“Yes — but it is very hard for the woman who is ill-treated, all the same,” said Lady Brenda, unwilling to relinquish her defence.
“Very — I agree with you,” replied the king. “I made many women unhappy in that way myself. If the whole world, in regard to marriage, were directed by one sublimely wise individual, who should be really able to judge when divorce is just and necessary and to dictate the terms of it, the institution would be a good and wise one. All government is but an attempt to combine the best faculties of the many into such a working shape as may represent the imaginary action of one sublimely wise individual. Hitherto the attempt has never wholly succeeded. The government of the many has never been so good as that of one or two exceptionally good and talented autocrats who have really lived. Owing to the rarity of such individuals it is found that, as a whole, it is better to adopt the form of government by the many, where at least there is some sort of balance maintained between the bad and the good sides of human nature. I myself believed in myself so much that I founded the autocratic despotism of the kings of France, when the Parliament gave their verdict in accordance with my instructions against Charles de Bourbon. It was the first thoroughly autocratic act accomplished by a French monarch, and but for Louis de Brézé, Diane’s husband, it would not have been brought about, as you probably know. It was no wonder that I pardoned her father, when her husband saved me from destruction. I pardoned almost every one concerned in the conspiracy except the Constable himself. Fortunately he was killed in the storming of Rome, or he would still have given me trouble. He had the devil in his body, and would have given me no peace. Madame d’Etampes would have helped him, and did, as she afterwards helped the emperor, out of sheer hatred for Madame de Brézé.”
“So I have heard,” said Lady Brenda. “It is an instance of the advantages-your majesty obtained from the connection with Madame d’Etampes.”
“To carry out your theory, madam, I should have divorced Eleonora, and married Anne in the face of the emperor. The result would have been startling.”
“Yes. Madame d’Etampes would have been satisfied and you would have had her for a friend instead of an enemy. Only — according to my theory, the divorce should have been demanded by the queen, and not by your majesty. At all events the treaty of Crespy would never have been signed.”
“It would have been a pity if it had not been signed, though no one could have foreseen that,” answered the king. “Madame d’Etampes wanted to make a great man of my poor boy Charles at the expense of his brother, out of spite against Diane de Poitiers, by marrying him to the emperor’s daughter or niece, as the emperor pleased; and to obtain this she persuaded the emperor to relinquish finally his claims upon Burgundy. Charles died, and the marriage never took place, but Burgundy remained French, and Henry ultimately overcame the emperor in at least one campaign, though he failed in others. Had he taken my advice about the Guise he might have done better. His prospects were not injured by anything I did, nor by the peace of Crespy. It is not fair to impute his failures to Madame d’Etampes, however much she tried to do him injury. She was not successful, or she would not have been obliged to leave the court after my death.”
“Poor woman!” exclaimed Lady Brenda. “It must have been very hard for her to leave it all! However, she had laid up a very pretty fortune.”
“An she never loved me in the least. She was not to be pitied, for she got all she wanted in this world.”
“No. I pity Françoise far more,” answered Lady Brenda. “You say you never see her now?”
“Never — I have sought her long,” said the king, sadly. His whole manner changed from a tone of half cynical, half buoyant good-humour to the expression of a profound sadness, as indeed occurred every time he mentioned the ill-fated countess. “You cannot imagine,” he continued, “how the thought of her dominates me, nor how hopeless is the passion of a dead man for a dead woman. It is a result, such a love, and it is irreparable, as results most often are. You who live and love cannot know what it is to love only when the body is in the grave, long crumbled into dust, and to love without hope. You who can still repair your mistakes, you cannot realise what it is to exist where there is no reparation. You who lightly forget, or remember only when it is convenient, you cannot guess at the agony of a state where you must perpetually remember everything and be conscious of the shame of a fault for centuries at a time.”
“Would it be any relief for you to see her now?”
“Yes,” answered Francis, thoughtfully, “I think it would be a relief. I may be wrong, but I fancy I should be more peaceful if I could hear her say she forgave me. Perhaps she would not say it.”
