Complete Works of F Marion Crawford

by F. Marion Crawford

  Beatrix was evidently not persuaded that he was in earnest, for she looked at him long and gravely.

  “We have not met for so long,” she said, “that I am not quite sure of you.”

  She threw her head back and scrutinized his face with half-closed lids; and about her lips there was an attempt to smile, that came and went fitfully.

  “Besides,” she added, as she turned away at last, “you could not possibly be so simple as that.”

  “By ‘simple,’ do you mean foolish, or do you mean plain?”

  “Neither,” she answered without looking at him. “I mean innocent.”

  “Oh!”

  Gilbert uttered the ejaculation in a tone expressive rather of bewilderment than of surprise. He did not in the least understand what she meant. Seeing that she did not enlighten him, and feeling uncomfortable, it was quite natural that he should attack her on different ground.

  “You have changed,” he said coldly. “I suppose you have grown up, as you call it.”

  For a moment Beatrix said nothing, but her lips trembled as if she were trying not to smile at what he said; and suddenly she could resist no longer, and laughed at him outright.

  “I cannot say the same for you,” she retorted presently; “you are certainly not grown up yet!”

  This pleased Gilbert even less than what she had said before, for he was still young enough to wish himself older. He therefore answered her laughter with a look of grave contempt. She was woman enough to see that the time had come to take him by surprise, with a view of ascertaining the truth.

  “How long has the Queen loved you?” she asked suddenly; and while she seemed not to be looking at him, she was watching every line in his face, and would have noticed the movement of an eyelash if there had been nothing else to note. But Gilbert was really surprised.

  “The Queen! The Queen love me! Are you beside yourself?”

  “Not at all,” answered the young girl, quietly; “it is the talk of the court. They say that the King is jealous of you.”

  She laughed — gayly, this time, for she saw that he really had had no idea of the truth. Then she grew grave all at once, for it occurred to her that she had perhaps made a mistake in putting the idea into his head.

  “At least,” she said, as if correcting herself, “that is what they used to say last year.”

  “You are quite mad,” he said, without a smile. “I cannot imagine how such an absurd idea could have suggested itself to you. In the first place, the Queen would never look at a poor Englishman like me—”

  “I defy any woman not to look at you,” said Beatrix.

  “Why?” he asked, with, curiosity.

  “Is this more simplicity, or is it more dulness?”

  “Both, I suppose,” answered Gilbert, in a hurt tone. “You are very witty.”

  “Oh, no!” she exclaimed. “Wit is quite another thing.”

  Then her tone changed and her face softened wonderfully as she took his hand.

  “I am glad that you do not believe it,” she said; “and I am glad that you do not care to be thought handsome. But I think it is true that the Queen loves you, and if she sent to England for me, that was merely in order to bring you back to France. Of course she could not know—”

  She checked herself, and he, of course, asked what she had meant to say, and insisted upon knowing.

  “The Queen could not know,” she said at last, “that we should seem so strange to each other when we met.”

  “Do I seem so strange to you?” he asked, in a sorrowful tone.

  “No,” she answered, “it is the other way. I can see that you expected me to be very different.”

  “Indeed, I did not,” answered Gilbert, with some indignation. “At least,” he added hastily, “if I thought anything about it, I did not expect that you would be half so pretty, or half—”

  “If you thought anything about it,” laughed Beatrix, interrupting him.

  “You know what I mean,” he said, justly annoyed by his own lack of tact.

  “Oh, yes; of course I do — that is the trouble.”

  “If we are going to do nothing but quarrel,” he said, “I am almost sorry that I came here.”

  Again her tone changed, but this time she did not touch his hand. Hearing her voice, he expected that she would, and he was oddly disappointed that she did not.

  “Nothing could make me sorry that you found me,” she answered. “You do not know how hard I have tried to see you all through this last year!”

  Her tone was tender and earnest, and though they had been long parted, she was nearer to him than he knew. His hand closed upon hers, and in the little thrill that he felt he forgot his disappointment.

  “Could you not send me any word?” he asked.

  “I am a prisoner,” she answered, more than half in earnest. “It would be ill for you if the Queen found you here; but there is no danger, for they are all gone to the high mass in the cathedral.”

  “And why are you left behind?” he asked.

  “They always say that I am not strong,” she replied, “especially when there might be a possibility of your seeing me. She has never allowed me to be with all the others when the court is together, since I was brought over from England.”

  “That is why I did not see you at Vezelay,” he said, suddenly understanding.

  And with him to understand was to act. He might have had some difficulty in persuading himself at leisure that he was seriously in love with Beatrix, but being taken suddenly and unawares, he had not the slightest doubt as to what he ought to do. Before she could answer his last words, he had risen to his feet and was drawing her by the hand.

  “Come,” he cried. “I can easily take you by the way I came. It is only a step, and in five minutes you shall be as free as I am!”

  But, to his great surprise, Beatrix seemed inclined to laugh at him.

  “Where should we go?” she asked, refusing to leave her seat. “We should be caught before we reached the city gates, and it would be the worse for us.”

  “And who should dare touch us?” asked Gilbert, indignantly. “Who should dare to lay a hand on you?”

