Complete Works of F Marion Crawford

by F. Marion Crawford

  The Queen was still smiling as she rested her elbows upon the sill and her chin on her folded hands. She was near enough to the tennis-players to be heard by them if she spoke in a low tone.

  “Are you angry because Master Gilbert is frightened?” she asked, looking at Henry. “Or are you frightened because his lordship, the Count of Anjou, is angry?” she inquired, turning her eyes to Gilbert.

  He smiled at her way of opening the conversation, but Henry thought that she was laughing at him and grew redder than ever. Not deigning to answer, he picked up the ball and served it over the penthouse to himself, striking it back cleverly enough. The Queen laughed again as he kept his face resolutely turned from her.

  “Will you teach me to play, if I come down to you?” she asked, looking at the back of his head.

  “It is no game for women,” answered the boy, rudely, and still keeping the ball up.

  “Will you give me a lesson, Master Gilbert?”

  The laughing eyes were suddenly grave as they turned to the young Englishman, the smiling lips grew tender, and the voice was gentle. Without turning round, Henry felt the change and knew that she was looking at his friend; he served the ball with a vicious stroke that brought it back too high for him. Without turning his head to see where it had rolled, the angry boy walked off, picked up his tunic, which lay on the turf at a little distance, threw it over his arm, jammed his pointed cap upon his head with his other hand, and departed in offended dignity.

  The Queen smiled as she looked after him, but did not laugh again.

  “Will you teach me to play tennis?” she asked of Gilbert, who was hesitating as to what he should do. “You have not answered me yet.”

  “I shall at all times do your Grace’s bidding,” answered Gilbert, inclining his head a little and making a gesture with the hand that held his cap as if to put himself at her disposal.

  “At all times?” she asked quietly.

  Gilbert looked up quickly, fearing lest he might be tricked into a promise he did not understand, and he did not answer at once. But she would not repeat the question.

  “Wait,” she said, before he spoke. “I am coming down.”

  With an almost imperceptible gesture, like a greeting, she disappeared. Gilbert began to walk up and down, his hands behind him, his eyes on the ground, and he did not see the tennis-ball which Henry had lost until he almost stumbled over it. The boy’s words had roused an entirely new train of ideas in his mind. Perhaps no man could be so free from vanity as not to be pleased, even against his will, with the thought that the most beautiful living woman, and she a queen, was in love with him. But whatever satisfaction of that sort Gilbert may have felt was traversed in an opposite direction by the cool sense of his own indifference. And besides, that was a simple age in which sins were called by their own names and were regarded with a sort of semi-religious, respectful abhorrence by most honest gentlemen; and what was only the general expression of a narrow but high morality had been branded upon Gilbert’s soul during the past months in letters that were wounds by the ever-present memory of his own mother’s shame.

  The confusion of his reflections was simplified by the appearance of Queen Eleanor. At the window of the lower story, which opened to the ground, she stepped out, looked up and down the deserted yard, and then came towards him. Gilbert had been long enough in Paris to understand that Queen Eleanor had not the slightest regard for the set rules, formal prejudices, and staid traditions of her husband’s court; and when King Louis gravely protested against her dressing herself in man’s mail, bestriding his own favourite charger, and tilting at the Saracen quintain in the yard, she hinted with more or less good or ill nature, according to her mood, that her possessions were considerably more extensive than the kingdom of France, and that what she had been taught to do by William of Aquitaine was necessarily right, and beyond the criticism of Louis Capet, who was descended from a Paris butcher. Nevertheless, the Englishman had some reasonable doubts and misgivings at finding himself, a humble squire, alone in that quiet corner with the most beautiful and most powerful of reigning queens. But she, whose quick intuition was a gift almost beyond nature, knew what he felt before she had reached his side. She spoke quite naturally and as if such a meeting were an everyday occurrence.

  “You did not know that the window was mine?” she said quietly. “I saw how surprised you were when I looked out. It is a window of a little hall behind my room. There is a staircase leading down. I often come that way, but I hardly ever look out. To-day as I was passing I heard that silly child’s angry voice, and when I saw his face and heard what he said, I could not help laughing.”

