The Project Gutenberg eBook of Moonglade, by Marguerite Cunliffe-Owen This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook. Title: Moonglade Author: Marguerite Cunliffe-Owen Release Date: February 13, 2021 [eBook #64546] Language: English Character set encoding: UTF-8 Produced by: Andrew Sly, MFR and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive) *** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MOONGLADE *** “PIOTR” MOONGLADE A NOVEL BY THE AUTHOR OF The Martyrdom of an Empress OFFICIER DE L’ORDRE DE L’INSTRUCTION PUBLIQUE DE FRANCE HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS NEW YORK AND LONDON MCMXV Books by The Author of “THE MARTYRDOM OF AN EMPRESS” MOONGLADE. Illustrated. Post 8vo. A DOFFED CORONET. Illustrated. Crown 8vo. THE CRADLE OF THE ROSE. Illustrated. Crown 8vo. EMERALD AND ERMINE. Crown 8vo. GRAY MIST. Illustrated. Crown 8vo. THE KEYSTONE OF EMPIRE. Illustrated. Crown 8vo. SNOW-FIRE. Illustrated. Crown 8vo. THE TRIBULATIONS OF A PRINCESS. Illustrated. Crown 8vo. THE TRIDENT AND THE NET. Illustrated. Crown 8vo. THE MARTYRDOM OF AN EMPRESS. Illustrated. Crown 8vo. HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY HARPER & BROTHERS PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA PUBLISHED FEBRUARY, 1915 C-P TO A WITH EVERLASTING THOUGHTS MOONGLADE Moonglade upon the waters whitely lying; Though the wind, shouting from the western verge, Herdeth the huddled cloud-rack, flying—flying— Glory still re-emergent, rift-descrying, Spanneth the somber surge. Moonglade, O Moonglade, heavenly calm and still, Throned on the tossing manes unbroke to thill, I know, beholding thee, The storm will pass, and night upon the sea! Moonglade the dark lanes of the forest keeping, Soundless and silent, hearken as ye list; Lakes of bejewelled vapor lowly sleeping, And the long grasses from the surface peeping Levelled of silver mist. Moonglade, O Moonglade, that your Fates fulfil, In your black forest-prison sweetly still, I know, beholding thee, Lights of the lost world, Faith and Purity! Moonglade, empearled of flame unearthly, lying Over the crystal plains of snow and light, While the lost wind, of naked cold a-crying, Shudders beneath the half-shut stars espying Down from the steely night. Moonglade, O Moonglade, heavenly calm and still, Moulding to beauty bitterness and ill, I know, beholding thee, Yet is there strength, and truth and constancy! Moonglade, a pale and forthright splendor, deeping The mountain shadows on the river-flow, Across the sullen flood’s resistless creeping— Across the years, the wreckage and the weeping, You stand, so let them go! Moonglade, O Moonglade, that my heart doth fill, Causeway to Avalon unchanging still, I know that pass by thee, The “bowery hollows, crowned with summer sea”! 1914. M. M. MOONGLADE CHAPTER I The Sphinx, prophetically sung By Fable old, and ever young, Is Beauty perilous, that stands With eagle wings and taloned hands. “Mademoiselle Seton is requested to come down to the parlor.” The white-coiffed nun stood inside the door, waiting for the tall girl who at the words had briskly risen from the first rank of her fellow-pupils. She was older than any there, and her whole allure as she stepped forward betrayed a certain sense of superiority and conscious pride. Silently she followed Madame Marie-Immaculée along the stone- paved and arched passage leading to the broad, shallow stairs, her step as light and noiseless as thistle-down, rhythmed, as it were, to the musical tinkle of her leader’s great rosary. In the vaulted hall below she made a deep obeisance, and passed into the parloir, leaving the nun on the threshold, as is the rule. The parloir of the Sacred Heart Convent at Bryn is a cheerful place, and was full of sun-rays that morning. Plants carefully tended showed their green leaves and bright blossoms on the window-sills behind the snowy sheerness of tightly drawn curtains, the old oaken furniture shone with numberless polishings, and a great silver-and-ivory crucifix fastened to the pale-gray wall gleamed benignantly above a jardinière filled with freshly gathered “votive” heathers. Blinking a little in all this brightness after the dimness of the corridor, the girl hesitated a second. “Good morning, Laurence. Don’t you see me?” The voice was prim, exceedingly correct in enunciation, and high- bred in accent. “Oh, is that you, Aunt Elizabeth?” the girl said, coming quietly forward, a cool hand outstretched. “When did you land?” “Two hours ago, at Tréport. And I am here to take you back with me this evening.” This was delivered much in the manner of a pronunciamiento, and the recipient thereof raised her eyebrows nervously. “This evening!” she echoed. “Why so much haste, Aunt Elizabeth, pray?” “Because you have been here four years, which is much longer than we wished you to remain,” the elder lady stated, tartly. “You are eighteen, and, being English, it is high time that you should become reaccustomed to British ways and manners.” A quaint little smile drew up the corners of Laurence’s lips, but her eyes remained serious. She was a singularly beautiful girl, graceful of figure, dainty-featured, and gifted with an alabaster complexion and a wealth of chestnut hair that would have made even a plain woman attractive. “You find me too Frenchified?” she queried, twisting the azure ribbon of her silver medal around her fingers—for she was an “Enfant de Marie,” and one of the model pupils of her convent-school. “Ye-es,” hesitated Lady Seton, raising her lorgnette the better to study this “uncomfortable” niece. “Ye-e-s! I am afraid so, but we will soon alter all that!” And she let the lorgnette drop to the very end of its interminable amethyst- and-pearl chain. “You had better get your things ready as quickly as you can, Laurence,” she continued, “for neither your uncle nor the tide is wont to wait, and I shall come back for you at six o’clock sharp.” 