The Helmet of Navarre Part 27

"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 pa.s.sage. 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, Francois?"

"This is a fellow of etienne 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 Francois; 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, Francois. 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!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed 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 s.n.a.t.c.hed 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.

etienne.

"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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "I DO NOT FORGIVE HIS DESPATCHING ME HIS HORSE-BOY."]

"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. .h.i.ther. 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, Francois; I may need him later. Let him be flogged and locked in the oratory."