Bardelys the Magnificent by Rafael Sabatini (best ebook reader under 100 .txt) đź“–
- Author: Rafael Sabatini
- Performer: 1406820563
Book online «Bardelys the Magnificent by Rafael Sabatini (best ebook reader under 100 .txt) 📖». Author Rafael Sabatini
“Will you explain?”
“Aye,” snarled Marsac, and his sword flashed from his scabbard,”
I’ll explain. As God lives, I’ll explain - with this!” And he
whirled his blade under the eyes of the invalid. “Come, my master,
the comedy’s played out. Cast aside that crutch and draw; draw,
man, or, sangdieu, I’ll run you through as you stand!”
There was a commotion below. The landlord and a posse of his
satellites - waiters, ostlers, and stableboys - rushed between
them, and sought to restrain the bloodthirsty Marsac. But he
shook them off as a bull shakes off a pack of dogs, and like an
angry bull, too, did he stand his ground and bellow. In a moment
his sweeping sword had cleared a circle about him. In its
lightning dartings hither and thither at random, it had stung a
waiter in the calf, and when the fellow saw the blood staining his
hose, he added to the general din his shrieks that he was murdered.
Marsac swore and threatened in a breath, and a kitchen wench, from
a point of vantage on the steps, called shame upon him and abused
him roundly for a cowardly assassin to assail a poor sufferer who
could hardly stand upright.
“Po’ Cap de Dieu!” swore Castelroux at my elbow. “Saw you ever such
an ado? What has chanced?”
But I never stayed to answer him. Unless I acted quickly blood
would assuredly be shed. I was the one man who could explain
matters, and it was a mercy for Lesperon that I should have been at
hand in the hour of his meeting that fire-eater Marsac. I forgot
the circumstances in which I stood to Castelroux; I forgot
everything but the imminent necessity that I should intervene.
Some seven feet below our window was the roof of the porch; from
that to the ground it might be some eight feet more. Before my
Gascon captain knew what I was about, I had swung myself down from
the window on to the projecting porch. A second later, I created
a diversion by landing in the midst of the courtyard fray, with the
alarmed Castelroux - who imagined that I was escaping - following
by the same unusual road, and shouting as he came “Monsieur de
Lesperon! Hi! Monsieur de Lesperon! Mordieu! Remember your
parole, Monsieur de Lesperon!”
Nothing could have been better calculated to stem Marsac’s fury;
nothing could have so predisposed him to lend an ear to what I had
to say, for it was very evident that Castelroux’s words were
addressed to me, and that it was I whom he called by the name of
Lesperon. In an instant I was at Marsac’s side. But before I
could utter a word, “What the devil does this mean?” he asked,
eyeing me with fierce suspicion.
“It means, monsieur, that there are more Lesperons than one in
France. I am the Lesperon who was at Lavedan. If you doubt me,
ask this gentleman, who arrested me there last night. Ask him,
too, why we have halted here. Ask him, if you will, to show you
the letter that you left at Lavedan making an assignation here
before noon to-day, which letter I received.”
The suspicion faded from Marsac’s eyes, and they grew round with
wonder as he listened to this prodigious array of evidence.
Lesperon looked on in no less amazement, yet I am sure from the
manner of his glance that he did not recognize in me the man that
had succoured him at Mirepoix. That, after all, was natural
enough; for the minds of men in such reduced conditions as had been
his upon that night are not prone to receive very clear impressions,
and still less prone to retain such impressions as they do receive.
Before Marsac could answer me, Castelroux was at my side.
“A thousand apologies!” he laughed. “A fool might have guessed the
errand that took you so quickly through that window, and none but
a fool would have suspected you of seeking to escape. It was
unworthy in me, Monsieur de Lesperon.”
I turned to him while those others still stood gaping, and led him
aside.
“Monsieur le Capitaine,” said I, “you find it troublesome enough
to reconcile your conscience with such arrests as you are charged
to make, is it not so.
“Mordieu!” he cried, by way of emphatically assenting.
“Now, if you should chance to overhear words betraying to you
certain people whom otherwise you would never suspect of being
rebels, your soldier’s duty would, nevertheless, compel you to
apprehend them, would it not?”
“Why, true. I am afraid it would,” he answered, with a grimace.
“But, if forewarned that by being present in a certain place you
should overhear such words, what course would you pursue?”
“Avoid it like a pestilence, monsieur,” he answered promptly.
“Then, Monsieur le Capitaine, may I trespass upon your generosity
to beseech you to let me take these litigants to our room upstairs,
and to leave us alone there for a half-hour?”
Frankness was my best friend in dealing with Castelroux - frankness
and his distaste for the business they had charged him with. As
for Marsac and Lesperon, they were both eager enough to have the
mystery explained, and when Castelroux having consented - I invited
them to my chamber, they came readily enough.
Since Monsieur de Lesperon did not recognize me, there was no reason
why I should enlighten him touching my identity, and every reason
why I should not. As soon as they were seated, I went to the heart
of the matter at once and without preamble.
