"You little scamp, you have all the luck! I never saw such a boy! Well
do they call you Félix! 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, Félix, 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, Félix?" 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, Félix," he laughed, "you take a black view of mankind."
"Not of mankind, M. Étienne. 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. Étienne 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, Félix," 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.
"Félix," 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."