Chapter XII: Book III: “the Oak of Mivoie” (6)

Dubois and his brother in arms bowed to her like men who were half in doubt as to what attitude to assume.

“Madame, we were with the Sire de Beaumanoir at Mivoie—”

“And you did not see the Du Guesclin eagle?”

They admitted the enigma, and were the more puzzled by the expression of consent upon her face.

“Perhaps, messires, you remember my brother’s arms—a silver fesse on a field of blue, the shield of Sir Robin Raguenel, of La Bellière, near Dinan?”

“Assuredly.” And they waited to hear more.

“And yet, messires, my brother was not at Mivoie. His heart had failed him, and he had broken troth. You would have found him hiding in the woods near Loudeac.”

Her words won a murmur of astonishment from the listening men, her very calmness carrying conviction to the hearts of not a few.

“Impossible!”

Carro de Bodegat’s face was honestly impertinent in its unbelief.

“How impossible, messire? Should I confess this shame without a cause?”

“Madame, we saw your brother’s shield, and heard him answer to his name.”

“Then the deceit was the braver in its thoroughness. Know, gentlemen, and Bretons—all, that it was Bertrand du Guesclin who fought in my brother’s stead!”

Her words fell like stones into a pool, making the waters swing into merging circles that spread and melted into a vague suggestion of unrest.

“Messires,” and she looked round at the listening faces with a brave lifting of the head, “I loved my brother, and I was afraid, for he was young and not stiffened into manhood when the news came of the gathering at Mivoie. It was then that Bertrand lodged at La Bellière with us a night, and since he was my friend I gave my brother to him with these words: ‘Look to the lad, because I love him, and because he is our father’s only son.’ Little did I think that Bertrand du Guesclin would set so great a price upon my words, and bear the shame to save a coward.”

She ceased, and looked round her at the faces of those who listened. Only on Carro de Bodegat’s face did she find the unhallowed glimmer of a prurient sneer.

“If this is the truth—”

It was Dubois, the Breton bear, who came forward several paces from where he stood.

“It is the truth. Ask the Sire de Tinteniac, ask Robin Raguenel, for you will find him among the monks of the abbey of Lehon. Shame drove my brother there when he could no longer bear the burden of a lie.”

Not a man doubted her in the sincerity of his heart. Carro de Bodegat alone remained grudging and ungenerous to the end.

“Madame, we have yet to hear the meaning of this man’s hiding at Pontivy.”

“This man—indeed!” and she let her scorn flash out at him. “Come, Messire Carro de Bodegat, I will ask you a question in return. Who was it killed Croquart and his three men single-handed when you were hunting them with fifty Bretons at your back?”

The laugh was against De Bodegat. The rest had drawn aside from him. He stood alone, and would not suffer his jealousy to be convinced.

“Madame, you have not answered me.”

“I have no wish to answer you, messire. Bertrand, who is no traitor, will answer for himself.”

The Bretons cheered her. De Bodegat, remembering Croquart’s mangled neck, looked sullenly at Bertrand and said nothing.

The pent-up ardor of the men burst out at last. All hands were towards Bertrand, and they crowded about him, strenuous to make amends. It was Dubois who was the first to do a brave man’s penance for a savage wrong. And yet another was before him in the act, for Tinteniac, long a listener, had pushed through the crowd and rushed on Du Guesclin with a great hearted-shout of joy.

“Bertrand, Brother Bertrand, the prize at Mivoie should have been yours—not mine.”

“Sire,” and the strong man’s head was bowed at last so that it rested on Tinteniac’s shoulder—“sire, I am a great fool, but—God help me—I shall play the woman.”

XXXIX

THEY stood alone together on the edge of the orchard, nothing but deep grassland before them and the haze of heat that covered the woods. The men who had followed the green gyron from Josselin had slipped away by twos and threes—Tinteniac, with his hand on Dubois’s shoulder; Carro de Bodegat, in sneering solitude and ready to snap at his best friend.

The bees were working in the apple-boughs, and the birds sang everywhere. The green lap of the world was filled with the precious stones from the treasure-chest of spring. Tiphaïne was looking before her with a faint smile playing about her mouth, the sword that Carro de Bodegat had surrendered to her held like a crucifix in her hands.

“Bertrand.”

Now that they were alone together he felt half afraid of her, and shy of the great gulf that her imagined marriage had set between them. Tiphaïne, turning to him, wondered why his eyes looked sad. Her gratitude was more deep than gratitude towards him. Bertrand might have suspected it had he not been so resigned to believing her a wife.

“Do you remember the day when you plucked the white May-bough for me before the tournament at Rennes?”

Bertrand remembered it, and by his face the memory brought him more bitterness than joy.

“You were a child—then.”

“A child, yes. I can see Robin now cantering his pony over the meadows. What a blessed boon it is that we mortals cannot foresee the future! The shame of this thing has broken my father’s heart.”

She began to speak of the past, that past that made the present seem more unlivable and real. She was grateful to him, Bertrand knew. But what was mere gratitude?—a cup of wine to a starving man.

“Tiphaïne,” and the low pitch of his voice startled her, “I am thinking of that poor child’s grave among the beech-trees of Broceliande.”

“Arletta?”

“Yes. You remember the words you gave me then?”

She looked at him steadily, with a transient quivering of her upper lip.

“I remember those words. And—I am thinking they may be forgotten.”

“They can never be forgotten.”

“No?”

“For they have made me something of which I am not ashamed.”

His deep sadness puzzled her, for his eyes were like the eyes of a man who strives to be patient when suffering inward pain. The tragedy of the Aspen Tower had left its shadow on him, and yet it could not explain to her the overmastering melancholy that seemed to humble his whole heart.

