The Helmet of Navarre Part 63

"Ah, monsieur, perhaps your life is nothing to you. But it is more to me than tongue can tell."

"My love, my love!" He s.n.a.t.c.hed her into his arms; she held away from him to look him beseechingly in the face, her little clutching hands on his shoulders.

"Oh, you will go! you will go!"

"Only if you come with me. Lorance, it is such a little way! Only to meet me in the next square. We will slip out of the gates together--leave Paris and all its plots and murders, and at St. Denis keep our honeymoon."

"Monsieur," she said slowly, "I am told that my cousin Mayenne offered a month ago to give me to you for your name on the roster of the League.

Is that true?"

"It is true. But you cannot think, Lorance, it was for any lack of love for you. I swear to you--"

"Nay, you need not. I have it by heart that you love me."

"Lorance!"

"But when you could not take me with honour you would not take me. Your house stands against us; you would not desert your house. Am I then to be false to mine?"

"A woman belongs to her husband's house."

"Aye, but she does not wed the enemy of her own. Monsieur, you are full of loyalty; shall I have none? I was born, my father before me, in the shadow of the house of Lorraine; the Lorraine princes our kinsmen, our masters, our friends. When I was orphaned young, and penniless because King Henry's Huguenots had wrenched our lands away, I came here to my cousin Mayenne, to dwell here in kindness and love as a daughter of the house. Am I to turn traitor now?"

"Lorance," he was fiercely beginning, when Mlle. de Tavanne bounded in.

"On guard!" she hissed at us. "They come!"

She looked behind her into the corridor. Mademoiselle gave her lips to monsieur in one last kiss, and slipped like water from his arms. I was at his side, and we busied ourselves over the trinkets, he with shaking fingers, cheeks burning through the stain.

The ladies streamed into the room, the lovely Mme. de Montpensier alone conspicuous by her absence. Mme. de Mayenne's face was hot and angry, and bore marks of tears. Not in this room only had a combat raged.

"Never shall he come into this house again," madame was crying vigorously. "I had had him strangled, the vile little beast, an she had not seized him. I will now, if she ever dares bring him hither again."

"You certainly should, madame," replied the nearest of the ladies. "You have been, in the goodness of your heart, far too forbearing, too patient under many presumptions. One would suppose the mistress here to be Mme. de Montpensier."

"I will show who is mistress here," the d.u.c.h.esse de Mayenne retorted.

Then her eye fell on Mlle. de Montluc, making her way softly to the door, and the vials of her wrath overflowed upon her:

"What, Lorance, you could not be at the pains to follow me to the rescue of my child! Your little cousin, poor innocent, may be eaten by the beasts for aught you care, while you prink over trinkets."

Mademoiselle faced her blankly, scarce understanding, midst the whirl of her own thoughts, of what she was accused. The little Tavanne came gallantly to the rescue:

"I did not follow you either, madame. We thought it scarcely safe; Lorance could not bear to leave this fellow alone."

Mme. de Mayenne glanced instinctively at her dressing-table's rich accoutrements, touched in spite of herself by such care of her belongings.

"I had not suspected you maids of such fore-thought," she said with relenting. "I vow for once I am beholden to you. You did quite right, Lorance."

XXVI

_Within the spider's web._

Mademoiselle slipped softly out of the room, taking our hearts with her.

Our one desire now was to be gone; but it was easier wished than accomplished, for there remained the dreary process of bargaining. Mme.

de Mayenne had set her heart on a pearl bracelet, Mme. de Brie wanted a vinaigrette, a third lady a pair of shoe-buckles. M. etienne developed a recklessness about prices that would have whitened the hair of a goldsmith father; I thought the ladies could not fail to be suspicious of such prodigality, to imagine we carried stolen goods. But no; the quick settlements defeated their own ends: they fired our customers with longing to purchase further. I was despairing, when at length Mme. de Mayenne bethought herself that supper-time was at hand, and that no one was yet dressed. To my eyes the company already looked fine enough for a coronation; but I rejoiced to hear them thanking madame for her reminder, with the grat.i.tude of victims s.n.a.t.c.hed from an awful fate. We were commanded to bundle out, which with all alacrity we did.

