The White Plumes of Navarre: A Romance of the Wars of Religion

by S. R. Crockett

  CHAPTER XXV.

  CLAIRE'S EMBARRASSMENT OF CHOICE

  There could be no longer any doubt about it. Raphael Llorient, Lord ofCollioure, was in love with his cousin. At least he made love to her,which, of course, is an entirely different thing. The Professor pointedthis out. The grave Alcalde of Collioure showed the meal-dust in a newwrinkle, and said that, for a Doctor of a learned college which excludedwomen as unholy things, Anatole was strangely learned in matters whichconcerned them. Whereupon the Professor asked his brother who had placeda handful of early roses beside Claire's platter, in a tall green Veniceglass, at the mid-day meal. He further remarked that these roses camefrom the castle gardens, and wished to be informed whether the miller ofCollioure was grinding his own corn or another man's.

  Don Jordy openly laughed at them both. One he declared to be bald andthe other musty. He alone, owing to his handsome face andfigure--considering also his semi-ecclesiastical prestige, a great thingwith women in all ages--had a right to hope!

  The Professor broke in more sharply than became his learned dignity.

  "Tush--what is the use?" he said, not without a certain bitterness;"she is not for any of us. I have seen another. I have stood silentlyby, while she was thinking about him. I do as much every day. If we alldied for her sake----"

  Don Jordy clapped his elder brother on the shoulder with a more anxiousface, crying, "What, man, surely this is not serious? Why, Anatole, Ithought you had never looked on women--since--but that is better notspoken of. I was only jesting, lad. You know me better than that!"

  But Jean-Marie, the Alcalde of Collioure, gravely shook his head. Heknew Raphael Llorient was not a man to stick at trifles, and that thefact that his young cousin loved an unseen captain warring for theBearnais would only whet his desires. So it happened that once in a waythe service of defence broke down. The Senora, a brave worker about herhouse, could not pass the bounds of her garden without laying herself upfor days. The Alcalde was down at his mills, the Notary Ecclesiasticalhad ridden over to Elne on his white mule, by the path that zigzaggedalong the sea cliff, up among the rock-cystus and the romarin, twiningand twisting like a dust-coloured snake striking from coil.

  The Professor, called by a sudden summons to the castle to see a mostlearned man who had just arrived from Madrid, and was high in the favourof Philip of Spain, had betaken himself most unwillingly down to thetown. It was a still day, and the sea without hardly moved on its fringeof pebbles, sucking a little with languid lip and sighing like an infantfallen asleep at the mother's breast. Claire Agnew wearied of thestillness of the house-place. In the base-court she could hear MadameAmelie calling "_Vienn-ne, vienn-ne!_" to her goats. For there was nomilk like Madame Amelie's of the Mas of La Masane above Collioure, andno goats so well treated. Why, each day they had a great _pot-au-feu_ ofnettles, and carrots, and wild mustard leaves, just like Christians. Socareless and wasteful are some people. As if goats were not made to findtheir own living among rocks and stone walls!

  Such, at least, was the collated opinion of Collioure, jealous more thana little of the good hill-farm in free life-rent, the three well-doingsons, and smarting, too, after fifty years' experience of the Senora'stongue, which, when the mood was upon her, could crack like awine-waggoner's whip about the ears of the forward or froward.

  The house silence, broken only by the solemn pacing of the greatseven-foot Provencal clock, ventrose, aldermanic, profusely gilded as toits body and floreated as to its face, presently grew too much forClaire. She was nervous to-day, at any rate.

  She regarded the dial of the big clock. Half-past three! In a littlewhile the goats would be coming home to be milked. That would besomething. They generally kicked her when they did not butt. Still, thatalso was interesting. "Patience," said Claire to herself, though it ishard to be patient with an active goat in an unfriendly mood.

  Then, round the corner of the sea-road Notary Don Jorge would bearriving presently, the westering sun shining on the white mule whichthe bishop had given him for his easier transport. They believed greatlyin Don Jordy over at Elne. He it was who had pled their case as againstbig, grasping, brand-new Perpignan, which wanted to take away theirbishopric, their relics, their prestige, and its ancient glory fromtheir hill-set cathedral. Yes, Don Jordy would be coming. He always hada new jest each evening--a merry man and a loyal, Don Jordy. Claireliked him, his rosy monk's face, and twinkling light-blue eyes.

  Then, presently, the Alcalde Jean-Marie would come climbing up, theabundantly-vowelled Provencal speech, sweet and slow, dropping likehoney from his lips. It was fun to tease Jean-Marie. He took such a longtime to get ready his retorts. He was like the big, blundering,good-natured humble-bees aforesaid--you could always be far away beforehe got ready to be angry. Then, like them, he would go muttering andgrumbling away, large and dusty, and--not too clever.

