Complete Works of F Marion Crawford

by F. Marion Crawford

  “I do not ask that you should plan battles, lead forlorn charges, nor sit down in your tent to study the destruction of walled towns. You can be our leader without all that, for he who leads men’s souls commands men’s bodies and lives in men’s hearts. Therefore, I bid you to come with us and help us, for although a sword is better at need than a hundred words, yet there are men at whose single word a thousand swords are drawn like one.”

  “No, Madam,” said the abbot, his even lips closing after the words, with a look of final decision, “I will not go with you. First, because I am unfit to be a leader of armies, and secondly, because such life as there is left in me can be better used at home than in following a camp. Lastly, I would that this good fight might be fought soberly and in earnest, neither in the fever of a fanatical fury nor, on the other hand, lightly, as an amusement and a play, nor selfishly and meanly in the hope of gain. My words are neither deep, nor learned, nor well chosen, for I speak as my thoughts rise and overflow. But thanks be to Heaven, what I say rouses men to act rather than moves them to think. Yet it is not well that they be over-roused or stirred when a long war is before them, lest their heat be consumed in a flash of fire, and their strength in a single blow. You need not a preacher, but a captain; not words but deeds. You go to make history, not to hear a prophecy.”

  “Nevertheless,” said the Queen, “you must go with us, for if the spirit you have called up sinks from men’s memories, our actions will be worse than spiritless. You must go.”

  “I cannot.”

  “Cannot? But I say you must.”

  “No, Madam — I say no.”

  For a long time the two sat in silence facing each other, the Queen confident, vital, fully roused to the expression of her will; Bernard, on the other hand, as fully determined to oppose her with all the fervent conviction which he brought to every question of judgment or policy.

  “If we fall out among ourselves,” said Eleanor, at last, “who shall unite us? If men lose faith in the cause before them and grow greedy of the things that lie in their way, who shall set them right?”

  The abbot shook his head sorrowfully and would not meet her eyes, for in this he knew that she was right.

  “When an army has lost faith,” he said, “it is already beaten. When

  Atalanta stooped to pick up the golden apples, her race was lost.”

  “As when love dies, contempt and hatred take its place,” said Eleanor, as if in comment.

  “Suck love is of hell,” said Bernard, looking suddenly into her face, so that she faintly blushed.

  “Yes,” she retorted scornfully, “for it is the love of man and wife.”

  The holy man watched her sadly and yet keenly, for he knew what she meant, and he foresaw the end.

  “Lucifer rebelled against law,” he said.

  “I do not wonder,” said the Queen, with a sharp laugh. “He would have rebelled against marriage. Love is the true faith — marriage is the dogma.” She laughed again.

  Bernard shrank a little as if he felt actual pain. He had known her since she had been a little child, yet he had never become used to her cruelties of expression. He was a man more easily disgusted in his aesthetic sensibilities than shocked by the wickedness of a world he knew. To him, God was not only great, but beautiful; Nature, as some theologians maintain, was cruel, evil, hurtful, but she was never coarse, nor foul in his conception, and her beauty appealed to him against his will. So also in his eyes a woman could be sinful, and her sins might seem terrible to him, and yet she herself was to him a woman still, a being delicate, refined, tender even in her wickedness; but a woman who could speak at once keenly and brutally of her marriage reacted upon him as a very ugly or painful sight, or as a very harsh and discordant sound that jars every nerve in the body.

  “Madam,” he said in a low voice, but very quietly and coldly, “I think not that you are in such state of grace as to bear the Cross to your good.”

  Eleanor raised her head and looked at him haughtily, with lids half drooped as her eyes grew hard and keen.

  “You are not my confessor, sir,” she retorted. “For all you know, he may have enjoined upon me a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. It is a common penance.” For the third time she laughed.

  “A common penance!” cried the abbot, in a tone of despair. “That is what it has come to in these days. A man kills his neighbour in a quarrel and goes to Jerusalem to purge him of blood, as he would take a physician’s draught to cure him of the least of little aches. A pilgrimage is a remedy, as a prayer is a medicine. To repeat the act of contrition so and so often, or to run through a dozen rosaries of an afternoon, is a potion for the sick soul.”

