MOONGLADE
A NOVEL
BY THE AUTHOR OF
The Martyrdom of an Empress
OFFICIER DE L’ORDRE DE L’INSTRUCTION
PUBLIQUE DE FRANCE
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
MCMXV
Books by The Author of
“THE MARTYRDOM OF AN EMPRESS”
MOONGLADE. Illustrated. Post 8vo.
A DOFFED CORONET. Illustrated. Crown 8vo.
THE CRADLE OF THE ROSE. Illustrated. Crown 8vo.
EMERALD AND ERMINE. Crown 8vo.
GRAY MIST. Illustrated. Crown 8vo.
THE KEYSTONE OF EMPIRE. Illustrated. Crown 8vo.
SNOW-FIRE. Illustrated. Crown 8vo.
THE TRIBULATIONS OF A PRINCESS. Illustrated. Crown 8vo.
THE TRIDENT AND THE NET. Illustrated. Crown 8vo.
THE MARTYRDOM OF AN EMPRESS. Illustrated. Crown 8vo.
HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK
COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY HARPER & BROTHERS
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
PUBLISHED FEBRUARY, 1915
C-P
TO
A
WITH
EVERLASTING THOUGHTS
MOONGLADE
Moonglade upon the waters whitely lying;
Though the wind, shouting from the western verge,
Herdeth the huddled cloud-rack, flying--flying--
Glory still re-emergent, rift-descrying,
Spanneth the somber surge.
Moonglade, O Moonglade, heavenly calm and still,
Throned on the tossing manes unbroke to thill,
I know, beholding thee,
The storm will pass, and night upon the sea!
Moonglade the dark lanes of the forest keeping,
Soundless and silent, hearken as ye list;
Lakes of bejewelled vapor lowly sleeping,
And the long grasses from the surface peeping
Levelled of silver mist.
Moonglade, O Moonglade, that your Fates fulfil,
In your black forest-prison sweetly still,
I know, beholding thee,
Lights of the lost world, Faith and Purity!
Moonglade, empearled of flame unearthly, lying
Over the crystal plains of snow and light,
While the lost wind, of naked cold a-crying,
Shudders beneath the half-shut stars espying
Down from the steely night.
Moonglade, O Moonglade, heavenly calm and still,
Moulding to beauty bitterness and ill,
I know, beholding thee,
Yet is there strength, and truth and constancy!
Moonglade, a pale and forthright splendor, deeping
The mountain shadows on the river-flow,
Across the sullen flood’s resistless creeping--
Across the years, the wreckage and the weeping,
You stand, so let them go!
Moonglade, O Moonglade, that my heart doth fill,
Causeway to Avalon unchanging still,
I know that pass by thee,
The “bowery hollows, crowned with summer sea”!
_1914._
M. M.
MOONGLADE
CHAPTER I
The Sphinx, prophetically sung
By Fable old, and ever young,
Is Beauty perilous, that stands
With eagle wings and taloned hands.
“Mademoiselle Seton is requested to come down to the parlor.”
The white-coiffed nun stood inside the door, waiting for the tall
girl who at the words had briskly risen from the first rank of her
fellow-pupils. She was older than any there, and her whole _allure_
as she stepped forward betrayed a certain sense of superiority and
conscious pride. Silently she followed Madame Marie-Immaculée along
the stone-paved and arched passage leading to the broad, shallow
stairs, her step as light and noiseless as thistle-down, rhythmed, as
it were, to the musical tinkle of her leader’s great rosary. In the
vaulted hall below she made a deep obeisance, and passed into the
_parloir_, leaving the nun on the threshold, as is the rule.
The _parloir_ of the Sacred Heart Convent at Bryn is a cheerful
place, and was full of sun-rays that morning. Plants carefully tended
showed their green leaves and bright blossoms on the window-sills
behind the snowy sheerness of tightly drawn curtains, the old
oaken furniture shone with numberless polishings, and a great
silver-and-ivory crucifix fastened to the pale-gray wall gleamed
benignantly above a jardinière filled with freshly gathered “votive”
heathers. Blinking a little in all this brightness after the dimness
of the corridor, the girl hesitated a second.
“Good morning, Laurence. Don’t you see me?” The voice was prim,
exceedingly correct in enunciation, and high-bred in accent.
“Oh, is that you, Aunt Elizabeth?” the girl said, coming quietly
forward, a cool hand outstretched. “When did you land?”
“Two hours ago, at Tréport. And I am here to take you back with me
this evening.”
This was delivered much in the manner of a pronunciamiento, and the
recipient thereof raised her eyebrows nervously.
“This evening!” she echoed. “Why so much haste, Aunt Elizabeth,
pray?”
“Because you have been here four years, which is much longer than we
wished you to remain,” the elder lady stated, tartly. “You are
eighteen, and, being English, it is high time that you should become
reaccustomed to British ways and manners.”
