“LA BELLE DES BELLES”
“Who may she be that is so beautiful?” I asked of James.
“She is the queen’s ward, her favourite, and has given much good
counsel to the king in matters concerning which the queen is
incapable,” said James calmly, “specially, that is, as to fighting the
English, and expelling them from the country. Have you not heard what
she said to the king when it was foretold by his own soothsayer that
she should live to do service to a great and victorious sovereign?
‘Then let me go to the court of the King of England,’ said she, rising
to take her leave, ‘that I may serve him! For as for His Majesty of
France, he cares for naught save hunting and pleasure. I but lose my
time and hinder the fulfilling of my destiny by remaining longer
here!’ Which when the king heard that, he was stung to the heart, and
forthwith girded on his armour and did valiantly in many battles. Then
Agnes Sorel retired for five years to her country seat, where she had
been brought up as a young girl. But of late the queen, seeing that
the king again drew slack to oppose the English, went in person to
fetch her back to the court, which many thought she was foolish for
doing. But here comes Her Majesty the Queen in person.”
And across the green alleys, as it were from the side curtains of the
garden, about which cropped hedges of yew were drawn in a sort of
narrow labyrinth, there came a gracious lady, sedate and grave of
aspect, yet without obvious melancholy.
Marie of Anjou, Queen of France, was still in the flower of her age,
well able to attend to the affairs domestic of a court which had no
fixed seat. But, for the rest, she had no influence with the king,
who, when she reproached him that the English were not expelled from
Guyenne, replied that he knew very well that she only wanted to get
the fish for Fridays better and cheaper from Bordeaux! So after one or
two attempts she left the whole governance of the king, in such
matters, to her young ward, the Lady Agnes, whose title of Dame de
Beauté constitutes by no means the greatest of her claims to be
remembered.
James Douglas bent the knee to the Queen of France, but, as I judged,
with something less of fervour than he had showed when he kissed the
hand of Mistress Sorel.
“And who may this be?” she said, with her motherly serenity, looking
long at me, and then turning to Mademoiselle Sorel for information.
The Dame de Beauté lowered her eyes and smiled, but, for reasons
which I appreciate better now than then, she left James to make the
introduction.
“A princess in your own right, my dear?” said the queen, “and to marry
your cousin by the special permission of His Holiness the Pope--you
are a happy woman, or ought to be. Indeed, if this be the
cousin”--(she turned towards the Lord James as she spoke, but Agnes
Sorel quickly interrupted)--“Permit me to set your Majesty right,” she
murmured. “That tall, dark man over there is the Earl of Douglas, he
who talks to the king and the Dauphin concerning State affairs in the
alcove yonder.”
The queen looked at the three men, of whom one was her husband and the
other her son. These two were bending towards William Douglas and
listening eagerly, as Will, with his usual self-absorption, laid down
the law on some subject of importance to himself.
“Ah,” she said, “I would it had not been so--for your sake, that is,
my little lady. No woman can halter these men of many and great ideas.
When you wed, my princess, see that you keep the smile ready on your
lips even when the tears lag not far behind. Lock the sadness up, but
let the hearth-fire be lit, and (if God be good to you) the children
playing about the door when your husband rides back through the outer
gate. For the ideas of such a man drive him fast and far--yea, against
his will. His very greatness compels him to go on and yet on. Stop he
cannot. His task will never be done. Kingdoms unknown, foes unproved,
there are to conquer. New horizons open continually before him, and--I
discern clearly the gloom of fate unfulfilled on his face! If he die
in his bed, this husband whom you have chosen, I am cheated of my
foresight--I, a woman who have suffered much, tell you so! A gloomy
prophecy--yet it is better that the heart should be forewarned.”
Then she turned to James, who had been listening with an amazed
expression to the queen’s words, for indeed he loved not sad talk at
any time. “And the great blond cousin here,” she added, “is he yet
wedded?”
James laughed softly and a little scornfully.
“Nay,” he said, “those I would have will none of me. And as for the
others”--
At this point, even as he shrugged his shoulders, Mademoiselle Sorel
turned her eyes upon him. There was a smile in them--a smile which,
for some reason, discomfited our good James no little.
