"I’ll win my lady!"

Lucas’s prophecy came to grief within five minutes of the making. For when the musketeer unbarred the house door for me, the first thing I saw was the morning sun.

My spirits danced at sight of him, as he himself might dance on Easter day. Within the close, candle-lit room I had had no thought but that it was still black midnight; and now at one step I passed from the gloomy house into the heartening sunshine of a new clean day. I ran along as joyously as if I had left the last of my troubles behind me, forgotten in some dark corner of the Hotel de Lorraine. Always my heart lifts when, after hours within walls, I find myself in the open again. I am afraid in houses, but out of doors I have no fear of harm from any man or any thing.

Though Sir Sun was risen this half-hour, and at home we should all have been about our business, these lazy Paris folk were still snoring. They liked well to turn night into day and lie long abed of a morning. Although here a shopkeeper took down shutters, and there a brisk servant-lass swept the door-step, yet I walked through a sleeping city, quiet as our St. Quentin woods, save that here my footsteps echoed in the emptiness. At length, with the knack I have, whatever my stupidities, of finding my way in a strange place, I arrived before the courtyard of the Trois Lanternes. The big wooden doors were indeed shut, but when I had pounded lustily awhile a young tapster, half clad and cross as a bear, opened to me. I vouchsafed him scant apology, but, dropping on a heap of hay under a shed in the court, passed straightway into dreamless slumber.

When I awoke my good friend the sun was looking down at me from near his zenith, and my first happy thought was that I was just in time for dinner. Then I discovered that I had been prodded out of my rest by the pitchfork of a hostler.

“Sorry to disturb monsieur, but the horses must be fed.”

“Oh, I am obliged to you,” I said, rubbing my eyes. “I must go up to M. lé Comte.”

“He has been himself to look at you, and gave orders you were not to be disturbed. But that was last week. Dame! you slept like a sabot.”

It did not take me long to brush the straw off me, wash my face at the trough, and present myself before monsieur. He was dressed and sitting at table in his bedchamber, while a drawer served him with dinner.

“You are out of bed, monsieur,” I cried.

“But yes,” he answered, springing up, “I am as well as ever I was. Felix, what has happened to you?”

I glanced at the serving-man; M. Etienne ordered him at once from the room.

“Now tell me quickly,” he cried, as I faltered, tongue-tied from very richness of matter. “Mademoiselle?”

“Ah, mademoiselle!” I exclaimed. “Mademoiselle is ” I paused in a dearth of words worthy of her.

“She is, she is!” he agreed, laughing. “Oh, go on, you little slow-poke! You saw her? And she said

He was near to laying hands on me, to hurry my tale.

“I saw her and Mayenne and Lucas and ever so many things,” I told him. “And they had me flogged, and mademoiselle loves you.”

“She does!” he cried, flushing. “Felix, does she? You cannot know.”

“But I do know it,” I answered, not very lucidly. “You see, she wouldn’t have wept so much, just over me.”

“Did she weep? Lorance?” he exclaimed.

“They flogged me,” I said. “They didn’t hurt me much. But she came down in the night with a candle and cried over me.”

“And what said she? Now I am sorry they beat you. Who did that? Mayenne? What said she, Felix?”

“And then,” I went on, not heeding his questions in sudden remembrance of my crowning news, “Mayenne and Lucas came in. And here is something you do not know, monsieur. Lucas is Paul de Lorraine, Henri de Guise’s son.”

“Mille tonnerres du ciel! But he is a Huguenot, a Rochelais!”

“Yes, but he is a son of Henri lé Balafre. His mother was Rochelaise, I think. He was a spy for Navarre and captured at Ivry. They were going to hang him when Mayenne, worse luck, recognized him for a nephew. Since then he has been spying for them. Because Mayenne promised him Mlle. de Montluc in marriage.”

He stared at me with dropped jaw, absolutely too startled to swear.

“He has not got her yet!” I cried. “Mayenne told him he should have her when he had killed St. Quentin. And St. Quentin is alive.”

“Great God!” said M. Etienne, only half aloud, dropping down on the arm of his chair, overcome to realize the issue that had hung on a paltry handful of pistoles. Then, recovering, himself a little, he cried:

“But she mademoiselle?”

