M. de Mar appears to consider himself of very little consequence, or of very great, since he is absent a whole month from the Hôtel de Lorraine. Does he think he is not missed? Or is he so sure of his standing that he fears no supplanting? In either case he is wrong. He is missed but he will not be missed forever. He may, if he will, be forgiven; or he may, if he will, be forgotten. If he would escape oblivion, let him come to-night, at the eleventh hour, to lay his apologies at the feet of
LORANCE DE MONTLUC.
"And she—"
"Is cousin and ward to the Duke of Mayenne. Yes, and my heart's desire."
"Monsieur—"
"Aye, you begin to see it now," he cried vehemently. "You see why I have stuck to Paris these three years, why I could not follow my father into exile. It was more than a handful of pistoles caused the breach with Monsieur; more than a quarrel over Gervais de Grammont. That was the spark kindled the powder, but the train was laid."
"Then you, monsieur, were a Leaguer?"
"Nay, I was not!" he cried. "To my credit,—or my shame, as you choose,—I was not. I was neither one nor the other, neither fish nor flesh. My father thought me a Leaguer, but I was not. I was not disloyal, in deed at least, to the house that bore me. Monsieur reviled me for a skulker, a fainéant; nom de diable, he might have remembered his own three years of idleness!"
"Monsieur held out for his religion—"
"Mademoiselle is my religion," he cried, and then laughed, not merrily.
"Pardieu! for all my pains I have not won her. I have skulked and evaded and temporized—for nothing. I would not join the League and break my father's heart; would not stand out against it and lose Lorance. I have been trying these three years to please both the goat and the cabbage—with the usual ending. I have pleased nobody. I am out of Mayenne's books: he made me overtures and I refused him. I am out of my father's books: he thinks me a traitor and parricide. And I am out of mademoiselle's: she despises me for a laggard. Had I gone in with Mayenne I had won her. Had I gone with Monsieur I was sure of a command in King Henry's army. But I, wanting both, get neither. Between two stools, I fall miserably to the ground. I am but a dawdler, a do-nothing, the butt and laughing-stock of all brave men.
"But I am done with shilly-shally!" he added, catching his breath. "For once I shall do something. Mlle. de Montluc has given me a last chance. She has sent for me, and I go. If I fall dead on her threshold, I at least die looking at her."
"Monsieur, monsieur," I cried in despair, "you will not die looking at her, for you will die out here in the street, and that will profit neither you nor her, but only Lucas and his crew."
"That is as may be. At least I make the attempt. A month back I sent her a letter. I found it to-night in Lucas's doublet. She thinks me careless of her. I must go."
"Monsieur, you are mad," I cried. "You have said yourself Mayenne is likely to be behind Lucas. If you go you do but walk into the enemies' very jaws. It is a trap, a lure."
"Félix, beware what you say!" he interrupted with quick-blazing ire. "I do not permit such words to be spoken in connection with Mlle. de Montluc."
"But, monsieur—"
"Silence!" he commanded in a voice as sharp as crack of pistolet. The St. Quentins had ever the most abundant faith in those they loved. I remembered how Monsieur in just such a blaze of resentment had forbidden me to speak ill of his son. And I remembered, too, that Monsieur's faith had been justified and that my accusations were lies. Natheless, I liked not the look of this affair, and I attempted further warnings.
"Monsieur, in my opinion—"
"You are not here to hold opinions, Félix, but your tongue."
I did, at that, and stood back from the bed to let him do as it liked him. He rose and went over to the chair where his clothes lay, only to drop into it half swooning. I ran to the ewer and dashed half the water in it into his face.
"Peste, you need not drown me!" he cried testily. "I am well; it was but a moment's dizziness." He got up again at once, but was forced to seize my shoulder to keep from falling.
"It was that damnable potion he made me drink," he muttered. "I am all well else; I am not weak. Curse the room; it reels about like a ship at sea."
I put my arm about him and led him back to bed; nor did he argue about it but lay back with his eyes shut, so white against the white bed-linen I thought him fainted for sure. But before I could drench him again he raised his lids.
"Félix, will you go get a shutter? For I see clearly that I shall reach Mlle. de Montluc this night in no other way."
"Monsieur," I said, "I can go. I can tell your mistress you cannot walk across this room to-night. I can do my best for you, M. Étienne."
"My faith! I think I must e'en let you try. But what to bid you say to her—pardieu! I scarce know what I could say to her myself."
"I can tell her how sorely you are hurt—how you would come, but cannot."
"And make her believe it," he cried eagerly. "Do not let her think it a flimsy excuse. And yet I do think she will believe you," he added, with half a laugh. "There is something very trust-compelling about you, Félix. And assure her of my lifelong, never-failing service."
"But I thought monsieur was going to take service with Henry of Navarre."
"I was!" he cried. "I am! Oh, Félix, was ever a poor wight so harried and torn betwixt two as I? Whom Jupiter would destroy he first makes mad. I shall be gibbering in a cage before I have done with it."
"Monsieur will be gibbering in his bed unless he sleeps soon. I go now, monsieur."
"And good luck to you! Félix, I offer you no reward for this midnight journey into the house of our enemies. For recompense you will see her."
