STILL WATERS TROUBLED.
Had Bonne de Villeneuve, a day earlier, paid a visit much in fashion
at that time, and consulted the "dark man" who, in an upper room on
the wall of Angouleme, followed the stars and cast horoscopes, and was
reputed to have foretold the death of the first Duke of Joyeuse as
that nobleman passed southwards to the field of Coutras, she might
have put faith in such of the events of the night as the magic crystal
showed her; until it came to mirror, faint as an evening mist beside
the river, her thoughts after the event. Then, had it foretold that,
as she lay quaking in her bed, she would be thinking neither of the
brother, whose desperate venture wrung her heart, nor of Roger, her
dearer self, but of a stranger--a stranger, whose name she had not
known six hours, and of whose past she knew nothing, she would have
paused, refusing credence. She would have smiled at the phantasm of
the impossible.
Yet so it was. Into the quiet pool of her maiden heart had fallen in
an hour the stone that sooner or later troubles the sweet waters. As
she lay thinking with wide-open eyes, her mind, which should have been
employed with her brother's peril, or her own escape, or her father's
rage, was busy with the stranger who had dropped so suddenly into her
life, and had begun on the instant to play a sovereign part. She
recalled his aspect as he looked in on them, cool and confident, at
their midnight conference. She heard his tone as he baffled her
father's questions with cunning answers. She marvelled at the wit that
in the last pinch had saved her from discovery. He seemed to her a man
of the world such as had not hitherto come within the range of her
experience. Was he also the perfect knight of whom she had not been
woman if she had not dreamed?
What, she wondered, must his life have been, who, cast among strange
surroundings, bore himself so masterfully, and so shrewdly took his
part! What chances he must have seen, what dangers run, how many men,
how many cities visited! He might have known the Court, that strange
_melange_ of splendour and wickedness, and mystery and valour. He
might have seen the King, shrewdest of captains, bravest of princes;
he might have encountered eye to eye men whose names were history. He
came out of the great outer world of which she had visions, and
already she was prepared to invest him with wonderful qualities. Her
curiosity once engaged, she constructed for him first one life and
then another, and then yet another--all on the same foundation, the
one fact which he had told them, that he was a poor gentleman of
Brittany. She considered his ring, and the shape of his clothes, and
his manner of eating, which she found more delicate than her
brothers'; and she fancied, but she told herself that she was foolish
to think it, that she detected under his frigid bearing a habit of
command that duller eyes failed to discern.
She was ashamed at last of the persistence with which her thoughts ran
on him, and she tried to think of other things, and so thought of him
again, and, awaking to the fact, smiled. But without blushing; partly
because, whatever he was, he stood a great way from her, and partly
because it was only her fancy that was touched, and not her heart; and
partly again because she knew that he would be gone by mid-day, and
could by no possibility form part of her life. Nevertheless, it was
not until her time for rising came that anxiety as to her brother's
safety and her father's anger eclipsed him. Then, uncertain how much
the Vicomte knew, how near the truth he guessed, she forgot her hero,
and thought exclusively of her father's resentment.
She might have spared her fears. The Vicomte was a sour and embittered
man, but neither by nature nor habit a violent one. Rage had for an
hour rendered him capable of the worst, capable of the murder of his
son if, having an arm in his hand, he had met him, capable of the
expulsion of his daughter from his house. But the fit was not natural
to him; it was not so that he avenged the wrongs which the world had
heaped upon him--since Coutras. He fell back easily and at once into
the black cynical mood that was his own. He was too old and weak, he
had too long brooded in inaction, he had too long wreaked his
vengeance on the feeble to take strong measures now, whatever happened
to him.
But some hours elapsed before Bonne knew this, or how things would be.
It was not her father's custom to descend before noon, for with his
straitened means and shrunken establishment he went little abroad; and
he would have died rather than stoop to the rustic tasks which Roger
pursued, and of which Bonne's small brown hands were not ignorant. She
had not seen him when, an hour before noon, she repaired to a seat in
the most remote corner of the garden, taking with her some household
work on which she was engaged.
