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

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