"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
Château? 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. God'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?"
"How should I know!" answered La Mothe crossly. It vexed him that
Villon should speak at all of Ursula de Vesc, and still more that his
answer was so lame. But recognizing the symptoms out of a wide
experience, Villon only laughed softly at the brusque retort.
"Some peaches hang themselves high," he said, the laugh broadening as
La Mothe's face grew wrathful, "but they are peaches all the same.
Shake the tree, my young friend, shake the tree, and see that you keep
your mouth open when the fruit drops."
"Monsieur Villon, if we are to be friends----"
"So young, so very young," said Villon softly. "Friends? most
certainly. If we are not friends, who should be? Are we not both
jackals hunting in the one pack, and jackal does not bite jackal."
Then his mood changed with a swiftness which La Mothe soon found to be
characteristic, a kindliness cast out the jarring banter from his face,
and his luminous eyes grew wistful. "Friends? It is a good word, the
very best word in the world. Friends are more than family or kinship,
and not many care to call old Francois Villon friend nowadays. There
was a time----" He paused, running his hand down the long trail of his
beard reflectively, a slender-fingered supple hand. La Mothe noted it
was, a hand that had a distinct character of its own, just as the
contradictory face had, though the finger-tips were less sensitive than
in the days when their itching acquisitiveness had brought their owner
to the cold shadows of the gallows. "Aye! there was a time. There
were four of us----"
"The ballad says six," said La Mothe.
"Four, four: a man--yet, more, a woman--may have many lovers but few
friends, many to tuck an arm in his or throw it across his neck when
the pockets are full. But that's not friendship, and I don't call
every man friend who dips his fingers into the same till with me. Yes,
there were four of us, Montigny, Tabary, Cayeux, poor snows of yester
year sucked down by the cold earth. But while the blood was warm in
our veins we four were as one with one purse. When it was full we
laughed and sang and feasted as no king feasts, because no king has
such spice of appetite nor can snap his fingers at the world and care
as we could: when it was empty, and it was mostly empty, we laughed and
sang the louder and shared our crusts or went gaily hungry. Brave lads
every one, and brave days. Aye, aye."
"And where are they now?"
"With the snows of yester year! God knows where! and I fear me the
devil knows too. Montigny was hung in '57, Tabary in '58, and Cayeux,
Cayeux of the light heart and lighter fingers, went by the same path
two years later: I only am left. They said I killed a man and would
have hung me--me! Francois Villon! Certainly a man died or there
would be no Villon now: it was either he or I, and they would have hung
me." The full lips parted in a comfortable laugh and the eyes
twinkled. "I appealed to Parliament in a ballad, and the humour of the
notion moved the good gentlemen to mercy. 'How can we choke the breath
from so sweet a singer?' said they. 'There are ten thousand hangable
rogues in Paris, but only one poet amongst them!' God be praised for
humour. I think it gave Francois Villon his life; but since then
friendship has walked the other side of the street."
"And yet," La Mothe laid his hand on the elder man's shoulder, letting
it lie there in kindliness, "you who so gibe at your best self are the
Francois Villon of the ballad to Mary the Mother. How is that?"
"Can I tell you?
'Je cognois tout fors que moy mesme.'
Man is Eden in little: there is the slime of the serpent under the tree
of knowledge, but the Lord God walks through the garden in the cool of
the day. What are we but contradictions, shadows of Montfaucon shot
through by glories from Notre Dame. Perhaps some day a clearer
knowledge than ours will straighten out the tangles," and with a laugh,
which had little joyousness in it, Villon plunged afresh into memories
which seemed to strike the whole gamut of a soul's experience from A to
G.
La Mothe allowed him to run on without interruption. The alternations
of mood, tender and callous by turns, but never remorseful, never
regretful, except with the regrets for a lost delight, both amused and
repelled him, but at last as Villon sat silent he turned to the window
and flung open the wooden sun-blinds.
"At last they are awake in the Château," he said. "Horses? hawks? Are
they going hunting, do you suppose?"
"Saxe will know. Hulloa! Saxe! Saxe! What is little Charles doing
to-day?"
"I was coming for you both," answered Saxe from the open door. "They
are riding to Château-Renaud, and your worships are so beloved by both
the Dauphin and mademoiselle that you must needs go with them.
Monsieur de Commines and Monsieur La Follette have gone hawking for the
day."
"Do not go," said Villon. "They know you at Château-Renaud, and how
could you explain if they recognized you?"
"But we may not go near the inn," answered La Mothe, to whom the ride
meant neither more nor less than a morning with Ursula de Vesc,
therefore a delight not to be denied. "But what of horses?"
