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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/8715-8.txt b/8715-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..56d5dd0 --- /dev/null +++ b/8715-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,10736 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Gallantry, by James Branch Cabell + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Gallantry + Vizain des fetes galantes + +Author: James Branch Cabell + +Posting Date: April 21, 2013 [EBook #8715] +Release Date: August, 2005 +First Posted: August 9, 2003 +Last Updated: August 11, 2003 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GALLANTRY *** + + + + +Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Tiffany Vergon and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team. + + + + + + + + + + +GALLANTRY + +_Dizain des Fêtes Galantes_ + +By + +JAMES BRANCH CABELL + + +WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY LOUIS UNTERMEYER + + +"_Half in masquerade, playing the drawing-room or garden comedy of life, +these persons have upon them, not less than the landscape among the +accidents of which they group themselves with fittingness, a certain light +that we should seek for in vain upon anything real._" + + + + +TO + +JAMES ROBINSON BRANCH + +THIS VOLUME, SINCE IT TREATS OF GALLANTRY, IS DEDICATED, AS BOTH IN LIFE +AND DEATH AN EXPONENT OF THE WORD'S HIGHEST MEANING + +"_A brutish man knoweth not, neither doth a fool understand this.... Shall +the throne of iniquity have fellowship with Thee, which frameth mischief by +a law?_" + + + + +INTRODUCTION + + +These paragraphs, dignified by the revised edition of _Gallantry_ and +spuriously designated An Introduction, are nothing more than a series of +notes and haphazard discoveries in preparation of a thesis. That thesis, +if it is ever written, will bear a title something academically like _The +Psychogenesis of a Poet; or Cabell the Masquerader_. For it is in this +guise--sometimes self-declared, sometimes self-concealed, but always as the +persistent visionary--that the author of some of the finest prose of our +day has given us the key with which (to lapse into the jargon of verse) he +has unlocked his heart. + +On the technical side alone, it is easy to establish Cabell's poetic +standing. There are, first of all, the quantity of original rhymes that +are scattered through the dozen volumes which Cabell has latterly (and +significantly) classified as Biography. Besides these interjections which +do duty as mottoes, chapter-headings, tailpieces, dedications, interludes +and sometimes relevant songs, there is the volume of seventy-five +"adaptations" in verse, _From the Hidden Way_, published in 1916. Here +Cabell, even in his most natural rôle, declines to show his face and amuses +himself with a new set of masks labelled Alessandro de Medici, Antoine +Riczi, Nicolas de Caen, Theodore Passerat and other fabulous minnesingers +whose verses were created only in the mind of Cabell. It has pleased him to +confuse others besides the erudite reviewer of the _Boston Transcript_ by +quoting the first lines of the non-existent originals in Latin, Italian, +Provençal--thus making his skilful ballades, sestinas and the less mediæval +narratives part of a remarkably elaborate and altogether successful hoax. + +And, as this masquerade of obscure Parnassians betrayed its creator, +Cabell--impelled by some fantastic reticence--sought for more subtle +makeshifts to hide the poet. The unwritten thesis, plunging abruptly into +the realm of analytical psychology, will detail the steps Cabell has taken, +as a result of early associative disappointments, to repress or at least +to disguise, the poet in himself--and it will disclose how he has failed. +It will burrow through the latest of his works and exhume his half-buried +experiments in rhyme, assonance and polyphony. This part of the paper will +examine _Jurgen_ and call attention to the distorted sonnet printed as a +prose soliloquy on page 97 of that exquisite and ironic volume. It will +pass to the subsequent _Figures of Earth_ and, after showing how the +greater gravity of this volume is accompanied by a greater profusion of +poetry _per se_ it will unravel the scheme of Cabell's fifteen essays in +what might be called contrapuntal prose. It will unscramble all the rhymes +screened in Manuel's monologue beginning on page 294, quote the metrical +innovations with rhymed vowels on page 60, tabulate the hexameters that +leap from the solidly set paragraphs and rearrange the brilliant fooling +that opens the chapter "Magic of the Image Makers." This last is in itself +so felicitous a composite of verse and criticism--a passage incredibly +overlooked by the most meticulous of Cabell's glossarians--that it deserves +a paper for itself. For here, set down prosaically as "the unfinished Rune +of the Blackbirds" are four distinct parodies--including two insidious +burlesques of Browning and Swinburne--on a theme which is familiar to us +to-day in _les mots justes_ of Mother Goose. "It is," explains Freydis, +after the thaumaturgists have finished, "an experimental incantation in +that it is a bit of unfinished magic for which the proper words have not +yet been found: but between now and a while they will be stumbled on, and +then this rune will live perpetually." And thus the poet, speaking through +the mouth-piece of Freydis, discourses on the power of words and, in one of +Cabell's most eloquent chapters, crystallizes that high mood, presenting +the case for poetry as it has been pleaded by few of her most fervid +advocates. + +Here the thesis will stop quoting and argue its main contention from +another angle. It will consider the author in a larger and less technical +sense: disclosing his characters, his settings, his plots, even the entire +genealogical plan of his works, to be the design of a poet rather than a +novelist. The persons of Cabell's imagination move to no haphazard strains; +they create their own music. And, like a set of modulated _motifs_, they +combine to form a richer and more sonorous pattern. With its interrelation +of figures and interweaving of themes, the Cabellian "Biography" assumes +the solidity and shapeliness of a fugue, a composition in which all the +voices speak with equal precision and recurring clarity. + +And what, the diagnostician may inquire, of the characters themselves? They +are, it will be answered, motivated by pity and irony; the tolerant humor, +the sympathetic and not too distant regard of their Olympian designer +agitate them so sensitively that we seldom see what strings are twitched. +These puppets seem to act of their own conviction--possibly because their +director is careful not to have too many convictions of his own. It may +have been pointed out before this that there are no undeviating villains +in his masques and, as many an indignant reviewer has expostulated, few +untarnished heroes. Cabell's, it will be perceived, is a frankly pagan +poetry. It has no texts with which to discipline beauty; it lacks moral +fervor; it pretends to no divinity of dogmatism. The image-maker is willing +to let his creatures ape their living models by fluctuating between +shifting conventions and contradictory ideals; he leaves to a more positive +Author the dubious pleasure of drawing a daily line between vice and +virtue. If Cabell pleads at all, he pleads with us not to repudiate a +Villon or a Marlowe while we are reviling the imperfect man in a perfect +poet. "What is man, that his welfare be considered?" questions Cabell, +paraphrasing Scripture, "an ape who chatters to himself of kinship with the +archangels while filthily he digs for groundnuts.... Yet do I perceive that +this same man is a maimed god.... He is under penalty condemned to compute +eternity with false weights and to estimate infinity with a yardstick--and +he very often does it." + +This, the thesis will contend, is the only possible attitude to the mingled +apathy and abandon of existence--and it is, in fine, the poetic attitude. +Romantic it is, without question, and I imagine Cabell would be the last +to cavil at the implication. For, mocked by a contemptuous silence gnawing +beneath the howling energy of life, what else is there for the poet but the +search for some miracle of belief, some assurance in a world of illimitable +perplexities? It is the wish to attain this dream which is more real than +reality that guides the entire Cabell _epos_--"and it is this will that +stirs in us to have the creatures of earth and the affairs of earth, not as +they are, but as 'they ought to be.'" + +Such a romantic vision, which concludes that glowing testament, _Beyond +Life_, is the shining thread that binds the latest of Cabell's novels +with the earliest of his short stories. It is, in effect, one tale he is +telling, a tale in which Poictesme and the more local Lichfield are, for +all their topographical dissimilarities, the same place, and all his people +interchangeable symbols of the changeless desires of men. Whether the +allegory is told in the terms of _Gallantry_ with its perfumed lights, its +deliberate artifice and its technique of badinage, or presented in the +more high-flying mood of _Chivalry_ with its ready passions and readier +rhetoric, it prefigures the subsequent pageant in which the victories might +so easily be mistaken for defeats. In this procession, amid a singularly +ordered riot of color, the figure of man moves, none too confidently but +with stirring fortitude, to an unrealized end. Here, stumbling through the +mazes of a code, in the habiliments of Ormskirk or de Soyecourt, he passes +from the adventures of the mind (Kennaston in _The Cream of the Jest_, +Charteris in _Beyond Life_) through the adventures of the flesh (_Jurgen_) +to the darker adventures of the spirit (Manuel in _Figures of Earth_). +Even this _Gallantry_, the most candidly superficial of Cabell's works, is +alive with a vigor of imagination and irony. It is not without significance +that the motto on the new title-page is: "Half in masquerade, playing the +drawing-room or garden comedy of life, these persons have upon them, not +less than the landscape among the accidents of which they group themselves, +a certain light that we should seek for in vain upon anything real." + +The genealogically inclined will be happy to discover that _Gallantry_, +for all its revulsion from reality, deals with the perpetuated life of +Manuel in a strangely altered _milieu_. The rest of us will be quicker to +comprehend how subtly this volume takes its peculiar place in its author's +record of struggling dreams, how, beneath, a surface covered with political +finery and sentimental bric-à-brac, the quest goes on, stubbornly and often +stupidly, in a forgotten world made suddenly animate and as real as our +own. + +And this, the thesis will conclude, is because Cabell is not as much a +masquerader as he imagines himself to be. None but a visionary could wear +so constantly upon his sleeve the desire "to write perfectly of beautiful +happenings." None but the poet, shaken with the strength of his vision, +could cry to-day, "It is only by preserving faith in human dreams that +we may, after all, perhaps some day make them come true." For poetry, to +which all literature aspires, is not the shadow of reality but the image of +perfection, the light of disembodied beauty toward which creation gropes. +And that poetic consciousness is the key to the complex and half-concealed +art of James Branch Cabell. + +LOUIS UNTERMEYER. + +New York City, +_April, 1922._ + + + + +CONTENTS + + +THE EPISTLE DEDICATORY + +THE PROLOGUE + +I SIMON'S HOUR + +II LOVE AT MARTINMAS + +III THE CASUAL HONEYMOON + +IV THE RHYME TO PORRINGER + +V ACTORS ALL + +VI APRIL'S MESSAGE + +VII IN THE SECOND APRIL + +VIII HEART OF GOLD + +IX THE SCAPEGOATS + +X THE DUCAL AUDIENCE + +LOVE'S ALUMNI: THE AFTERPIECE + +THE EPILOGUE + + + + +THE EPISTLE DEDICATORY + +_TO MRS. GRUNDY_ + + +Madam,--It is surely fitting that a book which harks back to the manners +of the second George should have its dedication and its patron. And these +comedies claim naturally your protection, since it likewise appears +a custom of that era for the poet to dedicate his book to his most +influential acquaintance and the one least likely to value it. + +Indeed, it is as proper that the plaudits of great persons be reserved for +great performances as it is undeniable these + + tiny pictures of that tiny time + Aim little at the lofty and sublime. + +Yet cognoscenti still esteem it an error in the accomplished Shakespeare +that he introduced a game of billiards into his portrayal of Queen +Cleopatra's court; and the impropriety had been equal had I linked the +extreme of any passion with an age and circle wherein abandonment to +the emotions was adjudged bucolic, nay, Madam, the Eumenides were very +terrifying at Delphi, no doubt, but deck them with paint, patch, and +panniers, send them howling among the _beau monde_ on the Pantiles, and +they are only figures of fun; nor may, in reason, the high woes of a second +Lear, or of a new Prometheus, be adequately lighted by the flambeaux of +Louis Quinze. + +Conceive, then, the overture begun, and fear not, if the action of the play +demand a lion, but that he shall be a beast of Peter Quince's picking. The +ladies shall not be frighted, for our chief comedians will enact modish +people of a time when gallantry prevailed. + +Now the essence of gallantry, I take it, was to accept the pleasures of +life leisurely and its inconveniences with a shrug. As requisites, a +gallant person will, of course, be "amorous, but not too constant, have +a pleasant voice, and possess a talent for love-letters." He will always +bear in mind that in love-affairs success is less the Ultima Thule of +desire than its _coup de grâce_, and he will be careful never to admit the +fact, especially to himself. He will value ceremony, but rather for its +comeliness than for its utility, as one esteeming the lily, say, to be a +more applaudable bulb than the onion. He will prink; and he will be at his +best after sunset. He will dare to acknowledge the shapeliness of a thief's +leg, to contend that the commission of murder does not necessarily impair +the agreeableness of the assassin's conversation; and to insist that at +bottom God is kindlier than the genteel would regard as rational. He will, +in fine, sin on sufficient provocation, and repent within the moment, +quite sincerely, and be not unconscionably surprised when he repeats the +progression: and he will consider the world with a smile of toleration, and +his own doings with a smile of honest amusement, and Heaven with a smile +that is not distrustful. + +This particular attitude toward life may have its merits, but it is not +conducive to meticulous morality; therefore, in advance, I warn you that my +_Dramatis Personæ_ will in their display of the cardinal virtues evince a +certain parsimony. Theirs were, in effect, not virtuous days. And the great +man who knew these times _au fond_, and loved them, and wrote of them as no +other man may ever hope to do, has said of these same times, with perfect +truth: + +"Fiddles sing all through them; wax-lights, fine dresses, fine jokes, +fine plate, fine equipages, glitter and sparkle: never was there such +a brilliant, jigging, smirking Vanity Fair. But wandering through that +city of the dead, that dreadfully selfish time, through those godless +intrigues and feasts, through those crowds, pushing, and eager, and +struggling,--rouged, and lying, and fawning,--I have wanted some one to be +friends with. I have said, _Show me some good person about that Court; find +me, among those selfish courtiers, those dissolute gay people, some one +being that I can love and regard._" And Thackeray confesses that, for all +his research, he could not find anybody living irreproachably, at this +especial period.... + +Where a giant fails one may in reason hesitate to essay. I present, then, +people who, as people normally do, accepted their times and made the best +of them, since the most estimable needs conform a little to the custom of +his day, whether it be Caractacus painting himself sky-blue or Galileo on +his knees at Santa Maria. And accordingly, many of my comedians will lie +when it seems advisable, and will not haggle over a misdemeanor when there +is anything to be gained by it; at times their virtues will get them +what they want, and at times their vices, and at other times they will +be neither punished nor rewarded; in fine, Madam, they will be just human +beings stumbling through illogical lives with precisely that lack of +common-sense which so pre-eminently distinguishes all our neighbors from +ourselves. + +For the life that moved in old Manuel of Poictesme finds hereinafter in his +descendants, in these later Allonbys and Bulmers and Heleighs and Floyers, +a new _milieu_ to conform and curb that life in externes rather than in +essentials. What this life made of chivalrous conditions has elsewhere +been recorded: with its renewal in gallant circumstances, the stage is +differently furnished and lighted, the costumes are dissimilar; but the +comedy, I think, works toward the same _dénouement_, and certainly the +protagonist remains unchanged. My protagonist is still the life of Manuel, +as this life was perpetuated in his descendants; and my endeavor is (still) +to show you what this life made (and omitted to make) of its tenancy of +earth. 'Tis a drama enactable in any setting. + +Yet the comedy of gallantry has its conventions. There must be quite +invaluable papers to be stolen and juggled with; an involuntary +marriage either threatened or consummated; elopements, highwaymen, and +despatch-boxes; and a continual indulgence in soliloquy and eavesdropping. +Everybody must pretend to be somebody else, and young girls, in particular, +must go disguised as boys, amid much cut-and-thrust work, both ferric and +verbal. For upon the whole, the comedy of gallantry tends to unfold itself +in dialogue, and yet more dialogue, with just the notice of a change +of scene or a brief stage direction inserted here and there. All these +conventions, Madam, I observe. + +A word more: the progress of an author who alternates, in turn, between +fact and his private fancies (like unequal crutches) cannot in reason be +undisfigured by false steps. Therefore it is judicious to confess, Madam, +that more than once I have pieced the opulence of my subject with the +poverty of my inventions. Indisputably, to thrust words into a dead man's +mouth is in the ultimate as unpardonable as the axiomatic offence of +stealing the pennies from his eyes; yet if I have sometimes erred in my +surmise at what Ormskirk or de Puysange or Louis de Soyecourt really said +at certain moments of their lives, the misstep was due, Madam, less to +malevolence than to inability to replevin their superior utterance; and the +accomplished shade of Garendon, at least, I have not travestied, unless it +were through some too prudent item of excision. + +Remains but to subscribe myself--in the approved formula of dedicators--as, + + MADAM, + + Your ladyship's most humble and most obedient servant, + + THE AUTHOR. + + + + +THE PROLOGUE + +SPOKEN BY LADY ALLONBY, WHO ENTERS IN A FLURRY + + + _The author bade we come_--Lud, I protest!-- + _He bade me come_--and I forget the rest. + But 'tis no matter; he's an arrant fool + That ever bade a woman speak by rule. + + Besides, his Prologue was, at best, dull stuff, + And of dull writing we have, sure, enough. + A book will do when you've a vacant minute, + But, la! who cares what is, and isn't, in it? + + And since I'm but the Prologue of a book, + What I've omitted all will overlook, + And owe me for it, too, some gratitude, + Seeing in reason it cannot be good + Whose author has as much but now confessed,-- + For, _Who'd excel when few can make a test + Betwixt indifferent writing and the best?_ + He said but now. + + And I:--_La, why excel, + When mediocrity does quite as well? + 'Tis women buy the books,--and read 'em, say, + What time a person nods, en négligée, + And in default of gossip, cards, or dance, + Resolves t' incite a nap with some romance._ + + The fool replied in verse,--I think he said + 'Twas verses the ingenious Dryden made, + And trust 'twill save me from entire disgrace + To cite 'em in his foolish Prologue's place. + _Yet, scattered here and there, I some behold, + Who can discern the tinsel from the gold; + To these he writes; and if by them allowed, + 'Tis their prerogative to rule the crowd, + For he more fears, like, a presuming man, + Their votes who cannot judge, than theirs can._ + + + + +I + +SIMON'S HOUR + + +_As Played at Stornoway Crag, March 25, 1750_ + +"_You're a woman--one to whom Heaven gave beauty, when it grafted roses on +a briar. You are the reflection of Heaven in a pond, and he that leaps at +you is sunk. You were all white, a sheet of lovely spotless paper, when you +first were born; but you are to be scrawled and blotted by every goose's +quill._" + + +DRAMATIS PERSONÆ. + +LORD ROKESLE, a loose-living, Impoverished nobleman, and loves Lady +Allonby. + +SIMON ORTS, Vicar of Heriz Magna, a debauched fellow, and Rokesle's +creature. + +PUNSHON, servant to Rokesle. + +LADY ALLONBY, a pleasure-loving, luxurious woman, a widow, and rich. + + +SCENE + +The Mancini Chamber at Stornoway Crag, on Usk. + + +SIMON'S HOUR + + +_PROEM:--The Age and a Product of It_ + +We begin at a time when George the Second was permitting Ormskirk and the +Pelhams to govern England, and the Jacobites had not yet ceased to hope +for another Stuart Restoration, and Mr. Washington was a promising young +surveyor in the most loyal colony of Virginia; when abroad the Marquise de +Pompadour ruled France and all its appurtenances, and the King of Prussia +and the Empress Maria Theresa had, between them, set entire Europe by +the ears; when at home the ladies, if rumor may be credited, were less +unapproachable than their hoop-petticoats caused them to appear, +[Footnote: "Oft have we known that sevenfold fence to fail, +Though stiff with hoops, and armed with ribs of whale."] +and gentlemen wore swords, and some of the more reckless bloods were +daringly beginning to discard the Ramillie-tie and the pigtail for their +own hair; when politeness was obligatory, and morality a matter of taste, +and when well-bred people went about the day's work with an ample leisure +and very few scruples. In fine, we begin toward the end of March, in +the year 1750, when Lady Allonby and her brother, Mr. Henry Heleigh, of +Trevor's Folly, were the guests of Lord Rokesle, at Stornoway Crag, on Usk. + +As any person of _ton_ could have informed you, Anastasia Allonby was the +widow (by his second marriage) of Lord Stephen Allonby, the Marquis of +Falmouth's younger brother; and it was conceded by the most sedate that +Lord Stephen's widow, in consideration of her liberal jointure, possessed +inordinate comeliness. + +She was tall for a woman. Her hair, to-night unpowdered, had the color of +amber and something, too, of its glow; her eyes, though not profound, were +large and in hue varied, as the light fell or her emotions shifted, through +a wide gamut of blue shades. But it was her mouth you remembered: the +fulness and brevity of it, the deep indentation of its upper lip, the +curves of it and its vivid crimson--these roused you to wildish speculation +as to its probable softness when Lady Allonby and Fate were beyond ordinary +lenient. Pink was the color most favorable to her complexion, and this +she wore to-night; the gown was voluminous, with a profusion of lace, and +afforded everybody an ample opportunity to appraise her neck and bosom. +Lady Allonby had no reason to be ashamed of either, and the last mode in +these matters was not prudish. + +To such a person, enters Simon Orts, chaplain in ordinary to Lord Rokesle, +and Vicar of Heriz Magna, one of Lord Rokesle's livings. + + +I + +"Now of a truth," said Simon Orts, "that is curious--undeniably that is +curious." + +He stayed at the door for a moment staring back into the ill-lit corridor. +Presently he shut the door, and came forward toward the fireplace. + +Lady Allonby, half-hidden in the depths of the big chair beside the +chimney-piece, a book in her lap, looked up inquiringly. "What is curious, +Mr. Orts?" + +The clergyman stood upon the hearth, warming his hands, and diffusing an +odor of tobacco and stale alcohol. "Faith, that damned rascal--I beg your +pardon, Anastasia; our life upon Usk is not conducive to a mincing nicety +of speech. That rascal Punshon made some difficulty over admitting me; you +might have taken him for a sentinel, with Stornoway in a state of siege. He +ruffled me,--and I don't like it," Simon Orts said, reflectively, looking +down upon her. "No, I don't like it. Where's your brother?" he demanded on +a sudden. + +"Harry and Lord Rokesle are at cards, I believe. And Mrs. Morfit has +retired to her apartments with one of her usual headaches, so that I have +been alone these two hours. You visit Stornoway somewhat late, Mr. Orts," +Anastasia Allonby added, without any particular concealment of the fact +that she considered his doing so a nuisance. + +He jerked his thumb ceilingward. "The cloth is at any rascal's beck and +call. Old Holles, my Lord's man, is dying up yonder, and the whim seized +him to have a clergyman in. God knows why, for it appears to me that one +knave might very easily make his way to hell without having another knave +to help him. And Holles?--eh, well, from what I myself know of him, the +rogue is triply damned." His mouth puckered as he set about unbuttoning his +long, rain-spattered cloak, which, with his big hat, he flung aside upon a +table. "Gad!" said Simon Orts, "we are most of us damned on Usk; and that +is why I don't like it--" He struck his hand against his thigh. "I don't +like it, Anastasia." + +"You must pardon me," she languidly retorted, "but I was never good at +riddles." + +He turned and glanced about the hall, debating. Lady Allonby meanwhile +regarded him, as she might have looked at a frog or a hurtless snake. A +small, slim, anxious man, she found him; always fidgeting, always placating +some one, but never without a covert sneer. The fellow was venomous; his +eyes only were honest, for even while his lips were about their wheedling, +these eyes flashed malice at you; and their shifting was so unremittent +that afterward you recalled them as an absolute shining which had not any +color. On Usk and thereabouts they said it was the glare from within of his +damned soul, already at white heat; but they were a plain-spoken lot on +Usk. To-night Simon Orts was all in black; and his hair, too, and his gross +eyebrows were black, and well-nigh to the cheek-bones of his clean-shaven +countenance the thick beard, showed black through the skin. + +Now he kept silence for a lengthy interval, his arms crossed on his breast, +gnawing meanwhile at the fingernails of his left hand in an unattractive +fashion he had of meditating. When words came it was in a torrent. + +"I will read you my riddle, then. You are a widow, rich; as women go, you +are not so unpleasant to look at as most of 'em. If it became a clergyman +to dwell upon such matters, I would say that your fleshly habitation is +too fine for its tenant, since I know you to be a good-for-nothing jilt. +However, you are God's handiwork, and doubtless He had His reasons for +constructing you. My Lord is poor; last summer at Tunbridge you declined to +marry him. I am in his confidence, you observe. He took your decision in +silence--'ware Rokesle when he is quiet! Eh, I know the man,--'tisn't for +nothing that these ten years past I have studied his whims, pampered his +vanity, lied to him, toadied him! You admire my candor?--faith, yes, I +am very candid. I am Rokesle's hanger-on; he took me out of the gutter, +and in my fashion I am grateful. And you?--Anastasia, had you treated me +more equitably fifteen years ago, I would have gone to the stake for you, +singing; now I don't value you the flip of a farthing. But, for old time's +sake, I warn you. You and your brother are Rokesle's guests--on Usk! +Harry Heleigh [Footnote: Henry Heleigh, thirteenth Earl of Brudenel, who +succeeded his cousin the twelfth Earl in 1759, and lived to a great age. +Bavois, writing in 1797, calls him "a very fine, strong old gentleman."] +can handle a sword, I grant you,--but you are on Usk! And Mrs. Morfit is +here to play propriety--propriety on Usk, God save the mark! And besides, +Rokesle can twist his sister about his little finger, as the phrase runs. +And I find sentinels at the door! I don't like it, Anastasia. In his way +Rokesle loves you; more than that, you are an ideal match to retrieve his +battered fortunes; and the name of my worthy patron, I regret to say, is +not likely ever to embellish the Calendar of Saints." + +Simon Orts paused with a short laugh. The woman had risen to her feet, +her eyes widening and a thought troubled, though her lips smiled +contemptuously. + +"La, I should have comprehended that this late in the evening you would be +in no condition to converse with ladies. Believe me, though, Mr. Orts, I +would be glad to credit your warning to officious friendliness, were it not +that the odor about your person compels me to attribute it to gin." + +"Oh, I have been drinking," he conceded; "I have been drinking with a +most commendable perseverance for these fifteen years. But at present I am +far from drunk." Simon Orts took a turn about the hall; in an instant he +faced her with an odd, almost tender smile, "You adorable, empty-headed, +pink-and-white fool," said Simon Orts, "what madness induced you to come to +Usk? You know that Rokesle wants you; you know that you don't mean to marry +him. Then why come to Usk? Do you know who is king in this sea-washed scrap +of earth?--Rokesle. German George reigns yonder in England, but here, in +the Isle of Usk, Vincent Floyer is king. And it is not precisely a convent +that he directs. The men of Usk, I gather, after ten years' experience in +the administering of spiritual consolation hereabouts"--and his teeth made +their appearance in honor of the jest,--"are part fisherman, part smuggler, +part pirate, and part devil. Since the last ingredient predominates, they +have no very unreasonable apprehension of hell, and would cheerfully invade +it if Rokesle bade 'em do so. As I have pointed out, my worthy patron is +subject to the frailties of the flesh. Oh, I am candid, for if you report +me to his Lordship I shall lie out of it. I have had practice enough to do +it handsomely. But Rokesle--do you not know what Rokesle is--?" + +The Vicar of Heriz Magna would have gone on, but Lady Allonby had +interrupted, her cheeks flaming. "Yes, yes," she cried;' "I know him to +be a worthy gentleman. 'Tis true I could not find it in my heart to marry +him, yet I am proud to rank Lord Rokesle among my friends." She waved her +hand toward the chimney-piece, where hung--and hangs to-day,--the sword of +Aluric Floyer, the founder of the house of Rokesle. "Do you see that old +sword, Mr. Orts? The man who wielded it long ago was a gallant gentleman +and a stalwart captain. And my Lord, as he told me but on Thursday +afternoon, hung it there that he might always have in mind the fact that +he bore the name of this man, and must bear it meritoriously. My Lord is +a gentleman. La, believe me, if you, too, were a gentleman, Mr. Orts, you +would understand! But a gentleman is not a talebearer; a gentleman does not +defame any person behind his back, far less the person to whom he owes his +daily bread." + +"So he has been gulling you?" said Simon Orts; then he added quite +inconsequently: "I had not thought anything you could say would hurt me. I +discover I was wrong. Perhaps I am not a gentleman. Faith, no; I am only a +shabby drunkard, a disgrace to my cloth, am I not, Anastasia? Accordingly, +I fail to perceive what old Aluric Floyer has to do with the matter in +hand. He was reasonably virtuous, I suppose; putting aside a disastrous +appetite for fruit, so was Adam: but, viewing their descendants, I ruefully +admit that in each case the strain has deteriorated." + +There was a brief silence; then Lady Allonby observed: "Perhaps I was +discourteous. I ask your forgiveness, Mr. Orts. And now, if you will pardon +the suggestion, I think you had better go to your dying parishioner." + +But she had touched the man to the quick. "I am a drunkard; who made me +so? Who was it used to cuddle me with so many soft words and kisses--yes, +kisses, my Lady!--till a wealthier man came a-wooing, and then flung me +aside like an old shoe?" + +This drenched her cheeks with crimson, "I think we had better not refer to +that boy-and-girl affair. You cannot blame me for your debauched manner +of living. I found before it was too late that I did not love you. I was +only a girl, and 'twas natural that at first I should be mistaken in my +fancies." + +The Vicar had caught her by each wrist. "You don't understand, of course. +You never understood, for you have no more heart than one of those +pink-and-white bisque figures that you resemble. You don't love me, and +therefore I will go to the devil' may not be an all-rational deduction, but +'tis very human logic. You don't understand that, do you, Anastasia? You +don't understand how when one is acutely miserable one remembers that at +the bottom of a wineglass--or even at the bottom of a tumbler of gin,--one +may come upon happiness, or at least upon acquiescence to whatever the +niggling gods may send. You don't understand how one remembers, when the +desired woman is lost, that there are other women whose lips are equally +red and whose hearts are tenderer and--yes, whose virtue is less exigent. +No; women never understand these things: and in any event, you would not +understand, because you are only an adorable pink-and-white fool." + +"Oh, oh!" she cried, struggling, "How dare you? You insult me, you coward!" + +"Well, you can always comfort yourself with the reflection that it scarcely +matters what a sot like me may elect to say. And, since you understand me +now no more than formerly, Anastasia, I tell you that the lover turned +adrift may well profit by the example of his predecessors. Other lovers +have been left forsaken, both in trousers and in ripped petticoats; and +I have heard that when Chryseis was reft away from Agamemnon, the _cnax +andrôn_ made himself tolerably comfortable with Briseis; and that, when +Theseus sneaked off in the night, Ariadne, after having wept for a +decent period, managed in the ultimate to console herself with Theban +Bacchus,--which I suppose to be a courteous method of stating that the +daughter of Minos took to drink. So the forsaken lover has his choice of +consolation--in wine or in that dearer danger, woman. I have tried both, +Anastasia. And I tell you--" + +He dropped her hands as though they had been embers. Lord Rokesle had come +quietly into the hall. + +"Why, what's this?" Lord Rokesle demanded. "Simon, you aren't making love +to Lady Allonby, I hope? Fie, man! remember your cloth." + +Simon Orts wheeled--a different being, servile and cringing. "Your Lordship +is pleased to be pleasant. Indeed, though, I fear that your ears must +burn, sir, for I was but now expatiating upon the manifold kindnesses your +Lordship has been so generous as to confer upon your unworthy friend. I was +admiring Lady Allonby's ruffle, sir,--Valenciennes, I take it, and very +choice." + +Lord Rokesle laughed. "So I am to thank you for blowing my trumpet, am I?" +said Lord Rokesle. "Well, you are not a bad fellow, Simon, so long as you +are sober. And now be off with you to Holles--the rascal is dying, they +tell me. My luck, Simon! He made up a cravat better than any one in the +kingdom." + +"The ways of Providence are inscrutable," Simon Orts considered; "and +if Providence has in verity elected to chasten your Lordship, doubtless +it shall be, as anciently in the case of Job the Patriarch, repaid by a +recompense, by a thousandfold recompense." And after a meaning glance +toward Lady Allonby,--a glance that said: "I, too, have a tongue,"--he was +mounting the stairway to the upper corridor when Lord Rokesle called to +him. + +"By my conscience! I forgot," said Lord Rokesle; "don't leave Stornoway +without seeing me again, I shall want you by and by." + + +II + +Lord Rokesle sat down upon the long, high-backed bench, beside the fire, +and facing Lady Allonby's arm-chair. + +Neither he nor Lady Allonby spoke for a while. + +In a sombre way Lord Rokesle was a handsome man, and to-night, in brown +and gold, very stately. His bearing savored faintly of the hidalgo; indeed, +his mother was a foreign woman, cast ashore on Usk, from a wrecked Spanish +vessel, and incontinently married by the despot of the island. For her, +Death had delayed his advent unmercifully; but her reason survived the +marriage by two years only, and there were those familiar with the late +Lord Rokesle's [Footnote: Born 1685, and accidentally killed by Sir +Piers Sabiston in 1738; an accurate account of this notorious duellist, +profligate, charlatan, and playwright is given in Ireson's _Letters_.] +peculiarities who considered that in this, at least, the crazed lady was +fortunate. Among these gossips it was also esteemed a matter deserving +comment that in the shipwrecks not infrequent about Usk the women sometimes +survived, but the men never. + +Now Lord Rokesle regarded Lady Allonby, the while that she displayed +conspicuous interest in the play of the flames. But by and by, "O +vulgarity!" said Lady Allonby. "Pray endeavor to look a little more +cheerful. Positively, you are glaring at me like one of those disagreeable +beggars one so often sees staring at bakery windows." + +He smiled. "Do you remember what the Frenchman wrote--_et pain ne voyent +qu'aux fenêtres?_ There is not an enormous difference between me and the +tattered rascal of Chepe, for we both stare longingly at what we most +desire. And were I minded to hunt the simile to the foot of the letter, +I would liken your coquetry to the intervening window-pane,--not easily +broken through, but very, very transparent, Anastasia." + +"You are not overwhelmingly polite," she said, reflectively; "but, then, I +suppose, living in the country is sure to damage a man's manners. Still, my +dear Orson, you smack too much of the forest." + +"Anastasia," said Lord Rokesle, bending toward her, "will you always be +thus cruel? Do you not understand that in this world you are the only thing +I care for? You think me a boor; perhaps I am,--and yet it rests with you, +my Lady, to make me what you will. For I love you, Anastasia--" + +"Why, how delightful of you!" said she, languidly. + +"It is not a matter for jesting. I tell you that I love you." My Lord's +color was rising. + +But Lady Allonby yawned. "Your honor's most devoted," she declared herself; +"still, you need not boast of your affection as if falling in love with me +were an uncommonly difficult achievement. That, too, is scarcely polite." + +"For the tenth time I ask you will you marry me?" said Lord Rokesle. + +"Is't only the tenth time? Dear me, it seems like the thousandth. Of +course, I couldn't think of it. Heavens, my Lord, how can you expect me to +marry a man who glares at me like that? Positively you look as ferocious as +the blackamoor in the tragedy,--the fellow who smothered his wife because +she misplaced a handkerchief, you remember." + +Lord Rokesle had risen, and he paced the hall, as if fighting down +resentment. "I am no Othello," he said at last; "though, indeed, I think +that the love I bear you is of a sort which rarely stirs our English blood. +'Tis not for nothing I am half-Spaniard, I warn you, Anastasia, my love is +a consuming blaze that will not pause for considerations of policy nor even +of honor. And you madden me, Anastasia! To-day you hear my protestations +with sighs and glances and faint denials; to-morrow you have only taunts +for me. Sometimes, I think, 'tis hatred rather than love I bear you. +Sometimes--" He clutched at his breast with a wild gesture. "I burn!" he +said. "Woman, give me back a human heart in place of this flame you have +kindled here, or I shall go mad! Last night I dreamed of hell, and of souls +toasted on burning forks and fed with sops of bale-fire,--and you were +there, Anastasia, where the flames leaped and curled like red-blazoned +snakes about the poor damned. And I, too, was there. And through eternity I +heard you cry to God in vain, O dear, wonderful, golden-haired woman! and +we could see Him, somehow,--see Him, a great way off, with straight, white +brows that frowned upon you pitilessly. And I was glad. For I knew then +that I hated you. And even now, when I think I must go mad for love of you, +I yet hate you with a fervor that shakes and thrills in every fibre of +me. Oh, I burn, I burn!" he cried, with the same frantic clutching at his +breast. + +Lady Allonby had risen. + +"Positively, I must ask you to open a window if you intend to continue in +this strain. D'ye mean to suffocate me, my Lord, with your flames and your +blazes and your brimstone and so on? You breathe conflagrations, like a +devil in a pantomime. I had as soon converse with a piece of fireworks. So, +if you'll pardon me, I will go to my brother." + +At the sound of her high, crisp speech his frenzy fell from him like a +mantle. "And you let me kiss you yesterday! Oh, I know you struggled, but +you did not struggle very hard, did you, Anastasia?" + +"Why, what a notion!" cried Lady Allonby; "as if a person should bother +seriously one way or the other about the antics of an amorous clodhopper! +Meanwhile, I repeat, my Lord, I wish to go to my brother." + +"Egad!" Lord Rokesle retorted, "that reminds me I have been notably remiss. +I bear you a message from Harry. He had to-night a letter from Job Nangle, +who, it seems, has a purchaser for Trevor's Folly at last. The fellow is +with our excellent Nangle at Peniston Friars, and offers liberal terms if +the sale be instant. The chance was too promising to let slip, so Harry +left the island an hour ago. It happened by a rare chance that some of my +fellows were on the point of setting out for the mainland,--and he knew +that he could safely entrust you to Mrs. Morfit's duennaship, he said." + +"He should not have done so," Lady Allonby observed, as if in a contention +of mind. "He--I will go to Mrs. Morfit, then, to confess to her in +frankness that, after all these rockets and bonfires--" + +"Why, that's the unfortunate part of the whole affair," said Lord Rokesle. +"The same boat brought Sabina a letter which summoned her to the bedside +of her husband, [Footnote: Archibald Morfit, M.P. for Salop, and in 1753 +elected Speaker, which office he declined on account of ill-health. He was +created a baronet in 1758 through the Duke of Ormskirk's influence.] who, +it appears, lies desperately ill at Kuyper Manor. It happened by a rare +chance that some of my fellows were on the point of setting out for the +mainland--from Heriz pier yonder, not from the end of the island whence +Harry sailed,--so she and her maid embarked instanter. Of course, there was +your brother here to play propriety, she said. And by the oddest misfortune +in the world," Lord Rokesle sighed, "I forgot to tell her that Harry +Heleigh had left Usk a half-hour earlier. My memory is lamentably +treacherous." + +But Lady Allonby had dropped all affectation. "You coward! You planned +this!" + +"Candidly, yes. Nangle is my agent as well as Harry's, you may remember. +I have any quantity of his letters, and of course an equal number +of Archibald's. So I spent the morning in my own apartments, +Anastasia,--tracing letters against the window-pane, which was, I suppose, +a childish recreation, but then what would you have? As you very justly +observe, country life invariably coarsens a man's tastes; and accordingly, +as you may now recall, I actually declined a game of _écarté_ with you in +order to indulge in these little forgeries. Decidedly, my dear, you must +train your husband's imagination for superior flights--when you are Lady +Rokesle." + +She was staring at him as though he had been a portent. "I am alone," she +said. "Alone--in this place--with you! Alone! you devil!" + +"Your epithets increase in vigor. Just now I was only a clodhopper. Well, +I can but repeat that it rests with you to make me what you will. Though, +indeed, you are to all intent alone upon Usk, and upon Usk there are many +devils. There are ten of them on guard yonder, by the way, in case your +brother should return inopportunely, though that's scarcely probable. +Obedient devils, you observe, Anastasia,--devils who exert and check their +deviltry as I bid 'em, for they esteem me Lucifer's lieutenant. And I grant +the present situation is an outrage to propriety, yet the evil is not +incurable. Lady Allonby may not, if she value her reputation, pass to-night +at Stornoway; but here am I, all willingness, and upstairs is the parson. +Believe me, Anastasia, the most vinegarish prude could never object to Lady +Rokesle's spending to-night at Stornoway." + +"Let me think, let me think!" Lady Allonby said, and her hands plucked now +at her hair, now at her dress. She appeared dazed. "I can't think!" she +wailed on a sudden. "I am afraid. I--O Vincent, Vincent, you cannot do +this thing! I trusted you, Vincent. I know I let you make love to me, and +I relished having you make love to me. Women are like that. But I cannot +marry you, Vincent. There is a man, yonder in England, whom I love. He does +not care for me any more,--he is in love with my step-daughter. That is +very amusing, is it not, Vincent? Some day I may be his mother-in-law. Why +don't you laugh, Vincent? Come, let us both laugh--first at this and then +at the jest you have just played on me. Do you know, for an instant, I +believed you were in earnest? But Harry went to sleep over the cards, +didn't he? And Mrs. Morfit has gone to bed with one of her usual headaches? +Of course; and you thought you would retaliate upon me for teasing you. You +were quite right, 'Twas an excellent jest. Now let us laugh at it. Laugh, +Vincent! Oh!" she said now, more shrilly, "for the love of God, laugh, +laugh!--or I shall go mad!" + +But Lord Rokesle was a man of ice, "Matrimony is a serious matter, +Anastasia; 'tis not becoming in those who are about to enter it to exhibit +undue levity. I wonder what's keeping Simon?" + +"Simon Orts!" she said, in a half-whisper. Then she came toward Lord +Rokesle, smiling. "Why, of course, I teased you, Vincent, but there was +never any hard feeling, was there? And you really wish me to marry you? +Well, we must see, Vincent. But, as you say, matrimony is a serious matter. +D'ye know you say very sensible things, Vincent?--not at all like those +silly fops yonder in London. I dare say you and I would be very happy +together. But you wouldn't have any respect for me if I married you on a +sudden like this, would you? Of course not. So you will let me consider it. +Come to me a month from now, say,--is that too long to wait? Well, I think +'tis too long myself. Say a week, then. I must have my wedding-finery, +you comprehend. We women are such vain creatures--not big and brave and +sensible like you men. See, for example, how much bigger your hand is +than mine--mine's quite lost in it, isn't it? So--since I am only a vain, +chattering, helpless female thing,--you are going to indulge me and let me +go up to London for some new clothes, aren't you, Vincent? Of course you +will; and we will be married in a week. But you will let me go to London +first, won't you?--away from this dreadful place, away--I didn't mean that. +I suppose it is a very agreeable place when you get accustomed to it. And +'tis only for clothes--Oh, I swear it is only for clothes, Vincent! And you +said you would--yes, only a moment ago you distinctly said you would let me +go. 'Tis not as if I were not coming back--who said I would not come back? +Of course I will. But you must give me time, Vincent dear,--you must, you +must, I tell you! O God!" she sobbed, and flung from her the loathed hand +she was fondling, "it's no use!" + +"No," said Lord Rokesle, rather sadly. "I am not Samson, nor are you +Delilah to cajole me. It's of no use, Anastasia. I would have preferred +that you came to me voluntarily, but since you cannot, I mean to take you +unwilling. Simon," he called, loudly, "does that rascal intend to spin out +his dying interminably? Charon's waiting, man." + +From above, "Coming, my Lord," said Simon Orts. + + +III + +The Vicar of Heriz Magna descended the stairway with deliberation. His +eyes twitched from the sobbing woman to Lord Rokesle, and then back again, +in that furtive way Orts had of glancing about a room, without moving his +head; he seemed to lie in ambush under his gross brows; and whatever his +thoughts may have been, he gave them no utterance. + +"Simon," said Lord Rokesle, "Lady Allonby is about to make me the happiest +of men. Have you a prayer-book about you, Master Parson?--for here's a +loving couple desirous of entering the blessed state of matrimony." + +"The match is somewhat of the suddenest," said Simon Orts. "But I have +known these impromptu marriages to turn out very happily--very happily, +indeed." he repeated, rubbing his hands together, and smiling horribly. "I +gather that Mr. Heleigh will not grace the ceremony with his presence?" + +They understood each other, these two. Lord Rokesle grinned, and in a few +words told the ecclesiastic of the trick which had insured the absence of +the other guests; and Simon Orts also grinned, but respectfully,--the grin, +of the true lackey wearing his master's emotions like his master's clothes, +at second-hand. + +"A very pretty stratagem," said Simon Orts; "unconventional, I must +confess, but it is proverbially known that all's fair in love." + +At this Lady Allonby came to him, catching his hand. "There is only you, +Simon. Oh, there is no hope in that lustful devil yonder. But you are not +all base, Simon. You are a man,--ah, God! if I were a man I would rip out +that devil's heart--his defiled and infamous heart! I would trample upon +it, I would feed it to dogs--!" She paused. Her impotent fury was jerking +at every muscle, was choking her. "But I am only a woman. Simon, you used +to love me. You cannot have forgotten, Simon. Oh, haven't you any pity on a +woman? Remember, Simon--remember how happy we were! Don't you remember how +the night-jars used to call to one another when we sat on moonlit evenings +under the elm-tree? And d'ye remember the cottage we planned, Simon?--where +we were going to live on bread and cheese and kisses? And how we quarrelled +because I wanted to train vines over it? You said the rooms would be too +dark. You said--oh, Simon, Simon! if only I had gone to live with you in +that little cottage we planned and never builded!" Lady Allonby was at his +feet now. She fawned upon him in somewhat the manner of a spaniel expectant +of a thrashing. + +The Vicar of Heriz Magna dispassionately ran over the leaves of his +prayer-book, till he had found the marriage service, and then closed the +book, his forefinger marking the place. Lord Rokesle stood apart, and with +a sly and meditative smile observed them. + +"Your plea is a remarkable one," said Simon Orts. "As I understand it, you +appeal to me to meddle in your affairs on the ground that you once made +a fool of me. I think the obligation is largely optional. I remember +quite clearly the incidents to which you refer; and it shames even an +old sot like me to think that I was ever so utterly at the mercy of a +good-for-nothing jilt. I remember every vow you ever made to me, Anastasia, +and I know they were all lies. I remember every kiss, every glance, every +caress--all lies, Anastasia! And gad! the only emotion it rouses in me is +wonder as to why my worthy patron here should want to marry you. Of course +you are wealthy, but, personally, I would not have you for double the +money. I must ask you to rise, Lady Rokesle.--Pardon me if I somewhat +anticipate your title." + +Lady Allonby stumbled to her feet. "Is there no manhood in the world?" she +asked, with a puzzled voice. "Has neither of you ever heard of manhood, +though but as distantly as men hear summer thunder? Had neither of you a +woman for a mother--a woman, as I am--or a father who was not--O God!--not +as you are?" + +"These rhetorical passages," said Lord Rokesle, "while very elegantly +expressed, are scarcely to the point. So you and Simon went a-philandering +once? Egad, that lends quite a touch of romance to the affair. But +despatch, Parson Simon,--your lady's for your betters now." + +"Dearly beloved,--" said Simon Orts. + +"Simon, you are not all base. I am helpless, Simon, utterly helpless. There +was a Simon once would not have seen me weep. There was a Simon--" + +"--we are gathered together here in the sight of God--" + +"You cannot do it, Simon,--do I not know you to the marrow? Remember--not +me--not the vain folly of my girlhood!--but do you remember the man you +have been, Simon Orts!" Fiercely Lady Allonby caught him by the shoulder. +"For you do remember! You do remember, don't you, Simon?" + +The Vicar stared at her. "The man I have been," said Simon Orts, "yes!--the +man I have been!" Something clicked in his throat with sharp distinctness. + +"Upon my word," said Lord Rokesle, yawning, "this getting married appears +to be an uncommonly tedious business." + +Then Simon Orts laid aside his prayer-book and said: "I cannot do it, my +Lord. The woman's right." + +She clapped her hands to her breast, and stood thus, reeling upon her +feet. You would have thought her in the crisis of some physical agony; +immediately she breathed again, deeply but with a flinching inhalation, as +though the contact of the air scorched her lungs, and, swaying, fell. It +was the Vicar who caught her as she fell. + +"I entreat your pardon?" said Lord Rokesle, and without study of Lady +Allonby's condition. This was men's business now, and over it Rokesle's +brow began to pucker. + +Simon Orts bore Lady Allonby to the settie. He passed behind it to arrange +a cushion under her head, with an awkward, grudging tenderness; and then +rose to face Lord Rokesle across the disordered pink fripperies. + +"The woman's right, my Lord. There is such a thing as manhood. Manhood!" +Simon Orts repeated, with a sort of wonder; "why, I might have boasted it +once. Then came this cuddling bitch to trick me into a fool's paradise--to +trick me into utter happiness, till Stephen Allonby, a marquis' son, +clapped eyes on her and whistled,--and within the moment she had flung me +aside. May God forgive me, I forgot I was His servant then! I set out to go +to the devil, but I went farther; for I went to you, Vincent Floyer. You +gave me bread when I was starving,--but 'twas at a price. Ay, the price was +that I dance attendance on you, to aid and applaud your knaveries, to be +your pander, your lackey, your confederate,--that I puff out, in effect, +the last spark of manhood in my sot's body. Oh, I am indeed beholden to you +two! to her for making me a sot, and to you for making me a lackey. But I +will save her from you, Vincent Floyer. Not for her sake"--Orts looked down +upon the prostrate woman and snarled. "Christ, no! But I'll do it for the +sake of the boy I have been, since I owe that boy some reparation. I have +ruined his nimble body, I have dulled the wits he gloried in, I have made +his name a foul thing that honesty spits out of her mouth; but, if God yet +reigns in heaven, I cleanse that name to-night!" + +"Oh, bless me," Lord Rokesle observed; "I begin to fear these heroics are +contagious. Possibly I, too, shall begin to rant in a moment. Meanwhile, as +I understand it, you decline to perform the ceremony. I have had to warn +you before this, Simon, that you mustn't take too much gin when I am apt +to need you. You are very pitifully drunk, man. So you defy me and my evil +courses! You defy me!" Rokesle laughed, genially, for the notion amused +him. "Wine is a mocker, Simon. But come, despatch, Parson Tosspot, and +let's have no more of these lofty sentiments." + +"I cannot do it. I--O my Lord, my Lord! You wouldn't kill an unarmed man!" +Simon Orts whined, with a sudden alteration of tone; for Lord Rokesle had +composedly drawn his sword, and its point was now not far from the Vicar's +breast. + +"I trust that I shall not be compelled to. Egad, it is a very ludicrous +business when the bridegroom is forced to hold a sword to the parson's +bosom all during the ceremony; but a ceremony we must have, Simon, for Lady +Allonby's jointure is considerable. Otherwise--Harkee, my man, don't play +the fool! there are my fellows yonder, any one of whom would twist your +neck at a word from me. And do you think I would boggle at a word? Gad, +Simon, I believed you knew me better!" + +The Vicar of Heriz Magna kept silence for an instant; his eyes were +twitching about the hall, in that stealthy way of his. Finally, "It is +no use," said he. "A poor knave cannot afford the luxury of honesty. My +life is not a valuable one, perhaps, but even vermin have an aversion to +death. I resume my lackeyship, Lord Rokesle. Perhaps 'twas only the gin. +Perhaps--In any event, I am once more at your service. And as guaranty of +this I warn you that you are exhibiting in the affair scant forethought. +Mr. Heleigh is but three miles distant. If he, by any chance, get wind of +this business, Denstroude will find a boat for him readily enough--ay, and +men, too, now that the Colonel is at feud with you. Many of your people +visit the mainland every night, and in their cups the inhabitants of Usk +are not taciturn. An idle word spoken over an inn-table may bring an armed +company thundering about your gates. You should have set sentinels, my +Lord." + +"I have already done so," Rokesle said; "there are ten of 'em yonder. Still +there is something in what you say. We will make this affair certain." + +Lord Rokesle crossed the hall to the foot of the stairway and struck thrice +upon the gong hanging there. Presently the door leading to the corridor was +opened, and a man came into the hall. + +"Punshon," said Lord Rokesle, "have any boats left the island to-night?" + +"No, my Lord." + +"You will see that none do. Also, no man is to leave Stornoway to-night, +either for Heriz Magna or the mainland; and nobody is to enter Stornoway. +Do you understand, Punshon?" + +"Yes, my Lord." + +"If you will pardon me," said Simon Orts, with a grin, "I have an +appointment to-night. You'd not have me break faith with a lady?" + +"You are a lecherous rascal, Simon. But do as you are bid and I indulge +you. I am not afraid of your going to Harry Heleigh--after performing the +ceremony. Nay, my lad, for you are thereby _particeps criminis_. You will +pass Mr. Orts, Punshon, to the embraces of his whore. Nobody else." + +Simon Orts waved his hand toward Lady Allonby. "'Twere only kindness to +warn Mr. Punshon there may be some disturbance shortly. A lamentation or +so." + +At this Lord Rokesle clapped him upon the shoulder and heartily laughed. +"That's the old Simon--always on the alert. Punshon, no one is to enter +this wing of the castle, on any pretext--no one, you understand. Whatever +noises you may hear, you will pay no attention. Now go." + +He went toward Lady Allonby and took her hand. "Come, Anastasia!" said he. +"Hold, she has really swooned! Why, what the devil, Simon--!" + +Simon Orts had flung the gong into the fire. "She will be sounding that +when she comes to," said Simon Orts. "You don't want a rumpus fit to vex +the dead yonder in the Chapel." Simon Orts stood before the fire, turning +the leaves of his prayer-book. He seemed to have difficulty in finding +again the marriage service. You heard the outer door of the corridor +closing, heard chains dragged ponderously, the heavy falling of a bolt. +Orts dropped the book and, springing into the arm-chair, wrested Aluric +Floyer's sword from its fastening. "Tricked, tricked!" said Simon Orts. +"You were always a fool, Vincent Floyer." + +Lord Rokesle blinked at him, as if dazzled by unexpected light. "What d'ye +mean?" + +"I have the honor to repeat--you are a fool, I did not know the place was +guarded--you told me. I needed privacy; by your orders no one is to enter +here to-night. I needed a sword--you had it hanging here, ready for the +first comer. Oh, beyond doubt, you are a fool, Vincent Floyer!" Standing +in the arm-chair, Simon Orts bowed fantastically, and then leaped to the +ground with the agility of an imp. + +"You have tricked me neatly," Lord Rokesle conceded, and his tone did not +lack honest admiration. "By gad, I have even given them orders to pass +you--after you have murdered me! Exceedingly clever, Simon,--but one thing +you overlooked. You are very far from my match at fencing. So I shall +presently kill you. And afterward, ceremony or no ceremony, the woman's +mine." + +"I am not convinced of that," the Vicar observed. "'Tis true I am no +swordsman; but there are behind my sword forces superior to any which +skill might muster. The sword of your fathers fights against you, my +Lord--against you that are their disgrace. They loved honor and truth; you +betrayed honor, you knew not truth. They revered womanhood; you reverence +nothing, and your life smirches your mother's memory. Ah, believe me, +they all fight against you! Can you not see them, my Lord?--yonder at my +back?--old Aluric Floyer and all those honest gentlemen, whose blood now +blushes in your body--ay, blushes to be confined in a vessel so ignoble! +Their armament fights against you, a host of gallant phantoms. And my +hatred, too, fights against you--the cur's bitter hatred for the mastering +hand it dares not bite. I dare now. You made me your pander, you slew my +manhood; in return, body and soul, I demolish you. Even my hatred for that +woman fights against you; she robbed me of my honor--is it not a tragical +revenge to save her honor, to hold it in my hand, mine, to dispose of as +I elect,--and then fling it to her as a thing contemptible? Between you, +you have ruined me; but it is Simon's hour to-night. I shame you both, and +past the reach of thought, for presently I shall take your life--in the +high-tide of your iniquity, praise God!--and presently I shall give my life +for hers. Ah, I a fey, my Lord! You are a dead man, Vincent Floyer, for the +powers of good and the powers of evil alike contend against you." + +He spoke rather sadly than otherwise; and there was a vague trouble in Lord +Rokesle's face, though he shook his head impatiently. "These are fine words +to come from the dirtiest knave unhanged in England." + +"Great ends may be attained by petty instruments, my Lord; a filthy turtle +quenched the genius of Æschylus, and they were only common soldiers who +shed the blood that redeemed the world." + +Lord Rokesle pished at this. Yet he was strangely unruffled. He saluted +with quietude, as equal to equal, and the two crossed blades. + +Simon Orts fought clumsily, but his encroachment was unwavering. From the +first he pressed his opponent with a contained resolution. The Vicar was +as a man fighting in a dream--with a drugged obstinacy, unswerving. Lord +Rokesle had wounded him in the arm, but Orts did not seem aware of this. +He crowded upon his master. Now there were little beads of sweat on Lord +Rokesle's brow, and his tongue protruded from his mouth, licking at it +ravenously. Step by step Lord Rokesle drew back; there was no withstanding +this dumb fanatic, who did not know when he was wounded, who scarcely +parried attack. + +"Even on earth you shall have a taste of hell," said Simon Orts. "There is +terror in your eyes, my worthy patron." + +Lord Rokesle flung up his arms as the sword dug into his breast. "I am +afraid! I am afraid!" he wailed. Then he coughed, and seemed with his +straining hands to push a great weight from him as the blood frothed about +his lips and nostrils. "O Simon, I am afraid! Help me, Simon!" + +Old custom spoke there. Followed silence, and presently the empty body +sprawled upon the floor. Vincent Floyer had done with it. + + +IV + +Simon Orts knelt, abstractedly wiping Aluric Floyer's sword upon the corner +of a rug. It may be that he derived comfort from this manual employment +which necessitated attention without demanding that it concentrate his +mind; it may have enabled him to forget how solitary the place was, how +viciously his garments rustled when he moved: the fact is certain that he +cleaned the sword, over and over again. + +Then a scraping of silks made him wince. Turning, he found Lady Allonby +half-erect upon the settle. She stared about her with a kind of Infantile +wonder; her glance swept, over Lord Rokesle's body, without to all +appearance finding it an object of remarkable interest. "Is he dead?" + +"Yes," said Simon Orts; "get up!" His voice had a rasp; she might from his +tone have been a refractory dog. But Lady Allonby obeyed him. + +"We are in a devil of a mess," said Simon Orts; "yet I see a way out of +it--if you can keep your head. Can you?" + +"I am past fear," she said, dully. "I drown, Simon, in a sea of feathers. I +can get no foothold, I clutch nothing that is steadfast, and I smother. I +have been like this in dreams. I am very tired, Simon." + +He took her hand, collectedly appraising her pulse. He put his own hand +upon her bared bosom, and felt the beat of her heart. "No," said Simon +Orts, "you are not afraid. Now, listen: You lack time to drown in a sea of +feathers. You are upon Usk, among men who differ from beasts by being a +thought more devilish, and from devils by being a little more bestial; it +is my opinion that the earlier you get away the better. Punshon has orders +to pass Simon Orts. Very well; put on this." + +He caught up his long cloak and wrapped it about her. Lady Allonby stood +rigid. But immediately he frowned and removed the garment from her +shoulders. + +"That won't do. Your skirts are too big. Take 'em off." + +Submissively she did so, and presently stood before him in her +under-petticoat. + +"You cut just now a very ludicrous figure, Anastasia. I dare assert that +the nobleman who formerly inhabited yonder carcass would still be its +tenant if he had known how greatly the beauty he went mad for was beholden +to the haberdasher and the mantua-maker, and quite possibly the chemist. +_Persicos odi_, Anastasia; 'tis a humiliating reflection that the hair of a +dead woman artfully disposed about a living head should have the power +to set men squabbling, and murder be at times engendered in a paint-pot. +However, wrap yourself in the cloak. Now turn up the collar,--so. Now pull +down the hatbrim. Um--a--pretty well. Chance favors us unblushingly. You +may thank your stars it is a rainy night and that I am a little man. You +detest little men, don't you? Yes, I remember." Simon Orts now gave his +orders, emphasizing each with a not over-clean forefinger. "When I open +this door you will go out into the corridor. Punshon or one of the others +will be on guard at the farther end. Pay no attention to him. There is +only one light--on the left. Keep to the right, in the shadow. Stagger as +you go; if you can manage a hiccough, the imitation will be all the more +lifelike. Punshon will expect something of the sort, and he will not +trouble you, for he knows that when I am fuddled I am quarrelsome. 'Tis a +diverting world, Anastasia, wherein, you now perceive, habitual drunkenness +and an unbridled temper may sometimes prove commendable,--as they do +to-night, when they aid persecuted innocence!" Here Simon Orts gave an +unpleasant laugh. + +"But I do not understand--" + +"You understand very little except coquetry and the proper disposition +of a ruffle. Yet this is simple. My horse is tied at the postern. +Mount--astride, mind. You know the way to the Vicarage, so does the horse; +you will find that posturing half-brother of mine at the Vicarage. Tell +Frank what has happened. Tell him to row you to the mainland; tell him to +conduct you to Colonel Denstroude's. Then you must shift for yourself; but +Denstroude is a gentleman, and Denstroude would protect Beelzebub if he +came to him a fugitive from Vincent Floyer. Now do you understand?" + +"Yes," said Lady Allonby, and seated herself before the fire,--"yes, I +understand. I am to slip away in the darkness and leave you here to answer +for Lord Rokesle's death--to those devils. La, do you really think me as +base as that?" + +Now Simon Orts was kneeling at her side. The black cloak enveloped her from +head to foot, and the turned-up collar screened her sunny hair; in the +shadow of the broad hatbrim you could see only her eyes, resplendent and +defiant, and in them the reflection of the vaulting flames. "You would +stay, Anastasia?" + +"I will not purchase my life at the cost of yours. I will be indebted to +you for nothing, Simon Orts." + +The Vicar chuckled. "Nor appeared Less than archangel ruined," he said. +"No, faith, not a whit less! We are much of a piece, Anastasia. Do you +know--if affairs had fallen out differently--I think I might have been a +man and you a woman? As it is--" Kneeling still, his glance devoured her. +"Yes, you would stay. And you comprehend what staying signifies. 'Tis +pride, your damnable pride, that moves you,--but I rejoice, for it proves +you a brave woman. Courage, at least, you possess, and this is the first +virtue I have discovered in you for a long while. However, there is no +necessity for your staying. The men of Usk will not hurt Simon Orts." + +She was very eager to believe this. Lady Allonby had found the world a +pleasant place since her widowhood. "They will not kill you? You swear it, +Simon?" + +"Why, the man was their tyrant. They obeyed him--yes, through fear. I am +their deliverer, Anastasia. But if they found a woman here--a woman not +ill-looking--" Simon Orts snapped his fingers. "Faith, I leave you to +conjecture," said he. + +They had both risen, he smiling, the woman in a turbulence of hope and +terror. "Swear to it, Simon!" + +"Anastasia, were affairs as you suppose them, I would have a curt while to +live. Were affairs as you suppose them, I would stand now at the threshold +of eternity. And I swear to you, upon my soul's salvation, that I have +nothing to fear. Nothing will ever hurt me any more." + +"No, you would not dare to lie in the moment of death," she said, after +a considerable pause. "I believe you. I will go. Good-bye, Simon." Lady +Allonby went toward the door opening into the corridor, but turned there +and came back to him. "I shall never see you again. And, la, I think that +I rather hate you than otherwise, for you remind me of things I would +willingly forget. But, Simon, I wish we had gone to live in that little +cottage we planned, and quarrelled over, and never built! I think we would +have been happy." + +Simon Orts raised her hand to his lips. "Yes," said he, "we would have been +happy. I would have been by this a man doing a man's work in the world, and +you a matron, grizzling, perhaps, but rich in content, and in love opulent. +As it is, you have your flatterers, your gossip, and your cards; I have my +gin. Good-bye, Anastasia." + +"Simon, why have you done--this?" + +The Vicar of Heriz Magna flung out his hands in a gesture of impotence. "I +dare confess now that which even to myself I have never dared confess. I +suppose the truth of it is that I have loved you all my life." + +"I am sorry. I am not worth it, Simon." + +"No; you are immeasurably far from being worth it. But one does not justify +these fancies by mathematics. Good-bye, Anastasia." + + +V + +Holding the door ajar, the Vicar of Heriz Magna heard a horse's hoofs slap +their leisurely way down the hillside. Presently the sound died and he +turned back into the hall. + +"A brave woman, that! Oh, a trifling, shallow-hearted jilt, but a brave +creature! + +"I had to lie to her. She would have stayed else. And perhaps it is true +that, in reality, I have loved her all my life,--or in any event, have +hankered after the pink-and-white flesh of her as any gentleman might. +Pschutt! a pox on all lechery says the dying man,--since it is now +necessary to put that strapping yellow-haired trollop out of your mind, +Simon Orts--yes, after all these years, to put her quite out of your mind. +Faith, she might wheedle me now to her heart's content, and my pulse would +never budge; for I must devote what trivial time there is to hoping they +will kill me quickly. He was their god, that man!" + +Simon Orts went toward the dead body, looking down into the distorted face. +"And I, too, loved him. Yes, such as he was, he was the only friend I +had. And I think he liked me," Simon Orts said aloud, with a touch of shy +pride. "Yes, and you trusted me, didn't you, Vincent? Wait for me, then, +my Lord,--I shall not be long. And now I'll serve you faithfully. I had to +play the man's part, you know,--you mustn't grudge old Simon his one hour +of manhood. You wouldn't, I think. And in any event, I shall be with you +presently, and you can cuff me for it if you like--just as you used to do." + +He covered the dead face with his handkerchief, but in the instant he drew +it away. "No, not this coarse cambric. You were too much of a fop, Vincent. +I will use yours--the finest linen, my Lord. You see old Simon knows your +tastes." + +He drew himself erect exultantly. + +"They will come at dawn to kill me; but I have had my hour. God, the man I +might have been! And now--well, perhaps He would not be offended if I said +a bit of a prayer for Vincent." + +So the Vicar of Heriz Magna knelt beside the flesh that had been Lord +Rokesle, and there they found him in the morning. + + + + +II + +LOVE AT MARTINMAS +_As Played at Tunbridge Wells, April 1, 1750_ + + "_He to love an altar built + Of twelve vast French romances, neatly gilt. + There lay three garters, half a pair of gloves, + And all the trophies of his former loves; + With tender billet-doux he lights the pyre, + And breathes three amorous sighs to raise the fire; + Then prostrate falls, and begs with ardent eyes + Soon to obtain, and long possess the prize._" + + +DRAMATIS PERSONÆ + +MR. ERWYN, a gentleman of the town, ceremonious and a + coxcomb, but a man of honor. +LADY ALLONBY, a woman of fashion, and widow to + Lord Stephen Allonby. +MISS ALLONBY, daughter to Lord Stephen by a former + marriage, of a considerable fortune in her own hands. +FOOTMEN to Lady Allonby; and in the Proem FRANCIS + ORTS, commonly know as FRANCIS VANBINGHAM, a + dissolute play-actor. + + +SCENE + +A drawing-room In Lady Allonby's villa at Tunbridge Wells. + + +LOVE AT MARTINMAS + + +_PROEM:--To be Filed for Reference Hereafter_ + +Lady Allonby followed in all respects the Vicar's instructions; and +midnight found her upon the pier of Bishops Onslow, Colonel Denstroude's +big and dilapidated country-residence. Frank Orts had assisted her from the +rowboat without speaking; indeed, he had uttered scarcely a word, save to +issue some necessary direction, since the woman first came to him at the +Vicarage with her news of the night's events. Now he composedly stepped +back into the boat. + +"You've only to go forward," said Frank Orts. "I regret that for my own +part I'm no longer an acceptable visitor here, since the Colonel and I +fought last summer over one Molly Yates. Nay, I beseech you, put up your +purse, my Lady." + +"Then I can but render you my heartfelt thanks," replied Lady Allonby, "and +incessantly remember you in daily prayers for the two gallant men who have +this night saved a woman from great misery. Yet there is that in your voice +which is curiously familiar, Mr. Orts, and I think that somewhere you and I +have met before this." + +"Ay," he responded, "you have squandered many a shilling on me here in +England, where Francis Vanringham bellows and makes faces with the rest of +the Globe Company. On Usk, you understand, I'm still Frank Orts, just as I +was christened; but elsewhere the name of Vanringham was long ago esteemed +more apt to embellish and adorn the bill of a heroic play. Ay, you've been +pleased to applaud my grimaces behind the footlights, more than once; your +mother-in-law, indeed, the revered Marchioness-Dowager of Falmouth, is +among my staunchest patrons." + +"Heavens! then we shall all again see one another at Tunbridge!" said Lady +Allonby, who was recovering her spirits; "and I shall have a Heaven-sent +opportunity, to confirm my protestations that I am not ungrateful. Mr. +Vanringham, I explicitly command you to open in _The Orphan_, since: as +Castalio in that piece you are the most elegant and moving thing in the +universal world." [Footnote: This was the opinion of others as well. +Thorsby (_Roscius Anglicanus_) says, "Mr. Vanringham was good in tragedy, +as well as in comedy, especially as Castalio in Otway's _Orphan_, and the +more famous Garrick came, in that part, far short of him." Vanringham was +also noted for his Valentine in _Love for Love_ and for his Beaugard in +_The Soldier's Fortune_.] + +"Your command shall be obeyed," said the actor. "And meantime, my Lady, +I bid you an _au revoir_, with many millions of regrets for the +inconveniences to which you've been subjected this evening, Oho, we are +lamentably rustic hereabout." + +And afterward as he rowed through the dark the man gave a grunt of +dissatisfaction. + +"I was too abrupt with her. But it vexes me to have Brother Simon butchered +like this.... These natural instincts are damnably inconvenient,--and +expensive, at times, Mr. Vanringham,--beside being ruinous to one's sense +of humor, Mr. Vanringham. Why, to think that she alone should go scot-free! +and of her ordering a stage-box within the hour of two men's destruction +on her account! Upon reflection, I admire the woman to the very tips of my +toes. Eh, well! I trust to have need of her gratitude before the month is +up." + + +I + +Since Colonel Denstroude proved a profane and dissolute and helpful person, +Lady Allonby was shortly re-established in her villa at Tunbridge Wells, on +the Sussex side, where she had resolved to find a breathing-space prior to +the full season in London. And thereupon she put all thoughts of Usk quite +out of her mind: it had been an unhappy business, but it was over. In the +meanwhile her wardrobe needed replenishing now that spring was coming +in; the company at the Wells was gay enough; and Lady Allonby had always +sedulously avoided anything that was disagreeable. + +Mr. Erwyn Lady Allonby was far from cataloguing under that head. Mr. George +Erwyn had been for years a major-general, at the very least, in Fashion's +army, and was concededly a connoisseur of all the elegancies. + +Mr. Erwyn sighed as he ended his recital--half for pity of the misguided +folk who had afforded Tunbridge its latest scandal, half for relief that, +in spite of many difficulties, the story had been set forth in discreet +language which veiled, without at all causing you to miss, the more +unsavory details. + +"And so," said he, "poor Harry is run through the lungs, and Mrs. +Anstruther has recovered her shape and is to be allowed a separate +maintenance." + +"'Tis shocking!" said Lady Allonby. + +"'Tis incredible," said Mr. Erwyn, "to my mind, at least, that the bonds of +matrimony should be slipped thus lightly. But the age is somewhat lax and +the world now views with complaisance the mad antics of half-grown lads and +wenches who trip toward the altar as carelessly as if the partnership were +for a country-dance." + +Lady Allonby stirred her tea and said nothing. Notoriously her marriage had +been unhappy; and her two years of widowhood (dating from the unlamented +seizure, brought on by an inherited tendency to apoplexy and French +brandy, which carried off Lord Stephen Allonby of Prestonwoode) had to all +appearance never tempered her distrust of the matrimonial state. Certain it +was that she had refused many advantageous offers during this period, for +her jointure was considerable, and, though in candid moments she confessed +to thirty-three, her dearest friends could not question Lady Allonby's +good looks. She was used to say that she would never re-marry, because she +desired to devote herself to her step-daughter, but, as gossip had it at +Tunbridge, she was soon to be deprived of this subterfuge; for Miss Allonby +had reached her twentieth year, and was nowadays rarely seen in public save +in the company of Mr. Erwyn, who, it was generally conceded, stood high in +the girl's favor and was desirous of rounding off his career as a leader of +fashion with the approved comoedic _dénouement_ of marriage with a young +heiress. + +For these reasons Lady Allonby heard with interest his feeling allusion to +the laxity of the age, and through a moment pondered thereon, for it seemed +now tolerably apparent that Mr. Erwyn had lingered, after the departure of +her other guests, in order to make a disclosure which Tunbridge had for +many months expected. + +"I had not thought," said she, at length, "that you, of all men, would ever +cast a serious eye toward marriage. Indeed, Mr. Erwyn, you have loved women +so long that I must dispute your ability to love a woman--and your amours +have been a byword these twenty years." + +"Dear lady," said Mr. Erwyn, "surely you would not confound amour with +love? Believe me, the translation is inadequate. Amour is but the summer +wave that lifts and glitters and laughs in the sunlight, and within the +instant disappears; but love is the unfathomed eternal sea itself. Or--to +shift the metaphor--Amour is a general under whom youth must serve: +Curiosity and Lustiness are his recruiting officers, and it is well to +fight under his colors, for it is against Ennui that he marshals his +forces. 'Tis a resplendent conflict, and young blood cannot but stir and +exult as paradoxes, marching and countermarching at the command of their +gay generalissimo, make way for one another in iridescent squadrons, while +through the steady musketry of epigram one hears the clash of contending +repartees, or the cry of a wailing sonnet. But this lord of laughter may be +served by the young alone; and by and by each veteran--scarred, it may be, +but not maimed, dear lady--is well content to relinquish the glory and +adventure of such colorful campaigns for some quiet inglenook, where, with +love to make a third, he prattles of past days and deeds with one that goes +hand in hand with him toward the tomb." + +Lady Allonby accorded this conceit the tribute of a sigh; then glanced, +in the direction of four impassive footmen to make sure they were out of +earshot. + +"And so--?" said she. + +"Split me!" said Mr. Erwyn, "I thought you had noted it long ago." + +"Indeed," she observed, reflectively, "I suppose it is quite time." + +"I am not," said Mr. Erwyn, "in the heyday of my youth, I grant you; but +I am not for that reason necessarily unmoved by the attractions of an +advantageous person, a fine sensibility and all the graces." + +He sipped his tea with an air of resentment; and Lady Allonby, in view of +the disparity of age which existed between Mr. Erwyn and her step-daughter, +had cause to feel that she had blundered into _gaucherie_; and to await +with contrition the proposal for her step-daughter's hand that the man was +(at last) about to broach to her, as the head of the family. + +"Who is she?" said Lady Allonby, all friendly interest. + +"An angel," said Mr. Erwyn, fencing. + +"Beware," Lady Allonby exhorted, "lest she prove a recording angel; a wife +who takes too deep an interest in your movements will scarcely suit you." + +"Oh, I am assured," said Mr. Erwyn, smiling, "that on Saturdays she will +allow me the customary half-holiday." + +Lady Allonby, rebuffed, sought consolation among the conserves. + +"Yet, as postscript," said Mr. Erwyn, "I do not desire a wife who will +take her morning chocolate with me and sup with Heaven knows whom. I have +seen, too much of _mariage à la mode_, and I come to her, if not with the +transports of an Amadis, at least with an entire affection and respect." + +"Then," said Lady Allonby, "you love this woman?" + +"Very tenderly," said Mr. Erwyn; "and, indeed, I would, for her sake, that +the errors of my past life were not so numerous, nor the frailty of my +aspiring resolutions rendered apparent--ah, so many times!--to a gaping +and censorious world. For, as you are aware, I cannot offer her an untried +heart; 'tis somewhat worn by many barterings. But I know that this heart +beats with accentuation in her presence; and when I come to her some day +and clasp her in my arms, as I aspire to do, I trust that her lips may not +turn away from mine and that she may be more glad because I am so near and +that her stainless heart may sound an echoing chime. For, with a great and +troubled adoration, I love her as I have loved no other woman; and this +much, I submit, you cannot doubt." + +"I?" said Lady Allonby, with extreme innocence. "La, how should I know?" + +"Unless you are blind," Mr. Erwyn observed--"and I apprehend those spacious +shining eyes to be more keen than the tongue of a dowager,--you must have +seen of late that I have presumed to hope--to think--that she whom I love +so tenderly might deign to be the affectionate, the condescending friend +who would assist me to retrieve the indiscretions of my youth--" + +The confusion of his utterance, his approach to positive agitation as he +waved his teaspoon, moved Lady Allonby. "It is true," she said, "that I +have not been wholly blind--" + +"Anastasia," said Mr. Erwyn, with yet more feeling, "is not our friendship +of an age to justify sincerity?" + +"Oh, bless me, you toad! but let us not talk of things that happened +under the Tudors. Well, I have not been unreasonably blind,--and I do not +object,--and I do not believe that Dorothy will prove obdurate." + +"You render me the happiest of men," Mr. Erwyn stated, rapturously. "You +have, then, already discussed this matter with Miss Allonby?" + +"Not precisely," said she, laughing; "since I had thought it apparent to +the most timid lover that the first announcement came with best grace from +him." + +"O' my conscience, then, I shall be a veritable Demosthenes," said Mr. +Erwyn, laughing likewise; "and in common decency she will consent." + +"Your conceit." said Lady Allonby, "is appalling." + +"'Tis beyond conception," Mr. Erwyn admitted; "and I propose to try +marriage as a remedy. I have heard that nothing so takes down a man." + +"Impertinent!" cried Lady Allonby; "now of whatever can the creature be +talking!" + +"I mean that, as your widowship well knows, marrying puts a man in his +proper place. And that the outcome is salutary for proud, puffed-up fellows +I would be the last to dispute. Indeed, I incline to dispute nothing, for I +find that perfect felicity is more potent than wine. I am now all pastoral +raptures, and were it not for the footmen there, I do not know to what +lengths I might go." + +"In that event," Lady Allonby decided, "I shall fetch Dorothy, that the +crown may be set upon your well-being. And previously I will dismiss the +footmen." She did so with a sign toward those lordly beings. + +"Believe me," said Mr. Erwyn, "'tis what I have long wished for. And +when Miss Allonby honors me with her attention I shall, since my life's +happiness depends upon the issue, plead with all the eloquence of a +starveling barrister, big with the import of his first case. May I, indeed, +rest assured that any triumph over her possible objections may be viewed +with not unfavorable eyes?" + +"O sir," said Lady Allonby, "believe me, there is nothing I more earnestly +desire than that you may obtain all which is necessary for your welfare. I +will fetch Dorothy." + +The largest footman but one removed Mr. Erwyn's cup. + + +II + +Mr. Erwyn, left alone, smiled at his own reflection in the mirror; +rearranged his ruffles with a deft and shapely hand; consulted his watch; +made sure that the padding which enhanced the calves of his most notable +legs was all as it should be; seated himself and hummed a merry air, in +meditative wise; and was in such posture when the crimson hangings that +shielded the hall-door quivered and broke into tumultuous waves and yielded +up Miss Dorothy Allonby. + +Being an heiress, Miss Allonby was by an ancient custom brevetted a great +beauty; and it is equitable to add that the sourest misogynist could hardly +have refused, pointblank, to countersign the commission. They said of +Dorothy Allonby that her eyes were as large as her bank account, and nearly +as formidable as her tongue; and it is undeniable that on provocation there +was in her speech a tang of acidity, such (let us say) as renders a salad +none the less palatable. In a word, Miss Allonby pitied the limitations of +masculine humanity more readily than its amorous pangs, and cuddled her +women friends as she did kittens, with a wary and candid apprehension of +their power to scratch; and decision was her key-note; continually she knew +to the quarter-width of a cobweb what she wanted, and invariably she got +it. + +Such was the person who, with a habitual emphasis which dowagers found +hoydenish and all young men adorable, demanded without prelude: + +"Heavens! What can it be, Mr. Erwyn, that has cast Mother into this +unprecedented state of excitement?" + +"What, indeed?" said he, and bowed above her proffered hand. + +"For like a hurricane, she burst into my room and cried, 'Mr. Erwyn +has something of importance to declare to you--why did you put on that +gown?--bless you, my child--' all in one eager breath; then kissed me, and +powdered my nose, and despatched me to you without any explanation. And +why?" said Miss Allonby. + +"Why, indeed?" said Mr. Erwyn. + +"It is very annoying," said she, decisively. + +"Sending you to me?" said Mr. Erwyn, a magnitude of reproach in his voice. + +"That," said Miss Allonby, "I can pardon--and easily. But I dislike all +mysteries, and being termed a child, and being--" + +"Yes?" said Mr. Erwyn. + +"--and being powdered on the nose," said Miss Allonby, with firmness. She +went to the mirror, and, standing on the tips of her toes, peered anxiously +into its depths. She rubbed her nose, as if in disapproval, and frowned, +perhaps involuntarily pursing up her lips,--which Mr. Erwyn intently +regarded, and then wandered to the extreme end of the apartment, where he +evinced a sudden interest in bric-à-brac. + +"Is there any powder on my nose?" said Miss Allonby. + +"I fail to perceive any," said Mr. Erwyn. + +"Come closer," said she. + +"I dare not," said he. + +Miss Allonby wheeled about. "Fie!" she cried; "one who has served against +the French, [Footnote: This was not absolutely so. Mr. Erwyn had, however, +in an outburst of patriotism, embarked, as a sort of cabin passenger, with +his friend Sir John Morris, and possessed in consequence some claim to +share such honor as was won by the glorious fiasco of Dungeness.] and +afraid of powder!" + +"It is not the powder that I fear." + +"What, then?" said she, in sinking to the divan beside the disordered +tea-table. + +"There are two of them," said Mr. Erwyn, "and they are so red--" + +"Nonsense!" cried Miss Allonby, with heightened color. + +"'Tis best to avoid temptation," said Mr. Erwyn, virtuously. + +"Undoubtedly," she assented, "it is best to avoid having your ears boxed." + +Mr. Erwyn sighed as if in the relinquishment of an empire. Miss Allonby +moved to the farther end of the divan. + +"What was it," she demanded, "that you had to tell me?" + +"'Tis a matter of some importance--" said Mr. Erwyn. + +"Heavens!" said Miss Allonby, and absent-mindedly drew aside her skirts; +"one would think you about to make a declaration." + +Mr. Erwyn sat down beside her, "I have been known," said he, "to do such +things." + +The divan was strewn with cushions in the Oriental fashion. Miss Allonby, +with some adroitness, slipped one of them between her person and the +locality of her neighbor. "Oh!" said Miss Allonby. + +"Yes," said he, smiling over the dragon-embroidered barrier; "I admit that +I am even now shuddering upon the verge of matrimony." + +"Indeed!" she marvelled, secure in her fortress. "Have you selected an +accomplice?" + +"Split me, yes!" said Mr. Erwyn. + +"And have I the honor of her acquaintance?" said Miss Allonby. + +"Provoking!" said Mr. Erwyn; "no woman knows her better." + +Miss Allonby smiled. "Dear Mr. Erwyn," she stated, "this is a disclosure I +have looked for these six months." + +"Split me!" said Mr. Erwyn. + +"Heavens, yes!" said she. "You have been a rather dilatory lover--" + +"I am inexpressibly grieved, that I should have kept you waiting--" + +"--and in fact, I had frequently thought of reproaching you for your +tardiness--" + +"Nay, in that case," said Mr. Erwyn, "the matter could, no doubt, have been +more expeditiously arranged." + +"--since your intentions have been quite apparent." + +Mr. Erwyn removed the cushion. "You do not, then, disapprove," said he, "of +my intentions?" + +"Indeed, no," said Miss Allonby; "I think you will make an excellent +step-father." + +The cushion fell to the floor. Mr. Erwyn replaced it and smiled. + +"And so," Miss Allonby continued, "Mother, believing me in ignorance, has +deputed you to inform me of this most transparent secret? How strange is +the blindness of lovers! But I suppose," sighed Miss Allonby, "we are all +much alike." + +"We?" said Mr. Erwyn, softly. + +"I meant--" said Miss Allonby, flushing somewhat. + +"Yes?" said Mr. Erwyn. His voice sank to a pleading cadence. "Dear child, +am I not worthy of trust?" + +There was a microscopic pause. + +"I am going to the Pantiles this afternoon," declared Miss Allonby, at +length, "to feed the swans." + +"Ah," said Mr. Erwyn, and with comprehension; "surely, he, too, is rather +tardy." + +"Oh," said she, "then you know?" + +"I know," he announced, "that there is a tasteful and secluded summer-house +near the Fountain of Neptune." + +"I was never allowed," said Miss Allonby, unconvincingly, "to go into +secluded summer-houses with any one; and, besides, the gardeners keep their +beer jugs there--under the biggest bench." + +Mr. Erwyn beamed upon her paternally. "I was not, till this, aware," said +he, "that Captain Audaine was so much interested in ornithology. Yet what +if, even when he is seated upon that biggest bench, your Captain does not +utterly lose the head he is contributing to the _tête-à-tête_?" + +"Oh, but he will," said Miss Allonby, with confidence; then she +reflectively added: "I shall have again to be painfully surprised by his +declaration, for, after all, it will only be his seventh." + +"Doubtless," Mr. Erwyn considered, "your astonishment will be extreme when +you rebuke him, there above hortensial beer jugs--" + +"And I shall be deeply grieved that he has so utterly misunderstood my +friendly interest in his welfare; and I shall be highly indignant after he +has--in effect, after he has--" + +"But not until afterward?" said Mr. Erwyn, holding up a forefinger. "Well, +I have told you their redness is fatal to good resolutions." + +"--after he has astounded me by his seventh avowal. And I shall behave +in precisely the same manner the eighth time he recurs to the repugnant +subject." + +"But the ninth time?" said Mr. Erwyn. + +"He has remarkably expressive eyes," Miss Allonby stated, "and really, +Mr. Erwyn, it is the most lovable creature when it raves about my +flint-heartedness and cutting its poor throat and murdering every man I +ever nodded to!" + +"Ah, youth, youth!" sighed Mr. Erwyn. "Dear child, I pray you, do not +trifle with the happiness that is within your grasp! _Si jeunesse +savait_--the proverb is somewhat musty. But we who have attained the St. +Martin's summer of our lives and have grown capable of but a calm and +tempered affection at the utmost--we cannot but look wistfully upon the +raptures and ignorance of youth, and we would warn you, were it possible, +of the many dangers whereby you are encompassed. For Love is a deity that +must not be trifled with; his voice may chaunt the requiem of all which +is bravest in our mingled natures, or sound a stave of such nobility as +heartens us through life. He is kindly, but implacable; beneficent, a +bestower of all gifts upon the faithful, a bestower of very terrible +gifts upon those that flout him; and I who speak to you have seen my +own contentment blighted, by just such flippant jesting with Love's +omnipotence, before the edge of my first razor had been dulled. 'Tis true, +I have lived since in indifferent comfort; yet it is but a dreary banquet +where there is no platter laid for Love, and within the chambers of my +heart--dust-gathering now, my dear!--he has gone unfed these fifteen years +or more." + +"Ah, goodness!" sighed Miss Allonby, touched by the ardor of his speech. +"And so, you have loved Mother all of fifteen years?" + +"Nay, split me--!" said Mr. Erwyn. + +"Your servant, sir," said the voice of Lady Allonby; "I trust you young +people have adjusted matters to your satisfaction?" + + +III + +"Dear madam," cried Miss Allonby, "I am overjoyed!" then kissed her +step-mother vigorously and left the room, casting in passage an arch glance +at Mr. Erwyn. + +"O vulgarity!" said Lady Allonby, recovering her somewhat rumpled dignity, +"the sweet child is yet unpolished. But, I suppose, we may regard the +matter as settled?" + +"Yes," said Mr. Erwyn, "I think, dear lady, we may with safety regard the +matter as settled." + +"Dorothy is of an excitable nature," she observed, and seated herself upon +the divan; "and you, dear Mr. Erwyn, who know women so thoroughly, will +overlook the agitation of an artless girl placed in quite unaccustomed +circumstances. Nay, I myself was affected by my first declaration,"' + +"Doubtless," said Mr. Erwyn, and sank beside her. "Lord Stephen was very +moving." + +"I can assure you," said she, smiling, "that he was not the first." + +"I' gad," said he, "I remember perfectly, in the old days, when you were +betrothed to that black-visaged young parson--" + +"Well, I do not remember anything of the sort," Lady Allonby stated; and +she flushed. + +"You wore a blue gown," he said. + +"Indeed?" said she. + +"And--" + +"La, if I did," said Lady Allonby, "I have quite forgotten it, and it is +now your manifest duty to do likewise." + +"Never in all these years," said Mr. Erwyn, sighing, "have I been able to +forget it." + +"I was but a girl, and 'twas natural that at first I should be mistaken in +my fancies," Lady Allonby told him, precisely as she had told Simon Orts: +"and at all events, there is nothing less well-bred than a good memory. I +would decline to remain in the same room with one were it not that Dorothy +has deserted you in this strange fashion. Whither, pray, has she gone?" + +Mr. Erwyn smiled. "Her tender heart," said Mr. Erwyn, "is affected by the +pathetic and moving spectacle of the poor hungry swans, pining for their +native land and made a raree-show for visitors in the Pantiles; and she has +gone to stay them with biscuits and to comfort them with cakes." + +"Really!" said Lady Allonby. + +"And," Mr. Erwyn continued, "to defend her from the possible ferocity +of the gold-fish, Captain Audaine had obligingly afforded service as an +escort." + +"Oh," said Lady Allonby; then added, "in the circumstances she might +permissibly have broken the engagement." + + +"But there is no engagement," said Mr. Erwyn--"as yet." + +"Indeed?" said she. + +"Harkee," said he; "should he make a declaration this afternoon she will +refuse him." + +"Why, but of course!" Lady Allonby marveled. + +"And the eighth time," said he. + +"Undoubtedly," said she; "but at whatever are you hinting?" + +"Yet the ninth time--" + +"Well, what is it, you grinning monster?" + +Mr. Erwyn allowed himself a noiseless chuckle. "After the ninth time," Mr. +Erwyn declared, "there will be an engagement." + +"Mr. Erwyn!" cried Lady Allonby, with widened eyes, "I had understood that +Dorothy looked favorably upon your suit." + +"Anastasia!" cried he; and then his finger-tips lightly caressed his brow. +"'Tis the first I had heard of it," said Mr. Erwyn. + +"Surely--" she began. + +"Nay, but far more surely," said he, "in consideration of the fact that, +not a half-hour since, you deigned to promise me your hand in marriage--" + +"O la now!" cried Lady Allonby; and, recovering herself, smiled +courteously. "'Tis the first I had heard of it," said she. + +They stared at each other in wonderment. Then Lady Allonby burst into +laughter. + +"D'ye mean--?" said she. + +"Indeed," said Mr. Erwyn, "so unintentional was I of aspiring to Miss +Allonby's affections that all my soul was set upon possessing the heart and +person of a lady, in my humble opinion, far more desirable." + +"I had not dreamed--" she commenced. + +"Behold," said Mr. Erwyn, bitterly, "how rightly is my presumption +punished. For I, with a fop's audacity, had thought my love for you of +sufficient moment to have been long since observed; and, strong in my +conceit, had scorned a pleasing declaration made up of faint phrases and +whining ballad-endings. I spoke as my heart prompted me; but the heart has +proven a poor counsellor, dear lady, and now am I rewarded. For you had +not even known of my passion, and that which my presumption had taken for +a reciprocal tenderness proves in the ultimate but a kindly aspiration to +further my union with another." + +"D'ye love me, toad?" said Lady Allonby, and very softly. + +"Indeed," said Mr. Erwyn, "I have loved you all my life, first with a +boyish inclination that I scarce knew was love, and, after your marriage +with an honorable man had severed us, as I thought, irrevocably, with such +lore as an ingenuous person may bear a woman whom both circumstances and +the respect in which he holds her have placed beyond his reach,--a love +that might not be spoken, but of which I had considered you could never be +ignorant." + +"Mr. Erwyn," said she, "at least I have not been ignorant--" + +"They had each one of them some feature that reminded me of you. That was +the truth of it, a truth so patent that we will not discuss it. Instead, +dear madam, do you for the moment grant a losing gamester the right to rail +at adverse fate! for I shall trouble you no more. Since your widowhood I +have pursued you with attentions which, I now perceive, must at many times +have proven distasteful. But my adoration had blinded me; and I shall +trouble you no more. I have been too serious, I did not know that our +affair was but a comedy of the eternal duel between man and woman; nor am +I sorry, dear opponent, that you have conquered. For how valorously you +fought! Eh, let it be! for you have triumphed in this duel, O puissant +lady, and I yield the victor--a devoted and, it may be, a rather heavy +heart; and I shall trouble you no more." + +"Ah, sir," said Lady Allonby, "you are aware that once--" + +"Indeed," said Mr. Erwyn, "'twas the sand on which I builded. But I am +wiser now, and I perceive that the feeling you entertain toward me is but +the pallid shadow of a youthful inclination. I shall not presume upon it. +Oh, I am somewhat proud, dear Anastasia; I have freely given you my heart, +such as it is; and were you minded to accept it, even at the eleventh hour, +through friendship or through pity only, I would refuse. For my love of you +has been the one pure and quite unselfish, emotion of my life, and I may +not barter it for an affection of lesser magnitude either in kind or in +degree. And so, farewell!" + +"Yet hold, dear sir--" said Lady Allonby. "Lord, but will you never let me +have the woman's privilege of talking!" + +"Nay, but I am, as ever, at your service," said Mr. Erwyn, and he paused in +transit for the door. + +"--since, as this betokens--" + +"'Tis a tasteful handkerchief," said Mr. Erwyn--"but somewhat moist!" + +"And--my eyes?" + +"Red," said Mr. Erwyn. + +"I have been weeping, toad, with my head on the pin-cushion, and the maid +trying to tipsify me with brandy." + +"Why?" said Mr. Erwyn. + +"I thought you were to marry Dorothy." + +Mr. Erwyn resumed his seat. "You objected?" he said. + +"I think, old monster," Lady Allonby replied, "that I would entertain the +same objection to seeing any woman thus sacrificed--" + +"Well?" said Mr. Erwyn. + +"--except--" + +"Incomparable Anastasia!" said Mr. Erwyn. + + +IV + +Afterward these two sat long in the twilight, talking very little, and with +their eyes rarely meeting, although their hands met frequently at quite +irrelevant intervals. Just the graze of a butterfly to make it certain that +the other was there: but all the while they both regarded the tiny fire +which had set each content of the room a-dancing in the companionable +darkness. For each, I take it, preferred to think of the other as being +still the naïve young person each remembered; and the firelight made such +thinking easier. + +"D'ye remember--?" was woven like a refrain through their placid duo.... + +It was, one estimates, their highest hour. Frivolous and trivial persons +you might have called them and have justified the accusation; but even to +the fop and the coquette was granted an hour wherein all human happenings +seemed to be ordered by supernal wisdom lovingly. Very soon they would +forget this hour; meanwhile there was a wonderful sense of dreams come +true. + + + + +III + +THE CASUAL HONEYMOON + +_As Played at Tunbridge Wells, April 1, 1750_ + +"_But this is the most cruel thing, to marry one does not know how, nor +why, nor wherefore.--Gad, I never liked anybody less in my life. Poor +woman!--Gad, I'm sorry for her, too; for I have no reason to hate her +neither; but I wish we could keep it secret! why, I don't believe any of +this company would speak of it._" + + +DRAMATIS PERSONÆ + + +CAPTAIN AUDAINE, of a pompous and handsome person, and loves Miss Allonby. + +LORD HUMPHREY DEGGE, younger son to the Marquis of Venour, makes love to +Miss Allonby. + +GERALD ALLONBY, brother to Miss Allonby, a true raw Squire. + +MR. ERWYN, betrothed to Lady Allonby. + +VANRINGHAM, an impudent tragedian of the Globe Company. + +QUARMBY, Vanringham's associate. + +Miss ALLONBY, an heiress, of a petulant humor, in love with Audaine. + +MARCHIONESS OF FALMOUTH, an impertinent affected dowager, and grandmother +to Miss Allonby. + +LADY ALLONBY, step-mother to Miss Allonby and Gerald. + +POSTILIONS, SERVANTS, Etc. + + +SCENE + +Tunbridge Wells, thence shifting to Chetwode Lodge, Mr. Babington-Herle's +house, on Rusthall Common, within two miles of the town. + + +THE CASUAL HONEYMOON + + +_PROEM:--Introductive of Captain Francis Audaine_ + +It appears convenient here to pursue Miss Allonby on her stroll about the +Pantiles in company with Captain Audaine. The latter has been at pains to +record the events of the afternoon and evening, so that I give you his own +account of them, though I abridge in consideration of his leisured style. +Pompous and verbose I grant the Captain, even in curtailment; but you are +to remember these were the faults of his age, ingrained and defiant of +deletion; and should you elect to peruse his memoirs [Footnote: There +appears to have been no American edition since that, in 1836, printed in +Philadelphia, "for Thomas Wardle, No. 15 Minor Street." In England the +memoirs of Lord Garendon are to all appearance equally hard to come by, +and seem to have been out of print since 1907.] you will find that I have +considerately spared you a majority of the digressions to which the future +Earl of Garendon was lamentably addicted. + +For the purpose of my tale you are to view him as Tunbridge did at this +particular time: as a handsome and formal person, twenty-eight years old +or thereabouts, of whom nobody knew anything quite definite--beyond the +genealogic inference to be drawn from a smatch of the brogue--save that +after a correspondence of gallantries, of some three weeks' duration, he +was the manifest slave of Miss Dorothy Allonby, and had already fought +three duels behind Ormerod House,--with Will Pratchet, Lord Humphrey Degge, +and Sir Eugene Harrabie, respectively, each one of whom was a declared +suitor for her hand. + +And with this prelude I begin on my transcription. + + +I + +Miss Allonby (says Captain Audaine) was that afternoon in a mighty cruel +humor. Though I had omitted no reasonable method to convince her of the +immensity of my passion, 'twas without the twitch of an eyelash she endured +the volley of my sighs and the fusillade of my respectful protestations; +and candor compels me to admit that toward the end her silvery laughter +disrupted the periods of a most elegant and sensible peroration. And when +the affair was concluded, and for the seventh time I had implored her to +make me the happiest of men, the rogue merely observed: "But I don't want +to marry you. Why on earth should I?" + +"For the sake of peace," I replied, "and in self-protection, since as long +as you stay obdurate I shall continue to importune, and by and by I shall +pester you to death." + +"Indeed, I think it more than probable," she returned; "for you dog me +like a bailiff. I am cordially a-weary, Captain Audaine, of your incessant +persecutions; and, after all, marrying you is perhaps the civilest way to +be rid of both them and you." + +But by this I held each velvet-soft and tiny hand. "Nay," I dissented; "the +subject is somewhat too sacred for jest. I am no modish lover, dearest and +best of creatures, to regard marriage as the thrifty purchase of an estate, +and the lady as so much bed-furniture thrown in with the mansion. I love +you with completeness: and give me leave to assure you, madam, with a +freedom which I think permissible on so serious an occasion that, even as +beautiful as you are, I could never be contented with your person without +your heart." + +She sat with eyes downcast, all one blush. Miss Dorothy Allonby was in the +bloom of nineteen, and shone with every charm peculiar to her sex. But I +have no mind to weary you with poetical rhodomontades till, as most lovers +do, I have proven her a paragon and myself an imbecile: it suffices to say +that her face, and shape, and mien, and wit, alike astounded and engaged +all those who had the happiness to know her; and had long ago rendered her +the object of my entire adoration and the target of my daily rhapsodies. +Now I viewed her with a dissension of the liveliest hopes and fears; for +she had hesitated, and had by this hesitation conceded my addresses to be +not irretrievably repugnant; and within the instant I knew that any life +undevoted to her service and protection could be but a lingering disease. + +But by and by, "You shall have your answer this evening," she said, and so +left me. + +I fathomed the meaning of "this evening" well enough. For my adored Dorothy +was all romance, and by preference granted me rendezvous in the back +garden, where she would tantalize me nightly, from her balcony, after the +example of the Veronese lady in Shakespeare's spirited tragedy, which she +prodigiously admired. As concerns myself, a reasonable liking for romance +had been of late somewhat tempered by the inclemency of the weather and +the obvious unfriendliness of the dog; but there is no resisting a lady's +commands; and clear or foul, you might at any twilight's death have found +me under her window, where a host of lyric phrases asserted the devotion +which a cold in the head confirmed. + +This night was black as a coal-pit. Strolling beneath the casement, well +wrapt in my cloak (for it drizzled), I meditated impartially upon the +perfections of my dear mistress and the tyrannic despotism of love. Being +the source of our existence, 'tis not unreasonably, perhaps, that this +passion assumes the proprietorship of our destinies and exacts of all +mankind a common tribute. To-night, at least, I viewed the world as a brave +pavilion, lighted by the stars and swept by the clean winds of heaven, +wherein we enacted varied rôles with God as audience; where, in turn, we +strutted or cringed about the stage, where, in turn, we were beset and +rent by an infinity of passions; but where every man must play the part +of lover. That passion alone, I said, is universal; it set wise Solomon +a-jigging in criminal byways, and sinewy Hercules himself was no stranger +to its inquietudes and joys. And I cried aloud with the Roman, _Parce +precor!_ and afterward upon high Heaven to make me a little worthier of +Dorothy. + + +II + +Engrossed in meditations such as these, I was fetched earthward by the +clicking of a lock, and, turning, saw the door beneath her balcony unclose +and afford egress to a slender and hooded figure. My amazement was +considerable and my felicity beyond rhetoric. + +"Dorothy--!" I whispered. + +"Come!" was her response; and her finger-tips rested upon my arm the while +that she guided me toward the gateway opening into Jervis Lane. I followed +with a trepidation you may not easily conceive; nor was this diminished +when I found awaiting us a post-chaise, into which my angel hastily +tripped. + +I babbled I know not what inarticulate nonsense. But, "Heavens!" she +retorted, "d'ye mean to keep the parson waiting all night?" + +This was her answer, then. Well, 'twas more than I could have hoped for, +though to a man of any sensibility this summary disposal of our love-affair +could not but vaguely smack of the distasteful. Say what you will, every +gentleman has about him somewhere a tincture of that venerable and artless +age when wives were taken by capture and were retained by force; he +prefers to have the lady hold off until the very last; and properly, her +tongue must sound defiance long after melting eyes have signalled that the +traitorous heart of her, like an anatomical Tarpeia, is ready to betray the +citadel and yield the treasury of her charms. + +Nevertheless, I stepped into the vehicle. The postilion was off in +a twinkling, as the saying is, over the roughest road in England. +Conversation was impossible, for Dorothy and I were jostling like two pills +in a box; and as the first observation I attempted resulted in a badly +bitten tongue, I prudently held my peace. + +This endured for, perhaps, a quarter of an hour, at the end of which period +the post-chaise on a sudden stopped, and I assisted my companion to alight. +Before us was a villa of considerable dimension, and situate, so far as I +could immediately detect, in the midst of a vast and desolate moor; there +was no trace of human habitation within the radius of the eye; and the +house itself presented not a glimpse of tenancy or illumination. + +"O Lord, madam--" I began. + +"Hasten!" spoke a voice from within the Parsonage. And Dorothy drew me +toward a side door, overhung with ivy, where, sure enough, a dim light +burned, 'Twas but a solitary candle stuck upon a dresser at the remoter end +of a large and low-ceiled apartment; and in this flickering obscurity we +found a tremulous parson in full canonicals, who had united our hands and +gabbled half-way through the marriage service before I had the slightest +notion of what was befalling me. + +And such is the unreasonable disposition of mankind that the attainment +of my most ardent desires aroused a feeling not altogether unakin to +irritation. This skulking celerity, this hole-and-corner business, I +thought, was in ill-accord with the respect due to a sacrament; and I could +have wished my marriage to have borne a less striking resemblance to the +conference of three thieves in a cellar. But 'twas over in two twos. Within +scantier time than it takes to tell of it, Francis and Dorothy were made +one, and I had turned to salute my wife. + +She gave a shriek of intolerable anguish. "Heavens!" said she, "I have +married the wrong man!" + + +III + +Without delay I snatched up the guttering candle and held it to my wife's +countenance. You can conceive that 'twas with no pleasurable emotion +I discovered I had inadvertently espoused the Dowager Marchioness of +Falmouth, my adored Dorothy's grandmother; and in frankness I can't deny +that the lady seemed equally dissatisfied: words failed us; and the newly +wedded couple stared at each other in silence. + +"Captain Audaine," said she, at last, "the situation is awkward." + +"Sure, madam," I returned, "and that is the precise thought which has just +occurred to me." + +"And I am of the opinion," she continued, "that you owe me some sort of +explanation. For I had planned to elope with Mr. Vanringham--" + +"Do I understand your Ladyship to allude to Mr. Francis Vanringham, the +play-actor, at present the talk of Tunbridge?" + +She bowed a grave response. + +"This is surprising news," said I. "And grant me leave to tell you that a +woman of mature years, possessed of an abundant fortune and unassailable +gentility, does not by ordinary sneak out of the kitchen door to meet a +raddle-faced actor in the middle of the night. 'Tis, indeed, a circumstance +to stagger human credulity. Oh, believe me, madam, for a virtuous woman the +back garden is not a fitting approach to the altar, nor is a comedian an +appropriate companion there at eleven o'clock in the evening." + +"Hey, my fine fellow," says my wife, "and what were you doing in the back +garden?" + +"Among all true lovers," I returned, "it is an immemorial custom to prowl +like sentinels beneath the windows of the beauteous adored. And I, +madam, had the temerity to aspire toward an honorable union with your +granddaughter." + +She wrung her withered hands. "That any reputable woman should have +nocturnal appointments with gentlemen in the back garden, and beguile her +own grandmother into an odious marriage! I protest, Captain Audaine, the +degenerate world of to-day is no longer a suitable residence for a lady!" + +"Look you, sir, this is a cruel bad business," the Parson here put in. +He was pacing the apartment in an altercation of dubiety and amaze. "Mr. +Vanringham will be vexed." + +"You will pardon me," I retorted, "if I lack pity to waste upon your Mr. +Vanringham. At present I devote all funds of compassion to my own affairs. +Am I, indeed, to understand that this lady and I are legally married?" + +He rubbed his chin. "By the Lord Harry," says he, "'tis a case that lacks +precedents! But the coincidence of the Christian names is devilish awkward; +the service takes no cognizance of surnames; and I have merely united a +Francis and a Dorothy." + +"O Lord, Mr. What-d'ye-call-um," said I, "then there is but one remedy and +that is an immediate divorce." + +My wife shrieked. "Have you no sense of decency, Captain Audaine? Never has +there been a divorce in my family. And shall I be the first to drag that +honored name into a public court,--to have my reputation worried at the bar +by a parcel of sniggering lawyers, while the town wits buzz about it like +flies around carrion? I pray you, do not suggest any such hideous thing." + +"Here's the other Francis," says the Parson, at this point. And it was,--a +raffish, handsome, slender, red-haired fellow, somewhat suggestive of the +royal duke, yet rather more like a sneak-thief, and with a whiff somewhere +of the dancing-master. At first glance you recognized in the actor a +personage, for he compelled the eye with a monstrous vividness of color and +gesture. To-night he had missed his lady at their rendezvous, owing to my +premature appearance, and had followed us post-haste. + +"My Castalio!" she screamed. "My Beaugard!" [Footnote: I never saw the +rascal act, thank Heaven, since in that event, report assures me, I might +conceivably have accredited him with the possession of some meritorious +qualities, however trivial; but, it appears, these two above-mentioned +rôles were the especial puppetry in which Mr. Vanringham was most +successful in wringing tears and laughter from the injudicious.--F.A.] She +ran to him, and with disjointed talk and quavering utterance disclosed the +present lamentable posture of affairs. + +And I found the tableau they presented singular. My wife had been a toast, +they tell me, in Queen Anne's time, and even now the lean and restless +gentlewoman showed as the abandoned house of youth and wit and beauty, with +here and there a trace of the old occupancy; always her furtive eyes shone +with a cold and shifting glitter, as though a frightened imp peeped through +a mask of Hecuba; and in every movement there was an ineffable touch of +something loosely hinged and fantastic. In a word, the Marchioness was +not unconscionably sane, and was known far and wide as a gallant woman +resolutely oblivious to the batterings of time, and so avid of flattery +that she was ready to smile on any man who durst give the lie to her +looking-glass. Demented landlady of her heart, she would sublet that +antiquated chamber to the first adventurer who came prepared to pay his +scot in the false coin of compliment; and 'twas not difficult to comprehend +how this young Thespian had acquired its tenancy. + +But now the face of Mr. Vanringham was attenuated by her revelations, and +the wried mouth of Mr. Vanringham suggested that the party be seated, in +order to consider more at ease the unfortunate _contretemps_. Fresh lights +were kindled, as one and all were past fear of discovery by this; and we +four assembled about a table which occupied the centre of the apartment. + + +IV + +"The situation," Mr. Vanringham, began, "may reasonably be described as +desperate. Here we sit, four ruined beings. For Dr. Quarmby has betrayed +an unoffending couple into involuntary matrimony, an act of which his +Bishop can scarcely fail to take official notice; Captain Audaine and +the Marchioness are entrapped into a loveless marriage, than which there +mayn't be a greater misery in life; and my own future, I needn't add, is +irrevocably blighted by the loss of my respected Dorothy, without whom +continued animation must necessarily be a hideous and hollow mockery. Yet +there occurs to me a panacea for these disasters." + +"Then, indeed, Mr. Vanringham," said I, "there is one of us who will be +uncommonly glad to know the name of it." + +He faced me with a kind of compassion in his wide-set brown eyes, "You, +sir, have caused a sweet and innocent lady to marry you against her +will--Oho, beyond doubt, your intentions were immaculate; but the outcome +remains in its stark enormity, and the hand of an inquisitive child is not +ordinarily salved by its previous ignorance as to the corrosive properties +of fire. You have betrayed confiding womanhood, an act abhorrent to +all notions of gentility. There is but one conclusive proof of your +repentance.--Need I mention that I allude to self-destruction?" + +"O Lord, sir," I observed, "suicide is a deadly sin, and I would not +willingly insult any gentlewoman by evincing so marked a desire for the +devil's company in preference to hers." + +"Your argument is sophistry," he returned, "since 'tis your death alone +that can endear you to your bride. Death is the ultimate and skilled +assayer of alloyed humanity: and by his art our gross constituents--our +foibles, our pettinesses, nay, our very crimes--are precipitated into the +coffin, the while that his crucible sets free the volatile pure essence, +and shows as undefiled by all life's accidents that part of divinity which +harbors in the vilest bosom. This only is remembered: this only mounts, +like an ethereal spirit, to hallow the finished-with blunderer's renown, +and reverently to enshrine his body's resting-place. Ah, no, Captain +Audaine! death alone may canonize the husband. Once you're dead, your wife +will adore you; once you're dead, your wife and I have before us an open +road to connubial felicity, a road which, living, you sadly encumber; and +only when he has delivered your funeral oration may Dr. Quarmby be exempt +from apprehension lest his part in your marriage ceremony bring about his +defrockment. I urge the greatest good for the greatest number, Captain; +living, you plunge all four of us into suffering; whereas the nobility of +an immediate _felo-de-se_ will in common decency exalt your soul to Heaven +accompanied and endorsed by the fervent prayers of three grateful hearts." + +"And by the Lord Harry," says the Parson, "while no clergyman extant has +a more cordial aversion to suicide, I cannot understand why a prolonged +existence should tempt you. You love Miss Dorothy Allonby, as all Tunbridge +knows; and to a person of sensibility, what can be more awkward than +to have thrust upon him grandfathership of the adored one? You must in +this position necessarily be exposed to the committal of a thousand +_gaucheries_; and if you insist upon your irreligious project of procuring +a divorce, what, I ask, can be your standing with the lady? Can she smile +upon the suit of an individual who has publicly cast aside the sworn love +and obedience of the being to whom she owes her very existence? or will +any clergyman in England participate in the union of a woman to her +ex-grandfather? Nay, believe me, sir, 'tis less the selfishness than the +folly of your clinging to this vale of tears which I deplore. And I protest +that this rope"--he fished up a coil from the corner--"appears to have +been deposited here by a benign and all-seeing Providence to Suggest +the manifold advantages of hanging yourself as compared with the untidy +operation of cutting one's throat." + +"And conceive, sir," says my wife, "what must be the universal grief +for the bridegroom so untimelily taken off in the primal crescence of +his honeymoon! Your funeral will be unparalleled both for sympathy and +splendor; all Tunbridge will attend in tears; and 'twill afford me a +melancholy but sincere pleasure to extend to you the hospitality of the +Allonby mausoleum, which many connoisseurs have accounted the finest in the +three kingdoms." + +"I must venture," said I, "to terminate this very singular conversation. +You have, one and all, set forth the advantages of my immediate demise; +your logic is unassailable and has proven suicide my plain duty; and my +rebuttal is confined to the statement that I will see every one of you +damned before I'll do it." + +Mr. Francis Vanringham rose with a little bow. "You have insulted both +womanhood and the Established Church by the spitting out of that ribald +oath; and me you have with equal levity wronged by the theft of my +affianced bride. I am only a play-actor, but in inflicting an insult a +gentleman must either lift his inferior to his own station or else forfeit +his gentility. I wear a sword, Captain Audaine. Heyho, will you grant me +the usual satisfaction?" + +"My fascinating comedian," said I, "if 'tis a fight you are desirous of, +I can assure you that in my present state I would cross swords with a +costermonger, or the devil, or the Archbishop of Canterbury, with equal +impartiality. But scarcely in the view of a lady, and, therefore, as you +boast the greater influence in that quarter, will you kindly advise the +withdrawal of yonder unexpected addition to my family?" + +"There's an inner room," says he, pointing to the door behind me; and I +held it open as my wife swept through. + +"You are the epitome of selfishness," she flung out, in passing; "for had +you possessed an ounce of gallantry, you would long ago have freed me from +this odious marriage." + +"Sure, madam," I returned, with a _congée_; "and is it not rather a +compliment that I so willingly forfeit a superlunar bliss in order to +retain the pleasure of your society?" + +She sniffed, and I closed the door; and within the moment the two men fell +upon me, from the rear, and presently had me trussed like a fowl and bound +with that abominable Parson's coil of rope. + + +V + +"Believe me," says Mr. Vanringham, now seated upon the table and indolently +dangling his heels,--the ecclesiastical monstrosity, having locked the +door upon Mrs. Audaine, had occupied a chair and was composedly smoking +a churchwarden,--"believe me, I lament the necessity of this uncouth +proceeding. But heyho! man is a selfish animal. You take me, sir, my +affection for yonder venerable lady does not keep me awake o' nights; yet +is a rich marriage the only method to amend my threadbare fortunes, so that +I cheerfully avail myself of her credulity. By God!" cried he, with a quick +raising of the voice, "to-morrow I had been a landed gentleman but for you, +you blundering omadhaun! And is a shabby merry-andrew from the devil knows +where to pop in and spoil the prettiest plot was ever hatched?" + +'Twas like a flare of lightning, this sudden outburst of malignity; for +you saw in it, quintessentialized, the man's stark and venomous hatred of +a world which had ill-used him; and 'twas over with too as quickly as the +lightning, yielding to the pleasantest smile imaginable. Meanwhile you are +to picture me, and my emotions, as I lay beneath his oscillating toes, +entirely helpless. "'Twas not that I lacked the courage to fight you," he +continues, "nor the skill, either. But there is always the possibility +that by some awkward thrust or other you might deprive the stage of a +distinguished ornament; and as a sincere admirer of my genius, I must, +in decency, avoid such risks. 'Twas necessary to me, of course, that you +be got out of this world speedily, since a further continuance of your +blunderings would interfere with my plans for the future; having gone thus +far, I cannot reasonably be expected to cede my interest in the Marchioness +and her estate. Accordingly I decide upon the handiest method and tip the +wink to Quarmby here; the lady quits the apartment in order to afford us +opportunity to settle our pretensions, with cutlery as arbiter; and she +will return to find your perforated carcass artistically displayed in +yonder extremity of the room. Slain in an affair of honor, my dear Captain! +The disputed damsel will think none the worse of me, a man of demonstrated +valor and affection; Quarmby and I'll bury you in the cellar; and being +freed from her recent and unfortunate alliance, my esteemed Dorothy will +seek consolation in the embraces of a more acceptable spouse. Confess, sir, +is it not a scheme of Arcadian simplicity?" + +'Twas the most extraordinary sensation to note the utterly urbane and +cheerful countenance with which Mr. Vanringham disclosed the meditated +atrocity. This unprincipled young man was about to run me through with no +more compunction than a naturalist in the act of pinning a new beetle among +his collection may momentarily be aware of. + +Then my quickened faculties were stirred on a sudden, and for the first +time I opened my mouth. Whatever claim I had upon Vanringham, there was no +need to advance it now. + +"You were about to say--?" he queried. + +"I was about to relieve a certain surplusage of emotion," I retorted, "by +observing that I regret to find you, sir, a chattering, lean-witted fool--a +vain and improvident fool!" + +"Harsh words, my Captain," says he, with lifted eyebrows. + +"O Lord, sir, but not of an undeserved asperity!" I returned, "D'ye think +the Marchioness, her flighty head crammed with scraps of idiotic romance, +would elope without regard for the canons of romance? Not so; depend upon +it, a letter was left upon her pin-cushion announcing her removal with +you, and in the most approved heroic style arraigning the obduracy of her +unsympathetic grandchildren. D'ye think Gerald Allonby will not follow +her? Sure, and he will; and the proof is," I added, "that you may hear his +horses yonder on the heath, as I heard them some moments ago." + +Vanringham leaped to the floor and stood thus, all tension. He raised +clenched, quivering hands toward the ceiling. "O King of Jesters!" he +cried, in horrid blasphemy; and then again, "O King of Jesters!" + +And by this time men were shouting without, and at the door there was a +prodigious and augmenting hammering. And the Parson wrung his hands and +began to shake like a dish of jelly in a thunder-storm. + +"Captain Audaine," Mr. Vanringham resumed, with more tranquillity, "you are +correct. Clidamira and Parthenissa would never have fled into the night +without leaving a note upon the pin-cushion. The folly I kindled in your +wife's addled pate has proven my ruin. Remains to make the best of Hobson's +choice." He unlocked the door. "Gentlemen, gentlemen!" says he, with +deprecating hand, "surely this disturbance is somewhat _outré_, a trifle +misplaced, upon the threshold of a bridal-chamber?" + +Then Gerald Allonby thrust into the room, followed by Lord Humphrey Degge, +[Footnote: I must in this place entreat my reader's profound discredit of +any aspersions I may rashly seem to cast upon this honest gentleman, whose +friendship I to-day esteem as invaluable; but I wrote, as always, _currente +calamo_, and the above was penned in an amorous misery, _sub Venire_, be +it remembered; and in such cases a wrong bias is easily hung upon the +mind.--F.A.] my abhorred rival for Dorothy's affection, and two attendants. + +"My grandmother!" shrieks Gerald. "Villain, what have you done with my +grandmother?" + +"The query were more fitly put," Vanringham retorts, "to the lady's +husband." And he waves his hand toward me. + +Thereupon the new-comers unbound me with various exclamations of wonder. +"And now," I observed, "I would suggest that you bestow upon Mr. Vanringham +and yonder blot upon the Church of England the bonds from which I have been +recently manumitted, or, at the very least, keep a vigilant watch upon +those more than suspicious characters, the while that I narrate the +surprising events of this evening." + + +VI + +Subsequently I made a clean breast of affairs to Gerald and Lord Humphrey +Degge. They heard me with attentive, even sympathetic, countenances; but by +and by the face of Lord Humphrey brightened as he saw a not unformidable +rival thus jockeyed from the field; and when I had ended, Gerald rose and +with an oath struck his open palm upon the table. + +"This is the most fortunate coincidence," he swears, "that I have ever +known of. I come prepared to find my grandmother the wife of a beggarly +play-actor, and I discover that, to the contrary, she has contracted an +alliance with a gentleman for whom I entertain sincere affection." + +"Surely," I cried, aghast, "you cannot deliberate acceptance of this +iniquitous and inadvertent match!" + +"What is your meaning, Captain Audaine?" says the boy, sharply. "What other +course is possible?"' + +"O Lord!" said I, "after to-night's imbroglio I have nothing to observe +concerning the possibility of anything; but if this marriage prove a legal +one, I am most indissuadably resolved to rectify matters without delay in +the divorce court." + +Now Gerald's brows were uglily compressed. "A divorce," said he, with an +extreme of deliberation, "means the airing of to-night's doings in the +open. I take it, 'tis the duty of a man of honor to preserve the reputation +of his grandmother stainless; whether she be a housemaid or the Queen +of Portugal, her frailties are equally entitled to endurance, her +eccentricities to toleration: can a gentleman, then, sanction any +proceeding of a nature calculated to make his grandmother the +laughing-stock of England? The point is a nice one." + +"For, conceive," said Lord Humphrey, with the most knavish grin I ever knew +a human countenance to pollute itself with, "that the entire matter will be +convoyed by the short-hand writers to the public press, and after this will +be hawked about the streets; and that the venders will yell particulars of +your grandmother's folly under your very windows; and that you must hear +them in impotence, and that for some months the three kingdoms will hear of +nothing else. Gad, I quite feel for you, my dear." + +"I have fallen into a nest of madmen," I cried. "You know, both of you, how +profoundly I adore Mr. Gerald's sister, the accomplished and bewitching +Miss Allonby; and in any event, I demand of you, as rational beings, is +it equitable that I be fettered for life to an old woman's apron-strings +because a doctor of divinity is parsimonious of his candles?" + +But Gerald had drawn with a flourish. "You have repudiated my kinswoman," +says he, "and you cannot deny me the customary satisfaction. Harkee, my +fine fellow, Dorothy will marry my friend Lord Humphrey if she will be +advised by me; or if she prefer it, she may marry the Man in the Iron Mask +or the piper that played before Moses, so far as I am concerned: but as for +you, I hereby offer you your choice between quitting this apartment as my +grandfather or as a corpse." + +"I won't fight you!" I shouted. "Keep the boy off, Degge!" But when the +infuriate lad rushed upon me, I was forced, in self-protection, to draw, +and after a brief engagement to knock his sword across the room. + +"Gerald," I pleaded, "for the love of reason, consider! I cannot fight you. +Heaven knows this tragic farce hath robbed me of all pretension toward your +sister, and that I am just now but little better than a madman; yet 'tis +her blood which exhilarates your veins, and with such dear and precious +fluid I cannot willingly imbrue my hands. Nay, you are no swordsman, +lad,--keep off!" + +And there I had blundered irretrievably. + +"No swordsman! By God, I fling the words in your face, Frank Audaine! must +I send the candlestick after them?" And within the instant he had caught +up his weapon and had hurled himself upon me, in an abandoned fury. I had +not moved. The boy spitted himself upon my sword and fell with a horrid +gasping. + +"You will bear me witness, Lord Humphrey," said I, "that the quarrel was +not of my provokement." + +But at this juncture the outer door reopened and Dorothy tripped into the +room, preceding Lady Allonby and Mr. George Erwyn. They had followed in the +family coach to dissuade the Marchioness from her contemplated match by +force or by argument, as the cat might jump; and so it came about that my +dear mistress and I stared at each other across her brother's lifeless +body. + +And 'twas in this poignant moment I first saw her truly. In a storm you +have doubtless had some utterly familiar scene leap from the darkness, +under the lash of lightning, and be for the instant made visible and +strange; and I beheld her with much that awful clarity. Formerly 'twas her +beauty had ensnared me, and this I now perceived to be a fortuitous and +happy medley of color and glow and curve, indeed, yet nothing more. 'Twas +the woman I loved, not her trappings; and her eyes were no more part of her +than were the jewels in her ears. But the sweet mirth of her, the brave +heart, the clean soul, the girl herself, how good and generous and kind +and tender,--'twas this that I now beheld, and knew that this, too, was +lost;--and, in beholding, the little love of yesterday fled whimpering +before the sacred passion which had possessed my being. And I began to +laugh. + +"My dear," said I, "'twas to-night that you promised me your answer, and +to-night you observe in me alike your grandfather and your brother's +murderer." + + +VII + +Lady Allonby fell to wringing her hands, but Dorothy had knelt beside the +prostrate form and was inspecting the ravages of my fratricidal sword. "Oh, +fy! fy!" says she immediately, and wrinkles her saucy nose; "had none of +you the sense to perceive that Gerald was tipsy? And as for the wound, 'tis +only a scratch here on the left shoulder. Get water, somebody." And her +command being obeyed, she cleansed the hurt composedly and bandaged it with +the ruffle of her petticoat. + +Meanwhile we hulking men stood thick about her, fidgeting and foolishly +gaping like a basket of fish; and presently a sibilance of relief went +about our circle as Gerald opened his eyes. "Sister," says he, with a +profoundly tragic face, "remember--remember that I perished to preserve the +honor of our family." + +"To preserve a fiddlestick!" said my adored Dorothy. And, rising, she +confronted me, a tinted statuette of decision. "Now, Frank," says she, "I +would like to know the meaning of this nonsense." + +And thereupon, for the second time, I recounted the dreadful and huddled +action of the night. + +When I had ended, "The first thing," says she, "is to let Grandmother out +of that room. And the second is to show me the Parson." This was done; the +Dowager entered in an extremity of sulkiness, and the Parson, on being +pointed out, lowered his eyes and intensified his complexion. + +"As I anticipated," says my charmer, "you are, one and all, a parcel of +credulous infants. 'Tis a parson, indeed, but merely the parson out of +Vanbrugh's _Relapse_; only last Friday, sir, we heartily commended your +fine performance. Why, Frank, the man is one of the play-actors." + +"I fancy," Mr. Vanringham here interpolates, "that I owe the assembled +company some modicum of explanation. 'Tis true that at the beginning of +our friendship I had contemplated matrimony with our amiable Marchioness, +but, I confess, 'twas the lady's property rather than her person which was +the allure. And reflection dissuaded me; a legal union left me, a young +and not unhandsome man, irrevocably fettered to an old woman; whereas a +mock-marriage afforded an eternal option to compound the match--for a +consideration--with the lady's relatives, to whom, I had instinctively +divined, her alliance with me would prove distasteful. Accordingly I +had availed myself of my colleague's skill [Footnote: I witnessed this +same Quarmby's hanging in 1754, and for a burglary, I think, with an +extraordinary relish.--F.A.] in the portrayal of clerical parts rather than +resort to any parson whose authority was unrestricted by the footlights. +And accordingly--" + +"And accordingly my marriage," I interrupted, "is not binding?" + +"I can assure you," he replied, "that you might trade your lawful right in +the lady for a twopenny whistle and not lose by the bargain." + +"And what about my marriage?" says the Marchioness--"the marriage which was +never to be legalized?--'twas merely that you might sell me afterward, like +so much mutton, was it, you jumping-jack--!" + +But I spare you her ensuing gloss upon this text. + +The man heard her through, without a muscle twitching. "It is more than +probable," he conceded, "that I have merited each and every fate your +Ladyship is pleased to invoke. Indeed, I consider the extent of your +distresses to be equaled only by that of your vocabulary. Yet by ordinary +the heart of woman is not obdurate, and upon one lady here I have some +claim--" + +Dorothy had drawn away from him, with an odd and frightened cry. "Not upon +me, sir! I never saw you except across the footlights. You know I never saw +you except across the footlights, Mr. Vanringham!" + +Fixedly he regarded her, with a curious yet not unpleasing smile. "I am +the more unfortunate," he said, at last. "Nay, 'twas to Lady Allonby I +addressed my appeal." + +The person he named had been whispering with George Erwyn, but now she +turned toward the actor. "Heavens!" said Lady Allonby, "to think I should +be able to repay you this soon! La, of course, you are at liberty, Mr. +Vanringham, and we may treat the whole series of events as a frolic +suited to the day. For I am under obligations to you, and, besides, your +punishment would breed a scandal, and, above all, anything is preferable to +being talked about in the wrong way." + +Having reasons of my own, I was elated by the upshot of this rather +remarkable affair. Yet in justice to my own perspicacity, I must declare +that it occurred to me, at this very time, that Mr. Vanringham had proven +himself not entirely worthy of unlimited confidence, I reflected, however, +that I had my instructions, and that, if a bad king may prove a good +husband, a knave may surely carry a letter with fidelity, the more so if it +be to his interest to do it. + + +VIII + +I rode back to Tunbridge in the coach, with Dorothy at my side and with +Gerald recumbent upon the front seat,--where, after ten minutes' driving +the boy very philanthropically fell asleep. + +"And you have not," I immediately asserted--"after all, you have not given +me the answer which was to-night to decide whether I be of all mankind the +most fortunate or the most miserable. And 'tis nearing twelve." + +"What choice have I?" she murmured; "after to-night is it not doubly +apparent that you need some one to take care of you? And, besides, this is +your eighth proposal, and the ninth I had always rather meant to accept, +because I have been in love with you for two whole weeks." + +My heart stood still. And shall I confess that for an instant my wits, +too, paused to play the gourmet with my emotions? She sat beside me in the +darkness, you understand, waiting, mine to touch. And everywhere the world +was filled with beautiful, kind people, and overhead God smiled down upon +His world, and a careless seraph had left open the door of Heaven, so that +quite a deal of its splendor flooded the world about us. And the snoring +of Gerald was now inaudible because of a stately music which was playing +somewhere. + +"Frank--!" she breathed. And I noted that her voice was no less tender than +her lips. + + + + +IV + +THE RHYME TO PORRINGER + + +_As Played at Tunbridge Wells, April 2, 1750_ + + "_Ye gods, why are not hearts first paired above, + But still some interfere in others' love, + Ere each for each by certain marks are known? + You mould them up in haste, and drop them down, + And while we seek what carelessly you sort, + You sit in state, and make our pains your sport._" + + +DRAMATIS PERSONÆ + +CAPTAIN AUDAINE, an ingenious, well-accomplished gentleman. +LORD HUMPHREY DEGGE, an airy young gentleman, loves Miss Allonby for her +money. +VANRINGHAM, emissary and confederate of Audaine. +MISS ALLONBY, a young lady of wit and fortune. + +ATTENDANTS to Lord Humphrey, Etc. + + +SCENE + +Tunbridge Wells, first in and about Lord Humphrey's lodgings, then shifting +to a drawing-room in Lady Allonby's villa. + + +THE RHYME TO PORRINGER + + +PROEM:--_Merely to Serve as Intermezzo_ + +Next morning Captain Audaine was closeted with Mr. Vanringham in the +latter's apartments at the _Three Gudgeons_. I abridge the Captain's +relation of their interview, and merely tell you that it ended in the +actor's looking up, with a puzzled face, from a certain document. + +"You might have let me have a whiff of this," Mr. Vanringham began. "You +might have breathed, say, a syllable or two last night--" + +"I had my instructions, sir, but yesterday," replied the Captain; "and +surely, Mr. Vanringham, to have presumed last night upon my possession of +this paper, so far as to have demanded any favor of you, were unreasonable, +even had it not savored of cowardice. For, as it has been very finely +observed, it is the nicest part of commerce in the world, that of doing and +receiving benefits. O Lord, sir! there are so many thousand circumstances, +with respect to time, person, and place, which either heighten or allay the +value of the obligation--" + +"I take your point," said the other, with some haste, "and concede that you +are, beyond any reasonable doubt, in the right. Within the hour I am off." + +"Then all is well," said Captain Audaine. + +But he was wrong in this opinion, so wrong that I confute him by subjoining +his own account of what befell, somewhat later in the day. + + +I + +'Twas hard upon ten in the evening (the Captain estimates) when I left +Lady Culcheth's, [Footnote: Sir Henry Muskerry's daughter, of whom I have +already spoken, and by common consent an estimable lady and a person of +fine wit; but my infatuation for Lady Betty had by this time, after three +nights with her, been puffed out; and this fortunate extinction, through +the affair of the broken snuffbox, had left me now entirely indifferent to +all her raptures, panegyrics, and premeditated artlessnesses.--F. A.] and I +protest that at the time there was not a happier man in all Tunbridge than +Francis Audaine. + +"You haven't the king?" Miss Allonby was saying, as I made my adieus to the +company. "Then I play queen, knave, and ace, which gives me the game, Lord +Humphrey." + +And afterward she shuffled the cards and flashed across the room a glance +whose brilliance shamed the tawdry candles about her, and, as you can +readily conceive, roused a prodigious trepidation in my adoring breast. + +"Dorothy!--O Dorothy!" I said over and over again when I had reached the +street; and so went homeward with constant repetitions of her dear name. + +I suppose it was an idiotic piece of business; but you are to remember +that I loved her with an entire heart, and that, as yet, I could scarcely +believe the confession of a reciprocal attachment, which I had wrung from +her overnight, to the accompaniment of Gerald's snoring, had been other +than an unusually delectable and audacious dream upon the part of Frank +Audaine. + +I found it, then, as I went homeward, a heady joy to ponder on her +loveliness. Oh, the wonder of her voice, that is a love-song! cried my +heart. Oh, the candid eyes of her, more beautiful than the June heavens, +more blue than the very bluest speedwell-flower! Oh, the tilt of her tiny +chin, and the incredible gold of her hair, and the quite unbelievable +pink-and-white of her little flower-soft face! And, oh, the scrap of +crimson that is her mouth. + +In a word, my pulses throbbed with a sort of divine insanity, and Frank +Audaine was as much out of his senses as any madman now in Bedlam, and as +deliriously perturbed as any lover is by ordinary when he meditates upon +the object of his affections. + +But there was other work than sonneting afoot that night, and shortly I +set about it. Yet such was my felicity that I went to my nocturnal labors +singing. Yes, it rang in my ears, somehow, that silly old Scotch song, and +under my breath I hummed odd snatches of it as I went about the night's +business. + +Sang I: + + "Ken ye the rhyme to porringer? + Ken ye the rhyme to porringer? + King James the Seventh had ae daughter, + And he gave her to an Oranger. + + "Ken ye how he requited him? + Ken ye how he requited him? + The dog has into England come, + And ta'en the crown in spite of him! + + "The rogue he salna keep it lang, + To budge we'll make him fain again; + We'll hang him high upon a tree, + And King James shall hae his ain again!" + + +II + +Well! matters went smoothly enough at the start. With a diamond Vanringham +dexterously cut out a pane of glass, so that we had little difficulty in +opening the window; and I climbed into a room black as a pocket, leaving +him without to act as a sentinel, since, so far as I could detect, the +house was now untenanted. + +But some twenty minutes later, when I had finally succeeded in forcing the +escritoire I found in the back room upon the second story, I heard the +street door unclose. And I had my candle extinguished in that self same +instant. You can conceive that 'twas with no pleasurable anticipation I +peered into the hall, for I was fairly trapped. I saw some five or six men +of an ugly aspect, who carried among them a burden, the nature of which I +could not determine in the uncertain light. But I heaved a sigh of relief +as they bore their cargo past me, to the front room, (which opened on the +one I occupied), without apparent recognition of my presence. + +"Now," thinks I, "is the time for my departure." And having already +selected the papers I had need of from the rifled desk, I was about to run +for it, when I heard a well-known voice. + +"Rat the parson!" it cried; "he should have been here an hour ago. Here's +the door left open for him, endangering the whole venture, and whey-face +han't plucked up heart to come! Do some of you rogues fetch him without +delay; and do all of you meet me to-morrow at the _Mitre_, to be paid in +full for this business, before reporting to his Grace." + +"Here," thinks I, "is beyond doubt a romance." And as the men tumbled +down-stairs and into the street, I resolved to see the adventure through, +by the light of those candles which were now burning in the next room. + +I waited for perhaps ten minutes, during which period I was aware of divers +movements near at hand; and, judging that in any case there was but one +man's anger to be apprehended, I crept toward the intervening door and +found it luckily ajar. + +So I peered through the crack into the adjoining room, and there, as I had +anticipated, discovered Lord Humphrey Degge, whom I had last seen at Lady +Culcheth's wrangling over a game of _écarté_ with the fairest antagonist +the universe could afford. + +Just now my Lord was in a state of high emotion, and the cause of it was +evident when I perceived his ruffians had borne into the house a swooning +lady, whom merciful unconsciousness had rendered oblivious to her present +surroundings, and whose wrists his Lordship was vigorously slapping in the +intervals between his frequent applications to her nostrils of a flask, +which, as I more lately learned, contained sal volatile. + +Here was an unlucky turn, since I had no desire to announce my whereabouts, +my business in the house being of a sort that necessitated secrecy; +whereas, upon the other hand, I could not but misdoubt my Lord's intention +toward the unknown fair was of discreditable kinship, and such as a +gentleman might not countenance with self-esteem. + +Accordingly I devoted the moments during which the lady was recovering +from her swoon, to serious reflection concerning the course that I should +preferably adopt. But now, Miss came to, and, as is the custom of all +females similarly situated, rubbed her eyes and said, "Where am I?" + +And when she rose from the divan I saw that 'twas my adored Dorothy. + +"In the presence of your infatuated slave," says my Lord. "Ah, divine Miss +Allonby--!" + +But being now aware of her deplorable circumstances, she began to weep, +and, in spite of the amorous rhetoric with which his Lordship was prompt to +comfort her, rebuked him for unmanly conduct, with sublimity and fire, and +depicted the horrors of her present predicament in terms that were both +just and elegant. + +From their disjointed talk I soon determined that, Lord Humphrey's suit +being rejected by my angel, he had laid a trap for her (by bribing her +coachman, as I subsequently learned), and had so far succeeded in his +nefarious scheme that she, on leaving Lady Culcheth's, had been driven +to this house, in the conviction she rode homeward; and this course my +Lord endeavored to justify, with a certain eloquence, and attributed the +irregularity of his behavior solely to the colossal vehemence of his +affection. + +His oratory, however, was of little avail, for Dorothy told him plainly +that she had rather hear the protestations of a toad than listen to his far +more nauseous flattery; and bade him at once restore her to her natural +guardians. + +"_Ma charmante_," said he, "to-morrow your good step-mother may, if you +will, share with your husband the privilege of saluting Lady Humphrey +Degge; but as for Miss Allonby, I question if in the future her dearest +friends are likely to see much of her." + +"What do you mean?" cries she. + +"That the parson will be here directly," said he. + +"Infamous!" she observes; "and is the world run mad, that these extempore +weddings should be foisted upon every woman in the Allonby connection!" + +"Ah, but, my dear," he answered airily, "'twas those two fiascos which +begot my notion, and yet hearten me. For in every approved romance the +third adventurer gets the victory; so that I am, I take it, predestinate to +win where Vanringham and Rokesle failed." + +She did not chop logic with him, but instead retorted in a more primitive +fashion by beginning to scream at the top of her voice. + +I doubt if any man of honor was ever placed under a more great embarrass. +Yonder was the object of my devotion, exposed to all the diabolical +machinations of a heartless villain; and here was I concealed in my Lord's +bedroom, his desk broken open, and his papers in my pocket. To remain quiet +was impossible, since 'twas to expose her to a fate worse than death; yet +to reveal myself was to confess Frank Audaine a thief, and to lose her +perhaps beyond redemption. + +Then I thought of the mask which I had brought in case of emergency; and, +clapping it on, resolved to brazen out the affair. Meanwhile I saw all +notions of gallantry turned topsy-turvy, for my Lord was laughing quietly, +while my adored Dorothy called aloud upon the name of her Maker. + +"The neighborhood is not unaccustomed to such sounds," said he, "and I +hardly think we need fear any interruption. I must tell you, my dear +creature, you have, by an evil chance, arrived in a most evil locality, for +this quarter of the town is the devil's own country, and he is scarcely +like to make you free of it." + +"O Lord, sir!" said I, and pushed the door wide open, "surely you forget +that the devil is a gentleman?" + + +III + +Had I dropped a hand-grenade into the apartment the astonishment of its +occupants would not have been excessive. My Lord's face, as he clapped +his hand to his sword, was neither tranquil nor altogether agreeable to +contemplate; but as for Dorothy, she gave a frightened little cry, and ran +toward the masked intruder with a piteous confidence which wrung my heart. + +"The devil!" says my Lord. + +"Not precisely," I amended, and bowed in my best manner, "though 'tis +undeniable I come to act as his representative." + +"Oh, joy to your success!" his Lordship sneered. + +"Harkee, sir," said I, "as you, with perfect justice, have stated, this is +the devil's stronghold, and hereabouts his will is paramount; and, as I +have had the honor to add, the devil is a gentleman. Sure, and as such, he +cannot be expected to countenance your present behavior? Nay, never fear! +Lucifer, already up to the ears in the affairs of this mundane sphere, +lacks leisure to express his disapproval in sulphuric person. He tenders +his apologies, sir, and sends in his stead your servant, with whose +capabilities he is indifferently acquainted." + +"To drop this mummery," says Lord Humphrey, "what are you doing in my +lodgings?" + +"O Lord, sir!" I responded, "I came thither, I confess, without invitation. +And with equal candor I will admit that my present need is of your +Lordship's banknotes and jewels, and such-like trifles, rather than--you +force me, sir, to say it,--rather than of your company." + +Thus speaking, I drew and placed myself on guard, while my Lord gasped. + +"You're the most impudent rogue," says he, after he had recovered himself a +little, "that I have had the privilege of meeting--" + +"Your Lordship is all kindness," I protested. + +"--but your impudence is worth the price of whatever you may have pilfered. +Go, my good man--or devil, if you so prefer to style yourself! Tell Lucifer +that he is well served; and obligingly return to the infernal regions +without delay. For, as you have doubtless learned, Miss and I have many +private matters to discuss. And, gad, Mr. Moloch, [Footnote: A deity of, +I believe, Ammonitish origin. His traditional character as represented +by our immortal Milton is both taking to the fancy and finely romantic; +and is, I am informed, no less remarkable for many happy turns of speech +than for conformity throughout to the most famous legends of Talmudic +fabrication.--F.A.] pleasant as is your conversation, you must acknowledge +I can't allow evil spirits about the house without getting it an ill +reputation. So pardon me if I exorcise you with this." + +He spoke boldly, and, as he ended, tossed me a purse. I let it lie where it +fell, for I had by no means ended my argument. + +"Yet, sir," said I, "my errand, which began with the acquisition of your +pins, studs and other jewelry, now reaches toward treasure far more +precious--" + +"Enough!" he cried, impatiently, "Begone! and do you render thanks--that my +present business is so urgent as to prevent my furnishing the rope which +will one day adorn your neck." + +"That's as may be," quoth I; "and, indeed, I doubt if I could abide +drowning, for 'tis a damp, unwholesome, and very permanent sort of death. +But my fixed purpose, to cut short all debate, is to escort Miss Allonby +homeward." + +"Come," sneers my Lord,--"come, Mr. Moloch, I have borne with your +insolence for a quarter of an hour--" + +"Twenty minutes," said I, after consulting my watch. + +"--but I mean to put up with it no longer; and in consequence I take the +boorish liberty of suggesting that this is none of your affair." + +"Good sir," I conceded, "your Lordship speaks with considerable justice, +and we must leave the final decision to Miss here." + +I bowed toward her. In her face there was a curious bewilderment that +made me fear lest, for all my mask, for all my unnatural intonations, and +for all the room's half-light, my worshipped mistress had come near to +recognizing this caught thief. + +"Miss Allonby," said I, in a falsetto voice which trembled, "since I am +unknown to you, may I trust you will permit me to present myself? My +name--though, indeed, I have a multitude of names--is for the occasion +Frederick Thomasson. With my father's appellation and estates I cannot +accommodate you, for the reason that a mystery attaches to his identity. +As for my mother, let it suffice to say that she was a vivacious brunette +of a large acquaintance, and generally known to the public as Black Moll +O'Reilly. I began life as a pickpocket. Since then I have so far improved +my natural gifts that the police are flattering enough to value my person +at several hundred pounds. My rank in society, as you perceive, is not +exalted; yet, if my luck by any chance should fail, I do not question that +I shall, upon some subsequent Friday, move in loftier circles than any +nobleman who happens at the time to be on Tyburn Hill.--So much for my poor +self. And since by this late hour Lady Allonby is beyond doubt beginning to +grow uneasy, let us have done with further exposition, and remember that +'tis high time you selected an escort to her residence. May I implore that +you choose between the son of the Marquis of Venour and Black Molly's +bastard?" + +She looked us over,--first one, then the other. More lately she laughed; +and if I had never seen her before, I could have found it in my heart to +love her for the sweet insolence of her demeanor. + +"After all," said my adored Dorothy, "I prefer the rogue who when he goes +about his knaveries has at least the decency to wear a mask." + +"That, my Lord," said I, "is fairly conclusive; and so we will be +journeying." + +"Over my dead body!" says he. + +"Sure, and what's beneath the feet," I protested, "is equally beneath +consideration." + +The witticism stung him like a wasp, and, with an oath, he drew, as I was +heartily glad to observe, for I cannot help thinking that when it comes to +the last pinch, and one gentleman is excessively annoyed by the existence +of another, steel is your only arbiter, and charitable allowances for the +dead make the one rational peroration. So we crossed blades; and, pursuing +my usual tactics, I began upon a flow of words, which course, as I have +learned by old experience, is apt to disconcert an adversary far more than +any trick of the sword can do. + +I pressed him sorely, and he continued to give way, but clearly for +tactical purposes, and without permitting the bright flash of steel that +protected him to swerve an instant from the proper line. + +"Miss Allonby," said I, growing impatient, "have you never seen a venomous +insect pinned to the wall? In that case, I pray you to attend more closely. +For one has only to parry--thus! And to thrust--in this fashion! And +behold, the thing is done!" + +In fact, having been run through the chest, my Lord was for the moment +affixed to the panelling at the extreme end of the apartment, where he +writhed, much in the manner of a cockchafer which mischievous urchins have +pinned to a card,--his mien and his gesticulations, however, being rather +more suggestive of the torments of the damned, as they are so strikingly +depicted by the Italian Dante. [Footnote: I allude, of course, to the +famous Florentine, who excels no less in his detailed depictions of +infernal anguish than in his eloquent portrayal of the graduated and +equitable emoluments of an eternal glorification.--F.A.] He tumbled in a +heap, though, when I sheathed my sword and bowed toward my charmer. + +"Miss Allonby," said I, "thus quickly ends this evil quarter of an hour; +and with, equal expedition, I think, should we be leaving this evil quarter +of the town." + +She had watched the combat with staring and frightened eyes. Now she had +drawn nearer, and she looked curiously at her over-presumptuous lover where +he had fallen. + +"Have you killed him?" she asked, in a hushed voice. + +"O Lord, no!" I protested. "The life of a peer's son is too valuable a +matter; he will be little the worse for it in a week." + +"The dog!" cries she, overcome with pardonable indignation at the affront +which the misguided nobleman had put upon her; and afterward, with a +ferocity the more astounding in an individual whose demeanor was by +ordinary of an aspect so amiable and so engaging, she said, "Oh, the lewd +thieving dog!" + +"My adorable Miss Allonby," said I, "do not, I pray you, thus slander the +canine species! Meanwhile, permit me to remind you that 'tis inexpedient +to loiter in these parts, for the parson will presently be at hand; and if +it be to inter rather than to marry Lord Humphrey--well, after all, the +peerage is a populous estate! But, either way, time presses." + +"Come!" said she, and took my arm; and together we went down-stairs and +into the street. + + +IV + +On the way homeward she spoke never a word. Vanringham had made a hasty +flitting when my Lord's people arrived, so that we saw nothing of him. But +when we had come safely to Lady Allonby's villa, Dorothy began to laugh. + +"Captain Audaine," says she, in a wearied and scornful voice, "I know that +the hour is very late, yet there are certain matters to be settled between +as which will, I think, scarcely admit of delay. I pray you, then, grant me +ten minutes' conversation." + +She had known me all along, you see. Trust the dullest woman to play +Oedipus when love sets the riddle. So there was nothing to do save clap my +mask into my pocket and follow her, sheepishly enough, toward one of the +salons, where at Dorothy's solicitation a gaping footman made a light for +us. + +She left me there to kick my heels through a solitude of some moments' +extent. But in a while my dear mistress came into the room, with her arms +full of trinkets and knick-knacks, which she flung upon a table. + +"Here's your ring, Captain Audaine," says she, and drew it from her finger. +"I did not wear it long, did I? And here's the miniature you gave me, too. +I used to kiss it every night, you know. And here's a flower you dropped at +Lady Pevensey's. I picked it up--oh, very secretly!--because you had worn +it, you understand. And here's--" + +But at this point she fairly broke down; and she cast her round white arms +about the heap of trinkets, and strained them close to her, and bowed her +imperious golden head above them in anguish. + +"Oh, how I loved you--how I loved you!" she sobbed. "And all the while you +were only a common thief!" + +"Dorothy--!" I pleaded. + +"You shame me--you shame me past utterance!" she cried, in a storm of +mingled tears and laughter. "Here's this bold Captain Audaine, who comes to +Tunbridge from nobody knows where, and wins a maid's love, and proves in +the end a beggarly house-breaker! Mr. Garrick might make a mirthful comedy +of this, might he not?" Then she rose to her feet very stiffly. "Take your +gifts, Mr. Thief," says she, pointing,--"take them. And for God's sake let +me not see you again!" + +So I was forced to make a clean breast of it. + +"Dorothy," said I, "ken ye the rhyme to porringer?" But she only stared at +me through unshed tears. + +Presently, though, I hummed over the old song: + + "Ken ye the rhyme to porringer? + Ken ye the rhyme to porringer? + King James the Seventh had ae daughter, + And he gave her to an Oranger. + +"And the Oranger filched his crown," said I, "and drove King James--God +bless him!--out of his kingdom. This was a while and a half ago, my dear; +but Dutch William left the stolen crown to Anne, and Anne, in turn, left it +to German George. So that now the Elector of Hanover reigns at St. James's, +while the true King's son must skulk in France, with never a roof to +shelter him. And there are certain gentlemen, Dorothy, who do not consider +that this is right." + +"You are a Jacobite?" said she. "Well! and what have your politics to do +with the matter?" + +"Simply that Lord Humphrey is not of my way of thinking, my dearest dear. +Lord Humphrey--pah!--this Degge is Ormskirk's spy, I tell you! He followed +Vanringham to Tunbridge on account of our business. And to-day, when +Vanringham set out for Avignon, he was stopped a mile from the Wells by +some six of Lord Humphrey's fellows, disguised as highwaymen, and all his +papers were stolen. Oho, but Lord Humphrey is a thrifty fellow: so when +Ormskirk puts six bandits at his disposal he employs them in double infamy, +to steal you as well as Vanringham's despatches. To-morrow they would have +been in Ormskirk's hands. And then--" I paused to allow myself a whistle. + +She came a little toward me, in the prettiest possible glow of +bewilderment, "I do not understand," she murmured. "Oh, Frank, Frank, for +the love of God, beware of trusting Vanringham in anything! And you are not +a thief, after all? Are you really not named Thomasson?" + +"I am most assuredly not Frederick Thomasson," said I, "nor do I know if +any such person exists, for I never heard the name before to-night. Yet, in +spite of this, I am an unmitigated thief. Why, d'ye not understand? What +Vanringham carried was a petition from some two hundred Scotch and English +gentlemen that our gracious Prince Charlie be pleased to come over and +take back his own from the Elector. 'Twas rebellion, flat rebellion, and +the very highest treason! Had Ormskirk seen the paper, within a month our +heads had all been blackening over Temple Bar. So I stole it,--I, Francis +Audaine, stole it in the King's cause, God bless him! 'Twas burglary, no +less, but it saved two hundred lives, my own included; and I look to be a +deal older than I am before I regret the deed with any sincerity." + +Afterward I showed her the papers, and then burned them one by one over a +candle. She said nothing. So by and by I turned toward her with a little +bow. + +"Madam," said I, "you have forced my secret from me. I know that your +family is staunch on the Whig side; and yet, ere the thief goes, may he not +trust you will ne'er betray him?" + +And now she came to me, all penitence and dimples. + +"But it was you who said you were a thief," my dear mistress pointed out. + +"O Lord, madam!" said I, "'twas very necessary that Degge should think me +so. A house-breaker they would have only hanged, but a Jacobite they would +have hanged and quartered afterward." + +"Ah, Frank, do not speak of such fearful matters, but forgive me +instantly!" she wailed. + +And I was about to do so in what I considered the most agreeable and +appropriate manner when the madcap broke away from me, and sprang upon a +footstool and waved her fan defiantly. + +"Down with the Elector!" she cried, in her high, sweet voice. "Long live +King James!" + +And then, with a most lovely wildness of mien, she began to sing: + + "Ken ye the rhyme to porringer? + Ken ye the rhyme to porringer? + King James the Seventh had ae daughter--" + +until I interrupted her. For, "Extraordinary creature!" I pleaded, "you +will rouse the house." + +"I don't care! I intend to be a Jacobite if you are one!" + +"Eh, well," said I, "Frank Audaine is not the man to coerce his wife in a +political matter. Nevertheless, I know of a certain Jacobite who is not +unlikely to have a bad time of it if by any chance Lord Humphrey recognized +him to-night. Nay, Miss, you may live to be a widow yet." + +"But he didn't recognize you. And if he did"--she snapped her +fingers,--"why, we'll fight him again, you and I. Won't we, my dear? For +he stole our secret, you know. And he stole me, too. Very pretty behavior, +wasn't it?" And here Miss, Allonby stamped the tiniest, the most +infinitesimal of red-heeled slippers. + + "The rogue he didna keep me lang, + To budge we made him fain again-- + +"that's you, Frank, and your great, long sword. And now: + + "We'll hang him high, upon a tree, + And King Frank shall hae his ain again!" + +Afterward my adored Dorothy jumped from the footstool, and came toward me, +lifting up the crimson trifle that she calls her mouth, "So take your own, +my king," she breathed, with a wonderful gesture of surrender. + +And a gentleman could do no less. + + + + +V + +ACTORS ALL + + +_As Played at Tunbridge Wells, April 3, 1750_ + +"_I am thinking if some little, filching, inquisitive poet should get my +story, and represent it to the stage, what those ladies who are never +precise but at a play would say of me now,--that I were a confident, coming +piece, I warrant, and they would damn the poor poet for libelling the +sex._" + + +DRAMATIS PERSONÆ + +DUKE OF ORMSKIRK. + +COLONEL DENSTROUDE, } +SIR GRESLEY CARNE, } Gentlemen of the town. +MR. BABINGTON-HERLE, } + +VANRINGHAM, a play-actor and a Jacobite emissary. + +MR. LANGTON, secretary to Ormskirk. + +MISS ALLONBY, an heiress, loves Captain Audaine. + +LOTTRUM, maid to Miss Allonby. + +BENYON, MINCHIN, and OTHER SERVANTS to Ormskirk. + + +SCENE + +Tunbridge Wells, shifting from Ormskirk's lodgings at the _Mitre_ to +Vanringham's apartments in the _Three Gudgeons_. + + + + +ACTORS ALL + + +_PROEM.--To Explain Why the Heroine of This Comedy Must Wear Her Best_ + +I quit pilfering from the writings of Francis Audaine, since in the +happenings which now concern us he plays but a subsidiary part. The Captain +had an utter faith in decorum, and therefore it was, as he records, an +earth-staggering shock when the following day, on the Pantiles, in full +sight of the best company at the Wells, Captain Audaine was apprehended. He +met disaster like an old acquaintance, and hummed a scrap of song--"_O, gin +I were a bonny bird_,"--and shrugged; but when Miss Allonby, with whom he +had been chatting, swayed and fell, the Captain caught her in his arms, and +standing thus, turned angrily upon the emissaries of the law. + +"Look you, you rascals," said he, "you have spoiled a lady's afternoon with +your foolish warrant!" + +He then relinquished the unconscious girl to her brother's keeping, +tenderly kissed one insensate hand, and afterward strolled off to jail +_en route_ for a perfunctory trial and a subsequent traffic with the +executioner that Audaine did not care to think of. + +Tunbridge buzzed like a fly-trap with the ensuing rumors. The Captain +was at the head of a most heinous Jacobitical uprising. The great Duke +of Ormskirk was come hastily from London on the business. Highlanders +were swarming over the Border, ten thousand French troops had landed at +Pevensey, commanded by the Chevalier St. George in person, and twenty +thousand friars and pilgrims from Coruña had sailed for Milford Haven, +under the admiralty of young Henry Stuart. The King was locked in the +Tower; the King had been assassinated that morning by a Spanish monk, with +horse-pistols and a cast in his left eye; and the King and the Countess of +Yarmouth had escaped three days ago, in disguise, and were now on their way +to Hanover. + +These were the reports which went about Tunbridge, while Dorothy Allonby +wept a little and presently called for cold water and a powder-puff, and +afterward for a sedan chair. + + +I + +Miss Allonby found my Lord Duke of Ormskirk deep in an infinity of papers. +But at her entrance he rose and with a sign dismissed his secretary. + +It appears appropriate here to afford you some notion of Ormskirk's +exterior. I pilfer from Löwe's memoir of him, where Horace Calverley, who +first saw Ormskirk at about this time, is quoted: + +"His Grace was in blue-and-silver, which became him, though he is somewhat +stomachy for such conspicuous colors. A handsome man, I would have said, +honest but not particularly intelligent.... Walpole, in a fit of spleen, +once called him 'a porcelain sphinx,' and the phrase sticks; but, +indeed, there is more of the china-doll about him. He possesses the +same too-perfect complexion, his blue eyes have the same spick-and-span +vacuity; and the fact that the right orb is a trifle larger than its fellow +gives his countenance, in repose, much the same expression of placid +astonishment.... Very plump, very sleepy-looking, immaculate as a cat, you +would never have accorded him a second glance: covert whisperings that the +stout gentleman yonder is the great Duke of Ormskirk have, I think, taxed +human belief more than once during these ten years past." + +They said of Ormskirk that he manifested a certain excitement on the +day after Culloden, when he had seventy-two prisoners shot _en masse_, +[Footnote: But for all that, when, near Rossinish (see Löwe), he captured +Flora Macdonald and her ostensibly female companion, Ormskirk flatly +declined to recognize Prince Charles. "They may well call you the +Pretender, madam," he observed to "Bettie Burke,"--"since as concerns my +party you are the most desirable Pretender we could possibly imagine." And +thereupon he gave the Prince a pass out of Scotland.] but this was doubted; +and in any event, such _battues_ being comparatively rare, he by ordinary +appeared to regard the universe with a composed and feline indifference. + + +II + +"Child, child!" Ormskirk began, and made a tiny gesture of deprecation, "I +perceive you are about to appeal to my better nature, and so I warn you in +advance that the idiotic business has worked me into a temper absolutely +ogreish." + +"The Jacobite conspiracy, you mean?" said Miss Allonby. "Oh, I suppose +so. I am not particularly interested in such matters, though; I came, you +understand, for a warrant, or an order, or whatever you call it, for them +to let Frank out of that horrid filthy gaol." + +The Duke's face was gravely humorous as he gazed at her for a moment or two +in silence, "You know quite well," he said at last, "that I can give you +nothing of the sort." + +Miss Allonby said: "Upon my word, I never heard of such nonsense! How else +is he to take me to Lady Mackworth's ball to-night?" + +"It is deplorable," his Grace of Ormskirk conceded, "that Captain Audaine +should be thus snatched from circles which he, no doubt, adorns. Still, I +fear you must look for another escort; and frankly, child, if you will be +advised by me, you will permit us to follow out our present intentions and +take off his head--not a great deprivation when you consider he has so +plainly demonstrated its contents to be of such inferior quality." + +She had drawn close to him, with widening, pitiable eyes. "You mean, then," +she demanded, "that Frank's very life is in danger?" + +"This is unfair," the Duke complained. "You are about to go into hysterics +forthwith and thus bully me into letting the man escape. You are a minx. +You presume upon the fact that in the autumn I am to wed your kinswoman and +bosom companion, and that my affection for her is widely known to go well +past the frontier of common-sense; and also upon the fact that Marian will +give me the devil if I don't do exactly as you ask. I consider you to abuse +your power unconscionably, I consider you to be a second Delilah. However, +since you insist upon it, this Captain Audaine must, of course, be spared +the fate he very richly merits." + +Miss Allonby had seated herself beside a table and was pensively looking +up at him. "Naturally," she said, "Marian and I, between us, will badger +you into saving Frank. I shall not worry, therefore, and I must trust to +Providence, I suppose, to arrange matters so that the poor boy will not +catch his death of cold in your leaky gaol yonder. And now I would like to +be informed of what he has been most unjustly accused." + +"His crime," the Duke retorted, "is the not unusual one of being a fool. +Oh, I am candid! All Jacobites are fools. We gave the Stuarts a fair trial, +Heaven knows, and nobody but a fool would want them back." + +"I am not here to discuss politics," a dignified Miss Allonby stated, "but +simply to find out in what way Frank has been slandered." + +Ormskirk lifted one eyebrow. "It is not altogether a matter of politics. +Rather, as I see it, it is a matter of common-sense. Under the Stuarts +England was a prostitute among the nations, lackey in turn to Spain and +France and Italy; under the Guelph the Three-per-cents. are to-day at par. +The question as to which is preferable thus resolves itself into a choice +between common-sense and bedlamite folly. But, unhappily, you cannot argue +with a Jacobite: only four years ago Cumberland and Hawley and I rode from +Aberdeen to the Highlands and left all the intervening country bare as the +palm of your hand; I forget how many Jacobites we killed, but evidently not +enough to convince the others. Very well: we intend to have no more such +nonsense, and we must settle this particular affair by the simple device +of hanging or beheading every man-Jack concerned in it." He spoke without +vehemence--rather regretfully than otherwise. + +Miss Allonby was patient, yet resolute to keep to the one really important +point. "But what has Frank been accused of doing when it never even entered +his head?" + +"He has been conspiring," said the Duke, "and with conspicuous clumsiness. +It appears, child, that it was their common idiocy which of late brought +together some two hundred gentlemen in Lancashire. Being every one of them +most unmitigated fools, they desired that sot at Avignon to come over once +more and 'take back his own,' as the saying is. He would not stir without +definite assurances. So these men drew up a petition pledging their all to +the Chevalier's cause and--God help us!--signed it. I protest," the Duke +sighed, "I cannot understand these people! A couple of penstrokes, you +observe, and there is your life at the mercy of chance, at the disposal of +a puff of wind or the first blunderer who stumbles on the paper." + +"Doubtless that is entirely true," said Miss Allonby, "but what about +Frank?" + +Ormskirk shrugged his shoulders and began to laugh. "You are an +incomparable actress, you rogue you. But let us be candid, for all that, +since as it happens Lord Humphrey is not the only person in my employ. What +occurred last night I now partly know, and in part guess, Degge played a +bold game, and your Captain gambled even more impudently,--only the stakes, +as it to-day transpires, were of somewhat less importance than either of +them surmised. For years Mr. Vanringham has been a Jacobite emissary; now +he tires of it; and so he devoted the entire morning, yesterday to making a +copy of this absurd petition." + +"I do not understand," said Miss Allonby; and in appearance, at least, she +was no whit disconcerted. + +"He carried only the copy. You burned only the copy. Mr. Vanringham, it +develops, knew well enough what that bungling Degge had been deputed to +do, and he preferred to treat directly with Lord Humphrey's principal. Mr. +Vanringham is an intelligent fellow. I dare make this assertion, because +I am fresh from an interview with Mr. Vanringham," his Grace of Ormskirk +ended, and allowed himself a reminiscent chuckle. + +She had risen. "O ungenerous! this Vanringham has been bribed!" + +"I pray you," said the Duke, "give vent to no such scandal. Vanringham's +life would not be worth a farthing if he had done such a thing, and he +knows it. Nay, I have planned it more neatly. To-night Mr. Vanringham will +be arrested--merely on suspicion, mind you,--and all his papers will be +brought to me; and it is possible that among them we may find the petition. +And it is possible that, somehow, when he is tried with the others, Mr. +Vanringham alone may be acquitted. And it is possible that an aunt--in +Wales, say,--may die about this time and leave him a legacy of some five +thousand pounds. Oh, yes, all this is quite possible," said the Duke; +"but should we therefore shriek _Bribery_? For my own part, I esteem Mr. +Vanringham, as the one sensible man in the two hundred." + +"He has turned King's evidence," she said, "and his papers will be brought +to you--" Miss Allonby paused. "All his papers!" said Miss Allonby. + +"And very curious they will prove, no doubt," said his Grace. "So many +love-sick misses write to actors. I can assure you, child, I look +forward with a deal of interest to my inspection of Mr. Vanringham's +correspondence." + +"Eh?--Oh, yes!" Miss Allonby assented--"all his papers! Yes, they should be +diverting, I must be going home though, to make ready for Lady Mackworth's +ball. And if I have nobody to dance with me, I shall know quite well whose +fault it is. How soon will Frank be freed, you odious tyrant?" + +"My child, but in these matters we are all slaves to red tape! I can +promise you, however, that your Captain will be released from prison before +this month is out, so you are not to worry." + + +III + +When she had left him the Duke sat for a while in meditation. + +"That is an admirable girl, I would I could oblige her in the matter and +let this Audaine live. But such folly is out of the question. The man is +the heart of the conspiracy. + +"No, Captain Audaine, I am afraid we must have that handsome head of yours, +and set your spirit free before this month is out. And your head also, Mr. +Vanringham, when we are done with using your evidence. This affair must be +the last; hitherto we have tried leniency, and it has failed; now we will +try extermination. Not one of these men must escape. + +"I shall have trouble with Marian, since the two girls are inseparable. +Yes, this Audaine will cause me some trouble with Marian. I heartily wish +the fellow had never been born." + +Ormskirk took a miniature from his pocket and sat thus in the dusk +regarding it. It was the portrait of a young girl with hazel eyes and +abundant hair the color of a dead oak-leaf. And now his sleepy face was +curiously moved. + +"I shall have to lie to you. And you will believe me, for you are not +disastrously clever. But I wish it were not necessary, my dear. I wish it +were possible to make you understand that my concern is to save England +rather than a twopenny captain. As it is, I shall lie to you, and you will +believe. And Dorothy will get over it in time, as one gets over everything +in time. But I wish it were not necessary, sweetheart. + +"I wish.... I wish that I were not so happy when I think of you. I become +so happy that I grow afraid. It is not right that anyone should be so +happy. + +"Bah! I am probably falling into my dotage." + +Ormskirk struck upon the gong. "And now, Mr. Langton, let us get back to +business." + + +IV + +Later in the afternoon Miss Allonby demanded of her maid if Gerald Allonby +were within, and received a negative response. "Nothing could be better," +said Miss Allonby. "You know that new suit of Master Gerald's, Lottrum--the +pink-and-silver? Very well; then you will do thus, and thus, and thus--" +And she poured forth a series of directions that astonished her maid not a +little. + +"Law you now!" said Lottrum, "whatever--?" + +"If you ask me any questions," said Dorothy, "I will discharge you on the +spot. And if you betray me, I shall probably kill you." + +Lottrum said, "O Gemini!" and did as her mistress ordered. + +Miss Allonby made a handsome boy, and such was her one comfort. Her mirror +showed an epicene denizen of romance,--Rosalind or Bellario, a frail +and lovely travesty of boyhood; but it is likely that the girl's heart +showed stark terror. Here was imminent no jaunt into Arden, but into the +gross jaws of even bodily destruction. Here was probable dishonor, a +guaranteeable death. She could fence well enough, thanks to many bouts with +Gerald; but when the foils were unbuttoned, there was a difference which +the girl could appreciate. + +"In consequence," said Dorothy, "I had better hurry before I am still more +afraid." + + +V + +So there came that evening, after dusk, to Mr. Francis Vanringham's +apartments, at the _Three Gudgeons_, a young spark in pink-and-silver. He +appeared startled at the sight of so much company, recovered his composure +with a gulp, and presented himself to the assembled gentlemen as Mr. +Osric Allonby, unexpectedly summoned from Cambridge, and in search of +his brother, Squire Gerald. At his step-mother's villa they had imagined +Gerald might be spending the evening with Mr. Vanringham. Mr. Osric +Allonby apologized for the intrusion; was their humble servant; and with a +profusion of _congées_ made as though to withdraw. + +Mr. Vanringham lounged forward. The comedian had a vogue among the younger +men, since at all games of chance they found him untiring and tolerably +honest; and his apartments were, in effect, a gambling parlor. + +Vanringham now took the boy's hand very genially. "You have somewhat the +look of your sister," he observed, after a prolonged appraisal; "though, in +nature, 'tis not expected of us trousered folk to be so beautiful. And by +your leave, you'll not quit us thus unceremoniously, Master Osric. I am by +way of being a friend of your brother's, and 'tis more than possible that +he may during the evening honor us with his presence. Will you not linger +awhile on the off-chance?" And Osric Allonby admitted he had no other +engagements. + +He was in due form made known to the three gentlemen--Colonel Denstroude, +[Footnote: He and Vanringham had just been reconciled by Molly Yates' +elopement with Tom Stoach, the Colonel's footman. Garendon has a curious +anecdote concerning this lady, apropos of his notorious duel with +Denstroude, in '61.] Mr. Babington-Herle, and Sir Gresley Carne--who sat +over a bowl of punch. Sir Gresley was then permitted to conclude the +narrative which Mr. Allonby's entrance had interrupted: the evening +previous, being a little tipsy, Sir Gresley had strolled about Tunbridge in +search of recreation and, with perhaps excessive playfulness, had slapped +a passer-by, broken the fellow's nose, and gouged both thumbs into the +rascal's eyes. The young baronet conceded the introduction of these London +pastimes into the rural quiet of Tunbridge to have been an error in taste, +especially as the man proved upon inquiry to be a respectable haberdasher +and the sole dependence of four children; and having thus unfortunately +blinded the little tradesman, Sir Gresley wished to ask of the assembled +company what in their opinion was a reasonable reparation. "For I sincerely +regret the entire affair," Sir Gresley concluded, "and am desirous to +follow a course approvable by all men of honor." + +"Heyho!" said Mr. Vanringham, "I'm afraid the rape of both eyes was a +trifle extreme; for by ordinary a haberdasher is neither a potato nor an +Argus, and, remembering that, even the high frivolity of brandy-and-water +should have respected his limitations." + +The hands of Mr. Allonby had screened his face during the recital, "Oh, the +poor man!" he said, "I cannot bear--" And then, with swift alteration, +he tossed back his head, and laughed. "Are we gentlemen to be denied all +amusement? Sir Gresley acted quite within his privilege, and in terming him +severe you have lied, Mr. Vanringham. I repeat, sir, you have lied!" + +Vanringham was on his feet within the instant, but Colonel Denstroude, who +sat beside him, laid a heavy hand upon Vanringham's arm. "'Oons, man," says +the Colonel, "infanticide is a crime." + +The actor shrugged his shoulders, "Doubtless you are in the right, Mr. +Allonby," he said; "though, as you were of course going on to remark, you +express yourself somewhat obscurely. Your meaning, I take it, is that I +mayn't criticise the doings, of my guests? I stand corrected, and concede +Sir Gresley acted with commendable moderation, and that Cambridge is, +beyond question, the paramount expositor of morals and manners." + +The lad stared about him: with a bewildered face. "La, will he not fight me +now?" he demanded of Colonel Denstroude,--"now, after I have called him a +liar?" + +"My dear," the Colonel retorted, "he may possibly deprive you of your +nursing-bottle, or he may even birch you, but he will most assuredly not +fight you, so long as I have any say in the affair. I' cod, we are all +friends here, I hope. D'ye think Mr. Vanringham has so often enacted +Richard III. that to strangle infants is habitual with him? Fight you, +indeed! 'Sdeath and devils!" roared the Colonel, "I will cut the throat of +any man who dares to speak of fighting in this amicable company! Gi'me some +more punch," said the Colonel. + +And thereupon in silence Mr. Allonby resumed his seat. + +Now, to relieve the somewhat awkward tension, Mr. Vanringham cried: "So +being neighborly again, let us think no more of the recent difference in +opinion. Pay your damned haberdasher what you like, Gresley; or, rather, +let Osric here fix the remuneration. I confess to all and sundry," he +added, with a smile, "that I daren't say another word in the matter. +Frankly, I'm afraid of this youngster. He breathes fire like Ætna." + +"He is a lad of spirit," said Mr. Babington-Herle, with an extreme +sobriety. "He's a lad eshtrornary spirit. Let's have game hazard." + +"Agreed, good sir," said Vanringham, "and I warn you, you will find me a +daring antagonist. I had to-day an extraordinary--the usual prejudice, +my dear Herle, is, I believe, somewhat inclined to that pronunciation of +the word,--the most extraordinary windfall. I am rich, and I protest King +Croesus himself sha'n't intimidate me to-night. Come!" he cried, and he +drew from his pocket a plump purse and emptied its contents upon the table; +"come, lay your wager!" + +"Hell and furies," the Colonel groaned, "there's that tomfool boy again! +Gi'me some more punch." + +For Osric Allonby had risen to his feet and had swept the littered gold +and notes toward him. He stood thus, his pink-tipped fingers caressing +the money, while his eyes fixed those of Mr. Vanringham. "And the chief +priests," observed Osric Allonby, "took the silver pieces and said, 'It is +not lawful for to put them into the treasury, because it is the price of +blood.' Are they, then, fit to be touched by gentlemen, Mr.--ah, but I +forget your given name?" + +Vanringham, too, had risen, his face changed. "My sponsors in baptism were +pleased to christen me Francis." + +"I entreat your pardon," the boy drawled, "but I have the oddest fancies. +I had thought it was Judas." And so they stood, warily regarding each the +other, very much as strange dogs are wont to do at meeting. + +"Boy is drunk," Mr. Babington-Herle explained at large, "and presents to +pitying eye of disinterested spectator most deplorable results incidental +to combination of immaturity and brandy. As to money, now, in Suetonius--" +And he launched upon a hiccough-punctuated anecdote of Vespasian, which to +record here is not convenient. "And moral of it is," Mr. Babington-Herle +perorated, "that all money is always fine thing to have. _Non olet!_ +Classical scholar, by Jove! Now let's have game hazard." + +Meanwhile those two had stood like statues. Vanringham seemed +half-frightened, half persuaded that this unaccountable boy spoke at +random. Talk, either way, the actor knew, was dangerous.... + +"I ask your forgiveness, gentlemen," said Francis Vanringham, "but I'm +suddenly ill. If you'll permit me to retire--" + +"Not at all," said. Mr. Babington-Herle; "late in evening, as it is. We +will go,--Colonel and old Carne and I will go kill watchman. Persevorate +him, by Jove,--like sieve." + +"I thank you," said Mr. Vanringham, withdrawing up the stairway toward his +bedroom. "I thank you. Mr. Allonby," he called, in a firmer tone, "you and +I have had some words together and you were the aggressor. Oho, I think we +may pass it over. I think--" + +Below, the four gentlemen were unhooking their swords from the wall. Mr. +Allonby now smiled with cherubic sweetness. "I, too," said he, "think that +all our differences might be arranged by ten minutes' private talk." He +came back, came up the stairs. "You had left your sword," he said to Mr. +Vanringham, "but I fetched it, you see." + +Vanringham stared, his lips working oddly. "I am no Siegfried," said he, +"and ordinarily my bedfellow is not cold and--deplorable defect in such +capacity!--somewhat unsympathetic steel." + +"But you forget," the boy urged, "that the room is public. And see, the +hilt is set with jewels. Ah, Mr. Vanringham, let us beware how we lead +others into temptation--" The door closed behind them. + + +VI + +Said Mr. Babington-Herle, judicially, "That's eshtrornary boy--most +eshtrornary boy, and precisely unlike brother." + +"You must remember," the Colonel pointed out, "that since his marriage +Gerald is a reformed man; he has quite given up punks and hazard, they say, +for beer and cattle-raising." + +"Well, but it is a sad thing to have a spirited tall rogue turn pimp to +balls and rams, and Mrs. Lascelles will be inconsolable," Sir Gresley +considered.--"Hey, what's that? Did you not hear a noise up-stairs?" + +"I do not think," said the Colonel, "that Mallison finds her so.--Yes, +i'cod! I suppose that tipsy boy has turned over a table." + +"But you astound me," Sir Gresley interrupted. "The constant Mallison, of +all persons!" + +"Nevertheless, my dear, they assure me that he has made over to her the +heart and lodgings until lately occupied by Mrs. Roydon--Oh, the devil!" +cried Colonel Denstroude, "they are fighting above!" + +"Good for Frank!" observed Mr. Babington-Herle. "Hip-hip! Stick young +rascal! Persevorate him, by Jove!" + +But the other men had run hastily up the stairway and were battering at +the door of Vanringham's chamber. "Locked!" said the Colonel. "Oh, the +unutterable cur! Open, open, I tell you, Vanringham! By God, I'll have your +blood for this if you have hurt the boy!" + +"Break in the door!" said a voice from below. The Colonel paused in his +objurgations, and found that the Duke of Ormskirk, followed by four +attendants, had entered the hallway of the _Three Gudgeons_. "Benyon," said +the Duke, more sharply, and wheeled upon his men, "you have had my orders, +I believe. Break in yonder door!" + +This was done. They found Mr. Francis Vanringham upon the hearthrug a +tousled heap of flesh and finery, insensible, with his mouth gaping, +in a great puddle of blood. To the rear of the room was a boy in +pink-and-silver, beside the writing-desk he had just got into with the +co-operation of a poker. Hugged to his breast he held a brown despatch-box. + +Ormskirk strode toward the boy and with an inhalation paused. The Duke +stood tense for a moment. Then silently he knelt beside the prostrate actor +and inspected Vanringham's injury. "You have killed him," the Duke said at +last. + +"I think so," said the boy. "But 'twas in fair fight." + +The Duke rose. "Benyon," he rapped out, "do you and Minchin take this body +to the room below. Let a surgeon be sent for. Bring word if he find any +sign of life. Gentlemen, I must ask you to avoid the chamber. This is a +state matter. I am responsible for yonder person." + +"Then your Grace is responsible for perfectly irresponsible young villain!" +said Mr. Babington-Herle. "He's murderer Frank Vanringham, of poor dear +Frank, like a brother to me, by Jove! Hang him high's Haman, your Grace, +and then we'll have another bottle." + +"Colonel Denstroude," said the Duke, "I will ask you to assist your friend +in retiring. The stairs are steep, and his conviviality, I fear, has by a +pint or so exceeded his capacity. And in fine--I wish you a good-evening, +gentlemen." + + +VII + +Ormskirk closed the door; then he turned, "I lack words," the Duke said. +"Oh, believe me, speech fails before this spectacle. To find you, here, +at this hour! To find you--my betrothed wife's kinswoman and life-long +associate,--here, in this garb! A slain man at your feet, his blood yet +reeking upon that stolen sword! His papers--pardon me!" + +Ormskirk sprang forward and caught the despatch-box from her grasp as she +strove to empty its contents into the fire. "Pardon me," he repeated; +"you have unsexed yourself; do not add high treason to the list of your +misdemeanors. Mr. Vanringham's papers, as I have previously had the honor +to inform you, are the state's property." + +She stood with void and inefficient hands that groped vaguely. "I could +trust no one," she said. "I have fenced so often with Gerald. I was not +afraid--at least, I was not very much afraid.. And 'twas so difficult to +draw him into a quarrel,--he wanted to live, because at last he had the +money his dirty little soul had craved. Ah, I had sacrificed so many things +to get these papers, my Lord Duke,--and now you rob me of them. You!" + +The Duke bent pitiless brows upon her. "I rob you of them," he said,--"ay, +I am discourteous and I rob, but not for myself alone. For your confusion +tells me that I hold here between my hands the salvation of England. Child, +child!" he cried, in sudden tenderness, "I trusted you to-day, and could +you not trust me? I promised you the life of the man you love. I promised +you--" He broke off, as if in a rivalry of rage and horror. "And you +betrayed me! You came hither, trousered and shameless, to save these +hare-brained traitors! Well, but at worst your treachery has very happily +released me from my promise to meddle in the fate of this Audaine. I shall +not lift a finger now. And I warn you that within the week your precious +Captain will have become the associate of seraphim." + +She had heard him, with defiant eyes; her head was flung back and she +laughed. "You thought I had come to destroy the Jacobite petition! Heavens, +what had I to do with all such nonsense? You had promised me Frank's +pardon, and the other men I had never seen. Harkee, my Lord Duke, do all +you politicians jump so wildly in your guess work? Did you in truth believe +that the poor fool who lies dead below would have entrusted the paper which +meant life and wealth to the keeping of a flimsy despatch-box?" + +"Indeed, no," his Grace of Ormskirk replied, and appeared a thought +abashed; "I was certain it would be concealed somewhere about his person, +and I have already given Benyon orders to search for it. Still, I confess +that for the moment your agitation misled me into believing these were +the important papers; and I admit, my dear creature, that unless you came +hither prompted by a mad design somehow to destroy the incriminating +documents and thereby to ensure your lover's life--why, otherwise, I +repeat, I am quite unable to divine your motive." + +She was silent for a while. Presently, "You told me this afternoon," she +began, in a dull voice, "that you anticipated much amusement from your +perusal of Mr. Vanringham's correspondence. All his papers were to be +seized, you said; and they all were to be brought to you, you said. And so +many love-sick misses write to actors, you said." + +"As I recall the conversation," his Grace conceded, "that which you have +stated is quite true." He spoke with admirable languor, but his countenance +was vaguely troubled. + +And now the girl came to him and laid her finger-tips ever so lightly upon +his. "Trust me," she pleaded. "Give me again the trust I have not merited. +Ay, in spite of reason, my Lord Duke, restore to me these papers unread, +that I may destroy them. For otherwise, I swear to you that without gain +to yourself--without gain, O God!--you wreck alike the happiness of an +innocent woman and of an honest gentleman. And otherwise--O infatuate!" she +wailed, and wrung impotent hands. + +But Ormskirk shook his head. "I cannot leap in the dark." + +She found no comfort in his face, and presently lowered her eyes. He +remained motionless. The girl went to the farther end of the apartment, and +then, her form straightening on a sudden, turned and came back toward him. + +"I think God has some grudge against you," Dorothy said, without any +emotion, "and--hardens your heart, as of old He hardened Pharaoh's heart, +to your own destruction. I have done my utmost to save you. My woman's +modesty I have put aside, and death and worse than death I have dared to +encounter to-night,--ah, my Lord, I have walked through hell this night for +your sake and another's. And in the end 'tis yourself who rob me of what I +had so nearly gained. Beyond doubt God has some grudge against you. Take +your fate, then." + +"_Integer vitæ_--" said the Duke of Ormskirk; and with more acerbity, "Go +on!" For momentarily she had paused. + +"The man who lies dead below was loved by many women. God pity them! But +women are not sensible like men, you know. And always the footlights made a +halo about him; and when you saw him as Castalio or Romeo, all beauty and +love and vigor and nobility, how was a woman to understand his splendor was +a sham, taken off with his wig, removed with his pinchbeck jewelry, and as +false? No, they thought it native, poor wretches. Yet one of them at least, +my Lord--a young girl--found out her error before it was too late. The man +was a villain through and through. God grant he sups in hell to-night!" + +"Go on," said Ormskirk. But by this time he knew all that she had to tell. + +"Afterward he demanded money of her. He had letters, you understand--mad, +foolish letters,--and these he offered to sell back to her at his own +price. And their publicity meant ruin. And, my Lord, we had so nearly saved +the money--pinching day by day, a little by a little, for his price was +very high, and it was necessary the sum be got in secrecy,--and that in the +end they should be read by you--" Her voice broke. + +"Go on," said Ormskirk. + +But her composure was shattered. "I would have given my life to save her," +the girl babbled. "Ah, you know that I have tried to save her. I was not +very much afraid. And it seemed the only way. So I came hither, my Lord, as +you see me, to get back the letters before you, too, had come." + +"There is but one woman in the world," the Duke said, quietly, "for whom +you would have done this thing. You and Marian were reared together. Always +you have been inseparable, always you have been to each other as sisters. +Is this not what you are about to tell me?" + +"Yes," she answered. + +"Well, you may spare yourself the pains of such unprofitable lying. That +Marian Heleigh should have been guilty of a vulgar _liaison_ with, an actor +is to me, who know her, unthinkable. No, madam! It was fear, not love, +which drove you hither to-night, and now a baser terror urges you to screen +yourself by vilifying her. The woman of whom you speak is yourself. The +letters were written by you." + +She raised one arm as though a physical blow impended. "No, no!" she cried. + +"Madam," the Duke said, "let us have done with these dexterities. I +have the vanity to believe I am not unreasonably obtuse--nor, I submit, +unreasonably self-righteous. Love is a monstrous force, as irrational, I +sometimes think, as the force of the thunderbolt; it appears neither to +select nor to eschew, but merely to strike; and it is not my duty to +asperse or to commend its victims. You have loved unworthily. From the +bottom of my heart I pity you, and I would that you had trusted me--had +trusted me enough--" His voice was not quite steady. "Ah, my dear," said +Ormskirk, "you should have confided all to me this afternoon. It hurts me +that you did not, for I am no Pharisee and--God knows!--my own past is not +immaculate. I would have understood, I think. Yet as it is, take back your +letters, child,--nay, in Heaven's name, take them in pledge of an old man's +love for Dorothy Allonby." + +The girl obeyed, turning them in her hands, the while that her eyes were +riveted to Ormskirk's face. And in Aprilian fashion she began to smile +through her tears. "You are superb, my Lord Duke. You comprehend that +Marian wrote these letters, and that if you read them--and I knew of +it,--your pride would force you to break off the match, because your +notions as to what is befitting in a Duchess of Ormskirk are precise. But +you want Marian, you want her even more than I had feared. Therefore, you +give me all these letters, because you know that I will destroy them, and +thus an inconvenient knowledge will be spared you. Oh, beyond doubt, you +are superb." + +"I give them to you," Ormskirk answered, "because I have seen through your +cowardly and clumsy lie, and have only pity for a thing so base as you. I +give them to you because to read one syllable of their contents would be to +admit I had some faith in your preposterous fabrication." + +But she shook her head. "Words, words, my Lord Duke! I understand you to +the marrow. And, in part, I think that I admire you." + +He was angry now. "Eh! for the love of God," cried the Duke of Ormskirk, +"let us burn the accursed things and have no more verbiage!" He seized the +papers and flung them into the fire. + +Then these two watched the papers consume to ashes, and stood a while +in silence, the gaze of neither lifting higher than the andirons; and +presently there was a tapping at the door. + +"That will be Benyon," the Duke said, with careful modulations. "Enter, +man! What news is there of this Vanringham?" + +"He will recover, your Grace, though he has lost much blood. Mr. Vanringham +has regained consciousness and took occasion to whisper me your Grace would +find the needful papers in his escritoire, in the brown despatch-box." + +"That is well," the Duke retorted, "You may go, Benyon." And when the +door had closed, he began, incuriously: "Then you are not a murderess at +least, Miss Allonby. At least--" He made a queer noise as he gazed, at the +despatch-box in his hand. "The brown box!" It fell to the floor. Ormskirk +drew near to her, staring, moving stiffly like a hinged toy, "I must have +the truth," he said, without a trace of any human passion. This was the +Ormskirk men had known in Scotland. + +"Yes," she answered, "they were the Jacobite papers. You burned them." + +"I!" said the Duke. + +Presently he said: "Do you not understand what this farce has cost? Thanks +to you, I have no iota of proof against these men. I cannot touch these +rebels. O madam, I pray Heaven that you have not by this night's trickery +destroyed England!" + +"I did it to save the man I love," she proudly said. + +"I had promised you his life." + +"But would you have kept that promise?" + +"No," he answered, simply. + +"Then are we quits, my Lord. You lied to me, and I to you. Oh, I know +that were I a man you would kill me within the moment. But you respect my +womanhood. Ah, goodness!" the girl cried, shrilly, "what very edifying +respect for womanhood have you, who burned those papers because you +believed my dearest Marian had stooped to a painted mountebank!" + +"I burned them--yes, in the belief that I was saving you." + +She laughed in his face. "You never believed that,--not for an instant." + +But by this time Ormskirk had regained his composure. "The hour is somewhat +late, and the discussion--if you will pardon the suggestion,--not likely to +be profitable. The upshot of the whole matter is that I am now powerless to +harm anybody--I submit the simile of the fangless snake,--and that Captain +Audaine will have his release in the morning. Accordingly you will now +permit me to wish you a pleasant night's rest. Benyon!" he called, "you +will escort Mr. Osric Allonby homeward. I remain to clear up this affair." + +He held open the door for her, and, bowing, stood aside that she might +pass. + + +VIII + +But afterward the great Duke of Ormskirk continued for a long while +motionless and faintly smiling as he gazed into the fire. Tricked and +ignominiously defeated! Ay, but that was a trifle now, scarcely worthy of +consideration. The girl had hoodwinked him, had lied more skilfully than +he, yet in the fact that she had lied he found a prodigal atonement. Whigs +and Jacobites might have their uses in the cosmic scheme, he reflected, as +house-flies have, but what really mattered was that at Halvergate yonder +Marian awaited his coming. And in place of statecraft he fell to thinking +of two hazel eyes and of abundant hair the color of a dead oak-leaf. + + + + +VI + +APRIL'S MESSAGE + + +_As Played at Halvergate House, April 9, 1750_ + + "_You cannot love, nor pleasure take, nor give, + But life begin when 'tis too late to live. + On a tired courser you pursue delight, + Let slip your morning, and set out at night. + If you have lived, take thankfully the past; + Make, as you can, the sweet remembrance last. + If you have not enjoyed what youth could give, + But life sunk through you, like a leaky sieve._" + + +DRAMATIS PERSONÆ + +DUKE OF ORMSKIKK. + +EARL OF BRUDENEL, father to Lady Marian Heleigh, who +has retired sometime into the country. + +LORD HUMPHREY DEGGE, a gamester, and Ormskirk's +hireling. + +MR. LANGTON, secretary to Ormskirk. + +LADY MARIAN HELEIGH, betrothed to Ormskirk, a young, +beautiful girl of a mild and tender disposition. + + +SCENE + +The east terrace of Halvergate House. + + + + +APRIL'S MESSAGE + + +_PROEM:--Apologia pro Auctore_ + +It occurs to me that we here assume intimacy with a man of unusual +achievement, and therefore tread upon quaggy premises. Yet I do but avail +myself of to-day's privilege.... It is an odd thing that people will +facilely assent to Don Adriano's protestation against a certain travestying +of Hector,--"Sweet chucks, beat not the bones of the dead, for when he +breathed he was a man,"--even while through the instant the tide of romance +will be setting quite otherwhither, with their condonation. For in all +the best approved romances the more sumptuous persons of antiquity are +very guilty of twaddle on at least one printed page in ten, and nobody +remonstrates; and here is John Bulmer, too, lugged from the grave for your +delectation. + +I presume, however, to palliate the offence. The curious may find the gist +of what I narrate concerning Ormskirk in Heinrich Löwe's biography of the +man, and will there discover that with established facts I have not made +bold to juggle. Only when knowledge failed have I bridged the void with +speculation. Perhaps I have guessed wrongly: the feat is not unhuman, and +in provision against detection therein I can only protest that this lack of +omniscience was never due to malice; faithfully I have endeavored to deduce +from the known the probable, and in nothing to misrepresent to you this big +man of a little age, this trout among a school of minnows. + +Trout, mark you; I claim for Ormskirk no leviathan-ship. Rather I would +remind you of a passage from somewhat anterior memoirs: "The Emperor of +Lilliput is taller, by almost the breadth of my nail, than any of his +court, which alone is enough to strike an awe into his beholders." + +This, however, is not the place to expatiate on Ormskirk's extraordinary +career; his rise from penury and obscurity, tempered indeed by gentle +birth, to the priviest secrets of his Majesty's council,--climbing +the peerage step by step, as though that institution had been a +garden-ladder,--may be read of in the history books. + +"I collect titles as an entomologist does butterflies," he is recorded to +have said: "and I find the gaudier ones the cheapest. My barony I got for +a very heinous piece of perjury, my earldom for not running away until the +latter end of a certain battle, my marquisate for hoodwinking a half-senile +Frenchman, and my dukedom for fetching in a quack doctor when he was sore +needed by a lady whom the King at that time delighted to honor." + +It was, you observe, a day of candors. + + +I + +The Duke of Ormskirk, then (one gleans from Löwe's pages), dismissed from +mind the Audaine conspiracy. It was a pity to miss the salutary effect of a +few political executions just then, but after all there was nothing to be +done about it. So the Duke turned to the one consolation offered by the +affair, and set out for Halvergate House, the home of Marian Heleigh's +father. There one finds him, six days later, deep in a consultation with +his secretary, which in consideration of the unseasonable warmth was held +upon the east terrace. + +"Yes, I think we had better have the fellow hanged on the thirteenth," said +Ormskirk, as he leisurely affixed his signature. "The date seems eminently +appropriate. Now the papers concerning the French treaty, if you please, +Mr. Langton." + +The impassive-faced young man who sat opposite placed a despatch-box +between them. "These were sent down from London only last night, sir. +Mr. Morfit [Footnote: Perhaps the most adroit of all the many spies in +Ormskirk's employment. It was this same Morfit who in 1756 accompanied +Damiens into France as far as Calais; and see page 16.] has been somewhat +dilatory." + +"Eh, it scarcely matters. I looked them over in bed this morning and found +them quite correct, Mr. Langton, quite--Why, heyday!" the Duke demanded, +"what's this? You have brought me the despatch-box from my dresser--not, +as I distinctly told you, from the table by my bed. Nay, I have had quite +enough of mistakes concerning despatch-boxes, Mr. Langton." + +Mr. Langton stammered that the error was natural. Two despatch-boxes were +in appearances so similar-- + +"Never make excuses, Mr. Langton. '_Qui s'excuse--_' You can complete the +proverb, I suppose. Bring me Morfit's report this afternoon, then. Yes, +that appears to be all. You may go now, Mr. Langton. No, you may leave that +box, I think, since it is here. O man, man, a mistake isn't high treason! +Go away, Mr. Langton! you annoy me." + +Left alone, the Duke of Ormskirk sat for a while, tapping his fingers +irresolutely against the open despatch-box. He frowned a little, for, with +fair reason to believe Tom Langton his son, he found the boy too stolid, +too unimaginative, to go far. It seemed to Ormskirk that none of his +illegitimate children displayed any particular promise, and he sighed. Then +he took a paper from the despatch-box, and began to read. + +He sat, as one had said, upon the east terrace of Halvergate House. Behind +him a tall yew-hedge shut off the sunlight from the table where he and +Tom Langton had earlier completed divers businesses; in front of him a +balustrade, ivy-covered, and set with flower-pots of stone, empty as yet, +half screened the terraced gardens that sank to the artificial lake below. + +The Duke could see only a vast expanse of sky and a stray bit of Halvergate +printing the horizon with turrets, all sober gray save where the two +big copper cupolas of the south façade burned in the April sun; but by +bending forward you glimpsed close-shaven lawns dotted with clipped trees +and statues,--as though, he reflected, Glumdalclitch had left her toys +scattered haphazard about a green blanket--and the white of the broad +marble stairway descending to the sunlit lake, and, at times, the flash +of a swan's deliberate passage across the lake's surface. All white and +green and blue the vista was, and of a monastic tranquillity, save for +the plashing of a fountain behind the yew-hedge and the grumblings of an +occasional bee that lurched complainingly on some by-errand of the hive. + +Presently his Grace of Ormskirk replaced the papers in the despatch-box, +and, leaning forward, sighed. "_Non_ _sum qualis eram sub bonæ regno +Cynaræ_," said his Grace of Ormskirk. He had a statesman-like partiality +for the fag-end of an alcaic. + +Then he lifted his head at the sound of a girl's voice. Somewhere rearward +to the hedge the girl idly sang--an old song of Thomas Heywood's,--in a +serene contralto, low-pitched and effortless, but very sweet. Smilingly the +Duke beat time. + +Sang the girl: + + "Pack clouds away, and welcome, day! + With night we banish sorrow: + Sweet air, blow soft; mount, lark, aloft, + To give my love good-morrow. + Wings from the wind to please her mind, + Notes from the lark I'll borrow: + Bird, prune thy wing; nightingale, sing, + To give my love good-morrow." + +And here the Duke chimed in with a sufficiently pleasing baritone: + + "To give my love good-morrow, + Notes from them all I'll borrow." + +"O heavens!" spoke the possessor of the contralto, "I would have thought +you were far too busy sending people to gaol and arranging their execution, +and so on, to have any time for music. I am going for a walk in the forest, +Jack." Considering for a moment, she added, "You may come, too, if you +like." + +But the concession was made so half-heartedly that in the instant the +Duke of Ormskirk raised a dissenting hand. "I would not annoy you for an +emperor's ransom. Go in peace, my child." + +Lady Marian Heleigh stood at an opening in the yew-hedge and regarded him +for a lengthy interval in silence. Slender, men called her, and women "a +bean pole." There was about her a great deal of the child and something of +the wood-nymph. She had abundant hair, the color of a dead oak-leaf, and +her skin was clear, with a brown tinge. Her eyes puzzled you by being +neither brown nor green consistently; no sooner had you convicted them of +verdancy than they shifted to the hue of polished maple, and vice versa; +but they were too large for her face, which narrowed rather abruptly +beneath a broad, low forehead, and they flavored her aspect with the shrewd +innocence of a kitten. She was by ordinary grave; but, animated, her +countenance quickened with somewhat the glow of a brown diamond; then her +generous eyes flashed and filmed like waters moving under starlight, then +you knew she was beautiful. All in all, you saw in Marian a woman designed +to be petted, a Columbine rather than a Cleopatra; her lures would never +shake the stability of a kingdom, but would inevitably gut its toy-shops; +and her departure left you meditative less of high enterprises than of +buying something for her. + +Now Marian considered her betrothed, and seemed to come at last to a +conclusion that skirted platitude. "Jack, two people can be fond of each +other without wanting to be together all the time. And I really am fond of +you, Jack." + +"I would be a fool if I questioned the first statement," rejoined the Duke; +"and if I questioned the second, very miserable. Nevertheless, you go in +pursuit of strange gods, and I decline to follow." + +Her eyebrows interrogated him. + +"You are going," the Duke continued, "in pursuit of gods beside whom I +esteem Zidonian Ashtoreth, and Chemosh, and Milcom, the abomination of +the Ammonites, to be commendable objects of worship. You will pardon my +pedantic display of learning, for my feelings are strong. You are going +to sit in the woods. You will probably sit under a youngish tree, and its +branches will sway almost to the ground and make a green, sun-steeped tent +about you, as though you sat at the heart of an emerald. You will hear the +kindly wood-gods go steathily about the forest, and you will know that they +are watching you, but you will never see them. From behind every tree-bole +they will watch you; you feel it, but you never, never quite see them. +Presently the sweet, warm odors of the place and its perpetual whispering +and the illimitably idiotic boasting of the birds,--that any living +creature should be proud of having constructed one of their nasty little +nests is a reflection to baffle understanding,--this hodge-podge of +sensations, I say, will intoxicate you. Yes, it will thoroughly intoxicate +you, Marian, and you sit there quite still, in a sort of stupor, drugged +into the inebriate's magnanimity, firmly believing that the remainder of +your life will be throughout of finer texture,--earth-spurning, free from +all pettiness, and at worst vexed only by the noblest sorrows. Bah!" cried +the Duke; "I have no patience with such nonsense! You will believe it to +the tiniest syllable, that wonderful lying message which April whispers to +every living creature that is young,--then you will return to me, a slim, +star-eyed Mænad, and will see that I am wrinkled. But do you go your ways, +none the less, for April is waiting for you yonder,--beautiful, mendacious, +splendid April. And I? Faith, April has no message for me, my dear." + +He laughed, but with a touch of wistfulness; and the girl came to him, +laying her hand upon his arm, surprised into a sort of hesitant affection. + +"How did you know, Jack? How did you, know that--things, invisible, +gracious things, went about the spring woods? I never thought that you knew +of them. You always seemed so sensible. I have reasoned it out, though," +Marian went on, sagaciously wrinkled as to the brow. "They are probably the +heathen fauns and satyrs and such,--one feels somehow that they are all +men. Don't you, Jack? Well, when the elder gods were sent packing from +Olympus there was naturally no employment left for these sylvan folk. So +April took them into her service. Each year she sends them about every +forest on her errands: she sends them to make up daffodil-cups, for +instance, which I suppose is difficult, for evidently they make them out +of sunshine; or to pencil the eyelids of the narcissi--narcissi are brazen +creatures, Jack, and use a deal of kohl; or to marshal the fleecy young +clouds about the sky; or to whistle the birds up from the south. Oh, she +keeps them busy, does April! And 'tis true that if you be quite still you +can hear them tripping among the dead leaves; and they watch you--with +very bright, twinkling little eyes, I think,--but you never see them. +And always, always there is that enormous whispering,--half-friendly, +half-menacing,--as if the woods were trying to tell you something. 'Tis +not only the foliage rustling.... No, I have often thought it sounded like +some gigantic foreigner--some Titan probably,--trying in his own queer +and outlandish language to tell you something very important, something +that means a deal to you, and to you in particular. Has not anybody ever +understood him?" + +He smiled. "And I, too, have dwelt in Arcadia," said his Grace of Ormskirk. +"Yes, I once heard April's message, Marian, for all my crow's-feet. But +that was a long while ago, and perhaps I have forgotten it. I cannot tell, +my dear. It is only from April in her own person that one hears this +immemorial message. And as for me? Eh, I go into the April woods, and I +find trees there of various sizes that pay no attention to me, and shrill, +dingy little birds that deafen me, and it may be a gaudy flower or two, +and, in any event, I find a vast quantity of sodden, decaying leaves to +warn me the place is no fitting haunt for a gentleman afflicted with +rheumatism. So I come away, my dear." + +Marian looked him over for a moment. "You are not really old," she said, +with rather conscious politeness. "And you are wonderfully well-preserved. +Why, Jack, do you mind--not being foolish?" she demanded, on a sudden. + +He debated the matter. Then, "Yes," the Duke of Ormskirk conceded, "I +suppose I do, at the bottom of my heart, regret that lost folly. A part +of me died, you understand, when it vanished, and it is not exhilarating +to think of one's self as even partially dead. Once--I hardly know"--he +sought the phrase,--"once this was a spacious and inexplicable world, with +a mystery up every lane and an adventure around each street-corner; a +world inhabited by most marvelous men and women,--some amiable, and some +detestable, but every one of them very interesting. And now I miss the +wonder of it all. You will presently discover, my dear, that youth is only +an ingenious prologue to whet one's appetite for a rather dull play. Eh, I +am no pessimist,--one may still find satisfaction in the exercise of mind +and body, in the pleasures of thought and taste and in other titillations +of one's faculties. Dinner is good and sleep, too, is excellent. But we men +and women tend, upon too close inspection, to appear rather paltry flies +that buzz and bustle aimlessly about, and breed perhaps, and eventually +die, and rot, and are swept away from this fragile window-pane of time that +opens on eternity." + +"If you are, indeed, the sort of person you describe," said Marian, +reflectively, "I do not at all blame April for having no communication with +anyone possessed of such extremely unpleasant opinions. But for my own +part, I shall never cease to wonder what it is that the woods whisper +about." + +Appraising her, he hazarded a cryptic question, "Vase of delights, and have +you never--cared?" + +"Why, yes, I think so," she answered, readily enough. "At least, I used +to be very fond of Humphrey Degge,--that is the Marquis of Venour's place +yonder, you know, just past the spur of the forest,--but he was only a +younger son, so of course Father wouldn't hear of it. That was rather +fortunate, as Humphrey by and by went mad about Dorothy's blue eyes and +fine shape,--I think her money had a deal to do with it, too, and in any +event, she will be fat as a pig at thirty,--and so we quarrelled. And I +minded it--at first. And now--well, I scarcely know." Marian hesitated. "He +was a handsome man, but that ridiculous cavalry moustache of his was so +bristly--" + +"I beg your pardon?" said the Duke. + +"--that it disfigured him dreadfully," said she, with firmness. She had +colored. + +His Grace of Ormskirk was moved to mirth. "Child, child, you are so +deliciously young it appears a monstrous crime to marry you to an old +fellow like me!" He took her firm, soft hand in his. "Are you quite sure +you can endure me, Marian?" + +"Why, but of course I want to marry you," she said, naïvely surprised. "How +else could I be Duchess of Ormskirk?" + +Again he chuckled. "You are a worldly little wretch," he stated; "but if +you want my title for a new toy, it is at your service. And now be off with +you,--you and your foolish woods, indeed!" + +Marian went a slight distance and then turned about, troubled. "I am really +very fond of you, Jack," she said, conscientiously. + +"Be off with you!" the Duke scolded. "You should be ashamed of yourself to +practice such flatteries and blandishments on a defenceless old gentleman. +You had best hurry, too, for if you don't I shall probably kiss you," he +threatened. "I, also," he added, with point. + +She blew him a kiss from her finger-tips and went away singing. + +Sang Marian: + + "Blackbird and thrush, in every bush, + Stare, linnet, and cock-sparrow, + You pretty elves, amongst yourselves, + Sing my fair love good-morrow. + To give my love good-morrow, + Sing birds, in every furrow." + + +II + +Left to his own resources, the Duke of Ormskirk sat down beside the table +and fell to making irrelevant marks upon a bit of paper. He hummed the air +of Marian's song. There was a vague contention in his face. Once he put +out his hand toward the open despatch-box, but immediately he sighed and +pushed, it farther from him. Presently he propped his chin upon both hands +and stayed in the attitude for a long while, staring past the balustrade at +the clear, pale sky of April. + +Thus Marian's father, the Earl of Brudenel, found Ormskirk. The Earl +was lean and gray, though only three years older than his prospective +son-in-law, and had been Ormskirk's intimate since boyhood. Ormskirk had +for Lord Brudenel's society the liking that a successful person usually +preserves for posturing in the gaze of his outrivalled school-fellows: +Brudenel was an embodied and flattering commentary as to what a less able +man might make of chances far more auspicious than Ormskirk ever enjoyed. +All failure the Earl's life had been; in London they had long ago forgotten +handsome Harry Heleigh and the composure with which he nightly shoved his +dwindling patrimony across the gaming-table; about Halvergate men called +him "the muddled Earl," and said of him that his heart died, with his young +wife some eighteen years back. Now he vegetated in the home of his fathers, +contentedly, a veteran of life, retaining still a mild pride in his past +vagaries; [Footnote: It was then well said of him by Claridge, "It is +Lord Henry Heleigh's vanity to show that he is a man of pleasure as well +as of business; and thus, in settlement, the expedition he displays +toward a fellow-gambler is equitably balanced by his tardiness toward +a too-credulous shoemaker."] and kindly time had armed him with the +benumbing, impenetrable indifference of the confessed failure. He was +abstractedly courteous to servants, and he would not, you felt, have given +even to an emperor his undivided attention. For the rest, the former +wastrel had turned miser, and went noticeably shabby as a rule, but this +morning he was trimly clothed, for he was returning homeward from the +quarter-sessions at Winstead. + +"Dreamer!" said the Earl. "I do not wonder that you grow fat." + +The Duke smiled up at him. "Confound you, Harry!" said he, "I had just +overreached myself into believing I had made what the world calls a mess +of my career and was supremely happy. There are disturbing influences +abroad to-day." He waved his hand toward the green-and-white gardens. "Old +friend, you permit disreputable trespassers about Halvergate. 'See you not +Goldy-locks there, in her yellow gown and green sleeves? the profane pipes, +the tinkling timbrels?' Spring is at her wiles yonder,--Spring, the liar, +the queen-cheat, Spring that tricks all men into happiness." + +"'Fore Gad," the Earl capped his quotation, "if the heathen man could stop +his ears with wax against the singing woman of the sea, then do you the +like with your fingers against the trollop of the forest." + +"Faith, time seals them firmlier than wax. You and I may sit snug now with +never a quicker heart-beat for all her lures. Yet I seem to remember,--once +a long while ago when we old fellows were somewhat sprier,--I, too, seem to +remember this Spring-magic." + +"Indeed," observed the Earl, seating himself ponderously, "if you refer to +a certain inclination at that period of the year toward the likeliest wench +in the neighborhood, so do I. 'Tis an obvious provision of nature, I take +it, to secure the perpetuation of the species. Spring comes, and she sets +us all a-mating--humanity, partridges, poultry, pigs, every blessed one of +us she sets a-mating. Propagation, Jack--propagation is necessary, d'ye +see; because," the Earl conclusively demanded, "what on earth would become +of us if we didn't propagate?" + +"The argument is unanswerable," the Duke conceded. "Yet I miss it,--this +Spring magic that no longer sets the blood of us staid fellows a-fret." + +"And I," said Lord Brudenel, "do not. It got me into the deuce of a scrape +more than once." + +"Yours is the sensible view, no doubt....Yet I miss it. Ah, it is not only +the wenches and the red lips of old years,--it is not only that at this +season lasses' hearts grow tender. There are some verses--" The Duke +quoted, with a half-guilty air: + + "Now I loiter, and dream to the branches swaying + In furtive conference,--high overhead-- + Atingle with rumors that Winter is sped + And over his ruins a world goes Maying. + + "Somewhere--impressively,--people are saying + Intelligent things (which their grandmothers said), + While I loiter, and dream to the branches swaying + In furtive conference, high overhead." + +"Verses!" The Earl snorted. "At your age!" + + "Here the hand of April, unwashed from slaying + Earth's fallen tyrant--for Winter is dead,-- + Uncloses anemones, staining them red: + And her daffodils guard me in squads,--displaying + Intrepid lances lest wisdom tread + Where I loiter and dream to the branches' swaying-- + +"Well, Harry, and to-day I cannot do so any longer. That is what I most +miss,--the ability to lie a-sprawl in the spring grass and dream out an +uncharted world,--a dream so vivid that, beside it, reality grew tenuous, +and the actual world became one of childhood's shrug-provoking bugbears +dimly remembered." + +"I do not understand poetry," the Earl apologetically observed. "It appears +to me unreasonable to advance a statement simply because it happens to +rhyme with a statement you have previously made. And that is what all +you poets do. Why, this is very remarkable," said Lord Brudenel, with a +change of tone; "yonder is young Humphrey Degge with Marian. I had thought +him in bed at Tunbridge. Did I not hear something of an affair with a +house-breaker--?" + +Then the Earl gave an exclamation, for in full view of them Lord Humphrey +Degge was kissing Lord Brudenel's daughter. + +"Oh, the devil!" said the Earl. "Oh, the insolent young ape!" + +"Nay," said the Duke, restraining him; "not particularly insolent, Harry. +If you will observe more closely you will see that Marian does not exactly +object to his caresses--quite the contrary, I would say, I told you that +you should not permit Spring about the premises." + +The Earl wheeled in an extreme of astonishment. "Come, come, sir! she is +your betrothed wife! Do you not intend to kill the fellow?" + +"My faith, why?" said his Grace of Ormskirk, with a shrug. "As for +betrothals, do you not see that she is already very happily paired?" + +In answer Brudenel raised his hands toward heaven, in just the contention +of despair and rage appropriate to parental affection when an excellent +match is imperilled by a chit's idiocy. + +Marian and Lord Humphrey Degge were mounting from the scrap of forest that +juts from Pevis Hill, like a spur from a man's heel, between Agard Court +and Halvergate. Their progress was not conspicuous for celerity. Now they +had attained to the tiny, elm-shadowed plateau beyond the yew-hedge, +and there Marian paused. Two daffodils had fallen from the great +green-and-yellow cluster in her left hand. Humphrey Degge lifted them, +and then raised to his mouth the slender fingers that reached toward the +flowers. The man's pallor, you would have said, was not altogether due to +his recent wound. + +She stood looking up at him, smiling a little timidly, her teeth glinting +through parted lips, her eyes star-fire, her cheeks blazoning gules in his +honor; she seemed not to breathe at all. A faint twinge woke in the Duke +of Ormskirk's heart. Most women smiled upon him, but they smiled beneath +furtive eyes, sometimes beneath rapacious eyes, and many smiled with +reddened lips which strove, uneasily, to provoke a rental; how long was it +he wondered, simply, since any woman had smiled as Marian smiled now, for +him? + +"I think it is a dream," said Marian. + +From the vantage of the yew-hedge, "I would to Heaven I could think so, +too," observed her father. + + +III + +The younger people had passed out of sight. But from the rear of the hedge +came to the Duke and Lord Brudenel, staring blankly at each other across +the paper-littered table, a sort of duet. First tenor, then contralto, then +tenor again,--and so on, with many long intervals of silence, during which +you heard the plashing of the fountain, grown doubly audible, and, it might +be, the sharp, plaintive cry of a bird intensified by the stillness. + +"I think it is a dream," said Marian.... + +"What eyes you have, Marian!" + +"But you have not kissed the littlest finger of all. See, it is quite stiff +with indignation." + +"They are green, and brown, and yellow--O Marian, there are little gold +specks in them like those in _eau de Dantzig_! They are quite wonderful +eyes, Marian. And your hair is all streaky gold-and-brown. You should not +have two colors in your hair, Marian. Marian, did any one ever tell you +that you are very beautiful?" + +Silence. "Pee-weet!" said a bird. "Tweet?" + +And Marian replied: "I am devoted to Dorothy, of course, but I have never +admired her fashion of making advances to every man she meets. Yes, she +does." + +"Nay, 'twas only her money that lured me, to do her justice. It appeared so +very sensible to marry an heiress.... But how can any man be sensible so +long as he is haunted by the memory of your eyes? For see how bright they +are,--see, here in the water. Two stars have fallen into the fountain, +Marian." + +"You are handsomer so. Your nose is too short, but here in the fountain you +are quite handsome--" + +"Marian,--" + +"I wonder how many other women's fingers you have kissed--like that. Ah, +don't tell me, Humphrey! Humphrey, promise me that you will always lie to +me when I ask you about those other women. Lie to me, my dear, and I will +know that you are lying and love you all the better for it.... You should +not have told me about Dorothy. How often did you kiss all of Dorothy's +finger-tips one by one, in just that foolish, dear way?" + +"But who was this Dorothy you speak of, Marian? I have forgotten. Oh, +yes--we quarrelled--over some woman,--and I went away. I left you for a +mere heiress, Marian. You! And five days, ago while I lay abed, wounded, +they told me that you, were to marry Ormskirk. I thought I would go mad.... +Eh, I remember now. But what do these things matter? Is it not of far +greater importance that the sunlight turns your hair to pure topaz?" + +"Ah, my hair, my eyes! Is it these you care for? You would not love me, +then, if I were old and ugly?" + +"Eh,--I love you." + +"Animal!" + +There was a longer silence now. "Tweet!" said a bird, pertly. + +Then Marian said, "Let us go to my father." + +"To tell him--?" + +"Why, that I love you, I suppose, and that I cannot marry Jack, not even +to be a duchess. Oh, I did so much want to be a duchess! But when you came +back to me yonder in the forest, somehow I stopped wanting anything more. +Something--I hardly know--something seemed to say, as you came striding +through the dead leaves, laughing and so very pale,--something seemed to +say, 'You love him'--oh, quite audibly." + +"Audibly! Why, the woods whispered it, the birds trilled it, screamed +it, the very leaves underfoot crackled assent. Only they said, 'You love +her--the girl yonder with glad, frightened eyes, Spring's daughter.' Oh, I +too, heard it, Marian! 'Follow,' the birds sang, 'follow, follow, follow, +for yonder is the heart's desire!" + +The Duke of Ormskirk raised his head, his lips sketching a whistle. "Ah! +ah!" he muttered. "Eureka! I have recaptured it--the message of April." + + +IV + +When these two had gone the Duke flung out his hands in a comprehensive +gesture of giving up the entire matter. "Well," said he, "you see how it +is!" + +"I do," Lord Brudenel assented. "And if you intend to sit patient under it, +I, at least, wear a sword. Confound it, Jack, do you suppose I am going +to have promiscuous young men dropping out of the skies and embracing my +daughter?" The Earl became forceful in his language. + +"Harry,--" the Duke began. + +"The fellow hasn't a penny--not a stick or a stiver to his name! He's only +a rascally, impudent younger son--and even Venour has nothing except Agard +Court yonder! That--that crow's nest!" Lord Brudenel spluttered. "They +mooned about together a great deal a year ago, but I thought nothing of +it; then he went away, and she never spoke of him again. Never spoke of +him--oh, the jade!" + +The Duke of Ormskirk considered the affair, a mild amusement waking in his +plump face. + +"Old friend," said he, at length, "it is my opinion that we are perilously +near to being a couple of fools. We planned this marriage, you and I--dear, +dear, we planned it when Marian was scarcely out of her cradle! But we +failed to take nature into the plot, Harry. It was sensible--Oh, granted! +I obtained a suitable mistress for Ingilby and Bottreaux Towers, a +magnificent ornament for my coach and my opera-box; while you--your pardon, +old friend, if I word it somewhat grossly,--you, in effect, obtained a +wealthy and not uninfluential husband for your daughter. Nay, I think you +are fond of me, but that is beside the mark; it was not Jack Bulmer who was +to marry your daughter, but the Duke of Ormskirk. The thing was as logical +as a sale of bullocks,--value for value. But now nature intervenes, +and"--he snapped his fingers,--"eh, well, since she wants this Humphrey +Degge, of course she must have him." + +Lord Brudenel mentioned several penalties which he would voluntarily incur +in case of any such preposterous marriage. + +"Your style," the Duke regretfully observed, "is somewhat more original +than your subject. You have a handsome daughter to barter, and you want +your price. The thing is far from uncommon. Yet you shall have your price, +Harry. What estate do you demand of your son-in-law?" + +"What the devil are you driving at?" said Lord Brudenel. + +Composedly the Duke of Ormskirk spread out his hands. "You have, in effect, +placed Marian in the market," he said, "and I offer to give Lord Humphrey +Degge the money with which to purchase her." + +"Tis evident," the Earl considered, "that you are demented!" + +"Because I willingly part with money? But then I have a great deal of +money. I have money, and I have power, and the King occasionally pats me +upon the shoulder, and men call me 'your Grace,' instead of 'my Lord,' as +they do you. So I ought to be very happy, ought I not, Harry? Ah, yes, +I ought to be entirely happy, because I have had everything, with the +unimportant exception of the one thing I wanted." + +But Lord Brudenel had drawn himself erect, stiffly. "I am to understand, +then, from this farrago, that on account of the--um--a--incident we have +just witnessed you decline to marry my daughter?" + +"I would sooner cut off my right hand," said the Duke, "for I am fonder of +Marian than I am of any other living creature." + +"Oh, very well!" the Earl conceded, sulkily. "Umfraville wants her. He is +only a marquis, of course, but so far as money is concerned, I believe +he is a thought better off than you. I would have preferred you as a +son-in-law, you understand, but since you withdraw--why, then, let it be +Umfraville." + +Now the Duke looked up into his face for some while. "You would do that! +You would sell Marian to Umfraville--[Footnote: "Whose entrance blushing +Satan did deny Lest hell be thought no better than a sty."] to a person who +unites the continence of a partridge with the graces of a Berkshire hog--to +that lean whoremonger, to that disease-rotted goat! Because he has the +money! Why, Harry, what a car you are!" + +Lord Brudenel bowed, "My Lord Duke, you are to-day my guest. I apprehend +you will presently be leaving Halvergate, however, and as soon--as that +regrettable event takes place, I shall see to it a friend wait upon you +with the length of my sword. Meanwhile I venture to reserve the privilege +of managing my family affairs at my own discretion." + +"I do not fight with hucksters," the Duke flung at him, "and you are one. +Oh, you peddler! Can you not understand that I am trying to buy your +daughter's happiness?" + +"I intend that my daughter shall make a suitable match," replied the Earl, +stubbornly, "and she shall. If Marian is a sensible girl--and, barring +to-day, I have always esteemed her such,--she will find happiness in +obeying her father's mandates: otherwise--" He waved the improbable +contingency aside. + +"Sensible! Faith, can you not see, even now, that to be sensible is not the +highest wisdom? You and I are sensible as the world goes,--and in God's +name, what good does it do us? Here we sit, two miserable and empty-veined +old men squabbling across a deal-table, breaking up a friendship of +thirty years. And yonder Marian and this Humphrey Degge--who are +within a measurable distance of insanity, if their conversation be the +touchstone,--yet tread the pinnacles of some seventh heaven of happiness. +April has brought them love, Harry. Oh, I concede their love is folly! But +it is all folly, Harry Heleigh. Purses, titles, blue ribbons, and the envy +of our fellows are the toys which we struggle for, we sensible men; and in +the end we find them only toys, and, gaining them, we gain only weariness. +And love, too, is a toy; but, gaining love, we gain, at least, a temporary +happiness. There is the difference, Harry Heleigh." + +"Oh, have done with your, balderdash!" said Lord Brudenel. He spoke +irritably, for he knew his position to be guaranteed by common-sense, and +his slow wrath was kindling at opposition. + +His Grace of Ormskirk rose to his feet, all tension. In the act his hand +struck against the open despatch-box; afterward, with a swift alteration +of countenance, he overturned this box and scattered the contents about +the table. For a moment he seemed to forget Lord Brudenel; quite without +warning Ormskirk flared into rage. + +"Harry Heleigh, Harry Heleigh!" he cried, as he strode across the terrace, +and caught Lord Brudenel roughly by the shoulder, "are you not content to +go to your grave without killing another woman? Oh, you dotard miser!--you +haberdasher!