Bardelys the Magnificent, Rafael Sabatini [best free e book reader .txt] 📗

fear.

 

Now the Chevalier de Saint-Eustache was a young man, and in the young

we can forgive much. But to forgive such an act as he had been

guilty of - that of drawing his sword upon a man who carried no

weapons - would have been not only a ridiculous toleration, but an

utter neglect of duty. As an older man it behoved me to read the

Chevalier a lesson in manners and gentlemanly feeling. So, quite

dispassionately, and purely for his own future good, I went about

the task, and administered him a thrashing that for thoroughness it

would be hard to better. I was not discriminating. I brought my

cane down with a rhythmical precision, and whether it took him on

the head, the back, or the shoulders, I held to be more his affair

than mine. I had a moral to inculcate, and the injuries he might

receive in the course of it were inconsiderable details so that the

lesson was borne in upon his soul. Two or three times he sought to

close with me, but I eluded him; I had no mind to descend to a vulgar

exchange of blows. My object was not to brawl, but to administer

chastisement, and this object I may claim to have accomplished with

a fair degree of success.

 

At last Roxalanne interfered; but only when one blow a little more

violent, perhaps, than its precursors resulted in the sudden snapping

of the cane and Monsieur de Eustache’s utter collapse into a moaning

heap.

 

“I deplore, mademoiselle, to have offended your sight with such a

spectacle, but unless these lessons are administered upon the instant

their effect is not half so salutary.”

 

“He deserved it, monsieur,” said she, with a note almost of

fierceness in her voice. And of such poor mettle are we that her

resentment against that groaning mass of fopperies and wheals sent a

thrill of pleasure through me. I walked over to the spot where his

sword had fallen, and picked it up.

 

“Monsieur de Saint-Eustache,” said I, “you have so dishonoured this

blade that I do not think you would care to wear it again.” Saying

which, I snapped it across my knee, and flung it far out into the

river, for all that the hilt was a costly one, richly wrought in

bronze and gold.

 

He raised his livid countenance, and his eyes blazed impotent fury.

 

“Par la mort Dieu!” he cried hoarsely, “you shall give me

satisfaction for this!”

 

“If you account yourself still unsatisfied, I am at your service when

you will,” said I courteously.

 

Then, before more could be said, I saw Monsieur de Lavedan and the

Vicomtesse approaching hurriedly across the parterre. The Vicomte’s

brow was black with what might have appeared anger, but which I

rightly construed into apprehension.

 

“What has taken place? What have you done?” he asked of me.

 

“He has brutally assaulted the Chevalier,” cried Madame shrilly, her

eyes malevolently set upon me. “He is only a child, this poor

Saint-Eustache,” she reproached me. “I saw it all from my window,

Monsieur de Lesperon. It was brutal; it was cowardly. So to beat

a boy! Shame! If you had a quarrel with him, are there not

prescribed methods for their adjustment between gentlemen? Pardieu,

could you not have given him proper satisfaction?”

 

“If madame will give herself the trouble of attentively examining

this poor Saint-Eustache,” said I, with a sarcasm which her virulence

prompted, “you will agree, I think, that I have given him very

proper and very thorough satisfaction. I would have met him sword

in hand, but the Chevalier has the fault of the very young - he is

precipitate; he was in too great a haste, and he could not wait

until I got a sword. So I was forced to do what I could with a cane.”

 

“But you provoked him,” she flashed back.

 

“Whoever told you so has misinformed you, madame. On the contrary,

he provoked me. He gave me the lie. I struck him - could I do

less? - and he drew. I defended myself, and I supplemented my

defence by a caning, so that this poor Saint-Eustache might realize

the unworthiness of what he had done. That is all, madame.”

 

But she was not so easily to be appeased, not even when Mademoiselle

and the Vicomte joined their voices to mine in extenuation of my

conduct. It was like Lavedan. For all that he was full of dread

of the result and of the vengeance Saint-Eustache might wreak - boy

though he was - he expressed himself freely touching the Chevalier’s

behaviour and the fittingness of the punishment that had overtaken

him.

 

The Vicomtesse stood in small awe of her husband, but his judgment

upon a point of honour was a matter that she would not dare contest.

She was ministering to the still prostrate Chevalier who, I think,

remained prostrate now that he might continue to make appeal to her

sympathy - when suddenly she cut in upon Roxalanne’s defence of me.

 

“Where have you been?” she demanded suddenly.

 

“When, my mother?”

 

“This afternoon,” answered the Vicomtesse impatiently. “The

Chevalier was waiting two hours for you.”

 

Roxalanne coloured to the roots of her hair. The Vicomte frowned.

 

“Waiting for me, my mother? But why for me?”

 

“Answer my question - where have you been?”

 

“I was with Monsieur de Lesperon,” she answered simply.

 

“Alone?” the Vicomtesse almost shrieked.

 

“But yes.” The poor child’s tones were laden with wonder at this

catechism.

 

“God’s death!” she snapped. “It seems that my daughter is no better

than—”

 

Heaven knows what may have been coming, for she had the most

virulent, scandalous tongue that I have ever known in a woman’s

head - which is much for one who has lived at Court to say. But

the Vicomte, sharing my fears, perhaps, and wishing to spare the

child’s ears, interposed quickly “Come, madame, what airs are these?

