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.
"Hélas, 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 Lavédan, 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 Lavédan, 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—Hélas! 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?"
"Tomorrow," was that infernal cheat's laconic answer.
They were silent a l
ittle 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 tomorrow, and tonight 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.
CHAPTER XV
MONSIEUR DE CHATELLERAULT IS ANGRY
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 Lavédan."
"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 Lavédan," 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. Today 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 Lavédan 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 waive 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 Lavédan 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 Lavédan 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."