“I did my best to save the lad,” he said.

“Can I doubt that? No, no, you kept your promises almost too well. If they had hanged you for a traitor I should not have had the heart to look the world in the face again.”

“What would it have mattered?” and she saw that his bitterness was not assumed.

“Mattered? To lose the bravest man in Brittany, at the end of a rope!”

“Tiphaïne!”

“Did I not dream as a child that Bertrand du Guesclin would do great things. And now this Bertrand du Guesclin is proving the wisdom of my dreams.”

He looked at her so sadly, but with such an air of patient self-distrust, that it seemed that her praise was like wealth to a man dying of some inexorable disease.

“I am glad that I kept my promise,” he began, “and that you can think well of a man who but a year ago was not worthy to touch your hands.”

“But now?”

“Now—also”—and he spoke with a sense of effort—“I am glad—that you have chosen for yourself a man who in these rough times can give you honor and strength—things precious to a woman.”

He made a brave uttering of these words, trying not to betray to her anything of the thoughts that were in his heart. There was a questioning wonder in Tiphaïne’s eyes. Only at that moment did she remember the part that the Sieur de Tinteniac had played.

“Bertrand!”

He looked at her sharply, for her voice had startled him.

“I had forgotten that you had followed us from Josselin. You often watched us with Croquart—was that not so?”

“Yes, I was always on the watch.”

“And perhaps you were near enough to hear some chance words.”

He flushed like an eavesdropper discovered in a seeming meanness.

“I was near you—” he began, “because—”

She broke in on him as though she had read his thoughts. “You believed that I was the Sieur de Tinteniac’s wife?”

“I believed it.”

“You believed that?”

“What else could I believe?”

“It was a mere pretence. Tinteniac knew too well what manner of man Croquart was.”

She told him the whole truth, and Bertrand watched her even as he had watched when she had swept past Carro de Bodegat to set him free. The bonds then had been bonds upon the flesh. Now she was breaking the spiritual fetters that had been riveted so fast about his soul.

“Tiphaïne, it is enough.”

The simplicity of those few words showed her how deep a loyalty had suffered here in silence. Woman that she was, she realized the completeness of his self-abnegation, and honored him the more because he had not grudged his faith to her when he had no hope of a reward.

“Bertrand, come near to me. Do you believe that I have told you the whole truth?”

He looked at her, silent yet very happy.

“I believe whatever you may say to me.”

“Blindly?”

“No—not blindly.”

“And why—not blindly?”

“Because”—and his strong face warmed to her—“because I can swear you are what you seem to be. Because I know what I myself have been. Because I have learned what honor is, and to know the face that cannot give a lie.”

“Then I am the same Tiphaïne who carried the white May-bough into Rennes?”

“Need you ask that?”

His faith was the more precious to her now that she knew what such a faith was worth. She turned aside, still holding the sword, and looked out over the meadows like one who wonders at the mystery of a moonlit sea. Some measure of awe had fallen on her in the presence of this silent and patient man who had learned to suffer—even to the death.

“Bertrand,” she said, at last, “I have a great longing in me for La Bellière and for my home.”

He bowed his head, watched her, and waited.

“The Sieur de Tinteniac and these men will carry the news to Beaumanoir at Josselin. Is it your wish that I should go to Josselin with them?”

“My wish?”

“Yes. For it is your right to ask.”

He drew a deep breath and gave her all his homage.

“If I might take you to La Bellière—”

“Bertrand!”

“You can trust me?”

“I trust you utterly,” she said.

XL

AT La Bellière an old man walked in the garden of the château, leaning on a servant’s arm and taking short turns to and fro on the stretch of grass bordering the fish-pond, where the sedges rustled and the yellow flags were raising their yellow banners above each clump of spears. The bloom was falling from the fruit trees, and lay turning brown upon the grass. In the wilder corners of the orchard the weeds and wild flowers stood knee-deep, the sunlight shimmering into the waste of green, and making each wild flower seem like a living gem, red, white, and azure, purple and gold.

A dog wandered lazily at the old man’s heels, snapping now and again at an over-zealous fly or watching the blackbirds and mistlethrushes that were foraging for nestfuls of querulous children. Swallows skimmed the surface of the fish-pond, twittering, and touching the still water with their wings between the great green leaves of the water-lilies.

It was Stephen Raguenel, who went slowly to and fro, leaning on the servant’s arm, his steps weak and hesitating, an expression of profound and patient melancholy upon his face. He stooped so much that he seemed to have lost three inches of his stature in a week. His eyes had lost their pointedness and their sparkle; they were fixed and vacant, the eyes of a man who is living largely in the past. From time to time the Vicomte would lift his head and look round him with the half-wistful wonder of a child. The second simplicity of life seemed to be taking possession of him, and the pride of the great seigneur had mellowed into the quiet gentleness of the old man.

The servant, whose head was but a shade darker than his master’s, kept step with him, and did not speak except when spoken to. Nor was his respect a thing of the surface only. He had felt much that the Vicomte himself had felt, and the shadow of humiliation fell also across his face.

“Girard, good fellow, what day of the week is it?”

“The third, sire.”

“Ah, ah, and the swallows are here. It is hardly a year ago since we rode to join Madame the Countess in the south.”

“Yes, sire, that is so.” And the servant, with the discretion of a good listener, contented himself with following where his master led.

“How do the apricots look on the south wall, Girard—eh?”

“They have been full of bloom, sire.”

“Madame Tiphaïne is fond of the fruit. Let me see, Girard—how many leagues is it to Josselin from here?”

Girard pretended to consider, though he was asked the same question twenty times a day.

“Some seventeen leagues, I should say, sire, by Montcontour and Loudeac.”

“And it was Thursday?”

