Bardelys the Magnificent
by Rafael Sabatini · English · Gutenberg #2389 · 438,361 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Bardelys the Magnificent
Author: Rafael Sabatini
Release date: November 1, 2000 [eBook #2389]
Most recently updated: March 10, 2018
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2389
Credits: Produced by Polly Stratton, and David Widger
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BARDELYS THE MAGNIFICENT ***
Produced by Polly Stratton
BARDELYS THE MAGNIFICENT
Being an Account of the Strange Wooing pursued by the Sieur Marcel de
Saint-Pol; Marquis of Bardelys, and of the things that in the course of
it befell him in Languedoc, in the year of the Rebellion
By Rafael Sabatini
CONTENTS
I. THE WAGER
II. THE KING'S WISHES
III. RENT: DE LESPERON
IV. A MAID IN THE MOONLIGHT
V. THE VICOMTE DE LAVEDAN
VI. IN CONVALESCENCE
VII. THE HOSTILITY OF SAINT-EUSTACHE
VIII. THE PORTRAIT
IX. A NIGHT ALARM
X. THE RISEN DEAD
XI. THE KING'S COMMISSIONER
XII. THE TRIBUNAL OF TOULOUSE
XIII. THE ELEVENTH HOUR
XIV. EAVESDROPPING
XV. MONSIEUR DE CHATELLERAULT IS ANGRY
XVI. SWORDS
XVII. THE BABBLING OF GANYMEDE
XVIII. SAINT-EUSTACHE IS OBSTINATE XIX. THE FLINT AND THE STEEL
XX. THE “BRAVI” AT BLAGNAC
XXI. LOUIS THE JUST
XXII. WE UNSADDLE
BARDELYS THE MAGNIFICENT
CHAPTER I. THE WAGER
“Speak of the Devil,” whispered La Fosse in my ear, and, moved by the
words and by the significance of his glance, I turned in my chair.
The door had opened, and under the lintel stood the thick-set figure
of the Comte de Chatellerault. Before him a lacquey in my escutcheoned
livery of red-and-gold was receiving, with back obsequiously bent, his
hat and cloak.
A sudden hush fell upon the assembly where a moment ago this very man
had been the subject of our talk, and silenced were the wits that but
an instant since had been making free with his name and turning the
Languedoc courtship--from which he was newly returned with the shame of
defeat--into a subject for heartless mockery and jest. Surprise was
in the air for we had heard that Chatellerault was crushed by his
ill-fortune in the lists of Cupid, and we had not looked to see him
joining so soon a board at which--or so at least I boasted--mirth
presided.
And so for a little space the Count stood pausing on my threshold,
whilst we craned our necks to contemplate him as though he had been
an object for inquisitive inspection. Then a smothered laugh from the
brainless La Fosse seemed to break the spell. I frowned. It was a climax
of discourtesy whose impression I must at all costs efface.
I leapt to my feet, with a suddenness that sent my chair gliding a full
half-yard along the glimmering parquet of the floor, and in two strides
I had reached the Count and put forth my hand to bid him welcome. He
took it with a leisureliness that argued sorrow. He advanced into the
full blaze of the candlelight, and fetched a dismal sigh from the depths
of his portly bulk.
“You are surprised to see me, Monsieur le Marquis,” said he, and his
tone seemed to convey an apology for his coming--for his very existence
almost.
Now Nature had made my Lord of Chatellerault as proud and arrogant as
Lucifer--some resemblance to which illustrious personage his downtrodden
retainers were said to detect in the lineaments of his swarthy face.
Environment had added to that store of insolence wherewith Nature had
equipped him, and the King's favour--in which he was my rival--had gone
yet further to mould the peacock attributes of his vain soul. So that
this wondrous humble tone of his gave me pause; for to me it seemed that
not even a courtship gone awry could account for it in such a man.
“I had not thought to find so many here,” said he. And his next
words contained the cause of his dejected air. “The King, Monsieur de
Bardelys, has refused to see me; and when the sun is gone, we lesser
bodies of the courtly firmament must needs turn for light and comfort to
the moon.” And he made me a sweeping bow.
“Meaning that I rule the night?” quoth I, and laughed. “The figure is
more playful than exact, for whilst the moon is cold and cheerless, me
you shall find ever warm and cordial. I could have wished, Monsieur de
Chatellerault, that your gracing my board were due to a circumstance
less untoward than His Majesty's displeasure.”
“It is not for nothing that they call you the Magnificent,” he answered,
with a fresh bow, insensible to the sting in the tail of my honeyed
words.
I laughed, and, setting compliments to rest with that, I led him to the
table.
“Ganymede, a place here for Monsieur le Comte. Gilles, Antoine, see to
Monsieur de Chatellerault. Basile, wine for Monsieur le Comte. Bestir
there!”
In a moment he was become the centre of a very turmoil of attention. My
lacqueys flitted about him buzzing and insistent as bees about a rose.
Would Monsieur taste of this capon a la casserole, or of this truffled
peacock? Would a slice of this juicy ham a l'anglaise tempt Monsieur
le Comte, or would he give himself the pain of trying this turkey aux
olives? Here was a salad whose secret Monsieur le Marquis's cook had
learnt in Italy, and here a vol-au-vent that was invented by Quelon
himself.
Basile urged his wines upon him, accompanied by a page who bore a silver
tray laden with beakers and Wagons. Would Monsieur le Comte take white
Armagnac or red Anjou? This was a Burgundy of which Monsieur le Marquis
thought highly, and this a delicate Lombardy wine that His Majesty had
oft commended. Or perhaps Monsieur de Chatellerault would prefer to
taste the last vintage of Bardelys?
And so they plagued him and bewildered him until his choice was made;
and even then a couple of them held themselves in readiness behind his
chair to forestall his slightest want. Indeed, had he been the very
King himself, no greater honour could we have shown him at the Hotel de
Bardelys.
But the restraint that his coming had brought with it hung still upon
the company, for Chatellerault was little loved, and his presence there
was much as that of the skull at an Egyptian banquet.
For of all these fair-weather friends that sat about my table--amongst
whom there were few that had not felt his power--I feared there might
be scarcely one would have the grace to dissemble his contempt of the
fallen favourite. That he was fallen, as much his words as what already
we had known, had told us.
Yet in my house I would strive that he should have no foretaste of that
coldness that to-morrow all Paris would be showing him, and to this
end I played the host with all the graciousness that role may bear, and
overwhelmed him with my cordiality, whilst to thaw all iciness from the
bearing of my other guests, I set the wines to flow more freely still.
My dignity would permit no less of me, else would it have seemed that
I rejoiced in a rival's downfall and took satisfaction from the
circumstance that his disfavour with the King was like to result in my
own further exaltation.
My efforts were not wasted. Slowly the mellowing influence of the grape
pronounced itself. To this influence I added that of such wit as Heaven
has graced me with, and by a word here and another there I set myself to
lash their mood back into the joviality out of which his coming had for
the moment driven it.
And so, presently, Good-Humour spread her mantle over us anew, and
quip and jest and laughter decked our speech, until the noise of our
merry-making drifting out through the open windows must have been borne
upon the breeze of that August night down the rue Saint-Dominique,
across the rue de l'Enfer, to the very ears perhaps of those within the
Luxembourg, telling them that Bardelys and his friends kept another of
those revels which were become a byword in Paris, and had contributed
not a little to the sobriquet of “Magnificent” which men gave me.
But, later, as the toasts grew wild and were pledged less for the sake
of the toasted than for that of the wine itself, wits grew more barbed
and less restrained by caution; recklessness hung a moment, like a bird
of prey, above us, then swooped abruptly down in the words of that fool
La Fosse.
“Messieurs,” he lisped, with that fatuousness he affected, and with his
eye fixed coldly upon Chatellerault, “I have a toast for you.” He rose
carefully to his feet--he had arrived at that condition in which to move
with care is of the first importance. He shifted his eye from the Count
to his glass, which stood half empty. He signed to a lacquey to fill
it. “To the brim, gentlemen,” he commanded. Then, in the silence that
ensued, he attempted to stand with one foot on the ground and one on
his chair; but encountering difficulties of balance, he remained
upright--safer if less picturesque.
“Messieurs, I give you the most peerless, the most beautiful, the most
difficult and cold lady in all France. I drink to those her thousand
graces, of which Fame has told us, and to that greatest and most vexing
charm of all--her cold indifference to man. I pledge you, too, the swain
whose good fortune it maybe to play Endymion to this Diana.
“It will need,” pursued La Fosse, who dealt much in mythology and
classic lore--“it will need an Adonis in beauty, a Mars in valour, an
Apollo in song, and a very Eros in love to accomplish it. And I fear
me,” he hiccoughed, “that it will go unaccomplished, since the one man
in all France on whom we have based our hopes has failed. Gentlemen, to
your feet! I give you the matchless Roxalanne de Lavedan!”
Such amusement as I felt was tempered by apprehension. I shot a swift
glance at Chatellerault to mark how he took this pleasantry and this
pledging of the lady whom the King had sent him to woo, but whom he
had failed to win. He had risen with the others at La Fosse's bidding,
either unsuspicious or else deeming suspicion too flimsy a thing by
which to steer conduct. Yet at the mention of her name a scowl darkened
his ponderous countenance. He set down his glass with such sudden force
that its slender stem was snapped and a red stream of wine streaked the
white tablecloth and spread around a silver flowerbowl. The sight of
that stain recalled him to himself and to the manners he had allowed
himself for a moment to forget.
“Bardelys, a thousand apologies for my clumsiness,” he muttered.
“Spilt wine,” I laughed, “is a good omen.”
And for once I accepted that belief, since but for the shedding of that
wine and its sudden effect upon him, it is likely we had witnessed
a shedding of blood. Thus, was the ill-timed pleasantry of my
feather-brained La Fosse tided over in comparative safety. But the topic
being raised was not so easily abandoned. Mademoiselle de Lavedan grew
to be openly discussed, and even the Count's courtship of her came to be
hinted at, at first vaguely, then pointedly, with a lack of delicacy
for which I can but blame the wine with which these gentlemen had made
a salad of their senses. In growing alarm I watched the Count. But he
showed no further sign of irritation. He sat and listened as though no
jot concerned. There were moments when he even smiled at some lively
sally, and at last he went so far as to join in that merry combat of
wits, and defend himself from their attacks, which were made with a
good-humour that but thinly veiled the dislike he was held in and the
satisfaction that was culled from his late discomfiture.
For a while I hung back and took no share in the banter that was toward.
But in the end--lured perhaps by the spirit in which I have shown that
Chatellerault accepted it, and lulled by the wine which in common with
my guests I may have abused--I came to utter words but for which this
story never had been written.
“Chatellerault,” I laughed, “abandon these defensive subterfuges;
confess that you are but uttering excuses, and acknowledge that you have
conducted this affair with a clumsiness unpardonable in one equipped
with your advantages of courtly rearing.”
A flush overspread his face, the first sign of anger since he had
spilled his wine.
“Your successes, Bardelys, render you vain, and of vanity is presumption
born,” he replied contemptuously.
“See!” I cried, appealing to the company. “Observe how he seeks to evade
replying! Nay, but you shall confess your clumsiness.”
“A clumsiness,” murmured La Fosse drowsily, “as signal as that which
attended Pan's wooing of the Queen of Lydia.”
“I have no clumsiness to confess,” he answered hotly, raising his voice.
“It is a fine thing to sit here in Paris, among the languid, dull, and
nerveless beauties of the Court, whose favours are easily won because
they look on dalliance as the best pastime offered them, and are eager
for such opportunities of it as you fleering coxcombs will afford them.
But this Mademoiselle de Lavedan is of a vastly different mettle. She
is a woman; not a doll. She is flesh and blood; not sawdust, powder, and
vermilion. She has a heart and a will; not a spirit corrupted by vanity
and licence.”
La Fosse burst into a laugh.
“Hark! O, hark!” he cried, “to the apostle of the chaste!”
“Saint Gris!” exclaimed another. “This good Chatellerault has lost both
heart and head to her.”
Chatellerault glanced at the speaker with an eye in which anger
smouldered.
“You have said it,” I agreed. “He has fallen her victim, and so his
vanity translates her into a compound of perfections. Does such a woman
as you have described exist, Comte? Bah! In a lover's mind, perhaps, or
in the pages of some crack-brained poet's fancies; but nowhere else in
this dull world of ours.”
He made a gesture of impatience.
“You have been clumsy, Chatellerault,” I insisted.
“You have lacked address. The woman does not live that is not to be won
by any man who sets his mind to do it, if only he be of her station and
have the means to maintain her in it or raise her to a better. A woman's
love, sir, is a tree whose root is vanity. Your attentions flatter her,
and predispose her to capitulate. Then, if you but wisely choose your
time to deliver the attack, and do so with the necessary adroitness--nor
is overmuch demanded--the battle is won with ease, and she surrenders.
Believe me, Chatellerault, I am a younger man than you by full five
years, yet in experience I am a generation older, and I talk of what I
know.”
He sneered heavily. “If to have begun your career of dalliance at the
age of eighteen with an amour that resulted in a scandal be your title
to experience, I agree,” said he. “But for the rest, Bardelys, for all
your fine talk of conquering women, believe me when I tell you that in
all your life you have never met a woman, for I deny the claim of these
Court creatures to that title. If you would know a woman, go to Lavedan,
Monsieur le Marquis. If you would have your army of amorous wiles suffer
a defeat at last, go employ it against the citadel of Roxalanne de
Lavedan's heart. If you would be humbled in your pride, betake yourself
to Lavedan.”
“A challenge!” roared a dozen voices. “A challenge, Bardelys!”
“Mais voyons,” I deprecated, with a laugh, “would you have me journey
into Languedoc and play at wooing this embodiment of all the marvels
of womanhood for the sake of making good my argument? Of your charity,
gentlemen, insist no further.”
“The never-failing excuse of the boaster,” sneered Chatellerault, “when
desired to make good his boast.”
“Monsieur conceives that I have made a boast?” quoth I, keeping my
temper.
“Your words suggested one--else I do not know the meaning of words. They
suggested that where I have failed you could succeed, if you had a mind
to try. I have challenged you, Bardelys. I challenge you again. Go
about this wooing as you will; dazzle the lady with your wealth and your
magnificence, with your servants, your horses, your equipages; and all
the splendours you can command; yet I make bold to say that not a year
of your scented attentions and most insidious wiles will bear you fruit.
Are you sufficiently challenged?”
“But this is rank frenzy!” I protested. “Why should I undertake this
thing?”
“To prove me wrong,” he taunted me. “To prove me clumsy. Come, Bardelys,
what of your spirit?”
“I confess I would do much to afford you the proof you ask. But to take
a wife! Pardi! That is much indeed!”
“Bah!” he sneered. “You do well to draw back You are wise to avoid
discomfiture. This lady is not for you. When she is won, it will be by
some bold and gallant gentleman, and by no mincing squire of dames,
no courtly coxcomb, no fop of the Luxembourg, be his experiences of
dalliance never so vast.”
“Po' Cap de Dieu!” growled Cazalet, who was a Gascon captain in the
Guards, and who swore strange, southern oaths. “Up, Bardelys! Afoot!
Prove your boldness and your gallantry, or be forever shamed; a squire
of dames, a courtly coxcomb, a fop of the Luxembourg! Mordemondieu! I
have given a man a bellyful of steel for the half of those titles!”
I heeded him little, and as little the other noisy babblers, who now on
their feet--those that could stand--were spurring me excitedly to accept
the challenge, until from being one of the baiters it seemed that of
a sudden the tables were turned and I was become the baited. I sat in
thought, revolving the business in my mind, and frankly liking it but
little. Doubts of the issue, were I to undertake it, I had none.
My views of the other sex were neither more nor less than my words to
the Count had been calculated to convey. It may be--I know now that it
was that the women I had known fitted Chatellerault's description, and
were not over-difficult to win. Hence, such successes as I had had with
them in such comedies of love as I had been engaged upon had given me a
false impression. But such at least was not my opinion that night. I was
satisfied that Chatellerault talked wildly, and that no such woman lived
as he depicted. Cynical and soured you may account me. Such I know I was
accounted in Paris; a man satiated with all that wealth and youth and
the King's favour could give him; stripped of illusions, of faith and
of zest, the very magnificence--so envied--of my existence affording me
more disgust than satisfaction. Since already I had gauged its shallows.
Is it strange, therefore, that in this challenge flung at me with such
insistence, a business that at first I disliked grew presently to beckon
me with its novelty and its promise of new sensations?
“Is your spirit dead, Monsieur de Bardelys?” Chatellerault was gibing,
when my silence had endured some moments. “Is the cock that lately
crowed so lustily now dumb? Look you, Monsieur le Marquis, you are
accounted here a reckless gamester. Will a wager induce you to this
undertaking?”
I leapt to my feet at that. His derision cut me like a whip. If what I
did was the act of a braggart, yet it almost seems I could do no less
to bolster up my former boasting--or what into boasting they had
translated.
“You'll lay a wager, will you, Chatellerault?” I cried, giving him back
defiance for defiance. A breathless silence fell. “Then have it so.
Listen, gentlemen, that you may be witnesses. I do here pledge my castle
of Bardelys, and my estates in Picardy, with every stick and stone and
blade of grass that stands upon them, that I shall woo and win Roxalanne
de Lavedan to be the Marquise of Bardelys. Does the stake satisfy
you, Monsieur le Comte? You may set all you have against it,” I added
coarsely, “and yet, I swear, the odds will be heavily in your favour.”
I remember it was Mironsac who first found his tongue, and sought even
at that late hour to set restraint upon us and to bring judgment to our
aid.
“Messieurs, messieurs!” he besought us. “In Heaven's name, bethink
you what you do. Bardelys, your wager is a madness. Monsieur de
Chatellerault, you'll not accept it. You'll--”
“Be silent,” I rebuked him, with some asperity. “What has Monsieur de
Chatellerault to say?”
He was staring at the tablecloth and the stain of the wine that he had
spilled when first Mademoiselle de Lavedan's name was mentioned. His
head had been bent so that his long black hair had tumbled forward and
partly veiled his face. At my question he suddenly looked up. The ghost
of a smile hung on his sensuous lips, for all that excitement had paled
his countenance beyond its habit.
“Monsieur le Marquis.” said he rising, “I take your wager, and I pledge
my lands in Normandy against yours of Bardelys. Should you lose, they
will no longer call you the Magnificent; should I lose--I shall be a
beggar. It is a momentous wager, Bardelys, and spells ruin for one of
us.”
“A madness!” groaned Mironsac.
“Mordieux!” swore Cazalet. Whilst La Fosse, who had been the original
cause of all this trouble, vented his excitement in a gibber of imbecile
laughter.
“How long do you give me, Chatellerault?” I asked, as quietly as I
might.
“What time shall you require?”
“I should prefer that you name the limit,” I answered.
He pondered a moment. Then “Will three months suffice you?” he asked.
“If it is not done in three months, I will pay,” said I.
And then Chatellerault did what after all was, I suppose, the only thing
that a gentleman might do under the circumstances. He rose to his feet,
and, bidding the company charge their glasses, he gave them a parting
toast.
“Messieurs, drink with me to Monsieur le Marquis de Bardelys's safe
journey into Languedoc, and to the prospering of his undertaking.”
In answer, a great shout went up from throats that suspense had lately
held in leash. Men leapt on to their chairs, and, holding their glasses
on high, they acclaimed me as thunderously as though I had been the
hero of some noble exploit, instead of the main figure in a somewhat
questionable wager.
“Bardelys!” was the shout with which the house reechoed. “Bardelys!
Bardelys the Magnificent! Vive Bardelys!”
CHAPTER II. THE KING'S WISHES
It was daybreak ere the last of them had left me, for a dozen or so had
lingered to play lansquenet after the others had departed. With those
that remained my wager had soon faded into insignificance, as their
minds became engrossed in the fluctuations of their own fortunes.
I did not play myself; I was not in the mood, and for one night, at
least, of sufficient weight already I thought the game upon which I was
launched.
I was out on the balcony as the first lines of dawn were scoring the
east, and in a moody, thoughtful condition I had riveted my eyes upon
the palace of the Luxembourg, which loomed a black pile against the
lightening sky, when Mironsac came out to join me. A gentle, lovable lad
was Mironsac, not twenty years of age, and with the face and manners of
a woman. That he was attached to me I knew.
“Monsieur le Marquis,” said he softly, “I am desolated at this wager
into which they have forced you.”
“Forced me?” I echoed. “No, no; they did not force me. And yet,” I
reflected, with a sigh, “perhaps they did.”
“I have been thinking, monsieur, that if the King were to hear of it the
evil might be mended.”
“But the King must not hear of it, Armand,” I answered quickly. “Even if
he did, matters would be no better--much worse, possibly.”
“But, monsieur, this thing done in the heat of wine--”
“Is none the less done, Armand,” I concluded. “And I for one do not wish
it undone.”
“But have you no thought for the lady?” he cried.
I laughed at him. “Were I still eighteen, boy, the thought might trouble
me. Had I my illusions, I might imagine that my wife must be some woman
of whom I should be enamoured. As it is, I have grown to the age of
twenty-eight unwed. Marriage becomes desirable. I must think of an heir
to all the wealth of Bardelys. And so I go to Languedoc. If the lady be
but half the saint that fool Chatellerault has painted her, so much the
better for my children; if not, so much the worse. There is the dawn,
Mironsac, and it is time we were abed. Let us drive these plaguy
gamesters home.”