  “The young Count is in earnest,” said Gilbert, quietly, for it would have seemed disloyal to him to join in the Queen’s laughter.

  “In earnest! Children are always in earnest!”

  “They deserve the more respect,” retorted the Englishman.

  “I never heard of respecting children,” laughed the Queen.

  “You never read Juvenal,” answered Gilbert.

  “You often say things which I never heard before,” answered the Queen.

  “Perhaps that is one reason why I like you.”

  She stopped and leaned against the penthouse, for they had reached the corner of the court, and she thoughtfully bit a sprig of rosemary which she had picked from her window in passing. Gilbert could not help watching the small white teeth that severed the little curling grey leaves like ivory knives, but the Queen’s eyes were turned from him and were very thoughtful.

  Gilbert deemed it necessary to say something.

  “Your Grace is very kind.” He bowed respectfully.

  “What makes you so sad?” she asked suddenly, after a short pause, and turning her eyes full upon him. “Is Paris so dull? Is our court so grave? Is my Gascony wine sour, that you will not be merry like the rest, or” — she laughed a little— “or are you not treated with the respect and consideration due to your rank?”

  Gilbert drew himself up a little as if not pleased by the jest.

  “You know well that I have no rank, Madam,” he said; “and though it should please you to command of me some worthy deed, and I should, by the grace of God, deserve knighthood, yet I would not have it save of my lawful sovereign.”

  “Such as teaching me to play tennis?” she asked, seeming not to hear the end of his speech. “You should as well be knighted for that as for any other thing hard to do.”

  “Your Grace is never in earnest.”

  “Sometimes I am.” Her eyelids drooped a little as she looked at him.

  “Not often enough, you think? And you — too often. Always, indeed.”

  “If I were Queen of France, I could be light-hearted, too,” said Gilbert. “But if your Grace were Gilbert Warde, you should be perhaps a sadder man than I.”

  And he also laughed a little, but bitterly. Eleanor raised her smooth brows and spoke with a touch of irony.

  “Are you so young, and have you already such desperate sorrows?”

  But as she looked, his face changed, with that look of real and cruel suffering which none can counterfeit. He leaned back against the penthouse, looking straight before him. Then she, seeing that she had touched the nerve in an unhealed wound, glanced sidelong at him, bit upon her sprig of rosemary again, turned, and with half-bent head walked slowly along to the next buttress; she turned again there, and coming back stood close before him, laying one hand upon his folded arm and looking up to his eyes, that gazed persistently over her head.

  “I would not hurt you for the world,” she said very gravely. “I mean to be your friend, your best friend — do you understand?”

  Gilbert looked down and saw her upturned face. It should have moved him even then, he thought, and perhaps he did not himself know that between her and him there was the freezing shadow of a faint likeness to his mother.

  “You are kind, Madam,” he said, somewhat formally. “A poor squire without home or fortune can hardly be the
friend of the Queen of France.”

  She drew back from him half a step, but her outstretched hand still rested on his arm.

  “What have lands and fortune to do with friendship — or with love?” she asked. “Friendship’s home is in the hearts of men and women; friendship’s fortune is friendship’s faith.”

  “Ay, Madam, so it should be,” answered Gilbert, his voice warming in a fuller tone.

  “Then be my friend,” she said, and her hand turned itself palm upward, asking for his.

  He took it and raised it to his lips in the act of bending one knee. But she hindered him; her fingers closed on his with a strength greater than he had supposed that any woman could possess, and she held him and made him stand upright again, so that he would have had to use force to kneel before her.

  “Leave that for the court,” she said; “when we are alone let us enjoy our freedom and be simply human beings, man and woman, friend and friend.”

  Gilbert still held her hand, and saw nothing but truth in the mask of open-hearted friendship in which she disguised her growing love. He was young and thought himself almost friendless; a generous warmth was suddenly at his heart, with something compounded of real present gratitude and of the most chivalrous and unselfish devotion for the future.

