FORS L'AMOUR.
Though it was not des Ageaux' fate to lie in one of those underground
dungeons, noisome and dark, which the lords of an earlier century had
provided in the foundations of the castle, he was not greatly the
better for the immunity. The humiliations of the mind are sometimes
sharper than the pains of the body; and the Lieutenant of Perigord,
defeated and a prisoner, was little the happier though a dry
strong-room looking on a tiny inner court held him, and though he
suffered nothing from cold or the slimy companionship of the newt and
frog. On the ambitious man defeat sits more heavily than chains; into
the nature that would fain be at work inaction gnaws deeper than a
shackle-bolt. Never while he lived would des Ageaux forget the long
hours which he spent, gazing drearily on the blank wall that faced his
window, while his mind measured a hundred times over the depth and the
completeness of his fall.
He feared little for his life if he deigned to fear at all. He knew
that he was a prize too valuable to be wasted. In the last resort,
indeed, when all hopes had failed the Captain of Vlaye, and ruin
stared him in the face, he might wreak his vengeance on the King's
governor. But short of that moment--and it depended upon many
things--the Lieutenant accounted himself safe. Safe as to life, but a
beaten man, a prisoner, a failure; a blot, every moment he lay there,
on the King's dignity, whose deputy he was; an unfortunate, whose ill
hap would never be forgiven by the powers he had represented so ill.
The misfortune was great, and, to a proud man, well-nigh intolerable.
Moreover, this man was so formed that he loved the order which it was
his mission to extend, and the good government which it was his to
impose. To make straight the crooked--gently, if it might be, but by
the strong hand if it must be--was his part in life, and one which he
pursued with the utmost zest. Every breach of order, therefore, every
trespass in his province, every outrage wounded him. But the breach
and the trespass which abased in his person the King's name--he
writhed, he groaned as he thought of this! Even the blow to his
career, fatal as it promised to be, scarce hurt him worse or cut him
so deeply.
The more as that career which had been all in all to him yesterday was
not quite all in all to him to-day. Bonne's voice, the touch of her
hands as she appealed to him, the contact of her figure with his as he
carried her, these haunted him, and moved him, in his solitude and his
humiliation. Her courage, her constancy, her appeal to him, when all
seemed lost, he could not think of them--he who had thought of naught
but himself for years--without a softening of his features, without a
flood of colour invading the darkness of his face. Strong, he had
estranged himself from the tender emotions, only to own their sway
now. With half his mind he dwelt upon his mishap; the other half, the
better half, found consolation in the prospect of her sympathy, of her
fidelity, of her gentle eyes and quivering lips--who loved him. He
found it strange to remember that he filled all a woman's thoughts;
that, as he sat there brooding in his prison, she was thinking of him
and dreaming of him, and perhaps praying for him!
It is not gladly, it is never without a pang that the man of affairs
sees the world pass from him. And if there be nothing left, it is bad
for him. Des Ageaux acknowledged that he had something left. A hand he
could trust would lie in his, and one brave heart, when all others
forsook him would accompany him whither he went. He might no longer
aspire to government and the rule of men, the work of his life was
over; but Bonne would hold to him none the less, would love him none
the less, would believe in him truly. The cares of power would no
longer trouble his head, or keep it sleepless; but her gentle breast
would pillow it, her smiles would comfort him, her company replace the
knot of followers to whom he had become accustomed. He told himself
that he was content. He more than half believed it.
In the present, however, he had not her company; and the present was
very miserable. He did not fear for his life, but he lay in ignorance
of all that had happened since his capture, of all that went forward;
and the tedium of imprisonment tried him. He knew that he might lie
there weeks and months and come forth at last--for the world moved
quickly in this period of transition--to find himself forgotten.
Seventy years earlier, a king, misnamed the Great, standing where he
stood, had said that all was lost but honour--and had hastened to
throw that also away. For him all was lost but love. All!
He had passed four days--they seemed to him a fortnight--in this weary
inaction, and on the last evening of the four he was expecting his
supper with impatience, when it occurred to him that the place was
more noisy than ordinary. For some time sounds had reached him without
making any definite impression on his mind; now they resolved
themselves into echoes of distant merry-making. Little spirts of
laughter, the catch of a drinking-song, the shrill squeal of a maid
pinched or kissed, the lilt of a hautboy--he began with quickened ears
to make these out. And straightway that notion which is never out of a
prisoner's mind and which the least departure from routine fosters
raised its head. Escape! Ah, if he could escape! Freedom would set him
where he had been, freedom would undo the worst of his mishap. It
might even give him the victory he had counted lost.