When the last of them had staggered down my steps, and I had bidden a
drowsy lacquey extinguish the candles, I called Ganymede to light me to
bed and aid me to undress. His true name was Rodenard; but my friend
La Fosse, of mythological fancy, had named him Ganymede, after the
cup-bearer of the gods, and the name had clung to him. He was a man of
some forty years of age, born into my father's service, and since become
my intendant, factotum, majordomo, and generalissimo of my regiment of
servants and my establishments both in Paris and at Bardelys.
We had been to the wars together ere I had cut my wisdom teeth, and thus
had he come to love me. There was nothing this invaluable servant could
not do. At baiting or shoeing a horse, at healing a wound, at roasting
a capon, or at mending a doublet, he was alike a master, besides
possessing a score of other accomplishments that do not now occur to me,
which in his campaigning he had acquired. Of late the easy life in
Paris had made him incline to corpulency, and his face was of a pale,
unhealthy fullness.
To-night, as he assisted me to undress, it wore an expression of supreme
woe.
“Monseigneur is going into Languedoc?” he inquired sorrowfully. He
always called me his “seigneur,” as did the other of my servants born at
Bardelys.
“Knave, you have been listening,” said I.
“But, monseigneur,” he explained, “when Monsieur le Comte de
Chatellerault laid his wager--”
“And have I not told you, Ganymede, that when you chance to be among
my friends you should hear nothing but the words addressed to you, see
nothing but the glasses that need replenishing? But, there! We are going
into Languedoc. What of it?”
“They say that war may break out at any moment,” he groaned; “that
Monsieur le Duc de Montmorency is receiving reenforcements from Spain,
and that he intends to uphold the standard of Monsieur and the rights of
the province against the encroachments of His Eminence the Cardinal.”
“So! We are becoming politicians, eh, Ganymede? And how shall all this
concern us? Had you listened more attentively, you had learnt that we go
to Languedoc to seek a wife, and not to concern ourselves with Cardinals
and Dukes. Now let me sleep ere the sun rises.”
On the morrow I attended the levee, and I applied to His Majesty for
leave to absent myself. But upon hearing that it was into Languedoc I
went, he frowned inquiry. Trouble enough was his brother already making
in that province. I explained that I went to seek a wife, and deeming
all subterfuge dangerous, since it might only serve to provoke him when
later he came to learn the lady's name, I told him--withholding yet all
mention of the wager--that I fostered the hope of making Mademoiselle de
Lavedan my marquise.
Deeper came the line between his brows at that, and blacker grew the
scowl. He was not wont to bestow on me such looks as I now met in his
weary eyes, for Louis XIII had much affection for me.
“You know this lady?” he demanded sharply.
“Only by name, Your Majesty.”
At that his brows went up in astonishment.
“Only by name? And you would wed her? But, Marcel, my friend, you are a
rich man one of the richest in France. You cannot be a fortune hunter.”
“Sire,” I answered, “Fame sings loudly the praises of this lady, her
beauty and her virtue--praises that lead me to opine she would make me
an excellent chatelaine. I am come to an age when it is well to wed;
indeed, Your Majesty has often told me so. And it seems to me that all
France does not hold a lady more desirable. Heaven send she will agree
to my suit!”
In that tired way of his that was so pathetic: “Do you love me a little,
Marcel?” he asked.
“Sire,” I exclaimed, wondering whither all this was leading us, “need I
protest it?”
“No,” he answered dryly; “you can prove it. Prove it by abandoning this
Languedoc quest. I have motives--sound motives, motives of political
import. I desire another wedding for Mademoiselle de Lavedan. I wish it
so, Bardelys, and I look to be obeyed.”
For a moment temptation had me by the throat. Here was an unlooked-for
chance to shake from me a business which reflection was already
rendering odious. I had but to call together my friends of yesternight,
and with them the Comte de Chatellerault, and inform them that by the
King was I forbidden to go awooing Roxalanne de Lavedan. So should my
wager be dissolved. And then in a flash I saw how they would sneer
one and all, and how they would think that I had caught avidly at this
opportunity of freeing myself from an undertaking into which a boastful
mood had lured me. The fear of that swept aside my momentary hesitation.
“Sire,” I answered, bending my head contritely, “I am desolated that
my inclinations should run counter to your wishes, but to your wonted
kindness and clemency I must look for forgiveness if these same
inclinations drive me so relentlessly that I may not now turn back.”
He caught me viciously by the arm and looked sharply into my face.
“You defy me, Bardelys?” he asked, in a voice of anger.
“God forbid, Sire!” I answered quickly. “I do but pursue my destiny.”
He took a turn in silence, like a man who is mastering himself before
he will speak. Many an eye, I knew, was upon us, and not a few may have
been marvelling whether already Bardelys were about to share the fate
that yesterday had overtaken his rival Chatellerault. At last he halted
at my side again.
“Marcel,” said he, but though he used that name his voice was harsh, “go
home and ponder what I have said. If you value my favour, if you desire
my love, you will abandon this journey and the suit you contemplate. If,
on the other hand, you persist in going--you need not return. The Court
of France has no room for gentlemen who are but lip-servers, no place
for courtiers who disobey their King.”
That was his last word. He waited for no reply, but swung round on his
heel, and an instant later I beheld him deep in conversation with the
Duke of Saint-Simon. Of such a quality is the love of princes--vain,
capricious, and wilful. Indulge it ever and at any cost, else you
forfeit it.
I turned away with a sigh, for in spite of all his weaknesses and
meannesses I loved this cardinal-ridden king, and would have died for
him had the need occurred, as well he knew. But in this matter--well, I
accounted my honour involved, and there was now no turning back save by
the payment of my wager and the acknowledgment of defeat.
CHAPTER III. RENE DE LESPERON
That very day I set out. For since the King was opposed to the affair,
and knowing the drastic measures by which he was wont to enforce what he
desired, I realized that did I linger he might find a way definitely to
prevent my going.
I travelled in a coach, attended by two lacqueys and a score of
men-at-arms in my own livery, all commanded by Ganymede. My intendant
himself came in another coach with my wardrobe and travelling
necessaries. We were a fine and almost regal cortege as we passed down
the rue de l'Enfer and quitted Paris by the Orleans gate, taking the
road south. So fine a cortege, indeed, that it entered my mind. His
Majesty would come to hear of it, and, knowing my destination, send
after me to bring me back. To evade such a possibility, I ordered
a divergence to be made, and we struck east and into Touraine. At
Pont-le-Duc, near Tours, I had a cousin in the Vicomte d'Amaral, and at
his chateau I arrived on the third day after quitting Paris.
Since that was the last place where they would seek me, if to seek me
they were inclined, I elected to remain my cousin's guest for fifteen
days. And whilst I was there we had news of trouble in the South and
of a rising in Languedoc under the Duc de Montmorency. Thus was it that
when I came to take my leave of Amaral, he, knowing that Languedoc was
my destination, sought ardently to keep me with him until we should
learn that peace and order were restored in the province. But I held the
trouble lightly, and insisted upon going.
Resolutely, then, if by slow stages, we pursued our journey, and came
at last to Montauban. There we lay a night at the Auberge de Navarre,
intending to push on to Lavedan upon the morrow. My father had been on
more than friendly terms with the Vicomte de Lavedan, and upon this I
built my hopes of a cordial welcome and an invitation to delay for a few
days the journey to Toulouse, upon which I should represent myself as
bound.
Thus, then, stood my plans. And they remained unaltered for all that
upon the morrow there were wild rumours in the air of Montauban. There
were tellings of a battle fought the day before at Castelnaudary, of
the defeat of Monsieur's partisans, of the utter rout of Gonzalo de
Cordova's Spanish tatterdemalions, and of the capture of Montmorency,
who was sorely wounded--some said with twenty and some with thirty
wounds--and little like to live. Sorrow and discontent stalked abroad in
Languedoc that day, for they believed that it was against the Cardinal,
who sought to strip them of so many privileges, that Gaston d'Orleans
had set up his standard.
That those rumours of battle and defeat were true we had ample proof
some few hours later, when a company of dragoons in buff and steel rode
into the courtyard of the Auberge de Navarre, headed by a young spark of
an officer, who confirmed the rumour and set the number of
Montmorency's wounds at seventeen. He was lying, the officer told us, at
Castelnaudary, and his duchess was hastening to him from Beziers. Poor
woman! She was destined to nurse him back to life and vigour only that
he might take his trial at Toulouse and pay with his head the price of
his rebellion.
Ganymede who, through the luxurious habits of his more recent years
had--for all his fine swagger--developed a marked distaste for warfare
and excitement, besought me to take thought for my safety and to lie
quietly at Montauban until the province should be more settled.
“The place is a hotbed of rebellion,” he urged. “If these Chouans but
learn that we are from Paris and of the King's party, we shall have our
throats slit, as I live. There is not a peasant in all this countryside
indeed, scarce a man of any sort but is a red-hot Orleanist,
anti-Cardinalist, and friend of the Devil. Bethink you, monseigneur, to
push on at the present is to court murder.”
“Why, then, we will court murder,” said I coldly. “Give the word to
saddle.”
I asked him at the moment of setting out did he know the road to
Lavedan, to which the lying poltroon made answer that he did. In his
youth he may have known it, and the countryside may have undergone since
then such changes as bewildered him. Or it may be that fear dulled his
wits, and lured him into taking what may have seemed the safer rather
than the likelier road. But this I know, that as night was falling
my carriage halted with a lurch, and as I put forth my head I was
confronted by my trembling intendant, his great fat face gleaming
whitely in the gloom above the lawn collar on his doublet.
“Why do we halt, Ganymede?” quoth I.
“Monseigneur,” he faltered, his trembling increasing as he spoke, and
his eyes meeting mine in a look of pitiful contrition, “I fear we are
lost.”
“Lost?” I echoed. “Of what do you talk? Am I to sleep in the coach?”
“Alas, monseigneur, I have done my best--”
“Why, then, God keep us from your worst,” I snapped. “Open me this
door.”
I stepped down and looked about me, and, by my faith, a more desolate
spot to lose us in my henchman could not have contrived had he been at
pains to do so. A bleak, barren landscape--such as I could hardly have
credited was to be found in all that fair province--unfolded itself,
looking now more bleak, perhaps, by virtue of the dim evening mist that
hovered over it. Yonder, to the right, a dull russet patch of sky marked
the west, and then in front of us I made out the hazy outline of the
Pyrenees. At sight of them, I swung round and gripped my henchman by the
shoulder.
“A fine trusty servant thou!” I cried. “Boaster! Had you told us that
age and fat living had so stunted your wits as to have extinguished
memory, I had taken a guide at Montauban to show us the way. Yet,
here, with the sun and the Pyrenees to guide you, even had you no other
knowledge, you lose yourself!”
“Monseigneur,” he whimpered, “I was choosing my way by the sun and the
mountains, and it was thus that I came to this impasse. For you may see,
yourself, that the road ends here abruptly.”
“Ganymede,” said I slowly, “when we return to Paris--if you do not
die of fright 'twixt this and then--I'll find a place for you in the
kitchens. God send you may make a better scullion than a follower!”
Then, vaulting over the wall, “Attend me, some half-dozen of you,” I
commanded, and stepped out briskly towards the barn.
As the weather-beaten old door creaked upon its rusty hinges, we were
greeted by a groan from within, and with it the soft rustle of straw
that is being moved. Surprised, I halted, and waited whilst one of my
men kindled a light in the lanthorn that he carried.
By its rays we beheld a pitiable sight in a corner of that building. A
man, quite young and of a tall and vigorous frame, lay stretched upon
the straw. He was fully dressed even to his great riding-boots, and
from the loose manner in which his back-and-breast hung now upon him,
it would seem as if he had been making shift to divest himself of his
armour, but had lacked the strength to complete the task. Beside him
lay a feathered headpiece and a sword attached to a richly broidered
baldrick. All about him the straw was clotted with brown, viscous
patches of blood. The doublet which had been of sky-blue velvet was all
sodden and stained, and inspection showed us that he had been wounded in
the right side, between the straps of his breastplate.
As we stood about him now, a silent, pitying group, appearing fantastic,
perhaps, by the dim light of that single lanthorn, he attempted to raise
his head, and then with a groan he dropped it back upon the straw that
pillowed it. From out of a face white, as in death, and drawn with
haggard lines of pain, a pair of great lustrous blue eyes were turned
upon us, abject and pitiful as the gaze of a dumb beast that is stricken
mortally.
It needed no acuteness to apprehend that we had before us one of
yesterday's defeated warriors; one who had spent his last strength in
creeping hither to get his dying done in peace. Lest our presence
should add fear to the agony already upon him, I knelt beside him in the
blood-smeared straw, and, raising his head, I pillowed it upon my arm.
“Have no fear,” said I reassuringly. “We are friends. Do you
understand?”
The faint smile that played for a second on his lips and lighted his
countenance would have told me that he understood, even had I not caught
his words, faint as a sigh “Merci, monsieur.” He nestled his head into
the crook of my arm. “Water--for the love of God!” he gasped, to add in
a groan, “Je me meurs, monsieur.”
Assisted by a couple of knaves, Ganymede went about attending to the
rebel at once. Handling him as carefully as might be, to avoid giving
him unnecessary pain they removed his back-and-breast, which was flung
with a clatter into one of the corners of the barn. Then, whilst one of
them gently drew off his boots, Rodenard, with the lanthorn close beside
him, cut away the fellow's doublet, and laid bare the oozing sword-wound
that gaped in his mangled side. He whispered an order to Gilles, who
went swiftly off to the coach in quest of something that he had asked
for; then he sat on his heels and waited, his hand upon the man's pulse,
his eyes on his face.
I stooped until my lips were on a level with my intendant's ear.
“How is it with him?” I inquired.
“Dying,” whispered Rodenard in answer. “He has lost too much blood, and
he is probably bleeding inwardly as well. There is no hope of his life,
but he may linger thus some little while, sinking gradually, and we can
at least mitigate the suffering of his last moments.”
When presently the men returned with the things that Ganymede had asked
for, he mixed some pungent liquid with water, and, whilst a servant held
the bowl, he carefully sponged the rebel's wound. This and a cordial
that he had given him to drink seemed to revive him and to afford him
ease. His breathing was no longer marked by any rasping sound, and his
eyes seemed to burn more intelligently.
“I am dying--is it not so?” he asked, and Ganymede bowed his head in
silence. The poor fellow sighed. “Raise me,” he begged, and when this
service had been done him, his eyes wandered round until they found me.
Then “Monsieur,” he said, “will you do me a last favour?”
“Assuredly, my poor friend,” I answered, going down on my knees beside
him.
“You--you were not for the Duke?” he inquired, eyeing me more keenly.
“No, monsieur. But do not let that disturb you; I have no interest in
this rising and I have taken no side. I am from Paris, on a journey
of--of pleasure. My name is Bardelys--Marcel de Bardelys.”
“Bardelys the Magnificent?” he questioned, and I could not repress a
smile.
“I am that overrated man.”
“But then you are for the King!” And a note of disappointment crept
into his voice. Before I could make him any answer, he had resumed. “No
matter; Marcel de Bardelys is a gentleman, and party signifies little
when a man is dying. I am Rene de Lesperon, of Lesperon in Gascony,” he
pursued. “Will you send word to my sister afterwards?”
I bowed my head without speaking.
“She is the only relative I have, monsieur. But”--and his tone grew
wistful--“there is one other to whom I would have you bear a message.”
He raised his hand by a painful effort to the level of his breast.
Strength failed him, and he sank back. “I cannot, monsieur,” he said in
a tone of pathetic apology. “See; there is a chain about my neck with
a locket. Take it from me. Take it now, monsieur. There are some papers
also, monsieur. Take all. I want to see them safely in your keeping.”
I did his bidding, and from the breast of his doublet I drew some loose
letters and a locket which held the miniature of a woman's face.
“I want you to deliver all to her, monsieur.”
“It shall be done,” I answered, deeply moved.
“Hold it--hold it up,” he begged, his voice weakening. “Let me behold
the face.”
Long his eyes rested on the likeness I held before him. At last, as one
in a dream--
“Well-beloved,” he sighed. “Bien aimee!” And down his grey, haggard
cheeks the tears came slowly. “Forgive this weakness, monsieur,” he
whispered brokenly. “We were to have been wed in a month, had I lived.”
He ended with a sob, and when next he spoke it was more labouredly, as
though that sob had robbed him of the half of what vitality remained.
“Tell her, monsieur, that my dying thoughts were of her. Tell--tell
her--I--”
“Her name?” I cried, fearing he would sink before I learned it. “Tell me
her name.”
He looked at me with eyes that were growing glassy and vacant. Then he
seemed to brace himself and to rally for a second.
“Her name?” he mused, in a far-off manner. “She is--Ma-de-moiselle de
------”
His head rolled on the suddenly relaxed neck. He collapsed into
Rodenard's arms.
“Is he dead?” I asked.
Rodenard nodded in silence.
CHAPTER IV. A MAID IN THE MOONLIGHT
I do not know whether it was the influence of that thing lying in a
corner of the barn under the cloak that Rodenard had flung over it, or
whether other influences of destiny were at work to impel me to rise
at the end of a half-hour and announce my determination to set out on
horseback and find myself quarters more congenial.
“To-morrow,” I instructed Ganymede, as I stood ready to mount, “you will
retrace your steps with the others, and, finding the road to Lavedan,
you will follow me to the chateau.”
“But you cannot hope to reach it to-night, monseigneur, through a
country that is unknown to you,” he protested.
“I do not hope to reach it to-night. I will ride south until I come upon
some hamlet that will afford me shelter and, in the morning, direction.”
I left him with that, and set out at a brisk trot. Night had now fallen,
but the sky was clear, and a crescent moon came opportunely if feebly to
dispel the gloom.
I quitted the field, and went back until I gained a crossroad, where,
turning to the right, I set my face to the Pyrenees, and rode briskly
amain. That I had chosen wisely was proved when some twenty minutes
later. I clattered into the hamlet of Mirepoix, and drew up before an
inn flaunting the sign of a peacock--as if in irony of its humbleness,
for it was no better than a wayside tavern. Neither stable-boy nor
ostler was here, and the unclean, overgrown urchin to whom I entrusted
my horse could not say whether indeed Pere Abdon the landlord would
be able to find me a room to sleep in. I thirsted, however; and so I
determined to alight, if it were only to drink a can of wine and obtain
information of my whereabouts.
As I was entering the hostelry there was a clatter of hoofs in the
street, and four dragoons headed by a sergeant rode up and halted at the
door of the Paon. They seemed to have ridden hard and some distance, for
their horses were jaded almost to the last point of endurance.
Within, I called the host, and having obtained a flagon of the best
vintage--Heaven fortify those that must be content with his worst!--I
passed on to make inquiries touching my whereabouts and the way to
Lavedan. This I learnt was but some three or four miles distant. About
the other table--there were but two within the room--stood the dragoons
in a whispered consultation, of which it had been well had I taken heed,
for it concerned me more closely than I could have dreamt.
“He answers the description,” said the sergeant, and though I heard the
words I took no thought that it was of me they spoke.
“Padrieu,” swore one of his companions, “I'll wager it is our man.”
And then, just as I was noticing that Master Abdon, who had also
overheard the conversation, was eyeing me curiously, the sergeant
stepped up to me, and--
“What is your name, monsieur?” quoth he.
I vouchsafed him a stare of surprise before asking in my turn “How may
that concern you?”
“Your pardon, my master, but we are on the King's business.”
I remembered then that he had said I answered some description. With
that it flashed through my mind that they had been sent after me by
His Majesty to enforce my obedience to his wishes and to hinder me
from reaching Lavedan. At once came the dominant desire to conceal my
identity that I might go unhindered. The first name that occurred to me
was that of the poor wretch I had left in the barn half an hour ago, and
so--
“I am,” said I, “Monsieur de Lesperon, at your service.”
Too late I saw the mistake that I had made. I own it was a blunder that
no man of ordinary intelligence should have permitted himself to have
committed. Remembering the unrest of the province, I should rather have
concluded that their business was more like to be in that connection.
“He is bold, at least,” cried one of the troopers, with a burst of
laughter. Then came the sergeant's voice, cold and formal, “In the
King's name, Monsieur de Lesperon, I arrest you.”
He had whipped out his sword, and the point was within an inch of my
breast. But his arm, I observed, was stretched to its fullest extent,
which forbade his making a sudden thrust. To hamper him in the lunge
there was the table between us.
So, my mind working quickly in this desperate situation, and realizing
how dire and urgent the need to attempt an escape, I leapt suddenly back
to find myself in the arms of his followers. But in moving I had caught
up by one of its legs the stool on which I had been sitting. As I raised
it, I eluded the pinioning grip of the troopers. I twisted in their
grasp, and brought the stool down upon the head of one of them with
a force that drove him to his knees. Up went that three-legged stool
again, to descend like a thunderbolt upon the head of another. That
freed me. The sergeant was coming up behind, but another flourish of my
improvised battle-axe sent the two remaining soldiers apart to look to
their swords. Ere they could draw, I had darted like a hare between
them and out into the street. The sergeant, cursing them with horrid
volubility, followed closely upon my heels.
Leaping as far into the roadway as I could, I turned to meet the
fellow's onslaught. Using the stool as a buckler, I caught his thrust
upon it. So violently was it delivered that the point buried itself in
the wood and the blade snapped, leaving him a hilt and a stump of steel.
I wasted no time in thought. Charging him wildly, I knocked him over
just as the two unhurt dragoons came stumbling out of the tavern.
