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

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