But the grated window or the barred door, the paved floor or the oaken
roof--one of these must be pierced; or the gaoler, who never visited
him without precautions and company, must be overcome and robbed of
his keys. And even then, with that done which was well-nigh
impossible, he would be little nearer to freedom than before. He would
be still in the heart of his enemy's fortress, with no knowledge of
the passages or the turnings, no clue to the stone labyrinth about
him, no accomplice.
Yet, beyond doubt, there was merry-making afoot--such merry-making as
accounted for the tarrying of his supper. Probably the man had
forgotten him. By-and-by the notes of the hautboy rose louder and
fuller, and on the wave of sound bursts of applause and laughter came
to him. He made up his mind that some were dancing and others were
looking on and encouraging them. Could it be that the Captain of Vlaye
had surprised the peasants' camp? and that this was his way of
celebrating his success? Or was it merely some common-place orgie,
held, it might be, in the Captain's absence? Or---- But while he
turned this and that in his thoughts the footsteps he had been
expecting sounded at the end of the stone passage and approached. A
light shone under the door, a key turned in the lock, and the man who
brought him his meals appeared on the threshold. He entered, his hands
full, while his comrade, who had opened for him, remained in the
passage.
"You are gay this evening?" the Lieutenant said as the man set down
his light.
The fellow grinned. "Ay, my lord," he replied good-humouredly, "you
may say it. Wedding-bells and the rest of it!" He was not drunk, but
he was flushed with wine. "That is the way the world goes--and comes."
"A wedding?" des Ageaux exclaimed. The news was strange.
"To be sure, my lord.
'En revenant des noces,
Barabim!'"
he hummed.
"And whose, my man?"
The fellow, in the act of putting a bowl of soup on the table, held
his hand. He looked at the Lieutenant with a grin. "Ay, whose?" he
said. "But that would be talking. And we have orders not to talk, see
you, my lord. Still, it is not many you'll have the chance of telling.
And, if I tell you it is the Captain himself, what matter? Should we
be footing it and drinking it and the rest for another?"
"M. de Vlaye married?" des Ageaux exclaimed in astonishment. "To-day?"
"Married for sure, and as tight as Father Benet could marry him! But
to-day"--with his head on one side--"that is another matter."
"And the bride?"
"Ay, that is another matter, tool" with a wink. "Not that you can let
it out to many either! So, if you must know----"
"Best not," intervened his comrade in the passage, speaking for the
first time.
"Perhaps you do not know yourself?" the Lieutenant said shrewdly. He
saw that the man was sufficiently in drink to be imprudent. With a
little provocation he would tell.
"Not know?"--with indignation. "Didn't I----"
"Know or not, don't tell!" growled the other.
"Of course," said des Ageaux, "if you don't know you cannot tell."
"Oh!" the fool rejoined. "Cannot I? Well, I can tell you it is
Mademoiselle de Villeneuve. So there's for knowing!"
Des Ageaux sprang to his feet, his face transformed. "What!" he cried.
"Say that again!"
But his excitement overreached itself. His movement warned the other
that he had spoken too freely. With an uneasy look--what had he
done?--he refused to say more, and backed to the door. "I have said
too much already," he muttered sullenly.
"But----"
"Don't answer him!" commanded the man in the passage. "And hurry! You
have stayed too long as it is! I would not be in your shoes for
something if the Captain comes to know."
Des Ageaux stepped forward, pressing him again to speak. But the man,
sobered and frightened, was obdurate. "I've said too much already," he
answered with a resentful scowl. "What is it to you, my lord?" And he
slipped out hurriedly, and secured the door behind him.
Des Ageaux remained glaring at the closed door. Bonne de Villeneuve
had been taken with him. Bonne de Villeneuve also was a prisoner. Was
it possible that she had become by force or willingly Vlaye's bride?
Possible? Ah, God, it must be so! And, if so, by force surely! Surely,
by force; his faith in her told him that! But if by force, what
consolation could he draw from that? For that, if he loved her, were
worst of all, most cruel of all! That were a thing intolerable by God
or man!