1 2 3 “You crossed on the Phyllis, then?” “Why, of course! What else would have landed us at Tréport?” “I don’t know,” the girl indifferently replied. Lady Seton shrugged one shoulder, not in the acceptedly Gallic way, which she would have condemned, but in a slightly contemptuous fashion. “Be ready, bag and baggage, at a quarter to six, please, without fail. I’ll be glad to see you out of that ghastly black uniform—or whatever you call it! It is decidedly dowdy!” Laurence laughed, smoothed the straight alpaca folds falling from shoulder to ankle, and glanced at her aunt quizzically. “I am going to interview the Mother Superior,” pronounced the latter again, “and then I shall go, so that you may have an opportunity to take all the hysterical farewells you choose from your beloved friends here.” Hysterical! Laurence laughed once more her low, mocking laugh, and effaced herself before the rangey form of her aunt as her British ladyship set off, under full sail, sweeping past Madame Marie-Immaculée—still pacing monotonously up and down the hall, out of hearing, but in full sight of the parloir door. “Poor Mother Superior!” Laurence mused, with piously raised eyes. “Poor Mother Superior! I hope my delightful aunt will have nothing but edifying things to say of me; she is not overburdened with tact, as a rule!” As she reascended the stairs she was suddenly met by a whirlwind of outstretched arms, flying golden hair, and skirts of alpaca like her own, which flung itself headlong upon her. “Laurence! Laurence! Have they come for you already?... Oh! Oh, Laurence!” The breathless sentence ended abruptly in a burst of whole-hearted sobs as Marguerite de Plenhöel clung desperately about her comrade’s neck. “Voyons, mon petit,” consoled Laurence, keeping her equilibrium with wonderful ease under the circumstances. “Sois raisonnable!” But the fifteen-year-old evidently was disinclined to listen to reason, at least just then, for she went on choking and gasping, and entreating betweentimes: “Don’t go away, Loris. Don’t leave me! Don’t!” “Hush! Hush, little one! Hush! Let’s slip into the garden. They’ll hear you if we stay here!” “We—ca—n’t—can’t go in—into ... the garden—with—out—permis—sion,” Marguerite convulsively objected. But Laurence was firm. “But, yes, we can. There’s nobody about now. Come quick!” she commanded, half dragging, half carrying Marguerite down-stairs again. And thus at last they reached a small postern opening from the north wing, and stopped only when, still clasping each other, they stepped into the wonderful allée of lindens that skirts the cloisters on that side of the building. The sun filtering through the pale leafage made swaying spots of pink copper all over the decorously raked gravel; the heliotropes and old-fashioned verbenas and rose-geraniums filling the borders smelled sweet to heaven, and in a near-by bosquet of laburnum a green finch sang to burst his little throat (à se rompre la gorge). Marguerite—“Gamin” to her intimates—instantly became quieter. With a gesture that was very youthful and very impatient she pushed the tumbled gold out of her big blue eyes, still brimful of tears, and stamped her narrow foot. “Don’t tell me it’s true!” she cried. “Don’t, Loris! It would be too terrible!” Miss Seton—the Hon. Laurence Seton—in all the plenitude of her admirably controlled faculties, stared at the delightful tomboy beside her. “It is true, my poor ‘Gamin,’” she serenely stated, checking another outburst with a slight recoil of her supple body. “My excellent uncle and aunt have resolved that I shall go with them to ‘la triste Angleterre,’ and so to the sad England I must go. Voilà!” “But when—when?” demanded the quivering little creature. “When?” Laurence hesitated. To tell the “Gamin” that only a few hours remained before her final departure from Bryn would destroy all her chances of making her preparations in peace; for this, alas! was a half-holiday, and Marguerite would be free to follow her about everywhere. To tell a frank fib was out of the question, of course. Laurence always avoided direct lies, so she took refuge in a simple evasion. “How can I tell exactly? Such queer people as my relatives are apt to be unreliable,” she equivocated. “You don’t 4 5 know my uncle Bob and my aunt Elizabeth, luckily for you, ‘Gamin.’ One can never guess what is going to happen next when they come on the scene!” “They must be atrocious—abominable!” snapped poor Marguerite, her dark eyebrows meeting in a furious frown above her exquisitely arched little nose. “N-no, not that; merely very tiresome and authoritative—insular to a terrible extent! He, as I have often told you, is a yachtsman above, before, after, and during everything else; by no means unkind, but as stubborn as a whole troop of mules. She—well, she’s Elizabethan; not kindly nor good-looking, but worse! Brick-red morally and physically, without any luster or brilliancy, fond of absolute power, narrow-minded, and—oh, well, quite unendurable.” “O-o-o-o-h!” gasped Marguerite. “Oh ... o ... o ... o ... h!” “I am their ward,” Laurence continued. “They are my omnipotent guardians, and I can never hope to get rid of them, for I am a beggar, living on their rather acid bounty. Do you understand, petit ‘Gamin’?” No, petit “Gamin” did not understand. There was something askew in that speech, somehow, something that grated upon her, though just what it was she could not have told. She therefore remained silent, her eyes fixed upon two yellow butterflies chasing each other round and round a clump of blue hortensias artistically grouped at the corner of the cloister beneath the leaden rain-spout, whose frequent libations kept those gorgeous globes of bloom from reverting to their original creamy pink. “A beggar!” the child said at last. “A beggar!... Then why don’t you come and live with me at Plenhöel instead of with them in England?” There was extraordinary contempt in the way she said “them.” “I have only another year to stay here,” she passionately pleaded, “and every single thing I own will be half yours, Loris darling—every single thing!” Eyes and hands uplifted, she gazed imploringly at Laurence, and for an instant a softer expression flitted across the latter’s somewhat sulky face. “They would not let me do that—at any rate, not until I come of age,” she asserted. “No, decidedly