The Line of Love Part 16

"I am sorry," Catherine said, dully. "I am sorry. Oh, for high G.o.d's sake! go, go! Do you want money? I will give you anything if you will only go. Oh, beast! Oh, swine, swine, swine!"

He turned and went, staggering like a drunken person.

Once in the garden he fell p.r.o.ne upon his face in the wet gra.s.s. About him the mingled odor of roses and mignonette was sweet and heavy; the fountain plashed interminably in the night, and above him the chestnuts and acacias rustled and lisped as they had done seven years ago. Only he was changed.

"O Mother of G.o.d," the thief prayed, "grant that Noel may be kind to her! Mother of G.o.d, grant that she may be happy! Mother of G.o.d, grant that I may not live long!"

And straightway he perceived that triple invocation could be, rather neatly, worked out in ballade form. Yes, with a separate prayer to each verse. So, dismissing for the while his misery, he fell to considering, with undried cheeks, what rhymes he needed.

JULY 17, 1484

"_Et puis il se rencontre icy une avanture merveilleuse, c'est que le fils de Grand Turc ressemble a Cleonte, a peu de chose pres_."

_Noel d'Arnaye and Catherine de Vaucelles were married in the September of 1462, and afterward withdrew to Noel's fief in Picardy. There Noel built him a new Chateau d'Arnaye, and through the influence of Nicole Beaupertuys, the King's mistress, (who was rumored in court by-ways to have a tenderness for the handsome Noel), obtained large grants for its maintenance. Madame d'Arnaye, also, it is gratifying to record, appears to have lived in tolerable amity with Sieur Noel, and neither of them pried too closely into the other's friendships.

Catherine died in 1470, and Noel outlived her but by three years. Of the six acknowledged children surviving him, only one was legitimate--a daughter called Matthiette. The estate and t.i.tle thus reverted to Raymond d'Arnaye, Noel's younger brother, from whom the present family of Arnaye is descended.

Raymond was a far shrewder man than his predecessor. For ten years'

s.p.a.ce, while Louis XI, that royal fox of France, was destroying feudalism piecemeal,--tr.i.m.m.i.n.g its power day by day as you might pare an onion,--the new Sieur d'Arnaye steered his shifty course between France and Burgundy, always to the betterment of his chances in this world however he may have modified them in the next. At Arras he fought beneath the orifiamme; at Guinegate you could not have found a more staunch Burgundian: though he was no warrior, victory followed him like a lap-dog. So that presently the Sieur d'Arnaye and the Vicomte de Puysange--with which family we have previously concerned ourselves--were the great lords of Northern France.

But after the old King's death came gusty times for Sieur Raymond. It is with them we have here to do_.

CHAPTER VI

_The Episode Called The Conspiracy of Arnaye_

1. _Policy Tempered with Singing_

"And so," said the Sieur d'Arnaye, as he laid down the letter, "we may look for the coming of Monsieur de Puysange to-morrow."

The Demoiselle Matthiette contorted her features in an expression of disapproval. "So soon!" said she. "I had thought--"

"Ouais, my dear niece, Love rides by ordinary with a dripping spur, and is still as arbitrary as in the day when Mars was taken with a net and amorous Jove bellowed in Europa's kail-yard. My faith! if Love distemper thus the spectral ichor of the G.o.ds, is it remarkable that the warmer blood of man pulses rather vehemently at his bidding? It were the least of Cupid's miracles that a l.u.s.ty bridegroom of some twenty-and-odd should be p.r.i.c.ked to outstrip the dial by a scant week. For love--I might tell you such tales--"

Sieur Raymond crossed his white, dimpled hands over a well-rounded paunch and chuckled reminiscently; had he spoken doubtless he would have left Master Jehan de Troyes very little to reveal in his Scandalous Chronicle: but now, as if now recalling with whom Sieur Raymond conversed, d'Arnaye's lean face a.s.sumed an expression of placid sanct.i.ty, and the somewhat unholy flame died out of his green eyes. He was like no other thing than a plethoric cat purring over the follies of kittenhood.

You would have taken oath that a cultured taste for good living was the chief of his offences, and that this benevolent gentleman had some sixty well-spent years to his credit. True, his late Majesty, King Louis XI, had sworn Pacque Dieu! that d'Arnaye loved underhanded work so heartily that he conspired with his gardener concerning the planting of cabbages, and within a week after his death would be heading some treachery against Lucifer; but kings are not always infallible, as his Majesty himself had proven at Peronne.

"--For," said the Sieur d'Arnaye, "man's flesh is frail, and the devil is very cunning to avail himself of the weaknesses of lovers."

"Love!" Matthiette cried. "Ah, do not mock me, my uncle! There can be no pretence of love between Monsieur de Puysange and me. A man that I have never seen, that is to wed me of pure policy, may look for no Alcestis in his wife."

"You speak like a very sensible girl," said Sieur Raymond, complacently.

"However, so that he find her no Guinevere or Semiramis or other loose-minded trollop of history, I dare say Monsieur de Puysange will hold to his bargain with indifferent content. Look you, niece, he, also, is buying--though the saying is somewhat rustic--a pig in a poke."

Matthiette glanced quickly toward the mirror which hung in her apartment.