So it seemed to this man, who only a few days before had not known
what love was. But who now, stung with sudden passion, flung himself
from wall to wall of his narrow prison. Now, when he saw it snatched
from him, now, when he saw himself denuded of that solace at which he
had grasped, but for which he had not been sufficiently thankful, now
he learned what love was, its pains as well as its promise, its
burning fevers, its heart-stabbing pity! He lost himself in rage. He
who for years had practised himself in calmness, who had made it his
aim to hide his heart, forgot his lesson, flung to the night his
habit. He seized the iron bars of his window and shook them in a
paroxysm of fury, as if only by violence he could retain his sanity.
When the bars, which would have resisted the strength of ten, declined
to leave the stone, he flung himself on the door, and beat on it and
shouted, maddened by the thought that she was under the same roof,
that she was within call, yet he could not help her! He called Vlaye
by dreadful names, challenging him, and defying him, and promising him
terrible deaths. And only when echo and silence answered all and the
iron sense of his helplessness settled down slowly upon him and numbed
his faculties did he, too, fall silent and, covering his face with his
hands, stagger to a seat and sit in a stupor of despair.
He had put love aside, he had despised it through years--for this! He
had held it cheap when it promised to be his--for this! He had
accepted it grudgingly, and when all else was like to fail him--for
this! He was punished, and sorely. She was near him. He pictured her
in the man's power, in the man's hands, in the man's arms! And he
could not help her.
Had his impotent cries and threats been heard they had only
covered him with humiliation. Fortunately they were not heard: the
merry-making was at its height, and no one came near him. The Captain
of Vlaye, aware that his marriage could not be hidden from his own
men--for he had made no secret of it beforehand--had not ventured to
forbid some indulgence. He could make it known that the man who named
his bride outside the gate would lose his tongue; but, that arranged,
he must wink--for every despotism is tempered by something--at a few
hours of riot, and affect not to see things that at another time had
called for swift retribution.
The men had used his permission to the full. They had brought in some
gipsies to make sport for them, a treble allowance of wine was on
draught, and the hour that saw des Ageaux beating in impotent fury on
his door saw the license and uproar of which he had marked the
beginning grown to a head. In the great hall the higher officers,
their banquet finished, were deep in their cups. In the cavernous
kitchens drunken cooks probed cauldrons for the stray capon that still
floated amid the spume; or half-naked scullions thrust a forgotten
duck or widgeon on the spit at the request of a hungry friend. About
the fires in the courtyard were dancing and singing and some romping;
for there were women within the walls, and others had come in with the
gipsies. Here a crowd surrounded the bear, and laid furious bets for
or against; while yelps and growls and fierce barkings deafened all
within hearing. There a girl, the centre of a leering ring, danced to
the music of her tambour; and there again a lad tumbled, and climbed a
pole at risk of his limbs. Everywhere, save in the dark garden under
the "demoiselle's" windows, where a sentry walked, and at the great
gates, where were some sober men picked for the purpose, wantonness
and jollity held reign, and the noise of brawling and riot cast fear
on the town that listened and quaked below.
A stranger entering the castle would have judged the reins quite
fallen, all discipline fled, all control lost. But he had been wrong.
Not only did a sentry walk the garden path--and soberly and shrewdly
too--but no man in his wildest and tipsiest moment ventured a foot
within the railing that fenced the lime avenue, or even approached the
gates that led to it without lowering his voice and returning to
something like his normal state. For in the rooms looking over the
garden M. de Vlaye entertained his bride of two days--and he had
relaxed, not loosed, the reins.
They sat supping in the room in which they had been wedded, and,
unmoved by the sounds of uproar that came fitfully to their ears,
discussed their plans; she, glowing and handsome, animated by present
love and future hope; he, content, if not enraptured, conquered by her
wit, and almost persuaded that all was for the best--that her charms
and beauty would secure him more than the dowry of her rival. Their
brief honeymoon over, they were to part on the morrow; she to pursue
her plans for the Duke's detachment, he to take the field and strike
such a blow as should scatter the peasants and dissipate what strength
remained in them. They were to part; and some shadow of the coming
separation had been natural. But her nerves as well as his were
strong, and the gloom of parting had not yet fallen on them. The
lights that filled the room were not brighter than her eyes; the snowy
linen that covered the round table at which they sat was not whiter
than her uncovered shoulders. He had given her jewels, the spoils of
many an enterprise; and they glittered on her queenly neck and in her
ears, gleamed through the thin lace of her dress, and on her round and
beautiful arms. He called her his Abbess and his nun in fond derision;
and she, in answering badinage, rallied him on his passion for the
Countess and his skill in abduction. So cleverly had she wrought on
him, so well managed him, that she dared even that.
