CHAPTER IV. A MAID IN THE MOONLIGHT
I do not know whether it was the influence of that thing lying in acorner of the barn under the cloak that Rodenard had flung over it, orwhether other influences of destiny were at work to impel me to riseat the end of a half-hour and announce my determination to set out onhorseback and find myself quarters more congenial.
"To-morrow," I instructed Ganymede, as I stood ready to mount, "you willretrace your steps with the others, and, finding the road to Lavedan,you will follow me to the chateau."
"But you cannot hope to reach it to-night, monseigneur, through acountry that is unknown to you," he protested.
"I do not hope to reach it to-night. I will ride south until I come uponsome hamlet that will afford me shelter and, in the morning, direction."
I left him with that, and set out at a brisk trot. Night had now fallen,but the sky was clear, and a crescent moon came opportunely if feebly todispel the gloom.
I quitted the field, and went back until I gained a crossroad, where,turning to the right, I set my face to the Pyrenees, and rode brisklyamain. That I had chosen wisely was proved when some twenty minuteslater. I clattered into the hamlet of Mirepoix, and drew up before aninn flaunting the sign of a peacock--as if in irony of its humbleness,for it was no better than a wayside tavern. Neither stable-boy norostler was here, and the unclean, overgrown urchin to whom I entrustedmy horse could not say whether indeed Pere Abdon the landlord wouldbe able to find me a room to sleep in. I thirsted, however; and so Idetermined to alight, if it were only to drink a can of wine and obtaininformation of my whereabouts.
As I was entering the hostelry there was a clatter of hoofs in thestreet, and four dragoons headed by a sergeant rode up and halted at thedoor of the Paon. They seemed to have ridden hard and some distance, fortheir horses were jaded almost to the last point of endurance.
Within, I called the host, and having obtained a flagon of the bestvintage--Heaven fortify those that must be content with his worst!--Ipassed on to make inquiries touching my whereabouts and the way toLavedan. This I learnt was but some three or four miles distant. Aboutthe other table--there were but two within the room--stood the dragoonsin a whispered consultation, of which it had been well had I taken heed,for it concerned me more closely than I could have dreamt.
"He answers the description," said the sergeant, and though I heard thewords I took no thought that it was of me they spoke.
"Padrieu," swore one of his companions, "I'll wager it is our man."
And then, just as I was noticing that Master Abdon, who had alsooverheard the conversation, was eyeing me curiously, the sergeantstepped up to me, and--
"What is your name, monsieur?" quoth he.
I vouchsafed him a stare of surprise before asking in my turn "How maythat concern you?"
"Your pardon, my master, but we are on the King's business."
I remembered then that he had said I answered some description. Withthat it flashed through my mind that they had been sent after me byHis Majesty to enforce my obedience to his wishes and to hinder mefrom reaching Lavedan. At once came the dominant desire to conceal myidentity that I might go unhindered. The first name that occurred to mewas that of the poor wretch I had left in the barn half an hour ago, andso--
"I am," said I, "Monsieur de Lesperon, at your service."
Too late I saw the mistake that I had made. I own it was a blunder thatno man of ordinary intelligence should have permitted himself to havecommitted. Remembering the unrest of the province, I should rather haveconcluded that their business was more like to be in that connection.
"He is bold, at least," cried one of the troopers, with a burst oflaughter. Then came the sergeant's voice, cold and formal, "In theKing's name, Monsieur de Lesperon, I arrest you."
He had whipped out his sword, and the point was within an inch of mybreast. But his arm, I observed, was stretched to its fullest extent,which forbade his making a sudden thrust. To hamper him in the lungethere was the table between us.
So, my mind working quickly in this desperate situation, and realizinghow dire and urgent the need to attempt an escape, I leapt suddenly backto find myself in the arms of his followers. But in moving I had caughtup by one of its legs the stool on which I had been sitting. As I raisedit, I eluded the pinioning grip of the troopers. I twisted in theirgrasp, and brought the stool down upon the head of one of them witha force that drove him to his knees. Up went that three-legged stoolagain, to descend like a thunderbolt upon the head of another. Thatfreed me. The sergeant was coming up behind, but another flourish of myimprovised battle-axe sent the two remaining soldiers apart to look totheir swords. Ere they could draw, I had darted like a hare betweenthem and out into the street. The sergeant, cursing them with horridvolubility, followed closely upon my heels.
