Followed a silence, vexed only on the purposeless September winds; but I believe that neither of these two slept with an inappropriate profundity.
About dawn one of the Queen's attendants roused Sir Gregory Darrell and presently conducted him into the hedged garden of Ordish, where Ysabeau walked in tranquil converse with Lord Berners. The old man was in high good-humor.
'My lad,' said he, and clapped Sir Gregory upon the shoulder, 'you have, I do protest, the very phoenix of sisters. I was never happier.' And he went away chuckling.
The Queen said in a toneless voice, 'We ride for Blackfriars now.'
Darrell responded, 'I am content, and ask but leave to speak, and briefly, with Dame Rosamund before I die.'
Then the woman came more near to him. 'I am not used to beg, but within this hour you die, and I have loved no man in all my life saving only you, Sir Gregory Darrell. Nor have you loved any person as you loved me once in France. Nay, to-day, I may speak freely, for with you the doings of that boy and girl are matters overpast. Yet were it otherwise—eh, weigh the matter carefully! for absolute mistress of England am I now, and entire England would I give you, and such love as that slim, white innocence has never dreamed of would I give you, Gregory Darrell—No, no! ah, Mother of God, not you!' The Queen clapped one hand upon his lips.
'Listen,' she quickly said, as a person in the crisis of panic; 'I spoke to tempt you. But you saw, and clearly, that it was the sickly whim of a wanton, and you never dreamed of yielding, for you love this Rosamund Eastney, and you know me to be vile. Then have a care of me! The strange woman am I of whom we read that her house is the way to hell, going down to the chambers of death. Yea, many strong men have been slain by me, and futurely will many others be slain, it may be; but never you among them, my Gregory, who are more wary, and more merciful, and know that I have need to lay aside at least one comfortable thought against eternity.'
'I concede you to have been unwise—' he hoarsely said.
About them fell the dying leaves, of many glorious colors, but the air of this new day seemed raw and chill.
Then Rosamund came through the opening in the hedge. 'Nay, choose,' she wearily said; 'the woman offers life and empery and wealth, and it may be, even a greater love than I am capable of giving you. I offer a dishonorable death within the moment.'
And again, with that peculiar and imperious gesture, the man flung back his head, and he laughed. 'I am I! and I will so to live that I may face without shame not only God, but even my own scrutiny.' He wheeled upon the Queen and spoke henceforward very leisurely. 'I love you; all my life long I have loved you, Ysabeau, and even now I love you: and you, too, dear Rosamund, I love, though with a difference. And every fibre of my being lusts for the power that you would give me, Ysabeau, and for the good which I would do with it in the England I or Roger Mortimer must rule; as every fibre of my being lusts for the man that I would be could I choose death without debate, and for the man which you would make of me, my Rosamund.
'The man! And what is this man, this Gregory Darrell, that his welfare be considered?—an ape who chatters to himself of kinship with the archangels while filthily he digs for groundnuts! This much I know, at bottom, durst I but be honest.
'Yet more clearly do I perceive that this same man, like all his fellows, is a maimed god who walks the world dependent upon many wise and evil counsellors. He must measure, and to a hair's-breadth, every content of the world by means of a bloodied sponge, tucked somewhere in his skull, which is ungeared by the first cup of wine and ruined by the touch of his own finger. He must appraise all that he judges with no better instruments than two bits of colored jelly, with a bungling makeshift so maladroit that the nearest horologer's apprentice could have devised a more accurate device. In fine, he is under penalty condemned to compute eternity with false weights and to estimate infinity with a yardstick: and he very often does it. For though, 'If then I do that which I would not I consent unto the law,' saith even the Apostle; yet the braver Pagan answers him, 'Perceive at last that thou hast in thee something better and more divine than the things which cause the various effects and, as it were, pull thee by the strings.'
'There lies the choice which every man must make—or rationally, as his reason goes, to accept his own limitations and make the best of his allotted prison-yard? or stupendously to play the fool and swear even to himself (while his own judgment shrieks and proves a flat denial), that he is at will omnipotent? You have chosen long ago, my poor proud Ysabeau; and I choose now, and differently: for poltroon that I am! being now in a cold drench of terror, I steadfastly protest I am not much afraid, and I choose death, madame.'
It was toward Rosamund that the Queen looked, and smiled a little pitifully. 'Should Queen Ysabeau be angry or vexed or very cruel now, my Rosamund? for at bottom she is glad.'
More lately the Queen said: 'I give you back your plighted word. I ride homeward to my husks, but you remain. Or rather, the Countess of Farrington departs for the convent of Ambresbury, disconsolate in her widowhood and desirous to have done with worldly affairs. It is most natural she should relinquish to her beloved and only brother all her dower-lands—or so at least Messire de Berners acknowledges. Here, then, is the grant, my Gregory, that conveys to you those lands of Ralph de Belomys which last year I confiscated. And this tedious Messire de Berners is willing now—nay, desirous—to have you for a son-in-law.'
About them fell the dying leaves, of many glorious colors, but the air of this new day seemed raw and chill, what while, very calmly, Dame Ysabeau took Sir Gregory's hand and laid it upon the hand of Rosamund Eastney. 'Our paladin is, in the outcome, a mortal man, and therefore I do not altogether envy you. Yet he has his moments, and you are capable. Serve, then, not only his desires but mine also, dear Rosamund.'
There was a silence. The girl spoke as though it was a sacrament. 'I will, madame and Queen.'
Thus did the Queen end her holiday.
A little later the Countess of Farrington rode from Ordish with all her train save one; and riding from that place, where love was, she sang very softly, and as to herself.
Sang Ysabeau:
And within the hour came Hubert Frayne to Ordish, on a foam-specked horse, as he rode to announce to the
