There was a moment’s pause on the landing.
“He passes my door, and Grizzel’s, and goes up the ladder to the loft. Listen.”
The uncertain footsteps came on and stopped. Someone was fumbling with the latch of the door. It opened. Abelard started up. It was Fulbert who came through it, shading the candle with his hand. He closed the door behind him and stood a moment blinking, till the candle flame steadied itself and shone clear on their faces. He stood there looking at them, and they at him. Then he lifted his hands with a cry no louder than a bat’s shriek, swayed, and slid to the ground. The candlestick falling made more noise than he. The candle rolled from it on the floor, and lay there, still burning.
In a moment Abelard was beside him, slipping his arm beneath his shoulder. He was breathing hoarsely, stertorously, and his mouth was awry.
“Hold the light, Heloise,” said Abelard. “It’s a stroke.”
There was no answer. He reached for the candle with his left hand, set it up, and turned to look at her.
She was sitting on the edge of the bed, her dark hair flowing over her shoulders and her rounded knees, looking straight at him, but seeing neither him nor the wreckage in his arms. Her eyes were like the windows of a roofless house.
“Heloise!” he cried, his voice sharp with fear.
She shook her head. “It is over,” she said, under her breath. Then coming to herself with a shudder, she looked at him, but this time with recognition.
“Here!” she cried, and springing from the bed, she flung back the covers. “Lay him down here. I’ll waken Grizzel.”
CHAPTER VII
“I tell you, Bernard, the thing is impossible.”
Bernard of Clairvaux looked tranquilly down at Gilles. “With God all things are possible.”
“Amen,” said Gilles. “But by your leave, Bernard, you and He are not yet identical.”
The eyes, deep set in the ravaged face, lit up with a smile of extraordinary charm.
“Thank God,” said Gilles, “you can still laugh. Even at yourself. And if you smile like that at young Robert, he will eat out of your hand all the way back to Clairvaux. But I doubt if you will keep him, once you have him.”
“I shall keep him,” said Bernard. His lips set.
“And your warrant?”
“Those that Thou gavest me I have kept, and not one of them is lost, save the son of perdition. And, please God, Robert shall not be that.”
“I do not imagine,” said Gilles soberly, “that it pleased Him to lose Judas. But He lost him. Has it never struck you, Bernard, that God has more respect for the free will of the creature He made in His own image than you have?”
“It was free will that damned us,” said Bernard.
“That,” said Gilles, “is not the point.”
Bernard moved impatiently. “I have no logic, Gilles,” he began, “and beside you I am an ignorant man. All I know is that if a man has once seen the face of God, as young Robert did, and then turns from it, it were better for him that he had never been born; for he has crucified the Son of God afresh, and put Him to an open shame. And I have vowed not to break my fast till I have seen him face to face, and pleaded with him, on my knees, to come back. And his penance I shall share with him myself.” He was looking straight before him, forgetting to whom he spoke, and the voice that had been harsh and constrained as he began had dropped to a deeper and strangely moving note.
Gilles looked at the young clenched hands, knotted with rheumatism—rheumatism at twenty-six—the thin stooped figure. Did not someone tell him that the Abbot’s cell at Clairvaux was so built that he could not stand upright, nor stretch himself out upon his bed?
“If you speak to him like that,” he said gently, “I think he will come back. But, Bernard,” his eyes had gone to the window beyond which the white pigeons flashed and tumbled in the blue air of May, “forgive me: are you so sure that to leave Clairvaux, where no man speaks unless in a whisper and the damp drips down the refectory walls and the brethren kneel in green slime on the chapel floor, and to go back to the kind house of Cluny, where he was reared and where his bed if it was hard was dry, is to turn from the face of God, and crucify His Son afresh?”
“I am. If a man puts his hand to the plough and looks back——”
“Bernard,” Gilles’ voice was suddenly stern, “he has turned not from God’s face, but from your face. He has not crucified the Son of God afresh, but he is the first deserter from your abbey that was to be the City of God upon earth; and the thing that he has crucified is your pride.”
