The Justice of the King Part 24

Nor in the high places of religion was there a n.o.bler law. A Sixtus, at that very moment, was letting loose the horrors of an unjust war upon Florence and Ferrara in the name of the Prince of Peace, while the sinister figure of Alexander Borgia sat upon the steps of the Papal throne biding its time. If the meek inherited the earth, it was commonly a territory six feet long and two in breadth. Everywhere the ancient rule was still the modern plan: those took who had the power, and those kept who could. There were exceptions, but exceptions were rare. Even at the Round Table there was only one Galahad.

Commines did not differ greatly from his age, or he would have been no fit minister for Louis. A tool is no longer a tool if it is not obedient to the hand which guides it. Let it fail in the work set it to do and it is cast aside into forgottenness or broken up as waste.

He had no liking, he had even a loathing, for the part allotted to him, and he played it unwillingly; left to himself, he would not have played it at all. Ursula de Vesc might have lived out her life in peace so far as he was concerned; but Ursula de Vesc stood in his master's path, and however distasteful it might be she must be swept aside, now that Saxe made it possible so to do, and yet hold a semblance of justice.

Only through her could the Dauphin be reached, therefore Commines steeled his nerves.

But to Stephen, partly for his own sake, and yet more for the memory of the dear dead woman, his heart went out in a greater tenderness than that of cold sympathy. Human love in the individual has been the salt which has kept the body politic from utter rottenness. How to soften the blow to Stephen was his thought as he paced slowly through the cool darkness of the night: how to do more than that, how to link Stephen to his own fortunes, which would surely rise after the successful execution of this commission of tragedy. Slowly he paced into the darkness, turned, and paced as slowly back again, to find Stephen standing motionless where he had left him, his hands linked behind his back, his shoulders squared, his face very sternly set.

"And if Jean Saxe's lies cannot be disproved? What follows then?"

"Stephen, we must save her together." He paused, but La Mothe made no reply. What could he answer? To continue protesting her innocence with nothing but his own word and hers to back the a.s.sertion was but beating the air; to ask, How shall we save her? would, he thought, tacitly admit her guilt. So there was silence until Commines went on slowly and with an evident difficulty; he would need all his diplomacy, he realized, all his powers of sophistry and persuasion if he was to carry Stephen La Mothe with him along the path he proposed to follow.

"Let us face facts," he began, almost roughly. "Saxe will leave me no alternative. No! say nothing, I know it all beforehand, and with all my soul I wish this had not fallen to my lot. And yet, Stephen, it is better I should be here than Tristan; Tristan has a rough way with women. Poor lad, that hurts you, does it? Yes, I am better than Tristan, even though Saxe leaves me no alternative. But we shall save her together," and this time Stephen La Mothe, out of the horror of the thought of Ursula de Vesc given over to the mercies of such a man as Tristan, found it in his heart to ask, "How?" The answer came promptly, but with grave deliberation.

"By the King's mercy."

"What mercy had the King on Molembrais? Will he be more merciful to a woman?"

"Then by his grat.i.tude. Stephen, for her sake we must win the King's grat.i.tude together."

"I do not understand."

"Behind the girl, but joined with her, stands----"

"The Dauphin? My G.o.d, Uncle, not that way."

La Mothe's voice was strange even to his own ears, so harsh and dry was it, the voice of age rather than of youth, and, indeed, he felt as if in this last hour he had suddenly grown so old that the world was a weariness.

"There were three in this plot," answered Commines, unmoved from his slow gravity, "Hugues, the Dauphin, and Mademoiselle de Vesc. Hugues is dead, but two still remain."

"His own son, his own, his one son? No, no, it cannot be, it cannot."

"I grant that it is incredible, but Saxe leaves no loophole for doubt."

"I do not mean that. I meant it could not be that the King--I cannot say it; his one son."

"He has no son but France. Do you remember what I told you that night in my room? Better the one should suffer than the many. And now there is a double reason, a double incentive to us both. Mademoiselle de Vesc's life hangs upon it. Follow the chain of reasoning, and, for G.o.d's sake, Stephen, follow closely. There is more than the life of a girl in all this. Jean Saxe cannot be suppressed even if we dared attempt it; Francois Villon, the King's jackal, who holds his life by a thread, knows everything. Of all men he dares not keep silence, of all men he would not keep silence if he dared, sc.u.m that he is. Within two days the King will know all Saxe's accusations, and if we do not act for ourselves another--Tristan or another--will come in our place. We will have destroyed ourselves for nothing, and there will be no hope for the girl, none. Can you not guess Tristan's methods with women?

But, Stephen, if we act, if we return to Valmy and say, 'Sire, we have done our duty to the nation, with heavy hearts and in bitter sorrow we have done it: even though we have laid love itself on the altar of sacrifice, we have done it, give us this one life in return'--can the King refuse? Remember, if it is not we it will be another, and if we have no claim to ask, there will be no life given. Nor can we have any claim but obedience. I see no other way, no other hope."

The touch upon his arm was half appeal, half admonition, wholly friendly, but La Mothe winced as he shrank from it. There are times when human sympathy is the very salvation of the reason and the one comfort possible to the bruised spirit, but now the solitary instinct of the sick animal was upon him and he longed to be alone. Some sorrows are so personal they cannot be shared. Nor was it all sorrow.

There was the pa.s.sion of a fierce resentment, the bitter protest of helpless nature against a wanton and callous outrage.

