LA MOTHE BELIEVES, BUT IS NOT CONVINCED
But having ended the sentence Commines broke off at the end as La Mothe
had done in the middle, and with much the same embarrassment. 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
ejaculation, there flooded significant, misunderstood hints dropped by
the King in Valmy, and by Commines himself on the road to
Château-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 God'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 relationship 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 platitude: 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 repetition of the
phrase, enlightenment dawned in part and he shrank back, his fingers
closing in upon his palms. "Not that! For God'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----"
"Hell!" broke in La Mothe fiercely. "Justice is sacred, to God
Almighty, and this--this---- Where is God's hand? Where is--? Oh,
no, no, it is damnable, damnable!"
"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! God 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 God!"
"Listen, Stephen." Commines had fuller command of himself now and
spoke more quickly, but also with more assumption of authority. "Put
yourself in the King's place and consider the truth dispassionately."
"Consider dispassionately 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
dispassionate. 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?"
"God knows!" replied La Mothe moodily. The dying out of his first hot
passionate 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 passed."
Again Commines let the sarcasm levelled at the King's justice pass
unchallenged: it is never wise to block a safety-valve when a high
pressure, whether of steam or of passion, 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 pass 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 God'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' assertion 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 passage 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.