Gallantry Part 26

"I would follow you," said John Bulmer, "though h.e.l.l 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 acquaintances.h.i.+p I took you for a sensible person!" Afterward the Friar mounted his mule and left them.

Then silently John Bulmer a.s.sisted 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 a.s.sent, 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 Ill.u.s.tres_; 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 pa.s.ses 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 a.s.sert 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 cla.s.ses 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 pa.s.sions, 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 s.n.a.t.c.hed at each loveliness, jealously, as a pug s.n.a.t.c.hes bits of sugar.

Beneath her window he paused and s.h.i.+fted 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 amba.s.sador, 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,"