He ceased speaking and the air was rigid with silence. At last Abelard spoke.
“Why has he done this?”
“He would take you for the half of what your separate housekeeping costs you now. But he asks you, with diffidence, if in part consideration of your board and lodging, you would, in such leisure as your weightier studies afford you, instruct his niece. He is ambitious for her, as you have yourself perceived. He bade me say that she will be at your disposal at any hour you choose.” Gilles’ voice rasped like a saw.
Abelard sat grimly silent. Suddenly he rose, and coming down the room, stood square in front of Gilles. “Is the man right in his wits?”
“I thought it my duty,” said Gilles deliberately, “to point out to him that his niece was seventeen and you as yet only in your thirty-seventh year. But he spoke much of your reputation for chastity, and of St. Jerome and his pupil Eustochium, and also of Origen. He seemed to me imperfectly acquainted with the circumstances of that Father.”
Abelard laughed shortly. He had begun tramping up and down the room. Gilles had turned his back on him and was looking into the empty hearth, but a muscle in his cheek twitched with irritation each time Abelard passed.
The tramping ceased. Abelard drew out a stool from the chimney-corner, and sat down, leaning forward, his elbows on his knees.
“Gilles,” he said, and the old man stirred wretchedly, for the voice was suddenly a boy’s voice, uncertain of himself. “Tell me. Is it to be Yes or No?”
Gilles lifted his hand and dropped it wearily. “I am no man to ask that question of, Peter,” he said slowly. “For never in my life have I said No to a thing I greatly desired.”
The tension had lessened. Abelard sat back, hugging his knees.
“Odd,” said he, “but do you know, Gilles, I do not think I have, either. Only,” he went on slowly, like a boy analysing himself for the first time, “I have wanted so few things.”
Gilles stirred in relief. He turned to Abelard, the old speculative light in his eye. “I have sometimes wondered, Peter, what were the things you did want.”
Abelard sat, his brows knit. “I believe,” he said slowly, “I believe the thing I have most wanted all my life was to be free. I think perhaps that was one reason why I told my father I did not want to go and be squire at Clisson, and be knighted, and that Guillaume might go instead.”
“It was a strange thing that your father gave consent,” said Gilles. “But he was not like other men, ever.”
Abelard’s eyes had softened. “He was more of a saint than any man I ever knew,” he said eagerly. “And he would have been a rare scholar, if there had been any schooling in his youth. I have seen him listen when Guillaume and I were at our lessons. I have thought that was why he was willing I should go to the schools, for his own heart lay there, and it was as though he satisfied himself in me. Only, he would have gone to the cloister, in my place, I think. You know, he has gone there, now.”
Gilles nodded. “I rode with him once, years ago. He was a young man then, and I not so much older. And even then I noted that at every crucifix he did not pass with a reverence, as the rest of us might, but got off his horse and knelt, and I could see his lips move. I asked him what the words were that he said, but it was a long time before he would tell me.”
“What was it?”
“Thy cross I adore. I call to mind Thy passion. Thou who didst die for the sins of the world, have mercy upon us.”
Reluctantly as Gilles spoke, the words made a curious silence about them, alien in that place. Abelard sat biting his under-lip. Gilles was the first to speak. “It was men like your father,” he said, “who made the liturgies.”
Abelard looked up, again eager for speech. “I never had a hard word from him, all my life,” he said. “It was my mother who gave us whatever chiding we got. And that was little enough.”
“She was a Quelhac,” said Gilles. “I saw her when she was a little girl: with great eyes, as wild as a hare.”
“She has them still,” said Abelard. “But I sometimes think she is happier now than in all the years. You know, she took the veil at Poitiers two months after my father entered at Saint Savin. It was as though they both had a vocation, a kind of spring in their hearts. And now their peace flows like a river. It is not the worst end, Gilles, to have served in the wars and taken a wife and begotten children and looked to one’s lands, and then at the last take down one’s sail and ride at anchor in God.”
“Would it have contented you?”
Abelard got restlessly to his feet. “I hate to be tied.”
“You know what they called you at Laon?” said Gilles, “The masterless man. Why do you make such enemies, Peter? You might as well have sat out your time at old Anselm’s feet, and been received by him as magister. Now they all say that you teach, never having been taught yourself. Use authority, and rebel when you are Authority yourself. It wastes time else.”
“I could not endure it,” said Abelard, frowning. “Anselm didn’t know anything. None of them do. At least, they know, but they don’t understand anything. They swallow, but they don’t chew.”
“The sincere milk of the Word,” said Gilles solemnly.
Abelard groaned. “Do you remember,” he said suddenly, “what Augustine said, that a man should serve the understanding of things? I shall be content if when I am dead someone says that about me. And that is why they like me, Gilles, these youngsters. There is a natural reasonable soul in most things, when they’re young.”
“I doubt it,” said Gilles. “Yet it may be even a hen when it is young thinks it may some day fly like a hawk. Then it grows up, and squawks when it sees one. They are beginning to squawk, Peter.”
“Let them,” said Abelard. He straightened his shoulders. “I can do what I please with the young men anyhow.”