“You need give yourself no uneasiness there,” I said. “Mademoiselle hates him.”

“Does she know

“I think she understands quite well what Lucas is,” I made answer. “Monsieur, I must tell you everything that happened from the beginning, or I shall never make it clear to you.”

“Yes, yes, go on,” he cried.

He sat down at table again, with the intention of eating his dinner as I talked, but precious few mouthfuls he took. At every word I spoke he got deeper into the interest of my tale. I never talked so much in my life, me, as I did those few days. I was always relating a history, to Monsieur, to mademoiselle, to M. Etienne, to well, you shall know.

I had finished at length, and he burst out at me:

“You little scamp, you have all the luck! I never saw such a boy! Well do they call you Felix! Mordieu, here I lie lapped in bed like a baby, while you go forth knight-erranting. I must lie here with old Galen for all company, while you bandy words with the Generalissimo himself! And make faces at Lucas, and kiss the hands of mademoiselle! But I’ll stand it no longer. I’m done with lying abed and letting you have all the fun. No; to-day I shall take part myself.”

“But monsieur’s arm

“Pshaw, it is well!” he cried. “It is a scratch it is nothing. Pardieu, it takes more than that to put a St. Quentin out of the reckoning. To-day is no time for sloth; I must act.”

“Monsieur ” I began, but he broke in on me:

“Nom de dieu, Felix, are we to sit idle while mademoiselle is carried off by that beast Lucas?”

“Of course not,” I said. “I was only trying to ask what monsieur meant to do.”

“To take the moon in my teeth,” he cried.

“Yes, monsieur, but how?”

“Ah, if I knew!”

He stared at me as if he would read the answer in my face, but he found it as blank as the wall. He flung away and made a turn down the room, and came back to seize me by the arm.

“How are we to do it, Felix?” he demanded.

But I could only shrug my shoulders and answer:

“Sais pas.”

He paced the floor once more, and presently faced me again with the declaration:

“Lucas shall have her only over my dead body.”

“He will only have her own dead body,” I said.

He turned away abruptly and stood at the window, looking out with unseeing eyes. “Lorance Lorance,” he murmured to himself. I think he did not know he spoke aloud.

“If I could get word to her ” he went on presently. “But I can’t send you again. Should I write a letter But letters are mischievous. They fall into the wrong hands, and then where are we?”

“Monsieur,” I suggested, “if I could get a letter into the hands of Pierre, that lackey who befriended me ” But he shook his head.

“They know you about the place. It were safer to despatch one of these inn-men if any had the sense to go rein in hand. Hang me if I don’t think I’ll go myself!”

“Monsieur,” I said, “Lucas swore by all things sacred that he would never molest you more. Therefore you will do well to keep out of his way.”

“My faith, Felix,” he laughed, “you take a black view of mankind.”

“Not of mankind, M. Etienne. Only of Lucas. Not of Monsieur, or you, or Vigo.”

“And of Mayenne?”

“I don’t make out Mayenne,” I answered. “I thought he was the worst of the crew. But he let me go. He said he would, and he did.”

“Think you he meant to let you go from the first?”

“Who knows?” I said, shrugging. “Lucas is always lying. But Mayenne sometimes he lies and sometimes not. He’s base, and then again he’s kind. You can’t make out Mayenne.”

“He does not mean you shall,” M. Etienne returned. “Yet the key is not buried. He is made up, like all the rest of us, of good and bad.”

“Monsieur,” I said, “if there is any bad in the St. Quentins I, for one, do not know it.”

“Ah, Felix,” he cried, “you may believe that till doomsday you will of Monsieur.”

His face clouded a little, and he fell silent. I knew that, besides his thoughts of his lady, came other thoughts of his father. He sat gravely silent. But of last night’s bitter distress he showed no trace. Last night he had not been able to take his eyes from the miserable past; but to-day he saw the future. A future not altogether flowery, perhaps, but one which, however it turned out, should not repeat the old mistakes and shames.

“Felix,” he said at length, “I see nothing for it but to eat my pride.”

I kept still in the happy hope that I should hear just what I longed to; he went on:

“I swore then that I would never darken his doors again; I was mad with anger; so was he. He said if I went with Gervais I went forever.”