What sudden assumption of graces that we do not affect? We are not

in Paris. This is not the Luxembourg. En province comme en

province, and here we are simple folk—”

 

“Simple folk?” she interrupted, gasping. “By God, am I married to

a ploughman? Am I Vicomtesse of Lavedan, or the wife of a boor of

the countryside? And is the honour of your daughter a matter—”

 

“The honour of my daughter is not in question, madame,” he

interrupted in his turn, and with a sudden sternness that spent

the fire of her indignation as a spark that is trampled underfoot.

Then, in a calm, level voice: “Ah, here are the servants,” said he.

 

“Permit them, madame, to take charge of Monsieur de Saint-Eustache.

Anatole, you had better order the carriage for Monsieur le Chevalier.

I do not think that he will be able to ride home.”

 

Anatole peered at the pale young gentleman on the ground, then he

turned his little wizened face upon me, and grinned in a singularly

solemn fashion. Monsieur de Saint-Eustache was little loved, it

seemed.

 

Leaning heavily upon the arm of one of the lacqueys, the Chevalier

moved painfully towards the courtyard, where the carriage was being

prepared for him. At the last moment he turned and beckoned the

Vicomte to his side.

 

“As God lives, Monsieur de Lavedan,” he swore, breathing heavily

in the fury that beset him, “you shall bitterly regret having taken

sides to-day with that Gascon bully. Remember me, both of you, when

you are journeying to Toulouse.”

 

The Vicomte stood beside him, impassive and unmoved by that grim

threat, for all that to him it must have sounded like a

death-sentence.

 

“Adieu, monsieur - a speedy recovery,” was all he answered.

 

But I stepped up to them. “Do you not think, Vicomte, that it were

better to detain him?” I asked.

 

“Pshaw!” he ejaculated. “Let him go.”

 

The Chevalier’s eyes met mine in a look of terror. Perhaps already

that young man repented him of his menace, and he realized the folly

of threatening one in whose power he still chanced to be.

 

“Bethink you, monsieur,” I cried. “Yours is a noble and useful life.

Mine is not without value, either. Shall we suffer these lives - aye,

and the happiness of your wife and daughter - to be destroyed by this

vermin?”

 

“Let him go, monsieur; let him go. I am not afraid.”

 

I bowed and stepped back, motioning to the lacquey to take the fellow

away, much as I should have motioned him to remove some uncleanness

from before me.

 

The Vicomtesse withdrew in high dudgeon to her chamber, and I did not

see her again that evening. Mademoiselle I saw once, for a moment,

and she employed that moment to question me touching the origin of

my quarrel with Saint-Eustache.

 

“Did he really lie, Monsieur de Lesperon?” she asked.

 

“Upon my honour, mademoiselle,” I answered solemnly, “I have

plighted my troth to no living woman.” Then my chin sank to my

breast as I bethought me of how tomorrow she must opine me the

vilest liar living - for I was resolved to be gone before Marsac

arrived - since the real Lesperon I did not doubt was, indeed,

betrothed to Mademoiselle de Marsac.

 

“I shall leave Lavedan betimes tomorrow, mademoiselle,” I pursued

presently. “What has happened to-day makes my departure all the

more urgent. Delay may have its dangers. You will hear strange

things of me, as already I have warned you. But be merciful. Much

will be true, much false; yet the truth itself is very vile, and—”

I stopped short, in despair of explaining or even tempering what

had to come. I shrugged my shoulders in my abandonment of hope, and

I turned towards the window. She crossed the room and came to stand

beside me.

 

“Will you not tell me? Have you no faith in me? Ah, Monsieur de

Lesperon—”

 

“‘Sh! child, I cannot. It is too late to tell you now.”

 

“Oh, not too late! From what you say they will tell me, I should

think, perhaps, worse of you than you deserve. What is this thing

you hide? What is this mystery? Tell me, monsieur. Tell me.”

 

Did ever woman more plainly tell a man she loved him, and that

loving him she would find all excuses for him? Was ever woman in

better case to hear a confession from the man that loved her, and

of whose love she was assured by every instinct that her sex

possesses in such matters? Those two questions leapt into my mind,

and in resolving them I all but determined to speak even now in

the eleventh hour.

 

And then - I know not how - a fresh barrier seemed to arise. It

was not merely a matter of telling her of the wager I was embarked

upon; not merely a matter of telling her of the duplicity that I

had practised, of the impostures by which I had gained admittance

to her father’s confidence and trust; not merely a matter of

confessing that I was not Lesperon. There would still be the

necessity of saying who I was. Even if she forgave all else, could

she forgive me for being Bardelys the notorious Bardelys, the

libertine, the rake, some of whose exploits she had heard of from

her mother, painted a hundred times blacker than they really were?

Might she not shrink from me when I told her I was that man? In

her pure innocence she deemed, no doubt, that the life of every

man who accounted himself a gentleman was moderately clean. She

would not see in me - as did her