“A fortnight ago, gentlemen,” said I, “I was driven by a pack of
dragoons across the Garonne. I was wounded in the shoulder and very
exhausted, and I knocked at the gates of Lavedan to crave shelter.
That shelter, gentlemen, was afforded me, and when I had announced
myself as Monsieur de Lesperon, it was all the more cordially
because one Monsieur de Marsac, who was a friend of the Vicomte de
Lavedan, and a partisan in the lost cause of Orleans, happened often
to have spoken of a certain Monsieur de Lesperon as his very dear
friend. I have no doubt, gentlemen, that you will think harshly of
me because I did not enlighten the Vicomte. But there were reasons
for which I trust you will not press me, since I shall find it
difficult to answer you with truth.”
“But is your name Lesperon?” cried Lesperon.
“That, monsieur, is a small matter. Whether my name is Lesperon or
not, I confess to having practised a duplicity upon the Vicomte and
his family, since I am certainly not the Lesperon whose identity I
accepted. But if I accepted that identity, monsieur, I also
accepted your liabilities, and so I think that you should find it
in your heart to extend me some measure of forgiveness. As Rene de
Lesperon, of Lesperon in Gascony, I was arrested last night at
Lavedan, and, as you may observe, I am being taken to Toulouse to
stand the charge of high treason. I have not demurred; I have not
denied in the hour of trouble the identity that served me in my
hour of need. I am taking the bitter with the sweet, and I assure
you, gentlemen, that the bitter predominates in a very marked degree.”
“But this must not be,” cried Lesperon, rising. “I know not what use
you may have made of my name, but I have no reason to think that you
can have brought discredit upon it, and so—”
“I thank you, monsieur, but—”
“And so I cannot submit that you shall go to Toulouse in my stead.
Where is this officer whose prisoner you are? Pray summon him,
monsieur, and let us set the matter right.”
“This is very generous,” I answered calmly. “But I have crimes
enough upon my head, and so, if the worst should befall me, I am
simply atoning in one person for the errors of two.”
“But that is no concern of mine!” he cried.
“It is so much your concern that if you commit so egregious a blunder
as to denounce yourself, you will have ruined yourself, without
materially benefitting me.
He still objected, but in this strain I argued for some time, and
to such good purpose that in the end I made him realize that by
betraying himself he would not save me, but only join me on the
journey to the scaffold.
“Besides, gentlemen,” I pursued, “my case is far from hopeless. I
have every confidence that, as matters stand, by putting forth my
hand at the right moment, by announcing my identity at the proper
season, I can, if I am so inclined, save my neck from the headsman.”
“If you are so inclined?” they both cried, their looks charged with
inquiry.
“Let that be,” I answered; “it does not at present concern us. What
I desire you to understand, Monsieur de Lesperon, is that if I go
to Toulouse alone, when the time comes to proclaim myself, and it is
found that I am not Rene de Lesperon, of Lesperon in Gascony, they
will assume that you are dead, and there will be no count against me.
“But if you come with me, and thereby afford proof that you are
alive, my impersonation of you may cause me trouble. They may opine
that I have been an abettor of treason, that I have attempted to
circumvent the ends of justice, and that I may have impersonated you
in order to render possible your escape. For that, you may rest
assured, they will punish me.
“You will see, therefore, that my own safety rests on your passing
quietly out of France and leaving the belief behind you that you are
dead - a belief that will quickly spread once I shall have cast off
your identity. You apprehend me?”
“Vaguely, monsieur; and perhaps you are right. What do you say,
Stanislas?”
“Say?” cried the fiery Marsac. “I am weighed down with shame, my
poor Rene, for having so misjudged you.”
More he would have said in the same strain, but Lesperon cut him
short and bade him attend to the issue now before him. They
discussed it at some length, but always under the cloud in which
my mysteriousness enveloped it, and, in the end, encouraged by my
renewed assurances that I could best save myself if Lesperon were
not taken with me, the Gascon consented to my proposals.
Marsac was on his way to Spain. His sister, he told us, awaited
him at Carcassonne. Lesperon should set out with him at once, and
in forty-eight hours they would be beyond the reach of the King’s
anger.
“I have a favour to ask of you, Monsieur de Marsac,” said I, rising;
for our business was at an end. “It is that if you should have an
opportunity of communicating with Mademoiselle de Lavedan, you will
let her know that I am not - not the Lesperon that is betrothed to
your sister.”
“I will inform her of it, monsieur,” he answered readily; and then,
of a sudden, a look of understanding and of infinite pity came into
his eyes. “My God!” he cried.
“What is it, monsieur?” I asked, staggered by that sudden outcry.
“Do not ask me, monsieur, do not ask me. I had forgotten for the
moment, in the excitement of all these revelations. But—” He
stopped short.
“Well, monsieur?”
He seemed to ponder a moment, then looking at me again with that
same compassionate glance, “You had better know,” said he.
Comments (0)