The Justice of the King Part 17

And yet, now that La Mothe had brought him face to face with the question, what had he discovered? Little or nothing. Using all the arts and artifices which ten years' service under such a master of subtle craftiness as the eleventh Louis had taught him, he had cajoled and bribed, probed and sifted, even covertly threatened at times. But all to no purpose. An indignant sarcasm from Ursula de Vesc, a politic--and wise--regret for the estrangement from La Follette, a petulant outburst from Charles, childish and pathetically cynical by turns, the vague whispers inseparable from such a household as was gathered together in Amboise were all his reward. But the King demanded proof; the King demanded articles of conviction which would, if necessary, satisfy an incredulous world that the terrible tragedy which followed proof was the justice of the highest law.

"Disaffection is everywhere," he said at last; "disloyalty which only lacks the spur of opportunity to drive desire into action. If these things are on the surface, worse lies hidden. You know the proverb of Smoke and Fire? I see the fire laid, I smell the smoke: it was for you to find the spark, you who have had a free hand in Amboise. But you play nonsense games with Charles, hanging upon the skirts of the unscrupulous woman who tutors him to revolt, or drink in taverns with a scurrilous thief turned spy to save his neck from a deserved hanging.

Do you think you serve the King by philandering in a rose garden, or playing at French and English in the Burnt Mill? Francois Villon!

Ursula de Vesc! Stephen, you make yourself too much one with them--an unhung footpad who prost.i.tutes the powers of mind G.o.d gave him to the devil's use, and a woman----"

"Uncle, if even your father had spoken evil of Suzanne would you have listened to him?"

"Suzanne? What has Suzanne in common with Ursula de Vesc?"

"Only that I love her as you loved Suzanne," answered La Mothe.

"Ursula de Vesc? Stephen, at the least she is the King's enemy."

"Yes, he told me so himself."

"And at the worst----"

"There is no worst," said La Mothe doggedly. "There is no plot against the King, no plot at all."

"And your proof is that when a clever woman bade a boy control his tongue he obeyed her! Will that convince Louis? Would it convince yourself but for this calf-love of yours? Stephen, Stephen, you do not know the gulf on which you stand. What answer am I to return to the King?"

"Uncle, is it my fault that I am living a lie in Amboise?"

"Grey Roland changed all that for you ten days ago. There was the game in your hands, and you threw it away! A touch of the heel, a single twitch of the bridle--there, there, say nothing: perhaps at your age I would have had the same scruples. But what answer am I to return to the King?"

"That I will do all he bade me; do it with all my heart to the very letter," answered La Mothe. And with that Commines had to be content.

"You go too slow," said Villon. "You go too fast," said Commines.

Between such cross fires what was a poor lover to do? There was once, La Mothe remembered, a man who had an only son and an a.s.s. But the problem is older than the imagination of any fabulist, and as new as the newest day in the world. "Thou shalt die," said the Lord G.o.d.

"Thou shalt not surely die," said the devil.

"I will take my own way," he said. "It is my life I have to live, not theirs." And that afternoon came his opportunity to prove that a man knows best how his own life should be shaped.

CHAPTER XVII

STEPHEN LA MOTHE ASKS THE WRONG QUESTION

Only the very foolish or the very weak man seeks to hide from his own soul the full, naked, unpalatable truth about himself. The fool follows the principle which governs the libel upon the intelligence of the ostrich, and vainly tries to persuade himself that what he does not see does not exist, while the weak man dares not open the doors of the cupboard hidden in every life for shivering terror of the secrets he knows are there. Wiser wickedness deliberately airs his skeleton now and then, and thereby the grisly presence grows less grisly, and the hollow rattle of the bones less threatening. The articulation remains the same, but the tone, so to speak, is more subdued.

And Stephen La Mothe, being neither a fool nor altogether weak, was not afraid to admit to himself that Commines' angry contempt had described the day-by-day life at Amboise with sufficient accuracy, at least so far as the Dauphin and Ursula de Vesc were concerned. The bitter fling at his friendship for Villon did not trouble him. It was simply the high light added to the picture to bring out its general truth.

Yes, he had played games of make-believe with the boy, such as Louis had spoken of half in tolerance and half with the vexation of a clever father who resents that his only son is not as clever as himself. He had--no, he had not philandered in the rose garden. The a.s.sociations of the word stirred him to revolt. Dairy-maids might philander, kitchen wenches and such-like common flesh might philander, but never Ursula of the grey eyes, Ursula of the tender, firm mouth. Ursula philander? Never! never! The thought was desecration. What was it Louis had said? All women are the same under the skin. It was a cynic's lie, and Louis had never known Ursula de Vesc.

Lifting a lute he touched the strings lightly. He was in one of the smaller rooms of the Chateau, one the girl used more, almost, than any other, and little suggestions of her were scattered about it. On a bench was a piece of woman's work with the threaded needle pushed through the stuff as when she laid it aside, flowers she had gathered were on the table, the portiere masking the door was her embroidery.