--haven't I offered you money, an isn't money the only thing +you are now capable of caring for? Give the girl to Degge, you huckster!" + +Lord Brudenel broke from the Duke's grasp. Brudenel was asplutter with +anger. "I will see you damned first. You offer money,--I fling the money +in your fat face. Look you, you have just insulted, me, and now you +offer--money! Another insult. John Bulmer, I would not accept an affront +like this from an archangel. You are my guest, but I am only flesh and +blood. I swear to you this is the most deliberate act of my life." Lord +Brudenel struck him full upon the cheek. + +"Pardon," said the Duke of Ormskirk. He stood rigid, his arms held stiff at +his sides, his hands clenched; the red mark showed plain against an ashy +countenance. "Pardon me for a moment." Once or twice he opened and shut his +eyes like an automaton. "And stop behaving so ridiculously. I cannot fight +you. I have other matters to attend to. We are wise, Harry,--you and I. +We know that love sometimes does not endure; sometimes it flares up +at a girl's glance, quite suddenly, and afterward smoulders out into +indifference or even into hatred. So, say we, let all sensible people marry +for money, for then in any event you get what you marry for,--a material +benefit, a tangible good, which does no vanish when the first squabble, or +perhaps the first gray hair, arrives. That is sensible; but women, Harry, +are not always sensible--" + +"Draw, you coward!" Lord Brudenel snarled at him. The Earl had already +lugged out his ineffectual dress sword, and would have been, as he stood on +guard, a ludicrous figure had he not been rather terrible. His rage shook +him visibly, and his obstinate mouth twitched and snapped like that of a +beast cornered. All gray he was, and the sun glistened on his gray tye-wig +as he waited. His eyes were coals. + +But Ormskirk had regained composure. "You know that I am not a coward," the +Duke said, equably. "I have proven it many times. Besides, you overlook two +details. One is that I have no sword with me, I am quite unarmed. The other +detail is that only gentlemen fight duels, and just now we are hucksters, +you and I, chaffering over Marian's happiness. So I return to my +bargaining. You will not sell Marian's happiness to me for money? Why, +then--remember, we are only hucksters, you and I,--I will purchase it by a +dishonorable action. I will show you a woman's letters,--some letters I was +going to burn romantically before I married--Instead, I wish you to read +them." + +He pushed the papers lying upon the table toward Lord Brudenel. Afterward +Ormskirk turned away and stood looking over the ivy-covered balustrade into +the gardens below. All white and green and blue the vista was, and of a +monastic tranquillity, save for the plashing of the fountain behind the +yew-hedge. From the gardens at his feet irresolute gusts brought tepid +woodland odors. He heard the rustling of papers, heard Lord Brudenel's +sword fall jangling to the ground. The Duke turned. + +"And for twenty years I have been eating my heart out with longing for +her," the Earl said. "And--and I thought you were my friend, Jack." + +"She was not your wife when I first knew her. But John Bulmer was a +penniless nobody,--so they gave her to you, an earl's heir, those sensible +parents of hers. I never saw her again, though--as you see,--she wrote to +me sometimes. And her parents did the sensible thing; but I think they +killed her, Harry." + +"Killed her?" Lord Brudenel echoed, stupidly. Then on a sudden it was +singular to see the glare in his eyes puffed out like a candle. "I killed +her," he whispered; "why, I killed Alison,--I!" He began to laugh. "Now +that is amusing, because she was the one thing in the world I ever loved. +I remember that she used to shudder when I kissed her. I thought it was +because she was only a brown and thin and timid child, who would be wiser +in love's tricks by and by. Now I comprehend 'twas because every kiss was +torment to her, because every time I touched her 'twas torment. So she +died very slowly, did Alison,--and always I was at hand with my kisses, my +pet names, and my paddlings,--killing her, you observe, always urging her +graveward. Yes, and yet there is nothing in these letters to show how much +she must have loathed me!" he said, in a mild sort of wonder. He appeared +senile now, the shrunken and calamitous shell of the man he had been within +the moment. + +The Duke of Ormskirk put an arm about him. "Old friend, old friend!" said +he. + +"Why did you not tell me?" the Earl said. "I loved you, Jack. I worshipped +her. I would never willingly have seen you two unhappy." + +"Her parents would have done as you planned to do,--they would have given +their daughter to the next richest suitor. I was nobody then. So the wisdom +of the aged slew us, Harry,--slew Alison utterly, and left me with a living +body, indeed, but with little more. I do not say that body has not amused +itself. Yet I too, loved her, Harry Heleigh. And when I saw this new +Alison--for Marian is her mother, face, heart, and soul,--why, some wraith +of emotion stirred in me, some thrill, some not quite forgotten pulse. It +seemed Alison come back from the grave. Love did not reawaken, for youth's +fervor was gone out of me, yet presently I fell a-dreaming over my Madeira +on long winter evenings,--sedate and tranquil dreams of this new Alison +flitting about Ingilby, making the splendid, desolate place into a home. Am +old man's fancies, Harry,--fancies bred of my loneliness, for I am lonely +nowadays. But my dreams, I find, were not sufficiently comprehensive; for +they did not anticipate April,--and nature,--and Lord Humphrey Degge. We +must yield to that triumvirate, we sensible old men. Nay, we are wise as +the world goes, but we have learned, you and I, that to be sensible is not +the highest wisdom. Marian is her mother in soul, heart, and feature. Don't +let the old tragedy be repeated, Harry. Let her have this Degge! Let Marian +have her chance of being happy, for a year or two...." + +But Lord Brudenel had paid very little attention. "I suppose so," he said, +when the Duke had ended. "Oh, I suppose so. Jack, she was always kind and +patient and gentle, you understand, but she used to shudder when I kissed +her," he repeated, dully,--"shudder, Jack." He sat staring at his sword +lying there on the ground, as though it fascinated him. + +"Ah, but,--old friend," the Duke cried, with his hand upon Lord Brudenel's +shoulder, "forgive me! It was the only way." + +Lord Brudenel rose to his feet. "Oh, yes! why, yes, I forgive you, if that +is any particular comfort to you. It scarcely seems of any importance, +though. The one thing which really matters is that I loved her, and I +killed her. Oh, beyond doubt, I forgive you. But now that you have made my +whole past a hideous stench to me, and have proven the love I was so proud +of--the one quite clean, quite unselfish thing in my life, I thought it, +Jack,--to have been only my lust vented on a defenceless woman,--why, just +now, I have not time to think of forgiveness. Yes, Marian may marry Degge +if she cares to. And I am sorry I took her mother away from you. I would +not have done it if I had known." + +Brudenel started away drearily, but when he had gone a little distance +turned back. + +"And the point of it is," he said, with a smile, "that I shall go on living +just as if nothing had happened, and shall probably live for a long, long +time. My body is so confoundedly healthy. How the deuce did you have the +courage to go on living?" he demanded, enviously. "You loved her and you +lost her. I'd have thought you would have killed yourself long ago." + +The Duke shrugged. "Yes, people do that in books. In books they have such +strong emotions--" + +Then Ormskirk paused for a heart-beat, looking down into the gardens. +Wonderfully virginal it all seemed to Ormskirk, that small portion of +a world upon the brink of renaissance: a tessellation of clean colors, +where the gravelled walkways were snow beneath the sun, and were in shadow +transmuted to dim violet tints; and for the rest, green ranging from the +sober foliage of yew and box and ilex to the pale glow of young grass +In the full sunlight; all green, save where the lake shone, a sapphire +green-girdled. Spring triumphed with a vaunting pageant. And in the +forest, in the air, even in the unplumbed sea-depths, woke the mating +impulse,--irresistible, borne as it might seem on the slow-rising tide +of grass that now rippled about the world. Everywhere they were mating; +everywhere glances allured and mouth met mouth, while John Bulmer went +alone without any mate or intimacy with anyone. + +Everywhere people were having emotions which Ormskirk envied. He had so few +emotions nowadays. Even all this posturing and talk about Alison Heleigh in +which he had just indulged began to savor somehow of play-acting. He had +loved Alison, of course, and that which he had said was true enough--in +a way,--but, after all, he had over-colored it. There had been in his +life so many interesting matters, and so many other women too, that the +loss of Alison could not be said to have blighted his existence quite +satisfactorily. No, John Bulmer had again been playing at the big emotions +which he heard about and coveted, just as at this very moment John Bulmer +was playing at being sophisticated and _blasé_... with only poor old Harry +for audience.... + +"A great deal of me did die," the Duke heard this John Bulmer +saying,--"all, I suppose, except my carcass, Harry. And it seemed hardly +worth the trouble to butcher that also." + +"No," Lord Brudenel conceded, "I suppose not. I wonder, d'ye know, will +anything ever again seem really worth the trouble of doing it?" + +The Duke of Ormskirk took his arm. "Fy, Harry, bid the daws seek their food +elsewhere, for a gentleman may not wear his heart upon his sleeve. Empires +crumble, and hearts break, and we are blessed or damned, as Fate elects; +but through it all we find comfort in the reflection that dinner is good, +and sleep, too, is excellent. As for the future--eh, well, if it mean +little to us, it means a deal to Alison's daughter. Let us go to them, +Harry." + + + + +VII + +IN THE SECOND APRIL + + +_As Played at Bellegarde, in the April of 1750_ + +"_This passion is in honest minds the strongest incentive that can move the +soul of man to laudable accomplishments. Is a man just? Let him fall in +love and grow generous. It immediately makes the good which is in him shine +forth in new excellencies, and the ill vanish away without the pain of +contrition, but with a sudden amendment of heart._" + + +DRAMATIS PERSONÆ + +DUKE OF ORMSKISK. + +DUC DE PUYSANGE, a true Frenchman, a pert, railing fribble, but at bottom a +man of parts. + +MARQUIS DE SOYECOURT, a brisk, conceited rake, and distant cousin to de +Puysange. + +CAZAIO, captain of brigands. + +DOM MICHEL FRÉGOSE, a lewd, rascally friar. + +GUITON, steward to de Puysange. + +PAWSEY, Ormskirk's man. + +ACHON, a knave. + +MICHAULT, another knave. + +DUCHESSE DE PUYSANGE. + +CLAIRE, sister to de Puysange, a woman of beauty and resolution, of a +literal humor. + +ATTENDANTS, BRIGANDS, and DRAGOONS; and, in the Proem, LORD HUMPHREY DEGGE +and LADY MARIAN HELEIGH. + + +SCENE + +First at Dover, thence shifting to Bellegarde-en-Poictesme and the adjacent +country. + + + + +IN THE SECOND APRIL + + +_PROEM:--More Properly an Apologue, and Treats of the Fallibility of Soap_ + +The Duke of Ormskirk left Halvergate on the following day, after +participation in two dialogues, which I abridge. + +Said the Duke to Lord Humphrey Degge: + +"You have been favored, sir, vastly beyond your deserts. I acquiesce, since +Fate is proverbially a lady, and to dissent were in consequence ungallant. +Shortly I shall find you more employment, at Dover, whither I am now going +to gull my old opponent and dear friend, Gaston de Puysange, in the matter +of this new compact between France and England. I shall look for you at +Dover, then, in three days' time." + +"And in vain, my Lord Duke," said the other. + +Now Ormskirk raised one eyebrow, after a fashion that he had. + +"Because I love Marian," said Lord Humphrey, "and because I mean to be less +unworthy of Marian than I have been heretofore. So that I can no longer be +your spy. Besides, in nature I lack aptitude for the trade. Eh, my Lord +Duke, have you already forgotten how I bungled the affair of Captain +Audaine and his associates?" + + +"But that was a maiden effort. And as I find--at alas! the cost of +decrepitude,--the one thing life teaches us is that many truisms are true. +'Practice makes perfect' is one of them. And faith, when you come to my +age, Lord Humphrey, you will not grumble at having to soil your hands +occasionally in the cause of common-sense." + +The younger man shook his head. "A week ago you would have found me +amenable enough to reason, since I was then a sensible person, and to be of +service to his Grace of Ormskirk was very sensible,--just as to marry Miss +Allonby, the young and beautiful heiress, was then the course pre-eminently +sensible. All the while I loved Marian, you understand. But I clung to +common-sense. Desperately I clung to common-sense. And yet--" He flung out +his hands. + +"Yes, there is by ordinary some plaguy _yet_," the Duke interpolated. + +"There is," cried Lord Humphrey Degge, "the swift and heart-grappling +recollection of the woman you gave up in the cause of common-sense,--roused +by some melody she liked, or some shade of color she was wont to wear, or +by hearing from other lips some turn of speech to which she was addicted. +My Lord Duke, that memory wakes on a sudden and clutches you by the throat, +and it chokes you. And one swears that common-sense--" + +"One swears that common-sense may go to the devil," said his Grace of +Ormskirk, "whence I don't say it didn't emanate! And one swears that, after +all, there is excellent stuff in you! Your idiotic conduct, sir, makes me +far happier than you know!" + +After some ten paces he turned, with a smile. "In the matter of soiling +one's hands--Personally I prefer them clean, sir, and particularly in the +case of Marian's husband. Had it been I, he must have stuck to prosaic +soap; with you in the rôle there is a difference. Faith, Lord Humphrey, +there is a decided difference, and if you be other than a monster of +depravity you will henceforth, I think, preserve your hands immaculate." + +To Marian the Duke said a vast number of things, prompted by a complaisant +thrill over the fact that, in view of the circumstances, his magnanimity +must to the unprejudiced appear profuse and his behavior tolerably heroic. + +"These are very absurd phrases," Marian considered, "since you will +never love anyone, I think--however much you may admire the color of her +eyes,--one-quarter so earnestly as you will always marvel at John Bulmer. +Or perhaps you have only to wait a little, Jack, till in her time and +season the elect woman shall come to you, just as she comes to all +men,--and then, for once in your existence, you will be sincere." + +"I go, provisionally, to seek this paragon at Dover," said his Grace of +Ormskirk, and he lifted her fingers toward his smiling lips; "but I shall +bear in mind, my dear, even in Dover, that sincerity is a devilishly +expensive virtue." + + +I + +It was on the thirteenth day of April that they signed the Second Treaty of +Dover, which not only confirmed its predecessor of Aix-la-Chapelle, but in +addition, with the brevity of lightning, demolished the last Stuarts' hope +of any further aid from France. And the French ambassador subscribed the +terms with a chuckle. + +"For on this occasion, Jean," he observed, as he pushed the paper from him, +"I think that honors are fairly even. You obtain peace at home, and in +India we obtain assistance for Dupleix; good, the benefit is quite mutual; +and accordingly, my friend, I must still owe you one requiting for that +Bavarian business." + +Ormskirk was silent until he had the churchwarden which he had just ignited +aglow. "That was the evening I had you robbed and beaten by footpads, was +it not? Faith, Gaston, I think you should rather be obliged to me, since it +taught you never to carry important papers in your pocket when you go about +your affairs of gallantry." + +"That beating with great sticks," the Duc de Puysange considered, "was the +height of unnecessity." + +And the Duke of Ormskirk shrugged. "A mere touch of verisimilitude, Gaston; +footpads invariably beat their victims. Besides, you had attempted to +murder me at Aix, you may remember." + +De Puysange was horrified. "My dear friend, when I set Villaneuve upon you +it was with express orders only to run you through the shoulder. Figure to +yourself: that abominable St. Severin had bribed your _chef_ to feed you +powdered glass in a ragout! But I dissented. 'Jean and I have been the +dearest enemies these ten years past,' I said. 'At every Court in Europe +we have lied to each other. If you kill him I shall beyond doubt presently +perish of ennui.' So, that France might escape a blow so crushing as the +loss of my services, St. Severin consented to disable you." + +"Believe me, I appreciate your intervention," Ormskirk stated, with his +usual sleepy smile; before this he had found amusement in the naïveté of +his friend's self-approbation. + +"Not so! Rather you are a monument of ingratitude," the other complained. +"You conceive, Villaneuve was in price exorbitant. I snap my fingers. +'For a comrade so dear,' I remark, 'I gladly employ the most expensive of +assassins.' Yet before the face of such magnanimity you grumble." The Duc +de Puysange spread out his shapely hands. "I murder you! My adored Jean, I +had as lief make love to my wife." + +Ormskirk struck his finger-tips upon the table. "Faith, I knew there was +something I intended to ask of you, I want you to get me a wife." + +"In fact," de Puysange observed, "warfare being now at an end, it is only +natural that you should resort to matrimony. I can assure you it is an +admirable substitute. But who is the lucky Miss, my little villain?" + +"Why, that is for you to settle," Ormskirk said. "I had hoped you might +know of some suitable person." + +"_Ma foi_, my friend, if I were arbiter and any wife would suit you, I +would cordially desire you to take mine, for when a woman so incessantly +resembles an angel in conduct, her husband inevitably desires to see her +one in reality." + +"You misinterpret me, Gaston. This is not a jest. I had always intended +to marry as soon as I could spare the time, and now that this treaty is +disposed of, my opportunity has beyond doubt arrived. I am practically at +leisure until the autumn. At latest, though, I must marry by August, +in order to get the honeymoon off my hands before the convocation of +Parliament. For there will have to be a honeymoon, I suppose." + +"It is customary," de Puysange said. He appeared to deliberate something +entirely alien to this reply, however, and now sat silent for a matter +of four seconds, his countenance profoundly grave. He was a hideous man, +[Footnote: For a consideration of the vexed and delicate question whether +or no Gaston de Puysange was grandson to King Charles the Second of +England, the reader is referred to the third chapter of La Vrillière's _De +Puysange et son temps_. The Duke's resemblance in person to that monarch +was undeniable.] with black beetling eyebrows, an enormous nose, and an +under-lip excessively full; his face had all the calculated ill-proportion +of a gargoyle, an ugliness so consummate and merry that in ultimate effect +it captivated. + +At last de Puysange began: "I think I follow you. It is quite proper that +you should marry. It is quite proper that a man who has done so much for +England should leave descendants to perpetuate his name, and with perhaps +some portion of his ability--no, Jean, I do not flatter,--serve the England +which is to his heart so dear. As a Frenchman I cannot but deplore that our +next generation may have to face another Ormskirk; as your friend who loves +you I say that this marriage will appropriately round a successful and +honorable and intelligent life. Eh, we are only men, you and I, and it is +advisable that all men should marry, since otherwise they might be so happy +in this colorful world that getting to heaven would not particularly tempt +them. Thus is matrimony a bulwark of religion." + +"You are growing scurrilous," Ormskirk complained, "whereas I am in perfect +earnest." + +"I, too, speak to the foot of the letter, Jean, as you will soon learn. I +comprehend that you cannot with agreeability marry an Englishwoman. You are +too much the personage. Possessing, as you notoriously possess, your pick +among the women of gentle degree--for none of them would her guardians nor +her good taste permit to refuse the great Duke of Ormskirk,--any choice +must therefore be a too robustious affrontment to all the others. If you +select a Howard, the Skirlaws have pepper in the nose; if a Beaufort, you +lose Umfraville's support,--and so on. Hey, I know, my dear Jean; your +affair with the Earl of Brudenel's daughter cost you seven seats in +Parliament, you may remember. How am I aware of this?--why, because I +habitually have your mail intercepted. You intercept mine, do you not? +Naturally; you would be a very gross and intolerable scion of the pig if +you did otherwise. _Eh bien_, let us get on. You might, of course, play +King Cophetua, but I doubt if it would amuse you, since Penelophons are +rare; it follows in logic that your wife must come from abroad. And whence? +Without question, from France, the land of adorable women. The thing is +plainly demonstrated; and in France, my dear, I have to an eyelash the +proper person for you." + +"Then we may consider the affair as settled," Ormskirk replied, "and should +you arrange to have the marriage take place upon the first of August,--if +possible, a trifle earlier,--I would be trebly your debtor." + +De Puysange retorted: "Beyond doubt I can adjust these matters. And yet, +my dear Jean, I must submit that it is not quite the act of a gentleman to +plunge into matrimony without even inquiring as to the dowry of your future +bride." + +"It is true," said Ormskirk, with a grimace; "I had not thought of her +portion. You must remember my attention is at present pre-empted by that +idiotic Ferrers business. How much am I to marry, then, Gaston?" + +"I had in mind," said the other, "my sister, the Demoiselle Claire de +Puysange,--" + +It was a day of courtesy when the minor graces were paramount. Ormskirk +rose and accorded de Puysange a salutation fitted to an emperor. "I entreat +your pardon, sir, for any _gaucherie_ of which I may have been guilty, and +desire to extend to you my appreciation of the honor you have done me." + +"It is sufficient, monsieur," de Puysange replied. And the two gravely +bowed again. + +Then the Frenchman resumed, in conversational tones: "I have but one +unmarried sister,--already nineteen, beautiful as an angel (in the eyes, at +least, of fraternal affection), and undoubtedly as headstrong as any devil +at present stoking the eternal fires below. You can conceive that the +disposal of such a person is a delicate matter. In Poictesme there is +no suitable match, and upon the other hand I grievously apprehend her +presentation at our Court, where, as Arouet de Voltaire once observed to +me, the men are lured into matrimony by the memories of their past sins, +and the women by the immunity it promises for future ones. In England, +where custom will permit a woman to be both handsome and chaste, I estimate +she would be admirably ranged. Accordingly, my dear Jean, behold a fact +accomplished. And now let us embrace, my brother!" + +This was done. The next day they settled the matter of dowry, jointure, the +widow's portion, and so on, and de Puysange returned to render his report +at Marly. The wedding had been fixed by the Frenchman for St. Anne's day, +and by Ormskirk, as an uncompromising churchman, for the twenty-sixth of +the following July. + + +II + +That evening the Duke of Ormskirk sat alone in his lodgings. His Grace +was very splendid in black-and-gold, wearing his two stars of the Garter +and the Thistle, for there was that night a ball at Lady Sandwich's, and +Royalty was to embellish it. In consequence, Ormskirk meant to show his +plump face there for a quarter of an hour; and the rooms would be too +hot (he peevishly reflected), and the light would tire his eyes, and +Laventhrope would button-hole him again about that appointment for +Laventhrope's son, and the King would give vent to some especially +fat-witted jest, and Ormskirk would apishly grin and applaud. And afterward +he would come home with a headache, and ghostly fiddles would vex him all +night long with their thin incessancy. + +"Accordingly," the Duke decided, "I shall not stir a step until eleven +o'clock. The King, in the ultimate, is only a tipsy, ignorant old German +debauchee, and I have half a mind to tell him so. Meantime, he can wait." + +The Duke sat down to consider this curious lassitude, this indefinite +vexation, which had possessed him. + +"For I appear to have taken a sudden dislike to the universe. It is +probably my liver. + +"In any event, I have come now to the end of my resources. For some +twenty-five years it has amused me to make a great man of John Bulmer. Now +that is done, and, like the Moorish fellow in the play, 'my occupation's +gone.' I am at the very top of the ladder, and I find it the dreariest +place in the world. There is nothing left to scheme for, and, besides, I am +tired. + +"The tiniest nerve in my body, the innermost cell of my brain, is tired +to-night. + +"I wonder if getting married will divert me? I doubt it. Of course I ought +to marry, but then it must be rather terrible to have a woman loitering +around you for the rest of your life. She will probably expect me to talk +to her; she will probably come into my rooms and sit there whenever the +inclination prompts her,--in a sentence, she will probably worry me to +death. Eh well!--that die is cast! + +"'Beautiful as an angel, and headstrong as a devil.' And what's her +name?--Oh, yes, Claire. That is a very silly name, and I suppose she is a +vixenish little idiot. However, the alliance is a sensible one. De Puysange +has had it in mind for some six months, I think, but certainly I did not +think he knew of my affair with Marian. Well, but he affects omniscience, +he delights in every small chicane. He is rather droll. Yesterday he knew +from the start that I was leading up to a proposal for his sister,--and yet +there we sat, two solemn fools, and played our tedious comedy to a finish. +_Eh bien!_ as he says, it is necessary to keep one's hand in. + +"'Beautiful as an angel, and headstrong as a devil'--Alison was not +headstrong." + +Ormskirk rose suddenly and approached an open window. It was a starless +sight, temperately cool, with no air stirring. Below was a garden of some +sort, and a flat roof which would be that of the stables, and beyond, +abrupt as a painted scene, a black wall of houses stood against a +steel-colored, vacant sky, reaching precisely to the middle of the vista. +Only a solitary poplar, to the rear of the garden, qualified this sombre +monotony of right angles. Ormskirk saw the world as an ugly mechanical +drawing, fashioned for utility, meticulously outlined with a ruler. Yet +there was a scent of growing things to nudge the senses. + +"No, Alison was different. And Alison has been dead near twenty years. +And God help me! I no longer regret even Alison. I should have been more +truthful in talking with poor Harry Heleigh. But, as always, the temptation +to be picturesque was irresistible. Besides, the truth is humiliating. + +"The real tragedy of life is to learn that it is not really tragic. To +learn that the world is gross, that it lacks nobility, that to considerate +persons it must be in effect quite unimportant,--here are commonplaces, +sweepings from the tub of the immaturest cynic. But to learn that you +yourself were thoughtfully constructed in harmony with the world you were +to live in, that you yourself are incapable of any great passion--eh, this +is an athletic blow to human vanity. Well! I acknowledge it. My love for +Alison Pleydell was the one sincere thing in my life. And it is dead. I do +not think of her once a month. I do not regret her except when I am tipsy +or bored or listening to music, and wish to fancy myself the picturesque +victim of a flint-hearted world. Which is a romantic lie; I move like a +man of card-board in a card-board world. Certain faculties and tastes and +mannerisms I undoubtedly possess, but if I have any personality at all, +I am not aware of it; I am a mechanism that eats and sleeps and clumsily +perambulates a ball that spins around a larger ball that revolves about +another, and so on, _ad infinitum_. Some day the mechanism will be broken. +Or it will slowly wear out, perhaps. And then it will go to the dust-heap. +And that will be the end of the great Duke of Ormskirk. + +"John Bulmer did not think so. It is true that John Bulmer was a +magnanimous fool,--Upon the other hand, John Bulmer would never have stared +out of an ugly window at an uglier landscape and have talked yet uglier +nonsense to it. He would have been off post-haste after the young person +who is 'beautiful as an angel and headstrong as a devil.' And afterward he +would have been very happy or else very miserable. I begin to think that +John Bulmer was more sensible than the great Duke of Ormskirk. I would--I +would that he were still alive." + +His Grace slapped one palm against his thigh with unwonted vigor. "Behold, +what I am longing for! I am longing for John Bulmer." + +Presently he sounded the gong upon his desk. And presently he said: "My +adorable Pawsey, the great Duke of Ormskirk is now going to pay his +respects to George Guelph, King of Britain, France, and Ireland, defender +of the faith. Duke of Brunswick and Lunenburg, and supreme head of the +Anglican and Hibernian Church. And to-morrow Mr. John Bulmer will set forth +upon a little journey into Poictesme. You will obligingly pack a valise. +No, I shall not require you,--for John Bulmer was entirely capable of +dressing and shaving himself. So kindly go to the devil, Pawsey, and stop +staring at me." + +Later in the evening Pawsey, a thought mellowed by the ale of Dover, +deplored with tears the instability of a nation whose pilots were addicted +to tippling. + +"Drunk as David's sow!" said Pawsey, "and 'im in the hactual presence of +'is Sacred Majesty!" + + +III + +Thus it came about that, five days later, arrived at Bellegarde Mr. John +Bulmer, kinsman and accredited emissary of the great Duke of Ormskirk. +He brought with him and in due course delivered a casket of jewels and a +letter from the Duke to his betrothed. The diamonds were magnificent, and +the letter was a paragon of polite ardors. + +Mr. Bulmer found the château in charge of a distant cousin to de Puysange, +the Marquis de Soyecourt; with whom were the Duchess, a gentle and +beautiful lady, her two children, and the Demoiselle Claire. The Duke +himself was still at Marly, with most of his people, but at Bellegarde +momentarily they looked for his return. Meanwhile de Soyecourt, an +exquisite and sociable and immoral young gentleman of forty-one, was +lonely, and protested that any civilized company was, in the oafish +provinces, a charity of celestial pre-arrangement. He would not hear of Mr. +Bulmer's leaving Bellegarde; and after a little protestation the latter +proved persuadable. + +"Mr. Bulmer," the Duke's letter of introduction informed the Marquis, "is +my kinsman and may be regarded as discreet. The evanishment of his tiny +patrimony, spirited away some years ago by divers over-friendly ladies, +hath taught the man humility, and procured for me the privilege of paying +for his support: but I find him more valuable than his cost. He is +tolerably honest, not too often tipsy, makes an excellent salad, and will +convey a letter or hold a door with fidelity and despatch. Employ his +services, monsieur, if you have need of them; I place him at your command." + +In fine, they at Bellegarde judged Mr. Bulmer to rank somewhere between +lackeyship and gentility, and treated him in accordance. It was an age of +parasitism, and John Bulmer, if a parasite, was the Phormio of a very great +man: when his patron expressed a desire Mr. Bulmer fulfilled it without +boggling over inconvenient scruples, perhaps; and there was the worst that +could with equity be said of him. An impoverished gentleman must live +somehow, and, deuce take it! there must be rather pretty pickings among +the broken meats of an Ormskirk. To this effect de Soyecourt moralized one +evening as the two sat over their wine. + +John Bulmer candidly assented. "I live as best I may," he said. "In a word +'I am his Highness' dog at Kew--' But mark you, I do not complete the +quotation, monsieur." + +"Which ends, as I remember it, 'I pray you, sir, whose dog are you?' Well, +Mr. Bulmer, each of us wards his own kennel somewhere, whether it be in +a king's court or in a woman's heart, and it is necessary that he pay +the rent of it in such coin as the owner may demand. Beggars cannot be +choosers, Mr. Bulmer." The Marquis went away moodily, and John Bulmer +poured out another glass. + +"Were I Gaston, you would not kennel here, my friend. The Duchess has too +many claims to be admired,--for undoubtedly people do go about unchained +who can admire a blonde,--and always your eyes follow her. I noticed it a +week ago." + +And during this week Mr. Bulmer had seen a deal of Claire de Puysange, with +results that you will presently ascertain. It was natural she should desire +to learn something of the man she was so soon to marry, and of whose +personality she was so ignorant; she had not even seen a picture of him, by +example. Was he handsome? + +John Bulmer believed him rather remarkably handsome, when you considered +how frequently his love-affairs had left disastrous souvenirs: yes, for a +man in middle life so often patched up by quack doctors, Ormskirk looked +wholesome enough, said Mr. Bulmer. He may have had his occult purposes, +this poor cousin, but of Ormskirk he undoubtedly spoke with engaging +candor. Here was no parasite cringingly praising his patron to the +skies. The Duke's career was touched on, with its grimy passages no whit +extenuated: before Dettingen Cousin Ormskirk had, it must be confessed, +taken a bribe from de Noailles, and in return had seen to it that the +English did not follow up their empty victory; and 'twas well known +Ormskirk got his dukedom through the Countess of Yarmouth, to whom the +King could deny nothing. What were the Duke's relations with this liberal +lady?--a shrug rendered Mr. Bulmer's avowal of ignorance tolerably +explicit. Then, too, Mr. Bulmer readily conceded, the Duke's atrocities +after Culloden were somewhat over-notorious for denial: all the prisoners +were shot out-of-hand; seventy-two of them were driven into an inn-yard +and massacred _en masse_. Yes, there were women among them, but not over +a half-dozen children, at most. Mademoiselle was not to class his noble +patron with Herod, understand,--only a few brats of no importance. + +In fine, he told her all the highly colored tales that envy and malice and +ignorance had been able to concoct concerning the great Duke. Many of them +John Bulmer knew to be false; nevertheless, he had a large mythology to +choose from, he picked his instances with care, he narrated them with gusto +and discretion,--and in the end he got his reward. + +For the girl rose, flame-faced, and burlesqued a courtesy in his direction. +"Monsieur Bulmer, I make you my compliments. You have very fully explained +what manner of man is this to whom my brother has sold me." + +"And wherefore do you accord me this sudden adulation?" said John Bulmer. + +"Because in France we have learned that lackeys are always powerful. Le Bel +is here omnipotent, Monsieur Bulmer; but he is lackey to a satyr only; and +therefore, I felicitate you, monsieur, who are lackey to a fiend." + +John Bulmer looked rather grave. "Civility is an inexpensive wear, +mademoiselle, but it becomes everybody." + +"Lackey!" she flung over her shoulder, as she left him. + +John Bulmer began to whistle an air then popular across the Channel. Later +his melody was stilled. + +"'Beautiful as an angel, and headstrong as a devil!'" said John Bulmer. +"You have an eye, Gaston!" + + +IV + +That evening came a letter from Gaston to de Soyecourt, which the latter +read aloud at supper. Gossip of the court it was for the most part, +garrulous, and peppered with deductions of a caustic and diverting sort, +but containing no word of a return to Bellegarde, in this vocal rendering. +For in the reading one paragraph was elided. + +"I arrive," the Duke had written, "within three or at most four days after +this will be received. You are to breathe not a syllable of my coming, dear +Louis, for I do not come alone. Achille Cazaio has intimidated Poictesme +long enough; I consider it is not desirable that a peer of France should be +at the mercy of a chicken-thief, particularly when Fortune whispers, as the +lady now does: + + "Viens punir le coupable; + Les oracles, les dieux, tout nous est favorable. + +"Understand, in fine, that Madame de Pompadour has graciously obtained for +me the loan of the dragoons of Entréchat for an entire fortnight, so that I +return not in submission, but, like Cæsar and Coriolanus and other exiled +captains of antiquity, at the head of a glorious army. We will harry the +Taunenfels, we will hang the vile bandit more high than Haman of old, we +will, in a word, enjoy the supreme pleasure of the chase, enhanced by the +knowledge we pursue a note-worthy quarry. Homicide is, after all, the most +satisfying recreation life affords us, since man alone knows how thoroughly +man deserves to be slaughtered. A tiger, now, has his deficiencies, +perhaps, viewed as a roommate; yet a tiger is at least acceptable to the +eye, a vision very pleasantly suggestive, we will say, of buttered toast; +whereas, our fellow-creatures, my dear Louis,--" And in this strain de +Puysange continued, with intolerably scandalous examples as parapets for +his argument. + +That night de Soyecourt re-read this paragraph. "So the Pompadour has +kindly tendered him the loan of certain dragoons? She is very fond of +Gaston, is la petite Étoiles, beyond doubt. And accordingly her dragoons +are to garrison Bellegarde for a whole fortnight. Good, good!" said the +Marquis; "I think that all goes well." + +He sat for a long while, smiling, preoccupied with his imaginings, which +were far adrift in the future. Louis de Soyecourt was a subtle little man, +freakish and amiable, and, on a minute scale, handsome. He reminded people +of a dissipated elf; his excesses were notorious, yet always he preserved +the face of an ecclesiastic and the eyes of an aging seraph; and bodily +there was as yet no trace of the corpulence which marred his later years. + +To-night he slept soundly. His conscience was always, they say, to the very +end of his long life, the conscience of a child, vulnerable by physical +punishment, but by nothing else. + + +V + +Next day John Bulmer rode through the Forest of Acaire, and sang as he +went. Yet he disapproved of the country. + +"For I am of the opinion," John Bulmer meditated, "that France just now is +too much like a flower-garden situate upon the slope of a volcano. The eye +is pleasantly titillated, but the ear catches eloquent rumblings. This is +not a very healthy country, I think. These shaggy-haired, dumb peasants +trouble me. I had thought France a nation of de Puysanges; I find it rather +a nation of beasts who are growing hungry. Presently they will begin +to feed, and I am not at all certain as to the urbanity of their table +manners." + +However, it was no affair of his; so he put the matter out of mind, and as +he rode through the forest, carolled blithely. Trees were marshalled on +each side with an effect of colonnades; everywhere there was a sniff of the +cathedral, of a cheery cathedral all green and gold and full-bodied browns, +where the industrious motes swam, like the fishes fairies angle for, in +every long and rigid shaft of sunlight,--or rather (John Bulmer decided), +as though Time had just passed by with a broom, intent to garnish the least +nook of Acaire against Spring's occupancy of it. Then there were tiny white +butterflies, frail as dream-stuff. There were anemones; and John Bulmer +sighed at their insolent perfection. Theirs was a frank allure; in the +solemn forest they alone of growing things were wanton, for they coquetted +with the wind, and their pink was the pink of flesh. + +He recollected that he was corpulent--and forty-five. "And yet, praise +Heaven," said John Bulmer, "something stirs in this sleepy skull of mine." + +Sang John Bulmer: + + "April wakes, and the gifts are good + Which April grants in this lonely wood + Mid the wistful sounds of a solitude, + Whose immemorial murmuring + Is the voice of Spring + And murmurs the burden of burgeoning. + + "April wakes, and her heart is high, + For the Bassarids and the Fauns are nigh, + And prosperous leaves lisp busily + Over flattered brakes, whence the breezes bring + Vext twittering + To swell the burden of burgeoning. + + "April wakes, and afield, astray, + She calls to whom at the end I say. + _Heart o' my Heart, I am thine alway_,-- + And I follow, follow her carolling, + For I hear her sing + Above the burden of burgeoning. + + "April wakes;--it were good to live + (_Yet April passes_), though April give + No other gift for our pleasuring + Than the old, old burden of burgeoning--" + +He paused here. Not far ahead a woman's voice had given a sudden scream, +followed by continuous calls for aid. + +"Now, if I choose, will begin the first fytte of John Bulmer's adventures," +he meditated, leisurely. "The woman is in some sort of trouble. If I go to +her assistance I shall probably involve myself in a most unattractive mess, +and eventually be arrested by the constable,--if they have any constables +in this operatic domain, the which I doubt. I shall accordingly emulate the +example of the long-headed Levite, and sensibly pass by on the other side. +Halt! I there recognize the voice of the Duke of Ormskirk. I came into this +country to find John Bulmer; and John Bulmer would most certainly have +spurred his gallant charger upon the craven who is just now molesting +yonder female. In consequence, my gallant charger, we will at once proceed +to confound the dastardly villain." + +He came presently into an open glade, which the keen sunlight lit without +obstruction. Obviously arranged, was his first appraisal of the tableau +there presented. A woman in blue half-knelt, half-lay, upon the young +grass, while a man, bending over, fettered her hands behind her back. +A swarthy and exuberantly bearded fellow, attired in green-and-russet, +stood beside them, displaying magnificent teeth in exactly the grin which +hieratic art imputes to devils. Yet farther off a Dominican Friar sat upon +a stone and displayed rather more unctuous amusement. Three horses and a +mule diversified the background. All in all, a thought larger than life, a +shade too obviously posed, a sign-painter's notion of a heroic picture, was +John Bulmer's verdict. From his holster he drew a pistol. + +The lesser rascal rose from the prostrate woman. "Finished, my captain,--" +he began. Against the forest verdure he made an excellent mark. John Bulmer +shot him neatly through the head. + +Startled by the detonation, the Friar and the man in green-and-russet +wheeled about to find Mr. Bulmer, with his most heroical bearing, +negligently replacing the discharged pistol. The woman lay absolutely +still, face downward, in a clump of fern. + +"Gentlemen," said John Bulmer, "I lament that your sylvan diversions +should be thus interrupted by the fact that an elderly person like myself, +quite old enough to know better, has seen fit to adopt the pursuit of +knight-errantry. You need not trouble yourselves about your companion, for +I have blown out most of the substance nature intended him to think with. +One of you, I regret to observe, is rendered immune by the garb of an order +which I consider misguided, indeed, but with which I have no quarrel. With +the other I beg leave to request the honor of exchanging a few passes as +the recumbent lady's champion." + +"Sacred blue!" remarked the bearded man; "you presume to oppose, then, of +all persons, me! You fool, I am Achille Cazaio!" + +"I deplore the circumstance that I am not overwhelmed by the revelation," +John Bulmer said, as he dismounted, "and I entreat you to bear in mind, +friend Achille, that in Poictesme I am a stranger. And, unhappily, the +names of many estimable persons have not an international celebrity." Thus +speaking, he drew and placed himself on guard. + +With a shrug the Friar turned and reseated himself upon the stone. He +appeared a sensible man. But Cazaio flashed out a long sword and hurled +himself upon John Bulmer. + +Cazaio thus obtained a butcherly thrust in the shoulder, "Friend Achille," +said John Bulmer, "that was tolerably severe for a first hit. Does it +content you?" + +The hairy man raged. "Eh, my God!" Cazaio shrieked, "do you mock me, you +misbegotten one! Before you can give me such another I shall have settled +you outright. Already hell gapes for you. Fool, I am Achille Cazaio!" + +"Yes, yes, you had mentioned that," said his opponent. "And, in return, +allow me to present Mr. John Bulmer, thoroughly enjoying himself for the +first time in a quarter of a century, Angelo taught me this thrust. Can you +parry it, friend Achille?" Mr. Bulmer cut open the other's forehead. + +"Well done!" Cazaio grunted. He attacked with renewed fury, but now the +blood was streaming down his face and into his eyes in such a manner that +he was momentarily compelled to carry his hand toward his countenance in +order to wipe away the heavy trickle. John Bulmer lowered his point. + +"Friend Achille, it is not reasonable I should continue our engagement to +its dénouement, since by that boastful parade of skill I have inadvertently +turned you into a blind man. Can you not stanch your wound sufficiently to +make possible a renewal of our exercise on somewhat more equal terms?" + +"Not now," the other replied, breathing heavily,--"not now, Monsieur +Bulmaire. You have conquered, and the woman is yours. Yet lend me my life +for a little till I may meet you more equitably. I will not fail you,--I +swear it--I, Achille Cazaio." + +"Why, God bless my soul!" said John Bulmer, "do you imagine that I am +forming a collection of vagrant females? Permit me, pray, to assist you to +your horse. And if you would so far honor me as to accept the temporary +loan of my handkerchief--" + +Solicitously Mr. Bulmer bound up his opponent's head, and more lately aided +him to mount one of the grazing horses. Cazaio was moved to say: + +"You are a gallant enemy, Monsieur Bulmaire. I shall have the pleasure of +cutting your throat on Thursday next, if that date be convenient to you." + +"Believe me," said John Bulmer, "I am always at your disposal. Let this +spot, then, be our rendezvous, since I am wofully ignorant concerning your +local geography. And meantime, my friend, if I may be so bold, I would +suggest a little practice in parrying. You are of Boisrobert's school, I +note, and in attack undeniably brilliant, whereas your defence--unvarying +defect of Boisrobert's followers!--is lamentably weak." + +"I perceive that monsieur is a connoisseur in these matters," said +Cazaio; "I am the more highly honored. Till Thursday, then." And with an +inclination of his bandaged head--and a furtive glance toward the insensate +woman,--he rode away singing. + +Sang Achille Cazaio: + + "But, oh, the world is wide, dear lass, + That I must wander through, + And many a wind and tide, dear lass, + Must flow 'twixt me and you, + Ere love that may not be denied + Shall bring me back to you, + --Dear lass! + Shall bring me back to you." + +Thus singing, he disappeared; meantime John Bulmer had turned toward the +woman. The Dominican sat upon the stone, placidly grinning. + +"And now," said John Bulmer, "we revert to the origin of all this +tomfoolery,--who, true to every instinct of her sex, has caused as much +trouble as lay within her power and then fainted. A little water from +the brook, if you will be so good. Master Friar,--Hey!--why, you damned +rascal!" + +As John Bulmer bent above the woman, the Friar had stabbed John Bulmer +between the shoulders. The dagger broke like glass. + +"Oh, the devil!" said the churchman; "what sort of a duellist is this who +fights in a shirt of Milanese armor!" He stood for a moment, silent, in +sincere horror. "I lack words," he said,--"Oh, vile coward! I lack words to +arraign this hideous revelation! There is a code of honor that obtains all +over the world, and any duellist who descends to secret armor is, as you +are perfectly aware, guilty of supersticery. He is no fit associate for +gentlemen, he is rather the appropriate companion of Korah, Dathan, and +Abiram in their fiery pit. Faugh, you sneak-thief!" + +John Bulmer was a thought abashed, and for an instant showed it. Then, +"Permit me," he equably replied, "to point out that I did not come hither +with any belligerent intent. My undershirt, therefore, I was entitled to +regard as a purely natural advantage,--as much so as would have been a +greater length of arm, which, you conceive, does not obligate a gentleman +to cut off his fingers before he fights." + +"I scent the casuist," said the Friar, shaking his head. "Frankly, you had +hoodwinked me: I was admiring you as a second Palmerin; and all the while +you were letting off those gasconades, adopting those heroic postures, and +exhibiting such romantic magnanimity, you were actually as safe from poor +Cazaio as though you had been in Crim Tartary rather than Acaire!" + +"But the pose was magnificent," John Bulmer pleaded, "and I have a leaning +that way when one loses nothing by it. Besides, I consider secret armor to +be no more than a rational precaution in any country where the clergy are +addicted to casual assassination." + +"It is human to err," the Friar replied, "and Cazaio would have given me +a thousand crowns for your head. Believe me, the man is meditating some +horrible mischief against you, for otherwise he would not have been so +damnably polite." + +"The information is distressing," said John Bulmer; and added, "This Cazaio +appears to be a personage?" + +"I retort," said the Friar, "that your ignorance is even more remarkable +than my news. Achille Cazaio is the bugbear of all Poictesme, he is as +powerful in these parts as ever old Manuel was." + +"But I have never heard of this old Manuel either--" + +"In fact, your ignorance seems limitless. For any child could tell you that +Cazaio roosts in the Taunenfels yonder, with some hundreds of brigands in +his company. Poictesme is, in effect, his pocket-book, from which he takes +whatever he has need of, and the Duc de Puysange, our nominal lord, pays +him an annual tribute to respect Bellegarde." + +"This appears to be an unusual country," quoth John Bulmer; "where a +brigand rules, and the forests are infested by homicidal clergymen and +harassed females. Which reminds me that I have been guilty of an act of +ungallantry,--and faith! while you and I have been chatting, the lady, with +a rare discretion, has peacefully come back to her senses." + +"She has regained nothing very valuable," said the Friar, with a shrug, +"Alone in Acaire!" But John Bulmer had assisted the woman to her feet, +and had given a little cry at sight of her face, and now he stood quite +motionless, holding both her unfettered hands. + +"You!" he said. And when speech returned to him, after a lengthy interval, +he spoke with odd irrelevance. "Now I appear to understand why God created +me." + +He was puzzled. For there had come to him, unheralded and simply, a sense +of something infinitely greater than his mind could conceive; and analysis +might only pluck at it, impotently, as a wearied swimmer might pluck at the +sides of a well. Ormskirk and Ormskirk's powers now somehow dwindled from +the zone of serious consideration, as did the radiant world, and even the +woman who stood before him; trifles, these: and his contentment spurned +the stars to know that, somehow, this woman and he were but a part, an +infinitesimal part, of a scheme which was ineffably vast and perfect.... +That was the knowledge he sensed, unwordably, as he regarded this woman +now. + +She was tall, just as tall as he. It was a blunt-witted devil who whispered +John Bulmer that, inch paralleling inch, the woman is taller than the +man and subtly renders him absurd; and that in a decade this woman would +be stout. There was no meaning now in any whispering save hers. John +Bulmer perceived, with a blurred thrill,--as if of memory, as if he were +recollecting something once familiar to him, a great while ago,--that the +girl was tall and deep-bosomed, and that her hair was dark, all crinkles, +but (he somehow knew) very soft to the touch. The full oval of her face had +throughout the rich tint of cream, so that he now understood the blowziness +of pink cheeks; but her mouth was vivid. It was a mouth not wholly +deficient in attractions, he estimated. Her nose managed to be Roman +without overdoing it. And her eyes, candid and appraising, he found to be +the color that blue is in Paradise; it was odd their lower lids should +be straight lines, so that when she laughed her eyes were converted into +right-angled triangles; and it was still more odd that when you gazed into +them your reach of vision should be extended until you saw without effort +for miles and miles. + +And now for a longish while these eyes returned his scrutiny, without +any trace of embarrassment; and whatever may have been the thoughts of +Mademoiselle de Puysange, she gave them no expression. But presently the +girl glanced down toward the dead man. + +"It was you who killed him?" she said. "You!" + +"I had that privilege," John Bulmer admitted. "And on Thursday afternoon, +God willing, I shall kill the other." + +"You are kind, Monsieur Bulmer. And I am not ungrateful. And for that which +happened yesterday I entreat your pardon." + +"I can pardon you for calling me a lackey, mademoiselle, only upon +condition that you permit me to be your lackey for the remainder of your +jaunt. Poictesme appears a somewhat too romantic country for unaccompanied +women to traverse in any comfort." + +"My thought to a comma," the Dominican put in,--"unaccompanied ladies +do not ordinarily drop from the forest oaks like acorns. I said as much +to Cazaio a half-hour ago. Look you, we two and Michault,--who formerly +incited this carcass and, from what I know of him, is by this time +occupying hell's hottest gridiron,--were riding peacefully toward +Beauséant. Then this lady pops out of nowhere, and Cazaio promptly +expresses an extreme admiration for her person." + +"The rest," John Bulmer said, "I can imagine. Oh, believe me, I look +forward to next Thursday!" + +"But for you," the girl said, "I would now be the prisoner of that devil +upon the Taunenfels! Three to one you fought,--and you conquered! I have +misjudged you, Monsieur Bulmer. I had thought you only an indolent old +gentleman, not very brave,--because--" + +"Because otherwise I would not have been the devil's lackey?" said John +Bulmer. "Eh, mademoiselle, I have been inspecting the world for more years +than I care to confess; I have observed the king upon his throne, and the +caught thief upon his coffin in passage for the gallows: and I suspect +they both came thither through taking such employment as chance offered. +Meanwhile, we waste daylight. You were journeying--?" + +"To Perdigon," Claire answered. She drew nearer to him and laid one +hand upon his arm. "You are a gallant man, Monsieur Bulmer. Surely you +understand. Two weeks ago my brother affianced me to the Duke of Ormskirk. +Ormskirk!--ah, I know he is your kinsman,--your patron,--but you yourself +could not deny that the world reeks with his infamy. And my own brother, +monsieur, had betrothed me to this perjurer, to that lewd rake, to that +inhuman devil who slaughters defenceless prisoners, men, women, and +children alike. Why, I had sooner marry the first beggar or the ugliest +fiend in hell!" the girl wailed, and she wrung her plump little hands in +desperation. + +"Good, good!" he cried, in his soul. "It appears my eloquence of yesterday +was greater than I knew of!" + +Claire resumed: "But you cannot argue with Gaston--he merely shrugs. So I +decided to go over to Perdigon and marry Gérard des Roches. He has wanted +to marry me for a long while, but Gaston said he was too poor. And, O +Monsieur Bulmer, Gérard is so very, very stupid!--but he was the only +person available, and in any event," she concluded, with a sigh of +resignation, "he is preferable to that terrible Ormskirk." + +John Bulmer gazed on her considerately. "'Beautiful as an angel, and +headstrong as a devil,'" was his thought, "You have an eye, Gaston!" +Aloud John Bulmer said: "Your remedy against your brother's tyranny, +mademoiselle, is quite masterly, though perhaps a trifle Draconic. Yet if +on his return he find you already married, he undoubtedly cannot hand you +over to this wicked Ormskirk. Marry, therefore, by all means,--but not with +this stupid Gérard." + +"With whom, then?" she wondered. + +"Fate has planned it," he laughed; "here are you and I, and yonder is the +clergyman whom Madam Destiny has thoughtfully thrown in our way." + +"Not you," she answered, gravely. "I am too deeply in your debt, Monsieur +Bulmer, to think of marrying you." + +"You refuse," he said, "because you have known for some days past that I +loved you. Yet it is really this fact which gives me my claim to become +your husband. You have need of a man to do you this little service. I know +of at least one person whose happiness it would be to die if thereby he +might save you a toothache. This man you cannot deny--you have not the +right to deny this man his single opportunity of serving you." + +"I like you very much," she faltered; and then, with disheartening +hastiness, "Of course, I like you very much; but I am not in love with +you." + +He shook his head at her, "I would think the worse of your intellect if you +were. I adore you. Granted: but that constitutes no cut-throat mortgage. +It is merely a state of mind which I have somehow blundered into, and with +which you have no concern. So I ask nothing of you save to marry me. You +may, if you like, look upon me as insane; it is the view toward which I +myself incline. However, mine is a domesticated mania and vexes no one save +myself; and even I derive no little amusement from its manifestations. Eh, +Monsieur Jourdain may laugh at me for a puling lover!" cried John Bulmer; +"but, heavens! if only he could see the unplumbed depths of ludicrousness I +discover in my own soul! The mirth of Atlas could not do it justice." + +Claire meditated for a while, her eyes inscrutable and yet not unkindly. +"It shall be as you will," she said at last. "Yes, certainly, I will marry +you." + +"O Mother of God!" said the Dominican, in profound disgust; "I cannot marry +two maniacs." But, in view of John Bulmer's sword and pistol, he went +through the ceremony without further protest. + +And something embryonic in John Bulmer seemed to come, with the knave's +benediction, into flowerage. He saw, as if upon a sudden, how fine she was; +all the gracious and friendly youth of her: and he deliberated, dizzily, +the awe of her spirited and alert eyes; why, the woman was afraid of him! +That sunny and vivid glade had become, to him, an island about which past +happenings lapped like a fretted sea. "Dear me!" he reflected, "but I am +really in a very bad way indeed." + +Now Mistress Bulmer gazed shyly at her husband. "We will go back to +Bellegarde," Claire began, "and inform Louis de Soyecourt that I cannot +marry the Duke of Ormskirk, because I have already married you, Jean +Bulmer,--" + +"I would follow you," said John Bulmer, "though hell yawned between us. +I employ the particular expression as customary in all these cases of +romantic infatuation." + +"Yet I," the Friar observed, "would, to the contrary, advise removal from +Poictesme as soon as may be possible. For I warn you that if you return to +Bellegarde, Monsieur de Soyecourt will have you hanged." + +"Reverend sir," John Bulmer replied, "do you actually believe this +consideration would be to me of any moment?" + +The Friar inspected his countenance. By and by the Friar said: "I +emphatically do not. And to think that at the beginning of our +acquaintanceship I took you for a sensible person!" Afterward the Friar +mounted his mule and left them. + +Then silently John Bulmer assisted his wife to the back of one of the +horses, and they turned eastward into the Forest of Acaire. Mr. Bulmer's +countenance was politely interested, and he chatted pleasantly of the +forenoon's adventure. Claire told him something of her earlier memories +of Cazaio. So the two returned to Bellegarde. Then Claire led the way +toward the western façade, where her apartments were, and they came to a +postern-door, very narrow and with a grating. + +"Help me down," the girl said. Immediately this was done; Claire remained +quite still. Her cheeks were smouldering and her left hand was lying inert +in John Bulmer's broader palm. + +"Wait here," she said, "and let me go in first. Someone may be on watch. +There is perhaps danger--" + +"My dear," said John Bulmer, "I perfectly comprehend you are about to enter +that postern, and close it in my face, and afterward hold discourse with me +through that little wicket. I assent, because I love you so profoundly that +I am capable not merely of tearing the world asunder like paper at your +command, but even of leaving you if you bid me do so." + +"Your suspicions," she replied, "are prematurely marital. I am trying to +protect you, and you are the first to accuse me of underhand dealing! I +will prove to you how unjust are your notions." She entered the postern, +closed and bolted it, and appeared at the wicket. + +"The Friar was intelligent," said Claire de Puysange, "and beyond doubt +the most sensible thing you can do is to get out of Poictesme as soon as +possible. You have been serviceable to me, and for that I thank you: but +the master of Bellegarde has the right of the low, the middle, and the high +justice, and if my husband show his face at Bellegarde he will infallibly +be hanged. If you claim me in England, Ormskirk will have you knifed in +some dark alleyway, just as, you tell me, he disposed of Monsieur Traquair +and Captain Dungelt. I am sorry, because I like you, even though you are +fat." + +"You bid me leave you?" said John Bulmer. He was comfortably seated upon +the turf. + +"For your own good," said she, "I advise you to." And she closed the +wicket. + +"The acceptance of advice," said John Bulmer, "is luckily optional. I shall +therefore go down into the village, purchase a lute, have supper, and I +shall be here at sunrise to greet you with an aubade, according to the +ancient custom of Poictesme." + +The wicket remained closed. + + +VI + +"I will go to Marly, inform Gaston of the entire matter, and then my wife +is mine. I have tricked her neatly. + +"I will do nothing of the sort. Gaston, can give me the woman's body only. +I shall accordingly buy me a lute." + + +VII + +Achille Cazaio on the Taunenfels did not sleep that night.... + +The two essays [Footnote: The twenty-first chapter of Du Maillot's _Hommes +Illustres_; and the fifth of d'Avranches's _Ancêtres de la Révolution_. +Löwe has an excellent digest of this data.] dealing with the man have +scarcely touched his capabilities. His exploits in and about Paris and +his Gascon doings, while important enough in the outcome, are but the +gesticulations of a puppet: the historian's real concern is with the hands +that manoeuvered above Cazaio; and whether or no Achille Cazaio organized +the riots in Toulouse and Guienne and Béarn is a question with which, at +this late day, there can be little profitable commerce. + +One recommends this Cazaio rather to the spinners of romance: with his +morality--a trifle buccaneerish on occasion--once discreetly palliated, +history affords few heroes more instantly taking to the fancy....One casts +a hankering eye toward this Cazaio's rumored parentage, his hopeless and +life-long adoration of Claire de Puysange, his dealings with d'Argenson and +King Louis le Bien-Aimé, the obscure and mischievous imbroglios in Spain, +and finally his aggrandizement and his flame-lit death, as du Maillot, +say, records these happenings: and one finds therein the outline of an +impelling hero, and laments that our traffic must be with a stolid and less +livelily tinted Bulmer. And with a sigh one passes on toward the labor +prearranged.... + +To-night Cazaio's desires were astir, and consciousness of his own power +was tempting him. He had never troubled Poictesme much: the Taunenfels were +accessible on that side, and so long as he confined his depredations to +the frontier, the Duc de Puysange merely shrugged and rendered his annual +tribute; it was not a great sum, and the Duke preferred to pay it rather +than forsake his international squabbles to quash a purely parochial +nuisance like a bandit, who was, too, a kinsman.... + +Meanwhile Cazaio had grown stronger than de Puysange knew. It was a time +of disaffection: the more violent here and there were beginning to assert +that before hanging a superfluous peasant or two de Puysange ought to bore +himself with inquiries concerning the abstract justice of the action. For +everywhere the irrational lower classes were grumbling about the very +miseries and maltreatments that had efficiently disposed of their fathers +for centuries: they seemed not to respect tradition: already they were +posting placards in the Paris boulevards,--"Shave the King for a monk, hang +the Pompadour, and break Machault on the wheel,"--and already a boy of +twelve, one Joseph Guillotin, was running about the streets of Saintes +yonder. So the commoners flocked to Cazaio in the Taunenfels until, little +by little, he had gathered an army about him. + +And at Bellegarde, de Soyecourt had only a handful of men, Cazaio meditated +to-night. And the woman was there,--the woman whose eyes were blue and +incurious, whose face was always scornful. + +In history they liken Achille Cazaio to Simon de Montfort, and the Gracchi, +and other graspers at fruit as yet unripe; or, if the perfervid word of +d'Avranches be accepted, you may regard him as "_le Saint-Jean de la +Révolution glorieuse_." But I think you may with more wisdom regard him as +a man of strong passions, any one of which, for the time being, possessed +him utterly. + +Now he struck his palm upon the table. + +"I have never seen a woman one-half so beautiful, Dom Michel. I am more +than ever in love with her." + +"In that event," the Friar considered, "it is, of course, unfortunate she +should have a brand-new husband. Husbands are often thought much of when +they are a novelty." + +"You bungled matters, you fat, mouse-hearted rascal. You could quite easily +have killed him." + +The Dominican spread out his hands, and afterward reached for the bottle. +"Milanese armor!" said Dom Michel Frégose. [Footnote: The same ecclesiastic +who more lately dubbed himself, with Maréchal de Richelieu's encouragement, +l'Abbé de Trans, and was discreditably involved in the forgeries of Madame +de St. Vincent.] + +"Yet I am master of Poictesme," Cazaio thundered, "I have ten men to de +Soyecourt's one. Am I, then, lightly to be thwarted?" + +"Undoubtedly you could take Bellegarde--and the woman along with the +castle,--if you decided they were worth the price of a little killing. I +think they are not worth it, I strongly advise you to have up a wench from +the village, to put out the light, and exercise your imagination." + +Cazaio shook his head. "No, Dom Michel, you churchmen live too lewdly to +understand the tyranny of love." + +"--Besides, there is that trifling matter of your understanding with de +Puysange,--and, besides, de Puysange will be here in two days." + +Cazaio snapped his fingers. "He will arrive after the fair." Cazaio +uncorked the ink-bottle with an august gesture. + +"Write!" said Achille Cazaio. + + +VIII + +As John Bulmer leisurely ascended from the village the birds were waking. +Whether day were at hand or no was a matter of twittering debate overhead, +but in the west the stars were paling one by one, like candles puffed out +by the pretentious little wind that was bustling about the turquoise cupola +of heaven; and eastward Bellegarde showed stark, as though scissored from +a painting, against a sky of gray-and-rose. Here was a world of faint +ambiguity. Here was the exquisite tension of dawn, curiously a-chime with +John Bulmer's mood, for just now he found the universe too beautiful to put +any actual faith in its existence. He had strayed into Faëry somehow--into +Atlantis, or Avalon, or "a wood near Athens,"--into a land of opalescence +and vapor and delicate color, that would vanish, bubble-like, at the +discreet tap of Pawsey fetching in his shaving-water; meantime John +Bulmer's memory snatched at each loveliness, jealously, as a pug snatches +bits of sugar. + +Beneath her window he paused and shifted his lute before him. Then he +began to sing, exultant in the unreality of everything and of himself in +particular. + +Sang John Bulmer, + + "Speed forth, my song, the sun's ambassador, + Lest in the east night prove the conqueror, + The day be slain, and darkness triumph,--for + The sun is single, but her eyes are twain. + + "And now the sunlight and the night contest + A doubtful battle, and day bides at best + Doubtful, until she waken. 'Tis attest + The sun is single. + + "But her eyes are twain,-- + And should the light of all the world delay, + And darkness prove victorious? Is it day + Now that the sun alone is risen? + + "Nay, + The sun is single, but her eyes are twain,-- + Twain firmaments that mock with heavenlier hue + The heavens' less lordly and less gracious blue, + And lit with sunlier sunlight through and through, + + "The sun is single, but her eyes are twain, + And of fair things this side of Paradise + Fairest, of goodly things most goodly," + +He paused here and smote a resonant and louder chord. His voice ascended in +dulcet supplication. + + "Rise, + And succor the benighted world that cries, + _The sun is single, but her eyes are twain!_" + +"Eh--? So it is you, is it?" Claire was peeping disdainfully from the +window. Her throat was bare, and her dusky hair was a shade dishevelled, +and in her meditative eyes he caught the flicker of her tardiest dream just +as it vanished. + +"It is I," John Bulmer confessed--"come to awaken you according to the +ancient custom of Poictesme." + +"I would much rather have had my sleep out," said she, resentfully. "In +perfect frankness, I find you and your ancient customs a nuisance." + +"You lack romance, my wife." + +"Oh--?" She was a person of many cryptic exclamations, this bride of his. +Presently she said: "Indeed, Monsieur Bulmer, I entreat you to leave +Poictesme. I have informed Louis of everything, and he is rather furious." + +John Bulmer said, "Do you comprehend why I have not already played the +emigrant?" + +After a little pause, she answered, "Yes." + +"And for the same reason I can never leave you so long as this gross +body is at my disposal. You are about to tell me that if I remain here I +shall probably be hanged on account of what happened yesterday. There are +grounds for my considering this outcome unlikely, but if I knew it to be +inevitable--if I had but one hour's start of Jack Ketch,--I swear to you I +would not budge." + +"I am heartily sorry," she replied, "since if I had known you really cared +for me--so much--I would never have married you. Oh, it is impossible!" the +girl laughed, with a trace of worriment. "You had not laid eyes on me until +a week ago yesterday!" + +"My dear," John Bulmer answered, "I am perhaps inadequately acquainted +with the etiquette of such matters, but I make bold to question if love is +exclusively regulated by clock-ticks. Observe!" he said, with a sort of +fury: "there is a mocking demon in me who twists my tongue into a jest even +when I am most serious. I love you: and I dare not tell you so without +a grin. Then when you laugh at me I, too, can laugh, and the whole +transaction can be regarded as a parody. Oh, I am indeed a coward!" + +"You are nothing of the sort! You proved that yesterday." + +"Yesterday I shot an unsuspecting man, and afterward fenced with +another--in a shirt of Milanese armor! Yes, I was astoundingly heroic +yesterday, for the simple reason that all the while I knew myself to be as +safe as though I were snug at home snoring under an eider-down quilt. Yet, +to do me justice, I am a shade less afraid of physical danger than of +ridicule." + +She gave him a womanly answer. "You are not ridiculous, and to wear armor +was very sensible of you." + +"To the contrary, I am extremely ridiculous. For observe: I am an elderly +man, quite old enough to be your father; I am fat--No, that is kind of you, +but I am not of pleasing portliness, I am just unpardonably fat; and, I +believe, I am not possessed of any fatal beauty of feature such as would +by ordinary impel young women to pursue me with unsolicited affection: +and being all this, I presume to love you. To me, at least, that appears +ridiculous." + +"Ah, do not laugh!" she said. "Do not laugh, Monsieur Bulmer!" + +But John Bulmer persisted in that curious laughter. "Because," he presently +stated, "the whole affair is so very diverting." + +"Believe me," Claire began, "I am sorry that you care--so much. I--do not +understand. I am sorry,--I am not sorry," the girl said, in a new tone, and +you saw her transfigured; "I am glad! Do you comprehend?--I am glad!" And +then she swiftly closed the window. + +John Bulmer observed. "I am perhaps subject to hallucinations, for +otherwise the fact had been previously noted by geographers that heaven is +immediately adjacent to Poictesme." + + +IX + +Presently the old flippancy came back to him, since an ancient custom is +not lightly broken; and John Bulmer smiled sleepily and shook his head. +"Here am I on my honeymoon, with my wife locked up in the château, and with +me locked out of it. My position savors too much of George Dandin's to be +quite acceptable. Let us set about rectifying matters." + +He came to the great gate of the castle and found two sentries there. He +thought this odd, but they recognized him as de Soyecourt's guest, and +after a whispered consultation admitted him. In the courtyard a lackey took +charge of Monsieur Bulmer, and he was conducted into the presence of the +Marquis de Soyecourt. "What the devil!" thought John Bulmer, "is Bellegarde +in a state of siege?" + +The little Marquis sat beside the Duchesse de Puysange, to the rear of a +long table with a crimson cover. Their attitudes smacked vaguely of the +judicial, and before them stood, guarded by four attendants, a ragged and +dissolute looking fellow whom the Marquis was languidly considering. + +"My dear man," de Soyecourt was saying as John Bulmer came into the room +"when you brought this extraordinary epistle to Bellegarde, you must +have been perfectly aware that thereby you were forfeiting your life. +Accordingly, I am compelled to deny your absurd claims to the immunity of a +herald, just as I would decline to receive a herald from the cockroaches." + +"That is cowardly," the man said. "I come as the representative of an +honorable enemy who desires to warn you before he strikes." + +"You come as the representative of vermin," de Soyecourt retorted, "and as +such I receive you. You will therefore, permit me to wish you a pleasant +journey into eternity. Why, holà, madame! here is that vagabond guest of +ours returned to observation!" The Marquis rose and stepped forward, all +abeam. "Mr. Bulmer, I can assure you that I was never more delighted to see +anyone in my entire life." + +"Pardon, monseigneur," one of the attendants here put in,--"but what shall +we do with this Achon?" + +The Marquis slightly turned his head, his hand still grasping John +Bulmer's. "Why, hang him, of course," he said. "Did I forget to tell you? +But yes, take him out, and have him confessed by Frère Joseph, and hang him +at once." The four men removed their prisoner. + +"You find us in the act of dispensing justice," the Marquis continued, "yet +at Bellegarde we temper it with mercy, so that I shall ask no indiscreet +questions concerning your absence of last night." + +"But I, monsieur," said John Bulmer, "I, too, have come to demand justice." + +"Tête-bleu, Mr. Bulmer! and what can I have the joy of doing for you in +that respect?" + +"You can restore to me my wife." + +And now de Soyecourt cast a smile toward the Duchess, who appeared +troubled. "Would you not have known this was an Englishman," he queried, +"by the avowed desire for the society of his own wife? They are a mad race. +And indeed, Mr. Bulmer, I would very gladly restore to you this hitherto +unheard-of spouse if but I were blest with her acquaintance. As it is--" He +waved his hand. + +"I married her only yesterday," said John Bulmer, "and I have reason to +believe that she is now within Bellegarde." + +He saw the eyes of de Soyecourt slowly narrow. "Jacques," said the Marquis, +"fetch me the pistol within that cabinet." The Marquis resumed his seat +to the rear of the table, the weapon lying before him. "You may go +now, Jacques; this gentleman and I are about to hold a little private +conversation." Then, when the door had closed upon the lackey, de Soyecourt +said, "Pray draw up a chair within just ten feet of this table, monsieur, +and oblige me with your wife's maiden name." + +"She was formerly known," John Bulmer answered, "as Mademoiselle Claire de +Puysange." + +The Duchess spoke for the first time. "Oh, the poor man! Monsieur de +Soyecourt, he is evidently insane." + +"I do not know about that," the Marquis said, fretfully, "but in any event +I hope that no more people will come to Bellegarde upon missions which, +compel me to have them hanged. First there was this Achon, and now you, Mr. +Bulmer, come to annoy me.--Listen, monsieur," he went on, presently: "last +evening Mademoiselle de Puysange announced to the Duchess and me that her +impending match with the Duke of Ormskirk must necessarily be broken off, +as she was already married. She had, she stated, encountered you and a +clergyman yonder the forest, where, on the spur of the moment, you two had +espoused each other; and was quite unable to inform us what had become of +you after the ceremony. You can conceive that, as a sensible man, I did not +credit a word of her story. But now, as I understand it, you corroborate +this moonstruck narrative?" + +John Bulmer bowed his head. "I have that honor, monsieur." + +De Soyecourt sounded the gong beside him. "In that event, it is uncommonly +convenient to have you in hand. Your return, to Bellegarde I regard +as opportune, even though I am compelled to attribute it to insanity; +personally, I disapprove of this match with Milor Ormskirk, but as Gaston +is bent upon it, you will understand that in reason my only course is to +make Claire a widow as soon as may be possible." + +"It is intended, then," John Bulmer queried, "that I am to follow Achon?" + +"I can but trust," said the Marquis, politely, "that your course of life +has qualified you for a superior flight, since Achon's departing, I +apprehend, is not unakin to a descent." + +"No!" the Duchess cried, suddenly; "Monsieur de Soyecourt, can you not +see the man is out of his senses? Let Claire be sent for. There is some +mistake." + +De Soyecourt shrugged. "Yen know that I can refuse you nothing. Jacques," +he called, to the appearing lackey, "request Mademoiselle de Puysange to +honor us, if it be convenient, with her presence. Nay, I pray you, do not +rise, Mr. Bulmer; I am of a nervous disposition, startled by the least +movement, and my finger, as you may note, is immediately upon the trigger." + +So they sat thus, John Bulmer beginning to feel rather foolish as time wore +on, though actually it was not a long while before Claire had appeared in +the doorway and had paused there. You saw a great wave of color flood her +countenance, then swiftly ebb. John Bulmer observed, with a thrill, that +she made no sound, but simply waited, composed and alert, to find out how +much de Soyecourt knew before she spoke. + +The little Marquis said, "Claire, this gentleman informs us that you +married him yesterday." + +Tranquilly she inspected her claimant. "I did not see Monsieur Bulmer at +all yesterday, so far as I remember. Why, surely, Louis, you did not take +my nonsense of last night in earnest?" she demanded, and gave a mellow +ripple of laughter. "Yes, you actually believed it; you actually believed +that I walked into the forest and married the first man I met there, and +that this is he. As it happens I did not; so please let Monsieur Bulmer go +at once, and put away that absurd pistol--at once, Louis, do you hear?" + +The Duchess shook her head. "She is lying, Monsieur de Soyecourt, and +undoubtedly this is the man." + +John Bulmer went to the girl and took her hand. "You are trying to save me, +I know. But need I warn you that the reward of Ananias was never a synonym +for felicity?" + +"Jean Bulmer! Jean Bulmer!" the girl asked, and her voice was tender; "why +did you return to Bellegarde, Jean Bulmer?" + +"I came," he answered, "for the absurd reason that I cannot live without +you." + +They stood thus for a while, both her hands clasped in his, "I believe +you," she said at last, "even though I do not understand at all, Jean +Bulmer." And then she wheeled upon the Marquis, "Yes, yes!" Claire +said; "the man is my husband. And I will not have him harmed. Do you +comprehend?--you shall not touch him, because you are not fit to touch him, +Louis, and also because I do not wish it." + +De Soyecourt looked toward the Duchess as if for advice. "It is a nuisance, +but evidently she cannot marry Milor Ormskirk so long as Mr. Bulmer is +alive. I suppose it would be better to hang him out-of-hand?" + +"Monsieur de Puysange would prefer it, I imagine," said the Duchess; +"nevertheless, it appears a great pity." + +"In nature," the Marquis assented, "we deplore the loss of Mr. Bulmer's +company. Yet as matters stand--" + +"But they are in love with each other," the Duchess pointed out, with a +sorry little laugh. "Can you not see that, my friend?" + +"Hein?" said the Marquis; "why, then, it is doubly important that Mr. +Bulmer be hanged as soon as possible." He reached for the gong, but Claire +had begun to speak. + +"I am not at all in love with him! You are of a profound imbecility, +Hélène. I think he is a detestable person, because he always looks at you +as if he saw something extremely ridiculous, but was too polite to notice +it. He is invariably making me suspect I have a smut on my nose. But in +spite of that, I consider him a very pleasant old gentleman, and I will not +have him hanged!" With which ultimatum she stamped her foot. + +"Yes, madame," said the Marquis, critically; "after all, she is in love +with him. That is unfortunate, is it not, for Milor Ormskirk,--and even for +Achille Cazaio," he added, with a shrug. + +"I fail to see," a dignified young lady stated, "what Cazaio, at least, has +to do with your galimatias." + +"Simply that I received this morning a letter demanding you be surrendered +to Cazaio," de Soyecourt answered as he sounded the gong. "Otherwise, our +amiable friend of the Taunenfels announces he will attack Bellegarde. I, +of course, hanged his herald and despatched messengers to Gaston, whom I +look for to-morrow. If Gaston indeed arrive to-morrow morning, Mr. Bulmer, +I shall relinquish you to him; in other circumstances will be laid upon +me the deplorable necessity of summoning a Protestant minister from +Manneville, and, after your spiritual affairs are put in order, of hanging +you--suppose we say at noon?" + +"The hour suits me," said John Bulmer, "as well as another. But no better. +And I warn you it will not suit the Duke of Ormskirk, either, whose +relative--whose very near relative--" He posed for the astounding +revelation. + +But little de Soyecourt had drawn closer to him. "Mr. Bulmer, I have +somehow omitted to mention that two years ago I was at Aix-la-Chapelle, +when the treaty was in progress, and there saw your great kinsman. I cut +no particular figure at the convocation, and it is unlikely he recalls my +features; but I remember his quite clearly." + +"Indeed?" said John Bulmer, courteously; "it appears, then, that monsieur +is a physiognomist?" + +"You flatter me," the Marquis returned. "My skill in that science enabled +me to deduce only the veriest truisms--such as that the man who for fifteen +years had beaten France, had hoodwinked France, would in France be not +oversafe could we conceive him fool enough to hazard a trip into this +country." + +"Especially alone?" said John Bulmer. + +"Especially," the Marquis assented, "if he came alone. But, ma foi! I am +discourteous. You were about to say--?" + +"That a comic subject declines to be set forth in tragic verse," John +Bulmer answered, "and afterward to inquire the way to my dungeon." + + +X + +But John Bulmer escaped a dungeon after all; for at parting de Soyecourt +graciously offered to accept Mr. Bulmer's parole, which he gave willingly +enough, and thereby obtained the liberty of a tiny enclosed garden, whence +a stairway led to his new apartment on the second floor of what had been +known as the Constable's Tower, since du Guesclin held it for six weeks +against Sir Robert Knollys. This was a part of the ancient fortress in +which, they say, Poictesme's most famous hero, Dom Manuel, dwelt and +performed such wonders, a long while before Bellegarde was remodeled by +Duke Florian. + +The garden, gravel-pathed, was a trim place, all green and white. It +contained four poplars, and in the center was a fountain, where three +Nereids contended with a brawny Triton for the possession of a turtle whose +nostrils spurted water. A circle of attendant turtles, half-submerged, shot +inferior jets from their gaping mouths. It was an odd, and not unhandsome +piece, [Footnote: Designed by Simon Guillain. This fountain is still to be +seen at Bellegarde, though the exuberancy of Revolutionary patriotism has +bereft the Triton of his head and of the lifted arm.] and John Bulmer +inspected it with appreciation, and then the garden, and having found all +things satisfactory, sat down and chuckled sleepily and waited. + +"De Soyecourt has been aware of my identity throughout the entire week! +Faith, then, I am a greater fool than even I suspected, since this fop of +the boulevards has been able to trick me so long. He has some card up his +sleeve, too, has our good Marquis--Eh, well! Gaston comes to-morrow, and +thenceforward all is plain sailing. Meantime I conjecture that the poor +captive will presently have visitors." + +He had dinner first, though, and at this meal gave an excellent account of +himself. Shortly afterward, as he sat over his coffee, little de Soyecourt +unlocked the high and narrow gate which constituted the one entrance to the +garden, and sauntered forward, dapper and smiling. + +"I entreat your pardon, Monsieur le Duc," de Soyecourt began, "that I have +not visited you sooner. But in unsettled times, you comprehend, the master +of a beleaguered fortress is kept busy. Cazaio, I now learn, means to +attack to-morrow, and I have been fortifying against him. However, I attach +no particular importance to the man's threats, as I have despatched three +couriers to Gaston, one of whom must in reason get to him; and in that +event Gaston should arrive early in the afternoon, accompanied by the +dragoons of Entréchat. And subsequently--eh bien! if Cazaio has stirred up +a hornets'-nest he has only himself to thank for it." The Marquis snapped +his fingers and hummed a merry air, being to all appearance in excellent +spirits. + +"That is well," said John Bulmer,--"for, believe me, I shall be unfeignedly +glad to see Gaston once more." + +"Decidedly," said the Marquis, sniffing, "they give my prisoners much +better coffee than they deign to afford me, I shall make bold to ask you +for a cup of it, while we converse sensibly." He sat down opposite John +Bulmer. "Oh, about Gaston," said the Marquis, as he added the sugar--"it +is deplorable that you will not see Gaston again, at least, not in this +naughty world of ours." + +"I am the more grieved," said John Bulmer, gravely, "for I love the man." + +"It is necessary, you conceive, that I hang you, at latest, before twelve +o'clock to-morrow, since Gaston is a little too fond of you to fall in with +my plans. His premature arrival would in effect admit the bull of equity +into the china-shop of my intentions. And day-dreams are fragile stuff, +Monsieur d'Ormskirk! Indeed, I am giving you this so brief reprieve only +because I am, unwilling to have upon my conscience the reproach of hanging +without due preparation a man whom of all politicians in the universe I +most unfeignedly like and respect. The Protestant minister has been sent +for, and will, I sincerely trust, be here at dawn. Otherwise--really, I am +desolated, Monsieur le Duc, but you surely comprehend that I cannot wait +upon his leisure." + +John Bulmer cracked a filbert. "So I am to die to-morrow? I do not presume +to dictate, monsieur, but I would appreciate some explanation of your +motive." + +"Which I freely render," the Marquis replied. "When I recognized you a week +ago--as I did at first glance,--I was astounded. That you, the man in all +the world most cordially hated by Frenchmen, should venture into France +quite unattended was a conception to confound belief. Still, here you were, +and I comprehended that such an opportunity would not rap twice upon +the door. So I despatched a letter post-haste to Madame de Pompadour at +Marly--" + +"I begin to comprehend," John Bulmer said. "Old Tournehem's daughter +[Footnote: Mr. Bulmer here refers to a venerable scandal. The Pompadour +was, in the eyes of the law, at least, the daughter of François Poisson.] +hates me as she hates no other man alive. Frankly, monsieur, the little +strumpet has some cause to,--may I trouble you for the nut-crackers? a +thousand thanks,--since I have outwitted her more than once, both in +diplomacy and on the battle-field. With me out of the way, I comprehend +that France might attempt to renew the war, and our late treaty would be so +much wasted paper. Yes, I comprehend that the woman would give a deal for +me--But what the devil! France has no allies. She dare not provoke England +just at present; she has no allies, monsieur, for I can assure you that +Prussia is out of the game. Then what is the woman driving at?" + +"Far be it from me," said the Marquis, with becoming modesty, "to meddle +with affairs of state. Nevertheless, madame is willing to purchase you--at +any price." + +John Bulmer slapped his thigh, "Kaunitz! behold the key. Eh, eh, I have +it now; not long ago the Empress despatched a special ambassador to +Versailles,--one Anton Wenzel Kaunitz, a man I never heard of. Why, this +Moravian count is a genius of the first water. He will combine France and +Austria, implacable enemies since the Great Cardinal's time. Ah, I have +it now, monsieur,--Frederick of Prussia has published verses against the +Pompadour which she can never pardon--eh, against the Czaritza, too! Why, +what a thing it is to be a poet! now Russia will join the league. And +Sweden, of course, because she wants Pomerania, which King Frederick +claims. Monsieur de Soyecourt, I protest it will be one of the prettiest +messes ever stirred up in history! And to think that I am to miss it all!" + +"I regret," de Soyecourt said, "to deny you the pleasure of participation. +In sober verity I regret it. But unluckily, Monsieur d'Ormskirk, your +dissolution is the sole security of my happiness; and in effect"--he +shrugged,--"you comprehend my unfortunate position." + +"One of the prettiest messes ever stirred up in all history!" John Bulmer +lamented; "and I to miss it! The policy of centuries shrugged aside, and +the map of the world made over as lightly as if it were one of last year's +gowns! Decidedly I shall never again cast reflections upon the woman in +politics, for this is superb. Why, this coup is worthy of me! And what is +Petticoat the Second to give you, pray, for making all this possible?" + +"She will give me," the Marquis retorted, "according to advices received +from her yesterday, a lettre-de-cachet for Gaston de Puysange. Gaston is a +man of ability, but he is also a man of unbridled tongue. He has expressed +his opinion concerning the Pompadour, to cite an instance, as freely as +ever did the Comte de Maurepas. You know what happened to de Maurepas. Ah, +yes, Gaston is undoubtedly a peer of France, but the Pompadour is queen +of that kingdom. And in consequence--on the day that Madame de Pompadour +learns of your death,--Gaston goes to the Bastile." + +"Naturally," John Bulmer assented, "since imprisonment in the Bastile is by +ordinary the reward of common-sense when manifested by a Frenchman. What +the devil, monsieur! The Duchess' uncle, Maréchal de Richelieu, has been +there four times, and Gaston himself, if I am not mistaken, has sojourned +there twice. And neither is one whit the worse for it." + +The Marquis sipped his coffee. "The Bastile is not a very healthy place. +Besides, I have a friend there,--a gaoler. He was formerly a chemist." + +John Bulmer elevated the right eyebrow. "Poison?" + +"Dieu m'en garde!" The Marquis was appalled. "Nay, monsieur, merely an +unforeseeable attack of heart-disease." + +"Ah! ah!" said John Bulmer, very slowly. He presently resumed: "Afterward +the Duchesse de Puysange will be a widow. And already she is fond of you; +but unfortunately the Duchess--with every possible deference,--is a trifle +prudish. I see it all now, quite plainly; and out of pure friendliness, +I warn you that in my opinion the Duchess is hopelessly in love with her +husband." + +"We should suspect no well bred lady of provincialism," returned the +Marquis, "and so I shall take my chance. Believe me, Monsieur le Duc, I +profoundly regret that you and Gaston must be sacrificed in order to afford +me this same chance." + +But John Bulmer was chuckling. "My faith!" he said, and softly chafed his +hands together, "how sincerely you will be horrified when your impetuous +error is discovered--just too late! You were merely endeavoring to serve +your beloved Gaston and the Duke of Ormskirk when you hanged the rascal +who had impudently stolen the woman intended to cement their friendship! +The Duke fell a victim to his own folly, and you acted precipitately, +perhaps, but out of pure zeal. You will probably weep. Meanwhile your +lettre-de-cachet is on the road, and presently Gaston, too, is trapped +and murdered. You weep yet more tears--oh, vociferous tears!---and the +Duchess succumbs to you because you were so devotedly attached to her +former husband. And England will sit snug while France reconquers Europe. +Monsieur, I make you my compliments on one of the tidiest plots ever +brooded over." + +"It rejoices me," the Marquis returned, "that a conspirator of many years' +standing should commend my maiden effort." He rose. "And now, Monsieur +d'Ormskirk," he continued, with extended hand, "matters being thus amicably +adjusted, shall we say adieu?" + +John Bulmer considered. "Well,--no!" said he, at last; "I commend your +cleverness, Monsieur de Soyecourt, but as concerns your hand I must confess +to a distaste." + +The Marquis smiled. "Because at the bottom of your heart you despise me," +he said. "Ah, believe me, monsieur, your contempt for de Soyecourt is less +great than mine. And yet I have a weakness for him,--a weakness which +induces me to indulge all his desires." + +He bowed with ceremony and left the garden. + + +XI + +John Bulmer sat down to consider more at leisure these revelations. He +foreread like a placard Jeanne d'Étoiles' magnificent scheme: it would +convulse all Europe. England would remain supine, because Henry Pelham +could hardly hold the ministry together, even now; Newcastle was a fool; +and Ormskirk would be dead. He would barter his soul for one hour of +liberty, he thought. A riot, now,--ay, a riot in Paris, a blow from within, +would temporarily stupefy French enterprise and gain England time for +preparation. And a riot could be arranged so easily! Meanwhile he was a +prisoner, Pelham's hands were tied, and Newcastle was a fool, and the +Pompadour was disastrously remote from being a fool. + +"It is possible to announce that I am the Duke of Ormskirk--and to what +end? Faith, I had as well proclaim myself the Pope of Rome or the Cazique +of Mexico: the jackanapes will effect to regard my confession as the device +of a desperate man and will hang me just the same; and his infernal comedy +will go on without a hitch. Nay, I am fairly trapped, and Monsieur de +Soyecourt holds the winning hand--Now that I think of it he even has, in +Mr. Bulmer's letter of introduction, my formally signed statement that I +am not Ormskirk. It was tactful of the small rascal not to allude to that +crowning piece of stupidity: I appreciate his forbearance. But even so, to +be outwitted--and hanged---by a smirking Hop-o'-my-thumb! + +"Oh, this is very annoying!" said John Bulmer, in his impotence. + +He sat down once more, sulkily, like an overfed cat, and began to read with +desperate attention: "'Here may men understand that be of worship, that he +was never formed that at every time might stand, but sometimes he was put +to the worse by evil fortune. And at sometimes the worse knight putteth +the better knight into rebuke.' Behold a niggardly salve rather than a +panacea." He turned several pages. "'And then said Sir Tristram to Sir +Lamorake, "I require you if ye happen to meet with Sir Palomides--"'" +Startled, John Bulmer glanced about the garden. + +It turned on a sudden into the primal garden of Paradise. "I came," she +loftily explained, "because I considered it my duty to apologize in person +for leading you into great danger. Our scouts tell us that already Cazaio +is marshalling his men upon the Taunenfels." + +"And yet," John Bulmer said, as he arose, and put away his book, +"Bellegarde is a strong place. And our good Marquis, whatever else he may +be, is neither a fool nor a coward." + +Claire shrugged. "Cazaio has ten men to our one. Yet perhaps we can hold +out till Gaston comes with his dragoons. And then--well, I have some +influence with Gaston. He will not deny me,--ah, surely he will not deny me +if I go down on my knees to him and wear my very prettiest gown. Nay, at +bottom Gaston is kind, my friend, and he will spare you." + +"To be your husband?" said John Bulmer. + +Twice she faltered "No." And then she cried, with a sudden flare of +irritation: "I do not love you! I cannot help that. Oh, you--you +unutterable bully!" + +Gravely he shook his head at her. + +"But indeed you are a bully. You are trying to bully me into caring for +you, and you know it. What else moved you to return to Bellegarde, and to +sit here, a doomed man, tranquilly reading? Yes, but you were,--I happened +to see you, through the key-hole in the gate. And why else should you be +doing that unless you were trying to bully me into admiring you?" + +"Because I adore you," said John Bulmer, taking affairs in order; "and +because in this noble and joyous history of the great conqueror and +excellent monarch, King Arthur, I find much diverting matter; and because, +to be quite frank, Claire, I consider an existence without you neither +alluring nor possible." + +She had noticeably pinkened. "Oh, monsieur," the girl cried, "you are +laughing because you are afraid that I will laugh at what you are saying to +me. Believe me, I have no desire to laugh. It frightens me, rather. I had +thought that nowadays no man could behave with a foolishness so divine. I +had thought all such extravagancy perished with the Launcelot and Palomides +of your book. And I had thought--that in any event, you had no earthly +right to call me Claire." + +"Superficially, the reproach is just," he assented, "but what was the +name your Palomides cried in battle, pray? Was it not _Ysoude!_ when his +searching sword had at last found the joints of his adversary's armor, or +when the foe's helmet spouted blood? _Ysoude!_ when the line of adverse +spears wavered and broke, and the Saracen was victor? Was it not _Ysoude!_ +he murmured riding over alien hill and valley in pursuit of the Questing +Beast?--'the glatisant beast'? Assuredly, he cried _Ysoude!_ and meantime +La Beale Ysoude sits snug in Cornwall with Tristram, who dons his armor +once in a while to roll Palomides in the sand _coram populo_. Still the +name was sweet, and I protest the Saracen had a perfect right to mention it +whenever he felt so inclined." + +"You jest at everything," she lamented--"which is one of the many traits +that I dislike in you." + +"Knowing your heart to be very tender," he submitted, "I am endeavoring to +present as jovial and callous an appearance as may be possible--to you, +whom I love as Palomides loved Ysoude. Otherwise, you might be cruelly +upset by your compassion and sympathy. Yet stay; is there not another +similitude? Assuredly, for you love me much as Ysoude loved Palomides. What +the deuce is all this lamentation to you? You do not value it the beard of +an onion,--while of course grieving that your friendship should have been +so utterly misconstrued, and wrongly interpreted,--and--trusting that +nothing you have said or done has misled me--Oh, but I know you women!" + +"Indeed, I sometimes wonder," she reflected, "what sort of women you have +been friends with hitherto? They must have been very patient of nonsense." + +"Ah, do you think so?--At all events, you interrupt my peroration. For we +have fought, you and I, a--battle which is over, so far as I am concerned. +And the other side has won. Well! Pompey was reckoned a very pretty fellow +in his day, but he took to his heels at Pharsalia, for all that; and +Hannibal, I have heard, did not have matters entirely his own way at Zama. +Good men have been beaten before this. So, without stopping to cry over +spilt milk,--heyho!" he interpolated, with a grimace, "it was uncommonly +sweet milk, though,--let's back to our tents and reckon up our wounds." + +"I am decidedly of the opinion," she said, "that for all your talk you +will find your heart unscratched." Irony bewildered Claire, though she +invariably recognized it, and gave it a polite smile. + +John Bulmer said: "Faith, I do not intend to flatter your vanity by going +into a decline on the spot. For in perfect frankness, I find no mortal +wounds anywhere. No, we have it on the best authority that, while many men +have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them, it was never for +love. I am inclined to agree with Rosalind: an aneurism may be fatal, but +a broken heart kills nobody. Lovers have died in divers manners since the +antique world was made, but not the most luckless of them was slain by +love. Even Palomides, as my book informs me, went abroad with Launcelot and +probably died an old man here in France,--peaceably, in his bed, with the +family physician in attendance, and every other circumstance becoming to +a genteel demise. And I dare assert that long before this he had learned +to chuckle over his youthful follies, and had protested to his wife that +La Beale Ysoude squinted, or was freckled, or the like; and had insisted, +laughingly, that the best of us must sow our wild oats. And at the last it +was his wife who mixed his gruel and smoothed his pillow and sat up with +him at night; so that if he died thinking of Madame Palomides rather than +of La Beale Ysoude, who shall blame him? Not I, for one," said John Bulmer, +stoutly; "If it was not heroic, it was at least respectable, and, above +all, natural; and I expect some day to gasp out a similar valedictory. No, +not to-morrow at noon, I think: I shall probably get out of this, somehow. +And when, in any event, I set about the process of dying, I may be thinking +of you, O fair lost lady! and again I may not be thinking of you. Who can +say? A fly, for instance, may have lighted upon my nose and his tickling +may have distracted my ultimate thoughts. Meanwhile, I love you consumedly, +and you do not care a snap of your fingers for me." + +"I--I am sorry," she said, inadequately. + +"You are the more gracious." And his face sank down into his hands, and +Claire was forgotten, for he was remembering Alison Pleydell and that +ancient bankruptcy of his heart in youth, and this preposterous old John +Bulmer (he reflected) was simply revelling in pity for himself. + +A hand, feather-soft, fell upon, his shoulder, "And who was your Ysoude, +Jean Bulmer?" + +"A woman who died twenty years ago,--a woman dead before you were born, my +dear." + +Claire gave a little stifled moan, "Oh--oh, I loathe her!" she cried. + +But when he raised his head Claire was gone. + + +XII + +He sat long in the twilight, now; rising insensibly about him. The garden +had become a grave, yet not unfriendly, place; the white straining Nereids +were taking on a tinge of violet, the verdure was of a deeper hue, that was +all; and the fountain plashed unhurriedly, as though measuring a reasonable +interval (he whimsically imagined) between the asking of a riddle and its +solution given gratis by the asker. + +He loved the woman; granted: but did not love rise the higher above a +corner-stone of delusion? And this he could never afford. He considered +Claire to be not extravagantly clever, he could have improved upon her +ears (to cite one instance), which were rather clumsily modelled; her +finger-tips were a thought too thick, a shade too practical, and in fine +she was no more the most beautiful woman in the world than she was the +tallest: and yet he loved her as certainly he had loved none of his recent +mistresses. Even so, here was no infatuation, no roseate and kindly haze +surrounding a goddess, such as that which had by ordinary accompanied +Alison Pleydell.... + +"I am grown older, perhaps. Perhaps it is merely that I am fashioned of +baser stuff than---say, Achille Cazaio or de Soyecourt. Or perhaps it +is that this overmastering, all-engulfing love is a mere figment of the +poet, an age-long superstition as zealously preserved as that of the +inscrutability of women, by men who don't believe a syllable of the +nonsense they are transmitting. Ysoude is dead; and I love my young +French wife as thoroughly as Palomides did, with as great a passion as +was possible to either of us oldsters. Well! all life is a compromise; I +compromise with tradition by loving her unselfishly, by loving her with the +very best that remains in John Bulmer. + +"And yet, I wish-- + +"True, I may be hanged at noon to-morrow, which would somewhat disconcert +my plan. I shall not bother about that. Always there remains the chance +that, somehow, Gaston may arrive in time: otherwise--why, otherwise I shall +be hanged, and as to what will happen afterward I decline to enter into any +discussion even with myself. I have my belief, but it is bolstered by no +iota of knowledge. Faith, let us live this life as a gentleman should, and +keep our hands and our consciences as clean as may be possible, and for the +outcome trust to God's common-sense. There are people who must divert Him +vastly by their frantic efforts to keep out of hell. For my own part, I +would not think of wearing a pelisse in the Desert of Sahara merely because +I happened to be sailing for Greenland during the ensuing week. I shall +trust to His common-sense. + +"And yet, I wish-- + +"I wish Reinault would hurry with the supper-trays. I am growing very +hungry." + + +XIII + +That night he was roused by a tapping at his door. "Jean Bulmer, Jean +Bulmer! I have bribed Reinault. I have the keys. Come, and I will set you +free." + +"Free to do what?" said John Bulmer. + +"To escape--to flee to your foggy England," said the voice without,--"and +to your hideous Englishwomen." + +"Do you go with me?" said John Bulmer. + +"I do not." This was spoken from the turrets of decision. + +"In that event," said John Bulmer, "I shall return to my dreams, which I +infinitely prefer to the realities of a hollow existence. And, besides, now +one thinks of it, I have given my parole." + +An infuriate voice came through the key-hole. "You are undoubtedly a +bully," it stated. "I loathe you." Followed silence. + +Presently the voice said, "Because if you really loved her you were no +better than she was, and so I hate you both." + +"'Beautiful as an angel, and headstrong as a devil,'" was John Bulmer's +meditation. Afterward John Bulmer turned over and went back to sleep. + +For after all, as he reflected, he had given his parole. + + +XIV + +He was awakened later by a shriek that was followed by a hubbub of tumult. +John Bulmer sat erect in bed. He heard a medley of yelling, of musketry, +and of crashes, like the dilapidation of falling battlements. He knew well +enough what had happened. Cazaio and his men were making a night attack +upon Bellegarde. + +John Bulmer arose and, having lighted two candles, dressed himself. He cast +aside the first cravat as a failure, knotted the second with scrupulous +nicety, and afterward sat down, facing the door to his apartment, and +trimmed his finger nails. Outside was Pandemonium, and the little scrap of +sky visible from his one window was now of a sullen red. + +"It is very curious I do not suffer more acutely. As a matter of fact, I +am not conscious of any particular feeling at all. I believe that most of +us when we are confronted with a situation demanding high joy or agony +find ourselves devoid of emotion. They have evidently taken de Soyecourt +by surprise. She is yonder in that hell outside and will inevitably be +captured by its most lustful devil--or else be murdered. I am here like +a trapped rat, impotent, waiting to be killed, which Cazaio's men will +presently attend to when they ransack the place and find me. And I feel +nothing, absolutely nothing. + +"By this she has probably fallen into Cazaio's power--" + +And the man went mad. He dashed upon the locked door, and tore at it with +soft-white hands, so that presently they were all blood. He beat his face +upon the door, cutting open his forehead. + +He shook his bleeding hands toward heaven. "In my time I have been cruel. I +am less cruel than You! Let me go!" + +The door opened and she stood upon the threshold. His arms were about her +and repeatedly he kissed her, mercilessly, with hard kisses, crushing her +in his embrace. + +"Jean, Jean!" she sobbed, beneath his lips, and lay quite still in his +arms. He saw how white and tender a thing she was, and the fierce embrace +relaxed. + +"You came to me!" he said. + +"Louis had forgotten you. They had all retreated to the Inner Tower. +[Footnote: The inner ward, or ballium, which (according to Quinault) was +defended by ten towers, connected by an embattled stone wall about thirty +feet in height and eight feet thick, on the summit of which was a footway; +now demolished to make way for the famous gardens.] Cazaio cannot take +that, for he has no cannon. Louis can hold out there until Gaston comes +with help," Claire rapidly explained. "But the thieves are burning +Bellegarde. I could bribe no man to set you free. They were afraid to +venture." + +"And you came," said John Bulmer--"you left the tall safe Inner Tower to +come to me!" + +"I could not let you die, Jean Bulmer." + +"Why, then I must live not unworthily the life which, you have given me. O +God!" John Bulmer cried, "what a pitiful creature was that great Duke of +Ormskirk! Now make a man of me, O God!" + +"Listen, dear madman," she breathed; "we cannot go out into Bellegarde. +They are everywhere--Cazaio's men. They are building huge fires about the +Inner Tower; but it is all stone, and I think Louis can hold out. But we, +Jean Bulmer, can only retreat to the roofing of this place. There is a +trap-door to admit you to the top, and there--there we can at least live +until the dawn." + +"I am unarmed," John Bulmer said; "and weaponless, I cannot hold even a +trap-door against armed men." + +"I have brought you weapons," Claire returned, and waved one hand toward +the outer passageway. "Naturally I would not overlook that. There were many +dead men on my way hither, and they had no need of weapons. I have a sword +here and two pistols." + +"You are," said John Bulmer, with supreme conviction, "the most wonderful +woman in the universe. By all means let us get to the top of this infernal +tower and live there as long as we may find living possible. But first, +will you permit me to make myself a thought tidier? For in my recent +agitation as to your whereabouts I have, I perceive, somewhat disordered +both my person and my apparel." + +Claire laughed a little sadly. "You have been sincere for once in your +existence, and you are hideously ashamed, is it not? Ah, my friend, I would +like you so much better if you were not always playing at life, not always +posing as if for your portrait." + +"For my part," he returned, obscurely, from the rear of a wet towel, "I +fail to perceive any particular merit in dying with a dirty face. We are +about to deal with a most important and, it well may be, the final crisis +of our lives. So let us do it with decency." + +Afterward John Bulmer changed his cravat, since the one he wore was soiled +and crumpled and stained a little with his blood; and they went up the +winding stairway to the top of the Constable's Tower. These two passed +through the trap-door into a moonlight which drenched the world; westward +the higher walls of the Hugonet Wing shut off that part of Bellegarde where +men were slaughtering one another, and turrets, black and untenanted, stood +in strong relief against a sky of shifting crimson and gold. At their feet +was the tiny enclosed garden half-hidden by the poplar boughs. To the east +the Tower dropped sheer to the moat; and past that was the curve of the +highway leading to the main entrance of the château, and beyond this road +you saw Amneran and the moonlighted plains of the Duardenez, and one little +tributary, a thread of pulsing silver, in passage to the great river which +showed as a smear of white, like a chalk-mark on the world's rim. + +John Bulmer closed the trap-door. They stood with clasped hands, eyes +straining toward the east, whence help must arrive if help came at all. + +"No sign of Gaston," the girl said. "We most die presently, Jean Bulmer." + +"I am sorry," he said,--"Oh, I am hideously sorry that we two must die." + +"I am not afraid, Jean Bulmer. But life would be very sweet, with you." + +"That was my thought, too.... I have always bungled this affair of living, +you conceive. I had considered the world a healthy and not intolerable +prison, where each man must get through his day's work as best he might, +soiling his fingers as much as necessity demanded--but no more,--so that at +the end he might sleep soundly--or perhaps that he might go to heaven and +pluck eternally at a harp, or else to hell and burn eternally, just as +divines say we will. I never bothered about it, much, so long as there was +my day's work at hand, demanding performance. And in consequence I missed +the whole meaning of life." + +"That is not so!" Claire replied. "No man has achieved more, as everybody +knows." + +This was an odd speech. But he answered, idly: "Eh, I have done well +enough as respectable persons judge these matters. And I went to church on +Sundays, and I paid my tithes. Trifles, these, sweetheart; for in every +man, as I now see quite plainly, there is a god. And the god must judge, +and the man himself must be the temple and the instrument of the god. It is +very simple, I see now. And whether he go to church or no is a matter of +trivial importance, so long as the man obeys the god who is within him." +John Bulmer was silent, staring vaguely toward the blank horizon. + +"And now that you have discovered this," she murmured, "therefore you wish +to live?" + +"Why, partly on account of that," he said, "yet perhaps mostly on account +of you.... But heyho!" said John Bulmer; "I am disfiguring my last hours +by inflicting upon a lady my half-baked theology. Let us sit down, my +dear, and talk of trifles till they find us. And then I will kill you, +sweetheart, and afterward myself. Presently come dawn and death; and my +heart, according to the ancient custom of Poictesme, is crying, '_Oy +Dieus! Oy Dieus, de l'alba tantost ve!_' But for all that, my mouth will +resolutely discourse of the last Parisian flounces, or of your unfathomable +eyes, or of Monsieur de Voltaire's new tragedy of _Oreste_,--or, in fine, +of any topic you may elect." + +He smiled, with a twinging undercurrent of regret that not even in +impendent death did he find any stimulus to the heroical. But the girl had +given a muffled cry. + +"Look, Jean! Already they come for us." + +Through the little garden a man was running, running frenziedly from +one wall to another when he found the place had no outlet save the gate +through which he had scuttled. It was fat Guiton, the steward of the Duc de +Puysange. Presently came Achille Cazaio with a wet sword, and harried the +unarmed old man, wantonly driving him about the poplars, pricking him in +the quivering shoulders, but never killing him. All the while the steward +screamed with a monotonous shrill wailing. + +After a little he fell at Cazaio's feet, shrieking for mercy. + +"Fool!" said the latter, "I am Achille Cazaio. I have no mercy in me." + +He kicked the steward in the face two or three times, and Guiton, his +countenance all blood, black in the moonlight, embraced the brigand's +and wept. Presently Cazaio slowly drove his sword into the back of the +prostrate man, who shrieked, "O Jesu!" and began to cough and choke. Five +times Cazaio spitted the writhing thing, and afterward was Guiton's soul +released from the tortured body. + +"Is it well, think you," said John Bulmer, "that I should die without first +killing Achille Cazaio?" + +"No!" the girl answered, fiercely. + +Then John Bulmer leaned upon the parapet of the Constable's Tower and +called aloud, "Friend Achille, your conduct disappoints me." + +The man started, peered about, and presently stared upward. "Monsieur +Bulmaire, to encounter you is indeed an unlooked-for pleasure. May I +inquire wherein I have been so ill-fated as to offend?" + +"You have an engagement to fight me on Thursday afternoon, friend Achille, +so that to all intent I hold a mortgage on your life. I submit that, in +consequence, you have no right to endanger that life by besieging castles +and wasting the night in assassinations." + +"There is something in what you say, Monsieur Bulmaire," the brigand +replied, "and I very heartily apologize for not thinking of it earlier. +But in the way of business, you understand,--However, may I trust it will +please you to release me from this inconvenient obligation?" Cazaio added, +with a smile. "My men are waiting for me yonder, you comprehend." + +"In fact," said John Bulmer, hospitably, "up here the moonlight is as clear +as day. We can settle our affair in five minutes." + +"I come," said Cazaio, and plunged into the entrance to the Constable's +Tower. + +"The pistol! quick!" said Claire. + +"And for what, pray?" said John Bulmer. + +"So that from behind, as he lifts the trap-door, I may shoot him through +the head. Do you stand in front as though to receive him. It will be quite +simple." + + +XV + +"My dear creature," said John Bulmer, "I am now doubly persuaded that God +entirely omitted what we term a sense of honor when He created the woman. I +mean to kill this rapscallion, but I mean to kill him fairly." He unbolted +the trap-door and immediately Cazaio stood upon the roof, his sword drawn. + +Achille Cazaio stared at the tranquil woman, and now his countenance +was less that of a satyr than of a demon. "At four in the morning! +I congratulate you, Monsieur Bulmaire," he said,--"Oh, decidedly, I +congratulate you." + +"Thank you," said John Bulmer, sword in hand; "yes, we were married +yesterday." + +Cazaio drew a pistol from his girdle and fired full in John Bulmer's face; +but the latter had fallen upon one knee, and the ball sped harmlessly above +him. + +"You are very careless with fire-arms," John Bulmer lamented, "Really, +friend Achille, if you are not more circumspect you will presently injure +somebody, and will forever afterward be consumed with unavailing regret and +compunctions. Now let us get down to our affair." + +They crossed blades in the moonlight, Cazaio was in a disastrous condition; +John Bulmer's tolerant acceptance of any meanness that a Cazaio might +attempt, the vital shame of this new and baser failure before Claire's very +eyes, had made of Cazaio a crazed beast. He slobbered little flecks of +foam, clinging like hoar-frost to the tangled beard, and he breathed with +shuddering inhalations, like a man in agony, the while that he charged +with redoubling thrusts. The Englishman appeared to be enjoying himself, +discreetly; he chuckled as the other, cursing, shifted from tierce to +quart, and he met the assault with a nice inevitableness. In all, each +movement had the comely precision of finely adjusted clockwork, though +at times John Bulmer's face showed a spurt of amusement roused by the +brigand's extravagancy of gesture and Cazaio's contortions as he strove to +pass the line of steel that flickered cannily between his sword and John +Bulmer's portly bosom. + +Then John Bulmer, too, attacked. "For Guiton!" said he, as his point +slipped into Cazaio's breast. John Bulmer recoiled and lodged another +thrust in the brigand's throat. "For attempting to assassinate me!" His +foot stamped as his sword ran deep into Cazaio's belly. "For insulting my +wife by thinking of her obscenely! You are a dead man, friend Achille." + +Cazaio had dropped his sword, reeling as if drunken against the western +battlement. "My comfort," he said, hoarsely, while one hand tore at his +jetting throat--"my comfort is that I could not perish slain by a braver +enemy." He moaned and stumbled backward. Momentarily his knees gripped the +low embrasure. Then his feet flipped upward, convulsively, so that John +Bulmer saw the man's spurs glitter and twitch in the moonlight, and John +Bulmer heard a snapping and crackling and swishing among the poplars, and +heard the heavy, unvibrant thud of Cazaio's body upon the turf. + +"May he find more mercy than he has merited," said John Bulmer, "for the +man had excellent traits. Yes, in him the making of a very good swordsman +was spoiled by that abominable Boisrobert." + +But Claire had caught him by the shoulder. "Look, Jean!" + +He turned toward the Duardenez. A troop of horsemen was nearing. Now they +swept about the curve in the highway and at their head was de Puysange, +laughing terribly. The dragoons went by like a tumult in a sick man's +dream, and the Hugonet Wing had screened them. + +"Then Bellegarde is relieved," said John Bulmer, "and your life, at least, +is saved." + +The girl stormed. "You--you abominable trickster! You would not be content +with the keys of heaven if you had not got them by outwitting somebody! Do +you fancy I had never seen the Duke of Ormskirk's portrait? Gaston sent me +one six months ago." + +"Ah!" said John Bulmer, very quietly. He took up the discarded scabbard, +and he sheathed his sword without speaking. + +Presently he said, "You have been cognizant all along that I was the Duke +of Ormskirk?" + +"Yes," she answered, promptly. + +"And you married me, knowing that I was--God save the mark!--the great Duke +of Ormskirk? knowing that you made what we must grossly term a brilliant +match?" + +"I married you because, in spite of Jean Bulmer, you had betrayed yourself +to be a daring and a gallant gentleman,--and because, for a moment, I +thought that I did not dislike the Duke of Ormskirk quite so much as I +ought to." + +He digested this. + +"O Jean Bulmer," the girl said, "they tell me you were ever a fortunate +man, but I consider you the unluckiest I know of. For always you are afraid +to be yourself. Sometimes you forget, and are just you--and then, ohé! you +remember, and are only a sulky, fat old gentleman who is not you at all, +somehow; so that at times I detest you, and at times I cannot thoroughly +detest you. So that I played out the comedy, Jean Bulmer. I meant in the +end to tell Louis who you were, of course, and not let them hang you; but I +never quite trusted you; and I never knew whether I detested you or no, at +bottom, until last night." + +"Last night you left the safe Inner Tower to come to me--to save me at all +hazards, or else to die with me--And for what reason, did you do this?" + +"You are bullying me!" she wailed. + +"And for what reason, did you do this?" he repeated, without any change of +intonation. + +"Can you not guess?" she asked. "Oh, because I am a fool!" she stated, very +happily, for his arms were about her. + +"Eh, in that event--" said the Duke of Ormskirk. "Look!" said he, with a +deeper thrill of speech, "it is the dawn." + +They turned hand in hand; and out of the east the sun came statelily, and a +new day was upon them. + + + + +VIII + +HEART OF GOLD + + +_As Played at Paris, in the May of 1750_ + +"_Cette amoureuse ardeur qui dans les coeurs s'excite N'est point, comme +l'on sçait, un effet du merite; Le caprice y prend part, et, quand +quelqu'un nous plaist, Souvent nous avons peine à dire pourquoy c'est. Mais +on vois que l'amour se gouverne autrement._" + + +DRAMATIS PERSONÆ + +DUC DE PUYSANGE, somewhat given to women, and now and then to +good-fellowship, but a man of excellent disposition. + +MARQUIS DE SOYECOURT, his cousin, and loves de Puysange's wife. + +DUKE OF ORMSKIRK. + +DUCHESSE DE PUYSANGE, a precise, but amiable and patient, woman. + +ANTOINE, LACKEYS to de Puysange, Etc. + + +SCENE + +Paris, mostly within and about the Hôtel de Puysange. + + + + +HEART OF GOLD + + +PROEM:--_Necessitated by a Change of Scene_ + +You are not to imagine that John Bulmer debated an exposure of de +Soyecourt. "Live and let live" was the Englishman's axiom; the exuberant +Cazaio was dead, his men were either slain or dispersed, and the whole +tangle of errors--with judicious reservations--had now been unravelled to +Gaston's satisfaction. And Claire de Puysange was now Duchess of Ormskirk. +Why, then, meddle with Destiny, who appeared, after all, to possess a +certain sense of equity? + +So Ormskirk smiled as he presently went about Paris, on his own business, +and when he and Louis de Soyecourt encountered each other their +friendliness was monstrous in its geniality. + +They were now one and all in Paris, where Ormskirk's marriage had been +again, and more publicly, solemnized. De Puysange swore that his sister was +on this occasion the loveliest person affordable by the resources of the +universe, but de Soyecourt backed another candidate; so that over their +wine the two gentlemen presently fell into a dispute. + +"Nay, but I protest to you she is the most beautiful woman in all Paris!" +cried the Marquis de Soyecourt, and kissed his finger-tips gallantly. + +"My dear Louis," the Duc de Puysange retorted, "her eyes are noticeable, +perhaps; and I grant you," he added, slowly, "that her husband is not often +troubled by--that which they notice." + +"--And the cleverest!" + +"I have admitted she knows when to be silent. What more would you demand of +any woman?" + +"And yet--" The little Marquis waved a reproachful forefinger. + +"Why, but," said the Duke, with utter comprehension, "it is not for nothing +that our house traces from the great Jurgen--" + +He was in a genial midnight mood, and, on other subjects, inclined to be +garrulous; for the world, viewed through a slight haze, of vinous origin, +seemed a pleasant place, and inspired a kindly desire to say diverting +things about the world's contents. He knew the Marquis to be patient, +and even stolid, under a fusillade of epigram and paradox; in short, de +Puysange knew the hour and the antagonist for midnight talk to be at hand. +And a saturnalia of phrases whirled in his brain, demanding utterance. + +He waved them aside. Certain inbred ideas are strangely tenacious of +existence, and it happened to be his wife they were discussing. It would +not be good form, de Puysange felt, for him to evince great interest in +this topic.... + + +I + +"And yet," de Puysange queried, as he climbed democratically into a public +hackney coach, "why not? For my part, I see no good and sufficient reason +for discriminating against the only woman one has sworn to love and cherish +and honor. It is true that several hundred people witnessed the promise, +with a perfect understanding of the jest, and that the keeping of this oath +involves a certain breach of faith with society. Eh bien! let us, then, +deceive the world--and the flesh--and the devil! Let us snap our fingers at +this unholy trinity, and assert the right, when the whim takes us, to make +unstinted love to our own wives!" + +He settled back in the _fiacre_ to deliberate. "It is bourgeois? Bah! the +word is the first refuge of the unskilful poseur! It is bourgeois to be +born, to breathe, to sleep, or eat; in which of the functions that consume +the greater part of my life do I differ from my grocer? Bourgeois! why, +rightly considered, to be a human being at all is quite inordinately +bourgeois! And it is very notably grocer-like to maintain a grave face and +two establishments, to chuckle privily over the fragments of the seventh +commandment, to repent, upon detection, and afterward--ces bêtes-là!--to +drink poison. Ma foi, I infinitely prefer the domestic coffee!" + +The Duc de Puysange laughed, and made as though to wave aside the crudities +of life. "All vice is bourgeois, and fornication in particular tends +to become sordid, outworn, vieux jeu! In youth, I grant you, it is the +unexpurgated that always happens. But at my age--misericorde!--the +men yawn, and les demoiselles--bah! les demoiselles have the souls of +accountants! They buy and sell, as my grocer does. The satiation of carnal +desires is no longer a matter of splendid crimes and sorrows and kingdoms +lost; it is a matter of business." + +The harsh and swarthy face relaxed. With, a little sigh the Duc de Puysange +had closed his fevered eyes. About them were a multitude of tiny lines, +and of this fact he was obscurely conscious, in a wearied fashion, when he +again looked out on the wellnigh deserted streets, now troubled by a hint +of dawn. His eyes were old; they had seen much. Two workmen shambled by, +chatting on their way to the day's work; in the attic yonder a drunken +fellow sang, "Ah, bouteille ma mie," he bellowed, "pourquoi vous +vuidez-vous?" + +De Puysange laughed. "I suppose I have no conscience, but at least, I can +lay claim to a certain fastidiousness. I am very wicked,"--he smiled, +without mirth or bitterness,--"I have sinned notably as the world accounts +it; indeed, I think, my repute is as abominable as that of any man living. +And I am tired,--alas, I am damnably tired! I have found the seven deadly +sins deadly, beyond, doubt, but only deadly dull and deadly commonplace. I +have perseveringly frisked in the high places of iniquity, I have junketed +with all evil gods, and the utmost they could pretend to offer any of their +servitors was a spasm. I renounce them, as feeble-minded deities, I snap +my fingers, very much as did my progenitor, the great Jurgen, at all their +over-rated mysteries." + +His glance caught and clung for a moment to the paling splendor of the moon +that hung low in the vacant, dove-colored heavens. A faint pang, half-envy, +half-regret, vexed the Duke with a dull twinge. "I wish too that by living +continently I could have done, once for all, with this faded pose and this +idle making of phrases! Eheu! there is a certain proverb concerning pitch +so cynical that I suspect it of being truthful. However,--we shall see." + +De Puysange smiled. "The most beautiful woman in all Paris? Ah, yes, she is +quite that, is this grave silent female whose eyes are more fathomless and +cold than oceans! And how cordially she despises me! Ma foi, I think that +if her blood--which is, beyond doubt, of a pale-pink color,--be ever +stirred, at all, it is with loathing of her husband. Well, life holds many +surprises for madame, now that I become quite as virtuous as she is. We +will arrange a very pleasant comedy of belated courtship; for are we not +bidden to love one another? So be it,--I am henceforth the model père de +famille." + +Now the _fiacre_ clattered before the Hôtel de Puysange. + +The door was opened by a dull-eyed lackey, whom de Puysange greeted with +a smile, "Bon jour, Antoine!" cried the Duke; "I trust that your wife and +doubtless very charming children have good health?" + +"Beyond question, monseigneur," the man answered, stolidly. + +"That is excellent hearing," de Puysange said, "and it rejoices me to be +reassured of their welfare. For the happiness of others, Antoine, is +very dear to the heart of a father--and of a husband." The Duke chuckled +seraphically as he passed down the hall. The man stared after him, and +shrugged. + +"Rather worse than usual," Antoine considered. + + +II + +Next morning the Duchesse de Puysange received an immoderate armful of +roses, with a fair copy of some execrable verses. De Puysange spent the +afternoon, selecting bonbons and wholesome books,--"for his fiancée," he +gravely informed the shopman. + +At the Opéra he never left her box; afterward, at the Comtesse de +Hauteville's, he created a furor by sitting out three dances in the +conservatory with his wife. Mademoiselle Tiercelin had already received his +regrets that he was spending that night at home. + + +III + +The month wore on. + +"It is the true honeymoon," said the Duke. + +In that event he might easily have found a quieter place than Paris wherein +to spend it. Police agents had of late been promised a premium for any +sturdy beggar, whether male or female, they could secure to populate +the new plantation of Louisiana; and as the premium was large, genteel +burgesses, and in particular the children of genteel burgesses, were +presently disappearing in a fashion their families found annoying. Now, +from nowhere, arose and spread the curious rumor that King Louis, somewhat +the worse for his diversions in the Parc-aux-Cerfs, daily restored his +vigor by bathing in the blood of young children; and parents of the +absentees began to manifest a double dissatisfaction, for the deduction was +obvious. + +There were riots. In one of them Madame de Pompadour barely escaped with +her life, [Footnote: This was on the afternoon of the famous ball given +by the Pompadour in honor of the new Duchess of Ormskirk.] and the King +himself on his way to Compiègne, was turned back at the Porte St. Antoine, +and forced to make a détour rather than enter his own capital. After this +affair de Puysange went straight to his brother-in-law. + +"Jean," said he, "for a newly married man you receive too much company. And +afterward your visitors talk blasphemously in cabarets and shoot the King's +musketeers. I would appreciate an explanation." + +Ormskirk shrugged. "Merely a makeshift, Gaston. Merely a device to gain +time wherein England may prepare against the alliance of France and +Austria. Your secret treaty will never be signed as long as Paris is given +over to rioters. Nay, the Empress may well hesitate to ally herself with +a king who thus clamantly cannot govern even his own realm. And meanwhile +England will prepare herself. We will be ready to fight you in five years, +but we do not intend to be hurried about it." + +"Yes," de Puysange assented;--"yet you err in sending Cumberland to defend +Hanover. You will need a better man there." + +Ormskirk slapped his thigh. "So you intercepted that last despatch, after +all! And I could have sworn Candale was trustworthy!" + +"My adored Jean," replied de Puysange, "he has been in my pay for six +months! Console yourself with the reflection that you overbid us in +Noumaria." + +"Yes, but old Ludwig held out for more than the whole duchy is worth. We +paid of course. We had to pay." + +"And one of course congratulates you upon securing the quite essential +support of that duchy. Still, Jean, if there were any accident--" De +Puysange was really unbelievably ugly when he smiled. "For accidents do +occur.... It is war, then?" + +"My dear fellow," said Ormskirk, "of course it is war. We are about to fly +at each other's throats, with half of Europe to back each of us. We begin +the greatest game we have ever played. And we will manage it very badly, I +dare say, since we are each of us just now besotted with adoration of our +wives." + +"At times," said de Puysange, with dignity, "your galimatias are +insufferable. Now let us talk like reasonable beings. In regard to +Pomerania, you will readily understand that the interests of humanity--" + + +IV + +Still the suggestion haunted him. It would be a nuance too ridiculous, of +course, to care seriously for one's wife, and yet Hélène de Puysange +was undeniably a handsome woman. As they sat over the remains of their +dinner,--_à deux_, by the Duke's request,--she seemed to her husband quite +incredibly beautiful. She exhaled the effects of a water-color in discreet +and delicate tinctures. Lithe and fine and proud she was to the merest +glance; yet patience, a thought conscious of itself, beaconed in her eyes, +and she appeared, with urbanity, to regard life as, upon the whole, a +countrified performance. De Puysange liked that air; he liked the reticence +of every glance and speech and gesture,--liked, above all, the thinnish +oval of her face and the staid splendor of her hair. Here was no vulgar +yellow, no crass and hackneyed gold ... and yet there was a clarified and +gauzier shade of gold ... the color of the moon by daylight, say.... Then, +as the pleasures of digestion lapsed gently into the initial amenities of +sleep, she spoke. + +"Monsieur," said she, "will you be pleased to tell me the meaning of this +comedy?" + +"Madame," de Puysange answered, and raised his gloomy eyebrows, "I do not +entirely comprehend." + +"Ah," said she, "believe me, I do not undervalue your perception. I have +always esteemed your cleverness, monsieur, however much"--she paused for +a moment, a fluctuating smile upon her lips,--"however much I may have +regretted its manifestations. I am not clever, and to me cleverness has +always seemed to be an infinite incapacity for hard work; its results +are usually a few sonnets, an undesirable wife, and a warning for one's +acquaintances. In your case it is, of course, different; you have your +statesmanship to play with--" + +"And statesmen have no need of cleverness, you would imply, madame?" + +"I do not say that. In any event, you are the Duc de Puysange, and the +weight of a great name stifles stupidity and cleverness without any +partiality. With you, cleverness has taken the form of a tendency to +intoxication, amours, and--amiability. I have acquiesced in this. But, for +the past month--" + +"The happiest period of my life!" breathed the Duke. + +"--you have been pleased to present me with flowers, bonbons, jewels, and +what not. You have actually accorded your wife the courtesies you usually +preserve for the ladies of the ballet. You have dogged my footsteps, you +have attempted to intrude into my bedroom, you have talked to me as--well, +very much as--" + +"Much as the others do?" de Puysange queried, helpfully. "Pardon me, +madame, but, in one's own husband, I had thought this very routine might +savor of originality." + +The Duchess flushed, "All the world knows, monsieur, that in your +estimation what men have said to me, or I to them, has been for fifteen +years a matter of no moment! It is not due to you that I am still--" + +"A pearl," finished the Duke, gallantly,--then touched himself upon the +chest,--"cast before swine," he sighed. + +She rose to her feet. "Yes, cast before swine!" she cried, with a quick +lift of speech. She seemed very tall as she stood tapping her fingers upon +the table, irresolutely; but after an instant she laughed and spread out +her fine hands in an impotent gesture. "Ah, monsieur," she said, "my father +entrusted to your keeping a clean-minded girl! What have you made of her, +Gaston?" + +A strange and profoundly unreasonable happiness swept through the Duke's +soul as she spoke his given name for the first time within his memory. +Surely, the deep contralto voice had lingered over it?--half-tenderly, +half-caressingly, one might think. + +The Duke put aside his coffee-cup and, rising, took his wife's soft hands +in his. "What have I made of her? I have made of her, Hélène, the one +object of all my desires." + +Her face flushed. "Mountebank!" she cried, and struggled to free herself; +"do you mistake me, then, for a raddle-faced actress in a barn? Ah, les +demoiselles have formed you, monsieur,--they have formed you well!" + +"Pardon!" said the Duke. He released her hands, he swept back his hair with +a gesture of impatience. He turned from his wife, and strolled toward a +window, where, for a little, he tapped upon the pane, his murky countenance +twitching oddly, as he stared into the quiet and sunlit street. "Madame," +he began, in a level voice, "I will tell you the meaning of the comedy. To +me,--always, as you know, a creature of whims,--there came, a month ago, a +new whim which I thought attractive, unconventional, promising. It was to +make love to my own wife rather than to another man's. Ah, I grant you, it +is incredible," he cried, when the Duchess raised her hand as though to +speak,--"incredible, fantastic, and ungentlemanly! So be it; nevertheless, +I have played out my rôle. I have been the model husband; I have put away +wine and--les demoiselles; for it pleased me, in my petty insolence, to +patronize, rather than to defy, the laws of God and man. Your perfection +irritated me, madame; it pleased me to demonstrate how easy is this trick +of treating the world as the antechamber of a future existence. It pleased +me to have in my life one space, however short, over which neither the +Recording Angel nor even you might draw a long countenance. It pleased me, +in effect, to play out the comedy, smug-faced and immaculate,--for the +time. I concede that I have failed in my part. Hiss me from the stage, +madame; add one more insult to the already considerable list of those +affronts which I have put upon you; one more will scarcely matter." + +She faced him with set lips. "So, monsieur, your boasted comedy amounts +only to this?" + +"I am not sure of its meaning, madame. I think that, perhaps, the swine, +wallowing in the mire which they have neither strength nor will to leave, +may yet, at times, long--and long whole-heartedly--" De Puysange snapped +his fingers. "Peste!" said he, "let us now have done with this dreary +comedy! Beyond doubt de Soyecourt has much to answer for, in those idle +words which were its germ. Let us hiss both collaborators, madame." + +"De Soyecourt!" she marveled, with, a little start. "Was it he who prompted +you to make love to me?" + +"Without intention," pleaded the Duke. "He twitted me for my inability, as +your husband, to gain your affections; but I do not question his finest +sensibilities would be outraged by our disastrous revival of Philemon and +Baucis." + +"Ah--!" said she. She was smiling at some reflection or other. + +There was a pause. The Duc de Puysange drummed upon the window-pane; the +Duchess, still faintly smiling, trifled with the thin gold chain that hung +about her neck. Both knew their display of emotion to have been somewhat +unmodern, not entirely _à la mode_. + +"Decidedly," spoke de Puysange, and turned toward her with a slight +grimace, "I am no longer fit to play the lover; yet a little while, madame, +and you must stir my gruel-posset, and arrange the pillows more comfortably +about the octogenarian." + +"Ah, Gaston," she answered, and in protest raised her slender fingers, "let +us have no more heroics. We are not well fitted for them, you and I." + +"So it would appear," the Duc de Puysange conceded, not without sulkiness. + +"Let us be friends," she pleaded. "Remember, it was fifteen years ago I +made the grave mistake of marrying a very charming man--" + +"Merci!" cried the Duke. + +"--and I did not know that I was thereby denying myself the pleasure of his +acquaintance. I have learned too late that marrying a man is only the most +civil way of striking him from one's visiting-list." The Duchess hesitated. +"Frankly, Gaston, I do not regret the past month." + +"It has been adorable!" sighed the Duke. + +"Yes," she admitted; "except those awkward moments when you would insist on +making love to me." + +"But no, madame," cried he, "it was precisely--" + +"O my husband, my husband!" she interrupted, with a shrug of the shoulders; +"why, you do it so badly!" + +The Duc de Puysange took a short turn about the apartment. "Yet I married +you," said he, "at sixteen--out of a convent!" + +"Mon ami," she murmured, in apology, "am I not to be frank with you? Would +you have only the connubial confidences?" + +"But I had no idea--" he began. + +"Why, Gaston, it bored me to the very verge of yawning in my lover's +countenance. I, too, had no idea but that it would bore you equally--" + +"Hein?" said the Duke. + +"--to hear what d'Humières--" + +"He squints!" cried the Duc de Puysange. + +"--or de Créquy--" + +"That red-haired ape!" he muttered. + +"--or d'Arlanges, or--or any of them, was pleased to say. In fact, it was +my duty to conceal from my husband anything which might involve him in +duels. Now that we are friends, of course it is entirely different." + +The Duchess smiled; the Duke walked up and down the room with the contained +ferocity of a caged tiger. + +"In duels! in a whole series of duels! So these seducers besiege you +in platoons. Ma foi, friendship is a good oculist! Already my vision +improves." + +"Gaston!" she cried. The Duchess rose and laid both hands upon his +shoulders. "Gaston--?" she repeated. + +For a heart-beat the Duc de Puysange looked into his wife's eyes; then he +sadly smiled and shook his head. "Madame," said the Duke, "I do not doubt +you. Ah, believe me, I have comprehended, always, that in your keeping my +honor was quite safe--far more safe than in mine, as Heaven and most of the +fiends well know. You have been a true and faithful wife to a worthless +brute who has not deserved it." He lifted her fingers to his lips. De +Puysange stood very erect; his heels clicked together, and his voice was +earnest. "I thank you, madame, and I pray you to believe that I have never +doubted you. You are too perfect to err--Frankly, and between friends." +added the Duke, "it was your cold perfection which frightened me. You are +an icicle, Hélène." + +She was silent for a moment. "Ah!" she said, and sighed; "you think so?" + +"Once, then--?" The Duc de Puysange seated himself beside his wife, and +took her hand. + +"I--it was nothing." Her lashes fell, and dull color flushed through her +countenance. + +"Between friends," the Duke suggested, "there should be no reservations." + +"But it is such a pitiably inartistic little history!" the Duchess +protested. "Eh bien, if you must have it! For I was a girl once,--an +innocent girl, as given as are most girls to long reveries and bright, +callow day-dreams. And there was a man--" + +"There always is," said the Duke, darkly. + +"Why, he never even knew, mon ami!" cried his wife, and laughed, and +clapped her hands. "He was much older than I; there were stories about +him--oh, a great many stories,--and one hears even in a convent--" She +paused with a reminiscent smile. "And I used to wonder shyly what this +very fearful reprobate might be like. I thought of him with de Lauzun, +and Dom Juan, and with the Duc de Grammont, and all those other scented, +shimmering, magnificent libertines over whom les ingénues--wonder; only, I +thought of him, more often than of the others, I made little prayers for +him to the Virgin. And I procured a tiny miniature of him. And, when I came +out of the convent, I met him at my father's house. [Footnote: She was of +the Aigullon family, and sister to d'Agenois, the first and very politic +lover of Madame de la Tournelle, afterward mistress to Louis Quinze under +the title of Duchesse de Châteauroux. The later relations between the +d'Aigullons and Madame du Barry are well-known.] And that was all." + +"All?" The Duc de Puysange had raised his swart eyebrows, and he slightly +smiled. + +"All," she re-echoed, firmly. "Oh, I assure you he was still too youthful +to have any time to devote to young girls. He was courteous--no more. But I +kept the picture,--ah, girls are so foolish, Gaston!" The Duchess, with a +light laugh, drew upward the thin chain about her neck. At its end was a +little heart-shaped locket of dull gold, with a diamond sunk deep in each +side. She regarded the locket with a quaint sadness. "It is a long while +since I have seen that miniature, for it has been sealed in here," said +she, "ever since--since some one gave me the locket" + +Now the Duc de Puysange took this trinket, still tepid and perfumed from +contact with her flesh. He turned it awkwardly in his hand, his eyes +flashing volumes of wonderment and inquiry. Yet he did not appear jealous, +nor excessively unhappy. "And never," he demanded, some vital emotion +catching at his voice--"never since then--?" + +"I never, of course, approved of him," she answered; and at this point de +Puysange noted--so near as he could remember for the first time in his +existence,--the curve of her trailing lashes. Why but his wife had lovely +eyelashes, lashes so unusual that he drew nearer to observe them more at +his ease. "Still,--I hardly know how to tell you--still, without him the +world was more quiet, less colorful; it held, appreciably, less to catch +the eye and ear. Eh, he had an air, Gaston; he was never an admirable man, +but, somehow, he was invariably the centre of the picture." + +"And you have always--always you have cared for him?" said the Duke, +drawing nearer and yet more near to her. + +"Other men," she murmured, "seem futile and of minor importance, after +him." The lashes lifted. They fell, promptly. "So, I have always kept the +heart, mon ami. And, yes, I have always loved him, I suppose." + +The chain had moved and quivered in his hand. Was it man or woman who +trembled? wondered the Duc de Puysange. For a moment he stood immovable, +every nerve in his body tense. Surely, it was she who trembled? It seemed +to him that this woman, whose cold perfection had galled him so long, now +stood with downcast eyes, and blushed and trembled, too, like any rustic +maiden come shamefaced to her first tryst. + +"Hélène--!" he cried. + +"But no, my story is too dull," she protested, and shrugged her shoulders, +and disengaged herself--half-fearfully, it seemed to her husband. "Even +more insipid than your comedy," she added, with a not unkindly smile. "Do +we drive this afternoon?" + +"In effect, yes!" cried the Duke. He paused and laughed--a low and gentle +laugh, pulsing with unutterable content. "Since this afternoon, madame--" + +"Is cloudless?" she queried. + +"Nay, far more than that," de Puysange amended; "it is refulgent." + + +V + +What time the Duchess prepared her person for the drive the Duke walked +in the garden of the Hôtel de Puysange. Up and down a shady avenue of +lime-trees he paced, and chuckled to himself, and smiled benignantly upon +the moss-incrusted statues,--a proceeding that was, beyond any reasonable +doubt, prompted by his happiness rather than by the artistic merits of +the postured images, since they constituted a formidable and broken-nosed +collection of the most cumbrous, the most incredible, and the most hideous +instances of sculpture the family of Puysange had been able to accumulate +for, as the phrase is, love or money. Amid these mute, gray travesties of +antiquity and the tastes of his ancestors, the Duc de Puysange exulted. + +"Ma foi, will life never learn to improve upon the extravagancies of +romance? Why, it is the old story,--the hackneyed story of the husband and +wife who fall in love with each other! Life is a very gross plagiarist. And +she--did she think I had forgotten how I gave her that little locket so +long ago? Eh, ma femme, so 'some one'--'some one' who cannot be alluded to +without a pause and an adorable flush--presented you with your locket! Nay, +love is not always blind!" + +The Duke paused before a puff-jawed Triton, who wallowed in an arid basin +and uplifted toward heaven what an indulgent observer might construe as a +broken conch-shell. "Love! Mon Dieu, how are the superior fallen! I have +not the decency to conceal even from myself that I love my wife! I am +shameless, I had as lief proclaim it from the house-tops. And a month +ago--tarare, the ignorant beast I was! Moreover, at that time I had not +passed a month in her company,--eh bien, I defy Diogenes and Timon to come +through such a testing with unscratched hearts. I love her. And she loves +me!" + +He drew a deep breath, and he lifted his comely hands toward the pale +spring sky, where the west wind was shepherding a sluggish flock of clouds. +"O sun, moon, and stars!" de Puysange said, aloud: "I call you to witness +that she loves me! Always she has loved me! O kindly little universe! O +little kings, tricked out with garish crowns and sceptres, you are masters +of your petty kingdoms, but I am master of her heart! + +"I do not deserve it," he conceded, to a dilapidated faun, who, though his +flute and the hands that held it had been missing for over a quarter of +a century, piped, on with unimpaired and fatuous mirth. "Ah, heart of +gold--demented trinket that you are, I have not merited that you should +retain my likeness all these years! If I had my deserts--parbleu! let us +accept such benefits as the gods provide, and not question the wisdom +of their dispensations. What man of forty-three may dare to ask for his +deserts? No, we prefer instead the dealings of blind chance and all the +gross injustices by which so many of us escape hanging".... + + +VI + +"So madame has visitors? Eh bien, let us, then, behold these naughty +visitors, who would sever a husband from his wife!" + +From within the Red Salon came a murmur of speech,--quiet, cordial, +colorless,--which showed very plainly that madame had visitors. As the Duc +de Puysange reached out his hand to draw aside the portières, her voice was +speaking, courteously, but without vital interest. + +"--and afterward," said she, "weather permitting--" + +"Ah, Hélène!" cried a voice that the Duke knew almost as well, "how long am +I to be held at arm's-length by these petty conventionalities? Is candor +never to be permitted?" + +The half-drawn portière trembled in the Duke's grasp. He could see, from +where he stood, the inmates of the salon, though their backs were turned. +They were his wife and the Marquis de Soyecourt. The Marquis bent eagerly +toward the Duchesse de Puysange, who had risen as he spoke. + +For a moment she stayed as motionless as her perplexed husband; then, +with a wearied sigh, the Duchess sank back into a _fauteuil_. "You are at +liberty to speak," she said, slowly, and with averted glance--"what you +choose." + +The portière fell; but between its folds the Duke still peered into the +room, where de Soyecourt had drawn nearer to the Duke's wife. "There is +so little to say," the Marquis murmured, "beyond what my eyes have surely +revealed a great while ago--that I love you." + +"Ah!" the Duchess cried, with a swift intaking of the breath which was +almost a sob. "Monsieur, I think you forget that you are speaking to the +wife of your kinsman and your friend." + +The Marquis threw out his hands in a gesture which was theatrical, though +the trouble that wrung his countenance seemed very real. He was, as one has +said, a slight, fair man, with the face of an ecclesiastic and the eyes of +an aging seraph. A dull pang shot through the Duke as he thought of the two +years' difference in their ages, and of his own tendency to embonpoint, and +of the dismal features which calumniated him. Yonder porcelain fellow was +in appearance so incredibly young! + +"Do you consider," said the Marquis, "that I do not know I act an +abominable part? Honor, friendship and even decency!--ah, I regret their +sacrifice, but love is greater than these petty things!" + +The Duchess sighed. "For my part," she returned, "I think differently. +Love is, doubtless, very wonderful and beautiful, but I am sufficiently +old-fashioned to hold honor yet dearer. Even--even if I loved you, +monsieur, there are certain promises, sworn before the altar, that I could +not forget." She looked up, candidly, into the flushed, handsome face of +the Marquis. + +"Words!" he cried, with vexed impatiency. + +"An oath," she answered, sadly,--"an oath that I may not break." + +There was hunger in the Marquis' eyes, and his hands lifted. Their glances +met for a breathless moment, and his eyes were tender, and her eyes were +resolute, but very, very compassionate. + +"I love you!" he said. He said no more than this, but none could doubt he +spoke the truth. + +"Monsieur," the Duchess replied, and the depths of her contralto voice were +shaken like the sobbing of a violin, and her hands stole upward to her +bosom, and clasped the gold heart, as she spoke,--"monsieur, ever since I +first knew you, many years ago, at my father's home, I have held you as my +friend. You were more kind to the girl, Monsieur de Soyecourt, than you +have been to the woman. Yet only since our stay in Poictesme yonder have +I feared for the result of our friendship. I have tried to prevent this +result. I have failed." The Duchess lifted the gold heart to her lips, and +her golden head bent over it. "Monsieur, before God, if I had loved you +with my whole being,--if I had loved you all these years,--if the sight of +your face were to me to-day the one good thing life holds, and the mere +sound of your voice had power to set my heart to beating--beating"--she +paused for a little, and then rose, with a sharp breath that shook her +slender body visibly,--"even then, my Louis, the answer would be the same; +and that is,--go!" + +"Hélène--!" he murmured; and his outstretched hands, which trembled, groped +toward her. + +"Let us have no misunderstanding," she protested, more composedly; "you +have my answer." + +De Soyecourt did not, at mildest, lead an immaculate life. But by +the passion that now possessed him the tiny man seemed purified and +transfigured beyond masculinity. His face was ascetic in its reverence as +he waited there, with his head slightly bowed. "I go," he said, at last, as +if picking his way carefully among tumbling words; then bent over her hand, +which, she made no effort to withdraw. "Ah, my dear!" cried the Marquis, +staring into her shy, uplifted eyes, "I think I might have made you happy!" + +His arm brushed the elbow of the Duke as de Soyecourt left the salon. The +Marquis seemed aware of nothing: the misery of both the men, as de Puysange +reflected, was of a sort to be disturbed by nothing less noticeable than an +earthquake. + + +VII + +"If I had loved you all these years," murmured the Duc de Puysange. His +dull gaze wandered toward the admirable "Herodias" of Giorgione which hung +there in the corridor: the strained face of the woman, the accented muscles +of her arms, the purple, bellying cloak which spread behind her, the livid +countenance of the dead man staring up from the salver,--all these he +noted, idly. It seemed strange that he should be appraising a painting at +this particular moment. + +"Well, now I will make recompense," said the Duke. + + +VIII + +He came into the room, humming a tune of the boulevards; the crimson +hangings swirled about him, the furniture swayed in aerial and thin-legged +minuets. He sank into a chair before the great mirror, supported by frail +love-gods, who contended for its possession. He viewed therein his pale and +grotesque reflection, and he laughed lightly. "Pardon, madame," he said, +"but my castles in the air are tumbling noisily about my ears. It is +difficult to think clearly amid the crashing of the battlements." + +"I do not understand." The Duchess had lifted a rather grave and quite +incurious face as he entered the salon. + +"My life," laughed the Duc de Puysange, "I assure you I am quite +incorrigible. I have just committed another abominable action; and I cry +_peccavi!_" He smote himself upon the breast, and sighed portentously. "I +accuse myself of eavesdropping." + +"What is your meaning?" She had now risen to her feet. + +"Nay, but I am requited," the Duke reassured her, and laughed with +discreetly tempered bitterness. "Figure to yourself, madame! I had +planned for us a life during which our new-born friendship was always to +endure untarnished. Eh bien, man proposes! De Soyecourt is of a jealous +disposition; and here I sit, amid my fallen aircastles, like that tiresome +Marius in his Carthaginian débris." + +"De Soyecourt?" she echoed, dully. + +"Ah, my poor child!" said the Duke and, rising, took her hand in a paternal +fashion, "did you think that, at this late day, the disease of matrimony +was still incurable? Nay, we progress, madame. You shall have grounds for a +separation--sufficient, unimpeachable grounds. You shall have your choice +of desertion, infidelity, cruelty in the presence of witnesses--oh, I shall +prove a yeritabie Gilles de Retz!" He laughed, not unkindlily, at her +bewilderment. + +"You heard everything?" she queried. + +"I have already confessed," the Duke reminded her. "And speaking as an +unprejudiced observer, I would say the little man really loves you. So be +it! You shall have your separation, you shall marry him in all honor and +respectability; and if everything goes well, you shall be a grand duchess +one of these days--Behold a fact accomplished!" De Puysange snapped his +fingers and made a pirouette; he began to hum, "Songez de bonne à suivre--" + +There was a little pause. + +"You, in truth, desire to restore to me my freedom?" she asked, in wonder, +and drew near to him. + +The Duc de Puysange seated himself, with a smile. "Mon Dieu!" he protested, +"who am I to keep lovers apart? As the first proof of our new-sworn +friendship, I hereby offer you any form of abuse or of maltreatment you may +select." + +She drew yet nearer to him. Afterward, with a sigh as if of great +happiness, her arms clasped about his neck. "Mountebank! do you, then, love +me very much?" + +"I?" The Duke raised his eyebrows. Yet, he reflected, there was really no +especial harm in drawing his cheek a trifle closer to hers, and he found +the contact to be that of cool velvet. + +"You love me!" she repeated, softly. + +"It pains me to the heart," the Duke apologized--"it pains me, pith and +core, to be guilty of this rudeness to a lady; but, after all, honesty is +a proverbially recommended virtue, and so I must unblushingly admit I do +nothing of the sort." + +"Gaston, why will you not confess to your new friend? Have I not pardoned +other amorous follies?" Her cheeks were warmer now, and softer than those +of any other woman in the world. + +"Eh, ma mie," cried the Duke, warningly, "do not be unduly elated by little +Louis' avowal! You are a very charming person, but--'_de gustibus_--'" + +"Gaston--!" she murmured. + +"Ah, what is one to do with such a woman!" De Puysange put her from him, +and he paced the room with quick, unequal strides. + +"Yes, I love you with every nerve and fibre of my body--with every not +unworthy thought and aspiration of my misguided soul! There you have the +ridiculous truth of it, the truth which makes me the laughing-stock of +well bred persons for all time. I adore you. I love you, I cherish you +sufficiently to resign you to the man your heart has chosen. I--But pardon +me,"--and he swept a white hand over his brow, with a little, choking +laugh,--"since I find this new emotion somewhat boisterous. It stifles one +unused to it." + +She faced him, inscrutably; but her eyes were deep wells of gladness. +"Monsieur," she said, "yours is a noble affection. I will not palter with +it, I accept your offer--" + +"Madame, you act with your usual wisdom," said the Duke. + +"--Upon condition," she continued,--"that you resume your position as +eavesdropper." + +The Duke obeyed her pointing finger. When he had reached the portières, +the proud, black-visaged man looked back into the salon, wearily. She had +seated herself in the _fauteuil_, where the Marquis de Soyecourt had bent +over her and she had kissed the little gold locket. Her back was turned +toward, her husband; but their eyes met in the great mirror, supported by +frail love-gods, who contended for its possession. + +"Comedy for comedy," she murmured. He wondered what purblind fool had +called her eyes sea-cold? + +"I do not understand," he said. "You saw me all the while--Yes, but the +locket--?" cried de Puysange. + +"Open it!" she answered, and her speech, too, was breathless. + +Under his heel the Duc de Puysange ground the trinket. The long, thin chain +clashed and caught about his foot; the face of his youth smiled from the +fragment in his not quite steady hands. "O heart' of gold! O heart of +gold!" he said, with, a strange meditative smile, now that his eyes lifted +toward the glad and glorious eyes of his wife; "I am not worthy! Indeed, my +dear, I am not worthy!" + + + + +IX + +THE SCAPEGOATS + + +_As Played at Manneville, September 18, 1750_ + +"_L'on a choisi justement le temps que je parlois à mon traiste de fils. +Sortons! Je veux aller querir la justice, et faire donner la question à +toute ma maison; à servantes, à valets, à fils, à fille, et à moi aussi._" + + +DRAMATIS PERSONÆ + +PRINCE DE GATINAIS, an old nobleman, who affects yesterday's fashion. + +Louis QUILLAN, formerly LOUIS DE SOYECOURT, son to the Prince, and newly +become GRAND DUKE OF NOUMARIA. + +VANRINGHAM, valet to the Prince. + +NELCHEN THORN, daughter to Hans Thorn, landlord of the _Golden +Pomegranate_, and loves Louis Quillan. + +And In the Proem, DUKE OF OSMSKIRK. + + +SCENE + +The Dolphin Room of the _Golden Pomegranate_, an inn at +Manneville-en-Poictesme. + + + + +THE SCAPEGOATS + + +_PROEM:-To Present Mr. Vanringham as Nuntius_ + +However profoundly the Duc de Puysange now approved of the universe and of +its management, it is not to be supposed that in consequence he intended +to overlook de Soyecourt's perfidy. De Puysange bore his kinsman no +malice; indeed, he was sincerely fond of the Marquis, sympathized with +him at bottom, and heartily regretted that the excellence of poor Louis' +taste should be thus demonstrably counterbalanced by the frailty of his +friendship. Still, one cannot entirely disregard the conventions: Louis had +betrayed him, had before the eyes of de Puysange made love to de Puysange's +wife. A duel was the inevitable consequence, though of course the Duke did +not intend to kill poor Louis, who might before long be very useful to +French statesmanship. So the Duke sent Ormskirk to arrange a meeting. + +A floridly handsome man in black was descending the stairway of the Hôtel +de Soyecourt at the moment the Duke of Ormskirk stepped cheerily from his +coach. This person saluted the plump nobleman with due deference, and was +accorded in return a little whistling sound of amazement. + +"Mr. Vanringham, as I live--and in Paris! Man, will you hare-brained +Jacobites never have done with these idiotic intrigues? Nay, in sincerity, +Mr. Vanringham, this is annoying." + +"My Lord Duke," said the other, "I venture to suggest that you forget +I dare no longer meddle with politics, in light of my recent mishap at +Tunbridge. Something of the truth leaked out, you comprehend--nothing +provable, thank God!--but while I lay abed Captain Audaine was calling +daily to inquire when would my wound be healed sufficiently for me to have +my throat cut. I found England unsalubrious, and vanished." + +Ormskirk nodded his approval. "I have always esteemed your common-sense. +Now, let us consider--yes, I might use you here in Paris, I believe. And +the work is light and safe,--a trifle of sedition, of stirring up a street +riot or two." + +Vanringham laughed. "I might have recognized your hand in the late +disturbances, sir. As matters stand, I can only thank your Grace and regret +that I have earlier secured employment. I've been, since April, valet to +the old Prince de Gâtinais, Monsieur de Soyecourt's father." + +"Yet lackeyship smacks, however vaguely, of an honest livelihood. You +disappoint me, Mr. Vanringham." + +"Nay, believe me, I yet pilfer a cuff-button or perhaps a jewel, when +occasion offers, lest any of my talents rust. For we reside at Beaujolais +yonder, my Lord Duke, where we live in retirement and give over our old +age to curious chemistries. It suits me well enough. I find the air of +Beaujolais excellent, my duties none too arduous, and the girls of the +country-side neither hideous nor obdurate. Oho, I'm tolerably content at +Beaujolais--the more for that 'tis expedient just now to go more softly +than ever Ahab did of old." + +"Lest your late associates get wind of your whereabouts? In that I don't +question your discretion, Mr. Vanringham. And out of pure friendliness I +warn you Paris is a very hotbed of hot-headed Jacobites who would derive +unmerited pleasure from getting a knife into your ribs." + +"Yet on an occasion of such importance--" Vanringham began; then marvelled +in reply to the Duke's look of courteous curiosity: "You han't heard, +sir, that my master's son is unexpectedly become the next Grand Duke of +Noumaria!" + +"Zounds!" said his Grace of Ormskirk, all alert, "is old Ludwig dead +at last? Why, then, the damned must be holding a notable carnival by +this, in honor of his arrival. Hey, but there was a merry rascal, a +thorough-paced--" He broke off short. He laughed. "What the devil, man! +Monsieur de Soyecourt is Ludwig's nephew, I grant you, on the maternal +side, but Ludwig left a son. De Soyecourt remains de Soyecourt so long +as Prince Rudolph lives,--and Prince Rudolph is to marry the Elector of +Badenburg's daughter this autumn, so that we may presently look for any +number of von Freistadts to perpetuate the older branch. Faith, you should +study your _Genealogischer Hofkalender_ more closely, Mr. Vanringham." + +"Oh, but very plainly your Grace has heard no word of the appalling tragedy +that hath made our little Louis a reigning monarch--" + +With gusto Francis Vanringham narrated the details of Duke Ludwig's last +mad freak [Footnote: In his _Journal_ Horace Calverley gives a long and +curious account of the disastrous masque at Breschau of which he, then on +the Grand Tour, had the luck to be an eye-witness. His hints as to the part +played in the affair by Kaunitz are now, of course, largely discredited by +the later confessions of de Puysange.] which, as the world knows, resulted +in the death of both Ludwig and his son, as well as that of their five +companions in the escapade,--with gusto, for in progress the soul of the +former actor warmed to his subject. But Ormskirk was sensibly displeased. + +"Behold what is termed a pretty kettle of fish!" said the Duke, in +meditation, when Vanringham had made an end. "Plainly, Gaston cannot fight +the rascal, since Hop-o'-my-thumb is now, most vexatiously, transformed +into a quasi-Royal Personage, Assassination, I fear, is out of the +question. So all our English plans will go to pot. A Frenchman will reign +in Noumaria,--after we had not only bought old Ludwig, but had paid for +him, too! Why, I suppose he gave that damnable masquerade on the strength +of having our money,--good English money, mark you, Mr. Vanringham, that we +have to squeeze out of honest tax-payers to bribe such, rascals with, only +to have them, cheat us by cooking themselves to a crisp! This is annoying, +Mr. Vanringham." + +"I don't entirely follow your Grace--" + +"It is not perhaps desirable you should. Yet I give you a key. It is +profoundly to be deplored that little Louis de Soyecourt, who cannot draw +a contented breath outside of his beloved Paris, should be forced to marry +Victoria von Uhm, in his cousin's place,--yes, for Gaston will arrange +that, of course,--and afterward be exiled to a semi-barbarous Noumaria, +where he must devote the rest of his existence to heading processions +and reviewing troops, and signing proclamations and guzzling beer and +sauerkraut. Nay, beyond doubt, Mr. Vanringham, this is deplorable. 'Tis an +appalling condition of affairs: it reminds me of Ovid among the Goths, Mr. +Vanringham!" + +"I'm to understand, then--?" the valet stammered. + +"You are to understand that I am more deeply your debtor than I could +desire you to believe; that I am going to tell the Marquis de Soyecourt all +which I have told you, though I must reword it for him, as eloquently as +may be possible; and that I even now feel myself to be Ciceronic." The Duke +of Ormskirk passed on with a polite nod. + + * * * * * + +Next day they gossiped busily at Versailles over the sudden disappearance +of Louis de Soyecourt. No more was heard of him for months. The mystery was +discussed, and by the wits embroidered, and by the imaginative annotated, +but it was never solved until the following September. + + +I + +For it was in September that, upon the threshold of the _Golden +Pomegranate_, at Manneville in Poictesme, Monsieur Louis Quillan paused, +and gave the contented little laugh which had of late become habitual with +him. "We are en fête to-night, it appears. Has the King, then, by any +chance dropped in to supper with us, Nelchen?" + +Silently the girl bestowed a provisional pat upon one fold of the white +table-cloth and regarded the result with critical approval. All being +in blameless order, she moved one of the candlesticks the width of a +needle. The table was now garnished to the last resource of the _Golden +Pomegranate_: the napery was snow, the glassware and the cutlery shone with +a frosty glitter, and the great bowl of crimson roses afforded the exact +splurge of vainglorious color and glow she had designed. Accordingly, being +now at leisure, Nelchen now came toward Monsieur Quillan, lifting her lips +to his precisely as a child might have done. + +"Not quite the King, my Louis. None the less I am sure that Monseigneur +is an illustrious person. He arrived not two hours ago--" She told how +Monseigneur had come in a coach, very splendid; even his lackeys were +resplendent. Monseigneur would stay overnight and would to-morrow push +on, to Beauséant. He had talked with her,--a kindly old gentleman, but so +stately that all the while she had been the tiniest thought afraid of him. +He must be some exalted nobleman, Nelchen considered,--a marquis at the +very least. + +Meantime diminutive Louis Quillan had led her to the window-seat beneath +the corridor, and sat holding one plump trifle of a hand, the, while +her speech fluttered bird-like from this topic to that; and be regarded +Nelchen Thorn with an abysmal content. The fates, he considered, had been +commendably generous to him. + +So he leaned back from her a little, laughing gently, and marked what a +quaint and eager child it was. He rejoiced that she was beautiful, and +triumphed still more to know that even if she had not been beautiful it +would have made slight difference to him. The soul of Nelchen was enough. +Yet, too, it was desirable this soul should be appropriately clad, that she +should have, for instance, these big and lustrous eyes,--plaintive eyes, +such as a hamadryad would conceivably possess, since they were beyond doubt +the candid and appraising eyes of some woodland creature, and always seemed +to find the world not precisely intimidating, perhaps, yet in the ultimate +a very curious place where one trod gingerly. Still, this Nelchen was a +practical body, prone to laughter,--as in nature, any person would be whose +mouth was all rotund and tiny scarlet curves. Why, it was, to a dimple, +the mouth which François Boucher bestowed on his sleek goddesses! Louis +Quillan was sorry for poor Boucher painting away yonder at a noisy garish +Versailles, where he would never see that perfect mouth the artist had so +often dreamed of. No, not in the sweet flesh at least; lips such as these +were unknown at Versailles.... + +And but four months ago he had fancied himself to be in love with Hélène +de Puysange, he remembered; and, by and large, he still considered Hélène +a delightful person. Yes, Hélène had made him quite happy last spring: and +when they found she was with child, and their first plan failed, she had +very adroitly played out their comedy to win back Gaston in time to avoid +scandal. Yes, you could not but admire Hélène, yet, even so.... + +"--and he asked me, oh, so many questions about you, Louis--" + +"About me?" said Louis Quillan, blankly. He was all circumspection now. + +"About my lover, you stupid person. Monseigneur assumed, somehow, that I +would have a lover or two. You perceive that he at least is not a stupid +person." And Nelchen tossed her head, with a touch of the provocative. + +Louis Quillan did what seemed advisable. "--and, furthermore, your +stupidity is no excuse for rumpling my hair," said Nelchen, by and by. + +"Then you should not pout," replied Monsieur Quillan. "Sanity is entirely +too much to require of any man when you pout. Besides, your eyes are so +big and so bright they bewilder one. In common charity you ought to wear +spectacles, Nelchen,--in sheer compassion toward mankind." + +"Monseigneur, also, has wonderful eyes, Louis. They are like the +stars,--very brilliant and cool and incurious, yet always looking at you as +though you were so insignificant that the mere fact of your presuming to +exist at all was a trifle interesting." + +"Like the stars!" Louis Quillan had flung back the shutter. It was a +tranquil evening in September, with no moon as yet, but with a great +multitude of lesser lights overhead. "Incurious like the stars! They do +dwarf one, rather. Yet just now I protest to you, infinitesimal man that I +am, I half-believe le bon Dieu loves us so utterly that He has kindled all +those pretty tapers solely for our diversion. He wishes us to be happy, +Nelchen; and so He has given us the big, fruitful, sweet-smelling world +to live in, and our astonishing human bodies to live in, with contented +hearts, and with no more vain desires, no loneliness--Why, in a word, He +has given us each other. Oh, beyond doubt, He loves us, my Nelchen!" + +For a long while the girl was silent. Presently she spoke, half-hushed, +like one in the presence of sanctity. "I am happy. For these three months I +have been more happy than I had thought was permissible on earth. And yet, +Louis, you tell me that those stars are worlds perhaps like ours,--think of +it, my dear, millions and millions of worlds like ours, and on each world +perhaps a million of lovers like us! It is true that among them all no +woman loves as I do, for that would be impossible. Yet think of it, mon +ami, how inconsiderable a thing is the happiness of one man and of one +woman in this immensity! Why, we are less than nothing, you and I! Ohé, I +am afraid, hideously afraid, Louis,--for we are such little folk and the +universe is so big. And always the storms go about it, and its lightnings +thrust at us, and the waters of it are clutching at our feet, and its laws +are not to be changed--Oh, it is big and cruel, my dear, and we are adrift +in it, we who are so little!" + +He again put forth his hand toward her. "What a morbid child it is!" said +Louis Quillan. "I can assure you I have resided in this same universe just +twice as long as you, and I find that upon the whole the establishment +is very creditably conducted. There arrives, to be sure, an occasional +tornado, or perhaps an earthquake, each with its incidental inconveniences. +On the other hand, there is every evening a lavishly arranged sunset, like +gratis fireworks, and each morning (I am credibly informed) a sunrise of +which poets and energetic people are pleased to speak highly; while every +year spring comes in, like a cosmical upholsterer, and refurnishes the +entire place, and makes us glad to live. Nay, I protest to you, this is +an excellent world, my Nelchen! and likewise I protest to you that in its +history there was never a luckier nor a happier man than I." + +Nelchen considered. "Well," she generously conceded; "perhaps, after all, +the stars are more like diamonds." + +Louis Quillan chuckled. "And since when were you a connoisseur of diamonds, +my dear?" + +"Of course I have never actually seen any. I would like to, though--yes, +Louis, what I would really like would be to have a bushelful or so of +diamonds, and to marry a duke--only the duke would have to be you, of +course,--and to go to Court, and to have all the fine ladies very jealous +of me, and for them to be very much in love with you, and for you not to +care a sou for them, of course, and for us both to see the King." Nelchen +paused, quite out of breath after this ambitious career in the imaginative. + +"To see the King, indeed!" scoffed little Louis Quillan. "Why, we would see +only a very disreputable pockmarked wornout lecher if we did." + +"Still," she pointed out, "I would like to see a king. Simply because I +never have done so before, you conceive." + +"At times, my Nelchen, you are effeminate. Eve ate the apple for that +identical reason. Yet what you say is odd, because--do you know?--I once +had a friend who was by way of being a sort of king." + +Nelchen gave a squeal of delight. "And you never told me about him! I +loathe you." + +Louis Quillan did what seemed advisable. "--and, furthermore, your +loathsomeness is no excuse for rumpling my hair," said Nelchen, by and by. + +"But there is so little to tell. His father had married the Grand Duke +of Noumaria's daughter,--over yonder between Silesia and Badenburg, you +may remember. And so last spring when the Grand Duke and the Prince were +both killed in that horrible fire, my friend quite unexpectedly became a +king--oh, king of a mere celery-patch, but still a sort of king. Figure to +yourself, Nelchen! they were going to make my poor friend marry the Elector +of Badenburg's daughter,--and Victoria von Uhm has perfection stamped upon +her face in all its odious immaculacy,--and force him to devote the rest +of his existence to heading processions and reviewing troops, and signing +proclamations, and guzzling beer and sauerkraut. Why, he would have been +like Ovid among the Goths, my Nelchen!" + +"But he could have worn such splendid uniforms!" said Nelchen. "And +diamonds!" + +"You mercenary wretch!" said he. Louis Quillan then did what seemed +advisable; and presently he added, "In any event, the horrified man ran +away." + +"That was silly of him," said Nelchen Thorn. "But where did he run to?" + +Louis Quillan considered. "To Paradise," he at last decided. "And there he +found a disengaged angel, who very imprudently lowered herself to the point +of marrying him. And so he lived happily ever afterward. And so, till the +day of his death, he preached the doctrine that silliness is the supreme +wisdom." + +"And he regretted nothing?" Nelchen said, after a meditative while. + +Louis Quillan began to laugh. "Oh, yes! at times he profoundly regretted +Victoria von Uhm." + +Then Nelchen gave him a surprise, for the girl bent toward him and leaned +one hand upon each shoulder. "Diamonds are not all, are they, Louis? +I thank you, dear, for telling me of what means so much to you. I can +understand, I think, because for a long while I have tried to know and care +for everything that concerns you." + +The little man had risen to his feet. "Nelchen--!" + +"Hush!" said Nelchen Thorn; "Monseigneur is coming down to his supper." + + +II + +It was a person of conspicuous appearance, both by reason of his great +height and leanness as well as his extreme age, who now descended the +straight stairway leading from the corridor above. At Court they would have +told you that the Prince de Gâtinais was a trifle insane, but he troubled +the Court very little, since he had spent the last twenty years, with brief +intermissions, at his château near Beaujolais, where, as rumor buzzed +it, he had fitted out a laboratory, and had devoted his old age to the +study of chemistry. "Between my flute and my retorts, my bees and my +chocolate-creams," the Prince was wont to say, "I manage to console myself +for the humiliating fact that even Death has forgotten my existence." For +he had a child's appetite for sweets, and was at this time past eighty, +though still well-nigh as active as Antoine de Soyecourt had ever been, +even when--a good half-century ago--he had served, with distinction under +Louis Quatorze. + +To-night the Prince de Gâtinais was all in steel-gray, of a metallic +lustre, with prodigiously fine ruffles at his throat and wrists. You would +have found something spectral in the tall, gaunt old man, for his periwig +was heavily powdered, and his deep-wrinkled countenance was of an absolute +white, save for the thin, faintly bluish lips and the inklike glitter of +his narrowing eyes, as he now regarded the couple waiting hand in hand +before him, like children detected in mischief. + +Little Louis Quillan had drawn an audible breath at first sight of the +newcomer. Monsieur Quillan did not speak, however, but merely waited. + +"You have fattened," the Prince de Gâtinais said, at last, "I wish I could +fatten. It is incredible that a man who eats pounds of sugar daily should +yet remain a skeleton." His voice was guttural, and a peculiar slur +ran through his speech, caused by the loss of his upper front teeth at +Ramillies. + +Louis Quillan came of a stock not lightly abashed. "I have fattened on a +new diet, monsieur,--on happiness. But, ma foi! I am discourteous. Permit +me, my father, to present Mademoiselle Nelchen Thorn, who has so far +honored me as to consent to become my wife. 'Nelchen, I present to you my +father, the Prince de Gâtinais." + +"Oh--?" observed Nelchen, midway in her courtesy. + +But the Prince had taken her fingers and he kissed them quite as though +they had been the finger-tips of the all-powerful Pompadour at Versailles +yonder. "I salute the future Marquise de Soyecourt. You young people will +sup with me, then?" + +"No, monseigneur, for I am to wait upon the table," said Nelchen, "and +Father is at Sigéan overnight, having the mare shod, and there is only +Leon, and, oh, thank you very much indeed, monseigneur, but I had much +rather wait on the table." + +The Prince waved his hand. "My valet, mademoiselle, is at your disposal. +Vanringham!" he called. + +From the corridor above descended a tall red-headed fellow in black. +"Monseigneur--?" + +"Go!" quickly said Louis de Soyecourt, while the Prince spoke with his +valet,--"go, Nelchen, and make yourself even more beautiful if such a thing +be possible. He will never resist you, my dear--ah, no, that is out of +nature." + +"You will find more plates in the cupboard, Monsieur Vanringham," remarked +Nelchen, as she obediently tripped up the stairway, toward her room in the +right wing. "And the knives and forks are in the second drawer." + +So Vanringham laid two covers in discreet silence; then bowed and withdrew +by the side door that led to the kitchen. The Prince had seated himself +beside the open fire, where he yawned and now looked up with a smile. + +"Well, Louis," said the Prince de Gâtinais--"so Monsieur de Puysange and I +have run you to earth at last. And I find you have determined to defy me, +eh?" + + +III + +"I trust there is no question of defiance," Louis de Soyecourt equably +returned. "Yet I regret you should have been at pains to follow me, since I +still claim the privilege of living out my life in my own fashion." + +"You claim a right which never existed, my little son. It is not demanded +of any man that he be happy, whereas it is manifestly necessary for a +gentleman to obey his God, his King, and his own conscience without +swerving. If he also find time for happiness, well and good; otherwise, he +must be unhappy. But, above all, he must intrepidly play out his allotted +part in the good God's scheme of things, and must with due humbleness +recognize that the happiness or the unhappiness of any man alive is a +trivial consideration as against the fulfilment of this scheme." + +"You and Nelchen are much at one there," the Marquis lightly replied; "yet, +for my part, I fancy that Providence is not particularly interested in who +happens to be the next Grand Duke of Noumaria." + +The Prince struck with his hand upon the arm of his chair. "You dare to +jest! Louis, your levity is incorrigible. France is beaten, discredited +among nations, naked to her enemies. She lies here, between England and +Prussia, as in a vise. God summons you, a Frenchman, to reign in Noumaria, +and in addition affords you a chance to marry that weathercock of +Badenburg's daughter. Ah, He never spoke more clearly, Louis. And you would +reply with a shallow jest! Why, Badenburg and Noumaria just bridge that +awkward space between France and Austria. Your accession would confirm the +Empress,--Gaston de Puysange has it in her own hand, yonder at Versailles! +I tell you it is all planned that France and Austria will combine, Louis! +Think of it,--our France on her feet again, mistress of Europe, and every +whit of it your doing, Louis,--ah, my boy, my boy, you cannot refuse!" + +Thus he ran on in a high, disordered voice, pleading, clutching at his son +with a strange new eagerness which now possessed the Prince de Gâtinais. +He was remembering the France which he had known; not the ignoble, tawdry +France of the moment, misruled by women, rakes, confessors, and valets, but +the France of his dead Sun King; and it seemed to Louis de Soyecourt that +the memory had brought back with it the youth of his father for an instant. +Just for a heart-beat, the lank man towered erect, his cheeks pink, and +every muscle tense. + +Then Louis de Soyecourt shook his head. In England's interest, as he now +knew, Ormskirk had played upon de Soyecourt's ignorance and his love of +pleasure, as an adept plays upon the strings of a violin; but de Soyecourt +had his reason, a gigantic reason, for harboring no grudge against the +Englishman. + +"Frankly, my father, I would not give up Nelchen though all Europe depended +upon it. I am a coward, perhaps; but I have my chance of happiness, and +I mean to take it. So Cousin Otto is welcome to the duchy. I infinitely +prefer Nelchen." + +"Otto! a general in the Prussian army, Frederick's property, Frederick's +idolater!" The old Prince now passed from an apex of horror to his former +pleading tones. "But, then, it is not necessary you give up Nelchen. Ah, +no, a certain latitude is permissible in these matters, you understand. She +could be made a countess, a marquise,--anything you choose to demand, my +Louis. And you could marry Princess Victoria just the same--" + +"Were you any other man, monsieur," said Louis de Soyecourt, "I would, +of course, challenge you. As it is, I can only ask you to respect my +helplessness. It is very actual helplessness, sir, for Nelchen has been +bred in such uncourtly circles as to entertain the most provincial notions +about becoming anybody's whore." + +Now the Prince de Gâtinais sank back into the chair. He seemed incredibly +old now. "You are right," he mumbled,--"yes, you are right, Louis. I have +talked with her. With her that would be impossible. These bourgeois do not +understand the claims of noble birth." + +The younger man had touched him upon the shoulder. "My father,--" he began. + +"Yes, I am your father," said the other, dully, "and it is that which +puzzles me. You are my own son, and yet you prefer your happiness to +the welfare of France, to the very preservation of France. Never in six +centuries has there been a de Soyecourt to do that. God and the King we +served ... six centuries ... and to-day my own son prefers an innkeeper's +daughter..." His voice trailed and slurred like that of one speaking in his +sleep, for he was an old man, and by this the flare of his excitement had +quite burned out, and weariness clung about his senses like a drug. "I will +go back to Beaujolais ... to my retorts and my bees ... and forget there +was never a de Soyecourt in six centuries, save my own son...." + +"My father!" Louis de Soyecourt cried, and shook him gently. "Ah, I dare +say you are right, in theory. But in practice I cannot give her up. Surely +you understand--why, they tell me there was never a more ardent lover than +you. They tell me--And you would actually have me relinquish Nelchen, even +after you have seen her! Yet remember, monsieur, I love her much as you +loved my mother,--that mettlesome little princess whom you stole from the +very heart of her court.[Footnote: The curious may find further details of +the then Marquis de Soyecourt's abduction of the Princess Clotilda in the +voluminous pages of Hulot, under the year 1708.] Ah, I have heard tales of +you, you conceive. And Nelchen means as much to me as once my mother meant +to you, remember--She means youth, and happiness, and a tiny space of +laughter before I, too, am worm's-meat, and means a proper appreciation of +God's love for us all, and means everything a man's mind clutches at when +he wakens from some forgotten dream that leaves him weeping with sheer +adoration of its beauty. Ho, never was there a kinder father than you, +monsieur. You have spoiled me most atrociously, I concede; and after so +many years you cannot in decency whip about like this and deny me my very +life. Why, my father it is your little Louis who is pleading with you,--and +you have never denied me anything! See, now, how I presume upon your +weakness. I am actually bullying you into submission--bullying you through +your love for me. Eh, we love greatly, we de Soyecourts, and give all for +love. Your own life attests that, monsieur. Now, then, let us recognize the +fact we are de Soyecourts, you and I. Ah, my father,--" + +Thus he babbled on, for the sudden languor of the Prince had alarmed him, +and Louis de Soyecourt, to afford him justice, loved his father with a +heartier intensity than falls to the portion of most parents. To arouse the +semi-conscious man was his one thought. And now he got his reward, for the +Prince de Gâtinais opened his keen old eyes, a trifle dazedly, and drew a +deep breath which shook his large frail body through and through. + +"Let us recognize that we are de Soyecourts, you and I," he repeated, in a +new voice. "After all, I cannot drag you to Noumaria by the scruff of your +neck like a truant school-boy. Yes, let us recognize the fact that we are +de Soyecourts, you and I." + +"Heh, in that event," said the Marquis, "we must both fall upon our knees +forthwith. For look, my father!" + +Nelchen Thorn was midway in her descent of the stairs. She wore her simple +best. All white it was, and yet the plump shoulders it displayed were not +put to shame. Rather must April clouds and the snows of December retire +abashed, as lamentably inefficient analogues, the Marquis meditated; and as +she paused starry-eyed and a thought afraid, it seemed to him improbable +that even the Prince de Gâtinais could find it in his heart greatly to +blame his son. + +"I begin to suspect," said the Prince, "that I am Jacob of old, and that +you are a very young cherub venturing out of Paradise through motives of +curiosity. Eh, my dear, let us see what entertainment we can afford you +during your visit to earth." He took her hand and led her to the table. + + +IV + +Vanringham served. Never was any one more blithe than the lean Prince de +Gâtinais. The latest gossip of Versailles was delivered, with discreet +emendations; he laughed gayly; and he ate with an appetite. There was a +blight among the cattle hereabouts? How deplorable! witchcraft, beyond +doubt. And Louis passed as a piano-tuner?--because there were no pianos in +Manneville. Excellent! he had always given Louis credit for a surpassing +cleverness; now it was demonstrated. In fine, the Prince de Gâtinais became +so jovial that Nelchen was quite at ease, and Louis de Soyecourt became +vaguely alarmed. He knew his father, and for the Prince to yield thus +facilely was incredible. Still, his father had seen Nelchen, had talked +with Nelchen.... + +Now the Prince rose. "Fresh glasses, Vanringham," he ordered; and then: "I +give you a toast. Through desire of love and happiness, you young people +have stolen a march on me. Eh, I am not Sgarnarelle of the comedy! +therefore, I drink cheerfully to love and happiness, I consider Louis is +not in the right, but I know that he is wise, my daughter, as concerns his +soul's health, in clinging to you rather than to a tinsel crown. Of Fate +I have demanded--like Sgarnarelle of the comedy,--prosaic equity and +common-sense; of Fate he has in turn demanded happiness; and Fate will at +her convenience decide between us. Meantime I drink to love and happiness, +since I, too, remember. I know better than to argue with Louis, you +observe, my Nelchen; we de Soyecourts are not lightly severed from any +notion we may have taken up. In consequence I drink to your love and +happiness!" + +They drank. "To your love, my son," said the Prince de Gâtinais,--"to the +true love of a de Soyecourt." And afterward he laughingly drank: "To your +happiness, my daughter,--to your eternal happiness." + +Nelchen sipped. The two men stood with drained glasses. Now on a sudden the +Prince de Gâtinais groaned and clutched his breast. + +"I was always a glutton," he said, hoarsely. "I should have been more +moderate--I am faint--" + +"Salts are the best thing in the world," said Nelchen, with fine readiness. +She was half-way up the stairs. "A moment, monseigneur,--a moment, and I +fetch salts." Nelchen Thorn had disappeared into her room. + + +V + +The Prince sat drumming upon the table with his long white fingers. He had +waved the Marquis and Vanringham aside. "A passing weakness,--I am not +adamant," he had said, half-peevishly. + +"Then I prescribe another glass of this really excellent wine," laughed +little Louis de Soyecourt. At heart he was not merry, and his own +unreasoning nervousness irritated him, for it seemed to the Marquis, +quite irrationally, that the atmosphere of the cheery room was, without +forerunnership, become tense and expectant, and was now quiet with much the +hush which precedes the bursting of a thunder-storm. And accordingly he +laughed. + +"I prescribe another glass, monsieur," said he. "Eh, that is the true +panacea for faintness--for every ill. Come, we will drink to the most +beautiful woman in Poictesme--nay, I am too modest,--to the most beautiful +woman in France, in Europe, in the whole universe! _Feriam sidera_, my +father! and confound all mealy-mouthed reticence, for you have both seen +her. Confess, am I not a lucky man? Come, Vanringham, too, shall drink. No +glasses? Take Nelchen's, then. Come, you fortunate rascal, you shall drink +to the bride from the bride's half-emptied glass. To the most beautiful +woman--Why, what the devil--?" + +Vanringham had blurted out an odd, unhuman sound. His extended hand shook +and jerked, as if in irresolution, and presently struck the proffered +glass from de Soyecourt's grasp. You heard the tiny crash, very audible in +the stillness, and afterward the irregular drumming of the old Prince's +finger-tips. He had not raised his head, had not moved. + +Louis de Soyecourt came to him, without speaking, and placed one hand under +his father's chin, and lifted the Prince's countenance, like a dead weight, +toward his own. Thus the two men regarded each the other. Their silence was +rather horrible. + +"It was not in vain that I dabbled with chemistry all these years," said +the guttural voice of the Prince de Gâtinais, "Yes, the child is dead by +this. Let us recognize the fact we are de Soyecourts, you and I." + +But Louis de Soyecourt had flung aside the passive, wrinkled face, and +then, with a straining gesture, wiped the fingers that had touched it upon +the sleeve of his left arm. He turned to the stairway. His hand grasped the +newelpost and gripped it so firmly that he seemed less to walk than by one +despairing effort to lift an inert body to the first step. He ascended +slowly, with a queer shamble, and disappeared into Nelchen's room. + + +VI + +"What next, monseigneur?" said Vanringham, half-whispering. + +"Why, next," said the Prince de Gâtinais, "I imagine that he will kill us +both. Meantime, as Louis says, the wine is really excellent. So you may +refill my glass, my man, and restore to me my vial of little tablets".... + +He was selecting a bonbon from the comfit-dish when his son returned into +the apartment. Very tenderly Louis de Soyecourt laid his burden upon a +settle, and then drew the older man toward it. You noted first how the +thing lacked weight: a flower snapped from its stalk could hardly have +seemed more fragile. The loosened hair strained toward the floor and +seemed to have sucked all color from the thing to inform that thick hair's +insolent glory; the tint of Nelchen's lips was less sprightly, and for the +splendor of her eyes Death had substituted a conscientious copy in crayons: +otherwise there was no change; otherwise she seemed to lie there and muse +on something remote and curious, yet quite as she would have wished it to +be. + +"See, my father," Louis de Soyecourt said, "she was only a child, +more little even than I. Never in her brief life had she wronged any +one,--never, I believe, had she known an unkind thought. Always she +laughed, you understand--Oh, my father, is it not pitiable that Nelchen +will never laugh any more?" + +"I entreat of God to have mercy upon her soul," said the old Prince de +Gâtinais. "I entreat of God that the soul of her murderer may dwell +eternally in the nethermost pit of hell." + +"I would cry amen," Louis de Soyecourt said, "if I could any longer believe +in God." + +The Prince turned toward him. "And will you kill me now, Louis?" + +"I cannot," said the other. "Is it not an excellent jest that I should +be your son and still be human? Yet as for your instrument, your cunning +butler--Come, Vanringham!" he barked. "We are unarmed. Come, tall man, for +I who am well-nigh a dwarf now mean to kill you with my naked hands." + +"Vanringham!" The Prince leaped forward. "Behind me, Vanringham!" As the +valet ran to him the old Prince de Gâtinais caught a knife from the table +and buried it to the handle in Vanringham's breast. The lackey coughed, +choked, clutched his assassin by each shoulder; thus he stood with a +bewildered face, shuddering visibly, every muscle twitching. Suddenly he +shrieked, with an odd, gurgling noise, and his grip relaxed, and Francis +Vanringham seemed to crumple among his garments, so that he shrank rather +than fell to the floor. His hands stretched forward, his fingers spreading +and for a moment writhing in agony, and then he lay quite still. + +"You progress, my father," said Louis de Soyecourt, quietly. "And what new +infamy may I now look for?" + +"A valet!" said the Prince. "You would have fought with him--a valet! He +topped you by six inches. And the man was desperate. Your life was in +danger. And your life is valuable." + +"I have earlier perceived, my father, that you prize human life very +highly." + +The Prince de Gâtinais struck sharply upon the table. "I prize the welfare +of France. To secure this it is necessary that you and no other reign in +Noumaria. But for the girl you would have yielded just now. So to the +welfare of France I sacrifice the knave at my feet, the child yonder, and +my own soul. Let us remember that we are de Soyecourts, you and I." + +"Rather I see in you," began the younger man, "a fiend. I see in you a far +ignobler Judas--" + +"And I see in you the savior of France. Nay, let us remember that we are de +Soyecourts, you and I. And for six centuries it has always been our first +duty to serve France. You behold only a man and a woman assassinated; I +behold thousands of men preserved from death, many thousands of women +rescued from hunger and degradation. I have sinned, and grievously; ages of +torment may not purge my infamy; yet I swear it is well done!" + +"And I--?" the little Marquis said. + +"Why, your heart is slain, my son, for you loved this girl as I loved your +mother, and now you can nevermore quite believe in the love God bears for +us all; and my soul is damned irretrievably: but we are de Soyecourts, you +and I, and accordingly we rejoice and drink to France, to the true love +of a de Soyecourt! to France preserved! to France still mighty among her +peers!" + +Louis de Soyecourt stood quite motionless. Only his eyes roved toward his +father, then to the body that had been Nelchen's. He began to laugh as he +caught up his glass. "You have conquered. What else have I to live for now? +To France, you devil!" + +"To France, my son!" The glasses clinked. "To the true love of a de +Soyecourt!" + +And immediately the Prince de Gâtinais fell at his son's feet. "You will go +into Noumaria?" + +"What does that matter now?" the other wearily said. "Yes, I suppose so. +Get up, you devil!" + +But the Prince de Gâtinais detained him, with hands like ice. "Then we +preserve France, you and I! We are both damned, I think, but it is worth +while, Louis. In hell we may remember that it was well worth while. I have +slain your very soul, my dear son, but that does not matter: France is +saved." The old man still knelt, looking upward. "Yes, and you must forgive +me, my son! For, see, I yield you what reparation I may. See, Louis,--I was +chemist enough for two. Wine of my own vintage I have tasted, of the brave +vintage which now revives all France. And I swear to you the child did not +suffer, Louis, not--not much. See, Louis! she did not suffer." A convulsion +tore at and shook the aged body, and twitched awry the mouth that had +smiled so resolutely. Thus the Prince died. + +Presently Louis de Soyecourt knelt and caught up the wrinkled face between +both hands. "My father--!" said Louis de Soyecourt. Afterward he kissed +the dead lips tenderly. "Teach me how to live, my father," said Louis de +Soyecourt, "for I begin to comprehend--in part I comprehend." Throughout +the moment Nelchen Thorn was forgotten: and to himself he too seemed to be +fashioned of heroic stuff. + + + + +X + +THE DUCAL AUDIENCE + + +_As Played at Breschau, May 3, 1755_ + + "_Venez, belle, venez, + Qu'on ne sçauroit tenir, et qui vous mutinez. + Void vostre galand! à moi pour recompence + Vous pouvez faire une humble et douce reverence! + Adieu, l'evenement trompe un peu mes souhaits; + Mais tous les amoureux ne sont pas satisfaits._" + + +DRAMATIS PERSONÆ + +GRAND DUKE OF NOUMARIA, formerly LOUIS DE SOYECOURT, tormented beyond +measure with the impertinences of life. +COMTE DE CHÂTEAUROUX, cousin to the Grand Duchess, and complies with +circumstance. +A COACHMAN and two FOOTMEN. + +GRAND DUCHESS OF NOUMARIA, a capable woman. +BARONESS VON ALTENBURG, a coquette. + + +SCENE + +The Palace Gardens at Breschau. + + + + +THE DUCAL AUDIENCE + + +_PROEM:--In Default of the Hornpipe Customary to a Lengthy Interval between +Acts_ + +Louis de Soyecourt fulfilled the promise made to the old Prince de +Gâtinais, so that presently went about Breschau, hailed by more or less +enthusiastic plaudits, a fair and blue-eyed, fat little man, who smiled +mechanically upon the multitude, and looked after the interests of France +wearily, and (without much more ardor) gave over the remainder of his time +to outrivalling his predecessor, unvenerable Ludwig von Freistadt, who +until now had borne, among the eighteen grand dukes (largely of quite +grand-ducal morals) that had earlier governed in Noumaria, the palm for +indolence and dissipation. + +At moments, perhaps, the Grand Duke recollected the Louis Quillan who had +spent three months in Manneville, but only, I think, as one recalls some +pleasurable acquaintance; Quillan had little resembled the Marquis de +Soyecourt, rake, tippler and exquisite of Versailles, and in the Grand Duke +you would have found even less of Nelchen Thorn's betrothed. He was quite +dead, was Quillan, for the man that Nelchen loved had died within the +moment of Nelchen's death. Hé, the poor children! his Highness meditated. +Dead, both of them, both murdered four years since, slain in Poictesme +yonder.... Eh bien, it was not necessary to engender melancholy. + +So his Highness amused himself,--not very heartily, but at least to the +last resource of a flippant and unprudish age. Meantime his grumbling +subjects bored him, his duties bored him, his wife bored him, his +mistresses bored him after the first night or two, and, above all, he most +hideously bored himself. But I spare you a _chronique scandaleuse_ of Duke +Louis' reign and come hastily to its termination, as more pertinent to the +matter I have now in hand. + +Suffice it, then, that he ruled in Noumaria five years; that he did what +was requisite by begetting children in lawful matrimony, and what was +expected of him by begetting some others otherwise; and that he stoutened +daily, and by and by decided that the young Baroness von Altenburg--not +excepting even her lovely and multifarious precursors,--was beyond doubt +possessed of the brightest eyes in all history. Therefore did his Highness +lay before the owner of these eyes a certain project, upon which the +Baroness was in season moved to comment. + + +I + +"The idea," said the Baroness, "is preposterous!" + +"Admirably put!" cried the Grand Duke. "We will execute it, then, the first +thing in the morning." + +"--and, besides, one could take only a portmanteau--" + +"And the capacity of a portmanteau is limited," his Highness agreed. "Nay, +I can assure you, after I had packed my coronet this evening there was +hardly room for a change of linen. And I found it necessary to choose +between the sceptre and a tooth-brush." + +"Ah, Highness" sighed the Baroness von Altenburg, "will you never be +serious? You plan to throw away a duchy, and in the act you jest like a +school-boy." + +"Ma foi!" retorted the Grand Duke, and looked out upon the moonlit gardens; +"as a loyal Noumarian, should I not rejoice at the good-fortune which is +about to befall my country? Nay, Amalia, morality demands my abdication," +he added, virtuously, "and for this once morality and I are in complete +accord." + +The Baroness von Altenburg was not disposed to argue the singularity of any +such agreement, the while that she considered Louis de Soyecourt's latest +scheme. + +He had, as prologue to its elucidation, conducted the Baroness into the +summer-house that his grandfather, good Duke Augustus, erected in the +Gardens of Breschau, close to the Fountain of the Naiads, and had en +tête-à-tête explained his notion. There were post-horses in Noumaria; there +was also an unobstructed road that led you to Vienna, and thence to the +world outside; and he proposed, in short, to quiet the grumbling of the +discontented Noumarians by a second, and this time a final, vanishment from +office and the general eye. He submitted that the Baroness, as a patriot, +could not fail to weigh the inestimable benefit which would thus accrue to +her native land. + +Yet he stipulated that his exit from public life should be made in company +with the latest lady on whom he had bestowed his variable affections; and +remembering this proviso, the Baroness, without exactly encouraging or +disencouraging his scheme, was at least not prone to insist on coupling him +with morality. + +She contented herself with a truism. "Indeed, your Highness, the example +you set your subjects is atrocious." + +"And yet they complain!" said the Grand Duke,--"though I swear to you I +have always done the things I ought not to have done, and have left unread +the papers I have signed. What more, in reason, can one ask of a grand +duke?" + +"You are indolent--" remonstrated the lady. + +"You--since we attempt the descriptive," said his Highness,--"are +adorable." + +"--and that injures your popularity--" + +"Which, by the way, vanished with my waist." + +"--and moreover you create scandals--" + +"'The woman tempted me,'" quoted the Grand Duke; and added, reflectively, +"Amalia, it is very singular--" + +"Nay, I am afraid," the Baroness lamented, "it is rather notoriously +plural." + +But the Grand Duke waved a dignified dissent, and continued, "--that I +could never resist green eyes of a peculiar shade." + +The Baroness, becoming vastly interested in the structure of her fan, went +on, with some severity, "Your reputation--" + +"_De mortuis_--" pleaded the Grand Duke. + +"--is bad; and you go from bad to worse." + +"By no means," said his Highness, "since when I was nineteen--" + +"I will not believe it even of you!" cried the Baroness von Altenburg. + +"I assure you," his Highness protested, gravely, "I was then a devil of a +fellow! She was only twenty, and she, too, had big green eyes--" + +"And by this late period," said the lady, "has in addition an infinity of +grandchildren." + +"I happen to be barely forty!" the Grand Duke said, with dignity. + +"In which event the _Almanachen_ dating, say, from 1710--" + +"Are not unmarred by an occasional misprint. Truly I lament the ways of all +typographers, and I will explain the cause of their depravity, in Vienna." + +"But I am not going to Vienna." + +"'And Sapphira,'" murmured his Highness, "'fell down straightway at his +feet, and yielded up the ghost!' So beware, Amalia!" + +"I am not afraid, your Highness,--" + +"Nor in effect am I. Then we will let Europe frown and journalists +moralize, while we two gallop forward on the road that leads to Vienna and +heaven?" + +"Or--" the Baroness helpfully suggested. + +"There is in this case no possible 'or.' Once out of Noumaria, we leave all +things behind save happiness." + +"Among these trifles, your Highness, is a duchy." + +"Hein?" said the Grand Duke; "what is it? A mere dot on the map, a pawn in +the game of politics. I give up the pawn and take--the queen." + +"That is unwise," said the Baroness, with composure, "and, besides, you are +hurting my hand. Apropos of the queen--the Grand Duchess--" + +"Will heartily thank God for her deliverance. She will renounce me before +the world, and in secret almost worship me for my consideration." + +"Yet a true woman," said the Baroness, oracularly, "will follow a +husband--" + +"Till his wife makes her stop," said the little Grand Duke, his tone +implying that he knew whereof he spoke. + +"--and if the Grand Duchess loved you--" + +"Oh, I think she would never mention it," said the Grand Duke, revolving in +his mind this novel idea. "She has a great regard for appearances." + +"Nevertheless--" + +"She will be Regent"--and the Grand Duke chuckled. "I can see her now,--St. +Elizabeth, with a dash of Boadicea. Noumaria will be a pantheon of the +virtues, and my children will be reared on moral aphorisms and rational +food, with me as a handy example of everything they should avoid. Deuce +take it, Amalia," he added, "a father must in common decency furnish an +example to his children!" + +"Pray," asked the Baroness, "do you owe it to your children, then, to take +this trip to Vienna--" + +"Ma foi!" retorted the Grand Duke, "I owe that to myself." + +"--and thereby break the Grand Duchess' heart?" + +"Indeed," observed his Highness, "you appear strangely deep in the +confidence of my wife." + +Again the Baroness descended to aphorism. "All women are alike, your +Highness." + +"Ah, ah! Well, I have heard," said the Grand Duke, "that seven devils were +cast out of Magdalene--" + +"Which means--?" + +"I have never heard of this being done to any other woman. Accordingly I +deduce that in all other women must remain--" + +"Beware, your Highness, of the crudeness of cynicism!" + +"I age," complained the Grand Duke, "and one reaches years of indiscretion +so early in the forties." + +"You admit, then, discretion is desirable?" + +"I admit that," his Highness said, with firmness, "of you alone." + +"Am I, in truth," queried the Baroness, "desirable?" And in this patch of +moonlight she looked incredibly so. + +"More than that," said the Grand Duke--"you are dangerous. You are a menace +to the peace of my Court. The young men make sonnets to your eyes, and the +ladies are ready to tear them out. You corrupt us, one and all. There is de +Châteauroux now--" + +"I assure you," protested the Baroness, "Monsieur de Châteauroux is not the +sort of person--" + +"But at twenty-five," the Grand Duke interrupted, "one is invariably that +sort of person." + +"Phrases, your Highness!" + +"Phrases or not, it is decided. You shall make no more bad poets." + +"You will," said the Baroness, "put me to a vast expense for curl-papers." + +"You shall ensnare no more admirers." + +"My milliner will be inconsolable." + +"In short, you must leave Noumaria--" + +"You condemn me to an exile's life of misery!" + +"Well, then, since misery loves company, I will go with you. For we should +never forget," his Highness added, with considerable kindliness, "always +to temper justice with mercy. So I have ordered a carriage to be ready at +dawn." + +The Baroness reflected; the plump little Grand Duke smiled. And he had +reason, for there was about this slim white woman--whose eyes were colossal +emeralds, and in show equivalently heatless, if not in effect,--so much +of the _baroque_ that in meditation she appeared some prentice queen of +Faëry dubious as to her incantations. Now, though, she had it--the mislaid +abracadabra. + +"I knew that I had some obstacle in mind--Thou shalt not commit adultery. +No, your Highness, I will not go." + +"Remember Sapphira," said the Grand Duke, "recall Herodias who fared +happily in all things, and by no means forget the portmanteau." + +"I have not the least intention of going--" the Baroness iterated, firmly. + +"Nor would I ever suspect you of harboring such a thought. Still, a +portmanteau, in case of an emergency--" + +"--although--" + +"Why, exactly." + +"--although I am told the sunrise is very beautiful from the Gardens of +Breschau." + +"It is well worth seeing," agreed the Grand Duke, "on certain +days--particularly on Thursdays. The gardeners make a specialty of them on +Thursdays." + +"By a curious chance," the Baroness murmured, "this is Wednesday." + +"Indeed," said the Grand Duke, "now you mention it, I believe it is." + +"And I shall be here, on your Highness' recommendation, to see the +sunrise--" + +"Of course," said the Grand Duke, "to see the sunrise,--but with a +portmanteau!" + +The Baroness was silent. + +"With a portmanteau," entreated the Grand Duke. "I am a connoisseur of +portmanteaux. Say that I may see yours, Amalia." + +The Baroness was silent. + +"Say yes, Amalia. For to the student of etymology the very word +portmanteau--" + +The Baroness bent toward him and said: + +"I am sorry to inform your Highness that there is some one at the door of +the summer-house." + + +II + +Inasmuch as all Noumaria knew that its little Grand Duke, once closeted +with the lady whom he delighted to honor, did not love intrusions, +and inasmuch as a discreet Court had learned, long ago, to regard +the summer-house as consecrate to his Highness and the Baroness von +Altenburg,--for these reasons the Grand Duke was inclined to resent +disturbance of his privacy when he first peered out into the gardens. + +His countenance was less severe when he turned again toward the Baroness, +and it smacked more of bewilderment. + +"It is only my wife," he said. + +"And the Comte de Châteauroux," said the Baroness. + +There is no denying that their voices were somewhat lowered. The chill and +frail beauty of the Grand Duchess was plainly visible from where they sat; +to every sense a woman of snow, his Highness mentally decided, for her gown +this evening was white and the black hair powdered; all white she was, a +cloud-tatter in the moonlight: yet with the Comte de Châteauroux as a foil, +his uniform of the Cuirassiers a big stir of glitter and color, she made an +undeniably handsome picture; and it was, quite possibly, the Grand Duke's +æsthetic taste which held him for the moment motionless. + +"After all--" he began, and rose. + +"I am afraid that her Highness--" the Baroness likewise commenced. + +"She would be sure to," said the Grand Duke, and thereupon he sat down. + +"I do not, however," said the Baroness, "approve of eavesdropping." + +"Oh, if you put it that way--" agreed the Grand Duke, and he was rising +once more, when the voice of de Châteauroux stopped him. + +"No, not at any cost!" de Châteauroux; was saying; "I cannot and I will not +give you up, Victoria!" + +"--though I have heard," said his Highness, "that the moonlight is bad for +the eyes." Saying this, he seated himself composedly in the darkest corner +of the summer-house. + +"This is madness!" the Grand Duchess said--"sheer madness." + +"Madness, if you will," de Châteauroux persisted, "yet it is a madness too +powerful and sweet to be withstood. Listen, Victoria,"--and he waved his +hand toward the palace, whence music, softened by the distance, came from +the lighted windows,--"do you not remember? They used to play that air at +Staarberg." + +The Grand Duchess had averted her gaze from him. She did not speak. + +He continued: "Those were contented days, were they not, when we were boy +and girl together? I have danced to that old-world tune so many times--with +you! And to-night, madame, it recalls a host of unforgettable things, for +it brings back to memory the scent of that girl's hair, the soft cheek that +sometimes brushed mine, the white shoulders which I so often had hungered +to kiss, before I dared--" + +"Hein?" muttered the Grand Duke. + +"We are no longer boy and girl," the Grand Duchess said. "All that lies +behind us. It was a dream--a foolish dream which we must forget." + +"Can you in truth forget?" de Châteauroux demanded,--"can you forget it +all, Victoria?--forget that night a Gnestadt, when you confessed you loved +me? forget that day at Staarberg, when we were lost in the palace gardens?" + +"Mon Dieu, what a queer method!" murmured the Grand Duke. "The man makes +love by the almanac." + +"Nay, dearest woman in the world," de Châteauroux went on, "you loved me +once, and that you cannot have quite forgotten. We were happy then--very +incredibly happy,--and now--" + +"Life," said the Grand Duchess, "cannot always be happy." + +"Ah, no, my dear! nor is it to be elated by truisms. But what a life is +this of mine,--a life of dreary days, filled with sick, vivid dreams of +our youth that is hardly past as yet! And so many dreams, dear woman of my +heart! in which the least remembered trifle brings back, as if in a flash, +some corner of the old castle and you as I saw you there,--laughing, or +insolent, or, it may be, tender. Ah, but you were not often tender! Just +for a moment I see you, and my blood leaps up in homage to my dear lady. +Then instantly that second of actual vision is over, I am going prosaically +about the day's business, but I hunger more than ever--" + +"This," said the Grand Duke, "is insanity." + +"Yet I love better the dreams of the night," de Châteauroux went on; "for +they are not made all of memories, sweetheart. Rather, they are romances +which my love weaves out of multitudinous memories,--fantastic stories of +just you and me that always end, if I be left to dream them out in comfort, +very happily. For there is in these dreams a woman who loves me, whose +heart and body and soul are mine, and mine alone. Ohé, it is a wonderful +vision while it lasts, though it be only in dreams that I am master of +my heart's desire, and though the waking be bitter...! Need it be just a +dream, Victoria?" + +"Not but that he does it rather well, you know," whispered the Grand Duke +to the Baroness von Altenburg, "although the style is florid. Yet that last +speech was quite in my earlier and more rococo manner." + +The Grand Duchess did not stir as de Châteauroux bent over her jewelled +hand. + +"Come! come now!" he said. "Let us not lose our only chance of happiness. +'Come forth, O Galatea, and forget as thou comest, even as I already have +forgot, the homeward way! Nay, choose with me to go a-shepherding--!'" + +"Oh, but to think of dragging in Theocritus!" observed his Highness. "Can +this be what they call seduction nowadays!" + +"I cannot," the Grand Duchess whispered, and her voice trembled. "You know +that I cannot, dear." + +"You will go!" said de Châteauroux. + +"My husband--" + +"A man who leaves you for each new caprice, who flaunts his mistresses in +the face of Europe." + +"My children--" + +"Eh, mon Dieu! are they or aught else to stand in my way, now that I know +you love me!" + +"--it would be criminal--" + +"Ah, yes, but then you love me!" + +"--you act a dishonorable part, de Châteauroux,--" + +"That does not matter. You love me!" + +"I will never see you again," said the Grand Duchess, firmly. "Go! I loathe +you, I loathe you, monsieur, even more than I loathe myself for having +stooped to listen to you." + +"You love me!" said de Châteauroux, and took her in his arms. + +Then the Grand Duchess rested her head upon the shoulder of de Châteauroux, +and breathed, "God help me!--yes!" + +"Really," said the Grand Duke, "I would never have thought it of Victoria. +It seems incredible for any woman of taste to be thus lured astray by +citations of the almanac and secondary Greek poets." + +"You will come, then?" the Count said. + +And the Grand Duchess answered, quietly, "It shall be as you will." + +More lately, while the Grand Duke and the Baroness craned their necks, and +de Châteauroux bent, very slowly, over her upturned lips, the Grand +Duchess struggled from him, saying, "Hark, Philippe! for I heard some +one--something stirring--" + +"It was the wind, dear heart." + +"Hasten!--I am afraid!--Oh, it is madness to wait here!" + +"At dawn, then,--in the gardens?" + +"Yes,--ah, yes, yes! But come, mon ami." And they disappeared in the +direction of the palace. + + +III + +The Grand Duke looked dispassionately on their retreating figures; +inquiringly on the Baroness; reprovingly on the moon, as though he rather +suspected it of having treated him with injustice. + +"Ma foi," said his Highness, at length, "I have never known such a passion +for sunrises. Shortly we shall have them announced as 'Patronized by the +Nobility.'" + +The Baroness said only, with an ellipsis, "Her own cousin, too!" [Footnote: +By courtesy rather than legally; Mademoiselle Berlin was, however, +undoubtedly the Elector of Badenburg's sister, though on the wrong side of +the blanket; and to her (second) son by Louis Quinze his French Majesty +accorded the title of Comte de Châteauroux.] + +"Victoria," observed the Grand Duke, "has always had the highest regard for +her family; but in this she is going too far--" + +"Yes," said the Baroness; "as far as Vienna." + +"--and I shall tell her that there are limits, Pardieu," the Grand Duke +emphatically repeated, "that there are limits." + +"Whereupon, if I am not mistaken, she will reply that there +are--baronesses." + +"I shall then appeal to her better nature--" + +"You will find it," said the Baroness, "strangely hard of hearing." + +"--and afterward I shall have de Châteauroux arrested." + +"On what grounds, your Highness?" + +"In fact," admitted the Grand Duke, "we do not want a scandal" + +"It is no longer," the Baroness considered, "altogether a question of what +we want." + +"And, morbleu! there will be a horrible scandal--" + +"The public gazettes will thrive on it." + +"--and trouble with her father, if not international complications--" + +"The armies of Noumaria and Badenburg have for years had nothing to do." + +"--and later a divorce." + +"The lawyers will call you blessed. In any event," the Baroness +conscientiously added, "your lawyers will. I am afraid that hers--" + +"Will scarcely be so courteous?" the Grand Duke queried. + +"It is not altogether impossible," the Baroness admitted, "that in +preparation of their briefs, they may light upon some other adjective." + +"And, in short," his Highness summed it up, "there will be the deuce to +pay." + +"Oh, no! the piper," said the Baroness,--"after long years of dancing. That +is what moralists will be saying, I suspect." + +And this seemed so highly probable that the plump little Grand Duke +frowned, and lapsed into a most un-ducal sullenness. + +"Your Highness," murmured the Baroness, "I cannot express my feelings as to +this shocking revelation--" + +"Madame," said the Grand Duke, "no more can I. At least, not in the +presence of a lady." + +"--But I have a plan--" + +"I," said the Grand Duke, "have an infinity of plans; but de Châteauroux +has a carriage, and a superfluity of Bourbon blood; and Victoria has the +obstinacy of a mule." + +"--And my plan," said the Baroness, "is a good one." + +"It needs to be," said the Grand Duke. + +But thereupon the Baroness von Altenburg unfolded to his Highness her +scheme for preserving coherency in the reigning family of Noumaria, and the +Grand Duke of that principality heard and marvelled. + +"Amalia," he said, when she had ended, "you should be prime-minister--" + +"Ah, your Highness," said the lady, "you flatter me, for none of my sex has +ever been sufficiently unmanly to make a good politician." + +"--though, indeed," the Grand Duke reflected, "what would a mere +prime-minister do with lips like yours?" + +"He would set you an excellent example by admiring them from a distance. Do +you agree, then, to my plan?" + +"Why, ma foi, yes!" said the Grand Duke, and he sighed. "In the gardens at +dawn." + +"At dawn," said the Baroness, "in the gardens." + + +IV + +That night the Grand Duke was somewhat impeded in falling asleep. He was +seriously annoyed by the upsetment of his escape from the Noumarian exile, +since he felt that he had prodigally fulfilled his obligations, and in +consequence deserved a holiday; the duchy was committed past retreat to the +French alliance, there were two legitimate children to reign after him, and +be the puppets of de Puysange and de Bernis, [Footnote: The Grand Duke, +however, owed de Puysange some reparation for having begot a child upon the +latter's wife; and with de Bernis had not dissimilar ties, for the Marquis +de Soyecourt had in Venice, in 1749, relinquished to him the beautiful nun +of Muran, Maria Montepulci,--which lady de Bernis subsequently turned over +to Giacomo Casanova, as is duly recorded in the latter's _Mémoires_, under +the year 1753.] just as he had been. Truly, it was diverting, after a +candid appraisal of his own merits, to reflect that a dwarfish Louis de +Soyecourt had succeeded where quite impeccable people like Bayard and du +Guesclin had failed; by four years of scandalous living in Noumaria he +had confirmed the duchy to the French interest, had thereby secured the +wavering friendship of Austria, and had, in effect, set France upon her +feet. Yes, the deed was notable, and he wanted his reward. + +To be the forsaken husband, to play Sgarnarelle with all Europe as an +audience, was, he considered, an entirely inadequate reward. That was out +of the question, for, deuce take it! somebody had to be Regent while +the brats were growing up. And Victoria, as he had said, would make an +admirable Regent. + +He was rather fond of his wife than otherwise. He appreciated the fact that +she never meddled with him, and he sincerely regretted she should have +taken a fancy to that good-for-nothing de Châteauroux. What qualms the poor +woman must be feeling at this very moment over the imminent loss of her +virtue! But love was a cruel and unreasonable lord.... There was Nelchen +Thorn, for instance.... He wondered would he have been happy with Nelchen? +her hands were rather coarse about the finger-tips, as he remembered +them.... The hands of Amalia, though, were perfection.... + +Then at last the body that had been Louis Quillan's fell asleep. + + +V + +Discontentedly the Grand Duke appraised the scene, and in the murky +twilight which heralded the day he found the world a cheerless place. The +Gardens of Breschau were deserted, save for a travelling carriage and +its fretful horses, who stamped and snuffled within forty yards of the +summer-house. + +"It appears," he said, "that I am the first on the ground, and that de +Châteauroux is a dilatory lover. Young men degenerate." + +Saying this, he seated himself on a convenient bench, where de Châteauroux +found him a few minutes later, and promptly dropped a portmanteau at the +ducal feet. + +"Monsieur le Comte," the Grand Duke said, "this is an unforeseen pleasure." + +"Your Highness!" cried de Châteauroux, in astonishment. + +"_Ludovicus_," said the Grand Duke, "_Dei gratia Archi Dux Noumariæ, +Princeps Gatinensis_, and so on." And de Châteauroux caressed his chin. + +"I did not know," said the Grand Duke, "that you were such an early riser. +Or perhaps," he continued, "you are late in retiring. Fy, fy, monsieur! you +must be more careful! You must not create a scandal in our little Court." +He shook his finger knowingly at Philippe de Châteauroux. + +"Your Highness,--" said the latter, and stammered into silence. + +"You said that before," the Grand Duke leisurely observed. + +"An affair of business--" + +"Ah! ah! ah!" said the Grand Duke, casting his eye first toward the +portmanteau and then toward the carriage, "can it be that you are leaving +Noumaria? We shall miss you, Comte." + +"I was summoned very hastily, or I would have paid my respects to your +Highness--" + +"Indeed," said the Grand Duke, "your departure is of a deplorable +suddenness--" + +"It is urgent, your Highness--" + +"--and yet," pursued the Grand Duke, "travel is beneficial to young men." + +"I shall not go far, your Highness--" + +"Nay, I would not for the world intrude upon your secrets, Comte--" + +"--But my estates, your Highness--" + +"--For young men will be young men, I know." + +"--There is, your Highness, to be a sale of meadow land--" + +"Which you will find, I trust, untilled." + +"--And my counsellor at law, your Highness, is imperative--" + +"At times," agreed the Grand Duke, "the most subtle of counsellors is +unreasonable. I trust, though, that she is handsome?" + +"Ah, your Highness--!" cried de Châteauroux. + +"And you have my blessing upon your culture of those meadow lands. Go in +peace." + +The Grand Duke was smiling on his wife's kinsman with extreme benevolence +when the Baroness von Altenburg appeared in travelling costume and carrying +a portmanteau. + + +VI + +"Heydey!" said the Grand Duke; "it seems, that the legal representative of +our good Baroness, also, is imperative." + +"Your Highness!" cried the Baroness, and she, too, dropped her burden. + +"Every one," said the Grand Duke, "appears to question my identity." And +meantime de Châteauroux turned from the one to the other in bewilderment. + +"This," said the Grand Duke, after a pause, "is painful. This is unworthy +of you, de Châteauroux." + +"Your Highness--!" cried the Count. + +"Again?" said the Grand Duke, pettishly. + +The Baroness applied her handkerchief to her eyes, and plaintively said, +"You do not understand, your Highness--" + +"I am afraid," said the Grand Duke, "that I understand only too clearly." + +"--and I confess I was here to meet Monsieur de Châteauroux--" + +"Oh, oh!" cried the latter. + +"Precisely," observed the Grand Duke, "to compare portmanteaux; and you +had selected the interior of yonder carriage, no doubt, as an appropriate +locality." + +"And I admit to your Highness--" + +"His Highness already knowing," the Grand Duke interpolated. + +"--that we were about to elope." + +"I can assure you--" de Châteauroux began. + +"Nay, I will take the lady's word for it," said the Grand Duke--"though it +grieves me." + +"We knew you--would never give your consent," murmured the Baroness, "and +without your consent I can not marry--" + +"Undoubtedly," said the Grand Duke, "I would never have given my consent to +such fiddle-faddle." + +"And we love each other." + +"Fiddle-de-dee!" said his Highness. + +But de Châteauroux passed one hand over his brow. "This," he said, "is some +horrible mistake--" + +"It is," assented the Grand Duke, "a mistake--and one of your making." + +"--For I certainly did not expect the Baroness--" + +"To make a clean breast of it so readily?" his Highness asked. "Ah, but she +is a lady of unusual candor." + +"Indeed, your Highness--" began de Châteauroux. + +"Nay, Philippe," the Baroness entreated, "confess to his Highness, as I +have done." + +"Oh, but--!" said de Châteauroux. + +"I must beseech you to be silent," said the Grand Duke; "you have already +brought scandal to our Court. Do not, I pray you, add profanity to the +catalogue of your offences. Why, I protest," he continued, "even the Grand +Duchess has heard of this imbroglio." + +Indeed, the Grand Duchess, hurrying from a pleached walkway, was already +within a few feet of the trio, and appeared no little surprised to find in +this place her husband. + +"I would not be surprised," said the Grand Duke, raising his eyes toward +heaven, "if by this time it were all over the palace." + + +VII + +Then, as his wife waited, speechless, the Grand Duke gravely asked: "You, +too, have heard of this sad affair, Victoria? Ah, I perceive you have, +and that you come in haste to prevent it,--even to pursue these misguided +beings, if necessary, as the fact that you come already dressed for the +journey very eloquently shows. You are self-sacrificing, you possess a good +heart, Victoria." + +"I did not know--" began the Grand Duchess. + +"Until the last moment," the Grand Duke finished. "Eh, I comprehend. But +perhaps," he continued, hopefully, "it is not yet too late to bring them to +their senses." + +And turning toward the Baroness and de Châteauroux, he said: + +"I may not hinder your departure if you two in truth are swayed by love, +since to control that passion is immeasurably beyond the prerogative +of kings. Yet I beg you to reflect that the step you contemplate is +irrevocable. Yes, and to you, madame, whom I have long viewed with a +paternal affection--an emotion wholly justified by the age and rank for +which it has pleased Heaven to preserve me,--to you in particular I would +address my plea. If with an entire heart you love Monsieur de Châteauroux, +why, then--why, then, I concede that love is divine, and yonder carriage at +your disposal. But I beg you to reflect--" + +"Believe me," said the Baroness, "we are heartily grateful for your +Highness' magnanimity. We may, I deduce, depart with your permission?" + +"Oh, freely, if upon reflection--" + +"I can reflect only when I am sitting down," declared the Baroness. She +handed her portmanteau to de Châteauroux, and stepped into the carriage. +And the Grand Duke noted that a coachman and two footmen had appeared, from +nowhere in particular. + +"To you, Monsieur le Comte," his Highness now began, with an Olympian +frown, "I have naught to say. Under the cover of our hospitality you have +endeavored to steal away the fairest ornament of our Court; I leave you +to the pangs of conscience, if indeed you possess a conscience. But the +Baroness is unsophisticated; she has been misled by your fallacious +arguments and specious pretence of affection. She has evidently been +misled," he said to the Grand Duchess, kindly, "as any woman might be." + +"As any woman might be!" his wife very feebly echoed. + +"And I shall therefore," continued the Grand Duke, "do all within my power +to dissuade her from this ruinous step. I shall appeal to her better +nature, and not, I trust, in vain." + +He advanced with dignity to the carriage, wherein the Baroness was seated. +"Amalia," he whispered, "you are an admirable actress. 'O wonderful, +wonderful, and most wonderful wonderful! and yet again wonderful, and after +that out of all whooping!" + +The Baroness smiled. + +"And it is now time," said his Highness, "for me to appeal to your better +nature. I shall do so in a rather loud voice, for I have prepared a most +virtuous homily that I am unwilling the Grand Duchess should miss. You +will at its conclusion be overcome with an appropriate remorse, and will +obligingly burst into tears, and throw yourself at my feet--pray remember +that the left is the gouty one,--and be forgiven. You will then be restored +to favor, while de Châteauroux drives off alone and in disgrace. Your plan +works wonderfully." + +"It is true," the Baroness doubtfully said, "such was the plan." + +"And a magnificent one," said the Grand Duke. + +"But I have altered it, your Highness." + +"And this alteration, Amalia--?" + +"Involves a trip to Vienna." + +"Not yet, Amalia. We must wait." + +"Oh, I could never endure delays," said the Baroness, "and, since you +cannot accompany me, I am going with Monsieur de Châteauroux." + +The Grand Duke grasped the carriage door. + +"Preposterous!" he cried. + +"But you have given your consent," the Baroness protested, "and in the +presence of the Grand Duchess." + +"Which," said the Grand Duke, "was part of our plan." + +"Indeed, your Highness," said the Baroness, "it was a most important part. +You must know," she continued, with some diffidence, "that I have the +misfortune to love Monsieur de Châteauroux." + +"Who is in love with Victoria." + +"I have the effrontery to believe," said the Baroness, "that he is, in +reality, in love with me." + +"Especially after hearing him last night," the Grand Duke suggested. + +"That scene, your Highness, we had carefully rehearsed--oh, seven or eight +times! Personally, I agreed with your Highness that the quotation from +Theocritus was pedantic, but Philippe insisted on it, you conceive--" + +The Grand Duke gazed meditatively upon the Baroness, who had the grace to +blush. + +"Then it was," he asked, "a comedy for my benefit?" + +"You would never have consented--" she began. But the Grand Duke's +countenance, which was slowly altering to a greenish pallor, caused her to +pause. + +"You will get over it in a week, Louis," she murmured, "and you will find +other--baronesses." + +"Oh, very probably!" said his Highness, and he noted with pleasure that he +spoke quite as if it did not matter. "Nevertheless, this was a despicable +trick to play upon the Grand Duchess." + +"Yet I do not think the Grand Duchess will complain," said the Baroness von +Altenburg. + +And it was as though a light broke on the Grand Duke. "You planned all this +beforehand?" he inquired. + +"Why, precisely, your Highness." + +"And de Châteauroux helped you?" + +"In effect, yes, your Highness." + +"And the Grand Duchess knew?" + +"The Grand Duchess suggested it, your Highness, the moment that she knew +you thought of eloping." + +"And I, who tricked Gaston--!" + +"Louis," said the Baroness von Altenburg, in a semi-whisper, "your wife +is one of those persons who cling to respectability like a tippler to his +bottle. To her it is absolutely nothing how many women you may pursue--or +conquer--so long as you remain here under her thumb, to be exhibited, in +fair sobriety, upon the necessary public occasions. I pity you, my Louis." +And she sighed with real compassion. + +He took possession of one gloved hand. "At the bottom of your heart," his +Highness said, irrelevantly, "you like me better than you do Monsieur de +Châteauroux." + +"I find you the more entertaining company, to be sure--But what a woman +most wants is to be loved. If I touch Philippe's hand for, say, the +millionth part of a second longer than necessity compels, he treads for the +remainder of the day above meteors; if yours--why, you at most admire my +fingers. No doubt you are a connoisseur of fingers and such-like trifles; +but, then, a woman does not wish to be admired by a connoisseur so much as +she hungers to be adored by a maniac. And accordingly, I prefer my stupid +Philippe." + +"You are wise," the Grand Duke estimated, "I remember long ago ... in +Poictesme yonder...." + +"I loathe her," the Bareness said, with emphasis. "Nay, I am ignorant as to +who she was--but O my Louis! had you accorded me a tithe of the love you +squandered on that abominable dairymaid I would have followed you not only +to Vienna--" + +He raised his hand, "There are persons yonder in whom the proper emotions +are innate; let us not shock them. No, I never loved you, I suppose; I +merely liked your way of talking, liked your big green eyes, liked your +lithe young body.... Hé, and I like you still, Amalia. So I shall not play +the twopenny despot. God be with you, my dear." + +He had seen tears in those admirable eyes before he turned his back to her. +"Monsieur de Châteauroux," he called, "I find the lady is adamant. I wish +you a pleasant journey." He held open the door of the carriage for de +Châteauroux to enter. + +"You will forgive us, your Highness?" asked the latter. + +"You will forget?" murmured the Baroness. + +"I shall do both," said the Grand Duke. "Bon voyage, mes enfants!" + +And with a cracking of whips the carriage drove off. + +"Victoria," said the plump little Grand Duke, in admiration, "you are a +remarkable woman. I think that I will walk for a while in the gardens, and +meditate upon the perfections of my wife." + + +VIII + +He strolled in the direction of the woods. As he reached the summit of +a slight incline he turned and looked toward the road that leads from +Breschau to Vienna. A cloud of dust showed where the carriage had +disappeared. + +"Ma foi!" said his Highness; "my wife has very fully proven her executive +ability. Beyond doubt, there is no person in Europe better qualified to +rule Noumaria as Regent." + + + + +LOVE'S ALUMNI: THE AFTERPIECE + + +_As Played at Ingilby, October 6, 1755_ + +"_Though marriage be a lottery, in which there are a wondrous many blanks, +yet there is one inestimable lot, in which the only heaven on earth is +written. Would your kind fate but guide your hand to that, though I were +wrapt in all that luxury itself could clothe me with, I still should envy +you._" + + +DRAMATIS PERSONÆ + +DUKE OF ORMSKIRK. +LOUIS DE SOYECOURT, formerly GRAND DUKE OF NOUMARIA, and now a tuner of +pianofortes. +DUC DE PUYSANGE. +DAMIENS, servant to Ormskirk. + +In Dumb Show are presented LORD HUMPHREY DEGGE, CAPTAIN FRANCIS AUDAINE, +MR. GEORGE ERWYN, DUCHESS OF ORMSKIRK, DUCHESSE DE PUYSANGE, LADY HUMPHREY +DEGGE, MRS. AUDAINE, and MRS. ERWYN. + + +SCENE + +The library, and afterward the dining-room, of Ormskirk's home at Ingilby, +in Westmoreland. + + + + +LOVE'S ALUMNI + + +_PROEM:-Wherein a Prince Serves His People_ + +The Grand Duke did not return to breakfast nor to dinner, nor, in point of +fact, to Noumaria. For the second occasion Louis de Soyecourt had vanished +at the spiriting of boredom; and it is gratifying to record that his +evasion passed without any train of turmoil. + +The Grand Duchess seemed to disapprove of her bereavement, mildly, but only +said, "Well, after all--!" + +She saw to it that the ponds about the palace were dragged conscientiously, +and held an interview with the Chief of Police, and more lately had herself +declared Regent of Noumaria. + +She proved a capable and popular ruler, who when she began to take lovers +allowed none of them to meddle with politics: so all went well enough in +Noumaria, and nobody evinced the least desire to hasten either the maturity +of young Duke Anthony or the reappearance of his father. + + +I + +Meantime had come to Ingilby, the Duke of Ormskirk's place in Westmoreland, +a smallish blue-eyed vagabond who requested audience with his Grace, and +presently got it, for the Duke, since his retirement from public affairs, +[Footnote: He returned to office during the following year, as is well +known, immediately before the attempted assassination of the French King, +in the January of 1757.] had become approachable by almost any member of +the public. + +The man came Into the library, smiling, "I entreat your pardon, Monsieur +le Duc," he began, "that I have not visited you sooner. But in unsettled +times, you comprehend, the master of a beleaguered fortress is kept busy. +This poor fortress of my body has been of late most resolutely besieged by +poverty and hunger, the while that I have been tramping about Europe--in +search of Gaston. Now, they tell me, he is here." + +The travesty of their five-year-old interview at Bellegarde so tickled +Ormskirk's fancy that he laughed heartily. "Damiens," said Ormskirk, to the +attendant lackey, "go fetch me a Protestant minister from Manneville, and +have a gallows erected in one of the drawing-rooms. I intend to pay off an +old score." Meantime he was shaking the little vagabond's hand, chuckling +and a-beam with hospitality. + +"Your Grace--!" said Damiens, bewildered. + +"Well, go, in any event," said Ormskirk. "Oh, go anywhere, man!--to the +devil, for instance." + +His eyes, followed the retreating lackey. "As I suspect in the end you +will," Ormskirk said, inconsequently. "Still, you are a very serviceable +fellow, my good Damiens. I have need of you." + +And with a shrug he now began, "Your Highness,--" + +"Praise God, no!" observed the other, fervently. + +And Ormskirk nodded his comprehension. "Monsieur de Soyecourt, then. Of +course, we heard of your disappearance, I have been expecting something of +the sort for years. And,--frankly, politics are often a nuisance, as both +Gaston and myself will willingly attest,--especially," he added, with a +grimace, "since war between France and England became inevitable through +the late happenings in India and Nova Scotia, and both our wives flatly +declined to let either of us take part therein,--for fear we might catch +our death of cold by sleeping in those draughty tents. Faith, you have +descended, sir, like an agreeable meteor, upon two of the most scandalously +henpecked husbands in all the universe. In fact, you will not find a +gentleman at Ingilby--save Mr. Erwyn, perhaps--but is an abject slave to +his wife, and in consequence most abjectly content." + +"You have guests, then?" said de Soyecourt. "_Ma foi_, it is unfortunate. I +but desired to confer with Gaston concerning the disposal of Beaujolais and +my other properties in France since I find that the sensation of hunger, +while undoubtedly novel, is, when too long continued, apt to grow tiresome. +I would not willingly intrude, however--" + +"Were it not for the fact that you are wealthy, and yet, so long as you +preserve your incognito, and remain legally dead, you cannot touch a penny +of your fortune! The situation is droll. We must arrange it. Meanwhile +you are my guest, and I can assure you that at Ingilby you will be to all +Monsieur de Soyecourt, no more and no less. Now let us see what can be done +about clothing Monsieur de Soyecourt for dinner--" + +"But I could not consider--" Monsieur de Soyecourt protested. + +"I must venture to remind you," the Duke retorted, "that dinner is almost +ready, and that Claire is the sort of housewife who would more readily +condone fratricide or arson than cold soup." + +"It is odd," little de Soyecourt said, with complete irrelevance, "that in +the end I should get aid of you and of Gaston. And it is odd you should be +forgiving my bungling attempts at crime, so lightly--" + +Ormskirk considered, a new gravity in his plump face. "Faith, but we find +it more salutary, in looking back, to consider some peccadilloes of our +own. And we bear no malice, Gaston and I,--largely, I suppose, because +contentment is a great encourager of all the virtues. Then, too, we +remember that to each of us, at the eleventh hour, and through no merit of +his own, was given the one thing worth while in life. We did not merit it; +few of us merit anything, for few of us are at bottom either very good or +very bad. Nay, my friend, for the most part we are blessed or damned as +Fate elects, and hence her favorites may not in reason contemn her victims. +For myself, I observe the king upon his throne and the thief upon his +coffin, in passage for the gallows; and I pilfer my phrase and I apply it +to either spectacle: _There, but for the will of God, sits John Bulmer_. I +may not understand, I may not question; I can but accept. Now, then, let us +prepare for dinner" he ended, in quite another tone. + +De Soyecourt yielded. He was shown to his rooms, and Ormskirk rang for +Damiens, whom the Duke was sending into France to attend to a rather +important assassination. + + +II + +At dinner Louis de Soyecourt made divers observations. + +First Gaston had embraced him. "And the de Gâtinais estates?--but beyond +question, my dear Louis! Next week we return to France, and the affair is +easily arranged. You may abdicate in due form, you need no longer skulk +about Europe disguised as a piano-tuner; it is all one to France, you +conceive, whether you or your son reign in Noumaria. You should have come +to me sooner. As for your having been in love with my wife, I could not +well quarrel with that, since the action would seriously reflect upon my +own taste, who am still most hideously in love with her." + +Hélène had stoutened. Monsieur de Soyecourt noted also that Hélène's gold +hair was silvering now, as though Time had tangled cobwebs through it, and +that Gaston was profoundly unconscious of the fact. In Gaston's eyes she +was at the most seventeen. Well, Hélène had always been admirable in her +management of all, and it would be diverting to see that youngest child of +hers.... Meanwhile it was diverting also to observe how conscientiously she +was exerting a good influence over Gaston: and de Soyecourt smiled to find +that she shook her head at Gaston's third glass, and that de Puysange did +not venture on a fourth. Victoria, to do her justice, had never meddled +with any of her husband's vices.... + +As for the Duchess of Ormskirk, Louis de Soyecourt had known from the +beginning--in comparative youthfulness,--that Claire would placidly order +her portion of the world as she considered expedient, and that Ormskirk +would travesty her, and somewhat bewilder her, and that in the ultimate +Ormskirk would obey her to the letter. + +Captain Audaine Monsieur de Soyecourt considered at the start diverting, +and in the end a pompous bore. Yet they assured him that Audaine was +getting on prodigiously in the House of Commons, [Footnote: The Captain's +personal quarrel with the Chevalier St. George and its remarkable upshot, +at Antwerp, as well as the Captain's subsequent renunciation of Jacobitism, +are best treated of in Garendon's own memoirs.]--as, _ma foi_! he would +most naturally do, since his _métier_ was simply to shout well-rounded +common-places,--and the circumstance that he shouted would always attract +attention, while the fact that he shouted platitudes would invariably +prevent his giving offence. Lord Humphrey Degge was found a ruddy and +comely person, of no especial importance, but de Soyecourt avidly took note +of Mr. Erwyn's waistcoat. Why, this man was a genius! Monsieur de Soyecourt +at first glance decided. Staid, demure even, yet with a quiet prodigality +of color and ornament, an inevitableness of cut--Oh, beyond doubt, this man +was a genius! + +As for the ladies at Ingilby, they were adjudged to be handsome women, +one and all, but quite unattractive, since they evinced not any excessive +interest in Monsieur de Soyecourt. Here was no sniff of future conquest, +not one side-long glance, but merely three wives unblushingly addicted to +their own husbands. _Eh bien_! these were droll customs! + +Yet in the little man woke a vague suspicion, as he sat among these +contented folk, that, after all, they had perhaps attained to something +very precious of which his own life had been void, to a something of which +he could not even form a conception. Love, of course, he understood, with +thoroughness; no man alive had loved more ardently and variously than +Louis de Soyecourt. But what the devil! love was a temporary delusion, an +ingenious device of Nature's to bring about perpetuation of the species. +It was a pleasurable insanity which induced you to take part in a rather +preposterously silly and undignified action: and once this action was +performed, the insanity, of course, gave way to mutual tolerance, or to +dislike, or, more preferably, as de Soyecourt considered, to a courteous +oblivion of the past. + +And yet when this Audaine, to cite one instance only, had vented some +particularly egregious speech that exquisite wife of his would merely +smile, in a fond, half-musing way. She had twice her husband's wit, and +was cognizant of the fact, beyond doubt; to any list of his faults and +weaknesses you could have compiled she indubitably might have added a dozen +items, familiar to herself alone: and with all this, it was clamant that +she preferred Audaine to any possible compendium of the manly virtues. Why, +in comparison, she would have pished at a seraph!--after five years of his +twaddle, mark you. And Hélène seemed to be really not much more sensible +about Gaston.... + +It all was quite inexplicable. Yet Louis de Soyecourt could see that not +one of these folk was blind to his or her yoke-fellow's frailty, but that, +beside this something very precious to which they had attained, and +he had never attained, a man's foible, or a woman's defect, dwindled +into insignificance. Here, then, were people who, after five years' +consortment,--consciously defiant of time's corrosion, of the guttering-out +of desire, of the gross and daily disillusions of a life in common, +and even of the daily fret of all trivialities shared and diversely +viewed,--who could yet smile and say: "No, my companion is not quite the +perfect being I had imagined. What does it matter? I am content. I would +have nothing changed." + +Well, but Victoria had not been like that. She let you go to the devil in +your own way, without meddling, but she irritated you all the while by +holding herself to a mark. She had too many lofty Ideas about her own +duties and principles,--much such uncompromising fancies as had led his +father to get rid of that little Nelchen.... No, there was no putting up +with these rigid virtues, day in and day out. These high-flown notions +about right and wrong upset your living, they fretted your luckless +associates.... These people here at Ingilby, by example, made no +pretensions to immaculacy; instead, they kept their gallant compromise +with imperfection; and they seemed happy enough.... There might be a moral +somewhere: but he could not find it. + + +CURTAIN + + + + +THE EPILOGUE + +SPOKEN BY ORMSKIRK, WHO ENTERS IN A FRET + + + A thankless task! to come to you and mar + Your dwindling appetite for caviar, + And so I told him! + [_He calls within._ + Sir, the critics sneer, + And swear the thing is "crude and insincere"! + "Too trivial"! or for an instant pause + And doubly damn with negligent applause! + Impute, in fine, the prowess of the Vicar + Less to repentance than to too much liquor! + Find Louis naught! de Gâtinais inane! + Gaston unvital, and George Erwyn vain, + And Degge the futile fellow of Audaine! + Nay, sir, no Epilogue avails to save-- + You're damned, and Bulmer's hooted as a knave. + + [_He retires behind the curtain and is thrust out + again. He resolves to make the best of it._ + + The author's obdurate, and bids me say + That--since the doings of our far-off day + Smacked less of Hippocrene than of Bohea-- + His tiny pictures of that tiny time + Aim little at the lofty and sublime, + And paint no peccadillo as a crime-- + Since when illegally light midges mate, + Or flies purloin, or gnats assassinate, + No sane man hales them to the magistrate. + + Or so he says. He merely strove to find + And fix a faithful likeness of mankind + About its daily business,--to secure + No full-length portrait, but a miniature,-- + And for it all no moral can procure. + + Let Bulmer, then, defend his old-world crew, + And beg indulgence--nay, applause--of you. + + Grant that we tippled and were indiscreet, + And that our idols all had earthen feet; + Grant that we made of life a masquerade; + And swore a deal more loudly than we prayed; + Grant none of us the man his Maker meant,-- + Our deeds, the parodies of our intent, + In neither good nor ill pre-eminent; + Grant none of us a Nero,--none a martyr,-- + All merely so-so. + And _de te narratur_. + +EXPLICIT + + + + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Gallantry, by James Branch Cabell + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GALLANTRY *** + +***** This file should be named 8715-8.txt or 8715-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/8/7/1/8715/ + +Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Tiffany Vergon and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team. + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Gallantry + Vizain des fetes galantes + +Author: James Branch Cabell + +Posting Date: April 21, 2013 [EBook #8715] +Release Date: August, 2005 +First Posted: August 9, 2003 +Last Updated: August 11, 2003 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GALLANTRY *** + + + + +Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Tiffany Vergon and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team. + + + + + + + + + + +GALLANTRY + +_Dizain des Fetes Galantes_ + +By + +JAMES BRANCH CABELL + + +WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY LOUIS UNTERMEYER + + +"_Half in masquerade, playing the drawing-room or garden comedy of life, +these persons have upon them, not less than the landscape among the +accidents of which they group themselves with fittingness, a certain light +that we should seek for in vain upon anything real._" + + + + +TO + +JAMES ROBINSON BRANCH + +THIS VOLUME, SINCE IT TREATS OF GALLANTRY, IS DEDICATED, AS BOTH IN LIFE +AND DEATH AN EXPONENT OF THE WORD'S HIGHEST MEANING + +"_A brutish man knoweth not, neither doth a fool understand this.... Shall +the throne of iniquity have fellowship with Thee, which frameth mischief by +a law?