I gained my horse and vaulted into the saddle. Tearing the reins from
the urchin that held them, and driving my spurs into the beast's flanks,
I went careering down the street at a gallop, gripping tightly with my
knees, whilst the stirrups, which I had had no time to step into, flew
wildly about my legs.
A pistol cracked behind me; then another, and a sharp, stinging pain in
the shoulder warned me that I was hit. But I took no heed of it then.
The wound could not be serious, else I had already been out of
the saddle, and it would be time enough to look to it when I had
outdistanced my pursuers. I say my pursuers, for already there were
hoofbeats behind me, and I knew that those gentlemen had taken to their
horses. But, as you may recall, I had on their arrival noted the
jaded condition of their cattle, whilst I bestrode a horse that was
comparatively fresh, so that pursuit had but small terrors for me.
Nevertheless, they held out longer, and gave me more to do than I had
imagined would be the case. For nigh upon a half-hour I rode, before I
could be said to have got clear of them, and then for aught I knew
they were still following, resolved to hound me down by the aid of such
information as they might cull upon their way.
I was come by then to the Garonne. I drew rein beside the swiftly
flowing stream, winding itself like a flood of glittering silver between
the black shadows of its banks. A little while I sat there listening,
and surveying the stately, turreted chateau that loomed, a grey, noble
pile, beyond the water. I speculated what demesne this might be, and I
realized that it was probably Lavedan.
I pondered what I had best do, and in the end I took the resolve to swim
the river and knock at the gates. If it were indeed Lavedan, I had but
to announce myself, and to one of my name surely its hospitalities would
be spread. If it were some other household, even then the name of Marcel
de Bardelys should suffice to ensure me a welcome.
By spurring and coaxing, I lured my steed into the river. There is a
proverb having it that though you may lead a horse to the water you
cannot make him drink. It would have now applied to my case, for
although I had brought mine to the water I could not make him swim; or,
at least, I could not make him breast the rush of the stream. Vainly
did I urge him and try to hold him; he plunged frantically, snorted,
coughed, and struggled gamely, but the current was bearing us swiftly
away, and his efforts brought us no nearer to the opposite shore. At
last I slipped from his back, and set myself to swim beside him, leading
him by the bridle. But even thus he proved unequal to the task of
resisting the current, so that in the end I let him go, and swam ashore
alone, hoping that he would land farther down, and that I might then
recapture him. When, however, I had reached the opposite bank, and stood
under the shadow of the chateau, I discovered that the cowardly beast
had turned back, and, having scrambled out, was now trotting away
along the path by which we had come. Having no mind to go after him, I
resigned myself to the loss, and turned my attention to the mansion now
before me.
Some two hundred yards from the river it raised its great square bulk
against the background of black, star-flecked sky. From the facade
before me down to the spot where I stood by the water, came a flight
of half a dozen terraces, each balustraded in white marble, ending in
square, flat-topped pillars of Florentine design. What moon there was
revealed the quaint architecture of that stately edifice and glittered
upon the mullioned windows. But within nothing stirred; no yellow
glimmer came to clash with the white purity of the moonlight; no sound
of man or beast broke the stillness of the night, for all that the hour
was early. The air of the place was as that of some gigantic sepulchre.
A little daunted by this all-enveloping stillness, I skirted the
terraces and approached the house on the eastern side. Here I found an
old-world drawbridge--now naturally in disuse--spanning a ditch fed
from the main river for the erstwhile purposes of a moat. I crossed the
bridge, and entered an imposing courtyard. Within this quadrangle the
same silence dwelt, and there was the same obscurity in the windows that
overlooked it. I paused, at a loss how to proceed, and I leaned against
a buttress of the portcullis, what time I considered.
I was weak from fasting, worn with hard riding, and faint from the wound
in my shoulder, which had been the cause at least of my losing some
blood. In addition to all this, I was shivering with the cold of my wet
garments, and generally I must have looked as little like that Bardelys
they called the Magnificent as you might well conceive. How, then, if I
were to knock, should I prevail in persuading these people--whoever they
might be--of my identity? Infinitely more had I the air of some fugitive
rebel, and it was more than probable that I should be kept in durance
to be handed over to my friends the dragoons, if later they came to
ride that way. I was separated from those who knew me, and as things now
stood--unless this were, indeed, Lavedan--it might be days before they
found me again.
I was beginning to deplore my folly at having cut myself adrift from
my followers in the first place, and having embroiled myself with the
soldiers in the second; I was beginning to contemplate the wisdom of
seeking some outhouse of this mansion wherein to lie until morning, when
of a sudden a broad shaft of light, coming from one of the windows on
the first floor, fell athwart the courtyard. Instinctively I crouched
back into the shadow of my friendly buttress, and looked up.
That sudden shaft of light resulted from the withdrawal of the curtains
that masked a window. At this window, which opened outward on to a
balcony; I now beheld--and to me it was as the vision of Beatrice may
have been to Dante--the white figure of a woman. The moonlight bathed
her, as in her white robe she leaned upon the parapet gazing upward into
the empyrean. A sweet, delicate face I saw, not endowed, perhaps, with
that exquisite balance and proportion of feature wherein they tell us
beauty lies, but blessed with a wondrously dainty beauty all its own;
a beauty, perhaps, as much of expression as of form; for in that gentle
countenance was mirrored every tender grace of girlhood, all that is
fresh and pure and virginal.
I held my breath, I think, as I stood in ravished contemplation of that
white vision. If this were Lavedan, and that the cold Roxalanne who had
sent my bold Chatellerault back to Paris empty-handed then were my task
a very welcome one.
How little it had weighed with me that I was come to Languedoc to woo a
woman bearing the name of Roxalanne de Lavedan I have already shown. But
here in this same Languedoc I beheld to-night a woman whom it seemed I
might have loved, for not in ten years--not, indeed, in all my life--had
any face so wrought upon me and called to my nature with so strong a
voice.
I gazed at that child, and I thought of the women that I had known--the
bold, bedizened beauties of a Court said to be the first in Europe. And
then it came to me that this was no demoiselle of Lavedan, no demoiselle
at all in fact, for the noblesse of France owned no such faces. Candour
and purity were not to be looked for in the high-bred countenances
of our great families; they were sometimes found in the faces of the
children of their retainers. Yes; I had it now. This child was the
daughter of some custodian of the demesne before me.
Suddenly, as she stood there in the moonlight, a song, sung at
half-voice, floated down on the calm air. It was a ditty of old
Provence, a melody I knew and loved, and if aught had been wanting to
heighten the enchantment that already ravished me, that soft melodious
voice had done it. Singing still, she turned and reentered the room,
leaving wide the windows, so that faintly, as from a distance, her voice
still reached me after she was gone from sight.
It was in that hour that it came to me to cast myself upon this fair
creature's mercy. Surely one so sweet and saintly to behold would take
compassion on an unfortunate! Haply my wound and all the rest that I had
that night endured made me dull-witted and warped my reason.
With what strength I still possessed I went to work to scale her
balcony. The task was easy even for one in my spent condition. The
wall was thick with ivy, and, moreover, a window beneath afforded some
support, for by standing on the heavy coping I could with my fingers
touch the sill of the balcony above. Thus I hoisted myself, and
presently I threw an arm over the parapet. Already I was astride of that
same Parapet before she became aware of my presence.
The song died suddenly on her lips, and her eyes, blue as
forget-me-nots, were wide now with the fear that the sight of me
occasioned. Another second and there had been an outcry that would have
brought the house about our ears, when, stepping to the threshold of the
room, “Mademoiselle,” I entreated, “for the love of God, be silent! I
mean you no harm. I am a fugitive. I am pursued.”
This was no considered speech. There had been no preparing of words; I
had uttered them mechanically almost--perhaps by inspiration, for they
were surely the best calculated to enlist this lady's sympathy. And so
far as went the words themselves, they were rigorously true.
With eyes wide open still, she confronted me, and I now observed that
she was not so tall as from below I had imagined. She was, in fact, of a
short stature rather, but of proportions so exquisite that she conveyed
an impression of some height. In her hand she held a taper by whose
light she had been surveying herself in her mirror at the moment of
my advent. Her unbound hair of brown fell like a mantle about her
shoulders, and this fact it was drew me to notice that she was in
her night-rail, and that this room to which I had penetrated was her
chamber.
“Who are you?” she asked breathlessly, as though in such a pass my
identity were a thing that signified.
I had almost answered her, as I had answered the troopers at Mirepoix,
that I was Lesperon. Then, bethinking me that there was no need for such
equivocation here, I was on the point of giving her my name. But noting
my hesitation, and misconstruing it, she forestalled me.
“I understand, monsieur,” said she more composedly. “And you need have
no fear. You are among friends.”
Her eyes had travelled over my sodden clothes, the haggard pallor of my
face, and the blood that stained my doublet from the shoulder downward.
From all this she had drawn her conclusions that I was a hunted rebel.
She drew me into the room, and, closing the window, she dragged the
heavy curtain across it, thereby giving me a proof of confidence that
smote me hard--impostor that I was.
“I crave your pardon, mademoiselle, for having startled you by the rude
manner of my coming,” said I, and never in my life had I felt less at
ease than then. “But I was exhausted and desperate. I am wounded, I have
ridden hard, and I swam the river.”
The latter piece of information was vastly unnecessary, seeing that the
water from my clothes was forming a pool about my feet. “I saw you from
below; mademoiselle, and surely, I thought, so sweet a lady would have
pity on an unfortunate.” She observed that my eyes were upon her, and
in an act of instinctive maidenliness she bore her hand to her throat to
draw the draperies together and screen the beauties of her neck from my
unwarranted glance, as though her daily gown did not reveal as much and
more of them.
That act, however, served to arouse me to a sense of my position. What
did I there? It was a profanity--a defiling, I swore; from which you'll
see, that Bardelys was grown of a sudden very nice.
“Monsieur,” she was saying, “you are exhausted.”
“But that I rode hard,” I laughed, “it is likely they had taken me to
Toulouse, were I might have lost my head before my friends could have
found and claimed me. I hope you'll see it is too comely a head to be so
lightly parted with.”
“For that,” said she, half seriously, half whimsically, “the ugliest
head would be too comely.”
I laughed softly, amusedly; then of a sudden, without warning, a
faintness took me, and I was forced to brace myself against the wall,
breathing heavily the while. At that she gave a little cry of alarm.
“Monsieur, I beseech you to be seated. I will summon my father, and we
will find a bed for you. You must not retain those clothes.”
“Angel of goodness!” I muttered gratefully, and being still half dazed,
I brought some of my Court tricks into that chamber by taking her hand
and carrying it towards my lips. But ere I had imprinted the intended
kiss upon her fingers--and by some miracle they were not withdrawn--my
eyes encountered hers again. I paused as one may pause who contemplates
a sacrilege. For a moment she held my glance with hers; then I fell
abashed, and released her hand.
The innocence peeping out of that child's eyes it was that had in that
moment daunted me, and made me tremble to think of being found there,
and of the vile thing it would be to have her name coupled with mine.
That thought lent me strength. I cast my weariness from me as though it
were a garment, and, straightening myself, I stepped of a sudden to the
window. Without a word, I made shift to draw back the curtain when her
hand, falling on my sodden sleeve, arrested me.
“What will you do, monsieur?” she cried in alarm. “You may be seen.”
My mind was now possessed by the thing I should have thought of before.
I climbed to her balcony, and my one resolve was to get me thence as
quickly as might be.
“I had not the right to enter here,” I muttered. “I--” I stopped short;
to explain would only be to sully, and so, “Good-night! Adieu!” I ended
brusquely.
“But, monsieur--” she began.
“Let me go,” I commanded almost roughly, as I shook my arm free of her
grasp.
“Bethink you that you are exhausted. If you go forth now, monsieur, you
will assuredly be taken. You must not go.”
I laughed softly, and with some bitterness, too, for I was angry with
myself.
“Hush, child,” I said. “Better so, if it is to be.”
And with that I drew aside the curtains and pushed the leaves of the
window apart. She remained standing in the room, watching me, her face
pale, and hex eyes pained and puzzled.
One last glance I gave her as I bestrode the rail of her balcony. Then
I lowered myself as I had ascended. I was hanging by my hands, seeking
with my foot for the coping of the window beneath me, when, suddenly,
there came a buzzing in my ears. I had a fleeting vision of a white
figure leaning on the balcony above me; then a veil seemed drawn over
my eyes; there came a sense of falling; a rush as of a tempestuous wind;
then--nothing.
CHAPTER V. THE VICOMTE DE LAVEDAN
When next I awakened, it was to find myself abed in an elegant
apartment, spacious and sunlit, that was utterly strange to me. For some
seconds I was content to lie and take no count of my whereabouts. My
eyes travelled idly over the handsome furnishings of that choicely
appointed chamber, and rested at last upon the lean, crooked figure of
a man whose back was towards me and who was busy with some phials at a
table not far distant. Then recollection awakened also in me, and I set
my wits to work to grapple with my surroundings. I looked through the
open window, but from my position on the bed no more was visible than
the blue sky and a faint haze of distant hills.
I taxed my memory, and the events of yesternight recurred to me. I
remembered the girl, the balcony, and my flight ending in my giddiness
and my fall. Had they brought me into that same chateau, or--Or what? No
other possibility came to suggest itself, and, seeing scant need to tax
my brains with speculation, since there was one there of whom I might
ask the question--
“Hola, my master!” I called to him, and as I did so I essayed to move.
The act wrung a sharp cry of pain from me. My left shoulder was numb
and sore, but in my right foot that sudden movement had roused a sharper
pang.
At my cry that little wizened old man swung suddenly round. He had the
face of a bird of prey, yellow as a louis d'or with a great hooked nose,
and a pair of beady black eyes that observed me solemnly. The mouth
alone was the redeeming feature in a countenance that had otherwise
been evil; it was instinct with good-humour. But I had small leisure
to observe him then, for simultaneously with his turning there had
been another movement at my bedside, which drew my eyes elsewhere. A
gentleman, richly dressed, and of an imposing height, approached me.
“You are awake, monsieur?” he said in a half interrogative tone.
“Will you do me the favour to tell me where I am, monsieur?” quoth I.
“You do not know? You are at Lavedan. I am the Vicomte de Lavedan--at
your service.”
Although it was no more than I might have expected, yet a dull wonder
filled me, to which presently I gave expression by asking stupidly--
“At Lavedan? But how came I hither?”
“How you came is more than I can tell,” he laughed. “But I'll swear the
King's dragoons were not far behind you. We found you in the courtyard
last night; in a swoon of exhaustion, wounded in the shoulder, and with
a sprained foot. It was my daughter who gave the alarm and called us
to your assistance. You were lying under her widow.” Then, seeing the
growing wonder in my eyes and misconstruing it into alarm: “Nay, have no
fear, monsieur,” he cried. “You were very well advised in coming to us.
You have fallen among friends. We are Orleanists too,--at Lavedan, for
all that I was not in the fight at Castelnaudary. That was no fault of
mine. His Grace's messenger reached me overlate, and for all that I set
out with a company of my men, I put back when I had reached Lautrec upon
hearing that already a decisive battle had been fought and that our side
had suffered a crushing defeat.” He uttered a weary sigh.
“God help us, monsieur! Monseigneur de Richelieu is likely to have his
way with us. But let that be for the present. You are here, and you are
safe. As yet no suspicion rests on Lavedan. I was, as I have said, too
late for the fight, and so I came quietly back to save my skin, that
I might serve the Cause in whatever other way might offer still. In
sheltering you I am serving Gaston d'Orleans, and, that I may continue
so to do, I pray that suspicion may continue to ignore me. If they were
to learn of it at Toulouse or of how with money and in other ways I have
helped this rebellion--I make no doubt that my head would be the forfeit
I should be asked to pay.”
I was aghast at the freedom of treasonable speech with which this very
debonnaire gentleman ventured to address an utter stranger.
“But tell me, Monsieur de Lesperon,” resumed my host, “how is it with
you?”
I started in fresh astonishment.
“How--how do you know that I am Lesperon?” I asked.
“Ma foi!” he laughed, “do you imagine I had spoken so unreservedly to a
man of whom I knew nothing? Think better of me, monsieur, I beseech
you. I found these letters in your pocket last night, and their
superscription gave me your identity. Your name is well known to me,” he
added. “My friend Monsieur de Marsac has often spoken of you and of your
devotion to the Cause, and it affords me no little satisfaction to be of
some service to one whom by repute I have already learned to esteem.”
I lay back on my pillows, and I groaned. Here was a predicament!
Mistaking me for that miserable rebel I had succoured at Mirepoix, and
whose letters I bore upon me that I might restore them to some one whose
name he had failed to give me at the last moment, the Vicomte de Lavedan
had poured the damning story of his treason into my ears.
What if I were now to enlighten him? What if I were to tell him that I
was not Lesperon--no rebel at all, in fact--but Marcel de Bardelys, the
King's favourite? That he would account me a spy I hardly thought; but
assuredly he would see that my life must be a danger to his own; he must
fear betrayal from me; and to protect himself he would be justified
in taking extreme measures. Rebels were not addicted to an excess of
niceness in their methods, and it was more likely that I should rise no
more from the luxurious bed on which his hospitality had laid me. But
even if I had exaggerated matters, and the Vicomte were not quite so
bloodthirsty as was usual with his order, even if he chose to accept my
promise that I would forget what he had said, he must nevertheless--in
view of his indiscretion--demand my instant withdrawal from Lavedan. And
what, then, of my wager with Chatellerault?
Then, in thinking of my wager, I came to think of Roxalanne
herself--that dainty, sweet-faced child into whose chamber I had
penetrated on the previous night. And would you believe it that I--the
satiated, cynical, unbelieving Bardelys--experienced dismay at the very
thought of leaving Lavedan for no other reason than because it involved
seeing no more of that provincial damsel?
My unwillingness to be driven from her presence determined me to stay.
I had come to Lavedan as Lesperon, a fugitive rebel. In that character
I had all but announced myself last night to Mademoiselle. In that
character I had been welcomed by her father. In that character, then, I
must remain, that I might be near her, that I might woo and win her, and
thus--though this, I swear, had now become a minor consideration with
me--make good my boast and win the wager that must otherwise involve my
ruin.
As I lay back with closed eyes and gave myself over to pondering the
situation, I took a pleasure oddly sweet in the prospect of urging my
suit under such circumstances. Chatellerault had given me a free hand. I
was to go about the wooing of Mademoiselle de Lavedan as I chose. But
he had cast it at me in defiance that not with all my magnificence, not
with all my retinue and all my state to dazzle her, should I succeed in
melting the coldest heart in France.
And now, behold! I had cast from me all these outward embellishments; I
came without pomp, denuded of every emblem of wealth, of every sign of
power; as a poor fugitive gentleman, I came, hunted, proscribed, and
penniless--for Lesperon's estate would assuredly suffer sequestration.
To win her thus would, by my faith, be an exploit I might take pride in,
a worthy achievement to encompass.
And so I left things as they were, and since I offered no denial to the
identity that was thrust upon me, as Lesperon I continued to be known to
the Vicomte and to his family.
Presently he called the old man to my bedside and I heard them talking
of my condition.
“You think, then, Anatole,” he said in the end, “that in three or four
days Monsieur de Lesperon may be able to rise?”
“I am assured of it,” replied the old servant.
Whereupon, turning to me, “Be therefore of good courage, monsieur,” said
Lavedan, “for your hurt is none so grievous after all.”
I was muttering my thanks and my assurances that I was in excellent
spirits, when we were suddenly disturbed by a rumbling noise as of
distant thunder.
“Mort Dieu!” swore the Vicomte, a look of alarm coming into his face.
With a bent head, he stood in a listening attitude.
“What is it?” I inquired.
“Horsemen--on the drawbridge,” he answered shortly. “A troop, by the
sound.”
And then, in confirmation of these words, followed a stamping and rattle
of hoofs on the flags of the courtyard below. The old servant stood
wringing his hands in helpless terror, and wailing, “Monsieur,
monsieur!”
But the Vicomte crossed rapidly to the window and looked out. Then he
laughed with intense relief; and in a wondering voice “They are not
troopers,” he announced. “They have more the air of a company of
servants in private livery; and there is a carriage--pardieu, two
carriages!”
At once the memory of Rodenard and my followers occurred to me, and I
thanked Heaven that I was abed where he might not see me, and that thus
he would probably be sent forth empty-handed with the news that his
master was neither arrived nor expected.
But in that surmise I went too fast. Ganymede was of a tenacious mettle,
and of this he now afforded proof. Upon learning that naught was known
of the Marquis de Bardelys at Lavedan, my faithful henchman announced
his intention to remain there and await me, since that was, he assured
the Vicomte, my destination.
“My first impulse,” said Lavedan, when later he came to tell me of it,
“was incontinently to order his departure. But upon considering the
matter and remembering how high in power and in the King's favour stands
that monstrous libertine Bardelys, I deemed it wiser to afford
shelter to this outrageous retinue. His steward--a flabby, insolent
creature--says that Bardelys left them last night near Mirepoix, to ride
hither, bidding them follow to-day. Curious that we should have no news
of him! That he should have fallen into the Garonne and drowned himself
were too great a good fortune to be hoped for.”
The bitterness with which he spoke of me afforded me ample cause for
congratulation that I had resolved to accept the role of Lesperon. Yet,
remembering that my father and he had been good friends, his manner left
me nonplussed. What cause could he have for this animosity to the son?
Could it be merely my position at Court that made me seem in his rebel
eyes a natural enemy?
“You are acquainted with this Bardelys?” I inquired, by way of drawing
him.
“I knew his father,” he answered gruffly. “An honest, upright
gentleman.”