  “Well, what then?” asked the Queen.

  “What then?” repeated the abbot. “Then there is no faith left in the true meaning of the Crusade—”

  “That is what I fear,” answered Eleanor. “That is why I am begging you to come with us. That is why the King will be unable to command men without you. And yet you will not go.”

  “No,” he replied, “I will not.”

  “You have always disappointed me,” said the Queen, rising, and employing a weapon to which women usually resort last. “You stand in the front and will not lead, you rouse men to deeds you will not do, you give men ideals in which you do not believe, and then you go back to the peace of your abbey of Clairvaux, and leave men to shift for themselves in danger and need. And if, perhaps, some trusting woman comes to you with overladen heart, you tell her that she is not in a state of grace. It must be easy to be a great man in that way.”

  She turned as she spoke the last words and stepped from the platform to the stone pavement. At the enormous injustice of her judgment, Bernard’s face grew cold and stern; but he would not answer what she said, for he knew how useless it would be. In her, and perhaps in her only, of all men and women he had known, there was the something to which he could not speak, the element that was out of harmony with his own being, and when he had talked with her it was as if he had eaten sand. He could understand that she, too, was in contradiction with her natural feelings in her marriage with such a man as the King; he could be sorry for her, he could pity her, he could forgive her, he could pray for her — but he could not speak to her as he could to others.

  A dozen times before she reached the door he wished to call her back, and he sought in the archive of his brain and in the treasury of his heart the words that might touch her. But he sought in vain. So long as she was before his eyes, a chilled air, dull and unresonant, divided his soul from hers. Her hand was on the curtain to go out when she turned and looked at him again.

  “You will not go with us,” she said. “If we fail, we shall count the fault yours; if we quarrel and turn our swords upon one another, the sin is yours; if our armies lose heart, and are scattered and hewn in pieces, their blood will be on your head. But if we win,” she said at the last, drawing herself to her height, “the honour of our deeds shall be ours alone, not yours.”

  She had raised the curtain, and it fell behind her as she spoke the last word, leaving the abbot no possibility of a retort. But she had missed her intention, for he was not a man to be threatened from the right he had planned. When she was gone, his face grew sad, and calm, and weary again, and presently, musing, he took up the pen that lay beside the half-written page.

  But she went on through the outer hall to the vestibule, drawing her thin dark mantle about her, her lips set and her eyes cruel, for she had been disappointed. Beneath the idle wish to hear Bernard speak, behind the strong conviction that he must follow the army to the East if it was to be victorious, there had been the unconscious longing for a return of that brave emotion under which, in the afternoon, she had taken the Cross with her ladies. And a woman disappointed of strong feeling, hoped for and desired, is less kind than a strong man defeated of expectation.

  She was alone. Of all women, she hated most to be followed by attendants and watched by inferiors when she chose solitude. Reliant o
n herself and unaffectedly courageous, she often wondered whether it were not a more pleasant thing to be a man than to be even the fairest of womankind, as she was. She stood still a moment in the vestibule, drawing the hood of her cloak over her head and half across her face. The outer door was half open; the single lamp, filled with olive-oil and hanging from the middle of the vault, cast its ray out into the night. As Eleanor stood arranging her headdress and almost unconsciously looking toward the darkness, a gleam of colour and steel flashed softly in the gloom. It disappeared and flashed again, for a man was waiting without and slowly walking up and down before the door. The Queen had chosen to come alone, but had no reason for concealing herself; she made two steps to the threshold and looked out, opening wide one half of the door.

  The man stood still and turned his head without haste as the fuller light fell upon him. It was Gilbert, and as his eyes turned to the Queen’s face, dark against the brightness within, she started a little, as if she would have drawn back, and she spoke nervously, in a low voice, hardly knowing what she said.

