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

Bardelys. I was

a man of careless ways, satiated with all the splendours life could

give me, nauseated by all its luxuries. Was it wonderful that I

allowed myself to be lured into this affair? It promised some

excitement, a certain novelty, difficulties in a path that I had -

alas! - ever found all too smooth - for Chatellerault had made your

reputed coldness the chief bolster of his opinion that I should not

win.

 

“Again, I was not given to over-nice scruples. I make no secret of

my infirmities, but do not blame me too much. If you could see the

fine demoiselles we have in Paris, if you could listen to their

tenets and take a deep look into their lives, you would not marvel

at me. I had never known any but these. On the night of my coming

to Lavedan, your sweetness, your pure innocence, your almost childish

virtue, dazed me by their novelty. From that first moment I became

your slave. Then I was in your garden day by day. And here, in

this old Languedoc garden with you and your roses, during the

languorous days of my convalescence, is it wonderful that some of

the purity, some of the sweetness that was of you and of your roses,

should have crept into my heart and cleansed it a little? Ah,

mademoiselle!” I cried - and, coming close to her, I would have

bent my knee in intercession but that she restrained me.

 

“Monsieur,” she interrupted, “we harass ourselves in vain. This can

have but one ending.”

 

Her tones were cold, but the coldness I knew was forced - else had

she not said “we harass ourselves.” Instead of quelling my ardour,

it gave it fuel.

 

“True, mademoiselle,” I cried, almost exultantly. “It can end but

one way!”

 

She caught my meaning, and her frown deepened. I went too fast, it

seemed.

 

“It had better end now, monsieur. There is too much between us.

You wagered to win me to wife.” She shuddered. “I could never

forget it.”

 

“Mademoiselle,” I denied stoutly, “I did not.”

 

“How?” She caught her breath. “You did not?”

 

“No,” I pursued boldly. “I did not wager to win you. I wagered

to win a certain Mademoiselle de Lavedan, who was unknown to me -

but not you, not you.”

 

She smiled, with never so slight a touch of scorn.

 

“Your distinctions are very fine - too fine for me, monsieur.”

 

“I implore you to be reasonable. Think reasonably.”

 

“Am I not reasonable? Do I not think? But there is so much to

think of!” she sighed. “You carried your deception so far. You

came here, for instance, as Monsieur de Lesperon. Why that

duplicity?”

 

“Again, mademoiselle, I did not,” said I.

 

She glanced at me with pathetic disdain.

 

“Indeed, indeed, monsieur, you deny things very bravely.”

 

“Did I tell you that my name was Lesperon?” Did I present myself

to monsieur your father as Lesperon?”

 

“Surely - yes.”

 

“Surely no; a thousand times no. I was the victim of circumstances

in that, and if I turned them to my own account after they had been

forced upon me, shall I be blamed and accounted a cheat? Whilst I

was unconscious, your father, seeking for a clue to my identity,

made an inspection of my clothes.

 

“In the pocket of my doublet they found some papers addressed to

Rene de Lesperon - some love letters, a communication from the Duc

d’Orleans, and a woman’s portrait. From all of this it was assumed

that I was that Lesperon. Upon my return to consciousness your

father greeted me effusively, whereat I wondered; he passed on to

discuss - nay, to tell me of - the state of the province and of his

own connection with the rebels, until I lay gasping at his egregious

temerity. Then, when he greeted me as Monsieur de Lesperon, I had

the explanation of it, but too late. Could I deny the identity then?

Could I tell him that I was Bardelys, the favourite of the King

himself? What would have occurred? I ask you, mademoiselle. Would

I not have been accounted a spy, and would they not have made short

work of me here at your chateau?”

 

“No, no; they would have done no murder.”

 

“Perhaps not, but I could not be sure just then. Most men situated

as your father was would have despatched me. Ah, mademoiselle, have

you not proofs enough? Do you not believe me now?”

 

“Yes, monsieur,” she answered simply, “I believe you.”

 

“Will you not believe, then, in the sincerity of my love?”

 

She made no rely. Her face was averted, but from her silence I took

heart. I drew close to her. I set my hand upon the tall back of

her chair, and, leaning towards her, I spoke with passionate heat

as must have melted, I thought, any woman who had not a loathing

for me.

 

“Mademoiselle; I am a poor man now,” I ended. “I am no longer that

magnificent gentleman whose wealth and splendour were a byword. Yet

am I no needy adventurer. I have a little property at Beaugency -

a very spot for happiness, mademoiselle. Paris shall know me no

more. At Beaugency I shall live at peace, in seclusion, and, so

that you come with me, in such joy as in all my life I have done

nothing to deserve. I have no longer an army of retainers. A couple

of men and a maid or two shall constitute our household. Yet I shall

account my wealth well lost if for love’s sake you’ll share with me

the peace of my obscurity. I am poor, mademoiselle yet no poorer

even now than that Gascon gentleman, Rene de Lesperon, for whom you

held me, and on whom you bestowed the priceless treasure of your

heart.”

