He made no difficulty. Two hours were of no account. We had all risen very early, and he was, himself, he said, entitled to some rest.
Whilst I stood by the window it came to pass than a very tall, indifferently apparelled gentleman issued from the hostelry and halted for some moments in conversation with the ostler below. He walked with an enfeebled step, and leaned heavily for support upon a stout cane. As he turned to reenter the inn I had a glimpse of a face woefully pale, about which, as about the man’s whole figure, there was a something that was familiar – a something that puzzled me, and on which my mind was still dwelling when presently I sat down to breakfast with Castelroux.
It may have been a half-hour later, and, our meal being at an end, we were sitting talking – I growing impatient the while that this Monsieur de Marsac should keep me waiting so – when of a sudden the rattle of hoofs drew me once more to the window. A gentleman, riding very recklessly, had just dashed through the porte-cochere, and was in the act of pulling up his horse. He was a lean, active man, very richly dressed, and with a face that by its swarthiness of skin and the sable hue of beard and hair looked almost black.
“Ah, you are there!” he cried, with something between a snarl and a laugh, and addressing somebody within the shelter of the porch. “Par la mort Dieu, I had hardly looked to find you!”
From the recess of the doorway I heard a gasp of amazement and a cry of “Marsac! You here?”
So this was the gentleman I was to see! A stable boy had taken his reins, and he leapt nimbly to the ground. Into my range of vision hobbled now the enfeebled gentleman whom earlier I had noticed.
“My dear Stanislas!” he cried, “I cannot tell you how rejoiced I am to see you!” and he approached Marsac with arms that were opened as if to embrace him.
The newcomer surveyed him a moment in wonder, with eyes grown dull. Then abruptly raising his hand, he struck the fellow on the breast, and thrust him back so violently that but for the stable-boy’s intervention he had of a certainty fallen. With a look of startled amazement on his haggard face, the invalid regarded his assailant.
As for Marsac, he stepped close up to him.
“What is this?” he cried harshly. “What is this make-believe feebleness? That you are pale, poltroon, I do not wonder! But why these tottering limbs? Why this assumption of weakness? Do you look to trick me by these signs?”
“Have you taken leave of your senses?” exclaimed the other, a note of responsive anger sounding in his voice. “Have you gone mad, Stanislas?”
“Abandon this pretence,” was the contemptuous answer. “Two days ago at Lavedan, my friend, they informed me how complete was your recovery; from what they told us, it was easy to guess why you tarried there and left us without news of you. That was my reason, as you may have surmised, for writing to you. My sister has mourned you for dead – was mourning you for dead whilst you sat at the feet of your Roxalanne and made love to her among the roses of Lavedan.”
“Lavedan?” echoed the other slowly. Then, raising his voice, “what the devil are you saying?” he blazed. “What do I know of Lavedan?”
In a flash it had come to me who that enfeebled gentleman was. Rodenard, the blunderer, had been at fault when he had said that Lesperon had expired. Clearly he could have no more than swooned; for here, in the flesh, was Lesperon himself, the man I had left for dead in that barn by Mirepoix.
How or where he had recovered were things that at the moment did not exercise my mind – nor have I since been at any pains to unravel the mystery of it; but there he was, and for the moment that fact was all-sufficing. What complications would come of his presence Heaven alone could foretell.
“Put an end to this play-acting!” roared the savage Marsac. “It will avail you nothing. My sister’s tears may have weighed lightly with you, but you shall pay the price of them, and of the slight you have put upon her.”
“My God, Marsac!” cried the other, roused to an equal fierceness. “Will you explain?”
“Aye,” snarled Marsac, and his sword flashed from his scabbard,” I’ll explain. As God lives, I’ll explain – with this!” And he whirled his blade under the eyes of the invalid. “Come, my master, the comedy’s played out. Cast aside that crutch and draw; draw, man, or, sangdieu, I’ll run you through as you stand!”
There was a commotion below. The landlord and a posse of his satellites – waiters, ostlers, and stableboys – rushed between them, and sought to restrain the bloodthirsty Marsac. But he shook them off as a bull shakes off a pack of dogs, and like an angry bull, too, did he stand his ground and bellow. In a moment his sweeping sword had cleared a circle about him. In its lightning dartings hither and thither at random, it had stung a waiter in the calf, and when the fellow saw the blood staining his hose, he added to the general din his shrieks that he was murdered. Marsac swore and threatened in a breath, and a kitchen wench, from a point of vantage on the steps, called shame upon him and abused him roundly for a cowardly assassin to assail a poor sufferer who could hardly stand upright.
“Po’ Cap de Dieu!” swore Castelroux at my elbow. “Saw you ever such an ado? What has chanced?”
But I never stayed to answer him. Unless I acted quickly blood would assuredly be shed. I was the one man who could explain matters, and it was a mercy for Lesperon that I should have been at hand in the hour of his meeting that fire-eater Marsac. I forgot the circumstances in which I stood to Castelroux; I forgot everything but the imminent necessity that I should intervene. Some seven feet below our window was the roof of the porch; from that to the ground it might be some eight feet more. Before my Gascon captain knew what I was about, I had swung myself down from the window on to the projecting porch. A second later, I created a diversion by landing in the midst of the courtyard fray, with the alarmed Castelroux – who imagined that I was escaping – following by the same unusual road, and shouting as he came “Monsieur de Lesperon! Hi! Monsieur de Lesperon! Mordieu! Remember your parole, Monsieur de Lesperon!”
Nothing could have been better calculated to stem Marsac’s fury; nothing could have so predisposed him to lend an ear to what I had to say, for it was very evident that Castelroux’s words were addressed to me, and that it was I whom he called by the name of Lesperon. In an instant I was at Marsac’s side. But before I could utter a word, “What the devil does this mean?” he asked, eyeing me with fierce suspicion.
“It means, monsieur, that there are more Lesperons than one in France. I am the Lesperon who was at Lavedan. If you doubt me, ask this gentleman, who arrested me there last night. Ask him, too, why we have halted here. Ask him, if you will, to show you the letter that you left at Lavedan making an assignation here before noon to-day, which letter I received.”
The suspicion faded from Marsac’s eyes, and they grew round with wonder as he listened to this prodigious array of evidence. Lesperon looked on in no less amazement, yet I am sure from the manner of his glance that he did not recognize in me the man that had succoured him at Mirepoix. That, after all, was natural enough; for the minds of men in such reduced conditions as had been his upon that night are not prone to receive very clear impressions, and still less prone to retain such impressions as they do receive.
Before Marsac could answer me, Castelroux was at my side.
“A thousand apologies!” he laughed. “A fool might have guessed the errand that took you so quickly through that window, and none but a fool would have suspected you of seeking to escape. It was unworthy in me, Monsieur de Lesperon.”
I turned to him while those others still stood gaping, and led him aside.
“Monsieur le Capitaine,” said I, “you find it troublesome enough to reconcile your conscience with such arrests as you are charged to make, is it not so.
“Mordieu!” he cried, by way of emphatically assenting.
“Now, if you should chance to overhear words betraying to you certain people whom otherwise you would never suspect of being rebels, your soldier’s duty would, nevertheless, compel you to apprehend them, would it not?”