  “What is it?” she asked. “Why did you come here?”

  “Because I knew your Grace was here,” he answered quietly.

  “You knew that I was here? How?”

  “I saw you — I followed.”

  Under her hood, the Queen felt the warm blood in her cheeks. Gilbert was very good to see as he stood just outside the door, in the bright lamplight. He was pale, but not wan like Bernard; he was thin with the leanness of vigorous youth, not with fasting and vigils; he was grave, not sad; energetic, not inspired; and his face was handsome rather than beautiful. Eleanor looked at him for a few moments before she spoke again.

  “You followed me. Why?”

  “To beg a word of your Grace’s favour.”

  “The question you asked today?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is it so urgent?” The Queen laughed a little, and Gilbert started in surprise.

  “Your Grace wrote urgently,” he said.

  “Then you are zealous only to obey me? I like that. You shall be rewarded! But I have changed my mind. If the letter were to be written again, I would not write it.”

  “It was the letter of a friend. Would you take it back?”

  Gilbert’s face showed the coming disappointment. In his anxiety he pressed nearer to her, resting his hand on the doorpost. The Queen drew back and smiled.

  “Was it so very friendly?” she asked. “I do not remember — but I did not mean it so.”

  “Madam, what did you mean?” His voice was steady and rather cold.

  “Oh — I have quite forgotten!” She almost laughed again, shaking her hooded head.

  “If your Grace had need of me, I might understand. Beatrix is not here. I looked at each of your ladies to-day, through all their ranks — she was not among them. I asked where she was, but you would not answer and were angry—”

  “I? Angry? You are dreaming!”

  “I thought you were angry, because you changed colour and would not speak again—”

  “You were wrong. Only a fool can be angry with ignorance.”

  “Why do you call me ignorant? These are all riddles.”

  “And you are not good at guessing. Come! To show you that I was not angry, I will have you walk with me down through the village. It is growing late.”

  “Your Grace is alone?”

  “Since you followed me, you know it. Come.”

  She almost pushed him aside to pass out, and a moment later they were crossing the dark open space before the church. Gilbert was not easily surprised, but when he reflected that he was walking late at night through a small French village with one of the most powerful sovereigns in Europe, who was at the same time the most beautiful of living women, he realized that his destiny was not leading him by common paths. He remembered his own surprise when, an hour earlier, he had seen the Queen’s unmistakable figure pass the open window of his lodging. And yet should any one see her now, abroad at such an hour, in the company of a young Englishman, there would be much more matter for astonishment. Half boyishly he wished that he were not himself, or else that the Queen were Beatrix. As for his actual position in the Queen’s good graces, he had not the slightest understanding of it, a fact which just then amused Eleanor almost as much as it irritated her. The road was uneven and steep beyond the little square. For some moments they walked side by side in silence. From far away came the sound of many rough voices singing a drinking-chorus.

  “Give me your arm,” said Eleanor, suddenly.

  As she spoke, she put out her hand, as if she feared to stumble. Doing as she begged him, Gilbert suited his steps to hers, and they were very close together as they went on. He had never walked arm in arm in that way before, nor perhaps had he ever been so close to any other woman. An indescribable sensation took possession of him; he felt that his step was less steady, and that his head was growing hot and his hands cold; and somehow he knew that whereas the idea of love was altogether beyond and out of the question, yet he was spellbound in the charm of a new and mysterious attraction. With it there was the instantaneous certainty that it was evil, with the equally sure knowledge that if it grew upon him but a few moments longer he should not be able to resist it.

  Eleanor would not have been a woman had she not understood.

  “What is the matter?” she asked gently, and under her hood she was smiling.

  “The matter?” Gilbert spoke nervously. “There is nothing the matter; why do you ask?”

  “Your arm trembled,” answered the Queen.

  “I suppose I was afraid that you were going to fall.”

  At this the Queen laughed aloud.

  “Are you so anxious for my safety as that?” she inquired.

  Gilbert did not answer at once.