_" + + + + +INTRODUCTION + + +These paragraphs, dignified by the revised edition of _Gallantry_ and +spuriously designated An Introduction, are nothing more than a series of +notes and haphazard discoveries in preparation of a thesis. That thesis, +if it is ever written, will bear a title something academically like _The +Psychogenesis of a Poet; or Cabell the Masquerader_. For it is in this +guise--sometimes self-declared, sometimes self-concealed, but always as the +persistent visionary--that the author of some of the finest prose of our +day has given us the key with which (to lapse into the jargon of verse) he +has unlocked his heart. + +On the technical side alone, it is easy to establish Cabell's poetic +standing. There are, first of all, the quantity of original rhymes that +are scattered through the dozen volumes which Cabell has latterly (and +significantly) classified as Biography. Besides these interjections which +do duty as mottoes, chapter-headings, tailpieces, dedications, interludes +and sometimes relevant songs, there is the volume of seventy-five +"adaptations" in verse, _From the Hidden Way_, published in 1916. Here +Cabell, even in his most natural role, declines to show his face and amuses +himself with a new set of masks labelled Alessandro de Medici, Antoine +Riczi, Nicolas de Caen, Theodore Passerat and other fabulous minnesingers +whose verses were created only in the mind of Cabell. It has pleased him to +confuse others besides the erudite reviewer of the _Boston Transcript_ by +quoting the first lines of the non-existent originals in Latin, Italian, +Provencal--thus making his skilful ballades, sestinas and the less mediaeval +narratives part of a remarkably elaborate and altogether successful hoax. + +And, as this masquerade of obscure Parnassians betrayed its creator, +Cabell--impelled by some fantastic reticence--sought for more subtle +makeshifts to hide the poet. The unwritten thesis, plunging abruptly into +the realm of analytical psychology, will detail the steps Cabell has taken, +as a result of early associative disappointments, to repress or at least +to disguise, the poet in himself--and it will disclose how he has failed. +It will burrow through the latest of his works and exhume his half-buried +experiments in rhyme, assonance and polyphony. This part of the paper will +examine _Jurgen_ and call attention to the distorted sonnet printed as a +prose soliloquy on page 97 of that exquisite and ironic volume. It will +pass to the subsequent _Figures of Earth_ and, after showing how the +greater gravity of this volume is accompanied by a greater profusion of +poetry _per se_ it will unravel the scheme of Cabell's fifteen essays in +what might be called contrapuntal prose. It will unscramble all the rhymes +screened in Manuel's monologue beginning on page 294, quote the metrical +innovations with rhymed vowels on page 60, tabulate the hexameters that +leap from the solidly set paragraphs and rearrange the brilliant fooling +that opens the chapter "Magic of the Image Makers." This last is in itself +so felicitous a composite of verse and criticism--a passage incredibly +overlooked by the most meticulous of Cabell's glossarians--that it deserves +a paper for itself. For here, set down prosaically as "the unfinished Rune +of the Blackbirds" are four distinct parodies--including two insidious +burlesques of Browning and Swinburne--on a theme which is familiar to us +to-day in _les mots justes_ of Mother Goose. "It is," explains Freydis, +after the thaumaturgists have finished, "an experimental incantation in +that it is a bit of unfinished magic for which the proper words have not +yet been found: but between now and a while they will be stumbled on, and +then this rune will live perpetually." And thus the poet, speaking through +the mouth-piece of Freydis, discourses on the power of words and, in one of +Cabell's most eloquent chapters, crystallizes that high mood, presenting +the case for poetry as it has been pleaded by few of her most fervid +advocates. + +Here the thesis will stop quoting and argue its main contention from +another angle. It will consider the author in a larger and less technical +sense: disclosing his characters, his settings, his plots, even the entire +genealogical plan of his works, to be the design of a poet rather than a +novelist. The persons of Cabell's imagination move to no haphazard strains; +they create their own music. And, like a set of modulated _motifs_, they +combine to form a richer and more sonorous pattern. With its interrelation +of figures and interweaving of themes, the Cabellian "Biography" assumes +the solidity and shapeliness of a fugue, a composition in which all the +voices speak with equal precision and recurring clarity. + +And what, the diagnostician may inquire, of the characters themselves? They +are, it will be answered, motivated by pity and irony; the tolerant humor, +the sympathetic and not too distant regard of their Olympian designer +agitate them so sensitively that we seldom see what strings are twitched. +These puppets seem to act of their own conviction--possibly because their +director is careful not to have too many convictions of his own. It may +have been pointed out before this that there are no undeviating villains +in his masques and, as many an indignant reviewer has expostulated, few +untarnished heroes. Cabell's, it will be perceived, is a frankly pagan +poetry. It has no texts with which to discipline beauty; it lacks moral +fervor; it pretends to no divinity of dogmatism. The image-maker is willing +to let his creatures ape their living models by fluctuating between +shifting conventions and contradictory ideals; he leaves to a more positive +Author the dubious pleasure of drawing a daily line between vice and +virtue. If Cabell pleads at all, he pleads with us not to repudiate a +Villon or a Marlowe while we are reviling the imperfect man in a perfect +poet. "What is man, that his welfare be considered?" questions Cabell, +paraphrasing Scripture, "an ape who chatters to himself of kinship with the +archangels while filthily he digs for groundnuts.... Yet do I perceive that +this same man is a maimed god.... He is under penalty condemned to compute +eternity with false weights and to estimate infinity with a yardstick--and +he very often does it." + +This, the thesis will contend, is the only possible attitude to the mingled +apathy and abandon of existence--and it is, in fine, the poetic attitude. +Romantic it is, without question, and I imagine Cabell would be the last +to cavil at the implication. For, mocked by a contemptuous silence gnawing +beneath the howling energy of life, what else is there for the poet but the +search for some miracle of belief, some assurance in a world of illimitable +perplexities? It is the wish to attain this dream which is more real than +reality that guides the entire Cabell _epos_--"and it is this will that +stirs in us to have the creatures of earth and the affairs of earth, not as +they are, but as 'they ought to be.'" + +Such a romantic vision, which concludes that glowing testament, _Beyond +Life_, is the shining thread that binds the latest of Cabell's novels +with the earliest of his short stories. It is, in effect, one tale he is +telling, a tale in which Poictesme and the more local Lichfield are, for +all their topographical dissimilarities, the same place, and all his people +interchangeable symbols of the changeless desires of men. Whether the +allegory is told in the terms of _Gallantry_ with its perfumed lights, its +deliberate artifice and its technique of badinage, or presented in the +more high-flying mood of _Chivalry_ with its ready passions and readier +rhetoric, it prefigures the subsequent pageant in which the victories might +so easily be mistaken for defeats. In this procession, amid a singularly +ordered riot of color, the figure of man moves, none too confidently but +with stirring fortitude, to an unrealized end. Here, stumbling through the +mazes of a code, in the habiliments of Ormskirk or de Soyecourt, he passes +from the adventures of the mind (Kennaston in _The Cream of the Jest_, +Charteris in _Beyond Life_) through the adventures of the flesh (_Jurgen_) +to the darker adventures of the spirit (Manuel in _Figures of Earth_). +Even this _Gallantry_, the most candidly superficial of Cabell's works, is +alive with a vigor of imagination and irony. It is not without significance +that the motto on the new title-page is: "Half in masquerade, playing the +drawing-room or garden comedy of life, these persons have upon them, not +less than the landscape among the accidents of which they group themselves, +a certain light that we should seek for in vain upon anything real." + +The genealogically inclined will be happy to discover that _Gallantry_, +for all its revulsion from reality, deals with the perpetuated life of +Manuel in a strangely altered _milieu_. The rest of us will be quicker to +comprehend how subtly this volume takes its peculiar place in its author's +record of struggling dreams, how, beneath, a surface covered with political +finery and sentimental bric-a-brac, the quest goes on, stubbornly and often +stupidly, in a forgotten world made suddenly animate and as real as our +own. + +And this, the thesis will conclude, is because Cabell is not as much a +masquerader as he imagines himself to be. None but a visionary could wear +so constantly upon his sleeve the desire "to write perfectly of beautiful +happenings." None but the poet, shaken with the strength of his vision, +could cry to-day, "It is only by preserving faith in human dreams that +we may, after all, perhaps some day make them come true." For poetry, to +which all literature aspires, is not the shadow of reality but the image of +perfection, the light of disembodied beauty toward which creation gropes. +And that poetic consciousness is the key to the complex and half-concealed +art of James Branch Cabell. + +LOUIS UNTERMEYER. + +New York City, +_April, 1922._ + + + + +CONTENTS + + +THE EPISTLE DEDICATORY + +THE PROLOGUE + +I SIMON'S HOUR + +II LOVE AT MARTINMAS + +III THE CASUAL HONEYMOON + +IV THE RHYME TO PORRINGER + +V ACTORS ALL + +VI APRIL'S MESSAGE + +VII IN THE SECOND APRIL + +VIII HEART OF GOLD + +IX THE SCAPEGOATS + +X THE DUCAL AUDIENCE + +LOVE'S ALUMNI: THE AFTERPIECE + +THE EPILOGUE + + + + +THE EPISTLE DEDICATORY + +_TO MRS. GRUNDY_ + + +Madam,--It is surely fitting that a book which harks back to the manners +of the second George should have its dedication and its patron. And these +comedies claim naturally your protection, since it likewise appears +a custom of that era for the poet to dedicate his book to his most +influential acquaintance and the one least likely to value it. + +Indeed, it is as proper that the plaudits of great persons be reserved for +great performances as it is undeniable these + + tiny pictures of that tiny time + Aim little at the lofty and sublime. + +Yet cognoscenti still esteem it an error in the accomplished Shakespeare +that he introduced a game of billiards into his portrayal of Queen +Cleopatra's court; and the impropriety had been equal had I linked the +extreme of any passion with an age and circle wherein abandonment to +the emotions was adjudged bucolic, nay, Madam, the Eumenides were very +terrifying at Delphi, no doubt, but deck them with paint, patch, and +panniers, send them howling among the _beau monde_ on the Pantiles, and +they are only figures of fun; nor may, in reason, the high woes of a second +Lear, or of a new Prometheus, be adequately lighted by the flambeaux of +Louis Quinze. + +Conceive, then, the overture begun, and fear not, if the action of the play +demand a lion, but that he shall be a beast of Peter Quince's picking. The +ladies shall not be frighted, for our chief comedians will enact modish +people of a time when gallantry prevailed. + +Now the essence of gallantry, I take it, was to accept the pleasures of +life leisurely and its inconveniences with a shrug. As requisites, a +gallant person will, of course, be "amorous, but not too constant, have +a pleasant voice, and possess a talent for love-letters." He will always +bear in mind that in love-affairs success is less the Ultima Thule of +desire than its _coup de grace_, and he will be careful never to admit the +fact, especially to himself. He will value ceremony, but rather for its +comeliness than for its utility, as one esteeming the lily, say, to be a +more applaudable bulb than the onion. He will prink; and he will be at his +best after sunset. He will dare to acknowledge the shapeliness of a thief's +leg, to contend that the commission of murder does not necessarily impair +the agreeableness of the assassin's conversation; and to insist that at +bottom God is kindlier than the genteel would regard as rational. He will, +in fine, sin on sufficient provocation, and repent within the moment, +quite sincerely, and be not unconscionably surprised when he repeats the +progression: and he will consider the world with a smile of toleration, and +his own doings with a smile of honest amusement, and Heaven with a smile +that is not distrustful. + +This particular attitude toward life may have its merits, but it is not +conducive to meticulous morality; therefore, in advance, I warn you that my +_Dramatis Personae_ will in their display of the cardinal virtues evince a +certain parsimony. Theirs were, in effect, not virtuous days. And the great +man who knew these times _au fond_, and loved them, and wrote of them as no +other man may ever hope to do, has said of these same times, with perfect +truth: + +"Fiddles sing all through them; wax-lights, fine dresses, fine jokes, +fine plate, fine equipages, glitter and sparkle: never was there such +a brilliant, jigging, smirking Vanity Fair. But wandering through that +city of the dead, that dreadfully selfish time, through those godless +intrigues and feasts, through those crowds, pushing, and eager, and +struggling,--rouged, and lying, and fawning,--I have wanted some one to be +friends with. I have said, _Show me some good person about that Court; find +me, among those selfish courtiers, those dissolute gay people, some one +being that I can love and regard._" And Thackeray confesses that, for all +his research, he could not find anybody living irreproachably, at this +especial period.... + +Where a giant fails one may in reason hesitate to essay. I present, then, +people who, as people normally do, accepted their times and made the best +of them, since the most estimable needs conform a little to the custom of +his day, whether it be Caractacus painting himself sky-blue or Galileo on +his knees at Santa Maria. And accordingly, many of my comedians will lie +when it seems advisable, and will not haggle over a misdemeanor when there +is anything to be gained by it; at times their virtues will get them +what they want, and at times their vices, and at other times they will +be neither punished nor rewarded; in fine, Madam, they will be just human +beings stumbling through illogical lives with precisely that lack of +common-sense which so pre-eminently distinguishes all our neighbors from +ourselves. + +For the life that moved in old Manuel of Poictesme finds hereinafter in his +descendants, in these later Allonbys and Bulmers and Heleighs and Floyers, +a new _milieu_ to conform and curb that life in externes rather than in +essentials. What this life made of chivalrous conditions has elsewhere +been recorded: with its renewal in gallant circumstances, the stage is +differently furnished and lighted, the costumes are dissimilar; but the +comedy, I think, works toward the same _denouement_, and certainly the +protagonist remains unchanged. My protagonist is still the life of Manuel, +as this life was perpetuated in his descendants; and my endeavor is (still) +to show you what this life made (and omitted to make) of its tenancy of +earth. 'Tis a drama enactable in any setting. + +Yet the comedy of gallantry has its conventions. There must be quite +invaluable papers to be stolen and juggled with; an involuntary +marriage either threatened or consummated; elopements, highwaymen, and +despatch-boxes; and a continual indulgence in soliloquy and eavesdropping. +Everybody must pretend to be somebody else, and young girls, in particular, +must go disguised as boys, amid much cut-and-thrust work, both ferric and +verbal. For upon the whole, the comedy of gallantry tends to unfold itself +in dialogue, and yet more dialogue, with just the notice of a change +of scene or a brief stage direction inserted here and there. All these +conventions, Madam, I observe. + +A word more: the progress of an author who alternates, in turn, between +fact and his private fancies (like unequal crutches) cannot in reason be +undisfigured by false steps. Therefore it is judicious to confess, Madam, +that more than once I have pieced the opulence of my subject with the +poverty of my inventions. Indisputably, to thrust words into a dead man's +mouth is in the ultimate as unpardonable as the axiomatic offence of +stealing the pennies from his eyes; yet if I have sometimes erred in my +surmise at what Ormskirk or de Puysange or Louis de Soyecourt really said +at certain moments of their lives, the misstep was due, Madam, less to +malevolence than to inability to replevin their superior utterance; and the +accomplished shade of Garendon, at least, I have not travestied, unless it +were through some too prudent item of excision. + +Remains but to subscribe myself--in the approved formula of dedicators--as, + + MADAM, + + Your ladyship's most humble and most obedient servant, + + THE AUTHOR. + + + + +THE PROLOGUE + +SPOKEN BY LADY ALLONBY, WHO ENTERS IN A FLURRY + + + _The author bade we come_--Lud, I protest!-- + _He bade me come_--and I forget the rest. + But 'tis no matter; he's an arrant fool + That ever bade a woman speak by rule. + + Besides, his Prologue was, at best, dull stuff, + And of dull writing we have, sure, enough. + A book will do when you've a vacant minute, + But, la! who cares what is, and isn't, in it? + + And since I'm but the Prologue of a book, + What I've omitted all will overlook, + And owe me for it, too, some gratitude, + Seeing in reason it cannot be good + Whose author has as much but now confessed,-- + For, _Who'd excel when few can make a test + Betwixt indifferent writing and the best?_ + He said but now. + + And I:--_La, why excel, + When mediocrity does quite as well? + 'Tis women buy the books,--and read 'em, say, + What time a person nods, en negligee, + And in default of gossip, cards, or dance, + Resolves t' incite a nap with some romance._ + + The fool replied in verse,--I think he said + 'Twas verses the ingenious Dryden made, + And trust 'twill save me from entire disgrace + To cite 'em in his foolish Prologue's place. + _Yet, scattered here and there, I some behold, + Who can discern the tinsel from the gold; + To these he writes; and if by them allowed, + 'Tis their prerogative to rule the crowd, + For he more fears, like, a presuming man, + Their votes who cannot judge, than theirs can._ + + + + +I + +SIMON'S HOUR + + +_As Played at Stornoway Crag, March 25, 1750_ + +"_You're a woman--one to whom Heaven gave beauty, when it grafted roses on +a briar. You are the reflection of Heaven in a pond, and he that leaps at +you is sunk. You were all white, a sheet of lovely spotless paper, when you +first were born; but you are to be scrawled and blotted by every goose's +quill._" + + +DRAMATIS PERSONAE. + +LORD ROKESLE, a loose-living, Impoverished nobleman, and loves Lady +Allonby. + +SIMON ORTS, Vicar of Heriz Magna, a debauched fellow, and Rokesle's +creature. + +PUNSHON, servant to Rokesle. + +LADY ALLONBY, a pleasure-loving, luxurious woman, a widow, and rich. + + +SCENE + +The Mancini Chamber at Stornoway Crag, on Usk. + + +SIMON'S HOUR + + +_PROEM:--The Age and a Product of It_ + +We begin at a time when George the Second was permitting Ormskirk and the +Pelhams to govern England, and the Jacobites had not yet ceased to hope +for another Stuart Restoration, and Mr. Washington was a promising young +surveyor in the most loyal colony of Virginia; when abroad the Marquise de +Pompadour ruled France and all its appurtenances, and the King of Prussia +and the Empress Maria Theresa had, between them, set entire Europe by +the ears; when at home the ladies, if rumor may be credited, were less +unapproachable than their hoop-petticoats caused them to appear, +[Footnote: "Oft have we known that sevenfold fence to fail, +Though stiff with hoops, and armed with ribs of whale."] +and gentlemen wore swords, and some of the more reckless bloods were +daringly beginning to discard the Ramillie-tie and the pigtail for their +own hair; when politeness was obligatory, and morality a matter of taste, +and when well-bred people went about the day's work with an ample leisure +and very few scruples. In fine, we begin toward the end of March, in +the year 1750, when Lady Allonby and her brother, Mr. Henry Heleigh, of +Trevor's Folly, were the guests of Lord Rokesle, at Stornoway Crag, on Usk. + +As any person of _ton_ could have informed you, Anastasia Allonby was the +widow (by his second marriage) of Lord Stephen Allonby, the Marquis of +Falmouth's younger brother; and it was conceded by the most sedate that +Lord Stephen's widow, in consideration of her liberal jointure, possessed +inordinate comeliness. + +She was tall for a woman. Her hair, to-night unpowdered, had the color of +amber and something, too, of its glow; her eyes, though not profound, were +large and in hue varied, as the light fell or her emotions shifted, through +a wide gamut of blue shades. But it was her mouth you remembered: the +fulness and brevity of it, the deep indentation of its upper lip, the +curves of it and its vivid crimson--these roused you to wildish speculation +as to its probable softness when Lady Allonby and Fate were beyond ordinary +lenient. Pink was the color most favorable to her complexion, and this +she wore to-night; the gown was voluminous, with a profusion of lace, and +afforded everybody an ample opportunity to appraise her neck and bosom. +Lady Allonby had no reason to be ashamed of either, and the last mode in +these matters was not prudish. + +To such a person, enters Simon Orts, chaplain in ordinary to Lord Rokesle, +and Vicar of Heriz Magna, one of Lord Rokesle's livings. + + +I + +"Now of a truth," said Simon Orts, "that is curious--undeniably that is +curious." + +He stayed at the door for a moment staring back into the ill-lit corridor. +Presently he shut the door, and came forward toward the fireplace. + +Lady Allonby, half-hidden in the depths of the big chair beside the +chimney-piece, a book in her lap, looked up inquiringly. "What is curious, +Mr. Orts?" + +The clergyman stood upon the hearth, warming his hands, and diffusing an +odor of tobacco and stale alcohol. "Faith, that damned rascal--I beg your +pardon, Anastasia; our life upon Usk is not conducive to a mincing nicety +of speech. That rascal Punshon made some difficulty over admitting me; you +might have taken him for a sentinel, with Stornoway in a state of siege. He +ruffled me,--and I don't like it," Simon Orts said, reflectively, looking +down upon her. "No, I don't like it. Where's your brother?" he demanded on +a sudden. + +"Harry and Lord Rokesle are at cards, I believe. And Mrs. Morfit has +retired to her apartments with one of her usual headaches, so that I have +been alone these two hours. You visit Stornoway somewhat late, Mr. Orts," +Anastasia Allonby added, without any particular concealment of the fact +that she considered his doing so a nuisance. + +He jerked his thumb ceilingward. "The cloth is at any rascal's beck and +call. Old Holles, my Lord's man, is dying up yonder, and the whim seized +him to have a clergyman in. God knows why, for it appears to me that one +knave might very easily make his way to hell without having another knave +to help him. And Holles?--eh, well, from what I myself know of him, the +rogue is triply damned." His mouth puckered as he set about unbuttoning his +long, rain-spattered cloak, which, with his big hat, he flung aside upon a +table. "Gad!" said Simon Orts, "we are most of us damned on Usk; and that +is why I don't like it--" He struck his hand against his thigh. "I don't +like it, Anastasia." + +"You must pardon me," she languidly retorted, "but I was never good at +riddles." + +He turned and glanced about the hall, debating. Lady Allonby meanwhile +regarded him, as she might have looked at a frog or a hurtless snake. A +small, slim, anxious man, she found him; always fidgeting, always placating +some one, but never without a covert sneer. The fellow was venomous; his +eyes only were honest, for even while his lips were about their wheedling, +these eyes flashed malice at you; and their shifting was so unremittent +that afterward you recalled them as an absolute shining which had not any +color. On Usk and thereabouts they said it was the glare from within of his +damned soul, already at white heat; but they were a plain-spoken lot on +Usk. To-night Simon Orts was all in black; and his hair, too, and his gross +eyebrows were black, and well-nigh to the cheek-bones of his clean-shaven +countenance the thick beard, showed black through the skin. + +Now he kept silence for a lengthy interval, his arms crossed on his breast, +gnawing meanwhile at the fingernails of his left hand in an unattractive +fashion he had of meditating. When words came it was in a torrent. + +"I will read you my riddle, then. You are a widow, rich; as women go, you +are not so unpleasant to look at as most of 'em. If it became a clergyman +to dwell upon such matters, I would say that your fleshly habitation is +too fine for its tenant, since I know you to be a good-for-nothing jilt. +However, you are God's handiwork, and doubtless He had His reasons for +constructing you. My Lord is poor; last summer at Tunbridge you declined to +marry him. I am in his confidence, you observe. He took your decision in +silence--'ware Rokesle when he is quiet! Eh, I know the man,--'tisn't for +nothing that these ten years past I have studied his whims, pampered his +vanity, lied to him, toadied him! You admire my candor?--faith, yes, I +am very candid. I am Rokesle's hanger-on; he took me out of the gutter, +and in my fashion I am grateful. And you?--Anastasia, had you treated me +more equitably fifteen years ago, I would have gone to the stake for you, +singing; now I don't value you the flip of a farthing. But, for old time's +sake, I warn you. You and your brother are Rokesle's guests--on Usk! +Harry Heleigh [Footnote: Henry Heleigh, thirteenth Earl of Brudenel, who +succeeded his cousin the twelfth Earl in 1759, and lived to a great age. +Bavois, writing in 1797, calls him "a very fine, strong old gentleman."] +can handle a sword, I grant you,--but you are on Usk! And Mrs. Morfit is +here to play propriety--propriety on Usk, God save the mark! And besides, +Rokesle can twist his sister about his little finger, as the phrase runs. +And I find sentinels at the door! I don't like it, Anastasia. In his way +Rokesle loves you; more than that, you are an ideal match to retrieve his +battered fortunes; and the name of my worthy patron, I regret to say, is +not likely ever to embellish the Calendar of Saints." + +Simon Orts paused with a short laugh. The woman had risen to her feet, +her eyes widening and a thought troubled, though her lips smiled +contemptuously. + +"La, I should have comprehended that this late in the evening you would be +in no condition to converse with ladies. Believe me, though, Mr. Orts, I +would be glad to credit your warning to officious friendliness, were it not +that the odor about your person compels me to attribute it to gin." + +"Oh, I have been drinking," he conceded; "I have been drinking with a +most commendable perseverance for these fifteen years. But at present I am +far from drunk." Simon Orts took a turn about the hall; in an instant he +faced her with an odd, almost tender smile, "You adorable, empty-headed, +pink-and-white fool," said Simon Orts, "what madness induced you to come to +Usk? You know that Rokesle wants you; you know that you don't mean to marry +him. Then why come to Usk? Do you know who is king in this sea-washed scrap +of earth?--Rokesle. German George reigns yonder in England, but here, in +the Isle of Usk, Vincent Floyer is king. And it is not precisely a convent +that he directs. The men of Usk, I gather, after ten years' experience in +the administering of spiritual consolation hereabouts"--and his teeth made +their appearance in honor of the jest,--"are part fisherman, part smuggler, +part pirate, and part devil. Since the last ingredient predominates, they +have no very unreasonable apprehension of hell, and would cheerfully invade +it if Rokesle bade 'em do so. As I have pointed out, my worthy patron is +subject to the frailties of the flesh. Oh, I am candid, for if you report +me to his Lordship I shall lie out of it. I have had practice enough to do +it handsomely. But Rokesle--do you not know what Rokesle is--?" + +The Vicar of Heriz Magna would have gone on, but Lady Allonby had +interrupted, her cheeks flaming. "Yes, yes," she cried;' "I know him to +be a worthy gentleman. 'Tis true I could not find it in my heart to marry +him, yet I am proud to rank Lord Rokesle among my friends." She waved her +hand toward the chimney-piece, where hung--and hangs to-day,--the sword of +Aluric Floyer, the founder of the house of Rokesle. "Do you see that old +sword, Mr. Orts? The man who wielded it long ago was a gallant gentleman +and a stalwart captain. And my Lord, as he told me but on Thursday +afternoon, hung it there that he might always have in mind the fact that +he bore the name of this man, and must bear it meritoriously. My Lord is +a gentleman. La, believe me, if you, too, were a gentleman, Mr. Orts, you +would understand! But a gentleman is not a talebearer; a gentleman does not +defame any person behind his back, far less the person to whom he owes his +daily bread." + +"So he has been gulling you?" said Simon Orts; then he added quite +inconsequently: "I had not thought anything you could say would hurt me. I +discover I was wrong. Perhaps I am not a gentleman. Faith, no; I am only a +shabby drunkard, a disgrace to my cloth, am I not, Anastasia? Accordingly, +I fail to perceive what old Aluric Floyer has to do with the matter in +hand. He was reasonably virtuous, I suppose; putting aside a disastrous +appetite for fruit, so was Adam: but, viewing their descendants, I ruefully +admit that in each case the strain has deteriorated." + +There was a brief silence; then Lady Allonby observed: "Perhaps I was +discourteous. I ask your forgiveness, Mr. Orts. And now, if you will pardon +the suggestion, I think you had better go to your dying parishioner." + +But she had touched the man to the quick. "I am a drunkard; who made me +so? Who was it used to cuddle me with so many soft words and kisses--yes, +kisses, my Lady!--till a wealthier man came a-wooing, and then flung me +aside like an old shoe?" + +This drenched her cheeks with crimson, "I think we had better not refer to +that boy-and-girl affair. You cannot blame me for your debauched manner +of living. I found before it was too late that I did not love you. I was +only a girl, and 'twas natural that at first I should be mistaken in my +fancies." + +The Vicar had caught her by each wrist. "You don't understand, of course. +You never understood, for you have no more heart than one of those +pink-and-white bisque figures that you resemble. You don't love me, and +therefore I will go to the devil' may not be an all-rational deduction, but +'tis very human logic. You don't understand that, do you, Anastasia? You +don't understand how when one is acutely miserable one remembers that at +the bottom of a wineglass--or even at the bottom of a tumbler of gin,--one +may come upon happiness, or at least upon acquiescence to whatever the +niggling gods may send. You don't understand how one remembers, when the +desired woman is lost, that there are other women whose lips are equally +red and whose hearts are tenderer and--yes, whose virtue is less exigent. +No; women never understand these things: and in any event, you would not +understand, because you are only an adorable pink-and-white fool." + +"Oh, oh!" she cried, struggling, "How dare you? You insult me, you coward!" + +"Well, you can always comfort yourself with the reflection that it scarcely +matters what a sot like me may elect to say. And, since you understand me +now no more than formerly, Anastasia, I tell you that the lover turned +adrift may well profit by the example of his predecessors. Other lovers +have been left forsaken, both in trousers and in ripped petticoats; and +I have heard that when Chryseis was reft away from Agamemnon, the _cnax +andron_ made himself tolerably comfortable with Briseis; and that, when +Theseus sneaked off in the night, Ariadne, after having wept for a +decent period, managed in the ultimate to console herself with Theban +Bacchus,--which I suppose to be a courteous method of stating that the +daughter of Minos took to drink. So the forsaken lover has his choice of +consolation--in wine or in that dearer danger, woman. I have tried both, +Anastasia. And I tell you--" + +He dropped her hands as though they had been embers. Lord Rokesle had come +quietly into the hall. + +"Why, what's this?" Lord Rokesle demanded. "Simon, you aren't making love +to Lady Allonby, I hope? Fie, man! remember your cloth." + +Simon Orts wheeled--a different being, servile and cringing. "Your Lordship +is pleased to be pleasant. Indeed, though, I fear that your ears must +burn, sir, for I was but now expatiating upon the manifold kindnesses your +Lordship has been so generous as to confer upon your unworthy friend. I was +admiring Lady Allonby's ruffle, sir,--Valenciennes, I take it, and very +choice." + +Lord Rokesle laughed. "So I am to thank you for blowing my trumpet, am I?" +said Lord Rokesle. "Well, you are not a bad fellow, Simon, so long as you +are sober. And now be off with you to Holles--the rascal is dying, they +tell me. My luck, Simon! He made up a cravat better than any one in the +kingdom." + +"The ways of Providence are inscrutable," Simon Orts considered; "and +if Providence has in verity elected to chasten your Lordship, doubtless +it shall be, as anciently in the case of Job the Patriarch, repaid by a +recompense, by a thousandfold recompense." And after a meaning glance +toward Lady Allonby,--a glance that said: "I, too, have a tongue,"--he was +mounting the stairway to the upper corridor when Lord Rokesle called to +him. + +"By my conscience! I forgot," said Lord Rokesle; "don't leave Stornoway +without seeing me again, I shall want you by and by." + + +II + +Lord Rokesle sat down upon the long, high-backed bench, beside the fire, +and facing Lady Allonby's arm-chair. + +Neither he nor Lady Allonby spoke for a while. + +In a sombre way Lord Rokesle was a handsome man, and to-night, in brown +and gold, very stately. His bearing savored faintly of the hidalgo; indeed, +his mother was a foreign woman, cast ashore on Usk, from a wrecked Spanish +vessel, and incontinently married by the despot of the island. For her, +Death had delayed his advent unmercifully; but her reason survived the +marriage by two years only, and there were those familiar with the late +Lord Rokesle's [Footnote: Born 1685, and accidentally killed by Sir +Piers Sabiston in 1738; an accurate account of this notorious duellist, +profligate, charlatan, and playwright is given in Ireson's _Letters_.] +peculiarities who considered that in this, at least, the crazed lady was +fortunate. Among these gossips it was also esteemed a matter deserving +comment that in the shipwrecks not infrequent about Usk the women sometimes +survived, but the men never. + +Now Lord Rokesle regarded Lady Allonby, the while that she displayed +conspicuous interest in the play of the flames. But by and by, "O +vulgarity!" said Lady Allonby. "Pray endeavor to look a little more +cheerful. Positively, you are glaring at me like one of those disagreeable +beggars one so often sees staring at bakery windows." + +He smiled. "Do you remember what the Frenchman wrote--_et pain ne voyent +qu'aux fenetres?_ There is not an enormous difference between me and the +tattered rascal of Chepe, for we both stare longingly at what we most +desire. And were I minded to hunt the simile to the foot of the letter, +I would liken your coquetry to the intervening window-pane,--not easily +broken through, but very, very transparent, Anastasia." + +"You are not overwhelmingly polite," she said, reflectively; "but, then, I +suppose, living in the country is sure to damage a man's manners. Still, my +dear Orson, you smack too much of the forest." + +"Anastasia," said Lord Rokesle, bending toward her, "will you always be +thus cruel? Do you not understand that in this world you are the only thing +I care for? You think me a boor; perhaps I am,--and yet it rests with you, +my Lady, to make me what you will. For I love you, Anastasia--" + +"Why, how delightful of you!" said she, languidly. + +"It is not a matter for jesting. I tell you that I love you." My Lord's +color was rising. + +But Lady Allonby yawned. "Your honor's most devoted," she declared herself; +"still, you need not boast of your affection as if falling in love with me +were an uncommonly difficult achievement. That, too, is scarcely polite." + +"For the tenth time I ask you will you marry me?" said Lord Rokesle. + +"Is't only the tenth time? Dear me, it seems like the thousandth. Of +course, I couldn't think of it. Heavens, my Lord, how can you expect me to +marry a man who glares at me like that? Positively you look as ferocious as +the blackamoor in the tragedy,--the fellow who smothered his wife because +she misplaced a handkerchief, you remember." + +Lord Rokesle had risen, and he paced the hall, as if fighting down +resentment. "I am no Othello," he said at last; "though, indeed, I think +that the love I bear you is of a sort which rarely stirs our English blood. +'Tis not for nothing I am half-Spaniard, I warn you, Anastasia, my love is +a consuming blaze that will not pause for considerations of policy nor even +of honor. And you madden me, Anastasia! To-day you hear my protestations +with sighs and glances and faint denials; to-morrow you have only taunts +for me. Sometimes, I think, 'tis hatred rather than love I bear you. +Sometimes--" He clutched at his breast with a wild gesture. "I burn!" he +said. "Woman, give me back a human heart in place of this flame you have +kindled here, or I shall go mad! Last night I dreamed of hell, and of souls +toasted on burning forks and fed with sops of bale-fire,--and you were +there, Anastasia, where the flames leaped and curled like red-blazoned +snakes about the poor damned. And I, too, was there. And through eternity I +heard you cry to God in vain, O dear, wonderful, golden-haired woman! and +we could see Him, somehow,--see Him, a great way off, with straight, white +brows that frowned upon you pitilessly. And I was glad. For I knew then +that I hated you. And even now, when I think I must go mad for love of you, +I yet hate you with a fervor that shakes and thrills in every fibre of +me. Oh, I burn, I burn!" he cried, with the same frantic clutching at his +breast. + +Lady Allonby had risen. + +"Positively, I must ask you to open a window if you intend to continue in +this strain. D'ye mean to suffocate me, my Lord, with your flames and your +blazes and your brimstone and so on? You breathe conflagrations, like a +devil in a pantomime. I had as soon converse with a piece of fireworks. So, +if you'll pardon me, I will go to my brother." + +At the sound of her high, crisp speech his frenzy fell from him like a +mantle. "And you let me kiss you yesterday! Oh, I know you struggled, but +you did not struggle very hard, did you, Anastasia?" + +"Why, what a notion!" cried Lady Allonby; "as if a person should bother +seriously one way or the other about the antics of an amorous clodhopper! +Meanwhile, I repeat, my Lord, I wish to go to my brother." + +"Egad!" Lord Rokesle retorted, "that reminds me I have been notably remiss. +I bear you a message from Harry. He had to-night a letter from Job Nangle, +who, it seems, has a purchaser for Trevor's Folly at last. The fellow is +with our excellent Nangle at Peniston Friars, and offers liberal terms if +the sale be instant. The chance was too promising to let slip, so Harry +left the island an hour ago. It happened by a rare chance that some of my +fellows were on the point of setting out for the mainland,--and he knew +that he could safely entrust you to Mrs. Morfit's duennaship, he said." + +"He should not have done so," Lady Allonby observed, as if in a contention +of mind. "He--I will go to Mrs. Morfit, then, to confess to her in +frankness that, after all these rockets and bonfires--" + +"Why, that's the unfortunate part of the whole affair," said Lord Rokesle. +"The same boat brought Sabina a letter which summoned her to the bedside +of her husband, [Footnote: Archibald Morfit, M.P. for Salop, and in 1753 +elected Speaker, which office he declined on account of ill-health. He was +created a baronet in 1758 through the Duke of Ormskirk's influence.] who, +it appears, lies desperately ill at Kuyper Manor. It happened by a rare +chance that some of my fellows were on the point of setting out for the +mainland--from Heriz pier yonder, not from the end of the island whence +Harry sailed,--so she and her maid embarked instanter. Of course, there was +your brother here to play propriety, she said. And by the oddest misfortune +in the world," Lord Rokesle sighed, "I forgot to tell her that Harry +Heleigh had left Usk a half-hour earlier. My memory is lamentably +treacherous." + +But Lady Allonby had dropped all affectation. "You coward! You planned +this!" + +"Candidly, yes. Nangle is my agent as well as Harry's, you may remember. +I have any quantity of his letters, and of course an equal number +of Archibald's. So I spent the morning in my own apartments, +Anastasia,--tracing letters against the window-pane, which was, I suppose, +a childish recreation, but then what would you have? As you very justly +observe, country life invariably coarsens a man's tastes; and accordingly, +as you may now recall, I actually declined a game of _ecarte_ with you in +order to indulge in these little forgeries. Decidedly, my dear, you must +train your husband's imagination for superior flights--when you are Lady +Rokesle." + +She was staring at him as though he had been a portent. "I am alone," she +said. "Alone--in this place--with you! Alone! you devil!" + +"Your epithets increase in vigor. Just now I was only a clodhopper. Well, +I can but repeat that it rests with you to make me what you will. Though, +indeed, you are to all intent alone upon Usk, and upon Usk there are many +devils. There are ten of them on guard yonder, by the way, in case your +brother should return inopportunely, though that's scarcely probable. +Obedient devils, you observe, Anastasia,--devils who exert and check their +deviltry as I bid 'em, for they esteem me Lucifer's lieutenant. And I grant +the present situation is an outrage to propriety, yet the evil is not +incurable. Lady Allonby may not, if she value her reputation, pass to-night +at Stornoway; but here am I, all willingness, and upstairs is the parson. +Believe me, Anastasia, the most vinegarish prude could never object to Lady +Rokesle's spending to-night at Stornoway." + +"Let me think, let me think!" Lady Allonby said, and her hands plucked now +at her hair, now at her dress. She appeared dazed. "I can't think!" she +wailed on a sudden. "I am afraid. I--O Vincent, Vincent, you cannot do +this thing! I trusted you, Vincent. I know I let you make love to me, and +I relished having you make love to me. Women are like that. But I cannot +marry you, Vincent. There is a man, yonder in England, whom I love. He does +not care for me any more,--he is in love with my step-daughter. That is +very amusing, is it not, Vincent? Some day I may be his mother-in-law. Why +don't you laugh, Vincent? Come, let us both laugh--first at this and then +at the jest you have just played on me. Do you know, for an instant, I +believed you were in earnest? But Harry went to sleep over the cards, +didn't he? And Mrs. Morfit has gone to bed with one of her usual headaches? +Of course; and you thought you would retaliate upon me for teasing you. You +were quite right, 'Twas an excellent jest. Now let us laugh at it. Laugh, +Vincent! Oh!" she said now, more shrilly, "for the love of God, laugh, +laugh!--or I shall go mad!" + +But Lord Rokesle was a man of ice, "Matrimony is a serious matter, +Anastasia; 'tis not becoming in those who are about to enter it to exhibit +undue levity. I wonder what's keeping Simon?" + +"Simon Orts!" she said, in a half-whisper. Then she came toward Lord +Rokesle, smiling. "Why, of course, I teased you, Vincent, but there was +never any hard feeling, was there? And you really wish me to marry you? +Well, we must see, Vincent. But, as you say, matrimony is a serious matter. +D'ye know you say very sensible things, Vincent?--not at all like those +silly fops yonder in London. I dare say you and I would be very happy +together. But you wouldn't have any respect for me if I married you on a +sudden like this, would you? Of course not. So you will let me consider it. +Come to me a month from now, say,--is that too long to wait? Well, I think +'tis too long myself. Say a week, then. I must have my wedding-finery, +you comprehend. We women are such vain creatures--not big and brave and +sensible like you men. See, for example, how much bigger your hand is +than mine--mine's quite lost in it, isn't it? So--since I am only a vain, +chattering, helpless female thing,--you are going to indulge me and let me +go up to London for some new clothes, aren't you, Vincent? Of course you +will; and we will be married in a week. But you will let me go to London +first, won't you?--away from this dreadful place, away--I didn't mean that. +I suppose it is a very agreeable place when you get accustomed to it. And +'tis only for clothes--Oh, I swear it is only for clothes, Vincent! And you +said you would--yes, only a moment ago you distinctly said you would let me +go. 'Tis not as if I were not coming back--who said I would not come back? +Of course I will. But you must give me time, Vincent dear,--you must, you +must, I tell you! O God!" she sobbed, and flung from her the loathed hand +she was fondling, "it's no use!" + +"No," said Lord Rokesle, rather sadly. "I am not Samson, nor are you +Delilah to cajole me. It's of no use, Anastasia. I would have preferred +that you came to me voluntarily, but since you cannot, I mean to take you +unwilling. Simon," he called, loudly, "does that rascal intend to spin out +his dying interminably? Charon's waiting, man." + +From above, "Coming, my Lord," said Simon Orts. + + +III + +The Vicar of Heriz Magna descended the stairway with deliberation. His +eyes twitched from the sobbing woman to Lord Rokesle, and then back again, +in that furtive way Orts had of glancing about a room, without moving his +head; he seemed to lie in ambush under his gross brows; and whatever his +thoughts may have been, he gave them no utterance. + +"Simon," said Lord Rokesle, "Lady Allonby is about to make me the happiest +of men. Have you a prayer-book about you, Master Parson?--for here's a +loving couple desirous of entering the blessed state of matrimony." + +"The match is somewhat of the suddenest," said Simon Orts. "But I have +known these impromptu marriages to turn out very happily--very happily, +indeed." he repeated, rubbing his hands together, and smiling horribly. "I +gather that Mr. Heleigh will not grace the ceremony with his presence?" + +They understood each other, these two. Lord Rokesle grinned, and in a few +words told the ecclesiastic of the trick which had insured the absence of +the other guests; and Simon Orts also grinned, but respectfully,--the grin, +of the true lackey wearing his master's emotions like his master's clothes, +at second-hand. + +"A very pretty stratagem," said Simon Orts; "unconventional, I must +confess, but it is proverbially known that all's fair in love." + +At this Lady Allonby came to him, catching his hand. "There is only you, +Simon. Oh, there is no hope in that lustful devil yonder. But you are not +all base, Simon. You are a man,--ah, God! if I were a man I would rip out +that devil's heart--his defiled and infamous heart! I would trample upon +it, I would feed it to dogs--!" She paused. Her impotent fury was jerking +at every muscle, was choking her. "But I am only a woman. Simon, you used +to love me. You cannot have forgotten, Simon. Oh, haven't you any pity on a +woman? Remember, Simon--remember how happy we were! Don't you remember how +the night-jars used to call to one another when we sat on moonlit evenings +under the elm-tree? And d'ye remember the cottage we planned, Simon?--where +we were going to live on bread and cheese and kisses? And how we quarrelled +because I wanted to train vines over it? You said the rooms would be too +dark. You said--oh, Simon, Simon! if only I had gone to live with you in +that little cottage we planned and never builded!" Lady Allonby was at his +feet now. She fawned upon him in somewhat the manner of a spaniel expectant +of a thrashing. + +The Vicar of Heriz Magna dispassionately ran over the leaves of his +prayer-book, till he had found the marriage service, and then closed the +book, his forefinger marking the place. Lord Rokesle stood apart, and with +a sly and meditative smile observed them. + +"Your plea is a remarkable one," said Simon Orts. "As I understand it, you +appeal to me to meddle in your affairs on the ground that you once made +a fool of me. I think the obligation is largely optional. I remember +quite clearly the incidents to which you refer; and it shames even an +old sot like me to think that I was ever so utterly at the mercy of a +good-for-nothing jilt. I remember every vow you ever made to me, Anastasia, +and I know they were all lies. I remember every kiss, every glance, every +caress--all lies, Anastasia! And gad! the only emotion it rouses in me is +wonder as to why my worthy patron here should want to marry you. Of course +you are wealthy, but, personally, I would not have you for double the +money. I must ask you to rise, Lady Rokesle.--Pardon me if I somewhat +anticipate your title." + +Lady Allonby stumbled to her feet. "Is there no manhood in the world?" she +asked, with a puzzled voice. "Has neither of you ever heard of manhood, +though but as distantly as men hear summer thunder? Had neither of you a +woman for a mother--a woman, as I am--or a father who was not--O God!--not +as you are?" + +"These rhetorical passages," said Lord Rokesle, "while very elegantly +expressed, are scarcely to the point. So you and Simon went a-philandering +once? Egad, that lends quite a touch of romance to the affair. But +despatch, Parson Simon,--your lady's for your betters now." + +"Dearly beloved,--" said Simon Orts. + +"Simon, you are not all base. I am helpless, Simon, utterly helpless. There +was a Simon once would not have seen me weep. There was a Simon--" + +"--we are gathered together here in the sight of God--" + +"You cannot do it, Simon,--do I not know you to the marrow? Remember--not +me--not the vain folly of my girlhood!--but do you remember the man you +have been, Simon Orts!" Fiercely Lady Allonby caught him by the shoulder. +"For you do remember! You do remember, don't you, Simon?" + +The Vicar stared at her. "The man I have been," said Simon Orts, "yes!--the +man I have been!" Something clicked in his throat with sharp distinctness. + +"Upon my word," said Lord Rokesle, yawning, "this getting married appears +to be an uncommonly tedious business." + +Then Simon Orts laid aside his prayer-book and said: "I cannot do it, my +Lord. The woman's right." + +She clapped her hands to her breast, and stood thus, reeling upon her +feet. You would have thought her in the crisis of some physical agony; +immediately she breathed again, deeply but with a flinching inhalation, as +though the contact of the air scorched her lungs, and, swaying, fell. It +was the Vicar who caught her as she fell. + +"I entreat your pardon?" said Lord Rokesle, and without study of Lady +Allonby's condition. This was men's business now, and over it Rokesle's +brow began to pucker. + +Simon Orts bore Lady Allonby to the settie. He passed behind it to arrange +a cushion under her head, with an awkward, grudging tenderness; and then +rose to face Lord Rokesle across the disordered pink fripperies. + +"The woman's right, my Lord. There is such a thing as manhood. Manhood!" +Simon Orts repeated, with a sort of wonder; "why, I might have boasted it +once. Then came this cuddling bitch to trick me into a fool's paradise--to +trick me into utter happiness, till Stephen Allonby, a marquis' son, +clapped eyes on her and whistled,--and within the moment she had flung me +aside. May God forgive me, I forgot I was His servant then! I set out to go +to the devil, but I went farther; for I went to you, Vincent Floyer. You +gave me bread when I was starving,--but 'twas at a price. Ay, the price was +that I dance attendance on you, to aid and applaud your knaveries, to be +your pander, your lackey, your confederate,--that I puff out, in effect, +the last spark of manhood in my sot's body. Oh, I am indeed beholden to you +two! to her for making me a sot, and to you for making me a lackey. But I +will save her from you, Vincent Floyer. Not for her sake"--Orts looked down +upon the prostrate woman and snarled. "Christ, no! But I'll do it for the +sake of the boy I have been, since I owe that boy some reparation. I have +ruined his nimble body, I have dulled the wits he gloried in, I have made +his name a foul thing that honesty spits out of her mouth; but, if God yet +reigns in heaven, I cleanse that name to-night!" + +"Oh, bless me," Lord Rokesle observed; "I begin to fear these heroics are +contagious. Possibly I, too, shall begin to rant in a moment. Meanwhile, as +I understand it, you decline to perform the ceremony. I have had to warn +you before this, Simon, that you mustn't take too much gin when I am apt +to need you. You are very pitifully drunk, man. So you defy me and my evil +courses! You defy me!" Rokesle laughed, genially, for the notion amused +him. "Wine is a mocker, Simon. But come, despatch, Parson Tosspot, and +let's have no more of these lofty sentiments." + +"I cannot do it. I--O my Lord, my Lord! You wouldn't kill an unarmed man!" +Simon Orts whined, with a sudden alteration of tone; for Lord Rokesle had +composedly drawn his sword, and its point was now not far from the Vicar's +breast. + +"I trust that I shall not be compelled to. Egad, it is a very ludicrous +business when the bridegroom is forced to hold a sword to the parson's +bosom all during the ceremony; but a ceremony we must have, Simon, for Lady +Allonby's jointure is considerable. Otherwise--Harkee, my man, don't play +the fool! there are my fellows yonder, any one of whom would twist your +neck at a word from me. And do you think I would boggle at a word? Gad, +Simon, I believed you knew me better!" + +The Vicar of Heriz Magna kept silence for an instant; his eyes were +twitching about the hall, in that stealthy way of his. Finally, "It is +no use," said he. "A poor knave cannot afford the luxury of honesty. My +life is not a valuable one, perhaps, but even vermin have an aversion to +death. I resume my lackeyship, Lord Rokesle. Perhaps 'twas only the gin. +Perhaps--In any event, I am once more at your service. And as guaranty of +this I warn you that you are exhibiting in the affair scant forethought. +Mr. Heleigh is but three miles distant. If he, by any chance, get wind of +this business, Denstroude will find a boat for him readily enough--ay, and +men, too, now that the Colonel is at feud with you. Many of your people +visit the mainland every night, and in their cups the inhabitants of Usk +are not taciturn. An idle word spoken over an inn-table may bring an armed +company thundering about your gates. You should have set sentinels, my +Lord." + +"I have already done so," Rokesle said; "there are ten of 'em yonder. Still +there is something in what you say. We will make this affair certain." + +Lord Rokesle crossed the hall to the foot of the stairway and struck thrice +upon the gong hanging there. Presently the door leading to the corridor was +opened, and a man came into the hall. + +"Punshon," said Lord Rokesle, "have any boats left the island to-night?" + +"No, my Lord." + +"You will see that none do. Also, no man is to leave Stornoway to-night, +either for Heriz Magna or the mainland; and nobody is to enter Stornoway. +Do you understand, Punshon?" + +"Yes, my Lord." + +"If you will pardon me," said Simon Orts, with a grin, "I have an +appointment to-night. You'd not have me break faith with a lady?" + +"You are a lecherous rascal, Simon. But do as you are bid and I indulge +you. I am not afraid of your going to Harry Heleigh--after performing the +ceremony. Nay, my lad, for you are thereby _particeps criminis_. You will +pass Mr. Orts, Punshon, to the embraces of his whore. Nobody else." + +Simon Orts waved his hand toward Lady Allonby. "'Twere only kindness to +warn Mr. Punshon there may be some disturbance shortly. A lamentation or +so." + +At this Lord Rokesle clapped him upon the shoulder and heartily laughed. +"That's the old Simon--always on the alert. Punshon, no one is to enter +this wing of the castle, on any pretext--no one, you understand. Whatever +noises you may hear, you will pay no attention. Now go." + +He went toward Lady Allonby and took her hand. "Come, Anastasia!" said he. +"Hold, she has really swooned! Why, what the devil, Simon--!" + +Simon Orts had flung the gong into the fire. "She will be sounding that +when she comes to," said Simon Orts. "You don't want a rumpus fit to vex +the dead yonder in the Chapel." Simon Orts stood before the fire, turning +the leaves of his prayer-book. He seemed to have difficulty in finding +again the marriage service. You heard the outer door of the corridor +closing, heard chains dragged ponderously, the heavy falling of a bolt. +Orts dropped the book and, springing into the arm-chair, wrested Aluric +Floyer's sword from its fastening. "Tricked, tricked!" said Simon Orts. +"You were always a fool, Vincent Floyer." + +Lord Rokesle blinked at him, as if dazzled by unexpected light. "What d'ye +mean?" + +"I have the honor to repeat--you are a fool, I did not know the place was +guarded--you told me. I needed privacy; by your orders no one is to enter +here to-night. I needed a sword--you had it hanging here, ready for the +first comer. Oh, beyond doubt, you are a fool, Vincent Floyer!" Standing +in the arm-chair, Simon Orts bowed fantastically, and then leaped to the +ground with the agility of an imp. + +"You have tricked me neatly," Lord Rokesle conceded, and his tone did not +lack honest admiration. "By gad, I have even given them orders to pass +you--after you have murdered me! Exceedingly clever, Simon,--but one thing +you overlooked. You are very far from my match at fencing. So I shall +presently kill you. And afterward, ceremony or no ceremony, the woman's +mine." + +"I am not convinced of that," the Vicar observed. "'Tis true I am no +swordsman; but there are behind my sword forces superior to any which +skill might muster. The sword of your fathers fights against you, my +Lord--against you that are their disgrace. They loved honor and truth; you +betrayed honor, you knew not truth. They revered womanhood; you reverence +nothing, and your life smirches your mother's memory. Ah, believe me, +they all fight against you! Can you not see them, my Lord?--yonder at my +back?--old Aluric Floyer and all those honest gentlemen, whose blood now +blushes in your body--ay, blushes to be confined in a vessel so ignoble! +Their armament fights against you, a host of gallant phantoms. And my +hatred, too, fights against you--the cur's bitter hatred for the mastering +hand it dares not bite. I dare now. You made me your pander, you slew my +manhood; in return, body and soul, I demolish you. Even my hatred for that +woman fights against you; she robbed me of my honor--is it not a tragical +revenge to save her honor, to hold it in my hand, mine, to dispose of as +I elect,--and then fling it to her as a thing contemptible? Between you, +you have ruined me; but it is Simon's hour to-night. I shame you both, and +past the reach of thought, for presently I shall take your life--in the +high-tide of your iniquity, praise God!--and presently I shall give my life +for hers. Ah, I a fey, my Lord! You are a dead man, Vincent Floyer, for the +powers of good and the powers of evil alike contend against you." + +He spoke rather sadly than otherwise; and there was a vague trouble in Lord +Rokesle's face, though he shook his head impatiently. "These are fine words +to come from the dirtiest knave unhanged in England." + +"Great ends may be attained by petty instruments, my Lord; a filthy turtle +quenched the genius of AEschylus, and they were only common soldiers who +shed the blood that redeemed the world." + +Lord Rokesle pished at this. Yet he was strangely unruffled. He saluted +with quietude, as equal to equal, and the two crossed blades. + +Simon Orts fought clumsily, but his encroachment was unwavering. From the +first he pressed his opponent with a contained resolution. The Vicar was +as a man fighting in a dream--with a drugged obstinacy, unswerving. Lord +Rokesle had wounded him in the arm, but Orts did not seem aware of this. +He crowded upon his master. Now there were little beads of sweat on Lord +Rokesle's brow, and his tongue protruded from his mouth, licking at it +ravenously. Step by step Lord Rokesle drew back; there was no withstanding +this dumb fanatic, who did not know when he was wounded, who scarcely +parried attack. + +"Even on earth you shall have a taste of hell," said Simon Orts. "There is +terror in your eyes, my worthy patron." + +Lord Rokesle flung up his arms as the sword dug into his breast. "I am +afraid! I am afraid!" he wailed. Then he coughed, and seemed with his +straining hands to push a great weight from him as the blood frothed about +his lips and nostrils. "O Simon, I am afraid! Help me, Simon!" + +Old custom spoke there. Followed silence, and presently the empty body +sprawled upon the floor. Vincent Floyer had done with it. + + +IV + +Simon Orts knelt, abstractedly wiping Aluric Floyer's sword upon the corner +of a rug. It may be that he derived comfort from this manual employment +which necessitated attention without demanding that it concentrate his +mind; it may have enabled him to forget how solitary the place was, how +viciously his garments rustled when he moved: the fact is certain that he +cleaned the sword, over and over again. + +Then a scraping of silks made him wince. Turning, he found Lady Allonby +half-erect upon the settle. She stared about her with a kind of Infantile +wonder; her glance swept, over Lord Rokesle's body, without to all +appearance finding it an object of remarkable interest. "Is he dead?" + +"Yes," said Simon Orts; "get up!" His voice had a rasp; she might from his +tone have been a refractory dog. But Lady Allonby obeyed him. + +"We are in a devil of a mess," said Simon Orts; "yet I see a way out of +it--if you can keep your head. Can you?" + +"I am past fear," she said, dully. "I drown, Simon, in a sea of feathers. I +can get no foothold, I clutch nothing that is steadfast, and I smother. I +have been like this in dreams. I am very tired, Simon." + +He took her hand, collectedly appraising her pulse. He put his own hand +upon her bared bosom, and felt the beat of her heart. "No," said Simon +Orts, "you are not afraid. Now, listen: You lack time to drown in a sea of +feathers. You are upon Usk, among men who differ from beasts by being a +thought more devilish, and from devils by being a little more bestial; it +is my opinion that the earlier you get away the better. Punshon has orders +to pass Simon Orts. Very well; put on this." + +He caught up his long cloak and wrapped it about her. Lady Allonby stood +rigid. But immediately he frowned and removed the garment from her +shoulders. + +"That won't do. Your skirts are too big. Take 'em off." + +Submissively she did so, and presently stood before him in her +under-petticoat. + +"You cut just now a very ludicrous figure, Anastasia. I dare assert that +the nobleman who formerly inhabited yonder carcass would still be its +tenant if he had known how greatly the beauty he went mad for was beholden +to the haberdasher and the mantua-maker, and quite possibly the chemist. +_Persicos odi_, Anastasia; 'tis a humiliating reflection that the hair of a +dead woman artfully disposed about a living head should have the power +to set men squabbling, and murder be at times engendered in a paint-pot. +However, wrap yourself in the cloak. Now turn up the collar,--so. Now pull +down the hatbrim. Um--a--pretty well. Chance favors us unblushingly. You +may thank your stars it is a rainy night and that I am a little man. You +detest little men, don't you? Yes, I remember." Simon Orts now gave his +orders, emphasizing each with a not over-clean forefinger. "When I open +this door you will go out into the corridor. Punshon or one of the others +will be on guard at the farther end. Pay no attention to him. There is +only one light--on the left. Keep to the right, in the shadow. Stagger as +you go; if you can manage a hiccough, the imitation will be all the more +lifelike. Punshon will expect something of the sort, and he will not +trouble you, for he knows that when I am fuddled I am quarrelsome. 'Tis a +diverting world, Anastasia, wherein, you now perceive, habitual drunkenness +and an unbridled temper may sometimes prove commendable,--as they do +to-night, when they aid persecuted innocence!" Here Simon Orts gave an +unpleasant laugh. + +"But I do not understand--" + +"You understand very little except coquetry and the proper disposition +of a ruffle. Yet this is simple. My horse is tied at the postern. +Mount--astride, mind. You know the way to the Vicarage, so does the horse; +you will find that posturing half-brother of mine at the Vicarage. Tell +Frank what has happened. Tell him to row you to the mainland; tell him to +conduct you to Colonel Denstroude's. Then you must shift for yourself; but +Denstroude is a gentleman, and Denstroude would protect Beelzebub if he +came to him a fugitive from Vincent Floyer. Now do you understand?" + +"Yes," said Lady Allonby, and seated herself before the fire,--"yes, I +understand. I am to slip away in the darkness and leave you here to answer +for Lord Rokesle's death--to those devils. La, do you really think me as +base as that?" + +Now Simon Orts was kneeling at her side. The black cloak enveloped her from +head to foot, and the turned-up collar screened her sunny hair; in the +shadow of the broad hatbrim you could see only her eyes, resplendent and +defiant, and in them the reflection of the vaulting flames. "You would +stay, Anastasia?" + +"I will not purchase my life at the cost of yours. I will be indebted to +you for nothing, Simon Orts." + +The Vicar chuckled. "Nor appeared Less than archangel ruined," he said. +"No, faith, not a whit less! We are much of a piece, Anastasia. Do you +know--if affairs had fallen out differently--I think I might have been a +man and you a woman? As it is--" Kneeling still, his glance devoured her. +"Yes, you would stay. And you comprehend what staying signifies. 'Tis +pride, your damnable pride, that moves you,--but I rejoice, for it proves +you a brave woman. Courage, at least, you possess, and this is the first +virtue I have discovered in you for a long while. However, there is no +necessity for your staying. The men of Usk will not hurt Simon Orts." + +She was very eager to believe this. Lady Allonby had found the world a +pleasant place since her widowhood. "They will not kill you? You swear it, +Simon?" + +"Why, the man was their tyrant. They obeyed him--yes, through fear. I am +their deliverer, Anastasia. But if they found a woman here--a woman not +ill-looking--" Simon Orts snapped his fingers. "Faith, I leave you to +conjecture," said he. + +They had both risen, he smiling, the woman in a turbulence of hope and +terror. "Swear to it, Simon!" + +"Anastasia, were affairs as you suppose them, I would have a curt while to +live. Were affairs as you suppose them, I would stand now at the threshold +of eternity. And I swear to you, upon my soul's salvation, that I have +nothing to fear. Nothing will ever hurt me any more." + +"No, you would not dare to lie in the moment of death," she said, after +a considerable pause. "I believe you. I will go. Good-bye, Simon." Lady +Allonby went toward the door opening into the corridor, but turned there +and came back to him. "I shall never see you again. And, la, I think that +I rather hate you than otherwise, for you remind me of things I would +willingly forget. But, Simon, I wish we had gone to live in that little +cottage we planned, and quarrelled over, and never built! I think we would +have been happy." + +Simon Orts raised her hand to his lips. "Yes," said he, "we would have been +happy. I would have been by this a man doing a man's work in the world, and +you a matron, grizzling, perhaps, but rich in content, and in love opulent. +As it is, you have your flatterers, your gossip, and your cards; I have my +gin. Good-bye, Anastasia." + +"Simon, why have you done--this?" + +The Vicar of Heriz Magna flung out his hands in a gesture of impotence. "I +dare confess now that which even to myself I have never dared confess. I +suppose the truth of it is that I have loved you all my life." + +"I am sorry. I am not worth it, Simon." + +"No; you are immeasurably far from being worth it. But one does not justify +these fancies by mathematics. Good-bye, Anastasia." + + +V + +Holding the door ajar, the Vicar of Heriz Magna heard a horse's hoofs slap +their leisurely way down the hillside. Presently the sound died and he +turned back into the hall. + +"A brave woman, that! Oh, a trifling, shallow-hearted jilt, but a brave +creature! + +"I had to lie to her. She would have stayed else. And perhaps it is true +that, in reality, I have loved her all my life,--or in any event, have +hankered after the pink-and-white flesh of her as any gentleman might. +Pschutt! a pox on all lechery says the dying man,--since it is now +necessary to put that strapping yellow-haired trollop out of your mind, +Simon Orts--yes, after all these years, to put her quite out of your mind. +Faith, she might wheedle me now to her heart's content, and my pulse would +never budge; for I must devote what trivial time there is to hoping they +will kill me quickly. He was their god, that man!" + +Simon Orts went toward the dead body, looking down into the distorted face. +"And I, too, loved him. Yes, such as he was, he was the only friend I +had. And I think he liked me," Simon Orts said aloud, with a touch of shy +pride. "Yes, and you trusted me, didn't you, Vincent? Wait for me, then, +my Lord,--I shall not be long. And now I'll serve you faithfully. I had to +play the man's part, you know,--you mustn't grudge old Simon his one hour +of manhood. You wouldn't, I think. And in any event, I shall be with you +presently, and you can cuff me for it if you like--just as you used to do." + +He covered the dead face with his handkerchief, but in the instant he drew +it away. "No, not this coarse cambric. You were too much of a fop, Vincent. +I will use yours--the finest linen, my Lord. You see old Simon knows your +tastes." + +He drew himself erect exultantly. + +"They will come at dawn to kill me; but I have had my hour. God, the man I +might have been! And now--well, perhaps He would not be offended if I said +a bit of a prayer for Vincent." + +So the Vicar of Heriz Magna knelt beside the flesh that had been Lord +Rokesle, and there they found him in the morning. + + + + +II + +LOVE AT MARTINMAS +_As Played at Tunbridge Wells, April 1, 1750_ + + "_He to love an altar built + Of twelve vast French romances, neatly gilt. + There lay three garters, half a pair of gloves, + And all the trophies of his former loves; + With tender billet-doux he lights the pyre, + And breathes three amorous sighs to raise the fire; + Then prostrate falls, and begs with ardent eyes + Soon to obtain, and long possess the prize._" + + +DRAMATIS PERSONAE + +MR. ERWYN, a gentleman of the town, ceremonious and a + coxcomb, but a man of honor. +LADY ALLONBY, a woman of fashion, and widow to + Lord Stephen Allonby. +MISS ALLONBY, daughter to Lord Stephen by a former + marriage, of a considerable fortune in her own hands. +FOOTMEN to Lady Allonby; and in the Proem FRANCIS + ORTS, commonly know as FRANCIS VANBINGHAM, a + dissolute play-actor. + + +SCENE + +A drawing-room In Lady Allonby's villa at Tunbridge Wells. + + +LOVE AT MARTINMAS + + +_PROEM:--To be Filed for Reference Hereafter_ + +Lady Allonby followed in all respects the Vicar's instructions; and +midnight found her upon the pier of Bishops Onslow, Colonel Denstroude's +big and dilapidated country-residence. Frank Orts had assisted her from the +rowboat without speaking; indeed, he had uttered scarcely a word, save to +issue some necessary direction, since the woman first came to him at the +Vicarage with her news of the night's events. Now he composedly stepped +back into the boat. + +"You've only to go forward," said Frank Orts. "I regret that for my own +part I'm no longer an acceptable visitor here, since the Colonel and I +fought last summer over one Molly Yates. Nay, I beseech you, put up your +purse, my Lady." + +"Then I can but render you my heartfelt thanks," replied Lady Allonby, "and +incessantly remember you in daily prayers for the two gallant men who have +this night saved a woman from great misery. Yet there is that in your voice +which is curiously familiar, Mr. Orts, and I think that somewhere you and I +have met before this." + +"Ay," he responded, "you have squandered many a shilling on me here in +England, where Francis Vanringham bellows and makes faces with the rest of +the Globe Company. On Usk, you understand, I'm still Frank Orts, just as I +was christened; but elsewhere the name of Vanringham was long ago esteemed +more apt to embellish and adorn the bill of a heroic play. Ay, you've been +pleased to applaud my grimaces behind the footlights, more than once; your +mother-in-law, indeed, the revered Marchioness-Dowager of Falmouth, is +among my staunchest patrons." + +"Heavens! then we shall all again see one another at Tunbridge!" said Lady +Allonby, who was recovering her spirits; "and I shall have a Heaven-sent +opportunity, to confirm my protestations that I am not ungrateful. Mr. +Vanringham, I explicitly command you to open in _The Orphan_, since: as +Castalio in that piece you are the most elegant and moving thing in the +universal world." [Footnote: This was the opinion of others as well. +Thorsby (_Roscius Anglicanus_) says, "Mr. Vanringham was good in tragedy, +as well as in comedy, especially as Castalio in Otway's _Orphan_, and the +more famous Garrick came, in that part, far short of him." Vanringham was +also noted for his Valentine in _Love for Love_ and for his Beaugard in +_The Soldier's Fortune_.] + +"Your command shall be obeyed," said the actor. "And meantime, my Lady, +I bid you an _au revoir_, with many millions of regrets for the +inconveniences to which you've been subjected this evening, Oho, we are +lamentably rustic hereabout." + +And afterward as he rowed through the dark the man gave a grunt of +dissatisfaction. + +"I was too abrupt with her. But it vexes me to have Brother Simon butchered +like this.... These natural instincts are damnably inconvenient,--and +expensive, at times, Mr. Vanringham,--beside being ruinous to one's sense +of humor, Mr. Vanringham. Why, to think that she alone should go scot-free! +and of her ordering a stage-box within the hour of two men's destruction +on her account! Upon reflection, I admire the woman to the very tips of my +toes. Eh, well! I trust to have need of her gratitude before the month is +up." + + +I + +Since Colonel Denstroude proved a profane and dissolute and helpful person, +Lady Allonby was shortly re-established in her villa at Tunbridge Wells, on +the Sussex side, where she had resolved to find a breathing-space prior to +the full season in London. And thereupon she put all thoughts of Usk quite +out of her mind: it had been an unhappy business, but it was over. In the +meanwhile her wardrobe needed replenishing now that spring was coming +in; the company at the Wells was gay enough; and Lady Allonby had always +sedulously avoided anything that was disagreeable. + +Mr. Erwyn Lady Allonby was far from cataloguing under that head. Mr. George +Erwyn had been for years a major-general, at the very least, in Fashion's +army, and was concededly a connoisseur of all the elegancies. + +Mr. Erwyn sighed as he ended his recital--half for pity of the misguided +folk who had afforded Tunbridge its latest scandal, half for relief that, +in spite of many difficulties, the story had been set forth in discreet +language which veiled, without at all causing you to miss, the more +unsavory details. + +"And so," said he, "poor Harry is run through the lungs, and Mrs. +Anstruther has recovered her shape and is to be allowed a separate +maintenance." + +"'Tis shocking!" said Lady Allonby. + +"'Tis incredible," said Mr. Erwyn, "to my mind, at least, that the bonds of +matrimony should be slipped thus lightly. But the age is somewhat lax and +the world now views with complaisance the mad antics of half-grown lads and +wenches who trip toward the altar as carelessly as if the partnership were +for a country-dance." + +Lady Allonby stirred her tea and said nothing. Notoriously her marriage had +been unhappy; and her two years of widowhood (dating from the unlamented +seizure, brought on by an inherited tendency to apoplexy and French +brandy, which carried off Lord Stephen Allonby of Prestonwoode) had to all +appearance never tempered her distrust of the matrimonial state. Certain it +was that she had refused many advantageous offers during this period, for +her jointure was considerable, and, though in candid moments she confessed +to thirty-three, her dearest friends could not question Lady Allonby's +good looks. She was used to say that she would never re-marry, because she +desired to devote herself to her step-daughter, but, as gossip had it at +Tunbridge, she was soon to be deprived of this subterfuge; for Miss Allonby +had reached her twentieth year, and was nowadays rarely seen in public save +in the company of Mr. Erwyn, who, it was generally conceded, stood high in +the girl's favor and was desirous of rounding off his career as a leader of +fashion with the approved comoedic _denouement_ of marriage with a young +heiress. + +For these reasons Lady Allonby heard with interest his feeling allusion to +the laxity of the age, and through a moment pondered thereon, for it seemed +now tolerably apparent that Mr. Erwyn had lingered, after the departure of +her other guests, in order to make a disclosure which Tunbridge had for +many months expected. + +"I had not thought," said she, at length, "that you, of all men, would ever +cast a serious eye toward marriage. Indeed, Mr. Erwyn, you have loved women +so long that I must dispute your ability to love a woman--and your amours +have been a byword these twenty years." + +"Dear lady," said Mr. Erwyn, "surely you would not confound amour with +love? Believe me, the translation is inadequate. Amour is but the summer +wave that lifts and glitters and laughs in the sunlight, and within the +instant disappears; but love is the unfathomed eternal sea itself. Or--to +shift the metaphor--Amour is a general under whom youth must serve: +Curiosity and Lustiness are his recruiting officers, and it is well to +fight under his colors, for it is against Ennui that he marshals his +forces. 'Tis a resplendent conflict, and young blood cannot but stir and +exult as paradoxes, marching and countermarching at the command of their +gay generalissimo, make way for one another in iridescent squadrons, while +through the steady musketry of epigram one hears the clash of contending +repartees, or the cry of a wailing sonnet. But this lord of laughter may be +served by the young alone; and by and by each veteran--scarred, it may be, +but not maimed, dear lady--is well content to relinquish the glory and +adventure of such colorful campaigns for some quiet inglenook, where, with +love to make a third, he prattles of past days and deeds with one that goes +hand in hand with him toward the tomb." + +Lady Allonby accorded this conceit the tribute of a sigh; then glanced, +in the direction of four impassive footmen to make sure they were out of +earshot. + +"And so--?" said she. + +"Split me!" said Mr. Erwyn, "I thought you had noted it long ago." + +"Indeed," she observed, reflectively, "I suppose it is quite time." + +"I am not," said Mr. Erwyn, "in the heyday of my youth, I grant you; but +I am not for that reason necessarily unmoved by the attractions of an +advantageous person, a fine sensibility and all the graces." + +He sipped his tea with an air of resentment; and Lady Allonby, in view of +the disparity of age which existed between Mr. Erwyn and her step-daughter, +had cause to feel that she had blundered into _gaucherie_; and to await +with contrition the proposal for her step-daughter's hand that the man was +(at last) about to broach to her, as the head of the family. + +"Who is she?" said Lady Allonby, all friendly interest. + +"An angel," said Mr. Erwyn, fencing. + +"Beware," Lady Allonby exhorted, "lest she prove a recording angel; a wife +who takes too deep an interest in your movements will scarcely suit you." + +"Oh, I am assured," said Mr. Erwyn, smiling, "that on Saturdays she will +allow me the customary half-holiday." + +Lady Allonby, rebuffed, sought consolation among the conserves. + +"Yet, as postscript," said Mr. Erwyn, "I do not desire a wife who will +take her morning chocolate with me and sup with Heaven knows whom. I have +seen, too much of _mariage a la mode_, and I come to her, if not with the +transports of an Amadis, at least with an entire affection and respect." + +"Then," said Lady Allonby, "you love this woman?" + +"Very tenderly," said Mr. Erwyn; "and, indeed, I would, for her sake, that +the errors of my past life were not so numerous, nor the frailty of my +aspiring resolutions rendered apparent--ah, so many times!--to a gaping +and censorious world. For, as you are aware, I cannot offer her an untried +heart; 'tis somewhat worn by many barterings. But I know that this heart +beats with accentuation in her presence; and when I come to her some day +and clasp her in my arms, as I aspire to do, I trust that her lips may not +turn away from mine and that she may be more glad because I am so near and +that her stainless heart may sound an echoing chime. For, with a great and +troubled adoration, I love her as I have loved no other woman; and this +much, I submit, you cannot doubt." + +"I?" said Lady Allonby, with extreme innocence. "La, how should I know?" + +"Unless you are blind," Mr. Erwyn observed--"and I apprehend those spacious +shining eyes to be more keen than the tongue of a dowager,--you must have +seen of late that I have presumed to hope--to think--that she whom I love +so tenderly might deign to be the affectionate, the condescending friend +who would assist me to retrieve the indiscretions of my youth--" + +The confusion of his utterance, his approach to positive agitation as he +waved his teaspoon, moved Lady Allonby. "It is true," she said, "that I +have not been wholly blind--" + +"Anastasia," said Mr. Erwyn, with yet more feeling, "is not our friendship +of an age to justify sincerity?" + +"Oh, bless me, you toad! but let us not talk of things that happened +under the Tudors. Well, I have not been unreasonably blind,--and I do not +object,--and I do not believe that Dorothy will prove obdurate." + +"You render me the happiest of men," Mr. Erwyn stated, rapturously. "You +have, then, already discussed this matter with Miss Allonby?" + +"Not precisely," said she, laughing; "since I had thought it apparent to +the most timid lover that the first announcement came with best grace from +him." + +"O' my conscience, then, I shall be a veritable Demosthenes," said Mr. +Erwyn, laughing likewise; "and in common decency she will consent." + +"Your conceit." said Lady Allonby, "is appalling." + +"'Tis beyond conception," Mr. Erwyn admitted; "and I propose to try +marriage as a remedy. I have heard that nothing so takes down a man." + +"Impertinent!" cried Lady Allonby; "now of whatever can the creature be +talking!" + +"I mean that, as your widowship well knows, marrying puts a man in his +proper place. And that the outcome is salutary for proud, puffed-up fellows +I would be the last to dispute. Indeed, I incline to dispute nothing, for I +find that perfect felicity is more potent than wine. I am now all pastoral +raptures, and were it not for the footmen there, I do not know to what +lengths I might go." + +"In that event," Lady Allonby decided, "I shall fetch Dorothy, that the +crown may be set upon your well-being. And previously I will dismiss the +footmen." She did so with a sign toward those lordly beings. + +"Believe me," said Mr. Erwyn, "'tis what I have long wished for. And +when Miss Allonby honors me with her attention I shall, since my life's +happiness depends upon the issue, plead with all the eloquence of a +starveling barrister, big with the import of his first case. May I, indeed, +rest assured that any triumph over her possible objections may be viewed +with not unfavorable eyes?" + +"O sir," said Lady Allonby, "believe me, there is nothing I more earnestly +desire than that you may obtain all which is necessary for your welfare. I +will fetch Dorothy." + +The largest footman but one removed Mr. Erwyn's cup. + + +II + +Mr. Erwyn, left alone, smiled at his own reflection in the mirror; +rearranged his ruffles with a deft and shapely hand; consulted his watch; +made sure that the padding which enhanced the calves of his most notable +legs was all as it should be; seated himself and hummed a merry air, in +meditative wise; and was in such posture when the crimson hangings that +shielded the hall-door quivered and broke into tumultuous waves and yielded +up Miss Dorothy Allonby. + +Being an heiress, Miss Allonby was by an ancient custom brevetted a great +beauty; and it is equitable to add that the sourest misogynist could hardly +have refused, pointblank, to countersign the commission. They said of +Dorothy Allonby that her eyes were as large as her bank account, and nearly +as formidable as her tongue; and it is undeniable that on provocation there +was in her speech a tang of acidity, such (let us say) as renders a salad +none the less palatable. In a word, Miss Allonby pitied the limitations of +masculine humanity more readily than its amorous pangs, and cuddled her +women friends as she did kittens, with a wary and candid apprehension of +their power to scratch; and decision was her key-note; continually she knew +to the quarter-width of a cobweb what she wanted, and invariably she got +it. + +Such was the person who, with a habitual emphasis which dowagers found +hoydenish and all young men adorable, demanded without prelude: + +"Heavens! What can it be, Mr. Erwyn, that has cast Mother into this +unprecedented state of excitement?" + +"What, indeed?" said he, and bowed above her proffered hand. + +"For like a hurricane, she burst into my room and cried, 'Mr. Erwyn +has something of importance to declare to you--why did you put on that +gown?--bless you, my child--' all in one eager breath; then kissed me, and +powdered my nose, and despatched me to you without any explanation. And +why?" said Miss Allonby. + +"Why, indeed?" said Mr. Erwyn. + +"It is very annoying," said she, decisively. + +"Sending you to me?" said Mr. Erwyn, a magnitude of reproach in his voice. + +"That," said Miss Allonby, "I can pardon--and easily. But I dislike all +mysteries, and being termed a child, and being--" + +"Yes?" said Mr. Erwyn. + +"--and being powdered on the nose," said Miss Allonby, with firmness. She +went to the mirror, and, standing on the tips of her toes, peered anxiously +into its depths. She rubbed her nose, as if in disapproval, and frowned, +perhaps involuntarily pursing up her lips,--which Mr. Erwyn intently +regarded, and then wandered to the extreme end of the apartment, where he +evinced a sudden interest in bric-a-brac. + +"Is there any powder on my nose?" said Miss Allonby. + +"I fail to perceive any," said Mr. Erwyn. + +"Come closer," said she. + +"I dare not," said he. + +Miss Allonby wheeled about. "Fie!" she cried; "one who has served against +the French, [Footnote: This was not absolutely so. Mr. Erwyn had, however, +in an outburst of patriotism, embarked, as a sort of cabin passenger, with +his friend Sir John Morris, and possessed in consequence some claim to +share such honor as was won by the glorious fiasco of Dungeness.] and +afraid of powder!" + +"It is not the powder that I fear." + +"What, then?" said she, in sinking to the divan beside the disordered +tea-table. + +"There are two of them," said Mr. Erwyn, "and they are so red--" + +"Nonsense!" cried Miss Allonby, with heightened color. + +"'Tis best to avoid temptation," said Mr. Erwyn, virtuously. + +"Undoubtedly," she assented, "it is best to avoid having your ears boxed." + +Mr. Erwyn sighed as if in the relinquishment of an empire. Miss Allonby +moved to the farther end of the divan. + +"What was it," she demanded, "that you had to tell me?" + +"'Tis a matter of some importance--" said Mr. Erwyn. + +"Heavens!" said Miss Allonby, and absent-mindedly drew aside her skirts; +"one would think you about to make a declaration." + +Mr. Erwyn sat down beside her, "I have been known," said he, "to do such +things." + +The divan was strewn with cushions in the Oriental fashion. Miss Allonby, +with some adroitness, slipped one of them between her person and the +locality of her neighbor. "Oh!" said Miss Allonby. + +"Yes," said he, smiling over the dragon-embroidered barrier; "I admit that +I am even now shuddering upon the verge of matrimony." + +"Indeed!" she marvelled, secure in her fortress. "Have you selected an +accomplice?" + +"Split me, yes!" said Mr. Erwyn. + +"And have I the honor of her acquaintance?" said Miss Allonby. + +"Provoking!" said Mr. Erwyn; "no woman knows her better." + +Miss Allonby smiled. "Dear Mr. Erwyn," she stated, "this is a disclosure I +have looked for these six months." + +"Split me!" said Mr. Erwyn. + +"Heavens, yes!" said she. "You have been a rather dilatory lover--" + +"I am inexpressibly grieved, that I should have kept you waiting--" + +"--and in fact, I had frequently thought of reproaching you for your +tardiness--" + +"Nay, in that case," said Mr. Erwyn, "the matter could, no doubt, have been +more expeditiously arranged." + +"--since your intentions have been quite apparent." + +Mr. Erwyn removed the cushion. "You do not, then, disapprove," said he, "of +my intentions?" + +"Indeed, no," said Miss Allonby; "I think you will make an excellent +step-father." + +The cushion fell to the floor. Mr. Erwyn replaced it and smiled. + +"And so," Miss Allonby continued, "Mother, believing me in ignorance, has +deputed you to inform me of this most transparent secret? How strange is +the blindness of lovers! But I suppose," sighed Miss Allonby, "we are all +much alike." + +"We?" said Mr. Erwyn, softly. + +"I meant--" said Miss Allonby, flushing somewhat. + +"Yes?" said Mr. Erwyn. His voice sank to a pleading cadence. "Dear child, +am I not worthy of trust?" + +There was a microscopic pause. + +"I am going to the Pantiles this afternoon," declared Miss Allonby, at +length, "to feed the swans." + +"Ah," said Mr. Erwyn, and with comprehension; "surely, he, too, is rather +tardy." + +"Oh," said she, "then you know?" + +"I know," he announced, "that there is a tasteful and secluded summer-house +near the Fountain of Neptune." + +"I was never allowed," said Miss Allonby, unconvincingly, "to go into +secluded summer-houses with any one; and, besides, the gardeners keep their +beer jugs there--under the biggest bench." + +Mr. Erwyn beamed upon her paternally. "I was not, till this, aware," said +he, "that Captain Audaine was so much interested in ornithology. Yet what +if, even when he is seated upon that biggest bench, your Captain does not +utterly lose the head he is contributing to the _tete-a-tete_?" + +"Oh, but he will," said Miss Allonby, with confidence; then she +reflectively added: "I shall have again to be painfully surprised by his +declaration, for, after all, it will only be his seventh." + +"Doubtless," Mr. Erwyn considered, "your astonishment will be extreme when +you rebuke him, there above hortensial beer jugs--" + +"And I shall be deeply grieved that he has so utterly misunderstood my +friendly interest in his welfare; and I shall be highly indignant after he +has--in effect, after he has--" + +"But not until afterward?" said Mr. Erwyn, holding up a forefinger. "Well, +I have told you their redness is fatal to good resolutions." + +"--after he has astounded me by his seventh avowal. And I shall behave +in precisely the same manner the eighth time he recurs to the repugnant +subject." + +"But the ninth time?" said Mr. Erwyn. + +"He has remarkably expressive eyes," Miss Allonby stated, "and really, +Mr. Erwyn, it is the most lovable creature when it raves about my +flint-heartedness and cutting its poor throat and murdering every man I +ever nodded to!" + +"Ah, youth, youth!" sighed Mr. Erwyn. "Dear child, I pray you, do not +trifle with the happiness that is within your grasp! _Si jeunesse +savait_--the proverb is somewhat musty. But we who have attained the St. +Martin's summer of our lives and have grown capable of but a calm and +tempered affection at the utmost--we cannot but look wistfully upon the +raptures and ignorance of youth, and we would warn you, were it possible, +of the many dangers whereby you are encompassed. For Love is a deity that +must not be trifled with; his voice may chaunt the requiem of all which +is bravest in our mingled natures, or sound a stave of such nobility as +heartens us through life. He is kindly, but implacable; beneficent, a +bestower of all gifts upon the faithful, a bestower of very terrible +gifts upon those that flout him; and I who speak to you have seen my +own contentment blighted, by just such flippant jesting with Love's +omnipotence, before the edge of my first razor had been dulled. 'Tis true, +I have lived since in indifferent comfort; yet it is but a dreary banquet +where there is no platter laid for Love, and within the chambers of my +heart--dust-gathering now, my dear!--he has gone unfed these fifteen years +or more." + +"Ah, goodness!" sighed Miss Allonby, touched by the ardor of his speech. +"And so, you have loved Mother all of fifteen years?" + +"Nay, split me--!" said Mr. Erwyn. + +"Your servant, sir," said the voice of Lady Allonby; "I trust you young +people have adjusted matters to your satisfaction?" + + +III + +"Dear madam," cried Miss Allonby, "I am overjoyed!" then kissed her +step-mother vigorously and left the room, casting in passage an arch glance +at Mr. Erwyn. + +"O vulgarity!" said Lady Allonby, recovering her somewhat rumpled dignity, +"the sweet child is yet unpolished. But, I suppose, we may regard the +matter as settled?" + +"Yes," said Mr. Erwyn, "I think, dear lady, we may with safety regard the +matter as settled." + +"Dorothy is of an excitable nature," she observed, and seated herself upon +the divan; "and you, dear Mr. Erwyn, who know women so thoroughly, will +overlook the agitation of an artless girl placed in quite unaccustomed +circumstances. Nay, I myself was affected by my first declaration,"' + +"Doubtless," said Mr. Erwyn, and sank beside her. "Lord Stephen was very +moving." + +"I can assure you," said she, smiling, "that he was not the first." + +"I' gad," said he, "I remember perfectly, in the old days, when you were +betrothed to that black-visaged young parson--" + +"Well, I do not remember anything of the sort," Lady Allonby stated; and +she flushed. + +"You wore a blue gown," he said. + +"Indeed?" said she. + +"And--" + +"La, if I did," said Lady Allonby, "I have quite forgotten it, and it is +now your manifest duty to do likewise." + +"Never in all these years," said Mr. Erwyn, sighing, "have I been able to +forget it." + +"I was but a girl, and 'twas natural that at first I should be mistaken in +my fancies," Lady Allonby told him, precisely as she had told Simon Orts: +"and at all events, there is nothing less well-bred than a good memory. I +would decline to remain in the same room with one were it not that Dorothy +has deserted you in this strange fashion. Whither, pray, has she gone?" + +Mr. Erwyn smiled. "Her tender heart," said Mr. Erwyn, "is affected by the +pathetic and moving spectacle of the poor hungry swans, pining for their +native land and made a raree-show for visitors in the Pantiles; and she has +gone to stay them with biscuits and to comfort them with cakes." + +"Really!" said Lady Allonby. + +"And," Mr. Erwyn continued, "to defend her from the possible ferocity +of the gold-fish, Captain Audaine had obligingly afforded service as an +escort." + +"Oh," said Lady Allonby; then added, "in the circumstances she might +permissibly have broken the engagement." + + +"But there is no engagement," said Mr. Erwyn--"as yet." + +"Indeed?" said she. + +"Harkee," said he; "should he make a declaration this afternoon she will +refuse him." + +"Why, but of course!" Lady Allonby marveled. + +"And the eighth time," said he. + +"Undoubtedly," said she; "but at whatever are you hinting?" + +"Yet the ninth time--" + +"Well, what is it, you grinning monster?" + +Mr. Erwyn allowed himself a noiseless chuckle. "After the ninth time," Mr. +Erwyn declared, "there will be an engagement." + +"Mr. Erwyn!" cried Lady Allonby, with widened eyes, "I had understood that +Dorothy looked favorably upon your suit." + +"Anastasia!" cried he; and then his finger-tips lightly caressed his brow. +"'Tis the first I had heard of it," said Mr. Erwyn. + +"Surely--" she began. + +"Nay, but far more surely," said he, "in consideration of the fact that, +not a half-hour since, you deigned to promise me your hand in marriage--" + +"O la now!" cried Lady Allonby; and, recovering herself, smiled +courteously. "'Tis the first I had heard of it," said she. + +They stared at each other in wonderment. Then Lady Allonby burst into +laughter. + +"D'ye mean--?" said she. + +"Indeed," said Mr. Erwyn, "so unintentional was I of aspiring to Miss +Allonby's affections that all my soul was set upon possessing the heart and +person of a lady, in my humble opinion, far more desirable." + +"I had not dreamed--" she commenced. + +"Behold," said Mr. Erwyn, bitterly, "how rightly is my presumption +punished. For I, with a fop's audacity, had thought my love for you of +sufficient moment to have been long since observed; and, strong in my +conceit, had scorned a pleasing declaration made up of faint phrases and +whining ballad-endings. I spoke as my heart prompted me; but the heart has +proven a poor counsellor, dear lady, and now am I rewarded. For you had +not even known of my passion, and that which my presumption had taken for +a reciprocal tenderness proves in the ultimate but a kindly aspiration to +further my union with another." + +"D'ye love me, toad?" said Lady Allonby, and very softly. + +"Indeed," said Mr. Erwyn, "I have loved you all my life, first with a +boyish inclination that I scarce knew was love, and, after your marriage +with an honorable man had severed us, as I thought, irrevocably, with such +lore as an ingenuous person may bear a woman whom both circumstances and +the respect in which he holds her have placed beyond his reach,--a love +that might not be spoken, but of which I had considered you could never be +ignorant." + +"Mr. Erwyn," said she, "at least I have not been ignorant--" + +"They had each one of them some feature that reminded me of you. That was +the truth of it, a truth so patent that we will not discuss it. Instead, +dear madam, do you for the moment grant a losing gamester the right to rail +at adverse fate! for I shall trouble you no more. Since your widowhood I +have pursued you with attentions which, I now perceive, must at many times +have proven distasteful. But my adoration had blinded me; and I shall +trouble you no more. I have been too serious, I did not know that our +affair was but a comedy of the eternal duel between man and woman; nor am +I sorry, dear opponent, that you have conquered. For how valorously you +fought! Eh, let it be! for you have triumphed in this duel, O puissant +lady, and I yield the victor--a devoted and, it may be, a rather heavy +heart; and I shall trouble you no more." + +"Ah, sir," said Lady Allonby, "you are aware that once--" + +"Indeed," said Mr. Erwyn, "'twas the sand on which I builded. But I am +wiser now, and I perceive that the feeling you entertain toward me is but +the pallid shadow of a youthful inclination. I shall not presume upon it. +Oh, I am somewhat proud, dear Anastasia; I have freely given you my heart, +such as it is; and were you minded to accept it, even at the eleventh hour, +through friendship or through pity only, I would refuse. For my love of you +has been the one pure and quite unselfish, emotion of my life, and I may +not barter it for an affection of lesser magnitude either in kind or in +degree. And so, farewell!" + +"Yet hold, dear sir--" said Lady Allonby. "Lord, but will you never let me +have the woman's privilege of talking!" + +"Nay, but I am, as ever, at your service," said Mr. Erwyn, and he paused in +transit for the door. + +"--since, as this betokens--" + +"'Tis a tasteful handkerchief," said Mr. Erwyn--"but somewhat moist!" + +"And--my eyes?" + +"Red," said Mr. Erwyn. + +"I have been weeping, toad, with my head on the pin-cushion, and the maid +trying to tipsify me with brandy." + +"Why?" said Mr. Erwyn. + +"I thought you were to marry Dorothy." + +Mr. Erwyn resumed his seat. "You objected?" he said. + +"I think, old monster," Lady Allonby replied, "that I would entertain the +same objection to seeing any woman thus sacrificed--" + +"Well?" said Mr. Erwyn. + +"--except--" + +"Incomparable Anastasia!" said Mr. Erwyn. + + +IV + +Afterward these two sat long in the twilight, talking very little, and with +their eyes rarely meeting, although their hands met frequently at quite +irrelevant intervals. Just the graze of a butterfly to make it certain that +the other was there: but all the while they both regarded the tiny fire +which had set each content of the room a-dancing in the companionable +darkness. For each, I take it, preferred to think of the other as being +still the naive young person each remembered; and the firelight made such +thinking easier. + +"D'ye remember--?" was woven like a refrain through their placid duo.... + +It was, one estimates, their highest hour. Frivolous and trivial persons +you might have called them and have justified the accusation; but even to +the fop and the coquette was granted an hour wherein all human happenings +seemed to be ordered by supernal wisdom lovingly. Very soon they would +forget this hour; meanwhile there was a wonderful sense of dreams come +true. + + + + +III + +THE CASUAL HONEYMOON + +_As Played at Tunbridge Wells, April 1, 1750_ + +"_But this is the most cruel thing, to marry one does not know how, nor +why, nor wherefore.--Gad, I never liked anybody less in my life. Poor +woman!--Gad, I'm sorry for her, too; for I have no reason to hate her +neither; but I wish we could keep it secret! why, I don't believe any of +this company would speak of it._" + + +DRAMATIS PERSONAE + + +CAPTAIN AUDAINE, of a pompous and handsome person, and loves Miss Allonby. + +LORD HUMPHREY DEGGE, younger son to the Marquis of Venour, makes love to +Miss Allonby. + +GERALD ALLONBY, brother to Miss Allonby, a true raw Squire. + +MR. ERWYN, betrothed to Lady Allonby. + +VANRINGHAM, an impudent tragedian of the Globe Company. + +QUARMBY, Vanringham's associate. + +Miss ALLONBY, an heiress, of a petulant humor, in love with Audaine. + +MARCHIONESS OF FALMOUTH, an impertinent affected dowager, and grandmother +to Miss Allonby. + +LADY ALLONBY, step-mother to Miss Allonby and Gerald. + +POSTILIONS, SERVANTS, Etc. + + +SCENE + +Tunbridge Wells, thence shifting to Chetwode Lodge, Mr. Babington-Herle's +house, on Rusthall Common, within two miles of the town. + + +THE CASUAL HONEYMOON + + +_PROEM:--Introductive of Captain Francis Audaine_ + +It appears convenient here to pursue Miss Allonby on her stroll about the +Pantiles in company with Captain Audaine. The latter has been at pains to +record the events of the afternoon and evening, so that I give you his own +account of them, though I abridge in consideration of his leisured style. +Pompous and verbose I grant the Captain, even in curtailment; but you are +to remember these were the faults of his age, ingrained and defiant of +deletion; and should you elect to peruse his memoirs [Footnote: There +appears to have been no American edition since that, in 1836, printed in +Philadelphia, "for Thomas Wardle, No. 15 Minor Street." In England the +memoirs of Lord Garendon are to all appearance equally hard to come by, +and seem to have been out of print since 1907.] you will find that I have +considerately spared you a majority of the digressions to which the future +Earl of Garendon was lamentably addicted. + +For the purpose of my tale you are to view him as Tunbridge did at this +particular time: as a handsome and formal person, twenty-eight years old +or thereabouts, of whom nobody knew anything quite definite--beyond the +genealogic inference to be drawn from a smatch of the brogue--save that +after a correspondence of gallantries, of some three weeks' duration, he +was the manifest slave of Miss Dorothy Allonby, and had already fought +three duels behind Ormerod House,--with Will Pratchet, Lord Humphrey Degge, +and Sir Eugene Harrabie, respectively, each one of whom was a declared +suitor for her hand. + +And with this prelude I begin on my transcription. + + +I + +Miss Allonby (says Captain Audaine) was that afternoon in a mighty cruel +humor. Though I had omitted no reasonable method to convince her of the +immensity of my passion, 'twas without the twitch of an eyelash she endured +the volley of my sighs and the fusillade of my respectful protestations; +and candor compels me to admit that toward the end her silvery laughter +disrupted the periods of a most elegant and sensible peroration. And when +the affair was concluded, and for the seventh time I had implored her to +make me the happiest of men, the rogue merely observed: "But I don't want +to marry you. Why on earth should I?" + +"For the sake of peace," I replied, "and in self-protection, since as long +as you stay obdurate I shall continue to importune, and by and by I shall +pester you to death." + +"Indeed, I think it more than probable," she returned; "for you dog me +like a bailiff. I am cordially a-weary, Captain Audaine, of your incessant +persecutions; and, after all, marrying you is perhaps the civilest way to +be rid of both them and you." + +But by this I held each velvet-soft and tiny hand. "Nay," I dissented; "the +subject is somewhat too sacred for jest. I am no modish lover, dearest and +best of creatures, to regard marriage as the thrifty purchase of an estate, +and the lady as so much bed-furniture thrown in with the mansion. I love +you with completeness: and give me leave to assure you, madam, with a +freedom which I think permissible on so serious an occasion that, even as +beautiful as you are, I could never be contented with your person without +your heart." + +She sat with eyes downcast, all one blush. Miss Dorothy Allonby was in the +bloom of nineteen, and shone with every charm peculiar to her sex. But I +have no mind to weary you with poetical rhodomontades till, as most lovers +do, I have proven her a paragon and myself an imbecile: it suffices to say +that her face, and shape, and mien, and wit, alike astounded and engaged +all those who had the happiness to know her; and had long ago rendered her +the object of my entire adoration and the target of my daily rhapsodies. +Now I viewed her with a dissension of the liveliest hopes and fears; for +she had hesitated, and had by this hesitation conceded my addresses to be +not irretrievably repugnant; and within the instant I knew that any life +undevoted to her service and protection could be but a lingering disease. + +But by and by, "You shall have your answer this evening," she said, and so +left me. + +I fathomed the meaning of "this evening" well enough. For my adored Dorothy +was all romance, and by preference granted me rendezvous in the back +garden, where she would tantalize me nightly, from her balcony, after the +example of the Veronese lady in Shakespeare's spirited tragedy, which she +prodigiously admired. As concerns myself, a reasonable liking for romance +had been of late somewhat tempered by the inclemency of the weather and +the obvious unfriendliness of the dog; but there is no resisting a lady's +commands; and clear or foul, you might at any twilight's death have found +me under her window, where a host of lyric phrases asserted the devotion +which a cold in the head confirmed. + +This night was black as a coal-pit. Strolling beneath the casement, well +wrapt in my cloak (for it drizzled), I meditated impartially upon the +perfections of my dear mistress and the tyrannic despotism of love. Being +the source of our existence, 'tis not unreasonably, perhaps, that this +passion assumes the proprietorship of our destinies and exacts of all +mankind a common tribute. To-night, at least, I viewed the world as a brave +pavilion, lighted by the stars and swept by the clean winds of heaven, +wherein we enacted varied roles with God as audience; where, in turn, we +strutted or cringed about the stage, where, in turn, we were beset and +rent by an infinity of passions; but where every man must play the part +of lover. That passion alone, I said, is universal; it set wise Solomon +a-jigging in criminal byways, and sinewy Hercules himself was no stranger +to its inquietudes and joys. And I cried aloud with the Roman, _Parce +precor!_ and afterward upon high Heaven to make me a little worthier of +Dorothy. + + +II + +Engrossed in meditations such as these, I was fetched earthward by the +clicking of a lock, and, turning, saw the door beneath her balcony unclose +and afford egress to a slender and hooded figure. My amazement was +considerable and my felicity beyond rhetoric. + +"Dorothy--!" I whispered. + +"Come!" was her response; and her finger-tips rested upon my arm the while +that she guided me toward the gateway opening into Jervis Lane. I followed +with a trepidation you may not easily conceive; nor was this diminished +when I found awaiting us a post-chaise, into which my angel hastily +tripped. + +I babbled I know not what inarticulate nonsense. But, "Heavens!" she +retorted, "d'ye mean to keep the parson waiting all night?" + +This was her answer, then. Well, 'twas more than I could have hoped for, +though to a man of any sensibility this summary disposal of our love-affair +could not but vaguely smack of the distasteful. Say what you will, every +gentleman has about him somewhere a tincture of that venerable and artless +age when wives were taken by capture and were retained by force; he +prefers to have the lady hold off until the very last; and properly, her +tongue must sound defiance long after melting eyes have signalled that the +traitorous heart of her, like an anatomical Tarpeia, is ready to betray the +citadel and yield the treasury of her charms. + +Nevertheless, I stepped into the vehicle. The postilion was off in +a twinkling, as the saying is, over the roughest road in England. +Conversation was impossible, for Dorothy and I were jostling like two pills +in a box; and as the first observation I attempted resulted in a badly +bitten tongue, I prudently held my peace. + +This endured for, perhaps, a quarter of an hour, at the end of which period +the post-chaise on a sudden stopped, and I assisted my companion to alight. +Before us was a villa of considerable dimension, and situate, so far as I +could immediately detect, in the midst of a vast and desolate moor; there +was no trace of human habitation within the radius of the eye; and the +house itself presented not a glimpse of tenancy or illumination. + +"O Lord, madam--" I began. + +"Hasten!" spoke a voice from within the Parsonage. And Dorothy drew me +toward a side door, overhung with ivy, where, sure enough, a dim light +burned, 'Twas but a solitary candle stuck upon a dresser at the remoter end +of a large and low-ceiled apartment; and in this flickering obscurity we +found a tremulous parson in full canonicals, who had united our hands and +gabbled half-way through the marriage service before I had the slightest +notion of what was befalling me. + +And such is the unreasonable disposition of mankind that the attainment +of my most ardent desires aroused a feeling not altogether unakin to +irritation. This skulking celerity, this hole-and-corner business, I +thought, was in ill-accord with the respect due to a sacrament; and I could +have wished my marriage to have borne a less striking resemblance to the +conference of three thieves in a cellar. But 'twas over in two twos. Within +scantier time than it takes to tell of it, Francis and Dorothy were made +one, and I had turned to salute my wife. + +She gave a shriek of intolerable anguish. "Heavens!" said she, "I have +married the wrong man!" + + +III + +Without delay I snatched up the guttering candle and held it to my wife's +countenance. You can conceive that 'twas with no pleasurable emotion +I discovered I had inadvertently espoused the Dowager Marchioness of +Falmouth, my adored Dorothy's grandmother; and in frankness I can't deny +that the lady seemed equally dissatisfied: words failed us; and the newly +wedded couple stared at each other in silence. + +"Captain Audaine," said she, at last, "the situation is awkward." + +"Sure, madam," I returned, "and that is the precise thought which has just +occurred to me." + +"And I am of the opinion," she continued, "that you owe me some sort of +explanation. For I had planned to elope with Mr. Vanringham--" + +"Do I understand your Ladyship to allude to Mr. Francis Vanringham, the +play-actor, at present the talk of Tunbridge?" + +She bowed a grave response. + +"This is surprising news," said I. "And grant me leave to tell you that a +woman of mature years, possessed of an abundant fortune and unassailable +gentility, does not by ordinary sneak out of the kitchen door to meet a +raddle-faced actor in the middle of the night. 'Tis, indeed, a circumstance +to stagger human credulity. Oh, believe me, madam, for a virtuous woman the +back garden is not a fitting approach to the altar, nor is a comedian an +appropriate companion there at eleven o'clock in the evening." + +"Hey, my fine fellow," says my wife, "and what were you doing in the back +garden?" + +"Among all true lovers," I returned, "it is an immemorial custom to prowl +like sentinels beneath the windows of the beauteous adored. And I, +madam, had the temerity to aspire toward an honorable union with your +granddaughter." + +She wrung her withered hands. "That any reputable woman should have +nocturnal appointments with gentlemen in the back garden, and beguile her +own grandmother into an odious marriage! I protest, Captain Audaine, the +degenerate world of to-day is no longer a suitable residence for a lady!" + +"Look you, sir, this is a cruel bad business," the Parson here put in. +He was pacing the apartment in an altercation of dubiety and amaze. "Mr. +Vanringham will be vexed." + +"You will pardon me," I retorted, "if I lack pity to waste upon your Mr. +Vanringham. At present I devote all funds of compassion to my own affairs. +Am I, indeed, to understand that this lady and I are legally married?" + +He rubbed his chin. "By the Lord Harry," says he, "'tis a case that lacks +precedents! But the coincidence of the Christian names is devilish awkward; +the service takes no cognizance of surnames; and I have merely united a +Francis and a Dorothy." + +"O Lord, Mr. What-d'ye-call-um," said I, "then there is but one remedy and +that is an immediate divorce." + +My wife shrieked. "Have you no sense of decency, Captain Audaine? Never has +there been a divorce in my family. And shall I be the first to drag that +honored name into a public court,--to have my reputation worried at the bar +by a parcel of sniggering lawyers, while the town wits buzz about it like +flies around carrion? I pray you, do not suggest any such hideous thing." + +"Here's the other Francis," says the Parson, at this point. And it was,--a +raffish, handsome, slender, red-haired fellow, somewhat suggestive of the +royal duke, yet rather more like a sneak-thief, and with a whiff somewhere +of the dancing-master. At first glance you recognized in the actor a +personage, for he compelled the eye with a monstrous vividness of color and +gesture. To-night he had missed his lady at their rendezvous, owing to my +premature appearance, and had followed us post-haste. + +"My Castalio!" she screamed. "My Beaugard!" [Footnote: I never saw the +rascal act, thank Heaven, since in that event, report assures me, I might +conceivably have accredited him with the possession of some meritorious +qualities, however trivial; but, it appears, these two above-mentioned +roles were the especial puppetry in which Mr. Vanringham was most +successful in wringing tears and laughter from the injudicious.--F.A.] She +ran to him, and with disjointed talk and quavering utterance disclosed the +present lamentable posture of affairs. + +And I found the tableau they presented singular. My wife had been a toast, +they tell me, in Queen Anne's time, and even now the lean and restless +gentlewoman showed as the abandoned house of youth and wit and beauty, with +here and there a trace of the old occupancy; always her furtive eyes shone +with a cold and shifting glitter, as though a frightened imp peeped through +a mask of Hecuba; and in every movement there was an ineffable touch of +something loosely hinged and fantastic. In a word, the Marchioness was +not unconscionably sane, and was known far and wide as a gallant woman +resolutely oblivious to the batterings of time, and so avid of flattery +that she was ready to smile on any man who durst give the lie to her +looking-glass. Demented landlady of her heart, she would sublet that +antiquated chamber to the first adventurer who came prepared to pay his +scot in the false coin of compliment; and 'twas not difficult to comprehend +how this young Thespian had acquired its tenancy. + +But now the face of Mr. Vanringham was attenuated by her revelations, and +the wried mouth of Mr. Vanringham suggested that the party be seated, in +order to consider more at ease the unfortunate _contretemps_. Fresh lights +were kindled, as one and all were past fear of discovery by this; and we +four assembled about a table which occupied the centre of the apartment. + + +IV + +"The situation," Mr. Vanringham, began, "may reasonably be described as +desperate. Here we sit, four ruined beings. For Dr. Quarmby has betrayed +an unoffending couple into involuntary matrimony, an act of which his +Bishop can scarcely fail to take official notice; Captain Audaine and +the Marchioness are entrapped into a loveless marriage, than which there +mayn't be a greater misery in life; and my own future, I needn't add, is +irrevocably blighted by the loss of my respected Dorothy, without whom +continued animation must necessarily be a hideous and hollow mockery. Yet +there occurs to me a panacea for these disasters." + +"Then, indeed, Mr. Vanringham," said I, "there is one of us who will be +uncommonly glad to know the name of it." + +He faced me with a kind of compassion in his wide-set brown eyes, "You, +sir, have caused a sweet and innocent lady to marry you against her +will--Oho, beyond doubt, your intentions were immaculate; but the outcome +remains in its stark enormity, and the hand of an inquisitive child is not +ordinarily salved by its previous ignorance as to the corrosive properties +of fire. You have betrayed confiding womanhood, an act abhorrent to +all notions of gentility. There is but one conclusive proof of your +repentance.--Need I mention that I allude to self-destruction?" + +"O Lord, sir," I observed, "suicide is a deadly sin, and I would not +willingly insult any gentlewoman by evincing so marked a desire for the +devil's company in preference to hers." + +"Your argument is sophistry," he returned, "since 'tis your death alone +that can endear you to your bride. Death is the ultimate and skilled +assayer of alloyed humanity: and by his art our gross constituents--our +foibles, our pettinesses, nay, our very crimes--are precipitated into the +coffin, the while that his crucible sets free the volatile pure essence, +and shows as undefiled by all life's accidents that part of divinity which +harbors in the vilest bosom. This only is remembered: this only mounts, +like an ethereal spirit, to hallow the finished-with blunderer's renown, +and reverently to enshrine his body's resting-place. Ah, no, Captain +Audaine! death alone may canonize the husband. Once you're dead, your wife +will adore you; once you're dead, your wife and I have before us an open +road to connubial felicity, a road which, living, you sadly encumber; and +only when he has delivered your funeral oration may Dr. Quarmby be exempt +from apprehension lest his part in your marriage ceremony bring about his +defrockment. I urge the greatest good for the greatest number, Captain; +living, you plunge all four of us into suffering; whereas the nobility of +an immediate _felo-de-se_ will in common decency exalt your soul to Heaven +accompanied and endorsed by the fervent prayers of three grateful hearts." + +"And by the Lord Harry," says the Parson, "while no clergyman extant has +a more cordial aversion to suicide, I cannot understand why a prolonged +existence should tempt you. You love Miss Dorothy Allonby, as all Tunbridge +knows; and to a person of sensibility, what can be more awkward than +to have thrust upon him grandfathership of the adored one? You must in +this position necessarily be exposed to the committal of a thousand +_gaucheries_; and if you insist upon your irreligious project of procuring +a divorce, what, I ask, can be your standing with the lady? Can she smile +upon the suit of an individual who has publicly cast aside the sworn love +and obedience of the being to whom she owes her very existence? or will +any clergyman in England participate in the union of a woman to her +ex-grandfather? Nay, believe me, sir, 'tis less the selfishness than the +folly of your clinging to this vale of tears which I deplore. And I protest +that this rope"--he fished up a coil from the corner--"appears to have +been deposited here by a benign and all-seeing Providence to Suggest +the manifold advantages of hanging yourself as compared with the untidy +operation of cutting one's throat." + +"And conceive, sir," says my wife, "what must be the universal grief +for the bridegroom so untimelily taken off in the primal crescence of +his honeymoon! Your funeral will be unparalleled both for sympathy and +splendor; all Tunbridge will attend in tears; and 'twill afford me a +melancholy but sincere pleasure to extend to you the hospitality of the +Allonby mausoleum, which many connoisseurs have accounted the finest in the +three kingdoms." + +"I must venture," said I, "to terminate this very singular conversation. +You have, one and all, set forth the advantages of my immediate demise; +your logic is unassailable and has proven suicide my plain duty; and my +rebuttal is confined to the statement that I will see every one of you +damned before I'll do it." + +Mr. Francis Vanringham rose with a little bow. "You have insulted both +womanhood and the Established Church by the spitting out of that ribald +oath; and me you have with equal levity wronged by the theft of my +affianced bride. I am only a play-actor, but in inflicting an insult a +gentleman must either lift his inferior to his own station or else forfeit +his gentility. I wear a sword, Captain Audaine. Heyho, will you grant me +the usual satisfaction?" + +"My fascinating comedian," said I, "if 'tis a fight you are desirous of, +I can assure you that in my present state I would cross swords with a +costermonger, or the devil, or the Archbishop of Canterbury, with equal +impartiality. But scarcely in the view of a lady, and, therefore, as you +boast the greater influence in that quarter, will you kindly advise the +withdrawal of yonder unexpected addition to my family?" + +"There's an inner room," says he, pointing to the door behind me; and I +held it open as my wife swept through. + +"You are the epitome of selfishness," she flung out, in passing; "for had +you possessed an ounce of gallantry, you would long ago have freed me from +this odious marriage." + +"Sure, madam," I returned, with a _congee_; "and is it not rather a +compliment that I so willingly forfeit a superlunar bliss in order to +retain the pleasure of your society?" + +She sniffed, and I closed the door; and within the moment the two men fell +upon me, from the rear, and presently had me trussed like a fowl and bound +with that abominable Parson's coil of rope. + + +V + +"Believe me," says Mr. Vanringham, now seated upon the table and indolently +dangling his heels,--the ecclesiastical monstrosity, having locked the +door upon Mrs. Audaine, had occupied a chair and was composedly smoking +a churchwarden,--"believe me, I lament the necessity of this uncouth +proceeding. But heyho! man is a selfish animal. You take me, sir, my +affection for yonder venerable lady does not keep me awake o' nights; yet +is a rich marriage the only method to amend my threadbare fortunes, so that +I cheerfully avail myself of her credulity. By God!" cried he, with a quick +raising of the voice, "to-morrow I had been a landed gentleman but for you, +you blundering omadhaun! And is a shabby merry-andrew from the devil knows +where to pop in and spoil the prettiest plot was ever hatched?" + +'Twas like a flare of lightning, this sudden outburst of malignity; for +you saw in it, quintessentialized, the man's stark and venomous hatred of +a world which had ill-used him; and 'twas over with too as quickly as the +lightning, yielding to the pleasantest smile imaginable. Meanwhile you are +to picture me, and my emotions, as I lay beneath his oscillating toes, +entirely helpless. "'Twas not that I lacked the courage to fight you," he +continues, "nor the skill, either. But there is always the possibility +that by some awkward thrust or other you might deprive the stage of a +distinguished ornament; and as a sincere admirer of my genius, I must, +in decency, avoid such risks. 'Twas necessary to me, of course, that you +be got out of this world speedily, since a further continuance of your +blunderings would interfere with my plans for the future; having gone thus +far, I cannot reasonably be expected to cede my interest in the Marchioness +and her estate. Accordingly I decide upon the handiest method and tip the +wink to Quarmby here; the lady quits the apartment in order to afford us +opportunity to settle our pretensions, with cutlery as arbiter; and she +will return to find your perforated carcass artistically displayed in +yonder extremity of the room. Slain in an affair of honor, my dear Captain! +The disputed damsel will think none the worse of me, a man of demonstrated +valor and affection; Quarmby and I'll bury you in the cellar; and being +freed from her recent and unfortunate alliance, my esteemed Dorothy will +seek consolation in the embraces of a more acceptable spouse. Confess, sir, +is it not a scheme of Arcadian simplicity?" + +'Twas the most extraordinary sensation to note the utterly urbane and +cheerful countenance with which Mr. Vanringham disclosed the meditated +atrocity. This unprincipled young man was about to run me through with no +more compunction than a naturalist in the act of pinning a new beetle among +his collection may momentarily be aware of. + +Then my quickened faculties were stirred on a sudden, and for the first +time I opened my mouth. Whatever claim I had upon Vanringham, there was no +need to advance it now. + +"You were about to say--?" he queried. + +"I was about to relieve a certain surplusage of emotion," I retorted, "by +observing that I regret to find you, sir, a chattering, lean-witted fool--a +vain and improvident fool!" + +"Harsh words, my Captain," says he, with lifted eyebrows. + +"O Lord, sir, but not of an undeserved asperity!" I returned, "D'ye think +the Marchioness, her flighty head crammed with scraps of idiotic romance, +would elope without regard for the canons of romance? Not so; depend upon +it, a letter was left upon her pin-cushion announcing her removal with +you, and in the most approved heroic style arraigning the obduracy of her +unsympathetic grandchildren. D'ye think Gerald Allonby will not follow +her? Sure, and he will; and the proof is," I added, "that you may hear his +horses yonder on the heath, as I heard them some moments ago." + +Vanringham leaped to the floor and stood thus, all tension. He raised +clenched, quivering hands toward the ceiling. "O King of Jesters!" he +cried, in horrid blasphemy; and then again, "O King of Jesters!" + +And by this time men were shouting without, and at the door there was a +prodigious and augmenting hammering. And the Parson wrung his hands and +began to shake like a dish of jelly in a thunder-storm. + +"Captain Audaine," Mr. Vanringham resumed, with more tranquillity, "you are +correct. Clidamira and Parthenissa would never have fled into the night +without leaving a note upon the pin-cushion. The folly I kindled in your +wife's addled pate has proven my ruin. Remains to make the best of Hobson's +choice." He unlocked the door. "Gentlemen, gentlemen!" says he, with +deprecating hand, "surely this disturbance is somewhat _outre_, a trifle +misplaced, upon the threshold of a bridal-chamber?" + +Then Gerald Allonby thrust into the room, followed by Lord Humphrey Degge, +[Footnote: I must in this place entreat my reader's profound discredit of +any aspersions I may rashly seem to cast upon this honest gentleman, whose +friendship I to-day esteem as invaluable; but I wrote, as always, _currente +calamo_, and the above was penned in an amorous misery, _sub Venire_, be +it remembered; and in such cases a wrong bias is easily hung upon the +mind.--F.A.] my abhorred rival for Dorothy's affection, and two attendants. + +"My grandmother!" shrieks Gerald. "Villain, what have you done with my +grandmother?" + +"The query were more fitly put," Vanringham retorts, "to the lady's +husband." And he waves his hand toward me. + +Thereupon the new-comers unbound me with various exclamations of wonder. +"And now," I observed, "I would suggest that you bestow upon Mr. Vanringham +and yonder blot upon the Church of England the bonds from which I have been +recently manumitted, or, at the very least, keep a vigilant watch upon +those more than suspicious characters, the while that I narrate the +surprising events of this evening." + + +VI + +Subsequently I made a clean breast of affairs to Gerald and Lord Humphrey +Degge. They heard me with attentive, even sympathetic, countenances; but by +and by the face of Lord Humphrey brightened as he saw a not unformidable +rival thus jockeyed from the field; and when I had ended, Gerald rose and +with an oath struck his open palm upon the table. + +"This is the most fortunate coincidence," he swears, "that I have ever +known of. I come prepared to find my grandmother the wife of a beggarly +play-actor, and I discover that, to the contrary, she has contracted an +alliance with a gentleman for whom I entertain sincere affection." + +"Surely," I cried, aghast, "you cannot deliberate acceptance of this +iniquitous and inadvertent match!" + +"What is your meaning, Captain Audaine?" says the boy, sharply. "What other +course is possible?"' + +"O Lord!" said I, "after to-night's imbroglio I have nothing to observe +concerning the possibility of anything; but if this marriage prove a legal +one, I am most indissuadably resolved to rectify matters without delay in +the divorce court." + +Now Gerald's brows were uglily compressed. "A divorce," said he, with an +extreme of deliberation, "means the airing of to-night's doings in the +open. I take it, 'tis the duty of a man of honor to preserve the reputation +of his grandmother stainless; whether she be a housemaid or the Queen +of Portugal, her frailties are equally entitled to endurance, her +eccentricities to toleration: can a gentleman, then, sanction any +proceeding of a nature calculated to make his grandmother the +laughing-stock of England? The point is a nice one." + +"For, conceive," said Lord Humphrey, with the most knavish grin I ever knew +a human countenance to pollute itself with, "that the entire matter will be +convoyed by the short-hand writers to the public press, and after this will +be hawked about the streets; and that the venders will yell particulars of +your grandmother's folly under your very windows; and that you must hear +them in impotence, and that for some months the three kingdoms will hear of +nothing else. Gad, I quite feel for you, my dear." + +"I have fallen into a nest of madmen," I cried. "You know, both of you, how +profoundly I adore Mr. Gerald's sister, the accomplished and bewitching +Miss Allonby; and in any event, I demand of you, as rational beings, is +it equitable that I be fettered for life to an old woman's apron-strings +because a doctor of divinity is parsimonious of his candles?" + +But Gerald had drawn with a flourish. "You have repudiated my kinswoman," +says he, "and you cannot deny me the customary satisfaction. Harkee, my +fine fellow, Dorothy will marry my friend Lord Humphrey if she will be +advised by me; or if she prefer it, she may marry the Man in the Iron Mask +or the piper that played before Moses, so far as I am concerned: but as for +you, I hereby offer you your choice between quitting this apartment as my +grandfather or as a corpse." + +"I won't fight you!" I shouted. "Keep the boy off, Degge!" But when the +infuriate lad rushed upon me, I was forced, in self-protection, to draw, +and after a brief engagement to knock his sword across the room. + +"Gerald," I pleaded, "for the love of reason, consider! I cannot fight you. +Heaven knows this tragic farce hath robbed me of all pretension toward your +sister, and that I am just now but little better than a madman; yet 'tis +her blood which exhilarates your veins, and with such dear and precious +fluid I cannot willingly imbrue my hands. Nay, you are no swordsman, +lad,--keep off!" + +And there I had blundered irretrievably. + +"No swordsman! By God, I fling the words in your face, Frank Audaine! must +I send the candlestick after them?" And within the instant he had caught +up his weapon and had hurled himself upon me, in an abandoned fury. I had +not moved. The boy spitted himself upon my sword and fell with a horrid +gasping. + +"You will bear me witness, Lord Humphrey," said I, "that the quarrel was +not of my provokement." + +But at this juncture the outer door reopened and Dorothy tripped into the +room, preceding Lady Allonby and Mr. George Erwyn. They had followed in the +family coach to dissuade the Marchioness from her contemplated match by +force or by argument, as the cat might jump; and so it came about that my +dear mistress and I stared at each other across her brother's lifeless +body. + +And 'twas in this poignant moment I first saw her truly. In a storm you +have doubtless had some utterly familiar scene leap from the darkness, +under the lash of lightning, and be for the instant made visible and +strange; and I beheld her with much that awful clarity. Formerly 'twas her +beauty had ensnared me, and this I now perceived to be a fortuitous and +happy medley of color and glow and curve, indeed, yet nothing more. 'Twas +the woman I loved, not her trappings; and her eyes were no more part of her +than were the jewels in her ears. But the sweet mirth of her, the brave +heart, the clean soul, the girl herself, how good and generous and kind +and tender,--'twas this that I now beheld, and knew that this, too, was +lost;--and, in beholding, the little love of yesterday fled whimpering +before the sacred passion which had possessed my being. And I began to +laugh. + +"My dear," said I, "'twas to-night that you promised me your answer, and +to-night you observe in me alike your grandfather and your brother's +murderer." + + +VII + +Lady Allonby fell to wringing her hands, but Dorothy had knelt beside the +prostrate form and was inspecting the ravages of my fratricidal sword. "Oh, +fy! fy!" says she immediately, and wrinkles her saucy nose; "had none of +you the sense to perceive that Gerald was tipsy? And as for the wound, 'tis +only a scratch here on the left shoulder. Get water, somebody." And her +command being obeyed, she cleansed the hurt composedly and bandaged it with +the ruffle of her petticoat. + +Meanwhile we hulking men stood thick about her, fidgeting and foolishly +gaping like a basket of fish; and presently a sibilance of relief went +about our circle as Gerald opened his eyes. "Sister," says he, with a +profoundly tragic face, "remember--remember that I perished to preserve the +honor of our family." + +"To preserve a fiddlestick!" said my adored Dorothy. And, rising, she +confronted me, a tinted statuette of decision. "Now, Frank," says she, "I +would like to know the meaning of this nonsense." + +And thereupon, for the second time, I recounted the dreadful and huddled +action of the night. + +When I had ended, "The first thing," says she, "is to let Grandmother out +of that room. And the second is to show me the Parson." This was done; the +Dowager entered in an extremity of sulkiness, and the Parson, on being +pointed out, lowered his eyes and intensified his complexion. + +"As I anticipated," says my charmer, "you are, one and all, a parcel of +credulous infants. 'Tis a parson, indeed, but merely the parson out of +Vanbrugh's _Relapse_; only last Friday, sir, we heartily commended your +fine performance. Why, Frank, the man is one of the play-actors." + +"I fancy," Mr. Vanringham here interpolates, "that I owe the assembled +company some modicum of explanation. 'Tis true that at the beginning of +our friendship I had contemplated matrimony with our amiable Marchioness, +but, I confess, 'twas the lady's property rather than her person which was +the allure. And reflection dissuaded me; a legal union left me, a young +and not unhandsome man, irrevocably fettered to an old woman; whereas a +mock-marriage afforded an eternal option to compound the match--for a +consideration--with the lady's relatives, to whom, I had instinctively +divined, her alliance with me would prove distasteful. Accordingly I +had availed myself of my colleague's skill [Footnote: I witnessed this +same Quarmby's hanging in 1754, and for a burglary, I think, with an +extraordinary relish.--F.A.] in the portrayal of clerical parts rather than +resort to any parson whose authority was unrestricted by the footlights. +And accordingly--" + +"And accordingly my marriage," I interrupted, "is not binding?" + +"I can assure you," he replied, "that you might trade your lawful right in +the lady for a twopenny whistle and not lose by the bargain." + +"And what about my marriage?" says the Marchioness--"the marriage which was +never to be legalized?--'twas merely that you might sell me afterward, like +so much mutton, was it, you jumping-jack--!" + +But I spare you her ensuing gloss upon this text. + +The man heard her through, without a muscle twitching. "It is more than +probable," he conceded, "that I have merited each and every fate your +Ladyship is pleased to invoke. Indeed, I consider the extent of your +distresses to be equaled only by that of your vocabulary. Yet by ordinary +the heart of woman is not obdurate, and upon one lady here I have some +claim--" + +Dorothy had drawn away from him, with an odd and frightened cry. "Not upon +me, sir! I never saw you except across the footlights. You know I never saw +you except across the footlights, Mr. Vanringham!" + +Fixedly he regarded her, with a curious yet not unpleasing smile. "I am +the more unfortunate," he said, at last. "Nay, 'twas to Lady Allonby I +addressed my appeal." + +The person he named had been whispering with George Erwyn, but now she +turned toward the actor. "Heavens!" said Lady Allonby, "to think I should +be able to repay you this soon! La, of course, you are at liberty, Mr. +Vanringham, and we may treat the whole series of events as a frolic +suited to the day. For I am under obligations to you, and, besides, your +punishment would breed a scandal, and, above all, anything is preferable to +being talked about in the wrong way." + +Having reasons of my own, I was elated by the upshot of this rather +remarkable affair. Yet in justice to my own perspicacity, I must declare +that it occurred to me, at this very time, that Mr. Vanringham had proven +himself not entirely worthy of unlimited confidence, I reflected, however, +that I had my instructions, and that, if a bad king may prove a good +husband, a knave may surely carry a letter with fidelity, the more so if it +be to his interest to do it. + + +VIII + +I rode back to Tunbridge in the coach, with Dorothy at my side and with +Gerald recumbent upon the front seat,--where, after ten minutes' driving +the boy very philanthropically fell asleep. + +"And you have not," I immediately asserted--"after all, you have not given +me the answer which was to-night to decide whether I be of all mankind the +most fortunate or the most miserable. And 'tis nearing twelve." + +"What choice have I?" she murmured; "after to-night is it not doubly +apparent that you need some one to take care of you? And, besides, this is +your eighth proposal, and the ninth I had always rather meant to accept, +because I have been in love with you for two whole weeks." + +My heart stood still. And shall I confess that for an instant my wits, +too, paused to play the gourmet with my emotions? She sat beside me in the +darkness, you understand, waiting, mine to touch. And everywhere the world +was filled with beautiful, kind people, and overhead God smiled down upon +His world, and a careless seraph had left open the door of Heaven, so that +quite a deal of its splendor flooded the world about us. And the snoring +of Gerald was now inaudible because of a stately music which was playing +somewhere. + +"Frank--!" she breathed. And I noted that her voice was no less tender than +her lips. + + + + +IV + +THE RHYME TO PORRINGER + + +_As Played at Tunbridge Wells, April 2, 1750_ + + "_Ye gods, why are not hearts first paired above, + But still some interfere in others' love, + Ere each for each by certain marks are known? + You mould them up in haste, and drop them down, + And while we seek what carelessly you sort, + You sit in state, and make our pains your sport._" + + +DRAMATIS PERSONAE + +CAPTAIN AUDAINE, an ingenious, well-accomplished gentleman. +LORD HUMPHREY DEGGE, an airy young gentleman, loves Miss Allonby for her +money. +VANRINGHAM, emissary and confederate of Audaine. +MISS ALLONBY, a young lady of wit and fortune. + +ATTENDANTS to Lord Humphrey, Etc. + + +SCENE + +Tunbridge Wells, first in and about Lord Humphrey's lodgings, then shifting +to a drawing-room in Lady Allonby's villa. + + +THE RHYME TO PORRINGER + + +PROEM:--_Merely to Serve as Intermezzo_ + +Next morning Captain Audaine was closeted with Mr. Vanringham in the +latter's apartments at the _Three Gudgeons_. I abridge the Captain's +relation of their interview, and merely tell you that it ended in the +actor's looking up, with a puzzled face, from a certain document. + +"You might have let me have a whiff of this," Mr. Vanringham began. "You +might have breathed, say, a syllable or two last night--" + +"I had my instructions, sir, but yesterday," replied the Captain; "and +surely, Mr. Vanringham, to have presumed last night upon my possession of +this paper, so far as to have demanded any favor of you, were unreasonable, +even had it not savored of cowardice. For, as it has been very finely +observed, it is the nicest part of commerce in the world, that of doing and +receiving benefits. O Lord, sir! there are so many thousand circumstances, +with respect to time, person, and place, which either heighten or allay the +value of the obligation--" + +"I take your point," said the other, with some haste, "and concede that you +are, beyond any reasonable doubt, in the right. Within the hour I am off." + +"Then all is well," said Captain Audaine. + +But he was wrong in this opinion, so wrong that I confute him by subjoining +his own account of what befell, somewhat later in the day. + + +I + +'Twas hard upon ten in the evening (the Captain estimates) when I left +Lady Culcheth's, [Footnote: Sir Henry Muskerry's daughter, of whom I have +already spoken, and by common consent an estimable lady and a person of +fine wit; but my infatuation for Lady Betty had by this time, after three +nights with her, been puffed out; and this fortunate extinction, through +the affair of the broken snuffbox, had left me now entirely indifferent to +all her raptures, panegyrics, and premeditated artlessnesses.--F. A.] and I +protest that at the time there was not a happier man in all Tunbridge than +Francis Audaine. + +"You haven't the king?" Miss Allonby was saying, as I made my adieus to the +company. "Then I play queen, knave, and ace, which gives me the game, Lord +Humphrey." + +And afterward she shuffled the cards and flashed across the room a glance +whose brilliance shamed the tawdry candles about her, and, as you can +readily conceive, roused a prodigious trepidation in my adoring breast. + +"Dorothy!--O Dorothy!" I said over and over again when I had reached the +street; and so went homeward with constant repetitions of her dear name. + +I suppose it was an idiotic piece of business; but you are to remember +that I loved her with an entire heart, and that, as yet, I could scarcely +believe the confession of a reciprocal attachment, which I had wrung from +her overnight, to the accompaniment of Gerald's snoring, had been other +than an unusually delectable and audacious dream upon the part of Frank +Audaine. + +I found it, then, as I went homeward, a heady joy to ponder on her +loveliness. Oh, the wonder of her voice, that is a love-song! cried my +heart. Oh, the candid eyes of her, more beautiful than the June heavens, +more blue than the very bluest speedwell-flower! Oh, the tilt of her tiny +chin, and the incredible gold of her hair, and the quite unbelievable +pink-and-white of her little flower-soft face! And, oh, the scrap of +crimson that is her mouth. + +In a word, my pulses throbbed with a sort of divine insanity, and Frank +Audaine was as much out of his senses as any madman now in Bedlam, and as +deliriously perturbed as any lover is by ordinary when he meditates upon +the object of his affections. + +But there was other work than sonneting afoot that night, and shortly I +set about it. Yet such was my felicity that I went to my nocturnal labors +singing. Yes, it rang in my ears, somehow, that silly old Scotch song, and +under my breath I hummed odd snatches of it as I went about the night's +business. + +Sang I: + + "Ken ye the rhyme to porringer? + Ken ye the rhyme to porringer? + King James the Seventh had ae daughter, + And he gave her to an Oranger. + + "Ken ye how he requited him? + Ken ye how he requited him? + The dog has into England come, + And ta'en the crown in spite of him! + + "The rogue he salna keep it lang, + To budge we'll make him fain again; + We'll hang him high upon a tree, + And King James shall hae his ain again!" + + +II + +Well! matters went smoothly enough at the start. With a diamond Vanringham +dexterously cut out a pane of glass, so that we had little difficulty in +opening the window; and I climbed into a room black as a pocket, leaving +him without to act as a sentinel, since, so far as I could detect, the +house was now untenanted. + +But some twenty minutes later, when I had finally succeeded in forcing the +escritoire I found in the back room upon the second story, I heard the +street door unclose. And I had my candle extinguished in that self same +instant. You can conceive that 'twas with no pleasurable anticipation I +peered into the hall, for I was fairly trapped. I saw some five or six men +of an ugly aspect, who carried among them a burden, the nature of which I +could not determine in the uncertain light. But I heaved a sigh of relief +as they bore their cargo past me, to the front room, (which opened on the +one I occupied), without apparent recognition of my presence. + +"Now," thinks I, "is the time for my departure." And having already +selected the papers I had need of from the rifled desk, I was about to run +for it, when I heard a well-known voice. + +"Rat the parson!" it cried; "he should have been here an hour ago. Here's +the door left open for him, endangering the whole venture, and whey-face +han't plucked up heart to come! Do some of you rogues fetch him without +delay; and do all of you meet me to-morrow at the _Mitre_, to be paid in +full for this business, before reporting to his Grace." + +"Here," thinks I, "is beyond doubt a romance." And as the men tumbled +down-stairs and into the street, I resolved to see the adventure through, +by the light of those candles which were now burning in the next room. + +I waited for perhaps ten minutes, during which period I was aware of divers +movements near at hand; and, judging that in any case there was but one +man's anger to be apprehended, I crept toward the intervening door and +found it luckily ajar. + +So I peered through the crack into the adjoining room, and there, as I had +anticipated, discovered Lord Humphrey Degge, whom I had last seen at Lady +Culcheth's wrangling over a game of _ecarte_ with the fairest antagonist +the universe could afford. + +Just now my Lord was in a state of high emotion, and the cause of it was +evident when I perceived his ruffians had borne into the house a swooning +lady, whom merciful unconsciousness had rendered oblivious to her present +surroundings, and whose wrists his Lordship was vigorously slapping in the +intervals between his frequent applications to her nostrils of a flask, +which, as I more lately learned, contained sal volatile. + +Here was an unlucky turn, since I had no desire to announce my whereabouts, +my business in the house being of a sort that necessitated secrecy; +whereas, upon the other hand, I could not but misdoubt my Lord's intention +toward the unknown fair was of discreditable kinship, and such as a +gentleman might not countenance with self-esteem. + +Accordingly I devoted the moments during which the lady was recovering +from her swoon, to serious reflection concerning the course that I should +preferably adopt. But now, Miss came to, and, as is the custom of all +females similarly situated, rubbed her eyes and said, "Where am I?" + +And when she rose from the divan I saw that 'twas my adored Dorothy. + +"In the presence of your infatuated slave," says my Lord. "Ah, divine Miss +Allonby--!" + +But being now aware of her deplorable circumstances, she began to weep, +and, in spite of the amorous rhetoric with which his Lordship was prompt to +comfort her, rebuked him for unmanly conduct, with sublimity and fire, and +depicted the horrors of her present predicament in terms that were both +just and elegant. + +From their disjointed talk I soon determined that, Lord Humphrey's suit +being rejected by my angel, he had laid a trap for her (by bribing her +coachman, as I subsequently learned), and had so far succeeded in his +nefarious scheme that she, on leaving Lady Culcheth's, had been driven +to this house, in the conviction she rode homeward; and this course my +Lord endeavored to justify, with a certain eloquence, and attributed the +irregularity of his behavior solely to the colossal vehemence of his +affection. + +His oratory, however, was of little avail, for Dorothy told him plainly +that she had rather hear the protestations of a toad than listen to his far +more nauseous flattery; and bade him at once restore her to her natural +guardians. + +"_Ma charmante_," said he, "to-morrow your good step-mother may, if you +will, share with your husband the privilege of saluting Lady Humphrey +Degge; but as for Miss Allonby, I question if in the future her dearest +friends are likely to see much of her." + +"What do you mean?" cries she. + +"That the parson will be here directly," said he. + +"Infamous!" she observes; "and is the world run mad, that these extempore +weddings should be foisted upon every woman in the Allonby connection!" + +"Ah, but, my dear," he answered airily, "'twas those two fiascos which +begot my notion, and yet hearten me. For in every approved romance the +third adventurer gets the victory; so that I am, I take it, predestinate to +win where Vanringham and Rokesle failed." + +She did not chop logic with him, but instead retorted in a more primitive +fashion by beginning to scream at the top of her voice. + +I doubt if any man of honor was ever placed under a more great embarrass. +Yonder was the object of my devotion, exposed to all the diabolical +machinations of a heartless villain; and here was I concealed in my Lord's +bedroom, his desk broken open, and his papers in my pocket. To remain quiet +was impossible, since 'twas to expose her to a fate worse than death; yet +to reveal myself was to confess Frank Audaine a thief, and to lose her +perhaps beyond redemption. + +Then I thought of the mask which I had brought in case of emergency; and, +clapping it on, resolved to brazen out the affair. Meanwhile I saw all +notions of gallantry turned topsy-turvy, for my Lord was laughing quietly, +while my adored Dorothy called aloud upon the name of her Maker. + +"The neighborhood is not unaccustomed to such sounds," said he, "and I +hardly think we need fear any interruption. I must tell you, my dear +creature, you have, by an evil chance, arrived in a most evil locality, for +this quarter of the town is the devil's own country, and he is scarcely +like to make you free of it." + +"O Lord, sir!" said I, and pushed the door wide open, "surely you forget +that the devil is a gentleman?" + + +III + +Had I dropped a hand-grenade into the apartment the astonishment of its +occupants would not have been excessive. My Lord's face, as he clapped +his hand to his sword, was neither tranquil nor altogether agreeable to +contemplate; but as for Dorothy, she gave a frightened little cry, and ran +toward the masked intruder with a piteous confidence which wrung my heart. + +"The devil!" says my Lord. + +"Not precisely," I amended, and bowed in my best manner, "though 'tis +undeniable I come to act as his representative." + +"Oh, joy to your success!" his Lordship sneered. + +"Harkee, sir," said I, "as you, with perfect justice, have stated, this is +the devil's stronghold, and hereabouts his will is paramount; and, as I +have had the honor to add, the devil is a gentleman. Sure, and as such, he +cannot be expected to countenance your present behavior? Nay, never fear! +Lucifer, already up to the ears in the affairs of this mundane sphere, +lacks leisure to express his disapproval in sulphuric person. He tenders +his apologies, sir, and sends in his stead your servant, with whose +capabilities he is indifferently acquainted." + +"To drop this mummery," says Lord Humphrey, "what are you doing in my +lodgings?" + +"O Lord, sir!" I responded, "I came thither, I confess, without invitation. +And with equal candor I will admit that my present need is of your +Lordship's banknotes and jewels, and such-like trifles, rather than--you +force me, sir, to say it,--rather than of your company." + +Thus speaking, I drew and placed myself on guard, while my Lord gasped. + +"You're the most impudent rogue," says he, after he had recovered himself a +little, "that I have had the privilege of meeting--" + +"Your Lordship is all kindness," I protested. + +"--but your impudence is worth the price of whatever you may have pilfered. +Go, my good man--or devil, if you so prefer to style yourself! Tell Lucifer +that he is well served; and obligingly return to the infernal regions +without delay. For, as you have doubtless learned, Miss and I have many +private matters to discuss. And, gad, Mr. Moloch, [Footnote: A deity of, +I believe, Ammonitish origin. His traditional character as represented +by our immortal Milton is both taking to the fancy and finely romantic; +and is, I am informed, no less remarkable for many happy turns of speech +than for conformity throughout to the most famous legends of Talmudic +fabrication.--F.A.] pleasant as is your conversation, you must acknowledge +I can't allow evil spirits about the house without getting it an ill +reputation. So pardon me if I exorcise you with this." + +He spoke boldly, and, as he ended, tossed me a purse. I let it lie where it +fell, for I had by no means ended my argument. + +"Yet, sir," said I, "my errand, which began with the acquisition of your +pins, studs and other jewelry, now reaches toward treasure far more +precious--" + +"Enough!" he cried, impatiently, "Begone! and do you render thanks--that my +present business is so urgent as to prevent my furnishing the rope which +will one day adorn your neck." + +"That's as may be," quoth I; "and, indeed, I doubt if I could abide +drowning, for 'tis a damp, unwholesome, and very permanent sort of death. +But my fixed purpose, to cut short all debate, is to escort Miss Allonby +homeward." + +"Come," sneers my Lord,--"come, Mr. Moloch, I have borne with your +insolence for a quarter of an hour--" + +"Twenty minutes," said I, after consulting my watch. + +"--but I mean to put up with it no longer; and in consequence I take the +boorish liberty of suggesting that this is none of your affair." + +"Good sir," I conceded, "your Lordship speaks with considerable justice, +and we must leave the final decision to Miss here." + +I bowed toward her. In her face there was a curious bewilderment that +made me fear lest, for all my mask, for all my unnatural intonations, and +for all the room's half-light, my worshipped mistress had come near to +recognizing this caught thief. + +"Miss Allonby," said I, in a falsetto voice which trembled, "since I am +unknown to you, may I trust you will permit me to present myself? My +name--though, indeed, I have a multitude of names--is for the occasion +Frederick Thomasson. With my father's appellation and estates I cannot +accommodate you, for the reason that a mystery attaches to his identity. +As for my mother, let it suffice to say that she was a vivacious brunette +of a large acquaintance, and generally known to the public as Black Moll +O'Reilly. I began life as a pickpocket. Since then I have so far improved +my natural gifts that the police are flattering enough to value my person +at several hundred pounds. My rank in society, as you perceive, is not +exalted; yet, if my luck by any chance should fail, I do not question that +I shall, upon some subsequent Friday, move in loftier circles than any +nobleman who happens at the time to be on Tyburn Hill.--So much for my poor +self. And since by this late hour Lady Allonby is beyond doubt beginning to +grow uneasy, let us have done with further exposition, and remember that +'tis high time you selected an escort to her residence. May I implore that +you choose between the son of the Marquis of Venour and Black Molly's +bastard?" + +She looked us over,--first one, then the other. More lately she laughed; +and if I had never seen her before, I could have found it in my heart to +love her for the sweet insolence of her demeanor. + +"After all," said my adored Dorothy, "I prefer the rogue who when he goes +about his knaveries has at least the decency to wear a mask." + +"That, my Lord," said I, "is fairly conclusive; and so we will be +journeying." + +"Over my dead body!" says he. + +"Sure, and what's beneath the feet," I protested, "is equally beneath +consideration." + +The witticism stung him like a wasp, and, with an oath, he drew, as I was +heartily glad to observe, for I cannot help thinking that when it comes to +the last pinch, and one gentleman is excessively annoyed by the existence +of another, steel is your only arbiter, and charitable allowances for the +dead make the one rational peroration. So we crossed blades; and, pursuing +my usual tactics, I began upon a flow of words, which course, as I have +learned by old experience, is apt to disconcert an adversary far more than +any trick of the sword can do. + +I pressed him sorely, and he continued to give way, but clearly for +tactical purposes, and without permitting the bright flash of steel that +protected him to swerve an instant from the proper line. + +"Miss Allonby," said I, growing impatient, "have you never seen a venomous +insect pinned to the wall? In that case, I pray you to attend more closely. +For one has only to parry--thus! And to thrust--in this fashion! And +behold, the thing is done!" + +In fact, having been run through the chest, my Lord was for the moment +affixed to the panelling at the extreme end of the apartment, where he +writhed, much in the manner of a cockchafer which mischievous urchins have +pinned to a card,--his mien and his gesticulations, however, being rather +more suggestive of the torments of the damned, as they are so strikingly +depicted by the Italian Dante. [Footnote: I allude, of course, to the +famous Florentine, who excels no less in his detailed depictions of +infernal anguish than in his eloquent portrayal of the graduated and +equitable emoluments of an eternal glorification.--F.A.] He tumbled in a +heap, though, when I sheathed my sword and bowed toward my charmer. + +"Miss Allonby," said I, "thus quickly ends this evil quarter of an hour; +and with, equal expedition, I think, should we be leaving this evil quarter +of the town." + +She had watched the combat with staring and frightened eyes. Now she had +drawn nearer, and she looked curiously at her over-presumptuous lover where +he had fallen. + +"Have you killed him?" she asked, in a hushed voice. + +"O Lord, no!" I protested. "The life of a peer's son is too valuable a +matter; he will be little the worse for it in a week." + +"The dog!" cries she, overcome with pardonable indignation at the affront +which the misguided nobleman had put upon her; and afterward, with a +ferocity the more astounding in an individual whose demeanor was by +ordinary of an aspect so amiable and so engaging, she said, "Oh, the lewd +thieving dog!" + +"My adorable Miss Allonby," said I, "do not, I pray you, thus slander the +canine species! Meanwhile, permit me to remind you that 'tis inexpedient +to loiter in these parts, for the parson will presently be at hand; and if +it be to inter rather than to marry Lord Humphrey--well, after all, the +peerage is a populous estate! But, either way, time presses." + +"Come!" said she, and took my arm; and together we went down-stairs and +into the street. + + +IV + +On the way homeward she spoke never a word. Vanringham had made a hasty +flitting when my Lord's people arrived, so that we saw nothing of him. But +when we had come safely to Lady Allonby's villa, Dorothy began to laugh. + +"Captain Audaine," says she, in a wearied and scornful voice, "I know that +the hour is very late, yet there are certain matters to be settled between +as which will, I think, scarcely admit of delay. I pray you, then, grant me +ten minutes' conversation." + +She had known me all along, you see. Trust the dullest woman to play +Oedipus when love sets the riddle. So there was nothing to do save clap my +mask into my pocket and follow her, sheepishly enough, toward one of the +salons, where at Dorothy's solicitation a gaping footman made a light for +us. + +She left me there to kick my heels through a solitude of some moments' +extent. But in a while my dear mistress came into the room, with her arms +full of trinkets and knick-knacks, which she flung upon a table. + +"Here's your ring, Captain Audaine," says she, and drew it from her finger. +"I did not wear it long, did I? And here's the miniature you gave me, too. +I used to kiss it every night, you know. And here's a flower you dropped at +Lady Pevensey's. I picked it up--oh, very secretly!--because you had worn +it, you understand. And here's--" + +But at this point she fairly broke down; and she cast her round white arms +about the heap of trinkets, and strained them close to her, and bowed her +imperious golden head above them in anguish. + +"Oh, how I loved you--how I loved you!" she sobbed. "And all the while you +were only a common thief!" + +"Dorothy--!" I pleaded. + +"You shame me--you shame me past utterance!" she cried, in a storm of +mingled tears and laughter. "Here's this bold Captain Audaine, who comes to +Tunbridge from nobody knows where, and wins a maid's love, and proves in +the end a beggarly house-breaker! Mr. Garrick might make a mirthful comedy +of this, might he not?" Then she rose to her feet very stiffly. "Take your +gifts, Mr. Thief," says she, pointing,--"take them. And for God's sake let +me not see you again!" + +So I was forced to make a clean breast of it. + +"Dorothy," said I, "ken ye the rhyme to porringer?" But she only stared at +me through unshed tears. + +Presently, though, I hummed over the old song: + + "Ken ye the rhyme to porringer? + Ken ye the rhyme to porringer? + King James the Seventh had ae daughter, + And he gave her to an Oranger. + +"And the Oranger filched his crown," said I, "and drove King James--God +bless him!--out of his kingdom. This was a while and a half ago, my dear; +but Dutch William left the stolen crown to Anne, and Anne, in turn, left it +to German George. So that now the Elector of Hanover reigns at St. James's, +while the true King's son must skulk in France, with never a roof to +shelter him. And there are certain gentlemen, Dorothy, who do not consider +that this is right." + +"You are a Jacobite?" said she. "Well! and what have your politics to do +with the matter?" + +"Simply that Lord Humphrey is not of my way of thinking, my dearest dear. +Lord Humphrey--pah!--this Degge is Ormskirk's spy, I tell you! He followed +Vanringham to Tunbridge on account of our business. And to-day, when +Vanringham set out for Avignon, he was stopped a mile from the Wells by +some six of Lord Humphrey's fellows, disguised as highwaymen, and all his +papers were stolen. Oho, but Lord Humphrey is a thrifty fellow: so when +Ormskirk puts six bandits at his disposal he employs them in double infamy, +to steal you as well as Vanringham's despatches. To-morrow they would have +been in Ormskirk's hands. And then--" I paused to allow myself a whistle. + +She came a little toward me, in the prettiest possible glow of +bewilderment, "I do not understand," she murmured. "Oh, Frank, Frank, for +the love of God, beware of trusting Vanringham in anything! And you are not +a thief, after all? Are you really not named Thomasson?" + +"I am most assuredly not Frederick Thomasson," said I, "nor do I know if +any such person exists, for I never heard the name before to-night. Yet, in +spite of this, I am an unmitigated thief. Why, d'ye not understand? What +Vanringham carried was a petition from some two hundred Scotch and English +gentlemen that our gracious Prince Charlie be pleased to come over and +take back his own from the Elector. 'Twas rebellion, flat rebellion, and +the very highest treason! Had Ormskirk seen the paper, within a month our +heads had all been blackening over Temple Bar. So I stole it,--I, Francis +Audaine, stole it in the King's cause, God bless him! 'Twas burglary, no +less, but it saved two hundred lives, my own included; and I look to be a +deal older than I am before I regret the deed with any sincerity." + +Afterward I showed her the papers, and then burned them one by one over a +candle. She said nothing. So by and by I turned toward her with a little +bow. + +"Madam," said I, "you have forced my secret from me. I know that your +family is staunch on the Whig side; and yet, ere the thief goes, may he not +trust you will ne'er betray him?" + +And now she came to me, all penitence and dimples. + +"But it was you who said you were a thief," my dear mistress pointed out. + +"O Lord, madam!" said I, "'twas very necessary that Degge should think me +so. A house-breaker they would have only hanged, but a Jacobite they would +have hanged and quartered afterward." + +"Ah, Frank, do not speak of such fearful matters, but forgive me +instantly!" she wailed. + +And I was about to do so in what I considered the most agreeable and +appropriate manner when the madcap broke away from me, and sprang upon a +footstool and waved her fan defiantly. + +"Down with the Elector!" she cried, in her high, sweet voice. "Long live +King James!" + +And then, with a most lovely wildness of mien, she began to sing: + + "Ken ye the rhyme to porringer? + Ken ye the rhyme to porringer? + King James the Seventh had ae daughter--" + +until I interrupted her. For, "Extraordinary creature!" I pleaded, "you +will rouse the house." + +"I don't care! I intend to be a Jacobite if you are one!" + +"Eh, well," said I, "Frank Audaine is not the man to coerce his wife in a +political matter. Nevertheless, I know of a certain Jacobite who is not +unlikely to have a bad time of it if by any chance Lord Humphrey recognized +him to-night. Nay, Miss, you may live to be a widow yet." + +"But he didn't recognize you. And if he did"--she snapped her +fingers,--"why, we'll fight him again, you and I. Won't we, my dear? For +he stole our secret, you know. And he stole me, too. Very pretty behavior, +wasn't it?" And here Miss, Allonby stamped the tiniest, the most +infinitesimal of red-heeled slippers. + + "The rogue he didna keep me lang, + To budge we made him fain again-- + +"that's you, Frank, and your great, long sword. And now: + + "We'll hang him high, upon a tree, + And King Frank shall hae his ain again!" + +Afterward my adored Dorothy jumped from the footstool, and came toward me, +lifting up the crimson trifle that she calls her mouth, "So take your own, +my king," she breathed, with a wonderful gesture of surrender. + +And a gentleman could do no less. + + + + +V + +ACTORS ALL + + +_As Played at Tunbridge Wells, April 3, 1750_ + +"_I am thinking if some little, filching, inquisitive poet should get my +story, and represent it to the stage, what those ladies who are never +precise but at a play would say of me now,--that I were a confident, coming +piece, I warrant, and they would damn the poor poet for libelling the +sex._" + + +DRAMATIS PERSONAE + +DUKE OF ORMSKIRK. + +COLONEL DENSTROUDE, } +SIR GRESLEY CARNE, } Gentlemen of the town. +MR. BABINGTON-HERLE, } + +VANRINGHAM, a play-actor and a Jacobite emissary. + +MR. LANGTON, secretary to Ormskirk. + +MISS ALLONBY, an heiress, loves Captain Audaine. + +LOTTRUM, maid to Miss Allonby. + +BENYON, MINCHIN, and OTHER SERVANTS to Ormskirk. + + +SCENE + +Tunbridge Wells, shifting from Ormskirk's lodgings at the _Mitre_ to +Vanringham's apartments in the _Three Gudgeons_. + + + + +ACTORS ALL + + +_PROEM.--To Explain Why the Heroine of This Comedy Must Wear Her Best_ + +I quit pilfering from the writings of Francis Audaine, since in the +happenings which now concern us he plays but a subsidiary part. The Captain +had an utter faith in decorum, and therefore it was, as he records, an +earth-staggering shock when the following day, on the Pantiles, in full +sight of the best company at the Wells, Captain Audaine was apprehended. He +met disaster like an old acquaintance, and hummed a scrap of song--"_O, gin +I were a bonny bird_,"--and shrugged; but when Miss Allonby, with whom he +had been chatting, swayed and fell, the Captain caught her in his arms, and +standing thus, turned angrily upon the emissaries of the law. + +"Look you, you rascals," said he, "you have spoiled a lady's afternoon with +your foolish warrant!" + +He then relinquished the unconscious girl to her brother's keeping, +tenderly kissed one insensate hand, and afterward strolled off to jail +_en route_ for a perfunctory trial and a subsequent traffic with the +executioner that Audaine did not care to think of. + +Tunbridge buzzed like a fly-trap with the ensuing rumors. The Captain +was at the head of a most heinous Jacobitical uprising. The great Duke +of Ormskirk was come hastily from London on the business. Highlanders +were swarming over the Border, ten thousand French troops had landed at +Pevensey, commanded by the Chevalier St. George in person, and twenty +thousand friars and pilgrims from Coruna had sailed for Milford Haven, +under the admiralty of young Henry Stuart. The King was locked in the +Tower; the King had been assassinated that morning by a Spanish monk, with +horse-pistols and a cast in his left eye; and the King and the Countess of +Yarmouth had escaped three days ago, in disguise, and were now on their way +to Hanover. + +These were the reports which went about Tunbridge, while Dorothy Allonby +wept a little and presently called for cold water and a powder-puff, and +afterward for a sedan chair. + + +I + +Miss Allonby found my Lord Duke of Ormskirk deep in an infinity of papers. +But at her entrance he rose and with a sign dismissed his secretary. + +It appears appropriate here to afford you some notion of Ormskirk's +exterior. I pilfer from Loewe's memoir of him, where Horace Calverley, who +first saw Ormskirk at about this time, is quoted: + +"His Grace was in blue-and-silver, which became him, though he is somewhat +stomachy for such conspicuous colors. A handsome man, I would have said, +honest but not particularly intelligent.... Walpole, in a fit of spleen, +once called him 'a porcelain sphinx,' and the phrase sticks; but, +indeed, there is more of the china-doll about him. He possesses the +same too-perfect complexion, his blue eyes have the same spick-and-span +vacuity; and the fact that the right orb is a trifle larger than its fellow +gives his countenance, in repose, much the same expression of placid +astonishment.... Very plump, very sleepy-looking, immaculate as a cat, you +would never have accorded him a second glance: covert whisperings that the +stout gentleman yonder is the great Duke of Ormskirk have, I think, taxed +human belief more than once during these ten years past." + +They said of Ormskirk that he manifested a certain excitement on the +day after Culloden, when he had seventy-two prisoners shot _en masse_, +[Footnote: But for all that, when, near Rossinish (see Loewe), he captured +Flora Macdonald and her ostensibly female companion, Ormskirk flatly +declined to recognize Prince Charles. "They may well call you the +Pretender, madam," he observed to "Bettie Burke,"--"since as concerns my +party you are the most desirable Pretender we could possibly imagine." And +thereupon he gave the Prince a pass out of Scotland.] but this was doubted; +and in any event, such _battues_ being comparatively rare, he by ordinary +appeared to regard the universe with a composed and feline indifference. + + +II + +"Child, child!" Ormskirk began, and made a tiny gesture of deprecation, "I +perceive you are about to appeal to my better nature, and so I warn you in +advance that the idiotic business has worked me into a temper absolutely +ogreish." + +"The Jacobite conspiracy, you mean?" said Miss Allonby. "Oh, I suppose +so. I am not particularly interested in such matters, though; I came, you +understand, for a warrant, or an order, or whatever you call it, for them +to let Frank out of that horrid filthy gaol." + +The Duke's face was gravely humorous as he gazed at her for a moment or two +in silence, "You know quite well," he said at last, "that I can give you +nothing of the sort." + +Miss Allonby said: "Upon my word, I never heard of such nonsense! How else +is he to take me to Lady Mackworth's ball to-night?" + +"It is deplorable," his Grace of Ormskirk conceded, "that Captain Audaine +should be thus snatched from circles which he, no doubt, adorns. Still, I +fear you must look for another escort; and frankly, child, if you will be +advised by me, you will permit us to follow out our present intentions and +take off his head--not a great deprivation when you consider he has so +plainly demonstrated its contents to be of such inferior quality." + +She had drawn close to him, with widening, pitiable eyes. "You mean, then," +she demanded, "that Frank's very life is in danger?" + +"This is unfair," the Duke complained. "You are about to go into hysterics +forthwith and thus bully me into letting the man escape. You are a minx. +You presume upon the fact that in the autumn I am to wed your kinswoman and +bosom companion, and that my affection for her is widely known to go well +past the frontier of common-sense; and also upon the fact that Marian will +give me the devil if I don't do exactly as you ask. I consider you to abuse +your power unconscionably, I consider you to be a second Delilah. However, +since you insist upon it, this Captain Audaine must, of course, be spared +the fate he very richly merits." + +Miss Allonby had seated herself beside a table and was pensively looking +up at him. "Naturally," she said, "Marian and I, between us, will badger +you into saving Frank. I shall not worry, therefore, and I must trust to +Providence, I suppose, to arrange matters so that the poor boy will not +catch his death of cold in your leaky gaol yonder. And now I would like to +be informed of what he has been most unjustly accused." + +"His crime," the Duke retorted, "is the not unusual one of being a fool. +Oh, I am candid! All Jacobites are fools. We gave the Stuarts a fair trial, +Heaven knows, and nobody but a fool would want them back." + +"I am not here to discuss politics," a dignified Miss Allonby stated, "but +simply to find out in what way Frank has been slandered." + +Ormskirk lifted one eyebrow. "It is not altogether a matter of politics. +Rather, as I see it, it is a matter of common-sense. Under the Stuarts +England was a prostitute among the nations, lackey in turn to Spain and +France and Italy; under the Guelph the Three-per-cents. are to-day at par. +The question as to which is preferable thus resolves itself into a choice +between common-sense and bedlamite folly. But, unhappily, you cannot argue +with a Jacobite: only four years ago Cumberland and Hawley and I rode from +Aberdeen to the Highlands and left all the intervening country bare as the +palm of your hand; I forget how many Jacobites we killed, but evidently not +enough to convince the others. Very well: we intend to have no more such +nonsense, and we must settle this particular affair by the simple device +of hanging or beheading every man-Jack concerned in it." He spoke without +vehemence--rather regretfully than otherwise. + +Miss Allonby was patient, yet resolute to keep to the one really important +point. "But what has Frank been accused of doing when it never even entered +his head?" + +"He has been conspiring," said the Duke, "and with conspicuous clumsiness. +It appears, child, that it was their common idiocy which of late brought +together some two hundred gentlemen in Lancashire. Being every one of them +most unmitigated fools, they desired that sot at Avignon to come over once +more and 'take back his own,' as the saying is. He would not stir without +definite assurances. So these men drew up a petition pledging their all to +the Chevalier's cause and--God help us!--signed it. I protest," the Duke +sighed, "I cannot understand these people! A couple of penstrokes, you +observe, and there is your life at the mercy of chance, at the disposal of +a puff of wind or the first blunderer who stumbles on the paper." + +"Doubtless that is entirely true," said Miss Allonby, "but what about +Frank?" + +Ormskirk shrugged his shoulders and began to laugh. "You are an +incomparable actress, you rogue you. But let us be candid, for all that, +since as it happens Lord Humphrey is not the only person in my employ. What +occurred last night I now partly know, and in part guess, Degge played a +bold game, and your Captain gambled even more impudently,--only the stakes, +as it to-day transpires, were of somewhat less importance than either of +them surmised. For years Mr. Vanringham has been a Jacobite emissary; now +he tires of it; and so he devoted the entire morning, yesterday to making a +copy of this absurd petition." + +"I do not understand," said Miss Allonby; and in appearance, at least, she +was no whit disconcerted. + +"He carried only the copy. You burned only the copy. Mr. Vanringham, it +develops, knew well enough what that bungling Degge had been deputed to +do, and he preferred to treat directly with Lord Humphrey's principal. Mr. +Vanringham is an intelligent fellow. I dare make this assertion, because +I am fresh from an interview with Mr. Vanringham," his Grace of Ormskirk +ended, and allowed himself a reminiscent chuckle. + +She had risen. "O ungenerous! this Vanringham has been bribed!" + +"I pray you," said the Duke, "give vent to no such scandal. Vanringham's +life would not be worth a farthing if he had done such a thing, and he +knows it. Nay, I have planned it more neatly. To-night Mr. Vanringham will +be arrested--merely on suspicion, mind you,--and all his papers will be +brought to me; and it is possible that among them we may find the petition. +And it is possible that, somehow, when he is tried with the others, Mr. +Vanringham alone may be acquitted. And it is possible that an aunt--in +Wales, say,--may die about this time and leave him a legacy of some five +thousand pounds. Oh, yes, all this is quite possible," said the Duke; +"but should we therefore shriek _Bribery_? For my own part, I esteem Mr. +Vanringham, as the one sensible man in the two hundred." + +"He has turned King's evidence," she said, "and his papers will be brought +to you--" Miss Allonby paused. "All his papers!" said Miss Allonby. + +"And very curious they will prove, no doubt," said his Grace. "So many +love-sick misses write to actors. I can assure you, child, I look +forward with a deal of interest to my inspection of Mr. Vanringham's +correspondence." + +"Eh?--Oh, yes!" Miss Allonby assented--"all his papers! Yes, they should be +diverting, I must be going home though, to make ready for Lady Mackworth's +ball. And if I have nobody to dance with me, I shall know quite well whose +fault it is. How soon will Frank be freed, you odious tyrant?" + +"My child, but in these matters we are all slaves to red tape! I can +promise you, however, that your Captain will be released from prison before +this month is out, so you are not to worry." + + +III + +When she had left him the Duke sat for a while in meditation. + +"That is an admirable girl, I would I could oblige her in the matter and +let this Audaine live. But such folly is out of the question. The man is +the heart of the conspiracy. + +"No, Captain Audaine, I am afraid we must have that handsome head of yours, +and set your spirit free before this month is out. And your head also, Mr. +Vanringham, when we are done with using your evidence. This affair must be +the last; hitherto we have tried leniency, and it has failed; now we will +try extermination. Not one of these men must escape. + +"I shall have trouble with Marian, since the two girls are inseparable. +Yes, this Audaine will cause me some trouble with Marian. I heartily wish +the fellow had never been born." + +Ormskirk took a miniature from his pocket and sat thus in the dusk +regarding it. It was the portrait of a young girl with hazel eyes and +abundant hair the color of a dead oak-leaf. And now his sleepy face was +curiously moved. + +"I shall have to lie to you. And you will believe me, for you are not +disastrously clever. But I wish it were not necessary, my dear. I wish it +were possible to make you understand that my concern is to save England +rather than a twopenny captain. As it is, I shall lie to you, and you will +believe. And Dorothy will get over it in time, as one gets over everything +in time. But I wish it were not necessary, sweetheart. + +"I wish.... I wish that I were not so happy when I think of you. I become +so happy that I grow afraid. It is not right that anyone should be so +happy. + +"Bah! I am probably falling into my dotage." + +Ormskirk struck upon the gong. "And now, Mr. Langton, let us get back to +business." + + +IV + +Later in the afternoon Miss Allonby demanded of her maid if Gerald Allonby +were within, and received a negative response. "Nothing could be better," +said Miss Allonby. "You know that new suit of Master Gerald's, Lottrum--the +pink-and-silver? Very well; then you will do thus, and thus, and thus--" +And she poured forth a series of directions that astonished her maid not a +little. + +"Law you now!" said Lottrum, "whatever--?" + +"If you ask me any questions," said Dorothy, "I will discharge you on the +spot. And if you betray me, I shall probably kill you." + +Lottrum said, "O Gemini!" and did as her mistress ordered. + +Miss Allonby made a handsome boy, and such was her one comfort. Her mirror +showed an epicene denizen of romance,--Rosalind or Bellario, a frail +and lovely travesty of boyhood; but it is likely that the girl's heart +showed stark terror. Here was imminent no jaunt into Arden, but into the +gross jaws of even bodily destruction. Here was probable dishonor, a +guaranteeable death. She could fence well enough, thanks to many bouts with +Gerald; but when the foils were unbuttoned, there was a difference which +the girl could appreciate. + +"In consequence," said Dorothy, "I had better hurry before I am still more +afraid." + + +V + +So there came that evening, after dusk, to Mr. Francis Vanringham's +apartments, at the _Three Gudgeons_, a young spark in pink-and-silver. He +appeared startled at the sight of so much company, recovered his composure +with a gulp, and presented himself to the assembled gentlemen as Mr. +Osric Allonby, unexpectedly summoned from Cambridge, and in search of +his brother, Squire Gerald. At his step-mother's villa they had imagined +Gerald might be spending the evening with Mr. Vanringham. Mr. Osric +Allonby apologized for the intrusion; was their humble servant; and with a +profusion of _congees_ made as though to withdraw. + +Mr. Vanringham lounged forward. The comedian had a vogue among the younger +men, since at all games of chance they found him untiring and tolerably +honest; and his apartments were, in effect, a gambling parlor. + +Vanringham now took the boy's hand very genially. "You have somewhat the +look of your sister," he observed, after a prolonged appraisal; "though, in +nature, 'tis not expected of us trousered folk to be so beautiful. And by +your leave, you'll not quit us thus unceremoniously, Master Osric. I am by +way of being a friend of your brother's, and 'tis more than possible that +he may during the evening honor us with his presence. Will you not linger +awhile on the off-chance?" And Osric Allonby admitted he had no other +engagements. + +He was in due form made known to the three gentlemen--Colonel Denstroude, +[Footnote: He and Vanringham had just been reconciled by Molly Yates' +elopement with Tom Stoach, the Colonel's footman. Garendon has a curious +anecdote concerning this lady, apropos of his notorious duel with +Denstroude, in '61.] Mr. Babington-Herle, and Sir Gresley Carne--who sat +over a bowl of punch. Sir Gresley was then permitted to conclude the +narrative which Mr. Allonby's entrance had interrupted: the evening +previous, being a little tipsy, Sir Gresley had strolled about Tunbridge in +search of recreation and, with perhaps excessive playfulness, had slapped +a passer-by, broken the fellow's nose, and gouged both thumbs into the +rascal's eyes. The young baronet conceded the introduction of these London +pastimes into the rural quiet of Tunbridge to have been an error in taste, +especially as the man proved upon inquiry to be a respectable haberdasher +and the sole dependence of four children; and having thus unfortunately +blinded the little tradesman, Sir Gresley wished to ask of the assembled +company what in their opinion was a reasonable reparation. "For I sincerely +regret the entire affair," Sir Gresley concluded, "and am desirous to +follow a course approvable by all men of honor." + +"Heyho!" said Mr. Vanringham, "I'm afraid the rape of both eyes was a +trifle extreme; for by ordinary a haberdasher is neither a potato nor an +Argus, and, remembering that, even the high frivolity of brandy-and-water +should have respected his limitations." + +The hands of Mr. Allonby had screened his face during the recital, "Oh, the +poor man!" he said, "I cannot bear--" And then, with swift alteration, +he tossed back his head, and laughed. "Are we gentlemen to be denied all +amusement? Sir Gresley acted quite within his privilege, and in terming him +severe you have lied, Mr. Vanringham. I repeat, sir, you have lied!" + +Vanringham was on his feet within the instant, but Colonel Denstroude, who +sat beside him, laid a heavy hand upon Vanringham's arm. "'Oons, man," says +the Colonel, "infanticide is a crime." + +The actor shrugged his shoulders, "Doubtless you are in the right, Mr. +Allonby," he said; "though, as you were of course going on to remark, you +express yourself somewhat obscurely. Your meaning, I take it, is that I +mayn't criticise the doings, of my guests? I stand corrected, and concede +Sir Gresley acted with commendable moderation, and that Cambridge is, +beyond question, the paramount expositor of morals and manners." + +The lad stared about him: with a bewildered face. "La, will he not fight me +now?" he demanded of Colonel Denstroude,--"now, after I have called him a +liar?" + +"My dear," the Colonel retorted, "he may possibly deprive you of your +nursing-bottle, or he may even birch you, but he will most assuredly not +fight you, so long as I have any say in the affair. I' cod, we are all +friends here, I hope. D'ye think Mr. Vanringham has so often enacted +Richard III. that to strangle infants is habitual with him? Fight you, +indeed! 'Sdeath and devils!" roared the Colonel, "I will cut the throat of +any man who dares to speak of fighting in this amicable company! Gi'me some +more punch," said the Colonel. + +And thereupon in silence Mr. Allonby resumed his seat. + +Now, to relieve the somewhat awkward tension, Mr. Vanringham cried: "So +being neighborly again, let us think no more of the recent difference in +opinion. Pay your damned haberdasher what you like, Gresley; or, rather, +let Osric here fix the remuneration. I confess to all and sundry," he +added, with a smile, "that I daren't say another word in the matter. +Frankly, I'm afraid of this youngster. He breathes fire like AEtna." + +"He is a lad of spirit," said Mr. Babington-Herle, with an extreme +sobriety. "He's a lad eshtrornary spirit. Let's have game hazard." + +"Agreed, good sir," said Vanringham, "and I warn you, you will find me a +daring antagonist. I had to-day an extraordinary--the usual prejudice, +my dear Herle, is, I believe, somewhat inclined to that pronunciation of +the word,--the most extraordinary windfall. I am rich, and I protest King +Croesus himself sha'n't intimidate me to-night. Come!" he cried, and he +drew from his pocket a plump purse and emptied its contents upon the table; +"come, lay your wager!" + +"Hell and furies," the Colonel groaned, "there's that tomfool boy again! +Gi'me some more punch." + +For Osric Allonby had risen to his feet and had swept the littered gold +and notes toward him. He stood thus, his pink-tipped fingers caressing +the money, while his eyes fixed those of Mr. Vanringham. "And the chief +priests," observed Osric Allonby, "took the silver pieces and said, 'It is +not lawful for to put them into the treasury, because it is the price of +blood.' Are they, then, fit to be touched by gentlemen, Mr.--ah, but I +forget your given name?" + +Vanringham, too, had risen, his face changed. "My sponsors in baptism were +pleased to christen me Francis." + +"I entreat your pardon," the boy drawled, "but I have the oddest fancies. +I had thought it was Judas." And so they stood, warily regarding each the +other, very much as strange dogs are wont to do at meeting. + +"Boy is drunk," Mr. Babington-Herle explained at large, "and presents to +pitying eye of disinterested spectator most deplorable results incidental +to combination of immaturity and brandy. As to money, now, in Suetonius--" +And he launched upon a hiccough-punctuated anecdote of Vespasian, which to +record here is not convenient. "And moral of it is," Mr. Babington-Herle +perorated, "that all money is always fine thing to have. _Non olet!_ +Classical scholar, by Jove! Now let's have game hazard." + +Meanwhile those two had stood like statues. Vanringham seemed +half-frightened, half persuaded that this unaccountable boy spoke at +random. Talk, either way, the actor knew, was dangerous.... + +"I ask your forgiveness, gentlemen," said Francis Vanringham, "but I'm +suddenly ill. If you'll permit me to retire--" + +"Not at all," said. Mr. Babington-Herle; "late in evening, as it is. We +will go,--Colonel and old Carne and I will go kill watchman. Persevorate +him, by Jove,--like sieve." + +"I thank you," said Mr. Vanringham, withdrawing up the stairway toward his +bedroom. "I thank you. Mr. Allonby," he called, in a firmer tone, "you and +I have had some words together and you were the aggressor. Oho, I think we +may pass it over. I think--" + +Below, the four gentlemen were unhooking their swords from the wall. Mr. +Allonby now smiled with cherubic sweetness. "I, too," said he, "think that +all our differences might be arranged by ten minutes' private talk." He +came back, came up the stairs. "You had left your sword," he said to Mr. +Vanringham, "but I fetched it, you see." + +Vanringham stared, his lips working oddly. "I am no Siegfried," said he, +"and ordinarily my bedfellow is not cold and--deplorable defect in such +capacity!--somewhat unsympathetic steel." + +"But you forget," the boy urged, "that the room is public. And see, the +hilt is set with jewels. Ah, Mr. Vanringham, let us beware how we lead +others into temptation--" The door closed behind them. + + +VI + +Said Mr. Babington-Herle, judicially, "That's eshtrornary boy--most +eshtrornary boy, and precisely unlike brother." + +"You must remember," the Colonel pointed out, "that since his marriage +Gerald is a reformed man; he has quite given up punks and hazard, they say, +for beer and cattle-raising." + +"Well, but it is a sad thing to have a spirited tall rogue turn pimp to +balls and rams, and Mrs. Lascelles will be inconsolable," Sir Gresley +considered.--"Hey, what's that? Did you not hear a noise up-stairs?" + +"I do not think," said the Colonel, "that Mallison finds her so.--Yes, +i'cod! I suppose that tipsy boy has turned over a table." + +"But you astound me," Sir Gresley interrupted. "The constant Mallison, of +all persons!" + +"Nevertheless, my dear, they assure me that he has made over to her the +heart and lodgings until lately occupied by Mrs. Roydon--Oh, the devil!" +cried Colonel Denstroude, "they are fighting above!" + +"Good for Frank!" observed Mr. Babington-Herle. "Hip-hip! Stick young +rascal! Persevorate him, by Jove!" + +But the other men had run hastily up the stairway and were battering at +the door of Vanringham's chamber. "Locked!" said the Colonel. "Oh, the +unutterable cur! Open, open, I tell you, Vanringham! By God, I'll have your +blood for this if you have hurt the boy!" + +"Break in the door!" said a voice from below. The Colonel paused in his +objurgations, and found that the Duke of Ormskirk, followed by four +attendants, had entered the hallway of the _Three Gudgeons_. "Benyon," said +the Duke, more sharply, and wheeled upon his men, "you have had my orders, +I believe. Break in yonder door!" + +This was done. They found Mr. Francis Vanringham upon the hearthrug a +tousled heap of flesh and finery, insensible, with his mouth gaping, +in a great puddle of blood. To the rear of the room was a boy in +pink-and-silver, beside the writing-desk he had just got into with the +co-operation of a poker. Hugged to his breast he held a brown despatch-box. + +Ormskirk strode toward the boy and with an inhalation paused. The Duke +stood tense for a moment. Then silently he knelt beside the prostrate actor +and inspected Vanringham's injury. "You have killed him," the Duke said at +last. + +"I think so," said the boy. "But 'twas in fair fight." + +The Duke rose. "Benyon," he rapped out, "do you and Minchin take this body +to the room below. Let a surgeon be sent for. Bring word if he find any +sign of life. Gentlemen, I must ask you to avoid the chamber. This is a +state matter. I am responsible for yonder person." + +"Then your Grace is responsible for perfectly irresponsible young villain!" +said Mr. Babington-Herle. "He's murderer Frank Vanringham, of poor dear +Frank, like a brother to me, by Jove! Hang him high's Haman, your Grace, +and then we'll have another bottle." + +"Colonel Denstroude," said the Duke, "I will ask you to assist your friend +in retiring. The stairs are steep, and his conviviality, I fear, has by a +pint or so exceeded his capacity. And in fine--I wish you a good-evening, +gentlemen." + + +VII + +Ormskirk closed the door; then he turned, "I lack words," the Duke said. +"Oh, believe me, speech fails before this spectacle. To find you, here, +at this hour! To find you--my betrothed wife's kinswoman and life-long +associate,--here, in this garb! A slain man at your feet, his blood yet +reeking upon that stolen sword! His papers--pardon me!" + +Ormskirk sprang forward and caught the despatch-box from her grasp as she +strove to empty its contents into the fire. "Pardon me," he repeated; +"you have unsexed yourself; do not add high treason to the list of your +misdemeanors. Mr. Vanringham's papers, as I have previously had the honor +to inform you, are the state's property." + +She stood with void and inefficient hands that groped vaguely. "I could +trust no one," she said. "I have fenced so often with Gerald. I was not +afraid--at least, I was not very much afraid.. And 'twas so difficult to +draw him into a quarrel,--he wanted to live, because at last he had the +money his dirty little soul had craved. Ah, I had sacrificed so many things +to get these papers, my Lord Duke,--and now you rob me of them. You!" + +The Duke bent pitiless brows upon her. "I rob you of them," he said,--"ay, +I am discourteous and I rob, but not for myself alone. For your confusion +tells me that I hold here between my hands the salvation of England. Child, +child!" he cried, in sudden tenderness, "I trusted you to-day, and could +you not trust me? I promised you the life of the man you love. I promised +you--" He broke off, as if in a rivalry of rage and horror. "And you +betrayed me! You came hither, trousered and shameless, to save these +hare-brained traitors! Well, but at worst your treachery has very happily +released me from my promise to meddle in the fate of this Audaine. I shall +not lift a finger now. And I warn you that within the week your precious +Captain will have become the associate of seraphim." + +She had heard him, with defiant eyes; her head was flung back and she +laughed. "You thought I had come to destroy the Jacobite petition! Heavens, +what had I to do with all such nonsense? You had promised me Frank's +pardon, and the other men I had never seen. Harkee, my Lord Duke, do all +you politicians jump so wildly in your guess work? Did you in truth believe +that the poor fool who lies dead below would have entrusted the paper which +meant life and wealth to the keeping of a flimsy despatch-box?" + +"Indeed, no," his Grace of Ormskirk replied, and appeared a thought +abashed; "I was certain it would be concealed somewhere about his person, +and I have already given Benyon orders to search for it. Still, I confess +that for the moment your agitation misled me into believing these were +the important papers; and I admit, my dear creature, that unless you came +hither prompted by a mad design somehow to destroy the incriminating +documents and thereby to ensure your lover's life--why, otherwise, I +repeat, I am quite unable to divine your motive." + +She was silent for a while. Presently, "You told me this afternoon," she +began, in a dull voice, "that you anticipated much amusement from your +perusal of Mr. Vanringham's correspondence. All his papers were to be +seized, you said; and they all were to be brought to you, you said. And so +many love-sick misses write to actors, you said." + +"As I recall the conversation," his Grace conceded, "that which you have +stated is quite true." He spoke with admirable languor, but his countenance +was vaguely troubled. + +And now the girl came to him and laid her finger-tips ever so lightly upon +his. "Trust me," she pleaded. "Give me again the trust I have not merited. +Ay, in spite of reason, my Lord Duke, restore to me these papers unread, +that I may destroy them. For otherwise, I swear to you that without gain +to yourself--without gain, O God!--you wreck alike the happiness of an +innocent woman and of an honest gentleman. And otherwise--O infatuate!" she +wailed, and wrung impotent hands. + +But Ormskirk shook his head. "I cannot leap in the dark." + +She found no comfort in his face, and presently lowered her eyes. He +remained motionless. The girl went to the farther end of the apartment, and +then, her form straightening on a sudden, turned and came back toward him. + +"I think God has some grudge against you," Dorothy said, without any +emotion, "and--hardens your heart, as of old He hardened Pharaoh's heart, +to your own destruction. I have done my utmost to save you. My woman's +modesty I have put aside, and death and worse than death I have dared to +encounter to-night,--ah, my Lord, I have walked through hell this night for +your sake and another's. And in the end 'tis yourself who rob me of what I +had so nearly gained. Beyond doubt God has some grudge against you. Take +your fate, then." + +"_Integer vitae_--" said the Duke of Ormskirk; and with more acerbity, "Go +on!" For momentarily she had paused. + +"The man who lies dead below was loved by many women. God pity them! But +women are not sensible like men, you know. And always the footlights made a +halo about him; and when you saw him as Castalio or Romeo, all beauty and +love and vigor and nobility, how was a woman to understand his splendor was +a sham, taken off with his wig, removed with his pinchbeck jewelry, and as +false? No, they thought it native, poor wretches. Yet one of them at least, +my Lord--a young girl--found out her error before it was too late. The man +was a villain through and through. God grant he sups in hell to-night!" + +"Go on," said Ormskirk. But by this time he knew all that she had to tell. + +"Afterward he demanded money of her. He had letters, you understand--mad, +foolish letters,--and these he offered to sell back to her at his own +price. And their publicity meant ruin. And, my Lord, we had so nearly saved +the money--pinching day by day, a little by a little, for his price was +very high, and it was necessary the sum be got in secrecy,--and that in the +end they should be read by you--" Her voice broke. + +"Go on," said Ormskirk. + +But her composure was shattered. "I would have given my life to save her," +the girl babbled. "Ah, you know that I have tried to save her. I was not +very much afraid. And it seemed the only way. So I came hither, my Lord, as +you see me, to get back the letters before you, too, had come." + +"There is but one woman in the world," the Duke said, quietly, "for whom +you would have done this thing. You and Marian were reared together. Always +you have been inseparable, always you have been to each other as sisters. +Is this not what you are about to tell me?" + +"Yes," she answered. + +"Well, you may spare yourself the pains of such unprofitable lying. That +Marian Heleigh should have been guilty of a vulgar _liaison_ with, an actor +is to me, who know her, unthinkable. No, madam! It was fear, not love, +which drove you hither to-night, and now a baser terror urges you to screen +yourself by vilifying her. The woman of whom you speak is yourself. The +letters were written by you." + +She raised one arm as though a physical blow impended. "No, no!" she cried. + +"Madam," the Duke said, "let us have done with these dexterities. I +have the vanity to believe I am not unreasonably obtuse--nor, I submit, +unreasonably self-righteous. Love is a monstrous force, as irrational, I +sometimes think, as the force of the thunderbolt; it appears neither to +select nor to eschew, but merely to strike; and it is not my duty to +asperse or to commend its victims. You have loved unworthily. From the +bottom of my heart I pity you, and I would that you had trusted me--had +trusted me enough--" His voice was not quite steady. "Ah, my dear," said +Ormskirk, "you should have confided all to me this afternoon. It hurts me +that you did not, for I am no Pharisee and--God knows!--my own past is not +immaculate. I would have understood, I think. Yet as it is, take back your +letters, child,--nay, in Heaven's name, take them in pledge of an old man's +love for Dorothy Allonby." + +The girl obeyed, turning them in her hands, the while that her eyes were +riveted to Ormskirk's face. And in Aprilian fashion she began to smile +through her tears. "You are superb, my Lord Duke. You comprehend that +Marian wrote these letters, and that if you read them--and I knew of +it,--your pride would force you to break off the match, because your +notions as to what is befitting in a Duchess of Ormskirk are precise. But +you want Marian, you want her even more than I had feared. Therefore, you +give me all these letters, because you know that I will destroy them, and +thus an inconvenient knowledge will be spared you. Oh, beyond doubt, you +are superb." + +"I give them to you," Ormskirk answered, "because I have seen through your +cowardly and clumsy lie, and have only pity for a thing so base as you. I +give them to you because to read one syllable of their contents would be to +admit I had some faith in your preposterous fabrication." + +But she shook her head. "Words, words, my Lord Duke! I understand you to +the marrow. And, in part, I think that I admire you." + +He was angry now. "Eh! for the love of God," cried the Duke of Ormskirk, +"let us burn the accursed things and have no more verbiage!" He seized the +papers and flung them into the fire. + +Then these two watched the papers consume to ashes, and stood a while +in silence, the gaze of neither lifting higher than the andirons; and +presently there was a tapping at the door. + +"That will be Benyon," the Duke said, with careful modulations. "Enter, +man! What news is there of this Vanringham?" + +"He will recover, your Grace, though he has lost much blood. Mr. Vanringham +has regained consciousness and took occasion to whisper me your Grace would +find the needful papers in his escritoire, in the brown despatch-box." + +"That is well," the Duke retorted, "You may go, Benyon." And when the +door had closed, he began, incuriously: "Then you are not a murderess at +least, Miss Allonby. At least--" He made a queer noise as he gazed, at the +despatch-box in his hand. "The brown box!" It fell to the floor. Ormskirk +drew near to her, staring, moving stiffly like a hinged toy, "I must have +the truth," he said, without a trace of any human passion. This was the +Ormskirk men had known in Scotland. + +"Yes," she answered, "they were the Jacobite papers. You burned them." + +"I!" said the Duke. + +Presently he said: "Do you not understand what this farce has cost? Thanks +to you, I have no iota of proof against these men. I cannot touch these +rebels. O madam, I pray Heaven that you have not by this night's trickery +destroyed England!" + +"I did it to save the man I love," she proudly said. + +"I had promised you his life." + +"But would you have kept that promise?" + +"No," he answered, simply. + +"Then are we quits, my Lord. You lied to me, and I to you. Oh, I know +that were I a man you would kill me within the moment. But you respect my +womanhood. Ah, goodness!" the girl cried, shrilly, "what very edifying +respect for womanhood have you, who burned those papers because you +believed my dearest Marian had stooped to a painted mountebank!" + +"I burned them--yes, in the belief that I was saving you." + +She laughed in his face. "You never believed that,--not for an instant." + +But by this time Ormskirk had regained his composure. "The hour is somewhat +late, and the discussion--if you will pardon the suggestion,--not likely to +be profitable. The upshot of the whole matter is that I am now powerless to +harm anybody--I submit the simile of the fangless snake,--and that Captain +Audaine will have his release in the morning. Accordingly you will now +permit me to wish you a pleasant night's rest. Benyon!" he called, "you +will escort Mr. Osric Allonby homeward. I remain to clear up this affair." + +He held open the door for her, and, bowing, stood aside that she might +pass. + + +VIII + +But afterward the great Duke of Ormskirk continued for a long while +motionless and faintly smiling as he gazed into the fire. Tricked and +ignominiously defeated! Ay, but that was a trifle now, scarcely worthy of +consideration. The girl had hoodwinked him, had lied more skilfully than +he, yet in the fact that she had lied he found a prodigal atonement. Whigs +and Jacobites might have their uses in the cosmic scheme, he reflected, as +house-flies have, but what really mattered was that at Halvergate yonder +Marian awaited his coming. And in place of statecraft he fell to thinking +of two hazel eyes and of abundant hair the color of a dead oak-leaf. + + + + +VI + +APRIL'S MESSAGE + + +_As Played at Halvergate House, April 9, 1750_ + + "_You cannot love, nor pleasure take, nor give, + But life begin when 'tis too late to live. + On a tired courser you pursue delight, + Let slip your morning, and set out at night. + If you have lived, take thankfully the past; + Make, as you can, the sweet remembrance last. + If you have not enjoyed what youth could give, + But life sunk through you, like a leaky sieve._" + + +DRAMATIS PERSONAE + +DUKE OF ORMSKIKK. + +EARL OF BRUDENEL, father to Lady Marian Heleigh, who +has retired sometime into the country. + +LORD HUMPHREY DEGGE, a gamester, and Ormskirk's +hireling. + +MR. LANGTON, secretary to Ormskirk. + +LADY MARIAN HELEIGH, betrothed to Ormskirk, a young, +beautiful girl of a mild and tender disposition. + + +SCENE + +The east terrace of Halvergate House. + + + + +APRIL'S MESSAGE + + +_PROEM:--Apologia pro Auctore_ + +It occurs to me that we here assume intimacy with a man of unusual +achievement, and therefore tread upon quaggy premises. Yet I do but avail +myself of to-day's privilege.... It is an odd thing that people will +facilely assent to Don Adriano's protestation against a certain travestying +of Hector,--"Sweet chucks, beat not the bones of the dead, for when he +breathed he was a man,"--even while through the instant the tide of romance +will be setting quite otherwhither, with their condonation. For in all +the best approved romances the more sumptuous persons of antiquity are +very guilty of twaddle on at least one printed page in ten, and nobody +remonstrates; and here is John Bulmer, too, lugged from the grave for your +delectation. + +I presume, however, to palliate the offence. The curious may find the gist +of what I narrate concerning Ormskirk in Heinrich Loewe's biography of the +man, and will there discover that with established facts I have not made +bold to juggle. Only when knowledge failed have I bridged the void with +speculation. Perhaps I have guessed wrongly: the feat is not unhuman, and +in provision against detection therein I can only protest that this lack of +omniscience was never due to malice; faithfully I have endeavored to deduce +from the known the probable, and in nothing to misrepresent to you this big +man of a little age, this trout among a school of minnows. + +Trout, mark you; I claim for Ormskirk no leviathan-ship. Rather I would +remind you of a passage from somewhat anterior memoirs: "The Emperor of +Lilliput is taller, by almost the breadth of my nail, than any of his +court, which alone is enough to strike an awe into his beholders." + +This, however, is not the place to expatiate on Ormskirk's extraordinary +career; his rise from penury and obscurity, tempered indeed by gentle +birth, to the priviest secrets of his Majesty's council,--climbing +the peerage step by step, as though that institution had been a +garden-ladder,--may be read of in the history books. + +"I collect titles as an entomologist does butterflies," he is recorded to +have said: "and I find the gaudier ones the cheapest. My barony I got for +a very heinous piece of perjury, my earldom for not running away until the +latter end of a certain battle, my marquisate for hoodwinking a half-senile +Frenchman, and my dukedom for fetching in a quack doctor when he was sore +needed by a lady whom the King at that time delighted to honor." + +It was, you observe, a day of candors. + + +I + +The Duke of Ormskirk, then (one gleans from Loewe's pages), dismissed from +mind the Audaine conspiracy. It was a pity to miss the salutary effect of a +few political executions just then, but after all there was nothing to be +done about it. So the Duke turned to the one consolation offered by the +affair, and set out for Halvergate House, the home of Marian Heleigh's +father. There one finds him, six days later, deep in a consultation with +his secretary, which in consideration of the unseasonable warmth was held +upon the east terrace. + +"Yes, I think we had better have the fellow hanged on the thirteenth," said +Ormskirk, as he leisurely affixed his signature. "The date seems eminently +appropriate. Now the papers concerning the French treaty, if you please, +Mr. Langton." + +The impassive-faced young man who sat opposite placed a despatch-box +between them. "These were sent down from London only last night, sir. +Mr. Morfit [Footnote: Perhaps the most adroit of all the many spies in +Ormskirk's employment. It was this same Morfit who in 1756 accompanied +Damiens into France as far as Calais; and see page 16.] has been somewhat +dilatory." + +"Eh, it scarcely matters. I looked them over in bed this morning and found +them quite correct, Mr. Langton, quite--Why, heyday!" the Duke demanded, +"what's this? You have brought me the despatch-box from my dresser--not, +as I distinctly told you, from the table by my bed. Nay, I have had quite +enough of mistakes concerning despatch-boxes, Mr. Langton." + +Mr. Langton stammered that the error was natural. Two despatch-boxes were +in appearances so similar-- + +"Never make excuses, Mr. Langton. '_Qui s'excuse--_' You can complete the +proverb, I suppose. Bring me Morfit's report this afternoon, then. Yes, +that appears to be all. You may go now, Mr. Langton. No, you may leave that +box, I think, since it is here. O man, man, a mistake isn't high treason! +Go away, Mr. Langton! you annoy me." + +Left alone, the Duke of Ormskirk sat for a while, tapping his fingers +irresolutely against the open despatch-box. He frowned a little, for, with +fair reason to believe Tom Langton his son, he found the boy too stolid, +too unimaginative, to go far. It seemed to Ormskirk that none of his +illegitimate children displayed any particular promise, and he sighed. Then +he took a paper from the despatch-box, and began to read. + +He sat, as one had said, upon the east terrace of Halvergate House. Behind +him a tall yew-hedge shut off the sunlight from the table where he and +Tom Langton had earlier completed divers businesses; in front of him a +balustrade, ivy-covered, and set with flower-pots of stone, empty as yet, +half screened the terraced gardens that sank to the artificial lake below. + +The Duke could see only a vast expanse of sky and a stray bit of Halvergate +printing the horizon with turrets, all sober gray save where the two +big copper cupolas of the south facade burned in the April sun; but by +bending forward you glimpsed close-shaven lawns dotted with clipped trees +and statues,--as though, he reflected, Glumdalclitch had left her toys +scattered haphazard about a green blanket--and the white of the broad +marble stairway descending to the sunlit lake, and, at times, the flash +of a swan's deliberate passage across the lake's surface. All white and +green and blue the vista was, and of a monastic tranquillity, save for +the plashing of a fountain behind the yew-hedge and the grumblings of an +occasional bee that lurched complainingly on some by-errand of the hive. + +Presently his Grace of Ormskirk replaced the papers in the despatch-box, +and, leaning forward, sighed. "_Non_ _sum qualis eram sub bonae regno +Cynarae_," said his Grace of Ormskirk. He had a statesman-like partiality +for the fag-end of an alcaic. + +Then he lifted his head at the sound of a girl's voice. Somewhere rearward +to the hedge the girl idly sang--an old song of Thomas Heywood's,--in a +serene contralto, low-pitched and effortless, but very sweet. Smilingly the +Duke beat time. + +Sang the girl: + + "Pack clouds away, and welcome, day! + With night we banish sorrow: + Sweet air, blow soft; mount, lark, aloft, + To give my love good-morrow. + Wings from the wind to please her mind, + Notes from the lark I'll borrow: + Bird, prune thy wing; nightingale, sing, + To give my love good-morrow." + +And here the Duke chimed in with a sufficiently pleasing baritone: + + "To give my love good-morrow, + Notes from them all I'll borrow." + +"O heavens!" spoke the possessor of the contralto, "I would have thought +you were far too busy sending people to gaol and arranging their execution, +and so on, to have any time for music. I am going for a walk in the forest, +Jack." Considering for a moment, she added, "You may come, too, if you +like." + +But the concession was made so half-heartedly that in the instant the +Duke of Ormskirk raised a dissenting hand. "I would not annoy you for an +emperor's ransom. Go in peace, my child." + +Lady Marian Heleigh stood at an opening in the yew-hedge and regarded him +for a lengthy interval in silence. Slender, men called her, and women "a +bean pole." There was about her a great deal of the child and something of +the wood-nymph. She had abundant hair, the color of a dead oak-leaf, and +her skin was clear, with a brown tinge. Her eyes puzzled you by being +neither brown nor green consistently; no sooner had you convicted them of +verdancy than they shifted to the hue of polished maple, and vice versa; +but they were too large for her face, which narrowed rather abruptly +beneath a broad, low forehead, and they flavored her aspect with the shrewd +innocence of a kitten. She was by ordinary grave; but, animated, her +countenance quickened with somewhat the glow of a brown diamond; then her +generous eyes flashed and filmed like waters moving under starlight, then +you knew she was beautiful. All in all, you saw in Marian a woman designed +to be petted, a Columbine rather than a Cleopatra; her lures would never +shake the stability of a kingdom, but would inevitably gut its toy-shops; +and her departure left you meditative less of high enterprises than of +buying something for her. + +Now Marian considered her betrothed, and seemed to come at last to a +conclusion that skirted platitude. "Jack, two people can be fond of each +other without wanting to be together all the time. And I really am fond of +you, Jack." + +"I would be a fool if I questioned the first statement," rejoined the Duke; +"and if I questioned the second, very miserable. Nevertheless, you go in +pursuit of strange gods, and I decline to follow." + +Her eyebrows interrogated him. + +"You are going," the Duke continued, "in pursuit of gods beside whom I +esteem Zidonian Ashtoreth, and Chemosh, and Milcom, the abomination of +the Ammonites, to be commendable objects of worship. You will pardon my +pedantic display of learning, for my feelings are strong. You are going +to sit in the woods. You will probably sit under a youngish tree, and its +branches will sway almost to the ground and make a green, sun-steeped tent +about you, as though you sat at the heart of an emerald. You will hear the +kindly wood-gods go steathily about the forest, and you will know that they +are watching you, but you will never see them. From behind every tree-bole +they will watch you; you feel it, but you never, never quite see them. +Presently the sweet, warm odors of the place and its perpetual whispering +and the illimitably idiotic boasting of the birds,--that any living +creature should be proud of having constructed one of their nasty little +nests is a reflection to baffle understanding,--this hodge-podge of +sensations, I say, will intoxicate you. Yes, it will thoroughly intoxicate +you, Marian, and you sit there quite still, in a sort of stupor, drugged +into the inebriate's magnanimity, firmly believing that the remainder of +your life will be throughout of finer texture,--earth-spurning, free from +all pettiness, and at worst vexed only by the noblest sorrows. Bah!" cried +the Duke; "I have no patience with such nonsense! You will believe it to +the tiniest syllable, that wonderful lying message which April whispers to +every living creature that is young,--then you will return to me, a slim, +star-eyed Maenad, and will see that I am wrinkled. But do you go your ways, +none the less, for April is waiting for you yonder,--beautiful, mendacious, +splendid April. And I? Faith, April has no message for me, my dear." + +He laughed, but with a touch of wistfulness; and the girl came to him, +laying her hand upon his arm, surprised into a sort of hesitant affection. + +"How did you know, Jack? How did you, know that--things, invisible, +gracious things, went about the spring woods? I never thought that you knew +of them. You always seemed so sensible. I have reasoned it out, though," +Marian went on, sagaciously wrinkled as to the brow. "They are probably the +heathen fauns and satyrs and such,--one feels somehow that they are all +men. Don't you, Jack? Well, when the elder gods were sent packing from +Olympus there was naturally no employment left for these sylvan folk. So +April took them into her service. Each year she sends them about every +forest on her errands: she sends them to make up daffodil-cups, for +instance, which I suppose is difficult, for evidently they make them out +of sunshine; or to pencil the eyelids of the narcissi--narcissi are brazen +creatures, Jack, and use a deal of kohl; or to marshal the fleecy young +clouds about the sky; or to whistle the birds up from the south. Oh, she +keeps them busy, does April! And 'tis true that if you be quite still you +can hear them tripping among the dead leaves; and they watch you--with +very bright, twinkling little eyes, I think,--but you never see them. +And always, always there is that enormous whispering,--half-friendly, +half-menacing,--as if the woods were trying to tell you something. 'Tis +not only the foliage rustling.... No, I have often thought it sounded like +some gigantic foreigner--some Titan probably,--trying in his own queer +and outlandish language to tell you something very important, something +that means a deal to you, and to you in particular. Has not anybody ever +understood him?" + +He smiled. "And I, too, have dwelt in Arcadia," said his Grace of Ormskirk. +"Yes, I once heard April's message, Marian, for all my crow's-feet. But +that was a long while ago, and perhaps I have forgotten it. I cannot tell, +my dear. It is only from April in her own person that one hears this +immemorial message. And as for me? Eh, I go into the April woods, and I +find trees there of various sizes that pay no attention to me, and shrill, +dingy little birds that deafen me, and it may be a gaudy flower or two, +and, in any event, I find a vast quantity of sodden, decaying leaves to +warn me the place is no fitting haunt for a gentleman afflicted with +rheumatism. So I come away, my dear." + +Marian looked him over for a moment. "You are not really old," she said, +with rather conscious politeness. "And you are wonderfully well-preserved. +Why, Jack, do you mind--not being foolish?" she demanded, on a sudden. + +He debated the matter. Then, "Yes," the Duke of Ormskirk conceded, "I +suppose I do, at the bottom of my heart, regret that lost folly. A part +of me died, you understand, when it vanished, and it is not exhilarating +to think of one's self as even partially dead. Once--I hardly know"--he +sought the phrase,--"once this was a spacious and inexplicable world, with +a mystery up every lane and an adventure around each street-corner; a +world inhabited by most marvelous men and women,--some amiable, and some +detestable, but every one of them very interesting. And now I miss the +wonder of it all. You will presently discover, my dear, that youth is only +an ingenious prologue to whet one's appetite for a rather dull play. Eh, I +am no pessimist,--one may still find satisfaction in the exercise of mind +and body, in the pleasures of thought and taste and in other titillations +of one's faculties. Dinner is good and sleep, too, is excellent. But we men +and women tend, upon too close inspection, to appear rather paltry flies +that buzz and bustle aimlessly about, and breed perhaps, and eventually +die, and rot, and are swept away from this fragile window-pane of time that +opens on eternity." + +"If you are, indeed, the sort of person you describe," said Marian, +reflectively, "I do not at all blame April for having no communication with +anyone possessed of such extremely unpleasant opinions. But for my own +part, I shall never cease to wonder what it is that the woods whisper +about." + +Appraising her, he hazarded a cryptic question, "Vase of delights, and have +you never--cared?" + +"Why, yes, I think so," she answered, readily enough. "At least, I used +to be very fond of Humphrey Degge,--that is the Marquis of Venour's place +yonder, you know, just past the spur of the forest,--but he was only a +younger son, so of course Father wouldn't hear of it. That was rather +fortunate, as Humphrey by and by went mad about Dorothy's blue eyes and +fine shape,--I think her money had a deal to do with it, too, and in any +event, she will be fat as a pig at thirty,--and so we quarrelled. And I +minded it--at first. And now--well, I scarcely know." Marian hesitated. "He +was a handsome man, but that ridiculous cavalry moustache of his was so +bristly--" + +"I beg your pardon?" said the Duke. + +"--that it disfigured him dreadfully," said she, with firmness. She had +colored. + +His Grace of Ormskirk was moved to mirth. "Child, child, you are so +deliciously young it appears a monstrous crime to marry you to an old +fellow like me!" He took her firm, soft hand in his. "Are you quite sure +you can endure me, Marian?" + +"Why, but of course I want to marry you," she said, naively surprised. "How +else could I be Duchess of Ormskirk?" + +Again he chuckled. "You are a worldly little wretch," he stated; "but if +you want my title for a new toy, it is at your service. And now be off with +you,--you and your foolish woods, indeed!" + +Marian went a slight distance and then turned about, troubled. "I am really +very fond of you, Jack," she said, conscientiously. + +"Be off with you!" the Duke scolded. "You should be ashamed of yourself to +practice such flatteries and blandishments on a defenceless old gentleman. +You had best hurry, too, for if you don't I shall probably kiss you," he +threatened. "I, also," he added, with point. + +She blew him a kiss from her finger-tips and went away singing. + +Sang Marian: + + "Blackbird and thrush, in every bush, + Stare, linnet, and cock-sparrow, + You pretty elves, amongst yourselves, + Sing my fair love good-morrow. + To give my love good-morrow, + Sing birds, in every furrow." + + +II + +Left to his own resources, the Duke of Ormskirk sat down beside the table +and fell to making irrelevant marks upon a bit of paper. He hummed the air +of Marian's song. There was a vague contention in his face. Once he put +out his hand toward the open despatch-box, but immediately he sighed and +pushed, it farther from him. Presently he propped his chin upon both hands +and stayed in the attitude for a long while, staring past the balustrade at +the clear, pale sky of April. + +Thus Marian's father, the Earl of Brudenel, found Ormskirk. The Earl +was lean and gray, though only three years older than his prospective +son-in-law, and had been Ormskirk's intimate since boyhood. Ormskirk had +for Lord Brudenel's society the liking that a successful person usually +preserves for posturing in the gaze of his outrivalled school-fellows: +Brudenel was an embodied and flattering commentary as to what a less able +man might make of chances far more auspicious than Ormskirk ever enjoyed. +All failure the Earl's life had been; in London they had long ago forgotten +handsome Harry Heleigh and the composure with which he nightly shoved his +dwindling patrimony across the gaming-table; about Halvergate men called +him "the muddled Earl," and said of him that his heart died, with his young +wife some eighteen years back. Now he vegetated in the home of his fathers, +contentedly, a veteran of life, retaining still a mild pride in his past +vagaries; [Footnote: It was then well said of him by Claridge, "It is +Lord Henry Heleigh's vanity to show that he is a man of pleasure as well +as of business; and thus, in settlement, the expedition he displays +toward a fellow-gambler is equitably balanced by his tardiness toward +a too-credulous shoemaker."] and kindly time had armed him with the +benumbing, impenetrable indifference of the confessed failure. He was +abstractedly courteous to servants, and he would not, you felt, have given +even to an emperor his undivided attention. For the rest, the former +wastrel had turned miser, and went noticeably shabby as a rule, but this +morning he was trimly clothed, for he was returning homeward from the +quarter-sessions at Winstead. + +"Dreamer!" said the Earl. "I do not wonder that you grow fat." + +The Duke smiled up at him. "Confound you, Harry!" said he, "I had just +overreached myself into believing I had made what the world calls a mess +of my career and was supremely happy. There are disturbing influences +abroad to-day." He waved his hand toward the green-and-white gardens. "Old +friend, you permit disreputable trespassers about Halvergate. 'See you not +Goldy-locks there, in her yellow gown and green sleeves? the profane pipes, +the tinkling timbrels?' Spring is at her wiles yonder,--Spring, the liar, +the queen-cheat, Spring that tricks all men into happiness." + +"'Fore Gad," the Earl capped his quotation, "if the heathen man could stop +his ears with wax against the singing woman of the sea, then do you the +like with your fingers against the trollop of the forest." + +"Faith, time seals them firmlier than wax. You and I may sit snug now with +never a quicker heart-beat for all her lures. Yet I seem to remember,--once +a long while ago when we old fellows were somewhat sprier,--I, too, seem to +remember this Spring-magic." + +"Indeed," observed the Earl, seating himself ponderously, "if you refer to +a certain inclination at that period of the year toward the likeliest wench +in the neighborhood, so do I. 'Tis an obvious provision of nature, I take +it, to secure the perpetuation of the species. Spring comes, and she sets +us all a-mating--humanity, partridges, poultry, pigs, every blessed one of +us she sets a-mating. Propagation, Jack--propagation is necessary, d'ye +see; because," the Earl conclusively demanded, "what on earth would become +of us if we didn't propagate?" + +"The argument is unanswerable," the Duke conceded. "Yet I miss it,--this +Spring magic that no longer sets the blood of us staid fellows a-fret." + +"And I," said Lord Brudenel, "do not. It got me into the deuce of a scrape +more than once." + +"Yours is the sensible view, no doubt....Yet I miss it. Ah, it is not only +the wenches and the red lips of old years,--it is not only that at this +season lasses' hearts grow tender. There are some verses--" The Duke +quoted, with a half-guilty air: + + "Now I loiter, and dream to the branches swaying + In furtive conference,--high overhead-- + Atingle with rumors that Winter is sped + And over his ruins a world goes Maying. + + "Somewhere--impressively,--people are saying + Intelligent things (which their grandmothers said), + While I loiter, and dream to the branches swaying + In furtive conference, high overhead." + +"Verses!" The Earl snorted. "At your age!" + + "Here the hand of April, unwashed from slaying + Earth's fallen tyrant--for Winter is dead,-- + Uncloses anemones, staining them red: + And her daffodils guard me in squads,--displaying + Intrepid lances lest wisdom tread + Where I loiter and dream to the branches' swaying-- + +"Well, Harry, and to-day I cannot do so any longer. That is what I most +miss,--the ability to lie a-sprawl in the spring grass and dream out an +uncharted world,--a dream so vivid that, beside it, reality grew tenuous, +and the actual world became one of childhood's shrug-provoking bugbears +dimly remembered." + +"I do not understand poetry," the Earl apologetically observed. "It appears +to me unreasonable to advance a statement simply because it happens to +rhyme with a statement you have previously made. And that is what all +you poets do. Why, this is very remarkable," said Lord Brudenel, with a +change of tone; "yonder is young Humphrey Degge with Marian. I had thought +him in bed at Tunbridge. Did I not hear something of an affair with a +house-breaker--?" + +Then the Earl gave an exclamation, for in full view of them Lord Humphrey +Degge was kissing Lord Brudenel's daughter. + +"Oh, the devil!" said the Earl. "Oh, the insolent young ape!" + +"Nay," said the Duke, restraining him; "not particularly insolent, Harry. +If you will observe more closely you will see that Marian does not exactly +object to his caresses--quite the contrary, I would say, I told you that +you should not permit Spring about the premises." + +The Earl wheeled in an extreme of astonishment. "Come, come, sir! she is +your betrothed wife! Do you not intend to kill the fellow?" + +"My faith, why?" said his Grace of Ormskirk, with a shrug. "As for +betrothals, do you not see that she is already very happily paired?" + +In answer Brudenel raised his hands toward heaven, in just the contention +of despair and rage appropriate to parental affection when an excellent +match is imperilled by a chit's idiocy. + +Marian and Lord Humphrey Degge were mounting from the scrap of forest that +juts from Pevis Hill, like a spur from a man's heel, between Agard Court +and Halvergate. Their progress was not conspicuous for celerity. Now they +had attained to the tiny, elm-shadowed plateau beyond the yew-hedge, +and there Marian paused. Two daffodils had fallen from the great +green-and-yellow cluster in her left hand. Humphrey Degge lifted them, +and then raised to his mouth the slender fingers that reached toward the +flowers. The man's pallor, you would have said, was not altogether due to +his recent wound. + +She stood looking up at him, smiling a little timidly, her teeth glinting +through parted lips, her eyes star-fire, her cheeks blazoning gules in his +honor; she seemed not to breathe at all. A faint twinge woke in the Duke +of Ormskirk's heart. Most women smiled upon him, but they smiled beneath +furtive eyes, sometimes beneath rapacious eyes, and many smiled with +reddened lips which strove, uneasily, to provoke a rental; how long was it +he wondered, simply, since any woman had smiled as Marian smiled now, for +him? + +"I think it is a dream," said Marian. + +From the vantage of the yew-hedge, "I would to Heaven I could think so, +too," observed her father. + + +III + +The younger people had passed out of sight. But from the rear of the hedge +came to the Duke and Lord Brudenel, staring blankly at each other across +the paper-littered table, a sort of duet. First tenor, then contralto, then +tenor again,--and so on, with many long intervals of silence, during which +you heard the plashing of the fountain, grown doubly audible, and, it might +be, the sharp, plaintive cry of a bird intensified by the stillness. + +"I think it is a dream," said Marian.... + +"What eyes you have, Marian!" + +"But you have not kissed the littlest finger of all. See, it is quite stiff +with indignation." + +"They are green, and brown, and yellow--O Marian, there are little gold +specks in them like those in _eau de Dantzig_! They are quite wonderful +eyes, Marian. And your hair is all streaky gold-and-brown. You should not +have two colors in your hair, Marian. Marian, did any one ever tell you +that you are very beautiful?" + +Silence. "Pee-weet!" said a bird. "Tweet?" + +And Marian replied: "I am devoted to Dorothy, of course, but I have never +admired her fashion of making advances to every man she meets. Yes, she +does." + +"Nay, 'twas only her money that lured me, to do her justice. It appeared so +very sensible to marry an heiress.... But how can any man be sensible so +long as he is haunted by the memory of your eyes? For see how bright they +are,--see, here in the water. Two stars have fallen into the fountain, +Marian." + +"You are handsomer so. Your nose is too short, but here in the fountain you +are quite handsome--" + +"Marian,--" + +"I wonder how many other women's fingers you have kissed--like that. Ah, +don't tell me, Humphrey! Humphrey, promise me that you will always lie to +me when I ask you about those other women. Lie to me, my dear, and I will +know that you are lying and love you all the better for it.... You should +not have told me about Dorothy. How often did you kiss all of Dorothy's +finger-tips one by one, in just that foolish, dear way?" + +"But who was this Dorothy you speak of, Marian? I have forgotten. Oh, +yes--we quarrelled--over some woman,--and I went away. I left you for a +mere heiress, Marian. You! And five days, ago while I lay abed, wounded, +they told me that you, were to marry Ormskirk. I thought I would go mad.... +Eh, I remember now. But what do these things matter? Is it not of far +greater importance that the sunlight turns your hair to pure topaz?" + +"Ah, my hair, my eyes! Is it these you care for? You would not love me, +then, if I were old and ugly?" + +"Eh,--I love you." + +"Animal!" + +There was a longer silence now. "Tweet!" said a bird, pertly. + +Then Marian said, "Let us go to my father." + +"To tell him--?" + +"Why, that I love you, I suppose, and that I cannot marry Jack, not even +to be a duchess. Oh, I did so much want to be a duchess! But when you came +back to me yonder in the forest, somehow I stopped wanting anything more. +Something--I hardly know--something seemed to say, as you came striding +through the dead leaves, laughing and so very pale,--something seemed to +say, 'You love him'--oh, quite audibly." + +"Audibly! Why, the woods whispered it, the birds trilled it, screamed +it, the very leaves underfoot crackled assent. Only they said, 'You love +her--the girl yonder with glad, frightened eyes, Spring's daughter.' Oh, I +too, heard it, Marian! 'Follow,' the birds sang, 'follow, follow, follow, +for yonder is the heart's desire!" + +The Duke of Ormskirk raised his head, his lips sketching a whistle. "Ah! +ah!" he muttered. "Eureka! I have recaptured it--the message of April." + + +IV + +When these two had gone the Duke flung out his hands in a comprehensive +gesture of giving up the entire matter. "Well," said he, "you see how it +is!" + +"I do," Lord Brudenel assented. "And if you intend to sit patient under it, +I, at least, wear a sword. Confound it, Jack, do you suppose I am going +to have promiscuous young men dropping out of the skies and embracing my +daughter?" The Earl became forceful in his language. + +"Harry,--" the Duke began. + +"The fellow hasn't a penny--not a stick or a stiver to his name! He's only +a rascally, impudent younger son--and even Venour has nothing except Agard +Court yonder! That--that crow's nest!" Lord Brudenel spluttered. "They +mooned about together a great deal a year ago, but I thought nothing of +it; then he went away, and she never spoke of him again. Never spoke of +him--oh, the jade!" + +The Duke of Ormskirk considered the affair, a mild amusement waking in his +plump face. + +"Old friend," said he, at length, "it is my opinion that we are perilously +near to being a couple of fools. We planned this marriage, you and I--dear, +dear, we planned it when Marian was scarcely out of her cradle! But we +failed to take nature into the plot, Harry. It was sensible--Oh, granted! +I obtained a suitable mistress for Ingilby and Bottreaux Towers, a +magnificent ornament for my coach and my opera-box; while you--your pardon, +old friend, if I word it somewhat grossly,--you, in effect, obtained a +wealthy and not uninfluential husband for your daughter. Nay, I think you +are fond of me, but that is beside the mark; it was not Jack Bulmer who was +to marry your daughter, but the Duke of Ormskirk. The thing was as logical +as a sale of bullocks,--value for value. But now nature intervenes, +and"--he snapped his fingers,--"eh, well, since she wants this Humphrey +Degge, of course she must have him." + +Lord Brudenel mentioned several penalties which he would voluntarily incur +in case of any such preposterous marriage. + +"Your style," the Duke regretfully observed, "is somewhat more original +than your subject. You have a handsome daughter to barter, and you want +your price. The thing is far from uncommon. Yet you shall have your price, +Harry. What estate do you demand of your son-in-law?" + +"What the devil are you driving at?" said Lord Brudenel. + +Composedly the Duke of Ormskirk spread out his hands. "You have, in effect, +placed Marian in the market," he said, "and I offer to give Lord Humphrey +Degge the money with which to purchase her." + +"Tis evident," the Earl considered, "that you are demented!" + +"Because I willingly part with money? But then I have a great deal of +money. I have money, and I have power, and the King occasionally pats me +upon the shoulder, and men call me 'your Grace,' instead of 'my Lord,' as +they do you. So I ought to be very happy, ought I not, Harry? Ah, yes, +I ought to be entirely happy, because I have had everything, with the +unimportant exception of the one thing I wanted." + +But Lord Brudenel had drawn himself erect, stiffly. "I am to understand, +then, from this farrago, that on account of the--um--a--incident we have +just witnessed you decline to marry my daughter?" + +"I would sooner cut off my right hand," said the Duke, "for I am fonder of +Marian than I am of any other living creature." + +"Oh, very well!" the Earl conceded, sulkily. "Umfraville wants her. He is +only a marquis, of course, but so far as money is concerned, I believe +he is a thought better off than you. I would have preferred you as a +son-in-law, you understand, but since you withdraw--why, then, let it be +Umfraville." + +Now the Duke looked up into his face for some while. "You would do that! +You would sell Marian to Umfraville--[Footnote: "Whose entrance blushing +Satan did deny Lest hell be thought no better than a sty."] to a person who +unites the continence of a partridge with the graces of a Berkshire hog--to +that lean whoremonger, to that disease-rotted goat! Because he has the +money! Why, Harry, what a car you are!" + +Lord Brudenel bowed, "My Lord Duke, you are to-day my guest. I apprehend +you will presently be leaving Halvergate, however, and as soon--as that +regrettable event takes place, I shall see to it a friend wait upon you +with the length of my sword. Meanwhile I venture to reserve the privilege +of managing my family affairs at my own discretion." + +"I do not fight with hucksters," the Duke flung at him, "and you are one. +Oh, you peddler! Can you not understand that I am trying to buy your +daughter's happiness?" + +"I intend that my daughter shall make a suitable match," replied the Earl, +stubbornly, "and she shall. If Marian is a sensible girl--and, barring +to-day, I have always esteemed her such,--she will find happiness in +obeying her father's mandates: otherwise--" He waved the improbable +contingency aside. + +"Sensible! Faith, can you not see, even now, that to be sensible is not the +highest wisdom? You and I are sensible as the world goes,--and in God's +name, what good does it do us? Here we sit, two miserable and empty-veined +old men squabbling across a deal-table, breaking up a friendship of +thirty years. And yonder Marian and this Humphrey Degge--who are +within a measurable distance of insanity, if their conversation be the +touchstone,--yet tread the pinnacles of some seventh heaven of happiness. +April has brought them love, Harry. Oh, I concede their love is folly! But +it is all folly, Harry Heleigh. Purses, titles, blue ribbons, and the envy +of our fellows are the toys which we struggle for, we sensible men; and in +the end we find them only toys, and, gaining them, we gain only weariness. +And love, too, is a toy; but, gaining love, we gain, at least, a temporary +happiness. There is the difference, Harry Heleigh." + +"Oh, have done with your, balderdash!" said Lord Brudenel. He spoke +irritably, for he knew his position to be guaranteed by common-sense, and +his slow wrath was kindling at opposition. + +His Grace of Ormskirk rose to his feet, all tension. In the act his hand +struck against the open despatch-box; afterward, with a swift alteration +of countenance, he overturned this box and scattered the contents about +the table. For a moment he seemed to forget Lord Brudenel; quite without +warning Ormskirk flared into rage. + +"Harry Heleigh, Harry Heleigh!" he cried, as he strode across the terrace, +and caught Lord Brudenel roughly by the shoulder, "are you not content to +go to your grave without killing another woman? Oh, you dotard miser!--you +haberdasher!