“A Thursday, sire, when madame set out.”

The Vicomte had halted and appeared to be counting the ripples that a swallow’s wings had raised on the quiet waters of the pool.

“Then I shall judge that they reached Josselin on the Sabbath, Girard—eh?”

“I should judge so, sire.”

“And to-day is Tuesday.”

“To-day is Tuesday.”

“Then on the morrow or the next day we should have good news?”

“To-morrow or the next day, sire, we should have good news.”

Stephen Raguenel turned away from the fish-pond with a quiet sigh.

“That is well, that is well. I think I will rest, Girard, on the seat under the Pucelle de Saintongue. Thanks, my good fellow. There is no news to-day from the abbey of Lehon?”

“No news, sire,” and Girard passed a nervous hand across his mouth.

“Abbot Stephen has a good name in Dinan, Girard—eh?”

“A very good name, sire. The country people call him their ‘little father.’”

“Their ‘little father’?” and the Vicomte folded his arms. “He will be a spiritual father to my son, my good Girard. Good luck to the lad. He was the only son I had.”

It so happened that while Stephen Raguenel dozed in the sun on the bench under the pear-tree, Stephen, Abbot of Lehon, dealt with two shamefaced mortals who had begged an audience of him that very morning. They were none other than the two La Bellière men-servants who had shown such whole-hearted consideration for Croquart in refusing to hinder him in the capturing of the Sieur de Tinteniac and their lady. Honestly ashamed of the part they had played in the adventure, they had ridden back from Loudeac, only to find that they had not the courage to be the bearers of such news to their lord and master the Vicomte of La Bellière.

Being sensible fellows, they had conceived the plan of shifting the responsibility upon the fatherly shoulders of the Abbot of Lehon.

The Abbot did not thank them in the sincerity of his heart, but, being a conscientious priest, bemoaned the disaster and accepted the responsibility.

He ordered the two men to be locked up safely in two vacant cells.

The Vicomte had lost one child to the Church, and Abbot Stephen concluded that it would be courting a calamity to confess to him that his other child had been stolen by the “Flemish Devil.” Madame Tiphaïne and the Sieur de Tinteniac might be rescued by the Bretons under Messire Geoffroi Dubois, and the Abbot deemed it wise to temporize, in the hope of receiving better news.

Unfortunately the good man’s discretion was nullified by the tongue of an irresponsible woman, and that woman Lisette, Tiphaïne’s bower wench whom the two men had left at Loudeac. A meddlesome but warm-hearted creature, she had made her way to Dinan by begging a place on the back of a pack-horse belonging to a merchant who was returning to that town after disposing of his goods at Loudeac. From Dinan she trudged to La Bellière, carrying her news like a piece of hot pudding on her tongue. To such a woman it was easier to chatter than to think, and after such a journey it was imperative that she should create something of a sensation. She created it by falling in a faint at the Vicomte’s feet as the old man crossed the court-yard from the garden, leaning on Girard’s arm.

The woman was a fool, and Girard, shrewd in his generation, suspecting that she was ready to shriek the news of some calamity into his master’s ears, promptly attempted to smother her indiscretion by whipping her gown up over her face.

“Ah, the little fox! Pierre, Gilbert, carry the baggage into the kitchen and give her a cup of wine.”

He was bending over Lisette and stuffing her gown into her mouth to prolong her fainting fit. Several men ran forward, pounced on her, and prepared to bundle her unceremoniously out of the Vicomte’s sight.

“Who is it, Girard?”

“No one, sire—only a silly chit who has walked too fast in the sun,” and his knuckles showed no consideration for the softness of Lisette’s lips.

The men were lifting her from the flag-stones when she recovered her senses with true hysterical inopportuneness and began to claw at the dress Girard had turned up over her head. The old man saw a scream gathering in the bower woman’s bosom, and did his best to throttle it in her throat.

“Fool! idiot! hold your tongue—”

Lisette wriggled her hands free and clawed at Girard’s face.

“Sire, sire—”

“Devil take the cat!”

The men showed her no great courtesy, but the gown fell away from her face in the scuffle.

“Let me be, fools!”

“Hold your tongue, you she-dog!”

“Sire, sire, they are hiding the truth from you. It is Lisette, madame’s woman.”

The Vicomte’s shadow fell across the flag-stones close to her.

“Lisette!”

He had recognized the girl. Girard stood back and surrendered to the hysterical folly of a woman.

“Let her be, men. Come, what has happened?”

The dishevelled figure fell on its knees at the Vicomte’s feet.

“Sire, sire, a great misfortune.”

“Ah!”

“Madame has been taken by Croquart the Fleming. It was on the road to Josselin.” And she gabbled all she knew, and straightway began to weep.

Stephen Raguenel looked down at her mutely, very gently, yet with a peculiar quivering of the lips. There was nothing foolish in Lisette’s grief to him. The truth was too poignant to suffer him to feel the thoughtless egotism of the woman’s tears.

“Girard.”

The old man was at his side, looking questioningly into his master’s face.

“Girard, help me to my room. I had rather have heard that she was dead.”

XLI

OVER golden moors and through winding woodways deep with the glamour of forests in green leaf, Bertrand and Tiphaïne rode homeward towards Dinan.

Since there seemed something sacred in the days to them, they shunned the towns and villages, holding to the wilderness of the woods and moors, as though solitude and the silence thereof had a restfulness for either heart. For Bertrand that season of the world’s awakening had been a season of storm, of weary nights and troubled dawns. He had slain his own self, to find his manhood reincarnated in the second life that had risen for him like a gold cloud out of the east. He was as a man who had much to remember, and much more to foreshadow. The woods and moors had a sudden awe for him, an awe that played like sacred fire upon the solemn summits of the hills.

