The Justice of the King Part 23

"You ask that of a poet? As well ask it of a courtier--or a king's minister," he added, and turned to La Mothe. "Were I you I would set them face to face this very night."

"But she has already denied it."

"All the more reason. A truth will wait till morning, but a lie should be killed overnight. Lies breed fast and die hard."

"But she may refuse."

"If I know women," said Villon, "Mademoiselle de Vesc will refuse you nothing."

CHAPTER XXII

"WE MUST SAVE HER TOGETHER"

But while Stephen La Mothe still hesitated Commines took action. He recognized that sooner or later there must be a confronting. Ursula de Vesc, however deeply implicated, was no patient Griselda to accept judgment without a protest. Tacit admission would condemn the Dauphin equally with herself, and she might be trusted to fight for the Dauphin with every wile and subterfuge open to a desperate woman. In her natural att.i.tude of indignation she would certainly force a crisis.

The sooner the crisis came the better, and amongst those for whom that was better Philip de Commines was not the least. With all his heart he loathed the part he was compelled to play, even while determined to play it to its ghastly end. But to some men, Commines amongst them, the irrevocable brings a drugging of the sensibilities. When that which must be done could not be undone he would be at peace.

The sooner the crisis came the better, too, for Stephen La Mothe, and Commines' sympathies went out to him with an unwonted tenderness. The lad's nerves were flayed raw, and for him also there could be no peace until the inevitable end had come. But just what that end would be, and how it was to be reached, Commines feared to discuss even with himself.

But the first necessity was that Ursula de Vesc's complicity should be brought home to her. Let that be done, and La Mothe's despair might clear aside all difficulties, though, without doubt, the poor boy would suffer. There is no such pain as when love dies in the full glory of its strength. But then would come the ministrations of Time, the healer. Mother Nature of the rough hand and tender heart would scar the hurt, and little by little its agony would numb into a pa.s.sive submission.

It was a truth he had proved. Suzanne's death had been as the plucking out of the very roots of life. In that first tremendous realization of loss there had been no place left for even G.o.d Himself. But that had pa.s.sed. The All-Merciful has placed bounds on the tide of human suffering: Thus far shalt thou go, and no further. The maimed roots of life had budded afresh, and if no flower of love had shed its fragrance to bless the days, there had been peace. So would it be with Stephen La Mothe. But the Valley of Tribulation must first be crossed, and it would be the mercy of kindness to shorten the pa.s.sage, even though the plunge into its shadows was the more swift. For that there must be conviction, and for the conviction a confronting. Villon was right, Ursula de Vesc and Jean Saxe should be set face to face within the hour.

"Monsieur Villon," he said with unaccustomed courtesy, "I agree with you. Hugues is dead, the Dauphin too high above us, but Mademoiselle de Vesc has the right to know the peril she stands in. Will you do us all a kindness and bring Jean Saxe to the Chateau? Monsieur La Mothe and I will----" he paused, searching for a word which would be conclusive and yet without offence, "will summon Mademoiselle de Vesc."

"It is an outrage," said La Mothe stubbornly, "and I protest against it, protest utterly."

"Stephen, try and understand," and Commines laid his hand upon the younger man's shoulder with something more than the persuasive appeal of the father who, to his sorrow, is at variance with the son of his love. It was the gesture of the friend, the equal, the elder in authority who might command but elects to reason. "Consider my position a moment. By the King's command I stand in his place in Amboise. If he were here----"

"G.o.d forbid!" said Villon. "The King is like heaven--dearly loved afar off."

"But his justice is here----"

"And his mercy?"

"And his mercy," repeated Commines coldly, "the mercy that gave you life when justice would have hung you as a rogue and a thief. Of all men you are the last who should sneer at the King's mercy. And now will you call Jean Saxe, or must I go myself?"

"As my friend La Mothe decides," answered Villon. "I advise it myself.

Give a lie a night's start and you will never catch it up."

"Stephen, son, be wise."

With a gesture of despair La Mothe would have turned away, but Commines held him fast. His faith was unshaken, but the natural reaction from the day's tense emotion had sapped its buoyancy, leaving it negative and inert rather than positive and aggressive. The half-hour's slackless concentration of nerve and muscle in the defence of the stairway had drained him of strength and energy like the crisis of a fever. For him Ursula de Vesc's curt No! stood against the world; but Philip de Commines was the King's justice in Amboise, and against Jean Saxe's accusation her denial would carry no weight--no weight at all.

But, though the gesture was one of helplessness, Villon chose to construe it into consent.

