Never until that hour, as I stood in the porch of the Hotel de l'Epee,
hearkening to my henchman's narrative and to the bursts of laughter
which ever and anon it provoked from his numerous listeners, had I
dreamed of the raconteur talents which Rodenard might boast. Yet was
I very far from being appreciative now that I discovered them, for the
story that he told was of how one Marcel Saint-Pol, Marquis de Bardelys,
had laid a wager with the Comte de Chatellerault that he would woo and
win Mademoiselle de Lavedan to wife within three months. Nor did he
stop there. Rodenard, it would seem, was well informed; he had drawn
all knowledge of the state of things from Castelroux's messenger, and
later--I know not from whom--at Toulouse, since his arrival.
He regaled the company, therefore, with a recital of our finding the
dying Lesperon, and of how I had gone off alone, and evidently assumed
the name and role of that proscribed rebel, and thus conducted my
wooing under sympathy inspiring circumstances at Lavedan. Then came, he
announced, the very cream of the jest, when I was arrested as Lesperon
and brought to Toulouse and to trial in Lesperon's stead; he told them
how I had been sentenced to death in the other man's place, and he
assured them that I would certainly have been beheaded upon the morrow
but that news had been borne to him--Rodenard--of my plight, and he was
come to deliver me.
My first impulse upon hearing him tell of the wager had been to stride
into the room and silence him by my coming. That I did not obey that
impulse was something that presently I was very bitterly to regret. How
it came that I did not I scarcely know. I was tempted, perhaps, to see
how far this henchman whom for years I had trusted was unworthy of
that trust. And so, there in the porch, I stayed until he had ended by
telling the company that he was on his way to inform the King--who by
great good chance was that day arrived in Toulouse--of the mistake that
had been made, and thus obtain my immediate enlargement and earn my
undying gratitude.
Again I was on the point of entering to administer a very stern reproof
to that talkative rogue, when of a sudden there was a commotion within.
I caught a scraping of chairs, a dropping of voices, and then suddenly I
found myself confronted by Roxalanne de Lavedan herself, issuing with a
page and a woman in attendance.
For just a second her eyes rested on me, and the light coming through
the doorway at her back boldly revealed my countenance. And a very
startled countenance it must have been, for in that fraction of time I
knew that she had heard all that Rodenard had been relating. Under
that instant's glance of her eyes I felt myself turn pale; a shiver
ran through me, and the sweat started cold upon my brow. Then her gaze
passed from me, and looked beyond into the street, as though she had not
known me; whether in her turn she paled or reddened I cannot say,
for the light was too uncertain. Next followed what seemed to me an
interminable pause, although, indeed, it can have been no more than a
matter of seconds--aye, and of but few. Then, her gown drawn well aside,
she passed me in that same irrecognizing way, whilst I, abashed, shrank
back into the shadows of the porch, burning with shame and rage and
humiliation.
From under her brows her woman glanced at me inquisitively; her liveried
page, his nose in the air, eyed me so pertly that I was hard put to it
not to hasten with my foot his descent of the steps.
At last they were gone, and from the outside the shrill voice of her
page was wafted to me. He was calling to the ostler for her carriage.
Standing, in my deep mortification, where she had passed me, I
conjectured from that demand that she was journeying to Lavedan.
She knew now how she had been cheated on every hand, first by me and
later, that very afternoon, by Chatellerault, and her resolve to quit
Toulouse could but signify that she was done with me for good. That it
had surprised her to find me at large already, I fancied I had seen in
her momentary glance, but her pride had been quick to conquer and stifle
all signs of that surprise.
I remained where she had passed me until her coach had rumbled away into
the night, and during the moments that elapsed I had stood arguing with
myself and resolving upon my course of action. But despair was fastening
upon me.
I had come to the Hotel de l'Epee, exulting, joyous, and confident of
victory. I had come to confess everything to her, and by virtue of what
I had done that confession was rendered easy. I could have said to her:
“The woman whom I wagered to win was not you, Roxalanne, but a certain
Mademoiselle de Lavedan. Your love I have won, but that you may foster
no doubts of my intentions, I have paid my wager and acknowledge defeat.
I have made over to Chatellerault and to his heirs for all time my
estates of Bardelys.”
