The Abbess Of Vlaye

CHAPTER XXII.

A NIGHT BY THE RIVER

The Countess knew that her knees were shaking under her. The gaze, too, of the men who watched was dreadful to her. She felt her feet slipping from the shoes; she felt the kerchief, that, twined in her hair, gave her height, shift with the movement; she felt her limbs yielding. And she despaired. She was certain that she could not pass; she must faint, she must fall. Then the scornful words of the woman she had left recurred to her, stung her, whipped her courage once more; and, before she was aware of it, she had reached the gateway. She was conscious of a crowd of men about her, of all eyes fixed on her, of a jeering voice that hummed:

and-and then she was beyond the gate! The cool air blowing in the gorge between the two breasts fanned her burning cheeks-never breeze more blessed! – and with hope, courage, confidence all in a moment revived and active, she began to descend the winding road that led to the town.

There were men lounging on the road, singly or in groups, who stared at her as she passed; some with thinly-veiled insolence, others in pure curiosity. But they did not dare to address her; though they thought, looking after her, that she bore herself oddly. And she came unmolested to the spot where the road passed under the drawbridge. Here for an instant sick fear shook her anew. Some of the men in the gateway had come out to watch her pass below; she thought that they came to call her back. But save for a muttered jeer and the voice of the jester repeating slyly:

no one spoke; and as pace by pace her feet carried her from them, carried her farther and farther, her courage returned, she breathed again. She came at the foot of the descent, to the carved stone fountain and the sloping market-place. She took, as ordered, the road that fell away to the right, and in a twinkling she was hidden by the turn from the purview of the castle.

She ventured then-the town seemed to stifle her-to move more quickly; as quickly as her clumsy shoes would let her move on stones sloping and greasy. Here and there a person, struck by something in her walk, turned to take a second glance at her; or a woman in a low doorway bent curious eyes on her as she came and went. She could not tell whether she bred suspicion in them or not, or whether she seemed the same woman-but a trifle downcast-who had passed that way before. For she dared not look back nor return their gaze. Her heart beat quickly, and more quickly as the end drew near. Success that seemed within her grasp impelled her at last almost to a run. And then-she was round the corner in the side lane that had been indicated to her, and she saw before her the horses and the men gathered before the chapel gate. And Roger-yes, Roger himself, with a face that worked strangely and words that joy stifled in his throat, was leading her to a horse and lending his knee to mount her. And they were turning, and moving back again into the street.

"There is only the gate now," he muttered, "only the gate! Courage, mademoiselle! Be steady!"

And the gate proved no hindrance. Though not one moment of all she had passed was more poignant, more full of choking fear, than that which saw them move slowly through, under the gaze of the men on guard, who seemed for just one second to be rising to question them. Then-the open country! The open country with its air, its cool breezes, its spacious evening light and its promise of safety. And quick on this followed the delicious moment when they began to trot, slowly at first and carelessly, that suspicion might not be awakened; and then more swiftly, and more swiftly, urging the horses with sly kicks and disguised spurrings until the first wood that hid them saw them pounding forward at a gallop, with the Countess's robe flapping in the wind, her kerchief fallen, her hair loosened. Two miles, three miles flew by them; they topped the wooded hill that looked down on Villeneuve. Then, midway in the descent on the farther side, they left the path at a word from Roger, plunged into the scrub and rode at risk-for it was dark-along a deer-trail with which he was familiar. This brought them presently, by many windings and through thick brush, to a spot where the brook was fordable. Thence, in silence, they plodded and waded and jogged along damp woodland ways and through watery lanes that attended the brook to its junction with the river.

Here, at length, in the lowest bottom of the Villeneuve valley, they halted. For the time they deemed themselves safe; since night had fallen and hidden their tracks, and Vlaye, if he followed, would take the ordinary road. It had grown so dark indeed, that until the moon rose farther retreat was impossible; and though the river beside which they stood was fordable at the cost of a wetting, Roger thought it better to put off the attempt. One of the servants, the man at the Countess's bridle, would have had him try now, and rest in the increased security of the farther bank. But Roger demurred, for a reason which he did not explain; and the party dismounted where they were, in a darkness which scarcely permitted the hand to be seen before the face.

"The moon will be up in three hours," Roger said. "If we cannot flee they cannot pursue. Mademoiselle," he continued, in a voice into which he strove to throw a certain aloofness, "if you will give me your hand," he felt for it, "there is a dry spot here. I will break down these saplings and put a cloak over them, and you may get some sleep. You will need it, for the moment the moon is up we must ride on."

The snapping of alder boughs announced that he was preparing her resting-place. She felt for the spot, but timidly, and he had to take her hand again and place her in it.

"I fear it is rough," he said, "but it is the best we can do. For food, alas, we have none."

"I want none," she answered. And then hurriedly, "You are not going?"