not.... And, what’s more, I would not accept charity from your people, who are no relations of mine.” Marguerite looked at her friend in positive amazement. “Charity!” she indignantly remonstrated; and then violently she cast herself prone upon the green border of the allée, kicking her tiny toes into the turf. “Charity indeed!” she angrily cried from within the shelter of her intertwined arms. “Charity—to you!” “Mademoiselle de Plenhöel!” a voice expostulated behind her; and Mademoiselle de Plenhöel regained her feet with amazing promptness, crimson with confusion, to face the most dreaded of her educators, Madame Marie-Antoinette, whose rigid manners and severe cast of countenance were the iron mask of a heart unsuspectedly tender. “What does this behavior mean?” she now demanded, standing like a black statue of reproof within a yard of the culprit, her white hands folded within her wide sleeves. “Pardon me, Madame Marie-Antoinette,” Marguerite stammered, “but you ... you see, Laurence is g-going away ... soon!” Here tears of mingled rage and distress began again to run from beneath the heavy, drooping lashes! An almost imperceptible wave of delicate color rose to the nun’s still features and wiped twenty years from them! She, too, had known those great despairs of early youth—far greater ones, perhaps—and it was in an altogether altered voice that she replied. “I am sorry to see you so unhappy, Marguerite,” she said, drawing nearer to her, “but such outbursts of feeling are not seemly, my child; besides, they prove nothing—nothing at all—and are—er—vulgar!” She gave a little cough, and went on, equably: “Laurence has her duties as you have yours. So come with me now, at least until you have controlled yourself”; and as an afterthought she concluded, “By the way, you are both in contravention, for you are well aware that the garden and park are forbidden ground to you when unaccompanied by one of us.” Marguerite reverently touched a fold of the nun’s robe. “I am sorry,” she whispered very mournfully; “I am sorry!” For a moment Laurence had been watching the picture made by the “Gamin” in this unusually contrite mood, looking, in fact, quite like a little saint in the discreet sun-shower beneath the trees that dappled her slim black gown and formed a bright nimbus around her lovely lowered head. Twice she opened her lips to speak, but refrained. Then, courtesying deeply to the nun, she walked demurely indoors, where, however, as soon as she found herself alone, she raced at top speed up the stairs, thinking, as she went: “Better so. Outbursts are—are—vulgar, as Madame Marie-Antoinette has so sapiently remarked, and our poor ‘Gamin’ is still so very impulsive—so impossible to convince that I’d sooner not try it!” 6 7 8 9 CHAPTER II Where first the wave, in long unrest Rolled from the glamour of the West, Breaks with the voice of Fate along The shores of Legend and of Song. The sea was beating into unbroken foam at the foot of the towering cliff—an uninterrupted front of granite, quite unscalable except at narrow clefts four and five miles apart, which nobody would attempt except at low water, when a precarious path of shingle is laid bare between that grim rampart and the lip of the tide. A summer storm had raged for two days and nights along this terrible coast, and now, although the leadenness of the sky was thinning here and there to patches of faded turquoise, the waves, still savagely churned by the wind, were piling beds of semi-solid spume far above the ragged margin of the inner Bay of Plenhöel. From the stone terrace of the Castle the sight would have been awe-inspiring to any but its inhabitants, hardened through generation after generation to such spectacles and such sensations. To the right of the fortress-like building a wall of spindrift whirling up an embayment of the falaise shut off all view of the coast to the eastward; to the left and in front chaos reigned supreme in a fathomless gulf, while behind it miles of pine forest stretched to the crest of the table-land in endless tossing manes of somber green. Five hundred feet of sheer cliff about which thousands of gulls flew screaming in and out of the roaring gusts of the gale, and down-shore the intermittent boom of a souffleur overtoning by many cavernous notes the great voices of sky and sea. The library at Plenhöel is one of the most pleasing places imaginable. Long ago it had been a guard-room, where the officers of the garrison watched the offing from the tunnel-like window-embrasures, and the pikes of halberdiers resounded upon the granite-flagged floor. Some time after the Chouan wars it was transformed into an eminently “living” apartment, paneled in carved oak, book-lined on three sides, and pierced by many tall French windows that open upon a broad balcony of wonderfully wrought stone. In one of the aforesaid embrasures that tempestuous morning the still, gracile silhouette of Marguerite de Plenhöel was outlined against the background of sea and cloud. She had grown a little since a year, but it seemed evident that she would never be either a tall or an “imposing” woman. But what could one not forgive in so lovely a little creature who, with her square shoulders and slim, round waist, looked wholesome and strong as any sand-poppy; whose delicately oval face was so full of happy life, from the deep-set blue eyes to the tender mouth, the patrician arch of the nose, and the obstinate little chin dented by a tantalizing fossette? The crinkly silkiness of her hair—that crowning beauty of hers—now piled upon her head in rebellious masses, shone even in the fog-dimmed light as she bent forward to gaze fervently through the panes, breathing on and rubbing them again and again to free them from their misted opaqueness. She had been home for good a couple of weeks only, and greeted the convulsions of nature as a treat especially prepared for her; for now and then she clapped her hands and sketched a merry jig-step or two on the polished floor, evidently in applause of so stirring a scene. So absorbed, indeed, was she in her contemplation, her lovely face flattened now against the