As plainly as if Commines had said it in so many words he understood that, sinless or sinning, Ursula de Vesc was to be sacrificed to some state advantage; he understood, too, that neither Commines nor the King cared greatly whether she was innocent or guilty, and that but for his sake Commines would have given her hardly a second thought. Saxe lies!

What matter? The state must progress. Saxe lies! What matter?

Better one suffer than the many. Saxe lies! What matter? We will save her together by the one way possible.

Did he remember that first night in Amboise? Had he ever forgotten?

Even in his plays of make-believe had he ever forgotten? The mind has a way of laying aside the unpalatable in some pigeon-hole of memory; it is out of sight, not forgotten. Yes, he remembered. Then it had been obedience to the King, service to the man to whom he owed everything and a duty to France. Now, more tremendous than all, Ursula de Vesc's life was thrown suddenly into the scale. That was Commines' plain statement. Nor was he conscious of any resentment against Commines.

If Jean Saxe held to his story Commines could have no alternative, and if not Commines, it would be another, another less kindly.

No? His rebellion, the bitter upheaval of spirit, was against the conspiracy of iron circ.u.mstances which hedged him round on every side, a rebellion such as a man might feel who finds himself in silent darkness bound hand and foot with grave-clothes, while his brain is still quick and every nerve quivering with the pa.s.sionate desire for life. "I see no hope," said Commines, "no hope but the one way," and Stephen La Mothe knew that one way was murder. Abruptly he turned upon his heel.

"The half-hour must be almost up," he said; "let us go to her."

CHAPTER XXIII

JEAN SAXE IS EXPLICIT

"Say to Mademoiselle de Vesc that Monsieur d'Argenton requires to speak with her in the Hercules room." It was the Judge who spoke. Already Commines stood in Louis' place to search, sift, find, and his tone was as cold and curt as the words were brusque. Then, as an afterthought, he added, "You can say, too, that Monsieur La Mothe is with him."

"No," said La Mothe; "omit that part of it."

For a moment Commines hesitated, annoyed by a tone curter and colder than his own, but after a glance at La Mothe's set face he motioned to the servant to go. That was not the moment to precipitate a conflict.

"Stephen, why not? It is the truth."

"Great heavens! do we want the truth?" answered La Mothe.

"But we are not friendly, she and I, and she may not come; you said so yourself. Remember, we must have no scandal, no publicity."

"Yes, what you have to do will be best done in the dark."

"Stephen, be just. You know I mean that Saxe's story is not one to be blazed abroad. Besides, nothing will be done to-night."

"But to-morrow, or next day?"

"It was not for the Dauphin's sake you risked your life this afternoon."

"That is quite true. It was for Mademoiselle de Vesc, and it may be risked again."

"Stephen, what do you mean?" But La Mothe, striding ahead as if impatient to face the issue and have done with uncertainties, returned no answer. There could be no answer until he saw how events fell out.

The Hercules chamber was named after the tapestry which hid the dull grey plaster of its walls. From the one door--and that there should be but one was unusual in an age when to provide for the strategy of retreat was common prudence--where the infant Hero strangled with chubby hands the twin serpents sent for his destruction, the story of his labours told itself with all the direct simplicity of medieval art.

No chronology was followed, the embroiderer having chosen her scenes at pleasure or as the exigencies of s.p.a.ce demanded. Here, Samson-like, he tore the Numean lion jaw from jaw, his knee sunk in the s.h.a.ggy chest, his shoulders ripped to the bone as the hooked claws gripped the muscles, his mighty torso a dripping crimson in the scheme of colour.

There he cleansed the Augean stable in a faithfulness of detail more admirable in its approach to nature than its appeal to the sensibilities, the artist having left nothing to the imagination; beyond was the more human note, and Omphale bound him to her by a single thread stronger than all the chains ever riveted in Vulcan's forge. Next, with perhaps a significance of symbolism, the s.h.i.+rt of Nessus tortured him to madness with its scorching fires till the huge limbs writhed and the broad, kindly face was all a-sweat with agony, but--and now it was the door again--the benediction of peace crowned the end. The labours, the sorrows, the fiery trials were behind the back for ever, the faults and failures were forgiven or atoned for; after the stress of toil, the weariness of struggle, came the blessedness of rest; after humanity, divinity and the imperishable glory of high Olympus. Crude in its art, angular in its execution, there still was something of the soul of the worker st.i.tched with the canvas. To Stephen La Mothe, touched at times by a poet's comprehension, it seemed not altogether a myth,--a type, perhaps; only, being very human, he hungered with a bitter hunger for the crowning of the peace and the divinity of love while life was life. It requires a robust faith to believe that Olympus can bring anything better than the best of earth.

A carved oak bench, black with age, stood beneath the centre of the three narrow windows piercing the outer wall; a four-branched copper lamp gave light from the polished table in the middle of the room; here and there, flanking the oaken bench, at the ends of the room, and at either side of the wide fireplace, were chairs and stools. A few wolfskin rugs dotted the floor. Villon and Saxe had not yet arrived.

"Mademoiselle begs that she may be excused to-night; she is very tired."

"But she cannot be excused," began Commines, when La Mothe intervened.

"Say that Monsieur La Mothe very greatly regrets she should be disturbed when so weary, but as it is of importance to Monseigneur he trusts she will excuse Monsieur d'Argenton's importunity."

"I told you how it would be," said Commines as the servant left the room, "you might as well have given your name first as last."