As a man’s life is, so are his desires. In the making or the marring it is the genius of effort that sets the furnace glowing and strikes with the hammer upon the malleable metal of the soul. No man ever drifted into strength or dreamed into nobleness by lying on a bed with a wine-cup at his elbow. We gather life or lose it. God strikes no balance for us. We may labor blindly, but we must labor—to be men.

As for Bertrand, he had grown young and old in the same breath—young in that he had won the brave ardor of his youth again; old, because he had taken the temper of the world, and learned to behold the conquering good even in the darkness of disloyalty and shame. He had come to true manhood by throwing that same manhood bound and broken at the feet of honor. He had won in thinking that he had lost, triumphed by believing that he could bear defeat.

Therefore he rode beside Tiphaïne, the Child of the White May Bough, the Enchantress of the Aspen Tower, looking upon the beauty of her womanhood without fear, yet with awe. Her face seemed to open the gates of heaven before his eyes. He was content to follow her, hoping that in due season he might hold her hand in his.

The first night they lodged in a little inn upon the road. There was but one guest-chamber in the place, and Tiphaïne slept there, while Bertrand lay awake before the door.

They passed the second night in an open wood, great pine-trees towering to the stars, Tiphaïne asleep on a bed of heather that Bertrand’s hands had gathered and spread. He stood on guard till the dawn came, feeling the dark, whispering wood like some solemn temple where he could keep vigil as a sacred right. Tiphaïne slept, even like a trusting child. Her great faith in him made Bertrand happy, happy as a man who has conquered fame.

He saw the dawn come up, a stealing into the sky of vapors of crimson and of gold. He knew that that evening they would reach La Bellière. It was to be the last day of their pilgrimage together.

The sunlight was slanting through the trees, warming the red trunks, when Tiphaïne awoke and saw Bertrand, motionless, a pillar of patience, leaning upon his sword. There was a faint glimmering of sunlight in the eyes that looked at him. Her hair bathed Tiphaïne’s face like some soft autumn color bathing the white face of an autumn flower.

She left the bed of heather, and Bertrand heard the rustle of her footsteps in the grass. He turned, looking like one who has been watching the sunrise and finding the woods dark and mist-fogged after the brightness of the broadening east.

Tiphaïne’s eyes had the strangeness of eyes that are half happy and half sad.

“And I have let you watch all night!”

He looked at her and smiled.

“It has seemed short enough.”

“Then Bertrand du Guesclin is never weary?”

“I had my own thoughts. With some thoughts—a man is never tired.”

The secrets of the heart escape in the uttering of a few simple words. They stood looking at each other, each wishing to be compassionate yet honest. Tiphaïne’s eyes were the first to turn away.

“We shall reach La Bellière to-night,” she said.

“Yes, to-night.”

“And I shall see my father.”

Perhaps there was the slightest tremor of regret quivering in her thankfulness. Bertrand was watching Tiphaïne as a strong man watches the light or shadow in the eyes of one he loves.

“Shall I be welcome at La Bellière?”

“Welcome?”

“You see, some men are remembered—with bitterness.”

“You misjudge my father.”

“No, but I feel for him.”

“I know it.”

She lifted her face to his with a brave quickening of her womanhood. Instinct told her all that was in Bertrand’s heart.

His hands were opening and shutting upon the hilt of his sword.

“A year ago you know what manner of man I was.”

“I know what manner of man I honor now.”

“You called me a worthless ruffian, and you were right.”

“Forget the words.”

“No, before God, no; they made me turn into a man.”

“And you, Bertrand, have taught me many things in return.”

It was as though she yielded, and yet did not yield.

“Tiphaïne.”

“We owe so much to you, we of La Bellière.”

His hands swept out to her, letting the sword fall.

“No, no, do not say that. Am I a man to trade upon my deeds?”

“Bertrand!”

“Forget them, for I should hate myself if you were to look on me as one who had plotted for your gratitude. Tiphaïne, I am just a man. I am thinking of you as the child who rescued me at Rennes.”

His words moved her more deeply than he imagined. She looked into his swarthy and impassioned face, and felt his homage leap up about her like sacred fire.

“If I might speak it?”

She faltered, and her cheeks were red, her eyes mysterious.

“No, no, not now—”

He went near to her, holding out his great, strong hands.

“I am a rough, ignorant fool, but—before God—I know now how to give you homage.”

“Bertrand, I know it—”

“Well—”

“Wait”—and she looked at him, and then at the hands he held to her—“I ask you to see the shadows that I see, the shadows that are darkening my own home.”

“Shadows?”

“Yes”—and her courage came to her—“I am thinking Bertrand, of my father, and of Robin hiding in the cloisters of Lehon.”

He dropped his hands and drew back a step, not harshly or selfishly, but with the reverence of a man who could behold the same vision as her tenderness beheld.

“Tiphaïne, I never had a home.”

“No.”

“They always hated me. And yet—”

“And yet you feel what I feel, the sacredness that watches over home. Bertrand, there is my father; my heart goes out to him; I remember how he looked at me when I told him the truth of Robin’s shame.”

His face was more tender towards her than before.

“He loved the lad.”

“And now he looks to me for all the love he lost at Mivoie. To-night he will kiss me and think me all his own.”

There was no bitterness in Bertrand’s eyes.

“You have a great heart in you.”

“Bertrand, you understand?”

“God bless you, yes.”

She went to him suddenly and took his hands.

“Patience.”

And in her eyes he might have read the dawning truth.

