Chapter XI

An hour later they had passed through the lines of circumvallation thrown up by the French around Liége to prevent any attack from the Allies; and through the earthworks bristling with cannon and culverin. Also they had, since they were now arrived here, passed the first inspection to which they must submit and the only one to which they would be submitted until they were at the gates of the city itself.

As the carriage of the Comtesse de Valorme had approached the opening left in those earthworks, the coachman being guided to it by a track which ran between innumerable grenades piled up in triangular heaps and numbers of tethered chargers as well as various other signs of preparation to resist attack, Bevill, looking down at his companion, saw that she was very white, and that her face, usually so calm and impassive, gave signs of much internal agitation.

"You do not fear, madame?" he asked, more with a view to calming her if necessary than, as a question.

"No," she replied, "I do not fear. My days for fear, for personal fear, are passed. I have suffered enough. But I am in dread for you."

"Dread nothing on my behalf, I beseech you," Bevill said. "I have a presentiment that that which I seek to do will be accomplished."

"I pray that it may be so. Yet--yet--I bear a name that stands not well in the eyes of Louis, and worse, doubly worse, in the eyes of the woman who rules him--the woman, De Maintenon. If the name of Valorme is known here to any in command--the name of Valorme, the heretic, the _reformée_, the _affectée_," she repeated bitterly, "it may go hard with us. I should not have bidden you to pass under the garb of a kinsman of mine. It would be best for you not to do so----"

But it was too late. Ere the Comtesse could finish the sentence, from behind a number of superb horses tethered together there rang out the words, "Halt, there!" and a moment later three officers and a trooper came forward, all of whose splendid dress showed that they were of the Mousquetaires Noirs.[4] Their blue riding coats were covered with gold and silver lace; on their breasts were crosses of silver emitting flames of gold, above each of which were stamped the _fleur-de-lis_; while the whole was passemented with more lace. Near where the horses stood, the banner of their regiment blew out to the warm afternoon breeze; close by waved also the guidon of the Mousquetaires, with its romantic legend, or motto, on it, "Mon Dieu, mon Roi, ma Dame."

"It is an officer's guard," Bevill murmured to the Comtesse.

"And of the Mousquetaires," she whispered back. "'Tis very well you are not Captain le Blond any longer."

Seeing that a lady was seated in the great coach, one of the mousquetaires advanced, hat in hand, towards the window, while apologising profusely to Bevill for causing him to back his horse so that he might speak to his companion. Then, in a tone as courtly as though he and the Comtesse stood in the salons of Versailles, he said:

"Madame voyages in troublous times. Yet, alas! 'tis war time. As officer of the exterior guard may I venture to ask for the papers of madame?"

Out of his politeness and innate good-breeding the mousquetaire but glanced at the papers handed to him, while muttering "La Comtesse de Valorme"; then, with a bow, he returned them to their owner, saying, "Madame is at liberty to pass. I regret to have been forced to cause her trouble," after which, turning politely to Bevill, he now asked for his papers.

"_Là! là!!_" he said, "Monsieur is from our embassy in London," while adding, with a smile, "Monsieur may meet with some of the English ere long again. They gather fast. We shall hope soon to give them a courteous reception."

"Without doubt, monsieur."

"Were monsieur and his brother officials well treated in London?"

"He has nothing to complain of, monsieur. Every facility was given for leaving England peaceably."

"I rejoice to hear it. Madame la Comtesse, I salute you," again standing bareheaded before the lady. "Monsieur, I am your servitor. _En route_," to Joseph on the box; but suddenly he said, "Yet stay an instant. Jacques, _mon camarade_," to the trooper close by (the troopers of the Mousquetaires were all gentlemen and often noblemen, having servants to attend to their horses and accoutrements), "accompany the carriage to the city walls."

"Yes, Monsieur le Duc," the man answered, saluting.

"Thereby," the former continued, "shall madame's way be made easier for her. The ground is a little encumbered," he said, turning to the Comtesse.

After which, and when more politenesses had been exchanged, the coach proceeded on its way towards the city.

A few moments later Madame de Valorme spoke to the trooper who had vaulted on to a horse on receiving his officer's orders, and was now riding on the other side of the carriage from that on which Bevill rode, and asked:

"Who is that officer who was so gallant to me? He is a very perfect gentleman."

"He is, madame, the Duc de Guise."

"Ah!" she repeated, "the Duc de Guise!" while Bevill, who had glanced into the carriage as she asked the question, saw that her face was clouded as though by a sudden pain.

Still a few moments more and the trooper had moved his horse to the front of those that were drawing the carriage, evidently with the intention of piloting Joseph through the enormous mass of arms and weapons of all kinds, gun carriages, and other materials of war with which the track through the camp was encumbered. So that, seeing they were free from being overheard by the man, Bevill said:

"That name caused madame some unpleasant thoughts. It is a great one, though not now prominent."

"It is the name of the greatest persecutors we have ever known. The bearer of it is the descendant of those who splashed the walls of Paris and dyed the waters of the Seine with our ancestors' blood. Can I--I--do aught but shudder at learning it, at being beholden to a de Guise for courtesy?"

"Those days are passed----"

"Passed Are they passed? Does not their memory linger even now. Is not the reflex of their wicked deeds cast on these present days? Oh, sir, you do not know, you cannot know what is doing even now in France, in the South. Ah, God! it seems to me as though the fact of this man, this inheritor of all the wickedness and cruelty of his forerunners, having been the first I encounter here, is an omen that I shall never succeed in the task I have set myself."

