She laughed a little nervous laugh, and—maybe to ease the tension that my sudden silence had begotten—"You see," she said, "how your imagination deserts you when you seek to draw upon it for proof of what you protest. You were about to tell me of—of the interests that hold you at Lavédan, and when you come to ponder them, you find that you can think of nothing. Is it—is it not so?" She put the question very timidly, as if half afraid of the answer she might provoke.
"No; it is not so," I said.
I paused a moment, and in that moment I wrestled with myself. Confession and avowal—confession of what I had undertaken, and avowal of the love that had so unexpectedly come to me—trembled upon my lips, to be driven shuddering away in fear.
Have I not said that this Bardelys was become a coward? Then my cowardice suggested a course to me—flight. I would leave Lavédan. I would return to Paris and to Chatellerault, owning defeat and paying my wager. It was the only course open to me. My honour, so tardily aroused, demanded no less. Yet, not so much because of that as because it was suddenly revealed to me as the easier course, did I determine to pursue it. What thereafter might become of me I did not know, nor in that hour of my heart's agony did it seem to matter overmuch.
"There is much, mademoiselle, much, indeed, to hold me firmly at Lavédan," I pursued at last. "But my—my obligations demand of me that I depart."
"You mean the Cause," she cried. "But, believe me, you can do nothing. To sacrifice yourself cannot profit it. Infinitely better you can serve the Duke by waiting until the time is ripe for another blow. And how can you better preserve your life than by remaining at Lavédan until the persecutions are at an end?"
"I was not thinking of the Cause, mademoiselle, but of myself alone—of my own personal honour. I would that I could explain; but I am afraid," I ended lamely.
"Afraid?" she echoed, now raising her eyes in wonder.
"Aye, afraid. Afraid of your contempt, of your scorn."
The wonder in her glance increased and asked a question that I could not answer. I stretched forward, and caught one of the hands lying idle in her lap.
"Roxalanne," I murmured very gently, and my tone, my touch, and the use of her name drove her eyes for refuge behind their lids again. A flush spread upon the ivory pallor of her face, to fade as swiftly, leaving it very white. Her bosom rose and fell in agitation, and the little hand I held trembled in my grasp. There was a moment's silence. Not that I had need to think or choose my words. But there was a lump in my throat—aye, I take no shame in confessing it, for this was the first time that a good and true emotion had been vouchsafed me since the Duchesse de Bourgogne had shattered my illusions ten years ago.
"Roxalanne," I resumed presently, when I was more master of myself, "we have been good friends, you and I, since that night when I climbed for shelter to your chamber, have we not?"
"But yes, monsieur," she faltered.
"Ten days ago it is. Think of it—no more than ten days. And it seems as if I had been months at Lavédan, so well have we become acquainted. In these ten days we have formed opinions of each other. But with this difference, that whilst mine are right, yours are wrong. I have come to know you for the sweetest, gentlest saint in all this world. Would to God I had known you earlier! It might have been very different; I might have been—I would have been—different, and I would not have done what I have done. You have come to know me for an unfortunate but honest gentleman. Such am I not. I am under false colours here, mademoiselle. Unfortunate I may be—at least, of late I seem to have become so. Honest I am not—I have not been. There, child, I can tell you no more. I am too great a coward. But when later you shall come to hear the truth—when, after I am gone, they may tell you a strange story touching this fellow Lesperon who sought the hospitality of your father's house—bethink you of my restraint in this hour; bethink you of my departure. You will understand these things perhaps afterwards. But bethink you of them, and you will unriddle them for yourself, perhaps. Be merciful upon me then; judge me not over-harshly."
I paused, and for a moment we were silent. Then suddenly she looked up; her fingers tightened upon mine.
"Monsieur de Lesperon," she pleaded, "of what do you speak? You are torturing me, monsieur."
"Look in my face, Roxalanne. Can you see nothing there of how I am torturing myself?"
