Stooping lower La Mothe drove Grey Roland forward, urging him with voice and hand, "Faster, boy, faster, faster." That he had no spurs was a point against him, but drawing his dagger he laid the point against the wet flank. There was no need to draw blood, no need for goading. The generous heart of the beast understood the touch, and the splendid muscles coined their utmost strength, squandering it in a spendthrift, willing energy. They were gaining now, stride by stride they were gaining: Bertrand, the half Arab, had the greater endurance, but English Grey Roland the greater power and the stouter heart. Yes, they were gaining, and there was hope if only the Dauphin kept the saddle, and so far he had held his place like a crouched statue, stooping by instinct as La Mothe had stooped, and clinging to the long mane with both hands. He was no coward, boy though he was, and not once had looked back, nor did he now though the following hoofs must have been loud in his ears as stride by stride the grey gained on the bay, and the ten lengths of space between them closed to five, to three, to one, and the glint of the river rose almost at their feet. Then La Mothe spoke.

"Monseigneur, keep your nerve, it will be all right. When I say 'Now!' loose your hold and try to kick your feet free from the stirrups; leave the rest to me."

The gap narrowed foot by foot: up to the girth of the bay crept the straining muzzle of the grey, the eyeballs staring, the teeth bared, the nostrils wide, the foam flying with every jar of the hoof, up and up with a scant two yards of river-bank to spare upon the outer side, up and up till, leaning forward and aside with outstretched arm, La Mothe could feel the pressing of the Dauphin's back, and the hand closed in upon the ribs. "Now," he cried, his voice cracked and hoarse. "Now, Christ help us, now, now," and gripping the boy he reined back as tightly as he dared, reined back to feel the slender boy slip from the bay's back, hang helpless in the air an instant, then fall sprawling across the saddle. On dashed the bay, and as Grey Roland staggered in his halt the bank caved under the Arab's feet; he too staggered, rearing back too late, then plunged head foremost forward.

As, dropping the reins, La Mothe caught the Dauphin in both his arms to raise him more fully upon the saddle, he was conscious for the first time that they were followed. From behind there was a shout and the noise of hoofs, and looking across his shoulder he saw Hugues mounted on the roan riding recklessly. Beyond him the rest of the escort tailed off almost to the city gate, with Ursula de Vesc framed by the grey arch, her hand upon her breast, as it had been when La Mothe first saw her, Love the Enemy, whom he so longed to make Love the more than friend. "Win the girl and you win the boy," said Villon. But what if he had won the boy, and winning him had won Ursula de Vesc, won her to friendliness, won her to kindliness, won her to trust, won her to—and Hugues thundered up breathlessly.

"Monseigneur?"

"Safe, unhurt, but I think he has fainted. Here," and lifting the lad with little effort La Mothe leaned across to Hugues and won his heart for ever by the act, "take him, you: he will be less fretted when he comes to himself. The sooner he is in mademoiselle's care the better, and I must spare Grey Roland."

"Monsieur, monsieur," stammered the valet, gathering the boy into his arms as carefully as any tender woman, "how can we thank you—how can we prove——"

"Thank Grey Roland," answered La Mothe, speaking more lightly than he felt. "I did nothing but keep my stirrups."

"Nothing?" Hugues' eyes turned to the gapped bank and followed the course of the river, void of any trace of the bay. "Then to save a king for France is nothing. But you are right, monsieur; the sooner the Dauphin is in Amboise the better."

"Was it for this you came to Amboise?" said Villon, as La Mothe, having given Grey Roland his own time to return, halted at the inn door. The crowd had been shaken off and the two were alone. "I doubt it myself, and you should have heard Saxe curse: I give you my word it was Parisian. But, as I said last night, what you do in Amboise is between you and the King, and you won't be the first man in the world who could not see beyond a pair of grey eyes."

"Come, Villon, no Paris jests."

"This was pure nature and no jest. I stood near her there in the shadow of the gate as Roland drew in to the bay on the edge of the bank, and she forgot Francois Villon, the guard, and everybody, as a woman does when her soul speaks to her heart. Not a word had she said till then, not one, but stood breathing deep breaths; there were red spots on the cheek-bones, with those little white teeth of hers hard on her lip. But when you leant aside and gripped the boy she cried—but what matters what she cried?"

"Is not friend more than family?" said La Mothe. "Tell me, my friend."

"So you would win old Villon as well as the girl? Well, here it is then—'Thank God I was wrong, oh, thank God I was wrong: God be thanked for a good man,' and the tears were tumbling down her cheeks. My friend," and Villon's voice deepened soberly, "I who am old have been young, and I tell you this, if a man has any true salt in him at all, heaven may well open for him when a woman like Ursula de Vesc calls him good with tears on her cheeks." And La Mothe had the wisdom and humble grace to answer nothing at all. It was Villon himself who broke the silence with a whistle.

"I am forgetting, fool that I am, though I think you too would have forgotten with a pair of grey eyes weeping at your elbow. What do you call this?"

From the cloth pouch which hung from his girdle he drew a small twig and handed it to La Mothe. It was spray of wild sloe cut from a thicket and trimmed to the shape of a cross, with one stiff thorn, broad based and sharp at the point as a needle, projecting at right angles from the intersection. The marks of the knife were still fresh upon it, the bark so soft and sappy that it must have been cut from the living plant within the hour. La Mothe shook his head as he turned it over on his palm.

"This? What do you call it?"

"Many things; the shadow of death for one; revenge, I think, for another; hate, and a warning certainly, unless I am a fool as well as all the hard things Monsieur d'Argenton calls me. And perhaps I am a fool, perhaps I had better have left that lying where I found it. Almost death, that's just what it is."

"Villon, what do you mean?"

"I mean you would find just such another bit of villainous innocence under Bertrand's saddle-flap. The poor brute was driven mad by it. I picked this up where Michel's stop-gap dropped it."

"That hedge-side beggar?"

"A hedge-side beggar who carries a signet slung round his neck. His jacket opened as he stooped and the ring swung out. The hedge-side beggar boasts a crest, Monsieur La Mothe: a martlet with three mullets in chief. Now do you understand?"

"No."

"It is the crest of the Molembrais. There were two brothers, the last of their family, and Guy de Molembrais trusted our revered King—yes, I see you know the name."

Know the name? La Mothe knew it as he knew the justice of the King. Had he not given his satire a loose rein over the safe-conduct which drew this very Guy de Molembrais to Valmy, and the swift ruthlessness which brushed aside any such feeble plea as a King's good faith? If Villon was right then this little inch or two of new-cut twig might indeed be all he said, the shadow of death, revenge, hate, and a warning against further attempts of a like kind yet to be faced. But was he right?

"Are you quite sure?"

"Quite," and Villon nodded. His face was very grave: not for an instant had he slipped into his sardonic mood of ironical jest. "And, mind you, I find it hard to blame Molembrais. He must strike how and when he can."

"Does Saxe know?"

"Better not ask. I told you he swore, but that may have been at the way you pounded his horse."

La Mothe had dismounted while they talked, and now, leaving the grey where he stood, the sweat caking on his dusty flanks, he turned to the stables. But if his intention was to charge Molembrais with his cowardly attempt on the boy's life it was baulked. At the door Michel met him, his rheumy eyes still blinking from his drunken sleep.

"Where is that fellow who took your place?"

"That's what I want to know, master. Took my place, did he? I'd place him, I would, making an old man drunk to rob him of his bread."

"Who was he?"

"No good, that's all I know. Gipsy scum! rob an old man, would he? I'll gipsy him if I find hair or hoof of him. Lord, master, how liquor do make a man thirsty. You must ha' found it so yourself?"



CHAPTER XV

A QUESTION IN THEOLOGY

Never was the cynical philosophy of the proverb, Virtue is its own reward, made more clear than in the indifference with which Amboise greeted the rescue of the Dauphin. Of course, there are those who contend that virtue is in itself a sufficient reward, but there is certainly a second possible reading, and this reading La Mothe found true. No one said what a fine fellow he was, no one stared in admiration of his promptitude or in awe of his courage. Amboise was cold, chillingly cold.

Hugues, perhaps, was an exception, and if Villon was right Ursula de Vesc had also been deeply moved. But that, La Mothe told himself as he wandered disconsolately through the dull and gloomy corridors of the Chateau, might have been nothing more than the transitory emotion of an excited girl moved to an expression repented of when the mood cooled.

So, as lovers have done ever since this hoar world was young, he gave himself up to melancholy and found, as more than lovers have found, a satisfaction in a grievance. Then, while he fumed, three half-grown spaniel puppies, followed more sedately by a full-grown brother, came scampering around a corner, and the lover remembered he was a sportsman who loved dogs as well as little Charles himself. It was almost the sole hereditary trait in the lad, and the passion for animals was as strong in the Dauphin as it was in the King.

Round the corner, full cry, they raced, slipped upon the smooth flags, tumbled, rolled over, and with a common impulse fell upon one another as puppies will in the sheer joy of living. But the elder dog, if he still had the heart of eighteen or younger, did not forget he was twenty-four with responsibilities and a dignity to maintain. Passing gravely by the riot of paws and flapping ears he halted a yard away from La Mothe, pushed out a sensitive, twitching nose, sniffed the hand held out in greeting and as gravely licked it. Love at first sight is not confined to humanity, and thanks to the unfailing miracle of instinct the dog makes fewer mistakes than man. Inside of two minutes he had adopted La Mothe into the very select circle of his friends.

