MADAME MARGOT
MADAME MARGOT
_A Grotesque Legend
of Old Charleston_
BY
JOHN BENNETT
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
THE CENTURY CO.
1921
Copyright, 1921, by
JOHN BENNETT
Printed in U. S. A.
TO
... You, and you, and you,
... who have gone greatly here
In friendship, making some delight, some true
Song in the dark, some story against fear.
... Lovers yet shall tell the nightingale
Sometimes a song that we of old time made,
And gossips gathered at the twilight ale
Shall say, “Those two were friends,” or “Unafraid
Of bitter thoughts were those because they loved
Better than most.”
... There in the midst of all those words shall be
Our names, our ghosts, our immortality.
--JOHN DRINKWATER.
_The above is reprinted by permission of the publishers._
MADAME MARGOT
MADAME MARGOT
In an age so glorious, so rich and fine, and so be-starred with
splendor that one almost forgets the bottomless abyss into which it
plunged at last, there lived a woman in Charleston of whom a very odd
story is told.
The languid, lovely, tired old town was then a city brave and gay, with
Mediterranean manners and Caribbean ways.
The perfume of ten thousand flowers drifted upon the winds, which came
and went over a thousand gardens, ebbing and flowing like the tide.
Clouds of snowy gold and roses rolled across the sky, like the vast
rotundas of a city builded of colored ivory. Slowly rising overhead, in
windy and ethereal masses, they stood, carvings of pale porphyry upon a
turquoise wall. The earth was transfigured with beauty.
It was a golden age, when all things were fair; nothing had grown
old; even the tragic and the terrible were comely then. Wonder lay
on everything. Merely to exist was to be happy. It was a world of
unextinguished youth; life was brimful to the lips with delight.
In the gardens rare flowers bloomed, and rare fruits
ripened,--pomegranates, oranges, medlars, figs, jujubes, and the purple
Indian peach; and among the flowers, like winged flames, small and
bright, sped the harlequins, the painted nonpareils, delicately beating
the soft wind with their pied wings; while in the pomegranate-tree,
among the dull bronze fruit, the mocking-bird sang his love and
rapture. Through the green-hedged close, women, beautiful and stately,
paced the shade, with men beside them, slender and straight, passionate
and haughty, with fierce, bright eyes as ardent as the goshawk’s and
as bold; and lovely girls, with dark hair and skins of alabaster, as
graceful and as timid as fawns, and with fawn’s eyes, slipped among the
green leaves like flowers alive.
Those were charmed days indeed. The town has changed since then. The
world seems to have grown weary and gray, and the hearts of men bitter.
The young were younger then; the old not so sorry for everything as
they have been since. Then, somehow, it seemed to be always summer
morning, morning before the sun had burned the world to a dun crisp
with his meridian heat, scorching bitter and blinding bright; before
the advent of gasping afternoon with its languid leafage and evaporated
sap. The calendar seemed to have paused among the daffodils, between
the jessamine and the June, in that paradise of the year. The delicate
and virginal camellia bloomed then, untarnished by rough wind or rain;
its petals were sweet, which since then have grown so bitter. The
elm-trees did not then bloom thrice for one green coat. And no one ever
paused to think that no good and lovely thing exists on earth without
its corresponding shadow.
The world was full of the sound of sweet, flute-like voices of young
women calling after their lovers; and the singing of small birds made
slender, pleasant melodies among the cool myrtles. Life was simpler;
perhaps more child-like though more passionate. Two who loved each
other might walk together, hand in hand, along the path, singing their
happiness, without reproach, save, perchance, from some lugubrious,
gray-bearded presbyter mourning, among mossy tombstones, life’s
evanescence.
And happy youth was without a fault, unless it were a trivial one,
some _péché mignon_, a guileless, guiltless, girlish sin, like kissing
oneself in the looking-glass for lack of another lover.
In all the town there were none so pretty, none so graceful or so
sweet, as the golden girls of San Domingo. They flowed along the
windy streets, their turbans nodding, like a stream of tulips. They
fluttered down the byways in their white muslin dresses like bevies of
butterflies. The loveliness of their slender bodies and the beauty of
their youthful faces were far beyond all dull description; they were
a bed of tiger-lilies in the sun. The earth loved the tread of their
flying feet, which seemed to be forever dancing pastourelles; and the
narrow lanes of the city laughed with the lilt of their Creole tongue.
* * * * *
Among the golden San Domingans the loveliest of all admittedly was
Marguerite Lagoux, the milliner, by her patronage called Rita, by her
familiars Margoton, by envious rivalry Madame Margot; and, after all
was over and done, known merely as Old Mother Go-go.
Hers was glorious physical loveliness in its fullest maturity. It was
in an hour of inspiration the indolent god of beauty drew the lines on
which her body was built.
