Castelroux visited me upon the following morning, but he brought no news that might be accounted encouraging. None of his messengers were yet returned, nor had any sent word that they were upon the trail of my followers. My heart sank a little, and such hope as I still fostered was fast perishing. Indeed, so imminent did my doom appear and so unavoidable, that later in the day I asked for pen and paper that I might make an attempt at setting my earthly affairs to rights. Yet when the writing materials were brought me, I wrote not. I sat instead with the feathered end of my quill between my teeth, and thus pondered the matter of the disposal of my Picardy estates.
Coldly I weighed the wording of the wager and the events that had transpired, and I came at length to the conclusion that Chatellerault could not be held to have the least claim upon my lands. That he had cheated at the very outset, as I have earlier shown, was of less account than that he had been instrumental in violently hindering me.
I took at last the resolve to indite a full memoir of the transaction, and to request Castelroux to see that it was delivered to the King himself. Thus not only would justice be done, but I should—though tardily—be even with the Count. No doubt he relied upon his power to make a thorough search for such papers as I might leave, and to destroy everything that might afford indication of my true identity. But he had not counted upon the good feeling that had sprung up betwixt the little Gascon captain and me, nor yet upon my having contrived to convince the latter that I was, indeed, Bardelys, and he little dreamt of such a step as I was about to take to ensure his punishment hereafter.
Resolved at last, I was commencing to write when my attention was arrested by an unusual sound. It was at first no more than a murmuring noise, as of at sea breaking upon its shore. Gradually it grew its volume and assumed the shape of human voices raised in lusty clamour. Then, above the din of the populace, a gun boomed out, then another, and another.
I sprang up at that, and, wondering what might be toward, I crossed to my barred window and stood there listening. I overlooked the courtyard of the jail, and I could see some commotion below, in sympathy, as it were, with the greater commotion without.
Presently, as the populace drew nearer, it seemed to me that the shouting was of acclamation. Next I caught a blare of trumpets, and, lastly, I was able to distinguish above the noise, which had now grown to monstrous proportions, the clattering hoofs of some cavalcade that was riding past the prison doors.
It was borne in upon me that some great personage was arriving in Toulouse, and my first thought was of the King. At the idea of such a possibility my brain whirled and I grew dizzy with hope. The next moment I recalled that but last night Roxalanne had told me that he was no nearer than Lyons, and so I put the thought from me, and the hope with it, for, travelling in that leisurely, indolent fashion that was characteristic of his every action, it would be a miracle if His Majesty should reach Toulouse before the week was out, and this but Sunday.
The populace passed on, then seemed to halt, and at last the shouts died down on the noontide air. I went back to my writing, and to wait until from my jailer, when next he should chance to appear, I might learn the meaning of that uproar.
An hour perhaps went by, and I had made some progress with my memoir, when my door was opened and the cheery voice of Castelroux greeted me from the threshold.
“Monsieur, I have brought a friend to see you.”
I turned in my chair, and one glance at the gentle, comely face and the fair hair of the young man standing beside Castelroux was enough to bring me of a sudden to my feet.
“Mironsac!” I shouted, and sprang towards him with hands outstretched.
But though my joy was great and my surprise profound, greater still was the bewilderment that in Mironsac's face I saw depicted.
“Monsieur de Bardelys!” he exclaimed, and a hundred questions were contained in his astonished eyes.
“Po' Cap de Dieu!” growled his cousin, “I was well advised, it seems, to have brought you.”
“But,” Mironsac asked his cousin, as he took my hands in his own, “why did you not tell me, Amedee, that it was to Monsieur le Marquis de Bardelys that you were conducting me?”
“Would you have had me spoil so pleasant a surprise?” his cousin demanded.
“Armand,” said I, “never was a man more welcome than are you. You are but come in time to save my life.”
And then, in answer to his questions, I told him briefly of all that had befallen me since that night in Paris when the wager had been laid, and of how, through the cunning silence of Chatellerault, I was now upon the very threshold of the scaffold. His wrath burst forth at that, and what he said of the Count did me good to hear. At last I stemmed his invective.
“Let that be for the present, Mironsac,” I laughed. “You are here, and you can thwart all Chatellerault's designs by witnessing to my identity before the Keeper of the Seals.”
And then of a sudden a doubt closed like a cold hand upon my brain. I turned to Castelroux.
“Mon Dieu!” I cried. “What if they were to deny me a fresh trial?”
“Deny it you!” he laughed. “They will not be asked to grant you one.”
“There will be no need,” added Mironsac. “I have but to tell the King—”
“But, my friend,” I exclaimed impatiently, “I am to die in the morning!”
“And the King shall be told to-day—now, at once. I will go to him.”
I stared askance a moment; then the thought of the uproar that I had heard recurring to me, “Has the King arrived already?” I exclaimed.
“Naturally, monsieur. How else do I come to be here? I am in His Majesty's train.”
