The Nightmare Had Triplets (44 page)

    “The fact appears obvious,” Clitandre reflected, in the back garden, “that the affairs of my charming Nicole have taken a bad turn. Let us keep out of them. She seems, at all events, to have died without pain.

    “Well, and I pardon her,” he decided, as he walked safely down the Street of St. Silenus, “although I cannot doubt she betrayed my love. Her companion, on the table, could not possibly have been the husband whose advanced age and physical deficiencies she lamented. No; that sturdy and quite handsome young man was far more directly my rival, in the role of her lover. With him she deceived me; and for their perfidy they have both been punished.”

    He sighed, to think of how strange life was! how rough-handed in its jests! and in its justice how inscrutable! Then Clitandre resumed his meditations, saying:

    “It is true I do not know how, or for what reason, or by whom, they were punished. The entire affair is mysterious; and the remarks of the police, as usual, are not enlightening.”

    With that, the young highwayman sighed yet again; he approached the huge dark cathedral of St. Lucy the Martyr, a most holy place; and so his thoughts passed naturally to the pureness and the modesty and the blonde beauty of Marianne, beside which such sordid matters as evil-minded policemen and stray, hole-and-corner illicit love-affairs showed in their true ugliness. He resolved not any longer to think about these ubiquitous nuisances which, night-in, night-out, laid claim to so many young poets.

    “Moreover, I can inquire into this tragedy to-morrow morning, at complete leisure. I shall then find in it, perhaps, the material for a most handsome elegy, an outcome which would be gratifying, even in the light of Nicole’s probable unfaith. I would not let any woman’s unworthiness stand between me and the composition of a really first-class elegy lamenting the world’s loss of her unparalleled virtues. Nor would any other true poet, I imagine, be guilty of such un-thrift.”

    Thereafter Clitandre heaved a third sigh, because he knew that, in the long run, he would not ever get any real pleasure out of Nicole’s death, no matter what might turn out to have been its cause and its circumstances.

    “Yes, I foresee that any possible explanation of this dear, dark-haired young minx’s murder cannot but turn out to be a disappointment, when it is compared with any one of the nine very beautiful and horrific explanations now in my mind. Life does not ever live up to the intelligent demands of a poet; life has no conscience, in this respect; and to coerce that which has already happened is a matter of some difficulty.

    One can but shrug; and then set for life a yet finer, brand-new example.—Which reminds me that, in the mean while, I have no moral right to let Nicole’s double-dealing avert my poetic abilities, such as they may or may not be, from continuing their refined labors upon ‘A Garland for Marianne.’” So he turned now toward Miradol.

    All that evening Marianne had remembered the incident of the young highwayman. The court ball was magnificent; her partners in the dance were ardent; and yet the polished phrases in which they expressed their dishonorable desires rang hollow, somehow. They lacked the dear naïveté of her poet lover, who at that instant was pursuing his arduous profession among goodness only knew what dangers, and yet always remembering the maiden hallowed with his affections.

    Heigho, but it was strangely sweet to be loved thus boyishly by a young poet! And that she might meet him again was an aspiration which Marianne must very certainly introduce into her prayers every evening before retiring.

    Well, and something of the romantic interest which had been aroused by her meeting with Clitandre was conveyed by Marianne to her friend Angelique that night, as the two maids of honor, clothed now in dressing-gowns, and with their hair down, sat cosily chatting in Marianne’s bedroom on the third floor of the castle of Miradol. Marianne at this time was putting away her jewels.

    “He might have taken all these bright pebbles, Angelique. All these I had with me in the coach, as I told him. But he took nothing.”

    “Nothing whatever, darling?”

    “No,” Marianne replied, blushing ever so prettily.

    “Such misplaced continence,” remarked Angelique, “appears to me foolish. In fact, I consider it discourteous, inasmuch as you two were alone in the forest.”

    “Your mind,” returned Marianne, “remains incurably corrupt. So noble was his manner that I did not think about the great jewel of my honor, except just in passing, of course, as girls have to do now and then. But it touched me, it did touch me sincerely, Angelique darling, the unbusinesslike way in which he did not make off with these lesser jewels.”