“And the son,” I inquired timidly, “has he none of these virtues?”
“I know not what virtues he may have; his vices are known to all the
world. He is a libertine, a gambler, a rake, a spendthrift. They say he
is one of the King's favourites, and that his monstrous extravagances
have earned for him the title of 'Magnificent'.” He uttered a short
laugh. “A fit servant for such a master as Louis the Just!”
“Monsieur le Vicomte,” said I, warming in my own defence, “I swear
you do him injustice. He is extravagant, but then he is rich; he is
a libertine, but then he is young, and he has been reared among
libertines; he is a gamester, but punctiliously honourable at play.
Believe me, monsieur, I have some acquaintance with Marcel de Bardelys,
and his vices are hardly so black as is generally believed; whilst in
his favour I think the same may be said that you have just said of his
father--he is an honest, upright gentleman.”
“And that disgraceful affair with the Duchesse de Bourgogne?” inquired
Lavedan, with the air of a man setting an unanswerable question.
“Mon Dieu!” I cried, “will the world never forget that indiscretion? An
indiscretion of youth, no doubt much exaggerated outside Court circles.”
The Vicomte eyed me in some astonishment for a moment.
“Monsieur de Lesperon,” he said at length, “you appear to hold this
Bardelys in high esteem. He has a staunch supporter in you and a stout
advocate. Yet me you cannot convince.” And he shook his head solemnly.
“Even if I did not hold him to be such a man as I have pronounced him,
but were to account him a paragon of all the virtues, his coming hither
remains an act that I must resent.”
“But why, Monsieur le Vicomte?”
“Because I know the errand that brings him to Lavedan. He comes to woo
my daughter.”
Had he flung a bomb into my bed he could not more effectively have
startled me.
“It astonishes you, eh?” he laughed bitterly. “But I can assure you
that it is so. A month ago I was visited by the Comte de
Chatellerault--another of His Majesty's fine favourites. He came
unbidden; offered no reason for his coming, save that he was making a
tour of the province for his amusement. His acquaintance with me was of
the slightest, and I had no desire that it should increase; yet here
he installed himself with a couple of servants, and bade fair to take a
long stay.
“I was surprised, but on the morrow I had an explanation. A courier,
arriving from an old friend of mine at Court, bore me a letter with the
information that Monsieur de Chatellerault was come to Lavedan at
the King's instigation to sue for my daughter's hand in marriage. The
reasons were not far to seek. The King, who loves him, would enrich him;
the easiest way is by a wealthy alliance, and Roxalanne is accounted
an heiress. In addition to that, my own power in the province is known,
whilst my defection from the Cardinalist party is feared. What better
link wherewith to attach me again to the fortunes of the Crown--for
Crown and Mitre have grown to be synonymous in this topsy-turvy
France--than to wed my daughter to one of the King's favourites?
“But for that timely warning, God knows what mischief had been wrought.
As it was, Monsieur de Chatellerault had but seen my daughter upon two
occasions. On the very day that I received the tidings I speak of,
I sent her to Auch to the care of some relatives of her mother's.
Chatellerault remained a week. Then, growing restive, he asked when my
daughter would return. 'When you depart, monsieur,' I answered him,
and, being pressed for reasons, I dealt so frankly with him that within
twenty-four hours he was on his way back to Paris.”
The Vicomte paused and took a turn in the apartment, whilst I pondered
his words, which were bringing me a curious revelation. Presently he
resumed.
“And now, Chatellerault having failed in his purpose, the King chooses
a more dangerous person for the gratifying of his desires. He sends the
Marquis, Marcel de Bardelys to Lavedan on the same business. No doubt
he attributes Chatellerault's failure to clumsiness, and he has decided
this time to choose a man famed for courtly address and gifted with such
arts of dalliance that he cannot fail but enmesh my daughter in them. It
is a great compliment that he pays us in sending hither the handsomest
and most accomplished gentleman of all his Court--so fame has it--yet it
is a compliment of whose flattery I am not sensible. Bardelys goes hence
as empty-handed as went Chatellerault. Let him but show his face, and
my daughter journeys to Auch again. Am I not well advised, Monsieur de
Lesperon?”
“Why, yes,” I answered slowly, after the manner of one who deliberates,
“if you are persuaded that your conclusions touching Bardelys are
correct.”
“I am more than persuaded. What other business could bring him to
Lavedan?”
It was a question that I did not attempt to answer. Haply he did not
expect me to answer it. He left me free to ponder another issue of this
same business of which my mind was become very full. Chatellerault had
not dealt fairly with me. Often, since I had left Paris, had I marvelled
that he came to be so rash as to risk his fortune upon a matter that
turned upon a woman's whim. That I possessed undeniable advantages
of person, of birth, and of wealth, Chatellerault could not have
disregarded. Yet these, and the possibility that they might suffice to
engage this lady's affections, he appeared to have set at naught when he
plunged into that rash wager.
He must have realized that because he had failed was no reason to
presume that I must also fail. There was no consequence in such an
argument, and often, as I have said, had I marvelled during the past
days at the readiness with which Chatellerault had flung down the gage.
Now I held the explanation of it. He counted upon the Vicomte de Lavedan
to reason precisely as he was reasoning, and he was confident that no
opportunities would be afforded me of so much as seeing this beautiful
and cold Roxalanne.
It was a wily trap he had set me, worthy only of a trickster.
Fate, however, had taken a hand in the game, and the cards were redealt
since I had left Paris. The terms of the wager permitted me to choose
any line of action that I considered desirable; but Destiny, it seemed,
had chosen for me, and set me in a line that should at least suffice
to overcome the parental resistance--that breastwork upon which
Chatellerault had so confidently depended.
As the rebel Rene de Lesperon I was sheltered at Lavedan and made
welcome by my fellow-rebel the Vicomte, who already seemed much taken
with me, and who had esteemed me before seeing me from the much that
Monsieur de Marsac--whoever he might be--had told him of me. As Rene de
Lesperon I must remain, and turn to best account my sojourn, praying God
meanwhile that this same Monsieur de Marsac might be pleased to refrain
from visiting Lavedan whilst I was there.
CHAPTER VI. IN CONVALESCENCE
Of the week that followed my coming to Lavedan I find some difficulty
in writing. It was for me a time very crowded with events--events that
appeared to be moulding my character anew and making of me a person
different, indeed, from that Marcel de Bardelys whom in Paris they
called the Magnificent. Yet these events, although significant in their
total, were of so vague and slight a nature in their detail, that when I
come to write of them I find really little that I may set down.
Rodenard and his companions remained for two days at the chateau, and to
me his sojourn there was a source of perpetual anxiety, for I knew not
how far the fool might see fit to prolong it. It was well for me that
this anxiety of mine was shared by Monsieur de Lavedan, who disliked at
such a time the presence of men attached to one who was so notoriously
of the King's party. He came at last to consult me as to what measures
might be taken to remove them, and I--nothing loath to conspire with him
to so desirable end--bade him suggest to Rodenard that perhaps evil had
befallen Monsieur de Bardelys, and that, instead of wasting his time
at Lavedan, he were better advised to be searching the province for his
master.
This counsel the Vicomte adopted, and with such excellent results that
that very day--within the hour, in fact--Ganymede, aroused to a sense
of his proper duty, set out in quest of me, not a little disturbed in
mind--for with all his shortcomings the rascal loved me very faithfully.
That was on the third day of my sojourn at Lavedan. On the morrow I
rose, my foot being sufficiently recovered to permit it. I felt a little
weak from loss of blood, but Anatole--who, for all his evil countenance,
was a kindly and gentle--servant was confident that a few days--a week
at most--would see me completely restored.
Of leaving Lavedan I said nothing. But the Vicomte, who was one of
the most generous and noble hearted men that it has ever been my good
fortune to meet, forestalled any mention of my departure by urging that
I should remain at the chateau until my recovery were completed, and,
for that matter, as long thereafter as should suit my inclinations.
“At Lavedan you will be safe, my friend,” he assured me; “for, as I have
told you, we are under no suspicion. Let me urge you to remain until the
King shall have desisted from further persecuting us.”
And when I protested and spoke of trespassing, he waived the point with
a brusqueness that amounted almost to anger.
“Believe, monsieur, that I am pleased and honoured at serving one who
has so stoutly served the Cause and sacrificed so much to it.”
At that, being not altogether dead to shame, I winced, and told myself
that my behaviour was unworthy, and that I was practising a detestable
deception. Yet some indulgence I may justly claim in consideration
of how far I was victim of circumstance. Did I tell him that I was
Bardelys, I was convinced that I should never leave the chateau alive.
Very noble-hearted was the Vicomte, and no man have I known more averse
to bloodthirstiness, but he had told me much during the days that I had
lain abed, and many lives would be jeopardized did I proclaim what I had
learned from him. Hence I argued that any disclosure of my identity must
perforce drive him to extreme measures for the sake of the friends he
had unwittingly betrayed.
On the day after Rodenard's departure I dined with the family, and met
again Mademoiselle de Lavedan, whom I had not seen since the balcony
adventure of some nights ago. The Vicomtesse was also present, a lady
of very austere and noble appearance--lean as a pike and with a most
formidable nose--but, as I was soon to discover, with a mind inclining
overmuch to scandal and the high-seasoned talk of the Courts in which
her girlhood had been spent.
From her lips I heard that day the old, scandalous story of Monseigneur
de Richelieu's early passion for Anne of Austria. With much unction did
she tell us how the Queen had lured His Eminence to dress himself in the
motley of a jester that she might make a mock of him in the eyes of the
courtiers she had concealed behind the arras of her chamber.
This anecdote she gave us with much wealth of discreditable detail and
scant regard for either her daughter's presence or for the blushes that
suffused the poor child's cheeks. In every way she was a pattern of the
class of women amongst whom my youth had been spent, a class which had
done so much towards shattering my faith and lowering my estimate of her
sex. Lavedan had married her and brought her into Languedoc, and here
she spent her years lamenting the scenes of her youth, and prone, it
would seem, to make them matter for conversation whenever a newcomer
chanced to present himself at the chateau.
Looking from her to her daughter, I thanked Heaven that Roxalanne was no
reproduction of the mother. She had inherited as little of her character
as of her appearance. Both in feature and in soul Mademoiselle de
Lavedan was a copy of that noble, gallant gentleman, her father.
One other was present at that meal, of whom I shall have more to say
hereafter. This was a young man of good presence, save, perhaps, a too
obtrusive foppishness, whom Monsieur de Lavedan presented to me as a
distant kinsman of theirs, one Chevalier de Saint-Eustache. He was
very tall--of fully my own height--and of an excellent shape, although
extremely young. But his head if anything was too small for his body,
and his good-natured mouth was of a weakness that was confirmed by the
significance of his chin, whilst his eyes were too closely set to augur
frankness.
He was a pleasant fellow, seemingly of that negative pleasantness
that lies in inoffensiveness, but otherwise dull and of an untutored
mind--rustic, as might be expected in one the greater part of whose life
had been spent in his native province, and of a rusticity rendered all
the more flagrant by the very efforts he exerted to dissemble it.
It was after madame had related that unsavoury anecdote touching the
Cardinal that he turned to ask me whether I was well acquainted with the
Court. I was near to committing the egregious blunder of laughing in his
face, but, recollecting myself betimes, I answered vaguely that I had
some knowledge of it, whereupon he all but caused me to bound from my
chair by asking me had I ever met the Magnificent Bardelys.
“I--I am acquainted with him,” I answered warily. “Why do you ask?”
“I was reminded of him by the fact that his servants have been here for
two days. You were expecting the Marquis himself, were you not, Monsieur
le Vicomte?”
Lavedan raised his head suddenly, after the manner of a man who has
received an affront.
“I was not, Chevalier,” he answered, with emphasis. “His intendant, an
insolent knave of the name of Rodenard, informed me that this Bardelys
projected visiting me. He has not come, and I devoutly hope that he may
not come. Trouble enough had I to rid myself of his servants, and but
for Monsieur de Lesperon's well-conceived suggestion they might still be
here.”
“You have never met him, monsieur?” inquired the Chevalier.
“Never,” replied our host in such a way that any but a fool must have
understood that he desired nothing less than such a meeting.
“A delightful fellow,” murmured Saint-Eustache--“a brilliant, dazzling
personality.”
“You--you are acquainted with him?” I asked.
“Acquainted?” echoed that boastful liar. “We were as brothers.”
“How you interest me! And why have you never told us?” quoth madame, her
eyes turned enviously upon the young man--as enviously as were Lavedan's
turned in disgust. “It is a thousand pities that Monsieur de Bardelys
has altered his plans and is no longer coming to us. To meet such a man
is to breathe again the air of the grand monde. You remember, Monsieur
de Lesperon, that affair with the Duchess de Bourgogne?” And she smiled
wickedly in my direction.
“I have some recollection of it,” I answered coldly. “But I think
that rumour exaggerates. When tongues wag, a little rivulet is often
described as a mountain torrent.”
“You would not say so did you but know what I know,” she informed me
roguishly. “Often, I confess, rumour may swell the importance of such an
affaire, but in this case I do not think that rumour does it justice.”
I made a deprecatory gesture, and I would have had the subject changed,
but ere I could make an effort to that end, the fool Saint-Eustache was
babbling again.
“You remember the duel that was fought in consequence, Monsieur de
Lesperon?”
“Yes,” I assented wearily.
“And in which a poor young fellow lost his life,” growled the Vicomte.
“It was practically a murder.”
“Nay, monsieur,” I cried, with a sudden heat that set them staring at
me; “there you do him wrong. Monsieur de Bardelys was opposed to the
best blade in France. The man's reputation as a swordsman was of such
a quality that for a twelvemonth he had been living upon it, doing all
manner of unseemly things immune from punishment by the fear in which
he was universally held. His behaviour in the unfortunate affair we
are discussing was of a particularly shameful character. Oh, I know the
details, messieurs, I can sure you. He thought to impose his reputation
upon Bardelys as he had imposed it upon a hundred others, but Bardelys
was over-tough for his teeth. He sent that notorious young gentleman
a challenge, and on the following morning he left him dead in the
horsemarket behind the Hotel Vendome. But far from a murder, monsieur,
it was an act of justice, and the most richly earned punishment with
which ever man was visited.”
“Even if so,” cried the Vicomte in some surprise, “why all this heat to
defend a brawler?”
“A brawler?” I repeated after him. “Oh, no. That is a charge his worst
enemies cannot make against Bardelys. He is no brawler. The duel in
question was his first affair of the kind, and it has been his last,
for unto him has clung the reputation that had belonged until then to La
Vertoile, and there is none in France bold enough to send a challenge
to him.” And, seeing what surprise I was provoking, I thought it well to
involve another with me in his defence. So, turning to the Chevalier,
“I am sure,” said I, “that Monsieur de Saint-Eustache will confirm my
words.”
Thereupon, his vanity being all aroused, the Chevalier set himself
to paraphrase all that I had said with a heat that cast mine into a
miserable insignificance.
“At least,” laughed the Vicomte at length, “he lacks not for champions.
For my own part, I am content to pray Heaven that he come not to
Lavedan, as he intended.”
“Mais voyons, Gaston,” the Vicomtesse protested, “why harbour prejudice?
Wait at least until you have seen him, that you may judge him for
yourself.”
“Already have I judged him; I pray that I may never see him.”
“They tell me he is a very handsome man,” said she, appealing to me
for confirmation. Lavedan shot her a sudden glance of alarm, at which I
could have laughed. Hitherto his sole concern had been his daughter, but
it suddenly occurred to him that perhaps not even her years might set
the Vicomtesse in safety from imprudences with this devourer of hearts,
should he still chance to come that way.
“Madame,” I answered, “he is accounted not ill-favored.” And with a
deprecatory smile I added, “I am said somewhat to resemble him.”
“Say you so?” she exclaimed, raising her eyebrows, and looking at me
more closely than hitherto. And then it seemed to me that into her
face crept a shade of disappointment. If this Bardelys were not more
beautiful than I, then he was not nearly so beautiful a man as she had
imagined. She turned to Saint-Eustache.
“It is indeed so, Chevalier?” she inquired. “Do you note the
resemblance?”
“Vanitas, vanitate,” murmured the youth, who had some scraps of Latin
and a taste for airing them. “I can see no likeness--no trace of one.
Monsieur de Lesperon is well enough, I should say. But Bardelys!” He
cast his eyes to the ceiling. “There is but one Bardelys in France.”
“Enfin,” I laughed, “you are no doubt well qualified to judge,
Chevalier. I had flattered myself that some likeness did exist, but
probably you have seen the Marquis more frequently than have I, and
probably you know him better. Nevertheless, should he come his way,
I will ask you to look at us side by side and be the judge of the
resemblance.”
“Should I happen to be here,” he said, with a sudden constraint not
difficult to understand, “I shall be happy to act as arbiter.”
“Should you happen to be here?” I echoed questioningly. “But surely,
should you hear that Monsieur de Bardelys is about to arrive, you will
postpone any departure you may be on the point of making, so that you
may renew this great friendship that you tell us you do the Marquis the
honour of entertaining for him?”
The Chevalier eyed me with the air of a man looking down from a great
height upon another. The Vicomte smiled quietly to himself as he combed
his fair beard with his forefinger in a meditative fashion, whilst even
Roxalanne--who had sat silently listening to a conversation that she
was at times mercifully spared from following too minutely--flashed me a
humorous glance. To the Vicomtesse alone who in common with women of
her type was of a singular obtuseness--was the situation without
significance.
Saint-Eustache, to defend himself against my delicate imputation, and
to show how well acquainted he was with Bardelys, plunged at once into
a thousand details of that gentleman's magnificence. He described his
suppers, his retinue, his equipages, his houses, his chateaux, his
favour with the King, his successes with the fair sex, and I know not
what besides--in all of which I confess that even to me there was a
certain degree of novelty. Roxalanne listened with an air of amusement
that showed how well she read him. Later, when I found myself alone
with her by the river, whither we had gone after the repast and
the Chevalier's reminiscences were at an end, she reverted to that
conversation.
“Is not my cousin a great fanfarron, monsieur,” she asked.
“Surely you know your cousin better than I,” I answered cautiously. “Why
question me upon his character?”
“I was hardly questioning; I was commenting. He spent a fortnight in
Paris once, and he accounts himself, or would have us account him,
intimate with every courtier at the Luxembourg. Oh, he is very amusing,
this good cousin, but tiresome too.” She laughed, and there was the
faintest note of scorn in her amusement. “Now, touching this Marquis de
Bardelys, it is very plain that the Chevalier boasted when he said that
they were as brothers--he and the Marquis--is it not? He grew ill at
ease when you reminded him of the possibility of the Marquis's visit to
Lavedan.” And she laughed quaintly to herself. “Do you think that he so
much as knows Bardelys?” she asked me suddenly.
“Not so much as by sight,” I answered. “He is full of information
concerning that unworthy gentleman, but it is only information that the
meanest scullion in Paris might afford you, and just as inaccurate.”
“Why do you speak of him as unworthy? Are you of the same opinion as my
father?”
“Aye, and with better cause.”
“You know him well?”
“Know him? Pardieu, he is my worst enemy. A worn-out libertine; a
sneering, cynical misogynist; a nauseated reveller; a hateful egotist.
There is no more unworthy person, I'll swear, in all France. Peste! The
very memory of the fellow makes me sick. Let us talk of other things.”
But although I urged it with the best will and the best intentions in
the world, I was not to have my way. The air became suddenly heavy with
the scent of musk, and the Chevalier de Saint-Eustache stood before us,
and forced the conversation once more upon the odious topic of Monsieur
de Bardelys.
The poor fool came with a plan of campaign carefully considered, bent
now upon overthrowing me with the knowledge he would exhibit, and
whereby he looked to encompass my humiliation before his cousin.
“Speaking of Bardelys, Monsieur de Lesperon--”
“My dear Chevalier, we were no longer speaking of him.”
He smiled darkly. “Let us speak of him, then.”
“But are there not a thousand more interesting things that we might
speak of?”
This he took for a fresh sign of fear, and so he pressed what he
accounted his advantage.
“Yet have patience; there is a point on which perhaps you can give me
some information.”
“Impossible,” said I.
“Are you acquainted with the Duchesse de Bourgogne?”
“I was,” I answered casually, and as casually I added, “Are you?”
“Excellently well,” he replied unhesitatingly. “I was in Paris at the
time of the scandal with Bardelys.”
I looked up quickly.
“Was it then that you met her?” I inquired in an idle sort of way.
“Yes. I was in the confidence of Bardelys, and one night after we
had supped at his hotel--one of those suppers graced by every wit in
Paris--he asked me if I were minded to accompany him to the Louvre. We
went. A masque was in progress.”
“Ah,” said I, after the manner of one who suddenly takes in the entire
situation; “and it was at this masque that you met the Duchesse?”
“You have guessed it. Ah, monsieur, if I were to tell you of the things
that I witnessed that night, they would amaze you,” said he, with a
great air and a casual glance at Mademoiselle to see into what depth of
wonder these glimpses into his wicked past were plunging her.
“I doubt it not,” said I, thinking that if his imagination were as
fertile in that connection as it had been in mine he was likely, indeed,
to have some amazing things to tell. “But do I understand you to say
that that was the time of the scandal you have touched upon?”
“The scandal burst three days after that masque. It came as a surprise
to most people. As for me--from what Bardelys had told me--I expected
nothing less.”
“Pardon, Chevalier, but how old do you happen to be?”
“A curious question that,” said he, knitting his brows.
“Perhaps. But will you not answer it?”
“I am twenty-one,” said he. “What of it?”
