THE WILD ANIMAL--WOMAN
Mariana the Jesuit rose, pen in hand, to embrace his "niece" as she
entered his bureau. There was a laughing twinkle in his eye, and all his
comfortable little pink-and-white figure shook with mirth.
"Bravo--oh! bravo!" he cried, "never--never did I suppose our little
Valentine half so clever. Why, you turned yonder boastful cockerel
outside in. Ha, they teach us something of dissimulation in our
seminaries, but we are children to you, the best of us--the whole Gesu
might sit at your feet and take lessons. Even Philip himself--were it
not for semi-paternal authority! Never was the thing they call love
better 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 least
colour in her cheeks, had disappeared. But the eyes of Valentine la Nina
were 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 his
hooks. By her father she had been vowed from infancy to the service of
the Society. Her rank was known only to a few in the realm. Save on this
condition of service, Philip would never have permitted her to remain
in his kingdom of the Seven Spains. And, indeed, Valentine la Nina
deserved well of Philip and the Gesu. She had served the Society
faithfully.
For these reasons she was dear as anything in flesh and blood could be
to Mariana the Jesuit. He laughed again, tasting the rare flavour of the
jest.
"A rich prize indeed," he chuckled. "The cousin of the Bearnais--a
candidate of the League for the crown of France. Ho, ho! Serving on the
galleys as a Huguenot! You were right. There is no good fuel for Father
Teruel's bonfires--he is meat for the masters of Tullio the Neapolitan
and Serra his kinsman. Was there ever such sport? You do indeed deserve
a province and a dower, were it not that you are too valuable where you
are, aiding the Cause--and me, your poor loving 'uncle'! But what made
me laugh as I listened, till the tears came into my old eyes, was to
hear you--you, to whom a thousand men had paid court--begging for the
love of that starved and terrified young braggart in his suit of silken
bravery, tashed with prisons, and the fear of the Place of Eyes still
white on his face!"
Then all unexpectedly Valentine la Nina spoke. Her tall figure seemed to
overshadow that of her little, dimpling, winking kinsman, as the pouches
under his eyes shook with merriment, while his mouth was one wreathed
smile, and he pointed his beautiful, plump, white fingers together
pyramidally, as if measuring one hand against the other.
"It was true," she said point-blank, "I was not pretending. I did love
him--and I do!"
The dimples died out one by one on the face of the historian, Mariana of
Toledo. The ripe colour faded from the cheek-bone. He glanced nervously
over his shoulder with the air of a man who may be sheltering traitors
under 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, like
a trout on an angle. But after all we are--where we are. And Teruel and
Tullio 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 have
loved me, and forgotten that--that woman--I would have done for him all
I 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 me
that he would present me to the Grand Turk if he thought the secret
would hold water. As it is, he keeps me doing hateful work, lying and
smiling, 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 the
man for whom you profess a feeling as foolish as sudden?"
"Neither foolish nor sudden," retorted the girl sullenly, her hand on
the back of a chair, gripping the top bar like a weapon. For a moment
the 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 oaken
seat crashing down upon the shining bald head which harboured so many
secrets and had worked out so many plots. Valentine la Nina let the
moment 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 a
human creature with a heart that beats so many times a minute, and a
skin that covers the same human needs and passions--just as if I were a
free 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 above
Collioure, when we stayed in the house of that cruel young monster
Raphael Llorient. I wandered on the wastes covered with romarin and
thyme--why, think you? 'A new-born passion for nature,' you said,
laughing. 'To get away from our host, Don Raphael,' said Livia the
countess. Neither, good people! It was, because, stretched at length on
a bed of juniper and lavender, in the shadow of a rock, my eyes had seen
the noblest youth the gods had put upon the earth. He was asleep."
"You are mad, girl," cried Mariana, as loudly as he dared. "These are
not 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 service
of the Gesu, whose secrets you hold? You dare not!"
"I dare all," she answered calmly. "This is not a matter of daring. It
comes! It is! I did not make it. It does not go at my bidding, nor at
yours. Besides, I did not bid it go. For one blessed moment I had at
least the sensation of a possible happiness!"
"Nevertheless, he shamed you, rejected you, like the meanest whining
lap-dog your foot spurns aside out of your path. He has done this to
you--Valentine la Nina, called the Most Beautiful--to you, the King's
daughter an you liked, an Infanta of Spain! Have you thought of that?"
"Thought?" she said, tapping her little foot on the floor, and with her
strong right hand swaying the chair to and fro like a feather--"have I
thought of it? What else have I done for many days and weeks? But
whether he will love me or cast me off--the die is thrown. I am his and
not another's. I may take revenge--for that is in my blood. I may cause
him to suffer as he has made me suffer--and the woman also--especially
the woman, the spy's daughter! But that does not alter the fact. I am
his, and if he would, even when chained to the oar of the galley, a
slave 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 can
be produced, if, in the time to come, his cousin the Bearnais, arrived
at the crown of France, has time to make inquiries after him!"
A knife glittered suddenly before the eyes of the Jesuit. It was in the
firm 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 you
do not wish to die now. There are so many things unfinished--so much yet
to 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 faithfully
than before!"
"How can I trust you?" said the Jesuit; "to-morrow you might go mad
again!"
"These things do not happen twice in a lifetime," said Valentine la
Nina, "and as for Jean d'Albret, I shall put him beyond the reach of any
second chance!"
Her uncle nodded his head. He knew when a woman has the bit between her
teeth, and though he had a remedy even for such cases, he judged that
the 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 wiped
his brow with a handkerchief.
"_Ouff!_" he cried, emptying his chest with a gust of relief, "this is
what it is to have to do with that wild animal, Woman! In Madrid they
tame the tiger, till it takes victual from its keeper's very hand. He is
its master, almost its lover; I have seen the tiger arch its back like a
cat under the caress. It sleeps with the arm of the keeper about its
neck! Till one day--one day--the tiger that was tamed falls upon the
tamer, the master, the lover, the friend! So with a woman. Have I not
trained 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 sight
of a comely youth in a court suit asleep, as Endymion on some Latmian
steep, she is wild again. Better to let her go than perish, keeping
her."
Mariana listened a while, but the chamber of his work was as far from
the lugubrious noises of the den of Dom Teruel as if it had been the
Place of Eyes itself. Neither could he hear any sound from the little
summer 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 me
that the youth D'Albret had better say his prayers--such, that is, as he
can remember. I, for one, would not care twice to anger Valentine la
Nina!"
He thought a while, and then with a grave air he added, "If I were a man
of the world I would wager ten golden ounces to one, that within five
minutes Master D'Albret knows more about eternity than the Holy Father
himself and all his College of Cardinals. Well, better so! Then she will
come 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 I
know nothing of womankind!"
But Mariana, though he stood long with his ear glued to the crack of the
door, could distinguish no sound within the summer parlour which
Valentine la Nina had entered to look for the Abbe John.