Bardelys the Magnificent - Rafael Sabatini (affordable ebook reader .txt) 📗
- Author: Rafael Sabatini
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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.
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 Lavedan
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
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