The Abbess Of Vlaye Part 52

"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 rea.s.sured 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 pa.s.sed 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 att.i.tude 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 gla.s.s 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!

CHAPTER XXV.

HIS LAST RIDE.

The man who had struck the blow, and whose eyes still sparkled with fury, turned them upon her. He took note of her stupor, frowned, and with a swift, cruel glance searched the room. The lights were in sconces on the walls, and had not suffered. The rest was wreck--a splendid wreck, mingled terror and luxury, with the woman's Medusa-like face gazing on it. The Duke--for he it was--still breathing quickly, still with malevolence in his eyes, listened and looked; but the alarm had not been taken. The lilt of a song and faint distant laughter, borne on the night air, alone broke the night silence. He pa.s.sed to a window, and putting aside a curtain, peered into the darkness of the garden. Then he went to the door, and listened. Still all was quiet without and within. But to the scene in the room his gliding figure, his bent, listening head gave the last touch of tragedy.

Presently--before, it would appear, he had made up his mind how to act--he saw a change come over the woman. Her breathing, which had been no more apparent for a time than the breath of the dead at her feet, became evident, her figure relaxed. Her att.i.tude lost its stoniness; yet she did not stir to the eye. Only her eyes moved; and then at last her foot. Stealthily her foot--the man listening at the door marked it--slid from her robe, and unshod in its thin silken stocking--so thin of web that the skin showed through it--covered the poniard, still wet with blood, that had fallen from her husband's hand. Slowly she drew it nearer and nearer to her.

He at the door made as if he did not heed. But when she had drawn the weapon within reach, and furtive and silent as a cat, stooped to grasp it, he was before her--so far before her, at least, that, though she gained it, he clutched her wrist as she rose. "No, madam!" he cried fiercely. "No! Enough!" And he tried to force it from her hand.

No words came from her lips, but an animal cry of unutterable fury.

She seized on his wrist with her left hand--she tried to seize it with her teeth; she fought to free herself, clinging to the knife and wrestling with him in the midst of the trampled fruit, the s.h.i.+vered gla.s.s, the mingled wine and blood that made the floor slippery.

"Let it fall!" he repeated, hard put to it and panting. "Enough, I say, enough!" If he had loved her once he showed scant tenderness now.

And she--her lips writhed, her hair uncoiled and fell about her. He began to wish that he had not dropped his sword when he sprang upon her. For he was still weak; and if she persevered she was more than a match for him. In her normal condition she had been more than a match for him; but the shock had left its secret sap. Suddenly, without cry or warning, her grasp relaxed, her head fell back, and she sank--all her length, but sideways--amid the ruin.

He nursed his wrist a moment, looking askance at her, and thinking deeply and darkly. a.s.sured at length that the swoon was no feint to take him unawares, he went to the door by which he had entered, pa.s.sed through the empty ante-room, and thence into the Captain of Vlaye's apartments. In the pa.s.sage outside the farther door of these a sleepy valet was on guard. He was not surprised by the Duke's appearance, for half an hour before--only half an hour!--he had allowed him and his guide to enter.

"M. de Vlaye wishes to see the Captain of the gate," the Duke said curtly. "Bid him come, and quickly." And to show that he looked for no answer he turned his back on the man, and, without looking behind him, pa.s.sed through the rooms again to the one he had left.

Here he did a strange thing. On a side table which had escaped the general disaster stood some dishes removed from the chief table, a plate or two, a bread trencher, and a silver decanter of wine. After a moment's thought he drew a chair to this table, laid his sword on it beside the dishes, and, helping himself to food, began to eat and drink, with his eyes on the door. After the lapse of two or three minutes, during which he more than once scanned the room with a strange and inexplicable satisfaction, a knock was heard at the door.

"Enter!" said the Duke, his mouth half-full.

The door opened, and a grizzled man with a square-cut beard stepped in. He wore a breastpiece over a leather coat, and held his steel cap in his hand.

"Shut the door!" the Duke said sharply.

The man did so mechanically, and turned again, and--his mouth opened.

After a few seconds of silence "Mon Dieu!" he whispered. "Mon Dieu!"

"He is quite dead," the Duke said, raising his gla.s.s to his lips. "But you had better satisfy yourself. When you have done so, listen to me."

Had the Duke been in any other att.i.tude it is probable that the man had turned in a panic, flung the door wide, and yelled for help. But, seeing a stranger calmly eating and drinking and addressing him with a morsel on the point of his knife, the man stared helplessly, and then did mechanically as he was told--stooped, listened, felt for the life that had for ever departed. When he rose again "Now, listen to me,"

said the other. "I am the Duke of Joyeuse--you know my name? You know me? Yes, I did it. That is not your affair--but I did it. Your affair is with the thing we have next to do. No--she is not dead."

"Mon Dieu!" the man whispered. Old war-dog as he was, his cheeks were sallow, his hand trembled. A hundred dead, in the open, on the rampart, under G.o.d's sky, had not scared him as this lighted room with its medley of horror and wealth, its curtained windows and its suffocating tapestry, scared him.

"Your affair," the Duke repeated, "is with what is to follow." He raised his gla.s.s, and held it between his eye and the light. "Do you take my side or his? He is dead--you see him. I am alive--you know me.

Now hear my terms. But first, my man, what do you number?"