XIII
Mademoiselle.
went to find Maître Menard, to urge upon him that some one should stay with M. Étienne while I was gone, lest he swooned or became light-headed. But the surgeon himself was present, having returned from bandaging up some common skull to see how his noble patient rested. He promised that he would stay the night with M. le Comte; so, eased of that care, I set out for the Hôtel de Lorraine, one of the inn-servants with a flambeau coming along to guide and guard me. M. Étienne was a favourite in this inn of Maître Menard's; they did not stop to ask whether he had money in his purse before falling over one another in their eagerness to serve him. It is my opinion that one gets more out of the world by dint of fair words than by a long purse or a long sword.
We had not gone a block from the inn before I turned to the right-about, to the impatience of my escort.
"Nay, Jean, I must go back," I said. "I will only delay a moment, but see Maître Menard I must."
He was still in the cabaret where the crowd was thinning.
"Now what brings you back?"
"This, maître," said I, drawing him into a corner. "M. le Comte has been in a fracas to-night, as you perchance may have divined. His arch-enemy gave us the slip. And I am not easy for monsieur while this Lucas is at large. He has the devil's own cunning and malice; he might track him here to the Three Lanterns. Therefore, maître, I beg you to admit no one to M. le Comte—no one on any business whatsoever. Not if he comes from the Duke of Mayenne himself."
"I won't admit the Sixteen themselves," the maître declared.
"There is one man you may admit," I conceded. "Vigo, M. de St. Quentin's equery. You will know him for the biggest man in France."
"Good. And this other; what is he like?"
"He is young," I said, "not above four or five and twenty. Tall and slim,—oh, without doubt, a gentleman. He has light-brown hair and thin, aquiline face. His tongue is unbound, too."
"His tongue shall not get around me," Maître Menard promised. "The host of the Three Lanterns was not born yesterday let me tell you."
With this comforting assurance I set out once more on my expedition with, to tell truth, no very keen enthusiasm for the business. It was all very well for M. Étienne to declare grandly that as recompense for my trouble I should see Mlle. de Montluc. But I was not her lover and I thought I could get along very comfortably without seeing her. I knew not how to bear myself before a splendid young noblewoman. When I had dashed across Paris to slay the traitor in the Rue Coupejarrets I had not been afraid; but now, going with a love-message to a girl, I was scared.
And there was more than the fear of her bright eyes to give me pause. I was afraid of Mlle. de Montluc, but more afraid of M. de Mayenne's cousin. What mocking devil had driven Étienne de Mar, out of a whole France full of lovely women, to fix his unturnable desire on this Ligueuse of Mayenne's own brood? Had his father's friends no daughters, that he must seek a mistress from the black duke's household? Were there no families of clean hands and honest speech, that he must ally himself with the treacherous blood of Lorraine?
I had seen a sample of the League's work to-day, and I liked it not. If Mayenne were, as Yeux-gris surmised, Lucas's backer, I marvelled that my master cared to enter his house; I marvelled that he cared to send his servant there. Yet I went none the less readily for that; I was here to do his bidding. Nor was I greatly alarmed for my own skin; I thought myself too small to be worth my Lord Mayenne's powder. And I had, I do confess, a lively curiosity to behold the interior of the greatest house in Paris, the very core and centre of the League. Belike if it had not been for terror of this young demoiselle I had stepped along cheerfully enough.
Though the hour was late, many people still loitered in the streets, the clear summer night, and all of them were talking politics. As Jean and I passed at a rapid pace the groups under the wine-shop lanterns, we caught always the names of Mayenne and Navarre. Everywhere they asked the same two questions: Was it true that Henry was coming into the Church? And if so, what would Mayenne do next? I perceived that old Maître Jacques of the Amour de Dieu knew what he was talking about: the people of Paris were sick to death of the Leagues and their intriguery, galled to desperation under the yoke of the Sixteen.
Mayenne's fine new hôtel in the Rue St. Antoine was lighted as for a fête. From its open windows came sounds of gay laughter and rattling dice. You might have thought them keeping carnival in the midst of a happy and loyal city. If the Lieutenant-General found anything to vex him in the present situation, he did not let the commonalty know it.
The Duke of Mayenne's house, like my duke's, was guarded by men-at-arms; but his grilles were thrown back while his soldiers lounged on the stone benches in the archway. Some of them were talking to a little knot of street idlers who had gathered about the entrance, while others, with the aid of a torch and a greasy pack of cards, were playing lansquenet.
I knew no way to do but to ask openly for Mlle. de Montluc, declaring that I came on behalf of the Comte de Mar.
"That is right; you are to enter," the captain of the guard replied at once. "But you are not the Comte de Mar yourself? Nay, no need to ask," he added with a laugh. "A pretty count you would make."
"I am his servant," I said. "I am charged with a message for mademoiselle."
"Well, my orders were to admit the count, but I suppose you may go in. If mademoiselle cannot land her lover it were cruel to deny her the consolation of a message."
A laugh went up and one of the gamblers looked round to say:
"It has gone hard with mademoiselle lately, sangdieu! Here's the Comte de Mar has not set foot in the house for a month or more, and M. Paul for a quarter of a year is vanished off the face of the earth. It seemed as if she must take the little cheese or nothing. But now things are looking up with her. M. Paul has walked calmly in, and here is a messenger at least from the other."
