THIRD COUNCIL OF WAR
Raphael had not been long in his bedroom when a light knock came to the
door. He looked about him with a startled air, as if there might be
something to be concealed on some table or in some alcove. All seemed in
order to his eye. Reassured, he went on tiptoe and opened the door very
gently, just so far that whoever stood without might enter.
"You?" he said, in a tone of surprise.
And the Jesuit father came into the room, softly smiling at the young
man's surprise.
"Ah," he said, with the most delicate touch of rebuke in his tone, "you
perhaps expected your major-domo, your steward. I forgot that you were a
bachelor and must attend to the morrow's provender, otherwise we should
all starve."
"Ah, no," said the Master of Collioure, "I have a good housekeeper, in
addition to Sebastian Tet, my major-domo. I can sleep on both ears and
know that my guests will not go dinnerless to-morrow. We are poor, but
there is always soup in the cabbage-garden, fish in the sea, mutton on
the hills, and wine everywhere at Collioure--good and strong, the wine
of Roussillon!"
"Faith," said the Jesuit, "but for the Order, a man might do worse than
abide here. 'Tis Egypt and its fleshpots! No wonder you are so fond of
it. And" (here he paused a little to give weight to his words) "Paul
Morella told me to-day that there is even a Cleopatra of the Heavy Locks
up there among the flocks of Goshen! You make your land of bondage
complete indeed!"
The dark face of Raphael grew livid and unlovely, as the eyes of the
smiling priest rested shrewdly upon him.
"Paul Morella meddles with what does not concern him," he answered
brusquely; "that is no safe business in Roussillon, as he will
find--especially when one has a sister of an unguarded tongue. I have
seen a knife-point look out at the other side of a man for less!"
Father Mariana raised his plump hands in deprecation.
"No, no," he said. "_'Quoniam Deus mortem non fecit, nec laetatur in
perditione vivorum!'_ Neither must you, my son, and a son of Holy
Church. Besides, there are always other ways. I am writing a book to
show how the Church can best be served with the guile of the serpent,
yet with the harmlessness of the dove."
The mood of the young man changed as he listened, as it always did with
Father Mariana of Toledo.
"I spoke in haste," he said. "I wish no ill to Paul Morella, nor to his
sister, the Countess Livia--only I would their tongues were stiller!"
The Jesuit patted Raphael's arm gently and soothingly.
"Be content," he murmured; "the Countess Livia is neither your sister
nor your wife. 'As the climbing up of a sandy way is to the feet of the
aged--so is a wife full of words to a quiet man.' So it is written, and
all marriage is but a commentary upon that text."
"Hum, it may be, my father," said Raphael, "and to tell the truth, I am
tempted to try. In which matter I shall be glad to have your advice, my
father Mariana, since you have come all the way from your hermitage at
Toledo to visit your old pupil----"
"And also to serve the Order and Holy Church," added the Jesuit gravely,
like a preceptor making a necessary correction in an exercise. "Is it as
spiritual director or as friend that you desire my counsel?"
"As a man of the world, rather," said Raphael, sitting down on the edge
of his bed and nursing his knee between his joined fingers. The Jesuit
had already installed himself in the great tapestried armchair, and put
his small, neatly-shod feet close together on the footstool.
"Alas, my son," said the priest, when at last he was comfortable, "I
have long ago lost all title to that name. And yet, I do not know; I
have been chased from most countries, and openly condemned by the
General of my own Order. Yet I serve in faith----"
"Oh," said Raphael, smiling, "all the world knows that the Order
approves your doings. The General only condemns your words for the
benefit of the vulgar and anointed kings. If I make not too bold, it
seems to me that there is a certain king in France--I say not of
France--who may well be interested in your presence so near his
territories! If I were he, I should say my prayers!"
"If you speak of the Bearnais, you are mistaken," said Mariana; "he, at
least, is an open enemy, and, who knows, may one day be reconciled,
being at heart a good, fightful, eat-drink-and-be-merry pagan--indeed,
Raphael Llorient of Collioure, very much of your own religion, save that
where he would wield a battle-axe you would drive a dagger, save that he
makes love where you would make money, and he trolls a catch where you
whisper a pass-word. But as to the advice--well, put your case. The
night is young before us, and this wine of Burgundy, like myself--old,
old, old!"
"My father," said Raphael, "just now you spoke of money. It is true I
seek it--but to spend, not to hoard. Too often I hazard it on the turn
of a dice-cube. I lose it. Money will not stay with me, neither the
golden discs, nor the value of them. This trick of gaming I have
inherited from my grandfather. Only he had the good sense to die before
he had spent all his heritance. His sons, being given rather to
sword-play and the war-game, died before him. To all appearance I was
sole heir, and so for long I considered myself. But when my
grandfather's will was found, half only was left to me--the other half
to his only daughter Colette and to her children. The will is in the
provincial archives at Perpignan. He had placed it there himself. A copy
is in the registry of the bishop at Elne. Yet another copy was sent to
the Huguenot whom my aunt Colette married."