    “Given his chances, my sweetest, I at least would not have been so bucolicly honest.” And Angelique gazed with frank envy at the gem-littered dressing-table. “No other girl at court has such jewels as you have. And it is so affecting, my pet, that each one of these bright lovely things should have its sentimental association.”

    “It is that which I value chiefly,” Marianne admitted, with a fond sigh. “This emerald bracelet, for example, whensoever I see it, recalls to me the dear Marquis, in the gay days before he married. This brooch is an ever-present reminder of the dear Baron—before he married. In point of fact, I believe it was the dear Chevalier, but the principle is the same. And these pearl earrings revive always the most delightful memories of the dear Bishop. I do not mean, of course, the Bishop of Sorram: he was a pendant, and only turquoise at that. No, I mean the dear Bishop of Arleoth.”

    “And was that in the days of his celibacy also, darling?”

    “But of course, Angelique. Such holy persons cannot marry. Besides, you well know my scruples. I do not accept the friendship of a married man. I think it immoral.”

    “Ah, but the necklace, dearest!” cried Angelique, raising a stout rivulet of large diamonds. “Now for such a necklace even a maid of honor might almost wink at immorality, for it is a king’s ransom.”

    “No, darling,” Marianne corrected her, smilingly, “it is only the ransom of a duke. You see, poor Charles was compelled by his rank and that uncle of his to marry. And he had written me a great number of indiscreet letters, even about her, my sweetest, that was the most delightful part of it all. And he wanted them back, of course.”

    “I see,” said Angelique, “perfectly. And so, what happened?”

    “Why, nothing whatever. I showed him a copy of one or two of the worst ones. Then he gave me this necklace at once. And I gave him his letters. And we parted quite pleasantly.”

    “My pet,” said Angelique, admiringly, “but you do manage affairs so well! With such correctness of principle! And with never the least breath of scandal! But whatever can that be?” Angelique asked, with a change of tone, now that a sudden uproar of musketry fire began in the courtyard just beneath Marianne’s windows.

    “It is only the palace guard firing at somebody and missing him,” Marianne answered, with a slight yawn. “No doubt, some reprobate was trying to get in at the window of one or another maid of honor; and against such impropriety the dear Queen has issued the most strict if somewhat old-fashioned orders. They have never hit anybody, though, since that time, you remember, when the dear King had to sit on cushions, and we all pretended not to notice anything, for weeks.”

    Brown, rather fat, and good-hearted Angelique was by nature prudent. She therefore counseled:

    “Yet do you lock up these pretty jewels at once, my dearest. It may just as easily be a thief, because, in the polite circles which we adorn, stealing is almost as frequent as seduction.”

    “Well, and even if your cynical aphorism be true,” Marianne replied merrily, “I do not know but one practising professional thief. And I am tolerably certain the guards’ target cannot be my tall and highhearted Clitandre.”

    “Alas, madame,” said the young man who now entered with haste from the balcony—in the instant that he removed his red-plumed hat and bowed gallantly to the two ladies,—“it is none other.”

    Clitandre, as he explained forthwith, had been contemplating the window of his elect lady with emotions which had flowered superbly in three brand-new stanzas to “A Garland for Marianne” before the meddlesomeness of the palace guard, on their midnight round, had compelled him to climb the waterspout and seek refuge on her balcony.

    “I praise Heaven,” Marianne returned, hastily tucking up her bright hair, and re-arranging her blue dressing-gown with decorum, “that my poet has so happily eluded their malice.”

    “Thus far,” Angelique emended. She had returned from the balcony, with her plump face uncommonly grave; and she said now:

    “They are seeking for you below, Master Clitandre—for such I assume to be your name—with lanterns and newly reloaded muskets. Even to the brusque mind of the professional military man it is apparent that, barring the unlikely event of your being a cherub equipped with wings, you must have entered one or another of the windows in this part of the palace. A search has been ordered. It follows that all is lost. For how may you now hope to escape from the but too well guarded apartments of a maid of honor?”

