Overgolden moors and through winding woodways deep with the glamour of forests in green leaf, Bertrand and Tiphaïne rode homeward towards Dinan.
Since there seemed something sacred in the days to them, they shunned the towns and villages, holding to the wilderness of the woods and moors, as though solitude and the silence thereof had a restfulness for either heart. For Bertrand that season of the world’s awakening had been a season of storm, of weary nights and troubled dawns. He had slain his own self, to find his manhood reincarnated in the second life that had risen for him like a gold cloud out of the east. He was as a man who had much to remember, and much more to foreshadow. The woods and moors had a sudden awe for him, an awe that played like sacred fire upon the solemn summits of the hills.
As a man’s life is, so are his desires. In the making or the marring it is the genius of effort that sets the furnace glowing and strikes with the hammer upon the malleable metal of the soul. No man ever drifted into strength or dreamed into nobleness by lying on a bed with a wine-cup at his elbow. We gather life or lose it. God strikes no balance for us. We may labor blindly, but we must labor—to be men.
As for Bertrand, he had grown young and old in the same breath—young in that he had won the brave ardor of his youth again; old, because he had taken the temper of the world, and learned to behold the conquering good even in the darkness of disloyalty and shame. He had come to true manhood by throwing that same manhood bound and broken at the feet of honor. He had won in thinking that he had lost, triumphed by believing that he could bear defeat.
Therefore he rode beside Tiphaïne, the Child of the White May Bough, the Enchantress of the Aspen Tower, looking upon the beauty of her womanhood without fear, yet with awe. Her face seemed to open the gates of heaven before his eyes. He was content to follow her, hoping that in due season he might hold her hand in his.
The first night they lodged in a little inn upon the road. There was but one guest-chamber in the place, and Tiphaïne slept there, while Bertrand lay awake before the door.
They passed the second night in an open wood, great pine-trees towering to the stars, Tiphaïne asleep on a bed of heather that Bertrand’s hands had gathered and spread. He stood on guard till the dawn came, feeling the dark, whispering wood like some solemn temple where he could keep vigil as a sacred right. Tiphaïne slept, even like a trusting child. Her great faith in him made Bertrand happy, happy as a man who has conquered fame.
He saw the dawn come up, a stealing into the sky of vapors of crimson and of gold. He knew that that evening they would reach La Bellière. It was to be the last day of their pilgrimage together.
The sunlight was slanting through the trees, warming the red trunks, when Tiphaïne awoke and saw Bertrand, motionless, a pillar of patience, leaning upon his sword. There was a faint glimmering of sunlight in the eyes that looked at him. Her hair bathed Tiphaïne’s face like some soft autumn color bathing the white face of an autumn flower.
She left the bed of heather, and Bertrand heard the rustle of her footsteps in the grass. He turned, looking like one who has been watching the sunrise and finding the woods dark and mist-fogged after the brightness of the broadening east.
Tiphaïne’s eyes had the strangeness of eyes that are half happy and half sad.
“And I have let you watch all night!”
He looked at her and smiled.
“It has seemed short enough.”
“Then Bertrand du Guesclin is never weary?”
“I had my own thoughts. With some thoughts—a man is never tired.”
The secrets of the heart escape in the uttering of a few simple words. They stood looking at each other, each wishing to be compassionate yet honest. Tiphaïne’s eyes were the first to turn away.
“We shall reach La Bellière to-night,” she said.
“Yes, to-night.”
“And I shall see my father.”
Perhaps there was the slightest tremor of regret quivering in her thankfulness. Bertrand was watching Tiphaïne as a strong man watches the light or shadow in the eyes of one he loves.
“Shall I be welcome at La Bellière?”
“Welcome?”
“You see, some men are remembered—with bitterness.”
“You misjudge my father.”
“No, but I feel for him.”
“I know it.”
She lifted her face to his with a brave quickening of her womanhood. Instinct told her all that was in Bertrand’s heart.
His hands were opening and shutting upon the hilt of his sword.
“A year ago you know what manner of man I was.”
“I know what manner of man I honor now.”
“You called me a worthless ruffian, and you were right.”
“Forget the words.”
“No, before God, no; they made me turn into a man.”
“And you, Bertrand, have taught me many things in return.”
It was as though she yielded, and yet did not yield.
“Tiphaïne.”
“We owe so much to you, we of La Bellière.”
His hands swept out to her, letting the sword fall.
“No, no, do not say that. Am I a man to trade upon my deeds?”
“Bertrand!”
“Forget them, for I should hate myself if you were to look on me as one who had plotted for your gratitude. Tiphaïne, I am just a man. I am thinking of you as the child who rescued me at Rennes.”
His words moved her more deeply than he imagined. She looked into his swarthy and impassioned face, and felt his homage leap up about her like sacred fire.
“If I might speak it?”
She faltered, and her cheeks were red, her eyes mysterious.
“No, no, not now—”
He went near to her, holding out his great, strong hands.
“I am a rough, ignorant fool, but—before God—I know now how to give you homage.”
“Bertrand, I know it—”
“Well—”
“Wait”—and she looked at him, and then at the hands he held to her—“I ask you to see the shadows that I see, the shadows that are darkening my own home.”
“Shadows?”
“Yes”—and her courage came to her—“I am thinking Bertrand, of my father, and of Robin hiding in the cloisters of Lehon.”
He dropped his hands and drew back a step, not harshly or selfishly, but with the reverence of a man who could behold the same vision as her tenderness beheld.
“Tiphaïne, I never had a home.”
“No.”
“They always hated me. And yet—”
“And yet you feel what I feel, the sacredness that watches over home. Bertrand, there is my father; my heart goes out to him; I remember how he looked at me when I told him the truth of Robin’s shame.”