Her passionate, rich-colored, handsome face was like a line from an
old enchantment which took men’s souls captive, then cast them away
without the least regret, or with a Circean spell turned them into
beasts. Her neck was a deep-colored, ivory tower poised perfectly
over her breast. The dazzling, orange-tawny skin of her broad bust
turned to golden-russet before it reached her cheeks, and was there
flushed to dusky rose, like the skin of a ruddy-gold peach. In the
burnt splendor of her cheek the darkly eloquent blood in her veins
made its golden proclamation. Her mouth was long and strangely curved
like a retroverted bow; the lips of a queer fruit-color, not crimson,
carmine, nor magenta, but a little of all three. The upper lip was
brief to a fault, and curled back on itself like a rich-pulped fruit
which has parted in ripening. The full under-lip cast a heavier shade
than the lips the old masters chose, when they painted a picture of the
Madonna. Her hair, like a dark, uncertain cloud, fell down in heavy
coils, gathered and knotted at the nape of the neck, bound there in a
golden net; or lay in an unfilleted band across the broad, low brow,
drawn back into braids over her ears, or collected into a turban tied
with peculiar dexterity. Her body was cast in a glorious mould: she was
tall; in figure perfect, and full of a stately, tiger-like grace, the
envy of other women. She moved, when she walked, as an empress might if
heaven but gave her grace, with an exquisite, perfect motion, devoid
of every appearance of effort,--not striding, but seeming to glide like
a swan swimming on untroubled water. In the sluggish grace of her heavy
lips and deep-lidded, brooding eyes, she was as full of an indolent,
sleepy beauty as midsummer afternoon. Dressed in bright merino,
crimson, orange, and blue, with a kerchief of blood-colored silk around
her head bound in oriental fashion, beads of amber around her neck, and
in each ear a hoop of gold, she looked like a great golden lily dusted
with _sang-dieu_.
One day she was the lily; the next a yellow rose; and the next she was
a tulip,--gold, crimson, purple and black. She was a Caribbean summer
incarnate, of flower-blooms, thunder and gold. The passing traveler,
seeing her, stopped while he caught his breath. There was something
about her commanded attention besides her remarkable beauty. One spoke
of Ducie Poincignon casually; but one spoke of Rita Lagoux with an
accent.
* * * * *
Of all the milliners of her day Margot was first beyond compare. Her
taste was perfect; her instinct for color was never at fault; her
choice of fabrics exquisite. None equaled her in dexterity; she was
like a marvelous spider weaving webs of gossamer. Those who sought
beauty found it; her patrons were patrician; all of the very best
employed her art; she had no successful competitor; beside her Eloise
Couesnon was esteemed but maladroit.
Margot’s shop was in King street, near Mignot’s Garden, a little above
the Bend. She lived in a little alley known as Lilac lane, a narrow,
crooked, private path between two large estates, which rambled into the
interspace like a brown brook into a wood. Beneath high green hedges
it wandered into the solitude, growing narrower as it went, until the
hedge boughs, meeting, knit themselves together, interlacing their
elastic, leafy twigs. There the baffled foot-path seemed to lose its
way and to abandon every purpose for which foot-paths are designed,
ran on a little, hesitated, crept on again uncertainly, then gave up
hope and disappeared in a green perplexity. The unfamiliar traveler
paused here, bewildered, and turned back to find a bolder thoroughfare;
familiar feet alone pressed on through Lilac lane.
Where the strait way vanished into the wilderness stood Margot’s
cottage, tucked snug as a plum stone in a plum. Around it was a garden
hedged by box and bay. Of all the hedges in Lilac lane the highest
were Margot’s. They rose around her garden in an impenetrable thicket,
tall, dark-tangled, dense and old, their green tops tossing against
the blue beyond the reach of the hedger’s bill. Within lay a little
tranquil space, withdrawn alike from curious gaze and the town’s brawl,
and overshadowed by the wide boughs of two great magnolias, whose
drowsy shade fell heavily on the sleepy oleanders and over the rows of
tulips below, that lifted up their golden cups and filled the air with
odor. Here day and night flowed by in undisturbed serenity; all noise
was hushed and tumult quelled; the shyest wild birds nested here in
perfect confidence, fear cast away and foes forgot. No place in all
the town seemed more secure from rude intrusion. No apparition came by
night, no terror by day; so quiet it was, so full of peace, it seemed a
sanctuary withdrawn from the interrupting clash and rude alarms of the
troubled world,--its tranquillity that of a convent close, with little,
distant, ringing bells, recurrent chimes and subdued voices, muffled
by distance, as of nuns chanting an office in the peaceful choir of a
green-nooked nunnery.
* * * * *
Margot Lagoux had a daughter; her name was Gabrielle.
Though Margot was lovely, Gabrielle was lovelier. They differed in
beauty as pompadour-pink differs from brier-rose. Margot’s was a
golden beauty; Gabrielle’s an ivory loveliness. Margot was a pottery
figurine moulded with marvelous skill; Gabrielle a statuette of
exquisite porcelain. Margot was like the summer sun, dazzling, opulent,
sumptuous; Gabrielle like the young spring moon in her slender
loveliness; the lines of her flowed one into the other like the lines
of a song. Her hands were delicate and fine, their touch as light as
flowers blown by the wind, which drift like a whisper across the face
of the passer-by. Her feet were arched like a Spanish girl’s; her
ankles were the loveliest things that ever sandal-ribbon bound; she
walked like the wind of an April morning through meadows after rain.
Her face, with its delicate high cheek-bones, was like the fair
flower of Normandy; but her beauty was not Western, ’twas Eastern;
it was like the pale Persian roses which blow by the gray-marbled
waterways among the fallen pillars of the forgotten gardens of
Istakhr,--roses of yesterday, full of yesterday’s unbearable
loveliness, yesterday’s happiness, yesterday’s tragedy,--fragrant with
passionate, heart-breaking perfume, piercingly sweet, with the pathos
of swift-passing beauty, far keener than that of ruins and age. She was
of a loveliness such as sometimes comes out of India unburned by the
Indian sun, of which dreamers make dreams of unforgettable beauty.
Her slender young body was like a piece of perfect ivory laid away to
be carved. Her long, dark, tangled eye-lashes fell upon her cheeks like
sudden gusts of darkening rain; her cheeks were japonica-color; her
lips pale pomegranate-red; her hair ebony; her temples were traced with
crocus-blue.