"Then tell me, monsieur," she begged, her voice a very caress of suppliant softness,—"tell me what vexes you and sets a curb upon your tongue. You exaggerate, I am assured. You could do nothing dishonourable, nothing vile."
"Child," I cried, "I thank God, that you are right! I cannot do what is dishonourable, and I will not, for all that a month ago I pledged myself to do it!"
A sudden horror, a doubt, a suspicion flashed into her glance.
"You—you do not mean that you are a spy?" she asked; and from my heart a prayer of thanks went up to Heaven that this at least it was mine frankly to deny.
"No, no—not that. I am no spy."
Her face cleared again, and she sighed.
"It is, I think, the only thing I could not forgive. Since it is not that, will you not tell me what it is?"
For a moment the temptation to confess, to tell her everything, was again upon me. But the futility of it appalled me.
"Don't ask me," I besought her; "you will learn it soon enough." For I was confident that once my wager was paid, the news of it and of the ruin of Bardelys would spread across the face of France like a ripple over water. Presently—
"Forgive me for having come into your life, Roxalanne!" I implored her, and then I sighed again. "Hélas! Had I but known you earlier! I did not dream such women lived in this worn-out France."
"I will not pry, monsieur, since your resolve appears to be so firm. But if—if after I have heard this thing you speak of," she said presently, speaking with averted eyes, "and if, having heard it, I judge you more mercifully than you judge yourself, and I send for you, will you—will you come back to Lavédan?"
My heart gave a great bound—a great, a sudden throb of hope. But as sudden and as great was the rebound into despair.
"You will not send for me, be assured of that," I said with finality; and we spoke no more.
I took the oars and plied them vigorously. I was in haste to end the situation. Tomorrow I must think of my departure, and, as I rowed, I pondered the words that had passed between us. Not one word of love had there been, and yet, in the very omission of it, avowal had lain on either side. A strange wooing had been mine—a wooing that precluded the possibility of winning, and yet a wooing that had won. Aye, it had won; but it might not take. I made fine distinctions and quaint paradoxes as I tugged at my oars, for the human mind is a curiously complex thing, and with some of us there is no such spur to humour as the sting of pain.
Roxalanne sat white and very thoughtful, but with veiled eyes, so that I might guess nothing of what passed within her mind.
At last we reached the château, and as I brought the boat to the terrace steps, it was Saint-Eustache who came forward to offer his wrist to Mademoiselle. He noted the pallor of her face, and darted me a quick, suspicion-laden glance. As we were walking towards the château—
"Monsieur de Lesperon," said he in a curious tone, "do you know that a rumour of your death is current in the province?"
"I had hoped that such a rumour might get abroad when I disappeared," I answered calmly.
"And you have taken no single step to contradict it?"
"Why should I, since in that rumour may be said to lie my safety?"
"Nevertheless, monsieur, voyons. Surely you might at least relieve the anxieties—the affliction, I might almost say—of those who are mourning you."
"Ah!" said I. "And who may these be?"
He shrugged his shoulders and pursed his lips in a curiously deprecatory smile. With a sidelong glance at Mademoiselle—
"Do you need that I name Mademoiselle de Marsac?" he sneered.
I stood still, my wits busily wo
rking, my face impassive under his scrutinizing glance. In a flash it came to me that this must be the writer of some of the letters Lesperon had given me, the original of the miniature I carried.
As I was silent, I grew suddenly conscious of another pair of eyes observing me—Mademoiselle's. She remembered what I had said, she may have remembered how I had cried out the wish that I had met her earlier, and she may not have been slow to find an interpretation for my words. I could have groaned in my rage at such a misinterpretation. I could have taken the Chevalier round to the other side of the château and killed him with the greatest relish in the world. But I restrained myself, I resigned myself to be misunderstood. What choice had I?
"Monsieur de Saint-Eustache," said I very coldly, and looking him straight between his close-set eyes, "I have permitted you many liberties, but there is one that I cannot permit any one—and, much as I honour you, I can make no exception in your favour. That is to interfere in my concerns and presume to dictate to me the manner in which I shall conduct them. Be good enough to bear that in your memory."