"Only a few yards."

"Stay, if you please. I am frightened."

"Be sure I will," he answered. "But we are in little danger here."

He made a seat for himself not far from her, and he sat down. And if she was frightened he was happy, though he could not see her. He was in that stage of love when no familiarity has brought the idol too near, no mark of favour has declared her human, no sign of preference has fostered hope. He had done her, he was doing her a service; and all his life it would be his to recall her as he had seen her during their flight-battered, blown about, with streaming hair and draggled clothes, the branches whipping colour into her cheeks, her small brown hand struggling with her tangled locks. In such a stage of love to be near is enough, and Roger asked no more. He forgot his sister's position, he forgot des Ageaux' danger. Listening in the warm summer night to the croaking of the frogs, he gazed unrebuked into the darkness that held her, and he was content.

Not that he had hope of her, or even in fancy thought of her as his. But this moment was his, and while he lived he would possess the recollection of it. All his life he would think of her, as the monk in the cloister bears with him the image of her he loved in the world; or as the maid remembers blamelessly the lover who died between betrothal and wedding, and before one wry word or one divided thought had risen to dim the fair mirror of her future.

Alas, of all the dainty things in the world, too delicate in their nature to be twice tasted, none is more evanescent than this first worship; this reverence of the lover for her who seems rather angel than woman, framed of a clay too heavenly for the coarse touch of passion.

Once before, in the hay-field, he had tried to save her, and he had failed. This time-oh, he was happy when he thought of it-he would save her. And he fell into a dream of a life-impossible in those days, however it might have been in the times of Amadis of Gaul, or Palmerin of England-devoted secretly to her service and her happiness; a beautiful, melancholy dream of unrequited devotion, attuned to the solemnity of the woodland night with its vast spaces, its mysterious rustlings and gurgling waters. Those who knew Roger best, and best appreciated his loyal nature, would have deemed him sleepless for the Lieutenant's sake-whose life hung in the balance; or tormented by thoughts of the Abbess's position. But love is of all things the most selfish; and though Roger ground his teeth once and again as Vlaye's breach of faith occurred to him, his thoughts were quickly plunged anew in a sweet reverie, in which she had part. The wind blew from her to him, and he fancied that some faint scent from her loosened hair, some perfume of her clothing came to him.

It was her voice that at last and abruptly dragged him from his dream. "Are you not ashamed of me?" she whispered.

"Ashamed?" he cried, leaping in his seat.

"Once-twice, I have failed," she went on, her voice trembling a little. "Always some one must take my place. Bonne first, and now your other sister! I am a coward, Monsieur Roger. A coward!"

"No!" he said firmly. "No!"

"Yes, a coward. But you do not know," she continued in the tone of one who pleaded, "how lonely I have been, and what I have suffered. I have been tossed from hand to hand all my life, and mocked with great names and great titles, and been with them all a puppet, a thing my family valued because they could barter it away when the price was good-just as they could a farm or a manor! I give orders, and sometimes they are carried out, and sometimes not-as it suits," bitterly. "I am shown on high days as Madonnas are shown, carried shoulder high through the streets. And I am as far from everybody, as lonely, as friendless," her voice broke a little, "as they! What wonder if I am a coward?"

"You are tired," Roger answered, striving to control his voice, striving also to control a mad desire to throw himself at her feet and comfort her. "You will feel differently to-morrow. You have had no food, mademoiselle."

"You too?" in a voice of reproach.

He did not understand her, and though he trembled he was silent.

"You too treat me as a child," she continued. "You talk as if food made up for friends and no one was lonely save when alone! Think what it must be to be always alone, in a crowd! Bargained for by one, snatched at by another, fawned on by a third, a prize for the boldest! And not one-not one thinking of me!" pathetically. And then, as he rose, "What is it?"

"I think I hear some one moving," Roger faltered. "I will tell the men!" And without waiting for her answer, he stumbled away. For, in truth, he could listen no longer. If he listened longer, if he stayed, he must speak! And she was a child, she did not know. She did not know that she was tempting him, trying him, putting him to a test beyond his strength. He stumbled away into the darkness, and steering for the place where the horses were tethered he called the men by name.

One answered sleepily that all was well. The other, who was resting, snored. Roger, his face on fire, hesitated, not knowing what to do. To bid the man who watched come nearer and keep the lady company would be absurd, would be out of reason; and so it would be to bid him stand guard over them while they talked. The man would think him mad. The only alternative, if he would remove himself from temptation, was to remain at a distance from her. And this he must do.

