If the tongue’s a consuming fire,
Then judging by the consternation
The written syllables inspire,
A letter is a conflagration.
“I’m sure you must be mistaken. It cannot be possible!”
Madame Gervex, Marguerite’s governess and companion, turned her
perplexed, good-natured face toward the gray-haired land-steward who
had begun his labors at Plenhöel in the time of the present
Marquis’s father. They were standing together on the far end of a
lower side terrace overlooking the green silver of the bay, to-day in
one of its most charming and innocent moods. There was scarcely a
ripple to be seen: a mere fringe of dainty foam hemmed the rising
tide as it lazily fretted up the narrow pebbly beach. A cable-length
or so beyond that lace-like border a large float rode at anchor, and
Marguerite, Laurence, Basil, and “Antinoüs” were alternately to be
descried taking glorious headers from its snowy planking into the
placid depths.
“Impossible, Madame Hortense? And why impossible, if you please?”
Sulian Quentin asked, with some asperity. “You are so soft-hearted
and innocent yourself that you can’t think anybody is made
otherwise! Now I tell you--” And he emphasized each separate word
with a smart tap of two fingers of his right hand on the hard, open
palm of his left. “I tell you that this fine Demoiselle from over
the Channel is well worth watching. Sweet as honey when she speaks to
you, but her linings have been dipped in gall, just the same. Bitter!
Madame Hortense! Bitter she is to the very core, and envious and
mean, and capable of anything that’s not straight. I, Sulian
Quentin, tell you this, and you’d do well to take my word for it!”
“But, Monsieur Sulian!” interrupted Madame Hortense.
“There’s no Monsieur Sulian about it. D’you imagine that I’ve
navigated for fifteen years before taking hold of things here for
defunct Monsieur le Marquis, without learning how to keep my eyes
open? Bah! I’ve seen in my time many sorts of female quality, brown
and red and blond and black, pretty and otherwise, clever and stupid,
good, bad, and worse, but just such a piece as this one--!” He left
his indictment incomplete, perhaps for lack of expressions fitted to
his listener’s ears, and allowed his long arms to fall to his sides
in a discouraged manner.
“But,” Hortense Gervex began again--“but what in the world made you
take such a dislike to Mademoiselle Seton, Monsieur Sulian? She’s
doing you no harm!”
“Yes, believe that and drink water!” he derisively retorted. “Look at
her now, _do_, just to oblige me!” He was angrily pointing downward,
and Hortense Gervex bent over the coping to see what he meant.
Plenhöel and Marguerite were swimming shoulder to shoulder toward
the open sea, with that calm, regular stroke which is so telling for
long-distance work. On the float Basil’s tall form showed clear as
wax against the pale shimmer of the water, and, with her back turned
to him, sat Laurence, on the very edge of the planking, her feet
dipping in the sea, her hair falling around her mantle-wise and
trailing behind her. Suddenly she turned, swung herself up on the
float, and stood before him, her arms uplifted to raise above her
head the shining mass of her tresses, her perfect figure displayed
to its best advantage by a bathing-dress of pure white cashmere that
clung very lovingly; and there was something so challenging in her
statuesque pose that the term of “professional beauty,” naïvely
applied to her a fortnight or so before by Marguerite, took on,
indeed, a newer and more expressive meaning.
“The minx!” grumbled the old steward, elbow to elbow with Madame
Hortense. “Oh, she’ll net him, never fear--and to think that our
Marquis, always so _malin_, alert, and wide awake, does not notice
her manœuvers! As to Mademoiselle ‘Gamin’--” He paused, blew out
the air from his chest with a sigh like a Triton’s, and resumed:
“She’s too young, thank the Saints, to perceive such wickedness,
and yet she’s sharp as a needle, and some day she’ll see, and
then!”
“Well what? What will she see some day, you old mischief? What will
happen some day, according to you? After all, isn’t the Prince free
to marry whom he chooses? Isn’t he rich enough for two? Why
shouldn’t he have a beautiful wife if he likes to? Have you any
personal objection to offer, Monsieur Sulian?”
Astounded by this abrupt style of address, so entirely foreign to
gentle, kindly Madame Hortense, Sulian Quentin turned to her, his
self-advertised eyes wide open.
“D’you mean to tell me,” he impressively pronounced, “that you’d
approve of this one for him?”
Madame Hortense glanced meditatively in the direction of the float.
“What have I got to approve or disapprove of in such a matter?” she
said in a tone that went far toward answering his question. “Who are
we, anyhow, to judge our masters?”
