Читать книгу Moonglade - Marguerite Cunliffe-Owen - Страница 7

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Fate plays no honest game, but when

You glance aside or back

She palms the discard slyly, then

Redeals it with the pack.

“Papa,” the “Gamin” said, “I wish we would not go to Paris this winter.”

She was driving “Antinoüs” home from Châstelcoûrt, the home of Comte René of that ilk, “Grand Louvetier de Bretagne,” and she spoke lightly, all her attention being presumably devoted to the careful guiding of her pet trotters, “Scylla” and “Charybdis”—quite a job in itself, being given the tempers of the beasts in question.

“Not go to Paris?” “Antinoüs” asked in surprise. “Not appear during your first season before what is left of our world? Why, ‘Gamin,’ what can you be thinking of?”

“Oh, nothing in particular, excepting of what Monsieur de Châstelcoûrt told you about the wolves in the mountains. It has been years—you heard—since they have been so numerous, which is not unnatural,” she went on, jerking the storm-collar of her long fur-lined driving-coat up to her little ears. “Brr-rr-rr. It is cold ... for Brittany, that is!”

“Not down at Plenhöel!” “Antinoüs” argued. “Here in the foot-hills, all right; but there we have only rain and fog and squalls to our heart’s content, which does not make for gaiety.”

“Then you are not a real Breton, my father—dear!” Marguerite exclaimed, tickling with the bud the glossy hind quarters of “Charybdis.” “Not a bona-fide son of the Celtic Sea,” she resumed, restraining the antics of the deeply offended horse. “Oh, you needn’t tug at your mustache! I am stating a fact.”

“Antinoüs” turned and gave her a quick look, but all he could see was the half of her profile between her upturned collar and the revers of her fur toque drawn down nearly to her brows. Her eyes were steadily fixed upon “Charybdis’s” ears, this unregenerate miscreant being still somewhat resentfully inclined.

“Why don’t you want to go to Paris?” asked the youthful father. “It is surely not only the chance of some wolf-hunting?”

Marguerite replied at once: “The wolves naturally have a great deal to do with it, but even barring them, I should much rather remain here—at home.”

“Isn’t the Hôtel de Plenhöel home, too? After all, it has been ours for many, many generations, which should lend it some of the charm that the old place here has for us. Besides, all our relatives and most of our friends are already in Paris, or will be there soon. Among others your beloved Laurence, who, by the way, is, as a Russian Princess, certainly an astounding success. Poor old Basil! I’ll be glad to see him again, although I still can’t help being sure he was a fool to marry her.”

Of a truth “Charybdis” must have been in a sour mood that morning, for at this point he cut such a caper that “Antinoüs” interrupted his discourse to advise Marguerite to land her team in the ditch before worse happened, and have done with it! The sarcasm, however, apparently did not touch her, for she gave no sign of annoyance, and as soon as the horses had resumed a more dignified allure, he went on, quietly:

“They’ve been married nearly four months now, haven’t they? Sapristi! How time flies! A chance meeting ... a hot-headed Muscovite ... a level-headed Britisher, an infinitesimal courtship, a consent from the Czar, a splendid wedding-feast, a short trip to one’s vasty estates, and here is our interesting couple royally established in the Faubourg St.-Germain, and cradled by the town of revolutions, where they will doubtless dominate chic and fashion. Ah, there’s no denying it! Your Loris knows how to paddle her own canoe.”

“You never did like Laurence!” Marguerite observed.

“No, I never did; I don’t mind owning up to that; and the high-handed way in which she landed one of the greatest matrimonial prizes in Europe did not improve my admiration, either. A girl as competent as she proved herself to be before twenty promises for the future.”

Marguerite was turning her horses from the departmental road into one which opened upon it at right angles, and made a short cut to Plenhöel across the heath. This delicate operation might, therefore, have excused her silence, but her father did not think so.

“Oh, hang it all, ‘Gamin’!” he exclaimed. “You know what I mean, in spite of your sugar-candy airs! You won’t tell me that you were pleased with her—or him, either, for the matter of that; else why did you refuse to go to the marriage on the plea of ill-health? You pleading ill-health! Preposterous! However, I thought that perhaps by now you had forgiven and forgotten, and that you might be pleased to see them once more.”

Had her father looked at her now he would have noticed the wave of delicate color rising on what was visible of her face; but he was irritably drawing his cigarette-case from a recalcitrant inner pocket, and did not see.

“Forgive—forget? What in the world have I to forgive or forget, papa?” she asked, glancing at the somber dried heather rustling along both sides of the road into misty distances. “What indeed; since it was I who at Cousin Basil’s request first spoke to Laurence of his ‘intentions’ regarding her?”

