The Justice of the King Part 18

"Of course. Music opens all doors. Monsieur La Mothe, I congratulate you."

"That having been in Valmy I am now in Amboise?"

"Upon better than that. Some day I may tell you."

"But this is the best possible, and I congratulate myself. No! Good as this is, there is a better than the best! Mademoiselle----"

"But you sing as well as make verses, do you not--you, whose music opened the gates even of Valmy? Indeed, I heard you just now. You are another Orpheus, and Valmy a very similar interior. You don't like me to say so? Very well, my lute is in your hand, and I am waiting. Did they teach you in Poitou to keep ladies waiting?"

"Poitou?" repeated La Mothe; "but I never said I had been in Poitou."

"Oh! but as a minstrel you wander everywhere, or--what was it?--as a poor gentleman seeing France, and so to Poitou. Anjou, Guienne, anywhere would do as well--except Flanders, where Monsieur de Commines comes from, and where I wish Monsieur de Commines had remained," she added.

"You dislike Monsieur de Commines? Mademoiselle, if you knew him better; how I wish you did. There was once a friendless boy--"

"Is this another fairy tale?" Though she interrupted him with so little ceremony, there was no asperity in the voice. It was as if she said, "Even good women have their limitations. I may forgive Philip de Commines, but you cannot expect me to praise him."

"As true a story as the other."

"And you believe in that other?"

"With all my heart."

"Then why does the father not show himself fatherly?"

"Is it not the part of the son to say, 'Father, I have sinned'?"

"I see," she said, some of the old bitterness creeping into her tone, "the prodigal of twelve years old who is rioting in Amboise--you see how he riots--should ask forgiveness," and as she spoke Stephen La Mothe, with a sudden sense of chill, remembered that other prodigal of twelve years old who was hung on the Valmy gallows that the roads of France might be safe. If Commines was right, the parallel was complete--horribly complete. But she gave him no time to dwell upon the coincidence. "You put a heavy charge upon me," she went on, the furrows deepening on her forehead. "Would to G.o.d I could see what is best, what is right. I must think. I must think. Play to me, Monsieur La Mothe, but not too loudly, and do not call me rude if I do not listen. I know that must sound strange, but at times music helps me to think. Is it not so with you?"

The question was apologetic, and as such La Mothe understood it. He understood, too, the straits in which she found herself. So powerful was her influence over Charles, the boy would certainly act on her advice. Her knowledge of Stephen La Mothe was greater than he supposed. If he was right, and she held her peace, this breach between father and son would not only remain unhealed but would be widened by Louis' natural resentment at the rejection of his covert overtures; but if La Mothe was mistaken she knew the old King well enough to be certain that he would use the boy's unwelcome advances against him in some cunning fashion. Which way lay wisdom? Or, as she had put it--raising the question to a higher plane--which was the right?

"If you please," she said imperiously. "Yes, I mean it. Play David to the evil spirit of my doubt," and with a laugh to cover his sense of embarra.s.sment La Mothe obeyed, touching the instrument very softly.

But she could not have told whether he played a drinking-song or a Miserere. With her, as with many, the quiet rhythm of the music stimulated thought, and gradually the perplexity cleared from her mind.

Stephen La Mothe was not a fool, that counted for much. He was honest, that counted for much more. The King was notoriously ailing and, being superst.i.tious, might well repent; no high motive, but a probable one.

Philip de Commines' visit to Amboise was not by chance, and nothing less than his master's orders would have kept him so long from Valmy.

If Stephen La Mothe was right, then these orders must surely have a connection with the King's changed disposition towards the Dauphin.

She would watch Commines, doing nothing hastily, and by his actions would shape her course.

With the relaxation from concentrated thought the swing of the music's rise and fall caught her ear. It was a ballad air, and new to her.

Shifting her chair, she looked up at La Mothe as he bent over his instrument. Streaming through the windows behind him the cunning sunshine lit the brown of his hair to a red-gold. She had never seen just such a colour in a man, and the Apollo simile was not so unapt.

"Sing," she said suddenly, and again La Mothe obeyed, catching up the air almost unconsciously.

"Lilies White and Roses Red, Gracious sweetness past compare, Beauty's self to thee hath fled, Lilies White and Roses Red: Lover's service bows its head, Awed by witchery so fair, Lilies White and Roses Red, Gracious sweetness past compare."

"Are they your own verses?"

"No, I wish they were. I only think them."

Their eyes met for a moment, then she looked aside and there was silence. Her thoughts, or that brief glance--Apollo was a G.o.d, good to look upon--had so warmed her cheeks that the refrain of the Triolet was almost justified. The lines of anxious care were smoothed from the forehead, and the half-smile of the new-drawn Cupid's bow was a little tremulous. A sudden determination moved La Mothe. Never had he seen her so gracious, so womanly, so completely the one sweet woman in all the world. Pushing the lute aside, he leaned forward.

