But John Bulmer was chuckling. "My faith!" he said, and softly chafed his hands together, "how sincerely you will be horrified when your impetuous error is discovered--just too late! You were merely endeavoring to serve your beloved Gaston and the Duke of Ormskirk when you hanged the rascal who had impudently stolen the woman intended to cement their friendship!

The Duke fell a victim to his own folly, and you acted precipitately, perhaps, but out of pure zeal. You will probably weep. Meanwhile your lettre-de-cachet is on the road, and presently Gaston, too, is trapped and murdered. You weep yet more tears--oh, vociferous tears!---and the d.u.c.h.ess succ.u.mbs to you because you were so devotedly attached to her former husband. And England will sit snug while France reconquers Europe.

Monsieur, I make you my compliments on one of the tidiest plots ever brooded over."

"It rejoices me," the Marquis returned, "that a conspirator of many years'

standing should commend my maiden effort." He rose. "And now, Monsieur d'Ormskirk," he continued, with extended hand, "matters being thus amicably adjusted, shall we say adieu?"

John Bulmer considered. "Well,--no!" said he, at last; "I commend your cleverness, Monsieur de Soyecourt, but as concerns your hand I must confess to a distaste."

The Marquis smiled. "Because at the bottom of your heart you despise me,"

he said. "Ah, believe me, monsieur, your contempt for de Soyecourt is less great than mine. And yet I have a weakness for him,--a weakness which induces me to indulge all his desires."

He bowed with ceremony and left the garden.

XI

John Bulmer sat down to consider more at leisure these revelations. He foreread like a placard Jeanne d'etoiles' magnificent scheme: it would convulse all Europe. England would remain supine, because Henry Pelham could hardly hold the ministry together, even now; Newcastle was a fool; and Ormskirk would be dead. He would barter his soul for one hour of liberty, he thought. A riot, now,--ay, a riot in Paris, a blow from within, would temporarily stupefy French enterprise and gain England time for preparation. And a riot could be arranged so easily! Meanwhile he was a prisoner, Pelham's hands were tied, and Newcastle was a fool, and the Pompadour was disastrously remote from being a fool.

"It is possible to announce that I am the Duke of Ormskirk--and to what end? Faith, I had as well proclaim myself the Pope of Rome or the Cazique of Mexico: the jackanapes will effect to regard my confession as the device of a desperate man and will hang me just the same; and his infernal comedy will go on without a hitch. Nay, I am fairly trapped, and Monsieur de Soyecourt holds the winning hand--Now that I think of it he even has, in Mr. Bulmer's letter of introduction, my formally signed statement that I am not Ormskirk. It was tactful of the small rascal not to allude to that crowning piece of stupidity: I appreciate his forbearance. But even so, to be outwitted--and hanged---by a smirking Hop-o'-my-thumb!

"Oh, this is very annoying!" said John Bulmer, in his impotence.

He sat down once more, sulkily, like an overfed cat, and began to read with desperate attention: "'Here may men understand that be of worship, that he was never formed that at every time might stand, but sometimes he was put to the worse by evil fortune. And at sometimes the worse knight putteth the better knight into rebuke.' Behold a n.i.g.g.ardly salve rather than a panacea." He turned several pages. "'And then said Sir Tristram to Sir Lamorake, "I require you if ye happen to meet with Sir Palomides--"'"

Startled, John Bulmer glanced about the garden.

It turned on a sudden into the primal garden of Paradise. "I came," she loftily explained, "because I considered it my duty to apologize in person for leading you into great danger. Our scouts tell us that already Cazaio is marshalling his men upon the Taunenfels."

"And yet," John Bulmer said, as he arose, and put away his book, "Bellegarde is a strong place. And our good Marquis, whatever else he may be, is neither a fool nor a coward."

Claire shrugged. "Cazaio has ten men to our one. Yet perhaps we can hold out till Gaston comes with his dragoons. And then--well, I have some influence with Gaston. He will not deny me,--ah, surely he will not deny me if I go down on my knees to him and wear my very prettiest gown. Nay, at bottom Gaston is kind, my friend, and he will spare you."

