The Justice of the King Part 16

"I told you at the first you were not going the right way about it."

"And you were wrong," answered La Mothe. "I am only ten days in Amboise, ten days which seem like so many hours, and already Charles trusts me as he trusts Mademoiselle de Vesc."

Pushing out his loose-hung under lip Villon eyed his companion quizzically, but with a little pity through the banter. They were alone in the common room of the Chien Noir, and on the table by which they sat were two bottles of the famous '63 wine, one empty, the other with its tide at a low ebb, but La Mothe's horn mug was still unemptied after its first filling. With some men this would have been an offence, but not with Francois Villon. "Good-fellowship is not in wine but in words, or surer still, in silence," he would say, "and another man's drinking neither warms my heart nor cools my thirst. Besides, there is the more left for the wiser man."

"Ten days of opportunity, and you are content that a boy trusts you!

Lovers were not so coldly contented in the good old days of the Paris pavements. Soul of the world! but there is no talk like Paris talk.

La Mothe, you will never be a man till you hear it. Cling-clang go the feet, and cling-clang sing the flags under them, cling-clang, cling-clang, and I'll never hear it again--never. Content, d'you say?

I'll not believe it. I'll not think so little of you. The Good G.o.d never meant man to be content. How would the world move?"

"I'm winning what I came to Amboise to win."

"A snap of the finger," and Villon filliped his own noisily, "for what you came to Amboise to win. The garden grows more flowers than fleurs-de-lis, and better worth the plucking. Eh, my young friend? I think there is a certain tall, slim Madonna lily----"

"No Paris jests, Villon."

"Trust Francois Villon! Jest?" His eyes twinkled humorously over the edge of his tilted horn cup as he finished the second bottle. "In all divine creation there is nothing so solemn as the heart of youth in its first love. It is the first, is it not, La Mothe? G.o.ds of Olympus!

was I ever as young as you? I think Paris aged me before I was breeched. But to go back to my garden. Do you dislike the simile--a Madonna lily?"

"The subject is distasteful."

"Mademoiselle de Vesc distasteful? Monsieur La Mothe, I apologize. In all my Paris days I was never such a hypocrite as to make love to a woman who was distasteful. But then, is any woman distasteful if a man be only in the right mood?"

"Villon, that is untrue------"

"My friend, I know my past better than you do. Distasteful? Pah! it is an ugly word."

"What you say of me is untrue. I honour Madedoiselle de Vesc----"

"Much she cares for that! 'No, thank you!' said the cat, when they gave her frozen milk. Honouring is cold love-making. And now you have proved that you don't go the right way about it. 'Mademoiselle,'"; and Villon minced a melancholy falsetto, "'I respect you deeply; mademoiselle, I honour you humbly from a distance; you are the highest star in the heavens, and I a worm of the earth! Permit me to kiss your venerated finger-tips.' Honour! Bah! get nearer to them, man; nearer to them; the closer the better; honour is too far off. Listen, now, while I teach you a better way."

"Thank you for nothing," said La Mothe drily, but unoffended. In these ten days he had learned which of Villon's jests were innocent of intention to hurt, and which carried a poisoned barb. "Love may be bought in Paris, but not in Amboise."

"But it costs more," retorted Villon. "In Amboise it costs a man's whole life, whereas in Paris," he paused, shrugged his shoulders, turned the drinking mug upside down and shook it whimsically, "emptiness ended all: emptiness of pocket, emptiness of--but there are seven separate emptinesses and any one was enough. Now listen and do not interrupt again. There be many ways of gathering peaches, but your way of kneeling at the foot of the tree with your hands folded like a saint in stained gla.s.s is the worst of all. It is only in theory that women, even lily Madonnas, love men to be saints; when it comes to practice----"

He broke off, chuckling the soft complacent chuckle La Mothe so greatly disliked, and putting the empty mug to his nose drew in the perfume of the wine with a deep breath. The lids drooped slowly over his shining eyes, and in the backward groping along the crooked byways which had led from Paris pavements to the mercy of Louis by way of an escaped gallows he forgot both La Mothe and Amboise. The voice of Paris the beloved, Paris the ever mourned for, was in his ears; the jargon of the Rue Maubert, the tinkle of the gla.s.ses through the doubtful but merry songs of the Pet du Deable, whispers of gay voices which had long pa.s.sed beyond these voices, and the leering face, part satyr and part poet, grew wholly poet in its remembrance. It is the blessing of nature, and one of its most divine gifts, that memory brings back the best from the past and leaves the worst covered. Even our snows of yester year are roseate with the glow of imagination.

"The Madonna lily! Blessed is the man who gathers one and finds warm blood in its pure veins. The gift of a good woman who loves and is loved. Aye, aye, G.o.d send us all heaven while we're young. The Madonna lily! Once there was such a one in the garden of life, pure, sweet, and beloved. But the perfume was not for Francois Villon, and the swine in him turned to the husks of the trough. Catherine de Vaucelles; Catherine, dead these many years, dead but never forgotten, a saint with the saints of G.o.d, and the rest--d.a.m.ned." He spoke to himself rather than to La Mothe, but after a little spell of silence he looked up, gravely in earnest. "You go too slowly. Any day the King may crook his finger. What if he calls you to Valmy, then sends you G.o.d knows where, G.o.d knows for how long, and you return to Amboise to find some one else has gathered your lily while you lagged? That would be a chilly winter in the garden of life where you left young spring."