"Ah," said the Jesuit, narrowing his eyes in deep thought, "and this
heretic--has he never claimed the inheritance?"
"He is dead, they say--was killed in Paris, on the day of the
Barricades. Yet he received the paper, and now his daughter has come to
Collioure, and is abiding at the house of La Masane with the family
there--emigrants from Provence--one of whom, by some trick of cunning or
aptitude for flattery, has become a professor at the Sorbonne--Doctor
Anatole Long, he styles himself."
"Ah," said the Jesuit, in a changed, caressing voice, "a learned man; he
has written well upon the eloquence of Greece and Rome as applied to the
purposes of the Church. I myself have ordered a translation of his
books to be made for the use of our schools at Toledo. And yet--I heard
something concerning him read from the Gazette of the Order at our last
council meeting. Had he not to flee, because he alone of the Senatus
withstood the Holy League?"
Raphael nodded slightly. The quarrels of philosophers were nothing to
him.
"Aye, and brought my cousin Claire with him--Colette's daughter, as I
suppose, to claim the property--the property which I have no
longer--which is blown wantonly upon every wind, rattled in other men's
pockets, paid out for laces and silks which I never wore----"
"You have been a foolish lad," said the Jesuit; "but one day, when you
have spent all, you will make a very good prodigal son to the Gesu.
Perhaps the hour is not far distant. What, then, is your intention?"
"I see nothing for it but that I must marry the girl," said Raphael
Llorient; "she is fair, and you--and the King--must help me to a
dispensation. Then her portion shall be her dower, and there is only her
husband to account to for it. I shall be that husband."
A subtle change passed over the Jesuit's face as his pupil was speaking.
He smiled.
"Softly, softly," he murmured; "to eat an egg, it is not necessary to
cook it in a silver vessel over a fire of sandalwood, and serve it upon
a platter of gold. It tastes just as well boiled in an earthenware dish
and eaten in the fingers."
"I have gone too far," said Raphael; "I cannot stand upon metaphors. My
eggs are already sucked. I have deceived the King, paid neither duty to
him nor tithes to the Church upon my cousin's portion. I must marry or
burn!"
"That you have not paid your tithes to the Church is grave," said the
Jesuit, "but the time is not too late. Perhaps you can pay in service.
We of the Society need the willing hand, the far-seeing brain more than
coined gold--though that, of course, we must have too."
"The King's arm is long," said Raphael, "and I fear he thinks I have not
done enough for his Armada. This news would end me if it were to come to
his ears."
"I judge that there will be no such need," purred the Jesuit; "is this
cousin of yours by chance a heretic, even as was her father?"
Raphael started. His netted fingers let go his knee, which in its turn
slowly relaxed and allowed the foot to sink to the ground, as through a
dense medium.
"I do not understand you, my father," he said, breathing deeply, his
eyes fixed on the priest's mild and smiling face.
"If your cousin be a Protestant, a heretic," continued the Jesuit, "I do
not see that there is any difficulty----"
"You mean----?" said Raphael, his face now of a livid paleness.
The priest beckoned him a little nearer, placed his lips, still smiling,
close to the young man's ear, and whispered two words.
"No--no--no!" gasped Raphael, starting back, "not that--anything but
that! I cannot--I will not--anything but that!"
"Then there is, I fear greatly, no other way!"
"None?"
"Your soul is the Church's--your body the King's," said the Jesuit;
"take care that you offend not both. For such there is no forgiveness,
even in the grave. Besides, you could never get a dispensation to marry
a heretic. Trust me, my way is the best."
"She would return to the Faith," said Raphael, who, though a man of no
half measures in his own plottings, yet stood aghast and horrified at
what the smiling priest proposed to him.
"Never," said Father Mariana; "I know the breed--'proud as a Scot,' say
the French, your friends, who know them best. And in nothing prouder or
more stubborn than in their heresy and hatred of the Wholesome
Discipline of the Church."
"I cannot," said Raphael; "after all, she is my cousin--my near and only
relative."
"If she were the mother who bore you," affirmed the priest, "your duty
would be the same. And moreover (though, indeed, it becomes not me to
press upon you that which should be your first happiness), has it struck
you that you have passed your word to the Senorita Valentine, my
niece----?"
"The Lady Valentine would have nothing to say to me," cried the young
man sharply; "I wed none such!"
"But are you so sure of your Scottish heretic? As for Valentine, when
was a gallant young man discouraged by a woman's first 'No'? You have
much to learn, young man; Valentine la Nina has been well taught. Fear
nothing. Where she gives her hand, her heart will go with it. I have
schooled her myself. She has no will but that of the Gesu--think on it,
my son, and deeply!"
And still smiling gently, the Jesuit went out, leaving Raphael to
meditations singularly unhappy, even for a man who has to choose between
the gallows and marriage with one of two women, neither of whom he
loves.