Читать книгу Moonglade - Marguerite Cunliffe-Owen - Страница 8

Table of Contents

Persuade him—he is but a man—

When you have swung the lash above,

Annoyed and hurt him all you can,

That it was done for love.

In the brougham taking them home at the stately speed of their Orloffs, neither Basil nor Laurence spoke. The distance was short, and in a few minutes the “Porte s’il vous plâit” of their imposing coachman resounded before the escutcheoned portals. The equipage turned into a closed court, stopped beneath the glass marquise, and the footman jumped to the carriage door at the precise moment that a Suisse of heroic proportions and dazzling baldric gave notice of their coming, by three short strokes of his halberd on the tessellated floor of the entrance.

Basil assisted his wife up the marble steps and, gently retaining her hand in his own, crossed the hall and ascended the great staircase with her. A double hedge of white lilac and narcissus lined the porphyry balustrade on either side, and somehow or other Laurence felt suddenly as if their heady perfume made her dizzy. She foresaw some sort of explanation between Basil and herself; she knew that her tone and manner had been unjustifiable, and false pride rose in her at the thought of being even ever so gently called to account.

Nevertheless, she let him accompany her to her own apartments without a word, and it was only when the door of the salon d’entrée had shut behind them that she at last opened her mouth.

“It was abominably warm at the Hôtel Plenhöel,” she said, disengaging her hand and walking ahead of him into the adjoining boudoir, where she sat herself down in closest possible proximity to the brightly burning pine-cone fire.

Basil did not comment upon this curious inconsequence, but, bending, he deftly unfastened the clasp of her long blue-fox cloak, and let it fall in a heap on the back of her arm-chair. In spite of herself Laurence was ill at ease. She gave a little laugh, and began to unbutton her left glove.

“They are so old-fashioned, the Plenhöels,” she said, without looking up. “One really thinks one is attending a reception at Versailles under Louis-Seize. Did you see the way that Duchesse de Montemare wears her hair? I really believe it must be rolled upon a cushion, like our great-grandmothers’, and I’d swear it was powdered!”

Basil, leaning against the tall chimneypiece, was looking straight into the dancing pink flames.

“She is the greatest lady in France,” he replied, “and as to the old-fashionedness of the Hôtel de Plenhöel, a noisily modern reception would clash with those antique ceilings and dignified souvenirs d’autrefois.”

“Oh, I am not finding fault!” she interposed, somewhat hurriedly. Then, looking up into her husband’s face, she saw there something that, oddly enough, made her suddenly determined to put him in the wrong. She was not going to let him reprove her, even tacitly—not she, indeed!

“Of course,” she said, arrogantly, “everything at the Plenhöels’ is bound to be perfection—at least in your eyes. Fortunately for me I am not as gullible as you!”

Basil turned a pair of sincerely astonished eyes upon her. For the second time in an hour he felt as a harmless traveler feels when, without warning, he faces a gun-barrel pointing at him from behind a bush. What could be the matter with his sweet little wife? he asked himself. Perhaps she was ill! He had been annoyed and a trifle irritated, but at this thought he experienced a complete revulsion of feeling, and quickly came across to her.

“What is the matter, Laury?” he asked, tenderly. “Are you tired, my darling? You do not seem quite yourself to-night.”

With a petulant gesture she turned away from him, tightening her hands upon the fan she still held. There was a tiny rending sound, and the delicate tortoise-shell sticks fell apart in her lap.

“Why, Laurence!” Basil exclaimed, and, stooping, he lifted her in his arms, sat down in her place, and, holding her like a baby, drew her pretty head to his shoulder. “My dear child!” he said, affectionately. “You are ill, and it is all my fault. I should not have allowed you to keep such late hours. Since we have been in Paris you have been constantly on the go. No wonder you feel done up.”

The broken fan had slipped noiselessly into the folds of Laurence’s train, and she struggled half up, as if to recover it; but he held her fast, and with a shiver of inexpressible rage she suddenly burst into tears.