  She felt that she had gained a point, and she forthwith claimed the privilege of friendship.

  “And being friends,” she said, still holding his hand as he stood beside her, “will you not trust me and tell me what it is that seems to break your heart? It may be that I can help you.”

  Gilbert hesitated, and she saw the uncertainty in his face, and pressed his hand softly as if persuading him to speak.

  “Tell me!” she said. “Tell me about yourself!”

  Gilbert looked at her doubtfully, looked away, and then turned to her again. Her voice had a persuasion of its own that appealed to him as her beauty could not. Almost before he knew what he was doing he was walking slowly by her left side, in the shade of the church, telling her his story; and she listened, silently interested, always turning her face a little toward his, and sometimes meeting his eyes with eyes of sympathy. He could not have told his tale to a man; he would not have told it to a woman he loved; but Eleanor represented to him a new and untried relation, and the sweet, impersonal light of friendship waked the dark places of his heart to undreamt confidence.

  He told her what had befallen him, from first to last, but the sound of his own words was strange to him; for he found himself telling her what he had seen two and three years ago, in the light of what he had known but a few months, yet almost as if he had known it from the first. More than once he hesitated in his speech, being suddenly struck by the horror of what he was telling, and almost doubting the witness of his own soul to the truth. One thing only he did not tell — he never spoke of Beatrix, nor hinted that there had been any love in his life.

  They turned, and turned again many times, and he was hardly aware that at the end the Queen had linked one hand in his right arm and gently pressed it from time to time in sign of sympathy. And when he had finished, with a quaver in his deep voice as he told how he had come out into the world to seek his fortune, she stopped him, and they both stood still.

  “Poor boy!” she exclaimed softly. “Poor Gilbert!” — and her tone lingered on the name,— “the world owes you a desperate debt — but the world shall pay it!”

  She smiled as she spoke the last words, pressing his arm more suddenly and quickly than before; and he smiled, too, but incredulously. Then she looked down at her own hand upon his sleeve.

  “But that is not all,” she continued thoughtfully; “was there no woman — no love — no one that was dearer than all you lost?”

  A faint and almost boyish blush rose in Gilbert’s cheek, and disappeared again instantly.

  “They took her from me, too,” he said in a low, hard voice. “She was Arnold de Curboil’s daughter — when he married my mother he made his child my sister. You know the Church’s law!”

  Eleanor was on the point of saying something impulsively, but her eyelids suddenly drooped and she checked herself. If Gilbert Warde did not know that the Church granted dispensations in such cases, she saw no good reason for telling him.

  “Besides,” he added, “I could not have her now, unless I could take her from her father by force.”

  “No,” said the Queen, thoughtfully. “Is she fair?”

  “Very dark,” said Gilbert.

  “I meant, is she beautiful?”

  “To me, yes: the most beautiful in the world. But how should I know? I have never heard others speak of her; she is not beautiful as your Grace is, — not radiantly, supremely, magnificently perfect, — yet to my eyes she is very lovely.”

  “I should like to see her,” said the Queen.

  In the silence that followed they began to walk up and down again side by side, but Eleanor’s hand no longer rested on Gilbert’s arm. She could see that his eyes were fixed upon a face that was far away, and that his hand longed for a touch not hers; and a painful little thrill of disappointment ran through her, for she was not used to any sort of opposition, in great things or small. The handsome Englishman attracted her strangely, and not by his outward personality only. From the first a sort of mystery had hung over him, and she had felt, when she was with him, the inexplicable fascination of a curiosity which she should be sure to satisfy sooner or later. And now, having learned something of his life, and liking him the more for what she knew, she was suddenly filled with an irresistible longing to see the girl who had made the first mark on Gilbert’s life. She tried to conjure up the young face, and the dark hue he had spoken of brought the vision of a fateful shadow. Her mind dwelt upon the girl, and she started visibly when Gilbert spoke to her.

  “And has your Grace no deed for me to do?” he asked. “Is there nothing whereby I may prove my thanks?”

