“You a Spaniard of Spain?” had been her taunt, dry and contemptuous. “I
do not believe it.”
And upon that she had put spur to the great black horse that bore her
and had ridden off along the precipitous road by the river.
After her he had flung his answer on a note of laughter, bitter and
cynical as the laughter of the damned, laughter that expressed all
things but mirth.
“Oh, a Spaniard of Spain, indeed, Madame la Marquise. Very much a
Spaniard of Spain, I assure you.”
The great black horse and the woman in red flashed round a bend of
the rocky road and were eclipsed by a clump of larches. The man leaned
heavily upon his ebony cane, sighed wearily, and grew thoughtful. Then,
with a laugh and a shrug, he sat down in the shade of the firs that
bordered the road. Behind him, crowning the heights, loomed the brown
castle built by Gaston Phoebus, Count of Foix, two hundred years ago,
and the Tower of Montauzet, its walls scarred by the shots of the
rebellious Biscayans. Below him, nourished by the snows that were
dissolving under the sunshine of early spring, sped the tumbling river;
beyond this spread pasture and arable land to the distant hills, and
beyond those stood the gigantic sharp-summited wall of the Pyrenees, its
long ridge dominated by the cloven cone of the snow clad Pic du Midi.
There was in the sight of that great barrier, at once natural and
political, a sense of security for this fugitive from the perils and
the hatreds that lurked in Spain beyond. Here in Bearn he was a king's
guest, enjoying the hospitality of the great Castle of Pau, safe from
the vindictive persecution of the mean tyrant who ruled in Spain. And
here, at last, he was at peace, or would have been but for the thought
of this woman--this Marquise de Chantenac--who had gone to such lengths
in her endeavours to soften his exile that her ultimate object could
never have been in doubt to a coxcomb, though it was in some doubt to
Antonio Perez, who had been cured for all time of Coxcombry by suffering
and misfortune, to say nothing of increasing age. It was when he
bethought him of that age of his that he was chiefly intrigued by the
amazing ardour of this great lady of Bearn. A dozen years ago--before
misfortune overtook him--he would have accepted her flagrant wooing as
a proper tribute. For then he had been the handsome, wealthy, witty,
profligate Secretary of State to His Catholic Majesty King Philip II,
with a power in Spain second only to the King's, and sometimes even
greater. In those days he would have welcomed her as her endowments
merited. She was radiantly lovely, in the very noontide of her
resplendent youth, the well-born widow of a gentleman of Bearn. And
it would not have lain within the strength or inclinations of Antonio
Perez, as he once had been, to have resisted the temptation that she
offered. Ever avid of pleasure, he had denied himself no single cup of
it that favouring Fortune had proffered him. It was, indeed, because
of this that he was fallen from his high estate; it was a woman who had
pulled him down in ruin, tumbling with him to her doom. She, poor soul,
was dead at last, which was the best that any lover could have wished
her. But he lived on, embittered, vengeful, with gall in his veins
instead of blood. He was the pale, faded shadow of that arrogant,
reckless, joyous Antonio Perez beloved of Fortune. He was fifty, gaunt,
hollow-eyed, and grey, half crippled by torture, sickly from long years
of incarceration.
What, he asked himself, sitting there, his eyes upon the eternal snows
of the barrier that shut out his past, was there left in him to
awaken love in such a woman as Madame de Chantenac? Was it that his
tribulations stirred her pity, or that the fame of him which rang
through Europe shed upon his withering frame some of the transfiguring
radiance of romance?
It marked, indeed, the change in him that he should pause to question,
whose erstwhile habit had been blindly to accept the good things tossed
by Fortune into his lap. But question he did, pondering that
parting taunt of hers to which, for emphasis, she had given an odd
redundancy--“You a Spaniard of Spain!” Could her meaning have been
plainer? Was not a Spaniard proverbially as quick to love as to
jealousy? Was not Spain, that scented land of warmth and colour, of
cruelty and blood, of throbbing lutes under lattices ajar, of mitred
sinners doing public penance, that land where lust and piety went hand
in hand, where passion and penitence lay down together--was not Spain
the land of love's most fruitful growth? And was not a Spaniard the very
hierophant of love?