"I have heard of you," said La Mothe, pulling the soft ears gently. "You sleep in the Dauphin's room o' nights as Hugues does at the door, and now and then you lay your head on her knee, while she strokes and pets you, lucky dog that you are. Why was I not born a dog, tell me that?"

At the sound of his voice the puppies ceased their play, sat up panting a moment, and then in a tumultuous bunch rushed upon La Mothe. Charlemagne vouched for him, Charlemagne who was their oracle as grown-up brothers so often are, and they could let loose the exuberance of their puppydom without a fear that a sudden cuff would teach their youth that wild delights find an end in sorrow. Over each other they sprawled in their heedless eagerness to get near to this new playfellow, one, a little weaker than the rest, lagging a half-tail's length behind, and La Mothe was so busy trying to find a hand for each to mumble that he never knew how long Ursula de Vesc stood watching him.

Nor was she in any haste to break the silence. A puzzling factor had come into her life, and she was impatient of the enigma. The solution was not a question of curiosity but of safety, and a safety not her own. On one side was Commines, Louis' devoted adherent, devoted not alone in service, but in blindness, the blindness which questions neither means nor purpose; on the other side was Villon, Louis' jackal and open ears in Amboise. Between these two so profoundly distrusted stood Stephen La Mothe. Between them, but was he of them? That was the problem.

That morning, from Hugues' report of the visit in the darkened quiet of the Chateau, and remembering how familiarly Villon had introduced La Mothe overnight, she had had no doubt, and the cautious secrecy of the rendezvous with Commines argued some sinister threat. But now she doubted, and as she watched La Mothe's careless play with the dogs the doubt grew. Hugues had kept his eyes open: the gapped bank and the narrow strip of grass between the bay and the river into which the grey horse had been thrust, without a hesitating thought of the inevitable result which must follow a slip or a swerve, spoke not alone of personal courage, but said plainly that La Mothe was ready to risk his life for the Dauphin. Neither Commines nor Villon would have done that, they would have let him perish and raised no hand to save him.

Where, then, was the sinister threat? And had not the devotion which she had so contemptuously scoffed at the night before already proved itself to be no empty word? Yes, she had scoffed, and he had answered her scoff at the risk of his life. How, then, could he be one with Commines and Villon? The thought that she had so misjudged him flushed her as with a sudden heat, the grey eyes grew tenderly troubled in her self-reproach, and unconsciously she drew a deeper breath. Slight as the sound was the dogs heard it; round they spun from their play, their mouths open, their tongues hanging, and next moment were leaping upon her skirts with little yelps of greeting.

"Mademoiselle!" and La Mothe sprang to his feet. "I did not hear you coming: how could I have been so deaf?" It was on his tongue to add, "I, who have been listening for the sound of your feet these hours past," but he wisely checked himself in time.

"Are you going to win all Amboise in a single day?" she answered, stooping so that the jubilant puppies almost scrambled into her lap. "You do not ask after the Dauphin?"

"I fear I had forgotten him," he replied, and though there was no intentional significance in his voice Ursula de Vesc was woman enough to understand the subtle compliment. "How is he?"

"If you forget, we do not. He is as well as a nervous boy can be after such an ordeal. He is looking forward to seeing you this afternoon to try to say to you what we all feel. Monsieur La Mothe, let me——"

"Nervous he may be, but he is no coward," interrupted La Mothe hastily. He foresaw what was coming and had all a shy man's horror of being thanked. "He sat his horse like a little hero. There is no such courage as to wait quietly for death."

"And what of the courage which goes to meet death?" Pushing the dogs from her Ursula de Vesc looked up, her face very grave and tender in the shadows, as the spring of tears glistened under the lashes. Life had brought her so little to be grateful for that the happiness of gratitude was very great.

"No, you must let me speak this once, I said hard things to you last night, and my thoughts were still harder: to-day you have answered me, and I am ashamed. Devotion? Gratitude? It is we who owe you these, and we have nothing wherewith to pay. Monsieur La Mothe——"

But again La Mothe interrupted her.

"Think kindly sometimes and I am more than paid. Forgive the presumption, for why should you think of me at all? Forget the hard thoughts, mademoiselle, and let that pay in full."

"There can be no more hard thoughts. How could we think hard thoughts of our friends?"

"Friends? If that might be."

With the quick instinct which belongs to well-bred puppydom, and is not unknown even in children, the dogs had caught the graver note which changed her voice. By common consent they ceased their restless play and, seated on their haunches, their sleek heads aslant, watched her with wistful eyes; here was something their love could not quite understand.

"Friends? Amboise has more need of friends than Landless of the Duchy of Lackeverything." The girl had risen slowly to her feet as she repeated La Mothe's words, and now as she paused the shadow again broke in lines of troubled care along her forehead. "Monsieur La Mothe, what was the end of the story you began last night?"

"It has no end as yet. The end is here in Amboise, and my hope is we may find it together. I am sure we will if you will but help me. But the story is true."

"How can you say that?" she burst out passionately. "Where do you find one little, little sign of love in Amboise? I can see none, none at all. Nothing but neglect, suspicion, even hate. Oh! it is terrible that a father should so hate his son. And yet you say there is love."

"I say what I know. Trust me, and give me time to prove it."

"We do trust you, indeed we do. Love in Amboise? Is it for that you are here?"

"Yes," answered La Mothe soberly. "It is for that I am here?"

"And Monsieur d'Argenton? Is that why he is here too?"

For a moment La Mothe returned no reply, but stood passing his fingers through Charlemagne's soft hair. The lie direct or the lie inferential would parry the question and possibly serve both Commines and the King; but how could he keep his hands clean in Amboise and lie even by inference to Ursula de Vesc who had said so simply, "We trust you"? It was impossible, not to be thought of for a moment, but neither was the whole truth.

"Monsieur d'Argenton and I are not upon the same errand," he said at last. "Some day, when you know me better, and trust me for something better than a little brute courage which any man in my place would have shown, I will ask you a question. When you have answered it—and I know what the answer will be—I will tell you why Monsieur d'Argenton is in Amboise."

"Monsieur La Mothe, ask your question now."

"No, the time has not come. But I will ask this: Help me that the Dauphin may trust me, and together we will make the end of the story Love and Peace and Faith."

"Love and Peace and Faith," she repeated, her eyes filling for the second time. "They have long been strangers to Amboise. God send our France such a trinity."

And again La Mothe had to check himself lest he should reply, "To you too, mademoiselle." To bring just such a trinity into her life, Love which worketh Faith, and the Peace which is born of both, was the one supreme good which the world could offer out of all the gifts in its treasure-house. But, as he said of his question, the time had not yet come, so he changed the blunt directness to the more oblique "Not to France alone," and was rewarded by seeing the serious wistfulness shift into a gay smile, as she curtsied mockingly with a "Merci, monsieur!" very different from the same words of the previous night. Then she added, as the dogs, following her lighter mood, sprung upon her anew:

"Here I have two of them already, but certainly they give one little peace. Have they been formally introduced? This is Diane, who will be a mighty huntress in her day. This we call Lui-meme because," she paused, flashing a mischievous glance at La Mothe, "well, just because his temper is not very good. He is a bully and uses his teeth on poor Charlot, who is the weakest of the three and the one we love best. But Charlot has one bad habit, he is very inquisitive, and it will get you into trouble some day, Charlot dear": whereat Charlot cocked his ears and looked wise.

Later that afternoon Charles spoke his thanks for himself, and said them with the dignity of a Dauphin of France struggling through the shy manners of a self-conscious schoolboy. But interpenetrating both dignity and self-conscious diffidence there was a frankness which told La Mothe that Ursula de Vesc's influence was already at work. The cold distaste had already disappeared, nor was there any suggestion of a compelled gratitude. Commines and La Follette had not returned from their hawking, and only Father John and the girl were with the Dauphin.

He had been conversing with the priest, but broke off abruptly when La Mothe was announced.

"Monsieur," he said, his hand stretched out as he went hastily to meet him, "there are some services hard to repay. No, I don't mean services, services is not the word. Services are for servants and I don't mean that, but perhaps you understand? And perhaps, too, some day you will teach me to ride as well as you do?"

"There is little to teach," answered La Mothe. "And as I told Hugues, it is Grey Roland who should be thanked."

"What the heir cannot do, being as yet a child," said the priest, "the grateful father can and surely will." Then he laid his hand on the Dauphin's shoulder. "Were you greatly afraid, my son? At such a time, with death so near, fear would not shame a man, much less a boy."

"When Bertrand swerved I was afraid just for a moment, for I did not know what was going to happen, but not afterwards."

"But afterwards, in that awful moment when hope was gone and the world slipped from you, when there was nothing real but God and your own soul, what were your thoughts then?"