He found, therefore, a seat a score of paces away, and he sat down, his head between his hands. But his heart cried-cried pitifully that he was losing moments that would never recur-moments on which he would look back all his life with regret. And besides his heart, other things spoke to him; the warm stillness of the summer night, the low murmur of the water at his feet, the whispering breeze, the wood-nymphs-ay, and the old song that recurred to his memory and mocked him-

Here, indeed, was his opportunity, here was such a chance as few men had, and no man would let slip. But he was not as other men-there it was. He was crook-backed, poor, unknown! And so thinking, so telling himself, he fixed himself in his resolve, he strove to harden his heart, he covered his ears with his hands. For she was a child, a child! She did not understand!

He would have played the hero perfectly but for one fatal thought that presently came to him-a thought fatal to his rectitude. She would take fright! Left alone, ignorant of the feeling that drove him from her-what if she moved from the place where he had left her, and lost herself in the wood, or fell into the river, or-and just then she called him.

"Monsieur Roger! Where are you?"

He went back to her slowly, almost sullenly; partly in surrender to his own impulse, partly in response to her call. But he did not again sit down beside her. "Yes," he said. "You are quite safe, mademoiselle. I shall not be out of earshot. You are quite safe."

"Why did you go away?"

"Away?" he faltered.

"Are you afraid of me?" gently.

"Afraid of you?" He tried to speak gaily.

"Pray," she said in a queer, stiff tone, "do not repeat all my words. I asked if you were afraid of me, Monsieur Roger?"

"No," he faltered, "but-but I thought that you would rather be alone."

"I?" in a tone that went to poor Roger's heart. "I, who have told you that I am always alone? Who have told you that I have not" – her voice shook-"a friend-one real friend in the world!"

"You are tired now," Roger faltered, finding no other words than those he had used before.

"Not one real friend!" she repeated piteously. "Not one!"

He was not proof against that. He bent towards her in the darkness-almost in spite of himself. "Yes, one," he said, in a voice as unsteady as hers. "One you have, mademoiselle, who would die for you and ask not a look in return! Who would set, and will ever set, your honour and your happiness above the prizes of the world! Who asks only to serve you at a distance, by day and dark, now and always! If it be a comfort for you to know that you have a friend, know it! Know-"

"I do not know," she struck in, in a voice both incredulous and ironical, "where I am to find such an one save in books! In the Seven Champions or in Amadis of Gaul-perhaps. But in the world-where?"

He was silent. He had said too much already. Too much, too much!

"Where?" she repeated.

Still he did not answer.

Then, "Do you mean yourself, Monsieur Roger?"

She spoke with a certain keenness of tone that was near to, ay, that threatened offence.

He stood, his hands hanging by his side. "Yes," he faltered. "But no one knows better than myself that I cannot help you, mademoiselle. That I can be no honour to you. For the Countess of Rochechouart to have a crook-backed knight at the tail of her train-it may make some laugh. It may make women laugh. Yet-" he paused on the word.

"Yet what, sir?"

"While he rides there," poor Roger whispered, "no man shall laugh."

She was silent quite a long time, as if she had not heard him. Then,

"Do you not know," she said, "that the Countess of Rochechouart can have but one friend-her husband?"

He winced. She was right; but if that was her feeling, why had she complained of the lack of friends?

"Only one friend, her husband," the Countess continued softly. "If you would be that friend-but perhaps you would not, Roger? Still, if you would, I say, you must be kind to her ever and gentle to her. You must not leave her alone in woods on dark nights. You must not slight her. You must not," – she was half laughing, half crying, and hanging towards him in the darkness, her childish hands held out in a gesture of appeal, irresistible had he seen it-but it was dark, or she had not dared-"you must not make anything too hard for her!"

He stepped one pace from her, shaking.

"I dare not! I dare not!" he said.

"Not if I dare?" she retorted gently. "Not if I dare, who am a coward? Are you a coward, too, that when you have said so much and I have said so much you will still leave me alone and unprotected, and-and friendless? Or is it that you do not love me?"

"Not love you?" Roger cried, in a tone that betrayed more than a volume of words had told. And beaten out of his last defence by that shrewd dilemma, he threw his pride to the winds; he sank down beside her, and seized her hands and carried them to his lips-lips that were hot with the fever of sudden passion. "Not love you, mademoiselle? Not love you?"

"So eloquent!" she murmured, with a last flicker of irony. "He does not even now say that he loves me. It is still his friendship, I suppose, that he offers me."

"Mademoiselle!"

"Or is it that you think me a nun because I wear this dress?"

He convinced her by means more eloquent than all the words lovers' lips have framed that he did not so think her; that she was the heart of his heart, the desire of his desire. Not that she needed to be convinced. For when the delirium of his joy began to subside he ventured to put a certain question to her-that question which happy lovers never fail to put.

"Do you think women are blind?" she answered. "Did you think I did not see your big eyes following me in and out and up and down? That I did not see your blush when I spoke to you and your black brow when I walked with M. des Ageaux? Dear Roger, women are not so blind! I was not so blind that I did not know as much before you spoke as I know now."