At that I grew again impatient. I thought of Roxalanne and of how she must be suffering, and I bethought me that every moment Mironsac now remained in my cell was another moment of torture for that poor child. So I urged him to be gone at once and carry news of my confinement to His Majesty. He obeyed me, and I was left alone once more, to pace up and down in my narrow cell, a prey to an excitement such as I should have thought I had outlived.
At the end of a half-hour Castelroux returned alone.
“Well?” I cried the moment the door opened, and without giving him so much as time to enter. “What news?”
“Mironsac tells me that His Majesty is more overwrought than he has ever seen him. You are to come to the Palace at once. I have an order here from the King.”
We went in a coach, and with all privacy, for he informed me that His Majesty desired the affair to be kept secret, having ends of his own to serve thereby.
I was left to wait some moments in an ante-chamber, whilst Castelroux announced me to the King; then I was ushered into a small apartment, furnished very sumptuously in crimson and gold, and evidently set apart for His Majesty's studies or devotions. As I entered, Louis's back was towards me. He was standing—a tall, spare figure in black—leaning against the frame of a window, his head supported on his raised left arm and his eyes intent upon the gardens below.
He remained so until Castelroux had withdrawn and the door had closed again; then, turning suddenly, he confronted me, his back to the light, so that his face was in a shadow that heightened its gloom and wonted weariness.
“Voila, Monsieur de Bardelys!” was his greeting, and unfriendly. “See the pass to which your disobedience of my commands has brought you.”
“I would submit, Sire,” I answered, “that I have been brought to it by the incompetence of Your Majesty's judges and the ill-will of others whom Your Majesty honours with too great a confidence, rather than by this same disobedience of mine.”
“The one and the other, perhaps,” he said more softly. “Though, after all, they appear to have had a very keen nose for a traitor. Come, Bardelys, confess yourself that.”
“I? A traitor?”
He shrugged his shoulders, and laughed without any conspicuous mirth.
“Is not a traitor one who runs counter to the wishes; of his King? And are you not, therefore, a traitor, whether they call you Lesperon or Bardelys? But there,” he ended more softly still, and flinging himself into a chair as he spoke, “I have been so wearied since you left me, Marcel. They have the best intentions in the world, these dullards, and some of them love me even; but they are tiresome all. Even Chatellerault, when he has a fancy for a jest—as in your case perpetrates it with the grace of a bear, the sprightliness of an elephant.”
“Jest?” said I.
“You find it no jest, Marcel? Pardieu, who shall blame you? He would be a man of unhealthy humour that could relish such a pleasantry as that of being sentenced to death. But tell me of it. The whole story, Marcel. I have not heard a story worth the listening to since—since you left us.”
“Would it please you, Sire, to send for the Comte de Chatellerault ere I begin?” I asked.
“Chatellerault? No, no.” He shook his head whimsically. “Chatellerault has had his laugh already, and, like the ill-mannered dog he is, he has kept it to himself. I think, Marcel, that it is our turn now. I have purposely sent Chatellerault away that he may gain no notion of the catastrophic jest we are preparing him in return.”
The words set me in the very best of humours, and to that it may be due that presently, as I warmed to my narrative, I lent it a vigour that drew His Majesty out of his wonted apathy and listlessness. He leaned forward when I told him of my encounter with the dragoons at Mirepoix, and how first I had committed the false step of representing myself to be Lesperon.
Encouraged by his interest, I proceeded, and I told my story with as much piquancy as I was master of, repressing only those slight matters which might reflect upon Monsieur de Lavedan's loyalty, but otherwise dealing frankly with His Majesty, even down to the genuineness of the feelings I entertained for Roxalanne. Often he laughed, more often still he nodded approvingly, in understanding and sympathy, whilst now and then he purred his applause. But towards the end, when I came to the matter of the Tribunal of Toulouse, of how my trial was conducted, and of the part played in it by Chatellerault, his face grew set and hard.
“It is true—all this that you tell me?” he cried harshly.
“As true as the Gospels. If you deem an oath necessary, Sire, I swear by my honour that I have uttered nothing that is false, and that, in connection with Monsieur de Chatellerault, even as I have suppressed nothing, so also have I exaggerated nothing.”
“The dastard!” he snapped. “But we will avenge you, Marcel. Never fear it.”
Then the trend of his thoughts being changed, he smiled wearily.
“By my faith, you may thank God every night of your worthless life that I came so opportunely to Toulouse, and so may that fair child whose beauty you have limned with such a lover's ardour. Nay, never redden, Marcel. What? At your age, and with such a heavy score of affaires to your credit, has it been left for a simple Languedoc maiden to call a blush to your callous cheek? Ma foi, they say truly that love is a great regenerator, a great rejuvenator!”
I made him no answer other than a sigh, for his words set me thinking, and with thought came a tempering of the gay humour that had pervaded me. Remarking this, and misreading it, he laughed outright.
“There, Marcel, never fear. We will not be rigorous. You have won both the maid and the wager, and, by the Mass, you shall enjoy both.”