“Freedom for yourself,” said Gilles reflectively. “And power of life and death over everybody else. Well, it is the nature of eagles—and hawks. But tell me, Abelard, have you never in all your life wanted anything else?”
Abelard stopped in his restless stride. “There was one time,” he said, “but it was only when I was tired. It was after that terrific fight with William of Champeaux, the time I had my schools at Corbeil. And suddenly my head stopped thinking. There was nothing I cared about. And I went back to Le Palais, to Denise.”
“Denise?”
“My little sister. She was the youngest. There was myself, and Guillaume, and Raoul, and Dagobert, and Denise. I think maybe Denise came off worst, with having a saint for a father. He did betroth her when she was nine to a Montreuil-Bellay, but the boy died of measles when he was sixteen, and things drifted. And I was away, and they two, Berengar and my mother, did not think how time went. And when they did, she had set her heart, and more than that, on Hugh the Stranger—a landless squire my father had—and they let her have him. He was steward for my father. And they live there, Hugh and Denise, still. You see, Guillaume married a Clisson, and Le Palais is a little fief beside hers. So Hugh farms the land for Guillaume, and there’s a bunch of children with soft heads and round eyes bustling about the orchard, like chickens. Denise is like an apple-tree when the sun has been on it; you put your hand on her and you can feel the kindness of the earth. And I was as weak as a cat. I used to lie on the grass that summer, no feeling in me at all. I could not read two lines without going dizzy. And I felt that I would have given all I had to be like Hugh and sweat all the mischief out of me at the hay, and come back and lie with something soft and kind like Denise all night. And I could have cursed my wits that had spoiled me for living, and then left me drained like a piece of tripe. And my head—God, how it ached! And then Denise used to come—there weren’t any children then, but she was carrying her first, and she would sit beside me on the grass for hours and hold my head in her two hands——”
Gilles raised his head. “Ah, th
ose two hands,” he cried, and Abelard wondered at the sudden harshness of passion in his voice. “If only they knew it, it is not their beauty, it is that divine kindness they have. That moment when they take two hands and carry it to their breasts.”
Abelard stood till. “No woman,” he said, very low, “has ever done that to me.” He stood for a moment looking at the old man, sunk in his chair, and then walked over to the door.
“You may tell Fulbert it is Yes,” he said quietly, and went out.
CHAPTER V
“Domine, probasti me—O Lord, thou hast searched me and known me; thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising: thou understandest my thought afar off.” Gilles’ voice fell silent, and his eye left the Psalter to rest on the still bar of sunlight that turned the oak of the floor to massy gold. It was the 28th of September, and not yet six o’clock: outside there was no sound but the intermittent drone of the pigeons, persistent and belated lovers. For weeks the sun had risen and set in unfathomable cloudless blue: there was warmth even in the starlight. All September the Île de Cité had lain in a trance of heat, yet not the lifeless heat of August: there was a shiver of expectation in the early mornings, exhilaration in the heavy evening dews. Like these two, thought Gilles. Never had he seen love so still, or so aware.
Yet not the stillness of possession. Of that, old and wise lover as he was, Gilles was sure. These two were drenched with love, as the air is drenched with light. Even so a river runs, smoother and deeper, with no fleck or ripple upon it, before the waterfall: so arches a wave, green and crystalline, before the plunge and the smother of foam.
Had he, or had he not, willed that these two should come together? Or had some deeper purpose than his own moved him, half blind and half aware? Here it was, at any rate, before his eyes: the absolute of human passion. Prophets and kings had desired to see the thing that he saw, and had not been able. How indeed should it have befallen, unless with these? This man, to whom his heart had warmed in spite of himself, with the arrogant head and the clean lines marred by irritation and by sleepless nights, and the intelligence that would reach down a handful of stars from heaven and set them by his book to read by: the hawk had become an eagle, a golden eagle flying to the sun. Two days ago he had spoken to his young men, already crowding Paris for the autumn session: “I said, ye are gods.” Young Pierre de Montboissier had come to Gilles after it, almost hysterical with rapture, till Gilles sobered him by setting him to a copy of Latin verses. Gilles’ eyes twinkled as he remembered them.
“The Socrates of Gaul, great Plato of the West,
Of all the ancient Masters of the Word
The peer, or greater: prince of human knowledge,
Our Aristotle——”
“Short of making him Chief of the Squadron of the Prince-Archangels,” Gilles had amiably commented, “I do not see that you could have said much more.” And when Pierre reddened and made to throw them into the fire, “Keep them, my son. It was Judas who gibed at the alabaster box. Keep them. They’ll serve you some day—absit omen—for his epitaph.”
And Heloise? Gilles put his hand across his eyes. Fragments floated through his mind, broken metaphors. “And I John saw the holy city . . . her light like unto a stone most precious, clear as crystal.” Mere breath of flutes at eve, he had called her, and if the breathing of pipes could fashion a girl, as the word of God fashioned the world, it would be such as she. Evening dew he had thought her, but it was dew of the morning now, crystal, but with the fire of the sunrise in it. There were times that he hardly dare touch her hand: and other times when he sat watching her, marvelling what manner of man the other must be, that he could so long forbear.