Oh, I had rehearsed it in my mind, and I was confident--I knew--that I
should win her. And now--the disclosure of that shameful traffic coming
from other lips than mine had ruined everything by forestalling my
avowal.
Rodenard should pay for it--by God, he should! Once again did I become a
prey to the passion of anger which I have ever held to be unworthy in a
gentleman, but to which it would seem that I was growing accustomed to
give way. The ostler was mounting the steps at the moment. He carried in
his hand a stout horsewhip with a long knotted thong. Hastily muttering
a “By your leave,” I snatched it from him and sprang into the room.
My intendant was still talking of me. The room was crowded, for Rodenard
alone had brought with him my twenty followers. One of these looked up
as I brushed past him, and uttered a cry of surprise upon recognizing
me. But Rodenard talked on, engrossed in his theme to the exclusion of
all else.
“Monsieur le Marquis,” he was saying, “is a gentleman whom it is,
indeed, an honour to serve--”
A scream burst from him with the last word, for the lash of my whip had
burnt a wheal upon his well-fed sides.
“It is an honour that shall be yours no more, you dog!” I cried.
He leapt high into the air as my whip cut him again. He swung round, his
face twisted with pain, his flabby cheeks white with fear, and his eyes
wild with anger, for as yet the full force of the situation had not been
borne in upon him. Then, seeing me there, and catching something of the
awful passion that must have been stamped upon my face, he dropped on
his knees and cried out something that I did not understand for I was
past understanding much just then.
The lash whistled through the air again and caught him about the
shoulders. He writhed and roared in his anguish of both flesh and
spirit. But I was pitiless. He had ruined my life for me with his
talking, and, as God lived, he should pay the only price that it lay in
his power to pay--the price of physical suffering. Again and again my
whip hissed about his head and cut into his soft white flesh,
whilst roaring for mercy he moved and rocked on his knees before me.
Instinctively he approached me to hamper my movements, whilst I moved
back to give my lash the better play. He held out his arms and joined
his fat hands in supplication, but the lash caught them in its sinuous
tormenting embrace, and started a red wheal across their whiteness.
He tucked them into his armpits with a scream, and fell prone upon the
ground.
Then I remember that some of my men essayed to restrain me, which to my
passion was as the wind to a blaze. I cracked my whip about their heads,
commanding them to keep their distance lest they were minded to share
his castigation. And so fearful an air must I have worn, that, daunted,
they hung back and watched their leader's punishment in silence.
When I think of it now, I take no little shame at the memory of how I
beat him. It is, indeed, with deep reluctance and yet deeper shame that
I have brought myself to write of it. If I offend you with this
account of that horsewhipping, let necessity be my apology; for the
horsewhipping itself I have, unfortunately, no apology, save the blind
fury that obsessed me--which is no apology at all.
Upon the morrow I repented me already with much bitterness. But in that
hour I knew no reason. I was mad, and of my madness was born this harsh
brutality.
“You would talk of me and my affairs in a tavern, you hound!” I cried,
out of breath both by virtue of my passion and my exertions. “Let the
memory of this act as a curb upon your poisonous tongue in future.”
“Monseigneur!” he screamed. “Misericorde, monseigneur!”
“Aye, you shall have mercy--just so much mercy as you deserve. Have I
trusted you all these years, and did my father trust you before me,
for this? Have you grown sleek and fat and smug in my service that you
should requite me thus? Sangdieu, Rodenard! My father had hanged you
for the half of the talking that you have done this night. You dog! You
miserable knave!”
“Monseigneur,” he shrieked again, “forgive! For your sainted mother's
sake, forgive! Monseigneur, I did not know--”
“But you are learning, cur; you are learning by the pain of your fat
carcase; is it not so, carrion?”
He sank down, his strength exhausted, a limp, moaning, bleeding mass of
flesh, into which my whip still cut relentlessly.
I have a picture in my mind of that ill-lighted room, of the startled
faces on which the flickering glimmer of the candles shed odd shadows;
of the humming and cracking of my whip; of my own voice raised in oaths
and epithets of contempt; of Rodenard's screams; of the cries raised
here and there in remonstrance or in entreaty, and of some more bold
that called shame upon me. Then others took up that cry of “Shame!” so
that at last I paused and stood there drawn up to my full height, as if
in challenge. Towering above the heads of any in that room, I held my
whip menacingly. I was unused to criticism, and their expressions of
condemnation roused me.
