A SOLDIERS' FROLIC.
A few hours later the chateau of Villeneuve, buried in the lonely
woods, wore a strange and unusual aspect.
To all things there comes an end, even to long silences and the march
of uneventful years. Summer evening after summer evening had looked
its last through darkening tree-tops on the house of Villeneuve, and
marked but a spare taper burning here and there in its recesses.
Winter evening after winter evening had fallen on the dripping woods
and listened in vain for the sounds of revelry that had once beaconed
the lost wayfarer, and held wolves doubting on the extremest edge of
pasture. Night after night for well-nigh a generation--with the one
exception of the historic night of Coutras, when the pursuers feasted
in its hall--the house had stood shadowy and silent in the dim spaces
of its clearing, and prowling beasts had haunted without fear its
threshold. A rotten branch, falling in the depth of the forest, now
scared more than its loudest orgy; nay, the dead lords, at rest in the
decaying graveyard where the Abbey had stood, made as much impression
on the night--for often the will o' the wisp burned there--as their
fallen descendants in his darkling house.
Until this night, when the wild things of the wood saw with wonder the
glow in the tree-tops and cowered in their lairs, and the owl mousing
in the uplands beyond the river shrank from the light in the meadows,
and flew to shelter. Beside the well in the courtyard blazed such a
bonfire as frightened the sparrows from the ivy; and the wolf had been
brave indeed that ventured within half a mile of the singers, whose
voices 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 and
buckets, beat out the chorus, or broke off to quarrel across the
flames, a chance passer might have thought the night of the great
battle come again. Old Solomon, listening to the roar of the wood, and
watching the train of sparks fly upwards, trembled for his haystacks;
nor would the man of peace have been a coward who, looking in at the
open 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 such
that but for one thing a stranger must have supposed that a mutiny was
on the point of breaking out. This was the cool demeanour of Ampoule,
M. de Vlaye's lieutenant; who with a couple of confidants sat drinking
in the outer hall, where the flames of an unwonted fire shone on torn
pennons and dusty head-pieces. When asked by Roger to reduce the men
to order, as the women could not sleep, he had shown himself offhand
to the point of insolence, curt to the point of brutality. "Have a
care of yourselves, and I'll have a care of my men!" he said. "You go
to your own!" And he would hear no more.
The Vicomte for a while noticed none of these things. The events of
the 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 had
cast 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 his
reverie--try to gain some counsel, some comfort from him. They could
not. But that which their timid efforts failed to effect, the rising
tempest of joviality at last and suddenly wrought.
"Where is Solomon?" he cried, lifting his head as one awakened from
sleep. And he looked about him in great wrath. "Where is Solomon? Why
does he not put a stop to this babel? 'Sdeath, man, am I to put up
with this? Do you hear me?" looking round. "Do you want them to bring
the Abbess downstairs?"
Bonne and Roger, who were crouching with the little Countess in one of
the two window-recesses that overlooked the courtyard, rose to go to
him. 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 servant
said gallantly, though his troubled face and twitching beard bespoke
his knowledge of the real position. "To be sure, my lord, it is not
the 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 their
senses! The liquor that has run in this house"--he lifted his hands in
admiration--"'tis no wonder, my lord, it goes sometimes to the head!"
"Go out, man! Go out and put a stop to it!" the Vicomte retorted
passionately. "Your chattering does but add to it!"
"To be sure, my lord, I am going," Solomon answered bravely. But his
eyes 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 a
while."
"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 feeling
tremulously for the arms of his chair; he found them and sank back in
it. "I--I had forgotten!" he muttered, his head sinking on his breast.
"I had forgotten. I dreamt, and now I am awake. I dreamt," he
continued, speaking with increasing bitterness, "that I was Seigneur
and 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 who
crossed 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 sinking
yet lower on his breast. "But there. It is over. Let them do what they
will!"
