On the occasion of my first visit to Lavedan I had disregarded--or,
rather, Fate had contrived that I should disregard--Chatellerault's
suggestion that I should go with all the panoply of power--with my
followers, my liveries, and my equipages to compose the magnificence
all France had come to associate with my name, and thus dazzle by my
brilliant lustre the lady I was come to win. As you may remember, I had
crept into the chateau like a thief in the night,--wounded, bedraggled,
and of miserable aspect, seeking to provoke compassion rather than
admiration.
Not so now that I made my second visit. I availed myself of all the
splendour to which I owed my title of “Magnificent,” and rode into the
courtyard of the Chateau de Lavedan preceded by twenty well-mounted
knaves wearing the gorgeous Saint-Pol liveries of scarlet and gold, with
the Bardelys escutcheon broidered on the breasts of their doublets--on a
field or a bar azure surcharged by three lilies of the field. They
were armed with swords and musketoons, and had more the air of a royal
bodyguard than of a company of attendant servants.
Our coming was in a way well timed. I doubt if we could have stayed the
execution of Saint-Eustache's warrant even had we arrived earlier. But
for effect--to produce a striking coup de theatre--we could not have
come more opportunely.
A coach stood in the quadrangle, at the foot of the chateau steps:
down these the Vicomte was descending, with the Vicomtesse--grim and
blasphemant as ever, on one side, and his daughter, white of face and
with tightly compressed lips, on the other. Between these two women--his
wife and his child--as different in body as they were different in soul,
came Lavedan with a firm step, a good colour, and a look of well-bred,
lofty indifference to his fate.
He disposed himself to enter the carriage which was to bear him to
prison with much the same air he would have assumed had his destination
been a royal levee.
Around the coach were grouped a score of men of Saint-Eustache's
company--half soldiers, half ploughboys--ill-garbed and indifferently
accoutred in dull breastplates and steel caps, many of which were
rusted. By the carriage door stood the long, lank figure of the
Chevalier himself, dressed with his wonted care, and perfumed, curled,
and beribboned beyond belief. His weak, boyish face sought by scowls and
by the adoption of a grim smile to assume an air of martial ferocity.
Such was the grouping in the quadrangle when my men, with Gilles at
their head, thundered across the drawbridge, giving pause to those
within, and drawing upon themselves the eyes of all, as they rode, two
by two, under the old-world arch of the keep into the courtyard. And
Gilles, who knew our errand, and who was as ready-witted a rogue as
ever rode with me, took in the situation at a glance. Knowing how much
I desired to make a goodly show, he whispered an order. This resulted
in the couples dividing at the gateway, one going to the left and one
to the right, so that as they came they spread themselves in a crescent,
and drawing rein, they faced forward, confronting and half surrounding
the Chevalier's company.
As each couple appeared, the curiosity--the uneasiness, probably--of
Saint-Eustache and his men, had increased, and their expectancy was on
tiptoe to see what lord it was went abroad with such regal pomp, when I
appeared in the gateway and advanced at the trot into the middle of the
quadrangle. There I drew rein and doffed my hat to them as they stood,
open-mouthed and gaping one and all. If it was a theatrical display, a
parade worthy of a tilt-ground, it was yet a noble and imposing advent,
and their gaping told me that it was not without effect. The men looked
uneasily at the Chevalier; the Chevalier looked uneasily at his men;
mademoiselle, very pale, lowered her eyes and pressed her lips yet more
tightly; the Vicomtesse uttered an oath of astonishment; whilst Lavedan,
too dignified to manifest surprise, greeted me with a sober bow.
Behind them on the steps I caught sight of a group of domestics, old
Anatole standing slightly in advance of his fellows, and wondering, no
doubt, whether this were, indeed, the bedraggled Lesperon of a little
while ago--for if I had thought of pomp in the display of my lacqueys,
no less had I considered it in the decking of my own person. Without
any of the ribbons and fopperies that mark the coxcomb, yet was I clad,
plumed, and armed with a magnificence such as I'll swear had not been
seen within the grey walls of that old castle in the lifetime of any of
those that were now present.
Gilles leapt from his horse as I drew rein, and hastened to hold
my stirrup, with a murmured “Monsieur,” which title drew a fresh
astonishment into the eyes of the beholders.
I advanced leisurely towards Saint-Eustache, and addressed him with such
condescension as I might a groom, to impress and quell a man of this
type your best weapon is the arrogance that a nobler spirit would
resent.
“A world of odd meetings this, Saint-Eustache,” I smiled disdainfully.