  The Professor also; he would not stay long, she knew, down at the castlewith that very learned man from Madrid. Nor yet with the great ladies.He would rather be listening to his friend, little Claire Agnew, readingthe Genevan Testament, while he compared Calvin's rendering with theoriginal Greek, or perhaps merely sitting silent on their favouriteknoll above the blue Mediterranean, watching the white town, the greyand gold castle walls, and the whirling sails of Jean-Marie's windmills.

  Yes, they would all be coming back, some one of them at least; or, ifnot, there would at least be the Senora and the kicking goats. It wasbetter to be kicked than to be bored, and _ennuyee_, and sickened withthe measured immeasurable "tick-tack" of time, as it was doled emptilyout by the big-bellied Provencal clock in the kitchen-corner.

  At La Masane above Collioure, Claire suffered from the weariness ofriches, the embarrassment of choice. In a little forsaken village, withher father busied about his affairs, she would have been well contentall day with no more than her needlework and her Genevan Bible. Therewere maps in that, and a beautiful plan of the ark, so that she coulddiscuss with herself where to put each of the animals. But at La Masane,with four people eager to do her pleasure, the maiden picked and choseas if culling flowers among the clover meadows.

  So Claire went out, and stood a long minute. Her hand went up to herbrow, and she looked abroad on her new world. She could hear where tofind the Senora. She loved the Senora. But then the Senora and the goatsshe had always with her. On the whole, she preferred the men--any of themen--to amuse her, and, yes, of course, to instruct her also. Clairefelt her need of instruction.

  She looked down the steep zigzags of the path over the cliff to thetowers of the Castle of Collioure. She saw no Professor, staff in hand,walking a little stiffly, his hat tilted on the back of his head, orcarried in his hand, that he might the more easily look up at La Masanewhen he came in sight of his birthplace.

  The Alcalde-miller's towers stood out dazzlingly white, the sailsturning merrily as if at play. They made her giddy to look at long. Butno sturdy Jean-Marie was to be seen, his bust thrown out, the stiff fuzzof his beard half a foot before him as he walked, every way a solid man,and worthy to be chief magistrate of a greater town than Collioure.Only, just at that moment, Claire could not see him.

  The whip-lash path, running perilously along the cliff-edge towardsElne, was broken by no slowly-crawling white speck, the mule bestriddenby Don Jordy, Notary Episcopal of the ancient See of the Bishops ofElne.

  Remained for Claire--the Senora, the goats.

  Now it chanced that the night before, the Alcalde Jean-Marie, grapplingfor small-talk in the dense medium of his brain, had thought to pointout to Claire a little ravine far away to the left, beyond the pasturelimits of La Masane. The Alcalde was strong on local topography. That,he said, was the famous sweet-water fountain and Chapel of theConsolation. You found your fate there. Young girls saw their husbandthat was to be, upon dropping a pin into its depths in the twilight.Good young women (imaginatively given) sometimes saw the Virgin, orthought they did. While bad men, stooping to drink, certainly saw thedevil looking up at them--in the plain
clear mirror of that sweet-waterspring.

  A most various spring--useful, too! She might see--but Claire did notanticipate even to herself what or whom she hoped to see. At any rate,pending the arrival of her three male servitors, she would go--therecould be no harm in just going--to the Spring of the Consolation, hiddeep in that bosky dell over which the willow and oleander cast sopleasant a shade.

  Claire snatched a broad Navarrese bonnet and went.

  * * * * *

  "My sweet cousin, I bid you welcome," a voice spoke, mocking a little,but quiet and penetrating.

  Hastily Claire let the laurel branch slip back, stood upright like astartled fawn, and--found herself in face of Raphael Llorient, who atthe other side of the little brook which flowed from the Spring of OurLady of the Consolation, leaned against a tree, tapping his knee with aswitch and smiling triumphantly across at her.

  "Ah, cousin," he said, "you did not give me any very pressing invitationto come again to see you at the Mas on the hillside yonder. All the moregracious of you, therefore, to have come so far to meet me at myfavourite retreat!"

  "But I--I did not know--I had no idea----" Claire stammered.

  The Lord of Collioure waved his hand easily, as one who passed lightlyfrom a childish indiscretion.

  "Of course not--of course not," he agreed, as if humouring her mood,"how should you know? You had never even heard of the Spring of Our Ladyof the Consolation, or of its magic properties. Well, we have time--Iwill explain them to you, sweet cousin Claire!"

  "Oh, pray do not," cried Claire breathlessly; "I know--what theysay--what Jean-Marie says, that is. He pointed out the nest of bushes onthe hillside last night--I should not have come!"

  "And he told you, I doubt not--he would not be a Collioure man if he didnot, and a good Catholic of Roussillon (which is to say a goodpagan)--that you had but to look in the well at the gloaming to see thePredestined. Well, look!"

