SAINT AND SINNER.
An hour later the Lieutenant was with the Duke in his quarters, and
had imparted to him what he knew of the position. The Duke listened,
not much affected; nay, with something approaching indifference.
"It is a question of four days then?" he rejoined, as he painfully
moved himself on his litter. They had made him as comfortable as they
could, screening the head of his couch, which was towards the hut
door, with a screen of wattle. Against one wall, if wall that could be
called which was of like make with the screen, ran a low bench of
green turves, and on this des Ageaux was seated.
"Of four days--and nights," the Lieutenant made answer, masking a
slight shiver. He was not thinking of his own position, but of the
young Countess; neither her fears nor the courage with which she
controlled them were a secret from him. "To-day is Saturday. The
Countess's men should be here by Monday, your men, M. de Joyeuse, by
Wednesday. All will be well then; and I doubt not with such support we
can handle the Captain of Vlaye. But until then we run a double risk."
"Of Vlaye, of course."
"And of our own people if anything occur to exasperate them."
Joyeuse laughed recklessly. "_Vogue la galere!_" he cried. "The plot
grows thicker. I came for adventure, and I have it. Ah, man, if you
had lived within the four walls of a convent!"
Des Ageaux shook his head. He knew the wanton courage of the man, who,
sick and helpless, found joy in the peril that surrounded them. But he
was very far from sharing the feeling. The dangers that threatened the
party lay heavy on the man who was responsible for all. The tremors of
the young girl who must share his risk that evening, the bitter
reproaches of the Abbess and her father, even the confidence that
Bonne's eyes rather than her lips avowed, all tormented him; so that
to see this man revelling in that which troubled him so sorely,
insulted his reason.
"I fancy, my lord," he said, a faint note of resentment in his tone,
"if you had had to face these rogues this morning you had been less
confident this evening."
"Were they so spiteful?" The Duke raised himself on his elbow. "Well,
I say again, you made a mistake. You should have run the spokesman
through the throat! Ca! Sa!" He made a pass through the air. "And
trust me, the rest of the knaves----"
"Might have left none of us alive to tell the tale!" the Lieutenant
retorted.
"I don't know that!"
"But I suspect it!" des Ageaux replied warmly. "And I do beg you, my
lord, to be guided in this. I am more than grateful for the impulse
which led you to come to my assistance. But honestly I had been more
glad if you had brought a couple of hundred spears with you. As it is,
the least imprudence may cost us more than our own lives! And it
behoves us all to remember that!"
"The least imprudence!"
"Certainly."
The Duke laughed softly--at nothing that appeared. "So!" he said. "The
least imprudence may destroy us, may it? The least imprudence!" And
then, suddenly sobered, he fixed his eyes on the Lieutenant. "But what
of letting your prisoner go, eh? What of that? Was not that an
imprudence, most wise Solomon?"
"A very great one!" des Ageaux replied with a sigh.
"What shall you do when, to-morrow morning, they claim his trial?"
"What I can," the Lieutenant answered, frowning and sitting more
erect. "See that the Countess returns early to this side; where the
Bat must make the best dispositions he can for your safety. Meanwhile,
I shall tell them and make them see reason if I can!"
"Lord!" the Duke said with genuine gusto, "I wish I were in your
place!"
"I wish you were," des Ageaux replied. "And still more that I had the
rogue by the leg again."
"Do you?"
"Do I?" the Lieutenant repeated in astonishment. "I do indeed. The
odds are they will maintain that we released him on purpose, and
dearly we may pay for it!"
For a moment the Duke, flat on his back, looked thoughtful. Then,
"Umph!" he said, "you think so? But you were always a croaker, des
Ageaux, and you are making the worst of it! Still--you would like to
lay your hand on him, would you?"
"I would indeed!"
The Duke rose on his elbow. "Would you mind giving me--I am a little
cold--that cloak?" he said. "No," as des Ageaux moved to do it, "not
that one under your hand--the small one! Thank you. I----"
He could not finish. He was shaking with laughter--which he vainly
tried to repress. Des Ageaux stared. And then, "What have I done to
amuse you so much, my lord?" he asked coldly, as he rose.
"Much and little," the Duke answered, still shaking.
