"You must not take everything I say in earnest," she said suddenly, with a laugh that jarred on the delicate nerves of the overwrought man.
He turned his head from her as if the sight of her face would have been disagreeable just then.
"Jest with life if you can," he said. "Jest with death if you are brave enough; yet at least be earnest in this great matter. If you are fixed in purpose to go with the King, you and your ladies, then go with the purpose to do good, to bind up men's wounds, to tend the sick, to cheer the weak, and by your presence to make the coward ashamed."
"And why not to fight?" asked the Queen, the light of an untried emotion brightening in her eyes. "Do you think I cannot bear the weight of mail, or sit a horse, or handle a sword as well as many a boy of twenty who will be there in the thick of battle? And if I and my court ladies can bear the weariness as well as even the weakest man in the King's army, and risk a life as bravely, and perhaps strike a clean blow or drive a straight thrust for the Holy Sepulchre, shall our souls have no good of it, because we are women?"
As she spoke, her arm lay across the table, and her small strong hand moved energetically with her speech, touching the monk's sleeve. The fighting blood of the old Duke was in her veins, and there was battle in her voice. Bernard looked up.
"If you were always what you are at this moment," he said, "and if you had a thousand such women as yourself to ride with you, the King would need no other army, for you could face the Seljuks alone.
"But you think that by the time I have to face them my courage will have cooled to woman's tears, like hot vapour on a glass."
She smiled, but gently now, for she was pleased by what he had said.
"You need not fear," she continued, before he had time to answer her. "We shall not bear ourselves worse than men, and there will be grown men there who shall be afraid before we are. But if there were with us a leader of men, I should have no fear. Men will fight for the King, they will shed their blood for Eleanor of Guienne, but they would die ten deaths at the bidding of-"
She paused, and fixed her eyes on Bernard's face.
"Of whom?" he asked, unsuspecting.
"Of Bernard of Clairvaux."
There was a short silence. Then in a clear far-off voice, as if in a dream, the abbot repeated his own name.
"Bernard of Clairvaux-a leader of men? A soldier? A general?" He paused as if consulting himself. "Madam," he said at last, "I am neither general, nor leader, nor soldier. I am a monk, and a churchman as the Hermit was, but not like him in this-I know the limitation of my strength. I can urge men to fight for a good cause, but I will not lead them to death and ruin, as Peter did, while there are men living who have been trained to the sword as I to the pen."
"I do not ask that you should plan battles, lead forlorn charges, nor sit down in your tent to study the destruction of walled towns. You can be our leader without all that, for he who leads men's souls commands men's bodies and lives in men's hearts. Therefore, I bid you to come with us and help us, for although a sword is better at need than a hundred words, yet there are men at whose single word a thousand swords are drawn like one."
"No, Madam," said the abbot, his even lips closing after the words, with a look of final decision, "I will not go with you. First, because I am unfit to be a leader of armies, and secondly, because such life as there is left in me can be better used at home than in following a camp. Lastly, I would that this good fight might be fought soberly and in earnest, neither in the fever of a fanatical fury nor, on the other hand, lightly, as an amusement and a play, nor selfishly and meanly in the hope of gain. My words are neither deep, nor learned, nor well chosen, for I speak as my thoughts rise and overflow. But thanks be to Heaven, what I say rouses men to act rather than moves them to think. Yet it is not well that they be over-roused or stirred when a long war is before them, lest their heat be consumed in a flash of fire, and their strength in a single blow. You need not a preacher, but a captain; not words but deeds. You go to make history, not to hear a prophecy."
"Nevertheless," said the Queen, "you must go with us, for if the spirit you have called up sinks from men's memories, our actions will be worse than spiritless. You must go."
"I cannot."
"Cannot? But I say you must."
"No, Madam-I say no."
For a long time the two sat in silence facing each other, the Queen confident, vital, fully roused to the expression of her will; Bernard, on the other hand, as fully determined to oppose her with all the fervent conviction which he brought to every question of judgment or policy.
"If we fall out among ourselves," said Eleanor, at last, "who shall unite us? If men lose faith in the cause before them and grow greedy of the things that lie in their way, who shall set them right?"
The abbot shook his head sorrowfully and would not meet her eyes, for in this he knew that she was right.
"When an army has lost faith," he said, "it is already beaten. When Atalanta stooped to pick up the golden apples, her race was lost."
"As when love dies, contempt and hatred take its place," said Eleanor, as if in comment.
"Suck love is of hell," said Bernard, looking suddenly into her face, so that she faintly blushed.
"Yes," she retorted scornfully, "for it is the love of man and wife."
The holy man watched her sadly and yet keenly, for he knew what she meant, and he foresaw the end.
"Lucifer rebelled against law," he said.
"I do not wonder," said the Queen, with a sharp laugh. "He would have rebelled against marriage. Love is the true faith-marriage is the dogma." She laughed again.
Bernard shrank a little as if he felt actual pain. He had known her since she had been a little child, yet he had never become used to her cruelties of expression. He was a man more easily disgusted in his aesthetic sensibilities than shocked by the wickedness of a world he knew. To him, God was not only great, but beautiful; Nature, as some theologians maintain, was cruel, evil, hurtful, but she was never coarse, nor foul in his conception, and her beauty appealed to him against his will. So also in his eyes a woman could be sinful, and her sins might seem terrible to him, and yet she herself was to him a woman still, a being delicate, refined, tender even in her wickedness; but a woman who could speak at once keenly and brutally of her marriage reacted upon him as a very ugly or painful sight, or as a very harsh and discordant sound that jars every nerve in the body.
"Madam," he said in a low voice, but very quietly and coldly, "I think not that you are in such state of grace as to bear the Cross to your good."
Eleanor raised her head and looked at him haughtily, with lids half drooped as her eyes grew hard and keen.
"You are not my confessor, sir," she retorted. "For all you know, he may have enjoined upon me a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. It is a common penance." For the third time she laughed.
"A common penance!" cried the abbot, in a tone of despair. "That is what it has come to in these days. A man kills his neighbour in a quarrel and goes to Jerusalem to purge him of blood, as he would take a physician's draught to cure him of the least of little aches. A pilgrimage is a remedy, as a prayer is a medicine. To repeat the act of contrition so and so often, or to run through a dozen rosaries of an afternoon, is a potion for the sick soul."
"Well, what then?" asked the Queen.
"What then?" repeated the abbot. "Then there is no faith left in the true meaning of the Crusade-"
"That is what I fear," answered Eleanor. "That is why I am begging you to come with us. That is why the King will be unable to command men without you. And yet you will not go."