CHAPTER XVI
WHAT NEWS MAÎTRE JEHAN BROUGHT BACK WITH HIM
I
How Gilles spent the next two or three weeks he could never afterwards tell you. They were a long-drawn-out agony of body and of mind: of body, because the enforced inactivity was positive torture to such a man of action as he was; of mind, because the problem of life had become so complicated, its riddle so unanswerable, that day after day and night after night Gilles would pace up and down his narrow room in the Rue aux Juifs, his heart torn with misery and shame and remorse. The image of Jacqueline, so young, so womanly, so unsuspecting, haunted him with its sweet, insistent charm, until he would stretch out his arms toward that radiant vision in passionate longing and call to her aloud to go and leave him, alone with his misery.
He felt that, mayhap under simpler circumstances—she being a great lady, a rich heiress, and he an humble soldier of fortune—he could have torn her image from his heart, since obviously she could never become his, and he could have endured the desolation, the anguish, which after such a sacrifice would have left him finally, bruised and wearied, an old and broken man. But what lay before him now was, of a truth, beyond the power of human sufferance. A great, an overwhelming love had risen in his heart almost at first sight of an exquisite woman: and he was pledged by all that he held most sacred and most dear to play an unworthy part towards her, to deceive her, to lie to her, and finally to deliver her body and soul to that degenerate Valois Prince whom he knew to be a liar and a libertine, who would toy with her affections, sneer at her sensibilities and leave her, mayhap, one day, broken-hearted and broken-spirited, to end her days in desolation and misery.
And it was when the prospect of such a future confronted Gilles de Crohin in his loneliness that he felt ready to dash his head against the wall, to end all this misery, this incertitude, this struggle with the unsolvable problem which stood before him. He longed to flee out of this city, wherein she dwelt, out of the land which gave her birth, out of life, which had become so immeasurably difficult.
Maître Julien tended him with unwearying care and devotion, but he too watched with burning impatience for the return of Maître Jehan. There was little that the worthy soul did not guess just at this time. It had not been very difficult to put two and two together with the help of the threads which his Liege Lady had deigned to place in his hands. But Julien was too discreet to speak; he could only show his sympathy for a grief which he was well able to comprehend by showering kindness and attention on Messire, feeling all the while that he was thereby rendering service to his divinity.
II
Despite his horror of inaction, Gilles seldom went out during that time save at nightfall, and he had been content to let Monseigneur the governor know that he was still sick of his wounds. Indeed, those wounds inflicted upon him that night by a crowd of young jackanapes had been a blessing in disguise for him. They had proved a valid excuse for putting off the final day of decision which Monseigneur d'Inchy and his adherents had originally fixed a fortnight hence. That fortnight had long since gone by, and Gilles knew well enough that the Flemish lords were waxing impatient.
They were urging him earnestly for a decision. The pressure of the Duke of Parma's blockade upon the city was beginning to make itself felt. All access to the French frontier was now closed and it was only from the agricultural districts of the province itself that food supplies could be got into the town; and those districts themselves were overrun with Spanish soldiery, who pillaged and burned, stole and requisitioned, everything that they could lay hands on. The city of Cambray was in open revolt against her Sovereign Lord, the King of Spain, and the Duke of Parma had demanded an unconditional surrender, under such pains and penalties as would deliver the whole population to the tender mercies of a conqueror whose final word was always bloodshed and destruction.