The Helmet of Navarre Part 24

"Monsieur," I stammered, "I did naught. I am your servant till I die."

"You deserve a better master. What am I? Lucas's puppet! Lucas's fool!"

"Monsieur, it was not Lucas alone. It was a plot. You know what he said--"

"Aye," he cried with bitter vehemence. "I shall remember for some time what he said. They would not kill me to make my cousin Valere duke! He was a man. But I--nom de dieu, I was not worth the killing."

"It is the League's scheming, monsieur."

"Oh, that does not need the saying. Secretaries don't plot against dukedoms on their own account. Some high man is behind Lucas--I dare swear his Grace of Mayenne himself. It is no secret now where Monsieur stands. Yet the king's party grows so strong and the mob so cheers Monsieur, the League dare not strike openly. So they put a spy in the house to choose time and way. And the spy would not stab, for he saw he could make me do his work for him. He saw I needed but a push to come to open breach with my father. He gave the push. Oh, he could make me pull his chestnuts from the fire well enough, burning my hands so that I could never strike a free blow again. I was to be their slave, their thrall forever!"

"Never that, monsieur; never that!"

"I am not so sure," he cried. "Had it not been for the advent of a stray boy from Picardie, I trow Lucas would have put his purpose through. I was blindfolded; I saw nothing. I knew my cousin Gervais to be morose and cruel; yet I had done him no harm; I had always stood his friend. I thought him shamefully used; I let myself be turned out of my father's house to champion him. I had no more notion he was plotting my ruin than a child playing with his dolls. I was their doll, mordieu! their toy, their crazy fool on a chain. But life is not over yet. To-morrow I go to pledge my sword to Henry of Navarre."

"Monsieur, if he comes to the faith--"

"Mordieu! faith is not all. Were he a pagan of the wilderness he were better than these Leaguers. He fights honestly and bravely and generously. He could have had the city before now, save that he will not starve us. He looks the other way, and the provision-trains come in. But the Leaguers, with all their regiments, dare not openly strike down one man,--one man who has come all alone into their country,--they put a spy into his house to eat his bread and betray him; they stir up his own kin to slay him, that it may not be called the League's work. And they are most Catholic and n.o.ble gentlemen! Nay, I am done with these pious plotters who would redden my hands with my father's blood and make me outcast and despised of all men. I have spent my playtime with the League; I will go work with Henry of Navarre!"

I caught his fire.

"By St. Quentin," I cried, "we will beat these Leaguers yet!"

He laughed, yet his eyes burned with determination.

"By St. Quentin, shall we! You and I, Felix, you and I alone will overturn the whole League! We will show them what we are made of. They think lightly of me. Why not? I never took part with my father. I lazed about in these gay Paris houses, bent on my pleasure, too shallow a fop even to take sides in the fight for a kingdom. What should they see in me but an empty-headed roisterer, frittering away his life in follies?

But they will find I am something more. Well, enter there!"

He dropped back among the pillows, striving to look careless, as Maitre Menard, the landlord, opened the door and stood shuffling on the threshold.

"Does M. le Comte sleep?" he asked me deferentially, though I think he could not but have heard M. etienne's tirading half-way down the pa.s.sage.

"Not yet," I answered. "What is it?"

"Why, a man came with a billet for M. le Comte and insisted it be sent in. I told him Monsieur was not to be disturbed; he had been wounded and was sleeping; I said it was not sense to wake him for a letter that would keep till morning. But he would have it 'twas of instant import, and so--"

"Oh, he is not asleep," I declared, eagerly ushering the maitre in, my mind leaping to the conclusion, for no reason save my ardent wish, that Vigo had discovered our whereabouts.

"I dared not deny him further," added Maitre Menard. "He wore the liveries of M. de Mayenne."

"Of Mayenne," I echoed, thinking of what M. etienne had said. "Pardieu, it may be Lucas himself!" And s.n.a.t.c.hing up my master's sword I dashed out of the door and was in the cabaret in three steps.

The room contained some score of men, but I, peering about by the uncertain candle-light, could find no one who in any wise resembled Lucas. A young gamester seated near the door, whom my sudden entrance had jostled, rose, demanding in the name of his outraged dignity to cross swords with me. On any other day I had deemed it impossible to say him nay, but now with a real vengeance, a quarrel a outrance on my hands, he seemed of no consequence at all. I brushed him aside as I demanded M. de Mayenne's man. They said he was gone. I ran out into the dark court and the darker street.

A tapster, lounging in the courtyard, had seen my man pa.s.s out, and he opined with much reason that I should not catch him. Yet I ran a hundred yards up street and a hundred yards down street, shouting on the name of Lucas, calling him coward and skulker, bidding him come forth and fight me. The whole neighbourhood became aware than I wanted one Lucas to fight: lights twinkled in windows; men, women, and children poured out of doors. But Lucas, if it were he, had for the second time vanished soft-footed into the night.

I returned with drooping tail to M. etienne. He was alone, sitting up in bed awaiting me, his cheeks scarlet, his eyes blazing.

"He is gone," I panted. "I looked everywhere, but he was gone. Oh, if I caught Lucas--"

"You little fool!" he exclaimed. "This was not Lucas. Had you waited long enough to hear your name called, I had told you. This is no errand of Lucas but a very different matter."

He sat a moment, thinking, still with that glitter of excitement in his eyes. The next instant he threw off the bedclothes and started to rise.

"Get my clothes, Felix. I must go to the Hotel de Lorraine."

But I flung myself upon him, pus.h.i.+ng him back into bed and dragging the cover over him by main force.

"You can go nowhere, M. etienne; it is madness. The surgeon said you must lie here for three days. You will get a fever in your wounds; you shall not go."

"Get off me, 'od rot you; you're smothering me," he gasped. Cautiously I relaxed my grip, still holding him down. He appealed: "Felix, I must go.

So long as there is a spark of life left in me, I have no choice but to go."

"Monsieur, you said you were done with the Leaguers--with M. de Mayenne."

"Aye, so I did," he cried. "But this--but this is Lorance."

Then, at my look of mystification, he suddenly opened his hand and tossed me the letter he had held close in his palm.

I read:

_M. de Mar appears to consider himself of very little consequence, or of very great, since he is absent a whole month from the Hotel 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 faineant; 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 n.o.body. 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 b.u.t.t and laughing-stock of all brave men.

"But I am done with s.h.i.+lly-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."