"Granted, but that is not the point. And what if the devotion is misdirected? It is a quality of love that it only sees the lights in the jewels and not the flaws. If love saw all the flaws in us it would hardly be love. What if Mademoiselle de Vesc, seeing the boy neglected—and I grant the neglect,—seeing him unhappy—and I grant the unhappiness,—seeing him denied his high position—and I grant the denial while I assert that the King, who is a wise king, must have wise reasons I do not understand; what if Mademoiselle de Vesc, I say, seeing all these things and understanding the reasons for them as little as I do, seeing no deeper than her devotion and knowing nothing of the King's wise reasons, were moved by this same devotion to some desperate effort which would right this wrong at any cost? Supposing that were so, what would hold her back? Fear? She is no coward, and there is no such courage on God's earth as the courage of a loving woman. Weakness? Love is strong as death and stronger, for love builds up where death can only destroy. The crime? In her eyes the crime lies in the unhappiness and neglect of Amboise, and to right the wrong by any means, however desperate, would be no offence before God or man. What would hold her back? I ask you. Nothing, nothing at all."
"Granted," said La Mothe, impressed in spite of himself and falling back upon the last resort of baffled argument. "It is all very plausible, but I do not believe it all the same."
"Because you are drunken," retorted Commines, "and because, too, there are none so blind as those who will not see. But supposing I am right, is not the King justified, and are not we, the King's servants, justified too? And is the Dauphin such a fool as to be blind to this devotion, he who has known so little love in his life? Stephen, if the King is right and Mademoiselle de Vesc's love has overcome both fear and weakness, he is right, too, when he links Charles with her in her abominable plot."
"But why has he sent——" La Mothe broke off lamely, remembering in time that he had no right to say to Commines, Why has he sent such a message of a father's love as lies in those saddle-bags I see in the corner? Very naturally Commines misunderstood the interrupted sentence.
"Why has he sent you to Amboise?"
CHAPTER XII
LA MOTHE BELIEVES, BUT IS NOT CONVINCED
But having ended the sentence Commines broke off at the end as La Mothe had done in the middle, and with much the same embarrassment. His face, harsh and stern of feature both by nature and schooling, grew almost tender as he turned aside troubled. To speak plainly to any man of honour and generous spirit, answering his own question in direct words, would have been difficult, but how much greater the difficulty when the man was brother to that dear dead woman who had sunk to her sleep comforted by his promise of care and protection? "Watch over him, Philip, for my sake." But into the memory of the tired voice he had loved there clashed the King's harsh question so curtly asked in Valmy, and torn by the conflict of the two natures warring within him Commines paced the room in silence. La Mothe was not the only man in Amboise who found his skill as a circus-rider tried to the utmost, and like La Mothe Commines temporized.
"Who are we to judge the King?" He spoke harshly, even aggressively, and as if combating some undeveloped argument of La Mothe's. A burst of temper may not convince a man's own conscience, or quiet its uneasiness, but it silences its voice for a time as declamation can always silence pleading. "Who are we to question his justice or deny its right to strike? And it is as his arm of justice that you are here in Amboise."
"I?" And into La Mothe's mind, as he stood silent after the startled ejaculation, there flooded significant, misunderstood hints dropped by the King in Valmy, and by Commines himself on the road to Château-Renaud, hints which had seemed to him meaningless in the memory of the little coat of mail which was the secret gift of a father's love. "I, the King's arm of justice? In God's name how can that be?"