“You are twenty, mon cousin,” Roxalanne corrected him.
He looked at her a second with an injured air.
“Why, true--twenty! That is so,” he acquiesced; and again, “what of it?”
he demanded.
“What of it, monsieur?” I echoed. “Will you forgive me if I express
amazement at your precocity, and congratulate you upon it?”
His brows went if possible closer together and his face grew very red.
He knew that somewhere a pitfall awaited him, yet hardly where.
“I do not understand you.”
“Bethink you, Chevalier. Ten years have flown since this scandal you
refer to. So that at the time of your supping with Bardelys and the wits
of Paris, at the time of his making a confidant of you and carrying you
off to a masque at the Louvre, at the time of his presenting you to the
Duchesse de Bourgogne, you were just ten years of age. I never had cause
to think over-well of Bardelys, but had you not told me yourself, I
should have hesitated to believe him so vile a despoiler of innocence,
such a perverter of youth.”
He crimsoned to the very roots of his hair.
Roxalanne broke into a laugh. “My cousin, my cousin,” she cried, “they
that would become masters should begin early, is it not so?”
“Monsieur de Lesperon,” said he, in a very formal voice, “do you wish me
to apprehend that you have put me through this catechism for the purpose
of casting a doubt upon what I have said?”
“But have I done that? Have I cast a doubt?” I asked, with the utmost
meekness.
“So I apprehend.”
“Then you apprehend amiss. Your words, I assure you, admit of no doubt
whatever. And now, monsieur, if you will have mercy upon me, we will
talk of other things. I am so weary of this unfortunate Bardelys and his
affairs. He may be the fashion of Paris and at Court, but down here his
very name befouls the air. Mademoiselle,” I said, turning to Roxalanne,
“you promised me a lesson in the lore of flowers.”
“Come, then,” said she, and, being an exceedingly wise child, she
plunged straightway into the history of the shrubs about us.
Thus did we avert a storm that for a moment was very imminent. Yet some
mischief was done, and some good, too, perhaps. For if I made an enemy
of the Chevalier de Saint-Eustache by humbling him in the eyes of the
one woman before whom he sought to shine, I established a bond 'twixt
Roxalanne and myself by that same humiliation of a foolish coxcomb,
whose boastfulness had long wearied her.
CHAPTER VII. THE HOSTILITY OF SAINT-EUSTACHE
In the days that followed I saw much of the Chevalier de Saint-Eustache.
He was a very constant visitor at Lavedan, and the reason of it was not
far to seek. For my own part, I disliked him--I had done so from
the moment when first I had set eyes on him--and since hatred, like
affection, is often a matter of reciprocity, the Chevalier was not slow
to return my dislike. Our manner gradually, by almost imperceptible
stages, grew more distant, until by the end of a week it had become so
hostile that Lavedan found occasion to comment upon it.
“Beware of Saint-Eustache,” he warned me. “You are becoming very
manifestly distasteful to each other, and I would urge you to have a
care. I don't trust him. His attachment to our Cause is of a lukewarm
character, and he gives me uneasiness, for he may do much harm if he
is so inclined. It is on this account that I tolerate his presence at
Lavedan. Frankly, I fear him, and I would counsel you to do no less. The
man is a liar, even if but a boastful liar and liars are never long out
of mischief.”
The wisdom of the words was unquestionable, but the advice in them was
not easily followed, particularly by one whose position was so peculiar
as my own. In a way I had little cause to fear the harm the Chevalier
might do me, but I was impelled to consider the harm that at the same
time he might do the Vicomte.
Despite our growing enmity, the Chevalier and I were very frequently
thrown together. The reason for this was, of course, that wherever
Roxalanne was to be found there, generally, were we both to be found
also. Yet had I advantages that must have gone to swell a rancour based
as much upon jealousy as any other sentiment, for whilst he was but a
daily visitor at Lavedan, I was established there indefinitely.
Of the use that I made of that time I find it difficult to speak. From
the first moment that I had beheld Roxalanne I had realized the truth of
Chatellerault's assertion that I had never known a woman. He was right.
Those that I had met and by whom I had judged the sex had, by contrast
with this child, little claim to the title. Virtue I had accounted a
shadow without substance; innocence, a synonym for ignorance; love, a
fable, a fairy tale for the delectation of overgrown children.
In the company of Roxalanne de Lavedan all those old, cynical beliefs,
built up upon a youth of undesirable experiences, were shattered and
the error of them exposed. Swiftly was I becoming a convert to the faith
which so long I had sneered at, and as lovesick as any unfledged youth
in his first amour.
Damn! It was something for a man who had lived as I had lived to have
his pulses quicken and his colour change at a maid's approach; to find
himself colouring under her smile and paling under her disdain; to have
his mind running on rhymes, and his soul so enslaved that, if she is not
to be won, chagrin will dislodge it from his body.
Here was a fine mood for a man who had entered upon his business
by pledging himself to win and wed this girl in cold and supreme
indifference to her personality. And that pledge, how I cursed it during
those days at Lavedan! How I cursed Chatellerault, cunning, subtle
trickster that he was! How I cursed myself for my lack of chivalry and
honour in having been lured so easily into so damnable a business! For
when the memory of that wager rose before me it brought despair in its
train. Had I found Roxalanne the sort of woman that I had looked to
find--the only sort that I had ever known--then matters had been easy.
I had set myself in cold blood, and by such wiles as I knew, to win such
affection as might be hers to bestow; and I would have married her in
much the same spirit as a man performs any other of the necessary acts
of his lifetime and station. I would have told her that I was Bardelys,
and to the woman that I had expected to find there had been no
difficulty in making the confession. But to Roxalanne! Had there been
no wager, I might have confessed my identity. As it was, I found it
impossible to avow the one without the other. For the sweet innocence
that invested her gentle, trusting soul must have given pause to any
but the most abandoned of men before committing a vileness in connection
with her.
We were much together during that week, and just as day by day, hour by
hour, my passion grew and grew until it absorbed me utterly, so, too,
did it seem to me that it awakened in her a responsive note. There was
an odd light at times in her soft eyes; I came upon her more than once
with snatches of love-songs on her lips, and when she smiled upon
me there was a sweet tenderness in her smile, which, had things been
different, would have gladdened my soul beyond all else; but which,
things being as they were, was rather wont to heighten my despair. I
was no coxcomb; I had had experiences, and I knew these signs. But
something, too, I guessed of the heart of such a one as Roxalanne. To
the full I realized the pain and shame I should inflict upon her when
my confession came; I realized, too, how the love of this dear child,
so honourable and high of mind, must turn to contempt and scorn when
I plucked away my mask, and let her see how poor a countenance I wore
beneath.
And yet I drifted with the tide of things. It was my habit so to drift,
and the habit of a lifetime is not to be set at naught in a day by a
resolve, however firm. A score of times was I reminded that an evil is
but increased by being ignored. A score of times confession trembled
on my lips, and I burned to tell her everything from its inception--the
environment that had erstwhile warped me, the honesty by which I was now
inspired--and so cast myself upon the mercy of her belief.
She might accept my story, and, attaching credit to it, forgive me the
deception I had practised, and recognize the great truth that must ring
out in the avowal of my love. But, on the other hand, she might not
accept it; she might deem my confession a shrewd part of my scheme, and
the dread of that kept me silent day by day.
Fully did I see how with every hour that sped confession became more
and more difficult. The sooner the thing were done, the greater the
likelihood of my being believed; the later I left it, the more probable
was it that I should be discredited. Alas! Bardelys, it seemed, had
added cowardice to his other short-comings.
As for the coldness of Roxalanne, that was a pretty fable of
Chatellerault's; or else no more than an assumption, an invention of
the imaginative La Fosse. Far, indeed, from it, I found no arrogance
or coldness in her. All unversed in the artifices of her sex, all
unacquainted with the wiles of coquetry, she was the very incarnation
of naturalness and maidenly simplicity. To the tales that--with many
expurgations--I told her of Court life, to the pictures that I drew
of Paris, the Luxembourg, the Louvre, the Palais Cardinal, and the
courtiers that thronged those historic palaces, she listened avidly and
enthralled; and much as Othello won the heart of Desdemona by a recital
of the perils he had endured, so it seemed to me was I winning the heart
of Roxalanne by telling her of the things that I had seen.
Once or twice she expressed wonder at the depth and intimacy of the
knowledge of such matters exhibited by a simple Gascon gentleman,
whereupon I would urge, in explanation, the appointment in the Guards
that Lesperon had held some few years ago, a position that will reveal
much to an observant man.
The Vicomte noted our growing intimacy, yet set no restraint upon it.
Down in his heart I believe that noble gentleman would have been
well pleased had matters gone to extremes between us, for however
impoverished he might deem me; Lesperon's estates in Gascony being, as
I have said, likely to suffer sequestration in view of his treason--he
remembered the causes of this and the deep devotion of the man I
impersonated to the affairs of Gaston d'Orleans.
Again, he feared the very obvious courtship of the Chevalier de
Saint-Eustache, and he would have welcomed a turn of events that would
effectually have frustrated it. That he did not himself interfere so
far as the Chevalier's wooing was concerned, I could but set down to the
mistrust of Saint-Eustache--amounting almost to fear--of which he had
spoken.
As for the Vicomtesse, the same causes that had won me some of the
daughter's regard gained me also no little of the mother's.
She had been attached to the Chevalier until my coming. But what did the
Chevalier know of the great world compared with what I could tell? Her
love of scandal drew her to me with inquiries upon this person and that
person, many of them but names to her.
My knowledge and wealth of detail--for all that I curbed it lest I
should seem to know too much--delighted her prurient soul. Had she been
more motherly, this same knowledge that I exhibited should have made her
ponder what manner of life I had led, and should have inspired her
to account me no fit companion for her daughter. But a selfish woman,
little inclined to be plagued by the concerns of another--even when that
other was her daughter--she left things to the destructive course that
they were shaping.
And so everything--if we except perhaps the Chevalier de
Saint-Eustache--conspired to the advancement of my suit, in a manner
that must have made Chatellerault grind his teeth in rage if he could
have witnessed it, but which made me grind mine in despair when I
pondered the situation in detail.
One evening--I had been ten days at the chateau--we went a half-league
or so up the Garonne in a boat, she and I. As we were returning,
drifting with the stream, the oars idle in my hand, I spoke of leaving
Lavedan.
She looked up quickly; her expression was almost of alarm, and her eyes
dilated as they met mine--for, as I have said, she was all unversed in
the ways of her sex, and by nature too guileless to attempt to disguise
her feelings or dissemble them.
“But why must you go so soon?” she asked. “You are safe at Lavedan, and
abroad you may be in danger. It was but two days ago that they took
a poor young gentleman of these parts at Pau; so that you see the
persecution is not yet ended. Are you”--and her voice trembled ever so
slightly--“are you weary of us, monsieur?”
I shook my head at that, and smiled wistfully.
“Weary?” I echoed. “Surely, mademoiselle, you do not think it? Surely
your heart must tell you something very different?”
She dropped her eyes before the passion of my gaze. And when presently
she answered me, there was no guile in her words; there were the
dictates of the intuitions of her sex, and nothing more.
“But it is possible, monsieur. You are accustomed to the great world--”
“The great world of Lesperon, in Gascony?” I interrupted.
“No, no; the great world you have inhabited at Paris and elsewhere.
I can understand that at Lavedan you should find little of interest,
and--and that your inactivity should render you impatient to be gone.”
“If there were so little to interest me then it might be as you say.
But, oh, mademoiselle--” I ceased abruptly. Fool! I had almost fallen a
prey to the seductions that the time afforded me. The balmy, languorous
eventide, the broad, smooth river down which we glided, the foliage,
the shadows on the water, her presence, and our isolation amid such
surroundings, had almost blotted out the matter of the wager and of my
duplicity.
She laughed a little nervous laugh, and--maybe to ease the tension
that my sudden silence had begotten--“You see,” she said, “how your
imagination deserts you when you seek to draw upon it for proof of what
you protest. You were about to tell me of--of the interests that hold
you at Lavedan, and when you come to ponder them, you find that you
can think of nothing. Is it--is it not so?” She put the question very
timidly, as if half afraid of the answer she might provoke.
“No; it is not so,” I said.
I paused a moment, and in that moment I wrestled with myself. Confession
and avowal--confession of what I had undertaken, and avowal of the love
that had so unexpectedly come to me--trembled upon my lips, to be driven
shuddering away in fear.
Have I not said that this Bardelys was become a coward? Then my
cowardice suggested a course to me--flight. I would leave Lavedan. I
would return to Paris and to Chatellerault, owning defeat and paying my
wager. It was the only course open to me. My honour, so tardily aroused,
demanded no less. Yet, not so much because of that as because it was
suddenly revealed to me as the easier course, did I determine to pursue
it. What thereafter might become of me I did not know, nor in that hour
of my heart's agony did it seem to matter overmuch.
“There is much, mademoiselle, much, indeed, to hold me firmly at
Lavedan,” I pursued at last. “But my--my obligations demand of me that I
depart.”
“You mean the Cause,” she cried. “But, believe me, you can do nothing.
To sacrifice yourself cannot profit it. Infinitely better you can serve
the Duke by waiting until the time is ripe for another blow. And how
can you better preserve your life than by remaining at Lavedan until the
persecutions are at an end?”
“I was not thinking of the Cause, mademoiselle, but of myself alone--of
my own personal honour. I would that I could explain; but I am afraid,”
I ended lamely.
“Afraid?” she echoed, now raising her eyes in wonder.
“Aye, afraid. Afraid of your contempt, of your scorn.”
The wonder in her glance increased and asked a question that I could not
answer. I stretched forward, and caught one of the hands lying idle in
her lap.
“Roxalanne,” I murmured very gently, and my tone, my touch, and the use
of her name drove her eyes for refuge behind their lids again. A flush
spread upon the ivory pallor of her face, to fade as swiftly, leaving it
very white. Her bosom rose and fell in agitation, and the little hand I
held trembled in my grasp. There was a moment's silence. Not that I
had need to think or choose my words. But there was a lump in my
throat--aye, I take no shame in confessing it, for this was the first
time that a good and true emotion had been vouchsafed me since the
Duchesse de Bourgogne had shattered my illusions ten years ago.
“Roxalanne,” I resumed presently, when I was more master of myself, “we
have been good friends, you and I, since that night when I climbed for
shelter to your chamber, have we not?”
“But yes, monsieur,” she faltered.
“Ten days ago it is. Think of it--no more than ten days. And it seems as
if I had been months at Lavedan, so well have we become acquainted.
In these ten days we have formed opinions of each other. But with this
difference, that whilst mine are right, yours are wrong. I have come to
know you for the sweetest, gentlest saint in all this world. Would to
God I had known you earlier! It might have been very different; I might
have been--I would have been--different, and I would not have done
what I have done. You have come to know me for an unfortunate but honest
gentleman. Such am I not. I am under false colours here, mademoiselle.
Unfortunate I may be--at least, of late I seem to have become so. Honest
I am not--I have not been. There, child, I can tell you no more. I
am too great a coward. But when later you shall come to hear the
truth--when, after I am gone, they may tell you a strange story touching
this fellow Lesperon who sought the hospitality of your father's
house--bethink you of my restraint in this hour; bethink you of my
departure. You will understand these things perhaps afterwards. But
bethink you of them, and you will unriddle them for yourself, perhaps.
Be merciful upon me then; judge me not over-harshly.”
I paused, and for a moment we were silent. Then suddenly she looked up;
her fingers tightened upon mine.
“Monsieur de Lesperon,” she pleaded, “of what do speak? You are
torturing me, monsieur.”
“Look in my face, Roxalanne. Can you see nothing there of how I am
torturing myself?”
“Then tell me, monsieur,” she begged, her voice a very caress of
suppliant softness,--“tell me what vexes you and sets a curb upon
your tongue. You exaggerate, I am assured. You could do nothing
dishonourable, nothing vile.”
“Child,” I cried, “I thank God that you are right! I cannot do what is
dishonourable, and I will not, for all that a month ago I pledged myself
to do it!”
A sudden horror, a doubt, a suspicion flashed into her glance.
“You--you do not mean that you are a spy?” she asked; and from my heart
a prayer of thanks went up to Heaven that this at least it was mine
frankly to deny.
“No, no--not that. I am no spy.”
Her face cleared again, and she sighed.
“It is, I think, the only thing I could not forgive. Since it is not
that, will you not tell me what it is?”
For a moment the temptation to confess, to tell her everything, was
again upon me. But the futility of it appalled me.
“Don't ask me,” I besought her; “you will learn it soon enough.” For
I was confident that once my wager was paid, the news of it and of the
ruin of Bardelys would spread across the face of France like a ripple
over water. Presently--
“Forgive me for having come into your life, Roxalanne!” I implored her,
and then I sighed again. “Helas! Had I but known you earlier! I did not
dream such women lived in this worn-out France.”
“I will not pry, monsieur, since your resolve appears to be so firm. But
if--if after I have heard this thing you speak of,” she said presently,
speaking with averted eyes, “and if, having heard it, I judge you more
mercifully than you judge yourself, and I send for you, will you--will
you come back to Lavedan?”
My heart gave a great bound--a great, a sudden throb of hope. But as
sudden and as great was the rebound into despair.
“You will not send for me, be assured of that,” I said with finality;
and we spoke no more.
I took the oars and plied them vigorously. I was in haste to end the
situation. Tomorrow I must think of my departure, and, as I rowed, I
pondered the words that had passed between us. Not one word of love
had there been, and yet, in the very omission of it, avowal had lain on
either side. A strange wooing had been mine--a wooing that precluded the
possibility of winning, and yet a wooing that had won. Aye, it had won;
but it might not take. I made fine distinctions and quaint paradoxes as
I tugged at my oars, for the human mind is a curiously complex thing,
and with some of us there is no such spur to humour as the sting of
pain.
Roxalanne sat white and very thoughtful, but with veiled eyes, so that I
might guess nothing of what passed within her mind.
At last we reached the chateau, and as I brought the boat to the terrace
steps, it was Saint-Eustache who came forward to offer his wrist to
Mademoiselle.
He noted the pallor of her face, and darted me a quick, suspicion-laden
glance. As we were walking towards the chateau--
“Monsieur de Lesperon,” said he in a curious tone, “do you know that a
rumour of your death is current in the province?”
“I had hoped that such a rumour might get abroad when I disappeared,” I
answered calmly.
“And you have taken no single step to contradict it?”
“Why should I, since in that rumour may be said to lie my safety?”
“Nevertheless, monsieur, voyons. Surely you might at least relieve the
anxieties the affliction, I might almost say--of those who are mourning
you.”
“Ah!” said I. “And who may these be?”
He shrugged his shoulders and pursed his lips in a curiously deprecatory
smile. With a sidelong glance at Mademoiselle--
“Do you need that I name Mademoiselle de Marsac?” he sneered.
I stood still, my wits busily working, my face impassive under his
scrutinizing glance. In a flash it came to me that this must be the
writer of some of the letters Lesperon had given me, the original of the
miniature I carried.
As I was silent, I grew suddenly conscious of another pair of eyes
observing me, Mademoiselle's. She remembered what I had said, she may
have remembered how I had cried out the wish that I had met her earlier,
and she may not have been slow to find an interpretation for my words. I
could have groaned in my rage at such a misinterpretation. I could have
taken the Chevalier round to the other side of the chateau and killed
him with the greatest relish in the world. But I restrained myself, I
resigned myself to be misunderstood. What choice had I?
“Monsieur de Saint-Eustache,” said I very coldly, and looking him
straight between his close-set eyes, “I have permitted you many
liberties, but there is one that I cannot permit any one--and, much as I
honour you, I can make no exception in your favour. That is to interfere
in my concerns and presume to dictate to me the manner in which I shall
conduct them. Be good enough to bear that in your memory.”
In a moment he was all servility. The sneer passed out of his face, the
arrogance out of his demeanour. He became as full of smiles and capers
as the meanest sycophant.
“You will forgive me, monsieur!” he cried, spreading his hands, and with
the humblest smile in the world. “I perceive that I have taken a great
liberty; yet you have misunderstood its purport. I sought to sound you
touching the wisdom of a step upon which I have ventured.”
“That is, monsieur?” I asked, throwing back my head, with the scent of
danger breast high.
“I took it upon myself to-day to mention the fact that you are alive and
well to one who had a right, I thought, to know of it, and who is coming
hither tomorrow.”
“That was a presumption you may regret,” said I between my teeth. “To
whom do you impart this information?”
“To your friend, Monsieur de Marsac,” he answered, and through his
mask of humility the sneer was again growing apparent. “He will be here
tomorrow,” he repeated.
Marsac was that friend of Lesperon's to whose warm commendation of
the Gascon rebel I owed the courtesy and kindness that the Vicomte de
Lavedan had meted out to me since my coming.
Is it wonderful that I stood as if frozen, my wits refusing to work and
my countenance wearing, I doubt not, a very stricken look? Here was one
coming to Lavedan who knew Lesperon--one who would unmask me and say
that I was an impostor. What would happen then? A spy they would of a
certainty account me, and that they would make short work of me I never
doubted. But that was something that troubled me less than the opinion
Mademoiselle must form. How would she interpret what I had said that
day? In what light would she view me hereafter?
Such questions sped like swift arrows through my mind, and in their
train came a dull anger with myself that I had not told her everything
that afternoon. It was too late now. The confession would come no longer
of my own free will, as it might have done an hour ago, but would be
forced from me by the circumstances that impended. Thus it would no
longer have any virtue to recommend it to her mercy.