“Who questions my right?” I demanded arrogantly, whereupon they one and
all fell silent. “If any here be bold enough to step out, he shall have
my answer.” Then, as none responded, I signified my contempt for them by
a laugh.
“Monseigneur!” wailed Rodenard at my feet, his voice growing feeble.
By way of answer, I gave him a final cut, then I flung the whip--
which had grown ragged in the fray--back to the ostler from whom I had
borrowed it.
“Let that suffice you, Rodenard,” I said, touching him with my foot.
“See that I never set eyes upon you again, if you cherish your miserable
life!”
“Not that, monseigneur.” groaned the wretch. “Oh, not that! You have
punished me; you have whipped me until I cannot stand; forgive me,
monseigneur, forgive me now!”
“I have forgiven you, but I never wish to see you again, lest I should
forget that I have forgiven you. Take him away, some of you,” I bade my
men, and in swift, silent obedience two of them stepped forward and bore
the groaning, sobbing fellow from the room. When that was done “Host,” I
commanded, “prepare me a room. Attend me, a couple of you.”
I gave orders thereafter for the disposal of my baggage, some of which
my lacqueys brought up to the chamber that the landlord had in haste
made ready for me. In that chamber I sat until very late; a prey to the
utmost misery and despair. My rage being spent, I might have taken some
thought for poor Ganymede and his condition, but my own affairs crowded
over-heavily upon my mind, and sat the undisputed rulers of my thoughts
that night.
At one moment I considered journeying to Lavedan, only to dismiss the
idea the next. What could it avail me now? Would Roxalanne believe the
tale I had to tell? Would she not think, naturally enough, that I was
but making the best of the situation, and that my avowal of the truth
of a story which it was not in my power to deny was not spontaneous, but
forced from me by circumstances? No, there was nothing more to be done.
A score of amours had claimed my attention in the past and received
it; yet there was not one of those affairs whose miscarriage would have
afforded me the slightest concern or mortification. It seemed like an
irony, like a Dies ire, that it should have been left to this first true
passion of my life to have gone awry.
I slept ill when at last I sought my bed, and through the night I nursed
my bitter grief, huddling to me the corpse of the love she had borne me
as a mother may the corpse of her first-born.
On the morrow I resolved to leave Toulouse--to quit this province
wherein so much had befallen me and repair to Beaugency, there to grow
old in misanthropical seclusion. I had done with Courts, I had done
with love and with women; I had done, it seemed to me, with life itself.
Prodigal had it been in gifts that I had not sought of it. It had spread
my table with the richest offerings, but they had been little to my
palate, and I had nauseated quickly. And now, when here in this remote
corner of France it had shown me the one prize I coveted, it had been
swift to place it beyond my reach, thereby sowing everlasting discontent
and misery in my hitherto pampered heart.
I saw Castelroux that day, but I said no word to him of my affliction.
He brought me news of Chatellerault. The Count was lying in a dangerous
condition at the Auberge Royale, and might not be moved. The physician
attending him all but despaired of his life.
“He is asking to see you,” said Castelroux.
But I was not minded to respond. For all that he had deeply wronged
me, for all that I despised him very cordially, the sight of him in his
present condition might arouse my pity, and I was in no mood to waste
upon such a one as Chatellerault even on his deathbed--a quality of
which I had so dire a need just then for my own case.
“I will not go,” said I, after deliberation. “Tell him from me that I
forgive him freely if it be that he seeks my forgiveness; tell him that
I bear him no rancour, and--that he had better make his will, to save me
trouble hereafter, if he should chance to die.”
I said this because I had no mind, if he should perish intestate, to go
in quest of his next heirs and advise them that my late Picardy estates
were now their property.
Castelroux sought yet to persuade me to visit the Count, but I held
firmly to my resolve.
“I am leaving Toulouse to-day,” I announced.
“Whither do you go?”
“To hell, or to Beaugency--I scarce know which, nor does it matter.”
He looked at me in surprise, but, being a man of breeding, asked no
questions upon matters that he accounted secret.
