Chapter 16

"Louis had forgotten you. They had all retreated to the Inner Tower. [Footnote: The inner ward, or ballium, which (according to Quinault) was defended by ten towers, connected by an embattled stone wall about thirty feet in height and eight feet thick, on the summit of which was a footway; now demolished to make way for the famous gardens.] Cazaio cannot take that, for he has no cannon. Louis can hold out there until Gaston comes with help," Claire rapidly explained. "But the thieves are burning Bellegarde. I could bribe no man to set you free. They were afraid to venture."

"And you came," said John Bulmer--"you left the tall safe Inner Tower to come to me!"

"I could not let you die, Jean Bulmer."

"Why, then I must live not unworthily the life which, you have given me. O God!" John Bulmer cried, "what a pitiful creature was that great Duke of Ormskirk! Now make a man of me, O God!"

"Listen, dear madman," she breathed; "we cannot go out into Bellegarde. They are everywhere--Cazaio's men. They are building huge fires about the Inner Tower; but it is all stone, and I think Louis can hold out. But we, Jean Bulmer, can only retreat to the roofing of this place. There is a trap-door to admit you to the top, and there--there we can at least live until the dawn."

"I am unarmed," John Bulmer said; "and weaponless, I cannot hold even a trap-door against armed men."

"I have brought you weapons," Claire returned, and waved one hand toward the outer passageway. "Naturally I would not overlook that. There were many dead men on my way hither, and they had no need of weapons. I have a sword here and two pistols."

"You are," said John Bulmer, with supreme conviction, "the most wonderful woman in the universe. By all means let us get to the top of this infernal tower and live there as long as we may find living possible. But first, will you permit me to make myself a thought tidier? For in my recent agitation as to your whereabouts I have, I perceive, somewhat disordered both my person and my apparel."

Claire laughed a little sadly. "You have been sincere for once in your existence, and you are hideously ashamed, is it not? Ah, my friend, I would like you so much better if you were not always playing at life, not always posing as if for your portrait."

"For my part," he returned, obscurely, from the rear of a wet towel, "I fail to perceive any particular merit in dying with a dirty face. We are about to deal with a most important and, it well may be, the final crisis of our lives. So let us do it with decency."

Afterward John Bulmer changed his cravat, since the one he wore was soiled and crumpled and stained a little with his blood; and they went up the winding stairway to the top of the Constable's Tower. These two passed through the trap-door into a moonlight which drenched the world; westward the higher walls of the Hugonet Wing shut off that part of Bellegarde where men were slaughtering one another, and turrets, black and untenanted, stood in strong relief against a sky of shifting crimson and gold. At their feet was the tiny enclosed garden half-hidden by the poplar boughs. To the east the Tower dropped sheer to the moat; and past that was the curve of the highway leading to the main entrance of the château, and beyond this road you saw Amneran and the moonlighted plains of the Duardenez, and one little tributary, a thread of pulsing silver, in passage to the great river which showed as a smear of white, like a chalk-mark on the world's rim.

John Bulmer closed the trap-door. They stood with clasped hands, eyes straining toward the east, whence help must arrive if help came at all.

"No sign of Gaston," the girl said. "We most die presently, Jean Bulmer."

"I am sorry," he said,--"Oh, I am hideously sorry that we two must die."

"I am not afraid, Jean Bulmer. But life would be very sweet, with you."

"That was my thought, too.... I have always bungled this affair of living, you conceive. I had considered the world a healthy and not intolerable prison, where each man must get through his day's work as best he might, soiling his fingers as much as necessity demanded--but no more,--so that at the end he might sleep soundly--or perhaps that he might go to heaven and pluck eternally at a harp, or else to hell and burn eternally, just as divines say we will. I never bothered about it, much, so long as there was my day's work at hand, demanding performance. And in consequence I missed the whole meaning of life."

"That is not so!" Claire replied. "No man has achieved more, as everybody knows."

This was an odd speech. But he answered, idly: "Eh, I have done well enough as respectable persons judge these matters. And I went to church on Sundays, and I paid my tithes. Trifles, these, sweetheart; for in every man, as I now see quite plainly, there is a god. And the god must judge, and the man himself must be the temple and the instrument of the god. It is very simple, I see now. And whether he go to church or no is a matter of trivial importance, so long as the man obeys the god who is within him." John Bulmer was silent, staring vaguely toward the blank horizon.