"Madame, think not so, I implore you. The Ducs de Guise are harmless now. Their power is gone, their teeth are broken. The ancient nobility can do nothing against the people without the King's command. He rules, directs all."

"Therein is the fear, the danger. Under that woman--faugh!--De Maintenon, he does indeed rule and direct all, but he directs all for cruelty. Who has filled the prisons, the galleys--ah! the galleys," the Comtesse repeated with an exclamation of such pain that Bevill wondered if, in any of those hideous receptacles of suffering and misery in which countless Protestants were now suffering, there might be, in their midst, some person or persons dear to her. "Who has filled those, who has strung thousands of innocent men and women upon the gallows, to the lamps of their own villages, on the trees of their own orchards, but Louis the King and those, his nobles, under him? Ah! ah!" she went on, "do you know what, in the old days, far, far off, long before they slaughtered us on St. Bartholomew's eve, the motto of the Guises was? It was one word only--'Kill.' And killing is in their blood. It cannot be eradicated; it is there. Is it strange that, in encountering this man. I fear? I who go to save. I who pray nightly, hourly, that my mission may help to save, to prevent, further slaughter?" And, as the Comtesse de Valorme finished speaking, she threw herself back upon the cushions of her carriage and buried her face in her hands.

"I pray God, madame," Bevill said, he being deeply moved at her words, "that the mission you are upon may bear good fruit. It is partly for that, also, that we, the English, are banded against France and Spain. Perhaps it may be that we desire not more to lower the pride, to break down the power of this King, than to prevent those whom he rules over from cruelly persecuting those of our faith."

Now, however, this discourse between them had to cease. They were at the gates of Liége, outside the suburb of St. Walburg, which, although not the nearest point of admission, was the one to which those who were permitted to enter the city at all were forced to go.

Contrary, however, to any fears which either the Comtesse de Valorme or Bevill might have felt as to their admission being made difficult, they found that it was extremely easy. The fact of the trooper who accompanied them having been sent by the Duc de Guise as an escort brought about this state of things, since it was almost unheard of that, whatever might be the detachment on guard at the exterior lines, or whosoever might be the travellers, such thought for their convenience should be exercised.

Consequently, the slightest examination of the papers of each was made by those at this barrier, and a moment later the barrier was passed.

Bevill had accomplished part of the task he had set out to perform. He was in the city where dwelt the woman whom he had come from England to help and assist.

"I am in Liége," he whispered to himself. "Yet--yet the difficulties do but now begin. May Heaven prosper me as it has done hitherto!"

They progressed now through the long, narrow streets that recalled, as every street in the Netherlands recalled, and still in many cases recalls, the ancient rule of Spaniard and Austrian. And thus, continuing on their way, crossing old bridges over the canals and watercourses that run from out the Meuse, observing the burghers coming forth from the service of many of their churches, and remarking the rich shops and warehouses full of silks and brocades from the far-off Indies and Java, they came at last to one of the long quays that border the river.

"And so," the Comtesse de Valorme said, as now the coach drew up at a great solid house in a small square off this quay, "we part for the present. Yet, monsieur, we are more than acquaintances now, more than mere fellow-travellers----"

"Friends, if madame will permit."

"Ay, friends! Therefore will you not tell me what is your rightful name? It may be well that I should know it."

"My name is Bevill Bracton, madame. I never thought when I set out upon this journey that I should tell it to any but her whom I seek; yet to you I now do so willingly."

"You may tell it in all confidence, and you know you may. 'Bevill Bracton,'" she repeated to herself. "I shall not forget. 'Bevill Bracton,'" she said again, as though desirous of impressing it thoroughly on her memory. "But here," she went on, "you are to be known always as André de Belleville!"

"It would be best, madame. I shall be known to few and, if fortune serves, shall not be long here."

For a moment the Comtesse let her clear eyes rest on the young man, as though she were meditating somewhat deeply; then suddenly, though hesitating somewhat in her speech as she did so, she said:

"And this young countrywoman of yours--this lady whom you have come so far to assist? May I not know her name also? It is no curiosity that prompts me----"

"Madame," Bevill replied, "our confidence is well established, our friendship made. The lady's name is Sylvia Thorne."

"Sylvia Thorne! Sylvia Thorne! Why, I know her. We, too, are friends, and firm ones."

"You know her? You are friends?"

"In very truth. I have been here more than once before as guest of my kinsman. And--yes, Sylvia Thorne and I are friends. Ah! what a double passport would this have been to my friendship had I but known that you were on your way to sweet Sylvia."

"She is, then, sweet? Doubtless gentle also?"

"She is both. In Sylvia Thorne, whom you say you knew once as a little child, you will find a sweet, good woman. Grave, perhaps, beyond her years--she has suffered much by the loss of both her parents--and too calm and unruffled, it may be, for one whose footsteps have but now passed over the threshold of womanhood. Sincere with those who win her regard, contemptuous of those unworthy of the good opinion of any honest man or woman; while yet placed here as she is, she possesses one gift she had far better be without."

"And that is, madame?"

"The gift of beauty; for she is beautiful, but seems to know it not. And it may be that her beauty is too cold and stately; it has not the brightness, the joyousness, that should accompany the beauty of youth. But you will see her ere long. Observe, those whom I come to dwell with for a time are at the door. Farewell--nay, _au revoir_ only, since you will not enter. _Adieu_ till next we meet. You know the house now; the door stands ever open to those who are my friends."