His face was more tender towards her than before.
“He loved the lad.”
“And now he looks to me for all the love he lost at Mivoie. To-night he will kiss me and think me all his own.”
There was no bitterness in Bertrand’s eyes.
“You have a great heart in you.”
“Bertrand, you understand?”
“God bless you, yes.”
She went to him suddenly and took his hands.
“Patience.”
And in her eyes he might have read the dawning truth.
Inthe Abbot’s parlor at Lehon there was a window that looked out upon the abbey garden, with its sunny stretch of turf, broad beds of herbs and vegetables, its barrier of aspen-trees about the orchard, an orchard rich in Pucelle de Flanders, St. Reols, and Caillon pears, cherries, and quinces, and pearmain apples. At this same window stood the Abbot Stephen, and behind him, half in the shadow, a girl in a gray hood and cloak and a man in black and rusty harness. The window was shaded, moreover, by a swinging lattice and by the red flowers and green leaves of a climbing rose, whose tendrils wavered athwart the blue of the summer sky.
Below, in the garden, between two broad bands of beans in flower, a young man in a russet-colored cassock was stooping over an onion-bed, holding a basket woven of osier twigs in one hand, while with the other he pulled up weeds. From time to time he stood up as though to stretch himself, or took to crawling between the rows, pushing the basket before him and throwing the weeds into it as he worked. The cowl of the cassock was turned back, leaving his head with its cropped hair bare to the sun.
The man weeding the onion-bed was Robin Raguenel; those who watched him, Bertrand du Guesclin and Robin’s sister.
The crawling figure, in its brown cassock, hardly suggested the young Breton noble who had ridden out to fight at Mivoie in all the splendor and opulence of arms. Robin had changed the sword for the hoe, the helmet for a basket of osiers. In lieu of cantering to the cry of trumpets over the Breton moors, he crawled across the cabbage and onion beds of the abbey of Lehon, the sun scorching his rough cassock, his nails rimmed with dirt, his sandalled feet brown with the warm earth of the garden. Here was a transfiguration that challenged the pride of the worldly-hearted.
“Pax Dei.”
Abbot Stephen crossed himself, beholding in Tiphaïne’s eyes a certain unpleased pity, as though the crawling figure of her brother had made her set the past beside the present.
Abbot Stephen looked at her steadily and smiled.
“You are offended for your brother’s sake,” he said.
Her eyes were on Robin, who had squatted on his heels to rest, and was staring vacantly into the basket half filled with weeds.
“Offended, father?”
“There is more wisdom, child, in this penance than the mere eye can see.”
She still watched Robin, an expression of poignant pity upon her face.
“The change is so sudden to me,” she said.
Stephen of Lehon spread his hands with a gesture of fatherly assent.
“And yet, my daughter, there is wisdom in this work of his. Your brother’s pride is in the dust, and in the dust man’s humbleness may find that subtle and mysterious seed that has its flowering when the heart is sad.”
“It is difficult for me, father, not to grudge the past.”
“Is there, then, no glory, child, save in the service of the sword?”
He looked at her with an amiable austerity whose humaneness had not hardened into the mere dogmatism of the priest. Abbot Stephen still boasted the instinctive sympathy of youth. As for Tiphaïne, she glanced at Bertrand, who had drawn back into the room, arguing in her heart that it was better to fight God’s battle in the world than to dream dreams in a religious house.
“Christ our Lord was but a carpenter.” And the Abbot crossed himself.
“I remember it.”
“In the simple things of life the heart finds comfort. A sinless working with the hands leads to a sinless working of the soul. It was the lad himself who prayed me to give him work to do.”
She put her hands together as though in prayer.
“My brother must know his own needs,” she said. “It is better to work than to sulk like a sick hawk upon a perch.”
“Child, that is the right spirit.”
And he stood to bless her, with no complacent unction, but with heart of grace.
For a while she looked at Robin kneeling on the naked earth, her silence seeming to confess that she was more content to leave him in the Church’s keeping.
“I go now to La Bellière,” she said, quietly.
“You have a double share, my child, to give and to receive.”
“God grant that I may remember it,” and she turned to Bertrand with a stately lifting of the head.
At La Bellière the sky was an open wealth of blue, the aspens all a-whisper. And yet, with summer reddening the lips of June, the sorrow of the place was still like the sighing of a wind through winter trees on a winter evening. Logs burned in the great fireplace of the solar. Stephen Raguenel, looking like some December saint, craved from the flames that warmth that life and the noon sun could not give.
The turrets were casting long shadows towards the east when dust rose on the road from Dinan. A few peasants were running in advance of a knight and a lady who wound between the aspen-trees towards the towers and chimneys of La Bellière. Soon there came the sound of men shouting, the clatter of hoofs on the bridge before the gate. The starlings and jackdaws wheeled and chattered about the chimneys. It was as though the château had slept under some wizard’s spell, to awake suddenly at the sounding of a hero’s horn.
Girard, discretion among the discreet, was craning out of a turret window, his face like a vociferous gargoyle spouting from a wall. He saw madame’s palfrey, the cloak with its crimson lining, and understood that Croquart had been cheated of a ransom.
Girard ran down the tower stair two steps at a time, bruised his forehead—without swearing—against the cross-beam of a door, and reached the great court in time to see Tiphaïne and the man in the black harness ride in through the gate.
“Assuredly this is God’s doing.” And Girard crossed himself before running forward to join his fellow-servants in frightening the starlings, who were unaccustomed to so much shouting.
“Madame, this is God’s doing.”
He kissed the hem of her cloak, and was asked but a single question in return:
“Girard, my father?”
“Now that madame has come back to us my lord the Vicomte will most surely live.”
