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.
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.