He continued to mutter, but incoherently, and Roger, signing to
Solomon to go to his place again, slunk back to the window recess. The
lad had no hope of effecting more with Ampoule, a brutal man where
rein was given him; and he crouched once more where he could see the
dark figures carousing in the glare that reached to the range of
stables. In order that those in the room might see without being seen,
Solomon had lighted no more than two candles, and these were not
behind 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 would
have burned under the sneer just flung at him. Now, though a stranger
and a girl had heard it, he was unmoved. For petty feelings of that
kind his mind had no longer space. The conduct of the man whom
Vlaye had left on guard, the increasing disorder and babel of the
half-drunken troopers, awoke in him neither indignation nor anger, nor
astonishment, but only fear. Not a fear that unmanned him, though he
faced his first real peril, nor a fear that disarmed him, but one that
braced him to do his best, that enabled him to think, and plan, and
determine--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 and
arranged. The Captain of Vlaye had conceived the wickedness of doing
by others what he dared not do himself. The men, unless Roger was
mistaken, would pass still more out of hand; the officer would profess
himself impotent. Then, it might not be this evening, but to-morrow,
or to-morrow evening at latest, the men would burst all bounds, cast
aside respect, seize the young Countess, and bear her off. At the
ford, or where you will, Vlaye would encounter them, rescue her, and
while he gained a hold on her gratitude, would effect that which he
had shrunk from doing openly.
It was a wicked, nay, a devilish plan, because in the course of its
execution there must come a moment when all in the house--and not the
young girl only at whom the plan was aimed--would lie at the men's
mercy. For a time the men, half-drunk, must be masters. A moment there
must be of extreme danger, threatening all, embracing all; and he, a
lad, stood alone to meet it. Alone, save for one old man; for the
Vicomte was past such work, and the servants had fled. And though
Bonne, to whom as well as to the young Countess he had disclosed his
fears, persisted in the hope of rescue, and based that hope on their
strange guest's promise, he had little or no hope.
As he crouched with the two girls in the dark window recess, he faced
the 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 the
chamber 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. The
only figure visible against the gloomy, dust-coloured hangings, he
seemed the type of a race fallen hopelessly; his features, once
imperious, hung flaccid, his hands clung weakly to the arms of his
chair. He was capable still of one brief, foolish outburst, one
passionate stroke; but no help or wise counsel could be expected from
him. He was astonishingly aged in one day; even his power to wound the
mind seemed near its end.
In contrast with that drooping figure, seated amid the shadows of the
room in which generations of Villeneuves had lorded it royally, the
scene without struck with an appalling sense of virility. The lusty
troopers lolling in the hot blaze of the bonfire, on which one or
another constantly flung fresh wood, and now roaring out some
gutter-stave, now flinging coarse badinage hither and thither, were
such as years of license and cruel campaigning had made them; men such
as it took a Vlaye or a Montluc to curb. And had the lad who watched
them with burning eyes and a beating heart lacked one jot of the
perfect courage, he had as soon thought of pitting himself against
them as of raising dead bones to life.
But he had that thought, and even planned and plotted as he watched
them. "Where is Odette?" he asked in a whisper. He had Bonne's hand in
his, her other arm held the Countess to her. "They may be afraid of
her. If she spoke to the officer, he might listen to her."
"She will not believe there is danger," Bonne answered with something
like a sob. "She will not hear a word. I began to explain about the
Countess and she flew into a passion. She has shut herself up and says
that we are all mad, stark mad from living alone, and afraid of our
shadows. 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 has
been said, the whole of the courtyard. The men, confident in their
strength, had left the gate open. As Roger ceased to speak, a single
horseman emerged, silent as a spectre, from the low gateway, and
advancing at a foot-pace three or four steps, drew rein, and gazed in
astonishment at the scene of hilarity presented to him.
The three at the window were the first to see him. Roger's hand closed
on 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 a
little from the house, was wide, but it might have been narrow and
still he had asked, for the stranger wore--it was no uncommon fashion
in those days--a mask. It was a slender thing, hiding only the upper
part of the face, but it sufficed. "Who is it?" Roger repeated.
"M. des Voeux!" Bonne answered involuntarily. In their excitement the
three rose to their feet.
Whether it were M. des Voeux or not, the masked man seemed in two
minds about advancing. He had even turned his horse as if he would go
out again, when some of the revellers espied him, and on the instant a
silence, broken only by the crackling of the logs, and as striking as
the previous din, proclaimed the fact.
The change seemed to encourage the stranger to advance. As he wheeled
again and paced nearer, the men who sat on the farther side of the
fire from him, and for that reason could not see him, rose and stood
gaping at him through the smoke. He moved nearer to the outer ring.
"Who lives here, my good people?" he asked in a voice peculiarly sweet
and clear; his tone smacked even a little womanish.