The room had been hung for her with tapestries brought from another
part of the house; the windows more richly curtained; and a door, long
closed, had been opened, through which and an ante-room the chambers
connected with M. de Vlaye's apartments. Where the wedding robes had
lain on the window-seat a ribboned lute and a gay music-book lay on
rich draperies, and elbowed a gilded head-piece of Milanese work
surmounted by M. de Vlaye's crest, which had been brought in for his
lady's approval. A mighty jar of Provence roses scented the apartment;
and intoxicated by their perfume or their meaning, she presently
seized the lute, and gaily, between jest and earnest, broke into the
old Angoumois song:--
"Si je suis renfermee.
Ah, c'est bien sans raison;
Ma plus belle journee,
Se pass'ra-z-en prison.
Mais mon amant sans peine
Pourra m'y venir voir,
Son c[oe]ur sait bien qu'il m'aime,
Il viendra'-z-au parloir!"
And he answered her--
"Oh, Madame l'Abbesse,
Qu'on tire les verrous,
Qu'on sorte ma maitresse
Le plus beau des bijoux;
Car je suis capitaine,
Je suis son cher amant,
J'enfoncerai sans peine
Les portes du couvent!"
As he finished, disturbed by some noise, he turned his head. "I told
your wench to go," he said, rising. "I suppose she took herself off?"
With a frown, he strode to the screen that masked the door, and made
sure by looking behind it that they had no listeners.
She smiled as she laid aside the lute. "I thought that your people
obeyed at a word?" she said.
"They do, or they suffer," he answered.
"And is that to apply to me?" with a mocking grimace.
"When we come to have two wills, sweet, yes!" he retorted. "It will
not be yet awhile. In the meantime I would this enterprise of yours
were over. I doubt your success, though all looks well."
"If I had been half as sure of you two days ago as I am of him
to-morrow!" she retorted.
"Yet you must not go too far with him."
She waved her finger-tips across the table. "So far, and no farther,"
she said lightly. "Have I not promised you? For the rest--what I have
done I can do. Am I not armed?" And she rose from her seat, and stood
before him in all the seduction of her charms. "Count it done, my
master. Set Joyeuse aside. He is captive of _my_ bow and spear. The
question is, can you deal with the rest?"
"The peasants?"
"And what remains of des Ageaux' power? And the Countess's levies?"
"For certain, if the Duke be out of the reckoning," he answered.
"He is a man. Remove him and des Ageaux--and the latter I have
already--and there is no one. Your brothers----"
"Bah!" She dismissed them with a contemptuous gesture.
"Just so. And the Countess's people have no leader. The Vicomte is
old. There is no one. Detach the Duke, and there will be a speedy end
of them. And before a new governor can set to work to make head
against me, many things may happen, my girl!"
"Many things will happen," she answered with confidence. "If I can win
one man, why not another? If a Duke, why not"--she made an
extraordinary face at him, half-sportive, half-serious--"why not a
greater? Eh, my lord?"
He stared. "No!" he answered, striking the table with sudden violence.
"No!" He knew well what she meant and whom she meant. "Not that! Even
to make all good, not that!" Yet his eyes glittered as he looked at
her; and it was plain that his thoughts travelled far and fast on the
wings of her words. While she, in the pride of her mastery, returned
his look fondly.
"No, not that--never that!" she replied in a voice that more than
reassured him. "It is for you and only for you that I do this. I am
yours, all and always--always! But, short of that, something may be
done. And, with friends at Court, from Captain of Vlaye to Governor of
Perigord is but a step!"
He nodded. "And a step that might save his Majesty much trouble," he
said with a smile. "Do that---- But I doubt your power, my girl."
"I have done that already should persuade you."