The Abbot flinched, but there was no anger in the deep eyes, only perplexity.
“My pride? Gilles, is it possible that any man on this earth should think me proud?”
“Proud? I tell you, Bernard, there is only one man in Europe prouder than the Abbot of Clairvaux, and that is Peter Abelard.”
A spasm of anger contorted the Abbot’s face, but only for a moment. It was followed by a look of genuine wretchedness.
“And now,” said Gilles remorsefully, “you will be using the discipline on those thin shoulders for weeks, for fear I may be right.”
“God knows you may be,” said Bernard. “And that I should have given you cause to think it is wretchedness enough.”
“Forget it,” said Gilles. “And what is one solitary son of Belial like myself against the united voice of Christendom?”
The arras parted and Heloise stood, the eager expectancy on her face slowly ebbing as she saw an unfamiliar presence.
“Forgive me, Gilles,” she said. “I did not know that you had a stranger with you.”
“Come in, child,” said Gilles. “This is the Abbot of Clairvaux.”
She knelt dutifully to kiss the Abbot’s ring, then rose, regarding him. The two stood face to face for a moment, searching one another’s eyes, and Gilles noted a curious resemblance. Not of feature, but of spirit. They both, he could see, lived and moved in some other life than their own: both had the same inner radiance, the same clear line of cheekbone and jaw. The soft roundness was gone from Heloise’s chin: she was thinner and there were dark shadows beneath her eyes. Yet never, thought Gilles, had she looked so starry.
“My daughter,” said the Abbot suddenly, “I think some day I shall call you sister.”
Heloise’s head drew back as a fawn’s might from the hand of a stranger. Her eyes were startled.
“What do you mean, my Father?”
“The life of the spirit is more to you already than the life of the flesh. And how shall you not someday be in subjection to the Father of Spirits, and live? Have you never thought of taking the vows?”
She caught her breath. “Never.”
“I had a brother,” Bernard went on, inexorably. “He had your look. He was married to a young wife and had two fair sons. He struggled long, but in the end he gave them up, and has come to live with his brethren in our bare house at Clairvaux. For there is no half-way house with such as you. Let you once give, you give, I think, for eternity.”
“And what, Father,” said Heloise quickly, “if one has already given? If there is no more oil in the lamp?” Her smile was faintly mocking. She turned from him decisively. “But I must not stay. My uncle is watching for me. I only came,” she added, “to bring you this letter, Gilles.”
Gilles took it from her, without glancing at the superscription. “There is no answer?” he asked. “I need not read it now?”
“There is no answer,” said Heloise. She was watching him anxiously. He put it between the leaves of the Horace in his lap, and closed the book upon it, with a little reassuring nod. She bent to touch his hand, knelt before the Abbot, and was gone.
Bernard crossed over to the hearth.
“Who is she, Gilles? I have never seen a face that had so markedly the makings of a saint. She looked to me as Our Lady might, w
hen she sang Magnificat.”
“She is niece to one of our canons,” said Gilles briefly. “Her name is Heloise.”
Bernard stood rigid. “Not Abelard’s whore?”
“She would, I think, choose so to describe herself.”
Bernard opened his mouth to speak, and shut it again.
“That’s right, Bernard,” said Gilles drily. “Think better of it.”
“That one can go about, transparent seeming to the crystalline soul within, and that soul be mired with the filthiest sin of the flesh! Truly, God’s ways are past finding out.”
“I am glad you think so, Bernard,” said Gilles tranquilly. “You thought you had the key to them a little while ago.”
Again the look of anger, again the frank recognition. Curse him, thought Gilles, the man is a saint.
“I do not believe it is His purpose it should always be so,” said Bernard slowly. “I shall keep vigils for her.”
“As Paphnutius did for Thaïs?”
Bernard had come across the room and was looking inscrutably down at the massive fleshly countenance upturned to his.