In a moment he was all servility. The sneer passed out of his face, the arrogance out of his demeanour. He became as full of smiles and capers as the meanest sycophant.
"You will forgive me, monsieur!" he cried, spreading his hands, and with the humblest smile in the world. "I perceive that I have taken a great liberty; yet you have misunderstood its purport. I sought to sound you touching the wisdom of a step upon which I have ventured."
"That is, monsieur?" I asked, throwing back my head, with the scent of danger breast high.
"I took it upon myself today to mention the fact that you are alive and well to one who had a right, I thought, to know of it, and who is coming hither tomorrow."
"That was a presumption you may regret," said I between my teeth. "To whom do you impart this information?"
"To your friend, Monsieur de Marsac," he answered, and through his mask of humility the sneer was again growing apparent. "He will be here tomorrow," he repeated.
Marsac was that friend of Lesperon's to whose warm commendation of the Gascon rebel I owed the courtesy and kindness that the Vicomte de Lavédan had meted out to me since my coming.
Is it wonderful that I stood as if frozen, my wits refusing to work and my countenance wearing, I doubt not, a very stricken look? Here was one coming to Lavédan who knew Lesperon—one who would unmask me and say that I was an impostor. What would happen then? A spy they would of a certainty account me, and that they would make short work of me I never doubted. But that was something that troubled me less than the opinion Mademoiselle must form. How would she interpret what I had said that day? In what light would she view me hereafter?
Such questions sped like swift arrows through my mind, and in their train came a dull anger with myself that I had not told her everything that afternoon. It was too late now. The confession would come no longer of my own free will, as it might have done an hour ago, but would be forced from me by the circumstances that impended. Thus it would no longer have any virtue to recommend it to her mercy.
"The news seems hardly welcome, Monsieur de Lesperon," said Roxalanne in a voice that was inscrutable. Her tone stirred me, for it betokened suspicion already. Something might yet chance to aid me, and in the mean while I might spoil all did I yield to this dread of the morrow. By an effort I mastered myself, and in tones calm and level, that betrayed nothing of the tempest in my soul—
"It is not welcome, mademoiselle," I answered. "I have excellent reasons for not desiring to meet Monsieur de Marsac."
"Excellent, indeed, are they!" lisped Saint-Eustache, with an ugly droop at the corners of his mouth. "I doubt not you'll find it hard to offer a plausible reason for having left him and his sister without news that you were alive."
"Monsieur," said I at random, "why will you drag in his sister's name?"
"Why?" he echoed, and he eyed me with undisguised amusement. He was standing erect, his head thrown back, his right arm outstretched from the shoulder, and his hand resting lightly upon the gold mount of his beribboned cane. He let his eyes wander from me to Roxalanne, then back again to me. At last: "Is it wonderful that I should drag in the name of your betrothed?" said he. "But perhaps you will deny that Mademoiselle de Marsac is that to you?" he suggested.
And I, forgetting for the moment the part I played and the man whose identity I had put on, made answer hotly: "I do deny it."
"Why, then, you lie," said he, and shrugged his shoulders with insolent contempt.
In all my life I do not think it could be said of me that I had ever given way to rage. Rude, untutored minds may fall a prey to passion, but a gentleman, I hold, is never angry. Nor was I then, so far as the outward signs of anger count. I doffed my hat with a sweep to Roxalanne, who stood by with fear and wonder blending in her glance.
"Mademoiselle, you will forgive that I find it necessary to birch this babbling schoolboy in your presence."
Then, with the pleasantest manner in the world, I stepped aside, and plucked the cane from the Chevalier's hand before he had so much as guessed what I was about. I bowed before him with the utmost politeness, as if craving his leave and tolerance for what I was about to do, and then, before he had recovered from his astonishment, I had laid that cane three times in quick succession across his shoulders. With a cry at once of pain and of mortification, he sprang back, and his hand dropped to his hilt.