The garden of the chateau of Villeneuve--the garden proper that is,
for the dry moat which divided the house from the courtyard was
planted with pot-herbs and cabbages--formed a square, having for its
one side the length of the house. It lay along the face of the
building remote from the courtyard, and was only accessible through
it. Its level, raised by art or nature, stood more than a man's height
above the surrounding country; of which, for this reason, it afforded
a pleasant and airy prospect. The wall which surrounded and buttressed
it stood on the inner side no more than three feet high, but rose on
the outer from a moat, the continuation of that which has just been
mentioned.
The pleasaunce thus secured on all sides from intrusion consisted
first of a paved walk which ran under the windows of the chateau, and
was boarded by a row of ancient mulberry-trees; secondly, beyond this,
of a strip of garden ground planted with gooseberry-bushes and
fruit-trees, and bisected by a narrow walk which led from the house to
a second terrace formed on the outer wall. This latter terrace lay
open towards the country and at either end, but was hidden from the
prying eyes of the house by a line of elms, poled and cut espalier
fashion. It offered at either extremity the accommodation of a
lichen-covered stone bench which tempted the old to repose and the
young to reverie. The east bench enabled a person seated sideways on
it--and so many had thus sat that the wall was hollowed by their
elbows--to look over the willow-edged river and the tract of lush
meadows which its loop enclosed. The western seat had not this poetic
advantage, but by way of compensation afforded to sharp eyes a glimpse
of the track--road it could not be called--which after passing the
chateau wound through the forest on its course to Vlaye and the south.
From childhood the seat facing the river had been Bonne's favourite
refuge. Before she could walk she had played games in the dust beneath
it. She had carried to it her small sorrows and her small joys, her
fits of nursery passion, her moods as she grew older. She had nursed
dolls on it, and fancies, dreamed dreams and built castles; and in a
not unhappy, thought neglected girlhood, it had stood for that sweet
and secret retreat, the bower of the budding life, which remains holy
in the memory of worn men and women. The other bench, which commanded
a peep of the road, had been more to her elder sister's taste; nor was
the choice without a certain bearing on the character of each.
This morning, she had not been five minutes at work before she heard
footsteps on the garden path. The sun, near its highest, had driven
her to the inner end of the seat, where the elm in summer leaf
straggled widely over it, growing low, as elms will. She knew that
whoever came she would see before she was seen.
It turned out as she expected. M. des Ageaux lounged onto the terrace,
and shading his eyes from the sun's rays, gazed on the prospect. She
judged that he thought himself alone, for he took a short turn this
way and that. Then, after a casual glance at the empty seats--empty as
he doubtless judged, though she from her arbour of leaves could watch
his every movement--he wheeled about, and, facing the chateau, seemed
to satisfy himself that the wall of pollard elms sheltered him from
sight.
His next proceeding was mysterious. He drew from his breast a packet,
of parchment or paper, unfolded it, and laid it flat on the wall
before him. Then he stooped and after poring over it, glanced at the
view, referred again to the paper, then again to the lie of the
country, and the course of the river which flowed on his left. Finally
he measured off a distance on the map. For a map it was, beyond doubt.
A shadow fell on her as she watched him. Nor did his next movement
dispel the feeling. Folding up the map he replaced it in his breast,
and leaning over the wall he scrutinised the outer surface of the
brickwork. Apparently he did not discover what he sought, for he
raised himself again, and with eyes bent on the tangle of nettles and
rough herbage that clothed the bottom of the moat, he moved slowly
along the terrace towards her. He reached, without seeing her, the
seat on which she sat, knelt on it with one knee, and leaning far over
the moat, allowed a low laugh to escape him.
She fought the faint suspicion that, unwelcome, asserted itself. He
had behaved so honourably, so reticently, in all that had happened
that she was determined not to believe aught to his discredit. But her
folly, if foolish she was, must not imperil another. She made a mental
note that there was one thing she must not tell him. Very quickly that
reflection passed through her brain. And then--
"Why do you laugh?" she said.
