“Ma foi, I had all but forgotten, so much has Monsieur de Lavedan’s fate preoccupied us.” He picked up another paper from his table, and tossed it to me. It was my note of hand to Chatellerault for my Picardy estates.
“Chatellerault died this morning,” the King pursued. “He had been asking to see you, but when he was told that you had left Toulouse, he dictated a long confession of his misdeeds, which he sent to me together with this note of yours. He could not, he wrote, permit his heirs to enjoy your estates; he had not won them; he had really forfeited his own stakes, since he had broken the rules of play. He has left me to deliver judgment in the matter of his own lands passing into your possession. What do you say to it, Marcel?”
It was almost with reluctance that I took up that scrap of paper. It had been so fine and heroic a thing to have cast my wealth to the winds of heaven for love’s sake, that on my soul I was loath to see myself master of more than Beaugency. Then a compromise suggested itself.
“The wager, Sire,” said I, “is one that I take shame in having entered upon; that shame made me eager to pay it, although fully conscious that I had not lost. But even now, I cannot, in any case, accept the forfeit Chatellerault was willing to suffer. Shall we –shall we forget that the wager was ever laid?”
“The decision does you honour. It was what I had hoped from you. Go now, Marcel. I doubt me you are eager. When your love-sickness wanes a little we shall hope to see you at Court again.”
I sighed. “Helas, Sire, that would be never.”
“So you said once before, monsieur. It is a foolish spirit upon which to enter into matrimony; yet – like many follies – a fine one. Adieu, Marcel!”
“Adieu, Sire!”
I had kissed his hands; I had poured forth my thanks; I had reached the door already, and he was in the act of turning to La Fosse, when it came into my head to glance at the warrant he had given me. He noticed this and my sudden halt.
“Is aught amiss?” he asked.
“You-you have omitted something, Sire,” I ventured, and I returned to the table. “I am already so grateful that I hesitate to ask an additional favour. Yet it is but troubling you to add a few strokes of the pen, and it will not materially affect the sentence itself.”
He glanced at me, and his brows drew together as he sought to guess my meaning.
“Well, man, what is it?” he demanded impatiently.
“It has occurred to me that this poor Vicomte, in a strange land, alone, among strange faces, missing the loved ones that for so many years he has seen daily by his side, will be pitiably lonely.”
The King’s glance was lifted suddenly to my face. “Must I then banish his family as well?”
“All of it will not be necessary, Your Majesty.”
For once his eyes lost their melancholy, and as hearty a burst of laughter as ever I heard from that poor, weary gentleman he vented then.
“Ciel! what a jester you are! Ah, but I shall miss you!” he cried, as, seizing the pen, he added the word I craved of him.
“Are you content at last?” he asked, returning the paper to me.
I glanced at it. The warrant now stipulated that Madame la Vicomtesse de Lavedan should bear her husband company in his exile.
“Sire, you are too good!” I murmured.
“Tell the officer to whom you entrust the execution of this warrant that he will find the lady in the guardroom below, where she is being detained, pending my pleasure. Did she but know that it was your pleasure she has been waiting upon, I should tremble for your future when the five years expire.”
CHAPTER XXII WE UNSADDLE
Mademoiselle held the royal warrant of her father’s banishment in her hand. She was pale, and her greeting of me had been timid. I stood before her, and by the door stood Rodenard, whom I had bidden attend me.
As I had approached Lavedan that day, I had been taken with a great, an overwhelming shame at the bargain I had driven. I had pondered, and it had come to me that she had been right to suggest that in matters of love what is not freely given it is not worth while to take. And out of my shame and that conclusion had sprung a new resolve. So that nothing might weaken it, and lest, after all, the sight of Roxalanne should bring me so to desire her that I might be tempted to override my purpose, I had deemed it well to have the restraint of a witness at our last interview. To this end had I bidden Ganymede follow me into the very salon.
She read the document to the very end, then her glance was raised timidly again to mine, and from me it shifted to Ganymede, stiff at his post by the door.
“This was the best that you could do, monsieur?” she asked at last.
“The very best, mademoiselle,” I answered calmly. “I do not wish to magnify my service, but it was that or the scaffold. Madame your mother had, unfortunately, seen the King before me, and she had prejudiced your father’s case by admitting him to be a traitor. There was a moment when in view of that I was almost led to despair. I am glad, however, mademoiselle, that I was so fortunate as to persuade the King to just so much clemency.”
“And for five years, then, I shall not see my parents.” She sighed, and her distress was very touching.
“That need not be. Though they may not come to France, it still remains possible for you to visit them in Spain.”
“True,” she mused; “that will be something – will it not?”
“Assuredly something; under the circumstances, much.”
She sighed again, and for a moment there was silence.
“Will you not sit, monsieur?” said she at last. She was very quiet to-day, this little maid – very quiet and very wondrously subdued.
“There is scarce the need,” I answered softly; whereupon her eyes were raised to ask a hundred questions. “You are satisfied with my efforts, mademoiselle?” I inquired.
“Yes, I am satisfied, monsieur.”
That was the end, I told myself, and involuntarily I also sighed. Still, I made no shift to go.
“You are satisfied that I – that I have fulfilled what I promised?”
Her eyes were again cast down, and she took a step in the direction of the window.
“But yes. Your promise was to save my father from the scaffold. You have done so, and I make no doubt you have done as much to reduce the term of his banishment as lay within your power. Yes, monsieur, I am satisfied that your promise has been well fulfilled.”
Heigho! The resolve that I had formed in coming whispered it in my ear that nothing remained but to withdraw and go my way. Yet not for all that resolve – not for a hundred such resolves – could I have gone thus. One kindly word, one kindly glance at least would I take to comfort me. I would tell her in plain words of my purpose, and she should see that there was still some good, some sense of honour in me, and thus should esteem me after I was gone.
“Ganymede.” said I.
“Monseigneur?”
“Bid the men mount.”
At that she turned, wonder opening her eyes very wide, and her glance travelled from me to Rodenard with its unspoken question. But even as she looked at him he bowed and, turning to do my bidding, left the room. We heard his steps pass with a jingle of spurs across the hall and out into the courtyard. We heard his raucous voice utter a word of command, and there was a stamping of hoofs, a cramping of harness, and all the bustle of preparation.
“Why have you ordered your men to mount?” she asked at last.
“Because my business here is ended, and we are going.”
“Going?” said she. Her eyes were lowered now, but a frown suggested their expression to me. “Going whither?”
“Hence,” I answered. “That for the moment is all that signifies.” I paused to swallow something that hindered a clear utterance. Then, “Adieu!” said I, and I abruptly put forth my hand.
Her glance met mine fearlessly, if puzzled.
“Do you mean, monsieur, that you are leaving Lavedan – thus?”
“So that I leave, what signifies the manner of my going?”
“But” – the trouble grew in her eyes; her cheeks seemed to wax paler than they had been – “but I thought that – that we made a bargain.”