The Justice of the King Part 11

"But if I took them elsewhere, even to Paris--and, heavens! how I wish I could--Amboise would be duller than ever," protested Villon, then added, with a significance of tone which gave the careless words a weight, "let us hope that Monseigneur and mademoiselle can protect each other as well as me."

Again there was a dangerous silence, and this time it was Ursula de Vesc who turned aside the threatening storm.

"Monsieur La Mothe is to cure our dullness. Tell us a story, monsieur, if you will neither sing nor play. We love a story, do we not, Charles?"

"A story?" repeated La Mothe slowly. The chance suggestion, more than half malicious, had given him an unexpected opening, and he was turning in his mind how best to use it. "Why, yes, I think I might. Once upon a time----"

"Wait a moment," said Charles. "Here, Ursula," and he rose from his stool as he spoke, "you sit down and I will sit at your feet and lean against your knee. There! That is better. Now we are both comfortable. What is the story about, monsieur?"

"It is an eastern tale, Monseigneur."

"I like the east better than the west, don't you, Ursula?" and he looked up in the girl's face with a laugh, then at Commines in a way which lent the words point and meaning. Valmy, La Mothe remembered, lay towards the west. "Now, monsieur, we are ready."

"There was once a king of the Genie who dwelt in a certain part of Arabia. He was a very great and a very wise king, the greatest and wisest his kingdom had known for many centuries. During his reign he had added province to province----"

"At whose expense?" broke in Villon. "In love and the building of kingdoms there is always a giving and a taking."

"Silence!" cried Charles sharply. "If you interrupt again I will have you removed, even though you are who you are. Now, monsieur, go on, please."

"He added province to province," continued La Mothe, "until in all that part of Arabia there was no such kingdom for greatness or for power, and no king so feared by the kings of the surrounding countries. But though his affairs were so prosperous he had one bitter grief which was never absent from his thoughts: he was estranged from his only son, whom he loved with all a father's love."

"Yes," said Charles gravely, "I see this is really an eastern story: a kind of a fairy tale, is it not, Monsieur La Mothe? A tale one wishes were true, but knows is all make-believe."

"All fairy tales have a heart of truth," answered La Mothe, "and this is a very true one, Monseigneur, as I hope you will believe before I have ended. In all his cares of state, and with so great a kingdom his cares were very many, there was no such care, no such sorrow, as this longing, unsatisfied love of the father's heart. Day and night his one thought was how he might win for his old age the love which his boy----"

"Ursula, I am tired," and Charles rose with a yawn. "Monsieur La Follette, will you please call Hugues, and I will go to bed? If we are duller to-morrow than we are to-day we will hear the rest of the story, but I don't think I like it very much. Even fairy tales should sound probable. Good night, Monsieur d'Argenton, good night, Monsieur La Follette, good night, Monsieur La Mothe," and with a bow which contrived to omit Villon from its scope the Dauphin left the room, followed by Ursula de Vesc. But at the door she paused a moment.

"A room will be made ready for you in the Chateau, Monsieur La Mothe, and perhaps to-morrow you will tell me the end of your story?"

"Dull?" said Villon, stretching himself with vigorous ostentation. "My faith, yes! If you are wise, friend La Mothe, you will finish the night with me at the Chien Noir. It is not often you can rub shoulders with genius familiarly."

But Commines already had a hand on La Mothe's arm.

"Genius?" he said, sternly contemptuous. "Yes! Genius depraved and degraded: genius c.r.a.pulous and drunken. Take advice, Monsieur La Mothe, and bide indoors: the foulest soiling of G.o.d's earth is a foul old age unashamed of its disgrace." Then lowering his voice to a whisper, he added, "Come to my room when all is quiet, son Stephen.

Look out for the cross of shadow and take care that the de Vesc girl does not see you."

The de Vesc girl! Stephen La Mothe was almost as offended by the curtly supercilious description of Mademoiselle Ursula as Villon was at the bitter judgment so uncompromisingly pa.s.sed upon him. That may have been because Cupid's bow had shot its bolt, and love's new wounds are almost as supersensitive as a poet's vanity.