"To be your husband?" said John Bulmer.

Twice she faltered "No." And then she cried, with a sudden flare of irritation: "I do not love you! I cannot help that. Oh, you--you unutterable bully!"

Gravely he shook his head at her.

"But indeed you are a bully. You are trying to bully me into caring for you, and you know it. What else moved you to return to Bellegarde, and to sit here, a doomed man, tranquilly reading? Yes, but you were,--I happened to see you, through the key-hole in the gate. And why else should you be doing that unless you were trying to bully me into admiring you?"

"Because I adore you," said John Bulmer, taking affairs in order; "and because in this n.o.ble and joyous history of the great conqueror and excellent monarch, King Arthur, I find much diverting matter; and because, to be quite frank, Claire, I consider an existence without you neither alluring nor possible."

She had noticeably pinkened. "Oh, monsieur," the girl cried, "you are laughing because you are afraid that I will laugh at what you are saying to me. Believe me, I have no desire to laugh. It frightens me, rather. I had thought that nowadays no man could behave with a foolishness so divine. I had thought all such extravagancy perished with the Launcelot and Palomides of your book. And I had thought--that in any event, you had no earthly right to call me Claire."

"Superficially, the reproach is just," he a.s.sented, "but what was the name your Palomides cried in battle, pray? Was it not _Ysoude!_ when his searching sword had at last found the joints of his adversary's armor, or when the foe's helmet spouted blood? _Ysoude!_ when the line of adverse spears wavered and broke, and the Saracen was victor? Was it not _Ysoude!_ he murmured riding over alien hill and valley in pursuit of the Questing Beast?--'the glatisant beast'? a.s.suredly, he cried _Ysoude!_ and meantime La Beale Ysoude sits snug in Cornwall with Tristram, who dons his armor once in a while to roll Palomides in the sand _coram populo_. Still the name was sweet, and I protest the Saracen had a perfect right to mention it whenever he felt so inclined."

"You jest at everything," she lamented--"which is one of the many traits that I dislike in you."

"Knowing your heart to be very tender," he submitted, "I am endeavoring to present as jovial and callous an appearance as may be possible--to you, whom I love as Palomides loved Ysoude. Otherwise, you might be cruelly upset by your compa.s.sion and sympathy. Yet stay; is there not another similitude? a.s.suredly, for you love me much as Ysoude loved Palomides. What the deuce is all this lamentation to you? You do not value it the beard of an onion,--while of course grieving that your friendship should have been so utterly misconstrued, and wrongly interpreted,--and--trusting that nothing you have said or done has misled me--Oh, but I know you women!"

"Indeed, I sometimes wonder," she reflected, "what sort of women you have been friends with hitherto? They must have been very patient of nonsense."

"Ah, do you think so?--At all events, you interrupt my peroration. For we have fought, you and I, a--battle which is over, so far as I am concerned.

And the other side has won. Well! Pompey was reckoned a very pretty fellow in his day, but he took to his heels at Pharsalia, for all that; and Hannibal, I have heard, did not have matters entirely his own way at Zama.

Good men have been beaten before this. So, without stopping to cry over spilt milk,--heyho!" he interpolated, with a grimace, "it was uncommonly sweet milk, though,--let's back to our tents and reckon up our wounds."

"I am decidedly of the opinion," she said, "that for all your talk you will find your heart unscratched." Irony bewildered Claire, though she invariably recognized it, and gave it a polite smile.

John Bulmer said: "Faith, I do not intend to flatter your vanity by going into a decline on the spot. For in perfect frankness, I find no mortal wounds anywhere. No, we have it on the best authority that, while many men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them, it was never for love. I am inclined to agree with Rosalind: an aneurism may be fatal, but a broken heart kills n.o.body. Lovers have died in divers manners since the antique world was made, but not the most luckless of them was slain by love. Even Palomides, as my book informs me, went abroad with Launcelot and probably died an old man here in France,--peaceably, in his bed, with the family physician in attendance, and every other circ.u.mstance becoming to a genteel demise. And I dare a.s.sert that long before this he had learned to chuckle over his youthful follies, and had protested to his wife that La Beale Ysoude squinted, or was freckled, or the like; and had insisted, laughingly, that the best of us must sow our wild oats. And at the last it was his wife who mixed his gruel and smoothed his pillow and sat up with him at night; so that if he died thinking of Madame Palomides rather than of La Beale Ysoude, who shall blame him? Not I, for one," said John Bulmer, stoutly; "If it was not heroic, it was at least respectable, and, above all, natural; and I expect some day to gasp out a similar valedictory. No, not to-morrow at noon, I think: I shall probably get out of this, somehow.