XLII

IN the Abbot’s parlor at Lehon there was a window that looked out upon the abbey garden, with its sunny stretch of turf, broad beds of herbs and vegetables, its barrier of aspen-trees about the orchard, an orchard rich in Pucelle de Flanders, St. Reols, and Caillon pears, cherries, and quinces, and pearmain apples. At this same window stood the Abbot Stephen, and behind him, half in the shadow, a girl in a gray hood and cloak and a man in black and rusty harness. The window was shaded, moreover, by a swinging lattice and by the red flowers and green leaves of a climbing rose, whose tendrils wavered athwart the blue of the summer sky.

Below, in the garden, between two broad bands of beans in flower, a young man in a russet-colored cassock was stooping over an onion-bed, holding a basket woven of osier twigs in one hand, while with the other he pulled up weeds. From time to time he stood up as though to stretch himself, or took to crawling between the rows, pushing the basket before him and throwing the weeds into it as he worked. The cowl of the cassock was turned back, leaving his head with its cropped hair bare to the sun.

The man weeding the onion-bed was Robin Raguenel; those who watched him, Bertrand du Guesclin and Robin’s sister.

The crawling figure, in its brown cassock, hardly suggested the young Breton noble who had ridden out to fight at Mivoie in all the splendor and opulence of arms. Robin had changed the sword for the hoe, the helmet for a basket of osiers. In lieu of cantering to the cry of trumpets over the Breton moors, he crawled across the cabbage and onion beds of the abbey of Lehon, the sun scorching his rough cassock, his nails rimmed with dirt, his sandalled feet brown with the warm earth of the garden. Here was a transfiguration that challenged the pride of the worldly-hearted.

“Pax Dei.”

Abbot Stephen crossed himself, beholding in Tiphaïne’s eyes a certain unpleased pity, as though the crawling figure of her brother had made her set the past beside the present.

Abbot Stephen looked at her steadily and smiled.

“You are offended for your brother’s sake,” he said.

Her eyes were on Robin, who had squatted on his heels to rest, and was staring vacantly into the basket half filled with weeds.

“Offended, father?”

“There is more wisdom, child, in this penance than the mere eye can see.”

She still watched Robin, an expression of poignant pity upon her face.

“The change is so sudden to me,” she said.

Stephen of Lehon spread his hands with a gesture of fatherly assent.

“And yet, my daughter, there is wisdom in this work of his. Your brother’s pride is in the dust, and in the dust man’s humbleness may find that subtle and mysterious seed that has its flowering when the heart is sad.”

“It is difficult for me, father, not to grudge the past.”

“Is there, then, no glory, child, save in the service of the sword?”

He looked at her with an amiable austerity whose humaneness had not hardened into the mere dogmatism of the priest. Abbot Stephen still boasted the instinctive sympathy of youth. As for Tiphaïne, she glanced at Bertrand, who had drawn back into the room, arguing in her heart that it was better to fight God’s battle in the world than to dream dreams in a religious house.

“Christ our Lord was but a carpenter.” And the Abbot crossed himself.

“I remember it.”

“In the simple things of life the heart finds comfort. A sinless working with the hands leads to a sinless working of the soul. It was the lad himself who prayed me to give him work to do.”

She put her hands together as though in prayer.

“My brother must know his own needs,” she said. “It is better to work than to sulk like a sick hawk upon a perch.”

“Child, that is the right spirit.”

And he stood to bless her, with no complacent unction, but with heart of grace.

For a while she looked at Robin kneeling on the naked earth, her silence seeming to confess that she was more content to leave him in the Church’s keeping.

“I go now to La Bellière,” she said, quietly.

“You have a double share, my child, to give and to receive.”

“God grant that I may remember it,” and she turned to Bertrand with a stately lifting of the head.

At La Bellière the sky was an open wealth of blue, the aspens all a-whisper. And yet, with summer reddening the lips of June, the sorrow of the place was still like the sighing of a wind through winter trees on a winter evening. Logs burned in the great fireplace of the solar. Stephen Raguenel, looking like some December saint, craved from the flames that warmth that life and the noon sun could not give.

The turrets were casting long shadows towards the east when dust rose on the road from Dinan. A few peasants were running in advance of a knight and a lady who wound between the aspen-trees towards the towers and chimneys of La Bellière. Soon there came the sound of men shouting, the clatter of hoofs on the bridge before the gate. The starlings and jackdaws wheeled and chattered about the chimneys. It was as though the château had slept under some wizard’s spell, to awake suddenly at the sounding of a hero’s horn.

Girard, discretion among the discreet, was craning out of a turret window, his face like a vociferous gargoyle spouting from a wall. He saw madame’s palfrey, the cloak with its crimson lining, and understood that Croquart had been cheated of a ransom.

Girard ran down the tower stair two steps at a time, bruised his forehead—without swearing—against the cross-beam of a door, and reached the great court in time to see Tiphaïne and the man in the black harness ride in through the gate.

“Assuredly this is God’s doing.” And Girard crossed himself before running forward to join his fellow-servants in frightening the starlings, who were unaccustomed to so much shouting.

“Madame, this is God’s doing.”

He kissed the hem of her cloak, and was asked but a single question in return:

“Girard, my father?”

“Now that madame has come back to us my lord the Vicomte will most surely live.”

She left the saddle and bade Bertrand follow her. But the man in the black harness held back, feeling that he was a stranger amid the curious and many faces that filled the court-yard of La Bellière.

“Go,” he said to her. “I will wait my time.”

“Perhaps it is better.”

“Yes, that you should go to him alone.”

Girard, sparkling like a well-polished flagon, and brimful of exultation, presented his homage to the gentleman on the black horse. All the La Bellière servants had been told the truth. Messire Bertrand du Guesclin could have commanded more devotion at that moment than Charles of Blois himself.

“The grace of God to you, messire,” and Girard’s face carried more than a servile blessing.