“The news seems hardly welcome, Monsieur de Lesperon,” said Roxalanne
in a voice that was inscrutable. Her tone stirred me, for it betokened
suspicion already. Something might yet chance to aid me, and in the mean
while I might spoil all did I yield to this dread of the morrow. By an
effort I mastered myself, and in tones calm and level, that betrayed
nothing of the tempest in my soul--
“It is not welcome, mademoiselle,” I answered. “I have excellent reasons
for not desiring to meet Monsieur de Marsac.”
“Excellent, indeed, are they!” lisped Saint-Eustache, with an ugly droop
at the corners of his mouth. “I doubt not you'll find it hard to offer
a plausible reason for having left him and his sister without news that
you were alive.”
“Monsieur,” said I at random, “why will you drag in his sister's name?”
“Why?” he echoed, and he eyed me with undisguised amusement. He was
standing erect, his head thrown back, his right arm outstretched from
the shoulder, and his hand resting lightly upon the gold mount of his
beribboned cane. He let his eyes wander from me to Roxalanne, then back
again to me. At last: “Is it wonderful that I should drag in the name of
your betrothed?” said he. “But perhaps you will deny that Mademoiselle
de Marsac is that to you?” he suggested.
And I, forgetting for the moment the part I played and the man whose
identity I had put on, made answer hotly: “I do deny it.”
“Why, then, you lie,” said he, and shrugged hits shoulders with insolent
contempt.
In all my life I do not think it could be said of me that I had ever
given way to rage. Rude, untutored minds may fall a prey to passion,
but a gentleman, I hold, is never angry. Nor was I then, so far as the
outward signs of anger count. I doffed my hat with a sweep to Roxalanne,
who stood by with fear and wonder blending in her glance.
“Mademoiselle, you will forgive that I find it necessary to birch this
babbling schoolboy in your presence.”
Then, with the pleasantest manner in the world, I stepped aside, and
plucked the cane from the Chevalier's hand before he had so much as
guessed what I was about. I bowed before him with the utmost politeness,
as if craving his leave and tolerance for what I was about to do, and
then, before he had recovered from his astonishment, I had laid that
cane three times in quick succession across his shoulders. With a cry at
once of pain and of mortification, he sprang back, and his hand dropped
to his hilt.
“Monsieur,” Roxalanne cried to him, “do you not see that he is unarmed?”
But he saw nothing, or, if he saw, thanked Heaven that things were in
such case, and got his sword out. Thereupon Roxalanne would have stepped
between us, but with arm outstretched I restrained her.
“Have no fear, mademoiselle,” said I very quietly; for if the wrist that
had overcome La Vertoile were not with a stick a match for a couple of
such swords as this coxcomb's, then was I forever shamed.
He bore down upon me furiously, his point coming straight for my throat.
I took the blade on the cane; then, as he disengaged and came at me
lower, I made counter-parry, and pursuing the circle after I had caught
his steel, I carried it out of his hand. It whirled an instant,
a shimmering wheel of light, then it clattered against the marble
balustrade half a dozen yards away. With his sword it seemed that his
courage, too, departed, and he stood at my mercy, a curious picture of
foolishness, surprise, and fear.
Now the Chevalier de Saint-Eustache was a young man, and in the young
we can forgive much. But to forgive such an act as he had been guilty
of--that of drawing his sword upon a man who carried no weapons--would
have been not only a ridiculous toleration, but an utter neglect of
duty. As an older man it behoved me to read the Chevalier a lesson in
manners and gentlemanly feeling. So, quite dispassionately, and purely
for his own future good, I went about the task, and administered him a
thrashing that for thoroughness it would be hard to better. I was not
discriminating. I brought my cane down with a rhythmical precision, and
whether it took him on the head, the back, or the shoulders, I held
to be more his affair than mine. I had a moral to inculcate, and the
injuries he might receive in the course of it were inconsiderable
details so that the lesson was borne in upon his soul. Two or three
times he sought to close with me, but I eluded him; I had no mind to
descend to a vulgar exchange of blows. My object was not to brawl,
but to administer chastisement, and this object I may claim to have
accomplished with a fair degree of success.
At last Roxalanne interfered; but only when one blow a little more
violent, perhaps, than its precursors resulted in the sudden snapping of
the cane and Monsieur de Eustache's utter collapse into a moaning heap.
“I deplore, mademoiselle, to have offended your sight with such a
spectacle, but unless these lessons are administered upon the instant
their effect is not half so salutary.”
“He deserved it, monsieur,” said she, with a note almost of fierceness
in her voice. And of such poor mettle are we that her resentment against
that groaning mass of fopperies and wheals sent a thrill of pleasure
through me. I walked over to the spot where his sword had fallen, and
picked it up.
“Monsieur de Saint-Eustache,” said I, “you have so dishonoured this
blade that I do not think you would care to wear it again.” Saying
which, I snapped it across my knee, and flung it far out into the river,
for all that the hilt was a costly one, richly wrought in bronze and
gold.
He raised his livid countenance, and his eyes blazed impotent fury.
“Par la mort Dieu!” he cried hoarsely, “you shall give me satisfaction
for this!”
“If you account yourself still unsatisfied, I am at your service when
you will,” said I courteously.
Then, before more could be said, I saw Monsieur de Lavedan and the
Vicomtesse approaching hurriedly across the parterre. The Vicomte's
brow was black with what might have appeared anger, but which I rightly
construed into apprehension.
“What has taken place? What have you done?” he asked of me.
“He has brutally assaulted the Chevalier,” cried Madame shrilly,
her eyes malevolently set upon me. “He is only a child, this poor
Saint-Eustache,” she reproached me. “I saw it all from my window,
Monsieur de Lesperon. It was brutal; it was cowardly. So to beat a boy!
Shame! If you had a quarrel with him, are there not prescribed methods
for their adjustment between gentlemen? Pardieu, could you not have
given him proper satisfaction?”
“If madame will give herself the trouble of attentively examining
this poor Saint-Eustache,” said I, with a sarcasm which her virulence
prompted, “you will agree, I think, that I have given him very proper
and very thorough satisfaction. I would have met him sword in hand, but
the Chevalier has the fault of the very young--he is precipitate; he was
in too great a haste, and he could not wait until I got a sword. So I
was forced to do what I could with a cane.”
“But you provoked him,” she flashed back.
“Whoever told you so has misinformed you, madame. On the contrary, he
provoked me. He gave me the lie. I struck him--could I do less?--and he
drew. I defended myself, and I supplemented my defence by a caning, so
that this poor Saint-Eustache might realize the unworthiness of what he
had done. That is all, madame.”
But she was not so easily to be appeased, not even when Mademoiselle and
the Vicomte joined their voices to mine in extenuation of my conduct. It
was like Lavedan. For all that he was full of dread of the result and
of the vengeance Saint-Eustache might wreak--boy though he was--he
expressed himself freely touching the Chevalier's behaviour and the
fittingness of the punishment that had overtaken him.
The Vicomtesse stood in small awe of her husband, but his judgment upon
a point of honour was a matter that she would not dare contest. She
was ministering to the still prostrate Chevalier who, I think,
remained prostrate now that he might continue to make appeal to her
sympathy--when suddenly she cut in upon Roxalanne's defence of me.
“Where have you been?” she demanded suddenly.
“When, my mother?”
“This afternoon,” answered the Vicomtesse impatiently. “The Chevalier
was waiting two hours for you.”
Roxalanne coloured to the roots of her hair. The Vicomte frowned.
“Waiting for me, my mother? But why for me?”
“Answer my question--where have you been?”
“I was with Monsieur de Lesperon,” she answered simply.
“Alone?” the Vicomtesse almost shrieked.
“But yes.” The poor child's tones were laden with wonder at this
catechism.
“God's death!” she snapped. “It seems that my daughter is no better
than--”
Heaven knows what may have been coming, for she had the most virulent,
scandalous tongue that I have ever known in a woman's head--which is
much for one who has lived at Court to say. But the Vicomte, sharing
my fears, perhaps, and wishing to spare the child's ears, interposed
quickly “Come, madame, what airs are these? What sudden assumption
of graces that we do not affect? We are not in Paris. This is not
the Luxembourg. En province comme en province, and here we are simple
folk--”
“Simple folk?” she interrupted, gasping. “By God, am I married to a
ploughman? Am I Vicomtesse of Lavedan, or the wife of a boor of the
countryside? And is the honour of your daughter a matter--”
“The honour of my daughter is not in question, madame,” he interrupted
in his turn, and with a sudden sternness that spent the fire of her
indignation as a spark that is trampled underfoot. Then, in a calm,
level voice: “Ah, here are the servants,” said he.
“Permit them, madame, to take charge of Monsieur de Saint-Eustache.
Anatole, you had better order the carriage for Monsieur le Chevalier. I
do not think that he will be able to ride home.”
Anatole peered at the pale young gentleman on the ground, then he turned
his little wizened face upon me, and grinned in a singularly solemn
fashion. Monsieur de Saint-Eustache was little loved, it seemed.
Leaning heavily upon the arm of one of the lacqueys, the Chevalier moved
painfully towards the courtyard, where the carriage was being prepared
for him. At the last moment he turned and beckoned the Vicomte to his
side.
“As God lives, Monsieur de Lavedan,” he swore, breathing heavily in
the fury that beset him, “you shall bitterly regret having taken sides
to-day with that Gascon bully. Remember me, both of you, when you are
journeying to Toulouse.”
The Vicomte stood beside him, impassive and unmoved by that grim threat,
for all that to him it must have sounded like a death-sentence.
“Adieu, monsieur--a speedy recovery,” was all he answered.
But I stepped up to them. “Do you not think, Vicomte, that it were
better to detain him?” I asked.
“Pshaw!” he ejaculated. “Let him go.”
The Chevalier's eyes met mine in a look of terror. Perhaps already
that young man repented him of his menace, and he realized the folly of
threatening one in whose power he still chanced to be.
“Bethink you, monsieur,” I cried. “Yours is a noble and useful life.
Mine is not without value, either. Shall we suffer these lives--aye,
and the happiness of your wife and daughter--to be destroyed by this
vermin?”
“Let him go, monsieur; let him go. I am not afraid.”
I bowed and stepped back, motioning to the lacquey to take the fellow
away, much as I should have motioned him to remove some uncleanness from
before me.
The Vicomtesse withdrew in high dudgeon to her chamber, and I did not
see her again that evening. Mademoiselle I saw once, for a moment,
and she employed that moment to question me touching the origin of my
quarrel with Saint-Eustache.
“Did he really lie, Monsieur de Lesperon?” she asked.
“Upon my honour, mademoiselle,” I answered solemnly, “I have plighted my
troth to no living woman.” Then my chin sank to my breast as I bethought
me of how tomorrow she must opine me the vilest liar living--for I was
resolved to be gone before Marsac arrived--since the real Lesperon I did
not doubt was, indeed, betrothed to Mademoiselle de Marsac.
“I shall leave Lavedan betimes to-morrow, mademoiselle,” I pursued
presently. “What has happened to-day makes my departure all the more
urgent. Delay may have its dangers. You will hear strange things of me,
as already I have warned you. But be merciful. Much will be true, much
false; yet the truth itself is very vile, and--” I stopped short, in
despair of explaining or even tempering what had to come. I shrugged my
shoulders in my abandonment of hope, and I turned towards the window.
She crossed the room and came to stand beside me.
“Will you not tell me? Have you no faith in me? Ah, Monsieur de
Lesperon--”
“'Sh! child, I cannot. It is too late to tell you now.”
“Oh, not too late! From what you say they will tell me, I should think,
perhaps, worse of you than you deserve. What is this thing you hide?
What is this mystery? Tell me, monsieur. Tell me.”
Did ever woman more plainly tell a man she loved him, and that loving
him she would find all excuses for him? Was ever woman in better case to
hear a confession from the man that loved her, and of whose love she was
assured by every instinct that her sex possesses in such matters?
Those two questions leapt into my mind, and in resolving them I all but
determined to speak even now in the eleventh hour.
And then--I know not how--a fresh barrier seemed to arise. It was not
merely a matter of telling her of the wager I was embarked upon; not
merely a matter of telling her of the duplicity that I had practised,
of the impostures by which I had gained admittance to her father's
confidence and trust; not merely a matter of confessing that I was not
Lesperon. There would still be the necessity of saying who I was. Even
if she forgave all else, could she forgive me for being Bardelys the
notorious Bardelys, the libertine, the rake, some of whose exploits she
had heard of from her mother, painted a hundred times blacker than they
really were? Might she not shrink from me when I told her I was that
man? In her pure innocence she deemed, no doubt, that the life of every
man who accounted himself a gentleman was moderately clean. She would
not see in me--as did her mother--no more than a type of the best class
in France, and having no more than the vices of my order. As a monster
of profligacy might she behold me, and that--ah, Dieu!--I could not
endure that she should do whilst I was by.
It may be--indeed, now, as I look back, I know that I exaggerated my
case. I imagined she would see it as I saw it then. For would you credit
it? With this great love that was now come to me, it seemed the ideals
of my boyhood were returned, and I abhorred the man that I had been. The
life I had led now filled me with disgust and loathing; the notions
I had formed seemed to me now all vicious and distorted, my cynicism
shallow and unjust.
“Monsieur de Lesperon,” she called softly to me, noting my silence.
I turned to her. I set my hand lightly upon her arm; I let my gaze
encounter the upward glance of her eyes--blue as forget-me-nots.
“You suffer!” she murmured, with sweet compassion.
“Worse, Roxalanne! I have sown in your heart too the seed of suffering.
Oh, I am too unworthy!” I cried out; “and when you come to discover how
unworthy it will hurt you; it will sting your pride to think how kind
you were to me.” She smiled incredulously, in denial of my words. “No,
child; I cannot tell you.”
She sighed, and then before more could be said there was a sound at the
door, and we started away from each other. The Vicomte entered, and my
last chance of confessing, of perhaps averting much of what followed,
was lost to me.
CHAPTER VIII. THE PORTRAIT
Into the mind of every thoughtful man must come at times with bitterness
the reflection of how utterly we are at the mercy of Fate, the victims
of her every whim and caprice. We may set out with the loftiest, the
sternest resolutions to steer our lives along a well-considered course,
yet the slightest of fortuitous circumstances will suffice to force us
into a direction that we had no thought of taking.
Now, had it pleased Monsieur de Marsac to have come to Lavedan at any
reasonable hour of the day, I should have been already upon the road
to Paris, intent to own defeat and pay my wager. A night of thought,
besides strengthening my determination to follow such a course, had
brought the reflection that I might thereafter return to Roxalanne, a
poor man, it is true, but one at least whose intentions might not be
misconstrued.
And so, when at last I sank into sleep, my mind was happier than it had
been for many days. Of Roxalanne's love I was assured, and it seemed
that I might win her, after all, once I removed the barrier of shame
that now deterred me. It may be that those thoughts kept me awake
until a late hour, and that to this I owe it that when on the morrow I
awakened the morning was well advanced. The sun was flooding my chamber,
and at my bedside stood Anatole.
“What's o'clock?” I inquired, sitting bolt upright.
“Past ten,” said he, with stern disapproval.
“And you have let me sleep?” I cried.
“We do little else at Lavedan even when we are awake,” he grumbled.
“There was no reason why monsieur should rise.” Then, holding out a
paper, “Monsieur Stanislas de Marsac was here betimes this morning with
Mademoiselle his sister. He left this letter for you, monsieur.”
Amaze and apprehension were quickly followed by relief, since Anatole's
words suggested that Marsac had not remained. I took the letter,
nevertheless, with some misgivings, and whilst I turned it over in my
hands I questioned the old servant.
“He stayed an hour at the chateau, monsieur,” Anatole informed me.
“Monsieur le Vicomte would have had you roused, but he would not hear of
it. 'If what Monsieur de Saint-Eustache has told me touching your guest
should prove to be true,' said he, 'I would prefer not to meet him under
your roof, monsieur.' 'Monsieur de Saint-Eustache,' my master replied,
'is not a person whose word should have weight with any man of honour.'
But in spite of that, Monsieur de Marsac held to his resolve, and
although he would offer no explanation in answer to my master's many
questions, you were not aroused.
“At the end of a half-hour his sister entered with Mademoiselle. They
had been walking together on the terrace, and Mademoiselle de Marsac
appeared very angry. 'Affairs are exactly as Monsieur de Saint-Eustache
has represented them,' said she to her brother. At that he swore a most
villainous oath, and called for writing materials. At the moment of his
departure he desired me to deliver this letter to you, and then rode
away in a fury, and, seemingly, not on the best of terms with Monsieur
le Vicomte.”
“And his sister?” I asked quickly.
“She went with him. A fine pair, as I live!” he added, casting his eyes
to the ceiling.
At least I could breathe freely. They were gone, and whatever damage
they may have done to the character of poor Rene de Lesperon ere they
departed, they were not there, at all events, to denounce me for an
impostor. With a mental apology to the shade of the departed Lesperon
for all the discredit I was bringing down upon his name, I broke
the seal of that momentous epistle, which enclosed a length of some
thirty-two inches of string.
Monsieur [I read], wherever I may chance to meet you it shall be my duty
to kill you.
A rich beginning, in all faith! If he could but maintain that
uncompromising dramatic flavour to the end, his epistle should be worth
the trouble of deciphering, for he penned a vile scrawl of pothooks.
It is because of this [the letter proceeded] that I have refrained from
coming face to face with you this morning. The times are too troublous
and the province is in too dangerous a condition to admit of an act
that might draw the eyes of the Keeper of the Seals upon Lavedan. To
my respect, then, to Monsieur le Vicomte and to my own devotion to the
Cause we mutually serve do you owe it that you still live. I am on my
way to Spain to seek shelter there from the King's vengeance.
To save myself is a duty that I owe as much to myself as to the Cause.
But there is another duty, one that I owe my sister, whom you have so
outrageously slighted, and this duty, by God's grace, I will perform
before I leave. Of your honour, monsieur, we will not speak, for reasons
into which I need not enter, and I make no appeal to it. But if you have
a spark of manhood left, if you are not an utter craven as well as a
knave, I shall expect you on the day after tomorrow, at any hour before
noon, at the Auberge de la Couronne at Grenade. There, monsieur, if you
please, we will adjust our differences. That you may come prepared, and
so that no time need be wasted when we meet, I send you the length of my
sword.
Thus ended that angry, fire-breathing epistle. I refolded it
thoughtfully, then, having taken my resolve, I leapt from the bed and
desired Anatole to assist me to dress.
I found the Vicomte much exercised in mind as to the meaning of Marsac's
extraordinary behaviour, and I was relieved to see that he, at least,
could conjecture no cause for it. In reply to the questions with which
he very naturally assailed me, I assured him that it was no more than
a matter of a misunderstanding; that Monsieur de Marsac had asked me to
meet him at Grenade in two days' time, and that I should then, no doubt,
be able to make all clear.
Meanwhile, I regretted the incident, since it necessitated my remaining
and encroaching for two days longer upon the Vicomte's hospitality. To
all this, however, he made the reply that I expected, concluding
with the remark that for the present at least it would seem as if
the Chevalier de Saint-Eustache had been satisfied with creating this
trouble betwixt myself and Marsac.
From what Anatole had said, I had already concluded that Marsac had
exercised the greatest reticence. But the interview between his sister
and Roxalanne filled me with the gravest anxiety. Women are not wont to
practise the restraint of men under such circumstances, and for all that
Mademoiselle de Marsac may not have expressed it in so many words that I
was her faithless lover, yet women are quick to detect and interpret the
signs of disorders springing from such causes, and I had every fear that
Roxalanne was come to the conclusion that I had lied to her yesternight.
With an uneasy spirit, then, I went in quest of her, and I found her
walking in the old rose garden behind the chateau.
She did not at first remark my approach, and I had leisure for some
moments to observe her and to note the sadness that dwelt in her profile
and the listlessness of her movements. This, then, was my work--mine,
and that of Monsieur de Chatellerault, and those other merry gentlemen
who had sat at my table in Paris nigh upon a month ago.
I moved, and the gravel crunched under my foot, whereupon she turned,
and, at sight of me advancing towards her, she started. The blood
mounted to her face, to ebb again upon the instant, leaving it paler
than it had been. She made as if to depart; then she appeared to check
herself, and stood immovable and outwardly calm, awaiting my approach.
But her eyes were averted, and her bosom rose and fell too swiftly to
lend colour to that mask of indifference she hurriedly put on. Yet, as
I drew nigh, she was the first to speak, and the triviality of her words
came as a shock to me, and for all my knowledge of woman's way caused me
to doubt for a moment whether perhaps her calm were not real, after all.
“You are a laggard this morning, Monsieur de Lesperon.” And, with a half
laugh, she turned aside to break a rose from its stem.
“True,” I answered stupidly; “I slept over-late.”
“A thousand pities, since thus you missed seeing Mademoiselle de Marsac.
Have they told you that she was here?”
“Yes, mademoiselle. Stanislas de Marsac left a letter for me.”
“You will regret not having seen them, no doubt?” quoth she.
I evaded the interrogative note in her voice. “That is their fault. They
appear to have preferred to avoid me.”
“Is it matter for wonder?” she flashed, with a sudden gleam of fury
which she as suddenly controlled. With the old indifference, she added,
“You do not seem perturbed, monsieur?”
“On the contrary, mademoiselle; I am very deeply perturbed.”
“At not having seen your betrothed?” she asked, and now for the first
time her eyes were raised, and they met mine with a look that was a
stab.
“Mademoiselle, I had the honour of telling you yesterday that I had
plighted my troth to no living woman.”
