Gallantry Part 30

"Do you go with me?" said John Bulmer.

"I do not." This was spoken from the turrets of decision.

"In that event," said John Bulmer, "I shall return to my dreams, which I infinitely prefer to the realities of a hollow existence. And, besides, now one thinks of it, I have given my parole."

An infuriate voice came through the key-hole. "You are undoubtedly a bully," it stated. "I loathe you." Followed silence.

Presently the voice said, "Because if you really loved her you were no better than she was, and so I hate you both."

"'Beautiful as an angel, and headstrong as a devil,'" was John Bulmer's meditation. Afterward John Bulmer turned over and went back to sleep.

For after all, as he reflected, he had given his parole.

XIV

He was awakened later by a shriek that was followed by a hubbub of tumult.

John Bulmer sat erect in bed. He heard a medley of yelling, of musketry, and of crashes, like the dilapidation of falling battlements. He knew well enough what had happened. Cazaio and his men were making a night attack upon Bellegarde.

John Bulmer arose and, having lighted two candles, dressed himself. He cast aside the first cravat as a failure, knotted the second with scrupulous nicety, and afterward sat down, facing the door to his apartment, and trimmed his finger nails. Outside was Pandemonium, and the little sc.r.a.p of sky visible from his one window was now of a sullen red.

"It is very curious I do not suffer more acutely. As a matter of fact, I am not conscious of any particular feeling at all. I believe that most of us when we are confronted with a situation demanding high joy or agony find ourselves devoid of emotion. They have evidently taken de Soyecourt by surprise. She is yonder in that h.e.l.l outside and will inevitably be captured by its most l.u.s.tful devil--or else be murdered. I am here like a trapped rat, impotent, waiting to be killed, which Cazaio's men will presently attend to when they ransack the place and find me. And I feel nothing, absolutely nothing.

"By this she has probably fallen into Cazaio's power--"

And the man went mad. He dashed upon the locked door, and tore at it with soft-white hands, so that presently they were all blood. He beat his face upon the door, cutting open his forehead.

He shook his bleeding hands toward heaven. "In my time I have been cruel. I am less cruel than You! Let me go!"

The door opened and she stood upon the threshold. His arms were about her and repeatedly he kissed her, mercilessly, with hard kisses, crus.h.i.+ng her in his embrace.

"Jean, Jean!" she sobbed, beneath his lips, and lay quite still in his arms. He saw how white and tender a thing she was, and the fierce embrace relaxed.

"You came to me!" he said.

"Louis had forgotten you. They had all retreated to the Inner Tower.

[Footnote: The inner ward, or ballium, which (according to Quinault) was defended by ten towers, connected by an embattled stone wall about thirty feet in height and eight feet thick, on the summit of which was a footway; now demolished to make way for the famous gardens.] Cazaio cannot take that, for he has no cannon. Louis can hold out there until Gaston comes with help," Claire rapidly explained. "But the thieves are burning Bellegarde. I could bribe no man to set you free. They were afraid to venture."

"And you came," said John Bulmer--"you left the tall safe Inner Tower to come to me!"

"I could not let you die, Jean Bulmer."

"Why, then I must live not unworthily the life which, you have given me. O G.o.d!" John Bulmer cried, "what a pitiful creature was that great Duke of Ormskirk! Now make a man of me, O G.o.d!"

"Listen, dear madman," she breathed; "we cannot go out into Bellegarde.

They are everywhere--Cazaio's men. They are building huge fires about the Inner Tower; but it is all stone, and I think Louis can hold out. But we, Jean Bulmer, can only retreat to the roofing of this place. There is a trap-door to admit you to the top, and there--there we can at least live until the dawn."

"I am unarmed," John Bulmer said; "and weaponless, I cannot hold even a trap-door against armed men."

"I have brought you weapons," Claire returned, and waved one hand toward the outer pa.s.sageway. "Naturally I would not overlook that. There were many dead men on my way hither, and they had no need of weapons. I have a sword here and two pistols."

"You are," said John Bulmer, with supreme conviction, "the most wonderful woman in the universe. By all means let us get to the top of this infernal tower and live there as long as we may find living possible. But first, will you permit me to make myself a thought tidier? For in my recent agitation as to your whereabouts I have, I perceive, somewhat disordered both my person and my apparel."

Claire laughed a little sadly. "You have been sincere for once in your existence, and you are hideously ashamed, is it not? Ah, my friend, I would like you so much better if you were not always playing at life, not always posing as if for your portrait."

"For my part," he returned, obscurely, from the rear of a wet towel, "I fail to perceive any particular merit in dying with a dirty face. We are about to deal with a most important and, it well may be, the final crisis of our lives. So let us do it with decency."