“Helas, Sire,” I sighed again, “when the lady comes to know of the wager—”
“Waste no time in telling her, Marcel, and cast yourself upon her mercy. Nay, go not with so gloomy a face, my friend. When woman loves, she can be very merciful; leastways, they tell me so.”
Then, his thoughts shifting ground once more, he grew stern again.
“But first we have Chatellerault to deal with. What shall we do with him?”
“It is for Your Majesty to decide.”
“For me?” he cried, his voice resuming the harshness that was never far from it. “I have a fancy for having gentlemen about me. Think you I will set eyes again upon that dastard? I am already resolved concerning him, but it entered my mind that it might please you to be the instrument of the law for me.”
“Me, Sire?”
“Aye, and why not? They say you can play a very deadly sword upon necessity. This is an occasion that demands an exception from our edict. You have my sanction to send the Comte de Chatellerault a challenge. And see that you kill him, Bardelys!” he continued viciously. “For, by the Mass, if you don't, I will! If he escapes your sword, or if he survives such hurt as you may do him, the headsman shall have him. Mordieu! is it for nothing that I am called Louis the Just?”
I stood in thought for a moment. Then—
“If I do this thing, Sire,” I ventured, “the world will say of me that I did so to escape the payment I had incurred.”
“Fool, you have not incurred it. When a man cheats, does he not forfeit all his rights?”
“That is very true. But the world—”
“Peste!” he snapped impatiently, “you are beginning to weary me, Marcel—and all the world does that so excellently that it needs not your collaboration. Go your ways, man, and do as you elect. But take my sanction to slay this fellow Chatellerault, and I shall be the better pleased if you avail yourself of it. He is lodged at the Auberge Royale, where probably you will find him at present. Now, go. I have more justice to dispense in this rebellious province.”
I paused a moment.
“Shall I not resume my duties near Your Majesty?”
He pondered a moment, then he smiled in his weary way.
“It would please me to have you, for these creatures are so dismally dull, all of them. Je m'ennuie tellement, Marcel!” he sighed. “Ough! But, no, my friend, I do not doubt you would be as dull as any of them at present. A man in love is the weariest and most futile thing in all this weary, futile world. What shall I do with your body what time your soul is at Lavedan? I doubt me you are in haste to get you there. So go, Marcel. Get you wed, and live out your amorous intoxication; marriage is the best antidote. When that is done, return to me.”
“That will be never, Sire,” I answered slyly.
“Say you so, Master Cupid Bardelys?” And he combed his beard reflectively. “Be not too sure. There have been other passions—aye, as great as yours—yet have they staled. But you waste my time. Go, Marcel; you are excused your duties by me for as long as your own affairs shall hold you elsewhere—for as long as you please. We are here upon a gloomy business—as you know. There are my cousin Montmorency and the others to be dealt with, and we are holding no levees, countenancing no revels. But come to me when you will, and I will see you. Adieu!”
I murmured my thanks, and very deep and sincere were they. Then, having kissed his hand, I left him.
Louis XIII is a man who lacks not maligners. Of how history may come to speak of him it is not mine to hazard. But this I can say, that I, at least, did never find him other than a just and kindly master, an upright gentleman, capricious at times and wilful, as must inevitably be the case with such spoilt children of fortune as are princes, but of lofty ideals and high principles. It was his worst fault that he was always tired, and through that everlasting weariness he came to entrust the determining of most affairs to His Eminence. Hence has it resulted that the censure for many questionable acts of his reign, which were the work of my Lord Cardinal, has recoiled upon my august master's head.
But to me, with all the faults that may be assigned him, he was ever Louis the Just, and wherever his name be mentioned in my hearing, I bare my head.
I turned it over in my mind, after I had left the King's presence, whether or not I should visit with my own hands upon Chatellerault the punishment he had so fully earned. That I would have gone about the task rejoicing you may readily imagine; but there was that accursed wager, and—to restrain me—the thought of how such an action might be construed into an evasion of its consequences. Better a thousand times that His Majesty should order his arrest and deal with him for his attempted perversion of justice to the service of his own vile ends. The charge of having abused his trust as King's commissioner to the extent of seeking to do murder through the channels of the Tribunal was one that could not fail to have fatal results for him—as, indeed, the King had sworn.
That was the position of affairs as it concerned Chatellerault, the world, and me. But the position must also be considered as it concerned Roxalanne, and deeply, indeed, did I so consider it. Much pondering brought me again to the conclusion that until I had made the only atonement in my power, the only atonement that would leave me with clean hands, I must not again approach her.
Whether Chatellerault had cheated or not could not affect the question as it concerned Mademoiselle and me. If I paid the wager—whether in honour bound to do so or not—I might then go to her, impoverished, it is true, but at least with no suspicion attaching to my suit of any ulterior object other than that of winning Roxalanne herself.
I could then make confession, and surely the fact that I had paid where clearly there was no longer any need to pay must earn me forgiveness and afford proof of the sincerity of my passion.
Upon such a course, then, did I decide, and, with this end in view, I took my way towards the Auberge Royale, where His Majesty had told me that the Count was lodged. It was my purpose to show myself fully aware of the treacherous and unworthy part he had played at the very inception of the affair, and that if I chose to consider the wager lost it was that I might the more honestly win the lady.
