Gallantry. Dizain des Fetes Galantes

by James Branch Cabell

  "You progress, my father," said Louis de Soyecourt, quietly. "And what new infamy may I now look for?"

  "A valet!" said the Prince. "You would have fought with him—a valet! He topped you by six inches. And the man was desperate. Your life was in danger. And your life is valuable."

  "I have earlier perceived, my father, that you prize human life very highly."

  The Prince de Gatinais struck sharply upon the table. "I prize the welfare of France. To secure this it is necessary that you and no other reign in Noumaria. But for the girl you would have yielded just now. So to the welfare of France I sacrifice the knave at my feet, the child yonder, and my own soul. Let us remember that we are de Soyecourts, you and I."

  "Rather I see in you," began the younger man, "a fiend. I see in you a far ignobler Judas—"

  "And I see in you the savior of France. Nay, let us remember that we are de Soyecourts, you and I. And for six centuries it has always been our first duty to serve France. You behold only a man and a woman assassinated; I behold thousands of men preserved from death, many thousands of women rescued from hunger and degradation. I have sinned, and grievously; ages of torment may not purge my infamy; yet I swear it is well done!"

  "And I—?" the little Marquis said.

  "Why, your heart is slain, my son, for you loved this girl as I loved your mother, and now you can nevermore quite believe in the love God bears for us all; and my soul is damned irretrievably: but we are de Soyecourts, you and I, and accordingly we rejoice and drink to France, to the true love of a de Soyecourt! to France preserved! to France still mighty among her peers!"

  Louis de Soyecourt stood quite motionless. Only his eyes roved toward his father, then to the body that had been Nelchen's. He began to laugh as he caught up his glass. "You have conquered. What else have I to live for now? To France, you devil!"

  "To France, my son!" The glasses clinked. "To the true love of a de Soyecourt!"

  And immediately the Prince de Gatinais fell at his son's feet. "You will go into Noumaria?"

  "What does that matter now?" the other wearily said. "Yes, I suppose so. Get up, you devil!"

  But the Prince de Gatinais detained him, with hands like ice. "Then we preserve France, you and I! We are both damned, I think, but it is worth while, Louis. In hell we may remember that it was well worth while. I have slain your very soul, my dear son, but that does not matter: France is saved." The old man still knelt, looking upward. "Yes, and you must forgive me, my son! For, see, I yield you what reparation I may. See, Louis,—I was chemist enough for two. Wine of my own vintage I have tasted, of the brave vintage which now revives all France. And I swear to you the child did not suffer, Louis, not—not much. See, Louis! she did not suffer." A convulsion tore at and shook the aged body, and twitched awry the mouth that had smiled so resolutely. Thus the Prince died.

  Presently Louis de Soyecourt knelt and caught up the wrinkled face between both hands. "My father—!" said Louis de Soyecourt. Afterward he kissed the dead lips tenderly. "Teach me how to live, my father," said Louis de Soyecourt, "for I begin to comprehend—in part I comprehend." Throughout the moment Nelchen Thorn was forgotten: and to himself he too seemed to be fashioned of heroic stuff.

  X

  THE DUCAL AUDIENCE

  As Played at Breschau, May 3, 1755

  "Venez, belle, venez,

  Qu'on ne scauroit tenir, et qui vous mutinez.

  Void vostre galand! a moi pour recompence

  Vous pouvez faire une humble et douce reverence!

  Adieu, l'evenement trompe un peu mes souhaits;

  Mais tous les amoureux ne sont pas satisfaits."

  DRAMATIS PERSONAE

  GRAND DUKE OF NOUMARIA, formerly LOUIS DE SOYECOURT, tormented beyond measure with the impertinences of life.

  COMTE DE CHATEAUROUX, cousin to the Grand Duchess, and complies with circumstance.

  A COACHMAN and two FOOTMEN.

  GRAND DUCHESS OF NOUMARIA, a capable woman.

  BARONESS VON ALTENBURG, a coquette.

  SCENE

  The Palace Gardens at Breschau.

