Rafael Sabatini - Bardelys the Magnificent

"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 Lavedan, 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 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.