The boy made no reply, but shifted uneasily under the hand which still rested upon him. The heavy eyes which had brightened while he spoke to La Mothe grew dull and peevishly sullen again as, according to habit, he glanced towards Ursula de Vesc. Following the glance La Mothe saw the girl shake her head warningly, apprehensively even: but Charles had not the obstinate Valois chin for nothing.

"Perhaps you have forgotten? At such times the mind is not very clear. Or perhaps it was like a dream? Dreams, you know, are forgotten when we wake."

"I remember very well. Yes, Ursula, I shall tell him since he asks. I wondered whether a son who hated his father, or a father who hated his son, would be most certainly damned."

"My son, my son," cried the priest, horrified. "How could you allow such a terrible thought?"

"Oh!" And the boy shook off the restraining hand impatiently. "You come from Valmy and are like all the rest of them. Monsieur La Mothe, let us go and thank Grey Roland."

But as he followed the Dauphin out of the room La Mothe asked himself whether, even with Ursula de Vesc's help, the end of the story could possibly be Love, Peace, and Faith.



CHAPTER XVI

TOO SLOW AND TOO FAST

"I told you at the first you were not going the right way about it."

"And you were wrong," answered La Mothe. "I am only ten days in Amboise, ten days which seem like so many hours, and already Charles trusts me as he trusts Mademoiselle de Vesc."

Pushing out his loose-hung under lip Villon eyed his companion quizzically, but with a little pity through the banter. They were alone in the common room of the Chien Noir, and on the table by which they sat were two bottles of the famous '63 wine, one empty, the other with its tide at a low ebb, but La Mothe's horn mug was still unemptied after its first filling. With some men this would have been an offence, but not with Francois Villon. "Good-fellowship is not in wine but in words, or surer still, in silence," he would say, "and another man's drinking neither warms my heart nor cools my thirst. Besides, there is the more left for the wiser man."

"Ten days of opportunity, and you are content that a boy trusts you! Lovers were not so coldly contented in the good old days of the Paris pavements. Soul of the world! but there is no talk like Paris talk. La Mothe, you will never be a man till you hear it. Cling-clang go the feet, and cling-clang sing the flags under them, cling-clang, cling-clang, and I'll never hear it again—never. Content, d'you say? I'll not believe it. I'll not think so little of you. The Good God never meant man to be content. How would the world move?"

"I'm winning what I came to Amboise to win."

"A snap of the finger," and Villon filliped his own noisily, "for what you came to Amboise to win. The garden grows more flowers than fleurs-de-lis, and better worth the plucking. Eh, my young friend? I think there is a certain tall, slim Madonna lily——"

"No Paris jests, Villon."

"Trust Francois Villon! Jest?" His eyes twinkled humorously over the edge of his tilted horn cup as he finished the second bottle. "In all divine creation there is nothing so solemn as the heart of youth in its first love. It is the first, is it not, La Mothe? Gods of Olympus! was I ever as young as you? I think Paris aged me before I was breeched. But to go back to my garden. Do you dislike the simile—a Madonna lily?"

"The subject is distasteful."

"Mademoiselle de Vesc distasteful? Monsieur La Mothe, I apologize. In all my Paris days I was never such a hypocrite as to make love to a woman who was distasteful. But then, is any woman distasteful if a man be only in the right mood?"

"Villon, that is untrue———"

"My friend, I know my past better than you do. Distasteful? Pah! it is an ugly word."

"What you say of me is untrue. I honour Madedoiselle de Vesc——"

"Much she cares for that! 'No, thank you!' said the cat, when they gave her frozen milk. Honouring is cold love-making. And now you have proved that you don't go the right way about it. 'Mademoiselle,'"; and Villon minced a melancholy falsetto, "'I respect you deeply; mademoiselle, I honour you humbly from a distance; you are the highest star in the heavens, and I a worm of the earth! Permit me to kiss your venerated finger-tips.' Honour! Bah! get nearer to them, man; nearer to them; the closer the better; honour is too far off. Listen, now, while I teach you a better way."

"Thank you for nothing," said La Mothe drily, but unoffended. In these ten days he had learned which of Villon's jests were innocent of intention to hurt, and which carried a poisoned barb. "Love may be bought in Paris, but not in Amboise."

"But it costs more," retorted Villon. "In Amboise it costs a man's whole life, whereas in Paris," he paused, shrugged his shoulders, turned the drinking mug upside down and shook it whimsically, "emptiness ended all: emptiness of pocket, emptiness of—but there are seven separate emptinesses and any one was enough. Now listen and do not interrupt again. There be many ways of gathering peaches, but your way of kneeling at the foot of the tree with your hands folded like a saint in stained glass is the worst of all. It is only in theory that women, even lily Madonnas, love men to be saints; when it comes to practice——"

He broke off, chuckling the soft complacent chuckle La Mothe so greatly disliked, and putting the empty mug to his nose drew in the perfume of the wine with a deep breath. The lids drooped slowly over his shining eyes, and in the backward groping along the crooked byways which had led from Paris pavements to the mercy of Louis by way of an escaped gallows he forgot both La Mothe and Amboise. The voice of Paris the beloved, Paris the ever mourned for, was in his ears; the jargon of the Rue Maubert, the tinkle of the glasses through the doubtful but merry songs of the Pet du Deable, whispers of gay voices which had long passed beyond these voices, and the leering face, part satyr and part poet, grew wholly poet in its remembrance. It is the blessing of nature, and one of its most divine gifts, that memory brings back the best from the past and leaves the worst covered. Even our snows of yester year are roseate with the glow of imagination.

"The Madonna lily! Blessed is the man who gathers one and finds warm blood in its pure veins. The gift of a good woman who loves and is loved. Aye, aye, God send us all heaven while we're young. The Madonna lily! Once there was such a one in the garden of life, pure, sweet, and beloved. But the perfume was not for Francois Villon, and the swine in him turned to the husks of the trough. Catherine de Vaucelles; Catherine, dead these many years, dead but never forgotten, a saint with the saints of God, and the rest—damned." He spoke to himself rather than to La Mothe, but after a little spell of silence he looked up, gravely in earnest. "You go too slowly. Any day the King may crook his finger. What if he calls you to Valmy, then sends you God knows where, God knows for how long, and you return to Amboise to find some one else has gathered your lily while you lagged? That would be a chilly winter in the garden of life where you left young spring."

La Mothe sat silent. What reply was possible? That the advice was well meant he knew, but he had never before realized that a peremptory recall might come any moment from Valmy. And it was not impossible. Louis, aged and ailing, spurred, too, by the desire for the comfort of his son's love while life was still good to the taste, would be impatient of delay. These ten days which had passed with the swiftness of a summer's morning would be long as a wintry month to the lonely father. But to the devout lover, in him haste savoured of presumption. Ursula de Vesc was his good friend and comrade; could he hope for more than that in so short a time? In making haste might he not lose all he had gained? Besides, in the service and worship of the one dear woman in the world, a man is his own High Priest, and none save himself may enter into the Holy of Holies. And what could this peach-picker of Paris pavements know of such a Holy of Holies? Nothing, absolutely nothing. So he sat silent, doubly tongue-tied by doubt and reverence.

But for these, Villon, who read his face with disconcerting ease, had no great respect.

"Eh!" he said briskly, "is the advice good?"

"Is good advice easy to follow?"

"Yes, when it is palatable, which is not often: commonly it has a bitter taste in the swallowing. Or do you think it will be all the same fifty years hence? By all the Muses, there's an idea! I must write the 'Ballad of Fifty Years to Come.' Let me see—let me see—'m yes, the first verse might run like this:

"Where is La Mothe, that lover gay, Or Francois Villon, poet splendid! Madonna of the eyes of grey, Or Charles whom Bertrand nearly ended? D'Argenton, are his manners mended? Or wisest Louis, swift to pardon Though so grievously offended? Ask of the Scents of Amboise garden!

"There!" and he drummed the empty mug on the flat of the table in mock applause which was not all unreal, "what do you think of that for the first draft? It does justice to me and to you, chronicles little Charles' escape, kicks your Monsieur d'Argenton in passing, and takes off its hat to the King all in a breath."

"Tear it up," answered La Mothe. "Will the King thank you for hinting he will be dead and forgotten fifty years hence? When you speak of Louis, you should always say, 'O King, live for ever!'"

The drumming ceased, the gay laugh died out of Villon's eyes, and he sat ruefully silent. To hint at death to Louis, even remotely, was an unpardonable sin.

"You are right," he said at last, and said it with a sigh. "All the same, the idea is a good one, and ideas are scarcer than poetry and always will be. I have heard your verses, my young friend. Here is Saxe. Saxe, have you brought that third bottle? To drink less than his average is a crime against a man's thirst."

But Saxe was empty-handed.

"Monsieur de Commines desires speech with Monsieur La Mothe in the Chateau garden."

"Monsieur de Commines? Bah! Go and be birched," said Villon peevishly. The failure of his ballad had vexed him, and he was ready to vent his spleen on what lay nearest. "You deserve it for your milk-and-water love-me-a-little-to-morrow. Had it been the old Paris days the Madonna lily would have said 'Come!' to Francois Villon in less than a week."

"Paris flowers do not grow in Amboise garden," answered La Mothe, and added "Thank God!" in his heart.

