第34章 THE WOOD OF LIFE(3)

Once another in a forest inn had spoken thus to her.She stretched out her hand to him, and he covered it with kisses.

But in the night the priests stirred her fears again, and next morning there was another tragic pleading, from which Philip fled almost in tears.

Presently he found himself denied her chamber, unless he could give assurance of a changed mind.And so the uneasy days went on, till in a dawn of wind amid a great praying and chanting the soul of the Countess Catherine passed, and Aimery reigned in Beaumanoir.

The place had grown hateful to Philip and he made ready to go.For him in his recalcitrancy there was only a younger son's portion, the little seigneury of Eaucourt, which had been his mother's.The good Aimery would have increased the inheritance, but Philip would have none of it.He had made his choice, and to ease his conscience must abide strictly by the consequences.Those days at Beaumanoir had plucked him from his moorings.

For the moment the ardour of his quest for knowledge had burned low.He stifled in the air of the north, which was heavy with the fog of a furious ignorance.But his mind did not turn happily to the trifling of his Italian friends.There was a tragic greatness about such as his grandmother, a salt of nobility which was lacking among the mellow Florentines.Truth, it seemed to him, lay neither with the old Church nor the New Learning, and not by either way could he reach the desire of his heart.

Aimery bade him a reluctant farewell."If you will not keep me company here, I go to the wars.At Beaumanoir I grow fat.Ugh, this business of dying chills me." And then with a very red face he held out a gold ring.

"Take it, Philip.She cherished it, and you were her favourite and should wear it.God knows I have enough."Likewise he presented him with a little vellum-bound book."I found this yesterday, and you being the scholar among us should have it.See, the grandmother's name is written within.".....................

It was a bright May morning when Philip, attended by only two lackeys as became a poor man, rode over the bridge of Canche with eyes turned southward.In the green singing world the pall lifted from his spirits.The earth which God had made was assuredly bigger and better than man's philosophies."It would appear," he told himself, "that like the younger son in the tale, I am setting out to look for fortune."At an inn in the city of Orleans he examined his brother's gift.It was a volume of careful manuscript, entitled Imago Mundi, and bearing the name of one Pierre d'Ailly, who had been Bishop of Cambray when the Countess Catherine was a child.He opened it and read of many marvels--how that the world was round, as Pythagoras held, so that if a man travelled west he would come in time to Asia where the sun rose.Philip brooded over the queer pages, letting his fancy run free, for he had been so wrapped up in the mysteries of man's soul that he had forgotten the mysteries of the earth which is that soul's place of pilgrimage.He read of cities with silver walls and golden towers waiting on the discoverer, and of a river on whose banks "virescit sylva vitae." And at that phrase he fell to dreaming of his childhood, and a pleasant unrest stirred in his heart.

"Aimery has given me a precious viaticum," he said.

.....................

He travelled by slow stages into Italy, for he had no cause for haste.At Pavia he wandered listlessly among the lecture halls.What had once seemed to him the fine gold of eloquence was now only leaden rhetoric.In his lodging at Florence he handled once again his treasures--his books from Ficino's press; his manuscripts, some from Byzantium yellow with age, some on clean white vellum new copied by his order; his busts and gems and intaglios.What had become of that fervour with which he had been used to gaze on them? What of that delicious world into which, with drawn curtains and a clear lamp, he could retire at will? The brightness had died in the air.

He found his friends very full of quarrels.There was a mighty feud between two of them on the respective merits of Cicero and Quintilian as lawgivers in grammar, and the air was thick with libels.Another pair wrangled in public over the pre-eminence of Scipio and Julius Caesar; others on narrow points of Latinity.There was a feud among the Platonists on a matter of interpretation, in which already stilettos had been drawn.More bitter still was the strife about mistresses--kitchen-wenches and courtesans, where one scholar stole shamelessly from the other and decked with names like Leshia and Erinna....Philip sickened at what he had before tolerated, for he had brought back with him from the north a quickened sense of sin.Maybe the Bishop of Beauvais had been right.What virtue was there in this new knowledge if its prophets were apes and satyrs! Not here grew the Wood of Life.Priapus did not haunt its green fringes.

His mind turned towards Venice.There the sea was, and there men dwelt with eyes turned to spacious and honourable quests, not to monkish hells and heavens or inward to unclean hearts.And in Venice in a tavern off the Merceria he spoke with destiny.

It was a warm evening, and, having dined early, he sought the balcony which overlooked the canal.It was empty but for one man who sat at a table with a spread of papers before him on which he was intently engaged.Philip bade him good evening, and a face was raised which promptly took his fancy.The stranger wore a shabby grey doublet, but he had no air of poverty, for round his neck hung a massive chain of gold, and his broad belt held a richly chased dagger.He had unbuckled his sword, and it lay on the table holding down certain vagrant papers which fluttered in the evening wind.

His face was hard and red like sandstone, and around his eyes were a multitude of fine wrinkles.It was these eyes that arrested Philip.They were of a pale brown as if bleached by weather and gazing over vast spaces;cool and quiet and friendly, but with a fire burning at the back of them.