"But M. Paul has walked calmly out again," a third soldier took up the tale. "He did not stay very long, for all mademoiselle's graces."
"Then I warrant 'twas mademoiselle sent him off with a flea in his ear," another cried. "She looks higher than a bastard, even Le Balafré's own."
"She had better take care how she flouts Paul de Lorraine," came the retort, but the captain bade me march along. I followed him into the house, leaving Jean to be edified, no doubt, by a whole history, false and true, concerning Mlle. de Montluc. We bow down before the lofty of the earth, we underlings, but behind their backs there is none with whose names we make so free. And there we have the advantage of our masters; for they know little of our private matters while we know everything of theirs.
In the hall the captain turned me over to a lackey who conducted me through a couple of antechambers to a curtained doorway whence issued a merry confusion of voices and laughter. He passed in while I remained to undergo the scrutiny of the pair of flunkies whose repose we had invaded. But in a moment my guide appeared again, lifting the curtain for me to enter.
The big room was ablaze with candles set in mirrored sconces along the walls, set also in silver candelabra on the tables. There was a crowd of people in the place, a hundred it seemed to my dazzled eyes; grouped, most of them, about the tables set up and down, either taking hands themselves at cards or dice or betting on those who did. Bluff soldiers in breastplate and jack-boots were not wanting in the throng, but the larger number of the gallants were brave in silken doublets and spotless ruffs, as became a noble's drawing-room. And the ladies! mordieu, what am I to say of them? Tricked out in every gay colour under the sun, agleam with jewels—eh bien, the ladies of St. Quentin, that I had thought so fine, were but serving-maids to these.
I stood blinking, dazed by the lights and the crowd and the chatter, unable in the first moment to note clearly any face in the congregation of strange countenances. Nor would it have helped me if I could, for here close about were a dozen fair women, any one of whom might be Mlle. de Montluc. My heart hammered in my throat. I knew not whom to address. But a young noble near by, dazzling in a suit of pink, took the burden on himself.
"I heard Mar's name; yet you are not M. de Mar, I think."
He spoke with a languid but none the less teasing derision. In truth, I must have resembled a little brown hare suddenly turned out of a bag in the midst of that gorgeous company.
"No," I stammered; "I am his servant. I seek Mlle. de Montluc."
"I have wondered what has become of Étienne de Mar this last month," spoke a second young gentleman, advancing from his place behind a fair one's chair. He was neither so pretty nor so fine as the other, but in his short, stocky figure and square face there was a force which his comrade lacked. He regarded me with a far keener glance as he asked:
"Peste! he must be in low water if this is the best he can do for a lackey."
"Perhaps the fellow's errand is to beg an advance from Mlle. de Montluc," suggested the pink youth.
"Who speaks my name?" a clear voice called; and a lady, laying down her hand at cards, rose and came toward me.
She was clad in amber satin. She was tall, and she carried herself with stately grace. Her black hair shadowed a cheek as purely white and pink as that of any yellow-locked Frisian girl, while her eyes, under their sooty lashes, shone blue as corn-flowers.
I began to understand M. Étienne.
"Who is it wants me?" she repeated, and catching sight of me stood regarding me in some surprise, not unfriendly, waiting for me to explain myself. But before I could find my tongue the man in pink answered her with his soft drawl:
"Mademoiselle, this is a minister plenipotentiary and envoy extraordinary—most extraordinary—from the court of his Highness the Comte de Mar."
"Oh, that is it!" she cried with a little laugh, but not, I think, at my uncouthness, though she looked me over curiously.
"He has not come himself, M. de Mar?"
"It appears not, mademoiselle."
She did not seem vastly disconcerted for all she cried in doleful tones:
"Alack! alack! I have lost. And Paul is not present to enjoy his triumph. He wagered me a pair of pearl-broidered gloves that I could not produce M. de Mar."
"But it is not his fault," I answered her, eagerly. "It is not M. de Mar's fault, mademoiselle. He has been hurt to-day, and he could not come. He is in bed of his wounds; he could not walk across his room. He tried. He bade me lay at mademoiselle's feet his lifelong services."
"Ah, Lorance!" cried a young demoiselle in a sky-coloured gown, "methinks you have indeed lost M. de Mar if he sends you no better messenger of his regrets than this horse-boy."
"I have lost the gloves, that is certain and sad," Mlle. de Montluc replied, as if the loss of the wager were all her care. "I am punished for my vanity, mesdames et messieurs. I undertook to produce my recreant squire and I have failed. Alas!" And she put up her white hands before her face with a pretty imitation of despair, save that her eyes sparkled from between her fingers.
By this time the gamesters about us had stopped their play, in a general interest in the affair. An older lady coming forward with an air of authority demanded:
"What is this disturbance, Lorance?"
"A wager between me and my cousin Paul, madame," she answered with instant gravity and respect.
"Paul de Lorraine! Is he here?" the other asked, unpleased, I thought.
"Yes, madame. He dropped from the skies on us this afternoon. He is out of the house again now."