Her cheeks japonica-color? They were the hue of peach flowers at dusk:
God who gave them knew whence came both peach flower color and dusk.
At every breath there came and went beneath her transparent skin a
shadowy crimson under-dusk, ebbing and flowing with the beat of her
heart like a somber, twilit tide,--San Domingo’s _sang de crépuscule_;
and through her fingers the sunlight shone with a golden radiance like
the glow of a rose through a glass of madeira.
She might have been sister to Scheherazade in her exquisite, aquiline,
high-born loveliness, a patrician beauty strangely like that of old
French romance. Far and away beyond compare she was the loveliest
girl in St. Finbar’s parish; and the faces of the young girls in St.
Finbar’s made that ancient, dim, gray parish bloom like the gardens of
Paradise.
God, who knows everything, knows whence she had her exquisite, slender
body, her aristocratic face, the dusky crimson tide, the touch of
fantasy which made her lovely as a strain of wild, passionate music
played on the deep strings of a gipsy violin.
For, as the rarest beauty remains imperfect without a touch of
strangeness, without something to haunt and to fret the mind,
forbidding it to forget, there was a something almost, if not quite,
fantastic, in Gabrielle’s loveliness--a touch of irregularity difficult
to define--making her beauty more significant through being peculiar,
more poignant through being strange. Something indefinite and
conjectural tinged her being; the ghost of a vaguely intricate and
tragical implication beneath her bright young innocence lurked shadowy
and malign. Had her beauty been less perfect this, perhaps, had been
less notable. Revealed in a casual attitude, for a moment startling in
vividness, now for a moment it was lost, and now stole forth again in
the stress of unstudied emotion to accent a passing mood.
As one who, looking into her mirror, sees a face there not her own,
Margot perceived in her daughter’s face an intricately blended
likeness, to banish which into forgetfulness she strove desperately in
vain,--the recollection of a wild, sweet, irrevocable hour whose memory
was fear. Gabrielle’s beauty made her tremble.
It is a perilous privilege for a girl to possess loveliness rising
above her station in life; there is a price always to be paid for it,
sorrow the common fee; such a heritage of beauty often proves but a
legacy of shame,--a beauty built for destruction, a loveliness for
scorn; haggard wisdom reaps in tears what innocence sowed with laughter.
There was a thought from which Margot shrank as from a draught of
poison: Gabrielle degraded and desolate. There was nothing to her more
precious than her daughter’s innocence; nothing so important as her
earthly happiness; these seemed to Margot even more necessary than her
eternal peace.
Yet ever a shadow hung over her child, from cradle to grave; her
delicate grace and refinement were signatures of dread. Margot’s eyes
hunted from side to side as do a deer’s hard pressed by the dogs--can
one elude destiny?
Where were the lovely and the fair she had known in her own youth?
Dead, long ago; the graveyard sand lay cold upon their lips; their
passion and their sweetness were forgotten long ago. Margot knew that
youth and summer night are made for ecstasy. She knew, too, that in
forgotten graveyards are many unmarked graves of hapless beauty.
Looking into the mirror where life is stripped of its illusions, and
truth stands stark and bare in its unmitigated ugliness, panic terror
seized Margot.
Was there no refuge, no escape, nor safety anywhere; no retreat, nor
harbor, but in hopeless longing; always the far-off lightning and
threatening of storm? Peering into the future she was filled with
apprehension. In dreams she saw Gabrielle’s innocence hanging over a
black abyss; in dreams saw a fawn torn by ravening wolves. She awoke,
starting up, crying out! There was nothing but the night. Yet she arose
from her bed, and, crouched by her crucifix, prayed for her daughter as
she never had prayed for herself.
* * * * *
At adolescence Gabrielle was a vision of delight. In temperament she
was ardent as is a summer shower, which gives, when it gives, all that
it has to give, in a rush of wind and rain. Unspoiled by knowledge,
unruined by folly, too innocent to be perplexed by life’s anxieties,
her soul mistook Earth for the pathway to Paradise, and nothing as yet
had discovered her error. With her each hour began afresh the tale of
life, a long, sweet, glad surprise.
Rose-winged days and golden nights were come to Gabrielle, whose feet
stood at the smiling gate of the Primrose Way. But Margot’s days and
nights were filled with passionate anxiety, as with increasing doubts
and fears she confronted destiny.
The inner house-door gave upon a little paved court, where two twisted
old fig-trees grew, many-branched candelabra, tipped in spring
with green-leaved lights. Green-leaved shadows wavered below on a
duck-pool’s marble bowl, stained green from the copper tenons which
tied its stones together. Here ducks praised Jove with yellow bills,
and splashed viridian wings. In the pool, glimmering, one saw the
stuccoed cottage-wall, on the irregular surface of which old colors
showed in broken chequers through the new until the wall was patched
with unpremeditated beauty. Across the pool the silvery sunlight
glimmered like a streak of flame. But the fairest thing reflected there
was Gabrielle, dancing on the old stones which paved the court,--dances
fantastic as her mood; sarabands to the stately rhythm of odd old
songs, deliberately slow; canzons whose pathos was lost in a pirouette;
minuets which mimicked the swallows overhead with their swift glissades
among the trees and undulating sweeps among the flowers,--snatching
the poppies as she passed, and thrusting them in her hair, and
pausing at last like a wind-blown flower above her reflection in the
pool,--Gabrielle, singing old songs by the world forgotten,--strains
of wild beauty, that by wayward loveliness have a peculiar power to
please, with old melodies, alluring and sweet; songs such as long ago
stole the souls of saints determined upon salvation, and gave themes
for many troubadour lays, of which, though all are lovely, the greater
part are sad, being memories of loveliness departed into the dust: one
of life’s paradoxes, that the memory of beauty should be bitter.
