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Love's Alumni: The Afterpiece |
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Title: Love's Alumni: The Afterpiece Author: James Branch Cabell [More Titles by Cabell] As Played at Ingilby, October 6, 1755 "Though marriage be a lottery, in which there are a wondrous many blanks, yet there is one inestimable lot, in which the only heaven on earth is written. Would your kind fate but guide your hand to that, though I were wrapt in all that luxury itself could clothe me with, I still should envy you." DUKE OF ORMSKIRK. In Dumb Show are presented LORD HUMPHREY DEGGE, CAPTAIN FRANCIS AUDAINE, MR. GEORGE ERWYN, DUCHESS OF ORMSKIRK, DUCHESSE DE PUYSANGE, LADY HUMPHREY DEGGE, MRS. AUDAINE, and MRS. ERWYN.
The library, and afterward the dining-room, of Ormskirk's home at Ingilby, in Westmoreland.
The Grand Duke did not return to breakfast nor to dinner, nor, in point of fact, to Noumaria. For the second occasion Louis de Soyecourt had vanished at the spiriting of boredom; and it is gratifying to record that his evasion passed without any train of turmoil. The Grand Duchess seemed to disapprove of her bereavement, mildly, but only said, "Well, after all--!" She saw to it that the ponds about the palace were dragged conscientiously, and held an interview with the Chief of Police, and more lately had herself declared Regent of Noumaria. She proved a capable and popular ruler, who when she began to take lovers allowed none of them to meddle with politics: so all went well enough in Noumaria, and nobody evinced the least desire to hasten either the maturity of young Duke Anthony or the reappearance of his father.
Meantime had come to Ingilby, the Duke of Ormskirk's place in Westmoreland, a smallish blue-eyed vagabond who requested audience with his Grace, and presently got it, for the Duke, since his retirement from public affairs, [Footnote: He returned to office during the following year, as is well known, immediately before the attempted assassination of the French King, in the January of 1757.] had become approachable by almost any member of the public. The man came Into the library, smiling, "I entreat your pardon, Monsieur le Duc," he began, "that I have not visited you sooner. But in unsettled times, you comprehend, the master of a beleaguered fortress is kept busy. This poor fortress of my body has been of late most resolutely besieged by poverty and hunger, the while that I have been tramping about Europe--in search of Gaston. Now, they tell me, he is here." The travesty of their five-year-old interview at Bellegarde so tickled Ormskirk's fancy that he laughed heartily. "Damiens," said Ormskirk, to the attendant lackey, "go fetch me a Protestant minister from Manneville, and have a gallows erected in one of the drawing-rooms. I intend to pay off an old score." Meantime he was shaking the little vagabond's hand, chuckling and a-beam with hospitality. "Your Grace--!" said Damiens, bewildered. "Well, go, in any event," said Ormskirk. "Oh, go anywhere, man!--to the devil, for instance." His eyes, followed the retreating lackey. "As I suspect in the end you will," Ormskirk said, inconsequently. "Still, you are a very serviceable fellow, my good Damiens. I have need of you." And with a shrug he now began, "Your Highness,--" "Praise God, no!" observed the other, fervently. And Ormskirk nodded his comprehension. "Monsieur de Soyecourt, then. Of course, we heard of your disappearance, I have been expecting something of the sort for years. And,--frankly, politics are often a nuisance, as both Gaston and myself will willingly attest,--especially," he added, with a grimace, "since war between France and England became inevitable through the late happenings in India and Nova Scotia, and both our wives flatly declined to let either of us take part therein,--for fear we might catch our death of cold by sleeping in those draughty tents. Faith, you have descended, sir, like an agreeable meteor, upon two of the most scandalously henpecked husbands in all the universe. In fact, you will not find a gentleman at Ingilby--save Mr. Erwyn, perhaps--but is an abject slave to his wife, and in consequence most abjectly content." "You have guests, then?" said de Soyecourt. "_Ma foi_, it is unfortunate. I but desired to confer with Gaston concerning the disposal of Beaujolais and my other properties in France since I find that the sensation of hunger, while undoubtedly novel, is, when too long continued, apt to grow tiresome. I would not willingly intrude, however--" "Were it not for the fact that you are wealthy, and yet, so long as you preserve your incognito, and remain legally dead, you cannot touch a penny of your fortune! The situation is droll. We must arrange it. Meanwhile you are my guest, and I can assure you that at Ingilby you will be to all Monsieur de Soyecourt, no more and no less. Now let us see what can be done about clothing Monsieur de Soyecourt for dinner--" "But I could not consider--" Monsieur de Soyecourt protested. "I must venture to remind you," the Duke retorted, "that dinner is almost ready, and that Claire is the sort of housewife who would more readily condone fratricide or arson than cold soup." "It is odd," little de Soyecourt said, with complete irrelevance, "that in the end I should get aid of you and of Gaston. And it is odd you should be forgiving my bungling attempts at crime, so lightly--" Ormskirk considered, a new gravity in his plump face. "Faith, but we find it more salutary, in looking back, to consider some peccadilloes of our own. And we bear no malice, Gaston and I,--largely, I suppose, because contentment is a great encourager of all the virtues. Then, too, we remember that to each of us, at the eleventh hour, and through no merit of his own, was given the one thing worth while in life. We did not merit it; few of us merit anything, for few of us are at bottom either very good or very bad. Nay, my friend, for the most part we are blessed or damned as Fate elects, and hence her favorites may not in reason contemn her victims. For myself, I observe the king upon his throne and the thief upon his coffin, in passage for the gallows; and I pilfer my phrase and I apply it to either spectacle: _There, but for the will of God, sits John Bulmer_. I may not understand, I may not question; I can but accept. Now, then, let us prepare for dinner" he ended, in quite another tone. De Soyecourt yielded. He was shown to his rooms, and Ormskirk rang for Damiens, whom the Duke was sending into France to attend to a rather important assassination.