“Monsieur, if you repent your hot words, so does he.”

“I must e’en give him the chance. If he do repent them, it were churlish to deny him the opportunity to tell me so. If he still maintain them, it were cowardly to shrink from hearing it. No, whatever Monsieur replies, I must go tell him I repent.”

I came forward to kiss his hand, I was so pleased.

“Oh, you look very smiling over it,” he cried. “Think you I like sneaking back home again like a whipped hound to his kennel?”

“But,” I protested, indignant, “monsieur is not a whipped hound.”

“Well, a prodigal son, as Lucas named me yesterday. It is the same thing.”

“I have heard M. l’Abbe read the story of the prodigal son,” I said. “And he was a vaurien, if you like no more monsieur’s sort than Lucas himself. But it says that when his father saw him coming a long way off, he ran out to meet him and fell on his neck.”

M. Etienne looked not altogether convinced.

“Well, however it turns out, it must be gone through with. It is only decent to go to Monsieur. But even at that, I think I should not go if it were not for mademoiselle.”

“You will beg his aid, monsieur?”

“I will beg his advice at least. For how you and I are to carry off mademoiselle under Mayenne’s hand well, I confess for the nonce that beats me.”

“We must do it, monsieur,” I cried.

“Aye, and we will! Come, Felix, you may put your knife in my dish. We must eat and be off. The meats have got cold and the wine warm, but never mind.”

I did not mind, but was indeed thankful to get any dinner at all. Once resolved on the move, he was in a fever to be off; it was not long before we were in the streets, bound for the Hotel St. Quentin. He said no more of Monsieur as we walked, but plied me with questions about Mlle. de Montluc not only as to every word she said, but as to every turn of her head and flicker of her eyelids; and he called me a dull oaf when I could not answer. But as we entered the Quartier Marais he fell silent, more Friday-faced than ever his lady looked. He had his fair allowance of pride, this M. Etienne; he found his own words no palatable meal.

However, when we came within a dozen paces of the gate he dropped, as one drops a cloak, all signs of gloom or discomposure, and approached the entrance with the easy swagger of the gay young gallant who had lived there. As if returning from a morning stroll he called to the sentry:

“Hola, squinting Charlot! Open now!”

“Morbleu, M. lé Comte!” the fellow exclaimed, running to draw the bolts. “Well, this is a sight for sore eyes, anyway.”

M. Etienne laughed out in pleasure. It put heart into him, I could see, that his first greeting should be thus friendly.

“Vigo didn’t know what had become of you, monsieur,” Chariot volunteered. “The old man wasn’t in the best of tempers last night, after Lucas got away and you gave us the slip, too. He called us all blockheads and cursed idiots. Things were lively for a time, nom d’un chien!”

“Eh bien, I am found,” M. Etienne returned. “In time we’ll get Lucas, too. Is Monsieur back?”

“No, M. Etienne, not yet.”

I think he was half sorry, half glad.

“Where’s Vigo?” he demanded.

“Somewhere about. I’ll find him for monsieur.”

“No, stay at your post. I’ll find him.”

He went straight across the court and in at the door he had sworn never again to darken. Humility and repentance might have brought him there, but it was the hand of mademoiselle drew him over the threshold without a falter.

Alone in the hall was my little friend Marcel, throwing dice against himself to while the time away. He sprang up at sight of us, agleam with excitement.

“Well, Marcel,” my master said, “and where is M. l’Ecuyer?”

“I think in the stables, monsieur.”

“Bid him come to me in the small cabinet.”

He turned with accustomed feet into the room at the end of the hall where Vigo kept the rolls of the guard. I, knowing it to be my duty to keep close at hand lest I be wanted, followed. Soon Marcel came flying back to say Vigo was on his way. M. Etienne thanked him, and he hung about, longing to pump me, and, in my lord’s presence, not quite daring, till I took him by the shoulders and turned him out. I hate curiosity.

M. Etienne stood behind the table, looking his haughtiest. He was unsure of a welcome from the contumacious Vigo; I read in his eyes a stern determination to set this insolent servant in his place.

The big man entered, saluted, came straight over to his young lord’s side, no whit hesitating, and said, as heartily as if there had never been a hard word between them:

“M. Etienne, I had liefer see you stand here than the king himself.”