Perhaps all these forced an a.s.sociation of ideas. Picking the strings out one by one half unconsciously, the air of the love song followed the shift of the hand, and equally unconsciously his voice took up the rhythm, first in an undertone, then louder and louder:

"Heigh-ho! Love is my sun, Love is my moon and the stars by night.

Heigh-ho! hour there is none, Love of my heart, but thou art my light; Never forsaking, Noon or day-breaking, Midnights of sorrow thy comforts make bright.

Heigh-ho! Love is my life, Live I in loving and love I to live: Heigh-ho!----"

"Monsieur La Mothe, Monsieur La Mothe, have you deceived us all these days?"

Down went the lute with a clang which jarred its every string into discord, and La Mothe sprang to his feet.

"Deceived you, mademoiselle! How?"

"That first night--I do not like to remember it even now, but Monsieur Villon told us you were both poet and singer, but you denied it. And now I hear you singing----"

"Not singing, mademoiselle."

"Singing," she persisted, with a pretty emphasis which La Mothe found very pleasant. "We shall have a new play to-night. A Court of High Justice, and Monsieur La Mothe arraigned for defrauding Amboise of a pleasure these ten days. I shall prosecute, Charles must be judge, and your sentence will be to sing every song you know."

"Then I shall escape lightly; I know so few."

"There! You have confessed, and your punishment must begin at once.

Villon was right: Amboise is dull; sing for me, Monsieur La Mothe."

"But," protested La Mothe, "Villon was wrong as well as right in what he told you that night."

"What? A minstrel who wanders France with his knapsack and his lute and yet cannot sing?" If the raillery yet remained in the gay voice, it was a raillery which shifted its significance from pleasant badinage to something deeper, and the tender mouth which La Mothe was so sure could never lend itself to philandering lost its tenderness. More than once he had caught just such expression when the perilous ground of the relationships between father and son had been trodden upon in an attempt to justify the King. Then it had been impersonal, now he was reminded of his first night in Amboise, when her cold suspicion had been frankly unveiled. But the hardening of the face was only for a moment. "Truly, now," she went on, "have you never made verses?"

"Very bad ones, mademoiselle."

"A poet tells the truth! The skies will fall! But perhaps it is not the truth; perhaps you are as unjust to your verses as you are to your singing." Seating herself in a low chair, she looked up at him with a dangerous but unconscious kindness in her eyes. "Now sit there in that window-seat and let me judge. With the sun behind you you will look like Apollo with his lyre. No, not Apollo. Apollo was the sun itself.

Why are men so much more difficult to duplicate in simile than women?"

"Not all women. I know one for whom there is no duplicate."

"A poet's divine imagination!"

"A man's reverent thankfulness."

The grey eyes kindled, and as the unconscious kindliness grew yet more kindly La Mothe told himself he had surely advanced a siege trench towards the defences. As to Ursula, she could not have told why these last days had been the pleasantest of her life, and would have indignantly denied that Stephen La Mothe was in any way the cause.

Women do not admit such truths as openly as men, not even to themselves. But Amboise was no longer dull, the rose garden no longer a mere relief from the greyness of the hours spent behind the grim walls which circled it. The sunshine was the same, the budding flowers were the same, the glorious shift from winter to summer, but they were the same with a difference, a difference she never paused to a.n.a.lyze.

Spring--the spring of her life--had come upon her unawares.

But a more acknowledged element in the pleasant comfort of these days had been a sense of support. One of the most corroding sorrows of life is to be lonely, alienated from sympathy and guidance, and in Amboise Ursula de Vesc had been very solitary. La Follette was politic, cautiously non-committal; Hugues of a cla.s.s apart; Commines an avowed opponent; Charles too young for companionship; Villon a contempt, and at times a loathing. Into this solitariness had come Stephen La Mothe, and the very reaction from acute suspicion had drawn her towards him.

Repentance for an unmerited blame is much nearer akin to love than any depths of pity. Then to repentance was added grat.i.tude, to grat.i.tude admiration, and to all three propinquity. Blessed be propinquity! If Hymen ever raises an altar to his most devoted hand-maid it will be to the dear G.o.ddess Propinquity! Yes! these days had been very pleasant days.

But an unfailing charm in a charming woman is that one can never tell what she will do next. Though the grey eyes kindled and the kindliness in them grew yet more kindly, though the soft embroideries in the delicate lawn were ruffled by a quicker breath, the natural perversity of her s.e.x must needs answer perversely, and Ursula de Vesc blew up his siege trench with a bombsh.e.l.l.

"Monsieur La Mothe, were you ever at Valmy?"

"Yes, mademoiselle." There was no shadow of hesitation in the reply, though the abrupt change of subject was as startling as the question itself.