“I don’t know,” said Lady Brenda. “I think she would. It may be possible to bring about a meeting now, owing to these astral things, or whatever Augustus calls them. I will ask him.”
The king was silent and seemed deep in thought. The sun had long disappeared and as they talked the twilight deepened into night, the broad water turned black and grey in streaks and bands, and then at last all black, while one by one the stars shone out above as though angels were lighting the candles at the altars of heaven. The soft land breeze floated down from the mountains and whispered over the terrace, and stirred the thin lace which Lady Brenda had thrown over her head and about her neck. The dead king sat motionless by her side, his head sunk on his breast, his great white hands clasped together upon one knee. Lady Brenda was thinking that the party stayed long upon their excursion and was wishing that they would return; and then her thoughts came back in ready sympathy to the being by her side, to his sufferings and regrets, his overwhelming memories of the past and his slender hopes for the future.
As they sat there side by side a woman in a black mantle came slowly towards them across the terrace, her long mourning garments trailing noiselessly behind her. The dark hood had fallen back from her head, and the light from the open windows of the drawing-room fell full upon her fair and pale young face. Slowly and noiselessly she came forward, but though the king did not look up, he seemed to feel her presence, and his hands twisted each other, while his broad chest heaved with excitement.
She came and stood before him, a frail, fair, blue eyed woman with a sorrowful face and dishevelled golden hair, and she looked down on the dead king’s bent head. Suddenly he sprang to his feet and threw out his arms as though he would have clasped her in them. But she drew swiftly back from him and faced him, looking sadly into his eyes.
“Ah, sire,” she cried in a strange, heart-broken voice, “why were you so unkind, so cruel to me?”
“Françoise, for the love of Heaven forgive me!” groaned the wretched spirit, stretching out his white hands towards the woman.
“Forgive you?” she echoed, sadly. “Is that all? I forgave you long ago. It is not all — to forgive, even when we are dead, you and I.”
“It is not all, Françoise — there is more — more than I can say. I love you still,” cried the king, springing forward.
“No — no — no! You never loved me — it was only I who loved, and loved to death, too well, too long, too sinfully!”
With streaming eyes the dead woman looked despairingly at the dead man, and then with a cry she turned and fled through the soft dusk into the darkness beyond. But Francis stood still, looking sorrowfully after her, his hands hanging listlessly by his sides, his eyes moistened with tears. Then he turned to Lady Brenda.
“And so it is,” he said, “that our sins pursue us for ever and cannot be forgotten. I tell you, I love her — I never really loved another woman, and I know it now. But she can never know it, until all this is over. The sin of loving her pursues me even in death — ah, madam, it is all too great and deep for me to understand.”
“I am sorry she came — indeed I am,” said Lady Brenda. “She has made you more unhappy than you were before.”
“Yes,” answered the dead man. “When we are alive we often long for something that is not good, and when we have it, we
are disappointed. But when we are dead we are doomed to long for the same things, and when they are given to us they are more bitter in one moment than all the pains of ten lifetimes. If pain could kill us now, we should die every hour, every minute.”
“You had so often wished to see her,” said Lady Brenda, sympathetically.
“Indeed, that is true. I had wished it as I never wished anything in my life. You have seen me get my wish — you have seen my suffering. Do you think that such pain changes us? No, we can never change. What we have made ourselves we must remain, who knows? perhaps for ever. We suffer, and have no rest. All that the heart feels from boyhood to old age, we feel at every instant of this eternity. Do you wonder that when it is possible we rejoice at meeting the living, and speaking with them, and dreaming for one moment that we are alive again, and subject to change?”
“But there is hope still left to you,” argued the lady.
“Hope — but such hope as you would not call hope at all. Do not speak to a dead man of hope, madam. It means the end. It is not hope, but doubt, for with the certainty of change, when time shall have worn itself out, there is the indescribable fear, the agony of uncertainty, the horror of what that change may be.”
Lady Brenda shuddered and drew her shawl more closely around her. In the distance below she heard the sound of voices, Gwendoline’s ringing laugh and Chard’s deep tones as he called to the sailors. The boat had come back and the party were landing. The king held out his hand.
