Chapter XXXII

To die. That was the sentence, awaiting only confirmation from Tallard to be at once carried into effect. To die--though, because he had once been that which his judges were now, because the "one touch of nature" had made these French soldiers and that English soldier kin; because, too, his quiet, manly bearing, his restraint from all plea for mercy, had touched the hearts of those who sentenced him--not by the rope, but by the hands of soldiers. Not to be hanged, as Francbois and Stuven were to be, but to be shot as he stood upright before a platoon of soldiers; his eyes unbandaged, so that he might look them and the death they dealt him as straight in the face as he had often before looked the enemy and death.

Also, it may be, the hearts of those judges had been softened to this extent by the avowal of his love for the stately, beautiful woman whom some of them--De Guise, De Violaine, D'Aubignay--had seen; whom these, at least, had heard cry "I love him, I love him, I love him!" Remembering that cry of Sylvia's, remembering how in that moment, so fraught with evil to both their destinies, the girl had cast aside all sense of mock diffidence, and how nobly she had avowed her love while recognising that, in doing so, no reproach of want of reserve could come anigh her, De Violaine, as he signed the finding of the Court over which he had presided, muttered to himself:

"To have heard Radegonde thus proclaim her love for me would have caused this sentence to fall harmless. Harmless! Nay, rather, welcome."

While, as for De Guise, duke and peer of France though he might be, with, in his veins, the old illustrious blood of Lorraine and Burgundy--what would he not have given to hear one woman utter that cry on his behalf from the depths of her heart? He who might, doubtless, obtain such avowals from many a nobly born woman hovering round the garish, bizarre Court of the great King, yet would, in doing so, scarce be able to bring himself to believe in the truth of even one of them.

Some days had passed since Bevill had heard his doom pronounced by De Violaine in a voice full of emotion; days in which he had stood, sometimes for hours together, at the window of the great cell, which was in truth a room, gazing across the town. Across the town, since the citadel was built on the brow of a hill that overhung it, to where, perhaps, he dreamt that, even at the last moment, succour might be expected to come. For though he did not know that the Comtesse de Valorme and Sylvia had by now contrived to escape out of Liége, he knew that this was the direction in which Marlborough must be; that, if there was any hope to be looked for, it was thence it must arrive. Yet he knew, too, that, if it came, also must it come swiftly.

"De Violaine said," he had told himself a hundred times, "that the finding of the Court would be sent at once to the Marshal Tallard for his approval. Ah, well! the time will not be long. With Marlborough as near as he must be by now, Tallard cannot be far away. Whispers filter even through these prison walls; the soldiers amongst whom I am allowed to walk below, and to get the air, are gloomy and depressed. Also, I have caught ere now the name of Venloo on their lips. If Venloo has fallen, then Liége will be the next. It will be its turn. But mine!" Bevill would add, with almost the shadow of a smile upon his face, "will my turn come first?"

"And she, my sweet, my love," he would continue. "What of her? Where is she, what is she doing? Yet why ask, why ponder? She is dreaming, musing, thinking of me now, I know; pitying my fate--it may be endeavouring in some way to avert it. Ah! Sylvia, Sylvia, if ere I go from out this world we might stand face to face again; if I might look once more into those fond, pure eyes, and read therein the love that I must part with, leave behind, death would not seem so bitter and parting be lighter sorrow than I deem it now."

Yet even as he spoke he chided himself for his consideration of himself alone; for thinking only of the love that he, going out into the darkness, must leave behind, not of the one left behind in a deeper, because a living, darkness.

As thus he mused one morning by the spot at the window at which he always stood while these, or similar, reflections occupied his mind, he heard the great bunch of keys in the possession of one of the soldier-gaolers rattling outside, and a moment later heard his cell being unlocked. Knowing that this was not the time for the man to visit him, either to bring food or to take him forth to walk in the courtyard of the citadel, he wondered who might be coming, and, with a leap at his heart, a quick bound of hope, wondered also if it were she who might have obtained admission to him.

A moment later De Violaine entered the room, and again Bevill's heart leapt within him, since he could suppose that this visit must bode but one thing, the announcement of the hour fixed for his execution. Wherefore he murmured to himself:

"Be brave. Fear naught. Remember 'tis but a dozen bullets. What are they to one who has faced thousands?"

If, however, the Governor of the citadel had come with any such intention as that which Bevill supposed, he at least did not declare it at once. Instead, he asked his prisoner if, so far as might be, he had been well attended and treated well.

"I have no complaint to urge," Bevill replied, "even if one placed as I am might venture to do so." Then, bracing himself to that which was nearest to, was never out of, his heart, he said: "Yet, monsieur, I may, perhaps, ask of you a question I might scarce put to those who have me in their charge." Then, seeing that De Violaine showed no signs of dissent, he continued: "I would fain know how it is with her--the woman whose affianced husband I am, and shall be while life remains. Also, if all is well with that noble lady the Comtesse de Valorme."

"I have seen neither of them since your appearance before the Court of Inquiry."

"Yet you were the friend of one of them at least--of Madame la Comtesse."

"Yes, of Madame la Comtesse--once."

"If--if--" Bevill said, while observing the hesitation in the other's words, the pause before that last word "once"--"if my doom is not close at hand, if still there remains even one day, some few hours, to me of life in this world, I would fain crave a boon at your hands, make one request. Ah! if it might be granted it would make my parting with life easier; it may be she would better be able to bear our eternal separation."

"What is it you desire?" De Violaine asked in a low voice, his eyes fixed on the other.

