Part 25 (2/2)
”You are kind, Monsieur Bulmer. And I am not ungrateful. And for that which happened yesterday I entreat your pardon.”
”I can pardon you for calling me a lackey, mademoiselle, only upon condition that you permit me to be your lackey for the remainder of your jaunt. Poictesme appears a somewhat too romantic country for unaccompanied women to traverse in any comfort.”
”My thought to a comma,” the Dominican put in,--”unaccompanied ladies do not ordinarily drop from the forest oaks like acorns. I said as much to Cazaio a half-hour ago. Look you, we two and Michault,--who formerly incited this carca.s.s and, from what I know of him, is by this time occupying h.e.l.l's hottest gridiron,--were riding peacefully toward Beauseant. Then this lady pops out of nowhere, and Cazaio promptly expresses an extreme admiration for her person.”
”The rest,” John Bulmer said, ”I can imagine. Oh, believe me, I look forward to next Thursday!”
”But for you,” the girl said, ”I would now be the prisoner of that devil upon the Taunenfels! Three to one you fought,--and you conquered! I have misjudged you, Monsieur Bulmer. I had thought you only an indolent old gentleman, not very brave,--because--”
”Because otherwise I would not have been the devil's lackey?” said John Bulmer. ”Eh, mademoiselle, I have been inspecting the world for more years than I care to confess; I have observed the king upon his throne, and the caught thief upon his coffin in pa.s.sage for the gallows: and I suspect they both came thither through taking such employment as chance offered.
Meanwhile, we waste daylight. You were journeying--?”
”To Perdigon,” Claire answered. She drew nearer to him and laid one hand upon his arm. ”You are a gallant man, Monsieur Bulmer. Surely you understand. Two weeks ago my brother affianced me to the Duke of Ormskirk.
Ormskirk!--ah, I know he is your kinsman,--your patron,--but you yourself could not deny that the world reeks with his infamy. And my own brother, monsieur, had betrothed me to this perjurer, to that lewd rake, to that inhuman devil who slaughters defenceless prisoners, men, women, and children alike. Why, I had sooner marry the first beggar or the ugliest fiend in h.e.l.l!” the girl wailed, and she wrung her plump little hands in desperation.
”Good, good!” he cried, in his soul. ”It appears my eloquence of yesterday was greater than I knew of!”
Claire resumed: ”But you cannot argue with Gaston--he merely shrugs. So I decided to go over to Perdigon and marry Gerard des Roches. He has wanted to marry me for a long while, but Gaston said he was too poor. And, O Monsieur Bulmer, Gerard is so very, very stupid!--but he was the only person available, and in any event,” she concluded, with a sigh of resignation, ”he is preferable to that terrible Ormskirk.”
John Bulmer gazed on her considerately. ”'Beautiful as an angel, and headstrong as a devil,'” was his thought, ”You have an eye, Gaston!”
Aloud John Bulmer said: ”Your remedy against your brother's tyranny, mademoiselle, is quite masterly, though perhaps a trifle Draconic. Yet if on his return he find you already married, he undoubtedly cannot hand you over to this wicked Ormskirk. Marry, therefore, by all means,--but not with this stupid Gerard.”
”With whom, then?” she wondered.
”Fate has planned it,” he laughed; ”here are you and I, and yonder is the clergyman whom Madam Destiny has thoughtfully thrown in our way.”
”Not you,” she answered, gravely. ”I am too deeply in your debt, Monsieur Bulmer, to think of marrying you.”
”You refuse,” he said, ”because you have known for some days past that I loved you. Yet it is really this fact which gives me my claim to become your husband. You have need of a man to do you this little service. I know of at least one person whose happiness it would be to die if thereby he might save you a toothache. This man you cannot deny--you have not the right to deny this man his single opportunity of serving you.”
”I like you very much,” she faltered; and then, with disheartening hastiness, ”Of course, I like you very much; but I am not in love with you.”
He shook his head at her, ”I would think the worse of your intellect if you were. I adore you. Granted: but that const.i.tutes no cut-throat mortgage.
It is merely a state of mind which I have somehow blundered into, and with which you have no concern. So I ask nothing of you save to marry me. You may, if you like, look upon me as insane; it is the view toward which I myself incline. However, mine is a domesticated mania and vexes no one save myself; and even I derive no little amus.e.m.e.nt from its manifestations. Eh, Monsieur Jourdain may laugh at me for a puling lover!” cried John Bulmer; ”but, heavens! if only he could see the unplumbed depths of ludicrousness I discover in my own soul! The mirth of Atlas could not do it justice.”
Claire meditated for a while, her eyes inscrutable and yet not unkindly.
”It shall be as you will,” she said at last. ”Yes, certainly, I will marry you.”
”O Mother of G.o.d!” said the Dominican, in profound disgust; ”I cannot marry two maniacs.” But, in view of John Bulmer's sword and pistol, he went through the ceremony without further protest.
And something embryonic in John Bulmer seemed to come, with the knave's benediction, into flowerage. He saw, as if upon a sudden, how fine she was; all the gracious and friendly youth of her: and he deliberated, dizzily, the awe of her spirited and alert eyes; why, the woman was afraid of him!
That sunny and vivid glade had become, to him, an island about which past happenings lapped like a fretted sea. ”Dear me!” he reflected, ”but I am really in a very bad way indeed.”
Now Mistress Bulmer gazed shyly at her husband. ”We will go back to Bellegarde,” Claire began, ”and inform Louis de Soyecourt that I cannot marry the Duke of Ormskirk, because I have already married you, Jean Bulmer,--”
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