His thoughts swung with sudden yearning to his wife Juana and their
children, held in brutal captivity by Philip, who sought to slake upon
them some of the vindictiveness from which their husband and father had
at last escaped. Not that Antonio Perez observed marital fidelity more
closely than any other Spaniard of his time, or of any time. But Antonio
Perez was growing old, older than he thought, older than his years. He
knew it. Madame de Chantenac had proved it to him.
She had reproached him with never coming to see her at Chantenac,
neglecting to return the too assiduous visits that she paid him here at
Pau.
“You are very beautiful, madame, and the world is very foul,” he had
excused himself. “Believe one who knows the world, to his bitter cost.
Tongues will wag.”
“And your Spanish pride will not suffer that clods may talk of you?”
“I am thinking of you, madame.”
“Of me?” she had answered. “Why, of me they talk already--talk their
fill. I must pretend blindness to the leering eyes that watch me each
time I come to Pau; feign unconsciousness of the impertinent glances of
the captain of the castle there as I ride in.”
“Then why do you come?” he had asked point-blank. But before her sudden
change of countenance he had been quick to add: “Oh, madame, I am
full conscious of the charity that brings you, and I am deeply, deeply
grateful; but--”
“Charity?” she had interrupted sharply, on a laugh that was
self-mocking. “Charity?”
“What else, madame?”
“Ask yourself,” she had answered, reddening and averting her face from
his questioning eyes.
“Madame,” he had faltered, “I dare not.”
“Dare not?”
“Madame, how should I? I am an old man, broken by sickness, disheartened
by misfortune, daunted by tribulation--a mere husk cast aside by
Fortune, whilst you are lovely as one of the angels about the Throne of
Heaven.”
She had looked into the haggard face, into the scars of suffering that
seared it, and she had answered gently: “Tomorrow you shall come to me
at Chantenac, my friend.”
“I am a Spaniard, for whom to-morrow never comes.”
“But it will this time. To-morrow I shall expect you.”
He looked up at her sitting her great black horse beside which he had
been pacing.
“Better not, madame! Better not!” he had said.
And then he saw the eyes that had been tender grow charged with scorn;
then came her angry taunt:
“You a Spaniard of Spain! I do not believe it!”
Oh, there was no doubt that he had angered her. Women of her temperament
are quick to anger as to every emotion. But he had not wished to anger
her. God knows it was never the way of Antonio Perez to anger lovely
women--at least not in this fashion. And it was an ill return for her
gentleness and attention to himself. Considering this as he sat there
now, he resolved that he must make amends--the only amends it was
possible to make.
An hour later, in one of the regal rooms of the castle, where he enjoyed
the hospitality of King Henri IV of France and Navarre, he announced
to that most faithful equerry, Gil de Mesa, his intention of riding to
Chantenac to-morrow.
“Is it prudent?” quoth Mesa, frowning.
“Most imprudent,” answered Don Antonio. “That is why I go.”
And on the morrow he went, escorted by a single groom. Gil de Mesa had
begged at first to be allowed to accompany him. But for Gil he had other
work, of which the instructions he left were very full. The distance was
short--three miles along the Gave de Pau--and Don Antonio covered it on
a gently ambling mule, such as might have been bred to bear some aged
dignitary of Holy Church.
The lords of Chantenac were as noble, as proud, and as poor as most
great lords of Bearn. Their lineage was long, their rent-rolls short.
And the last marquis had suffered more from this dual complaint than
any of his forbears, and he had not at all improved matters by a certain
habit of gaming contracted in youth. The chateau bore abundant signs of
it. It was a burnt red pile standing four-square on a little eminence,
about the base of which the river went winding turbulently; it was
turreted at each of its four angles, imposing in its way, but in a sad
state of dilapidation and disrepair.