Upon inquiring at the hostelry for Monsieur de Chatellerault I was informed by the servant I addressed that he was within, but that at the moment he had a visitor. I replied that I would wait, and demanded a private room, since I desired to avoid meeting any Court acquaintances who might chance into the auberge before I had seen the Count.
My apparel at the moment may not have been all that could have been desired, but when a gentleman's rearing has taken place amid an army of servitors to minister to his every wish, he is likely to have acquired an air that is wont to win him obedience. With all celerity was I ushered into a small chamber, opening on the one side upon the common room, and being divided on the other by the thinnest of wooden partitions from the adjoining apartment.
Here, the landlord having left me, I disposed myself to wait, and here I did a thing I would not have believed myself capable of doing, a thing I cannot think of without blushing to this very day. In short, I played the eavesdropper—I, Marcel Saint-Pol de Bardelys. Yet, if you who read and are nice-minded, shudder at this confession, or, worse still, shrug your shoulders in contempt, with the reflection that such former conduct of mine as I have avowed had already partly disposed you against surprise at this I do but ask that you measure my sin by my temptation, and think honestly whether in my position you might not yourselves have fallen. Aye—be you never so noble and high-principled—I make bold to say that you had done no less, for the voice that penetrated to my ears was that of Roxalanne de Lavedan.
“I sought an audience with the King,” she was saying, “but I could not gain his presence. They told me that he was holding no levees, and that he refused to see any one not introduced by one of those having the private entree.”
“And so,” answered the voice of Chatellerault, in tones that were perfectly colourless, “you come to me that I may present you to his Majesty?”
“You have guessed it, Monsieur le Comte. You are the only gentleman of His Majesty's suite, with whom I can claim acquaintance—however slight—and, moreover, it is well known how high you stand in his royal favour. I was told that they that have a boon to crave can find no better sponsor.”
“Had you gone to the King, mademoiselle,” said he, “had you gained audience, he would have directed you to make your appeal to me. I am his Commissioner in Languedoc, and the prisoners attainted with high treason are my property.”
“Why then, monsieur,” she cried in an eager voice, that set my pulses throbbing, “you'll not deny me the boon I crave? You'll not deny me his life?”
There was a short laugh from Chatellerault, and I could hear the deliberate fall of his feet as he paced the chamber.
“Mademoiselle, mademoiselle, you must not overrate my powers. You must not forget that I am the slave of Justice. You may be asking more than is in my power to grant. What can you advance to show that I should be justified in proceeding as you wish?”
“Helas, monsieur, I can advance nothing but my prayers and the assurance that a hideous mistake is being made.”
“What is your interest in this Monsieur de Lesperon?”
“He is not Monsieur de Lesperon,” she cried.
“But, since you cannot tell me who he is, you must be content that we speak of him at least as Lesperon,” said he, and I could imagine the evil grin with which he would accompany the words.
The better that you may appreciate that which followed, let me here impart to you the suspicions which were already sinking into my mind, to be changed later into absolute convictions touching the course the Count intended to pursue concerning me. The sudden arrival of the King had thrown him into some measure of panic, and no longer daring to carry out his plans concerning me, it was his object, I made no doubt, to set me at liberty that very evening. Ere he did so, however, and presuming upon my ignorance of His Majesty's presence in Toulouse, Chatellerault would of a certainty have bound me down by solemn promise—making that promise the price of my liberty and my life—to breathe no word of my captivity and trial. No doubt, his cunning brain would have advanced me plausible and convincing reasons so to engage myself.
He had not calculated upon Castelroux, nor that the King should already have heard of my detention. Now that Roxalanne came to entreat him to do that which already he saw himself forced to do, he turned his attention to the profit that he might derive from her interestedness on my behalf. I could guess also something of the jealous rage that must fill him at this signal proof of my success with her, and already I anticipated, I think, the bargain that he would drive.
“Tell me, then,” he was repeating, “what is your interest in this gentleman?”
There was a silence. I could imagine her gentle face clouded with the trouble that sprang from devising an' answer to that question; I could picture her innocent eyes cast down, her delicate cheeks pinked by some measure of shame, as at last, in a low, stifled voice, the four words broke from her “I love him, monsieur.”
Ah, Dieu! To hear her confess it so! If yesternight it had stirred me to the very depths of my poor, sinful soul to have her say so much to me, how infinitely more did it not affect me to overhear this frank avowal of it to another! And to think that she was undergoing all this to the end that she might save me!
From Chatellerault there came an impatient snort in answer, and his feet again smote the floor as he resumed the pacing that for a moment he had suspended. Then followed a pause, a long silence, broken only by the Count's restless walking to and fro. At last “Why are you silent, monsieur?” she asked in a trembling voice.
“Helas, mademoiselle, I can do nothing. I had feared that it might be thus with you; and, if I put the question, it was in the hope that I was wrong.”