  “It seems so strange,” he said at last, “that your Grace should choose to be abroad alone so late at night.”

  “I am not alone,” she answered.

  At that moment her foot seemed to slip, and her hand tightened suddenly upon Gilbert’s arm. But as he thought her in danger of falling, he caught her round the waist and held her up; and, as he almost clasped her to him, the mysterious influence strengthened his hold in a most unnecessary manner.

  “I never slip,” said Eleanor, by way of explaining the fact that she had just stumbled.

  “No,” answered Gilbert. “Of course not.”

  And he continued to hold her fast. She made a little movement vaguely indicating that she wished him to let her go, and her free right hand pretended to loosen his from her waist. He felt infinitesimal lines of fire running from his head to his feet, and he saw lights where there were none.

  “Let me go,” she said, almost under her breath; and accentuating her words with little efforts of hand and body, it accidentally happened that her head was against his breast for a moment.

  The fire grew hotter, the lights brighter, and, with the consciousness of doing something at once terrible yet surpassingly sweet to do, he allowed his lips to touch the dark stuff that hid her russet hair. But she was quite unaware of this desperate deed. A moment later she seemed to hear something, for she turned her head quickly, as if listening, and spoke in an anxious half-whisper.

  “Take care! There is somebody—”

  Instantly Gilbert’s hand dropped to his side and he assumed the attitude of a respectful protector. The Queen continued to stare into the darkness a moment longer, and then began to walk on.

  “It was nothing,” she said carelessly.

  “I hear men singing,” said Gilbert.

  “I dare say,” answered Eleanor, with perfect indifference. “I have heard them for some time.”

  One voice rose higher and louder than the rest as the singers approached, and the other voices joined in the rough chorus of a Burgundy drinking-song. Near the outskirts of the village, lights were flashing and moving unsteadily in the road as those who carried them staggered along. To reach the monastery which was the
headquarters of the court, the Queen and Gilbert would have to walk a hundred yards down the street before turning to the right. Gilbert saw at a glance that it would be impossible for them to reach the turning before meeting the drunken crowd.

  “It would be better to go back by another way,” he said, slackening his pace.

  But the Queen walked quietly on without answering him. It was clear that she intended to make the people stand aside to let her pass, for she continued to walk in the middle of the street. But Gilbert gently drew her aside, and she suffered him to lead her to a doorway, raised two steps above the street, and darkened by an overhanging balcony. There they stood and waited. A dense throng of grooms, archers and men-at-arms came roaring up the steep way toward them. A huge man in a dirty scarlet tunic and dusty russet hose, with soft boots that were slipping down in folds about his ankles, staggered along in front of the rest. His face was on fire with wine, his little red eyes glared dully from under swollen lids, and as he bawled his song with mouth wide open, one might have tossed an apple between his wolfish teeth. In his right hand he held an earthen jug in which there was still a little wine; with his left he brandished a banner that had been made by sewing a broad red cross upon a towel tied to one of those long wands with which farmers’ boys drive geese to feed. Half dancing, half marching, and reeling at every step, he came along, followed closely by a dozen companions one degree less burly than himself, but at least quite as drunk; and each had upon his breast or shoulder the cross he had received that day. Behind them more and more, closer and closer, the others came stumbling, rolling, jostling each other, howling the chorus of the song. And every now and then the leader, swinging his banner and his wine jug, sent a shower of red drops into the faces of his followers, some of whom laughed, and some swore loudly in curses that made themselves felt through the roaring din. But loudest, highest, clearest of all, from within the heart of the drunken crowd, came one of those voices that are made to be heard in storm and battle. In a tune of its own, regardless of the singing of all the rest, it was chanting the Magnificat anima mea Dominum. Long-drawn, sustained, and of brazen quality, it calmly defied all other din, and as the crowd drew nearer Gilbert saw through the torchlight the thin white face of a very tall man in the midst, with half-closed eyes and lips that wore a look of pain as he sang — the face, the look, the voice of a man who in the madness of liquor was still a fanatic.