The interior, when Don Antonio reached it, was rather better; the
furnishings, though sparse, were massive and imposing; the tapestries on
the walls, if old, were rich and choice. But everywhere the ill-assorted
marriage of pretentiousness and neediness was apparent. The floors of
hall and living-room were strewn with fresh-cut rushes, an obsolescent
custom which served here alike to save the heavy cost of carpets and to
lend the place an ancient baronial dignity. Whilst pretence was made of
keeping state, the servitors were all old, and insufficient in number
to warrant the retention of the infirm seneschal by whom Don Antonio was
ceremoniously received. A single groom, aged and without livery, took
charge at once of Don Antonio's mule, his servant's horse, and the
servant himself.
The seneschal, hobbling before him, conducted our Spaniard across the
great hall, gloomy and half denuded, through the main living-room of the
chateau into a smaller, more intimate apartment, holding some trace of
luxury, which he announced as madame's own room. And there he left him
to await the coming of the chatelaine.
She, at least, showed none of the outward disrepair of her surroundings.
She came to him sheathed in a gown of shimmering silk that was of the
golden brown of autumn tints, caught to her waist by a slender girdle of
hammered gold. Eyes of deepest blue pondered him questioningly, whilst
red lips smiled their welcome. “So you have come in spite of all?” she
greeted him. “Be very welcome to my poor house, Don Antonio.”
And regally she proffered her hand to his homage.
He took it, observing the shapely, pointed fingers, the delicately
curving nails. Reluctantly, almost, he admitted to himself how complete
was her beauty, how absolute her charm. He sighed--a sigh for that lost
youth of his, perhaps--as he bowed from his fine, lean height to press
cold lips of formal duty on that hand.
“Your will, madame, was stronger than my prudence,” said he.
“Prudence?” quoth she, and almost sneered. “Since when has Antonio Perez
stooped to prudence?”
“Since paying the bitter price of imprudence. You know my story?”
“A little. I know, for instance, that you murdered Escovedo--all the
world knows that. Is that the imprudence of which you speak? I have
heard it said that it was for love of a woman that you did it.”
“You have heard that, too?” he said. He had paled a little. “You have
heard a deal, Marquise. I wonder would it amuse you to hear more, to
hear from my own lips this story of mine which all Europe garbles? Would
it?”
There was a faint note of anxiety in his voice, a look faintly anxious
in his eyes.
She scanned him a moment gravely, almost inscrutably. “What purpose
can it serve?” she asked; and her tone was forbidding--almost a tone of
fear.
“It will explain,” he insisted.
“Explain what?”
“How it comes that I am not this moment prostrate at your feet; how it
happens that I am not on my knees to worship your heavenly beauty; how I
have contrived to remain insensible before a loveliness that in happier
times would have made me mad.”
“Vive Dieu!” she murmured, half ironical. “Perhaps that needs
explaining.”
“How it became necessary,” he pursued, never heeding the interruption,
“that yesterday you should proclaim your disbelief that I could be, as
you said, a Spaniard of Spain. How it happens that Antonio Perez has
become incapable of any emotion but hate. Will you hear the story--all
of it?”
He was leaning towards her, his white face held close to her own, a
smouldering fire in the dark, sunken eyes that now devoured her.
She shivered, and her own cheeks turned very pale. Her lips were faintly
twisted as if in an effort to smile.
“My friend--if you insist,” she consented.
“It is the purpose for which I came,” he announced.
For a long moment each looked into the other's eyes with a singular
intentness that nothing here would seem to warrant.
At length she spoke.
“Come,” she said, “you shall tell me.”
And she waved him to a chair set in the embrasure of the mullioned
window that looked out over a tract of meadowland sweeping gently down
to the river.
Don Antonio sank into the chair, placing his hat and whip upon the floor
beside him. The Marquise faced him, occupying the padded window-seat,
her back to the light, her countenance in shadow.
And here, in his own words, follows the story that he told her as she
herself set it down soon after. Whilst more elaborate and intimate
in parts, it yet so closely agrees throughout with his own famous
“Relacion,” that I do not hesitate to accept the assurance she has
left us that every word he uttered was burnt as if by an acid upon her
memory.