Chapter IX: The honour of St. Quentin

Monsieur was seated at his table, talking in a low tone and hurriedly to Lucas. They started and stared as I broke in upon them, and then Monsieur cried out to me:

"Ah, Félix! You have come to your senses."

"I will tell Monsieur all, the whole story."

He tested my honesty with a glance, then looked beyond me at Marcel, standing agape in the doorway.

"Leave us, Marcel. Go down-stairs. Leave that door open, and shut the door into the corridor."

Marcel obeyed. Monsieur turned to me with a smile.

"Now, Félix."

I had hardly been able to hold my words back while Marcel was disposed of.

"Monsieur, I knew not, myself, the names of those men. Now I have found out. They--"

My eyes met the secretary's fixed excitedly upon me and the words died on my tongue. Even in my rage I had the grace to know that this was no story to tell Monsieur before another.

"I will tell Monsieur alone."

"You may speak before M. Lucas," he rejoined impatiently.

"No," I persisted. "I must tell Monsieur alone."

He saw in my face that I had strong reasons for asking it, and said to the secretary:

"You may go, Lucas."

Lucas protested.

"M. le Duc will be wiser not to see him alone. He is not to be trusted. Perchance, Monsieur, this demand covers an attack on your life."

The warning nettled my lord. He answered curtly:

"You may go."

"Monsieur--"

"Go!"

Lucas passed out, giving me, as he went, a look of hatred that startled me. But I did not pay it much heed.

"Well!" exclaimed Monsieur.

But by this time I had bethought myself what a story it was I had to tell a father of his son. I could not blurt it out in two words. I stood silent, not knowing how to start.

"Félix! Beware how much longer you abuse my patience!"

"Monsieur," I began, "the spy in the house is named Martin."

"Ah!" cried Monsieur. "So it is Louis Martin. How he knew--But go on. The others--"

"I lay the night in the Rue Coupejarrets, not far from the St. Denis gate," I said, still beating about the bush, "at the sign of the Amour de Dieu. Opposite is a closed house, shuttered with iron from garret to cellar. You can enter from a court behind. It is here that they plot."

Monsieur's brows drew together, as if he were trying to recall something half remembered, half forgotten.

"But the men," he cried, "the men!"

"They are three. One a low fellow named Pontou."

"Pontou? The name is nothing to me. The others?" He was leaning forward eagerly. I knew of what he was thinking--the quickest way to reach the Rue Coupejarrets.

"There are two others, Monsieur," I said slowly. "Young men--noble."

I looked at him. But no light whatever had broken in upon him.

"Their names, lad!"

Then, seeing him unsuspecting, the fury in my heart surged up and covered every other feeling. I burst out:

"Gervais de Grammont and the Comte de Mar."

He looked me in the face, and he knew I was telling the truth. Unexpected as it was, hideous as it was, yet he knew I was telling the truth.

I had seen cowards turn pale, but never the colour washed from a brave man's face. The sight made my fingers itch to strangle that gray-eyed cheat.

With a cry Monsieur sprang toward me.

"You lie, you cur!"

"No, Monsieur," I gasped; "it is the truth."

He let me go then, and laid his hand on the collar of the dog, who had sprung to his aid. But Monsieur had got a hurt from which the dumb beast's loyalty could not defend him. He stood with bowed head, a man stricken to the heart's core. Full of wrath as I was, the tears came to my eyes for Monsieur.

He recovered himself.

"It is some damnable mistake! You have been tricked!"

My rage blazed up again.

"No! They tricked me once. Not again! Not this time. I knew not who they were till now, when I talked with Marcel. The two things fitted."

"Then it is your guess! You dare to say--"

"No, I know!" I interrupted rudely, too excited to remember respect. "Shall I tell what these men were like? I had never seen M. le Comte nor M. de Grammont before. One was broad-shouldered and heavy, with a black beard and a black scowl, whom the other called Gervais. The younger was called Étienne, tall and slender, with gray eyes and fair hair. And like Monsieur!" I cried, suddenly aware of it. "Mordieu, how he is like, though he is light! In face, in voice, in manner! He speaks like Monsieur. He has Monsieur's laugh. I was blind not to see it. I believe that was why I loved him so much."

"It was he whom you would not betray?"

"Aye. That was before I knew."

Thinking of the trust I had given him, my wrath boiled up again. Monsieur took me by the shoulder and looked at me as if he would look through me to the naked soul.

"How do I know that you are not lying?"

"Monsieur does know it."

"Yes," he answered after a moment. "Alas! yes, I know it."

He stood looking at me, with the dreariest face I ever saw--the face of a man whose son has sought to murder him. Looking back on it now, I wonder that I ever went to Monsieur with that story. I wonder why I did not bury the shame and disgrace of it in my own heart, at whatever cost keep it from Monsieur. But the thought never entered my head then. I was so full of black rage against Yeux-gris--him most of all, because he had won me so--that I could feel nothing else. I knew that I pitied Monsieur, yet I hardly felt it.