“Antinoüs,” a cigarette in one hand and a vesta-box in the other, veered abruptly in his seat, and stared at his daughter with something akin to consternation in his eyes.

“You!” he exclaimed. “Why I never heard a word of all this! What an idea, to make a baby like you his messenger, instead of asking me!”

“Well, he thought you’d laugh at him,” Marguerite frankly replied.

“He did, eh? Jolly right he was, too, come to think of it. For that’s exactly what I would have done, I dare say. A man like him to throw himself away for the sake of a pretty minx’s bright eyes, and that, mind you, without knowing anything in particular about her.”

“He was right to mistrust you, you see,” she mocked.

“Yes, I see, but it isn’t too late. I promise you that I’ll do my laughing yet. Indeed, ‘Gamin,’ I hope you’re going to reconsider that verdict about not going to Paris. It would annoy me very much to miss the fun.”

For a minute Marguerite did not reply. Another brusque bend in the road lent her fresh reasons for not attending, but when she spoke it was in her usual tone of semi-banter.

“My dear papa!” she said. “If you are bent on amusement, amusement you must have! It is not for an old lady like myself to stand in the way of your giddy doings.”

“Chevalier,” “Antinoüs” interrupted, “you do not always observe the deep respect due to a parent, but I will not repel the hand you offer me in peace and amity. May these words be my guerdon! I was wondering whether you had some really serious reason for disliking to go. And here are our turrets pointing skyward over the pines, so kindly let your estimable steeds have their heads. I am as hungry as a bear. Aren’t you?”

“Very hungry,” she replied, with the enthusiasm of a sailor accepting a glass of water on a cold winter’s day. “By the way, when do you wish to leave Plenhöel?”

“As soon as you like ... or can. The first week of January I think would be a fairly good time. Of course Christmas and New-Year are better spent on our own land. In spite of what you say, I am almost as Breton in heart and soul as you are yourself, mon Chevalier—take care of that stone near the clump of reeds yonder, ‘Scylla’ seems determined to swallow it en passant.”

“Leurs Altesses Sérénissimes le Prince et la Princesse Palitzin!”

The gigantic footman sent these distinguished appellations down the room in the perfectly intoned accents of a valet de grande maison, without the slightest striving after bombastic effect, and Marguerite quietly rose from the place before the fire where she was entertaining some guests. It was the first reception given by the Plenhöels since their arrival in Paris, and the salons were crowded.

Slim and graceful in her simple white gauze dress, that fell about her like fluent frost, the young mistress of the house wore no jewels, a little branch of white heather alone defining the heart-shaped opening of the corsage. With a charming smile she advanced to meet the strikingly handsome couple that was focusing all eyes in this choice assemblage, and her voice was coolly gracious as she bade them welcome.

Laurence was even more beautiful—if that were possible—than she had been before her marriage. Her lithe shape seemed taller, and in her trailing gown of almond-green velvet, bordered with a fine rouleau of ermine, she had something decidedly queenly.

She bent as though to embrace her cousin by marriage, but, though she could not have told how, found herself merely shaking hands with that erstwhile “dearest of all friends,” who immediately turned to Basil, uttering a commonplace compliment of congratulation.

He was beaming with happiness, and when “Antinoüs,” who had followed his daughter, added his felicitations to hers, he actually grew red with pleasure.

“Yes!” he said, exultantly, letting his wife and Marguerite pass on, and detaining “Antinoüs” by the arm. “Yes, I am a lucky dog! Look at her! Isn’t she a marvel? Wasn’t I right when I called her that long ago—and exquisite, my dear fellow, in temper, in manner—oh, in everything!”

Never had the Marquis de Plenhöel heard his kinsman express himself with so much warmth or at such length. Interested by this transformation, he glanced at the serpentine folds of Laurence’s long train, coiling and uncoiling behind her as she walked beside Marguerite, and then back at the once taciturn Basil. He had always thought his cousin a trifle too unemotional, and an amused smile showed under his blond mustache.

“How ill we judge women at first sight!” he remarked, lightly. “D’you remember your first view of Laurence in that gorgeous storm at Plenhöel? Who then would have imagined—”

“Speak for yourself, Régis,” Basil countered, hastily. “You were the one who found fault. I fell in love with her at first sight, I tell you. As to you, permit me to suggest that you were not using your habitual keenness of vision that morning.”

“Perhaps! Perhaps! I always said, though, that she was a beauty, you remember, and now I’ll improve upon that. Marriage decidedly agrees with her, and she has become absolutely superb.”

Once more Basil flushed with delight, for his cousin’s appreciation was not one to be disdained. “Isn’t she?” he said, with almost boyish pride. “But”—with a look of contrition and apology so sudden that it was almost ludicrous—“tell me, Régis, has the ‘Gamin’ really been ill?”