“And the beast went timidly, for awe of the goddess,” he had once muttered to himself: and Heloise, sitting reading on her stool at his feet, had lifted her head.
“What beast?”
Gilles laughed a little. “I was wondering,” he said, “how it comes that men love to postpone delight: but women never.”
“And you think?”
“I think it is because men live in their imagination as well as in their senses.” He paused.
“And women only in their senses?” Heloise’s voice was small and cold.
Gilles laughed softly and touched the plait of hair with one finger.
“Does it anger you to be in this, as in all things, the exception, Heloise?”
Heloise pondered. “I think,” she said slowly, “it frightens me, when men think about women as you do. For it might come—it is bound to come—that one would be no more Heloise but just a woman, and then——”
Gilles raised his hand to stop her. “Child,” he said hurriedly, “it is not canny to be so wise.”
“It is wisdom, then?” The eyes that had hoped for contradiction darkened.
Gilles did not speak. His eyes were on her face, but she could see in them that he was working out a thought beyond her.
“I have sometimes thought,” he said at last, “that this is the difference between loveliness and beauty. Wisdom, the knowledge of things past, the memory of the tree in Eden. Loveliness is an easy thing, an appletree in blossom, and most women have something of it, in their youth. But beauty—one or perhaps two, in every generation. Persephone come back from the dead, with the knowledge of the kingdoms of it in her face.”
“And are they happy?” Her eyes clung to his.
Gilles sat up with a sudden violence almost as of anger. “Happy? What do they want with happiness? They know ecstasy. Happiness? A dog asleep in the sun.”
He had turned away from her in his sudden fear. There was no sound from her, and when he turned to her, his heart stood still at the look on her face. “They know ecstasy,” but what was in the words to bring transfiguration? A moment later, and his duller ear had caught the sound of Abelard’s foot on the stair.
Gilles sighed and turned again to his book. “Thou compassest my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways. For there is not a word in my tongue——” The door latched open and Heloise came swiftly across the room, so swiftly that she was on the floor at his feet with her head in his lap before he could see her face. But he could feel her quivering.
“May God damn him,” said Gilles to himself unreasonably. But he said nothing: only his hand fell on her shoulder and held it.
Heloise moved her head reassuringly against his knee. “Go on reading, Gilles,” she said. “I like to hear it.”
“Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into Heaven, thou art there; if I make my bed in Hell, behold, thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me.”
With a little laugh Heloise slipped her head from under his hand, and looked up at him.
“Not much use in going away, then?” she said, half ruefully.
Gilles looked down at her. There was disquiet in her eyes, but no graver trouble. “Serve him right for a clumsy fool,” he thought.
“Do you want to go away?”
“I must.” She looked away from him. “Gilles, can you think of something? I want to go away. Before anybody knows.”
“That is easy enough,” said Gilles placidly. “It is the Eve of St. Michael. I shall send Jehan to Argenteuil with an offering for to-morrow’s Feast, and greetings to my cousin the Abbess. Jehan is always glad of an excuse to go to Argenteuil, for his sister’s son keeps the change-house at the ferry. It is a long time since you have seen the Sisters. You can ride pillion behind him, and come back with him this evening, or not, as you choose. Do you want to come back?”
“I do not know,” said Heloise. She was twisting one of her plaits of hair in and out of her fingers. She looked up at him with a sudden burst of courage. “I don’t know—until I have gone away. I want to think.”
Gilles nodded. “Is your uncle at Mass?”
“He is.”
“Then go back, and get your cloak and whatever gear you want, and leave word with your Grizzel that I am sending Jehan to Argenteuil, and he must go at once. Fulbert will come to ask me about it, and I shall tell him that I urged you to take the opportunity, and even to stay a while, for you have kept close at your books all summer, and my cousin at Argenteuil is aggrieved that you have neglected them for so long. Truth has as many coats as an onion,” he added reflectively, “and each one of them hollow when you peel it off.”
Heloise had risen while he was speaking: she stooped and held his hand against her cheek.
“And send Jehan to me as you go out,” concluded Gilles. “He’ll likely be in the stable.”
“I’ll find him,” said Heloise joyfully, and went out.
It was still before seven when they rode across the Grand Pont to the north bank. Passing the Schools, Heloise had pulled her hood over her face. The windows were open, and on the sills and even on the stairs leading up to the open door the young men were thick as bees. They were intent as she went by, and the deep voice from within rang with a curious solemnity through the arches. There came a quick roar of laughter, and the men outside plucked at the gowns of those on the window-sills to hear the joke, and one slid off and fell almost under the feet of Jehan’s mare, looking up and still laughing. There was a market on the Grand Pont, and they had to go slowly: but once across the bridge, Heloise threw back her hood. The air was cooler than it had been for weeks, and there was a ripple and stray windflaws on the Seine, and moving golden lights on the walls of the Port St. Landry as the boats for the market made waves alongside it. Jehan was silent, but there was comfort in the lee of the solid back. He would likely not say a word till he got off to dismount her at the ferry at Asnières: the mare jogged easily, and Heloise sat in a kind of remote peace that was not unpleasant.
Peter Abelard Page 4
