself on his hands and knees among the fagots. Before he could risethe door clanged horridly on him, the key grated in the lock, he wasin darkness, a prisoner!

  The men, reckless and half-drunk, roared with delight at the jest."Welcome, my lord duke!" the ringleader cried, holding aloft hislight, and bowing to the ground before the thick oaken door. "Welcometo Villeneuve!"

  "Welcome!" cried the others, waving their lights, and clutching oneanother in fits of laughter. "Welcome to Villeneuve! A good night toyou! An appetite to your supper, my lord duke!"

  So they gibed awhile. Then, beginning to weary of it, they turned and,still shaking with laughter, discovered an addition to their party:Roger stood before them, his eyes glittering with excitement. The ladhad not been able to look on and see the trick played on a guest; themore as that guest represented his one solitary, feeble hope of help.The men might still be sober enough to listen; at any rate he wouldtry. Much against their wills he had broken away from the girls. Hewas here.

  "Open that door!" he said.

  The man to whom he spoke, the ringleader, looked almost as muchastonished as he was. The others ceased to laugh, and waited to seewhat would happen.

  "That door?" the man concerned answered slowly as soon as he couldbring his thoughts to bear on the emergency.

  "Yes, that door!" Roger cried imperiously, all the Villeneuve in himrising to th
e surface. "And instantly, fellow!"

  "So be it, if you will have it so," the man replied, shrugging hisshoulders. "But it was only a jest, and----"

  "There is enough of the jest, and too much!" Roger retorted. He spokeso bravely that not a man remembered his crooked shoulders. "Open, Isay!"

  The man shook his head. "Best not," he said.

  "It shall be done!"

  "Well, you can open, if you please," the man replied. "But I am M. deVlaye's man and take orders nowhere else!" And with an insolentgesture he flung the key on the ground.

  To punish him for his insolence, when they were a score to one, wasimpossible. Roger took up the key, set it in the lock, turned, opened,and, tricked in his turn, plunged head first into the darkness,impelled by a treacherous thrust from behind. Crash! The door was shuton him.

  But he knew naught of that. As he fell forward a savage blow from thefront, from the darkness, hurled him breathless against a pile offagots. At the same moment a voice cried in his ear, "There is one isspent, Deo Laus!" A hand groped for him, a foot was set hard againsthim, and something wrenched at his clothes.

  "Why," quoth the same voice a second later--the darkness was almostperfect--"did I not run the rascal through?"

  "No!" Roger said, and as the stranger's sword, which had only passedthrough his clothes, was dragged clear, he nimbly shifted his place."And I beg you will not," he continued hurriedly. "I was coming toyour aid, and those treacherous dogs played the same trick on me!""Then who are you?"

  "I am Roger de Villeneuve, my father's son."

  "Then it _is_ Villeneuve, this place? They did not lie in that?"

  "No, it is Villeneuve, but these scoundrels are Vlaye's people," Rogeranswered. He was in the depths of despair, for the girls were alonenow and unprotected. "They are in possession here," he continued,almost weeping. "M. de Vlaye----"

  "The Captain of Vlaye, do you mean?"

  "Yes. He tried to seize the Countess of Rochechouart as she passedthis way yesterday. She took refuge here and he did not dare to dragher away. So he left these men to guard her, as he said; but really tocarry her off as soon as they should be drunk enough to venture onit." Poor Roger's voice shook. He was lamenting his folly, hisdreadful folly, in leaving the women.

  The stranger took the news, as was natural, after a different fashion,and one strange enough. First he swore with a deliberate fluency thatshocked the country lad; and then he laughed with a light-heartedjoyousness that was still more alien from the circumstances. "Well, itis an adventure!" he cried. "It is an adventure! And for what did Icome? To the fool his folly! And one fool makes many! But do youthink, my friend," he continued, speaking in a different strain, "thatthey will carry off the Countess while we lie here?"

  Roger, raging in the dark, had no other thought. "Why not?" he cried."Why not? And there are other women in the house." He groaned.

  "Young?"

  "Yes, yes."

  "And one of them--lovely?" There was amusement in the stranger's tone.

  "One of them is my sister," Roger retorted fiercely. And for aninstant the other was silent.

  Then, "With what attendance?" he asked. "Whom have they with them thatyou can trust?"

  "The Countess's steward and one old man. And my father, but he is oldalso."

