HOW I MET MADEMOISELLE THE SECOND TIME
Though Monsieur de Commines travelled, as he said, on the King's
service--a service which, I have since concluded, had it been known,
might have cost him his head--he travelled without ostentation. And
yet our train of twelve mounted guards, six led packhorses and as many
body servants was a royal progress compared with our entrance to Paris.
We crossed the river by the ferry that plied from the Louvre gardens,
landing near the end of the Rue de Seine, a hundred paces below the
Tour de Nesle. Thence we followed the same street till we reached the
Rue du Bussy, where we turned to the right, keeping straight on till we
reached the pillory which stands, as a terror to evil-doers, at the
junction of the Rue du Four and the Rue des Boucheries. There, in the
triangular open space used as an occasional market, we were joined by
Monsieur de Rochfort, the Chancellor, and Monsieur de Commines, who, so
far, had ridden by my side pointing out this or that of interest as we
passed, drew apart.
"It is for your sake," said he, with a kindly nod. "The Chancellor and
I are both too near the King to wish well to the other's friends."
Once or twice thereafter through the day he reined back alongside
Roland, just as he did with each of the three or four gentlemen in his
train. But, unless we were out of earshot of the Chancellor's friends,
there was an indifferent coldness in his manner which, more than any
words could have done, warned me how warily men must walk whose paths
lie near a throne. So plain was this coldness to himself that he
half-excused it.
"There are three parties at court," said he waving his hand aside as if
indicating some point in the landscape. "I call them the party of the
present, of the early future, and for all time; or, to put it more
clearly, of the King, of the Dauphin, and of France. I am of the last,
and so most truly for the King, though all do not see as I do. When
the King is well, Monsieur de Rochfort is of the first; when the King
is sick, he is of the second; and never, to my thinking, of the third.
Now, such a man rarely,--oh ho! here comes one of his friends slipping
back to catch what I am saying. Good-morning, Monsieur de Bueil, there
is an urgent matter on which I wish to consult you, but without
advertisement. Do you think the Chancellor would consider it wise----"
and lowering his voice he drew aside, plunging into I know not what
story, having in a single sentence flattered not only the Chancellor's
wisdom and influence at court, but also Monsieur de Bueil's intimacy
with his master.
That night we lay at Anneau where, because of the inn's cramped space,
I slept on hay, and was glad of its softness for my wound still stung
me. Next night our quarters were at Vendôme, and so Tours was reached
before dinner on the third day. There Martin and I dropped off;
Plessis, which lay a mile or so to the south-west, was not for us as
yet.
"Put up at the Cross of Saint Martin," was Monsieur de Commines' last
advice. "It is not the best inn in the city, but the other is in the
Rue des Trois Pucelles, and so too near Confrère Tristan's for comfort,
unless you have a strong stomach," a hint which, in my innocence, I
failed to understand. "Give me a week," he added at parting, "but
remember, I promise nothing except that I am at all times the friend of
your father's son," and so rode on.
Later I was grateful for his choice of our lodgings. As we gaped about
the streets, Martin a discreet half-pace behind me, but talking across
my shoulder without a break, touched me.
"Monsieur Tristan's," he said, nodding at the other side. "That a man
should make a gallows of the house where he eats and sleeps, and, it
maybe, loves his wife and children."
"A gallows? where?"
"For God's sake walk on, Monsieur Gaspard, and don't stare. These
nails, and that fag end of a cut rope blowing in the wind make my flesh
creep."
That is always the way! The kennel is swimming in mud and a pretty
woman crosses the road with her skirts a-tilt; or an unhappy gallant in
silks is chasing his bonnet through the self-same mud, and you are
bidden to look and not stare! Not stare? That's not in nature; the
very warning is a challenge. Of course I stood and stared, though at
first there was little to look at, a house, like a hundred others in
Tours with a dozen of the kind in the same street. Then, as I looked
again, there came a sense of the sinister. It was as when a face,
which at the first glance seems one of a score, shows something of a
peculiar and personal devil, and with it a fascination that fastens the
attention, as all things evil or ugly fasten it.
It was a tall narrow house of four storeys, tapering as if by steps and
stairs to a point at the ridge. The wall of the floor on the street
level was pierced by two unequal windows, heavily barred. The larger
was to the left, and in its position it balanced the stout door raised
two steps above the pavement. Above these were three windows, the
largest again to the left, and all with similar significant heavy
defences; whoso lived there was careful of his safety. The two upper
storeys were in the contraction of the roof. Each had but one outlook,
and in the case of the lower it was again to the left, leaving a wide
expanse of blank wall, and when I understood the tale it told, my gorge
rose. Here was the sinister threat, the foul vice writ on an honest
seeming; François Villon in stone and mortar stared across the road.
