"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 Lavédan, 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 Lavédan 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 Lavédan must be thinking of me. I repented me then of my rashness in coming to Lavédan 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 Lavédan?"
"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 catch-poll, 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 l'espion?"
"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 Cæsar'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 château, she passed from my sight.
I gave the order to dismount as the last of Saint-Eustache's followers vanished under the portcullis.
CHAPTER XIX
THE FLINT AND THE STEEL
MADEMOISELLE will see you, monsieur," said Anatole at last.
Twice already had he carried unavailingly my request that Roxalanne should accord me an interview ere I departed. On this the third occasion I had bidden him say that I would not stir from Lavédan until she had done me the honour of hearing me. Seemingly that threat had prevailed where entreaties had been scorned.
I followed Anatole from the half-light of the hall in which I had been pacing into the salon overlooking the terraces and the river, where Roxalanne awaited me. She was standing at the farther end of the room by one of the long windows, which was open, for, although we were already in the first week of October, the air of Languedoc was as warm and balmy as that of Paris or Picardy is in summer.
I advanced to the centre of the chamber, and there I paused and waited until it should please her to acknowledge my presence and turn to face me. I was no fledgling. I had seen much, I had learnt much and been in many places, and my bearing was wont to convey it. Never in my life had I been gauche, for which I thank my parents, and if years ago—long years ago—a certain timidity had marked my first introductions to the Louvre and the Luxembourg, that timidity was something from which I had long since parted company. And yet it seemed to me, as I stood in that pretty, sunlit room awaiting the pleasure of that child, scarce out of her teens, that some of the awkwardness I had escaped in earlier years, some of the timidity of long ago, came to me then. I shifted the weight of my body from one leg to the other; I fingered the table by which I stood; I pulled at the hat I held; my colour came and went; I looked at her furtively from under bent brows, and I thanked God that her back being towards me she might not see the clown I must have seemed.
At length, unable longer to brook that discomposing silence—
"Mademoiselle!" I called softly. The sound of my own voice seemed to invigorate me, to strip me of my awkwardness and self-consciousness. It broke the spell that for a moment had been over me, and brought me back to myself—to the vain, self-confident, flamboyant Bardelys that perhaps you have pictured from my writings.
"I hope, monsieur," she answered, without turning, "that what you may have to say may justify in some measure your very importunate insistence."
On my life, this was not encouraging. But now that I was master of myself, I was not again so easily to be disconcerted. My eyes rested upon her as she stood almost framed in the opening of that long window. How straight and supple she was, yet how dainty and slight withal! She was far from being a tall woman, but her clean length of limb, her very slightness, and the high-bred poise of her shapely head, conveyed an illusion of height unless you stood beside her. The illusion did not sway me then. I saw only a child; but a child with a great spirit, with a great soul that seemed to accentuate her physical helplessness. That helplessness, which I felt rather than saw, wove into the warp of my love. She was in grief just then—in grief at the arrest of her father, and at the dark fate that threatened him; in grief at the unworthiness of a lover. Of the two which might be the more bitter it was not mine to judge, but I burned to gather her to me, to comfort and cherish her, to make her one with me, and thus, whilst giving her something of my man's height and strength, cull from her something of that pure, noble spirit, and thus sanctify my own.
I had a moment's weakness when she spoke. I was within an ace of advancing and casting myself upon my knees like any Lenten penitent, to sue forgiveness. But I set the inclination down betimes. Such expedients would not avail me here.
"What I have to say, mademoiselle," I answered after a pause, "would justify a saint descending into hell; or, rather, to make my metaphor more apt, would warrant a sinner's intrusion into heaven."
I spoke solemnly, yet not too solemnly; the least slur of a sardonic humour was in my tones.
She moved her head upon the white column of her neck, and with the gesture one of her brown curls became disordered. I could fancy the upward tilt of her delicate nose, the scornful curve of her lip as she answered shortly—
"Then say it quickly, monsieur."
And, being thus bidden, I said quickly—
"I love you, Roxalanne."
Her heel beat the shimmering parquet of the floor; she half turned towards me, her cheek flushed, her lip tremulous with anger.
"Will you say what you have to say, monsieur?" she demanded in a concentrated voice, "and having said it, will you go?"
"Mademoiselle, I have already said it," I answered, with a wistful smile.
"Oh!" she gasped. Then suddenly facing round upon me, a world of anger in her blue eyes—eyes that I had known dreamy, but which were now very wide awake. "Was it to offer me this last insult you forced your presence upon me? Was it to mock me with those words, me—a woman, with no man about me to punish you? Shame, sir! Yet it is no more than I might look for in you."
