The Abbess Of Vlaye

by Stanley John Weyman

Suddenly the Abbess lifted her head. Mingled with the water's chatter was a harsher sound--a sound of rattling stones, of jingling steel and, a second later, of men's voices. She rose slowly to her feet, and as the other woman, alarmed by the expression of her features, would have screamed, she silenced her by a fierce gesture. Then she stood, her hand resting against the wall beside her, and listened.

She had no doubt that it was he. Her parted lips her eyes, half fierce, half tender, told as much. It was he, and she had but to open the door, she had but to show herself in the lighted doorway, and he would come to her! As the voices of the riders grew, and the rattle of hoofs among the pebbles ceased, she pictured him abreast of the hermitage; she fancied, but it must have been fancy, that she could distinguish his voice. Or no, he would not be speaking. He would be riding, silent, alone, his hand on his hip, the grey light of morning falling on his stern face. And at that, at that picture of him, his deeds and his career, his greatness who had made himself, his firmness whom no obstacle stayed, rose before her embodied in the solitary figure riding foremost through the dawn. Her breast rose and fell tumultuously. The hand that rested on the wall shook. She had only to open the door, she had only to cry his name aloud, only to show herself, and he would be at her side! And she would be no longer against him but with him, no longer would be ranked with his foes--who were so many--but for him against the world!

The temptation was so strong that her form seemed to droop and sway as if a physical charm drew her in the direction of the man she loved, the man to whom, in spite of his faults, or by reason of them, she clung in the face of defection. But powerful as was the spell laid upon her, pride--pride and her will proved stronger. She stiffened herself; for an instant she did not seem to breathe. Nor was it until the last faint clink of iron died away that she turned feverish eyes in search of some crevice, some loophole, some fissure, through which she might yet see him; yet see, if it were but the waving of his plume.

She found none. The only windows, two tiny arrow-slits that had never known glass, were in the wall remote from the track. On that she set her teeth to control the moan of disappointment that rose from her heart; and slowly she sank into her old seat.

But not into her old reverie. The eyes which she bent on the sick man were no longer dreamy. On the contrary, they were fixed in a gaze of eager scrutiny that sought to drag from the Duke's pallid features the secret of his weakness and waywardness, of his strange nature and bizarre fame. And unconsciously as she gazed, she bent nearer and nearer to him; her look grew sharper and more imperious. All hung on him now--all! Her mind was made up. Fortune had not cast him so timely in her path, fate had not afforded her the opportunity of which she had dreamed, without intending her to profit by it, without proposing to crown the scheme with success. The spell of her lover's presence, the spell that had obsessed her so short a time before that the interval could be reckoned by seconds, was broken! Never should it be hers to play that creeping part, to regain him that way, to return to him tamely, empty-handed, a suppliant for his love! No, not while it might be hers to return a conqueror, an equal, with a greater than the Captain of Vlaye in her toils!

She rose to her feet, and tasting triumph in advance, she smiled. With a firm hand, disregarding her woman's remonstrance, she extinguished the lamp. The pale light of early morning stole in through the narrow slits, and then for a brief instant the Abbess held her breath; for the light falling on the Duke's face so sharpened his thin temples and nervous features, showed him so livid and wan and death-like, that she thought him gone. He was not gone, but she acted upon the hint. If he died, where were her schemes and the clever combinations she had been forming? Quickly she drew from the litter a flagon of broth that had been mixed with a cunning cordial; and first moistening his lips with the liquor, by-and-by she contrived to make him swallow some. In the act he opened his eyes, and they were clear and sensible; but it was only to close them again with a sigh, half of satisfaction, half of weakness. Nevertheless, from this time his state was rather one of sleep, the sleep craved by exhausted nature, than of insensibility or fever, and with every hour the forces of his youth and constitution wrought at the task of restoration.

Odette, brooding over him, watched with satisfaction the return of a more healthy colour to his cheeks. Time passed, and presently, while the light was still cold and young, there came an interruption. A murmur of voices, and the jingle of spur and bit, warned her that M. de Vlaye, baffled in his attempt to cut off the fugitives before they found refuge, was returning through the valley. This time, how different were her sensations. She started to her feet and listened, and her face grew hard, but under pressure of suspense, not of desire. Suspense--for if they turned aside, if they entered the deserted chapel and discovered her, her plan--and her very soul was now set on its success--perished still-born.

It was a trying moment, but it passed. Probably Vlaye knew the chapel of old, and knew that the good father had fled from it. At any rate he passed by it, and rode on his way. She heard the trampling of the horses break the singing of the ford; and then she heard only the murmur of the water and the morning hymn of a lark that, startled by the passage of the riders, soared above the glen, and with the sunshine on its throbbing breast, hailed the warm rising of another day.

Whether the lark's song appealed to the softer strain in her, or she began to hate the sordid interior with its grey half-light, the moment she was sure that the riders had gone on their way she opened the door and went out. The sun was peeping into the valley and all nature was astir. The laughing waters of the ford, the steep bluff, darksome by night, now clad in waving tree-tops, the floor of meadow emerald-green, all reflected the brightness of a sky in which not one but half a dozen songsters trilled forth the joy of life. After the gloom, the vigil, the danger of the night, the scene appealed to her strongly; and for a brief time, while she stood gazing on the vale unmarred by human works or human presence, she felt a compunction; such a feeling as in a similar scene invades the breast of the veteran hunter, and whispers to him that to carry death into the haunts of nature is but a sorry task.

A feeling as quickly suppressed in the one case as in the other. A few minutes later the Abbess appeared in the doorway, and beckoned to the woman to join her outside.