Basil was nonplussed, but for a moment he continued to stroke her hair in silence. He was not an expert in the queer humors of women, like his cousin Plenhöel, but from his great strength he looked upon them one and all as children, capricious, easily moved to shallow depths of emotion, a little irrational, and always in need of tenderness, of protection, and of caresses. Therefore he bore himself wholly in accordance with this belief during this first difficult moment of their already prolonged honeymoon. She was unstrung, pettish, a little unreasonable, yes! but adorable as always. All she wanted was to be soothed, petted. He did not even mind the sharp points of her tiara, that at every nervous sob came unpleasantly into contact with his chin and cheek. Let her cry herself out, poor dear; that was the best thing for her to do; and, of course, after the storm sunshine would follow! Every married man knows that! He did not question the sorrowfulness of those sobs; they were convincing enough to him.

“I have gone too far; I have offended him!” the silly woman—interpreting his silence wrongly—was thinking meanwhile, her face hidden on his breast. “What shall I do—how explain?” For in spite of herself she was more than a little afraid of him now. Gradually, scientifically, so to speak, she began to temper the pathetic signs of her distress; and at length she ceased altogether to cry, snuggling closer and closer to him, however, as a tired child does with its nurse after some great and exhausting emotion.

“Better now, sweetheart?” Basil gently inquired. “Look up a bit, and let us dry those naughty eyes. I don’t want my beautiful wife to be disfigured by tears.”

He suited the action to the words, raised her head as if it had been made of egg-shell china with one big, brown hand, and, possessing himself of the absurd morsel of lace she called her handkerchief, tenderly wiped very genuine tears of anger from her long eyelashes. Then he sat her up straight on his knee like a doll, and asked, smiling imperturbably:

“Tell me now, oh, Un-Serene Highness, what causes all this big sorrow.”

The manner in which she lowered her eyes and pouted partook of nothing less than genius. Her white breast was still rising and falling charmingly in its frame of velvet and ermine, making the big octagonal diamonds hanging from her necklace throb with prismatic light, and altogether she was irresistible in her half-contrite, half-resentful mood.

“You treat me like ... like a baby,” she murmured, pettishly. “And yet I am your wife, and I have my rights, haven’t I?”

“Most decidedly!” he agreed, repressing a smile with difficulty. What was coming now!

“Well, then,” she went on, twisting the little chain of decorations in his buttonhole between her slim fingers, “why should I not feel hurt when you show me, so very rudely, that I am not first in your thoughts?”

Basil, greatly amused, laughed outright. “So, so!” he said, gaily. “You have discovered all by your own wee self that you are not first in my thoughts! What a clever little woman it is, to be sure! Especially under present circumstances. You should be mightily proud of such a painstaking and praiseworthy achievement.”

“You can laugh!” she cried, leaping from his knee and confronting him, her cheeks flaming with real indignation. “You can laugh as much as you please, but I’m not laughing ... not laughing at all, I assure you ... nor would you if you knew how you have offended and affronted me.”

“Is this serious?” Basil asked, getting to his feet after one painfully astonished glance at her. “A joke must not be carried too far, you know, my dear.”

Laurence blushed crimson. She was as yet a novice at such a game, and her lord and master looked extraordinarily imposing, towering there in that bijou room, walled and ceiled with white plush, like an écrin made to hold a pearl. For the first time she saw new possibilities in him, and a cold shudder ran down her back. Was she to resort again to tears, she quickly reflected, or was it wiser to fight the matter out, and obtain the mastery, now and at once?

“Are you serious?” he repeated, sternly enough now; and she winced.

“Quite serious,” she murmured, trying to steady the trembling of her lips. “It is sickening to see you lost in admiration before your cousin and everything your cousin does.”

“Régis? In admiration before Régis?” he queried.

“You know very well I don’t mean Régis—I mean Marguerite—your precious ‘Gamin.’ The ‘Chevalier Gamin,’ as her foolish father and you call her.”

Basil stepped nearer to her, put the tips of his fingers on her shoulders, and turned her face to the full glow of the wax lights burning in tall candelabras near by.

“What do you mean, Laurence?” he said, quietly. “Is it that you are jealous of Marguerite de Plenhöel?”

“Yes,” she admitted, attempting to shake him off, but without avail, for although he did not exert the least pressure, she knew that she could not rid herself of those well-controlled fingers which nevertheless weighed so little that she scarcely felt their touch.