“But he, monsieur?” she exclaimed in anguish. “What of him?”
“Believe me, mademoiselle, if it lay in my power I would save him were he never so guilty, if only that I might spare you sorrow.”
He spoke with tender regret, foul hypocrite that he was!
“Oh, no, no!” she cried, and her voice was of horror and despair. “You do not mean that—” She stopped short; and then, after a pause, it was the Count who finished the sentence for her.
“I mean, mademoiselle, that this Lesperon must die!”
You will marvel that I let her suffer so, that I did not break down the partition with my hands and strike that supple gentleman dead at her feet in atonement for the anguish he was causing her. But I had a mind to see how far he would drive this game he was engaged upon.
Again there was a spell of silence, and at last, when Mademoiselle spoke, I was amazed at the calm voice in which she addressed him, marvelling at the strength and courage of one so frail and childlike to behold.
“Is your determination, indeed, irrevocable, monsieur? If you have any pity, will you not at least let me bear my prayers and my tears to the King?”
“It would avail you nothing. As I have said, the Languedoc rebels are in my hands.” He paused as if to let those words sink well into her understanding; then, “If I were to set him at liberty, mademoiselle, if I were to spirit him out of prison in the night, bribing his jailers to keep silent and binding him by oath to quit France at once and never to betray me, I should be, myself, guilty of high treason. Thus alone could the thing be done, and you will see, mademoiselle, that by doing it I should be endangering my neck.”
There was an ineffable undercurrent of meaning in his words—an intangible suggestion that he might be bribed to do all this to which he so vaguely alluded.
“I understand, monsieur,” she answered, choking—“I understand that it would be too much to ask of you.”
“It would be much, mademoiselle,” he returned quickly, and his voice was now subdued and invested with an odd quiver. “But nothing that your lips might ask of me and that it might lie in the power of mortal man to do, would be too much!”
“You mean?” she cried, a catch in her breath. Had she guessed—as I, without sight of her face, had guessed—what was to follow? My gorge was rising fast. I clenched my hands, and by an effort I restrained myself to learn that I had guessed aright.
“Some two months ago,” he said, “I journeyed to Lavedan, as you may remember. I saw you, mademoiselle—for a brief while only, it is true—and ever since I have seen nothing else but you.” His voice went a shade lower, and passion throbbed in his words.
She, too, perceived it, for the grating of a chair informed me that she had risen.
“Not now, monsieur—not now!” she exclaimed. “This is not the season. I beg of you think of my desolation.”
“I do, mademoiselle, and I respect your grief, and, with all my heart, believe me, I share it. Yet this is the season, and if you have this man's interests at heart, you will hear me to the end.”
Through all the imperiousness of his tone an odd note of respect—real or assumed—was sounding.
“If you suffer, mademoiselle, believe me that I suffer also, and if I make you suffer more by what I say, I beg that you will think how what you have said, how the very motive of your presence here, has made me suffer. Do you know, mademoiselle, what it is to be torn by jealousy? Can you imagine it? If you can, you can imagine also something of the torture I endured when you confessed to me that you loved this Lesperon, when you interceded for his life. Mademoiselle, I love you—with all my heart and soul I love you. I have loved you, I think, since the first moment of our meeting at Lavedan, and to win you there is no risk that I would not take, no danger that I would not brave.”
“Monsieur, I implore you—”
“Hear me out, mademoiselle!” he cried. Then in quieter voice he proceeded: “At present you love this Monsieur de Lesperon—”
“I shall always love him! Always, monsieur!”
“Wait, wait, wait!” he exclaimed, annoyed by her interruption. “If he were to live, and you were to wed him and be daily in his company, I make no doubt your love might endure. But if he were to die, or if he were to pass into banishment and you were to see him no more, you would mourn him for a little while, and then—Helas! it is the way of men and women—time would heal first your sorrow, then your heart.”
“Never, monsieur—oh, never!”
“I am older, child, than you are. I know. At present you are anxious to save his life anxious because you love him, and also because you betrayed him, and you would not have his death upon your conscience.” He paused a moment; then raising his voice, “Mademoiselle,” said he, “I offer you your lover's life.”
“Monsieur, monsieur!” cried the poor child, “I knew you were good! I knew—”
“A moment! Do not misapprehend me. I do not say that I give it—I offer it.”
“But the difference?”
“That if you would have it, mademoiselle, you must buy it. I have said that for you I would brave all dangers. To save your lover, I brave the scaffold. If I am betrayed, or if the story transpire, my head will assuredly fall in the place of Lesperon's. This I will risk, mademoiselle—I will do it gladly—if you will promise to become my wife when it is done.”
There was a moan from Roxalanne, then silence; then—“Oh, monsieur, you are pitiless! What bargain is this that you offer me?”
“A fair one, surely,” said that son of hell—“a very fair one. The risk of my life against your hand in marriage.”
“If you—if you truly loved me as you say, monsieur,” she reasoned, “you would serve me without asking guerdon.”