Commines was standing at the entrance to an arch of roses which, pergola fashion, covered a sunny walk. On three sides rose the Chateau, grey and sullen, on the fourth was an enclosing wall. In shaded corners a few belated gillyflowers, straggling and overgrown, filled the air with perfume, but La Mothe's gaze was caught by a group of Madonna lilies, slim and graceful, rising from a bed of purple fleurs-de-lis, their ivory buds new opened, and the recollection of Villon's comparison thrilled his imagination with its aptness. Grace for grace, beauty for beauty, in fulfilment and promise, they were Ursula de Vesc herself.

But almost with his first sentence Commines proved that Villon had shrewd forethought as well as a poet's eye for a fitting simile.

"If it is not Mademoiselle de Vesc it is Francois Villon; if it is not philandering it is wine-bibbing," he said harshly. "Stephen, the King thinks you are wasting your time in Amboise and I think so too. What have you discovered in your ten days?"

"All that there is to learn, Uncle."

"I see. That Ursula de Vesc has a pretty face? Stephen, Stephen, you are not in Amboise to play the fool."

La Mothe flushed and was about to answer angrily, but remembering that Commines spoke for the King rather than for himself he restrained his impatience.

"Uncle, is that just?"

"Well, what have you discovered?"

"That there is no such vile scheme as the King imagines."

"Can you prove that?"

"To me there is proof. Ten days ago, when the boy thanked me for pulling him off Bertrand's back, he as much as said he had nothing to pay me with. Now if this lie of a plot against the King were the truth, would not a self-willed boy like the Dauphin, boastful as boys are, proud and galled by the debt he thought he owed me, have hinted that the day would come when he could pay in full, and sooner than some expected? He surely would. His pride would have run away with his discretion. Besides, Uncle, what have you discovered in your ten days?"

But Commines returned no answer, and to La Mothe his gloomy face was inscrutable. He knew his master; knew, without being told in so many words, that it was the King's purpose to set Charles aside; knew that the King believed justification for such a course was to be found at Amboise; knew above all, knew with the knowledge of other men's bitter experience, that there were no thanks for the man who failed, even though that failure proved a son innocent of crime against a father. It was not innocence the King desired but guilt.

And yet, now that La Mothe had brought him face to face with the question, what had he discovered? Little or nothing. Using all the arts and artifices which ten years' service under such a master of subtle craftiness as the eleventh Louis had taught him, he had cajoled and bribed, probed and sifted, even covertly threatened at times. But all to no purpose. An indignant sarcasm from Ursula de Vesc, a politic—and wise—regret for the estrangement from La Follette, a petulant outburst from Charles, childish and pathetically cynical by turns, the vague whispers inseparable from such a household as was gathered together in Amboise were all his reward. But the King demanded proof; the King demanded articles of conviction which would, if necessary, satisfy an incredulous world that the terrible tragedy which followed proof was the justice of the highest law.

"Disaffection is everywhere," he said at last; "disloyalty which only lacks the spur of opportunity to drive desire into action. If these things are on the surface, worse lies hidden. You know the proverb of Smoke and Fire? I see the fire laid, I smell the smoke: it was for you to find the spark, you who have had a free hand in Amboise. But you play nonsense games with Charles, hanging upon the skirts of the unscrupulous woman who tutors him to revolt, or drink in taverns with a scurrilous thief turned spy to save his neck from a deserved hanging. Do you think you serve the King by philandering in a rose garden, or playing at French and English in the Burnt Mill? Francois Villon! Ursula de Vesc! Stephen, you make yourself too much one with them—an unhung footpad who prostitutes the powers of mind God gave him to the devil's use, and a woman——"

"Uncle, if even your father had spoken evil of Suzanne would you have listened to him?"

"Suzanne? What has Suzanne in common with Ursula de Vesc?"

"Only that I love her as you loved Suzanne," answered La Mothe.

"Ursula de Vesc? Stephen, at the least she is the King's enemy."

"Yes, he told me so himself."

"And at the worst——"

"There is no worst," said La Mothe doggedly. "There is no plot against the King, no plot at all."

"And your proof is that when a clever woman bade a boy control his tongue he obeyed her! Will that convince Louis? Would it convince yourself but for this calf-love of yours? Stephen, Stephen, you do not know the gulf on which you stand. What answer am I to return to the King?"

"Uncle, is it my fault that I am living a lie in Amboise?"

"Grey Roland changed all that for you ten days ago. There was the game in your hands, and you threw it away! A touch of the heel, a single twitch of the bridle—there, there, say nothing: perhaps at your age I would have had the same scruples. But what answer am I to return to the King?"

"That I will do all he bade me; do it with all my heart to the very letter," answered La Mothe. And with that Commines had to be content.

"You go too slow," said Villon. "You go too fast," said Commines. Between such cross fires what was a poor lover to do? There was once, La Mothe remembered, a man who had an only son and an ass. But the problem is older than the imagination of any fabulist, and as new as the newest day in the world. "Thou shalt die," said the Lord God. "Thou shalt not surely die," said the devil.

"I will take my own way," he said. "It is my life I have to live, not theirs." And that afternoon came his opportunity to prove that a man knows best how his own life should be shaped.



CHAPTER XVII

STEPHEN LA MOTHE ASKS THE WRONG QUESTION

Only the very foolish or the very weak man seeks to hide from his own soul the full, naked, unpalatable truth about himself. The fool follows the principle which governs the libel upon the intelligence of the ostrich, and vainly tries to persuade himself that what he does not see does not exist, while the weak man dares not open the doors of the cupboard hidden in every life for shivering terror of the secrets he knows are there. Wiser wickedness deliberately airs his skeleton now and then, and thereby the grisly presence grows less grisly, and the hollow rattle of the bones less threatening. The articulation remains the same, but the tone, so to speak, is more subdued.

And Stephen La Mothe, being neither a fool nor altogether weak, was not afraid to admit to himself that Commines' angry contempt had described the day-by-day life at Amboise with sufficient accuracy, at least so far as the Dauphin and Ursula de Vesc were concerned. The bitter fling at his friendship for Villon did not trouble him. It was simply the high light added to the picture to bring out its general truth.

Yes, he had played games of make-believe with the boy, such as Louis had spoken of half in tolerance and half with the vexation of a clever father who resents that his only son is not as clever as himself. He had—no, he had not philandered in the rose garden. The associations of the word stirred him to revolt. Dairy-maids might philander, kitchen wenches and such-like common flesh might philander, but never Ursula of the grey eyes, Ursula of the tender, firm mouth. Ursula philander? Never! never! The thought was desecration. What was it Louis had said? All women are the same under the skin. It was a cynic's lie, and Louis had never known Ursula de Vesc.

Lifting a lute he touched the strings lightly. He was in one of the smaller rooms of the Chateau, one the girl used more, almost, than any other, and little suggestions of her were scattered about it. On a bench was a piece of woman's work with the threaded needle pushed through the stuff as when she laid it aside, flowers she had gathered were on the table, the portiere masking the door was her embroidery. Perhaps all these forced an association of ideas. Picking the strings out one by one half unconsciously, the air of the love song followed the shift of the hand, and equally unconsciously his voice took up the rhythm, first in an undertone, then louder and louder:

"Heigh-ho! Love is my sun, Love is my moon and the stars by night. Heigh-ho! hour there is none, Love of my heart, but thou art my light; Never forsaking, Noon or day-breaking, Midnights of sorrow thy comforts make bright. Heigh-ho! Love is my life, Live I in loving and love I to live: Heigh-ho!——"

"Monsieur La Mothe, Monsieur La Mothe, have you deceived us all these days?"

Down went the lute with a clang which jarred its every string into discord, and La Mothe sprang to his feet.

"Deceived you, mademoiselle! How?"

"That first night—I do not like to remember it even now, but Monsieur Villon told us you were both poet and singer, but you denied it. And now I hear you singing——"

"Not singing, mademoiselle."

"Singing," she persisted, with a pretty emphasis which La Mothe found very pleasant. "We shall have a new play to-night. A Court of High Justice, and Monsieur La Mothe arraigned for defrauding Amboise of a pleasure these ten days. I shall prosecute, Charles must be judge, and your sentence will be to sing every song you know."

"Then I shall escape lightly; I know so few."

"There! You have confessed, and your punishment must begin at once. Villon was right: Amboise is dull; sing for me, Monsieur La Mothe."

"But," protested La Mothe, "Villon was wrong as well as right in what he told you that night."

"What? A minstrel who wanders France with his knapsack and his lute and yet cannot sing?" If the raillery yet remained in the gay voice, it was a raillery which shifted its significance from pleasant badinage to something deeper, and the tender mouth which La Mothe was so sure could never lend itself to philandering lost its tenderness. More than once he had caught just such expression when the perilous ground of the relationships between father and son had been trodden upon in an attempt to justify the King. Then it had been impersonal, now he was reminded of his first night in Amboise, when her cold suspicion had been frankly unveiled. But the hardening of the face was only for a moment. "Truly, now," she went on, "have you never made verses?"

"Very bad ones, mademoiselle."