At that reminder of yesterday she winced, and I was sorry that I had
uttered it, for it must have set the wound in her pride a-bleeding
again. Yesterday I had as much as told her that I loved her, and
yesterday she had as much as answered me that she loved me, for
yesterday I had sworn that Saint-Eustache's story of my betrothal was
a lie. To-day she had had assurance of the truth from the very woman to
whom Lesperon's faith was plighted, and I could imagine something of her
shame.
“Yesterday, monsieur,” she answered contemptuously, “you lied in many
things.”
“Nay, I spoke the truth in all. Oh, God in heaven, mademoiselle,” I
exclaimed in sudden passion, “will you not believe me? Will you not
accept my word for what I say, and have a little patience until I shall
have discharged such obligations as will permit me to explain?”
“Explain?” quoth she, with withering disdain.
“There is a hideous misunderstanding in all this. I am the victim of a
miserable chain of circumstances. Oh, I can say no more! These Marsacs
I shall easily pacify. I am to meet Monsieur de Marsac at Grenade on
the day after to-morrow. In my pocket I have a letter from this living
sword-blade, in which he tells me that he will give himself the pleasure
of killing me then. Yet--”
“I hope he does, monsieur!” she cut in, with a fierceness before which
I fell dumb and left my sentence unfinished. “I shall pray God that he
may!” she added. “You deserve it as no man deserved it yet!”
For a moment I stood stricken, indeed, by her words. Then, my reason
grasping the motive of that fierceness, a sudden joy pervaded me. It was
a fierceness breathing that hatred that is a part of love, than which,
it is true, no hatred can be more deadly. And yet so eloquently did it
tell me of those very feelings which she sought jealously to conceal,
that, moved by a sudden impulse, I stepped close up to her.
“Roxalanne,” I said fervently, “you do not hope for it. What would your
life be if I were dead? Child, child, you love me even as I love you.”
I caught her suddenly to me with infinite tenderness, with reverence
almost. “Can you lend no ear to the voice of this love? Can you not have
faith in me a little? Can you not think that if I were quite as unworthy
as you make-believe to your very self, this love could have no place?”
“It has no place!” she cried. “You lie--as in all things else. I do not
love you. I hate you. Dieu! How I hate you!”
She had lain in my arms until then, with upturned face and piteous,
frightened eyes--like a bird that feels itself within the toils of a
snake, yet whose horror is blent with a certain fascination. Now, as she
spoke, her will seemed to reassert itself, and she struggled to break
from me. But as her fierceness of hatred grew, so did my fierceness of
resolve gain strength, and I held her tightly.
“Why do you hate me?” I asked steadily. “Ask yourself, Roxalanne, and
tell me what answer your heart makes. Does it not answer that indeed you
do not hate me--that you love me?”
“Oh, God, to be so insulted!” she cried out. “Will you not release me,
miserable? Must I call for help? Oh, you shall suffer for this! As there
is a Heaven, you shall be punished!”
But in my passion I held her, despite entreaties, threats, and
struggles. I was brutal, if you will. Yet think of what was in my soul
at being so misjudged, at finding myself in this position, and deal
not over harshly with me. The courage to confess which I had lacked for
days, came to me then. I must tell her. Let the result be what it might,
it could not be worse than this, and this I could endure no longer.
“Listen, Roxalanne!”
“I will not listen! Enough of insults have I heard already. Let me go!”
“Nay, but you shall hear me. I am not Rene de Lesperon. Had these
Marsacs been less impetuous and foolish, had they waited to have seen me
this morning, they would have told you so.”
She paused for a second in her struggles to regard me. Then, with a
sudden contemptuous laugh, she renewed her efforts more vigorously than
before.
“What fresh lies do you offer me? Release me, I will hear no more!”
“As Heaven is my witness, I have told you the truth. I know how wild
a sound it has, and that is partly why I did not tell you earlier.
But your disdain I cannot suffer. That you should deem me a liar in
professing to love you--”
Her struggles were grown so frantic that I was forced to relax my grip.
But this I did with a suddenness that threw her out of balance, and she
was in danger of falling backwards. To save herself, she caught at my
doublet, which was torn open under the strain.
We stood some few feet apart, and, white and palpitating in her anger,
she confronted me. Her eyes lashed me with their scorn, but under my
steady, unflinching gaze they fell at last. When next she raised them
there was a smile of quiet but unutterable contempt upon her lips.
“Will you swear,” said she, “that you are not Rene de Lesperon? That
Mademoiselle de Marsac is not your betrothed?”
“Yes--by my every hope of Heaven!” I cried passionately.
She continued to survey me with that quiet smile of mocking scorn.
“I have heard it said,” quoth she, “that the greatest liars are ever
those that are readiest to take oath.” Then, with a sudden gasp of
loathing, “I think you have dropped something, monsieur,” said she,
pointing to the ground. And without waiting for more, she swung round
and left me.
Face upwards at my feet lay the miniature that poor Lesperon had
entrusted to me in his dying moments. It had dropped from my doublet in
the struggle, and I never doubted now but that the picture it contained
was that of Mademoiselle de Marsac.
CHAPTER IX. A NIGHT ALARM
I was returning that same afternoon from a long walk that I had
taken--for my mood was of that unenviable sort that impels a man to be
moving--when I found a travelling-chaise drawn up in the quadrangle as
if ready for a journey. As I mounted the steps of the chateau I came
face to face with mademoiselle, descending. I drew aside that she might
pass; and this she did with her chin in the air, and her petticoat drawn
to her that it might not touch me.
I would have spoken to her, but her eyes looked straight before her with
a glance that was too forbidding; besides which there was the gaze of a
half-dozen grooms upon us. So, bowing before her--the plume of my doffed
hat sweeping the ground--I let her go. Yet I remained standing where
she had passed me, and watched her enter the coach. I looked after the
vehicle as it wheeled round and rattled out over the drawbridge, to
raise a cloud of dust on the white, dry road beyond.
In that hour I experienced a sense of desolation and a pain to which I
find it difficult to give expression. It seemed to me as if she had gone
out of my life for all time--as if no reparation that I could ever make
would suffice to win her back after what had passed between us that
morning. Already wounded in her pride by what Mademoiselle de Marsac had
told her of our relations, my behaviour in the rose garden had completed
the work of turning into hatred the tender feelings that but yesterday
she had all but confessed for me. That she hated me now, I was well
assured. My reflections as I walked had borne it in upon me how rash,
how mad had been my desperate action, and with bitterness I realized
that I had destroyed the last chance of ever mending matters.
Not even the payment of my wager and my return in my true character
could avail me now. The payment of my wager, forsooth! Even that lost
what virtue it might have contained. Where was the heroism of such an
act? Had I not failed, indeed? And was not, therefore, the payment of my
wager become inevitable?
Fool! fool! Why had I not profited that gentle mood of hers when we had
drifted down the stream together? Why had I not told her then of the
whole business from its ugly inception down to the pass to which things
were come, adding that to repair the evil I was going back to Paris to
pay my wager, and that when that was done, I would return to ask her to
become my wife? That was the course a man of sense would have adopted.
He would have seen the dangers that beset him in my false position,
and would have been quick to have forestalled them in the only manner
possible.
Heigh-ho! It was done. The game was at an end, and I had bungled my part
of it like any fool. One task remained me--that of meeting Marsac at
Grenade and doing justice to the memory of poor Lesperon. What might
betide thereafter mattered little. I should be ruined when I had settled
with Chatellerault, and Marcel de Saint-Pol, de Bardelys, that brilliant
star in the firmament of the Court of France, would suffer an abrupt
eclipse, would be quenched for all time. But this weighed little with
me then. I had lost everything that I might have valued--everything that
might have brought fresh zest to a jaded, satiated life.
Later that day I was told by the Vicomte that there was a rumour current
to the effect that the Marquis de Bardelys was dead. Idly I inquired how
the rumour had been spread, and he told me that a riderless horse, which
had been captured a few days ago by some peasants, had been recognized
by Monsieur de Bardelys's servants as belonging to their master, and
that as nothing had been seen or heard of him for a fortnight, it was
believed that he must have met with some mischance. Not even that piece
of information served to arouse my interest. Let them believe me dead
if they would. To him that is suffering worse than death to be accounted
dead is a small matter.
The next day passed without incident. Mademoiselle's absence continued
and I would have questioned the Vicomte concerning it, but a not
unnatural hesitancy beset me, and I refrained.
On the morrow I was to leave Lavedan, but there were no preparations to
be made, no packing to be done, for during my sojourn there I had been
indebted to the generous hospitality of the Vicomte for my very apparel.
We supped quietly together that night the Vicomte and I--for the
Vicomtesse was keeping her room.
I withdrew early to my chamber, and long I lay awake, revolving a gloomy
future in my mind. I had given no thought to what I should do after
having offered my explanation to Monsieur de Marsac on the morrow, nor
could I now bring myself to consider it with any degree of interest. I
would communicate with Chatellerault to inform him that I accounted
my wager lost. I would send him my note of hand, making over to him
my Picardy estates, and I would request him to pay off and disband my
servants both in Paris and at Bardelys.
As for myself, I did not know, and, as I have hinted, I cared but
little, in what places my future life might lie. I had still a little
property by Beaugency, but scant inclination to withdraw to it. To Paris
I would not return; that much I was determined upon; but upon no more.
I had thoughts of going to Spain. Yet that course seemed no less futile
than any other of which I could bethink me. I fell asleep at last,
vowing that it would be a mercy and a fine solution to the puzzle of how
to dispose of the future if I were to awaken no more.
I was, however, destined to be roused again just as the veil of night
was being lifted and the chill breath of dawn was upon the world. There
was a loud knocking at the gates of Lavedan, confused noises of voices,
of pattering feet, of doors opening and closing within the chateau.
There was a rapping at my chamber door, and when I went to open, I found
the Vicomte on the threshold, nightcapped, in his shirt, and bearing a
lighted taper.
“There are troopers at the gate!” he exclaimed as he entered the room.
“That dog Saint-Eustache has already been at work!”
For all the agitation that must have been besetting him, his manner was
serene as ever. “What are we to do?” he asked.
“You are admitting them--naturally?” said I, inquiry in my voice.
“Why, yes”; and he shrugged his shoulders. “What could it avail us to
resist them? Even had I been prepared for it, it would be futile to
attempt to suffer a siege.”
I wrapped a dressing-gown about me, for the morning air was chill.
“Monsieur le Vicomte,” said I gravely, “I heartily deplore that Monsieur
de Marsac's affairs should have detained me here. But for him, I had
left Lavedan two days ago. As it is, I tremble for you, but we may
at least hope that my being taken in your house will draw down no ill
results upon you. I shall never forgive myself if through my having
taken refuge here I should have encompassed your destruction.”
“There is no question of that,” he replied, with the quick generosity
characteristic of the man. “This is the work of Saint-Eustache. Sooner
or later I always feared that it would happen, for sooner or later he
and I must have come to enmity over my daughter. That knave had me in
his power. He knew--being himself outwardly one of us--to what extent
I was involved in the late rebellion, and I knew enough of him to be
assured that if some day he should wish to do me ill, he would never
scruple to turn traitor. I am afraid, Monsieur de Lesperon, that it is
not for you alone--perhaps not for you at all--that the soldiers have
come, but for me.”
Then, before I could answer him, the door was flung wide, and into the
room, in nightcap and hastily donned robe--looking a very meagre in that
disfiguring deshabille--swept the Vicomtesse.
“See,” she cried to her husband, her strident voice raised in
reproach--“see to what a pass you have brought us!”
“Anne, Anne!” he exclaimed, approaching her and seeking to soothe her;
“be calm, my poor child, and be brave.”
But, evading him, she towered, lean and malevolent as a fury.
“Calm?” she echoed contemptuously. “Brave?” Then a short laugh broke
from her--a despairing, mocking, mirthless expression of anger. “By God,
do you add effrontery to your other failings? Dare you bid me be calm
and brave in such an hour? Have I been warning you fruitlessly these
twelve months past, that, after disregarding me and deriding my
warnings, you should bid me be calm now that my fears are realized?”
There was a sound of creaking gates below. The Vicomte heard it.
“Madame,” he said, putting aside his erstwhile tender manner, and
speaking with a lofty dignity, “the troopers have been admitted. Let me
entreat you to retire. It is not befitting our station--”
“What is our station?” she interrupted harshly. “Rebels--proscribed,
houseless beggars. That is our station, thanks to you and your insane
meddling with treason. What is to become of us, fool? What is to become
of Roxalanne and me when they shall have hanged you and have driven us
from Lavedan? By God's death, a fine season this to talk of the dignity
of our station! Did I not warn you, malheureux, to leave party faction
alone? You laughed at me.”
“Madame, your memory does me an injustice,” he answered in a strangled
voice. “I never laughed at you in all my life.”
“You did as much, at least. Did you not bid me busy myself with women's
affairs? Did you not bid me leave you to follow your own judgment? You
have followed it--to a pretty purpose, as God lives! These gentlemen of
the King's will cause you to follow it a little farther,” she pursued,
with heartless, loathsome sarcasm. “You will follow it as far as the
scaffold at Toulouse. That, you will tell me, is your own affair. But
what provision have you made for your wife and daughter? Did you marry
me and get her to leave us to perish of starvation? Or are we to turn
kitchen wenches or sempstresses for our livelihood?”
With a groan, the Vicomte sank down upon the bed, and covered his face
with his hands.
“God pity me!” he cried, in a voice of agony--an agony such as the fear
of death could never have infused into his brave soul; an agony born of
the heartlessness of this woman who for twenty years had shared his
bed and board, and who now in the hour of his adversity failed him so
cruelly--so tragically.
“Aye,” she mocked in her bitterness, “call upon God to pity you, for I
shall not.”
She paced the room now, like a caged lioness, her face livid with the
fury that possessed her. She no longer asked questions; she no
longer addressed him; oath followed oath from her thin lips, and the
hideousness of this woman's blasphemy made me shudder. At last there
were heavy steps upon the stairs, and, moved by a sudden impulse
“Madame,” I cried, “let me prevail upon you to restrain yourself.”
She swung round to face me, her dose-set eyes ablaze with anger.
“Sangdieu! By what right do you--” she began but this was no time to
let a woman's tongue go babbling on; no time for ceremony; no season for
making a leg and addressing her with a simper. I caught her viciously by
the wrist, and with my face close up to hers “Folle!” I cried, and I'll
swear no man had ever used the word to her before. She gasped and choked
in her surprise and rage. Then lowering my voice lest it should reach
the approaching soldiers: “Would you ruin the Vicomte and yourself?” I
muttered. Her eyes asked me a question, and I answered it. “How do you
know that the soldiers have come for your husband? It may be that they
are seeking me--and only me. They may know nothing of the Vicomte's
defection. Shall you, then, be the one to inform them of it by your
unbridled rantings and your accusations?”
Her jaw fell open in astonishment. This was a side of the question she
had not considered.
“Let me prevail upon you, madame, to withdraw and to be of good courage.
It is more than likely that you alarm yourself without cause.”
She continued to stare at me in her amazement and the confusion that was
congenital with it, and if there was not time for her to withdraw, at
least the possibility I had suggested acted as a timely warning.
In that moment the door opened again, and on the threshold appeared a
young man in a plumed hat and corselet, carrying a naked sword in one
hand and a lanthorn in the other. Behind him I caught the gleam of steel
from the troopers at his heels.
“Which of you is Monsieur Rene de Lesperon?” he inquired politely, his
utterance flavoured by a strong Gascon accent.
I stood forward. “I am known by that name, Monsieur le Capitaine,” said
I.
He looked at me wistfully, apologetically almost, then “In the King's
name, Monsieur de Lesperon, I call upon you to yield!” said he.
“I have been expecting you. My sword is yonder, monsieur,” I replied
suavely. “If you will allow me to dress, I shall be ready to accompany
you in a few minutes.”
He bowed, and it at once became clear that his business at Lavedan
was--as I had suggested to the Vicomtesse might be possible--with me
alone.
“I am grateful for the readiness of your submission,” said this
very polite gentleman. He was a comely lad, with blue eyes and a
good-humoured mouth, to which a pair of bristling moustaches sought
vainly to impart an expression of ferocity.
“Before you proceed to dress, monsieur, I have another duty to
discharge.”
“Discharge your duty, monsieur,” I answered. Whereupon he made a sign to
his men, and in a moment they were ransacking my garments and effects.
While this was taking place, he turned to the Vicomte and Vicomtesse,
and offered them a thousand apologies for having interrupted their
slumbers, and for so rudely depriving them of their guest. He advanced
in his excuse the troublous nature of the times, and threw in a bunch
of malisons at the circumstances which forced upon soldiers the odious
duties of the tipstaff, hoping that we would think him none the less a
gentleman for the unsavoury business upon which he was engaged.
From my clothes they took the letters addressed to Lesperon which that
poor gentleman had entrusted to me on the night of his death; and among
these there was one from the Duc d'Orleans himself, which would alone
have sufficed to have hanged a regiment. Besides these, they took
Monsieur de Marsac's letter of two days ago, and the locket containing
the picture of Mademoiselle de Marsac.
The papers and the portrait they delivered to the Captain, who took them
with the same air of deprecation tainted with disgust that coloured all
his actions in connection with my arrest.
To this same repugnance for his catchpoll work do I owe it that at the
moment of setting out he offered to let me ride without the annoyance of
an escort if I would pass him my parole not to attempt an escape.
We were standing, then, in the hall of the chateau. His men were already
in the courtyard, and there were only present Monsieur le Vicomte and
Anatole--the latter reflecting the look of sorrow that haunted his
master's face. The Captain's generosity was certainly leading him beyond
the bounds of his authority, and it touched me.
“Monsieur is very generous,” said I.
He shrugged his shoulders impatiently.
“Cap de Dieu!” he cried--he had a way of swearing that reminded me of my
friend Cazalet. “It is no generosity, monsieur. It is a desire to make
this obscene work more congenial to the spirit of a gentleman, which,
devil take me, I cannot stifle, not for the King himself. And then,
Monsieur de Lesperon, are we not fellow-countrymen? Are we not Gascons
both? Pardieu, there is no more respected a name in the whole of Gascony
than that of Lesperon, and that you belong to so honourable a family is
alone more than sufficient to warrant such slight favours as it may be
in my power to show you.”
“You have my parole that I will attempt no escape, Monsieur le
Capitaine,” I answered, bowing may acknowledgment of his compliments.
“I am Mironsac de Castelroux, of Chateau Rouge in Gascony,” he informed
me, returning my bow. My faith, had he not made a pretty soldier he
would have made an admirable master of deportment.
My leave-taking of Monsieur de Lavedan was brief but cordial; apologetic
on my part, intensely sympathetic on his. And so I went out alone with
Castelroux upon the road to Toulouse, his men being ordered to follow in
half an hour's time and to travel at their leisure.
As we cantered along--Castelroux and I--we talked of many things, and
I found him an amusing and agreeable companion. Had my mood been other
than despairing, the news he gave me might have occasioned me some
concern; for it seemed that prisoners arraigned for treason and
participation in the late rising were being very summarily treated. Many
were never so much as heard in their own defence, the evidence collected
of their defection being submitted to the Tribunal, and judgment being
forthwith passed upon them by judges who had no ears for anything they
might advance in their own favour.
The evidence of my identity was complete: there was my own admission to
Castelroux; the evidence of the treason of Lesperon was none the less
complete; in fact, it was notorious; and there was the Duke's letter
found amongst my effects. If the judges refused to lend an ear to my
assurances that I was not Lesperon at all, but the missing Bardelys, my
troubles were likely to receive a very summary solution. The fear of it,
however, weighed not over-heavily upon me. I was supremely indifferent.
Life was at an end so far as I was concerned. I had ruined the one
chance of real happiness that had ever been held out to me, and if the
gentlemen of the courts of Toulouse were pleased to send me unheeded to
the scaffold, what should it signify?
But there was another matter that did interest me, and that was my
interview with Marsac. Touching this, I spoke to my captor.
“There is a gentleman I wish to see at Grenade this morning. You have
amongst the papers taken from me a letter making this assignation,
Monsieur le Capitaine, and I should be indeed grateful if you would
determine that we shall break our fast there, so that I may have
an opportunity of seeing him. The matter is to me of the highest
importance.”
“It concerns--?” he asked.
“A lady,” I answered.
“Ah, yes! But the letter is of the nature of a challenge, is it not?
Naturally, I cannot permit you to endanger your life.”
“Lest we disappoint the headsman at Toulouse?” I laughed. “Have no fear.
There shall be no duel!”
“Then I am content, monsieur, and you shall see your friend.”
I thanked him, and we talked of other things thereafter as we rode in
the early morning along the Toulouse road. Our conversation found its
way, I scarce know how, to the topic of Paris and the Court, and when
I casually mentioned, in passing, that I was well acquainted with the
Luxembourg, he inquired whether I had ever chanced to meet a young spark
of the name of Mironsac.
“Mironsac?” I echoed. “Why, yes.” And I was on the point of adding that
I knew the youth intimately, and what a kindness I had for him, when,
deeming it imprudent, I contented myself with asking, “You know him?”
“Pardieu!” he swore. “The fellow is my cousin. We are both Mironsacs; he
is Mironsac of Castelvert, whilst I, as you may remember I told you,
am Mironsac of Castelroux. To distinguish us, he is always known as
Mironsac, and I as Castelroux. Peste! It is not the only distinction,
for while he basks in the sunshine of the great world of Paris--they
are wealthy, the Mironsacs of Castelvert--I, a poor devil of a Gascony
cadet, am playing the catchpoll in Languedoc!”