"And now that you have discovered this," she murmured, "therefore you wish to live?"

"Why, partly on account of that," he said, "yet perhaps mostly on account of you.... But heyho!" said John Bulmer; "I am disfiguring my last hours by inflicting upon a lady my half-baked theology. Let us sit down, my dear, and talk of trifles till they find us. And then I will kill you, sweetheart, and afterward myself. Presently come dawn and death; and my heart, according to the ancient custom of Poictesme, is crying, '_Oy Dieus! Oy Dieus, de l'alba tantost ve!_' But for all that, my mouth will resolutely discourse of the last Parisian flounces, or of your unfathomable eyes, or of Monsieur de Voltaire's new tragedy of _Oreste_,--or, in fine, of any topic you may elect."

He smiled, with a twinging undercurrent of regret that not even in impendent death did he find any stimulus to the heroical. But the girl had given a muffled cry.

"Look, Jean! Already they come for us."

Through the little garden a man was running, running frenziedly from one wall to another when he found the place had no outlet save the gate through which he had scuttled. It was fat Guiton, the steward of the Duc de Puysange. Presently came Achille Cazaio with a wet sword, and harried the unarmed old man, wantonly driving him about the poplars, pricking him in the quivering shoulders, but never killing him. All the while the steward screamed with a monotonous shrill wailing.

After a little he fell at Cazaio's feet, shrieking for mercy.

"Fool!" said the latter, "I am Achille Cazaio. I have no mercy in me."

He kicked the steward in the face two or three times, and Guiton, his countenance all blood, black in the moonlight, embraced the brigand's and wept. Presently Cazaio slowly drove his sword into the back of the prostrate man, who shrieked, "O Jesu!" and began to cough and choke. Five times Cazaio spitted the writhing thing, and afterward was Guiton's soul released from the tortured body.

"Is it well, think you," said John Bulmer, "that I should die without first killing Achille Cazaio?"

"No!" the girl answered, fiercely.

Then John Bulmer leaned upon the parapet of the Constable's Tower and called aloud, "Friend Achille, your conduct disappoints me."

The man started, peered about, and presently stared upward. "Monsieur Bulmaire, to encounter you is indeed an unlooked-for pleasure. May I inquire wherein I have been so ill-fated as to offend?"

"You have an engagement to fight me on Thursday afternoon, friend Achille, so that to all intent I hold a mortgage on your life. I submit that, in consequence, you have no right to endanger that life by besieging castles and wasting the night in assassinations."

"There is something in what you say, Monsieur Bulmaire," the brigand replied, "and I very heartily apologize for not thinking of it earlier. But in the way of business, you understand,--However, may I trust it will please you to release me from this inconvenient obligation?" Cazaio added, with a smile. "My men are waiting for me yonder, you comprehend."

"In fact," said John Bulmer, hospitably, "up here the moonlight is as clear as day. We can settle our affair in five minutes."

"I come," said Cazaio, and plunged into the entrance to the Constable's Tower.

"The pistol! quick!" said Claire.

"And for what, pray?" said John Bulmer.

"So that from behind, as he lifts the trap-door, I may shoot him through the head. Do you stand in front as though to receive him. It will be quite simple."

XV

"My dear creature," said John Bulmer, "I am now doubly persuaded that God entirely omitted what we term a sense of honor when He created the woman. I mean to kill this rapscallion, but I mean to kill him fairly." He unbolted the trap-door and immediately Cazaio stood upon the roof, his sword drawn.

Achille Cazaio stared at the tranquil woman, and now his countenance was less that of a satyr than of a demon. "At four in the morning! I congratulate you, Monsieur Bulmaire," he said,--"Oh, decidedly, I congratulate you."

"Thank you," said John Bulmer, sword in hand; "yes, we were married yesterday."

Cazaio drew a pistol from his girdle and fired full in John Bulmer's face; but the latter had fallen upon one knee, and the ball sped harmlessly above him.

"You are very careless with fire-arms," John Bulmer lamented, "Really, friend Achille, if you are not more circumspect you will presently injure somebody, and will forever afterward be consumed with unavailing regret and compunctions. Now let us get down to our affair."