"Monsieur," Roxalanne cried to him, "do you not see that he is unarmed?"
But he saw nothing, or, if he saw, thanked Heaven that things were in such case, and got his sword out. Thereupon Roxalanne would have stepped between us, but with arm outstretched I restrained her.
"Have no fear, mademoiselle," said I very quietly; for if the wrist that had overcome La Vertoile were not, with a stick, a match for a couple of such swords as this coxcomb's, then was I forever shamed.
He bore down upon me furiously, his point coming straight for my throat. I took the blade on the cane; then, as he disengaged and came at me lower, I made counter-parry, and pursuing the circle after I had caught his steel, I carried it out of his hand. It whirled an instant, a shimmering wheel of light, then it clattered against the marble balustrade half a dozen yards away. With his sword it seemed that his courage, too, departed, and he stood at my mercy, a curious picture of foolishness, surprise, and fear.
Now the Chevalier de Saint-Eustache was a young man, and in the young we can forgive much. But to forgive such an act as he had been guilty of—that of drawing his sword upon a man who carried no weapons—would have been not only a ridiculous toleration, but an utter neglect of duty. As an older man it behoved me to read the Chevalier a lesson in manners and gentlemanly feeling. So, quite dispassionately, and purely for his own future good, I went about the task, and administered him a thrashing that for thoroughness it would be hard to better. I was not discriminating. I brought my cane down with a rhythmical precision, and whether it took him on the head, the back, or the shoulders, I held to be more his affair than mine. I had a moral to inculcate, and the injuries he might receive in the course of it were inconsiderable details so that the lesson was borne in upon his soul. Two or three times he sought to close with me, but I eluded him; I had no mind to descend to a vulgar exchange of blows. My object was not to brawl, but to administer chastisement, and this object I may claim to have accomplished with a fair degree of success.
At last Roxalanne interfered; but only when one blow a little more violent, perhaps, than its precursors resulted in the sudden snapping of the cane and Monsieur de Eustache's utter collapse into a moaning heap.
"I deplore, mademoiselle, to have offended your sight with such a spectacle, but unless these lessons are administered upon the instant their effect is not half so salutary."
"He deserved it, monsieur," said she, with a note almost of fierceness in her voice. And of such poor mettle are we that her resentment against that groaning mass of fopperies and wheals sent a thrill of pleasure t
hrough me. I walked over to the spot where his sword had fallen, and picked it up.
"Monsieur de Saint-Eustache," said I, "you have so dishonoured this blade that I do not think you would care to wear it again." Saying which, I snapped it across my knee, and flung it far out into the river, for all that the hilt was a costly one, richly wrought in bronze and gold.
He raised his livid countenance, and his eyes blazed impotent fury.
"Par la mort Dieu!" he cried hoarsely, "you shall give me satisfaction for this!"
"If you account yourself still unsatisfied, I am at your service when you will," said I courteously.
Then, before more could be said, I saw Monsieur de Lavédan and the Vicomtesse approaching hurriedly across the parterre. The Vicomte's brow was black with what might have appeared anger, but which I rightly construed into apprehension.
"What has taken place? What have you done?" he asked of me.
"He has brutally assaulted the Chevalier," cried Madame shrilly, her eyes malevolently set upon me. "He is only a child, this poor Saint-Eustache," she reproached me. "I saw it all from my window, Monsieur de Lesperon. It was brutal; it was cowardly. So to beat a boy! Shame! If you had a quarrel with him, are there not prescribed methods for their adjustment between gentlemen? Pardieu, could you not have given him proper satisfaction?"
"If madame will give herself the trouble of attentively examining this poor Saint-Eustache," said I, with a sarcasm which her virulence prompted, "you will agree, I think, that I have given him very proper and very thorough satisfaction. I would have met him sword in hand, but the Chevalier has the fault of the very young—he is precipitate; he was in too great a haste, and he could not wait until I got a sword. So I was forced to do what I could with a cane."