Leaping as far into the roadway as I could, I turned to meet thefellow's onslaught. Using the stool as a buckler, I caught his thrustupon it. So violently was it delivered that the point buried itself inthe wood and the blade snapped, leaving him a hilt and a stump of steel.I wasted no time in thought. Charging him wildly, I knocked him overjust as the two unhurt dragoons came stumbling out of the tavern.
I gained my horse and vaulted into the saddle. Tearing the reins fromthe urchin that held them, and driving my spurs into the beast's flanks,I went careering down the street at a gallop, gripping tightly with myknees, whilst the stirrups, which I had had no time to step into, flewwildly about my legs.
A pistol cracked behind me; then another, and a sharp, stinging pain inthe shoulder warned me that I was hit. But I took no heed of it then.The wound could not be serious, else I had already been out ofthe saddle, and it would be time enough to look to it when I hadoutdistanced my pursuers. I say my pursuers, for already there werehoofbeats behind me, and I knew that those gentlemen had taken to theirhorses. But, as you may recall, I had on their arrival noted thejaded condition of their cattle, whilst I bestrode a horse that wascomparatively fresh, so that pursuit had but small terrors for me.Nevertheless, they held out longer, and gave me more to do than I hadimagined would be the case. For nigh upon a half-hour I rode, before Icould be said to have got clear of them, and then for aught I knewthey were still following, resolved to hound me down by the aid of suchinformation as they might cull upon their way.
I was come by then to the Garonne. I drew rein beside the swiftlyflowing stream, winding itself like a flood of glittering silver betweenthe black shadows of its banks. A little while I sat there listening,and surveying the stately, turreted chateau that loomed, a grey, noblepile, beyond the water. I speculated what demesne this might be, and Irealized that it was probably Lavedan.
I pondered what I had best do, and in the end I took the resolve to swimthe river and knock at the gates. If it were indeed Lavedan, I had butto announce myself, and to one of my name surely its hospitalities wouldbe spread. If it were some other household, even then the name of Marcelde Bardelys should suffice to ensure me a welcome.
By spurring and coaxing, I lured my steed into the river. There is aproverb having it that though you may lead a horse to the water youcannot make him drink. It would have now applied to my case, foralthough I had brought mine to the water I could not make him swim; or,at least, I could not make him breast the rush of the stream. Vainlydid I urge him and try to hold him; he plunged frantically, snorted,coughed, and struggled gamely, but the current was bearing us swiftlyaway, and his efforts brought us no nearer to the opposite shore. Atlast I slipped from his back, and set myself to swim beside him, leadinghim by the bridle. But even thus he proved unequal to the task ofresisting the current, so that in the end I let him go, and swam ashorealone, hoping that he would land farther down, and that I might thenrecapture him. When, however, I had reached the opposite bank, and stoodunder the shadow of the chateau, I discovered that the cowardly beasthad turned back, and, having scrambled out, was now trotting awayalong the path by which we had come. Having no mind to go after him, Iresigned myself to the los
s, and turned my attention to the mansion nowbefore me.
Some two hundred yards from the river it raised its great square bulkagainst the background of black, star-flecked sky. From the facadebefore me down to the spot where I stood by the water, came a flightof half a dozen terraces, each balustraded in white marble, ending insquare, flat-topped pillars of Florentine design. What moon there wasrevealed the quaint architecture of that stately edifice and glitteredupon the mullioned windows. But within nothing stirred; no yellowglimmer came to clash with the white purity of the moonlight; no soundof man or beast broke the stillness of the night, for all that the hourwas early. The air of the place was as that of some gigantic sepulchre.A little daunted by this all-enveloping stillness, I skirted theterraces and approached the house on the eastern side. Here I found anold-world drawbridge--now naturally in disuse--spanning a ditch fedfrom the main river for the erstwhile purposes of a moat. I crossed thebridge, and entered an imposing courtyard. Within this quadrangle thesame silence dwelt, and there was the same obscurity in the windows thatoverlooked it. I paused, at a loss how to proceed, and I leaned againsta buttress of the portcullis, what time I considered.
