Gallantry. Dizain des Fetes Galantes

by James Branch Cabell

  "—after he has astounded me by his seventh avowal. And I shall behave in precisely the same manner the eighth time he recurs to the repugnant subject."

  "But the ninth time?" said Mr. Erwyn.

  "He has remarkably expressive eyes," Miss Allonby stated, "and really, Mr. Erwyn, it is the most lovable creature when it raves about my flint-heartedness and cutting its poor throat and murdering every man I ever nodded to!"

  "Ah, youth, youth!" sighed Mr. Erwyn. "Dear child, I pray you, do not trifle with the happiness that is within your grasp! Si jeunesse savait—the proverb is somewhat musty. But we who have attained the St. Martin's summer of our lives and have grown capable of but a calm and tempered affection at the utmost—we cannot but look wistfully upon the raptures and ignorance of youth, and we would warn you, were it possible, of the many dangers whereby you are encompassed. For Love is a deity that must not be trifled with; his voice may chaunt the requiem of all which is bravest in our mingled natures, or sound a stave of such nobility as heartens us through life. He is kindly, but implacable; beneficent, a bestower of all gifts upon the faithful, a bestower of very terrible gifts upon those that flout him; and I who speak to you have seen my own contentment blighted, by just such flippant jesting with Love's omnipotence, before the edge of my first razor had been dulled. 'Tis true, I have lived since in indifferent comfort; yet it is but a dreary banquet where there is no platter laid for Love, and within the chambers of my heart—dust-gathering now, my dear!—he has gone unfed these fifteen years or more."

  "Ah, goodness!" sighed Miss Allonby, touched by the ardor of his speech. "And so, you have loved Mother all of fifteen years?"

  "Nay, split me—!" said Mr. Erwyn.

  "Your servant, sir," said the voice of Lady Allonby; "I trust you young people have adjusted matters to your satisfaction?"

  III

  "Dear madam," cried Miss Allonby, "I am overjoyed!" then kissed her step-mother vigorously and left the room, casting in passage an arch glance at Mr. Erwyn.

  "O vulgarity!" said Lady Allonby, recovering her somewhat rumpled dignity, "the sweet child is yet unpolished. But, I suppose, we may regard the matter as settled?"

  "Yes," said Mr. Erwyn, "I think, dear lady, we may with safety regard the matter as settled."

  "Dorothy is of an excitable nature," she observed, and seated herself upon the divan; "and you, dear Mr. Erwyn, who know women so thoroughly, will overlook the agitation of an artless girl placed in quite unaccustomed circumstances. Nay, I myself was affected by my first declaration,"'

  "Doubtless," said Mr. Erwyn, and sank beside her. "Lord Stephen was very moving."

  "I can assure you," said she, smiling, "that he was not the first."

  "I' gad," said he, "I remember perfectly, in the old days, when you were betrothed to that black-visaged young parson—"

  "Well, I do not remember anything of the sort," Lady Allonby stated; and she flushed.

  "You wore a blue gown," he said.

  "Indeed?" said she.

  "And—"

  "La, if I did," said Lady Allonby, "I have quite forgotten it, and it is now your manifest duty to do likewise."

  "Never in all these years," said Mr. Erwyn, sighing, "have I been able to forget it."

  "I was but a girl, and 'twas natural that at first I should be mistaken in my fancies," Lady Allonby told him, precisely as she had told Simon Orts: "and at all events, there is nothing less well-bred than a good memory. I would decline to remain in the same room with one were it not that Dorothy has deserted you in this strange fashion. Whither, pray, has she gone?"

  Mr. Erwyn smiled. "Her tender heart," said Mr. Erwyn, "is affected by the pathetic and moving spectacle of the poor hungry swans, pining for their native land and made a raree-show for visitors in the Pantiles; and she has gone to stay them with biscuits and to comfort them with cakes."

  "Really!" said Lady Allonby.

  "And," Mr. Erwyn continued, "to defend her from the possible ferocity of the gold-fish, Captain Audaine had obligingly afforded service as an escort."

  "Oh," said Lady Allonby; then added, "in the circumstances she might permissibly have broken the engagement."

  "But there is no engagement," said Mr. Erwyn—"as yet."

  "Indeed?" said she.

  "Harkee," said he; "should he make a declaration this afternoon she will refuse him."