Freedom was in sight. I was not so nervous on this journey as I had been coming in. As we pa.s.sed, lackey-led, through the long corridors, I had ease enough of mind to enable me to take my bearings, and to whisper to my master, "That door yonder is the door of the council-room, where I was." Even as I spoke the door opened, two gentlemen appearing at the threshold. One was a stranger; the other was Mayenne.

Our guide held back in deference. The duke and his friend stood a moment or two in low-voiced converse; then the visitor made his farewells, and went off down the staircase.

Mayenne had not appeared aware of our existence, thirty feet up the pa.s.sage, but now he inquired, as if we had been pieces of merchandise:

"What have you there, Louis?"

"An Italian goldsmith, so please your Grace. Madame has just dismissed him."

He led us forward. Mayenne surveyed us deliberately, and at length said to M. le Comte:

"I will look at your wares."

M. etienne smiled his eager, deprecating smile, informing his Highness that we, poor creatures, spoke no French.

"How came you in Paris, then?"

M. etienne for the fourth time went through with his tale. I think this time he must have trembled over it. My Lord Mayenne had not the reputation of being easily gulled. For aught we knew, he might be informed of the name and condition of every person who had entered Paris this year. He might, as he listened stolid-faced, be checking off to himself the number of monsieur's lies. But if M. etienne trembled in his soul, his words never faltered; he knew his history well, by this. At its finish Mayenne said:

"Come in here."

The lackey was ordered to wait outside, while we followed his Grace of Mayenne across the council-room to that table by the window where he had sat with Lucas night before last. I clinched my teeth to keep them from chattering together. Not Grammont's brutality, not Lucas's venom, not Mlle. de Tavanne's rampant suspicion, had ever frightened me so horribly as did Mayenne's amiable composure. He made me feel as I had felt when I entered the tunnel, helpless in the dark, unable to cope with dangers I could not see. Mayenne was a well, the light s.h.i.+ning down its sides a way, and far below the still surface of the water. You hang over the edge and peer till your eyes drop out; you can as easily look through iron as discern how deep the water is. I seemed to see clearly that Mayenne suspected us not in the least. He was as placid as a summer day, turning over the contents of the box, showing little interest in us, much in our wares, every now and then speaking a generous word of praise or asking a friendly question. He was the very model of the gracious prince; the humble tradesmen whom we feigned to be must needs have wors.h.i.+pfully loved him. Yet withal I believed that all the time he knew us; that he was amusing himself with us. Presently, when he tired, he would walk casually out of the room and send in his creatures to stab us.

Had I known this for a truth, that he had discovered us, I should have braced myself, I trow, to meet it. The certainty would have been bearable; I had courage to face ruin. It was the uncertainty that was so heart-shaking--like crossing a mora.s.s in the dark. We might be on the safe path; we might with every step be wandering away farther and farther into the treacherous bog; there was no way to tell. Mayenne was quite the man to be kindly patron of the crafts, to pick out a rich present for a friend. He was also the man to sit in the presence of his enemy, unbetraying, tranquil, a.s.sured, waiting. It seemed to me that in a few minutes more of this I should go mad; I should scream out: "Yes, I am Felix Broux, and he is M. le Comte de Mar!"

But before I had verily come to this, something happened to change the situation. Entered like a young tempest, slamming the door after him, Lucas.

M. etienne clutched me by the arm, drawing me back into the embrasure of the window, where we stood in plain sight but with our faces blotted out against the light. Mayenne looked up from two rings he was comparing, one in each hand. Lucas, hat on head, came rapidly across the room.

"So you have appeared again," Mayenne said. "I could almost believe myself back in night before last."

"Aye; at last I have." Lucas was all hot and ruffled, panting half from hurry, half from wrath.

"You saw fit to be absent last night," Mayenne went on indifferently, his eyes on the ring. "I trust, for your sake, you have used your time profitably."

"I have been about my own concerns," Lucas answered lightly, arming himself with his insolence against the other's disdain. In a moment he had mastered the excitement that brought him so stormily into the room.

He was once more the Lucas who had entered that other night, nonchalant, mocking.

"Pretty trinkets," he observed, sitting down and lifting a bracelet from the tray.