glass, that she did not hear a door unclose and shut behind her. She was counting aloud for the seventh fateful wave that all true-born ocean folk hold in so profound a respect. “One, two, three, four, five, six ...” she called, as if summoning the crowning surge in unconquerable impatience. “Seven!” said a voice immediately at her side, and she whirled about on one toe to find herself confronted by a very tall man who was smiling amusedly. “Basil!” she exclaimed. “Cousin Basil! Where did you jump from?” “From the cliff path, which I don’t recommend as a peaceful choice of promenade just now,” he replied, calmly; but his fine gray eyes, nevertheless, held a suggestion of the pleasing battle he had just fought against the tempest. “Why didn’t you call me?” she reproached, with an adorable pout. “I would have liked so much to come with you.” “Little girls, my cousin,” he answered, gravely, “should not be risked on the edge of draughty precipices.” The “Gamin” frowned. She was too young as yet to enjoy being called a little girl, and the riposte came at once. “Where old gentlemen are safe, younger people may surely go!” she said, mischievously. “Old gentleman ... hummm ... m! That’s rather hard on me, isn’t it, dear cousin mine?” “Hard, why?” she retorted. “How old are you, anyhow?” And, standing on the very points of her tiny slippers, she pointed at his temples with two accusing fingers. 10 11 “One, two, three, four, five, six ... silver threads among the bronze,” she misquoted. “And seven!” he coolly admitted, looking smilingly down at her. “Seven or more, what matters? I am thirty-four, you know, my little cousin.” “What matters indeed! You have enough privileges already, without expecting to remain always young.” “Privileges! You surprise me!” “Certainly,” she insisted. “Aren’t you a great Prince, a Serene-Highness—just as in the fairy-tales? Haven’t you huge, big estates in Russia and the Crimea, villas in the south of France, fortins in the Caucasus, mines in Siberia, besides loads and loads of money, jewels, picture-galleries, a private band of musicians, acres of hothouses, horses, stud-farms? A regular Marquis de Carabas, that’s what you are!” She paused for lack of breath, and once more he laughed. “You overwhelm me, ma cousine,” he mocked; “but since I am old, quite an old gentleman, you see ... what are these manifold gifts to me?” “Old! Oh, not so very old, after all!” she suddenly contradicted. “Fortunately you are handsome, and very, very tall. Whew ... ew! You are tall! I love that! I despise small men. They’re always barking and fussing, like black-and-tans. Don’t you think so?” “Your knowledge is indeed extensive, ‘Gamin,’” he praised. “Yet it is scarcely necessary to be a giant in order to possess a kindly temper. I have met—” “Never mind what you have met,” she interrupted. “I know that you are good-tempered, and six foot four inches. That’s enough proof of what I said just now.” “Thank you!” he began, dryly. But in one clean bound she cleared the space between the window and a ponderous oaken bench, upon which she perched herself, her feet ten inches from the immense rug covering all the middle of the room. “And now,” she stated, “I must be reasonable, and grown-up, and all the rest of it, so that the person who first exhorted me to listen to reason may not find me lacking in that desirable quality.” “Is there really a person bold enough to preach reason to you?” he commenced; but she silenced him by an eminently peremptory gesture. “Listen!” she admonished. “Do you hear wheels?” “Wheels?” he questioned, sincerely astonished. “In this storm?” “And why not? Why shouldn’t people travel in a storm when they are not imprisoned, as I am?” “You are a prisoner?” Prince Basil asked, with amazement. “Of course I am. Papa—the dear Saints of Brittany bless him—has decreed—decreed, you understand—‘J’ai décrété’ was what he said—he loves such sentences—that he would go alone to fetch my Loris at the station. You will agree with him, I am sure, ‘little girls’ should always be left at home. Eh?” “What is ‘your Loris,’ if I may be so indiscreet as to ask, petite cousine?” “What? You mean who, I suppose. She is the most beautiful girl in the world—an English ‘professional beauty,’ they say. She was at the Sacré-Cœur with me, and she loved me—yes, she loved me, though she played me a mean trick once; but it wasn’t her fault, poor dear! I’ve never seen her since. And just imagine, her ogres of uncle and aunt have condescended to let her spend a month with us here—a whole month—thirty days—no, thirty-one, as this is the last day of June.” “This promises to be interesting,” Basil remarked. “A gloriously beautiful maiden oppressed by avuncular ogres, and coming all the way from perfidious Albion to charm the natives of ancient Armorica! It sounds very well, when one comes to think of it!” The “Gamin,” who had pulled from the pocket of her white serge frock a handful of hazelnuts, and was joyously cracking them one after another between her short white teeth, laughed and nearly choked herself. “You have,” she asserted, as soon as she could speak, “a funny way of expressing yourself, Cousin Basil. Why don’t you add that a handsome Prince Charming came from much farther off yet, to do likewise?” “Again? Vous y tenez décidément, ma cousine! Handsome is as handsome does, you know, and as yet I am not conscious of having behaved in any very remarkable way since my arrival!” 