M. Etienne displayed the funniest face of bafflement. He had been prepared to lash rudeness or sullenness, to accept, de haut en bas, shamed contrition. But this easy cordiality took the wind out of his sails. He stared, and then flushed, and then laughed. And then he held out his hand, saying simply:

“Thank you, Vigo.”

Vigo bent over to kiss it in cheerful ignorance of how that hand had itched to box his ears.

“What became of you last night, M. Etienne?” he inquired.

“I was hunting Lucas. When does Monsieur return, Vigo?”

“He thought he might be back to-day. But he could not tell.”

“Have you sent to tell him about me?” he asked, colouring.

“No, I couldn’t do that,” Vigo said. “You see, it is quite on the cards that the Spanish gang may come hither to clean us out. I want every man I have if they do.”

“I understand that,” M. Etienne said, “but

“So long as you are innocent a day or two matters not,” Vigo pronounced. “He will presently turn up here or send word that he will not return till the king comes in. But since you are impatient, M. lé Comte, you can go to him at St. Denis. If he can get through the gates you can.”

“Aye, but I have business in Paris. I mean to join King Henry, Vigo. There’s glory going begging out there at St. Denis. It would like me well to bear away my share. But

He broke off, to begin again abruptly:

“Ah, Vigo, that still tongue of yours! You knew, then, that there was more cause of trouble between my father and me than the pistoles?”

“I knew he suspected you of a kindness for the League, monsieur. But you are cured of that.”

“There you are wrong. For I never had it, and I am not cured of it. If I hung around the Hotel de Lorraine, it was not for politics; it was for petticoats.”

Vigo made no answer, but the corners of his grim mouth twitched.

“That’s no news, either? Well, then, since you know so much, you may as well know more. Step up, Felix, and tell your tale.”

I did as I was bid, M. Etienne now and then taking the words out of my mouth in his eagerness, Vigo listening to us both with grave attention. I had for the second time in my career the pleasure of startling him out of his iron composure when I told him the true name and condition of Lucas. But at the end of the adventure all the comment he made was:

“A fool for luck.”

“Well,” said M. Etienne, impatiently, “is that all you have to say? What are we to do about it?”

“Do? Why, nothing.”

“Nothing?” he cried, with his hand on his sword. “Nothing? And let that scoundrel have her?”

“That is M. de Mayenne’s affair,” Vigo said. “We can’t help it.”

“I will help it!” M. Etienne declared. “Mordieu! Am I to let that traitor, that spy, that soul of dirt, marry Mlle. de Montluc?”

“What Mayenne wishes he’ll have,” Vigo said. “Some day you will surely get a chance to fight Lucas, monsieur.”

“And meantime he is to enjoy her?”

“It is a pity,” Vigo admitted. “But there is Mayenne. Can we storm the Hotel de Lorraine? No one can drink up the sea.”

“One could if he wanted to as much as I want mademoiselle,” my lord declared.

But Vigo shook his head.

“Monsieur,” he said gravely, “monsieur, you have a great chance. You have a sword and a good cause to draw it in. What more should a man ask in the world than that? Your father has been without it these three years, and for want of it he has eaten his heart out. You have been without it, and you have got yourself into all sorts of mischief. But now all that is coming straight. King Henry is turning Catholic, so that a man may follow him without offence to God. He is a good fellow and a first-rate general. He’s just out there, at St. Denis. There’s your place, M. Etienne.”

“Not to-day, Vigo.”

“Yes, M. Etienne, to-day. Be advised, monsieur,” Vigo said with his steady persistence. “There is nothing to gain by staying here to drink up the sea. Mayenne will no more give your lady to you now than he would give her to Felix. And you can no more carry her off than could Felix. Mayenne will have you killed and flung into the Seine, as easy as eat breakfast.”

“And you bid me grudge my life? Strange counsel from you, Vigo.”

“No, monsieur, but I bid you not throw it away. We all hope to die afield, but we have a preference how and where. If you fell fighting for Navarre, I should be sorry; Monsieur would grieve deep. But we should say it was well; we grudged not your life to the country and the king. While, if you fall in this fool affair

“I fall for my lady,” M. Etienne finished. “The bravest captain of them all does no better than that.”

