Bardelys the Magnificent (26 page)

"Monsieur," she interrupted, "we harass ourselves in vain. This can have but one ending."

Her tones were cold, but the coldness I knew was forced—else had she not said "we harass
our
selves." Instead of quelling my ardour, it gave it fuel.

"True, mademoiselle," I cried, almost exultantly. "It can end but one way!"

She caught my meaning, and her frown deepened. I went too fast, it seemed.

"It had better end now, monsieur. There is too much between us. You wagered to win me to wife." She shuddered. "I could never forget it."

"Mademoiselle," I denied stoutly, "I did not."

"How?" She caught her breath. "You did not?"

"No," I pursued boldly. "I did not wager to win you. I wagered to win a certain Mademoiselle de Lavédan, who was unknown to me—but not you, not you."

She smiled, with never so slight a touch of scorn.

"Your distinctions are very fine—too fine for me, monsieur."

"I implore you to be reasonable. Think reasonably."

"Am I not reasonable? Do I not think? But there is so much to think of!" she sighed. "You carried your deception so far. You came here, for instance, as Monsieur de Lesperon. Why that duplicity?"

"Again, mademoiselle, I did not," said I.

She glanced at me with pathetic disdain.

"Indeed, indeed, monsieur, you deny things very bravely."

"Did I tell you that my name was Lesperon?" Did I present myself to monsieur your father as Lesperon?"

"Surely—yes."

"Surely no; a thousand times no. I was the victim of circumstances in that, and if I turned them to my own account after they had been forced upon me, shall I be blamed and accounted a cheat? Whilst I was unconscious, your father, seeking for a clue to my identity, made an inspection of my clothes.

"In the pocket of my doublet they found some papers addressed to René de Lesperon—some love letters, a communication from the Duc d'Orléans, and a woman's portrait. From all of this it was assumed that I was that Lesperon. Upon my return to consciousness your father greeted me effusively, whereat I wondered; he passed on to discuss—nay, to tell me of—the state of the province and of his own connection with the rebels, until I lay gasping at his egregious temerity. Then, when he greeted me as Monsieur de Lesperon, I had the explanation of it, but too late. Could I deny the identity then? Could I tell him that I was Bardelys, the favourite of the King himself? What would have occurred? I ask you, mademoiselle. Would I not have been accounted a spy, and would they not have made short work of me here at your château?"

"No, no; they would have done no murder."

"Perhaps not, but I could not be sure just then. Most men situated as your father was would have
despatched me. Ah, mademoiselle, have you not proofs enough? Do you not believe me now?"

"Yes, monsieur," she answered simply, "I believe you."

"Will you not believe, then, in the sincerity of my love?"

She made no reply. Her face was averted, but from her silence I took heart. I drew close to her. I set my hand upon the tall back of her chair, and, leaning towards her, I spoke with passionate heat as must have melted, I thought, any woman who had not a loathing for me.

"Mademoiselle, I am a poor man now," I ended. "I am no longer that magnificent gentleman whose wealth and splendour were a byword. Yet am I no needy adventurer. I have a little property at Beaugency—a very spot for happiness, mademoiselle. Paris shall know me no more. At Beaugency I shall live at peace, in seclusion, and, so that you come with me, in such joy as in all my life I have done nothing to deserve. I have no longer an army of retainers. A couple of men and a maid or two shall constitute our household. Yet I shall account my wealth well lost if for love's sake you'll share with me the peace of my obscurity. I am poor, mademoiselle, yet no poorer even now than that Gascon gentleman, René de Lesperon, for whom you held me, and on whom you bestowed the priceless treasure of your heart."

"Oh, might it have pleased God that you had remained that poor Gascon gentleman!" she cried.

"In what am I different, Roxalanne?"

"In that he had laid no wager," she answered, rising suddenly.

My hopes were withering. She was not angry. She was pale, and her gentle face was troubled—dear God! how sorely troubled! To me it almost seemed that I had lost.

She flashed me a glance of her blue eyes, and I thought that tears impended.

"Roxalanne!" I supplicated.

But she recovered the control that for a moment she had appeared upon the verge of losing. She put forth her hand.

"Adieu, monsieur!" said she.

