The Abbess Of Vlaye

by Stanley John Weyman

"My lord, they are fighting!" he cried. And then emboldened by the emergency, "Were it not well," he continued, "to put the ladies in a place of safety?"

The Vicomte, urged up the steps by the women, leant over the parapet, and learned the truth for himself. Bonne, the Countess, the Abbess and her women, all followed, and in a twinkling were standing on the roof in the dark night, the round tower rising beside them, and the croaking of the frogs coming up to them from below.

But the brief clash of weapons was over, and they could make out no more than a group of figures gathered about two prostrate men. The movement of the lights, now here now there, augmented the difficulty of seeing, and for a while Bonne's heart stood still. She made no lamentations, for she came of the old blood, but she thought Roger dead. And then a man raised a light, and she distinguished his figure leaning over one of the injured men.

"Thank God!" she murmured. "There is Roger. He is not hurt!"

"Who are they? Who are they?" the Vicomte babbled, clinging to the parapet. "Eh? Who are they? Cannot any one see?"

But no one could see, and the Abbess's women began to cry. She paid no heed to them. She leant with the others over the parapet, and she listened with them to the shuffling feet of the men below, as slowly in a double line they bore the cloaked form towards the house. But whether their thoughts were her thoughts, their anxiety her anxiety, whether she was wrapt, as they were, in the scene that passed below, or chewed instead the cud of other and more bitter reflections, was known only to herself. Her proud spirit, whose worst failings hitherto had not gone beyond selfishness and vanity, hung, it may be, during those moments between good and evil, the better and the worse; took, perhaps, the turn that must decide its life; flung from it, perhaps, in passionate abandonment the last heart-strings that bound it to the purer and more generous affections.

Perhaps; but none of those who stood beside her had an inkling of her mood. For the troopers had passed with their mysterious burden into the house, and no sooner were they gone than one of the Abbess's women cried in a panic that they would be murdered, and in a trice all, succumbing to the impulse, made for the Tower Chamber, and herded into it pell-mell, some shrugging their shoulders and showing that they gave way to the more timid, and the men not knowing from whom to take orders. In the chamber were already two or three of the house-women, who had sought that refuge earlier in the evening, and these, seeing the Vicomte, looked for nothing but slaughter, and by their shrill lamentations added to the confusion.

The security of all depended entirely on their holding the way across the leads, and here the men should have remained; but the women would not part with them and all entered together. Some one locked the outer door, and there they were, in all eleven or twelve persons, in the great, dreary chamber, where a few feeble candles that served to make darkness visible disclosed their blanched faces. At the slightest sound the women shrieked or clung to one another, and with every second the boldest expected to hear the tramp of feet without, and the clatter of weapons on the oak.

There was something ridiculous in this noisy panic; yet something terrifying also to those who, like Bonne, kept their heads. She strove in vain to make herself heard; her voice was drowned; the disorder overwhelmed her as a flood overwhelms a strong swimmer. She seized a girl by the arm to silence her: the wench took it for a fresh alarm and squalled the louder. She flew to her father and begged him to interpose; flurried, he fell into a rage with her, and stormed at her as if it were she who caused the confusion. For the others the young Countess, though quiet, was scared; and Odette, seated at a distance, noticed her companions only at intervals in the dark current of her thoughts--and then with a look of disdain.

At length Bonne betook herself to Solomon. "Some one should hold the roof!" she said.