Here, remote from the curious world, preserved by the cloistral hedges
from prying indiscretion, flowed her secluded existence. Few ever saw
her. Such as by chance observed her through some green interstice,
dazzled by her beauty, hurried off to spread the tale of an enchanted
princess in an enchanted wood; hedge-balked and bewildered, few had
ever seen her twice; by which she had been the more thought of through
being the less seen.
Many had sought the courtyard; but none had found the way. Margot
kept it a solitude lest Gabrielle suffer corruption, and around her
maintained a veritable nunnery of care, hovered over her, and kept her
as close withdrawn as a novice in a convent-garth.
But beauty cannot be sequestered always safely anywhere. Cloistral life
is very well for souls of cloistral nature and of the convent sort;
but youth and spring hate convents, and will have life’s novitiate,
or none. There is a crevice in every hedge, no matter how tall or how
thick it may be, and through it, ever, Gabrielle peeps.
* * * * *
Spring followed winter; May’s warm slow, yellow, moonlit nights were
come.
Then Gabrielle grew tired and white. Her hand became tremulous; her
light foot stumbled; she left off dancing in the garden. She sighed
wistfully; her song ceased; her mouth showed scarcely a smile’s wasted
ghost. Her eyes, like those of a wounded creature, followed everywhere;
her tears flowed at nothing. She grew as languid as a withering flower.
The light of her seemed going out. The pallor of her face and the
feverish luster of her eyes startled and frightened Margot.
Days dragged a laggard length; night still more oppressed her. She lay
awake, whispering with dry lips she knew not what; calling she knew
not whom; her trembling hands pressed against her breast. Fancies for
which she found no name, thoughts for which she had no words, and
visions inexpressible, would not let her sleep. Night after night she
lay awake, consuming the hours with wonder; or, if she slept, awoke in
tears, fell asleep to tears again, and waking, tear-wet, trembling,
with darkened lids and drawn face, grew daily worse.
Vague, moody wants annoyed her; the night was harassed by melancholy
dreams; the day vexed with formless fancies.
Walking alone in the garden, answerless questionings beset and
frightened her; she listened where there was nothing to be heard;
stared where there was nothing to be seen; found peace nowhere.
Her heart ached with unreasoning pain; she grew as gusty as a storm;
the speechless, inexplicable wonder within her breast throbbed like a
festered thorn.
Margot too well knew the cause: there was but one alleviation.
* * * * *
Spring, with its universal song, from grove and garden lifted up its
deathless melody of bloomy verdure and warm-breathed sweetness. All
living creatures voiced the universal theme: “Rejoice with the partner
of thine heart in the happy days of thy youth!”
The blue dove moaned out his heart’s desire; the copper beetle wooed
and won his lady in the dust; butterflies and dragon-flies glittered
in the wind, happy in their airy ecstasy--they fluttered among the
hedges; they sported among the flowers--and all the earth rejoiced in
having its heart’s desire. Thrush and mocker sang, “Passion, passion
... heart-breaking passion!” to their pretty feathered paramours. From
every spray the vireo cried shrill, in shreds of melody, “Heart’s
desire! Heart’s desire!” In the fragrant green-bay the painted
bunting’s love-call rang incessantly; while from the tufted grove
arose the stirring chant of earth’s universal choir, the canticle, all
passionate and shrill, of “Love, love, love!” and yet again of “Love!”
How can one keep it from the heart of youth, that, all unknowing, yet
numb with longing, breathlessly awaits its coming, and trembles like a
leaf with the wordless yearning of unrecognized desire.
Gabrielle was intoxicated with the passion of her own heart, without
an object or an aim; her throat was almost choked with youth’s sweet,
innocent desire; and, ever, within her shaking heart, the questioning
wonder grew.
“Mother,” she said wistfully, “what is it fills the world with music
day and night? What is it makes the whole world sing?”
“Happiness,” replied Margot, “and joy of the spring.”
“Happiness?” rejoined Gabrielle. “If it be happiness, why does it make
my heart ache? Why does spring hurt me so?”
Margot, startled, sat staring, wrung with sudden fear.
“And what is this love of which every one sings--we women most of all?”
“The source of all wretchedness. Leave it alone!” cried Margot. She
looked at her daughter in terror.
“But,” replied Gabrielle, wondering, “if love be the source of all
wretchedness, why is it’s song so sweet?”
“Because fools have their folly!” cried Margot. “Love-songs are sweet
to a lover, as folly is dear to a fool. Worship thy God,” she said
harshly, “and leave foolishness to the fool!”
“Love--foolishness?” said Gabrielle, puzzled. “You told me that God is
love!” She turned the riddle over and over in her mind.
“What ails you?” asked Margot.
“Nothing,” said Gabrielle. But a flush stole up her cheeks. “How does
a woman know, Mother, that she loves, so that she may say certainly,
‘This is love’?”
“By the utter despair that tears her heart in two.”
“But, Mother,” protested Gabrielle, “they tell me that love is sweet!”
“Sweet? As wormwood!” said Margot hoarsely. “It is nothing but fever
and fret.”
“Many I see who have it; but none who fret. Might I not know for myself
a little of this pretty play of lovers and beloved?” besought Gabrielle.
