"Ma belle," the Queen answered, and laughed bitterly, "do I not know men? He told you nothing. And to-night he hesitated, and to-morrow, at the lifting of my finger, he will supplicate. Throughout his life has Gregory Darrell loved me, O white, palsied innocence! and he is mine at a whistle. And in that time to come he will desert you, Rosamund—though with a pleasing Canzon—and they will give you to the gross Earl of Sarum, as they gave me to the painted man who was of late our King! and in that time to come you will know your body to be your husband's makeshift when he lacks leisure to seek out other recreation! and in that time to come you will long at first for death, and presently your heart will be a flame within you, my Rosamund, an insatiable flame! and you will hate your God because He made you, and hate Satan because in some desperate hour he tricked you, and hate all masculinity because, poor fools, they scurry to obey your whim! and chiefly hate yourself because you are so pitiable! and devastation only will you love in that strange time which is to come. It is adjacent, my Rosamund."
The girl kept silence. She sat erect in the tumbled bed, her hands clasping her knees, and appeared to deliberate what Dame Ysabeau had said. The plentiful brown hair fell about this Rosamund's face, which was white and shrewd. "A part of what you say, madame, I understand. I know that Gregory Darrell loves me, yet I have long ago acknowledged he loves me but as one pets a child, or, let us say, a spaniel which reveres and amuses one. I lack his wit, you comprehend, and so he never speaks to me all that he thinks. Yet a part of it he tells me, and he loves me, and with this I am content. Assuredly, if they give me to Sarum I shall hate Sarum even more than I detest him now. And then, I think, Heaven help me! that I would not greatly grieve— Oh, you are all evil!" Rosamund said; "and you thrust thoughts into my mind I may not grapple with!"
"You will comprehend them," the Queen said, "when you know yourself a chattel, bought and paid for."
The Queen laughed. She rose, and either hand strained toward heaven. "You are omnipotent, yet have You let me become that into which I am transmuted," she said, very low.
Anon she began, as though a statue spoke through motionless and pallid lips. "They have long urged me, Rosamund, to a deed which by one stroke would make me mistress of these islands. To-day I looked on Gregory Darrell, and knew that I was wise in love—and I had but to crush a filthy worm to come to him. Eh, and I was tempted—!"
The fearless girl said: "Let us grant that Gregory loves you very greatly, and me just when his leisure serves. You may offer him a cushioned infamy, a colorful and brief delirium, and afterward demolishment of soul and body; I offer him contentment and a level life, made up of tiny happenings, it may be, and lacking both in abysses and in skyey heights. Yet is love a flame wherein must the lover's soul be purified, as an ore by fire, even to its own discredit; and thus, madame, to judge between us I dare summon you."
"Child, child!" the Queen said, tenderly, and with a smile, "you are brave; and in your fashion you are wise; yet you will never comprehend. But once I was in heart and soul and body all that you are to-day; and now I am Queen Ysabeau. Assuredly, it would be hard to yield my single chance of happiness; it would be hard to know that Gregory Darrell must presently dwindle into an ox well-pastured, and garner of life no more than any ox; but to say, 'Let this girl become as I, and garner that which I have garnered—!' Did you in truth hear nothing, Rosamund?"
"Why, nothing save the wind."
"Strange!" said the Queen; "since all the while that I have talked with you I have been seriously annoyed by shrieks and various imprecations! But I, too, grow cowardly, it maybe— Nay, I know," she said, and in a resonant voice, "that I am by this 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 stammered, and ran toward her, for the girl had risen, and she was terrified.
"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 will 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."
And timidly the girl touched one shoulder. "In part, I understand, madame and Queen."
"You understand nothing," said Ysabeau; "how should you understand whose breasts are yet so tiny? Nay, put out the light! though I dread the darkness, Rosamund—For they say that hell is poorly lighted—and they say—" Then Queen Ysabeau shrugged. Herself blew out each lamp.
"We know this Gregory Darrell," the Queen said in the darkness, and aloud, "ay, 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 but one unending warfare between that which is divine in him and that which is bestial, while impartial Heaven attends as arbiter of the cruel tourney. Always his judgment misleads the man, 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 His wisdom God intends; so that when the man is overthrown, God the Eternal Father may, in reason, be neither vexed nor grieved if only he 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 they hold festival in heaven."
"A very pretty sermon," said the Queen, and with premeditation yawned.
Followed a silence, vexed only on the purposeless September winds; but I believe that neither of these two slept with an inappropriate profundity.
About dawn one of the Queen's attendants roused Sir Gregory Darrell and presently 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, and 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 die, 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 me once in France. Nay, to-day, I may speak freely, for with you the doings of that boy and girl are matters overpast. Yet were it otherwise—eh, weigh the matter carefully! for absolute mistress of England am I now, and entire England would I give you, and such love as that slim, white innocence has never dreamed of would I give you, Gregory Darrell—No, no! ah, Mother of God, not you!" The Queen clapped one hand upon his lips.
"Listen," she quickly said, as a person in the crisis of panic; "I spoke to tempt you. But you saw, and clearly, that it was the sickly whim of a wanton, and you never dreamed of yielding, for you love this Rosamund Eastney, and you know me to be vile. Then have a care of me! The strange woman am I of whom we read that her house is the way to hell, going down to the chambers of death. Yea, many strong men have been slain by me, and futurely will many others be slain, it may be; but never you among them, my Gregory, who are more wary, and more merciful, and know that I have need to lay aside at least one comfortable thought against eternity."