"Good!" he said cordially, "it is best, much the best. In half an hour I will bring Saxe to--let me see, the Hercules room, I think, Monsieur d'Argenton? It is small, but large enough for the purpose, and as it has only one door it can be easily guarded."

"No guards," said Commines harshly. "There must be no publicity."

Villon laughed unpleasantly. His shifting mood had, almost for the first time in his life, felt kindly disposed towards Commines as he saw his evident solicitude for La Mothe, but that was forgotten in the contemptuous recall of a past he held should no longer rise against him. What the King forgave the King's minister should forget. The thrust had wounded his vanity, and now, as he saw his opening, he promptly thrust back in return.

"You are the King's justice in Amboise and would have no man know it!

That is true modesty, Monsieur d'Argenton! No, don't fear, there will be no publicity. Monsieur La Mothe, he calls you son; but friend is more than kin, more than family, remember that Francois Villon says so."

Commines' answer was an upward shake of the head, a lifting of the shoulders hardly perceptible in the darkness.

"It is the nature of curs to snarl," he said. "But his impertinence grows insufferable and must be muzzled." Linking his arm into La Mothe's he drew him slowly along the garden path. Both were preoccupied by the same desire, to win the other to his own way of thinking, but it was the more cautious elder who spoke first. He would appeal to the very affection Villon had gibed at.

"Stephen, dear lad, with all my heart I grieve for you. Would to G.o.d it were anything but this. Mademoiselle de Vesc has always opposed me, but that is nothing; has always striven to thwart me, but for your sake that could be forgotten; has always flouted and belittled me, but for your sake that could be forgiven. You are as the son of my love, and what is there that love will not forgive--will not forget? These weigh nothing, nothing at all. In the face of this--this--tremendous crime against the King, against all France, I count them nothing, less than nothing. Dear lad, you must be brave. This worthless woman----"

"No, Uncle, no, not that, never that!" La Mothe's voice was as level and quiet as Commines' own, and the elder knew thereby that his difficulty was the greater. Quietness is always strong, always a.s.sured of itself. "I do not believe Saxe speaks the truth."

"Saxe is the spark, and I told you I smelt smoke. Even Villon admits, much against his will, that some one has approached Saxe."

"But not Hugues, and if that is untrue then all is untrue."

"No: there is no logic in that. Hugues or another, it matters little who it was. It is the fact that d.a.m.ns, and Saxe is explicit. And how can Villon be sure it was not Hugues?"

"Uncle, Uncle, you can't believe it, in your heart you can't believe it. All these days you have seen her, so gracious, so gentle, so womanly. It can't be true, it can't. There is some horrible mistake."

"Saxe is explicit, and Villon agrees with him," repeated Commines, driving home the inexorable point. "Nor can I help myself; the King has left me no alternative."

"Mademoiselle de Vesc has denied it to me, and I believe her."

"You believe her because you love her."

"No," answered La Mothe simply, "I believe her because I have faith in her, but even though she were all Saxe says, and more, I would stand by her because I love her."

Commines paused in his slow walk, slipped his hand from La Mothe's arm, and they stood silent side by side. Then in his perplexity he moved a few paces away, halted, turned again and faced La Mothe.

"Poor lad, and I have no alternative. The King and my duty alike allow me none. Stephen, in self-defence I must be frank with you. It is my firm belief that the King has evidence he cannot show openly----"

"And so a pretext will be enough? G.o.d in heaven! is that justice?"

"No, there must be something more than a pretext, something more than a lie; but Saxe will be enough."

"It will be enough if Saxe's lies cannot be disproved?"

"If Saxe cannot be disproved," corrected Commines. "I cannot admit that Saxe lies."

"And what then?"

Again Commines turned away. Humanity's Iron Age was as stern, as selfish, as callous, as cruel as in the days of Attila the Hun.

Christianity, after its almost fifteen centuries, had no more than, as it were, warmed it through with its gentle fires. There was as yet no softening. It was true that some increasing flowers of civilization obscured the brutality, some decorations of art glorified it, but underneath the beauty and the art the native ruthlessness remained unchanged. Might founded a throne upon the ruin of weaker nations, cemented its strength with the blood of innocence, set the crown upon its own head, and reigned in arrogant defiance of right or justice.

From the barbarous Muscovite in the north to the polished Spaniard in the south the conditions scarcely varied. Everywhere there was the same spirit. A Louis pushed wide the borders of France by theft and the law of the stronger arm, a Ferdinand offered up his holocaust to the greater glory of G.o.d, a Philip yet to come would steep the Netherlands in blood to the very dikes that the same G.o.d might be worshipped in violation of the worshipper's conscience, in England a Crookback Richard had neither pity nor scruple when a crown was the reward of ruthlessness and murder.