"They are being saddled this very moment," replied Jean Saxe, and then
went on to paint out La Mothe's roseate dreams with the dull brush of
realities. "Always," and he lowered his voice as he spoke, "whether by
day or by night, you will find a horse waiting ready for your ride to
Valmy. It is in the stall facing the door, monsieur. By day the
stable is open and not a soul will ask questions; saddle and bridle for
yourself, then ride like the devil. By night send a stone through the
last window on the left and I will be with you in three seconds. Don't
spare your spurs, that's my advice."
"God send the man who rides to Valmy nothing redder than a red spur."
Villon had joined La Mothe at the window, and was peering out at the
stir of men and horses in the open space between the inn and the castle
gates.
"Saxe, what man of yours is that who is bitting Grey Roland? I don't
know his face."
"A stop-gap," answered Saxe indifferently. "A gipsy fellow I think he
is by his colour. Old Michel is drunk in the barn--how I don't know,
but the Chien Noir is none the better for it--this other is in his
place for the day. I don't know his name, but he can tell a horse from
a mule by more than the ears, and that's name enough for me."
"Who owns that huge, raw-boned roan?" asked La Mothe. "Surely I have
seen it somewhere."
"It's as much a stranger to me as Michel's stop-gap," answered Saxe.
"It's not one of the regular Château horses, that's certain. The beast
has power in his legs, rough though he is. Why do you ask, monsieur?"
But La Mothe had already lost his interest. "There is the Dauphin," he
said. "Come, let us go."
But his gaze was fixed on the slender figure which followed the boy,
and the eyes of a much greyer age than a lover of twenty-four with the
heart of eighteen might well have lit into a sparkle at the charm of
the picture. He was not learned in women's stuffs, or the hundred
little arts through which an accent, as it were, is put upon a charm
already sufficiently gracious, or a beauty brought into yet clearer
relief for the luring and undoing of the unsuspecting male, and so
could not have told whether Ursula de Vesc was clad in sober grey or
sunny lightness. She was Ursula de Vesc, and that was enough, Ursula
de Vesc, the woman of a single hour of life, and yet the one sweet
woman in the world.
"A lover's arms ought to be her riding-chair," said Villon, following
La Mothe's gaze. "No, there is no offence meant," he added, as
Stephen's face reddened with the beginnings of umbrage. "She may be a
spitfire and not love Francois Villon, but she is a good girl, and my
four eyes are not blind."
"Your four eyes?" questioned La Mothe; "most of us have but two."
"Two in my head and two in my sense, and it is by the two in his sense
a man should marry. The two in the head are the greatest liars and
deceivers in creation."
The Dauphin had already mounted when La Mothe and Villon crossed the
roadway with their horses following, led by drunken Michel's
substitute, and his greeting to both was of the curtest. The apologue
of the night before was neither forgotten nor forgiven. But with
Ursula de Vesc's grey eyes smiling at him La Mothe cared little for the
boy's dour looks. Hugues, who had mounted his master, still waited by
the horse's head, a spirited, high-bred bay, sleek and well groomed,
which stood shifting its feet with impatience at the delay. The bridle
of the less fiery but no less well-cared-for jennet intended for the
girl was held by a stable-helper, while in a group behind the escort
made ready to mount. Neither Commines nor La Follette was present;
they had gone hawking, as Saxe had said, nor was Hugues booted for
riding.
"Good morning, Monsieur La Mothe." Ursula de Vesc spoke gaily,
frankly, as if she had not a care in the world, and the greeting in the
soft clear voice stirred La Mothe's heart as the smile in the grey eyes
had stirred it. "We missed you at breakfast: what early risers you
poets are."
"Mademoiselle," stammered La Mothe, "my day has but now begun."
"Then you must walk in your sleep," she interrupted laughingly.
"Monseigneur, do you hear? Monsieur La Mothe walks in his sleep. So
do not be frightened if you hear him in the corridor o' nights. He has
been up these three hours and says the day has only now begun."
"I hear," replied Charles, turning on La Mothe those dull, watchful
eyes which, according to Villon, saw so much more than men supposed.
"And Hugues hears too. While Hugues sleeps at my door I shan't be
frightened. Come, Ursula, mount and let us go. Bertrand is so restive
I can scarcely hold him."
At that moment La Mothe felt the bridle of Grey Roland pushed into his
hand with a "Hold that a moment, monsieur," and Jean Saxe's stop-gap
crossed to the Dauphin's side.
"Your pardon, Monseigneur," he said, stooping, "there is a buckle
loose, if your Highness would lift your leg a moment while I fasten it."
"A buckle? Where?"
"Below the saddle-flap, Monseigneur: a shift of the leg--thank you,
Monseigneur, that is right," and he drew back toward the Chien Noir,
nor paused until he was lost in the crowd of idlers. For a gipsy he
was singularly unobtrusive.