  In spite of herself Claire glanced downwards. She stood on the oppositeside of it from her cousin Raphael, and it was with a thrill of angerand fear that she saw his slender figure mirrored in the black pool.

  "It looks like a betrothal--eh, cousin?" said Raphael, "even by yourfriend Jean-Marie's telling?"

  "No, no!" cried Claire desperately, "I do not believe it. It is onlybecause I found you standing there. Of course, you can also see me fromwhere you stand! It is nothing!"

  "It is everything--a double proof of our fate, yours and mine, mycousin," said Raphael softly. "The Well of the Consolation has betrothedus. Sweet cousin Claire, there remains for me only to leap the slightobstacle and take possession! So fair a bride goes not long a-begging!"

  "No, no!" cried Claire, more emphatically, and making sure of herretreat in case of need, "I do not want to marry. I could not marryyou, at any rate--you are my cousin!"

  Inwardly she was saying to herself, "I must speak him fair to get away.When once I am back at La Masane I shall never wander away again fromthe Senora. I shall milk goats all my life--even if they butt me. I wishit were now." Her cousin Llorient smiled with subtlety. There was aflash in his eyes in the dusk of the wood like that of a wild animalseen in a cave.

  "Because I am your cousin--is it that I must not marry you? Pshaw!" hesaid, "what of that? Am I not a servant of King Philip, and of somefavour with him? Also he with the Pope, who, though he hates him, daresnot refuse all his asking to the Right Hand of Holy Church."

  Claire glanced behind her. The little path among the bushes was narrow,but beyond the primrose sky of evening peeped through. Two steps, onewild rush, and she would be out on the open brae-face, the heath andjuniper under foot, springy and close-matted--perfect running right tothe door of La Masane.

  She launched her ultimatum.

  "I will not wed you, whether you speak in jest or earnest. I wouldrather marry Don Jordy, or his white mule, or one of Jean-Marie'swindmills. No, not if you got fifty dispensations from as many popes. Iam of the religion oppressed and persecuted--Huguenot, Calvinist,Protestant. As my father was--as he lived and died, so will I live anddie!"

  With a backward step she was gone, the bushes swishing about her. In amoment she was out on the open slope, flying towards La Masane. Therewas the Professor laboriously climbing up from the castle, his hat onthe back of his head, his staff in his hand, just as she had foreseen.Good kind Professor, how she loved him!

  There, at the door of the Fanal Mill, making signs to her with his arms,signals as clumsy as the whirling of the great sails, now disconnectedand anchored for the night, was the Miller-Alcalde Jean-Marie, theflour-dust doubtless in his beard and mapping the wrinkles of his honestface. She loved him, too--she loved the flour-dust also, so glad was sheto get away from the Well of the Consolation.

  But nearer even than Don Jordy, whose white mule disengaged itself fromthe rocky wimples of the road to Elne (Claire loved Don Jordy and themule also, even more than she had said to Raphael, her cousin), thereappeared a lonely sentinel, motionless on a rock. A mere black figure itwas, wrapped in a great cloak, on his head the slouched hat of theRoussillon shepherds, looped up at the side, and a huge dog couchant athis feet.

  "Jean-aux-Choux! Jean--Jean--Jean!" cried Claire. And she never couldexplain how it came to pass that her arms were about Jean's neck, or whythere was a tear on her cheek. She did not know she had been weeping.

  By the Fountain of the Consolation, Raphael Llorient remained alone. Hedid not even trouble to follow Claire in her wild flight. He had thegirl, as he thought, under his hand, whenever he chose to lift her. Heranger did not displease him--on the contrary.

  He laughed a little, and the lifting of the lip gave a momentary glimpseof white teeth, which, taken together with the greenish sub-glitter(like shot silk) of his eyes, was distinctly unpleasant in the twilightof the wood.

  "The little vixen," he said to himself, changing his pose against thegreat olive for one yet more graceful, "the small fury! A little moreand she would have bitten her lip through. I saw the tremble of theunder one where the teeth were biting into it, when she was holdingherself in. But I like her none the worse for that. Women are thepoorest sort of wild cattle--unless you have to tame them!"

  The night darkened down. The primrose of the sky changed to the saffronred of a mountain-gipsy's handkerchief, crimsoned to a deep welter ofincarnadine, the "flurry" of the dying day. Still Raphael stood there,by the black pool. A little bluish glimmer, which might have beenWill-o'-the-wisp, danced across the marisma. The trees sighed. The watermuttered to itself.

  In that place and time, simple shepherd-folk who had often seen Raphael,Lord of Collioure, pass into the haunted coppice, were entirely sure ofthe explanation. The devil spoke with him--else, why was he not afraid?They were right.

  For Raphael Llorient took counsel there with his own heart. And as thatwas evil, it amounted to the same thing.

  The Kingdom of God is within you, saith the Word. The other kingdomalso, according to your choice.