“I thank you for this pleasant hour, madam,” he said, simply.
“Your majesty is not going?” asked Lady Brenda, almost ludicrously forgetful, for the moment, that her visitor was only a ghost. But she started as she took his hand which chilled her to the bone.
“Yes, I am going. But we shall meet again very soon,” he answered, and in a moment he had left her.
CHAPTER VIII.
“I HAVE MADE up my mind that I will never be surprised at anything again,” said Lady Brenda, as the party sat at their mid-day breakfast on the day after the events last recorded. She had been telling the rest about the king’s visit.
“You are quite right,” answered Augustus. “You are quite right, my dearly beloved mother-in-law. Surprise is nothing but a disturbance in the balance of the faculties. Now, when a woman possesses faculties like yours it is a pity that they should not be always balanced.”
“Really, Augustus—”
“Quite so,” continued Chard, imperturbably. “When once you have discovered that we are likely to meet dead men who talk very agreeably, almost every day, it is as well to make the most of your opportunities. The phenomenon will probably be explained some day; meanwhile let us enjoy it as much as we can. It would be very pleasant if these charming people could dine with us, but I gather from various things that they do not dine at all, nor even breakfast. Who is going on the expedition this afternoon?”
“We all are,” said the three ladies, with a unanimity as rarely found in the country when a walk is proposed, as it is general in town when there is a ball.
They had determined to take a long walk among the mountains, and, as the day was comparatively cool, they started immediately after breakfast. Augustus led them up the rocky path, past their little stone hut which was the centre of his experiments, and along the steep side of the mountain over the sea. They were all four good walkers and fond of exercise.
“It would be very amusing if some of our friends would walk with us,” remarked Diana, as she picked her way over the rocks.
“Delightful,” said Gwendoline, steadying herself with her stick upon the summit of a small boulder, and looking at the view.
“Dear me!” exclaimed Lady Brenda, “who can that be? Do you see, Augustus? Such a very odd dress! Do they still wear three-cornered hats in this part of the world — and brown coats with brass buttons?”
“He is a very big man,” said Augustus, eyeing the stranger, who was coming down the rocks and was not more than a hundred yards from them. “A very big man indeed. He must be some old peasant. We will talk to him.”
They walked on and in a few seconds came up to the solitary pedestrian. Augustus spoke to him. He was of colossal size, with a huge head surmounted by an old full-bottomed wig and a three-cornered hat. He wore knee-breeches and stockings, with stout buckled shoes, and he carried in his hand a huge oak stick, which looked more like a club. Augustus addressed him in the dialect of the hills.
“Me fat’u piacè, m’andecat’ a’ndusse wa p’annà a Pussità?”
“Sir,” replied the stranger in English, in a loud, gruff voice, “from your appearance I take you to be an Englishman, like myself.”
“I beg your pardon,” said Augustus, very much surprised. “There are so few of our countrymen about here—”
“Your surprise is venial sir,” returned the other, fixing his dark eyes on Chard’s face. “I am not only an Englishman, but a dead Englishman; and, what is more, sir, I believe that a dead Englishman is better than a live Italian. I am Samuel Johnson.”
“Dr. Johnson!” exclaimed the four living people in astonishment.
“Do not doctor me, sir,” roared the great man in tremendous tones. “Do not doctor me, sir, for I am past doctoring!” He glared a moment at the party and then suddenly broke into a peal of laughter, in which the others soon joined.
“If I cannot frighten you,” he continued, good-naturedly, “I can at least excite your merriment. But, sir, I have seen little boys in Scotland tremble at the sight of this stick.”
“You have found it, then?” said Augustus. “I congratulate you.”
“Yes sir, they stole it, the villains; I always said so.”
In a few minutes they all proceeded on their walk. Augustus stated who he was and presented Dr. Johnson to his three companions. The doctor showed the greatest delight and explained that he had just met the party of dead men, who were passing the afternoon among the rocks. He was intimate with them, he said, and they had told him all about Chard and his experiments. Indeed the doctor had taken the road towards the Castello del Gaudio in hopes of meeting the inhabitants of the castle.