"But while he was in the house," quoth she in sky-colour, "though he did not find time to pay his respects to Mme. la Duchesse, he had the leisure for considerable conversation with Mlle. de Montluc."
The other lady, whom I now guessed to be the Duchesse de Mayenne herself, turned somewhat sharply on her cousin of Montluc.
"I do not yet hear your excuses, mademoiselle, for the introduction of a stable-boy into my salon."
"I beg you to believe, madame, I am not responsible for it," she protested. "Paul, when he was here, saw fit to rally me concerning M. de Mar. Mlle. de Tavanne informed him of the count's defection and they were pleased to be merry with me over it. I vowed I could get him back if I wished. The end of the matter was that I wrote a letter which my cousin promised to have conveyed to M. le Comte's old lodgings. This is the answer," mademoiselle cried, with a wave of her hand toward me. "But I did not expect it in this guise, madame. Blame your lackeys who know not their duties, not me."
"I blame you, mademoiselle," Mme. de Mayenne answered her, tartly. "I consider my salon no place for intrigues with horse-boys. If you must hold colloquy with this fellow, take him whither he belongs—to the stables."
A laugh went up among those who laugh at whatever a duchess says.
"Come, mesdames, we will resume our play," she added to the ladies who had followed her on the scene, and turned her back in lofty disdain on Mlle. de Montluc and her concerns. But though some of the company obeyed her, a curious circle still surrounded us.
"Dame! if you must be banished to the stables, we all will go, mademoiselle," declared the pink gallant. "We all want news of the vanished Mar."
"Indeed we do. We have missed him sorely. And I dare swear this messenger's account will prove diverting," lisped the sky-coloured demoiselle.
I was not enjoying myself. I had given all my hopes of glory to be out in the street again. I wished Mlle. de Montluc would take me to the stables—anywhere out of this laughing company. But she had no such intent.
"I think madame does not mean her sentence," she rejoined. "I would not for the world frustrate your curiosity, Blanche; nor yours, M. de Champfleury. Tell us what has befallen your master, Sir Courier."
"He has been in a duel, mademoiselle."
"Whom was he fighting?"
"And for what lady's favour?"
"Is it a pretty Huguenot this time?"
"Does she make him read his Bible?"
"Or did her big brother set on him for a wicked papist?"
The questions chorussed upon me; I saw they were framed to tease mademoiselle. I answered as best I might:
"He thinks of no lady but Mlle. de Montluc. The fight was over other matters. I am only told to say M. le Comte regrets most heartily that his wound prevents his coming, and to assure mademoiselle that he is too weak and faint to walk across the floor."
"Then exceed your instructions a little. Tell us what monsieur has been about these four weeks that he could not take time to visit us."
I was in a dilemma. I knew she was M. Étienne's chosen lady and therefore deserving of all fealty from me; yet at the same time I could not answer her question. It was sheer embarrassment and no intent of rudeness that caused my short answer:
"About his own concerns, mademoiselle."
"The young puppy begins to growl!" exclaimed the thick-set soldierly fellow who had bespoken me before, whose hostile gaze had never left my face. "I'll have him flogged, mademoiselle, for this insolence."
"M. de Brie—" she began at the same moment that I cried out to her:
"I meant no insolence; I crave mademoiselle's pardon." I added, in my haste floundering deeper into the mire: "Mademoiselle sees for herself that I cannot tell about M. le Comte's affairs in this house."
Brie had me by the collar.
"So that is what has become of Mar!" he cried triumphantly. "I thought as much. If Mar's affairs are to be a secret from this house, then, nom de dieu, they are no secret."
He shook me back and forth as if to shake the truth out of me, till my teeth rattled together; I could not have spoken if I would. But he cried on, his voice rising with excitement:
"It has been no secret where St. Quentin stands and what he has been about. He came into Paris, smooth and smiling, his own man, forsooth—neither ours nor the heretic's! Mordieu! he was Henry's, fast and sure, save that he was not man enough to say so. I told Mayenne last month we ought to settle with M. de St. Quentin; I asked nothing better than to attend to him. But the general would not, but let him alone, free and unmolested in his work of stirring up sedition. And Mar, too—"
He stopped in the middle of a word. All the company who had been pressing around us halted still. I knew that behind me some one had entered the room.
M. de Brie dragged me back from where we were blocking the passage. I turned in his grasp to face the newcomer.
He was a tall, stout man, deep-chested, thick-necked, heavy-jowled. His wavy hair, brushed up from a high forehead, was lightest brown, while his brows, mustachios, and beard were dark. His eyes were dark also, his full lips red and smiling. He had the beauty and presence of all the Guises; it needed not the star on his breast to tell me that this was Mayenne himself.
He advanced into the room returning the salutes of the company, but his glance travelling straight to me and my captor.
"What have we here, François?"
"This is a fellow of Étienne de Mar's, M. le Duc," Brie answered. "He came here with messages for Mlle. de Montluc. I am getting out of him what Mar has been up to since he disappeared a month back."
"You are at unnecessary pains, my dear François; I already know Mar's whereabouts and doings rather better than he knows them himself."
Brie dropped his hand from my collar, looking by no means at ease. I perceived that this was the way with Mayenne: you knew what he said but you did not know what he thought. His somewhat heavy face varied little; what went on in his mind behind the smiling mask was matter for anxiety. If he asked pleasantly after your health, you fancied he might be thinking how well you would grace the gallows.