One of the men stifled a drunken laugh. Another turned, and after
winking at his neighbours--who passed the joke round--advanced a pace
or two, uncovered elaborately and bowed with ceremony to match. "M. le
Vicomte de Villeneuve, if it please you, my lord--I should say your
excellency!" with another low bow.
"Curse on it!" the stranger exclaimed.
The men's spokesman stared an instant, taken aback by the unexpected
rejoinder. Then, aware that his reputation among his fellows was
at stake, he recovered himself. "Did your excellency, my lord
duke"--another delighted chuckle among the men--"please to speak?"
"Go and tell him I am here," the masked man answered, disregarding
their horse-play; and he released his feet from the stirrups. The
window of the dining-hall was open, and the three at it could mark him
well, and hear every word of the dialogue.
"If your excellency--would enter?" the man rejoined with the same
travesty of politeness. "The Vicomte would not wish you, I am sure, to
await his coming."
"Very good. And do you, fellow, tell him that I crave the favour of a
night's lodging. That I am alone, and my--but the rest I will tell him
myself!"
The troopers nudged one another. "Go, Jasper," said the spokesman
aloud, "and carry his excellency's commands to M. le Vicomte. Your
horse, my lord duke, shall be taken care of! This way, if it please
you my lord duke! And do some of you," turning, and making, unseen by
the stranger, the motion of turning a key--"bring lights! Lights to
the west tower, do you hear?"
The faces of the three within the window were pressed against the
panes. "Who can he be?" Bonne muttered. "They call him----"
"They are fooling him!" Roger replied In wrath. "They know no more who
he is than we do! He is not des Voeux. He has not his height, and not
half his width. But what," angrily, "are they doing now? Where are
they 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 the
inhabited part of the house, the trooper, attended by four or five of
his half-drunken comrades, was ushering him with ceremony to the
lesser bridge which led to the western tower; the ground floor of
which, a cold damp dungeon-like place, was used as a wood store. It
had been opened a few hours before, that fagots might be taken from
it, and this circumstance had perhaps suggested the joke to the prime
conspirator.
"Lights are coming, my lord duke!" he said, taking a flaring brand
from one of his comrades and holding it aloft. He was chuckling
inwardly at the folly of the stranger in swallowing his egregious
titles without demur. "The Vicomte shall be told. Beware of the step,
my lord!" lowering his light that the other might see it. They were on
the threshold now, and he pushed open the door that already stood
ajar. "The step is somewhat awkward, your excellency! We have to go
through the--it is somewhat old-fashioned, but craving your
excellency'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 found
himself on his hands and knees among the fagots. Before he could rise
the door clanged horridly on him, the key grated in the lock, he was
in darkness, a prisoner!
The men, reckless and half-drunk, roared with delight at the jest.
"Welcome, my lord duke!" the ringleader cried, holding aloft his
light, and bowing to the ground before the thick oaken door. "Welcome
to Villeneuve!"
"Welcome!" cried the others, waving their lights, and clutching one
another in fits of laughter. "Welcome to Villeneuve! A good night to
you! 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 lad
had not been able to look on and see the trick played on a guest; the
more as that guest represented his one solitary, feeble hope of help.
The men might still be sober enough to listen; at any rate he would
try. Much against their wills he had broken away from the girls. He
was here.
"Open that door!" he said.
The man to whom he spoke, the ringleader, looked almost as much
astonished as he was. The others ceased to laugh, and waited to see
what would happen.
"That door?" the man concerned answered slowly as soon as he could
bring his thoughts to bear on the emergency.
"Yes, that door!" Roger cried imperiously, all the Villeneuve in him
rising to the surface. "And instantly, fellow!"
"So be it, if you will have it so," the man replied, shrugging his
shoulders. "But it was only a jest, and----"
"There is enough of the jest, and too much!" Roger retorted. He spoke
so bravely that not a man remembered his crooked shoulders. "Open, I
say!"
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. de
Vlaye's man and take orders nowhere else!" And with an insolent
gesture he flung the key on the ground.
To punish him for his insolence, when they were a score to one, was
impossible. 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 shut
on him.
But he knew naught of that. As he fell forward a savage blow from the
front, from the darkness, hurled him breathless against a pile of
fagots. At the same moment a voice cried in his ear, "There is one is
spent, Deo Laus!" A hand groped for him, a foot was set hard against
him, and something wrenched at his clothes.