--haven't I offered you money, an isn't money the only thing +you are now capable of caring for? Give the girl to Degge, you huckster!" + +Lord Brudenel broke from the Duke's grasp. Brudenel was asplutter with +anger. "I will see you damned first. You offer money,--I fling the money +in your fat face. Look you, you have just insulted, me, and now you +offer--money! Another insult. John Bulmer, I would not accept an affront +like this from an archangel. You are my guest, but I am only flesh and +blood. I swear to you this is the most deliberate act of my life." Lord +Brudenel struck him full upon the cheek. + +"Pardon," said the Duke of Ormskirk. He stood rigid, his arms held stiff at +his sides, his hands clenched; the red mark showed plain against an ashy +countenance. "Pardon me for a moment." Once or twice he opened and shut his +eyes like an automaton. "And stop behaving so ridiculously. I cannot fight +you. I have other matters to attend to. We are wise, Harry,--you and I. +We know that love sometimes does not endure; sometimes it flares up +at a girl's glance, quite suddenly, and afterward smoulders out into +indifference or even into hatred. So, say we, let all sensible people marry +for money, for then in any event you get what you marry for,--a material +benefit, a tangible good, which does no vanish when the first squabble, or +perhaps the first gray hair, arrives. That is sensible; but women, Harry, +are not always sensible--" + +"Draw, you coward!" Lord Brudenel snarled at him. The Earl had already +lugged out his ineffectual dress sword, and would have been, as he stood on +guard, a ludicrous figure had he not been rather terrible. His rage shook +him visibly, and his obstinate mouth twitched and snapped like that of a +beast cornered. All gray he was, and the sun glistened on his gray tye-wig +as he waited. His eyes were coals. + +But Ormskirk had regained composure. "You know that I am not a coward," the +Duke said, equably. "I have proven it many times. Besides, you overlook two +details. One is that I have no sword with me, I am quite unarmed. The other +detail is that only gentlemen fight duels, and just now we are hucksters, +you and I, chaffering over Marian's happiness. So I return to my +bargaining. You will not sell Marian's happiness to me for money? Why, +then--remember, we are only hucksters, you and I,--I will purchase it by a +dishonorable action. I will show you a woman's letters,--some letters I was +going to burn romantically before I married--Instead, I wish you to read +them." + +He pushed the papers lying upon the table toward Lord Brudenel. Afterward +Ormskirk turned away and stood looking over the ivy-covered balustrade into +the gardens below. All white and green and blue the vista was, and of a +monastic tranquillity, save for the plashing of the fountain behind the +yew-hedge. From the gardens at his feet irresolute gusts brought tepid +woodland odors. He heard the rustling of papers, heard Lord Brudenel's +sword fall jangling to the ground. The Duke turned. + +"And for twenty years I have been eating my heart out with longing for +her," the Earl said. "And--and I thought you were my friend, Jack." + +"She was not your wife when I first knew her. But John Bulmer was a +penniless nobody,--so they gave her to you, an earl's heir, those sensible +parents of hers. I never saw her again, though--as you see,--she wrote to +me sometimes. And her parents did the sensible thing; but I think they +killed her, Harry." + +"Killed her?" Lord Brudenel echoed, stupidly. Then on a sudden it was +singular to see the glare in his eyes puffed out like a candle. "I killed +her," he whispered; "why, I killed Alison,--I!" He began to laugh. "Now +that is amusing, because she was the one thing in the world I ever loved. +I remember that she used to shudder when I kissed her. I thought it was +because she was only a brown and thin and timid child, who would be wiser +in love's tricks by and by. Now I comprehend 'twas because every kiss was +torment to her, because every time I touched her 'twas torment. So she +died very slowly, did Alison,--and always I was at hand with my kisses, my +pet names, and my paddlings,--killing her, you observe, always urging her +graveward. Yes, and yet there is nothing in these letters to show how much +she must have loathed me!" he said, in a mild sort of wonder. He appeared +senile now, the shrunken and calamitous shell of the man he had been within +the moment. + +The Duke of Ormskirk put an arm about him. "Old friend, old friend!" said +he. + +"Why did you not tell me?" the Earl said. "I loved you, Jack. I worshipped +her. I would never willingly have seen you two unhappy." + +"Her parents would have done as you planned to do,--they would have given +their daughter to the next richest suitor. I was nobody then. So the wisdom +of the aged slew us, Harry,--slew Alison utterly, and left me with a living +body, indeed, but with little more. I do not say that body has not amused +itself. Yet I too, loved her, Harry Heleigh. And when I saw this new +Alison--for Marian is her mother, face, heart, and soul,--why, some wraith +of emotion stirred in me, some thrill, some not quite forgotten pulse. It +seemed Alison come back from the grave. Love did not reawaken, for youth's +fervor was gone out of me, yet presently I fell a-dreaming over my Madeira +on long winter evenings,--sedate and tranquil dreams of this new Alison +flitting about Ingilby, making the splendid, desolate place into a home. Am +old man's fancies, Harry,--fancies bred of my loneliness, for I am lonely +nowadays. But my dreams, I find, were not sufficiently comprehensive; for +they did not anticipate April,--and nature,--and Lord Humphrey Degge. We +must yield to that triumvirate, we sensible old men. Nay, we are wise as +the world goes, but we have learned, you and I, that to be sensible is not +the highest wisdom. Marian is her mother in soul, heart, and feature. Don't +let the old tragedy be repeated, Harry. Let her have this Degge! Let Marian +have her chance of being happy, for a year or two...." + +But Lord Brudenel had paid very little attention. "I suppose so," he said, +when the Duke had ended. "Oh, I suppose so. Jack, she was always kind and +patient and gentle, you understand, but she used to shudder when I kissed +her," he repeated, dully,--"shudder, Jack." He sat staring at his sword +lying there on the ground, as though it fascinated him. + +"Ah, but,--old friend," the Duke cried, with his hand upon Lord Brudenel's +shoulder, "forgive me! It was the only way." + +Lord Brudenel rose to his feet. "Oh, yes! why, yes, I forgive you, if that +is any particular comfort to you. It scarcely seems of any importance, +though. The one thing which really matters is that I loved her, and I +killed her. Oh, beyond doubt, I forgive you. But now that you have made my +whole past a hideous stench to me, and have proven the love I was so proud +of--the one quite clean, quite unselfish thing in my life, I thought it, +Jack,--to have been only my lust vented on a defenceless woman,--why, just +now, I have not time to think of forgiveness. Yes, Marian may marry Degge +if she cares to. And I am sorry I took her mother away from you. I would +not have done it if I had known." + +Brudenel started away drearily, but when he had gone a little distance +turned back. + +"And the point of it is," he said, with a smile, "that I shall go on living +just as if nothing had happened, and shall probably live for a long, long +time. My body is so confoundedly healthy. How the deuce did you have the +courage to go on living?" he demanded, enviously. "You loved her and you +lost her. I'd have thought you would have killed yourself long ago." + +The Duke shrugged. "Yes, people do that in books. In books they have such +strong emotions--" + +Then Ormskirk paused for a heart-beat, looking down into the gardens. +Wonderfully virginal it all seemed to Ormskirk, that small portion of +a world upon the brink of renaissance: a tessellation of clean colors, +where the gravelled walkways were snow beneath the sun, and were in shadow +transmuted to dim violet tints; and for the rest, green ranging from the +sober foliage of yew and box and ilex to the pale glow of young grass +In the full sunlight; all green, save where the lake shone, a sapphire +green-girdled. Spring triumphed with a vaunting pageant. And in the +forest, in the air, even in the unplumbed sea-depths, woke the mating +impulse,--irresistible, borne as it might seem on the slow-rising tide +of grass that now rippled about the world. Everywhere they were mating; +everywhere glances allured and mouth met mouth, while John Bulmer went +alone without any mate or intimacy with anyone. + +Everywhere people were having emotions which Ormskirk envied. He had so few +emotions nowadays. Even all this posturing and talk about Alison Heleigh in +which he had just indulged began to savor somehow of play-acting. He had +loved Alison, of course, and that which he had said was true enough--in +a way,--but, after all, he had over-colored it. There had been in his +life so many interesting matters, and so many other women too, that the +loss of Alison could not be said to have blighted his existence quite +satisfactorily. No, John Bulmer had again been playing at the big emotions +which he heard about and coveted, just as at this very moment John Bulmer +was playing at being sophisticated and _blase_... with only poor old Harry +for audience.... + +"A great deal of me did die," the Duke heard this John Bulmer +saying,--"all, I suppose, except my carcass, Harry. And it seemed hardly +worth the trouble to butcher that also." + +"No," Lord Brudenel conceded, "I suppose not. I wonder, d'ye know, will +anything ever again seem really worth the trouble of doing it?" + +The Duke of Ormskirk took his arm. "Fy, Harry, bid the daws seek their food +elsewhere, for a gentleman may not wear his heart upon his sleeve. Empires +crumble, and hearts break, and we are blessed or damned, as Fate elects; +but through it all we find comfort in the reflection that dinner is good, +and sleep, too, is excellent. As for the future--eh, well, if it mean +little to us, it means a deal to Alison's daughter. Let us go to them, +Harry." + + + + +VII + +IN THE SECOND APRIL + + +_As Played at Bellegarde, in the April of 1750_ + +"_This passion is in honest minds the strongest incentive that can move the +soul of man to laudable accomplishments. Is a man just? Let him fall in +love and grow generous. It immediately makes the good which is in him shine +forth in new excellencies, and the ill vanish away without the pain of +contrition, but with a sudden amendment of heart._" + + +DRAMATIS PERSONAE + +DUKE OF ORMSKISK. + +DUC DE PUYSANGE, a true Frenchman, a pert, railing fribble, but at bottom a +man of parts. + +MARQUIS DE SOYECOURT, a brisk, conceited rake, and distant cousin to de +Puysange. + +CAZAIO, captain of brigands. + +DOM MICHEL FREGOSE, a lewd, rascally friar. + +GUITON, steward to de Puysange. + +PAWSEY, Ormskirk's man. + +ACHON, a knave. + +MICHAULT, another knave. + +DUCHESSE DE PUYSANGE. + +CLAIRE, sister to de Puysange, a woman of beauty and resolution, of a +literal humor. + +ATTENDANTS, BRIGANDS, and DRAGOONS; and, in the Proem, LORD HUMPHREY DEGGE +and LADY MARIAN HELEIGH. + + +SCENE + +First at Dover, thence shifting to Bellegarde-en-Poictesme and the adjacent +country. + + + + +IN THE SECOND APRIL + + +_PROEM:--More Properly an Apologue, and Treats of the Fallibility of Soap_ + +The Duke of Ormskirk left Halvergate on the following day, after +participation in two dialogues, which I abridge. + +Said the Duke to Lord Humphrey Degge: + +"You have been favored, sir, vastly beyond your deserts. I acquiesce, since +Fate is proverbially a lady, and to dissent were in consequence ungallant. +Shortly I shall find you more employment, at Dover, whither I am now going +to gull my old opponent and dear friend, Gaston de Puysange, in the matter +of this new compact between France and England. I shall look for you at +Dover, then, in three days' time." + +"And in vain, my Lord Duke," said the other. + +Now Ormskirk raised one eyebrow, after a fashion that he had. + +"Because I love Marian," said Lord Humphrey, "and because I mean to be less +unworthy of Marian than I have been heretofore. So that I can no longer be +your spy. Besides, in nature I lack aptitude for the trade. Eh, my Lord +Duke, have you already forgotten how I bungled the affair of Captain +Audaine and his associates?" + + +"But that was a maiden effort. And as I find--at alas! the cost of +decrepitude,--the one thing life teaches us is that many truisms are true. +'Practice makes perfect' is one of them. And faith, when you come to my +age, Lord Humphrey, you will not grumble at having to soil your hands +occasionally in the cause of common-sense." + +The younger man shook his head. "A week ago you would have found me +amenable enough to reason, since I was then a sensible person, and to be of +service to his Grace of Ormskirk was very sensible,--just as to marry Miss +Allonby, the young and beautiful heiress, was then the course pre-eminently +sensible. All the while I loved Marian, you understand. But I clung to +common-sense. Desperately I clung to common-sense. And yet--" He flung out +his hands. + +"Yes, there is by ordinary some plaguy _yet_," the Duke interpolated. + +"There is," cried Lord Humphrey Degge, "the swift and heart-grappling +recollection of the woman you gave up in the cause of common-sense,--roused +by some melody she liked, or some shade of color she was wont to wear, or +by hearing from other lips some turn of speech to which she was addicted. +My Lord Duke, that memory wakes on a sudden and clutches you by the throat, +and it chokes you. And one swears that common-sense--" + +"One swears that common-sense may go to the devil," said his Grace of +Ormskirk, "whence I don't say it didn't emanate! And one swears that, after +all, there is excellent stuff in you! Your idiotic conduct, sir, makes me +far happier than you know!" + +After some ten paces he turned, with a smile. "In the matter of soiling +one's hands--Personally I prefer them clean, sir, and particularly in the +case of Marian's husband. Had it been I, he must have stuck to prosaic +soap; with you in the role there is a difference. Faith, Lord Humphrey, +there is a decided difference, and if you be other than a monster of +depravity you will henceforth, I think, preserve your hands immaculate." + +To Marian the Duke said a vast number of things, prompted by a complaisant +thrill over the fact that, in view of the circumstances, his magnanimity +must to the unprejudiced appear profuse and his behavior tolerably heroic. + +"These are very absurd phrases," Marian considered, "since you will +never love anyone, I think--however much you may admire the color of her +eyes,--one-quarter so earnestly as you will always marvel at John Bulmer. +Or perhaps you have only to wait a little, Jack, till in her time and +season the elect woman shall come to you, just as she comes to all +men,--and then, for once in your existence, you will be sincere." + +"I go, provisionally, to seek this paragon at Dover," said his Grace of +Ormskirk, and he lifted her fingers toward his smiling lips; "but I shall +bear in mind, my dear, even in Dover, that sincerity is a devilishly +expensive virtue." + + +I + +It was on the thirteenth day of April that they signed the Second Treaty of +Dover, which not only confirmed its predecessor of Aix-la-Chapelle, but in +addition, with the brevity of lightning, demolished the last Stuarts' hope +of any further aid from France. And the French ambassador subscribed the +terms with a chuckle. + +"For on this occasion, Jean," he observed, as he pushed the paper from him, +"I think that honors are fairly even. You obtain peace at home, and in +India we obtain assistance for Dupleix; good, the benefit is quite mutual; +and accordingly, my friend, I must still owe you one requiting for that +Bavarian business." + +Ormskirk was silent until he had the churchwarden which he had just ignited +aglow. "That was the evening I had you robbed and beaten by footpads, was +it not? Faith, Gaston, I think you should rather be obliged to me, since it +taught you never to carry important papers in your pocket when you go about +your affairs of gallantry." + +"That beating with great sticks," the Duc de Puysange considered, "was the +height of unnecessity." + +And the Duke of Ormskirk shrugged. "A mere touch of verisimilitude, Gaston; +footpads invariably beat their victims. Besides, you had attempted to +murder me at Aix, you may remember." + +De Puysange was horrified. "My dear friend, when I set Villaneuve upon you +it was with express orders only to run you through the shoulder. Figure to +yourself: that abominable St. Severin had bribed your _chef_ to feed you +powdered glass in a ragout! But I dissented. 'Jean and I have been the +dearest enemies these ten years past,' I said. 'At every Court in Europe +we have lied to each other. If you kill him I shall beyond doubt presently +perish of ennui.' So, that France might escape a blow so crushing as the +loss of my services, St. Severin consented to disable you." + +"Believe me, I appreciate your intervention," Ormskirk stated, with his +usual sleepy smile; before this he had found amusement in the naivete of +his friend's self-approbation. + +"Not so! Rather you are a monument of ingratitude," the other complained. +"You conceive, Villaneuve was in price exorbitant. I snap my fingers. +'For a comrade so dear,' I remark, 'I gladly employ the most expensive of +assassins.' Yet before the face of such magnanimity you grumble." The Duc +de Puysange spread out his shapely hands. "I murder you! My adored Jean, I +had as lief make love to my wife." + +Ormskirk struck his finger-tips upon the table. "Faith, I knew there was +something I intended to ask of you, I want you to get me a wife." + +"In fact," de Puysange observed, "warfare being now at an end, it is only +natural that you should resort to matrimony. I can assure you it is an +admirable substitute. But who is the lucky Miss, my little villain?" + +"Why, that is for you to settle," Ormskirk said. "I had hoped you might +know of some suitable person." + +"_Ma foi_, my friend, if I were arbiter and any wife would suit you, I +would cordially desire you to take mine, for when a woman so incessantly +resembles an angel in conduct, her husband inevitably desires to see her +one in reality." + +"You misinterpret me, Gaston. This is not a jest. I had always intended +to marry as soon as I could spare the time, and now that this treaty is +disposed of, my opportunity has beyond doubt arrived. I am practically at +leisure until the autumn. At latest, though, I must marry by August, +in order to get the honeymoon off my hands before the convocation of +Parliament. For there will have to be a honeymoon, I suppose." + +"It is customary," de Puysange said. He appeared to deliberate something +entirely alien to this reply, however, and now sat silent for a matter +of four seconds, his countenance profoundly grave. He was a hideous man, +[Footnote: For a consideration of the vexed and delicate question whether +or no Gaston de Puysange was grandson to King Charles the Second of +England, the reader is referred to the third chapter of La Vrilliere's _De +Puysange et son temps_. The Duke's resemblance in person to that monarch +was undeniable.] with black beetling eyebrows, an enormous nose, and an +under-lip excessively full; his face had all the calculated ill-proportion +of a gargoyle, an ugliness so consummate and merry that in ultimate effect +it captivated. + +At last de Puysange began: "I think I follow you. It is quite proper that +you should marry. It is quite proper that a man who has done so much for +England should leave descendants to perpetuate his name, and with perhaps +some portion of his ability--no, Jean, I do not flatter,--serve the England +which is to his heart so dear. As a Frenchman I cannot but deplore that our +next generation may have to face another Ormskirk; as your friend who loves +you I say that this marriage will appropriately round a successful and +honorable and intelligent life. Eh, we are only men, you and I, and it is +advisable that all men should marry, since otherwise they might be so happy +in this colorful world that getting to heaven would not particularly tempt +them. Thus is matrimony a bulwark of religion." + +"You are growing scurrilous," Ormskirk complained, "whereas I am in perfect +earnest." + +"I, too, speak to the foot of the letter, Jean, as you will soon learn. I +comprehend that you cannot with agreeability marry an Englishwoman. You are +too much the personage. Possessing, as you notoriously possess, your pick +among the women of gentle degree--for none of them would her guardians nor +her good taste permit to refuse the great Duke of Ormskirk,--any choice +must therefore be a too robustious affrontment to all the others. If you +select a Howard, the Skirlaws have pepper in the nose; if a Beaufort, you +lose Umfraville's support,--and so on. Hey, I know, my dear Jean; your +affair with the Earl of Brudenel's daughter cost you seven seats in +Parliament, you may remember. How am I aware of this?--why, because I +habitually have your mail intercepted. You intercept mine, do you not? +Naturally; you would be a very gross and intolerable scion of the pig if +you did otherwise. _Eh bien_, let us get on. You might, of course, play +King Cophetua, but I doubt if it would amuse you, since Penelophons are +rare; it follows in logic that your wife must come from abroad. And whence? +Without question, from France, the land of adorable women. The thing is +plainly demonstrated; and in France, my dear, I have to an eyelash the +proper person for you." + +"Then we may consider the affair as settled," Ormskirk replied, "and should +you arrange to have the marriage take place upon the first of August,--if +possible, a trifle earlier,--I would be trebly your debtor." + +De Puysange retorted: "Beyond doubt I can adjust these matters. And yet, +my dear Jean, I must submit that it is not quite the act of a gentleman to +plunge into matrimony without even inquiring as to the dowry of your future +bride." + +"It is true," said Ormskirk, with a grimace; "I had not thought of her +portion. You must remember my attention is at present pre-empted by that +idiotic Ferrers business. How much am I to marry, then, Gaston?" + +"I had in mind," said the other, "my sister, the Demoiselle Claire de +Puysange,--" + +It was a day of courtesy when the minor graces were paramount. Ormskirk +rose and accorded de Puysange a salutation fitted to an emperor. "I entreat +your pardon, sir, for any _gaucherie_ of which I may have been guilty, and +desire to extend to you my appreciation of the honor you have done me." + +"It is sufficient, monsieur," de Puysange replied. And the two gravely +bowed again. + +Then the Frenchman resumed, in conversational tones: "I have but one +unmarried sister,--already nineteen, beautiful as an angel (in the eyes, at +least, of fraternal affection), and undoubtedly as headstrong as any devil +at present stoking the eternal fires below. You can conceive that the +disposal of such a person is a delicate matter. In Poictesme there is +no suitable match, and upon the other hand I grievously apprehend her +presentation at our Court, where, as Arouet de Voltaire once observed to +me, the men are lured into matrimony by the memories of their past sins, +and the women by the immunity it promises for future ones. In England, +where custom will permit a woman to be both handsome and chaste, I estimate +she would be admirably ranged. Accordingly, my dear Jean, behold a fact +accomplished. And now let us embrace, my brother!" + +This was done. The next day they settled the matter of dowry, jointure, the +widow's portion, and so on, and de Puysange returned to render his report +at Marly. The wedding had been fixed by the Frenchman for St. Anne's day, +and by Ormskirk, as an uncompromising churchman, for the twenty-sixth of +the following July. + + +II + +That evening the Duke of Ormskirk sat alone in his lodgings. His Grace +was very splendid in black-and-gold, wearing his two stars of the Garter +and the Thistle, for there was that night a ball at Lady Sandwich's, and +Royalty was to embellish it. In consequence, Ormskirk meant to show his +plump face there for a quarter of an hour; and the rooms would be too +hot (he peevishly reflected), and the light would tire his eyes, and +Laventhrope would button-hole him again about that appointment for +Laventhrope's son, and the King would give vent to some especially +fat-witted jest, and Ormskirk would apishly grin and applaud. And afterward +he would come home with a headache, and ghostly fiddles would vex him all +night long with their thin incessancy. + +"Accordingly," the Duke decided, "I shall not stir a step until eleven +o'clock. The King, in the ultimate, is only a tipsy, ignorant old German +debauchee, and I have half a mind to tell him so. Meantime, he can wait." + +The Duke sat down to consider this curious lassitude, this indefinite +vexation, which had possessed him. + +"For I appear to have taken a sudden dislike to the universe. It is +probably my liver. + +"In any event, I have come now to the end of my resources. For some +twenty-five years it has amused me to make a great man of John Bulmer. Now +that is done, and, like the Moorish fellow in the play, 'my occupation's +gone.' I am at the very top of the ladder, and I find it the dreariest +place in the world. There is nothing left to scheme for, and, besides, I am +tired. + +"The tiniest nerve in my body, the innermost cell of my brain, is tired +to-night. + +"I wonder if getting married will divert me? I doubt it. Of course I ought +to marry, but then it must be rather terrible to have a woman loitering +around you for the rest of your life. She will probably expect me to talk +to her; she will probably come into my rooms and sit there whenever the +inclination prompts her,--in a sentence, she will probably worry me to +death. Eh well!--that die is cast! + +"'Beautiful as an angel, and headstrong as a devil.' And what's her +name?--Oh, yes, Claire. That is a very silly name, and I suppose she is a +vixenish little idiot. However, the alliance is a sensible one. De Puysange +has had it in mind for some six months, I think, but certainly I did not +think he knew of my affair with Marian. Well, but he affects omniscience, +he delights in every small chicane. He is rather droll. Yesterday he knew +from the start that I was leading up to a proposal for his sister,--and yet +there we sat, two solemn fools, and played our tedious comedy to a finish. +_Eh bien!_ as he says, it is necessary to keep one's hand in. + +"'Beautiful as an angel, and headstrong as a devil'--Alison was not +headstrong." + +Ormskirk rose suddenly and approached an open window. It was a starless +sight, temperately cool, with no air stirring. Below was a garden of some +sort, and a flat roof which would be that of the stables, and beyond, +abrupt as a painted scene, a black wall of houses stood against a +steel-colored, vacant sky, reaching precisely to the middle of the vista. +Only a solitary poplar, to the rear of the garden, qualified this sombre +monotony of right angles. Ormskirk saw the world as an ugly mechanical +drawing, fashioned for utility, meticulously outlined with a ruler. Yet +there was a scent of growing things to nudge the senses. + +"No, Alison was different. And Alison has been dead near twenty years. +And God help me! I no longer regret even Alison. I should have been more +truthful in talking with poor Harry Heleigh. But, as always, the temptation +to be picturesque was irresistible. Besides, the truth is humiliating. + +"The real tragedy of life is to learn that it is not really tragic. To +learn that the world is gross, that it lacks nobility, that to considerate +persons it must be in effect quite unimportant,--here are commonplaces, +sweepings from the tub of the immaturest cynic. But to learn that you +yourself were thoughtfully constructed in harmony with the world you were +to live in, that you yourself are incapable of any great passion--eh, this +is an athletic blow to human vanity. Well! I acknowledge it. My love for +Alison Pleydell was the one sincere thing in my life. And it is dead. I do +not think of her once a month. I do not regret her except when I am tipsy +or bored or listening to music, and wish to fancy myself the picturesque +victim of a flint-hearted world. Which is a romantic lie; I move like a +man of card-board in a card-board world. Certain faculties and tastes and +mannerisms I undoubtedly possess, but if I have any personality at all, +I am not aware of it; I am a mechanism that eats and sleeps and clumsily +perambulates a ball that spins around a larger ball that revolves about +another, and so on, _ad infinitum_. Some day the mechanism will be broken. +Or it will slowly wear out, perhaps. And then it will go to the dust-heap. +And that will be the end of the great Duke of Ormskirk. + +"John Bulmer did not think so. It is true that John Bulmer was a +magnanimous fool,--Upon the other hand, John Bulmer would never have stared +out of an ugly window at an uglier landscape and have talked yet uglier +nonsense to it. He would have been off post-haste after the young person +who is 'beautiful as an angel and headstrong as a devil.' And afterward he +would have been very happy or else very miserable. I begin to think that +John Bulmer was more sensible than the great Duke of Ormskirk. I would--I +would that he were still alive." + +His Grace slapped one palm against his thigh with unwonted vigor. "Behold, +what I am longing for! I am longing for John Bulmer." + +Presently he sounded the gong upon his desk. And presently he said: "My +adorable Pawsey, the great Duke of Ormskirk is now going to pay his +respects to George Guelph, King of Britain, France, and Ireland, defender +of the faith. Duke of Brunswick and Lunenburg, and supreme head of the +Anglican and Hibernian Church. And to-morrow Mr. John Bulmer will set forth +upon a little journey into Poictesme. You will obligingly pack a valise. +No, I shall not require you,--for John Bulmer was entirely capable of +dressing and shaving himself. So kindly go to the devil, Pawsey, and stop +staring at me." + +Later in the evening Pawsey, a thought mellowed by the ale of Dover, +deplored with tears the instability of a nation whose pilots were addicted +to tippling. + +"Drunk as David's sow!" said Pawsey, "and 'im in the hactual presence of +'is Sacred Majesty!" + + +III + +Thus it came about that, five days later, arrived at Bellegarde Mr. John +Bulmer, kinsman and accredited emissary of the great Duke of Ormskirk. +He brought with him and in due course delivered a casket of jewels and a +letter from the Duke to his betrothed. The diamonds were magnificent, and +the letter was a paragon of polite ardors. + +Mr. Bulmer found the chateau in charge of a distant cousin to de Puysange, +the Marquis de Soyecourt; with whom were the Duchess, a gentle and +beautiful lady, her two children, and the Demoiselle Claire. The Duke +himself was still at Marly, with most of his people, but at Bellegarde +momentarily they looked for his return. Meanwhile de Soyecourt, an +exquisite and sociable and immoral young gentleman of forty-one, was +lonely, and protested that any civilized company was, in the oafish +provinces, a charity of celestial pre-arrangement. He would not hear of Mr. +Bulmer's leaving Bellegarde; and after a little protestation the latter +proved persuadable. + +"Mr. Bulmer," the Duke's letter of introduction informed the Marquis, "is +my kinsman and may be regarded as discreet. The evanishment of his tiny +patrimony, spirited away some years ago by divers over-friendly ladies, +hath taught the man humility, and procured for me the privilege of paying +for his support: but I find him more valuable than his cost. He is +tolerably honest, not too often tipsy, makes an excellent salad, and will +convey a letter or hold a door with fidelity and despatch. Employ his +services, monsieur, if you have need of them; I place him at your command." + +In fine, they at Bellegarde judged Mr. Bulmer to rank somewhere between +lackeyship and gentility, and treated him in accordance. It was an age of +parasitism, and John Bulmer, if a parasite, was the Phormio of a very great +man: when his patron expressed a desire Mr. Bulmer fulfilled it without +boggling over inconvenient scruples, perhaps; and there was the worst that +could with equity be said of him. An impoverished gentleman must live +somehow, and, deuce take it! there must be rather pretty pickings among +the broken meats of an Ormskirk. To this effect de Soyecourt moralized one +evening as the two sat over their wine. + +John Bulmer candidly assented. "I live as best I may," he said. "In a word +'I am his Highness' dog at Kew--' But mark you, I do not complete the +quotation, monsieur." + +"Which ends, as I remember it, 'I pray you, sir, whose dog are you?' Well, +Mr. Bulmer, each of us wards his own kennel somewhere, whether it be in +a king's court or in a woman's heart, and it is necessary that he pay +the rent of it in such coin as the owner may demand. Beggars cannot be +choosers, Mr. Bulmer." The Marquis went away moodily, and John Bulmer +poured out another glass. + +"Were I Gaston, you would not kennel here, my friend. The Duchess has too +many claims to be admired,--for undoubtedly people do go about unchained +who can admire a blonde,--and always your eyes follow her. I noticed it a +week ago." + +And during this week Mr. Bulmer had seen a deal of Claire de Puysange, with +results that you will presently ascertain. It was natural she should desire +to learn something of the man she was so soon to marry, and of whose +personality she was so ignorant; she had not even seen a picture of him, by +example. Was he handsome? + +John Bulmer believed him rather remarkably handsome, when you considered +how frequently his love-affairs had left disastrous souvenirs: yes, for a +man in middle life so often patched up by quack doctors, Ormskirk looked +wholesome enough, said Mr. Bulmer. He may have had his occult purposes, +this poor cousin, but of Ormskirk he undoubtedly spoke with engaging +candor. Here was no parasite cringingly praising his patron to the +skies. The Duke's career was touched on, with its grimy passages no whit +extenuated: before Dettingen Cousin Ormskirk had, it must be confessed, +taken a bribe from de Noailles, and in return had seen to it that the +English did not follow up their empty victory; and 'twas well known +Ormskirk got his dukedom through the Countess of Yarmouth, to whom the +King could deny nothing. What were the Duke's relations with this liberal +lady?--a shrug rendered Mr. Bulmer's avowal of ignorance tolerably +explicit. Then, too, Mr. Bulmer readily conceded, the Duke's atrocities +after Culloden were somewhat over-notorious for denial: all the prisoners +were shot out-of-hand; seventy-two of them were driven into an inn-yard +and massacred _en masse_. Yes, there were women among them, but not over +a half-dozen children, at most. Mademoiselle was not to class his noble +patron with Herod, understand,--only a few brats of no importance. + +In fine, he told her all the highly colored tales that envy and malice and +ignorance had been able to concoct concerning the great Duke. Many of them +John Bulmer knew to be false; nevertheless, he had a large mythology to +choose from, he picked his instances with care, he narrated them with gusto +and discretion,--and in the end he got his reward. + +For the girl rose, flame-faced, and burlesqued a courtesy in his direction. +"Monsieur Bulmer, I make you my compliments. You have very fully explained +what manner of man is this to whom my brother has sold me." + +"And wherefore do you accord me this sudden adulation?" said John Bulmer. + +"Because in France we have learned that lackeys are always powerful. Le Bel +is here omnipotent, Monsieur Bulmer; but he is lackey to a satyr only; and +therefore, I felicitate you, monsieur, who are lackey to a fiend." + +John Bulmer looked rather grave. "Civility is an inexpensive wear, +mademoiselle, but it becomes everybody." + +"Lackey!" she flung over her shoulder, as she left him. + +John Bulmer began to whistle an air then popular across the Channel. Later +his melody was stilled. + +"'Beautiful as an angel, and headstrong as a devil!'" said John Bulmer. +"You have an eye, Gaston!" + + +IV + +That evening came a letter from Gaston to de Soyecourt, which the latter +read aloud at supper. Gossip of the court it was for the most part, +garrulous, and peppered with deductions of a caustic and diverting sort, +but containing no word of a return to Bellegarde, in this vocal rendering. +For in the reading one paragraph was elided. + +"I arrive," the Duke had written, "within three or at most four days after +this will be received. You are to breathe not a syllable of my coming, dear +Louis, for I do not come alone. Achille Cazaio has intimidated Poictesme +long enough; I consider it is not desirable that a peer of France should be +at the mercy of a chicken-thief, particularly when Fortune whispers, as the +lady now does: + + "Viens punir le coupable; + Les oracles, les dieux, tout nous est favorable. + +"Understand, in fine, that Madame de Pompadour has graciously obtained for +me the loan of the dragoons of Entrechat for an entire fortnight, so that I +return not in submission, but, like Caesar and Coriolanus and other exiled +captains of antiquity, at the head of a glorious army. We will harry the +Taunenfels, we will hang the vile bandit more high than Haman of old, we +will, in a word, enjoy the supreme pleasure of the chase, enhanced by the +knowledge we pursue a note-worthy quarry. Homicide is, after all, the most +satisfying recreation life affords us, since man alone knows how thoroughly +man deserves to be slaughtered. A tiger, now, has his deficiencies, +perhaps, viewed as a roommate; yet a tiger is at least acceptable to the +eye, a vision very pleasantly suggestive, we will say, of buttered toast; +whereas, our fellow-creatures, my dear Louis,--" And in this strain de +Puysange continued, with intolerably scandalous examples as parapets for +his argument. + +That night de Soyecourt re-read this paragraph. "So the Pompadour has +kindly tendered him the loan of certain dragoons? She is very fond of +Gaston, is la petite Etoiles, beyond doubt. And accordingly her dragoons +are to garrison Bellegarde for a whole fortnight. Good, good!" said the +Marquis; "I think that all goes well." + +He sat for a long while, smiling, preoccupied with his imaginings, which +were far adrift in the future. Louis de Soyecourt was a subtle little man, +freakish and amiable, and, on a minute scale, handsome. He reminded people +of a dissipated elf; his excesses were notorious, yet always he preserved +the face of an ecclesiastic and the eyes of an aging seraph; and bodily +there was as yet no trace of the corpulence which marred his later years. + +To-night he slept soundly. His conscience was always, they say, to the very +end of his long life, the conscience of a child, vulnerable by physical +punishment, but by nothing else. + + +V + +Next day John Bulmer rode through the Forest of Acaire, and sang as he +went. Yet he disapproved of the country. + +"For I am of the opinion," John Bulmer meditated, "that France just now is +too much like a flower-garden situate upon the slope of a volcano. The eye +is pleasantly titillated, but the ear catches eloquent rumblings. This is +not a very healthy country, I think. These shaggy-haired, dumb peasants +trouble me. I had thought France a nation of de Puysanges; I find it rather +a nation of beasts who are growing hungry. Presently they will begin +to feed, and I am not at all certain as to the urbanity of their table +manners." + +However, it was no affair of his; so he put the matter out of mind, and as +he rode through the forest, carolled blithely. Trees were marshalled on +each side with an effect of colonnades; everywhere there was a sniff of the +cathedral, of a cheery cathedral all green and gold and full-bodied browns, +where the industrious motes swam, like the fishes fairies angle for, in +every long and rigid shaft of sunlight,--or rather (John Bulmer decided), +as though Time had just passed by with a broom, intent to garnish the least +nook of Acaire against Spring's occupancy of it. Then there were tiny white +butterflies, frail as dream-stuff. There were anemones; and John Bulmer +sighed at their insolent perfection. Theirs was a frank allure; in the +solemn forest they alone of growing things were wanton, for they coquetted +with the wind, and their pink was the pink of flesh. + +He recollected that he was corpulent--and forty-five. "And yet, praise +Heaven," said John Bulmer, "something stirs in this sleepy skull of mine." + +Sang John Bulmer: + + "April wakes, and the gifts are good + Which April grants in this lonely wood + Mid the wistful sounds of a solitude, + Whose immemorial murmuring + Is the voice of Spring + And murmurs the burden of burgeoning. + + "April wakes, and her heart is high, + For the Bassarids and the Fauns are nigh, + And prosperous leaves lisp busily + Over flattered brakes, whence the breezes bring + Vext twittering + To swell the burden of burgeoning. + + "April wakes, and afield, astray, + She calls to whom at the end I say. + _Heart o' my Heart, I am thine alway_,-- + And I follow, follow her carolling, + For I hear her sing + Above the burden of burgeoning. + + "April wakes;--it were good to live + (_Yet April passes_), though April give + No other gift for our pleasuring + Than the old, old burden of burgeoning--" + +He paused here. Not far ahead a woman's voice had given a sudden scream, +followed by continuous calls for aid. + +"Now, if I choose, will begin the first fytte of John Bulmer's adventures," +he meditated, leisurely. "The woman is in some sort of trouble. If I go to +her assistance I shall probably involve myself in a most unattractive mess, +and eventually be arrested by the constable,--if they have any constables +in this operatic domain, the which I doubt. I shall accordingly emulate the +example of the long-headed Levite, and sensibly pass by on the other side. +Halt! I there recognize the voice of the Duke of Ormskirk. I came into this +country to find John Bulmer; and John Bulmer would most certainly have +spurred his gallant charger upon the craven who is just now molesting +yonder female. In consequence, my gallant charger, we will at once proceed +to confound the dastardly villain." + +He came presently into an open glade, which the keen sunlight lit without +obstruction. Obviously arranged, was his first appraisal of the tableau +there presented. A woman in blue half-knelt, half-lay, upon the young +grass, while a man, bending over, fettered her hands behind her back. +A swarthy and exuberantly bearded fellow, attired in green-and-russet, +stood beside them, displaying magnificent teeth in exactly the grin which +hieratic art imputes to devils. Yet farther off a Dominican Friar sat upon +a stone and displayed rather more unctuous amusement. Three horses and a +mule diversified the background. All in all, a thought larger than life, a +shade too obviously posed, a sign-painter's notion of a heroic picture, was +John Bulmer's verdict. From his holster he drew a pistol. + +The lesser rascal rose from the prostrate woman. "Finished, my captain,--" +he began. Against the forest verdure he made an excellent mark. John Bulmer +shot him neatly through the head. + +Startled by the detonation, the Friar and the man in green-and-russet +wheeled about to find Mr. Bulmer, with his most heroical bearing, +negligently replacing the discharged pistol. The woman lay absolutely +still, face downward, in a clump of fern. + +"Gentlemen," said John Bulmer, "I lament that your sylvan diversions +should be thus interrupted by the fact that an elderly person like myself, +quite old enough to know better, has seen fit to adopt the pursuit of +knight-errantry. You need not trouble yourselves about your companion, for +I have blown out most of the substance nature intended him to think with. +One of you, I regret to observe, is rendered immune by the garb of an order +which I consider misguided, indeed, but with which I have no quarrel. With +the other I beg leave to request the honor of exchanging a few passes as +the recumbent lady's champion." + +"Sacred blue!" remarked the bearded man; "you presume to oppose, then, of +all persons, me! You fool, I am Achille Cazaio!" + +"I deplore the circumstance that I am not overwhelmed by the revelation," +John Bulmer said, as he dismounted, "and I entreat you to bear in mind, +friend Achille, that in Poictesme I am a stranger. And, unhappily, the +names of many estimable persons have not an international celebrity." Thus +speaking, he drew and placed himself on guard. + +With a shrug the Friar turned and reseated himself upon the stone. He +appeared a sensible man. But Cazaio flashed out a long sword and hurled +himself upon John Bulmer. + +Cazaio thus obtained a butcherly thrust in the shoulder, "Friend Achille," +said John Bulmer, "that was tolerably severe for a first hit. Does it +content you?" + +The hairy man raged. "Eh, my God!" Cazaio shrieked, "do you mock me, you +misbegotten one! Before you can give me such another I shall have settled +you outright. Already hell gapes for you. Fool, I am Achille Cazaio!" + +"Yes, yes, you had mentioned that," said his opponent. "And, in return, +allow me to present Mr. John Bulmer, thoroughly enjoying himself for the +first time in a quarter of a century, Angelo taught me this thrust. Can you +parry it, friend Achille?" Mr. Bulmer cut open the other's forehead. + +"Well done!" Cazaio grunted. He attacked with renewed fury, but now the +blood was streaming down his face and into his eyes in such a manner that +he was momentarily compelled to carry his hand toward his countenance in +order to wipe away the heavy trickle. John Bulmer lowered his point. + +"Friend Achille, it is not reasonable I should continue our engagement to +its denouement, since by that boastful parade of skill I have inadvertently +turned you into a blind man. Can you not stanch your wound sufficiently to +make possible a renewal of our exercise on somewhat more equal terms?" + +"Not now," the other replied, breathing heavily,--"not now, Monsieur +Bulmaire. You have conquered, and the woman is yours. Yet lend me my life +for a little till I may meet you more equitably. I will not fail you,--I +swear it--I, Achille Cazaio." + +"Why, God bless my soul!" said John Bulmer, "do you imagine that I am +forming a collection of vagrant females? Permit me, pray, to assist you to +your horse. And if you would so far honor me as to accept the temporary +loan of my handkerchief--" + +Solicitously Mr. Bulmer bound up his opponent's head, and more lately aided +him to mount one of the grazing horses. Cazaio was moved to say: + +"You are a gallant enemy, Monsieur Bulmaire. I shall have the pleasure of +cutting your throat on Thursday next, if that date be convenient to you." + +"Believe me," said John Bulmer, "I am always at your disposal. Let this +spot, then, be our rendezvous, since I am wofully ignorant concerning your +local geography. And meantime, my friend, if I may be so bold, I would +suggest a little practice in parrying. You are of Boisrobert's school, I +note, and in attack undeniably brilliant, whereas your defence--unvarying +defect of Boisrobert's followers!--is lamentably weak." + +"I perceive that monsieur is a connoisseur in these matters," said +Cazaio; "I am the more highly honored. Till Thursday, then." And with an +inclination of his bandaged head--and a furtive glance toward the insensate +woman,--he rode away singing. + +Sang Achille Cazaio: + + "But, oh, the world is wide, dear lass, + That I must wander through, + And many a wind and tide, dear lass, + Must flow 'twixt me and you, + Ere love that may not be denied + Shall bring me back to you, + --Dear lass! + Shall bring me back to you." + +Thus singing, he disappeared; meantime John Bulmer had turned toward the +woman. The Dominican sat upon the stone, placidly grinning. + +"And now," said John Bulmer, "we revert to the origin of all this +tomfoolery,--who, true to every instinct of her sex, has caused as much +trouble as lay within her power and then fainted. A little water from +the brook, if you will be so good. Master Friar,--Hey!--why, you damned +rascal!" + +As John Bulmer bent above the woman, the Friar had stabbed John Bulmer +between the shoulders. The dagger broke like glass. + +"Oh, the devil!" said the churchman; "what sort of a duellist is this who +fights in a shirt of Milanese armor!" He stood for a moment, silent, in +sincere horror. "I lack words," he said,--"Oh, vile coward! I lack words to +arraign this hideous revelation! There is a code of honor that obtains all +over the world, and any duellist who descends to secret armor is, as you +are perfectly aware, guilty of supersticery. He is no fit associate for +gentlemen, he is rather the appropriate companion of Korah, Dathan, and +Abiram in their fiery pit. Faugh, you sneak-thief!" + +John Bulmer was a thought abashed, and for an instant showed it. Then, +"Permit me," he equably replied, "to point out that I did not come hither +with any belligerent intent. My undershirt, therefore, I was entitled to +regard as a purely natural advantage,--as much so as would have been a +greater length of arm, which, you conceive, does not obligate a gentleman +to cut off his fingers before he fights." + +"I scent the casuist," said the Friar, shaking his head. "Frankly, you had +hoodwinked me: I was admiring you as a second Palmerin; and all the while +you were letting off those gasconades, adopting those heroic postures, and +exhibiting such romantic magnanimity, you were actually as safe from poor +Cazaio as though you had been in Crim Tartary rather than Acaire!" + +"But the pose was magnificent," John Bulmer pleaded, "and I have a leaning +that way when one loses nothing by it. Besides, I consider secret armor to +be no more than a rational precaution in any country where the clergy are +addicted to casual assassination." + +"It is human to err," the Friar replied, "and Cazaio would have given me +a thousand crowns for your head. Believe me, the man is meditating some +horrible mischief against you, for otherwise he would not have been so +damnably polite." + +"The information is distressing," said John Bulmer; and added, "This Cazaio +appears to be a personage?" + +"I retort," said the Friar, "that your ignorance is even more remarkable +than my news. Achille Cazaio is the bugbear of all Poictesme, he is as +powerful in these parts as ever old Manuel was." + +"But I have never heard of this old Manuel either--" + +"In fact, your ignorance seems limitless. For any child could tell you that +Cazaio roosts in the Taunenfels yonder, with some hundreds of brigands in +his company. Poictesme is, in effect, his pocket-book, from which he takes +whatever he has need of, and the Duc de Puysange, our nominal lord, pays +him an annual tribute to respect Bellegarde." + +"This appears to be an unusual country," quoth John Bulmer; "where a +brigand rules, and the forests are infested by homicidal clergymen and +harassed females. Which reminds me that I have been guilty of an act of +ungallantry,--and faith! while you and I have been chatting, the lady, with +a rare discretion, has peacefully come back to her senses." + +"She has regained nothing very valuable," said the Friar, with a shrug, +"Alone in Acaire!" But John Bulmer had assisted the woman to her feet, +and had given a little cry at sight of her face, and now he stood quite +motionless, holding both her unfettered hands. + +"You!" he said. And when speech returned to him, after a lengthy interval, +he spoke with odd irrelevance. "Now I appear to understand why God created +me." + +He was puzzled. For there had come to him, unheralded and simply, a sense +of something infinitely greater than his mind could conceive; and analysis +might only pluck at it, impotently, as a wearied swimmer might pluck at the +sides of a well. Ormskirk and Ormskirk's powers now somehow dwindled from +the zone of serious consideration, as did the radiant world, and even the +woman who stood before him; trifles, these: and his contentment spurned +the stars to know that, somehow, this woman and he were but a part, an +infinitesimal part, of a scheme which was ineffably vast and perfect.... +That was the knowledge he sensed, unwordably, as he regarded this woman +now. + +She was tall, just as tall as he. It was a blunt-witted devil who whispered +John Bulmer that, inch paralleling inch, the woman is taller than the +man and subtly renders him absurd; and that in a decade this woman would +be stout. There was no meaning now in any whispering save hers. John +Bulmer perceived, with a blurred thrill,--as if of memory, as if he were +recollecting something once familiar to him, a great while ago,--that the +girl was tall and deep-bosomed, and that her hair was dark, all crinkles, +but (he somehow knew) very soft to the touch. The full oval of her face had +throughout the rich tint of cream, so that he now understood the blowziness +of pink cheeks; but her mouth was vivid. It was a mouth not wholly +deficient in attractions, he estimated. Her nose managed to be Roman +without overdoing it. And her eyes, candid and appraising, he found to be +the color that blue is in Paradise; it was odd their lower lids should +be straight lines, so that when she laughed her eyes were converted into +right-angled triangles; and it was still more odd that when you gazed into +them your reach of vision should be extended until you saw without effort +for miles and miles. + +And now for a longish while these eyes returned his scrutiny, without +any trace of embarrassment; and whatever may have been the thoughts of +Mademoiselle de Puysange, she gave them no expression. But presently the +girl glanced down toward the dead man. + +"It was you who killed him?" she said. "You!" + +"I had that privilege," John Bulmer admitted. "And on Thursday afternoon, +God willing, I shall kill the other." + +"You are kind, Monsieur Bulmer. And I am not ungrateful. And for that which +happened yesterday I entreat your pardon." + +"I can pardon you for calling me a lackey, mademoiselle, only upon +condition that you permit me to be your lackey for the remainder of your +jaunt. Poictesme appears a somewhat too romantic country for unaccompanied +women to traverse in any comfort." + +"My thought to a comma," the Dominican put in,--"unaccompanied ladies +do not ordinarily drop from the forest oaks like acorns. I said as much +to Cazaio a half-hour ago. Look you, we two and Michault,--who formerly +incited this carcass and, from what I know of him, is by this time +occupying hell's hottest gridiron,--were riding peacefully toward +Beauseant. Then this lady pops out of nowhere, and Cazaio promptly +expresses an extreme admiration for her person." + +"The rest," John Bulmer said, "I can imagine. Oh, believe me, I look +forward to next Thursday!" + +"But for you," the girl said, "I would now be the prisoner of that devil +upon the Taunenfels! Three to one you fought,--and you conquered! I have +misjudged you, Monsieur Bulmer. I had thought you only an indolent old +gentleman, not very brave,--because--" + +"Because otherwise I would not have been the devil's lackey?" said John +Bulmer. "Eh, mademoiselle, I have been inspecting the world for more years +than I care to confess; I have observed the king upon his throne, and the +caught thief upon his coffin in passage for the gallows: and I suspect +they both came thither through taking such employment as chance offered. +Meanwhile, we waste daylight. You were journeying--?" + +"To Perdigon," Claire answered. She drew nearer to him and laid one +hand upon his arm. "You are a gallant man, Monsieur Bulmer. Surely you +understand. Two weeks ago my brother affianced me to the Duke of Ormskirk. +Ormskirk!--ah, I know he is your kinsman,--your patron,--but you yourself +could not deny that the world reeks with his infamy. And my own brother, +monsieur, had betrothed me to this perjurer, to that lewd rake, to that +inhuman devil who slaughters defenceless prisoners, men, women, and +children alike. Why, I had sooner marry the first beggar or the ugliest +fiend in hell!" the girl wailed, and she wrung her plump little hands in +desperation. + +"Good, good!" he cried, in his soul. "It appears my eloquence of yesterday +was greater than I knew of!" + +Claire resumed: "But you cannot argue with Gaston--he merely shrugs. So I +decided to go over to Perdigon and marry Gerard des Roches. He has wanted +to marry me for a long while, but Gaston said he was too poor. And, O +Monsieur Bulmer, Gerard is so very, very stupid!--but he was the only +person available, and in any event," she concluded, with a sigh of +resignation, "he is preferable to that terrible Ormskirk." + +John Bulmer gazed on her considerately. "'Beautiful as an angel, and +headstrong as a devil,'" was his thought, "You have an eye, Gaston!" +Aloud John Bulmer said: "Your remedy against your brother's tyranny, +mademoiselle, is quite masterly, though perhaps a trifle Draconic. Yet if +on his return he find you already married, he undoubtedly cannot hand you +over to this wicked Ormskirk. Marry, therefore, by all means,--but not with +this stupid Gerard." + +"With whom, then?" she wondered. + +"Fate has planned it," he laughed; "here are you and I, and yonder is the +clergyman whom Madam Destiny has thoughtfully thrown in our way." + +"Not you," she answered, gravely. "I am too deeply in your debt, Monsieur +Bulmer, to think of marrying you." + +"You refuse," he said, "because you have known for some days past that I +loved you. Yet it is really this fact which gives me my claim to become +your husband. You have need of a man to do you this little service. I know +of at least one person whose happiness it would be to die if thereby he +might save you a toothache. This man you cannot deny--you have not the +right to deny this man his single opportunity of serving you." + +"I like you very much," she faltered; and then, with disheartening +hastiness, "Of course, I like you very much; but I am not in love with +you." + +He shook his head at her, "I would think the worse of your intellect if you +were. I adore you. Granted: but that constitutes no cut-throat mortgage. +It is merely a state of mind which I have somehow blundered into, and with +which you have no concern. So I ask nothing of you save to marry me. You +may, if you like, look upon me as insane; it is the view toward which I +myself incline. However, mine is a domesticated mania and vexes no one save +myself; and even I derive no little amusement from its manifestations. Eh, +Monsieur Jourdain may laugh at me for a puling lover!" cried John Bulmer; +"but, heavens! if only he could see the unplumbed depths of ludicrousness I +discover in my own soul! The mirth of Atlas could not do it justice." + +Claire meditated for a while, her eyes inscrutable and yet not unkindly. +"It shall be as you will," she said at last. "Yes, certainly, I will marry +you." + +"O Mother of God!" said the Dominican, in profound disgust; "I cannot marry +two maniacs." But, in view of John Bulmer's sword and pistol, he went +through the ceremony without further protest. + +And something embryonic in John Bulmer seemed to come, with the knave's +benediction, into flowerage. He saw, as if upon a sudden, how fine she was; +all the gracious and friendly youth of her: and he deliberated, dizzily, +the awe of her spirited and alert eyes; why, the woman was afraid of him! +That sunny and vivid glade had become, to him, an island about which past +happenings lapped like a fretted sea. "Dear me!" he reflected, "but I am +really in a very bad way indeed." + +Now Mistress Bulmer gazed shyly at her husband. "We will go back to +Bellegarde," Claire began, "and inform Louis de Soyecourt that I cannot +marry the Duke of Ormskirk, because I have already married you, Jean +Bulmer,--" + +"I would follow you," said John Bulmer, "though hell yawned between us. +I employ the particular expression as customary in all these cases of +romantic infatuation." + +"Yet I," the Friar observed, "would, to the contrary, advise removal from +Poictesme as soon as may be possible. For I warn you that if you return to +Bellegarde, Monsieur de Soyecourt will have you hanged." + +"Reverend sir," John Bulmer replied, "do you actually believe this +consideration would be to me of any moment?" + +The Friar inspected his countenance. By and by the Friar said: "I +emphatically do not. And to think that at the beginning of our +acquaintanceship I took you for a sensible person!" Afterward the Friar +mounted his mule and left them. + +Then silently John Bulmer assisted his wife to the back of one of the +horses, and they turned eastward into the Forest of Acaire. Mr. Bulmer's +countenance was politely interested, and he chatted pleasantly of the +forenoon's adventure. Claire told him something of her earlier memories +of Cazaio. So the two returned to Bellegarde. Then Claire led the way +toward the western facade, where her apartments were, and they came to a +postern-door, very narrow and with a grating. + +"Help me down," the girl said. Immediately this was done; Claire remained +quite still. Her cheeks were smouldering and her left hand was lying inert +in John Bulmer's broader palm. + +"Wait here," she said, "and let me go in first. Someone may be on watch. +There is perhaps danger--" + +"My dear," said John Bulmer, "I perfectly comprehend you are about to enter +that postern, and close it in my face, and afterward hold discourse with me +through that little wicket. I assent, because I love you so profoundly that +I am capable not merely of tearing the world asunder like paper at your +command, but even of leaving you if you bid me do so." + +"Your suspicions," she replied, "are prematurely marital. I am trying to +protect you, and you are the first to accuse me of underhand dealing! I +will prove to you how unjust are your notions." She entered the postern, +closed and bolted it, and appeared at the wicket. + +"The Friar was intelligent," said Claire de Puysange, "and beyond doubt +the most sensible thing you can do is to get out of Poictesme as soon as +possible. You have been serviceable to me, and for that I thank you: but +the master of Bellegarde has the right of the low, the middle, and the high +justice, and if my husband show his face at Bellegarde he will infallibly +be hanged. If you claim me in England, Ormskirk will have you knifed in +some dark alleyway, just as, you tell me, he disposed of Monsieur Traquair +and Captain Dungelt. I am sorry, because I like you, even though you are +fat." + +"You bid me leave you?" said John Bulmer. He was comfortably seated upon +the turf. + +"For your own good," said she, "I advise you to." And she closed the +wicket. + +"The acceptance of advice," said John Bulmer, "is luckily optional. I shall +therefore go down into the village, purchase a lute, have supper, and I +shall be here at sunrise to greet you with an aubade, according to the +ancient custom of Poictesme." + +The wicket remained closed. + + +VI + +"I will go to Marly, inform Gaston of the entire matter, and then my wife +is mine. I have tricked her neatly. + +"I will do nothing of the sort. Gaston, can give me the woman's body only. +I shall accordingly buy me a lute." + + +VII + +Achille Cazaio on the Taunenfels did not sleep that night.... + +The two essays [Footnote: The twenty-first chapter of Du Maillot's _Hommes +Illustres_; and the fifth of d'Avranches's _Ancetres de la Revolution_. +Loewe has an excellent digest of this data.] dealing with the man have +scarcely touched his capabilities. His exploits in and about Paris and +his Gascon doings, while important enough in the outcome, are but the +gesticulations of a puppet: the historian's real concern is with the hands +that manoeuvered above Cazaio; and whether or no Achille Cazaio organized +the riots in Toulouse and Guienne and Bearn is a question with which, at +this late day, there can be little profitable commerce. + +One recommends this Cazaio rather to the spinners of romance: with his +morality--a trifle buccaneerish on occasion--once discreetly palliated, +history affords few heroes more instantly taking to the fancy....One casts +a hankering eye toward this Cazaio's rumored parentage, his hopeless and +life-long adoration of Claire de Puysange, his dealings with d'Argenson and +King Louis le Bien-Aime, the obscure and mischievous imbroglios in Spain, +and finally his aggrandizement and his flame-lit death, as du Maillot, +say, records these happenings: and one finds therein the outline of an +impelling hero, and laments that our traffic must be with a stolid and less +livelily tinted Bulmer. And with a sigh one passes on toward the labor +prearranged.... + +To-night Cazaio's desires were astir, and consciousness of his own power +was tempting him. He had never troubled Poictesme much: the Taunenfels were +accessible on that side, and so long as he confined his depredations to +the frontier, the Duc de Puysange merely shrugged and rendered his annual +tribute; it was not a great sum, and the Duke preferred to pay it rather +than forsake his international squabbles to quash a purely parochial +nuisance like a bandit, who was, too, a kinsman.... + +Meanwhile Cazaio had grown stronger than de Puysange knew. It was a time +of disaffection: the more violent here and there were beginning to assert +that before hanging a superfluous peasant or two de Puysange ought to bore +himself with inquiries concerning the abstract justice of the action. For +everywhere the irrational lower classes were grumbling about the very +miseries and maltreatments that had efficiently disposed of their fathers +for centuries: they seemed not to respect tradition: already they were +posting placards in the Paris boulevards,--"Shave the King for a monk, hang +the Pompadour, and break Machault on the wheel,"--and already a boy of +twelve, one Joseph Guillotin, was running about the streets of Saintes +yonder. So the commoners flocked to Cazaio in the Taunenfels until, little +by little, he had gathered an army about him. + +And at Bellegarde, de Soyecourt had only a handful of men, Cazaio meditated +to-night. And the woman was there,--the woman whose eyes were blue and +incurious, whose face was always scornful. + +In history they liken Achille Cazaio to Simon de Montfort, and the Gracchi, +and other graspers at fruit as yet unripe; or, if the perfervid word of +d'Avranches be accepted, you may regard him as "_le Saint-Jean de la +Revolution glorieuse_." But I think you may with more wisdom regard him as +a man of strong passions, any one of which, for the time being, possessed +him utterly. + +Now he struck his palm upon the table. + +"I have never seen a woman one-half so beautiful, Dom Michel. I am more +than ever in love with her." + +"In that event," the Friar considered, "it is, of course, unfortunate she +should have a brand-new husband. Husbands are often thought much of when +they are a novelty." + +"You bungled matters, you fat, mouse-hearted rascal. You could quite easily +have killed him." + +The Dominican spread out his hands, and afterward reached for the bottle. +"Milanese armor!" said Dom Michel Fregose. [Footnote: The same ecclesiastic +who more lately dubbed himself, with Marechal de Richelieu's encouragement, +l'Abbe de Trans, and was discreditably involved in the forgeries of Madame +de St. Vincent.] + +"Yet I am master of Poictesme," Cazaio thundered, "I have ten men to de +Soyecourt's one. Am I, then, lightly to be thwarted?" + +"Undoubtedly you could take Bellegarde--and the woman along with the +castle,--if you decided they were worth the price of a little killing. I +think they are not worth it, I strongly advise you to have up a wench from +the village, to put out the light, and exercise your imagination." + +Cazaio shook his head. "No, Dom Michel, you churchmen live too lewdly to +understand the tyranny of love." + +"--Besides, there is that trifling matter of your understanding with de +Puysange,--and, besides, de Puysange will be here in two days." + +Cazaio snapped his fingers. "He will arrive after the fair." Cazaio +uncorked the ink-bottle with an august gesture. + +"Write!" said Achille Cazaio. + + +VIII + +As John Bulmer leisurely ascended from the village the birds were waking. +Whether day were at hand or no was a matter of twittering debate overhead, +but in the west the stars were paling one by one, like candles puffed out +by the pretentious little wind that was bustling about the turquoise cupola +of heaven; and eastward Bellegarde showed stark, as though scissored from +a painting, against a sky of gray-and-rose. Here was a world of faint +ambiguity. Here was the exquisite tension of dawn, curiously a-chime with +John Bulmer's mood, for just now he found the universe too beautiful to put +any actual faith in its existence. He had strayed into Faery somehow--into +Atlantis, or Avalon, or "a wood near Athens,"--into a land of opalescence +and vapor and delicate color, that would vanish, bubble-like, at the +discreet tap of Pawsey fetching in his shaving-water; meantime John +Bulmer's memory snatched at each loveliness, jealously, as a pug snatches +bits of sugar. + +Beneath her window he paused and shifted his lute before him. Then he +began to sing, exultant in the unreality of everything and of himself in +particular. + +Sang John Bulmer, + + "Speed forth, my song, the sun's ambassador, + Lest in the east night prove the conqueror, + The day be slain, and darkness triumph,--for + The sun is single, but her eyes are twain. + + "And now the sunlight and the night contest + A doubtful battle, and day bides at best + Doubtful, until she waken. 'Tis attest + The sun is single. + + "But her eyes are twain,-- + And should the light of all the world delay, + And darkness prove victorious? Is it day + Now that the sun alone is risen? + + "Nay, + The sun is single, but her eyes are twain,-- + Twain firmaments that mock with heavenlier hue + The heavens' less lordly and less gracious blue, + And lit with sunlier sunlight through and through, + + "The sun is single, but her eyes are twain, + And of fair things this side of Paradise + Fairest, of goodly things most goodly," + +He paused here and smote a resonant and louder chord. His voice ascended in +dulcet supplication. + + "Rise, + And succor the benighted world that cries, + _The sun is single, but her eyes are twain!_" + +"Eh--? So it is you, is it?" Claire was peeping disdainfully from the +window. Her throat was bare, and her dusky hair was a shade dishevelled, +and in her meditative eyes he caught the flicker of her tardiest dream just +as it vanished. + +"It is I," John Bulmer confessed--"come to awaken you according to the +ancient custom of Poictesme." + +"I would much rather have had my sleep out," said she, resentfully. "In +perfect frankness, I find you and your ancient customs a nuisance." + +"You lack romance, my wife." + +"Oh--?" She was a person of many cryptic exclamations, this bride of his. +Presently she said: "Indeed, Monsieur Bulmer, I entreat you to leave +Poictesme. I have informed Louis of everything, and he is rather furious." + +John Bulmer said, "Do you comprehend why I have not already played the +emigrant?" + +After a little pause, she answered, "Yes." + +"And for the same reason I can never leave you so long as this gross +body is at my disposal. You are about to tell me that if I remain here I +shall probably be hanged on account of what happened yesterday. There are +grounds for my considering this outcome unlikely, but if I knew it to be +inevitable--if I had but one hour's start of Jack Ketch,--I swear to you I +would not budge." + +"I am heartily sorry," she replied, "since if I had known you really cared +for me--so much--I would never have married you. Oh, it is impossible!" the +girl laughed, with a trace of worriment. "You had not laid eyes on me until +a week ago yesterday!" + +"My dear," John Bulmer answered, "I am perhaps inadequately acquainted +with the etiquette of such matters, but I make bold to question if love is +exclusively regulated by clock-ticks. Observe!" he said, with a sort of +fury: "there is a mocking demon in me who twists my tongue into a jest even +when I am most serious. I love you: and I dare not tell you so without +a grin. Then when you laugh at me I, too, can laugh, and the whole +transaction can be regarded as a parody. Oh, I am indeed a coward!" + +"You are nothing of the sort! You proved that yesterday." + +"Yesterday I shot an unsuspecting man, and afterward fenced with +another--in a shirt of Milanese armor! Yes, I was astoundingly heroic +yesterday, for the simple reason that all the while I knew myself to be as +safe as though I were snug at home snoring under an eider-down quilt. Yet, +to do me justice, I am a shade less afraid of physical danger than of +ridicule." + +She gave him a womanly answer. "You are not ridiculous, and to wear armor +was very sensible of you." + +"To the contrary, I am extremely ridiculous. For observe: I am an elderly +man, quite old enough to be your father; I am fat--No, that is kind of you, +but I am not of pleasing portliness, I am just unpardonably fat; and, I +believe, I am not possessed of any fatal beauty of feature such as would +by ordinary impel young women to pursue me with unsolicited affection: +and being all this, I presume to love you. To me, at least, that appears +ridiculous." + +"Ah, do not laugh!" she said. "Do not laugh, Monsieur Bulmer!" + +But John Bulmer persisted in that curious laughter. "Because," he presently +stated, "the whole affair is so very diverting." + +"Believe me," Claire began, "I am sorry that you care--so much. I--do not +understand. I am sorry,--I am not sorry," the girl said, in a new tone, and +you saw her transfigured; "I am glad! Do you comprehend?--I am glad!" And +then she swiftly closed the window. + +John Bulmer observed. "I am perhaps subject to hallucinations, for +otherwise the fact had been previously noted by geographers that heaven is +immediately adjacent to Poictesme." + + +IX + +Presently the old flippancy came back to him, since an ancient custom is +not lightly broken; and John Bulmer smiled sleepily and shook his head. +"Here am I on my honeymoon, with my wife locked up in the chateau, and with +me locked out of it. My position savors too much of George Dandin's to be +quite acceptable. Let us set about rectifying matters." + +He came to the great gate of the castle and found two sentries there. He +thought this odd, but they recognized him as de Soyecourt's guest, and +after a whispered consultation admitted him. In the courtyard a lackey took +charge of Monsieur Bulmer, and he was conducted into the presence of the +Marquis de Soyecourt. "What the devil!" thought John Bulmer, "is Bellegarde +in a state of siege?" + +The little Marquis sat beside the Duchesse de Puysange, to the rear of a +long table with a crimson cover. Their attitudes smacked vaguely of the +judicial, and before them stood, guarded by four attendants, a ragged and +dissolute looking fellow whom the Marquis was languidly considering. + +"My dear man," de Soyecourt was saying as John Bulmer came into the room +"when you brought this extraordinary epistle to Bellegarde, you must +have been perfectly aware that thereby you were forfeiting your life. +Accordingly, I am compelled to deny your absurd claims to the immunity of a +herald, just as I would decline to receive a herald from the cockroaches." + +"That is cowardly," the man said. "I come as the representative of an +honorable enemy who desires to warn you before he strikes." + +"You come as the representative of vermin," de Soyecourt retorted, "and as +such I receive you. You will therefore, permit me to wish you a pleasant +journey into eternity. Why, hola, madame! here is that vagabond guest of +ours returned to observation!" The Marquis rose and stepped forward, all +abeam. "Mr. Bulmer, I can assure you that I was never more delighted to see +anyone in my entire life." + +"Pardon, monseigneur," one of the attendants here put in,--"but what shall +we do with this Achon?" + +The Marquis slightly turned his head, his hand still grasping John +Bulmer's. "Why, hang him, of course," he said. "Did I forget to tell you? +But yes, take him out, and have him confessed by Frere Joseph, and hang him +at once." The four men removed their prisoner. + +"You find us in the act of dispensing justice," the Marquis continued, "yet +at Bellegarde we temper it with mercy, so that I shall ask no indiscreet +questions concerning your absence of last night." + +"But I, monsieur," said John Bulmer, "I, too, have come to demand justice." + +"Tete-bleu, Mr. Bulmer! and what can I have the joy of doing for you in +that respect?" + +"You can restore to me my wife." + +And now de Soyecourt cast a smile toward the Duchess, who appeared +troubled. "Would you not have known this was an Englishman," he queried, +"by the avowed desire for the society of his own wife? They are a mad race. +And indeed, Mr. Bulmer, I would very gladly restore to you this hitherto +unheard-of spouse if but I were blest with her acquaintance. As it is--" He +waved his hand. + +"I married her only yesterday," said John Bulmer, "and I have reason to +believe that she is now within Bellegarde." + +He saw the eyes of de Soyecourt slowly narrow. "Jacques," said the Marquis, +"fetch me the pistol within that cabinet." The Marquis resumed his seat +to the rear of the table, the weapon lying before him. "You may go +now, Jacques; this gentleman and I are about to hold a little private +conversation." Then, when the door had closed upon the lackey, de Soyecourt +said, "Pray draw up a chair within just ten feet of this table, monsieur, +and oblige me with your wife's maiden name." + +"She was formerly known," John Bulmer answered, "as Mademoiselle Claire de +Puysange." + +The Duchess spoke for the first time. "Oh, the poor man! Monsieur de +Soyecourt, he is evidently insane." + +"I do not know about that," the Marquis said, fretfully, "but in any event +I hope that no more people will come to Bellegarde upon missions which, +compel me to have them hanged. First there was this Achon, and now you, Mr. +Bulmer, come to annoy me.--Listen, monsieur," he went on, presently: "last +evening Mademoiselle de Puysange announced to the Duchess and me that her +impending match with the Duke of Ormskirk must necessarily be broken off, +as she was already married. She had, she stated, encountered you and a +clergyman yonder the forest, where, on the spur of the moment, you two had +espoused each other; and was quite unable to inform us what had become of +you after the ceremony. You can conceive that, as a sensible man, I did not +credit a word of her story. But now, as I understand it, you corroborate +this moonstruck narrative?" + +John Bulmer bowed his head. "I have that honor, monsieur." + +De Soyecourt sounded the gong beside him. "In that event, it is uncommonly +convenient to have you in hand. Your return, to Bellegarde I regard +as opportune, even though I am compelled to attribute it to insanity; +personally, I disapprove of this match with Milor Ormskirk, but as Gaston +is bent upon it, you will understand that in reason my only course is to +make Claire a widow as soon as may be possible." + +"It is intended, then," John Bulmer queried, "that I am to follow Achon?" + +"I can but trust," said the Marquis, politely, "that your course of life +has qualified you for a superior flight, since Achon's departing, I +apprehend, is not unakin to a descent." + +"No!" the Duchess cried, suddenly; "Monsieur de Soyecourt, can you not +see the man is out of his senses? Let Claire be sent for. There is some +mistake." + +De Soyecourt shrugged. "Yen know that I can refuse you nothing. Jacques," +he called, to the appearing lackey, "request Mademoiselle de Puysange to +honor us, if it be convenient, with her presence. Nay, I pray you, do not +rise, Mr. Bulmer; I am of a nervous disposition, startled by the least +movement, and my finger, as you may note, is immediately upon the trigger." + +So they sat thus, John Bulmer beginning to feel rather foolish as time wore +on, though actually it was not a long while before Claire had appeared in +the doorway and had paused there. You saw a great wave of color flood her +countenance, then swiftly ebb. John Bulmer observed, with a thrill, that +she made no sound, but simply waited, composed and alert, to find out how +much de Soyecourt knew before she spoke. + +The little Marquis said, "Claire, this gentleman informs us that you +married him yesterday." + +Tranquilly she inspected her claimant. "I did not see Monsieur Bulmer at +all yesterday, so far as I remember. Why, surely, Louis, you did not take +my nonsense of last night in earnest?" she demanded, and gave a mellow +ripple of laughter. "Yes, you actually believed it; you actually believed +that I walked into the forest and married the first man I met there, and +that this is he. As it happens I did not; so please let Monsieur Bulmer go +at once, and put away that absurd pistol--at once, Louis, do you hear?" + +The Duchess shook her head. "She is lying, Monsieur de Soyecourt, and +undoubtedly this is the man." + +John Bulmer went to the girl and took her hand. "You are trying to save me, +I know. But need I warn you that the reward of Ananias was never a synonym +for felicity?" + +"Jean Bulmer! Jean Bulmer!" the girl asked, and her voice was tender; "why +did you return to Bellegarde, Jean Bulmer?" + +"I came," he answered, "for the absurd reason that I cannot live without +you." + +They stood thus for a while, both her hands clasped in his, "I believe +you," she said at last, "even though I do not understand at all, Jean +Bulmer." And then she wheeled upon the Marquis, "Yes, yes!" Claire +said; "the man is my husband. And I will not have him harmed. Do you +comprehend?--you shall not touch him, because you are not fit to touch him, +Louis, and also because I do not wish it." + +De Soyecourt looked toward the Duchess as if for advice. "It is a nuisance, +but evidently she cannot marry Milor Ormskirk so long as Mr. Bulmer is +alive. I suppose it would be better to hang him out-of-hand?" + +"Monsieur de Puysange would prefer it, I imagine," said the Duchess; +"nevertheless, it appears a great pity." + +"In nature," the Marquis assented, "we deplore the loss of Mr. Bulmer's +company. Yet as matters stand--" + +"But they are in love with each other," the Duchess pointed out, with a +sorry little laugh. "Can you not see that, my friend?" + +"Hein?" said the Marquis; "why, then, it is doubly important that Mr. +Bulmer be hanged as soon as possible." He reached for the gong, but Claire +had begun to speak. + +"I am not at all in love with him! You are of a profound imbecility, +Helene. I think he is a detestable person, because he always looks at you +as if he saw something extremely ridiculous, but was too polite to notice +it. He is invariably making me suspect I have a smut on my nose. But in +spite of that, I consider him a very pleasant old gentleman, and I will not +have him hanged!" With which ultimatum she stamped her foot. + +"Yes, madame," said the Marquis, critically; "after all, she is in love +with him. That is unfortunate, is it not, for Milor Ormskirk,--and even for +Achille Cazaio," he added, with a shrug. + +"I fail to see," a dignified young lady stated, "what Cazaio, at least, has +to do with your galimatias." + +"Simply that I received this morning a letter demanding you be surrendered +to Cazaio," de Soyecourt answered as he sounded the gong. "Otherwise, our +amiable friend of the Taunenfels announces he will attack Bellegarde. I, +of course, hanged his herald and despatched messengers to Gaston, whom I +look for to-morrow. If Gaston indeed arrive to-morrow morning, Mr. Bulmer, +I shall relinquish you to him; in other circumstances will be laid upon +me the deplorable necessity of summoning a Protestant minister from +Manneville, and, after your spiritual affairs are put in order, of hanging +you--suppose we say at noon?" + +"The hour suits me," said John Bulmer, "as well as another. But no better. +And I warn you it will not suit the Duke of Ormskirk, either, whose +relative--whose very near relative--" He posed for the astounding +revelation. + +But little de Soyecourt had drawn closer to him. "Mr. Bulmer, I have +somehow omitted to mention that two years ago I was at Aix-la-Chapelle, +when the treaty was in progress, and there saw your great kinsman. I cut +no particular figure at the convocation, and it is unlikely he recalls my +features; but I remember his quite clearly." + +"Indeed?" said John Bulmer, courteously; "it appears, then, that monsieur +is a physiognomist?" + +"You flatter me," the Marquis returned. "My skill in that science enabled +me to deduce only the veriest truisms--such as that the man who for fifteen +years had beaten France, had hoodwinked France, would in France be not +oversafe could we conceive him fool enough to hazard a trip into this +country." + +"Especially alone?" said John Bulmer. + +"Especially," the Marquis assented, "if he came alone. But, ma foi! I am +discourteous. You were about to say--?" + +"That a comic subject declines to be set forth in tragic verse," John +Bulmer answered, "and afterward to inquire the way to my dungeon." + + +X + +But John Bulmer escaped a dungeon after all; for at parting de Soyecourt +graciously offered to accept Mr. Bulmer's parole, which he gave willingly +enough, and thereby obtained the liberty of a tiny enclosed garden, whence +a stairway led to his new apartment on the second floor of what had been +known as the Constable's Tower, since du Guesclin held it for six weeks +against Sir Robert Knollys. This was a part of the ancient fortress in +which, they say, Poictesme's most famous hero, Dom Manuel, dwelt and +performed such wonders, a long while before Bellegarde was remodeled by +Duke Florian. + +The garden, gravel-pathed, was a trim place, all green and white. It +contained four poplars, and in the center was a fountain, where three +Nereids contended with a brawny Triton for the possession of a turtle whose +nostrils spurted water. A circle of attendant turtles, half-submerged, shot +inferior jets from their gaping mouths. It was an odd, and not unhandsome +piece, [Footnote: Designed by Simon Guillain. This fountain is still to be +seen at Bellegarde, though the exuberancy of Revolutionary patriotism has +bereft the Triton of his head and of the lifted arm.] and John Bulmer +inspected it with appreciation, and then the garden, and having found all +things satisfactory, sat down and chuckled sleepily and waited. + +"De Soyecourt has been aware of my identity throughout the entire week! +Faith, then, I am a greater fool than even I suspected, since this fop of +the boulevards has been able to trick me so long. He has some card up his +sleeve, too, has our good Marquis--Eh, well! Gaston comes to-morrow, and +thenceforward all is plain sailing. Meantime I conjecture that the poor +captive will presently have visitors." + +He had dinner first, though, and at this meal gave an excellent account of +himself. Shortly afterward, as he sat over his coffee, little de Soyecourt +unlocked the high and narrow gate which constituted the one entrance to the +garden, and sauntered forward, dapper and smiling. + +"I entreat your pardon, Monsieur le Duc," de Soyecourt began, "that I have +not visited you sooner. But in unsettled times, you comprehend, the master +of a beleaguered fortress is kept busy. Cazaio, I now learn, means to +attack to-morrow, and I have been fortifying against him. However, I attach +no particular importance to the man's threats, as I have despatched three +couriers to Gaston, one of whom must in reason get to him; and in that +event Gaston should arrive early in the afternoon, accompanied by the +dragoons of Entrechat. And subsequently--eh bien! if Cazaio has stirred up +a hornets'-nest he has only himself to thank for it." The Marquis snapped +his fingers and hummed a merry air, being to all appearance in excellent +spirits. + +"That is well," said John Bulmer,--"for, believe me, I shall be unfeignedly +glad to see Gaston once more." + +"Decidedly," said the Marquis, sniffing, "they give my prisoners much +better coffee than they deign to afford me, I shall make bold to ask you +for a cup of it, while we converse sensibly." He sat down opposite John +Bulmer. "Oh, about Gaston," said the Marquis, as he added the sugar--"it +is deplorable that you will not see Gaston again, at least, not in this +naughty world of ours." + +"I am the more grieved," said John Bulmer, gravely, "for I love the man." + +"It is necessary, you conceive, that I hang you, at latest, before twelve +o'clock to-morrow, since Gaston is a little too fond of you to fall in with +my plans. His premature arrival would in effect admit the bull of equity +into the china-shop of my intentions. And day-dreams are fragile stuff, +Monsieur d'Ormskirk! Indeed, I am giving you this so brief reprieve only +because I am, unwilling to have upon my conscience the reproach of hanging +without due preparation a man whom of all politicians in the universe I +most unfeignedly like and respect. The Protestant minister has been sent +for, and will, I sincerely trust, be here at dawn. Otherwise--really, I am +desolated, Monsieur le Duc, but you surely comprehend that I cannot wait +upon his leisure." + +John Bulmer cracked a filbert. "So I am to die to-morrow? I do not presume +to dictate, monsieur, but I would appreciate some explanation of your +motive." + +"Which I freely render," the Marquis replied. "When I recognized you a week +ago--as I did at first glance,--I was astounded. That you, the man in all +the world most cordially hated by Frenchmen, should venture into France +quite unattended was a conception to confound belief. Still, here you were, +and I comprehended that such an opportunity would not rap twice upon +the door. So I despatched a letter post-haste to Madame de Pompadour at +Marly--" + +"I begin to comprehend," John Bulmer said. "Old Tournehem's daughter +[Footnote: Mr. Bulmer here refers to a venerable scandal. The Pompadour +was, in the eyes of the law, at least, the daughter of Francois Poisson.] +hates me as she hates no other man alive. Frankly, monsieur, the little +strumpet has some cause to,--may I trouble you for the nut-crackers? a +thousand thanks,--since I have outwitted her more than once, both in +diplomacy and on the battle-field. With me out of the way, I comprehend +that France might attempt to renew the war, and our late treaty would be so +much wasted paper. Yes, I comprehend that the woman would give a deal for +me--But what the devil! France has no allies. She dare not provoke England +just at present; she has no allies, monsieur, for I can assure you that +Prussia is out of the game. Then what is the woman driving at?" + +"Far be it from me," said the Marquis, with becoming modesty, "to meddle +with affairs of state. Nevertheless, madame is willing to purchase you--at +any price." + +John Bulmer slapped his thigh, "Kaunitz! behold the key. Eh, eh, I have +it now; not long ago the Empress despatched a special ambassador to +Versailles,--one Anton Wenzel Kaunitz, a man I never heard of. Why, this +Moravian count is a genius of the first water. He will combine France and +Austria, implacable enemies since the Great Cardinal's time. Ah, I have +it now, monsieur,--Frederick of Prussia has published verses against the +Pompadour which she can never pardon--eh, against the Czaritza, too! Why, +what a thing it is to be a poet! now Russia will join the league. And +Sweden, of course, because she wants Pomerania, which King Frederick +claims. Monsieur de Soyecourt, I protest it will be one of the prettiest +messes ever stirred up in history! And to think that I am to miss it all!" + +"I regret," de Soyecourt said, "to deny you the pleasure of participation. +In sober verity I regret it. But unluckily, Monsieur d'Ormskirk, your +dissolution is the sole security of my happiness; and in effect"--he +shrugged,--"you comprehend my unfortunate position." + +"One of the prettiest messes ever stirred up in all history!" John Bulmer +lamented; "and I to miss it! The policy of centuries shrugged aside, and +the map of the world made over as lightly as if it were one of last year's +gowns! Decidedly I shall never again cast reflections upon the woman in +politics, for this is superb. Why, this coup is worthy of me! And what is +Petticoat the Second to give you, pray, for making all this possible?" + +"She will give me," the Marquis retorted, "according to advices received +from her yesterday, a lettre-de-cachet for Gaston de Puysange. Gaston is a +man of ability, but he is also a man of unbridled tongue. He has expressed +his opinion concerning the Pompadour, to cite an instance, as freely as +ever did the Comte de Maurepas. You know what happened to de Maurepas. Ah, +yes, Gaston is undoubtedly a peer of France, but the Pompadour is queen +of that kingdom. And in consequence--on the day that Madame de Pompadour +learns of your death,--Gaston goes to the Bastile." + +"Naturally," John Bulmer assented, "since imprisonment in the Bastile is by +ordinary the reward of common-sense when manifested by a Frenchman. What +the devil, monsieur! The Duchess' uncle, Marechal de Richelieu, has been +there four times, and Gaston himself, if I am not mistaken, has sojourned +there twice. And neither is one whit the worse for it." + +The Marquis sipped his coffee. "The Bastile is not a very healthy place. +Besides, I have a friend there,--a gaoler. He was formerly a chemist." + +John Bulmer elevated the right eyebrow. "Poison?" + +"Dieu m'en garde!" The Marquis was appalled. "Nay, monsieur, merely an +unforeseeable attack of heart-disease." + +"Ah! ah!" said John Bulmer, very slowly. He presently resumed: "Afterward +the Duchesse de Puysange will be a widow. And already she is fond of you; +but unfortunately the Duchess--with every possible deference,--is a trifle +prudish. I see it all now, quite plainly; and out of pure friendliness, +I warn you that in my opinion the Duchess is hopelessly in love with her +husband." + +"We should suspect no well bred lady of provincialism," returned the +Marquis, "and so I shall take my chance. Believe me, Monsieur le Duc, I +profoundly regret that you and Gaston must be sacrificed in order to afford +me this same chance." + +But John Bulmer was chuckling. "My faith!" he said, and softly chafed his +hands together, "how sincerely you will be horrified when your impetuous +error is discovered--just too late! You were merely endeavoring to serve +your beloved Gaston and the Duke of Ormskirk when you hanged the rascal +who had impudently stolen the woman intended to cement their friendship! +The Duke fell a victim to his own folly, and you acted precipitately, +perhaps, but out of pure zeal. You will probably weep. Meanwhile your +lettre-de-cachet is on the road, and presently Gaston, too, is trapped +and murdered. You weep yet more tears--oh, vociferous tears!---and the +Duchess succumbs to you because you were so devotedly attached to her +former husband. And England will sit snug while France reconquers Europe. +Monsieur, I make you my compliments on one of the tidiest plots ever +brooded over." + +"It rejoices me," the Marquis returned, "that a conspirator of many years' +standing should commend my maiden effort." He rose. "And now, Monsieur +d'Ormskirk," he continued, with extended hand, "matters being thus amicably +adjusted, shall we say adieu?" + +John Bulmer considered. "Well,--no!" said he, at last; "I commend your +cleverness, Monsieur de Soyecourt, but as concerns your hand I must confess +to a distaste." + +The Marquis smiled. "Because at the bottom of your heart you despise me," +he said. "Ah, believe me, monsieur, your contempt for de Soyecourt is less +great than mine. And yet I have a weakness for him,--a weakness which +induces me to indulge all his desires." + +He bowed with ceremony and left the garden. + + +XI + +John Bulmer sat down to consider more at leisure these revelations. He +foreread like a placard Jeanne d'Etoiles' magnificent scheme: it would +convulse all Europe. England would remain supine, because Henry Pelham +could hardly hold the ministry together, even now; Newcastle was a fool; +and Ormskirk would be dead. He would barter his soul for one hour of +liberty, he thought. A riot, now,--ay, a riot in Paris, a blow from within, +would temporarily stupefy French enterprise and gain England time for +preparation. And a riot could be arranged so easily! Meanwhile he was a +prisoner, Pelham's hands were tied, and Newcastle was a fool, and the +Pompadour was disastrously remote from being a fool. + +"It is possible to announce that I am the Duke of Ormskirk--and to what +end? Faith, I had as well proclaim myself the Pope of Rome or the Cazique +of Mexico: the jackanapes will effect to regard my confession as the device +of a desperate man and will hang me just the same; and his infernal comedy +will go on without a hitch. Nay, I am fairly trapped, and Monsieur de +Soyecourt holds the winning hand--Now that I think of it he even has, in +Mr. Bulmer's letter of introduction, my formally signed statement that I +am not Ormskirk. It was tactful of the small rascal not to allude to that +crowning piece of stupidity: I appreciate his forbearance. But even so, to +be outwitted--and hanged---by a smirking Hop-o'-my-thumb! + +"Oh, this is very annoying!" said John Bulmer, in his impotence. + +He sat down once more, sulkily, like an overfed cat, and began to read with +desperate attention: "'Here may men understand that be of worship, that he +was never formed that at every time might stand, but sometimes he was put +to the worse by evil fortune. And at sometimes the worse knight putteth +the better knight into rebuke.' Behold a niggardly salve rather than a +panacea." He turned several pages. "'And then said Sir Tristram to Sir +Lamorake, "I require you if ye happen to meet with Sir Palomides--"'" +Startled, John Bulmer glanced about the garden. + +It turned on a sudden into the primal garden of Paradise. "I came," she +loftily explained, "because I considered it my duty to apologize in person +for leading you into great danger. Our scouts tell us that already Cazaio +is marshalling his men upon the Taunenfels." + +"And yet," John Bulmer said, as he arose, and put away his book, +"Bellegarde is a strong place. And our good Marquis, whatever else he may +be, is neither a fool nor a coward." + +Claire shrugged. "Cazaio has ten men to our one. Yet perhaps we can hold +out till Gaston comes with his dragoons. And then--well, I have some +influence with Gaston. He will not deny me,--ah, surely he will not deny me +if I go down on my knees to him and wear my very prettiest gown. Nay, at +bottom Gaston is kind, my friend, and he will spare you." + +"To be your husband?" said John Bulmer. + +Twice she faltered "No." And then she cried, with a sudden flare of +irritation: "I do not love you! I cannot help that. Oh, you--you +unutterable bully!" + +Gravely he shook his head at her. + +"But indeed you are a bully. You are trying to bully me into caring for +you, and you know it. What else moved you to return to Bellegarde, and to +sit here, a doomed man, tranquilly reading? Yes, but you were,--I happened +to see you, through the key-hole in the gate. And why else should you be +doing that unless you were trying to bully me into admiring you?" + +"Because I adore you," said John Bulmer, taking affairs in order; "and +because in this noble and joyous history of the great conqueror and +excellent monarch, King Arthur, I find much diverting matter; and because, +to be quite frank, Claire, I consider an existence without you neither +alluring nor possible." + +She had noticeably pinkened. "Oh, monsieur," the girl cried, "you are +laughing because you are afraid that I will laugh at what you are saying to +me. Believe me, I have no desire to laugh. It frightens me, rather. I had +thought that nowadays no man could behave with a foolishness so divine. I +had thought all such extravagancy perished with the Launcelot and Palomides +of your book. And I had thought--that in any event, you had no earthly +right to call me Claire." + +"Superficially, the reproach is just," he assented, "but what was the +name your Palomides cried in battle, pray? Was it not _Ysoude!_ when his +searching sword had at last found the joints of his adversary's armor, or +when the foe's helmet spouted blood? _Ysoude!_ when the line of adverse +spears wavered and broke, and the Saracen was victor? Was it not _Ysoude!_ +he murmured riding over alien hill and valley in pursuit of the Questing +Beast?--'the glatisant beast'? Assuredly, he cried _Ysoude!_ and meantime +La Beale Ysoude sits snug in Cornwall with Tristram, who dons his armor +once in a while to roll Palomides in the sand _coram populo_. Still the +name was sweet, and I protest the Saracen had a perfect right to mention it +whenever he felt so inclined." + +"You jest at everything," she lamented--"which is one of the many traits +that I dislike in you." + +"Knowing your heart to be very tender," he submitted, "I am endeavoring to +present as jovial and callous an appearance as may be possible--to you, +whom I love as Palomides loved Ysoude. Otherwise, you might be cruelly +upset by your compassion and sympathy. Yet stay; is there not another +similitude? Assuredly, for you love me much as Ysoude loved Palomides. What +the deuce is all this lamentation to you? You do not value it the beard of +an onion,--while of course grieving that your friendship should have been +so utterly misconstrued, and wrongly interpreted,--and--trusting that +nothing you have said or done has misled me--Oh, but I know you women!" + +"Indeed, I sometimes wonder," she reflected, "what sort of women you have +been friends with hitherto? They must have been very patient of nonsense." + +"Ah, do you think so?--At all events, you interrupt my peroration. For we +have fought, you and I, a--battle which is over, so far as I am concerned. +And the other side has won. Well! Pompey was reckoned a very pretty fellow +in his day, but he took to his heels at Pharsalia, for all that; and +Hannibal, I have heard, did not have matters entirely his own way at Zama. +Good men have been beaten before this. So, without stopping to cry over +spilt milk,--heyho!" he interpolated, with a grimace, "it was uncommonly +sweet milk, though,--let's back to our tents and reckon up our wounds." + +"I am decidedly of the opinion," she said, "that for all your talk you +will find your heart unscratched." Irony bewildered Claire, though she +invariably recognized it, and gave it a polite smile. + +John Bulmer said: "Faith, I do not intend to flatter your vanity by going +into a decline on the spot. For in perfect frankness, I find no mortal +wounds anywhere. No, we have it on the best authority that, while many men +have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them, it was never for +love. I am inclined to agree with Rosalind: an aneurism may be fatal, but +a broken heart kills nobody. Lovers have died in divers manners since the +antique world was made, but not the most luckless of them was slain by +love. Even Palomides, as my book informs me, went abroad with Launcelot and +probably died an old man here in France,--peaceably, in his bed, with the +family physician in attendance, and every other circumstance becoming to +a genteel demise. And I dare assert that long before this he had learned +to chuckle over his youthful follies, and had protested to his wife that +La Beale Ysoude squinted, or was freckled, or the like; and had insisted, +laughingly, that the best of us must sow our wild oats. And at the last it +was his wife who mixed his gruel and smoothed his pillow and sat up with +him at night; so that if he died thinking of Madame Palomides rather than +of La Beale Ysoude, who shall blame him? Not I, for one," said John Bulmer, +stoutly; "If it was not heroic, it was at least respectable, and, above +all, natural; and I expect some day to gasp out a similar valedictory. No, +not to-morrow at noon, I think: I shall probably get out of this, somehow. +And when, in any event, I set about the process of dying, I may be thinking +of you, O fair lost lady! and again I may not be thinking of you. Who can +say? A fly, for instance, may have lighted upon my nose and his tickling +may have distracted my ultimate thoughts. Meanwhile, I love you consumedly, +and you do not care a snap of your fingers for me." + +"I--I am sorry," she said, inadequately. + +"You are the more gracious." And his face sank down into his hands, and +Claire was forgotten, for he was remembering Alison Pleydell and that +ancient bankruptcy of his heart in youth, and this preposterous old John +Bulmer (he reflected) was simply revelling in pity for himself. + +A hand, feather-soft, fell upon, his shoulder, "And who was your Ysoude, +Jean Bulmer?" + +"A woman who died twenty years ago,--a woman dead before you were born, my +dear." + +Claire gave a little stifled moan, "Oh--oh, I loathe her!" she cried. + +But when he raised his head Claire was gone. + + +XII + +He sat long in the twilight, now; rising insensibly about him. The garden +had become a grave, yet not unfriendly, place; the white straining Nereids +were taking on a tinge of violet, the verdure was of a deeper hue, that was +all; and the fountain plashed unhurriedly, as though measuring a reasonable +interval (he whimsically imagined) between the asking of a riddle and its +solution given gratis by the asker. + +He loved the woman; granted: but did not love rise the higher above a +corner-stone of delusion? And this he could never afford. He considered +Claire to be not extravagantly clever, he could have improved upon her +ears (to cite one instance), which were rather clumsily modelled; her +finger-tips were a thought too thick, a shade too practical, and in fine +she was no more the most beautiful woman in the world than she was the +tallest: and yet he loved her as certainly he had loved none of his recent +mistresses. Even so, here was no infatuation, no roseate and kindly haze +surrounding a goddess, such as that which had by ordinary accompanied +Alison Pleydell.... + +"I am grown older, perhaps. Perhaps it is merely that I am fashioned of +baser stuff than---say, Achille Cazaio or de Soyecourt. Or perhaps it +is that this overmastering, all-engulfing love is a mere figment of the +poet, an age-long superstition as zealously preserved as that of the +inscrutability of women, by men who don't believe a syllable of the +nonsense they are transmitting. Ysoude is dead; and I love my young +French wife as thoroughly as Palomides did, with as great a passion as +was possible to either of us oldsters. Well! all life is a compromise; I +compromise with tradition by loving her unselfishly, by loving her with the +very best that remains in John Bulmer. + +"And yet, I wish-- + +"True, I may be hanged at noon to-morrow, which would somewhat disconcert +my plan. I shall not bother about that. Always there remains the chance +that, somehow, Gaston may arrive in time: otherwise--why, otherwise I shall +be hanged, and as to what will happen afterward I decline to enter into any +discussion even with myself. I have my belief, but it is bolstered by no +iota of knowledge. Faith, let us live this life as a gentleman should, and +keep our hands and our consciences as clean as may be possible, and for the +outcome trust to God's common-sense. There are people who must divert Him +vastly by their frantic efforts to keep out of hell. For my own part, I +would not think of wearing a pelisse in the Desert of Sahara merely because +I happened to be sailing for Greenland during the ensuing week. I shall +trust to His common-sense. + +"And yet, I wish-- + +"I wish Reinault would hurry with the supper-trays. I am growing very +hungry." + + +XIII + +That night he was roused by a tapping at his door. "Jean Bulmer, Jean +Bulmer! I have bribed Reinault. I have the keys. Come, and I will set you +free." + +"Free to do what?" said John Bulmer. + +"To escape--to flee to your foggy England," said the voice without,--"and +to your hideous Englishwomen." + +"Do you go with me?" said John Bulmer. + +"I do not." This was spoken from the turrets of decision. + +"In that event," said John Bulmer, "I shall return to my dreams, which I +infinitely prefer to the realities of a hollow existence. And, besides, now +one thinks of it, I have given my parole." + +An infuriate voice came through the key-hole. "You are undoubtedly a +bully," it stated. "I loathe you." Followed silence. + +Presently the voice said, "Because if you really loved her you were no +better than she was, and so I hate you both." + +"'Beautiful as an angel, and headstrong as a devil,'" was John Bulmer's +meditation. Afterward John Bulmer turned over and went back to sleep. + +For after all, as he reflected, he had given his parole. + + +XIV + +He was awakened later by a shriek that was followed by a hubbub of tumult. +John Bulmer sat erect in bed. He heard a medley of yelling, of musketry, +and of crashes, like the dilapidation of falling battlements. He knew well +enough what had happened. Cazaio and his men were making a night attack +upon Bellegarde. + +John Bulmer arose and, having lighted two candles, dressed himself. He cast +aside the first cravat as a failure, knotted the second with scrupulous +nicety, and afterward sat down, facing the door to his apartment, and +trimmed his finger nails. Outside was Pandemonium, and the little scrap of +sky visible from his one window was now of a sullen red. + +"It is very curious I do not suffer more acutely. As a matter of fact, I +am not conscious of any particular feeling at all. I believe that most of +us when we are confronted with a situation demanding high joy or agony +find ourselves devoid of emotion. They have evidently taken de Soyecourt +by surprise. She is yonder in that hell outside and will inevitably be +captured by its most lustful devil--or else be murdered. I am here like +a trapped rat, impotent, waiting to be killed, which Cazaio's men will +presently attend to when they ransack the place and find me. And I feel +nothing, absolutely nothing. + +"By this she has probably fallen into Cazaio's power--" + +And the man went mad. He dashed upon the locked door, and tore at it with +soft-white hands, so that presently they were all blood. He beat his face +upon the door, cutting open his forehead. + +He shook his bleeding hands toward heaven. "In my time I have been cruel. I +am less cruel than You! Let me go!" + +The door opened and she stood upon the threshold. His arms were about her +and repeatedly he kissed her, mercilessly, with hard kisses, crushing her +in his embrace. + +"Jean, Jean!" she sobbed, beneath his lips, and lay quite still in his +arms. He saw how white and tender a thing she was, and the fierce embrace +relaxed. + +"You came to me!" he said. + +"Louis had forgotten you. They had all retreated to the Inner Tower. +[Footnote: The inner ward, or ballium, which (according to Quinault) was +defended by ten towers, connected by an embattled stone wall about thirty +feet in height and eight feet thick, on the summit of which was a footway; +now demolished to make way for the famous gardens.] Cazaio cannot take +that, for he has no cannon. Louis can hold out there until Gaston comes +with help," Claire rapidly explained. "But the thieves are burning +Bellegarde. I could bribe no man to set you free. They were afraid to +venture." + +"And you came," said John Bulmer--"you left the tall safe Inner Tower to +come to me!" + +"I could not let you die, Jean Bulmer." + +"Why, then I must live not unworthily the life which, you have given me. O +God!" John Bulmer cried, "what a pitiful creature was that great Duke of +Ormskirk! Now make a man of me, O God!" + +"Listen, dear madman," she breathed; "we cannot go out into Bellegarde. +They are everywhere--Cazaio's men. They are building huge fires about the +Inner Tower; but it is all stone, and I think Louis can hold out. But we, +Jean Bulmer, can only retreat to the roofing of this place. There is a +trap-door to admit you to the top, and there--there we can at least live +until the dawn." + +"I am unarmed," John Bulmer said; "and weaponless, I cannot hold even a +trap-door against armed men." + +"I have brought you weapons," Claire returned, and waved one hand toward +the outer passageway. "Naturally I would not overlook that. There were many +dead men on my way hither, and they had no need of weapons. I have a sword +here and two pistols." + +"You are," said John Bulmer, with supreme conviction, "the most wonderful +woman in the universe. By all means let us get to the top of this infernal +tower and live there as long as we may find living possible. But first, +will you permit me to make myself a thought tidier? For in my recent +agitation as to your whereabouts I have, I perceive, somewhat disordered +both my person and my apparel." + +Claire laughed a little sadly. "You have been sincere for once in your +existence, and you are hideously ashamed, is it not? Ah, my friend, I would +like you so much better if you were not always playing at life, not always +posing as if for your portrait." + +"For my part," he returned, obscurely, from the rear of a wet towel, "I +fail to perceive any particular merit in dying with a dirty face. We are +about to deal with a most important and, it well may be, the final crisis +of our lives. So let us do it with decency." + +Afterward John Bulmer changed his cravat, since the one he wore was soiled +and crumpled and stained a little with his blood; and they went up the +winding stairway to the top of the Constable's Tower. These two passed +through the trap-door into a moonlight which drenched the world; westward +the higher walls of the Hugonet Wing shut off that part of Bellegarde where +men were slaughtering one another, and turrets, black and untenanted, stood +in strong relief against a sky of shifting crimson and gold. At their feet +was the tiny enclosed garden half-hidden by the poplar boughs. To the east +the Tower dropped sheer to the moat; and past that was the curve of the +highway leading to the main entrance of the chateau, and beyond this road +you saw Amneran and the moonlighted plains of the Duardenez, and one little +tributary, a thread of pulsing silver, in passage to the great river which +showed as a smear of white, like a chalk-mark on the world's rim. + +John Bulmer closed the trap-door. They stood with clasped hands, eyes +straining toward the east, whence help must arrive if help came at all. + +"No sign of Gaston," the girl said. "We most die presently, Jean Bulmer." + +"I am sorry," he said,--"Oh, I am hideously sorry that we two must die." + +"I am not afraid, Jean Bulmer. But life would be very sweet, with you." + +"That was my thought, too.... I have always bungled this affair of living, +you conceive. I had considered the world a healthy and not intolerable +prison, where each man must get through his day's work as best he might, +soiling his fingers as much as necessity demanded--but no more,--so that at +the end he might sleep soundly--or perhaps that he might go to heaven and +pluck eternally at a harp, or else to hell and burn eternally, just as +divines say we will. I never bothered about it, much, so long as there was +my day's work at hand, demanding performance. And in consequence I missed +the whole meaning of life." + +"That is not so!" Claire replied. "No man has achieved more, as everybody +knows." + +This was an odd speech. But he answered, idly: "Eh, I have done well +enough as respectable persons judge these matters. And I went to church on +Sundays, and I paid my tithes. Trifles, these, sweetheart; for in every +man, as I now see quite plainly, there is a god. And the god must judge, +and the man himself must be the temple and the instrument of the god. It is +very simple, I see now. And whether he go to church or no is a matter of +trivial importance, so long as the man obeys the god who is within him." +John Bulmer was silent, staring vaguely toward the blank horizon. + +"And now that you have discovered this," she murmured, "therefore you wish +to live?" + +"Why, partly on account of that," he said, "yet perhaps mostly on account +of you.... But heyho!" said John Bulmer; "I am disfiguring my last hours +by inflicting upon a lady my half-baked theology. Let us sit down, my +dear, and talk of trifles till they find us. And then I will kill you, +sweetheart, and afterward myself. Presently come dawn and death; and my +heart, according to the ancient custom of Poictesme, is crying, '_Oy +Dieus! Oy Dieus, de l'alba tantost ve!_' But for all that, my mouth will +resolutely discourse of the last Parisian flounces, or of your unfathomable +eyes, or of Monsieur de Voltaire's new tragedy of _Oreste_,--or, in fine, +of any topic you may elect." + +He smiled, with a twinging undercurrent of regret that not even in +impendent death did he find any stimulus to the heroical. But the girl had +given a muffled cry. + +"Look, Jean! Already they come for us." + +Through the little garden a man was running, running frenziedly from +one wall to another when he found the place had no outlet save the gate +through which he had scuttled. It was fat Guiton, the steward of the Duc de +Puysange. Presently came Achille Cazaio with a wet sword, and harried the +unarmed old man, wantonly driving him about the poplars, pricking him in +the quivering shoulders, but never killing him. All the while the steward +screamed with a monotonous shrill wailing. + +After a little he fell at Cazaio's feet, shrieking for mercy. + +"Fool!" said the latter, "I am Achille Cazaio. I have no mercy in me." + +He kicked the steward in the face two or three times, and Guiton, his +countenance all blood, black in the moonlight, embraced the brigand's +and wept. Presently Cazaio slowly drove his sword into the back of the +prostrate man, who shrieked, "O Jesu!" and began to cough and choke. Five +times Cazaio spitted the writhing thing, and afterward was Guiton's soul +released from the tortured body. + +"Is it well, think you," said John Bulmer, "that I should die without first +killing Achille Cazaio?" + +"No!" the girl answered, fiercely. + +Then John Bulmer leaned upon the parapet of the Constable's Tower and +called aloud, "Friend Achille, your conduct disappoints me." + +The man started, peered about, and presently stared upward. "Monsieur +Bulmaire, to encounter you is indeed an unlooked-for pleasure. May I +inquire wherein I have been so ill-fated as to offend?" + +"You have an engagement to fight me on Thursday afternoon, friend Achille, +so that to all intent I hold a mortgage on your life. I submit that, in +consequence, you have no right to endanger that life by besieging castles +and wasting the night in assassinations." + +"There is something in what you say, Monsieur Bulmaire," the brigand +replied, "and I very heartily apologize for not thinking of it earlier. +But in the way of business, you understand,--However, may I trust it will +please you to release me from this inconvenient obligation?" Cazaio added, +with a smile. "My men are waiting for me yonder, you comprehend." + +"In fact," said John Bulmer, hospitably, "up here the moonlight is as clear +as day. We can settle our affair in five minutes." + +"I come," said Cazaio, and plunged into the entrance to the Constable's +Tower. + +"The pistol! quick!" said Claire. + +"And for what, pray?" said John Bulmer. + +"So that from behind, as he lifts the trap-door, I may shoot him through +the head. Do you stand in front as though to receive him. It will be quite +simple." + + +XV + +"My dear creature," said John Bulmer, "I am now doubly persuaded that God +entirely omitted what we term a sense of honor when He created the woman. I +mean to kill this rapscallion, but I mean to kill him fairly." He unbolted +the trap-door and immediately Cazaio stood upon the roof, his sword drawn. + +Achille Cazaio stared at the tranquil woman, and now his countenance +was less that of a satyr than of a demon. "At four in the morning! +I congratulate you, Monsieur Bulmaire," he said,--"Oh, decidedly, I +congratulate you." + +"Thank you," said John Bulmer, sword in hand; "yes, we were married +yesterday." + +Cazaio drew a pistol from his girdle and fired full in John Bulmer's face; +but the latter had fallen upon one knee, and the ball sped harmlessly above +him. + +"You are very careless with fire-arms," John Bulmer lamented, "Really, +friend Achille, if you are not more circumspect you will presently injure +somebody, and will forever afterward be consumed with unavailing regret and +compunctions. Now let us get down to our affair." + +They crossed blades in the moonlight, Cazaio was in a disastrous condition; +John Bulmer's tolerant acceptance of any meanness that a Cazaio might +attempt, the vital shame of this new and baser failure before Claire's very +eyes, had made of Cazaio a crazed beast. He slobbered little flecks of +foam, clinging like hoar-frost to the tangled beard, and he breathed with +shuddering inhalations, like a man in agony, the while that he charged +with redoubling thrusts. The Englishman appeared to be enjoying himself, +discreetly; he chuckled as the other, cursing, shifted from tierce to +quart, and he met the assault with a nice inevitableness. In all, each +movement had the comely precision of finely adjusted clockwork, though +at times John Bulmer's face showed a spurt of amusement roused by the +brigand's extravagancy of gesture and Cazaio's contortions as he strove to +pass the line of steel that flickered cannily between his sword and John +Bulmer's portly bosom. + +Then John Bulmer, too, attacked. "For Guiton!" said he, as his point +slipped into Cazaio's breast. John Bulmer recoiled and lodged another +thrust in the brigand's throat. "For attempting to assassinate me!" His +foot stamped as his sword ran deep into Cazaio's belly. "For insulting my +wife by thinking of her obscenely! You are a dead man, friend Achille." + +Cazaio had dropped his sword, reeling as if drunken against the western +battlement. "My comfort," he said, hoarsely, while one hand tore at his +jetting throat--"my comfort is that I could not perish slain by a braver +enemy." He moaned and stumbled backward. Momentarily his knees gripped the +low embrasure. Then his feet flipped upward, convulsively, so that John +Bulmer saw the man's spurs glitter and twitch in the moonlight, and John +Bulmer heard a snapping and crackling and swishing among the poplars, and +heard the heavy, unvibrant thud of Cazaio's body upon the turf. + +"May he find more mercy than he has merited," said John Bulmer, "for the +man had excellent traits. Yes, in him the making of a very good swordsman +was spoiled by that abominable Boisrobert." + +But Claire had caught him by the shoulder. "Look, Jean!" + +He turned toward the Duardenez. A troop of horsemen was nearing. Now they +swept about the curve in the highway and at their head was de Puysange, +laughing terribly. The dragoons went by like a tumult in a sick man's +dream, and the Hugonet Wing had screened them. + +"Then Bellegarde is relieved," said John Bulmer, "and your life, at least, +is saved." + +The girl stormed. "You--you abominable trickster! You would not be content +with the keys of heaven if you had not got them by outwitting somebody! Do +you fancy I had never seen the Duke of Ormskirk's portrait? Gaston sent me +one six months ago." + +"Ah!" said John Bulmer, very quietly. He took up the discarded scabbard, +and he sheathed his sword without speaking. + +Presently he said, "You have been cognizant all along that I was the Duke +of Ormskirk?" + +"Yes," she answered, promptly. + +"And you married me, knowing that I was--God save the mark!--the great Duke +of Ormskirk? knowing that you made what we must grossly term a brilliant +match?" + +"I married you because, in spite of Jean Bulmer, you had betrayed yourself +to be a daring and a gallant gentleman,--and because, for a moment, I +thought that I did not dislike the Duke of Ormskirk quite so much as I +ought to." + +He digested this. + +"O Jean Bulmer," the girl said, "they tell me you were ever a fortunate +man, but I consider you the unluckiest I know of. For always you are afraid +to be yourself. Sometimes you forget, and are just you--and then, ohe! you +remember, and are only a sulky, fat old gentleman who is not you at all, +somehow; so that at times I detest you, and at times I cannot thoroughly +detest you. So that I played out the comedy, Jean Bulmer. I meant in the +end to tell Louis who you were, of course, and not let them hang you; but I +never quite trusted you; and I never knew whether I detested you or no, at +bottom, until last night." + +"Last night you left the safe Inner Tower to come to me--to save me at all +hazards, or else to die with me--And for what reason, did you do this?" + +"You are bullying me!" she wailed. + +"And for what reason, did you do this?" he repeated, without any change of +intonation. + +"Can you not guess?" she asked. "Oh, because I am a fool!" she stated, very +happily, for his arms were about her. + +"Eh, in that event--" said the Duke of Ormskirk. "Look!" said he, with a +deeper thrill of speech, "it is the dawn." + +They turned hand in hand; and out of the east the sun came statelily, and a +new day was upon them. + + + + +VIII + +HEART OF GOLD + + +_As Played at Paris, in the May of 1750_ + +"_Cette amoureuse ardeur qui dans les coeurs s'excite N'est point, comme +l'on scait, un effet du merite; Le caprice y prend part, et, quand +quelqu'un nous plaist, Souvent nous avons peine a dire pourquoy c'est. Mais +on vois que l'amour se gouverne autrement._" + + +DRAMATIS PERSONAE + +DUC DE PUYSANGE, somewhat given to women, and now and then to +good-fellowship, but a man of excellent disposition. + +MARQUIS DE SOYECOURT, his cousin, and loves de Puysange's wife. + +DUKE OF ORMSKIRK. + +DUCHESSE DE PUYSANGE, a precise, but amiable and patient, woman. + +ANTOINE, LACKEYS to de Puysange, Etc. + + +SCENE + +Paris, mostly within and about the Hotel de Puysange. + + + + +HEART OF GOLD + + +PROEM:--_Necessitated by a Change of Scene_ + +You are not to imagine that John Bulmer debated an exposure of de +Soyecourt. "Live and let live" was the Englishman's axiom; the exuberant +Cazaio was dead, his men were either slain or dispersed, and the whole +tangle of errors--with judicious reservations--had now been unravelled to +Gaston's satisfaction. And Claire de Puysange was now Duchess of Ormskirk. +Why, then, meddle with Destiny, who appeared, after all, to possess a +certain sense of equity? + +So Ormskirk smiled as he presently went about Paris, on his own business, +and when he and Louis de Soyecourt encountered each other their +friendliness was monstrous in its geniality. + +They were now one and all in Paris, where Ormskirk's marriage had been +again, and more publicly, solemnized. De Puysange swore that his sister was +on this occasion the loveliest person affordable by the resources of the +universe, but de Soyecourt backed another candidate; so that over their +wine the two gentlemen presently fell into a dispute. + +"Nay, but I protest to you she is the most beautiful woman in all Paris!" +cried the Marquis de Soyecourt, and kissed his finger-tips gallantly. + +"My dear Louis," the Duc de Puysange retorted, "her eyes are noticeable, +perhaps; and I grant you," he added, slowly, "that her husband is not often +troubled by--that which they notice." + +"--And the cleverest!" + +"I have admitted she knows when to be silent. What more would you demand of +any woman?" + +"And yet--" The little Marquis waved a reproachful forefinger. + +"Why, but," said the Duke, with utter comprehension, "it is not for nothing +that our house traces from the great Jurgen--" + +He was in a genial midnight mood, and, on other subjects, inclined to be +garrulous; for the world, viewed through a slight haze, of vinous origin, +seemed a pleasant place, and inspired a kindly desire to say diverting +things about the world's contents. He knew the Marquis to be patient, +and even stolid, under a fusillade of epigram and paradox; in short, de +Puysange knew the hour and the antagonist for midnight talk to be at hand. +And a saturnalia of phrases whirled in his brain, demanding utterance. + +He waved them aside. Certain inbred ideas are strangely tenacious of +existence, and it happened to be his wife they were discussing. It would +not be good form, de Puysange felt, for him to evince great interest in +this topic.... + + +I + +"And yet," de Puysange queried, as he climbed democratically into a public +hackney coach, "why not? For my part, I see no good and sufficient reason +for discriminating against the only woman one has sworn to love and cherish +and honor. It is true that several hundred people witnessed the promise, +with a perfect understanding of the jest, and that the keeping of this oath +involves a certain breach of faith with society. Eh bien! let us, then, +deceive the world--and the flesh--and the devil! Let us snap our fingers at +this unholy trinity, and assert the right, when the whim takes us, to make +unstinted love to our own wives!" + +He settled back in the _fiacre_ to deliberate. "It is bourgeois? Bah! the +word is the first refuge of the unskilful poseur! It is bourgeois to be +born, to breathe, to sleep, or eat; in which of the functions that consume +the greater part of my life do I differ from my grocer? Bourgeois! why, +rightly considered, to be a human being at all is quite inordinately +bourgeois! And it is very notably grocer-like to maintain a grave face and +two establishments, to chuckle privily over the fragments of the seventh +commandment, to repent, upon detection, and afterward--ces betes-la!--to +drink poison. Ma foi, I infinitely prefer the domestic coffee!" + +The Duc de Puysange laughed, and made as though to wave aside the crudities +of life. "All vice is bourgeois, and fornication in particular tends +to become sordid, outworn, vieux jeu! In youth, I grant you, it is the +unexpurgated that always happens. But at my age--misericorde!--the +men yawn, and les demoiselles--bah! les demoiselles have the souls of +accountants! They buy and sell, as my grocer does. The satiation of carnal +desires is no longer a matter of splendid crimes and sorrows and kingdoms +lost; it is a matter of business." + +The harsh and swarthy face relaxed. With, a little sigh the Duc de Puysange +had closed his fevered eyes. About them were a multitude of tiny lines, +and of this fact he was obscurely conscious, in a wearied fashion, when he +again looked out on the wellnigh deserted streets, now troubled by a hint +of dawn. His eyes were old; they had seen much. Two workmen shambled by, +chatting on their way to the day's work; in the attic yonder a drunken +fellow sang, "Ah, bouteille ma mie," he bellowed, "pourquoi vous +vuidez-vous?" + +De Puysange laughed. "I suppose I have no conscience, but at least, I can +lay claim to a certain fastidiousness. I am very wicked,"--he smiled, +without mirth or bitterness,--"I have sinned notably as the world accounts +it; indeed, I think, my repute is as abominable as that of any man living. +And I am tired,--alas, I am damnably tired! I have found the seven deadly +sins deadly, beyond, doubt, but only deadly dull and deadly commonplace. I +have perseveringly frisked in the high places of iniquity, I have junketed +with all evil gods, and the utmost they could pretend to offer any of their +servitors was a spasm. I renounce them, as feeble-minded deities, I snap +my fingers, very much as did my progenitor, the great Jurgen, at all their +over-rated mysteries." + +His glance caught and clung for a moment to the paling splendor of the moon +that hung low in the vacant, dove-colored heavens. A faint pang, half-envy, +half-regret, vexed the Duke with a dull twinge. "I wish too that by living +continently I could have done, once for all, with this faded pose and this +idle making of phrases! Eheu! there is a certain proverb concerning pitch +so cynical that I suspect it of being truthful. However,--we shall see." + +De Puysange smiled. "The most beautiful woman in all Paris? Ah, yes, she is +quite that, is this grave silent female whose eyes are more fathomless and +cold than oceans! And how cordially she despises me! Ma foi, I think that +if her blood--which is, beyond doubt, of a pale-pink color,--be ever +stirred, at all, it is with loathing of her husband. Well, life holds many +surprises for madame, now that I become quite as virtuous as she is. We +will arrange a very pleasant comedy of belated courtship; for are we not +bidden to love one another? So be it,--I am henceforth the model pere de +famille." + +Now the _fiacre_ clattered before the Hotel de Puysange. + +The door was opened by a dull-eyed lackey, whom de Puysange greeted with +a smile, "Bon jour, Antoine!" cried the Duke; "I trust that your wife and +doubtless very charming children have good health?" + +"Beyond question, monseigneur," the man answered, stolidly. + +"That is excellent hearing," de Puysange said, "and it rejoices me to be +reassured of their welfare. For the happiness of others, Antoine, is +very dear to the heart of a father--and of a husband." The Duke chuckled +seraphically as he passed down the hall. The man stared after him, and +shrugged. + +"Rather worse than usual," Antoine considered. + + +II + +Next morning the Duchesse de Puysange received an immoderate armful of +roses, with a fair copy of some execrable verses. De Puysange spent the +afternoon, selecting bonbons and wholesome books,--"for his fiancee," he +gravely informed the shopman. + +At the Opera he never left her box; afterward, at the Comtesse de +Hauteville's, he created a furor by sitting out three dances in the +conservatory with his wife. Mademoiselle Tiercelin had already received his +regrets that he was spending that night at home. + + +III + +The month wore on. + +"It is the true honeymoon," said the Duke. + +In that event he might easily have found a quieter place than Paris wherein +to spend it. Police agents had of late been promised a premium for any +sturdy beggar, whether male or female, they could secure to populate +the new plantation of Louisiana; and as the premium was large, genteel +burgesses, and in particular the children of genteel burgesses, were +presently disappearing in a fashion their families found annoying. Now, +from nowhere, arose and spread the curious rumor that King Louis, somewhat +the worse for his diversions in the Parc-aux-Cerfs, daily restored his +vigor by bathing in the blood of young children; and parents of the +absentees began to manifest a double dissatisfaction, for the deduction was +obvious. + +There were riots. In one of them Madame de Pompadour barely escaped with +her life, [Footnote: This was on the afternoon of the famous ball given +by the Pompadour in honor of the new Duchess of Ormskirk.] and the King +himself on his way to Compiegne, was turned back at the Porte St. Antoine, +and forced to make a detour rather than enter his own capital. After this +affair de Puysange went straight to his brother-in-law. + +"Jean," said he, "for a newly married man you receive too much company. And +afterward your visitors talk blasphemously in cabarets and shoot the King's +musketeers. I would appreciate an explanation." + +Ormskirk shrugged. "Merely a makeshift, Gaston. Merely a device to gain +time wherein England may prepare against the alliance of France and +Austria. Your secret treaty will never be signed as long as Paris is given +over to rioters. Nay, the Empress may well hesitate to ally herself with +a king who thus clamantly cannot govern even his own realm. And meanwhile +England will prepare herself. We will be ready to fight you in five years, +but we do not intend to be hurried about it." + +"Yes," de Puysange assented;--"yet you err in sending Cumberland to defend +Hanover. You will need a better man there." + +Ormskirk slapped his thigh. "So you intercepted that last despatch, after +all! And I could have sworn Candale was trustworthy!" + +"My adored Jean," replied de Puysange, "he has been in my pay for six +months! Console yourself with the reflection that you overbid us in +Noumaria." + +"Yes, but old Ludwig held out for more than the whole duchy is worth. We +paid of course. We had to pay." + +"And one of course congratulates you upon securing the quite essential +support of that duchy. Still, Jean, if there were any accident--" De +Puysange was really unbelievably ugly when he smiled. "For accidents do +occur.... It is war, then?" + +"My dear fellow," said Ormskirk, "of course it is war. We are about to fly +at each other's throats, with half of Europe to back each of us. We begin +the greatest game we have ever played. And we will manage it very badly, I +dare say, since we are each of us just now besotted with adoration of our +wives." + +"At times," said de Puysange, with dignity, "your galimatias are +insufferable. Now let us talk like reasonable beings. In regard to +Pomerania, you will readily understand that the interests of humanity--" + + +IV + +Still the suggestion haunted him. It would be a nuance too ridiculous, of +course, to care seriously for one's wife, and yet Helene de Puysange +was undeniably a handsome woman. As they sat over the remains of their +dinner,--_a deux_, by the Duke's request,--she seemed to her husband quite +incredibly beautiful. She exhaled the effects of a water-color in discreet +and delicate tinctures. Lithe and fine and proud she was to the merest +glance; yet patience, a thought conscious of itself, beaconed in her eyes, +and she appeared, with urbanity, to regard life as, upon the whole, a +countrified performance. De Puysange liked that air; he liked the reticence +of every glance and speech and gesture,--liked, above all, the thinnish +oval of her face and the staid splendor of her hair. Here was no vulgar +yellow, no crass and hackneyed gold ... and yet there was a clarified and +gauzier shade of gold ... the color of the moon by daylight, say.... Then, +as the pleasures of digestion lapsed gently into the initial amenities of +sleep, she spoke. + +"Monsieur," said she, "will you be pleased to tell me the meaning of this +comedy?" + +"Madame," de Puysange answered, and raised his gloomy eyebrows, "I do not +entirely comprehend." + +"Ah," said she, "believe me, I do not undervalue your perception. I have +always esteemed your cleverness, monsieur, however much"--she paused for +a moment, a fluctuating smile upon her lips,--"however much I may have +regretted its manifestations. I am not clever, and to me cleverness has +always seemed to be an infinite incapacity for hard work; its results +are usually a few sonnets, an undesirable wife, and a warning for one's +acquaintances. In your case it is, of course, different; you have your +statesmanship to play with--" + +"And statesmen have no need of cleverness, you would imply, madame?" + +"I do not say that. In any event, you are the Duc de Puysange, and the +weight of a great name stifles stupidity and cleverness without any +partiality. With you, cleverness has taken the form of a tendency to +intoxication, amours, and--amiability. I have acquiesced in this. But, for +the past month--" + +"The happiest period of my life!" breathed the Duke. + +"--you have been pleased to present me with flowers, bonbons, jewels, and +what not. You have actually accorded your wife the courtesies you usually +preserve for the ladies of the ballet. You have dogged my footsteps, you +have attempted to intrude into my bedroom, you have talked to me as--well, +very much as--" + +"Much as the others do?" de Puysange queried, helpfully. "Pardon me, +madame, but, in one's own husband, I had thought this very routine might +savor of originality." + +The Duchess flushed, "All the world knows, monsieur, that in your +estimation what men have said to me, or I to them, has been for fifteen +years a matter of no moment! It is not due to you that I am still--" + +"A pearl," finished the Duke, gallantly,--then touched himself upon the +chest,--"cast before swine," he sighed. + +She rose to her feet. "Yes, cast before swine!" she cried, with a quick +lift of speech. She seemed very tall as she stood tapping her fingers upon +the table, irresolutely; but after an instant she laughed and spread out +her fine hands in an impotent gesture. "Ah, monsieur," she said, "my father +entrusted to your keeping a clean-minded girl! What have you made of her, +Gaston?" + +A strange and profoundly unreasonable happiness swept through the Duke's +soul as she spoke his given name for the first time within his memory. +Surely, the deep contralto voice had lingered over it?--half-tenderly, +half-caressingly, one might think. + +The Duke put aside his coffee-cup and, rising, took his wife's soft hands +in his. "What have I made of her? I have made of her, Helene, the one +object of all my desires." + +Her face flushed. "Mountebank!" she cried, and struggled to free herself; +"do you mistake me, then, for a raddle-faced actress in a barn? Ah, les +demoiselles have formed you, monsieur,--they have formed you well!" + +"Pardon!" said the Duke. He released her hands, he swept back his hair with +a gesture of impatience. He turned from his wife, and strolled toward a +window, where, for a little, he tapped upon the pane, his murky countenance +twitching oddly, as he stared into the quiet and sunlit street. "Madame," +he began, in a level voice, "I will tell you the meaning of the comedy. To +me,--always, as you know, a creature of whims,--there came, a month ago, a +new whim which I thought attractive, unconventional, promising. It was to +make love to my own wife rather than to another man's. Ah, I grant you, it +is incredible," he cried, when the Duchess raised her hand as though to +speak,--"incredible, fantastic, and ungentlemanly! So be it; nevertheless, +I have played out my role. I have been the model husband; I have put away +wine and--les demoiselles; for it pleased me, in my petty insolence, to +patronize, rather than to defy, the laws of God and man. Your perfection +irritated me, madame; it pleased me to demonstrate how easy is this trick +of treating the world as the antechamber of a future existence. It pleased +me to have in my life one space, however short, over which neither the +Recording Angel nor even you might draw a long countenance. It pleased me, +in effect, to play out the comedy, smug-faced and immaculate,--for the +time. I concede that I have failed in my part. Hiss me from the stage, +madame; add one more insult to the already considerable list of those +affronts which I have put upon you; one more will scarcely matter." + +She faced him with set lips. "So, monsieur, your boasted comedy amounts +only to this?" + +"I am not sure of its meaning, madame. I think that, perhaps, the swine, +wallowing in the mire which they have neither strength nor will to leave, +may yet, at times, long--and long whole-heartedly--" De Puysange snapped +his fingers. "Peste!" said he, "let us now have done with this dreary +comedy! Beyond doubt de Soyecourt has much to answer for, in those idle +words which were its germ. Let us hiss both collaborators, madame." + +"De Soyecourt!" she marveled, with, a little start. "Was it he who prompted +you to make love to me?" + +"Without intention," pleaded the Duke. "He twitted me for my inability, as +your husband, to gain your affections; but I do not question his finest +sensibilities would be outraged by our disastrous revival of Philemon and +Baucis." + +"Ah--!" said she. She was smiling at some reflection or other. + +There was a pause. The Duc de Puysange drummed upon the window-pane; the +Duchess, still faintly smiling, trifled with the thin gold chain that hung +about her neck. Both knew their display of emotion to have been somewhat +unmodern, not entirely _a la mode_. + +"Decidedly," spoke de Puysange, and turned toward her with a slight +grimace, "I am no longer fit to play the lover; yet a little while, madame, +and you must stir my gruel-posset, and arrange the pillows more comfortably +about the octogenarian." + +"Ah, Gaston," she answered, and in protest raised her slender fingers, "let +us have no more heroics. We are not well fitted for them, you and I." + +"So it would appear," the Duc de Puysange conceded, not without sulkiness. + +"Let us be friends," she pleaded. "Remember, it was fifteen years ago I +made the grave mistake of marrying a very charming man--" + +"Merci!" cried the Duke. + +"--and I did not know that I was thereby denying myself the pleasure of his +acquaintance. I have learned too late that marrying a man is only the most +civil way of striking him from one's visiting-list." The Duchess hesitated. +"Frankly, Gaston, I do not regret the past month." + +"It has been adorable!" sighed the Duke. + +"Yes," she admitted; "except those awkward moments when you would insist on +making love to me." + +"But no, madame," cried he, "it was precisely--" + +"O my husband, my husband!" she interrupted, with a shrug of the shoulders; +"why, you do it so badly!" + +The Duc de Puysange took a short turn about the apartment. "Yet I married +you," said he, "at sixteen--out of a convent!" + +"Mon ami," she murmured, in apology, "am I not to be frank with you? Would +you have only the connubial confidences?" + +"But I had no idea--" he began. + +"Why, Gaston, it bored me to the very verge of yawning in my lover's +countenance. I, too, had no idea but that it would bore you equally--" + +"Hein?" said the Duke. + +"--to hear what d'Humieres--" + +"He squints!" cried the Duc de Puysange. + +"--or de Crequy--" + +"That red-haired ape!" he muttered. + +"--or d'Arlanges, or--or any of them, was pleased to say. In fact, it was +my duty to conceal from my husband anything which might involve him in +duels. Now that we are friends, of course it is entirely different." + +The Duchess smiled; the Duke walked up and down the room with the contained +ferocity of a caged tiger. + +"In duels! in a whole series of duels! So these seducers besiege you +in platoons. Ma foi, friendship is a good oculist! Already my vision +improves." + +"Gaston!" she cried. The Duchess rose and laid both hands upon his +shoulders. "Gaston--?" she repeated. + +For a heart-beat the Duc de Puysange looked into his wife's eyes; then he +sadly smiled and shook his head. "Madame," said the Duke, "I do not doubt +you. Ah, believe me, I have comprehended, always, that in your keeping my +honor was quite safe--far more safe than in mine, as Heaven and most of the +fiends well know. You have been a true and faithful wife to a worthless +brute who has not deserved it." He lifted her fingers to his lips. De +Puysange stood very erect; his heels clicked together, and his voice was +earnest. "I thank you, madame, and I pray you to believe that I have never +doubted you. You are too perfect to err--Frankly, and between friends." +added the Duke, "it was your cold perfection which frightened me. You are +an icicle, Helene." + +She was silent for a moment. "Ah!" she said, and sighed; "you think so?" + +"Once, then--?" The Duc de Puysange seated himself beside his wife, and +took her hand. + +"I--it was nothing." Her lashes fell, and dull color flushed through her +countenance. + +"Between friends," the Duke suggested, "there should be no reservations." + +"But it is such a pitiably inartistic little history!" the Duchess +protested. "Eh bien, if you must have it! For I was a girl once,--an +innocent girl, as given as are most girls to long reveries and bright, +callow day-dreams. And there was a man--" + +"There always is," said the Duke, darkly. + +"Why, he never even knew, mon ami!" cried his wife, and laughed, and +clapped her hands. "He was much older than I; there were stories about +him--oh, a great many stories,--and one hears even in a convent--" She +paused with a reminiscent smile. "And I used to wonder shyly what this +very fearful reprobate might be like. I thought of him with de Lauzun, +and Dom Juan, and with the Duc de Grammont, and all those other scented, +shimmering, magnificent libertines over whom les ingenues--wonder; only, I +thought of him, more often than of the others, I made little prayers for +him to the Virgin. And I procured a tiny miniature of him. And, when I came +out of the convent, I met him at my father's house. [Footnote: She was of +the Aigullon family, and sister to d'Agenois, the first and very politic +lover of Madame de la Tournelle, afterward mistress to Louis Quinze under +the title of Duchesse de Chateauroux. The later relations between the +d'Aigullons and Madame du Barry are well-known.] And that was all." + +"All?" The Duc de Puysange had raised his swart eyebrows, and he slightly +smiled. + +"All," she re-echoed, firmly. "Oh, I assure you he was still too youthful +to have any time to devote to young girls. He was courteous--no more. But I +kept the picture,--ah, girls are so foolish, Gaston!" The Duchess, with a +light laugh, drew upward the thin chain about her neck. At its end was a +little heart-shaped locket of dull gold, with a diamond sunk deep in each +side. She regarded the locket with a quaint sadness. "It is a long while +since I have seen that miniature, for it has been sealed in here," said +she, "ever since--since some one gave me the locket" + +Now the Duc de Puysange took this trinket, still tepid and perfumed from +contact with her flesh. He turned it awkwardly in his hand, his eyes +flashing volumes of wonderment and inquiry. Yet he did not appear jealous, +nor excessively unhappy. "And never," he demanded, some vital emotion +catching at his voice--"never since then--?" + +"I never, of course, approved of him," she answered; and at this point de +Puysange noted--so near as he could remember for the first time in his +existence,--the curve of her trailing lashes. Why but his wife had lovely +eyelashes, lashes so unusual that he drew nearer to observe them more at +his ease. "Still,--I hardly know how to tell you--still, without him the +world was more quiet, less colorful; it held, appreciably, less to catch +the eye and ear. Eh, he had an air, Gaston; he was never an admirable man, +but, somehow, he was invariably the centre of the picture." + +"And you have always--always you have cared for him?" said the Duke, +drawing nearer and yet more near to her. + +"Other men," she murmured, "seem futile and of minor importance, after +him." The lashes lifted. They fell, promptly. "So, I have always kept the +heart, mon ami. And, yes, I have always loved him, I suppose." + +The chain had moved and quivered in his hand. Was it man or woman who +trembled? wondered the Duc de Puysange. For a moment he stood immovable, +every nerve in his body tense. Surely, it was she who trembled? It seemed +to him that this woman, whose cold perfection had galled him so long, now +stood with downcast eyes, and blushed and trembled, too, like any rustic +maiden come shamefaced to her first tryst. + +"Helene--!" he cried. + +"But no, my story is too dull," she protested, and shrugged her shoulders, +and disengaged herself--half-fearfully, it seemed to her husband. "Even +more insipid than your comedy," she added, with a not unkindly smile. "Do +we drive this afternoon?" + +"In effect, yes!" cried the Duke. He paused and laughed--a low and gentle +laugh, pulsing with unutterable content. "Since this afternoon, madame--" + +"Is cloudless?" she queried. + +"Nay, far more than that," de Puysange amended; "it is refulgent." + + +V + +What time the Duchess prepared her person for the drive the Duke walked +in the garden of the Hotel de Puysange. Up and down a shady avenue of +lime-trees he paced, and chuckled to himself, and smiled benignantly upon +the moss-incrusted statues,--a proceeding that was, beyond any reasonable +doubt, prompted by his happiness rather than by the artistic merits of +the postured images, since they constituted a formidable and broken-nosed +collection of the most cumbrous, the most incredible, and the most hideous +instances of sculpture the family of Puysange had been able to accumulate +for, as the phrase is, love or money. Amid these mute, gray travesties of +antiquity and the tastes of his ancestors, the Duc de Puysange exulted. + +"Ma foi, will life never learn to improve upon the extravagancies of +romance? Why, it is the old story,--the hackneyed story of the husband and +wife who fall in love with each other! Life is a very gross plagiarist. And +she--did she think I had forgotten how I gave her that little locket so +long ago? Eh, ma femme, so 'some one'--'some one' who cannot be alluded to +without a pause and an adorable flush--presented you with your locket! Nay, +love is not always blind!" + +The Duke paused before a puff-jawed Triton, who wallowed in an arid basin +and uplifted toward heaven what an indulgent observer might construe as a +broken conch-shell. "Love! Mon Dieu, how are the superior fallen! I have +not the decency to conceal even from myself that I love my wife! I am +shameless, I had as lief proclaim it from the house-tops. And a month +ago--tarare, the ignorant beast I was! Moreover, at that time I had not +passed a month in her company,--eh bien, I defy Diogenes and Timon to come +through such a testing with unscratched hearts. I love her. And she loves +me!" + +He drew a deep breath, and he lifted his comely hands toward the pale +spring sky, where the west wind was shepherding a sluggish flock of clouds. +"O sun, moon, and stars!" de Puysange said, aloud: "I call you to witness +that she loves me! Always she has loved me! O kindly little universe! O +little kings, tricked out with garish crowns and sceptres, you are masters +of your petty kingdoms, but I am master of her heart! + +"I do not deserve it," he conceded, to a dilapidated faun, who, though his +flute and the hands that held it had been missing for over a quarter of +a century, piped, on with unimpaired and fatuous mirth. "Ah, heart of +gold--demented trinket that you are, I have not merited that you should +retain my likeness all these years! If I had my deserts--parbleu! let us +accept such benefits as the gods provide, and not question the wisdom +of their dispensations. What man of forty-three may dare to ask for his +deserts? No, we prefer instead the dealings of blind chance and all the +gross injustices by which so many of us escape hanging".... + + +VI + +"So madame has visitors? Eh bien, let us, then, behold these naughty +visitors, who would sever a husband from his wife!" + +From within the Red Salon came a murmur of speech,--quiet, cordial, +colorless,--which showed very plainly that madame had visitors. As the Duc +de Puysange reached out his hand to draw aside the portieres, her voice was +speaking, courteously, but without vital interest. + +"--and afterward," said she, "weather permitting--" + +"Ah, Helene!" cried a voice that the Duke knew almost as well, "how long am +I to be held at arm's-length by these petty conventionalities? Is candor +never to be permitted?" + +The half-drawn portiere trembled in the Duke's grasp. He could see, from +where he stood, the inmates of the salon, though their backs were turned. +They were his wife and the Marquis de Soyecourt. The Marquis bent eagerly +toward the Duchesse de Puysange, who had risen as he spoke. + +For a moment she stayed as motionless as her perplexed husband; then, +with a wearied sigh, the Duchess sank back into a _fauteuil_. "You are at +liberty to speak," she said, slowly, and with averted glance--"what you +choose." + +The portiere fell; but between its folds the Duke still peered into the +room, where de Soyecourt had drawn nearer to the Duke's wife. "There is +so little to say," the Marquis murmured, "beyond what my eyes have surely +revealed a great while ago--that I love you." + +"Ah!" the Duchess cried, with a swift intaking of the breath which was +almost a sob. "Monsieur, I think you forget that you are speaking to the +wife of your kinsman and your friend." + +The Marquis threw out his hands in a gesture which was theatrical, though +the trouble that wrung his countenance seemed very real. He was, as one has +said, a slight, fair man, with the face of an ecclesiastic and the eyes of +an aging seraph. A dull pang shot through the Duke as he thought of the two +years' difference in their ages, and of his own tendency to embonpoint, and +of the dismal features which calumniated him. Yonder porcelain fellow was +in appearance so incredibly young! + +"Do you consider," said the Marquis, "that I do not know I act an +abominable part? Honor, friendship and even decency!--ah, I regret their +sacrifice, but love is greater than these petty things!" + +The Duchess sighed. "For my part," she returned, "I think differently. +Love is, doubtless, very wonderful and beautiful, but I am sufficiently +old-fashioned to hold honor yet dearer. Even--even if I loved you, +monsieur, there are certain promises, sworn before the altar, that I could +not forget." She looked up, candidly, into the flushed, handsome face of +the Marquis. + +"Words!" he cried, with vexed impatiency. + +"An oath," she answered, sadly,--"an oath that I may not break." + +There was hunger in the Marquis' eyes, and his hands lifted. Their glances +met for a breathless moment, and his eyes were tender, and her eyes were +resolute, but very, very compassionate. + +"I love you!" he said. He said no more than this, but none could doubt he +spoke the truth. + +"Monsieur," the Duchess replied, and the depths of her contralto voice were +shaken like the sobbing of a violin, and her hands stole upward to her +bosom, and clasped the gold heart, as she spoke,--"monsieur, ever since I +first knew you, many years ago, at my father's home, I have held you as my +friend. You were more kind to the girl, Monsieur de Soyecourt, than you +have been to the woman. Yet only since our stay in Poictesme yonder have +I feared for the result of our friendship. I have tried to prevent this +result. I have failed." The Duchess lifted the gold heart to her lips, and +her golden head bent over it. "Monsieur, before God, if I had loved you +with my whole being,--if I had loved you all these years,--if the sight of +your face were to me to-day the one good thing life holds, and the mere +sound of your voice had power to set my heart to beating--beating"--she +paused for a little, and then rose, with a sharp breath that shook her +slender body visibly,--"even then, my Louis, the answer would be the same; +and that is,--go!" + +"Helene--!" he murmured; and his outstretched hands, which trembled, groped +toward her. + +"Let us have no misunderstanding," she protested, more composedly; "you +have my answer." + +De Soyecourt did not, at mildest, lead an immaculate life. But by +the passion that now possessed him the tiny man seemed purified and +transfigured beyond masculinity. His face was ascetic in its reverence as +he waited there, with his head slightly bowed. "I go," he said, at last, as +if picking his way carefully among tumbling words; then bent over her hand, +which, she made no effort to withdraw. "Ah, my dear!" cried the Marquis, +staring into her shy, uplifted eyes, "I think I might have made you happy!" + +His arm brushed the elbow of the Duke as de Soyecourt left the salon. The +Marquis seemed aware of nothing: the misery of both the men, as de Puysange +reflected, was of a sort to be disturbed by nothing less noticeable than an +earthquake. + + +VII + +"If I had loved you all these years," murmured the Duc de Puysange. His +dull gaze wandered toward the admirable "Herodias" of Giorgione which hung +there in the corridor: the strained face of the woman, the accented muscles +of her arms, the purple, bellying cloak which spread behind her, the livid +countenance of the dead man staring up from the salver,--all these he +noted, idly. It seemed strange that he should be appraising a painting at +this particular moment. + +"Well, now I will make recompense," said the Duke. + + +VIII + +He came into the room, humming a tune of the boulevards; the crimson +hangings swirled about him, the furniture swayed in aerial and thin-legged +minuets. He sank into a chair before the great mirror, supported by frail +love-gods, who contended for its possession. He viewed therein his pale and +grotesque reflection, and he laughed lightly. "Pardon, madame," he said, +"but my castles in the air are tumbling noisily about my ears. It is +difficult to think clearly amid the crashing of the battlements." + +"I do not understand." The Duchess had lifted a rather grave and quite +incurious face as he entered the salon. + +"My life," laughed the Duc de Puysange, "I assure you I am quite +incorrigible. I have just committed another abominable action; and I cry +_peccavi!_" He smote himself upon the breast, and sighed portentously. "I +accuse myself of eavesdropping." + +"What is your meaning?" She had now risen to her feet. + +"Nay, but I am requited," the Duke reassured her, and laughed with +discreetly tempered bitterness. "Figure to yourself, madame! I had +planned for us a life during which our new-born friendship was always to +endure untarnished. Eh bien, man proposes! De Soyecourt is of a jealous +disposition; and here I sit, amid my fallen aircastles, like that tiresome +Marius in his Carthaginian debris." + +"De Soyecourt?" she echoed, dully. + +"Ah, my poor child!" said the Duke and, rising, took her hand in a paternal +fashion, "did you think that, at this late day, the disease of matrimony +was still incurable? Nay, we progress, madame. You shall have grounds for a +separation--sufficient, unimpeachable grounds. You shall have your choice +of desertion, infidelity, cruelty in the presence of witnesses--oh, I shall +prove a yeritabie Gilles de Retz!" He laughed, not unkindlily, at her +bewilderment. + +"You heard everything?" she queried. + +"I have already confessed," the Duke reminded her. "And speaking as an +unprejudiced observer, I would say the little man really loves you. So be +it! You shall have your separation, you shall marry him in all honor and +respectability; and if everything goes well, you shall be a grand duchess +one of these days--Behold a fact accomplished!" De Puysange snapped his +fingers and made a pirouette; he began to hum, "Songez de bonne a suivre--" + +There was a little pause. + +"You, in truth, desire to restore to me my freedom?" she asked, in wonder, +and drew near to him. + +The Duc de Puysange seated himself, with a smile. "Mon Dieu!" he protested, +"who am I to keep lovers apart? As the first proof of our new-sworn +friendship, I hereby offer you any form of abuse or of maltreatment you may +select." + +She drew yet nearer to him. Afterward, with a sigh as if of great +happiness, her arms clasped about his neck. "Mountebank! do you, then, love +me very much?" + +"I?" The Duke raised his eyebrows. Yet, he reflected, there was really no +especial harm in drawing his cheek a trifle closer to hers, and he found +the contact to be that of cool velvet. + +"You love me!" she repeated, softly. + +"It pains me to the heart," the Duke apologized--"it pains me, pith and +core, to be guilty of this rudeness to a lady; but, after all, honesty is +a proverbially recommended virtue, and so I must unblushingly admit I do +nothing of the sort." + +"Gaston, why will you not confess to your new friend? Have I not pardoned +other amorous follies?" Her cheeks were warmer now, and softer than those +of any other woman in the world. + +"Eh, ma mie," cried the Duke, warningly, "do not be unduly elated by little +Louis' avowal! You are a very charming person, but--'_de gustibus_--'" + +"Gaston--!" she murmured. + +"Ah, what is one to do with such a woman!" De Puysange put her from him, +and he paced the room with quick, unequal strides. + +"Yes, I love you with every nerve and fibre of my body--with every not +unworthy thought and aspiration of my misguided soul! There you have the +ridiculous truth of it, the truth which makes me the laughing-stock of +well bred persons for all time. I adore you. I love you, I cherish you +sufficiently to resign you to the man your heart has chosen. I--But pardon +me,"--and he swept a white hand over his brow, with a little, choking +laugh,--"since I find this new emotion somewhat boisterous. It stifles one +unused to it." + +She faced him, inscrutably; but her eyes were deep wells of gladness. +"Monsieur," she said, "yours is a noble affection. I will not palter with +it, I accept your offer--" + +"Madame, you act with your usual wisdom," said the Duke. + +"--Upon condition," she continued,--"that you resume your position as +eavesdropper." + +The Duke obeyed her pointing finger. When he had reached the portieres, +the proud, black-visaged man looked back into the salon, wearily. She had +seated herself in the _fauteuil_, where the Marquis de Soyecourt had bent +over her and she had kissed the little gold locket. Her back was turned +toward, her husband; but their eyes met in the great mirror, supported by +frail love-gods, who contended for its possession. + +"Comedy for comedy," she murmured. He wondered what purblind fool had +called her eyes sea-cold? + +"I do not understand," he said. "You saw me all the while--Yes, but the +locket--?" cried de Puysange. + +"Open it!" she answered, and her speech, too, was breathless. + +Under his heel the Duc de Puysange ground the trinket. The long, thin chain +clashed and caught about his foot; the face of his youth smiled from the +fragment in his not quite steady hands. "O heart' of gold! O heart of +gold!" he said, with, a strange meditative smile, now that his eyes lifted +toward the glad and glorious eyes of his wife; "I am not worthy! Indeed, my +dear, I am not worthy!" + + + + +IX + +THE SCAPEGOATS + + +_As Played at Manneville, September 18, 1750_ + +"_L'on a choisi justement le temps que je parlois a mon traiste de fils. +Sortons! Je veux aller querir la justice, et faire donner la question a +toute ma maison; a servantes, a valets, a fils, a fille, et a moi aussi._" + + +DRAMATIS PERSONAE + +PRINCE DE GATINAIS, an old nobleman, who affects yesterday's fashion. + +Louis QUILLAN, formerly LOUIS DE SOYECOURT, son to the Prince, and newly +become GRAND DUKE OF NOUMARIA. + +VANRINGHAM, valet to the Prince. + +NELCHEN THORN, daughter to Hans Thorn, landlord of the _Golden +Pomegranate_, and loves Louis Quillan. + +And In the Proem, DUKE OF OSMSKIRK. + + +SCENE + +The Dolphin Room of the _Golden Pomegranate_, an inn at +Manneville-en-Poictesme. + + + + +THE SCAPEGOATS + + +_PROEM:-To Present Mr. Vanringham as Nuntius_ + +However profoundly the Duc de Puysange now approved of the universe and of +its management, it is not to be supposed that in consequence he intended +to overlook de Soyecourt's perfidy. De Puysange bore his kinsman no +malice; indeed, he was sincerely fond of the Marquis, sympathized with +him at bottom, and heartily regretted that the excellence of poor Louis' +taste should be thus demonstrably counterbalanced by the frailty of his +friendship. Still, one cannot entirely disregard the conventions: Louis had +betrayed him, had before the eyes of de Puysange made love to de Puysange's +wife. A duel was the inevitable consequence, though of course the Duke did +not intend to kill poor Louis, who might before long be very useful to +French statesmanship. So the Duke sent Ormskirk to arrange a meeting. + +A floridly handsome man in black was descending the stairway of the Hotel +de Soyecourt at the moment the Duke of Ormskirk stepped cheerily from his +coach. This person saluted the plump nobleman with due deference, and was +accorded in return a little whistling sound of amazement. + +"Mr. Vanringham, as I live--and in Paris! Man, will you hare-brained +Jacobites never have done with these idiotic intrigues? Nay, in sincerity, +Mr. Vanringham, this is annoying." + +"My Lord Duke," said the other, "I venture to suggest that you forget +I dare no longer meddle with politics, in light of my recent mishap at +Tunbridge. Something of the truth leaked out, you comprehend--nothing +provable, thank God!--but while I lay abed Captain Audaine was calling +daily to inquire when would my wound be healed sufficiently for me to have +my throat cut. I found England unsalubrious, and vanished." + +Ormskirk nodded his approval. "I have always esteemed your common-sense. +Now, let us consider--yes, I might use you here in Paris, I believe. And +the work is light and safe,--a trifle of sedition, of stirring up a street +riot or two." + +Vanringham laughed. "I might have recognized your hand in the late +disturbances, sir. As matters stand, I can only thank your Grace and regret +that I have earlier secured employment. I've been, since April, valet to +the old Prince de Gatinais, Monsieur de Soyecourt's father." + +"Yet lackeyship smacks, however vaguely, of an honest livelihood. You +disappoint me, Mr. Vanringham." + +"Nay, believe me, I yet pilfer a cuff-button or perhaps a jewel, when +occasion offers, lest any of my talents rust. For we reside at Beaujolais +yonder, my Lord Duke, where we live in retirement and give over our old +age to curious chemistries. It suits me well enough. I find the air of +Beaujolais excellent, my duties none too arduous, and the girls of the +country-side neither hideous nor obdurate. Oho, I'm tolerably content at +Beaujolais--the more for that 'tis expedient just now to go more softly +than ever Ahab did of old." + +"Lest your late associates get wind of your whereabouts? In that I don't +question your discretion, Mr. Vanringham. And out of pure friendliness I +warn you Paris is a very hotbed of hot-headed Jacobites who would derive +unmerited pleasure from getting a knife into your ribs." + +"Yet on an occasion of such importance--" Vanringham began; then marvelled +in reply to the Duke's look of courteous curiosity: "You han't heard, +sir, that my master's son is unexpectedly become the next Grand Duke of +Noumaria!" + +"Zounds!" said his Grace of Ormskirk, all alert, "is old Ludwig dead +at last? Why, then, the damned must be holding a notable carnival by +this, in honor of his arrival. Hey, but there was a merry rascal, a +thorough-paced--" He broke off short. He laughed. "What the devil, man! +Monsieur de Soyecourt is Ludwig's nephew, I grant you, on the maternal +side, but Ludwig left a son. De Soyecourt remains de Soyecourt so long +as Prince Rudolph lives,--and Prince Rudolph is to marry the Elector of +Badenburg's daughter this autumn, so that we may presently look for any +number of von Freistadts to perpetuate the older branch. Faith, you should +study your _Genealogischer Hofkalender_ more closely, Mr. Vanringham." + +"Oh, but very plainly your Grace has heard no word of the appalling tragedy +that hath made our little Louis a reigning monarch--" + +With gusto Francis Vanringham narrated the details of Duke Ludwig's last +mad freak [Footnote: In his _Journal_ Horace Calverley gives a long and +curious account of the disastrous masque at Breschau of which he, then on +the Grand Tour, had the luck to be an eye-witness. His hints as to the part +played in the affair by Kaunitz are now, of course, largely discredited by +the later confessions of de Puysange.] which, as the world knows, resulted +in the death of both Ludwig and his son, as well as that of their five +companions in the escapade,--with gusto, for in progress the soul of the +former actor warmed to his subject. But Ormskirk was sensibly displeased. + +"Behold what is termed a pretty kettle of fish!" said the Duke, in +meditation, when Vanringham had made an end. "Plainly, Gaston cannot fight +the rascal, since Hop-o'-my-thumb is now, most vexatiously, transformed +into a quasi-Royal Personage, Assassination, I fear, is out of the +question. So all our English plans will go to pot. A Frenchman will reign +in Noumaria,--after we had not only bought old Ludwig, but had paid for +him, too! Why, I suppose he gave that damnable masquerade on the strength +of having our money,--good English money, mark you, Mr. Vanringham, that we +have to squeeze out of honest tax-payers to bribe such, rascals with, only +to have them, cheat us by cooking themselves to a crisp! This is annoying, +Mr. Vanringham." + +"I don't entirely follow your Grace--" + +"It is not perhaps desirable you should. Yet I give you a key. It is +profoundly to be deplored that little Louis de Soyecourt, who cannot draw +a contented breath outside of his beloved Paris, should be forced to marry +Victoria von Uhm, in his cousin's place,--yes, for Gaston will arrange +that, of course,--and afterward be exiled to a semi-barbarous Noumaria, +where he must devote the rest of his existence to heading processions +and reviewing troops, and signing proclamations and guzzling beer and +sauerkraut. Nay, beyond doubt, Mr. Vanringham, this is deplorable. 'Tis an +appalling condition of affairs: it reminds me of Ovid among the Goths, Mr. +Vanringham!" + +"I'm to understand, then--?" the valet stammered. + +"You are to understand that I am more deeply your debtor than I could +desire you to believe; that I am going to tell the Marquis de Soyecourt all +which I have told you, though I must reword it for him, as eloquently as +may be possible; and that I even now feel myself to be Ciceronic." The Duke +of Ormskirk passed on with a polite nod. + + * * * * * + +Next day they gossiped busily at Versailles over the sudden disappearance +of Louis de Soyecourt. No more was heard of him for months. The mystery was +discussed, and by the wits embroidered, and by the imaginative annotated, +but it was never solved until the following September. + + +I + +For it was in September that, upon the threshold of the _Golden +Pomegranate_, at Manneville in Poictesme, Monsieur Louis Quillan paused, +and gave the contented little laugh which had of late become habitual with +him. "We are en fete to-night, it appears. Has the King, then, by any +chance dropped in to supper with us, Nelchen?" + +Silently the girl bestowed a provisional pat upon one fold of the white +table-cloth and regarded the result with critical approval. All being +in blameless order, she moved one of the candlesticks the width of a +needle. The table was now garnished to the last resource of the _Golden +Pomegranate_: the napery was snow, the glassware and the cutlery shone with +a frosty glitter, and the great bowl of crimson roses afforded the exact +splurge of vainglorious color and glow she had designed. Accordingly, being +now at leisure, Nelchen now came toward Monsieur Quillan, lifting her lips +to his precisely as a child might have done. + +"Not quite the King, my Louis. None the less I am sure that Monseigneur +is an illustrious person. He arrived not two hours ago--" She told how +Monseigneur had come in a coach, very splendid; even his lackeys were +resplendent. Monseigneur would stay overnight and would to-morrow push +on, to Beauseant. He had talked with her,--a kindly old gentleman, but so +stately that all the while she had been the tiniest thought afraid of him. +He must be some exalted nobleman, Nelchen considered,--a marquis at the +very least. + +Meantime diminutive Louis Quillan had led her to the window-seat beneath +the corridor, and sat holding one plump trifle of a hand, the, while +her speech fluttered bird-like from this topic to that; and be regarded +Nelchen Thorn with an abysmal content. The fates, he considered, had been +commendably generous to him. + +So he leaned back from her a little, laughing gently, and marked what a +quaint and eager child it was. He rejoiced that she was beautiful, and +triumphed still more to know that even if she had not been beautiful it +would have made slight difference to him. The soul of Nelchen was enough. +Yet, too, it was desirable this soul should be appropriately clad, that she +should have, for instance, these big and lustrous eyes,--plaintive eyes, +such as a hamadryad would conceivably possess, since they were beyond doubt +the candid and appraising eyes of some woodland creature, and always seemed +to find the world not precisely intimidating, perhaps, yet in the ultimate +a very curious place where one trod gingerly. Still, this Nelchen was a +practical body, prone to laughter,--as in nature, any person would be whose +mouth was all rotund and tiny scarlet curves. Why, it was, to a dimple, +the mouth which Francois Boucher bestowed on his sleek goddesses! Louis +Quillan was sorry for poor Boucher painting away yonder at a noisy garish +Versailles, where he would never see that perfect mouth the artist had so +often dreamed of. No, not in the sweet flesh at least; lips such as these +were unknown at Versailles.... + +And but four months ago he had fancied himself to be in love with Helene +de Puysange, he remembered; and, by and large, he still considered Helene +a delightful person. Yes, Helene had made him quite happy last spring: and +when they found she was with child, and their first plan failed, she had +very adroitly played out their comedy to win back Gaston in time to avoid +scandal. Yes, you could not but admire Helene, yet, even so.... + +"--and he asked me, oh, so many questions about you, Louis--" + +"About me?" said Louis Quillan, blankly. He was all circumspection now. + +"About my lover, you stupid person. Monseigneur assumed, somehow, that I +would have a lover or two. You perceive that he at least is not a stupid +person." And Nelchen tossed her head, with a touch of the provocative. + +Louis Quillan did what seemed advisable. "--and, furthermore, your +stupidity is no excuse for rumpling my hair," said Nelchen, by and by. + +"Then you should not pout," replied Monsieur Quillan. "Sanity is entirely +too much to require of any man when you pout. Besides, your eyes are so +big and so bright they bewilder one. In common charity you ought to wear +spectacles, Nelchen,--in sheer compassion toward mankind." + +"Monseigneur, also, has wonderful eyes, Louis. They are like the +stars,--very brilliant and cool and incurious, yet always looking at you as +though you were so insignificant that the mere fact of your presuming to +exist at all was a trifle interesting." + +"Like the stars!" Louis Quillan had flung back the shutter. It was a +tranquil evening in September, with no moon as yet, but with a great +multitude of lesser lights overhead. "Incurious like the stars! They do +dwarf one, rather. Yet just now I protest to you, infinitesimal man that I +am, I half-believe le bon Dieu loves us so utterly that He has kindled all +those pretty tapers solely for our diversion. He wishes us to be happy, +Nelchen; and so He has given us the big, fruitful, sweet-smelling world +to live in, and our astonishing human bodies to live in, with contented +hearts, and with no more vain desires, no loneliness--Why, in a word, He +has given us each other. Oh, beyond doubt, He loves us, my Nelchen!" + +For a long while the girl was silent. Presently she spoke, half-hushed, +like one in the presence of sanctity. "I am happy. For these three months I +have been more happy than I had thought was permissible on earth. And yet, +Louis, you tell me that those stars are worlds perhaps like ours,--think of +it, my dear, millions and millions of worlds like ours, and on each world +perhaps a million of lovers like us! It is true that among them all no +woman loves as I do, for that would be impossible. Yet think of it, mon +ami, how inconsiderable a thing is the happiness of one man and of one +woman in this immensity! Why, we are less than nothing, you and I! Ohe, I +am afraid, hideously afraid, Louis,--for we are such little folk and the +universe is so big. And always the storms go about it, and its lightnings +thrust at us, and the waters of it are clutching at our feet, and its laws +are not to be changed--Oh, it is big and cruel, my dear, and we are adrift +in it, we who are so little!" + +He again put forth his hand toward her. "What a morbid child it is!" said +Louis Quillan. "I can assure you I have resided in this same universe just +twice as long as you, and I find that upon the whole the establishment +is very creditably conducted. There arrives, to be sure, an occasional +tornado, or perhaps an earthquake, each with its incidental inconveniences. +On the other hand, there is every evening a lavishly arranged sunset, like +gratis fireworks, and each morning (I am credibly informed) a sunrise of +which poets and energetic people are pleased to speak highly; while every +year spring comes in, like a cosmical upholsterer, and refurnishes the +entire place, and makes us glad to live. Nay, I protest to you, this is +an excellent world, my Nelchen! and likewise I protest to you that in its +history there was never a luckier nor a happier man than I." + +Nelchen considered. "Well," she generously conceded; "perhaps, after all, +the stars are more like diamonds." + +Louis Quillan chuckled. "And since when were you a connoisseur of diamonds, +my dear?" + +"Of course I have never actually seen any. I would like to, though--yes, +Louis, what I would really like would be to have a bushelful or so of +diamonds, and to marry a duke--only the duke would have to be you, of +course,--and to go to Court, and to have all the fine ladies very jealous +of me, and for them to be very much in love with you, and for you not to +care a sou for them, of course, and for us both to see the King." Nelchen +paused, quite out of breath after this ambitious career in the imaginative. + +"To see the King, indeed!" scoffed little Louis Quillan. "Why, we would see +only a very disreputable pockmarked wornout lecher if we did." + +"Still," she pointed out, "I would like to see a king. Simply because I +never have done so before, you conceive." + +"At times, my Nelchen, you are effeminate. Eve ate the apple for that +identical reason. Yet what you say is odd, because--do you know?--I once +had a friend who was by way of being a sort of king." + +Nelchen gave a squeal of delight. "And you never told me about him! I +loathe you." + +Louis Quillan did what seemed advisable. "--and, furthermore, your +loathsomeness is no excuse for rumpling my hair," said Nelchen, by and by. + +"But there is so little to tell. His father had married the Grand Duke +of Noumaria's daughter,--over yonder between Silesia and Badenburg, you +may remember. And so last spring when the Grand Duke and the Prince were +both killed in that horrible fire, my friend quite unexpectedly became a +king--oh, king of a mere celery-patch, but still a sort of king. Figure to +yourself, Nelchen! they were going to make my poor friend marry the Elector +of Badenburg's daughter,--and Victoria von Uhm has perfection stamped upon +her face in all its odious immaculacy,--and force him to devote the rest +of his existence to heading processions and reviewing troops, and signing +proclamations, and guzzling beer and sauerkraut. Why, he would have been +like Ovid among the Goths, my Nelchen!" + +"But he could have worn such splendid uniforms!" said Nelchen. "And +diamonds!" + +"You mercenary wretch!" said he. Louis Quillan then did what seemed +advisable; and presently he added, "In any event, the horrified man ran +away." + +"That was silly of him," said Nelchen Thorn. "But where did he run to?" + +Louis Quillan considered. "To Paradise," he at last decided. "And there he +found a disengaged angel, who very imprudently lowered herself to the point +of marrying him. And so he lived happily ever afterward. And so, till the +day of his death, he preached the doctrine that silliness is the supreme +wisdom." + +"And he regretted nothing?" Nelchen said, after a meditative while. + +Louis Quillan began to laugh. "Oh, yes! at times he profoundly regretted +Victoria von Uhm." + +Then Nelchen gave him a surprise, for the girl bent toward him and leaned +one hand upon each shoulder. "Diamonds are not all, are they, Louis? +I thank you, dear, for telling me of what means so much to you. I can +understand, I think, because for a long while I have tried to know and care +for everything that concerns you." + +The little man had risen to his feet. "Nelchen--!" + +"Hush!" said Nelchen Thorn; "Monseigneur is coming down to his supper." + + +II + +It was a person of conspicuous appearance, both by reason of his great +height and leanness as well as his extreme age, who now descended the +straight stairway leading from the corridor above. At Court they would have +told you that the Prince de Gatinais was a trifle insane, but he troubled +the Court very little, since he had spent the last twenty years, with brief +intermissions, at his chateau near Beaujolais, where, as rumor buzzed +it, he had fitted out a laboratory, and had devoted his old age to the +study of chemistry. "Between my flute and my retorts, my bees and my +chocolate-creams," the Prince was wont to say, "I manage to console myself +for the humiliating fact that even Death has forgotten my existence." For +he had a child's appetite for sweets, and was at this time past eighty, +though still well-nigh as active as Antoine de Soyecourt had ever been, +even when--a good half-century ago--he had served, with distinction under +Louis Quatorze. + +To-night the Prince de Gatinais was all in steel-gray, of a metallic +lustre, with prodigiously fine ruffles at his throat and wrists. You would +have found something spectral in the tall, gaunt old man, for his periwig +was heavily powdered, and his deep-wrinkled countenance was of an absolute +white, save for the thin, faintly bluish lips and the inklike glitter of +his narrowing eyes, as he now regarded the couple waiting hand in hand +before him, like children detected in mischief. + +Little Louis Quillan had drawn an audible breath at first sight of the +newcomer. Monsieur Quillan did not speak, however, but merely waited. + +"You have fattened," the Prince de Gatinais said, at last, "I wish I could +fatten. It is incredible that a man who eats pounds of sugar daily should +yet remain a skeleton." His voice was guttural, and a peculiar slur +ran through his speech, caused by the loss of his upper front teeth at +Ramillies. + +Louis Quillan came of a stock not lightly abashed. "I have fattened on a +new diet, monsieur,--on happiness. But, ma foi! I am discourteous. Permit +me, my father, to present Mademoiselle Nelchen Thorn, who has so far +honored me as to consent to become my wife. 'Nelchen, I present to you my +father, the Prince de Gatinais." + +"Oh--?" observed Nelchen, midway in her courtesy. + +But the Prince had taken her fingers and he kissed them quite as though +they had been the finger-tips of the all-powerful Pompadour at Versailles +yonder. "I salute the future Marquise de Soyecourt. You young people will +sup with me, then?" + +"No, monseigneur, for I am to wait upon the table," said Nelchen, "and +Father is at Sigean overnight, having the mare shod, and there is only +Leon, and, oh, thank you very much indeed, monseigneur, but I had much +rather wait on the table." + +The Prince waved his hand. "My valet, mademoiselle, is at your disposal. +Vanringham!" he called. + +From the corridor above descended a tall red-headed fellow in black. +"Monseigneur--?" + +"Go!" quickly said Louis de Soyecourt, while the Prince spoke with his +valet,--"go, Nelchen, and make yourself even more beautiful if such a thing +be possible. He will never resist you, my dear--ah, no, that is out of +nature." + +"You will find more plates in the cupboard, Monsieur Vanringham," remarked +Nelchen, as she obediently tripped up the stairway, toward her room in the +right wing. "And the knives and forks are in the second drawer." + +So Vanringham laid two covers in discreet silence; then bowed and withdrew +by the side door that led to the kitchen. The Prince had seated himself +beside the open fire, where he yawned and now looked up with a smile. + +"Well, Louis," said the Prince de Gatinais--"so Monsieur de Puysange and I +have run you to earth at last. And I find you have determined to defy me, +eh?" + + +III + +"I trust there is no question of defiance," Louis de Soyecourt equably +returned. "Yet I regret you should have been at pains to follow me, since I +still claim the privilege of living out my life in my own fashion." + +"You claim a right which never existed, my little son. It is not demanded +of any man that he be happy, whereas it is manifestly necessary for a +gentleman to obey his God, his King, and his own conscience without +swerving. If he also find time for happiness, well and good; otherwise, he +must be unhappy. But, above all, he must intrepidly play out his allotted +part in the good God's scheme of things, and must with due humbleness +recognize that the happiness or the unhappiness of any man alive is a +trivial consideration as against the fulfilment of this scheme." + +"You and Nelchen are much at one there," the Marquis lightly replied; "yet, +for my part, I fancy that Providence is not particularly interested in who +happens to be the next Grand Duke of Noumaria." + +The Prince struck with his hand upon the arm of his chair. "You dare to +jest! Louis, your levity is incorrigible. France is beaten, discredited +among nations, naked to her enemies. She lies here, between England and +Prussia, as in a vise. God summons you, a Frenchman, to reign in Noumaria, +and in addition affords you a chance to marry that weathercock of +Badenburg's daughter. Ah, He never spoke more clearly, Louis. And you would +reply with a shallow jest! Why, Badenburg and Noumaria just bridge that +awkward space between France and Austria. Your accession would confirm the +Empress,--Gaston de Puysange has it in her own hand, yonder at Versailles! +I tell you it is all planned that France and Austria will combine, Louis! +Think of it,--our France on her feet again, mistress of Europe, and every +whit of it your doing, Louis,--ah, my boy, my boy, you cannot refuse!" + +Thus he ran on in a high, disordered voice, pleading, clutching at his son +with a strange new eagerness which now possessed the Prince de Gatinais. +He was remembering the France which he had known; not the ignoble, tawdry +France of the moment, misruled by women, rakes, confessors, and valets, but +the France of his dead Sun King; and it seemed to Louis de Soyecourt that +the memory had brought back with it the youth of his father for an instant. +Just for a heart-beat, the lank man towered erect, his cheeks pink, and +every muscle tense. + +Then Louis de Soyecourt shook his head. In England's interest, as he now +knew, Ormskirk had played upon de Soyecourt's ignorance and his love of +pleasure, as an adept plays upon the strings of a violin; but de Soyecourt +had his reason, a gigantic reason, for harboring no grudge against the +Englishman. + +"Frankly, my father, I would not give up Nelchen though all Europe depended +upon it. I am a coward, perhaps; but I have my chance of happiness, and +I mean to take it. So Cousin Otto is welcome to the duchy. I infinitely +prefer Nelchen." + +"Otto! a general in the Prussian army, Frederick's property, Frederick's +idolater!" The old Prince now passed from an apex of horror to his former +pleading tones. "But, then, it is not necessary you give up Nelchen. Ah, +no, a certain latitude is permissible in these matters, you understand. She +could be made a countess, a marquise,--anything you choose to demand, my +Louis. And you could marry Princess Victoria just the same--" + +"Were you any other man, monsieur," said Louis de Soyecourt, "I would, +of course, challenge you. As it is, I can only ask you to respect my +helplessness. It is very actual helplessness, sir, for Nelchen has been +bred in such uncourtly circles as to entertain the most provincial notions +about becoming anybody's whore." + +Now the Prince de Gatinais sank back into the chair. He seemed incredibly +old now. "You are right," he mumbled,--"yes, you are right, Louis. I have +talked with her. With her that would be impossible. These bourgeois do not +understand the claims of noble birth." + +The younger man had touched him upon the shoulder. "My father,--" he began. + +"Yes, I am your father," said the other, dully, "and it is that which +puzzles me. You are my own son, and yet you prefer your happiness to +the welfare of France, to the very preservation of France. Never in six +centuries has there been a de Soyecourt to do that. God and the King we +served ... six centuries ... and to-day my own son prefers an innkeeper's +daughter..." His voice trailed and slurred like that of one speaking in his +sleep, for he was an old man, and by this the flare of his excitement had +quite burned out, and weariness clung about his senses like a drug. "I will +go back to Beaujolais ... to my retorts and my bees ... and forget there +was never a de Soyecourt in six centuries, save my own son...." + +"My father!" Louis de Soyecourt cried, and shook him gently. "Ah, I dare +say you are right, in theory. But in practice I cannot give her up. Surely +you understand--why, they tell me there was never a more ardent lover than +you. They tell me--And you would actually have me relinquish Nelchen, even +after you have seen her! Yet remember, monsieur, I love her much as you +loved my mother,--that mettlesome little princess whom you stole from the +very heart of her court.[Footnote: The curious may find further details of +the then Marquis de Soyecourt's abduction of the Princess Clotilda in the +voluminous pages of Hulot, under the year 1708.] Ah, I have heard tales of +you, you conceive. And Nelchen means as much to me as once my mother meant +to you, remember--She means youth, and happiness, and a tiny space of +laughter before I, too, am worm's-meat, and means a proper appreciation of +God's love for us all, and means everything a man's mind clutches at when +he wakens from some forgotten dream that leaves him weeping with sheer +adoration of its beauty. Ho, never was there a kinder father than you, +monsieur. You have spoiled me most atrociously, I concede; and after so +many years you cannot in decency whip about like this and deny me my very +life. Why, my father it is your little Louis who is pleading with you,--and +you have never denied me anything! See, now, how I presume upon your +weakness. I am actually bullying you into submission--bullying you through +your love for me. Eh, we love greatly, we de Soyecourts, and give all for +love. Your own life attests that, monsieur. Now, then, let us recognize the +fact we are de Soyecourts, you and I. Ah, my father,--" + +Thus he babbled on, for the sudden languor of the Prince had alarmed him, +and Louis de Soyecourt, to afford him justice, loved his father with a +heartier intensity than falls to the portion of most parents. To arouse the +semi-conscious man was his one thought. And now he got his reward, for the +Prince de Gatinais opened his keen old eyes, a trifle dazedly, and drew a +deep breath which shook his large frail body through and through. + +"Let us recognize that we are de Soyecourts, you and I," he repeated, in a +new voice. "After all, I cannot drag you to Noumaria by the scruff of your +neck like a truant school-boy. Yes, let us recognize the fact that we are +de Soyecourts, you and I." + +"Heh, in that event," said the Marquis, "we must both fall upon our knees +forthwith. For look, my father!" + +Nelchen Thorn was midway in her descent of the stairs. She wore her simple +best. All white it was, and yet the plump shoulders it displayed were not +put to shame. Rather must April clouds and the snows of December retire +abashed, as lamentably inefficient analogues, the Marquis meditated; and as +she paused starry-eyed and a thought afraid, it seemed to him improbable +that even the Prince de Gatinais could find it in his heart greatly to +blame his son. + +"I begin to suspect," said the Prince, "that I am Jacob of old, and that +you are a very young cherub venturing out of Paradise through motives of +curiosity. Eh, my dear, let us see what entertainment we can afford you +during your visit to earth." He took her hand and led her to the table. + + +IV + +Vanringham served. Never was any one more blithe than the lean Prince de +Gatinais. The latest gossip of Versailles was delivered, with discreet +emendations; he laughed gayly; and he ate with an appetite. There was a +blight among the cattle hereabouts? How deplorable! witchcraft, beyond +doubt. And Louis passed as a piano-tuner?--because there were no pianos in +Manneville. Excellent! he had always given Louis credit for a surpassing +cleverness; now it was demonstrated. In fine, the Prince de Gatinais became +so jovial that Nelchen was quite at ease, and Louis de Soyecourt became +vaguely alarmed. He knew his father, and for the Prince to yield thus +facilely was incredible. Still, his father had seen Nelchen, had talked +with Nelchen.... + +Now the Prince rose. "Fresh glasses, Vanringham," he ordered; and then: "I +give you a toast. Through desire of love and happiness, you young people +have stolen a march on me. Eh, I am not Sgarnarelle of the comedy! +therefore, I drink cheerfully to love and happiness, I consider Louis is +not in the right, but I know that he is wise, my daughter, as concerns his +soul's health, in clinging to you rather than to a tinsel crown. Of Fate +I have demanded--like Sgarnarelle of the comedy,--prosaic equity and +common-sense; of Fate he has in turn demanded happiness; and Fate will at +her convenience decide between us. Meantime I drink to love and happiness, +since I, too, remember. I know better than to argue with Louis, you +observe, my Nelchen; we de Soyecourts are not lightly severed from any +notion we may have taken up. In consequence I drink to your love and +happiness!" + +They drank. "To your love, my son," said the Prince de Gatinais,--"to the +true love of a de Soyecourt." And afterward he laughingly drank: "To your +happiness, my daughter,--to your eternal happiness." + +Nelchen sipped. The two men stood with drained glasses. Now on a sudden the +Prince de Gatinais groaned and clutched his breast. + +"I was always a glutton," he said, hoarsely. "I should have been more +moderate--I am faint--" + +"Salts are the best thing in the world," said Nelchen, with fine readiness. +She was half-way up the stairs. "A moment, monseigneur,--a moment, and I +fetch salts." Nelchen Thorn had disappeared into her room. + + +V + +The Prince sat drumming upon the table with his long white fingers. He had +waved the Marquis and Vanringham aside. "A passing weakness,--I am not +adamant," he had said, half-peevishly. + +"Then I prescribe another glass of this really excellent wine," laughed +little Louis de Soyecourt. At heart he was not merry, and his own +unreasoning nervousness irritated him, for it seemed to the Marquis, +quite irrationally, that the atmosphere of the cheery room was, without +forerunnership, become tense and expectant, and was now quiet with much the +hush which precedes the bursting of a thunder-storm. And accordingly he +laughed. + +"I prescribe another glass, monsieur," said he. "Eh, that is the true +panacea for faintness--for every ill. Come, we will drink to the most +beautiful woman in Poictesme--nay, I am too modest,--to the most beautiful +woman in France, in Europe, in the whole universe! _Feriam sidera_, my +father! and confound all mealy-mouthed reticence, for you have both seen +her. Confess, am I not a lucky man? Come, Vanringham, too, shall drink. No +glasses? Take Nelchen's, then. Come, you fortunate rascal, you shall drink +to the bride from the bride's half-emptied glass. To the most beautiful +woman--Why, what the devil--?" + +Vanringham had blurted out an odd, unhuman sound. His extended hand shook +and jerked, as if in irresolution, and presently struck the proffered +glass from de Soyecourt's grasp. You heard the tiny crash, very audible in +the stillness, and afterward the irregular drumming of the old Prince's +finger-tips. He had not raised his head, had not moved. + +Louis de Soyecourt came to him, without speaking, and placed one hand under +his father's chin, and lifted the Prince's countenance, like a dead weight, +toward his own. Thus the two men regarded each the other. Their silence was +rather horrible. + +"It was not in vain that I dabbled with chemistry all these years," said +the guttural voice of the Prince de Gatinais, "Yes, the child is dead by +this. Let us recognize the fact we are de Soyecourts, you and I." + +But Louis de Soyecourt had flung aside the passive, wrinkled face, and +then, with a straining gesture, wiped the fingers that had touched it upon +the sleeve of his left arm. He turned to the stairway. His hand grasped the +newelpost and gripped it so firmly that he seemed less to walk than by one +despairing effort to lift an inert body to the first step. He ascended +slowly, with a queer shamble, and disappeared into Nelchen's room. + + +VI + +"What next, monseigneur?" said Vanringham, half-whispering. + +"Why, next," said the Prince de Gatinais, "I imagine that he will kill us +both. Meantime, as Louis says, the wine is really excellent. So you may +refill my glass, my man, and restore to me my vial of little tablets".... + +He was selecting a bonbon from the comfit-dish when his son returned into +the apartment. Very tenderly Louis de Soyecourt laid his burden upon a +settle, and then drew the older man toward it. You noted first how the +thing lacked weight: a flower snapped from its stalk could hardly have +seemed more fragile. The loosened hair strained toward the floor and +seemed to have sucked all color from the thing to inform that thick hair's +insolent glory; the tint of Nelchen's lips was less sprightly, and for the +splendor of her eyes Death had substituted a conscientious copy in crayons: +otherwise there was no change; otherwise she seemed to lie there and muse +on something remote and curious, yet quite as she would have wished it to +be. + +"See, my father," Louis de Soyecourt said, "she was only a child, +more little even than I. Never in her brief life had she wronged any +one,--never, I believe, had she known an unkind thought. Always she +laughed, you understand--Oh, my father, is it not pitiable that Nelchen +will never laugh any more?" + +"I entreat of God to have mercy upon her soul," said the old Prince de +Gatinais. "I entreat of God that the soul of her murderer may dwell +eternally in the nethermost pit of hell." + +"I would cry amen," Louis de Soyecourt said, "if I could any longer believe +in God." + +The Prince turned toward him. "And will you kill me now, Louis?" + +"I cannot," said the other. "Is it not an excellent jest that I should +be your son and still be human? Yet as for your instrument, your cunning +butler--Come, Vanringham!" he barked. "We are unarmed. Come, tall man, for +I who am well-nigh a dwarf now mean to kill you with my naked hands." + +"Vanringham!" The Prince leaped forward. "Behind me, Vanringham!" As the +valet ran to him the old Prince de Gatinais caught a knife from the table +and buried it to the handle in Vanringham's breast. The lackey coughed, +choked, clutched his assassin by each shoulder; thus he stood with a +bewildered face, shuddering visibly, every muscle twitching. Suddenly he +shrieked, with an odd, gurgling noise, and his grip relaxed, and Francis +Vanringham seemed to crumple among his garments, so that he shrank rather +than fell to the floor. His hands stretched forward, his fingers spreading +and for a moment writhing in agony, and then he lay quite still. + +"You progress, my father," said Louis de Soyecourt, quietly. "And what new +infamy may I now look for?" + +"A valet!" said the Prince. "You would have fought with him--a valet! He +topped you by six inches. And the man was desperate. Your life was in +danger. And your life is valuable." + +"I have earlier perceived, my father, that you prize human life very +highly." + +The Prince de Gatinais struck sharply upon the table. "I prize the welfare +of France. To secure this it is necessary that you and no other reign in +Noumaria. But for the girl you would have yielded just now. So to the +welfare of France I sacrifice the knave at my feet, the child yonder, and +my own soul. Let us remember that we are de Soyecourts, you and I." + +"Rather I see in you," began the younger man, "a fiend. I see in you a far +ignobler Judas--" + +"And I see in you the savior of France. Nay, let us remember that we are de +Soyecourts, you and I. And for six centuries it has always been our first +duty to serve France. You behold only a man and a woman assassinated; I +behold thousands of men preserved from death, many thousands of women +rescued from hunger and degradation. I have sinned, and grievously; ages of +torment may not purge my infamy; yet I swear it is well done!" + +"And I--?" the little Marquis said. + +"Why, your heart is slain, my son, for you loved this girl as I loved your +mother, and now you can nevermore quite believe in the love God bears for +us all; and my soul is damned irretrievably: but we are de Soyecourts, you +and I, and accordingly we rejoice and drink to France, to the true love +of a de Soyecourt! to France preserved! to France still mighty among her +peers!" + +Louis de Soyecourt stood quite motionless. Only his eyes roved toward his +father, then to the body that had been Nelchen's. He began to laugh as he +caught up his glass. "You have conquered. What else have I to live for now? +To France, you devil!" + +"To France, my son!" The glasses clinked. "To the true love of a de +Soyecourt!" + +And immediately the Prince de Gatinais fell at his son's feet. "You will go +into Noumaria?" + +"What does that matter now?" the other wearily said. "Yes, I suppose so. +Get up, you devil!" + +But the Prince de Gatinais detained him, with hands like ice. "Then we +preserve France, you and I! We are both damned, I think, but it is worth +while, Louis. In hell we may remember that it was well worth while. I have +slain your very soul, my dear son, but that does not matter: France is +saved." The old man still knelt, looking upward. "Yes, and you must forgive +me, my son! For, see, I yield you what reparation I may. See, Louis,--I was +chemist enough for two. Wine of my own vintage I have tasted, of the brave +vintage which now revives all France. And I swear to you the child did not +suffer, Louis, not--not much. See, Louis! she did not suffer." A convulsion +tore at and shook the aged body, and twitched awry the mouth that had +smiled so resolutely. Thus the Prince died. + +Presently Louis de Soyecourt knelt and caught up the wrinkled face between +both hands. "My father--!" said Louis de Soyecourt. Afterward he kissed +the dead lips tenderly. "Teach me how to live, my father," said Louis de +Soyecourt, "for I begin to comprehend--in part I comprehend." Throughout +the moment Nelchen Thorn was forgotten: and to himself he too seemed to be +fashioned of heroic stuff. + + + + +X + +THE DUCAL AUDIENCE + + +_As Played at Breschau, May 3, 1755_ + + "_Venez, belle, venez, + Qu'on ne scauroit tenir, et qui vous mutinez. + Void vostre galand! a moi pour recompence + Vous pouvez faire une humble et douce reverence! + Adieu, l'evenement trompe un peu mes souhaits; + Mais tous les amoureux ne sont pas satisfaits._" + + +DRAMATIS PERSONAE + +GRAND DUKE OF NOUMARIA, formerly LOUIS DE SOYECOURT, tormented beyond +measure with the impertinences of life. +COMTE DE CHATEAUROUX, cousin to the Grand Duchess, and complies with +circumstance. +A COACHMAN and two FOOTMEN. + +GRAND DUCHESS OF NOUMARIA, a capable woman. +BARONESS VON ALTENBURG, a coquette. + + +SCENE + +The Palace Gardens at Breschau. + + + + +THE DUCAL AUDIENCE + + +_PROEM:--In Default of the Hornpipe Customary to a Lengthy Interval between +Acts_ + +Louis de Soyecourt fulfilled the promise made to the old Prince de +Gatinais, so that presently went about Breschau, hailed by more or less +enthusiastic plaudits, a fair and blue-eyed, fat little man, who smiled +mechanically upon the multitude, and looked after the interests of France +wearily, and (without much more ardor) gave over the remainder of his time +to outrivalling his predecessor, unvenerable Ludwig von Freistadt, who +until now had borne, among the eighteen grand dukes (largely of quite +grand-ducal morals) that had earlier governed in Noumaria, the palm for +indolence and dissipation. + +At moments, perhaps, the Grand Duke recollected the Louis Quillan who had +spent three months in Manneville, but only, I think, as one recalls some +pleasurable acquaintance; Quillan had little resembled the Marquis de +Soyecourt, rake, tippler and exquisite of Versailles, and in the Grand Duke +you would have found even less of Nelchen Thorn's betrothed. He was quite +dead, was Quillan, for the man that Nelchen loved had died within the +moment of Nelchen's death. He, the poor children! his Highness meditated. +Dead, both of them, both murdered four years since, slain in Poictesme +yonder.... Eh bien, it was not necessary to engender melancholy. + +So his Highness amused himself,--not very heartily, but at least to the +last resource of a flippant and unprudish age. Meantime his grumbling +subjects bored him, his duties bored him, his wife bored him, his +mistresses bored him after the first night or two, and, above all, he most +hideously bored himself. But I spare you a _chronique scandaleuse_ of Duke +Louis' reign and come hastily to its termination, as more pertinent to the +matter I have now in hand. + +Suffice it, then, that he ruled in Noumaria five years; that he did what +was requisite by begetting children in lawful matrimony, and what was +expected of him by begetting some others otherwise; and that he stoutened +daily, and by and by decided that the young Baroness von Altenburg--not +excepting even her lovely and multifarious precursors,--was beyond doubt +possessed of the brightest eyes in all history. Therefore did his Highness +lay before the owner of these eyes a certain project, upon which the +Baroness was in season moved to comment. + + +I + +"The idea," said the Baroness, "is preposterous!" + +"Admirably put!" cried the Grand Duke. "We will execute it, then, the first +thing in the morning." + +"--and, besides, one could take only a portmanteau--" + +"And the capacity of a portmanteau is limited," his Highness agreed. "Nay, +I can assure you, after I had packed my coronet this evening there was +hardly room for a change of linen. And I found it necessary to choose +between the sceptre and a tooth-brush." + +"Ah, Highness" sighed the Baroness von Altenburg, "will you never be +serious? You plan to throw away a duchy, and in the act you jest like a +school-boy." + +"Ma foi!" retorted the Grand Duke, and looked out upon the moonlit gardens; +"as a loyal Noumarian, should I not rejoice at the good-fortune which is +about to befall my country? Nay, Amalia, morality demands my abdication," +he added, virtuously, "and for this once morality and I are in complete +accord." + +The Baroness von Altenburg was not disposed to argue the singularity of any +such agreement, the while that she considered Louis de Soyecourt's latest +scheme. + +He had, as prologue to its elucidation, conducted the Baroness into the +summer-house that his grandfather, good Duke Augustus, erected in the +Gardens of Breschau, close to the Fountain of the Naiads, and had en +tete-a-tete explained his notion. There were post-horses in Noumaria; there +was also an unobstructed road that led you to Vienna, and thence to the +world outside; and he proposed, in short, to quiet the grumbling of the +discontented Noumarians by a second, and this time a final, vanishment from +office and the general eye. He submitted that the Baroness, as a patriot, +could not fail to weigh the inestimable benefit which would thus accrue to +her native land. + +Yet he stipulated that his exit from public life should be made in company +with the latest lady on whom he had bestowed his variable affections; and +remembering this proviso, the Baroness, without exactly encouraging or +disencouraging his scheme, was at least not prone to insist on coupling him +with morality. + +She contented herself with a truism. "Indeed, your Highness, the example +you set your subjects is atrocious." + +"And yet they complain!" said the Grand Duke,--"though I swear to you I +have always done the things I ought not to have done, and have left unread +the papers I have signed. What more, in reason, can one ask of a grand +duke?" + +"You are indolent--" remonstrated the lady. + +"You--since we attempt the descriptive," said his Highness,--"are +adorable." + +"--and that injures your popularity--" + +"Which, by the way, vanished with my waist." + +"--and moreover you create scandals--" + +"'The woman tempted me,'" quoted the Grand Duke; and added, reflectively, +"Amalia, it is very singular--" + +"Nay, I am afraid," the Baroness lamented, "it is rather notoriously +plural." + +But the Grand Duke waved a dignified dissent, and continued, "--that I +could never resist green eyes of a peculiar shade." + +The Baroness, becoming vastly interested in the structure of her fan, went +on, with some severity, "Your reputation--" + +"_De mortuis_--" pleaded the Grand Duke. + +"--is bad; and you go from bad to worse." + +"By no means," said his Highness, "since when I was nineteen--" + +"I will not believe it even of you!" cried the Baroness von Altenburg. + +"I assure you," his Highness protested, gravely, "I was then a devil of a +fellow! She was only twenty, and she, too, had big green eyes--" + +"And by this late period," said the lady, "has in addition an infinity of +grandchildren." + +"I happen to be barely forty!" the Grand Duke said, with dignity. + +"In which event the _Almanachen_ dating, say, from 1710--" + +"Are not unmarred by an occasional misprint. Truly I lament the ways of all +typographers, and I will explain the cause of their depravity, in Vienna." + +"But I am not going to Vienna." + +"'And Sapphira,'" murmured his Highness, "'fell down straightway at his +feet, and yielded up the ghost!' So beware, Amalia!" + +"I am not afraid, your Highness,--" + +"Nor in effect am I. Then we will let Europe frown and journalists +moralize, while we two gallop forward on the road that leads to Vienna and +heaven?" + +"Or--" the Baroness helpfully suggested. + +"There is in this case no possible 'or.' Once out of Noumaria, we leave all +things behind save happiness." + +"Among these trifles, your Highness, is a duchy." + +"Hein?" said the Grand Duke; "what is it? A mere dot on the map, a pawn in +the game of politics. I give up the pawn and take--the queen." + +"That is unwise," said the Baroness, with composure, "and, besides, you are +hurting my hand. Apropos of the queen--the Grand Duchess--" + +"Will heartily thank God for her deliverance. She will renounce me before +the world, and in secret almost worship me for my consideration." + +"Yet a true woman," said the Baroness, oracularly, "will follow a +husband--" + +"Till his wife makes her stop," said the little Grand Duke, his tone +implying that he knew whereof he spoke. + +"--and if the Grand Duchess loved you--" + +"Oh, I think she would never mention it," said the Grand Duke, revolving in +his mind this novel idea. "She has a great regard for appearances." + +"Nevertheless--" + +"She will be Regent"--and the Grand Duke chuckled. "I can see her now,--St. +Elizabeth, with a dash of Boadicea. Noumaria will be a pantheon of the +virtues, and my children will be reared on moral aphorisms and rational +food, with me as a handy example of everything they should avoid. Deuce +take it, Amalia," he added, "a father must in common decency furnish an +example to his children!" + +"Pray," asked the Baroness, "do you owe it to your children, then, to take +this trip to Vienna--" + +"Ma foi!" retorted the Grand Duke, "I owe that to myself." + +"--and thereby break the Grand Duchess' heart?" + +"Indeed," observed his Highness, "you appear strangely deep in the +confidence of my wife." + +Again the Baroness descended to aphorism. "All women are alike, your +Highness." + +"Ah, ah! Well, I have heard," said the Grand Duke, "that seven devils were +cast out of Magdalene--" + +"Which means--?" + +"I have never heard of this being done to any other woman. Accordingly I +deduce that in all other women must remain--" + +"Beware, your Highness, of the crudeness of cynicism!" + +"I age," complained the Grand Duke, "and one reaches years of indiscretion +so early in the forties." + +"You admit, then, discretion is desirable?" + +"I admit that," his Highness said, with firmness, "of you alone." + +"Am I, in truth," queried the Baroness, "desirable?" And in this patch of +moonlight she looked incredibly so. + +"More than that," said the Grand Duke--"you are dangerous. You are a menace +to the peace of my Court. The young men make sonnets to your eyes, and the +ladies are ready to tear them out. You corrupt us, one and all. There is de +Chateauroux now--" + +"I assure you," protested the Baroness, "Monsieur de Chateauroux is not the +sort of person--" + +"But at twenty-five," the Grand Duke interrupted, "one is invariably that +sort of person." + +"Phrases, your Highness!" + +"Phrases or not, it is decided. You shall make no more bad poets." + +"You will," said the Baroness, "put me to a vast expense for curl-papers." + +"You shall ensnare no more admirers." + +"My milliner will be inconsolable." + +"In short, you must leave Noumaria--" + +"You condemn me to an exile's life of misery!" + +"Well, then, since misery loves company, I will go with you. For we should +never forget," his Highness added, with considerable kindliness, "always +to temper justice with mercy. So I have ordered a carriage to be ready at +dawn." + +The Baroness reflected; the plump little Grand Duke smiled. And he had +reason, for there was about this slim white woman--whose eyes were colossal +emeralds, and in show equivalently heatless, if not in effect,--so much +of the _baroque_ that in meditation she appeared some prentice queen of +Faery dubious as to her incantations. Now, though, she had it--the mislaid +abracadabra. + +"I knew that I had some obstacle in mind--Thou shalt not commit adultery. +No, your Highness, I will not go." + +"Remember Sapphira," said the Grand Duke, "recall Herodias who fared +happily in all things, and by no means forget the portmanteau." + +"I have not the least intention of going--" the Baroness iterated, firmly. + +"Nor would I ever suspect you of harboring such a thought. Still, a +portmanteau, in case of an emergency--" + +"--although--" + +"Why, exactly." + +"--although I am told the sunrise is very beautiful from the Gardens of +Breschau." + +"It is well worth seeing," agreed the Grand Duke, "on certain +days--particularly on Thursdays. The gardeners make a specialty of them on +Thursdays." + +"By a curious chance," the Baroness murmured, "this is Wednesday." + +"Indeed," said the Grand Duke, "now you mention it, I believe it is." + +"And I shall be here, on your Highness' recommendation, to see the +sunrise--" + +"Of course," said the Grand Duke, "to see the sunrise,--but with a +portmanteau!" + +The Baroness was silent. + +"With a portmanteau," entreated the Grand Duke. "I am a connoisseur of +portmanteaux. Say that I may see yours, Amalia." + +The Baroness was silent. + +"Say yes, Amalia. For to the student of etymology the very word +portmanteau--" + +The Baroness bent toward him and said: + +"I am sorry to inform your Highness that there is some one at the door of +the summer-house." + + +II + +Inasmuch as all Noumaria knew that its little Grand Duke, once closeted +with the lady whom he delighted to honor, did not love intrusions, +and inasmuch as a discreet Court had learned, long ago, to regard +the summer-house as consecrate to his Highness and the Baroness von +Altenburg,--for these reasons the Grand Duke was inclined to resent +disturbance of his privacy when he first peered out into the gardens. + +His countenance was less severe when he turned again toward the Baroness, +and it smacked more of bewilderment. + +"It is only my wife," he said. + +"And the Comte de Chateauroux," said the Baroness. + +There is no denying that their voices were somewhat lowered. The chill and +frail beauty of the Grand Duchess was plainly visible from where they sat; +to every sense a woman of snow, his Highness mentally decided, for her gown +this evening was white and the black hair powdered; all white she was, a +cloud-tatter in the moonlight: yet with the Comte de Chateauroux as a foil, +his uniform of the Cuirassiers a big stir of glitter and color, she made an +undeniably handsome picture; and it was, quite possibly, the Grand Duke's +aesthetic taste which held him for the moment motionless. + +"After all--" he began, and rose. + +"I am afraid that her Highness--" the Baroness likewise commenced. + +"She would be sure to," said the Grand Duke, and thereupon he sat down. + +"I do not, however," said the Baroness, "approve of eavesdropping." + +"Oh, if you put it that way--" agreed the Grand Duke, and he was rising +once more, when the voice of de Chateauroux stopped him. + +"No, not at any cost!" de Chateauroux; was saying; "I cannot and I will not +give you up, Victoria!" + +"--though I have heard," said his Highness, "that the moonlight is bad for +the eyes." Saying this, he seated himself composedly in the darkest corner +of the summer-house. + +"This is madness!" the Grand Duchess said--"sheer madness." + +"Madness, if you will," de Chateauroux persisted, "yet it is a madness too +powerful and sweet to be withstood. Listen, Victoria,"--and he waved his +hand toward the palace, whence music, softened by the distance, came from +the lighted windows,--"do you not remember? They used to play that air at +Staarberg." + +The Grand Duchess had averted her gaze from him. She did not speak. + +He continued: "Those were contented days, were they not, when we were boy +and girl together? I have danced to that old-world tune so many times--with +you! And to-night, madame, it recalls a host of unforgettable things, for +it brings back to memory the scent of that girl's hair, the soft cheek that +sometimes brushed mine, the white shoulders which I so often had hungered +to kiss, before I dared--" + +"Hein?" muttered the Grand Duke. + +"We are no longer boy and girl," the Grand Duchess said. "All that lies +behind us. It was a dream--a foolish dream which we must forget." + +"Can you in truth forget?" de Chateauroux demanded,--"can you forget it +all, Victoria?--forget that night a Gnestadt, when you confessed you loved +me? forget that day at Staarberg, when we were lost in the palace gardens?" + +"Mon Dieu, what a queer method!" murmured the Grand Duke. "The man makes +love by the almanac." + +"Nay, dearest woman in the world," de Chateauroux went on, "you loved me +once, and that you cannot have quite forgotten. We were happy then--very +incredibly happy,--and now--" + +"Life," said the Grand Duchess, "cannot always be happy." + +"Ah, no, my dear! nor is it to be elated by truisms. But what a life is +this of mine,--a life of dreary days, filled with sick, vivid dreams of +our youth that is hardly past as yet! And so many dreams, dear woman of my +heart! in which the least remembered trifle brings back, as if in a flash, +some corner of the old castle and you as I saw you there,--laughing, or +insolent, or, it may be, tender. Ah, but you were not often tender! Just +for a moment I see you, and my blood leaps up in homage to my dear lady. +Then instantly that second of actual vision is over, I am going prosaically +about the day's business, but I hunger more than ever--" + +"This," said the Grand Duke, "is insanity." + +"Yet I love better the dreams of the night," de Chateauroux went on; "for +they are not made all of memories, sweetheart. Rather, they are romances +which my love weaves out of multitudinous memories,--fantastic stories of +just you and me that always end, if I be left to dream them out in comfort, +very happily. For there is in these dreams a woman who loves me, whose +heart and body and soul are mine, and mine alone. Ohe, it is a wonderful +vision while it lasts, though it be only in dreams that I am master of +my heart's desire, and though the waking be bitter...! Need it be just a +dream, Victoria?" + +"Not but that he does it rather well, you know," whispered the Grand Duke +to the Baroness von Altenburg, "although the style is florid. Yet that last +speech was quite in my earlier and more rococo manner." + +The Grand Duchess did not stir as de Chateauroux bent over her jewelled +hand. + +"Come! come now!" he said. "Let us not lose our only chance of happiness. +'Come forth, O Galatea, and forget as thou comest, even as I already have +forgot, the homeward way! Nay, choose with me to go a-shepherding--!'" + +"Oh, but to think of dragging in Theocritus!" observed his Highness. "Can +this be what they call seduction nowadays!" + +"I cannot," the Grand Duchess whispered, and her voice trembled. "You know +that I cannot, dear." + +"You will go!" said de Chateauroux. + +"My husband--" + +"A man who leaves you for each new caprice, who flaunts his mistresses in +the face of Europe." + +"My children--" + +"Eh, mon Dieu! are they or aught else to stand in my way, now that I know +you love me!" + +"--it would be criminal--" + +"Ah, yes, but then you love me!" + +"--you act a dishonorable part, de Chateauroux,--" + +"That does not matter. You love me!" + +"I will never see you again," said the Grand Duchess, firmly. "Go! I loathe +you, I loathe you, monsieur, even more than I loathe myself for having +stooped to listen to you." + +"You love me!" said de Chateauroux, and took her in his arms. + +Then the Grand Duchess rested her head upon the shoulder of de Chateauroux, +and breathed, "God help me!--yes!" + +"Really," said the Grand Duke, "I would never have thought it of Victoria. +It seems incredible for any woman of taste to be thus lured astray by +citations of the almanac and secondary Greek poets." + +"You will come, then?" the Count said. + +And the Grand Duchess answered, quietly, "It shall be as you will." + +More lately, while the Grand Duke and the Baroness craned their necks, and +de Chateauroux bent, very slowly, over her upturned lips, the Grand +Duchess struggled from him, saying, "Hark, Philippe! for I heard some +one--something stirring--" + +"It was the wind, dear heart." + +"Hasten!--I am afraid!--Oh, it is madness to wait here!" + +"At dawn, then,--in the gardens?" + +"Yes,--ah, yes, yes! But come, mon ami." And they disappeared in the +direction of the palace. + + +III + +The Grand Duke looked dispassionately on their retreating figures; +inquiringly on the Baroness; reprovingly on the moon, as though he rather +suspected it of having treated him with injustice. + +"Ma foi," said his Highness, at length, "I have never known such a passion +for sunrises. Shortly we shall have them announced as 'Patronized by the +Nobility.'" + +The Baroness said only, with an ellipsis, "Her own cousin, too!" [Footnote: +By courtesy rather than legally; Mademoiselle Berlin was, however, +undoubtedly the Elector of Badenburg's sister, though on the wrong side of +the blanket; and to her (second) son by Louis Quinze his French Majesty +accorded the title of Comte de Chateauroux.] + +"Victoria," observed the Grand Duke, "has always had the highest regard for +her family; but in this she is going too far--" + +"Yes," said the Baroness; "as far as Vienna." + +"--and I shall tell her that there are limits, Pardieu," the Grand Duke +emphatically repeated, "that there are limits." + +"Whereupon, if I am not mistaken, she will reply that there +are--baronesses." + +"I shall then appeal to her better nature--" + +"You will find it," said the Baroness, "strangely hard of hearing." + +"--and afterward I shall have de Chateauroux arrested." + +"On what grounds, your Highness?" + +"In fact," admitted the Grand Duke, "we do not want a scandal" + +"It is no longer," the Baroness considered, "altogether a question of what +we want." + +"And, morbleu! there will be a horrible scandal--" + +"The public gazettes will thrive on it." + +"--and trouble with her father, if not international complications--" + +"The armies of Noumaria and Badenburg have for years had nothing to do." + +"--and later a divorce." + +"The lawyers will call you blessed. In any event," the Baroness +conscientiously added, "your lawyers will. I am afraid that hers--" + +"Will scarcely be so courteous?" the Grand Duke queried. + +"It is not altogether impossible," the Baroness admitted, "that in +preparation of their briefs, they may light upon some other adjective." + +"And, in short," his Highness summed it up, "there will be the deuce to +pay." + +"Oh, no! the piper," said the Baroness,--"after long years of dancing. That +is what moralists will be saying, I suspect." + +And this seemed so highly probable that the plump little Grand Duke +frowned, and lapsed into a most un-ducal sullenness. + +"Your Highness," murmured the Baroness, "I cannot express my feelings as to +this shocking revelation--" + +"Madame," said the Grand Duke, "no more can I. At least, not in the +presence of a lady." + +"--But I have a plan--" + +"I," said the Grand Duke, "have an infinity of plans; but de Chateauroux +has a carriage, and a superfluity of Bourbon blood; and Victoria has the +obstinacy of a mule." + +"--And my plan," said the Baroness, "is a good one." + +"It needs to be," said the Grand Duke. + +But thereupon the Baroness von Altenburg unfolded to his Highness her +scheme for preserving coherency in the reigning family of Noumaria, and the +Grand Duke of that principality heard and marvelled. + +"Amalia," he said, when she had ended, "you should be prime-minister--" + +"Ah, your Highness," said the lady, "you flatter me, for none of my sex has +ever been sufficiently unmanly to make a good politician." + +"--though, indeed," the Grand Duke reflected, "what would a mere +prime-minister do with lips like yours?" + +"He would set you an excellent example by admiring them from a distance. Do +you agree, then, to my plan?" + +"Why, ma foi, yes!" said the Grand Duke, and he sighed. "In the gardens at +dawn." + +"At dawn," said the Baroness, "in the gardens." + + +IV + +That night the Grand Duke was somewhat impeded in falling asleep. He was +seriously annoyed by the upsetment of his escape from the Noumarian exile, +since he felt that he had prodigally fulfilled his obligations, and in +consequence deserved a holiday; the duchy was committed past retreat to the +French alliance, there were two legitimate children to reign after him, and +be the puppets of de Puysange and de Bernis, [Footnote: The Grand Duke, +however, owed de Puysange some reparation for having begot a child upon the +latter's wife; and with de Bernis had not dissimilar ties, for the Marquis +de Soyecourt had in Venice, in 1749, relinquished to him the beautiful nun +of Muran, Maria Montepulci,--which lady de Bernis subsequently turned over +to Giacomo Casanova, as is duly recorded in the latter's _Memoires_, under +the year 1753.] just as he had been. Truly, it was diverting, after a +candid appraisal of his own merits, to reflect that a dwarfish Louis de +Soyecourt had succeeded where quite impeccable people like Bayard and du +Guesclin had failed; by four years of scandalous living in Noumaria he +had confirmed the duchy to the French interest, had thereby secured the +wavering friendship of Austria, and had, in effect, set France upon her +feet. Yes, the deed was notable, and he wanted his reward. + +To be the forsaken husband, to play Sgarnarelle with all Europe as an +audience, was, he considered, an entirely inadequate reward. That was out +of the question, for, deuce take it! somebody had to be Regent while +the brats were growing up. And Victoria, as he had said, would make an +admirable Regent. + +He was rather fond of his wife than otherwise. He appreciated the fact that +she never meddled with him, and he sincerely regretted she should have +taken a fancy to that good-for-nothing de Chateauroux. What qualms the poor +woman must be feeling at this very moment over the imminent loss of her +virtue! But love was a cruel and unreasonable lord.... There was Nelchen +Thorn, for instance.... He wondered would he have been happy with Nelchen? +her hands were rather coarse about the finger-tips, as he remembered +them.... The hands of Amalia, though, were perfection.... + +Then at last the body that had been Louis Quillan's fell asleep. + + +V + +Discontentedly the Grand Duke appraised the scene, and in the murky +twilight which heralded the day he found the world a cheerless place. The +Gardens of Breschau were deserted, save for a travelling carriage and +its fretful horses, who stamped and snuffled within forty yards of the +summer-house. + +"It appears," he said, "that I am the first on the ground, and that de +Chateauroux is a dilatory lover. Young men degenerate." + +Saying this, he seated himself on a convenient bench, where de Chateauroux +found him a few minutes later, and promptly dropped a portmanteau at the +ducal feet. + +"Monsieur le Comte," the Grand Duke said, "this is an unforeseen pleasure." + +"Your Highness!" cried de Chateauroux, in astonishment. + +"_Ludovicus_," said the Grand Duke, "_Dei gratia Archi Dux Noumariae, +Princeps Gatinensis_, and so on." And de Chateauroux caressed his chin. + +"I did not know," said the Grand Duke, "that you were such an early riser. +Or perhaps," he continued, "you are late in retiring. Fy, fy, monsieur! you +must be more careful! You must not create a scandal in our little Court." +He shook his finger knowingly at Philippe de Chateauroux. + +"Your Highness,--" said the latter, and stammered into silence. + +"You said that before," the Grand Duke leisurely observed. + +"An affair of business--" + +"Ah! ah! ah!" said the Grand Duke, casting his eye first toward the +portmanteau and then toward the carriage, "can it be that you are leaving +Noumaria? We shall miss you, Comte." + +"I was summoned very hastily, or I would have paid my respects to your +Highness--" + +"Indeed," said the Grand Duke, "your departure is of a deplorable +suddenness--" + +"It is urgent, your Highness--" + +"--and yet," pursued the Grand Duke, "travel is beneficial to young men." + +"I shall not go far, your Highness--" + +"Nay, I would not for the world intrude upon your secrets, Comte--" + +"--But my estates, your Highness--" + +"--For young men will be young men, I know." + +"--There is, your Highness, to be a sale of meadow land--" + +"Which you will find, I trust, untilled." + +"--And my counsellor at law, your Highness, is imperative--" + +"At times," agreed the Grand Duke, "the most subtle of counsellors is +unreasonable. I trust, though, that she is handsome?" + +"Ah, your Highness--!" cried de Chateauroux. + +"And you have my blessing upon your culture of those meadow lands. Go in +peace." + +The Grand Duke was smiling on his wife's kinsman with extreme benevolence +when the Baroness von Altenburg appeared in travelling costume and carrying +a portmanteau. + + +VI + +"Heydey!" said the Grand Duke; "it seems, that the legal representative of +our good Baroness, also, is imperative." + +"Your Highness!" cried the Baroness, and she, too, dropped her burden. + +"Every one," said the Grand Duke, "appears to question my identity." And +meantime de Chateauroux turned from the one to the other in bewilderment. + +"This," said the Grand Duke, after a pause, "is painful. This is unworthy +of you, de Chateauroux." + +"Your Highness--!" cried the Count. + +"Again?" said the Grand Duke, pettishly. + +The Baroness applied her handkerchief to her eyes, and plaintively said, +"You do not understand, your Highness--" + +"I am afraid," said the Grand Duke, "that I understand only too clearly." + +"--and I confess I was here to meet Monsieur de Chateauroux--" + +"Oh, oh!" cried the latter. + +"Precisely," observed the Grand Duke, "to compare portmanteaux; and you +had selected the interior of yonder carriage, no doubt, as an appropriate +locality." + +"And I admit to your Highness--" + +"His Highness already knowing," the Grand Duke interpolated. + +"--that we were about to elope." + +"I can assure you--" de Chateauroux began. + +"Nay, I will take the lady's word for it," said the Grand Duke--"though it +grieves me." + +"We knew you--would never give your consent," murmured the Baroness, "and +without your consent I can not marry--" + +"Undoubtedly," said the Grand Duke, "I would never have given my consent to +such fiddle-faddle." + +"And we love each other." + +"Fiddle-de-dee!" said his Highness. + +But de Chateauroux passed one hand over his brow. "This," he said, "is some +horrible mistake--" + +"It is," assented the Grand Duke, "a mistake--and one of your making." + +"--For I certainly did not expect the Baroness--" + +"To make a clean breast of it so readily?" his Highness asked. "Ah, but she +is a lady of unusual candor." + +"Indeed, your Highness--" began de Chateauroux. + +"Nay, Philippe," the Baroness entreated, "confess to his Highness, as I +have done." + +"Oh, but--!" said de Chateauroux. + +"I must beseech you to be silent," said the Grand Duke; "you have already +brought scandal to our Court. Do not, I pray you, add profanity to the +catalogue of your offences. Why, I protest," he continued, "even the Grand +Duchess has heard of this imbroglio." + +Indeed, the Grand Duchess, hurrying from a pleached walkway, was already +within a few feet of the trio, and appeared no little surprised to find in +this place her husband. + +"I would not be surprised," said the Grand Duke, raising his eyes toward +heaven, "if by this time it were all over the palace." + + +VII + +Then, as his wife waited, speechless, the Grand Duke gravely asked: "You, +too, have heard of this sad affair, Victoria? Ah, I perceive you have, +and that you come in haste to prevent it,--even to pursue these misguided +beings, if necessary, as the fact that you come already dressed for the +journey very eloquently shows. You are self-sacrificing, you possess a good +heart, Victoria." + +"I did not know--" began the Grand Duchess. + +"Until the last moment," the Grand Duke finished. "Eh, I comprehend. But +perhaps," he continued, hopefully, "it is not yet too late to bring them to +their senses." + +And turning toward the Baroness and de Chateauroux, he said: + +"I may not hinder your departure if you two in truth are swayed by love, +since to control that passion is immeasurably beyond the prerogative +of kings. Yet I beg you to reflect that the step you contemplate is +irrevocable. Yes, and to you, madame, whom I have long viewed with a +paternal affection--an emotion wholly justified by the age and rank for +which it has pleased Heaven to preserve me,--to you in particular I would +address my plea. If with an entire heart you love Monsieur de Chateauroux, +why, then--why, then, I concede that love is divine, and yonder carriage at +your disposal. But I beg you to reflect--" + +"Believe me," said the Baroness, "we are heartily grateful for your +Highness' magnanimity. We may, I deduce, depart with your permission?" + +"Oh, freely, if upon reflection--" + +"I can reflect only when I am sitting down," declared the Baroness. She +handed her portmanteau to de Chateauroux, and stepped into the carriage. +And the Grand Duke noted that a coachman and two footmen had appeared, from +nowhere in particular. + +"To you, Monsieur le Comte," his Highness now began, with an Olympian +frown, "I have naught to say. Under the cover of our hospitality you have +endeavored to steal away the fairest ornament of our Court; I leave you +to the pangs of conscience, if indeed you possess a conscience. But the +Baroness is unsophisticated; she has been misled by your fallacious +arguments and specious pretence of affection. She has evidently been +misled," he said to the Grand Duchess, kindly, "as any woman might be." + +"As any woman might be!" his wife very feebly echoed. + +"And I shall therefore," continued the Grand Duke, "do all within my power +to dissuade her from this ruinous step. I shall appeal to her better +nature, and not, I trust, in vain." + +He advanced with dignity to the carriage, wherein the Baroness was seated. +"Amalia," he whispered, "you are an admirable actress. 'O wonderful, +wonderful, and most wonderful wonderful! and yet again wonderful, and after +that out of all whooping!" + +The Baroness smiled. + +"And it is now time," said his Highness, "for me to appeal to your better +nature. I shall do so in a rather loud voice, for I have prepared a most +virtuous homily that I am unwilling the Grand Duchess should miss. You +will at its conclusion be overcome with an appropriate remorse, and will +obligingly burst into tears, and throw yourself at my feet--pray remember +that the left is the gouty one,--and be forgiven. You will then be restored +to favor, while de Chateauroux drives off alone and in disgrace. Your plan +works wonderfully." + +"It is true," the Baroness doubtfully said, "such was the plan." + +"And a magnificent one," said the Grand Duke. + +"But I have altered it, your Highness." + +"And this alteration, Amalia--?" + +"Involves a trip to Vienna." + +"Not yet, Amalia. We must wait." + +"Oh, I could never endure delays," said the Baroness, "and, since you +cannot accompany me, I am going with Monsieur de Chateauroux." + +The Grand Duke grasped the carriage door. + +"Preposterous!" he cried. + +"But you have given your consent," the Baroness protested, "and in the +presence of the Grand Duchess." + +"Which," said the Grand Duke, "was part of our plan." + +"Indeed, your Highness," said the Baroness, "it was a most important part. +You must know," she continued, with some diffidence, "that I have the +misfortune to love Monsieur de Chateauroux." + +"Who is in love with Victoria." + +"I have the effrontery to believe," said the Baroness, "that he is, in +reality, in love with me." + +"Especially after hearing him last night," the Grand Duke suggested. + +"That scene, your Highness, we had carefully rehearsed--oh, seven or eight +times! Personally, I agreed with your Highness that the quotation from +Theocritus was pedantic, but Philippe insisted on it, you conceive--" + +The Grand Duke gazed meditatively upon the Baroness, who had the grace to +blush. + +"Then it was," he asked, "a comedy for my benefit?" + +"You would never have consented--" she began. But the Grand Duke's +countenance, which was slowly altering to a greenish pallor, caused her to +pause. + +"You will get over it in a week, Louis," she murmured, "and you will find +other--baronesses." + +"Oh, very probably!" said his Highness, and he noted with pleasure that he +spoke quite as if it did not matter. "Nevertheless, this was a despicable +trick to play upon the Grand Duchess." + +"Yet I do not think the Grand Duchess will complain," said the Baroness von +Altenburg. + +And it was as though a light broke on the Grand Duke. "You planned all this +beforehand?" he inquired. + +"Why, precisely, your Highness." + +"And de Chateauroux helped you?" + +"In effect, yes, your Highness." + +"And the Grand Duchess knew?" + +"The Grand Duchess suggested it, your Highness, the moment that she knew +you thought of eloping." + +"And I, who tricked Gaston--!" + +"Louis," said the Baroness von Altenburg, in a semi-whisper, "your wife +is one of those persons who cling to respectability like a tippler to his +bottle. To her it is absolutely nothing how many women you may pursue--or +conquer--so long as you remain here under her thumb, to be exhibited, in +fair sobriety, upon the necessary public occasions. I pity you, my Louis." +And she sighed with real compassion. + +He took possession of one gloved hand. "At the bottom of your heart," his +Highness said, irrelevantly, "you like me better than you do Monsieur de +Chateauroux." + +"I find you the more entertaining company, to be sure--But what a woman +most wants is to be loved. If I touch Philippe's hand for, say, the +millionth part of a second longer than necessity compels, he treads for the +remainder of the day above meteors; if yours--why, you at most admire my +fingers. No doubt you are a connoisseur of fingers and such-like trifles; +but, then, a woman does not wish to be admired by a connoisseur so much as +she hungers to be adored by a maniac. And accordingly, I prefer my stupid +Philippe." + +"You are wise," the Grand Duke estimated, "I remember long ago ... in +Poictesme yonder...." + +"I loathe her," the Bareness said, with emphasis. "Nay, I am ignorant as to +who she was--but O my Louis! had you accorded me a tithe of the love you +squandered on that abominable dairymaid I would have followed you not only +to Vienna--" + +He raised his hand, "There are persons yonder in whom the proper emotions +are innate; let us not shock them. No, I never loved you, I suppose; I +merely liked your way of talking, liked your big green eyes, liked your +lithe young body.... He, and I like you still, Amalia. So I shall not play +the twopenny despot. God be with you, my dear." + +He had seen tears in those admirable eyes before he turned his back to her. +"Monsieur de Chateauroux," he called, "I find the lady is adamant. I wish +you a pleasant journey." He held open the door of the carriage for de +Chateauroux to enter. + +"You will forgive us, your Highness?" asked the latter. + +"You will forget?" murmured the Baroness. + +"I shall do both," said the Grand Duke. "Bon voyage, mes enfants!" + +And with a cracking of whips the carriage drove off. + +"Victoria," said the plump little Grand Duke, in admiration, "you are a +remarkable woman. I think that I will walk for a while in the gardens, and +meditate upon the perfections of my wife." + + +VIII + +He strolled in the direction of the woods. As he reached the summit of +a slight incline he turned and looked toward the road that leads from +Breschau to Vienna. A cloud of dust showed where the carriage had +disappeared. + +"Ma foi!" said his Highness; "my wife has very fully proven her executive +ability. Beyond doubt, there is no person in Europe better qualified to +rule Noumaria as Regent." + + + + +LOVE'S ALUMNI: THE AFTERPIECE + + +_As Played at Ingilby, October 6, 1755_ + +"_Though marriage be a lottery, in which there are a wondrous many blanks, +yet there is one inestimable lot, in which the only heaven on earth is +written. Would your kind fate but guide your hand to that, though I were +wrapt in all that luxury itself could clothe me with, I still should envy +you._" + + +DRAMATIS PERSONAE + +DUKE OF ORMSKIRK. +LOUIS DE SOYECOURT, formerly GRAND DUKE OF NOUMARIA, and now a tuner of +pianofortes. +DUC DE PUYSANGE. +DAMIENS, servant to Ormskirk. + +In Dumb Show are presented LORD HUMPHREY DEGGE, CAPTAIN FRANCIS AUDAINE, +MR. GEORGE ERWYN, DUCHESS OF ORMSKIRK, DUCHESSE DE PUYSANGE, LADY HUMPHREY +DEGGE, MRS. AUDAINE, and MRS. ERWYN. + + +SCENE + +The library, and afterward the dining-room, of Ormskirk's home at Ingilby, +in Westmoreland. + + + + +LOVE'S ALUMNI + + +_PROEM:-Wherein a Prince Serves His People_ + +The Grand Duke did not return to breakfast nor to dinner, nor, in point of +fact, to Noumaria. For the second occasion Louis de Soyecourt had vanished +at the spiriting of boredom; and it is gratifying to record that his +evasion passed without any train of turmoil. + +The Grand Duchess seemed to disapprove of her bereavement, mildly, but only +said, "Well, after all--!" + +She saw to it that the ponds about the palace were dragged conscientiously, +and held an interview with the Chief of Police, and more lately had herself +declared Regent of Noumaria. + +She proved a capable and popular ruler, who when she began to take lovers +allowed none of them to meddle with politics: so all went well enough in +Noumaria, and nobody evinced the least desire to hasten either the maturity +of young Duke Anthony or the reappearance of his father. + + +I + +Meantime had come to Ingilby, the Duke of Ormskirk's place in Westmoreland, +a smallish blue-eyed vagabond who requested audience with his Grace, and +presently got it, for the Duke, since his retirement from public affairs, +[Footnote: He returned to office during the following year, as is well +known, immediately before the attempted assassination of the French King, +in the January of 1757.] had become approachable by almost any member of +the public. + +The man came Into the library, smiling, "I entreat your pardon, Monsieur +le Duc," he began, "that I have not visited you sooner. But in unsettled +times, you comprehend, the master of a beleaguered fortress is kept busy. +This poor fortress of my body has been of late most resolutely besieged by +poverty and hunger, the while that I have been tramping about Europe--in +search of Gaston. Now, they tell me, he is here." + +The travesty of their five-year-old interview at Bellegarde so tickled +Ormskirk's fancy that he laughed heartily. "Damiens," said Ormskirk, to the +attendant lackey, "go fetch me a Protestant minister from Manneville, and +have a gallows erected in one of the drawing-rooms. I intend to pay off an +old score." Meantime he was shaking the little vagabond's hand, chuckling +and a-beam with hospitality. + +"Your Grace--!" said Damiens, bewildered. + +"Well, go, in any event," said Ormskirk. "Oh, go anywhere, man!--to the +devil, for instance." + +His eyes, followed the retreating lackey. "As I suspect in the end you +will," Ormskirk said, inconsequently. "Still, you are a very serviceable +fellow, my good Damiens. I have need of you." + +And with a shrug he now began, "Your Highness,--" + +"Praise God, no!" observed the other, fervently. + +And Ormskirk nodded his comprehension. "Monsieur de Soyecourt, then. Of +course, we heard of your disappearance, I have been expecting something of +the sort for years. And,--frankly, politics are often a nuisance, as both +Gaston and myself will willingly attest,--especially," he added, with a +grimace, "since war between France and England became inevitable through +the late happenings in India and Nova Scotia, and both our wives flatly +declined to let either of us take part therein,--for fear we might catch +our death of cold by sleeping in those draughty tents. Faith, you have +descended, sir, like an agreeable meteor, upon two of the most scandalously +henpecked husbands in all the universe. In fact, you will not find a +gentleman at Ingilby--save Mr. Erwyn, perhaps--but is an abject slave to +his wife, and in consequence most abjectly content." + +"You have guests, then?" said de Soyecourt. "_Ma foi_, it is unfortunate. I +but desired to confer with Gaston concerning the disposal of Beaujolais and +my other properties in France since I find that the sensation of hunger, +while undoubtedly novel, is, when too long continued, apt to grow tiresome. +I would not willingly intrude, however--" + +"Were it not for the fact that you are wealthy, and yet, so long as you +preserve your incognito, and remain legally dead, you cannot touch a penny +of your fortune! The situation is droll. We must arrange it. Meanwhile +you are my guest, and I can assure you that at Ingilby you will be to all +Monsieur de Soyecourt, no more and no less. Now let us see what can be done +about clothing Monsieur de Soyecourt for dinner--" + +"But I could not consider--" Monsieur de Soyecourt protested. + +"I must venture to remind you," the Duke retorted, "that dinner is almost +ready, and that Claire is the sort of housewife who would more readily +condone fratricide or arson than cold soup." + +"It is odd," little de Soyecourt said, with complete irrelevance, "that in +the end I should get aid of you and of Gaston. And it is odd you should be +forgiving my bungling attempts at crime, so lightly--" + +Ormskirk considered, a new gravity in his plump face. "Faith, but we find +it more salutary, in looking back, to consider some peccadilloes of our +own. And we bear no malice, Gaston and I,--largely, I suppose, because +contentment is a great encourager of all the virtues. Then, too, we +remember that to each of us, at the eleventh hour, and through no merit of +his own, was given the one thing worth while in life. We did not merit it; +few of us merit anything, for few of us are at bottom either very good or +very bad. Nay, my friend, for the most part we are blessed or damned as +Fate elects, and hence her favorites may not in reason contemn her victims. +For myself, I observe the king upon his throne and the thief upon his +coffin, in passage for the gallows; and I pilfer my phrase and I apply it +to either spectacle: _There, but for the will of God, sits John Bulmer_. I +may not understand, I may not question; I can but accept. Now, then, let us +prepare for dinner" he ended, in quite another tone. + +De Soyecourt yielded. He was shown to his rooms, and Ormskirk rang for +Damiens, whom the Duke was sending into France to attend to a rather +important assassination. + + +II + +At dinner Louis de Soyecourt made divers observations. + +First Gaston had embraced him. "And the de Gatinais estates?--but beyond +question, my dear Louis! Next week we return to France, and the affair is +easily arranged. You may abdicate in due form, you need no longer skulk +about Europe disguised as a piano-tuner; it is all one to France, you +conceive, whether you or your son reign in Noumaria. You should have come +to me sooner. As for your having been in love with my wife, I could not +well quarrel with that, since the action would seriously reflect upon my +own taste, who am still most hideously in love with her." + +Helene had stoutened. Monsieur de Soyecourt noted also that Helene's gold +hair was silvering now, as though Time had tangled cobwebs through it, and +that Gaston was profoundly unconscious of the fact. In Gaston's eyes she +was at the most seventeen. Well, Helene had always been admirable in her +management of all, and it would be diverting to see that youngest child of +hers.... Meanwhile it was diverting also to observe how conscientiously she +was exerting a good influence over Gaston: and de Soyecourt smiled to find +that she shook her head at Gaston's third glass, and that de Puysange did +not venture on a fourth. Victoria, to do her justice, had never meddled +with any of her husband's vices.... + +As for the Duchess of Ormskirk, Louis de Soyecourt had known from the +beginning--in comparative youthfulness,--that Claire would placidly order +her portion of the world as she considered expedient, and that Ormskirk +would travesty her, and somewhat bewilder her, and that in the ultimate +Ormskirk would obey her to the letter. + +Captain Audaine Monsieur de Soyecourt considered at the start diverting, +and in the end a pompous bore. Yet they assured him that Audaine was +getting on prodigiously in the House of Commons, [Footnote: The Captain's +personal quarrel with the Chevalier St. George and its remarkable upshot, +at Antwerp, as well as the Captain's subsequent renunciation of Jacobitism, +are best treated of in Garendon's own memoirs.]--as, _ma foi_! he would +most naturally do, since his _metier_ was simply to shout well-rounded +common-places,--and the circumstance that he shouted would always attract +attention, while the fact that he shouted platitudes would invariably +prevent his giving offence. Lord Humphrey Degge was found a ruddy and +comely person, of no especial importance, but de Soyecourt avidly took note +of Mr. Erwyn's waistcoat. Why, this man was a genius! Monsieur de Soyecourt +at first glance decided. Staid, demure even, yet with a quiet prodigality +of color and ornament, an inevitableness of cut--Oh, beyond doubt, this man +was a genius! + +As for the ladies at Ingilby, they were adjudged to be handsome women, +one and all, but quite unattractive, since they evinced not any excessive +interest in Monsieur de Soyecourt. Here was no sniff of future conquest, +not one side-long glance, but merely three wives unblushingly addicted to +their own husbands. _Eh bien_! these were droll customs! + +Yet in the little man woke a vague suspicion, as he sat among these +contented folk, that, after all, they had perhaps attained to something +very precious of which his own life had been void, to a something of which +he could not even form a conception. Love, of course, he understood, with +thoroughness; no man alive had loved more ardently and variously than +Louis de Soyecourt. But what the devil! love was a temporary delusion, an +ingenious device of Nature's to bring about perpetuation of the species. +It was a pleasurable insanity which induced you to take part in a rather +preposterously silly and undignified action: and once this action was +performed, the insanity, of course, gave way to mutual tolerance, or to +dislike, or, more preferably, as de Soyecourt considered, to a courteous +oblivion of the past. + +And yet when this Audaine, to cite one instance only, had vented some +particularly egregious speech that exquisite wife of his would merely +smile, in a fond, half-musing way. She had twice her husband's wit, and +was cognizant of the fact, beyond doubt; to any list of his faults and +weaknesses you could have compiled she indubitably might have added a dozen +items, familiar to herself alone: and with all this, it was clamant that +she preferred Audaine to any possible compendium of the manly virtues. Why, +in comparison, she would have pished at a seraph!--after five years of his +twaddle, mark you. And Helene seemed to be really not much more sensible +about Gaston.... + +It all was quite inexplicable. Yet Louis de Soyecourt could see that not +one of these folk was blind to his or her yoke-fellow's frailty, but that, +beside this something very precious to which they had attained, and +he had never attained, a man's foible, or a woman's defect, dwindled +into insignificance. Here, then, were people who, after five years' +consortment,--consciously defiant of time's corrosion, of the guttering-out +of desire, of the gross and daily disillusions of a life in common, +and even of the daily fret of all trivialities shared and diversely +viewed,--who could yet smile and say: "No, my companion is not quite the +perfect being I had imagined. What does it matter? I am content. I would +have nothing changed." + +Well, but Victoria had not been like that. She let you go to the devil in +your own way, without meddling, but she irritated you all the while by +holding herself to a mark. She had too many lofty Ideas about her own +duties and principles,--much such uncompromising fancies as had led his +father to get rid of that little Nelchen.... No, there was no putting up +with these rigid virtues, day in and day out. These high-flown notions +about right and wrong upset your living, they fretted your luckless +associates.... These people here at Ingilby, by example, made no +pretensions to immaculacy; instead, they kept their gallant compromise +with imperfection; and they seemed happy enough.... There might be a moral +somewhere: but he could not find it. + + +CURTAIN + + + + +THE EPILOGUE + +SPOKEN BY ORMSKIRK, WHO ENTERS IN A FRET + + + A thankless task! to come to you and mar + Your dwindling appetite for caviar, + And so I told him! + [_He calls within._ + Sir, the critics sneer, + And swear the thing is "crude and insincere"! + "Too trivial"! or for an instant pause + And doubly damn with negligent applause! + Impute, in fine, the prowess of the Vicar + Less to repentance than to too much liquor! + Find Louis naught! de Gatinais inane! + Gaston unvital, and George Erwyn vain, + And Degge the futile fellow of Audaine! + Nay, sir, no Epilogue avails to save-- + You're damned, and Bulmer's hooted as a knave. + + [_He retires behind the curtain and is thrust out + again. He resolves to make the best of it._ + + The author's obdurate, and bids me say + That--since the doings of our far-off day + Smacked less of Hippocrene than of Bohea-- + His tiny pictures of that tiny time + Aim little at the lofty and sublime, + And paint no peccadillo as a crime-- + Since when illegally light midges mate, + Or flies purloin, or gnats assassinate, + No sane man hales them to the magistrate. + + Or so he says. He merely strove to find + And fix a faithful likeness of mankind + About its daily business,--to secure + No full-length portrait, but a miniature,-- + And for it all no moral can procure. + + Let Bulmer, then, defend his old-world crew, + And beg indulgence--nay, applause--of you. + + Grant that we tippled and were indiscreet, + And that our idols all had earthen feet; + Grant that we made of life a masquerade; + And swore a deal more loudly than we prayed; + Grant none of us the man his Maker meant,-- + Our deeds, the parodies of our intent, + In neither good nor ill pre-eminent; + Grant none of us a Nero,--none a martyr,-- + All merely so-so. + And _de te narratur_. + +EXPLICIT + + + + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Gallantry, by James Branch Cabell + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GALLANTRY *** + +***** This file should be named 8715.txt or 8715.