At dinner Louis de Soyecourt made divers observations. First Gaston had embraced him. "And the de Gâtinais estates?--but beyond question, my dear Louis! Next week we return to France, and the affair is easily arranged. You may abdicate in due form, you need no longer skulk about Europe disguised as a piano-tuner; it is all one to France, you conceive, whether you or your son reign in Noumaria. You should have come to me sooner. As for your having been in love with my wife, I could not well quarrel with that, since the action would seriously reflect upon my own taste, who am still most hideously in love with her." Hélène had stoutened. Monsieur de Soyecourt noted also that Hélène's gold hair was silvering now, as though Time had tangled cobwebs through it, and that Gaston was profoundly unconscious of the fact. In Gaston's eyes she was at the most seventeen. Well, Hélène had always been admirable in her management of all, and it would be diverting to see that youngest child of hers.... Meanwhile it was diverting also to observe how conscientiously she was exerting a good influence over Gaston: and de Soyecourt smiled to find that she shook her head at Gaston's third glass, and that de Puysange did not venture on a fourth. Victoria, to do her justice, had never meddled with any of her husband's vices.... As for the Duchess of Ormskirk, Louis de Soyecourt had known from the beginning--in comparative youthfulness,--that Claire would placidly order her portion of the world as she considered expedient, and that Ormskirk would travesty her, and somewhat bewilder her, and that in the ultimate Ormskirk would obey her to the letter. Captain Audaine Monsieur de Soyecourt considered at the start diverting, and in the end a pompous bore. Yet they assured him that Audaine was getting on prodigiously in the House of Commons, [Footnote: The Captain's personal quarrel with the Chevalier St. George and its remarkable upshot, at Antwerp, as well as the Captain's subsequent renunciation of Jacobitism, are best treated of in Garendon's own memoirs.]--as, _ma foi_! he would most naturally do, since his _métier_ was simply to shout well-rounded common-places,--and the circumstance that he shouted would always attract attention, while the fact that he shouted platitudes would invariably prevent his giving offence. Lord Humphrey Degge was found a ruddy and comely person, of no especial importance, but de Soyecourt avidly took note of Mr. Erwyn's waistcoat. Why, this man was a genius! Monsieur de Soyecourt at first glance decided. Staid, demure even, yet with a quiet prodigality of color and ornament, an inevitableness of cut--Oh, beyond doubt, this man was a genius! As for the ladies at Ingilby, they were adjudged to be handsome women, one and all, but quite unattractive, since they evinced not any excessive interest in Monsieur de Soyecourt. Here was no sniff of future conquest, not one side-long glance, but merely three wives unblushingly addicted to their own husbands. _Eh bien_! these were droll customs! Yet in the little man woke a vague suspicion, as he sat among these contented folk, that, after all, they had perhaps attained to something very precious of which his own life had been void, to a something of which he could not even form a conception. Love, of course, he understood, with thoroughness; no man alive had loved more ardently and variously than Louis de Soyecourt. But what the devil! love was a temporary delusion, an ingenious device of Nature's to bring about perpetuation of the species. It was a pleasurable insanity which induced you to take part in a rather preposterously silly and undignified action: and once this action was performed, the insanity, of course, gave way to mutual tolerance, or to dislike, or, more preferably, as de Soyecourt considered, to a courteous oblivion of the past. And yet when this Audaine, to cite one instance only, had vented some particularly egregious speech that exquisite wife of his would merely smile, in a fond, half-musing way. She had twice her husband's wit, and was cognizant of the fact, beyond doubt; to any list of his faults and weaknesses you could have compiled she indubitably might have added a dozen items, familiar to herself alone: and with all this, it was clamant that she preferred Audaine to any possible compendium of the manly virtues. Why, in comparison, she would have pished at a seraph!--after five years of his twaddle, mark you. And Hélène seemed to be really not much more sensible about Gaston.... It all was quite inexplicable. Yet Louis de Soyecourt could see that not one of these folk was blind to his or her yoke-fellow's frailty, but that, beside this something very precious to which they had attained, and he had never attained, a man's foible, or a woman's defect, dwindled into insignificance. Here, then, were people who, after five years' consortment,--consciously defiant of time's corrosion, of the guttering-out of desire, of the gross and daily disillusions of a life in common, and even of the daily fret of all trivialities shared and diversely viewed,--who could yet smile and say: "No, my companion is not quite the perfect being I had imagined. What does it matter? I am content. I would have nothing changed." Well, but Victoria had not been like that. She let you go to the devil in your own way, without meddling, but she irritated you all the while by holding herself to a mark. She had too many lofty Ideas about her own duties and principles,--much such uncompromising fancies as had led his father to get rid of that little Nelchen.... No, there was no putting up with these rigid virtues, day in and day out. These high-flown notions about right and wrong upset your living, they fretted your luckless associates.... These people here at Ingilby, by example, made no pretensions to immaculacy; instead, they kept their gallant compromise with imperfection; and they seemed happy enough.... There might be a moral somewhere: but he could not find it.
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