The gla.s.s reflected features which went to make up a beauty already be-sonneted in that part of France; and if her green gown was some months behind the last Italian fashion, it undeniably clad one who needed few advent.i.tious aids. The Demoiselle Matthiette at seventeen was very tall, and was as yet too slender for perfection of form, but her honey-colored hair hung heavily about the unblemished oval of a countenance whose nose alone left something to be desired; for this feature, though well shaped, was unduly diminutive. For the rest, her mouth curved in an irreproachable bow, her complexion was mingled milk and roses, her blue eyes brooded in a provoking calm; taking matters by and large, the smile that followed her inspection of the mirror's depths was far from unwarranted. Catherine de Vaucelles reanimate, you would have sworn; and at the abbey of Saint Maixent-en-Poitou there was a pot-belly monk, a Brother Francois, who would have demonstrated it to you, in an unanswerable ballad, that Catherine's daughter was in consequence all that an empress should be and so rarely is. Harembourges and Bertha Broadfoot and white Queen Blanche would have been laughed to scorn, demolished and proven, in comparison (with a catalogue of very intimate personal detail), the squalidest s.l.u.ts conceivable, by Brother Francois.

But Sieur Raymond merely chuckled wheezily, as one discovering a fault in his companion of which he disapproves in theory, but in practice finds flattering to his vanity.

"I grant you, Monsieur de Puysange drives a good bargain," said Sieur Raymond. "Were Cleopatra thus featured, the Roman lost the world very worthily. Yet, such is the fantastic disposition of man that I do not doubt the vicomte looks forward to the joys of to-morrow no whit more cheerfully than you do: for the lad is young, and, as rumor says, has been guilty of divers verses,--ay, he has bearded common-sense in the vext periods of many a wailing rhyme. I will wager a moderate amount, however, that the vicomte, like a sensible young man, keeps these whimsies of flames and dames laid away in lavender for festivals and the like; they are somewhat too fine for everyday wear."

Sieur Raymond sipped the sugared wine which stood beside him. "Like any sensible young man," he repeated, in a meditative fashion that was half a query.

Matthiette stirred uneasily. "Is love, then, nothing?" she murmured.

"Love!" Sieur Raymond barked like a kicked mastiff. "It is very discreetly fabled that love was brought forth at Cythera by the ocean fogs. Thus, look you, even ballad-mongers admit it comes of a short-lived family, that fade as time wears on. I may have a pa.s.sion for cloud-tatters, and, doubtless, the morning mists are beautiful; but if I give rein to my admiration, breakfast is likely to grow cold. I deduce that beauty, as represented by the sunrise, is less profitably considered than utility, as personified by the frying-pan. And love! A niece of mine prating of love!" The idea of such an occurrence, combined with a fit of coughing which now came upon him, drew tears to the Sieur d'Arnaye's eyes. "Pardon me," said he, when he had recovered his breath, "if I speak somewhat brutally to maiden ears."

Matthiette sighed. "Indeed," said she, "you have spoken very brutally!"

She rose from her seat, and went to the Sieur d'Arnaye. "Dear uncle,"

said she, with her arms about his neck, and with her soft cheek brushing his withered countenance, "are you come to my apartments to-night to tell me that love is nothing--you who have shown me that even the roughest, most grizzled bear in all the world has a heart compact of love and tender as a woman's?"

The Sieur d'Arnaye snorted. "Her mother all over again!" he complained; and then, recovering himself, shook his head with a hint of sadness.

He said: "I have sighed to every eyebrow at court, and I tell you this moonshine is--moonshine pure and simple. Matthiette, I love you too dearly to deceive you in, at all events, this matter, and I have learned by hard knocks that we of gentle quality may not lightly follow our own inclinations. Happiness is a luxury which the great can very rarely afford. Granted that you have an aversion to this marriage. Yet consider this: Arnaye and Puysange united may sit snug and let the world wag; otherwise, lying here between the Breton and the Austrian, we are so many nuts in a door-crack, at the next wind's mercy. And yonder in the South, Orleans and Dunois are raising every devil in h.e.l.l's register! Ah, no, ma mie; I put it to you fairly is it of greater import that a girl have her callow heart's desire than that a province go free of Monsieur War and Madame Rapine?"

"Yes, but--" said Matthiette.

Sieur Raymond struck his hand upon the table with considerable heat.

"Everywhere Death yawps at the frontier; will you, a d'Arnaye, bid him enter and surfeit? An alliance with Puysange alone may save us. Eheu, it is, doubtless, pitiful that a maid may not wait and wed her chosen paladin, but our va.s.sals demand these sacrifices. For example, do you think I wedded my late wife in any fervor of adoration? I had never seen her before our marriage day; yet we lived much as most couples do for some ten years afterward, thereby demonstrating--"

He smiled, evilly; Matthiette sighed.

"--Well, thereby demonstrating nothing new," said Sieur Raymond. "So do you remember that Pierre must have his bread and cheese; that the cows must calve undisturbed; that the pigs--you have not seen the sow I had to-day from Harfleur?--black as ebony and a snout like a rose-leaf!--must be stied in comfort: and that these things may not be, without an alliance with Puysange. Besides, dear niece, it is something to be the wife of a great lord."

A certain excitement awoke in Matthiette's eyes. "It must be very beautiful at Court," said she, softly. "Masques, fetes, tourneys every day;--and they say the new King is exceedingly gallant--"

Sieur Raymond caught her by the chin, and for a moment turned her face toward his. "I warn you," said he, "you are a d'Arnaye; and King or not--"

He paused here. Through the open window came the voice of one singing to the demure accompaniment of a lute.

"Hey?" said the Sieur d'Arnaye.

Sang the voice:

"_When you are very old, and I am gone, Not to return, it may be you will say-- Hearing my name and holding me as one Long dead to you,--in some half-jesting way Of speech, sweet as vague heraldings of May Rumored in woods when first the throstles sing-- 'He loved me once.' And straightway murmuring My half-forgotten rhymes, you will regret Evanished times when I was wont to sing So very lightly, 'Love runs into debt.'_"

"Now, may I never sit among the saints," said the Sieur d'Arnaye, "if that is not the voice of Raoul de Prison, my new page."

"Hush," Matthiette whispered. "He woos my maid, Alys. He often sings under the window, and I wink at it."

Sang the voice: