The White Plumes of Navarre: A Romance of the Wars of Religion Page 5

  CHAPTER IV.

  LITTLE COLETTE OF COLLIOURE

  While the Abbe John was gone to seek the passports from his uncle, andfrom what remained of royal authority in a city now wholly given over tothe League, Anatole Long, college professor, explained matters to hisnew charge.

  "You saw but little of your father, I take it?" he began gently. TheSorbonnist was a large-framed, upstanding man, with an easy-going face,and manners which could be velvet soft or trampling, according tocircumstances. They were generally the former.

  "There is no use in wasting good anger," he would say, "at least, on apack of cublings."

  He was referring to the young men of his class, who thought themselvesPlatos for wisdom and Kings of Navarre in experience. For though theycursed "the Bearnais" in their songs and causeway-side shoutings, intheir hearts they thought that there was none like him in the world--atonce soldier, lover, and man.

  "My father," said Claire Agnew, looking the Professor in the face, "wasa brave gentleman. He owed that to his race. But he had long been inthis service of politics, which makes a man's life like a precious glassin the hands of a paralytic. One day or another, as he takes hismedicine, it will drop, and there is an end."

  "You speak bitterly?"

  The Professor's voice was very soft. It was a wonder that he had nevermarried again, for all knew that his youth had been severely accidented.

  "Bitterly," said the girl; "indeed, I may speak truly and yet withouthoney under my tongue. For my father made himself a hunted hare for thecause that was dear to him. Yet the King he served left him oftenwithout a penny or a crust. When he asked for his own, he was put offwith fair words. He spent his own estate, which was all my portion, likewater. Yet neither from King James of Scots, nor from Elizabeth of theEnglish, did he get so much as a 'thank you' for the travail of years!"

  "And from Henry of Navarre?" said the Professor of the Sorbonne.

  "Why," said Claire Agnew, "I am shamed to own it. But though never a manneeded money more than the King of Navarre, it is on his bounty that wehave been living these four years. He is great and generous!"

  "I have heard something less than that said of the Bearnais," answeredthe Professor; "yet he is a true Frenchman of the Gascon breed, great tomen, generous to women, hail-fellow-well-met with all the world. But heloves the world to know it! And now, little lady," said ProfessorAnatole, "I must conduct you elsewhere. It is not seemly that a prettyone like you should be found in this dingy parchment den, counting thesparrows under the dome of the Sorbonne. Have you any friends in Paristo whose care I can commit you for the time being?"

  "Not one!" cried the girl fiercely; "it is a city ofmurderers--Leaguers--our enemies!"

  "Gently--fairly, little one," the Professor spoke soothingly; "thereare good men and bad in Paris, as elsewhere; but since you have nofriends here, I must conduct you to Havre de Grace, where we will surelyfind a captain biding for a fair wind to take him through Queen Bess'sSleeve into the North Sea, far on the way for Scotland."

  The girl began to cry bitterly, for the first time.

  "I have no friends in Scotland, not any more than in France," she said."My father was a true man, but of a quick high temper, and such friendsas he had he quarrelled with long ago. It began about his marrying mymother, who was a little maid out of Roussillon, come to Paris in thesuite of the wife of some Governor of Catalonia who had been madeSpanish ambassador. It was in the Emperor's time, when men were men--notfighting machines--and priests. My father, Francis Agnew, wasstiff-necked and not given to pardon-asking, save of his Maker. Andthough little Colette Llorient softened him to all the world else, shedied too soon to soften him towards his kinsfolk."

  The Professor meditated gravely, like one solving a difficult problem.

  "What?" he said--"no, it cannot be. Your mother was never little Coletteof the Llorients of Collioure?"

  "I have indeed always believed so," said the girl; "but doubtless in myfather's papers----"

  "But they are Catholics of the biggest grain, those Llorients ofCollioure, deep-dyed Leaguers, as fierce as if Collioure were in theheart of Lorraine!"

  Claire bent her head and nodded sadly.

  "Yes," she said, "for my father's sake my mother embroiled herself withher relatives. She became a Huguenot, a Calvinist like him. Then theyhad a family meeting about her. All the black brothers, mailed andgauntleted, they say, sat round a table and swore that my poor mothershould be no more of their family!"

  "Yes, I can fancy it--I see them; there was huge Bernard, weasel-facedGiles, subtle Philippe----"

  "How," cried the girl, surprised in her turn; "you know them--mymother's people?"

  "Well, I ought," said the Professor of the Sorbonne, with a young lookflushing back into his face, "seeing that my mother has held a 'mas'from the family of Llorient of Collioure for more years than I canremember. When I was a lad going to the collegiate school at Elne, Iremember your mother, Mademoiselle Colette, as a little maid, playing byherself among the sand-dunes. I looked up from my Greek grammar to watchher, till the nurse in the flat Limousin cap shook her fist at me,stopping her nursing to do it."

