“Madame Ysabeau—!” the girl answered vaguely, for she was puzzled and was almost frightened by the other’s strange talk.
“To bed!” said Ysabeau; “and put out the lights lest he come presently. Or perhaps he fears me now too much to come to-night. Yet the night approaches, none the less, when I must lift some arras and find him there, chalk-white, with painted cheeks, and rigid, and smiling very terribly, or look into some mirror and behold there not myself but him,—and in that instant I shall die. Meantime I rule, until my son attains his manhood. Eh, Rosamund, my only son was once so tiny, and so helpless, and his little crimson mouth groped toward me, helplessly, and save in Bethlehem, I thought, there was never any child more fair—But I must forget all that, for even now he plots. Hey, God orders matters very shrewdly, my Rosamund.”
Timidly the girl touched Ysabeau’s shoulder. “In part, I understand, madame and Queen.”
“You understand nothing,” said Ysabeau; “how should you understand whose breasts are yet so tiny? So let us put out the light! though I dread darkness, Rosamund—For they say that hell is poorly lighted—and they say—” Then Queen Ysabeau shrugged. Pensively she blew out each lamp.
“We know this Gregory Darrell,” the Queen said in the darkness, “ah, to the marrow we know him, however steadfastly we blink, and we know the present turmoil of his soul; and in common-sense what chance have you of victory?”
“None in common-sense, madame, and yet you go too fast. For man is a being of mingled nature, we are told by those in holy orders, and his life here is one unending warfare between that which is divine in him and that which is bestial, while impartial Heaven attends as arbiter of the tourney. Always a man’s judgment misleads him and his faculties allure him to a truce, however brief, with iniquity. His senses raise a mist about his goings, and there is not an endowment of the man but in the end plays traitor to his interest, as of God’s wisdom God intends; so that when the man is overthrown, the Eternal Father may, in reason, be neither vexed nor grieved if only the man takes heart to rise again. And when, betrayed and impotent, the man elects to fight out the allotted battle, defiant of common-sense and of the counsellors which God Himself accorded, I think that the Saints hold festival in heaven.”
“A very pretty sermon,” said the Queen. “Yet I do not think that our Gregory could very long endure a wife given over to such high-minded talking. He prefers to hear himself do the fine talking.”
Followed a silence, vexed only on the purposeless September winds; but I believe that neither of these two slept with profundity.
About dawn one of the Queen’s attendants roused Sir Gregory Darrell and 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.