  “You are strong and brave,” answered Beatrix, “but you are not an army, and the Queen — but you will not believe what I say.”

  “If the Queen even cared to see my face, she could send for me. It is three weeks since I caught a glimpse of her, five hundred yards away.”

  “She is angry with you,” answered the young girl, “and she thinks that you will wish to be with her, and will find some way of seeing her.”

  “But,” argued Gilbert, “if she only meant to use your name in order to bring me from Rome, it would have been quite enough to have written that letter without having brought you at all.”

  “And how could she tell that I did not know where you were, or that I could not send you a message which might contradict hers?”

  “That is true,” Gilbert admitted. “But what does it matter, after all, since we have met at last?”

  “Yes; what does it matter?”

  They asked the answerless question of each other almost unconsciously, for they were finding each other again. There are plants which may be plucked up half-grown, before their roots have spread in the earth or their buds ripened to blossoming, and they may lie long in dry places till they seem withered and dead; but there is life in their fibres still, and the power to grow is in the shrivelled stem and in the dusty leaf, so that if they be planted again and tended they come at last to their due maturity. Gilbert and Beatrix might have lived out their lives apart, and in the course of years they would have been the merest memories to each other; but having met in the slow weaving of fate’s threads, they became destined to win or lose together.

  Their conversation needed but the slightest direction to take them back to the recollections of other times, and one of the first elements of lasting love is a common past, though that past may have covered but a few days. To that memory lover
s go back as to the starting-point of life’s journey, and though they may not speak of it often, yet its existence is the narrow ledge on which they have reared their stronghold in the perilous pass. And the English boy and girl had really lived a joint life, in their sympathies and surroundings, for years before a joint misfortune had overtaken them. In their meeting after a long separation they felt at the same time the rare delight of friendship renewed, and the still rarer charm of finding new acquaintances in old friends; but besides the well-remembered bond of habit, and the strong attraction of newly awakened interest, there was the masterful, nameless something upon which man’s world has spun for all ages, as the material earth turns on its poles toward the sun — always to hope beyond failure, always to life beyond death, always and forever to love beyond life. It is the spark from heaven, the stolen fire, the mask of divinity with which the poorest of mankind may play himself a god. It has all powers, and it brings all gifts — the gift of tongues, for it is above words; the gift of prophecy, for it has foreknowledge of its own sadness; the gift of life, for it is itself that elixir in which mankind boasts of eternal youth.

  The two sat side by side and talked, and were silent, and talked again, understanding each other and happy in finding more to understand. The sun rose high and fell through the rustling leaves in fanciful warm tracery of light; down from the Bosphorus the sweet northerly breeze came over the rippling water, laden with the scent of orange-blossoms from the Asian shore and with the perfume of late roses from far Therapia. Between the trees they could see the white sails of little vessels beating to windward up the narrow channel, and now and then the dyed canvas of a fisherman’s craft set a strangely disquieting note of colour upon the sea. There seemed to be no time, for all life was theirs, and it was all before them; an hour had passed, and they had not told each other half; another came and went, and what there was to tell still gained upon them.

  They talked of the Crusade, and of how the Queen had given her ladies no choice, commanding them to follow her, as a noble would order his vassals to rise with him to the king’s war. Three hundred ladies were to wear mail and lead the van of battle, the fairest ladies of France and Aquitaine, of Gascony, of Burgundy, and of Provence. So far, a few had ridden, and many had been carried in closed litters slung between mules or borne on the broad shoulders of Swiss porters; and each lady had her serving-maid, and her servants and mules heavy laden with the furniture of beauty, with laces and silks and velvets, jewellery and scented waters, and salves for the face, of great virtue against cold and heat. It was a little army in itself, recruited of the women, and in which beauty was rank, and rank was power; and in order that the three hundred might ride with Queen Eleanor in the most marvellous masquerade of all time, a host of some two thousand servants and porters crossed Europe on foot and on horseback from the Rhine to the Bosphorus. The mere idea was so vastly absurd that Gilbert had laughed at it many a time by himself; and yet there was at the root of it an impulse which was rather sublime than ridiculous. Between its conception and its execution the time was too long, and the hot blood of daring romance already felt the fatal chill of coming failure.

  Gilbert looked at the delicate features and the slight figure beside him, and he resented the mere thought that Beatrix should ever be exposed to weariness and hardship. But she laughed.

  “I am always left behind on great occasions,” she said. “You need not fear for me, for I shall certainly not be seen on the Queen’s left hand when she overcomes the Seljuks without your help. I shall be told to wait quietly in my tent until it is all over. What can I do?”

  “You can at least let me know where you are,” answered Gilbert.

  “What satisfaction shall you get from that? You cannot see me; you cannot come to me in the ladies’ camp.”

  “Indeed I can, and will,” answered Gilbert, without the least hesitation.

  “At the risk of the Queen’s displeasure?”

  “At any risk.”

  “How strange it is!” exclaimed Beatrix, raising her eyebrows a little, but smiling happily. “This morning you would not have risked anything especial for the sake of finding me, but now that we have met by chance you are ready to do anything and everything to see me again.”