They crossed blades in the moonlight, Cazaio was in a disastrous condition; John Bulmer's tolerant acceptance of any meanness that a Cazaio might attempt, the vital shame of this new and baser failure before Claire's very eyes, had made of Cazaio a crazed beast. He slobbered little flecks of foam, clinging like hoar-frost to the tangled beard, and he breathed with shuddering inhalations, like a man in agony, the while that he charged with redoubling thrusts. The Englishman appeared to be enjoying himself, discreetly; he chuckled as the other, cursing, shifted from tierce to quart, and he met the assault with a nice inevitableness. In all, each movement had the comely precision of finely adjusted clockwork, though at times John Bulmer's face showed a spurt of amusement roused by the brigand's extravagancy of gesture and Cazaio's contortions as he strove to pass the line of steel that flickered cannily between his sword and John Bulmer's portly bosom.

Then John Bulmer, too, attacked. "For Guiton!" said he, as his point slipped into Cazaio's breast. John Bulmer recoiled and lodged another thrust in the brigand's throat. "For attempting to assassinate me!" His foot stamped as his sword ran deep into Cazaio's belly. "For insulting my wife by thinking of her obscenely! You are a dead man, friend Achille."

Cazaio had dropped his sword, reeling as if drunken against the western battlement. "My comfort," he said, hoarsely, while one hand tore at his jetting throat--"my comfort is that I could not perish slain by a braver enemy." He moaned and stumbled backward. Momentarily his knees gripped the low embrasure. Then his feet flipped upward, convulsively, so that John Bulmer saw the man's spurs glitter and twitch in the moonlight, and John Bulmer heard a snapping and crackling and swishing among the poplars, and heard the heavy, unvibrant thud of Cazaio's body upon the turf.

"May he find more mercy than he has merited," said John Bulmer, "for the man had excellent traits. Yes, in him the making of a very good swordsman was spoiled by that abominable Boisrobert."

But Claire had caught him by the shoulder. "Look, Jean!"

He turned toward the Duardenez. A troop of horsemen was nearing. Now they swept about the curve in the highway and at their head was de Puysange, laughing terribly. The dragoons went by like a tumult in a sick man's dream, and the Hugonet Wing had screened them.

"Then Bellegarde is relieved," said John Bulmer, "and your life, at least, is saved."

The girl stormed. "You--you abominable trickster! You would not be content with the keys of heaven if you had not got them by outwitting somebody! Do you fancy I had never seen the Duke of Ormskirk's portrait? Gaston sent me one six months ago."

"Ah!" said John Bulmer, very quietly. He took up the discarded scabbard, and he sheathed his sword without speaking.

Presently he said, "You have been cognizant all along that I was the Duke of Ormskirk?"

"Yes," she answered, promptly.

"And you married me, knowing that I was--God save the mark!--the great Duke of Ormskirk? knowing that you made what we must grossly term a brilliant match?"

"I married you because, in spite of Jean Bulmer, you had betrayed yourself to be a daring and a gallant gentleman,--and because, for a moment, I thought that I did not dislike the Duke of Ormskirk quite so much as I ought to."

He digested this.

"O Jean Bulmer," the girl said, "they tell me you were ever a fortunate man, but I consider you the unluckiest I know of. For always you are afraid to be yourself. Sometimes you forget, and are just you--and then, ohé! you remember, and are only a sulky, fat old gentleman who is not you at all, somehow; so that at times I detest you, and at times I cannot thoroughly detest you. So that I played out the comedy, Jean Bulmer. I meant in the end to tell Louis who you were, of course, and not let them hang you; but I never quite trusted you; and I never knew whether I detested you or no, at bottom, until last night."

"Last night you left the safe Inner Tower to come to me--to save me at all hazards, or else to die with me--And for what reason, did you do this?"

"You are bullying me!" she wailed.

"And for what reason, did you do this?" he repeated, without any change of intonation.

"Can you not guess?" she asked. "Oh, because I am a fool!" she stated, very happily, for his arms were about her.

"Eh, in that event--" said the Duke of Ormskirk. "Look!" said he, with a deeper thrill of speech, "it is the dawn."

They turned hand in hand; and out of the east the sun came statelily, and a new day was upon them.