"A poet tells the truth! The skies will fall! But perhaps it is not the truth; perhaps you are as unjust to your verses as you are to your singing." Seating herself in a low chair, she looked up at him with a dangerous but unconscious kindness in her eyes. "Now sit there in that window-seat and let me judge. With the sun behind you you will look like Apollo with his lyre. No, not Apollo. Apollo was the sun itself. Why are men so much more difficult to duplicate in simile than women?"

"Not all women. I know one for whom there is no duplicate."

"A poet's divine imagination!"

"A man's reverent thankfulness."

The grey eyes kindled, and as the unconscious kindliness grew yet more kindly La Mothe told himself he had surely advanced a siege trench towards the defences. As to Ursula, she could not have told why these last days had been the pleasantest of her life, and would have indignantly denied that Stephen La Mothe was in any way the cause. Women do not admit such truths as openly as men, not even to themselves. But Amboise was no longer dull, the rose garden no longer a mere relief from the greyness of the hours spent behind the grim walls which circled it. The sunshine was the same, the budding flowers were the same, the glorious shift from winter to summer, but they were the same with a difference, a difference she never paused to analyze. Spring—the spring of her life—had come upon her unawares.

But a more acknowledged element in the pleasant comfort of these days had been a sense of support. One of the most corroding sorrows of life is to be lonely, alienated from sympathy and guidance, and in Amboise Ursula de Vesc had been very solitary. La Follette was politic, cautiously non-committal; Hugues of a class apart; Commines an avowed opponent; Charles too young for companionship; Villon a contempt, and at times a loathing. Into this solitariness had come Stephen La Mothe, and the very reaction from acute suspicion had drawn her towards him. Repentance for an unmerited blame is much nearer akin to love than any depths of pity. Then to repentance was added gratitude, to gratitude admiration, and to all three propinquity. Blessed be propinquity! If Hymen ever raises an altar to his most devoted hand-maid it will be to the dear goddess Propinquity! Yes! these days had been very pleasant days.

But an unfailing charm in a charming woman is that one can never tell what she will do next. Though the grey eyes kindled and the kindliness in them grew yet more kindly, though the soft embroideries in the delicate lawn were ruffled by a quicker breath, the natural perversity of her sex must needs answer perversely, and Ursula de Vesc blew up his siege trench with a bombshell.

"Monsieur La Mothe, were you ever at Valmy?"

"Yes, mademoiselle." There was no shadow of hesitation in the reply, though the abrupt change of subject was as startling as the question itself.

"Of course. Music opens all doors. Monsieur La Mothe, I congratulate you."

"That having been in Valmy I am now in Amboise?"

"Upon better than that. Some day I may tell you."

"But this is the best possible, and I congratulate myself. No! Good as this is, there is a better than the best! Mademoiselle——"

"But you sing as well as make verses, do you not—you, whose music opened the gates even of Valmy? Indeed, I heard you just now. You are another Orpheus, and Valmy a very similar interior. You don't like me to say so? Very well, my lute is in your hand, and I am waiting. Did they teach you in Poitou to keep ladies waiting?"

"Poitou?" repeated La Mothe; "but I never said I had been in Poitou."

"Oh! but as a minstrel you wander everywhere, or—what was it?—as a poor gentleman seeing France, and so to Poitou. Anjou, Guienne, anywhere would do as well—except Flanders, where Monsieur de Commines comes from, and where I wish Monsieur de Commines had remained," she added.

"You dislike Monsieur de Commines? Mademoiselle, if you knew him better; how I wish you did. There was once a friendless boy—"

"Is this another fairy tale?" Though she interrupted him with so little ceremony, there was no asperity in the voice. It was as if she said, "Even good women have their limitations. I may forgive Philip de Commines, but you cannot expect me to praise him."

"As true a story as the other."

"And you believe in that other?"

"With all my heart."

"Then why does the father not show himself fatherly?"

"Is it not the part of the son to say, 'Father, I have sinned'?"

"I see," she said, some of the old bitterness creeping into her tone, "the prodigal of twelve years old who is rioting in Amboise—you see how he riots—should ask forgiveness," and as she spoke Stephen La Mothe, with a sudden sense of chill, remembered that other prodigal of twelve years old who was hung on the Valmy gallows that the roads of France might be safe. If Commines was right, the parallel was complete—horribly complete. But she gave him no time to dwell upon the coincidence. "You put a heavy charge upon me," she went on, the furrows deepening on her forehead. "Would to God I could see what is best, what is right. I must think. I must think. Play to me, Monsieur La Mothe, but not too loudly, and do not call me rude if I do not listen. I know that must sound strange, but at times music helps me to think. Is it not so with you?"

The question was apologetic, and as such La Mothe understood it. He understood, too, the straits in which she found herself. So powerful was her influence over Charles, the boy would certainly act on her advice. Her knowledge of Stephen La Mothe was greater than he supposed. If he was right, and she held her peace, this breach between father and son would not only remain unhealed but would be widened by Louis' natural resentment at the rejection of his covert overtures; but if La Mothe was mistaken she knew the old King well enough to be certain that he would use the boy's unwelcome advances against him in some cunning fashion. Which way lay wisdom? Or, as she had put it—raising the question to a higher plane—which was the right?

"If you please," she said imperiously. "Yes, I mean it. Play David to the evil spirit of my doubt," and with a laugh to cover his sense of embarrassment La Mothe obeyed, touching the instrument very softly.

But she could not have told whether he played a drinking-song or a Miserere. With her, as with many, the quiet rhythm of the music stimulated thought, and gradually the perplexity cleared from her mind. Stephen La Mothe was not a fool, that counted for much. He was honest, that counted for much more. The King was notoriously ailing and, being superstitious, might well repent; no high motive, but a probable one. Philip de Commines' visit to Amboise was not by chance, and nothing less than his master's orders would have kept him so long from Valmy. If Stephen La Mothe was right, then these orders must surely have a connection with the King's changed disposition towards the Dauphin. She would watch Commines, doing nothing hastily, and by his actions would shape her course.

With the relaxation from concentrated thought the swing of the music's rise and fall caught her ear. It was a ballad air, and new to her. Shifting her chair, she looked up at La Mothe as he bent over his instrument. Streaming through the windows behind him the cunning sunshine lit the brown of his hair to a red-gold. She had never seen just such a colour in a man, and the Apollo simile was not so unapt.

"Sing," she said suddenly, and again La Mothe obeyed, catching up the air almost unconsciously.

"Lilies White and Roses Red, Gracious sweetness past compare, Beauty's self to thee hath fled, Lilies White and Roses Red: Lover's service bows its head, Awed by witchery so fair, Lilies White and Roses Red, Gracious sweetness past compare."

"Are they your own verses?"

"No, I wish they were. I only think them."

Their eyes met for a moment, then she looked aside and there was silence. Her thoughts, or that brief glance—Apollo was a god, good to look upon—had so warmed her cheeks that the refrain of the Triolet was almost justified. The lines of anxious care were smoothed from the forehead, and the half-smile of the new-drawn Cupid's bow was a little tremulous. A sudden determination moved La Mothe. Never had he seen her so gracious, so womanly, so completely the one sweet woman in all the world. Pushing the lute aside, he leaned forward.

"Mademoiselle," he began earnestly, "do you remember ten days ago I said there was a question I would dare to ask you when you knew me better?"

"I remember," she said, turning a little from him that the light might not fall upon her face to betray her. She said she remembered, but the truth was that in the tumult of her thoughts the recollection was vague. "Yes, I think I know you better."

"It is a very bold question, and one which might well offend. And yet you know I would not willingly offend you?"

"Yes, I am sure of that." The rustling of the lawn and laces on her breast was a little more tempestuous, but the voice was very level, very quiet. As to Stephen La Mothe, he felt that earth and sun and stars had disappeared and they two alone were left out of all the world.

"So bold, so presumptuous," he went on, "that it is hard to find words at all. But you forgive me in advance?"

At that she smiled a little. She did not think there would be much need for pardon. Was there any question Apollo—Stephen La Mothe, that is—might not ask? She knew now why these ten days had been the happiest of her life.

"Yes, Monsieur La Mothe, you are forgiven beforehand."

"Then—is there any plot in Amboise against the King? From you a simple 'no' is enough. I ask no proof, a simple word, nothing more."

Unconsciously he had forced a pleading into his voice, an urging, as if it was not so much the truth he sought as a denial at all costs; but as she turned in her chair, rising as she turned so that she looked down upon him, he broke off. It would have taken a much bolder man than Stephen La Mothe to have maintained his covert accusation—and what else was it?—in the face of the angry surprise which needed no expression in words.

"Was that your question? You have spied upon us all these days—suspected us—accused us in your thoughts? You have pretended friendship, devotion—God knows what monstrous lie—and all the while you spied—spied. But you shall have your answer in your single word. No, Monsieur La Mothe; such women as I am do not plot against their King, nor teach sons to revolt against their fathers."

"Mademoiselle——" he began.

But not even the scornful indignation vouchsafed him a second glance as she swept past him without a word. At the door she paused and, half turning, looked back across her shoulder, a spot of scarlet on either cheek.

