The White Plumes of Navarre: A Romance of the Wars of Religion
Page 40
CHAPTER XXXIX.
SAVED BY SULKS
When the so-called uncle of Valentine la Nina, Mariana the Jesuit, foundthat even his acute ears could distinguish no sound within the darkenedparlour of his niece, he did what he had often done before. He openedthe door with the skill of an evil-doer, and peered through the crack.The evening sun struck on a spray of scattered blooms which Valentinehad thrown down in her haste--grenadine flowers, red as blood--upon abroidery frame, the needle stuck transversely, an open book of devotion,across which the shadows of the window bars slowly passed, following, ason a dial of illuminated capitals, the swift westering of the sun. Buthe heard no sound save the flick-flick of the leaves of the Judas treeagainst the window, in the light airs from the Canigou, already dampwith the early mist of the foot-hills.
The Jesuit listened, carefully opened the door a little more widely, andlistened again, holding his hand to his lips. Still only the stirringair and the leaves that tapped. Mariana drew a long breath and steppedwithin. The room was empty.
Then he brought his hand hard down on his thigh, and turned as if to crya hasty order. He stopped, however, before the words found vent.
"She has freed him--fled with him, the jade," he murmured; "she wasplaying to me also--what a woman--ah, what a woman!"
Then admiration took and held possession of him--a kind of connoisseur'senvy in the presence of a masterpiece of guile. The great Jesuit felthimself beaten at his own weapons.
"Used for sanctified ends," he murmured, "what a power she would be!"And again, "What a woman!"
But the order did not leave his lips. He felt that it were better toleave the matter as it was. If only he could find Valentine la Nina, noone would know of her part in the prisoner's escape. It could be putdown to the carelessness of the watchers. The principal familiars wereat their work deep in the caves of the Inquisition. The eyes in theprisoner's cell were painted eyes only--their effect merely moral. Nonehad seen John d'Albret go into the summer parlour of Valentine. None hadheard her interview, stormy as it was, with her uncle. They had otherthings to do in the House of the Street of the Money. If only, then, hecould find La Nina. All turned on that.
"Ah," he thought suddenly, "the key! She has the key of the little doorgiving upon the ancient bed of the Tet."
And, hastening down the passage by which, a few minutes before,Valentine la Nina had led the Abbe John, he stumbled upon his niece,fallen by the gate, her white dress and white face sombre under the duskof vine-leaves, which clambered over the porch as if it had been alady's bower.
But the key was not in her hand. With the single flash of intuition heshowed in the matter, John d'Albret had thrown it away, and it nowreposed in the bed of the Tet, not half a mile from the lost seal of theHoly Office which, some time previously, his friend Jean-aux-Choux hadso obligingly disposed of there.
The Jesuit, in order to keep up his credit in the house of his friends,was obliged to carry his niece to her summer bower, and leave her thereto recover in the coolness and quiet. Then he put on his out-of-doorssoutane, and passed calmly through the main portal to dispatch amessenger of his own Order to the frontier with a description of acertain John d'Albret, evaded from the prison of the Holy Office in theStreet of the Money at Perpignan--who, if caught, was by no means to bereturned thither, but to be held at the disposition of Father Mariana,chief of the Order of the Gesu in the North of Spain, and bearingletters mandatory to that effect from the King himself.
"For the present he is gone and lost," he murmured, as he went back;"the minx has outwitted me"--here he chuckled, and all the soft childishdimples came out--"yet why should I complain? It was I who taught her.Or, rather, to say the truth, I outwitted myself--I, and thatincalculable something in women which wrecks the wisdom of the wisestmen!"
And, comforting himself with these reflections, Mariana returned aloneto the House of the Holy Office in the Street of the Money, which, ofnecessity, he entered by the main door.
Now that buzzed like a hive, which had been silent and deserted enoughwhen he went out. The Jesuit stood in apparent bewilderment, his lipsmoving as if to ask a question. He could hear Dom Teruel storming thathe would burn every assistant, every familiar in the building, from roofto cellar, while Frey Tullio and Serra, the huge Murcian, madetumultuary perquisition into every chamber in search of the runaway.
"Hold there--I will open for you," commanded Mariana, as he saw thatthey were approaching the door within which lay Valentine; "I will goin, and you can follow. But let no one dare to disturb the repose of thelady, my niece. Or--ye know well the seal and mandate of the Kingconcerning her!"
Mariana went softly in, not closing the door, and having satisfiedhimself that all was well, he beckoned the inquisitors to approach.Valentine la Nina lay on the oaken settle, her head on the pillow,exactly as he had placed her, but thanks to the few drops from the phialwhich he had compelled her to swallow, she was now sleeping peacefully,her bosom rising and falling with her measured breathing.
The men stood a moment uncertain, perhaps a little awestruck. Serrawould have retreated, but the suspicious Neapolitan walked softly acrossand tested the bars of the window. They were firmly and deeply enoughsunk in the stone to convince even Frey Tullio.
* * * * *
So it chanced that while the messenger of the Gesu sped northward to thefrontier with orders to arrest one Jean d'Albret, a near relative of theBearnais, clad in frayed court-suit of pale blue, and even while thecouriers of the Holy Office posted in the same direction seeking acriminal whom it was death to shelter or succour, the Abbe John, lookingmost abbatical in his decent black cloak, passed out of the city by theempty bed of the Tet, the same which it had occupied before the straightcut known as the Basse led it to southward of the town. Then--marvel ofmarvels--the hunted man turned to the south and made across the hills inthe direction of the House of La Masane upon the slopes of the hillsbehind Collioure.
And as he went he communed with himself.
"I will show her!" affirmed the Abbe John grimly (for there was a hotand lasting temper under that light exterior, perhaps that of theaboriginal Bourbon, who to this day "never learns and never forgives")."I will show her! If I loved her as an ordinary man, I would hasten tofollow and overtake her! But she is safe and has no need of me. If shehas any thought for me--any care (he did not say 'any love'), it will benone the worse for keeping. I will go back to Jean-aux-Choux. He was toreturn and care for all that remained at La Masane. Well, surely he isno braver than I. What he does I can do. I will go and help him. Also, Ishall be able to keep an eye on that rascal, Raphael Llorient!"
And so, with these excellent intentions he turned his face resolutely tothe south--a determination which completely threw his pursuers off thescent. For it was a natural axiom in Spanish Roussillon, that whosoeverembroiled himself with the powers-that-were in that province madeinstantly, by sea or by land, for the nearest French border.
Thus was John d'Albret saved by the Bourbon blood of his mother, or byhis own native cross-grained temper. In short, he sulked. And for thetime being, the sulking saved his neck.