“In any other thing I would. But is it fair to ask a man who is racked by love of you to place another in your arms, and that at the risk of his own life? Ah, mademoiselle, I am but a man, and I am subject to human weaknesses. If you will consent, this Lesperon shall go free, but you must see him no more; and I will carry my consideration so far as to give you six months in which to overcome your sorrow, ere I present myself to you again to urge my suit.”
“And if I refuse, monsieur?”
He sighed.
“To the value which I set upon my life you must add my very human jealousy. From such a combination what can you hope for?”
“You mean, in short, that he must die?”
“To-morrow,” was that infernal cheat's laconic answer.
They were silent a little while, then she fell a-sobbing.
“Be pitiful, monsieur! Have mercy if you, indeed, love me. Oh, he must not die! I cannot, I dare not, let him die! Save him, monsieur, and I will pray for you every night of my life; I will pray for you to our Holy Mother as I am now praying to you for him.”
Lived there the man to resist that innocent, devout appeal? Lived there one who in answer to such gentle words of love and grief could obtrude his own coarse passions? It seems there did, for all he answered was “You know the price, child.”
“And God pity me! I must pay it. I must, for if he dies I shall have his blood upon my conscience!” Then she checked her grief, and her voice grew almost stern in the restraint she set upon herself. “If I give you my promise to wed you hereafter—say in six months' time—what proof will you afford me that he who is detained under the name of Lesperon shall go free?”
I caught the sound of something very like a gasp from the Count.
“Remain in Toulouse until to-morrow, and to-night ere he departs he shall come to take his leave of you. Are you content?”
“Be it so, monsieur,” she answered.
Then at last I leapt to my feet. I could endure no more. You may marvel that I had had the heart to endure so much, and to have so let her suffer that I might satisfy myself how far this scoundrel Chatellerault would drive his trickster's bargain.
A more impetuous man would have beaten down the partition, or shouted to her through it the consolation that Chatellerault's bargain was no bargain at all, since I was already at large. And that is where a more impetuous man would have acted upon instinct more wisely than did I upon reason. Instead, I opened the door, and, crossing the common room, I flung myself down a passage that I thought must lead to the chamber in which they were closeted. But in this I was at fault, and ere I had come upon a waiter and been redirected some precious moments were lost. He led me back through the common room to a door opening upon another corridor. He pushed it wide, and I came suddenly face to face with Chatellerault, still flushed from his recent contest.
“You here!” he gasped, his jaw falling, and his cheeks turning pale, as well they might; for all that he could not dream I had overheard his bargaining.
“We will go back, if you please, Monsieur le Comte.” said I.
“Back where?” he asked stupidly.
“Back to Mademoiselle. Back to the room you have just quitted.” And none too gently I pushed him into the corridor again, and so, in the gloom, I missed the expression of his face.
“She is not there,” said he.
I laughed shortly.
“Nevertheless, we will go back,” I insisted.
And so I had my way, and we gained the room where his infamous traffic had been held. Yet for once he spoke the truth. She was no longer there.
“Where is she?” I demanded angrily.
“Gone,” he answered; and when I protested that I had not met her, “You would not have a lady go by way of the public room, would you?” he demanded insolently. “She left by the side door into the courtyard.”
“That being so, Monsieur le Comte,” said I quietly, “I will have a little talk with you before going after her.” And I carefully closed the door.
Within the room Chatellerault and I faced each other in silence. And how vastly changed were the circumstances since our last meeting!
The disorder that had stamped itself upon his countenance when first he had beheld me still prevailed. There was a lowering, sullen look in his eyes and a certain displacement of their symmetry which was peculiar to them when troubled.
Although a cunning plotter and a scheming intriguer in his own interests, Chatellerault, as I have said before, was not by nature a quick man. His wits worked slowly, and he needed leisure to consider a situation and his actions therein ere he was in a position to engage with it.
“Monsieur le Comte,” quoth I ironically, “I make you my compliments upon your astuteness and the depth of your schemes, and my condolences upon the little accident owing to which I am here, and in consequence of which your pretty plans are likely to miscarry.”
He threw back his great head like a horse that feels the curb, and his smouldering eyes looked up at me balefully. Then his sensuous lips parted in scorn.
“How much do you know?” he demanded with sullen contempt.
“I have been in that room for the half of an hour,” I answered, rapping the partition with my knuckles.
“The dividing wall, as you will observe, is thin, and I heard everything that passed between you and Mademoiselle de Lavedan.”
“So that Bardelys, known as the Magnificent; Bardelys the mirror of chivalry; Bardelys the arbiter elegantiarum of the Court of France, is no better, it seems, than a vulgar spy.”
If he sought by that word to anger me, he failed.
“Lord Count,” I answered him very quietly, “you are of an age to know that the truth alone has power to wound. I was in that room by accident, and when the first words of your conversation reached me I had not been human had I not remained and strained my ears to catch every syllable you uttered. For the rest, let me ask you, my dear Chatellerault, since when have you become so nice that you dare cast it at a man that he has been eavesdropping?”
“You are obscure, monsieur. What is it that you suggest?”