She left the saddle and bade Bertrand follow her. But the man in the black harness held back, feeling that he was a stranger amid the curious and many faces that filled the court-yard of La Bellière.
“Go,” he said to her. “I will wait my time.”
“Perhaps it is better.”
“Yes, that you should go to him alone.”
Girard, sparkling like a well-polished flagon, and brimful of exultation, presented his homage to the gentleman on the black horse. All the La Bellière servants had been told the truth. Messire Bertrand du Guesclin could have commanded more devotion at that moment than Charles of Blois himself.
“The grace of God to you, messire,” and Girard’s face carried more than a servile blessing.
The men made the turrets ring.
“God and St. Ives for the Eagle of Cancale!”
They crowded round, each trying to hold his stirrup or bridle or to take his spear. Their enthusiasm grew bolder as the contact became more intimate. Two of the tallest men soon had Bertrand upon their shoulders, and carried him in triumph to the dais in the great hall.
Girard’s bald pate glistened with obeisances.
“Would my lord eat and drink?”
Bertrand accepted the suggestion. He felt it embarrassing, this setting-up of him like an idol to be stared at unwinkingly by so many pairs of eyes. If the god ate, they would at least see that he was half-human like themselves.
“My good-fellow, honest men are always thirsty.”
And had it been possible they would have emptied a hogshead of Bordeaux down Bertrand’s throat by way of testifying their devotion.
Even the cook, gardeners, and dairy-women crowded “the screens” to catch a glimpse of Bertrand as he sat at the high table. They watched him eat and drink as though he were an ogre, whispering together, peeping over one another’s shoulders. Bertrand, who had none of the spirit of the mock hero, chafed under this flattering publicity, being in no humor to be gaped at like a black bear in a cage.
“My good-fellow, do people ever eat here?”
Girard flourished a napkin and looked puzzled.
“Ah, messire—”
“These friends of yours seem to grudge me my hunger by the way they push and stare.”
Girard took the hint and closed the doors on the array of inquisitive faces. He returned and made his bow.
“Messire du Guesclin must pardon the people. Messire du Guesclin is a great soldier and a hero.”
“Nonsense, sir,” and Bertrand laughed half foolishly at Girard’s magniloquent respect.
“Messire, you have a modest heart.”
“Modest heart!—to the devil with you!”
“And a courage that will not be flattered.”
Bertrand picked up his wine-cup and held it towards Girard.
“Enough, friend,” he said; “I am clumsy at catching compliments. Drink to all good Bretons. That will please me better.”
And Girard drank, his eyes looking at Bertrand over the rim of the cup.
It was then that the door leading to the stairway behind the dais opened, showing Tiphaïne in a green gown, a red girdle about her waist.
“Bertrand.”
He saw at once that she had been weeping, though her eyes shone like a clear sky after rain.
“Come.”
Bertrand followed her without a word. She climbed the stairs and halted on the threshold of the solar, her hand on the latch of the closed door.
“My father has asked for you.”
The man before her appeared far more distrustful of himself than if he had been called to lead the forlornest of forlorn hopes.
“You will find him changed.”
“Am I to go alone?”
“If you wish it.”
Bertrand’s face betrayed his unwillingness.
“I would rather—”
“I came with you?”
And she took his hand.
Stephen Raguenel was sitting in his chair before the fire, with the look of a man exhausted by too sudden and great a joy. Tears were still shining on his cheeks. Bertrand felt more afraid of him than of a weeping girl.
“Father, I have brought Bertrand to you.”
The old man would have risen; his hands were already on the arms of his chair. Bertrand, a great rush of pity sweeping away his awkwardness, went to him and knelt like a stripling beside the Vicomte’s chair.
“Sire—”
Stephen Raguenel laid his hands upon Bertrand’s shoulders. His eyes had a blind and vacant look. It was the wreck of a face that Bertrand saw gazing into his.
“It is you, Messire Bertrand du Guesclin?”
“It is I, sire.”
“We owe you much, my Tiphaïne and I.”
“Sire, let us not speak of it,” and his mouth quivered, for he saw in the old man’s eyes the yearning of a father for his son.
“No, messire, our honor is with us yet. We give you that gratitude of which God alone can know the depth. Child, is not that so?”
Tiphaïne had slipped behind him, and stood leaning upon the carved back of the chair. Her hands rested on her father’s shoulders. He drew them down with his and looked up wistfully into her face.
“Bertrand braved more than death for us,” she said.
“For the lad Robin’s sake.”
“Yes, for him.”
He lay back in his chair with his eyes closed, his breathing slow and regular like the breathing of one who sleeps. Bertrand had risen, and was leaning against the carved hood of the chimney. He remembered vividly that night, not many weeks, ago when the old man had gloried in the promise of his son.
Tiphaïne’s hands were smoothing her father’s hair. The touch of those hands brought a smile to the old man’s face. He opened his eyes to look at her, and in that look the heart of the father seemed to drink in peace.
Bertrand turned, and went stealthily towards the door. He opened it gently, and left them alone together.
Bertrandrode out hawking early on the forenoon of the third day at La Bellière, leaving Tiphaïne and her father seated together under the Vicomte’s favorite pear-tree in the orchard. He had chosen a gerfalcon in the La Bellière mews, and taken the path towards a marsh where there was a heron passage some three miles from the château. He rode alone, with the bird belled and hooded on his wrist, more intent, perhaps, in gaining solitude than on seeing the falcon make a flight. For the heart of a man in love is a world within itself, where the green pastures and deep woods are tinged with a melancholy like the perfume of wild thyme in the green deeps of June.