"Much or little," des Ageaux retorted, "you will do yourself no good
by laughing so violently. If your wound, my lord, sets to bleeding
again----"
"Pray for the soul of Henry, Duke of Joyeuse, Count of Bouchage!" the
Duke replied lightly. Yet on the instant, and by a transition so
abrupt as to sound incredible to men of these days, he composed his
face, groped for his rosary, and began to say his offices. The
suddenness of the change, the fervour of his manner, the earnestness
of his voice astonished the Lieutenant, intimately as he knew this
strange man. Awhile he waited, then he rose and made for the door.
But Joyeuse--not the Duke of three minutes before, but Frere Ange of
the Capuchin convent--stopped him with a movement of his eyes. "And
why not," said he, "to-day as well as to-morrow? No man need be afraid
to die who prepares himself. The soldier above all, Lieutenant, for
the true secret of courage is to repent. Ay, to repent," he continued
in a voice, sweet and thrilling, and with a look in his eyes strangely
gentle and compelling. "Friend, are you prepared? Have you confessed
lately? If not, kneel down! Kneel, man, and let us say a dozen aves,
and a couple of Paternosters! It will be no time wasted," he continued
anxiously. "No man has sinned more than I have. No man, no man! Yet I
face death like one in a thousand! And why? Why, man? Because it is
not I, but----"
But there are things too high for the level of such narrations as
this, and too grave for such treatment as is here essayed. The
character of this man was so abnormal, he played with so much
enthusiasm his alternate _roles_, that without this passing glimpse of
his rarer side--that side which in the intervals of wild revelry led
him to dying beds and sick men's couches--but one-half of him could be
understood. Not that he was quite alone in the possession of this
trait. It was a characteristic of the age to combine the most flagrant
sins with the strictest observances; and a few like M. de Joyeuse
added to both a real, if intermittent and hysterical, repentance.
On this occasion it was not long before he showed his other face. The
Abbess, after waiting without and fretting much--for she had returned
to the purpose momentarily abandoned, and the length of the interview
alarmed her--won entrance at last. She exchanged a cold greeting with
the departing Lieutenant, then took his place, book in hand, on the
green bench. For a while there was silence. She had so far played her
part with success. The Duke knew not whether to call her saint or
woman; and that he might remain in that doubt she now left it to him
to speak. At the same time she left him at liberty to look: for she
knew that bending thus at her devotions she must appear more striking
to his jaded senses. And he, for a time, was mute also, and
thoughtful; so much he gave to the scene just ended.
It is possible that the silence was prolonged by the chance of
considering her at leisure which she was careful to afford him. He was
still weak, the better side of him was still uppermost; and handsome
as she was, he saw her through a medium of his own, in a halo of
meekness and goodness and purity. Thus viewed she fell in with his
higher mood, she was a part of it, she prolonged it. A time would
come, would most certainly come, when one of the wildest libertines of
his day would see her otherwise, and in the woman forget the saint.
But it had not yet come. And the Abbess, with her pure, cold profile,
bent over her book, and, with her thoughts apparently in heaven, knew
also that her time had not yet come.
Though her face betrayed nothing, she was in an angry mood. She had
gained little by the altercation with des Ageaux; and though the
simplicity which he had betrayed in his dealings with the peasants
excited her boundless contempt--he, to pit himself against M. de
Vlaye!--the peril which it brought upon all heightened that contempt
to anger. If the peril had been his only, or included the Countess
only, if it had threatened those only whom she could so well spare,
and towards whose undoing her brain was busily working, she could have
borne it bravely and gaily.
But the case was far other; and something she regretted that she had
not bowed to her first impulse in the chapel and called to M. de
Vlaye, and gone to him--ay, gone to him empty-handed as she was,
without the triumph of which she had dreamed. For the jeopardy in
which she and all her family now stood put her in a dilemma. If the
Lieutenant kept faith with the peasants and all went well, it would go
ill with her lover. If, on the contrary, M. des Ageaux failed to
restrain the peasants, it might go ill with herself.
It came always to this: she must win over the Duke. Of the allies
against Vlaye, he, with his hundred and fifty horse, due to arrive on
the Wednesday, with the larger support which he could summon if it
were necessary, and with his favour at Court, was by far the most
formidable. Detach him, and the Lieutenant with his handful of riders,
backed though he might be by the Countess's men, and the peasant rout
would be very likely to fail. It came back then always to this: she
must win the Duke. As she pondered, with her eyes on her book, as she
considered again and anew this resolution, the noises of the camp, the
Bat's sharp word of command--for he had fallen imperturbably to
drilling as if that were the one thing necessary--the Vicomte's
querulous voice, and the more distant babel of the peasants' quarter,
all added weight to her thoughts. And then on a sudden an alien sound
broke the current. The man lying beside her laughed.