  “Nothing, save that you be indeed my friend — a friend I can trust, a friend to whom I may speak safely as to my own soul, a friend whom I may tell how heartily I hate this life I lead!”

  She uttered the last words with a sudden rising accent of unruly discontent, as genuine as every other outward showing of her vital nature.

  “How can your life be hateful?” asked Gilbert, in profound astonishment, for he did not know her half as well as she already knew him.

  “How can it be anything else?” she asked, “How should life not be hateful, when every natural thing that makes life worth living is choked as soon as it is awake? Oh, I often wish I were a man!”

  “Men do not wish you were,” answered Gilbert, with a smile.

  Suddenly, while they were speaking, a sound of voices filled the air with loud chanting of Latin words. Instinctively the Queen laid her hand on Gilbert’s sleeve and drew him into the shadow of a buttress, and he yielded, scarcely knowing what he did. The chanting swelled on the air, and a moment later the procession began to appear beyond the corner of the church. Two and two, led by one who bore a cross, the song-boys in scarlet and white came first, then Benedictine monks in black, then priests of the cathedral in violet cloth with fine white linen surplices and bearing wax candles. And they all chanted as they walked, loudly, fervently, as if a life and a soul depended on every note. Then, as the Queen and Gilbert looked on from the shade where they stood, they saw the canopy of cloth of gold borne on its six gilded staves by slim young men in white, and beneath it walked the venerable bishop, half hidden under the vast embroidered cope from which the golden monstrance emerged, grasped by his closely wrapped hands; and his colourless eyes were fixed devoutly upon the Sacred Host, while his lips moved in silent prayer.

  Just as the canopy was in sight the procession halted for some time. In the shadow of the buttress Eleanor knelt upon the turf, looking towards the Sacred Host, and Gilbert dropped upon one knee at her side, very reverently bending his head.

  Eleanor looked straight before her with more curiosity than religious fervour, but in he
r ear she heard Gilbert’s deep voice softly chanting with the monks the psalms he had so often sung at Sheering Abbey. The Queen turned her head at the sound, in surprise, and watched the young man’s grave face for a moment without attracting his attention. Apparently she was not pleased, for her brows were very slightly drawn together, the corners of her eyes drooped, and the deep bright blue was darkened. At that moment the canopy swayed a little, the ancient bishop moved his shoulders under the heavy cope in the effort of starting again, and the procession began to move onward.

  Next after the bishop, from behind the end of the church, the King came into sight, walking, monk-like, with folded hands, moving lips and downcast eyes, the long embroidered bliaut reaching almost to his feet, while the scarlet mantle, lined with blue and bordered with ermine, fell straight from his shoulders and touched the turf as he walked. He was bareheaded, and as Eleanor noticed what was evidently intended for another act of humility, the serene curve of her closed lips was sharpened in scorn. And suddenly, as she gazed at her husband’s cold, white features in contempt, she heard Gilbert’s voice at her elbow again, chanting the Latin words musically and distinctly, and she turned almost with a movement of anger to see the bold young face saddened and softened by the essence of a profound belief.

  “Was I born to love monks!” she sighed half audibly; but as she looked back at the procession she started and uttered a low exclamation.

  Beside her husband, but a little after him as the pageant turned, a straight, thin figure came into sight, clad in a monk’s frock scarcely less dazzling white than the marvellous upturned face. At Eleanor’s exclamation Gilbert also had raised his eyes from the ground, and they fixed themselves on the wonderful features of the greatest man of the age, while his voice forgot to chant and his lips remained parted in wonder. Upon the bright green grass against the background of hewn stone walls, in the glorious autumn sunshine, Bernard of Clairvaux moved like the supernal vision of a heavenly dream. His head thrown back, the delicate silver-fair beard scarcely shadowing the spiritual outlines of an almost divine face, his soft blue eyes looked upward, filled with a light not earthly. The transparent brow and the almost emaciated cheeks were luminously pale, and seemed to shed a radiance of their own.