Chivalry by James Branch Cabell Page B

wind."
    "Strange!" said the Queen; "since all the while that I have talked with
you I have been seriously annoyed by shrieks and imprecations! But I,
too, grow cowardly, it may be—Nay, I know," she said, and in a resonant
voice, "that by this I am mistress of broad England, until my son—my
own son, born of my body, and in glad anguish, Rosamund—knows me for
what I am. For I have heard—Coward! O beautiful sleek coward!" the
Queen said; "I would have died without lamentation and I was but your
plaything!"
    "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.
    The Queen said in a toneless voice, "We ride for Blackfriars now."
    Darrell responded, "I am content, and ask but leave to speak, briefly,
with Dame Rosamund before I die."
    Then the woman came more near to him. "I am not used to beg, but within
this hour you encounter death, and I have loved no man in all my life
saving only you, Sir Gregory Darrell. Nor have you loved any person as
you loved