The White Plumes of Navarre Part 15

Jean-aux-Choux departed, muttering to himself that the Bearnais was becoming as learned as a pupil of Beza or a Sorbonne Doctor, but consoling himself for his dialectical defeat by the thought that, at least, in the Capuchin's robe he was fairly safe. For even if caught, after all, it was only another trick of the Fool of the Three Henries.

It was, indeed, the only thing concerning which Leaguers, Royalists, and Huguenots were agreed--that Jean-aux-Choux was a good, simple fool!

CHAPTER XIV.

EYES OF JADE

Claire Agnew was left alone among a world of men. But as she had known few women all her life, that made the less matter. Her dark, densely ringleted hair, something between raven-black and the colour of bog-oak, was crisped about a fine forehead, which in his hours of ease her father had been wont to call "Ailsa Craig."

"Oh, cover up Ailsa!" he would say often to tease her, "no girl can have brains enough for a brow such as that!" And so, to please him, she had trained her hair to lie low on her forehead, and then to ripple and twist away gracefully to the nape of her neck, looking, as she turned her head, like a charming young Medusa with deep green eyes of mystic jade.

Such was Claire Agnew in the year of grace 1588, when she found herself fatherless in that famous town of Blois, soon to be the terror, the joy, and the hope of the world. Not that any description can do much to make the personality of a fair woman leap from the printed page. Slowly and only in part, it must disengage itself in word and thought and deed.

Like almost all lonely girls, Claire Agnew kept, in her father's tongue, often in his very dialect, a journal of events and feelings and imaginings--her "I-book," as she used to name it to herself.

That night as she curled herself up to sleep--it was almost morning--she arranged in her mind how she would begin the very next day to write down "all that happened, as well as" (because she was a girl) "all that she hoped would happen."

The closely-packed script has come down to us, the writing fine, like Greek cursive. The paper has been preserved marvellously, but the ink is browned with time, and the letters so small and serried that they can only be made out with a magnifying-gla.s.s.

"This is my I-Book, and I mean to be more faithful with myself in writing it out; from this time forward--I shall write it every night, no matter how tired I may be. Or--at least, the next day, without the least failure. This shall have the force of a vow!"

(Poor Claire--even thus have all diaries opened, since the first Cave-man began to scratch the details of his Twelfth of August "bag" on a mammoth-tusk! What a feeble proportion of these diaries have survived even one fortnight!)

"Yes, I like him," Claire wrote, without prelude or the formality of naming the him--"I like him, but I am glad he is gone. Somehow, till I have thought and rested a while, I shall feel safer with just our excellent Doctor Long, who preaches at me much as Pastor Gras used to do at Geneva. Indeed, I see little difference, except that the pastor was older, and did not hold my hand as he talked. But no doubt he does that because I have lost my father."

Doubtless it was so; nevertheless it needs some little explanation to make it clear why, after having been committed by D'Epernon to the care of the King of Navarre, Claire and the Professor should still be in the little town of Blois, with the young girl busily writing her journal, and lifting her eyes at the end of every sentence to look across the broad blue river at the squares and oblongs of ripening vintages which went clambering irregularly over the low hills opposite.

"The Loire here in this place" (so she wrote) "is broad and calm, not swift and treacherous like the Rhone, or sleepy like the Seine, nor yet fierce like the Rhine as I saw it long ago, las.h.i.+ng green as sea-water about the old bridge at Basel. I love the Loire--a wide river, still and unrippled, not a leaping fish, not a stooping bird, a water of silver flowing on and on in a dream. And though my father is dead and I greatly alone (save for old Madame Granier in her widow's c.r.a.pe) I cannot feel that I am very unhappy. Perhaps it is wicked to say so. I reproach myself that I lack feeling--that if I had loved my father more, surely I would now have been more unhappy. I do not know. One is as one is made.

"Yet I did love him--G.o.d knows I did! But here--it is so peaceful. Sadness falls away."

And peaceful it certainly was. The Bearnais had gone back to his camp, taking the Abbe John with him, where, in the incessant advance and retreat of the Huguenot army, there was little room for fair maids.

Before he went away, the King had had a talk with Jean-aux-Choux and with his host, Anthony Arpajon. They reminded him that for some months at least, no one would be more welcome in Blois than this learned Professor of the Sorbonne. Was not the Parliament of the King--the loyal States-General--to be gathered there in a few weeks? And, meantime, the provident Blesois were employed in making their rooms fit and proper for the reception of the rich and n.o.ble out of all France, excepting only the Leaguer provinces of the north and the Huguenot south-east from the Loire to the Pyrenees.

"I would willingly keep the maid and the Professor," said Anthony, "but it is of the nature of my business that there should be at times a bustle and a noise of rough lads coming and going. And though none of them would harm the daughter of Francis the Scot--having me to deal with, as well as wearing, for the most part, the silver cow-bell at their girdles--yet a hostelry is no place for a well-favoured Calvinist maid, and the daughter of Master Francis Agnew!"