A quaint little smile drew up the corners of Laurence’s lips, but
her eyes remained serious. She was a singularly beautiful girl,
graceful of figure, dainty-featured, and gifted with an alabaster
complexion and a wealth of chestnut hair that would have made even a
plain woman attractive.
“You find me too Frenchified?” she queried, twisting the azure ribbon
of her silver medal around her fingers--for she was an “_Enfant de
Marie_,” and one of the model pupils of her convent-school.
“Ye-es,” hesitated Lady Seton, raising her lorgnette the better to
study this “uncomfortable” niece. “Ye-e-s! I am afraid so, but we
will soon alter all that!” And she let the lorgnette drop to the
very end of its interminable amethyst-and-pearl chain. “You had
better get your things ready as quickly as you can, Laurence,” she
continued, “for neither your uncle nor the tide is wont to wait, and
I shall come back for you at six o’clock sharp.”
“You crossed on the _Phyllis_, then?”
“Why, of course! What else would have landed us at Tréport?”
“I don’t know,” the girl indifferently replied.
Lady Seton shrugged one shoulder, not in the acceptedly Gallic way,
which she would have condemned, but in a slightly contemptuous
fashion.
“Be ready, bag and baggage, at a quarter to six, please, _without
fail_. I’ll be glad to see you out of that ghastly black
uniform--or whatever you call it! It is decidedly dowdy!”
Laurence laughed, smoothed the straight alpaca folds falling from
shoulder to ankle, and glanced at her aunt quizzically.
“I am going to interview the Mother Superior,” pronounced the latter
again, “and then I shall go, so that you may have an opportunity to
take all the hysterical farewells you choose from your beloved
friends here.”
Hysterical! Laurence laughed once more her low, mocking laugh,
and effaced herself before the rangey form of her aunt as her
British ladyship set off, under full sail, sweeping past Madame
Marie-Immaculée--still pacing monotonously up and down the hall, out
of hearing, but in full sight of the _parloir_ door.
“Poor Mother Superior!” Laurence mused, with piously raised eyes.
“Poor Mother Superior! I hope my delightful aunt will have nothing
but edifying things to say of me; she is not overburdened with tact,
as a rule!”
As she reascended the stairs she was suddenly met by a whirlwind of
outstretched arms, flying golden hair, and skirts of alpaca like her
own, which flung itself headlong upon her.
“Laurence! Laurence! Have they come for you already?... Oh! Oh,
Laurence!” The breathless sentence ended abruptly in a burst of
whole-hearted sobs as Marguerite de Plenhöel clung desperately about
her comrade’s neck.
“_Voyons, mon petit_,” consoled Laurence, keeping her equilibrium
with wonderful ease under the circumstances. “_Sois raisonnable!_”
But the fifteen-year-old evidently was disinclined to listen to
reason, at least just then, for she went on choking and gasping, and
entreating betweentimes: “Don’t go away, Loris. Don’t leave me!
Don’t!”
“Hush! Hush, little one! Hush! Let’s slip into the garden.
They’ll hear you if we stay here!”
“We--ca--n’t--can’t go in--into ... the garden--with--out--permis--sion,”
Marguerite convulsively objected.
But Laurence was firm. “But, yes, we can. There’s nobody about now.
Come quick!” she commanded, half dragging, half carrying Marguerite
down-stairs again. And thus at last they reached a small postern
opening from the north wing, and stopped only when, still clasping
each other, they stepped into the wonderful _allée_ of lindens that
skirts the cloisters on that side of the building.
The sun filtering through the pale leafage made swaying spots of pink
copper all over the decorously raked gravel; the heliotropes and
old-fashioned verbenas and rose-geraniums filling the borders smelled
sweet to heaven, and in a near-by bosquet of laburnum a green finch
sang to burst his little throat (_à se rompre la gorge_).
Marguerite--“Gamin” to her intimates--instantly became quieter. With
a gesture that was very youthful and very impatient she pushed the
tumbled gold out of her big blue eyes, still brimful of tears, and
stamped her narrow foot.
“Don’t tell me it’s true!” she cried. “Don’t, Loris! It would
be too terrible!”
Miss Seton--the Hon. Laurence Seton--in all the plenitude of her
admirably controlled faculties, stared at the delightful tomboy
beside her.
“It is true, my poor ‘Gamin,’” she serenely stated, checking
another outburst with a slight recoil of her supple body. “My
excellent uncle and aunt have resolved that I shall go with them to
‘_la triste Angleterre_,’ and so to the sad England I must go.
_Voilà!_”
“But when--when?” demanded the quivering little creature. “When?”
Laurence hesitated. To tell the “Gamin” that only a few hours
remained before her final departure from Bryn would destroy all her
chances of making her preparations in peace; for this, alas! was a
half-holiday, and Marguerite would be free to follow her about
everywhere. To tell a frank fib was out of the question, of course.