    “He must descend,” said Marianne, “by the outer window, which opens upon the park outside the castle. There one encounters no guardsmen.”

    Angelique regarded her with compassion. “And for an excellent reason, my pet. The outer side of the fortress of Miradol is a bare bleak wall which, as the dear Queen well knows, defies climbing. No; it is possible that an insect could descend the sheer hundred feet of smooth stone beneath your window; but it is out of reason to imagine that Master Clitandre or any other mortal person could manage it without either a scaling ladder or a ruinous tumble.”

    “That is true,” Marianne answered, unhappily.

    “There remains the door,” Clitandre suggested.

    At that, both the ladies cried out; and they told him of the six eunuchs waiting in the corridor outside, in black armor with their faces painted black and white and red, with black plumes on their heads. Thus terribly garbed were the incomplete but hard-hearted men-at-arms who guarded the Queen’s maids of honor every night, on account of the strictness of her majesty’s moral principles.

    “I can but ask, then,” Clitandre said, after a moment of reflection, “that the one or the other of you should scream for assistance. These sentinels will enter. Do you then denounce me as the house-breaker that, in point of fact, I occasionally am. They will arrest me. And all will end happily.”

    “Your plan appears excellent,” Marianne admitted, “but for the drawback that it involves your being hanged.”

    “Death, my adored one, is the fixed end of every man’s life. I do not, it is true, desire any such immediate ending. I would prefer to finish my ‘Garland for Marianne’ without being hurried. But it appears not possible for me to escape unseen from this room. It is most certainly not possible for me to be found here in circumstances”—Clitandre blushed, and he looked modestly away from the two maids of honor—“in circumstances through which your reputation would suffer.”

    “Oh, but come now!” said Angelique.

    “People misconstrue such matters,” Clitandre explained. “From the circumstance of a young man’s being found in Madame Marianne’s bedroom they would draw very shocking conclusions.”

    “It is true,” said Angelique, in a sad twitter, “that for Master Clitandre to be caught here as a thief is permissible. A thief is not compromising. A thief might happen to anybody. Otherwise, do what we may, darling, Master Clitandre will be found here in the morning. Our reputations will be ruined. The dear Queen will behave, as she always does, like an infuriated turkey gobbler with overtones of the tigress. She will rend both of us to-morrow, just as she did poor Célie yesterday. We too shall be locked up in convents. And our talents would be wasted in a convent, simply wasted, my precious, among nuns and very old clergymen and penitent persons. Besides, Master Clitandre would be hanged just the same, after having compromised both of us.”

    “You speak sagely, madame,” said Clitandre; “so now do you scream with equal wisdom. In this way will the affair be settled to everyone’s satisfaction.”

    Angelique opened her mouth experimentally; and then this brown-haired, stoutish, kind-hearted young woman shrugged in despair.

    “I cannot do it,” she confessed, with a half-sob. “Logic prompts me to such a shriek as was never heard in any one of the dear Queen’s torture chambers. And yet, the nobility of your devotion, my fine young man, to my darling here—well, it chokes me, because I too adore Marianne. No: I simply cannot bring myself to be the cause of your destruction. Instead, I shall go back to my own rooms. And then only Marianne will be compromised and turkey-gobbled at.”

    “I am foiled,” declared Clitandre, “by that mania for self-sacrifice which is habitual to all good women. The guardsmen at this instant are searching for me. At any moment they may forcibly enter this room. My detection is inevitable. And both of you elect to risk eternal dishonor by tacitly emulating clams. It is compassionate, it is seraphic, it is heroic; but it is likewise injudicious.”

    In his desperation, the young poet knelt humbly at the feet of Marianne. “For an entire year, lacking but the month of May, during which I stole boys for the King of Tarob, I have adored you. Reward my devotion, beloved, with one single yell which will save your honor.”

    “Clitandre,” she answered, “I cannot yell. It would not be dignified.”

    “Oh, and at such an instant, my heart’s dearest, do you intend to stand upon dignity!”

    “To the contrary,” she replied, sombrely, “I intend now to reward your devotion at some risk of killing it.”