"What, then, would you do with her?"

The brow of the King was frowning a little. After all, he thought, had the girl not followed her father, and been accustomed to the rough side of the blanket? He had not found women so nice about their accommodation when a king catered for them.

But a well-timed jest of Jean-aux-Choux concerning the young blades which the mere sight of Claire would set bickering, caused the Bearnais to smile, and with a sigh he gave way.

"Well, Anthony the Calvinist, you are an obstinate varlet. Have it as you will. I am an easy man. But tell me your plans. For, after all, the girl has been committed to my charge."

The Calvinist innkeeper had his answer ready.

"There dwells," he said, "by the water-side yonder a wise and prudent wife, whose husband was long at the wars, a sergeant in your Cevenol levies. She will care for the maid. And if there be need, Madame Granier knows a door in her back-yard by which, at all times, she can have such help or shelter as the house of Anthony Arpajon can give her."

"And the Professor of Eloquence?" said Henry, with a quick glance.

"Is he not her uncle--in a way, her guardian?" said Anthony, with an impenetrable countenance. "She could not be in safer hands. Leave us also the fool, Jean-aux-Choux, and, by my word, you shall have the first and the best intelligence of that the King and his wise Parliamenters may devise. They say my Lord of Guise is soon to be here with a thousand gentlemen, and such a tail of the commonalty as will eat up all the decent folk in Blois like a swarm of locusts!"

"Good," said the King of Navarre. "Guise has long been tickling the adder's tail; he will find what the head holds some fine day, when he least expects it!"

These were quiet days in the little white house, with only the narrow quay underneath, and the changing groups of washerwomen, bare-armed, lilac-bloused, laving and lifting in the tremulous heat-haze of the afternoon. But somehow they were very dear days to Claire Agnew, and she clung to the memory of them long afterwards.

She was near enough for safety to the hostelry of the Silver Cow-bell (presently held by Anthony Arpajon), yet far enough from it to be quite apart from its throng and bustle. All day Madame Granier gathered up the gossip of the quarter, and pa.s.sing it through a kind of moral sieve, retailed it at intervals to her guest.

Furthermore, Claire had time to bethink herself. She had long, long thoughts of the Abbe John. She remembered how bright and willing he had ever been in her service, how he had respected her grief, and never breathed word her father might not have heard.

And her good Professor of Eloquence--Doctor Anatole Long? What of him?

He was there close under her hand, always willing to stroll with her along the river's bank. Or in Dame Granier's little living-room, he would explain the universe to Claire Agnew to the accompaniment of Madame Granier's clattering platters and her rhyme of King Francis.

"Brave Francis went the devil's way, Bold sprang the hawk, laughed maidens gay!

Yet he learned to eat from an Emperor's tray, _Sans_ hawk, _sans_ hound, _sans_ maiden gay.

A-lack-a-day! A-lack-a-day!

From Pavia's steeple struck Doomsday!"

After all, it was best by the river-side. You saw things there, and if the Professor were in good humour, he would talk on and on, while you could--that is, Claire could--throw stones in the water without disturbing the even flow of the big, fine words. Not too large stones, but only pebbles, else he would rise and march on, with a frown at being interrupted, but without at all perceiving the cause. For at such times Claire always looked especially demure.

"You are indeed my dear Uncle Anatole," she said one day, when they had been longer by the water-side than usual; "you were just made for it. If you had not been--I declare I should have adopted you!"

There was something teasing about Claire's accent, at once girlish and light, which fell pleasantly on the Professor's ear. But the words--he was not so sure that he liked the words.

"I am not so old," he said, the deep furrow which dinted downwards between his thick eyebrows smoothing itself out as he looked, or rather peered at her with his short-sighted blue eyes; "my mother is active still. I long for you to see her; and I have two brothers, one of whom was thinking of marrying last year, but after all it came to nothing!"

"I should think so, indeed," said Claire suddenly.

"And pray why?" The Professor swung about and faced her. "What was there to prevent it?"

"The girl, of course!" said Claire, smiling simply.

"Umph!" said the Professor, and for half a mile spoke no more.

Then he nodded his head sagely, and communed to himself without speech.

"She is right," he said; "she is warning me. What have I to do with young maids?--I who might have had maids of my own, fool that I was!

Hey, what's that? Stand back there, or I will spit any two of you--dogs!"

A laughing, dancing convoy of gold-laced pages from the Chateau, now rapidly filling up for the momentous meeting of the States-General, swirled out of the willow-copses by the Loire side. Claire was caught into the turmoil of the dance, as a flight of wild pigeons might envelop a tame dove wandering from the Ba.s.se Cour.

"Go up, bald-head!" they cried, "grey beards and young maids go not well together!"

The Professor of Eloquence, stung by the affront, lifted his only weapon, a stout oaken cudgel. And with such a pack of beardless loons, the mere threat was enough. They scattered, screaming and laughing.