CHAPTER XI

THE CROSS IN THE DARKNESS

Two or three adroit questions addressed to the servant who showed him to his sleeping-quarters gave La Mothe a sufficient clue to the whereabouts of Commines' lodgings. That they were in the same block of buildings as his own, and on the same level, made it comparatively easy to find them. But the Chateau must first settle into sleep, and he had an hour or two to wait before he could safely go in search of them un.o.bserved. In the angry mood which swayed him the delay was fortunate. For the first time in his life his temper was exasperated against the man to whom he owed everything, nor did the sight of his knapsack and lute, sent from the Chien Noir, lessen the irritation.

Few things feed the flame of a man's anger as do his own faults, and in every string of the unlucky toy--for it was little more--he saw a sharp reminder of his own false pretence to flick the soreness left by Commines.

What right had Commines to speak of Mademoiselle de Vesc as this de Vesc girl, as if she was some lumpish wench of the kitchen instead of a sweet and gracious woman, gentle and tender as a woman should be, and yet full of a splendid courage? Yes, and La Mothe strode up and down the room to give his indignation ease by the exercise of his muscles; that was Ursula de Vesc, tender, gentle, loving: but wise in her tenderness, strong in her gentleness, and utterly without fear in her love. From which it will be seen that the Cupid's bow had sent its shaft very deep indeed, and Commines by his contemptuous phrase had but driven it more surely home.

There be those who say love dethrones reason, but observe with what admirable logic, what cogency of deduction Stephen La Mothe could argue upon Commines' incapacity for judgment--thus. He had misjudged Ursula de Vesc, why not also Villon? If there had been this undeserved prejudice against an innocent and helpless girl, was not his contempt for Villon equally unjustified? How, in fact, could such a man as Philip de Commines, Commines, the mere man of the world and of the world's affairs, understand or appreciate Villon the poet, Villon who had lifted the whole literature and poetry of France to the highest level it had yet reached? It was preposterous, ridiculous, unthinkable, the one as great a blunder as the other. So Stephen La Mothe gilded his gold, painting his lily lover-fas.h.i.+on time out of mind, and whitewashed into a pleasant greyness all the ugly smirchings with which Villon had so cheerfully daubed himself.

With the door drawn behind him La Mothe found the outer pa.s.sage intensely dark. Its only illumination came from the narrow lancet windows through which the moonlight streamed so whitely that the rest of the gallery was yet blacker and more hidden by the contrast.

Beyond, at the end, was a deeper pool of darkness which he knew was the arched entrance to the main body of the Chateau, his own lodgings being in a projecting wing bounded on the one side by a wide court. A few steps beyond this archway a narrow corridor cut the pa.s.sageway, opening up three lanes of shadow. These were lit to a bare visibility by as many tiny lamps hung from the vaulted ceilings, mere specks of points of light too small to flicker, and such as all night long hang before the high altar of a church, symbols of changeless faith burning unquenched even in the deepest darkness of the night of the world.

Turning to the left, his hand upon the wall for guidance, La Mothe crept softly on until a further pa.s.sage opened to his right. Down this he stole, breathing uneasily as men do who walk warily in the dark, intent to keep their presence secret. From the roof depended the same inadequate light, but at the farther end was a hazy blur which marked the head of the stairs, and across the floor luminous shadows drifted here and there from under doorways where the lamp still burned within the chamber. One of these chambers La Mothe knew was allotted to Commines, and as he scanned the flagged floor of the pa.s.sage, searching for the sign Commines had given him, a shadow amongst the shadows stirred his curiosity, and he stole nearer on tiptoe: it was a mattress laid before a closed door, and stretched upon it lay a man wrapped in a blanket.

Holding his breath, La Mothe paused, listening intently. Though he had resented Commines' brusque reference to Mademoiselle de Vesc, the wisdom of caution was obvious, and he knew the value of secrecy too well to venture an unnecessary risk. But the figure neither moved nor changed its regular deep breathing, and La Mothe slipped past noiselessly, seeking anew for the promised signal. And midway to the well of the stairs, where faint murmurings told of sleepless life even in ill-lit, ill-guarded Amboise, he found it--a nebulous dusky cross, broader than long, stretching its shadowy arms upon the flags, and at his first low tap on the panel the door was softly opened and as softly closed behind him.

"Are you sure no one saw you?"

"No one. But, Uncle, this playing at thief in the night is intolerable. It will be very much better to say quite plainly to Mademoiselle de Vesc----"

"Stephen, Stephen!" and as he spoke Commines, who had been stooping over his signal, a tiny paper cross pinned against the foot of the door so that it blocked the flow of light from the lamp laid on the floor behind, lifted himself and laid his hand strongly on La Mothe's shoulder. "Do you know why you are in Amboise at all? Do you know it is to convict this very Ursula de Vesc of complicity in a plot to murder the King and place the Dauphin on the throne, and that the King believes the Dauphin is privy to the scheme? And do you know what part you are to play?"