The men made the turrets ring.

“God and St. Ives for the Eagle of Cancale!”

They crowded round, each trying to hold his stirrup or bridle or to take his spear. Their enthusiasm grew bolder as the contact became more intimate. Two of the tallest men soon had Bertrand upon their shoulders, and carried him in triumph to the dais in the great hall.

Girard’s bald pate glistened with obeisances.

“Would my lord eat and drink?”

Bertrand accepted the suggestion. He felt it embarrassing, this setting-up of him like an idol to be stared at unwinkingly by so many pairs of eyes. If the god ate, they would at least see that he was half-human like themselves.

“My good-fellow, honest men are always thirsty.”

And had it been possible they would have emptied a hogshead of Bordeaux down Bertrand’s throat by way of testifying their devotion.

Even the cook, gardeners, and dairy-women crowded “the screens” to catch a glimpse of Bertrand as he sat at the high table. They watched him eat and drink as though he were an ogre, whispering together, peeping over one another’s shoulders. Bertrand, who had none of the spirit of the mock hero, chafed under this flattering publicity, being in no humor to be gaped at like a black bear in a cage.

“My good-fellow, do people ever eat here?”

Girard flourished a napkin and looked puzzled.

“Ah, messire—”

“These friends of yours seem to grudge me my hunger by the way they push and stare.”

Girard took the hint and closed the doors on the array of inquisitive faces. He returned and made his bow.

“Messire du Guesclin must pardon the people. Messire du Guesclin is a great soldier and a hero.”

“Nonsense, sir,” and Bertrand laughed half foolishly at Girard’s magniloquent respect.

“Messire, you have a modest heart.”

“Modest heart!—to the devil with you!”

“And a courage that will not be flattered.”

Bertrand picked up his wine-cup and held it towards Girard.

“Enough, friend,” he said; “I am clumsy at catching compliments. Drink to all good Bretons. That will please me better.”

And Girard drank, his eyes looking at Bertrand over the rim of the cup.

It was then that the door leading to the stairway behind the dais opened, showing Tiphaïne in a green gown, a red girdle about her waist.

“Bertrand.”

He saw at once that she had been weeping, though her eyes shone like a clear sky after rain.

“Come.”

Bertrand followed her without a word. She climbed the stairs and halted on the threshold of the solar, her hand on the latch of the closed door.

“My father has asked for you.”

The man before her appeared far more distrustful of himself than if he had been called to lead the forlornest of forlorn hopes.

“You will find him changed.”

“Am I to go alone?”

“If you wish it.”

Bertrand’s face betrayed his unwillingness.

“I would rather—”

“I came with you?”

And she took his hand.

Stephen Raguenel was sitting in his chair before the fire, with the look of a man exhausted by too sudden and great a joy. Tears were still shining on his cheeks. Bertrand felt more afraid of him than of a weeping girl.

“Father, I have brought Bertrand to you.”

The old man would have risen; his hands were already on the arms of his chair. Bertrand, a great rush of pity sweeping away his awkwardness, went to him and knelt like a stripling beside the Vicomte’s chair.

“Sire—”

Stephen Raguenel laid his hands upon Bertrand’s shoulders. His eyes had a blind and vacant look. It was the wreck of a face that Bertrand saw gazing into his.

“It is you, Messire Bertrand du Guesclin?”

“It is I, sire.”

“We owe you much, my Tiphaïne and I.”

“Sire, let us not speak of it,” and his mouth quivered, for he saw in the old man’s eyes the yearning of a father for his son.

“No, messire, our honor is with us yet. We give you that gratitude of which God alone can know the depth. Child, is not that so?”

Tiphaïne had slipped behind him, and stood leaning upon the carved back of the chair. Her hands rested on her father’s shoulders. He drew them down with his and looked up wistfully into her face.

“Bertrand braved more than death for us,” she said.

“For the lad Robin’s sake.”

“Yes, for him.”

He lay back in his chair with his eyes closed, his breathing slow and regular like the breathing of one who sleeps. Bertrand had risen, and was leaning against the carved hood of the chimney. He remembered vividly that night, not many weeks, ago when the old man had gloried in the promise of his son.

Tiphaïne’s hands were smoothing her father’s hair. The touch of those hands brought a smile to the old man’s face. He opened his eyes to look at her, and in that look the heart of the father seemed to drink in peace.

Bertrand turned, and went stealthily towards the door. He opened it gently, and left them alone together.

XLIII

BERTRAND rode out hawking early on the forenoon of the third day at La Bellière, leaving Tiphaïne and her father seated together under the Vicomte’s favorite pear-tree in the orchard. He had chosen a gerfalcon in the La Bellière mews, and taken the path towards a marsh where there was a heron passage some three miles from the château. He rode alone, with the bird belled and hooded on his wrist, more intent, perhaps, in gaining solitude than on seeing the falcon make a flight. For the heart of a man in love is a world within itself, where the green pastures and deep woods are tinged with a melancholy like the perfume of wild thyme in the green deeps of June.

But there was more than mere melancholy in Bertrand’s heart that morning, for the truth was plain to him as the blue sweep of the summer sky that the old man at La Bellière lived in the spirit on the eyes and lips of Tiphaïne, his child. The vision of yesterday shone ever before Bertrand’s mind, the vision of Stephen Raguenel’s face glowing with a reflected light, a light falling from Tiphaïne’s face, with its great eyes and splendid sheen of hair. Nor would Bertrand have grudged the old man this, or have reproached Tiphaïne for having a woman’s heart. Men look for piety in priests, patience in a philosopher, tenderness and loyalty in a daughter towards her sire. The true man desires to find a beautiful completeness in the creature of his heart’s creation. He would rather starve his own desires than see her fail in some sacred duty towards her soul.