Quentin gave a short laugh. “Who indeed? Who are we, indeed? We who
have served them loyally for year after year this long, long time;
served them, and loved them, too! Yes, loved them as if they were our
own children: defunct Monsieur le Marquis, and Madame la Marquise,
and our present Monsieur le Marquis and Mademoiselle ‘Gamin.’”
“But what have they got to do with it?” asked Madame Hortense,
beginning to feel utterly bewildered.
Quentin went back a step and glared at her.
“You’re a bat--a real genuine bat!” he said, contemptuously,
“that’s all I’ve got to say. Daylight is nothing to you, so you
might as well go on traveling in darkness all your days! Oh, have it
your own way! Don’t think again; it would be idle; but still let me
compliment you on your sharpness, _ma bonne dame_. Nothing to
them!... Nothing to them! That’s a good one!”
He raised his arms far above his head in impotent protestation to an
unkind Heaven, and, turning raspingly on his heel, left her without
further ceremony to digest his cynical advice.
During Marguerite’s convent days Hortense Gervex had lived at
Plenhöel as a very superior sort of housekeeper, looking, together
with Quentin, after the Marquis’s interests, and keeping the
château continually ready to receive him in the intervals of his
trips to known and sometimes unknown portions of the globe. Years
before, when widowed at twenty by the premature drowning of her
husband, a fine young sailorman in command of a coasting steamer, she
had come to Plenhöel as companion and reader to “Antinoüs’s”
mother. She was now fifty-five, extremely well preserved, and very
comely, with her thick blond hair, slightly frosted with silver above
the temples, her wholesome face, and calm, blue-green eyes; and she
literally adored the “Gamin.”
After Quentin’s departure she remained for a few moments more,
watching the bathers frolicking in the wavelets below. Marguerite and
her father were swimming back now, and presently ran foul of a school
of porpoises playing “follow-my-leader” with the utmost gaiety.
Madame Hortense saw Marguerite dive suddenly and come up immediately
behind a big, shining fellow, whom she playfully slapped on the side.
Girl and fish disappeared together in a quick smother of foam; then
the fair head, darkened by immersion to a golden brown, emerged again
and followed in the wake of the paternal one.
“Ah, my little mermaid!” murmured Madame Hortense. “_Ma jolie petite
sirène!_ Is what that scamp of Quentin hints at truly possible?”
Her affectionate eyes followed the thought to the float, and their
expression slowly hardened. Laurence was still standing before Basil
in the same provocative attitude, still busy with her splendid hair,
twisting and untwisting it, as though to wring it dry. The hidden sun
had just made up his mind to peep through his veil of pearly vapors,
and a primrose glow of delicious warmth suffused the two figures. In
that revealing light Madame Hortense became suddenly aware of the
science that had presided over the making of Miss Seton’s costume,
in spite of all its maidenly whiteness. The young girl’s
illuminated silhouette all at once seemed terribly shocking to her in
its Venus-like beauty--(_Vénus sortant de l’onde_)--and with a
short exclamation she too turned on her heel and, running up the
steps to the esplanade, rapidly entered the château. Her brows were
knit and the flame of indignation shone warlike in her eyes.
The way to her own domain led past the suite of rooms occupied by
Laurence, and with perfect deliberation she opened the door of the
boudoir off the sleeping-apartment and entered.
This suite, comprising a bed, dressing and bath room, besides the
boudoir in question, was designated by the household as _la
volière_; for the whole plan of decoration was based upon bird life.
It had been a fantasy of a Marquise de Plenhöel, arriving as a bride
there from the Court of Versailles, to evolve for her own personal
use this dainty retreat, so completely at variance with the grim
fortress on the coast of Finisterre. She had been of a gay and witty
spirit, had this pretty Marquise, and this was testified by the
ingenuity with which these embellishments had been planned.
From the exquisite lampas covering the walls, where flights of winged
things seemed alive amid branches of pale brocaded roses and
apple-blossoms, from the curtains and portières of like material,
the beautifully medallioned and painted ceilings, the pink-marble
fireplaces and faintly gilded cornices, down to the very carpets,
lounges, and chairs, birds and flowers were repeated in every
imaginable hue and tint. Carved, embroidered, painted, and chiseled,
the feathered tribes hovered between garlands of bloom as admirably
preserved as if the hands of the artists had but just put the
finishing touches to their gracious task. The inspirer of it all had
died on the guillotine in 1794, but her pastel portrait hanging in
the boudoir smiled the imperishable smile of an all-conquering
loveliness and charm.
