The Helmet of Navarre Part 75

"The king," Monsieur went on, as immovably as Mayenne himself at his best, "with that warm heart of his pitying beauty in distress, is eager for mademoiselle's marriage with her lover Mar. But he did not favour my venture here; he called it a silly business. He said you would clap me in jail, and he told me flat I might rot my life out there before he would give up to you Mlle. de Montluc."

"Well, then, pardieu, we'll try if he means it!"

"He gave me to understand that he meant it. The St. Quentins out of the way, there is Valere, stout Kingsman, to succeed. The king loses little."

"Then are you gone mad that you put yourself in my grasp?"

"I was never saner. I come, my friend, to make you listen to sanity."

I had waited from moment to moment Mayenne's summons to his soldiers.

But he had not rung, and now he flung himself down again in his arm-chair.

"What, to your understanding, is sanity?"

"If you send me to join my son, monsieur, you leave mademoiselle without a protector, friendless, penniless, in the midst of a hostile army cursing the name of Mayenne. Have you reared her delicately, tenderly, for that?"

Mayenne sat silent, his face a mask. It was impossible to tell whether the shot hit. Monsieur went on:

"You can of course hold us in durance, torture us, kill us; but you must answer for it to the people of Paris."

Still was Mayenne silent, drumming on the edge of the table. Finally he said roughly, as if the words were dragged from him against his will:

"I shall not torture you. I never meant to torture Mar. The arrest was not my work. Since it was done, I meant to profit by it to keep him awhile out of my way--only that. I threatened my cousin otherwise in heat of pa.s.sion. But I shall not torture him. I shall not kill him."

"Monsieur--"

"I put a card in your hand," Mayenne said curtly. His pride ill brooked to concede the point, but he could not have it supposed that he did not see what he was doing. "I give you a card. Do what you can with it."

"Monsieur, you show what little surprises me--knightly generosity. It is to that generosity I appeal."

"Is the horse of that colour? But now you were frightening my prudence."

"Ah, but how fortunate the man to whom generosity and prudence point the same path!"

It may have been but pretence, this smiling bonhomie of Monsieur's.

Mayenne doubtless gauged it as such, but, at any rate, he suffered it to warm him. He regained of a sudden all the amiability with which he had greeted his guest. Smiling and calm, he answered:

"St. Quentin, I care little for either your threats or your cajoleries.

They amuse me alike, and move me not. But I have a care for my sweet cousin. Since you threaten me with her danger, you have the whiphand."

Now it was Monsieur's turn to sit discreetly silent, waiting.

"I went last night to tell the child I would not harm her lover. Lo! she had flown. I had a regiment searching Paris for her. I was in the streets myself till dawn."

"Monsieur, she made her way to us at St. Denis to offer herself to our torture did you torture Mar."

"Morbleu!" Mayenne cried, half rising.

"G.o.d's mercy, we're not ruffians out there! I tell it to show you to what the maid was strung."

"I never thought it great matter whom one married," Mayenne said slowly: "one boy is much like another. I should have mated her as befitted her station--I thought she would be happy enough. And she was good about it: I did not see how deep she cared. She was docile till I drove her too hard. She's a loving child. You are fortunate in your daughter, St. Quentin."

Monsieur sprang up radiant, advancing on him open-armed. Mayenne added, with his cool smile:

"You need not flatter yourself, Monsieur, that it is your doing. I laugh at your threats. 'Twere sport to me to clap you behind bars, to say to your king, to the mob you brag of, 'Come, now, get him out.'"

"Then," cried Monsieur, "I must value my sweet daughter more than ever."

He was standing over Mayenne with outstretched hand, but the chief delayed taking it.

"Not quite so fast, my friend. If I yield up the Duc de St. Quentin, the Comte de Mar, and Mlle. Lorance de Montluc, I demand certain little concessions for myself."

"By all means, monsieur. You stamp us churls else."

My duke sat again, his smile a shade uneasy. Which Mayenne perceived with quiet enjoyment, as he went on blandly: "Nothing that I could ask of you, M. de St. Quentin, could equal, could halve, what I give. Still, that the knightliness may not be, to your mortification, all on one side, I have thought of something for you to grant."

"Name it, monsieur."

"Another point in your favour I had forgot," Mayenne observed, with his usual reluctance to show his cards even when the time had come to spread them. "Last night I laid on this table a packet, just arrived, which I was told belonged to you. When I had time to think of it again, it had vanished. I accused my lackeys, but later it occurred to me that Mlle.

de Montluc, arming for battle, had purloined it."

"Your shrewdness does you credit."

"You see you have scored a fourth point, though again by no prowess of your own. Therefore am I emboldened to demand what I want."

"Even to half my fortune--"

"No, not your gear. Save that for your Bearnais's itching palm."

"Then what the devil is it you want? You will not get my name in the League."

"I am glad my nephew Paul bungled that affair of his," Mayenne went on at his own pace. "It might have been a blunder to kill you; it had certainly been a pity. Though we Lorraines have two murders to avenge, I have changed my mind about beginning with yours."

"You are wise, monsieur. I am, after all, a harmless creature."

Mayenne laughed.

"Natheless have you done your best here in Paris to undermine me. Did I let you carry on your little works unhindered, they might in time annoy me. Therefore I request that so long as I stay in Paris you stay out."

"Oh, I don't like that!"

The navete amazed while it amused Mayenne.

"Possibly not, but you will consent to it. You will ride out of my court, when we have finished some necessary signing of papers, straight to the St. Denis gate. And you will pledge me your honour to make no attempt hereafter to enter so long as the city is mine."

Mayenne was smiling broadly, Monsieur frowning. He relished the condition little. He was enjoying himself much in Paris, his dangers, his successes, his biting his thumb at the power of the League. To be killed at his post was nothing, but to be bundled away from it to inglorious safety, that stuck in his gorge. For a moment he actually hesitated. Then he began to laugh at his own hesitation.

"Well, ma foi! what do I expect? To walk, a rabbit, into the lion's den and make my own terms to Leo? I am happy to accept yours, M. de Mayenne, especially since, do I refuse, you will none the less pack me off."