Читать книгу Moonglade - Marguerite Cunliffe-Owen - Страница 4

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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.

“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!”

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:

“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.

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 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.