  "Pheugh!" the stranger whistled. "An adventure indeed!" From the soundof the fagots it seemed that he was moving. "We must out of this," hesaid, "and to the rescue! But how? There is no other door than the oneby which we entered?"

  "There is one, but the key is lost, and it has not been opened foryears."

  "Then we must go out as we came in," the stranger answered gaily. "Buthow? But how? Let me think! Let me think, lad!"

  The smell of damp earth mingled with rotting wood pervaded thedarkness in which they stood. They could not see one another, but at acertain height from the ground a shaft of reddish light pierced thegloom and disclosed about a foot of the cobweb vault above them. Thislight entered through an arrow-slit which looked toward the bonfire,and apparently it suggested a plan, for presently the stranger couldbe heard stumbling and groping towards it.

  "You cannot go out that way!" Roger said.

  "No, but I can get them in!" the other answered drily, and fromcertain noises which came to his ear Roger judged that the man waspiling wood under the opening that he might climb to it. He succeededby-and-by; his head and shoulders became darkly visible at thewindow--if window that could be called which was but a span wide.

  "There is some one in command?" he asked. "Who is it? His name, myfriend?" And when Roger, who fortunately remembered Ampoule's name,had told him: "Do you pile," he said, "some wood behind the door, sothat it cannot be opened to the full or too quickly. It is only togive us time to transact the punctilios."

  Roger complied. He hoped--but with doubt--that the man was not mad. Hesupposed that out in the world men were of these odd and surprisingkinds. The Lieutenant had impressed him. This strange man, who aftercoming within an ace of killing him jested, who laughed and blasphemedin a breath, and who was no sooner down than he was up, impressed himmore vividly, though differently. And was to impress him stillmore. For when he had set the wood behind the door, the unknown,raised on his pile of fagots, thrust his face into the opening of thearrow-slit, and in a shrill voice of surprising timbre began to pouron the ill-starred Ampoule a stream of the grossest and most injuriousabuse. Amid stinging gibes and scalding epithets, and words thatblistered, the name rang out at intervals only to sink again under thetorrent of vile charges and outrageous insinuations. The lad's earsburned as he listened; burned still more hotly as he reflected thatthe girls might be within hearing. As for the men at the fire, twentyseconds saw them silent with amazement. Their very laughter died outunder that steady stream of epithets, for any one of which a man ofhonour must have cut his fellow's throat. A moment or two passed inthis stark surprise; still the voice, ever attaining lower depths ofabuse, went on.

  At length, whether some one told him or he heard it himself, thelieutenant came out, and, flushed with drink, listened for a whileincredulous. But when he caught his name, undoubtedly his name,"Ampoule! Ampoule!" again and again, and the tale was told him, and hebegan to comprehend that in the tower was a man who dared to say ofhim, Vlaye's right hand in many a dark adventure, of him who had cutmany a young cock's comb--to say of him the things he heard--he stoodan instant in the blaze of the fire and bellowed like a bull.

  "His own sister, fifteen years old," the pitiless voice repeated."Sold her to a Spanish Jew and divided the money with his mother!"

  Ampoule's mouth opened wide, but this time breath failed him. Hegasped.

  "And being charged with it at Fontarabie," continued the voice, "as hereturned, showed the white feather before four men at the inn, whotook him and dipped him in a dye vat."

  "Son of a dog!" Ampoule shrieked, getting his voice at last. "This istoo much! This is----"

  "Why, he never bullies when he is unsupported!" his tormentor went on."But a craven he has always been when put to it! If he be not, let himsay it now, and face me in a ring!"

  The exasperated man ground his teeth and flung out his arms. "Faceyou!" he roared. "You! You! Face me, and I will cut out your heart!"

  "Fine talk! Fine talk!" came the answer. "So you have said many a timeand run! Meet me in a ring, foot to foot and fairly, in your shirt!"

  "I'll meet you!" the lieutenant answered passionately. "I'll meet you,fool of the world. Little you know whom you have bearded. You must bemad; but mad or not, say your prayer, for 'twill be the last time!"

  There was a momentary pause. Then "Promise me a ring and fair-play!"cried the high, delicate voice, "and a clear way of escape if I killyou!"

  "Ay, ay! That will I! All that! And much good may it do you!"

  "Nay, but swear it," the stranger persisted, "by--by our Lady ofRocamadour!"

  "I swear it! I swear it!"

  "Then," the stranger replied with a sneer, "it is for you to open.I've no
key!" And he leapt lightly from his pile of fagots to thefloor.