VIII

HEART OF GOLD

_As Played at Paris, in the May of 1750_

"_Cette amoureuse ardeur qui dans les coeurs s'excite N'est point, comme l'on sçait, un effet du merite; Le caprice y prend part, et, quand quelqu'un nous plaist, Souvent nous avons peine à dire pourquoy c'est. Mais on vois que l'amour se gouverne autrement._"

DRAMATIS PERSONÆ

DUC DE PUYSANGE, somewhat given to women, and now and then to good-fellowship, but a man of excellent disposition.

MARQUIS DE SOYECOURT, his cousin, and loves de Puysange's wife.

DUKE OF ORMSKIRK.

DUCHESSE DE PUYSANGE, a precise, but amiable and patient, woman.

ANTOINE, LACKEYS to de Puysange, Etc.

SCENE

Paris, mostly within and about the Hôtel de Puysange.

HEART OF GOLD

PROEM:--_Necessitated by a Change of Scene_

You are not to imagine that John Bulmer debated an exposure of de Soyecourt. "Live and let live" was the Englishman's axiom; the exuberant Cazaio was dead, his men were either slain or dispersed, and the whole tangle of errors--with judicious reservations--had now been unravelled to Gaston's satisfaction. And Claire de Puysange was now Duchess of Ormskirk. Why, then, meddle with Destiny, who appeared, after all, to possess a certain sense of equity?

So Ormskirk smiled as he presently went about Paris, on his own business, and when he and Louis de Soyecourt encountered each other their friendliness was monstrous in its geniality.

They were now one and all in Paris, where Ormskirk's marriage had been again, and more publicly, solemnized. De Puysange swore that his sister was on this occasion the loveliest person affordable by the resources of the universe, but de Soyecourt backed another candidate; so that over their wine the two gentlemen presently fell into a dispute.

"Nay, but I protest to you she is the most beautiful woman in all Paris!" cried the Marquis de Soyecourt, and kissed his finger-tips gallantly.

"My dear Louis," the Duc de Puysange retorted, "her eyes are noticeable, perhaps; and I grant you," he added, slowly, "that her husband is not often troubled by--that which they notice."

"--And the cleverest!"

"I have admitted she knows when to be silent. What more would you demand of any woman?"

"And yet--" The little Marquis waved a reproachful forefinger.

"Why, but," said the Duke, with utter comprehension, "it is not for nothing that our house traces from the great Jurgen--"

He was in a genial midnight mood, and, on other subjects, inclined to be garrulous; for the world, viewed through a slight haze, of vinous origin, seemed a pleasant place, and inspired a kindly desire to say diverting things about the world's contents. He knew the Marquis to be patient, and even stolid, under a fusillade of epigram and paradox; in short, de Puysange knew the hour and the antagonist for midnight talk to be at hand. And a saturnalia of phrases whirled in his brain, demanding utterance.

He waved them aside. Certain inbred ideas are strangely tenacious of existence, and it happened to be his wife they were discussing. It would not be good form, de Puysange felt, for him to evince great interest in this topic....

I

"And yet," de Puysange queried, as he climbed democratically into a public hackney coach, "why not? For my part, I see no good and sufficient reason for discriminating against the only woman one has sworn to love and cherish and honor. It is true that several hundred people witnessed the promise, with a perfect understanding of the jest, and that the keeping of this oath involves a certain breach of faith with society. Eh bien! let us, then, deceive the world--and the flesh--and the devil! Let us snap our fingers at this unholy trinity, and assert the right, when the whim takes us, to make unstinted love to our own wives!"

He settled back in the _fiacre_ to deliberate. "It is bourgeois? Bah! the word is the first refuge of the unskilful poseur! It is bourgeois to be born, to breathe, to sleep, or eat; in which of the functions that consume the greater part of my life do I differ from my grocer? Bourgeois! why, rightly considered, to be a human being at all is quite inordinately bourgeois! And it is very notably grocer-like to maintain a grave face and two establishments, to chuckle privily over the fragments of the seventh commandment, to repent, upon detection, and afterward--ces bêtes-là!--to drink poison. Ma foi, I infinitely prefer the domestic coffee!"

The Duc de Puysange laughed, and made as though to wave aside the crudities of life. "All vice is bourgeois, and fornication in particular tends to become sordid, outworn, vieux jeu! In youth, I grant you, it is the unexpurgated that always happens. But at my age--misericorde!--the men yawn, and les demoiselles--bah! les demoiselles have the souls of accountants! They buy and sell, as my grocer does. The satiation of carnal desires is no longer a matter of splendid crimes and sorrows and kingdoms lost; it is a matter of business."

