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

was separated from those who knew me, and as things now

stood - unless this were, indeed, Lavedan - it might be days before

they found me again.

 

I was beginning to deplore my folly at having cut myself adrift

from my followers in the first place, and having embroiled myself

with the soldiers in the second; I was beginning to contemplate the

wisdom of seeking some outhouse of this mansion wherein to lie

until morning, when of a sudden a broad shaft of light, coming from

one of the windows on the first floor, fell athwart the courtyard.

Instinctively I crouched back into the shadow of my friendly

buttress, and looked up.

 

That sudden shaft of light resulted from the withdrawal of the

curtains that masked a window. At this window, which opened outward

on to a balcony; I now beheld - and to me it was as the vision of

Beatrice may have been to Dante - the white figure of a woman. The

moonlight bathed her, as in her white robe she leaned upon the

parapet gazing upward into the empyrean. A sweet, delicate face

I saw, not endowed, perhaps, with that exquisite balance and

proportion of feature wherein they tell us beauty lies, but blessed

with a wondrously dainty beauty all its own; a beauty, perhaps, as

much of expression as of form; for in that gentle countenance was

mirrored every tender grace of girlhood, all that is fresh and pure

and virginal.

 

I held my breath, I think, as I stood in ravished contemplation of

that white vision. If this were Lavedan, and that the cold Roxalanne

who had sent my bold Chatellerault back to Paris empty-handed then

were my task a very welcome one.

 

How little it had weighed with me that I was come to Languedoc to

woo a woman bearing the name of Roxalanne de Lavedan I have already

shown. But here in this same Languedoc I beheld to-night a woman

whom it seemed I might have loved, for not in ten years - not,

indeed, in all my life - had any face so wrought upon me and called

to my nature with so strong a voice.

 

I gazed at that child, and I thought of the women that I had known

—the bold, bedizened beauties of a Court said to be the first in

Europe. And then it came to me that this was no demoiselle of

Lavedan, no demoiselle at all in fact, for the noblesse of France

owned no such faces. Candour and purity were not to be looked for

in the high-bred countenances of our great families; they were

sometimes found in the faces of the children of their retainers.

Yes; I had it now. This child was the daughter of some custodian

of the demesne before me.

 

Suddenly, as she stood there in the moonlight, a song, sung at

half-voice, floated down on the calm air. It was a ditty of old

Provence, a melody I knew and loved, and if aught had been wanting

to heighten the enchantment that already ravished me, that soft

melodious voice had done it. Singing still, she turned and reentered

the room, leaving wide the windows, so that faintly, as from a

distance, her voice still reached me after she was gone from sight.

 

It was in that hour that it came to me to cast myself upon this fair

creature’s mercy. Surely one so sweet and saintly to behold would

take compassion on an unfortunate! Haply my wound and all the rest

that I had that night endured made me dull-witted and warped my

reason.

 

With what strength I still possessed I went to work to scale her

balcony. The task was easy even for one in my spent condition. The

wall was thick with ivy, and, moreover, a window beneath afforded

some support, for by standing on the heavy coping I could with my

fingers touch the sill of the balcony above. Thus I hoisted myself,

and presently I threw an arm over the parapet. Already I was astride

of that same Parapet before she became aware of my presence.

 

The song died suddenly on her lips, and her eyes, blue as

forget-me-nots, were wide now with the fear that the sight of me

occasioned. Another second and there had been an outcry that would

have brought the house about our ears, when, stepping to the

threshold of the room, “Mademoiselle,” I entreated, “for the love of

God, be silent! I mean you no harm. I am a fugitive. I am pursued.”

 

This was no considered speech. There had been no preparing of words;

I had uttered them mechanically almost - perhaps by inspiration, for

they were surely the best calculated to enlist this lady’s sympathy.

And so far as went the words themselves, they were rigorously true.

 

With eyes wide open still, she confronted me, and I now observed that

she was not so tall as from below I had imagined. She was, in fact,

of a short stature rather, but of proportions so exquisite that she

conveyed an impression of some height. In her hand she held a taper

by whose light she had been surveying herself in her mirror at the

moment of my advent. Her unbound hair of brown fell like a mantle

about her shoulders, and this fact it was drew me to notice that she

was in her night-rail, and that this room to which I had penetrated

was her chamber.

 

“Who are you?” she asked breathlessly, as though in such a pass my

identity were a thing that signified.