“A world of strange comings and goings, and of strange transformations.
The last time we were here we stood mutually as guests of Monsieur le
Vicomte; at present you appear to be officiating as a--a tipstaff.”
“Monsieur!” He coloured, and he uttered the word in accents of awakening
resentment. I looked into his eyes, coldly, impassively, as if waiting
to hear what he might have to add, and so I stayed until his glance fell
and his spirit was frozen in him. He knew me, and he knew how much I was
to be feared. A word from me to the King might send him to the wheel.
It was upon this I played. Presently, as his eye fell, “Is your business
with me, Monsieur de Bardelys?” he asked, and at that utterance of my
name there was a commotion on the steps, whilst the Vicomte started, and
his eyes frowned upon me, and the Vicomtesse looked up suddenly to scan
me with a fresh interest. She beheld at last in the flesh the gentleman
who had played so notorious a part, ten years ago, in that scandal
connected with the Duchesse de Bourgogne, of which she never tired of
reciting the details. And think that she had sat at table with him day
by day and been unconscious of that momentous fact! Such, I make no
doubt, was what passed through her mind at the moment, and, to judge
from her expression, I should say that the excitement of beholding
the Magnificent Bardelys had for the nonce eclipsed beholding even her
husband's condition and the imminent sequestration of Lavedan.
“My business is with you, Chevalier,” said I. “It relates to your
mission here.”
His jaw fell. “You wish--?”
“To desire you to withdraw your men and quit Lavedan at once, abandoning
the execution of your warrant.”
He flashed me a look of impotent hate. “You know of the existence of
my warrant, Monsieur de Bardelys, and you must therefore realize that a
royal mandate alone can exempt me from delivering Monsieur de Lavedan to
the Keeper of the Seals.”
“My only warrant,” I answered, somewhat baffled, but far from abandoning
hope, “is my word. You shall say to the Garde des Sceaux that you have
done this upon the authority of the Marquis de Bardelys, and you have my
promise that His Majesty shall confirm my action.”
In saying that I said too much, as I was quickly to realize.
“His Majesty will confirm it, monsieur?” he said interrogatively, and he
shook his head. “That is a risk I dare not run. My warrant sets me under
imperative obligations which I must discharge--you will see the justice
of what I state.”
His tone was all humility, all subservience, nevertheless it was firm
to the point of being hard. But my last card, the card upon which I was
depending, was yet to be played.
“Will you do me the honour to step aside with me, Chevalier?” I
commanded rather than besought.
“At your service, sir,” said he; and I drew him out of earshot of those
others.
“Now, Saint-Eustache, we can talk,” said I, with an abrupt change
of manner from the coldly arrogant to the coldly menacing. “I marvel
greatly at your temerity in pursuing this Iscariot business after
learning who I am, at Toulouse two nights ago.”
He clenched his hands, and his weak face hardened.
“I would beg you to consider your expressions, monsieur, and to control
them,” said he in a thick voice.
I vouchsafed him a stare of freezing amazement. “You will no doubt
remember in what capacity I find you employed. Nay, keep your hands
still, Saint-Eustache. I don't fight catchpolls, and if you give me
trouble my men are yonder.” And I jerked my thumb over my shoulder. “And
now to business. I am not minded to talk all day. I was saying that
I marvel at your temerity, and more particularly at your having laid
information against Monsieur de Lavedan, and having come here to arrest
him, knowing, as you must know, that I am interested in the Vicomte.”
“I have heard of that interest, monsieur,” said he, with a sneer for
which I could have struck him.
“This act of yours,” I pursued, ignoring his interpolation, “savours
very much of flying in the face of Destiny. It almost seems to me as if
you were defying me.”
His lip trembled, and his eyes shunned my glance.
“Indeed--indeed, monsieur--” he was protesting, when I cut him short.
“You cannot be so great a fool but that you must realize that if I tell
the King what I know of you, you will be stripped of your ill-gotten
gains, and broken on the wheel for a double traitor--a betrayer of your
fellow-rebels.”
“But you will not do that, monsieur?” he cried. “It would be unworthy in
you.”
At that I laughed in his face. “Heart of God! Are you to be what you
please, and do you still expect that men shall be nice in dealing with
you? I would do this thing, and, by my faith, Monsieur de Eustache, I
will do it, if you compel me!”
He reddened and moved his foot uneasily. Perhaps I did not take the best
way with him, after all. I might have confined myself to sowing fear in
his heart; that alone might have had the effect I desired; by visiting
upon him at the same time the insults I could not repress, I may have
aroused his resistance, and excited his desire above all else to thwart
me.