M. de Brie said nothing and the duke continued:
"Yes, I have kept watch over him these five weeks. You are late, François. You little boys are fools; you think because you do not know a thing I do not know it. Was I cruel to keep my information from you, ma belle Lorance?"
The attack was absolutely sudden; he had not seemed to observe her. Mademoiselle coloured and made no instant reply. His voice was neither loud nor rough; he was smiling upon her.
"Or did you need no information, mademoiselle?"
She met his look unflinching.
"I have not been sighing for tidings of the Comte de Mar, monsieur."
"Because you have had tidings, mademoiselle?"
"No, monsieur, I have had no communication with M. de Mar since May—until to-night."
"And what has happened to-night?"
"To-night—Paul appeared."
"Paul!" ejaculated the duke, startled momentarily out of his phlegm. "Paul here?"
"He was, monsieur, an hour ago. He has since gone forth again, I know not whither or for what."
Mayenne ruminated over this, pulling off his gloves slowly.
"Well? What has this to do with Mar?"
She had no choice, though in evident fear of his displeasure, but to go through again the tale of the wager and letter. She was moistening her dry lips as she finished, her eyes on his face wide with apprehension. But he answered amiably, half absently, as if the whole affair were a triviality:
"Never mind; I will give you a pair of gloves, Lorance."
He stood smiling upon us as if amused for an idle moment over our childish games. The colour came back to her cheeks; she made him a curtsey, laughing lightly.
"Then my grief is indeed cured, monsieur. A new bit of finery is the best of balms for wounded self-esteem, is it not, Blanche? I confess I am piqued; I had dared to imagine that my squire might remember me still after a month of absence. I should have known it too much to ask of mortal man. Not till the rivers run up-hill will you keep our memories green for more than a week, messieurs."
"She turns it off well," cried the little demoiselle in blue, Mlle. Blanche de Tavanne; "you would not guess that she will be awake the night long, weeping over M. de Mar's defection."
"I!" exclaimed Mlle. de Montluc; "I weep over his recreancy? It is a far-fetched jest, my Blanche; can you invent no better? The Comte de Mar—behold him!"
She snatched a card from a tossed-down hand, holding it up aloft for us all to see. It was by chance the knave of diamonds; the pictured face with its yellow hair bore, in my fancy at least, a suggestion of M. Étienne.
"Behold M. de Mar—behold his fate!" With a twinkling of her white fingers she had torn the luckless knave into a dozen pieces and sent them whirling over her head to fall far and wide among the company.
"Summary measures, mademoiselle!" quoth a grizzled warrior, with a laugh. "Mordieu! have we your good permission to deal likewise with the flesh-and-blood Mar, when we go to arrest him for conspiring against the Holy League?"
But Mlle. de Tavanne's quick tongue robbed him of his answer.
"Marry, you are severe on him, Lorance. To be sure he does not come himself, but he sends so gallant a messenger!"
Mademoiselle glanced at me with hard blue eyes.
"That is the greatest insult of all," she said. "I could forgive—and forget—his absence; but I do not forgive his despatching me his horse-boy."
Thus far I had choked down my swelling rage at her faithlessness, her vanity, her despiteful entreatment of my master's plight. I knew it was sheer madness for me to attempt his defence before this hostile company; nay, there was no object in defending him; there was not one here who cared to hear good of him. But at her last insult to him my blood boiled so hot that I lost all command of myself, and I burst out:
"If I were a horse-boy,—which I am not,—I were twenty times too good to be carrying messages hither. You need not rail at his poverty, mademoiselle; it was you brought him to it. It was for you he was turned out of his father's house. But for you he would not now be lying in a garret, penniless and dishonoured. Whatever ills he suffers, it is you and your false house have brought them."
Brie had me by the throat. Mayenne interfered without excitement.
"Don't strangle him, François; I may need him later. Let him be flogged and locked in the oratory."
He turned away as one bored over a trifling matter. And as the lackeys dragged me back to the door, I heard Mlle. de Montluc saying:
"Oh, M. de Latour, what have I done in destroying your knave of diamonds! Ma foi, you had a quatorze!"
XIV
In the oratory.
ere, Pierre!" M. de Brie called to the head lackey, "here's a candidate for a hiding. This is a cub of that fellow Mar's. He reckoned wrong when he brought his insolence into this house. Lay on well, boys; make him howl."
Brie would have liked well enough, I fancy, to come along and see the fun, but he conceived that his duty lay in the salon. Pierre, the same who had conducted me to Mlle. de Montluc, now led the way into a long oak-panelled parlour. Opposite the entrance was a huge chimney carved with the arms of Lorraine; at one end a door led into a little oratory where tapers burned before the image of the Virgin; at the other, before the two narrow windows, stood a long table with writing-materials. Chests and cupboards nearly filled the walls. I took this to be a sort of council-room of my Lord Mayenne.
Pierre sent one of his men for a cane and to the other suggested that he should quench the Virgin's candles.
"For I don't see why this rascal should have the comfort of a light in there," he said. "As for Madonna Mary, she will not mind; she has a million others to see by."