"You have tricked me," he said, smiling. "That is true. And it is no
mean thing, I grant."
"More than that!" she retorted. The wine she had drunk had flushed her
cheek and perhaps loosed her tongue. "More than that I have done! Who
took the first step for you? Who put the Lieutenant in your hands--and
my sister? And so, in place of my sister, the Countess?"
He looked at her in astonishment. "Who?" he rejoined. "Why, who but I
myself? Did I not take them with my own hands--at the old windmill on
the hill? What had you to do with that?"
"And who sent them to the windmill?"
"Why, the rabble to be sure, who seized them, took them as far as the
ford."
"And who set the rabble on them?" As she asked the question she rose
from her seat. In the excitement of her triumph, in the intoxication
of her desire to please him she forgot the despair into which the act
which she boasted had cast her but a week before. She forgot all
except that she had done it for him whom she loved, for him who now
was hers, and whose she was! "Who," she repeated, "set the rabble upon
them?"
"You?" he murmured. "Not you?"
"I!" she said, "I!"--and held out her hands to him. "It was I who told
the brute beasts that he--des Ageaux--had your man in hiding! It was I
who wrought them to the attempt and listened while they did it! I
thought, indeed, that it was your Countess who was with him. And I
hated her! I was jealous of her! But, Countess or no Countess, 'twas
done by me!--by me! And now do you think that there is anything I will
not do for you? That there is anything I cannot do for you?"
He was not shocked; it took much to shock the Captain of Vlaye. But he
was so much astonished, he marvelled so much that he was silent. And
she, reading the astonishment in his face, and seeing it grow, felt a
qualm--now she had spoken--and lost colour, and faltered. Had she been
foolish to tell it? Perhaps. Had she passed some boundary, sacred to
him, unknown to her? It must be so. For as she gazed, no word spoken,
there came into his face a change, a strange hardening. He rose.
"My lord!" she cried, clapping her hands to her head, "what have I
done?" She recoiled a pace, affrighted. "I did it for you!"
"Some one has heard you," he answered between his teeth. And then she
saw that he was looking not at her, but beyond her--beyond her. "There
is some one behind that screen."
She faced about, affrighted, and instinctively seized his arm and hung
on it, her eyes on the screen. Her attitude as she listened, and her
pallor, were in strange contrast with the gay glitter of the table,
the lights, the luxury, the fairness of her dress.
"Yes, listening," he said grimly. "Some one has been listening. The
worse for them! For they will never tell what they have heard!"
And bounding forward without warning, he dashed the screen down and
aside--and recoiled. Face to face with him, cowering against the
doorpost, and pale as ashes, was the very man she had mentioned a
minute before--that very man of his whose hidden presence in the camp
she had betrayed to the malcontents. Vlaye glared at him. "You!" he
cried. "You!"
"My lord!"
"And listening!"
"But----"
"But! But die, fool!" the Captain retorted savagely. "Die!" And, swift
as speech, the dagger he had stealthily drawn gleamed above his
shoulder and sank in the poor wretch's throat.
The man's hands groped in the air, his eyes opened wide; but he
attempted no return-stroke. Choked by the life-stream that gushed from
his mouth, he sank back inert like a bundle of clothes, while the
Abbess's low shriek of terror mingled with his stifled cry.
And, with a sterner sound, another sound. For as the man collapsed,
and fell in on himself, a figure hitherto hidden in the doorway sprang
over his falling body, a long blade flashed in the candle-light, and
the Captain of Vlaye staggered back, one hand pressed to his breast.
He made a futile attempt to ward with his poniard, but it fell from
his grasp. And the pitiless steel found his heart again. Silent, grim,
with unquenchable hate in his eyes, he reeled against the table. And
then from the table, dragging with him all--silver and glass and
fruit--in one common crash, he rolled to the floor--dying.
Ay, in five seconds, dead! And she saw it with her eyes! Saw it! And
frozen, stiff, clinging to the bare edge of the table, she stood
looking at him, her brain numbed by the horror, by the suddenness, the
hopelessness of the catastrophe. In a twinkling, in a time measured by
seconds, it was done. The olives that fell from the dish had not
ceased to roll, the wine still crept upon the floor, the man who had
struck the blow still panted, his point delivered--but he was dead
whom she had loved. Dead!