Bardelys the Magnificent (5 page)

I held my breath, I think, as I stood in ravished contemplation of that white vision. If this were Lavédan, 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 Lavédan, I have already shown. But here in this same Languedoc I beheld tonight 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 Lavédan, 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 reëntered 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, where 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 her 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 LAVÉDAN

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 reflection 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 château, 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—

"Holà, 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 aroused 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 Lavédan. I am the Vicomte de Lavédan—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 Lavédan? 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 window." 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 Orléanists too, at Lavédan, for all that I was not in the fight at Castelnaudary.
That was no fault of mine. His Grace's messenger reached me over-late, 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 Lavédan. 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'Orléans, 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 débonnaire 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 Lavédan 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 Lavédan. 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 Lavédan for no other reason than because it involved seeing no more of that provincial damsel?