“May I walk with you, little one?” she said, gently touching me on the
shoulder with her hand. “I think the queen has something to say to my
Lord James of Douglas!”
They walked away together, while we followed them, silent till we had
entered upon the alleys of green shade, in which the queen’s
head-dress (of the fashion of twenty years ago, winged above like a
sea swallow and with a falling frill of white muslin to cover the neck
below) reminded me of my mother in the old days at Thrieve--as she was
wont to stand in the embrasure of the tower, looking eastward for the
home-coming of the “boys,” who would never grow to be men.
The queen and James soon passed out of sight. I was left alone with
Agnes Sorel. For a time she did not speak, pacing gently along with
her eyes abased upon the tall Easter lilies, which, in the light wind,
swayed like her own slender body.
“Little maid,” she said, “I am well-nigh twice as old as you--and no
longer a girl. I have seen much, and, they say, have profited thereby.
They call me still ‘La Belle des Belles!’ These nicknames stick long.
They ought rather to call me the wisest of those who once were fair.
The profit may have been great, but it has also been bitter. Bear with
me!”
“You are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen!” The words came
from me I hardly know how. But I meant them--yes, as if I too had been
her lover.
She sighed, and looked about her a little wistfully.
“I have never thought much of that,” she said gently.
“Nay,” I answered, feeling somehow more at ease with her, “others
were, I doubt not, ready enough to do that for you!”
She poised a finger at me with an expression half arch, half
melancholy.
“Little flatterer,” she said, “do they teach even the maids to utter
love glosings in their cradles in Scotland? Or have the Sisters taught
you the trick at St. Brigida’s along with the abacus and broidering
frame?”
“Neither,” I said. “I speak the truth as I think it!”
“Ah, wait, little lady,” she said. “In two years you will be as a bird
of paradise to my barn-door fowl. You gain every day in beauty. Wit
you have already, as is abundantly manifest. What you want is wisdom.
That is all I now possess. In everything else I am far upon the
return!”
“Not so, my Lady of Beauty,” I answered her. “You will never cease to
be as young and beautiful as I see you now!”
(And when I spoke I knew not how true the words were to prove.)
But she only smiled sadly and answered me in a proverb of her country,
as, indeed, she had a habit of doing.
“_Adieu, baskets_,” she said, “_Vintage is done!_”
Then gently and sweetly, as she did everything, she looked at me.
“But, my dear,” she continued, “it is not so with you. Your baskets
are of the finest silver, and they are worthy to be filled with apples
of gold. But will they be? Ah!” (here she sighed), “it is not good for
a woman to be too beautiful--or what is the same thing, to have the
name for it.”
“But I am not,” I said, awkwardly enough--blushing too, I doubt. For
had not James told me that very thing two hours agone as we rode to
Amboise? Not that I heeded James much, for he was always cataloguing
my charms like a bill of accompt! But Larry--well, Larry spoke the
truth even when it hurt. Only Will, my cousin, cared nothing for the
matter one way or other. Indeed, I doubt if ever he remarked my face
more than the spangles on the wings of the summer butterflies that
fluttered by, balancing themselves like thistledown in the light wind.
So it is small wonder that I blushed because La Belle des Belles said
this thing.
Whereupon immediately she took my arm and bent over me, most
loverlike.
“Princess,” she said, “there is a proverb--‘Buy peace and a house
ready built!’ That is my advice. Love your husband and none other man.
He is, they say, both a good man and a wise--a little hard, maybe, but
yet to the wife who keeps the home-fires bright, a husband has a nose
of wax. Nine times out of ten, she can make of him what she will. So
at least we say in Touraine, and I judge it is a true word. There is,
of course, the tenth!”
“But I can never love my Cousin Will,” I cried, “no, not if he were to
be twenty years my husband!”
Agnes Sorel rested her hand a little more heavily on my shoulder as
she replied, “Yes, you will love him--only pray God it may not be too
late!”
