The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay | Page 7

the office; nor did she relax when at the elevation of the Host Richard bowed himself to the earth. It seemed as if she too, bearing between her hands her own heart, was lifting it up for sacrifice and for worship.
The Count was communicated. He was a very religious man, who would sooner have gone without his sword than his Saviour upon any affairs. Jehane saw him fed without a twitch of the lips. She was in a great mood, a rapt and pillared saint; but when mass was over and his thanksgiving to make, she got up and hid herself away from him in the shades. There she lurked darkling, and he, lunging out, swept with his sword's point the very edge of her gown. She did not hear him go, for he trod like a cat; but she felt him touch her with the sword, and shuddered once or twice. He went out of the courtyard at a gallop.
While the abbot was reciting his own thanksgiving Jehane came out of her corner, minded to speak with him. So much he divined, needing not the beckoning look she sent him from her guarded eyes. He sat himself down by the altar of Saint Remy, and she knelt beside him.
'Well, my daughter?' says Milo.
'I think it is well,' she took him up.
The Abbot Milo, a red-faced, watery-eyed old man, rheumy and weathered well, then opened his mouth and spake such wisdom as he knew. He held up his forefinger like a claw, and used it as if describing signs and wonders in the air.
'Hearken, Madame Jehane,' he said. 'I say that you have done well, and will maintain it. That great prince, whom I love like my own son, is not for you, nor for another. No, no. He is married already.'
He hoped to startle her, the old rhetorician; but he failed. Jehane was too dreary.
'He is married, my daughter,' he repeated; 'and to whom? Why, to himself. That man from the birth has been a lonely soul. He can never wed, as you understand it. You think him your lover! Believe me, he is not. He is his own lover. He is called. He has a destiny. And what is that? you ask me.'
She did not, but rhetoric bade him suppose it. 'Salem is his destiny; Salem is his bride, the elect lady in bonds. He will not wed Madame Alois of France, nor you, nor any virgin in Christendom until that spiritual wedlock is consummate. I should not love him as I do if I did not believe it. For why? Shall I call my own son apostate? He is signed with the Cross, a married man, by our Saviour!'
He leaned back in his chair, peering down at her to see how she took it. She took it stilly, and turned him a marble, storm-purged face, a pair of eyes which seemed all black.
'What shall I do to be safe?' Her voice sounded worn.
'Safe, my child?' He wondered. 'Bless me, is not the Cross safety?'
'Not with him, father.'
This was perfectly true, though tainted with scandal, he thought. The abbot, who was trained to blink all such facts, had to learn that this girl blinked none. True to his guidance, he blinked.
'Go home to your brother, my daughter; go home to Saint-Pol-la-Marche. At the worst, remember that there are always two arks for a woman in flood-time, a convent and a bed.'
'I shall never choose a convent,' said Jehane.
'I think,' said the abbot, 'that you are perfectly wise.'
I suppose the alternative struck a sudden terror into her; for the abbot abruptly records in his book that 'here her spirit seemed to flit out of her, and she began to tremble very much, and in vain to contend with tears. I had her all dissolved at my feet within a few moments. She was very young, and seemed lost.'
'Come, come,' he said, 'you have shown yourself a brave girl these two days. It is not every maid can sacrifice herself for a Count of Poictou, the eldest son of a king. Come, come, let us have no more of this.' He hoped, no doubt, to brace her by a roughness which was far from his nature; and it is possible that he succeeded in heading off a mutiny of the nerves. She was not violent under her despair, but went on crying very miserably, saying, 'Oh, what shall I do? what shall I do?'
'God knoweth,' says the abbot, 'this was a bad case; but I had a good thought for it.' He began to speak of Richard, of what he had done and what would live to do. 'They say that the strain of the fiend is in that race, my dear,' he told her. 'They say that Geoffrey Grey-Gown