I glanced from her hand to her face. Her attitude began to anger me, for I saw that she was not only resisting me, but resisting herself. In her heart the insidious canker of doubt persisted. She knew—or should have known—that it no longer should have any place there, yet obstinately she refrained from plucking it out. There was that wager. But for that same obstinacy she must have realized the reason of my arguments, the irrefutable logic of my payment. She denied me, and in denying me she denied herself, for that she had loved me she had herself told me, and that she could love me again I was assured, if she would but see the thing in the light of reason and of justice.

"Roxalanne, I did not come to Lavédan to say 'Good-bye' to you. I seek from you a welcome, not a dismissal."

"Yet my dismissal is all that I can give. Will you not take my hand? May we not part in friendly spirit?"

"No, we may not; for we do not part at all."

It was as the steel of my determination striking
upon the flint of hers. She looked up to my face for an instant; she raised her eyebrows in deprecation; she sighed, shrugged one shoulder, and, turning on her heel, moved towards the door.

"Anatole shall bring you refreshment ere you go," she said in a very polite and formal voice.

Then I played my last card. Was it for nothing that I had flung away my wealth? If she would not give herself, by God, I would compel her to sell herself. And I took no shame in doing it, for by doing it I was saving her and saving myself from a life of unhappiness.

"Roxalanne!" I cried. The imperiousness of my voice arrested and compelled her—perhaps against her very will.

"Monsieur?" said she, as demurely as you please.

"Do you know what you are doing?"

"But yes—perfectly."

"Pardieu, you do not. I will tell you. You are sending your father to the scaffold."

She turned livid, her step faltered, and she leant against the frame of the doorway for support. Then she stared at me, wide-eyed in horror.

"That is not true," she pleaded, yet without conviction. "He is not in danger of his life. They can prove nothing against him. Monsieur de Saint-Eustache could find no evidence here—nothing."

"Yet there is Monsieur de Saint-Eustache's word; there is the fact—the significant fact—that your father did not take up arms for the King, to afford the Chevalier's accusation some measure of corroboration. At Toulouse in these times they are not particular.
Remember how it had fared with me but for the King's timely arrival."

That smote home. The last shred of her strength fell from her. A great sob shook her, then covering her face with her hands—

"Mother in heaven, have pity on me!" she cried. "Oh, it cannot be, it cannot be!"

Her distress touched me sorely. I would have consoled her, I would have bidden her have no fear, assuring her that I would save her father. But for my own ends, I curbed the mood. I would use this as a cudgel to shatter her obstinacy, and I prayed that God might forgive me if I did aught that a gentleman should account unworthy. My need was urgent, my love all-engrossing; winning her meant winning life and happiness, and already I had sacrificed so much. Her cry rang still in my ears, "It cannot be, it cannot be!"

I trampled my nascent tenderness underfoot, and in its room I set a harshness that I did not feel—a harshness of defiance and menace.

"It can be, it will be, and, as God lives, it shall be, if you persist in your unreasonable attitude."

"Monsieur, have mercy!"

"Yes, when you shall be pleased to show me the way to it by having mercy upon me. If I have sinned, I have atoned. But that is a closed question now; to reopen it were futile. Take heed of this, Roxalanne: there is one thing—one only in all France—can save your father."

"That is, monsieur?" she inquired breathlessly.

"My word against that of Saint-Eustache. My indication to His Majesty that your father's treason
is not to be accepted on the accusation of Saint-Eustache. My information to the King of what I know touching this gentleman."

"You will go, monsieur?" she implored me. "Oh, you will save him! Mon Dieu, to think of the time that we have wasted here, you and I, whilst he is being carried to the scaffold! Oh, I did not dream it was so perilous with him! I was desolated by his arrest; I thought of some months' imprisonment, perhaps. But that he should die—! Monsieur de Bardelys, you will save him! Say that you will do this for me!"

She was on her knees to me now, her arms clasping my boots, her eyes raised in entreaty—God, what entreaty!—to my own.

"Rise, mademoiselle, I beseech you," I said, with a quiet I was far from feeling. "There is no need for this. Let us be calm. The danger to your father is not so imminent. We may have some days yet—three or four, perhaps."

I lifted her gently and led her to a chair. I was hard put to it not to hold her supported in my arms. But I might not cull that advantage from her distress. A singular niceness, you will say, perhaps, as in your scorn you laugh at me. Perhaps you are right to laugh—yet are you not altogether right.

