LOVE, THE ENEMY
Charles was seated on a low stool at the further end of the room, a
pale-faced boy with dull, peevish eyes closely set together, the long
Valois nose, and a thin, obstinate mouth. His dress was severely,
obstinately, contemptuously plain. Again it was as if the King said,
This is not the greatness or the glory of France! But love and care
had redeemed the derisive parsimony. All the lad wore was exquisitely
neat and the very severity lent the little figure a dignity of its own.
Beside him, but a little behind, stood Love, the Enemy, Ursula de Vesc,
a slim figure in white. One arm was flung over his shoulder, the hand
holding the boy's hand as he raised it across his breast, and she
seemed to draw him back to her so that he half leaned, half lay against
her knee. Her other hand was caught up against her side below the
rounded breast, and pressed there so tensely that the slender,
bloodless fingers lay ivory-white against the hardly purer white of the
bodice. The whole attitude was one of spontaneous, natural, womanly
affection, but as Stephen La Mothe looked a second time he seemed to
find in it both defence and defiance, or if not defiance, then that
vigilant watchfulness which is almost an antagonism. The clasping arm
spoke protection, but a protection which said, "Touch if you dare."
Nor did the expression of her face change his thought. The clear grey
eyes were alert with something more than a girl's fresh interest, the
firm mouth, even while the lips moved, was set in an unconscious
strain, and across the broad forehead two lines were shadowed where no
lines ought to have been. If the face of age, when the sorrows and
experience of years have written anxiety for the uncertain morrow
across it, moves the heart by the story it tells, how much more the
face of youth lined by cares which merciful Time should still have held
unrevealed? There are more valleys of shadows than that of death, and
it seemed to La Mothe that the gloom of some one of them had gathered
thickly round Ursula de Vesc.
Of the three or four others grouped at the further end of the room
Commines was the only familiar figure, and though all turned at the
noise of the brass rings jangling on their rod as Villon drew the
curtain there was no recognition in his eyes. It was the opening of
the lying masquerade, and La Mothe vaguely felt the white horse stumble
as it swerved from the straight course. The soiling of clean hands
spoken of by Commines on the road to Château-Renaud had begun.
"Gain the girl and win the boy," whispered Villon as, with his hand
upon La Mothe's arm, they walked up the room together, then aloud,
"Monseigneur and Mademoiselle----"
"Monseigneur, if you please," interrupted the girl, but though she
spoke to Villon her eyes were on La Mothe. The voice was cold, the
words at once a self-effacement and a rebuke. It was as if she said,
"I know my place: know--and keep--yours."
"Monseigneur," went on Villon, quite unruffled, "with the ills of life
come their cure: Amboise was dull and I present to you Monsieur Stephen
La Mothe."
The Dauphin made no immediate answer, but glanced up at Ursula de Vesc
with a question in his eyes, and his clasp on her hand tightened,
drawing her yet closer to him. It was the action of a child to its
mother rather than that of a boy of twelve to a girl not twice his age,
and to those who understood it was curiously instructive. Looking down
upon him she smiled and nodded, nor did the gracious softening of the
tender face escape La Mothe. Her eyes were grey, and surely grey eyes
were the sweetest in all the world?
"Monsieur La Mothe," repeated Charles, as if the girl's look had given
him courage to speak. "Monsieur La Mothe of--Valmy?"
"Monsieur La Mothe of everywhere," replied Villon hastily, before La
Mothe had time to answer. "Singers and poets are of all the world.
They say it took seven cities to give Homer birth."
"And Monsieur La Mothe is another Homer?" said the girl, and Stephen
winced at the insolent curve of her lips. He was quite sure they were
never meant for such a curve, surely a Cupid's bow would be more
natural than contempt, disdain, and a few other injurious opinions all
in the one expression. In this belief he hastened to reply, allowing
no time for Villon to intervene.
"No, mademoiselle, I am neither a singer nor a poet, at least not such
a one as Monsieur Villon."
"I hope not, for your credit's sake," answered the girl drily, nor did
she seek to keep the scorn from her voice. "As both singer and poet
Monsieur Francois Villon is beyond his age."
"There is no such critic as the one who fails to understand," said
Villon, his wrinkled face white with anger, "and I see I was right at
first, and should have said Mademoiselle and Monseigneur, not
Monseigneur and Mademoiselle."
"Master Villon, you are impertinent," broke in Commines, who loved
Ursula de Vesc little, but hated Villon more.
"Monsieur de Commines, if it were not another impertinence I would say
that like breeds like," retorted Villon, entirely unabashed. He
returned Commines' dislike with energy, and so long as he served the
King he had little to fear from the King's minister.