“I am signifying that when a man stands unmasked for a cheat, a liar, and a thief, his own character should give him concern enough to restrain him from strictures upon that of another.”
A red flush showed through the tan of his skin, then faded and left him livid—a very evil sight, as God lives. He flung his heavily-feathered hat upon the table, and carried his hand to his hilt.
“God's blood!” he cried. “You shall answer me for this.”
I shook my head and smiled; but I made no sign of drawing.
“Monsieur, we must talk a while. I think that you had better.”
He raised his sullen eyes to mine. Perhaps the earnest impressiveness of my tones prevailed. Be that as it may, his half-drawn sword was thrust back with a click, and “What have you to say?” he asked.
“Be seated.” I motioned him to a chair by the table and when he had taken it I sat down opposite to him. Taking up a quill, I dipped it in the ink-horn that stood by, and drew towards me a sheet of paper.
“When you lured me into the wager touching Mademoiselle de Lavedan,” said I calmly, “you did so, counting upon certain circumstances, of which you alone had knowledge, that should render impossible the urging of my suit. That, Monsieur le Comte, was undeniably the action of a cheat. Was it not?”
“Damnation!” he roared, and would have risen, but, my hand upon his arm, I restrained him and pressed him back into his chair.
“By a sequence of fortuitous circumstances,” I pursued, “it became possible for me to circumvent the obstacle upon which you had based your calculations. Those same circumstances led later to my being arrested in error and in place of another man. You discovered how I had contravened the influence upon which you counted; you trembled to see how the unexpected had befriended me, and you began to fear for your wager.
“What did you do? Seeing me arraigned before you in your quality as King's Commissioner, you pretended to no knowledge of me; you became blind to my being any but Lesperon the rebel, and you sentenced me to death in his place, so that being thus definitely removed I should be unable to carry out my undertaking, and my lands should consequently pass into your possession. That, monsieur, was at once the act of a thief and a murderer. Wait, monsieur; restrain yourself until I shall have done. To-day again fortune comes to my rescue. Again you see me slipping from your grasp, and you are in despair. Then, in the eleventh hour, Mademoiselle de Lavedan comes to you to plead for my life. By that act she gives you the most ample proof that your wager is lost. What would a gentleman, a man of honour, have done under these circumstances? What did you do? You seized that last chance; you turned it to the best account; you made this poor girl buy something from you; you made her sell herself to you for nothing—pretending that your nothing was a something of great value. What term shall we apply to that? To say that you cheated again seems hardly adequate.”
“By God, Bardelys!”
“Wait!” I thundered, looking him straight between the eyes, so that again he sank back cowed. Then resuming the calm with which hitherto I had addressed him, “Your cupidity,” said I, “your greed for the estates of Bardelys, and your jealousy and thirst to see me impoverished and so ousted from my position at Court, to leave you supreme in His Majesty's favour, have put you to strange shifts for a gentleman, Chatellerault. Yet, wait.”
And, dipping my pen in the ink-horn, I began to write. I was conscious of his eyes upon me, and I could imagine his surmisings and bewildered speculations as my pen scratched rapidly across the paper. In a few moments it was done, and I tossed the pen aside. I took up the sandbox.
“When a man cheats, Monsieur le Comte, and is detected, he is invariably adjudged the loser of his stakes. On that count alone everything that you have is now mine by rights.” Again I had to quell an interruption. “But if we wave that point, and proceed upon the supposition that you have dealt fairly and honourably with me, why, then, monsieur, you have still sufficient evidence—the word of Mademoiselle, herself, in fact—that I have won my wager. And so, if we take this, the most lenient view of the case”—I paused to sprinkle the sand over my writing—“your estates are still lost to you, and pass to be my property.”
“Do they, by God?” he roared, unable longer to restrain himself, and leaping to his feet. “You have done, have you not? You have said all that you can call to mind? You have flung insults and epithets at me enough to earn the cutting of a dozen throats. You have dubbed me cheat and thief”—he choked in his passion—“until you have had your fill—is it not so? Now, listen to me, Master Bardelys, master spy, master buffoon, master masquerader! What manner of proceeding was yours to go to Lavedan under a false name? How call you that? Was that, perhaps, not cheating?”
“No, monsieur, it was not,” I answered quietly. “It was in the terms of your challenge that I was free to go to Lavedan in what guise I listed, employing what wiles I pleased. But let that be,” I ended, and, creasing the paper, I poured the sand back into the box, and dusted the document. “The point is hardly worth discussing at this time of day. If not one way, why, then, in another, your wager is lost.”
“Is it?” He set his arms akimbo and eyed me derisively, his thick-set frame planted squarely before me. “You are satisfied that it is so? Quite satisfied, eh?” He leered in my face. “Why, then, Monsieur le Marquis, we will see whether a few inches of steel will win it back for me.” And once more his hand flew to his hilt.
Rising, I flung the document I had accomplished upon the table. “Glance first at that,” said I.
