Gamelyn

“ His brother’s servants fled from his anger, and the crowd that had accompanied him swarmed into courtyard and hall, while the knight took refuge in a little turret.
“Welcome to you all,” said Gamelyn. “We will be masters here and ask no man’s leave. Yesterday I left five tuns of wine in the cellar; we will drain them dry before you go. If my brother objects (as he well may, for he is a miser) I will be butler and caterer and manage the whole feast. Any person who dares to object may join the porter in the well.” ”

“ Why, what weak soul spake that, Alison? It is but begun. We will have more and more and more till no lordling is left to vaunt himself Jack Trueman's better. All must come down. We will have them low upon their knees. I have mastered a king to-day. I will be King's counsellor yet and rule him to a new governance, wherein all shall enjoy the earth. I——”
“Thou? Why art thou idle here?”
Gamelyn turned on the grim brow of Captain Craddock. “I have earned my leisure, sweet sir: hast thou?”
“Go to thy friends, and dabble in the Archbishop's blood.” ”

“ When they heard this they tried to encourage him, by bidding him remember that God can provide a remedy for every disease, and the good knight received their kindly words without dispute. “That God can send remedy for an [Pg 206] ill I will never deny; but I beseech you, for my sake, to divide my lands among my three sons. For the love of God deal justly, and forget not my youngest, Gamelyn. Seldom does any heir to an estate help his brothers after his father’s death.” ”

“ The friends whom Sir John had summoned deliberated long over the disposal of the estate. The majority wished to give all to the eldest son, but a strong minority urged the claims of the second, but all agreed that Gamelyn might wait till his eldest brother chose to give him a share of his father’s lands. At last it was decided to divide the inheritance between the two elder sons, and the knights returned to the chamber where the brave old knight lay dying, and told him their decision. He summoned up strength enough to protest against their plan of distribution, and said ”

“ Here cometh the scherreve · and wil have cure heedes.'
Adam sayde, 'Gamelyn · my reed is now this,
Abyde we no lenger · lest we fare amis:
I rede that we to wode goon · ar that we be founde, 605
Better is us ther loos · than in town y-bounde.'
Adam took by the hond · yonge Gamelyn;
And everich of hem two · drank a draught of wyn,
And after took her cours · and wenten her way;
Tho fond the scherreve · nest, but non ay. 610
The scherreve lighte adoun · and went in-to the halle,
And fond the lord y-fetered · faste with-alle. ”

“ The justice sat still, dumb with astonishment, and Gamelyn struck him fiercely, cut his cheek, and threw him over the bar so that his arm broke; and no man durst withstand the outlaw, for fear of his company standing at the doors. The youth sat down in the judge’s seat, with Otho beside him, and Adam in the clerk’s desk; and he placed in the dock the false sheriff, the justice, and the unjust jurors, and accused them of wrong and attempted murder. ”

“ Gamelin could not cross the Pont-Neuf or pass the Hôtel de Ville without his heart beating high at sight of the beflagged marquee in which magistrates in tricolour scarves were inscribing the names of volunteers to the sound of the Marseillaise. But for him to join the Republic's armies would have meant leaving his mother to starve.
Heralded by a grievous sound of puffing and panting the old citoyenne, Gamelin's widowed mother, entered the studio, hot, red and out of breath, the National cockade hanging half unpinned in her cap and on the point of falling out. ”

“ We were wrong; it is to conquer and to die we ought to say."
He looked about him. Children were building sand-castles. Citoyennes in their wooden chairs under the trees were sewing or embroidering. The passers-by, in coat and breeches of elegant cut and strange fashion, their thoughts fixed on their business or their pleasures, were making for home. And Gamelin felt himself alone amongst them; he was no compatriot, no contemporary of theirs. What was it had happened? How came the enthusiasm of the great years to have been succeeded by indifference, weariness, perhaps disgust? ”

“ Gamelin did not hear these remarks, which would have angered him; he had gone into the next room to don his blue coat.
"You may well be proud of your son," observed the citoyenne Rochemaure, addressing the citoyenne Gamelin. "He is a great man; talent and character both make him so."
In answer, the widow Gamelin gave a good account of her son, yet without making much boast of him before a lady of high station, for she had been taught in her childhood that the first duty of the lowly is humility towards the great. ”