But there was more than mere melancholy in Bertrand’s heart that morning, for the truth was plain to him as the blue sweep of the summer sky that the old man at La Bellière lived in the spirit on the eyes and lips of Tiphaïne, his child. The vision of yesterday shone ever before Bertrand’s mind, the vision of Stephen Raguenel’s face glowing with a reflected light, a light falling from Tiphaïne’s face, with its great eyes and splendid sheen of hair. Nor would Bertrand have grudged the old man this, or have reproached Tiphaïne for having a woman’s heart. Men look for piety in priests, patience in a philosopher, tenderness and loyalty in a daughter towards her sire. The true man desires to find a beautiful completeness in the creature of his heart’s creation. He would rather starve his own desires than see her fail in some sacred duty towards her soul.
But the Vicomte had given Bertrand food for reflection that same morning, nor had the food seemed particularly sweet.
“I am remembering, Messire Bertrand,” he had said, “that there are other hearts in Brittany more near of sympathy to you than ours. We must not keep you at La Bellière.”
A broad hint, forsooth, and Bertrand had read more in the old man’s restless eyes than the Vicomte’s tongue had suffered him to say. Half an hour’s talk with Tiphaïne at the open window! Stephen Raguenel had even grudged him that, and betrayed by a flash of senile peevishness that the younger man’s presence cast a shadow across the narrowing path of age.
Human, most human, and yet there was something pitiful to Bertrand in the old man’s sensitiveness, his readiness to resent any sharing of Tiphaïne’s thoughts. No doubt she was all that was left to him, his pearl of great price, which he would suffer no other man to handle. In this life the services of a friend may be too soon forgotten when the clash of interests rouses the armed ego. Gratitude is the most volatile of all the sentiments. Return an old man his lost purse, and it is but natural that he should knit his brows when the self-same purse is coveted by the very mortal who returned it.
Yet to one who has suffered in the cause of others a grudging and suspicious spirit is as a north wind in the midst of June. It was for this reason that Bertrand’s heart was bitter in him that morning, not because Tiphaïne loved her father, but because the old man grudged her even a friend. In the past the lord of La Bellière would have laughed at such a notion of tyranny. But sorrow and the slackening of the fibres of the heart can change the temper of the happiest mind.
The forenoon had gone when Bertrand turned homeward to La Bellière without having so much as slipped the hood or jesses. Yet even though he had won nothing by the falcon’s talons, he had come by a decision to leave La Bellière on the morrow.
Not in the best of tempers, he came suddenly upon two shabby-looking devils squatting side by side under a wayside cross. They were sharing half a brown loaf and a bottle of cider, the jaws of both munching energetically with that stolid emphasis that betrays the philosophic and worldly mendicant. A couple of rusty swords and bucklers lay on the grass at the men’s feet. One of the pair was leathery and tall; the other, buxom about the body, with a face that matched the frayed scarlet of his coat.
They sighted Bertrand, falcon on wrist, and stared at him casually as though considering whether he was a gentleman likely to disburse a coin. There was an abrupt slackening of the masticatory muscles. Two pairs of eyes were startled by the apparition. The lean man bolted a large mouthful of bread and started up with a shout that sent Bertrand’s horse swerving across the road.
The loaf and the cider bottle were tossed upon the grass.
“Soul of my grandmother, bully Hopart, but it’s the captain!”
“Lording! lording!”
“Devil’s luck, and I’m no sinner!”
They made a rush across the grass, waving their caps and cutting grotesque capers.
“Hopart! Guicheaux!”
“The very dogs, messire.”
“God save me, but this is gallant!”
Bertrand’s face beamed like a great boy’s as he rolled out of the saddle almost into Guicheaux’s arms. Hopart and his brother bully sprang at him like a couple of barking and delirious dogs. So rough and strenuous were their methods of showing joy that a stranger might have taken them for a couple of footpads in the act of robbing a gentleman of his purse.
“Captain, captain, I could hug the heart out of you.”
“Goodman, Guicheaux. Give me a grip.”
“A crack of the knuckle-bones. Sir, but you are still strong in the fist.”
In the midst of all this loving turbulence the gyrfalcon on Bertrand’s wrist took to fluttering and screeching by way of protest, ruffled in feathers as well as temper. Bertrand disentangled himself, laughing and not a little out of breath.
“Captain, we have been beating all the country this side of Loudeac.”
“Good-fellows!”
“And, lord, we have had our hands busy cramming lies back down these squeakers’ throats. Faugh! how some of these fat folk stink of the pit!”
“So you have heard lies, eh?”
Hopart and Guicheaux exchanged glances.
“Well, captain, there’s never a wind in seed-time but thistle-down’s a blowing. Certain lewd rogues had been puffing a tale of the fight at Mivoie.”
“To be sure.”
“What is more, captain, a harping devil made so bold as to blab of it at Cancale.”
“To Sieur Robert, eh?”
“Yes, and to madame.”
“And it was believed?”
Guicheaux screwed his hatchet face into a kind of knot.
“Your pardon, captain, Madame Jeanne is a great lady.”
“And has some spite against me. Well?”
Guicheaux looked at Hopart; his comrade returned an eloquent grin.
“Well, captain, we two took that harping devil and half drowned him in the ditch.”
“You did?”
“But madame had her weapons ready. Brother Hopart, be so good as to scratch my back.”
The fat man pulled up the thin man’s shirt, and Guicheaux displayed a back still livid from the blows of a whip.
“Madame knows how to argue, captain,” and he chuckled.
“What, they whipped you?”
“By the lord, they did that!” and Guicheaux proceeded to display in turn his comrade’s honorable scars.
Bertrand looked at them, stubble-chinned rascals that they were, and felt a significant stiffening of the throat. It was no news to him that Dame Jeanne should have been ready to hear him slandered, but the loyalty of these rough dogs of war more than compensated for the smart.