“You don’t know me yet! I am jealous by temperament; jealous, of course, especially of you; of every word you speak to another, of every look, of every gesture! I can’t help it; I am built that way, I suppose.” She raised her large, resentful eyes to him so suddenly that he let go his delicate hold and remained gazing at her in helpless wonderment. Did she mean what she said? It was difficult to doubt that she was in earnest, but so ridiculous was the charge she made that his face grew grim.

“If this is the truth,” he said, slowly, “I am extremely sorry for it. Jealousy not only denotes an entire lack of confidence and trust in oneself and another, but an inordinate amount of vanity.”

“I dare say,” she interrupted, sulkily, backing away from him. “But you cannot change me. I am as I am.”

“Look here, Laurence,” he said, gravely. “Assured of my love as you are, you cannot be really jealous. Surely I have given you no reason, be it ever so slight, for feelings that are so unworthy of you?”

Her brows met in one straight line above a pair of eyes in which there appeared for a second a sparkle of hatred.

“Well, then, if you love and adore me as you say you do, you might show me more consideration. To begin with, I will not tolerate your attentions to stupid ingénues, nor hear you praise ‘greatest ladies’—as you call them—to my face. I know you have made a sacrifice in marrying me, since I brought you nothing but myself; but as you have done so, I suppose you’ll have to abide by your bargain, such as it is.”

Leaning against a table, both hands grasping its edge behind her, she was absolutely glaring at him, courting a quarrel with all her might, and a dreary sensation of pain and bewilderment overcame him.

“So!” he said at length, in a voice that shook a little. “You are offended because to-night I spoke to a little girl of my family—a child I have known since she was born—and ventured to praise a woman worthy of all reverence and old enough to be your great-grandmother! Well, this being the case, my dear Laurence, I can only ask you what you wish me to do in the future to please you. Remember that I love you with all my heart and soul, and that I am an honest man determined to make you happy at all costs. Now speak, please.”

She, however, did not do so. As a matter of fact, she had by now worked herself into such a fury that she no longer quite knew what she was doing. She vaguely felt that she was acting like a fool. Yet she could not master an intense desire to hurt him, if she could only do so.

“Please, Laurence,” he reiterated, looking miserably across at her, “do not mar our happiness by so uncalled-for a scene! If you but knew how you hurt me—what you are to me—you would not act like this!”

But she kept silent still, and, enervated beyond measure, he reached her in one stride, snatched her up in his arms, and crushed her passionately to him. There was a moisture in his eyes that he did not care to let her see.

“Laury, my little Laury!” he murmured, shakily. “What is the matter with you to-night? Be honest with me at least, and tell me the real truth, instead of keeping me guessing like this!”

She swayed limply in his arms, unresistingly, as utterly irresponsive as a cushion of down, her head drooping, her whole body relaxed; and he bent quickly, thinking that she had fainted. But, no, her eyes were wide open, her face set in extravagant obstinacy; and the feeling of utter helplessness which strong men well know who have been confronted by the Ewig-Weibliche when at its worst wrung his soul. What could one do against this passive force of a being so delicate and frail that one could crush it between two fingers almost, and yet did not dare even to scold for what might, after all, be the mere childishness of a spoiled beauty?

This plea of sudden jealousy on Laurence’s part was so absurd, so lacking in all foundation, that he really did not know what to think. Was it a clumsy excuse, perhaps, to conceal a fit of ... of temper? Surely his Laurence, his beloved Laurence, so angelic until now, could not possibly have a temper to conceal! Concealment and her frank little self should not even be mentioned in the same breath. These reflections only lasted a few seconds, but during that short time Laurence, satisfied by the evident success of her armed reconnaissance, had cast about for some means of escape from the impasse in which she had so stupidly placed herself, thanks to that upsetting encounter with Neville Moray, and had come to a decision.

In another moment she straightened up, dabbed her now perfectly dry eyes pathetically with her handkerchief, and, gliding from Basil’s grasp, began to look contrite.

“I’m sorry to have been so bad!” she murmured, piteously. “I don’t know what possessed me ... for, really, I don’t have those naughty fits often!”