12 13 14 Marguerite raised her shoulders to the level of her ears, threw a handful of nut-shells in the bronze waste-paper holder at her side, and jumped from her lofty seat. “It must be nearly eleven,” she cried in sudden alarm. “We’ll miss it all if we don’t go down-stairs now, at once. Come quick.” “Miss what?” the impassive Prince demanded, slowly rising from the deep arm-chair where he had established himself. But she had already glissaded to the head of the stairs, and it took all he could accomplish with his long legs to overtake her before she had quite succeeded in breaking her pretty nails, in endeavoring to open one of the tall windows giving on the north terrace. “Leave that to me. The wind is straight against it. Wait, won’t you, please?” he pleaded, his hand over both of hers, for she was still struggling manfully with the complicated fastening. “I’m very strong,” she panted. “I’ve done it lots of times.” Evidently she was very strong, for the window suddenly gave way and, had it not been for Basil’s weight, would have knocked her flat. But little did she care for such slight contretemps. With a ringing war-whoop she raced out, her hair—instantly blown from its restraining combs by the whistling blast—streaming in clouds behind her, her skirts flying back from her slim ankles, and danced wildly toward the carven parapet. Basil, hastily securing the window from the outside, ran after her, afraid that she would really be whirled by the back- draught over the balustrade to the causeway below. He was laughing helplessly at the extraordinary antics of this queer little being who bewitched him, but when he caught up with her he took firm hold upon her arm. “You imp!” he shouted, for the hurly-burly was such that he could not hear his own voice, nor her reply, for that matter; but it was not a very decorous one, to judge by the roguish sparkle of her eyes. However, she did not shake off his hand, which quite surprised him, and soon they were leaning side by side against a beautiful mediæval gargoyle hewn from the stone wall of the terrace, and at that moment disgorging the downpour of the morning hours. Following her excited glance, he saw, away down at the foot of the causeway, a four-in-hand, fiercely beaten by the wind as it labored up the steep incline. “Les voilà! Les voilà!” Marguerite shrieked, quite beside herself with delight. “They’ll be here in ten minutes.” The words were flung in Basil’s teeth by the tempest. But he had already recognized—his sight being unusually keen —his cousin de Plenhöel handling the ribbons, and seen that a slender feminine form, tightly cloaked and hooded, was sitting beside him. Far behind the equipage a fourgon was following, with the maid and luggage. “Oh, look at the horses’ manes!” shrieked Marguerite, pointing to the drag, now almost immediately beneath. “They are blown all sideways. Oh dear! How funny!” “And what about yours?” Basil laughed, vainly attempting to capture in both hands the flying silk of her glorious hair; but with another of her acrobatic bounds she darted from his side, turned the corner like a blown feather, and disappeared into the Cour-d’Honneur, where he hastened to join her, bullied by the wind and with less decorum than was his wont. Great black clouds were once more piling up in the sky, and as the horses turned into the wide paved space a few enormous drops of rain began to fall. Fortunately here there was some shelter from the storm, and it became possible to reassume some dignity of demeanor, if one felt so inclined. Marguerite, however, had no such cares, and as soon as her father—Le Beau Plenhöel, known since his early youth by the eminently unpretentious sobriquet of “Antinoüs”—had accomplished a masterly turn around the central fountain and brought his mettlesome team to a stand at the foot of the perron, she had clambered on the near wheel and, lifting herself to the box, was hugging Laurence Seton like a bear. The Marquis de Plenhöel burst into hearty laughter and glanced indulgently at Basil, standing ready to help the two girls down. The grooms had jumped to the horses’ heads, where they now remained, like twin wax figures incapable of movement or expression, under the pelting shower. “Mais, mon ‘Gamin,’ let her get down!” Plenhöel called. “We’ll all be drenched to the bone.” And then only Marguerite regretfully leaped into his arms, making it possible for Basil to assist Laurence to the ground. Under such circumstances the introduction was necessarily quite unconventional, and, driven indoors by the rain now flooding in torrents from the leaden gutters overhead and ricochetting in the liveliest fashion from the steps, Marguerite and Laurence ran off without further ado. Pulling off his long mackintosh and soaked driving-gloves, Plenhöel turned to his cousin: 15 16 “A dramatic entrée!” he said, grinning, and displaying under his blond mustache teeth of a whiteness and regularity worthy of a boy of twenty. “With the ‘Gamin’ one can always expect something unforeseen,” he added, leading the way to his den. “Here, have a dash of cognac, Basil. You look almost as pumped as I am!” And he pushed the tantalus toward his relative. “It will sharpen our appetites for luncheon, too.” Basil quietly possessed himself of a very easy chair, and, declining the spirits by a gesture, lighted a cigarette. “Who and what is that ethereal apparition who is throwing our ‘Gamin’ into such convulsions of joy?” he asked, lazily following with his eyes a ring of smoke floating toward the caissoned ceiling. “Hum-um!” “Antinoüs” replied, setting down his little glass and drying his mustache on his handkerchief. “A very beautiful person, as you may have seen.” “I did not see. She was cowled like a monk, and, save for a bit of resolute chin and the gleam of an interesting pair of eyes—” “Oh, she’s beautiful; no doubt about that, my boy; but as far as I have been able to judge—which is not much, I admit—she is scarcely the sort I would have accused the ‘Gamin’ of turning into an idol.” “Accuse is severe!” Basil remarked, knocking the ashes from his cigarette with the tip of his little finger. “What’s amiss with her? You don’t mean that she’s a dark filly?” “No....” “Antinoüs” hesitated. “No—but hard in the mouth, and a bit sultry in temperament, I should say. Of course it is hard to judge, where the Anglo-Saxon ‘Miss Independence’ is concerned; but this one has been admirably brought up by our good ladies of the Sacré-Cœur; and moreover I understand that all her life she has been pruned, and prismed, and molded, and clipped by a dragon of an aunt—an ex-beauty—now rather long in the tooth, who, it appears, is not often inclined to joke. But still the finished product of her labors inspires me with no extravagant amount of confidence.” Basil gazed thoughtfully at his kinsman. He knew