“ By-the-bye, about Gamelin; yesterday, strolling in the Boulevard du Temple, I saw at a dealer's, who keeps a second-hand stall opposite the House of Beaumarchais, all that poor devil's canvases, amongst the rest his Orestes and Electra. The head of Orestes, who's like Gamelin, is really fine, I assure you.... The head and arm are superb.... The man told me he found no difficulty in getting rid of these canvases to artists who want to paint over them.... Poor Gamelin! ”

“ Jocelyn’s proceedings were in curious contrast. She took the first empty seat. Her eyelids dropped, her chin tilted up, her face assumed a mask of indifference. She pushed her stakes on with the rake, carelessly, as if they did not belong to her, she raked them in carelessly in the same way. She backed her luck and cut her losses with nonchalance in an orthodox fashion—gambling because other people gambled.
Giles, standing at the same table, staked feverishly on every spin of the wheel. He kept his eyes all the time on Jocelyn. ”

“ For six months and more Gamelin had been drawing soldiers with never-failing gusto. He had sold some of these while the fit of martial enthusiasm lasted, while others hung on the walls of the room, and five or six, water-colours, colour-washes and chalks in two tints, lay about on the table and chairs. In the days of July, '92, when in every open space rose platforms for enrolling recruits, when all the taverns were gay with green leaves and resounded to the shouts of "Vive la Nation! freedom or death!" ”

“ He felt himself to be a person too much in the public eye and mixed up in too many transactions to enjoy perfect security; so the citoyen Gamelin struck him as a friend worth cultivating. When all was said, one was a good citizen and on the side of justice.
He gave the painter magistrate his hand, declaring himself his true friend and a true patriot, a well-wisher of the arts and of liberty. Gamelin forgot his injuries and pressed the hand so generously offered.
"Citoyen Évariste Gamelin," said Jean Blaise, "I appeal to you as a friend and as a man of talent. ”

“ Évariste Gamelin climbed the old-fashioned staircase as far as the fourth and last storey, where he had his studio together with a bedroom for his mother. At this point ended the wooden stairs laid with tiles that took the place of the grand stairway of the more important floors. A ladder clamped to the wall led to a cock-loft, from which at that moment emerged a stout man with a handsome, florid, rosy-cheeked face, climbing painfully down with an enormous package clasped in his arms, yet humming gaily to himself: J'ai perdu mon serviteur. ”

“ Gamelin replied that he was too insignificant an individual to present her to Marat, besides which, she had no need of anyone to be her sponsor; Marat, albeit overwhelmed with business, was not the inaccessible person he was said to be,—and, added Gamelin:
"He will receive you, citoyenne, if you are in distress; his great heart makes him compassionate to all who suffer. He will likewise receive you if you have any revelation to make concerning the public weal; he has vowed his days to the unmasking of traitors." ”

“ When she had finished, she got up, saying, in answer to a buzz of remonstrance, “It’s too hot to play,” and walked away to a chair, with a sudden impatience of the people around her. She was thinking, “Why doesn’t Giles come and talk to me?” The German professor, who had followed her from the window, began a commentary upon composers; Jocelyn, leaning back in her chair, listened languidly, while her eyes wandered to the window. A tall, good-looking woman in pink was talking to Giles, who was listening with a smile on his face. ”

“ She greeted Nielsen with a smoothly dignified cordiality. She managed at the same time, by refusing to look at her niece above the waist, to convey to her a sense of unforgiven injury. For a large lady she was inimitably quick of expression—she never wasted time. She began to talk to Nielsen of old days and mutual friends; no allusion was made to the Legards, but in the middle of the conversation Jocelyn rose, and, on the pretence of drawing the blinds, went to the window. She dreaded to hear Giles’s name, fearing for her self-command. ”

“ Amidst the calamities of the State and the disaster that overwhelmed himself, he preserved an unruffled spirit, reading for the refreshment of his mind in his Lucretius, which he carried with him wherever he went in the gaping pocket of his plum-coloured surtout.
Évariste Gamelin pushed open the door of his lodging. It offered no resistance, for his poverty spared him any trouble about lock and key; when his mother from force of habit shot the bolt, he would tell her: "Why, what's the good? Folks don't steal spiders'-webs,—nor my pictures, neither." ”