I was left alone with him and I promised myself the joy of one good blow at his face, no matter how deep they flayed me for it. But as I gathered myself for the rush he spoke to me low and cautiously:
"Now howl your loudest, lad; and I'll not lay on too hard."
My clinched fist dropped to my side.
"You never did me any harm," he muttered. "Howl till they think you half killed, and I'll manage."
I gaped at him, not knowing what to make of it. But this is the way of the world; if there is much cruelty in it, there is much kindness, too.
"Here's the cane, nom d'un chien!" Pierre exclaimed boisterously. "Give it here, Jean; there'll not be much of it left when I get through."
"You'll strip his coat off?" said the second lackey, from the oratory.
"My faith! no; I should kill him if I did, and the duke wants him," Pierre retorted. So without more ado the two men tied my wrists in front of me, and Jean held me by the knot while Pierre laid on. And he, good fellow, grasping my collar, contrived to pull my loose jerkin away from my back, so that he dusted it down without greatly incommoding me. Some hard whacks I did get, but they were nothing to what a strong man could have given in grim earnest.
I trust I could have taken a real flogging with as close lips as anybody, but if my kind succourer wanted howls, howls he should have. I yelled and cowered and dodged about, to the roaring delight of Jean and his mate. Indeed, I had drawn a crowd of grinning varlets to the door before my performance was over. But at length, when I thought I had done enough for their pleasure and that of the nobles in the salon, I dropped down on the floor and lay quiet, with shut eyes.
"He has had his fill, I trow; we must not spoil him for the master," Pierre said.
"Oh, he'll come to in a minute," another answered. "Why, you have not even drawn blood, Pierre!" He laid his hand on my back, whereat I groaned my hollowest.
"It will be many a day before he cares to have his back touched," laughed Pierre. "Here, men, lend a hand. Pardieu! I wonder what Our Lady thinks of some of the devotees we bring her."
As they lifted me he took my hand with an inquiring squeeze; and I squeezed back, grateful, if ever a boy was. They flung me down on the oratory floor and left me there a prisoner.
I spent the next hour or so trying to undo the knot of my handcuff with my teeth; and failing that, to chew the stout rope in two. I was minded as I worked of Lucas and his bonds, and wondered whether he had managed to rid himself of their inconvenience. He went straightway, doubtless, to some confederate who cut them for him, and even now was planning fresh evil against the St. Quentins. I remembered his face as he cried to M. le Comte that they should meet again; and I thought that M. Étienne was likely to have his hands full with Lucas, without this unlucky tanglement with Mlle. de Montluc. In the darkness and solitude I called down a murrain on his folly. Why could he not leave the girl alone? There were other blue eyes in the world. And it would be hard on humanity if there were none kindlier.
He had been at it three years, too. For three long years this girl's fair face had stood between him and his home, between him and action, between him and happiness. It was a fair face, truly; yet, in my opinion, neither it nor any maid's was worth such pains. If she had loved him it had not been worth it, but this girl spurned and flouted him. Why, in the name of Heaven, could he not put the jade out of his mind and turn merrily to St. Denis and the road to glory? When I got back to him and told him how she had mocked him, hang me but he should, though!
Ah, but when was I to get back to him? That rested not with me but with my dangerous host, the League's Lieutenant-General, dark-minded Mayenne. What he wanted with me he had not revealed; nor was it a pleasant subject for speculation. He meant me, of course, to tell him all I knew of the St. Quentins; well, that was soon done; belike he understood more than I of the day's work. But after he had questioned me, what?
Would he consider, with his servant Pierre, that I had never done him any harm? Or would he—I wondered, if they flung me out stark into some alley's gutter, whether M. le Comte would search for me and claim my carcass? Or would he, too, have fallen by the blades of the League?
I was shuddering as I waited there in the darkness. Never, not even this morning in the closet of the Rue Coupejarrets, had I been in such mortal dread. I had walked out of that closet to find M. Étienne; but I was not likely to happen on succour here. Pierre, for all his kind heart, could not save me from the Duke of Mayenne.
Then, when my hope was at its nadir, I remembered who was with me in the little room. I groped my way to Our Lady's feet and prayed her to save me, and if she might not, then to stand by me during the hard moment of dying and receive my seeking soul. Comforted now and deeming I could pass, if it came to that, with a steady face, I laid me down, my head on the prie-dieu cushion, and presently went to sleep.
I was waked by a light in my face, and, all a-quiver, sprang up to meet my doom. But it was not the duke or any of his hirelings who bent over me, candle in hand; it was Mlle. de Montluc.
"Oh, my boy, my poor boy!" she cried pitifully, "I could not save you the flogging; on my honour, I could not. It would have availed you nothing had I pleaded for you on my bended knees."
With bewilderment I observed that the tears were brimming over her lashes and splashing down into the candle-flame. I stared, too confused for speech, while she, putting down the shaking candlestick on the altar, as she crossed herself, covered her face with her hands, sobbing.
"Mademoiselle," I stammered, "it is not worth mademoiselle's tears! The man, Pierre, he told me to scream, so they would think he was half flaying me. But in truth he did not strike very hard. He did not hurt so much."