Margot looked at Gabrielle and trembled, seeing the shadow upon her,
foreseeing the fate of her loveliness, perceiving indiscretion’s lips
at the rim of the cup of terror. “What man has snared your silly
heart?” she asked.
Gabrielle stared at her. “Why should any man snare my heart?” she asked
in pitiful wonder. “I have never harmed any man, nor any living thing.”
She caught her breath. “Oh, Mother, feel my heart beating! It beats as
if it would burst. Why does my heart beat so? Am I dying? Do you think
that I must die? Yet, Mother, my heart is aching so that I would that
I could die! Is not what God made good ... you told me that God was
love ... was not mankind made by God ... and is not love the world’s
delight?”
“It is its direst misery,” said Margot bitterly. “God keep you from it.
Two parts are pain, two sorrow, and the other two parts are death.”
“I don’t fear death,” said Gabrielle. “Then why should I fear love?”
“Because it is a lie,” cried Margot, beside herself. “I conjure you, by
God’s sorrow, close your ears against it.”
“How can I close my ears against it when I hear it in my sleep?”
Margot’s delight in her daughter’s beauty was turned into bitterness.
“Peace!” she cried. “And leave me. All this will pass away.” But, deep
within, her heart said, “Never!” Innocence will be indiscreet. Sin
alone is always clever. And in youth great things are lightly asked and
lightly given. “Go!” she cried to Gabrielle.
Gabrielle left the room. Margot buried her face in her hands.
It is hard for woman to stand alone and to resist temptation forever.
Soon or late the black moment comes; reason is off guard; prudence
abandons her; caution is thrown to the winds: passion betrays. Here
is an irremediable disease which baffles the skill of the physicians.
Margot recoiled as she faced the future. Time had become a terror.
Burning tears flowed down her cheeks. There is no woe so sickening
as the monotone of fear, the shuddering, interior sense of impending
catastrophe. Nor is it eased by the strange apathy which is granted
to the doomed. Margot groaned in an agony, half remorse, half
apprehension. Could God set so foul a seal upon so fair a thing?
Again on a day Gabrielle came in from the garden, her eyes dry-burning
and famine-bright. “Mother, give me a lover!” she cried. “Nietta
Pascault has one!”
“Then alas and alack for Nietta Pascault!” cried Margot.
“But, Mother, he called her his heart’s delight; she did not speak, but
she kissed him; and he kissed her until he must have bruised her lips;
yet she did not seem to care ... rather she seemed to like it. And all
he said was ‘Love me! Love me!’ and all she said was ‘Yes,’ and ‘Yes!’
And when he kissed her she grew pale; I thought that she was dead, ...
but he held her in his arms, Mother, and kissed her again and again, as
though he would kiss her back to life. Will kisses bring one back from
the dead? For, Mother, suddenly she opened her eyes as if she lived
only for love; and then all he said was ‘Love me!’ and all she said was
‘Yes!’”
Margot’s heart fainted.
Day after day Gabrielle knelt in the garden and plead for her heart’s
desire. Night after night Margot crouched on her floor and prayed, in
despair and agony, that it might not be given her. Heaven’s custodian
mingled their prayers in fatal entanglement; one was answered, and one
was not: he is responsible.
* * * * *
Sunset lay on Margot’s garden. The paths still shimmered with the
day’s heat, though the lax grass lifted in the shadows. Nameless
perfumes wandered among the drowsily-bending flowers; the odor of warm
boxwood rose from the hedge. The hedge stood black against the sky; in
its glistening, fragrant deeps small birds moved swiftly to and fro in
curious agitation.
Gabrielle, puzzling upon life’s unanswered riddle, stood listening to
sounds beyond the hedge. Everywhere was the patter of hurrying feet,
and the whisper of wordless laughter, mockingly borne on the evening
wind. The air was full of the golden vision of light-footed maidens
with fluttering garments, flying through Lilac lane, pursued by ardent
and breathless lovers, eagerly following where they fled. The sound of
laughter floated back along the narrow way, and the little faint echo
of flying feet. It was that time of the year when all maids are sweet
as freshly gathered flowers, and all men are a little mad. Even the
earth, drab clod, was astir with the ecstasy of approaching night.
Beneath the broad-boughed magnolia grew a pomegranate-tree whose
branches shrouded the greater tree’s bole. The scarlet pomegranate
flowers hung over Gabrielle; the green leaves folded her in. Faint
color came fitfully over her cheek; her eyes roamed restlessly through
the garden, but found no solace there. As she stood thus, brooding on
life’s inexplicable theme, she was aware of a sudden shadow which fell
on the grass beside her, and turned in voiceless terror.
There was a face in the green hedge, smiling, two butterflies hovering
over it,--a lad’s face, laughing and debonair, with yellow hair
curling around it like crisp little golden flames; his cheeks were
as ruddy and smooth as a child’s; his eyes were blue as the morning,
swift and bright; the leaves stirred all around him as if to the beat
of wings; there was confidence in his bearing, easy lordship and high
pride.
Gabrielle, startled and terrified, shrank back against the magnolia’s
black bole, one trembling, hesitant hand extended in doubt.
Speechless she stared at that bright, boyish face with its nimbus of
sunlit, yellow hair, until her dry eyes gushed tears, dimming her
sight,--stared in wonder and adoration.
His eyes were audaciously bright as wild stars, incessantly roving,
and alight with golden fire. He was tall, well-set and slender, with a
beautiful, straight body; there was something godlike in his air as he
leaned through the matted hedge, eagerly scanning her,--her pale rose
cheeks, snowy gown, moth-green kerchief, her lips, her neck matching
the ivory of the blossoms in her hair,--half-veiled by a screen of
leafy green, dull gold and pomegranate flowers.