him to be a connoisseur, and a fastidious one, at that, for all the women of his family were, or had been, renowned for their loveliness. Moreover, married at twenty-two to one of Brittany’s fairest daughters, he had been left a widower fourteen months later, when Marguerite was born. Be it said to his praise, he had never dreamt of giving his dear “Gamin” a stepmother; but when all was said and done he was now barely thirty-eight, extraordinarily good-looking, and eminently disinclined by nature to keep his eyes closed when beauty was about. “Not bridle wise?” Basil smiled up at Antinoüs. “According to your lights, at least?” “Bridle wise! Who d’you take me for?” the Marquis protested. “You don’t fancy I’d try to flirt”—he said “fleureter”—“with a damsel under my protection, do you? Besides,” he added, naïvely, “she’s not my style ... not a bit of it!” “Heaven be thanked, then,” Basil gravely replied. “We can henceforth rest in peace!” Plenhöel burst out laughing and clapped his cousin on the back. “There’s the bell. Let’s to table, unbeliever!” And he drew back to let Basil pass out of the room before him. A surprise awaited Basil in the dining-room as he came down, after hurriedly brushing his hair to an admirable smoothness. By the opposite door Marguerite and Laurence were entering, and for the first time in his affectionate acquaintance with the “Gamin” he completely forgot her presence, for the lithe figure beside her and overtopping her by half a head almost took his breath away. Graceful as it is granted but few to be, “Miss Independence,” as “Antinoüs” had called her—was, outwardly, at least, perfection. Her long hazel eyes had that slight droop at the outer edges of the lids which makes so much for beauty and expression; her small, well-cut mouth and high-bred features, the oval of her jasmine-white face, and her coronal of warmly auburn braids, made up an altogether uncommon ensemble. Clad in vaporous lace-incrusted batiste of a creamy tint, melting into that of her exquisite skin, a knot of deep-red carnations carelessly thrust in her softly folded satin belt was the only touch of color about her, and Basil’s eyes very nearly transgressed the dictates of good form as he looked at her. Truly, Plenhöel was difficult to please, he thought, taking his seat beside “the Marvel,” as he already inwardly named her. The poor “Gamin,” although her rebellious tresses were now as neat as Laurence’s own, her crumpled serge replaced by a pale-pink linen of irreproachable chic, remained during the entire meal unobserved by her big cousin; but she, nevertheless, filled her place as mistress of the house excellently well, and with a little air of importance that sat very prettily upon her extreme youthfulness. However, “Antinoüs,” always immensely proud of his daughter, seemed lost in contemplation of this charming vis-à-vis, so that at first the conversational ball rolled uninterruptedly between the two others; but as a matter of fact he was thinking of some retrievers that were coming from England that week to add the charm of their thoroughbredness to his kennels—already too expensive, for, in the modern sense of the word, at least, he was not what is termed a very wealthy man. 17 18 19 After luncheon, the storm having not as yet abated, the little party went to what is called at Plenhöel the Galerie des Ancêtres—a particularly attractive apartment in which to spend a wet afternoon. Hung with ancient tapestries and decorated with armor of the best period, with an antique banner drooping here and there along the paneling above a row of knights’ stalls of heavy carven wood, this, together with a succession of splendid family portraits, preserved there the touch of the long ago, for the rest of the furnishings were amusingly heterogeneous. The great room terminated at both ends in monumental fireplaces. Fronting one of these was a huge billiard-table, balanced by a Pleyel grand piano, and opposite, to one side of the other chimneypiece, a large-sized organ was flanked by enormous palms in bronze tubs, while the rest of the thirty-odd yards of space was most variously occupied—tables great and small, loaded with albums, books, magazines, and flower-filled vases; a collection of sofas, pouffs and piled-up cushions; and many arm-chairs and benches, ranging from angular Gothic shapes to the most approved and lazy forms of to-day. Here one could smoke, read, nap, or play games of all sorts without let or hindrance, since, besides the billiards, a set of graces, a game of bagatelle, a chess-board, a Dutch top flanked by its individual paraphernalia, and even a jeu de petits chevaux were ready to hand. To-day, however, a strange and unaccustomed atmosphere seemed to pervade this home-like and delightful retreat. Basil, perhaps exhausted by his unwonted loquacity at lunch, had fallen silent, and stood near one of the windows, gazing dreamily at the soupy gravel drive and the dripping trees. Antinoüs, sunk to the shoulders into the mellowness of a brocaded smoking-chair, pulled pensively at his mustache, his eyes idly wandering over the pages of a two- days-old number of the Gazette de France, and neither of them said a word. Still, Marguerite and her guest, sitting side by side on an ottoman placed in a far-off embrasure, made up for it by chattering like magpies—but sotto voce, so that their “confidences” should not be overheard. In truth, their “confidences” had so far remained completely one-sided. Laurence spoke in a sufficiently lively fashion, but revealed nothing of her own doings and thoughts. That she was drawing out the “Gamin” with superior skill would have been patent to a less simple little soul than Marguerite’s. “But,” Miss Seton said at last, “you never told me that you have Russian relatives.” And her eyes slid a furtive glance in the direction of Prince Basil. “Didn’t I?” Marguerite laughed. “I never thought of it in our convent days. You see, I did not know my cousin Basil then quite as well as I do now. It is like this. My grandfather’s sister, Anne de Plenhöel, married Pierre Palitzin, and became Basil’s grandmother. Am I expressing myself