The White Plumes of Navarre: A Romance of the Wars of Religion
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CHAPTER XXXVII.
THE WILD ANIMAL--WOMAN
Mariana the Jesuit rose, pen in hand, to embrace his "niece" as sheentered his bureau. There was a laughing twinkle in his eye, and all hiscomfortable little pink-and-white figure shook with mirth.
"Bravo--oh! bravo!" he cried, "never--never did I suppose our littleValentine half so clever. Why, you turned yonder boastful cockereloutside in. Ha, they teach us something of dissimulation in ourseminaries, but we are children to you, the best of us--the whole Gesumight sit at your feet and take lessons. Even Philip himself--were itnot for semi-paternal authority! Never was the thing they call lovebetter acted. I declare it was a great moral lesson to listen to you.You made the folly of it so apparent--so abject!"
The girl was still pale. The rich glow of health, without the leastcolour in her cheeks, had disappeared. But the eyes of Valentine la Ninawere dangerously bright.
The Jesuit proceeded, without taking note of these symptoms of disorder.He was so accustomed to use the girl's beauty and cleverness to bait hishooks. By her father she had been vowed from infancy to the service ofthe Society. Her rank was known only to a few in the realm. Save on thiscondition of service, Philip would never have permitted her to remainin his kingdom of the Seven Spains. And, indeed, Valentine la Ninadeserved well of Philip and the Gesu. She had served the Societyfaithfully.
For these reasons she was dear as anything in flesh and blood could beto Mariana the Jesuit. He laughed again, tasting the rare flavour of thejest.
"A rich prize indeed," he chuckled. "The cousin of the Bearnais--acandidate of the League for the crown of France. Ho, ho! Serving on thegalleys as a Huguenot! You were right. There is no good fuel for FatherTeruel's bonfires--he is meat for the masters of Tullio the Neapolitanand Serra his kinsman. Was there ever such sport? You do indeed deservea province and a dower, were it not that you are too valuable where youare, aiding the Cause--and me, your poor loving 'uncle'! But what mademe laugh as I listened, till the tears came into my old eyes, was tohear you--you, to whom a thousand men had paid court--begging for thelove of that starved and terrified young braggart in his suit of silkenbravery, tashed with prisons, and the fear of the Place of Eyes stillwhite on his face!"
Then all unexpectedly Valentine la Nina spoke. Her tall figure seemed toovershadow that of her little, dimpling, winking kinsman, as the pouchesunder his eyes shook with merriment, while his mouth was one wreathedsmile, and he pointed his beautiful, plump, white fingers togetherpyramidally, as if measuring one hand against the other.
"It was true," she said point-blank, "I was not pretending. I did lovehim--and I do!"
The dimples died out one by one on the face of the historian, Mariana ofToledo. The ripe colour faded from the cheek-bone. He glanced nervouslyover his shoulder with the air of a man who may be sheltering traitorsunder his roof-tree.
"Hush!" he whispered. "Enough--now you have carried the jest far enough.It was excellent with the springald D'Albret. You played him well, likea trout on an angle. But after all we are--where we are. And Teruel andTullio are not the men to appreciate such a jest."
"I was never farther from jesting in my life," said Valentine la Nina;"I love him as I never thought to love man before. If he would haveloved me, and forgotten that--that woman--I would have done for him allI said--aye, and more!"
"You--Valentine--a king's daughter?"
"Great good that has done me," cried the girl; "I must not show my face.My father (if, indeed, he is my father) would so gladly get rid of methat he would present me to the Grand Turk if he thought the secretwould hold water. As it is, he keeps me doing hateful work, lying andsmiling, smiling and lying, like--like a Jesuit!"
"Girl, you have taken leave of your senses--of your judgment!" said her"uncle" severely. "Do you not see that you are sealing the doom of theman for whom you profess a feeling as foolish as sudden?"
"Neither foolish nor sudden," retorted the girl sullenly, her hand onthe back of a chair, gripping the top bar like a weapon. For a momentthe little soft man with his eternal smile might have been her victim.She could have brained him with a blow--the angle of that solid oakenseat crashing down upon the shining bald head which harboured so manysecrets and had worked out so many plots. Valentine la Nina let themoment pass, but while it lasted she might very well have done it.
"It is not foolish," she said, relaxing her grip for an instant. "I am ahuman creature with a heart that beats so many times a minute, and askin that covers the same human needs and passions--just as if I were afree and happy girl--like--like that spy's daughter whom he loves.Neither is it sudden. For I saw him more than once on the hills aboveCollioure, when we stayed in the house of that cruel young monsterRaphael Llorient. I wandered on the wastes covered with romarin andthyme--why, think you? 'A new-born passion for nature,' you said,laughing. 'To get away from our host, Don Raphael,' said Livia thecountess. Neither, good people! It was, because, stretched at length ona bed of juniper and lavender, in the shadow of a rock, my eyes had seenthe noblest youth the gods had put upon the earth. He was asleep."