He wheeled about so sharply that in another mood she must have
laughed, so much she had the advantage of him. For an instant he was
so taken aback that he did not speak. Then, "Why did you startle me?"
he asked, his eyes smiling.
"Because--yes, my brother came in that way."
"I know it," he answered; "but not why you startled me, mademoiselle,
a minute ago."
"Nor I," she retorted, smiling faintly, "why you were so inquisitive,
M. des Voeux?"
"I am going to tell you that," he said. He seated himself on the bench
so as to face her, and doffing his hat, held it between his face and
the sun. He was not, we know, very amenable to the charms of women,
and he saw in her no more than a girl of rustic breeding, comely and
gentle, and something commonplace, but a good sister whose aid with
her brother he needed. "I am going to tell you," he said; "because I
am anxious to meet your brother again and to talk with him."
She continued to meet his eyes, but her own were clouded. "On what
subject," she asked, "if I am not too curious?"
"The Crocans."
On her guard as she was, the word put her out of countenance. She
could not hide, and after one half-hearted attempt did not try to
hide, her dismay. "The Crocans?" she said. "But why do you come to
me?" her colour coming and going. "What have we to do with them, if
you please? Or my brother?"
"He has been banished from his home for some offence," the Lieutenant
answered quietly. "Your father forbids the mention of the name
Crocans. It is reasonable to infer that the offence is connected with
them, and, in a word, that your brother has done what any young man
with generous instincts and a love of adventure might do. He has
joined them. I do not blame him."
"You do not blame him?" she murmured. Never had she heard such words
of the Crocans--except from her brother. "You mean that?"
"I say it and mean it," the Lieutenant replied. But he spoke without
emotion, emotion was not his forte. "Nor am I alone," he went on, "in
holding such opinions. But the point, mademoiselle, is this. I wish to
find a means of communicating with them, and he can and probably will
be willing to aid me. For certain, if the worst comes to the worst, I
can aid him."
Bonne's heart beat rapidly. She did not--she told herself that she did
not distrust him. Had it been her own secret he was seeking she would
have delivered it to him freely. But the manner in which he had borne
himself while he thought himself alone, the possession of the map, and
the shrewdness with which he had traced her brother's movement and
surprised a secret that was still a secret from the household,
frightened her. And her very inexperience made her pause.
"But first, I take it, you need his aid?" she murmured.
"I wish to speak with him."
"Have you seen my father?"
He opened his eyes and bent a little nearer. "Do you mean,
mademoiselle----"
"I mean only," she said gently, "that if you express to him the views
on the Crocans which you have just expressed to me, your opportunities
of seeing my brother will be scant."
He laughed. "I have not opened them to him," he said. "I have seen
him, and whether he thinks that he was a little more exigent last
night than the danger required, or he desires to prove to me that
midnight alarms are not the rule at Villeneuve, he has not given me
notice to go. His invitation to remain is not, perhaps," he smiled
slightly, "of the warmest. But if you, mademoiselle, will second
it----"
She muttered--not without a blush--that it would give her pleasure.
And he proceeded, "Then no difficulty on that point will arise."
She stooped lower over her work. What was she to do? He wanted that
which she had decided she must not give him. Just that! What was she
to do?
She was so long in answering, that he dubbed her awkward and
mannerless. And thought it a pity, too; for she was a staunch sister,
and had shown herself resourceful; and in repose her face, though
brown and sunburnt, was not without grace. He came to the point. "May
I count on you for this?" he asked bluntly.
"For--what?"
"That as soon as you can you will bring me face to face with your
brother?"
She looked up and met his gaze. "As soon as I think it safe to do so,"
she said, "I will. You may depend on me."
He had not divined her doubt, nor did he discern her quibble. Still,
"Could I not go to him to-day?" he said. "If he is still in the
neighbourhood?"