  THE DUCAL AUDIENCE

  PROEM:—In Default of the Hornpipe Customary to a Lengthy Interval between Acts

  Louis de Soyecourt fulfilled the promise made to the old Prince de Gatinais, so that presently went about Breschau, hailed by more or less enthusiastic plaudits, a fair and blue-eyed, fat little man, who smiled mechanically upon the multitude, and looked after the interests of France wearily, and (without much more ardor) gave over the remainder of his time to outrivalling his predecessor, unvenerable Ludwig von Freistadt, who until now had borne, among the eighteen grand dukes (largely of quite grand-ducal morals) that had earlier governed in Noumaria, the palm for indolence and dissipation.

  At moments, perhaps, the Grand Duke recollected the Louis Quillan who had spent three months in Manneville, but only, I think, as one recalls some pleasurable acquaintance; Quillan had little resembled the Marquis de Soyecourt, rake, tippler and exquisite of Versailles, and in the Grand Duke you would have found even less of Nelchen Thorn's betrothed. He was quite dead, was Quillan, for the man that Nelchen loved had died within the moment of Nelchen's death. He, the poor children! his Highness meditated. Dead, both of them, both murdered four years since, slain in Poictesme yonder…. Eh bien, it was not necessary to engender melancholy.

  So his Highness amused himself,—not very heartily, but at least to the last resource of a flippant and unprudish age. Meantime his grumbling subjects bored him, his duties bored him, his wife bored him, his mistresses bored him after the first night or two, and, above all, he most hideously bored himself. But I spare you a chronique scandaleuse of Duke Louis' reign and come hastily to its termination, as more pertinent to the matter I have now in hand.

  Suffice it, then, that he ruled in Noumaria five years; that he did what was requisite by begetting children in lawful matrimony, and what was expected of him by begetting some others otherwise; and that he stoutened daily, and by and by decided that the young Baroness von Altenburg—not excepting even her lovely and multifarious precursors,—was beyond doubt possessed of the brightest eyes in all history. Therefore did his Highness lay before the owner of these eyes a certain project, upon which the Baroness was in season moved to comment.

  I

  "The idea," said the Baroness, "is preposterous!"

  "Admirably put!" cried the Grand Duke. "We will execute it, then, the first thing in the morning."

  "—and, besides, one could take only a portmanteau—"

  "And the capacity of a portmanteau is limited," his Highness agreed. "Nay, I can assure you, after I had packed my coronet this evening there was hardly room for a change of linen. And I found it necessary to choose between the sceptre and a tooth-brush."

  "Ah, Highness" sighed the Baroness von Altenburg, "will you never be serious? You plan to throw away a duchy, and in the act you jest like a school-boy."

  "Ma foi!" retorted the Grand Duke, and looked out upon the moonlit gardens; "as a loyal Noumarian, should I not rejoice at the good-fortune which is about to befall my country? Nay, Amalia, morality demands my abdication," he added, virtuously, "and for this once morality and I are in complete accord."

  The Baroness von Altenburg was not disposed to argue the singularity of any such agreement, the while that she considered Louis de Soyecourt's latest scheme.

  He had, as prologue to its elucidation, conducted the Baroness into the summer-house that his grandfather, good Duke Augustus, erected in the Gardens of Breschau, close to the Fountain of the Naiads, and had en tete-a-tete explained his notion. There were post-horses in Noumaria; there was also an unobstructed road that led you to Vienna, and thence to the world outside; and he proposed, in short, to quiet the grumbling of the discontented Noumarians by a second, and this time a final, vanishment from office and the general eye. He submitted that the Baroness, as a patriot, could not fail to weigh the inestimable benefit which would thus accrue to her native land
.

  Yet he stipulated that his exit from public life should be made in company with the latest lady on whom he had bestowed his variable affections; and remembering this proviso, the Baroness, without exactly encouraging or disencouraging his scheme, was at least not prone to insist on coupling him with morality.

  She contented herself with a truism. "Indeed, your Highness, the example you set your subjects is atrocious."

