The servant led him to a parlour, a cool shady room on the farther side of the tiny quadrangle, and, muttering something inaudible, withdrew. A moment later a frolicsome laugh, and the light flutter of a woman's skirt as she tripped across the court, brought the blood to his cheeks. He went a step nearer to the door, and his eyes grew bright.
CHAPTER X. MADAME ST. LO.
So far excitement had supported Tignonville in his escape. It was only when he knew himself safe, when he heard Madame St. Lo's footstep in the courtyard and knew that in a moment he would see her, that he knew also that he was failing for want of food. The room seemed to go round with him; the window to shift, the light to flicker. And then again, with equal abruptness, he grew strong and steady and perfectly master of himself. Nay, never had he felt a confidence in himself so overwhelming or a capacity so complete. The triumph of that which he had done, the knowledge that of so many he, almost alone, had escaped, filled his brain with a delicious and intoxicating vanity. When the door opened, and Madame St. Lo appeared on the threshold, he advanced holding out his arms. He expected that she would fall into them.
But Madame only backed and curtseyed, a mischievous light in her eyes.
"A thousand thanks, Monsieur!" she said, "but you are more ready than I!" And she remained by the door.
"I have come to you through all!" he cried, speaking loudly because of a humming in his ears. "They are lying in the streets! They are dying, are dead, are hunted, are pursued, are perishing! But I have come through all to you!"
She curtseyed anew. "So I see, Monsieur!" she answered. "I am flattered!" But she did not advance, and gradually, light-headed as he was, he began to see that she looked at him with an odd closeness. And he took offence.
"I say, Madame, I have come to you!" he repeated. "And you do not seem pleased!"
She came forward a step and looked at him still more oddly.
"Oh yes," she said. "I am pleased, M. de Tignonville. It is what I intended. But tell me how you have fared. You are not hurt?"
"Not a hair!" he cried boastfully. And he told her in a dozen windy sentences of the adventure of the haycart and his narrow escape. He wound up with a foolish meaningless laugh.
"Then you have not eaten for thirty-six hours?" she said. And when he did not answer, "I understand," she continued, nodding and speaking as to a child. And she rang a silver handbell and gave an order.
She addressed the servant in her usual tone, but to Tignonville's ear her voice seemed to fall to a whisper. Her figure--she was small and fairy- like--began to sway before him; and then in a moment, as it seemed to him, she was gone, and he was seated at a table, his trembling fingers grasping a cup of wine which the elderly servant who had admitted him was holding to his lips. On the table before him were a spit of partridges and a cake of white bread. When he had swallowed a second mouthful of wine--which cleared his eyes as by magic--the man urged him to eat. And he fell to with an appetite that grew as he ate.
By-and-by, feeling himself again, he became aware that two of Madame's women were peering at him through the open doorway. He looked that way and they fled giggling into the court; but in a moment they were back again, and the sound of their tittering drew his eyes anew to the door. It was the custom of the day for ladies of rank to wait on their favourites at table; and he wondered if Madame were with them, and why she did not come and serve him herself.
But for a while longer the savour of the roasted game took up the major part of his thoughts; and when prudence warned him to desist, and he sat back, satisfied after his long fast, he was in no mood to be critical. Perhaps--for somewhere in the house he heard a lute--Madame was entertaining those whom she could not leave? Or deluding some who might betray him if they discovered him?
From that his mind turned back to the streets and the horrors through which he had passed; but for a moment and no more. A shudder, an emotion of prayerful pity, and he recalled his thoughts. In the quiet of the cool room, looking on the sunny, vine-clad court, with the tinkle of the lute and the murmurous sound of women's voices in his ears, it was hard to believe that the things from which he had emerged were real. It was still more unpleasant, and as futile, to dwell on them. A day of reckoning would come, and, if La Tribe were right, the cause would rally, bristling with pikes and snorting with war-horses, and the blood spilled in this wicked city would cry aloud for vengeance. But the hour was not yet. He had lost his mistress, and for that atonement must be exacted. But in the present another mistress awaited him, and as a man could only die once, and might die at any minute, so he could only live once, and in the present. Then _vogue la galere_!
As he roused himself from this brief reverie and fell to wondering how long he was to be left to himself, a rosebud tossed by an unseen hand struck him on the breast and dropped to his knees. To seize it and kiss it gallantly, to spring to his feet and look about him were instinctive movements. But he could see no one; and, in the hope of surprising the giver, he stole to the window. The sound of the lute and the distant tinkle of laughter persisted. The court, save for a page, who lay asleep on a bench in the gallery, was empty. Tignonville scanned the boy suspiciously; a male disguise was often adopted by the court ladies, and if Madame would play a prank on him, this was a thing to be reckoned with. But a boy it seemed to be, and after a while the young man went back to his seat.
Even as he sat down, a second flower struck him more sharply in the face, and this time he darted not to the window but to the door. He opened it quickly and looked out, but again he was too late.
"I shall catch you presently, _ma reine_!" he murmured tenderly, with intent to be heard. And he closed the door. But, wiser this time, he waited with his hand on the latch until he heard the rustling of a skirt, and saw the line of light at the foot of the door darkened by a shadow. That moment he flung the door wide, and, clasping the wearer of the skirt in his arms, kissed her lips before she had time to resist.
Then he fell back as if he had been shot! For the wearer of the skirt, she whom he had kissed, was Madame St. Lo's woman, and behind her stood Madame herself, laughing, laughing, laughing with all the gay abandonment of her light little heart.
"Oh, the gallant gentleman!" she cried, and clapped her hands effusively. "Was ever recovery so rapid? Or triumph so speedy? Suzanne, my child; you surpass Venus. Your charms conquer before they are seen!"
M. de Tignonville had put poor Suzanne from him as if she burned; and hot and embarrassed, cursing his haste, he stood looking awkwardly at them.
"Madame," he stammered at last, "you know quite well that--"
"Seeing is believing!"
"That I thought it was you!"
"Oh, what I have lost!" she replied. And she looked archly at Suzanne, who giggled and tossed her head.
He was growing angry. "But, Madame," he protested, "you know--"
"I know what I know, and I have seen what I have seen!" Madame answered merrily. And she hummed,
"'Ce fut le plus grand jour d'este Que m'embrassa la belle Suzanne!'
Oh yes, I know what I know!" she repeated. And she fell again to laughing immoderately; while the pretty piece of mischief beside her hung her head, and, putting a finger in her mouth, mocked him with an affectation of modesty.
The young man glowered at them between rage and embarrassment. This was not the reception, nor this the hero's return to which he had looked forward. And a doubt began to take form in his mind. The mistress he had pictured would not laugh at kisses given to another; nor forget in a twinkling the straits through which he had come to her, the hell from which he had plucked himself! Possibly the court ladies held love as cheap as this, and lovers but as playthings, butts for their wit, and pegs on which to hang their laughter. But--but he began to doubt, and, perplexed and irritated, he showed his feelings.
"Madame,"