She shook her head. "I do not know where he is," she answered, glad
that she could say so much with truth. "But if he show himself, and it
be safe, I will let you know. Roger----"
"Ha! To be sure, Roger may know?"
She smiled. "Roger and I are one," she said. "You must not expect to
get from him what I do not give." She said it naively, with just so
much of a smile as showed her at her best, and he hastened to say that
he left himself in her hands. She blushed through her sunburn at that,
but clung to her quibble, telling herself that this was a stranger,
the other a brother, and that if she destroyed Charles she could never
forgive herself.
He saw that she was disturbed, and he changed the subject. "You have
always lived here?" he asked.
"Yes," she answered, "but I can remember when things were different
with us. We were not always so broken. Before Coutras--but," with a
faint smile, "you have heard my father on that, and will not wish to
hear me."
"The Vicomte was present at the battle?"
"Yes, he was in the centre of the Catholic army with the Duke of
Joyeuse. He escaped with his life. But we lay in the path of the
pursuit after the flight, and they sacked the house, and burned the
hamlet by the ford--the one you passed--and the two farms in the bend
of the river--the two behind you. They swept off every four-legged
thing, every horse, and cow, and sheep, and left us bare. One of the
servants who resisted was killed, and--and my mother died of the
shock."
She broke off with an uncontrollable shiver. She was silent. After a
pause, "Perhaps you were at Coutras, M. des Voeux?" she said, looking
up.
"I was not of the party who sacked your house," he answered gravely.
She knew then that he had fought on the other side; and she admired
him for the tact with which he made it known to her. He was a soldier
then. She wondered, as she bent over her work, if he had fought
elsewhere, and under whom, and with what success. Had he prospered or
sunk? He called himself a poor gentleman of Brittany, but that might
have been his origin only, he might be something more now.
In the earnestness of her thoughts she turned her eyes on his ring,
and she blushed brightly when with a quick, almost rude movement he
hid his hand. "I beg your pardon!" she murmured. "I was not thinking."
"It is I should beg yours," he said quietly. "It is only that I do not
want you to come to a false conclusion. This ring--in a word I wear
it, but the arms are not mine. That is all."
"Does that apply also," she asked, looking at him ingenuously, "to the
pistols you carry, M. des Voeux? Or should I address you--for I saw
last evening that they bore a duke's coronet--as your Grace?"
He laughed gaily. "They are mine, but I am not a duke," he said.
"Nor are you M. des Voeux?"
Her acuteness surprised him. "I am afraid, mademoiselle," he said,
"that you have a mind to exalt me into a hero of romance--whether I
will or no."
She bent over her work to hide her face. "A duke gave them to you, I
suppose?" she said.
"That is so," he replied sedately.
"Did you save his life?"
"I did not."
"I have heard," she returned, looking up thoughtfully, "that at
Coutras a gentleman on the other side strove hard to save the Duke of
Joyeuse's life, and did not desist until he was struck down by his own
men."
"He looked to make his account by him, no doubt," the Lieutenant
answered coldly. "Perhaps," with a scarcely perceptible bitterness,
"the Duke, had he lived, would have given him--a pair of pistols!"
"That were a small return," she said indignantly, "for such a
service!"
He shrugged his shoulders. And to change the subject--
"What are the grey ruins," he asked, "on the edge of the wood?"
"They are part of the old Abbey," she answered without looking up,
"afterwards removed to Vlaye, of which my sister is Abbess. There was
a time, I believe, when the convent stood so close to the house that
it was well-nigh one with it. There was some disorder, I believe, and
the Diocesan obtained leave to have it moved, and it was planted on
lands that belonged to us at that time."
"Near Vlaye?"
"Within half a league of it."
"Your sister, then, is acquainted with the Captain of Vlaye?"
She did not look up. "Yes," she said.
"But you and your brothers?"
"We know him and hate him--only less than we fear him!" She regretted
her vehemence the moment she had spoken.