Her azure gaze, so proud and high-bred beneath the powdered and
diamond-dewed waves of her coiffure, riveted Madame Hortense’s
attention, as it always did when her duties called her to that
portion of the State Apartments. She paused before the cupid-wreathed
flame, and gazed at the slender waist in the silk-and-lace corselet
of a Court toilette; at the slim hands clasped over the nacre sticks
of a _point d’Argentan_ fan; at the trail of jasmine intermingled
with strands of great pearls, crossing like the ribbon of some Order
from the right shoulder to the left ride of the cloth-of-silver
girdle, and she sighed profoundly.
“_Ah! quelle pitié!_” she whispered, “_quelle pitié!_” Then, struck
by a sudden thought, she bent swiftly forward. “How Marguerite
resembles her!” she resumed, half aloud. “I had never noticed that
before.” And a shade of fear darkened her own eyes for an instant.
But she had not come to indulge in vain contemplations and vague
forebodings. So, straightening herself, she cast a quick look about
the room. Inside one of the window-places a Louis XVI. desk of
celadon-green wood, inlaid preciously with more birds and flowers,
had been left open. On the velvet-covered writing-board lay, in
unpleasant contrast, one of those eminently durable and business-like
blotting-books for which the world is indebted to England. Covered in
pigskin, it displayed the large, flat monogram, L. S., in visibly
extra-solid silver, while a fountain-pen of similar usefulness and
practicality had been uncapped, in dangerous proximity to the softly
faded lining of the desk.
If ever there existed a scrupulously honest and loyal woman, Madame
Hortense was that one. Yet without any hesitation whatsoever she
stepped to the window and resolutely opened the blotting-book.
Between the rough leaves there was nothing save a few clear sheets of
lavender-gray note-paper bearing the same letters, L. S., in violet
and gold, and Madame Hortense let the covers fall together with some
abruptness. She glanced into the immaculate depths of a beribboned
basket near by, and was on the point of passing on into the adjacent
bedroom when the violent stain made by a crimson-morocco volume on
the pale loveliness of the room made her stop and take up the
eye-offending object. “Scott’s Poems, by Scott. For a good little
girl,” was the enlightening device she read on the fly-leaf, writ in
an angular and manful, if not masculine, hand, and this was signed,
“From Aunt Elizabeth.” Madame Hortense lacked perhaps a keen sense of
humor, but yet she laughed, and was about to thrust the double
absurdity out of sight when it slipped from her fingers and fell with
a crash to the floor, flying open as it fell, and flinging half a
dozen sheets of the lavender-gray paper in as many different
directions.
“Oh! Oh! Oh!” quoth Madame Hortense in three different tones,
quickly picking them up. “So that’s the letter-box, eh?”
She was a trifle short-sighted, and, holding the loose pages close to
her eyes, began to read. She knew English very well, and followed
without the least trouble the small, neat lines of script that were
disposed to slant diagonally down the sheets toward the outer
corners, and as she read her kindly features gradually altered into
something almost approaching a tragic mask. When she reached the last
word of two copious epistles she confided them once more to Scott’s
care, replaced his poems on the table where she had found them, and
left the room with a curiously stiff gait, suggesting the _Statue du
Commandeur_ in “Don Juan.”
“So,” she thought, stalking wrathfully away, “Milady has a lover ...
an English lover--created by Divine Providence expressly for her,
excepting that he is not rich--an officer in the Life Guards, poor
fellow!” Pausing for an instant, she leaned against the stair
banister to reflect the better.
“Also,” she went on, mentally commenting, “she has a confidant--a
cousin ... _he_ is in the Scots Guards--to whom she tells all her
little plots! _Parfaitement!_ Mademoiselle Seton is well provided so
far. Add to this a millionaire Russian Prince anxious to become her
prey, it seems, and an American youth also possessed of vast wealth,
but, alas, untitled, who likewise is in love with her, and we have
the situation clear as mud. A very pretty situation indeed! Quentin
is really no fool!”
She shook her head dismally, disarranging thereby the spick-and-span
neatness of her undulated _bandeaux_ crowned by a bow of creamy lace,
and sought her own rooms, resolved to watch minutely the sorry game
that--chance somewhat assisting--had just been revealed, and which
presented many hitherto undreamed-of but very dangerous possibilities.
She who was here to watch over little motherless Marguerite at once
began to heap a thousand undeserved reproaches upon herself for what
she termed her unpardonable negligence, and felt indeed that in the
last half-hour she had become a sadder if a wiser woman.