"Why," quoth the same voice a second later--the darkness was almost
perfect--"did I not run the rascal through?"
"No!" Roger said, and as the stranger's sword, which had only passed
through his clothes, was dragged clear, he nimbly shifted his place.
"And I beg you will not," he continued hurriedly. "I was coming to
your 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," Roger
answered. He was in the depths of despair, for the girls were alone
now 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 passed
this way yesterday. She took refuge here and he did not dare to drag
her away. So he left these men to guard her, as he said; but really to
carry her off as soon as they should be drunk enough to venture on
it." Poor Roger's voice shook. He was lamenting his folly, his
dreadful 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 that
shocked the country lad; and then he laughed with a light-hearted
joyousness that was still more alien from the circumstances. "Well, it
is an adventure!" he cried. "It is an adventure! And for what did I
come? To the fool his folly! And one fool makes many! But do you
think, my friend," he continued, speaking in a different strain, "that
they 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 an
instant the other was silent.
Then, "With what attendance?" he asked. "Whom have they with them that
you can trust?"
"The Countess's steward and one old man. And my father, but he is old
also."
"Pheugh!" the stranger whistled. "An adventure indeed!" From the sound
of the fagots it seemed that he was moving. "We must out of this," he
said, "and to the rescue! But how? There is no other door than the one
by which we entered?"
"There is one, but the key is lost, and it has not been opened for
years."
"Then we must go out as we came in," the stranger answered gaily. "But
how? But how? Let me think! Let me think, lad!"
The smell of damp earth mingled with rotting wood pervaded the
darkness in which they stood. They could not see one another, but at a
certain height from the ground a shaft of reddish light pierced the
gloom and disclosed about a foot of the cobweb vault above them. This
light entered through an arrow-slit which looked toward the bonfire,
and apparently it suggested a plan, for presently the stranger could
be 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 from
certain noises which came to his ear Roger judged that the man was
piling wood under the opening that he might climb to it. He succeeded
by-and-by; his head and shoulders became darkly visible at the
window--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, my
friend?" And when Roger, who fortunately remembered Ampoule's name,
had told him: "Do you pile," he said, "some wood behind the door, so
that it cannot be opened to the full or too quickly. It is only to
give us time to transact the punctilios."
Roger complied. He hoped--but with doubt--that the man was not mad. He
supposed that out in the world men were of these odd and surprising
kinds. The Lieutenant had impressed him. This strange man, who after
coming within an ace of killing him jested, who laughed and blasphemed
in a breath, and who was no sooner down than he was up, impressed him
more vividly, though differently. And was to impress him still
more. 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 the
arrow-slit, and in a shrill voice of surprising timbre began to pour
on the ill-starred Ampoule a stream of the grossest and most injurious
abuse. Amid stinging gibes and scalding epithets, and words that
blistered, the name rang out at intervals only to sink again under the
torrent of vile charges and outrageous insinuations. The lad's ears
burned as he listened; burned still more hotly as he reflected that
the girls might be within hearing. As for the men at the fire, twenty
seconds saw them silent with amazement. Their very laughter died out
under that steady stream of epithets, for any one of which a man of
honour must have cut his fellow's throat. A moment or two passed in
this stark surprise; still the voice, ever attaining lower depths of
abuse, went on.
At length, whether some one told him or he heard it himself, the
lieutenant came out, and, flushed with drink, listened for a while
incredulous. But when he caught his name, undoubtedly his name,
"Ampoule! Ampoule!" again and again, and the tale was told him, and he
began to comprehend that in the tower was a man who dared to say of
him, Vlaye's right hand in many a dark adventure, of him who had cut
many a young cock's comb--to say of him the things he heard--he stood
an 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. He
gasped.
"And being charged with it at Fontarabie," continued the voice, "as he
returned, showed the white feather before four men at the inn, who
took him and dipped him in a dye vat."
"Son of a dog!" Ampoule shrieked, getting his voice at last. "This is
too 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 him
say it now, and face me in a ring!"
The exasperated man ground his teeth and flung out his arms. "Face
you!" 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 time
and 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 be
mad; 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 kill
you!"
"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 of
Rocamadour!"
"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 the
floor.