But he merely nodded. "So do the Crocans, I fancy," he said. "It is
rumoured that he is preparing something against them."
"You know that?" she exclaimed in surprise.
"Without being omniscient," he answered smiling. "I heard it in
Barbesieux. It was that, perhaps," he continued shrewdly, "which you
wished to tell your brother yesterday."
On that she was near confessing all to him and telling him, in spite
of her resolutions, where on the next day he could find her brother.
But she clung to her decision, and a minute later he rose and moved
away in the direction of the house.
When they met at table the mystery of the Vicomte's sudden impulse to
hospitality, which was something of a puzzle to her, began to clear.
It had its origin in nothing more substantial than his vanity; which
was tickled by the opportunity of talking to a man who, with some
pretensions to gentility, could be patronised. A little, too, he
thought of the figure he had made the night before. It was possible
that the stranger had been unfavourably impressed. That impression the
Vicomte thought he must remove, and to that end he laboured, after his
manner, to be courteous to his guest. But as his talk consisted, and
had long consisted, of little but sneers and gibes at the companions
of his fallen fortunes, his civility found its only vent in this
direction.
Des Ageaux indeed would gladly have had less of his civility. More
than once--though he was not fastidious--his cheek coloured with
shame, and willingly would he, had that been all, have told the
Vicomte what he thought of his witticisms. But he had his cards
sorted, his course arranged. Circumstances had played for him in the
dangerous game on which he was embarked, and he would have been
unworldly indeed had he been willing to cast away, for a point of
feeling--he who was no knight-errant--the advantages he had gained.
Not that he did not feel strongly for the two whose affection for one
another touched him. Roger's deformity appealed to him, for he fancied
that he detected in the lad a spirit which those who knew him better,
but knew only his gentler side, did not suspect. And the girl who had
grown from child to woman in the rustic stillness of this moated
house--that once had rung with the tread of armed heels and been gay
with festive robes and tourneys, but now was sinking fast into a
lonely farmstead--she too awakened some interest in the man of the
world, who smiled to find himself embedded for the time in a life so
alien from his every-day experiences. Concern he felt for the one and
the other; but such concern as weighed light in the balance against
the interests he held in his hands, or even against his own selfish
interest.
It soon appeared that the Vicomte had another motive for hospitality,
in the desire to dazzle the stranger by the splendours of his eldest
daughter, on whom he continued to harp. "There is still one of us," he
said with senile vanity--"I doubt if, from the specimens you have
seen, you will believe it--who is not entirely as God made her! Thank
the Lord for that! Who is neither clod nor clout, sir, but has as much
fashion as goes to the making of a modest gentlewoman."
His guest looked gravely at him. "I look forward much to seeing her,
M. le Vicomte!" he said for the tenth time.
"Ay, you may say so!" the Vicomte answered. "For in her you will see a
Villeneuve, and the last of the line!" with a scowl at Roger. "Neither
a lout with his boots full of hay-seeds--pah! nor a sulky girl with as
much manner as God gave her, and not a jot to it! Nice company I have,
M. des Voeux," he continued bitterly. "Did you say des Voeux--I never
heard the name?"
"Yes, M. le Vicomte."
"Nice company, I say, for a Villeneuve in his old age! What think you
of it? Before Coutras, where was an end of the good old days, and the
good old gentrice----"
"You were at Coutras?"
"Ay, to my cost, a curse on it! But before Coutras, I say, I had at
least their mother, who was a Monclar from Rouergue. She had at any
rate a tongue and could speak. And my daughter the Abbess takes after
her, though may-be more after me, as you will think when you see her.
She will be here, she says, to-morrow, for a night or two." This he
told for the fifth time that evening.
"I am looking forward to seeing her!" the guest repeated gravely--also
for the fifth time.
But the Vicomte could not have enough of boasting, which was doubly
sweet to him; first because it exalted the absent, and secondly
because it humiliated those who were present. "Thank God, she at least
is not as God made her!" he said again, pleased with the phrase. "At
Court last year the King noticed her, and swore she was a true
Villeneuve, and a most perfect lady without fault or blemish!"