clearly?” “Very clearly. And is Prince Basil an only child?” Laurence spoke in the tone of one who desires, out of mere politeness, to keep up a rather boring dialogue. “Oh dear, no! He has the most exquisite sister. She married another relative of ours, Jean de Salvières. It’s quite a mixed affair, those family ties of ours, like a Neapolitan ice, pink, and green, and mauve, and lemon, in stripes.” “De Salvières.... The Duke?” mused Laurence, aloud. “Yes! The Duke, of course! Do you know him, Laurence? He has a château on the Normandy cliffs—the château —le plus beau château de France, I believe honestly; and so picturesque, with its machicolations, its keep, its dungeons, and turrets and towers! It looks as if Gustave Doré had built it. Also Basil has two brothers—the youngest, who is in the Corps-des-Pages of the Czar, and then André, an officer in the Chevaliers-Gardes, all white and gold and silver, and taller even than Basil, with big blue eyes, a yellow mustache, a complexion as rosy as a baby’s, a—” “He must be lovely,” interrupted Laurence, “and look as if he had rolled about on a rainbow, your cousin André.” Marguerite stared. The tone rather than the words surprised her. This quaint little being, still at the tender age of easy laughter and easy tears, hated mockery when it was directed toward what she loved and honored. Her slangy childish tongue, so apt to speak at random, never gave its assistance to unkind sayings, and for the second time since they knew each other Laurence felt that she had struck a false note. Indeed, the “Gamin” looked at that minute like a small game-cock of ruffled plumage and sparkling eyes. “I beg your pardon. I did not know a harmless joke could offend you,” Laurence apologized. “It did not offend me!” stoutly declared Marguerite. “But—I don’t know why—I can’t bear to have my people laughed at.” “Your people! You are so excessively and exclusively a Bretonne, that one cannot realize your claiming kin with Muscovites.” “When I say my people I mean all who belong to me, which includes, of course, the Palitzins.” Again Laurence, not quite at her keenest on this occasion, overstepped the bounds of prudence, certainly those of 20 21 22 Breton delicacy—which are finely drawn—for, piqued at Marguerite’s plainness of speech—perhaps at something else, too—she quickly retorted: “I am inclined to believe that you are in love with Prince Basil!” Marguerite’s blue eyes widened, her pretty lips straightened, and she rose to her feet. “I am sure papa must be fainting with ennui,” she said in a level voice. “Let’s go and challenge him to a game of billiards. It is his hour for play!” And she glided off with the lithe grace which betrays great strength concealed in satin softness. “The cut direct!” Laurence muttered, following her, and smiling in a fashion that strove, quite unsuccessfully, to be pleasingly indulgent. “Bother these Breton prudes! I’ll have to mend my paces here, it seems,” she muttered, as she crossed the gallery. CHAPTER III If the tongue’s a consuming fire, Then judging by the consternation The written syllables inspire, A letter is a conflagration. “I’m sure you must be mistaken. It cannot be possible!” Madame Gervex, Marguerite’s governess and companion, turned her perplexed, good-natured face toward the gray-haired land-steward who had begun his labors at Plenhöel in the time of the present Marquis’s father. They were standing together on the far end of a lower side terrace overlooking the green silver of the bay, to-day in one of its most charming and innocent moods. There was scarcely a ripple to be seen: a mere fringe of dainty foam hemmed the rising tide as it lazily fretted up the narrow pebbly beach. A cable-length or so beyond that lace-like border a large float rode at anchor, and Marguerite, Laurence, Basil, and “Antinoüs” were alternately to be descried taking glorious headers from its snowy planking into the placid depths. “Impossible, Madame Hortense? And why impossible, if you please?” Sulian Quentin asked, with some asperity. “You are so soft-hearted and innocent yourself that you can’t think anybody is made otherwise! Now I tell you—” And he emphasized each separate word with a smart tap of two fingers of his right hand on the hard, open palm of his left. “I tell you that this fine Demoiselle from over the Channel is well worth watching. Sweet as honey when she speaks to you, but her linings have been dipped in gall, just the same. Bitter! Madame Hortense! Bitter she is to the very core, and envious and mean, and capable of anything that’s not straight. I, Sulian Quentin, tell you this, and you’d do well to take my word for it!” “But, Monsieur Sulian!” interrupted Madame Hortense. “There’s no Monsieur Sulian about it. D’you imagine that I’ve navigated for fifteen years before taking hold of things here for defunct Monsieur le Marquis, without learning how to keep my eyes open? Bah! I’ve seen in my time many sorts of female quality, brown and red and blond and black, pretty and otherwise, clever and stupid, good, bad, and worse, but just such a piece as this one—!” He left his indictment incomplete, perhaps for lack of expressions fitted to his listener’s ears, and allowed his long arms to fall to his sides in a discouraged manner. “But,” Hortense Gervex began again—“but what in the world made you take such a dislike to Mademoiselle Seton, Monsieur Sulian? She’s doing you no harm!” “Yes, believe that and drink water!” he derisively retorted. “Look at her now, do, just to oblige me!” He was angrily pointing downward, and Hortense Gervex bent over the coping to see what he meant. Plenhöel and Marguerite were swimming shoulder to shoulder toward the open sea, with that calm, regular stroke which is so telling for long-distance work. On the float Basil’s tall form showed clear as wax against the pale shimmer of the water, and, with her back turned to him, sat Laurence, on the very edge of the planking, her feet dipping in the sea, her hair falling around her mantle-wise and trailing behind her. Suddenly she turned, swung herself up on the float, and stood before him, her arms uplifted to raise