"Mademoiselle," he began earnestly, "do you remember ten days ago I said there was a question I would dare to ask you when you knew me better?"

"I remember," she said, turning a little from him that the light might not fall upon her face to betray her. She said she remembered, but the truth was that in the tumult of her thoughts the recollection was vague. "Yes, I think I know you better."

"It is a very bold question, and one which might well offend. And yet you know I would not willingly offend you?"

"Yes, I am sure of that." The rustling of the lawn and laces on her breast was a little more tempestuous, but the voice was very level, very quiet. As to Stephen La Mothe, he felt that earth and sun and stars had disappeared and they two alone were left out of all the world.

"So bold, so presumptuous," he went on, "that it is hard to find words at all. But you forgive me in advance?"

At that she smiled a little. She did not think there would be much need for pardon. Was there any question Apollo--Stephen La Mothe, that is--might not ask? She knew now why these ten days had been the happiest of her life.

"Yes, Monsieur La Mothe, you are forgiven beforehand."

"Then--is there any plot in Amboise against the King? From you a simple 'no' is enough. I ask no proof, a simple word, nothing more."

Unconsciously he had forced a pleading into his voice, an urging, as if it was not so much the truth he sought as a denial at all costs; but as she turned in her chair, rising as she turned so that she looked down upon him, he broke off. It would have taken a much bolder man than Stephen La Mothe to have maintained his covert accusation--and what else was it?--in the face of the angry surprise which needed no expression in words.

"Was that your question? You have spied upon us all these days--suspected us--accused us in your thoughts? You have pretended friendship, devotion--G.o.d knows what monstrous lie--and all the while you spied--spied. But you shall have your answer in your single word.

No, Monsieur La Mothe; such women as I am do not plot against their King, nor teach sons to revolt against their fathers."

"Mademoiselle----" he began.

But not even the scornful indignation vouchsafed him a second glance as she swept past him without a word. At the door she paused and, half turning, looked back across her shoulder, a spot of scarlet on either cheek.

"I had forgotten my message. I had already told Jean Saxe, in case I failed to find you. The Dauphin bids you join him at the Burnt Mill at three o'clock; but if it were not that the Dauphin's word is a command, even to you I would say be otherwise engaged, Monsieur La Mothe, since I must be of the party."

"But, Mademoiselle----"

He spoke to an empty room, and if Ursula de Vesc closed the door between them with a greater vigour than the politeness strict deportment demanded she may surely be excused. It may be that even the angels lose their tempers at times over the follies of a blind humanity.

As to Stephen La Mothe, he stood staring at the closed door as if he were not only alone in the room but in the very world itself; or, rather, as if the world had suddenly dropped from under his feet and the shock bewildered him. She had been so gracious, so very sweet and gracious. He had been forgiven in advance; why such bitter offence? A single word was all he had asked--one little word. Then he flushed all over with a peculiar p.r.i.c.king sensation down the spine. Could it be that she expected a very different question; one whose answer might have been a Yes? If that were so--but it was absurd, and he called himself many hard names for having such an idea a single moment. To have thought such a thought of Ursula de Vesc was as preposterous as saying she would philander in a rose garden.

CHAPTER XVIII

FRENCH AND ENGLISH

Before the coming of the Maid, that is to say more than fifty years before Stephen La Mothe gave himself the heartache over his misreadings of the most read chapter in the book of nature, there stood upon the banks of the Loire, about a mile from Amboise, the flour mill of one Jean Calvet. For six generations it had pa.s.sed from a Calvet to a Calvet, son succeeding father as Amurath an Amurath, and the Moulin Fleche d'Or was as well known to the countryside as Amboise itself.

The kirkyard or the grinding stones; humanity must needs find its way to both.

When harvests were fat, and corn plentiful, its stones hummed from daylight to dark to the blent music of the creaking wheel and the splash-splash of the water which drove it. In lean years, when war or famine was abroad, and thanks to England these years were not few, the sluice was lifted, and in place of the hoa.r.s.e murmur and complaint of the grinding stones and lumbering wheel there was the soft purr of the millrace, and the Calvet of his generation lived, like a turtle, on his own fat, waiting for better days. And sooner or later these always came, and with their coming grew the prosperity of the Golden Arrow.

Corn and the human heart must needs be ground while the world lasts, and perhaps it is as much out of the grinding of the latter as the former that life is strengthened. Then came a day which brought an end to more than the prosperity of Jean Calvet the sixth.