  "And yet they complain!" said the Grand Duke,—"though I swear to you I have always done the things I ought not to have done, and have left unread the papers I have signed. What more, in reason, can one ask of a grand duke?"

  "You are indolent—" remonstrated the lady.

  "You—since we attempt the descriptive," said his Highness,—"are adorable."

  "—and that injures your popularity—"

  "Which, by the way, vanished with my waist."

  "—and moreover you create scandals—"

  "'The woman tempted me,'" quoted the Grand Duke; and added, reflectively, "Amalia, it is very singular—"

  "Nay, I am afraid," the Baroness lamented, "it is rather notoriously plural."

  But the Grand Duke waved a dignified dissent, and continued, "—that I could never resist green eyes of a peculiar shade."

  The Baroness, becoming vastly interested in the structure of her fan, went on, with some severity, "Your reputation—"

  "De mortuis—" pleaded the Grand Duke.

  "—is bad; and you go from bad to worse."

  "By no means," said his Highness, "since when I was nineteen—"

  "I will not believe it even of you!" cried the Baroness von Altenburg.

  "I assure you," his Highness protested, gravely, "I was then a devil of a fellow! She was only twenty, and she, too, had big green eyes—"

  "And by this late period," said the lady, "has in addition an infinity of grandchildren."

  "I happen to be barely forty!" the Grand Duke said, with dignity.

  "In which event the Almanachen dating, say, from 1710—"

  "Are not unmarred by an occasional misprint. Truly I lament the ways of all typographers, and I will explain the cause of their depravity, in Vienna."

  "But I am not going to Vienna."

  "'And Sapphira,'" murmured his Highness, "'fell down straightway at his feet, and yielded up the ghost!' So beware, Amalia!"

  "I am not afraid, your Highness,—"

  "Nor in effect am I. Then we will let Europe frown and journalists moralize, while we two gallop forward on the road that leads to Vienna and heaven?"

  "Or—" the Baroness helpfully suggested.

  "There is in this case no possible 'or.' Once out of Noumaria, we leave all things behind save happiness."

  "Among these trifles, your Highness, is a duchy."

  "Hein?" said the Grand Duke; "what is it? A mere dot on the map, a pawn in the game of politics. I give up the pawn and take—the queen."

  "That is unwise," said the Baroness, with composure, "and, besides, you are hurting my hand. Apropos of the queen—the Grand Duchess—"

  "Will heartily thank God for her deliverance. She will renounce me before the world, and in secret almost worship me for my consideration."

  "Yet a true woman," said the Baroness, oracularly, "will follow a husband—"

  "Till his wife makes her stop," said the little Grand Duke, his tone implying that he knew whereof he spoke.

  "—and if the Grand Duchess loved you—"

  "Oh, I think she would never mention it," said the Grand Duke, revolving in his mind this novel idea. "She has a great regard for appearances."

  "Nevertheless—"

  "She will be Regent"—and the Grand Duke chuckled. "I can see her now,—St. Elizabeth, with a dash of Boadicea. Noumaria will be a pantheon of the virtues, and my children will be reared on moral aphorisms and rational food, with me as a handy example of everything they should avoid. Deuce take it, Amalia," he added, "a father must in common decency furnish an example to his children!"

  "Pray," asked the Baroness, "do you owe it to your children, then, to take this trip to Vienna—"

  "Ma foi!" retorted the Grand Duke, "I owe that to myself."

  "—and thereby break the Grand Duchess' heart?"

  "Indeed," observed his Highness, "you appear strangely deep in the confidence of my wife."

  Again the Baroness descended to aphorism. "All women are alike, your Highness."

  "Ah, ah! Well, I have heard," said the Grand Duke, "that seven devils were cast out of Magdalene—"

  "Which means—?"

  "I have never heard of this being done to any other woman. Accordingly I deduce that in all other women must remain—"

  "Beware, your Highness, of the crudeness of cynicism!"

  "I age," complained the Grand Duke, "and one reaches years of indiscretion so early in the forties."

  "You admit, then, discretion is desirable?"

  "I admit that," his Highness said, with firmness, "of you alone."