Instantly Basil cast behind him all that had taken place. She was a child, he told himself. Nothing but an impulsive, as yet immature creature, charming and wayward, whom he loved with a great love. What mattered a little cloud in a sky hitherto so pure? Surely he had been in the wrong to take the affair so seriously. He would have done much better to laugh it away, and thus did he begin to laugh and pet her, a change of front which she submitted to with seraphic patience, especially as he promised her—to commemorate their first little dispute—a wonderful bracelet of uncut sapphires she had admired that very morning in the rue de la Paix. What will you? Children must have toys and bonbons to console them when they cry.

A little later, when he had rung for her women, Basil went to his study. It was dark, save for the fire-glow, and he did not trouble to turn on the lights, but stood a long time at a window overlooking the garden behind the house. It had been freezing very hard for Paris—this particular winter being of unusual severity. Every tree, every branch, gleamed in crystal purity. The lawn, which earlier had been powdered with snow, glittered like a carpet of diamonds, and the hundred ramifications of a leafless aristolochia on the end wall made a twinkling lace-like tracery, interspersed here and there with broad frost-roses and ice-flowers against the dark stone. Above this fairy spot the sky was sown with stars, only a little paled by the cold radiance of the full moon.

A growing longing for his own land gradually stole over Basil as he stood there motionless. He drew a deep breath of regret as he called to mind the enchanting nights on the Neva; the music of sleds, the silky slide of sleigh runners, the fitful waves of the Northern Aurora rising and falling like a softly moving curtain behind the towers and domes of snow-hushed St. Petersburg.

Until then he had not paused to think about the change that had come over his life. It had all been done so swiftly. Dazzled by passion, he had never paused to reflect that he was binding himself to a being of another race, another creed, another world, so to speak, and that such a step might bring about unforeseen and very grave difficulties. She had been so docile, so very anxious to please him during their brief engagement. Without a murmur she had abandoned the old faith of her people, for Greek Catholicism. She had accepted—in theory, at least—with touching self-forgetfulness, the heavy duties devolving upon the consort of a great territorial lord responsible for the welfare of the hundreds and hundreds of retainers and dependents upon his large estates, in villages and small towns lost in the immensity of the steppes, the depths of the boundless forests; and she had seemed to fully understand the heavy cares resulting from immense wealth, when that wealth is not looked upon as a mere personal benefit, but as a terrible responsibility for which account must some day be rendered to One watchful of His creatures and their deeds. Deep below the Russian earth labored miners whose task it was to bring to the surface gold and platinum, gems and malachite and lapis lazuli to fill the Palitzin coffers. Vast reaches of field and furrow, of forest and vineyard, were worked by erstwhile serfs of that princely house, in order to fulfil the same purpose. Thousands of horses and cattle were tended upon the plains by troops of herdsmen wearing the emblazoned brassard of Basil-Vassilièvitch Palitzin—the present master of half a province or so—and, strange to say, none were malcontents; for their lord treated them well, and had made himself well-beloved during the years of his stewardship. And now what of the Princess who was to rule at his side? The question was late in coming to his mind. Well-born, well-bred, well-educated, she assuredly was. Why should she not be the absolute partner of his thoughts, his ideals, his plans—and they were many? But would she be that? He passed his hand slowly across his forehead, and relapsed into contemplation of the miniature Muscovy gleaming beneath the moon at his feet and islanded amid the great capital of France.

Paris with its round of gaieties, its music and laughter, and republican irresponsibility! Paris, the paradise of strangers from all parts of the globe; Paris, that from a thorough Anglomaniac had changed with startling rapidity into an Americo-lunatic; Paris, who threw wide her portals to every moneyed invader that chose to come her way, and gave him in return the tinsel-glitter and costly viciousness prepared for his or her reception, guarding jealously out of sight whatever remained truly French and truly decent within her walls, so that none could truthfully speak well of that famous modern Babylon. Basil smiled a little bitterly as his thoughts ran on thus. London, Berlin, New York—he knew them well—were wiser far than Paris. They did not flaunt their evil in the face of visitors, not they! They hid it scrupulously under the thick mantles of variegated religions, suited to every taste and class. Human failings, frailties, and worse than frailties, were shut in hidden places there, guarded by solemn-faced warders who denied their very existence and profited by their remarkable vivacity. And Petersburg—once again Basil’s mind flew back to his own dear capital city, where failings and virtues run neck to neck, and elbow to elbow, in supreme carelessness of consequences, but at any rate without either effrontery or hypocrisy—just like Vienna, only more so!