"You will go to Toulouse, monsieur?" she begged.

I took a turn in the room, then halting before her—

"Yes," I answered, "I will go."

The gratitude that leapt to her eyes smote me hard, for my sentence was unfinished.

"I will go," I continued quickly, "when you shall have promised to become my wife."

The joy passed from her face. She glanced at me a moment as if without understanding.

"I came to Lavédan to win you, Roxalanne, and from Lavédan I shall not stir until I have accomplished my design," I said very quietly. "You will therefore see that it rests with you how soon I may set out."

She fell to weeping softly, but answered nothing. At last I turned from her and moved towards the door.

"Where are you going?" she cried.

"To take the air, mademoiselle. If upon deliberation you can bring yourself to marry me, send me word by Anatole or one of the others, and I shall set out at once for Toulouse."

"Stop!" she cried. Obediently I stopped, my hand already upon the doorknob. "You are cruel, monsieur!" she complained.

"I love you," said I, by way of explaining it. "To be cruel seems to be the way of love. You have been cruel to me."

"Would you—would you take what is not freely given?"

"I have the hope that when you see that you must give, you will give freely."

"If—if I make you this promise—"

"Yes?" I was growing white with eagerness.

"You will fulfil your part of the bargain?"

"It is a habit of mine, mademoiselle—as witnesses the case of Chatellerault." She shivered at the mention of his name. It reminded her of precisely such another bargain that three nights ago she had made. Precisely, did I say? Well, not quite precisely.

"I—I promise to marry you, then," said she in a choking voice, "whenever you choose, after my father shall have been set at liberty."

I bowed. "I shall start at once," said I.

And perhaps out of shame, perhaps out of—who shall say what sentiments?—I turned without another word and left her.

CHAPTER XX

THE "BRAVI" AT BLAGNAC

I WAS glad to be in the open once more—glad of the movement, as I rode at the head of my brave company along the bank of the Garonne and in the shade of the golden, autumn-tinted trees.

I was in a measure angry with myself that I had driven such a bargain with Roxalanne, in a measure angry with her that she had forced me to it by her obstinacy. A fine gentleman I, on my soul, to have dubbed Chatellerault a cheat for having done no worse than I had now brought myself to do! Yet, was it so? No, I assured myself, it was not. A thousand times no! What I had done I had done as much to win Roxalanne to me as to win her from her own unreasonableness. In the days to come she should thank me for my harshness, for that which now she perhaps accounted my unfairness.

Then, again, would I ask myself, was I very sure of this? And so the two questions were flung the one against the other; my conscience divided itself into two parties, and they waged a war that filled me with a depressing uncertainty.

In the end shame was overthrown, and I flung back my head with a snort of assurance. I was doing no wrong. On the contrary, I was doing right—both by myself and by Roxalanne. What matter that I was really cheating her? What matter that I had said I
would not leave Lavédan until I had her promise, whilst in reality I had hurled my threat at Saint-Eustache that I would meet him at Toulouse, and passed my word to the Vicomtesse that I would succour her husband?

I gave no thought to the hidden threat with which Saint-Eustache had retorted that from Lavédan to Toulouse was a distance of some twenty leagues. Had he been a man of sterner purposes I might have been uneasy and on my guard. But Saint-Eustache—pshaw!

It is ill to underestimate an enemy, be he never so contemptible, and for my disdain of the Chevalier I might have paid dearly had not Fortune—which of late had been practising singular jests upon me—after seemingly abandoning me, returned to my aid at the last moment.

It was Saint-Eustache's purpose that I should never reach Toulouse alive, for in all the world I was the one man he feared, the one man who would encompass his undoing and destruction by a word. And so he had resolved and disposed that I should be removed, and to accomplish this he had left a line of bravi along the road I was to pass.

He had counted upon my lying the night in one of the intervening towns, for the journey was over-long to be accomplished at a stretch, and wherever I might chance to lie, there I should have to reckon with his assassins. The nearer Toulouse—although I knew not this—the thicker grew my danger. Into the very thick of it I rode; in the very thick of it I lay, and all that came of it was that I obtained possession of one more and overwhelming piece of evidence
against my murderous Chevalier. But I outrun my story.