She glanced at him, startled for the moment out of her _role_. The
Duke was shaking with merriment. Confused, not understanding, she
rose. "My lord," she said, half offended, "what is it? What moves
you?"
"A rare joke," he answered. "I was loth to interrupt your thoughts,
fair sister, but 'twas too much for me." He fell to laughing again.
"You will injure yourself, my lord," she said, chiding him gently, "if
you laugh so violently."
"Oh, but----" The litter shook under him.
"At least," she said, with a look more tender and less saintly than
she had yet permitted herself, "you will tell me what it is! What----"
"Raise that--the cloak!" he said. He pointed with his hand. "Remove
it, I mean, and you will see what--what you will see!"
She obeyed and immediately recoiled with a low cry, the cloak in her
hand. "_Mon Dieu!_" she whispered, with the colour gone from her
cheeks. "Who--who is he? Who is he?" She shuddered.
The man her act had revealed rose from his hiding-place, his face
whiter than hers, his haggard, shifty eyes betraying his terror.
"My lord!" he cried, "you will not betray me? My lord, you passed your
word!"
"Pah, coward, be silent!" the Duke answered. He turned to the Abbess,
his eyes dancing. "Do you know him?" he asked.
"He is M. de Vlaye's man," she said. "The prisoner!" She was pale and
she frowned, her hands pressed to her breast.
"Whom they are so anxious to hang!" the Duke replied, chuckling. "And
whom des Ageaux is so anxious to have under his hand! Ha! ha! Those
were his words! Under his hand! When he touched the cloak I thought I
should have died. And you, rascal, what did you think? You thought you
were going to die, I'll be sworn!"
"My lord--my lord!" the man faltered the words, holding out imploring
hands.
"Ay, I'll wager you did!" Joyeuse replied. "Wished you had let me
confess you then, I'll be sworn! He'd not have it, good sister, when I
offered it, because it was too like the end--the rope and the tree!"
"My lord! My lord!" Fear had driven all but those two words from the
man's mouth.
And certainly if man had ever ground for fear, he had. In that hut of
wattle, open to the sky, open in a dozen places to the curious eye, he
had heard the voices, the cries, the threats of his pursuers. The
first that entered must see him, even if this mad lord who played with
his life as lightly as he had in the beginning shielded it did not
summon them to take him.
Verily, as he stood, the cloak plucked from him, with every opening in
the hut's walls an eye, he tasted the bitterness of death. And in the
amused face of his protector, in the girl's cold frowning gaze, what
of sympathy, of feeling, of pity? Not a jot. Not a sign. To the one a
jest, to the other a peril, he was to neither akin.
As it seemed. But a few seconds saw a change. The Abbess, in the first
flush of amazement, had come near to forgetting her part. Under other
circumstances the trembling wretch before her might have claimed and
gained her sympathy, for he was one of Vlaye's men. At any rate, his
punishment by des Ageaux would have added one more to the list of the
Lieutenant's offences. But as it was she saw in him only a root, so
long as he lay hidden, of utmost peril to all her party; a thing to be
cast to the wolves, if she and those who rode in the chariot with her
were to escape. Her first feeling, therefore--and her face must have
betrayed it had the Duke looked at her at the first--had been one of
fierce repulsion. Her natural impulse had been the impulse to call for
help and give the man up!
But in time, with a kind of shock of the mind that turned her hot, she
remembered. The Duke was not one to see his will or his whim thwarted
lightly. And she, the saint, whose book of offices still lay where it
had fallen at her feet, she to lend herself to harshness! She to show
herself void of pity! Hurriedly she forced words to her lips, and did
what she could to match her face to their meaning.
"My lord, blessed are the merciful," she murmured with a slight but
irrepressible shudder. "You who"--her words stuck a little--"have been
spared so lately should be mercy itself."
"My sister," the Duke said slowly, "you are more than mercy!" And
he looked at her, his lips still smiling, but his eyes grave. He
knew--was ever Frenchman who did not know--the value of his own
courage. He knew that to act as a mere whim led him to act was not in
many, where life was in question; and to see a woman rise thus to his
level, ay, and rise in a moment and unasked, touched him with a new
and ardent admiration. His eyes, as he looked, grew tender.
"You, too, will protect him?" he said.
