And with that I gave her the whole details of the affair, including the information that Chatellerault had been no party to my release, and that for his attempted judicial murder of me the King would have dealt very hardly with him had he not saved the King the trouble by throwing himself upon his sword:
There was a silence when I had done. Roxalanne sat on, and seemed to ponder. To let all that I had said sink in and advocate my cause, as to me was very clear it must, I turned aside and moved to one of the windows.
“Why did you not tell me before?” she asked suddenly. “Why – oh, why – did you not confess to me the whole infamous affair as soon as you came to love me, as you say you did?”
“As I say I did?” I repeated after her. “Do you doubt it? Can you doubt it in the face of what I have done?”
“Oh, I don’t know what to believe!” she cried, a sob in her voice. “You have deceived me so far, so often. Why did you not tell me that night on the river? Or later, when I pressed you in this very house? Or again, the other night in the prison of Toulouse?”
“You ask me why. Can you not answer the question for yourself? Can you not conceive the fear that was in me that you should shrink away from me in loathing? The fear that if you cared a little, I might for all time stifle such affection as you bore me? The fear that I must ruin your trust in me? Oh, mademoiselle, can you not see how my only hope lay in first owning defeat to Chatellerault, in first paying the wager?”
“How could you have lent yourself to such a bargain?” was her next question.
“How, indeed?” I asked in my turn. “From your mother you have heard something of the reputation that attaches to 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.