 

I had almost answered her, as I had answered the troopers at Mirepoix,

that I was Lesperon. Then, bethinking me that there was no need for

such equivocation here, I was on the point of giving her my name.

But noting my hesitation, and misconstruing it, she forestalled me.

 

“I understand, monsieur,” said she more composedly. “And you need

have no fear. You are among friends.”

 

Her eyes had travelled over my sodden clothes, the haggard pallor of

my face, and the blood that stained my doublet from the shoulder

downward. From all this she had drawn her conclusions that I was a

hunted rebel. She drew me into the room, and, closing the window,

she dragged the heavy curtain across it, thereby giving me a proof

of confidence that smote me hard - impostor that I was.

 

“I crave your pardon, mademoiselle, for having startled you by the

rude manner of my coming,” said I, and never in my life had I felt

less at ease than then. “But I was exhausted and desperate. I am

wounded, I have ridden hard, and I swam the river.”

 

The latter piece of information was vastly unnecessary, seeing that

the water from my clothes was forming a pool about my feet. “I saw

you from below; mademoiselle, and surely, I thought, so sweet a lady

would have pity on an unfortunate.” She observed that my eyes were

upon her, and in an act of instinctive maidenliness she bore her hand

to her throat to draw the draperies together and screen the beauties

of her neck from my unwarranted glance, as though her daily gown did

not reveal as much and more of them.

 

That act, however, served to arouse me to a sense of my position.

What did I there? It was a profanity - a defiling, I swore; from

which you’ll see, that Bardelys was grown of a sudden very nice.

 

“Monsieur,” she was saying, “you are exhausted.”

 

“But that I rode hard,” I laughed, “it is likely they had taken me

to Toulouse, were I might have lost my head before my friends could

have found and claimed me. I hope you’ll see it is too comely a

head to be so lightly parted with.”

 

“For that,” said she, half seriously, half whimsically, “the ugliest

head would be too comely.”

 

I laughed softly, amusedly; then of a sudden, without warning, a

faintness took me, and I was forced to brace myself against the

wall, breathing heavily the while. At that she gave a little cry

of alarm.

 

“Monsieur, I beseech you to be seated. I will summon my father,

and we will find a bed for you. You must not retain those clothes.”

 

“Angel of goodness!” I muttered gratefully, and being still half

dazed, I brought some of my Court tricks into that chamber by

taking her hand and carrying it towards my lips. But ere I had

imprinted the intended kiss upon her fingers - and by some miracle

they were not withdrawn - my eyes encountered hers again. I paused

as one may pause who contemplates a sacrilege. For a moment she

held my glance with hers; then I fell abashed, and released her hand.

 

The innocence peeping out of that child’s eyes it was that had in

that moment daunted me, and made me tremble to think of being found

there, and of the vile thing it would be to have her name coupled

with mine. That thought lent me strength. I cast my weariness from

me as though it were a garment, and, straightening myself, I stepped

of a sudden to the window. Without a word, I made shift to draw back

the curtain when her hand, falling on my sodden sleeve, arrested me.

 

“What will you do, monsieur?” she cried in alarm. “You may be seen.”

 

My mind was now possessed by the thing I should have thought of

before. I climbed to her balcony, and my one resolve was to get me

thence as quickly as might be.

 

“I had not the right to enter here,” I muttered. “I—” I stopped

short; to explain would only be to sully, and so, “Good-night!

Adieu!” I ended brusquely.

 

“But, monsieur—” she began.

 

“Let me go,” I commanded almost roughly, as I shook my arm free of

her grasp.

 

“Bethink you that you are exhausted. If you go forth now, monsieur,

you will assuredly be taken. You must not go.”

 

I laughed softly, and with some bitterness, too, for I was angry

with myself.

 

“Hush, child,” I said. “Better so, if it is to be.”

 

And with that I drew aside the curtains and pushed the leaves of the

window apart. She remained standing in the room, watching me, her

face pale, and hex eyes pained and puzzled.

 

One last glance I gave her as I bestrode the rail of her balcony.

Then I lowered myself as I had ascended. I was hanging by my hands,

seeking with my foot for the coping of the window beneath me, when,

suddenly, there came a buzzing in my ears. I had a fleeting vision

of a white figure leaning on the balcony above me; then a veil seemed

drawn over my eyes; there came a sense of falling; a rush as of a

tempestuous wind; then - nothing.