She had bound her hair with a bit of gold braid which shone like an
aureole round her brow, and in it had thrust two butterfly lilies,
whiter than ivory; her eyes were wide open, round and unwinking,
their frightened depths full of tears; her lips had fallen slightly
apart to free her fluttering breath; she sighed, a little, shuddering
sigh, and crossed her hands upon her breast. Her beauty startled him:
delicate-frail, almost translucent in the golden sun, she seemed a
being not of flesh and gross mortality, but a spirit by enchantment
made visible, a dryad out of the ancient wood, a maiden saint stepped
out of a missal or fled from a chapel window, with a halo around her
brow. With her head poised like a flower; her little, perfect hands and
feet; her ankles slim and beautiful; each line aristocratic; everything
proclaiming patrician blood; nothing asserting a baser thing: saint,
maid, dryad, nymph, or sprite, who could tell which?
Silently drinking her loveliness he leaned through the hedge. Among the
fire-colored flowers and green, her color was exquisite as the violet
sky is, seen through yellow leaves.
Again she sighed softly; stared at his face, and shivered a little. Was
it a god or a man in the hedge? Had he sprouted out of the boxwood, or
fallen from the clouds?
The perfect beauty of her figure, outlined on green by her thin white
gown, charmed and enchanted him. He stared at her, trying to focus
her face more clearly upon his sight; her loveliness struck him dumb.
She seemed a statue of ivory, hung with garlands of gold, crimson and
green, half-hidden by a rood-screen of shimmering emerald. It seemed to
him that he looked on more than mortal beauty.
Leaning forward a little, one hand outstretched, one clasping her
throat, she watched his face with its golden hair aglow in the last
red sunlight. How could she tell if it were a god or a man,--that
face with its shimmering locks like living fire around it, a gleaming
nimbus whose dancing flames were fashioned of burnished gold, a face
like a blazing seraph’s, or Ariel’s? She looked at that proud young
countenance in wordless adoration.
Her own face was now intensely bright with the sunset’s declining
glory. Into the crevice between her lips the sunshine had slipped; her
lips were translucent; her mouth was aglow as if she breathed ethereal
fire.
Suddenly he drew his breath with a sharply audible sound; for, as he
gazed, longing seized the boy’s heart and wrung it bitterly.
The flame which blazed in his bright eyes put an answering glow in her
own. She was aware that her beauty had startled him. For the first time
in her life she was awake to her own loveliness, a sense wonderful
and sweet. A delicate, throbbing fire came fluttering up through her
breast; a flush stole into her cheeks and warmed their ashy pallor. Her
eyes met his: in his eyes were joy, surprise, and longing. His eyes
met hers: and all her doubts went out in wordless joy. For, when she
perceived that look in his face, she, too, was thrilled with longing;
the silence sang; fire thrilled her heart; suddenly neck and cheeks
flamed red.
She answered his look with glorious eyes, humid, terrified, alight.
Then her frightened eyes fell and her shy face. But, like a wave which
breaks along a beach in a passionate surge, her heart rushed out to
greet him.
He saw her neck and her cheeks flame red; passion struck him to the
heart. With a gesture of haughty but boyish humility he pushed through
the hedge, seized the sheltering pomegranate branches, and swept
them aside. She stood uncurtained before him. He gazed at her. “St.
Jacques!” he cried. “Are you a living creature?”
She regarded him for an instant with a look of undisguised terror,
catching her breath with a sobbing sound right pitiful to hear; then
her quivering, piteous face was made exquisite by tears.
A back-wash of timidity held him silently staring at her,--a boy, hot
and hasty, sure of himself, impulsively bold, but abashed,--admiration
and longing ablaze in his eyes. Gabrielle stammered, but could not
find words; her breast heaved and sank; she could not control it.
Overwhelmed by the sudden strange rush of emotion, she swayed giddily,
dizzily put out one hand to steady herself, and laid it upon his arm:
a tremulous smile came over her face; her tears, like an April shower,
were gone.
His hand sought her other hand; found it; held it; thus their hands
met. Half a step timidly they approached each other; then stood at a
halt as if turned to stone. Her frightened breath was the only sound
save the stirring of the night-wind in the dark boughs overhead.
Shaking like a wind-blown leaf, “_Que désirez-vous de moi?_” she gasped.
His voice, too, was trembling. “That you should love me a little, for
pity’s sake, ... and quite forget to fear!”
His voice seemed to Gabrielle godlike.
“See, then ... I fear nothing.... I should as soon think of fearing the
air we breathe!” she said, adoring her slender young demigod out of
the hedge. Then suddenly she raised her hand and laid it caressingly on
his cheek; her trembling fingers felt like flowers trailed across his
face.
He laughed. There was an infectious sweetness and merriment in his
laughter. Then they laughed together, softly,--first love and joy are
silent things.
“You are the god of love,” she said, with infinite simplicity. “Else,
how could you fly over the hedge?”
Her flute-like voice was like the music of a half-awakened song, and
exquisitely moving; her words trailed slowly like speech asleep.
Again he laughed. “The god of love? _Bien!_ Then what shall I have that
is godlike?”
“What you will,” she said. “You may ask.” For the innocent are
trustful as doves, helpless as the least creatures, weak as the small
birds among the little branches.
He drew a quick breath. “Most of all things on earth I would have a
kiss from your mouth. Shall I have it?”
“Yes,” she said. “Take it!” and put up her lips. So their mouths met. A
thousand tingling darts of fire pierced through her as his lips touched
hers.