She struggled to check the rising tempest of her tears, and presently dropped her hands and looked at me earnestly from out her shining wet eyes. "Is that true? Are you not flayed?" And to make sure, she laid her hand delicately on my back.
"They have whacked your coat to ribbons, but, thank St. Généviève, they have not brought the blood. I saw a man flogged once—" she shut her eyes, shuddering, and her mouth quivered anew. "But I am not much hurt, mademoiselle," I answered her.
She took out her film of a handkerchief to wipe her wet cheeks, her hand still trembling. I could think of nothing but to repeat:
"I am not in the least hurt, mademoiselle."
"Ah, but if they have spared you the flogging to take your life!" she breathed.
It was not a heartening suggestion. To my astonishment, suddenly I found myself, frightened victim, striving to comfort this noblewoman for my death.
"Nay, I am not afraid. Since mademoiselle weeps over me, I can die happily."
She sprang toward me as if to protect me with her body from some menacing thrust.
"They shall not kill you!" she cried, her eyes flashing blue fire. "They shall not! Mon dieu! is Lorance de Montluc so feeble a thing that she cannot save a serving-boy?"
She fell back a pace, pressing her hands to her temples as if to stifle their throbbing.
"It was my fault," she cried—"it was all my fault. It was my vanity and silliness brought you to this. I should never have written that letter—a three years' child would have known better. But I had not seen M. de Mar for five weeks—I did not know, what I readily guess now, that he had taken sides against us. M. de Lorraine played on my pique."
"Mademoiselle," I said, "the worst has not followed, since M. Étienne did not come himself."
"You are glad for that?"
"Why, of course, mademoiselle. Was it not a trap for him?"
She caught her breath as if in pain.
"I knew that as soon as I saw that my cousin Mayenne was not angry. When I told what I had done and he smiled at me and said I should have my gloves, why, then I thought my heart would stop beating. I saw what I had accomplished—mon dieu, I was sick with repentance of it!"
I had to tell her I had not thought it.
"No," she answered; "I had got you into this by my foolishness; I must needs try to get you out by my wits. Brie, the one who took you by the throat—there has been bad blood between him and your lord this twelvemonth; only last May M. le Comte ran him through the wrist. Had I interfered for you," she said, colouring a little, "M. de Brie would have inferred interest in the master from that in the man, and he had seen to your beating himself."
It suddenly dawned on me that this M. de Brie was the "little cheese" of guard-room gossip. And I thought that the gentleman would hardly display so much venom against M. Étienne unless he were a serious obstacle to his hopes. Nor would mademoiselle be here at midnight, weeping over a serving-lad, if she cared nothing for the master. If she had not worn her heart on her sleeve before the laughing salon, mayhap she would show it to me.
"Mademoiselle," I cried, "when the billet was brought him M. Étienne rose from his bed at once to come. But he was faint from fatigue and loss of blood; he could not walk across the room. But he bade me try to make mademoiselle believe his absence was no fault of his. He wrote her a month ago; he found to-day the letter was never delivered."
"Is he hurt dangerously?"
"No," I admitted reluctantly; "no, I think not. He was wounded in the right forearm, and again pinked in the shoulder; but he will recover."
"You said," she went on, the tears standing in her eyes, "that he was penniless. I have not much, but what I have is freely his."
She advanced upon me holding out her silken purse which she had taken from her bosom; but I retreated.
"No, no, mademoiselle," I cried, ashamed of my hot words; "we are not penniless—or if we are, we get on very well sans le sou. They do everything for monsieur at the Trois Lanternes, and he has only to return to the Hôtel St. Quentin to get all the gold pieces he can spend. Oh, no; we are in no want, mademoiselle. I was angry when I said it; I did not mean it. I cry mademoiselle's pardon."
She looked at me a little hesitatingly.
"You are telling me true?"
"Why, yes, mademoiselle; if my monsieur needed money, indeed, indeed, I would not refuse it."
"Then if you cannot take it for him, you can take it for yourself. It will be strange if in all Paris you cannot find something you like as a token from me." With her own white fingers she slipped some tinkling coins into my pouch, and cut short my thanks with the little wailing cry:
"Oh, your poor, bound hands! I have my poniard in my dress. I could free them in a second. But if they knew I had been here with you they never will let you go."
"If mademoiselle is running into danger staying here, I pray her to go back to bed. M. Étienne did not send me hither to bring her grief and trouble."
"Who are you?" she asked me abruptly. "You have never been here before on monsieur's errands?"
"No, mademoiselle; I came up only yesterday from Picardie. I belong on the St. Quentin estate. My name is Félix Broux."
"Alack, you have chosen a bad time to visit Paris!"
"I came up to see life," I said, "and mordieu! I am seeing it."
"I pray God you may not see death, too," she answered soberly.
She stood looking at me helplessly.
"I am in my lord's black books," she said slowly, as if to herself; "but I might weep François de Brie's rough heart to softness. Then it is a question whether he could turn Mayenne. I wish I knew whether the duke himself or only Paul de Lorraine has planned this move to-night. That is," she added, blushing, but speaking out candidly, "whether they attack M. de Mar as the League's enemy or as my lover."