“Why?” questioned Plenhöel, utterly forgetting the excuse made for her non-appearance at the wedding, and instantly alarmed. “Don’t you think she looks well?” All thought of banter had suddenly left him, and he involuntarily took a step toward the place where Marguerite was attending to her duties, presenting one guest after another to Laurence, and that with amazing ease for a girl not yet seventeen.

“She looks adorable, as usual,” Basil said, slowly. “That goes without saying; but I don’t know, she seems elongated somehow ... not thinner ... not taller, either; just a trifle more ethereal; more like a dream.” He paused and fixed his deep eyes on his little comrade—as he had used to style her. “I left a sheaf of sun-rays, and find one made of moonbeams—no, a moonglade—that’s the word—yes, that’s the exact impression she gives now—a quiet, restful, lovely moonglade.”

“You’re getting positively lyrical,” “Antinoüs” retorted, impatiently. “A moonglade, indeed! Why, she’s as full of life as a two-year-old, and as jolly as a sandpiper. Idiot!” he was thinking to himself. “He’s so absorbed by his new toy that he can’t see straight any longer. Decidedly a man of one idea at a time!” And he invited his cousin to come and have a cigar in the smoking-room, with indifferently concealed irritation.

Meanwhile Laurence was enjoying to the full the success which she had encountered wherever she had gone since her marriage. From beneath her long, curving lashes she eagerly watched the effect she was producing, and her rather too small ears—a sure sign of selfishness—adorned with priceless pearls, were quick to catch the compliments upon her beauty that Marguerite was receiving.

“Délicieuse! Ravissante! Mais, elle est jolie comme un amour, votre cousine!” It was intensely enjoyable, this long-awaited manna bedewing après-coup the desert of her past life, so bitter and so humiliating when this ambitious woman looked back at it, now that she had arrived! No more pronunciamientos from Aunt Elizabeth, no more charity from splenetic Uncle Bob—ever grumpy when not aboard his beloved yacht. No! Laurence was her own mistress now, with power and wealth unspeakable at her command. She was beautiful; she was not quite twenty; at her feet knelt a man no less her lover because she was his by the imperial word of church and state—indeed, rather more so—being given Basil’s peculiarly chivalrous nature, his blind passion for her. She had reached to-night the very apogee of all her earthly desires, and therefore that was naturally the moment for her to feel the blood crowd back upon her heart as a voice not heard for seeming ages spoke suddenly at her shoulder.

“Permit me, madame, to recall myself to your memory.” The words were irreproachable, so was the attitude of the tall, good-looking soldier bowing low before her, but she could willingly have annihilated him then and there.

“Neville!” she cried, before recovering her presence of mind. “Captain Moray! How—how are you here?”

“As naturally as you are yourself—madame. I, too, have the honor of being counted a friend in this hospitable house. Moreover, I have just been appointed Military Attaché to the British Embassy here.”

She winced. Good Heavens! What could they mean in England by sending this young man, of all people in the world, to Paris, where she, the Princess Palitzin, intended to make her home for several months out of every year!

“Indeed!” she said, with passably assumed indifference. “I congratulate you.”

“Thank you! I am rather young for the post, of course, but my uncle....”

“It is always agreeable to have friends at Court,” she retorted, and felt horribly vexed at the difficulty she experienced in giving vent to this platitude. She had much to learn, had this Princess out of a fairy-tale—not hardened as yet to the world’s surprises, not controlled enough, alas! to dissemble convincingly the wild agitation his sudden appearance caused her.

Her Neville! The boy she had loved—as far, at least, as she was capable of loving. Her restless eyes scanned the flower-filled enfilade of salons, and dwelt for an instant upon her husband, who, with “Antinoüs” in tow, was returning from the smoking-room. Basil’s personality was of those that impose themselves upon any milieu. Patrician to his finger-tips, elegant—in the delicate French sense of this word so misused by foreigners—a full head taller than most of the men there, he was a Prince to be proud of, a Prince Charming—as Marguerite had once called him—in every possible respect. Why then did she feel her throat contract at the realization that she was, after all was said and done, his irrevocably, and that Neville Moray was henceforth but a figment of the days that had gone?

Basil certainly dwarfed his neighbors; she could not help admitting it to herself; and yet the English guardsman was good to look at, too, and had, moreover, an advantage over him to-night—he was in uniform, the soirée being a semi-official affair—and to a woman a uniform always appeals, especially when worn by men as manly as Moray. To Laurence, so enamoured of pomp and show, it appealed doubly.

Fortunately for her, Marguerite came toward her at that moment. “Laurence,” she said, “the Dowager would like to know you.”