“I wonder,” said Augustus, “that you should care to walk here — you who are so fond of trees.”
“Since I have hung loose on the world,” replied. Johnson, “and have been at liberty to walk where I please, and as long as I please, I have grown tolerant of contrast. It is one thing to be obliged to traverse a country where there is no timber; it is another matter to be independent of those laws which, while we are alive, force us to spend some time in moving from place to place.”
“Do you think,” asked Lady Brenda, “that when one has as many beautiful things as one likes, one begins to like ugly things, just for a change?”
“No, madam,” said Johnson. “I do not like ugly things, but I have learned that there are no ugly things in nature. In living persons the impression of the ugliness of external objects is purely relative; since we know that an African negro in the natural state sees more beauty in a black woman of his own race than in a white woman of ours, and that with ourselves the contrary is the case. But if the negro be taken to a country inhabited by white men and women, he soon comes to regard the white woman as the type of what a woman should be, and before long he will see beauty where he formerly supposed that there was nothing but ugliness.”
“But of course white women are more beautiful than black!” exclaimed Lady Brenda.
“When you say that they are more beautiful, you imply that their beauty is contrasted with the less beauty of black women,” continued Johnson. “For since you employ a comparative form in describing the one, it may reasonably be supposed that you find something in the other with which the first may be compared. Indeed, comparison is at the root of all intelligence, and, if other things be alike, the man who is able to compare any two things with greater accuracy than his neighbour, is the wiser of the two; for, if we suppose that two men are equally able to remember that which they
have learned, it is clear that he who is able to discern the comparative value of the different things he knows, possesses of the two the greater facility for using his knowledge. It may be doubted whether Sir Isaac Newton possessed a more remarkable memory than Lord Chesterfield; but it cannot be questioned that, whereas, in the latter, the power of comparison merely produced a brilliant wit, in Newton the power was so great that it produced a very great man and a very great discoverer.”
“Is it fair to compare a statesman with a scientist?” asked Diana, as the party paused in their walk.
“If statesmanship is a science, it is fair,” answered the doctor, looking down at the young girl.
“Statesmanship must be the greatest of sciences,” said Augustus. “There are a hundred scientists today alive, who are commonly called great. There are certainly not three statesmen alive to whom the epithet is applied now, or will be applied when they are dead.”
“You are quite right, sir,” answered Johnson.
“I suppose there is less room for them,” remarked Gwendoline.
“I do not know,” returned her husband. “There are hundreds of important places in which a man might distinguish himself, if we count together all the important governments in the world. If great statesmen were plenty, there would be no reason why a whole government should not consist of great men. Almost every university in the world pretends to boast of possessing one or two great men, and nobody seems able to prove that they are not really as great as is pretended.”
“Scientists,” said the doctor, “or men of science, as we called them in my day, are in a position which differs wholly from that of statesmen; for while the former are privileged to speak without acting, the latter are often compelled to act without explaining themselves in words. A man is not to be held responsible for his convictions, provided that he does not act upon them; but the actions of a statesman produce results of the sort which soon become manifest to all men and which influence the lives of mankind, so that mankind has the right to judge him. If all the theories of men of science were subjected to the test of experiment upon the corpus vile of whole nations, it may be doubted whether popular opinion would continue to be as tolerant of scientific opinion as it now is; for though one man might succeed in rearing men from a litter of monkeys, the next experimenter might very likely, by a small error, reduce men to the state of apes. One man rises up, and declares to the people that they must believe in him, but that, in order to believe in him, it is necessary that they should not believe in God. He exalts science to the position of the Deity, and tells people that they must worship it; but it is his own science which he exalts, and not that of his adversary, who has invented a different kind of idol. No, sir, science is a good thing so long as it is useful; but when, in its present state, it takes upon itself to tamper with so enormous and vital a matter as the belief of man in his Creator, it is pernicious, it is dangerous, and it will soon become destructive.”
Complete Works of F Marion Crawford Page 308