“What do you want of me?” he demanded, with a sudden arrogance which
almost cast mine into the shade.
“I want you,” said I, deeming the time ripe to make a plain tale of it,
“to withdraw your men, and to ride back to Toulouse without Monsieur
de Lavedan, there to confess to the Keeper of the Seals that your
suspicions were unfounded, and that you have culled evidence that the
Vicomte has had no relations with Monsieur the King's brother.”
He looked at me in amazement--amusedly, almost.
“A likely story that to bear to the astute gentlemen in Toulouse,” said
he.
“Aye, ma foi, a most likely story,” said I. “When they come to consider
the profit that you are losing by not apprehending the Vicomte, and can
think of none that you are making, they will have little difficulty in
believing you.”
“But what of this evidence you refer to?”
“You have, I take it, discovered no incriminating evidence--no documents
that will tell against the Vicomte?”
“No, monsieur, it is true that I have not--”
He stopped and bit his lip, my smile making him aware of his
indiscretion.
“Very well, then, you must invent some evidence to prove that he was in
no way, associated with the rebellion.”
“Monsieur de Bardelys,” said he very insolently, “we waste time in idle
words. If you think that I will imperil my neck for the sake of serving
you or the Vicomte, you are most prodigiously at fault.”
“I have never thought so. But I have thought that you might be induced
to imperil your neck--as you have it--for its own sake, and to the end
that you might save it.”
He moved away. “Monsieur, you talk in vain. You have no royal warrant
to supersede mine. Do what you will when you come to Toulouse,” and he
smiled darkly. “Meanwhile, the Vicomte goes with me.”
“You have no evidence against him!” I cried, scarce believing that he
would dare to defy me and that I had failed.
“I have the evidence of my word. I am ready to swear to what I
know--that, whilst I was here at Lavedan, some weeks ago, I discovered
his connection with the rebels.”
“And what think you, miserable fool, shall your word weigh against
mine?” I cried. “Never fear, Monsieur le Chevalier, I shall be in
Toulouse to give you the lie by showing that your word is a word to
which no man may attach faith, and by exposing to the King your past
conduct. If you think that, after I have spoken, King Louis whom they
name the just will suffer the trial of the Vicomte to go further on your
instigation, or if you think that you will be able to slip your own neck
from the noose I shall have set about it, you are an infinitely greater
fool than I deem you.”
He stood and looked at me over his shoulder, his face crimson, and his
brows black as a thundercloud.
“All this may betide when you come to Toulouse, Monsieur de Bardelys,”
said he darkly, “but from here to Toulouse it is a matter of some twenty
leagues.”
With that, he turned on his heel and left me, baffled and angry, to
puzzle out the inner meaning of his parting words.
He gave his men the order to mount, and bade Monsieur de Lavedan enter
the coach, whereupon Gilles shot me a glance of inquiry. For a second,
as I stepped slowly after the Chevalier, I was minded to try armed
resistance, and to convert that grey courtyard into a shambles. Then I
saw betimes the futility of such a step, and I shrugged my shoulders in
answer to my servant's glance.
I would have spoken to the Vicomte ere he departed, but I was too deeply
chagrined and humiliated by my defeat. So much so that I had no room in
my thoughts even for the very natural conjecture of what Lavedan must be
thinking of me. I repented me then of my rashness in coming to Lavedan
without having seen the King--as Castelroux had counselled me. I had
come indulging vain dreams of a splendid overthrow of Saint-Eustache. I
had thought to shine heroically in Mademoiselle's eyes, and thus I had
hoped that both gratitude for having saved her father and admiration at
the manner in which I had achieved it would predispose her to grant me
a hearing in which I might plead my rehabilitation. Once that were
accorded me, I did not doubt I should prevail.
Now my dream was all dispelled, and my pride had suffered just such a
humiliating fall as the moralists tell us pride must ever suffer. There
seemed little left me but to go hence with lambent tail, like a dog that
has been whipped--my dazzling escort become a mockery but that it served
the more loudly to advertise my true impotency.
As I approached the carriage, the Vicomtesse swept suddenly down the
steps and came towards me with a friendly smile. “Monsieur de Bardelys,”
said she, “we are grateful for your intervention in the cause of that
rebel my husband.”