"You are mad, girl," cried Mariana, as loudly as he dared. "These arenot the words of the Valentine I knew!"
"Surely not," said the girl, her head thrown back, her breast forward,and breathing deep, "nor am I the Valentine I myself knew!"
"You dare to love this man--you--vowed to the Church and to the serviceof the Gesu, whose secrets you hold? You dare not!"
"I dare all," she answered calmly. "This is not a matter of daring. Itcomes! It is! I did not make it. It does not go at my bidding, nor atyours. Besides, I did not bid it go. For one blessed moment I had atleast the sensation of a possible happiness!"
"Nevertheless, he shamed you, rejected you, like the meanest whininglap-dog your foot spurns aside out of your path. He has done this toyou--Valentine la Nina, called the Most Beautiful--to you, the King'sdaughter an you liked, an Infanta of Spain! Have you thought of that?"
"Thought?" she said, tapping her little foot on the floor, and with herstrong right hand swaying the chair to and fro like a feather--"have Ithought of it? What else have I done for many days and weeks? Butwhether he will love me or cast me off--the die is thrown. I am his andnot another's. I may take revenge--for that is in my blood. I may causehim to suffer as he has made me suffer--and the woman also--especiallythe woman, the spy's daughter! But that does not alter the fact. I amhis, and if he would, even when chained to the oar of the galley, aslave among slaves--he could whistle me to his side like a fawning dog!For I am his slave--his slave!"
The last words were spoken almost inaudibly, as if to herself.
"And to the galleys he shall go!" said the Jesuit, "you have said it,and the idea is a good one. There he will be out of mischief. Yet he canbe produced, if, in the time to come, his cousin the Bearnais, arrivedat the crown of France, has time to make inquiries after him!"
A knife glittered suddenly before the eyes of the Jesuit. It was in thefirm white hand of the girl vowed to the Society.
"See," she hissed, letting each word drop slowly from her lips, "see,Doctor Mariana, my uncle, you are not afraid of death--I know--but youdo not wish to die now. There are so many things unfinished--so much yetto do. I know you, uncle! Now let me take my will of this young man.Afterwards I am at your service--for ever--for ever--more faithfullythan before!"
"How can I trust you?" said the Jesuit; "to-morrow you might go madagain!"
"These things do not happen twice in a lifetime," said Valentine laNina, "and as for Jean d'Albret, I shall put him beyond the reach of anysecond chance!"
Her uncle nodded his head. He knew when a woman has the bit between herteeth, and though he had a remedy even for such cases, he judged thatthe present was not the time to use it.
So Valentine la Nina went out, the knife still in her hand.
* * * * *
The Jesuit of Toledo threw himself back on his writing-chair and wipedhis brow with a handkerchief.
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"_Ouff!_" he cried, emptying his chest with a gust of relief, "this iswhat it is to have to do with that wild animal, Woman! In Madrid theytame the tiger, till it takes victual from its keeper's very hand. He isits master, almost its lover; I have seen the tiger arch its back like acat under the caress. It sleeps with the arm of the keeper about itsneck! Till one day--one day--the tiger that was tamed falls upon thetamer, the master, the lover, the friend! So with a woman. Have I nottrained and nurtured, pruned and cared for this soul as for mine own.She was tame. She knew no will but mine. _Clack!_ In a moment, at sightof a comely youth in a court suit asleep, as Endymion on some Latmiansteep, she is wild again. Better to let her go than perish, keepingher."
Mariana listened a while, but the chamber of his work was as far fromthe lugubrious noises of the den of Dom Teruel as if it had been thePlace of Eyes itself. Neither could he hear any sound from the littlesummer parlour which had been put at the service of his niece.
The old worldly-wise smile came back upon his lips.
"It is none of my business, of course," he murmured, "but it strikes methat the youth D'Albret had better say his prayers--such, that is, as hecan remember. I, for one, would not care twice to anger Valentine laNina!"
He thought a while, and then with a grave air he added, "If I were a manof the world I would wager ten golden ounces to one, that within fiveminutes Master D'Albret knows more about eternity than the Holy Fatherhimself and all his College of Cardinals. Well, better so! Then she willcome back to us. She has served us well, Valentine la Nina, and now,having drunk the cup--_now_ she will serve us better than ever, or Iknow nothing of womankind!"
But Mariana, though he stood long with his ear glued to the crack of thedoor, could distinguish no sound within the summer parlour whichValentine la Nina had entered to look for the Abbe John.