The whole wide expanse, and it was a very wide one, for the windows
were small, was studded over by stout nails driven between the joints
of the masonry. From these fluttered rope-ends, some short, some long,
some weather-frayed to rags, others--horrible to think of--newly cut,
and there men and women had choked to death while the King's Provost
Marshal ate, drank, or took his pleasure within to the music of the
dying wretches clattering their boot heels against the wall!
Shuddering and half-sick with disgust I swallowed down my loathing as
best I could. And yet it was nothing more than the sordid commentary
to the comedy of the Louvre and a plain warning. Everywhere I turned
the law of the King's will was a handwriting on the wall, inexorable,
inevitable, callous.
Perhaps because of this newly reawakened sense of the dangers that lay
behind the walls of Plessis, or perhaps--and I trust it was so--because
to the heart of every man who thinks at all there comes the desire to
give God thanks for mercies undeserved and unlooked for, and to seek
His strength and guidance in the uncertainties of life, I shook off
Martin about vespers, and made my way alone to the great church of
Saint Gatien. Behind the grated screens of its dim aisles there rarely
fails a priest to ease a burdened spirit of that which grows too heavy
to be borne.
But before a man can thus cleanse his soul it is fitting he should
pray, and so I knelt, but not before the great altar. No! its hard
brilliance and gorgeous extravagance of this world's passing splendours
repelled me. What had a poor crushed soul in common with such proud
display? The God who loved these flaring lights, silver lamps that
swung by silver chains, gilt candlesticks of many branches all ablaze,
who took complacent pleasure in such ostentation of gold vessels,
broidered draperies, fretted carvings, gems that flashed and gems that
glowed, how could He stoop to a worm of the earth? True, the pure,
pale Face of the suffering Christ looked out from it all, but looked
out as if to ask, What have I, the Man of Sorrows acquainted with
grief, Who had not where to lay His head, what have I to do with all
this arrogance of flaunted wealth? Either I am the Son of God in My
heaven of heavens, and what to Me are your tinsel glories! or I am the
Son of Man working out salvation in anguish and alone, sweating, as it
were, great drops of blood, no man ministering to Me, and what have I
to do with all this splendour! The God of the high altar is either the
God of the very great or the very poor; of the man who says in his
pride, I, too, am a god, a god to myself, a god upon earth for the
people's worship, and so we are a-kin, thou and I! Or else it is for
those ignorants who find the incense of heaven in the smell of the
unsnuffed guttering candles; for myself, I could not pray there. I
found instead a small remote chapel, where a single rushlight trembled
before a darkened shrine, faint and small like a soul facing the
unknowable; shrinking, and yet persistent because of the Love unseen
that watched and waited, yearning to be gracious. Nor was I alone. A
woman knelt upon the altar step, her head bowed forward till it rested
on the wooden rail.
Seeing her rapt worship I kept back, and in the quiet of the little
sanctuary lost myself. The world, with its drone of life, its careless
callous tread, was behind my back, and I forgot everything but that
Solignac was in ashes, Babette murdered, and that God had prospered me
on my way to retribution. What He begins He finishes, and not a
thousand Jan Meerts, no, nor Louis of France, could turn back the hand
of His justice.
But how diverse are His attributes, how infinite, how inscrutable, is
the greatness of His powers. As I, through His justice cried for
vengeance, another kneeling at the same footstool sought peace through
mercy.
"Not the King's will, but Thine, O Lord!"
It was the voice of Mademoiselle, and as I heard it, my heart leaped!
Our paths had come together through no seeking of mine, and there was
now no question of disloyalty to Monsieur de Commines. Nor, I
remembered with satisfaction, being a frail man, was I any longer in
rags.
It may be asked, What was Mademoiselle to me, who had never so much as
seen her face clearly, never spoken three words to her, never touched
her hand? I answer, Nothing! And yet my heart leaped; perhaps because
Monsieur de Commines' interference piqued me, perhaps--but at
twenty-five one does not stop to analyse a perhaps that makes the heart
leap! It is still the age of impulse and half-blind instinct, and
these ask no questions. Rising, I slipped out into the growing dusk
and waited without a thought as to whether or no there was a priest
behind his grille ready to give comfort to the sinner.
Presently she came.
"Mademoiselle!" and I bared my head.
With a little twitch of her skirts she stood aside, straightening
herself.
"What?" she said. "Even on the very church step? Oh, for shame,
Monsieur, for shame!"
"No, no," I protested, "you mistake."
"Prove it, Monsieur," she retorted; "prove it by going your way while I
go mine."
But as she had moved so had I, and the waning light fell sufficiently
strongly on the gay greens and yellows of my bruised forehead for her
to see them.
"Ah!" she cried, drawing in her breath, "you come
from--from--Monseigneur? You were with us in the Paris inn and are the
servant of that Monsieur Hellewyl he said he knew? What is your
message? Has he seen the King?"