“Hopart, Guicheaux, answer me. It was told then to madame my mother that Bertrand du Guesclin had played the traitor?”
They both stared at him and nodded.
“She believed it?”
Again the two heads bobbed acquiescence.
“And you?”
“We, captain?”
“Yes, you.”
“Well,” and Guicheaux looked embarrassed—“well, Brother Hopart, what did we do?”
“Kicked,” quoth the fat man, “and were royally toe-plugged for our pains.”
Bertrand slipped the jesses and shook the falcon from his wrist. He opened his arms to the two men, and Messire Bertrand du Guesclin might have been seen embracing the two vagabonds like brothers.
“Assuredly,” he said, “that harper friend of yours told lies.”
“Captain!”
“I fought at Mivoie, but not in my own arms.”
“Captain! captain!”
“All Brittany will soon know the truth.”
“St. Ives du Guesclin!” And Guicheaux threw his cap into the air, sprang at Hopart, and smote him an open-handed smack across the chest.
“Bully Hopart, bully Hopart, we must get drunk on this—or die!”
And they gripped hands and danced round Bertrand like a couple of clowns at a fair.
WhileHopart and Guicheaux discovered themselves in such excellent fettle over the recovery of their idol, no less a person than Madame Jeanne du Guesclin presented her husband’s pennon before the great gates of La Bellière.
The disgrace at the Oak of Mivoie had sent Madame Jeanne upon a pilgrimage among her friends, for the news of Bertrand’s troth-breaking had challenged her pride, if it had not troubled her affection. Sieur Robert, a fat imbecile, had been left to gormandize at Cancale, while the wife, with sweet Olivier at her side, rode out to play the Roman mother. It was a necessary discretion that Bertrand should be sacrificed, nor did Madame Jeanne fail in the heroism of her indignation.
Sumptuous in red gown, with streamers of gold at the elbows, a short “spencer” of blue cloth open at the hips, a hood of some amber-colored stuff with liripipia of green silk, Madame Jeanne rode her roan horse into the La Bellière court. Olivier, as flushed and splendid as his mother, straight-waisted, full and jagged in the sleeves, smiled at the wide welkin as though his motto were, “By God’s soul, I am the man.” Ten armed servants in red and green, a falconer, two huntsmen with four hounds in leash, followed hard at madame’s heels.
Some people seem designed by nature for the more spacious ways of life, for terraces that touch the sunset, marble stairways, and chairs of gold. This largeness of presence was part of Jeanne du Guesclin’s birthright. Standing in the state solar of La Bellière, with one hand on Olivier’s shoulder, she dwarfed her slim fop of a son, whose mawkish look betrayed the oppression of a youth tired by indiscriminate motherly conceit.
The window of the solar, with its scarlet cushions and carved pillars in the jambs, looked out upon the garden, where Madame Jeanne could see the Vicomte asleep on the bench under the Pucelle de Saintonge. Half an hour had passed since Girard had bowed them into the state solar, and Madame Jeanne was not a lady who could wait in patience. She watched Stephen Raguenel with a slight twitching of her nostrils and the air of a grand seigneuress much upon her dignity.
“It seems that they do things slowly at La Bellière.”
Olivier yawned behind his hand.
“The roads are devilish dry,” he remarked. “I should not quarrel with a cup of wine. The old gentleman there appears to have eaten a big dinner.”
“The servants must be fools.”
“Probably Madame Tiphaïne is looking out her very best gown.” And Olivier began to flick the dust from the embroidery and the slashed splendor of hiscôte hardie.
Jeanne du Guesclin looked at him and smiled.
“If Robin Raguenel is half as handsome—”
“Pooh, mother!”
“—as Messire Olivier.”
“Confound my good looks,” and he pretended to appear modestly impatient. “How often are you talking to me as though I were a fool of a peacock?”
“There, put your girdle straight, Olivier. If I have a handsome son, am I not allowed to use my eyes?”
“I may be straighter in the legs than Bertrand,” and he gave a sharp and shallow laugh.
“Bertrand, indeed! We shall soon have done with the worthless fool. My friends cannot say that I am prejudiced in the man’s favor, since I have been the first to tell many of them the truth.”
“Poor fellow!”
It was curious to watch Jeanne du Guesclin’s eyes change their expression—like water that seems hardened by the passing of a cloud.
“Remember, you have taken Bertrand’s place,” she said.
“Poor Bertrand!” and he showed his teeth; “if Beaumanoir catches him, he will most assuredly be hanged.”
“Let them hang the traitor. I can have no pity for a turncoat and a coward.”
Tiphaïne was in her brother’s room, looking through the hundred and one things that had belonged to Robin: his whips and hunting-spears; the jesses, hoods, and gloves he had used in hawking; a few books; a great press full of perfumed clothes. On a peg by the window hung the surcoat that Bertrand had worn at Mivoie. The room was much as the lad had left it on the night of his flight to the abbey of Lehon. None of the servants had dared to touch the room. The care of all these treasures of a young man’s youth had been left to Tiphaïne like some sacred trust.
It was in this room that Girard found her, kneeling before the great carved chest, her brother’s helmet in her lap. She was burnishing the armor that Robin should have worn at Mivoie, and whose sheen displayed the scars gotten from the English swords. The light from the window fell across her figure as she knelt, her hair aglow, her eyes deep with the pathos of the past.
“Madame.”
To Girard it seemed that she had been praying, and perhaps weeping, over her brother’s arms. His voice startled her, for she had not heard the opening of the door.
“Girard?”
The old man bowed to her as she rose with Robin’s helmet in her hands.
“Pardon, madame, there are guests in the great solar.”
