Gallantry: Dizain des Fetes Galantes, James Branch Cabell [free biff chip and kipper ebooks .TXT] 📗

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