"I had forgotten my message. I had already told Jean Saxe, in case I failed to find you. The Dauphin bids you join him at the Burnt Mill at three o'clock; but if it were not that the Dauphin's word is a command, even to you I would say be otherwise engaged, Monsieur La Mothe, since I must be of the party."

"But, Mademoiselle——"

He spoke to an empty room, and if Ursula de Vesc closed the door between them with a greater vigour than the politeness strict deportment demanded she may surely be excused. It may be that even the angels lose their tempers at times over the follies of a blind humanity.

As to Stephen La Mothe, he stood staring at the closed door as if he were not only alone in the room but in the very world itself; or, rather, as if the world had suddenly dropped from under his feet and the shock bewildered him. She had been so gracious, so very sweet and gracious. He had been forgiven in advance; why such bitter offence? A single word was all he had asked—one little word. Then he flushed all over with a peculiar pricking sensation down the spine. Could it be that she expected a very different question; one whose answer might have been a Yes? If that were so—but it was absurd, and he called himself many hard names for having such an idea a single moment. To have thought such a thought of Ursula de Vesc was as preposterous as saying she would philander in a rose garden.



CHAPTER XVIII

FRENCH AND ENGLISH

Before the coming of the Maid, that is to say more than fifty years before Stephen La Mothe gave himself the heartache over his misreadings of the most read chapter in the book of nature, there stood upon the banks of the Loire, about a mile from Amboise, the flour mill of one Jean Calvet. For six generations it had passed from a Calvet to a Calvet, son succeeding father as Amurath an Amurath, and the Moulin Fleche d'Or was as well known to the countryside as Amboise itself. The kirkyard or the grinding stones; humanity must needs find its way to both.

When harvests were fat, and corn plentiful, its stones hummed from daylight to dark to the blent music of the creaking wheel and the splash-splash of the water which drove it. In lean years, when war or famine was abroad, and thanks to England these years were not few, the sluice was lifted, and in place of the hoarse murmur and complaint of the grinding stones and lumbering wheel there was the soft purr of the millrace, and the Calvet of his generation lived, like a turtle, on his own fat, waiting for better days. And sooner or later these always came, and with their coming grew the prosperity of the Golden Arrow. Corn and the human heart must needs be ground while the world lasts, and perhaps it is as much out of the grinding of the latter as the former that life is strengthened. Then came a day which brought an end to more than the prosperity of Jean Calvet the sixth.

Some clocks wear out, running down with little spurts of life and longer intervals of dumbness; others end with a sudden crashing of the pendulum while in its full swing, and a wild, convulsive whirr of the jarred wheels. One moment the sober tick tells that all is well, the next—silence. So was it with Calvet's mill.

In the fortune, or misfortune, of war an Englishman, one Sir John Stone, riding that way with his band of marauders, little better than licensed brigands, found Amboise too tough a nut for his teeth, and harried the Calvets in pure wantonness. Over the tree-tops the garrison of Amboise could see the smoke of the burning, but they were too weak to venture succour.

Calvet must fend for himself lest Calvet and Amboise both end in the one ruin. There was little defence, but that little was grimly in earnest and yet more grim the revenge of the attack. For that generation both pity and mercy had fled France. Jean Calvet the younger, he who should have been the seventh of his line, was coursed in the open like a hare, but turned at the last and died at bay as a wolf dies. Behind the barred door were Jean the sixth, his two younger sons, and the dead man's wife. The woman, grey-faced but tearless, fought as the men fought, using her Jean's cross-bow from the narrow upper windows. All that rage, desperation, and hate could do was done, and when the door fell in with a crash Jean the younger had been avenged four times over. John Stone took as little by his wantonness as he deserved.

Then came the end. There was a rush up the stone stairway, a brief struggle to gain the upper level, a minute's surging back and forth, a briefer, fiercer fury of strife among the cranks and meal-bags, a few rough oaths, a woman's scream, and then silence, or what by contrast passed for silence, since the sudden quiet was only broken by deep breathing and the sucking of air into dry throats. England had gained an ignoble victory.

Fire followed as naturally as the spark follows the jar of flint and steel, and with a hundred and fifty years to dry its beams, its cobwebbed walls hung with mouldy dust from the grinding of as many harvests, its complex wooden troughs and grain-shoots parched to tinder, the old mill was a ready prey. All that could burn burnt like a pile of dry shavings. But the walls, the stairway, and the upper floor were of stone, and stood; and but for one thing the peace which followed the coming of the Maid might have set the waterwheel creaking afresh. That one thing, typical of the times, forbade the thought. When the men of Amboise cleared away the rubbish they found the bones of Jean Calvet the sixth piled in a grim derision upon his own millstones, and so these stones never turned again. Who could eat bread of their making?

But the blackened shell was one of the Dauphin's favourite haunts, nor could a better stage for one of those plays of make-believe which had called down the old King's bitter irony have been well devised. So far as possible the mill had been restored to its old condition. The rubbish had been cleared from the ancient watercourse; the tough old wheel, freed from the weeds and soil which bound it, was set running as in the past, and a palisade of stout pickets erected to fence out the curious. The side furthest from the roadway, with its clumps of hazels, alder thicket, and chestnut wood in the distance was left open. Here, amid surroundings which lent a sombre realism to the pretence, Charlemagne could carve out a kingdom, Roland sound the horn of Roncesvalles, or the Maid herself win back to France the crown the boy's forefather had lost.

But, dearer even than these, he best loved to reproduce in little the tragedy which had laid the mill desolate, and it was La Mothe's participation in that mock combat which had aroused Commines' contempt. What boy of imagination has not revelled in such sport, living a glorious hour beyond his age? And not a few of every nation have, in their turn, made the glory real at the call of the country that the blood of new generations may take fire. And Stephen La Mothe saw no shame in such a play; saw, rather, a stimulus and an uplifting whose effects might not altogether pass away when the play ended. So he was France or England as the Dauphin bade him, and by turns died valiantly or fought victoriously.

But chiefly, and to La Mothe it had its significance, the Dauphin played the part of Jean Calvet. All children, and not children only, love to be upon the winning side, and it told something of the trend of the boy's deeper nature that he would rather die for France than live for England. So would it have been the afternoon of the day La Mothe had followed his own course to his own disaster had not Charles once more proved the truth of Villon's observation. The dull eyes saw more than men supposed.

"You and Ursula have quarrelled," he said, with all a boy's blunt power of making the truth a terror. "All the way from Amboise you have not spoken a word to each other; and you will quarrel still more if I shut you up in the mill together. Do you be Stone, with Blaise and Marcel, while I and Monsieur La Follette and Hugues will keep the stairs." Then a gleam of unaccustomed humour flickered across his face; a sense of humour was rarely a Valois characteristic. "No, I am wrong. Do you be Calvet; I want a real battle to-day, and you will fight all the better with Ursula looking on." As for Ursula de Vesc, she drew her skirts together and ran up the unprotected flight of stairs humming an air—not Stephen La Mothe's triolet, you may be sure—as if she had not a care in the world.

So the forces arrayed themselves, Charles and the two lads from the stables behind the clump of bushes which always served as an ambush, and La Mothe at the doorless entrance to the mill, where he was to give the alarm and then retreat to the upper floor where La Follette and Hugues were posted. La Follette, who had been a lover in his day, would have kept watch below and taken Hugues with him, but Ursula de Vesc, in the upper room, told them tartly that the Dauphin would be displeased if the usual plan were departed from, and so, in no very playful humour any of them, they waited the attack.

Presently it came. Out from his ambush, a hundred yards away, raced the Dauphin, Marcel and Blaise at his heels, their stout wooden swords bared for the grim work of slaughter. "The English! the English!" shouted La Mothe. "Frenchmen, the enemy are upon us!" But as he turned to gain the upper floor there came a cry which was not part of the play, a cry of fear and despairing rage, "The Dauphin! the Dauphin! Monsieur La Mothe, save the Dauphin," and midway on the stairs Hugues dashed past him.

"Hugues, what is it?"

"An ambush. The Dauphin; they will murder the Dauphin——" and Hugues was through the doorway with La Mothe and La Follette following, and Ursula de Vesc, white and trembling, at the stair-head, more in surprise than any realization of danger. But only for an instant, then she ran to the narrow window where Hugues had waited, watching.

Midway from their hiding-place, confused by the sudden outcry, stood the Dauphin and the two lads, and towards them ran Hugues with all his speed, La Mothe not far behind. La Follette waited at the door, uncertain and bewildered. But from a further covert, the thicket of more distant alder, a troop of ten or a dozen horsemen had burst, galloping at the charge, nor could there be any doubt of their sinister purpose. It was a race for the boy, with the greater distance to neutralize the greater speed, but they rode desperately, recklessly, as men who ride for their lives.