“I heard the sound of trumpets, Girard, and thought that Messire Bertrand had returned.”
“It is his mother, madame.”
“Jeanne du Guesclin?”
“And Messire Olivier with her.”
Tiphaïne laid Robin’s helmet upon the bed, closed the great chest, and went to her own room, telling Girard not to wake the Vicomte. She changed her old gown for one of grass-green dusted with violets, fastened on a girdle of beaten silver and a brooch of lapis lazuli at her throat. Like Girard, she believed that Jeanne du Guesclin had ridden to La Bellière with the news of Bertrand’s nobleness ringing like some old epic in her ears.
The windows of the gallery that led from Tiphaïne’s room towards the chapel and the great solar looked out westward over the main court. The sun beat full upon these windows, and Tiphaïne, as she passed, had a blurred vision of Jeanne du Guesclin’s men, in their red jupons slashed with green, crowding round some of the La Bellière servants. They appeared to be arguing and chaffering over some piece of news. In fact, Madame Jeanne’s men were in the process of being enlightened as to that truth of which their mistress was most unmotherly in her ignorance. Tiphaïne loitered a moment at one of the windows. She had an instinctive antipathy for the haughty-mouthed lady of Motte Broon. The two strong natures were in contrast, and Tiphaïne was in no mood for uncovering her heart for the edification of this woman, whom she had distrusted ever since the days at Rennes.
To Girard, Tiphaïne had given orders that the Vicomte was not to be disturbed, for she had taken the cares of the household on her own shoulders; nor was her father in a fit state to be afflicted with the irresponsible sympathy of inquisitive friends. The honor of the château was with Tiphaïne, and it was this same honor that brought Girard to the door of the state solar ten minutes after his mistress had entered. Girard’s fist was about to knock, when the pitch of the voices from within suggested suddenly that any intrusion would be indiscreet.
Girard stood there stroking his chin and knowing not for the moment whether to enter or to retire. Tiphaïne was speaking, not loudly, but with that intensity of self-restraint that made each word ring like the clear stroke of a bell. Girard, who had known her since a child, and had grown familiar with every modulation of her voice, could see her, even though the door was shut. She would be standing at her full height, her head thrown back a little, her eyes looking straight at the face of the woman to whom she spoke.
Soon a harsher, sharper voice broke in at intervals, questioning, criticising, snapping out short sentences with too evident a twinge of temper. Madame Jeanne had lost her haughty poise, and Girard, smiling a shrewd smile, thanked Heaven that he did not wear the Du Guesclin livery. From time to time a thinner and less aggressive voice would interpose, drawling out a few half-apologetic syllables—Messire Olivier trying to play the part of the wise and conciliating man of the world.
Girard was in the act of turning to retreat when he heard footsteps sweeping towards the door.
“Madame,” said Jeanne du Guesclin’s voice, harsh and metallic with inexpressible impatience, “you need not twit me with having blundered. What I heard I heard, and we credulous mortals are very human. Olivier, your arm.”
The door swung back, and Girard, caught before he could scramble round the corner, flattened himself against the wall. He had a glimpse of Jeanne du Guesclin’s face shining like a red sun through a thunder cloud, her lower lip pinched by her strong, white teeth. She came sweeping out on Olivier’s arm—Olivier, who looked like a wet chicken trying to appear worthy of an incensed and fluffed-up hen.
Jeanne du Guesclin saw Girard flattened like a pilaster against the wall, and recognized him as the man in office who had ordered the trumpets to blow a fanfan in her honor.
“Fellow, my horses!”
Girard contrived to bend at the hips.
“Order my men to be ready to return to Dinan in ten minutes.”
“It shall be done, madame.”
And Girard disappeared like a flitting shadow down the stairs.
Fate, however, reserved a more scathing ordeal for the chastening of Jeanne du Guesclin’s pride. Probably she never realized in life how insolent the truth could be till that moment when she came out from the doorway of the hall, and, standing at the top of a flight of steps, looked down upon the crowd of servants in the castle court.
The crowd was divided into two parties, distinguishable in the bulk by the contrasting colors of their liveries. Before the great gate the red and green of the Du Guesclins had huddled itself into a sullen and silent knot, while the blue and silver of La Bellière fluttered more cheerily across the court. But the dramatic energy of the scene seemed centred in two shabby, swaggering figures footing it to and fro under the noses of Jeanne du Guesclin’s men.
Messires Hopart and Guicheaux were taking their revenge, arm in arm, with a flourish of swords and the happy arrogance of a pair of heroes. The La Bellière servants appeared to be applauding their bombast and their swagger. Not so Jeanne du Guesclin’s men, whose toes were being trodden on and whose ribs had suffered from the ironical raillery of the mighty Hopart’s elbows. Bertrand’s rapscallions were top dogs for the moment.
“Hallo, sirs!”—and Guicheaux spread his fingers at one of Olivier’s grooms who had taken part in the “scourging” at Cancale, “—who said Messire Bertrand did not fight at Mivoie? They swallow strange tales at Gleaquim, eh?”
A figure in red and green growled out:
“God have pity on these two fools!”
“Fools?” and Hopart stopped dead in front of a little man who had ventured the insult. “So it is you, Jacques, my little pig, eh? I have always heard that swine are unclean brutes in the matter of food. Did you say ‘fools’?”
Hopart, bulking big, with a face like a devouring fire, stared at the little man and shook a huge, brown fist.
“Did you say ‘fool,’ little pig?”
“Let Jacques be, bully Hopart.”
“So!” and Hopart set his hoof on the great toe of the second man who had spoken, and emphasized the rebuke by a sounding smack across the mouth.
“Come out and fight,” he said; “we are not in madame’s piggery now.”