  “Of some things,” answered her companion, “one does not know how much one wants them till they are within reach.”

  “And there are others which one longs for till one has them, and which one despises as soon as they are one’s own.”

  “What things may those be?” asked Gilbert.

  “I have heard Queen Eleanor say that a husband is one of them,” answered Beatrix, demurely, “but I dare say that she is not always right.”

  Side by side the two sat in the autumn noonday, each forgetful of all but the other, in the perfect unconsciousness of the difference their meeting was to make in their lives from that day onward. Yet after the first few words they did not speak again of Beatrix’s father nor of Gilbert’s mother. By a common instinct they tried to lose both, in the happiness of again finding one another.

  Then, at last, a cloud passed over the sun, and Beatrix felt a little chill that was like the breath of a coming evil while Gilbert became suddenly very grave and thoughtful.

  Beatrix looked round, more in fear than in suspicion, as a child does at night, when it has been frightened by a tale of goblins; and, turning, she caught sight of something and turned farther, and then started with a scared cry and half rose, with her hand on Gilbert’s arm. Anxious for her, he sprang up to his height at the sound of her voice, and at the same moment he saw what she saw, and uttered an exclamation of surprise. It was not a cloud that had passed between them and the sun. The Queen stood there, as she had come from the Office in the church, a veil embroidered with gold pinned upon her head in a fashion altogether her own. Her clear eyes were very bright and hard, and her beautiful lips had a frozen look.

  “It is very long since I have seen you,” she said to Gilbert, “and I had not thought to see you here — of all places — unbidden.”

  “Nor I to be here, Madam,” answered the Englishman.

  “Did you come here in your sleep?” asked the Queen, coldly.

  “For aught that I can tell how I got here, it may be as your Grace says. I came by such a way as I may not find again.”

  “I care not how soon you find another, sir, so that it be a way out.”

  Gilbert had never seen the Queen gravely displeased, and as yet she had been very kind to him when he had been in her presence. Against her anger he drew himself up, for he neither loved her nor feared her, and as he looked at her now he saw in her eyes that haunting memory of his own mother which had disturbed him more than once.

  “I ask your Grace’s pardon,” he said slowly, “for having entered uninvited. Yet I am glad that I did, since I have found what was kept from me so long.”

  “I fancied your idol so changed that you might not care to find it after all!”

  Beatrix hardly understood what the words meant, but she knew that they were intended to hurt both her and Gilbert, and she saw by his face what he felt. Knowing as she did that the Queen was very strongly attracted by him, she would not have been human if she had not felt in her throat the pulse of triumph, as she stood beside the most beautiful woman in the world, pale, slight, sad-eyed, but preferred before the other’s supreme beauty by the one man whose preference meant anything at all. But a moment later she forgot herself and feared for him.

  “Madam,” he said very slowly and distinctly, “I trust that I may not fail in courtesy, either toward your Grace, or toward any other woman, high or low; and none but the blind man would deny that, of all women, you are fairest, wherefore you may cast it in the face of other ladies of your court that you are fairer than they. But since your Grace would wear a man’s armour and draw a knight’s sword, and ride for the Cross, shoulder to shoulder with the gentlemen of Normandy and Gascony and France, I shall tell you without fear of discourtesy, as one man would
tell another, that your words and your deeds are less gentle than your royal blood.”

  He finished speaking and looked her quietly in the face, his arms folded, his brow calm, his eyes still and clear. Beatrix fell back a step and drew anxious breath, for it was no small thing to cross words boldly with the sovereign next in power to the Emperor himself. And at the first, the seething blood hissed in the Queen’s ears, and her lovely face grew ashy pale, and her wrath rose in her eyes with the red shadow of coming revenge. But no manlike impulse moved her hand nor her foot, and she stood motionless, with half her mantle gathered round her. In the fierce silence, the two faced each other, while Beatrix looked on, half sick with fear. Neither moved an eyelash, nor did the glance of either flinch, till it seemed as if a spell had bound them there forever, motionless, under the changing shadows of the leaves, only their hair stirring in the cool wind. Eleanor knew that no man had ever thus faced her before. For a few moments she felt the absolute confidence in herself which had never failed her yet; the certainty of strength which drove the King to take refuge from her behind a barrier of devotion and prayer; the insolence of wit and force against which the holy man of Clairvaux had never found a weapon of thought or speech. And still the hard Norman eyes were colder and angrier than her own, and still the man’s head was high, and his face like a mask. At last she felt her lids tremble, and her lips quiver; his face moved strangely in her sight, his cold resistance hurt her as if she were thrusting herself uselessly against a rock; she knew that he was stronger than she, and that she loved him. The struggle was over; her face softened, and her eyes looked down. Beatrix could not understand, for she had expected that the Queen would command Gilbert to leave them, and that before long her vengeance would most certainly overtake him. But instead, it was the young soldier without fame or fortune, the boy with whom she had many a time played children’s games, before whom Eleanor, Duchess of Guienne and Queen of France, lost courage and confidence.

  A moment later she looked up again, and not a trace of her anger was left to see. Simply and quietly she came to Gilbert’s side and laid her hand upon his sleeve.