But the Vicomte had given Bertrand food for reflection that same morning, nor had the food seemed particularly sweet.

“I am remembering, Messire Bertrand,” he had said, “that there are other hearts in Brittany more near of sympathy to you than ours. We must not keep you at La Bellière.”

A broad hint, forsooth, and Bertrand had read more in the old man’s restless eyes than the Vicomte’s tongue had suffered him to say. Half an hour’s talk with Tiphaïne at the open window! Stephen Raguenel had even grudged him that, and betrayed by a flash of senile peevishness that the younger man’s presence cast a shadow across the narrowing path of age.

Human, most human, and yet there was something pitiful to Bertrand in the old man’s sensitiveness, his readiness to resent any sharing of Tiphaïne’s thoughts. No doubt she was all that was left to him, his pearl of great price, which he would suffer no other man to handle. In this life the services of a friend may be too soon forgotten when the clash of interests rouses the armed ego. Gratitude is the most volatile of all the sentiments. Return an old man his lost purse, and it is but natural that he should knit his brows when the self-same purse is coveted by the very mortal who returned it.

Yet to one who has suffered in the cause of others a grudging and suspicious spirit is as a north wind in the midst of June. It was for this reason that Bertrand’s heart was bitter in him that morning, not because Tiphaïne loved her father, but because the old man grudged her even a friend. In the past the lord of La Bellière would have laughed at such a notion of tyranny. But sorrow and the slackening of the fibres of the heart can change the temper of the happiest mind.

The forenoon had gone when Bertrand turned homeward to La Bellière without having so much as slipped the hood or jesses. Yet even though he had won nothing by the falcon’s talons, he had come by a decision to leave La Bellière on the morrow.

Not in the best of tempers, he came suddenly upon two shabby-looking devils squatting side by side under a wayside cross. They were sharing half a brown loaf and a bottle of cider, the jaws of both munching energetically with that stolid emphasis that betrays the philosophic and worldly mendicant. A couple of rusty swords and bucklers lay on the grass at the men’s feet. One of the pair was leathery and tall; the other, buxom about the body, with a face that matched the frayed scarlet of his coat.

They sighted Bertrand, falcon on wrist, and stared at him casually as though considering whether he was a gentleman likely to disburse a coin. There was an abrupt slackening of the masticatory muscles. Two pairs of eyes were startled by the apparition. The lean man bolted a large mouthful of bread and started up with a shout that sent Bertrand’s horse swerving across the road.

The loaf and the cider bottle were tossed upon the grass.

“Soul of my grandmother, bully Hopart, but it’s the captain!”

“Lording! lording!”

“Devil’s luck, and I’m no sinner!”

They made a rush across the grass, waving their caps and cutting grotesque capers.

“Hopart! Guicheaux!”

“The very dogs, messire.”

“God save me, but this is gallant!”

Bertrand’s face beamed like a great boy’s as he rolled out of the saddle almost into Guicheaux’s arms. Hopart and his brother bully sprang at him like a couple of barking and delirious dogs. So rough and strenuous were their methods of showing joy that a stranger might have taken them for a couple of footpads in the act of robbing a gentleman of his purse.

“Captain, captain, I could hug the heart out of you.”

“Goodman, Guicheaux. Give me a grip.”

“A crack of the knuckle-bones. Sir, but you are still strong in the fist.”

In the midst of all this loving turbulence the gyrfalcon on Bertrand’s wrist took to fluttering and screeching by way of protest, ruffled in feathers as well as temper. Bertrand disentangled himself, laughing and not a little out of breath.

“Captain, we have been beating all the country this side of Loudeac.”

“Good-fellows!”

“And, lord, we have had our hands busy cramming lies back down these squeakers’ throats. Faugh! how some of these fat folk stink of the pit!”

“So you have heard lies, eh?”

Hopart and Guicheaux exchanged glances.

“Well, captain, there’s never a wind in seed-time but thistle-down’s a blowing. Certain lewd rogues had been puffing a tale of the fight at Mivoie.”

“To be sure.”

“What is more, captain, a harping devil made so bold as to blab of it at Cancale.”

“To Sieur Robert, eh?”

“Yes, and to madame.”

“And it was believed?”

Guicheaux screwed his hatchet face into a kind of knot.

“Your pardon, captain, Madame Jeanne is a great lady.”

“And has some spite against me. Well?”

Guicheaux looked at Hopart; his comrade returned an eloquent grin.

“Well, captain, we two took that harping devil and half drowned him in the ditch.”

“You did?”

“But madame had her weapons ready. Brother Hopart, be so good as to scratch my back.”

The fat man pulled up the thin man’s shirt, and Guicheaux displayed a back still livid from the blows of a whip.

“Madame knows how to argue, captain,” and he chuckled.

“What, they whipped you?”

“By the lord, they did that!” and Guicheaux proceeded to display in turn his comrade’s honorable scars.

Bertrand looked at them, stubble-chinned rascals that they were, and felt a significant stiffening of the throat. It was no news to him that Dame Jeanne should have been ready to hear him slandered, but the loyalty of these rough dogs of war more than compensated for the smart.

“Hopart, Guicheaux, answer me. It was told then to madame my mother that Bertrand du Guesclin had played the traitor?”

They both stared at him and nodded.

“She believed it?”

Again the two heads bobbed acquiescence.

“And you?”

“We, captain?”

“Yes, you.”

“Well,” and Guicheaux looked embarrassed—“well, Brother Hopart, what did we do?”

“Kicked,” quoth the fat man, “and were royally toe-plugged for our pains.”

Bertrand slipped the jesses and shook the falcon from his wrist. He opened his arms to the two men, and Messire Bertrand du Guesclin might have been seen embracing the two vagabonds like brothers.