"Who am I that I should do otherwise?" she answered. She spoke the
words so well she seemed to him an angel. And to the man----
The man fell at her feet, seized the hem of her robe, kissed it, clung
to it, sobbed broken words of thanks over it, gave way to transports
of gratitude. To him, too, she was an angel. And while she reflected,
"I can still give him up if I think better of it," the Duke watched
her with moist eyes, finding that holy in her case which in his own
had been but a jest, the freak of a man in love with danger, and proud
of seeking it by every road.
Presently "Now, man, to your cloak!" he said. "And you, sister," he
continued, willing to hear the words again, "you are sure that you are
not afraid?"
"I am no more afraid," she replied, with downcast eyes and hands
crossed upon her breast, "than I was when I stayed alone with you by
the river, my lord. There was no other who could stay."
"Say instead, who dared to stay."
"There is no other now who can shelter him!"
"_Mon Dieu!_" he whispered.
He followed her with his eyes after that, all his impressions
confirmed; and as it was rare in those days to find the good also the
beautiful, the imprint made on him was deep. She thrilled him as no
woman had thrilled him since the days of his boyhood and his first
gallantries. His feeling for her elevated him, purified him. As he
watched her moving to and fro in his service, a great content stole
over him. Once, when she bent to his couch to do him some office, he
contrived to touch her hand with his. So might an anchorite have
touched the wood of the true Cross--so reverent, so humble, so full of
adoration and worship was the touch.
But it was the first step--that touch--and she knew it. She went back
to her bench, and veiling her eyes with her long lashes that he might
not read the triumph which shone in them, she fell again to her
devotions--but with content in her breast. A little more, a little
while, and she would have him at her beck, she would have him on his
knees; and then it should not be long before his alliance with des
Ageaux was broken, and his lances sent home. Not long! But meanwhile
time pressed. There was the trouble; time pressed, yet she dared not
be hasty. He was no simple boy, and one false move might open his
eyes. He might see that she was no angel, but of the same clay as
those of whom he had made toys all his life!
As she pondered, the near prospect of success set the possibility of
failure, through some accident, through some mischance, in a more
terrible aspect. She hated the trembling fugitive cowering in his
hiding-place behind the Duke's bed; she wished to heaven he were in
des Ageaux' hands again. The danger of a mutiny on his account, a
danger that despite her courage chilled her, would then be at an end.
True, such a mutiny menaced the Lieutenant in the first place and the
Countess in the second; and she could spare them. But she could not be
sure that it would go no farther. She could not be sure that its
burning breath would not lap all in the camp. Had she been sure--that
had been another matter. And behold, as she thought of it, from some
cell of the brain leapt full-grown a plan; a plan wicked enough, cruel
enough, terrible enough, to shock even her, but a clever plan if it
could be executed!
She had little doubt that the Lieutenant would overcome the difficulty
of the morning and succeed in persuading the peasants that he was
guiltless of the escape of the prisoner. Suppose he succeeded, what
would happen if it leaked out later that the prisoner had been hidden
all the time in the Lieutenant's huts? Particularly if it leaked out
at a time when the Lieutenant and the Countess lay in the peasants'
power in the peasants' camp? And for choice after the arrival of the
first batch of spears had secured the rest of the party from danger?
What would happen to des Ageaux and the Countess in that event?
It was a black thought. The beautiful face bent over the book of
offices grew perceptibly harder. But what better fate did they deserve
who took on themselves to mar and meddle? They who incited her very
brothers, clownish hobbledehoys, and her mawkish sister to rise up
against her and against _him?_ If fault there was, the fault lay with
those who threw down the glove. The Lieutenant was come for naught
else but her lover's destruction: and if he fell into the pit that he
digged for another he could blame himself only. As for the girl, the
white-faced puling child whose help M. de Vlaye's enemies were driving
him to seek, if she, with her castles and her wealth, her lands and
horse and foot, could not protect herself, the issue was her affair!
Of a surety it was not her rival's!
Odette de Villeneuve's breath came a little quickly, a fine dew stood
on her white forehead. Meantime the Duke watched her and wondered in
an enthusiasm of piety what prayer it was that so stirred that angelic
breast, what aspirations for the good of her sinning and suffering
sisters swelled that saintly bosom! A vision of an ascetic life spent
by her side, of Fathers read page by page in her company, of the good
and the noble pursued with her under cloistered yews, of an Order such
as the modern Church had never seen--such a vision wrapt him for a few
blissful minutes from the cold, lower world of sense.