  Here the Professor seemed to rouse himself as from a dream.

  "That rascal John should be getting back by now," he said, "unless hehas elbowed a way into the crowd to fight or fall for his great Duke!"

  "You do not love the Duke of Guise?" said the girl.

  "I have not your reasons for hating him," the Professor of Eloquenceanswered. "I am no Huguenot, by family or feeling. But I think it is apoor day for France when the valet chases the master out of house andhome. The King is the King, and all the Guises in the world cannot alterthat. Also, since the King has departed, and I have been left, aloneloyal of all the faculty of the Sorbonne, it is time that I too made myway to see my mother among the sand-hills of Collioure. Ah, John, yourascal, what has kept you so long?"

  "The porter at my uncle's would give me no satisfaction--swore I hadcome again to borrow money. A manifest falsehood! As, indeed, I provedon the spot by pulling him out of his lodge and thumping him well. Avarlet--to dare to suppose, because a gentleman comes twice to borrowmoney from a rich and loving relative, that he has returned a third timeupon the same errand! But I got the passports, and they arecountersigned and stamped by Merlan at the Secretary's office, whichwill do no harm if we come across King's men!"

  "As for the Bearnais and his folk," said the Professor to Claire, "Isuppose you have your father's papers safe enough?"

  The girl blushed and murmured something indefinite. As a matter of fact,she had made sure of these while he yet lay on the ground, and the RoyalSwiss were firing over her head. It was the instinct of her hunted life.

  They left the Sorbonne together, all cloaked and hooded "like threecarrion crows," said the Abbe John. None who saw them would havesupposed that a young maid's face lurked beneath the sombre muffling.Indeed, beneath that of the Abbe John, curls of the same hue clusteredjust as tightly and almost as abundantly.

  The street were silent all about the quarter of the University. Butevery hundred yards great barricades of barrels and paving-stones, earthand iron chains, had to be passed. Narrow alleys, the breadth of a manand no more, were generally left, zig-zagging among the defences. Butalmost as often the barricades had to be surmounted, after discovery ofidentity, by the aid of friendly pushes and hauls. In all cases,however, the examination was strict.

  At every barricade they were stopped and called upon to declare theirmission. However, the Doctor Anatole was generally recognised by somescapegrace runaway student, at scrambling horse-play among the pavementcobbles. At any rate, the Abbe John, who had been conspicuous at themeetings of the Elect Leaguers as the nephew of the great Cardinald'Albret, was universally hailed with favour.

  He was also constantly asked who the lady in the hood might be, whom hewas convoying away so secretly. He had but one reply to gentle andsimple.

  "Give me a sword, come down hither, and I will affor
d any three men ofyou satisfaction on the spot!"

  For, in spite of the Abbe John's peaceful cognomen, his credit as apusher of the unbuttoned foil was too good for any to accept hisproposition. They laughed instead.

  One of the Duke Guise's "mud-porters" called the pair an ugly name. Butit was (happily) in the Latin quarter, and a score of eager handspropelled him down into the gutter, where, after having his nose rubbedin the mire, he was permitted (and even assisted) to retire to the rear.He rubbed himself as he went and regretted mournfully that these thingshad not happened near the street of Saint Antoine.

  Altogether they escaped well. The Sorbonne, a difficult place to getinto, is easy to get out of--for those who know how. And so the three,guided by the Abbe John, slipped into the great Rue St. Jacques by thelittle port St. Benoit, which the students and even the professors foundso necessary, whenever their errands were of such a private nature as todisqualify them from crossing the square of the Sorbonne, with its rowson rows of enfilading windows.

  It was up the narrow stair of the Abbe John's lodgings that they found atemporary shelter while the final arrangements were being made. Horsesand a serving-man (provided for in the passports) were the most pressingof these.

  It was in connection with the serving-man that Claire Agnew first founda tongue.

  "I know a lad," she said, "a Scot, seemingly stupid, but cunning as afox, who may be of service to us. His apparent simplicity will be aprotection. For it will be evident that none bent on escaping wouldburden themselves with such a 'Cabbage Jock.' He is of my father'scountry and they were ofttimes in close places together. His nameis----"

  "No matter for his name--we will call him Cabbage Jock," cried the AbbeJohn. "Where is this marvel to be found?"

  "Not far away, as I judge," said the girl, taking a silver whistle, suchas ladies wore at that time to call their waiting-maids, from about herneck. She blew lightly upon it, first two long and then two short notes.And from the street corner, prompt as if he had been watching (which,indeed, he had been), came running the strangest object ever seen in acivilised land. He gave one glance at the window at which Claire's headappeared. Then, diving under the low door like a rat making for a hole,he easily evaded the shouting concierge, and in a moment more stoodbefore them.