Doctor Franklin journeys down to Lyons, on some secret errand of his
own; he will be gone a week. Commodore Paul Jones, at home with the good
Marsan, drunk with love, forgets the blue of the ocean in the blue of
Aimee’s eyes. One sun-filled afternoon he is disturbed by Lieutenant
Dale, who stalks in with a scowl on his usually steady face.
“What is it, Dick?” asks Commodore Paul Jones, alive in a moment.
“Something too deep for me, Commodore, or I shouldn’t be here with the
tangle. Commissioner Lee, with Landais, has taken the _Alliance_.”
“What?”
“It’s as I say. Lee declares that Doctor Franklin had no authority to
depose Landais. He, Lee, has restored him to command, and the pair have
possession of the ship.”
“What did you do?”
“I did nothing. I’m a sailor, and pretend to no knowledge of the limits
of Mr. Lee’s authority. Speaking for myself, I refused to serve with
Landais; and Lieutenants Stack, McCarty and Lunt, and Midshipman
Lindthwait did the same. We came ashore, and Bo’sen Jack Robinson at
the head of sixty of the crew came with us.” Commodore Paul Jones,
while Lieutenant Dale talks, is thinking. What is to be done! Manifestly
nothing. Doctor Franklin is out of reach. Without the Doctor’s authority
no one can meddle with Arthur Lee, who still has his powers as a
commissioner. Besides, there’s the _Serapis_; it is only a question
of weeks when he, Commodore Paul Jones, will be given its command.
Meanwhile, Lieutenant Dale and the others can disport themselves ashore,
as he does. Let Lee and Landais keep the _Alliance_, since they already
have it.
“You’ve done right, Dick,” he says. “Stay ashore then, and keep the
lads together; we’ll wait for the _Serapis_. Also, King Louis has given
Doctor Franklin the _Ariel_, a ship-sloop the size of the old _Ranger_.
When I take the _Serapis_ to sea, Dick, you shall sail Captain of the
_Ariel_.”
Lieutenant Dale goes his way, and Commodore Paul Jones returns to Aimee,
pleased in secret to think he may continue unhindered to sun himself
in her smiles. It grinds a bit to think of the “dog Landais,” and the
“traitor Arthur Lee,” in control of the _Alliance_. Still, all will come
right; for is he not to have the _Serapis_? And while he waits, there
is Aimee; and love is even sweeter than war. So he goes back to his
goddess, with her deep eyes and red-gold hair, and puts such caitiff
creatures as Lee and Landais outside his thoughts. It is for Congress to
deal with them.
Commodore Paul Jones is not permitted to forget Lee and Landais. Within
the hour, he is again called from the side of Aimee by his friend Genet,
a noble upperling in the French foreign office.
“I come to tell you,” says Genet, “that Captain Landais and Monsieur Lee
have got the _Alliance_.”
“I know!”
“They are to sail in three days.”
“Lieutenant Dale has told me.”
“He did not tell you that we have issued orders to Thevenard, who
commands the forts at the barrier, to sink the _Alliance_, should she
try to put to sea.”
“Sink the _Alliance_!” Commodore Paul Jones is thunderstruck. “My dear
Genet, you jest.”
“No jest, my friend. The orders have been given. Should the _Alliance_
attempt to pass the harriers, Thevenard will fire on it with all his
hundreds of big guns, and snuff it out like a candle. It is by request
of your Doctor Franklin.”
“Do you tell me that Doctor Franklin asks you to sink the _Alliance_?”
“He has asked us--for he had some inkling of the designs of Lee and
Landais--to prevent them sailing away with the ship. We know of but one
way to do that. We must sink it, since we have no ship here to arrest
them. So we gave the orders to Thevenard. Those orders, however, we did
not impart to Doctor Franklin; and, in good truth, I tell them to you
now, not as a French official, but as a friend.”
“This must be stopped!” cries Commodore Paul Jones, his habits of
decision and iron promptitude reassumed in a moment. “What! Sink two
hundred brave, good men, to punish a pair of traitors? Never!”
Genet, who makes a cult of red tape, shrugs his shoulders and spreads
his hands.
“It is too late,” he says. “There is Doctor Franklin’s request. I cannot
countermand the orders to Thevenard until he withdraws his request.”
“I shall see Thevenard!”
