“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 entreaty – God, what entreaty! – to my own.
“Rise, mademoiselle, I beseech you,” I said, with a quiet I was far from feeling. “There is no need for this. Let us be calm. The danger to your father is not so imminent. We may have some days yet –three or four, perhaps.”
I lifted her gently and led her to a chair. I was hard put to it not to hold her supported in my arms. But I might not cull that advantage from her distress. A singular niceness, you will say, perhaps, as in your scorn you laugh at me. Perhaps you are right to laugh – yet are you not altogether right.
“You will go to Toulouse, monsieur?” she begged.
I took a turn in the room, then halting before her “Yes,” I answered, “I will go.”
The gratitude that leapt to her eyes smote me hard, for my sentence was unfinished.
“I will go,” I continued quickly, “when you shall have promised to become my wife.”
The joy passed from her face. She glanced at me a moment as if without understanding.
“I came to Lavedan to win you, Roxalanne, and from Lavedan I shall not stir until I have accomplished my design,” I said very quietly. “You will therefore see that it rests with you how soon I may set out.”
She fell to weeping softly, but answered nothing. At last I turned from her and moved towards the door.
“Where are you going?” she cried.
“To take the air, mademoiselle. If upon deliberation you can bring yourself to marry me, send me word by Anatole or one of the others, and I shall set out at once for Toulouse.”
“Stop!” she cried. Obediently I stopped, my hand already upon the doorknob. “You are cruel, monsieur!” she complained.
“I love you,” said I, by way of explaining it. “To be cruel seems to be the way of love. You have been cruel to me.”
“Would you – would you take what is not freely given?”
“I have the hope that when you see that you must give, you will give freely.”
“If – if I make you this promise–”
“Yes?” I was growing white with eagerness.
“You will fulfil your part of the bargain?”
“It is a habit of mine, mademoiselle – as witnesses the case of Chatellerault.” She shivered at the mention of his name. It reminded her of precisely such another bargain that three nights ago she had made. Precisely, did I say? Well, not quite precisely.
“I – I promise to marry you, then,” said she in a choking voice, “whenever you choose, after my father shall have been set at liberty.”
I bowed. “I shall start at once,” said I.
And perhaps out of shame, perhaps out of – who shall say what sentiments? – I turned without another word and left her.
CHAPTER XX THE “BRAVI” AT BLAGNAC
I was glad to be in the open once more – glad of the movement, as I rode at the head of my brave company along the bank of the Garonne and in the shade of the golden, autumn-tinted trees.
I was in a measure angry with myself that I had driven such a bargain with Roxalanne, in a measure angry with her that she had forced me to it by her obstinacy. A fine gentleman I, on my soul, to have dubbed Chatellerault a cheat for having done no worse than I had now brought myself to do! Yet, was it so? No, I assured myself, it was not. A thousand times no! What I had done I had done as much to win Roxalanne to me as to win her from her own unreasonableness. In the days to come she should thank me for my harshness, for that which now she perhaps accounted my unfairness.
Then, again, would I ask myself, was I very sure of this? And so the two questions were flung the one against the other; my conscience divided itself into two parties, and they waged a war that filled me with a depressing uncertainty.
In the end shame was overthrown, and I flung back my head with a snort of assurance. I was doing no wrong. On the contrary, I was doing right – both by myself and by Roxalanne. What matter that I was really cheating her? What matter that I had said I would not leave Lavedan until I had her promise, whilst in reality I had hurled my threat at Saint-Eustache that I would meet him at Toulouse, and passed my word to the Vicomtesse that I would succour her husband?
I gave no thought to the hidden threat with which Saint-Eustache had retorted that from Lavedan to Toulouse was a distance of some twenty leagues. Had he been a man of sterner purposes I might have been uneasy and on my guard. But Saint-Eustache pshaw!