I was weak from fasting, worn with hard riding, and faint from the woundin my shoulder, which had been the cause at least of my losing someblood. In addition to all this, I was shivering with the cold of my wetgarments, and generally I must have looked as little like that Bardelysthey called the Magnificent as you might well conceive. How, then, if Iwere to knock, should I prevail in persuading these people--whoever theymight be--of my identity? Infinitely more had I the air of some fugitiverebel, and it was more than probable that I should be kept in duranceto be handed over to my friends the dragoons, if later they came toride that way. I was separated from those who knew me, and as things nowstood--unless this were, indeed, Lavedan--it might be days before theyfound me again.
I was beginning to deplore my folly at having cut myself adrift frommy followers in the first place, and having embroiled myself with thesoldiers in the second; I was beginning to contemplate the wisdom ofseeking some outhouse of this mansion wherein to lie until morning, whenof a sudden a broad shaft of light, coming from one of the windows onthe first floor, fell athwart the courtyard. Instinctively I crouchedback into the shadow of my friendly buttress, and looked up.
That sudden shaft of light resulted from the withdrawal of the curtainsthat masked a window. At this window, which opened outward on to abalcony; I now beheld--and to me it was as the vision of Beatrice mayhave been to Dante--the white figure of a woman. The moonlight bathedher, as in her white robe she leaned upon the parapet gazing upward intothe empyrean. A sweet, delicate face I saw, not endowed, perhaps, withthat exquisite balance and proportion of feature wherein they tell usbeauty lies, but blessed with a wondrously dainty beauty all its own;a beauty, perhaps, as much of expression as of form; for in that gentlecountenance was mirrored every tender grace of girlhood, all that isfresh and pure and virginal.
I held my breath, I think, as I stood in ravished contemplation of thatwhite vision. If this were Lavedan, and that the cold Roxalanne who hadsent my bold Chatellerault back to Paris empty-handed then were my taska very welcome one.
How little it had weighed with me that I was come to Languedoc to woo awoman bearing the name of Roxalanne de Lavedan I have already shown. Buthere in this same Languedoc I beheld to-night a woman whom it seemed Imight have loved, for not in ten years--not, indeed, in all my life--hadany face so wrought upon me and called to my nature with so strong avoice.
I gazed at that child, and I thought of the women that I had known--thebold, bedizened beauties of a Court said to be the first in Europe. Andthen it came to me that this was no demoiselle of Lavedan, no demoiselleat all in fact, for the noblesse of France owned no such faces. Candourand purity were not to be looked for in the high-bred countenancesof our great families; they were sometimes found in the faces of thechildren of their retainers. Yes; I had it now. This child was thedaughter of some custodian of the demesne before me.
Suddenly, as she stood there in the moonlight, a song, sung athalf-voice, floated down on the calm air. It was a ditty of oldProvence, a melody I knew and loved, and if aught had been wanting toheighten the enchantment that already ravished me, that soft melodiousvoice had done it. Singing still, she turned and reentered the room,leaving wide the windows, so that faintly, as from a distance, her voicestill reached me after she was gone from sight.
It was in that hour that it came to me to cast myself upon this faircreature's mercy. Surely one so sweet and saintly to behold would takecompassion on an unfortunate! Haply my wound and all the rest that I hadthat night endured made me dull-witted and warped my reason.
With what strength I still possessed I went to work to scale herbalcony. The task was easy even for one in my spent condition. Thewall was thick with ivy, and, moreover, a window beneath afforded somesupport, for by standing on the heavy coping I could with my fingerstouch the sill of the balcony above. Thus I hoisted myself, andpresently I threw an arm over the parapet. Already I was astride of thatsame Parapet before she became aware of my presence.