"Poets are privileged," said Mademoiselle de Vesc. "And Monsieur
Villon has paid me a compliment: I neither understand his poetry nor
desire to." Her tone was still contemptuous and had in it no thanks to
Philip de Commines for his reproof on her behalf. She resented it,
rather, since she had no desire to owe him either gratitude or thanks.
For a moment there was a pause, a moment which seemed the prelude to a
sarcastic outbreak from one or other of those she had wilfully
irritated in that intolerance which so often goes hand in hand with a
spirit of self-sacrifice. But Stephen La Mothe interposed.
"Mademoiselle, may I have the honour of being presented to Monseigneur?"
"You?" she said, the lines deepening across her forehead. "A roadside
singer presented to the Dauphin! Surely you forget yourself--and him?"
"Even a roadside singer may be a loyal son of France," he retorted,
looking her full in the face. He keenly resented the false position
into which the King's ill-considered scheme had thrust him, but he had
gone too far to retreat. "You know best, mademoiselle, whether the
Dauphin has need of a man's honest love and devotion."
"Devotion that is here to-day, was God knows where yesterday, and will
be God knows where to-morrow! Merci! the Dauphin is indeed grateful."
"Spitfire!" murmured Villon, but so cautiously that only La Mothe heard
him. "Certainly I should have said Mademoiselle and Monseigneur. Or
better still have left the Monseigneur out altogether. You do not go
the right way. Win the girl, I tell you, and the boy will follow like
a sheep."
"Let me win her my own way," answered La Mothe, which has always been
the man's desire since Adam was in Eden with the one woman in all the
world. Then he went on aloud, "Pour your scorn on it as you will,
mademoiselle, it is devotion that will wait patiently in Amboise until
it has proved itself."
"That will wait patiently in Amboise?" she repeated. Her eyes
challenged his as she spoke, and in them there was nothing of the light
the sons of Adam have loved to see in a woman's eyes so that they might
dwell together in Paradise.
"Why not? And if a poor gentleman desires to see France in this
fashion is there any reason against it?"
"A poor gentleman, but not a poor minstrel?"
"As both I can but give my best. May I have the honour, mademoiselle?"
Her clasp upon the boy's hand must have tightened, for again he raised
his face to hers as she stooped over him, speaking softly. This time
it was he who nodded.
"You know best," he whispered back, and the words would have given La
Mothe food for thought had he heard them. "As you say, it will be
safer to have him before our eyes than behind our backs. We may be
quite sure that Hugues will watch him. Yes, I agree: at least he is
prettier to look at than that beast of a Villon."
From her side, where she held it pressed, her left hand slipped down
across the Dauphin's shoulder until it too drew him towards her, but
when she raised her head the lines were smoothed from the forehead, and
if the grey eyes were still watchful, they watched through a smile.
"Monseigneur permits it," she said. "Monseigneur, I have the honour to
present to you Monsieur Stephen La Mothe."
"Monsieur La Mothe of where?" asked the boy gravely.
"Of Landless, in the Duchy of Lackeverything," replied La Mothe, bowing
with an equal gravity, and at the adroit parrying of a difficult
question the smile crept down from Ursula de Vesc's eyes until it
loosened the hard lines of the mouth, and bent them to that Cupid's bow
La Mothe so much desired to see. "I have many fellow-subjects,
Monseigneur."
"Another name for that duchy is Amboise," said Charles, "and so,
monsieur, it is my wish that you make the castle your home for as long
as it pleases you."
He spoke with such a settled seriousness that it was difficult to be
sure whether he understood the jest and played up to it in that spirit
of make-believe which had drawn down the King's anger or answered out
of a dull uncomprehension. Nor did La Mothe care which it was. His
heart leaped within him at the double promise opened up of fulfilling
the King's mission at his ease and watching the unbending of the curved
bow, but he answered with an equal gravity.
"Then Landless is not Houseless, Monseigneur, and to devotion gratitude
is added."
"Discretion and good appetite give a man a longer life than either,"
said Villon.
"But remember," and Commines spoke to La Mothe for the first time, "the
King has first claim upon both."
"On discretion and good appetite?" said Villon gravely. "I fear,
Monsieur d'Argenton, His Majesty in his present health has more need of
the second than the first."
"Take your ribald impertinences elsewhere, but beware how you attempt
them upon me elsewhere," answered Commines, with a stern contempt.
"Here Monseigneur and mademoiselle's presence protect you."
"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 Château, 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 crapulous and drunken. Take advice, Monsieur La
Mothe, and bide indoors: the foulest soiling of God'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 passed 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.