"Mademoiselle, you do me grievous wrong—" I began.
"I do you no wrong," she answered hotly, then stopped, unwilling haply to be drawn into contention with me. "Enfin, since you have said what you came to say—will you go?" And she pointed to the door.
"Mademoiselle, mademoiselle—" I began in a voice of earnest intercession.
"Go!" she interrupted angrily, and for a second the violence of her voice and gesture almost reminded me of the Vicomtesse. "I will hear no more from you."
"Mademoiselle, you shall," I answered no whit less firmly.
"I will not listen to you. Talk if you will. You shall have the walls for audience." And she moved towards the door, but I barred her passage. I was courteous to the last degree; I bowed low before her as I put myself in her way.
"It is all that was wanting—that you should offer me violence!" she exclaimed.
"God forbid!" said I.
"Then let me pass."
"Aye, when you have heard me."
"I do not wish to hear you. Nothing that you may say can matter to me. Oh, monsieur, if you have any instincts of gentility, if you have any pretension to be accounted anything but a mauvais sujet, I beg of you to respect my grief. You witnessed, yourself, the arrest of my father. This is no season for such a scene as you are creating."
"Pardon! It is in such a season as this that you need the comfort and support that the man you love alone can give you."
"The man I love?" she echoed, and from flushed that they had been, her cheeks went very pale. Her eyes fell for an instant, then they were raised again, and their blue depths were offered me. "I think, sir," she said, through her teeth, "that your insolence transcends all belief."
"Can you deny it?" I cried. "Can you deny that you love me? If you can—why, then, you lied to me three nights ago at Toulouse!"
That smote her hard—so hard that she forgot her assurance that she would not listen to me—her promise to herself that she would stoop to no contention with me.
"If, in a momentary weakness, in my nescience of you as you truly are, I did make some such admission, I did entertain such feelings for you, things have come to my knowledge since then, monsieur, that have revealed you to me as another man; I have learnt something that has utterly withered such love as I then confessed. Now, monsieur, are you satisfied, and will you let me pass?" She said the last words with a return of her imperiousness, already angry at having been drawn so far.
"I am satisfied, mademoiselle," I answered brutally, "that you did not speak the truth three nights ago. You never loved me. It was pity that deluded you, shame that urged you—shame at the Delilah part you had played and at your betrayal of me. Now, mademoiselle, you may p
ass," said I.
And I stood aside, assured that as she was a woman she would not pass me now. Nor did she. She recoiled a step instead. Her lip quivered. Then she recovered quickly. Her mother might have told her that she was a fool for engaging herself in such a duel with me—me, the veteran of a hundred amorous combats. Yet though I doubt not it was her first assault-at-arms of this description, she was more than a match for me, as her next words proved.
"Monsieur, I thank you for enlightening me. I cannot, indeed, have spoken the truth three nights ago. You are right, I do not doubt it now, and you lift from me a load of shame."
Dieu! It was like a thrust in the high lines, and its hurtful violence staggered me. I was finished, it seemed. The victory was hers, and she but a child with no practice of Cupid's art of fence!
"Now, monsieur," she added, "now that you are satisfied that you did wrong to say I loved you, now that we have disposed of that question—adieu!"
"A moment yet!" I cried. "We have disposed of that, but there was another point, an earlier one, which for the moment we have disregarded. We have—you have—disproved the love I was so presumptuous as to believe you fostered for me. We have yet to reckon with the love I bear you, mademoiselle, and of that we shall not be able to dispose so readily."
With a gesture of weariness or of impatience, she turned aside. "What is it you want? What do you seek to gain by thus provoking me? To win your wager?" Her voice was cold. Who to have looked upon that childlike face, upon those meek, pondering eyes, could have believed her capable of so much cruelty?
"There can no longer be any question of my wager; I have lost and paid it," said I.
She looked up suddenly. Her brows met in a frown of bewilderment. Clearly this interested her. Again was she drawn.
"How?" she asked. "You have lost and paid it?"
"Even so. That odious, cursed, infamous wager was the something which I hinted at so often as standing between you and me. The confession that so often I was on the point of making—that so often you urged me to make—concerned that wager. Would to God, Roxalanne, that I had told you!" I cried, and it seemed to me that the sincerity ringing in my voice drove some of the harshness from her countenance, some of the coldness from her glance.