"His Majesty is certainly a judge," the listener responded, the
twinkle in his eye more apparent than usual.
"To be sure!" the old man returned. "Who better? But, for the matter
of that, I am a judge myself. My daughter--for there is only one
worthy of the name"--with a withering glance at poor Bonne--"is not
hand in glove with every base-born wench about the place, trapesing to
a christening in a stable as readily as if the child were a king's
son! Ay, and as I am a Catholic, praying beside old hags' beds till
the lazy priest at the chapel has nought left to do for his month's
meal! Pah!"
"Ranks are no doubt of God's invention," des Voeux said with his eyes
on the table.
The Vicomte struck the board angrily. "Who doubts it?" he exclaimed.
"Of God's invention, sir? Of course they are!"
"But I take it that they exist, in part at least," des Ageaux
answered, "as a provision for the exercise of charity; and of----" he
hesitated, unwilling--he read the gathering storm on the Vicomte's
brow--to give offence; and, by a coincidence, he was saved from the
necessity. As he paused the door flew open, and a serving-man, not one
of the two who had waited on the table, but an uncouth creature,
shaggy and field-stained, appeared gesticulating on the threshold. He
was out of breath, apparently he could not speak; while the gust of
wind which entered with him, by blowing sideways the long, straggling
flames of the candles, and deepening the gloom of the ill-lit room,
made it impossible to discern his face.
The Vicomte rose. They all rose. "What does this mean?" he cried in a
rage. "What is it?"
"There's a party ringing at the gate, my lord, and--and won't take
no!" the man gasped. "A half-dozen of spears, and others on foot and
horse. A body of them. Solomon sent me to ask what's to do, and if he
shall open."
"There's a petticoat with them," a second voice answered. The speaker
showed his face over the other's shoulder.
"Imbeciles!" the Vicomte retorted, fired with rage. "It is your lady
the Abbess come a day before her time! It is my daughter and you stay
her at the door!"
"It is not my lady," the second man answered timidly. "It might be
some of her company, my lord, but 'tis not her. And Solomon----"
"Well? Well?"
"Says that they are not her people, my lord."
The Vicomte groaned. "If I had a son worthy the name!" he said, and
then he broke off, looking foolish. For Roger had left the room and
des Ageaux also. They had slipped by the men while the Vicomte
questioned them, and run out through the hall and to the gate--not
unarmed. The Vicomte, seeing this, bade the men follow them; and when
these too had vanished, and only four or five frightened women who had
crowded into the room at the first alarm remained, he began to fumble
with his sword, and to add to the confusion by calling fussily for
this and that, and to bring him his arquebus, and not to open--not
to open till he came! In truth years had worked imperceptibly on
him. His nerves, like many things about him, were not what they had
been--before Coutras. And he was still giving contrary directions, and
scolding the women, and bidding them make way for him--since it seemed
there was not a man to go to the gate but himself--when approaching
voices broke on his ear and silenced him. An instant later one or two
men appeared among the women in the doorway, and the little crowd fell
back in wonder, to make room for a low dark man, bareheaded and
breathing hard, with disordered hair and glittering eyes, who,
thrusting the women to either side, cried--not once, but again, and
yet again:--
"Room! Room for the Countess of Rochechouart! Way for the Countess!"
At the third repetition of this--which he seemed to say
mechanically--his eyes took in the scene, the table, the room, and the
waiting figure of the scandalized Vicomte, and his voice broke.
"Saved!" he cried, flinging up his arms, and reeling slightly as if he
would fall. "My lady is saved! Saved!"
And then, behind the low, dark man, who, it was plain, was almost
beside himself, the Vicomte saw the white face and shrinking form of a
small, slight girl little more than a child, whose eyes were like no
eyes but a haunted hare's, so large and bright and affrighted were
they.