"Run, Monseigneur, run," cried Hugues, panting. "See, behind—behind," and almost as he shouted the words he and La Mothe, younger and more active, reached the group. "Out of the way, fools," he gasped, shouldering the stable lads aside; then to La Mothe, "Take the other arm," and again there was a race of desperation, but this time with the mill as the goal. Nearer and nearer thundered the hoofs, out from his scattered following forged their leader, his spurs red to the heel, his teeth set hard in the shadow of the mask which hid his face. "Faster, for God's sake faster," groaned Hugues, "Faster, faster," shouted La Follette from the doorway, and Ursula de Vesc, at her point of vantage, hardly dared to breathe as she knit her hands so closely the one into the other that the fingers cramped. Then the chase passed out of sight, and she ran to the stair-head, waiting for she knew not what. It was just there that Calvet the younger had died, and now there was as little mockery in the tragedy. Beyond the doorway she heard a "Thank God!" from La Follette, then shadows darkened it, and the Dauphin was thrust in, staggering. On the instant La Follette followed, paused, glancing backward as if in hesitation. But one duty was imperative. Catching the boy in his arms, he half carried, half forced him up the stairway, while in the open space below La Mothe and Hugues, letting Blaise and Marcel slip between them, turned side by side to face whatever was without. What that was she knew, and as she watched him in the gap an instant, before hastening to the Dauphin's aid, the girl's heart went out to Stephen La Mothe in the agony of a bitter repentance. If death pays all debts surely the darkening of the shadows brings forgiveness for all offences?



CHAPTER XIX

GREATER LOVE HATH NO MAN

But meanwhile there was a pause. Below, in the defenceless doorway, Hugues and La Mothe stood shoulder to shoulder for one of those fiery instants which try a man's nerve rather than his courage. For the moment the Dauphin was saved. But they had no illusions. It was only for the moment, and both knew that in the moment to follow the danger would not be for the Dauphin alone. But only one, Stephen La Mothe, gave that a thought, and it was not for himself. Ursula de Vesc? The masked scoundrel who, panting with the rage of disappointment, faced them three yards away, one hand still gripping the reins of the horse by whose head he stood, the other a naked sword, had his half-score of cut-throats behind him, and could afford to leave no witness to his outrage. There would be no pity for Ursula de Vesc.

"Damnation," cried La Mothe almost in a sob, and, forgetting that he, too, wore a sword, he would have sprung upon him barehanded in his despair had not Hugues forced him to keep his place.

"Not yet," he whispered. "Wait; perhaps—later——" and the moment of possibility had passed. The troop was upon them.

But their leader held them back.

"Wait," he said in his turn. "We may save time. Be wise, and give us the Dauphin. We are a dozen, you only three or four. We are sure to have him in the end."

"On what terms?" It was Hugues who answered.

"Terms?" cried La Mothe. "Hugues, there can be no terms."

"Your pardon, Monsieur La Mothe," said Hugues. "You are a gentleman, but I am only a servant," and in his excitement La Mothe never paused to ask himself why Hugues should so classify a hedge minstrel of the Duchy of Lackeverything. "It is a fine thing, no doubt, to die for your honour, but what have I to do with honour? Life is life. The boy, on what terms?"

"Your lives. And you gain nothing by refusing. The boy is ours in any case."

"Never," said La Mothe, struggling to shake off the restraining hand that pinned him, helpless, half behind the doorpost. "Never while I live."

"Just so," answered Hugues, tightening his grasp; "not while you live. But afterwards? and what better are we then, or the Dauphin either? Give me three minutes, monsieur, to persuade him, just three minutes," and in La Mothe's ear he whispered, "For God's sake be quiet or you will ruin us all."

"Three minutes? Play me no tricks, my man."

"But, monsieur," and Hugues' voice was a whine as he spoke. "What trick is possible? You are a dozen, we three or four. And are we not caught like rats in a pit?"

"Like rats! You have said the word! Take your three minutes, rat, and don't forget that like rats we'll kill you."

Urging his point vehemently, pleadingly, and with every plausible argument at his command, but never slackening his grip, Hugues drew La Mothe a yard or two into the blackened ruin. There he held him with a wary eye to a possible surprise. Blaise and Marcel were on the upper floor and only La Follette was in sight, standing guard at the stair-head.

"Listen," he said. "Monseigneur is dearer to me than to you. Do you think I would give up one hair of him while I live, I, who sleep at his door of nights? Never, not one hair! But between us we may save him yet. Shake your head, curse me for a coward, for a scoundrel, try to throw me off, strike me if you like. Yes, yes," he insisted, raising his voice, "it is our lives; why lose our lives for nothing?" Then, in a whisper, "They will give the alarm from the fields; it is only a mile to Amboise——"

"But it is a mile—a mile to go, a mile to come back——"

"It is the one chance," answered Hugues loudly, fawning on La Mothe with a hand which aped persuasion. The words had a double meaning and held La Follette quiet, La Follette who might have ruined all through incomprehension. "You know the bench where Mademoiselle sits to watch the play? When I cry Now! rush up and fling it across the gap of the stair-head. It will hold them back for a time. Then, for God's sake, Monsieur La Mothe, fight, fight, fight. Fight to the last. It is for life, it is for France, it is for Mademoiselle."

"And you?"

"I will hold the door."

"But that is death."

"It will give you a minute, or two, or three."

"Then it is my place; I have a sword."

"I love him best," answered Hugues. To him was the one unanswerable argument; he loved him best, and love had the right to die for love's sake. "You understand? When I cry Now! run—run."

"Hugues, Hugues, let me——"

"Do you think a valet cannot love?"

"It is time," said a voice from without. "Are you ready, rats?"

"Yes, monsieur, yes, yes. I have him persuaded Just one little moment. Monsieur La Mothe, NOW! Now!"

"No, Hugues, no, let me——"

"Damn you, man, would you murder the Dauphin for a scruple? Now! I say, Now!"

"I have a sword——"

But Hugues had caught up the slender cudgel dropped by Marcel in his flight for the stairs and was already in the doorway.

"If you want the Dauphin, come and take him. God save the Dauphin! France! France!" and drawing a deep breath he stood on guard, one wooden sword against a dozen of steel.

"Bravo, Hugues," cried La Follette from above. "Hold the scoundrels while you can, and God be with you. Come, La Mothe, come, come."

And what could La Mothe do but obey? For a moment he glanced this way and that, uncertain, drawn to the one man who stood alone against such odds, yet knowing that to aid him was the surest way to make Hugues' sacrifice unavailing. Then he jumped for the stairs; but not before the doorway was darkened; not before he heard the dull clash of steel upon wood; not before Hugues had stifled a cry which told that the offering up of the sacrifice had begun.

And as it began so it ended. But how desperately the breach was held, how desperately Hugues fought with his mockery of a sword, with his bare hands, with his very breast, they could only guess when he was found later with the staff in splinters, his palms and arms hacked and gashed, his bosom agape with dumb mouths which told their tale of love and splendid courage lavished to the utmost. He died with all his wounds in front; he died for loyalty, for love's sake, giving his life without a grudge. Could a Roland or a Charlemagne have done more?

Reaching forward La Follette seized La Mothe, dragging him up the last three stairs, "Draw, man, draw, we will fight them here." But La Mothe shook him off.

"This first," he said, and catching up the broad, unbacked bench which day by day had served Ursula de Vesc as a resting-place he flung it, flat downwards, across the railless stair-head. "It's done, Hugues, and never fear but we'll fight," he cried, offering the only comfort he could to the man who, down below, gave his life for them all. "Now, Follette, I am ready."

But Hugues still held the door, and for the first time La Mothe had leisure to look round him. In the background were Blaise and Marcel—barehanded, silent, helpless. The younger, Marcel, was crying openly but dumbly, the tears running unheeded and unwiped down his cheeks; the other, dogged and dour, with teeth and fists clenched, was of braver stuff, a fighter, but without a weapon. Midway, still exhausted from his flight, Charles lay on his elbow, propped against Ursula de Vesc, who stooped above him with one arm round his shoulders as support. The boy's long narrow face was paler beyond his natural pallor, but his mouth was firm-set, his eyes bright and dry. The girl's features were hidden, and Stephen La Mothe was not sure whether he was glad or sorry. To have read coldness or reproach in her eyes at such a time would have been bitter indeed.

It was but a glance, then La Follette touched his arm. Down below there was no longer the rasp of steel on wood. Hugues was fighting now barehanded, but he had been better than his word—the three minutes had been prolonged to four. Then came a cry, "Ah, God!" and La Mothe heard Ursula de Vesc sob. For a moment she looked up and their glances met, but there was little time to read her message, little time to see anything but the pain in the grey eyes. A rush of feet on the stairs called him, and side by side with La Follette he bent across the well. The bench half covered the opening, but there were slits of a foot or more wide at either edge, opening the way for attack.

But the rush ceased almost as soon as it began. This new obstacle was unlooked for, and between the slits those above could see the savagely passionate faces of the besiegers staring up at them. Then one, bolder or more enterprising than the rest, crept up cautiously step by step, measuring his distance as he advanced.

"Cover me," he said to the next lower. "Strike at whatever shows itself," and thrust blindly upwards. It was their first sight of bare steel, and Ursula de Vesc drew in her breath with a shiver as she saw the red smear upon its flat. "Oh! Hugues, Hugues," she moaned, and the Dauphin, catching at her hand with both his, shrank closer.

"Damnation!" cried La Mothe, striking fiercely at the blade as it darted from side to side or sawed back and forth. But when he would have struck a second time La Follette curtly forbade him.