“ With every step gained from the villa, Jocelyn’s spirits rose in the rapid motion{71} through the warm dry air; she lost herself in the brilliant day, in the passing glimpses of the laughing sea, in the hot pine scent from above the road. She shook her parasol gaily, with a smiling “Buon Giorno,” at a group of Italian peasant girls swinging along, slowly and erect, to market; the flowers which she had tied round its handle swayed and quivered, sending their perfume over to Giles, who sat opposite her. She did not look at him ”

“ The courtyard of the Palais, dimly lighted by the last rays of the setting sun, was filled with a howling, excited crowd. The four sections of the Tribunal had the day before pronounced thirty sentences of death, and on the steps of the Great Stairway a throng of tricoteuses squatted to see the tumbrils start. But Gamelin, as he descended the steps among the press of jurors and spectators, saw nothing, heard nothing but his own act of justice and humanity and the self-congratulation he felt at having recognized innocence. In the courtyard stood Élodie, all in white, smiling through her tears ”

“ Thus attired and with a black hat, she appealed irresistibly to Nielsen’s sense of the fitness of things. Her small face seemed to gleam out of its black and white setting like a jewel. He squared his figure as he walked, and held his head up with a feeling of pride.
In the Studio groups of people stood, in a subdued light, discussing the pictures in low tones. The spirit of allegory stared out upon them from the walls. Imagination laid a spell upon the eye, and upon the tongue. Jocelyn’s face had become suddenly grave and earnest. ”

“ CHAPTER V Giles rode over the next morning. He found Jocelyn and Mrs. Travis in the garden of the hotel talking with a young Englishman. They came forward to meet him, but he felt at once that in Jocelyn’s greeting there was something foreign to her, something almost repellant. After the first moment she did not look at him; all her attention seemed bestowed upon the speech of the young Englishman, who stood, speckless, descanting upon “systems,” the demerits of which he illustrated languidly with his fingers. ”

“ On reaching home, Gamelin found his mother and old Brotteaux playing a game of piquet by the light of a smoky tallow-candle. At the moment the old woman was calling "sequence of kings" without the smallest scruple.
When she heard her son was appointed juryman, she kissed him in a transport of triumph, thinking what an honour it was for both of them and that henceforth they would have plenty to eat every day.
"I am proud and happy," she declared, "to be the mother of a juryman. Justice is a fine thing, and of all the most necessary ”

“ Worthington so, much as I should like to give my darling sister a brother's kiss, and tell her, instead of writing it, how truly I rejoice with her in this new-born happiness, I must be content to spend my Christmas in old bachelor fashion. As to your coming to me! That is equally impossible. A little cloaked and furred damsel, known to the world as Gertrude Glyn, might be packed off by train, landed at the station nearest to Little Cray, and thence conveyed in a borrowed trap to the rectory. But if she were here in the body she would be absent in spirit. ”

“ He said to Jocelyn when he left them{91}—
“I must get back to Monte Carrlo, you know, and appease the Fates for my desertion.”
As they passed the last hill into Mentone the evening light was already spreading, mellow and soft, over the town, and the sun was dying behind the Esterelles. The tired little horses, toiling up the steep ascent, nodded their heads diligently.
Jocelyn and Giles got out to walk. Half-way up, Jocelyn stopped and stretched out her arms, saying with a sigh—
“Look! The evening is coming over everything, like a cool blessing, gentle—gentle—”
“Yes!” said Giles. ”

“ Glyn I had a house on the beach in California. Here I did a great deal of entertaining, and among these entertainments a dinner which I gave for Nina Wilcox Putnam represents the enthusiasm with which Hollywood took up the game of authors. For Elinor was only one of the many writers who mingled that evening with the luminaries of screen and stage. That she was not the most retiring of her craft is a statement bound to be accepted immediately by those familiar with her talent for being a dinner-guest. As a matter of fact, Mrs. Glyn is one of the greatest social assets I ever knew. ”