La Mothe sat silent. What reply was possible? That the advice was well meant he knew, but he had never before realized that a peremptory recall might come any moment from Valmy. And it was not impossible.

Louis, aged and ailing, spurred, too, by the desire for the comfort of his son's love while life was still good to the taste, would be impatient of delay. These ten days which had pa.s.sed with the swiftness of a summer's morning would be long as a wintry month to the lonely father. But to the devout lover, in him haste savoured of presumption.

Ursula de Vesc was his good friend and comrade; could he hope for more than that in so short a time? In making haste might he not lose all he had gained? Besides, in the service and worship of the one dear woman in the world, a man is his own High Priest, and none save himself may enter into the Holy of Holies. And what could this peach-picker of Paris pavements know of such a Holy of Holies? Nothing, absolutely nothing. So he sat silent, doubly tongue-tied by doubt and reverence.

But for these, Villon, who read his face with disconcerting ease, had no great respect.

"Eh!" he said briskly, "is the advice good?"

"Is good advice easy to follow?"

"Yes, when it is palatable, which is not often: commonly it has a bitter taste in the swallowing. Or do you think it will be all the same fifty years hence? By all the Muses, there's an idea! I must write the 'Ballad of Fifty Years to Come.' Let me see--let me see--'m yes, the first verse might run like this:

"Where is La Mothe, that lover gay, Or Francois Villon, poet splendid!

Madonna of the eyes of grey, Or Charles whom Bertrand nearly ended?

D'Argenton, are his manners mended?

Or wisest Louis, swift to pardon Though so grievously offended?

Ask of the Scents of Amboise garden!

"There!" and he drummed the empty mug on the flat of the table in mock applause which was not all unreal, "what do you think of that for the first draft? It does justice to me and to you, chronicles little Charles' escape, kicks your Monsieur d'Argenton in pa.s.sing, and takes off its hat to the King all in a breath."

"Tear it up," answered La Mothe. "Will the King thank you for hinting he will be dead and forgotten fifty years hence? When you speak of Louis, you should always say, 'O King, live for ever!'"

The drumming ceased, the gay laugh died out of Villon's eyes, and he sat ruefully silent. To hint at death to Louis, even remotely, was an unpardonable sin.

"You are right," he said at last, and said it with a sigh. "All the same, the idea is a good one, and ideas are scarcer than poetry and always will be. I have heard your verses, my young friend. Here is Saxe. Saxe, have you brought that third bottle? To drink less than his average is a crime against a man's thirst."

But Saxe was empty-handed.

"Monsieur de Commines desires speech with Monsieur La Mothe in the Chateau garden."

"Monsieur de Commines? Bah! Go and be birched," said Villon peevishly. The failure of his ballad had vexed him, and he was ready to vent his spleen on what lay nearest. "You deserve it for your milk-and-water love-me-a-little-to-morrow. Had it been the old Paris days the Madonna lily would have said 'Come!' to Francois Villon in less than a week."

"Paris flowers do not grow in Amboise garden," answered La Mothe, and added "Thank G.o.d!" in his heart.

Commines was standing at the entrance to an arch of roses which, pergola fashion, covered a sunny walk. On three sides rose the Chateau, grey and sullen, on the fourth was an enclosing wall. In shaded corners a few belated gillyflowers, straggling and overgrown, filled the air with perfume, but La Mothe's gaze was caught by a group of Madonna lilies, slim and graceful, rising from a bed of purple fleurs-de-lis, their ivory buds new opened, and the recollection of Villon's comparison thrilled his imagination with its aptness. Grace for grace, beauty for beauty, in fulfilment and promise, they were Ursula de Vesc herself.

But almost with his first sentence Commines proved that Villon had shrewd forethought as well as a poet's eye for a fitting simile.

"If it is not Mademoiselle de Vesc it is Francois Villon; if it is not philandering it is wine-bibbing," he said harshly. "Stephen, the King thinks you are wasting your time in Amboise and I think so too. What have you discovered in your ten days?"

"All that there is to learn, Uncle."

"I see. That Ursula de Vesc has a pretty face? Stephen, Stephen, you are not in Amboise to play the fool."

La Mothe flushed and was about to answer angrily, but remembering that Commines spoke for the King rather than for himself he restrained his impatience.

"Uncle, is that just?"

"Well, what have you discovered?"

"That there is no such vile scheme as the King imagines."

"Can you prove that?"

"To me there is proof. Ten days ago, when the boy thanked me for pulling him off Bertrand's back, he as much as said he had nothing to pay me with. Now if this lie of a plot against the King were the truth, would not a self-willed boy like the Dauphin, boastful as boys are, proud and galled by the debt he thought he owed me, have hinted that the day would come when he could pay in full, and sooner than some expected? He surely would. His pride would have run away with his discretion. Besides, Uncle, what have you discovered in your ten days?"

But Commines returned no answer, and to La Mothe his gloomy face was inscrutable. He knew his master; knew, without being told in so many words, that it was the King's purpose to set Charles aside; knew that the King believed justification for such a course was to be found at Amboise; knew above all, knew with the knowledge of other men's bitter experience, that there were no thanks for the man who failed, even though that failure proved a son innocent of crime against a father.

It was not innocence the King desired but guilt.