"You may break your sword, and he can do no harm from where he is."

So they discovered for themselves, and the foremost crept yet a step higher. But when he struck afresh La Follette, lunging aslant and downwards, caught him below the wrist. With a curse he let the blade fall clattering, and there was a pause. But if he were bolder, those behind had not been idle. A voice from the background cried out to clear the steps, and before those above understood the altered tactics a picket, drawn from the palisade, was thrust between the bench and the wall. It was La Follette who first grasped the danger.

"Blaise—Marcel!" he cried. "Here on the bench both of you and hold it down."

But only one answered the call. Marcel was on his knees in the corner praying for the miracle which should be his own handiwork, not the first man nor the last who has called on God to bear the burden his own shoulder refuses. Blaise was of better stuff. "Here I am, monsieur," he cried, but before he could bring his weight to bear a second picket, sharpened at the point, was rammed up and forward with two men's strength, driving the bench aslant till its end dipped and it fell with a crash, scattering those below, but with little hurt. The way was open, but Hugues' foresight had added five minutes to the four.

"For the Lord's sake," cried Blaise, staring into the welter below, "give me something in my bare hand. Rats, he called us, rats, and I won't die like a rat, I won't, I won't." It was the cry of primitive nature and the Dauphin answered it.

"Here," said he, rising on his knees as he unbuckled his own small sword. "You are stronger than I am. Be a man, Blaise."

"You'll see, Monseigneur, you'll see. Come up, you curs, come up. Rats, you said? Come up and meet a man."

"Three men," said Mademoiselle. "Monsieur La Mothe, is there nothing I can do?"

"Nothing, mademoiselle," he answered, and turning met her eyes with a smile. He knew he was forgiven, and thanked Hugues in his heart that he had lived so long. But for Hugues he would have died at the door, died in ignorance. The comfort was the dead man's gift to him, and now, in the paradox of nature, because of that comfort it would not be so hard to follow him.

But if to die comforted would be less hard, there was something much more than comfort to live for, and to La Mothe the odds did not seem utterly hopeless. Three resolute men could surely hold the well hole till succour came. Resolute? Much more than resolute—desperate. Again he glanced aside at Ursula de Vesc. Had he not the best cause the world holds to be resolute to desperation? Hugues had died for love's sake, please God he would live for it.



CHAPTER XX

THE LAST STAND

Below the attack halted, but up the stairway came the noise of rough laughter and rougher words, words which made Stephen La Mothe's blood grow hot and his nerves tingle as, gritting his teeth, he stamped his feet so that the girl might not hear them also. Resolute? Desperate? Yes, much more than resolute, much more than desperate, and with much more than a man's life to be lost. And all were of one mind. Follette he was sure of, and at his right Blaise, the stable-lad, panted in short breaths, swinging his unaccustomed weapon softly. "Damn them!" La Mothe heard him say. "Will they never come?" and when the nine minutes had crawled to twelve they came.

But not with a rush, not as those above had reckoned. The siege had grown cautious. This time there was a system. Up, on the very edge of the steps, broad, wide, and shallow for the easier carrying of heavy loads upon the back, came the two with the palisades, up, until the pickets were a full yard through the well-hole, but with those who held them out of reach, and with a shout, the wood rasping the ancient flagging, each swept a quarter circle. It was the work of an instant. As the pickets crashed against the wall the voice from behind cried, "Now lads!" and the rush came. There was the clang of iron-shod feet on the stones, a glimmer in the half obscurity, and behind the pickets the stairway bristled with steel.

"Praises be!" cried Blaise, and crouched on his heels. Down he leaned, down, forward, and lunged clumsily. That, too, was the work of an instant, an act concurrent with his cry, but when he straightened himself a picket had dropped into the gloom, and he who held it lay upon it, coughing and choking. "Rats!" said Blaise, slashing viciously at the blade nearest him. "Dieu! but the rat bit the cur dog that time! Come on, you curs."

And the rats had need to bite. The well-hole was double-lined; those in front fought upward, while those behind protected them and stole a step higher if the defence slackened. Nice play of fence there was none. In such a packed confusion the brute strength of Blaise the stableman counted for more than the finest skill of fence in the world. And with the brute's strength he seemed to have the brute's indifference to pain. Twice, stooping low, he parried with his arm, taking the slash with a gasp but thrusting as he took it, and each thrust struck home. But those behind filled the gaps, those below pressed upward stair by stair, and La Mothe, breathless, but without a scratch, knew what it was to be blood-drunken as the din of steel filled his ears and he saw the flushed and staring faces opposite rise minute by minute more level with his own. The three were doing all men could dare or do, but the end was nearer and nearer with every breath. The end! God in heaven! No! not that—not that; and in his drunkenness he dashed a thrust aside as Blaise had done, stabbed as Blaise had stabbed, and laughed drunkenly that he had sent a soul to its Maker with all the passions of lust and murder hot upon it; but happier than Blaise he took no hurt.

"Mademoiselle," said La Follette without turning his head, and speaking softly to save his breath, "go you and Monseigneur to the corner behind me," and La Mothe knew that he too saw the coming of the end. There in the corner, with Love and France behind them, they would make their last stand.

"I have Monseigneur's dagger," she answered. Again La Mothe understood the inference left unspoken, understood that she as well as he had heard the brutal jests which had set his blood boiling. That she had the dagger was a comfort; but what a splendid courage was hers. Marcel had even ceased to pray.

For very life's sake La Mothe dared abate the vigilance of neither eye nor hand, and yet by instinct—there was no sound—he knew they had risen to obey. By instinct, too, he knew that Ursula de Vesc had drawn nearer, and it was no surprise to hear her voice behind him. But it was not to him she spoke.

"Now, Blaise, thrust, thrust!"

There was a rip of torn cloth, a flutter in the air—the flutter as of a bird on the wing—an upturned point was caught in a tangle of white linen, and through the tangle Blaise rammed his sword-blade almost to the hilt and laughed, panting.

"Rats!" he cried, tugging his arm backwards with a horrible jerk. "Go to your hole, cur!" and more blood-drunken even than La Mothe he broke into a village song.

"'Rosalie was soft and sweet; Sweet to kiss, sweet to kiss: Hair and month and cheek and feet, Sweet to kiss, sweet to kiss.'

"Mademoiselle, fling in that praying lout from the corner and make some use of him; it's all he's fit for."

But the gap was filled; there were two on the top-most step, and La Follette, not only wounded in the thigh but slashed across the ribs, was giving ground.

"Be ready, La Mothe," he said. His teeth were clenched and his chest laboured heavily. "Be ready, Blaise."

"Ready," answered La Mothe, saving his breath. His heart was very bitter. The twelve minutes were seventeen, succour could not be far off, but the end had come. "Do you hear, Blaise?"

But Blaise was past hearing. While he fought with his right his maimed left hand, cut to the bones, had torn his smock open from the throat, and the hairy chest, smeared with his blood, glistened in broad drops from the sweat of his labours. In such a hilt-to-hilt struggle his ignorance was almost an advantage. He had nothing to unlearn, no rules of fence to disregard, and his peasant's strength of arm whirled aside an attack with a paralyzing power impossible to any skill. Right, left, downward swept the blade, his knees and hips half bent as he leaned forward, crouching, his left arm swinging as he swayed. Right, left, downward, his blood-drunkenness growing in savage abandonment with every minute. Yes, he was ready—ready in his own way—but past hearing.

"Damn the English," was his answer to La Mothe, his mind back in the fifty-year-old tragedy. The play was no make-believe, and he was Michel Calvet, son to Jean the sixth, the Michel whose elder brother had been coursed like a hare and killed in the open. Then his song rose afresh, but gaspingly, raucously, as if the notes tore his chest.

"'Rosalie, I love you true; Kiss me, sweet, kiss me, sweet. Lov'st thou me as I love you? Kiss me, sweet, kiss me, sweet.'

"Rats," said he! "Come up, y' cur dogs, come up."

"La Mothe," breathed La Follette, "when I say Now!"

Yes, the end had come.

"Damn the English," cried Blaise hoarsely. With a mighty stroke he swept aside the opposing points, drew a choking breath, crouched lower, and, with the Dauphin's sword at the charge, he flung himself into the gap breast-forward, missed his thrust, splintered the blade against the wall, and with a wild clutch drew all within reach into his grip. For an instant they hung upon a stair-edge, then, in a writhing, floundering mass, breast to breast, breathless, half dead or dying, they rolled to the floor. From behind La Mothe heard Ursula de Vesc cry, "Oh God! pity him!" in a sob. But he dared not turn, his own blood-drunkenness fired him to the finger-tips and he lunged furiously, getting home a stroke above a point lowered in the surprise. Again there was a rush of iron-shod feet upon the stones, but a rush downward, a moment's pause below, a crossing babel of passionate, clamouring voices, insistence, denial, and yet more denial, then a silence—or what seemed a silence—a few hoarse whispers and a cry or two of pain. Yes, the end had come. In the corner stood the Dauphin and, half in front, Ursula de Vesc, her arm stretched out across his breast in the old attitude of protection. Marcel lay beside them in a faint.