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/8/7/1/8715/ + +Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Tiffany Vergon and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team. + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You can also find out about how to make a +donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!***** + + +Title: Gallantry + Dizain des Fetes Galantes + +Author: James Branch Cabell + +Release Date: August, 2005 [EBook #8715] +[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] +[This file was first posted on August 3, 2003] +[Date last updated: August 11, 2003] + +Edition: 10 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GALLANTRY *** + + + + +Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Tiffany Vergon +and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team. + + + + +GALLANTRY + +_Dizain des Fetes Galantes_ + +By + +JAMES BRANCH CABELL + + +WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY LOUIS UNTERMEYER + + +"_Half in masquerade, playing the drawing-room or garden comedy of life, +these persons have upon them, not less than the landscape among the +accidents of which they group themselves with fittingness, a certain light +that we should seek for in vain upon anything real._" + + + + +TO + +JAMES ROBINSON BRANCH + +THIS VOLUME, SINCE IT TREATS OF GALLANTRY, IS DEDICATED, AS BOTH IN LIFE +AND DEATH AN EXPONENT OF THE WORD'S HIGHEST MEANING + +"_A brutish man knoweth not, neither doth a fool understand this.... Shall +the throne of iniquity have fellowship with Thee, which frameth mischief by +a law?_" + + + + +INTRODUCTION + + +These paragraphs, dignified by the revised edition of _Gallantry_ and +spuriously designated An Introduction, are nothing more than a series of +notes and haphazard discoveries in preparation of a thesis. That thesis, +if it is ever written, will bear a title something academically like _The +Psychogenesis of a Poet; or Cabell the Masquerader_. For it is in this +guise--sometimes self-declared, sometimes self-concealed, but always as the +persistent visionary--that the author of some of the finest prose of our +day has given us the key with which (to lapse into the jargon of verse) he +has unlocked his heart. + +On the technical side alone, it is easy to establish Cabell's poetic +standing. There are, first of all, the quantity of original rhymes that +are scattered through the dozen volumes which Cabell has latterly (and +significantly) classified as Biography. Besides these interjections which +do duty as mottoes, chapter-headings, tailpieces, dedications, interludes +and sometimes relevant songs, there is the volume of seventy-five +"adaptations" in verse, _From the Hidden Way_, published in 1916. Here +Cabell, even in his most natural role, declines to show his face and amuses +himself with a new set of masks labelled Alessandro de Medici, Antoine +Riczi, Nicolas de Caen, Theodore Passerat and other fabulous minnesingers +whose verses were created only in the mind of Cabell. It has pleased him to +confuse others besides the erudite reviewer of the _Boston Transcript_ by +quoting the first lines of the non-existent originals in Latin, Italian, +Provencal--thus making his skilful ballades, sestinas and the less mediaeval +narratives part of a remarkably elaborate and altogether successful hoax. + +And, as this masquerade of obscure Parnassians betrayed its creator, +Cabell--impelled by some fantastic reticence--sought for more subtle +makeshifts to hide the poet. The unwritten thesis, plunging abruptly into +the realm of analytical psychology, will detail the steps Cabell has taken, +as a result of early associative disappointments, to repress or at least +to disguise, the poet in himself--and it will disclose how he has failed. +It will burrow through the latest of his works and exhume his half-buried +experiments in rhyme, assonance and polyphony. This part of the paper will +examine _Jurgen_ and call attention to the distorted sonnet printed as a +prose soliloquy on page 97 of that exquisite and ironic volume. It will +pass to the subsequent _Figures of Earth_ and, after showing how the +greater gravity of this volume is accompanied by a greater profusion of +poetry _per se_ it will unravel the scheme of Cabell's fifteen essays in +what might be called contrapuntal prose. It will unscramble all the rhymes +screened in Manuel's monologue beginning on page 294, quote the metrical +innovations with rhymed vowels on page 60, tabulate the hexameters that +leap from the solidly set paragraphs and rearrange the brilliant fooling +that opens the chapter "Magic of the Image Makers." This last is in itself +so felicitous a composite of verse and criticism--a passage incredibly +overlooked by the most meticulous of Cabell's glossarians--that it deserves +a paper for itself. For here, set down prosaically as "the unfinished Rune +of the Blackbirds" are four distinct parodies--including two insidious +burlesques of Browning and Swinburne--on a theme which is familiar to us +to-day in _les mots justes_ of Mother Goose. "It is," explains Freydis, +after the thaumaturgists have finished, "an experimental incantation in +that it is a bit of unfinished magic for which the proper words have not +yet been found: but between now and a while they will be stumbled on, and +then this rune will live perpetually." And thus the poet, speaking through +the mouth-piece of Freydis, discourses on the power of words and, in one of +Cabell's most eloquent chapters, crystallizes that high mood, presenting +the case for poetry as it has been pleaded by few of her most fervid +advocates. + +Here the thesis will stop quoting and argue its main contention from +another angle. It will consider the author in a larger and less technical +sense: disclosing his characters, his settings, his plots, even the entire +genealogical plan of his works, to be the design of a poet rather than a +novelist. The persons of Cabell's imagination move to no haphazard strains; +they create their own music. And, like a set of modulated _motifs_, they +combine to form a richer and more sonorous pattern. With its interrelation +of figures and interweaving of themes, the Cabellian "Biography" assumes +the solidity and shapeliness of a fugue, a composition in which all the +voices speak with equal precision and recurring clarity. + +And what, the diagnostician may inquire, of the characters themselves? They +are, it will be answered, motivated by pity and irony; the tolerant humor, +the sympathetic and not too distant regard of their Olympian designer +agitate them so sensitively that we seldom see what strings are twitched. +These puppets seem to act of their own conviction--possibly because their +director is careful not to have too many convictions of his own. It may +have been pointed out before this that there are no undeviating villains +in his masques and, as many an indignant reviewer has expostulated, few +untarnished heroes. Cabell's, it will be perceived, is a frankly pagan +poetry. It has no texts with which to discipline beauty; it lacks moral +fervor; it pretends to no divinity of dogmatism. The image-maker is willing +to let his creatures ape their living models by fluctuating between +shifting conventions and contradictory ideals; he leaves to a more positive +Author the dubious pleasure of drawing a daily line between vice and +virtue. If Cabell pleads at all, he pleads with us not to repudiate a +Villon or a Marlowe while we are reviling the imperfect man in a perfect +poet. "What is man, that his welfare be considered?" questions Cabell, +paraphrasing Scripture, "an ape who chatters to himself of kinship with the +archangels while filthily he digs for groundnuts.... Yet do I perceive that +this same man is a maimed god.... He is under penalty condemned to compute +eternity with false weights and to estimate infinity with a yardstick--and +he very often does it." + +This, the thesis will contend, is the only possible attitude to the mingled +apathy and abandon of existence--and it is, in fine, the poetic attitude. +Romantic it is, without question, and I imagine Cabell would be the last +to cavil at the implication. For, mocked by a contemptuous silence gnawing +beneath the howling energy of life, what else is there for the poet but the +search for some miracle of belief, some assurance in a world of illimitable +perplexities? It is the wish to attain this dream which is more real than +reality that guides the entire Cabell _epos_--"and it is this will that +stirs in us to have the creatures of earth and the affairs of earth, not as +they are, but as 'they ought to be.'" + +Such a romantic vision, which concludes that glowing testament, _Beyond +Life_, is the shining thread that binds the latest of Cabell's novels +with the earliest of his short stories. It is, in effect, one tale he is +telling, a tale in which Poictesme and the more local Lichfield are, for +all their topographical dissimilarities, the same place, and all his people +interchangeable symbols of the changeless desires of men. Whether the +allegory is told in the terms of _Gallantry_ with its perfumed lights, its +deliberate artifice and its technique of badinage, or presented in the +more high-flying mood of _Chivalry_ with its ready passions and readier +rhetoric, it prefigures the subsequent pageant in which the victories might +so easily be mistaken for defeats. In this procession, amid a singularly +ordered riot of color, the figure of man moves, none too confidently but +with stirring fortitude, to an unrealized end. Here, stumbling through the +mazes of a code, in the habiliments of Ormskirk or de Soyecourt, he passes +from the adventures of the mind (Kennaston in _The Cream of the Jest_, +Charteris in _Beyond Life_) through the adventures of the flesh (_Jurgen_) +to the darker adventures of the spirit (Manuel in _Figures of Earth_). +Even this _Gallantry_, the most candidly superficial of Cabell's works, is +alive with a vigor of imagination and irony. It is not without significance +that the motto on the new title-page is: "Half in masquerade, playing the +drawing-room or garden comedy of life, these persons have upon them, not +less than the landscape among the accidents of which they group themselves, +a certain light that we should seek for in vain upon anything real." + +The genealogically inclined will be happy to discover that _Gallantry_, +for all its revulsion from reality, deals with the perpetuated life of +Manuel in a strangely altered _milieu_. The rest of us will be quicker to +comprehend how subtly this volume takes its peculiar place in its author's +record of struggling dreams, how, beneath, a surface covered with political +finery and sentimental bric-a-brac, the quest goes on, stubbornly and often +stupidly, in a forgotten world made suddenly animate and as real as our +own. + +And this, the thesis will conclude, is because Cabell is not as much a +masquerader as he imagines himself to be. None but a visionary could wear +so constantly upon his sleeve the desire "to write perfectly of beautiful +happenings." None but the poet, shaken with the strength of his vision, +could cry to-day, "It is only by preserving faith in human dreams that +we may, after all, perhaps some day make them come true." For poetry, to +which all literature aspires, is not the shadow of reality but the image of +perfection, the light of disembodied beauty toward which creation gropes. +And that poetic consciousness is the key to the complex and half-concealed +art of James Branch Cabell. + +LOUIS UNTERMEYER. + +New York City, +_April, 1922._ + + + + +CONTENTS + + +THE EPISTLE DEDICATORY + +THE PROLOGUE + +I SIMON'S HOUR + +II LOVE AT MARTINMAS + +III THE CASUAL HONEYMOON + +IV THE RHYME TO PORRINGER + +V ACTORS ALL + +VI APRIL'S MESSAGE + +VII IN THE SECOND APRIL + +VIII HEART OF GOLD + +IX THE SCAPEGOATS + +X THE DUCAL AUDIENCE + +LOVE'S ALUMNI: THE AFTERPIECE + +THE EPILOGUE + + + + +THE EPISTLE DEDICATORY + +_TO MRS. GRUNDY_ + + +Madam,--It is surely fitting that a book which harks back to the manners +of the second George should have its dedication and its patron. And these +comedies claim naturally your protection, since it likewise appears +a custom of that era for the poet to dedicate his book to his most +influential acquaintance and the one least likely to value it. + +Indeed, it is as proper that the plaudits of great persons be reserved for +great performances as it is undeniable these + + tiny pictures of that tiny time + Aim little at the lofty and sublime. + +Yet cognoscenti still esteem it an error in the accomplished Shakespeare +that he introduced a game of billiards into his portrayal of Queen +Cleopatra's court; and the impropriety had been equal had I linked the +extreme of any passion with an age and circle wherein abandonment to +the emotions was adjudged bucolic, nay, Madam, the Eumenides were very +terrifying at Delphi, no doubt, but deck them with paint, patch, and +panniers, send them howling among the _beau monde_ on the Pantiles, and +they are only figures of fun; nor may, in reason, the high woes of a second +Lear, or of a new Prometheus, be adequately lighted by the flambeaux of +Louis Quinze. + +Conceive, then, the overture begun, and fear not, if the action of the play +demand a lion, but that he shall be a beast of Peter Quince's picking. The +ladies shall not be frighted, for our chief comedians will enact modish +people of a time when gallantry prevailed. + +Now the essence of gallantry, I take it, was to accept the pleasures of +life leisurely and its inconveniences with a shrug. As requisites, a +gallant person will, of course, be "amorous, but not too constant, have +a pleasant voice, and possess a talent for love-letters." He will always +bear in mind that in love-affairs success is less the Ultima Thule of +desire than its _coup de grace_, and he will be careful never to admit the +fact, especially to himself. He will value ceremony, but rather for its +comeliness than for its utility, as one esteeming the lily, say, to be a +more applaudable bulb than the onion. He will prink; and he will be at his +best after sunset. He will dare to acknowledge the shapeliness of a thief's +leg, to contend that the commission of murder does not necessarily impair +the agreeableness of the assassin's conversation; and to insist that at +bottom God is kindlier than the genteel would regard as rational. He will, +in fine, sin on sufficient provocation, and repent within the moment, +quite sincerely, and be not unconscionably surprised when he repeats the +progression: and he will consider the world with a smile of toleration, and +his own doings with a smile of honest amusement, and Heaven with a smile +that is not distrustful. + +This particular attitude toward life may have its merits, but it is not +conducive to meticulous morality; therefore, in advance, I warn you that my +_Dramatis Personae_ will in their display of the cardinal virtues evince a +certain parsimony. Theirs were, in effect, not virtuous days. And the great +man who knew these times _au fond_, and loved them, and wrote of them as no +other man may ever hope to do, has said of these same times, with perfect +truth: + +"Fiddles sing all through them; wax-lights, fine dresses, fine jokes, +fine plate, fine equipages, glitter and sparkle: never was there such +a brilliant, jigging, smirking Vanity Fair. But wandering through that +city of the dead, that dreadfully selfish time, through those godless +intrigues and feasts, through those crowds, pushing, and eager, and +struggling,--rouged, and lying, and fawning,--I have wanted some one to be +friends with. I have said, _Show me some good person about that Court; find +me, among those selfish courtiers, those dissolute gay people, some one +being that I can love and regard._" And Thackeray confesses that, for all +his research, he could not find anybody living irreproachably, at this +especial period.... + +Where a giant fails one may in reason hesitate to essay. I present, then, +people who, as people normally do, accepted their times and made the best +of them, since the most estimable needs conform a little to the custom of +his day, whether it be Caractacus painting himself sky-blue or Galileo on +his knees at Santa Maria. And accordingly, many of my comedians will lie +when it seems advisable, and will not haggle over a misdemeanor when there +is anything to be gained by it; at times their virtues will get them +what they want, and at times their vices, and at other times they will +be neither punished nor rewarded; in fine, Madam, they will be just human +beings stumbling through illogical lives with precisely that lack of +common-sense which so pre-eminently distinguishes all our neighbors from +ourselves. + +For the life that moved in old Manuel of Poictesme finds hereinafter in his +descendants, in these later Allonbys and Bulmers and Heleighs and Floyers, +a new _milieu_ to conform and curb that life in externes rather than in +essentials. What this life made of chivalrous conditions has elsewhere +been recorded: with its renewal in gallant circumstances, the stage is +differently furnished and lighted, the costumes are dissimilar; but the +comedy, I think, works toward the same _denouement_, and certainly the +protagonist remains unchanged. My protagonist is still the life of Manuel, +as this life was perpetuated in his descendants; and my endeavor is (still) +to show you what this life made (and omitted to make) of its tenancy of +earth. 'Tis a drama enactable in any setting. + +Yet the comedy of gallantry has its conventions. There must be quite +invaluable papers to be stolen and juggled with; an involuntary +marriage either threatened or consummated; elopements, highwaymen, and +despatch-boxes; and a continual indulgence in soliloquy and eavesdropping. +Everybody must pretend to be somebody else, and young girls, in particular, +must go disguised as boys, amid much cut-and-thrust work, both ferric and +verbal. For upon the whole, the comedy of gallantry tends to unfold itself +in dialogue, and yet more dialogue, with just the notice of a change +of scene or a brief stage direction inserted here and there. All these +conventions, Madam, I observe. + +A word more: the progress of an author who alternates, in turn, between +fact and his private fancies (like unequal crutches) cannot in reason be +undisfigured by false steps. Therefore it is judicious to confess, Madam, +that more than once I have pieced the opulence of my subject with the +poverty of my inventions. Indisputably, to thrust words into a dead man's +mouth is in the ultimate as unpardonable as the axiomatic offence of +stealing the pennies from his eyes; yet if I have sometimes erred in my +surmise at what Ormskirk or de Puysange or Louis de Soyecourt really said +at certain moments of their lives, the misstep was due, Madam, less to +malevolence than to inability to replevin their superior utterance; and the +accomplished shade of Garendon, at least, I have not travestied, unless it +were through some too prudent item of excision. + +Remains but to subscribe myself--in the approved formula of dedicators--as, + + MADAM, + + Your ladyship's most humble and most obedient servant, + + THE AUTHOR. + + + + +THE PROLOGUE + +SPOKEN BY LADY ALLONBY, WHO ENTERS IN A FLURRY + + + _The author bade we come_--Lud, I protest!-- + _He bade me come_--and I forget the rest. + But 'tis no matter; he's an arrant fool + That ever bade a woman speak by rule. + + Besides, his Prologue was, at best, dull stuff, + And of dull writing we have, sure, enough. + A book will do when you've a vacant minute, + But, la! who cares what is, and isn't, in it? + + And since I'm but the Prologue of a book, + What I've omitted all will overlook, + And owe me for it, too, some gratitude, + Seeing in reason it cannot be good + Whose author has as much but now confessed,-- + For, _Who'd excel when few can make a test + Betwixt indifferent writing and the best?_ + He said but now. + + And I:--_La, why excel, + When mediocrity does quite as well? + 'Tis women buy the books,--and read 'em, say, + What time a person nods, en negligee, + And in default of gossip, cards, or dance, + Resolves t' incite a nap with some romance._ + + The fool replied in verse,--I think he said + 'Twas verses the ingenious Dryden made, + And trust 'twill save me from entire disgrace + To cite 'em in his foolish Prologue's place. + _Yet, scattered here and there, I some behold, + Who can discern the tinsel from the gold; + To these he writes; and if by them allowed, + 'Tis their prerogative to rule the crowd, + For he more fears, like, a presuming man, + Their votes who cannot judge, than theirs can._ + + + + +I + +SIMON'S HOUR + + +_As Played at Stornoway Crag, March 25, 1750_ + +"_You're a woman--one to whom Heaven gave beauty, when it grafted roses on +a briar. You are the reflection of Heaven in a pond, and he that leaps at +you is sunk. You were all white, a sheet of lovely spotless paper, when you +first were born; but you are to be scrawled and blotted by every goose's +quill._" + + +DRAMATIS PERSONAE. + +LORD ROKESLE, a loose-living, Impoverished nobleman, and loves Lady +Allonby. + +SIMON ORTS, Vicar of Heriz Magna, a debauched fellow, and Rokesle's +creature. + +PUNSHON, servant to Rokesle. + +LADY ALLONBY, a pleasure-loving, luxurious woman, a widow, and rich. + + +SCENE + +The Mancini Chamber at Stornoway Crag, on Usk. + + +SIMON'S HOUR + + +_PROEM:--The Age and a Product of It_ + +We begin at a time when George the Second was permitting Ormskirk and the +Pelhams to govern England, and the Jacobites had not yet ceased to hope +for another Stuart Restoration, and Mr. Washington was a promising young +surveyor in the most loyal colony of Virginia; when abroad the Marquise de +Pompadour ruled France and all its appurtenances, and the King of Prussia +and the Empress Maria Theresa had, between them, set entire Europe by +the ears; when at home the ladies, if rumor may be credited, were less +unapproachable than their hoop-petticoats caused them to appear, +[Footnote: "Oft have we known that sevenfold fence to fail, +Though stiff with hoops, and armed with ribs of whale."] +and gentlemen wore swords, and some of the more reckless bloods were +daringly beginning to discard the Ramillie-tie and the pigtail for their +own hair; when politeness was obligatory, and morality a matter of taste, +and when well-bred people went about the day's work with an ample leisure +and very few scruples. In fine, we begin toward the end of March, in +the year 1750, when Lady Allonby and her brother, Mr. Henry Heleigh, of +Trevor's Folly, were the guests of Lord Rokesle, at Stornoway Crag, on Usk. + +As any person of _ton_ could have informed you, Anastasia Allonby was the +widow (by his second marriage) of Lord Stephen Allonby, the Marquis of +Falmouth's younger brother; and it was conceded by the most sedate that +Lord Stephen's widow, in consideration of her liberal jointure, possessed +inordinate comeliness. + +She was tall for a woman. Her hair, to-night unpowdered, had the color of +amber and something, too, of its glow; her eyes, though not profound, were +large and in hue varied, as the light fell or her emotions shifted, through +a wide gamut of blue shades. But it was her mouth you remembered: the +fulness and brevity of it, the deep indentation of its upper lip, the +curves of it and its vivid crimson--these roused you to wildish speculation +as to its probable softness when Lady Allonby and Fate were beyond ordinary +lenient. Pink was the color most favorable to her complexion, and this +she wore to-night; the gown was voluminous, with a profusion of lace, and +afforded everybody an ample opportunity to appraise her neck and bosom. +Lady Allonby had no reason to be ashamed of either, and the last mode in +these matters was not prudish. + +To such a person, enters Simon Orts, chaplain in ordinary to Lord Rokesle, +and Vicar of Heriz Magna, one of Lord Rokesle's livings. + + +I + +"Now of a truth," said Simon Orts, "that is curious--undeniably that is +curious." + +He stayed at the door for a moment staring back into the ill-lit corridor. +Presently he shut the door, and came forward toward the fireplace. + +Lady Allonby, half-hidden in the depths of the big chair beside the +chimney-piece, a book in her lap, looked up inquiringly. "What is curious, +Mr. Orts?" + +The clergyman stood upon the hearth, warming his hands, and diffusing an +odor of tobacco and stale alcohol. "Faith, that damned rascal--I beg your +pardon, Anastasia; our life upon Usk is not conducive to a mincing nicety +of speech. That rascal Punshon made some difficulty over admitting me; you +might have taken him for a sentinel, with Stornoway in a state of siege. He +ruffled me,--and I don't like it," Simon Orts said, reflectively, looking +down upon her. "No, I don't like it. Where's your brother?" he demanded on +a sudden. + +"Harry and Lord Rokesle are at cards, I believe. And Mrs. Morfit has +retired to her apartments with one of her usual headaches, so that I have +been alone these two hours. You visit Stornoway somewhat late, Mr. Orts," +Anastasia Allonby added, without any particular concealment of the fact +that she considered his doing so a nuisance. + +He jerked his thumb ceilingward. "The cloth is at any rascal's beck and +call. Old Holles, my Lord's man, is dying up yonder, and the whim seized +him to have a clergyman in. God knows why, for it appears to me that one +knave might very easily make his way to hell without having another knave +to help him. And Holles?--eh, well, from what I myself know of him, the +rogue is triply damned." His mouth puckered as he set about unbuttoning his +long, rain-spattered cloak, which, with his big hat, he flung aside upon a +table. "Gad!" said Simon Orts, "we are most of us damned on Usk; and that +is why I don't like it--" He struck his hand against his thigh. "I don't +like it, Anastasia." + +"You must pardon me," she languidly retorted, "but I was never good at +riddles." + +He turned and glanced about the hall, debating. Lady Allonby meanwhile +regarded him, as she might have looked at a frog or a hurtless snake. A +small, slim, anxious man, she found him; always fidgeting, always placating +some one, but never without a covert sneer. The fellow was venomous; his +eyes only were honest, for even while his lips were about their wheedling, +these eyes flashed malice at you; and their shifting was so unremittent +that afterward you recalled them as an absolute shining which had not any +color. On Usk and thereabouts they said it was the glare from within of his +damned soul, already at white heat; but they were a plain-spoken lot on +Usk. To-night Simon Orts was all in black; and his hair, too, and his gross +eyebrows were black, and well-nigh to the cheek-bones of his clean-shaven +countenance the thick beard, showed black through the skin. + +Now he kept silence for a lengthy interval, his arms crossed on his breast, +gnawing meanwhile at the fingernails of his left hand in an unattractive +fashion he had of meditating. When words came it was in a torrent. + +"I will read you my riddle, then. You are a widow, rich; as women go, you +are not so unpleasant to look at as most of 'em. If it became a clergyman +to dwell upon such matters, I would say that your fleshly habitation is +too fine for its tenant, since I know you to be a good-for-nothing jilt. +However, you are God's handiwork, and doubtless He had His reasons for +constructing you. My Lord is poor; last summer at Tunbridge you declined to +marry him. I am in his confidence, you observe. He took your decision in +silence--'ware Rokesle when he is quiet! Eh, I know the man,--'tisn't for +nothing that these ten years past I have studied his whims, pampered his +vanity, lied to him, toadied him! You admire my candor?--faith, yes, I +am very candid. I am Rokesle's hanger-on; he took me out of the gutter, +and in my fashion I am grateful. And you?--Anastasia, had you treated me +more equitably fifteen years ago, I would have gone to the stake for you, +singing; now I don't value you the flip of a farthing. But, for old time's +sake, I warn you. You and your brother are Rokesle's guests--on Usk! +Harry Heleigh [Footnote: Henry Heleigh, thirteenth Earl of Brudenel, who +succeeded his cousin the twelfth Earl in 1759, and lived to a great age. +Bavois, writing in 1797, calls him "a very fine, strong old gentleman."] +can handle a sword, I grant you,--but you are on Usk! And Mrs. Morfit is +here to play propriety--propriety on Usk, God save the mark! And besides, +Rokesle can twist his sister about his little finger, as the phrase runs. +And I find sentinels at the door! I don't like it, Anastasia. In his way +Rokesle loves you; more than that, you are an ideal match to retrieve his +battered fortunes; and the name of my worthy patron, I regret to say, is +not likely ever to embellish the Calendar of Saints." + +Simon Orts paused with a short laugh. The woman had risen to her feet, +her eyes widening and a thought troubled, though her lips smiled +contemptuously. + +"La, I should have comprehended that this late in the evening you would be +in no condition to converse with ladies. Believe me, though, Mr. Orts, I +would be glad to credit your warning to officious friendliness, were it not +that the odor about your person compels me to attribute it to gin." + +"Oh, I have been drinking," he conceded; "I have been drinking with a +most commendable perseverance for these fifteen years. But at present I am +far from drunk." Simon Orts took a turn about the hall; in an instant he +faced her with an odd, almost tender smile, "You adorable, empty-headed, +pink-and-white fool," said Simon Orts, "what madness induced you to come to +Usk? You know that Rokesle wants you; you know that you don't mean to marry +him. Then why come to Usk? Do you know who is king in this sea-washed scrap +of earth?--Rokesle. German George reigns yonder in England, but here, in +the Isle of Usk, Vincent Floyer is king. And it is not precisely a convent +that he directs. The men of Usk, I gather, after ten years' experience in +the administering of spiritual consolation hereabouts"--and his teeth made +their appearance in honor of the jest,--"are part fisherman, part smuggler, +part pirate, and part devil. Since the last ingredient predominates, they +have no very unreasonable apprehension of hell, and would cheerfully invade +it if Rokesle bade 'em do so. As I have pointed out, my worthy patron is +subject to the frailties of the flesh. Oh, I am candid, for if you report +me to his Lordship I shall lie out of it. I have had practice enough to do +it handsomely. But Rokesle--do you not know what Rokesle is--?" + +The Vicar of Heriz Magna would have gone on, but Lady Allonby had +interrupted, her cheeks flaming. "Yes, yes," she cried;' "I know him to +be a worthy gentleman. 'Tis true I could not find it in my heart to marry +him, yet I am proud to rank Lord Rokesle among my friends." She waved her +hand toward the chimney-piece, where hung--and hangs to-day,--the sword of +Aluric Floyer, the founder of the house of Rokesle. "Do you see that old +sword, Mr. Orts? The man who wielded it long ago was a gallant gentleman +and a stalwart captain. And my Lord, as he told me but on Thursday +afternoon, hung it there that he might always have in mind the fact that +he bore the name of this man, and must bear it meritoriously. My Lord is +a gentleman. La, believe me, if you, too, were a gentleman, Mr. Orts, you +would understand! But a gentleman is not a talebearer; a gentleman does not +defame any person behind his back, far less the person to whom he owes his +daily bread." + +"So he has been gulling you?" said Simon Orts; then he added quite +inconsequently: "I had not thought anything you could say would hurt me. I +discover I was wrong. Perhaps I am not a gentleman. Faith, no; I am only a +shabby drunkard, a disgrace to my cloth, am I not, Anastasia? Accordingly, +I fail to perceive what old Aluric Floyer has to do with the matter in +hand. He was reasonably virtuous, I suppose; putting aside a disastrous +appetite for fruit, so was Adam: but, viewing their descendants, I ruefully +admit that in each case the strain has deteriorated." + +There was a brief silence; then Lady Allonby observed: "Perhaps I was +discourteous. I ask your forgiveness, Mr. Orts. And now, if you will pardon +the suggestion, I think you had better go to your dying parishioner." + +But she had touched the man to the quick. "I am a drunkard; who made me +so? Who was it used to cuddle me with so many soft words and kisses--yes, +kisses, my Lady!--till a wealthier man came a-wooing, and then flung me +aside like an old shoe?" + +This drenched her cheeks with crimson, "I think we had better not refer to +that boy-and-girl affair. You cannot blame me for your debauched manner +of living. I found before it was too late that I did not love you. I was +only a girl, and 'twas natural that at first I should be mistaken in my +fancies." + +The Vicar had caught her by each wrist. "You don't understand, of course. +You never understood, for you have no more heart than one of those +pink-and-white bisque figures that you resemble. You don't love me, and +therefore I will go to the devil' may not be an all-rational deduction, but +'tis very human logic. You don't understand that, do you, Anastasia? You +don't understand how when one is acutely miserable one remembers that at +the bottom of a wineglass--or even at the bottom of a tumbler of gin,--one +may come upon happiness, or at least upon acquiescence to whatever the +niggling gods may send. You don't understand how one remembers, when the +desired woman is lost, that there are other women whose lips are equally +red and whose hearts are tenderer and--yes, whose virtue is less exigent. +No; women never understand these things: and in any event, you would not +understand, because you are only an adorable pink-and-white fool." + +"Oh, oh!" she cried, struggling, "How dare you? You insult me, you coward!" + +"Well, you can always comfort yourself with the reflection that it scarcely +matters what a sot like me may elect to say. And, since you understand me +now no more than formerly, Anastasia, I tell you that the lover turned +adrift may well profit by the example of his predecessors. Other lovers +have been left forsaken, both in trousers and in ripped petticoats; and +I have heard that when Chryseis was reft away from Agamemnon, the _cnax +andron_ made himself tolerably comfortable with Briseis; and that, when +Theseus sneaked off in the night, Ariadne, after having wept for a +decent period, managed in the ultimate to console herself with Theban +Bacchus,--which I suppose to be a courteous method of stating that the +daughter of Minos took to drink. So the forsaken lover has his choice of +consolation--in wine or in that dearer danger, woman. I have tried both, +Anastasia. And I tell you--" + +He dropped her hands as though they had been embers. Lord Rokesle had come +quietly into the hall. + +"Why, what's this?" Lord Rokesle demanded. "Simon, you aren't making love +to Lady Allonby, I hope? Fie, man! remember your cloth." + +Simon Orts wheeled--a different being, servile and cringing. "Your Lordship +is pleased to be pleasant. Indeed, though, I fear that your ears must +burn, sir, for I was but now expatiating upon the manifold kindnesses your +Lordship has been so generous as to confer upon your unworthy friend. I was +admiring Lady Allonby's ruffle, sir,--Valenciennes, I take it, and very +choice." + +Lord Rokesle laughed. "So I am to thank you for blowing my trumpet, am I?" +said Lord Rokesle. "Well, you are not a bad fellow, Simon, so long as you +are sober. And now be off with you to Holles--the rascal is dying, they +tell me. My luck, Simon! He made up a cravat better than any one in the +kingdom." + +"The ways of Providence are inscrutable," Simon Orts considered; "and +if Providence has in verity elected to chasten your Lordship, doubtless +it shall be, as anciently in the case of Job the Patriarch, repaid by a +recompense, by a thousandfold recompense." And after a meaning glance +toward Lady Allonby,--a glance that said: "I, too, have a tongue,"--he was +mounting the stairway to the upper corridor when Lord Rokesle called to +him. + +"By my conscience! I forgot," said Lord Rokesle; "don't leave Stornoway +without seeing me again, I shall want you by and by." + + +II + +Lord Rokesle sat down upon the long, high-backed bench, beside the fire, +and facing Lady Allonby's arm-chair. + +Neither he nor Lady Allonby spoke for a while. + +In a sombre way Lord Rokesle was a handsome man, and to-night, in brown +and gold, very stately. His bearing savored faintly of the hidalgo; indeed, +his mother was a foreign woman, cast ashore on Usk, from a wrecked Spanish +vessel, and incontinently married by the despot of the island. For her, +Death had delayed his advent unmercifully; but her reason survived the +marriage by two years only, and there were those familiar with the late +Lord Rokesle's [Footnote: Born 1685, and accidentally killed by Sir +Piers Sabiston in 1738; an accurate account of this notorious duellist, +profligate, charlatan, and playwright is given in Ireson's _Letters_.] +peculiarities who considered that in this, at least, the crazed lady was +fortunate. Among these gossips it was also esteemed a matter deserving +comment that in the shipwrecks not infrequent about Usk the women sometimes +survived, but the men never. + +Now Lord Rokesle regarded Lady Allonby, the while that she displayed +conspicuous interest in the play of the flames. But by and by, "O +vulgarity!" said Lady Allonby. "Pray endeavor to look a little more +cheerful. Positively, you are glaring at me like one of those disagreeable +beggars one so often sees staring at bakery windows." + +He smiled. "Do you remember what the Frenchman wrote--_et pain ne voyent +qu'aux fenetres?_ There is not an enormous difference between me and the +tattered rascal of Chepe, for we both stare longingly at what we most +desire. And were I minded to hunt the simile to the foot of the letter, +I would liken your coquetry to the intervening window-pane,--not easily +broken through, but very, very transparent, Anastasia." + +"You are not overwhelmingly polite," she said, reflectively; "but, then, I +suppose, living in the country is sure to damage a man's manners. Still, my +dear Orson, you smack too much of the forest." + +"Anastasia," said Lord Rokesle, bending toward her, "will you always be +thus cruel? Do you not understand that in this world you are the only thing +I care for? You think me a boor; perhaps I am,--and yet it rests with you, +my Lady, to make me what you will. For I love you, Anastasia--" + +"Why, how delightful of you!" said she, languidly. + +"It is not a matter for jesting. I tell you that I love you." My Lord's +color was rising. + +But Lady Allonby yawned. "Your honor's most devoted," she declared herself; +"still, you need not boast of your affection as if falling in love with me +were an uncommonly difficult achievement. That, too, is scarcely polite." + +"For the tenth time I ask you will you marry me?" said Lord Rokesle. + +"Is't only the tenth time? Dear me, it seems like the thousandth. Of +course, I couldn't think of it. Heavens, my Lord, how can you expect me to +marry a man who glares at me like that? Positively you look as ferocious as +the blackamoor in the tragedy,--the fellow who smothered his wife because +she misplaced a handkerchief, you remember." + +Lord Rokesle had risen, and he paced the hall, as if fighting down +resentment. "I am no Othello," he said at last; "though, indeed, I think +that the love I bear you is of a sort which rarely stirs our English blood. +'Tis not for nothing I am half-Spaniard, I warn you, Anastasia, my love is +a consuming blaze that will not pause for considerations of policy nor even +of honor. And you madden me, Anastasia! To-day you hear my protestations +with sighs and glances and faint denials; to-morrow you have only taunts +for me. Sometimes, I think, 'tis hatred rather than love I bear you. +Sometimes--" He clutched at his breast with a wild gesture. "I burn!" he +said. "Woman, give me back a human heart in place of this flame you have +kindled here, or I shall go mad! Last night I dreamed of hell, and of souls +toasted on burning forks and fed with sops of bale-fire,--and you were +there, Anastasia, where the flames leaped and curled like red-blazoned +snakes about the poor damned. And I, too, was there. And through eternity I +heard you cry to God in vain, O dear, wonderful, golden-haired woman! and +we could see Him, somehow,--see Him, a great way off, with straight, white +brows that frowned upon you pitilessly. And I was glad. For I knew then +that I hated you. And even now, when I think I must go mad for love of you, +I yet hate you with a fervor that shakes and thrills in every fibre of +me. Oh, I burn, I burn!" he cried, with the same frantic clutching at his +breast. + +Lady Allonby had risen. + +"Positively, I must ask you to open a window if you intend to continue in +this strain. D'ye mean to suffocate me, my Lord, with your flames and your +blazes and your brimstone and so on? You breathe conflagrations, like a +devil in a pantomime. I had as soon converse with a piece of fireworks. So, +if you'll pardon me, I will go to my brother." + +At the sound of her high, crisp speech his frenzy fell from him like a +mantle. "And you let me kiss you yesterday! Oh, I know you struggled, but +you did not struggle very hard, did you, Anastasia?" + +"Why, what a notion!" cried Lady Allonby; "as if a person should bother +seriously one way or the other about the antics of an amorous clodhopper! +Meanwhile, I repeat, my Lord, I wish to go to my brother." + +"Egad!" Lord Rokesle retorted, "that reminds me I have been notably remiss. +I bear you a message from Harry. He had to-night a letter from Job Nangle, +who, it seems, has a purchaser for Trevor's Folly at last. The fellow is +with our excellent Nangle at Peniston Friars, and offers liberal terms if +the sale be instant. The chance was too promising to let slip, so Harry +left the island an hour ago. It happened by a rare chance that some of my +fellows were on the point of setting out for the mainland,--and he knew +that he could safely entrust you to Mrs. Morfit's duennaship, he said." + +"He should not have done so," Lady Allonby observed, as if in a contention +of mind. "He--I will go to Mrs. Morfit, then, to confess to her in +frankness that, after all these rockets and bonfires--" + +"Why, that's the unfortunate part of the whole affair," said Lord Rokesle. +"The same boat brought Sabina a letter which summoned her to the bedside +of her husband, [Footnote: Archibald Morfit, M.P. for Salop, and in 1753 +elected Speaker, which office he declined on account of ill-health. He was +created a baronet in 1758 through the Duke of Ormskirk's influence.] who, +it appears, lies desperately ill at Kuyper Manor. It happened by a rare +chance that some of my fellows were on the point of setting out for the +mainland--from Heriz pier yonder, not from the end of the island whence +Harry sailed,--so she and her maid embarked instanter. Of course, there was +your brother here to play propriety, she said. And by the oddest misfortune +in the world," Lord Rokesle sighed, "I forgot to tell her that Harry +Heleigh had left Usk a half-hour earlier. My memory is lamentably +treacherous." + +But Lady Allonby had dropped all affectation. "You coward! You planned +this!" + +"Candidly, yes. Nangle is my agent as well as Harry's, you may remember. +I have any quantity of his letters, and of course an equal number +of Archibald's. So I spent the morning in my own apartments, +Anastasia,--tracing letters against the window-pane, which was, I suppose, +a childish recreation, but then what would you have? As you very justly +observe, country life invariably coarsens a man's tastes; and accordingly, +as you may now recall, I actually declined a game of _ecarte_ with you in +order to indulge in these little forgeries. Decidedly, my dear, you must +train your husband's imagination for superior flights--when you are Lady +Rokesle." + +She was staring at him as though he had been a portent. "I am alone," she +said. "Alone--in this place--with you! Alone! you devil!" + +"Your epithets increase in vigor. Just now I was only a clodhopper. Well, +I can but repeat that it rests with you to make me what you will. Though, +indeed, you are to all intent alone upon Usk, and upon Usk there are many +devils. There are ten of them on guard yonder, by the way, in case your +brother should return inopportunely, though that's scarcely probable. +Obedient devils, you observe, Anastasia,--devils who exert and check their +deviltry as I bid 'em, for they esteem me Lucifer's lieutenant. And I grant +the present situation is an outrage to propriety, yet the evil is not +incurable. Lady Allonby may not, if she value her reputation, pass to-night +at Stornoway; but here am I, all willingness, and upstairs is the parson. +Believe me, Anastasia, the most vinegarish prude could never object to Lady +Rokesle's spending to-night at Stornoway." + +"Let me think, let me think!" Lady Allonby said, and her hands plucked now +at her hair, now at her dress. She appeared dazed. "I can't think!" she +wailed on a sudden. "I am afraid. I--O Vincent, Vincent, you cannot do +this thing! I trusted you, Vincent. I know I let you make love to me, and +I relished having you make love to me. Women are like that. But I cannot +marry you, Vincent. There is a man, yonder in England, whom I love. He does +not care for me any more,--he is in love with my step-daughter. That is +very amusing, is it not, Vincent? Some day I may be his mother-in-law. Why +don't you laugh, Vincent? Come, let us both laugh--first at this and then +at the jest you have just played on me. Do you know, for an instant, I +believed you were in earnest? But Harry went to sleep over the cards, +didn't he? And Mrs. Morfit has gone to bed with one of her usual headaches? +Of course; and you thought you would retaliate upon me for teasing you. You +were quite right, 'Twas an excellent jest. Now let us laugh at it. Laugh, +Vincent! Oh!" she said now, more shrilly, "for the love of God, laugh, +laugh!--or I shall go mad!" + +But Lord Rokesle was a man of ice, "Matrimony is a serious matter, +Anastasia; 'tis not becoming in those who are about to enter it to exhibit +undue levity. I wonder what's keeping Simon?" + +"Simon Orts!" she said, in a half-whisper. Then she came toward Lord +Rokesle, smiling. "Why, of course, I teased you, Vincent, but there was +never any hard feeling, was there? And you really wish me to marry you? +Well, we must see, Vincent. But, as you say, matrimony is a serious matter. +D'ye know you say very sensible things, Vincent?--not at all like those +silly fops yonder in London. I dare say you and I would be very happy +together. But you wouldn't have any respect for me if I married you on a +sudden like this, would you? Of course not. So you will let me consider it. +Come to me a month from now, say,--is that too long to wait? Well, I think +'tis too long myself. Say a week, then. I must have my wedding-finery, +you comprehend. We women are such vain creatures--not big and brave and +sensible like you men. See, for example, how much bigger your hand is +than mine--mine's quite lost in it, isn't it? So--since I am only a vain, +chattering, helpless female thing,--you are going to indulge me and let me +go up to London for some new clothes, aren't you, Vincent? Of course you +will; and we will be married in a week. But you will let me go to London +first, won't you?--away from this dreadful place, away--I didn't mean that. +I suppose it is a very agreeable place when you get accustomed to it. And +'tis only for clothes--Oh, I swear it is only for clothes, Vincent! And you +said you would--yes, only a moment ago you distinctly said you would let me +go. 'Tis not as if I were not coming back--who said I would not come back? +Of course I will. But you must give me time, Vincent dear,--you must, you +must, I tell you! O God!" she sobbed, and flung from her the loathed hand +she was fondling, "it's no use!" + +"No," said Lord Rokesle, rather sadly. "I am not Samson, nor are you +Delilah to cajole me. It's of no use, Anastasia. I would have preferred +that you came to me voluntarily, but since you cannot, I mean to take you +unwilling. Simon," he called, loudly, "does that rascal intend to spin out +his dying interminably? Charon's waiting, man." + +From above, "Coming, my Lord," said Simon Orts. + + +III + +The Vicar of Heriz Magna descended the stairway with deliberation. His +eyes twitched from the sobbing woman to Lord Rokesle, and then back again, +in that furtive way Orts had of glancing about a room, without moving his +head; he seemed to lie in ambush under his gross brows; and whatever his +thoughts may have been, he gave them no utterance. + +"Simon," said Lord Rokesle, "Lady Allonby is about to make me the happiest +of men. Have you a prayer-book about you, Master Parson?--for here's a +loving couple desirous of entering the blessed state of matrimony." + +"The match is somewhat of the suddenest," said Simon Orts. "But I have +known these impromptu marriages to turn out very happily--very happily, +indeed." he repeated, rubbing his hands together, and smiling horribly. "I +gather that Mr. Heleigh will not grace the ceremony with his presence?" + +They understood each other, these two. Lord Rokesle grinned, and in a few +words told the ecclesiastic of the trick which had insured the absence of +the other guests; and Simon Orts also grinned, but respectfully,--the grin, +of the true lackey wearing his master's emotions like his master's clothes, +at second-hand. + +"A very pretty stratagem," said Simon Orts; "unconventional, I must +confess, but it is proverbially known that all's fair in love." + +At this Lady Allonby came to him, catching his hand. "There is only you, +Simon. Oh, there is no hope in that lustful devil yonder. But you are not +all base, Simon. You are a man,--ah, God! if I were a man I would rip out +that devil's heart--his defiled and infamous heart! I would trample upon +it, I would feed it to dogs--!" She paused. Her impotent fury was jerking +at every muscle, was choking her. "But I am only a woman. Simon, you used +to love me. You cannot have forgotten, Simon. Oh, haven't you any pity on a +woman? Remember, Simon--remember how happy we were! Don't you remember how +the night-jars used to call to one another when we sat on moonlit evenings +under the elm-tree? And d'ye remember the cottage we planned, Simon?--where +we were going to live on bread and cheese and kisses? And how we quarrelled +because I wanted to train vines over it? You said the rooms would be too +dark. You said--oh, Simon, Simon! if only I had gone to live with you in +that little cottage we planned and never builded!" Lady Allonby was at his +feet now. She fawned upon him in somewhat the manner of a spaniel expectant +of a thrashing. + +The Vicar of Heriz Magna dispassionately ran over the leaves of his +prayer-book, till he had found the marriage service, and then closed the +book, his forefinger marking the place. Lord Rokesle stood apart, and with +a sly and meditative smile observed them. + +"Your plea is a remarkable one," said Simon Orts. "As I understand it, you +appeal to me to meddle in your affairs on the ground that you once made +a fool of me. I think the obligation is largely optional. I remember +quite clearly the incidents to which you refer; and it shames even an +old sot like me to think that I was ever so utterly at the mercy of a +good-for-nothing jilt. I remember every vow you ever made to me, Anastasia, +and I know they were all lies. I remember every kiss, every glance, every +caress--all lies, Anastasia! And gad! the only emotion it rouses in me is +wonder as to why my worthy patron here should want to marry you. Of course +you are wealthy, but, personally, I would not have you for double the +money. I must ask you to rise, Lady Rokesle.--Pardon me if I somewhat +anticipate your title." + +Lady Allonby stumbled to her feet. "Is there no manhood in the world?" she +asked, with a puzzled voice. "Has neither of you ever heard of manhood, +though but as distantly as men hear summer thunder? Had neither of you a +woman for a mother--a woman, as I am--or a father who was not--O God!--not +as you are?" + +"These rhetorical passages," said Lord Rokesle, "while very elegantly +expressed, are scarcely to the point. So you and Simon went a-philandering +once? Egad, that lends quite a touch of romance to the affair. But +despatch, Parson Simon,--your lady's for your betters now." + +"Dearly beloved,--" said Simon Orts. + +"Simon, you are not all base. I am helpless, Simon, utterly helpless. There +was a Simon once would not have seen me weep. There was a Simon--" + +"--we are gathered together here in the sight of God--" + +"You cannot do it, Simon,--do I not know you to the marrow? Remember--not +me--not the vain folly of my girlhood!--but do you remember the man you +have been, Simon Orts!" Fiercely Lady Allonby caught him by the shoulder. +"For you do remember! You do remember, don't you, Simon?" + +The Vicar stared at her. "The man I have been," said Simon Orts, "yes!--the +man I have been!" Something clicked in his throat with sharp distinctness. + +"Upon my word," said Lord Rokesle, yawning, "this getting married appears +to be an uncommonly tedious business." + +Then Simon Orts laid aside his prayer-book and said: "I cannot do it, my +Lord. The woman's right." + +She clapped her hands to her breast, and stood thus, reeling upon her +feet. You would have thought her in the crisis of some physical agony; +immediately she breathed again, deeply but with a flinching inhalation, as +though the contact of the air scorched her lungs, and, swaying, fell. It +was the Vicar who caught her as she fell. + +"I entreat your pardon?" said Lord Rokesle, and without study of Lady +Allonby's condition. This was men's business now, and over it Rokesle's +brow began to pucker. + +Simon Orts bore Lady Allonby to the settie. He passed behind it to arrange +a cushion under her head, with an awkward, grudging tenderness; and then +rose to face Lord Rokesle across the disordered pink fripperies. + +"The woman's right, my Lord. There is such a thing as manhood. Manhood!" +Simon Orts repeated, with a sort of wonder; "why, I might have boasted it +once. Then came this cuddling bitch to trick me into a fool's paradise--to +trick me into utter happiness, till Stephen Allonby, a marquis' son, +clapped eyes on her and whistled,--and within the moment she had flung me +aside. May God forgive me, I forgot I was His servant then! I set out to go +to the devil, but I went farther; for I went to you, Vincent Floyer. You +gave me bread when I was starving,--but 'twas at a price. Ay, the price was +that I dance attendance on you, to aid and applaud your knaveries, to be +your pander, your lackey, your confederate,--that I puff out, in effect, +the last spark of manhood in my sot's body. Oh, I am indeed beholden to you +two! to her for making me a sot, and to you for making me a lackey. But I +will save her from you, Vincent Floyer. Not for her sake"--Orts looked down +upon the prostrate woman and snarled. "Christ, no! But I'll do it for the +sake of the boy I have been, since I owe that boy some reparation. I have +ruined his nimble body, I have dulled the wits he gloried in, I have made +his name a foul thing that honesty spits out of her mouth; but, if God yet +reigns in heaven, I cleanse that name to-night!" + +"Oh, bless me," Lord Rokesle observed; "I begin to fear these heroics are +contagious. Possibly I, too, shall begin to rant in a moment. Meanwhile, as +I understand it, you decline to perform the ceremony. I have had to warn +you before this, Simon, that you mustn't take too much gin when I am apt +to need you. You are very pitifully drunk, man. So you defy me and my evil +courses! You defy me!" Rokesle laughed, genially, for the notion amused +him. "Wine is a mocker, Simon. But come, despatch, Parson Tosspot, and +let's have no more of these lofty sentiments." + +"I cannot do it. I--O my Lord, my Lord! You wouldn't kill an unarmed man!" +Simon Orts whined, with a sudden alteration of tone; for Lord Rokesle had +composedly drawn his sword, and its point was now not far from the Vicar's +breast. + +"I trust that I shall not be compelled to. Egad, it is a very ludicrous +business when the bridegroom is forced to hold a sword to the parson's +bosom all during the ceremony; but a ceremony we must have, Simon, for Lady +Allonby's jointure is considerable. Otherwise--Harkee, my man, don't play +the fool! there are my fellows yonder, any one of whom would twist your +neck at a word from me. And do you think I would boggle at a word? Gad, +Simon, I believed you knew me better!" + +The Vicar of Heriz Magna kept silence for an instant; his eyes were +twitching about the hall, in that stealthy way of his. Finally, "It is +no use," said he. "A poor knave cannot afford the luxury of honesty. My +life is not a valuable one, perhaps, but even vermin have an aversion to +death. I resume my lackeyship, Lord Rokesle. Perhaps 'twas only the gin. +Perhaps--In any event, I am once more at your service. And as guaranty of +this I warn you that you are exhibiting in the affair scant forethought. +Mr. Heleigh is but three miles distant. If he, by any chance, get wind of +this business, Denstroude will find a boat for him readily enough--ay, and +men, too, now that the Colonel is at feud with you. Many of your people +visit the mainland every night, and in their cups the inhabitants of Usk +are not taciturn. An idle word spoken over an inn-table may bring an armed +company thundering about your gates. You should have set sentinels, my +Lord." + +"I have already done so," Rokesle said; "there are ten of 'em yonder. Still +there is something in what you say. We will make this affair certain." + +Lord Rokesle crossed the hall to the foot of the stairway and struck thrice +upon the gong hanging there. Presently the door leading to the corridor was +opened, and a man came into the hall. + +"Punshon," said Lord Rokesle, "have any boats left the island to-night?" + +"No, my Lord." + +"You will see that none do. Also, no man is to leave Stornoway to-night, +either for Heriz Magna or the mainland; and nobody is to enter Stornoway. +Do you understand, Punshon?" + +"Yes, my Lord." + +"If you will pardon me," said Simon Orts, with a grin, "I have an +appointment to-night. You'd not have me break faith with a lady?" + +"You are a lecherous rascal, Simon. But do as you are bid and I indulge +you. I am not afraid of your going to Harry Heleigh--after performing the +ceremony. Nay, my lad, for you are thereby _particeps criminis_. You will +pass Mr. Orts, Punshon, to the embraces of his whore. Nobody else." + +Simon Orts waved his hand toward Lady Allonby. "'Twere only kindness to +warn Mr. Punshon there may be some disturbance shortly. A lamentation or +so." + +At this Lord Rokesle clapped him upon the shoulder and heartily laughed. +"That's the old Simon--always on the alert. Punshon, no one is to enter +this wing of the castle, on any pretext--no one, you understand. Whatever +noises you may hear, you will pay no attention. Now go." + +He went toward Lady Allonby and took her hand. "Come, Anastasia!" said he. +"Hold, she has really swooned! Why, what the devil, Simon--!" + +Simon Orts had flung the gong into the fire. "She will be sounding that +when she comes to," said Simon Orts. "You don't want a rumpus fit to vex +the dead yonder in the Chapel." Simon Orts stood before the fire, turning +the leaves of his prayer-book. He seemed to have difficulty in finding +again the marriage service. You heard the outer door of the corridor +closing, heard chains dragged ponderously, the heavy falling of a bolt. +Orts dropped the book and, springing into the arm-chair, wrested Aluric +Floyer's sword from its fastening. "Tricked, tricked!" said Simon Orts. +"You were always a fool, Vincent Floyer." + +Lord Rokesle blinked at him, as if dazzled by unexpected light. "What d'ye +mean?" + +"I have the honor to repeat--you are a fool, I did not know the place was +guarded--you told me. I needed privacy; by your orders no one is to enter +here to-night. I needed a sword--you had it hanging here, ready for the +first comer. Oh, beyond doubt, you are a fool, Vincent Floyer!" Standing +in the arm-chair, Simon Orts bowed fantastically, and then leaped to the +ground with the agility of an imp. + +"You have tricked me neatly," Lord Rokesle conceded, and his tone did not +lack honest admiration. "By gad, I have even given them orders to pass +you--after you have murdered me! Exceedingly clever, Simon,--but one thing +you overlooked. You are very far from my match at fencing. So I shall +presently kill you. And afterward, ceremony or no ceremony, the woman's +mine." + +"I am not convinced of that," the Vicar observed. "'Tis true I am no +swordsman; but there are behind my sword forces superior to any which +skill might muster. The sword of your fathers fights against you, my +Lord--against you that are their disgrace. They loved honor and truth; you +betrayed honor, you knew not truth. They revered womanhood; you reverence +nothing, and your life smirches your mother's memory. Ah, believe me, +they all fight against you! Can you not see them, my Lord?--yonder at my +back?--old Aluric Floyer and all those honest gentlemen, whose blood now +blushes in your body--ay, blushes to be confined in a vessel so ignoble! +Their armament fights against you, a host of gallant phantoms. And my +hatred, too, fights against you--the cur's bitter hatred for the mastering +hand it dares not bite. I dare now. You made me your pander, you slew my +manhood; in return, body and soul, I demolish you. Even my hatred for that +woman fights against you; she robbed me of my honor--is it not a tragical +revenge to save her honor, to hold it in my hand, mine, to dispose of as +I elect,--and then fling it to her as a thing contemptible? Between you, +you have ruined me; but it is Simon's hour to-night. I shame you both, and +past the reach of thought, for presently I shall take your life--in the +high-tide of your iniquity, praise God!--and presently I shall give my life +for hers. Ah, I a fey, my Lord! You are a dead man, Vincent Floyer, for the +powers of good and the powers of evil alike contend against you." + +He spoke rather sadly than otherwise; and there was a vague trouble in Lord +Rokesle's face, though he shook his head impatiently. "These are fine words +to come from the dirtiest knave unhanged in England." + +"Great ends may be attained by petty instruments, my Lord; a filthy turtle +quenched the genius of AEschylus, and they were only common soldiers who +shed the blood that redeemed the world." + +Lord Rokesle pished at this. Yet he was strangely unruffled. He saluted +with quietude, as equal to equal, and the two crossed blades. + +Simon Orts fought clumsily, but his encroachment was unwavering. From the +first he pressed his opponent with a contained resolution. The Vicar was +as a man fighting in a dream--with a drugged obstinacy, unswerving. Lord +Rokesle had wounded him in the arm, but Orts did not seem aware of this. +He crowded upon his master. Now there were little beads of sweat on Lord +Rokesle's brow, and his tongue protruded from his mouth, licking at it +ravenously. Step by step Lord Rokesle drew back; there was no withstanding +this dumb fanatic, who did not know when he was wounded, who scarcely +parried attack. + +"Even on earth you shall have a taste of hell," said Simon Orts. "There is +terror in your eyes, my worthy patron." + +Lord Rokesle flung up his arms as the sword dug into his breast. "I am +afraid! I am afraid!" he wailed. Then he coughed, and seemed with his +straining hands to push a great weight from him as the blood frothed about +his lips and nostrils. "O Simon, I am afraid! Help me, Simon!" + +Old custom spoke there. Followed silence, and presently the empty body +sprawled upon the floor. Vincent Floyer had done with it. + + +IV + +Simon Orts knelt, abstractedly wiping Aluric Floyer's sword upon the corner +of a rug. It may be that he derived comfort from this manual employment +which necessitated attention without demanding that it concentrate his +mind; it may have enabled him to forget how solitary the place was, how +viciously his garments rustled when he moved: the fact is certain that he +cleaned the sword, over and over again. + +Then a scraping of silks made him wince. Turning, he found Lady Allonby +half-erect upon the settle. She stared about her with a kind of Infantile +wonder; her glance swept, over Lord Rokesle's body, without to all +appearance finding it an object of remarkable interest. "Is he dead?" + +"Yes," said Simon Orts; "get up!" His voice had a rasp; she might from his +tone have been a refractory dog. But Lady Allonby obeyed him. + +"We are in a devil of a mess," said Simon Orts; "yet I see a way out of +it--if you can keep your head. Can you?" + +"I am past fear," she said, dully. "I drown, Simon, in a sea of feathers. I +can get no foothold, I clutch nothing that is steadfast, and I smother. I +have been like this in dreams. I am very tired, Simon." + +He took her hand, collectedly appraising her pulse. He put his own hand +upon her bared bosom, and felt the beat of her heart. "No," said Simon +Orts, "you are not afraid. Now, listen: You lack time to drown in a sea of +feathers. You are upon Usk, among men who differ from beasts by being a +thought more devilish, and from devils by being a little more bestial; it +is my opinion that the earlier you get away the better. Punshon has orders +to pass Simon Orts. Very well; put on this." + +He caught up his long cloak and wrapped it about her. Lady Allonby stood +rigid. But immediately he frowned and removed the garment from her +shoulders. + +"That won't do. Your skirts are too big. Take 'em off." + +Submissively she did so, and presently stood before him in her +under-petticoat. + +"You cut just now a very ludicrous figure, Anastasia. I dare assert that +the nobleman who formerly inhabited yonder carcass would still be its +tenant if he had known how greatly the beauty he went mad for was beholden +to the haberdasher and the mantua-maker, and quite possibly the chemist. +_Persicos odi_, Anastasia; 'tis a humiliating reflection that the hair of a +dead woman artfully disposed about a living head should have the power +to set men squabbling, and murder be at times engendered in a paint-pot. +However, wrap yourself in the cloak. Now turn up the collar,--so. Now pull +down the hatbrim. Um--a--pretty well. Chance favors us unblushingly. You +may thank your stars it is a rainy night and that I am a little man. You +detest little men, don't you? Yes, I remember." Simon Orts now gave his +orders, emphasizing each with a not over-clean forefinger. "When I open +this door you will go out into the corridor. Punshon or one of the others +will be on guard at the farther end. Pay no attention to him. There is +only one light--on the left. Keep to the right, in the shadow. Stagger as +you go; if you can manage a hiccough, the imitation will be all the more +lifelike. Punshon will expect something of the sort, and he will not +trouble you, for he knows that when I am fuddled I am quarrelsome. 'Tis a +diverting world, Anastasia, wherein, you now perceive, habitual drunkenness +and an unbridled temper may sometimes prove commendable,--as they do +to-night, when they aid persecuted innocence!" Here Simon Orts gave an +unpleasant laugh. + +"But I do not understand--" + +"You understand very little except coquetry and the proper disposition +of a ruffle. Yet this is simple. My horse is tied at the postern. +Mount--astride, mind. You know the way to the Vicarage, so does the horse; +you will find that posturing half-brother of mine at the Vicarage. Tell +Frank what has happened. Tell him to row you to the mainland; tell him to +conduct you to Colonel Denstroude's. Then you must shift for yourself; but +Denstroude is a gentleman, and Denstroude would protect Beelzebub if he +came to him a fugitive from Vincent Floyer. Now do you understand?" + +"Yes," said Lady Allonby, and seated herself before the fire,--"yes, I +understand. I am to slip away in the darkness and leave you here to answer +for Lord Rokesle's death--to those devils. La, do you really think me as +base as that?" + +Now Simon Orts was kneeling at her side. The black cloak enveloped her from +head to foot, and the turned-up collar screened her sunny hair; in the +shadow of the broad hatbrim you could see only her eyes, resplendent and +defiant, and in them the reflection of the vaulting flames. "You would +stay, Anastasia?" + +"I will not purchase my life at the cost of yours. I will be indebted to +you for nothing, Simon Orts." + +The Vicar chuckled. "Nor appeared Less than archangel ruined," he said. +"No, faith, not a whit less! We are much of a piece, Anastasia. Do you +know--if affairs had fallen out differently--I think I might have been a +man and you a woman? As it is--" Kneeling still, his glance devoured her. +"Yes, you would stay. And you comprehend what staying signifies. 'Tis +pride, your damnable pride, that moves you,--but I rejoice, for it proves +you a brave woman. Courage, at least, you possess, and this is the first +virtue I have discovered in you for a long while. However, there is no +necessity for your staying. The men of Usk will not hurt Simon Orts." + +She was very eager to believe this. Lady Allonby had found the world a +pleasant place since her widowhood. "They will not kill you? You swear it, +Simon?" + +"Why, the man was their tyrant. They obeyed him--yes, through fear. I am +their deliverer, Anastasia. But if they found a woman here--a woman not +ill-looking--" Simon Orts snapped his fingers. "Faith, I leave you to +conjecture," said he. + +They had both risen, he smiling, the woman in a turbulence of hope and +terror. "Swear to it, Simon!" + +"Anastasia, were affairs as you suppose them, I would have a curt while to +live. Were affairs as you suppose them, I would stand now at the threshold +of eternity. And I swear to you, upon my soul's salvation, that I have +nothing to fear. Nothing will ever hurt me any more." + +"No, you would not dare to lie in the moment of death," she said, after +a considerable pause. "I believe you. I will go. Good-bye, Simon." Lady +Allonby went toward the door opening into the corridor, but turned there +and came back to him. "I shall never see you again. And, la, I think that +I rather hate you than otherwise, for you remind me of things I would +willingly forget. But, Simon, I wish we had gone to live in that little +cottage we planned, and quarrelled over, and never built! I think we would +have been happy." + +Simon Orts raised her hand to his lips. "Yes," said he, "we would have been +happy. I would have been by this a man doing a man's work in the world, and +you a matron, grizzling, perhaps, but rich in content, and in love opulent. +As it is, you have your flatterers, your gossip, and your cards; I have my +gin. Good-bye, Anastasia." + +"Simon, why have you done--this?" + +The Vicar of Heriz Magna flung out his hands in a gesture of impotence. "I +dare confess now that which even to myself I have never dared confess. I +suppose the truth of it is that I have loved you all my life." + +"I am sorry. I am not worth it, Simon." + +"No; you are immeasurably far from being worth it. But one does not justify +these fancies by mathematics. Good-bye, Anastasia." + + +V + +Holding the door ajar, the Vicar of Heriz Magna heard a horse's hoofs slap +their leisurely way down the hillside. Presently the sound died and he +turned back into the hall. + +"A brave woman, that! Oh, a trifling, shallow-hearted jilt, but a brave +creature! + +"I had to lie to her. She would have stayed else. And perhaps it is true +that, in reality, I have loved her all my life,--or in any event, have +hankered after the pink-and-white flesh of her as any gentleman might. +Pschutt! a pox on all lechery says the dying man,--since it is now +necessary to put that strapping yellow-haired trollop out of your mind, +Simon Orts--yes, after all these years, to put her quite out of your mind. +Faith, she might wheedle me now to her heart's content, and my pulse would +never budge; for I must devote what trivial time there is to hoping they +will kill me quickly. He was their god, that man!" + +Simon Orts went toward the dead body, looking down into the distorted face. +"And I, too, loved him. Yes, such as he was, he was the only friend I +had. And I think he liked me," Simon Orts said aloud, with a touch of shy +pride. "Yes, and you trusted me, didn't you, Vincent? Wait for me, then, +my Lord,--I shall not be long. And now I'll serve you faithfully. I had to +play the man's part, you know,--you mustn't grudge old Simon his one hour +of manhood. You wouldn't, I think. And in any event, I shall be with you +presently, and you can cuff me for it if you like--just as you used to do." + +He covered the dead face with his handkerchief, but in the instant he drew +it away. "No, not this coarse cambric. You were too much of a fop, Vincent. +I will use yours--the finest linen, my Lord. You see old Simon knows your +tastes." + +He drew himself erect exultantly. + +"They will come at dawn to kill me; but I have had my hour. God, the man I +might have been! And now--well, perhaps He would not be offended if I said +a bit of a prayer for Vincent." + +So the Vicar of Heriz Magna knelt beside the flesh that had been Lord +Rokesle, and there they found him in the morning. + + + + +II + +LOVE AT MARTINMAS +_As Played at Tunbridge Wells, April 1, 1750_ + + "_He to love an altar built + Of twelve vast French romances, neatly gilt. + There lay three garters, half a pair of gloves, + And all the trophies of his former loves; + With tender billet-doux he lights the pyre, + And breathes three amorous sighs to raise the fire; + Then prostrate falls, and begs with ardent eyes + Soon to obtain, and long possess the prize._" + + +DRAMATIS PERSONAE + +MR. ERWYN, a gentleman of the town, ceremonious and a + coxcomb, but a man of honor. +LADY ALLONBY, a woman of fashion, and widow to + Lord Stephen Allonby. +MISS ALLONBY, daughter to Lord Stephen by a former + marriage, of a considerable fortune in her own hands. +FOOTMEN to Lady Allonby; and in the Proem FRANCIS + ORTS, commonly know as FRANCIS VANBINGHAM, a + dissolute play-actor. + + +SCENE + +A drawing-room In Lady Allonby's villa at Tunbridge Wells. + + +LOVE AT MARTINMAS + + +_PROEM:--To be Filed for Reference Hereafter_ + +Lady Allonby followed in all respects the Vicar's instructions; and +midnight found her upon the pier of Bishops Onslow, Colonel Denstroude's +big and dilapidated country-residence. Frank Orts had assisted her from the +rowboat without speaking; indeed, he had uttered scarcely a word, save to +issue some necessary direction, since the woman first came to him at the +Vicarage with her news of the night's events. Now he composedly stepped +back into the boat. + +"You've only to go forward," said Frank Orts. "I regret that for my own +part I'm no longer an acceptable visitor here, since the Colonel and I +fought last summer over one Molly Yates. Nay, I beseech you, put up your +purse, my Lady." + +"Then I can but render you my heartfelt thanks," replied Lady Allonby, "and +incessantly remember you in daily prayers for the two gallant men who have +this night saved a woman from great misery. Yet there is that in your voice +which is curiously familiar, Mr. Orts, and I think that somewhere you and I +have met before this." + +"Ay," he responded, "you have squandered many a shilling on me here in +England, where Francis Vanringham bellows and makes faces with the rest of +the Globe Company. On Usk, you understand, I'm still Frank Orts, just as I +was christened; but elsewhere the name of Vanringham was long ago esteemed +more apt to embellish and adorn the bill of a heroic play. Ay, you've been +pleased to applaud my grimaces behind the footlights, more than once; your +mother-in-law, indeed, the revered Marchioness-Dowager of Falmouth, is +among my staunchest patrons." + +"Heavens! then we shall all again see one another at Tunbridge!" said Lady +Allonby, who was recovering her spirits; "and I shall have a Heaven-sent +opportunity, to confirm my protestations that I am not ungrateful. Mr. +Vanringham, I explicitly command you to open in _The Orphan_, since: as +Castalio in that piece you are the most elegant and moving thing in the +universal world." [Footnote: This was the opinion of others as well. +Thorsby (_Roscius Anglicanus_) says, "Mr. Vanringham was good in tragedy, +as well as in comedy, especially as Castalio in Otway's _Orphan_, and the +more famous Garrick came, in that part, far short of him." Vanringham was +also noted for his Valentine in _Love for Love_ and for his Beaugard in +_The Soldier's Fortune_.] + +"Your command shall be obeyed," said the actor. "And meantime, my Lady, +I bid you an _au revoir_, with many millions of regrets for the +inconveniences to which you've been subjected this evening, Oho, we are +lamentably rustic hereabout." + +And afterward as he rowed through the dark the man gave a grunt of +dissatisfaction. + +"I was too abrupt with her. But it vexes me to have Brother Simon butchered +like this.... These natural instincts are damnably inconvenient,--and +expensive, at times, Mr. Vanringham,--beside being ruinous to one's sense +of humor, Mr. Vanringham. Why, to think that she alone should go scot-free! +and of her ordering a stage-box within the hour of two men's destruction +on her account! Upon reflection, I admire the woman to the very tips of my +toes. Eh, well! I trust to have need of her gratitude before the month is +up." + + +I + +Since Colonel Denstroude proved a profane and dissolute and helpful person, +Lady Allonby was shortly re-established in her villa at Tunbridge Wells, on +the Sussex side, where she had resolved to find a breathing-space prior to +the full season in London. And thereupon she put all thoughts of Usk quite +out of her mind: it had been an unhappy business, but it was over. In the +meanwhile her wardrobe needed replenishing now that spring was coming +in; the company at the Wells was gay enough; and Lady Allonby had always +sedulously avoided anything that was disagreeable. + +Mr. Erwyn Lady Allonby was far from cataloguing under that head. Mr. George +Erwyn had been for years a major-general, at the very least, in Fashion's +army, and was concededly a connoisseur of all the elegancies. + +Mr. Erwyn sighed as he ended his recital--half for pity of the misguided +folk who had afforded Tunbridge its latest scandal, half for relief that, +in spite of many difficulties, the story had been set forth in discreet +language which veiled, without at all causing you to miss, the more +unsavory details. + +"And so," said he, "poor Harry is run through the lungs, and Mrs. +Anstruther has recovered her shape and is to be allowed a separate +maintenance." + +"'Tis shocking!" said Lady Allonby. + +"'Tis incredible," said Mr. Erwyn, "to my mind, at least, that the bonds of +matrimony should be slipped thus lightly. But the age is somewhat lax and +the world now views with complaisance the mad antics of half-grown lads and +wenches who trip toward the altar as carelessly as if the partnership were +for a country-dance." + +Lady Allonby stirred her tea and said nothing. Notoriously her marriage had +been unhappy; and her two years of widowhood (dating from the unlamented +seizure, brought on by an inherited tendency to apoplexy and French +brandy, which carried off Lord Stephen Allonby of Prestonwoode) had to all +appearance never tempered her distrust of the matrimonial state. Certain it +was that she had refused many advantageous offers during this period, for +her jointure was considerable, and, though in candid moments she confessed +to thirty-three, her dearest friends could not question Lady Allonby's +good looks. She was used to say that she would never re-marry, because she +desired to devote herself to her step-daughter, but, as gossip had it at +Tunbridge, she was soon to be deprived of this subterfuge; for Miss Allonby +had reached her twentieth year, and was nowadays rarely seen in public save +in the company of Mr. Erwyn, who, it was generally conceded, stood high in +the girl's favor and was desirous of rounding off his career as a leader of +fashion with the approved comoedic _denouement_ of marriage with a young +heiress. + +For these reasons Lady Allonby heard with interest his feeling allusion to +the laxity of the age, and through a moment pondered thereon, for it seemed +now tolerably apparent that Mr. Erwyn had lingered, after the departure of +her other guests, in order to make a disclosure which Tunbridge had for +many months expected. + +"I had not thought," said she, at length, "that you, of all men, would ever +cast a serious eye toward marriage. Indeed, Mr. Erwyn, you have loved women +so long that I must dispute your ability to love a woman--and your amours +have been a byword these twenty years." + +"Dear lady," said Mr. Erwyn, "surely you would not confound amour with +love? Believe me, the translation is inadequate. Amour is but the summer +wave that lifts and glitters and laughs in the sunlight, and within the +instant disappears; but love is the unfathomed eternal sea itself. Or--to +shift the metaphor--Amour is a general under whom youth must serve: +Curiosity and Lustiness are his recruiting officers, and it is well to +fight under his colors, for it is against Ennui that he marshals his +forces. 'Tis a resplendent conflict, and young blood cannot but stir and +exult as paradoxes, marching and countermarching at the command of their +gay generalissimo, make way for one another in iridescent squadrons, while +through the steady musketry of epigram one hears the clash of contending +repartees, or the cry of a wailing sonnet. But this lord of laughter may be +served by the young alone; and by and by each veteran--scarred, it may be, +but not maimed, dear lady--is well content to relinquish the glory and +adventure of such colorful campaigns for some quiet inglenook, where, with +love to make a third, he prattles of past days and deeds with one that goes +hand in hand with him toward the tomb." + +Lady Allonby accorded this conceit the tribute of a sigh; then glanced, +in the direction of four impassive footmen to make sure they were out of +earshot. + +"And so--?" said she. + +"Split me!" said Mr. Erwyn, "I thought you had noted it long ago." + +"Indeed," she observed, reflectively, "I suppose it is quite time." + +"I am not," said Mr. Erwyn, "in the heyday of my youth, I grant you; but +I am not for that reason necessarily unmoved by the attractions of an +advantageous person, a fine sensibility and all the graces." + +He sipped his tea with an air of resentment; and Lady Allonby, in view of +the disparity of age which existed between Mr. Erwyn and her step-daughter, +had cause to feel that she had blundered into _gaucherie_; and to await +with contrition the proposal for her step-daughter's hand that the man was +(at last) about to broach to her, as the head of the family. + +"Who is she?" said Lady Allonby, all friendly interest. + +"An angel," said Mr. Erwyn, fencing. + +"Beware," Lady Allonby exhorted, "lest she prove a recording angel; a wife +who takes too deep an interest in your movements will scarcely suit you." + +"Oh, I am assured," said Mr. Erwyn, smiling, "that on Saturdays she will +allow me the customary half-holiday." + +Lady Allonby, rebuffed, sought consolation among the conserves. + +"Yet, as postscript," said Mr. Erwyn, "I do not desire a wife who will +take her morning chocolate with me and sup with Heaven knows whom. I have +seen, too much of _mariage a la mode_, and I come to her, if not with the +transports of an Amadis, at least with an entire affection and respect." + +"Then," said Lady Allonby, "you love this woman?" + +"Very tenderly," said Mr. Erwyn; "and, indeed, I would, for her sake, that +the errors of my past life were not so numerous, nor the frailty of my +aspiring resolutions rendered apparent--ah, so many times!--to a gaping +and censorious world. For, as you are aware, I cannot offer her an untried +heart; 'tis somewhat worn by many barterings. But I know that this heart +beats with accentuation in her presence; and when I come to her some day +and clasp her in my arms, as I aspire to do, I trust that her lips may not +turn away from mine and that she may be more glad because I am so near and +that her stainless heart may sound an echoing chime. For, with a great and +troubled adoration, I love her as I have loved no other woman; and this +much, I submit, you cannot doubt." + +"I?" said Lady Allonby, with extreme innocence. "La, how should I know?" + +"Unless you are blind," Mr. Erwyn observed--"and I apprehend those spacious +shining eyes to be more keen than the tongue of a dowager,--you must have +seen of late that I have presumed to hope--to think--that she whom I love +so tenderly might deign to be the affectionate, the condescending friend +who would assist me to retrieve the indiscretions of my youth--" + +The confusion of his utterance, his approach to positive agitation as he +waved his teaspoon, moved Lady Allonby. "It is true," she said, "that I +have not been wholly blind--" + +"Anastasia," said Mr. Erwyn, with yet more feeling, "is not our friendship +of an age to justify sincerity?" + +"Oh, bless me, you toad! but let us not talk of things that happened +under the Tudors. Well, I have not been unreasonably blind,--and I do not +object,--and I do not believe that Dorothy will prove obdurate." + +"You render me the happiest of men," Mr. Erwyn stated, rapturously. "You +have, then, already discussed this matter with Miss Allonby?" + +"Not precisely," said she, laughing; "since I had thought it apparent to +the most timid lover that the first announcement came with best grace from +him." + +"O' my conscience, then, I shall be a veritable Demosthenes," said Mr. +Erwyn, laughing likewise; "and in common decency she will consent." + +"Your conceit." said Lady Allonby, "is appalling." + +"'Tis beyond conception," Mr. Erwyn admitted; "and I propose to try +marriage as a remedy. I have heard that nothing so takes down a man." + +"Impertinent!" cried Lady Allonby; "now of whatever can the creature be +talking!" + +"I mean that, as your widowship well knows, marrying puts a man in his +proper place. And that the outcome is salutary for proud, puffed-up fellows +I would be the last to dispute. Indeed, I incline to dispute nothing, for I +find that perfect felicity is more potent than wine. I am now all pastoral +raptures, and were it not for the footmen there, I do not know to what +lengths I might go." + +"In that event," Lady Allonby decided, "I shall fetch Dorothy, that the +crown may be set upon your well-being. And previously I will dismiss the +footmen." She did so with a sign toward those lordly beings. + +"Believe me," said Mr. Erwyn, "'tis what I have long wished for. And +when Miss Allonby honors me with her attention I shall, since my life's +happiness depends upon the issue, plead with all the eloquence of a +starveling barrister, big with the import of his first case. May I, indeed, +rest assured that any triumph over her possible objections may be viewed +with not unfavorable eyes?" + +"O sir," said Lady Allonby, "believe me, there is nothing I more earnestly +desire than that you may obtain all which is necessary for your welfare. I +will fetch Dorothy." + +The largest footman but one removed Mr. Erwyn's cup. + + +II + +Mr. Erwyn, left alone, smiled at his own reflection in the mirror; +rearranged his ruffles with a deft and shapely hand; consulted his watch; +made sure that the padding which enhanced the calves of his most notable +legs was all as it should be; seated himself and hummed a merry air, in +meditative wise; and was in such posture when the crimson hangings that +shielded the hall-door quivered and broke into tumultuous waves and yielded +up Miss Dorothy Allonby. + +Being an heiress, Miss Allonby was by an ancient custom brevetted a great +beauty; and it is equitable to add that the sourest misogynist could hardly +have refused, pointblank, to countersign the commission. They said of +Dorothy Allonby that her eyes were as large as her bank account, and nearly +as formidable as her tongue; and it is undeniable that on provocation there +was in her speech a tang of acidity, such (let us say) as renders a salad +none the less palatable. In a word, Miss Allonby pitied the limitations of +masculine humanity more readily than its amorous pangs, and cuddled her +women friends as she did kittens, with a wary and candid apprehension of +their power to scratch; and decision was her key-note; continually she knew +to the quarter-width of a cobweb what she wanted, and invariably she got +it. + +Such was the person who, with a habitual emphasis which dowagers found +hoydenish and all young men adorable, demanded without prelude: + +"Heavens! What can it be, Mr. Erwyn, that has cast Mother into this +unprecedented state of excitement?" + +"What, indeed?" said he, and bowed above her proffered hand. + +"For like a hurricane, she burst into my room and cried, 'Mr. Erwyn +has something of importance to declare to you--why did you put on that +gown?--bless you, my child--' all in one eager breath; then kissed me, and +powdered my nose, and despatched me to you without any explanation. And +why?" said Miss Allonby. + +"Why, indeed?" said Mr. Erwyn. + +"It is very annoying," said she, decisively. + +"Sending you to me?" said Mr. Erwyn, a magnitude of reproach in his voice. + +"That," said Miss Allonby, "I can pardon--and easily. But I dislike all +mysteries, and being termed a child, and being--" + +"Yes?" said Mr. Erwyn. + +"--and being powdered on the nose," said Miss Allonby, with firmness. She +went to the mirror, and, standing on the tips of her toes, peered anxiously +into its depths. She rubbed her nose, as if in disapproval, and frowned, +perhaps involuntarily pursing up her lips,--which Mr. Erwyn intently +regarded, and then wandered to the extreme end of the apartment, where he +evinced a sudden interest in bric-a-brac. + +"Is there any powder on my nose?" said Miss Allonby. + +"I fail to perceive any," said Mr. Erwyn. + +"Come closer," said she. + +"I dare not," said he. + +Miss Allonby wheeled about. "Fie!" she cried; "one who has served against +the French, [Footnote: This was not absolutely so. Mr. Erwyn had, however, +in an outburst of patriotism, embarked, as a sort of cabin passenger, with +his friend Sir John Morris, and possessed in consequence some claim to +share such honor as was won by the glorious fiasco of Dungeness.] and +afraid of powder!" + +"It is not the powder that I fear." + +"What, then?" said she, in sinking to the divan beside the disordered +tea-table. + +"There are two of them," said Mr. Erwyn, "and they are so red--" + +"Nonsense!" cried Miss Allonby, with heightened color. + +"'Tis best to avoid temptation," said Mr. Erwyn, virtuously. + +"Undoubtedly," she assented, "it is best to avoid having your ears boxed." + +Mr. Erwyn sighed as if in the relinquishment of an empire. Miss Allonby +moved to the farther end of the divan. + +"What was it," she demanded, "that you had to tell me?" + +"'Tis a matter of some importance--" said Mr. Erwyn. + +"Heavens!" said Miss Allonby, and absent-mindedly drew aside her skirts; +"one would think you about to make a declaration." + +Mr. Erwyn sat down beside her, "I have been known," said he, "to do such +things." + +The divan was strewn with cushions in the Oriental fashion. Miss Allonby, +with some adroitness, slipped one of them between her person and the +locality of her neighbor. "Oh!" said Miss Allonby. + +"Yes," said he, smiling over the dragon-embroidered barrier; "I admit that +I am even now shuddering upon the verge of matrimony." + +"Indeed!" she marvelled, secure in her fortress. "Have you selected an +accomplice?" + +"Split me, yes!" said Mr. Erwyn. + +"And have I the honor of her acquaintance?" said Miss Allonby. + +"Provoking!" said Mr. Erwyn; "no woman knows her better." + +Miss Allonby smiled. "Dear Mr. Erwyn," she stated, "this is a disclosure I +have looked for these six months." + +"Split me!" said Mr. Erwyn. + +"Heavens, yes!" said she. "You have been a rather dilatory lover--" + +"I am inexpressibly grieved, that I should have kept you waiting--" + +"--and in fact, I had frequently thought of reproaching you for your +tardiness--" + +"Nay, in that case," said Mr. Erwyn, "the matter could, no doubt, have been +more expeditiously arranged." + +"--since your intentions have been quite apparent." + +Mr. Erwyn removed the cushion. "You do not, then, disapprove," said he, "of +my intentions?" + +"Indeed, no," said Miss Allonby; "I think you will make an excellent +step-father." + +The cushion fell to the floor. Mr. Erwyn replaced it and smiled. + +"And so," Miss Allonby continued, "Mother, believing me in ignorance, has +deputed you to inform me of this most transparent secret? How strange is +the blindness of lovers! But I suppose," sighed Miss Allonby, "we are all +much alike." + +"We?" said Mr. Erwyn, softly. + +"I meant--" said Miss Allonby, flushing somewhat. + +"Yes?" said Mr. Erwyn. His voice sank to a pleading cadence. "Dear child, +am I not worthy of trust?" + +There was a microscopic pause. + +"I am going to the Pantiles this afternoon," declared Miss Allonby, at +length, "to feed the swans." + +"Ah," said Mr. Erwyn, and with comprehension; "surely, he, too, is rather +tardy." + +"Oh," said she, "then you know?" + +"I know," he announced, "that there is a tasteful and secluded summer-house +near the Fountain of Neptune." + +"I was never allowed," said Miss Allonby, unconvincingly, "to go into +secluded summer-houses with any one; and, besides, the gardeners keep their +beer jugs there--under the biggest bench." + +Mr. Erwyn beamed upon her paternally. "I was not, till this, aware," said +he, "that Captain Audaine was so much interested in ornithology. Yet what +if, even when he is seated upon that biggest bench, your Captain does not +utterly lose the head he is contributing to the _tete-a-tete_?" + +"Oh, but he will," said Miss Allonby, with confidence; then she +reflectively added: "I shall have again to be painfully surprised by his +declaration, for, after all, it will only be his seventh." + +"Doubtless," Mr. Erwyn considered, "your astonishment will be extreme when +you rebuke him, there above hortensial beer jugs--" + +"And I shall be deeply grieved that he has so utterly misunderstood my +friendly interest in his welfare; and I shall be highly indignant after he +has--in effect, after he has--" + +"But not until afterward?" said Mr. Erwyn, holding up a forefinger. "Well, +I have told you their redness is fatal to good resolutions." + +"--after he has astounded me by his seventh avowal. And I shall behave +in precisely the same manner the eighth time he recurs to the repugnant +subject." + +"But the ninth time?" said Mr. Erwyn. + +"He has remarkably expressive eyes," Miss Allonby stated, "and really, +Mr. Erwyn, it is the most lovable creature when it raves about my +flint-heartedness and cutting its poor throat and murdering every man I +ever nodded to!" + +"Ah, youth, youth!" sighed Mr. Erwyn. "Dear child, I pray you, do not +trifle with the happiness that is within your grasp! _Si jeunesse +savait_--the proverb is somewhat musty. But we who have attained the St. +Martin's summer of our lives and have grown capable of but a calm and +tempered affection at the utmost--we cannot but look wistfully upon the +raptures and ignorance of youth, and we would warn you, were it possible, +of the many dangers whereby you are encompassed. For Love is a deity that +must not be trifled with; his voice may chaunt the requiem of all which +is bravest in our mingled natures, or sound a stave of such nobility as +heartens us through life. He is kindly, but implacable; beneficent, a +bestower of all gifts upon the faithful, a bestower of very terrible +gifts upon those that flout him; and I who speak to you have seen my +own contentment blighted, by just such flippant jesting with Love's +omnipotence, before the edge of my first razor had been dulled. 'Tis true, +I have lived since in indifferent comfort; yet it is but a dreary banquet +where there is no platter laid for Love, and within the chambers of my +heart--dust-gathering now, my dear!--he has gone unfed these fifteen years +or more." + +"Ah, goodness!" sighed Miss Allonby, touched by the ardor of his speech. +"And so, you have loved Mother all of fifteen years?" + +"Nay, split me--!" said Mr. Erwyn. + +"Your servant, sir," said the voice of Lady Allonby; "I trust you young +people have adjusted matters to your satisfaction?" + + +III + +"Dear madam," cried Miss Allonby, "I am overjoyed!" then kissed her +step-mother vigorously and left the room, casting in passage an arch glance +at Mr. Erwyn. + +"O vulgarity!" said Lady Allonby, recovering her somewhat rumpled dignity, +"the sweet child is yet unpolished. But, I suppose, we may regard the +matter as settled?" + +"Yes," said Mr. Erwyn, "I think, dear lady, we may with safety regard the +matter as settled." + +"Dorothy is of an excitable nature," she observed, and seated herself upon +the divan; "and you, dear Mr. Erwyn, who know women so thoroughly, will +overlook the agitation of an artless girl placed in quite unaccustomed +circumstances. Nay, I myself was affected by my first declaration,"' + +"Doubtless," said Mr. Erwyn, and sank beside her. "Lord Stephen was very +moving." + +"I can assure you," said she, smiling, "that he was not the first." + +"I' gad," said he, "I remember perfectly, in the old days, when you were +betrothed to that black-visaged young parson--" + +"Well, I do not remember anything of the sort," Lady Allonby stated; and +she flushed. + +"You wore a blue gown," he said. + +"Indeed?" said she. + +"And--" + +"La, if I did," said Lady Allonby, "I have quite forgotten it, and it is +now your manifest duty to do likewise." + +"Never in all these years," said Mr. Erwyn, sighing, "have I been able to +forget it." + +"I was but a girl, and 'twas natural that at first I should be mistaken in +my fancies," Lady Allonby told him, precisely as she had told Simon Orts: +"and at all events, there is nothing less well-bred than a good memory. I +would decline to remain in the same room with one were it not that Dorothy +has deserted you in this strange fashion. Whither, pray, has she gone?" + +Mr. Erwyn smiled. "Her tender heart," said Mr. Erwyn, "is affected by the +pathetic and moving spectacle of the poor hungry swans, pining for their +native land and made a raree-show for visitors in the Pantiles; and she has +gone to stay them with biscuits and to comfort them with cakes." + +"Really!" said Lady Allonby. + +"And," Mr. Erwyn continued, "to defend her from the possible ferocity +of the gold-fish, Captain Audaine had obligingly afforded service as an +escort." + +"Oh," said Lady Allonby; then added, "in the circumstances she might +permissibly have broken the engagement." + + +"But there is no engagement," said Mr. Erwyn--"as yet." + +"Indeed?" said she. + +"Harkee," said he; "should he make a declaration this afternoon she will +refuse him." + +"Why, but of course!" Lady Allonby marveled. + +"And the eighth time," said he. + +"Undoubtedly," said she; "but at whatever are you hinting?" + +"Yet the ninth time--" + +"Well, what is it, you grinning monster?" + +Mr. Erwyn allowed himself a noiseless chuckle. "After the ninth time," Mr. +Erwyn declared, "there will be an engagement." + +"Mr. Erwyn!" cried Lady Allonby, with widened eyes, "I had understood that +Dorothy looked favorably upon your suit." + +"Anastasia!" cried he; and then his finger-tips lightly caressed his brow. +"'Tis the first I had heard of it," said Mr. Erwyn. + +"Surely--" she began. + +"Nay, but far more surely," said he, "in consideration of the fact that, +not a half-hour since, you deigned to promise me your hand in marriage--" + +"O la now!" cried Lady Allonby; and, recovering herself, smiled +courteously. "'Tis the first I had heard of it," said she. + +They stared at each other in wonderment. Then Lady Allonby burst into +laughter. + +"D'ye mean--?" said she. + +"Indeed," said Mr. Erwyn, "so unintentional was I of aspiring to Miss +Allonby's affections that all my soul was set upon possessing the heart and +person of a lady, in my humble opinion, far more desirable." + +"I had not dreamed--" she commenced. + +"Behold," said Mr. Erwyn, bitterly, "how rightly is my presumption +punished. For I, with a fop's audacity, had thought my love for you of +sufficient moment to have been long since observed; and, strong in my +conceit, had scorned a pleasing declaration made up of faint phrases and +whining ballad-endings. I spoke as my heart prompted me; but the heart has +proven a poor counsellor, dear lady, and now am I rewarded. For you had +not even known of my passion, and that which my presumption had taken for +a reciprocal tenderness proves in the ultimate but a kindly aspiration to +further my union with another." + +"D'ye love me, toad?" said Lady Allonby, and very softly. + +"Indeed," said Mr. Erwyn, "I have loved you all my life, first with a +boyish inclination that I scarce knew was love, and, after your marriage +with an honorable man had severed us, as I thought, irrevocably, with such +lore as an ingenuous person may bear a woman whom both circumstances and +the respect in which he holds her have placed beyond his reach,--a love +that might not be spoken, but of which I had considered you could never be +ignorant." + +"Mr. Erwyn," said she, "at least I have not been ignorant--" + +"They had each one of them some feature that reminded me of you. That was +the truth of it, a truth so patent that we will not discuss it. Instead, +dear madam, do you for the moment grant a losing gamester the right to rail +at adverse fate! for I shall trouble you no more. Since your widowhood I +have pursued you with attentions which, I now perceive, must at many times +have proven distasteful. But my adoration had blinded me; and I shall +trouble you no more. I have been too serious, I did not know that our +affair was but a comedy of the eternal duel between man and woman; nor am +I sorry, dear opponent, that you have conquered. For how valorously you +fought! Eh, let it be! for you have triumphed in this duel, O puissant +lady, and I yield the victor--a devoted and, it may be, a rather heavy +heart; and I shall trouble you no more." + +"Ah, sir," said Lady Allonby, "you are aware that once--" + +"Indeed," said Mr. Erwyn, "'twas the sand on which I builded. But I am +wiser now, and I perceive that the feeling you entertain toward me is but +the pallid shadow of a youthful inclination. I shall not presume upon it. +Oh, I am somewhat proud, dear Anastasia; I have freely given you my heart, +such as it is; and were you minded to accept it, even at the eleventh hour, +through friendship or through pity only, I would refuse. For my love of you +has been the one pure and quite unselfish, emotion of my life, and I may +not barter it for an affection of lesser magnitude either in kind or in +degree. And so, farewell!" + +"Yet hold, dear sir--" said Lady Allonby. "Lord, but will you never let me +have the woman's privilege of talking!" + +"Nay, but I am, as ever, at your service," said Mr. Erwyn, and he paused in +transit for the door. + +"--since, as this betokens--" + +"'Tis a tasteful handkerchief," said Mr. Erwyn--"but somewhat moist!" + +"And--my eyes?" + +"Red," said Mr. Erwyn. + +"I have been weeping, toad, with my head on the pin-cushion, and the maid +trying to tipsify me with brandy." + +"Why?" said Mr. Erwyn. + +"I thought you were to marry Dorothy." + +Mr. Erwyn resumed his seat. "You objected?" he said. + +"I think, old monster," Lady Allonby replied, "that I would entertain the +same objection to seeing any woman thus sacrificed--" + +"Well?" said Mr. Erwyn. + +"--except--" + +"Incomparable Anastasia!" said Mr. Erwyn. + + +IV + +Afterward these two sat long in the twilight, talking very little, and with +their eyes rarely meeting, although their hands met frequently at quite +irrelevant intervals. Just the graze of a butterfly to make it certain that +the other was there: but all the while they both regarded the tiny fire +which had set each content of the room a-dancing in the companionable +darkness. For each, I take it, preferred to think of the other as being +still the naive young person each remembered; and the firelight made such +thinking easier. + +"D'ye remember--?" was woven like a refrain through their placid duo.... + +It was, one estimates, their highest hour. Frivolous and trivial persons +you might have called them and have justified the accusation; but even to +the fop and the coquette was granted an hour wherein all human happenings +seemed to be ordered by supernal wisdom lovingly. Very soon they would +forget this hour; meanwhile there was a wonderful sense of dreams come +true. + + + + +III + +THE CASUAL HONEYMOON + +_As Played at Tunbridge Wells, April 1, 1750_ + +"_But this is the most cruel thing, to marry one does not know how, nor +why, nor wherefore.--Gad, I never liked anybody less in my life. Poor +woman!--Gad, I'm sorry for her, too; for I have no reason to hate her +neither; but I wish we could keep it secret! why, I don't believe any of +this company would speak of it._" + + +DRAMATIS PERSONAE + + +CAPTAIN AUDAINE, of a pompous and handsome person, and loves Miss Allonby. + +LORD HUMPHREY DEGGE, younger son to the Marquis of Venour, makes love to +Miss Allonby. + +GERALD ALLONBY, brother to Miss Allonby, a true raw Squire. + +MR. ERWYN, betrothed to Lady Allonby. + +VANRINGHAM, an impudent tragedian of the Globe Company. + +QUARMBY, Vanringham's associate. + +Miss ALLONBY, an heiress, of a petulant humor, in love with Audaine. + +MARCHIONESS OF FALMOUTH, an impertinent affected dowager, and grandmother +to Miss Allonby. + +LADY ALLONBY, step-mother to Miss Allonby and Gerald. + +POSTILIONS, SERVANTS, Etc. + + +SCENE + +Tunbridge Wells, thence shifting to Chetwode Lodge, Mr. Babington-Herle's +house, on Rusthall Common, within two miles of the town. + + +THE CASUAL HONEYMOON + + +_PROEM:--Introductive of Captain Francis Audaine_ + +It appears convenient here to pursue Miss Allonby on her stroll about the +Pantiles in company with Captain Audaine. The latter has been at pains to +record the events of the afternoon and evening, so that I give you his own +account of them, though I abridge in consideration of his leisured style. +Pompous and verbose I grant the Captain, even in curtailment; but you are +to remember these were the faults of his age, ingrained and defiant of +deletion; and should you elect to peruse his memoirs [Footnote: There +appears to have been no American edition since that, in 1836, printed in +Philadelphia, "for Thomas Wardle, No. 15 Minor Street." In England the +memoirs of Lord Garendon are to all appearance equally hard to come by, +and seem to have been out of print since 1907.] you will find that I have +considerately spared you a majority of the digressions to which the future +Earl of Garendon was lamentably addicted. + +For the purpose of my tale you are to view him as Tunbridge did at this +particular time: as a handsome and formal person, twenty-eight years old +or thereabouts, of whom nobody knew anything quite definite--beyond the +genealogic inference to be drawn from a smatch of the brogue--save that +after a correspondence of gallantries, of some three weeks' duration, he +was the manifest slave of Miss Dorothy Allonby, and had already fought +three duels behind Ormerod House,--with Will Pratchet, Lord Humphrey Degge, +and Sir Eugene Harrabie, respectively, each one of whom was a declared +suitor for her hand. + +And with this prelude I begin on my transcription. + + +I + +Miss Allonby (says Captain Audaine) was that afternoon in a mighty cruel +humor. Though I had omitted no reasonable method to convince her of the +immensity of my passion, 'twas without the twitch of an eyelash she endured +the volley of my sighs and the fusillade of my respectful protestations; +and candor compels me to admit that toward the end her silvery laughter +disrupted the periods of a most elegant and sensible peroration. And when +the affair was concluded, and for the seventh time I had implored her to +make me the happiest of men, the rogue merely observed: "But I don't want +to marry you. Why on earth should I?" + +"For the sake of peace," I replied, "and in self-protection, since as long +as you stay obdurate I shall continue to importune, and by and by I shall +pester you to death." + +"Indeed, I think it more than probable," she returned; "for you dog me +like a bailiff. I am cordially a-weary, Captain Audaine, of your incessant +persecutions; and, after all, marrying you is perhaps the civilest way to +be rid of both them and you." + +But by this I held each velvet-soft and tiny hand. "Nay," I dissented; "the +subject is somewhat too sacred for jest. I am no modish lover, dearest and +best of creatures, to regard marriage as the thrifty purchase of an estate, +and the lady as so much bed-furniture thrown in with the mansion. I love +you with completeness: and give me leave to assure you, madam, with a +freedom which I think permissible on so serious an occasion that, even as +beautiful as you are, I could never be contented with your person without +your heart." + +She sat with eyes downcast, all one blush. Miss Dorothy Allonby was in the +bloom of nineteen, and shone with every charm peculiar to her sex. But I +have no mind to weary you with poetical rhodomontades till, as most lovers +do, I have proven her a paragon and myself an imbecile: it suffices to say +that her face, and shape, and mien, and wit, alike astounded and engaged +all those who had the happiness to know her; and had long ago rendered her +the object of my entire adoration and the target of my daily rhapsodies. +Now I viewed her with a dissension of the liveliest hopes and fears; for +she had hesitated, and had by this hesitation conceded my addresses to be +not irretrievably repugnant; and within the instant I knew that any life +undevoted to her service and protection could be but a lingering disease. + +But by and by, "You shall have your answer this evening," she said, and so +left me. + +I fathomed the meaning of "this evening" well enough. For my adored Dorothy +was all romance, and by preference granted me rendezvous in the back +garden, where she would tantalize me nightly, from her balcony, after the +example of the Veronese lady in Shakespeare's spirited tragedy, which she +prodigiously admired. As concerns myself, a reasonable liking for romance +had been of late somewhat tempered by the inclemency of the weather and +the obvious unfriendliness of the dog; but there is no resisting a lady's +commands; and clear or foul, you might at any twilight's death have found +me under her window, where a host of lyric phrases asserted the devotion +which a cold in the head confirmed. + +This night was black as a coal-pit. Strolling beneath the casement, well +wrapt in my cloak (for it drizzled), I meditated impartially upon the +perfections of my dear mistress and the tyrannic despotism of love. Being +the source of our existence, 'tis not unreasonably, perhaps, that this +passion assumes the proprietorship of our destinies and exacts of all +mankind a common tribute. To-night, at least, I viewed the world as a brave +pavilion, lighted by the stars and swept by the clean winds of heaven, +wherein we enacted varied roles with God as audience; where, in turn, we +strutted or cringed about the stage, where, in turn, we were beset and +rent by an infinity of passions; but where every man must play the part +of lover. That passion alone, I said, is universal; it set wise Solomon +a-jigging in criminal byways, and sinewy Hercules himself was no stranger +to its inquietudes and joys. And I cried aloud with the Roman, _Parce +precor!_ and afterward upon high Heaven to make me a little worthier of +Dorothy. + + +II + +Engrossed in meditations such as these, I was fetched earthward by the +clicking of a lock, and, turning, saw the door beneath her balcony unclose +and afford egress to a slender and hooded figure. My amazement was +considerable and my felicity beyond rhetoric. + +"Dorothy--!" I whispered. + +"Come!" was her response; and her finger-tips rested upon my arm the while +that she guided me toward the gateway opening into Jervis Lane. I followed +with a trepidation you may not easily conceive; nor was this diminished +when I found awaiting us a post-chaise, into which my angel hastily +tripped. + +I babbled I know not what inarticulate nonsense. But, "Heavens!" she +retorted, "d'ye mean to keep the parson waiting all night?" + +This was her answer, then. Well, 'twas more than I could have hoped for, +though to a man of any sensibility this summary disposal of our love-affair +could not but vaguely smack of the distasteful. Say what you will, every +gentleman has about him somewhere a tincture of that venerable and artless +age when wives were taken by capture and were retained by force; he +prefers to have the lady hold off until the very last; and properly, her +tongue must sound defiance long after melting eyes have signalled that the +traitorous heart of her, like an anatomical Tarpeia, is ready to betray the +citadel and yield the treasury of her charms. + +Nevertheless, I stepped into the vehicle. The postilion was off in +a twinkling, as the saying is, over the roughest road in England. +Conversation was impossible, for Dorothy and I were jostling like two pills +in a box; and as the first observation I attempted resulted in a badly +bitten tongue, I prudently held my peace. + +This endured for, perhaps, a quarter of an hour, at the end of which period +the post-chaise on a sudden stopped, and I assisted my companion to alight. +Before us was a villa of considerable dimension, and situate, so far as I +could immediately detect, in the midst of a vast and desolate moor; there +was no trace of human habitation within the radius of the eye; and the +house itself presented not a glimpse of tenancy or illumination. + +"O Lord, madam--" I began. + +"Hasten!" spoke a voice from within the Parsonage. And Dorothy drew me +toward a side door, overhung with ivy, where, sure enough, a dim light +burned, 'Twas but a solitary candle stuck upon a dresser at the remoter end +of a large and low-ceiled apartment; and in this flickering obscurity we +found a tremulous parson in full canonicals, who had united our hands and +gabbled half-way through the marriage service before I had the slightest +notion of what was befalling me. + +And such is the unreasonable disposition of mankind that the attainment +of my most ardent desires aroused a feeling not altogether unakin to +irritation. This skulking celerity, this hole-and-corner business, I +thought, was in ill-accord with the respect due to a sacrament; and I could +have wished my marriage to have borne a less striking resemblance to the +conference of three thieves in a cellar. But 'twas over in two twos. Within +scantier time than it takes to tell of it, Francis and Dorothy were made +one, and I had turned to salute my wife. + +She gave a shriek of intolerable anguish. "Heavens!" said she, "I have +married the wrong man!" + + +III + +Without delay I snatched up the guttering candle and held it to my wife's +countenance. You can conceive that 'twas with no pleasurable emotion +I discovered I had inadvertently espoused the Dowager Marchioness of +Falmouth, my adored Dorothy's grandmother; and in frankness I can't deny +that the lady seemed equally dissatisfied: words failed us; and the newly +wedded couple stared at each other in silence. + +"Captain Audaine," said she, at last, "the situation is awkward." + +"Sure, madam," I returned, "and that is the precise thought which has just +occurred to me." + +"And I am of the opinion," she continued, "that you owe me some sort of +explanation. For I had planned to elope with Mr. Vanringham--" + +"Do I understand your Ladyship to allude to Mr. Francis Vanringham, the +play-actor, at present the talk of Tunbridge?" + +She bowed a grave response. + +"This is surprising news," said I. "And grant me leave to tell you that a +woman of mature years, possessed of an abundant fortune and unassailable +gentility, does not by ordinary sneak out of the kitchen door to meet a +raddle-faced actor in the middle of the night. 'Tis, indeed, a circumstance +to stagger human credulity. Oh, believe me, madam, for a virtuous woman the +back garden is not a fitting approach to the altar, nor is a comedian an +appropriate companion there at eleven o'clock in the evening." + +"Hey, my fine fellow," says my wife, "and what were you doing in the back +garden?" + +"Among all true lovers," I returned, "it is an immemorial custom to prowl +like sentinels beneath the windows of the beauteous adored. And I, +madam, had the temerity to aspire toward an honorable union with your +granddaughter." + +She wrung her withered hands. "That any reputable woman should have +nocturnal appointments with gentlemen in the back garden, and beguile her +own grandmother into an odious marriage! I protest, Captain Audaine, the +degenerate world of to-day is no longer a suitable residence for a lady!" + +"Look you, sir, this is a cruel bad business," the Parson here put in. +He was pacing the apartment in an altercation of dubiety and amaze. "Mr. +Vanringham will be vexed." + +"You will pardon me," I retorted, "if I lack pity to waste upon your Mr. +Vanringham. At present I devote all funds of compassion to my own affairs. +Am I, indeed, to understand that this lady and I are legally married?" + +He rubbed his chin. "By the Lord Harry," says he, "'tis a case that lacks +precedents! But the coincidence of the Christian names is devilish awkward; +the service takes no cognizance of surnames; and I have merely united a +Francis and a Dorothy." + +"O Lord, Mr. What-d'ye-call-um," said I, "then there is but one remedy and +that is an immediate divorce." + +My wife shrieked. "Have you no sense of decency, Captain Audaine? Never has +there been a divorce in my family. And shall I be the first to drag that +honored name into a public court,--to have my reputation worried at the bar +by a parcel of sniggering lawyers, while the town wits buzz about it like +flies around carrion? I pray you, do not suggest any such hideous thing." + +"Here's the other Francis," says the Parson, at this point. And it was,--a +raffish, handsome, slender, red-haired fellow, somewhat suggestive of the +royal duke, yet rather more like a sneak-thief, and with a whiff somewhere +of the dancing-master. At first glance you recognized in the actor a +personage, for he compelled the eye with a monstrous vividness of color and +gesture. To-night he had missed his lady at their rendezvous, owing to my +premature appearance, and had followed us post-haste. + +"My Castalio!" she screamed. "My Beaugard!" [Footnote: I never saw the +rascal act, thank Heaven, since in that event, report assures me, I might +conceivably have accredited him with the possession of some meritorious +qualities, however trivial; but, it appears, these two above-mentioned +roles were the especial puppetry in which Mr. Vanringham was most +successful in wringing tears and laughter from the injudicious.--F.A.] She +ran to him, and with disjointed talk and quavering utterance disclosed the +present lamentable posture of affairs. + +And I found the tableau they presented singular. My wife had been a toast, +they tell me, in Queen Anne's time, and even now the lean and restless +gentlewoman showed as the abandoned house of youth and wit and beauty, with +here and there a trace of the old occupancy; always her furtive eyes shone +with a cold and shifting glitter, as though a frightened imp peeped through +a mask of Hecuba; and in every movement there was an ineffable touch of +something loosely hinged and fantastic. In a word, the Marchioness was +not unconscionably sane, and was known far and wide as a gallant woman +resolutely oblivious to the batterings of time, and so avid of flattery +that she was ready to smile on any man who durst give the lie to her +looking-glass. Demented landlady of her heart, she would sublet that +antiquated chamber to the first adventurer who came prepared to pay his +scot in the false coin of compliment; and 'twas not difficult to comprehend +how this young Thespian had acquired its tenancy. + +But now the face of Mr. Vanringham was attenuated by her revelations, and +the wried mouth of Mr. Vanringham suggested that the party be seated, in +order to consider more at ease the unfortunate _contretemps_. Fresh lights +were kindled, as one and all were past fear of discovery by this; and we +four assembled about a table which occupied the centre of the apartment. + + +IV + +"The situation," Mr. Vanringham, began, "may reasonably be described as +desperate. Here we sit, four ruined beings. For Dr. Quarmby has betrayed +an unoffending couple into involuntary matrimony, an act of which his +Bishop can scarcely fail to take official notice; Captain Audaine and +the Marchioness are entrapped into a loveless marriage, than which there +mayn't be a greater misery in life; and my own future, I needn't add, is +irrevocably blighted by the loss of my respected Dorothy, without whom +continued animation must necessarily be a hideous and hollow mockery. Yet +there occurs to me a panacea for these disasters." + +"Then, indeed, Mr. Vanringham," said I, "there is one of us who will be +uncommonly glad to know the name of it." + +He faced me with a kind of compassion in his wide-set brown eyes, "You, +sir, have caused a sweet and innocent lady to marry you against her +will--Oho, beyond doubt, your intentions were immaculate; but the outcome +remains in its stark enormity, and the hand of an inquisitive child is not +ordinarily salved by its previous ignorance as to the corrosive properties +of fire. You have betrayed confiding womanhood, an act abhorrent to +all notions of gentility. There is but one conclusive proof of your +repentance.--Need I mention that I allude to self-destruction?" + +"O Lord, sir," I observed, "suicide is a deadly sin, and I would not +willingly insult any gentlewoman by evincing so marked a desire for the +devil's company in preference to hers." + +"Your argument is sophistry," he returned, "since 'tis your death alone +that can endear you to your bride. Death is the ultimate and skilled +assayer of alloyed humanity: and by his art our gross constituents--our +foibles, our pettinesses, nay, our very crimes--are precipitated into the +coffin, the while that his crucible sets free the volatile pure essence, +and shows as undefiled by all life's accidents that part of divinity which +harbors in the vilest bosom. This only is remembered: this only mounts, +like an ethereal spirit, to hallow the finished-with blunderer's renown, +and reverently to enshrine his body's resting-place. Ah, no, Captain +Audaine! death alone may canonize the husband. Once you're dead, your wife +will adore you; once you're dead, your wife and I have before us an open +road to connubial felicity, a road which, living, you sadly encumber; and +only when he has delivered your funeral oration may Dr. Quarmby be exempt +from apprehension lest his part in your marriage ceremony bring about his +defrockment. I urge the greatest good for the greatest number, Captain; +living, you plunge all four of us into suffering; whereas the nobility of +an immediate _felo-de-se_ will in common decency exalt your soul to Heaven +accompanied and endorsed by the fervent prayers of three grateful hearts." + +"And by the Lord Harry," says the Parson, "while no clergyman extant has +a more cordial aversion to suicide, I cannot understand why a prolonged +existence should tempt you. You love Miss Dorothy Allonby, as all Tunbridge +knows; and to a person of sensibility, what can be more awkward than +to have thrust upon him grandfathership of the adored one? You must in +this position necessarily be exposed to the committal of a thousand +_gaucheries_; and if you insist upon your irreligious project of procuring +a divorce, what, I ask, can be your standing with the lady? Can she smile +upon the suit of an individual who has publicly cast aside the sworn love +and obedience of the being to whom she owes her very existence? or will +any clergyman in England participate in the union of a woman to her +ex-grandfather? Nay, believe me, sir, 'tis less the selfishness than the +folly of your clinging to this vale of tears which I deplore. And I protest +that this rope"--he fished up a coil from the corner--"appears to have +been deposited here by a benign and all-seeing Providence to Suggest +the manifold advantages of hanging yourself as compared with the untidy +operation of cutting one's throat." + +"And conceive, sir," says my wife, "what must be the universal grief +for the bridegroom so untimelily taken off in the primal crescence of +his honeymoon! Your funeral will be unparalleled both for sympathy and +splendor; all Tunbridge will attend in tears; and 'twill afford me a +melancholy but sincere pleasure to extend to you the hospitality of the +Allonby mausoleum, which many connoisseurs have accounted the finest in the +three kingdoms." + +"I must venture," said I, "to terminate this very singular conversation. +You have, one and all, set forth the advantages of my immediate demise; +your logic is unassailable and has proven suicide my plain duty; and my +rebuttal is confined to the statement that I will see every one of you +damned before I'll do it." + +Mr. Francis Vanringham rose with a little bow. "You have insulted both +womanhood and the Established Church by the spitting out of that ribald +oath; and me you have with equal levity wronged by the theft of my +affianced bride. I am only a play-actor, but in inflicting an insult a +gentleman must either lift his inferior to his own station or else forfeit +his gentility. I wear a sword, Captain Audaine. Heyho, will you grant me +the usual satisfaction?" + +"My fascinating comedian," said I, "if 'tis a fight you are desirous of, +I can assure you that in my present state I would cross swords with a +costermonger, or the devil, or the Archbishop of Canterbury, with equal +impartiality. But scarcely in the view of a lady, and, therefore, as you +boast the greater influence in that quarter, will you kindly advise the +withdrawal of yonder unexpected addition to my family?" + +"There's an inner room," says he, pointing to the door behind me; and I +held it open as my wife swept through. + +"You are the epitome of selfishness," she flung out, in passing; "for had +you possessed an ounce of gallantry, you would long ago have freed me from +this odious marriage." + +"Sure, madam," I returned, with a _congee_; "and is it not rather a +compliment that I so willingly forfeit a superlunar bliss in order to +retain the pleasure of your society?" + +She sniffed, and I closed the door; and within the moment the two men fell +upon me, from the rear, and presently had me trussed like a fowl and bound +with that abominable Parson's coil of rope. + + +V + +"Believe me," says Mr. Vanringham, now seated upon the table and indolently +dangling his heels,--the ecclesiastical monstrosity, having locked the +door upon Mrs. Audaine, had occupied a chair and was composedly smoking +a churchwarden,--"believe me, I lament the necessity of this uncouth +proceeding. But heyho! man is a selfish animal. You take me, sir, my +affection for yonder venerable lady does not keep me awake o' nights; yet +is a rich marriage the only method to amend my threadbare fortunes, so that +I cheerfully avail myself of her credulity. By God!" cried he, with a quick +raising of the voice, "to-morrow I had been a landed gentleman but for you, +you blundering omadhaun! And is a shabby merry-andrew from the devil knows +where to pop in and spoil the prettiest plot was ever hatched?" + +'Twas like a flare of lightning, this sudden outburst of malignity; for +you saw in it, quintessentialized, the man's stark and venomous hatred of +a world which had ill-used him; and 'twas over with too as quickly as the +lightning, yielding to the pleasantest smile imaginable. Meanwhile you are +to picture me, and my emotions, as I lay beneath his oscillating toes, +entirely helpless. "'Twas not that I lacked the courage to fight you," he +continues, "nor the skill, either. But there is always the possibility +that by some awkward thrust or other you might deprive the stage of a +distinguished ornament; and as a sincere admirer of my genius, I must, +in decency, avoid such risks. 'Twas necessary to me, of course, that you +be got out of this world speedily, since a further continuance of your +blunderings would interfere with my plans for the future; having gone thus +far, I cannot reasonably be expected to cede my interest in the Marchioness +and her estate. Accordingly I decide upon the handiest method and tip the +wink to Quarmby here; the lady quits the apartment in order to afford us +opportunity to settle our pretensions, with cutlery as arbiter; and she +will return to find your perforated carcass artistically displayed in +yonder extremity of the room. Slain in an affair of honor, my dear Captain! +The disputed damsel will think none the worse of me, a man of demonstrated +valor and affection; Quarmby and I'll bury you in the cellar; and being +freed from her recent and unfortunate alliance, my esteemed Dorothy will +seek consolation in the embraces of a more acceptable spouse. Confess, sir, +is it not a scheme of Arcadian simplicity?" + +'Twas the most extraordinary sensation to note the utterly urbane and +cheerful countenance with which Mr. Vanringham disclosed the meditated +atrocity. This unprincipled young man was about to run me through with no +more compunction than a naturalist in the act of pinning a new beetle among +his collection may momentarily be aware of. + +Then my quickened faculties were stirred on a sudden, and for the first +time I opened my mouth. Whatever claim I had upon Vanringham, there was no +need to advance it now. + +"You were about to say--?" he queried. + +"I was about to relieve a certain surplusage of emotion," I retorted, "by +observing that I regret to find you, sir, a chattering, lean-witted fool--a +vain and improvident fool!" + +"Harsh words, my Captain," says he, with lifted eyebrows. + +"O Lord, sir, but not of an undeserved asperity!" I returned, "D'ye think +the Marchioness, her flighty head crammed with scraps of idiotic romance, +would elope without regard for the canons of romance? Not so; depend upon +it, a letter was left upon her pin-cushion announcing her removal with +you, and in the most approved heroic style arraigning the obduracy of her +unsympathetic grandchildren. D'ye think Gerald Allonby will not follow +her? Sure, and he will; and the proof is," I added, "that you may hear his +horses yonder on the heath, as I heard them some moments ago." + +Vanringham leaped to the floor and stood thus, all tension. He raised +clenched, quivering hands toward the ceiling. "O King of Jesters!" he +cried, in horrid blasphemy; and then again, "O King of Jesters!" + +And by this time men were shouting without, and at the door there was a +prodigious and augmenting hammering. And the Parson wrung his hands and +began to shake like a dish of jelly in a thunder-storm. + +"Captain Audaine," Mr. Vanringham resumed, with more tranquillity, "you are +correct. Clidamira and Parthenissa would never have fled into the night +without leaving a note upon the pin-cushion. The folly I kindled in your +wife's addled pate has proven my ruin. Remains to make the best of Hobson's +choice." He unlocked the door. "Gentlemen, gentlemen!" says he, with +deprecating hand, "surely this disturbance is somewhat _outre_, a trifle +misplaced, upon the threshold of a bridal-chamber?" + +Then Gerald Allonby thrust into the room, followed by Lord Humphrey Degge, +[Footnote: I must in this place entreat my reader's profound discredit of +any aspersions I may rashly seem to cast upon this honest gentleman, whose +friendship I to-day esteem as invaluable; but I wrote, as always, _currente +calamo_, and the above was penned in an amorous misery, _sub Venire_, be +it remembered; and in such cases a wrong bias is easily hung upon the +mind.--F.A.] my abhorred rival for Dorothy's affection, and two attendants. + +"My grandmother!" shrieks Gerald. "Villain, what have you done with my +grandmother?" + +"The query were more fitly put," Vanringham retorts, "to the lady's +husband." And he waves his hand toward me. + +Thereupon the new-comers unbound me with various exclamations of wonder. +"And now," I observed, "I would suggest that you bestow upon Mr. Vanringham +and yonder blot upon the Church of England the bonds from which I have been +recently manumitted, or, at the very least, keep a vigilant watch upon +those more than suspicious characters, the while that I narrate the +surprising events of this evening." + + +VI + +Subsequently I made a clean breast of affairs to Gerald and Lord Humphrey +Degge. They heard me with attentive, even sympathetic, countenances; but by +and by the face of Lord Humphrey brightened as he saw a not unformidable +rival thus jockeyed from the field; and when I had ended, Gerald rose and +with an oath struck his open palm upon the table. + +"This is the most fortunate coincidence," he swears, "that I have ever +known of. I come prepared to find my grandmother the wife of a beggarly +play-actor, and I discover that, to the contrary, she has contracted an +alliance with a gentleman for whom I entertain sincere affection." + +"Surely," I cried, aghast, "you cannot deliberate acceptance of this +iniquitous and inadvertent match!" + +"What is your meaning, Captain Audaine?" says the boy, sharply. "What other +course is possible?"' + +"O Lord!" said I, "after to-night's imbroglio I have nothing to observe +concerning the possibility of anything; but if this marriage prove a legal +one, I am most indissuadably resolved to rectify matters without delay in +the divorce court." + +Now Gerald's brows were uglily compressed. "A divorce," said he, with an +extreme of deliberation, "means the airing of to-night's doings in the +open. I take it, 'tis the duty of a man of honor to preserve the reputation +of his grandmother stainless; whether she be a housemaid or the Queen +of Portugal, her frailties are equally entitled to endurance, her +eccentricities to toleration: can a gentleman, then, sanction any +proceeding of a nature calculated to make his grandmother the +laughing-stock of England? The point is a nice one." + +"For, conceive," said Lord Humphrey, with the most knavish grin I ever knew +a human countenance to pollute itself with, "that the entire matter will be +convoyed by the short-hand writers to the public press, and after this will +be hawked about the streets; and that the venders will yell particulars of +your grandmother's folly under your very windows; and that you must hear +them in impotence, and that for some months the three kingdoms will hear of +nothing else. Gad, I quite feel for you, my dear." + +"I have fallen into a nest of madmen," I cried. "You know, both of you, how +profoundly I adore Mr. Gerald's sister, the accomplished and bewitching +Miss Allonby; and in any event, I demand of you, as rational beings, is +it equitable that I be fettered for life to an old woman's apron-strings +because a doctor of divinity is parsimonious of his candles?" + +But Gerald had drawn with a flourish. "You have repudiated my kinswoman," +says he, "and you cannot deny me the customary satisfaction. Harkee, my +fine fellow, Dorothy will marry my friend Lord Humphrey if she will be +advised by me; or if she prefer it, she may marry the Man in the Iron Mask +or the piper that played before Moses, so far as I am concerned: but as for +you, I hereby offer you your choice between quitting this apartment as my +grandfather or as a corpse." + +"I won't fight you!" I shouted. "Keep the boy off, Degge!" But when the +infuriate lad rushed upon me, I was forced, in self-protection, to draw, +and after a brief engagement to knock his sword across the room. + +"Gerald," I pleaded, "for the love of reason, consider! I cannot fight you. +Heaven knows this tragic farce hath robbed me of all pretension toward your +sister, and that I am just now but little better than a madman; yet 'tis +her blood which exhilarates your veins, and with such dear and precious +fluid I cannot willingly imbrue my hands. Nay, you are no swordsman, +lad,--keep off!" + +And there I had blundered irretrievably. + +"No swordsman! By God, I fling the words in your face, Frank Audaine! must +I send the candlestick after them?" And within the instant he had caught +up his weapon and had hurled himself upon me, in an abandoned fury. I had +not moved. The boy spitted himself upon my sword and fell with a horrid +gasping. + +"You will bear me witness, Lord Humphrey," said I, "that the quarrel was +not of my provokement." + +But at this juncture the outer door reopened and Dorothy tripped into the +room, preceding Lady Allonby and Mr. George Erwyn. They had followed in the +family coach to dissuade the Marchioness from her contemplated match by +force or by argument, as the cat might jump; and so it came about that my +dear mistress and I stared at each other across her brother's lifeless +body. + +And 'twas in this poignant moment I first saw her truly. In a storm you +have doubtless had some utterly familiar scene leap from the darkness, +under the lash of lightning, and be for the instant made visible and +strange; and I beheld her with much that awful clarity. Formerly 'twas her +beauty had ensnared me, and this I now perceived to be a fortuitous and +happy medley of color and glow and curve, indeed, yet nothing more. 'Twas +the woman I loved, not her trappings; and her eyes were no more part of her +than were the jewels in her ears. But the sweet mirth of her, the brave +heart, the clean soul, the girl herself, how good and generous and kind +and tender,--'twas this that I now beheld, and knew that this, too, was +lost;--and, in beholding, the little love of yesterday fled whimpering +before the sacred passion which had possessed my being. And I began to +laugh. + +"My dear," said I, "'twas to-night that you promised me your answer, and +to-night you observe in me alike your grandfather and your brother's +murderer." + + +VII + +Lady Allonby fell to wringing her hands, but Dorothy had knelt beside the +prostrate form and was inspecting the ravages of my fratricidal sword. "Oh, +fy! fy!" says she immediately, and wrinkles her saucy nose; "had none of +you the sense to perceive that Gerald was tipsy? And as for the wound, 'tis +only a scratch here on the left shoulder. Get water, somebody." And her +command being obeyed, she cleansed the hurt composedly and bandaged it with +the ruffle of her petticoat. + +Meanwhile we hulking men stood thick about her, fidgeting and foolishly +gaping like a basket of fish; and presently a sibilance of relief went +about our circle as Gerald opened his eyes. "Sister," says he, with a +profoundly tragic face, "remember--remember that I perished to preserve the +honor of our family." + +"To preserve a fiddlestick!" said my adored Dorothy. And, rising, she +confronted me, a tinted statuette of decision. "Now, Frank," says she, "I +would like to know the meaning of this nonsense." + +And thereupon, for the second time, I recounted the dreadful and huddled +action of the night. + +When I had ended, "The first thing," says she, "is to let Grandmother out +of that room. And the second is to show me the Parson." This was done; the +Dowager entered in an extremity of sulkiness, and the Parson, on being +pointed out, lowered his eyes and intensified his complexion. + +"As I anticipated," says my charmer, "you are, one and all, a parcel of +credulous infants. 'Tis a parson, indeed, but merely the parson out of +Vanbrugh's _Relapse_; only last Friday, sir, we heartily commended your +fine performance. Why, Frank, the man is one of the play-actors." + +"I fancy," Mr. Vanringham here interpolates, "that I owe the assembled +company some modicum of explanation. 'Tis true that at the beginning of +our friendship I had contemplated matrimony with our amiable Marchioness, +but, I confess, 'twas the lady's property rather than her person which was +the allure. And reflection dissuaded me; a legal union left me, a young +and not unhandsome man, irrevocably fettered to an old woman; whereas a +mock-marriage afforded an eternal option to compound the match--for a +consideration--with the lady's relatives, to whom, I had instinctively +divined, her alliance with me would prove distasteful. Accordingly I +had availed myself of my colleague's skill [Footnote: I witnessed this +same Quarmby's hanging in 1754, and for a burglary, I think, with an +extraordinary relish.--F.A.] in the portrayal of clerical parts rather than +resort to any parson whose authority was unrestricted by the footlights. +And accordingly--" + +"And accordingly my marriage," I interrupted, "is not binding?" + +"I can assure you," he replied, "that you might trade your lawful right in +the lady for a twopenny whistle and not lose by the bargain." + +"And what about my marriage?" says the Marchioness--"the marriage which was +never to be legalized?--'twas merely that you might sell me afterward, like +so much mutton, was it, you jumping-jack--!" + +But I spare you her ensuing gloss upon this text. + +The man heard her through, without a muscle twitching. "It is more than +probable," he conceded, "that I have merited each and every fate your +Ladyship is pleased to invoke. Indeed, I consider the extent of your +distresses to be equaled only by that of your vocabulary. Yet by ordinary +the heart of woman is not obdurate, and upon one lady here I have some +claim--" + +Dorothy had drawn away from him, with an odd and frightened cry. "Not upon +me, sir! I never saw you except across the footlights. You know I never saw +you except across the footlights, Mr. Vanringham!" + +Fixedly he regarded her, with a curious yet not unpleasing smile. "I am +the more unfortunate," he said, at last. "Nay, 'twas to Lady Allonby I +addressed my appeal." + +The person he named had been whispering with George Erwyn, but now she +turned toward the actor. "Heavens!" said Lady Allonby, "to think I should +be able to repay you this soon! La, of course, you are at liberty, Mr. +Vanringham, and we may treat the whole series of events as a frolic +suited to the day. For I am under obligations to you, and, besides, your +punishment would breed a scandal, and, above all, anything is preferable to +being talked about in the wrong way." + +Having reasons of my own, I was elated by the upshot of this rather +remarkable affair. Yet in justice to my own perspicacity, I must declare +that it occurred to me, at this very time, that Mr. Vanringham had proven +himself not entirely worthy of unlimited confidence, I reflected, however, +that I had my instructions, and that, if a bad king may prove a good +husband, a knave may surely carry a letter with fidelity, the more so if it +be to his interest to do it. + + +VIII + +I rode back to Tunbridge in the coach, with Dorothy at my side and with +Gerald recumbent upon the front seat,--where, after ten minutes' driving +the boy very philanthropically fell asleep. + +"And you have not," I immediately asserted--"after all, you have not given +me the answer which was to-night to decide whether I be of all mankind the +most fortunate or the most miserable. And 'tis nearing twelve." + +"What choice have I?" she murmured; "after to-night is it not doubly +apparent that you need some one to take care of you? And, besides, this is +your eighth proposal, and the ninth I had always rather meant to accept, +because I have been in love with you for two whole weeks." + +My heart stood still. And shall I confess that for an instant my wits, +too, paused to play the gourmet with my emotions? She sat beside me in the +darkness, you understand, waiting, mine to touch. And everywhere the world +was filled with beautiful, kind people, and overhead God smiled down upon +His world, and a careless seraph had left open the door of Heaven, so that +quite a deal of its splendor flooded the world about us. And the snoring +of Gerald was now inaudible because of a stately music which was playing +somewhere. + +"Frank--!" she breathed. And I noted that her voice was no less tender than +her lips. + + + + +IV + +THE RHYME TO PORRINGER + + +_As Played at Tunbridge Wells, April 2, 1750_ + + "_Ye gods, why are not hearts first paired above, + But still some interfere in others' love, + Ere each for each by certain marks are known? + You mould them up in haste, and drop them down, + And while we seek what carelessly you sort, + You sit in state, and make our pains your sport._" + + +DRAMATIS PERSONAE + +CAPTAIN AUDAINE, an ingenious, well-accomplished gentleman. +LORD HUMPHREY DEGGE, an airy young gentleman, loves Miss Allonby for her +money. +VANRINGHAM, emissary and confederate of Audaine. +MISS ALLONBY, a young lady of wit and fortune. + +ATTENDANTS to Lord Humphrey, Etc. + + +SCENE + +Tunbridge Wells, first in and about Lord Humphrey's lodgings, then shifting +to a drawing-room in Lady Allonby's villa. + + +THE RHYME TO PORRINGER + + +PROEM:--_Merely to Serve as Intermezzo_ + +Next morning Captain Audaine was closeted with Mr. Vanringham in the +latter's apartments at the _Three Gudgeons_. I abridge the Captain's +relation of their interview, and merely tell you that it ended in the +actor's looking up, with a puzzled face, from a certain document. + +"You might have let me have a whiff of this," Mr. Vanringham began. "You +might have breathed, say, a syllable or two last night--" + +"I had my instructions, sir, but yesterday," replied the Captain; "and +surely, Mr. Vanringham, to have presumed last night upon my possession of +this paper, so far as to have demanded any favor of you, were unreasonable, +even had it not savored of cowardice. For, as it has been very finely +observed, it is the nicest part of commerce in the world, that of doing and +receiving benefits. O Lord, sir! there are so many thousand circumstances, +with respect to time, person, and place, which either heighten or allay the +value of the obligation--" + +"I take your point," said the other, with some haste, "and concede that you +are, beyond any reasonable doubt, in the right. Within the hour I am off." + +"Then all is well," said Captain Audaine. + +But he was wrong in this opinion, so wrong that I confute him by subjoining +his own account of what befell, somewhat later in the day. + + +I + +'Twas hard upon ten in the evening (the Captain estimates) when I left +Lady Culcheth's, [Footnote: Sir Henry Muskerry's daughter, of whom I have +already spoken, and by common consent an estimable lady and a person of +fine wit; but my infatuation for Lady Betty had by this time, after three +nights with her, been puffed out; and this fortunate extinction, through +the affair of the broken snuffbox, had left me now entirely indifferent to +all her raptures, panegyrics, and premeditated artlessnesses.--F. A.] and I +protest that at the time there was not a happier man in all Tunbridge than +Francis Audaine. + +"You haven't the king?" Miss Allonby was saying, as I made my adieus to the +company. "Then I play queen, knave, and ace, which gives me the game, Lord +Humphrey." + +And afterward she shuffled the cards and flashed across the room a glance +whose brilliance shamed the tawdry candles about her, and, as you can +readily conceive, roused a prodigious trepidation in my adoring breast. + +"Dorothy!--O Dorothy!" I said over and over again when I had reached the +street; and so went homeward with constant repetitions of her dear name. + +I suppose it was an idiotic piece of business; but you are to remember +that I loved her with an entire heart, and that, as yet, I could scarcely +believe the confession of a reciprocal attachment, which I had wrung from +her overnight, to the accompaniment of Gerald's snoring, had been other +than an unusually delectable and audacious dream upon the part of Frank +Audaine. + +I found it, then, as I went homeward, a heady joy to ponder on her +loveliness. Oh, the wonder of her voice, that is a love-song! cried my +heart. Oh, the candid eyes of her, more beautiful than the June heavens, +more blue than the very bluest speedwell-flower! Oh, the tilt of her tiny +chin, and the incredible gold of her hair, and the quite unbelievable +pink-and-white of her little flower-soft face! And, oh, the scrap of +crimson that is her mouth. + +In a word, my pulses throbbed with a sort of divine insanity, and Frank +Audaine was as much out of his senses as any madman now in Bedlam, and as +deliriously perturbed as any lover is by ordinary when he meditates upon +the object of his affections. + +But there was other work than sonneting afoot that night, and shortly I +set about it. Yet such was my felicity that I went to my nocturnal labors +singing. Yes, it rang in my ears, somehow, that silly old Scotch song, and +under my breath I hummed odd snatches of it as I went about the night's +business. + +Sang I: + + "Ken ye the rhyme to porringer? + Ken ye the rhyme to porringer? + King James the Seventh had ae daughter, + And he gave her to an Oranger. + + "Ken ye how he requited him? + Ken ye how he requited him? + The dog has into England come, + And ta'en the crown in spite of him! + + "The rogue he salna keep it lang, + To budge we'll make him fain again; + We'll hang him high upon a tree, + And King James shall hae his ain again!" + + +II + +Well! matters went smoothly enough at the start. With a diamond Vanringham +dexterously cut out a pane of glass, so that we had little difficulty in +opening the window; and I climbed into a room black as a pocket, leaving +him without to act as a sentinel, since, so far as I could detect, the +house was now untenanted. + +But some twenty minutes later, when I had finally succeeded in forcing the +escritoire I found in the back room upon the second story, I heard the +street door unclose. And I had my candle extinguished in that self same +instant. You can conceive that 'twas with no pleasurable anticipation I +peered into the hall, for I was fairly trapped. I saw some five or six men +of an ugly aspect, who carried among them a burden, the nature of which I +could not determine in the uncertain light. But I heaved a sigh of relief +as they bore their cargo past me, to the front room, (which opened on the +one I occupied), without apparent recognition of my presence. + +"Now," thinks I, "is the time for my departure." And having already +selected the papers I had need of from the rifled desk, I was about to run +for it, when I heard a well-known voice. + +"Rat the parson!" it cried; "he should have been here an hour ago. Here's +the door left open for him, endangering the whole venture, and whey-face +han't plucked up heart to come! Do some of you rogues fetch him without +delay; and do all of you meet me to-morrow at the _Mitre_, to be paid in +full for this business, before reporting to his Grace." + +"Here," thinks I, "is beyond doubt a romance." And as the men tumbled +down-stairs and into the street, I resolved to see the adventure through, +by the light of those candles which were now burning in the next room. + +I waited for perhaps ten minutes, during which period I was aware of divers +movements near at hand; and, judging that in any case there was but one +man's anger to be apprehended, I crept toward the intervening door and +found it luckily ajar. + +So I peered through the crack into the adjoining room, and there, as I had +anticipated, discovered Lord Humphrey Degge, whom I had last seen at Lady +Culcheth's wrangling over a game of _ecarte_ with the fairest antagonist +the universe could afford. + +Just now my Lord was in a state of high emotion, and the cause of it was +evident when I perceived his ruffians had borne into the house a swooning +lady, whom merciful unconsciousness had rendered oblivious to her present +surroundings, and whose wrists his Lordship was vigorously slapping in the +intervals between his frequent applications to her nostrils of a flask, +which, as I more lately learned, contained sal volatile. + +Here was an unlucky turn, since I had no desire to announce my whereabouts, +my business in the house being of a sort that necessitated secrecy; +whereas, upon the other hand, I could not but misdoubt my Lord's intention +toward the unknown fair was of discreditable kinship, and such as a +gentleman might not countenance with self-esteem. + +Accordingly I devoted the moments during which the lady was recovering +from her swoon, to serious reflection concerning the course that I should +preferably adopt. But now, Miss came to, and, as is the custom of all +females similarly situated, rubbed her eyes and said, "Where am I?" + +And when she rose from the divan I saw that 'twas my adored Dorothy. + +"In the presence of your infatuated slave," says my Lord. "Ah, divine Miss +Allonby--!" + +But being now aware of her deplorable circumstances, she began to weep, +and, in spite of the amorous rhetoric with which his Lordship was prompt to +comfort her, rebuked him for unmanly conduct, with sublimity and fire, and +depicted the horrors of her present predicament in terms that were both +just and elegant. + +From their disjointed talk I soon determined that, Lord Humphrey's suit +being rejected by my angel, he had laid a trap for her (by bribing her +coachman, as I subsequently learned), and had so far succeeded in his +nefarious scheme that she, on leaving Lady Culcheth's, had been driven +to this house, in the conviction she rode homeward; and this course my +Lord endeavored to justify, with a certain eloquence, and attributed the +irregularity of his behavior solely to the colossal vehemence of his +affection. + +His oratory, however, was of little avail, for Dorothy told him plainly +that she had rather hear the protestations of a toad than listen to his far +more nauseous flattery; and bade him at once restore her to her natural +guardians. + +"_Ma charmante_," said he, "to-morrow your good step-mother may, if you +will, share with your husband the privilege of saluting Lady Humphrey +Degge; but as for Miss Allonby, I question if in the future her dearest +friends are likely to see much of her." + +"What do you mean?" cries she. + +"That the parson will be here directly," said he. + +"Infamous!" she observes; "and is the world run mad, that these extempore +weddings should be foisted upon every woman in the Allonby connection!" + +"Ah, but, my dear," he answered airily, "'twas those two fiascos which +begot my notion, and yet hearten me. For in every approved romance the +third adventurer gets the victory; so that I am, I take it, predestinate to +win where Vanringham and Rokesle failed." + +She did not chop logic with him, but instead retorted in a more primitive +fashion by beginning to scream at the top of her voice. + +I doubt if any man of honor was ever placed under a more great embarrass. +Yonder was the object of my devotion, exposed to all the diabolical +machinations of a heartless villain; and here was I concealed in my Lord's +bedroom, his desk broken open, and his papers in my pocket. To remain quiet +was impossible, since 'twas to expose her to a fate worse than death; yet +to reveal myself was to confess Frank Audaine a thief, and to lose her +perhaps beyond redemption. + +Then I thought of the mask which I had brought in case of emergency; and, +clapping it on, resolved to brazen out the affair. Meanwhile I saw all +notions of gallantry turned topsy-turvy, for my Lord was laughing quietly, +while my adored Dorothy called aloud upon the name of her Maker. + +"The neighborhood is not unaccustomed to such sounds," said he, "and I +hardly think we need fear any interruption. I must tell you, my dear +creature, you have, by an evil chance, arrived in a most evil locality, for +this quarter of the town is the devil's own country, and he is scarcely +like to make you free of it." + +"O Lord, sir!" said I, and pushed the door wide open, "surely you forget +that the devil is a gentleman?" + + +III + +Had I dropped a hand-grenade into the apartment the astonishment of its +occupants would not have been excessive. My Lord's face, as he clapped +his hand to his sword, was neither tranquil nor altogether agreeable to +contemplate; but as for Dorothy, she gave a frightened little cry, and ran +toward the masked intruder with a piteous confidence which wrung my heart. + +"The devil!" says my Lord. + +"Not precisely," I amended, and bowed in my best manner, "though 'tis +undeniable I come to act as his representative." + +"Oh, joy to your success!" his Lordship sneered. + +"Harkee, sir," said I, "as you, with perfect justice, have stated, this is +the devil's stronghold, and hereabouts his will is paramount; and, as I +have had the honor to add, the devil is a gentleman. Sure, and as such, he +cannot be expected to countenance your present behavior? Nay, never fear! +Lucifer, already up to the ears in the affairs of this mundane sphere, +lacks leisure to express his disapproval in sulphuric person. He tenders +his apologies, sir, and sends in his stead your servant, with whose +capabilities he is indifferently acquainted." + +"To drop this mummery," says Lord Humphrey, "what are you doing in my +lodgings?" + +"O Lord, sir!" I responded, "I came thither, I confess, without invitation. +And with equal candor I will admit that my present need is of your +Lordship's banknotes and jewels, and such-like trifles, rather than--you +force me, sir, to say it,--rather than of your company." + +Thus speaking, I drew and placed myself on guard, while my Lord gasped. + +"You're the most impudent rogue," says he, after he had recovered himself a +little, "that I have had the privilege of meeting--" + +"Your Lordship is all kindness," I protested. + +"--but your impudence is worth the price of whatever you may have pilfered. +Go, my good man--or devil, if you so prefer to style yourself! Tell Lucifer +that he is well served; and obligingly return to the infernal regions +without delay. For, as you have doubtless learned, Miss and I have many +private matters to discuss. And, gad, Mr. Moloch, [Footnote: A deity of, +I believe, Ammonitish origin. His traditional character as represented +by our immortal Milton is both taking to the fancy and finely romantic; +and is, I am informed, no less remarkable for many happy turns of speech +than for conformity throughout to the most famous legends of Talmudic +fabrication.--F.A.] pleasant as is your conversation, you must acknowledge +I can't allow evil spirits about the house without getting it an ill +reputation. So pardon me if I exorcise you with this." + +He spoke boldly, and, as he ended, tossed me a purse. I let it lie where it +fell, for I had by no means ended my argument. + +"Yet, sir," said I, "my errand, which began with the acquisition of your +pins, studs and other jewelry, now reaches toward treasure far more +precious--" + +"Enough!" he cried, impatiently, "Begone! and do you render thanks--that my +present business is so urgent as to prevent my furnishing the rope which +will one day adorn your neck." + +"That's as may be," quoth I; "and, indeed, I doubt if I could abide +drowning, for 'tis a damp, unwholesome, and very permanent sort of death. +But my fixed purpose, to cut short all debate, is to escort Miss Allonby +homeward." + +"Come," sneers my Lord,--"come, Mr. Moloch, I have borne with your +insolence for a quarter of an hour--" + +"Twenty minutes," said I, after consulting my watch. + +"--but I mean to put up with it no longer; and in consequence I take the +boorish liberty of suggesting that this is none of your affair." + +"Good sir," I conceded, "your Lordship speaks with considerable justice, +and we must leave the final decision to Miss here." + +I bowed toward her. In her face there was a curious bewilderment that +made me fear lest, for all my mask, for all my unnatural intonations, and +for all the room's half-light, my worshipped mistress had come near to +recognizing this caught thief. + +"Miss Allonby," said I, in a falsetto voice which trembled, "since I am +unknown to you, may I trust you will permit me to present myself? My +name--though, indeed, I have a multitude of names--is for the occasion +Frederick Thomasson. With my father's appellation and estates I cannot +accommodate you, for the reason that a mystery attaches to his identity. +As for my mother, let it suffice to say that she was a vivacious brunette +of a large acquaintance, and generally known to the public as Black Moll +O'Reilly. I began life as a pickpocket. Since then I have so far improved +my natural gifts that the police are flattering enough to value my person +at several hundred pounds. My rank in society, as you perceive, is not +exalted; yet, if my luck by any chance should fail, I do not question that +I shall, upon some subsequent Friday, move in loftier circles than any +nobleman who happens at the time to be on Tyburn Hill.--So much for my poor +self. And since by this late hour Lady Allonby is beyond doubt beginning to +grow uneasy, let us have done with further exposition, and remember that +'tis high time you selected an escort to her residence. May I implore that +you choose between the son of the Marquis of Venour and Black Molly's +bastard?" + +She looked us over,--first one, then the other. More lately she laughed; +and if I had never seen her before, I could have found it in my heart to +love her for the sweet insolence of her demeanor. + +"After all," said my adored Dorothy, "I prefer the rogue who when he goes +about his knaveries has at least the decency to wear a mask." + +"That, my Lord," said I, "is fairly conclusive; and so we will be +journeying." + +"Over my dead body!" says he. + +"Sure, and what's beneath the feet," I protested, "is equally beneath +consideration." + +The witticism stung him like a wasp, and, with an oath, he drew, as I was +heartily glad to observe, for I cannot help thinking that when it comes to +the last pinch, and one gentleman is excessively annoyed by the existence +of another, steel is your only arbiter, and charitable allowances for the +dead make the one rational peroration. So we crossed blades; and, pursuing +my usual tactics, I began upon a flow of words, which course, as I have +learned by old experience, is apt to disconcert an adversary far more than +any trick of the sword can do. + +I pressed him sorely, and he continued to give way, but clearly for +tactical purposes, and without permitting the bright flash of steel that +protected him to swerve an instant from the proper line. + +"Miss Allonby," said I, growing impatient, "have you never seen a venomous +insect pinned to the wall? In that case, I pray you to attend more closely. +For one has only to parry--thus! And to thrust--in this fashion! And +behold, the thing is done!" + +In fact, having been run through the chest, my Lord was for the moment +affixed to the panelling at the extreme end of the apartment, where he +writhed, much in the manner of a cockchafer which mischievous urchins have +pinned to a card,--his mien and his gesticulations, however, being rather +more suggestive of the torments of the damned, as they are so strikingly +depicted by the Italian Dante. [Footnote: I allude, of course, to the +famous Florentine, who excels no less in his detailed depictions of +infernal anguish than in his eloquent portrayal of the graduated and +equitable emoluments of an eternal glorification.--F.A.] He tumbled in a +heap, though, when I sheathed my sword and bowed toward my charmer. + +"Miss Allonby," said I, "thus quickly ends this evil quarter of an hour; +and with, equal expedition, I think, should we be leaving this evil quarter +of the town." + +She had watched the combat with staring and frightened eyes. Now she had +drawn nearer, and she looked curiously at her over-presumptuous lover where +he had fallen. + +"Have you killed him?" she asked, in a hushed voice. + +"O Lord, no!" I protested. "The life of a peer's son is too valuable a +matter; he will be little the worse for it in a week." + +"The dog!" cries she, overcome with pardonable indignation at the affront +which the misguided nobleman had put upon her; and afterward, with a +ferocity the more astounding in an individual whose demeanor was by +ordinary of an aspect so amiable and so engaging, she said, "Oh, the lewd +thieving dog!" + +"My adorable Miss Allonby," said I, "do not, I pray you, thus slander the +canine species! Meanwhile, permit me to remind you that 'tis inexpedient +to loiter in these parts, for the parson will presently be at hand; and if +it be to inter rather than to marry Lord Humphrey--well, after all, the +peerage is a populous estate! But, either way, time presses." + +"Come!" said she, and took my arm; and together we went down-stairs and +into the street. + + +IV + +On the way homeward she spoke never a word. Vanringham had made a hasty +flitting when my Lord's people arrived, so that we saw nothing of him. But +when we had come safely to Lady Allonby's villa, Dorothy began to laugh. + +"Captain Audaine," says she, in a wearied and scornful voice, "I know that +the hour is very late, yet there are certain matters to be settled between +as which will, I think, scarcely admit of delay. I pray you, then, grant me +ten minutes' conversation." + +She had known me all along, you see. Trust the dullest woman to play +Oedipus when love sets the riddle. So there was nothing to do save clap my +mask into my pocket and follow her, sheepishly enough, toward one of the +salons, where at Dorothy's solicitation a gaping footman made a light for +us. + +She left me there to kick my heels through a solitude of some moments' +extent. But in a while my dear mistress came into the room, with her arms +full of trinkets and knick-knacks, which she flung upon a table. + +"Here's your ring, Captain Audaine," says she, and drew it from her finger. +"I did not wear it long, did I? And here's the miniature you gave me, too. +I used to kiss it every night, you know. And here's a flower you dropped at +Lady Pevensey's. I picked it up--oh, very secretly!--because you had worn +it, you understand. And here's--" + +But at this point she fairly broke down; and she cast her round white arms +about the heap of trinkets, and strained them close to her, and bowed her +imperious golden head above them in anguish. + +"Oh, how I loved you--how I loved you!" she sobbed. "And all the while you +were only a common thief!" + +"Dorothy--!" I pleaded. + +"You shame me--you shame me past utterance!" she cried, in a storm of +mingled tears and laughter. "Here's this bold Captain Audaine, who comes to +Tunbridge from nobody knows where, and wins a maid's love, and proves in +the end a beggarly house-breaker! Mr. Garrick might make a mirthful comedy +of this, might he not?" Then she rose to her feet very stiffly. "Take your +gifts, Mr. Thief," says she, pointing,--"take them. And for God's sake let +me not see you again!" + +So I was forced to make a clean breast of it. + +"Dorothy," said I, "ken ye the rhyme to porringer?" But she only stared at +me through unshed tears. + +Presently, though, I hummed over the old song: + + "Ken ye the rhyme to porringer? + Ken ye the rhyme to porringer? + King James the Seventh had ae daughter, + And he gave her to an Oranger. + +"And the Oranger filched his crown," said I, "and drove King James--God +bless him!--out of his kingdom. This was a while and a half ago, my dear; +but Dutch William left the stolen crown to Anne, and Anne, in turn, left it +to German George. So that now the Elector of Hanover reigns at St. James's, +while the true King's son must skulk in France, with never a roof to +shelter him. And there are certain gentlemen, Dorothy, who do not consider +that this is right." + +"You are a Jacobite?" said she. "Well! and what have your politics to do +with the matter?" + +"Simply that Lord Humphrey is not of my way of thinking, my dearest dear. +Lord Humphrey--pah!--this Degge is Ormskirk's spy, I tell you! He followed +Vanringham to Tunbridge on account of our business. And to-day, when +Vanringham set out for Avignon, he was stopped a mile from the Wells by +some six of Lord Humphrey's fellows, disguised as highwaymen, and all his +papers were stolen. Oho, but Lord Humphrey is a thrifty fellow: so when +Ormskirk puts six bandits at his disposal he employs them in double infamy, +to steal you as well as Vanringham's despatches. To-morrow they would have +been in Ormskirk's hands. And then--" I paused to allow myself a whistle. + +She came a little toward me, in the prettiest possible glow of +bewilderment, "I do not understand," she murmured. "Oh, Frank, Frank, for +the love of God, beware of trusting Vanringham in anything! And you are not +a thief, after all? Are you really not named Thomasson?" + +"I am most assuredly not Frederick Thomasson," said I, "nor do I know if +any such person exists, for I never heard the name before to-night. Yet, in +spite of this, I am an unmitigated thief. Why, d'ye not understand? What +Vanringham carried was a petition from some two hundred Scotch and English +gentlemen that our gracious Prince Charlie be pleased to come over and +take back his own from the Elector. 'Twas rebellion, flat rebellion, and +the very highest treason! Had Ormskirk seen the paper, within a month our +heads had all been blackening over Temple Bar. So I stole it,--I, Francis +Audaine, stole it in the King's cause, God bless him! 'Twas burglary, no +less, but it saved two hundred lives, my own included; and I look to be a +deal older than I am before I regret the deed with any sincerity." + +Afterward I showed her the papers, and then burned them one by one over a +candle. She said nothing. So by and by I turned toward her with a little +bow. + +"Madam," said I, "you have forced my secret from me. I know that your +family is staunch on the Whig side; and yet, ere the thief goes, may he not +trust you will ne'er betray him?" + +And now she came to me, all penitence and dimples. + +"But it was you who said you were a thief," my dear mistress pointed out. + +"O Lord, madam!" said I, "'twas very necessary that Degge should think me +so. A house-breaker they would have only hanged, but a Jacobite they would +have hanged and quartered afterward." + +"Ah, Frank, do not speak of such fearful matters, but forgive me +instantly!" she wailed. + +And I was about to do so in what I considered the most agreeable and +appropriate manner when the madcap broke away from me, and sprang upon a +footstool and waved her fan defiantly. + +"Down with the Elector!" she cried, in her high, sweet voice. "Long live +King James!" + +And then, with a most lovely wildness of mien, she began to sing: + + "Ken ye the rhyme to porringer? + Ken ye the rhyme to porringer? + King James the Seventh had ae daughter--" + +until I interrupted her. For, "Extraordinary creature!" I pleaded, "you +will rouse the house." + +"I don't care! I intend to be a Jacobite if you are one!" + +"Eh, well," said I, "Frank Audaine is not the man to coerce his wife in a +political matter. Nevertheless, I know of a certain Jacobite who is not +unlikely to have a bad time of it if by any chance Lord Humphrey recognized +him to-night. Nay, Miss, you may live to be a widow yet." + +"But he didn't recognize you. And if he did"--she snapped her +fingers,--"why, we'll fight him again, you and I. Won't we, my dear? For +he stole our secret, you know. And he stole me, too. Very pretty behavior, +wasn't it?" And here Miss, Allonby stamped the tiniest, the most +infinitesimal of red-heeled slippers. + + "The rogue he didna keep me lang, + To budge we made him fain again-- + +"that's you, Frank, and your great, long sword. And now: + + "We'll hang him high, upon a tree, + And King Frank shall hae his ain again!" + +Afterward my adored Dorothy jumped from the footstool, and came toward me, +lifting up the crimson trifle that she calls her mouth, "So take your own, +my king," she breathed, with a wonderful gesture of surrender. + +And a gentleman could do no less. + + + + +V + +ACTORS ALL + + +_As Played at Tunbridge Wells, April 3, 1750_ + +"_I am thinking if some little, filching, inquisitive poet should get my +story, and represent it to the stage, what those ladies who are never +precise but at a play would say of me now,--that I were a confident, coming +piece, I warrant, and they would damn the poor poet for libelling the +sex._" + + +DRAMATIS PERSONAE + +DUKE OF ORMSKIRK. + +COLONEL DENSTROUDE, } +SIR GRESLEY CARNE, } Gentlemen of the town. +MR. BABINGTON-HERLE, } + +VANRINGHAM, a play-actor and a Jacobite emissary. + +MR. LANGTON, secretary to Ormskirk. + +MISS ALLONBY, an heiress, loves Captain Audaine. + +LOTTRUM, maid to Miss Allonby. + +BENYON, MINCHIN, and OTHER SERVANTS to Ormskirk. + + +SCENE + +Tunbridge Wells, shifting from Ormskirk's lodgings at the _Mitre_ to +Vanringham's apartments in the _Three Gudgeons_. + + + + +ACTORS ALL + + +_PROEM.--To Explain Why the Heroine of This Comedy Must Wear Her Best_ + +I quit pilfering from the writings of Francis Audaine, since in the +happenings which now concern us he plays but a subsidiary part. The Captain +had an utter faith in decorum, and therefore it was, as he records, an +earth-staggering shock when the following day, on the Pantiles, in full +sight of the best company at the Wells, Captain Audaine was apprehended. He +met disaster like an old acquaintance, and hummed a scrap of song--"_O, gin +I were a bonny bird_,"--and shrugged; but when Miss Allonby, with whom he +had been chatting, swayed and fell, the Captain caught her in his arms, and +standing thus, turned angrily upon the emissaries of the law. + +"Look you, you rascals," said he, "you have spoiled a lady's afternoon with +your foolish warrant!" + +He then relinquished the unconscious girl to her brother's keeping, +tenderly kissed one insensate hand, and afterward strolled off to jail +_en route_ for a perfunctory trial and a subsequent traffic with the +executioner that Audaine did not care to think of. + +Tunbridge buzzed like a fly-trap with the ensuing rumors. The Captain +was at the head of a most heinous Jacobitical uprising. The great Duke +of Ormskirk was come hastily from London on the business. Highlanders +were swarming over the Border, ten thousand French troops had landed at +Pevensey, commanded by the Chevalier St. George in person, and twenty +thousand friars and pilgrims from Coruna had sailed for Milford Haven, +under the admiralty of young Henry Stuart. The King was locked in the +Tower; the King had been assassinated that morning by a Spanish monk, with +horse-pistols and a cast in his left eye; and the King and the Countess of +Yarmouth had escaped three days ago, in disguise, and were now on their way +to Hanover. + +These were the reports which went about Tunbridge, while Dorothy Allonby +wept a little and presently called for cold water and a powder-puff, and +afterward for a sedan chair. + + +I + +Miss Allonby found my Lord Duke of Ormskirk deep in an infinity of papers. +But at her entrance he rose and with a sign dismissed his secretary. + +It appears appropriate here to afford you some notion of Ormskirk's +exterior. I pilfer from Loewe's memoir of him, where Horace Calverley, who +first saw Ormskirk at about this time, is quoted: + +"His Grace was in blue-and-silver, which became him, though he is somewhat +stomachy for such conspicuous colors. A handsome man, I would have said, +honest but not particularly intelligent.... Walpole, in a fit of spleen, +once called him 'a porcelain sphinx,' and the phrase sticks; but, +indeed, there is more of the china-doll about him. He possesses the +same too-perfect complexion, his blue eyes have the same spick-and-span +vacuity; and the fact that the right orb is a trifle larger than its fellow +gives his countenance, in repose, much the same expression of placid +astonishment.... Very plump, very sleepy-looking, immaculate as a cat, you +would never have accorded him a second glance: covert whisperings that the +stout gentleman yonder is the great Duke of Ormskirk have, I think, taxed +human belief more than once during these ten years past." + +They said of Ormskirk that he manifested a certain excitement on the +day after Culloden, when he had seventy-two prisoners shot _en masse_, +[Footnote: But for all that, when, near Rossinish (see Loewe), he captured +Flora Macdonald and her ostensibly female companion, Ormskirk flatly +declined to recognize Prince Charles. "They may well call you the +Pretender, madam," he observed to "Bettie Burke,"--"since as concerns my +party you are the most desirable Pretender we could possibly imagine." And +thereupon he gave the Prince a pass out of Scotland.] but this was doubted; +and in any event, such _battues_ being comparatively rare, he by ordinary +appeared to regard the universe with a composed and feline indifference. + + +II + +"Child, child!" Ormskirk began, and made a tiny gesture of deprecation, "I +perceive you are about to appeal to my better nature, and so I warn you in +advance that the idiotic business has worked me into a temper absolutely +ogreish." + +"The Jacobite conspiracy, you mean?" said Miss Allonby. "Oh, I suppose +so. I am not particularly interested in such matters, though; I came, you +understand, for a warrant, or an order, or whatever you call it, for them +to let Frank out of that horrid filthy gaol." + +The Duke's face was gravely humorous as he gazed at her for a moment or two +in silence, "You know quite well," he said at last, "that I can give you +nothing of the sort." + +Miss Allonby said: "Upon my word, I never heard of such nonsense! How else +is he to take me to Lady Mackworth's ball to-night?" + +"It is deplorable," his Grace of Ormskirk conceded, "that Captain Audaine +should be thus snatched from circles which he, no doubt, adorns. Still, I +fear you must look for another escort; and frankly, child, if you will be +advised by me, you will permit us to follow out our present intentions and +take off his head--not a great deprivation when you consider he has so +plainly demonstrated its contents to be of such inferior quality." + +She had drawn close to him, with widening, pitiable eyes. "You mean, then," +she demanded, "that Frank's very life is in danger?" + +"This is unfair," the Duke complained. "You are about to go into hysterics +forthwith and thus bully me into letting the man escape. You are a minx. +You presume upon the fact that in the autumn I am to wed your kinswoman and +bosom companion, and that my affection for her is widely known to go well +past the frontier of common-sense; and also upon the fact that Marian will +give me the devil if I don't do exactly as you ask. I consider you to abuse +your power unconscionably, I consider you to be a second Delilah. However, +since you insist upon it, this Captain Audaine must, of course, be spared +the fate he very richly merits." + +Miss Allonby had seated herself beside a table and was pensively looking +up at him. "Naturally," she said, "Marian and I, between us, will badger +you into saving Frank. I shall not worry, therefore, and I must trust to +Providence, I suppose, to arrange matters so that the poor boy will not +catch his death of cold in your leaky gaol yonder. And now I would like to +be informed of what he has been most unjustly accused." + +"His crime," the Duke retorted, "is the not unusual one of being a fool. +Oh, I am candid! All Jacobites are fools. We gave the Stuarts a fair trial, +Heaven knows, and nobody but a fool would want them back." + +"I am not here to discuss politics," a dignified Miss Allonby stated, "but +simply to find out in what way Frank has been slandered." + +Ormskirk lifted one eyebrow. "It is not altogether a matter of politics. +Rather, as I see it, it is a matter of common-sense. Under the Stuarts +England was a prostitute among the nations, lackey in turn to Spain and +France and Italy; under the Guelph the Three-per-cents. are to-day at par. +The question as to which is preferable thus resolves itself into a choice +between common-sense and bedlamite folly. But, unhappily, you cannot argue +with a Jacobite: only four years ago Cumberland and Hawley and I rode from +Aberdeen to the Highlands and left all the intervening country bare as the +palm of your hand; I forget how many Jacobites we killed, but evidently not +enough to convince the others. Very well: we intend to have no more such +nonsense, and we must settle this particular affair by the simple device +of hanging or beheading every man-Jack concerned in it." He spoke without +vehemence--rather regretfully than otherwise. + +Miss Allonby was patient, yet resolute to keep to the one really important +point. "But what has Frank been accused of doing when it never even entered +his head?" + +"He has been conspiring," said the Duke, "and with conspicuous clumsiness. +It appears, child, that it was their common idiocy which of late brought +together some two hundred gentlemen in Lancashire. Being every one of them +most unmitigated fools, they desired that sot at Avignon to come over once +more and 'take back his own,' as the saying is. He would not stir without +definite assurances. So these men drew up a petition pledging their all to +the Chevalier's cause and--God help us!--signed it. I protest," the Duke +sighed, "I cannot understand these people! A couple of penstrokes, you +observe, and there is your life at the mercy of chance, at the disposal of +a puff of wind or the first blunderer who stumbles on the paper." + +"Doubtless that is entirely true," said Miss Allonby, "but what about +Frank?" + +Ormskirk shrugged his shoulders and began to laugh. "You are an +incomparable actress, you rogue you. But let us be candid, for all that, +since as it happens Lord Humphrey is not the only person in my employ. What +occurred last night I now partly know, and in part guess, Degge played a +bold game, and your Captain gambled even more impudently,--only the stakes, +as it to-day transpires, were of somewhat less importance than either of +them surmised. For years Mr. Vanringham has been a Jacobite emissary; now +he tires of it; and so he devoted the entire morning, yesterday to making a +copy of this absurd petition." + +"I do not understand," said Miss Allonby; and in appearance, at least, she +was no whit disconcerted. + +"He carried only the copy. You burned only the copy. Mr. Vanringham, it +develops, knew well enough what that bungling Degge had been deputed to +do, and he preferred to treat directly with Lord Humphrey's principal. Mr. +Vanringham is an intelligent fellow. I dare make this assertion, because +I am fresh from an interview with Mr. Vanringham," his Grace of Ormskirk +ended, and allowed himself a reminiscent chuckle. + +She had risen. "O ungenerous! this Vanringham has been bribed!" + +"I pray you," said the Duke, "give vent to no such scandal. Vanringham's +life would not be worth a farthing if he had done such a thing, and he +knows it. Nay, I have planned it more neatly. To-night Mr. Vanringham will +be arrested--merely on suspicion, mind you,--and all his papers will be +brought to me; and it is possible that among them we may find the petition. +And it is possible that, somehow, when he is tried with the others, Mr. +Vanringham alone may be acquitted. And it is possible that an aunt--in +Wales, say,--may die about this time and leave him a legacy of some five +thousand pounds. Oh, yes, all this is quite possible," said the Duke; +"but should we therefore shriek _Bribery_? For my own part, I esteem Mr. +Vanringham, as the one sensible man in the two hundred." + +"He has turned King's evidence," she said, "and his papers will be brought +to you--" Miss Allonby paused. "All his papers!" said Miss Allonby. + +"And very curious they will prove, no doubt," said his Grace. "So many +love-sick misses write to actors. I can assure you, child, I look +forward with a deal of interest to my inspection of Mr. Vanringham's +correspondence." + +"Eh?--Oh, yes!" Miss Allonby assented--"all his papers! Yes, they should be +diverting, I must be going home though, to make ready for Lady Mackworth's +ball. And if I have nobody to dance with me, I shall know quite well whose +fault it is. How soon will Frank be freed, you odious tyrant?" + +"My child, but in these matters we are all slaves to red tape! I can +promise you, however, that your Captain will be released from prison before +this month is out, so you are not to worry." + + +III + +When she had left him the Duke sat for a while in meditation. + +"That is an admirable girl, I would I could oblige her in the matter and +let this Audaine live. But such folly is out of the question. The man is +the heart of the conspiracy. + +"No, Captain Audaine, I am afraid we must have that handsome head of yours, +and set your spirit free before this month is out. And your head also, Mr. +Vanringham, when we are done with using your evidence. This affair must be +the last; hitherto we have tried leniency, and it has failed; now we will +try extermination. Not one of these men must escape. + +"I shall have trouble with Marian, since the two girls are inseparable. +Yes, this Audaine will cause me some trouble with Marian. I heartily wish +the fellow had never been born." + +Ormskirk took a miniature from his pocket and sat thus in the dusk +regarding it. It was the portrait of a young girl with hazel eyes and +abundant hair the color of a dead oak-leaf. And now his sleepy face was +curiously moved. + +"I shall have to lie to you. And you will believe me, for you are not +disastrously clever. But I wish it were not necessary, my dear. I wish it +were possible to make you understand that my concern is to save England +rather than a twopenny captain. As it is, I shall lie to you, and you will +believe. And Dorothy will get over it in time, as one gets over everything +in time. But I wish it were not necessary, sweetheart. + +"I wish.... I wish that I were not so happy when I think of you. I become +so happy that I grow afraid. It is not right that anyone should be so +happy. + +"Bah! I am probably falling into my dotage." + +Ormskirk struck upon the gong. "And now, Mr. Langton, let us get back to +business." + + +IV + +Later in the afternoon Miss Allonby demanded of her maid if Gerald Allonby +were within, and received a negative response. "Nothing could be better," +said Miss Allonby. "You know that new suit of Master Gerald's, Lottrum--the +pink-and-silver? Very well; then you will do thus, and thus, and thus--" +And she poured forth a series of directions that astonished her maid not a +little. + +"Law you now!" said Lottrum, "whatever--?" + +"If you ask me any questions," said Dorothy, "I will discharge you on the +spot. And if you betray me, I shall probably kill you." + +Lottrum said, "O Gemini!" and did as her mistress ordered. + +Miss Allonby made a handsome boy, and such was her one comfort. Her mirror +showed an epicene denizen of romance,--Rosalind or Bellario, a frail +and lovely travesty of boyhood; but it is likely that the girl's heart +showed stark terror. Here was imminent no jaunt into Arden, but into the +gross jaws of even bodily destruction. Here was probable dishonor, a +guaranteeable death. She could fence well enough, thanks to many bouts with +Gerald; but when the foils were unbuttoned, there was a difference which +the girl could appreciate. + +"In consequence," said Dorothy, "I had better hurry before I am still more +afraid." + + +V + +So there came that evening, after dusk, to Mr. Francis Vanringham's +apartments, at the _Three Gudgeons_, a young spark in pink-and-silver. He +appeared startled at the sight of so much company, recovered his composure +with a gulp, and presented himself to the assembled gentlemen as Mr. +Osric Allonby, unexpectedly summoned from Cambridge, and in search of +his brother, Squire Gerald. At his step-mother's villa they had imagined +Gerald might be spending the evening with Mr. Vanringham. Mr. Osric +Allonby apologized for the intrusion; was their humble servant; and with a +profusion of _congees_ made as though to withdraw. + +Mr. Vanringham lounged forward. The comedian had a vogue among the younger +men, since at all games of chance they found him untiring and tolerably +honest; and his apartments were, in effect, a gambling parlor. + +Vanringham now took the boy's hand very genially. "You have somewhat the +look of your sister," he observed, after a prolonged appraisal; "though, in +nature, 'tis not expected of us trousered folk to be so beautiful. And by +your leave, you'll not quit us thus unceremoniously, Master Osric. I am by +way of being a friend of your brother's, and 'tis more than possible that +he may during the evening honor us with his presence. Will you not linger +awhile on the off-chance?" And Osric Allonby admitted he had no other +engagements. + +He was in due form made known to the three gentlemen--Colonel Denstroude, +[Footnote: He and Vanringham had just been reconciled by Molly Yates' +elopement with Tom Stoach, the Colonel's footman. Garendon has a curious +anecdote concerning this lady, apropos of his notorious duel with +Denstroude, in '61.] Mr. Babington-Herle, and Sir Gresley Carne--who sat +over a bowl of punch. Sir Gresley was then permitted to conclude the +narrative which Mr. Allonby's entrance had interrupted: the evening +previous, being a little tipsy, Sir Gresley had strolled about Tunbridge in +search of recreation and, with perhaps excessive playfulness, had slapped +a passer-by, broken the fellow's nose, and gouged both thumbs into the +rascal's eyes. The young baronet conceded the introduction of these London +pastimes into the rural quiet of Tunbridge to have been an error in taste, +especially as the man proved upon inquiry to be a respectable haberdasher +and the sole dependence of four children; and having thus unfortunately +blinded the little tradesman, Sir Gresley wished to ask of the assembled +company what in their opinion was a reasonable reparation. "For I sincerely +regret the entire affair," Sir Gresley concluded, "and am desirous to +follow a course approvable by all men of honor." + +"Heyho!" said Mr. Vanringham, "I'm afraid the rape of both eyes was a +trifle extreme; for by ordinary a haberdasher is neither a potato nor an +Argus, and, remembering that, even the high frivolity of brandy-and-water +should have respected his limitations." + +The hands of Mr. Allonby had screened his face during the recital, "Oh, the +poor man!" he said, "I cannot bear--" And then, with swift alteration, +he tossed back his head, and laughed. "Are we gentlemen to be denied all +amusement? Sir Gresley acted quite within his privilege, and in terming him +severe you have lied, Mr. Vanringham. I repeat, sir, you have lied!" + +Vanringham was on his feet within the instant, but Colonel Denstroude, who +sat beside him, laid a heavy hand upon Vanringham's arm. "'Oons, man," says +the Colonel, "infanticide is a crime." + +The actor shrugged his shoulders, "Doubtless you are in the right, Mr. +Allonby," he said; "though, as you were of course going on to remark, you +express yourself somewhat obscurely. Your meaning, I take it, is that I +mayn't criticise the doings, of my guests? I stand corrected, and concede +Sir Gresley acted with commendable moderation, and that Cambridge is, +beyond question, the paramount expositor of morals and manners." + +The lad stared about him: with a bewildered face. "La, will he not fight me +now?" he demanded of Colonel Denstroude,--"now, after I have called him a +liar?" + +"My dear," the Colonel retorted, "he may possibly deprive you of your +nursing-bottle, or he may even birch you, but he will most assuredly not +fight you, so long as I have any say in the affair. I' cod, we are all +friends here, I hope. D'ye think Mr. Vanringham has so often enacted +Richard III. that to strangle infants is habitual with him? Fight you, +indeed! 'Sdeath and devils!" roared the Colonel, "I will cut the throat of +any man who dares to speak of fighting in this amicable company! Gi'me some +more punch," said the Colonel. + +And thereupon in silence Mr. Allonby resumed his seat. + +Now, to relieve the somewhat awkward tension, Mr. Vanringham cried: "So +being neighborly again, let us think no more of the recent difference in +opinion. Pay your damned haberdasher what you like, Gresley; or, rather, +let Osric here fix the remuneration. I confess to all and sundry," he +added, with a smile, "that I daren't say another word in the matter. +Frankly, I'm afraid of this youngster. He breathes fire like AEtna." + +"He is a lad of spirit," said Mr. Babington-Herle, with an extreme +sobriety. "He's a lad eshtrornary spirit. Let's have game hazard." + +"Agreed, good sir," said Vanringham, "and I warn you, you will find me a +daring antagonist. I had to-day an extraordinary--the usual prejudice, +my dear Herle, is, I believe, somewhat inclined to that pronunciation of +the word,--the most extraordinary windfall. I am rich, and I protest King +Croesus himself sha'n't intimidate me to-night. Come!" he cried, and he +drew from his pocket a plump purse and emptied its contents upon the table; +"come, lay your wager!" + +"Hell and furies," the Colonel groaned, "there's that tomfool boy again! +Gi'me some more punch." + +For Osric Allonby had risen to his feet and had swept the littered gold +and notes toward him. He stood thus, his pink-tipped fingers caressing +the money, while his eyes fixed those of Mr. Vanringham. "And the chief +priests," observed Osric Allonby, "took the silver pieces and said, 'It is +not lawful for to put them into the treasury, because it is the price of +blood.' Are they, then, fit to be touched by gentlemen, Mr.--ah, but I +forget your given name?" + +Vanringham, too, had risen, his face changed. "My sponsors in baptism were +pleased to christen me Francis." + +"I entreat your pardon," the boy drawled, "but I have the oddest fancies. +I had thought it was Judas." And so they stood, warily regarding each the +other, very much as strange dogs are wont to do at meeting. + +"Boy is drunk," Mr. Babington-Herle explained at large, "and presents to +pitying eye of disinterested spectator most deplorable results incidental +to combination of immaturity and brandy. As to money, now, in Suetonius--" +And he launched upon a hiccough-punctuated anecdote of Vespasian, which to +record here is not convenient. "And moral of it is," Mr. Babington-Herle +perorated, "that all money is always fine thing to have. _Non olet!_ +Classical scholar, by Jove! Now let's have game hazard." + +Meanwhile those two had stood like statues. Vanringham seemed +half-frightened, half persuaded that this unaccountable boy spoke at +random. Talk, either way, the actor knew, was dangerous.... + +"I ask your forgiveness, gentlemen," said Francis Vanringham, "but I'm +suddenly ill. If you'll permit me to retire--" + +"Not at all," said. Mr. Babington-Herle; "late in evening, as it is. We +will go,--Colonel and old Carne and I will go kill watchman. Persevorate +him, by Jove,--like sieve." + +"I thank you," said Mr. Vanringham, withdrawing up the stairway toward his +bedroom. "I thank you. Mr. Allonby," he called, in a firmer tone, "you and +I have had some words together and you were the aggressor. Oho, I think we +may pass it over. I think--" + +Below, the four gentlemen were unhooking their swords from the wall. Mr. +Allonby now smiled with cherubic sweetness. "I, too," said he, "think that +all our differences might be arranged by ten minutes' private talk." He +came back, came up the stairs. "You had left your sword," he said to Mr. +Vanringham, "but I fetched it, you see." + +Vanringham stared, his lips working oddly. "I am no Siegfried," said he, +"and ordinarily my bedfellow is not cold and--deplorable defect in such +capacity!--somewhat unsympathetic steel." + +"But you forget," the boy urged, "that the room is public. And see, the +hilt is set with jewels. Ah, Mr. Vanringham, let us beware how we lead +others into temptation--" The door closed behind them. + + +VI + +Said Mr. Babington-Herle, judicially, "That's eshtrornary boy--most +eshtrornary boy, and precisely unlike brother." + +"You must remember," the Colonel pointed out, "that since his marriage +Gerald is a reformed man; he has quite given up punks and hazard, they say, +for beer and cattle-raising." + +"Well, but it is a sad thing to have a spirited tall rogue turn pimp to +balls and rams, and Mrs. Lascelles will be inconsolable," Sir Gresley +considered.--"Hey, what's that? Did you not hear a noise up-stairs?" + +"I do not think," said the Colonel, "that Mallison finds her so.--Yes, +i'cod! I suppose that tipsy boy has turned over a table." + +"But you astound me," Sir Gresley interrupted. "The constant Mallison, of +all persons!" + +"Nevertheless, my dear, they assure me that he has made over to her the +heart and lodgings until lately occupied by Mrs. Roydon--Oh, the devil!" +cried Colonel Denstroude, "they are fighting above!" + +"Good for Frank!" observed Mr. Babington-Herle. "Hip-hip! Stick young +rascal! Persevorate him, by Jove!" + +But the other men had run hastily up the stairway and were battering at +the door of Vanringham's chamber. "Locked!" said the Colonel. "Oh, the +unutterable cur! Open, open, I tell you, Vanringham! By God, I'll have your +blood for this if you have hurt the boy!" + +"Break in the door!" said a voice from below. The Colonel paused in his +objurgations, and found that the Duke of Ormskirk, followed by four +attendants, had entered the hallway of the _Three Gudgeons_. "Benyon," said +the Duke, more sharply, and wheeled upon his men, "you have had my orders, +I believe. Break in yonder door!" + +This was done. They found Mr. Francis Vanringham upon the hearthrug a +tousled heap of flesh and finery, insensible, with his mouth gaping, +in a great puddle of blood. To the rear of the room was a boy in +pink-and-silver, beside the writing-desk he had just got into with the +co-operation of a poker. Hugged to his breast he held a brown despatch-box. + +Ormskirk strode toward the boy and with an inhalation paused. The Duke +stood tense for a moment. Then silently he knelt beside the prostrate actor +and inspected Vanringham's injury. "You have killed him," the Duke said at +last. + +"I think so," said the boy. "But 'twas in fair fight." + +The Duke rose. "Benyon," he rapped out, "do you and Minchin take this body +to the room below. Let a surgeon be sent for. Bring word if he find any +sign of life. Gentlemen, I must ask you to avoid the chamber. This is a +state matter. I am responsible for yonder person." + +"Then your Grace is responsible for perfectly irresponsible young villain!" +said Mr. Babington-Herle. "He's murderer Frank Vanringham, of poor dear +Frank, like a brother to me, by Jove! Hang him high's Haman, your Grace, +and then we'll have another bottle." + +"Colonel Denstroude," said the Duke, "I will ask you to assist your friend +in retiring. The stairs are steep, and his conviviality, I fear, has by a +pint or so exceeded his capacity. And in fine--I wish you a good-evening, +gentlemen." + + +VII + +Ormskirk closed the door; then he turned, "I lack words," the Duke said. +"Oh, believe me, speech fails before this spectacle. To find you, here, +at this hour! To find you--my betrothed wife's kinswoman and life-long +associate,--here, in this garb! A slain man at your feet, his blood yet +reeking upon that stolen sword! His papers--pardon me!" + +Ormskirk sprang forward and caught the despatch-box from her grasp as she +strove to empty its contents into the fire. "Pardon me," he repeated; +"you have unsexed yourself; do not add high treason to the list of your +misdemeanors. Mr. Vanringham's papers, as I have previously had the honor +to inform you, are the state's property." + +She stood with void and inefficient hands that groped vaguely. "I could +trust no one," she said. "I have fenced so often with Gerald. I was not +afraid--at least, I was not very much afraid.. And 'twas so difficult to +draw him into a quarrel,--he wanted to live, because at last he had the +money his dirty little soul had craved. Ah, I had sacrificed so many things +to get these papers, my Lord Duke,--and now you rob me of them. You!" + +The Duke bent pitiless brows upon her. "I rob you of them," he said,--"ay, +I am discourteous and I rob, but not for myself alone. For your confusion +tells me that I hold here between my hands the salvation of England. Child, +child!" he cried, in sudden tenderness, "I trusted you to-day, and could +you not trust me? I promised you the life of the man you love. I promised +you--" He broke off, as if in a rivalry of rage and horror. "And you +betrayed me! You came hither, trousered and shameless, to save these +hare-brained traitors! Well, but at worst your treachery has very happily +released me from my promise to meddle in the fate of this Audaine. I shall +not lift a finger now. And I warn you that within the week your precious +Captain will have become the associate of seraphim." + +She had heard him, with defiant eyes; her head was flung back and she +laughed. "You thought I had come to destroy the Jacobite petition! Heavens, +what had I to do with all such nonsense? You had promised me Frank's +pardon, and the other men I had never seen. Harkee, my Lord Duke, do all +you politicians jump so wildly in your guess work? Did you in truth believe +that the poor fool who lies dead below would have entrusted the paper which +meant life and wealth to the keeping of a flimsy despatch-box?" + +"Indeed, no," his Grace of Ormskirk replied, and appeared a thought +abashed; "I was certain it would be concealed somewhere about his person, +and I have already given Benyon orders to search for it. Still, I confess +that for the moment your agitation misled me into believing these were +the important papers; and I admit, my dear creature, that unless you came +hither prompted by a mad design somehow to destroy the incriminating +documents and thereby to ensure your lover's life--why, otherwise, I +repeat, I am quite unable to divine your motive." + +She was silent for a while. Presently, "You told me this afternoon," she +began, in a dull voice, "that you anticipated much amusement from your +perusal of Mr. Vanringham's correspondence. All his papers were to be +seized, you said; and they all were to be brought to you, you said. And so +many love-sick misses write to actors, you said." + +"As I recall the conversation," his Grace conceded, "that which you have +stated is quite true." He spoke with admirable languor, but his countenance +was vaguely troubled. + +And now the girl came to him and laid her finger-tips ever so lightly upon +his. "Trust me," she pleaded. "Give me again the trust I have not merited. +Ay, in spite of reason, my Lord Duke, restore to me these papers unread, +that I may destroy them. For otherwise, I swear to you that without gain +to yourself--without gain, O God!--you wreck alike the happiness of an +innocent woman and of an honest gentleman. And otherwise--O infatuate!" she +wailed, and wrung impotent hands. + +But Ormskirk shook his head. "I cannot leap in the dark." + +She found no comfort in his face, and presently lowered her eyes. He +remained motionless. The girl went to the farther end of the apartment, and +then, her form straightening on a sudden, turned and came back toward him. + +"I think God has some grudge against you," Dorothy said, without any +emotion, "and--hardens your heart, as of old He hardened Pharaoh's heart, +to your own destruction. I have done my utmost to save you. My woman's +modesty I have put aside, and death and worse than death I have dared to +encounter to-night,--ah, my Lord, I have walked through hell this night for +your sake and another's. And in the end 'tis yourself who rob me of what I +had so nearly gained. Beyond doubt God has some grudge against you. Take +your fate, then." + +"_Integer vitae_--" said the Duke of Ormskirk; and with more acerbity, "Go +on!" For momentarily she had paused. + +"The man who lies dead below was loved by many women. God pity them! But +women are not sensible like men, you know. And always the footlights made a +halo about him; and when you saw him as Castalio or Romeo, all beauty and +love and vigor and nobility, how was a woman to understand his splendor was +a sham, taken off with his wig, removed with his pinchbeck jewelry, and as +false? No, they thought it native, poor wretches. Yet one of them at least, +my Lord--a young girl--found out her error before it was too late. The man +was a villain through and through. God grant he sups in hell to-night!" + +"Go on," said Ormskirk. But by this time he knew all that she had to tell. + +"Afterward he demanded money of her. He had letters, you understand--mad, +foolish letters,--and these he offered to sell back to her at his own +price. And their publicity meant ruin. And, my Lord, we had so nearly saved +the money--pinching day by day, a little by a little, for his price was +very high, and it was necessary the sum be got in secrecy,--and that in the +end they should be read by you--" Her voice broke. + +"Go on," said Ormskirk. + +But her composure was shattered. "I would have given my life to save her," +the girl babbled. "Ah, you know that I have tried to save her. I was not +very much afraid. And it seemed the only way. So I came hither, my Lord, as +you see me, to get back the letters before you, too, had come." + +"There is but one woman in the world," the Duke said, quietly, "for whom +you would have done this thing. You and Marian were reared together. Always +you have been inseparable, always you have been to each other as sisters. +Is this not what you are about to tell me?" + +"Yes," she answered. + +"Well, you may spare yourself the pains of such unprofitable lying. That +Marian Heleigh should have been guilty of a vulgar _liaison_ with, an actor +is to me, who know her, unthinkable. No, madam! It was fear, not love, +which drove you hither to-night, and now a baser terror urges you to screen +yourself by vilifying her. The woman of whom you speak is yourself. The +letters were written by you." + +She raised one arm as though a physical blow impended. "No, no!" she cried. + +"Madam," the Duke said, "let us have done with these dexterities. I +have the vanity to believe I am not unreasonably obtuse--nor, I submit, +unreasonably self-righteous. Love is a monstrous force, as irrational, I +sometimes think, as the force of the thunderbolt; it appears neither to +select nor to eschew, but merely to strike; and it is not my duty to +asperse or to commend its victims. You have loved unworthily. From the +bottom of my heart I pity you, and I would that you had trusted me--had +trusted me enough--" His voice was not quite steady. "Ah, my dear," said +Ormskirk, "you should have confided all to me this afternoon. It hurts me +that you did not, for I am no Pharisee and--God knows!--my own past is not +immaculate. I would have understood, I think. Yet as it is, take back your +letters, child,--nay, in Heaven's name, take them in pledge of an old man's +love for Dorothy Allonby." + +The girl obeyed, turning them in her hands, the while that her eyes were +riveted to Ormskirk's face. And in Aprilian fashion she began to smile +through her tears. "You are superb, my Lord Duke. You comprehend that +Marian wrote these letters, and that if you read them--and I knew of +it,--your pride would force you to break off the match, because your +notions as to what is befitting in a Duchess of Ormskirk are precise. But +you want Marian, you want her even more than I had feared. Therefore, you +give me all these letters, because you know that I will destroy them, and +thus an inconvenient knowledge will be spared you. Oh, beyond doubt, you +are superb." + +"I give them to you," Ormskirk answered, "because I have seen through your +cowardly and clumsy lie, and have only pity for a thing so base as you. I +give them to you because to read one syllable of their contents would be to +admit I had some faith in your preposterous fabrication." + +But she shook her head. "Words, words, my Lord Duke! I understand you to +the marrow. And, in part, I think that I admire you." + +He was angry now. "Eh! for the love of God," cried the Duke of Ormskirk, +"let us burn the accursed things and have no more verbiage!" He seized the +papers and flung them into the fire. + +Then these two watched the papers consume to ashes, and stood a while +in silence, the gaze of neither lifting higher than the andirons; and +presently there was a tapping at the door. + +"That will be Benyon," the Duke said, with careful modulations. "Enter, +man! What news is there of this Vanringham?" + +"He will recover, your Grace, though he has lost much blood. Mr. Vanringham +has regained consciousness and took occasion to whisper me your Grace would +find the needful papers in his escritoire, in the brown despatch-box." + +"That is well," the Duke retorted, "You may go, Benyon." And when the +door had closed, he began, incuriously: "Then you are not a murderess at +least, Miss Allonby. At least--" He made a queer noise as he gazed, at the +despatch-box in his hand. "The brown box!" It fell to the floor. Ormskirk +drew near to her, staring, moving stiffly like a hinged toy, "I must have +the truth," he said, without a trace of any human passion. This was the +Ormskirk men had known in Scotland. + +"Yes," she answered, "they were the Jacobite papers. You burned them." + +"I!" said the Duke. + +Presently he said: "Do you not understand what this farce has cost? Thanks +to you, I have no iota of proof against these men. I cannot touch these +rebels. O madam, I pray Heaven that you have not by this night's trickery +destroyed England!" + +"I did it to save the man I love," she proudly said. + +"I had promised you his life." + +"But would you have kept that promise?" + +"No," he answered, simply. + +"Then are we quits, my Lord. You lied to me, and I to you. Oh, I know +that were I a man you would kill me within the moment. But you respect my +womanhood. Ah, goodness!" the girl cried, shrilly, "what very edifying +respect for womanhood have you, who burned those papers because you +believed my dearest Marian had stooped to a painted mountebank!" + +"I burned them--yes, in the belief that I was saving you." + +She laughed in his face. "You never believed that,--not for an instant." + +But by this time Ormskirk had regained his composure. "The hour is somewhat +late, and the discussion--if you will pardon the suggestion,--not likely to +be profitable. The upshot of the whole matter is that I am now powerless to +harm anybody--I submit the simile of the fangless snake,--and that Captain +Audaine will have his release in the morning. Accordingly you will now +permit me to wish you a pleasant night's rest. Benyon!" he called, "you +will escort Mr. Osric Allonby homeward. I remain to clear up this affair." + +He held open the door for her, and, bowing, stood aside that she might +pass. + + +VIII + +But afterward the great Duke of Ormskirk continued for a long while +motionless and faintly smiling as he gazed into the fire. Tricked and +ignominiously defeated! Ay, but that was a trifle now, scarcely worthy of +consideration. The girl had hoodwinked him, had lied more skilfully than +he, yet in the fact that she had lied he found a prodigal atonement. Whigs +and Jacobites might have their uses in the cosmic scheme, he reflected, as +house-flies have, but what really mattered was that at Halvergate yonder +Marian awaited his coming. And in place of statecraft he fell to thinking +of two hazel eyes and of abundant hair the color of a dead oak-leaf. + + + + +VI + +APRIL'S MESSAGE + + +_As Played at Halvergate House, April 9, 1750_ + + "_You cannot love, nor pleasure take, nor give, + But life begin when 'tis too late to live. + On a tired courser you pursue delight, + Let slip your morning, and set out at night. + If you have lived, take thankfully the past; + Make, as you can, the sweet remembrance last. + If you have not enjoyed what youth could give, + But life sunk through you, like a leaky sieve._" + + +DRAMATIS PERSONAE + +DUKE OF ORMSKIKK. + +EARL OF BRUDENEL, father to Lady Marian Heleigh, who +has retired sometime into the country. + +LORD HUMPHREY DEGGE, a gamester, and Ormskirk's +hireling. + +MR. LANGTON, secretary to Ormskirk. + +LADY MARIAN HELEIGH, betrothed to Ormskirk, a young, +beautiful girl of a mild and tender disposition. + + +SCENE + +The east terrace of Halvergate House. + + + + +APRIL'S MESSAGE + + +_PROEM:--Apologia pro Auctore_ + +It occurs to me that we here assume intimacy with a man of unusual +achievement, and therefore tread upon quaggy premises. Yet I do but avail +myself of to-day's privilege.... It is an odd thing that people will +facilely assent to Don Adriano's protestation against a certain travestying +of Hector,--"Sweet chucks, beat not the bones of the dead, for when he +breathed he was a man,"--even while through the instant the tide of romance +will be setting quite otherwhither, with their condonation. For in all +the best approved romances the more sumptuous persons of antiquity are +very guilty of twaddle on at least one printed page in ten, and nobody +remonstrates; and here is John Bulmer, too, lugged from the grave for your +delectation. + +I presume, however, to palliate the offence. The curious may find the gist +of what I narrate concerning Ormskirk in Heinrich Loewe's biography of the +man, and will there discover that with established facts I have not made +bold to juggle. Only when knowledge failed have I bridged the void with +speculation. Perhaps I have guessed wrongly: the feat is not unhuman, and +in provision against detection therein I can only protest that this lack of +omniscience was never due to malice; faithfully I have endeavored to deduce +from the known the probable, and in nothing to misrepresent to you this big +man of a little age, this trout among a school of minnows. + +Trout, mark you; I claim for Ormskirk no leviathan-ship. Rather I would +remind you of a passage from somewhat anterior memoirs: "The Emperor of +Lilliput is taller, by almost the breadth of my nail, than any of his +court, which alone is enough to strike an awe into his beholders." + +This, however, is not the place to expatiate on Ormskirk's extraordinary +career; his rise from penury and obscurity, tempered indeed by gentle +birth, to the priviest secrets of his Majesty's council,--climbing +the peerage step by step, as though that institution had been a +garden-ladder,--may be read of in the history books. + +"I collect titles as an entomologist does butterflies," he is recorded to +have said: "and I find the gaudier ones the cheapest. My barony I got for +a very heinous piece of perjury, my earldom for not running away until the +latter end of a certain battle, my marquisate for hoodwinking a half-senile +Frenchman, and my dukedom for fetching in a quack doctor when he was sore +needed by a lady whom the King at that time delighted to honor." + +It was, you observe, a day of candors. + + +I + +The Duke of Ormskirk, then (one gleans from Loewe's pages), dismissed from +mind the Audaine conspiracy. It was a pity to miss the salutary effect of a +few political executions just then, but after all there was nothing to be +done about it. So the Duke turned to the one consolation offered by the +affair, and set out for Halvergate House, the home of Marian Heleigh's +father. There one finds him, six days later, deep in a consultation with +his secretary, which in consideration of the unseasonable warmth was held +upon the east terrace. + +"Yes, I think we had better have the fellow hanged on the thirteenth," said +Ormskirk, as he leisurely affixed his signature. "The date seems eminently +appropriate. Now the papers concerning the French treaty, if you please, +Mr. Langton." + +The impassive-faced young man who sat opposite placed a despatch-box +between them. "These were sent down from London only last night, sir. +Mr. Morfit [Footnote: Perhaps the most adroit of all the many spies in +Ormskirk's employment. It was this same Morfit who in 1756 accompanied +Damiens into France as far as Calais; and see page 16.] has been somewhat +dilatory." + +"Eh, it scarcely matters. I looked them over in bed this morning and found +them quite correct, Mr. Langton, quite--Why, heyday!" the Duke demanded, +"what's this? You have brought me the despatch-box from my dresser--not, +as I distinctly told you, from the table by my bed. Nay, I have had quite +enough of mistakes concerning despatch-boxes, Mr. Langton." + +Mr. Langton stammered that the error was natural. Two despatch-boxes were +in appearances so similar-- + +"Never make excuses, Mr. Langton. '_Qui s'excuse--_' You can complete the +proverb, I suppose. Bring me Morfit's report this afternoon, then. Yes, +that appears to be all. You may go now, Mr. Langton. No, you may leave that +box, I think, since it is here. O man, man, a mistake isn't high treason! +Go away, Mr. Langton! you annoy me." + +Left alone, the Duke of Ormskirk sat for a while, tapping his fingers +irresolutely against the open despatch-box. He frowned a little, for, with +fair reason to believe Tom Langton his son, he found the boy too stolid, +too unimaginative, to go far. It seemed to Ormskirk that none of his +illegitimate children displayed any particular promise, and he sighed. Then +he took a paper from the despatch-box, and began to read. + +He sat, as one had said, upon the east terrace of Halvergate House. Behind +him a tall yew-hedge shut off the sunlight from the table where he and +Tom Langton had earlier completed divers businesses; in front of him a +balustrade, ivy-covered, and set with flower-pots of stone, empty as yet, +half screened the terraced gardens that sank to the artificial lake below. + +The Duke could see only a vast expanse of sky and a stray bit of Halvergate +printing the horizon with turrets, all sober gray save where the two +big copper cupolas of the south facade burned in the April sun; but by +bending forward you glimpsed close-shaven lawns dotted with clipped trees +and statues,--as though, he reflected, Glumdalclitch had left her toys +scattered haphazard about a green blanket--and the white of the broad +marble stairway descending to the sunlit lake, and, at times, the flash +of a swan's deliberate passage across the lake's surface. All white and +green and blue the vista was, and of a monastic tranquillity, save for +the plashing of a fountain behind the yew-hedge and the grumblings of an +occasional bee that lurched complainingly on some by-errand of the hive. + +Presently his Grace of Ormskirk replaced the papers in the despatch-box, +and, leaning forward, sighed. "_Non_ _sum qualis eram sub bonae regno +Cynarae_," said his Grace of Ormskirk. He had a statesman-like partiality +for the fag-end of an alcaic. + +Then he lifted his head at the sound of a girl's voice. Somewhere rearward +to the hedge the girl idly sang--an old song of Thomas Heywood's,--in a +serene contralto, low-pitched and effortless, but very sweet. Smilingly the +Duke beat time. + +Sang the girl: + + "Pack clouds away, and welcome, day! + With night we banish sorrow: + Sweet air, blow soft; mount, lark, aloft, + To give my love good-morrow. + Wings from the wind to please her mind, + Notes from the lark I'll borrow: + Bird, prune thy wing; nightingale, sing, + To give my love good-morrow." + +And here the Duke chimed in with a sufficiently pleasing baritone: + + "To give my love good-morrow, + Notes from them all I'll borrow." + +"O heavens!" spoke the possessor of the contralto, "I would have thought +you were far too busy sending people to gaol and arranging their execution, +and so on, to have any time for music. I am going for a walk in the forest, +Jack." Considering for a moment, she added, "You may come, too, if you +like." + +But the concession was made so half-heartedly that in the instant the +Duke of Ormskirk raised a dissenting hand. "I would not annoy you for an +emperor's ransom. Go in peace, my child." + +Lady Marian Heleigh stood at an opening in the yew-hedge and regarded him +for a lengthy interval in silence. Slender, men called her, and women "a +bean pole." There was about her a great deal of the child and something of +the wood-nymph. She had abundant hair, the color of a dead oak-leaf, and +her skin was clear, with a brown tinge. Her eyes puzzled you by being +neither brown nor green consistently; no sooner had you convicted them of +verdancy than they shifted to the hue of polished maple, and vice versa; +but they were too large for her face, which narrowed rather abruptly +beneath a broad, low forehead, and they flavored her aspect with the shrewd +innocence of a kitten. She was by ordinary grave; but, animated, her +countenance quickened with somewhat the glow of a brown diamond; then her +generous eyes flashed and filmed like waters moving under starlight, then +you knew she was beautiful. All in all, you saw in Marian a woman designed +to be petted, a Columbine rather than a Cleopatra; her lures would never +shake the stability of a kingdom, but would inevitably gut its toy-shops; +and her departure left you meditative less of high enterprises than of +buying something for her. + +Now Marian considered her betrothed, and seemed to come at last to a +conclusion that skirted platitude. "Jack, two people can be fond of each +other without wanting to be together all the time. And I really am fond of +you, Jack." + +"I would be a fool if I questioned the first statement," rejoined the Duke; +"and if I questioned the second, very miserable. Nevertheless, you go in +pursuit of strange gods, and I decline to follow." + +Her eyebrows interrogated him. + +"You are going," the Duke continued, "in pursuit of gods beside whom I +esteem Zidonian Ashtoreth, and Chemosh, and Milcom, the abomination of +the Ammonites, to be commendable objects of worship. You will pardon my +pedantic display of learning, for my feelings are strong. You are going +to sit in the woods. You will probably sit under a youngish tree, and its +branches will sway almost to the ground and make a green, sun-steeped tent +about you, as though you sat at the heart of an emerald. You will hear the +kindly wood-gods go steathily about the forest, and you will know that they +are watching you, but you will never see them. From behind every tree-bole +they will watch you; you feel it, but you never, never quite see them. +Presently the sweet, warm odors of the place and its perpetual whispering +and the illimitably idiotic boasting of the birds,--that any living +creature should be proud of having constructed one of their nasty little +nests is a reflection to baffle understanding,--this hodge-podge of +sensations, I say, will intoxicate you. Yes, it will thoroughly intoxicate +you, Marian, and you sit there quite still, in a sort of stupor, drugged +into the inebriate's magnanimity, firmly believing that the remainder of +your life will be throughout of finer texture,--earth-spurning, free from +all pettiness, and at worst vexed only by the noblest sorrows. Bah!" cried +the Duke; "I have no patience with such nonsense! You will believe it to +the tiniest syllable, that wonderful lying message which April whispers to +every living creature that is young,--then you will return to me, a slim, +star-eyed Maenad, and will see that I am wrinkled. But do you go your ways, +none the less, for April is waiting for you yonder,--beautiful, mendacious, +splendid April. And I? Faith, April has no message for me, my dear." + +He laughed, but with a touch of wistfulness; and the girl came to him, +laying her hand upon his arm, surprised into a sort of hesitant affection. + +"How did you know, Jack? How did you, know that--things, invisible, +gracious things, went about the spring woods? I never thought that you knew +of them. You always seemed so sensible. I have reasoned it out, though," +Marian went on, sagaciously wrinkled as to the brow. "They are probably the +heathen fauns and satyrs and such,--one feels somehow that they are all +men. Don't you, Jack? Well, when the elder gods were sent packing from +Olympus there was naturally no employment left for these sylvan folk. So +April took them into her service. Each year she sends them about every +forest on her errands: she sends them to make up daffodil-cups, for +instance, which I suppose is difficult, for evidently they make them out +of sunshine; or to pencil the eyelids of the narcissi--narcissi are brazen +creatures, Jack, and use a deal of kohl; or to marshal the fleecy young +clouds about the sky; or to whistle the birds up from the south. Oh, she +keeps them busy, does April! And 'tis true that if you be quite still you +can hear them tripping among the dead leaves; and they watch you--with +very bright, twinkling little eyes, I think,--but you never see them. +And always, always there is that enormous whispering,--half-friendly, +half-menacing,--as if the woods were trying to tell you something. 'Tis +not only the foliage rustling.... No, I have often thought it sounded like +some gigantic foreigner--some Titan probably,--trying in his own queer +and outlandish language to tell you something very important, something +that means a deal to you, and to you in particular. Has not anybody ever +understood him?" + +He smiled. "And I, too, have dwelt in Arcadia," said his Grace of Ormskirk. +"Yes, I once heard April's message, Marian, for all my crow's-feet. But +that was a long while ago, and perhaps I have forgotten it. I cannot tell, +my dear. It is only from April in her own person that one hears this +immemorial message. And as for me? Eh, I go into the April woods, and I +find trees there of various sizes that pay no attention to me, and shrill, +dingy little birds that deafen me, and it may be a gaudy flower or two, +and, in any event, I find a vast quantity of sodden, decaying leaves to +warn me the place is no fitting haunt for a gentleman afflicted with +rheumatism. So I come away, my dear." + +Marian looked him over for a moment. "You are not really old," she said, +with rather conscious politeness. "And you are wonderfully well-preserved. +Why, Jack, do you mind--not being foolish?" she demanded, on a sudden. + +He debated the matter. Then, "Yes," the Duke of Ormskirk conceded, "I +suppose I do, at the bottom of my heart, regret that lost folly. A part +of me died, you understand, when it vanished, and it is not exhilarating +to think of one's self as even partially dead. Once--I hardly know"--he +sought the phrase,--"once this was a spacious and inexplicable world, with +a mystery up every lane and an adventure around each street-corner; a +world inhabited by most marvelous men and women,--some amiable, and some +detestable, but every one of them very interesting. And now I miss the +wonder of it all. You will presently discover, my dear, that youth is only +an ingenious prologue to whet one's appetite for a rather dull play. Eh, I +am no pessimist,--one may still find satisfaction in the exercise of mind +and body, in the pleasures of thought and taste and in other titillations +of one's faculties. Dinner is good and sleep, too, is excellent. But we men +and women tend, upon too close inspection, to appear rather paltry flies +that buzz and bustle aimlessly about, and breed perhaps, and eventually +die, and rot, and are swept away from this fragile window-pane of time that +opens on eternity." + +"If you are, indeed, the sort of person you describe," said Marian, +reflectively, "I do not at all blame April for having no communication with +anyone possessed of such extremely unpleasant opinions. But for my own +part, I shall never cease to wonder what it is that the woods whisper +about." + +Appraising her, he hazarded a cryptic question, "Vase of delights, and have +you never--cared?" + +"Why, yes, I think so," she answered, readily enough. "At least, I used +to be very fond of Humphrey Degge,--that is the Marquis of Venour's place +yonder, you know, just past the spur of the forest,--but he was only a +younger son, so of course Father wouldn't hear of it. That was rather +fortunate, as Humphrey by and by went mad about Dorothy's blue eyes and +fine shape,--I think her money had a deal to do with it, too, and in any +event, she will be fat as a pig at thirty,--and so we quarrelled. And I +minded it--at first. And now--well, I scarcely know." Marian hesitated. "He +was a handsome man, but that ridiculous cavalry moustache of his was so +bristly--" + +"I beg your pardon?" said the Duke. + +"--that it disfigured him dreadfully," said she, with firmness. She had +colored. + +His Grace of Ormskirk was moved to mirth. "Child, child, you are so +deliciously young it appears a monstrous crime to marry you to an old +fellow like me!" He took her firm, soft hand in his. "Are you quite sure +you can endure me, Marian?" + +"Why, but of course I want to marry you," she said, naively surprised. "How +else could I be Duchess of Ormskirk?" + +Again he chuckled. "You are a worldly little wretch," he stated; "but if +you want my title for a new toy, it is at your service. And now be off with +you,--you and your foolish woods, indeed!" + +Marian went a slight distance and then turned about, troubled. "I am really +very fond of you, Jack," she said, conscientiously. + +"Be off with you!" the Duke scolded. "You should be ashamed of yourself to +practice such flatteries and blandishments on a defenceless old gentleman. +You had best hurry, too, for if you don't I shall probably kiss you," he +threatened. "I, also," he added, with point. + +She blew him a kiss from her finger-tips and went away singing. + +Sang Marian: + + "Blackbird and thrush, in every bush, + Stare, linnet, and cock-sparrow, + You pretty elves, amongst yourselves, + Sing my fair love good-morrow. + To give my love good-morrow, + Sing birds, in every furrow." + + +II + +Left to his own resources, the Duke of Ormskirk sat down beside the table +and fell to making irrelevant marks upon a bit of paper. He hummed the air +of Marian's song. There was a vague contention in his face. Once he put +out his hand toward the open despatch-box, but immediately he sighed and +pushed, it farther from him. Presently he propped his chin upon both hands +and stayed in the attitude for a long while, staring past the balustrade at +the clear, pale sky of April. + +Thus Marian's father, the Earl of Brudenel, found Ormskirk. The Earl +was lean and gray, though only three years older than his prospective +son-in-law, and had been Ormskirk's intimate since boyhood. Ormskirk had +for Lord Brudenel's society the liking that a successful person usually +preserves for posturing in the gaze of his outrivalled school-fellows: +Brudenel was an embodied and flattering commentary as to what a less able +man might make of chances far more auspicious than Ormskirk ever enjoyed. +All failure the Earl's life had been; in London they had long ago forgotten +handsome Harry Heleigh and the composure with which he nightly shoved his +dwindling patrimony across the gaming-table; about Halvergate men called +him "the muddled Earl," and said of him that his heart died, with his young +wife some eighteen years back. Now he vegetated in the home of his fathers, +contentedly, a veteran of life, retaining still a mild pride in his past +vagaries; [Footnote: It was then well said of him by Claridge, "It is +Lord Henry Heleigh's vanity to show that he is a man of pleasure as well +as of business; and thus, in settlement, the expedition he displays +toward a fellow-gambler is equitably balanced by his tardiness toward +a too-credulous shoemaker."] and kindly time had armed him with the +benumbing, impenetrable indifference of the confessed failure. He was +abstractedly courteous to servants, and he would not, you felt, have given +even to an emperor his undivided attention. For the rest, the former +wastrel had turned miser, and went noticeably shabby as a rule, but this +morning he was trimly clothed, for he was returning homeward from the +quarter-sessions at Winstead. + +"Dreamer!" said the Earl. "I do not wonder that you grow fat." + +The Duke smiled up at him. "Confound you, Harry!" said he, "I had just +overreached myself into believing I had made what the world calls a mess +of my career and was supremely happy. There are disturbing influences +abroad to-day." He waved his hand toward the green-and-white gardens. "Old +friend, you permit disreputable trespassers about Halvergate. 'See you not +Goldy-locks there, in her yellow gown and green sleeves? the profane pipes, +the tinkling timbrels?' Spring is at her wiles yonder,--Spring, the liar, +the queen-cheat, Spring that tricks all men into happiness." + +"'Fore Gad," the Earl capped his quotation, "if the heathen man could stop +his ears with wax against the singing woman of the sea, then do you the +like with your fingers against the trollop of the forest." + +"Faith, time seals them firmlier than wax. You and I may sit snug now with +never a quicker heart-beat for all her lures. Yet I seem to remember,--once +a long while ago when we old fellows were somewhat sprier,--I, too, seem to +remember this Spring-magic." + +"Indeed," observed the Earl, seating himself ponderously, "if you refer to +a certain inclination at that period of the year toward the likeliest wench +in the neighborhood, so do I. 'Tis an obvious provision of nature, I take +it, to secure the perpetuation of the species. Spring comes, and she sets +us all a-mating--humanity, partridges, poultry, pigs, every blessed one of +us she sets a-mating. Propagation, Jack--propagation is necessary, d'ye +see; because," the Earl conclusively demanded, "what on earth would become +of us if we didn't propagate?" + +"The argument is unanswerable," the Duke conceded. "Yet I miss it,--this +Spring magic that no longer sets the blood of us staid fellows a-fret." + +"And I," said Lord Brudenel, "do not. It got me into the deuce of a scrape +more than once." + +"Yours is the sensible view, no doubt....Yet I miss it. Ah, it is not only +the wenches and the red lips of old years,--it is not only that at this +season lasses' hearts grow tender. There are some verses--" The Duke +quoted, with a half-guilty air: + + "Now I loiter, and dream to the branches swaying + In furtive conference,--high overhead-- + Atingle with rumors that Winter is sped + And over his ruins a world goes Maying. + + "Somewhere--impressively,--people are saying + Intelligent things (which their grandmothers said), + While I loiter, and dream to the branches swaying + In furtive conference, high overhead." + +"Verses!" The Earl snorted. "At your age!" + + "Here the hand of April, unwashed from slaying + Earth's fallen tyrant--for Winter is dead,-- + Uncloses anemones, staining them red: + And her daffodils guard me in squads,--displaying + Intrepid lances lest wisdom tread + Where I loiter and dream to the branches' swaying-- + +"Well, Harry, and to-day I cannot do so any longer. That is what I most +miss,--the ability to lie a-sprawl in the spring grass and dream out an +uncharted world,--a dream so vivid that, beside it, reality grew tenuous, +and the actual world became one of childhood's shrug-provoking bugbears +dimly remembered." + +"I do not understand poetry," the Earl apologetically observed. "It appears +to me unreasonable to advance a statement simply because it happens to +rhyme with a statement you have previously made. And that is what all +you poets do. Why, this is very remarkable," said Lord Brudenel, with a +change of tone; "yonder is young Humphrey Degge with Marian. I had thought +him in bed at Tunbridge. Did I not hear something of an affair with a +house-breaker--?" + +Then the Earl gave an exclamation, for in full view of them Lord Humphrey +Degge was kissing Lord Brudenel's daughter. + +"Oh, the devil!" said the Earl. "Oh, the insolent young ape!" + +"Nay," said the Duke, restraining him; "not particularly insolent, Harry. +If you will observe more closely you will see that Marian does not exactly +object to his caresses--quite the contrary, I would say, I told you that +you should not permit Spring about the premises." + +The Earl wheeled in an extreme of astonishment. "Come, come, sir! she is +your betrothed wife! Do you not intend to kill the fellow?" + +"My faith, why?" said his Grace of Ormskirk, with a shrug. "As for +betrothals, do you not see that she is already very happily paired?" + +In answer Brudenel raised his hands toward heaven, in just the contention +of despair and rage appropriate to parental affection when an excellent +match is imperilled by a chit's idiocy. + +Marian and Lord Humphrey Degge were mounting from the scrap of forest that +juts from Pevis Hill, like a spur from a man's heel, between Agard Court +and Halvergate. Their progress was not conspicuous for celerity. Now they +had attained to the tiny, elm-shadowed plateau beyond the yew-hedge, +and there Marian paused. Two daffodils had fallen from the great +green-and-yellow cluster in her left hand. Humphrey Degge lifted them, +and then raised to his mouth the slender fingers that reached toward the +flowers. The man's pallor, you would have said, was not altogether due to +his recent wound. + +She stood looking up at him, smiling a little timidly, her teeth glinting +through parted lips, her eyes star-fire, her cheeks blazoning gules in his +honor; she seemed not to breathe at all. A faint twinge woke in the Duke +of Ormskirk's heart. Most women smiled upon him, but they smiled beneath +furtive eyes, sometimes beneath rapacious eyes, and many smiled with +reddened lips which strove, uneasily, to provoke a rental; how long was it +he wondered, simply, since any woman had smiled as Marian smiled now, for +him? + +"I think it is a dream," said Marian. + +From the vantage of the yew-hedge, "I would to Heaven I could think so, +too," observed her father. + + +III + +The younger people had passed out of sight. But from the rear of the hedge +came to the Duke and Lord Brudenel, staring blankly at each other across +the paper-littered table, a sort of duet. First tenor, then contralto, then +tenor again,--and so on, with many long intervals of silence, during which +you heard the plashing of the fountain, grown doubly audible, and, it might +be, the sharp, plaintive cry of a bird intensified by the stillness. + +"I think it is a dream," said Marian.... + +"What eyes you have, Marian!" + +"But you have not kissed the littlest finger of all. See, it is quite stiff +with indignation." + +"They are green, and brown, and yellow--O Marian, there are little gold +specks in them like those in _eau de Dantzig_! They are quite wonderful +eyes, Marian. And your hair is all streaky gold-and-brown. You should not +have two colors in your hair, Marian. Marian, did any one ever tell you +that you are very beautiful?" + +Silence. "Pee-weet!" said a bird. "Tweet?" + +And Marian replied: "I am devoted to Dorothy, of course, but I have never +admired her fashion of making advances to every man she meets. Yes, she +does." + +"Nay, 'twas only her money that lured me, to do her justice. It appeared so +very sensible to marry an heiress.... But how can any man be sensible so +long as he is haunted by the memory of your eyes? For see how bright they +are,--see, here in the water. Two stars have fallen into the fountain, +Marian." + +"You are handsomer so. Your nose is too short, but here in the fountain you +are quite handsome--" + +"Marian,--" + +"I wonder how many other women's fingers you have kissed--like that. Ah, +don't tell me, Humphrey! Humphrey, promise me that you will always lie to +me when I ask you about those other women. Lie to me, my dear, and I will +know that you are lying and love you all the better for it.... You should +not have told me about Dorothy. How often did you kiss all of Dorothy's +finger-tips one by one, in just that foolish, dear way?" + +"But who was this Dorothy you speak of, Marian? I have forgotten. Oh, +yes--we quarrelled--over some woman,--and I went away. I left you for a +mere heiress, Marian. You! And five days, ago while I lay abed, wounded, +they told me that you, were to marry Ormskirk. I thought I would go mad.... +Eh, I remember now. But what do these things matter? Is it not of far +greater importance that the sunlight turns your hair to pure topaz?" + +"Ah, my hair, my eyes! Is it these you care for? You would not love me, +then, if I were old and ugly?" + +"Eh,--I love you." + +"Animal!" + +There was a longer silence now. "Tweet!" said a bird, pertly. + +Then Marian said, "Let us go to my father." + +"To tell him--?" + +"Why, that I love you, I suppose, and that I cannot marry Jack, not even +to be a duchess. Oh, I did so much want to be a duchess! But when you came +back to me yonder in the forest, somehow I stopped wanting anything more. +Something--I hardly know--something seemed to say, as you came striding +through the dead leaves, laughing and so very pale,--something seemed to +say, 'You love him'--oh, quite audibly." + +"Audibly! Why, the woods whispered it, the birds trilled it, screamed +it, the very leaves underfoot crackled assent. Only they said, 'You love +her--the girl yonder with glad, frightened eyes, Spring's daughter.' Oh, I +too, heard it, Marian! 'Follow,' the birds sang, 'follow, follow, follow, +for yonder is the heart's desire!" + +The Duke of Ormskirk raised his head, his lips sketching a whistle. "Ah! +ah!" he muttered. "Eureka! I have recaptured it--the message of April." + + +IV + +When these two had gone the Duke flung out his hands in a comprehensive +gesture of giving up the entire matter. "Well," said he, "you see how it +is!" + +"I do," Lord Brudenel assented. "And if you intend to sit patient under it, +I, at least, wear a sword. Confound it, Jack, do you suppose I am going +to have promiscuous young men dropping out of the skies and embracing my +daughter?" The Earl became forceful in his language. + +"Harry,--" the Duke began. + +"The fellow hasn't a penny--not a stick or a stiver to his name! He's only +a rascally, impudent younger son--and even Venour has nothing except Agard +Court yonder! That--that crow's nest!" Lord Brudenel spluttered. "They +mooned about together a great deal a year ago, but I thought nothing of +it; then he went away, and she never spoke of him again. Never spoke of +him--oh, the jade!" + +The Duke of Ormskirk considered the affair, a mild amusement waking in his +plump face. + +"Old friend," said he, at length, "it is my opinion that we are perilously +near to being a couple of fools. We planned this marriage, you and I--dear, +dear, we planned it when Marian was scarcely out of her cradle! But we +failed to take nature into the plot, Harry. It was sensible--Oh, granted! +I obtained a suitable mistress for Ingilby and Bottreaux Towers, a +magnificent ornament for my coach and my opera-box; while you--your pardon, +old friend, if I word it somewhat grossly,--you, in effect, obtained a +wealthy and not uninfluential husband for your daughter. Nay, I think you +are fond of me, but that is beside the mark; it was not Jack Bulmer who was +to marry your daughter, but the Duke of Ormskirk. The thing was as logical +as a sale of bullocks,--value for value. But now nature intervenes, +and"--he snapped his fingers,--"eh, well, since she wants this Humphrey +Degge, of course she must have him." + +Lord Brudenel mentioned several penalties which he would voluntarily incur +in case of any such preposterous marriage. + +"Your style," the Duke regretfully observed, "is somewhat more original +than your subject. You have a handsome daughter to barter, and you want +your price. The thing is far from uncommon. Yet you shall have your price, +Harry. What estate do you demand of your son-in-law?" + +"What the devil are you driving at?" said Lord Brudenel. + +Composedly the Duke of Ormskirk spread out his hands. "You have, in effect, +placed Marian in the market," he said, "and I offer to give Lord Humphrey +Degge the money with which to purchase her." + +"Tis evident," the Earl considered, "that you are demented!" + +"Because I willingly part with money? But then I have a great deal of +money. I have money, and I have power, and the King occasionally pats me +upon the shoulder, and men call me 'your Grace,' instead of 'my Lord,' as +they do you. So I ought to be very happy, ought I not, Harry? Ah, yes, +I ought to be entirely happy, because I have had everything, with the +unimportant exception of the one thing I wanted." + +But Lord Brudenel had drawn himself erect, stiffly. "I am to understand, +then, from this farrago, that on account of the--um--a--incident we have +just witnessed you decline to marry my daughter?" + +"I would sooner cut off my right hand," said the Duke, "for I am fonder of +Marian than I am of any other living creature." + +"Oh, very well!" the Earl conceded, sulkily. "Umfraville wants her. He is +only a marquis, of course, but so far as money is concerned, I believe +he is a thought better off than you. I would have preferred you as a +son-in-law, you understand, but since you withdraw--why, then, let it be +Umfraville." + +Now the Duke looked up into his face for some while. "You would do that! +You would sell Marian to Umfraville--[Footnote: "Whose entrance blushing +Satan did deny Lest hell be thought no better than a sty."] to a person who +unites the continence of a partridge with the graces of a Berkshire hog--to +that lean whoremonger, to that disease-rotted goat! Because he has the +money! Why, Harry, what a car you are!" + +Lord Brudenel bowed, "My Lord Duke, you are to-day my guest. I apprehend +you will presently be leaving Halvergate, however, and as soon--as that +regrettable event takes place, I shall see to it a friend wait upon you +with the length of my sword. Meanwhile I venture to reserve the privilege +of managing my family affairs at my own discretion." + +"I do not fight with hucksters," the Duke flung at him, "and you are one. +Oh, you peddler! Can you not understand that I am trying to buy your +daughter's happiness?" + +"I intend that my daughter shall make a suitable match," replied the Earl, +stubbornly, "and she shall. If Marian is a sensible girl--and, barring +to-day, I have always esteemed her such,--she will find happiness in +obeying her father's mandates: otherwise--" He waved the improbable +contingency aside. + +"Sensible! Faith, can you not see, even now, that to be sensible is not the +highest wisdom? You and I are sensible as the world goes,--and in God's +name, what good does it do us? Here we sit, two miserable and empty-veined +old men squabbling across a deal-table, breaking up a friendship of +thirty years. And yonder Marian and this Humphrey Degge--who are +within a measurable distance of insanity, if their conversation be the +touchstone,--yet tread the pinnacles of some seventh heaven of happiness. +April has brought them love, Harry. Oh, I concede their love is folly! But +it is all folly, Harry Heleigh. Purses, titles, blue ribbons, and the envy +of our fellows are the toys which we struggle for, we sensible men; and in +the end we find them only toys, and, gaining them, we gain only weariness. +And love, too, is a toy; but, gaining love, we gain, at least, a temporary +happiness. There is the difference, Harry Heleigh." + +"Oh, have done with your, balderdash!" said Lord Brudenel. He spoke +irritably, for he knew his position to be guaranteed by common-sense, and +his slow wrath was kindling at opposition. + +His Grace of Ormskirk rose to his feet, all tension. In the act his hand +struck against the open despatch-box; afterward, with a swift alteration +of countenance, he overturned this box and scattered the contents about +the table. For a moment he seemed to forget Lord Brudenel; quite without +warning Ormskirk flared into rage. + +"Harry Heleigh, Harry Heleigh!" he cried, as he strode across the terrace, +and caught Lord Brudenel roughly by the shoulder, "are you not content to +go to your grave without killing another woman? Oh, you dotard miser!--you +haberdasher!