GARDEN LOVE
On the terrace the fair girl leaned and looked over at the garden
and its golden occupant. To the eyes of Villon her beauty had never
seemed rarer, and the wild passion which had prompted him to spin
his very soul into song burnt with a new, delicious strength of
hope. He stared at her as a worshipper might stare at some sudden
vision of a long dreamed of goddess, and as he stared, Olivier
descended the steps, soft-footed, and came and stood before him.
"My lord, there is a lady there who desires to speak with you."
Villon turned his gaze unwillingly from the gracious apparition
above him to the sombre servitor.
"I desire to speak with her," he said earnestly, and again his eyes
travelled in the direction of the lady.
Olivier came close to him and touched him respectfully on the wrist.
"Remember, my lord," he said, very softly, "that you are François of
Corbeuil, Lord of Montcorbier, Grand Constable of France, newly come
to Paris from the Court of His Majesty of Provence. Remember this as
if it were written in letters of gold upon tables of iron. Forget
all else. The king commands it."
The words sounded dully enough on Villon's brain, absorbed as he was
in the contemplation of his queen, but at least they served to
convince him of what he had already begun to assure himself, that
for some purpose or other King Louis wished him well and granted him
golden chances.
François of Corbeuil, Count of Montcorbier, stood in a very
different relation to the Lady Katherine from that of the lowly poet
and gaolbird who had rhymed and sighed and battled in the Fircone
Tavern last night.
"The king shall be obeyed," he said gravely, and Olivier, turning,
made a sign to Katherine, who descended the steps slowly. As she
reached the last step, Olivier saluted Villon and the lady
profoundly and, mounting the steps, vanished within the palace.
The man and the woman were left alone in the rose garden. Villon
felt a sudden strange sensation at his heart, exquisite pain and
exquisite pleasure, and he clasped his hands together.
"I am awake," he assured himself; "no dream could be as fair as
she."
Even at the thought, Katherine flung herself swiftly at his feet,
divinely gracious in her surrender of dignity as she kneeled to him
with uplifted imploring hands and eyes.
"My lord," she cried, "will you listen to a distressed lady?"
Villon stooped and caught her white fingers and drew her to her
feet.
"Not while the lady kneels," he said gently, and he looked with a
strange apprehension into the frank, bright eyes of Katherine. Would
she know him for what he was, he wondered. He read no recognition in
her sweet eyes. Katherine returned his gaze, unflinchingly regarding
him as a great lady might regard some stranger her equal of whom she
could ask a favour.
"She does not know me," Villon's delight cried in his heart, and at
the thought his spirit fluttered with fierce exaltation. The Lord of
Moncorbier, who was Grand Constable of France, might say many things
that were denied to the lips of François Villon.
Katherine pleaded warmly:
"There is a man in prison at this hour for whom I would implore your
clemency. His name is François Villon. Last night he wounded Thibaut
d'Aussigny--"
Villon smiled a contented smile.
"Thereby making room for me," he suggested.
Katherine went on unheeding:
"The penalty is death. But Thibaut was a traitor sold to Burgundy."
"Did this Villon fight him for his treason?"
"No. He fought for the sake of a woman. He risked his life with a
light heart because a woman asked him."
"How do you know all this?"
"Because I was the woman. This man had seen me, thought he loved me,
sent me verses--"
"How insolent!"
"It was insolence--and yet they were beautiful verses. I was in
mortal fear of Thibaut d'Aussigny. I went to this Villon and begged
him to kill my enemy. He backed his love tale with his sword--and he
lies in the shadow of death. It is not just that he should suffer
for my sin."
Villon turned suddenly upon the beautiful suppliant. A thought had
come into his brain so whimsical and so fantastic that it made him
as dizzy for an instant as if the smooth grass beneath him had
yawned into a sheer and evil precipice.
"Do you by any chance love this Villon?"
A little wave of disdain rippled over the girl's calm face.
"Great ladies do not love tavern bravos. But I pity him, and I do
not want him to die, though, indeed, life cannot be very dear to him
if he would fling it away to please a woman."
She had held a rose in her hand, and as she spoke she flung it from
her in dainty symbolism of the life which the poor tavern poet had
risked so bravely for her sake. A mad resolve came into Villon's
mind. If he was, indeed, all that this woman thought him to be, all
that those with whom he had spoken had assured him he was, now was
his chance to play the lover to his heart's desire. If the Grand
Constable had the power to pardon, surely the Grand Constable had
also the right to woo. She had drawn a little way from him and he
followed her up, standing so close to her that with a little
movement he might have kissed her on the cheek.
"Even when you are the woman? If I had stood in this rascal's shoes,
I would have done as he did for your sake."
The girl gave a joyous cry.
"If you think this, you should grant the poor knave his freedom."
Villon flung his hands apart with a magnificent gesture of
liberation.
"That broker of ballads shall go free. Your prayer unshackles him
and we will do no more than banish him from Paris. Forget that such
a slave ever came near you."
The lady dropped him a magnificent curtsey, and her cheeks glowed
with gratitude.
"I shall remember your clemency."
She made as if she would leave his presence, but his boldness waxed
within him as a fire waxes with new wood, and he caught her lightly
by the wrist.
"By Saint Venus, I envy this fellow that he should have won your
thoughts. For I am in his case and I, too, would die to serve you!"
Surprise flamed in the girl's eyes, surprise and amusement mingled.
"My lord, you do not know me," she laughed, and her laughter was as
fresh and merry as a milkmaid's in the meadows.