Laurence always avoided direct lies, so she took refuge in a simple
evasion.
“How can I tell exactly? Such queer people as my relatives are apt to
be unreliable,” she equivocated. “You don’t know my uncle Bob and
my aunt Elizabeth, luckily for you, ‘Gamin.’ One can never guess
what is going to happen next when they come on the scene!”
“They must be atrocious--abominable!” snapped poor Marguerite, her
dark eyebrows meeting in a furious frown above her exquisitely arched
little nose.
“N-no, not that; merely very tiresome and authoritative--insular to a
terrible extent! He, as I have often told you, is a yachtsman above,
before, after, and during everything else; by no means unkind, but as
stubborn as a whole troop of mules. She--well, she’s Elizabethan;
not kindly nor good-looking, but worse! Brick-red morally and
physically, without any luster or brilliancy, fond of absolute power,
narrow-minded, and--oh, well, quite unendurable.”
“O-o-o-o-h!” gasped Marguerite. “Oh ... o ... o ... o ... h!”
“I am their ward,” Laurence continued. “They are my omnipotent
guardians, and I can never hope to get rid of them, for I am a
beggar, living on their rather acid bounty. Do you understand, _petit
‘Gamin’_?”
No, _petit “Gamin”_ did not understand. There was something askew in
that speech, somehow, something that grated upon her, though just
what it was she could not have told. She therefore remained silent,
her eyes fixed upon two yellow butterflies chasing each other round
and round a clump of blue hortensias artistically grouped at the
corner of the cloister beneath the leaden rain-spout, whose frequent
libations kept those gorgeous globes of bloom from reverting to their
original creamy pink.
“A beggar!” the child said at last. “A beggar!... Then why don’t
you come and live with me at Plenhöel instead of with them in
England?” There was extraordinary contempt in the way she said
“them.” “I have only another year to stay here,” she passionately
pleaded, “and every single thing I own will be half yours, Loris
darling--every single thing!”
Eyes and hands uplifted, she gazed imploringly at Laurence, and for
an instant a softer expression flitted across the latter’s somewhat
sulky face.
“They would not let me do that--at any rate, not until I come of
age,” she asserted. “No, decidedly not.... And, what’s more, I
would not accept charity from your people, who are no relations of
mine.”
Marguerite looked at her friend in positive amazement. “Charity!” she
indignantly remonstrated; and then violently she cast herself prone
upon the green border of the _allée_, kicking her tiny toes into the
turf. “Charity indeed!” she angrily cried from within the shelter of
her intertwined arms. “Charity--to you!”
“Mademoiselle de Plenhöel!” a voice expostulated behind her; and
Mademoiselle de Plenhöel regained her feet with amazing promptness,
crimson with confusion, to face the most dreaded of her educators,
Madame Marie-Antoinette, whose rigid manners and severe cast of
countenance were the iron mask of a heart unsuspectedly tender.
“What does this behavior mean?” she now demanded, standing like a
black statue of reproof within a yard of the culprit, her white hands
folded within her wide sleeves.
“Pardon me, Madame Marie-Antoinette,” Marguerite stammered, “but you
... you see, Laurence is g-going away ... soon!” Here tears of
mingled rage and distress began again to run from beneath the heavy,
drooping lashes!
An almost imperceptible wave of delicate color rose to the nun’s
still features and wiped twenty years from them! She, too, had known
those great despairs of early youth--far greater ones, perhaps--and
it was in an altogether altered voice that she replied.
“I am sorry to see you so unhappy, Marguerite,” she said, drawing
nearer to her, “but such outbursts of feeling are not seemly,
my child; besides, they prove nothing--nothing at all--and
are--er--vulgar!” She gave a little cough, and went on, equably:
“Laurence has her duties as you have yours. So come with me now, at
least until you have controlled yourself”; and as an afterthought she
concluded, “By the way, you are both in contravention, for you are
well aware that the garden and park are forbidden ground to you when
unaccompanied by one of us.”
Marguerite reverently touched a fold of the nun’s robe. “I am
sorry,” she whispered very mournfully; “I am sorry!”
For a moment Laurence had been watching the picture made by the
“Gamin” in this unusually contrite mood, looking, in fact, quite
like a little saint in the discreet sun-shower beneath the trees that
dappled her slim black gown and formed a bright nimbus around her
lovely lowered head. Twice she opened her lips to speak, but
refrained. Then, courtesying deeply to the nun, she walked demurely
indoors, where, however, as soon as she found herself alone, she
raced at top speed up the stairs, thinking, as she went: “Better so.
Outbursts are--are--vulgar, as Madame Marie-Antoinette has so
sapiently remarked, and our poor ‘Gamin’ is still so very
impulsive--so impossible to convince that I’d sooner not try it!”