Two hundred and eighty miles in fifty-four hours! An unprecedented
thing! And yet Commodore Paul Jones does it, and rides into l’Orient
in time to prevail on General Thevenard, who is his friend and his
worshipper, to let the _Alliance_ pass free. The forts would else
have sunk the ship with their tons upon tons of metal. He saves the
_Alliance_ by a narrow margin of hours, and Lee and Landais shake out
their sails for America.
“They go to disgrace and grief,” thinks Commodore Paul Jones, consoling
himself for their escape. Then he considers how he has saved the lives
of more than two hundred honest sailors, who have fought well for flag
and country, and is consoled in earnest.
Commodore Paul Jones is surrounded by surprises. He is met on the road,
while returning to his Aimee, by a message from the Duchess de Chartres.
“Come instantly to me!” it says.
There is a look of mingled sorrow and resentment, with over all a hue
of humor, on the Duchess’ bright face when she welcomes Commodore Paul
Jones.
“The Marchioness de Marsan and I have arranged it,” she says, and her
glance is wicked and amused.
“Arranged what?”
“Your marriage, my friend! I congratulate you! You and your red-haired,
blue-eyed one are to wed.”
“With all my heart, then!” says he, turning wicked, too. Manlike, it
offends his vanity that one who has pretended to love him so deeply
should be now so ready to give him to another. “I could wish no fairer
fate.”
“But the wedding must be secret.”
“Secret! Believe me, I shall tell all France.”
“And ruin the blue-eyed one! Hear me, my Commodore--once my beloved,
ever to be my friend! I have had a world of trouble in your affairs.
I arranged with the Marsan; but only by agreeing that the marriage be
buried in secrecy. You know much of the sea; little of the shore when
all’s said. Should the king hear of Aimee as your wife, he would drive
her from court.”
“May I ask why!” and his cheek begins to burn angrily.
“You forget that Aimee is a Bourbon,” returns the Duchess, with a
fashion of malicious satisfaction. He has deserted her for his Aimee; it
is her revenge to irritate his pride. “You are a valorous man, and the
king makes much of you. Besides, you beat the English, whom he fears
and hates. And yet he does not forget that you are a peasant--as I did.
Marry Aimee, my friend--. marry a Bourbon, even a Bourbon by the left
hand, and King Louis will bolt the doors of France in both your faces.
Indeed, the Bastile might be the end of it for your Aimee.”
“I think your royal highness sees unnecessary ghosts,” he replies, with
a sneer. Just the same, that linking of the Bastile and Aimee alarms
him. “Without pausing to question the king’s powers touching Bastiles
and French doors, I may tell you he has already heard that I love Aimee.
Doctor Franklin, himself, told me.”
“Love Aimee! Yes; love her as much and to what limit you will! The king
will never resent that. But do not let the whisper that you have married
Aimee reach the kingly ear. Can you not understand! Here, I will put it
in the abstract. A Princess may have a _liaison_ with a peasant, and in
the shadow of that dishonor she will remain forever a Princess. Should
the Princess, in some gust of virtue, be swept into a marriage with the
peasant, she becomes instantly a peasant. It is one of those strange
cases, my friend, where the word ‘wife’ is a stain and the word
‘mistress’ no stain at all.”
It is midnight; two candles burn dimly on the altar of “Our Lady of
Loretto.” The great chapel is dark and vacant; the feeble light does
not reach the vaulted roof, and the groined arches disappear upward in a
thick blackness.
At the altar stands a priest. Near the rail is gathered a group of four,
the Duchess de Chartres, the good Marchioness de Marsan, Aimee--heart
a-flutter, her pink cheeks hidden in a veil--and Commodore Paul Jones.
The priest draws the Duchess aside.
“Your royal highness,” he whispers, pleadingly, “I am afraid.”
“Afraid of whom, pray?”
“The king, your royal highness.”
The Duchess makes an angry motion with her hand, while her little
boot smites the stone floor and sends an echo through the room’s vast
emptiness.
“Father Joseph, observe! You are my almoner. Through your hands I give
fifty thousand louis to the poor of Paris, and keep you in fatness
besides. It is I, not the king, whom you should fear.”
And so, before the flickering altar candles, Commodore Paul Jones weds
Aimee Adele de Telison. In the book which the Duchess and the good
Marsan sign as witnesses, Father Joseph, with a pen that shakes a
little, records the nuptials of “Monsieur le Joignes and Mademoiselle
Adele de Bonneval.” For “de Bonneval” was the dead King’s name for
Aimee’s mother in the days of Monsieur le Bel and the Parc-aux-Cerfs.