The harsh and swarthy face relaxed. With, a little sigh the Duc de Puysange had closed his fevered eyes. About them were a multitude of tiny lines, and of this fact he was obscurely conscious, in a wearied fashion, when he again looked out on the wellnigh deserted streets, now troubled by a hint of dawn. His eyes were old; they had seen much. Two workmen shambled by, chatting on their way to the day's work; in the attic yonder a drunken fellow sang, "Ah, bouteille ma mie," he bellowed, "pourquoi vous vuidez-vous?"

De Puysange laughed. "I suppose I have no conscience, but at least, I can lay claim to a certain fastidiousness. I am very wicked,"--he smiled, without mirth or bitterness,--"I have sinned notably as the world accounts it; indeed, I think, my repute is as abominable as that of any man living. And I am tired,--alas, I am damnably tired! I have found the seven deadly sins deadly, beyond, doubt, but only deadly dull and deadly commonplace. I have perseveringly frisked in the high places of iniquity, I have junketed with all evil gods, and the utmost they could pretend to offer any of their servitors was a spasm. I renounce them, as feeble-minded deities, I snap my fingers, very much as did my progenitor, the great Jurgen, at all their over-rated mysteries."

His glance caught and clung for a moment to the paling splendor of the moon that hung low in the vacant, dove-colored heavens. A faint pang, half-envy, half-regret, vexed the Duke with a dull twinge. "I wish too that by living continently I could have done, once for all, with this faded pose and this idle making of phrases! Eheu! there is a certain proverb concerning pitch so cynical that I suspect it of being truthful. However,--we shall see."

De Puysange smiled. "The most beautiful woman in all Paris? Ah, yes, she is quite that, is this grave silent female whose eyes are more fathomless and cold than oceans! And how cordially she despises me! Ma foi, I think that if her blood--which is, beyond doubt, of a pale-pink color,--be ever stirred, at all, it is with loathing of her husband. Well, life holds many surprises for madame, now that I become quite as virtuous as she is. We will arrange a very pleasant comedy of belated courtship; for are we not bidden to love one another? So be it,--I am henceforth the model père de famille."

Now the _fiacre_ clattered before the Hôtel de Puysange.

The door was opened by a dull-eyed lackey, whom de Puysange greeted with a smile, "Bon jour, Antoine!" cried the Duke; "I trust that your wife and doubtless very charming children have good health?"

"Beyond question, monseigneur," the man answered, stolidly.

"That is excellent hearing," de Puysange said, "and it rejoices me to be reassured of their welfare. For the happiness of others, Antoine, is very dear to the heart of a father--and of a husband." The Duke chuckled seraphically as he passed down the hall. The man stared after him, and shrugged.

"Rather worse than usual," Antoine considered.

II

Next morning the Duchesse de Puysange received an immoderate armful of roses, with a fair copy of some execrable verses. De Puysange spent the afternoon, selecting bonbons and wholesome books,--"for his fiancée," he gravely informed the shopman.

At the Opéra he never left her box; afterward, at the Comtesse de Hauteville's, he created a furor by sitting out three dances in the conservatory with his wife. Mademoiselle Tiercelin had already received his regrets that he was spending that night at home.

III

The month wore on.

"It is the true honeymoon," said the Duke.

In that event he might easily have found a quieter place than Paris wherein to spend it. Police agents had of late been promised a premium for any sturdy beggar, whether male or female, they could secure to populate the new plantation of Louisiana; and as the premium was large, genteel burgesses, and in particular the children of genteel burgesses, were presently disappearing in a fashion their families found annoying. Now, from nowhere, arose and spread the curious rumor that King Louis, somewhat the worse for his diversions in the Parc-aux-Cerfs, daily restored his vigor by bathing in the blood of young children; and parents of the absentees began to manifest a double dissatisfaction, for the deduction was obvious.

There were riots. In one of them Madame de Pompadour barely escaped with her life, [Footnote: This was on the afternoon of the famous ball given by the Pompadour in honor of the new Duchess of Ormskirk.] and the King himself on his way to Compiègne, was turned back at the Porte St. Antoine, and forced to make a détour rather than enter his own capital. After this affair de Puysange went straight to his brother-in-law.