"To see her once again. To bid her one last farewell, to hold her in my arms for the first and last time. You know, you must know, that our love grew from out this attempt for which I am now to suffer; that, even as the knowledge came to both our hearts that the love was there, so, too, the parting, the end was at hand. Ah! if to you the love for a woman has ever come, if it has ever so fortuned that you should love and lose----"

"It is impossible!" De Violaine interrupted, his voice at war with his features. For, though there seemed to be a harshness in the former, there were tears in the latter. And Bevill, hearing the harshness even as he saw the tears, was amazed--staggered, too, as he showed while repeating the word "Impossible."

"Ay. They are not here. Not in Liége. They have left--evaded--the city."

"Left! Gone!"

"Yes. Doubtless you of all others best know whither."

"I know nothing."

"You knew where they would go when you sought to accompany them. You can have little doubt where they are gone without you."

To say now that he did not know, that he could not conceive which way those two women had for certain directed their steps would, Bevill recognised, be but to add one more equivocation, one more evasion of the absolute truth, to those he had been obliged to perpetrate in his desire to escape with Sylvia from Liége. But now--and if he could welcome the perilous position in which he stood he was almost brought to do so by De Violaine's last utterance--equivocations, evasions, were no longer necessary. Henceforth, since he had failed and Sylvia had escaped from Liége, and also was undoubtedly either with the English or some portion of the Allies, he need never again utter one word that was not absolutely a true one. He had failed in that which he had undertaken, yet, he thanked God, that failure mattered not. Out of it had at least come the escape of her he loved.

He stood, therefore, before De Violaine neither asserting nor denying the last words of the other; while that other, observing the calm frankness of his manner, thought that, should there be any future before this man, should he and the woman he loved ever come by any chance together, how proud, how happy in her possession of him, should that woman be.

A moment later he said, perhaps as though desirous of answering his own suggestion, perhaps of showing his prisoner that he, too, was under no doubt of where Sylvia and her friend--the one a woman the prisoner loved, the other the woman he loved--were.

"Doubtless," he said, "they are not very far. Venloo has fallen," and De Violaine sighed as he told of one more defeat to his country.

"To Marlborough!"

"To the Allies at least. Marlborough draws near. Yet Liége may not fall so easy a prey to him as other of these towns and cities have done. If Tallard returns from the Rhine, if Boufflers but succours us--ah! England cannot win for ever!"

"The time is almost past," Bevill said now, and even as his words fell from him the noble heart of De Violaine, the heart of the man who held this other in his grasp, was full of pity and compassion; "the time is almost past when it matters for me whether Marlborough or Tallard reaches Liége first, whether England or France wins at last. My day is almost done. But to go leaving her behind, unmarried yet widowed, since no other man will ever win the love she gave to me; to leave her to a long life cheerless and blank! Ah! ah!" he murmured, breaking off, "I dare not, must not think of that," while, his manly stoicism giving way, he turned his back on the other so that he should not see his face, and moved towards the deep embrasure of the window.

As he did so De Violaine, observing Bevill's emotion, his poignant grief, stood for a moment looking at him. Then, some feeling stronger than a soldier's duty, a soldier's necessary harshness towards a prisoner, an enemy, one taken as Bevill had been taken, under a false name and bearing false papers, stirred him deeply. They were no longer, he felt, captor and captive, French soldier or English, but man and man. Advancing towards the embrasure, yet hesitating ere he did so, De Violaine placed his hand on Bevill's sleeve.

"Be cheered," he said, impelled to do that which his humanity, in contradistinction to his duty, prompted him towards. "Be cheered. Until either De Boufflers or Tallard comes, the warrant for your--your--for the end--cannot be made. The finding of the Court cannot be carried out. And there is another chance, a hope for you. At Nimeguen the English hold a prisoner of our side who is to suffer for doing that which you have done."

"Ah! if they should spare him."

"If Marlborough has not signed his warrant, and almost I doubt it, seeing that day by day he places a greater distance between him and that city, there is a possibility of an exchange; while until Tallard returns here he cannot sign. No messenger from us can reach him now, since, Heaven help us! an iron ring is round us. Also, it may be, Tallard cannot fight his way here. Even though the worst befalls you, your fate is not yet."

"But still prolonged, still in the balance! Ah! if she were here," Bevill said again.

"She is not. She and Ra--Madame de Valorme--have taken their own way--have placed leagues between them and this place. If she were here, she should see you."

After which, as though feeling that he had said more than became the Governor of this fortress, and of others in the city, who held in his hands a prisoner belonging to the enemy, De Violaine went towards the door. Arrived at it, however, he paused, and looked back while saying:

"Whatever faults you have committed against France, there was not one of those who judged you a week ago who did not sympathise with, nay pity, you. You heard the noble reason De Guise gave for not signing; the reason I gave for signing. And of the others--some of them worn veterans who have crossed swords with those of England scores of times--all acquitted you in their hearts, even while, in duty, condemning you. Tallard will be no harder than they, provided ever that Marlborough has himself been merciful to De Cabrieres, the prisoner whose fault is as yours."

"All sympathised with, all pitied me," Bevill said to himself when De Violaine was gone. "Even though they condemned me as they did so. Ah! well, I must bear my lot whate'er befall. I knew the chances and faced them ere I left England; they have gone against me--let me face that, too."

"Yet," he continued to muse, "'twas strange that the one from whom the Comtesse de Valorme feared the worst might come--De Guise--should have been the only one who refused to sign my condemnation."

But now, as ever, his thoughts wandered from any fate, good or bad, that hovered over him to what she, his love, was doing, to where she might be. And in those thoughts there was always one surety strong and triumphant over all the rest. The thought, the certainty, that his image was never absent from her heart, the confidence that, since she had escaped out of Liége, the escape had only been made with a view to endeavouring to obtain succour for him.

Though whether that endeavour, wild, almost hopeless as it must be, could meet with success was more than he dared dream of.

"I am in God's hand," he murmured. "In God alone I must put my trust."