  "Why, but of course!" Lady Allonby marveled.

  "And the eighth time," said he.

  "Undoubtedly," said she; "but at whatever are you hinting?"

  "Yet the ninth time—"

  "Well, what is it, you grinning monster?"

  Mr. Erwyn allowed himself a noiseless chuckle. "After the ninth time," Mr. Erwyn declared, "there will be an engagement."

  "Mr. Erwyn!" cried Lady Allonby, with widened eyes, "I had understood that Dorothy looked favorably upon your suit."

  "Anastasia!" cried he; and then his finger-tips lightly caressed his brow.

  "'Tis the first I had heard of it," said Mr. Erwyn.

  "Surely—" she began.

  "Nay, but far more surely," said he, "in consideration of the fact that, not a half-hour since, you deigned to promise me your hand in marriage—"

  "O la now!" cried Lady Allonby; and, recovering herself, smiled courteously. "'Tis the first I had heard of it," said she.

  They stared at each other in wonderment. Then Lady Allonby burst into laughter.

  "D'ye mean—?" said she.

  "Indeed," said Mr. Erwyn, "so unintentional was I of aspiring to Miss Allonby's affections that all my soul was set upon possessing the heart and person of a lady, in my humble opinion, far more desirable."

  "I had not dreamed—" she commenced.

  "Behold," said Mr. Erwyn, bitterly, "how rightly is my presumption punished. For I, with a fop's audacity, had thought my love for you of sufficient moment to have been long since observed; and, strong in my conceit, had scorned a pleasing declaration made up of faint phrases and whining ballad-endings. I spoke as my heart prompted me; but the heart has proven a poor counsellor, dear lady, and now am I rewarded. For you had not even known of my passion, and that which my presumption had taken for a reciprocal tenderness proves in the ultimate but a kindly aspiration to further my union with another."

  "D'ye love me, toad?" said Lady Allonby, and very softly.

  "Indeed," said Mr. Erwyn, "I have loved you all my life, first with a boyish inclination that I scarce knew was love, and, after your marriage with an honorable man had severed us, as I thought, irrevocably, with such lore as an ingenuous person may bear a woman whom both circumstances and the respect in which he holds her have placed beyond his reach,—a love that might not be spoken, but of which I had considered you could never be ignorant."

  "Mr. Erwyn," said she, "at least I have not been ignorant—"

  "They had each one of them some feature that reminded me of you. That was the truth of it, a truth so patent that we will not discuss it. Instead, dear madam, do you for the moment grant a losing gamester the right to rail at adverse fate! for I shall trouble you no more. Since your widowhood I have pursued you with attentions which, I now perceive, must at many times have proven distasteful. But my adoration had blinded me; and I shall trouble you no more. I have been too serious, I did not know that our affair was but a comedy of the eternal duel between man and woman; nor am I sorry, dear opponent, that you have conquered. For how valorously you fought! Eh, let it be! for you have triumphed in this duel, O puissant lady, and I yield the victor—a devoted and, it may be, a rather heavy heart; and I shall trouble you no more."

  "Ah, sir," said Lady Allonby, "you are aware that once—"

  "Indeed," said Mr. Erwyn, "'twas the sand on which I builded. But I am wiser now, and I perceive that the feeling you entertain toward me is but the pallid shadow of a youthful inclination. I shall not presume upon it. Oh, I am somewhat proud, dear Anastasia; I have freely given you my heart, such as it is; and were you minded to accept it, even at
the eleventh hour, through friendship or through pity only, I would refuse. For my love of you has been the one pure and quite unselfish, emotion of my life, and I may not barter it for an affection of lesser magnitude either in kind or in degree. And so, farewell!"

  "Yet hold, dear sir—" said Lady Allonby. "Lord, but will you never let me have the woman's privilege of talking!"

  "Nay, but I am, as ever, at your service," said Mr. Erwyn, and he paused in transit for the door.

  "—since, as this betokens—"

  "'Tis a tasteful handkerchief," said Mr. Erwyn—"but somewhat moist!"

  "And—my eyes?"

  "Red," said Mr. Erwyn.

  "I have been weeping, toad, with my head on the pin-cushion, and the maid trying to tipsify me with brandy."

  "Why?" said Mr. Erwyn.

  "I thought you were to marry Dorothy."

