The Helmet of Navarre Part 30

"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, Felix," 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, Felix, lad. It is not long to daylight now. I will go to Francois 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.

XV

_My Lord Mayenne._

I knew she was shutting the door by the click of the latch; in the next second I made the discovery that she was still on my side of it.

"What--" I was beginning, when she laid her hand over my mouth. A line of light showed through the crack. She had not quite closed the door on account of the noise of the latch. She tried again; again it rattled and she desisted. I heard her fluttered breathing and I heard something else--a rapid, heavy tread in the corridor without. Into the council-room came a man carrying a lighted taper. It was Mayenne.

Mademoiselle, with a whispered "G.o.d save us!" sank in a heap at my feet.

I bent over her to find if she had swooned, when she seized my hand in a sharp grip that told me plain as words to be quiet.

Mayenne was yawning; he had a rumpled and dishevelled look like one just roused from sleep. He crossed over to the table, lighted the three-branched candlestick standing there, and seated himself with his back to us, pulling about some papers. I hardly dared glance at him, for fear my eyes should draw his; the crack of our door seemed to call aloud to him to mark it; but the candle-light scarcely pierced the shadows of the long room.

More quick footsteps in the corridor. Mayenne hitched his chair about, sidewise to the table and to us, facing the outer door. A tall man in black entered, saluting the general from the threshold.

"So you have come back?" spoke the duke in his even tones. It was impossible to tell whether the words were a welcome or a sentence.

"Yes," answered the other, in a voice as noncommittal as Mayenne's own.

He shut the door after him and walked over to the table.

"And how goes it?"

"Badly."

The newcomer threw his hat aside and sat down without waiting for an invitation.

"What! Badly, sirrah!" Mayenne exclaimed sharply. "You come to me with that report?"

"I do, monsieur," answered the other with cool insolence, leaning back in his chair. The light fell directly on his face and proved to me what I had guessed at his first word. The duke's night visitor was Lucas.

"Yes," he repeated indifferently, "it has gone badly. In fact, your game is up."

Mayenne jumped to his feet, bringing his fist down on the table.

"You tell me this?"

Lucas regarded him with an easy smile.

"Unfortunately, monsieur, I do."

[Ill.u.s.tration: MLLE. De MONTLUC AND FeLIX BROUX IN THE ORATORY]

Mayenne turned on him, cursing. Lucas with the quickness of a cat sprang a yard aside, dagger unsheathed.

"Put up that knife!" shouted Mayenne.

"When you put up yours, monsieur."

"I have drawn none!"

"In your sleeve, monsieur."

"Liar!" cried Mayenne.

I know not who was lying, for I could not tell whether the blade that flashed now in the duke's hand came from his sleeve or from his belt.

But if he had not drawn before he had drawn now and rushed at Lucas. He dodged and they circled round each other, wary as two matched c.o.c.ks.

Lucas was strictly on the defensive; Mayenne, the less agile by reason of his weight, could make no chance to strike. He drew off presently.

"I'll have your neck wrung for this," he panted.

"For what, monsieur?" asked Lucas, imperturbably. "For defending myself?"

Mayenne let the charge go by default.

"For coming to me with the tale of your failures. Nom de dieu, do I employ you to fail?"

"We are none of us G.o.ds, monsieur. You yourself lost Ivry."

Mayenne backed over to his chair and seated himself, laying his knife on the table in front of him. His face smoothed out to good humour--no mean tribute to his power of self-control. For the written words can convey no notion of the maddening insolence of Lucas's bearing--an insolence so studied that it almost seemed unconscious and was thereby well-nigh impossible to silence.