“Madame,” I besought her, under my breath, “if you would not totally
destroy him, I beseech you to be cautious. By your leave, I will have my
men refreshed, and thereafter I shall take the road to Toulouse again. I
can only hope that my intervention with the King may bear better fruit.”
Although I spoke in a subdued key, Saint-Eustache, who stood near us,
overheard me, as his face very clearly testified.
“Remain here, sir,” she replied, with some effusion, “and follow us when
you are rested.”
“Follow you?” I inquired. “Do you then go with Monsieur de Lavedan?”
“No, Anne,” said the Vicomte politely from the carriage. “It will be
tiring you unnecessarily. You were better advised to remain here until
my return.”
I doubt not that the poor Vicomte was more concerned with how she would
tire him than with how the journey might tire her. But the Vicomtesse
was not to be gainsaid. The Chevalier had sneered when the Vicomte spoke
of returning. Madame had caught that sneer, and she swung round upon him
now with the vehement fury of a virago.
“He'll not return, you think, you Judas!” she snarled at him, her lean,
swarthy face growing very evil to see. “But he shall--by God, he shall!
And look to your skin when he does, monsieur the catchpoll, for, on
my honour, you shall have a foretaste of hell for your trouble in this
matter.”
The Chevalier smiled with much restraint. “A woman's tongue,” said he,
“does no injury.”
“Will a woman's arm, think you?” demanded that warlike matron. “You
musk-stinking tipstaff, I'll--”
“Anne, my love,” implored the Vicomte soothingly, “I beg that you will
control yourself.”
“Shall I submit to the insolence of this misbegotten vassal? Shall I--”
“Remember rather that it does not become the dignity of your station to
address the fellow. We avoid venomous reptiles, but we do not pause to
reproach them with their venom. God made them so.”
Saint-Eustache coloured to the roots of his hair, then, turning hastily
to the driver, he bade him start. He would have closed the door with
that, but that madame thrust herself forward.
That was the Chevalier's chance to be avenged. “You cannot go,” said he.
“Cannot?” Her cheeks reddened. “Why not, monsieur Lesperon?
“I have no reasons to afford you,” he answered brutally. “You cannot
go.”
“Your pardon, Chevalier,” I interposed. “You go beyond your rights in
seeking to prevent her. Monsieur le Vicomte is not yet convicted. Do
not, I beseech you, transcend the already odious character of your
work.”
And without more ado I shouldered him aside, and held the door that she
might enter. She rewarded me with a smile--half vicious, half whimsical,
and mounted the step. Saint-Eustache would have interfered. He came
at me as if resenting that shoulder-thrust of mine, and for a second I
almost thought he would have committed the madness of striking me.
“Take care, Saint-Eustache,” I said very quietly, my eyes fixed on his.
And much as dead Caesar's ghost may have threatened Brutus with Philippi
“We meet at Toulouse, Chevalier,” said I, and closing the carriage door
I stepped back.
There was a flutter of skirts behind me. It was mademoiselle. So brave
and outwardly so calm until now, the moment of actual separation--and
added thereunto perhaps her mother's going and the loneliness that for
herself she foresaw--proved more than she could endure. I stepped aside,
and she swept past me and caught at the leather curtain of the coach.
“Father!” she sobbed.
There are some things that a man of breeding may not witness--some
things to look upon which is near akin to eavesdropping or reading the
letters of another. Such a scene did I now account the present one, and,
turning, I moved away. But Saint-Eustache cut it short, for scarce had
I taken three paces when his voice rang out the command to move. The
driver hesitated, for the girl was still hanging at the window. But a
second command, accompanied by a vigorous oath, overcame his hesitation.
He gathered up his reins, cracked his whip, and the lumbering wheels
began to move.
“Have a care, child!” I heard the Vicomte cry, “have a care! Adieu, mon
enfant!”
She sprang back, sobbing, and assuredly she would have fallen, thrown
out of balance by the movement of the coach, but that I put forth my
hands and caught her.
I do not think she knew whose were the arms that held her for that brief
space, so desolated was she by the grief so long repressed. At last she
realized that it was this worthless Bardelys against whom she rested;
this man who had wagered that he would win and wed her; this impostor
who had come to her under an assumed name; this knave who had lied to
her as no gentleman could have lied, swearing to love her, whilst, in
reality, he did no more than seek to win a wager. When all this she
realized, she shuddered a second, then moved abruptly from my grasp,
and, without so much as a glance at me, she left me, and, ascending the
steps of the chateau, she passed from my sight.
I gave the order to dismount as the last of Saint-Eustache's followers
vanished under the portcullis.