--haven't I offered you money, an isn't money the only thing +you are now capable of caring for? Give the girl to Degge, you huckster!" + +Lord Brudenel broke from the Duke's grasp. Brudenel was asplutter with +anger. "I will see you damned first. You offer money,--I fling the money +in your fat face. Look you, you have just insulted, me, and now you +offer--money! Another insult. John Bulmer, I would not accept an affront +like this from an archangel. You are my guest, but I am only flesh and +blood. I swear to you this is the most deliberate act of my life." Lord +Brudenel struck him full upon the cheek. + +"Pardon," said the Duke of Ormskirk. He stood rigid, his arms held stiff at +his sides, his hands clenched; the red mark showed plain against an ashy +countenance. "Pardon me for a moment." Once or twice he opened and shut his +eyes like an automaton. "And stop behaving so ridiculously. I cannot fight +you. I have other matters to attend to. We are wise, Harry,--you and I. +We know that love sometimes does not endure; sometimes it flares up +at a girl's glance, quite suddenly, and afterward smoulders out into +indifference or even into hatred. So, say we, let all sensible people marry +for money, for then in any event you get what you marry for,--a material +benefit, a tangible good, which does no vanish when the first squabble, or +perhaps the first gray hair, arrives. That is sensible; but women, Harry, +are not always sensible--" + +"Draw, you coward!" Lord Brudenel snarled at him. The Earl had already +lugged out his ineffectual dress sword, and would have been, as he stood on +guard, a ludicrous figure had he not been rather terrible. His rage shook +him visibly, and his obstinate mouth twitched and snapped like that of a +beast cornered. All gray he was, and the sun glistened on his gray tye-wig +as he waited. His eyes were coals. + +But Ormskirk had regained composure. "You know that I am not a coward," the +Duke said, equably. "I have proven it many times. Besides, you overlook two +details. One is that I have no sword with me, I am quite unarmed. The other +detail is that only gentlemen fight duels, and just now we are hucksters, +you and I, chaffering over Marian's happiness. So I return to my +bargaining. You will not sell Marian's happiness to me for money? Why, +then--remember, we are only hucksters, you and I,--I will purchase it by a +dishonorable action. I will show you a woman's letters,--some letters I was +going to burn romantically before I married--Instead, I wish you to read +them." + +He pushed the papers lying upon the table toward Lord Brudenel. Afterward +Ormskirk turned away and stood looking over the ivy-covered balustrade into +the gardens below. All white and green and blue the vista was, and of a +monastic tranquillity, save for the plashing of the fountain behind the +yew-hedge. From the gardens at his feet irresolute gusts brought tepid +woodland odors. He heard the rustling of papers, heard Lord Brudenel's +sword fall jangling to the ground. The Duke turned. + +"And for twenty years I have been eating my heart out with longing for +her," the Earl said. "And--and I thought you were my friend, Jack." + +"She was not your wife when I first knew her. But John Bulmer was a +penniless nobody,--so they gave her to you, an earl's heir, those sensible +parents of hers. I never saw her again, though--as you see,--she wrote to +me sometimes. And her parents did the sensible thing; but I think they +killed her, Harry." + +"Killed her?" Lord Brudenel echoed, stupidly. Then on a sudden it was +singular to see the glare in his eyes puffed out like a candle. "I killed +her," he whispered; "why, I killed Alison,--I!" He began to laugh. "Now +that is amusing, because she was the one thing in the world I ever loved. +I remember that she used to shudder when I kissed her. I thought it was +because she was only a brown and thin and timid child, who would be wiser +in love's tricks by and by. Now I comprehend 'twas because every kiss was +torment to her, because every time I touched her 'twas torment. So she +died very slowly, did Alison,--and always I was at hand with my kisses, my +pet names, and my paddlings,--killing her, you observe, always urging her +graveward. Yes, and yet there is nothing in these letters to show how much +she must have loathed me!" he said, in a mild sort of wonder. He appeared +senile now, the shrunken and calamitous shell of the man he had been within +the moment. + +The Duke of Ormskirk put an arm about him. "Old friend, old friend!" said +he. + +"Why did you not tell me?" the Earl said. "I loved you, Jack. I worshipped +her. I would never willingly have seen you two unhappy." + +"Her parents would have done as you planned to do,--they would have given +their daughter to the next richest suitor. I was nobody then. So the wisdom +of the aged slew us, Harry,--slew Alison utterly, and left me with a living +body, indeed, but with little more. I do not say that body has not amused +itself. Yet I too, loved her, Harry Heleigh. And when I saw this new +Alison--for Marian is her mother, face, heart, and soul,--why, some wraith +of emotion stirred in me, some thrill, some not quite forgotten pulse. It +seemed Alison come back from the grave. Love did not reawaken, for youth's +fervor was gone out of me, yet presently I fell a-dreaming over my Madeira +on long winter evenings,--sedate and tranquil dreams of this new Alison +flitting about Ingilby, making the splendid, desolate place into a home. Am +old man's fancies, Harry,--fancies bred of my loneliness, for I am lonely +nowadays. But my dreams, I find, were not sufficiently comprehensive; for +they did not anticipate April,--and nature,--and Lord Humphrey Degge. We +must yield to that triumvirate, we sensible old men. Nay, we are wise as +the world goes, but we have learned, you and I, that to be sensible is not +the highest wisdom. Marian is her mother in soul, heart, and feature. Don't +let the old tragedy be repeated, Harry. Let her have this Degge! Let Marian +have her chance of being happy, for a year or two...." + +But Lord Brudenel had paid very little attention. "I suppose so," he said, +when the Duke had ended. "Oh, I suppose so. Jack, she was always kind and +patient and gentle, you understand, but she used to shudder when I kissed +her," he repeated, dully,--"shudder, Jack." He sat staring at his sword +lying there on the ground, as though it fascinated him. + +"Ah, but,--old friend," the Duke cried, with his hand upon Lord Brudenel's +shoulder, "forgive me! It was the only way." + +Lord Brudenel rose to his feet. "Oh, yes! why, yes, I forgive you, if that +is any particular comfort to you. It scarcely seems of any importance, +though. The one thing which really matters is that I loved her, and I +killed her. Oh, beyond doubt, I forgive you. But now that you have made my +whole past a hideous stench to me, and have proven the love I was so proud +of--the one quite clean, quite unselfish thing in my life, I thought it, +Jack,--to have been only my lust vented on a defenceless woman,--why, just +now, I have not time to think of forgiveness. Yes, Marian may marry Degge +if she cares to. And I am sorry I took her mother away from you. I would +not have done it if I had known." + +Brudenel started away drearily, but when he had gone a little distance +turned back. + +"And the point of it is," he said, with a smile, "that I shall go on living +just as if nothing had happened, and shall probably live for a long, long +time. My body is so confoundedly healthy. How the deuce did you have the +courage to go on living?" he demanded, enviously. "You loved her and you +lost her. I'd have thought you would have killed yourself long ago." + +The Duke shrugged. "Yes, people do that in books. In books they have such +strong emotions--" + +Then Ormskirk paused for a heart-beat, looking down into the gardens. +Wonderfully virginal it all seemed to Ormskirk, that small portion of +a world upon the brink of renaissance: a tessellation of clean colors, +where the gravelled walkways were snow beneath the sun, and were in shadow +transmuted to dim violet tints; and for the rest, green ranging from the +sober foliage of yew and box and ilex to the pale glow of young grass +In the full sunlight; all green, save where the lake shone, a sapphire +green-girdled. Spring triumphed with a vaunting pageant. And in the +forest, in the air, even in the unplumbed sea-depths, woke the mating +impulse,--irresistible, borne as it might seem on the slow-rising tide +of grass that now rippled about the world. Everywhere they were mating; +everywhere glances allured and mouth met mouth, while John Bulmer went +alone without any mate or intimacy with anyone. + +Everywhere people were having emotions which Ormskirk envied. He had so few +emotions nowadays. Even all this posturing and talk about Alison Heleigh in +which he had just indulged began to savor somehow of play-acting. He had +loved Alison, of course, and that which he had said was true enough--in +a way,--but, after all, he had over-colored it. There had been in his +life so many interesting matters, and so many other women too, that the +loss of Alison could not be said to have blighted his existence quite +satisfactorily. No, John Bulmer had again been playing at the big emotions +which he heard about and coveted, just as at this very moment John Bulmer +was playing at being sophisticated and _blase_... with only poor old Harry +for audience.... + +"A great deal of me did die," the Duke heard this John Bulmer +saying,--"all, I suppose, except my carcass, Harry. And it seemed hardly +worth the trouble to butcher that also." + +"No," Lord Brudenel conceded, "I suppose not. I wonder, d'ye know, will +anything ever again seem really worth the trouble of doing it?" + +The Duke of Ormskirk took his arm. "Fy, Harry, bid the daws seek their food +elsewhere, for a gentleman may not wear his heart upon his sleeve. Empires +crumble, and hearts break, and we are blessed or damned, as Fate elects; +but through it all we find comfort in the reflection that dinner is good, +and sleep, too, is excellent. As for the future--eh, well, if it mean +little to us, it means a deal to Alison's daughter. Let us go to them, +Harry." + + + + +VII + +IN THE SECOND APRIL + + +_As Played at Bellegarde, in the April of 1750_ + +"_This passion is in honest minds the strongest incentive that can move the +soul of man to laudable accomplishments. Is a man just? Let him fall in +love and grow generous. It immediately makes the good which is in him shine +forth in new excellencies, and the ill vanish away without the pain of +contrition, but with a sudden amendment of heart._" + + +DRAMATIS PERSONAE + +DUKE OF ORMSKISK. + +DUC DE PUYSANGE, a true Frenchman, a pert, railing fribble, but at bottom a +man of parts. + +MARQUIS DE SOYECOURT, a brisk, conceited rake, and distant cousin to de +Puysange. + +CAZAIO, captain of brigands. + +DOM MICHEL FREGOSE, a lewd, rascally friar. + +GUITON, steward to de Puysange. + +PAWSEY, Ormskirk's man. + +ACHON, a knave. + +MICHAULT, another knave. + +DUCHESSE DE PUYSANGE. + +CLAIRE, sister to de Puysange, a woman of beauty and resolution, of a +literal humor. + +ATTENDANTS, BRIGANDS, and DRAGOONS; and, in the Proem, LORD HUMPHREY DEGGE +and LADY MARIAN HELEIGH. + + +SCENE + +First at Dover, thence shifting to Bellegarde-en-Poictesme and the adjacent +country. + + + + +IN THE SECOND APRIL + + +_PROEM:--More Properly an Apologue, and Treats of the Fallibility of Soap_ + +The Duke of Ormskirk left Halvergate on the following day, after +participation in two dialogues, which I abridge. + +Said the Duke to Lord Humphrey Degge: + +"You have been favored, sir, vastly beyond your deserts. I acquiesce, since +Fate is proverbially a lady, and to dissent were in consequence ungallant. +Shortly I shall find you more employment, at Dover, whither I am now going +to gull my old opponent and dear friend, Gaston de Puysange, in the matter +of this new compact between France and England. I shall look for you at +Dover, then, in three days' time." + +"And in vain, my Lord Duke," said the other. + +Now Ormskirk raised one eyebrow, after a fashion that he had. + +"Because I love Marian," said Lord Humphrey, "and because I mean to be less +unworthy of Marian than I have been heretofore. So that I can no longer be +your spy. Besides, in nature I lack aptitude for the trade. Eh, my Lord +Duke, have you already forgotten how I bungled the affair of Captain +Audaine and his associates?" + + +"But that was a maiden effort. And as I find--at alas! the cost of +decrepitude,--the one thing life teaches us is that many truisms are true. +'Practice makes perfect' is one of them. And faith, when you come to my +age, Lord Humphrey, you will not grumble at having to soil your hands +occasionally in the cause of common-sense." + +The younger man shook his head. "A week ago you would have found me +amenable enough to reason, since I was then a sensible person, and to be of +service to his Grace of Ormskirk was very sensible,--just as to marry Miss +Allonby, the young and beautiful heiress, was then the course pre-eminently +sensible. All the while I loved Marian, you understand. But I clung to +common-sense. Desperately I clung to common-sense. And yet--" He flung out +his hands. + +"Yes, there is by ordinary some plaguy _yet_," the Duke interpolated. + +"There is," cried Lord Humphrey Degge, "the swift and heart-grappling +recollection of the woman you gave up in the cause of common-sense,--roused +by some melody she liked, or some shade of color she was wont to wear, or +by hearing from other lips some turn of speech to which she was addicted. +My Lord Duke, that memory wakes on a sudden and clutches you by the throat, +and it chokes you. And one swears that common-sense--" + +"One swears that common-sense may go to the devil," said his Grace of +Ormskirk, "whence I don't say it didn't emanate! And one swears that, after +all, there is excellent stuff in you! Your idiotic conduct, sir, makes me +far happier than you know!" + +After some ten paces he turned, with a smile. "In the matter of soiling +one's hands--Personally I prefer them clean, sir, and particularly in the +case of Marian's husband. Had it been I, he must have stuck to prosaic +soap; with you in the role there is a difference. Faith, Lord Humphrey, +there is a decided difference, and if you be other than a monster of +depravity you will henceforth, I think, preserve your hands immaculate." + +To Marian the Duke said a vast number of things, prompted by a complaisant +thrill over the fact that, in view of the circumstances, his magnanimity +must to the unprejudiced appear profuse and his behavior tolerably heroic. + +"These are very absurd phrases," Marian considered, "since you will +never love anyone, I think--however much you may admire the color of her +eyes,--one-quarter so earnestly as you will always marvel at John Bulmer. +Or perhaps you have only to wait a little, Jack, till in her time and +season the elect woman shall come to you, just as she comes to all +men,--and then, for once in your existence, you will be sincere." + +"I go, provisionally, to seek this paragon at Dover," said his Grace of +Ormskirk, and he lifted her fingers toward his smiling lips; "but I shall +bear in mind, my dear, even in Dover, that sincerity is a devilishly +expensive virtue." + + +I + +It was on the thirteenth day of April that they signed the Second Treaty of +Dover, which not only confirmed its predecessor of Aix-la-Chapelle, but in +addition, with the brevity of lightning, demolished the last Stuarts' hope +of any further aid from France. And the French ambassador subscribed the +terms with a chuckle. + +"For on this occasion, Jean," he observed, as he pushed the paper from him, +"I think that honors are fairly even. You obtain peace at home, and in +India we obtain assistance for Dupleix; good, the benefit is quite mutual; +and accordingly, my friend, I must still owe you one requiting for that +Bavarian business." + +Ormskirk was silent until he had the churchwarden which he had just ignited +aglow. "That was the evening I had you robbed and beaten by footpads, was +it not? Faith, Gaston, I think you should rather be obliged to me, since it +taught you never to carry important papers in your pocket when you go about +your affairs of gallantry." + +"That beating with great sticks," the Duc de Puysange considered, "was the +height of unnecessity." + +And the Duke of Ormskirk shrugged. "A mere touch of verisimilitude, Gaston; +footpads invariably beat their victims. Besides, you had attempted to +murder me at Aix, you may remember." + +De Puysange was horrified. "My dear friend, when I set Villaneuve upon you +it was with express orders only to run you through the shoulder. Figure to +yourself: that abominable St. Severin had bribed your _chef_ to feed you +powdered glass in a ragout! But I dissented. 'Jean and I have been the +dearest enemies these ten years past,' I said. 'At every Court in Europe +we have lied to each other. If you kill him I shall beyond doubt presently +perish of ennui.' So, that France might escape a blow so crushing as the +loss of my services, St. Severin consented to disable you." + +"Believe me, I appreciate your intervention," Ormskirk stated, with his +usual sleepy smile; before this he had found amusement in the naivete of +his friend's self-approbation. + +"Not so! Rather you are a monument of ingratitude," the other complained. +"You conceive, Villaneuve was in price exorbitant. I snap my fingers. +'For a comrade so dear,' I remark, 'I gladly employ the most expensive of +assassins.' Yet before the face of such magnanimity you grumble." The Duc +de Puysange spread out his shapely hands. "I murder you! My adored Jean, I +had as lief make love to my wife." + +Ormskirk struck his finger-tips upon the table. "Faith, I knew there was +something I intended to ask of you, I want you to get me a wife." + +"In fact," de Puysange observed, "warfare being now at an end, it is only +natural that you should resort to matrimony. I can assure you it is an +admirable substitute. But who is the lucky Miss, my little villain?" + +"Why, that is for you to settle," Ormskirk said. "I had hoped you might +know of some suitable person." + +"_Ma foi_, my friend, if I were arbiter and any wife would suit you, I +would cordially desire you to take mine, for when a woman so incessantly +resembles an angel in conduct, her husband inevitably desires to see her +one in reality." + +"You misinterpret me, Gaston. This is not a jest. I had always intended +to marry as soon as I could spare the time, and now that this treaty is +disposed of, my opportunity has beyond doubt arrived. I am practically at +leisure until the autumn. At latest, though, I must marry by August, +in order to get the honeymoon off my hands before the convocation of +Parliament. For there will have to be a honeymoon, I suppose." + +"It is customary," de Puysange said. He appeared to deliberate something +entirely alien to this reply, however, and now sat silent for a matter +of four seconds, his countenance profoundly grave. He was a hideous man, +[Footnote: For a consideration of the vexed and delicate question whether +or no Gaston de Puysange was grandson to King Charles the Second of +England, the reader is referred to the third chapter of La Vrilliere's _De +Puysange et son temps_. The Duke's resemblance in person to that monarch +was undeniable.] with black beetling eyebrows, an enormous nose, and an +under-lip excessively full; his face had all the calculated ill-proportion +of a gargoyle, an ugliness so consummate and merry that in ultimate effect +it captivated. + +At last de Puysange began: "I think I follow you. It is quite proper that +you should marry. It is quite proper that a man who has done so much for +England should leave descendants to perpetuate his name, and with perhaps +some portion of his ability--no, Jean, I do not flatter,--serve the England +which is to his heart so dear. As a Frenchman I cannot but deplore that our +next generation may have to face another Ormskirk; as your friend who loves +you I say that this marriage will appropriately round a successful and +honorable and intelligent life. Eh, we are only men, you and I, and it is +advisable that all men should marry, since otherwise they might be so happy +in this colorful world that getting to heaven would not particularly tempt +them. Thus is matrimony a bulwark of religion." + +"You are growing scurrilous," Ormskirk complained, "whereas I am in perfect +earnest." + +"I, too, speak to the foot of the letter, Jean, as you will soon learn. I +comprehend that you cannot with agreeability marry an Englishwoman. You are +too much the personage. Possessing, as you notoriously possess, your pick +among the women of gentle degree--for none of them would her guardians nor +her good taste permit to refuse the great Duke of Ormskirk,--any choice +must therefore be a too robustious affrontment to all the others. If you +select a Howard, the Skirlaws have pepper in the nose; if a Beaufort, you +lose Umfraville's support,--and so on. Hey, I know, my dear Jean; your +affair with the Earl of Brudenel's daughter cost you seven seats in +Parliament, you may remember. How am I aware of this?--why, because I +habitually have your mail intercepted. You intercept mine, do you not? +Naturally; you would be a very gross and intolerable scion of the pig if +you did otherwise. _Eh bien_, let us get on. You might, of course, play +King Cophetua, but I doubt if it would amuse you, since Penelophons are +rare; it follows in logic that your wife must come from abroad. And whence? +Without question, from France, the land of adorable women. The thing is +plainly demonstrated; and in France, my dear, I have to an eyelash the +proper person for you." + +"Then we may consider the affair as settled," Ormskirk replied, "and should +you arrange to have the marriage take place upon the first of August,--if +possible, a trifle earlier,--I would be trebly your debtor." + +De Puysange retorted: "Beyond doubt I can adjust these matters. And yet, +my dear Jean, I must submit that it is not quite the act of a gentleman to +plunge into matrimony without even inquiring as to the dowry of your future +bride." + +"It is true," said Ormskirk, with a grimace; "I had not thought of her +portion. You must remember my attention is at present pre-empted by that +idiotic Ferrers business. How much am I to marry, then, Gaston?" + +"I had in mind," said the other, "my sister, the Demoiselle Claire de +Puysange,--" + +It was a day of courtesy when the minor graces were paramount. Ormskirk +rose and accorded de Puysange a salutation fitted to an emperor. "I entreat +your pardon, sir, for any _gaucherie_ of which I may have been guilty, and +desire to extend to you my appreciation of the honor you have done me." + +"It is sufficient, monsieur," de Puysange replied. And the two gravely +bowed again. + +Then the Frenchman resumed, in conversational tones: "I have but one +unmarried sister,--already nineteen, beautiful as an angel (in the eyes, at +least, of fraternal affection), and undoubtedly as headstrong as any devil +at present stoking the eternal fires below. You can conceive that the +disposal of such a person is a delicate matter. In Poictesme there is +no suitable match, and upon the other hand I grievously apprehend her +presentation at our Court, where, as Arouet de Voltaire once observed to +me, the men are lured into matrimony by the memories of their past sins, +and the women by the immunity it promises for future ones. In England, +where custom will permit a woman to be both handsome and chaste, I estimate +she would be admirably ranged. Accordingly, my dear Jean, behold a fact +accomplished. And now let us embrace, my brother!" + +This was done. The next day they settled the matter of dowry, jointure, the +widow's portion, and so on, and de Puysange returned to render his report +at Marly. The wedding had been fixed by the Frenchman for St. Anne's day, +and by Ormskirk, as an uncompromising churchman, for the twenty-sixth of +the following July. + + +II + +That evening the Duke of Ormskirk sat alone in his lodgings. His Grace +was very splendid in black-and-gold, wearing his two stars of the Garter +and the Thistle, for there was that night a ball at Lady Sandwich's, and +Royalty was to embellish it. In consequence, Ormskirk meant to show his +plump face there for a quarter of an hour; and the rooms would be too +hot (he peevishly reflected), and the light would tire his eyes, and +Laventhrope would button-hole him again about that appointment for +Laventhrope's son, and the King would give vent to some especially +fat-witted jest, and Ormskirk would apishly grin and applaud. And afterward +he would come home with a headache, and ghostly fiddles would vex him all +night long with their thin incessancy. + +"Accordingly," the Duke decided, "I shall not stir a step until eleven +o'clock. The King, in the ultimate, is only a tipsy, ignorant old German +debauchee, and I have half a mind to tell him so. Meantime, he can wait." + +The Duke sat down to consider this curious lassitude, this indefinite +vexation, which had possessed him. + +"For I appear to have taken a sudden dislike to the universe. It is +probably my liver. + +"In any event, I have come now to the end of my resources. For some +twenty-five years it has amused me to make a great man of John Bulmer. Now +that is done, and, like the Moorish fellow in the play, 'my occupation's +gone.' I am at the very top of the ladder, and I find it the dreariest +place in the world. There is nothing left to scheme for, and, besides, I am +tired. + +"The tiniest nerve in my body, the innermost cell of my brain, is tired +to-night. + +"I wonder if getting married will divert me? I doubt it. Of course I ought +to marry, but then it must be rather terrible to have a woman loitering +around you for the rest of your life. She will probably expect me to talk +to her; she will probably come into my rooms and sit there whenever the +inclination prompts her,--in a sentence, she will probably worry me to +death. Eh well!--that die is cast! + +"'Beautiful as an angel, and headstrong as a devil.' And what's her +name?--Oh, yes, Claire. That is a very silly name, and I suppose she is a +vixenish little idiot. However, the alliance is a sensible one. De Puysange +has had it in mind for some six months, I think, but certainly I did not +think he knew of my affair with Marian. Well, but he affects omniscience, +he delights in every small chicane. He is rather droll. Yesterday he knew +from the start that I was leading up to a proposal for his sister,--and yet +there we sat, two solemn fools, and played our tedious comedy to a finish. +_Eh bien!_ as he says, it is necessary to keep one's hand in. + +"'Beautiful as an angel, and headstrong as a devil'--Alison was not +headstrong." + +Ormskirk rose suddenly and approached an open window. It was a starless +sight, temperately cool, with no air stirring. Below was a garden of some +sort, and a flat roof which would be that of the stables, and beyond, +abrupt as a painted scene, a black wall of houses stood against a +steel-colored, vacant sky, reaching precisely to the middle of the vista. +Only a solitary poplar, to the rear of the garden, qualified this sombre +monotony of right angles. Ormskirk saw the world as an ugly mechanical +drawing, fashioned for utility, meticulously outlined with a ruler. Yet +there was a scent of growing things to nudge the senses. + +"No, Alison was different. And Alison has been dead near twenty years. +And God help me! I no longer regret even Alison. I should have been more +truthful in talking with poor Harry Heleigh. But, as always, the temptation +to be picturesque was irresistible. Besides, the truth is humiliating. + +"The real tragedy of life is to learn that it is not really tragic. To +learn that the world is gross, that it lacks nobility, that to considerate +persons it must be in effect quite unimportant,--here are commonplaces, +sweepings from the tub of the immaturest cynic. But to learn that you +yourself were thoughtfully constructed in harmony with the world you were +to live in, that you yourself are incapable of any great passion--eh, this +is an athletic blow to human vanity. Well! I acknowledge it. My love for +Alison Pleydell was the one sincere thing in my life. And it is dead. I do +not think of her once a month. I do not regret her except when I am tipsy +or bored or listening to music, and wish to fancy myself the picturesque +victim of a flint-hearted world. Which is a romantic lie; I move like a +man of card-board in a card-board world. Certain faculties and tastes and +mannerisms I undoubtedly possess, but if I have any personality at all, +I am not aware of it; I am a mechanism that eats and sleeps and clumsily +perambulates a ball that spins around a larger ball that revolves about +another, and so on, _ad infinitum_. Some day the mechanism will be broken. +Or it will slowly wear out, perhaps. And then it will go to the dust-heap. +And that will be the end of the great Duke of Ormskirk. + +"John Bulmer did not think so. It is true that John Bulmer was a +magnanimous fool,--Upon the other hand, John Bulmer would never have stared +out of an ugly window at an uglier landscape and have talked yet uglier +nonsense to it. He would have been off post-haste after the young person +who is 'beautiful as an angel and headstrong as a devil.' And afterward he +would have been very happy or else very miserable. I begin to think that +John Bulmer was more sensible than the great Duke of Ormskirk. I would--I +would that he were still alive." + +His Grace slapped one palm against his thigh with unwonted vigor. "Behold, +what I am longing for! I am longing for John Bulmer." + +Presently he sounded the gong upon his desk. And presently he said: "My +adorable Pawsey, the great Duke of Ormskirk is now going to pay his +respects to George Guelph, King of Britain, France, and Ireland, defender +of the faith. Duke of Brunswick and Lunenburg, and supreme head of the +Anglican and Hibernian Church. And to-morrow Mr. John Bulmer will set forth +upon a little journey into Poictesme. You will obligingly pack a valise. +No, I shall not require you,--for John Bulmer was entirely capable of +dressing and shaving himself. So kindly go to the devil, Pawsey, and stop +staring at me." + +Later in the evening Pawsey, a thought mellowed by the ale of Dover, +deplored with tears the instability of a nation whose pilots were addicted +to tippling. + +"Drunk as David's sow!" said Pawsey, "and 'im in the hactual presence of +'is Sacred Majesty!" + + +III + +Thus it came about that, five days later, arrived at Bellegarde Mr. John +Bulmer, kinsman and accredited emissary of the great Duke of Ormskirk. +He brought with him and in due course delivered a casket of jewels and a +letter from the Duke to his betrothed. The diamonds were magnificent, and +the letter was a paragon of polite ardors. + +Mr. Bulmer found the chateau in charge of a distant cousin to de Puysange, +the Marquis de Soyecourt; with whom were the Duchess, a gentle and +beautiful lady, her two children, and the Demoiselle Claire. The Duke +himself was still at Marly, with most of his people, but at Bellegarde +momentarily they looked for his return. Meanwhile de Soyecourt, an +exquisite and sociable and immoral young gentleman of forty-one, was +lonely, and protested that any civilized company was, in the oafish +provinces, a charity of celestial pre-arrangement. He would not hear of Mr. +Bulmer's leaving Bellegarde; and after a little protestation the latter +proved persuadable. + +"Mr. Bulmer," the Duke's letter of introduction informed the Marquis, "is +my kinsman and may be regarded as discreet. The evanishment of his tiny +patrimony, spirited away some years ago by divers over-friendly ladies, +hath taught the man humility, and procured for me the privilege of paying +for his support: but I find him more valuable than his cost. He is +tolerably honest, not too often tipsy, makes an excellent salad, and will +convey a letter or hold a door with fidelity and despatch. Employ his +services, monsieur, if you have need of them; I place him at your command." + +In fine, they at Bellegarde judged Mr. Bulmer to rank somewhere between +lackeyship and gentility, and treated him in accordance. It was an age of +parasitism, and John Bulmer, if a parasite, was the Phormio of a very great +man: when his patron expressed a desire Mr. Bulmer fulfilled it without +boggling over inconvenient scruples, perhaps; and there was the worst that +could with equity be said of him. An impoverished gentleman must live +somehow, and, deuce take it! there must be rather pretty pickings among +the broken meats of an Ormskirk. To this effect de Soyecourt moralized one +evening as the two sat over their wine. + +John Bulmer candidly assented. "I live as best I may," he said. "In a word +'I am his Highness' dog at Kew--' But mark you, I do not complete the +quotation, monsieur." + +"Which ends, as I remember it, 'I pray you, sir, whose dog are you?' Well, +Mr. Bulmer, each of us wards his own kennel somewhere, whether it be in +a king's court or in a woman's heart, and it is necessary that he pay +the rent of it in such coin as the owner may demand. Beggars cannot be +choosers, Mr. Bulmer." The Marquis went away moodily, and John Bulmer +poured out another glass. + +"Were I Gaston, you would not kennel here, my friend. The Duchess has too +many claims to be admired,--for undoubtedly people do go about unchained +who can admire a blonde,--and always your eyes follow her. I noticed it a +week ago." + +And during this week Mr. Bulmer had seen a deal of Claire de Puysange, with +results that you will presently ascertain. It was natural she should desire +to learn something of the man she was so soon to marry, and of whose +personality she was so ignorant; she had not even seen a picture of him, by +example. Was he handsome? + +John Bulmer believed him rather remarkably handsome, when you considered +how frequently his love-affairs had left disastrous souvenirs: yes, for a +man in middle life so often patched up by quack doctors, Ormskirk looked +wholesome enough, said Mr. Bulmer. He may have had his occult purposes, +this poor cousin, but of Ormskirk he undoubtedly spoke with engaging +candor. Here was no parasite cringingly praising his patron to the +skies. The Duke's career was touched on, with its grimy passages no whit +extenuated: before Dettingen Cousin Ormskirk had, it must be confessed, +taken a bribe from de Noailles, and in return had seen to it that the +English did not follow up their empty victory; and 'twas well known +Ormskirk got his dukedom through the Countess of Yarmouth, to whom the +King could deny nothing. What were the Duke's relations with this liberal +lady?--a shrug rendered Mr. Bulmer's avowal of ignorance tolerably +explicit. Then, too, Mr. Bulmer readily conceded, the Duke's atrocities +after Culloden were somewhat over-notorious for denial: all the prisoners +were shot out-of-hand; seventy-two of them were driven into an inn-yard +and massacred _en masse_. Yes, there were women among them, but not over +a half-dozen children, at most. Mademoiselle was not to class his noble +patron with Herod, understand,--only a few brats of no importance. + +In fine, he told her all the highly colored tales that envy and malice and +ignorance had been able to concoct concerning the great Duke. Many of them +John Bulmer knew to be false; nevertheless, he had a large mythology to +choose from, he picked his instances with care, he narrated them with gusto +and discretion,--and in the end he got his reward. + +For the girl rose, flame-faced, and burlesqued a courtesy in his direction. +"Monsieur Bulmer, I make you my compliments. You have very fully explained +what manner of man is this to whom my brother has sold me." + +"And wherefore do you accord me this sudden adulation?" said John Bulmer. + +"Because in France we have learned that lackeys are always powerful. Le Bel +is here omnipotent, Monsieur Bulmer; but he is lackey to a satyr only; and +therefore, I felicitate you, monsieur, who are lackey to a fiend." + +John Bulmer looked rather grave. "Civility is an inexpensive wear, +mademoiselle, but it becomes everybody." + +"Lackey!" she flung over her shoulder, as she left him. + +John Bulmer began to whistle an air then popular across the Channel. Later +his melody was stilled. + +"'Beautiful as an angel, and headstrong as a devil!'" said John Bulmer. +"You have an eye, Gaston!" + + +IV + +That evening came a letter from Gaston to de Soyecourt, which the latter +read aloud at supper. Gossip of the court it was for the most part, +garrulous, and peppered with deductions of a caustic and diverting sort, +but containing no word of a return to Bellegarde, in this vocal rendering. +For in the reading one paragraph was elided. + +"I arrive," the Duke had written, "within three or at most four days after +this will be received. You are to breathe not a syllable of my coming, dear +Louis, for I do not come alone. Achille Cazaio has intimidated Poictesme +long enough; I consider it is not desirable that a peer of France should be +at the mercy of a chicken-thief, particularly when Fortune whispers, as the +lady now does: + + "Viens punir le coupable; + Les oracles, les dieux, tout nous est favorable. + +"Understand, in fine, that Madame de Pompadour has graciously obtained for +me the loan of the dragoons of Entrechat for an entire fortnight, so that I +return not in submission, but, like Caesar and Coriolanus and other exiled +captains of antiquity, at the head of a glorious army. We will harry the +Taunenfels, we will hang the vile bandit more high than Haman of old, we +will, in a word, enjoy the supreme pleasure of the chase, enhanced by the +knowledge we pursue a note-worthy quarry. Homicide is, after all, the most +satisfying recreation life affords us, since man alone knows how thoroughly +man deserves to be slaughtered. A tiger, now, has his deficiencies, +perhaps, viewed as a roommate; yet a tiger is at least acceptable to the +eye, a vision very pleasantly suggestive, we will say, of buttered toast; +whereas, our fellow-creatures, my dear Louis,--" And in this strain de +Puysange continued, with intolerably scandalous examples as parapets for +his argument. + +That night de Soyecourt re-read this paragraph. "So the Pompadour has +kindly tendered him the loan of certain dragoons? She is very fond of +Gaston, is la petite Etoiles, beyond doubt. And accordingly her dragoons +are to garrison Bellegarde for a whole fortnight. Good, good!" said the +Marquis; "I think that all goes well." + +He sat for a long while, smiling, preoccupied with his imaginings, which +were far adrift in the future. Louis de Soyecourt was a subtle little man, +freakish and amiable, and, on a minute scale, handsome. He reminded people +of a dissipated elf; his excesses were notorious, yet always he preserved +the face of an ecclesiastic and the eyes of an aging seraph; and bodily +there was as yet no trace of the corpulence which marred his later years. + +To-night he slept soundly. His conscience was always, they say, to the very +end of his long life, the conscience of a child, vulnerable by physical +punishment, but by nothing else. + + +V + +Next day John Bulmer rode through the Forest of Acaire, and sang as he +went. Yet he disapproved of the country. + +"For I am of the opinion," John Bulmer meditated, "that France just now is +too much like a flower-garden situate upon the slope of a volcano. The eye +is pleasantly titillated, but the ear catches eloquent rumblings. This is +not a very healthy country, I think. These shaggy-haired, dumb peasants +trouble me. I had thought France a nation of de Puysanges; I find it rather +a nation of beasts who are growing hungry. Presently they will begin +to feed, and I am not at all certain as to the urbanity of their table +manners." + +However, it was no affair of his; so he put the matter out of mind, and as +he rode through the forest, carolled blithely. Trees were marshalled on +each side with an effect of colonnades; everywhere there was a sniff of the +cathedral, of a cheery cathedral all green and gold and full-bodied browns, +where the industrious motes swam, like the fishes fairies angle for, in +every long and rigid shaft of sunlight,--or rather (John Bulmer decided), +as though Time had just passed by with a broom, intent to garnish the least +nook of Acaire against Spring's occupancy of it. Then there were tiny white +butterflies, frail as dream-stuff. There were anemones; and John Bulmer +sighed at their insolent perfection. Theirs was a frank allure; in the +solemn forest they alone of growing things were wanton, for they coquetted +with the wind, and their pink was the pink of flesh. + +He recollected that he was corpulent--and forty-five. "And yet, praise +Heaven," said John Bulmer, "something stirs in this sleepy skull of mine." + +Sang John Bulmer: + + "April wakes, and the gifts are good + Which April grants in this lonely wood + Mid the wistful sounds of a solitude, + Whose immemorial murmuring + Is the voice of Spring + And murmurs the burden of burgeoning. + + "April wakes, and her heart is high, + For the Bassarids and the Fauns are nigh, + And prosperous leaves lisp busily + Over flattered brakes, whence the breezes bring + Vext twittering + To swell the burden of burgeoning. + + "April wakes, and afield, astray, + She calls to whom at the end I say. + _Heart o' my Heart, I am thine alway_,-- + And I follow, follow her carolling, + For I hear her sing + Above the burden of burgeoning. + + "April wakes;--it were good to live + (_Yet April passes_), though April give + No other gift for our pleasuring + Than the old, old burden of burgeoning--" + +He paused here. Not far ahead a woman's voice had given a sudden scream, +followed by continuous calls for aid. + +"Now, if I choose, will begin the first fytte of John Bulmer's adventures," +he meditated, leisurely. "The woman is in some sort of trouble. If I go to +her assistance I shall probably involve myself in a most unattractive mess, +and eventually be arrested by the constable,--if they have any constables +in this operatic domain, the which I doubt. I shall accordingly emulate the +example of the long-headed Levite, and sensibly pass by on the other side. +Halt! I there recognize the voice of the Duke of Ormskirk. I came into this +country to find John Bulmer; and John Bulmer would most certainly have +spurred his gallant charger upon the craven who is just now molesting +yonder female. In consequence, my gallant charger, we will at once proceed +to confound the dastardly villain." + +He came presently into an open glade, which the keen sunlight lit without +obstruction. Obviously arranged, was his first appraisal of the tableau +there presented. A woman in blue half-knelt, half-lay, upon the young +grass, while a man, bending over, fettered her hands behind her back. +A swarthy and exuberantly bearded fellow, attired in green-and-russet, +stood beside them, displaying magnificent teeth in exactly the grin which +hieratic art imputes to devils. Yet farther off a Dominican Friar sat upon +a stone and displayed rather more unctuous amusement. Three horses and a +mule diversified the background. All in all, a thought larger than life, a +shade too obviously posed, a sign-painter's notion of a heroic picture, was +John Bulmer's verdict. From his holster he drew a pistol. + +The lesser rascal rose from the prostrate woman. "Finished, my captain,--" +he began. Against the forest verdure he made an excellent mark. John Bulmer +shot him neatly through the head. + +Startled by the detonation, the Friar and the man in green-and-russet +wheeled about to find Mr. Bulmer, with his most heroical bearing, +negligently replacing the discharged pistol. The woman lay absolutely +still, face downward, in a clump of fern. + +"Gentlemen," said John Bulmer, "I lament that your sylvan diversions +should be thus interrupted by the fact that an elderly person like myself, +quite old enough to know better, has seen fit to adopt the pursuit of +knight-errantry. You need not trouble yourselves about your companion, for +I have blown out most of the substance nature intended him to think with. +One of you, I regret to observe, is rendered immune by the garb of an order +which I consider misguided, indeed, but with which I have no quarrel. With +the other I beg leave to request the honor of exchanging a few passes as +the recumbent lady's champion." + +"Sacred blue!" remarked the bearded man; "you presume to oppose, then, of +all persons, me! You fool, I am Achille Cazaio!" + +"I deplore the circumstance that I am not overwhelmed by the revelation," +John Bulmer said, as he dismounted, "and I entreat you to bear in mind, +friend Achille, that in Poictesme I am a stranger. And, unhappily, the +names of many estimable persons have not an international celebrity." Thus +speaking, he drew and placed himself on guard. + +With a shrug the Friar turned and reseated himself upon the stone. He +appeared a sensible man. But Cazaio flashed out a long sword and hurled +himself upon John Bulmer. + +Cazaio thus obtained a butcherly thrust in the shoulder, "Friend Achille," +said John Bulmer, "that was tolerably severe for a first hit. Does it +content you?" + +The hairy man raged. "Eh, my God!" Cazaio shrieked, "do you mock me, you +misbegotten one! Before you can give me such another I shall have settled +you outright. Already hell gapes for you. Fool, I am Achille Cazaio!" + +"Yes, yes, you had mentioned that," said his opponent. "And, in return, +allow me to present Mr. John Bulmer, thoroughly enjoying himself for the +first time in a quarter of a century, Angelo taught me this thrust. Can you +parry it, friend Achille?" Mr. Bulmer cut open the other's forehead. + +"Well done!" Cazaio grunted. He attacked with renewed fury, but now the +blood was streaming down his face and into his eyes in such a manner that +he was momentarily compelled to carry his hand toward his countenance in +order to wipe away the heavy trickle. John Bulmer lowered his point. + +"Friend Achille, it is not reasonable I should continue our engagement to +its denouement, since by that boastful parade of skill I have inadvertently +turned you into a blind man. Can you not stanch your wound sufficiently to +make possible a renewal of our exercise on somewhat more equal terms?" + +"Not now," the other replied, breathing heavily,--"not now, Monsieur +Bulmaire. You have conquered, and the woman is yours. Yet lend me my life +for a little till I may meet you more equitably. I will not fail you,--I +swear it--I, Achille Cazaio." + +"Why, God bless my soul!" said John Bulmer, "do you imagine that I am +forming a collection of vagrant females? Permit me, pray, to assist you to +your horse. And if you would so far honor me as to accept the temporary +loan of my handkerchief--" + +Solicitously Mr. Bulmer bound up his opponent's head, and more lately aided +him to mount one of the grazing horses. Cazaio was moved to say: + +"You are a gallant enemy, Monsieur Bulmaire. I shall have the pleasure of +cutting your throat on Thursday next, if that date be convenient to you." + +"Believe me," said John Bulmer, "I am always at your disposal. Let this +spot, then, be our rendezvous, since I am wofully ignorant concerning your +local geography. And meantime, my friend, if I may be so bold, I would +suggest a little practice in parrying. You are of Boisrobert's school, I +note, and in attack undeniably brilliant, whereas your defence--unvarying +defect of Boisrobert's followers!--is lamentably weak." + +"I perceive that monsieur is a connoisseur in these matters," said +Cazaio; "I am the more highly honored. Till Thursday, then." And with an +inclination of his bandaged head--and a furtive glance toward the insensate +woman,--he rode away singing. + +Sang Achille Cazaio: + + "But, oh, the world is wide, dear lass, + That I must wander through, + And many a wind and tide, dear lass, + Must flow 'twixt me and you, + Ere love that may not be denied + Shall bring me back to you, + --Dear lass! + Shall bring me back to you." + +Thus singing, he disappeared; meantime John Bulmer had turned toward the +woman. The Dominican sat upon the stone, placidly grinning. + +"And now," said John Bulmer, "we revert to the origin of all this +tomfoolery,--who, true to every instinct of her sex, has caused as much +trouble as lay within her power and then fainted. A little water from +the brook, if you will be so good. Master Friar,--Hey!--why, you damned +rascal!" + +As John Bulmer bent above the woman, the Friar had stabbed John Bulmer +between the shoulders. The dagger broke like glass. + +"Oh, the devil!" said the churchman; "what sort of a duellist is this who +fights in a shirt of Milanese armor!" He stood for a moment, silent, in +sincere horror. "I lack words," he said,--"Oh, vile coward! I lack words to +arraign this hideous revelation! There is a code of honor that obtains all +over the world, and any duellist who descends to secret armor is, as you +are perfectly aware, guilty of supersticery. He is no fit associate for +gentlemen, he is rather the appropriate companion of Korah, Dathan, and +Abiram in their fiery pit. Faugh, you sneak-thief!" + +John Bulmer was a thought abashed, and for an instant showed it. Then, +"Permit me," he equably replied, "to point out that I did not come hither +with any belligerent intent. My undershirt, therefore, I was entitled to +regard as a purely natural advantage,--as much so as would have been a +greater length of arm, which, you conceive, does not obligate a gentleman +to cut off his fingers before he fights." + +"I scent the casuist," said the Friar, shaking his head. "Frankly, you had +hoodwinked me: I was admiring you as a second Palmerin; and all the while +you were letting off those gasconades, adopting those heroic postures, and +exhibiting such romantic magnanimity, you were actually as safe from poor +Cazaio as though you had been in Crim Tartary rather than Acaire!" + +"But the pose was magnificent," John Bulmer pleaded, "and I have a leaning +that way when one loses nothing by it. Besides, I consider secret armor to +be no more than a rational precaution in any country where the clergy are +addicted to casual assassination." + +"It is human to err," the Friar replied, "and Cazaio would have given me +a thousand crowns for your head. Believe me, the man is meditating some +horrible mischief against you, for otherwise he would not have been so +damnably polite." + +"The information is distressing," said John Bulmer; and added, "This Cazaio +appears to be a personage?" + +"I retort," said the Friar, "that your ignorance is even more remarkable +than my news. Achille Cazaio is the bugbear of all Poictesme, he is as +powerful in these parts as ever old Manuel was." + +"But I have never heard of this old Manuel either--" + +"In fact, your ignorance seems limitless. For any child could tell you that +Cazaio roosts in the Taunenfels yonder, with some hundreds of brigands in +his company. Poictesme is, in effect, his pocket-book, from which he takes +whatever he has need of, and the Duc de Puysange, our nominal lord, pays +him an annual tribute to respect Bellegarde." + +"This appears to be an unusual country," quoth John Bulmer; "where a +brigand rules, and the forests are infested by homicidal clergymen and +harassed females. Which reminds me that I have been guilty of an act of +ungallantry,--and faith! while you and I have been chatting, the lady, with +a rare discretion, has peacefully come back to her senses." + +"She has regained nothing very valuable," said the Friar, with a shrug, +"Alone in Acaire!" But John Bulmer had assisted the woman to her feet, +and had given a little cry at sight of her face, and now he stood quite +motionless, holding both her unfettered hands. + +"You!" he said. And when speech returned to him, after a lengthy interval, +he spoke with odd irrelevance. "Now I appear to understand why God created +me." + +He was puzzled. For there had come to him, unheralded and simply, a sense +of something infinitely greater than his mind could conceive; and analysis +might only pluck at it, impotently, as a wearied swimmer might pluck at the +sides of a well. Ormskirk and Ormskirk's powers now somehow dwindled from +the zone of serious consideration, as did the radiant world, and even the +woman who stood before him; trifles, these: and his contentment spurned +the stars to know that, somehow, this woman and he were but a part, an +infinitesimal part, of a scheme which was ineffably vast and perfect.... +That was the knowledge he sensed, unwordably, as he regarded this woman +now. + +She was tall, just as tall as he. It was a blunt-witted devil who whispered +John Bulmer that, inch paralleling inch, the woman is taller than the +man and subtly renders him absurd; and that in a decade this woman would +be stout. There was no meaning now in any whispering save hers. John +Bulmer perceived, with a blurred thrill,--as if of memory, as if he were +recollecting something once familiar to him, a great while ago,--that the +girl was tall and deep-bosomed, and that her hair was dark, all crinkles, +but (he somehow knew) very soft to the touch. The full oval of her face had +throughout the rich tint of cream, so that he now understood the blowziness +of pink cheeks; but her mouth was vivid. It was a mouth not wholly +deficient in attractions, he estimated. Her nose managed to be Roman +without overdoing it. And her eyes, candid and appraising, he found to be +the color that blue is in Paradise; it was odd their lower lids should +be straight lines, so that when she laughed her eyes were converted into +right-angled triangles; and it was still more odd that when you gazed into +them your reach of vision should be extended until you saw without effort +for miles and miles. + +And now for a longish while these eyes returned his scrutiny, without +any trace of embarrassment; and whatever may have been the thoughts of +Mademoiselle de Puysange, she gave them no expression. But presently the +girl glanced down toward the dead man. + +"It was you who killed him?" she said. "You!" + +"I had that privilege," John Bulmer admitted. "And on Thursday afternoon, +God willing, I shall kill the other." + +"You are kind, Monsieur Bulmer. And I am not ungrateful. And for that which +happened yesterday I entreat your pardon." + +"I can pardon you for calling me a lackey, mademoiselle, only upon +condition that you permit me to be your lackey for the remainder of your +jaunt. Poictesme appears a somewhat too romantic country for unaccompanied +women to traverse in any comfort." + +"My thought to a comma," the Dominican put in,--"unaccompanied ladies +do not ordinarily drop from the forest oaks like acorns. I said as much +to Cazaio a half-hour ago. Look you, we two and Michault,--who formerly +incited this carcass and, from what I know of him, is by this time +occupying hell's hottest gridiron,--were riding peacefully toward +Beauseant. Then this lady pops out of nowhere, and Cazaio promptly +expresses an extreme admiration for her person." + +"The rest," John Bulmer said, "I can imagine. Oh, believe me, I look +forward to next Thursday!" + +"But for you," the girl said, "I would now be the prisoner of that devil +upon the Taunenfels! Three to one you fought,--and you conquered! I have +misjudged you, Monsieur Bulmer. I had thought you only an indolent old +gentleman, not very brave,--because--" + +"Because otherwise I would not have been the devil's lackey?" said John +Bulmer. "Eh, mademoiselle, I have been inspecting the world for more years +than I care to confess; I have observed the king upon his throne, and the +caught thief upon his coffin in passage for the gallows: and I suspect +they both came thither through taking such employment as chance offered. +Meanwhile, we waste daylight. You were journeying--?" + +"To Perdigon," Claire answered. She drew nearer to him and laid one +hand upon his arm. "You are a gallant man, Monsieur Bulmer. Surely you +understand. Two weeks ago my brother affianced me to the Duke of Ormskirk. +Ormskirk!--ah, I know he is your kinsman,--your patron,--but you yourself +could not deny that the world reeks with his infamy. And my own brother, +monsieur, had betrothed me to this perjurer, to that lewd rake, to that +inhuman devil who slaughters defenceless prisoners, men, women, and +children alike. Why, I had sooner marry the first beggar or the ugliest +fiend in hell!" the girl wailed, and she wrung her plump little hands in +desperation. + +"Good, good!" he cried, in his soul. "It appears my eloquence of yesterday +was greater than I knew of!" + +Claire resumed: "But you cannot argue with Gaston--he merely shrugs. So I +decided to go over to Perdigon and marry Gerard des Roches. He has wanted +to marry me for a long while, but Gaston said he was too poor. And, O +Monsieur Bulmer, Gerard is so very, very stupid!--but he was the only +person available, and in any event," she concluded, with a sigh of +resignation, "he is preferable to that terrible Ormskirk." + +John Bulmer gazed on her considerately. "'Beautiful as an angel, and +headstrong as a devil,'" was his thought, "You have an eye, Gaston!" +Aloud John Bulmer said: "Your remedy against your brother's tyranny, +mademoiselle, is quite masterly, though perhaps a trifle Draconic. Yet if +on his return he find you already married, he undoubtedly cannot hand you +over to this wicked Ormskirk. Marry, therefore, by all means,--but not with +this stupid Gerard." + +"With whom, then?" she wondered. + +"Fate has planned it," he laughed; "here are you and I, and yonder is the +clergyman whom Madam Destiny has thoughtfully thrown in our way." + +"Not you," she answered, gravely. "I am too deeply in your debt, Monsieur +Bulmer, to think of marrying you." + +"You refuse," he said, "because you have known for some days past that I +loved you. Yet it is really this fact which gives me my claim to become +your husband. You have need of a man to do you this little service. I know +of at least one person whose happiness it would be to die if thereby he +might save you a toothache. This man you cannot deny--you have not the +right to deny this man his single opportunity of serving you." + +"I like you very much," she faltered; and then, with disheartening +hastiness, "Of course, I like you very much; but I am not in love with +you." + +He shook his head at her, "I would think the worse of your intellect if you +were. I adore you. Granted: but that constitutes no cut-throat mortgage. +It is merely a state of mind which I have somehow blundered into, and with +which you have no concern. So I ask nothing of you save to marry me. You +may, if you like, look upon me as insane; it is the view toward which I +myself incline. However, mine is a domesticated mania and vexes no one save +myself; and even I derive no little amusement from its manifestations. Eh, +Monsieur Jourdain may laugh at me for a puling lover!" cried John Bulmer; +"but, heavens! if only he could see the unplumbed depths of ludicrousness I +discover in my own soul! The mirth of Atlas could not do it justice." + +Claire meditated for a while, her eyes inscrutable and yet not unkindly. +"It shall be as you will," she said at last. "Yes, certainly, I will marry +you." + +"O Mother of God!" said the Dominican, in profound disgust; "I cannot marry +two maniacs." But, in view of John Bulmer's sword and pistol, he went +through the ceremony without further protest. + +And something embryonic in John Bulmer seemed to come, with the knave's +benediction, into flowerage. He saw, as if upon a sudden, how fine she was; +all the gracious and friendly youth of her: and he deliberated, dizzily, +the awe of her spirited and alert eyes; why, the woman was afraid of him! +That sunny and vivid glade had become, to him, an island about which past +happenings lapped like a fretted sea. "Dear me!" he reflected, "but I am +really in a very bad way indeed." + +Now Mistress Bulmer gazed shyly at her husband. "We will go back to +Bellegarde," Claire began, "and inform Louis de Soyecourt that I cannot +marry the Duke of Ormskirk, because I have already married you, Jean +Bulmer,--" + +"I would follow you," said John Bulmer, "though hell yawned between us. +I employ the particular expression as customary in all these cases of +romantic infatuation." + +"Yet I," the Friar observed, "would, to the contrary, advise removal from +Poictesme as soon as may be possible. For I warn you that if you return to +Bellegarde, Monsieur de Soyecourt will have you hanged." + +"Reverend sir," John Bulmer replied, "do you actually believe this +consideration would be to me of any moment?" + +The Friar inspected his countenance. By and by the Friar said: "I +emphatically do not. And to think that at the beginning of our +acquaintanceship I took you for a sensible person!" Afterward the Friar +mounted his mule and left them. + +Then silently John Bulmer assisted his wife to the back of one of the +horses, and they turned eastward into the Forest of Acaire. Mr. Bulmer's +countenance was politely interested, and he chatted pleasantly of the +forenoon's adventure. Claire told him something of her earlier memories +of Cazaio. So the two returned to Bellegarde. Then Claire led the way +toward the western facade, where her apartments were, and they came to a +postern-door, very narrow and with a grating. + +"Help me down," the girl said. Immediately this was done; Claire remained +quite still. Her cheeks were smouldering and her left hand was lying inert +in John Bulmer's broader palm. + +"Wait here," she said, "and let me go in first. Someone may be on watch. +There is perhaps danger--" + +"My dear," said John Bulmer, "I perfectly comprehend you are about to enter +that postern, and close it in my face, and afterward hold discourse with me +through that little wicket. I assent, because I love you so profoundly that +I am capable not merely of tearing the world asunder like paper at your +command, but even of leaving you if you bid me do so." + +"Your suspicions," she replied, "are prematurely marital. I am trying to +protect you, and you are the first to accuse me of underhand dealing! I +will prove to you how unjust are your notions." She entered the postern, +closed and bolted it, and appeared at the wicket. + +"The Friar was intelligent," said Claire de Puysange, "and beyond doubt +the most sensible thing you can do is to get out of Poictesme as soon as +possible. You have been serviceable to me, and for that I thank you: but +the master of Bellegarde has the right of the low, the middle, and the high +justice, and if my husband show his face at Bellegarde he will infallibly +be hanged. If you claim me in England, Ormskirk will have you knifed in +some dark alleyway, just as, you tell me, he disposed of Monsieur Traquair +and Captain Dungelt. I am sorry, because I like you, even though you are +fat." + +"You bid me leave you?" said John Bulmer. He was comfortably seated upon +the turf. + +"For your own good," said she, "I advise you to." And she closed the +wicket. + +"The acceptance of advice," said John Bulmer, "is luckily optional. I shall +therefore go down into the village, purchase a lute, have supper, and I +shall be here at sunrise to greet you with an aubade, according to the +ancient custom of Poictesme." + +The wicket remained closed. + + +VI + +"I will go to Marly, inform Gaston of the entire matter, and then my wife +is mine. I have tricked her neatly. + +"I will do nothing of the sort. Gaston, can give me the woman's body only. +I shall accordingly buy me a lute." + + +VII + +Achille Cazaio on the Taunenfels did not sleep that night.... + +The two essays [Footnote: The twenty-first chapter of Du Maillot's _Hommes +Illustres_; and the fifth of d'Avranches's _Ancetres de la Revolution_. +Loewe has an excellent digest of this data.] dealing with the man have +scarcely touched his capabilities. His exploits in and about Paris and +his Gascon doings, while important enough in the outcome, are but the +gesticulations of a puppet: the historian's real concern is with the hands +that manoeuvered above Cazaio; and whether or no Achille Cazaio organized +the riots in Toulouse and Guienne and Bearn is a question with which, at +this late day, there can be little profitable commerce. + +One recommends this Cazaio rather to the spinners of romance: with his +morality--a trifle buccaneerish on occasion--once discreetly palliated, +history affords few heroes more instantly taking to the fancy....One casts +a hankering eye toward this Cazaio's rumored parentage, his hopeless and +life-long adoration of Claire de Puysange, his dealings with d'Argenson and +King Louis le Bien-Aime, the obscure and mischievous imbroglios in Spain, +and finally his aggrandizement and his flame-lit death, as du Maillot, +say, records these happenings: and one finds therein the outline of an +impelling hero, and laments that our traffic must be with a stolid and less +livelily tinted Bulmer. And with a sigh one passes on toward the labor +prearranged.... + +To-night Cazaio's desires were astir, and consciousness of his own power +was tempting him. He had never troubled Poictesme much: the Taunenfels were +accessible on that side, and so long as he confined his depredations to +the frontier, the Duc de Puysange merely shrugged and rendered his annual +tribute; it was not a great sum, and the Duke preferred to pay it rather +than forsake his international squabbles to quash a purely parochial +nuisance like a bandit, who was, too, a kinsman.... + +Meanwhile Cazaio had grown stronger than de Puysange knew. It was a time +of disaffection: the more violent here and there were beginning to assert +that before hanging a superfluous peasant or two de Puysange ought to bore +himself with inquiries concerning the abstract justice of the action. For +everywhere the irrational lower classes were grumbling about the very +miseries and maltreatments that had efficiently disposed of their fathers +for centuries: they seemed not to respect tradition: already they were +posting placards in the Paris boulevards,--"Shave the King for a monk, hang +the Pompadour, and break Machault on the wheel,"--and already a boy of +twelve, one Joseph Guillotin, was running about the streets of Saintes +yonder. So the commoners flocked to Cazaio in the Taunenfels until, little +by little, he had gathered an army about him. + +And at Bellegarde, de Soyecourt had only a handful of men, Cazaio meditated +to-night. And the woman was there,--the woman whose eyes were blue and +incurious, whose face was always scornful. + +In history they liken Achille Cazaio to Simon de Montfort, and the Gracchi, +and other graspers at fruit as yet unripe; or, if the perfervid word of +d'Avranches be accepted, you may regard him as "_le Saint-Jean de la +Revolution glorieuse_." But I think you may with more wisdom regard him as +a man of strong passions, any one of which, for the time being, possessed +him utterly. + +Now he struck his palm upon the table. + +"I have never seen a woman one-half so beautiful, Dom Michel. I am more +than ever in love with her." + +"In that event," the Friar considered, "it is, of course, unfortunate she +should have a brand-new husband. Husbands are often thought much of when +they are a novelty." + +"You bungled matters, you fat, mouse-hearted rascal. You could quite easily +have killed him." + +The Dominican spread out his hands, and afterward reached for the bottle. +"Milanese armor!" said Dom Michel Fregose. [Footnote: The same ecclesiastic +who more lately dubbed himself, with Marechal de Richelieu's encouragement, +l'Abbe de Trans, and was discreditably involved in the forgeries of Madame +de St. Vincent.] + +"Yet I am master of Poictesme," Cazaio thundered, "I have ten men to de +Soyecourt's one. Am I, then, lightly to be thwarted?" + +"Undoubtedly you could take Bellegarde--and the woman along with the +castle,--if you decided they were worth the price of a little killing. I +think they are not worth it, I strongly advise you to have up a wench from +the village, to put out the light, and exercise your imagination." + +Cazaio shook his head. "No, Dom Michel, you churchmen live too lewdly to +understand the tyranny of love." + +"--Besides, there is that trifling matter of your understanding with de +Puysange,--and, besides, de Puysange will be here in two days." + +Cazaio snapped his fingers. "He will arrive after the fair." Cazaio +uncorked the ink-bottle with an august gesture. + +"Write!" said Achille Cazaio. + + +VIII + +As John Bulmer leisurely ascended from the village the birds were waking. +Whether day were at hand or no was a matter of twittering debate overhead, +but in the west the stars were paling one by one, like candles puffed out +by the pretentious little wind that was bustling about the turquoise cupola +of heaven; and eastward Bellegarde showed stark, as though scissored from +a painting, against a sky of gray-and-rose. Here was a world of faint +ambiguity. Here was the exquisite tension of dawn, curiously a-chime with +John Bulmer's mood, for just now he found the universe too beautiful to put +any actual faith in its existence. He had strayed into Faery somehow--into +Atlantis, or Avalon, or "a wood near Athens,"--into a land of opalescence +and vapor and delicate color, that would vanish, bubble-like, at the +discreet tap of Pawsey fetching in his shaving-water; meantime John +Bulmer's memory snatched at each loveliness, jealously, as a pug snatches +bits of sugar. + +Beneath her window he paused and shifted his lute before him. Then he +began to sing, exultant in the unreality of everything and of himself in +particular. + +Sang John Bulmer, + + "Speed forth, my song, the sun's ambassador, + Lest in the east night prove the conqueror, + The day be slain, and darkness triumph,--for + The sun is single, but her eyes are twain. + + "And now the sunlight and the night contest + A doubtful battle, and day bides at best + Doubtful, until she waken. 'Tis attest + The sun is single. + + "But her eyes are twain,-- + And should the light of all the world delay, + And darkness prove victorious? Is it day + Now that the sun alone is risen? + + "Nay, + The sun is single, but her eyes are twain,-- + Twain firmaments that mock with heavenlier hue + The heavens' less lordly and less gracious blue, + And lit with sunlier sunlight through and through, + + "The sun is single, but her eyes are twain, + And of fair things this side of Paradise + Fairest, of goodly things most goodly," + +He paused here and smote a resonant and louder chord. His voice ascended in +dulcet supplication. + + "Rise, + And succor the benighted world that cries, + _The sun is single, but her eyes are twain!_" + +"Eh--? So it is you, is it?" Claire was peeping disdainfully from the +window. Her throat was bare, and her dusky hair was a shade dishevelled, +and in her meditative eyes he caught the flicker of her tardiest dream just +as it vanished. + +"It is I," John Bulmer confessed--"come to awaken you according to the +ancient custom of Poictesme." + +"I would much rather have had my sleep out," said she, resentfully. "In +perfect frankness, I find you and your ancient customs a nuisance." + +"You lack romance, my wife." + +"Oh--?" She was a person of many cryptic exclamations, this bride of his. +Presently she said: "Indeed, Monsieur Bulmer, I entreat you to leave +Poictesme. I have informed Louis of everything, and he is rather furious." + +John Bulmer said, "Do you comprehend why I have not already played the +emigrant?" + +After a little pause, she answered, "Yes." + +"And for the same reason I can never leave you so long as this gross +body is at my disposal. You are about to tell me that if I remain here I +shall probably be hanged on account of what happened yesterday. There are +grounds for my considering this outcome unlikely, but if I knew it to be +inevitable--if I had but one hour's start of Jack Ketch,--I swear to you I +would not budge." + +"I am heartily sorry," she replied, "since if I had known you really cared +for me--so much--I would never have married you. Oh, it is impossible!" the +girl laughed, with a trace of worriment. "You had not laid eyes on me until +a week ago yesterday!" + +"My dear," John Bulmer answered, "I am perhaps inadequately acquainted +with the etiquette of such matters, but I make bold to question if love is +exclusively regulated by clock-ticks. Observe!" he said, with a sort of +fury: "there is a mocking demon in me who twists my tongue into a jest even +when I am most serious. I love you: and I dare not tell you so without +a grin. Then when you laugh at me I, too, can laugh, and the whole +transaction can be regarded as a parody. Oh, I am indeed a coward!" + +"You are nothing of the sort! You proved that yesterday." + +"Yesterday I shot an unsuspecting man, and afterward fenced with +another--in a shirt of Milanese armor! Yes, I was astoundingly heroic +yesterday, for the simple reason that all the while I knew myself to be as +safe as though I were snug at home snoring under an eider-down quilt. Yet, +to do me justice, I am a shade less afraid of physical danger than of +ridicule." + +She gave him a womanly answer. "You are not ridiculous, and to wear armor +was very sensible of you." + +"To the contrary, I am extremely ridiculous. For observe: I am an elderly +man, quite old enough to be your father; I am fat--No, that is kind of you, +but I am not of pleasing portliness, I am just unpardonably fat; and, I +believe, I am not possessed of any fatal beauty of feature such as would +by ordinary impel young women to pursue me with unsolicited affection: +and being all this, I presume to love you. To me, at least, that appears +ridiculous." + +"Ah, do not laugh!" she said. "Do not laugh, Monsieur Bulmer!" + +But John Bulmer persisted in that curious laughter. "Because," he presently +stated, "the whole affair is so very diverting." + +"Believe me," Claire began, "I am sorry that you care--so much. I--do not +understand. I am sorry,--I am not sorry," the girl said, in a new tone, and +you saw her transfigured; "I am glad! Do you comprehend?--I am glad!" And +then she swiftly closed the window. + +John Bulmer observed. "I am perhaps subject to hallucinations, for +otherwise the fact had been previously noted by geographers that heaven is +immediately adjacent to Poictesme." + + +IX + +Presently the old flippancy came back to him, since an ancient custom is +not lightly broken; and John Bulmer smiled sleepily and shook his head. +"Here am I on my honeymoon, with my wife locked up in the chateau, and with +me locked out of it. My position savors too much of George Dandin's to be +quite acceptable. Let us set about rectifying matters." + +He came to the great gate of the castle and found two sentries there. He +thought this odd, but they recognized him as de Soyecourt's guest, and +after a whispered consultation admitted him. In the courtyard a lackey took +charge of Monsieur Bulmer, and he was conducted into the presence of the +Marquis de Soyecourt. "What the devil!" thought John Bulmer, "is Bellegarde +in a state of siege?" + +The little Marquis sat beside the Duchesse de Puysange, to the rear of a +long table with a crimson cover. Their attitudes smacked vaguely of the +judicial, and before them stood, guarded by four attendants, a ragged and +dissolute looking fellow whom the Marquis was languidly considering. + +"My dear man," de Soyecourt was saying as John Bulmer came into the room +"when you brought this extraordinary epistle to Bellegarde, you must +have been perfectly aware that thereby you were forfeiting your life. +Accordingly, I am compelled to deny your absurd claims to the immunity of a +herald, just as I would decline to receive a herald from the cockroaches." + +"That is cowardly," the man said. "I come as the representative of an +honorable enemy who desires to warn you before he strikes." + +"You come as the representative of vermin," de Soyecourt retorted, "and as +such I receive you. You will therefore, permit me to wish you a pleasant +journey into eternity. Why, hola, madame! here is that vagabond guest of +ours returned to observation!" The Marquis rose and stepped forward, all +abeam. "Mr. Bulmer, I can assure you that I was never more delighted to see +anyone in my entire life." + +"Pardon, monseigneur," one of the attendants here put in,--"but what shall +we do with this Achon?" + +The Marquis slightly turned his head, his hand still grasping John +Bulmer's. "Why, hang him, of course," he said. "Did I forget to tell you? +But yes, take him out, and have him confessed by Frere Joseph, and hang him +at once." The four men removed their prisoner. + +"You find us in the act of dispensing justice," the Marquis continued, "yet +at Bellegarde we temper it with mercy, so that I shall ask no indiscreet +questions concerning your absence of last night." + +"But I, monsieur," said John Bulmer, "I, too, have come to demand justice." + +"Tete-bleu, Mr. Bulmer! and what can I have the joy of doing for you in +that respect?" + +"You can restore to me my wife." + +And now de Soyecourt cast a smile toward the Duchess, who appeared +troubled. "Would you not have known this was an Englishman," he queried, +"by the avowed desire for the society of his own wife? They are a mad race. +And indeed, Mr. Bulmer, I would very gladly restore to you this hitherto +unheard-of spouse if but I were blest with her acquaintance. As it is--" He +waved his hand. + +"I married her only yesterday," said John Bulmer, "and I have reason to +believe that she is now within Bellegarde." + +He saw the eyes of de Soyecourt slowly narrow. "Jacques," said the Marquis, +"fetch me the pistol within that cabinet." The Marquis resumed his seat +to the rear of the table, the weapon lying before him. "You may go +now, Jacques; this gentleman and I are about to hold a little private +conversation." Then, when the door had closed upon the lackey, de Soyecourt +said, "Pray draw up a chair within just ten feet of this table, monsieur, +and oblige me with your wife's maiden name." + +"She was formerly known," John Bulmer answered, "as Mademoiselle Claire de +Puysange." + +The Duchess spoke for the first time. "Oh, the poor man! Monsieur de +Soyecourt, he is evidently insane." + +"I do not know about that," the Marquis said, fretfully, "but in any event +I hope that no more people will come to Bellegarde upon missions which, +compel me to have them hanged. First there was this Achon, and now you, Mr. +Bulmer, come to annoy me.--Listen, monsieur," he went on, presently: "last +evening Mademoiselle de Puysange announced to the Duchess and me that her +impending match with the Duke of Ormskirk must necessarily be broken off, +as she was already married. She had, she stated, encountered you and a +clergyman yonder the forest, where, on the spur of the moment, you two had +espoused each other; and was quite unable to inform us what had become of +you after the ceremony. You can conceive that, as a sensible man, I did not +credit a word of her story. But now, as I understand it, you corroborate +this moonstruck narrative?" + +John Bulmer bowed his head. "I have that honor, monsieur." + +De Soyecourt sounded the gong beside him. "In that event, it is uncommonly +convenient to have you in hand. Your return, to Bellegarde I regard +as opportune, even though I am compelled to attribute it to insanity; +personally, I disapprove of this match with Milor Ormskirk, but as Gaston +is bent upon it, you will understand that in reason my only course is to +make Claire a widow as soon as may be possible." + +"It is intended, then," John Bulmer queried, "that I am to follow Achon?" + +"I can but trust," said the Marquis, politely, "that your course of life +has qualified you for a superior flight, since Achon's departing, I +apprehend, is not unakin to a descent." + +"No!" the Duchess cried, suddenly; "Monsieur de Soyecourt, can you not +see the man is out of his senses? Let Claire be sent for. There is some +mistake." + +De Soyecourt shrugged. "Yen know that I can refuse you nothing. Jacques," +he called, to the appearing lackey, "request Mademoiselle de Puysange to +honor us, if it be convenient, with her presence. Nay, I pray you, do not +rise, Mr. Bulmer; I am of a nervous disposition, startled by the least +movement, and my finger, as you may note, is immediately upon the trigger." + +So they sat thus, John Bulmer beginning to feel rather foolish as time wore +on, though actually it was not a long while before Claire had appeared in +the doorway and had paused there. You saw a great wave of color flood her +countenance, then swiftly ebb. John Bulmer observed, with a thrill, that +she made no sound, but simply waited, composed and alert, to find out how +much de Soyecourt knew before she spoke. + +The little Marquis said, "Claire, this gentleman informs us that you +married him yesterday." + +Tranquilly she inspected her claimant. "I did not see Monsieur Bulmer at +all yesterday, so far as I remember. Why, surely, Louis, you did not take +my nonsense of last night in earnest?" she demanded, and gave a mellow +ripple of laughter. "Yes, you actually believed it; you actually believed +that I walked into the forest and married the first man I met there, and +that this is he. As it happens I did not; so please let Monsieur Bulmer go +at once, and put away that absurd pistol--at once, Louis, do you hear?" + +The Duchess shook her head. "She is lying, Monsieur de Soyecourt, and +undoubtedly this is the man." + +John Bulmer went to the girl and took her hand. "You are trying to save me, +I know. But need I warn you that the reward of Ananias was never a synonym +for felicity?" + +"Jean Bulmer! Jean Bulmer!" the girl asked, and her voice was tender; "why +did you return to Bellegarde, Jean Bulmer?" + +"I came," he answered, "for the absurd reason that I cannot live without +you." + +They stood thus for a while, both her hands clasped in his, "I believe +you," she said at last, "even though I do not understand at all, Jean +Bulmer." And then she wheeled upon the Marquis, "Yes, yes!" Claire +said; "the man is my husband. And I will not have him harmed. Do you +comprehend?--you shall not touch him, because you are not fit to touch him, +Louis, and also because I do not wish it." + +De Soyecourt looked toward the Duchess as if for advice. "It is a nuisance, +but evidently she cannot marry Milor Ormskirk so long as Mr. Bulmer is +alive. I suppose it would be better to hang him out-of-hand?" + +"Monsieur de Puysange would prefer it, I imagine," said the Duchess; +"nevertheless, it appears a great pity." + +"In nature," the Marquis assented, "we deplore the loss of Mr. Bulmer's +company. Yet as matters stand--" + +"But they are in love with each other," the Duchess pointed out, with a +sorry little laugh. "Can you not see that, my friend?" + +"Hein?" said the Marquis; "why, then, it is doubly important that Mr. +Bulmer be hanged as soon as possible." He reached for the gong, but Claire +had begun to speak. + +"I am not at all in love with him! You are of a profound imbecility, +Helene. I think he is a detestable person, because he always looks at you +as if he saw something extremely ridiculous, but was too polite to notice +it. He is invariably making me suspect I have a smut on my nose. But in +spite of that, I consider him a very pleasant old gentleman, and I will not +have him hanged!" With which ultimatum she stamped her foot. + +"Yes, madame," said the Marquis, critically; "after all, she is in love +with him. That is unfortunate, is it not, for Milor Ormskirk,--and even for +Achille Cazaio," he added, with a shrug. + +"I fail to see," a dignified young lady stated, "what Cazaio, at least, has +to do with your galimatias." + +"Simply that I received this morning a letter demanding you be surrendered +to Cazaio," de Soyecourt answered as he sounded the gong. "Otherwise, our +amiable friend of the Taunenfels announces he will attack Bellegarde. I, +of course, hanged his herald and despatched messengers to Gaston, whom I +look for to-morrow. If Gaston indeed arrive to-morrow morning, Mr. Bulmer, +I shall relinquish you to him; in other circumstances will be laid upon +me the deplorable necessity of summoning a Protestant minister from +Manneville, and, after your spiritual affairs are put in order, of hanging +you--suppose we say at noon?" + +"The hour suits me," said John Bulmer, "as well as another. But no better. +And I warn you it will not suit the Duke of Ormskirk, either, whose +relative--whose very near relative--" He posed for the astounding +revelation. + +But little de Soyecourt had drawn closer to him. "Mr. Bulmer, I have +somehow omitted to mention that two years ago I was at Aix-la-Chapelle, +when the treaty was in progress, and there saw your great kinsman. I cut +no particular figure at the convocation, and it is unlikely he recalls my +features; but I remember his quite clearly." + +"Indeed?" said John Bulmer, courteously; "it appears, then, that monsieur +is a physiognomist?" + +"You flatter me," the Marquis returned. "My skill in that science enabled +me to deduce only the veriest truisms--such as that the man who for fifteen +years had beaten France, had hoodwinked France, would in France be not +oversafe could we conceive him fool enough to hazard a trip into this +country." + +"Especially alone?" said John Bulmer. + +"Especially," the Marquis assented, "if he came alone. But, ma foi! I am +discourteous. You were about to say--?" + +"That a comic subject declines to be set forth in tragic verse," John +Bulmer answered, "and afterward to inquire the way to my dungeon." + + +X + +But John Bulmer escaped a dungeon after all; for at parting de Soyecourt +graciously offered to accept Mr. Bulmer's parole, which he gave willingly +enough, and thereby obtained the liberty of a tiny enclosed garden, whence +a stairway led to his new apartment on the second floor of what had been +known as the Constable's Tower, since du Guesclin held it for six weeks +against Sir Robert Knollys. This was a part of the ancient fortress in +which, they say, Poictesme's most famous hero, Dom Manuel, dwelt and +performed such wonders, a long while before Bellegarde was remodeled by +Duke Florian. + +The garden, gravel-pathed, was a trim place, all green and white. It +contained four poplars, and in the center was a fountain, where three +Nereids contended with a brawny Triton for the possession of a turtle whose +nostrils spurted water. A circle of attendant turtles, half-submerged, shot +inferior jets from their gaping mouths. It was an odd, and not unhandsome +piece, [Footnote: Designed by Simon Guillain. This fountain is still to be +seen at Bellegarde, though the exuberancy of Revolutionary patriotism has +bereft the Triton of his head and of the lifted arm.] and John Bulmer +inspected it with appreciation, and then the garden, and having found all +things satisfactory, sat down and chuckled sleepily and waited. + +"De Soyecourt has been aware of my identity throughout the entire week! +Faith, then, I am a greater fool than even I suspected, since this fop of +the boulevards has been able to trick me so long. He has some card up his +sleeve, too, has our good Marquis--Eh, well! Gaston comes to-morrow, and +thenceforward all is plain sailing. Meantime I conjecture that the poor +captive will presently have visitors." + +He had dinner first, though, and at this meal gave an excellent account of +himself. Shortly afterward, as he sat over his coffee, little de Soyecourt +unlocked the high and narrow gate which constituted the one entrance to the +garden, and sauntered forward, dapper and smiling. + +"I entreat your pardon, Monsieur le Duc," de Soyecourt began, "that I have +not visited you sooner. But in unsettled times, you comprehend, the master +of a beleaguered fortress is kept busy. Cazaio, I now learn, means to +attack to-morrow, and I have been fortifying against him. However, I attach +no particular importance to the man's threats, as I have despatched three +couriers to Gaston, one of whom must in reason get to him; and in that +event Gaston should arrive early in the afternoon, accompanied by the +dragoons of Entrechat. And subsequently--eh bien! if Cazaio has stirred up +a hornets'-nest he has only himself to thank for it." The Marquis snapped +his fingers and hummed a merry air, being to all appearance in excellent +spirits. + +"That is well," said John Bulmer,--"for, believe me, I shall be unfeignedly +glad to see Gaston once more." + +"Decidedly," said the Marquis, sniffing, "they give my prisoners much +better coffee than they deign to afford me, I shall make bold to ask you +for a cup of it, while we converse sensibly." He sat down opposite John +Bulmer. "Oh, about Gaston," said the Marquis, as he added the sugar--"it +is deplorable that you will not see Gaston again, at least, not in this +naughty world of ours." + +"I am the more grieved," said John Bulmer, gravely, "for I love the man." + +"It is necessary, you conceive, that I hang you, at latest, before twelve +o'clock to-morrow, since Gaston is a little too fond of you to fall in with +my plans. His premature arrival would in effect admit the bull of equity +into the china-shop of my intentions. And day-dreams are fragile stuff, +Monsieur d'Ormskirk! Indeed, I am giving you this so brief reprieve only +because I am, unwilling to have upon my conscience the reproach of hanging +without due preparation a man whom of all politicians in the universe I +most unfeignedly like and respect. The Protestant minister has been sent +for, and will, I sincerely trust, be here at dawn. Otherwise--really, I am +desolated, Monsieur le Duc, but you surely comprehend that I cannot wait +upon his leisure." + +John Bulmer cracked a filbert. "So I am to die to-morrow? I do not presume +to dictate, monsieur, but I would appreciate some explanation of your +motive." + +"Which I freely render," the Marquis replied. "When I recognized you a week +ago--as I did at first glance,--I was astounded. That you, the man in all +the world most cordially hated by Frenchmen, should venture into France +quite unattended was a conception to confound belief. Still, here you were, +and I comprehended that such an opportunity would not rap twice upon +the door. So I despatched a letter post-haste to Madame de Pompadour at +Marly--" + +"I begin to comprehend," John Bulmer said. "Old Tournehem's daughter +[Footnote: Mr. Bulmer here refers to a venerable scandal. The Pompadour +was, in the eyes of the law, at least, the daughter of Francois Poisson.] +hates me as she hates no other man alive. Frankly, monsieur, the little +strumpet has some cause to,--may I trouble you for the nut-crackers? a +thousand thanks,--since I have outwitted her more than once, both in +diplomacy and on the battle-field. With me out of the way, I comprehend +that France might attempt to renew the war, and our late treaty would be so +much wasted paper. Yes, I comprehend that the woman would give a deal for +me--But what the devil! France has no allies. She dare not provoke England +just at present; she has no allies, monsieur, for I can assure you that +Prussia is out of the game. Then what is the woman driving at?" + +"Far be it from me," said the Marquis, with becoming modesty, "to meddle +with affairs of state. Nevertheless, madame is willing to purchase you--at +any price." + +John Bulmer slapped his thigh, "Kaunitz! behold the key. Eh, eh, I have +it now; not long ago the Empress despatched a special ambassador to +Versailles,--one Anton Wenzel Kaunitz, a man I never heard of. Why, this +Moravian count is a genius of the first water. He will combine France and +Austria, implacable enemies since the Great Cardinal's time. Ah, I have +it now, monsieur,--Frederick of Prussia has published verses against the +Pompadour which she can never pardon--eh, against the Czaritza, too! Why, +what a thing it is to be a poet! now Russia will join the league. And +Sweden, of course, because she wants Pomerania, which King Frederick +claims. Monsieur de Soyecourt, I protest it will be one of the prettiest +messes ever stirred up in history! And to think that I am to miss it all!" + +"I regret," de Soyecourt said, "to deny you the pleasure of participation. +In sober verity I regret it. But unluckily, Monsieur d'Ormskirk, your +dissolution is the sole security of my happiness; and in effect"--he +shrugged,--"you comprehend my unfortunate position." + +"One of the prettiest messes ever stirred up in all history!" John Bulmer +lamented; "and I to miss it! The policy of centuries shrugged aside, and +the map of the world made over as lightly as if it were one of last year's +gowns! Decidedly I shall never again cast reflections upon the woman in +politics, for this is superb. Why, this coup is worthy of me! And what is +Petticoat the Second to give you, pray, for making all this possible?" + +"She will give me," the Marquis retorted, "according to advices received +from her yesterday, a lettre-de-cachet for Gaston de Puysange. Gaston is a +man of ability, but he is also a man of unbridled tongue. He has expressed +his opinion concerning the Pompadour, to cite an instance, as freely as +ever did the Comte de Maurepas. You know what happened to de Maurepas. Ah, +yes, Gaston is undoubtedly a peer of France, but the Pompadour is queen +of that kingdom. And in consequence--on the day that Madame de Pompadour +learns of your death,--Gaston goes to the Bastile." + +"Naturally," John Bulmer assented, "since imprisonment in the Bastile is by +ordinary the reward of common-sense when manifested by a Frenchman. What +the devil, monsieur! The Duchess' uncle, Marechal de Richelieu, has been +there four times, and Gaston himself, if I am not mistaken, has sojourned +there twice. And neither is one whit the worse for it." + +The Marquis sipped his coffee. "The Bastile is not a very healthy place. +Besides, I have a friend there,--a gaoler. He was formerly a chemist." + +John Bulmer elevated the right eyebrow. "Poison?" + +"Dieu m'en garde!" The Marquis was appalled. "Nay, monsieur, merely an +unforeseeable attack of heart-disease." + +"Ah! ah!" said John Bulmer, very slowly. He presently resumed: "Afterward +the Duchesse de Puysange will be a widow. And already she is fond of you; +but unfortunately the Duchess--with every possible deference,--is a trifle +prudish. I see it all now, quite plainly; and out of pure friendliness, +I warn you that in my opinion the Duchess is hopelessly in love with her +husband." + +"We should suspect no well bred lady of provincialism," returned the +Marquis, "and so I shall take my chance. Believe me, Monsieur le Duc, I +profoundly regret that you and Gaston must be sacrificed in order to afford +me this same chance." + +But John Bulmer was chuckling. "My faith!" he said, and softly chafed his +hands together, "how sincerely you will be horrified when your impetuous +error is discovered--just too late! You were merely endeavoring to serve +your beloved Gaston and the Duke of Ormskirk when you hanged the rascal +who had impudently stolen the woman intended to cement their friendship! +The Duke fell a victim to his own folly, and you acted precipitately, +perhaps, but out of pure zeal. You will probably weep. Meanwhile your +lettre-de-cachet is on the road, and presently Gaston, too, is trapped +and murdered. You weep yet more tears--oh, vociferous tears!---and the +Duchess succumbs to you because you were so devotedly attached to her +former husband. And England will sit snug while France reconquers Europe. +Monsieur, I make you my compliments on one of the tidiest plots ever +brooded over." + +"It rejoices me," the Marquis returned, "that a conspirator of many years' +standing should commend my maiden effort." He rose. "And now, Monsieur +d'Ormskirk," he continued, with extended hand, "matters being thus amicably +adjusted, shall we say adieu?" + +John Bulmer considered. "Well,--no!" said he, at last; "I commend your +cleverness, Monsieur de Soyecourt, but as concerns your hand I must confess +to a distaste." + +The Marquis smiled. "Because at the bottom of your heart you despise me," +he said. "Ah, believe me, monsieur, your contempt for de Soyecourt is less +great than mine. And yet I have a weakness for him,--a weakness which +induces me to indulge all his desires." + +He bowed with ceremony and left the garden. + + +XI + +John Bulmer sat down to consider more at leisure these revelations. He +foreread like a placard Jeanne d'Etoiles' magnificent scheme: it would +convulse all Europe. England would remain supine, because Henry Pelham +could hardly hold the ministry together, even now; Newcastle was a fool; +and Ormskirk would be dead. He would barter his soul for one hour of +liberty, he thought. A riot, now,--ay, a riot in Paris, a blow from within, +would temporarily stupefy French enterprise and gain England time for +preparation. And a riot could be arranged so easily! Meanwhile he was a +prisoner, Pelham's hands were tied, and Newcastle was a fool, and the +Pompadour was disastrously remote from being a fool. + +"It is possible to announce that I am the Duke of Ormskirk--and to what +end? Faith, I had as well proclaim myself the Pope of Rome or the Cazique +of Mexico: the jackanapes will effect to regard my confession as the device +of a desperate man and will hang me just the same; and his infernal comedy +will go on without a hitch. Nay, I am fairly trapped, and Monsieur de +Soyecourt holds the winning hand--Now that I think of it he even has, in +Mr. Bulmer's letter of introduction, my formally signed statement that I +am not Ormskirk. It was tactful of the small rascal not to allude to that +crowning piece of stupidity: I appreciate his forbearance. But even so, to +be outwitted--and hanged---by a smirking Hop-o'-my-thumb! + +"Oh, this is very annoying!" said John Bulmer, in his impotence. + +He sat down once more, sulkily, like an overfed cat, and began to read with +desperate attention: "'Here may men understand that be of worship, that he +was never formed that at every time might stand, but sometimes he was put +to the worse by evil fortune. And at sometimes the worse knight putteth +the better knight into rebuke.' Behold a niggardly salve rather than a +panacea." He turned several pages. "'And then said Sir Tristram to Sir +Lamorake, "I require you if ye happen to meet with Sir Palomides--"'" +Startled, John Bulmer glanced about the garden. + +It turned on a sudden into the primal garden of Paradise. "I came," she +loftily explained, "because I considered it my duty to apologize in person +for leading you into great danger. Our scouts tell us that already Cazaio +is marshalling his men upon the Taunenfels." + +"And yet," John Bulmer said, as he arose, and put away his book, +"Bellegarde is a strong place. And our good Marquis, whatever else he may +be, is neither a fool nor a coward." + +Claire shrugged. "Cazaio has ten men to our one. Yet perhaps we can hold +out till Gaston comes with his dragoons. And then--well, I have some +influence with Gaston. He will not deny me,--ah, surely he will not deny me +if I go down on my knees to him and wear my very prettiest gown. Nay, at +bottom Gaston is kind, my friend, and he will spare you." + +"To be your husband?" said John Bulmer. + +Twice she faltered "No." And then she cried, with a sudden flare of +irritation: "I do not love you! I cannot help that. Oh, you--you +unutterable bully!" + +Gravely he shook his head at her. + +"But indeed you are a bully. You are trying to bully me into caring for +you, and you know it. What else moved you to return to Bellegarde, and to +sit here, a doomed man, tranquilly reading? Yes, but you were,--I happened +to see you, through the key-hole in the gate. And why else should you be +doing that unless you were trying to bully me into admiring you?" + +"Because I adore you," said John Bulmer, taking affairs in order; "and +because in this noble and joyous history of the great conqueror and +excellent monarch, King Arthur, I find much diverting matter; and because, +to be quite frank, Claire, I consider an existence without you neither +alluring nor possible." + +She had noticeably pinkened. "Oh, monsieur," the girl cried, "you are +laughing because you are afraid that I will laugh at what you are saying to +me. Believe me, I have no desire to laugh. It frightens me, rather. I had +thought that nowadays no man could behave with a foolishness so divine. I +had thought all such extravagancy perished with the Launcelot and Palomides +of your book. And I had thought--that in any event, you had no earthly +right to call me Claire." + +"Superficially, the reproach is just," he assented, "but what was the +name your Palomides cried in battle, pray? Was it not _Ysoude!_ when his +searching sword had at last found the joints of his adversary's armor, or +when the foe's helmet spouted blood? _Ysoude!_ when the line of adverse +spears wavered and broke, and the Saracen was victor? Was it not _Ysoude!_ +he murmured riding over alien hill and valley in pursuit of the Questing +Beast?--'the glatisant beast'? Assuredly, he cried _Ysoude!_ and meantime +La Beale Ysoude sits snug in Cornwall with Tristram, who dons his armor +once in a while to roll Palomides in the sand _coram populo_. Still the +name was sweet, and I protest the Saracen had a perfect right to mention it +whenever he felt so inclined." + +"You jest at everything," she lamented--"which is one of the many traits +that I dislike in you." + +"Knowing your heart to be very tender," he submitted, "I am endeavoring to +present as jovial and callous an appearance as may be possible--to you, +whom I love as Palomides loved Ysoude. Otherwise, you might be cruelly +upset by your compassion and sympathy. Yet stay; is there not another +similitude? Assuredly, for you love me much as Ysoude loved Palomides. What +the deuce is all this lamentation to you? You do not value it the beard of +an onion,--while of course grieving that your friendship should have been +so utterly misconstrued, and wrongly interpreted,--and--trusting that +nothing you have said or done has misled me--Oh, but I know you women!" + +"Indeed, I sometimes wonder," she reflected, "what sort of women you have +been friends with hitherto? They must have been very patient of nonsense." + +"Ah, do you think so?--At all events, you interrupt my peroration. For we +have fought, you and I, a--battle which is over, so far as I am concerned. +And the other side has won. Well! Pompey was reckoned a very pretty fellow +in his day, but he took to his heels at Pharsalia, for all that; and +Hannibal, I have heard, did not have matters entirely his own way at Zama. +Good men have been beaten before this. So, without stopping to cry over +spilt milk,--heyho!" he interpolated, with a grimace, "it was uncommonly +sweet milk, though,--let's back to our tents and reckon up our wounds." + +"I am decidedly of the opinion," she said, "that for all your talk you +will find your heart unscratched." Irony bewildered Claire, though she +invariably recognized it, and gave it a polite smile. + +John Bulmer said: "Faith, I do not intend to flatter your vanity by going +into a decline on the spot. For in perfect frankness, I find no mortal +wounds anywhere. No, we have it on the best authority that, while many men +have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them, it was never for +love. I am inclined to agree with Rosalind: an aneurism may be fatal, but +a broken heart kills nobody. Lovers have died in divers manners since the +antique world was made, but not the most luckless of them was slain by +love. Even Palomides, as my book informs me, went abroad with Launcelot and +probably died an old man here in France,--peaceably, in his bed, with the +family physician in attendance, and every other circumstance becoming to +a genteel demise. And I dare assert that long before this he had learned +to chuckle over his youthful follies, and had protested to his wife that +La Beale Ysoude squinted, or was freckled, or the like; and had insisted, +laughingly, that the best of us must sow our wild oats. And at the last it +was his wife who mixed his gruel and smoothed his pillow and sat up with +him at night; so that if he died thinking of Madame Palomides rather than +of La Beale Ysoude, who shall blame him? Not I, for one," said John Bulmer, +stoutly; "If it was not heroic, it was at least respectable, and, above +all, natural; and I expect some day to gasp out a similar valedictory. No, +not to-morrow at noon, I think: I shall probably get out of this, somehow. +And when, in any event, I set about the process of dying, I may be thinking +of you, O fair lost lady! and again I may not be thinking of you. Who can +say? A fly, for instance, may have lighted upon my nose and his tickling +may have distracted my ultimate thoughts. Meanwhile, I love you consumedly, +and you do not care a snap of your fingers for me." + +"I--I am sorry," she said, inadequately. + +"You are the more gracious." And his face sank down into his hands, and +Claire was forgotten, for he was remembering Alison Pleydell and that +ancient bankruptcy of his heart in youth, and this preposterous old John +Bulmer (he reflected) was simply revelling in pity for himself. + +A hand, feather-soft, fell upon, his shoulder, "And who was your Ysoude, +Jean Bulmer?" + +"A woman who died twenty years ago,--a woman dead before you were born, my +dear." + +Claire gave a little stifled moan, "Oh--oh, I loathe her!" she cried. + +But when he raised his head Claire was gone. + + +XII + +He sat long in the twilight, now; rising insensibly about him. The garden +had become a grave, yet not unfriendly, place; the white straining Nereids +were taking on a tinge of violet, the verdure was of a deeper hue, that was +all; and the fountain plashed unhurriedly, as though measuring a reasonable +interval (he whimsically imagined) between the asking of a riddle and its +solution given gratis by the asker. + +He loved the woman; granted: but did not love rise the higher above a +corner-stone of delusion? And this he could never afford. He considered +Claire to be not extravagantly clever, he could have improved upon her +ears (to cite one instance), which were rather clumsily modelled; her +finger-tips were a thought too thick, a shade too practical, and in fine +she was no more the most beautiful woman in the world than she was the +tallest: and yet he loved her as certainly he had loved none of his recent +mistresses. Even so, here was no infatuation, no roseate and kindly haze +surrounding a goddess, such as that which had by ordinary accompanied +Alison Pleydell.... + +"I am grown older, perhaps. Perhaps it is merely that I am fashioned of +baser stuff than---say, Achille Cazaio or de Soyecourt. Or perhaps it +is that this overmastering, all-engulfing love is a mere figment of the +poet, an age-long superstition as zealously preserved as that of the +inscrutability of women, by men who don't believe a syllable of the +nonsense they are transmitting. Ysoude is dead; and I love my young +French wife as thoroughly as Palomides did, with as great a passion as +was possible to either of us oldsters. Well! all life is a compromise; I +compromise with tradition by loving her unselfishly, by loving her with the +very best that remains in John Bulmer. + +"And yet, I wish-- + +"True, I may be hanged at noon to-morrow, which would somewhat disconcert +my plan. I shall not bother about that. Always there remains the chance +that, somehow, Gaston may arrive in time: otherwise--why, otherwise I shall +be hanged, and as to what will happen afterward I decline to enter into any +discussion even with myself. I have my belief, but it is bolstered by no +iota of knowledge. Faith, let us live this life as a gentleman should, and +keep our hands and our consciences as clean as may be possible, and for the +outcome trust to God's common-sense. There are people who must divert Him +vastly by their frantic efforts to keep out of hell. For my own part, I +would not think of wearing a pelisse in the Desert of Sahara merely because +I happened to be sailing for Greenland during the ensuing week. I shall +trust to His common-sense. + +"And yet, I wish-- + +"I wish Reinault would hurry with the supper-trays. I am growing very +hungry." + + +XIII + +That night he was roused by a tapping at his door. "Jean Bulmer, Jean +Bulmer! I have bribed Reinault. I have the keys. Come, and I will set you +free." + +"Free to do what?" said John Bulmer. + +"To escape--to flee to your foggy England," said the voice without,--"and +to your hideous Englishwomen." + +"Do you go with me?" said John Bulmer. + +"I do not." This was spoken from the turrets of decision. + +"In that event," said John Bulmer, "I shall return to my dreams, which I +infinitely prefer to the realities of a hollow existence. And, besides, now +one thinks of it, I have given my parole." + +An infuriate voice came through the key-hole. "You are undoubtedly a +bully," it stated. "I loathe you." Followed silence. + +Presently the voice said, "Because if you really loved her you were no +better than she was, and so I hate you both." + +"'Beautiful as an angel, and headstrong as a devil,'" was John Bulmer's +meditation. Afterward John Bulmer turned over and went back to sleep. + +For after all, as he reflected, he had given his parole. + + +XIV + +He was awakened later by a shriek that was followed by a hubbub of tumult. +John Bulmer sat erect in bed. He heard a medley of yelling, of musketry, +and of crashes, like the dilapidation of falling battlements. He knew well +enough what had happened. Cazaio and his men were making a night attack +upon Bellegarde. + +John Bulmer arose and, having lighted two candles, dressed himself. He cast +aside the first cravat as a failure, knotted the second with scrupulous +nicety, and afterward sat down, facing the door to his apartment, and +trimmed his finger nails. Outside was Pandemonium, and the little scrap of +sky visible from his one window was now of a sullen red. + +"It is very curious I do not suffer more acutely. As a matter of fact, I +am not conscious of any particular feeling at all. I believe that most of +us when we are confronted with a situation demanding high joy or agony +find ourselves devoid of emotion. They have evidently taken de Soyecourt +by surprise. She is yonder in that hell outside and will inevitably be +captured by its most lustful devil--or else be murdered. I am here like +a trapped rat, impotent, waiting to be killed, which Cazaio's men will +presently attend to when they ransack the place and find me. And I feel +nothing, absolutely nothing. + +"By this she has probably fallen into Cazaio's power--" + +And the man went mad. He dashed upon the locked door, and tore at it with +soft-white hands, so that presently they were all blood. He beat his face +upon the door, cutting open his forehead. + +He shook his bleeding hands toward heaven. "In my time I have been cruel. I +am less cruel than You! Let me go!" + +The door opened and she stood upon the threshold. His arms were about her +and repeatedly he kissed her, mercilessly, with hard kisses, crushing her +in his embrace. + +"Jean, Jean!" she sobbed, beneath his lips, and lay quite still in his +arms. He saw how white and tender a thing she was, and the fierce embrace +relaxed. + +"You came to me!" he said. + +"Louis had forgotten you. They had all retreated to the Inner Tower. +[Footnote: The inner ward, or ballium, which (according to Quinault) was +defended by ten towers, connected by an embattled stone wall about thirty +feet in height and eight feet thick, on the summit of which was a footway; +now demolished to make way for the famous gardens.] Cazaio cannot take +that, for he has no cannon. Louis can hold out there until Gaston comes +with help," Claire rapidly explained. "But the thieves are burning +Bellegarde. I could bribe no man to set you free. They were afraid to +venture." + +"And you came," said John Bulmer--"you left the tall safe Inner Tower to +come to me!" + +"I could not let you die, Jean Bulmer." + +"Why, then I must live not unworthily the life which, you have given me. O +God!" John Bulmer cried, "what a pitiful creature was that great Duke of +Ormskirk! Now make a man of me, O God!" + +"Listen, dear madman," she breathed; "we cannot go out into Bellegarde. +They are everywhere--Cazaio's men. They are building huge fires about the +Inner Tower; but it is all stone, and I think Louis can hold out. But we, +Jean Bulmer, can only retreat to the roofing of this place. There is a +trap-door to admit you to the top, and there--there we can at least live +until the dawn." + +"I am unarmed," John Bulmer said; "and weaponless, I cannot hold even a +trap-door against armed men." + +"I have brought you weapons," Claire returned, and waved one hand toward +the outer passageway. "Naturally I would not overlook that. There were many +dead men on my way hither, and they had no need of weapons. I have a sword +here and two pistols." + +"You are," said John Bulmer, with supreme conviction, "the most wonderful +woman in the universe. By all means let us get to the top of this infernal +tower and live there as long as we may find living possible. But first, +will you permit me to make myself a thought tidier? For in my recent +agitation as to your whereabouts I have, I perceive, somewhat disordered +both my person and my apparel." + +Claire laughed a little sadly. "You have been sincere for once in your +existence, and you are hideously ashamed, is it not? Ah, my friend, I would +like you so much better if you were not always playing at life, not always +posing as if for your portrait." + +"For my part," he returned, obscurely, from the rear of a wet towel, "I +fail to perceive any particular merit in dying with a dirty face. We are +about to deal with a most important and, it well may be, the final crisis +of our lives. So let us do it with decency." + +Afterward John Bulmer changed his cravat, since the one he wore was soiled +and crumpled and stained a little with his blood; and they went up the +winding stairway to the top of the Constable's Tower. These two passed +through the trap-door into a moonlight which drenched the world; westward +the higher walls of the Hugonet Wing shut off that part of Bellegarde where +men were slaughtering one another, and turrets, black and untenanted, stood +in strong relief against a sky of shifting crimson and gold. At their feet +was the tiny enclosed garden half-hidden by the poplar boughs. To the east +the Tower dropped sheer to the moat; and past that was the curve of the +highway leading to the main entrance of the chateau, and beyond this road +you saw Amneran and the moonlighted plains of the Duardenez, and one little +tributary, a thread of pulsing silver, in passage to the great river which +showed as a smear of white, like a chalk-mark on the world's rim. + +John Bulmer closed the trap-door. They stood with clasped hands, eyes +straining toward the east, whence help must arrive if help came at all. + +"No sign of Gaston," the girl said. "We most die presently, Jean Bulmer." + +"I am sorry," he said,--"Oh, I am hideously sorry that we two must die." + +"I am not afraid, Jean Bulmer. But life would be very sweet, with you." + +"That was my thought, too.... I have always bungled this affair of living, +you conceive. I had considered the world a healthy and not intolerable +prison, where each man must get through his day's work as best he might, +soiling his fingers as much as necessity demanded--but no more,--so that at +the end he might sleep soundly--or perhaps that he might go to heaven and +pluck eternally at a harp, or else to hell and burn eternally, just as +divines say we will. I never bothered about it, much, so long as there was +my day's work at hand, demanding performance. And in consequence I missed +the whole meaning of life." + +"That is not so!" Claire replied. "No man has achieved more, as everybody +knows." + +This was an odd speech. But he answered, idly: "Eh, I have done well +enough as respectable persons judge these matters. And I went to church on +Sundays, and I paid my tithes. Trifles, these, sweetheart; for in every +man, as I now see quite plainly, there is a god. And the god must judge, +and the man himself must be the temple and the instrument of the god. It is +very simple, I see now. And whether he go to church or no is a matter of +trivial importance, so long as the man obeys the god who is within him." +John Bulmer was silent, staring vaguely toward the blank horizon. + +"And now that you have discovered this," she murmured, "therefore you wish +to live?" + +"Why, partly on account of that," he said, "yet perhaps mostly on account +of you.... But heyho!" said John Bulmer; "I am disfiguring my last hours +by inflicting upon a lady my half-baked theology. Let us sit down, my +dear, and talk of trifles till they find us. And then I will kill you, +sweetheart, and afterward myself. Presently come dawn and death; and my +heart, according to the ancient custom of Poictesme, is crying, '_Oy +Dieus! Oy Dieus, de l'alba tantost ve!_' But for all that, my mouth will +resolutely discourse of the last Parisian flounces, or of your unfathomable +eyes, or of Monsieur de Voltaire's new tragedy of _Oreste_,--or, in fine, +of any topic you may elect." + +He smiled, with a twinging undercurrent of regret that not even in +impendent death did he find any stimulus to the heroical. But the girl had +given a muffled cry. + +"Look, Jean! Already they come for us." + +Through the little garden a man was running, running frenziedly from +one wall to another when he found the place had no outlet save the gate +through which he had scuttled. It was fat Guiton, the steward of the Duc de +Puysange. Presently came Achille Cazaio with a wet sword, and harried the +unarmed old man, wantonly driving him about the poplars, pricking him in +the quivering shoulders, but never killing him. All the while the steward +screamed with a monotonous shrill wailing. + +After a little he fell at Cazaio's feet, shrieking for mercy. + +"Fool!" said the latter, "I am Achille Cazaio. I have no mercy in me." + +He kicked the steward in the face two or three times, and Guiton, his +countenance all blood, black in the moonlight, embraced the brigand's +and wept. Presently Cazaio slowly drove his sword into the back of the +prostrate man, who shrieked, "O Jesu!" and began to cough and choke. Five +times Cazaio spitted the writhing thing, and afterward was Guiton's soul +released from the tortured body. + +"Is it well, think you," said John Bulmer, "that I should die without first +killing Achille Cazaio?" + +"No!" the girl answered, fiercely. + +Then John Bulmer leaned upon the parapet of the Constable's Tower and +called aloud, "Friend Achille, your conduct disappoints me." + +The man started, peered about, and presently stared upward. "Monsieur +Bulmaire, to encounter you is indeed an unlooked-for pleasure. May I +inquire wherein I have been so ill-fated as to offend?" + +"You have an engagement to fight me on Thursday afternoon, friend Achille, +so that to all intent I hold a mortgage on your life. I submit that, in +consequence, you have no right to endanger that life by besieging castles +and wasting the night in assassinations." + +"There is something in what you say, Monsieur Bulmaire," the brigand +replied, "and I very heartily apologize for not thinking of it earlier. +But in the way of business, you understand,--However, may I trust it will +please you to release me from this inconvenient obligation?" Cazaio added, +with a smile. "My men are waiting for me yonder, you comprehend." + +"In fact," said John Bulmer, hospitably, "up here the moonlight is as clear +as day. We can settle our affair in five minutes." + +"I come," said Cazaio, and plunged into the entrance to the Constable's +Tower. + +"The pistol! quick!" said Claire. + +"And for what, pray?" said John Bulmer. + +"So that from behind, as he lifts the trap-door, I may shoot him through +the head. Do you stand in front as though to receive him. It will be quite +simple." + + +XV + +"My dear creature," said John Bulmer, "I am now doubly persuaded that God +entirely omitted what we term a sense of honor when He created the woman. I +mean to kill this rapscallion, but I mean to kill him fairly." He unbolted +the trap-door and immediately Cazaio stood upon the roof, his sword drawn. + +Achille Cazaio stared at the tranquil woman, and now his countenance +was less that of a satyr than of a demon. "At four in the morning! +I congratulate you, Monsieur Bulmaire," he said,--"Oh, decidedly, I +congratulate you." + +"Thank you," said John Bulmer, sword in hand; "yes, we were married +yesterday." + +Cazaio drew a pistol from his girdle and fired full in John Bulmer's face; +but the latter had fallen upon one knee, and the ball sped harmlessly above +him. + +"You are very careless with fire-arms," John Bulmer lamented, "Really, +friend Achille, if you are not more circumspect you will presently injure +somebody, and will forever afterward be consumed with unavailing regret and +compunctions. Now let us get down to our affair." + +They crossed blades in the moonlight, Cazaio was in a disastrous condition; +John Bulmer's tolerant acceptance of any meanness that a Cazaio might +attempt, the vital shame of this new and baser failure before Claire's very +eyes, had made of Cazaio a crazed beast. He slobbered little flecks of +foam, clinging like hoar-frost to the tangled beard, and he breathed with +shuddering inhalations, like a man in agony, the while that he charged +with redoubling thrusts. The Englishman appeared to be enjoying himself, +discreetly; he chuckled as the other, cursing, shifted from tierce to +quart, and he met the assault with a nice inevitableness. In all, each +movement had the comely precision of finely adjusted clockwork, though +at times John Bulmer's face showed a spurt of amusement roused by the +brigand's extravagancy of gesture and Cazaio's contortions as he strove to +pass the line of steel that flickered cannily between his sword and John +Bulmer's portly bosom. + +Then John Bulmer, too, attacked. "For Guiton!" said he, as his point +slipped into Cazaio's breast. John Bulmer recoiled and lodged another +thrust in the brigand's throat. "For attempting to assassinate me!" His +foot stamped as his sword ran deep into Cazaio's belly. "For insulting my +wife by thinking of her obscenely! You are a dead man, friend Achille." + +Cazaio had dropped his sword, reeling as if drunken against the western +battlement. "My comfort," he said, hoarsely, while one hand tore at his +jetting throat--"my comfort is that I could not perish slain by a braver +enemy." He moaned and stumbled backward. Momentarily his knees gripped the +low embrasure. Then his feet flipped upward, convulsively, so that John +Bulmer saw the man's spurs glitter and twitch in the moonlight, and John +Bulmer heard a snapping and crackling and swishing among the poplars, and +heard the heavy, unvibrant thud of Cazaio's body upon the turf. + +"May he find more mercy than he has merited," said John Bulmer, "for the +man had excellent traits. Yes, in him the making of a very good swordsman +was spoiled by that abominable Boisrobert." + +But Claire had caught him by the shoulder. "Look, Jean!" + +He turned toward the Duardenez. A troop of horsemen was nearing. Now they +swept about the curve in the highway and at their head was de Puysange, +laughing terribly. The dragoons went by like a tumult in a sick man's +dream, and the Hugonet Wing had screened them. + +"Then Bellegarde is relieved," said John Bulmer, "and your life, at least, +is saved." + +The girl stormed. "You--you abominable trickster! You would not be content +with the keys of heaven if you had not got them by outwitting somebody! Do +you fancy I had never seen the Duke of Ormskirk's portrait? Gaston sent me +one six months ago." + +"Ah!" said John Bulmer, very quietly. He took up the discarded scabbard, +and he sheathed his sword without speaking. + +Presently he said, "You have been cognizant all along that I was the Duke +of Ormskirk?" + +"Yes," she answered, promptly. + +"And you married me, knowing that I was--God save the mark!--the great Duke +of Ormskirk? knowing that you made what we must grossly term a brilliant +match?" + +"I married you because, in spite of Jean Bulmer, you had betrayed yourself +to be a daring and a gallant gentleman,--and because, for a moment, I +thought that I did not dislike the Duke of Ormskirk quite so much as I +ought to." + +He digested this. + +"O Jean Bulmer," the girl said, "they tell me you were ever a fortunate +man, but I consider you the unluckiest I know of. For always you are afraid +to be yourself. Sometimes you forget, and are just you--and then, ohe! you +remember, and are only a sulky, fat old gentleman who is not you at all, +somehow; so that at times I detest you, and at times I cannot thoroughly +detest you. So that I played out the comedy, Jean Bulmer. I meant in the +end to tell Louis who you were, of course, and not let them hang you; but I +never quite trusted you; and I never knew whether I detested you or no, at +bottom, until last night." + +"Last night you left the safe Inner Tower to come to me--to save me at all +hazards, or else to die with me--And for what reason, did you do this?" + +"You are bullying me!" she wailed. + +"And for what reason, did you do this?" he repeated, without any change of +intonation. + +"Can you not guess?" she asked. "Oh, because I am a fool!" she stated, very +happily, for his arms were about her. + +"Eh, in that event--" said the Duke of Ormskirk. "Look!" said he, with a +deeper thrill of speech, "it is the dawn." + +They turned hand in hand; and out of the east the sun came statelily, and a +new day was upon them. + + + + +VIII + +HEART OF GOLD + + +_As Played at Paris, in the May of 1750_ + +"_Cette amoureuse ardeur qui dans les coeurs s'excite N'est point, comme +l'on scait, un effet du merite; Le caprice y prend part, et, quand +quelqu'un nous plaist, Souvent nous avons peine a dire pourquoy c'est. Mais +on vois que l'amour se gouverne autrement._" + + +DRAMATIS PERSONAE + +DUC DE PUYSANGE, somewhat given to women, and now and then to +good-fellowship, but a man of excellent disposition. + +MARQUIS DE SOYECOURT, his cousin, and loves de Puysange's wife. + +DUKE OF ORMSKIRK. + +DUCHESSE DE PUYSANGE, a precise, but amiable and patient, woman. + +ANTOINE, LACKEYS to de Puysange, Etc. + + +SCENE + +Paris, mostly within and about the Hotel de Puysange. + + + + +HEART OF GOLD + + +PROEM:--_Necessitated by a Change of Scene_ + +You are not to imagine that John Bulmer debated an exposure of de +Soyecourt. "Live and let live" was the Englishman's axiom; the exuberant +Cazaio was dead, his men were either slain or dispersed, and the whole +tangle of errors--with judicious reservations--had now been unravelled to +Gaston's satisfaction. And Claire de Puysange was now Duchess of Ormskirk. +Why, then, meddle with Destiny, who appeared, after all, to possess a +certain sense of equity? + +So Ormskirk smiled as he presently went about Paris, on his own business, +and when he and Louis de Soyecourt encountered each other their +friendliness was monstrous in its geniality. + +They were now one and all in Paris, where Ormskirk's marriage had been +again, and more publicly, solemnized. De Puysange swore that his sister was +on this occasion the loveliest person affordable by the resources of the +universe, but de Soyecourt backed another candidate; so that over their +wine the two gentlemen presently fell into a dispute. + +"Nay, but I protest to you she is the most beautiful woman in all Paris!" +cried the Marquis de Soyecourt, and kissed his finger-tips gallantly. + +"My dear Louis," the Duc de Puysange retorted, "her eyes are noticeable, +perhaps; and I grant you," he added, slowly, "that her husband is not often +troubled by--that which they notice." + +"--And the cleverest!" + +"I have admitted she knows when to be silent. What more would you demand of +any woman?" + +"And yet--" The little Marquis waved a reproachful forefinger. + +"Why, but," said the Duke, with utter comprehension, "it is not for nothing +that our house traces from the great Jurgen--" + +He was in a genial midnight mood, and, on other subjects, inclined to be +garrulous; for the world, viewed through a slight haze, of vinous origin, +seemed a pleasant place, and inspired a kindly desire to say diverting +things about the world's contents. He knew the Marquis to be patient, +and even stolid, under a fusillade of epigram and paradox; in short, de +Puysange knew the hour and the antagonist for midnight talk to be at hand. +And a saturnalia of phrases whirled in his brain, demanding utterance. + +He waved them aside. Certain inbred ideas are strangely tenacious of +existence, and it happened to be his wife they were discussing. It would +not be good form, de Puysange felt, for him to evince great interest in +this topic.... + + +I + +"And yet," de Puysange queried, as he climbed democratically into a public +hackney coach, "why not? For my part, I see no good and sufficient reason +for discriminating against the only woman one has sworn to love and cherish +and honor. It is true that several hundred people witnessed the promise, +with a perfect understanding of the jest, and that the keeping of this oath +involves a certain breach of faith with society. Eh bien! let us, then, +deceive the world--and the flesh--and the devil! Let us snap our fingers at +this unholy trinity, and assert the right, when the whim takes us, to make +unstinted love to our own wives!" + +He settled back in the _fiacre_ to deliberate. "It is bourgeois? Bah! the +word is the first refuge of the unskilful poseur! It is bourgeois to be +born, to breathe, to sleep, or eat; in which of the functions that consume +the greater part of my life do I differ from my grocer? Bourgeois! why, +rightly considered, to be a human being at all is quite inordinately +bourgeois! And it is very notably grocer-like to maintain a grave face and +two establishments, to chuckle privily over the fragments of the seventh +commandment, to repent, upon detection, and afterward--ces betes-la!--to +drink poison. Ma foi, I infinitely prefer the domestic coffee!" + +The Duc de Puysange laughed, and made as though to wave aside the crudities +of life. "All vice is bourgeois, and fornication in particular tends +to become sordid, outworn, vieux jeu! In youth, I grant you, it is the +unexpurgated that always happens. But at my age--misericorde!--the +men yawn, and les demoiselles--bah! les demoiselles have the souls of +accountants! They buy and sell, as my grocer does. The satiation of carnal +desires is no longer a matter of splendid crimes and sorrows and kingdoms +lost; it is a matter of business." + +The harsh and swarthy face relaxed. With, a little sigh the Duc de Puysange +had closed his fevered eyes. About them were a multitude of tiny lines, +and of this fact he was obscurely conscious, in a wearied fashion, when he +again looked out on the wellnigh deserted streets, now troubled by a hint +of dawn. His eyes were old; they had seen much. Two workmen shambled by, +chatting on their way to the day's work; in the attic yonder a drunken +fellow sang, "Ah, bouteille ma mie," he bellowed, "pourquoi vous +vuidez-vous?" + +De Puysange laughed. "I suppose I have no conscience, but at least, I can +lay claim to a certain fastidiousness. I am very wicked,"--he smiled, +without mirth or bitterness,--"I have sinned notably as the world accounts +it; indeed, I think, my repute is as abominable as that of any man living. +And I am tired,--alas, I am damnably tired! I have found the seven deadly +sins deadly, beyond, doubt, but only deadly dull and deadly commonplace. I +have perseveringly frisked in the high places of iniquity, I have junketed +with all evil gods, and the utmost they could pretend to offer any of their +servitors was a spasm. I renounce them, as feeble-minded deities, I snap +my fingers, very much as did my progenitor, the great Jurgen, at all their +over-rated mysteries." + +His glance caught and clung for a moment to the paling splendor of the moon +that hung low in the vacant, dove-colored heavens. A faint pang, half-envy, +half-regret, vexed the Duke with a dull twinge. "I wish too that by living +continently I could have done, once for all, with this faded pose and this +idle making of phrases! Eheu! there is a certain proverb concerning pitch +so cynical that I suspect it of being truthful. However,--we shall see." + +De Puysange smiled. "The most beautiful woman in all Paris? Ah, yes, she is +quite that, is this grave silent female whose eyes are more fathomless and +cold than oceans! And how cordially she despises me! Ma foi, I think that +if her blood--which is, beyond doubt, of a pale-pink color,--be ever +stirred, at all, it is with loathing of her husband. Well, life holds many +surprises for madame, now that I become quite as virtuous as she is. We +will arrange a very pleasant comedy of belated courtship; for are we not +bidden to love one another? So be it,--I am henceforth the model pere de +famille." + +Now the _fiacre_ clattered before the Hotel de Puysange. + +The door was opened by a dull-eyed lackey, whom de Puysange greeted with +a smile, "Bon jour, Antoine!" cried the Duke; "I trust that your wife and +doubtless very charming children have good health?" + +"Beyond question, monseigneur," the man answered, stolidly. + +"That is excellent hearing," de Puysange said, "and it rejoices me to be +reassured of their welfare. For the happiness of others, Antoine, is +very dear to the heart of a father--and of a husband." The Duke chuckled +seraphically as he passed down the hall. The man stared after him, and +shrugged. + +"Rather worse than usual," Antoine considered. + + +II + +Next morning the Duchesse de Puysange received an immoderate armful of +roses, with a fair copy of some execrable verses. De Puysange spent the +afternoon, selecting bonbons and wholesome books,--"for his fiancee," he +gravely informed the shopman. + +At the Opera he never left her box; afterward, at the Comtesse de +Hauteville's, he created a furor by sitting out three dances in the +conservatory with his wife. Mademoiselle Tiercelin had already received his +regrets that he was spending that night at home. + + +III + +The month wore on. + +"It is the true honeymoon," said the Duke. + +In that event he might easily have found a quieter place than Paris wherein +to spend it. Police agents had of late been promised a premium for any +sturdy beggar, whether male or female, they could secure to populate +the new plantation of Louisiana; and as the premium was large, genteel +burgesses, and in particular the children of genteel burgesses, were +presently disappearing in a fashion their families found annoying. Now, +from nowhere, arose and spread the curious rumor that King Louis, somewhat +the worse for his diversions in the Parc-aux-Cerfs, daily restored his +vigor by bathing in the blood of young children; and parents of the +absentees began to manifest a double dissatisfaction, for the deduction was +obvious. + +There were riots. In one of them Madame de Pompadour barely escaped with +her life, [Footnote: This was on the afternoon of the famous ball given +by the Pompadour in honor of the new Duchess of Ormskirk.] and the King +himself on his way to Compiegne, was turned back at the Porte St. Antoine, +and forced to make a detour rather than enter his own capital. After this +affair de Puysange went straight to his brother-in-law. + +"Jean," said he, "for a newly married man you receive too much company. And +afterward your visitors talk blasphemously in cabarets and shoot the King's +musketeers. I would appreciate an explanation." + +Ormskirk shrugged. "Merely a makeshift, Gaston. Merely a device to gain +time wherein England may prepare against the alliance of France and +Austria. Your secret treaty will never be signed as long as Paris is given +over to rioters. Nay, the Empress may well hesitate to ally herself with +a king who thus clamantly cannot govern even his own realm. And meanwhile +England will prepare herself. We will be ready to fight you in five years, +but we do not intend to be hurried about it." + +"Yes," de Puysange assented;--"yet you err in sending Cumberland to defend +Hanover. You will need a better man there." + +Ormskirk slapped his thigh. "So you intercepted that last despatch, after +all! And I could have sworn Candale was trustworthy!" + +"My adored Jean," replied de Puysange, "he has been in my pay for six +months! Console yourself with the reflection that you overbid us in +Noumaria." + +"Yes, but old Ludwig held out for more than the whole duchy is worth. We +paid of course. We had to pay." + +"And one of course congratulates you upon securing the quite essential +support of that duchy. Still, Jean, if there were any accident--" De +Puysange was really unbelievably ugly when he smiled. "For accidents do +occur.... It is war, then?" + +"My dear fellow," said Ormskirk, "of course it is war. We are about to fly +at each other's throats, with half of Europe to back each of us. We begin +the greatest game we have ever played. And we will manage it very badly, I +dare say, since we are each of us just now besotted with adoration of our +wives." + +"At times," said de Puysange, with dignity, "your galimatias are +insufferable. Now let us talk like reasonable beings. In regard to +Pomerania, you will readily understand that the interests of humanity--" + + +IV + +Still the suggestion haunted him. It would be a nuance too ridiculous, of +course, to care seriously for one's wife, and yet Helene de Puysange +was undeniably a handsome woman. As they sat over the remains of their +dinner,--_a deux_, by the Duke's request,--she seemed to her husband quite +incredibly beautiful. She exhaled the effects of a water-color in discreet +and delicate tinctures. Lithe and fine and proud she was to the merest +glance; yet patience, a thought conscious of itself, beaconed in her eyes, +and she appeared, with urbanity, to regard life as, upon the whole, a +countrified performance. De Puysange liked that air; he liked the reticence +of every glance and speech and gesture,--liked, above all, the thinnish +oval of her face and the staid splendor of her hair. Here was no vulgar +yellow, no crass and hackneyed gold ... and yet there was a clarified and +gauzier shade of gold ... the color of the moon by daylight, say.... Then, +as the pleasures of digestion lapsed gently into the initial amenities of +sleep, she spoke. + +"Monsieur," said she, "will you be pleased to tell me the meaning of this +comedy?" + +"Madame," de Puysange answered, and raised his gloomy eyebrows, "I do not +entirely comprehend." + +"Ah," said she, "believe me, I do not undervalue your perception. I have +always esteemed your cleverness, monsieur, however much"--she paused for +a moment, a fluctuating smile upon her lips,--"however much I may have +regretted its manifestations. I am not clever, and to me cleverness has +always seemed to be an infinite incapacity for hard work; its results +are usually a few sonnets, an undesirable wife, and a warning for one's +acquaintances. In your case it is, of course, different; you have your +statesmanship to play with--" + +"And statesmen have no need of cleverness, you would imply, madame?" + +"I do not say that. In any event, you are the Duc de Puysange, and the +weight of a great name stifles stupidity and cleverness without any +partiality. With you, cleverness has taken the form of a tendency to +intoxication, amours, and--amiability. I have acquiesced in this. But, for +the past month--" + +"The happiest period of my life!" breathed the Duke. + +"--you have been pleased to present me with flowers, bonbons, jewels, and +what not. You have actually accorded your wife the courtesies you usually +preserve for the ladies of the ballet. You have dogged my footsteps, you +have attempted to intrude into my bedroom, you have talked to me as--well, +very much as--" + +"Much as the others do?" de Puysange queried, helpfully. "Pardon me, +madame, but, in one's own husband, I had thought this very routine might +savor of originality." + +The Duchess flushed, "All the world knows, monsieur, that in your +estimation what men have said to me, or I to them, has been for fifteen +years a matter of no moment! It is not due to you that I am still--" + +"A pearl," finished the Duke, gallantly,--then touched himself upon the +chest,--"cast before swine," he sighed. + +She rose to her feet. "Yes, cast before swine!" she cried, with a quick +lift of speech. She seemed very tall as she stood tapping her fingers upon +the table, irresolutely; but after an instant she laughed and spread out +her fine hands in an impotent gesture. "Ah, monsieur," she said, "my father +entrusted to your keeping a clean-minded girl! What have you made of her, +Gaston?" + +A strange and profoundly unreasonable happiness swept through the Duke's +soul as she spoke his given name for the first time within his memory. +Surely, the deep contralto voice had lingered over it?--half-tenderly, +half-caressingly, one might think. + +The Duke put aside his coffee-cup and, rising, took his wife's soft hands +in his. "What have I made of her? I have made of her, Helene, the one +object of all my desires." + +Her face flushed. "Mountebank!" she cried, and struggled to free herself; +"do you mistake me, then, for a raddle-faced actress in a barn? Ah, les +demoiselles have formed you, monsieur,--they have formed you well!" + +"Pardon!" said the Duke. He released her hands, he swept back his hair with +a gesture of impatience. He turned from his wife, and strolled toward a +window, where, for a little, he tapped upon the pane, his murky countenance +twitching oddly, as he stared into the quiet and sunlit street. "Madame," +he began, in a level voice, "I will tell you the meaning of the comedy. To +me,--always, as you know, a creature of whims,--there came, a month ago, a +new whim which I thought attractive, unconventional, promising. It was to +make love to my own wife rather than to another man's. Ah, I grant you, it +is incredible," he cried, when the Duchess raised her hand as though to +speak,--"incredible, fantastic, and ungentlemanly! So be it; nevertheless, +I have played out my role. I have been the model husband; I have put away +wine and--les demoiselles; for it pleased me, in my petty insolence, to +patronize, rather than to defy, the laws of God and man. Your perfection +irritated me, madame; it pleased me to demonstrate how easy is this trick +of treating the world as the antechamber of a future existence. It pleased +me to have in my life one space, however short, over which neither the +Recording Angel nor even you might draw a long countenance. It pleased me, +in effect, to play out the comedy, smug-faced and immaculate,--for the +time. I concede that I have failed in my part. Hiss me from the stage, +madame; add one more insult to the already considerable list of those +affronts which I have put upon you; one more will scarcely matter." + +She faced him with set lips. "So, monsieur, your boasted comedy amounts +only to this?" + +"I am not sure of its meaning, madame. I think that, perhaps, the swine, +wallowing in the mire which they have neither strength nor will to leave, +may yet, at times, long--and long whole-heartedly--" De Puysange snapped +his fingers. "Peste!" said he, "let us now have done with this dreary +comedy! Beyond doubt de Soyecourt has much to answer for, in those idle +words which were its germ. Let us hiss both collaborators, madame." + +"De Soyecourt!" she marveled, with, a little start. "Was it he who prompted +you to make love to me?" + +"Without intention," pleaded the Duke. "He twitted me for my inability, as +your husband, to gain your affections; but I do not question his finest +sensibilities would be outraged by our disastrous revival of Philemon and +Baucis." + +"Ah--!" said she. She was smiling at some reflection or other. + +There was a pause. The Duc de Puysange drummed upon the window-pane; the +Duchess, still faintly smiling, trifled with the thin gold chain that hung +about her neck. Both knew their display of emotion to have been somewhat +unmodern, not entirely _a la mode_. + +"Decidedly," spoke de Puysange, and turned toward her with a slight +grimace, "I am no longer fit to play the lover; yet a little while, madame, +and you must stir my gruel-posset, and arrange the pillows more comfortably +about the octogenarian." + +"Ah, Gaston," she answered, and in protest raised her slender fingers, "let +us have no more heroics. We are not well fitted for them, you and I." + +"So it would appear," the Duc de Puysange conceded, not without sulkiness. + +"Let us be friends," she pleaded. "Remember, it was fifteen years ago I +made the grave mistake of marrying a very charming man--" + +"Merci!" cried the Duke. + +"--and I did not know that I was thereby denying myself the pleasure of his +acquaintance. I have learned too late that marrying a man is only the most +civil way of striking him from one's visiting-list." The Duchess hesitated. +"Frankly, Gaston, I do not regret the past month." + +"It has been adorable!" sighed the Duke. + +"Yes," she admitted; "except those awkward moments when you would insist on +making love to me." + +"But no, madame," cried he, "it was precisely--" + +"O my husband, my husband!" she interrupted, with a shrug of the shoulders; +"why, you do it so badly!" + +The Duc de Puysange took a short turn about the apartment. "Yet I married +you," said he, "at sixteen--out of a convent!" + +"Mon ami," she murmured, in apology, "am I not to be frank with you? Would +you have only the connubial confidences?" + +"But I had no idea--" he began. + +"Why, Gaston, it bored me to the very verge of yawning in my lover's +countenance. I, too, had no idea but that it would bore you equally--" + +"Hein?" said the Duke. + +"--to hear what d'Humieres--" + +"He squints!" cried the Duc de Puysange. + +"--or de Crequy--" + +"That red-haired ape!" he muttered. + +"--or d'Arlanges, or--or any of them, was pleased to say. In fact, it was +my duty to conceal from my husband anything which might involve him in +duels. Now that we are friends, of course it is entirely different." + +The Duchess smiled; the Duke walked up and down the room with the contained +ferocity of a caged tiger. + +"In duels! in a whole series of duels! So these seducers besiege you +in platoons. Ma foi, friendship is a good oculist! Already my vision +improves." + +"Gaston!" she cried. The Duchess rose and laid both hands upon his +shoulders. "Gaston--?" she repeated. + +For a heart-beat the Duc de Puysange looked into his wife's eyes; then he +sadly smiled and shook his head. "Madame," said the Duke, "I do not doubt +you. Ah, believe me, I have comprehended, always, that in your keeping my +honor was quite safe--far more safe than in mine, as Heaven and most of the +fiends well know. You have been a true and faithful wife to a worthless +brute who has not deserved it." He lifted her fingers to his lips. De +Puysange stood very erect; his heels clicked together, and his voice was +earnest. "I thank you, madame, and I pray you to believe that I have never +doubted you. You are too perfect to err--Frankly, and between friends." +added the Duke, "it was your cold perfection which frightened me. You are +an icicle, Helene." + +She was silent for a moment. "Ah!" she said, and sighed; "you think so?" + +"Once, then--?" The Duc de Puysange seated himself beside his wife, and +took her hand. + +"I--it was nothing." Her lashes fell, and dull color flushed through her +countenance. + +"Between friends," the Duke suggested, "there should be no reservations." + +"But it is such a pitiably inartistic little history!" the Duchess +protested. "Eh bien, if you must have it! For I was a girl once,--an +innocent girl, as given as are most girls to long reveries and bright, +callow day-dreams. And there was a man--" + +"There always is," said the Duke, darkly. + +"Why, he never even knew, mon ami!" cried his wife, and laughed, and +clapped her hands. "He was much older than I; there were stories about +him--oh, a great many stories,--and one hears even in a convent--" She +paused with a reminiscent smile. "And I used to wonder shyly what this +very fearful reprobate might be like. I thought of him with de Lauzun, +and Dom Juan, and with the Duc de Grammont, and all those other scented, +shimmering, magnificent libertines over whom les ingenues--wonder; only, I +thought of him, more often than of the others, I made little prayers for +him to the Virgin. And I procured a tiny miniature of him. And, when I came +out of the convent, I met him at my father's house. [Footnote: She was of +the Aigullon family, and sister to d'Agenois, the first and very politic +lover of Madame de la Tournelle, afterward mistress to Louis Quinze under +the title of Duchesse de Chateauroux. The later relations between the +d'Aigullons and Madame du Barry are well-known.] And that was all." + +"All?" The Duc de Puysange had raised his swart eyebrows, and he slightly +smiled. + +"All," she re-echoed, firmly. "Oh, I assure you he was still too youthful +to have any time to devote to young girls. He was courteous--no more. But I +kept the picture,--ah, girls are so foolish, Gaston!" The Duchess, with a +light laugh, drew upward the thin chain about her neck. At its end was a +little heart-shaped locket of dull gold, with a diamond sunk deep in each +side. She regarded the locket with a quaint sadness. "It is a long while +since I have seen that miniature, for it has been sealed in here," said +she, "ever since--since some one gave me the locket" + +Now the Duc de Puysange took this trinket, still tepid and perfumed from +contact with her flesh. He turned it awkwardly in his hand, his eyes +flashing volumes of wonderment and inquiry. Yet he did not appear jealous, +nor excessively unhappy. "And never," he demanded, some vital emotion +catching at his voice--"never since then--?" + +"I never, of course, approved of him," she answered; and at this point de +Puysange noted--so near as he could remember for the first time in his +existence,--the curve of her trailing lashes. Why but his wife had lovely +eyelashes, lashes so unusual that he drew nearer to observe them more at +his ease. "Still,--I hardly know how to tell you--still, without him the +world was more quiet, less colorful; it held, appreciably, less to catch +the eye and ear. Eh, he had an air, Gaston; he was never an admirable man, +but, somehow, he was invariably the centre of the picture." + +"And you have always--always you have cared for him?" said the Duke, +drawing nearer and yet more near to her. + +"Other men," she murmured, "seem futile and of minor importance, after +him." The lashes lifted. They fell, promptly. "So, I have always kept the +heart, mon ami. And, yes, I have always loved him, I suppose." + +The chain had moved and quivered in his hand. Was it man or woman who +trembled? wondered the Duc de Puysange. For a moment he stood immovable, +every nerve in his body tense. Surely, it was she who trembled? It seemed +to him that this woman, whose cold perfection had galled him so long, now +stood with downcast eyes, and blushed and trembled, too, like any rustic +maiden come shamefaced to her first tryst. + +"Helene--!" he cried. + +"But no, my story is too dull," she protested, and shrugged her shoulders, +and disengaged herself--half-fearfully, it seemed to her husband. "Even +more insipid than your comedy," she added, with a not unkindly smile. "Do +we drive this afternoon?" + +"In effect, yes!" cried the Duke. He paused and laughed--a low and gentle +laugh, pulsing with unutterable content. "Since this afternoon, madame--" + +"Is cloudless?" she queried. + +"Nay, far more than that," de Puysange amended; "it is refulgent." + + +V + +What time the Duchess prepared her person for the drive the Duke walked +in the garden of the Hotel de Puysange. Up and down a shady avenue of +lime-trees he paced, and chuckled to himself, and smiled benignantly upon +the moss-incrusted statues,--a proceeding that was, beyond any reasonable +doubt, prompted by his happiness rather than by the artistic merits of +the postured images, since they constituted a formidable and broken-nosed +collection of the most cumbrous, the most incredible, and the most hideous +instances of sculpture the family of Puysange had been able to accumulate +for, as the phrase is, love or money. Amid these mute, gray travesties of +antiquity and the tastes of his ancestors, the Duc de Puysange exulted. + +"Ma foi, will life never learn to improve upon the extravagancies of +romance? Why, it is the old story,--the hackneyed story of the husband and +wife who fall in love with each other! Life is a very gross plagiarist. And +she--did she think I had forgotten how I gave her that little locket so +long ago? Eh, ma femme, so 'some one'--'some one' who cannot be alluded to +without a pause and an adorable flush--presented you with your locket! Nay, +love is not always blind!" + +The Duke paused before a puff-jawed Triton, who wallowed in an arid basin +and uplifted toward heaven what an indulgent observer might construe as a +broken conch-shell. "Love! Mon Dieu, how are the superior fallen! I have +not the decency to conceal even from myself that I love my wife! I am +shameless, I had as lief proclaim it from the house-tops. And a month +ago--tarare, the ignorant beast I was! Moreover, at that time I had not +passed a month in her company,--eh bien, I defy Diogenes and Timon to come +through such a testing with unscratched hearts. I love her. And she loves +me!" + +He drew a deep breath, and he lifted his comely hands toward the pale +spring sky, where the west wind was shepherding a sluggish flock of clouds. +"O sun, moon, and stars!" de Puysange said, aloud: "I call you to witness +that she loves me! Always she has loved me! O kindly little universe! O +little kings, tricked out with garish crowns and sceptres, you are masters +of your petty kingdoms, but I am master of her heart! + +"I do not deserve it," he conceded, to a dilapidated faun, who, though his +flute and the hands that held it had been missing for over a quarter of +a century, piped, on with unimpaired and fatuous mirth. "Ah, heart of +gold--demented trinket that you are, I have not merited that you should +retain my likeness all these years! If I had my deserts--parbleu! let us +accept such benefits as the gods provide, and not question the wisdom +of their dispensations. What man of forty-three may dare to ask for his +deserts? No, we prefer instead the dealings of blind chance and all the +gross injustices by which so many of us escape hanging".... + + +VI + +"So madame has visitors? Eh bien, let us, then, behold these naughty +visitors, who would sever a husband from his wife!" + +From within the Red Salon came a murmur of speech,--quiet, cordial, +colorless,--which showed very plainly that madame had visitors. As the Duc +de Puysange reached out his hand to draw aside the portieres, her voice was +speaking, courteously, but without vital interest. + +"--and afterward," said she, "weather permitting--" + +"Ah, Helene!" cried a voice that the Duke knew almost as well, "how long am +I to be held at arm's-length by these petty conventionalities? Is candor +never to be permitted?" + +The half-drawn portiere trembled in the Duke's grasp. He could see, from +where he stood, the inmates of the salon, though their backs were turned. +They were his wife and the Marquis de Soyecourt. The Marquis bent eagerly +toward the Duchesse de Puysange, who had risen as he spoke. + +For a moment she stayed as motionless as her perplexed husband; then, +with a wearied sigh, the Duchess sank back into a _fauteuil_. "You are at +liberty to speak," she said, slowly, and with averted glance--"what you +choose." + +The portiere fell; but between its folds the Duke still peered into the +room, where de Soyecourt had drawn nearer to the Duke's wife. "There is +so little to say," the Marquis murmured, "beyond what my eyes have surely +revealed a great while ago--that I love you." + +"Ah!" the Duchess cried, with a swift intaking of the breath which was +almost a sob. "Monsieur, I think you forget that you are speaking to the +wife of your kinsman and your friend." + +The Marquis threw out his hands in a gesture which was theatrical, though +the trouble that wrung his countenance seemed very real. He was, as one has +said, a slight, fair man, with the face of an ecclesiastic and the eyes of +an aging seraph. A dull pang shot through the Duke as he thought of the two +years' difference in their ages, and of his own tendency to embonpoint, and +of the dismal features which calumniated him. Yonder porcelain fellow was +in appearance so incredibly young! + +"Do you consider," said the Marquis, "that I do not know I act an +abominable part? Honor, friendship and even decency!--ah, I regret their +sacrifice, but love is greater than these petty things!" + +The Duchess sighed. "For my part," she returned, "I think differently. +Love is, doubtless, very wonderful and beautiful, but I am sufficiently +old-fashioned to hold honor yet dearer. Even--even if I loved you, +monsieur, there are certain promises, sworn before the altar, that I could +not forget." She looked up, candidly, into the flushed, handsome face of +the Marquis. + +"Words!" he cried, with vexed impatiency. + +"An oath," she answered, sadly,--"an oath that I may not break." + +There was hunger in the Marquis' eyes, and his hands lifted. Their glances +met for a breathless moment, and his eyes were tender, and her eyes were +resolute, but very, very compassionate. + +"I love you!" he said. He said no more than this, but none could doubt he +spoke the truth. + +"Monsieur," the Duchess replied, and the depths of her contralto voice were +shaken like the sobbing of a violin, and her hands stole upward to her +bosom, and clasped the gold heart, as she spoke,--"monsieur, ever since I +first knew you, many years ago, at my father's home, I have held you as my +friend. You were more kind to the girl, Monsieur de Soyecourt, than you +have been to the woman. Yet only since our stay in Poictesme yonder have +I feared for the result of our friendship. I have tried to prevent this +result. I have failed." The Duchess lifted the gold heart to her lips, and +her golden head bent over it. "Monsieur, before God, if I had loved you +with my whole being,--if I had loved you all these years,--if the sight of +your face were to me to-day the one good thing life holds, and the mere +sound of your voice had power to set my heart to beating--beating"--she +paused for a little, and then rose, with a sharp breath that shook her +slender body visibly,--"even then, my Louis, the answer would be the same; +and that is,--go!" + +"Helene--!" he murmured; and his outstretched hands, which trembled, groped +toward her. + +"Let us have no misunderstanding," she protested, more composedly; "you +have my answer." + +De Soyecourt did not, at mildest, lead an immaculate life. But by +the passion that now possessed him the tiny man seemed purified and +transfigured beyond masculinity. His face was ascetic in its reverence as +he waited there, with his head slightly bowed. "I go," he said, at last, as +if picking his way carefully among tumbling words; then bent over her hand, +which, she made no effort to withdraw. "Ah, my dear!" cried the Marquis, +staring into her shy, uplifted eyes, "I think I might have made you happy!" + +His arm brushed the elbow of the Duke as de Soyecourt left the salon. The +Marquis seemed aware of nothing: the misery of both the men, as de Puysange +reflected, was of a sort to be disturbed by nothing less noticeable than an +earthquake. + + +VII + +"If I had loved you all these years," murmured the Duc de Puysange. His +dull gaze wandered toward the admirable "Herodias" of Giorgione which hung +there in the corridor: the strained face of the woman, the accented muscles +of her arms, the purple, bellying cloak which spread behind her, the livid +countenance of the dead man staring up from the salver,--all these he +noted, idly. It seemed strange that he should be appraising a painting at +this particular moment. + +"Well, now I will make recompense," said the Duke. + + +VIII + +He came into the room, humming a tune of the boulevards; the crimson +hangings swirled about him, the furniture swayed in aerial and thin-legged +minuets. He sank into a chair before the great mirror, supported by frail +love-gods, who contended for its possession. He viewed therein his pale and +grotesque reflection, and he laughed lightly. "Pardon, madame," he said, +"but my castles in the air are tumbling noisily about my ears. It is +difficult to think clearly amid the crashing of the battlements." + +"I do not understand." The Duchess had lifted a rather grave and quite +incurious face as he entered the salon. + +"My life," laughed the Duc de Puysange, "I assure you I am quite +incorrigible. I have just committed another abominable action; and I cry +_peccavi!_" He smote himself upon the breast, and sighed portentously. "I +accuse myself of eavesdropping." + +"What is your meaning?" She had now risen to her feet. + +"Nay, but I am requited," the Duke reassured her, and laughed with +discreetly tempered bitterness. "Figure to yourself, madame! I had +planned for us a life during which our new-born friendship was always to +endure untarnished. Eh bien, man proposes! De Soyecourt is of a jealous +disposition; and here I sit, amid my fallen aircastles, like that tiresome +Marius in his Carthaginian debris." + +"De Soyecourt?" she echoed, dully. + +"Ah, my poor child!" said the Duke and, rising, took her hand in a paternal +fashion, "did you think that, at this late day, the disease of matrimony +was still incurable? Nay, we progress, madame. You shall have grounds for a +separation--sufficient, unimpeachable grounds. You shall have your choice +of desertion, infidelity, cruelty in the presence of witnesses--oh, I shall +prove a yeritabie Gilles de Retz!" He laughed, not unkindlily, at her +bewilderment. + +"You heard everything?" she queried. + +"I have already confessed," the Duke reminded her. "And speaking as an +unprejudiced observer, I would say the little man really loves you. So be +it! You shall have your separation, you shall marry him in all honor and +respectability; and if everything goes well, you shall be a grand duchess +one of these days--Behold a fact accomplished!" De Puysange snapped his +fingers and made a pirouette; he began to hum, "Songez de bonne a suivre--" + +There was a little pause. + +"You, in truth, desire to restore to me my freedom?" she asked, in wonder, +and drew near to him. + +The Duc de Puysange seated himself, with a smile. "Mon Dieu!" he protested, +"who am I to keep lovers apart? As the first proof of our new-sworn +friendship, I hereby offer you any form of abuse or of maltreatment you may +select." + +She drew yet nearer to him. Afterward, with a sigh as if of great +happiness, her arms clasped about his neck. "Mountebank! do you, then, love +me very much?" + +"I?" The Duke raised his eyebrows. Yet, he reflected, there was really no +especial harm in drawing his cheek a trifle closer to hers, and he found +the contact to be that of cool velvet. + +"You love me!" she repeated, softly. + +"It pains me to the heart," the Duke apologized--"it pains me, pith and +core, to be guilty of this rudeness to a lady; but, after all, honesty is +a proverbially recommended virtue, and so I must unblushingly admit I do +nothing of the sort." + +"Gaston, why will you not confess to your new friend? Have I not pardoned +other amorous follies?" Her cheeks were warmer now, and softer than those +of any other woman in the world. + +"Eh, ma mie," cried the Duke, warningly, "do not be unduly elated by little +Louis' avowal! You are a very charming person, but--'_de gustibus_--'" + +"Gaston--!" she murmured. + +"Ah, what is one to do with such a woman!" De Puysange put her from him, +and he paced the room with quick, unequal strides. + +"Yes, I love you with every nerve and fibre of my body--with every not +unworthy thought and aspiration of my misguided soul! There you have the +ridiculous truth of it, the truth which makes me the laughing-stock of +well bred persons for all time. I adore you. I love you, I cherish you +sufficiently to resign you to the man your heart has chosen. I--But pardon +me,"--and he swept a white hand over his brow, with a little, choking +laugh,--"since I find this new emotion somewhat boisterous. It stifles one +unused to it." + +She faced him, inscrutably; but her eyes were deep wells of gladness. +"Monsieur," she said, "yours is a noble affection. I will not palter with +it, I accept your offer--" + +"Madame, you act with your usual wisdom," said the Duke. + +"--Upon condition," she continued,--"that you resume your position as +eavesdropper." + +The Duke obeyed her pointing finger. When he had reached the portieres, +the proud, black-visaged man looked back into the salon, wearily. She had +seated herself in the _fauteuil_, where the Marquis de Soyecourt had bent +over her and she had kissed the little gold locket. Her back was turned +toward, her husband; but their eyes met in the great mirror, supported by +frail love-gods, who contended for its possession. + +"Comedy for comedy," she murmured. He wondered what purblind fool had +called her eyes sea-cold? + +"I do not understand," he said. "You saw me all the while--Yes, but the +locket--?" cried de Puysange. + +"Open it!" she answered, and her speech, too, was breathless. + +Under his heel the Duc de Puysange ground the trinket. The long, thin chain +clashed and caught about his foot; the face of his youth smiled from the +fragment in his not quite steady hands. "O heart' of gold! O heart of +gold!" he said, with, a strange meditative smile, now that his eyes lifted +toward the glad and glorious eyes of his wife; "I am not worthy! Indeed, my +dear, I am not worthy!" + + + + +IX + +THE SCAPEGOATS + + +_As Played at Manneville, September 18, 1750_ + +"_L'on a choisi justement le temps que je parlois a mon traiste de fils. +Sortons! Je veux aller querir la justice, et faire donner la question a +toute ma maison; a servantes, a valets, a fils, a fille, et a moi aussi._" + + +DRAMATIS PERSONAE + +PRINCE DE GATINAIS, an old nobleman, who affects yesterday's fashion. + +Louis QUILLAN, formerly LOUIS DE SOYECOURT, son to the Prince, and newly +become GRAND DUKE OF NOUMARIA. + +VANRINGHAM, valet to the Prince. + +NELCHEN THORN, daughter to Hans Thorn, landlord of the _Golden +Pomegranate_, and loves Louis Quillan. + +And In the Proem, DUKE OF OSMSKIRK. + + +SCENE + +The Dolphin Room of the _Golden Pomegranate_, an inn at +Manneville-en-Poictesme. + + + + +THE SCAPEGOATS + + +_PROEM:-To Present Mr. Vanringham as Nuntius_ + +However profoundly the Duc de Puysange now approved of the universe and of +its management, it is not to be supposed that in consequence he intended +to overlook de Soyecourt's perfidy. De Puysange bore his kinsman no +malice; indeed, he was sincerely fond of the Marquis, sympathized with +him at bottom, and heartily regretted that the excellence of poor Louis' +taste should be thus demonstrably counterbalanced by the frailty of his +friendship. Still, one cannot entirely disregard the conventions: Louis had +betrayed him, had before the eyes of de Puysange made love to de Puysange's +wife. A duel was the inevitable consequence, though of course the Duke did +not intend to kill poor Louis, who might before long be very useful to +French statesmanship. So the Duke sent Ormskirk to arrange a meeting. + +A floridly handsome man in black was descending the stairway of the Hotel +de Soyecourt at the moment the Duke of Ormskirk stepped cheerily from his +coach. This person saluted the plump nobleman with due deference, and was +accorded in return a little whistling sound of amazement. + +"Mr. Vanringham, as I live--and in Paris! Man, will you hare-brained +Jacobites never have done with these idiotic intrigues? Nay, in sincerity, +Mr. Vanringham, this is annoying." + +"My Lord Duke," said the other, "I venture to suggest that you forget +I dare no longer meddle with politics, in light of my recent mishap at +Tunbridge. Something of the truth leaked out, you comprehend--nothing +provable, thank God!--but while I lay abed Captain Audaine was calling +daily to inquire when would my wound be healed sufficiently for me to have +my throat cut. I found England unsalubrious, and vanished." + +Ormskirk nodded his approval. "I have always esteemed your common-sense. +Now, let us consider--yes, I might use you here in Paris, I believe. And +the work is light and safe,--a trifle of sedition, of stirring up a street +riot or two." + +Vanringham laughed. "I might have recognized your hand in the late +disturbances, sir. As matters stand, I can only thank your Grace and regret +that I have earlier secured employment. I've been, since April, valet to +the old Prince de Gatinais, Monsieur de Soyecourt's father." + +"Yet lackeyship smacks, however vaguely, of an honest livelihood. You +disappoint me, Mr. Vanringham." + +"Nay, believe me, I yet pilfer a cuff-button or perhaps a jewel, when +occasion offers, lest any of my talents rust. For we reside at Beaujolais +yonder, my Lord Duke, where we live in retirement and give over our old +age to curious chemistries. It suits me well enough. I find the air of +Beaujolais excellent, my duties none too arduous, and the girls of the +country-side neither hideous nor obdurate. Oho, I'm tolerably content at +Beaujolais--the more for that 'tis expedient just now to go more softly +than ever Ahab did of old." + +"Lest your late associates get wind of your whereabouts? In that I don't +question your discretion, Mr. Vanringham. And out of pure friendliness I +warn you Paris is a very hotbed of hot-headed Jacobites who would derive +unmerited pleasure from getting a knife into your ribs." + +"Yet on an occasion of such importance--" Vanringham began; then marvelled +in reply to the Duke's look of courteous curiosity: "You han't heard, +sir, that my master's son is unexpectedly become the next Grand Duke of +Noumaria!" + +"Zounds!" said his Grace of Ormskirk, all alert, "is old Ludwig dead +at last? Why, then, the damned must be holding a notable carnival by +this, in honor of his arrival. Hey, but there was a merry rascal, a +thorough-paced--" He broke off short. He laughed. "What the devil, man! +Monsieur de Soyecourt is Ludwig's nephew, I grant you, on the maternal +side, but Ludwig left a son. De Soyecourt remains de Soyecourt so long +as Prince Rudolph lives,--and Prince Rudolph is to marry the Elector of +Badenburg's daughter this autumn, so that we may presently look for any +number of von Freistadts to perpetuate the older branch. Faith, you should +study your _Genealogischer Hofkalender_ more closely, Mr. Vanringham." + +"Oh, but very plainly your Grace has heard no word of the appalling tragedy +that hath made our little Louis a reigning monarch--" + +With gusto Francis Vanringham narrated the details of Duke Ludwig's last +mad freak [Footnote: In his _Journal_ Horace Calverley gives a long and +curious account of the disastrous masque at Breschau of which he, then on +the Grand Tour, had the luck to be an eye-witness. His hints as to the part +played in the affair by Kaunitz are now, of course, largely discredited by +the later confessions of de Puysange.] which, as the world knows, resulted +in the death of both Ludwig and his son, as well as that of their five +companions in the escapade,--with gusto, for in progress the soul of the +former actor warmed to his subject. But Ormskirk was sensibly displeased. + +"Behold what is termed a pretty kettle of fish!" said the Duke, in +meditation, when Vanringham had made an end. "Plainly, Gaston cannot fight +the rascal, since Hop-o'-my-thumb is now, most vexatiously, transformed +into a quasi-Royal Personage, Assassination, I fear, is out of the +question. So all our English plans will go to pot. A Frenchman will reign +in Noumaria,--after we had not only bought old Ludwig, but had paid for +him, too! Why, I suppose he gave that damnable masquerade on the strength +of having our money,--good English money, mark you, Mr. Vanringham, that we +have to squeeze out of honest tax-payers to bribe such, rascals with, only +to have them, cheat us by cooking themselves to a crisp! This is annoying, +Mr. Vanringham." + +"I don't entirely follow your Grace--" + +"It is not perhaps desirable you should. Yet I give you a key. It is +profoundly to be deplored that little Louis de Soyecourt, who cannot draw +a contented breath outside of his beloved Paris, should be forced to marry +Victoria von Uhm, in his cousin's place,--yes, for Gaston will arrange +that, of course,--and afterward be exiled to a semi-barbarous Noumaria, +where he must devote the rest of his existence to heading processions +and reviewing troops, and signing proclamations and guzzling beer and +sauerkraut. Nay, beyond doubt, Mr. Vanringham, this is deplorable. 'Tis an +appalling condition of affairs: it reminds me of Ovid among the Goths, Mr. +Vanringham!" + +"I'm to understand, then--?" the valet stammered. + +"You are to understand that I am more deeply your debtor than I could +desire you to believe; that I am going to tell the Marquis de Soyecourt all +which I have told you, though I must reword it for him, as eloquently as +may be possible; and that I even now feel myself to be Ciceronic." The Duke +of Ormskirk passed on with a polite nod. + + * * * * * + +Next day they gossiped busily at Versailles over the sudden disappearance +of Louis de Soyecourt. No more was heard of him for months. The mystery was +discussed, and by the wits embroidered, and by the imaginative annotated, +but it was never solved until the following September. + + +I + +For it was in September that, upon the threshold of the _Golden +Pomegranate_, at Manneville in Poictesme, Monsieur Louis Quillan paused, +and gave the contented little laugh which had of late become habitual with +him. "We are en fete to-night, it appears. Has the King, then, by any +chance dropped in to supper with us, Nelchen?" + +Silently the girl bestowed a provisional pat upon one fold of the white +table-cloth and regarded the result with critical approval. All being +in blameless order, she moved one of the candlesticks the width of a +needle. The table was now garnished to the last resource of the _Golden +Pomegranate_: the napery was snow, the glassware and the cutlery shone with +a frosty glitter, and the great bowl of crimson roses afforded the exact +splurge of vainglorious color and glow she had designed. Accordingly, being +now at leisure, Nelchen now came toward Monsieur Quillan, lifting her lips +to his precisely as a child might have done. + +"Not quite the King, my Louis. None the less I am sure that Monseigneur +is an illustrious person. He arrived not two hours ago--" She told how +Monseigneur had come in a coach, very splendid; even his lackeys were +resplendent. Monseigneur would stay overnight and would to-morrow push +on, to Beauseant. He had talked with her,--a kindly old gentleman, but so +stately that all the while she had been the tiniest thought afraid of him. +He must be some exalted nobleman, Nelchen considered,--a marquis at the +very least. + +Meantime diminutive Louis Quillan had led her to the window-seat beneath +the corridor, and sat holding one plump trifle of a hand, the, while +her speech fluttered bird-like from this topic to that; and be regarded +Nelchen Thorn with an abysmal content. The fates, he considered, had been +commendably generous to him. + +So he leaned back from her a little, laughing gently, and marked what a +quaint and eager child it was. He rejoiced that she was beautiful, and +triumphed still more to know that even if she had not been beautiful it +would have made slight difference to him. The soul of Nelchen was enough. +Yet, too, it was desirable this soul should be appropriately clad, that she +should have, for instance, these big and lustrous eyes,--plaintive eyes, +such as a hamadryad would conceivably possess, since they were beyond doubt +the candid and appraising eyes of some woodland creature, and always seemed +to find the world not precisely intimidating, perhaps, yet in the ultimate +a very curious place where one trod gingerly. Still, this Nelchen was a +practical body, prone to laughter,--as in nature, any person would be whose +mouth was all rotund and tiny scarlet curves. Why, it was, to a dimple, +the mouth which Francois Boucher bestowed on his sleek goddesses! Louis +Quillan was sorry for poor Boucher painting away yonder at a noisy garish +Versailles, where he would never see that perfect mouth the artist had so +often dreamed of. No, not in the sweet flesh at least; lips such as these +were unknown at Versailles.... + +And but four months ago he had fancied himself to be in love with Helene +de Puysange, he remembered; and, by and large, he still considered Helene +a delightful person. Yes, Helene had made him quite happy last spring: and +when they found she was with child, and their first plan failed, she had +very adroitly played out their comedy to win back Gaston in time to avoid +scandal. Yes, you could not but admire Helene, yet, even so.... + +"--and he asked me, oh, so many questions about you, Louis--" + +"About me?" said Louis Quillan, blankly. He was all circumspection now. + +"About my lover, you stupid person. Monseigneur assumed, somehow, that I +would have a lover or two. You perceive that he at least is not a stupid +person." And Nelchen tossed her head, with a touch of the provocative. + +Louis Quillan did what seemed advisable. "--and, furthermore, your +stupidity is no excuse for rumpling my hair," said Nelchen, by and by. + +"Then you should not pout," replied Monsieur Quillan. "Sanity is entirely +too much to require of any man when you pout. Besides, your eyes are so +big and so bright they bewilder one. In common charity you ought to wear +spectacles, Nelchen,--in sheer compassion toward mankind." + +"Monseigneur, also, has wonderful eyes, Louis. They are like the +stars,--very brilliant and cool and incurious, yet always looking at you as +though you were so insignificant that the mere fact of your presuming to +exist at all was a trifle interesting." + +"Like the stars!" Louis Quillan had flung back the shutter. It was a +tranquil evening in September, with no moon as yet, but with a great +multitude of lesser lights overhead. "Incurious like the stars! They do +dwarf one, rather. Yet just now I protest to you, infinitesimal man that I +am, I half-believe le bon Dieu loves us so utterly that He has kindled all +those pretty tapers solely for our diversion. He wishes us to be happy, +Nelchen; and so He has given us the big, fruitful, sweet-smelling world +to live in, and our astonishing human bodies to live in, with contented +hearts, and with no more vain desires, no loneliness--Why, in a word, He +has given us each other. Oh, beyond doubt, He loves us, my Nelchen!" + +For a long while the girl was silent. Presently she spoke, half-hushed, +like one in the presence of sanctity. "I am happy. For these three months I +have been more happy than I had thought was permissible on earth. And yet, +Louis, you tell me that those stars are worlds perhaps like ours,--think of +it, my dear, millions and millions of worlds like ours, and on each world +perhaps a million of lovers like us! It is true that among them all no +woman loves as I do, for that would be impossible. Yet think of it, mon +ami, how inconsiderable a thing is the happiness of one man and of one +woman in this immensity! Why, we are less than nothing, you and I! Ohe, I +am afraid, hideously afraid, Louis,--for we are such little folk and the +universe is so big. And always the storms go about it, and its lightnings +thrust at us, and the waters of it are clutching at our feet, and its laws +are not to be changed--Oh, it is big and cruel, my dear, and we are adrift +in it, we who are so little!" + +He again put forth his hand toward her. "What a morbid child it is!" said +Louis Quillan. "I can assure you I have resided in this same universe just +twice as long as you, and I find that upon the whole the establishment +is very creditably conducted. There arrives, to be sure, an occasional +tornado, or perhaps an earthquake, each with its incidental inconveniences. +On the other hand, there is every evening a lavishly arranged sunset, like +gratis fireworks, and each morning (I am credibly informed) a sunrise of +which poets and energetic people are pleased to speak highly; while every +year spring comes in, like a cosmical upholsterer, and refurnishes the +entire place, and makes us glad to live. Nay, I protest to you, this is +an excellent world, my Nelchen! and likewise I protest to you that in its +history there was never a luckier nor a happier man than I." + +Nelchen considered. "Well," she generously conceded; "perhaps, after all, +the stars are more like diamonds." + +Louis Quillan chuckled. "And since when were you a connoisseur of diamonds, +my dear?" + +"Of course I have never actually seen any. I would like to, though--yes, +Louis, what I would really like would be to have a bushelful or so of +diamonds, and to marry a duke--only the duke would have to be you, of +course,--and to go to Court, and to have all the fine ladies very jealous +of me, and for them to be very much in love with you, and for you not to +care a sou for them, of course, and for us both to see the King." Nelchen +paused, quite out of breath after this ambitious career in the imaginative. + +"To see the King, indeed!" scoffed little Louis Quillan. "Why, we would see +only a very disreputable pockmarked wornout lecher if we did." + +"Still," she pointed out, "I would like to see a king. Simply because I +never have done so before, you conceive." + +"At times, my Nelchen, you are effeminate. Eve ate the apple for that +identical reason. Yet what you say is odd, because--do you know?--I once +had a friend who was by way of being a sort of king." + +Nelchen gave a squeal of delight. "And you never told me about him! I +loathe you." + +Louis Quillan did what seemed advisable. "--and, furthermore, your +loathsomeness is no excuse for rumpling my hair," said Nelchen, by and by. + +"But there is so little to tell. His father had married the Grand Duke +of Noumaria's daughter,--over yonder between Silesia and Badenburg, you +may remember. And so last spring when the Grand Duke and the Prince were +both killed in that horrible fire, my friend quite unexpectedly became a +king--oh, king of a mere celery-patch, but still a sort of king. Figure to +yourself, Nelchen! they were going to make my poor friend marry the Elector +of Badenburg's daughter,--and Victoria von Uhm has perfection stamped upon +her face in all its odious immaculacy,--and force him to devote the rest +of his existence to heading processions and reviewing troops, and signing +proclamations, and guzzling beer and sauerkraut. Why, he would have been +like Ovid among the Goths, my Nelchen!" + +"But he could have worn such splendid uniforms!" said Nelchen. "And +diamonds!" + +"You mercenary wretch!" said he. Louis Quillan then did what seemed +advisable; and presently he added, "In any event, the horrified man ran +away." + +"That was silly of him," said Nelchen Thorn. "But where did he run to?" + +Louis Quillan considered. "To Paradise," he at last decided. "And there he +found a disengaged angel, who very imprudently lowered herself to the point +of marrying him. And so he lived happily ever afterward. And so, till the +day of his death, he preached the doctrine that silliness is the supreme +wisdom." + +"And he regretted nothing?" Nelchen said, after a meditative while. + +Louis Quillan began to laugh. "Oh, yes! at times he profoundly regretted +Victoria von Uhm." + +Then Nelchen gave him a surprise, for the girl bent toward him and leaned +one hand upon each shoulder. "Diamonds are not all, are they, Louis? +I thank you, dear, for telling me of what means so much to you. I can +understand, I think, because for a long while I have tried to know and care +for everything that concerns you." + +The little man had risen to his feet. "Nelchen--!" + +"Hush!" said Nelchen Thorn; "Monseigneur is coming down to his supper." + + +II + +It was a person of conspicuous appearance, both by reason of his great +height and leanness as well as his extreme age, who now descended the +straight stairway leading from the corridor above. At Court they would have +told you that the Prince de Gatinais was a trifle insane, but he troubled +the Court very little, since he had spent the last twenty years, with brief +intermissions, at his chateau near Beaujolais, where, as rumor buzzed +it, he had fitted out a laboratory, and had devoted his old age to the +study of chemistry. "Between my flute and my retorts, my bees and my +chocolate-creams," the Prince was wont to say, "I manage to console myself +for the humiliating fact that even Death has forgotten my existence." For +he had a child's appetite for sweets, and was at this time past eighty, +though still well-nigh as active as Antoine de Soyecourt had ever been, +even when--a good half-century ago--he had served, with distinction under +Louis Quatorze. + +To-night the Prince de Gatinais was all in steel-gray, of a metallic +lustre, with prodigiously fine ruffles at his throat and wrists. You would +have found something spectral in the tall, gaunt old man, for his periwig +was heavily powdered, and his deep-wrinkled countenance was of an absolute +white, save for the thin, faintly bluish lips and the inklike glitter of +his narrowing eyes, as he now regarded the couple waiting hand in hand +before him, like children detected in mischief. + +Little Louis Quillan had drawn an audible breath at first sight of the +newcomer. Monsieur Quillan did not speak, however, but merely waited. + +"You have fattened," the Prince de Gatinais said, at last, "I wish I could +fatten. It is incredible that a man who eats pounds of sugar daily should +yet remain a skeleton." His voice was guttural, and a peculiar slur +ran through his speech, caused by the loss of his upper front teeth at +Ramillies. + +Louis Quillan came of a stock not lightly abashed. "I have fattened on a +new diet, monsieur,--on happiness. But, ma foi! I am discourteous. Permit +me, my father, to present Mademoiselle Nelchen Thorn, who has so far +honored me as to consent to become my wife. 'Nelchen, I present to you my +father, the Prince de Gatinais." + +"Oh--?" observed Nelchen, midway in her courtesy. + +But the Prince had taken her fingers and he kissed them quite as though +they had been the finger-tips of the all-powerful Pompadour at Versailles +yonder. "I salute the future Marquise de Soyecourt. You young people will +sup with me, then?" + +"No, monseigneur, for I am to wait upon the table," said Nelchen, "and +Father is at Sigean overnight, having the mare shod, and there is only +Leon, and, oh, thank you very much indeed, monseigneur, but I had much +rather wait on the table." + +The Prince waved his hand. "My valet, mademoiselle, is at your disposal. +Vanringham!" he called. + +From the corridor above descended a tall red-headed fellow in black. +"Monseigneur--?" + +"Go!" quickly said Louis de Soyecourt, while the Prince spoke with his +valet,--"go, Nelchen, and make yourself even more beautiful if such a thing +be possible. He will never resist you, my dear--ah, no, that is out of +nature." + +"You will find more plates in the cupboard, Monsieur Vanringham," remarked +Nelchen, as she obediently tripped up the stairway, toward her room in the +right wing. "And the knives and forks are in the second drawer." + +So Vanringham laid two covers in discreet silence; then bowed and withdrew +by the side door that led to the kitchen. The Prince had seated himself +beside the open fire, where he yawned and now looked up with a smile. + +"Well, Louis," said the Prince de Gatinais--"so Monsieur de Puysange and I +have run you to earth at last. And I find you have determined to defy me, +eh?" + + +III + +"I trust there is no question of defiance," Louis de Soyecourt equably +returned. "Yet I regret you should have been at pains to follow me, since I +still claim the privilege of living out my life in my own fashion." + +"You claim a right which never existed, my little son. It is not demanded +of any man that he be happy, whereas it is manifestly necessary for a +gentleman to obey his God, his King, and his own conscience without +swerving. If he also find time for happiness, well and good; otherwise, he +must be unhappy. But, above all, he must intrepidly play out his allotted +part in the good God's scheme of things, and must with due humbleness +recognize that the happiness or the unhappiness of any man alive is a +trivial consideration as against the fulfilment of this scheme." + +"You and Nelchen are much at one there," the Marquis lightly replied; "yet, +for my part, I fancy that Providence is not particularly interested in who +happens to be the next Grand Duke of Noumaria." + +The Prince struck with his hand upon the arm of his chair. "You dare to +jest! Louis, your levity is incorrigible. France is beaten, discredited +among nations, naked to her enemies. She lies here, between England and +Prussia, as in a vise. God summons you, a Frenchman, to reign in Noumaria, +and in addition affords you a chance to marry that weathercock of +Badenburg's daughter. Ah, He never spoke more clearly, Louis. And you would +reply with a shallow jest! Why, Badenburg and Noumaria just bridge that +awkward space between France and Austria. Your accession would confirm the +Empress,--Gaston de Puysange has it in her own hand, yonder at Versailles! +I tell you it is all planned that France and Austria will combine, Louis! +Think of it,--our France on her feet again, mistress of Europe, and every +whit of it your doing, Louis,--ah, my boy, my boy, you cannot refuse!" + +Thus he ran on in a high, disordered voice, pleading, clutching at his son +with a strange new eagerness which now possessed the Prince de Gatinais. +He was remembering the France which he had known; not the ignoble, tawdry +France of the moment, misruled by women, rakes, confessors, and valets, but +the France of his dead Sun King; and it seemed to Louis de Soyecourt that +the memory had brought back with it the youth of his father for an instant. +Just for a heart-beat, the lank man towered erect, his cheeks pink, and +every muscle tense. + +Then Louis de Soyecourt shook his head. In England's interest, as he now +knew, Ormskirk had played upon de Soyecourt's ignorance and his love of +pleasure, as an adept plays upon the strings of a violin; but de Soyecourt +had his reason, a gigantic reason, for harboring no grudge against the +Englishman. + +"Frankly, my father, I would not give up Nelchen though all Europe depended +upon it. I am a coward, perhaps; but I have my chance of happiness, and +I mean to take it. So Cousin Otto is welcome to the duchy. I infinitely +prefer Nelchen." + +"Otto! a general in the Prussian army, Frederick's property, Frederick's +idolater!" The old Prince now passed from an apex of horror to his former +pleading tones. "But, then, it is not necessary you give up Nelchen. Ah, +no, a certain latitude is permissible in these matters, you understand. She +could be made a countess, a marquise,--anything you choose to demand, my +Louis. And you could marry Princess Victoria just the same--" + +"Were you any other man, monsieur," said Louis de Soyecourt, "I would, +of course, challenge you. As it is, I can only ask you to respect my +helplessness. It is very actual helplessness, sir, for Nelchen has been +bred in such uncourtly circles as to entertain the most provincial notions +about becoming anybody's whore." + +Now the Prince de Gatinais sank back into the chair. He seemed incredibly +old now. "You are right," he mumbled,--"yes, you are right, Louis. I have +talked with her. With her that would be impossible. These bourgeois do not +understand the claims of noble birth." + +The younger man had touched him upon the shoulder. "My father,--" he began. + +"Yes, I am your father," said the other, dully, "and it is that which +puzzles me. You are my own son, and yet you prefer your happiness to +the welfare of France, to the very preservation of France. Never in six +centuries has there been a de Soyecourt to do that. God and the King we +served ... six centuries ... and to-day my own son prefers an innkeeper's +daughter..." His voice trailed and slurred like that of one speaking in his +sleep, for he was an old man, and by this the flare of his excitement had +quite burned out, and weariness clung about his senses like a drug. "I will +go back to Beaujolais ... to my retorts and my bees ... and forget there +was never a de Soyecourt in six centuries, save my own son...." + +"My father!" Louis de Soyecourt cried, and shook him gently. "Ah, I dare +say you are right, in theory. But in practice I cannot give her up. Surely +you understand--why, they tell me there was never a more ardent lover than +you. They tell me--And you would actually have me relinquish Nelchen, even +after you have seen her! Yet remember, monsieur, I love her much as you +loved my mother,--that mettlesome little princess whom you stole from the +very heart of her court.[Footnote: The curious may find further details of +the then Marquis de Soyecourt's abduction of the Princess Clotilda in the +voluminous pages of Hulot, under the year 1708.] Ah, I have heard tales of +you, you conceive. And Nelchen means as much to me as once my mother meant +to you, remember--She means youth, and happiness, and a tiny space of +laughter before I, too, am worm's-meat, and means a proper appreciation of +God's love for us all, and means everything a man's mind clutches at when +he wakens from some forgotten dream that leaves him weeping with sheer +adoration of its beauty. Ho, never was there a kinder father than you, +monsieur. You have spoiled me most atrociously, I concede; and after so +many years you cannot in decency whip about like this and deny me my very +life. Why, my father it is your little Louis who is pleading with you,--and +you have never denied me anything! See, now, how I presume upon your +weakness. I am actually bullying you into submission--bullying you through +your love for me. Eh, we love greatly, we de Soyecourts, and give all for +love. Your own life attests that, monsieur. Now, then, let us recognize the +fact we are de Soyecourts, you and I. Ah, my father,--" + +Thus he babbled on, for the sudden languor of the Prince had alarmed him, +and Louis de Soyecourt, to afford him justice, loved his father with a +heartier intensity than falls to the portion of most parents. To arouse the +semi-conscious man was his one thought. And now he got his reward, for the +Prince de Gatinais opened his keen old eyes, a trifle dazedly, and drew a +deep breath which shook his large frail body through and through. + +"Let us recognize that we are de Soyecourts, you and I," he repeated, in a +new voice. "After all, I cannot drag you to Noumaria by the scruff of your +neck like a truant school-boy. Yes, let us recognize the fact that we are +de Soyecourts, you and I." + +"Heh, in that event," said the Marquis, "we must both fall upon our knees +forthwith. For look, my father!" + +Nelchen Thorn was midway in her descent of the stairs. She wore her simple +best. All white it was, and yet the plump shoulders it displayed were not +put to shame. Rather must April clouds and the snows of December retire +abashed, as lamentably inefficient analogues, the Marquis meditated; and as +she paused starry-eyed and a thought afraid, it seemed to him improbable +that even the Prince de Gatinais could find it in his heart greatly to +blame his son. + +"I begin to suspect," said the Prince, "that I am Jacob of old, and that +you are a very young cherub venturing out of Paradise through motives of +curiosity. Eh, my dear, let us see what entertainment we can afford you +during your visit to earth." He took her hand and led her to the table. + + +IV + +Vanringham served. Never was any one more blithe than the lean Prince de +Gatinais. The latest gossip of Versailles was delivered, with discreet +emendations; he laughed gayly; and he ate with an appetite. There was a +blight among the cattle hereabouts? How deplorable! witchcraft, beyond +doubt. And Louis passed as a piano-tuner?--because there were no pianos in +Manneville. Excellent! he had always given Louis credit for a surpassing +cleverness; now it was demonstrated. In fine, the Prince de Gatinais became +so jovial that Nelchen was quite at ease, and Louis de Soyecourt became +vaguely alarmed. He knew his father, and for the Prince to yield thus +facilely was incredible. Still, his father had seen Nelchen, had talked +with Nelchen.... + +Now the Prince rose. "Fresh glasses, Vanringham," he ordered; and then: "I +give you a toast. Through desire of love and happiness, you young people +have stolen a march on me. Eh, I am not Sgarnarelle of the comedy! +therefore, I drink cheerfully to love and happiness, I consider Louis is +not in the right, but I know that he is wise, my daughter, as concerns his +soul's health, in clinging to you rather than to a tinsel crown. Of Fate +I have demanded--like Sgarnarelle of the comedy,--prosaic equity and +common-sense; of Fate he has in turn demanded happiness; and Fate will at +her convenience decide between us. Meantime I drink to love and happiness, +since I, too, remember. I know better than to argue with Louis, you +observe, my Nelchen; we de Soyecourts are not lightly severed from any +notion we may have taken up. In consequence I drink to your love and +happiness!" + +They drank. "To your love, my son," said the Prince de Gatinais,--"to the +true love of a de Soyecourt." And afterward he laughingly drank: "To your +happiness, my daughter,--to your eternal happiness." + +Nelchen sipped. The two men stood with drained glasses. Now on a sudden the +Prince de Gatinais groaned and clutched his breast. + +"I was always a glutton," he said, hoarsely. "I should have been more +moderate--I am faint--" + +"Salts are the best thing in the world," said Nelchen, with fine readiness. +She was half-way up the stairs. "A moment, monseigneur,--a moment, and I +fetch salts." Nelchen Thorn had disappeared into her room. + + +V + +The Prince sat drumming upon the table with his long white fingers. He had +waved the Marquis and Vanringham aside. "A passing weakness,--I am not +adamant," he had said, half-peevishly. + +"Then I prescribe another glass of this really excellent wine," laughed +little Louis de Soyecourt. At heart he was not merry, and his own +unreasoning nervousness irritated him, for it seemed to the Marquis, +quite irrationally, that the atmosphere of the cheery room was, without +forerunnership, become tense and expectant, and was now quiet with much the +hush which precedes the bursting of a thunder-storm. And accordingly he +laughed. + +"I prescribe another glass, monsieur," said he. "Eh, that is the true +panacea for faintness--for every ill. Come, we will drink to the most +beautiful woman in Poictesme--nay, I am too modest,--to the most beautiful +woman in France, in Europe, in the whole universe! _Feriam sidera_, my +father! and confound all mealy-mouthed reticence, for you have both seen +her. Confess, am I not a lucky man? Come, Vanringham, too, shall drink. No +glasses? Take Nelchen's, then. Come, you fortunate rascal, you shall drink +to the bride from the bride's half-emptied glass. To the most beautiful +woman--Why, what the devil--?" + +Vanringham had blurted out an odd, unhuman sound. His extended hand shook +and jerked, as if in irresolution, and presently struck the proffered +glass from de Soyecourt's grasp. You heard the tiny crash, very audible in +the stillness, and afterward the irregular drumming of the old Prince's +finger-tips. He had not raised his head, had not moved. + +Louis de Soyecourt came to him, without speaking, and placed one hand under +his father's chin, and lifted the Prince's countenance, like a dead weight, +toward his own. Thus the two men regarded each the other. Their silence was +rather horrible. + +"It was not in vain that I dabbled with chemistry all these years," said +the guttural voice of the Prince de Gatinais, "Yes, the child is dead by +this. Let us recognize the fact we are de Soyecourts, you and I." + +But Louis de Soyecourt had flung aside the passive, wrinkled face, and +then, with a straining gesture, wiped the fingers that had touched it upon +the sleeve of his left arm. He turned to the stairway. His hand grasped the +newelpost and gripped it so firmly that he seemed less to walk than by one +despairing effort to lift an inert body to the first step. He ascended +slowly, with a queer shamble, and disappeared into Nelchen's room. + + +VI + +"What next, monseigneur?" said Vanringham, half-whispering. + +"Why, next," said the Prince de Gatinais, "I imagine that he will kill us +both. Meantime, as Louis says, the wine is really excellent. So you may +refill my glass, my man, and restore to me my vial of little tablets".... + +He was selecting a bonbon from the comfit-dish when his son returned into +the apartment. Very tenderly Louis de Soyecourt laid his burden upon a +settle, and then drew the older man toward it. You noted first how the +thing lacked weight: a flower snapped from its stalk could hardly have +seemed more fragile. The loosened hair strained toward the floor and +seemed to have sucked all color from the thing to inform that thick hair's +insolent glory; the tint of Nelchen's lips was less sprightly, and for the +splendor of her eyes Death had substituted a conscientious copy in crayons: +otherwise there was no change; otherwise she seemed to lie there and muse +on something remote and curious, yet quite as she would have wished it to +be. + +"See, my father," Louis de Soyecourt said, "she was only a child, +more little even than I. Never in her brief life had she wronged any +one,--never, I believe, had she known an unkind thought. Always she +laughed, you understand--Oh, my father, is it not pitiable that Nelchen +will never laugh any more?" + +"I entreat of God to have mercy upon her soul," said the old Prince de +Gatinais. "I entreat of God that the soul of her murderer may dwell +eternally in the nethermost pit of hell." + +"I would cry amen," Louis de Soyecourt said, "if I could any longer believe +in God." + +The Prince turned toward him. "And will you kill me now, Louis?" + +"I cannot," said the other. "Is it not an excellent jest that I should +be your son and still be human? Yet as for your instrument, your cunning +butler--Come, Vanringham!" he barked. "We are unarmed. Come, tall man, for +I who am well-nigh a dwarf now mean to kill you with my naked hands." + +"Vanringham!" The Prince leaped forward. "Behind me, Vanringham!" As the +valet ran to him the old Prince de Gatinais caught a knife from the table +and buried it to the handle in Vanringham's breast. The lackey coughed, +choked, clutched his assassin by each shoulder; thus he stood with a +bewildered face, shuddering visibly, every muscle twitching. Suddenly he +shrieked, with an odd, gurgling noise, and his grip relaxed, and Francis +Vanringham seemed to crumple among his garments, so that he shrank rather +than fell to the floor. His hands stretched forward, his fingers spreading +and for a moment writhing in agony, and then he lay quite still. + +"You progress, my father," said Louis de Soyecourt, quietly. "And what new +infamy may I now look for?" + +"A valet!" said the Prince. "You would have fought with him--a valet! He +topped you by six inches. And the man was desperate. Your life was in +danger. And your life is valuable." + +"I have earlier perceived, my father, that you prize human life very +highly." + +The Prince de Gatinais struck sharply upon the table. "I prize the welfare +of France. To secure this it is necessary that you and no other reign in +Noumaria. But for the girl you would have yielded just now. So to the +welfare of France I sacrifice the knave at my feet, the child yonder, and +my own soul. Let us remember that we are de Soyecourts, you and I." + +"Rather I see in you," began the younger man, "a fiend. I see in you a far +ignobler Judas--" + +"And I see in you the savior of France. Nay, let us remember that we are de +Soyecourts, you and I. And for six centuries it has always been our first +duty to serve France. You behold only a man and a woman assassinated; I +behold thousands of men preserved from death, many thousands of women +rescued from hunger and degradation. I have sinned, and grievously; ages of +torment may not purge my infamy; yet I swear it is well done!" + +"And I--?" the little Marquis said. + +"Why, your heart is slain, my son, for you loved this girl as I loved your +mother, and now you can nevermore quite believe in the love God bears for +us all; and my soul is damned irretrievably: but we are de Soyecourts, you +and I, and accordingly we rejoice and drink to France, to the true love +of a de Soyecourt! to France preserved! to France still mighty among her +peers!" + +Louis de Soyecourt stood quite motionless. Only his eyes roved toward his +father, then to the body that had been Nelchen's. He began to laugh as he +caught up his glass. "You have conquered. What else have I to live for now? +To France, you devil!" + +"To France, my son!" The glasses clinked. "To the true love of a de +Soyecourt!" + +And immediately the Prince de Gatinais fell at his son's feet. "You will go +into Noumaria?" + +"What does that matter now?" the other wearily said. "Yes, I suppose so. +Get up, you devil!" + +But the Prince de Gatinais detained him, with hands like ice. "Then we +preserve France, you and I! We are both damned, I think, but it is worth +while, Louis. In hell we may remember that it was well worth while. I have +slain your very soul, my dear son, but that does not matter: France is +saved." The old man still knelt, looking upward. "Yes, and you must forgive +me, my son! For, see, I yield you what reparation I may. See, Louis,--I was +chemist enough for two. Wine of my own vintage I have tasted, of the brave +vintage which now revives all France. And I swear to you the child did not +suffer, Louis, not--not much. See, Louis! she did not suffer." A convulsion +tore at and shook the aged body, and twitched awry the mouth that had +smiled so resolutely. Thus the Prince died. + +Presently Louis de Soyecourt knelt and caught up the wrinkled face between +both hands. "My father--!" said Louis de Soyecourt. Afterward he kissed +the dead lips tenderly. "Teach me how to live, my father," said Louis de +Soyecourt, "for I begin to comprehend--in part I comprehend." Throughout +the moment Nelchen Thorn was forgotten: and to himself he too seemed to be +fashioned of heroic stuff. + + + + +X + +THE DUCAL AUDIENCE + + +_As Played at Breschau, May 3, 1755_ + + "_Venez, belle, venez, + Qu'on ne scauroit tenir, et qui vous mutinez. + Void vostre galand! a moi pour recompence + Vous pouvez faire une humble et douce reverence! + Adieu, l'evenement trompe un peu mes souhaits; + Mais tous les amoureux ne sont pas satisfaits._" + + +DRAMATIS PERSONAE + +GRAND DUKE OF NOUMARIA, formerly LOUIS DE SOYECOURT, tormented beyond +measure with the impertinences of life. +COMTE DE CHATEAUROUX, cousin to the Grand Duchess, and complies with +circumstance. +A COACHMAN and two FOOTMEN. + +GRAND DUCHESS OF NOUMARIA, a capable woman. +BARONESS VON ALTENBURG, a coquette. + + +SCENE + +The Palace Gardens at Breschau. + + + + +THE DUCAL AUDIENCE + + +_PROEM:--In Default of the Hornpipe Customary to a Lengthy Interval between +Acts_ + +Louis de Soyecourt fulfilled the promise made to the old Prince de +Gatinais, so that presently went about Breschau, hailed by more or less +enthusiastic plaudits, a fair and blue-eyed, fat little man, who smiled +mechanically upon the multitude, and looked after the interests of France +wearily, and (without much more ardor) gave over the remainder of his time +to outrivalling his predecessor, unvenerable Ludwig von Freistadt, who +until now had borne, among the eighteen grand dukes (largely of quite +grand-ducal morals) that had earlier governed in Noumaria, the palm for +indolence and dissipation. + +At moments, perhaps, the Grand Duke recollected the Louis Quillan who had +spent three months in Manneville, but only, I think, as one recalls some +pleasurable acquaintance; Quillan had little resembled the Marquis de +Soyecourt, rake, tippler and exquisite of Versailles, and in the Grand Duke +you would have found even less of Nelchen Thorn's betrothed. He was quite +dead, was Quillan, for the man that Nelchen loved had died within the +moment of Nelchen's death. He, the poor children! his Highness meditated. +Dead, both of them, both murdered four years since, slain in Poictesme +yonder.... Eh bien, it was not necessary to engender melancholy. + +So his Highness amused himself,--not very heartily, but at least to the +last resource of a flippant and unprudish age. Meantime his grumbling +subjects bored him, his duties bored him, his wife bored him, his +mistresses bored him after the first night or two, and, above all, he most +hideously bored himself. But I spare you a _chronique scandaleuse_ of Duke +Louis' reign and come hastily to its termination, as more pertinent to the +matter I have now in hand. + +Suffice it, then, that he ruled in Noumaria five years; that he did what +was requisite by begetting children in lawful matrimony, and what was +expected of him by begetting some others otherwise; and that he stoutened +daily, and by and by decided that the young Baroness von Altenburg--not +excepting even her lovely and multifarious precursors,--was beyond doubt +possessed of the brightest eyes in all history. Therefore did his Highness +lay before the owner of these eyes a certain project, upon which the +Baroness was in season moved to comment. + + +I + +"The idea," said the Baroness, "is preposterous!" + +"Admirably put!" cried the Grand Duke. "We will execute it, then, the first +thing in the morning." + +"--and, besides, one could take only a portmanteau--" + +"And the capacity of a portmanteau is limited," his Highness agreed. "Nay, +I can assure you, after I had packed my coronet this evening there was +hardly room for a change of linen. And I found it necessary to choose +between the sceptre and a tooth-brush." + +"Ah, Highness" sighed the Baroness von Altenburg, "will you never be +serious? You plan to throw away a duchy, and in the act you jest like a +school-boy." + +"Ma foi!" retorted the Grand Duke, and looked out upon the moonlit gardens; +"as a loyal Noumarian, should I not rejoice at the good-fortune which is +about to befall my country? Nay, Amalia, morality demands my abdication," +he added, virtuously, "and for this once morality and I are in complete +accord." + +The Baroness von Altenburg was not disposed to argue the singularity of any +such agreement, the while that she considered Louis de Soyecourt's latest +scheme. + +He had, as prologue to its elucidation, conducted the Baroness into the +summer-house that his grandfather, good Duke Augustus, erected in the +Gardens of Breschau, close to the Fountain of the Naiads, and had en +tete-a-tete explained his notion. There were post-horses in Noumaria; there +was also an unobstructed road that led you to Vienna, and thence to the +world outside; and he proposed, in short, to quiet the grumbling of the +discontented Noumarians by a second, and this time a final, vanishment from +office and the general eye. He submitted that the Baroness, as a patriot, +could not fail to weigh the inestimable benefit which would thus accrue to +her native land. + +Yet he stipulated that his exit from public life should be made in company +with the latest lady on whom he had bestowed his variable affections; and +remembering this proviso, the Baroness, without exactly encouraging or +disencouraging his scheme, was at least not prone to insist on coupling him +with morality. + +She contented herself with a truism. "Indeed, your Highness, the example +you set your subjects is atrocious." + +"And yet they complain!" said the Grand Duke,--"though I swear to you I +have always done the things I ought not to have done, and have left unread +the papers I have signed. What more, in reason, can one ask of a grand +duke?" + +"You are indolent--" remonstrated the lady. + +"You--since we attempt the descriptive," said his Highness,--"are +adorable." + +"--and that injures your popularity--" + +"Which, by the way, vanished with my waist." + +"--and moreover you create scandals--" + +"'The woman tempted me,'" quoted the Grand Duke; and added, reflectively, +"Amalia, it is very singular--" + +"Nay, I am afraid," the Baroness lamented, "it is rather notoriously +plural." + +But the Grand Duke waved a dignified dissent, and continued, "--that I +could never resist green eyes of a peculiar shade." + +The Baroness, becoming vastly interested in the structure of her fan, went +on, with some severity, "Your reputation--" + +"_De mortuis_--" pleaded the Grand Duke. + +"--is bad; and you go from bad to worse." + +"By no means," said his Highness, "since when I was nineteen--" + +"I will not believe it even of you!" cried the Baroness von Altenburg. + +"I assure you," his Highness protested, gravely, "I was then a devil of a +fellow! She was only twenty, and she, too, had big green eyes--" + +"And by this late period," said the lady, "has in addition an infinity of +grandchildren." + +"I happen to be barely forty!" the Grand Duke said, with dignity. + +"In which event the _Almanachen_ dating, say, from 1710--" + +"Are not unmarred by an occasional misprint. Truly I lament the ways of all +typographers, and I will explain the cause of their depravity, in Vienna." + +"But I am not going to Vienna." + +"'And Sapphira,'" murmured his Highness, "'fell down straightway at his +feet, and yielded up the ghost!' So beware, Amalia!" + +"I am not afraid, your Highness,--" + +"Nor in effect am I. Then we will let Europe frown and journalists +moralize, while we two gallop forward on the road that leads to Vienna and +heaven?" + +"Or--" the Baroness helpfully suggested. + +"There is in this case no possible 'or.' Once out of Noumaria, we leave all +things behind save happiness." + +"Among these trifles, your Highness, is a duchy." + +"Hein?" said the Grand Duke; "what is it? A mere dot on the map, a pawn in +the game of politics. I give up the pawn and take--the queen." + +"That is unwise," said the Baroness, with composure, "and, besides, you are +hurting my hand. Apropos of the queen--the Grand Duchess--" + +"Will heartily thank God for her deliverance. She will renounce me before +the world, and in secret almost worship me for my consideration." + +"Yet a true woman," said the Baroness, oracularly, "will follow a +husband--" + +"Till his wife makes her stop," said the little Grand Duke, his tone +implying that he knew whereof he spoke. + +"--and if the Grand Duchess loved you--" + +"Oh, I think she would never mention it," said the Grand Duke, revolving in +his mind this novel idea. "She has a great regard for appearances." + +"Nevertheless--" + +"She will be Regent"--and the Grand Duke chuckled. "I can see her now,--St. +Elizabeth, with a dash of Boadicea. Noumaria will be a pantheon of the +virtues, and my children will be reared on moral aphorisms and rational +food, with me as a handy example of everything they should avoid. Deuce +take it, Amalia," he added, "a father must in common decency furnish an +example to his children!" + +"Pray," asked the Baroness, "do you owe it to your children, then, to take +this trip to Vienna--" + +"Ma foi!" retorted the Grand Duke, "I owe that to myself." + +"--and thereby break the Grand Duchess' heart?" + +"Indeed," observed his Highness, "you appear strangely deep in the +confidence of my wife." + +Again the Baroness descended to aphorism. "All women are alike, your +Highness." + +"Ah, ah! Well, I have heard," said the Grand Duke, "that seven devils were +cast out of Magdalene--" + +"Which means--?" + +"I have never heard of this being done to any other woman. Accordingly I +deduce that in all other women must remain--" + +"Beware, your Highness, of the crudeness of cynicism!" + +"I age," complained the Grand Duke, "and one reaches years of indiscretion +so early in the forties." + +"You admit, then, discretion is desirable?" + +"I admit that," his Highness said, with firmness, "of you alone." + +"Am I, in truth," queried the Baroness, "desirable?" And in this patch of +moonlight she looked incredibly so. + +"More than that," said the Grand Duke--"you are dangerous. You are a menace +to the peace of my Court. The young men make sonnets to your eyes, and the +ladies are ready to tear them out. You corrupt us, one and all. There is de +Chateauroux now--" + +"I assure you," protested the Baroness, "Monsieur de Chateauroux is not the +sort of person--" + +"But at twenty-five," the Grand Duke interrupted, "one is invariably that +sort of person." + +"Phrases, your Highness!" + +"Phrases or not, it is decided. You shall make no more bad poets." + +"You will," said the Baroness, "put me to a vast expense for curl-papers." + +"You shall ensnare no more admirers." + +"My milliner will be inconsolable." + +"In short, you must leave Noumaria--" + +"You condemn me to an exile's life of misery!" + +"Well, then, since misery loves company, I will go with you. For we should +never forget," his Highness added, with considerable kindliness, "always +to temper justice with mercy. So I have ordered a carriage to be ready at +dawn." + +The Baroness reflected; the plump little Grand Duke smiled. And he had +reason, for there was about this slim white woman--whose eyes were colossal +emeralds, and in show equivalently heatless, if not in effect,--so much +of the _baroque_ that in meditation she appeared some prentice queen of +Faery dubious as to her incantations. Now, though, she had it--the mislaid +abracadabra. + +"I knew that I had some obstacle in mind--Thou shalt not commit adultery. +No, your Highness, I will not go." + +"Remember Sapphira," said the Grand Duke, "recall Herodias who fared +happily in all things, and by no means forget the portmanteau." + +"I have not the least intention of going--" the Baroness iterated, firmly. + +"Nor would I ever suspect you of harboring such a thought. Still, a +portmanteau, in case of an emergency--" + +"--although--" + +"Why, exactly." + +"--although I am told the sunrise is very beautiful from the Gardens of +Breschau." + +"It is well worth seeing," agreed the Grand Duke, "on certain +days--particularly on Thursdays. The gardeners make a specialty of them on +Thursdays." + +"By a curious chance," the Baroness murmured, "this is Wednesday." + +"Indeed," said the Grand Duke, "now you mention it, I believe it is." + +"And I shall be here, on your Highness' recommendation, to see the +sunrise--" + +"Of course," said the Grand Duke, "to see the sunrise,--but with a +portmanteau!" + +The Baroness was silent. + +"With a portmanteau," entreated the Grand Duke. "I am a connoisseur of +portmanteaux. Say that I may see yours, Amalia." + +The Baroness was silent. + +"Say yes, Amalia. For to the student of etymology the very word +portmanteau--" + +The Baroness bent toward him and said: + +"I am sorry to inform your Highness that there is some one at the door of +the summer-house." + + +II + +Inasmuch as all Noumaria knew that its little Grand Duke, once closeted +with the lady whom he delighted to honor, did not love intrusions, +and inasmuch as a discreet Court had learned, long ago, to regard +the summer-house as consecrate to his Highness and the Baroness von +Altenburg,--for these reasons the Grand Duke was inclined to resent +disturbance of his privacy when he first peered out into the gardens. + +His countenance was less severe when he turned again toward the Baroness, +and it smacked more of bewilderment. + +"It is only my wife," he said. + +"And the Comte de Chateauroux," said the Baroness. + +There is no denying that their voices were somewhat lowered. The chill and +frail beauty of the Grand Duchess was plainly visible from where they sat; +to every sense a woman of snow, his Highness mentally decided, for her gown +this evening was white and the black hair powdered; all white she was, a +cloud-tatter in the moonlight: yet with the Comte de Chateauroux as a foil, +his uniform of the Cuirassiers a big stir of glitter and color, she made an +undeniably handsome picture; and it was, quite possibly, the Grand Duke's +aesthetic taste which held him for the moment motionless. + +"After all--" he began, and rose. + +"I am afraid that her Highness--" the Baroness likewise commenced. + +"She would be sure to," said the Grand Duke, and thereupon he sat down. + +"I do not, however," said the Baroness, "approve of eavesdropping." + +"Oh, if you put it that way--" agreed the Grand Duke, and he was rising +once more, when the voice of de Chateauroux stopped him. + +"No, not at any cost!" de Chateauroux; was saying; "I cannot and I will not +give you up, Victoria!" + +"--though I have heard," said his Highness, "that the moonlight is bad for +the eyes." Saying this, he seated himself composedly in the darkest corner +of the summer-house. + +"This is madness!" the Grand Duchess said--"sheer madness." + +"Madness, if you will," de Chateauroux persisted, "yet it is a madness too +powerful and sweet to be withstood. Listen, Victoria,"--and he waved his +hand toward the palace, whence music, softened by the distance, came from +the lighted windows,--"do you not remember? They used to play that air at +Staarberg." + +The Grand Duchess had averted her gaze from him. She did not speak. + +He continued: "Those were contented days, were they not, when we were boy +and girl together? I have danced to that old-world tune so many times--with +you! And to-night, madame, it recalls a host of unforgettable things, for +it brings back to memory the scent of that girl's hair, the soft cheek that +sometimes brushed mine, the white shoulders which I so often had hungered +to kiss, before I dared--" + +"Hein?" muttered the Grand Duke. + +"We are no longer boy and girl," the Grand Duchess said. "All that lies +behind us. It was a dream--a foolish dream which we must forget." + +"Can you in truth forget?" de Chateauroux demanded,--"can you forget it +all, Victoria?--forget that night a Gnestadt, when you confessed you loved +me? forget that day at Staarberg, when we were lost in the palace gardens?" + +"Mon Dieu, what a queer method!" murmured the Grand Duke. "The man makes +love by the almanac." + +"Nay, dearest woman in the world," de Chateauroux went on, "you loved me +once, and that you cannot have quite forgotten. We were happy then--very +incredibly happy,--and now--" + +"Life," said the Grand Duchess, "cannot always be happy." + +"Ah, no, my dear! nor is it to be elated by truisms. But what a life is +this of mine,--a life of dreary days, filled with sick, vivid dreams of +our youth that is hardly past as yet! And so many dreams, dear woman of my +heart! in which the least remembered trifle brings back, as if in a flash, +some corner of the old castle and you as I saw you there,--laughing, or +insolent, or, it may be, tender. Ah, but you were not often tender! Just +for a moment I see you, and my blood leaps up in homage to my dear lady. +Then instantly that second of actual vision is over, I am going prosaically +about the day's business, but I hunger more than ever--" + +"This," said the Grand Duke, "is insanity." + +"Yet I love better the dreams of the night," de Chateauroux went on; "for +they are not made all of memories, sweetheart. Rather, they are romances +which my love weaves out of multitudinous memories,--fantastic stories of +just you and me that always end, if I be left to dream them out in comfort, +very happily. For there is in these dreams a woman who loves me, whose +heart and body and soul are mine, and mine alone. Ohe, it is a wonderful +vision while it lasts, though it be only in dreams that I am master of +my heart's desire, and though the waking be bitter...! Need it be just a +dream, Victoria?" + +"Not but that he does it rather well, you know," whispered the Grand Duke +to the Baroness von Altenburg, "although the style is florid. Yet that last +speech was quite in my earlier and more rococo manner." + +The Grand Duchess did not stir as de Chateauroux bent over her jewelled +hand. + +"Come! come now!" he said. "Let us not lose our only chance of happiness. +'Come forth, O Galatea, and forget as thou comest, even as I already have +forgot, the homeward way! Nay, choose with me to go a-shepherding--!'" + +"Oh, but to think of dragging in Theocritus!" observed his Highness. "Can +this be what they call seduction nowadays!" + +"I cannot," the Grand Duchess whispered, and her voice trembled. "You know +that I cannot, dear." + +"You will go!" said de Chateauroux. + +"My husband--" + +"A man who leaves you for each new caprice, who flaunts his mistresses in +the face of Europe." + +"My children--" + +"Eh, mon Dieu! are they or aught else to stand in my way, now that I know +you love me!" + +"--it would be criminal--" + +"Ah, yes, but then you love me!" + +"--you act a dishonorable part, de Chateauroux,--" + +"That does not matter. You love me!" + +"I will never see you again," said the Grand Duchess, firmly. "Go! I loathe +you, I loathe you, monsieur, even more than I loathe myself for having +stooped to listen to you." + +"You love me!" said de Chateauroux, and took her in his arms. + +Then the Grand Duchess rested her head upon the shoulder of de Chateauroux, +and breathed, "God help me!--yes!" + +"Really," said the Grand Duke, "I would never have thought it of Victoria. +It seems incredible for any woman of taste to be thus lured astray by +citations of the almanac and secondary Greek poets." + +"You will come, then?" the Count said. + +And the Grand Duchess answered, quietly, "It shall be as you will." + +More lately, while the Grand Duke and the Baroness craned their necks, and +de Chateauroux bent, very slowly, over her upturned lips, the Grand +Duchess struggled from him, saying, "Hark, Philippe! for I heard some +one--something stirring--" + +"It was the wind, dear heart." + +"Hasten!--I am afraid!--Oh, it is madness to wait here!" + +"At dawn, then,--in the gardens?" + +"Yes,--ah, yes, yes! But come, mon ami." And they disappeared in the +direction of the palace. + + +III + +The Grand Duke looked dispassionately on their retreating figures; +inquiringly on the Baroness; reprovingly on the moon, as though he rather +suspected it of having treated him with injustice. + +"Ma foi," said his Highness, at length, "I have never known such a passion +for sunrises. Shortly we shall have them announced as 'Patronized by the +Nobility.'" + +The Baroness said only, with an ellipsis, "Her own cousin, too!" [Footnote: +By courtesy rather than legally; Mademoiselle Berlin was, however, +undoubtedly the Elector of Badenburg's sister, though on the wrong side of +the blanket; and to her (second) son by Louis Quinze his French Majesty +accorded the title of Comte de Chateauroux.] + +"Victoria," observed the Grand Duke, "has always had the highest regard for +her family; but in this she is going too far--" + +"Yes," said the Baroness; "as far as Vienna." + +"--and I shall tell her that there are limits, Pardieu," the Grand Duke +emphatically repeated, "that there are limits." + +"Whereupon, if I am not mistaken, she will reply that there +are--baronesses." + +"I shall then appeal to her better nature--" + +"You will find it," said the Baroness, "strangely hard of hearing." + +"--and afterward I shall have de Chateauroux arrested." + +"On what grounds, your Highness?" + +"In fact," admitted the Grand Duke, "we do not want a scandal" + +"It is no longer," the Baroness considered, "altogether a question of what +we want." + +"And, morbleu! there will be a horrible scandal--" + +"The public gazettes will thrive on it." + +"--and trouble with her father, if not international complications--" + +"The armies of Noumaria and Badenburg have for years had nothing to do." + +"--and later a divorce." + +"The lawyers will call you blessed. In any event," the Baroness +conscientiously added, "your lawyers will. I am afraid that hers--" + +"Will scarcely be so courteous?" the Grand Duke queried. + +"It is not altogether impossible," the Baroness admitted, "that in +preparation of their briefs, they may light upon some other adjective." + +"And, in short," his Highness summed it up, "there will be the deuce to +pay." + +"Oh, no! the piper," said the Baroness,--"after long years of dancing. That +is what moralists will be saying, I suspect." + +And this seemed so highly probable that the plump little Grand Duke +frowned, and lapsed into a most un-ducal sullenness. + +"Your Highness," murmured the Baroness, "I cannot express my feelings as to +this shocking revelation--" + +"Madame," said the Grand Duke, "no more can I. At least, not in the +presence of a lady." + +"--But I have a plan--" + +"I," said the Grand Duke, "have an infinity of plans; but de Chateauroux +has a carriage, and a superfluity of Bourbon blood; and Victoria has the +obstinacy of a mule." + +"--And my plan," said the Baroness, "is a good one." + +"It needs to be," said the Grand Duke. + +But thereupon the Baroness von Altenburg unfolded to his Highness her +scheme for preserving coherency in the reigning family of Noumaria, and the +Grand Duke of that principality heard and marvelled. + +"Amalia," he said, when she had ended, "you should be prime-minister--" + +"Ah, your Highness," said the lady, "you flatter me, for none of my sex has +ever been sufficiently unmanly to make a good politician." + +"--though, indeed," the Grand Duke reflected, "what would a mere +prime-minister do with lips like yours?" + +"He would set you an excellent example by admiring them from a distance. Do +you agree, then, to my plan?" + +"Why, ma foi, yes!" said the Grand Duke, and he sighed. "In the gardens at +dawn." + +"At dawn," said the Baroness, "in the gardens." + + +IV + +That night the Grand Duke was somewhat impeded in falling asleep. He was +seriously annoyed by the upsetment of his escape from the Noumarian exile, +since he felt that he had prodigally fulfilled his obligations, and in +consequence deserved a holiday; the duchy was committed past retreat to the +French alliance, there were two legitimate children to reign after him, and +be the puppets of de Puysange and de Bernis, [Footnote: The Grand Duke, +however, owed de Puysange some reparation for having begot a child upon the +latter's wife; and with de Bernis had not dissimilar ties, for the Marquis +de Soyecourt had in Venice, in 1749, relinquished to him the beautiful nun +of Muran, Maria Montepulci,--which lady de Bernis subsequently turned over +to Giacomo Casanova, as is duly recorded in the latter's _Memoires_, under +the year 1753.] just as he had been. Truly, it was diverting, after a +candid appraisal of his own merits, to reflect that a dwarfish Louis de +Soyecourt had succeeded where quite impeccable people like Bayard and du +Guesclin had failed; by four years of scandalous living in Noumaria he +had confirmed the duchy to the French interest, had thereby secured the +wavering friendship of Austria, and had, in effect, set France upon her +feet. Yes, the deed was notable, and he wanted his reward. + +To be the forsaken husband, to play Sgarnarelle with all Europe as an +audience, was, he considered, an entirely inadequate reward. That was out +of the question, for, deuce take it! somebody had to be Regent while +the brats were growing up. And Victoria, as he had said, would make an +admirable Regent. + +He was rather fond of his wife than otherwise. He appreciated the fact that +she never meddled with him, and he sincerely regretted she should have +taken a fancy to that good-for-nothing de Chateauroux. What qualms the poor +woman must be feeling at this very moment over the imminent loss of her +virtue! But love was a cruel and unreasonable lord.... There was Nelchen +Thorn, for instance.... He wondered would he have been happy with Nelchen? +her hands were rather coarse about the finger-tips, as he remembered +them.... The hands of Amalia, though, were perfection.... + +Then at last the body that had been Louis Quillan's fell asleep. + + +V + +Discontentedly the Grand Duke appraised the scene, and in the murky +twilight which heralded the day he found the world a cheerless place. The +Gardens of Breschau were deserted, save for a travelling carriage and +its fretful horses, who stamped and snuffled within forty yards of the +summer-house. + +"It appears," he said, "that I am the first on the ground, and that de +Chateauroux is a dilatory lover. Young men degenerate." + +Saying this, he seated himself on a convenient bench, where de Chateauroux +found him a few minutes later, and promptly dropped a portmanteau at the +ducal feet. + +"Monsieur le Comte," the Grand Duke said, "this is an unforeseen pleasure." + +"Your Highness!" cried de Chateauroux, in astonishment. + +"_Ludovicus_," said the Grand Duke, "_Dei gratia Archi Dux Noumariae, +Princeps Gatinensis_, and so on." And de Chateauroux caressed his chin. + +"I did not know," said the Grand Duke, "that you were such an early riser. +Or perhaps," he continued, "you are late in retiring. Fy, fy, monsieur! you +must be more careful! You must not create a scandal in our little Court." +He shook his finger knowingly at Philippe de Chateauroux. + +"Your Highness,--" said the latter, and stammered into silence. + +"You said that before," the Grand Duke leisurely observed. + +"An affair of business--" + +"Ah! ah! ah!" said the Grand Duke, casting his eye first toward the +portmanteau and then toward the carriage, "can it be that you are leaving +Noumaria? We shall miss you, Comte." + +"I was summoned very hastily, or I would have paid my respects to your +Highness--" + +"Indeed," said the Grand Duke, "your departure is of a deplorable +suddenness--" + +"It is urgent, your Highness--" + +"--and yet," pursued the Grand Duke, "travel is beneficial to young men." + +"I shall not go far, your Highness--" + +"Nay, I would not for the world intrude upon your secrets, Comte--" + +"--But my estates, your Highness--" + +"--For young men will be young men, I know." + +"--There is, your Highness, to be a sale of meadow land--" + +"Which you will find, I trust, untilled." + +"--And my counsellor at law, your Highness, is imperative--" + +"At times," agreed the Grand Duke, "the most subtle of counsellors is +unreasonable. I trust, though, that she is handsome?" + +"Ah, your Highness--!" cried de Chateauroux. + +"And you have my blessing upon your culture of those meadow lands. Go in +peace." + +The Grand Duke was smiling on his wife's kinsman with extreme benevolence +when the Baroness von Altenburg appeared in travelling costume and carrying +a portmanteau. + + +VI + +"Heydey!" said the Grand Duke; "it seems, that the legal representative of +our good Baroness, also, is imperative." + +"Your Highness!" cried the Baroness, and she, too, dropped her burden. + +"Every one," said the Grand Duke, "appears to question my identity." And +meantime de Chateauroux turned from the one to the other in bewilderment. + +"This," said the Grand Duke, after a pause, "is painful. This is unworthy +of you, de Chateauroux." + +"Your Highness--!" cried the Count. + +"Again?" said the Grand Duke, pettishly. + +The Baroness applied her handkerchief to her eyes, and plaintively said, +"You do not understand, your Highness--" + +"I am afraid," said the Grand Duke, "that I understand only too clearly." + +"--and I confess I was here to meet Monsieur de Chateauroux--" + +"Oh, oh!" cried the latter. + +"Precisely," observed the Grand Duke, "to compare portmanteaux; and you +had selected the interior of yonder carriage, no doubt, as an appropriate +locality." + +"And I admit to your Highness--" + +"His Highness already knowing," the Grand Duke interpolated. + +"--that we were about to elope." + +"I can assure you--" de Chateauroux began. + +"Nay, I will take the lady's word for it," said the Grand Duke--"though it +grieves me." + +"We knew you--would never give your consent," murmured the Baroness, "and +without your consent I can not marry--" + +"Undoubtedly," said the Grand Duke, "I would never have given my consent to +such fiddle-faddle." + +"And we love each other." + +"Fiddle-de-dee!" said his Highness. + +But de Chateauroux passed one hand over his brow. "This," he said, "is some +horrible mistake--" + +"It is," assented the Grand Duke, "a mistake--and one of your making." + +"--For I certainly did not expect the Baroness--" + +"To make a clean breast of it so readily?" his Highness asked. "Ah, but she +is a lady of unusual candor." + +"Indeed, your Highness--" began de Chateauroux. + +"Nay, Philippe," the Baroness entreated, "confess to his Highness, as I +have done." + +"Oh, but--!" said de Chateauroux. + +"I must beseech you to be silent," said the Grand Duke; "you have already +brought scandal to our Court. Do not, I pray you, add profanity to the +catalogue of your offences. Why, I protest," he continued, "even the Grand +Duchess has heard of this imbroglio." + +Indeed, the Grand Duchess, hurrying from a pleached walkway, was already +within a few feet of the trio, and appeared no little surprised to find in +this place her husband. + +"I would not be surprised," said the Grand Duke, raising his eyes toward +heaven, "if by this time it were all over the palace." + + +VII + +Then, as his wife waited, speechless, the Grand Duke gravely asked: "You, +too, have heard of this sad affair, Victoria? Ah, I perceive you have, +and that you come in haste to prevent it,--even to pursue these misguided +beings, if necessary, as the fact that you come already dressed for the +journey very eloquently shows. You are self-sacrificing, you possess a good +heart, Victoria." + +"I did not know--" began the Grand Duchess. + +"Until the last moment," the Grand Duke finished. "Eh, I comprehend. But +perhaps," he continued, hopefully, "it is not yet too late to bring them to +their senses." + +And turning toward the Baroness and de Chateauroux, he said: + +"I may not hinder your departure if you two in truth are swayed by love, +since to control that passion is immeasurably beyond the prerogative +of kings. Yet I beg you to reflect that the step you contemplate is +irrevocable. Yes, and to you, madame, whom I have long viewed with a +paternal affection--an emotion wholly justified by the age and rank for +which it has pleased Heaven to preserve me,--to you in particular I would +address my plea. If with an entire heart you love Monsieur de Chateauroux, +why, then--why, then, I concede that love is divine, and yonder carriage at +your disposal. But I beg you to reflect--" + +"Believe me," said the Baroness, "we are heartily grateful for your +Highness' magnanimity. We may, I deduce, depart with your permission?" + +"Oh, freely, if upon reflection--" + +"I can reflect only when I am sitting down," declared the Baroness. She +handed her portmanteau to de Chateauroux, and stepped into the carriage. +And the Grand Duke noted that a coachman and two footmen had appeared, from +nowhere in particular. + +"To you, Monsieur le Comte," his Highness now began, with an Olympian +frown, "I have naught to say. Under the cover of our hospitality you have +endeavored to steal away the fairest ornament of our Court; I leave you +to the pangs of conscience, if indeed you possess a conscience. But the +Baroness is unsophisticated; she has been misled by your fallacious +arguments and specious pretence of affection. She has evidently been +misled," he said to the Grand Duchess, kindly, "as any woman might be." + +"As any woman might be!" his wife very feebly echoed. + +"And I shall therefore," continued the Grand Duke, "do all within my power +to dissuade her from this ruinous step. I shall appeal to her better +nature, and not, I trust, in vain." + +He advanced with dignity to the carriage, wherein the Baroness was seated. +"Amalia," he whispered, "you are an admirable actress. 'O wonderful, +wonderful, and most wonderful wonderful! and yet again wonderful, and after +that out of all whooping!" + +The Baroness smiled. + +"And it is now time," said his Highness, "for me to appeal to your better +nature. I shall do so in a rather loud voice, for I have prepared a most +virtuous homily that I am unwilling the Grand Duchess should miss. You +will at its conclusion be overcome with an appropriate remorse, and will +obligingly burst into tears, and throw yourself at my feet--pray remember +that the left is the gouty one,--and be forgiven. You will then be restored +to favor, while de Chateauroux drives off alone and in disgrace. Your plan +works wonderfully." + +"It is true," the Baroness doubtfully said, "such was the plan." + +"And a magnificent one," said the Grand Duke. + +"But I have altered it, your Highness." + +"And this alteration, Amalia--?" + +"Involves a trip to Vienna." + +"Not yet, Amalia. We must wait." + +"Oh, I could never endure delays," said the Baroness, "and, since you +cannot accompany me, I am going with Monsieur de Chateauroux." + +The Grand Duke grasped the carriage door. + +"Preposterous!" he cried. + +"But you have given your consent," the Baroness protested, "and in the +presence of the Grand Duchess." + +"Which," said the Grand Duke, "was part of our plan." + +"Indeed, your Highness," said the Baroness, "it was a most important part. +You must know," she continued, with some diffidence, "that I have the +misfortune to love Monsieur de Chateauroux." + +"Who is in love with Victoria." + +"I have the effrontery to believe," said the Baroness, "that he is, in +reality, in love with me." + +"Especially after hearing him last night," the Grand Duke suggested. + +"That scene, your Highness, we had carefully rehearsed--oh, seven or eight +times! Personally, I agreed with your Highness that the quotation from +Theocritus was pedantic, but Philippe insisted on it, you conceive--" + +The Grand Duke gazed meditatively upon the Baroness, who had the grace to +blush. + +"Then it was," he asked, "a comedy for my benefit?" + +"You would never have consented--" she began. But the Grand Duke's +countenance, which was slowly altering to a greenish pallor, caused her to +pause. + +"You will get over it in a week, Louis," she murmured, "and you will find +other--baronesses." + +"Oh, very probably!" said his Highness, and he noted with pleasure that he +spoke quite as if it did not matter. "Nevertheless, this was a despicable +trick to play upon the Grand Duchess." + +"Yet I do not think the Grand Duchess will complain," said the Baroness von +Altenburg. + +And it was as though a light broke on the Grand Duke. "You planned all this +beforehand?" he inquired. + +"Why, precisely, your Highness." + +"And de Chateauroux helped you?" + +"In effect, yes, your Highness." + +"And the Grand Duchess knew?" + +"The Grand Duchess suggested it, your Highness, the moment that she knew +you thought of eloping." + +"And I, who tricked Gaston--!" + +"Louis," said the Baroness von Altenburg, in a semi-whisper, "your wife +is one of those persons who cling to respectability like a tippler to his +bottle. To her it is absolutely nothing how many women you may pursue--or +conquer--so long as you remain here under her thumb, to be exhibited, in +fair sobriety, upon the necessary public occasions. I pity you, my Louis." +And she sighed with real compassion. + +He took possession of one gloved hand. "At the bottom of your heart," his +Highness said, irrelevantly, "you like me better than you do Monsieur de +Chateauroux." + +"I find you the more entertaining company, to be sure--But what a woman +most wants is to be loved. If I touch Philippe's hand for, say, the +millionth part of a second longer than necessity compels, he treads for the +remainder of the day above meteors; if yours--why, you at most admire my +fingers. No doubt you are a connoisseur of fingers and such-like trifles; +but, then, a woman does not wish to be admired by a connoisseur so much as +she hungers to be adored by a maniac. And accordingly, I prefer my stupid +Philippe." + +"You are wise," the Grand Duke estimated, "I remember long ago ... in +Poictesme yonder...." + +"I loathe her," the Bareness said, with emphasis. "Nay, I am ignorant as to +who she was--but O my Louis! had you accorded me a tithe of the love you +squandered on that abominable dairymaid I would have followed you not only +to Vienna--" + +He raised his hand, "There are persons yonder in whom the proper emotions +are innate; let us not shock them. No, I never loved you, I suppose; I +merely liked your way of talking, liked your big green eyes, liked your +lithe young body.... He, and I like you still, Amalia. So I shall not play +the twopenny despot. God be with you, my dear." + +He had seen tears in those admirable eyes before he turned his back to her. +"Monsieur de Chateauroux," he called, "I find the lady is adamant. I wish +you a pleasant journey." He held open the door of the carriage for de +Chateauroux to enter. + +"You will forgive us, your Highness?" asked the latter. + +"You will forget?" murmured the Baroness. + +"I shall do both," said the Grand Duke. "Bon voyage, mes enfants!" + +And with a cracking of whips the carriage drove off. + +"Victoria," said the plump little Grand Duke, in admiration, "you are a +remarkable woman. I think that I will walk for a while in the gardens, and +meditate upon the perfections of my wife." + + +VIII + +He strolled in the direction of the woods. As he reached the summit of +a slight incline he turned and looked toward the road that leads from +Breschau to Vienna. A cloud of dust showed where the carriage had +disappeared. + +"Ma foi!" said his Highness; "my wife has very fully proven her executive +ability. Beyond doubt, there is no person in Europe better qualified to +rule Noumaria as Regent." + + + + +LOVE'S ALUMNI: THE AFTERPIECE + + +_As Played at Ingilby, October 6, 1755_ + +"_Though marriage be a lottery, in which there are a wondrous many blanks, +yet there is one inestimable lot, in which the only heaven on earth is +written. Would your kind fate but guide your hand to that, though I were +wrapt in all that luxury itself could clothe me with, I still should envy +you._" + + +DRAMATIS PERSONAE + +DUKE OF ORMSKIRK. +LOUIS DE SOYECOURT, formerly GRAND DUKE OF NOUMARIA, and now a tuner of +pianofortes. +DUC DE PUYSANGE. +DAMIENS, servant to Ormskirk. + +In Dumb Show are presented LORD HUMPHREY DEGGE, CAPTAIN FRANCIS AUDAINE, +MR. GEORGE ERWYN, DUCHESS OF ORMSKIRK, DUCHESSE DE PUYSANGE, LADY HUMPHREY +DEGGE, MRS. AUDAINE, and MRS. ERWYN. + + +SCENE + +The library, and afterward the dining-room, of Ormskirk's home at Ingilby, +in Westmoreland. + + + + +LOVE'S ALUMNI + + +_PROEM:-Wherein a Prince Serves His People_ + +The Grand Duke did not return to breakfast nor to dinner, nor, in point of +fact, to Noumaria. For the second occasion Louis de Soyecourt had vanished +at the spiriting of boredom; and it is gratifying to record that his +evasion passed without any train of turmoil. + +The Grand Duchess seemed to disapprove of her bereavement, mildly, but only +said, "Well, after all--!" + +She saw to it that the ponds about the palace were dragged conscientiously, +and held an interview with the Chief of Police, and more lately had herself +declared Regent of Noumaria. + +She proved a capable and popular ruler, who when she began to take lovers +allowed none of them to meddle with politics: so all went well enough in +Noumaria, and nobody evinced the least desire to hasten either the maturity +of young Duke Anthony or the reappearance of his father. + + +I + +Meantime had come to Ingilby, the Duke of Ormskirk's place in Westmoreland, +a smallish blue-eyed vagabond who requested audience with his Grace, and +presently got it, for the Duke, since his retirement from public affairs, +[Footnote: He returned to office during the following year, as is well +known, immediately before the attempted assassination of the French King, +in the January of 1757.] had become approachable by almost any member of +the public. + +The man came Into the library, smiling, "I entreat your pardon, Monsieur +le Duc," he began, "that I have not visited you sooner. But in unsettled +times, you comprehend, the master of a beleaguered fortress is kept busy. +This poor fortress of my body has been of late most resolutely besieged by +poverty and hunger, the while that I have been tramping about Europe--in +search of Gaston. Now, they tell me, he is here." + +The travesty of their five-year-old interview at Bellegarde so tickled +Ormskirk's fancy that he laughed heartily. "Damiens," said Ormskirk, to the +attendant lackey, "go fetch me a Protestant minister from Manneville, and +have a gallows erected in one of the drawing-rooms. I intend to pay off an +old score." Meantime he was shaking the little vagabond's hand, chuckling +and a-beam with hospitality. + +"Your Grace--!" said Damiens, bewildered. + +"Well, go, in any event," said Ormskirk. "Oh, go anywhere, man!--to the +devil, for instance." + +His eyes, followed the retreating lackey. "As I suspect in the end you +will," Ormskirk said, inconsequently. "Still, you are a very serviceable +fellow, my good Damiens. I have need of you." + +And with a shrug he now began, "Your Highness,--" + +"Praise God, no!" observed the other, fervently. + +And Ormskirk nodded his comprehension. "Monsieur de Soyecourt, then. Of +course, we heard of your disappearance, I have been expecting something of +the sort for years. And,--frankly, politics are often a nuisance, as both +Gaston and myself will willingly attest,--especially," he added, with a +grimace, "since war between France and England became inevitable through +the late happenings in India and Nova Scotia, and both our wives flatly +declined to let either of us take part therein,--for fear we might catch +our death of cold by sleeping in those draughty tents. Faith, you have +descended, sir, like an agreeable meteor, upon two of the most scandalously +henpecked husbands in all the universe. In fact, you will not find a +gentleman at Ingilby--save Mr. Erwyn, perhaps--but is an abject slave to +his wife, and in consequence most abjectly content." + +"You have guests, then?" said de Soyecourt. "_Ma foi_, it is unfortunate. I +but desired to confer with Gaston concerning the disposal of Beaujolais and +my other properties in France since I find that the sensation of hunger, +while undoubtedly novel, is, when too long continued, apt to grow tiresome. +I would not willingly intrude, however--" + +"Were it not for the fact that you are wealthy, and yet, so long as you +preserve your incognito, and remain legally dead, you cannot touch a penny +of your fortune! The situation is droll. We must arrange it. Meanwhile +you are my guest, and I can assure you that at Ingilby you will be to all +Monsieur de Soyecourt, no more and no less. Now let us see what can be done +about clothing Monsieur de Soyecourt for dinner--" + +"But I could not consider--" Monsieur de Soyecourt protested. + +"I must venture to remind you," the Duke retorted, "that dinner is almost +ready, and that Claire is the sort of housewife who would more readily +condone fratricide or arson than cold soup." + +"It is odd," little de Soyecourt said, with complete irrelevance, "that in +the end I should get aid of you and of Gaston. And it is odd you should be +forgiving my bungling attempts at crime, so lightly--" + +Ormskirk considered, a new gravity in his plump face. "Faith, but we find +it more salutary, in looking back, to consider some peccadilloes of our +own. And we bear no malice, Gaston and I,--largely, I suppose, because +contentment is a great encourager of all the virtues. Then, too, we +remember that to each of us, at the eleventh hour, and through no merit of +his own, was given the one thing worth while in life. We did not merit it; +few of us merit anything, for few of us are at bottom either very good or +very bad. Nay, my friend, for the most part we are blessed or damned as +Fate elects, and hence her favorites may not in reason contemn her victims. +For myself, I observe the king upon his throne and the thief upon his +coffin, in passage for the gallows; and I pilfer my phrase and I apply it +to either spectacle: _There, but for the will of God, sits John Bulmer_. I +may not understand, I may not question; I can but accept. Now, then, let us +prepare for dinner" he ended, in quite another tone. + +De Soyecourt yielded. He was shown to his rooms, and Ormskirk rang for +Damiens, whom the Duke was sending into France to attend to a rather +important assassination. + + +II + +At dinner Louis de Soyecourt made divers observations. + +First Gaston had embraced him. "And the de Gatinais estates?--but beyond +question, my dear Louis! Next week we return to France, and the affair is +easily arranged. You may abdicate in due form, you need no longer skulk +about Europe disguised as a piano-tuner; it is all one to France, you +conceive, whether you or your son reign in Noumaria. You should have come +to me sooner. As for your having been in love with my wife, I could not +well quarrel with that, since the action would seriously reflect upon my +own taste, who am still most hideously in love with her." + +Helene had stoutened. Monsieur de Soyecourt noted also that Helene's gold +hair was silvering now, as though Time had tangled cobwebs through it, and +that Gaston was profoundly unconscious of the fact. In Gaston's eyes she +was at the most seventeen. Well, Helene had always been admirable in her +management of all, and it would be diverting to see that youngest child of +hers.... Meanwhile it was diverting also to observe how conscientiously she +was exerting a good influence over Gaston: and de Soyecourt smiled to find +that she shook her head at Gaston's third glass, and that de Puysange did +not venture on a fourth. Victoria, to do her justice, had never meddled +with any of her husband's vices.... + +As for the Duchess of Ormskirk, Louis de Soyecourt had known from the +beginning--in comparative youthfulness,--that Claire would placidly order +her portion of the world as she considered expedient, and that Ormskirk +would travesty her, and somewhat bewilder her, and that in the ultimate +Ormskirk would obey her to the letter. + +Captain Audaine Monsieur de Soyecourt considered at the start diverting, +and in the end a pompous bore. Yet they assured him that Audaine was +getting on prodigiously in the House of Commons, [Footnote: The Captain's +personal quarrel with the Chevalier St. George and its remarkable upshot, +at Antwerp, as well as the Captain's subsequent renunciation of Jacobitism, +are best treated of in Garendon's own memoirs.]--as, _ma foi_! he would +most naturally do, since his _metier_ was simply to shout well-rounded +common-places,--and the circumstance that he shouted would always attract +attention, while the fact that he shouted platitudes would invariably +prevent his giving offence. Lord Humphrey Degge was found a ruddy and +comely person, of no especial importance, but de Soyecourt avidly took note +of Mr. Erwyn's waistcoat. Why, this man was a genius! Monsieur de Soyecourt +at first glance decided. Staid, demure even, yet with a quiet prodigality +of color and ornament, an inevitableness of cut--Oh, beyond doubt, this man +was a genius! + +As for the ladies at Ingilby, they were adjudged to be handsome women, +one and all, but quite unattractive, since they evinced not any excessive +interest in Monsieur de Soyecourt. Here was no sniff of future conquest, +not one side-long glance, but merely three wives unblushingly addicted to +their own husbands. _Eh bien_! these were droll customs! + +Yet in the little man woke a vague suspicion, as he sat among these +contented folk, that, after all, they had perhaps attained to something +very precious of which his own life had been void, to a something of which +he could not even form a conception. Love, of course, he understood, with +thoroughness; no man alive had loved more ardently and variously than +Louis de Soyecourt. But what the devil! love was a temporary delusion, an +ingenious device of Nature's to bring about perpetuation of the species. +It was a pleasurable insanity which induced you to take part in a rather +preposterously silly and undignified action: and once this action was +performed, the insanity, of course, gave way to mutual tolerance, or to +dislike, or, more preferably, as de Soyecourt considered, to a courteous +oblivion of the past. + +And yet when this Audaine, to cite one instance only, had vented some +particularly egregious speech that exquisite wife of his would merely +smile, in a fond, half-musing way. She had twice her husband's wit, and +was cognizant of the fact, beyond doubt; to any list of his faults and +weaknesses you could have compiled she indubitably might have added a dozen +items, familiar to herself alone: and with all this, it was clamant that +she preferred Audaine to any possible compendium of the manly virtues. Why, +in comparison, she would have pished at a seraph!--after five years of his +twaddle, mark you. And Helene seemed to be really not much more sensible +about Gaston.... + +It all was quite inexplicable. Yet Louis de Soyecourt could see that not +one of these folk was blind to his or her yoke-fellow's frailty, but that, +beside this something very precious to which they had attained, and +he had never attained, a man's foible, or a woman's defect, dwindled +into insignificance. Here, then, were people who, after five years' +consortment,--consciously defiant of time's corrosion, of the guttering-out +of desire, of the gross and daily disillusions of a life in common, +and even of the daily fret of all trivialities shared and diversely +viewed,--who could yet smile and say: "No, my companion is not quite the +perfect being I had imagined. What does it matter? I am content. I would +have nothing changed." + +Well, but Victoria had not been like that. She let you go to the devil in +your own way, without meddling, but she irritated you all the while by +holding herself to a mark. She had too many lofty Ideas about her own +duties and principles,--much such uncompromising fancies as had led his +father to get rid of that little Nelchen.... No, there was no putting up +with these rigid virtues, day in and day out. These high-flown notions +about right and wrong upset your living, they fretted your luckless +associates.... These people here at Ingilby, by example, made no +pretensions to immaculacy; instead, they kept their gallant compromise +with imperfection; and they seemed happy enough.... There might be a moral +somewhere: but he could not find it. + + +CURTAIN + + + + +THE EPILOGUE + +SPOKEN BY ORMSKIRK, WHO ENTERS IN A FRET + + + A thankless task! to come to you and mar + Your dwindling appetite for caviar, + And so I told him! + [_He calls within._ + Sir, the critics sneer, + And swear the thing is "crude and insincere"! + "Too trivial"! or for an instant pause + And doubly damn with negligent applause! + Impute, in fine, the prowess of the Vicar + Less to repentance than to too much liquor! + Find Louis naught! de Gatinais inane! + Gaston unvital, and George Erwyn vain, + And Degge the futile fellow of Audaine! + Nay, sir, no Epilogue avails to save-- + You're damned, and Bulmer's hooted as a knave. + + [_He retires behind the curtain and is thrust out + again. He resolves to make the best of it._ + + The author's obdurate, and bids me say + That--since the doings of our far-off day + Smacked less of Hippocrene than of Bohea-- + His tiny pictures of that tiny time + Aim little at the lofty and sublime, + And paint no peccadillo as a crime-- + Since when illegally light midges mate, + Or flies purloin, or gnats assassinate, + No sane man hales them to the magistrate. + + Or so he says. He merely strove to find + And fix a faithful likeness of mankind + About its daily business,--to secure + No full-length portrait, but a miniature,-- + And for it all no moral can procure. + + Let Bulmer, then, defend his old-world crew, + And beg indulgence--nay, applause--of you. + + Grant that we tippled and were indiscreet, + And that our idols all had earthen feet; + Grant that we made of life a masquerade; + And swore a deal more loudly than we prayed; + Grant none of us the man his Maker meant,-- + Our deeds, the parodies of our intent, + In neither good nor ill pre-eminent; + Grant none of us a Nero,--none a martyr,-- + All merely so-so. + And _de te narratur_. + +EXPLICIT + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Gallantry, by James Branch Cabell + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GALLANTRY *** + +This file should be named 8gtry10.txt or 8gtry10.zip +Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks get a new NUMBER, 8gtry11.txt +VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, 8gtry10a.txt + +Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Tiffany Vergon +and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team. + +Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US +unless a copyright notice is included. 