He stopped to look at me in inquiry, my manner sowing so great a curiosity in him that his passion was all scattered before it. Then he stepped up to the table and lifted the paper. As he read, his hand shook, amazement dilated his eyes and furrowed his brow.
“What—what does it signify?” he gasped.
“It signifies that, although fully conscious of having won, I prefer to acknowledge that I have lost. I make over to you thus my estates of Bardelys, because, monsieur, I have come to realize that that wager was an infamous one—one in which a gentleman should have had no part—and the only atonement I can make to myself, my honour, and the lady whom we insulted—is that.”
“I do not understand,” he complained.
“I apprehend your difficulty, Comte. The point is a nice one. But understand at least that my Picardy estates are yours. Only, monsieur, you will be well advised to make your will forthwith, for you are not destined, yourself, to enjoy them.”
He looked at me, his glance charged with inquiry.
“His Majesty,” I continued, in answer to his glance, “is ordering your arrest for betraying the trust he had reposed in you and for perverting the ends of justice to do your own private murdering.”
“Mon Dieu!” he cried, falling of a sudden unto a most pitiful affright. “The King knows?”
“Knows?” I laughed. “In the excitement of these other matters you have forgotten to ask how I come to be at liberty. I have been to the King, monsieur, and I have told him what has taken place here at Toulouse, and how I was to have gone to the block tomorrow!”
“Scelerat!” he cried. “You have ruined me!” Rage and grief were blent in his accents. He stood before me, livid of face and with hands clenching and unclenching at his sides.
“Did you expect me to keep such a matter silent? Even had I been so inclined it had not been easy, for His Majesty had questions to ask me. From what the King said, monsieur, you may count upon mounting the scaffold in my stead. So be advised, and make your will without delay, if you would have your heirs enjoy my Picardy chateau.”
I have seen terror and anger distort men's countenances, but never have I seen aught to compare with the disorder of Chatellerault at that moment. He stamped and raved and fumed. He poured forth a thousand ordures of speech in his frenzy; he heaped insults upon me and imprecations upon the King, whose lapdog he pronounced me. His short, stout frame was quivering with passion and fear, his broad face distorted by his hideous grimaces of rage. And then, while yet his ravings were in full flow, the door opened, and in stepped the airy Chevalier de Saint-Eustache.
He stood still, amazed, beneath the lintel—marvelling to see all this anger, and abashed at beholding me. His sudden appearance reminded me that I had last seen him at Grenade in the Count's company, on the day of my arrest. The surprise it had occasioned me now returned upon seeing him so obviously and intimately seeking Chatellerault.
The Count turned on him in his anger.
“Well, popinjay?” he roared. “What do you want with me?”
“Monsieur le Comte!” cried the other, in blent indignation and reproach.
“You will perceive that you are come inopportunely,” I put in. “Monsieur de Chatellerault is not quite himself.”
But my speech again drew his attention to my presence; and the wonder grew in his eyes at finding me there, for to him I was still Lesperon the rebel, and he marvelled naturally that I should be at large.
Then in the corridor there was a sound of steps and voices, and as I turned I beheld in the doorway, behind Saint-Eustache, the faces of Castelroux, Mironsac, and my old acquaintance, the babbling, irresponsible buffoon, La Fosse. From Mironsac he had heard of my presence in Toulouse, and, piloted by Castelroux, they were both come to seek me out. I'll swear it was not thus they had looked to find me.
They pushed their way into the room, impelling Saint-Eustache forward, and there were greetings exchanged and felicitations, whilst Chatellerault, curbing his disorder, drew the Chevalier into a corner of the room, and stood there listening to him.
At length I heard the Count exclaim—
“Do as you please, Chevalier. If you have interests of your own to serve, serve them. As for myself—I am past being interested.”
“But why, monsieur?” the chevalier inquired.
“Why?” echoed Chatellerault, his ferocity welling up again. Then, swinging round, he came straight at me, as a bull makes a charge.
“Monsieur de Bardelys!” he blazed.
“Bardelys!” gasped Saint-Eustache in the background.
“What now?” I inquired coldly, turning from my friends.
“All that you said may be true, and I may be doomed, but I swear before God that you shall not go unpunished.”
“I think, monsieur, that you run a grave risk of perjuring yourself!” I laughed.
“You shall render me satisfaction ere we part!” he cried.
“If you do not deem that paper satisfaction enough, then, monsieur, forgive me, but your greed transcends all possibility of being ever satisfied.”
“The devil take your paper and your estates! What shall they profit me when I am dead?”
“They may profit your heirs,” I suggested.
“How shall that profit me?”
“That is a riddle that I cannot pretend to elucidate.”
“You laugh, you knave!” he snorted. Then, with an abrupt change of manner, “You do not lack for friends,” said he. “Beg one of these gentlemen to act for you, and if you are a man of honour let us step out into the yard and settle the matter.”
I shook my head.
“I am so much a man of honour as to be careful with whom I cross steel. I prefer to leave you to His Majesty's vengeance; his headsman may be less particular than am I. No, monsieur, on the whole, I do not think that I can fight you.”