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

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