"I have no message, Mademoiselle, and it is I who am Gaspard Hellewyl."
"You? But it was the other----"
"That was a mistake and----"
"No message? Then whoever you may be, Monsieur, what have I to do with
you, or you with me?"
"Nothing, Mademoiselle, except----" and I stopped, not knowing how to
answer her.
The pain of her disappointment was written on her face, and I, in my
blundering want of thought, had brought it there. The optimism of her
youth had jumped to the comfort of the hope that Monsieur de Commines
had already good news for her, and that I had brought it. Now the
reaction galled her like a blow; I could have cursed myself for my
tactless want of foresight. But her gentle womanhoods found an excuse
even for that stupidity.
"Except--?" and her face softened.
Have I described her face? I think not, no, I cannot have since till
then I had not seen it, and God forbid that I should describe it now.
No two faces are alike in the world, and that in almost every one some
other finds a sweetness others fail to see is the recurrent miracle of
life. I could tell you much of the face that looked up to mine in the
twilight, but I could never tell its sweetness, and failing that, the
rest is little better than dead flesh. What do so many inches matter
except in a man who may have to use their strength? It is not the
inches a wise man loves, nor yet the eyes or lips or cheeks, but the
Spirit that uses all these, and more than these, as God uses the cold
dead things of stone and wood, the perishing things of the world, to
point a promise of eternal life. And yet, understand me; I did not, at
that time, love Mademoiselle, nor had I totally forgotten Brigitta, as
will be seen. But I had begun to compare the two, and when a man
begins comparing a new interest with an old love a change is not far
off.
"Except," she said, her face softening, and, I think, a little moisture
shining in her eyes, "except that we owe you a life--perhaps even more
than a life."
"No, no," and I drew back, wounded that she should think I traded on
her gratitude, and yet with the wound salved by her wakened warmth of
kindliness; "it was not that, it was that in Tours--in a strange
city--at this hour--Mademoiselle might have trouble----"
"And that Monsieur might have the pleasure of killing some one else?
Bah?" and she searched me gravely with her eyes a second or two. "I
can guard myself. What does Tours care for a serving maid! Had it
been my mistress, there might have been a need for your gallantry."
"Oh! Mademoiselle, but Monseigneur said----"
"Nothing to you, of that I am sure; and besides Monseigneur knows there
are more cloaks in the world than go on the shoulders."
A serving maid? Her mistress? Of course it should have been an
evident folly; but remember I was no more than a Flemish clod. I
suppose it was that same cloddishness in me, for even while I staggered
at what she said I kept my hat in my hand.
"But," I persisted, "Tours is still Tours, and you are still you. With
your leave, I will see you safe home."
Turning, she looked over her shoulder with the first glimpse of
coquetry I had seen. We had, of course, quitted the Place Saint
Gatien, I following her a foot or two behind, as Martin earlier in the
day had followed me. But now she slackened her pace, and without
increasing mine I drew along side.
"Madame will laugh when I tell her how Monsieur Hellewyl--you said you
were Monsieur Hellewyl, did you not, and not that other? I think I
prefer the exchange, but it is hard to be sure on so short an
acquaintance--how Monsieur Hellewyl, Monseigneur's friend, squired a
serving maid through the streets of Tours!"
"Let her laugh!" answered I bravely, "better she should laugh than that
a woman left alone in Tours should have bitter cause to weep."
"One woman!" she cried with a sudden pained sharpness, "oh! what does
one woman matter? If your King has his way it will not be one woman
who will weep but thousands; yes, thousands, thousands."
"Not my King," I answered, and again I will say, answered bravely.
More bravely than I knew. To say such words on the streets of Tours
risked more than the being laughed at for a woman's sake; Tristan's
House of the Great Nails was grim warrant for the danger. "Not my
King, I am of Flanders, and so--not my King."
"The better fortune yours!" she answered curtly. "I would rather trust
the grossest bully in Tours than Louis of France."
"Then," said I, giving tongue to the thought that had troubled me these
ten minutes, "why come to Tours at all, with Louis only a mile away?"
"Because it was safest so. Do you think he would look for me under the
shadow of Tristan's gallows? And because, too, I am a woman, Monsieur
Hellewyl, and hoped--hoped I might bring back a message of peace to
my--my--mistress."
With the words in her mouth, words caught by a half-breath of tears,
she turned into a little covered archway opening off the street, and
dropped a curtsey.
"I lodge here, Monsieur, and my mistress and I both thank you for your
care--though this time there was no man to kill!"
"To-morrow----" I began.
"To-morrow?" echoed she, looking back at me with her foot on the
doorstep, "I hope there is no To-morrow for me in Tours, for if there
is, it will be passed dangling from one of Tristan's flesh hooks!" and
with a little gesture of farewell, she was gone.
Nor had Tours a To-morrow for me either; by midday I was behind the
triple walls of Plessis.