I looked at him with fresh interest, for the mention of that dear
lad Mironsac brought back to my mind the night in Paris on which
my ill-starred wager had been laid, and I was reminded of how that
high-minded youth had sought--when it was too late to reason me out of
the undertaking by alluding to the dishonour with which in his honest
eyes it must be fraught.
We spoke of his cousin--Castelroux and I--and I went so far now as
to confess that I had some love for the youth, whom I praised in
unmistakable terms. This inclined to increase the friendliness which
my young Captain had manifested since my arrest, and I was presently
emboldened by it to beg of him to add to the many favours that I already
owed him by returning to me the portrait which his men had subtracted
from my pocket. It was my wish to return this to Marsac, whilst at the
same time it would afford corroboration of my story.
To this Castelroux made no difficulty.
“Why, yes,” said he, and he produced it. “I crave your pardon for not
having done the thing of my own accord. What can the Keeper of the Seals
want with that picture?”
I thanked him, and pocketed the locket.
“Poor lady!” he sighed, a note of compassion in his voice. “By my soul,
Monsieur de Lesperon, fine work this for soldiers, is it not? Diable! It
is enough to turn a gentleman's stomach sour for life, and make him go
hide himself from the eyes of honest men. Had I known that soldiering
meant such business, I had thought twice before I adopted it as a career
for a man of honour. I had remained in Gascony and tilled the earth
sooner than have lent myself to this!”
“My good young friend,” I laughed, “what you do, you do in the King's
name.”
“So does every tipstaff,” he answered impatiently, his moustaches
bristling as the result of the scornful twist he gave his lips. “To
think that I should have a hand in bringing tears to the eyes of that
sweet lady! Quelle besogne! Bon Dieu, quelle besogne!”
I laughed at the distress vented in that whimsical Gascon tongue of his,
whereupon he eyed me in a wonder that was tempered with admiration. For
to his brave soul a gentleman so stoical as to laugh under such parlous
circumstances was very properly a gentleman to be admired.
CHAPTER X. THE RISEN DEAD
It was close upon ten o'clock as we rode into the yard of the imposing
Hotel de la Couronne at Grenade.
Castelroux engaged a private room on the first floor--a handsome chamber
overlooking the courtyard--and in answer to the inquiries that I made
I was informed by the landlord that Monsieur de Marsac was not yet
arrived.
“My assignation was 'before noon,' Monsieur de Castelroux,” said I.
“With your permission, I would wait until noon.”
He made no difficulty. Two hours were of no account. We had all risen
very early, and he was, himself, he said, entitled to some rest.
Whilst I stood by the window it came to pass than a very tall,
indifferently apparelled gentleman issued from the hostelry and halted
for some moments in conversation with the ostler below. He walked with
an enfeebled step, and leaned heavily for support upon a stout cane. As
he turned to reenter the inn I had a glimpse of a face woefully pale,
about which, as about the man's whole figure, there was a something
that was familiar--a something that puzzled me, and on which my mind was
still dwelling when presently I sat down to breakfast with Castelroux.
It may have been a half-hour later, and, our meal being at an end, we
were sitting talking--I growing impatient the while that this Monsieur
de Marsac should keep me waiting so--when of a sudden the rattle
of hoofs drew me once more to the window. A gentleman, riding very
recklessly, had just dashed through the porte-cochere, and was in the
act of pulling up his horse. He was a lean, active man, very richly
dressed, and with a face that by its swarthiness of skin and the sable
hue of beard and hair looked almost black.
“Ah, you are there!” he cried, with something between a snarl and a
laugh, and addressing somebody within the shelter of the porch. “Par la
mort Dieu, I had hardly looked to find you!”
From the recess of the doorway I heard a gasp of amazement and a cry of
“Marsac! You here?”
So this was the gentleman I was to see! A stable boy had taken his
reins, and he leapt nimbly to the ground. Into my range of vision
hobbled now the enfeebled gentleman whom earlier I had noticed.
“My dear Stanislas!” he cried, “I cannot tell you how rejoiced I am to
see you!” and he approached Marsac with arms that were opened as if to
embrace him.
The newcomer surveyed him a moment in wonder, with eyes grown dull.
Then abruptly raising his hand, he struck the fellow on the breast, and
thrust him back so violently that but for the stable-boy's intervention
he had of a certainty fallen. With a look of startled amazement on his
haggard face, the invalid regarded his assailant.
As for Marsac, he stepped close up to him.
“What is this?” he cried harshly. “What is this make-believe feebleness?
That you are pale, poltroon, I do not wonder! But why these tottering
limbs? Why this assumption of weakness? Do you look to trick me by these
signs?”
“Have you taken leave of your senses?” exclaimed the other, a note of
responsive anger sounding in his voice. “Have you gone mad, Stanislas?”
“Abandon this pretence,” was the contemptuous answer. “Two days ago at
Lavedan, my friend, they informed me how complete was your recovery;
from what they told us, it was easy to guess why you tarried there
and left us without news of you. That was my reason, as you may have
surmised, for writing to you. My sister has mourned you for dead--was
mourning you for dead whilst you sat at the feet of your Roxalanne and
made love to her among the roses of Lavedan.”
“Lavedan?” echoed the other slowly. Then, raising his voice, “what the
devil are you saying?” he blazed. “What do I know of Lavedan?”
In a flash it had come to me who that enfeebled gentleman was. Rodenard,
the blunderer, had been at fault when he had said that Lesperon had
expired. Clearly he could have no more than swooned; for here, in the
flesh, was Lesperon himself, the man I had left for dead in that barn by
Mirepoix.
How or where he had recovered were things that at the moment did not
exercise my mind--nor have I since been at any pains to unravel the
mystery of it; but there he was, and for the moment that fact was
all-sufficing. What complications would come of his presence Heaven
alone could foretell.
“Put an end to this play-acting!” roared the savage Marsac. “It will
avail you nothing. My sister's tears may have weighed lightly with you,
but you shall pay the price of them, and of the slight you have put upon
her.”
“My God, Marsac!” cried the other, roused to an equal fierceness. “Will
you explain?”
“Aye,” snarled Marsac, and his sword flashed from his scabbard, “I'll
explain. As God lives, I'll explain--with this!” And he whirled his
blade under the eyes of the invalid. “Come, my master, the comedy's
played out. Cast aside that crutch and draw; draw, man, or, sangdieu,
I'll run you through as you stand!”
There was a commotion below. The landlord and a posse of his
satellites--waiters, ostlers, and stableboys--rushed between them, and
sought to restrain the bloodthirsty Marsac. But he shook them off as
a bull shakes off a pack of dogs, and like an angry bull, too, did he
stand his ground and bellow. In a moment his sweeping sword had cleared
a circle about him. In its lightning dartings hither and thither at
random, it had stung a waiter in the calf, and when the fellow saw the
blood staining his hose, he added to the general din his shrieks that
he was murdered. Marsac swore and threatened in a breath, and a kitchen
wench, from a point of vantage on the steps, called shame upon him and
abused him roundly for a cowardly assassin to assail a poor sufferer who
could hardly stand upright.
“Po' Cap de Dieu!” swore Castelroux at my elbow. “Saw you ever such an
ado? What has chanced?”
But I never stayed to answer him. Unless I acted quickly blood would
assuredly be shed. I was the one man who could explain matters, and it
was a mercy for Lesperon that I should have been at hand in the hour of
his meeting that fire-eater Marsac. I forgot the circumstances in which
I stood to Castelroux; I forgot everything but the imminent necessity
that I should intervene. Some seven feet below our window was the roof
of the porch; from that to the ground it might be some eight feet more.
Before my Gascon captain knew what I was about, I had swung myself down
from the window on to the projecting porch. A second later, I created
a diversion by landing in the midst of the courtyard fray, with the
alarmed Castelroux--who imagined that I was escaping--following by the
same unusual road, and shouting as he came “Monsieur de Lesperon!
Hi! Monsieur de Lesperon! Mordieu! Remember your parole, Monsieur de
Lesperon!”
Nothing could have been better calculated to stem Marsac's fury; nothing
could have so predisposed him to lend an ear to what I had to say, for
it was very evident that Castelroux's words were addressed to me, and
that it was I whom he called by the name of Lesperon. In an instant I
was at Marsac's side. But before I could utter a word, “What the devil
does this mean?” he asked, eyeing me with fierce suspicion.
“It means, monsieur, that there are more Lesperons than one in France. I
am the Lesperon who was at Lavedan. If you doubt me, ask this gentleman,
who arrested me there last night. Ask him, too, why we have halted here.
Ask him, if you will, to show you the letter that you left at Lavedan
making an assignation here before noon to-day, which letter I received.”
The suspicion faded from Marsac's eyes, and they grew round with wonder
as he listened to this prodigious array of evidence. Lesperon looked on
in no less amazement, yet I am sure from the manner of his glance that
he did not recognize in me the man that had succoured him at Mirepoix.
That, after all, was natural enough; for the minds of men in such
reduced conditions as had been his upon that night are not prone to
receive very clear impressions, and still less prone to retain such
impressions as they do receive.
Before Marsac could answer me, Castelroux was at my side.
“A thousand apologies!” he laughed. “A fool might have guessed the
errand that took you so quickly through that window, and none but a fool
would have suspected you of seeking to escape. It was unworthy in me,
Monsieur de Lesperon.”
I turned to him while those others still stood gaping, and led him
aside.
“Monsieur le Capitaine,” said I, “you find it troublesome enough to
reconcile your conscience with such arrests as you are charged to make,
is it not so.
“Mordieu!” he cried, by way of emphatically assenting.
“Now, if you should chance to overhear words betraying to you certain
people whom otherwise you would never suspect of being rebels, your
soldier's duty would, nevertheless, compel you to apprehend them, would
it not?”
“Why, true. I am afraid it would,” he answered, with a grimace.
“But, if forewarned that by being present in a certain place you should
overhear such words, what course would you pursue?”
“Avoid it like a pestilence, monsieur,” he answered promptly.
“Then, Monsieur le Capitaine, may I trespass upon your generosity to
beseech you to let me take these litigants to our room upstairs, and to
leave us alone there for a half-hour?”
Frankness was my best friend in dealing with Castelroux--frankness and
his distaste for the business they had charged him with. As for Marsac
and Lesperon, they were both eager enough to have the mystery explained,
and when Castelroux having consented--I invited them to my chamber, they
came readily enough.
Since Monsieur de Lesperon did not recognize me, there was no reason
why I should enlighten him touching my identity, and every reason why
I should not. As soon as they were seated, I went to the heart of the
matter at once and without preamble.
“A fortnight ago, gentlemen,” said I, “I was driven by a pack of
dragoons across the Garonne. I was wounded in the shoulder and very
exhausted, and I knocked at the gates of Lavedan to crave shelter. That
shelter, gentlemen, was afforded me, and when I had announced myself as
Monsieur de Lesperon, it was all the more cordially because one Monsieur
de Marsac, who was a friend of the Vicomte de Lavedan, and a partisan
in the lost cause of Orleans, happened often to have spoken of a
certain Monsieur de Lesperon as his very dear friend. I have no doubt,
gentlemen, that you will think harshly of me because I did not enlighten
the Vicomte. But there were reasons for which I trust you will not press
me, since I shall find it difficult to answer you with truth.”
“But is your name Lesperon?” cried Lesperon.
“That, monsieur, is a small matter. Whether my name is Lesperon or
not, I confess to having practised a duplicity upon the Vicomte and his
family, since I am certainly not the Lesperon whose identity I accepted.
But if I accepted that identity, monsieur, I also accepted your
liabilities, and so I think that you should find it in your heart to
extend me some measure of forgiveness. As Rene de Lesperon, of Lesperon
in Gascony, I was arrested last night at Lavedan, and, as you may
observe, I am being taken to Toulouse to stand the charge of high
treason. I have not demurred; I have not denied in the hour of trouble
the identity that served me in my hour of need. I am taking the
bitter with the sweet, and I assure you, gentlemen, that the bitter
predominates in a very marked degree.”
“But this must not be,” cried Lesperon, rising. “I know not what use
you may have made of my name, but I have no reason to think that you can
have brought discredit upon it, and so--”
“I thank you, monsieur, but--”
“And so I cannot submit that you shall go to Toulouse in my stead. Where
is this officer whose prisoner you are? Pray summon him, monsieur, and
let us set the matter right.”
“This is very generous,” I answered calmly. “But I have crimes enough
upon my head, and so, if the worst should befall me, I am simply atoning
in one person for the errors of two.”
“But that is no concern of mine!” he cried.
“It is so much your concern that if you commit so egregious a blunder as
to denounce yourself, you will have ruined yourself, without materially
benefitting me.”
He still objected, but in this strain I argued for some time, and to
such good purpose that in the end I made him realize that by betraying
himself he would not save me, but only join me on the journey to the
scaffold.
“Besides, gentlemen,” I pursued, “my case is far from hopeless. I have
every confidence that, as matters stand, by putting forth my hand at the
right moment, by announcing my identity at the proper season, I can, if
I am so inclined, save my neck from the headsman.”
“If you are so inclined?” they both cried, their looks charged with
inquiry.
“Let that be,” I answered; “it does not at present concern us. What
I desire you to understand, Monsieur de Lesperon, is that if I go to
Toulouse alone, when the time comes to proclaim myself, and it is found
that I am not Rene de Lesperon, of Lesperon in Gascony, they will assume
that you are dead, and there will be no count against me.
“But if you come with me, and thereby afford proof that you are alive,
my impersonation of you may cause me trouble. They may opine that I have
been an abettor of treason, that I have attempted to circumvent the
ends of justice, and that I may have impersonated you in order to render
possible your escape. For that, you may rest assured, they will punish
me.
“You will see, therefore, that my own safety rests on your passing
quietly out of France and leaving the belief behind you that you are
dead--a belief that will quickly spread once I shall have cast off your
identity. You apprehend me?”
“Vaguely, monsieur; and perhaps you are right. What do you say,
Stanislas?”
“Say?” cried the fiery Marsac. “I am weighed down with shame, my poor
Rene, for having so misjudged you.”
More he would have said in the same strain, but Lesperon cut him short
and bade him attend to the issue now before him. They discussed it
at some length, but always under the cloud in which my mysteriousness
enveloped it, and, in the end, encouraged by my renewed assurances that
I could best save myself if Lesperon were not taken with me, the Gascon
consented to my proposals.
Marsac was on his way to Spain. His sister, he told us, awaited him
at Carcassonne. Lesperon should set out with him at once, and in
forty-eight hours they would be beyond the reach of the King's anger.
“I have a favour to ask of you, Monsieur de Marsac,” said I, rising;
for our business was at an end. “It is that if you should have an
opportunity of communicating with Mademoiselle de Lavedan, you will
let her know that I am not--not the Lesperon that is betrothed to your
sister.”
“I will inform her of it, monsieur,” he answered readily; and then, of a
sudden, a look of understanding and of infinite pity came into his eyes.
“My God!” he cried.
“What is it, monsieur?” I asked, staggered by that sudden outcry.
“Do not ask me, monsieur, do not ask me. I had forgotten for the moment,
in the excitement of all these revelations. But--” He stopped short.
“Well, monsieur?”
He seemed to ponder a moment, then looking at me again with that same
compassionate glance, “You had better know,” said he. “And yet--it is a
difficult thing to tell you. I understand now much that I had not dreamt
of. You--you have no suspicion of how you came to be arrested?”
“For my alleged participation in the late rebellion?”
“Yes, yes. But who gave the information of your whereabouts? Who told
the Keeper of the Seals where you were to be found?”
“Oh, that?” I answered easily. “Why, I never doubted it. It was the
coxcomb Saint-Eustache. I whipped him--”
I stopped short. There was something in Marsac's black face, something
in his glance, that forced the unspoken truth upon my mind.
“Mother in heaven!” I cried. “Do you mean that it was Mademoiselle de
Lavedan?”
He bowed his head in silence. Did she hate me, then, so much as that?
Would nothing less than my death appease her, and had I utterly crushed
the love that for a little while she had borne me, that she could bring
herself to hand me over to the headsman?
God! What a stab was that! It turned me sick with grief--aye, and with
some rage not against her, oh, not against her; against the fates that
had brought such things to pass.
I controlled myself while their eyes were yet upon me. I went to the
door and held it open for them, and they, perceiving something of my
disorder, were courteous enough to omit the protracted leave-takings
that under other auspices there might have been. Marsac paused a moment
on the threshold as if he would have offered me some word of comfort.
Then, perceiving, perhaps, how banal must be all comfort that was of
words alone, and how it might but increase the anger of the wound it was
meant to balm, he sighed a simple “Adieu, monsieur!” and went his way.
When they were gone, I returned to the table, and, sitting down, I
buried my head in my arms, and there I lay, a prey to the most poignant
grief that in all my easy, fortunate life I had ever known. That she
should have done this thing! That the woman I loved, the pure, sweet,
innocent girl that I had wooed so ardently in my unworthiness at
Lavedan, should have stooped to such an act of betrayal! To what had I
not reduced her, since such things could be!
Then, out of my despair grew comfort, slowly at first, and more
vigorously anon. The sudden shock of the news had robbed me of some of
my wit, and had warped my reasoning. Later, as the pain of the blow grew
duller, I came to reflect that what she had done was but a proof--an
overwhelming proof--of how deeply she had cared. Such hatred as this
can be but born of a great love; reaction is ever to be measured by the
action that occasions it, and a great revulsion can only come of a great
affection. Had she been indifferent to me, or had she but entertained
for me a passing liking, she would not have suffered so.
And so I came to realize how cruel must have been the pang that had
driven her to this. But she had loved me; aye, and she loved me still,
for all that she thought she hated, and for all that she had acted as
if she hated. But even if I were wrong--even if she did hate me--what a
fresh revulsion would not be hers when anon she learnt that--whatever my
sins--I had not played lightly with her love; that I was not, as she had
imagined, the betrothed of another woman!
The thought fired me like wine. I was no longer listless--no longer
indifferent as to whether I lived or died. I must live. I must enlighten
the Keeper of the Seals and the judges at Toulouse concerning my
identity. Why, indeed, had I ever wavered? Bardelys the Magnificent must
come to life again, and then--What then?
As suddenly as I had been exalted was I cast down. There was a rumour
abroad that Bardelys was dead. In the wake of that rumour I shrewdly
guessed that the report of the wager that had brought him into Languedoc
would not be slow to follow. What then? Would she love me any the
better? Would she hate me any the less? If now she was wounded by the
belief that I had made sport of her love, would not that same belief be
with her again when she came to know the truth?
Aye, the tangle was a grievous one. Yet I took heart. My old resolve
returned to me, and I saw the need for urgency--in that alone could
lie now my redemption in her eyes. My wager must be paid before I again
repaired to her, for all that it should leave me poor indeed. In the
mean while, I prayed God that she might not hear of it ere I returned to
tell her.
CHAPTER XI. THE KING'S COMMISSIONER
For that most amiable of Gascon cadets, Monsieur de Castelroux, I have
naught but the highest praise. In his every dealing with me he revealed
himself so very gallant, generous, and high-minded a gentleman that it
was little short of a pleasure to be his prisoner. He made no inquiries
touching the nature of my interview with those two gentlemen at the
Hotel de la Couronne, and when at the moment of leaving I requested him
to deliver a packet to the taller of those same two he did so without
comment or question. That packet contained the portrait of Mademoiselle
de Marsac, but on the inner wrapper was a note requesting Lesperon not
to open it until he should be in Spain.
Neither Marsac nor Lesperon did I see again before we resumed our
journey to Toulouse.
At the moment of setting out a curious incident occurred. Castelroux's
company of dragoons had ridden into the courtyard as we were mounting.
They lined up under their lieutenant's command, to allow us to pass;
but as we reached the porte-cochere we were delayed for a moment by a
travelling-carriage, entering for relays, and coming, apparently, from
Toulouse. Castelroux and I backed our horses until we were in the midst
of the dragoons, and so we stood while the vehicle passed in. As it
went by, one of the leather curtains was drawn back, and my heart was
quickened by the sight of a pale girl face, with eyes of blue, and brown
curls lying upon the slender neck. Her glance lighted on me, swordless
and in the midst of that company of troopers, and I bowed low upon the
withers of my horse, doffing my hat in distant salutation.
The curtain dropped again, and eclipsed the face of the woman that had
betrayed me. With my mind full of wild surmisings as to what emotions
might have awakened in her upon beholding me, I rode away in silence
at Monsieur de Castelroux's side. Had she experienced any remorse? Any
shame? Whether or not such feelings had been aroused at sight of me, it
certainly would not be long ere she experienced them, for at the Hotel
de la Couronne were those who would enlighten her.
The contemplation of the remorseful grief that might anon beset her when
she came to ponder the truth of matters, and, with that truth, those
things that at Lavedan I had uttered, filled me presently with regret
and pity. I grew impatient to reach Toulouse and tell the judges of the
mistake that there had been. My name could not be unknown to them, and
the very mention of it, I thought, should suffice to give them pause and
lead them to make inquiries before sending me to the scaffold. Yet I was
not without uneasiness, for the summariness with which Castelroux had
informed me they were in the habit of dealing with those accused of high
treason occasioned me some apprehensive pangs.
This apprehension led me to converse with my captor touching those
trials, seeking to gather from him who were the judges. I learnt then
that besides the ordinary Tribunal, a Commissioner had been dispatched
by His Majesty, and was hourly expected to arrive at Toulouse. It would
be his mission to supervise and direct the inquiries that were taking
place. It was said, he a
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