“M. Etienne, she is no wife for you. You cannot get her. And if you could ’twere pity. She is a Ligueuse, and you from now on are a staunch Kingsman. Give her up, monsieur. You have had this maggot in your brain this four years. Once for all, get it out. Go to St. Denis; take your troop among Biron’s horse. That is the place for you. You will marry a maid of honour and die a marshal of France.”

M. Etienne laid his arm around Vigo’s shoulder with a smile.

“Good old Vigo! Vigo, tell me this; if you saw a marshal’s baton waiting you in the field, and at home your dearest friend were alone and in peril, would you go off after glory?”

“Aye, if ’twas a hopeless business to stay, certes I would go.”

“Oh, tell that in Bedlam!” M. Etienne cried. “You would do nothing of the sort. Was it to win glory you stayed three years in that hole, St. Quentin?”

“I had no choice, monsieur. My master was there.”

“And my mistress is here! You may save your breath, Vigo; I know what I shall do. The eloquence of monk Christin wouldn’t change me.”

“What is your purpose, M. Etienne?” Vigo asked.

Indeed, there was a vagueness about his scheme as revealed to us.

“It is quite simple. I purpose to get speech with mademoiselle if I can contrive it, and I think I can. I purpose to smuggle her out of the Hotel de Lorraine such feats have been accomplished before and may be again. Then I shall bring her here and hold her against all comers.”

“No,” Vigo said, “no, monsieur. You may not do that.”

“Ventre bleu, Vigo!” his young lord cried.

“No,” said Vigo. “I can’t have her here, and Mayenne’s army after her.”

“Coward!” shouted M. Etienne.

I thought Vigo would take us both by the scruff of our necks and throw us out of the place. But he answered undisturbed:

“No, that is not the reason, monsieur. If M. lé Duc told me to hold this house against the armies of France and Spain, I’d hold it till the last man of us was dead. But I am here in his absence to guard his hotel, his moneys, and his papers. I don’t call it guarding to throw a firebrand among them. Bringing Mayenne’s niece here would be worse than that.”

“Monsieur would never hesitate! Monsieur is no chicken-heart!” M. Etienne cried. “If he were here, he’d say, ’We’ll defend the lady if every stone in this house is pulled from its fellow!’”

A twinkle came into Vigo’s eyes.

“I think that is likely true,” he said. “Monsieur opposed the marriage as long as Mayenne desired it; but now that Mayenne forbids it, stealing the demoiselle is another pair of sleeves.”

“Well, then,” cried M. Etienne, all good humour in a moment, “what more do you want? We’ll divert ourselves pouring pitch out of the windows on Mayenne’s ruffians.”

“No, M. Etienne, it can’t be done. If M. lé Duc were here and gave the command to receive her, that would be one thing. No one would obey with a readier heart than I. Mordieu, monsieur, I have no objection to succouring a damsel in distress; I have been in the business before now.”

“Then why not now? Death of my life, Vigo! When I know, and you know, Monsieur would approve.”

“I don’t know it, monsieur,” Vigo said. “I only think it. And I cannot move by my own guesswork. I am in charge of the house till Monsieur returns. I purpose to do nothing to jeopard it. But I interfere in no way with your liberty to proceed as you please.”

“I should think not, forsooth!” M. Etienne blazed out furiously.

“I could,” rejoined Vigo, with his maddening tranquillity. “I could order the guard and they would obey to lock you up in your chamber. I believe Monsieur would thank me for it. But I don’t do it. I leave you free to act as it likes you.”

My lord was white with ire.

“Who is master here, you or I?”

“Neither of us, M. lé Comte. But Monsieur, leaving, put the keys in my hand, and I am head of the house till he returns. You are very angry, M. Etienne, but my shoulders are broad enough to bear it. Your madness will get no countenance from me.”

“Hang you for an obstinate pig!” M. Etienne cried.

Vigo said no more. He had made plain his position; he had naught to add or retract. Yeux-gris’s face cleared. After all, there was no use being angry with Vigo; one might as well make fists at the flow of the Seine.

“Very well.” M. Etienne swallowed his wrath. “It is understood that I get no aid from you. Then I have nobody in the world with me save Felix here. But for all that I’ll win my lady!”