John Bulmer sat down to consider more at leisure these revelations. He
foreread like a placard Jeanne d'Étoiles' 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 niggardly 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 noble 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 assented, "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'? Assuredly, 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 compassion and sympathy. Yet stay; is there not another
similitude? Assuredly, 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 nobody. 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 circumstance becoming to
a genteel demise. And I dare assert 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.