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Shall +the throne of iniquity have fellowship with Thee, which frameth mischief by +a law?_" + + + + +INTRODUCTION + + +These paragraphs, dignified by the revised edition of _Gallantry_ and +spuriously designated An Introduction, are nothing more than a series of +notes and haphazard discoveries in preparation of a thesis. That thesis, +if it is ever written, will bear a title something academically like _The +Psychogenesis of a Poet; or Cabell the Masquerader_. For it is in this +guise--sometimes self-declared, sometimes self-concealed, but always as the +persistent visionary--that the author of some of the finest prose of our +day has given us the key with which (to lapse into the jargon of verse) he +has unlocked his heart. + +On the technical side alone, it is easy to establish Cabell's poetic +standing. There are, first of all, the quantity of original rhymes that +are scattered through the dozen volumes which Cabell has latterly (and +significantly) classified as Biography. Besides these interjections which +do duty as mottoes, chapter-headings, tailpieces, dedications, interludes +and sometimes relevant songs, there is the volume of seventy-five +"adaptations" in verse, _From the Hidden Way_, published in 1916. Here +Cabell, even in his most natural rôle, declines to show his face and amuses +himself with a new set of masks labelled Alessandro de Medici, Antoine +Riczi, Nicolas de Caen, Theodore Passerat and other fabulous minnesingers +whose verses were created only in the mind of Cabell. It has pleased him to +confuse others besides the erudite reviewer of the _Boston Transcript_ by +quoting the first lines of the non-existent originals in Latin, Italian, +Provençal--thus making his skilful ballades, sestinas and the less mediæval +narratives part of a remarkably elaborate and altogether successful hoax. + +And, as this masquerade of obscure Parnassians betrayed its creator, +Cabell--impelled by some fantastic reticence--sought for more subtle +makeshifts to hide the poet. The unwritten thesis, plunging abruptly into +the realm of analytical psychology, will detail the steps Cabell has taken, +as a result of early associative disappointments, to repress or at least +to disguise, the poet in himself--and it will disclose how he has failed. +It will burrow through the latest of his works and exhume his half-buried +experiments in rhyme, assonance and polyphony. This part of the paper will +examine _Jurgen_ and call attention to the distorted sonnet printed as a +prose soliloquy on page 97 of that exquisite and ironic volume. It will +pass to the subsequent _Figures of Earth_ and, after showing how the +greater gravity of this volume is accompanied by a greater profusion of +poetry _per se_ it will unravel the scheme of Cabell's fifteen essays in +what might be called contrapuntal prose. It will unscramble all the rhymes +screened in Manuel's monologue beginning on page 294, quote the metrical +innovations with rhymed vowels on page 60, tabulate the hexameters that +leap from the solidly set paragraphs and rearrange the brilliant fooling +that opens the chapter "Magic of the Image Makers." This last is in itself +so felicitous a composite of verse and criticism--a passage incredibly +overlooked by the most meticulous of Cabell's glossarians--that it deserves +a paper for itself. For here, set down prosaically as "the unfinished Rune +of the Blackbirds" are four distinct parodies--including two insidious +burlesques of Browning and Swinburne--on a theme which is familiar to us +to-day in _les mots justes_ of Mother Goose. "It is," explains Freydis, +after the thaumaturgists have finished, "an experimental incantation in +that it is a bit of unfinished magic for which the proper words have not +yet been found: but between now and a while they will be stumbled on, and +then this rune will live perpetually." And thus the poet, speaking through +the mouth-piece of Freydis, discourses on the power of words and, in one of +Cabell's most eloquent chapters, crystallizes that high mood, presenting +the case for poetry as it has been pleaded by few of her most fervid +advocates. + +Here the thesis will stop quoting and argue its main contention from +another angle. It will consider the author in a larger and less technical +sense: disclosing his characters, his settings, his plots, even the entire +genealogical plan of his works, to be the design of a poet rather than a +novelist. The persons of Cabell's imagination move to no haphazard strains; +they create their own music. And, like a set of modulated _motifs_, they +combine to form a richer and more sonorous pattern. With its interrelation +of figures and interweaving of themes, the Cabellian "Biography" assumes +the solidity and shapeliness of a fugue, a composition in which all the +voices speak with equal precision and recurring clarity. + +And what, the diagnostician may inquire, of the characters themselves? They +are, it will be answered, motivated by pity and irony; the tolerant humor, +the sympathetic and not too distant regard of their Olympian designer +agitate them so sensitively that we seldom see what strings are twitched. +These puppets seem to act of their own conviction--possibly because their +director is careful not to have too many convictions of his own. It may +have been pointed out before this that there are no undeviating villains +in his masques and, as many an indignant reviewer has expostulated, few +untarnished heroes. Cabell's, it will be perceived, is a frankly pagan +poetry. It has no texts with which to discipline beauty; it lacks moral +fervor; it pretends to no divinity of dogmatism. The image-maker is willing +to let his creatures ape their living models by fluctuating between +shifting conventions and contradictory ideals; he leaves to a more positive +Author the dubious pleasure of drawing a daily line between vice and +virtue. If Cabell pleads at all, he pleads with us not to repudiate a +Villon or a Marlowe while we are reviling the imperfect man in a perfect +poet. "What is man, that his welfare be considered?" questions Cabell, +paraphrasing Scripture, "an ape who chatters to himself of kinship with the +archangels while filthily he digs for groundnuts.... Yet do I perceive that +this same man is a maimed god.... He is under penalty condemned to compute +eternity with false weights and to estimate infinity with a yardstick--and +he very often does it." + +This, the thesis will contend, is the only possible attitude to the mingled +apathy and abandon of existence--and it is, in fine, the poetic attitude. +Romantic it is, without question, and I imagine Cabell would be the last +to cavil at the implication. For, mocked by a contemptuous silence gnawing +beneath the howling energy of life, what else is there for the poet but the +search for some miracle of belief, some assurance in a world of illimitable +perplexities? It is the wish to attain this dream which is more real than +reality that guides the entire Cabell _epos_--"and it is this will that +stirs in us to have the creatures of earth and the affairs of earth, not as +they are, but as 'they ought to be.'" + +Such a romantic vision, which concludes that glowing testament, _Beyond +Life_, is the shining thread that binds the latest of Cabell's novels +with the earliest of his short stories. It is, in effect, one tale he is +telling, a tale in which Poictesme and the more local Lichfield are, for +all their topographical dissimilarities, the same place, and all his people +interchangeable symbols of the changeless desires of men. Whether the +allegory is told in the terms of _Gallantry_ with its perfumed lights, its +deliberate artifice and its technique of badinage, or presented in the +more high-flying mood of _Chivalry_ with its ready passions and readier +rhetoric, it prefigures the subsequent pageant in which the victories might +so easily be mistaken for defeats. In this procession, amid a singularly +ordered riot of color, the figure of man moves, none too confidently but +with stirring fortitude, to an unrealized end. Here, stumbling through the +mazes of a code, in the habiliments of Ormskirk or de Soyecourt, he passes +from the adventures of the mind (Kennaston in _The Cream of the Jest_, +Charteris in _Beyond Life_) through the adventures of the flesh (_Jurgen_) +to the darker adventures of the spirit (Manuel in _Figures of Earth_). +Even this _Gallantry_, the most candidly superficial of Cabell's works, is +alive with a vigor of imagination and irony. It is not without significance +that the motto on the new title-page is: "Half in masquerade, playing the +drawing-room or garden comedy of life, these persons have upon them, not +less than the landscape among the accidents of which they group themselves, +a certain light that we should seek for in vain upon anything real." + +The genealogically inclined will be happy to discover that _Gallantry_, +for all its revulsion from reality, deals with the perpetuated life of +Manuel in a strangely altered _milieu_. The rest of us will be quicker to +comprehend how subtly this volume takes its peculiar place in its author's +record of struggling dreams, how, beneath, a surface covered with political +finery and sentimental bric-à-brac, the quest goes on, stubbornly and often +stupidly, in a forgotten world made suddenly animate and as real as our +own. + +And this, the thesis will conclude, is because Cabell is not as much a +masquerader as he imagines himself to be. None but a visionary could wear +so constantly upon his sleeve the desire "to write perfectly of beautiful +happenings." None but the poet, shaken with the strength of his vision, +could cry to-day, "It is only by preserving faith in human dreams that +we may, after all, perhaps some day make them come true." For poetry, to +which all literature aspires, is not the shadow of reality but the image of +perfection, the light of disembodied beauty toward which creation gropes. +And that poetic consciousness is the key to the complex and half-concealed +art of James Branch Cabell. + +LOUIS UNTERMEYER. + +New York City, +_April, 1922._ + + + + +CONTENTS + + +THE EPISTLE DEDICATORY + +THE PROLOGUE + +I SIMON'S HOUR + +II LOVE AT MARTINMAS + +III THE CASUAL HONEYMOON + +IV THE RHYME TO PORRINGER + +V ACTORS ALL + +VI APRIL'S MESSAGE + +VII IN THE SECOND APRIL + +VIII HEART OF GOLD + +IX THE SCAPEGOATS + +X THE DUCAL AUDIENCE + +LOVE'S ALUMNI: THE AFTERPIECE + +THE EPILOGUE + + + + +THE EPISTLE DEDICATORY + +_TO MRS. GRUNDY_ + + +Madam,--It is surely fitting that a book which harks back to the manners +of the second George should have its dedication and its patron. And these +comedies claim naturally your protection, since it likewise appears +a custom of that era for the poet to dedicate his book to his most +influential acquaintance and the one least likely to value it. + +Indeed, it is as proper that the plaudits of great persons be reserved for +great performances as it is undeniable these + + tiny pictures of that tiny time + Aim little at the lofty and sublime. + +Yet cognoscenti still esteem it an error in the accomplished Shakespeare +that he introduced a game of billiards into his portrayal of Queen +Cleopatra's court; and the impropriety had been equal had I linked the +extreme of any passion with an age and circle wherein abandonment to +the emotions was adjudged bucolic, nay, Madam, the Eumenides were very +terrifying at Delphi, no doubt, but deck them with paint, patch, and +panniers, send them howling among the _beau monde_ on the Pantiles, and +they are only figures of fun; nor may, in reason, the high woes of a second +Lear, or of a new Prometheus, be adequately lighted by the flambeaux of +Louis Quinze. + +Conceive, then, the overture begun, and fear not, if the action of the play +demand a lion, but that he shall be a beast of Peter Quince's picking. The +ladies shall not be frighted, for our chief comedians will enact modish +people of a time when gallantry prevailed. + +Now the essence of gallantry, I take it, was to accept the pleasures of +life leisurely and its inconveniences with a shrug. As requisites, a +gallant person will, of course, be "amorous, but not too constant, have +a pleasant voice, and possess a talent for love-letters." He will always +bear in mind that in love-affairs success is less the Ultima Thule of +desire than its _coup de grâce_, and he will be careful never to admit the +fact, especially to himself. He will value ceremony, but rather for its +comeliness than for its utility, as one esteeming the lily, say, to be a +more applaudable bulb than the onion. He will prink; and he will be at his +best after sunset. He will dare to acknowledge the shapeliness of a thief's +leg, to contend that the commission of murder does not necessarily impair +the agreeableness of the assassin's conversation; and to insist that at +bottom God is kindlier than the genteel would regard as rational. He will, +in fine, sin on sufficient provocation, and repent within the moment, +quite sincerely, and be not unconscionably surprised when he repeats the +progression: and he will consider the world with a smile of toleration, and +his own doings with a smile of honest amusement, and Heaven with a smile +that is not distrustful. + +This particular attitude toward life may have its merits, but it is not +conducive to meticulous morality; therefore, in advance, I warn you that my +_Dramatis Personæ_ will in their display of the cardinal virtues evince a +certain parsimony. Theirs were, in effect, not virtuous days. And the great +man who knew these times _au fond_, and loved them, and wrote of them as no +other man may ever hope to do, has said of these same times, with perfect +truth: + +"Fiddles sing all through them; wax-lights, fine dresses, fine jokes, +fine plate, fine equipages, glitter and sparkle: never was there such +a brilliant, jigging, smirking Vanity Fair. But wandering through that +city of the dead, that dreadfully selfish time, through those godless +intrigues and feasts, through those crowds, pushing, and eager, and +struggling,--rouged, and lying, and fawning,--I have wanted some one to be +friends with. I have said, _Show me some good person about that Court; find +me, among those selfish courtiers, those dissolute gay people, some one +being that I can love and regard._" And Thackeray confesses that, for all +his research, he could not find anybody living irreproachably, at this +especial period.... + +Where a giant fails one may in reason hesitate to essay. I present, then, +people who, as people normally do, accepted their times and made the best +of them, since the most estimable needs conform a little to the custom of +his day, whether it be Caractacus painting himself sky-blue or Galileo on +his knees at Santa Maria. And accordingly, many of my comedians will lie +when it seems advisable, and will not haggle over a misdemeanor when there +is anything to be gained by it; at times their virtues will get them +what they want, and at times their vices, and at other times they will +be neither punished nor rewarded; in fine, Madam, they will be just human +beings stumbling through illogical lives with precisely that lack of +common-sense which so pre-eminently distinguishes all our neighbors from +ourselves. + +For the life that moved in old Manuel of Poictesme finds hereinafter in his +descendants, in these later Allonbys and Bulmers and Heleighs and Floyers, +a new _milieu_ to conform and curb that life in externes rather than in +essentials. What this life made of chivalrous conditions has elsewhere +been recorded: with its renewal in gallant circumstances, the stage is +differently furnished and lighted, the costumes are dissimilar; but the +comedy, I think, works toward the same _dénouement_, and certainly the +protagonist remains unchanged. My protagonist is still the life of Manuel, +as this life was perpetuated in his descendants; and my endeavor is (still) +to show you what this life made (and omitted to make) of its tenancy of +earth. 'Tis a drama enactable in any setting. + +Yet the comedy of gallantry has its conventions. There must be quite +invaluable papers to be stolen and juggled with; an involuntary +marriage either threatened or consummated; elopements, highwaymen, and +despatch-boxes; and a continual indulgence in soliloquy and eavesdropping. +Everybody must pretend to be somebody else, and young girls, in particular, +must go disguised as boys, amid much cut-and-thrust work, both ferric and +verbal. For upon the whole, the comedy of gallantry tends to unfold itself +in dialogue, and yet more dialogue, with just the notice of a change +of scene or a brief stage direction inserted here and there. All these +conventions, Madam, I observe. + +A word more: the progress of an author who alternates, in turn, between +fact and his private fancies (like unequal crutches) cannot in reason be +undisfigured by false steps. Therefore it is judicious to confess, Madam, +that more than once I have pieced the opulence of my subject with the +poverty of my inventions. Indisputably, to thrust words into a dead man's +mouth is in the ultimate as unpardonable as the axiomatic offence of +stealing the pennies from his eyes; yet if I have sometimes erred in my +surmise at what Ormskirk or de Puysange or Louis de Soyecourt really said +at certain moments of their lives, the misstep was due, Madam, less to +malevolence than to inability to replevin their superior utterance; and the +accomplished shade of Garendon, at least, I have not travestied, unless it +were through some too prudent item of excision. + +Remains but to subscribe myself--in the approved formula of dedicators--as, + + MADAM, + + Your ladyship's most humble and most obedient servant, + + THE AUTHOR. + + + + +THE PROLOGUE + +SPOKEN BY LADY ALLONBY, WHO ENTERS IN A FLURRY + + + _The author bade we come_--Lud, I protest!-- + _He bade me come_--and I forget the rest. + But 'tis no matter; he's an arrant fool + That ever bade a woman speak by rule. + + Besides, his Prologue was, at best, dull stuff, + And of dull writing we have, sure, enough. + A book will do when you've a vacant minute, + But, la! who cares what is, and isn't, in it? + + And since I'm but the Prologue of a book, + What I've omitted all will overlook, + And owe me for it, too, some gratitude, + Seeing in reason it cannot be good + Whose author has as much but now confessed,-- + For, _Who'd excel when few can make a test + Betwixt indifferent writing and the best?_ + He said but now. + + And I:--_La, why excel, + When mediocrity does quite as well? + 'Tis women buy the books,--and read 'em, say, + What time a person nods, en négligée, + And in default of gossip, cards, or dance, + Resolves t' incite a nap with some romance._ + + The fool replied in verse,--I think he said + 'Twas verses the ingenious Dryden made, + And trust 'twill save me from entire disgrace + To cite 'em in his foolish Prologue's place. + _Yet, scattered here and there, I some behold, + Who can discern the tinsel from the gold; + To these he writes; and if by them allowed, + 'Tis their prerogative to rule the crowd, + For he more fears, like, a presuming man, + Their votes who cannot judge, than theirs can._ + + + + +I + +SIMON'S HOUR + + +_As Played at Stornoway Crag, March 25, 1750_ + +"_You're a woman--one to whom Heaven gave beauty, when it grafted roses on +a briar. You are the reflection of Heaven in a pond, and he that leaps at +you is sunk. You were all white, a sheet of lovely spotless paper, when you +first were born; but you are to be scrawled and blotted by every goose's +quill._" + + +DRAMATIS PERSONÆ. + +LORD ROKESLE, a loose-living, Impoverished nobleman, and loves Lady +Allonby. + +SIMON ORTS, Vicar of Heriz Magna, a debauched fellow, and Rokesle's +creature. + +PUNSHON, servant to Rokesle. + +LADY ALLONBY, a pleasure-loving, luxurious woman, a widow, and rich. + + +SCENE + +The Mancini Chamber at Stornoway Crag, on Usk. + + +SIMON'S HOUR + + +_PROEM:--The Age and a Product of It_ + +We begin at a time when George the Second was permitting Ormskirk and the +Pelhams to govern England, and the Jacobites had not yet ceased to hope +for another Stuart Restoration, and Mr. Washington was a promising young +surveyor in the most loyal colony of Virginia; when abroad the Marquise de +Pompadour ruled France and all its appurtenances, and the King of Prussia +and the Empress Maria Theresa had, between them, set entire Europe by +the ears; when at home the ladies, if rumor may be credited, were less +unapproachable than their hoop-petticoats caused them to appear, +[Footnote: "Oft have we known that sevenfold fence to fail, +Though stiff with hoops, and armed with ribs of whale."] +and gentlemen wore swords, and some of the more reckless bloods were +daringly beginning to discard the Ramillie-tie and the pigtail for their +own hair; when politeness was obligatory, and morality a matter of taste, +and when well-bred people went about the day's work with an ample leisure +and very few scruples. In fine, we begin toward the end of March, in +the year 1750, when Lady Allonby and her brother, Mr. Henry Heleigh, of +Trevor's Folly, were the guests of Lord Rokesle, at Stornoway Crag, on Usk. + +As any person of _ton_ could have informed you, Anastasia Allonby was the +widow (by his second marriage) of Lord Stephen Allonby, the Marquis of +Falmouth's younger brother; and it was conceded by the most sedate that +Lord Stephen's widow, in consideration of her liberal jointure, possessed +inordinate comeliness. + +She was tall for a woman. Her hair, to-night unpowdered, had the color of +amber and something, too, of its glow; her eyes, though not profound, were +large and in hue varied, as the light fell or her emotions shifted, through +a wide gamut of blue shades. But it was her mouth you remembered: the +fulness and brevity of it, the deep indentation of its upper lip, the +curves of it and its vivid crimson--these roused you to wildish speculation +as to its probable softness when Lady Allonby and Fate were beyond ordinary +lenient. Pink was the color most favorable to her complexion, and this +she wore to-night; the gown was voluminous, with a profusion of lace, and +afforded everybody an ample opportunity to appraise her neck and bosom. +Lady Allonby had no reason to be ashamed of either, and the last mode in +these matters was not prudish. + +To such a person, enters Simon Orts, chaplain in ordinary to Lord Rokesle, +and Vicar of Heriz Magna, one of Lord Rokesle's livings. + + +I + +"Now of a truth," said Simon Orts, "that is curious--undeniably that is +curious." + +He stayed at the door for a moment staring back into the ill-lit corridor. +Presently he shut the door, and came forward toward the fireplace. + +Lady Allonby, half-hidden in the depths of the big chair beside the +chimney-piece, a book in her lap, looked up inquiringly. "What is curious, +Mr. Orts?" + +The clergyman stood upon the hearth, warming his hands, and diffusing an +odor of tobacco and stale alcohol. "Faith, that damned rascal--I beg your +pardon, Anastasia; our life upon Usk is not conducive to a mincing nicety +of speech. That rascal Punshon made some difficulty over admitting me; you +might have taken him for a sentinel, with Stornoway in a state of siege. He +ruffled me,--and I don't like it," Simon Orts said, reflectively, looking +down upon her. "No, I don't like it. Where's your brother?" he demanded on +a sudden. + +"Harry and Lord Rokesle are at cards, I believe. And Mrs. Morfit has +retired to her apartments with one of her usual headaches, so that I have +been alone these two hours. You visit Stornoway somewhat late, Mr. Orts," +Anastasia Allonby added, without any particular concealment of the fact +that she considered his doing so a nuisance. + +He jerked his thumb ceilingward. "The cloth is at any rascal's beck and +call. Old Holles, my Lord's man, is dying up yonder, and the whim seized +him to have a clergyman in. God knows why, for it appears to me that one +knave might very easily make his way to hell without having another knave +to help him. And Holles?--eh, well, from what I myself know of him, the +rogue is triply damned." His mouth puckered as he set about unbuttoning his +long, rain-spattered cloak, which, with his big hat, he flung aside upon a +table. "Gad!" said Simon Orts, "we are most of us damned on Usk; and that +is why I don't like it--" He struck his hand against his thigh. "I don't +like it, Anastasia." + +"You must pardon me," she languidly retorted, "but I was never good at +riddles." + +He turned and glanced about the hall, debating. Lady Allonby meanwhile +regarded him, as she might have looked at a frog or a hurtless snake. A +small, slim, anxious man, she found him; always fidgeting, always placating +some one, but never without a covert sneer. The fellow was venomous; his +eyes only were honest, for even while his lips were about their wheedling, +these eyes flashed malice at you; and their shifting was so unremittent +that afterward you recalled them as an absolute shining which had not any +color. On Usk and thereabouts they said it was the glare from within of his +damned soul, already at white heat; but they were a plain-spoken lot on +Usk. To-night Simon Orts was all in black; and his hair, too, and his gross +eyebrows were black, and well-nigh to the cheek-bones of his clean-shaven +countenance the thick beard, showed black through the skin. + +Now he kept silence for a lengthy interval, his arms crossed on his breast, +gnawing meanwhile at the fingernails of his left hand in an unattractive +fashion he had of meditating. When words came it was in a torrent. + +"I will read you my riddle, then. You are a widow, rich; as women go, you +are not so unpleasant to look at as most of 'em. If it became a clergyman +to dwell upon such matters, I would say that your fleshly habitation is +too fine for its tenant, since I know you to be a good-for-nothing jilt. +However, you are God's handiwork, and doubtless He had His reasons for +constructing you. My Lord is poor; last summer at Tunbridge you declined to +marry him. I am in his confidence, you observe. He took your decision in +silence--'ware Rokesle when he is quiet! Eh, I know the man,--'tisn't for +nothing that these ten years past I have studied his whims, pampered his +vanity, lied to him, toadied him! You admire my candor?--faith, yes, I +am very candid. I am Rokesle's hanger-on; he took me out of the gutter, +and in my fashion I am grateful. And you?--Anastasia, had you treated me +more equitably fifteen years ago, I would have gone to the stake for you, +singing; now I don't value you the flip of a farthing. But, for old time's +sake, I warn you. You and your brother are Rokesle's guests--on Usk! +Harry Heleigh [Footnote: Henry Heleigh, thirteenth Earl of Brudenel, who +succeeded his cousin the twelfth Earl in 1759, and lived to a great age. +Bavois, writing in 1797, calls him "a very fine, strong old gentleman."] +can handle a sword, I grant you,--but you are on Usk! And Mrs. Morfit is +here to play propriety--propriety on Usk, God save the mark! And besides, +Rokesle can twist his sister about his little finger, as the phrase runs. +And I find sentinels at the door! I don't like it, Anastasia. In his way +Rokesle loves you; more than that, you are an ideal match to retrieve his +battered fortunes; and the name of my worthy patron, I regret to say, is +not likely ever to embellish the Calendar of Saints." + +Simon Orts paused with a short laugh. The woman had risen to her feet, +her eyes widening and a thought troubled, though her lips smiled +contemptuously. + +"La, I should have comprehended that this late in the evening you would be +in no condition to converse with ladies. Believe me, though, Mr. Orts, I +would be glad to credit your warning to officious friendliness, were it not +that the odor about your person compels me to attribute it to gin." + +"Oh, I have been drinking," he conceded; "I have been drinking with a +most commendable perseverance for these fifteen years. But at present I am +far from drunk." Simon Orts took a turn about the hall; in an instant he +faced her with an odd, almost tender smile, "You adorable, empty-headed, +pink-and-white fool," said Simon Orts, "what madness induced you to come to +Usk? You know that Rokesle wants you; you know that you don't mean to marry +him. Then why come to Usk? Do you know who is king in this sea-washed scrap +of earth?--Rokesle. German George reigns yonder in England, but here, in +the Isle of Usk, Vincent Floyer is king. And it is not precisely a convent +that he directs. The men of Usk, I gather, after ten years' experience in +the administering of spiritual consolation hereabouts"--and his teeth made +their appearance in honor of the jest,--"are part fisherman, part smuggler, +part pirate, and part devil. Since the last ingredient predominates, they +have no very unreasonable apprehension of hell, and would cheerfully invade +it if Rokesle bade 'em do so. As I have pointed out, my worthy patron is +subject to the frailties of the flesh. Oh, I am candid, for if you report +me to his Lordship I shall lie out of it. I have had practice enough to do +it handsomely. But Rokesle--do you not know what Rokesle is--?" + +The Vicar of Heriz Magna would have gone on, but Lady Allonby had +interrupted, her cheeks flaming. "Yes, yes," she cried;' "I know him to +be a worthy gentleman. 'Tis true I could not find it in my heart to marry +him, yet I am proud to rank Lord Rokesle among my friends." She waved her +hand toward the chimney-piece, where hung--and hangs to-day,--the sword of +Aluric Floyer, the founder of the house of Rokesle. "Do you see that old +sword, Mr. Orts? The man who wielded it long ago was a gallant gentleman +and a stalwart captain. And my Lord, as he told me but on Thursday +afternoon, hung it there that he might always have in mind the fact that +he bore the name of this man, and must bear it meritoriously. My Lord is +a gentleman. La, believe me, if you, too, were a gentleman, Mr. Orts, you +would understand! But a gentleman is not a talebearer; a gentleman does not +defame any person behind his back, far less the person to whom he owes his +daily bread." + +"So he has been gulling you?" said Simon Orts; then he added quite +inconsequently: "I had not thought anything you could say would hurt me. I +discover I was wrong. Perhaps I am not a gentleman. Faith, no; I am only a +shabby drunkard, a disgrace to my cloth, am I not, Anastasia? Accordingly, +I fail to perceive what old Aluric Floyer has to do with the matter in +hand. He was reasonably virtuous, I suppose; putting aside a disastrous +appetite for fruit, so was Adam: but, viewing their descendants, I ruefully +admit that in each case the strain has deteriorated." + +There was a brief silence; then Lady Allonby observed: "Perhaps I was +discourteous. I ask your forgiveness, Mr. Orts. And now, if you will pardon +the suggestion, I think you had better go to your dying parishioner." + +But she had touched the man to the quick. "I am a drunkard; who made me +so? Who was it used to cuddle me with so many soft words and kisses--yes, +kisses, my Lady!--till a wealthier man came a-wooing, and then flung me +aside like an old shoe?" + +This drenched her cheeks with crimson, "I think we had better not refer to +that boy-and-girl affair. You cannot blame me for your debauched manner +of living. I found before it was too late that I did not love you. I was +only a girl, and 'twas natural that at first I should be mistaken in my +fancies." + +The Vicar had caught her by each wrist. "You don't understand, of course. +You never understood, for you have no more heart than one of those +pink-and-white bisque figures that you resemble. You don't love me, and +therefore I will go to the devil' may not be an all-rational deduction, but +'tis very human logic. You don't understand that, do you, Anastasia? You +don't understand how when one is acutely miserable one remembers that at +the bottom of a wineglass--or even at the bottom of a tumbler of gin,--one +may come upon happiness, or at least upon acquiescence to whatever the +niggling gods may send. You don't understand how one remembers, when the +desired woman is lost, that there are other women whose lips are equally +red and whose hearts are tenderer and--yes, whose virtue is less exigent. +No; women never understand these things: and in any event, you would not +understand, because you are only an adorable pink-and-white fool." + +"Oh, oh!" she cried, struggling, "How dare you? You insult me, you coward!" + +"Well, you can always comfort yourself with the reflection that it scarcely +matters what a sot like me may elect to say. And, since you understand me +now no more than formerly, Anastasia, I tell you that the lover turned +adrift may well profit by the example of his predecessors. Other lovers +have been left forsaken, both in trousers and in ripped petticoats; and +I have heard that when Chryseis was reft away from Agamemnon, the _cnax +andrôn_ made himself tolerably comfortable with Briseis; and that, when +Theseus sneaked off in the night, Ariadne, after having wept for a +decent period, managed in the ultimate to console herself with Theban +Bacchus,--which I suppose to be a courteous method of stating that the +daughter of Minos took to drink. So the forsaken lover has his choice of +consolation--in wine or in that dearer danger, woman. I have tried both, +Anastasia. And I tell you--" + +He dropped her hands as though they had been embers. Lord Rokesle had come +quietly into the hall. + +"Why, what's this?" Lord Rokesle demanded. "Simon, you aren't making love +to Lady Allonby, I hope? Fie, man! remember your cloth." + +Simon Orts wheeled--a different being, servile and cringing. "Your Lordship +is pleased to be pleasant. Indeed, though, I fear that your ears must +burn, sir, for I was but now expatiating upon the manifold kindnesses your +Lordship has been so generous as to confer upon your unworthy friend. I was +admiring Lady Allonby's ruffle, sir,--Valenciennes, I take it, and very +choice." + +Lord Rokesle laughed. "So I am to thank you for blowing my trumpet, am I?" +said Lord Rokesle. "Well, you are not a bad fellow, Simon, so long as you +are sober. And now be off with you to Holles--the rascal is dying, they +tell me. My luck, Simon! He made up a cravat better than any one in the +kingdom." + +"The ways of Providence are inscrutable," Simon Orts considered; "and +if Providence has in verity elected to chasten your Lordship, doubtless +it shall be, as anciently in the case of Job the Patriarch, repaid by a +recompense, by a thousandfold recompense." And after a meaning glance +toward Lady Allonby,--a glance that said: "I, too, have a tongue,"--he was +mounting the stairway to the upper corridor when Lord Rokesle called to +him. + +"By my conscience! I forgot," said Lord Rokesle; "don't leave Stornoway +without seeing me again, I shall want you by and by." + + +II + +Lord Rokesle sat down upon the long, high-backed bench, beside the fire, +and facing Lady Allonby's arm-chair. + +Neither he nor Lady Allonby spoke for a while. + +In a sombre way Lord Rokesle was a handsome man, and to-night, in brown +and gold, very stately. His bearing savored faintly of the hidalgo; indeed, +his mother was a foreign woman, cast ashore on Usk, from a wrecked Spanish +vessel, and incontinently married by the despot of the island. For her, +Death had delayed his advent unmercifully; but her reason survived the +marriage by two years only, and there were those familiar with the late +Lord Rokesle's [Footnote: Born 1685, and accidentally killed by Sir +Piers Sabiston in 1738; an accurate account of this notorious duellist, +profligate, charlatan, and playwright is given in Ireson's _Letters_.] +peculiarities who considered that in this, at least, the crazed lady was +fortunate. Among these gossips it was also esteemed a matter deserving +comment that in the shipwrecks not infrequent about Usk the women sometimes +survived, but the men never. + +Now Lord Rokesle regarded Lady Allonby, the while that she displayed +conspicuous interest in the play of the flames. But by and by, "O +vulgarity!" said Lady Allonby. "Pray endeavor to look a little more +cheerful. Positively, you are glaring at me like one of those disagreeable +beggars one so often sees staring at bakery windows." + +He smiled. "Do you remember what the Frenchman wrote--_et pain ne voyent +qu'aux fenêtres?_ There is not an enormous difference between me and the +tattered rascal of Chepe, for we both stare longingly at what we most +desire. And were I minded to hunt the simile to the foot of the letter, +I would liken your coquetry to the intervening window-pane,--not easily +broken through, but very, very transparent, Anastasia." + +"You are not overwhelmingly polite," she said, reflectively; "but, then, I +suppose, living in the country is sure to damage a man's manners. Still, my +dear Orson, you smack too much of the forest." + +"Anastasia," said Lord Rokesle, bending toward her, "will you always be +thus cruel? Do you not understand that in this world you are the only thing +I care for? You think me a boor; perhaps I am,--and yet it rests with you, +my Lady, to make me what you will. For I love you, Anastasia--" + +"Why, how delightful of you!" said she, languidly. + +"It is not a matter for jesting. I tell you that I love you." My Lord's +color was rising. + +But Lady Allonby yawned. "Your honor's most devoted," she declared herself; +"still, you need not boast of your affection as if falling in love with me +were an uncommonly difficult achievement. That, too, is scarcely polite." + +"For the tenth time I ask you will you marry me?" said Lord Rokesle. + +"Is't only the tenth time? Dear me, it seems like the thousandth. Of +course, I couldn't think of it. Heavens, my Lord, how can you expect me to +marry a man who glares at me like that? Positively you look as ferocious as +the blackamoor in the tragedy,--the fellow who smothered his wife because +she misplaced a handkerchief, you remember." + +Lord Rokesle had risen, and he paced the hall, as if fighting down +resentment. "I am no Othello," he said at last; "though, indeed, I think +that the love I bear you is of a sort which rarely stirs our English blood. +'Tis not for nothing I am half-Spaniard, I warn you, Anastasia, my love is +a consuming blaze that will not pause for considerations of policy nor even +of honor. And you madden me, Anastasia! To-day you hear my protestations +with sighs and glances and faint denials; to-morrow you have only taunts +for me. Sometimes, I think, 'tis hatred rather than love I bear you. +Sometimes--" He clutched at his breast with a wild gesture. "I burn!" he +said. "Woman, give me back a human heart in place of this flame you have +kindled here, or I shall go mad! Last night I dreamed of hell, and of souls +toasted on burning forks and fed with sops of bale-fire,--and you were +there, Anastasia, where the flames leaped and curled like red-blazoned +snakes about the poor damned. And I, too, was there. And through eternity I +heard you cry to God in vain, O dear, wonderful, golden-haired woman! and +we could see Him, somehow,--see Him, a great way off, with straight, white +brows that frowned upon you pitilessly. And I was glad. For I knew then +that I hated you. And even now, when I think I must go mad for love of you, +I yet hate you with a fervor that shakes and thrills in every fibre of +me. Oh, I burn, I burn!" he cried, with the same frantic clutching at his +breast. + +Lady Allonby had risen. + +"Positively, I must ask you to open a window if you intend to continue in +this strain. D'ye mean to suffocate me, my Lord, with your flames and your +blazes and your brimstone and so on? You breathe conflagrations, like a +devil in a pantomime. I had as soon converse with a piece of fireworks. So, +if you'll pardon me, I will go to my brother." + +At the sound of her high, crisp speech his frenzy fell from him like a +mantle. "And you let me kiss you yesterday! Oh, I know you struggled, but +you did not struggle very hard, did you, Anastasia?" + +"Why, what a notion!" cried Lady Allonby; "as if a person should bother +seriously one way or the other about the antics of an amorous clodhopper! +Meanwhile, I repeat, my Lord, I wish to go to my brother." + +"Egad!" Lord Rokesle retorted, "that reminds me I have been notably remiss. +I bear you a message from Harry. He had to-night a letter from Job Nangle, +who, it seems, has a purchaser for Trevor's Folly at last. The fellow is +with our excellent Nangle at Peniston Friars, and offers liberal terms if +the sale be instant. The chance was too promising to let slip, so Harry +left the island an hour ago. It happened by a rare chance that some of my +fellows were on the point of setting out for the mainland,--and he knew +that he could safely entrust you to Mrs. Morfit's duennaship, he said." + +"He should not have done so," Lady Allonby observed, as if in a contention +of mind. "He--I will go to Mrs. Morfit, then, to confess to her in +frankness that, after all these rockets and bonfires--" + +"Why, that's the unfortunate part of the whole affair," said Lord Rokesle. +"The same boat brought Sabina a letter which summoned her to the bedside +of her husband, [Footnote: Archibald Morfit, M.P. for Salop, and in 1753 +elected Speaker, which office he declined on account of ill-health. He was +created a baronet in 1758 through the Duke of Ormskirk's influence.] who, +it appears, lies desperately ill at Kuyper Manor. It happened by a rare +chance that some of my fellows were on the point of setting out for the +mainland--from Heriz pier yonder, not from the end of the island whence +Harry sailed,--so she and her maid embarked instanter. Of course, there was +your brother here to play propriety, she said. And by the oddest misfortune +in the world," Lord Rokesle sighed, "I forgot to tell her that Harry +Heleigh had left Usk a half-hour earlier. My memory is lamentably +treacherous." + +But Lady Allonby had dropped all affectation. "You coward! You planned +this!" + +"Candidly, yes. Nangle is my agent as well as Harry's, you may remember. +I have any quantity of his letters, and of course an equal number +of Archibald's. So I spent the morning in my own apartments, +Anastasia,--tracing letters against the window-pane, which was, I suppose, +a childish recreation, but then what would you have? As you very justly +observe, country life invariably coarsens a man's tastes; and accordingly, +as you may now recall, I actually declined a game of _écarté_ with you in +order to indulge in these little forgeries. Decidedly, my dear, you must +train your husband's imagination for superior flights--when you are Lady +Rokesle." + +She was staring at him as though he had been a portent. "I am alone," she +said. "Alone--in this place--with you! Alone! you devil!" + +"Your epithets increase in vigor. Just now I was only a clodhopper. Well, +I can but repeat that it rests with you to make me what you will. Though, +indeed, you are to all intent alone upon Usk, and upon Usk there are many +devils. There are ten of them on guard yonder, by the way, in case your +brother should return inopportunely, though that's scarcely probable. +Obedient devils, you observe, Anastasia,--devils who exert and check their +deviltry as I bid 'em, for they esteem me Lucifer's lieutenant. And I grant +the present situation is an outrage to propriety, yet the evil is not +incurable. Lady Allonby may not, if she value her reputation, pass to-night +at Stornoway; but here am I, all willingness, and upstairs is the parson. +Believe me, Anastasia, the most vinegarish prude could never object to Lady +Rokesle's spending to-night at Stornoway." + +"Let me think, let me think!" Lady Allonby said, and her hands plucked now +at her hair, now at her dress. She appeared dazed. "I can't think!" she +wailed on a sudden. "I am afraid. I--O Vincent, Vincent, you cannot do +this thing! I trusted you, Vincent. I know I let you make love to me, and +I relished having you make love to me. Women are like that. But I cannot +marry you, Vincent. There is a man, yonder in England, whom I love. He does +not care for me any more,--he is in love with my step-daughter. That is +very amusing, is it not, Vincent? Some day I may be his mother-in-law. Why +don't you laugh, Vincent? Come, let us both laugh--first at this and then +at the jest you have just played on me. Do you know, for an instant, I +believed you were in earnest? But Harry went to sleep over the cards, +didn't he? And Mrs. Morfit has gone to bed with one of her usual headaches? +Of course; and you thought you would retaliate upon me for teasing you. You +were quite right, 'Twas an excellent jest. Now let us laugh at it. Laugh, +Vincent! Oh!" she said now, more shrilly, "for the love of God, laugh, +laugh!--or I shall go mad!" + +But Lord Rokesle was a man of ice, "Matrimony is a serious matter, +Anastasia; 'tis not becoming in those who are about to enter it to exhibit +undue levity. I wonder what's keeping Simon?" + +"Simon Orts!" she said, in a half-whisper. Then she came toward Lord +Rokesle, smiling. "Why, of course, I teased you, Vincent, but there was +never any hard feeling, was there? And you really wish me to marry you? +Well, we must see, Vincent. But, as you say, matrimony is a serious matter. +D'ye know you say very sensible things, Vincent?--not at all like those +silly fops yonder in London. I dare say you and I would be very happy +together. But you wouldn't have any respect for me if I married you on a +sudden like this, would you? Of course not. So you will let me consider it. +Come to me a month from now, say,--is that too long to wait? Well, I think +'tis too long myself. Say a week, then. I must have my wedding-finery, +you comprehend. We women are such vain creatures--not big and brave and +sensible like you men. See, for example, how much bigger your hand is +than mine--mine's quite lost in it, isn't it? So--since I am only a vain, +chattering, helpless female thing,--you are going to indulge me and let me +go up to London for some new clothes, aren't you, Vincent? Of course you +will; and we will be married in a week. But you will let me go to London +first, won't you?--away from this dreadful place, away--I didn't mean that. +I suppose it is a very agreeable place when you get accustomed to it. And +'tis only for clothes--Oh, I swear it is only for clothes, Vincent! And you +said you would--yes, only a moment ago you distinctly said you would let me +go. 'Tis not as if I were not coming back--who said I would not come back? +Of course I will. But you must give me time, Vincent dear,--you must, you +must, I tell you! O God!" she sobbed, and flung from her the loathed hand +she was fondling, "it's no use!" + +"No," said Lord Rokesle, rather sadly. "I am not Samson, nor are you +Delilah to cajole me. It's of no use, Anastasia. I would have preferred +that you came to me voluntarily, but since you cannot, I mean to take you +unwilling. Simon," he called, loudly, "does that rascal intend to spin out +his dying interminably? Charon's waiting, man." + +From above, "Coming, my Lord," said Simon Orts. + + +III + +The Vicar of Heriz Magna descended the stairway with deliberation. His +eyes twitched from the sobbing woman to Lord Rokesle, and then back again, +in that furtive way Orts had of glancing about a room, without moving his +head; he seemed to lie in ambush under his gross brows; and whatever his +thoughts may have been, he gave them no utterance. + +"Simon," said Lord Rokesle, "Lady Allonby is about to make me the happiest +of men. Have you a prayer-book about you, Master Parson?--for here's a +loving couple desirous of entering the blessed state of matrimony." + +"The match is somewhat of the suddenest," said Simon Orts. "But I have +known these impromptu marriages to turn out very happily--very happily, +indeed." he repeated, rubbing his hands together, and smiling horribly. "I +gather that Mr. Heleigh will not grace the ceremony with his presence?" + +They understood each other, these two. Lord Rokesle grinned, and in a few +words told the ecclesiastic of the trick which had insured the absence of +the other guests; and Simon Orts also grinned, but respectfully,--the grin, +of the true lackey wearing his master's emotions like his master's clothes, +at second-hand. + +"A very pretty stratagem," said Simon Orts; "unconventional, I must +confess, but it is proverbially known that all's fair in love." + +At this Lady Allonby came to him, catching his hand. "There is only you, +Simon. Oh, there is no hope in that lustful devil yonder. But you are not +all base, Simon. You are a man,--ah, God! if I were a man I would rip out +that devil's heart--his defiled and infamous heart! I would trample upon +it, I would feed it to dogs--!" She paused. Her impotent fury was jerking +at every muscle, was choking her. "But I am only a woman. Simon, you used +to love me. You cannot have forgotten, Simon. Oh, haven't you any pity on a +woman? Remember, Simon--remember how happy we were! Don't you remember how +the night-jars used to call to one another when we sat on moonlit evenings +under the elm-tree? And d'ye remember the cottage we planned, Simon?--where +we were going to live on bread and cheese and kisses? And how we quarrelled +because I wanted to train vines over it? You said the rooms would be too +dark. You said--oh, Simon, Simon! if only I had gone to live with you in +that little cottage we planned and never builded!" Lady Allonby was at his +feet now. She fawned upon him in somewhat the manner of a spaniel expectant +of a thrashing. + +The Vicar of Heriz Magna dispassionately ran over the leaves of his +prayer-book, till he had found the marriage service, and then closed the +book, his forefinger marking the place. Lord Rokesle stood apart, and with +a sly and meditative smile observed them. + +"Your plea is a remarkable one," said Simon Orts. "As I understand it, you +appeal to me to meddle in your affairs on the ground that you once made +a fool of me. I think the obligation is largely optional. I remember +quite clearly the incidents to which you refer; and it shames even an +old sot like me to think that I was ever so utterly at the mercy of a +good-for-nothing jilt. I remember every vow you ever made to me, Anastasia, +and I know they were all lies. I remember every kiss, every glance, every +caress--all lies, Anastasia! And gad! the only emotion it rouses in me is +wonder as to why my worthy patron here should want to marry you. Of course +you are wealthy, but, personally, I would not have you for double the +money. I must ask you to rise, Lady Rokesle.--Pardon me if I somewhat +anticipate your title." + +Lady Allonby stumbled to her feet. "Is there no manhood in the world?" she +asked, with a puzzled voice. "Has neither of you ever heard of manhood, +though but as distantly as men hear summer thunder? Had neither of you a +woman for a mother--a woman, as I am--or a father who was not--O God!--not +as you are?" + +"These rhetorical passages," said Lord Rokesle, "while very elegantly +expressed, are scarcely to the point. So you and Simon went a-philandering +once? Egad, that lends quite a touch of romance to the affair. But +despatch, Parson Simon,--your lady's for your betters now." + +"Dearly beloved,--" said Simon Orts. + +"Simon, you are not all base. I am helpless, Simon, utterly helpless. There +was a Simon once would not have seen me weep. There was a Simon--" + +"--we are gathered together here in the sight of God--" + +"You cannot do it, Simon,--do I not know you to the marrow? Remember--not +me--not the vain folly of my girlhood!--but do you remember the man you +have been, Simon Orts!" Fiercely Lady Allonby caught him by the shoulder. +"For you do remember! You do remember, don't you, Simon?" + +The Vicar stared at her. "The man I have been," said Simon Orts, "yes!--the +man I have been!" Something clicked in his throat with sharp distinctness. + +"Upon my word," said Lord Rokesle, yawning, "this getting married appears +to be an uncommonly tedious business." + +Then Simon Orts laid aside his prayer-book and said: "I cannot do it, my +Lord. The woman's right." + +She clapped her hands to her breast, and stood thus, reeling upon her +feet. You would have thought her in the crisis of some physical agony; +immediately she breathed again, deeply but with a flinching inhalation, as +though the contact of the air scorched her lungs, and, swaying, fell. It +was the Vicar who caught her as she fell. + +"I entreat your pardon?" said Lord Rokesle, and without study of Lady +Allonby's condition. This was men's business now, and over it Rokesle's +brow began to pucker. + +Simon Orts bore Lady Allonby to the settie. He passed behind it to arrange +a cushion under her head, with an awkward, grudging tenderness; and then +rose to face Lord Rokesle across the disordered pink fripperies. + +"The woman's right, my Lord. There is such a thing as manhood. Manhood!" +Simon Orts repeated, with a sort of wonder; "why, I might have boasted it +once. Then came this cuddling bitch to trick me into a fool's paradise--to +trick me into utter happiness, till Stephen Allonby, a marquis' son, +clapped eyes on her and whistled,--and within the moment she had flung me +aside. May God forgive me, I forgot I was His servant then! I set out to go +to the devil, but I went farther; for I went to you, Vincent Floyer. You +gave me bread when I was starving,--but 'twas at a price. Ay, the price was +that I dance attendance on you, to aid and applaud your knaveries, to be +your pander, your lackey, your confederate,--that I puff out, in effect, +the last spark of manhood in my sot's body. Oh, I am indeed beholden to you +two! to her for making me a sot, and to you for making me a lackey. But I +will save her from you, Vincent Floyer. Not for her sake"--Orts looked down +upon the prostrate woman and snarled. "Christ, no! But I'll do it for the +sake of the boy I have been, since I owe that boy some reparation. I have +ruined his nimble body, I have dulled the wits he gloried in, I have made +his name a foul thing that honesty spits out of her mouth; but, if God yet +reigns in heaven, I cleanse that name to-night!" + +"Oh, bless me," Lord Rokesle observed; "I begin to fear these heroics are +contagious. Possibly I, too, shall begin to rant in a moment. Meanwhile, as +I understand it, you decline to perform the ceremony. I have had to warn +you before this, Simon, that you mustn't take too much gin when I am apt +to need you. You are very pitifully drunk, man. So you defy me and my evil +courses! You defy me!" Rokesle laughed, genially, for the notion amused +him. "Wine is a mocker, Simon. But come, despatch, Parson Tosspot, and +let's have no more of these lofty sentiments." + +"I cannot do it. I--O my Lord, my Lord! You wouldn't kill an unarmed man!" +Simon Orts whined, with a sudden alteration of tone; for Lord Rokesle had +composedly drawn his sword, and its point was now not far from the Vicar's +breast. + +"I trust that I shall not be compelled to. Egad, it is a very ludicrous +business when the bridegroom is forced to hold a sword to the parson's +bosom all during the ceremony; but a ceremony we must have, Simon, for Lady +Allonby's jointure is considerable. Otherwise--Harkee, my man, don't play +the fool! there are my fellows yonder, any one of whom would twist your +neck at a word from me. And do you think I would boggle at a word? Gad, +Simon, I believed you knew me better!" + +The Vicar of Heriz Magna kept silence for an instant; his eyes were +twitching about the hall, in that stealthy way of his. Finally, "It is +no use," said he. "A poor knave cannot afford the luxury of honesty. My +life is not a valuable one, perhaps, but even vermin have an aversion to +death. I resume my lackeyship, Lord Rokesle. Perhaps 'twas only the gin. +Perhaps--In any event, I am once more at your service. And as guaranty of +this I warn you that you are exhibiting in the affair scant forethought. +Mr. Heleigh is but three miles distant. If he, by any chance, get wind of +this business, Denstroude will find a boat for him readily enough--ay, and +men, too, now that the Colonel is at feud with you. Many of your people +visit the mainland every night, and in their cups the inhabitants of Usk +are not taciturn. An idle word spoken over an inn-table may bring an armed +company thundering about your gates. You should have set sentinels, my +Lord." + +"I have already done so," Rokesle said; "there are ten of 'em yonder. Still +there is something in what you say. We will make this affair certain." + +Lord Rokesle crossed the hall to the foot of the stairway and struck thrice +upon the gong hanging there. Presently the door leading to the corridor was +opened, and a man came into the hall. + +"Punshon," said Lord Rokesle, "have any boats left the island to-night?" + +"No, my Lord." + +"You will see that none do. Also, no man is to leave Stornoway to-night, +either for Heriz Magna or the mainland; and nobody is to enter Stornoway. +Do you understand, Punshon?" + +"Yes, my Lord." + +"If you will pardon me," said Simon Orts, with a grin, "I have an +appointment to-night. You'd not have me break faith with a lady?" + +"You are a lecherous rascal, Simon. But do as you are bid and I indulge +you. I am not afraid of your going to Harry Heleigh--after performing the +ceremony. Nay, my lad, for you are thereby _particeps criminis_. You will +pass Mr. Orts, Punshon, to the embraces of his whore. Nobody else." + +Simon Orts waved his hand toward Lady Allonby. "'Twere only kindness to +warn Mr. Punshon there may be some disturbance shortly. A lamentation or +so." + +At this Lord Rokesle clapped him upon the shoulder and heartily laughed. +"That's the old Simon--always on the alert. Punshon, no one is to enter +this wing of the castle, on any pretext--no one, you understand. Whatever +noises you may hear, you will pay no attention. Now go." + +He went toward Lady Allonby and took her hand. "Come, Anastasia!" said he. +"Hold, she has really swooned! Why, what the devil, Simon--!" + +Simon Orts had flung the gong into the fire. "She will be sounding that +when she comes to," said Simon Orts. "You don't want a rumpus fit to vex +the dead yonder in the Chapel." Simon Orts stood before the fire, turning +the leaves of his prayer-book. He seemed to have difficulty in finding +again the marriage service. You heard the outer door of the corridor +closing, heard chains dragged ponderously, the heavy falling of a bolt. +Orts dropped the book and, springing into the arm-chair, wrested Aluric +Floyer's sword from its fastening. "Tricked, tricked!" said Simon Orts. +"You were always a fool, Vincent Floyer." + +Lord Rokesle blinked at him, as if dazzled by unexpected light. "What d'ye +mean?" + +"I have the honor to repeat--you are a fool, I did not know the place was +guarded--you told me. I needed privacy; by your orders no one is to enter +here to-night. I needed a sword--you had it hanging here, ready for the +first comer. Oh, beyond doubt, you are a fool, Vincent Floyer!" Standing +in the arm-chair, Simon Orts bowed fantastically, and then leaped to the +ground with the agility of an imp. + +"You have tricked me neatly," Lord Rokesle conceded, and his tone did not +lack honest admiration. "By gad, I have even given them orders to pass +you--after you have murdered me! Exceedingly clever, Simon,--but one thing +you overlooked. You are very far from my match at fencing. So I shall +presently kill you. And afterward, ceremony or no ceremony, the woman's +mine." + +"I am not convinced of that," the Vicar observed. "'Tis true I am no +swordsman; but there are behind my sword forces superior to any which +skill might muster. The sword of your fathers fights against you, my +Lord--against you that are their disgrace. They loved honor and truth; you +betrayed honor, you knew not truth. They revered womanhood; you reverence +nothing, and your life smirches your mother's memory. Ah, believe me, +they all fight against you! Can you not see them, my Lord?--yonder at my +back?--old Aluric Floyer and all those honest gentlemen, whose blood now +blushes in your body--ay, blushes to be confined in a vessel so ignoble! +Their armament fights against you, a host of gallant phantoms. And my +hatred, too, fights against you--the cur's bitter hatred for the mastering +hand it dares not bite. I dare now. You made me your pander, you slew my +manhood; in return, body and soul, I demolish you. Even my hatred for that +woman fights against you; she robbed me of my honor--is it not a tragical +revenge to save her honor, to hold it in my hand, mine, to dispose of as +I elect,--and then fling it to her as a thing contemptible? Between you, +you have ruined me; but it is Simon's hour to-night. I shame you both, and +past the reach of thought, for presently I shall take your life--in the +high-tide of your iniquity, praise God!--and presently I shall give my life +for hers. Ah, I a fey, my Lord! You are a dead man, Vincent Floyer, for the +powers of good and the powers of evil alike contend against you." + +He spoke rather sadly than otherwise; and there was a vague trouble in Lord +Rokesle's face, though he shook his head impatiently. "These are fine words +to come from the dirtiest knave unhanged in England." + +"Great ends may be attained by petty instruments, my Lord; a filthy turtle +quenched the genius of Æschylus, and they were only common soldiers who +shed the blood that redeemed the world." + +Lord Rokesle pished at this. Yet he was strangely unruffled. He saluted +with quietude, as equal to equal, and the two crossed blades. + +Simon Orts fought clumsily, but his encroachment was unwavering. From the +first he pressed his opponent with a contained resolution. The Vicar was +as a man fighting in a dream--with a drugged obstinacy, unswerving. Lord +Rokesle had wounded him in the arm, but Orts did not seem aware of this. +He crowded upon his master. Now there were little beads of sweat on Lord +Rokesle's brow, and his tongue protruded from his mouth, licking at it +ravenously. Step by step Lord Rokesle drew back; there was no withstanding +this dumb fanatic, who did not know when he was wounded, who scarcely +parried attack. + +"Even on earth you shall have a taste of hell," said Simon Orts. "There is +terror in your eyes, my worthy patron." + +Lord Rokesle flung up his arms as the sword dug into his breast. "I am +afraid! I am afraid!" he wailed. Then he coughed, and seemed with his +straining hands to push a great weight from him as the blood frothed about +his lips and nostrils. "O Simon, I am afraid! Help me, Simon!" + +Old custom spoke there. Followed silence, and presently the empty body +sprawled upon the floor. Vincent Floyer had done with it. + + +IV + +Simon Orts knelt, abstractedly wiping Aluric Floyer's sword upon the corner +of a rug. It may be that he derived comfort from this manual employment +which necessitated attention without demanding that it concentrate his +mind; it may have enabled him to forget how solitary the place was, how +viciously his garments rustled when he moved: the fact is certain that he +cleaned the sword, over and over again. + +Then a scraping of silks made him wince. Turning, he found Lady Allonby +half-erect upon the settle. She stared about her with a kind of Infantile +wonder; her glance swept, over Lord Rokesle's body, without to all +appearance finding it an object of remarkable interest. "Is he dead?" + +"Yes," said Simon Orts; "get up!" His voice had a rasp; she might from his +tone have been a refractory dog. But Lady Allonby obeyed him. + +"We are in a devil of a mess," said Simon Orts; "yet I see a way out of +it--if you can keep your head. Can you?" + +"I am past fear," she said, dully. "I drown, Simon, in a sea of feathers. I +can get no foothold, I clutch nothing that is steadfast, and I smother. I +have been like this in dreams. I am very tired, Simon." + +He took her hand, collectedly appraising her pulse. He put his own hand +upon her bared bosom, and felt the beat of her heart. "No," said Simon +Orts, "you are not afraid. Now, listen: You lack time to drown in a sea of +feathers. You are upon Usk, among men who differ from beasts by being a +thought more devilish, and from devils by being a little more bestial; it +is my opinion that the earlier you get away the better. Punshon has orders +to pass Simon Orts. Very well; put on this." + +He caught up his long cloak and wrapped it about her. Lady Allonby stood +rigid. But immediately he frowned and removed the garment from her +shoulders. + +"That won't do. Your skirts are too big. Take 'em off." + +Submissively she did so, and presently stood before him in her +under-petticoat. + +"You cut just now a very ludicrous figure, Anastasia. I dare assert that +the nobleman who formerly inhabited yonder carcass would still be its +tenant if he had known how greatly the beauty he went mad for was beholden +to the haberdasher and the mantua-maker, and quite possibly the chemist. +_Persicos odi_, Anastasia; 'tis a humiliating reflection that the hair of a +dead woman artfully disposed about a living head should have the power +to set men squabbling, and murder be at times engendered in a paint-pot. +However, wrap yourself in the cloak. Now turn up the collar,--so. Now pull +down the hatbrim. Um--a--pretty well. Chance favors us unblushingly. You +may thank your stars it is a rainy night and that I am a little man. You +detest little men, don't you? Yes, I remember." Simon Orts now gave his +orders, emphasizing each with a not over-clean forefinger. "When I open +this door you will go out into the corridor. Punshon or one of the others +will be on guard at the farther end. Pay no attention to him. There is +only one light--on the left. Keep to the right, in the shadow. Stagger as +you go; if you can manage a hiccough, the imitation will be all the more +lifelike. Punshon will expect something of the sort, and he will not +trouble you, for he knows that when I am fuddled I am quarrelsome. 'Tis a +diverting world, Anastasia, wherein, you now perceive, habitual drunkenness +and an unbridled temper may sometimes prove commendable,--as they do +to-night, when they aid persecuted innocence!" Here Simon Orts gave an +unpleasant laugh. + +"But I do not understand--" + +"You understand very little except coquetry and the proper disposition +of a ruffle. Yet this is simple. My horse is tied at the postern. +Mount--astride, mind. You know the way to the Vicarage, so does the horse; +you will find that posturing half-brother of mine at the Vicarage. Tell +Frank what has happened. Tell him to row you to the mainland; tell him to +conduct you to Colonel Denstroude's. Then you must shift for yourself; but +Denstroude is a gentleman, and Denstroude would protect Beelzebub if he +came to him a fugitive from Vincent Floyer. Now do you understand?" + +"Yes," said Lady Allonby, and seated herself before the fire,--"yes, I +understand. I am to slip away in the darkness and leave you here to answer +for Lord Rokesle's death--to those devils. La, do you really think me as +base as that?" + +Now Simon Orts was kneeling at her side. The black cloak enveloped her from +head to foot, and the turned-up collar screened her sunny hair; in the +shadow of the broad hatbrim you could see only her eyes, resplendent and +defiant, and in them the reflection of the vaulting flames. "You would +stay, Anastasia?" + +"I will not purchase my life at the cost of yours. I will be indebted to +you for nothing, Simon Orts." + +The Vicar chuckled. "Nor appeared Less than archangel ruined," he said. +"No, faith, not a whit less! We are much of a piece, Anastasia. Do you +know--if affairs had fallen out differently--I think I might have been a +man and you a woman? As it is--" Kneeling still, his glance devoured her. +"Yes, you would stay. And you comprehend what staying signifies. 'Tis +pride, your damnable pride, that moves you,--but I rejoice, for it proves +you a brave woman. Courage, at least, you possess, and this is the first +virtue I have discovered in you for a long while. However, there is no +necessity for your staying. The men of Usk will not hurt Simon Orts." + +She was very eager to believe this. Lady Allonby had found the world a +pleasant place since her widowhood. "They will not kill you? You swear it, +Simon?" + +"Why, the man was their tyrant. They obeyed him--yes, through fear. I am +their deliverer, Anastasia. But if they found a woman here--a woman not +ill-looking--" Simon Orts snapped his fingers. "Faith, I leave you to +conjecture," said he. + +They had both risen, he smiling, the woman in a turbulence of hope and +terror. "Swear to it, Simon!" + +"Anastasia, were affairs as you suppose them, I would have a curt while to +live. Were affairs as you suppose them, I would stand now at the threshold +of eternity. And I swear to you, upon my soul's salvation, that I have +nothing to fear. Nothing will ever hurt me any more." + +"No, you would not dare to lie in the moment of death," she said, after +a considerable pause. "I believe you. I will go. Good-bye, Simon." Lady +Allonby went toward the door opening into the corridor, but turned there +and came back to him. "I shall never see you again. And, la, I think that +I rather hate you than otherwise, for you remind me of things I would +willingly forget. But, Simon, I wish we had gone to live in that little +cottage we planned, and quarrelled over, and never built! I think we would +have been happy." + +Simon Orts raised her hand to his lips. "Yes," said he, "we would have been +happy. I would have been by this a man doing a man's work in the world, and +you a matron, grizzling, perhaps, but rich in content, and in love opulent. +As it is, you have your flatterers, your gossip, and your cards; I have my +gin. Good-bye, Anastasia." + +"Simon, why have you done--this?" + +The Vicar of Heriz Magna flung out his hands in a gesture of impotence. "I +dare confess now that which even to myself I have never dared confess. I +suppose the truth of it is that I have loved you all my life." + +"I am sorry. I am not worth it, Simon." + +"No; you are immeasurably far from being worth it. But one does not justify +these fancies by mathematics. Good-bye, Anastasia." + + +V + +Holding the door ajar, the Vicar of Heriz Magna heard a horse's hoofs slap +their leisurely way down the hillside. Presently the sound died and he +turned back into the hall. + +"A brave woman, that! Oh, a trifling, shallow-hearted jilt, but a brave +creature! + +"I had to lie to her. She would have stayed else. And perhaps it is true +that, in reality, I have loved her all my life,--or in any event, have +hankered after the pink-and-white flesh of her as any gentleman might. +Pschutt! a pox on all lechery says the dying man,--since it is now +necessary to put that strapping yellow-haired trollop out of your mind, +Simon Orts--yes, after all these years, to put her quite out of your mind. +Faith, she might wheedle me now to her heart's content, and my pulse would +never budge; for I must devote what trivial time there is to hoping they +will kill me quickly. He was their god, that man!" + +Simon Orts went toward the dead body, looking down into the distorted face. +"And I, too, loved him. Yes, such as he was, he was the only friend I +had. And I think he liked me," Simon Orts said aloud, with a touch of shy +pride. "Yes, and you trusted me, didn't you, Vincent? Wait for me, then, +my Lord,--I shall not be long. And now I'll serve you faithfully. I had to +play the man's part, you know,--you mustn't grudge old Simon his one hour +of manhood. You wouldn't, I think. And in any event, I shall be with you +presently, and you can cuff me for it if you like--just as you used to do." + +He covered the dead face with his handkerchief, but in the instant he drew +it away. "No, not this coarse cambric. You were too much of a fop, Vincent. +I will use yours--the finest linen, my Lord. You see old Simon knows your +tastes." + +He drew himself erect exultantly. + +"They will come at dawn to kill me; but I have had my hour. God, the man I +might have been! And now--well, perhaps He would not be offended if I said +a bit of a prayer for Vincent." + +So the Vicar of Heriz Magna knelt beside the flesh that had been Lord +Rokesle, and there they found him in the morning. + + + + +II + +LOVE AT MARTINMAS +_As Played at Tunbridge Wells, April 1, 1750_ + + "_He to love an altar built + Of twelve vast French romances, neatly gilt. + There lay three garters, half a pair of gloves, + And all the trophies of his former loves; + With tender billet-doux he lights the pyre, + And breathes three amorous sighs to raise the fire; + Then prostrate falls, and begs with ardent eyes + Soon to obtain, and long possess the prize._" + + +DRAMATIS PERSONÆ + +MR. ERWYN, a gentleman of the town, ceremonious and a + coxcomb, but a man of honor. +LADY ALLONBY, a woman of fashion, and widow to + Lord Stephen Allonby. +MISS ALLONBY, daughter to Lord Stephen by a former + marriage, of a considerable fortune in her own hands. +FOOTMEN to Lady Allonby; and in the Proem FRANCIS + ORTS, commonly know as FRANCIS VANBINGHAM, a + dissolute play-actor. + + +SCENE + +A drawing-room In Lady Allonby's villa at Tunbridge Wells. + + +LOVE AT MARTINMAS + + +_PROEM:--To be Filed for Reference Hereafter_ + +Lady Allonby followed in all respects the Vicar's instructions; and +midnight found her upon the pier of Bishops Onslow, Colonel Denstroude's +big and dilapidated country-residence. Frank Orts had assisted her from the +rowboat without speaking; indeed, he had uttered scarcely a word, save to +issue some necessary direction, since the woman first came to him at the +Vicarage with her news of the night's events. Now he composedly stepped +back into the boat. + +"You've only to go forward," said Frank Orts. "I regret that for my own +part I'm no longer an acceptable visitor here, since the Colonel and I +fought last summer over one Molly Yates. Nay, I beseech you, put up your +purse, my Lady." + +"Then I can but render you my heartfelt thanks," replied Lady Allonby, "and +incessantly remember you in daily prayers for the two gallant men who have +this night saved a woman from great misery. Yet there is that in your voice +which is curiously familiar, Mr. Orts, and I think that somewhere you and I +have met before this." + +"Ay," he responded, "you have squandered many a shilling on me here in +England, where Francis Vanringham bellows and makes faces with the rest of +the Globe Company. On Usk, you understand, I'm still Frank Orts, just as I +was christened; but elsewhere the name of Vanringham was long ago esteemed +more apt to embellish and adorn the bill of a heroic play. Ay, you've been +pleased to applaud my grimaces behind the footlights, more than once; your +mother-in-law, indeed, the revered Marchioness-Dowager of Falmouth, is +among my staunchest patrons." + +"Heavens! then we shall all again see one another at Tunbridge!" said Lady +Allonby, who was recovering her spirits; "and I shall have a Heaven-sent +opportunity, to confirm my protestations that I am not ungrateful. Mr. +Vanringham, I explicitly command you to open in _The Orphan_, since: as +Castalio in that piece you are the most elegant and moving thing in the +universal world." [Footnote: This was the opinion of others as well. +Thorsby (_Roscius Anglicanus_) says, "Mr. Vanringham was good in tragedy, +as well as in comedy, especially as Castalio in Otway's _Orphan_, and the +more famous Garrick came, in that part, far short of him." Vanringham was +also noted for his Valentine in _Love for Love_ and for his Beaugard in +_The Soldier's Fortune_.] + +"Your command shall be obeyed," said the actor. "And meantime, my Lady, +I bid you an _au revoir_, with many millions of regrets for the +inconveniences to which you've been subjected this evening, Oho, we are +lamentably rustic hereabout." + +And afterward as he rowed through the dark the man gave a grunt of +dissatisfaction. + +"I was too abrupt with her. But it vexes me to have Brother Simon butchered +like this.... These natural instincts are damnably inconvenient,--and +expensive, at times, Mr. Vanringham,--beside being ruinous to one's sense +of humor, Mr. Vanringham. Why, to think that she alone should go scot-free! +and of her ordering a stage-box within the hour of two men's destruction +on her account! Upon reflection, I admire the woman to the very tips of my +toes. Eh, well! I trust to have need of her gratitude before the month is +up." + + +I + +Since Colonel Denstroude proved a profane and dissolute and helpful person, +Lady Allonby was shortly re-established in her villa at Tunbridge Wells, on +the Sussex side, where she had resolved to find a breathing-space prior to +the full season in London. And thereupon she put all thoughts of Usk quite +out of her mind: it had been an unhappy business, but it was over. In the +meanwhile her wardrobe needed replenishing now that spring was coming +in; the company at the Wells was gay enough; and Lady Allonby had always +sedulously avoided anything that was disagreeable. + +Mr. Erwyn Lady Allonby was far from cataloguing under that head. Mr. George +Erwyn had been for years a major-general, at the very least, in Fashion's +army, and was concededly a connoisseur of all the elegancies. + +Mr. Erwyn sighed as he ended his recital--half for pity of the misguided +folk who had afforded Tunbridge its latest scandal, half for relief that, +in spite of many difficulties, the story had been set forth in discreet +language which veiled, without at all causing you to miss, the more +unsavory details. + +"And so," said he, "poor Harry is run through the lungs, and Mrs. +Anstruther has recovered her shape and is to be allowed a separate +maintenance." + +"'Tis shocking!" said Lady Allonby. + +"'Tis incredible," said Mr. Erwyn, "to my mind, at least, that the bonds of +matrimony should be slipped thus lightly. But the age is somewhat lax and +the world now views with complaisance the mad antics of half-grown lads and +wenches who trip toward the altar as carelessly as if the partnership were +for a country-dance." + +Lady Allonby stirred her tea and said nothing. Notoriously her marriage had +been unhappy; and her two years of widowhood (dating from the unlamented +seizure, brought on by an inherited tendency to apoplexy and French +brandy, which carried off Lord Stephen Allonby of Prestonwoode) had to all +appearance never tempered her distrust of the matrimonial state. Certain it +was that she had refused many advantageous offers during this period, for +her jointure was considerable, and, though in candid moments she confessed +to thirty-three, her dearest friends could not question Lady Allonby's +good looks. She was used to say that she would never re-marry, because she +desired to devote herself to her step-daughter, but, as gossip had it at +Tunbridge, she was soon to be deprived of this subterfuge; for Miss Allonby +had reached her twentieth year, and was nowadays rarely seen in public save +in the company of Mr. Erwyn, who, it was generally conceded, stood high in +the girl's favor and was desirous of rounding off his career as a leader of +fashion with the approved comoedic _dénouement_ of marriage with a young +heiress. + +For these reasons Lady Allonby heard with interest his feeling allusion to +the laxity of the age, and through a moment pondered thereon, for it seemed +now tolerably apparent that Mr. Erwyn had lingered, after the departure of +her other guests, in order to make a disclosure which Tunbridge had for +many months expected. + +"I had not thought," said she, at length, "that you, of all men, would ever +cast a serious eye toward marriage. Indeed, Mr. Erwyn, you have loved women +so long that I must dispute your ability to love a woman--and your amours +have been a byword these twenty years." + +"Dear lady," said Mr. Erwyn, "surely you would not confound amour with +love? Believe me, the translation is inadequate. Amour is but the summer +wave that lifts and glitters and laughs in the sunlight, and within the +instant disappears; but love is the unfathomed eternal sea itself. Or--to +shift the metaphor--Amour is a general under whom youth must serve: +Curiosity and Lustiness are his recruiting officers, and it is well to +fight under his colors, for it is against Ennui that he marshals his +forces. 'Tis a resplendent conflict, and young blood cannot but stir and +exult as paradoxes, marching and countermarching at the command of their +gay generalissimo, make way for one another in iridescent squadrons, while +through the steady musketry of epigram one hears the clash of contending +repartees, or the cry of a wailing sonnet. But this lord of laughter may be +served by the young alone; and by and by each veteran--scarred, it may be, +but not maimed, dear lady--is well content to relinquish the glory and +adventure of such colorful campaigns for some quiet inglenook, where, with +love to make a third, he prattles of past days and deeds with one that goes +hand in hand with him toward the tomb." + +Lady Allonby accorded this conceit the tribute of a sigh; then glanced, +in the direction of four impassive footmen to make sure they were out of +earshot. + +"And so--?" said she. + +"Split me!" said Mr. Erwyn, "I thought you had noted it long ago." + +"Indeed," she observed, reflectively, "I suppose it is quite time." + +"I am not," said Mr. Erwyn, "in the heyday of my youth, I grant you; but +I am not for that reason necessarily unmoved by the attractions of an +advantageous person, a fine sensibility and all the graces." + +He sipped his tea with an air of resentment; and Lady Allonby, in view of +the disparity of age which existed between Mr. Erwyn and her step-daughter, +had cause to feel that she had blundered into _gaucherie_; and to await +with contrition the proposal for her step-daughter's hand that the man was +(at last) about to broach to her, as the head of the family. + +"Who is she?" said Lady Allonby, all friendly interest. + +"An angel," said Mr. Erwyn, fencing. + +"Beware," Lady Allonby exhorted, "lest she prove a recording angel; a wife +who takes too deep an interest in your movements will scarcely suit you." + +"Oh, I am assured," said Mr. Erwyn, smiling, "that on Saturdays she will +allow me the customary half-holiday." + +Lady Allonby, rebuffed, sought consolation among the conserves. + +"Yet, as postscript," said Mr. Erwyn, "I do not desire a wife who will +take her morning chocolate with me and sup with Heaven knows whom. I have +seen, too much of _mariage à la mode_, and I come to her, if not with the +transports of an Amadis, at least with an entire affection and respect." + +"Then," said Lady Allonby, "you love this woman?" + +"Very tenderly," said Mr. Erwyn; "and, indeed, I would, for her sake, that +the errors of my past life were not so numerous, nor the frailty of my +aspiring resolutions rendered apparent--ah, so many times!--to a gaping +and censorious world. For, as you are aware, I cannot offer her an untried +heart; 'tis somewhat worn by many barterings. But I know that this heart +beats with accentuation in her presence; and when I come to her some day +and clasp her in my arms, as I aspire to do, I trust that her lips may not +turn away from mine and that she may be more glad because I am so near and +that her stainless heart may sound an echoing chime. For, with a great and +troubled adoration, I love her as I have loved no other woman; and this +much, I submit, you cannot doubt." + +"I?" said Lady Allonby, with extreme innocence. "La, how should I know?" + +"Unless you are blind," Mr. Erwyn observed--"and I apprehend those spacious +shining eyes to be more keen than the tongue of a dowager,--you must have +seen of late that I have presumed to hope--to think--that she whom I love +so tenderly might deign to be the affectionate, the condescending friend +who would assist me to retrieve the indiscretions of my youth--" + +The confusion of his utterance, his approach to positive agitation as he +waved his teaspoon, moved Lady Allonby. "It is true," she said, "that I +have not been wholly blind--" + +"Anastasia," said Mr. Erwyn, with yet more feeling, "is not our friendship +of an age to justify sincerity?" + +"Oh, bless me, you toad! but let us not talk of things that happened +under the Tudors. Well, I have not been unreasonably blind,--and I do not +object,--and I do not believe that Dorothy will prove obdurate." + +"You render me the happiest of men," Mr. Erwyn stated, rapturously. "You +have, then, already discussed this matter with Miss Allonby?" + +"Not precisely," said she, laughing; "since I had thought it apparent to +the most timid lover that the first announcement came with best grace from +him." + +"O' my conscience, then, I shall be a veritable Demosthenes," said Mr. +Erwyn, laughing likewise; "and in common decency she will consent." + +"Your conceit." said Lady Allonby, "is appalling." + +"'Tis beyond conception," Mr. Erwyn admitted; "and I propose to try +marriage as a remedy. I have heard that nothing so takes down a man." + +"Impertinent!" cried Lady Allonby; "now of whatever can the creature be +talking!" + +"I mean that, as your widowship well knows, marrying puts a man in his +proper place. And that the outcome is salutary for proud, puffed-up fellows +I would be the last to dispute. Indeed, I incline to dispute nothing, for I +find that perfect felicity is more potent than wine. I am now all pastoral +raptures, and were it not for the footmen there, I do not know to what +lengths I might go." + +"In that event," Lady Allonby decided, "I shall fetch Dorothy, that the +crown may be set upon your well-being. And previously I will dismiss the +footmen." She did so with a sign toward those lordly beings. + +"Believe me," said Mr. Erwyn, "'tis what I have long wished for. And +when Miss Allonby honors me with her attention I shall, since my life's +happiness depends upon the issue, plead with all the eloquence of a +starveling barrister, big with the import of his first case. May I, indeed, +rest assured that any triumph over her possible objections may be viewed +with not unfavorable eyes?" + +"O sir," said Lady Allonby, "believe me, there is nothing I more earnestly +desire than that you may obtain all which is necessary for your welfare. I +will fetch Dorothy." + +The largest footman but one removed Mr. Erwyn's cup. + + +II + +Mr. Erwyn, left alone, smiled at his own reflection in the mirror; +rearranged his ruffles with a deft and shapely hand; consulted his watch; +made sure that the padding which enhanced the calves of his most notable +legs was all as it should be; seated himself and hummed a merry air, in +meditative wise; and was in such posture when the crimson hangings that +shielded the hall-door quivered and broke into tumultuous waves and yielded +up Miss Dorothy Allonby. + +Being an heiress, Miss Allonby was by an ancient custom brevetted a great +beauty; and it is equitable to add that the sourest misogynist could hardly +have refused, pointblank, to countersign the commission. They said of +Dorothy Allonby that her eyes were as large as her bank account, and nearly +as formidable as her tongue; and it is undeniable that on provocation there +was in her speech a tang of acidity, such (let us say) as renders a salad +none the less palatable. In a word, Miss Allonby pitied the limitations of +masculine humanity more readily than its amorous pangs, and cuddled her +women friends as she did kittens, with a wary and candid apprehension of +their power to scratch; and decision was her key-note; continually she knew +to the quarter-width of a cobweb what she wanted, and invariably she got +it. + +Such was the person who, with a habitual emphasis which dowagers found +hoydenish and all young men adorable, demanded without prelude: + +"Heavens! What can it be, Mr. Erwyn, that has cast Mother into this +unprecedented state of excitement?" + +"What, indeed?" said he, and bowed above her proffered hand. + +"For like a hurricane, she burst into my room and cried, 'Mr. Erwyn +has something of importance to declare to you--why did you put on that +gown?--bless you, my child--' all in one eager breath; then kissed me, and +powdered my nose, and despatched me to you without any explanation. And +why?" said Miss Allonby. + +"Why, indeed?" said Mr. Erwyn. + +"It is very annoying," said she, decisively. + +"Sending you to me?" said Mr. Erwyn, a magnitude of reproach in his voice. + +"That," said Miss Allonby, "I can pardon--and easily. But I dislike all +mysteries, and being termed a child, and being--" + +"Yes?" said Mr. Erwyn. + +"--and being powdered on the nose," said Miss Allonby, with firmness. She +went to the mirror, and, standing on the tips of her toes, peered anxiously +into its depths. She rubbed her nose, as if in disapproval, and frowned, +perhaps involuntarily pursing up her lips,--which Mr. Erwyn intently +regarded, and then wandered to the extreme end of the apartment, where he +evinced a sudden interest in bric-à-brac. + +"Is there any powder on my nose?" said Miss Allonby. + +"I fail to perceive any," said Mr. Erwyn. + +"Come closer," said she. + +"I dare not," said he. + +Miss Allonby wheeled about. "Fie!" she cried; "one who has served against +the French, [Footnote: This was not absolutely so. Mr. Erwyn had, however, +in an outburst of patriotism, embarked, as a sort of cabin passenger, with +his friend Sir John Morris, and possessed in consequence some claim to +share such honor as was won by the glorious fiasco of Dungeness.] and +afraid of powder!" + +"It is not the powder that I fear." + +"What, then?" said she, in sinking to the divan beside the disordered +tea-table. + +"There are two of them," said Mr. Erwyn, "and they are so red--" + +"Nonsense!" cried Miss Allonby, with heightened color. + +"'Tis best to avoid temptation," said Mr. Erwyn, virtuously. + +"Undoubtedly," she assented, "it is best to avoid having your ears boxed." + +Mr. Erwyn sighed as if in the relinquishment of an empire. Miss Allonby +moved to the farther end of the divan. + +"What was it," she demanded, "that you had to tell me?" + +"'Tis a matter of some importance--" said Mr. Erwyn. + +"Heavens!" said Miss Allonby, and absent-mindedly drew aside her skirts; +"one would think you about to make a declaration." + +Mr. Erwyn sat down beside her, "I have been known," said he, "to do such +things." + +The divan was strewn with cushions in the Oriental fashion. Miss Allonby, +with some adroitness, slipped one of them between her person and the +locality of her neighbor. "Oh!" said Miss Allonby. + +"Yes," said he, smiling over the dragon-embroidered barrier; "I admit that +I am even now shuddering upon the verge of matrimony." + +"Indeed!" she marvelled, secure in her fortress. "Have you selected an +accomplice?" + +"Split me, yes!" said Mr. Erwyn. + +"And have I the honor of her acquaintance?" said Miss Allonby. + +"Provoking!" said Mr. Erwyn; "no woman knows her better." + +Miss Allonby smiled. "Dear Mr. Erwyn," she stated, "this is a disclosure I +have looked for these six months." + +"Split me!" said Mr. Erwyn. + +"Heavens, yes!" said she. "You have been a rather dilatory lover--" + +"I am inexpressibly grieved, that I should have kept you waiting--" + +"--and in fact, I had frequently thought of reproaching you for your +tardiness--" + +"Nay, in that case," said Mr. Erwyn, "the matter could, no doubt, have been +more expeditiously arranged." + +"--since your intentions have been quite apparent." + +Mr. Erwyn removed the cushion. "You do not, then, disapprove," said he, "of +my intentions?" + +"Indeed, no," said Miss Allonby; "I think you will make an excellent +step-father." + +The cushion fell to the floor. Mr. Erwyn replaced it and smiled. + +"And so," Miss Allonby continued, "Mother, believing me in ignorance, has +deputed you to inform me of this most transparent secret? How strange is +the blindness of lovers! But I suppose," sighed Miss Allonby, "we are all +much alike." + +"We?" said Mr. Erwyn, softly. + +"I meant--" said Miss Allonby, flushing somewhat. + +"Yes?" said Mr. Erwyn. His voice sank to a pleading cadence. "Dear child, +am I not worthy of trust?" + +There was a microscopic pause. + +"I am going to the Pantiles this afternoon," declared Miss Allonby, at +length, "to feed the swans." + +"Ah," said Mr. Erwyn, and with comprehension; "surely, he, too, is rather +tardy." + +"Oh," said she, "then you know?" + +"I know," he announced, "that there is a tasteful and secluded summer-house +near the Fountain of Neptune." + +"I was never allowed," said Miss Allonby, unconvincingly, "to go into +secluded summer-houses with any one; and, besides, the gardeners keep their +beer jugs there--under the biggest bench." + +Mr. Erwyn beamed upon her paternally. "I was not, till this, aware," said +he, "that Captain Audaine was so much interested in ornithology. Yet what +if, even when he is seated upon that biggest bench, your Captain does not +utterly lose the head he is contributing to the _tête-à-tête_?" + +"Oh, but he will," said Miss Allonby, with confidence; then she +reflectively added: "I shall have again to be painfully surprised by his +declaration, for, after all, it will only be his seventh." + +"Doubtless," Mr. Erwyn considered, "your astonishment will be extreme when +you rebuke him, there above hortensial beer jugs--" + +"And I shall be deeply grieved that he has so utterly misunderstood my +friendly interest in his welfare; and I shall be highly indignant after he +has--in effect, after he has--" + +"But not until afterward?" said Mr. Erwyn, holding up a forefinger. "Well, +I have told you their redness is fatal to good resolutions." + +"--after he has astounded me by his seventh avowal. And I shall behave +in precisely the same manner the eighth time he recurs to the repugnant +subject." + +"But the ninth time?" said Mr. Erwyn. + +"He has remarkably expressive eyes," Miss Allonby stated, "and really, +Mr. Erwyn, it is the most lovable creature when it raves about my +flint-heartedness and cutting its poor throat and murdering every man I +ever nodded to!" + +"Ah, youth, youth!" sighed Mr. Erwyn. "Dear child, I pray you, do not +trifle with the happiness that is within your grasp! _Si jeunesse +savait_--the proverb is somewhat musty. But we who have attained the St. +Martin's summer of our lives and have grown capable of but a calm and +tempered affection at the utmost--we cannot but look wistfully upon the +raptures and ignorance of youth, and we would warn you, were it possible, +of the many dangers whereby you are encompassed. For Love is a deity that +must not be trifled with; his voice may chaunt the requiem of all which +is bravest in our mingled natures, or sound a stave of such nobility as +heartens us through life. He is kindly, but implacable; beneficent, a +bestower of all gifts upon the faithful, a bestower of very terrible +gifts upon those that flout him; and I who speak to you have seen my +own contentment blighted, by just such flippant jesting with Love's +omnipotence, before the edge of my first razor had been dulled. 'Tis true, +I have lived since in indifferent comfort; yet it is but a dreary banquet +where there is no platter laid for Love, and within the chambers of my +heart--dust-gathering now, my dear!--he has gone unfed these fifteen years +or more." + +"Ah, goodness!" sighed Miss Allonby, touched by the ardor of his speech. +"And so, you have loved Mother all of fifteen years?" + +"Nay, split me--!" said Mr. Erwyn. + +"Your servant, sir," said the voice of Lady Allonby; "I trust you young +people have adjusted matters to your satisfaction?" + + +III + +"Dear madam," cried Miss Allonby, "I am overjoyed!" then kissed her +step-mother vigorously and left the room, casting in passage an arch glance +at Mr. Erwyn. + +"O vulgarity!" said Lady Allonby, recovering her somewhat rumpled dignity, +"the sweet child is yet unpolished. But, I suppose, we may regard the +matter as settled?" + +"Yes," said Mr. Erwyn, "I think, dear lady, we may with safety regard the +matter as settled." + +"Dorothy is of an excitable nature," she observed, and seated herself upon +the divan; "and you, dear Mr. Erwyn, who know women so thoroughly, will +overlook the agitation of an artless girl placed in quite unaccustomed +circumstances. Nay, I myself was affected by my first declaration,"' + +"Doubtless," said Mr. Erwyn, and sank beside her. "Lord Stephen was very +moving." + +"I can assure you," said she, smiling, "that he was not the first." + +"I' gad," said he, "I remember perfectly, in the old days, when you were +betrothed to that black-visaged young parson--" + +"Well, I do not remember anything of the sort," Lady Allonby stated; and +she flushed. + +"You wore a blue gown," he said. + +"Indeed?" said she. + +"And--" + +"La, if I did," said Lady Allonby, "I have quite forgotten it, and it is +now your manifest duty to do likewise." + +"Never in all these years," said Mr. Erwyn, sighing, "have I been able to +forget it." + +"I was but a girl, and 'twas natural that at first I should be mistaken in +my fancies," Lady Allonby told him, precisely as she had told Simon Orts: +"and at all events, there is nothing less well-bred than a good memory. I +would decline to remain in the same room with one were it not that Dorothy +has deserted you in this strange fashion. Whither, pray, has she gone?" + +Mr. Erwyn smiled. "Her tender heart," said Mr. Erwyn, "is affected by the +pathetic and moving spectacle of the poor hungry swans, pining for their +native land and made a raree-show for visitors in the Pantiles; and she has +gone to stay them with biscuits and to comfort them with cakes." + +"Really!" said Lady Allonby. + +"And," Mr. Erwyn continued, "to defend her from the possible ferocity +of the gold-fish, Captain Audaine had obligingly afforded service as an +escort." + +"Oh," said Lady Allonby; then added, "in the circumstances she might +permissibly have broken the engagement." + + +"But there is no engagement," said Mr. Erwyn--"as yet." + +"Indeed?" said she. + +"Harkee," said he; "should he make a declaration this afternoon she will +refuse him." + +"Why, but of course!" Lady Allonby marveled. + +"And the eighth time," said he. + +"Undoubtedly," said she; "but at whatever are you hinting?" + +"Yet the ninth time--" + +"Well, what is it, you grinning monster?" + +Mr. Erwyn allowed himself a noiseless chuckle. "After the ninth time," Mr. +Erwyn declared, "there will be an engagement." + +"Mr. Erwyn!" cried Lady Allonby, with widened eyes, "I had understood that +Dorothy looked favorably upon your suit." + +"Anastasia!" cried he; and then his finger-tips lightly caressed his brow. +"'Tis the first I had heard of it," said Mr. Erwyn. + +"Surely--" she began. + +"Nay, but far more surely," said he, "in consideration of the fact that, +not a half-hour since, you deigned to promise me your hand in marriage--" + +"O la now!" cried Lady Allonby; and, recovering herself, smiled +courteously. "'Tis the first I had heard of it," said she. + +They stared at each other in wonderment. Then Lady Allonby burst into +laughter. + +"D'ye mean--?" said she. + +"Indeed," said Mr. Erwyn, "so unintentional was I of aspiring to Miss +Allonby's affections that all my soul was set upon possessing the heart and +person of a lady, in my humble opinion, far more desirable." + +"I had not dreamed--" she commenced. + +"Behold," said Mr. Erwyn, bitterly, "how rightly is my presumption +punished. For I, with a fop's audacity, had thought my love for you of +sufficient moment to have been long since observed; and, strong in my +conceit, had scorned a pleasing declaration made up of faint phrases and +whining ballad-endings. I spoke as my heart prompted me; but the heart has +proven a poor counsellor, dear lady, and now am I rewarded. For you had +not even known of my passion, and that which my presumption had taken for +a reciprocal tenderness proves in the ultimate but a kindly aspiration to +further my union with another." + +"D'ye love me, toad?" said Lady Allonby, and very softly. + +"Indeed," said Mr. Erwyn, "I have loved you all my life, first with a +boyish inclination that I scarce knew was love, and, after your marriage +with an honorable man had severed us, as I thought, irrevocably, with such +lore as an ingenuous person may bear a woman whom both circumstances and +the respect in which he holds her have placed beyond his reach,--a love +that might not be spoken, but of which I had considered you could never be +ignorant." + +"Mr. Erwyn," said she, "at least I have not been ignorant--" + +"They had each one of them some feature that reminded me of you. That was +the truth of it, a truth so patent that we will not discuss it. Instead, +dear madam, do you for the moment grant a losing gamester the right to rail +at adverse fate! for I shall trouble you no more. Since your widowhood I +have pursued you with attentions which, I now perceive, must at many times +have proven distasteful. But my adoration had blinded me; and I shall +trouble you no more. I have been too serious, I did not know that our +affair was but a comedy of the eternal duel between man and woman; nor am +I sorry, dear opponent, that you have conquered. For how valorously you +fought! Eh, let it be! for you have triumphed in this duel, O puissant +lady, and I yield the victor--a devoted and, it may be, a rather heavy +heart; and I shall trouble you no more." + +"Ah, sir," said Lady Allonby, "you are aware that once--" + +"Indeed," said Mr. Erwyn, "'twas the sand on which I builded. But I am +wiser now, and I perceive that the feeling you entertain toward me is but +the pallid shadow of a youthful inclination. I shall not presume upon it. +Oh, I am somewhat proud, dear Anastasia; I have freely given you my heart, +such as it is; and were you minded to accept it, even at the eleventh hour, +through friendship or through pity only, I would refuse. For my love of you +has been the one pure and quite unselfish, emotion of my life, and I may +not barter it for an affection of lesser magnitude either in kind or in +degree. And so, farewell!" + +"Yet hold, dear sir--" said Lady Allonby. "Lord, but will you never let me +have the woman's privilege of talking!" + +"Nay, but I am, as ever, at your service," said Mr. Erwyn, and he paused in +transit for the door. + +"--since, as this betokens--" + +"'Tis a tasteful handkerchief," said Mr. Erwyn--"but somewhat moist!" + +"And--my eyes?" + +"Red," said Mr. Erwyn. + +"I have been weeping, toad, with my head on the pin-cushion, and the maid +trying to tipsify me with brandy." + +"Why?" said Mr. Erwyn. + +"I thought you were to marry Dorothy." + +Mr. Erwyn resumed his seat. "You objected?" he said. + +"I think, old monster," Lady Allonby replied, "that I would entertain the +same objection to seeing any woman thus sacrificed--" + +"Well?" said Mr. Erwyn. + +"--except--" + +"Incomparable Anastasia!" said Mr. Erwyn. + + +IV + +Afterward these two sat long in the twilight, talking very little, and with +their eyes rarely meeting, although their hands met frequently at quite +irrelevant intervals. Just the graze of a butterfly to make it certain that +the other was there: but all the while they both regarded the tiny fire +which had set each content of the room a-dancing in the companionable +darkness. For each, I take it, preferred to think of the other as being +still the naïve young person each remembered; and the firelight made such +thinking easier. + +"D'ye remember--?" was woven like a refrain through their placid duo.... + +It was, one estimates, their highest hour. Frivolous and trivial persons +you might have called them and have justified the accusation; but even to +the fop and the coquette was granted an hour wherein all human happenings +seemed to be ordered by supernal wisdom lovingly. Very soon they would +forget this hour; meanwhile there was a wonderful sense of dreams come +true. + + + + +III + +THE CASUAL HONEYMOON + +_As Played at Tunbridge Wells, April 1, 1750_ + +"_But this is the most cruel thing, to marry one does not know how, nor +why, nor wherefore.--Gad, I never liked anybody less in my life. Poor +woman!--Gad, I'm sorry for her, too; for I have no reason to hate her +neither; but I wish we could keep it secret! why, I don't believe any of +this company would speak of it._" + + +DRAMATIS PERSONÆ + + +CAPTAIN AUDAINE, of a pompous and handsome person, and loves Miss Allonby. + +LORD HUMPHREY DEGGE, younger son to the Marquis of Venour, makes love to +Miss Allonby. + +GERALD ALLONBY, brother to Miss Allonby, a true raw Squire. + +MR. ERWYN, betrothed to Lady Allonby. + +VANRINGHAM, an impudent tragedian of the Globe Company. + +QUARMBY, Vanringham's associate. + +Miss ALLONBY, an heiress, of a petulant humor, in love with Audaine. + +MARCHIONESS OF FALMOUTH, an impertinent affected dowager, and grandmother +to Miss Allonby. + +LADY ALLONBY, step-mother to Miss Allonby and Gerald. + +POSTILIONS, SERVANTS, Etc. + + +SCENE + +Tunbridge Wells, thence shifting to Chetwode Lodge, Mr. Babington-Herle's +house, on Rusthall Common, within two miles of the town. + + +THE CASUAL HONEYMOON + + +_PROEM:--Introductive of Captain Francis Audaine_ + +It appears convenient here to pursue Miss Allonby on her stroll about the +Pantiles in company with Captain Audaine. The latter has been at pains to +record the events of the afternoon and evening, so that I give you his own +account of them, though I abridge in consideration of his leisured style. +Pompous and verbose I grant the Captain, even in curtailment; but you are +to remember these were the faults of his age, ingrained and defiant of +deletion; and should you elect to peruse his memoirs [Footnote: There +appears to have been no American edition since that, in 1836, printed in +Philadelphia, "for Thomas Wardle, No. 15 Minor Street." In England the +memoirs of Lord Garendon are to all appearance equally hard to come by, +and seem to have been out of print since 1907.] you will find that I have +considerately spared you a majority of the digressions to which the future +Earl of Garendon was lamentably addicted. + +For the purpose of my tale you are to view him as Tunbridge did at this +particular time: as a handsome and formal person, twenty-eight years old +or thereabouts, of whom nobody knew anything quite definite--beyond the +genealogic inference to be drawn from a smatch of the brogue--save that +after a correspondence of gallantries, of some three weeks' duration, he +was the manifest slave of Miss Dorothy Allonby, and had already fought +three duels behind Ormerod House,--with Will Pratchet, Lord Humphrey Degge, +and Sir Eugene Harrabie, respectively, each one of whom was a declared +suitor for her hand. + +And with this prelude I begin on my transcription. + + +I + +Miss Allonby (says Captain Audaine) was that afternoon in a mighty cruel +humor. Though I had omitted no reasonable method to convince her of the +immensity of my passion, 'twas without the twitch of an eyelash she endured +the volley of my sighs and the fusillade of my respectful protestations; +and candor compels me to admit that toward the end her silvery laughter +disrupted the periods of a most elegant and sensible peroration. And when +the affair was concluded, and for the seventh time I had implored her to +make me the happiest of men, the rogue merely observed: "But I don't want +to marry you. Why on earth should I?" + +"For the sake of peace," I replied, "and in self-protection, since as long +as you stay obdurate I shall continue to importune, and by and by I shall +pester you to death." + +"Indeed, I think it more than probable," she returned; "for you dog me +like a bailiff. I am cordially a-weary, Captain Audaine, of your incessant +persecutions; and, after all, marrying you is perhaps the civilest way to +be rid of both them and you." + +But by this I held each velvet-soft and tiny hand. "Nay," I dissented; "the +subject is somewhat too sacred for jest. I am no modish lover, dearest and +best of creatures, to regard marriage as the thrifty purchase of an estate, +and the lady as so much bed-furniture thrown in with the mansion. I love +you with completeness: and give me leave to assure you, madam, with a +freedom which I think permissible on so serious an occasion that, even as +beautiful as you are, I could never be contented with your person without +your heart." + +She sat with eyes downcast, all one blush. Miss Dorothy Allonby was in the +bloom of nineteen, and shone with every charm peculiar to her sex. But I +have no mind to weary you with poetical rhodomontades till, as most lovers +do, I have proven her a paragon and myself an imbecile: it suffices to say +that her face, and shape, and mien, and wit, alike astounded and engaged +all those who had the happiness to know her; and had long ago rendered her +the object of my entire adoration and the target of my daily rhapsodies. +Now I viewed her with a dissension of the liveliest hopes and fears; for +she had hesitated, and had by this hesitation conceded my addresses to be +not irretrievably repugnant; and within the instant I knew that any life +undevoted to her service and protection could be but a lingering disease. + +But by and by, "You shall have your answer this evening," she said, and so +left me. + +I fathomed the meaning of "this evening" well enough. For my adored Dorothy +was all romance, and by preference granted me rendezvous in the back +garden, where she would tantalize me nightly, from her balcony, after the +example of the Veronese lady in Shakespeare's spirited tragedy, which she +prodigiously admired. As concerns myself, a reasonable liking for romance +had been of late somewhat tempered by the inclemency of the weather and +the obvious unfriendliness of the dog; but there is no resisting a lady's +commands; and clear or foul, you might at any twilight's death have found +me under her window, where a host of lyric phrases asserted the devotion +which a cold in the head confirmed. + +This night was black as a coal-pit. Strolling beneath the casement, well +wrapt in my cloak (for it drizzled), I meditated impartially upon the +perfections of my dear mistress and the tyrannic despotism of love. Being +the source of our existence, 'tis not unreasonably, perhaps, that this +passion assumes the proprietorship of our destinies and exacts of all +mankind a common tribute. To-night, at least, I viewed the world as a brave +pavilion, lighted by the stars and swept by the clean winds of heaven, +wherein we enacted varied rôles with God as audience; where, in turn, we +strutted or cringed about the stage, where, in turn, we were beset and +rent by an infinity of passions; but where every man must play the part +of lover. That passion alone, I said, is universal; it set wise Solomon +a-jigging in criminal byways, and sinewy Hercules himself was no stranger +to its inquietudes and joys. And I cried aloud with the Roman, _Parce +precor!_ and afterward upon high Heaven to make me a little worthier of +Dorothy. + + +II + +Engrossed in meditations such as these, I was fetched earthward by the +clicking of a lock, and, turning, saw the door beneath her balcony unclose +and afford egress to a slender and hooded figure. My amazement was +considerable and my felicity beyond rhetoric. + +"Dorothy--!" I whispered. + +"Come!" was her response; and her finger-tips rested upon my arm the while +that she guided me toward the gateway opening into Jervis Lane. I followed +with a trepidation you may not easily conceive; nor was this diminished +when I found awaiting us a post-chaise, into which my angel hastily +tripped. + +I babbled I know not what inarticulate nonsense. But, "Heavens!" she +retorted, "d'ye mean to keep the parson waiting all night?" + +This was her answer, then. Well, 'twas more than I could have hoped for, +though to a man of any sensibility this summary disposal of our love-affair +could not but vaguely smack of the distasteful. Say what you will, every +gentleman has about him somewhere a tincture of that venerable and artless +age when wives were taken by capture and were retained by force; he +prefers to have the lady hold off until the very last; and properly, her +tongue must sound defiance long after melting eyes have signalled that the +traitorous heart of her, like an anatomical Tarpeia, is ready to betray the +citadel and yield the treasury of her charms. + +Nevertheless, I stepped into the vehicle. The postilion was off in +a twinkling, as the saying is, over the roughest road in England. +Conversation was impossible, for Dorothy and I were jostling like two pills +in a box; and as the first observation I attempted resulted in a badly +bitten tongue, I prudently held my peace. + +This endured for, perhaps, a quarter of an hour, at the end of which period +the post-chaise on a sudden stopped, and I assisted my companion to alight. +Before us was a villa of considerable dimension, and situate, so far as I +could immediately detect, in the midst of a vast and desolate moor; there +was no trace of human habitation within the radius of the eye; and the +house itself presented not a glimpse of tenancy or illumination. + +"O Lord, madam--" I began. + +"Hasten!" spoke a voice from within the Parsonage. And Dorothy drew me +toward a side door, overhung with ivy, where, sure enough, a dim light +burned, 'Twas but a solitary candle stuck upon a dresser at the remoter end +of a large and low-ceiled apartment; and in this flickering obscurity we +found a tremulous parson in full canonicals, who had united our hands and +gabbled half-way through the marriage service before I had the slightest +notion of what was befalling me. + +And such is the unreasonable disposition of mankind that the attainment +of my most ardent desires aroused a feeling not altogether unakin to +irritation. This skulking celerity, this hole-and-corner business, I +thought, was in ill-accord with the respect due to a sacrament; and I could +have wished my marriage to have borne a less striking resemblance to the +conference of three thieves in a cellar. But 'twas over in two twos. Within +scantier time than it takes to tell of it, Francis and Dorothy were made +one, and I had turned to salute my wife. + +She gave a shriek of intolerable anguish. "Heavens!" said she, "I have +married the wrong man!" + + +III + +Without delay I snatched up the guttering candle and held it to my wife's +countenance. You can conceive that 'twas with no pleasurable emotion +I discovered I had inadvertently espoused the Dowager Marchioness of +Falmouth, my adored Dorothy's grandmother; and in frankness I can't deny +that the lady seemed equally dissatisfied: words failed us; and the newly +wedded couple stared at each other in silence. + +"Captain Audaine," said she, at last, "the situation is awkward." + +"Sure, madam," I returned, "and that is the precise thought which has just +occurred to me." + +"And I am of the opinion," she continued, "that you owe me some sort of +explanation. For I had planned to elope with Mr. Vanringham--" + +"Do I understand your Ladyship to allude to Mr. Francis Vanringham, the +play-actor, at present the talk of Tunbridge?" + +She bowed a grave response. + +"This is surprising news," said I. "And grant me leave to tell you that a +woman of mature years, possessed of an abundant fortune and unassailable +gentility, does not by ordinary sneak out of the kitchen door to meet a +raddle-faced actor in the middle of the night. 'Tis, indeed, a circumstance +to stagger human credulity. Oh, believe me, madam, for a virtuous woman the +back garden is not a fitting approach to the altar, nor is a comedian an +appropriate companion there at eleven o'clock in the evening." + +"Hey, my fine fellow," says my wife, "and what were you doing in the back +garden?" + +"Among all true lovers," I returned, "it is an immemorial custom to prowl +like sentinels beneath the windows of the beauteous adored. And I, +madam, had the temerity to aspire toward an honorable union with your +granddaughter." + +She wrung her withered hands. "That any reputable woman should have +nocturnal appointments with gentlemen in the back garden, and beguile her +own grandmother into an odious marriage! I protest, Captain Audaine, the +degenerate world of to-day is no longer a suitable residence for a lady!" + +"Look you, sir, this is a cruel bad business," the Parson here put in. +He was pacing the apartment in an altercation of dubiety and amaze. "Mr. +Vanringham will be vexed." + +"You will pardon me," I retorted, "if I lack pity to waste upon your Mr. +Vanringham. At present I devote all funds of compassion to my own affairs. +Am I, indeed, to understand that this lady and I are legally married?" + +He rubbed his chin. "By the Lord Harry," says he, "'tis a case that lacks +precedents! But the coincidence of the Christian names is devilish awkward; +the service takes no cognizance of surnames; and I have merely united a +Francis and a Dorothy." + +"O Lord, Mr. What-d'ye-call-um," said I, "then there is but one remedy and +that is an immediate divorce." + +My wife shrieked. "Have you no sense of decency, Captain Audaine? Never has +there been a divorce in my family. And shall I be the first to drag that +honored name into a public court,--to have my reputation worried at the bar +by a parcel of sniggering lawyers, while the town wits buzz about it like +flies around carrion? I pray you, do not suggest any such hideous thing." + +"Here's the other Francis," says the Parson, at this point. And it was,--a +raffish, handsome, slender, red-haired fellow, somewhat suggestive of the +royal duke, yet rather more like a sneak-thief, and with a whiff somewhere +of the dancing-master. At first glance you recognized in the actor a +personage, for he compelled the eye with a monstrous vividness of color and +gesture. To-night he had missed his lady at their rendezvous, owing to my +premature appearance, and had followed us post-haste. + +"My Castalio!" she screamed. "My Beaugard!" [Footnote: I never saw the +rascal act, thank Heaven, since in that event, report assures me, I might +conceivably have accredited him with the possession of some meritorious +qualities, however trivial; but, it appears, these two above-mentioned +rôles were the especial puppetry in which Mr. Vanringham was most +successful in wringing tears and laughter from the injudicious.--F.A.] She +ran to him, and with disjointed talk and quavering utterance disclosed the +present lamentable posture of affairs. + +And I found the tableau they presented singular. My wife had been a toast, +they tell me, in Queen Anne's time, and even now the lean and restless +gentlewoman showed as the abandoned house of youth and wit and beauty, with +here and there a trace of the old occupancy; always her furtive eyes shone +with a cold and shifting glitter, as though a frightened imp peeped through +a mask of Hecuba; and in every movement there was an ineffable touch of +something loosely hinged and fantastic. In a word, the Marchioness was +not unconscionably sane, and was known far and wide as a gallant woman +resolutely oblivious to the batterings of time, and so avid of flattery +that she was ready to smile on any man who durst give the lie to her +looking-glass. Demented landlady of her heart, she would sublet that +antiquated chamber to the first adventurer who came prepared to pay his +scot in the false coin of compliment; and 'twas not difficult to comprehend +how this young Thespian had acquired its tenancy. + +But now the face of Mr. Vanringham was attenuated by her revelations, and +the wried mouth of Mr. Vanringham suggested that the party be seated, in +order to consider more at ease the unfortunate _contretemps_. Fresh lights +were kindled, as one and all were past fear of discovery by this; and we +four assembled about a table which occupied the centre of the apartment. + + +IV + +"The situation," Mr. Vanringham, began, "may reasonably be described as +desperate. Here we sit, four ruined beings. For Dr. Quarmby has betrayed +an unoffending couple into involuntary matrimony, an act of which his +Bishop can scarcely fail to take official notice; Captain Audaine and +the Marchioness are entrapped into a loveless marriage, than which there +mayn't be a greater misery in life; and my own future, I needn't add, is +irrevocably blighted by the loss of my respected Dorothy, without whom +continued animation must necessarily be a hideous and hollow mockery. Yet +there occurs to me a panacea for these disasters." + +"Then, indeed, Mr. Vanringham," said I, "there is one of us who will be +uncommonly glad to know the name of it." + +He faced me with a kind of compassion in his wide-set brown eyes, "You, +sir, have caused a sweet and innocent lady to marry you against her +will--Oho, beyond doubt, your intentions were immaculate; but the outcome +remains in its stark enormity, and the hand of an inquisitive child is not +ordinarily salved by its previous ignorance as to the corrosive properties +of fire. You have betrayed confiding womanhood, an act abhorrent to +all notions of gentility. There is but one conclusive proof of your +repentance.--Need I mention that I allude to self-destruction?" + +"O Lord, sir," I observed, "suicide is a deadly sin, and I would not +willingly insult any gentlewoman by evincing so marked a desire for the +devil's company in preference to hers." + +"Your argument is sophistry," he returned, "since 'tis your death alone +that can endear you to your bride. Death is the ultimate and skilled +assayer of alloyed humanity: and by his art our gross constituents--our +foibles, our pettinesses, nay, our very crimes--are precipitated into the +coffin, the while that his crucible sets free the volatile pure essence, +and shows as undefiled by all life's accidents that part of divinity which +harbors in the vilest bosom. This only is remembered: this only mounts, +like an ethereal spirit, to hallow the finished-with blunderer's renown, +and reverently to enshrine his body's resting-place. Ah, no, Captain +Audaine! death alone may canonize the husband. Once you're dead, your wife +will adore you; once you're dead, your wife and I have before us an open +road to connubial felicity, a road which, living, you sadly encumber; and +only when he has delivered your funeral oration may Dr. Quarmby be exempt +from apprehension lest his part in your marriage ceremony bring about his +defrockment. I urge the greatest good for the greatest number, Captain; +living, you plunge all four of us into suffering; whereas the nobility of +an immediate _felo-de-se_ will in common decency exalt your soul to Heaven +accompanied and endorsed by the fervent prayers of three grateful hearts." + +"And by the Lord Harry," says the Parson, "while no clergyman extant has +a more cordial aversion to suicide, I cannot understand why a prolonged +existence should tempt you. You love Miss Dorothy Allonby, as all Tunbridge +knows; and to a person of sensibility, what can be more awkward than +to have thrust upon him grandfathership of the adored one? You must in +this position necessarily be exposed to the committal of a thousand +_gaucheries_; and if you insist upon your irreligious project of procuring +a divorce, what, I ask, can be your standing with the lady? Can she smile +upon the suit of an individual who has publicly cast aside the sworn love +and obedience of the being to whom she owes her very existence? or will +any clergyman in England participate in the union of a woman to her +ex-grandfather? Nay, believe me, sir, 'tis less the selfishness than the +folly of your clinging to this vale of tears which I deplore. And I protest +that this rope"--he fished up a coil from the corner--"appears to have +been deposited here by a benign and all-seeing Providence to Suggest +the manifold advantages of hanging yourself as compared with the untidy +operation of cutting one's throat." + +"And conceive, sir," says my wife, "what must be the universal grief +for the bridegroom so untimelily taken off in the primal crescence of +his honeymoon! Your funeral will be unparalleled both for sympathy and +splendor; all Tunbridge will attend in tears; and 'twill afford me a +melancholy but sincere pleasure to extend to you the hospitality of the +Allonby mausoleum, which many connoisseurs have accounted the finest in the +three kingdoms." + +"I must venture," said I, "to terminate this very singular conversation. +You have, one and all, set forth the advantages of my immediate demise; +your logic is unassailable and has proven suicide my plain duty; and my +rebuttal is confined to the statement that I will see every one of you +damned before I'll do it." + +Mr. Francis Vanringham rose with a little bow. "You have insulted both +womanhood and the Established Church by the spitting out of that ribald +oath; and me you have with equal levity wronged by the theft of my +affianced bride. I am only a play-actor, but in inflicting an insult a +gentleman must either lift his inferior to his own station or else forfeit +his gentility. I wear a sword, Captain Audaine. Heyho, will you grant me +the usual satisfaction?" + +"My fascinating comedian," said I, "if 'tis a fight you are desirous of, +I can assure you that in my present state I would cross swords with a +costermonger, or the devil, or the Archbishop of Canterbury, with equal +impartiality. But scarcely in the view of a lady, and, therefore, as you +boast the greater influence in that quarter, will you kindly advise the +withdrawal of yonder unexpected addition to my family?" + +"There's an inner room," says he, pointing to the door behind me; and I +held it open as my wife swept through. + +"You are the epitome of selfishness," she flung out, in passing; "for had +you possessed an ounce of gallantry, you would long ago have freed me from +this odious marriage." + +"Sure, madam," I returned, with a _congée_; "and is it not rather a +compliment that I so willingly forfeit a superlunar bliss in order to +retain the pleasure of your society?" + +She sniffed, and I closed the door; and within the moment the two men fell +upon me, from the rear, and presently had me trussed like a fowl and bound +with that abominable Parson's coil of rope. + + +V + +"Believe me," says Mr. Vanringham, now seated upon the table and indolently +dangling his heels,--the ecclesiastical monstrosity, having locked the +door upon Mrs. Audaine, had occupied a chair and was composedly smoking +a churchwarden,--"believe me, I lament the necessity of this uncouth +proceeding. But heyho! man is a selfish animal. You take me, sir, my +affection for yonder venerable lady does not keep me awake o' nights; yet +is a rich marriage the only method to amend my threadbare fortunes, so that +I cheerfully avail myself of her credulity. By God!" cried he, with a quick +raising of the voice, "to-morrow I had been a landed gentleman but for you, +you blundering omadhaun! And is a shabby merry-andrew from the devil knows +where to pop in and spoil the prettiest plot was ever hatched?" + +'Twas like a flare of lightning, this sudden outburst of malignity; for +you saw in it, quintessentialized, the man's stark and venomous hatred of +a world which had ill-used him; and 'twas over with too as quickly as the +lightning, yielding to the pleasantest smile imaginable. Meanwhile you are +to picture me, and my emotions, as I lay beneath his oscillating toes, +entirely helpless. "'Twas not that I lacked the courage to fight you," he +continues, "nor the skill, either. But there is always the possibility +that by some awkward thrust or other you might deprive the stage of a +distinguished ornament; and as a sincere admirer of my genius, I must, +in decency, avoid such risks. 'Twas necessary to me, of course, that you +be got out of this world speedily, since a further continuance of your +blunderings would interfere with my plans for the future; having gone thus +far, I cannot reasonably be expected to cede my interest in the Marchioness +and her estate. Accordingly I decide upon the handiest method and tip the +wink to Quarmby here; the lady quits the apartment in order to afford us +opportunity to settle our pretensions, with cutlery as arbiter; and she +will return to find your perforated carcass artistically displayed in +yonder extremity of the room. Slain in an affair of honor, my dear Captain! +The disputed damsel will think none the worse of me, a man of demonstrated +valor and affection; Quarmby and I'll bury you in the cellar; and being +freed from her recent and unfortunate alliance, my esteemed Dorothy will +seek consolation in the embraces of a more acceptable spouse. Confess, sir, +is it not a scheme of Arcadian simplicity?" + +'Twas the most extraordinary sensation to note the utterly urbane and +cheerful countenance with which Mr. Vanringham disclosed the meditated +atrocity. This unprincipled young man was about to run me through with no +more compunction than a naturalist in the act of pinning a new beetle among +his collection may momentarily be aware of. + +Then my quickened faculties were stirred on a sudden, and for the first +time I opened my mouth. Whatever claim I had upon Vanringham, there was no +need to advance it now. + +"You were about to say--?" he queried. + +"I was about to relieve a certain surplusage of emotion," I retorted, "by +observing that I regret to find you, sir, a chattering, lean-witted fool--a +vain and improvident fool!" + +"Harsh words, my Captain," says he, with lifted eyebrows. + +"O Lord, sir, but not of an undeserved asperity!" I returned, "D'ye think +the Marchioness, her flighty head crammed with scraps of idiotic romance, +would elope without regard for the canons of romance? Not so; depend upon +it, a letter was left upon her pin-cushion announcing her removal with +you, and in the most approved heroic style arraigning the obduracy of her +unsympathetic grandchildren. D'ye think Gerald Allonby will not follow +her? Sure, and he will; and the proof is," I added, "that you may hear his +horses yonder on the heath, as I heard them some moments ago." + +Vanringham leaped to the floor and stood thus, all tension. He raised +clenched, quivering hands toward the ceiling. "O King of Jesters!" he +cried, in horrid blasphemy; and then again, "O King of Jesters!" + +And by this time men were shouting without, and at the door there was a +prodigious and augmenting hammering. And the Parson wrung his hands and +began to shake like a dish of jelly in a thunder-storm. + +"Captain Audaine," Mr. Vanringham resumed, with more tranquillity, "you are +correct. Clidamira and Parthenissa would never have fled into the night +without leaving a note upon the pin-cushion. The folly I kindled in your +wife's addled pate has proven my ruin. Remains to make the best of Hobson's +choice." He unlocked the door. "Gentlemen, gentlemen!" says he, with +deprecating hand, "surely this disturbance is somewhat _outré_, a trifle +misplaced, upon the threshold of a bridal-chamber?" + +Then Gerald Allonby thrust into the room, followed by Lord Humphrey Degge, +[Footnote: I must in this place entreat my reader's profound discredit of +any aspersions I may rashly seem to cast upon this honest gentleman, whose +friendship I to-day esteem as invaluable; but I wrote, as always, _currente +calamo_, and the above was penned in an amorous misery, _sub Venire_, be +it remembered; and in such cases a wrong bias is easily hung upon the +mind.--F.A.] my abhorred rival for Dorothy's affection, and two attendants. + +"My grandmother!" shrieks Gerald. "Villain, what have you done with my +grandmother?" + +"The query were more fitly put," Vanringham retorts, "to the lady's +husband." And he waves his hand toward me. + +Thereupon the new-comers unbound me with various exclamations of wonder. +"And now," I observed, "I would suggest that you bestow upon Mr. Vanringham +and yonder blot upon the Church of England the bonds from which I have been +recently manumitted, or, at the very least, keep a vigilant watch upon +those more than suspicious characters, the while that I narrate the +surprising events of this evening." + + +VI + +Subsequently I made a clean breast of affairs to Gerald and Lord Humphrey +Degge. They heard me with attentive, even sympathetic, countenances; but by +and by the face of Lord Humphrey brightened as he saw a not unformidable +rival thus jockeyed from the field; and when I had ended, Gerald rose and +with an oath struck his open palm upon the table. + +"This is the most fortunate coincidence," he swears, "that I have ever +known of. I come prepared to find my grandmother the wife of a beggarly +play-actor, and I discover that, to the contrary, she has contracted an +alliance with a gentleman for whom I entertain sincere affection." + +"Surely," I cried, aghast, "you cannot deliberate acceptance of this +iniquitous and inadvertent match!" + +"What is your meaning, Captain Audaine?" says the boy, sharply. "What other +course is possible?"' + +"O Lord!" said I, "after to-night's imbroglio I have nothing to observe +concerning the possibility of anything; but if this marriage prove a legal +one, I am most indissuadably resolved to rectify matters without delay in +the divorce court." + +Now Gerald's brows were uglily compressed. "A divorce," said he, with an +extreme of deliberation, "means the airing of to-night's doings in the +open. I take it, 'tis the duty of a man of honor to preserve the reputation +of his grandmother stainless; whether she be a housemaid or the Queen +of Portugal, her frailties are equally entitled to endurance, her +eccentricities to toleration: can a gentleman, then, sanction any +proceeding of a nature calculated to make his grandmother the +laughing-stock of England? The point is a nice one." + +"For, conceive," said Lord Humphrey, with the most knavish grin I ever knew +a human countenance to pollute itself with, "that the entire matter will be +convoyed by the short-hand writers to the public press, and after this will +be hawked about the streets; and that the venders will yell particulars of +your grandmother's folly under your very windows; and that you must hear +them in impotence, and that for some months the three kingdoms will hear of +nothing else. Gad, I quite feel for you, my dear." + +"I have fallen into a nest of madmen," I cried. "You know, both of you, how +profoundly I adore Mr. Gerald's sister, the accomplished and bewitching +Miss Allonby; and in any event, I demand of you, as rational beings, is +it equitable that I be fettered for life to an old woman's apron-strings +because a doctor of divinity is parsimonious of his candles?" + +But Gerald had drawn with a flourish. "You have repudiated my kinswoman," +says he, "and you cannot deny me the customary satisfaction. Harkee, my +fine fellow, Dorothy will marry my friend Lord Humphrey if she will be +advised by me; or if she prefer it, she may marry the Man in the Iron Mask +or the piper that played before Moses, so far as I am concerned: but as for +you, I hereby offer you your choice between quitting this apartment as my +grandfather or as a corpse." + +"I won't fight you!" I shouted. "Keep the boy off, Degge!" But when the +infuriate lad rushed upon me, I was forced, in self-protection, to draw, +and after a brief engagement to knock his sword across the room. + +"Gerald," I pleaded, "for the love of reason, consider! I cannot fight you. +Heaven knows this tragic farce hath robbed me of all pretension toward your +sister, and that I am just now but little better than a madman; yet 'tis +her blood which exhilarates your veins, and with such dear and precious +fluid I cannot willingly imbrue my hands. Nay, you are no swordsman, +lad,--keep off!" + +And there I had blundered irretrievably. + +"No swordsman! By God, I fling the words in your face, Frank Audaine! must +I send the candlestick after them?" And within the instant he had caught +up his weapon and had hurled himself upon me, in an abandoned fury. I had +not moved. The boy spitted himself upon my sword and fell with a horrid +gasping. + +"You will bear me witness, Lord Humphrey," said I, "that the quarrel was +not of my provokement." + +But at this juncture the outer door reopened and Dorothy tripped into the +room, preceding Lady Allonby and Mr. George Erwyn. They had followed in the +family coach to dissuade the Marchioness from her contemplated match by +force or by argument, as the cat might jump; and so it came about that my +dear mistress and I stared at each other across her brother's lifeless +body. + +And 'twas in this poignant moment I first saw her truly. In a storm you +have doubtless had some utterly familiar scene leap from the darkness, +under the lash of lightning, and be for the instant made visible and +strange; and I beheld her with much that awful clarity. Formerly 'twas her +beauty had ensnared me, and this I now perceived to be a fortuitous and +happy medley of color and glow and curve, indeed, yet nothing more. 'Twas +the woman I loved, not her trappings; and her eyes were no more part of her +than were the jewels in her ears. But the sweet mirth of her, the brave +heart, the clean soul, the girl herself, how good and generous and kind +and tender,--'twas this that I now beheld, and knew that this, too, was +lost;--and, in beholding, the little love of yesterday fled whimpering +before the sacred passion which had possessed my being. And I began to +laugh. + +"My dear," said I, "'twas to-night that you promised me your answer, and +to-night you observe in me alike your grandfather and your brother's +murderer." + + +VII + +Lady Allonby fell to wringing her hands, but Dorothy had knelt beside the +prostrate form and was inspecting the ravages of my fratricidal sword. "Oh, +fy! fy!" says she immediately, and wrinkles her saucy nose; "had none of +you the sense to perceive that Gerald was tipsy? And as for the wound, 'tis +only a scratch here on the left shoulder. Get water, somebody." And her +command being obeyed, she cleansed the hurt composedly and bandaged it with +the ruffle of her petticoat. + +Meanwhile we hulking men stood thick about her, fidgeting and foolishly +gaping like a basket of fish; and presently a sibilance of relief went +about our circle as Gerald opened his eyes. "Sister," says he, with a +profoundly tragic face, "remember--remember that I perished to preserve the +honor of our family." + +"To preserve a fiddlestick!" said my adored Dorothy. And, rising, she +confronted me, a tinted statuette of decision. "Now, Frank," says she, "I +would like to know the meaning of this nonsense." + +And thereupon, for the second time, I recounted the dreadful and huddled +action of the night. + +When I had ended, "The first thing," says she, "is to let Grandmother out +of that room. And the second is to show me the Parson." This was done; the +Dowager entered in an extremity of sulkiness, and the Parson, on being +pointed out, lowered his eyes and intensified his complexion. + +"As I anticipated," says my charmer, "you are, one and all, a parcel of +credulous infants. 'Tis a parson, indeed, but merely the parson out of +Vanbrugh's _Relapse_; only last Friday, sir, we heartily commended your +fine performance. Why, Frank, the man is one of the play-actors." + +"I fancy," Mr. Vanringham here interpolates, "that I owe the assembled +company some modicum of explanation. 'Tis true that at the beginning of +our friendship I had contemplated matrimony with our amiable Marchioness, +but, I confess, 'twas the lady's property rather than her person which was +the allure. And reflection dissuaded me; a legal union left me, a young +and not unhandsome man, irrevocably fettered to an old woman; whereas a +mock-marriage afforded an eternal option to compound the match--for a +consideration--with the lady's relatives, to whom, I had instinctively +divined, her alliance with me would prove distasteful. Accordingly I +had availed myself of my colleague's skill [Footnote: I witnessed this +same Quarmby's hanging in 1754, and for a burglary, I think, with an +extraordinary relish.--F.A.] in the portrayal of clerical parts rather than +resort to any parson whose authority was unrestricted by the footlights. +And accordingly--" + +"And accordingly my marriage," I interrupted, "is not binding?" + +"I can assure you," he replied, "that you might trade your lawful right in +the lady for a twopenny whistle and not lose by the bargain." + +"And what about my marriage?" says the Marchioness--"the marriage which was +never to be legalized?--'twas merely that you might sell me afterward, like +so much mutton, was it, you jumping-jack--!" + +But I spare you her ensuing gloss upon this text. + +The man heard her through, without a muscle twitching. "It is more than +probable," he conceded, "that I have merited each and every fate your +Ladyship is pleased to invoke. Indeed, I consider the extent of your +distresses to be equaled only by that of your vocabulary. Yet by ordinary +the heart of woman is not obdurate, and upon one lady here I have some +claim--" + +Dorothy had drawn away from him, with an odd and frightened cry. "Not upon +me, sir! I never saw you except across the footlights. You know I never saw +you except across the footlights, Mr. Vanringham!" + +Fixedly he regarded her, with a curious yet not unpleasing smile. "I am +the more unfortunate," he said, at last. "Nay, 'twas to Lady Allonby I +addressed my appeal." + +The person he named had been whispering with George Erwyn, but now she +turned toward the actor. "Heavens!" said Lady Allonby, "to think I should +be able to repay you this soon! La, of course, you are at liberty, Mr. +Vanringham, and we may treat the whole series of events as a frolic +suited to the day. For I am under obligations to you, and, besides, your +punishment would breed a scandal, and, above all, anything is preferable to +being talked about in the wrong way." + +Having reasons of my own, I was elated by the upshot of this rather +remarkable affair. Yet in justice to my own perspicacity, I must declare +that it occurred to me, at this very time, that Mr. Vanringham had proven +himself not entirely worthy of unlimited confidence, I reflected, however, +that I had my instructions, and that, if a bad king may prove a good +husband, a knave may surely carry a letter with fidelity, the more so if it +be to his interest to do it. + + +VIII + +I rode back to Tunbridge in the coach, with Dorothy at my side and with +Gerald recumbent upon the front seat,--where, after ten minutes' driving +the boy very philanthropically fell asleep. + +"And you have not," I immediately asserted--"after all, you have not given +me the answer which was to-night to decide whether I be of all mankind the +most fortunate or the most miserable. And 'tis nearing twelve." + +"What choice have I?" she murmured; "after to-night is it not doubly +apparent that you need some one to take care of you? And, besides, this is +your eighth proposal, and the ninth I had always rather meant to accept, +because I have been in love with you for two whole weeks." + +My heart stood still. And shall I confess that for an instant my wits, +too, paused to play the gourmet with my emotions? She sat beside me in the +darkness, you understand, waiting, mine to touch. And everywhere the world +was filled with beautiful, kind people, and overhead God smiled down upon +His world, and a careless seraph had left open the door of Heaven, so that +quite a deal of its splendor flooded the world about us. And the snoring +of Gerald was now inaudible because of a stately music which was playing +somewhere. + +"Frank--!" she breathed. And I noted that her voice was no less tender than +her lips. + + + + +IV + +THE RHYME TO PORRINGER + + +_As Played at Tunbridge Wells, April 2, 1750_ + + "_Ye gods, why are not hearts first paired above, + But still some interfere in others' love, + Ere each for each by certain marks are known? + You mould them up in haste, and drop them down, + And while we seek what carelessly you sort, + You sit in state, and make our pains your sport._" + + +DRAMATIS PERSONÆ + +CAPTAIN AUDAINE, an ingenious, well-accomplished gentleman. +LORD HUMPHREY DEGGE, an airy young gentleman, loves Miss Allonby for her +money. +VANRINGHAM, emissary and confederate of Audaine. +MISS ALLONBY, a young lady of wit and fortune. + +ATTENDANTS to Lord Humphrey, Etc. + + +SCENE + +Tunbridge Wells, first in and about Lord Humphrey's lodgings, then shifting +to a drawing-room in Lady Allonby's villa. + + +THE RHYME TO PORRINGER + + +PROEM:--_Merely to Serve as Intermezzo_ + +Next morning Captain Audaine was closeted with Mr. Vanringham in the +latter's apartments at the _Three Gudgeons_. I abridge the Captain's +relation of their interview, and merely tell you that it ended in the +actor's looking up, with a puzzled face, from a certain document. + +"You might have let me have a whiff of this," Mr. Vanringham began. "You +might have breathed, say, a syllable or two last night--" + +"I had my instructions, sir, but yesterday," replied the Captain; "and +surely, Mr. Vanringham, to have presumed last night upon my possession of +this paper, so far as to have demanded any favor of you, were unreasonable, +even had it not savored of cowardice. For, as it has been very finely +observed, it is the nicest part of commerce in the world, that of doing and +receiving benefits. O Lord, sir! there are so many thousand circumstances, +with respect to time, person, and place, which either heighten or allay the +value of the obligation--" + +"I take your point," said the other, with some haste, "and concede that you +are, beyond any reasonable doubt, in the right. Within the hour I am off." + +"Then all is well," said Captain Audaine. + +But he was wrong in this opinion, so wrong that I confute him by subjoining +his own account of what befell, somewhat later in the day. + + +I + +'Twas hard upon ten in the evening (the Captain estimates) when I left +Lady Culcheth's, [Footnote: Sir Henry Muskerry's daughter, of whom I have +already spoken, and by common consent an estimable lady and a person of +fine wit; but my infatuation for Lady Betty had by this time, after three +nights with her, been puffed out; and this fortunate extinction, through +the affair of the broken snuffbox, had left me now entirely indifferent to +all her raptures, panegyrics, and premeditated artlessnesses.--F. A.] and I +protest that at the time there was not a happier man in all Tunbridge than +Francis Audaine. + +"You haven't the king?" Miss Allonby was saying, as I made my adieus to the +company. "Then I play queen, knave, and ace, which gives me the game, Lord +Humphrey." + +And afterward she shuffled the cards and flashed across the room a glance +whose brilliance shamed the tawdry candles about her, and, as you can +readily conceive, roused a prodigious trepidation in my adoring breast. + +"Dorothy!--O Dorothy!" I said over and over again when I had reached the +street; and so went homeward with constant repetitions of her dear name. + +I suppose it was an idiotic piece of business; but you are to remember +that I loved her with an entire heart, and that, as yet, I could scarcely +believe the confession of a reciprocal attachment, which I had wrung from +her overnight, to the accompaniment of Gerald's snoring, had been other +than an unusually delectable and audacious dream upon the part of Frank +Audaine. + +I found it, then, as I went homeward, a heady joy to ponder on her +loveliness. Oh, the wonder of her voice, that is a love-song! cried my +heart. Oh, the candid eyes of her, more beautiful than the June heavens, +more blue than the very bluest speedwell-flower! Oh, the tilt of her tiny +chin, and the incredible gold of her hair, and the quite unbelievable +pink-and-white of her little flower-soft face! And, oh, the scrap of +crimson that is her mouth. + +In a word, my pulses throbbed with a sort of divine insanity, and Frank +Audaine was as much out of his senses as any madman now in Bedlam, and as +deliriously perturbed as any lover is by ordinary when he meditates upon +the object of his affections. + +But there was other work than sonneting afoot that night, and shortly I +set about it. Yet such was my felicity that I went to my nocturnal labors +singing. Yes, it rang in my ears, somehow, that silly old Scotch song, and +under my breath I hummed odd snatches of it as I went about the night's +business. + +Sang I: + + "Ken ye the rhyme to porringer? + Ken ye the rhyme to porringer? + King James the Seventh had ae daughter, + And he gave her to an Oranger. + + "Ken ye how he requited him? + Ken ye how he requited him? + The dog has into England come, + And ta'en the crown in spite of him! + + "The rogue he salna keep it lang, + To budge we'll make him fain again; + We'll hang him high upon a tree, + And King James shall hae his ain again!" + + +II + +Well! matters went smoothly enough at the start. With a diamond Vanringham +dexterously cut out a pane of glass, so that we had little difficulty in +opening the window; and I climbed into a room black as a pocket, leaving +him without to act as a sentinel, since, so far as I could detect, the +house was now untenanted. + +But some twenty minutes later, when I had finally succeeded in forcing the +escritoire I found in the back room upon the second story, I heard the +street door unclose. And I had my candle extinguished in that self same +instant. You can conceive that 'twas with no pleasurable anticipation I +peered into the hall, for I was fairly trapped. I saw some five or six men +of an ugly aspect, who carried among them a burden, the nature of which I +could not determine in the uncertain light. But I heaved a sigh of relief +as they bore their cargo past me, to the front room, (which opened on the +one I occupied), without apparent recognition of my presence. + +"Now," thinks I, "is the time for my departure." And having already +selected the papers I had need of from the rifled desk, I was about to run +for it, when I heard a well-known voice. + +"Rat the parson!" it cried; "he should have been here an hour ago. Here's +the door left open for him, endangering the whole venture, and whey-face +han't plucked up heart to come! Do some of you rogues fetch him without +delay; and do all of you meet me to-morrow at the _Mitre_, to be paid in +full for this business, before reporting to his Grace." + +"Here," thinks I, "is beyond doubt a romance." And as the men tumbled +down-stairs and into the street, I resolved to see the adventure through, +by the light of those candles which were now burning in the next room. + +I waited for perhaps ten minutes, during which period I was aware of divers +movements near at hand; and, judging that in any case there was but one +man's anger to be apprehended, I crept toward the intervening door and +found it luckily ajar. + +So I peered through the crack into the adjoining room, and there, as I had +anticipated, discovered Lord Humphrey Degge, whom I had last seen at Lady +Culcheth's wrangling over a game of _écarté_ with the fairest antagonist +the universe could afford. + +Just now my Lord was in a state of high emotion, and the cause of it was +evident when I perceived his ruffians had borne into the house a swooning +lady, whom merciful unconsciousness had rendered oblivious to her present +surroundings, and whose wrists his Lordship was vigorously slapping in the +intervals between his frequent applications to her nostrils of a flask, +which, as I more lately learned, contained sal volatile. + +Here was an unlucky turn, since I had no desire to announce my whereabouts, +my business in the house being of a sort that necessitated secrecy; +whereas, upon the other hand, I could not but misdoubt my Lord's intention +toward the unknown fair was of discreditable kinship, and such as a +gentleman might not countenance with self-esteem. + +Accordingly I devoted the moments during which the lady was recovering +from her swoon, to serious reflection concerning the course that I should +preferably adopt. But now, Miss came to, and, as is the custom of all +females similarly situated, rubbed her eyes and said, "Where am I?" + +And when she rose from the divan I saw that 'twas my adored Dorothy. + +"In the presence of your infatuated slave," says my Lord. "Ah, divine Miss +Allonby--!" + +But being now aware of her deplorable circumstances, she began to weep, +and, in spite of the amorous rhetoric with which his Lordship was prompt to +comfort her, rebuked him for unmanly conduct, with sublimity and fire, and +depicted the horrors of her present predicament in terms that were both +just and elegant. + +From their disjointed talk I soon determined that, Lord Humphrey's suit +being rejected by my angel, he had laid a trap for her (by bribing her +coachman, as I subsequently learned), and had so far succeeded in his +nefarious scheme that she, on leaving Lady Culcheth's, had been driven +to this house, in the conviction she rode homeward; and this course my +Lord endeavored to justify, with a certain eloquence, and attributed the +irregularity of his behavior solely to the colossal vehemence of his +affection. + +His oratory, however, was of little avail, for Dorothy told him plainly +that she had rather hear the protestations of a toad than listen to his far +more nauseous flattery; and bade him at once restore her to her natural +guardians. + +"_Ma charmante_," said he, "to-morrow your good step-mother may, if you +will, share with your husband the privilege of saluting Lady Humphrey +Degge; but as for Miss Allonby, I question if in the future her dearest +friends are likely to see much of her." + +"What do you mean?" cries she. + +"That the parson will be here directly," said he. + +"Infamous!" she observes; "and is the world run mad, that these extempore +weddings should be foisted upon every woman in the Allonby connection!" + +"Ah, but, my dear," he answered airily, "'twas those two fiascos which +begot my notion, and yet hearten me. For in every approved romance the +third adventurer gets the victory; so that I am, I take it, predestinate to +win where Vanringham and Rokesle failed." + +She did not chop logic with him, but instead retorted in a more primitive +fashion by beginning to scream at the top of her voice. + +I doubt if any man of honor was ever placed under a more great embarrass. +Yonder was the object of my devotion, exposed to all the diabolical +machinations of a heartless villain; and here was I concealed in my Lord's +bedroom, his desk broken open, and his papers in my pocket. To remain quiet +was impossible, since 'twas to expose her to a fate worse than death; yet +to reveal myself was to confess Frank Audaine a thief, and to lose her +perhaps beyond redemption. + +Then I thought of the mask which I had brought in case of emergency; and, +clapping it on, resolved to brazen out the affair. Meanwhile I saw all +notions of gallantry turned topsy-turvy, for my Lord was laughing quietly, +while my adored Dorothy called aloud upon the name of her Maker. + +"The neighborhood is not unaccustomed to such sounds," said he, "and I +hardly think we need fear any interruption. I must tell you, my dear +creature, you have, by an evil chance, arrived in a most evil locality, for +this quarter of the town is the devil's own country, and he is scarcely +like to make you free of it." + +"O Lord, sir!" said I, and pushed the door wide open, "surely you forget +that the devil is a gentleman?" + + +III + +Had I dropped a hand-grenade into the apartment the astonishment of its +occupants would not have been excessive. My Lord's face, as he clapped +his hand to his sword, was neither tranquil nor altogether agreeable to +contemplate; but as for Dorothy, she gave a frightened little cry, and ran +toward the masked intruder with a piteous confidence which wrung my heart. + +"The devil!" says my Lord. + +"Not precisely," I amended, and bowed in my best manner, "though 'tis +undeniable I come to act as his representative." + +"Oh, joy to your success!" his Lordship sneered. + +"Harkee, sir," said I, "as you, with perfect justice, have stated, this is +the devil's stronghold, and hereabouts his will is paramount; and, as I +have had the honor to add, the devil is a gentleman. Sure, and as such, he +cannot be expected to countenance your present behavior? Nay, never fear! +Lucifer, already up to the ears in the affairs of this mundane sphere, +lacks leisure to express his disapproval in sulphuric person. He tenders +his apologies, sir, and sends in his stead your servant, with whose +capabilities he is indifferently acquainted." + +"To drop this mummery," says Lord Humphrey, "what are you doing in my +lodgings?" + +"O Lord, sir!" I responded, "I came thither, I confess, without invitation. +And with equal candor I will admit that my present need is of your +Lordship's banknotes and jewels, and such-like trifles, rather than--you +force me, sir, to say it,--rather than of your company." + +Thus speaking, I drew and placed myself on guard, while my Lord gasped. + +"You're the most impudent rogue," says he, after he had recovered himself a +little, "that I have had the privilege of meeting--" + +"Your Lordship is all kindness," I protested. + +"--but your impudence is worth the price of whatever you may have pilfered. +Go, my good man--or devil, if you so prefer to style yourself! Tell Lucifer +that he is well served; and obligingly return to the infernal regions +without delay. For, as you have doubtless learned, Miss and I have many +private matters to discuss. And, gad, Mr. Moloch, [Footnote: A deity of, +I believe, Ammonitish origin. His traditional character as represented +by our immortal Milton is both taking to the fancy and finely romantic; +and is, I am informed, no less remarkable for many happy turns of speech +than for conformity throughout to the most famous legends of Talmudic +fabrication.--F.A.] pleasant as is your conversation, you must acknowledge +I can't allow evil spirits about the house without getting it an ill +reputation. So pardon me if I exorcise you with this." + +He spoke boldly, and, as he ended, tossed me a purse. I let it lie where it +fell, for I had by no means ended my argument. + +"Yet, sir," said I, "my errand, which began with the acquisition of your +pins, studs and other jewelry, now reaches toward treasure far more +precious--" + +"Enough!" he cried, impatiently, "Begone! and do you render thanks--that my +present business is so urgent as to prevent my furnishing the rope which +will one day adorn your neck." + +"That's as may be," quoth I; "and, indeed, I doubt if I could abide +drowning, for 'tis a damp, unwholesome, and very permanent sort of death. +But my fixed purpose, to cut short all debate, is to escort Miss Allonby +homeward." + +"Come," sneers my Lord,--"come, Mr. Moloch, I have borne with your +insolence for a quarter of an hour--" + +"Twenty minutes," said I, after consulting my watch. + +"--but I mean to put up with it no longer; and in consequence I take the +boorish liberty of suggesting that this is none of your affair." + +"Good sir," I conceded, "your Lordship speaks with considerable justice, +and we must leave the final decision to Miss here." + +I bowed toward her. In her face there was a curious bewilderment that +made me fear lest, for all my mask, for all my unnatural intonations, and +for all the room's half-light, my worshipped mistress had come near to +recognizing this caught thief. + +"Miss Allonby," said I, in a falsetto voice which trembled, "since I am +unknown to you, may I trust you will permit me to present myself? My +name--though, indeed, I have a multitude of names--is for the occasion +Frederick Thomasson. With my father's appellation and estates I cannot +accommodate you, for the reason that a mystery attaches to his identity. +As for my mother, let it suffice to say that she was a vivacious brunette +of a large acquaintance, and generally known to the public as Black Moll +O'Reilly. I began life as a pickpocket. Since then I have so far improved +my natural gifts that the police are flattering enough to value my person +at several hundred pounds. My rank in society, as you perceive, is not +exalted; yet, if my luck by any chance should fail, I do not question that +I shall, upon some subsequent Friday, move in loftier circles than any +nobleman who happens at the time to be on Tyburn Hill.--So much for my poor +self. And since by this late hour Lady Allonby is beyond doubt beginning to +grow uneasy, let us have done with further exposition, and remember that +'tis high time you selected an escort to her residence. May I implore that +you choose between the son of the Marquis of Venour and Black Molly's +bastard?" + +She looked us over,--first one, then the other. More lately she laughed; +and if I had never seen her before, I could have found it in my heart to +love her for the sweet insolence of her demeanor. + +"After all," said my adored Dorothy, "I prefer the rogue who when he goes +about his knaveries has at least the decency to wear a mask." + +"That, my Lord," said I, "is fairly conclusive; and so we will be +journeying." + +"Over my dead body!" says he. + +"Sure, and what's beneath the feet," I protested, "is equally beneath +consideration." + +The witticism stung him like a wasp, and, with an oath, he drew, as I was +heartily glad to observe, for I cannot help thinking that when it comes to +the last pinch, and one gentleman is excessively annoyed by the existence +of another, steel is your only arbiter, and charitable allowances for the +dead make the one rational peroration. So we crossed blades; and, pursuing +my usual tactics, I began upon a flow of words, which course, as I have +learned by old experience, is apt to disconcert an adversary far more than +any trick of the sword can do. + +I pressed him sorely, and he continued to give way, but clearly for +tactical purposes, and without permitting the bright flash of steel that +protected him to swerve an instant from the proper line. + +"Miss Allonby," said I, growing impatient, "have you never seen a venomous +insect pinned to the wall? In that case, I pray you to attend more closely. +For one has only to parry--thus! And to thrust--in this fashion! And +behold, the thing is done!" + +In fact, having been run through the chest, my Lord was for the moment +affixed to the panelling at the extreme end of the apartment, where he +writhed, much in the manner of a cockchafer which mischievous urchins have +pinned to a card,--his mien and his gesticulations, however, being rather +more suggestive of the torments of the damned, as they are so strikingly +depicted by the Italian Dante. [Footnote: I allude, of course, to the +famous Florentine, who excels no less in his detailed depictions of +infernal anguish than in his eloquent portrayal of the graduated and +equitable emoluments of an eternal glorification.--F.A.] He tumbled in a +heap, though, when I sheathed my sword and bowed toward my charmer. + +"Miss Allonby," said I, "thus quickly ends this evil quarter of an hour; +and with, equal expedition, I think, should we be leaving this evil quarter +of the town." + +She had watched the combat with staring and frightened eyes. Now she had +drawn nearer, and she looked curiously at her over-presumptuous lover where +he had fallen. + +"Have you killed him?" she asked, in a hushed voice. + +"O Lord, no!" I protested. "The life of a peer's son is too valuable a +matter; he will be little the worse for it in a week." + +"The dog!" cries she, overcome with pardonable indignation at the affront +which the misguided nobleman had put upon her; and afterward, with a +ferocity the more astounding in an individual whose demeanor was by +ordinary of an aspect so amiable and so engaging, she said, "Oh, the lewd +thieving dog!" + +"My adorable Miss Allonby," said I, "do not, I pray you, thus slander the +canine species! Meanwhile, permit me to remind you that 'tis inexpedient +to loiter in these parts, for the parson will presently be at hand; and if +it be to inter rather than to marry Lord Humphrey--well, after all, the +peerage is a populous estate! But, either way, time presses." + +"Come!" said she, and took my arm; and together we went down-stairs and +into the street. + + +IV + +On the way homeward she spoke never a word. Vanringham had made a hasty +flitting when my Lord's people arrived, so that we saw nothing of him. But +when we had come safely to Lady Allonby's villa, Dorothy began to laugh. + +"Captain Audaine," says she, in a wearied and scornful voice, "I know that +the hour is very late, yet there are certain matters to be settled between +as which will, I think, scarcely admit of delay. I pray you, then, grant me +ten minutes' conversation." + +She had known me all along, you see. Trust the dullest woman to play +Oedipus when love sets the riddle. So there was nothing to do save clap my +mask into my pocket and follow her, sheepishly enough, toward one of the +salons, where at Dorothy's solicitation a gaping footman made a light for +us. + +She left me there to kick my heels through a solitude of some moments' +extent. But in a while my dear mistress came into the room, with her arms +full of trinkets and knick-knacks, which she flung upon a table. + +"Here's your ring, Captain Audaine," says she, and drew it from her finger. +"I did not wear it long, did I? And here's the miniature you gave me, too. +I used to kiss it every night, you know. And here's a flower you dropped at +Lady Pevensey's. I picked it up--oh, very secretly!--because you had worn +it, you understand. And here's--" + +But at this point she fairly broke down; and she cast her round white arms +about the heap of trinkets, and strained them close to her, and bowed her +imperious golden head above them in anguish. + +"Oh, how I loved you--how I loved you!" she sobbed. "And all the while you +were only a common thief!" + +"Dorothy--!" I pleaded. + +"You shame me--you shame me past utterance!" she cried, in a storm of +mingled tears and laughter. "Here's this bold Captain Audaine, who comes to +Tunbridge from nobody knows where, and wins a maid's love, and proves in +the end a beggarly house-breaker! Mr. Garrick might make a mirthful comedy +of this, might he not?" Then she rose to her feet very stiffly. "Take your +gifts, Mr. Thief," says she, pointing,--"take them. And for God's sake let +me not see you again!" + +So I was forced to make a clean breast of it. + +"Dorothy," said I, "ken ye the rhyme to porringer?" But she only stared at +me through unshed tears. + +Presently, though, I hummed over the old song: + + "Ken ye the rhyme to porringer? + Ken ye the rhyme to porringer? + King James the Seventh had ae daughter, + And he gave her to an Oranger. + +"And the Oranger filched his crown," said I, "and drove King James--God +bless him!--out of his kingdom. This was a while and a half ago, my dear; +but Dutch William left the stolen crown to Anne, and Anne, in turn, left it +to German George. So that now the Elector of Hanover reigns at St. James's, +while the true King's son must skulk in France, with never a roof to +shelter him. And there are certain gentlemen, Dorothy, who do not consider +that this is right." + +"You are a Jacobite?" said she. "Well! and what have your politics to do +with the matter?" + +"Simply that Lord Humphrey is not of my way of thinking, my dearest dear. +Lord Humphrey--pah!--this Degge is Ormskirk's spy, I tell you! He followed +Vanringham to Tunbridge on account of our business. And to-day, when +Vanringham set out for Avignon, he was stopped a mile from the Wells by +some six of Lord Humphrey's fellows, disguised as highwaymen, and all his +papers were stolen. Oho, but Lord Humphrey is a thrifty fellow: so when +Ormskirk puts six bandits at his disposal he employs them in double infamy, +to steal you as well as Vanringham's despatches. To-morrow they would have +been in Ormskirk's hands. And then--" I paused to allow myself a whistle. + +She came a little toward me, in the prettiest possible glow of +bewilderment, "I do not understand," she murmured. "Oh, Frank, Frank, for +the love of God, beware of trusting Vanringham in anything! And you are not +a thief, after all? Are you really not named Thomasson?" + +"I am most assuredly not Frederick Thomasson," said I, "nor do I know if +any such person exists, for I never heard the name before to-night. Yet, in +spite of this, I am an unmitigated thief. Why, d'ye not understand? What +Vanringham carried was a petition from some two hundred Scotch and English +gentlemen that our gracious Prince Charlie be pleased to come over and +take back his own from the Elector. 'Twas rebellion, flat rebellion, and +the very highest treason! Had Ormskirk seen the paper, within a month our +heads had all been blackening over Temple Bar. So I stole it,--I, Francis +Audaine, stole it in the King's cause, God bless him! 'Twas burglary, no +less, but it saved two hundred lives, my own included; and I look to be a +deal older than I am before I regret the deed with any sincerity." + +Afterward I showed her the papers, and then burned them one by one over a +candle. She said nothing. So by and by I turned toward her with a little +bow. + +"Madam," said I, "you have forced my secret from me. I know that your +family is staunch on the Whig side; and yet, ere the thief goes, may he not +trust you will ne'er betray him?" + +And now she came to me, all penitence and dimples. + +"But it was you who said you were a thief," my dear mistress pointed out. + +"O Lord, madam!" said I, "'twas very necessary that Degge should think me +so. A house-breaker they would have only hanged, but a Jacobite they would +have hanged and quartered afterward." + +"Ah, Frank, do not speak of such fearful matters, but forgive me +instantly!" she wailed. + +And I was about to do so in what I considered the most agreeable and +appropriate manner when the madcap broke away from me, and sprang upon a +footstool and waved her fan defiantly. + +"Down with the Elector!" she cried, in her high, sweet voice. "Long live +King James!" + +And then, with a most lovely wildness of mien, she began to sing: + + "Ken ye the rhyme to porringer? + Ken ye the rhyme to porringer? + King James the Seventh had ae daughter--" + +until I interrupted her. For, "Extraordinary creature!" I pleaded, "you +will rouse the house." + +"I don't care! I intend to be a Jacobite if you are one!" + +"Eh, well," said I, "Frank Audaine is not the man to coerce his wife in a +political matter. Nevertheless, I know of a certain Jacobite who is not +unlikely to have a bad time of it if by any chance Lord Humphrey recognized +him to-night. Nay, Miss, you may live to be a widow yet." + +"But he didn't recognize you. And if he did"--she snapped her +fingers,--"why, we'll fight him again, you and I. Won't we, my dear? For +he stole our secret, you know. And he stole me, too. Very pretty behavior, +wasn't it?" And here Miss, Allonby stamped the tiniest, the most +infinitesimal of red-heeled slippers. + + "The rogue he didna keep me lang, + To budge we made him fain again-- + +"that's you, Frank, and your great, long sword. And now: + + "We'll hang him high, upon a tree, + And King Frank shall hae his ain again!" + +Afterward my adored Dorothy jumped from the footstool, and came toward me, +lifting up the crimson trifle that she calls her mouth, "So take your own, +my king," she breathed, with a wonderful gesture of surrender. + +And a gentleman could do no less. + + + + +V + +ACTORS ALL + + +_As Played at Tunbridge Wells, April 3, 1750_ + +"_I am thinking if some little, filching, inquisitive poet should get my +story, and represent it to the stage, what those ladies who are never +precise but at a play would say of me now,--that I were a confident, coming +piece, I warrant, and they would damn the poor poet for libelling the +sex._" + + +DRAMATIS PERSONÆ + +DUKE OF ORMSKIRK. + +COLONEL DENSTROUDE, } +SIR GRESLEY CARNE, } Gentlemen of the town. +MR. BABINGTON-HERLE, } + +VANRINGHAM, a play-actor and a Jacobite emissary. + +MR. LANGTON, secretary to Ormskirk. + +MISS ALLONBY, an heiress, loves Captain Audaine. + +LOTTRUM, maid to Miss Allonby. + +BENYON, MINCHIN, and OTHER SERVANTS to Ormskirk. + + +SCENE + +Tunbridge Wells, shifting from Ormskirk's lodgings at the _Mitre_ to +Vanringham's apartments in the _Three Gudgeons_. + + + + +ACTORS ALL + + +_PROEM.--To Explain Why the Heroine of This Comedy Must Wear Her Best_ + +I quit pilfering from the writings of Francis Audaine, since in the +happenings which now concern us he plays but a subsidiary part. The Captain +had an utter faith in decorum, and therefore it was, as he records, an +earth-staggering shock when the following day, on the Pantiles, in full +sight of the best company at the Wells, Captain Audaine was apprehended. He +met disaster like an old acquaintance, and hummed a scrap of song--"_O, gin +I were a bonny bird_,"--and shrugged; but when Miss Allonby, with whom he +had been chatting, swayed and fell, the Captain caught her in his arms, and +standing thus, turned angrily upon the emissaries of the law. + +"Look you, you rascals," said he, "you have spoiled a lady's afternoon with +your foolish warrant!" + +He then relinquished the unconscious girl to her brother's keeping, +tenderly kissed one insensate hand, and afterward strolled off to jail +_en route_ for a perfunctory trial and a subsequent traffic with the +executioner that Audaine did not care to think of. + +Tunbridge buzzed like a fly-trap with the ensuing rumors. The Captain +was at the head of a most heinous Jacobitical uprising. The great Duke +of Ormskirk was come hastily from London on the business. Highlanders +were swarming over the Border, ten thousand French troops had landed at +Pevensey, commanded by the Chevalier St. George in person, and twenty +thousand friars and pilgrims from Coruña had sailed for Milford Haven, +under the admiralty of young Henry Stuart. The King was locked in the +Tower; the King had been assassinated that morning by a Spanish monk, with +horse-pistols and a cast in his left eye; and the King and the Countess of +Yarmouth had escaped three days ago, in disguise, and were now on their way +to Hanover. + +These were the reports which went about Tunbridge, while Dorothy Allonby +wept a little and presently called for cold water and a powder-puff, and +afterward for a sedan chair. + + +I + +Miss Allonby found my Lord Duke of Ormskirk deep in an infinity of papers. +But at her entrance he rose and with a sign dismissed his secretary. + +It appears appropriate here to afford you some notion of Ormskirk's +exterior. I pilfer from Löwe's memoir of him, where Horace Calverley, who +first saw Ormskirk at about this time, is quoted: + +"His Grace was in blue-and-silver, which became him, though he is somewhat +stomachy for such conspicuous colors. A handsome man, I would have said, +honest but not particularly intelligent.... Walpole, in a fit of spleen, +once called him 'a porcelain sphinx,' and the phrase sticks; but, +indeed, there is more of the china-doll about him. He possesses the +same too-perfect complexion, his blue eyes have the same spick-and-span +vacuity; and the fact that the right orb is a trifle larger than its fellow +gives his countenance, in repose, much the same expression of placid +astonishment.... Very plump, very sleepy-looking, immaculate as a cat, you +would never have accorded him a second glance: covert whisperings that the +stout gentleman yonder is the great Duke of Ormskirk have, I think, taxed +human belief more than once during these ten years past." + +They said of Ormskirk that he manifested a certain excitement on the +day after Culloden, when he had seventy-two prisoners shot _en masse_, +[Footnote: But for all that, when, near Rossinish (see Löwe), he captured +Flora Macdonald and her ostensibly female companion, Ormskirk flatly +declined to recognize Prince Charles. "They may well call you the +Pretender, madam," he observed to "Bettie Burke,"--"since as concerns my +party you are the most desirable Pretender we could possibly imagine." And +thereupon he gave the Prince a pass out of Scotland.] but this was doubted; +and in any event, such _battues_ being comparatively rare, he by ordinary +appeared to regard the universe with a composed and feline indifference. + + +II + +"Child, child!" Ormskirk began, and made a tiny gesture of deprecation, "I +perceive you are about to appeal to my better nature, and so I warn you in +advance that the idiotic business has worked me into a temper absolutely +ogreish." + +"The Jacobite conspiracy, you mean?" said Miss Allonby. "Oh, I suppose +so. I am not particularly interested in such matters, though; I came, you +understand, for a warrant, or an order, or whatever you call it, for them +to let Frank out of that horrid filthy gaol." + +The Duke's face was gravely humorous as he gazed at her for a moment or two +in silence, "You know quite well," he said at last, "that I can give you +nothing of the sort." + +Miss Allonby said: "Upon my word, I never heard of such nonsense! How else +is he to take me to Lady Mackworth's ball to-night?" + +"It is deplorable," his Grace of Ormskirk conceded, "that Captain Audaine +should be thus snatched from circles which he, no doubt, adorns. Still, I +fear you must look for another escort; and frankly, child, if you will be +advised by me, you will permit us to follow out our present intentions and +take off his head--not a great deprivation when you consider he has so +plainly demonstrated its contents to be of such inferior quality." + +She had drawn close to him, with widening, pitiable eyes. "You mean, then," +she demanded, "that Frank's very life is in danger?" + +"This is unfair," the Duke complained. "You are about to go into hysterics +forthwith and thus bully me into letting the man escape. You are a minx. +You presume upon the fact that in the autumn I am to wed your kinswoman and +bosom companion, and that my affection for her is widely known to go well +past the frontier of common-sense; and also upon the fact that Marian will +give me the devil if I don't do exactly as you ask. I consider you to abuse +your power unconscionably, I consider you to be a second Delilah. However, +since you insist upon it, this Captain Audaine must, of course, be spared +the fate he very richly merits." + +Miss Allonby had seated herself beside a table and was pensively looking +up at him. "Naturally," she said, "Marian and I, between us, will badger +you into saving Frank. I shall not worry, therefore, and I must trust to +Providence, I suppose, to arrange matters so that the poor boy will not +catch his death of cold in your leaky gaol yonder. And now I would like to +be informed of what he has been most unjustly accused." + +"His crime," the Duke retorted, "is the not unusual one of being a fool. +Oh, I am candid! All Jacobites are fools. We gave the Stuarts a fair trial, +Heaven knows, and nobody but a fool would want them back." + +"I am not here to discuss politics," a dignified Miss Allonby stated, "but +simply to find out in what way Frank has been slandered." + +Ormskirk lifted one eyebrow. "It is not altogether a matter of politics. +Rather, as I see it, it is a matter of common-sense. Under the Stuarts +England was a prostitute among the nations, lackey in turn to Spain and +France and Italy; under the Guelph the Three-per-cents. are to-day at par. +The question as to which is preferable thus resolves itself into a choice +between common-sense and bedlamite folly. But, unhappily, you cannot argue +with a Jacobite: only four years ago Cumberland and Hawley and I rode from +Aberdeen to the Highlands and left all the intervening country bare as the +palm of your hand; I forget how many Jacobites we killed, but evidently not +enough to convince the others. Very well: we intend to have no more such +nonsense, and we must settle this particular affair by the simple device +of hanging or beheading every man-Jack concerned in it." He spoke without +vehemence--rather regretfully than otherwise. + +Miss Allonby was patient, yet resolute to keep to the one really important +point. "But what has Frank been accused of doing when it never even entered +his head?" + +"He has been conspiring," said the Duke, "and with conspicuous clumsiness. +It appears, child, that it was their common idiocy which of late brought +together some two hundred gentlemen in Lancashire. Being every one of them +most unmitigated fools, they desired that sot at Avignon to come over once +more and 'take back his own,' as the saying is. He would not stir without +definite assurances. So these men drew up a petition pledging their all to +the Chevalier's cause and--God help us!--signed it. I protest," the Duke +sighed, "I cannot understand these people! A couple of penstrokes, you +observe, and there is your life at the mercy of chance, at the disposal of +a puff of wind or the first blunderer who stumbles on the paper." + +"Doubtless that is entirely true," said Miss Allonby, "but what about +Frank?" + +Ormskirk shrugged his shoulders and began to laugh. "You are an +incomparable actress, you rogue you. But let us be candid, for all that, +since as it happens Lord Humphrey is not the only person in my employ. What +occurred last night I now partly know, and in part guess, Degge played a +bold game, and your Captain gambled even more impudently,--only the stakes, +as it to-day transpires, were of somewhat less importance than either of +them surmised. For years Mr. Vanringham has been a Jacobite emissary; now +he tires of it; and so he devoted the entire morning, yesterday to making a +copy of this absurd petition." + +"I do not understand," said Miss Allonby; and in appearance, at least, she +was no whit disconcerted. + +"He carried only the copy. You burned only the copy. Mr. Vanringham, it +develops, knew well enough what that bungling Degge had been deputed to +do, and he preferred to treat directly with Lord Humphrey's principal. Mr. +Vanringham is an intelligent fellow. I dare make this assertion, because +I am fresh from an interview with Mr. Vanringham," his Grace of Ormskirk +ended, and allowed himself a reminiscent chuckle. + +She had risen. "O ungenerous! this Vanringham has been bribed!" + +"I pray you," said the Duke, "give vent to no such scandal. Vanringham's +life would not be worth a farthing if he had done such a thing, and he +knows it. Nay, I have planned it more neatly. To-night Mr. Vanringham will +be arrested--merely on suspicion, mind you,--and all his papers will be +brought to me; and it is possible that among them we may find the petition. +And it is possible that, somehow, when he is tried with the others, Mr. +Vanringham alone may be acquitted. And it is possible that an aunt--in +Wales, say,--may die about this time and leave him a legacy of some five +thousand pounds. Oh, yes, all this is quite possible," said the Duke; +"but should we therefore shriek _Bribery_? For my own part, I esteem Mr. +Vanringham, as the one sensible man in the two hundred." + +"He has turned King's evidence," she said, "and his papers will be brought +to you--" Miss Allonby paused. "All his papers!" said Miss Allonby. + +"And very curious they will prove, no doubt," said his Grace. "So many +love-sick misses write to actors. I can assure you, child, I look +forward with a deal of interest to my inspection of Mr. Vanringham's +correspondence." + +"Eh?--Oh, yes!" Miss Allonby assented--"all his papers! Yes, they should be +diverting, I must be going home though, to make ready for Lady Mackworth's +ball. And if I have nobody to dance with me, I shall know quite well whose +fault it is. How soon will Frank be freed, you odious tyrant?" + +"My child, but in these matters we are all slaves to red tape! I can +promise you, however, that your Captain will be released from prison before +this month is out, so you are not to worry." + + +III + +When she had left him the Duke sat for a while in meditation. + +"That is an admirable girl, I would I could oblige her in the matter and +let this Audaine live. But such folly is out of the question. The man is +the heart of the conspiracy. + +"No, Captain Audaine, I am afraid we must have that handsome head of yours, +and set your spirit free before this month is out. And your head also, Mr. +Vanringham, when we are done with using your evidence. This affair must be +the last; hitherto we have tried leniency, and it has failed; now we will +try extermination. Not one of these men must escape. + +"I shall have trouble with Marian, since the two girls are inseparable. +Yes, this Audaine will cause me some trouble with Marian. I heartily wish +the fellow had never been born." + +Ormskirk took a miniature from his pocket and sat thus in the dusk +regarding it. It was the portrait of a young girl with hazel eyes and +abundant hair the color of a dead oak-leaf. And now his sleepy face was +curiously moved. + +"I shall have to lie to you. And you will believe me, for you are not +disastrously clever. But I wish it were not necessary, my dear. I wish it +were possible to make you understand that my concern is to save England +rather than a twopenny captain. As it is, I shall lie to you, and you will +believe. And Dorothy will get over it in time, as one gets over everything +in time. But I wish it were not necessary, sweetheart. + +"I wish.... I wish that I were not so happy when I think of you. I become +so happy that I grow afraid. It is not right that anyone should be so +happy. + +"Bah! I am probably falling into my dotage." + +Ormskirk struck upon the gong. "And now, Mr. Langton, let us get back to +business." + + +IV + +Later in the afternoon Miss Allonby demanded of her maid if Gerald Allonby +were within, and received a negative response. "Nothing could be better," +said Miss Allonby. "You know that new suit of Master Gerald's, Lottrum--the +pink-and-silver? Very well; then you will do thus, and thus, and thus--" +And she poured forth a series of directions that astonished her maid not a +little. + +"Law you now!" said Lottrum, "whatever--?" + +"If you ask me any questions," said Dorothy, "I will discharge you on the +spot. And if you betray me, I shall probably kill you." + +Lottrum said, "O Gemini!" and did as her mistress ordered. + +Miss Allonby made a handsome boy, and such was her one comfort. Her mirror +showed an epicene denizen of romance,--Rosalind or Bellario, a frail +and lovely travesty of boyhood; but it is likely that the girl's heart +showed stark terror. Here was imminent no jaunt into Arden, but into the +gross jaws of even bodily destruction. Here was probable dishonor, a +guaranteeable death. She could fence well enough, thanks to many bouts with +Gerald; but when the foils were unbuttoned, there was a difference which +the girl could appreciate. + +"In consequence," said Dorothy, "I had better hurry before I am still more +afraid." + + +V + +So there came that evening, after dusk, to Mr. Francis Vanringham's +apartments, at the _Three Gudgeons_, a young spark in pink-and-silver. He +appeared startled at the sight of so much company, recovered his composure +with a gulp, and presented himself to the assembled gentlemen as Mr. +Osric Allonby, unexpectedly summoned from Cambridge, and in search of +his brother, Squire Gerald. At his step-mother's villa they had imagined +Gerald might be spending the evening with Mr. Vanringham. Mr. Osric +Allonby apologized for the intrusion; was their humble servant; and with a +profusion of _congées_ made as though to withdraw. + +Mr. Vanringham lounged forward. The comedian had a vogue among the younger +men, since at all games of chance they found him untiring and tolerably +honest; and his apartments were, in effect, a gambling parlor. + +Vanringham now took the boy's hand very genially. "You have somewhat the +look of your sister," he observed, after a prolonged appraisal; "though, in +nature, 'tis not expected of us trousered folk to be so beautiful. And by +your leave, you'll not quit us thus unceremoniously, Master Osric. I am by +way of being a friend of your brother's, and 'tis more than possible that +he may during the evening honor us with his presence. Will you not linger +awhile on the off-chance?" And Osric Allonby admitted he had no other +engagements. + +He was in due form made known to the three gentlemen--Colonel Denstroude, +[Footnote: He and Vanringham had just been reconciled by Molly Yates' +elopement with Tom Stoach, the Colonel's footman. Garendon has a curious +anecdote concerning this lady, apropos of his notorious duel with +Denstroude, in '61.] Mr. Babington-Herle, and Sir Gresley Carne--who sat +over a bowl of punch. Sir Gresley was then permitted to conclude the +narrative which Mr. Allonby's entrance had interrupted: the evening +previous, being a little tipsy, Sir Gresley had strolled about Tunbridge in +search of recreation and, with perhaps excessive playfulness, had slapped +a passer-by, broken the fellow's nose, and gouged both thumbs into the +rascal's eyes. The young baronet conceded the introduction of these London +pastimes into the rural quiet of Tunbridge to have been an error in taste, +especially as the man proved upon inquiry to be a respectable haberdasher +and the sole dependence of four children; and having thus unfortunately +blinded the little tradesman, Sir Gresley wished to ask of the assembled +company what in their opinion was a reasonable reparation. "For I sincerely +regret the entire affair," Sir Gresley concluded, "and am desirous to +follow a course approvable by all men of honor." + +"Heyho!" said Mr. Vanringham, "I'm afraid the rape of both eyes was a +trifle extreme; for by ordinary a haberdasher is neither a potato nor an +Argus, and, remembering that, even the high frivolity of brandy-and-water +should have respected his limitations." + +The hands of Mr. Allonby had screened his face during the recital, "Oh, the +poor man!" he said, "I cannot bear--" And then, with swift alteration, +he tossed back his head, and laughed. "Are we gentlemen to be denied all +amusement? Sir Gresley acted quite within his privilege, and in terming him +severe you have lied, Mr. Vanringham. I repeat, sir, you have lied!" + +Vanringham was on his feet within the instant, but Colonel Denstroude, who +sat beside him, laid a heavy hand upon Vanringham's arm. "'Oons, man," says +the Colonel, "infanticide is a crime." + +The actor shrugged his shoulders, "Doubtless you are in the right, Mr. +Allonby," he said; "though, as you were of course going on to remark, you +express yourself somewhat obscurely. Your meaning, I take it, is that I +mayn't criticise the doings, of my guests? I stand corrected, and concede +Sir Gresley acted with commendable moderation, and that Cambridge is, +beyond question, the paramount expositor of morals and manners." + +The lad stared about him: with a bewildered face. "La, will he not fight me +now?" he demanded of Colonel Denstroude,--"now, after I have called him a +liar?" + +"My dear," the Colonel retorted, "he may possibly deprive you of your +nursing-bottle, or he may even birch you, but he will most assuredly not +fight you, so long as I have any say in the affair. I' cod, we are all +friends here, I hope. D'ye think Mr. Vanringham has so often enacted +Richard III. that to strangle infants is habitual with him? Fight you, +indeed! 'Sdeath and devils!" roared the Colonel, "I will cut the throat of +any man who dares to speak of fighting in this amicable company! Gi'me some +more punch," said the Colonel. + +And thereupon in silence Mr. Allonby resumed his seat. + +Now, to relieve the somewhat awkward tension, Mr. Vanringham cried: "So +being neighborly again, let us think no more of the recent difference in +opinion. Pay your damned haberdasher what you like, Gresley; or, rather, +let Osric here fix the remuneration. I confess to all and sundry," he +added, with a smile, "that I daren't say another word in the matter. +Frankly, I'm afraid of this youngster. He breathes fire like Ætna." + +"He is a lad of spirit," said Mr. Babington-Herle, with an extreme +sobriety. "He's a lad eshtrornary spirit. Let's have game hazard." + +"Agreed, good sir," said Vanringham, "and I warn you, you will find me a +daring antagonist. I had to-day an extraordinary--the usual prejudice, +my dear Herle, is, I believe, somewhat inclined to that pronunciation of +the word,--the most extraordinary windfall. I am rich, and I protest King +Croesus himself sha'n't intimidate me to-night. Come!" he cried, and he +drew from his pocket a plump purse and emptied its contents upon the table; +"come, lay your wager!" + +"Hell and furies," the Colonel groaned, "there's that tomfool boy again! +Gi'me some more punch." + +For Osric Allonby had risen to his feet and had swept the littered gold +and notes toward him. He stood thus, his pink-tipped fingers caressing +the money, while his eyes fixed those of Mr. Vanringham. "And the chief +priests," observed Osric Allonby, "took the silver pieces and said, 'It is +not lawful for to put them into the treasury, because it is the price of +blood.' Are they, then, fit to be touched by gentlemen, Mr.--ah, but I +forget your given name?" + +Vanringham, too, had risen, his face changed. "My sponsors in baptism were +pleased to christen me Francis." + +"I entreat your pardon," the boy drawled, "but I have the oddest fancies. +I had thought it was Judas." And so they stood, warily regarding each the +other, very much as strange dogs are wont to do at meeting. + +"Boy is drunk," Mr. Babington-Herle explained at large, "and presents to +pitying eye of disinterested spectator most deplorable results incidental +to combination of immaturity and brandy. As to money, now, in Suetonius--" +And he launched upon a hiccough-punctuated anecdote of Vespasian, which to +record here is not convenient. "And moral of it is," Mr. Babington-Herle +perorated, "that all money is always fine thing to have. _Non olet!_ +Classical scholar, by Jove! Now let's have game hazard." + +Meanwhile those two had stood like statues. Vanringham seemed +half-frightened, half persuaded that this unaccountable boy spoke at +random. Talk, either way, the actor knew, was dangerous.... + +"I ask your forgiveness, gentlemen," said Francis Vanringham, "but I'm +suddenly ill. If you'll permit me to retire--" + +"Not at all," said. Mr. Babington-Herle; "late in evening, as it is. We +will go,--Colonel and old Carne and I will go kill watchman. Persevorate +him, by Jove,--like sieve." + +"I thank you," said Mr. Vanringham, withdrawing up the stairway toward his +bedroom. "I thank you. Mr. Allonby," he called, in a firmer tone, "you and +I have had some words together and you were the aggressor. Oho, I think we +may pass it over. I think--" + +Below, the four gentlemen were unhooking their swords from the wall. Mr. +Allonby now smiled with cherubic sweetness. "I, too," said he, "think that +all our differences might be arranged by ten minutes' private talk." He +came back, came up the stairs. "You had left your sword," he said to Mr. +Vanringham, "but I fetched it, you see." + +Vanringham stared, his lips working oddly. "I am no Siegfried," said he, +"and ordinarily my bedfellow is not cold and--deplorable defect in such +capacity!--somewhat unsympathetic steel." + +"But you forget," the boy urged, "that the room is public. And see, the +hilt is set with jewels. Ah, Mr. Vanringham, let us beware how we lead +others into temptation--" The door closed behind them. + + +VI + +Said Mr. Babington-Herle, judicially, "That's eshtrornary boy--most +eshtrornary boy, and precisely unlike brother." + +"You must remember," the Colonel pointed out, "that since his marriage +Gerald is a reformed man; he has quite given up punks and hazard, they say, +for beer and cattle-raising." + +"Well, but it is a sad thing to have a spirited tall rogue turn pimp to +balls and rams, and Mrs. Lascelles will be inconsolable," Sir Gresley +considered.--"Hey, what's that? Did you not hear a noise up-stairs?" + +"I do not think," said the Colonel, "that Mallison finds her so.--Yes, +i'cod! I suppose that tipsy boy has turned over a table." + +"But you astound me," Sir Gresley interrupted. "The constant Mallison, of +all persons!" + +"Nevertheless, my dear, they assure me that he has made over to her the +heart and lodgings until lately occupied by Mrs. Roydon--Oh, the devil!" +cried Colonel Denstroude, "they are fighting above!" + +"Good for Frank!" observed Mr. Babington-Herle. "Hip-hip! Stick young +rascal! Persevorate him, by Jove!" + +But the other men had run hastily up the stairway and were battering at +the door of Vanringham's chamber. "Locked!" said the Colonel. "Oh, the +unutterable cur! Open, open, I tell you, Vanringham! By God, I'll have your +blood for this if you have hurt the boy!" + +"Break in the door!" said a voice from below. The Colonel paused in his +objurgations, and found that the Duke of Ormskirk, followed by four +attendants, had entered the hallway of the _Three Gudgeons_. "Benyon," said +the Duke, more sharply, and wheeled upon his men, "you have had my orders, +I believe. Break in yonder door!" + +This was done. They found Mr. Francis Vanringham upon the hearthrug a +tousled heap of flesh and finery, insensible, with his mouth gaping, +in a great puddle of blood. To the rear of the room was a boy in +pink-and-silver, beside the writing-desk he had just got into with the +co-operation of a poker. Hugged to his breast he held a brown despatch-box. + +Ormskirk strode toward the boy and with an inhalation paused. The Duke +stood tense for a moment. Then silently he knelt beside the prostrate actor +and inspected Vanringham's injury. "You have killed him," the Duke said at +last. + +"I think so," said the boy. "But 'twas in fair fight." + +The Duke rose. "Benyon," he rapped out, "do you and Minchin take this body +to the room below. Let a surgeon be sent for. Bring word if he find any +sign of life. Gentlemen, I must ask you to avoid the chamber. This is a +state matter. I am responsible for yonder person." + +"Then your Grace is responsible for perfectly irresponsible young villain!" +said Mr. Babington-Herle. "He's murderer Frank Vanringham, of poor dear +Frank, like a brother to me, by Jove! Hang him high's Haman, your Grace, +and then we'll have another bottle." + +"Colonel Denstroude," said the Duke, "I will ask you to assist your friend +in retiring. The stairs are steep, and his conviviality, I fear, has by a +pint or so exceeded his capacity. And in fine--I wish you a good-evening, +gentlemen." + + +VII + +Ormskirk closed the door; then he turned, "I lack words," the Duke said. +"Oh, believe me, speech fails before this spectacle. To find you, here, +at this hour! To find you--my betrothed wife's kinswoman and life-long +associate,--here, in this garb! A slain man at your feet, his blood yet +reeking upon that stolen sword! His papers--pardon me!" + +Ormskirk sprang forward and caught the despatch-box from her grasp as she +strove to empty its contents into the fire. "Pardon me," he repeated; +"you have unsexed yourself; do not add high treason to the list of your +misdemeanors. Mr. Vanringham's papers, as I have previously had the honor +to inform you, are the state's property." + +She stood with void and inefficient hands that groped vaguely. "I could +trust no one," she said. "I have fenced so often with Gerald. I was not +afraid--at least, I was not very much afraid.. And 'twas so difficult to +draw him into a quarrel,--he wanted to live, because at last he had the +money his dirty little soul had craved. Ah, I had sacrificed so many things +to get these papers, my Lord Duke,--and now you rob me of them. You!" + +The Duke bent pitiless brows upon her. "I rob you of them," he said,--"ay, +I am discourteous and I rob, but not for myself alone. For your confusion +tells me that I hold here between my hands the salvation of England. Child, +child!" he cried, in sudden tenderness, "I trusted you to-day, and could +you not trust me? I promised you the life of the man you love. I promised +you--" He broke off, as if in a rivalry of rage and horror. "And you +betrayed me! You came hither, trousered and shameless, to save these +hare-brained traitors! Well, but at worst your treachery has very happily +released me from my promise to meddle in the fate of this Audaine. I shall +not lift a finger now. And I warn you that within the week your precious +Captain will have become the associate of seraphim." + +She had heard him, with defiant eyes; her head was flung back and she +laughed. "You thought I had come to destroy the Jacobite petition! Heavens, +what had I to do with all such nonsense? You had promised me Frank's +pardon, and the other men I had never seen. Harkee, my Lord Duke, do all +you politicians jump so wildly in your guess work? Did you in truth believe +that the poor fool who lies dead below would have entrusted the paper which +meant life and wealth to the keeping of a flimsy despatch-box?" + +"Indeed, no," his Grace of Ormskirk replied, and appeared a thought +abashed; "I was certain it would be concealed somewhere about his person, +and I have already given Benyon orders to search for it. Still, I confess +that for the moment your agitation misled me into believing these were +the important papers; and I admit, my dear creature, that unless you came +hither prompted by a mad design somehow to destroy the incriminating +documents and thereby to ensure your lover's life--why, otherwise, I +repeat, I am quite unable to divine your motive." + +She was silent for a while. Presently, "You told me this afternoon," she +began, in a dull voice, "that you anticipated much amusement from your +perusal of Mr. Vanringham's correspondence. All his papers were to be +seized, you said; and they all were to be brought to you, you said. And so +many love-sick misses write to actors, you said." + +"As I recall the conversation," his Grace conceded, "that which you have +stated is quite true." He spoke with admirable languor, but his countenance +was vaguely troubled. + +And now the girl came to him and laid her finger-tips ever so lightly upon +his. "Trust me," she pleaded. "Give me again the trust I have not merited. +Ay, in spite of reason, my Lord Duke, restore to me these papers unread, +that I may destroy them. For otherwise, I swear to you that without gain +to yourself--without gain, O God!--you wreck alike the happiness of an +innocent woman and of an honest gentleman. And otherwise--O infatuate!" she +wailed, and wrung impotent hands. + +But Ormskirk shook his head. "I cannot leap in the dark." + +She found no comfort in his face, and presently lowered her eyes. He +remained motionless. The girl went to the farther end of the apartment, and +then, her form straightening on a sudden, turned and came back toward him. + +"I think God has some grudge against you," Dorothy said, without any +emotion, "and--hardens your heart, as of old He hardened Pharaoh's heart, +to your own destruction. I have done my utmost to save you. My woman's +modesty I have put aside, and death and worse than death I have dared to +encounter to-night,--ah, my Lord, I have walked through hell this night for +your sake and another's. And in the end 'tis yourself who rob me of what I +had so nearly gained. Beyond doubt God has some grudge against you. Take +your fate, then." + +"_Integer vitæ_--" said the Duke of Ormskirk; and with more acerbity, "Go +on!" For momentarily she had paused. + +"The man who lies dead below was loved by many women. God pity them! But +women are not sensible like men, you know. And always the footlights made a +halo about him; and when you saw him as Castalio or Romeo, all beauty and +love and vigor and nobility, how was a woman to understand his splendor was +a sham, taken off with his wig, removed with his pinchbeck jewelry, and as +false? No, they thought it native, poor wretches. Yet one of them at least, +my Lord--a young girl--found out her error before it was too late. The man +was a villain through and through. God grant he sups in hell to-night!" + +"Go on," said Ormskirk. But by this time he knew all that she had to tell. + +"Afterward he demanded money of her. He had letters, you understand--mad, +foolish letters,--and these he offered to sell back to her at his own +price. And their publicity meant ruin. And, my Lord, we had so nearly saved +the money--pinching day by day, a little by a little, for his price was +very high, and it was necessary the sum be got in secrecy,--and that in the +end they should be read by you--" Her voice broke. + +"Go on," said Ormskirk. + +But her composure was shattered. "I would have given my life to save her," +the girl babbled. "Ah, you know that I have tried to save her. I was not +very much afraid. And it seemed the only way. So I came hither, my Lord, as +you see me, to get back the letters before you, too, had come." + +"There is but one woman in the world," the Duke said, quietly, "for whom +you would have done this thing. You and Marian were reared together. Always +you have been inseparable, always you have been to each other as sisters. +Is this not what you are about to tell me?" + +"Yes," she answered. + +"Well, you may spare yourself the pains of such unprofitable lying. That +Marian Heleigh should have been guilty of a vulgar _liaison_ with, an actor +is to me, who know her, unthinkable. No, madam! It was fear, not love, +which drove you hither to-night, and now a baser terror urges you to screen +yourself by vilifying her. The woman of whom you speak is yourself. The +letters were written by you." + +She raised one arm as though a physical blow impended. "No, no!" she cried. + +"Madam," the Duke said, "let us have done with these dexterities. I +have the vanity to believe I am not unreasonably obtuse--nor, I submit, +unreasonably self-righteous. Love is a monstrous force, as irrational, I +sometimes think, as the force of the thunderbolt; it appears neither to +select nor to eschew, but merely to strike; and it is not my duty to +asperse or to commend its victims. You have loved unworthily. From the +bottom of my heart I pity you, and I would that you had trusted me--had +trusted me enough--" His voice was not quite steady. "Ah, my dear," said +Ormskirk, "you should have confided all to me this afternoon. It hurts me +that you did not, for I am no Pharisee and--God knows!--my own past is not +immaculate. I would have understood, I think. Yet as it is, take back your +letters, child,--nay, in Heaven's name, take them in pledge of an old man's +love for Dorothy Allonby." + +The girl obeyed, turning them in her hands, the while that her eyes were +riveted to Ormskirk's face. And in Aprilian fashion she began to smile +through her tears. "You are superb, my Lord Duke. You comprehend that +Marian wrote these letters, and that if you read them--and I knew of +it,--your pride would force you to break off the match, because your +notions as to what is befitting in a Duchess of Ormskirk are precise. But +you want Marian, you want her even more than I had feared. Therefore, you +give me all these letters, because you know that I will destroy them, and +thus an inconvenient knowledge will be spared you. Oh, beyond doubt, you +are superb." + +"I give them to you," Ormskirk answered, "because I have seen through your +cowardly and clumsy lie, and have only pity for a thing so base as you. I +give them to you because to read one syllable of their contents would be to +admit I had some faith in your preposterous fabrication." + +But she shook her head. "Words, words, my Lord Duke! I understand you to +the marrow. And, in part, I think that I admire you." + +He was angry now. "Eh! for the love of God," cried the Duke of Ormskirk, +"let us burn the accursed things and have no more verbiage!" He seized the +papers and flung them into the fire. + +Then these two watched the papers consume to ashes, and stood a while +in silence, the gaze of neither lifting higher than the andirons; and +presently there was a tapping at the door. + +"That will be Benyon," the Duke said, with careful modulations. "Enter, +man! What news is there of this Vanringham?" + +"He will recover, your Grace, though he has lost much blood. Mr. Vanringham +has regained consciousness and took occasion to whisper me your Grace would +find the needful papers in his escritoire, in the brown despatch-box." + +"That is well," the Duke retorted, "You may go, Benyon." And when the +door had closed, he began, incuriously: "Then you are not a murderess at +least, Miss Allonby. At least--" He made a queer noise as he gazed, at the +despatch-box in his hand. "The brown box!" It fell to the floor. Ormskirk +drew near to her, staring, moving stiffly like a hinged toy, "I must have +the truth," he said, without a trace of any human passion. This was the +Ormskirk men had known in Scotland. + +"Yes," she answered, "they were the Jacobite papers. You burned them." + +"I!" said the Duke. + +Presently he said: "Do you not understand what this farce has cost? Thanks +to you, I have no iota of proof against these men. I cannot touch these +rebels. O madam, I pray Heaven that you have not by this night's trickery +destroyed England!" + +"I did it to save the man I love," she proudly said. + +"I had promised you his life." + +"But would you have kept that promise?" + +"No," he answered, simply. + +"Then are we quits, my Lord. You lied to me, and I to you. Oh, I know +that were I a man you would kill me within the moment. But you respect my +womanhood. Ah, goodness!" the girl cried, shrilly, "what very edifying +respect for womanhood have you, who burned those papers because you +believed my dearest Marian had stooped to a painted mountebank!" + +"I burned them--yes, in the belief that I was saving you." + +She laughed in his face. "You never believed that,--not for an instant." + +But by this time Ormskirk had regained his composure. "The hour is somewhat +late, and the discussion--if you will pardon the suggestion,--not likely to +be profitable. The upshot of the whole matter is that I am now powerless to +harm anybody--I submit the simile of the fangless snake,--and that Captain +Audaine will have his release in the morning. Accordingly you will now +permit me to wish you a pleasant night's rest. Benyon!" he called, "you +will escort Mr. Osric Allonby homeward. I remain to clear up this affair." + +He held open the door for her, and, bowing, stood aside that she might +pass. + + +VIII + +But afterward the great Duke of Ormskirk continued for a long while +motionless and faintly smiling as he gazed into the fire. Tricked and +ignominiously defeated! Ay, but that was a trifle now, scarcely worthy of +consideration. The girl had hoodwinked him, had lied more skilfully than +he, yet in the fact that she had lied he found a prodigal atonement. Whigs +and Jacobites might have their uses in the cosmic scheme, he reflected, as +house-flies have, but what really mattered was that at Halvergate yonder +Marian awaited his coming. And in place of statecraft he fell to thinking +of two hazel eyes and of abundant hair the color of a dead oak-leaf. + + + + +VI + +APRIL'S MESSAGE + + +_As Played at Halvergate House, April 9, 1750_ + + "_You cannot love, nor pleasure take, nor give, + But life begin when 'tis too late to live. + On a tired courser you pursue delight, + Let slip your morning, and set out at night. + If you have lived, take thankfully the past; + Make, as you can, the sweet remembrance last. + If you have not enjoyed what youth could give, + But life sunk through you, like a leaky sieve._" + + +DRAMATIS PERSONÆ + +DUKE OF ORMSKIKK. + +EARL OF BRUDENEL, father to Lady Marian Heleigh, who +has retired sometime into the country. + +LORD HUMPHREY DEGGE, a gamester, and Ormskirk's +hireling. + +MR. LANGTON, secretary to Ormskirk. + +LADY MARIAN HELEIGH, betrothed to Ormskirk, a young, +beautiful girl of a mild and tender disposition. + + +SCENE + +The east terrace of Halvergate House. + + + + +APRIL'S MESSAGE + + +_PROEM:--Apologia pro Auctore_ + +It occurs to me that we here assume intimacy with a man of unusual +achievement, and therefore tread upon quaggy premises. Yet I do but avail +myself of to-day's privilege.... It is an odd thing that people will +facilely assent to Don Adriano's protestation against a certain travestying +of Hector,--"Sweet chucks, beat not the bones of the dead, for when he +breathed he was a man,"--even while through the instant the tide of romance +will be setting quite otherwhither, with their condonation. For in all +the best approved romances the more sumptuous persons of antiquity are +very guilty of twaddle on at least one printed page in ten, and nobody +remonstrates; and here is John Bulmer, too, lugged from the grave for your +delectation. + +I presume, however, to palliate the offence. The curious may find the gist +of what I narrate concerning Ormskirk in Heinrich Löwe's biography of the +man, and will there discover that with established facts I have not made +bold to juggle. Only when knowledge failed have I bridged the void with +speculation. Perhaps I have guessed wrongly: the feat is not unhuman, and +in provision against detection therein I can only protest that this lack of +omniscience was never due to malice; faithfully I have endeavored to deduce +from the known the probable, and in nothing to misrepresent to you this big +man of a little age, this trout among a school of minnows. + +Trout, mark you; I claim for Ormskirk no leviathan-ship. Rather I would +remind you of a passage from somewhat anterior memoirs: "The Emperor of +Lilliput is taller, by almost the breadth of my nail, than any of his +court, which alone is enough to strike an awe into his beholders." + +This, however, is not the place to expatiate on Ormskirk's extraordinary +career; his rise from penury and obscurity, tempered indeed by gentle +birth, to the priviest secrets of his Majesty's council,--climbing +the peerage step by step, as though that institution had been a +garden-ladder,--may be read of in the history books. + +"I collect titles as an entomologist does butterflies," he is recorded to +have said: "and I find the gaudier ones the cheapest. My barony I got for +a very heinous piece of perjury, my earldom for not running away until the +latter end of a certain battle, my marquisate for hoodwinking a half-senile +Frenchman, and my dukedom for fetching in a quack doctor when he was sore +needed by a lady whom the King at that time delighted to honor." + +It was, you observe, a day of candors. + + +I + +The Duke of Ormskirk, then (one gleans from Löwe's pages), dismissed from +mind the Audaine conspiracy. It was a pity to miss the salutary effect of a +few political executions just then, but after all there was nothing to be +done about it. So the Duke turned to the one consolation offered by the +affair, and set out for Halvergate House, the home of Marian Heleigh's +father. There one finds him, six days later, deep in a consultation with +his secretary, which in consideration of the unseasonable warmth was held +upon the east terrace. + +"Yes, I think we had better have the fellow hanged on the thirteenth," said +Ormskirk, as he leisurely affixed his signature. "The date seems eminently +appropriate. Now the papers concerning the French treaty, if you please, +Mr. Langton." + +The impassive-faced young man who sat opposite placed a despatch-box +between them. "These were sent down from London only last night, sir. +Mr. Morfit [Footnote: Perhaps the most adroit of all the many spies in +Ormskirk's employment. It was this same Morfit who in 1756 accompanied +Damiens into France as far as Calais; and see page 16.] has been somewhat +dilatory." + +"Eh, it scarcely matters. I looked them over in bed this morning and found +them quite correct, Mr. Langton, quite--Why, heyday!" the Duke demanded, +"what's this? You have brought me the despatch-box from my dresser--not, +as I distinctly told you, from the table by my bed. Nay, I have had quite +enough of mistakes concerning despatch-boxes, Mr. Langton." + +Mr. Langton stammered that the error was natural. Two despatch-boxes were +in appearances so similar-- + +"Never make excuses, Mr. Langton. '_Qui s'excuse--_' You can complete the +proverb, I suppose. Bring me Morfit's report this afternoon, then. Yes, +that appears to be all. You may go now, Mr. Langton. No, you may leave that +box, I think, since it is here. O man, man, a mistake isn't high treason! +Go away, Mr. Langton! you annoy me." + +Left alone, the Duke of Ormskirk sat for a while, tapping his fingers +irresolutely against the open despatch-box. He frowned a little, for, with +fair reason to believe Tom Langton his son, he found the boy too stolid, +too unimaginative, to go far. It seemed to Ormskirk that none of his +illegitimate children displayed any particular promise, and he sighed. Then +he took a paper from the despatch-box, and began to read. + +He sat, as one had said, upon the east terrace of Halvergate House. Behind +him a tall yew-hedge shut off the sunlight from the table where he and +Tom Langton had earlier completed divers businesses; in front of him a +balustrade, ivy-covered, and set with flower-pots of stone, empty as yet, +half screened the terraced gardens that sank to the artificial lake below. + +The Duke could see only a vast expanse of sky and a stray bit of Halvergate +printing the horizon with turrets, all sober gray save where the two +big copper cupolas of the south façade burned in the April sun; but by +bending forward you glimpsed close-shaven lawns dotted with clipped trees +and statues,--as though, he reflected, Glumdalclitch had left her toys +scattered haphazard about a green blanket--and the white of the broad +marble stairway descending to the sunlit lake, and, at times, the flash +of a swan's deliberate passage across the lake's surface. All white and +green and blue the vista was, and of a monastic tranquillity, save for +the plashing of a fountain behind the yew-hedge and the grumblings of an +occasional bee that lurched complainingly on some by-errand of the hive. + +Presently his Grace of Ormskirk replaced the papers in the despatch-box, +and, leaning forward, sighed. "_Non_ _sum qualis eram sub bonæ regno +Cynaræ_," said his Grace of Ormskirk. He had a statesman-like partiality +for the fag-end of an alcaic. + +Then he lifted his head at the sound of a girl's voice. Somewhere rearward +to the hedge the girl idly sang--an old song of Thomas Heywood's,--in a +serene contralto, low-pitched and effortless, but very sweet. Smilingly the +Duke beat time. + +Sang the girl: + + "Pack clouds away, and welcome, day! + With night we banish sorrow: + Sweet air, blow soft; mount, lark, aloft, + To give my love good-morrow. + Wings from the wind to please her mind, + Notes from the lark I'll borrow: + Bird, prune thy wing; nightingale, sing, + To give my love good-morrow." + +And here the Duke chimed in with a sufficiently pleasing baritone: + + "To give my love good-morrow, + Notes from them all I'll borrow." + +"O heavens!" spoke the possessor of the contralto, "I would have thought +you were far too busy sending people to gaol and arranging their execution, +and so on, to have any time for music. I am going for a walk in the forest, +Jack." Considering for a moment, she added, "You may come, too, if you +like." + +But the concession was made so half-heartedly that in the instant the +Duke of Ormskirk raised a dissenting hand. "I would not annoy you for an +emperor's ransom. Go in peace, my child." + +Lady Marian Heleigh stood at an opening in the yew-hedge and regarded him +for a lengthy interval in silence. Slender, men called her, and women "a +bean pole." There was about her a great deal of the child and something of +the wood-nymph. She had abundant hair, the color of a dead oak-leaf, and +her skin was clear, with a brown tinge. Her eyes puzzled you by being +neither brown nor green consistently; no sooner had you convicted them of +verdancy than they shifted to the hue of polished maple, and vice versa; +but they were too large for her face, which narrowed rather abruptly +beneath a broad, low forehead, and they flavored her aspect with the shrewd +innocence of a kitten. She was by ordinary grave; but, animated, her +countenance quickened with somewhat the glow of a brown diamond; then her +generous eyes flashed and filmed like waters moving under starlight, then +you knew she was beautiful. All in all, you saw in Marian a woman designed +to be petted, a Columbine rather than a Cleopatra; her lures would never +shake the stability of a kingdom, but would inevitably gut its toy-shops; +and her departure left you meditative less of high enterprises than of +buying something for her. + +Now Marian considered her betrothed, and seemed to come at last to a +conclusion that skirted platitude. "Jack, two people can be fond of each +other without wanting to be together all the time. And I really am fond of +you, Jack." + +"I would be a fool if I questioned the first statement," rejoined the Duke; +"and if I questioned the second, very miserable. Nevertheless, you go in +pursuit of strange gods, and I decline to follow." + +Her eyebrows interrogated him. + +"You are going," the Duke continued, "in pursuit of gods beside whom I +esteem Zidonian Ashtoreth, and Chemosh, and Milcom, the abomination of +the Ammonites, to be commendable objects of worship. You will pardon my +pedantic display of learning, for my feelings are strong. You are going +to sit in the woods. You will probably sit under a youngish tree, and its +branches will sway almost to the ground and make a green, sun-steeped tent +about you, as though you sat at the heart of an emerald. You will hear the +kindly wood-gods go steathily about the forest, and you will know that they +are watching you, but you will never see them. From behind every tree-bole +they will watch you; you feel it, but you never, never quite see them. +Presently the sweet, warm odors of the place and its perpetual whispering +and the illimitably idiotic boasting of the birds,--that any living +creature should be proud of having constructed one of their nasty little +nests is a reflection to baffle understanding,--this hodge-podge of +sensations, I say, will intoxicate you. Yes, it will thoroughly intoxicate +you, Marian, and you sit there quite still, in a sort of stupor, drugged +into the inebriate's magnanimity, firmly believing that the remainder of +your life will be throughout of finer texture,--earth-spurning, free from +all pettiness, and at worst vexed only by the noblest sorrows. Bah!" cried +the Duke; "I have no patience with such nonsense! You will believe it to +the tiniest syllable, that wonderful lying message which April whispers to +every living creature that is young,--then you will return to me, a slim, +star-eyed Mænad, and will see that I am wrinkled. But do you go your ways, +none the less, for April is waiting for you yonder,--beautiful, mendacious, +splendid April. And I? Faith, April has no message for me, my dear." + +He laughed, but with a touch of wistfulness; and the girl came to him, +laying her hand upon his arm, surprised into a sort of hesitant affection. + +"How did you know, Jack? How did you, know that--things, invisible, +gracious things, went about the spring woods? I never thought that you knew +of them. You always seemed so sensible. I have reasoned it out, though," +Marian went on, sagaciously wrinkled as to the brow. "They are probably the +heathen fauns and satyrs and such,--one feels somehow that they are all +men. Don't you, Jack? Well, when the elder gods were sent packing from +Olympus there was naturally no employment left for these sylvan folk. So +April took them into her service. Each year she sends them about every +forest on her errands: she sends them to make up daffodil-cups, for +instance, which I suppose is difficult, for evidently they make them out +of sunshine; or to pencil the eyelids of the narcissi--narcissi are brazen +creatures, Jack, and use a deal of kohl; or to marshal the fleecy young +clouds about the sky; or to whistle the birds up from the south. Oh, she +keeps them busy, does April! And 'tis true that if you be quite still you +can hear them tripping among the dead leaves; and they watch you--with +very bright, twinkling little eyes, I think,--but you never see them. +And always, always there is that enormous whispering,--half-friendly, +half-menacing,--as if the woods were trying to tell you something. 'Tis +not only the foliage rustling.... No, I have often thought it sounded like +some gigantic foreigner--some Titan probably,--trying in his own queer +and outlandish language to tell you something very important, something +that means a deal to you, and to you in particular. Has not anybody ever +understood him?" + +He smiled. "And I, too, have dwelt in Arcadia," said his Grace of Ormskirk. +"Yes, I once heard April's message, Marian, for all my crow's-feet. But +that was a long while ago, and perhaps I have forgotten it. I cannot tell, +my dear. It is only from April in her own person that one hears this +immemorial message. And as for me? Eh, I go into the April woods, and I +find trees there of various sizes that pay no attention to me, and shrill, +dingy little birds that deafen me, and it may be a gaudy flower or two, +and, in any event, I find a vast quantity of sodden, decaying leaves to +warn me the place is no fitting haunt for a gentleman afflicted with +rheumatism. So I come away, my dear." + +Marian looked him over for a moment. "You are not really old," she said, +with rather conscious politeness. "And you are wonderfully well-preserved. +Why, Jack, do you mind--not being foolish?" she demanded, on a sudden. + +He debated the matter. Then, "Yes," the Duke of Ormskirk conceded, "I +suppose I do, at the bottom of my heart, regret that lost folly. A part +of me died, you understand, when it vanished, and it is not exhilarating +to think of one's self as even partially dead. Once--I hardly know"--he +sought the phrase,--"once this was a spacious and inexplicable world, with +a mystery up every lane and an adventure around each street-corner; a +world inhabited by most marvelous men and women,--some amiable, and some +detestable, but every one of them very interesting. And now I miss the +wonder of it all. You will presently discover, my dear, that youth is only +an ingenious prologue to whet one's appetite for a rather dull play. Eh, I +am no pessimist,--one may still find satisfaction in the exercise of mind +and body, in the pleasures of thought and taste and in other titillations +of one's faculties. Dinner is good and sleep, too, is excellent. But we men +and women tend, upon too close inspection, to appear rather paltry flies +that buzz and bustle aimlessly about, and breed perhaps, and eventually +die, and rot, and are swept away from this fragile window-pane of time that +opens on eternity." + +"If you are, indeed, the sort of person you describe," said Marian, +reflectively, "I do not at all blame April for having no communication with +anyone possessed of such extremely unpleasant opinions. But for my own +part, I shall never cease to wonder what it is that the woods whisper +about." + +Appraising her, he hazarded a cryptic question, "Vase of delights, and have +you never--cared?" + +"Why, yes, I think so," she answered, readily enough. "At least, I used +to be very fond of Humphrey Degge,--that is the Marquis of Venour's place +yonder, you know, just past the spur of the forest,--but he was only a +younger son, so of course Father wouldn't hear of it. That was rather +fortunate, as Humphrey by and by went mad about Dorothy's blue eyes and +fine shape,--I think her money had a deal to do with it, too, and in any +event, she will be fat as a pig at thirty,--and so we quarrelled. And I +minded it--at first. And now--well, I scarcely know." Marian hesitated. "He +was a handsome man, but that ridiculous cavalry moustache of his was so +bristly--" + +"I beg your pardon?" said the Duke. + +"--that it disfigured him dreadfully," said she, with firmness. She had +colored. + +His Grace of Ormskirk was moved to mirth. "Child, child, you are so +deliciously young it appears a monstrous crime to marry you to an old +fellow like me!" He took her firm, soft hand in his. "Are you quite sure +you can endure me, Marian?" + +"Why, but of course I want to marry you," she said, naïvely surprised. "How +else could I be Duchess of Ormskirk?" + +Again he chuckled. "You are a worldly little wretch," he stated; "but if +you want my title for a new toy, it is at your service. And now be off with +you,--you and your foolish woods, indeed!" + +Marian went a slight distance and then turned about, troubled. "I am really +very fond of you, Jack," she said, conscientiously. + +"Be off with you!" the Duke scolded. "You should be ashamed of yourself to +practice such flatteries and blandishments on a defenceless old gentleman. +You had best hurry, too, for if you don't I shall probably kiss you," he +threatened. "I, also," he added, with point. + +She blew him a kiss from her finger-tips and went away singing. + +Sang Marian: + + "Blackbird and thrush, in every bush, + Stare, linnet, and cock-sparrow, + You pretty elves, amongst yourselves, + Sing my fair love good-morrow. + To give my love good-morrow, + Sing birds, in every furrow." + + +II + +Left to his own resources, the Duke of Ormskirk sat down beside the table +and fell to making irrelevant marks upon a bit of paper. He hummed the air +of Marian's song. There was a vague contention in his face. Once he put +out his hand toward the open despatch-box, but immediately he sighed and +pushed, it farther from him. Presently he propped his chin upon both hands +and stayed in the attitude for a long while, staring past the balustrade at +the clear, pale sky of April. + +Thus Marian's father, the Earl of Brudenel, found Ormskirk. The Earl +was lean and gray, though only three years older than his prospective +son-in-law, and had been Ormskirk's intimate since boyhood. Ormskirk had +for Lord Brudenel's society the liking that a successful person usually +preserves for posturing in the gaze of his outrivalled school-fellows: +Brudenel was an embodied and flattering commentary as to what a less able +man might make of chances far more auspicious than Ormskirk ever enjoyed. +All failure the Earl's life had been; in London they had long ago forgotten +handsome Harry Heleigh and the composure with which he nightly shoved his +dwindling patrimony across the gaming-table; about Halvergate men called +him "the muddled Earl," and said of him that his heart died, with his young +wife some eighteen years back. Now he vegetated in the home of his fathers, +contentedly, a veteran of life, retaining still a mild pride in his past +vagaries; [Footnote: It was then well said of him by Claridge, "It is +Lord Henry Heleigh's vanity to show that he is a man of pleasure as well +as of business; and thus, in settlement, the expedition he displays +toward a fellow-gambler is equitably balanced by his tardiness toward +a too-credulous shoemaker."] and kindly time had armed him with the +benumbing, impenetrable indifference of the confessed failure. He was +abstractedly courteous to servants, and he would not, you felt, have given +even to an emperor his undivided attention. For the rest, the former +wastrel had turned miser, and went noticeably shabby as a rule, but this +morning he was trimly clothed, for he was returning homeward from the +quarter-sessions at Winstead. + +"Dreamer!" said the Earl. "I do not wonder that you grow fat." + +The Duke smiled up at him. "Confound you, Harry!" said he, "I had just +overreached myself into believing I had made what the world calls a mess +of my career and was supremely happy. There are disturbing influences +abroad to-day." He waved his hand toward the green-and-white gardens. "Old +friend, you permit disreputable trespassers about Halvergate. 'See you not +Goldy-locks there, in her yellow gown and green sleeves? the profane pipes, +the tinkling timbrels?' Spring is at her wiles yonder,--Spring, the liar, +the queen-cheat, Spring that tricks all men into happiness." + +"'Fore Gad," the Earl capped his quotation, "if the heathen man could stop +his ears with wax against the singing woman of the sea, then do you the +like with your fingers against the trollop of the forest." + +"Faith, time seals them firmlier than wax. You and I may sit snug now with +never a quicker heart-beat for all her lures. Yet I seem to remember,--once +a long while ago when we old fellows were somewhat sprier,--I, too, seem to +remember this Spring-magic." + +"Indeed," observed the Earl, seating himself ponderously, "if you refer to +a certain inclination at that period of the year toward the likeliest wench +in the neighborhood, so do I. 'Tis an obvious provision of nature, I take +it, to secure the perpetuation of the species. Spring comes, and she sets +us all a-mating--humanity, partridges, poultry, pigs, every blessed one of +us she sets a-mating. Propagation, Jack--propagation is necessary, d'ye +see; because," the Earl conclusively demanded, "what on earth would become +of us if we didn't propagate?" + +"The argument is unanswerable," the Duke conceded. "Yet I miss it,--this +Spring magic that no longer sets the blood of us staid fellows a-fret." + +"And I," said Lord Brudenel, "do not. It got me into the deuce of a scrape +more than once." + +"Yours is the sensible view, no doubt....Yet I miss it. Ah, it is not only +the wenches and the red lips of old years,--it is not only that at this +season lasses' hearts grow tender. There are some verses--" The Duke +quoted, with a half-guilty air: + + "Now I loiter, and dream to the branches swaying + In furtive conference,--high overhead-- + Atingle with rumors that Winter is sped + And over his ruins a world goes Maying. + + "Somewhere--impressively,--people are saying + Intelligent things (which their grandmothers said), + While I loiter, and dream to the branches swaying + In furtive conference, high overhead." + +"Verses!" The Earl snorted. "At your age!" + + "Here the hand of April, unwashed from slaying + Earth's fallen tyrant--for Winter is dead,-- + Uncloses anemones, staining them red: + And her daffodils guard me in squads,--displaying + Intrepid lances lest wisdom tread + Where I loiter and dream to the branches' swaying-- + +"Well, Harry, and to-day I cannot do so any longer. That is what I most +miss,--the ability to lie a-sprawl in the spring grass and dream out an +uncharted world,--a dream so vivid that, beside it, reality grew tenuous, +and the actual world became one of childhood's shrug-provoking bugbears +dimly remembered." + +"I do not understand poetry," the Earl apologetically observed. "It appears +to me unreasonable to advance a statement simply because it happens to +rhyme with a statement you have previously made. And that is what all +you poets do. Why, this is very remarkable," said Lord Brudenel, with a +change of tone; "yonder is young Humphrey Degge with Marian. I had thought +him in bed at Tunbridge. Did I not hear something of an affair with a +house-breaker--?" + +Then the Earl gave an exclamation, for in full view of them Lord Humphrey +Degge was kissing Lord Brudenel's daughter. + +"Oh, the devil!" said the Earl. "Oh, the insolent young ape!" + +"Nay," said the Duke, restraining him; "not particularly insolent, Harry. +If you will observe more closely you will see that Marian does not exactly +object to his caresses--quite the contrary, I would say, I told you that +you should not permit Spring about the premises." + +The Earl wheeled in an extreme of astonishment. "Come, come, sir! she is +your betrothed wife! Do you not intend to kill the fellow?" + +"My faith, why?" said his Grace of Ormskirk, with a shrug. "As for +betrothals, do you not see that she is already very happily paired?" + +In answer Brudenel raised his hands toward heaven, in just the contention +of despair and rage appropriate to parental affection when an excellent +match is imperilled by a chit's idiocy. + +Marian and Lord Humphrey Degge were mounting from the scrap of forest that +juts from Pevis Hill, like a spur from a man's heel, between Agard Court +and Halvergate. Their progress was not conspicuous for celerity. Now they +had attained to the tiny, elm-shadowed plateau beyond the yew-hedge, +and there Marian paused. Two daffodils had fallen from the great +green-and-yellow cluster in her left hand. Humphrey Degge lifted them, +and then raised to his mouth the slender fingers that reached toward the +flowers. The man's pallor, you would have said, was not altogether due to +his recent wound. + +She stood looking up at him, smiling a little timidly, her teeth glinting +through parted lips, her eyes star-fire, her cheeks blazoning gules in his +honor; she seemed not to breathe at all. A faint twinge woke in the Duke +of Ormskirk's heart. Most women smiled upon him, but they smiled beneath +furtive eyes, sometimes beneath rapacious eyes, and many smiled with +reddened lips which strove, uneasily, to provoke a rental; how long was it +he wondered, simply, since any woman had smiled as Marian smiled now, for +him? + +"I think it is a dream," said Marian. + +From the vantage of the yew-hedge, "I would to Heaven I could think so, +too," observed her father. + + +III + +The younger people had passed out of sight. But from the rear of the hedge +came to the Duke and Lord Brudenel, staring blankly at each other across +the paper-littered table, a sort of duet. First tenor, then contralto, then +tenor again,--and so on, with many long intervals of silence, during which +you heard the plashing of the fountain, grown doubly audible, and, it might +be, the sharp, plaintive cry of a bird intensified by the stillness. + +"I think it is a dream," said Marian.... + +"What eyes you have, Marian!" + +"But you have not kissed the littlest finger of all. See, it is quite stiff +with indignation." + +"They are green, and brown, and yellow--O Marian, there are little gold +specks in them like those in _eau de Dantzig_! They are quite wonderful +eyes, Marian. And your hair is all streaky gold-and-brown. You should not +have two colors in your hair, Marian. Marian, did any one ever tell you +that you are very beautiful?" + +Silence. "Pee-weet!" said a bird. "Tweet?" + +And Marian replied: "I am devoted to Dorothy, of course, but I have never +admired her fashion of making advances to every man she meets. Yes, she +does." + +"Nay, 'twas only her money that lured me, to do her justice. It appeared so +very sensible to marry an heiress.... But how can any man be sensible so +long as he is haunted by the memory of your eyes? For see how bright they +are,--see, here in the water. Two stars have fallen into the fountain, +Marian." + +"You are handsomer so. Your nose is too short, but here in the fountain you +are quite handsome--" + +"Marian,--" + +"I wonder how many other women's fingers you have kissed--like that. Ah, +don't tell me, Humphrey! Humphrey, promise me that you will always lie to +me when I ask you about those other women. Lie to me, my dear, and I will +know that you are lying and love you all the better for it.... You should +not have told me about Dorothy. How often did you kiss all of Dorothy's +finger-tips one by one, in just that foolish, dear way?" + +"But who was this Dorothy you speak of, Marian? I have forgotten. Oh, +yes--we quarrelled--over some woman,--and I went away. I left you for a +mere heiress, Marian. You! And five days, ago while I lay abed, wounded, +they told me that you, were to marry Ormskirk. I thought I would go mad.... +Eh, I remember now. But what do these things matter? Is it not of far +greater importance that the sunlight turns your hair to pure topaz?" + +"Ah, my hair, my eyes! Is it these you care for? You would not love me, +then, if I were old and ugly?" + +"Eh,--I love you." + +"Animal!" + +There was a longer silence now. "Tweet!" said a bird, pertly. + +Then Marian said, "Let us go to my father." + +"To tell him--?" + +"Why, that I love you, I suppose, and that I cannot marry Jack, not even +to be a duchess. Oh, I did so much want to be a duchess! But when you came +back to me yonder in the forest, somehow I stopped wanting anything more. +Something--I hardly know--something seemed to say, as you came striding +through the dead leaves, laughing and so very pale,--something seemed to +say, 'You love him'--oh, quite audibly." + +"Audibly! Why, the woods whispered it, the birds trilled it, screamed +it, the very leaves underfoot crackled assent. Only they said, 'You love +her--the girl yonder with glad, frightened eyes, Spring's daughter.' Oh, I +too, heard it, Marian! 'Follow,' the birds sang, 'follow, follow, follow, +for yonder is the heart's desire!" + +The Duke of Ormskirk raised his head, his lips sketching a whistle. "Ah! +ah!" he muttered. "Eureka! I have recaptured it--the message of April." + + +IV + +When these two had gone the Duke flung out his hands in a comprehensive +gesture of giving up the entire matter. "Well," said he, "you see how it +is!" + +"I do," Lord Brudenel assented. "And if you intend to sit patient under it, +I, at least, wear a sword. Confound it, Jack, do you suppose I am going +to have promiscuous young men dropping out of the skies and embracing my +daughter?" The Earl became forceful in his language. + +"Harry,--" the Duke began. + +"The fellow hasn't a penny--not a stick or a stiver to his name! He's only +a rascally, impudent younger son--and even Venour has nothing except Agard +Court yonder! That--that crow's nest!" Lord Brudenel spluttered. "They +mooned about together a great deal a year ago, but I thought nothing of +it; then he went away, and she never spoke of him again. Never spoke of +him--oh, the jade!" + +The Duke of Ormskirk considered the affair, a mild amusement waking in his +plump face. + +"Old friend," said he, at length, "it is my opinion that we are perilously +near to being a couple of fools. We planned this marriage, you and I--dear, +dear, we planned it when Marian was scarcely out of her cradle! But we +failed to take nature into the plot, Harry. It was sensible--Oh, granted! +I obtained a suitable mistress for Ingilby and Bottreaux Towers, a +magnificent ornament for my coach and my opera-box; while you--your pardon, +old friend, if I word it somewhat grossly,--you, in effect, obtained a +wealthy and not uninfluential husband for your daughter. Nay, I think you +are fond of me, but that is beside the mark; it was not Jack Bulmer who was +to marry your daughter, but the Duke of Ormskirk. The thing was as logical +as a sale of bullocks,--value for value. But now nature intervenes, +and"--he snapped his fingers,--"eh, well, since she wants this Humphrey +Degge, of course she must have him." + +Lord Brudenel mentioned several penalties which he would voluntarily incur +in case of any such preposterous marriage. + +"Your style," the Duke regretfully observed, "is somewhat more original +than your subject. You have a handsome daughter to barter, and you want +your price. The thing is far from uncommon. Yet you shall have your price, +Harry. What estate do you demand of your son-in-law?" + +"What the devil are you driving at?" said Lord Brudenel. + +Composedly the Duke of Ormskirk spread out his hands. "You have, in effect, +placed Marian in the market," he said, "and I offer to give Lord Humphrey +Degge the money with which to purchase her." + +"Tis evident," the Earl considered, "that you are demented!" + +"Because I willingly part with money? But then I have a great deal of +money. I have money, and I have power, and the King occasionally pats me +upon the shoulder, and men call me 'your Grace,' instead of 'my Lord,' as +they do you. So I ought to be very happy, ought I not, Harry? Ah, yes, +I ought to be entirely happy, because I have had everything, with the +unimportant exception of the one thing I wanted." + +But Lord Brudenel had drawn himself erect, stiffly. "I am to understand, +then, from this farrago, that on account of the--um--a--incident we have +just witnessed you decline to marry my daughter?" + +"I would sooner cut off my right hand," said the Duke, "for I am fonder of +Marian than I am of any other living creature." + +"Oh, very well!" the Earl conceded, sulkily. "Umfraville wants her. He is +only a marquis, of course, but so far as money is concerned, I believe +he is a thought better off than you. I would have preferred you as a +son-in-law, you understand, but since you withdraw--why, then, let it be +Umfraville." + +Now the Duke looked up into his face for some while. "You would do that! +You would sell Marian to Umfraville--[Footnote: "Whose entrance blushing +Satan did deny Lest hell be thought no better than a sty."] to a person who +unites the continence of a partridge with the graces of a Berkshire hog--to +that lean whoremonger, to that disease-rotted goat! Because he has the +money! Why, Harry, what a car you are!" + +Lord Brudenel bowed, "My Lord Duke, you are to-day my guest. I apprehend +you will presently be leaving Halvergate, however, and as soon--as that +regrettable event takes place, I shall see to it a friend wait upon you +with the length of my sword. Meanwhile I venture to reserve the privilege +of managing my family affairs at my own discretion." + +"I do not fight with hucksters," the Duke flung at him, "and you are one. +Oh, you peddler! Can you not understand that I am trying to buy your +daughter's happiness?" + +"I intend that my daughter shall make a suitable match," replied the Earl, +stubbornly, "and she shall. If Marian is a sensible girl--and, barring +to-day, I have always esteemed her such,--she will find happiness in +obeying her father's mandates: otherwise--" He waved the improbable +contingency aside. + +"Sensible! Faith, can you not see, even now, that to be sensible is not the +highest wisdom? You and I are sensible as the world goes,--and in God's +name, what good does it do us? Here we sit, two miserable and empty-veined +old men squabbling across a deal-table, breaking up a friendship of +thirty years. And yonder Marian and this Humphrey Degge--who are +within a measurable distance of insanity, if their conversation be the +touchstone,--yet tread the pinnacles of some seventh heaven of happiness. +April has brought them love, Harry. Oh, I concede their love is folly! But +it is all folly, Harry Heleigh. Purses, titles, blue ribbons, and the envy +of our fellows are the toys which we struggle for, we sensible men; and in +the end we find them only toys, and, gaining them, we gain only weariness. +And love, too, is a toy; but, gaining love, we gain, at least, a temporary +happiness. There is the difference, Harry Heleigh." + +"Oh, have done with your, balderdash!" said Lord Brudenel. He spoke +irritably, for he knew his position to be guaranteed by common-sense, and +his slow wrath was kindling at opposition. + +His Grace of Ormskirk rose to his feet, all tension. In the act his hand +struck against the open despatch-box; afterward, with a swift alteration +of countenance, he overturned this box and scattered the contents about +the table. For a moment he seemed to forget Lord Brudenel; quite without +warning Ormskirk flared into rage. + +"Harry Heleigh, Harry Heleigh!" he cried, as he strode across the terrace, +and caught Lord Brudenel roughly by the shoulder, "are you not content to +go to your grave without killing another woman? Oh, you dotard miser!--you +haberdasher!