above her head the shining mass of her tresses, her perfect figure displayed to its best advantage by a bathing-dress of pure white cashmere that clung very lovingly; and there was something so challenging in her statuesque pose that the term of “professional beauty,” naïvely applied to her a fortnight or so before by Marguerite, took on, indeed, a newer and more expressive meaning. “The minx!” grumbled the old steward, elbow to elbow with Madame Hortense. “Oh, she’ll net him, never fear—and to think that our Marquis, always so malin, alert, and wide awake, does not notice her manœuvers! As to 23 24 25 Mademoiselle ‘Gamin’—” He paused, blew out the air from his chest with a sigh like a Triton’s, and resumed: “She’s too young, thank the Saints, to perceive such wickedness, and yet she’s sharp as a needle, and some day she’ll see, and then!” “Well what? What will she see some day, you old mischief? What will happen some day, according to you? After all, isn’t the Prince free to marry whom he chooses? Isn’t he rich enough for two? Why shouldn’t he have a beautiful wife if he likes to? Have you any personal objection to offer, Monsieur Sulian?” Astounded by this abrupt style of address, so entirely foreign to gentle, kindly Madame Hortense, Sulian Quentin turned to her, his self-advertised eyes wide open. “D’you mean to tell me,” he impressively pronounced, “that you’d approve of this one for him?” Madame Hortense glanced meditatively in the direction of the float. “What have I got to approve or disapprove of in such a matter?” she said in a tone that went far toward answering his question. “Who are we, anyhow, to judge our masters?” Quentin gave a short laugh. “Who indeed? Who are we, indeed? We who have served them loyally for year after year this long, long time; served them, and loved them, too! Yes, loved them as if they were our own children: defunct Monsieur le Marquis, and Madame la Marquise, and our present Monsieur le Marquis and Mademoiselle ‘Gamin.’” “But what have they got to do with it?” asked Madame Hortense, beginning to feel utterly bewildered. Quentin went back a step and glared at her. “You’re a bat—a real genuine bat!” he said, contemptuously, “that’s all I’ve got to say. Daylight is nothing to you, so you might as well go on traveling in darkness all your days! Oh, have it your own way! Don’t think again; it would be idle; but still let me compliment you on your sharpness, ma bonne dame. Nothing to them!... Nothing to them! That’s a good one!” He raised his arms far above his head in impotent protestation to an unkind Heaven, and, turning raspingly on his heel, left her without further ceremony to digest his cynical advice. During Marguerite’s convent days Hortense Gervex had lived at Plenhöel as a very superior sort of housekeeper, looking, together with Quentin, after the Marquis’s interests, and keeping the château continually ready to receive him in the intervals of his trips to known and sometimes unknown portions of the globe. Years before, when widowed at twenty by the premature drowning of her husband, a fine young sailorman in command of a coasting steamer, she had come to Plenhöel as companion and reader to “Antinoüs’s” mother. She was now fifty-five, extremely well preserved, and very comely, with her thick blond hair, slightly frosted with silver above the temples, her wholesome face, and calm, blue-green eyes; and she literally adored the “Gamin.” After Quentin’s departure she remained for a few moments more, watching the bathers frolicking in the wavelets below. Marguerite and her father were swimming back now, and presently ran foul of a school of porpoises playing “follow-my-leader” with the utmost gaiety. Madame Hortense saw Marguerite dive suddenly and come up immediately behind a big, shining fellow, whom she playfully slapped on the side. Girl and fish disappeared together in a quick smother of foam; then the fair head, darkened by immersion to a golden brown, emerged again and followed in the wake of the paternal one. “Ah, my little mermaid!” murmured Madame Hortense. “Ma jolie petite sirène! Is what that scamp of Quentin hints at truly possible?” Her affectionate eyes followed the thought to the float, and their expression slowly hardened. Laurence was still standing before Basil in the same provocative attitude, still busy with her splendid hair, twisting and untwisting it, as though to wring it dry. The hidden sun had just made up his mind to peep through his veil of pearly vapors, and a primrose glow of delicious warmth suffused the two figures. In that revealing light Madame Hortense became suddenly aware of the science that had presided over the making of Miss Seton’s costume, in spite of all its maidenly whiteness. The young girl’s illuminated silhouette all at once seemed terribly shocking to her in its Venus-like beauty —(Vénus sortant de l’onde)—and with a short exclamation she too turned on her heel and, running up the steps to the esplanade, rapidly entered the château. Her brows were knit and the flame of indignation shone warlike in her eyes. The way to her own domain led past the suite of rooms occupied by Laurence, and with perfect deliberation she opened the door of the boudoir off the sleeping-apartment and entered. This suite, comprising a bed, dressing and bath room, besides the boudoir in question, was designated by the household as la volière; for the whole plan of decoration was based upon bird life. It had been a fantasy of a Marquise de Plenhöel, arriving as a bride there from the Court of Versailles, to evolve for her own personal use this 26 27 28 dainty retreat, so completely at variance with the grim fortress on the coast of Finisterre. She had been of a gay and witty spirit, had this pretty Marquise, and this was testified by the ingenuity with which these embellishments had been planned. From the exquisite lampas covering the walls, where flights of winged things seemed alive amid branches of pale brocaded roses and apple-blossoms, from the curtains and portières of like material, the beautifully medallioned and painted ceilings, the pink-marble fireplaces and faintly gilded...