“Why do you come to see me, Bernard?” said Gilles irritably. “A heathen man and a publican. To do me good?”
“No,” said Bernard. He thought for a while. “I am afraid,” he said simply, “it is only because I like you, Gilles.”
Gilles flung out his hands and groaned. “What is one to do with a man like that? But, Bernard,” he looked up, his eyes bright with mischief, “it has given me a thought, to edification. Two kinds of people you love: lost souls like me, black sheep, goats even. And your own fold, that blessed little, shivering, ague-stricken flock of yours at Clairvaux. But the brethren, the plain grey sheep of the other fold—you have small love or charity for them.”
Bernard stood, frowning thoughtfully.
“God forgive me if you are right, Gilles. And my anger rises so that I fear you are. I shall put my mind to it. But I must be going.”
“Well, be gentle with young Robert.”
The Abbot nodded. He lifted his hands: “The grace of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion and fellowship of the Holy Ghost be with you.”
“Amen,” said Gilles. “The uncanny thing about you, Bernard, is that you invoke the communion and fellowship of the Holy Ghost upon me as if you meant it. It leaves me uncomfortable for half an hour.”
The Abbot flung back his head in a delighted shout of laughter. “He would not find you such ill company as you think, Gilles,” said he, and went downstairs.
“That,” said Gilles to himself, “was very handsome of him.” He sighed, and opened his Horace. The letter lay there, addressed in Heloise’s hand to Master Gilles de Vannes, but there was a mark after the “Vannes.” He held it thoughtfully. God help them, he thought, they had not seen each other for a fortnight. Abelard should be here any moment now. A pity the child could not have stayed: but she had said her uncle was watching. Truly, as Bernard said, God’s ways are past finding out. Why, when the old man had his stroke, could he not have died instead of living to make the house a hell? Living, too, with a strange new energy of hate. And that old bearded witch of a Grizzel not much better. It was an ill house for that young creature. But her courage! The love of these two had always been beyond his comprehending: it was beyond it still. Separation and agony seemed to have purged whatever dross was in it: it burned with a clearer flame. Abelard, back in his old quarters in the Maison du Poirier, and half-starved again with Guibert’s poor providing and worse cooking, was like the Abelard of that first September. He had begun to write again in the long evenings, till it was dark enough for him to pace up and down beneath the house, if he might catch a glimpse of her at the window. But only twice had he dared to find his way in. Old Grizzel was on the watch, long after Fulbert had gone to bed, and it was only when she went out to her crony in the Rue Cocatrice that it was possible. But he had no complaint. He never spoke to Gilles of his own misery, only of hers. That, Gilles could see, was his perpetual torment. And yet it seemed to him, watching and pondering, that they knew ecstasy now as they had never known it, when love was easy and warm on the hearthstone.
There was the familiar foot, hurrying up the stair. The door burst open, and once again Gilles saw eagerness suddenly wiped from a face. This face had strangely got its youth again.
“She was here, Peter,” he said, “but the old man was watching for her. She left you a letter.”
Abelard caught at it and went over to the far window, turning his back on Gilles to read it. Gilles heard the sound of the breaking seal, and then a sudden exclamation. There fell a long silence.
Abelard turned and came slowly down the room. His eyes looked dazed. He swallowed once or twice before he spoke.
“She says,” he began at last, his voice so low that Gilles could hardly hear it, “she says she is going to have a child.”
Gilles looked at him in silence. The magnitude of the calamity had taken his speech from him.
At last he spoke. “It may not be so, Peter. She may easily be mistaken.”
Abelard shook his head. “She says that she is sure. She says,” his mouth began to tremble, “that she has been reading Aristotle to find out.” He broke down, helplessly. “Reading Aristotle, that little lonely child. Not a woman to speak to but that damned hag. Reading Aristotle, my little one, my little one. And I brought her to this.”