The crowd roared. Hopart’s swagger neared the sublime, his great, fiery face making the men in red and green blink like a brood of startled owls. Hopart was too big and threatening to be taken by the beard. No one answered his challenge, and the two heroes strutted to and fro again like a couple of prize cocks.
Jeanne du Guesclin, standing at the top of the stairway leading from the hall, saw all this in the compass of a moment. Nor had her coming been lost upon Hopart and Guicheaux. They doffed their caps to her with exaggerated gestures of respect, a display of mock homage that turned all eyes upon the proud figure of the lady.
Jeanne du Guesclin’s face was white with anger.
“Olivier”—and she bit her words—“go down and give those swine a beating with your sword.”
“Madame mother, leave the men to me.”
It was not Olivier who had answered her, and Dame Jeanne started as though a snake had fallen at her feet. She turned and saw Bertrand standing on the threshold of the hall, his face impassive, his arms folded across his chest.
For the first time in her life Jeanne du Guesclin faltered before her son. There was a peculiar look in Bertrand’s eyes, a look that shamed her, leaving her speechless and at his mercy.
“Guicheaux! Hopart!” And he went down the steps into the court.
The two worthies had discarded all swagger and were meek as lambs.
“Yes, captain?”
“We are here, captain.”
Their innocence was sublime. No school-boy could have equalled it. Bertrand struggled hard to hide a smile.
“You are too noisy, you two. Stand back and remember your manners.”
They stood back, yet ready to wink at the first chance.
“Certainly, captain. We were amusing ourselves a little.”
“Cease to be amused.”
And for the life of him Bertrand could not bully them further when they looked at him like a pair of rough and mischievous dogs ready to come and lick his hands.
Two men in red and green were leading Madame Jeanne’s roan horse forward. She was still standing at the top of the steps, looking at Bertrand and biting her lower lip. All the prejudices of twenty years seemed shadowed forth upon her face. Even the cherished Olivier was afraid to meet her eyes.
Jeanne du Guesclin saw Bertrand take the roan’s bridle from the hands of one of the grooms. To those who watched her closely it seemed that some great struggle was passing behind the proud and full-lipped face. Her eyes had the strained look of an imperious nature to whom the bitterest ordeal may be the forgiving of defeat.
“Madame.”
Bertrand was before her, holding the bridle of her horse. His face appeared cold and impassive, and yet there was a slight softening of the stubborn mouth. Olivier, a mere pawn in this pageant of pride and passion, stood to one side, playing with his sword.
“Madame mother, may I help you to mount?”
Jeanne du Guesclin came down the steps like one under compulsion, and suffered Bertrand to take her hand. A strange thrill swept through her at the touch. It was as though she had realized with a flash of intuition that it was possible for a woman to be despised by her own son.
“Bertrand.”
He saw her lips tremble, saw her color and then go pale.
“Mother.”
It was as though the word struck her on the bosom—over her heart. She flashed an indescribable look at him, a look half of defiance, half of awe.
“Bertrand—”
He bent his head.
“You will come to us at Cancale?”
The words were half whispered, but Bertrand heard them, and felt all that was passing in Jeanne du Guesclin’s heart.
“Mother, you can command.”
He saw her draw a deep and hurried breath, and felt her grasp tighten upon his hand. Her eyes, full of the stormy instincts of a woman’s soul, betrayed a half-hunger for something that she could not name.
“Then—you will come? I ask it.”
“Yes.”
“Thanks. You are generous—more generous than I deserve.”
Thus far her pride would bend itself, and Bertrand, as he helped her to the saddle, felt her hand close again spasmodically on his. He knew the iron of his mother’s will, and understood how much those few words meant.
He walked beside her to the gate. And there, like a woman whose true instincts break through the ice of years, she looked long at him, and touched his forehead with her hand.
“Do not forget us at Cancale.”
“No, I shall not forget.”
“You have given us great honor.”
“Madame, remember, I am still Bertrand, your son.”
Bertrandwas astir next morning, with the reconciliation of yesterday still vividly before his mind. He began to dress and to arm himself, sitting on the edge of the bed in his room in one of the turrets, his hands dawdling at their work as though their master were too much enthralled by the importunity of his own thoughts. He had been moved by the sudden surrender of his mother’s pride, and the element of shame in her recantation had roused in him a new instinct of tenderness, a tenderness that overflowed perhaps from a subtle and more human source. The indifference of years had been broken by a few halting, yet inevitable, words. Bertrand had given Jeanne du Guesclin no idle promise. He would turn his horse’s head towards Cancale that very day.
Bertrand could hear Hopart and Guicheaux talking together in the little anteroom that opened from the turret stair. The fellows had lain like a couple of dogs outside his door, happy in the promise that he had given them that they should be his men from that day forth. The murmur of their voices came up to Bertrand as he armed, bringing back many a wild memory of wild nights spent on the moors and in the woods.
He buckled on his arm-pieces, using teeth and hands to clinch the straps, and, picking up his sword, went to the turret window and looked out. A thin mist hung over the meadows and the woods, a mist shot through like some silvery cloth with the gold threads of the morning sun. Above the haze the tops of the aspen-trees glimmered towards the deepening blue, and the jackdaws, whose nests were in the tall chimneys, were croaking and wheeling about the castle.
From the turret window Bertrand could see into the garden, where the mist clung about the orchard trees and dimmed the pool where the water-lilies spread their cups of ivory and of gold. Early though it was, Tiphaïne walked in the garden, with the Vicomte’s dog following at her heels. Bertrand had hoped for some such chance of speaking to her alone before he sallied to Cancale.
