The Justice of the King Part 12

But having ended the sentence Commines broke off at the end as La Mothe had done in the middle, and with much the same embarra.s.sment. His face, harsh and stern of feature both by nature and schooling, grew almost tender as he turned aside troubled. To speak plainly to any man of honour and generous spirit, answering his own question in direct words, would have been difficult, but how much greater the difficulty when the man was brother to that dear dead woman who had sunk to her sleep comforted by his promise of care and protection? "Watch over him, Philip, for my sake." But into the memory of the tired voice he had loved there clashed the King's harsh question so curtly asked in Valmy, and torn by the conflict of the two natures warring within him Commines paced the room in silence. La Mothe was not the only man in Amboise who found his skill as a circus-rider tried to the utmost, and like La Mothe Commines temporized.

"Who are we to judge the King?" He spoke harshly, even aggressively, and as if combating some undeveloped argument of La Mothe's. A burst of temper may not convince a man's own conscience, or quiet its uneasiness, but it silences its voice for a time as declamation can always silence pleading. "Who are we to question his justice or deny its right to strike? And it is as his arm of justice that you are here in Amboise."

"I?" And into La Mothe's mind, as he stood silent after the startled e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n, there flooded significant, misunderstood hints dropped by the King in Valmy, and by Commines himself on the road to Chateau-Renaud, hints which had seemed to him meaningless in the memory of the little coat of mail which was the secret gift of a father's love. "I, the King's arm of justice? In G.o.d's name how can that be?"

"The days of Brutus have gone by," answered Commines, never ceasing from his restless pacing of the room. The motion eased the tension of his nervous distress and made speech less formal, less difficult.

"Treason is treason wherever found. You know its punishment, but the days of Brutus are gone. The justice of the King, the justice of the father, can no longer--no longer----" But even his restless pacing could not give him power to clothe the grim thought in blunt words, and Commines was silent.

La Mothe's scornful indignation had no such reticence, nor had he yet learned how to cloak the ugliness of a naked truth in the pleasant euphemisms of diplomacy. With frank brutality he completed Commines'

broken sentence.

"The father can no longer murder the son and call it justice. But, monsieur," and it was significant that the adoptive relations.h.i.+p was unceremoniously swept aside, "what has the father's murder of the son to do with me?"

"Treason is treason," repeated Commines, finding some comfort and strength in the bald plat.i.tude: it was incontrovertible and at least gave him firm ground under his feet. "Nor can treason go unpunished, or how would the throne be safe for a day? But what the father cannot do, though a king, another can and must; and must," he reiterated, steeling himself with a rising emphasis for what was to follow. "And you have been chosen as the King's arm in Amboise."

This time there was no outburst of scorn or indignation. It was not that the crisis was too deep for noisy declamation, though human nature differs from organic in that it commonly meets its most grave crises in quietness. The truth was, simply, that La Mothe did not grasp the full meaning of the words.

"The King's arm in Amboise?" he said uncomprehendingly. "The King's arm? What does that mean?" Then, by the very repet.i.tion of the phrase, enlightenment dawned in part and he shrank back, his fingers closing in upon his palms. "Not that! For G.o.d's sake, Monsieur de Commines, say it is not that! Not that the father---- Oh! it cannot be, it cannot. Is it--is it murder?"

"Justice," replied Commines doggedly through his shut teeth. "Let us call things by their proper names. I say justice, justice of----"

"h.e.l.l!" broke in La Mothe fiercely. "Justice is sacred, to G.o.d Almighty, and this--this---- Where is G.o.d's hand? Where is--? Oh, no, no, it is d.a.m.nable, d.a.m.nable!"

"Justice," repeated Commines, quoting Louis. "Not even the son of a king is above or beyond justice."

"Vicarious murder!" retorted La Mothe. "No smooth sophism can make it less. He would have another commit an iniquity he dare not commit himself. And I am the arm of the King in Amboise? Never! G.o.d helping me. I am to obey you, Monsieur de Commines; these were the King's orders; but not in this, never in this, never, so help me G.o.d!"

"Listen, Stephen." Commines had fuller command of himself now and spoke more quickly, but also with more a.s.sumption of authority. "Put yourself in the King's place and consider the truth dispa.s.sionately."

"Consider dispa.s.sionately how a father can best kill his own son; yes, Uncle?"

But Commines took no umbrage at the crude sarcasm, a sarcasm aimed at himself and the King alike. He understood it as a sign that La Mothe's mind was recovering from the shock which had swung its balance awry.

Five minutes earlier he would have declared that murder could never be dispa.s.sionate. That he would listen at all was something gained.

"The King is both more and less than father," Commines went on: "that is to say, his responsibilities are greater than those of a simple citizen, and his private rights in his son are less. He and the Dauphin do not belong to themselves. France comes first. Do you admit that France comes first?"

"G.o.d knows!" replied La Mothe moodily. The dying out of his first hot pa.s.sionate protest had left him fretful and desperate. He remembered, too, something the King had said about France being the mother of them all, and at the time he had agreed; nor could he quite see where Commines' argument might lead. "There was a time when I thought right was eternally right, but now it seems a father may wipe out his fatherhood in blood and be justified."