Laurence loved Paris. It was she who had hinted, in her pretty girlish way, at a speedy installation there, where she knew so many people—friends of her uncle and aunt, acquaintances made during her stay at Seton Park, Wiltshire, and Seton House, Belgravia; her summer cruises on the Phyllis; her short sojourns with Uncle Bob and Aunt Elizabeth at seaside or mountain resorts. Before these she ardently desired to appear in her new Glanz und Pracht, these who had seen her in the character of a dependent—and what a bounty that had been! But what did Basil know about these little secret plans? What indeed! He had found it quite natural for a young girl, full of life and of the joy of life, to want to spend her first married winter in the city of worldly pleasure par excellence. At that moment, however, he began to question the wisdom of his having so readily assented to her wishes. He felt that it might have been better for him to have done otherwise, to have begun by making her thoroughly acquainted with her adopted land, her adopted nationality, her new hereditary dignities and duties. Yes, the welfare of his own people was dear indeed to him, and a flying trip to his chief estate, where she had been greeted and fêted like a young queen, served but little to initiate her to what his life among them, as their suzerain, had really been.

With a puzzled frown he leaned his head against the cold glass. “We belong,” he mused, “to utterly discrepant generations. I am so irredeemably slow and old-fashioned; she is so intensely modern!” He gave his shoulders a shake of dissatisfaction at these shortcomings of his. Then he began to pace moodily back and forth before the huge fireplace. “Oh yes,” he reflected, sadly, “I suppose I will always be saying and doing things she will instinctively dislike and resent, and if she really is of a jealous disposition—” He stopped, pulled fiercely at his mustache, and resumed his pacings and his futile cogitations until his brain grew tired.

Truly this night’s unfortunate events had suddenly disclosed to him an altogether undreamed-of horizon line, and it was difficult to see what lay concealed beyond it. Assuredly Laurence, had she but known it, would have done better to put her hand in the fire, than to shake even by the lightest possible touch the splendid monument of love and trust Basil had built up for her with so great a joy and so great a faith.

Weary, both morally and physically, he at last went back and gazed out into the garden again. Strangely enough, the image of the “Gamin,” in her diaphanous white dress, with her sparkling blond hair aureoling her little head, suddenly appeared before him with startling reality. Her blue eyes seemed to gaze deep into his, and somehow she was no longer the playmate of other days, the merry child who had run and danced with the wind along the terrace at Plenhöel, who had struggled with the window-fastenings, and climbed to the box of the drag bringing Laurence that fateful morning, but a being wholly different; a sorrowing woman developed to her uttermost possibilities in a few hours, a woman possessed of the wisdom of all the ages, a friend in all the potency of the word—a counselor—more, even more than that—some one to look up to and gain endurance and patience from. Involuntarily he drew closer to frosted pane, and, looking out upon the softly gleaming moonshine by which he had symbolized her that evening, it seemed to him that her spirit was dowering the night with all its enshrined loveliness and shrouded mystery. Well! There would never again be the same ease and comradeship between them as before Laurence had committed the folly of naming her as a rival; but did this foolish act break the sweetness of the past, or perchance lend a new enchantment to the power of a personality Basil had not been clearly conscious of until this moment? He drew away from the window, determined to cut short such a train of thought now and for all time. He must be thoroughly out of sorts himself, he argued, and Laurence had been silly to speak as she had done—not quite as distinguished in manner as he had fancied her to be! The women of his class, of course, were perfectly capable of fierce jealousies, yet they were bred and born to keep such feelings to themselves. It was part of their métier as great ladies. Still, his wife was now one of them; she would be taught by example the unspoken etiquette of their decorous world. Besides, he was not the sort to give her cause for jealousy; also he would, as far as he was able, avoid meeting Marguerite. Yes! Yes! Everything would turn out all right—and in the morning—the morning— He glanced at his watch by the last leaping flames of the crumbled logs—surely it must have stopped—or else hurried on without rhyme or reason, for it pointed at six o’clock. Guiltily he stole back to the window and stared at the garden below. All was so very still there—the sapphire-and-silver winter night as yet undisturbed—but as he bent closer he saw that ever so cold and faint a pallor was stealthily clouding its depth, its serenity, and with a quick, impatient sigh he sought his own room.