I looked about me. Will was, as I expected, deep in talk with the
king, and the Dauphin was sitting by, watching them out of those
twinkling pupils of his eyes, which closed and opened again ever so
little, like a cat’s in the sun.
But James, walking with the queen, was at the moment looking over his
shoulder at me, and actually had the audacity to make that pouting
movement of the lips which the French call _petite moue_. He would
rather have been with us, he meant to say; and he did it so openly
that I was frightened lest the king or other might see him.
“The Lord James is your husband’s brother?” said Agnes Sorel, with (I
thought) more of meaning in her tone than was necessary.
“One of five!” I answered, “the eldest after the earl!”
“He follows you?” she continued, as if it were a matter of public
knowledge.
“Nay,” answered I, with some little heat, “he saved me from the
dungeons of the Maréchal de Retz at Machecoul, and on that account I
have seen more of him than of my other cousins, who, besides, are much
younger. Will, whom, for the sake of the house, I must marry, I have
scarce seen at all.”
“Ah,” she said, after a pause, “then you love this James. I am sorry.
Such round-the-corner affection as this is poor capital to begin
housekeeping on!”
“Indeed, I love him not--no, nor any man in the world,” I cried, with
much hotness of speech. “I would give all I possess to rid me of the
whole wearyful, teasing crew. And of all things that tease, my cousins
are the worst--excepting Will, that is, who takes no notice of
anything.”
“And that,” here the Dame de Beauté smiled, “you, being a woman, like
worst of all!”
“Nay,” said I, returning to the main question, “you do James a great
wrong. He loves me, indeed, but he would as lief say so before his
brother as to myself; and as for William--if he did, why, he would
only continue to expound Rights Royal and Rights Seigneurial,
Privilege and Prerogative, Domaines and Feodalities, while James made
verses upon my eyelashes or told over for the fiftieth time the rings
upon my fingers!”
The brows of the Dame de Beauté were drawn into a frown. The line of
firmness showed plain between them.
“I must speak with William, Earl of Douglas,” she murmured; “this
marches worse than I thought.”
“You shall not,” I cried, snatching away from her. “What right have
you to take so much upon you? What am I to you--ay, or what is William
Douglas either? Pray grind your own corn with the water out of your
own mill-dam, Mistress Agnes Sorel!”
The Dame de Beauté was no ways put down by my rudeness; indeed, since
I had spoken as a baby, she treated me as one.
“To-day explains Yesterday, and To-morrow the Day After,” she said;
“but we must wait the Last Day of All to know everything! Then you
also will know that I was right. Though now my words anger you, and
are out of tune to your ear, believe that I know that which is best
for you. Have I not bought that knowledge with a great price? Let your
heart follow your hand, and, as you love God, draw yourself apart from
the Lord James, your cousin! He is a light man. He hath the wandering
eye. He will make no woman happy!”
“You shall not speak against James,” I cried, yet more angrily than
before. “I have known him from a child. He saved me from death--ay,
worse, from the Altar of Evil itself at Machecoul. He can drive a
lance with any man in France. It is not given you to say to a woman’s
heart, ‘Stay here, or go there.’ _When you were young as I, could you
do as much with your own?_”
The Dame de Beauté bowed her head, and I think a tear fell upon her
hand.
“God help me, that could I not!” she murmured; “but my failure only
makes me the wiser physician for others. May the Mother Mary, in her
mercy, keep your feet from the way mine have walked in!”
I took her hand, and would have answered more gently, for there were
tears also in my eyes. But at that moment William, my cousin, came up,
and, putting his hand on my arm, almost dragged me away, making no
apology, saying neither By-y’r-leave nor yet Fare-ye-well!
“The king desires to see you!” He said the words roughly. “Come!”
Then, as was natural, I flew into a yet greater anger, and said to
him, “Do you think, sirrah, that this is the way to make a young maid
love you?”
“I did not ask you to love me,” he retorted upon me; “only to obey
me!”
“Do as he bids; he is right!” murmured Agnes Sorel softly, as she
turned away, her eyes upon the green untrodden grass and the nodding
lilies of Our Lady.