When Arletta had left him, Bertrand had taken down his blue surcoat from the peg where his sword and shield were hanging, the blue surcoat that had once been blazoned over with eagles of gold, but was now wofully dim and threadbare. He had slipped into it, pulled on his hose and shoes, and felt the stubble on his chin, that had not been barbered for two days. Opening the chapel door, he found the place empty and the sun making a glorious mosaic of light of the eastern window above the altar. The Virgin’s robes gleamed like amber wine; the greens and purples were richer than the colors of the sea. Bertrand closed the chapel door, and, leaning against it, stood looking towards the altar and at the steps where Hanotin had fallen the night before.
It was here that Tiphaïne prayed, and yonder stood her prie-dieu, with a missal on the book-ledge. How quiet the chapel seemed, how full of sunlight and of peace after the brutal violence of yesterday! Bertrand went and stood by the prayer-desk, and, looking like a boy half fearful of being caught in mischief, opened the missal and turned over the pages. The book was beautifully illuminated, the vermilions, golds, and greens glowing with the freshness of young flowers, the quaint pictures and grotesque letters making the book a thing of beauty and of strangeness. Bertrand knew naught of Latin, save the few prayers he had been taught by Father Isidore at Motte Broon. In truth, he hardly knew his letters, and it was curious to see him running his finger under a word and trying to come to grips with the profundities of a pronoun.
But if Bertrand could not read its Latin, the missal itself spoke to him in a language of the heart that he could understand. How often had Tiphaïne’s hands turned these pages! How pure she was, how utterly unlike the poor drabs upon whom he had wasted his manhood! Bertrand stood fingering his unshaven chin and staring at the missal, with his brows wrinkled up in thought. He had come face to face with one of those barriers in life that mark off beauty from ugliness and deformity. Was character worth the building, worth every careful chisel-mark on the stone? Bertrand looked round the chapel; it was oracular to him that morning, eloquent of those higher truths he had lost in the rough petulance of his distemper. He felt himself a prodigal, an interloper, a foolish boy who had thrown away his birthright in a moment of peevish irritation.
There was much boyish simplicity in Bertrand still. He touched Tiphaïne’s missal with his great hands, and then knelt at the prie-dieu as though trying to experience some new sensation. He crossed himself, fixed his eyes on the book, and, great, broad-backed sworder that he was, tried to imagine how Tiphaïne felt when she knelt to pray before the Virgin. It seemed quite natural to Bertrand that Tiphaïne should pray. He would like to watch her fair, strong face turned up in adoration to the cross. It would do him good to look at her, drive the evil out of his heart, and perhaps teach him to pray in turn. What, Bertrand du Guesclin praying! He stumbled up with a rough and ingenuous burst of self-contempt. He was a fool to be kneeling at Tiphaïne’s prie-dieu. He had forgotten how to pray, and his one religious inspiration was the dread of ever playing the hypocrite.
“Bertrand!”
He started as though one of his own rough fellows had caught him on his knees. The door of Tiphaïne’s bedchamber had opened while Bertrand was kneeling before the missal. She was standing on the threshold, wearing her wine-red gown.
Bertrand faced her sheepishly.
“I was only looking at the missal,” he explained, bent on thoroughness and sincerity.
They stood considering each other, with something of the cautious coyness of a couple of strange children brought suddenly face to face. Both were embarrassed, both conscious of a sense of antagonism and discomfort, as though troubled by the thoughts imagined in the heart of the other.
“Bertrand, I have not thanked you—yet.”