“Your words set a new price upon the fellow’s head.”
XXVII
The walls of Loudeac melted away amid the green as the Sieur de Tinteniac’s party turned eastward along the forest-way to Josselin. They had taken a Loudeac shepherd with them as a guide, for there were many branching ways amid the woods, and it was easy to go astray amid that wilderness of oaks and beeches. Tinteniac sent his two esquires forward with the three men-at-arms, the two La Bellière servants coming next with the mules, and Tiphaïne’s woman upon her palfrey, while Tinteniac, the tall carack of the fleet, sailed beside the Vicomte’s daughter, his shield flashing gold and gules towards the morning sun.
No healthy male is without vanity, and Tinteniac, despite the serenity of his pride, had taken some of Tiphaïne’s words to heart. It was peculiar to her, this power of hers of establishing her ideals in the minds of others—foreign gods in a foreign sanctuary. A gesture, an expression of the eyes, a few movements of the lips, and her own intensity of soul poured out its inspiration upon others. She had all the passionate enthusiasm of youth, that fine fire that will not be damped by the cynicism of experience. And yet when she spoke it was without any intrusion of prejudice or self-will. Her heart force, her peerless sincerity, gave her this influence over the world about her.
Tinteniac was not a man to be dictated to by the tongue of a mere girl, and yet there was something so compelling in Tiphaïne’s nature that he discovered himself questioning the aristocratic niceness of his opinions. It was her courage, her great-heartedness, that had struck Tinteniac from the hour he had first spoken with her in the solar at La Bellière. Few women would have chosen so straight a path as Tiphaïne. Her courage appeared to brush formalities aside. When trouble came she might have sat dazed beside her father in the great house at La Bellière, or hurried to Lehon to reproach Robin, or taken to her room and made sorrow selfish by refusing to be comforted. One clear thought appeared to have dominated her mind, the thought that a brave man had sacrificed himself, perhaps because she was Robin’s sister. Tinteniac envied Bertrand the part he had played at Mivoie.
They spoke of Robin that morning as they rode towards Josselin through the dewy woods. The Sieur de Tinteniac would have made an admirable confessor, for he had the sympathetic self-effacement of the ideal priest, with the strength and sincerity of the soldier. Tiphaïne found him easy to trust. He helped her with his knowledge of the world without uncovering her sense of humiliation and regret.
“A lively imagination may be a treacherous blessing,” he confessed to her. “I remember being saved from playing—from forgetting my manhood—once.”
“You, sire, a coward!” and she used the word that he had avoided.
“All men are human—nerve, muscle, and blood. We build up character as our monks build a church. One loose stone in the tower arch and half the place may be in ruins.”
“How did it happen?”