Commines spoke in the anxious remonstrance of affection rather than in anger. There was no censure in the tone, no reproof, a pleading rather: but when the irritation of offence is raw it resents expostulation and rebuke alike: they are just so much salt to the wound. So was it now with La Mothe.

"It is we who conspire," he answered angrily, "we who call ourselves men and yet creep about a sleeping house to meet by stealth in the dark. And against whom? Against a weak girl, a weak, defenceless girl whose one offence is that her love is loyal to a boy as helpless as herself. A brave conspiracy truly, brave, worthy, and honourable! You saw her to-night, how she faced us for his sake, unafraid and yet very sorely afraid because she is so womanly through her courage. A girl and a half-grown boy! And we call ourselves men."

"Why do you say 'we'? Me she knows and Villon she knows, but not you."

"Some day she will, my hope is some day she will: pray G.o.d I be not ashamed to look her in the face when that day comes."

"Stephen, Stephen, what has changed you? Have you grown mad or is this that drunkenness?"

"I don't know, I only know it is something new. And if it is that drunkenness as you call it, then may I never be sober again my life long."

"Listen," and this time Commines' voice was stern to harshness. The time for pleading, or even remonstrance, had gone by. A more vigorous schooling was needed if Stephen La Mothe was to be saved from folly.

"If you must go girl-drunken as every sentimental boy does sooner or later, do not go blind-drunk or sense-drunk, but keep your eyes open and your mind clear. Mademoiselle de Vesc may be blameless or she may not: that is what we are here to prove. You call her weak, but the greatest folly of a foolish man is to despise weakness. Contempt of weakness has lost more battles than strength of arms has won. Charles the Bold despised the weakness of the Swiss, and the devotion of the weak Swiss crushed him. Weak, you say? Love is never weak. Fifty years ago a weak girl saved France because of her great love for France, and to-day another just as weak might ruin France through another great love. Never despise the power of love nor call it weak even in the weakest. If faith can remove mountains, love is greater than faith, and of mademoiselle's devotion to the Dauphin I have no doubt."

"Who has the better claim upon it?" answered La Mothe sullenly.

"Granted, but that is not the point. And what if the devotion is misdirected? It is a quality of love that it only sees the lights in the jewels and not the flaws. If love saw all the flaws in us it would hardly be love. What if Mademoiselle de Vesc, seeing the boy neglected--and I grant the neglect,--seeing him unhappy--and I grant the unhappiness,--seeing him denied his high position--and I grant the denial while I a.s.sert that the King, who is a wise king, must have wise reasons I do not understand; what if Mademoiselle de Vesc, I say, seeing all these things and understanding the reasons for them as little as I do, seeing no deeper than her devotion and knowing nothing of the King's wise reasons, were moved by this same devotion to some desperate effort which would right this wrong at any cost? Supposing that were so, what would hold her back? Fear? She is no coward, and there is no such courage on G.o.d's earth as the courage of a loving woman. Weakness? Love is strong as death and stronger, for love builds up where death can only destroy. The crime? In her eyes the crime lies in the unhappiness and neglect of Amboise, and to right the wrong by any means, however desperate, would be no offence before G.o.d or man. What would hold her back? I ask you. Nothing, nothing at all."

"Granted," said La Mothe, impressed in spite of himself and falling back upon the last resort of baffled argument. "It is all very plausible, but I do not believe it all the same."

"Because you are drunken," retorted Commines, "and because, too, there are none so blind as those who will not see. But supposing I am right, is not the King justified, and are not we, the King's servants, justified too? And is the Dauphin such a fool as to be blind to this devotion, he who has known so little love in his life? Stephen, if the King is right and Mademoiselle de Vesc's love has overcome both fear and weakness, he is right, too, when he links Charles with her in her abominable plot."

"But why has he sent----" La Mothe broke off lamely, remembering in time that he had no right to say to Commines, Why has he sent such a message of a father's love as lies in those saddle-bags I see in the corner? Very naturally Commines misunderstood the interrupted sentence.

"Why has he sent you to Amboise?"

CHAPTER XII

LA MOTHE BELIEVES, BUT IS NOT CONVINCED