"Tell me everything--how you met them--all. Else I shall not believe a word of your devilish rigmarole," Monsieur cried out.

I told him the whole shameful story, every word, from my lightning vision to my gossip with Marcel in the antechamber, he listening in hopeless silence. At length I finished. It seemed hours since he had spoken. At last he said, "Then it is true." The grayness of his face drew the cry from me:

"The villain! the black-hearted villain!"

"Take care, Félix, he is my son!"

I got hold of my cross and tore it off, breaking the chain.

"See, Monsieur. That is the cross on which he swore the plot was not against you. He swore it, and Gervais de Grammont laughed! I swore, too, never to betray them! Two perjuries!"

I flung the cross on the floor and stamped on it, splintering it.

"Profaner!" cried Monsieur.

"It is no sacrilege!" I retorted. "That is no holy thing since he has touched it. He has made it vile--scoundrel, assassin, parricide!"

Monsieur struck the words from my lips.

"It is true," I muttered.

"Were it ten times true, you have no right to say it."

"No, I have none," I answered, shamed. I might not speak ill of a St. Quentin, though he were the devil's own. But my rage came uppermost again.

"I can bring Monsieur to the house in twenty minutes. Vigo and a handful of men can take them prisoners before they suspect aught amiss. They are only three--he and Grammont and the lackey."

But Monsieur shook his head.

"I cannot do that."

"Why not, Monsieur?"

"Can I take my own son prisoner?"

"Monsieur need not go," said I, wondering. In his place I would have gone and killed Yeux-gris with my own hands. "Vigo and I and two more can do it. Vigo and I alone, if Monsieur would not shame him before the men." I guessed at what he was thinking.

"Not even you and Vigo," he answered. "Think you I would arrest my son like a common felon--shame him like that?"

"He has shamed himself!" I cried. I cared not whether I had a right to say it. "He has forgotten his honour."

"Aye. But I have remembered mine."

"Monsieur! Monsieur cannot mean to let him go scot-free?"

But his eyes told me that he did mean it.

"Then," I said in more and more amazement, "Monsieur forgives him?"

His face set sternly.

"No," he answered. "No, Félix. He has placed himself beyond my forgiveness."

"Then we will go there alone, we two, and kill him! Kill the three!"

He laughed. But not a man in France felt less mirthful.

"You would have me kill my son?"

"He would have killed you."

"That makes no difference."

I looked at him, groping after the thoughts that swayed him, and catching at them dimly. I knew them for the principles of a proud and honour-ruled man, but there was no room for them in my angry heart.

"Monsieur," I cried, "will you let three villains go unpunished for the sake of one?" It was what I had meant to do, awhile back, but the case was changed now.

"Of two: Gervais de Grammont is also of my blood."

"Monsieur would spare him as well--him, the ringleader!"

"He is my cousin."

"He forgets it."

"But I do not."

"Monsieur, will you have no vengeance?"

Monsieur looked at me.

"When you are a man, Félix Broux, you will know that there are other things in this world besides vengeance. You will know that some injuries cannot be avenged. You will know that a gentleman cannot use the same weapons that blackguards use to him."

"Ah, Monsieur!" I cried. "Monsieur is indeed a nobleman!" But I was furious with him for it.

He turned abruptly and paced down the room. The dog, which had been standing at his side, stayed still, looking from him to me with puzzled, troubled eyes. He knew quite well something was wrong, and vented his feelings in a long, dismal whine. Monsieur spoke to him; Roland bounded up to him and licked his hand. They walked up and down together, comforting each other.

"At least," I cried in desperation, "Monsieur has the spy."

He laughed. Only a man in utter despair could have laughed then as he did.

"Even the spy to wreak vengeance on consoles you somewhat, Félix? But does it seem to you fair that a tool should be punished when the leaders go free?"

"No," said I; "but it is the common way."

"That is a true word," he said, turning away again.

I waited till he faced me once more.

"Monsieur will not suffer the spy to go free?"

"No, Félix. He shall be punished lest he betray again."

He passed me in his dreary walk. Half a dozen times he passed by me, a broken-hearted man, striving to collect his courage to take up his life once more. But I thought he would never get over the blow. A husband may forget his wife's treachery, and a mother will forgive her child's, but a father can neither forget nor forgive the crime of the son who bears his name.

"Ah, Monsieur, you are noble, and I love you!" I cried from the depths of my heart, and knelt to kiss his hand.

Monsieur laid that kind hand on my shoulder.

"You shall serve me. Go now and send Vigo here. I must be looking to the country's business."