The song died suddenly on her lips, and her eyes, blue asforget-me-nots, were wide now with the fear that the sight of meoccasioned. Another second and there had been an outcry that would havebrought the house about our ears, when, stepping to the threshold of theroom, "Mademoiselle," I entreated, "for the love of God, be silent! Imean you no harm. I am a fugitive. I am pursued."
This was no considered speech. There had been no preparing of words; Ihad uttered them mechanically almost--perhaps by inspiration, for theywere surely the best calculated to enlist this lady's sympathy. And sofar as went the words themselves, they were rigorously true.
With eyes wide open still, she confronted me, and I now observed thatshe was not so tall as from below I had imagined. She was, in fact, of ashort stature rather, but of proportions so exquisite that she conveyedan impression of some height. In her hand she held a taper by whoselight she had been surveying herself in her mirror at the moment ofmy advent. Her unbound hair of brown fell like a mantle about hershoulders, and this fact it was drew me to notice that she was inher night-rail, and that this room to which I had penetrated was herchamber.
"Who are you?" she asked breathlessly, as though in such a pass myidentity 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 suchequivocation here, I was on the point of giving her my name. But notingmy hesitation, and misconstruing it, she forestalled me.
"I understand, monsieur," said she more composedly. "And you need haveno fear. You are among friends."
Her eyes had travelled over my sodden clothes, the haggard pallor of myface, 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 theheavy curtain across it, thereby giving me a proof of confidence thatsmote me hard--impostor that I was.
"I crave your pardon, mademoiselle, for having startled you by the rudemanner of my coming," said I, and never in my life had I felt less atease than then. "But I was exhausted and desperate. I am wounded, I haveridden hard, and I swam the river."
The latter piece of information was vastly unnecessary, seeing that thewater from my clothes was forming a pool about my feet. "I saw you frombelow; mademoiselle, and surely, I thought, so sweet a lady would havepity on an unfortunate." She observed that my eyes were upon her, andin an act of instinctive maidenliness she bore her hand to her throat todraw the draperies together and screen the beauties of her neck from myunwarranted glance, as though her daily gown did not reveal as much andmore of them.
That act, however, served to arouse me to a sense of my position. Whatdid I there? It was a profanity--a defiling, I swore; from which you'llsee, that Bardelys was grown of a sudden very nice.
"M
onsieur," she was saying, "you are exhausted."
"But that I rode hard," I laughed, "it is likely they had taken me toToulouse, were I might have lost my head before my friends could havefound and claimed me. I hope you'll see it is too comely a head to be solightly parted with."
"For that," said she, half seriously, half whimsically, "the ugliesthead would be too comely."
I laughed softly, amusedly; then of a sudden, without warning, afaintness 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 wewill 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 handand carrying it towards my lips. But ere I had imprinted the intendedkiss upon her fingers--and by some miracle they were not withdrawn--myeyes encountered hers again. I paused as one may pause who contemplatesa sacrilege. For a moment she held my glance with hers; then I fellabashed, and released her hand.
The innocence peeping out of that child's eyes it was that had in thatmoment 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 itwere a garment, and, straightening myself, I stepped of a sudden to thewindow. Without a word, I made shift to draw back the curtain when herhand, 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 asquickly 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 endedbrusquely.
"But, monsieur--" she began.
"Let me go," I commanded almost roughly, as I shook my arm free of hergrasp.
"Bethink you that you are exhausted. If you go forth now, monsieur, youwill assuredly be taken. You must not go."
I laughed softly, and with some bitterness, too, for I was angry withmyself.
"Hush, child," I said. "Better so, if it is to be."
And with that I drew aside the curtains and pushed the leaves of thewindow apart. She remained standing in the room, watching me, her facepale, and hex eyes pained and puzzled.
One last glance I gave her as I bestrode the rail of her balcony. ThenI lowered myself as I had ascended. I was hanging by my hands, seekingwith 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 whitefigure leaning on the balcony above me; then a veil seemed drawn overmy eyes; there came a sense of falling; a rush as of a tempestuous wind;then--nothing.