The Abbess Of Vlaye

by Stanley John Weyman

He thought not. At any rate it seemed well to take the chance. He was taking, he was beginning to see that he was taking a good many chances. "It seems a good plan, if mademoiselle be indeed willing," he said. He wished that he could see her face.

"I have said," she replied coldly, "that I am willing."

But her women showed forthwith that they were not. What? Remain in this wilderness in the dark with a dying man? They would be eaten by wolves, they would be strangled by witches, they would be ravished by thieves! Never! And in a trice one was in hysterics, deaf to her mistress's threats and to the Bat's grim hints. The other, after a conflict, allowed herself to be browbeaten, and sullenly, and with tears, yielded. But not until the water of the ford rippled about their horses' hoofs, and the tiny spark of light that through the open door beaconed the shallows shone in their eyes.

Had it been day they would have had before them a scene at once wild and peaceful. On their right, below the ford--which was formed by the passage of the stream from one side of the narrow valley to the other--a lofty bluff overhung a black pool. Above the ford, on the level meadow, and a stone's-throw from the track--if track that could be called which was not used by a hundred persons in a year--stood a tiny chapel and cell, which some hermit in past ages had built with his own hands. The approach of the Crocans had driven his latest successor from his post; but des Ageaux, passing that way in the day, had noted the chapel, and with the forethought of the soldier who expected to return in the dark he had seen the earthen lamp relit. Its light, he knew, would, in case of need, direct him to the ford.

At present that lamp, a tiny spark in the blackness, was all they saw. They made for it through the shallows and over a bed of shingle across which the horses clattered noisily. In haste they reached the door of the chapel, and there in a trice--for if the thing was to be done it must be done quickly--they aided the Abbess and the lay sister to alight, bore in the litter with the wounded man, and closed the door on all; this last, that the light might no longer be visible from the ford. Then they, the men, got themselves to horse again, and away at a round trot.

Not without repugnance on the part of several; not without regret and misgiving. Des Ageaux's heart smote him as his horse's feet carried him farther and farther away; it seemed so cowardly a thing to leave women to bear in that wild and lonely place the brunt of whatever might befall. And Charles, ready as he had been to acclaim the notion, wondered if he had erred in leaving his sister thus lightly. But in truth they were embarked in an enterprise whose full perils it lay with time to disclose. And other and more pressing anxieties soon had possession of their minds.

They had been less troubled had they been able to witness the Abbess's demeanour in her solitude. While her companion, overcome by her fears, sank down in a fit of hysterical weeping, Odette de Villeneuve remained standing within the low doorway, and with head erect listened frowning until the last sound of the horses' hoofs died to the ear. Then she drew a deep breath, and, turning slowly, she allowed her eyes to take stock of the place in which she so strangely found herself.

It was a tiny building of rough-hewn stones, with an altar and crucifix, also of stone, erected at the end remote from the door. Along either wall ran a stone bench, on one or other of which the good fathers must have spent many a summer day watching the ford; for at a certain point the stone was polished and worn by friction. The litter and the wounded man filled half the open space, leaving visible only a floor of trodden earth foul with the droppings of birds and sheep, and betraying in other respects the results of neglect. Here and there on some stone larger than its fellows, and particularly on the lintel, a prentice hand had carved symbols; but, this notwithstanding, the whole wore by the light of the smoky lamp an aspect far from sacred.

Yet the prospect of spending several hours in so poor a place did not appear to depress the Abbess. Her inspection finished, she nodded an answer to her thoughts, and sitting down on the bench beside the litter, rested her elbow on her knee and her chin on her hand, and fixing her large dark eyes on the wounded man, gave herself up, as completely as if she had been in her own chamber, to her thoughts.

Her woman, whose complaining, half fractious, half fearful, had sunk to an occasional sob, presently looked at her, and fascinated by that gloomy absorption--which might have dealt with the mysteries of the faith, but turned in fact on the faithlessness of man--she could not look away. And moments passed; the first pale glimmer of dawn appeared, and still the two women faced one another across the insensible man whose heavy breathing, broken from time to time by some obstruction, was the one sound that vied with the low murmur of the stream.