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.