 

“Oh, might it have pleased God that you had remained that poor

Gascon gentleman!” she cried.

 

“In what am I different, Roxalanne?”

 

“In that he had laid no wager,” she answered, rising suddenly.

 

My hopes were withering. She was not angry. She was pale, and her

gentle face was troubled - dear God! how sorely troubled! To me

it almost seemed that I had lost.

 

She flashed me a glance of her blue eyes, and I thought that tears

impended.

 

“Roxalanne!” I supplicated.

 

But she recovered the control that for a moment she had appeared

upon the verge of losing. She put forth her hand.

 

“Adieu, monsieur!” said she.

 

I glanced from her hand to her face. Her attitude began to anger me,

for I saw that she was not only resisting me, but resisting herself.

In her heart the insidious canker of doubt persisted. She knew - or

should have known - that it no longer should have any place there,

yet obstinately she refrained from plucking it out. There was that

wager. But for that same obstinacy she must have realized the reason

of my arguments, the irrefutable logic of my payment. She denied me,

and in denying me she denied herself, for that she had loved me she

had herself told me, and that she could love me again I was assured,

if she would but see the thing in the light of reason and of justice.

 

“Roxalanne, I did not come to Lavedan to say ‘Good-bye’ to you. I

seek from you a welcome, not a dismissal.”

 

“Yet my dismissal is all that I can give. Will you not take my hand?

May we not part in friendly spirit?”

 

“No, we may not; for we do not part at all.”

 

It was as the steel of my determination striking upon the flint of

hers. She looked up to my face for an instant; she raised her

eyebrows in deprecation; she sighed, shrugged one shoulder, and,

turning on her heel, moved towards the door.

 

“Anatole shall bring you refreshment ere you go,” she said in a very

polite and formal voice.

 

Then I played my last card. Was it for nothing that I had flung

away my wealth? If she would not give herself, by God, I would

compel her to sell herself. And I took no shame in doing it, for by

doing it I was saving her and saving myself from a life of

unhappiness.

 

“Roxalanne!” I cried. The imperiousness of my voice arrested and

compelled her perhaps against her very will.

 

“Monsieur?” said she, as demurely as you please.

 

“Do you know what you are doing?”.

 

“But yes - perfectly.”

 

“Pardieu, you do not. I will tell you. You are sending your father

to the scaffold.”

 

She turned livid, her step faltered, and she leant against the frame

of the doorway for support. Then she stared at me, wide-eyed in

horror.

 

“That is not true,” she pleaded, yet without conviction. “He is not

in danger of his life. They can prove nothing against him. Monsieur

de Saint-Eustache could find no evidence here - nothing.”

 

“Yet there is Monsieur de Saint-Eustache’s word; there is the fact

—the significant fact - that your father did not take up arms for

the King, to afford the Chevalier’s accusation some measure of

corroboration. At Toulouse in these times they are not particular.

Remember how it had fared with me but for the King’s timely arrival.”

 

That smote home. The last shred of her strength fell from her. A

great sob shook her, then covering her face with her hands “Mother

in heaven, have pity on me!” she cried. “Oh, it cannot be, it cannot

be!”

 

Her distress touched me sorely. I would have consoled her, I would

have bidden her have no fear, assuring her that I would save her

father. But for my own ends, I curbed the mood. I would use this

as a cudgel to shatter her obstinacy, and I prayed that God might

forgive me if I did aught that a gentleman should account unworthy.

My need was urgent, my love all-engrossing; winning her meant

winning life and happiness, and already I had sacrificed so much.

Her cry rang still in my ears, “It cannot be, it cannot be!”

 

I trampled my nascent tenderness underfoot, and in its room I set a

harshness that I did not feel - a harshness of defiance and menace.

 

“It can be, it will be, and, as God lives, it shall be, if you

persist in your unreasonable attitude.”

 

“Monsieur, have mercy!”

 

“Yes, when you shall be pleased to show me the way to it by having

mercy upon me. If I have sinned, I have atoned. But that is a

closed question now; to reopen it were futile. Take heed of this,

Roxalanne: there is one thing - one only in all France can save

your father.”

 

“That is, monsieur?” she inquired breathlessly.

 

“My word against that of Saint-Eustache. My indication to His

Majesty that your father’s treason is not to be accepted on the

accusation of Saint-Eustache. My information to the King of what

I know touching this gentleman.”

 

“You will go, monsieur?” she implored me. “Oh, you will save him!

Mon Dieu, to think of the time that we have wasted here, you and I,

whilst he is being carried to the scaffold! Oh, I did not dream it

was so perilous with him! I was desolated by his arrest; I thought

of some months’ imprisonment, perhaps. But that he should die - !

Monsieur de Bardelys, you will save him! Say that you will do this

for me!”

 

She was on her knees to me now, her arms clasping my boots, her

eyes raised in