Loe raamatut: «The White Plumes of Navarre: A Romance of the Wars of Religion», lehekülg 22
AFTER THE CURTAIN
In the Mas of the Mountain the olive logs were piled high. The mistral of November made rage outside. But those who gathered round were well content. Claire sat by Dame Amélie's knee, her hand in her father's, her husband watching her proudly.
There were the three brothers, to all appearance not a day older – the Professor with a huge Pliny on his knee, the miller with the lines of farina-dust back again in the crow's feet about his eyes, and Don Jordy, who had taken up the succession of a notary's office in Avignon, which is a great city for matters and quarrels ecclesiastical, being Papal territory of the strictest: he also throve.
The three were telling each other for the thousandth time how glad they were to be free and bachelors. Thus they had none to consider but themselves. The world was open and easy before them. Nothing was more light than the heart of a woman – nothing heavier than that of a man saddled with a wife. In short, the vine having been swept clean, the grapes had become very, very sour.
All this in natural pleasantry, while Dame Amélie interrupted them with her ever-new rejoinder.
"They are slow – slow, my sons," she murmured, patting the head of Claire which touched her side – "slow, but good lads. Only – they will be dead before they are married!"
Into the quietly merry circle came Jean-aux-Choux. He brought great news.
"The Bearnais has beaten Mayenne and bought the others!" he cried; "France will be a quiet land for many days – no place for Jean-aux-Choux. So I will hie me to the Prince of Orange, and there seek some good fighting for the Religion! Will you come with me, Francis Agnew, as in the days before the Bartholomew?"
But the worn man shook his head.
"I have been too long at the oar, Jean-aux-Choux!" he said. "Moreover, I am too old. When I see these young folk settled in that which the Bearnais hath promised them, I have a thought to win back and lay this tired tickle of bones in good Wigtonshire mould – somewhere within sough of the Back Shore of the Solway, where the waves will sing me to sleep at nights! Come back with me, John Stirling, and we will eat oaten cakes and tell old tales!"
"Not I," cried Jean-aux-Choux, "I go where the fighting is – where the weapon-work is to be done. I shall die on a battle-field – or on the scaffold. But on the shore of mine own land will I not set a foot, unless" – he paused a moment as if the more surely to launch his phrase of denunciation – "unless the Woman-clad-in-Scarlet, Mother of Abominations, returns thither in her power! Then and then alone will John Stirling (called Jean-aux-Choux) tread Scottish earth."
So, without a good-bye, Jean-aux-Choux went out into the night and the storm, his great piked staff thrust before him, and the firelight from the sparkling olive-roots gleaming red on the brass-bound sheath of the dagger which had been wet with the blood of Guise.
Then the Professor, looking across at the lovers, who had drawn together in the semi-obscurity, murmured to himself, "Which is better – to love or to go lonely? Which is happier – John d'Albret – or I? Who hath better served the Lord – Valentine the cloistered Carmelite, or Jean-aux-Choux the Calvinist, gone forth into the world to fight after his fashion the fight of faith?"
Then aloud he said, speaking so suddenly that every one in the comfortable kitchen started, "Who art thou that judgest another man's servant? To his own master he standeth or falleth!"
Without, Jean-aux-Choux faced the storm and was happy. Within, the lovers sat hand in hand in a great peace, and were happy also. And in her narrow cell, who shall say that Valentine la Niña had not also some happiness? She had given her life for another.