Afterward John Bulmer changed his cravat, since the one he wore was soiled and crumpled and stained a little with his blood; and they went up the winding stairway to the top of the Constable's Tower. These two pa.s.sed through the trap-door into a moonlight which drenched the world; westward the higher walls of the Hugonet Wing shut off that part of Bellegarde where men were slaughtering one another, and turrets, black and untenanted, stood in strong relief against a sky of s.h.i.+fting crimson and gold. At their feet was the tiny enclosed garden half-hidden by the poplar boughs. To the east the Tower dropped sheer to the moat; and past that was the curve of the highway leading to the main entrance of the chateau, and beyond this road you saw Amneran and the moonlighted plains of the Duardenez, and one little tributary, a thread of pulsing silver, in pa.s.sage to the great river which showed as a smear of white, like a chalk-mark on the world's rim.

John Bulmer closed the trap-door. They stood with clasped hands, eyes straining toward the east, whence help must arrive if help came at all.

"No sign of Gaston," the girl said. "We most die presently, Jean Bulmer."

"I am sorry," he said,--"Oh, I am hideously sorry that we two must die."

"I am not afraid, Jean Bulmer. But life would be very sweet, with you."

"That was my thought, too.... I have always bungled this affair of living, you conceive. I had considered the world a healthy and not intolerable prison, where each man must get through his day's work as best he might, soiling his fingers as much as necessity demanded--but no more,--so that at the end he might sleep soundly--or perhaps that he might go to heaven and pluck eternally at a harp, or else to h.e.l.l and burn eternally, just as divines say we will. I never bothered about it, much, so long as there was my day's work at hand, demanding performance. And in consequence I missed the whole meaning of life."

"That is not so!" Claire replied. "No man has achieved more, as everybody knows."

This was an odd speech. But he answered, idly: "Eh, I have done well enough as respectable persons judge these matters. And I went to church on Sundays, and I paid my t.i.thes. Trifles, these, sweetheart; for in every man, as I now see quite plainly, there is a G.o.d. And the G.o.d must judge, and the man himself must be the temple and the instrument of the G.o.d. It is very simple, I see now. And whether he go to church or no is a matter of trivial importance, so long as the man obeys the G.o.d who is within him."

John Bulmer was silent, staring vaguely toward the blank horizon.

"And now that you have discovered this," she murmured, "therefore you wish to live?"

"Why, partly on account of that," he said, "yet perhaps mostly on account of you.... But heyho!" said John Bulmer; "I am disfiguring my last hours by inflicting upon a lady my half-baked theology. Let us sit down, my dear, and talk of trifles till they find us. And then I will kill you, sweetheart, and afterward myself. Presently come dawn and death; and my heart, according to the ancient custom of Poictesme, is crying, '_Oy Dieus! Oy Dieus, de l'alba tantost ve!_' But for all that, my mouth will resolutely discourse of the last Parisian flounces, or of your unfathomable eyes, or of Monsieur de Voltaire's new tragedy of _Oreste_,--or, in fine, of any topic you may elect."

He smiled, with a twinging undercurrent of regret that not even in impendent death did he find any stimulus to the heroical. But the girl had given a m.u.f.fled cry.

"Look, Jean! Already they come for us."

Through the little garden a man was running, running frenziedly from one wall to another when he found the place had no outlet save the gate through which he had scuttled. It was fat Guiton, the steward of the Duc de Puysange. Presently came Achille Cazaio with a wet sword, and harried the unarmed old man, wantonly driving him about the poplars, p.r.i.c.king him in the quivering shoulders, but never killing him. All the while the steward screamed with a monotonous shrill wailing.

After a little he fell at Cazaio's feet, shrieking for mercy.

"Fool!" said the latter, "I am Achille Cazaio. I have no mercy in me."

He kicked the steward in the face two or three times, and Guiton, his countenance all blood, black in the moonlight, embraced the brigand's and wept. Presently Cazaio slowly drove his sword into the back of the prostrate man, who shrieked, "O Jesu!" and began to cough and choke. Five times Cazaio spitted the writhing thing, and afterward was Guiton's soul released from the tortured body.

"Is it well, think you," said John Bulmer, "that I should die without first killing Achille Cazaio?"

"No!" the girl answered, fiercely.

Then John Bulmer leaned upon the parapet of the Constable's Tower and called aloud, "Friend Achille, your conduct disappoints me."

The man started, peered about, and presently stared upward. "Monsieur Bulmaire, to encounter you is indeed an unlooked-for pleasure. May I inquire wherein I have been so ill-fated as to offend?"

"You have an engagement to fight me on Thursday afternoon, friend Achille, so that to all intent I hold a mortgage on your life. I submit that, in consequence, you have no right to endanger that life by besieging castles and wasting the night in a.s.sa.s.sinations."