  "Am I, in truth," queried the Baroness, "desirable?" And in this patch of moonlight she looked incredibly so.

  "More than that," said the Grand Duke—"you are dangerous. You are a menace to the peace of my Court. The young men make sonnets to your eyes, and the ladies are ready to tear them out. You corrupt us, one and all. There is de Chateauroux now—"

  "I assure you," protested the Baroness, "Monsieur de Chateauroux is not the sort of person—"

  "But at twenty-five," the Grand Duke interrupted, "one is invariably that sort of person."

  "Phrases, your Highness!"

  "Phrases or not, it is decided. You shall make no more bad poets."

  "You will," said the Baroness, "put me to a vast expense for curl-papers."

  "You shall ensnare no more admirers."

  "My milliner will be inconsolable."

  "In short, you must leave Noumaria—"

  "You condemn me to an exile's life of misery!"

  "Well, then, since misery loves company, I will go with you. For we should never forget," his Highness added, with considerable kindliness, "always to temper justice with mercy. So I have ordered a carriage to be ready at dawn."

  The Baroness reflected; the plump little Grand Duke smiled. And he had reason, for there was about this slim white woman—whose eyes were colossal emeralds, and in show equivalently heatless, if not in effect,—so much of the baroque that in meditation she appeared some prentice queen of Faery dubious as to her incantations. Now, though, she had it—the mislaid abracadabra.

  "I knew that I had some obstacle in mind—Thou shalt not commit adultery. No, your Highness, I will not go."

  "Remember Sapphira," said the Grand Duke, "recall Herodias who fared happily in all things, and by no means forget the portmanteau."

  "I have not the least intention of going—" the Baroness iterated, firmly.

  "Nor would I ever suspect you of harboring such a thought. Still, a portmanteau, in case of an emergency—"

  "—although—"

  "Why, exactly."

  "—although I am told the sunrise is very beautiful from the Gardens of Breschau."

  "It is well worth seeing," agreed the Grand Duke, "on certain days—particularly on Thursdays. The gardeners make a specialty of them on Thursdays."

  "By a curious chance," the Baroness murmured, "this is Wednesday."

  "Indeed," said the Grand Duke, "now you mention it, I believe it is."

  "And I shall be here, on your Highness' recommendation, to see the sunrise—"

  "Of course," said the Grand Duke, "to see the sunrise,—but with a portmanteau!"

  The Baroness was silent.

  "With a portmanteau," entreated the Grand Duke. "I am a connoisseur of portmanteaux. Say that I may see yours, Amalia."

  The Baroness was silent.

  "Say yes, Amalia. For to the student of etymology the very word portmanteau—"

  The Baroness bent toward him and said:

  "I am sorry to inform your Highness t
hat there is some one at the door of the summer-house."

  II

  Inasmuch as all Noumaria knew that its little Grand Duke, once closeted with the lady whom he delighted to honor, did not love intrusions, and inasmuch as a discreet Court had learned, long ago, to regard the summer-house as consecrate to his Highness and the Baroness von Altenburg,—for these reasons the Grand Duke was inclined to resent disturbance of his privacy when he first peered out into the gardens.

  His countenance was less severe when he turned again toward the Baroness, and it smacked more of bewilderment.

  "It is only my wife," he said.

  "And the Comte de Chateauroux," said the Baroness.

  There is no denying that their voices were somewhat lowered. The chill and frail beauty of the Grand Duchess was plainly visible from where they sat; to every sense a woman of snow, his Highness mentally decided, for her gown this evening was white and the black hair powdered; all white she was, a cloud-tatter in the moonlight: yet with the Comte de Chateauroux as a foil, his uniform of the Cuirassiers a big stir of glitter and color, she made an undeniably handsome picture; and it was, quite possibly, the Grand Duke's aesthetic taste which held him for the moment motionless.

  "After all—" he began, and rose.

  "I am afraid that her Highness—" the Baroness likewise commenced.

  "She would be sure to," said the Grand Duke, and thereupon he sat down.

  "I do not, however," said the Baroness, "approve of eavesdropping."