“But the King?” he ventured presently.
“His Majesty has already dispensed me from my duties by him.”
Nevertheless, I did not go that day. I maintained the intention until
sunset; then, seeing that it was too late, I postponed my departure
until the morrow. I can assign no reason for my dallying mood. Perhaps
it sprang from the inertness that pervaded me, perhaps some mysterious
hand detained me. Be that as it may, that I remained another night at
the Hotel de l'Epee was one of those contingencies which, though slight
and seemingly inconsequential in themselves, lead to great issues. Had
I departed that day for Beaugency, it is likely that you had never heard
of me--leastways, not from my own pen--for in what so far I have told
you, without that which is to follow, there is haply little that was
worth the labour of setting down.
In the morning, then, I set out; but having started late, we got no
farther than Grenade, where we lay the night once more at the Hotel de
la Couronne. And so, through having delayed my departure by a single
day, did it come to pass that a message reached me before it might have
been too late.
It was high noon of the morrow. Our horses stood saddled; indeed, some
of my men were already mounted--for I was not minded to disband them
until Beaugency was reached--and my two coaches were both ready for the
journey. The habits of a lifetime are not so easy to abandon even when
Necessity raises her compelling voice.
I was in the act of settling my score with the landlord when of a sudden
there were quick steps in the passage, the clank of a rapier against the
wall, and a voice--the voice of Castelroux--calling excitedly “Bardelys!
Monsieur de Bardelys!”
“What brings you here?” I cried in greeting, as he stepped into the
room.
“Are you still for Beaugency?” he asked sharply, throwing back his head.
“Why, yes,” I answered, wondering at this excitement.
“Then you have seen nothing of Saint-Eustache and his men?”
“Nothing.”
“Yet they must have passed this way not many hours ago.” Then tossing
his hat on the table and speaking with sudden vehemence: “If you have
any interest in the family of Lavedan, you will return upon the instant
to Toulouse.”
The mention of Lavedan was enough to quicken my pulses. Yet in the
past two days I had mastered resignation, and in doing that we school
ourselves to much restraint. I turned slowly, and surveyed the little
Captain attentively. His black eyes sparkled, and his moustaches
bristled with excitement. Clearly he had news of import. I turned to the
landlord.
“Leave us, Monsieur l'Hote,” said I shortly; and when he had departed,
“What of the Lavedan family, Castelroux?” I inquired as calmly as I
might.
“The Chevalier de Saint-Eustache left Toulouse at six o'clock this
morning for Lavedan.”
Swift the suspicion of his errand broke upon my mind.
“He has betrayed the Vicomte?” I half inquired, half asserted.
Castelroux nodded. “He has obtained a warrant for his apprehension from
the Keeper of the Seals, and is gone to execute it. In the course of a
few days Lavedan will be in danger of being no more than a name. This
Saint-Eustache is driving a brisk trade, by God, and some fine prizes
have already fallen to his lot. But if you add them all together, they
are not likely to yield as much as this his latest expedition. Unless
you intervene, Bardelys, the Vicomte de Lavedan is doomed and his family
houseless.”
“I will intervene,” I cried. “By God, I will! And as for
Saint-Eustache--he was born under a propitious star, indeed, if he
escapes the gallows. He little dreams that I am still to be reckoned
with. There, Castelroux, I will start for Lavedan at once.”
Already I was striding to the door, when the Gascon called me back.
“What good will that do?” he asked. “Were it not better first to return
to Toulouse and obtain a counter-warrant from the King?”
There was wisdom in his words--much wisdom. But my blood was afire, and
I was in too hot a haste to reason.
“Return to Toulouse?” I echoed scornfully. “A waste of time, Captain.
No, I will go straight to Lavedan. I need no counter-warrant. I know too
much of this Chevalier's affairs, and my very presence should be enough
to stay his hand. He is as foul a traitor as you'll find in France;
but for the moment God bless him for a very opportune knave. Gilles!” I
called, throwing wide the door. “Gilles!”
“Monseigneur,” he answered, hastening to me.
“Put back the carriages and saddle me a horse,” I commanded. “And bid
your fellows mount at once and await me in the courtyard. We are not
going to Beaugency, Gilles. We ride north--to Lavedan.”