--haven't I offered you money, an isn't money the only thing +you are now capable of caring for? Give the girl to Degge, you huckster!" + +Lord Brudenel broke from the Duke's grasp. Brudenel was asplutter with +anger. "I will see you damned first. You offer money,--I fling the money +in your fat face. Look you, you have just insulted, me, and now you +offer--money! Another insult. John Bulmer, I would not accept an affront +like this from an archangel. You are my guest, but I am only flesh and +blood. I swear to you this is the most deliberate act of my life." Lord +Brudenel struck him full upon the cheek. + +"Pardon," said the Duke of Ormskirk. He stood rigid, his arms held stiff at +his sides, his hands clenched; the red mark showed plain against an ashy +countenance. "Pardon me for a moment." Once or twice he opened and shut his +eyes like an automaton. "And stop behaving so ridiculously. I cannot fight +you. I have other matters to attend to. We are wise, Harry,--you and I. +We know that love sometimes does not endure; sometimes it flares up +at a girl's glance, quite suddenly, and afterward smoulders out into +indifference or even into hatred. So, say we, let all sensible people marry +for money, for then in any event you get what you marry for,--a material +benefit, a tangible good, which does no vanish when the first squabble, or +perhaps the first gray hair, arrives. That is sensible; but women, Harry, +are not always sensible--" + +"Draw, you coward!" Lord Brudenel snarled at him. The Earl had already +lugged out his ineffectual dress sword, and would have been, as he stood on +guard, a ludicrous figure had he not been rather terrible. His rage shook +him visibly, and his obstinate mouth twitched and snapped like that of a +beast cornered. All gray he was, and the sun glistened on his gray tye-wig +as he waited. His eyes were coals. + +But Ormskirk had regained composure. "You know that I am not a coward," the +Duke said, equably. "I have proven it many times. Besides, you overlook two +details. One is that I have no sword with me, I am quite unarmed. The other +detail is that only gentlemen fight duels, and just now we are hucksters, +you and I, chaffering over Marian's happiness. So I return to my +bargaining. You will not sell Marian's happiness to me for money? Why, +then--remember, we are only hucksters, you and I,--I will purchase it by a +dishonorable action. I will show you a woman's letters,--some letters I was +going to burn romantically before I married--Instead, I wish you to read +them." + +He pushed the papers lying upon the table toward Lord Brudenel. Afterward +Ormskirk turned away and stood looking over the ivy-covered balustrade into +the gardens below. All white and green and blue the vista was, and of a +monastic tranquillity, save for the plashing of the fountain behind the +yew-hedge. From the gardens at his feet irresolute gusts brought tepid +woodland odors. He heard the rustling of papers, heard Lord Brudenel's +sword fall jangling to the ground. The Duke turned. + +"And for twenty years I have been eating my heart out with longing for +her," the Earl said. "And--and I thought you were my friend, Jack." + +"She was not your wife when I first knew her. But John Bulmer was a +penniless nobody,--so they gave her to you, an earl's heir, those sensible +parents of hers. I never saw her again, though--as you see,--she wrote to +me sometimes. And her parents did the sensible thing; but I think they +killed her, Harry." + +"Killed her?" Lord Brudenel echoed, stupidly. Then on a sudden it was +singular to see the glare in his eyes puffed out like a candle. "I killed +her," he whispered; "why, I killed Alison,--I!" He began to laugh. "Now +that is amusing, because she was the one thing in the world I ever loved. +I remember that she used to shudder when I kissed her. I thought it was +because she was only a brown and thin and timid child, who would be wiser +in love's tricks by and by. Now I comprehend 'twas because every kiss was +torment to her, because every time I touched her 'twas torment. So she +died very slowly, did Alison,--and always I was at hand with my kisses, my +pet names, and my paddlings,--killing her, you observe, always urging her +graveward. Yes, and yet there is nothing in these letters to show how much +she must have loathed me!" he said, in a mild sort of wonder. He appeared +senile now, the shrunken and calamitous shell of the man he had been within +the moment. + +The Duke of Ormskirk put an arm about him. "Old friend, old friend!" said +he. + +"Why did you not tell me?" the Earl said. "I loved you, Jack. I worshipped +her. I would never willingly have seen you two unhappy." + +"Her parents would have done as you planned to do,--they would have given +their daughter to the next richest suitor. I was nobody then. So the wisdom +of the aged slew us, Harry,--slew Alison utterly, and left me with a living +body, indeed, but with little more. I do not say that body has not amused +itself. Yet I too, loved her, Harry Heleigh. And when I saw this new +Alison--for Marian is her mother, face, heart, and soul,--why, some wraith +of emotion stirred in me, some thrill, some not quite forgotten pulse. It +seemed Alison come back from the grave. Love did not reawaken, for youth's +fervor was gone out of me, yet presently I fell a-dreaming over my Madeira +on long winter evenings,--sedate and tranquil dreams of this new Alison +flitting about Ingilby, making the splendid, desolate place into a home. Am +old man's fancies, Harry,--fancies bred of my loneliness, for I am lonely +nowadays. But my dreams, I find, were not sufficiently comprehensive; for +they did not anticipate April,--and nature,--and Lord Humphrey Degge. We +must yield to that triumvirate, we sensible old men. Nay, we are wise as +the world goes, but we have learned, you and I, that to be sensible is not +the highest wisdom. Marian is her mother in soul, heart, and feature. Don't +let the old tragedy be repeated, Harry. Let her have this Degge! Let Marian +have her chance of being happy, for a year or two...." + +But Lord Brudenel had paid very little attention. "I suppose so," he said, +when the Duke had ended. "Oh, I suppose so. Jack, she was always kind and +patient and gentle, you understand, but she used to shudder when I kissed +her," he repeated, dully,--"shudder, Jack." He sat staring at his sword +lying there on the ground, as though it fascinated him. + +"Ah, but,--old friend," the Duke cried, with his hand upon Lord Brudenel's +shoulder, "forgive me! It was the only way." + +Lord Brudenel rose to his feet. "Oh, yes! why, yes, I forgive you, if that +is any particular comfort to you. It scarcely seems of any importance, +though. The one thing which really matters is that I loved her, and I +killed her. Oh, beyond doubt, I forgive you. But now that you have made my +whole past a hideous stench to me, and have proven the love I was so proud +of--the one quite clean, quite unselfish thing in my life, I thought it, +Jack,--to have been only my lust vented on a defenceless woman,--why, just +now, I have not time to think of forgiveness. Yes, Marian may marry Degge +if she cares to. And I am sorry I took her mother away from you. I would +not have done it if I had known." + +Brudenel started away drearily, but when he had gone a little distance +turned back. + +"And the point of it is," he said, with a smile, "that I shall go on living +just as if nothing had happened, and shall probably live for a long, long +time. My body is so confoundedly healthy. How the deuce did you have the +courage to go on living?" he demanded, enviously. "You loved her and you +lost her. I'd have thought you would have killed yourself long ago." + +The Duke shrugged. "Yes, people do that in books. In books they have such +strong emotions--" + +Then Ormskirk paused for a heart-beat, looking down into the gardens. +Wonderfully virginal it all seemed to Ormskirk, that small portion of +a world upon the brink of renaissance: a tessellation of clean colors, +where the gravelled walkways were snow beneath the sun, and were in shadow +transmuted to dim violet tints; and for the rest, green ranging from the +sober foliage of yew and box and ilex to the pale glow of young grass +In the full sunlight; all green, save where the lake shone, a sapphire +green-girdled. Spring triumphed with a vaunting pageant. And in the +forest, in the air, even in the unplumbed sea-depths, woke the mating +impulse,--irresistible, borne as it might seem on the slow-rising tide +of grass that now rippled about the world. Everywhere they were mating; +everywhere glances allured and mouth met mouth, while John Bulmer went +alone without any mate or intimacy with anyone. + +Everywhere people were having emotions which Ormskirk envied. He had so few +emotions nowadays. Even all this posturing and talk about Alison Heleigh in +which he had just indulged began to savor somehow of play-acting. He had +loved Alison, of course, and that which he had said was true enough--in +a way,--but, after all, he had over-colored it. There had been in his +life so many interesting matters, and so many other women too, that the +loss of Alison could not be said to have blighted his existence quite +satisfactorily. No, John Bulmer had again been playing at the big emotions +which he heard about and coveted, just as at this very moment John Bulmer +was playing at being sophisticated and _blasé_... with only poor old Harry +for audience.... + +"A great deal of me did die," the Duke heard this John Bulmer +saying,--"all, I suppose, except my carcass, Harry. And it seemed hardly +worth the trouble to butcher that also." + +"No," Lord Brudenel conceded, "I suppose not. I wonder, d'ye know, will +anything ever again seem really worth the trouble of doing it?" + +The Duke of Ormskirk took his arm. "Fy, Harry, bid the daws seek their food +elsewhere, for a gentleman may not wear his heart upon his sleeve. Empires +crumble, and hearts break, and we are blessed or damned, as Fate elects; +but through it all we find comfort in the reflection that dinner is good, +and sleep, too, is excellent. As for the future--eh, well, if it mean +little to us, it means a deal to Alison's daughter. Let us go to them, +Harry." + + + + +VII + +IN THE SECOND APRIL + + +_As Played at Bellegarde, in the April of 1750_ + +"_This passion is in honest minds the strongest incentive that can move the +soul of man to laudable accomplishments. Is a man just? Let him fall in +love and grow generous. It immediately makes the good which is in him shine +forth in new excellencies, and the ill vanish away without the pain of +contrition, but with a sudden amendment of heart._" + + +DRAMATIS PERSONÆ + +DUKE OF ORMSKISK. + +DUC DE PUYSANGE, a true Frenchman, a pert, railing fribble, but at bottom a +man of parts. + +MARQUIS DE SOYECOURT, a brisk, conceited rake, and distant cousin to de +Puysange. + +CAZAIO, captain of brigands. + +DOM MICHEL FRÉGOSE, a lewd, rascally friar. + +GUITON, steward to de Puysange. + +PAWSEY, Ormskirk's man. + +ACHON, a knave. + +MICHAULT, another knave. + +DUCHESSE DE PUYSANGE. + +CLAIRE, sister to de Puysange, a woman of beauty and resolution, of a +literal humor. + +ATTENDANTS, BRIGANDS, and DRAGOONS; and, in the Proem, LORD HUMPHREY DEGGE +and LADY MARIAN HELEIGH. + + +SCENE + +First at Dover, thence shifting to Bellegarde-en-Poictesme and the adjacent +country. + + + + +IN THE SECOND APRIL + + +_PROEM:--More Properly an Apologue, and Treats of the Fallibility of Soap_ + +The Duke of Ormskirk left Halvergate on the following day, after +participation in two dialogues, which I abridge. + +Said the Duke to Lord Humphrey Degge: + +"You have been favored, sir, vastly beyond your deserts. I acquiesce, since +Fate is proverbially a lady, and to dissent were in consequence ungallant. +Shortly I shall find you more employment, at Dover, whither I am now going +to gull my old opponent and dear friend, Gaston de Puysange, in the matter +of this new compact between France and England. I shall look for you at +Dover, then, in three days' time." + +"And in vain, my Lord Duke," said the other. + +Now Ormskirk raised one eyebrow, after a fashion that he had. + +"Because I love Marian," said Lord Humphrey, "and because I mean to be less +unworthy of Marian than I have been heretofore. So that I can no longer be +your spy. Besides, in nature I lack aptitude for the trade. Eh, my Lord +Duke, have you already forgotten how I bungled the affair of Captain +Audaine and his associates?" + + +"But that was a maiden effort. And as I find--at alas! the cost of +decrepitude,--the one thing life teaches us is that many truisms are true. +'Practice makes perfect' is one of them. And faith, when you come to my +age, Lord Humphrey, you will not grumble at having to soil your hands +occasionally in the cause of common-sense." + +The younger man shook his head. "A week ago you would have found me +amenable enough to reason, since I was then a sensible person, and to be of +service to his Grace of Ormskirk was very sensible,--just as to marry Miss +Allonby, the young and beautiful heiress, was then the course pre-eminently +sensible. All the while I loved Marian, you understand. But I clung to +common-sense. Desperately I clung to common-sense. And yet--" He flung out +his hands. + +"Yes, there is by ordinary some plaguy _yet_," the Duke interpolated. + +"There is," cried Lord Humphrey Degge, "the swift and heart-grappling +recollection of the woman you gave up in the cause of common-sense,--roused +by some melody she liked, or some shade of color she was wont to wear, or +by hearing from other lips some turn of speech to which she was addicted. +My Lord Duke, that memory wakes on a sudden and clutches you by the throat, +and it chokes you. And one swears that common-sense--" + +"One swears that common-sense may go to the devil," said his Grace of +Ormskirk, "whence I don't say it didn't emanate! And one swears that, after +all, there is excellent stuff in you! Your idiotic conduct, sir, makes me +far happier than you know!" + +After some ten paces he turned, with a smile. "In the matter of soiling +one's hands--Personally I prefer them clean, sir, and particularly in the +case of Marian's husband. Had it been I, he must have stuck to prosaic +soap; with you in the rôle there is a difference. Faith, Lord Humphrey, +there is a decided difference, and if you be other than a monster of +depravity you will henceforth, I think, preserve your hands immaculate." + +To Marian the Duke said a vast number of things, prompted by a complaisant +thrill over the fact that, in view of the circumstances, his magnanimity +must to the unprejudiced appear profuse and his behavior tolerably heroic. + +"These are very absurd phrases," Marian considered, "since you will +never love anyone, I think--however much you may admire the color of her +eyes,--one-quarter so earnestly as you will always marvel at John Bulmer. +Or perhaps you have only to wait a little, Jack, till in her time and +season the elect woman shall come to you, just as she comes to all +men,--and then, for once in your existence, you will be sincere." + +"I go, provisionally, to seek this paragon at Dover," said his Grace of +Ormskirk, and he lifted her fingers toward his smiling lips; "but I shall +bear in mind, my dear, even in Dover, that sincerity is a devilishly +expensive virtue." + + +I + +It was on the thirteenth day of April that they signed the Second Treaty of +Dover, which not only confirmed its predecessor of Aix-la-Chapelle, but in +addition, with the brevity of lightning, demolished the last Stuarts' hope +of any further aid from France. And the French ambassador subscribed the +terms with a chuckle. + +"For on this occasion, Jean," he observed, as he pushed the paper from him, +"I think that honors are fairly even. You obtain peace at home, and in +India we obtain assistance for Dupleix; good, the benefit is quite mutual; +and accordingly, my friend, I must still owe you one requiting for that +Bavarian business." + +Ormskirk was silent until he had the churchwarden which he had just ignited +aglow. "That was the evening I had you robbed and beaten by footpads, was +it not? Faith, Gaston, I think you should rather be obliged to me, since it +taught you never to carry important papers in your pocket when you go about +your affairs of gallantry." + +"That beating with great sticks," the Duc de Puysange considered, "was the +height of unnecessity." + +And the Duke of Ormskirk shrugged. "A mere touch of verisimilitude, Gaston; +footpads invariably beat their victims. Besides, you had attempted to +murder me at Aix, you may remember." + +De Puysange was horrified. "My dear friend, when I set Villaneuve upon you +it was with express orders only to run you through the shoulder. Figure to +yourself: that abominable St. Severin had bribed your _chef_ to feed you +powdered glass in a ragout! But I dissented. 'Jean and I have been the +dearest enemies these ten years past,' I said. 'At every Court in Europe +we have lied to each other. If you kill him I shall beyond doubt presently +perish of ennui.' So, that France might escape a blow so crushing as the +loss of my services, St. Severin consented to disable you." + +"Believe me, I appreciate your intervention," Ormskirk stated, with his +usual sleepy smile; before this he had found amusement in the naïveté of +his friend's self-approbation. + +"Not so! Rather you are a monument of ingratitude," the other complained. +"You conceive, Villaneuve was in price exorbitant. I snap my fingers. +'For a comrade so dear,' I remark, 'I gladly employ the most expensive of +assassins.' Yet before the face of such magnanimity you grumble." The Duc +de Puysange spread out his shapely hands. "I murder you! My adored Jean, I +had as lief make love to my wife." + +Ormskirk struck his finger-tips upon the table. "Faith, I knew there was +something I intended to ask of you, I want you to get me a wife." + +"In fact," de Puysange observed, "warfare being now at an end, it is only +natural that you should resort to matrimony. I can assure you it is an +admirable substitute. But who is the lucky Miss, my little villain?" + +"Why, that is for you to settle," Ormskirk said. "I had hoped you might +know of some suitable person." + +"_Ma foi_, my friend, if I were arbiter and any wife would suit you, I +would cordially desire you to take mine, for when a woman so incessantly +resembles an angel in conduct, her husband inevitably desires to see her +one in reality." + +"You misinterpret me, Gaston. This is not a jest. I had always intended +to marry as soon as I could spare the time, and now that this treaty is +disposed of, my opportunity has beyond doubt arrived. I am practically at +leisure until the autumn. At latest, though, I must marry by August, +in order to get the honeymoon off my hands before the convocation of +Parliament. For there will have to be a honeymoon, I suppose." + +"It is customary," de Puysange said. He appeared to deliberate something +entirely alien to this reply, however, and now sat silent for a matter +of four seconds, his countenance profoundly grave. He was a hideous man, +[Footnote: For a consideration of the vexed and delicate question whether +or no Gaston de Puysange was grandson to King Charles the Second of +England, the reader is referred to the third chapter of La Vrillière's _De +Puysange et son temps_. The Duke's resemblance in person to that monarch +was undeniable.] with black beetling eyebrows, an enormous nose, and an +under-lip excessively full; his face had all the calculated ill-proportion +of a gargoyle, an ugliness so consummate and merry that in ultimate effect +it captivated. + +At last de Puysange began: "I think I follow you. It is quite proper that +you should marry. It is quite proper that a man who has done so much for +England should leave descendants to perpetuate his name, and with perhaps +some portion of his ability--no, Jean, I do not flatter,--serve the England +which is to his heart so dear. As a Frenchman I cannot but deplore that our +next generation may have to face another Ormskirk; as your friend who loves +you I say that this marriage will appropriately round a successful and +honorable and intelligent life. Eh, we are only men, you and I, and it is +advisable that all men should marry, since otherwise they might be so happy +in this colorful world that getting to heaven would not particularly tempt +them. Thus is matrimony a bulwark of religion." + +"You are growing scurrilous," Ormskirk complained, "whereas I am in perfect +earnest." + +"I, too, speak to the foot of the letter, Jean, as you will soon learn. I +comprehend that you cannot with agreeability marry an Englishwoman. You are +too much the personage. Possessing, as you notoriously possess, your pick +among the women of gentle degree--for none of them would her guardians nor +her good taste permit to refuse the great Duke of Ormskirk,--any choice +must therefore be a too robustious affrontment to all the others. If you +select a Howard, the Skirlaws have pepper in the nose; if a Beaufort, you +lose Umfraville's support,--and so on. Hey, I know, my dear Jean; your +affair with the Earl of Brudenel's daughter cost you seven seats in +Parliament, you may remember. How am I aware of this?--why, because I +habitually have your mail intercepted. You intercept mine, do you not? +Naturally; you would be a very gross and intolerable scion of the pig if +you did otherwise. _Eh bien_, let us get on. You might, of course, play +King Cophetua, but I doubt if it would amuse you, since Penelophons are +rare; it follows in logic that your wife must come from abroad. And whence? +Without question, from France, the land of adorable women. The thing is +plainly demonstrated; and in France, my dear, I have to an eyelash the +proper person for you." + +"Then we may consider the affair as settled," Ormskirk replied, "and should +you arrange to have the marriage take place upon the first of August,--if +possible, a trifle earlier,--I would be trebly your debtor." + +De Puysange retorted: "Beyond doubt I can adjust these matters. And yet, +my dear Jean, I must submit that it is not quite the act of a gentleman to +plunge into matrimony without even inquiring as to the dowry of your future +bride." + +"It is true," said Ormskirk, with a grimace; "I had not thought of her +portion. You must remember my attention is at present pre-empted by that +idiotic Ferrers business. How much am I to marry, then, Gaston?" + +"I had in mind," said the other, "my sister, the Demoiselle Claire de +Puysange,--" + +It was a day of courtesy when the minor graces were paramount. Ormskirk +rose and accorded de Puysange a salutation fitted to an emperor. "I entreat +your pardon, sir, for any _gaucherie_ of which I may have been guilty, and +desire to extend to you my appreciation of the honor you have done me." + +"It is sufficient, monsieur," de Puysange replied. And the two gravely +bowed again. + +Then the Frenchman resumed, in conversational tones: "I have but one +unmarried sister,--already nineteen, beautiful as an angel (in the eyes, at +least, of fraternal affection), and undoubtedly as headstrong as any devil +at present stoking the eternal fires below. You can conceive that the +disposal of such a person is a delicate matter. In Poictesme there is +no suitable match, and upon the other hand I grievously apprehend her +presentation at our Court, where, as Arouet de Voltaire once observed to +me, the men are lured into matrimony by the memories of their past sins, +and the women by the immunity it promises for future ones. In England, +where custom will permit a woman to be both handsome and chaste, I estimate +she would be admirably ranged. Accordingly, my dear Jean, behold a fact +accomplished. And now let us embrace, my brother!" + +This was done. The next day they settled the matter of dowry, jointure, the +widow's portion, and so on, and de Puysange returned to render his report +at Marly. The wedding had been fixed by the Frenchman for St. Anne's day, +and by Ormskirk, as an uncompromising churchman, for the twenty-sixth of +the following July. + + +II + +That evening the Duke of Ormskirk sat alone in his lodgings. His Grace +was very splendid in black-and-gold, wearing his two stars of the Garter +and the Thistle, for there was that night a ball at Lady Sandwich's, and +Royalty was to embellish it. In consequence, Ormskirk meant to show his +plump face there for a quarter of an hour; and the rooms would be too +hot (he peevishly reflected), and the light would tire his eyes, and +Laventhrope would button-hole him again about that appointment for +Laventhrope's son, and the King would give vent to some especially +fat-witted jest, and Ormskirk would apishly grin and applaud. And afterward +he would come home with a headache, and ghostly fiddles would vex him all +night long with their thin incessancy. + +"Accordingly," the Duke decided, "I shall not stir a step until eleven +o'clock. The King, in the ultimate, is only a tipsy, ignorant old German +debauchee, and I have half a mind to tell him so. Meantime, he can wait." + +The Duke sat down to consider this curious lassitude, this indefinite +vexation, which had possessed him. + +"For I appear to have taken a sudden dislike to the universe. It is +probably my liver. + +"In any event, I have come now to the end of my resources. For some +twenty-five years it has amused me to make a great man of John Bulmer. Now +that is done, and, like the Moorish fellow in the play, 'my occupation's +gone.' I am at the very top of the ladder, and I find it the dreariest +place in the world. There is nothing left to scheme for, and, besides, I am +tired. + +"The tiniest nerve in my body, the innermost cell of my brain, is tired +to-night. + +"I wonder if getting married will divert me? I doubt it. Of course I ought +to marry, but then it must be rather terrible to have a woman loitering +around you for the rest of your life. She will probably expect me to talk +to her; she will probably come into my rooms and sit there whenever the +inclination prompts her,--in a sentence, she will probably worry me to +death. Eh well!--that die is cast! + +"'Beautiful as an angel, and headstrong as a devil.' And what's her +name?--Oh, yes, Claire. That is a very silly name, and I suppose she is a +vixenish little idiot. However, the alliance is a sensible one. De Puysange +has had it in mind for some six months, I think, but certainly I did not +think he knew of my affair with Marian. Well, but he affects omniscience, +he delights in every small chicane. He is rather droll. Yesterday he knew +from the start that I was leading up to a proposal for his sister,--and yet +there we sat, two solemn fools, and played our tedious comedy to a finish. +_Eh bien!_ as he says, it is necessary to keep one's hand in. + +"'Beautiful as an angel, and headstrong as a devil'--Alison was not +headstrong." + +Ormskirk rose suddenly and approached an open window. It was a starless +sight, temperately cool, with no air stirring. Below was a garden of some +sort, and a flat roof which would be that of the stables, and beyond, +abrupt as a painted scene, a black wall of houses stood against a +steel-colored, vacant sky, reaching precisely to the middle of the vista. +Only a solitary poplar, to the rear of the garden, qualified this sombre +monotony of right angles. Ormskirk saw the world as an ugly mechanical +drawing, fashioned for utility, meticulously outlined with a ruler. Yet +there was a scent of growing things to nudge the senses. + +"No, Alison was different. And Alison has been dead near twenty years. +And God help me! I no longer regret even Alison. I should have been more +truthful in talking with poor Harry Heleigh. But, as always, the temptation +to be picturesque was irresistible. Besides, the truth is humiliating. + +"The real tragedy of life is to learn that it is not really tragic. To +learn that the world is gross, that it lacks nobility, that to considerate +persons it must be in effect quite unimportant,--here are commonplaces, +sweepings from the tub of the immaturest cynic. But to learn that you +yourself were thoughtfully constructed in harmony with the world you were +to live in, that you yourself are incapable of any great passion--eh, this +is an athletic blow to human vanity. Well! I acknowledge it. My love for +Alison Pleydell was the one sincere thing in my life. And it is dead. I do +not think of her once a month. I do not regret her except when I am tipsy +or bored or listening to music, and wish to fancy myself the picturesque +victim of a flint-hearted world. Which is a romantic lie; I move like a +man of card-board in a card-board world. Certain faculties and tastes and +mannerisms I undoubtedly possess, but if I have any personality at all, +I am not aware of it; I am a mechanism that eats and sleeps and clumsily +perambulates a ball that spins around a larger ball that revolves about +another, and so on, _ad infinitum_. Some day the mechanism will be broken. +Or it will slowly wear out, perhaps. And then it will go to the dust-heap. +And that will be the end of the great Duke of Ormskirk. + +"John Bulmer did not think so. It is true that John Bulmer was a +magnanimous fool,--Upon the other hand, John Bulmer would never have stared +out of an ugly window at an uglier landscape and have talked yet uglier +nonsense to it. He would have been off post-haste after the young person +who is 'beautiful as an angel and headstrong as a devil.' And afterward he +would have been very happy or else very miserable. I begin to think that +John Bulmer was more sensible than the great Duke of Ormskirk. I would--I +would that he were still alive." + +His Grace slapped one palm against his thigh with unwonted vigor. "Behold, +what I am longing for! I am longing for John Bulmer." + +Presently he sounded the gong upon his desk. And presently he said: "My +adorable Pawsey, the great Duke of Ormskirk is now going to pay his +respects to George Guelph, King of Britain, France, and Ireland, defender +of the faith. Duke of Brunswick and Lunenburg, and supreme head of the +Anglican and Hibernian Church. And to-morrow Mr. John Bulmer will set forth +upon a little journey into Poictesme. You will obligingly pack a valise. +No, I shall not require you,--for John Bulmer was entirely capable of +dressing and shaving himself. So kindly go to the devil, Pawsey, and stop +staring at me." + +Later in the evening Pawsey, a thought mellowed by the ale of Dover, +deplored with tears the instability of a nation whose pilots were addicted +to tippling. + +"Drunk as David's sow!" said Pawsey, "and 'im in the hactual presence of +'is Sacred Majesty!" + + +III + +Thus it came about that, five days later, arrived at Bellegarde Mr. John +Bulmer, kinsman and accredited emissary of the great Duke of Ormskirk. +He brought with him and in due course delivered a casket of jewels and a +letter from the Duke to his betrothed. The diamonds were magnificent, and +the letter was a paragon of polite ardors. + +Mr. Bulmer found the château in charge of a distant cousin to de Puysange, +the Marquis de Soyecourt; with whom were the Duchess, a gentle and +beautiful lady, her two children, and the Demoiselle Claire. The Duke +himself was still at Marly, with most of his people, but at Bellegarde +momentarily they looked for his return. Meanwhile de Soyecourt, an +exquisite and sociable and immoral young gentleman of forty-one, was +lonely, and protested that any civilized company was, in the oafish +provinces, a charity of celestial pre-arrangement. He would not hear of Mr. +Bulmer's leaving Bellegarde; and after a little protestation the latter +proved persuadable. + +"Mr. Bulmer," the Duke's letter of introduction informed the Marquis, "is +my kinsman and may be regarded as discreet. The evanishment of his tiny +patrimony, spirited away some years ago by divers over-friendly ladies, +hath taught the man humility, and procured for me the privilege of paying +for his support: but I find him more valuable than his cost. He is +tolerably honest, not too often tipsy, makes an excellent salad, and will +convey a letter or hold a door with fidelity and despatch. Employ his +services, monsieur, if you have need of them; I place him at your command." + +In fine, they at Bellegarde judged Mr. Bulmer to rank somewhere between +lackeyship and gentility, and treated him in accordance. It was an age of +parasitism, and John Bulmer, if a parasite, was the Phormio of a very great +man: when his patron expressed a desire Mr. Bulmer fulfilled it without +boggling over inconvenient scruples, perhaps; and there was the worst that +could with equity be said of him. An impoverished gentleman must live +somehow, and, deuce take it! there must be rather pretty pickings among +the broken meats of an Ormskirk. To this effect de Soyecourt moralized one +evening as the two sat over their wine. + +John Bulmer candidly assented. "I live as best I may," he said. "In a word +'I am his Highness' dog at Kew--' But mark you, I do not complete the +quotation, monsieur." + +"Which ends, as I remember it, 'I pray you, sir, whose dog are you?' Well, +Mr. Bulmer, each of us wards his own kennel somewhere, whether it be in +a king's court or in a woman's heart, and it is necessary that he pay +the rent of it in such coin as the owner may demand. Beggars cannot be +choosers, Mr. Bulmer." The Marquis went away moodily, and John Bulmer +poured out another glass. + +"Were I Gaston, you would not kennel here, my friend. The Duchess has too +many claims to be admired,--for undoubtedly people do go about unchained +who can admire a blonde,--and always your eyes follow her. I noticed it a +week ago." + +And during this week Mr. Bulmer had seen a deal of Claire de Puysange, with +results that you will presently ascertain. It was natural she should desire +to learn something of the man she was so soon to marry, and of whose +personality she was so ignorant; she had not even seen a picture of him, by +example. Was he handsome? + +John Bulmer believed him rather remarkably handsome, when you considered +how frequently his love-affairs had left disastrous souvenirs: yes, for a +man in middle life so often patched up by quack doctors, Ormskirk looked +wholesome enough, said Mr. Bulmer. He may have had his occult purposes, +this poor cousin, but of Ormskirk he undoubtedly spoke with engaging +candor. Here was no parasite cringingly praising his patron to the +skies. The Duke's career was touched on, with its grimy passages no whit +extenuated: before Dettingen Cousin Ormskirk had, it must be confessed, +taken a bribe from de Noailles, and in return had seen to it that the +English did not follow up their empty victory; and 'twas well known +Ormskirk got his dukedom through the Countess of Yarmouth, to whom the +King could deny nothing. What were the Duke's relations with this liberal +lady?--a shrug rendered Mr. Bulmer's avowal of ignorance tolerably +explicit. Then, too, Mr. Bulmer readily conceded, the Duke's atrocities +after Culloden were somewhat over-notorious for denial: all the prisoners +were shot out-of-hand; seventy-two of them were driven into an inn-yard +and massacred _en masse_. Yes, there were women among them, but not over +a half-dozen children, at most. Mademoiselle was not to class his noble +patron with Herod, understand,--only a few brats of no importance. + +In fine, he told her all the highly colored tales that envy and malice and +ignorance had been able to concoct concerning the great Duke. Many of them +John Bulmer knew to be false; nevertheless, he had a large mythology to +choose from, he picked his instances with care, he narrated them with gusto +and discretion,--and in the end he got his reward. + +For the girl rose, flame-faced, and burlesqued a courtesy in his direction. +"Monsieur Bulmer, I make you my compliments. You have very fully explained +what manner of man is this to whom my brother has sold me." + +"And wherefore do you accord me this sudden adulation?" said John Bulmer. + +"Because in France we have learned that lackeys are always powerful. Le Bel +is here omnipotent, Monsieur Bulmer; but he is lackey to a satyr only; and +therefore, I felicitate you, monsieur, who are lackey to a fiend." + +John Bulmer looked rather grave. "Civility is an inexpensive wear, +mademoiselle, but it becomes everybody." + +"Lackey!" she flung over her shoulder, as she left him. + +John Bulmer began to whistle an air then popular across the Channel. Later +his melody was stilled. + +"'Beautiful as an angel, and headstrong as a devil!'" said John Bulmer. +"You have an eye, Gaston!" + + +IV + +That evening came a letter from Gaston to de Soyecourt, which the latter +read aloud at supper. Gossip of the court it was for the most part, +garrulous, and peppered with deductions of a caustic and diverting sort, +but containing no word of a return to Bellegarde, in this vocal rendering. +For in the reading one paragraph was elided. + +"I arrive," the Duke had written, "within three or at most four days after +this will be received. You are to breathe not a syllable of my coming, dear +Louis, for I do not come alone. Achille Cazaio has intimidated Poictesme +long enough; I consider it is not desirable that a peer of France should be +at the mercy of a chicken-thief, particularly when Fortune whispers, as the +lady now does: + + "Viens punir le coupable; + Les oracles, les dieux, tout nous est favorable. + +"Understand, in fine, that Madame de Pompadour has graciously obtained for +me the loan of the dragoons of Entréchat for an entire fortnight, so that I +return not in submission, but, like Cæsar and Coriolanus and other exiled +captains of antiquity, at the head of a glorious army. We will harry the +Taunenfels, we will hang the vile bandit more high than Haman of old, we +will, in a word, enjoy the supreme pleasure of the chase, enhanced by the +knowledge we pursue a note-worthy quarry. Homicide is, after all, the most +satisfying recreation life affords us, since man alone knows how thoroughly +man deserves to be slaughtered. A tiger, now, has his deficiencies, +perhaps, viewed as a roommate; yet a tiger is at least acceptable to the +eye, a vision very pleasantly suggestive, we will say, of buttered toast; +whereas, our fellow-creatures, my dear Louis,--" And in this strain de +Puysange continued, with intolerably scandalous examples as parapets for +his argument. + +That night de Soyecourt re-read this paragraph. "So the Pompadour has +kindly tendered him the loan of certain dragoons? She is very fond of +Gaston, is la petite Étoiles, beyond doubt. And accordingly her dragoons +are to garrison Bellegarde for a whole fortnight. Good, good!" said the +Marquis; "I think that all goes well." + +He sat for a long while, smiling, preoccupied with his imaginings, which +were far adrift in the future. Louis de Soyecourt was a subtle little man, +freakish and amiable, and, on a minute scale, handsome. He reminded people +of a dissipated elf; his excesses were notorious, yet always he preserved +the face of an ecclesiastic and the eyes of an aging seraph; and bodily +there was as yet no trace of the corpulence which marred his later years. + +To-night he slept soundly. His conscience was always, they say, to the very +end of his long life, the conscience of a child, vulnerable by physical +punishment, but by nothing else. + + +V + +Next day John Bulmer rode through the Forest of Acaire, and sang as he +went. Yet he disapproved of the country. + +"For I am of the opinion," John Bulmer meditated, "that France just now is +too much like a flower-garden situate upon the slope of a volcano. The eye +is pleasantly titillated, but the ear catches eloquent rumblings. This is +not a very healthy country, I think. These shaggy-haired, dumb peasants +trouble me. I had thought France a nation of de Puysanges; I find it rather +a nation of beasts who are growing hungry. Presently they will begin +to feed, and I am not at all certain as to the urbanity of their table +manners." + +However, it was no affair of his; so he put the matter out of mind, and as +he rode through the forest, carolled blithely. Trees were marshalled on +each side with an effect of colonnades; everywhere there was a sniff of the +cathedral, of a cheery cathedral all green and gold and full-bodied browns, +where the industrious motes swam, like the fishes fairies angle for, in +every long and rigid shaft of sunlight,--or rather (John Bulmer decided), +as though Time had just passed by with a broom, intent to garnish the least +nook of Acaire against Spring's occupancy of it. Then there were tiny white +butterflies, frail as dream-stuff. There were anemones; and John Bulmer +sighed at their insolent perfection. Theirs was a frank allure; in the +solemn forest they alone of growing things were wanton, for they coquetted +with the wind, and their pink was the pink of flesh. + +He recollected that he was corpulent--and forty-five. "And yet, praise +Heaven," said John Bulmer, "something stirs in this sleepy skull of mine." + +Sang John Bulmer: + + "April wakes, and the gifts are good + Which April grants in this lonely wood + Mid the wistful sounds of a solitude, + Whose immemorial murmuring + Is the voice of Spring + And murmurs the burden of burgeoning. + + "April wakes, and her heart is high, + For the Bassarids and the Fauns are nigh, + And prosperous leaves lisp busily + Over flattered brakes, whence the breezes bring + Vext twittering + To swell the burden of burgeoning. + + "April wakes, and afield, astray, + She calls to whom at the end I say. + _Heart o' my Heart, I am thine alway_,-- + And I follow, follow her carolling, + For I hear her sing + Above the burden of burgeoning. + + "April wakes;--it were good to live + (_Yet April passes_), though April give + No other gift for our pleasuring + Than the old, old burden of burgeoning--" + +He paused here. Not far ahead a woman's voice had given a sudden scream, +followed by continuous calls for aid. + +"Now, if I choose, will begin the first fytte of John Bulmer's adventures," +he meditated, leisurely. "The woman is in some sort of trouble. If I go to +her assistance I shall probably involve myself in a most unattractive mess, +and eventually be arrested by the constable,--if they have any constables +in this operatic domain, the which I doubt. I shall accordingly emulate the +example of the long-headed Levite, and sensibly pass by on the other side. +Halt! I there recognize the voice of the Duke of Ormskirk. I came into this +country to find John Bulmer; and John Bulmer would most certainly have +spurred his gallant charger upon the craven who is just now molesting +yonder female. In consequence, my gallant charger, we will at once proceed +to confound the dastardly villain." + +He came presently into an open glade, which the keen sunlight lit without +obstruction. Obviously arranged, was his first appraisal of the tableau +there presented. A woman in blue half-knelt, half-lay, upon the young +grass, while a man, bending over, fettered her hands behind her back. +A swarthy and exuberantly bearded fellow, attired in green-and-russet, +stood beside them, displaying magnificent teeth in exactly the grin which +hieratic art imputes to devils. Yet farther off a Dominican Friar sat upon +a stone and displayed rather more unctuous amusement. Three horses and a +mule diversified the background. All in all, a thought larger than life, a +shade too obviously posed, a sign-painter's notion of a heroic picture, was +John Bulmer's verdict. From his holster he drew a pistol. + +The lesser rascal rose from the prostrate woman. "Finished, my captain,--" +he began. Against the forest verdure he made an excellent mark. John Bulmer +shot him neatly through the head. + +Startled by the detonation, the Friar and the man in green-and-russet +wheeled about to find Mr. Bulmer, with his most heroical bearing, +negligently replacing the discharged pistol. The woman lay absolutely +still, face downward, in a clump of fern. + +"Gentlemen," said John Bulmer, "I lament that your sylvan diversions +should be thus interrupted by the fact that an elderly person like myself, +quite old enough to know better, has seen fit to adopt the pursuit of +knight-errantry. You need not trouble yourselves about your companion, for +I have blown out most of the substance nature intended him to think with. +One of you, I regret to observe, is rendered immune by the garb of an order +which I consider misguided, indeed, but with which I have no quarrel. With +the other I beg leave to request the honor of exchanging a few passes as +the recumbent lady's champion." + +"Sacred blue!" remarked the bearded man; "you presume to oppose, then, of +all persons, me! You fool, I am Achille Cazaio!" + +"I deplore the circumstance that I am not overwhelmed by the revelation," +John Bulmer said, as he dismounted, "and I entreat you to bear in mind, +friend Achille, that in Poictesme I am a stranger. And, unhappily, the +names of many estimable persons have not an international celebrity." Thus +speaking, he drew and placed himself on guard. + +With a shrug the Friar turned and reseated himself upon the stone. He +appeared a sensible man. But Cazaio flashed out a long sword and hurled +himself upon John Bulmer. + +Cazaio thus obtained a butcherly thrust in the shoulder, "Friend Achille," +said John Bulmer, "that was tolerably severe for a first hit. Does it +content you?" + +The hairy man raged. "Eh, my God!" Cazaio shrieked, "do you mock me, you +misbegotten one! Before you can give me such another I shall have settled +you outright. Already hell gapes for you. Fool, I am Achille Cazaio!" + +"Yes, yes, you had mentioned that," said his opponent. "And, in return, +allow me to present Mr. John Bulmer, thoroughly enjoying himself for the +first time in a quarter of a century, Angelo taught me this thrust. Can you +parry it, friend Achille?" Mr. Bulmer cut open the other's forehead. + +"Well done!" Cazaio grunted. He attacked with renewed fury, but now the +blood was streaming down his face and into his eyes in such a manner that +he was momentarily compelled to carry his hand toward his countenance in +order to wipe away the heavy trickle. John Bulmer lowered his point. + +"Friend Achille, it is not reasonable I should continue our engagement to +its dénouement, since by that boastful parade of skill I have inadvertently +turned you into a blind man. Can you not stanch your wound sufficiently to +make possible a renewal of our exercise on somewhat more equal terms?" + +"Not now," the other replied, breathing heavily,--"not now, Monsieur +Bulmaire. You have conquered, and the woman is yours. Yet lend me my life +for a little till I may meet you more equitably. I will not fail you,--I +swear it--I, Achille Cazaio." + +"Why, God bless my soul!" said John Bulmer, "do you imagine that I am +forming a collection of vagrant females? Permit me, pray, to assist you to +your horse. And if you would so far honor me as to accept the temporary +loan of my handkerchief--" + +Solicitously Mr. Bulmer bound up his opponent's head, and more lately aided +him to mount one of the grazing horses. Cazaio was moved to say: + +"You are a gallant enemy, Monsieur Bulmaire. I shall have the pleasure of +cutting your throat on Thursday next, if that date be convenient to you." + +"Believe me," said John Bulmer, "I am always at your disposal. Let this +spot, then, be our rendezvous, since I am wofully ignorant concerning your +local geography. And meantime, my friend, if I may be so bold, I would +suggest a little practice in parrying. You are of Boisrobert's school, I +note, and in attack undeniably brilliant, whereas your defence--unvarying +defect of Boisrobert's followers!--is lamentably weak." + +"I perceive that monsieur is a connoisseur in these matters," said +Cazaio; "I am the more highly honored. Till Thursday, then." And with an +inclination of his bandaged head--and a furtive glance toward the insensate +woman,--he rode away singing. + +Sang Achille Cazaio: + + "But, oh, the world is wide, dear lass, + That I must wander through, + And many a wind and tide, dear lass, + Must flow 'twixt me and you, + Ere love that may not be denied + Shall bring me back to you, + --Dear lass! + Shall bring me back to you." + +Thus singing, he disappeared; meantime John Bulmer had turned toward the +woman. The Dominican sat upon the stone, placidly grinning. + +"And now," said John Bulmer, "we revert to the origin of all this +tomfoolery,--who, true to every instinct of her sex, has caused as much +trouble as lay within her power and then fainted. A little water from +the brook, if you will be so good. Master Friar,--Hey!--why, you damned +rascal!" + +As John Bulmer bent above the woman, the Friar had stabbed John Bulmer +between the shoulders. The dagger broke like glass. + +"Oh, the devil!" said the churchman; "what sort of a duellist is this who +fights in a shirt of Milanese armor!" He stood for a moment, silent, in +sincere horror. "I lack words," he said,--"Oh, vile coward! I lack words to +arraign this hideous revelation! There is a code of honor that obtains all +over the world, and any duellist who descends to secret armor is, as you +are perfectly aware, guilty of supersticery. He is no fit associate for +gentlemen, he is rather the appropriate companion of Korah, Dathan, and +Abiram in their fiery pit. Faugh, you sneak-thief!" + +John Bulmer was a thought abashed, and for an instant showed it. Then, +"Permit me," he equably replied, "to point out that I did not come hither +with any belligerent intent. My undershirt, therefore, I was entitled to +regard as a purely natural advantage,--as much so as would have been a +greater length of arm, which, you conceive, does not obligate a gentleman +to cut off his fingers before he fights." + +"I scent the casuist," said the Friar, shaking his head. "Frankly, you had +hoodwinked me: I was admiring you as a second Palmerin; and all the while +you were letting off those gasconades, adopting those heroic postures, and +exhibiting such romantic magnanimity, you were actually as safe from poor +Cazaio as though you had been in Crim Tartary rather than Acaire!" + +"But the pose was magnificent," John Bulmer pleaded, "and I have a leaning +that way when one loses nothing by it. Besides, I consider secret armor to +be no more than a rational precaution in any country where the clergy are +addicted to casual assassination." + +"It is human to err," the Friar replied, "and Cazaio would have given me +a thousand crowns for your head. Believe me, the man is meditating some +horrible mischief against you, for otherwise he would not have been so +damnably polite." + +"The information is distressing," said John Bulmer; and added, "This Cazaio +appears to be a personage?" + +"I retort," said the Friar, "that your ignorance is even more remarkable +than my news. Achille Cazaio is the bugbear of all Poictesme, he is as +powerful in these parts as ever old Manuel was." + +"But I have never heard of this old Manuel either--" + +"In fact, your ignorance seems limitless. For any child could tell you that +Cazaio roosts in the Taunenfels yonder, with some hundreds of brigands in +his company. Poictesme is, in effect, his pocket-book, from which he takes +whatever he has need of, and the Duc de Puysange, our nominal lord, pays +him an annual tribute to respect Bellegarde." + +"This appears to be an unusual country," quoth John Bulmer; "where a +brigand rules, and the forests are infested by homicidal clergymen and +harassed females. Which reminds me that I have been guilty of an act of +ungallantry,--and faith! while you and I have been chatting, the lady, with +a rare discretion, has peacefully come back to her senses." + +"She has regained nothing very valuable," said the Friar, with a shrug, +"Alone in Acaire!" But John Bulmer had assisted the woman to her feet, +and had given a little cry at sight of her face, and now he stood quite +motionless, holding both her unfettered hands. + +"You!" he said. And when speech returned to him, after a lengthy interval, +he spoke with odd irrelevance. "Now I appear to understand why God created +me." + +He was puzzled. For there had come to him, unheralded and simply, a sense +of something infinitely greater than his mind could conceive; and analysis +might only pluck at it, impotently, as a wearied swimmer might pluck at the +sides of a well. Ormskirk and Ormskirk's powers now somehow dwindled from +the zone of serious consideration, as did the radiant world, and even the +woman who stood before him; trifles, these: and his contentment spurned +the stars to know that, somehow, this woman and he were but a part, an +infinitesimal part, of a scheme which was ineffably vast and perfect.... +That was the knowledge he sensed, unwordably, as he regarded this woman +now. + +She was tall, just as tall as he. It was a blunt-witted devil who whispered +John Bulmer that, inch paralleling inch, the woman is taller than the +man and subtly renders him absurd; and that in a decade this woman would +be stout. There was no meaning now in any whispering save hers. John +Bulmer perceived, with a blurred thrill,--as if of memory, as if he were +recollecting something once familiar to him, a great while ago,--that the +girl was tall and deep-bosomed, and that her hair was dark, all crinkles, +but (he somehow knew) very soft to the touch. The full oval of her face had +throughout the rich tint of cream, so that he now understood the blowziness +of pink cheeks; but her mouth was vivid. It was a mouth not wholly +deficient in attractions, he estimated. Her nose managed to be Roman +without overdoing it. And her eyes, candid and appraising, he found to be +the color that blue is in Paradise; it was odd their lower lids should +be straight lines, so that when she laughed her eyes were converted into +right-angled triangles; and it was still more odd that when you gazed into +them your reach of vision should be extended until you saw without effort +for miles and miles. + +And now for a longish while these eyes returned his scrutiny, without +any trace of embarrassment; and whatever may have been the thoughts of +Mademoiselle de Puysange, she gave them no expression. But presently the +girl glanced down toward the dead man. + +"It was you who killed him?" she said. "You!" + +"I had that privilege," John Bulmer admitted. "And on Thursday afternoon, +God willing, I shall kill the other." + +"You are kind, Monsieur Bulmer. And I am not ungrateful. And for that which +happened yesterday I entreat your pardon." + +"I can pardon you for calling me a lackey, mademoiselle, only upon +condition that you permit me to be your lackey for the remainder of your +jaunt. Poictesme appears a somewhat too romantic country for unaccompanied +women to traverse in any comfort." + +"My thought to a comma," the Dominican put in,--"unaccompanied ladies +do not ordinarily drop from the forest oaks like acorns. I said as much +to Cazaio a half-hour ago. Look you, we two and Michault,--who formerly +incited this carcass and, from what I know of him, is by this time +occupying hell's hottest gridiron,--were riding peacefully toward +Beauséant. Then this lady pops out of nowhere, and Cazaio promptly +expresses an extreme admiration for her person." + +"The rest," John Bulmer said, "I can imagine. Oh, believe me, I look +forward to next Thursday!" + +"But for you," the girl said, "I would now be the prisoner of that devil +upon the Taunenfels! Three to one you fought,--and you conquered! I have +misjudged you, Monsieur Bulmer. I had thought you only an indolent old +gentleman, not very brave,--because--" + +"Because otherwise I would not have been the devil's lackey?" said John +Bulmer. "Eh, mademoiselle, I have been inspecting the world for more years +than I care to confess; I have observed the king upon his throne, and the +caught thief upon his coffin in passage for the gallows: and I suspect +they both came thither through taking such employment as chance offered. +Meanwhile, we waste daylight. You were journeying--?" + +"To Perdigon," Claire answered. She drew nearer to him and laid one +hand upon his arm. "You are a gallant man, Monsieur Bulmer. Surely you +understand. Two weeks ago my brother affianced me to the Duke of Ormskirk. +Ormskirk!--ah, I know he is your kinsman,--your patron,--but you yourself +could not deny that the world reeks with his infamy. And my own brother, +monsieur, had betrothed me to this perjurer, to that lewd rake, to that +inhuman devil who slaughters defenceless prisoners, men, women, and +children alike. Why, I had sooner marry the first beggar or the ugliest +fiend in hell!" the girl wailed, and she wrung her plump little hands in +desperation. + +"Good, good!" he cried, in his soul. "It appears my eloquence of yesterday +was greater than I knew of!" + +Claire resumed: "But you cannot argue with Gaston--he merely shrugs. So I +decided to go over to Perdigon and marry Gérard des Roches. He has wanted +to marry me for a long while, but Gaston said he was too poor. And, O +Monsieur Bulmer, Gérard is so very, very stupid!--but he was the only +person available, and in any event," she concluded, with a sigh of +resignation, "he is preferable to that terrible Ormskirk." + +John Bulmer gazed on her considerately. "'Beautiful as an angel, and +headstrong as a devil,'" was his thought, "You have an eye, Gaston!" +Aloud John Bulmer said: "Your remedy against your brother's tyranny, +mademoiselle, is quite masterly, though perhaps a trifle Draconic. Yet if +on his return he find you already married, he undoubtedly cannot hand you +over to this wicked Ormskirk. Marry, therefore, by all means,--but not with +this stupid Gérard." + +"With whom, then?" she wondered. + +"Fate has planned it," he laughed; "here are you and I, and yonder is the +clergyman whom Madam Destiny has thoughtfully thrown in our way." + +"Not you," she answered, gravely. "I am too deeply in your debt, Monsieur +Bulmer, to think of marrying you." + +"You refuse," he said, "because you have known for some days past that I +loved you. Yet it is really this fact which gives me my claim to become +your husband. You have need of a man to do you this little service. I know +of at least one person whose happiness it would be to die if thereby he +might save you a toothache. This man you cannot deny--you have not the +right to deny this man his single opportunity of serving you." + +"I like you very much," she faltered; and then, with disheartening +hastiness, "Of course, I like you very much; but I am not in love with +you." + +He shook his head at her, "I would think the worse of your intellect if you +were. I adore you. Granted: but that constitutes no cut-throat mortgage. +It is merely a state of mind which I have somehow blundered into, and with +which you have no concern. So I ask nothing of you save to marry me. You +may, if you like, look upon me as insane; it is the view toward which I +myself incline. However, mine is a domesticated mania and vexes no one save +myself; and even I derive no little amusement from its manifestations. Eh, +Monsieur Jourdain may laugh at me for a puling lover!" cried John Bulmer; +"but, heavens! if only he could see the unplumbed depths of ludicrousness I +discover in my own soul! The mirth of Atlas could not do it justice." + +Claire meditated for a while, her eyes inscrutable and yet not unkindly. +"It shall be as you will," she said at last. "Yes, certainly, I will marry +you." + +"O Mother of God!" said the Dominican, in profound disgust; "I cannot marry +two maniacs." But, in view of John Bulmer's sword and pistol, he went +through the ceremony without further protest. + +And something embryonic in John Bulmer seemed to come, with the knave's +benediction, into flowerage. He saw, as if upon a sudden, how fine she was; +all the gracious and friendly youth of her: and he deliberated, dizzily, +the awe of her spirited and alert eyes; why, the woman was afraid of him! +That sunny and vivid glade had become, to him, an island about which past +happenings lapped like a fretted sea. "Dear me!" he reflected, "but I am +really in a very bad way indeed." + +Now Mistress Bulmer gazed shyly at her husband. "We will go back to +Bellegarde," Claire began, "and inform Louis de Soyecourt that I cannot +marry the Duke of Ormskirk, because I have already married you, Jean +Bulmer,--" + +"I would follow you," said John Bulmer, "though hell yawned between us. +I employ the particular expression as customary in all these cases of +romantic infatuation." + +"Yet I," the Friar observed, "would, to the contrary, advise removal from +Poictesme as soon as may be possible. For I warn you that if you return to +Bellegarde, Monsieur de Soyecourt will have you hanged." + +"Reverend sir," John Bulmer replied, "do you actually believe this +consideration would be to me of any moment?" + +The Friar inspected his countenance. By and by the Friar said: "I +emphatically do not. And to think that at the beginning of our +acquaintanceship I took you for a sensible person!" Afterward the Friar +mounted his mule and left them. + +Then silently John Bulmer assisted his wife to the back of one of the +horses, and they turned eastward into the Forest of Acaire. Mr. Bulmer's +countenance was politely interested, and he chatted pleasantly of the +forenoon's adventure. Claire told him something of her earlier memories +of Cazaio. So the two returned to Bellegarde. Then Claire led the way +toward the western façade, where her apartments were, and they came to a +postern-door, very narrow and with a grating. + +"Help me down," the girl said. Immediately this was done; Claire remained +quite still. Her cheeks were smouldering and her left hand was lying inert +in John Bulmer's broader palm. + +"Wait here," she said, "and let me go in first. Someone may be on watch. +There is perhaps danger--" + +"My dear," said John Bulmer, "I perfectly comprehend you are about to enter +that postern, and close it in my face, and afterward hold discourse with me +through that little wicket. I assent, because I love you so profoundly that +I am capable not merely of tearing the world asunder like paper at your +command, but even of leaving you if you bid me do so." + +"Your suspicions," she replied, "are prematurely marital. I am trying to +protect you, and you are the first to accuse me of underhand dealing! I +will prove to you how unjust are your notions." She entered the postern, +closed and bolted it, and appeared at the wicket. + +"The Friar was intelligent," said Claire de Puysange, "and beyond doubt +the most sensible thing you can do is to get out of Poictesme as soon as +possible. You have been serviceable to me, and for that I thank you: but +the master of Bellegarde has the right of the low, the middle, and the high +justice, and if my husband show his face at Bellegarde he will infallibly +be hanged. If you claim me in England, Ormskirk will have you knifed in +some dark alleyway, just as, you tell me, he disposed of Monsieur Traquair +and Captain Dungelt. I am sorry, because I like you, even though you are +fat." + +"You bid me leave you?" said John Bulmer. He was comfortably seated upon +the turf. + +"For your own good," said she, "I advise you to." And she closed the +wicket. + +"The acceptance of advice," said John Bulmer, "is luckily optional. I shall +therefore go down into the village, purchase a lute, have supper, and I +shall be here at sunrise to greet you with an aubade, according to the +ancient custom of Poictesme." + +The wicket remained closed. + + +VI + +"I will go to Marly, inform Gaston of the entire matter, and then my wife +is mine. I have tricked her neatly. + +"I will do nothing of the sort. Gaston, can give me the woman's body only. +I shall accordingly buy me a lute." + + +VII + +Achille Cazaio on the Taunenfels did not sleep that night.... + +The two essays [Footnote: The twenty-first chapter of Du Maillot's _Hommes +Illustres_; and the fifth of d'Avranches's _Ancêtres de la Révolution_. +Löwe has an excellent digest of this data.] dealing with the man have +scarcely touched his capabilities. His exploits in and about Paris and +his Gascon doings, while important enough in the outcome, are but the +gesticulations of a puppet: the historian's real concern is with the hands +that manoeuvered above Cazaio; and whether or no Achille Cazaio organized +the riots in Toulouse and Guienne and Béarn is a question with which, at +this late day, there can be little profitable commerce. + +One recommends this Cazaio rather to the spinners of romance: with his +morality--a trifle buccaneerish on occasion--once discreetly palliated, +history affords few heroes more instantly taking to the fancy....One casts +a hankering eye toward this Cazaio's rumored parentage, his hopeless and +life-long adoration of Claire de Puysange, his dealings with d'Argenson and +King Louis le Bien-Aimé, the obscure and mischievous imbroglios in Spain, +and finally his aggrandizement and his flame-lit death, as du Maillot, +say, records these happenings: and one finds therein the outline of an +impelling hero, and laments that our traffic must be with a stolid and less +livelily tinted Bulmer. And with a sigh one passes on toward the labor +prearranged.... + +To-night Cazaio's desires were astir, and consciousness of his own power +was tempting him. He had never troubled Poictesme much: the Taunenfels were +accessible on that side, and so long as he confined his depredations to +the frontier, the Duc de Puysange merely shrugged and rendered his annual +tribute; it was not a great sum, and the Duke preferred to pay it rather +than forsake his international squabbles to quash a purely parochial +nuisance like a bandit, who was, too, a kinsman.... + +Meanwhile Cazaio had grown stronger than de Puysange knew. It was a time +of disaffection: the more violent here and there were beginning to assert +that before hanging a superfluous peasant or two de Puysange ought to bore +himself with inquiries concerning the abstract justice of the action. For +everywhere the irrational lower classes were grumbling about the very +miseries and maltreatments that had efficiently disposed of their fathers +for centuries: they seemed not to respect tradition: already they were +posting placards in the Paris boulevards,--"Shave the King for a monk, hang +the Pompadour, and break Machault on the wheel,"--and already a boy of +twelve, one Joseph Guillotin, was running about the streets of Saintes +yonder. So the commoners flocked to Cazaio in the Taunenfels until, little +by little, he had gathered an army about him. + +And at Bellegarde, de Soyecourt had only a handful of men, Cazaio meditated +to-night. And the woman was there,--the woman whose eyes were blue and +incurious, whose face was always scornful. + +In history they liken Achille Cazaio to Simon de Montfort, and the Gracchi, +and other graspers at fruit as yet unripe; or, if the perfervid word of +d'Avranches be accepted, you may regard him as "_le Saint-Jean de la +Révolution glorieuse_." But I think you may with more wisdom regard him as +a man of strong passions, any one of which, for the time being, possessed +him utterly. + +Now he struck his palm upon the table. + +"I have never seen a woman one-half so beautiful, Dom Michel. I am more +than ever in love with her." + +"In that event," the Friar considered, "it is, of course, unfortunate she +should have a brand-new husband. Husbands are often thought much of when +they are a novelty." + +"You bungled matters, you fat, mouse-hearted rascal. You could quite easily +have killed him." + +The Dominican spread out his hands, and afterward reached for the bottle. +"Milanese armor!" said Dom Michel Frégose. [Footnote: The same ecclesiastic +who more lately dubbed himself, with Maréchal de Richelieu's encouragement, +l'Abbé de Trans, and was discreditably involved in the forgeries of Madame +de St. Vincent.] + +"Yet I am master of Poictesme," Cazaio thundered, "I have ten men to de +Soyecourt's one. Am I, then, lightly to be thwarted?" + +"Undoubtedly you could take Bellegarde--and the woman along with the +castle,--if you decided they were worth the price of a little killing. I +think they are not worth it, I strongly advise you to have up a wench from +the village, to put out the light, and exercise your imagination." + +Cazaio shook his head. "No, Dom Michel, you churchmen live too lewdly to +understand the tyranny of love." + +"--Besides, there is that trifling matter of your understanding with de +Puysange,--and, besides, de Puysange will be here in two days." + +Cazaio snapped his fingers. "He will arrive after the fair." Cazaio +uncorked the ink-bottle with an august gesture. + +"Write!" said Achille Cazaio. + + +VIII + +As John Bulmer leisurely ascended from the village the birds were waking. +Whether day were at hand or no was a matter of twittering debate overhead, +but in the west the stars were paling one by one, like candles puffed out +by the pretentious little wind that was bustling about the turquoise cupola +of heaven; and eastward Bellegarde showed stark, as though scissored from +a painting, against a sky of gray-and-rose. Here was a world of faint +ambiguity. Here was the exquisite tension of dawn, curiously a-chime with +John Bulmer's mood, for just now he found the universe too beautiful to put +any actual faith in its existence. He had strayed into Faëry somehow--into +Atlantis, or Avalon, or "a wood near Athens,"--into a land of opalescence +and vapor and delicate color, that would vanish, bubble-like, at the +discreet tap of Pawsey fetching in his shaving-water; meantime John +Bulmer's memory snatched at each loveliness, jealously, as a pug snatches +bits of sugar. + +Beneath her window he paused and shifted his lute before him. Then he +began to sing, exultant in the unreality of everything and of himself in +particular. + +Sang John Bulmer, + + "Speed forth, my song, the sun's ambassador, + Lest in the east night prove the conqueror, + The day be slain, and darkness triumph,--for + The sun is single, but her eyes are twain. + + "And now the sunlight and the night contest + A doubtful battle, and day bides at best + Doubtful, until she waken. 'Tis attest + The sun is single. + + "But her eyes are twain,-- + And should the light of all the world delay, + And darkness prove victorious? Is it day + Now that the sun alone is risen? + + "Nay, + The sun is single, but her eyes are twain,-- + Twain firmaments that mock with heavenlier hue + The heavens' less lordly and less gracious blue, + And lit with sunlier sunlight through and through, + + "The sun is single, but her eyes are twain, + And of fair things this side of Paradise + Fairest, of goodly things most goodly," + +He paused here and smote a resonant and louder chord. His voice ascended in +dulcet supplication. + + "Rise, + And succor the benighted world that cries, + _The sun is single, but her eyes are twain!_" + +"Eh--? So it is you, is it?" Claire was peeping disdainfully from the +window. Her throat was bare, and her dusky hair was a shade dishevelled, +and in her meditative eyes he caught the flicker of her tardiest dream just +as it vanished. + +"It is I," John Bulmer confessed--"come to awaken you according to the +ancient custom of Poictesme." + +"I would much rather have had my sleep out," said she, resentfully. "In +perfect frankness, I find you and your ancient customs a nuisance." + +"You lack romance, my wife." + +"Oh--?" She was a person of many cryptic exclamations, this bride of his. +Presently she said: "Indeed, Monsieur Bulmer, I entreat you to leave +Poictesme. I have informed Louis of everything, and he is rather furious." + +John Bulmer said, "Do you comprehend why I have not already played the +emigrant?" + +After a little pause, she answered, "Yes." + +"And for the same reason I can never leave you so long as this gross +body is at my disposal. You are about to tell me that if I remain here I +shall probably be hanged on account of what happened yesterday. There are +grounds for my considering this outcome unlikely, but if I knew it to be +inevitable--if I had but one hour's start of Jack Ketch,--I swear to you I +would not budge." + +"I am heartily sorry," she replied, "since if I had known you really cared +for me--so much--I would never have married you. Oh, it is impossible!" the +girl laughed, with a trace of worriment. "You had not laid eyes on me until +a week ago yesterday!" + +"My dear," John Bulmer answered, "I am perhaps inadequately acquainted +with the etiquette of such matters, but I make bold to question if love is +exclusively regulated by clock-ticks. Observe!" he said, with a sort of +fury: "there is a mocking demon in me who twists my tongue into a jest even +when I am most serious. I love you: and I dare not tell you so without +a grin. Then when you laugh at me I, too, can laugh, and the whole +transaction can be regarded as a parody. Oh, I am indeed a coward!" + +"You are nothing of the sort! You proved that yesterday." + +"Yesterday I shot an unsuspecting man, and afterward fenced with +another--in a shirt of Milanese armor! Yes, I was astoundingly heroic +yesterday, for the simple reason that all the while I knew myself to be as +safe as though I were snug at home snoring under an eider-down quilt. Yet, +to do me justice, I am a shade less afraid of physical danger than of +ridicule." + +She gave him a womanly answer. "You are not ridiculous, and to wear armor +was very sensible of you." + +"To the contrary, I am extremely ridiculous. For observe: I am an elderly +man, quite old enough to be your father; I am fat--No, that is kind of you, +but I am not of pleasing portliness, I am just unpardonably fat; and, I +believe, I am not possessed of any fatal beauty of feature such as would +by ordinary impel young women to pursue me with unsolicited affection: +and being all this, I presume to love you. To me, at least, that appears +ridiculous." + +"Ah, do not laugh!" she said. "Do not laugh, Monsieur Bulmer!" + +But John Bulmer persisted in that curious laughter. "Because," he presently +stated, "the whole affair is so very diverting." + +"Believe me," Claire began, "I am sorry that you care--so much. I--do not +understand. I am sorry,--I am not sorry," the girl said, in a new tone, and +you saw her transfigured; "I am glad! Do you comprehend?--I am glad!" And +then she swiftly closed the window. + +John Bulmer observed. "I am perhaps subject to hallucinations, for +otherwise the fact had been previously noted by geographers that heaven is +immediately adjacent to Poictesme." + + +IX + +Presently the old flippancy came back to him, since an ancient custom is +not lightly broken; and John Bulmer smiled sleepily and shook his head. +"Here am I on my honeymoon, with my wife locked up in the château, and with +me locked out of it. My position savors too much of George Dandin's to be +quite acceptable. Let us set about rectifying matters." + +He came to the great gate of the castle and found two sentries there. He +thought this odd, but they recognized him as de Soyecourt's guest, and +after a whispered consultation admitted him. In the courtyard a lackey took +charge of Monsieur Bulmer, and he was conducted into the presence of the +Marquis de Soyecourt. "What the devil!" thought John Bulmer, "is Bellegarde +in a state of siege?" + +The little Marquis sat beside the Duchesse de Puysange, to the rear of a +long table with a crimson cover. Their attitudes smacked vaguely of the +judicial, and before them stood, guarded by four attendants, a ragged and +dissolute looking fellow whom the Marquis was languidly considering. + +"My dear man," de Soyecourt was saying as John Bulmer came into the room +"when you brought this extraordinary epistle to Bellegarde, you must +have been perfectly aware that thereby you were forfeiting your life. +Accordingly, I am compelled to deny your absurd claims to the immunity of a +herald, just as I would decline to receive a herald from the cockroaches." + +"That is cowardly," the man said. "I come as the representative of an +honorable enemy who desires to warn you before he strikes." + +"You come as the representative of vermin," de Soyecourt retorted, "and as +such I receive you. You will therefore, permit me to wish you a pleasant +journey into eternity. Why, holà, madame! here is that vagabond guest of +ours returned to observation!" The Marquis rose and stepped forward, all +abeam. "Mr. Bulmer, I can assure you that I was never more delighted to see +anyone in my entire life." + +"Pardon, monseigneur," one of the attendants here put in,--"but what shall +we do with this Achon?" + +The Marquis slightly turned his head, his hand still grasping John +Bulmer's. "Why, hang him, of course," he said. "Did I forget to tell you? +But yes, take him out, and have him confessed by Frère Joseph, and hang him +at once." The four men removed their prisoner. + +"You find us in the act of dispensing justice," the Marquis continued, "yet +at Bellegarde we temper it with mercy, so that I shall ask no indiscreet +questions concerning your absence of last night." + +"But I, monsieur," said John Bulmer, "I, too, have come to demand justice." + +"Tête-bleu, Mr. Bulmer! and what can I have the joy of doing for you in +that respect?" + +"You can restore to me my wife." + +And now de Soyecourt cast a smile toward the Duchess, who appeared +troubled. "Would you not have known this was an Englishman," he queried, +"by the avowed desire for the society of his own wife? They are a mad race. +And indeed, Mr. Bulmer, I would very gladly restore to you this hitherto +unheard-of spouse if but I were blest with her acquaintance. As it is--" He +waved his hand. + +"I married her only yesterday," said John Bulmer, "and I have reason to +believe that she is now within Bellegarde." + +He saw the eyes of de Soyecourt slowly narrow. "Jacques," said the Marquis, +"fetch me the pistol within that cabinet." The Marquis resumed his seat +to the rear of the table, the weapon lying before him. "You may go +now, Jacques; this gentleman and I are about to hold a little private +conversation." Then, when the door had closed upon the lackey, de Soyecourt +said, "Pray draw up a chair within just ten feet of this table, monsieur, +and oblige me with your wife's maiden name." + +"She was formerly known," John Bulmer answered, "as Mademoiselle Claire de +Puysange." + +The Duchess spoke for the first time. "Oh, the poor man! Monsieur de +Soyecourt, he is evidently insane." + +"I do not know about that," the Marquis said, fretfully, "but in any event +I hope that no more people will come to Bellegarde upon missions which, +compel me to have them hanged. First there was this Achon, and now you, Mr. +Bulmer, come to annoy me.--Listen, monsieur," he went on, presently: "last +evening Mademoiselle de Puysange announced to the Duchess and me that her +impending match with the Duke of Ormskirk must necessarily be broken off, +as she was already married. She had, she stated, encountered you and a +clergyman yonder the forest, where, on the spur of the moment, you two had +espoused each other; and was quite unable to inform us what had become of +you after the ceremony. You can conceive that, as a sensible man, I did not +credit a word of her story. But now, as I understand it, you corroborate +this moonstruck narrative?" + +John Bulmer bowed his head. "I have that honor, monsieur." + +De Soyecourt sounded the gong beside him. "In that event, it is uncommonly +convenient to have you in hand. Your return, to Bellegarde I regard +as opportune, even though I am compelled to attribute it to insanity; +personally, I disapprove of this match with Milor Ormskirk, but as Gaston +is bent upon it, you will understand that in reason my only course is to +make Claire a widow as soon as may be possible." + +"It is intended, then," John Bulmer queried, "that I am to follow Achon?" + +"I can but trust," said the Marquis, politely, "that your course of life +has qualified you for a superior flight, since Achon's departing, I +apprehend, is not unakin to a descent." + +"No!" the Duchess cried, suddenly; "Monsieur de Soyecourt, can you not +see the man is out of his senses? Let Claire be sent for. There is some +mistake." + +De Soyecourt shrugged. "Yen know that I can refuse you nothing. Jacques," +he called, to the appearing lackey, "request Mademoiselle de Puysange to +honor us, if it be convenient, with her presence. Nay, I pray you, do not +rise, Mr. Bulmer; I am of a nervous disposition, startled by the least +movement, and my finger, as you may note, is immediately upon the trigger." + +So they sat thus, John Bulmer beginning to feel rather foolish as time wore +on, though actually it was not a long while before Claire had appeared in +the doorway and had paused there. You saw a great wave of color flood her +countenance, then swiftly ebb. John Bulmer observed, with a thrill, that +she made no sound, but simply waited, composed and alert, to find out how +much de Soyecourt knew before she spoke. + +The little Marquis said, "Claire, this gentleman informs us that you +married him yesterday." + +Tranquilly she inspected her claimant. "I did not see Monsieur Bulmer at +all yesterday, so far as I remember. Why, surely, Louis, you did not take +my nonsense of last night in earnest?" she demanded, and gave a mellow +ripple of laughter. "Yes, you actually believed it; you actually believed +that I walked into the forest and married the first man I met there, and +that this is he. As it happens I did not; so please let Monsieur Bulmer go +at once, and put away that absurd pistol--at once, Louis, do you hear?" + +The Duchess shook her head. "She is lying, Monsieur de Soyecourt, and +undoubtedly this is the man." + +John Bulmer went to the girl and took her hand. "You are trying to save me, +I know. But need I warn you that the reward of Ananias was never a synonym +for felicity?" + +"Jean Bulmer! Jean Bulmer!" the girl asked, and her voice was tender; "why +did you return to Bellegarde, Jean Bulmer?" + +"I came," he answered, "for the absurd reason that I cannot live without +you." + +They stood thus for a while, both her hands clasped in his, "I believe +you," she said at last, "even though I do not understand at all, Jean +Bulmer." And then she wheeled upon the Marquis, "Yes, yes!" Claire +said; "the man is my husband. And I will not have him harmed. Do you +comprehend?--you shall not touch him, because you are not fit to touch him, +Louis, and also because I do not wish it." + +De Soyecourt looked toward the Duchess as if for advice. "It is a nuisance, +but evidently she cannot marry Milor Ormskirk so long as Mr. Bulmer is +alive. I suppose it would be better to hang him out-of-hand?" + +"Monsieur de Puysange would prefer it, I imagine," said the Duchess; +"nevertheless, it appears a great pity." + +"In nature," the Marquis assented, "we deplore the loss of Mr. Bulmer's +company. Yet as matters stand--" + +"But they are in love with each other," the Duchess pointed out, with a +sorry little laugh. "Can you not see that, my friend?" + +"Hein?" said the Marquis; "why, then, it is doubly important that Mr. +Bulmer be hanged as soon as possible." He reached for the gong, but Claire +had begun to speak. + +"I am not at all in love with him! You are of a profound imbecility, +Hélène. I think he is a detestable person, because he always looks at you +as if he saw something extremely ridiculous, but was too polite to notice +it. He is invariably making me suspect I have a smut on my nose. But in +spite of that, I consider him a very pleasant old gentleman, and I will not +have him hanged!" With which ultimatum she stamped her foot. + +"Yes, madame," said the Marquis, critically; "after all, she is in love +with him. That is unfortunate, is it not, for Milor Ormskirk,--and even for +Achille Cazaio," he added, with a shrug. + +"I fail to see," a dignified young lady stated, "what Cazaio, at least, has +to do with your galimatias." + +"Simply that I received this morning a letter demanding you be surrendered +to Cazaio," de Soyecourt answered as he sounded the gong. "Otherwise, our +amiable friend of the Taunenfels announces he will attack Bellegarde. I, +of course, hanged his herald and despatched messengers to Gaston, whom I +look for to-morrow. If Gaston indeed arrive to-morrow morning, Mr. Bulmer, +I shall relinquish you to him; in other circumstances will be laid upon +me the deplorable necessity of summoning a Protestant minister from +Manneville, and, after your spiritual affairs are put in order, of hanging +you--suppose we say at noon?" + +"The hour suits me," said John Bulmer, "as well as another. But no better. +And I warn you it will not suit the Duke of Ormskirk, either, whose +relative--whose very near relative--" He posed for the astounding +revelation. + +But little de Soyecourt had drawn closer to him. "Mr. Bulmer, I have +somehow omitted to mention that two years ago I was at Aix-la-Chapelle, +when the treaty was in progress, and there saw your great kinsman. I cut +no particular figure at the convocation, and it is unlikely he recalls my +features; but I remember his quite clearly." + +"Indeed?" said John Bulmer, courteously; "it appears, then, that monsieur +is a physiognomist?" + +"You flatter me," the Marquis returned. "My skill in that science enabled +me to deduce only the veriest truisms--such as that the man who for fifteen +years had beaten France, had hoodwinked France, would in France be not +oversafe could we conceive him fool enough to hazard a trip into this +country." + +"Especially alone?" said John Bulmer. + +"Especially," the Marquis assented, "if he came alone. But, ma foi! I am +discourteous. You were about to say--?" + +"That a comic subject declines to be set forth in tragic verse," John +Bulmer answered, "and afterward to inquire the way to my dungeon." + + +X + +But John Bulmer escaped a dungeon after all; for at parting de Soyecourt +graciously offered to accept Mr. Bulmer's parole, which he gave willingly +enough, and thereby obtained the liberty of a tiny enclosed garden, whence +a stairway led to his new apartment on the second floor of what had been +known as the Constable's Tower, since du Guesclin held it for six weeks +against Sir Robert Knollys. This was a part of the ancient fortress in +which, they say, Poictesme's most famous hero, Dom Manuel, dwelt and +performed such wonders, a long while before Bellegarde was remodeled by +Duke Florian. + +The garden, gravel-pathed, was a trim place, all green and white. It +contained four poplars, and in the center was a fountain, where three +Nereids contended with a brawny Triton for the possession of a turtle whose +nostrils spurted water. A circle of attendant turtles, half-submerged, shot +inferior jets from their gaping mouths. It was an odd, and not unhandsome +piece, [Footnote: Designed by Simon Guillain. This fountain is still to be +seen at Bellegarde, though the exuberancy of Revolutionary patriotism has +bereft the Triton of his head and of the lifted arm.] and John Bulmer +inspected it with appreciation, and then the garden, and having found all +things satisfactory, sat down and chuckled sleepily and waited. + +"De Soyecourt has been aware of my identity throughout the entire week! +Faith, then, I am a greater fool than even I suspected, since this fop of +the boulevards has been able to trick me so long. He has some card up his +sleeve, too, has our good Marquis--Eh, well! Gaston comes to-morrow, and +thenceforward all is plain sailing. Meantime I conjecture that the poor +captive will presently have visitors." + +He had dinner first, though, and at this meal gave an excellent account of +himself. Shortly afterward, as he sat over his coffee, little de Soyecourt +unlocked the high and narrow gate which constituted the one entrance to the +garden, and sauntered forward, dapper and smiling. + +"I entreat your pardon, Monsieur le Duc," de Soyecourt began, "that I have +not visited you sooner. But in unsettled times, you comprehend, the master +of a beleaguered fortress is kept busy. Cazaio, I now learn, means to +attack to-morrow, and I have been fortifying against him. However, I attach +no particular importance to the man's threats, as I have despatched three +couriers to Gaston, one of whom must in reason get to him; and in that +event Gaston should arrive early in the afternoon, accompanied by the +dragoons of Entréchat. And subsequently--eh bien! if Cazaio has stirred up +a hornets'-nest he has only himself to thank for it." The Marquis snapped +his fingers and hummed a merry air, being to all appearance in excellent +spirits. + +"That is well," said John Bulmer,--"for, believe me, I shall be unfeignedly +glad to see Gaston once more." + +"Decidedly," said the Marquis, sniffing, "they give my prisoners much +better coffee than they deign to afford me, I shall make bold to ask you +for a cup of it, while we converse sensibly." He sat down opposite John +Bulmer. "Oh, about Gaston," said the Marquis, as he added the sugar--"it +is deplorable that you will not see Gaston again, at least, not in this +naughty world of ours." + +"I am the more grieved," said John Bulmer, gravely, "for I love the man." + +"It is necessary, you conceive, that I hang you, at latest, before twelve +o'clock to-morrow, since Gaston is a little too fond of you to fall in with +my plans. His premature arrival would in effect admit the bull of equity +into the china-shop of my intentions. And day-dreams are fragile stuff, +Monsieur d'Ormskirk! Indeed, I am giving you this so brief reprieve only +because I am, unwilling to have upon my conscience the reproach of hanging +without due preparation a man whom of all politicians in the universe I +most unfeignedly like and respect. The Protestant minister has been sent +for, and will, I sincerely trust, be here at dawn. Otherwise--really, I am +desolated, Monsieur le Duc, but you surely comprehend that I cannot wait +upon his leisure." + +John Bulmer cracked a filbert. "So I am to die to-morrow? I do not presume +to dictate, monsieur, but I would appreciate some explanation of your +motive." + +"Which I freely render," the Marquis replied. "When I recognized you a week +ago--as I did at first glance,--I was astounded. That you, the man in all +the world most cordially hated by Frenchmen, should venture into France +quite unattended was a conception to confound belief. Still, here you were, +and I comprehended that such an opportunity would not rap twice upon +the door. So I despatched a letter post-haste to Madame de Pompadour at +Marly--" + +"I begin to comprehend," John Bulmer said. "Old Tournehem's daughter +[Footnote: Mr. Bulmer here refers to a venerable scandal. The Pompadour +was, in the eyes of the law, at least, the daughter of François Poisson.] +hates me as she hates no other man alive. Frankly, monsieur, the little +strumpet has some cause to,--may I trouble you for the nut-crackers? a +thousand thanks,--since I have outwitted her more than once, both in +diplomacy and on the battle-field. With me out of the way, I comprehend +that France might attempt to renew the war, and our late treaty would be so +much wasted paper. Yes, I comprehend that the woman would give a deal for +me--But what the devil! France has no allies. She dare not provoke England +just at present; she has no allies, monsieur, for I can assure you that +Prussia is out of the game. Then what is the woman driving at?" + +"Far be it from me," said the Marquis, with becoming modesty, "to meddle +with affairs of state. Nevertheless, madame is willing to purchase you--at +any price." + +John Bulmer slapped his thigh, "Kaunitz! behold the key. Eh, eh, I have +it now; not long ago the Empress despatched a special ambassador to +Versailles,--one Anton Wenzel Kaunitz, a man I never heard of. Why, this +Moravian count is a genius of the first water. He will combine France and +Austria, implacable enemies since the Great Cardinal's time. Ah, I have +it now, monsieur,--Frederick of Prussia has published verses against the +Pompadour which she can never pardon--eh, against the Czaritza, too! Why, +what a thing it is to be a poet! now Russia will join the league. And +Sweden, of course, because she wants Pomerania, which King Frederick +claims. Monsieur de Soyecourt, I protest it will be one of the prettiest +messes ever stirred up in history! And to think that I am to miss it all!" + +"I regret," de Soyecourt said, "to deny you the pleasure of participation. +In sober verity I regret it. But unluckily, Monsieur d'Ormskirk, your +dissolution is the sole security of my happiness; and in effect"--he +shrugged,--"you comprehend my unfortunate position." + +"One of the prettiest messes ever stirred up in all history!" John Bulmer +lamented; "and I to miss it! The policy of centuries shrugged aside, and +the map of the world made over as lightly as if it were one of last year's +gowns! Decidedly I shall never again cast reflections upon the woman in +politics, for this is superb. Why, this coup is worthy of me! And what is +Petticoat the Second to give you, pray, for making all this possible?" + +"She will give me," the Marquis retorted, "according to advices received +from her yesterday, a lettre-de-cachet for Gaston de Puysange. Gaston is a +man of ability, but he is also a man of unbridled tongue. He has expressed +his opinion concerning the Pompadour, to cite an instance, as freely as +ever did the Comte de Maurepas. You know what happened to de Maurepas. Ah, +yes, Gaston is undoubtedly a peer of France, but the Pompadour is queen +of that kingdom. And in consequence--on the day that Madame de Pompadour +learns of your death,--Gaston goes to the Bastile." + +"Naturally," John Bulmer assented, "since imprisonment in the Bastile is by +ordinary the reward of common-sense when manifested by a Frenchman. What +the devil, monsieur! The Duchess' uncle, Maréchal de Richelieu, has been +there four times, and Gaston himself, if I am not mistaken, has sojourned +there twice. And neither is one whit the worse for it." + +The Marquis sipped his coffee. "The Bastile is not a very healthy place. +Besides, I have a friend there,--a gaoler. He was formerly a chemist." + +John Bulmer elevated the right eyebrow. "Poison?" + +"Dieu m'en garde!" The Marquis was appalled. "Nay, monsieur, merely an +unforeseeable attack of heart-disease." + +"Ah! ah!" said John Bulmer, very slowly. He presently resumed: "Afterward +the Duchesse de Puysange will be a widow. And already she is fond of you; +but unfortunately the Duchess--with every possible deference,--is a trifle +prudish. I see it all now, quite plainly; and out of pure friendliness, +I warn you that in my opinion the Duchess is hopelessly in love with her +husband." + +"We should suspect no well bred lady of provincialism," returned the +Marquis, "and so I shall take my chance. Believe me, Monsieur le Duc, I +profoundly regret that you and Gaston must be sacrificed in order to afford +me this same chance." + +But John Bulmer was chuckling. "My faith!" he said, and softly chafed his +hands together, "how sincerely you will be horrified when your impetuous +error is discovered--just too late! You were merely endeavoring to serve +your beloved Gaston and the Duke of Ormskirk when you hanged the rascal +who had impudently stolen the woman intended to cement their friendship! +The Duke fell a victim to his own folly, and you acted precipitately, +perhaps, but out of pure zeal. You will probably weep. Meanwhile your +lettre-de-cachet is on the road, and presently Gaston, too, is trapped +and murdered. You weep yet more tears--oh, vociferous tears!---and the +Duchess succumbs to you because you were so devotedly attached to her +former husband. And England will sit snug while France reconquers Europe. +Monsieur, I make you my compliments on one of the tidiest plots ever +brooded over." + +"It rejoices me," the Marquis returned, "that a conspirator of many years' +standing should commend my maiden effort." He rose. "And now, Monsieur +d'Ormskirk," he continued, with extended hand, "matters being thus amicably +adjusted, shall we say adieu?" + +John Bulmer considered. "Well,--no!" said he, at last; "I commend your +cleverness, Monsieur de Soyecourt, but as concerns your hand I must confess +to a distaste." + +The Marquis smiled. "Because at the bottom of your heart you despise me," +he said. "Ah, believe me, monsieur, your contempt for de Soyecourt is less +great than mine. And yet I have a weakness for him,--a weakness which +induces me to indulge all his desires." + +He bowed with ceremony and left the garden. + + +XI + +John Bulmer sat down to consider more at leisure these revelations. He +foreread like a placard Jeanne d'Étoiles' magnificent scheme: it would +convulse all Europe. England would remain supine, because Henry Pelham +could hardly hold the ministry together, even now; Newcastle was a fool; +and Ormskirk would be dead. He would barter his soul for one hour of +liberty, he thought. A riot, now,--ay, a riot in Paris, a blow from within, +would temporarily stupefy French enterprise and gain England time for +preparation. And a riot could be arranged so easily! Meanwhile he was a +prisoner, Pelham's hands were tied, and Newcastle was a fool, and the +Pompadour was disastrously remote from being a fool. + +"It is possible to announce that I am the Duke of Ormskirk--and to what +end? Faith, I had as well proclaim myself the Pope of Rome or the Cazique +of Mexico: the jackanapes will effect to regard my confession as the device +of a desperate man and will hang me just the same; and his infernal comedy +will go on without a hitch. Nay, I am fairly trapped, and Monsieur de +Soyecourt holds the winning hand--Now that I think of it he even has, in +Mr. Bulmer's letter of introduction, my formally signed statement that I +am not Ormskirk. It was tactful of the small rascal not to allude to that +crowning piece of stupidity: I appreciate his forbearance. But even so, to +be outwitted--and hanged---by a smirking Hop-o'-my-thumb! + +"Oh, this is very annoying!" said John Bulmer, in his impotence. + +He sat down once more, sulkily, like an overfed cat, and began to read with +desperate attention: "'Here may men understand that be of worship, that he +was never formed that at every time might stand, but sometimes he was put +to the worse by evil fortune. And at sometimes the worse knight putteth +the better knight into rebuke.' Behold a niggardly salve rather than a +panacea." He turned several pages. "'And then said Sir Tristram to Sir +Lamorake, "I require you if ye happen to meet with Sir Palomides--"'" +Startled, John Bulmer glanced about the garden. + +It turned on a sudden into the primal garden of Paradise. "I came," she +loftily explained, "because I considered it my duty to apologize in person +for leading you into great danger. Our scouts tell us that already Cazaio +is marshalling his men upon the Taunenfels." + +"And yet," John Bulmer said, as he arose, and put away his book, +"Bellegarde is a strong place. And our good Marquis, whatever else he may +be, is neither a fool nor a coward." + +Claire shrugged. "Cazaio has ten men to our one. Yet perhaps we can hold +out till Gaston comes with his dragoons. And then--well, I have some +influence with Gaston. He will not deny me,--ah, surely he will not deny me +if I go down on my knees to him and wear my very prettiest gown. Nay, at +bottom Gaston is kind, my friend, and he will spare you." + +"To be your husband?" said John Bulmer. + +Twice she faltered "No." And then she cried, with a sudden flare of +irritation: "I do not love you! I cannot help that. Oh, you--you +unutterable bully!" + +Gravely he shook his head at her. + +"But indeed you are a bully. You are trying to bully me into caring for +you, and you know it. What else moved you to return to Bellegarde, and to +sit here, a doomed man, tranquilly reading? Yes, but you were,--I happened +to see you, through the key-hole in the gate. And why else should you be +doing that unless you were trying to bully me into admiring you?" + +"Because I adore you," said John Bulmer, taking affairs in order; "and +because in this noble and joyous history of the great conqueror and +excellent monarch, King Arthur, I find much diverting matter; and because, +to be quite frank, Claire, I consider an existence without you neither +alluring nor possible." + +She had noticeably pinkened. "Oh, monsieur," the girl cried, "you are +laughing because you are afraid that I will laugh at what you are saying to +me. Believe me, I have no desire to laugh. It frightens me, rather. I had +thought that nowadays no man could behave with a foolishness so divine. I +had thought all such extravagancy perished with the Launcelot and Palomides +of your book. And I had thought--that in any event, you had no earthly +right to call me Claire." + +"Superficially, the reproach is just," he assented, "but what was the +name your Palomides cried in battle, pray? Was it not _Ysoude!_ when his +searching sword had at last found the joints of his adversary's armor, or +when the foe's helmet spouted blood? _Ysoude!_ when the line of adverse +spears wavered and broke, and the Saracen was victor? Was it not _Ysoude!_ +he murmured riding over alien hill and valley in pursuit of the Questing +Beast?--'the glatisant beast'? Assuredly, he cried _Ysoude!_ and meantime +La Beale Ysoude sits snug in Cornwall with Tristram, who dons his armor +once in a while to roll Palomides in the sand _coram populo_. Still the +name was sweet, and I protest the Saracen had a perfect right to mention it +whenever he felt so inclined." + +"You jest at everything," she lamented--"which is one of the many traits +that I dislike in you." + +"Knowing your heart to be very tender," he submitted, "I am endeavoring to +present as jovial and callous an appearance as may be possible--to you, +whom I love as Palomides loved Ysoude. Otherwise, you might be cruelly +upset by your compassion and sympathy. Yet stay; is there not another +similitude? Assuredly, for you love me much as Ysoude loved Palomides. What +the deuce is all this lamentation to you? You do not value it the beard of +an onion,--while of course grieving that your friendship should have been +so utterly misconstrued, and wrongly interpreted,--and--trusting that +nothing you have said or done has misled me--Oh, but I know you women!" + +"Indeed, I sometimes wonder," she reflected, "what sort of women you have +been friends with hitherto? They must have been very patient of nonsense." + +"Ah, do you think so?--At all events, you interrupt my peroration. For we +have fought, you and I, a--battle which is over, so far as I am concerned. +And the other side has won. Well! Pompey was reckoned a very pretty fellow +in his day, but he took to his heels at Pharsalia, for all that; and +Hannibal, I have heard, did not have matters entirely his own way at Zama. +Good men have been beaten before this. So, without stopping to cry over +spilt milk,--heyho!" he interpolated, with a grimace, "it was uncommonly +sweet milk, though,--let's back to our tents and reckon up our wounds." + +"I am decidedly of the opinion," she said, "that for all your talk you +will find your heart unscratched." Irony bewildered Claire, though she +invariably recognized it, and gave it a polite smile. + +John Bulmer said: "Faith, I do not intend to flatter your vanity by going +into a decline on the spot. For in perfect frankness, I find no mortal +wounds anywhere. No, we have it on the best authority that, while many men +have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them, it was never for +love. I am inclined to agree with Rosalind: an aneurism may be fatal, but +a broken heart kills nobody. Lovers have died in divers manners since the +antique world was made, but not the most luckless of them was slain by +love. Even Palomides, as my book informs me, went abroad with Launcelot and +probably died an old man here in France,--peaceably, in his bed, with the +family physician in attendance, and every other circumstance becoming to +a genteel demise. And I dare assert that long before this he had learned +to chuckle over his youthful follies, and had protested to his wife that +La Beale Ysoude squinted, or was freckled, or the like; and had insisted, +laughingly, that the best of us must sow our wild oats. And at the last it +was his wife who mixed his gruel and smoothed his pillow and sat up with +him at night; so that if he died thinking of Madame Palomides rather than +of La Beale Ysoude, who shall blame him? Not I, for one," said John Bulmer, +stoutly; "If it was not heroic, it was at least respectable, and, above +all, natural; and I expect some day to gasp out a similar valedictory. No, +not to-morrow at noon, I think: I shall probably get out of this, somehow. +And when, in any event, I set about the process of dying, I may be thinking +of you, O fair lost lady! and again I may not be thinking of you. Who can +say? A fly, for instance, may have lighted upon my nose and his tickling +may have distracted my ultimate thoughts. Meanwhile, I love you consumedly, +and you do not care a snap of your fingers for me." + +"I--I am sorry," she said, inadequately. + +"You are the more gracious." And his face sank down into his hands, and +Claire was forgotten, for he was remembering Alison Pleydell and that +ancient bankruptcy of his heart in youth, and this preposterous old John +Bulmer (he reflected) was simply revelling in pity for himself. + +A hand, feather-soft, fell upon, his shoulder, "And who was your Ysoude, +Jean Bulmer?" + +"A woman who died twenty years ago,--a woman dead before you were born, my +dear." + +Claire gave a little stifled moan, "Oh--oh, I loathe her!" she cried. + +But when he raised his head Claire was gone. + + +XII + +He sat long in the twilight, now; rising insensibly about him. The garden +had become a grave, yet not unfriendly, place; the white straining Nereids +were taking on a tinge of violet, the verdure was of a deeper hue, that was +all; and the fountain plashed unhurriedly, as though measuring a reasonable +interval (he whimsically imagined) between the asking of a riddle and its +solution given gratis by the asker. + +He loved the woman; granted: but did not love rise the higher above a +corner-stone of delusion? And this he could never afford. He considered +Claire to be not extravagantly clever, he could have improved upon her +ears (to cite one instance), which were rather clumsily modelled; her +finger-tips were a thought too thick, a shade too practical, and in fine +she was no more the most beautiful woman in the world than she was the +tallest: and yet he loved her as certainly he had loved none of his recent +mistresses. Even so, here was no infatuation, no roseate and kindly haze +surrounding a goddess, such as that which had by ordinary accompanied +Alison Pleydell.... + +"I am grown older, perhaps. Perhaps it is merely that I am fashioned of +baser stuff than---say, Achille Cazaio or de Soyecourt. Or perhaps it +is that this overmastering, all-engulfing love is a mere figment of the +poet, an age-long superstition as zealously preserved as that of the +inscrutability of women, by men who don't believe a syllable of the +nonsense they are transmitting. Ysoude is dead; and I love my young +French wife as thoroughly as Palomides did, with as great a passion as +was possible to either of us oldsters. Well! all life is a compromise; I +compromise with tradition by loving her unselfishly, by loving her with the +very best that remains in John Bulmer. + +"And yet, I wish-- + +"True, I may be hanged at noon to-morrow, which would somewhat disconcert +my plan. I shall not bother about that. Always there remains the chance +that, somehow, Gaston may arrive in time: otherwise--why, otherwise I shall +be hanged, and as to what will happen afterward I decline to enter into any +discussion even with myself. I have my belief, but it is bolstered by no +iota of knowledge. Faith, let us live this life as a gentleman should, and +keep our hands and our consciences as clean as may be possible, and for the +outcome trust to God's common-sense. There are people who must divert Him +vastly by their frantic efforts to keep out of hell. For my own part, I +would not think of wearing a pelisse in the Desert of Sahara merely because +I happened to be sailing for Greenland during the ensuing week. I shall +trust to His common-sense. + +"And yet, I wish-- + +"I wish Reinault would hurry with the supper-trays. I am growing very +hungry." + + +XIII + +That night he was roused by a tapping at his door. "Jean Bulmer, Jean +Bulmer! I have bribed Reinault. I have the keys. Come, and I will set you +free." + +"Free to do what?" said John Bulmer. + +"To escape--to flee to your foggy England," said the voice without,--"and +to your hideous Englishwomen." + +"Do you go with me?" said John Bulmer. + +"I do not." This was spoken from the turrets of decision. + +"In that event," said John Bulmer, "I shall return to my dreams, which I +infinitely prefer to the realities of a hollow existence. And, besides, now +one thinks of it, I have given my parole." + +An infuriate voice came through the key-hole. "You are undoubtedly a +bully," it stated. "I loathe you." Followed silence. + +Presently the voice said, "Because if you really loved her you were no +better than she was, and so I hate you both." + +"'Beautiful as an angel, and headstrong as a devil,'" was John Bulmer's +meditation. Afterward John Bulmer turned over and went back to sleep. + +For after all, as he reflected, he had given his parole. + + +XIV + +He was awakened later by a shriek that was followed by a hubbub of tumult. +John Bulmer sat erect in bed. He heard a medley of yelling, of musketry, +and of crashes, like the dilapidation of falling battlements. He knew well +enough what had happened. Cazaio and his men were making a night attack +upon Bellegarde. + +John Bulmer arose and, having lighted two candles, dressed himself. He cast +aside the first cravat as a failure, knotted the second with scrupulous +nicety, and afterward sat down, facing the door to his apartment, and +trimmed his finger nails. Outside was Pandemonium, and the little scrap of +sky visible from his one window was now of a sullen red. + +"It is very curious I do not suffer more acutely. As a matter of fact, I +am not conscious of any particular feeling at all. I believe that most of +us when we are confronted with a situation demanding high joy or agony +find ourselves devoid of emotion. They have evidently taken de Soyecourt +by surprise. She is yonder in that hell outside and will inevitably be +captured by its most lustful devil--or else be murdered. I am here like +a trapped rat, impotent, waiting to be killed, which Cazaio's men will +presently attend to when they ransack the place and find me. And I feel +nothing, absolutely nothing. + +"By this she has probably fallen into Cazaio's power--" + +And the man went mad. He dashed upon the locked door, and tore at it with +soft-white hands, so that presently they were all blood. He beat his face +upon the door, cutting open his forehead. + +He shook his bleeding hands toward heaven. "In my time I have been cruel. I +am less cruel than You! Let me go!" + +The door opened and she stood upon the threshold. His arms were about her +and repeatedly he kissed her, mercilessly, with hard kisses, crushing her +in his embrace. + +"Jean, Jean!" she sobbed, beneath his lips, and lay quite still in his +arms. He saw how white and tender a thing she was, and the fierce embrace +relaxed. + +"You came to me!" he said. + +"Louis had forgotten you. They had all retreated to the Inner Tower. +[Footnote: The inner ward, or ballium, which (according to Quinault) was +defended by ten towers, connected by an embattled stone wall about thirty +feet in height and eight feet thick, on the summit of which was a footway; +now demolished to make way for the famous gardens.] Cazaio cannot take +that, for he has no cannon. Louis can hold out there until Gaston comes +with help," Claire rapidly explained. "But the thieves are burning +Bellegarde. I could bribe no man to set you free. They were afraid to +venture." + +"And you came," said John Bulmer--"you left the tall safe Inner Tower to +come to me!" + +"I could not let you die, Jean Bulmer." + +"Why, then I must live not unworthily the life which, you have given me. O +God!" John Bulmer cried, "what a pitiful creature was that great Duke of +Ormskirk! Now make a man of me, O God!" + +"Listen, dear madman," she breathed; "we cannot go out into Bellegarde. +They are everywhere--Cazaio's men. They are building huge fires about the +Inner Tower; but it is all stone, and I think Louis can hold out. But we, +Jean Bulmer, can only retreat to the roofing of this place. There is a +trap-door to admit you to the top, and there--there we can at least live +until the dawn." + +"I am unarmed," John Bulmer said; "and weaponless, I cannot hold even a +trap-door against armed men." + +"I have brought you weapons," Claire returned, and waved one hand toward +the outer passageway. "Naturally I would not overlook that. There were many +dead men on my way hither, and they had no need of weapons. I have a sword +here and two pistols." + +"You are," said John Bulmer, with supreme conviction, "the most wonderful +woman in the universe. By all means let us get to the top of this infernal +tower and live there as long as we may find living possible. But first, +will you permit me to make myself a thought tidier? For in my recent +agitation as to your whereabouts I have, I perceive, somewhat disordered +both my person and my apparel." + +Claire laughed a little sadly. "You have been sincere for once in your +existence, and you are hideously ashamed, is it not? Ah, my friend, I would +like you so much better if you were not always playing at life, not always +posing as if for your portrait." + +"For my part," he returned, obscurely, from the rear of a wet towel, "I +fail to perceive any particular merit in dying with a dirty face. We are +about to deal with a most important and, it well may be, the final crisis +of our lives. So let us do it with decency." + +Afterward John Bulmer changed his cravat, since the one he wore was soiled +and crumpled and stained a little with his blood; and they went up the +winding stairway to the top of the Constable's Tower. These two passed +through the trap-door into a moonlight which drenched the world; westward +the higher walls of the Hugonet Wing shut off that part of Bellegarde where +men were slaughtering one another, and turrets, black and untenanted, stood +in strong relief against a sky of shifting crimson and gold. At their feet +was the tiny enclosed garden half-hidden by the poplar boughs. To the east +the Tower dropped sheer to the moat; and past that was the curve of the +highway leading to the main entrance of the château, and beyond this road +you saw Amneran and the moonlighted plains of the Duardenez, and one little +tributary, a thread of pulsing silver, in passage to the great river which +showed as a smear of white, like a chalk-mark on the world's rim. + +John Bulmer closed the trap-door. They stood with clasped hands, eyes +straining toward the east, whence help must arrive if help came at all. + +"No sign of Gaston," the girl said. "We most die presently, Jean Bulmer." + +"I am sorry," he said,--"Oh, I am hideously sorry that we two must die." + +"I am not afraid, Jean Bulmer. But life would be very sweet, with you." + +"That was my thought, too.... I have always bungled this affair of living, +you conceive. I had considered the world a healthy and not intolerable +prison, where each man must get through his day's work as best he might, +soiling his fingers as much as necessity demanded--but no more,--so that at +the end he might sleep soundly--or perhaps that he might go to heaven and +pluck eternally at a harp, or else to hell and burn eternally, just as +divines say we will. I never bothered about it, much, so long as there was +my day's work at hand, demanding performance. And in consequence I missed +the whole meaning of life." + +"That is not so!" Claire replied. "No man has achieved more, as everybody +knows." + +This was an odd speech. But he answered, idly: "Eh, I have done well +enough as respectable persons judge these matters. And I went to church on +Sundays, and I paid my tithes. Trifles, these, sweetheart; for in every +man, as I now see quite plainly, there is a god. And the god must judge, +and the man himself must be the temple and the instrument of the god. It is +very simple, I see now. And whether he go to church or no is a matter of +trivial importance, so long as the man obeys the god who is within him." +John Bulmer was silent, staring vaguely toward the blank horizon. + +"And now that you have discovered this," she murmured, "therefore you wish +to live?" + +"Why, partly on account of that," he said, "yet perhaps mostly on account +of you.... But heyho!" said John Bulmer; "I am disfiguring my last hours +by inflicting upon a lady my half-baked theology. Let us sit down, my +dear, and talk of trifles till they find us. And then I will kill you, +sweetheart, and afterward myself. Presently come dawn and death; and my +heart, according to the ancient custom of Poictesme, is crying, '_Oy +Dieus! Oy Dieus, de l'alba tantost ve!_' But for all that, my mouth will +resolutely discourse of the last Parisian flounces, or of your unfathomable +eyes, or of Monsieur de Voltaire's new tragedy of _Oreste_,--or, in fine, +of any topic you may elect." + +He smiled, with a twinging undercurrent of regret that not even in +impendent death did he find any stimulus to the heroical. But the girl had +given a muffled cry. + +"Look, Jean! Already they come for us." + +Through the little garden a man was running, running frenziedly from +one wall to another when he found the place had no outlet save the gate +through which he had scuttled. It was fat Guiton, the steward of the Duc de +Puysange. Presently came Achille Cazaio with a wet sword, and harried the +unarmed old man, wantonly driving him about the poplars, pricking him in +the quivering shoulders, but never killing him. All the while the steward +screamed with a monotonous shrill wailing. + +After a little he fell at Cazaio's feet, shrieking for mercy. + +"Fool!" said the latter, "I am Achille Cazaio. I have no mercy in me." + +He kicked the steward in the face two or three times, and Guiton, his +countenance all blood, black in the moonlight, embraced the brigand's +and wept. Presently Cazaio slowly drove his sword into the back of the +prostrate man, who shrieked, "O Jesu!" and began to cough and choke. Five +times Cazaio spitted the writhing thing, and afterward was Guiton's soul +released from the tortured body. + +"Is it well, think you," said John Bulmer, "that I should die without first +killing Achille Cazaio?" + +"No!" the girl answered, fiercely. + +Then John Bulmer leaned upon the parapet of the Constable's Tower and +called aloud, "Friend Achille, your conduct disappoints me." + +The man started, peered about, and presently stared upward. "Monsieur +Bulmaire, to encounter you is indeed an unlooked-for pleasure. May I +inquire wherein I have been so ill-fated as to offend?" + +"You have an engagement to fight me on Thursday afternoon, friend Achille, +so that to all intent I hold a mortgage on your life. I submit that, in +consequence, you have no right to endanger that life by besieging castles +and wasting the night in assassinations." + +"There is something in what you say, Monsieur Bulmaire," the brigand +replied, "and I very heartily apologize for not thinking of it earlier. +But in the way of business, you understand,--However, may I trust it will +please you to release me from this inconvenient obligation?" Cazaio added, +with a smile. "My men are waiting for me yonder, you comprehend." + +"In fact," said John Bulmer, hospitably, "up here the moonlight is as clear +as day. We can settle our affair in five minutes." + +"I come," said Cazaio, and plunged into the entrance to the Constable's +Tower. + +"The pistol! quick!" said Claire. + +"And for what, pray?" said John Bulmer. + +"So that from behind, as he lifts the trap-door, I may shoot him through +the head. Do you stand in front as though to receive him. It will be quite +simple." + + +XV + +"My dear creature," said John Bulmer, "I am now doubly persuaded that God +entirely omitted what we term a sense of honor when He created the woman. I +mean to kill this rapscallion, but I mean to kill him fairly." He unbolted +the trap-door and immediately Cazaio stood upon the roof, his sword drawn. + +Achille Cazaio stared at the tranquil woman, and now his countenance +was less that of a satyr than of a demon. "At four in the morning! +I congratulate you, Monsieur Bulmaire," he said,--"Oh, decidedly, I +congratulate you." + +"Thank you," said John Bulmer, sword in hand; "yes, we were married +yesterday." + +Cazaio drew a pistol from his girdle and fired full in John Bulmer's face; +but the latter had fallen upon one knee, and the ball sped harmlessly above +him. + +"You are very careless with fire-arms," John Bulmer lamented, "Really, +friend Achille, if you are not more circumspect you will presently injure +somebody, and will forever afterward be consumed with unavailing regret and +compunctions. Now let us get down to our affair." + +They crossed blades in the moonlight, Cazaio was in a disastrous condition; +John Bulmer's tolerant acceptance of any meanness that a Cazaio might +attempt, the vital shame of this new and baser failure before Claire's very +eyes, had made of Cazaio a crazed beast. He slobbered little flecks of +foam, clinging like hoar-frost to the tangled beard, and he breathed with +shuddering inhalations, like a man in agony, the while that he charged +with redoubling thrusts. The Englishman appeared to be enjoying himself, +discreetly; he chuckled as the other, cursing, shifted from tierce to +quart, and he met the assault with a nice inevitableness. In all, each +movement had the comely precision of finely adjusted clockwork, though +at times John Bulmer's face showed a spurt of amusement roused by the +brigand's extravagancy of gesture and Cazaio's contortions as he strove to +pass the line of steel that flickered cannily between his sword and John +Bulmer's portly bosom. + +Then John Bulmer, too, attacked. "For Guiton!" said he, as his point +slipped into Cazaio's breast. John Bulmer recoiled and lodged another +thrust in the brigand's throat. "For attempting to assassinate me!" His +foot stamped as his sword ran deep into Cazaio's belly. "For insulting my +wife by thinking of her obscenely! You are a dead man, friend Achille." + +Cazaio had dropped his sword, reeling as if drunken against the western +battlement. "My comfort," he said, hoarsely, while one hand tore at his +jetting throat--"my comfort is that I could not perish slain by a braver +enemy." He moaned and stumbled backward. Momentarily his knees gripped the +low embrasure. Then his feet flipped upward, convulsively, so that John +Bulmer saw the man's spurs glitter and twitch in the moonlight, and John +Bulmer heard a snapping and crackling and swishing among the poplars, and +heard the heavy, unvibrant thud of Cazaio's body upon the turf. + +"May he find more mercy than he has merited," said John Bulmer, "for the +man had excellent traits. Yes, in him the making of a very good swordsman +was spoiled by that abominable Boisrobert." + +But Claire had caught him by the shoulder. "Look, Jean!" + +He turned toward the Duardenez. A troop of horsemen was nearing. Now they +swept about the curve in the highway and at their head was de Puysange, +laughing terribly. The dragoons went by like a tumult in a sick man's +dream, and the Hugonet Wing had screened them. + +"Then Bellegarde is relieved," said John Bulmer, "and your life, at least, +is saved." + +The girl stormed. "You--you abominable trickster! You would not be content +with the keys of heaven if you had not got them by outwitting somebody! Do +you fancy I had never seen the Duke of Ormskirk's portrait? Gaston sent me +one six months ago." + +"Ah!" said John Bulmer, very quietly. He took up the discarded scabbard, +and he sheathed his sword without speaking. + +Presently he said, "You have been cognizant all along that I was the Duke +of Ormskirk?" + +"Yes," she answered, promptly. + +"And you married me, knowing that I was--God save the mark!--the great Duke +of Ormskirk? knowing that you made what we must grossly term a brilliant +match?" + +"I married you because, in spite of Jean Bulmer, you had betrayed yourself +to be a daring and a gallant gentleman,--and because, for a moment, I +thought that I did not dislike the Duke of Ormskirk quite so much as I +ought to." + +He digested this. + +"O Jean Bulmer," the girl said, "they tell me you were ever a fortunate +man, but I consider you the unluckiest I know of. For always you are afraid +to be yourself. Sometimes you forget, and are just you--and then, ohé! you +remember, and are only a sulky, fat old gentleman who is not you at all, +somehow; so that at times I detest you, and at times I cannot thoroughly +detest you. So that I played out the comedy, Jean Bulmer. I meant in the +end to tell Louis who you were, of course, and not let them hang you; but I +never quite trusted you; and I never knew whether I detested you or no, at +bottom, until last night." + +"Last night you left the safe Inner Tower to come to me--to save me at all +hazards, or else to die with me--And for what reason, did you do this?" + +"You are bullying me!" she wailed. + +"And for what reason, did you do this?" he repeated, without any change of +intonation. + +"Can you not guess?" she asked. "Oh, because I am a fool!" she stated, very +happily, for his arms were about her. + +"Eh, in that event--" said the Duke of Ormskirk. "Look!" said he, with a +deeper thrill of speech, "it is the dawn." + +They turned hand in hand; and out of the east the sun came statelily, and a +new day was upon them. + + + + +VIII + +HEART OF GOLD + + +_As Played at Paris, in the May of 1750_ + +"_Cette amoureuse ardeur qui dans les coeurs s'excite N'est point, comme +l'on sçait, un effet du merite; Le caprice y prend part, et, quand +quelqu'un nous plaist, Souvent nous avons peine à dire pourquoy c'est. Mais +on vois que l'amour se gouverne autrement._" + + +DRAMATIS PERSONÆ + +DUC DE PUYSANGE, somewhat given to women, and now and then to +good-fellowship, but a man of excellent disposition. + +MARQUIS DE SOYECOURT, his cousin, and loves de Puysange's wife. + +DUKE OF ORMSKIRK. + +DUCHESSE DE PUYSANGE, a precise, but amiable and patient, woman. + +ANTOINE, LACKEYS to de Puysange, Etc. + + +SCENE + +Paris, mostly within and about the Hôtel de Puysange. + + + + +HEART OF GOLD + + +PROEM:--_Necessitated by a Change of Scene_ + +You are not to imagine that John Bulmer debated an exposure of de +Soyecourt. "Live and let live" was the Englishman's axiom; the exuberant +Cazaio was dead, his men were either slain or dispersed, and the whole +tangle of errors--with judicious reservations--had now been unravelled to +Gaston's satisfaction. And Claire de Puysange was now Duchess of Ormskirk. +Why, then, meddle with Destiny, who appeared, after all, to possess a +certain sense of equity? + +So Ormskirk smiled as he presently went about Paris, on his own business, +and when he and Louis de Soyecourt encountered each other their +friendliness was monstrous in its geniality. + +They were now one and all in Paris, where Ormskirk's marriage had been +again, and more publicly, solemnized. De Puysange swore that his sister was +on this occasion the loveliest person affordable by the resources of the +universe, but de Soyecourt backed another candidate; so that over their +wine the two gentlemen presently fell into a dispute. + +"Nay, but I protest to you she is the most beautiful woman in all Paris!" +cried the Marquis de Soyecourt, and kissed his finger-tips gallantly. + +"My dear Louis," the Duc de Puysange retorted, "her eyes are noticeable, +perhaps; and I grant you," he added, slowly, "that her husband is not often +troubled by--that which they notice." + +"--And the cleverest!" + +"I have admitted she knows when to be silent. What more would you demand of +any woman?" + +"And yet--" The little Marquis waved a reproachful forefinger. + +"Why, but," said the Duke, with utter comprehension, "it is not for nothing +that our house traces from the great Jurgen--" + +He was in a genial midnight mood, and, on other subjects, inclined to be +garrulous; for the world, viewed through a slight haze, of vinous origin, +seemed a pleasant place, and inspired a kindly desire to say diverting +things about the world's contents. He knew the Marquis to be patient, +and even stolid, under a fusillade of epigram and paradox; in short, de +Puysange knew the hour and the antagonist for midnight talk to be at hand. +And a saturnalia of phrases whirled in his brain, demanding utterance. + +He waved them aside. Certain inbred ideas are strangely tenacious of +existence, and it happened to be his wife they were discussing. It would +not be good form, de Puysange felt, for him to evince great interest in +this topic.... + + +I + +"And yet," de Puysange queried, as he climbed democratically into a public +hackney coach, "why not? For my part, I see no good and sufficient reason +for discriminating against the only woman one has sworn to love and cherish +and honor. It is true that several hundred people witnessed the promise, +with a perfect understanding of the jest, and that the keeping of this oath +involves a certain breach of faith with society. Eh bien! let us, then, +deceive the world--and the flesh--and the devil! Let us snap our fingers at +this unholy trinity, and assert the right, when the whim takes us, to make +unstinted love to our own wives!" + +He settled back in the _fiacre_ to deliberate. "It is bourgeois? Bah! the +word is the first refuge of the unskilful poseur! It is bourgeois to be +born, to breathe, to sleep, or eat; in which of the functions that consume +the greater part of my life do I differ from my grocer? Bourgeois! why, +rightly considered, to be a human being at all is quite inordinately +bourgeois! And it is very notably grocer-like to maintain a grave face and +two establishments, to chuckle privily over the fragments of the seventh +commandment, to repent, upon detection, and afterward--ces bêtes-là!--to +drink poison. Ma foi, I infinitely prefer the domestic coffee!" + +The Duc de Puysange laughed, and made as though to wave aside the crudities +of life. "All vice is bourgeois, and fornication in particular tends +to become sordid, outworn, vieux jeu! In youth, I grant you, it is the +unexpurgated that always happens. But at my age--misericorde!--the +men yawn, and les demoiselles--bah! les demoiselles have the souls of +accountants! They buy and sell, as my grocer does. The satiation of carnal +desires is no longer a matter of splendid crimes and sorrows and kingdoms +lost; it is a matter of business." + +The harsh and swarthy face relaxed. With, a little sigh the Duc de Puysange +had closed his fevered eyes. About them were a multitude of tiny lines, +and of this fact he was obscurely conscious, in a wearied fashion, when he +again looked out on the wellnigh deserted streets, now troubled by a hint +of dawn. His eyes were old; they had seen much. Two workmen shambled by, +chatting on their way to the day's work; in the attic yonder a drunken +fellow sang, "Ah, bouteille ma mie," he bellowed, "pourquoi vous +vuidez-vous?" + +De Puysange laughed. "I suppose I have no conscience, but at least, I can +lay claim to a certain fastidiousness. I am very wicked,"--he smiled, +without mirth or bitterness,--"I have sinned notably as the world accounts +it; indeed, I think, my repute is as abominable as that of any man living. +And I am tired,--alas, I am damnably tired! I have found the seven deadly +sins deadly, beyond, doubt, but only deadly dull and deadly commonplace. I +have perseveringly frisked in the high places of iniquity, I have junketed +with all evil gods, and the utmost they could pretend to offer any of their +servitors was a spasm. I renounce them, as feeble-minded deities, I snap +my fingers, very much as did my progenitor, the great Jurgen, at all their +over-rated mysteries." + +His glance caught and clung for a moment to the paling splendor of the moon +that hung low in the vacant, dove-colored heavens. A faint pang, half-envy, +half-regret, vexed the Duke with a dull twinge. "I wish too that by living +continently I could have done, once for all, with this faded pose and this +idle making of phrases! Eheu! there is a certain proverb concerning pitch +so cynical that I suspect it of being truthful. However,--we shall see." + +De Puysange smiled. "The most beautiful woman in all Paris? Ah, yes, she is +quite that, is this grave silent female whose eyes are more fathomless and +cold than oceans! And how cordially she despises me! Ma foi, I think that +if her blood--which is, beyond doubt, of a pale-pink color,--be ever +stirred, at all, it is with loathing of her husband. Well, life holds many +surprises for madame, now that I become quite as virtuous as she is. We +will arrange a very pleasant comedy of belated courtship; for are we not +bidden to love one another? So be it,--I am henceforth the model père de +famille." + +Now the _fiacre_ clattered before the Hôtel de Puysange. + +The door was opened by a dull-eyed lackey, whom de Puysange greeted with +a smile, "Bon jour, Antoine!" cried the Duke; "I trust that your wife and +doubtless very charming children have good health?" + +"Beyond question, monseigneur," the man answered, stolidly. + +"That is excellent hearing," de Puysange said, "and it rejoices me to be +reassured of their welfare. For the happiness of others, Antoine, is +very dear to the heart of a father--and of a husband." The Duke chuckled +seraphically as he passed down the hall. The man stared after him, and +shrugged. + +"Rather worse than usual," Antoine considered. + + +II + +Next morning the Duchesse de Puysange received an immoderate armful of +roses, with a fair copy of some execrable verses. De Puysange spent the +afternoon, selecting bonbons and wholesome books,--"for his fiancée," he +gravely informed the shopman. + +At the Opéra he never left her box; afterward, at the Comtesse de +Hauteville's, he created a furor by sitting out three dances in the +conservatory with his wife. Mademoiselle Tiercelin had already received his +regrets that he was spending that night at home. + + +III + +The month wore on. + +"It is the true honeymoon," said the Duke. + +In that event he might easily have found a quieter place than Paris wherein +to spend it. Police agents had of late been promised a premium for any +sturdy beggar, whether male or female, they could secure to populate +the new plantation of Louisiana; and as the premium was large, genteel +burgesses, and in particular the children of genteel burgesses, were +presently disappearing in a fashion their families found annoying. Now, +from nowhere, arose and spread the curious rumor that King Louis, somewhat +the worse for his diversions in the Parc-aux-Cerfs, daily restored his +vigor by bathing in the blood of young children; and parents of the +absentees began to manifest a double dissatisfaction, for the deduction was +obvious. + +There were riots. In one of them Madame de Pompadour barely escaped with +her life, [Footnote: This was on the afternoon of the famous ball given +by the Pompadour in honor of the new Duchess of Ormskirk.] and the King +himself on his way to Compiègne, was turned back at the Porte St. Antoine, +and forced to make a détour rather than enter his own capital. After this +affair de Puysange went straight to his brother-in-law. + +"Jean," said he, "for a newly married man you receive too much company. And +afterward your visitors talk blasphemously in cabarets and shoot the King's +musketeers. I would appreciate an explanation." + +Ormskirk shrugged. "Merely a makeshift, Gaston. Merely a device to gain +time wherein England may prepare against the alliance of France and +Austria. Your secret treaty will never be signed as long as Paris is given +over to rioters. Nay, the Empress may well hesitate to ally herself with +a king who thus clamantly cannot govern even his own realm. And meanwhile +England will prepare herself. We will be ready to fight you in five years, +but we do not intend to be hurried about it." + +"Yes," de Puysange assented;--"yet you err in sending Cumberland to defend +Hanover. You will need a better man there." + +Ormskirk slapped his thigh. "So you intercepted that last despatch, after +all! And I could have sworn Candale was trustworthy!" + +"My adored Jean," replied de Puysange, "he has been in my pay for six +months! Console yourself with the reflection that you overbid us in +Noumaria." + +"Yes, but old Ludwig held out for more than the whole duchy is worth. We +paid of course. We had to pay." + +"And one of course congratulates you upon securing the quite essential +support of that duchy. Still, Jean, if there were any accident--" De +Puysange was really unbelievably ugly when he smiled. "For accidents do +occur.... It is war, then?" + +"My dear fellow," said Ormskirk, "of course it is war. We are about to fly +at each other's throats, with half of Europe to back each of us. We begin +the greatest game we have ever played. And we will manage it very badly, I +dare say, since we are each of us just now besotted with adoration of our +wives." + +"At times," said de Puysange, with dignity, "your galimatias are +insufferable. Now let us talk like reasonable beings. In regard to +Pomerania, you will readily understand that the interests of humanity--" + + +IV + +Still the suggestion haunted him. It would be a nuance too ridiculous, of +course, to care seriously for one's wife, and yet Hélène de Puysange +was undeniably a handsome woman. As they sat over the remains of their +dinner,--_à deux_, by the Duke's request,--she seemed to her husband quite +incredibly beautiful. She exhaled the effects of a water-color in discreet +and delicate tinctures. Lithe and fine and proud she was to the merest +glance; yet patience, a thought conscious of itself, beaconed in her eyes, +and she appeared, with urbanity, to regard life as, upon the whole, a +countrified performance. De Puysange liked that air; he liked the reticence +of every glance and speech and gesture,--liked, above all, the thinnish +oval of her face and the staid splendor of her hair. Here was no vulgar +yellow, no crass and hackneyed gold ... and yet there was a clarified and +gauzier shade of gold ... the color of the moon by daylight, say.... Then, +as the pleasures of digestion lapsed gently into the initial amenities of +sleep, she spoke. + +"Monsieur," said she, "will you be pleased to tell me the meaning of this +comedy?" + +"Madame," de Puysange answered, and raised his gloomy eyebrows, "I do not +entirely comprehend." + +"Ah," said she, "believe me, I do not undervalue your perception. I have +always esteemed your cleverness, monsieur, however much"--she paused for +a moment, a fluctuating smile upon her lips,--"however much I may have +regretted its manifestations. I am not clever, and to me cleverness has +always seemed to be an infinite incapacity for hard work; its results +are usually a few sonnets, an undesirable wife, and a warning for one's +acquaintances. In your case it is, of course, different; you have your +statesmanship to play with--" + +"And statesmen have no need of cleverness, you would imply, madame?" + +"I do not say that. In any event, you are the Duc de Puysange, and the +weight of a great name stifles stupidity and cleverness without any +partiality. With you, cleverness has taken the form of a tendency to +intoxication, amours, and--amiability. I have acquiesced in this. But, for +the past month--" + +"The happiest period of my life!" breathed the Duke. + +"--you have been pleased to present me with flowers, bonbons, jewels, and +what not. You have actually accorded your wife the courtesies you usually +preserve for the ladies of the ballet. You have dogged my footsteps, you +have attempted to intrude into my bedroom, you have talked to me as--well, +very much as--" + +"Much as the others do?" de Puysange queried, helpfully. "Pardon me, +madame, but, in one's own husband, I had thought this very routine might +savor of originality." + +The Duchess flushed, "All the world knows, monsieur, that in your +estimation what men have said to me, or I to them, has been for fifteen +years a matter of no moment! It is not due to you that I am still--" + +"A pearl," finished the Duke, gallantly,--then touched himself upon the +chest,--"cast before swine," he sighed. + +She rose to her feet. "Yes, cast before swine!" she cried, with a quick +lift of speech. She seemed very tall as she stood tapping her fingers upon +the table, irresolutely; but after an instant she laughed and spread out +her fine hands in an impotent gesture. "Ah, monsieur," she said, "my father +entrusted to your keeping a clean-minded girl! What have you made of her, +Gaston?" + +A strange and profoundly unreasonable happiness swept through the Duke's +soul as she spoke his given name for the first time within his memory. +Surely, the deep contralto voice had lingered over it?--half-tenderly, +half-caressingly, one might think. + +The Duke put aside his coffee-cup and, rising, took his wife's soft hands +in his. "What have I made of her? I have made of her, Hélène, the one +object of all my desires." + +Her face flushed. "Mountebank!" she cried, and struggled to free herself; +"do you mistake me, then, for a raddle-faced actress in a barn? Ah, les +demoiselles have formed you, monsieur,--they have formed you well!" + +"Pardon!" said the Duke. He released her hands, he swept back his hair with +a gesture of impatience. He turned from his wife, and strolled toward a +window, where, for a little, he tapped upon the pane, his murky countenance +twitching oddly, as he stared into the quiet and sunlit street. "Madame," +he began, in a level voice, "I will tell you the meaning of the comedy. To +me,--always, as you know, a creature of whims,--there came, a month ago, a +new whim which I thought attractive, unconventional, promising. It was to +make love to my own wife rather than to another man's. Ah, I grant you, it +is incredible," he cried, when the Duchess raised her hand as though to +speak,--"incredible, fantastic, and ungentlemanly! So be it; nevertheless, +I have played out my rôle. I have been the model husband; I have put away +wine and--les demoiselles; for it pleased me, in my petty insolence, to +patronize, rather than to defy, the laws of God and man. Your perfection +irritated me, madame; it pleased me to demonstrate how easy is this trick +of treating the world as the antechamber of a future existence. It pleased +me to have in my life one space, however short, over which neither the +Recording Angel nor even you might draw a long countenance. It pleased me, +in effect, to play out the comedy, smug-faced and immaculate,--for the +time. I concede that I have failed in my part. Hiss me from the stage, +madame; add one more insult to the already considerable list of those +affronts which I have put upon you; one more will scarcely matter." + +She faced him with set lips. "So, monsieur, your boasted comedy amounts +only to this?" + +"I am not sure of its meaning, madame. I think that, perhaps, the swine, +wallowing in the mire which they have neither strength nor will to leave, +may yet, at times, long--and long whole-heartedly--" De Puysange snapped +his fingers. "Peste!" said he, "let us now have done with this dreary +comedy! Beyond doubt de Soyecourt has much to answer for, in those idle +words which were its germ. Let us hiss both collaborators, madame." + +"De Soyecourt!" she marveled, with, a little start. "Was it he who prompted +you to make love to me?" + +"Without intention," pleaded the Duke. "He twitted me for my inability, as +your husband, to gain your affections; but I do not question his finest +sensibilities would be outraged by our disastrous revival of Philemon and +Baucis." + +"Ah--!" said she. She was smiling at some reflection or other. + +There was a pause. The Duc de Puysange drummed upon the window-pane; the +Duchess, still faintly smiling, trifled with the thin gold chain that hung +about her neck. Both knew their display of emotion to have been somewhat +unmodern, not entirely _à la mode_. + +"Decidedly," spoke de Puysange, and turned toward her with a slight +grimace, "I am no longer fit to play the lover; yet a little while, madame, +and you must stir my gruel-posset, and arrange the pillows more comfortably +about the octogenarian." + +"Ah, Gaston," she answered, and in protest raised her slender fingers, "let +us have no more heroics. We are not well fitted for them, you and I." + +"So it would appear," the Duc de Puysange conceded, not without sulkiness. + +"Let us be friends," she pleaded. "Remember, it was fifteen years ago I +made the grave mistake of marrying a very charming man--" + +"Merci!" cried the Duke. + +"--and I did not know that I was thereby denying myself the pleasure of his +acquaintance. I have learned too late that marrying a man is only the most +civil way of striking him from one's visiting-list." The Duchess hesitated. +"Frankly, Gaston, I do not regret the past month." + +"It has been adorable!" sighed the Duke. + +"Yes," she admitted; "except those awkward moments when you would insist on +making love to me." + +"But no, madame," cried he, "it was precisely--" + +"O my husband, my husband!" she interrupted, with a shrug of the shoulders; +"why, you do it so badly!" + +The Duc de Puysange took a short turn about the apartment. "Yet I married +you," said he, "at sixteen--out of a convent!" + +"Mon ami," she murmured, in apology, "am I not to be frank with you? Would +you have only the connubial confidences?" + +"But I had no idea--" he began. + +"Why, Gaston, it bored me to the very verge of yawning in my lover's +countenance. I, too, had no idea but that it would bore you equally--" + +"Hein?" said the Duke. + +"--to hear what d'Humières--" + +"He squints!" cried the Duc de Puysange. + +"--or de Créquy--" + +"That red-haired ape!" he muttered. + +"--or d'Arlanges, or--or any of them, was pleased to say. In fact, it was +my duty to conceal from my husband anything which might involve him in +duels. Now that we are friends, of course it is entirely different." + +The Duchess smiled; the Duke walked up and down the room with the contained +ferocity of a caged tiger. + +"In duels! in a whole series of duels! So these seducers besiege you +in platoons. Ma foi, friendship is a good oculist! Already my vision +improves." + +"Gaston!" she cried. The Duchess rose and laid both hands upon his +shoulders. "Gaston--?" she repeated. + +For a heart-beat the Duc de Puysange looked into his wife's eyes; then he +sadly smiled and shook his head. "Madame," said the Duke, "I do not doubt +you. Ah, believe me, I have comprehended, always, that in your keeping my +honor was quite safe--far more safe than in mine, as Heaven and most of the +fiends well know. You have been a true and faithful wife to a worthless +brute who has not deserved it." He lifted her fingers to his lips. De +Puysange stood very erect; his heels clicked together, and his voice was +earnest. "I thank you, madame, and I pray you to believe that I have never +doubted you. You are too perfect to err--Frankly, and between friends." +added the Duke, "it was your cold perfection which frightened me. You are +an icicle, Hélène." + +She was silent for a moment. "Ah!" she said, and sighed; "you think so?" + +"Once, then--?" The Duc de Puysange seated himself beside his wife, and +took her hand. + +"I--it was nothing." Her lashes fell, and dull color flushed through her +countenance. + +"Between friends," the Duke suggested, "there should be no reservations." + +"But it is such a pitiably inartistic little history!" the Duchess +protested. "Eh bien, if you must have it! For I was a girl once,--an +innocent girl, as given as are most girls to long reveries and bright, +callow day-dreams. And there was a man--" + +"There always is," said the Duke, darkly. + +"Why, he never even knew, mon ami!" cried his wife, and laughed, and +clapped her hands. "He was much older than I; there were stories about +him--oh, a great many stories,--and one hears even in a convent--" She +paused with a reminiscent smile. "And I used to wonder shyly what this +very fearful reprobate might be like. I thought of him with de Lauzun, +and Dom Juan, and with the Duc de Grammont, and all those other scented, +shimmering, magnificent libertines over whom les ingénues--wonder; only, I +thought of him, more often than of the others, I made little prayers for +him to the Virgin. And I procured a tiny miniature of him. And, when I came +out of the convent, I met him at my father's house. [Footnote: She was of +the Aigullon family, and sister to d'Agenois, the first and very politic +lover of Madame de la Tournelle, afterward mistress to Louis Quinze under +the title of Duchesse de Châteauroux. The later relations between the +d'Aigullons and Madame du Barry are well-known.] And that was all." + +"All?" The Duc de Puysange had raised his swart eyebrows, and he slightly +smiled. + +"All," she re-echoed, firmly. "Oh, I assure you he was still too youthful +to have any time to devote to young girls. He was courteous--no more. But I +kept the picture,--ah, girls are so foolish, Gaston!" The Duchess, with a +light laugh, drew upward the thin chain about her neck. At its end was a +little heart-shaped locket of dull gold, with a diamond sunk deep in each +side. She regarded the locket with a quaint sadness. "It is a long while +since I have seen that miniature, for it has been sealed in here," said +she, "ever since--since some one gave me the locket" + +Now the Duc de Puysange took this trinket, still tepid and perfumed from +contact with her flesh. He turned it awkwardly in his hand, his eyes +flashing volumes of wonderment and inquiry. Yet he did not appear jealous, +nor excessively unhappy. "And never," he demanded, some vital emotion +catching at his voice--"never since then--?" + +"I never, of course, approved of him," she answered; and at this point de +Puysange noted--so near as he could remember for the first time in his +existence,--the curve of her trailing lashes. Why but his wife had lovely +eyelashes, lashes so unusual that he drew nearer to observe them more at +his ease. "Still,--I hardly know how to tell you--still, without him the +world was more quiet, less colorful; it held, appreciably, less to catch +the eye and ear. Eh, he had an air, Gaston; he was never an admirable man, +but, somehow, he was invariably the centre of the picture." + +"And you have always--always you have cared for him?" said the Duke, +drawing nearer and yet more near to her. + +"Other men," she murmured, "seem futile and of minor importance, after +him." The lashes lifted. They fell, promptly. "So, I have always kept the +heart, mon ami. And, yes, I have always loved him, I suppose." + +The chain had moved and quivered in his hand. Was it man or woman who +trembled? wondered the Duc de Puysange. For a moment he stood immovable, +every nerve in his body tense. Surely, it was she who trembled? It seemed +to him that this woman, whose cold perfection had galled him so long, now +stood with downcast eyes, and blushed and trembled, too, like any rustic +maiden come shamefaced to her first tryst. + +"Hélène--!" he cried. + +"But no, my story is too dull," she protested, and shrugged her shoulders, +and disengaged herself--half-fearfully, it seemed to her husband. "Even +more insipid than your comedy," she added, with a not unkindly smile. "Do +we drive this afternoon?" + +"In effect, yes!" cried the Duke. He paused and laughed--a low and gentle +laugh, pulsing with unutterable content. "Since this afternoon, madame--" + +"Is cloudless?" she queried. + +"Nay, far more than that," de Puysange amended; "it is refulgent." + + +V + +What time the Duchess prepared her person for the drive the Duke walked +in the garden of the Hôtel de Puysange. Up and down a shady avenue of +lime-trees he paced, and chuckled to himself, and smiled benignantly upon +the moss-incrusted statues,--a proceeding that was, beyond any reasonable +doubt, prompted by his happiness rather than by the artistic merits of +the postured images, since they constituted a formidable and broken-nosed +collection of the most cumbrous, the most incredible, and the most hideous +instances of sculpture the family of Puysange had been able to accumulate +for, as the phrase is, love or money. Amid these mute, gray travesties of +antiquity and the tastes of his ancestors, the Duc de Puysange exulted. + +"Ma foi, will life never learn to improve upon the extravagancies of +romance? Why, it is the old story,--the hackneyed story of the husband and +wife who fall in love with each other! Life is a very gross plagiarist. And +she--did she think I had forgotten how I gave her that little locket so +long ago? Eh, ma femme, so 'some one'--'some one' who cannot be alluded to +without a pause and an adorable flush--presented you with your locket! Nay, +love is not always blind!" + +The Duke paused before a puff-jawed Triton, who wallowed in an arid basin +and uplifted toward heaven what an indulgent observer might construe as a +broken conch-shell. "Love! Mon Dieu, how are the superior fallen! I have +not the decency to conceal even from myself that I love my wife! I am +shameless, I had as lief proclaim it from the house-tops. And a month +ago--tarare, the ignorant beast I was! Moreover, at that time I had not +passed a month in her company,--eh bien, I defy Diogenes and Timon to come +through such a testing with unscratched hearts. I love her. And she loves +me!" + +He drew a deep breath, and he lifted his comely hands toward the pale +spring sky, where the west wind was shepherding a sluggish flock of clouds. +"O sun, moon, and stars!" de Puysange said, aloud: "I call you to witness +that she loves me! Always she has loved me! O kindly little universe! O +little kings, tricked out with garish crowns and sceptres, you are masters +of your petty kingdoms, but I am master of her heart! + +"I do not deserve it," he conceded, to a dilapidated faun, who, though his +flute and the hands that held it had been missing for over a quarter of +a century, piped, on with unimpaired and fatuous mirth. "Ah, heart of +gold--demented trinket that you are, I have not merited that you should +retain my likeness all these years! If I had my deserts--parbleu! let us +accept such benefits as the gods provide, and not question the wisdom +of their dispensations. What man of forty-three may dare to ask for his +deserts? No, we prefer instead the dealings of blind chance and all the +gross injustices by which so many of us escape hanging".... + + +VI + +"So madame has visitors? Eh bien, let us, then, behold these naughty +visitors, who would sever a husband from his wife!" + +From within the Red Salon came a murmur of speech,--quiet, cordial, +colorless,--which showed very plainly that madame had visitors. As the Duc +de Puysange reached out his hand to draw aside the portières, her voice was +speaking, courteously, but without vital interest. + +"--and afterward," said she, "weather permitting--" + +"Ah, Hélène!" cried a voice that the Duke knew almost as well, "how long am +I to be held at arm's-length by these petty conventionalities? Is candor +never to be permitted?" + +The half-drawn portière trembled in the Duke's grasp. He could see, from +where he stood, the inmates of the salon, though their backs were turned. +They were his wife and the Marquis de Soyecourt. The Marquis bent eagerly +toward the Duchesse de Puysange, who had risen as he spoke. + +For a moment she stayed as motionless as her perplexed husband; then, +with a wearied sigh, the Duchess sank back into a _fauteuil_. "You are at +liberty to speak," she said, slowly, and with averted glance--"what you +choose." + +The portière fell; but between its folds the Duke still peered into the +room, where de Soyecourt had drawn nearer to the Duke's wife. "There is +so little to say," the Marquis murmured, "beyond what my eyes have surely +revealed a great while ago--that I love you." + +"Ah!" the Duchess cried, with a swift intaking of the breath which was +almost a sob. "Monsieur, I think you forget that you are speaking to the +wife of your kinsman and your friend." + +The Marquis threw out his hands in a gesture which was theatrical, though +the trouble that wrung his countenance seemed very real. He was, as one has +said, a slight, fair man, with the face of an ecclesiastic and the eyes of +an aging seraph. A dull pang shot through the Duke as he thought of the two +years' difference in their ages, and of his own tendency to embonpoint, and +of the dismal features which calumniated him. Yonder porcelain fellow was +in appearance so incredibly young! + +"Do you consider," said the Marquis, "that I do not know I act an +abominable part? Honor, friendship and even decency!--ah, I regret their +sacrifice, but love is greater than these petty things!" + +The Duchess sighed. "For my part," she returned, "I think differently. +Love is, doubtless, very wonderful and beautiful, but I am sufficiently +old-fashioned to hold honor yet dearer. Even--even if I loved you, +monsieur, there are certain promises, sworn before the altar, that I could +not forget." She looked up, candidly, into the flushed, handsome face of +the Marquis. + +"Words!" he cried, with vexed impatiency. + +"An oath," she answered, sadly,--"an oath that I may not break." + +There was hunger in the Marquis' eyes, and his hands lifted. Their glances +met for a breathless moment, and his eyes were tender, and her eyes were +resolute, but very, very compassionate. + +"I love you!" he said. He said no more than this, but none could doubt he +spoke the truth. + +"Monsieur," the Duchess replied, and the depths of her contralto voice were +shaken like the sobbing of a violin, and her hands stole upward to her +bosom, and clasped the gold heart, as she spoke,--"monsieur, ever since I +first knew you, many years ago, at my father's home, I have held you as my +friend. You were more kind to the girl, Monsieur de Soyecourt, than you +have been to the woman. Yet only since our stay in Poictesme yonder have +I feared for the result of our friendship. I have tried to prevent this +result. I have failed." The Duchess lifted the gold heart to her lips, and +her golden head bent over it. "Monsieur, before God, if I had loved you +with my whole being,--if I had loved you all these years,--if the sight of +your face were to me to-day the one good thing life holds, and the mere +sound of your voice had power to set my heart to beating--beating"--she +paused for a little, and then rose, with a sharp breath that shook her +slender body visibly,--"even then, my Louis, the answer would be the same; +and that is,--go!" + +"Hélène--!" he murmured; and his outstretched hands, which trembled, groped +toward her. + +"Let us have no misunderstanding," she protested, more composedly; "you +have my answer." + +De Soyecourt did not, at mildest, lead an immaculate life. But by +the passion that now possessed him the tiny man seemed purified and +transfigured beyond masculinity. His face was ascetic in its reverence as +he waited there, with his head slightly bowed. "I go," he said, at last, as +if picking his way carefully among tumbling words; then bent over her hand, +which, she made no effort to withdraw. "Ah, my dear!" cried the Marquis, +staring into her shy, uplifted eyes, "I think I might have made you happy!" + +His arm brushed the elbow of the Duke as de Soyecourt left the salon. The +Marquis seemed aware of nothing: the misery of both the men, as de Puysange +reflected, was of a sort to be disturbed by nothing less noticeable than an +earthquake. + + +VII + +"If I had loved you all these years," murmured the Duc de Puysange. His +dull gaze wandered toward the admirable "Herodias" of Giorgione which hung +there in the corridor: the strained face of the woman, the accented muscles +of her arms, the purple, bellying cloak which spread behind her, the livid +countenance of the dead man staring up from the salver,--all these he +noted, idly. It seemed strange that he should be appraising a painting at +this particular moment. + +"Well, now I will make recompense," said the Duke. + + +VIII + +He came into the room, humming a tune of the boulevards; the crimson +hangings swirled about him, the furniture swayed in aerial and thin-legged +minuets. He sank into a chair before the great mirror, supported by frail +love-gods, who contended for its possession. He viewed therein his pale and +grotesque reflection, and he laughed lightly. "Pardon, madame," he said, +"but my castles in the air are tumbling noisily about my ears. It is +difficult to think clearly amid the crashing of the battlements." + +"I do not understand." The Duchess had lifted a rather grave and quite +incurious face as he entered the salon. + +"My life," laughed the Duc de Puysange, "I assure you I am quite +incorrigible. I have just committed another abominable action; and I cry +_peccavi!_" He smote himself upon the breast, and sighed portentously. "I +accuse myself of eavesdropping." + +"What is your meaning?" She had now risen to her feet. + +"Nay, but I am requited," the Duke reassured her, and laughed with +discreetly tempered bitterness. "Figure to yourself, madame! I had +planned for us a life during which our new-born friendship was always to +endure untarnished. Eh bien, man proposes! De Soyecourt is of a jealous +disposition; and here I sit, amid my fallen aircastles, like that tiresome +Marius in his Carthaginian débris." + +"De Soyecourt?" she echoed, dully. + +"Ah, my poor child!" said the Duke and, rising, took her hand in a paternal +fashion, "did you think that, at this late day, the disease of matrimony +was still incurable? Nay, we progress, madame. You shall have grounds for a +separation--sufficient, unimpeachable grounds. You shall have your choice +of desertion, infidelity, cruelty in the presence of witnesses--oh, I shall +prove a yeritabie Gilles de Retz!" He laughed, not unkindlily, at her +bewilderment. + +"You heard everything?" she queried. + +"I have already confessed," the Duke reminded her. "And speaking as an +unprejudiced observer, I would say the little man really loves you. So be +it! You shall have your separation, you shall marry him in all honor and +respectability; and if everything goes well, you shall be a grand duchess +one of these days--Behold a fact accomplished!" De Puysange snapped his +fingers and made a pirouette; he began to hum, "Songez de bonne à suivre--" + +There was a little pause. + +"You, in truth, desire to restore to me my freedom?" she asked, in wonder, +and drew near to him. + +The Duc de Puysange seated himself, with a smile. "Mon Dieu!" he protested, +"who am I to keep lovers apart? As the first proof of our new-sworn +friendship, I hereby offer you any form of abuse or of maltreatment you may +select." + +She drew yet nearer to him. Afterward, with a sigh as if of great +happiness, her arms clasped about his neck. "Mountebank! do you, then, love +me very much?" + +"I?" The Duke raised his eyebrows. Yet, he reflected, there was really no +especial harm in drawing his cheek a trifle closer to hers, and he found +the contact to be that of cool velvet. + +"You love me!" she repeated, softly. + +"It pains me to the heart," the Duke apologized--"it pains me, pith and +core, to be guilty of this rudeness to a lady; but, after all, honesty is +a proverbially recommended virtue, and so I must unblushingly admit I do +nothing of the sort." + +"Gaston, why will you not confess to your new friend? Have I not pardoned +other amorous follies?" Her cheeks were warmer now, and softer than those +of any other woman in the world. + +"Eh, ma mie," cried the Duke, warningly, "do not be unduly elated by little +Louis' avowal! You are a very charming person, but--'_de gustibus_--'" + +"Gaston--!" she murmured. + +"Ah, what is one to do with such a woman!" De Puysange put her from him, +and he paced the room with quick, unequal strides. + +"Yes, I love you with every nerve and fibre of my body--with every not +unworthy thought and aspiration of my misguided soul! There you have the +ridiculous truth of it, the truth which makes me the laughing-stock of +well bred persons for all time. I adore you. I love you, I cherish you +sufficiently to resign you to the man your heart has chosen. I--But pardon +me,"--and he swept a white hand over his brow, with a little, choking +laugh,--"since I find this new emotion somewhat boisterous. It stifles one +unused to it." + +She faced him, inscrutably; but her eyes were deep wells of gladness. +"Monsieur," she said, "yours is a noble affection. I will not palter with +it, I accept your offer--" + +"Madame, you act with your usual wisdom," said the Duke. + +"--Upon condition," she continued,--"that you resume your position as +eavesdropper." + +The Duke obeyed her pointing finger. When he had reached the portières, +the proud, black-visaged man looked back into the salon, wearily. She had +seated herself in the _fauteuil_, where the Marquis de Soyecourt had bent +over her and she had kissed the little gold locket. Her back was turned +toward, her husband; but their eyes met in the great mirror, supported by +frail love-gods, who contended for its possession. + +"Comedy for comedy," she murmured. He wondered what purblind fool had +called her eyes sea-cold? + +"I do not understand," he said. "You saw me all the while--Yes, but the +locket--?" cried de Puysange. + +"Open it!" she answered, and her speech, too, was breathless. + +Under his heel the Duc de Puysange ground the trinket. The long, thin chain +clashed and caught about his foot; the face of his youth smiled from the +fragment in his not quite steady hands. "O heart' of gold! O heart of +gold!" he said, with, a strange meditative smile, now that his eyes lifted +toward the glad and glorious eyes of his wife; "I am not worthy! Indeed, my +dear, I am not worthy!" + + + + +IX + +THE SCAPEGOATS + + +_As Played at Manneville, September 18, 1750_ + +"_L'on a choisi justement le temps que je parlois à mon traiste de fils. +Sortons! Je veux aller querir la justice, et faire donner la question à +toute ma maison; à servantes, à valets, à fils, à fille, et à moi aussi._" + + +DRAMATIS PERSONÆ + +PRINCE DE GATINAIS, an old nobleman, who affects yesterday's fashion. + +Louis QUILLAN, formerly LOUIS DE SOYECOURT, son to the Prince, and newly +become GRAND DUKE OF NOUMARIA. + +VANRINGHAM, valet to the Prince. + +NELCHEN THORN, daughter to Hans Thorn, landlord of the _Golden +Pomegranate_, and loves Louis Quillan. + +And In the Proem, DUKE OF OSMSKIRK. + + +SCENE + +The Dolphin Room of the _Golden Pomegranate_, an inn at +Manneville-en-Poictesme. + + + + +THE SCAPEGOATS + + +_PROEM:-To Present Mr. Vanringham as Nuntius_ + +However profoundly the Duc de Puysange now approved of the universe and of +its management, it is not to be supposed that in consequence he intended +to overlook de Soyecourt's perfidy. De Puysange bore his kinsman no +malice; indeed, he was sincerely fond of the Marquis, sympathized with +him at bottom, and heartily regretted that the excellence of poor Louis' +taste should be thus demonstrably counterbalanced by the frailty of his +friendship. Still, one cannot entirely disregard the conventions: Louis had +betrayed him, had before the eyes of de Puysange made love to de Puysange's +wife. A duel was the inevitable consequence, though of course the Duke did +not intend to kill poor Louis, who might before long be very useful to +French statesmanship. So the Duke sent Ormskirk to arrange a meeting. + +A floridly handsome man in black was descending the stairway of the Hôtel +de Soyecourt at the moment the Duke of Ormskirk stepped cheerily from his +coach. This person saluted the plump nobleman with due deference, and was +accorded in return a little whistling sound of amazement. + +"Mr. Vanringham, as I live--and in Paris! Man, will you hare-brained +Jacobites never have done with these idiotic intrigues? Nay, in sincerity, +Mr. Vanringham, this is annoying." + +"My Lord Duke," said the other, "I venture to suggest that you forget +I dare no longer meddle with politics, in light of my recent mishap at +Tunbridge. Something of the truth leaked out, you comprehend--nothing +provable, thank God!--but while I lay abed Captain Audaine was calling +daily to inquire when would my wound be healed sufficiently for me to have +my throat cut. I found England unsalubrious, and vanished." + +Ormskirk nodded his approval. "I have always esteemed your common-sense. +Now, let us consider--yes, I might use you here in Paris, I believe. And +the work is light and safe,--a trifle of sedition, of stirring up a street +riot or two." + +Vanringham laughed. "I might have recognized your hand in the late +disturbances, sir. As matters stand, I can only thank your Grace and regret +that I have earlier secured employment. I've been, since April, valet to +the old Prince de Gâtinais, Monsieur de Soyecourt's father." + +"Yet lackeyship smacks, however vaguely, of an honest livelihood. You +disappoint me, Mr. Vanringham." + +"Nay, believe me, I yet pilfer a cuff-button or perhaps a jewel, when +occasion offers, lest any of my talents rust. For we reside at Beaujolais +yonder, my Lord Duke, where we live in retirement and give over our old +age to curious chemistries. It suits me well enough. I find the air of +Beaujolais excellent, my duties none too arduous, and the girls of the +country-side neither hideous nor obdurate. Oho, I'm tolerably content at +Beaujolais--the more for that 'tis expedient just now to go more softly +than ever Ahab did of old." + +"Lest your late associates get wind of your whereabouts? In that I don't +question your discretion, Mr. Vanringham. And out of pure friendliness I +warn you Paris is a very hotbed of hot-headed Jacobites who would derive +unmerited pleasure from getting a knife into your ribs." + +"Yet on an occasion of such importance--" Vanringham began; then marvelled +in reply to the Duke's look of courteous curiosity: "You han't heard, +sir, that my master's son is unexpectedly become the next Grand Duke of +Noumaria!" + +"Zounds!" said his Grace of Ormskirk, all alert, "is old Ludwig dead +at last? Why, then, the damned must be holding a notable carnival by +this, in honor of his arrival. Hey, but there was a merry rascal, a +thorough-paced--" He broke off short. He laughed. "What the devil, man! +Monsieur de Soyecourt is Ludwig's nephew, I grant you, on the maternal +side, but Ludwig left a son. De Soyecourt remains de Soyecourt so long +as Prince Rudolph lives,--and Prince Rudolph is to marry the Elector of +Badenburg's daughter this autumn, so that we may presently look for any +number of von Freistadts to perpetuate the older branch. Faith, you should +study your _Genealogischer Hofkalender_ more closely, Mr. Vanringham." + +"Oh, but very plainly your Grace has heard no word of the appalling tragedy +that hath made our little Louis a reigning monarch--" + +With gusto Francis Vanringham narrated the details of Duke Ludwig's last +mad freak [Footnote: In his _Journal_ Horace Calverley gives a long and +curious account of the disastrous masque at Breschau of which he, then on +the Grand Tour, had the luck to be an eye-witness. His hints as to the part +played in the affair by Kaunitz are now, of course, largely discredited by +the later confessions of de Puysange.] which, as the world knows, resulted +in the death of both Ludwig and his son, as well as that of their five +companions in the escapade,--with gusto, for in progress the soul of the +former actor warmed to his subject. But Ormskirk was sensibly displeased. + +"Behold what is termed a pretty kettle of fish!" said the Duke, in +meditation, when Vanringham had made an end. "Plainly, Gaston cannot fight +the rascal, since Hop-o'-my-thumb is now, most vexatiously, transformed +into a quasi-Royal Personage, Assassination, I fear, is out of the +question. So all our English plans will go to pot. A Frenchman will reign +in Noumaria,--after we had not only bought old Ludwig, but had paid for +him, too! Why, I suppose he gave that damnable masquerade on the strength +of having our money,--good English money, mark you, Mr. Vanringham, that we +have to squeeze out of honest tax-payers to bribe such, rascals with, only +to have them, cheat us by cooking themselves to a crisp! This is annoying, +Mr. Vanringham." + +"I don't entirely follow your Grace--" + +"It is not perhaps desirable you should. Yet I give you a key. It is +profoundly to be deplored that little Louis de Soyecourt, who cannot draw +a contented breath outside of his beloved Paris, should be forced to marry +Victoria von Uhm, in his cousin's place,--yes, for Gaston will arrange +that, of course,--and afterward be exiled to a semi-barbarous Noumaria, +where he must devote the rest of his existence to heading processions +and reviewing troops, and signing proclamations and guzzling beer and +sauerkraut. Nay, beyond doubt, Mr. Vanringham, this is deplorable. 'Tis an +appalling condition of affairs: it reminds me of Ovid among the Goths, Mr. +Vanringham!" + +"I'm to understand, then--?" the valet stammered. + +"You are to understand that I am more deeply your debtor than I could +desire you to believe; that I am going to tell the Marquis de Soyecourt all +which I have told you, though I must reword it for him, as eloquently as +may be possible; and that I even now feel myself to be Ciceronic." The Duke +of Ormskirk passed on with a polite nod. + + * * * * * + +Next day they gossiped busily at Versailles over the sudden disappearance +of Louis de Soyecourt. No more was heard of him for months. The mystery was +discussed, and by the wits embroidered, and by the imaginative annotated, +but it was never solved until the following September. + + +I + +For it was in September that, upon the threshold of the _Golden +Pomegranate_, at Manneville in Poictesme, Monsieur Louis Quillan paused, +and gave the contented little laugh which had of late become habitual with +him. "We are en fête to-night, it appears. Has the King, then, by any +chance dropped in to supper with us, Nelchen?" + +Silently the girl bestowed a provisional pat upon one fold of the white +table-cloth and regarded the result with critical approval. All being +in blameless order, she moved one of the candlesticks the width of a +needle. The table was now garnished to the last resource of the _Golden +Pomegranate_: the napery was snow, the glassware and the cutlery shone with +a frosty glitter, and the great bowl of crimson roses afforded the exact +splurge of vainglorious color and glow she had designed. Accordingly, being +now at leisure, Nelchen now came toward Monsieur Quillan, lifting her lips +to his precisely as a child might have done. + +"Not quite the King, my Louis. None the less I am sure that Monseigneur +is an illustrious person. He arrived not two hours ago--" She told how +Monseigneur had come in a coach, very splendid; even his lackeys were +resplendent. Monseigneur would stay overnight and would to-morrow push +on, to Beauséant. He had talked with her,--a kindly old gentleman, but so +stately that all the while she had been the tiniest thought afraid of him. +He must be some exalted nobleman, Nelchen considered,--a marquis at the +very least. + +Meantime diminutive Louis Quillan had led her to the window-seat beneath +the corridor, and sat holding one plump trifle of a hand, the, while +her speech fluttered bird-like from this topic to that; and be regarded +Nelchen Thorn with an abysmal content. The fates, he considered, had been +commendably generous to him. + +So he leaned back from her a little, laughing gently, and marked what a +quaint and eager child it was. He rejoiced that she was beautiful, and +triumphed still more to know that even if she had not been beautiful it +would have made slight difference to him. The soul of Nelchen was enough. +Yet, too, it was desirable this soul should be appropriately clad, that she +should have, for instance, these big and lustrous eyes,--plaintive eyes, +such as a hamadryad would conceivably possess, since they were beyond doubt +the candid and appraising eyes of some woodland creature, and always seemed +to find the world not precisely intimidating, perhaps, yet in the ultimate +a very curious place where one trod gingerly. Still, this Nelchen was a +practical body, prone to laughter,--as in nature, any person would be whose +mouth was all rotund and tiny scarlet curves. Why, it was, to a dimple, +the mouth which François Boucher bestowed on his sleek goddesses! Louis +Quillan was sorry for poor Boucher painting away yonder at a noisy garish +Versailles, where he would never see that perfect mouth the artist had so +often dreamed of. No, not in the sweet flesh at least; lips such as these +were unknown at Versailles.... + +And but four months ago he had fancied himself to be in love with Hélène +de Puysange, he remembered; and, by and large, he still considered Hélène +a delightful person. Yes, Hélène had made him quite happy last spring: and +when they found she was with child, and their first plan failed, she had +very adroitly played out their comedy to win back Gaston in time to avoid +scandal. Yes, you could not but admire Hélène, yet, even so.... + +"--and he asked me, oh, so many questions about you, Louis--" + +"About me?" said Louis Quillan, blankly. He was all circumspection now. + +"About my lover, you stupid person. Monseigneur assumed, somehow, that I +would have a lover or two. You perceive that he at least is not a stupid +person." And Nelchen tossed her head, with a touch of the provocative. + +Louis Quillan did what seemed advisable. "--and, furthermore, your +stupidity is no excuse for rumpling my hair," said Nelchen, by and by. + +"Then you should not pout," replied Monsieur Quillan. "Sanity is entirely +too much to require of any man when you pout. Besides, your eyes are so +big and so bright they bewilder one. In common charity you ought to wear +spectacles, Nelchen,--in sheer compassion toward mankind." + +"Monseigneur, also, has wonderful eyes, Louis. They are like the +stars,--very brilliant and cool and incurious, yet always looking at you as +though you were so insignificant that the mere fact of your presuming to +exist at all was a trifle interesting." + +"Like the stars!" Louis Quillan had flung back the shutter. It was a +tranquil evening in September, with no moon as yet, but with a great +multitude of lesser lights overhead. "Incurious like the stars! They do +dwarf one, rather. Yet just now I protest to you, infinitesimal man that I +am, I half-believe le bon Dieu loves us so utterly that He has kindled all +those pretty tapers solely for our diversion. He wishes us to be happy, +Nelchen; and so He has given us the big, fruitful, sweet-smelling world +to live in, and our astonishing human bodies to live in, with contented +hearts, and with no more vain desires, no loneliness--Why, in a word, He +has given us each other. Oh, beyond doubt, He loves us, my Nelchen!" + +For a long while the girl was silent. Presently she spoke, half-hushed, +like one in the presence of sanctity. "I am happy. For these three months I +have been more happy than I had thought was permissible on earth. And yet, +Louis, you tell me that those stars are worlds perhaps like ours,--think of +it, my dear, millions and millions of worlds like ours, and on each world +perhaps a million of lovers like us! It is true that among them all no +woman loves as I do, for that would be impossible. Yet think of it, mon +ami, how inconsiderable a thing is the happiness of one man and of one +woman in this immensity! Why, we are less than nothing, you and I! Ohé, I +am afraid, hideously afraid, Louis,--for we are such little folk and the +universe is so big. And always the storms go about it, and its lightnings +thrust at us, and the waters of it are clutching at our feet, and its laws +are not to be changed--Oh, it is big and cruel, my dear, and we are adrift +in it, we who are so little!" + +He again put forth his hand toward her. "What a morbid child it is!" said +Louis Quillan. "I can assure you I have resided in this same universe just +twice as long as you, and I find that upon the whole the establishment +is very creditably conducted. There arrives, to be sure, an occasional +tornado, or perhaps an earthquake, each with its incidental inconveniences. +On the other hand, there is every evening a lavishly arranged sunset, like +gratis fireworks, and each morning (I am credibly informed) a sunrise of +which poets and energetic people are pleased to speak highly; while every +year spring comes in, like a cosmical upholsterer, and refurnishes the +entire place, and makes us glad to live. Nay, I protest to you, this is +an excellent world, my Nelchen! and likewise I protest to you that in its +history there was never a luckier nor a happier man than I." + +Nelchen considered. "Well," she generously conceded; "perhaps, after all, +the stars are more like diamonds." + +Louis Quillan chuckled. "And since when were you a connoisseur of diamonds, +my dear?" + +"Of course I have never actually seen any. I would like to, though--yes, +Louis, what I would really like would be to have a bushelful or so of +diamonds, and to marry a duke--only the duke would have to be you, of +course,--and to go to Court, and to have all the fine ladies very jealous +of me, and for them to be very much in love with you, and for you not to +care a sou for them, of course, and for us both to see the King." Nelchen +paused, quite out of breath after this ambitious career in the imaginative. + +"To see the King, indeed!" scoffed little Louis Quillan. "Why, we would see +only a very disreputable pockmarked wornout lecher if we did." + +"Still," she pointed out, "I would like to see a king. Simply because I +never have done so before, you conceive." + +"At times, my Nelchen, you are effeminate. Eve ate the apple for that +identical reason. Yet what you say is odd, because--do you know?--I once +had a friend who was by way of being a sort of king." + +Nelchen gave a squeal of delight. "And you never told me about him! I +loathe you." + +Louis Quillan did what seemed advisable. "--and, furthermore, your +loathsomeness is no excuse for rumpling my hair," said Nelchen, by and by. + +"But there is so little to tell. His father had married the Grand Duke +of Noumaria's daughter,--over yonder between Silesia and Badenburg, you +may remember. And so last spring when the Grand Duke and the Prince were +both killed in that horrible fire, my friend quite unexpectedly became a +king--oh, king of a mere celery-patch, but still a sort of king. Figure to +yourself, Nelchen! they were going to make my poor friend marry the Elector +of Badenburg's daughter,--and Victoria von Uhm has perfection stamped upon +her face in all its odious immaculacy,--and force him to devote the rest +of his existence to heading processions and reviewing troops, and signing +proclamations, and guzzling beer and sauerkraut. Why, he would have been +like Ovid among the Goths, my Nelchen!" + +"But he could have worn such splendid uniforms!" said Nelchen. "And +diamonds!" + +"You mercenary wretch!" said he. Louis Quillan then did what seemed +advisable; and presently he added, "In any event, the horrified man ran +away." + +"That was silly of him," said Nelchen Thorn. "But where did he run to?" + +Louis Quillan considered. "To Paradise," he at last decided. "And there he +found a disengaged angel, who very imprudently lowered herself to the point +of marrying him. And so he lived happily ever afterward. And so, till the +day of his death, he preached the doctrine that silliness is the supreme +wisdom." + +"And he regretted nothing?" Nelchen said, after a meditative while. + +Louis Quillan began to laugh. "Oh, yes! at times he profoundly regretted +Victoria von Uhm." + +Then Nelchen gave him a surprise, for the girl bent toward him and leaned +one hand upon each shoulder. "Diamonds are not all, are they, Louis? +I thank you, dear, for telling me of what means so much to you. I can +understand, I think, because for a long while I have tried to know and care +for everything that concerns you." + +The little man had risen to his feet. "Nelchen--!" + +"Hush!" said Nelchen Thorn; "Monseigneur is coming down to his supper." + + +II + +It was a person of conspicuous appearance, both by reason of his great +height and leanness as well as his extreme age, who now descended the +straight stairway leading from the corridor above. At Court they would have +told you that the Prince de Gâtinais was a trifle insane, but he troubled +the Court very little, since he had spent the last twenty years, with brief +intermissions, at his château near Beaujolais, where, as rumor buzzed +it, he had fitted out a laboratory, and had devoted his old age to the +study of chemistry. "Between my flute and my retorts, my bees and my +chocolate-creams," the Prince was wont to say, "I manage to console myself +for the humiliating fact that even Death has forgotten my existence." For +he had a child's appetite for sweets, and was at this time past eighty, +though still well-nigh as active as Antoine de Soyecourt had ever been, +even when--a good half-century ago--he had served, with distinction under +Louis Quatorze. + +To-night the Prince de Gâtinais was all in steel-gray, of a metallic +lustre, with prodigiously fine ruffles at his throat and wrists. You would +have found something spectral in the tall, gaunt old man, for his periwig +was heavily powdered, and his deep-wrinkled countenance was of an absolute +white, save for the thin, faintly bluish lips and the inklike glitter of +his narrowing eyes, as he now regarded the couple waiting hand in hand +before him, like children detected in mischief. + +Little Louis Quillan had drawn an audible breath at first sight of the +newcomer. Monsieur Quillan did not speak, however, but merely waited. + +"You have fattened," the Prince de Gâtinais said, at last, "I wish I could +fatten. It is incredible that a man who eats pounds of sugar daily should +yet remain a skeleton." His voice was guttural, and a peculiar slur +ran through his speech, caused by the loss of his upper front teeth at +Ramillies. + +Louis Quillan came of a stock not lightly abashed. "I have fattened on a +new diet, monsieur,--on happiness. But, ma foi! I am discourteous. Permit +me, my father, to present Mademoiselle Nelchen Thorn, who has so far +honored me as to consent to become my wife. 'Nelchen, I present to you my +father, the Prince de Gâtinais." + +"Oh--?" observed Nelchen, midway in her courtesy. + +But the Prince had taken her fingers and he kissed them quite as though +they had been the finger-tips of the all-powerful Pompadour at Versailles +yonder. "I salute the future Marquise de Soyecourt. You young people will +sup with me, then?" + +"No, monseigneur, for I am to wait upon the table," said Nelchen, "and +Father is at Sigéan overnight, having the mare shod, and there is only +Leon, and, oh, thank you very much indeed, monseigneur, but I had much +rather wait on the table." + +The Prince waved his hand. "My valet, mademoiselle, is at your disposal. +Vanringham!" he called. + +From the corridor above descended a tall red-headed fellow in black. +"Monseigneur--?" + +"Go!" quickly said Louis de Soyecourt, while the Prince spoke with his +valet,--"go, Nelchen, and make yourself even more beautiful if such a thing +be possible. He will never resist you, my dear--ah, no, that is out of +nature." + +"You will find more plates in the cupboard, Monsieur Vanringham," remarked +Nelchen, as she obediently tripped up the stairway, toward her room in the +right wing. "And the knives and forks are in the second drawer." + +So Vanringham laid two covers in discreet silence; then bowed and withdrew +by the side door that led to the kitchen. The Prince had seated himself +beside the open fire, where he yawned and now looked up with a smile. + +"Well, Louis," said the Prince de Gâtinais--"so Monsieur de Puysange and I +have run you to earth at last. And I find you have determined to defy me, +eh?" + + +III + +"I trust there is no question of defiance," Louis de Soyecourt equably +returned. "Yet I regret you should have been at pains to follow me, since I +still claim the privilege of living out my life in my own fashion." + +"You claim a right which never existed, my little son. It is not demanded +of any man that he be happy, whereas it is manifestly necessary for a +gentleman to obey his God, his King, and his own conscience without +swerving. If he also find time for happiness, well and good; otherwise, he +must be unhappy. But, above all, he must intrepidly play out his allotted +part in the good God's scheme of things, and must with due humbleness +recognize that the happiness or the unhappiness of any man alive is a +trivial consideration as against the fulfilment of this scheme." + +"You and Nelchen are much at one there," the Marquis lightly replied; "yet, +for my part, I fancy that Providence is not particularly interested in who +happens to be the next Grand Duke of Noumaria." + +The Prince struck with his hand upon the arm of his chair. "You dare to +jest! Louis, your levity is incorrigible. France is beaten, discredited +among nations, naked to her enemies. She lies here, between England and +Prussia, as in a vise. God summons you, a Frenchman, to reign in Noumaria, +and in addition affords you a chance to marry that weathercock of +Badenburg's daughter. Ah, He never spoke more clearly, Louis. And you would +reply with a shallow jest! Why, Badenburg and Noumaria just bridge that +awkward space between France and Austria. Your accession would confirm the +Empress,--Gaston de Puysange has it in her own hand, yonder at Versailles! +I tell you it is all planned that France and Austria will combine, Louis! +Think of it,--our France on her feet again, mistress of Europe, and every +whit of it your doing, Louis,--ah, my boy, my boy, you cannot refuse!" + +Thus he ran on in a high, disordered voice, pleading, clutching at his son +with a strange new eagerness which now possessed the Prince de Gâtinais. +He was remembering the France which he had known; not the ignoble, tawdry +France of the moment, misruled by women, rakes, confessors, and valets, but +the France of his dead Sun King; and it seemed to Louis de Soyecourt that +the memory had brought back with it the youth of his father for an instant. +Just for a heart-beat, the lank man towered erect, his cheeks pink, and +every muscle tense. + +Then Louis de Soyecourt shook his head. In England's interest, as he now +knew, Ormskirk had played upon de Soyecourt's ignorance and his love of +pleasure, as an adept plays upon the strings of a violin; but de Soyecourt +had his reason, a gigantic reason, for harboring no grudge against the +Englishman. + +"Frankly, my father, I would not give up Nelchen though all Europe depended +upon it. I am a coward, perhaps; but I have my chance of happiness, and +I mean to take it. So Cousin Otto is welcome to the duchy. I infinitely +prefer Nelchen." + +"Otto! a general in the Prussian army, Frederick's property, Frederick's +idolater!" The old Prince now passed from an apex of horror to his former +pleading tones. "But, then, it is not necessary you give up Nelchen. Ah, +no, a certain latitude is permissible in these matters, you understand. She +could be made a countess, a marquise,--anything you choose to demand, my +Louis. And you could marry Princess Victoria just the same--" + +"Were you any other man, monsieur," said Louis de Soyecourt, "I would, +of course, challenge you. As it is, I can only ask you to respect my +helplessness. It is very actual helplessness, sir, for Nelchen has been +bred in such uncourtly circles as to entertain the most provincial notions +about becoming anybody's whore." + +Now the Prince de Gâtinais sank back into the chair. He seemed incredibly +old now. "You are right," he mumbled,--"yes, you are right, Louis. I have +talked with her. With her that would be impossible. These bourgeois do not +understand the claims of noble birth." + +The younger man had touched him upon the shoulder. "My father,--" he began. + +"Yes, I am your father," said the other, dully, "and it is that which +puzzles me. You are my own son, and yet you prefer your happiness to +the welfare of France, to the very preservation of France. Never in six +centuries has there been a de Soyecourt to do that. God and the King we +served ... six centuries ... and to-day my own son prefers an innkeeper's +daughter..." His voice trailed and slurred like that of one speaking in his +sleep, for he was an old man, and by this the flare of his excitement had +quite burned out, and weariness clung about his senses like a drug. "I will +go back to Beaujolais ... to my retorts and my bees ... and forget there +was never a de Soyecourt in six centuries, save my own son...." + +"My father!" Louis de Soyecourt cried, and shook him gently. "Ah, I dare +say you are right, in theory. But in practice I cannot give her up. Surely +you understand--why, they tell me there was never a more ardent lover than +you. They tell me--And you would actually have me relinquish Nelchen, even +after you have seen her! Yet remember, monsieur, I love her much as you +loved my mother,--that mettlesome little princess whom you stole from the +very heart of her court.[Footnote: The curious may find further details of +the then Marquis de Soyecourt's abduction of the Princess Clotilda in the +voluminous pages of Hulot, under the year 1708.] Ah, I have heard tales of +you, you conceive. And Nelchen means as much to me as once my mother meant +to you, remember--She means youth, and happiness, and a tiny space of +laughter before I, too, am worm's-meat, and means a proper appreciation of +God's love for us all, and means everything a man's mind clutches at when +he wakens from some forgotten dream that leaves him weeping with sheer +adoration of its beauty. Ho, never was there a kinder father than you, +monsieur. You have spoiled me most atrociously, I concede; and after so +many years you cannot in decency whip about like this and deny me my very +life. Why, my father it is your little Louis who is pleading with you,--and +you have never denied me anything! See, now, how I presume upon your +weakness. I am actually bullying you into submission--bullying you through +your love for me. Eh, we love greatly, we de Soyecourts, and give all for +love. Your own life attests that, monsieur. Now, then, let us recognize the +fact we are de Soyecourts, you and I. Ah, my father,--" + +Thus he babbled on, for the sudden languor of the Prince had alarmed him, +and Louis de Soyecourt, to afford him justice, loved his father with a +heartier intensity than falls to the portion of most parents. To arouse the +semi-conscious man was his one thought. And now he got his reward, for the +Prince de Gâtinais opened his keen old eyes, a trifle dazedly, and drew a +deep breath which shook his large frail body through and through. + +"Let us recognize that we are de Soyecourts, you and I," he repeated, in a +new voice. "After all, I cannot drag you to Noumaria by the scruff of your +neck like a truant school-boy. Yes, let us recognize the fact that we are +de Soyecourts, you and I." + +"Heh, in that event," said the Marquis, "we must both fall upon our knees +forthwith. For look, my father!" + +Nelchen Thorn was midway in her descent of the stairs. She wore her simple +best. All white it was, and yet the plump shoulders it displayed were not +put to shame. Rather must April clouds and the snows of December retire +abashed, as lamentably inefficient analogues, the Marquis meditated; and as +she paused starry-eyed and a thought afraid, it seemed to him improbable +that even the Prince de Gâtinais could find it in his heart greatly to +blame his son. + +"I begin to suspect," said the Prince, "that I am Jacob of old, and that +you are a very young cherub venturing out of Paradise through motives of +curiosity. Eh, my dear, let us see what entertainment we can afford you +during your visit to earth." He took her hand and led her to the table. + + +IV + +Vanringham served. Never was any one more blithe than the lean Prince de +Gâtinais. The latest gossip of Versailles was delivered, with discreet +emendations; he laughed gayly; and he ate with an appetite. There was a +blight among the cattle hereabouts? How deplorable! witchcraft, beyond +doubt. And Louis passed as a piano-tuner?--because there were no pianos in +Manneville. Excellent! he had always given Louis credit for a surpassing +cleverness; now it was demonstrated. In fine, the Prince de Gâtinais became +so jovial that Nelchen was quite at ease, and Louis de Soyecourt became +vaguely alarmed. He knew his father, and for the Prince to yield thus +facilely was incredible. Still, his father had seen Nelchen, had talked +with Nelchen.... + +Now the Prince rose. "Fresh glasses, Vanringham," he ordered; and then: "I +give you a toast. Through desire of love and happiness, you young people +have stolen a march on me. Eh, I am not Sgarnarelle of the comedy! +therefore, I drink cheerfully to love and happiness, I consider Louis is +not in the right, but I know that he is wise, my daughter, as concerns his +soul's health, in clinging to you rather than to a tinsel crown. Of Fate +I have demanded--like Sgarnarelle of the comedy,--prosaic equity and +common-sense; of Fate he has in turn demanded happiness; and Fate will at +her convenience decide between us. Meantime I drink to love and happiness, +since I, too, remember. I know better than to argue with Louis, you +observe, my Nelchen; we de Soyecourts are not lightly severed from any +notion we may have taken up. In consequence I drink to your love and +happiness!" + +They drank. "To your love, my son," said the Prince de Gâtinais,--"to the +true love of a de Soyecourt." And afterward he laughingly drank: "To your +happiness, my daughter,--to your eternal happiness." + +Nelchen sipped. The two men stood with drained glasses. Now on a sudden the +Prince de Gâtinais groaned and clutched his breast. + +"I was always a glutton," he said, hoarsely. "I should have been more +moderate--I am faint--" + +"Salts are the best thing in the world," said Nelchen, with fine readiness. +She was half-way up the stairs. "A moment, monseigneur,--a moment, and I +fetch salts." Nelchen Thorn had disappeared into her room. + + +V + +The Prince sat drumming upon the table with his long white fingers. He had +waved the Marquis and Vanringham aside. "A passing weakness,--I am not +adamant," he had said, half-peevishly. + +"Then I prescribe another glass of this really excellent wine," laughed +little Louis de Soyecourt. At heart he was not merry, and his own +unreasoning nervousness irritated him, for it seemed to the Marquis, +quite irrationally, that the atmosphere of the cheery room was, without +forerunnership, become tense and expectant, and was now quiet with much the +hush which precedes the bursting of a thunder-storm. And accordingly he +laughed. + +"I prescribe another glass, monsieur," said he. "Eh, that is the true +panacea for faintness--for every ill. Come, we will drink to the most +beautiful woman in Poictesme--nay, I am too modest,--to the most beautiful +woman in France, in Europe, in the whole universe! _Feriam sidera_, my +father! and confound all mealy-mouthed reticence, for you have both seen +her. Confess, am I not a lucky man? Come, Vanringham, too, shall drink. No +glasses? Take Nelchen's, then. Come, you fortunate rascal, you shall drink +to the bride from the bride's half-emptied glass. To the most beautiful +woman--Why, what the devil--?" + +Vanringham had blurted out an odd, unhuman sound. His extended hand shook +and jerked, as if in irresolution, and presently struck the proffered +glass from de Soyecourt's grasp. You heard the tiny crash, very audible in +the stillness, and afterward the irregular drumming of the old Prince's +finger-tips. He had not raised his head, had not moved. + +Louis de Soyecourt came to him, without speaking, and placed one hand under +his father's chin, and lifted the Prince's countenance, like a dead weight, +toward his own. Thus the two men regarded each the other. Their silence was +rather horrible. + +"It was not in vain that I dabbled with chemistry all these years," said +the guttural voice of the Prince de Gâtinais, "Yes, the child is dead by +this. Let us recognize the fact we are de Soyecourts, you and I." + +But Louis de Soyecourt had flung aside the passive, wrinkled face, and +then, with a straining gesture, wiped the fingers that had touched it upon +the sleeve of his left arm. He turned to the stairway. His hand grasped the +newelpost and gripped it so firmly that he seemed less to walk than by one +despairing effort to lift an inert body to the first step. He ascended +slowly, with a queer shamble, and disappeared into Nelchen's room. + + +VI + +"What next, monseigneur?" said Vanringham, half-whispering. + +"Why, next," said the Prince de Gâtinais, "I imagine that he will kill us +both. Meantime, as Louis says, the wine is really excellent. So you may +refill my glass, my man, and restore to me my vial of little tablets".... + +He was selecting a bonbon from the comfit-dish when his son returned into +the apartment. Very tenderly Louis de Soyecourt laid his burden upon a +settle, and then drew the older man toward it. You noted first how the +thing lacked weight: a flower snapped from its stalk could hardly have +seemed more fragile. The loosened hair strained toward the floor and +seemed to have sucked all color from the thing to inform that thick hair's +insolent glory; the tint of Nelchen's lips was less sprightly, and for the +splendor of her eyes Death had substituted a conscientious copy in crayons: +otherwise there was no change; otherwise she seemed to lie there and muse +on something remote and curious, yet quite as she would have wished it to +be. + +"See, my father," Louis de Soyecourt said, "she was only a child, +more little even than I. Never in her brief life had she wronged any +one,--never, I believe, had she known an unkind thought. Always she +laughed, you understand--Oh, my father, is it not pitiable that Nelchen +will never laugh any more?" + +"I entreat of God to have mercy upon her soul," said the old Prince de +Gâtinais. "I entreat of God that the soul of her murderer may dwell +eternally in the nethermost pit of hell." + +"I would cry amen," Louis de Soyecourt said, "if I could any longer believe +in God." + +The Prince turned toward him. "And will you kill me now, Louis?" + +"I cannot," said the other. "Is it not an excellent jest that I should +be your son and still be human? Yet as for your instrument, your cunning +butler--Come, Vanringham!" he barked. "We are unarmed. Come, tall man, for +I who am well-nigh a dwarf now mean to kill you with my naked hands." + +"Vanringham!" The Prince leaped forward. "Behind me, Vanringham!" As the +valet ran to him the old Prince de Gâtinais caught a knife from the table +and buried it to the handle in Vanringham's breast. The lackey coughed, +choked, clutched his assassin by each shoulder; thus he stood with a +bewildered face, shuddering visibly, every muscle twitching. Suddenly he +shrieked, with an odd, gurgling noise, and his grip relaxed, and Francis +Vanringham seemed to crumple among his garments, so that he shrank rather +than fell to the floor. His hands stretched forward, his fingers spreading +and for a moment writhing in agony, and then he lay quite still. + +"You progress, my father," said Louis de Soyecourt, quietly. "And what new +infamy may I now look for?" + +"A valet!" said the Prince. "You would have fought with him--a valet! He +topped you by six inches. And the man was desperate. Your life was in +danger. And your life is valuable." + +"I have earlier perceived, my father, that you prize human life very +highly." + +The Prince de Gâtinais struck sharply upon the table. "I prize the welfare +of France. To secure this it is necessary that you and no other reign in +Noumaria. But for the girl you would have yielded just now. So to the +welfare of France I sacrifice the knave at my feet, the child yonder, and +my own soul. Let us remember that we are de Soyecourts, you and I." + +"Rather I see in you," began the younger man, "a fiend. I see in you a far +ignobler Judas--" + +"And I see in you the savior of France. Nay, let us remember that we are de +Soyecourts, you and I. And for six centuries it has always been our first +duty to serve France. You behold only a man and a woman assassinated; I +behold thousands of men preserved from death, many thousands of women +rescued from hunger and degradation. I have sinned, and grievously; ages of +torment may not purge my infamy; yet I swear it is well done!" + +"And I--?" the little Marquis said. + +"Why, your heart is slain, my son, for you loved this girl as I loved your +mother, and now you can nevermore quite believe in the love God bears for +us all; and my soul is damned irretrievably: but we are de Soyecourts, you +and I, and accordingly we rejoice and drink to France, to the true love +of a de Soyecourt! to France preserved! to France still mighty among her +peers!" + +Louis de Soyecourt stood quite motionless. Only his eyes roved toward his +father, then to the body that had been Nelchen's. He began to laugh as he +caught up his glass. "You have conquered. What else have I to live for now? +To France, you devil!" + +"To France, my son!" The glasses clinked. "To the true love of a de +Soyecourt!" + +And immediately the Prince de Gâtinais fell at his son's feet. "You will go +into Noumaria?" + +"What does that matter now?" the other wearily said. "Yes, I suppose so. +Get up, you devil!" + +But the Prince de Gâtinais detained him, with hands like ice. "Then we +preserve France, you and I! We are both damned, I think, but it is worth +while, Louis. In hell we may remember that it was well worth while. I have +slain your very soul, my dear son, but that does not matter: France is +saved." The old man still knelt, looking upward. "Yes, and you must forgive +me, my son! For, see, I yield you what reparation I may. See, Louis,--I was +chemist enough for two. Wine of my own vintage I have tasted, of the brave +vintage which now revives all France. And I swear to you the child did not +suffer, Louis, not--not much. See, Louis! she did not suffer." A convulsion +tore at and shook the aged body, and twitched awry the mouth that had +smiled so resolutely. Thus the Prince died. + +Presently Louis de Soyecourt knelt and caught up the wrinkled face between +both hands. "My father--!" said Louis de Soyecourt. Afterward he kissed +the dead lips tenderly. "Teach me how to live, my father," said Louis de +Soyecourt, "for I begin to comprehend--in part I comprehend." Throughout +the moment Nelchen Thorn was forgotten: and to himself he too seemed to be +fashioned of heroic stuff. + + + + +X + +THE DUCAL AUDIENCE + + +_As Played at Breschau, May 3, 1755_ + + "_Venez, belle, venez, + Qu'on ne sçauroit tenir, et qui vous mutinez. + Void vostre galand! à moi pour recompence + Vous pouvez faire une humble et douce reverence! + Adieu, l'evenement trompe un peu mes souhaits; + Mais tous les amoureux ne sont pas satisfaits._" + + +DRAMATIS PERSONÆ + +GRAND DUKE OF NOUMARIA, formerly LOUIS DE SOYECOURT, tormented beyond +measure with the impertinences of life. +COMTE DE CHÂTEAUROUX, cousin to the Grand Duchess, and complies with +circumstance. +A COACHMAN and two FOOTMEN. + +GRAND DUCHESS OF NOUMARIA, a capable woman. +BARONESS VON ALTENBURG, a coquette. + + +SCENE + +The Palace Gardens at Breschau. + + + + +THE DUCAL AUDIENCE + + +_PROEM:--In Default of the Hornpipe Customary to a Lengthy Interval between +Acts_ + +Louis de Soyecourt fulfilled the promise made to the old Prince de +Gâtinais, so that presently went about Breschau, hailed by more or less +enthusiastic plaudits, a fair and blue-eyed, fat little man, who smiled +mechanically upon the multitude, and looked after the interests of France +wearily, and (without much more ardor) gave over the remainder of his time +to outrivalling his predecessor, unvenerable Ludwig von Freistadt, who +until now had borne, among the eighteen grand dukes (largely of quite +grand-ducal morals) that had earlier governed in Noumaria, the palm for +indolence and dissipation. + +At moments, perhaps, the Grand Duke recollected the Louis Quillan who had +spent three months in Manneville, but only, I think, as one recalls some +pleasurable acquaintance; Quillan had little resembled the Marquis de +Soyecourt, rake, tippler and exquisite of Versailles, and in the Grand Duke +you would have found even less of Nelchen Thorn's betrothed. He was quite +dead, was Quillan, for the man that Nelchen loved had died within the +moment of Nelchen's death. Hé, the poor children! his Highness meditated. +Dead, both of them, both murdered four years since, slain in Poictesme +yonder.... Eh bien, it was not necessary to engender melancholy. + +So his Highness amused himself,--not very heartily, but at least to the +last resource of a flippant and unprudish age. Meantime his grumbling +subjects bored him, his duties bored him, his wife bored him, his +mistresses bored him after the first night or two, and, above all, he most +hideously bored himself. But I spare you a _chronique scandaleuse_ of Duke +Louis' reign and come hastily to its termination, as more pertinent to the +matter I have now in hand. + +Suffice it, then, that he ruled in Noumaria five years; that he did what +was requisite by begetting children in lawful matrimony, and what was +expected of him by begetting some others otherwise; and that he stoutened +daily, and by and by decided that the young Baroness von Altenburg--not +excepting even her lovely and multifarious precursors,--was beyond doubt +possessed of the brightest eyes in all history. Therefore did his Highness +lay before the owner of these eyes a certain project, upon which the +Baroness was in season moved to comment. + + +I + +"The idea," said the Baroness, "is preposterous!" + +"Admirably put!" cried the Grand Duke. "We will execute it, then, the first +thing in the morning." + +"--and, besides, one could take only a portmanteau--" + +"And the capacity of a portmanteau is limited," his Highness agreed. "Nay, +I can assure you, after I had packed my coronet this evening there was +hardly room for a change of linen. And I found it necessary to choose +between the sceptre and a tooth-brush." + +"Ah, Highness" sighed the Baroness von Altenburg, "will you never be +serious? You plan to throw away a duchy, and in the act you jest like a +school-boy." + +"Ma foi!" retorted the Grand Duke, and looked out upon the moonlit gardens; +"as a loyal Noumarian, should I not rejoice at the good-fortune which is +about to befall my country? Nay, Amalia, morality demands my abdication," +he added, virtuously, "and for this once morality and I are in complete +accord." + +The Baroness von Altenburg was not disposed to argue the singularity of any +such agreement, the while that she considered Louis de Soyecourt's latest +scheme. + +He had, as prologue to its elucidation, conducted the Baroness into the +summer-house that his grandfather, good Duke Augustus, erected in the +Gardens of Breschau, close to the Fountain of the Naiads, and had en +tête-à-tête explained his notion. There were post-horses in Noumaria; there +was also an unobstructed road that led you to Vienna, and thence to the +world outside; and he proposed, in short, to quiet the grumbling of the +discontented Noumarians by a second, and this time a final, vanishment from +office and the general eye. He submitted that the Baroness, as a patriot, +could not fail to weigh the inestimable benefit which would thus accrue to +her native land. + +Yet he stipulated that his exit from public life should be made in company +with the latest lady on whom he had bestowed his variable affections; and +remembering this proviso, the Baroness, without exactly encouraging or +disencouraging his scheme, was at least not prone to insist on coupling him +with morality. + +She contented herself with a truism. "Indeed, your Highness, the example +you set your subjects is atrocious." + +"And yet they complain!" said the Grand Duke,--"though I swear to you I +have always done the things I ought not to have done, and have left unread +the papers I have signed. What more, in reason, can one ask of a grand +duke?" + +"You are indolent--" remonstrated the lady. + +"You--since we attempt the descriptive," said his Highness,--"are +adorable." + +"--and that injures your popularity--" + +"Which, by the way, vanished with my waist." + +"--and moreover you create scandals--" + +"'The woman tempted me,'" quoted the Grand Duke; and added, reflectively, +"Amalia, it is very singular--" + +"Nay, I am afraid," the Baroness lamented, "it is rather notoriously +plural." + +But the Grand Duke waved a dignified dissent, and continued, "--that I +could never resist green eyes of a peculiar shade." + +The Baroness, becoming vastly interested in the structure of her fan, went +on, with some severity, "Your reputation--" + +"_De mortuis_--" pleaded the Grand Duke. + +"--is bad; and you go from bad to worse." + +"By no means," said his Highness, "since when I was nineteen--" + +"I will not believe it even of you!" cried the Baroness von Altenburg. + +"I assure you," his Highness protested, gravely, "I was then a devil of a +fellow! She was only twenty, and she, too, had big green eyes--" + +"And by this late period," said the lady, "has in addition an infinity of +grandchildren." + +"I happen to be barely forty!" the Grand Duke said, with dignity. + +"In which event the _Almanachen_ dating, say, from 1710--" + +"Are not unmarred by an occasional misprint. Truly I lament the ways of all +typographers, and I will explain the cause of their depravity, in Vienna." + +"But I am not going to Vienna." + +"'And Sapphira,'" murmured his Highness, "'fell down straightway at his +feet, and yielded up the ghost!' So beware, Amalia!" + +"I am not afraid, your Highness,--" + +"Nor in effect am I. Then we will let Europe frown and journalists +moralize, while we two gallop forward on the road that leads to Vienna and +heaven?" + +"Or--" the Baroness helpfully suggested. + +"There is in this case no possible 'or.' Once out of Noumaria, we leave all +things behind save happiness." + +"Among these trifles, your Highness, is a duchy." + +"Hein?" said the Grand Duke; "what is it? A mere dot on the map, a pawn in +the game of politics. I give up the pawn and take--the queen." + +"That is unwise," said the Baroness, with composure, "and, besides, you are +hurting my hand. Apropos of the queen--the Grand Duchess--" + +"Will heartily thank God for her deliverance. She will renounce me before +the world, and in secret almost worship me for my consideration." + +"Yet a true woman," said the Baroness, oracularly, "will follow a +husband--" + +"Till his wife makes her stop," said the little Grand Duke, his tone +implying that he knew whereof he spoke. + +"--and if the Grand Duchess loved you--" + +"Oh, I think she would never mention it," said the Grand Duke, revolving in +his mind this novel idea. "She has a great regard for appearances." + +"Nevertheless--" + +"She will be Regent"--and the Grand Duke chuckled. "I can see her now,--St. +Elizabeth, with a dash of Boadicea. Noumaria will be a pantheon of the +virtues, and my children will be reared on moral aphorisms and rational +food, with me as a handy example of everything they should avoid. Deuce +take it, Amalia," he added, "a father must in common decency furnish an +example to his children!" + +"Pray," asked the Baroness, "do you owe it to your children, then, to take +this trip to Vienna--" + +"Ma foi!" retorted the Grand Duke, "I owe that to myself." + +"--and thereby break the Grand Duchess' heart?" + +"Indeed," observed his Highness, "you appear strangely deep in the +confidence of my wife." + +Again the Baroness descended to aphorism. "All women are alike, your +Highness." + +"Ah, ah! Well, I have heard," said the Grand Duke, "that seven devils were +cast out of Magdalene--" + +"Which means--?" + +"I have never heard of this being done to any other woman. Accordingly I +deduce that in all other women must remain--" + +"Beware, your Highness, of the crudeness of cynicism!" + +"I age," complained the Grand Duke, "and one reaches years of indiscretion +so early in the forties." + +"You admit, then, discretion is desirable?" + +"I admit that," his Highness said, with firmness, "of you alone." + +"Am I, in truth," queried the Baroness, "desirable?" And in this patch of +moonlight she looked incredibly so. + +"More than that," said the Grand Duke--"you are dangerous. You are a menace +to the peace of my Court. The young men make sonnets to your eyes, and the +ladies are ready to tear them out. You corrupt us, one and all. There is de +Châteauroux now--" + +"I assure you," protested the Baroness, "Monsieur de Châteauroux is not the +sort of person--" + +"But at twenty-five," the Grand Duke interrupted, "one is invariably that +sort of person." + +"Phrases, your Highness!" + +"Phrases or not, it is decided. You shall make no more bad poets." + +"You will," said the Baroness, "put me to a vast expense for curl-papers." + +"You shall ensnare no more admirers." + +"My milliner will be inconsolable." + +"In short, you must leave Noumaria--" + +"You condemn me to an exile's life of misery!" + +"Well, then, since misery loves company, I will go with you. For we should +never forget," his Highness added, with considerable kindliness, "always +to temper justice with mercy. So I have ordered a carriage to be ready at +dawn." + +The Baroness reflected; the plump little Grand Duke smiled. And he had +reason, for there was about this slim white woman--whose eyes were colossal +emeralds, and in show equivalently heatless, if not in effect,--so much +of the _baroque_ that in meditation she appeared some prentice queen of +Faëry dubious as to her incantations. Now, though, she had it--the mislaid +abracadabra. + +"I knew that I had some obstacle in mind--Thou shalt not commit adultery. +No, your Highness, I will not go." + +"Remember Sapphira," said the Grand Duke, "recall Herodias who fared +happily in all things, and by no means forget the portmanteau." + +"I have not the least intention of going--" the Baroness iterated, firmly. + +"Nor would I ever suspect you of harboring such a thought. Still, a +portmanteau, in case of an emergency--" + +"--although--" + +"Why, exactly." + +"--although I am told the sunrise is very beautiful from the Gardens of +Breschau." + +"It is well worth seeing," agreed the Grand Duke, "on certain +days--particularly on Thursdays. The gardeners make a specialty of them on +Thursdays." + +"By a curious chance," the Baroness murmured, "this is Wednesday." + +"Indeed," said the Grand Duke, "now you mention it, I believe it is." + +"And I shall be here, on your Highness' recommendation, to see the +sunrise--" + +"Of course," said the Grand Duke, "to see the sunrise,--but with a +portmanteau!" + +The Baroness was silent. + +"With a portmanteau," entreated the Grand Duke. "I am a connoisseur of +portmanteaux. Say that I may see yours, Amalia." + +The Baroness was silent. + +"Say yes, Amalia. For to the student of etymology the very word +portmanteau--" + +The Baroness bent toward him and said: + +"I am sorry to inform your Highness that there is some one at the door of +the summer-house." + + +II + +Inasmuch as all Noumaria knew that its little Grand Duke, once closeted +with the lady whom he delighted to honor, did not love intrusions, +and inasmuch as a discreet Court had learned, long ago, to regard +the summer-house as consecrate to his Highness and the Baroness von +Altenburg,--for these reasons the Grand Duke was inclined to resent +disturbance of his privacy when he first peered out into the gardens. + +His countenance was less severe when he turned again toward the Baroness, +and it smacked more of bewilderment. + +"It is only my wife," he said. + +"And the Comte de Châteauroux," said the Baroness. + +There is no denying that their voices were somewhat lowered. The chill and +frail beauty of the Grand Duchess was plainly visible from where they sat; +to every sense a woman of snow, his Highness mentally decided, for her gown +this evening was white and the black hair powdered; all white she was, a +cloud-tatter in the moonlight: yet with the Comte de Châteauroux as a foil, +his uniform of the Cuirassiers a big stir of glitter and color, she made an +undeniably handsome picture; and it was, quite possibly, the Grand Duke's +æsthetic taste which held him for the moment motionless. + +"After all--" he began, and rose. + +"I am afraid that her Highness--" the Baroness likewise commenced. + +"She would be sure to," said the Grand Duke, and thereupon he sat down. + +"I do not, however," said the Baroness, "approve of eavesdropping." + +"Oh, if you put it that way--" agreed the Grand Duke, and he was rising +once more, when the voice of de Châteauroux stopped him. + +"No, not at any cost!" de Châteauroux; was saying; "I cannot and I will not +give you up, Victoria!" + +"--though I have heard," said his Highness, "that the moonlight is bad for +the eyes." Saying this, he seated himself composedly in the darkest corner +of the summer-house. + +"This is madness!" the Grand Duchess said--"sheer madness." + +"Madness, if you will," de Châteauroux persisted, "yet it is a madness too +powerful and sweet to be withstood. Listen, Victoria,"--and he waved his +hand toward the palace, whence music, softened by the distance, came from +the lighted windows,--"do you not remember? They used to play that air at +Staarberg." + +The Grand Duchess had averted her gaze from him. She did not speak. + +He continued: "Those were contented days, were they not, when we were boy +and girl together? I have danced to that old-world tune so many times--with +you! And to-night, madame, it recalls a host of unforgettable things, for +it brings back to memory the scent of that girl's hair, the soft cheek that +sometimes brushed mine, the white shoulders which I so often had hungered +to kiss, before I dared--" + +"Hein?" muttered the Grand Duke. + +"We are no longer boy and girl," the Grand Duchess said. "All that lies +behind us. It was a dream--a foolish dream which we must forget." + +"Can you in truth forget?" de Châteauroux demanded,--"can you forget it +all, Victoria?--forget that night a Gnestadt, when you confessed you loved +me? forget that day at Staarberg, when we were lost in the palace gardens?" + +"Mon Dieu, what a queer method!" murmured the Grand Duke. "The man makes +love by the almanac." + +"Nay, dearest woman in the world," de Châteauroux went on, "you loved me +once, and that you cannot have quite forgotten. We were happy then--very +incredibly happy,--and now--" + +"Life," said the Grand Duchess, "cannot always be happy." + +"Ah, no, my dear! nor is it to be elated by truisms. But what a life is +this of mine,--a life of dreary days, filled with sick, vivid dreams of +our youth that is hardly past as yet! And so many dreams, dear woman of my +heart! in which the least remembered trifle brings back, as if in a flash, +some corner of the old castle and you as I saw you there,--laughing, or +insolent, or, it may be, tender. Ah, but you were not often tender! Just +for a moment I see you, and my blood leaps up in homage to my dear lady. +Then instantly that second of actual vision is over, I am going prosaically +about the day's business, but I hunger more than ever--" + +"This," said the Grand Duke, "is insanity." + +"Yet I love better the dreams of the night," de Châteauroux went on; "for +they are not made all of memories, sweetheart. Rather, they are romances +which my love weaves out of multitudinous memories,--fantastic stories of +just you and me that always end, if I be left to dream them out in comfort, +very happily. For there is in these dreams a woman who loves me, whose +heart and body and soul are mine, and mine alone. Ohé, it is a wonderful +vision while it lasts, though it be only in dreams that I am master of +my heart's desire, and though the waking be bitter...! Need it be just a +dream, Victoria?" + +"Not but that he does it rather well, you know," whispered the Grand Duke +to the Baroness von Altenburg, "although the style is florid. Yet that last +speech was quite in my earlier and more rococo manner." + +The Grand Duchess did not stir as de Châteauroux bent over her jewelled +hand. + +"Come! come now!" he said. "Let us not lose our only chance of happiness. +'Come forth, O Galatea, and forget as thou comest, even as I already have +forgot, the homeward way! Nay, choose with me to go a-shepherding--!'" + +"Oh, but to think of dragging in Theocritus!" observed his Highness. "Can +this be what they call seduction nowadays!" + +"I cannot," the Grand Duchess whispered, and her voice trembled. "You know +that I cannot, dear." + +"You will go!" said de Châteauroux. + +"My husband--" + +"A man who leaves you for each new caprice, who flaunts his mistresses in +the face of Europe." + +"My children--" + +"Eh, mon Dieu! are they or aught else to stand in my way, now that I know +you love me!" + +"--it would be criminal--" + +"Ah, yes, but then you love me!" + +"--you act a dishonorable part, de Châteauroux,--" + +"That does not matter. You love me!" + +"I will never see you again," said the Grand Duchess, firmly. "Go! I loathe +you, I loathe you, monsieur, even more than I loathe myself for having +stooped to listen to you." + +"You love me!" said de Châteauroux, and took her in his arms. + +Then the Grand Duchess rested her head upon the shoulder of de Châteauroux, +and breathed, "God help me!--yes!" + +"Really," said the Grand Duke, "I would never have thought it of Victoria. +It seems incredible for any woman of taste to be thus lured astray by +citations of the almanac and secondary Greek poets." + +"You will come, then?" the Count said. + +And the Grand Duchess answered, quietly, "It shall be as you will." + +More lately, while the Grand Duke and the Baroness craned their necks, and +de Châteauroux bent, very slowly, over her upturned lips, the Grand +Duchess struggled from him, saying, "Hark, Philippe! for I heard some +one--something stirring--" + +"It was the wind, dear heart." + +"Hasten!--I am afraid!--Oh, it is madness to wait here!" + +"At dawn, then,--in the gardens?" + +"Yes,--ah, yes, yes! But come, mon ami." And they disappeared in the +direction of the palace. + + +III + +The Grand Duke looked dispassionately on their retreating figures; +inquiringly on the Baroness; reprovingly on the moon, as though he rather +suspected it of having treated him with injustice. + +"Ma foi," said his Highness, at length, "I have never known such a passion +for sunrises. Shortly we shall have them announced as 'Patronized by the +Nobility.'" + +The Baroness said only, with an ellipsis, "Her own cousin, too!" [Footnote: +By courtesy rather than legally; Mademoiselle Berlin was, however, +undoubtedly the Elector of Badenburg's sister, though on the wrong side of +the blanket; and to her (second) son by Louis Quinze his French Majesty +accorded the title of Comte de Châteauroux.] + +"Victoria," observed the Grand Duke, "has always had the highest regard for +her family; but in this she is going too far--" + +"Yes," said the Baroness; "as far as Vienna." + +"--and I shall tell her that there are limits, Pardieu," the Grand Duke +emphatically repeated, "that there are limits." + +"Whereupon, if I am not mistaken, she will reply that there +are--baronesses." + +"I shall then appeal to her better nature--" + +"You will find it," said the Baroness, "strangely hard of hearing." + +"--and afterward I shall have de Châteauroux arrested." + +"On what grounds, your Highness?" + +"In fact," admitted the Grand Duke, "we do not want a scandal" + +"It is no longer," the Baroness considered, "altogether a question of what +we want." + +"And, morbleu! there will be a horrible scandal--" + +"The public gazettes will thrive on it." + +"--and trouble with her father, if not international complications--" + +"The armies of Noumaria and Badenburg have for years had nothing to do." + +"--and later a divorce." + +"The lawyers will call you blessed. In any event," the Baroness +conscientiously added, "your lawyers will. I am afraid that hers--" + +"Will scarcely be so courteous?" the Grand Duke queried. + +"It is not altogether impossible," the Baroness admitted, "that in +preparation of their briefs, they may light upon some other adjective." + +"And, in short," his Highness summed it up, "there will be the deuce to +pay." + +"Oh, no! the piper," said the Baroness,--"after long years of dancing. That +is what moralists will be saying, I suspect." + +And this seemed so highly probable that the plump little Grand Duke +frowned, and lapsed into a most un-ducal sullenness. + +"Your Highness," murmured the Baroness, "I cannot express my feelings as to +this shocking revelation--" + +"Madame," said the Grand Duke, "no more can I. At least, not in the +presence of a lady." + +"--But I have a plan--" + +"I," said the Grand Duke, "have an infinity of plans; but de Châteauroux +has a carriage, and a superfluity of Bourbon blood; and Victoria has the +obstinacy of a mule." + +"--And my plan," said the Baroness, "is a good one." + +"It needs to be," said the Grand Duke. + +But thereupon the Baroness von Altenburg unfolded to his Highness her +scheme for preserving coherency in the reigning family of Noumaria, and the +Grand Duke of that principality heard and marvelled. + +"Amalia," he said, when she had ended, "you should be prime-minister--" + +"Ah, your Highness," said the lady, "you flatter me, for none of my sex has +ever been sufficiently unmanly to make a good politician." + +"--though, indeed," the Grand Duke reflected, "what would a mere +prime-minister do with lips like yours?" + +"He would set you an excellent example by admiring them from a distance. Do +you agree, then, to my plan?" + +"Why, ma foi, yes!" said the Grand Duke, and he sighed. "In the gardens at +dawn." + +"At dawn," said the Baroness, "in the gardens." + + +IV + +That night the Grand Duke was somewhat impeded in falling asleep. He was +seriously annoyed by the upsetment of his escape from the Noumarian exile, +since he felt that he had prodigally fulfilled his obligations, and in +consequence deserved a holiday; the duchy was committed past retreat to the +French alliance, there were two legitimate children to reign after him, and +be the puppets of de Puysange and de Bernis, [Footnote: The Grand Duke, +however, owed de Puysange some reparation for having begot a child upon the +latter's wife; and with de Bernis had not dissimilar ties, for the Marquis +de Soyecourt had in Venice, in 1749, relinquished to him the beautiful nun +of Muran, Maria Montepulci,--which lady de Bernis subsequently turned over +to Giacomo Casanova, as is duly recorded in the latter's _Mémoires_, under +the year 1753.] just as he had been. Truly, it was diverting, after a +candid appraisal of his own merits, to reflect that a dwarfish Louis de +Soyecourt had succeeded where quite impeccable people like Bayard and du +Guesclin had failed; by four years of scandalous living in Noumaria he +had confirmed the duchy to the French interest, had thereby secured the +wavering friendship of Austria, and had, in effect, set France upon her +feet. Yes, the deed was notable, and he wanted his reward. + +To be the forsaken husband, to play Sgarnarelle with all Europe as an +audience, was, he considered, an entirely inadequate reward. That was out +of the question, for, deuce take it! somebody had to be Regent while +the brats were growing up. And Victoria, as he had said, would make an +admirable Regent. + +He was rather fond of his wife than otherwise. He appreciated the fact that +she never meddled with him, and he sincerely regretted she should have +taken a fancy to that good-for-nothing de Châteauroux. What qualms the poor +woman must be feeling at this very moment over the imminent loss of her +virtue! But love was a cruel and unreasonable lord.... There was Nelchen +Thorn, for instance.... He wondered would he have been happy with Nelchen? +her hands were rather coarse about the finger-tips, as he remembered +them.... The hands of Amalia, though, were perfection.... + +Then at last the body that had been Louis Quillan's fell asleep. + + +V + +Discontentedly the Grand Duke appraised the scene, and in the murky +twilight which heralded the day he found the world a cheerless place. The +Gardens of Breschau were deserted, save for a travelling carriage and +its fretful horses, who stamped and snuffled within forty yards of the +summer-house. + +"It appears," he said, "that I am the first on the ground, and that de +Châteauroux is a dilatory lover. Young men degenerate." + +Saying this, he seated himself on a convenient bench, where de Châteauroux +found him a few minutes later, and promptly dropped a portmanteau at the +ducal feet. + +"Monsieur le Comte," the Grand Duke said, "this is an unforeseen pleasure." + +"Your Highness!" cried de Châteauroux, in astonishment. + +"_Ludovicus_," said the Grand Duke, "_Dei gratia Archi Dux Noumariæ, +Princeps Gatinensis_, and so on." And de Châteauroux caressed his chin. + +"I did not know," said the Grand Duke, "that you were such an early riser. +Or perhaps," he continued, "you are late in retiring. Fy, fy, monsieur! you +must be more careful! You must not create a scandal in our little Court." +He shook his finger knowingly at Philippe de Châteauroux. + +"Your Highness,--" said the latter, and stammered into silence. + +"You said that before," the Grand Duke leisurely observed. + +"An affair of business--" + +"Ah! ah! ah!" said the Grand Duke, casting his eye first toward the +portmanteau and then toward the carriage, "can it be that you are leaving +Noumaria? We shall miss you, Comte." + +"I was summoned very hastily, or I would have paid my respects to your +Highness--" + +"Indeed," said the Grand Duke, "your departure is of a deplorable +suddenness--" + +"It is urgent, your Highness--" + +"--and yet," pursued the Grand Duke, "travel is beneficial to young men." + +"I shall not go far, your Highness--" + +"Nay, I would not for the world intrude upon your secrets, Comte--" + +"--But my estates, your Highness--" + +"--For young men will be young men, I know." + +"--There is, your Highness, to be a sale of meadow land--" + +"Which you will find, I trust, untilled." + +"--And my counsellor at law, your Highness, is imperative--" + +"At times," agreed the Grand Duke, "the most subtle of counsellors is +unreasonable. I trust, though, that she is handsome?" + +"Ah, your Highness--!" cried de Châteauroux. + +"And you have my blessing upon your culture of those meadow lands. Go in +peace." + +The Grand Duke was smiling on his wife's kinsman with extreme benevolence +when the Baroness von Altenburg appeared in travelling costume and carrying +a portmanteau. + + +VI + +"Heydey!" said the Grand Duke; "it seems, that the legal representative of +our good Baroness, also, is imperative." + +"Your Highness!" cried the Baroness, and she, too, dropped her burden. + +"Every one," said the Grand Duke, "appears to question my identity." And +meantime de Châteauroux turned from the one to the other in bewilderment. + +"This," said the Grand Duke, after a pause, "is painful. This is unworthy +of you, de Châteauroux." + +"Your Highness--!" cried the Count. + +"Again?" said the Grand Duke, pettishly. + +The Baroness applied her handkerchief to her eyes, and plaintively said, +"You do not understand, your Highness--" + +"I am afraid," said the Grand Duke, "that I understand only too clearly." + +"--and I confess I was here to meet Monsieur de Châteauroux--" + +"Oh, oh!" cried the latter. + +"Precisely," observed the Grand Duke, "to compare portmanteaux; and you +had selected the interior of yonder carriage, no doubt, as an appropriate +locality." + +"And I admit to your Highness--" + +"His Highness already knowing," the Grand Duke interpolated. + +"--that we were about to elope." + +"I can assure you--" de Châteauroux began. + +"Nay, I will take the lady's word for it," said the Grand Duke--"though it +grieves me." + +"We knew you--would never give your consent," murmured the Baroness, "and +without your consent I can not marry--" + +"Undoubtedly," said the Grand Duke, "I would never have given my consent to +such fiddle-faddle." + +"And we love each other." + +"Fiddle-de-dee!" said his Highness. + +But de Châteauroux passed one hand over his brow. "This," he said, "is some +horrible mistake--" + +"It is," assented the Grand Duke, "a mistake--and one of your making." + +"--For I certainly did not expect the Baroness--" + +"To make a clean breast of it so readily?" his Highness asked. "Ah, but she +is a lady of unusual candor." + +"Indeed, your Highness--" began de Châteauroux. + +"Nay, Philippe," the Baroness entreated, "confess to his Highness, as I +have done." + +"Oh, but--!" said de Châteauroux. + +"I must beseech you to be silent," said the Grand Duke; "you have already +brought scandal to our Court. Do not, I pray you, add profanity to the +catalogue of your offences. Why, I protest," he continued, "even the Grand +Duchess has heard of this imbroglio." + +Indeed, the Grand Duchess, hurrying from a pleached walkway, was already +within a few feet of the trio, and appeared no little surprised to find in +this place her husband. + +"I would not be surprised," said the Grand Duke, raising his eyes toward +heaven, "if by this time it were all over the palace." + + +VII + +Then, as his wife waited, speechless, the Grand Duke gravely asked: "You, +too, have heard of this sad affair, Victoria? Ah, I perceive you have, +and that you come in haste to prevent it,--even to pursue these misguided +beings, if necessary, as the fact that you come already dressed for the +journey very eloquently shows. You are self-sacrificing, you possess a good +heart, Victoria." + +"I did not know--" began the Grand Duchess. + +"Until the last moment," the Grand Duke finished. "Eh, I comprehend. But +perhaps," he continued, hopefully, "it is not yet too late to bring them to +their senses." + +And turning toward the Baroness and de Châteauroux, he said: + +"I may not hinder your departure if you two in truth are swayed by love, +since to control that passion is immeasurably beyond the prerogative +of kings. Yet I beg you to reflect that the step you contemplate is +irrevocable. Yes, and to you, madame, whom I have long viewed with a +paternal affection--an emotion wholly justified by the age and rank for +which it has pleased Heaven to preserve me,--to you in particular I would +address my plea. If with an entire heart you love Monsieur de Châteauroux, +why, then--why, then, I concede that love is divine, and yonder carriage at +your disposal. But I beg you to reflect--" + +"Believe me," said the Baroness, "we are heartily grateful for your +Highness' magnanimity. We may, I deduce, depart with your permission?" + +"Oh, freely, if upon reflection--" + +"I can reflect only when I am sitting down," declared the Baroness. She +handed her portmanteau to de Châteauroux, and stepped into the carriage. +And the Grand Duke noted that a coachman and two footmen had appeared, from +nowhere in particular. + +"To you, Monsieur le Comte," his Highness now began, with an Olympian +frown, "I have naught to say. Under the cover of our hospitality you have +endeavored to steal away the fairest ornament of our Court; I leave you +to the pangs of conscience, if indeed you possess a conscience. But the +Baroness is unsophisticated; she has been misled by your fallacious +arguments and specious pretence of affection. She has evidently been +misled," he said to the Grand Duchess, kindly, "as any woman might be." + +"As any woman might be!" his wife very feebly echoed. + +"And I shall therefore," continued the Grand Duke, "do all within my power +to dissuade her from this ruinous step. I shall appeal to her better +nature, and not, I trust, in vain." + +He advanced with dignity to the carriage, wherein the Baroness was seated. +"Amalia," he whispered, "you are an admirable actress. 'O wonderful, +wonderful, and most wonderful wonderful! and yet again wonderful, and after +that out of all whooping!" + +The Baroness smiled. + +"And it is now time," said his Highness, "for me to appeal to your better +nature. I shall do so in a rather loud voice, for I have prepared a most +virtuous homily that I am unwilling the Grand Duchess should miss. You +will at its conclusion be overcome with an appropriate remorse, and will +obligingly burst into tears, and throw yourself at my feet--pray remember +that the left is the gouty one,--and be forgiven. You will then be restored +to favor, while de Châteauroux drives off alone and in disgrace. Your plan +works wonderfully." + +"It is true," the Baroness doubtfully said, "such was the plan." + +"And a magnificent one," said the Grand Duke. + +"But I have altered it, your Highness." + +"And this alteration, Amalia--?" + +"Involves a trip to Vienna." + +"Not yet, Amalia. We must wait." + +"Oh, I could never endure delays," said the Baroness, "and, since you +cannot accompany me, I am going with Monsieur de Châteauroux." + +The Grand Duke grasped the carriage door. + +"Preposterous!" he cried. + +"But you have given your consent," the Baroness protested, "and in the +presence of the Grand Duchess." + +"Which," said the Grand Duke, "was part of our plan." + +"Indeed, your Highness," said the Baroness, "it was a most important part. +You must know," she continued, with some diffidence, "that I have the +misfortune to love Monsieur de Châteauroux." + +"Who is in love with Victoria." + +"I have the effrontery to believe," said the Baroness, "that he is, in +reality, in love with me." + +"Especially after hearing him last night," the Grand Duke suggested. + +"That scene, your Highness, we had carefully rehearsed--oh, seven or eight +times! Personally, I agreed with your Highness that the quotation from +Theocritus was pedantic, but Philippe insisted on it, you conceive--" + +The Grand Duke gazed meditatively upon the Baroness, who had the grace to +blush. + +"Then it was," he asked, "a comedy for my benefit?" + +"You would never have consented--" she began. But the Grand Duke's +countenance, which was slowly altering to a greenish pallor, caused her to +pause. + +"You will get over it in a week, Louis," she murmured, "and you will find +other--baronesses." + +"Oh, very probably!" said his Highness, and he noted with pleasure that he +spoke quite as if it did not matter. "Nevertheless, this was a despicable +trick to play upon the Grand Duchess." + +"Yet I do not think the Grand Duchess will complain," said the Baroness von +Altenburg. + +And it was as though a light broke on the Grand Duke. "You planned all this +beforehand?" he inquired. + +"Why, precisely, your Highness." + +"And de Châteauroux helped you?" + +"In effect, yes, your Highness." + +"And the Grand Duchess knew?" + +"The Grand Duchess suggested it, your Highness, the moment that she knew +you thought of eloping." + +"And I, who tricked Gaston--!" + +"Louis," said the Baroness von Altenburg, in a semi-whisper, "your wife +is one of those persons who cling to respectability like a tippler to his +bottle. To her it is absolutely nothing how many women you may pursue--or +conquer--so long as you remain here under her thumb, to be exhibited, in +fair sobriety, upon the necessary public occasions. I pity you, my Louis." +And she sighed with real compassion. + +He took possession of one gloved hand. "At the bottom of your heart," his +Highness said, irrelevantly, "you like me better than you do Monsieur de +Châteauroux." + +"I find you the more entertaining company, to be sure--But what a woman +most wants is to be loved. If I touch Philippe's hand for, say, the +millionth part of a second longer than necessity compels, he treads for the +remainder of the day above meteors; if yours--why, you at most admire my +fingers. No doubt you are a connoisseur of fingers and such-like trifles; +but, then, a woman does not wish to be admired by a connoisseur so much as +she hungers to be adored by a maniac. And accordingly, I prefer my stupid +Philippe." + +"You are wise," the Grand Duke estimated, "I remember long ago ... in +Poictesme yonder...." + +"I loathe her," the Bareness said, with emphasis. "Nay, I am ignorant as to +who she was--but O my Louis! had you accorded me a tithe of the love you +squandered on that abominable dairymaid I would have followed you not only +to Vienna--" + +He raised his hand, "There are persons yonder in whom the proper emotions +are innate; let us not shock them. No, I never loved you, I suppose; I +merely liked your way of talking, liked your big green eyes, liked your +lithe young body.... Hé, and I like you still, Amalia. So I shall not play +the twopenny despot. God be with you, my dear." + +He had seen tears in those admirable eyes before he turned his back to her. +"Monsieur de Châteauroux," he called, "I find the lady is adamant. I wish +you a pleasant journey." He held open the door of the carriage for de +Châteauroux to enter. + +"You will forgive us, your Highness?" asked the latter. + +"You will forget?" murmured the Baroness. + +"I shall do both," said the Grand Duke. "Bon voyage, mes enfants!" + +And with a cracking of whips the carriage drove off. + +"Victoria," said the plump little Grand Duke, in admiration, "you are a +remarkable woman. I think that I will walk for a while in the gardens, and +meditate upon the perfections of my wife." + + +VIII + +He strolled in the direction of the woods. As he reached the summit of +a slight incline he turned and looked toward the road that leads from +Breschau to Vienna. A cloud of dust showed where the carriage had +disappeared. + +"Ma foi!" said his Highness; "my wife has very fully proven her executive +ability. Beyond doubt, there is no person in Europe better qualified to +rule Noumaria as Regent." + + + + +LOVE'S ALUMNI: THE AFTERPIECE + + +_As Played at Ingilby, October 6, 1755_ + +"_Though marriage be a lottery, in which there are a wondrous many blanks, +yet there is one inestimable lot, in which the only heaven on earth is +written. Would your kind fate but guide your hand to that, though I were +wrapt in all that luxury itself could clothe me with, I still should envy +you._" + + +DRAMATIS PERSONÆ + +DUKE OF ORMSKIRK. +LOUIS DE SOYECOURT, formerly GRAND DUKE OF NOUMARIA, and now a tuner of +pianofortes. +DUC DE PUYSANGE. +DAMIENS, servant to Ormskirk. + +In Dumb Show are presented LORD HUMPHREY DEGGE, CAPTAIN FRANCIS AUDAINE, +MR. GEORGE ERWYN, DUCHESS OF ORMSKIRK, DUCHESSE DE PUYSANGE, LADY HUMPHREY +DEGGE, MRS. AUDAINE, and MRS. ERWYN. + + +SCENE + +The library, and afterward the dining-room, of Ormskirk's home at Ingilby, +in Westmoreland. + + + + +LOVE'S ALUMNI + + +_PROEM:-Wherein a Prince Serves His People_ + +The Grand Duke did not return to breakfast nor to dinner, nor, in point of +fact, to Noumaria. For the second occasion Louis de Soyecourt had vanished +at the spiriting of boredom; and it is gratifying to record that his +evasion passed without any train of turmoil. + +The Grand Duchess seemed to disapprove of her bereavement, mildly, but only +said, "Well, after all--!" + +She saw to it that the ponds about the palace were dragged conscientiously, +and held an interview with the Chief of Police, and more lately had herself +declared Regent of Noumaria. + +She proved a capable and popular ruler, who when she began to take lovers +allowed none of them to meddle with politics: so all went well enough in +Noumaria, and nobody evinced the least desire to hasten either the maturity +of young Duke Anthony or the reappearance of his father. + + +I + +Meantime had come to Ingilby, the Duke of Ormskirk's place in Westmoreland, +a smallish blue-eyed vagabond who requested audience with his Grace, and +presently got it, for the Duke, since his retirement from public affairs, +[Footnote: He returned to office during the following year, as is well +known, immediately before the attempted assassination of the French King, +in the January of 1757.] had become approachable by almost any member of +the public. + +The man came Into the library, smiling, "I entreat your pardon, Monsieur +le Duc," he began, "that I have not visited you sooner. But in unsettled +times, you comprehend, the master of a beleaguered fortress is kept busy. +This poor fortress of my body has been of late most resolutely besieged by +poverty and hunger, the while that I have been tramping about Europe--in +search of Gaston. Now, they tell me, he is here." + +The travesty of their five-year-old interview at Bellegarde so tickled +Ormskirk's fancy that he laughed heartily. "Damiens," said Ormskirk, to the +attendant lackey, "go fetch me a Protestant minister from Manneville, and +have a gallows erected in one of the drawing-rooms. I intend to pay off an +old score." Meantime he was shaking the little vagabond's hand, chuckling +and a-beam with hospitality. + +"Your Grace--!" said Damiens, bewildered. + +"Well, go, in any event," said Ormskirk. "Oh, go anywhere, man!--to the +devil, for instance." + +His eyes, followed the retreating lackey. "As I suspect in the end you +will," Ormskirk said, inconsequently. "Still, you are a very serviceable +fellow, my good Damiens. I have need of you." + +And with a shrug he now began, "Your Highness,--" + +"Praise God, no!" observed the other, fervently. + +And Ormskirk nodded his comprehension. "Monsieur de Soyecourt, then. Of +course, we heard of your disappearance, I have been expecting something of +the sort for years. And,--frankly, politics are often a nuisance, as both +Gaston and myself will willingly attest,--especially," he added, with a +grimace, "since war between France and England became inevitable through +the late happenings in India and Nova Scotia, and both our wives flatly +declined to let either of us take part therein,--for fear we might catch +our death of cold by sleeping in those draughty tents. Faith, you have +descended, sir, like an agreeable meteor, upon two of the most scandalously +henpecked husbands in all the universe. In fact, you will not find a +gentleman at Ingilby--save Mr. Erwyn, perhaps--but is an abject slave to +his wife, and in consequence most abjectly content." + +"You have guests, then?" said de Soyecourt. "_Ma foi_, it is unfortunate. I +but desired to confer with Gaston concerning the disposal of Beaujolais and +my other properties in France since I find that the sensation of hunger, +while undoubtedly novel, is, when too long continued, apt to grow tiresome. +I would not willingly intrude, however--" + +"Were it not for the fact that you are wealthy, and yet, so long as you +preserve your incognito, and remain legally dead, you cannot touch a penny +of your fortune! The situation is droll. We must arrange it. Meanwhile +you are my guest, and I can assure you that at Ingilby you will be to all +Monsieur de Soyecourt, no more and no less. Now let us see what can be done +about clothing Monsieur de Soyecourt for dinner--" + +"But I could not consider--" Monsieur de Soyecourt protested. + +"I must venture to remind you," the Duke retorted, "that dinner is almost +ready, and that Claire is the sort of housewife who would more readily +condone fratricide or arson than cold soup." + +"It is odd," little de Soyecourt said, with complete irrelevance, "that in +the end I should get aid of you and of Gaston. And it is odd you should be +forgiving my bungling attempts at crime, so lightly--" + +Ormskirk considered, a new gravity in his plump face. "Faith, but we find +it more salutary, in looking back, to consider some peccadilloes of our +own. And we bear no malice, Gaston and I,--largely, I suppose, because +contentment is a great encourager of all the virtues. Then, too, we +remember that to each of us, at the eleventh hour, and through no merit of +his own, was given the one thing worth while in life. We did not merit it; +few of us merit anything, for few of us are at bottom either very good or +very bad. Nay, my friend, for the most part we are blessed or damned as +Fate elects, and hence her favorites may not in reason contemn her victims. +For myself, I observe the king upon his throne and the thief upon his +coffin, in passage for the gallows; and I pilfer my phrase and I apply it +to either spectacle: _There, but for the will of God, sits John Bulmer_. I +may not understand, I may not question; I can but accept. Now, then, let us +prepare for dinner" he ended, in quite another tone. + +De Soyecourt yielded. He was shown to his rooms, and Ormskirk rang for +Damiens, whom the Duke was sending into France to attend to a rather +important assassination. + + +II + +At dinner Louis de Soyecourt made divers observations. + +First Gaston had embraced him. "And the de Gâtinais estates?--but beyond +question, my dear Louis! Next week we return to France, and the affair is +easily arranged. You may abdicate in due form, you need no longer skulk +about Europe disguised as a piano-tuner; it is all one to France, you +conceive, whether you or your son reign in Noumaria. You should have come +to me sooner. As for your having been in love with my wife, I could not +well quarrel with that, since the action would seriously reflect upon my +own taste, who am still most hideously in love with her." + +Hélène had stoutened. Monsieur de Soyecourt noted also that Hélène's gold +hair was silvering now, as though Time had tangled cobwebs through it, and +that Gaston was profoundly unconscious of the fact. In Gaston's eyes she +was at the most seventeen. Well, Hélène had always been admirable in her +management of all, and it would be diverting to see that youngest child of +hers.... Meanwhile it was diverting also to observe how conscientiously she +was exerting a good influence over Gaston: and de Soyecourt smiled to find +that she shook her head at Gaston's third glass, and that de Puysange did +not venture on a fourth. Victoria, to do her justice, had never meddled +with any of her husband's vices.... + +As for the Duchess of Ormskirk, Louis de Soyecourt had known from the +beginning--in comparative youthfulness,--that Claire would placidly order +her portion of the world as she considered expedient, and that Ormskirk +would travesty her, and somewhat bewilder her, and that in the ultimate +Ormskirk would obey her to the letter. + +Captain Audaine Monsieur de Soyecourt considered at the start diverting, +and in the end a pompous bore. Yet they assured him that Audaine was +getting on prodigiously in the House of Commons, [Footnote: The Captain's +personal quarrel with the Chevalier St. George and its remarkable upshot, +at Antwerp, as well as the Captain's subsequent renunciation of Jacobitism, +are best treated of in Garendon's own memoirs.]--as, _ma foi_! he would +most naturally do, since his _métier_ was simply to shout well-rounded +common-places,--and the circumstance that he shouted would always attract +attention, while the fact that he shouted platitudes would invariably +prevent his giving offence. Lord Humphrey Degge was found a ruddy and +comely person, of no especial importance, but de Soyecourt avidly took note +of Mr. Erwyn's waistcoat. Why, this man was a genius! Monsieur de Soyecourt +at first glance decided. Staid, demure even, yet with a quiet prodigality +of color and ornament, an inevitableness of cut--Oh, beyond doubt, this man +was a genius! + +As for the ladies at Ingilby, they were adjudged to be handsome women, +one and all, but quite unattractive, since they evinced not any excessive +interest in Monsieur de Soyecourt. Here was no sniff of future conquest, +not one side-long glance, but merely three wives unblushingly addicted to +their own husbands. _Eh bien_! these were droll customs! + +Yet in the little man woke a vague suspicion, as he sat among these +contented folk, that, after all, they had perhaps attained to something +very precious of which his own life had been void, to a something of which +he could not even form a conception. Love, of course, he understood, with +thoroughness; no man alive had loved more ardently and variously than +Louis de Soyecourt. But what the devil! love was a temporary delusion, an +ingenious device of Nature's to bring about perpetuation of the species. +It was a pleasurable insanity which induced you to take part in a rather +preposterously silly and undignified action: and once this action was +performed, the insanity, of course, gave way to mutual tolerance, or to +dislike, or, more preferably, as de Soyecourt considered, to a courteous +oblivion of the past. + +And yet when this Audaine, to cite one instance only, had vented some +particularly egregious speech that exquisite wife of his would merely +smile, in a fond, half-musing way. She had twice her husband's wit, and +was cognizant of the fact, beyond doubt; to any list of his faults and +weaknesses you could have compiled she indubitably might have added a dozen +items, familiar to herself alone: and with all this, it was clamant that +she preferred Audaine to any possible compendium of the manly virtues. Why, +in comparison, she would have pished at a seraph!--after five years of his +twaddle, mark you. And Hélène seemed to be really not much more sensible +about Gaston.... + +It all was quite inexplicable. Yet Louis de Soyecourt could see that not +one of these folk was blind to his or her yoke-fellow's frailty, but that, +beside this something very precious to which they had attained, and +he had never attained, a man's foible, or a woman's defect, dwindled +into insignificance. Here, then, were people who, after five years' +consortment,--consciously defiant of time's corrosion, of the guttering-out +of desire, of the gross and daily disillusions of a life in common, +and even of the daily fret of all trivialities shared and diversely +viewed,--who could yet smile and say: "No, my companion is not quite the +perfect being I had imagined. What does it matter? I am content. I would +have nothing changed." + +Well, but Victoria had not been like that. She let you go to the devil in +your own way, without meddling, but she irritated you all the while by +holding herself to a mark. She had too many lofty Ideas about her own +duties and principles,--much such uncompromising fancies as had led his +father to get rid of that little Nelchen.... No, there was no putting up +with these rigid virtues, day in and day out. These high-flown notions +about right and wrong upset your living, they fretted your luckless +associates.... These people here at Ingilby, by example, made no +pretensions to immaculacy; instead, they kept their gallant compromise +with imperfection; and they seemed happy enough.... There might be a moral +somewhere: but he could not find it. + + +CURTAIN + + + + +THE EPILOGUE + +SPOKEN BY ORMSKIRK, WHO ENTERS IN A FRET + + + A thankless task! to come to you and mar + Your dwindling appetite for caviar, + And so I told him! + [_He calls within._ + Sir, the critics sneer, + And swear the thing is "crude and insincere"! + "Too trivial"! or for an instant pause + And doubly damn with negligent applause! + Impute, in fine, the prowess of the Vicar + Less to repentance than to too much liquor! + Find Louis naught! de Gâtinais inane! + Gaston unvital, and George Erwyn vain, + And Degge the futile fellow of Audaine! + Nay, sir, no Epilogue avails to save-- + You're damned, and Bulmer's hooted as a knave. + + [_He retires behind the curtain and is thrust out + again. He resolves to make the best of it._ + + The author's obdurate, and bids me say + That--since the doings of our far-off day + Smacked less of Hippocrene than of Bohea-- + His tiny pictures of that tiny time + Aim little at the lofty and sublime, + And paint no peccadillo as a crime-- + Since when illegally light midges mate, + Or flies purloin, or gnats assassinate, + No sane man hales them to the magistrate. + + Or so he says. He merely strove to find + And fix a faithful likeness of mankind + About its daily business,--to secure + No full-length portrait, but a miniature,-- + And for it all no moral can procure. + + Let Bulmer, then, defend his old-world crew, + And beg indulgence--nay, applause--of you. + + Grant that we tippled and were indiscreet, + And that our idols all had earthen feet; + Grant that we made of life a masquerade; + And swore a deal more loudly than we prayed; + Grant none of us the man his Maker meant,-- + Our deeds, the parodies of our intent, + In neither good nor ill pre-eminent; + Grant none of us a Nero,--none a martyr,-- + All merely so-so. + And _de te narratur_. + +EXPLICIT + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Gallantry, by James Branch Cabell + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GALLANTRY *** + +This file should be named 8gtry10.txt or 8gtry10.zip +Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks get a new NUMBER, 8gtry11.txt +VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, 8gtry10a.txt + +Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Tiffany Vergon +and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team. + +Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US +unless a copyright notice is included. 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