  Mr. Erwyn resumed his seat. "You objected?" he said.

  "I think, old monster," Lady Allonby replied, "that I would entertain the same objection to seeing any woman thus sacrificed—"

  "Well?" said Mr. Erwyn.

  "—except—"

  "Incomparable Anastasia!" said Mr. Erwyn.

  IV

  Afterward these two sat long in the twilight, talking very little, and with their eyes rarely meeting, although their hands met frequently at quite irrelevant intervals. Just the graze of a butterfly to make it certain that the other was there: but all the while they both regarded the tiny fire which had set each content of the room a-dancing in the companionable darkness. For each, I take it, preferred to think of the other as being still the naive young person each remembered; and the firelight made such thinking easier.

  "D'ye remember—?" was woven like a refrain through their placid duo….

  It was, one estimates, their highest hour. Frivolous and trivial persons you might have called them and have justified the accusation; but even to the fop and the coquette was granted an hour wherein all human happenings seemed to be ordered by supernal wisdom lovingly. Very soon they would forget this hour; meanwhile there was a wonderful sense of dreams come true.

  III

  THE CASUAL HONEYMOON

  As Played at Tunbridge Wells, April 1, 1750

  "But this is the most cruel thing, to marry one does not know how, nor why, nor wherefore.—Gad, I never liked anybody less in my life. Poor woman!—Gad, I'm sorry for her, too; for I have no reason to hate her neither; but I wish we could keep it secret! why, I don't believe any of this company would speak of it."

  DRAMATIS PERSONAE

  CAPTAIN AUDAINE, of a pompous and handsome person, and loves Miss Allonby.

  LORD HUMPHREY DEGGE, younger son to the Marquis of Venour, makes love to

  Miss Allonby.

  GERALD ALLONBY, brother to Miss Allonby, a true raw Squire.

  MR. ERWYN, betrothed to Lady Allonby.

  VANRINGHAM, an impudent tragedian of the Globe Company.

  QUARMBY, Vanringham's associate.

  Miss ALLONBY, an heiress, of a petulant humor, in love with Audaine.

  MARCHIONESS OF FALMOUTH, an impertinent affected dowager, and grandmother to Miss Allonby.

  LADY ALLONBY, step-mother to Miss Allonby and Gerald.

  POSTILIONS, SERVANTS, Etc.

  SCENE

  Tunbridge Wells, thence shifting to Chetwode Lodge, Mr. Babington-Herle's house, on Rusthall Common, within two miles of the town.

  THE CASUAL HONEYMOON

  PROEM:—Introductive of Captain Francis Audaine

  It appears convenient here to pursue Miss Allonby on her stroll about the Pantiles in company with Captain Audaine. The latter has been at pains to record the events of the afternoon and evening, so that I give you his own account of them, though I abridge in consideration of his leisured style. Pompous and verbose I grant the Captain, even in curtailment; but you are to remember these were the faults of his age, ingrained and defiant of deletion; and should you elect to peruse his memoirs [Footnote: There appears to have been no American edition since that, in 1836, printed in Philadelphia, "for Thomas Wardle, No. 15 Minor Street." In England the memoirs of Lord Garendon are to all appearance equally hard to come by, and seem to have been out of print since 1907.] you will find that I have considerately spared you a majority of the digressions to which the future Earl of Garendon was lamentably addicted.

  For the purpose of my tale you are to view him as Tunbridge did at this particular time: as a handsome and formal person, twenty-eight years old or thereabouts, of whom nobody knew anything quite definite—beyond the genealogic inference to be drawn from a smatch of the brogue—save that after a correspondence of gallantries, of some three weeks' duration, he was the manifest slave of Miss Dorothy Allonby, and had already fought three duels behind Ormerod House,—with Will Pratchet, Lord Humphrey Degge, and Sir Eugene Harrabie, respectively, each one of whom was a declared suitor for her hand.

  And with this prelude I begin on my transcription.

  I

  Miss Allonby (says Captain Audaine) was that afternoon in a mighty cruel humor. Though I had omitted no reasonable method to convince her of the immensity of my passion, 'twas without the twitch of an eyelash she endured the volley of my sighs and the fusillade of my respectful protestations; and candor compels me to admit that toward the end her silvery laughter disrupted the periods of a most elegant and sensible peroration. And when the affair was concluded, and for the seventh time I had implored her to make me the happiest of men, the rogue merely observed: "But I don't want to marry you. Why on earth should I?"