"Did he know you? Yet when he saw you he loved you and made bold to
tell you so."
Her forehead wrinkled prettily in a little protesting frown.
"His words were of no more account than the wind in the eaves. But
you and I are peers and the words we change have meanings."
Villon caught his breath. The Lord of Montcorbier was, indeed,
wardered by very different stars from the fellow of the Fircone. He
saluted her banteringly.
"Though I be newly come to Paris I have heard much of the beauty and
more of the pride of the Lady Katherine de Vaucelles."
A little fire burned in the girl's pale cheeks, and she flung her
head back scornfully.
"I am humble enough as to my beauty, but I am very proud of my
pride."
Villon, leaning forward with entreating hands, pleaded with
beseeching lips.
"Would you pity me if I told you that I loved you?"
Katherine laughed, and the music of her laughter seemed to wake
faint echoes among the roses as if every blossom were a magic bell
with a fairy hand at the clapper.
"Heaven's mercy," she said. "How fast your fancy gallops. I care
little to be flattered and less to be wooed, and I swear that I
should be very hard to win."
She turned to mount the steps as she spoke, as if she had said all
that she wanted to say, but Villon delayed her with imploring
protest.
"I have more right to try than your taproom bandit. I see what he
saw; I love what he loved."
Again the girl's laughter brightened the summer air.
"You are very inflammable."
Villon caught at her words.
"My fire burns to the ashes. You can no more stay me from loving you
than you can stay the flowers from loving the soft air, or true men
from loving honour, or heroes from loving glory. I would rake the
moon from heaven for you."
The girl swayed her head daintily, as a queen rose might in a realm
of roses. There was something like pity in her eyes, but laughter
lingered on her lips.
"That promise has grown rusty since Adam first made it to Eve." She
eyed him in silence for a second time, deriding his sighs with a
smile: then "There is a rhyme in my mind," she cried, "about moons
and lovers," and she began to declaim, half muse, half minx, some
lines that had pleased her, to tease the importunate stranger.
"Life is unstable,
Love may uphold;
Fear goes in sable,
Courage in gold.
Mystery covers
Midnight and noon,
Heroes and lovers
Cry for the moon."
As the first words of the verse fell from her lips, Villon's heart
leaped and his eyes brightened for he knew the sound. They were part
of the rhymes himself had sent her on that very parchment which had
cost him first a dinner and then a drubbing. He had fancied the
words and the rhymes when he wrote them, but now they seemed to
sound on his ears with the married music of all the falling waters
and all the blowing winds of the world. It was a shining face that
he turned to the girl as he jeered, denying the thought in his
heart:
"What doggerel!"
The girl flashed scorn at him.
"Doggerel! It is divinity," she insisted, flinging a kiss from her
finger-tips in Godspeed, as it were, to the banished ballad-maker,
as she moved a little further up the steps. Villon followed her. Let
come what might come, he was the maid's equal for the moment and
would press his suit if he died for it.
"Tell me what I may do," he said, "to win your favour."
The girl's smiling face grew graver as she looked down on the
imploring poet.
"A trifle," she said lightly, as a child might bid for a doll; and
then, as Villon's eyes glowed questions, her voice rang out like the
call of a clarion. "Save France!" she trumpeted.
Villon caught fire from both her moods.
"No more?" he said, and though the sound of his voice jested, the
look in his eyes was earnest.
The girl responded to jest and earnest royally.
"No less. Are you not Grand Constable, chief of the king's army?
There is an enemy at the gates of Paris, and none of the king's men
can frighten him away." She pointed out where, in the distance,
beyond the walls of Paris, the pitched tents of the enemy fluttered
their hostile flags. Her bosom heaved with great desire. "Oh, that a
man would come to court! For the man who shall trail the banners of
Burgundy in the dust for the king of France to walk on, I may
perhaps have favours."
Villon looked at her as men must have looked at Joan of Arc when she
bade them rise up and strike for France.
"You are hard to please," he said, but his heart was full of joy at
the thought of trying to please her. If he could do this thing!
The girl answered his words and not his thoughts.
"My hero must have every virtue for his wreath, every courage for
his coronet. Farewell."
By this time she had reached the terrace and she made to enter the
palace. Villon called to her longingly:
"Stay! I have a thousand things to say to you."
The girl smiled denial.
"I have but one," she said, "and I have said it long since.
Farewell."
Villon made a dash for audacity.
"I will follow you," he said, and he moved to do so, but the girl's
lifted finger stayed him.
"You may not," she said peremptorily. "I go to the queen." And so
with a swift salutation, gracious as the dip of a dancing wave, she
entered the palace and left him standing there, dazed and ardent, as
a man might be who had just been vouchsafed the vision of an angel.
He murmured to himself her words as he slowly descended the steps to
the ground,
"Oh, that a man would come to court," and on that text he wove the
hopeful commentary of his thoughts.
"Why should I not deserve her? Last night I was only a poor devil
with a rusty sword and a single suit. To-day all's different. I am
the king's friend, it would seem, a court potentate, a man of mark.
What may I not accomplish? This finery smiles like sunlight and the
world will warm its hands at me."
He was exquisitely pleased with himself, exquisitely pleased with
the world that held him and Katherine. He forgot, as lovers always
will forget, that there was any one else in the world save himself
and his beloved, and he was so wrapped in his sweet contemplations
that he did not hear the tower door gently open, did not hear the
soft, creeping footsteps of the king as he came out of his hiding
place and shuffled across the soft grass toward his plaything.