Her heart was wrung by that first kiss; for an instant it stood still;
the blood had left it, and had fled through her like flame; she
almost swooned. For first passion is like the wind in the blossoming
locust-tree, too sweet to be easily breathed or borne; youth’s first
caress is almost an agony. Gabrielle gasped; his lips had burned on
hers like a celestial fire. Both shook as love’s consuming flame
rushed through them.
As he to her was first, so she to him; each gave the other life’s
immaculate gift, the unmeasured, unmeasurable fire of love’s first
embrace, that passionate anguish of delicate, uncalculated delight,
ardent and boundless.
Their lips hurried to the meeting. How could they delay? Youth and love
brook no delays. Yet, as she felt his lips upon her own, she regarded
him with a writhen countenance of unqualified terror. Love comes to
the maiden spirit with sudden tumult, and strikes it, not as a blithe
discovery, or an all-Elysian joy, but as a birth and an agony, from
which, if the soul survives, comes unspeakable happiness. His lips
sought hers and seeking, met; in the meeting her soul flew out at her
mouth.
The world seemed suddenly remote, withdrawn into the depths of
uncalculated space. There remained but these two young, love-stunned
souls, groping to each other in the garden under the shadow of the
great magnolia-trees.
The enchantment of love was upon them. The happy girl lay close upon
his heart, and all she said was, “Love me! Love me!” and, “If ever
I cease to love you perdition take my soul!” he said. With utter
confidence her eyes looked up into his, glowing with a passion that
knows no change; and all she said, as she lay against his heart, was,
“Love me! Only love me!” That is all a woman asks. Her fingers stroked
his yellow hair; the mere touch thrilled her with unspeakable happiness.
Night came, and darkness voyaged the uncharted sky. Overhead the blue
dome blazed with the innumerable stars and golden planets heaving up
heaven’s arch; the tremulous green lamps of the fireflies filled the
earth with twinkling constellations all around them. But the heavens
and the earth were as nothing to them: love was there, and he, and
she, and the utterly forgotten starlight. And where youth and love
are, life, death, good or ill, the bright stars or the black mould, or
better or worse, are nothing, and wisdom is of little worth.
They gazed into each other’s eyes with wordless tenderness. Youth has
not words, nor waits to find them; age finds words, and nothing else.
Across the city boomed the hour,--at last.
“Oh! I must go!”
“Not yet! Not yet!”
“But I must go. Good-night!”
“Not yet!”
“But I must go! Good-night! Good-night! I pray you, leave me go ... for
truly I must go!”
“You’ll come again?”
“To-morrow.”
“Show me the way into the garden,” he said. She showed him the
quickest way in, kissed him, and was gone through the garden; for him
the night was darkened, and the stars put out. Her breath was still
upon his face, the smell of the flowers in his nostrils; and in his
ears was the sound of her voice, calling after him, low and sweet,
like a half-awakened song,--or was it but a bird which called, that
softly-fluting, lonely note.
And when he was gone the garden to Gabrielle was emptied of delight;
but all her soul was singing.
Her lips stung; her cheeks were on fire. Into the house she came, one
little slipper upon its little foot, one slipper gone,--what became of
that lost little slipper God knows!--and her stockinged foot was damp
with the dew which had dripped from the leaves overhead. A flame was
in her eyes which is in a maiden’s eyes but once, when love first lays
his hands upon her heart. So transfigured was she, she seemed a winged
creature. She loved; she was beloved; inarticulate ecstasy! Hands,
feet, neck, and face told but one story. Her eyes shone like blazing
stars; the roses had returned to her pale lips, the freshness to her
wan cheeks.
Margot watched her with narrowed eyes.
“Mother, I am happy; so happy that I do not want to die; I want to live
forever!”
Margot eyed her narrowly. “What has changed your mind?”
“I was walking in the garden,” rejoined Gabrielle, “and the god of love
was there. He kissed me on my mouth, Mother; and oh, Mother, love is
sweet!”
Margot’s heart stopped beating. “Are you quite mad?” she said.
Then the truth dawned upon her. She lost all sense of balance in the
crossed tides of dismay. She strained her daughter to her heart,
then thrust her away; dropped speech unuttered; gave a choked cry of
despair, while her face went gray as ashes.
She clutched Gabrielle by the arms, steadying herself, for she could
scarcely have stood alone. She blinked like a person purblind, and
peered into the girl’s wondering eyes. The lines of her face became
furrows. “Oh, my God!” she whispered, “I should have known! I should
have known!”
Margot cowered as if to avoid a blow; her eyes dilated; yet she seemed
incapable of seeing; her mouth fell open, she seemed to scream, yet
made no sound but that of the whistling breath through her nostrils, as
one who sustains the torture of the rack.
She thrust Gabrielle from her. “Go!” she gasped, and struck herself on
head and breast, crying out, “Mother of God! I should have known! Fool,
fool, fool!” Then, as if stunned, her head fell down upon her breast.
* * * * *
In the dark and breathless stillness of the night there was a stern,
strange loveliness; and now something akin to terror, the terror of a
child that dreams, and, waking in the darkness, cries out from dread
of unknown things.
An ill wind, which had been blowing since sunset with a far-off,
moaning sound, had arisen to a melancholy, screaming note, with an
extraordinary rumbling in the chimney. Clouds of soot and ashes, blown
from the fireplace, whirled in drifts around the floor. The sound of
distant thunder, the velocity of the wind, the increasing turmoil and
confusion, filled the night with keen disease. A bird sped round the
house with a shrill cry; the wind bellowed hoarsely in the chimney;
the house shook with the blast; over the housetops could be heard
the coming of the rain; the light of the flickering candles served
only to increase the gloom; the draft from the window swelled out the
print curtain and floated it half-way across the room, straining and
whipping at its pole; the black magnolias bent, and rose, and bent
again, as if beneath the beating of gigantic wings: it was close upon
midnight.