"This M. Paul de Lorraine," said I, speaking as respectfully as I knew how, but eager to find out all I could for M. Étienne—"this M. de Lorraine is mademoiselle's lover, too?"
She shrugged her shoulders, neither assenting nor denying. "We are all pawns in the game for M. de Mayenne to push about as he chooses. For a time M. de Mar was high in his favour. Then my cousin Paul came back after a two years' disappearance, and straightway he was up and M. de Mar was down. And then Paul vanished again as suddenly as he had come, and it became the turn of M. de Brie. Now to-night Paul walked in as suddenly as he had left and at once played on me to write that unlucky letter. And what it bodes for him I know not."
She spoke with amazing frankness; yet, much as she had told me, the fact of her telling it told me even more. I saw that she was as lonely in this great house as I had been at St. Quentin. She would have talked delightedly to M. le Comte's dog.
"Mademoiselle," I said, "I would like well to tell you what has been happening to my M. Étienne this last month, if you are not afraid to stay long enough to hear it."
"Oh, every one is asleep long ago; it is past two o'clock. Yes, you may tell me if you wish."
She sat down on a praying-cushion, motioning me to the other, and I began my tale. At first she listened with a little air of languor, as if the whole were of slight consequence and she really did not care at all what M. le Comte had been about these five weeks. But as I got into the affair of the Rue Coupejarrets she forgot her indifference and leaned forward with burning cheeks, hanging on my words with eager questions. And when I told her how Lucas had evaded us in the darkness, she cried:
"Blessed Virgin! M. de Mar has enough to contend with in this Lucas, without Paul de Lorraine, and Brie, and the Duke of Mayenne himself."
I was silent, being of her opinion. Presently she asked reluctantly:
"Does your master think this Lucas a tool of M. de Mayenne's?"
"Yes, mademoiselle. He says secretaries do not plot against dukedoms for their own pleasure."
"Asassination was not wont to be my cousin Mayenne's way," she said with an accent of confidence that rang as false as a counterfeit coin. I saw well enough that mademoiselle did fear, at least, Mayenne's guilt. I thought I might tell her a little more.
"M. le Comte told me that since his father's coming to Paris M. de Mayenne made him offers to join the League, and he refused them. So then M. de Mayenne, seeing himself losing the whole house of St. Quentin, invented this."
"But it failed. Thank God, it failed! And now he will leave Paris. He will—he must!"
"He did mean to seek Navarre's camp to-morrow," I answered; "but—"
"But what?"
"But then the letter came."
"But that makes no difference! He must go for all that. The time is over for trimming. He must stand on one side or the other. I am a Ligueuse born and bred, and I tell him to go to King Henry. It is his father's side; it is his side. He cannot stay in Paris another day."
"I do not think he will go, mademoiselle."
"But he must!" she cried with vehemence. "Paris is not safe for him. If he cannot stand for his wound, he must go. I will send him a letter myself to tell him he must."
"Then he will never go."
"Félix!"
"He will not. He was going because he thought his lady flouted him; when he finds she does not—well, if he budges a step out of Paris, I do not know him. When he thought himself despised—"
"And why did I turn his suit into laughter in the salon if I did not mean that I despised him? I did it for you to tell him how I made a mock of him, that he might hate me and keep away from me."
"Oh," I said, "mademoiselle is beyond me; I cannot keep up with her."
"And you believed it! But you must needs spoil all by flaring out with impudent speech."
"I crave mademoiselle's pardon. I was wrong and insolent. But she played too well."
"And if it was not play?" she cried, rising. "If I do—well, I will not say despise him—but care nothing for him? Will he then go to St. Denis? Then tell him from me that he has my pity as one cruelly cozened, and my esteem as a one-time servant of mine, but never my love. Tell him I would willingly save him alive, for the sake of the love he once bore me. But as for any answering love in my bosom, I have not one spark. Tell him to go find a new mistress at St. Denis. He might as well cry for the moon as seek to win Lorance de Montluc."
"That may be true," I said; "but all the same he will try. Can mademoiselle suppose he will go out of Paris now, and leave her to marry Brie and Lorraine?"
"Only one," she protested with the shadow of a smile; and then a sudden rush of tears blinded her. "I am a very miserable girl," she said woefully, "for I bring nothing but danger to those that love me."
I dropped on my knees before her and kissed the hem of her dress.
"Ah, Félix," she said, "if you really pitied me, you would get him out of Paris!" And she fell to weeping as if her heart would break.
I had no skill to comfort her. I bent my head before her, silent. At length she sobbed out:
"It boots little for us to quarrel over what you shall say to M. de Mar, when we know not that you will ever speak to him again. And it was all my fault."
"Mademoiselle, it was the fault of my hasty tongue."
But she shook her head.
"I maintained that to you, but it was not true. Mayenne had something in his mind before. A general holds his schemes so dear and lives so cheap. But I will do my utmost, Félix, lad. It is not long to daylight now. I will go to François de Brie and we'll believe I shall prevail."
She took up her candle and said good night to me very gently and quietly, and gave me her hand to kiss. She opened the door,—with my fettered wrists I could not do the office for her,—and on the threshold turned to smile on me, wistfully, hopefully. In the next second, with a gasp that was half a cry, she blew out the light and pushed the door shut again.