  "For the sake of peace," I replied, "and in self-protection, since as long as you stay obdurate I shall continue to importune, and by and by I shall pester you to death."

  "Indeed, I think it more than probable," she returned; "for you dog me like a bailiff. I am cordially a-weary, Captain Audaine, of your incessant persecutions; and, after all, marrying you is perhaps the civilest way to be rid of both them and you."

  But by this I held each velvet-soft and tiny hand. "Nay," I dissented; "the subject is somewhat too sacred for jest. I am no modish lover, dearest and best of creatures, to regard marriage as the thrifty purchase of an estate, and the lady as so much bed-furniture thrown in with the mansion. I love you with completeness: and give me leave to assure you, madam, with a freedom which I think permissible on so serious an occasion that, even as beautiful as you are, I could never be contented with your person without your heart."

  She sat with eyes downcast, all one blush. Miss Dorothy Allonby was in the bloom of nineteen, and shone with every charm peculiar to her sex. But I have no mind to weary you with poetical rhodomontades till, as most lovers do, I have proven her a paragon and myself an imbecile: it suffices to say that her face, and shape, and mien, and wit, alike astounded and engaged all those who had the happiness to know her; and had long ago rendered her the object of my entire adoration and the target of my daily rhapsodies. Now I viewed her with a dissension of the liveliest hopes and fears; for she had hesitated, and had by this hesitation conceded my addresses to be not irretrievably repugnant; and within the instant I knew that any life undevoted to her service and protection could be but a lingering disease.

  But by and by, "You shall have your answer this evening," she said, and so left me.

  I fathomed the meaning of "this evening" well enough. For my adored Dorothy was all romance, and by preference granted me rendezvous in the back garden, where she would tantalize me nightly, from her balcony, after the example of the Veronese lady in Shakespeare's spirited tragedy, which she prodigiously admired. As concerns myself, a reasonable liking for romance had been of late somewhat tempered by the inclemency of the weather and the obvious unfriendliness of the dog; but there is no resisting a lady's commands; and clear or foul, you might at any twilight's death have found me under her window, where a host of lyric phrases asserted the devotion which a cold in the head confirmed.

  This night was black as a coal-pit. Strolling beneath the casement,
well wrapt in my cloak (for it drizzled), I meditated impartially upon the perfections of my dear mistress and the tyrannic despotism of love. Being the source of our existence, 'tis not unreasonably, perhaps, that this passion assumes the proprietorship of our destinies and exacts of all mankind a common tribute. To-night, at least, I viewed the world as a brave pavilion, lighted by the stars and swept by the clean winds of heaven, wherein we enacted varied roles with God as audience; where, in turn, we strutted or cringed about the stage, where, in turn, we were beset and rent by an infinity of passions; but where every man must play the part of lover. That passion alone, I said, is universal; it set wise Solomon a-jigging in criminal byways, and sinewy Hercules himself was no stranger to its inquietudes and joys. And I cried aloud with the Roman, Parce precor! and afterward upon high Heaven to make me a little worthier of Dorothy.

  II

  Engrossed in meditations such as these, I was fetched earthward by the clicking of a lock, and, turning, saw the door beneath her balcony unclose and afford egress to a slender and hooded figure. My amazement was considerable and my felicity beyond rhetoric.

  "Dorothy—!" I whispered.

  "Come!" was her response; and her finger-tips rested upon my arm the while that she guided me toward the gateway opening into Jervis Lane. I followed with a trepidation you may not easily conceive; nor was this diminished when I found awaiting us a post-chaise, into which my angel hastily tripped.

  I babbled I know not what inarticulate nonsense. But, "Heavens!" she retorted, "d'ye mean to keep the parson waiting all night?"

  This was her answer, then. Well, 'twas more than I could have hoped for, though to a man of any sensibility this summary disposal of our love-affair could not but vaguely smack of the distasteful. Say what you will, every gentleman has about him somewhere a tincture of that venerable and artless age when wives were taken by capture and were retained by force; he prefers to have the lady hold off until the very last; and properly, her tongue must sound defiance long after melting eyes have signalled that the traitorous heart of her, like an anatomical Tarpeia, is ready to betray the citadel and yield the treasury of her charms.