"France comes first," went on Commines, emphasizing the point which he saw had weight. "The millions of lives in France come first. Could a son who plots against his father's life reign in France?"

"He is a child."

"In a year he will be old enough to reign: answer me, could such a son reign?"

"Are there not prisons?"

"You do not answer my question. I ask again, could such a son reign?"

"I am answering it in my own way, and, I repeat, there are prisons."

"And would there not be conspiracies? Would France not be torn asunder in civil war? Would the blood of France not flow like water? Be sensible, Stephen: am I not right?"

"I will never be the King's arm in Amboise, never, never. I would sooner ride back to Valmy and face the justice of the King. The justice of the King!" scoffed La Mothe, to ease his troubled soul.

"And in any case I shall return to Valmy; my word is pa.s.sed."

Again Commines let the sarcasm levelled at the King's justice pa.s.s unchallenged: it is never wise to block a safety-valve when a high pressure, whether of steam or of pa.s.sion, is blowing itself off.

"These things being granted," he went on, "what course is the King to follow? Is he to pardon the crime against the nation? for that is what it is; is he to pa.s.s it over in silence and leave the criminal free to weave a second and perhaps successful conspiracy? The King dare not: for the nation's sake he dare not. What then? Is he to arrest and try the prince by solemn course of law? I doubt if the Dauphin of France is not above the common law of France, but apart from that again the King dare not. France would be rent from end to end, and her enemies, England, Spain, Burgundy, would swoop upon her and lay her waste, as in the days before the coming of The Maid. I say again, the King dare not. What course is left? Nothing but the arm of justice, that justice which is Almighty G.o.d's, striking in secret, and so France is saved."

He ended, but La Mothe returned no answer. Not that he was convinced, no, not by a hairbreadth. But the sophism, and he knew it to be a sophism, was too subtle for him, and his safest refuge was silence.

And yet his inability to tear the sophism to tatters was not the sole cause of the silence. Commines' last question, What is left? though a mere flourish of rhetoric, had stirred another possible reply.

Reconcilement was left, the union of father and son in love was left.

Inexorable logic as voiced by Commines, if it was logic at all and not a sophism, might coerce the King to a terrible justice, but would the father's love not welcome the reconcilement of a son's penitence as a way of escape from the ultimate horror of the logic? And surely that love must be a very tender, very yearning, very forgiving love when even in the midst of just anger it could bend to such gentle thoughts as lay hidden in those gifts through the hand of a stranger. Surely, surely, surely. And so La Mothe kept silence.

"There may be no plot: there is no plot," he said at last, though in the face of Commines' a.s.sertion he had little hope he was right; then he added, "and what of Mademoiselle de Vesc?"

"The greater includes the less," replied Commines shortly.

"What do you mean by that?"

"If the King may not spare his son can he spare the girl?"

"There is no plot," repeated La Mothe, more emphatically than before, "and I shall remain in Amboise." Crossing the room he knelt beside his saddle-bags, opening and taking from them the package wrapped in a linen napkin which contained the King's gifts to the Dauphin. "I suppose I must live upon my knapsack for the present, but this I shall take with me. Is there anything more to be said?"

"Not for the present."

"Then good night."

The pa.s.sage was plunged in the same quiet and as deep a gloom as when he had traversed it an hour before, and La Mothe plumed himself on regaining his room unseen. But had he paused and turned at the first angle he would have seen the shadow which lay stretched in the deeper shadows of the doorway stir itself, and Hugues' white face, a blur upon the darkness, watching him. Beyond that door slept the Dauphin, and Villon was right when he said that the guards of Amboise were not pikes or cross-bows, but eyes that saw and hearts that loved.

CHAPTER XIII

"FRIEND IS MORE THAN FAMILY"

With his overnight's irritation still unallayed, and more than ever convinced that the prejudice which could so misread Mademoiselle de Vesc must also wrong Francois Villon, La Mothe was early at the Chien Noir. Of the Amboise household he had seen nothing, which means that he had looked in vain for Ursula of the Cupid's bow, and his temper was not thereby improved. But he had the day before him, and he promised himself some recompense for his disappointment before it was many hours old. Meanwhile, he would show Villon that all who came from Valmy were not sharers in Commines' harsh judgment. He found the poet contemplative over the remains of his breakfast, but in a mood as captious as his own.

"Have you found already that the inn has a warmer welcome than the Chateau? I tell you this, my young friend, it will cost you less to live here than there, though in either case it is the King who pays."

"To every man his wages," answered La Mothe, but Villon shook his head.

His knowledge of the paying of wages, or at least of the earning of them, gave the chance phrase a sinister meaning.

"As to that, we all look for more than our dues in this world and less in that to come. G.o.d's mercy keep us from justice! If our wages were paid in full where would we be? What is little Charles doing?"

"Sleeping, I suppose."

"And Mademoiselle de Vesc?"