“The Dowager?” Laurence said, slowly, her lips still trembling a little.

“The old Duchesse de Montemare,” the “Gamin” explained. “You know she is the arbiter par excellence of our coterie. Will you come and be presented?” Then catching sight of the Captain, she turned to him with a smile of welcome.

“Good evening, Captain Moray. I had not seen you enter.”

“I have been trying for ten minutes to approach you, mademoiselle, but you were quite unapproachable,” he explained, bending low before her. “I have, however, been happy enough to pay my respects to your father.”

“Ah! Very well. Platnowsky is going to play for us presently. I hope you’ll enjoy it. He has a positive genius for entrancing an audience, irrespective of nationality, creed, taste, or personal inclinations.”

“Hm—he is not the only one,” Neville said, softly, his golden-brown eyes lingering admiringly upon the exquisite contour of Marguerite’s face and form. “Will you sing for us to-night, mademoiselle?”

“I! You are not thinking of what you say, Capitaine. I! Sing after Platnowsky’s wonderful playing, and Señora Vizazona’s folk-songs in A minor!” But an impatient touch on the arm made Marguerite turn and gaze at Laurence, who, with heightened color and a toss of the head that made the diamonds in her tiara sparkle furiously, was attempting to draw her away.

“I am waiting!” she said, shortly.

“I almost waited is how Louis-Quatorze put it!” rejoined Marguerite. “This sort of thing was managed better then.” And with a nod to Captain Moray she preceded Laurence across the room.

“What an exquisite little creature!” mused Moray, as he watched her disappearing into the music-room. He drew a deep breath and made his way unobtrusively to a near-by embrasure, where the window-curtains hid him from sight. His disappointment in Laurence had been keen just now. A few words sent him before her marriage had acquainted him with as much of the facts as she cared to reveal. He saw now before his eyes the lavender paper she always used, and the downward-slanting lines of violet ink closing with this characteristic sentence: “Beggars are no choosers. They do what they must. Pity me!”

From the shadowy corner where he stood, the new Military Attaché surveyed the brilliantly lighted salons with meditative eyes. He fell to wondering why she had written that hypocrite “Pity me!” Basil, still chatting with Régis de Plenhöel, was only a few feet away, and the watcher had to confess to himself that this handsome aristocrat—every inch a man—with the stars of some great Orders on his coat, his winning smile and high-bred bearing, was not to be classed with those whom a woman is very sorry to have married. Moreover, Laurence had been looking not only happy, but singularly triumphant, before his own appearance within her range of vision. Her exultant attitude, her sumptuous toilette, her regal jewels, did not frame somehow with the picture one makes oneself of a poor heartbroken creature—vierge et martyr—forced into a distasteful union; and for the first time his love and loyalty for her wavered.

Presently she came back toward the sofa where Basil and “Antinoüs” were established. She was leaning on the arm of an Ambassador, extremely young-looking for so weighty a distinction, who was obviously delighted with his present rôle as cavalière-servente to the most-looked-at woman in the room. Laurence, her pretty color heightened, her eyes sparkling with animation, was responding to his graceful compliments in faultless Italian, “flying her hands” as if really to the manner born. The two men on the sofa had risen, and the little group was now so close to Neville that he could hear every word distinctly. And suddenly through the archway of the music-room he saw Marguerite de Plenhöel standing by the concert piano, where Platnowsky had just installed himself, and half unconsciously he took a step in that direction, putting aside the curtain, and standing for a second irresolute and half revealed.

Laurence’s eyes, meeting his, changed to extreme harshness, and in a voice new to her audience—especially to Basil—she asked him to have their carriage called.

“Not before hearing Platnowsky!” remonstrated “Antinoüs.” “He is the nail of the evening—and looks it,” he added, indicating the interminable maestro, thin almost to emaciation, and topped by an exuberant mane of dull potato-colored hair, weeping-willowing across his melancholy brow. But Laurence was not attuned to humorous remarks just now, and with an impatient gesture she reiterated what might easily have been mistaken for a command, and encountered Basil’s glance of astonishment with a frown.

“She is afraid of me,” Neville thought, as with a bow he passed on toward the music-room. “Afraid of me! Can it be possible? What does she take me for?” He felt very unhappy, almost ashamed, and especially puzzled. What did it all mean? Could this haughty, overbearing woman be the same who in the grace of all her girlish beauty had spoken so tenderly to him on the moonlit lawns of Seton Park less than a year ago? He glanced helplessly around. Marguerite’s white silhouette detached itself against the lemon-wood paneling of the great salle-de-concert, and toward Marguerite he went instinctively, like all those who needed comfort, or followed the search of the ideal.