And when, in any event, I set about the process of dying, I may be thinking of you, O fair lost lady! and again I may not be thinking of you. Who can say? A fly, for instance, may have lighted upon my nose and his tickling may have distracted my ultimate thoughts. Meanwhile, I love you consumedly, and you do not care a snap of your fingers for me."

"I--I am sorry," she said, inadequately.

"You are the more gracious." And his face sank down into his hands, and Claire was forgotten, for he was remembering Alison Pleydell and that ancient bankruptcy of his heart in youth, and this preposterous old John Bulmer (he reflected) was simply revelling in pity for himself.

A hand, feather-soft, fell upon, his shoulder, "And who was your Ysoude, Jean Bulmer?"

"A woman who died twenty years ago,--a woman dead before you were born, my dear."

Claire gave a little stifled moan, "Oh--oh, I loathe her!" she cried.

But when he raised his head Claire was gone.

XII

He sat long in the twilight, now; rising insensibly about him. The garden had become a grave, yet not unfriendly, place; the white straining Nereids were taking on a tinge of violet, the verdure was of a deeper hue, that was all; and the fountain plashed unhurriedly, as though measuring a reasonable interval (he whimsically imagined) between the asking of a riddle and its solution given gratis by the asker.

He loved the woman; granted: but did not love rise the higher above a corner-stone of delusion? And this he could never afford. He considered Claire to be not extravagantly clever, he could have improved upon her ears (to cite one instance), which were rather clumsily modelled; her finger-tips were a thought too thick, a shade too practical, and in fine she was no more the most beautiful woman in the world than she was the tallest: and yet he loved her as certainly he had loved none of his recent mistresses. Even so, here was no infatuation, no roseate and kindly haze surrounding a G.o.ddess, such as that which had by ordinary accompanied Alison Pleydell....

"I am grown older, perhaps. Perhaps it is merely that I am fashioned of baser stuff than---say, Achille Cazaio or de Soyecourt. Or perhaps it is that this overmastering, all-engulfing love is a mere figment of the poet, an age-long superst.i.tion as zealously preserved as that of the inscrutability of women, by men who don't believe a syllable of the nonsense they are transmitting. Ysoude is dead; and I love my young French wife as thoroughly as Palomides did, with as great a pa.s.sion as was possible to either of us oldsters. Well! all life is a compromise; I compromise with tradition by loving her unselfishly, by loving her with the very best that remains in John Bulmer.

"And yet, I wish--

"True, I may be hanged at noon to-morrow, which would somewhat disconcert my plan. I shall not bother about that. Always there remains the chance that, somehow, Gaston may arrive in time: otherwise--why, otherwise I shall be hanged, and as to what will happen afterward I decline to enter into any discussion even with myself. I have my belief, but it is bolstered by no iota of knowledge. Faith, let us live this life as a gentleman should, and keep our hands and our consciences as clean as may be possible, and for the outcome trust to G.o.d's common-sense. There are people who must divert Him vastly by their frantic efforts to keep out of h.e.l.l. For my own part, I would not think of wearing a pelisse in the Desert of Sahara merely because I happened to be sailing for Greenland during the ensuing week. I shall trust to His common-sense.

"And yet, I wish--

"I wish Reinault would hurry with the supper-trays. I am growing very hungry."

XIII

That night he was roused by a tapping at his door. "Jean Bulmer, Jean Bulmer! I have bribed Reinault. I have the keys. Come, and I will set you free."

"Free to do what?" said John Bulmer.

"To escape--to flee to your foggy England," said the voice without,--"and to your hideous Englishwomen."