Before her crucifix Margot knelt, regardless of the storm, praying in
anguish for the safety of her child. Ever before her imagining was
Gabrielle, dishonored and betrayed, abandoned to scorn and poverty. Her
hands twisted in desperate appeal.
“Blessed St. Dominique, lover of souls, preserve my daughter!” she
plead. She listened motionless; all that she heard was the roar of the
wind.
“Mary, Mother, great in grace, defend and preserve my child! Mary,
Mother of Sorrows, have mercy upon my daughter!”
Again she listened; but for the howl of the gale the silence was
profound.
“All ye Holy Virgins, intercede for us!” Her panting voice broke. “Lord
of Compassion, hear me! Lord of Infinite Mercy, hear me! Have mercy
upon my child! O Thou, Most Pitiful Lord of the Innocent, answer my
prayer!”
Again she listened. There was no sound but the roar of the storm, the
creak of the house, and the gnawing of the great rats in the timbers
of the wall. She cringed and shivered, and in extreme entreaty cried,
“Lord, Seigneur Dieu, preserve and spare my child! You see her young
and fair, her soul as pure as the flowers that bloom in Paradise! You
breathed into her life; by your law she was made; but for you she
never had been; dare you then let her fall?”
But all was still. Heaven, to mortal anguish, seems intolerably serene,
so far beyond comprehension is the inscrutable leisure of God. It was
taking too long for her sorrow to reach the foot of the throne. She was
seeking her daughter’s safety, though it should be at the hazard of her
soul; but all she had was the bitterness of unanswered supplication.
To hearts dismayed there is nothing so appallingly still as God. The
confident faithful may await the ultimate reply; but the desperate
storm heaven, they have not time to wait.
She beat her breast; her hair was moist; her garments disarrayed;
her voice grew sharp; by vicars, saints and intercessors, by all
intermediaries, she plead with Almighty God to listen and to reply.
There was no answer. “Mary, Mother of Sorrows!” she gasped. “Does God
not understand?”
Her appeal arose piercing shrill: “_Dieu, Dieu, Eternel Dieu, écoute
mes cris! Hâte-toi de ma secourir! Hâte-toi d’elle delivrer! O Toi, qui
écoutes la prière, aie pitié de nous! Ne tarde-pas! Écoute, mes cris!_”
She waited; there was no answer; and suddenly her voice went up like
the cry of delirium:
“_O Dieu Très-haut, réveille-toi! Réveille-toi, mon Dieu!_” Then in a
tone of amazement and pathos, “Mary, Mother of Sorrows,” she said, “do
I have to explain to God?”
She paused a moment while despair rose like a swelling flood; then
through the darkness and the night went up a bitter cry: “_Seigneur
Dieu! Tout-puissant Dieu! sois attentif à ma prière: tu m’arrosarez
avec l’hysope, et je serai purifiée; vous me laveras, et je deviendrai
plus blanche que la neige! Plus blanche que la neige, mon Dieu! Plus
blanche que la neige! Gabrielle, ma fille, mon Dieu! plus blanche que
la neige!_ Forgive in her my transgressions; pardon in her my sins;
deliver her from her inheritance.... O my God!... let her be white!”
A tremendous gust blew through the house; the wind sucked in the
chimney with a sound like awful laughter; the blinds recoiled with
thunderous shock; but from Heaven there was no answer.
At this she cried out pitifully as He who long ago cried out the cry,
which through unending ages shall stand archetype of despair: “_Mon
Dieu, mon Dieu! pourquoi m’as-tu abandonné?_”
The wind screamed round about her with the sound of many voices; far
off arose a tumult as of many people running; borne on the wind came a
torrent of hideous sound, not mad music, but awful dissonance, swiftly
nearing, suddenly checked: after the clamor a silence like death; the
room was fantastically still. Margot clung to the foot of the crucifix.
“_Pourquoi, O Dieu, rejettes-tu?_” she asked in a voice grown shriveled
and thin. She crouched a moment, motionless, her head on one side,
listening. There was no reply. Heaven maintained its brassy silence.
Her face went gray; her eyes were hard as stones; she turned her back
on the crucifix, saying, “I will call upon You no more!”
There was a queer shuffling sound as of footsteps in the entry. The
candles sank to dull blue sparks devoid of radiance; yet, instead
of darkness there was light. Outside was darkness, vast, pitmirk;
inside, appalling light. All the place was stunned and blinded by an
overwhelming light which cast no shadows anywhere, but, vehemently
streaming, searched crack and cranny; not a crevice escaped. It lapped
and flowed like waves, and penetrated everything; even the gross
material of the walls, saturated by that flame, gave back a superfluous
glow, a white excess of light, and every pointed thing within the room
was peaked and capped with flame. Round and round the room a bewildered
host of moths in little wavering flights and drops went fluttering,
with a light rustle of powdery wings, and, among them, bats splashed
through the light with a low, continuous whirr. Round and round, like
froth-clots on flood-water swinging around a vortex, whirled slantbat
and moth in a dizzy, irregular ring, in the midst of which, crouched in
a high-backed chair, sat a shriveled, dead-alive, mummy-like figure, as
thin and fleshless as a skeleton,--an apparition, sinister, white, and
wasted as a corpse new-risen from the grave.