“Saddle the horses in an hour,” he said, as he passed Hopart and Guicheaux on the stairs and went clashing down in his well-worn harness. The men watched him down the first gray curve of the winding stair, silent, whimsical, mysteriously wise. Hopart nodded; Guicheaux bobbed his hatchet face in turn. A long, red tongue darted out momentarily between a thin and humorous pair of lips.
“The captain has it, God bless him.”
Hopart looked solemn.
“And something of a scold, too!”
Guicheaux’s bright eyes were dull suddenly, as though he were thinking of the Aspen Tower in far Broceliande, and of the grim happenings there that had shocked even his war-hardened soul.
“The devil’s in the women,” he said, with reflection, “and yet—not the devil, brother Hopart, for the devil, I guess, would never have bearded the captain and made him humble, as she did, in Broceliande.”
Hopart nodded.
“A brave lady.”
“Our Lord keep them”—and the rascal crossed himself with the gravity of a fanatic—“she’s just the captain’s match, just as stout in the heart as he. I’ll wager she’s waiting for him in the garden.”
The giant chuckled.
“If she’s a lady of sense.”
“Which she is. Come up; we’ll peep.”
And in they went to the window of the turret-room, and by the affectionate grin on Hopart’s face it was plain that Guicheaux’s prophecy had not flown wide.
Tiphaïne and Bertrand were standing beside the pool, she in her green gown with the violets thereon, he in his harness, belted and spurred for the road to the sea. He had told her the preceding night of the last melting of his mother’s pride. Tiphaïne had known, when she rose with the dawn, that Bertrand was leaving La Bellière for Cancale that morning.
But it was not of his own home that Bertrand thought as he stood beside Tiphaïne in the mist-wrapped garden. Life had taken for him a deeper tone. No more would he be the free lance, the man of the moors, who fought like an outcast for the law of his own hand.
“So you will go to Cancale?”
She spoke softly, like one who thinks. Bertrand was standing with his shoulders squared, looking at the water, his arms crossed upon his breast.
“To Cancale, my old home.”
“And then—?”
“To the wars again.”
“It is always war with us.”
“It will always be war with us till the English are driven into the sea.”
“You will share—in that.”
“God helping me”—and he bowed his head—“and some day—”
He paused, a man weighing his words.
“Some day—I shall come to La Bellière again.”
He turned and looked at her, as though wondering whether the woman in her understood.
“Bertrand.”
She was gazing at the pool, with its floating lilies and the swallows skimming.
“Bertrand. My father is going towards the grave. He looks to me for a double love, now that Robin is no more his son. Can you blame me for remembering this?”
He looked at her honestly, and answered:
“No.”
They were standing close to each other, so close that Bertrand’s hand touched Tiphaïne’s arm.
“It is not easy to give up—all.”
She felt that he was trembling.
“Bertrand, I have one word for you.”
“And that word?”
“Wait.”
Her hand touched his. He held it, and stood looking down into her face.
“To serve you, honor you, to bide my time,” he said.
It was not the half-shamed face of a girl that he gazed at, but the inspired face of a brave woman.
“Bertrand, take troth from me; are you content?”
He threw his head back with a great intake of his breath.
“Content,” was all he answered.
From the turret window overhead Hopart and Guicheaux had drawn back with curiously stolid and solemn faces. It was as though each of these ragged sworders were attempting to disavow any trace of feeling by assuming a staring obtuseness that scorned anything so mawkish as sympathy with Bertrand and the lady. Hopart yawned behind his hand, looking at his comrade the while out of the corners of his slits of eyes.
“Borrowed that grease-pot, brother?” he asked, abruptly, as though fixing on a sufficiently unemotional topic.
Guicheaux stared. He was not without sentiment.
“Grease-pot?”
“For the captain’s stirrup leathers; they’re stiff as boards. I told you to get it from the cook, eh?”
“Wipe them round your neck, brother,” said the thin man; “ ’twill serve.”
Hopart yawned again, and glanced reflectively towards his stomach.
“Honest service once more,” he said, with a fat and complacent sigh; “a roof over a man’s head, and clean straw to lie in; good food and plenty. Brother, I have pricked two holes to let out my belt.”
It was the distant braying of a trumpet and the floating-up of a haze of dust among the poplar-trees on the Dinan road where the mist had cleared that brought the alert, hawklike glint back into Guicheaux’s eyes. He rested his elbows on the window-sill and craned his head forward, his mouth open as though it helped him to take in sound.
“Hst!”
Hopart leaned his hands on Guicheaux’s shoulders and flattened the thin man against the wall as he peered out in turn.
“Trumpets and banners, God a mercy!”
Guicheaux gave an expostulatory heave.
“Push me through the wall, hogshead! Eyes alive, but here’s a brave show—pennons by the score.”
Hopart’s heavy breathing grew yet heavier as he craned his head forward over Guicheaux’s shoulder.
“The Ermine, the Ermine, or I’m a bat!”
“Beaumanoir! Beaumanoir!”
“All for the love of the captain, I’ll swear. All the cats in Brittany coming to purr and rub against his legs.”
Guicheaux, in his excitement, continued to heave Hopart back a little, and to draw himself up so that he lay like a bolster doubled over the sill.
“Beaumanoir! Bully Beaumanoir, by God’s grace! Phew!”
He kicked out suddenly and began to writhe and wriggle under Hopart’s weight.
“Get back, great fool! Let me in.”
“What ails you, little one?”
“The captain!” And Guicheaux spluttered. “Get off my legs, oaf. He’ll break my head.”
Hopart’s obtuseness seemed as bulky as his body.
“What’s the captain doing, eh?”
Guicheaux cursed him, and contrived to squeeze back into the room.
“Was not madame there, fool?” he asked, looking hot and flattened.
“Madame?”
“Yes.”
And Guicheaux smacked his lips on the back of his hand.