“Assuredly,” he said, “that harper friend of yours told lies.”

“Captain!”

“I fought at Mivoie, but not in my own arms.”

“Captain! captain!”

“All Brittany will soon know the truth.”

“St. Ives du Guesclin!” And Guicheaux threw his cap into the air, sprang at Hopart, and smote him an open-handed smack across the chest.

“Bully Hopart, bully Hopart, we must get drunk on this—or die!”

And they gripped hands and danced round Bertrand like a couple of clowns at a fair.

XLIV

WHILE Hopart and Guicheaux discovered themselves in such excellent fettle over the recovery of their idol, no less a person than Madame Jeanne du Guesclin presented her husband’s pennon before the great gates of La Bellière.

The disgrace at the Oak of Mivoie had sent Madame Jeanne upon a pilgrimage among her friends, for the news of Bertrand’s troth-breaking had challenged her pride, if it had not troubled her affection. Sieur Robert, a fat imbecile, had been left to gormandize at Cancale, while the wife, with sweet Olivier at her side, rode out to play the Roman mother. It was a necessary discretion that Bertrand should be sacrificed, nor did Madame Jeanne fail in the heroism of her indignation.

Sumptuous in red gown, with streamers of gold at the elbows, a short “spencer” of blue cloth open at the hips, a hood of some amber-colored stuff with liripipia of green silk, Madame Jeanne rode her roan horse into the La Bellière court. Olivier, as flushed and splendid as his mother, straight-waisted, full and jagged in the sleeves, smiled at the wide welkin as though his motto were, “By God’s soul, I am the man.” Ten armed servants in red and green, a falconer, two huntsmen with four hounds in leash, followed hard at madame’s heels.

Some people seem designed by nature for the more spacious ways of life, for terraces that touch the sunset, marble stairways, and chairs of gold. This largeness of presence was part of Jeanne du Guesclin’s birthright. Standing in the state solar of La Bellière, with one hand on Olivier’s shoulder, she dwarfed her slim fop of a son, whose mawkish look betrayed the oppression of a youth tired by indiscriminate motherly conceit.

The window of the solar, with its scarlet cushions and carved pillars in the jambs, looked out upon the garden, where Madame Jeanne could see the Vicomte asleep on the bench under the Pucelle de Saintonge. Half an hour had passed since Girard had bowed them into the state solar, and Madame Jeanne was not a lady who could wait in patience. She watched Stephen Raguenel with a slight twitching of her nostrils and the air of a grand seigneuress much upon her dignity.

“It seems that they do things slowly at La Bellière.”

Olivier yawned behind his hand.

“The roads are devilish dry,” he remarked. “I should not quarrel with a cup of wine. The old gentleman there appears to have eaten a big dinner.”

“The servants must be fools.”

“Probably Madame Tiphaïne is looking out her very best gown.” And Olivier began to flick the dust from the embroidery and the slashed splendor of his _côte hardie_.

Jeanne du Guesclin looked at him and smiled.

“If Robin Raguenel is half as handsome—”

“Pooh, mother!”

“—as Messire Olivier.”

“Confound my good looks,” and he pretended to appear modestly impatient. “How often are you talking to me as though I were a fool of a peacock?”

“There, put your girdle straight, Olivier. If I have a handsome son, am I not allowed to use my eyes?”

“I may be straighter in the legs than Bertrand,” and he gave a sharp and shallow laugh.

“Bertrand, indeed! We shall soon have done with the worthless fool. My friends cannot say that I am prejudiced in the man’s favor, since I have been the first to tell many of them the truth.”

“Poor fellow!”

It was curious to watch Jeanne du Guesclin’s eyes change their expression—like water that seems hardened by the passing of a cloud.

“Remember, you have taken Bertrand’s place,” she said.

“Poor Bertrand!” and he showed his teeth; “if Beaumanoir catches him, he will most assuredly be hanged.”

“Let them hang the traitor. I can have no pity for a turncoat and a coward.”

Tiphaïne was in her brother’s room, looking through the hundred and one things that had belonged to Robin: his whips and hunting-spears; the jesses, hoods, and gloves he had used in hawking; a few books; a great press full of perfumed clothes. On a peg by the window hung the surcoat that Bertrand had worn at Mivoie. The room was much as the lad had left it on the night of his flight to the abbey of Lehon. None of the servants had dared to touch the room. The care of all these treasures of a young man’s youth had been left to Tiphaïne like some sacred trust.

It was in this room that Girard found her, kneeling before the great carved chest, her brother’s helmet in her lap. She was burnishing the armor that Robin should have worn at Mivoie, and whose sheen displayed the scars gotten from the English swords. The light from the window fell across her figure as she knelt, her hair aglow, her eyes deep with the pathos of the past.

“Madame.”

To Girard it seemed that she had been praying, and perhaps weeping, over her brother’s arms. His voice startled her, for she had not heard the opening of the door.

“Girard?”

The old man bowed to her as she rose with Robin’s helmet in her hands.

“Pardon, madame, there are guests in the great solar.”

“I heard the sound of trumpets, Girard, and thought that Messire Bertrand had returned.”

“It is his mother, madame.”

“Jeanne du Guesclin?”

“And Messire Olivier with her.”

Tiphaïne laid Robin’s helmet upon the bed, closed the great chest, and went to her own room, telling Girard not to wake the Vicomte. She changed her old gown for one of grass-green dusted with violets, fastened on a girdle of beaten silver and a brooch of lapis lazuli at her throat. Like Girard, she believed that Jeanne du Guesclin had ridden to La Bellière with the news of Bertrand’s nobleness ringing like some old epic in her ears.