Gilles pulled himself together. “See here, Peter. Even if it is true, she is happy. She was here to-day. I tell you I never saw her so—so blessed. Bernard of Clairvaux saw her. He said she looked like Mary when she sang Magnificat.”
“I know.” Abelard raised his head, rubbing his eyes viciously. “Her letter is like that. It is a Magnificat. She is wildly happy. She says she thought for a long time it was too good to be true.”
The two looked at each other in bewilderment. “It is the way of women sometimes,” said Gilles, “when—when they love the father of it.”
Abelard flushed scarlet. “But, Gilles, what is she to do? The old man is cruel enough with her now, when there is no open scandal. You see, his having a stroke like that made it natural for me to move out of the house. He is like a child that shuts his eyes and thinks nobody can see him. But this—there will be no dissembling this. Even as it is—I cannot tell you, Gilles, the very thought of it drives me mad. Heloise pretended she had hurt herself. But I saw one bruise. It is as if hate gave him strength. And I think he hates her now. When I think of her alone in that house with him and that hell-cat Grizzel——”
“I have thought sometimes,” said Gilles, “that the old tenderness had come back.”
Abelard shook his head. “Only, I think, to torture him. And always he remembers how he was deceived. Do you know, Gilles, I could find it in my heart to pity him? Even that night, the poor soul had no suspicion when he came upstairs. He was creeping up to waken Heloise, because he felt sick. And he trusted me.”
“Don’t think of it now,” said Gilles.
Abelard got to his feet. “She must not stay in that house,” he said slowly. “That is one thing certain. But—Gilles, I have it; I shall take her to Brittany, to Denise.”
“Denise?”
“I told you, the sister who married Hugh the Stranger. They are living there still—at Le Palais. Denise has half a dozen already, and I told you, she has the kindness of the earth. And she always was fond of me.” He was walking up and down, his eyes bright. “This is the end of May. Heloise says two months. That means Christmas. We have only to wait till the end of June, and I can ride with her.” He was transfigured, as eager as a small boy planning a holiday. “Gilles, I must see her. To ride together, all the way to Brittany—and we shall have the whole summer, I need not come back till St. Rémy, October 1st. It was my own choice to begin in September. And later on I’ll have a proxy here and go back to her, for
Christmas.” He turned and stood looking out of the window, suddenly silent.
“Well, it is as it should be,” said Gilles gravely. “Where should your son be born, but in his father’s house?”
ebreak
BOOK II
BRITTANY
April—May 1118
CHAPTER I
“This then, as I have already said, is the definition of sin: sin is the will to hold or to follow after that which righteousness forbids, and from which a man is free to abstain.” The April sun came out from behind a racing cloud and turned the parchment molten, but Abelard, too absorbed in Augustine’s argument to be aware of his own discomfort, wrote on, his eyes screwed up and his left hand cupping a bay of shadow on the page. “I say then that there is no sin where there is no personal will to sin; but I would have it understood that I speak of sin, not of the punishment of sin: of that punishment I have elsewhere said what is to be said.” Abelard was smiling as he wrote, recognising with a twist of irony an arrogance so like his own. The quotation finished, he sat back, aware at last that his eyes were smarting; he looked from the almost invisible script on the dazzling page to the window, and saw a single branch of pear blossom from the ancient tree that grew against the western gable, intolerably white against the blackness of the bark. For a little while he sat, his hands outspread in the bar of light that fell across the table, remembering the Irish gloss he had seen in a MS. at Laon that Dubthach had shown him: “Good it is to see the April sunlight flickering on this page.” But to work in this blaze was impossible: he rose and began to drag the massive table across the room to its summer halting-place by the north window. Odd, he reflected, that one can only think, to call it thinking, in the grey light of the north in which no living thing thrives, except man’s mind only. He stood for a moment looking out at the Parvis Notre Dame, and an ancient beggar sunning himself on the steps of the cathedral. It would soon be time for Compline. He sat down, and again began to write.
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