Ask; I will not deny, within the strength
Courage and Honor may descry in me.
Ask of my service to the utmost length
And I will give it thee.
Marguerite was sitting on the short salt-grass at the top of the
_souffleur_ cliff. Beside her was a large reed basket, half filled
with _mousserons_--those toothsome little pale-yellow mushrooms that
grow in perfect circles all over the table-land--perfect circles,
from which, however, one mushroom is always missing, because these
erratic cryptogams appear only where the _Farfadets_ (elves) have
danced during the night, a member of their company lying on watch at
full length upon the ground while they merrily disport themselves in
an all but complete _ronde_.
The gray-green sward was still dotted with the quaint formation close
to Marguerite, but she had stopped harvesting them, and sat idly--a
strange thing for her to do--evidently absorbed in the evolutions of
the gulls, which kept plunging headlong down to the blue waves,
apparently for no other purpose than to fly immediately up again and
preen their plumage in the veiled sunlight of the cliff-top.
There was an indefinite expression in Marguerite’s attitude which
had never been there before: not lassitude, not ennui, but a queer
lack of that verve and elasticity hitherto one of her greatest
charms. Her delicious face, so like the pastel in the boudoir of the
_volière_ suite, was much as usual beneath the brim of her
sailor-hat, her slim waist as supple, her shoulders as straight and
well drilled as ever, and yet, and yet--?
Nobody had noticed any change in her, however, so change assuredly
there could not be.
A quick step behind her made her turn and see Basil advancing in long
strides from the “castle-path”--as the yard-wide track westward along
the _falaise_ is distinguished from the one in the opposite
direction.
“Had a pleasant ride?” she queried, as he came up, instinctively
making room for him beside her, as though there had not been mile
after mile of room on both interminable stretches to east and to
west.
“Yes,” he replied, lowering himself to the grass at her side and
pushing back his cap to let the strong sea-breeze cool his forehead.
“A very nice ride. But why didn’t you come with us, my dear little
‘Gamin’?”
His dear little “Gamin” resumed her contemplation of the whirling
gulls, her eyes averted from him.
“Oh,” she replied, lightly, “I didn’t feel like riding to-day.
Besides, these mushrooms needed cutting.”
Basil laughed. “A fine excuse!” he declared. “And as to your not
feeling like riding, you who, so to speak, have been born on
horseback--a little Centauress!”
He bent sideways to see her face, but she petulantly left a mere
profile for his inspection.
“Oh, there’s an eagle!” she exclaimed, pointing to a distant crag,
where a solitary bird of great size had just alighted.
“An eagle! Yes, I think it must be an eagle,” he amiably
corroborated, without troubling to look in that direction. “Let him
be; he is well enough there. Can’t you be serious a moment,
‘Gamin’? I want to speak to you.”
His face was grave now, and the tone of his voice made her veer round
with a sudden anxiety.
“Anything wrong?” she asked.
“No, of course not ... I only wish to ... ask your advice about a
personal matter. You are a very wise little person, sometimes, you
know.”
“Am I? It’s the first time I hear of it!” she exclaimed. “It sounds
very nice!”
“I’m glad it does, ‘Gamin,’ because it’s the plain truth. And
I am sorely in need of wisdom just now, having apparently none left
of my own.”
Marguerite laughed, and a quick blush followed the laugh.
“Set forth the case for judgment,” she said, reaching to gather a
dewy _mousseron_ and tossing it negligently into the basket; but he
suddenly caught her hand and held it tightly in his.
“Look here!” he pleaded. “I cannot speak if you don’t keep quiet.
What I have to say is not so awfully easy.”
“It is serious, then?” she questioned, hesitatingly, her fingers
remaining his willing prisoners.
“Very serious.”
The “Gamin” slowly shifted her head, and her luminous eyes met his
frankly.
“Speak then,” she said in an odd voice, which seemed all at once a
little strangled.
“Well!” Basil began. “Well--now supposing you were asked ... would
you ... would a young girl like you find me too old to--to marry?”
Marguerite started and drew her hand firmly away. There was a silence
during which the clamor of the gulls became enervatingly loud. A
hurtling squadron of noisy birds swept over Marguerite’s and
Basil’s heads, settled in disorder on the grass ten yards farther
on, and instantly ceased shrieking.
“Well?” Basil, who had also fallen into a bird-study, resumed with an
effort.
“Well, I told you so before. You are not so very old.” There was a
pitiful little attempt at humor and lightness in the words. “I ...
you see ... I was teasing you that day.... I was much younger then.”
“Much younger,” he expostulated, “four weeks ago!”
“Four weeks--is that all?” she wondered.
“Yes, just four weeks to-morrow. I remember because ... never mind
why.... But you have not really answered me.” He recaptured her hand
and pressed it. “Do, ‘Gamin,’ do, please say something encouraging!”
he murmured, almost in her ear, and quite unconsciously drawing her
toward him.
Her graceful body stiffened, and almost immediately relaxed again.
The hand in his was trembling a very little.
“I think you would make a very nice husband,” she said, innocently,
not in the least aware of what she was saying.
A quick smile lighted up Basil’s eyes. “You dear child!” he
whispered. “You little darling!”
Marguerite sat quite still waiting--waiting for she knew not what;
her heart beating so fast that she became afraid he might hear it.
Fortunately more gulls were swooping up from below the giddy brink,
and the surge of their wings made this improbable.
“Then you would not laugh at me if I were to ask you to--”
He paused, searching for the exact words he wanted, and Marguerite,
her lips slightly apart, listened a trifle breathlessly. “To help
me?” he concluded with unexpected force.
“Help you? How? What do you mean, Cousin Basil?”
She was desperately trying to conquer some unexplainable emotion.
“You see, I don’t like to ask your father. He would begin by making
fun of me!”
“Fun of _you_!”
“Oh, without a doubt! You know him, Marguerite.” He had never called
her Marguerite before, and she wondered why he did so now. “He is
barely four years older than I am, you understand, and....”
“What does that matter?” she interrupted, with a happy little smile.
“He--”
She checked herself and hastily altered the sentence to a “He likes
you very much, you know!” which was extraordinarily meaningless.
“And do you like me very much, too?” Basil asked, looking straight
ahead in the eye of the wind. It was a pity he could not see her
smile now, or the expression that accompanied the light casualness of
her reply, for both were revealing.
“Yes; very much, Cousin Basil.”
“I know you do, my dear little ‘Gamin,’ and that is what
emboldened me to ask your advice just now.”
He was still gazing out to sea, wrapped in his own thought, while she
waited, a faint tingling in her finger-tips warning her that her
patience was really being tried. She moved restlessly once or twice,
until finally one slender fawn-suède-shod foot hung directly over
the knife-like edge of the cliff. In the offing a fleet of
fishing-boats that from that height resembled a mere flight of
red-and-white butterflies, were drowsily drifting under slack sails
toward the harbor of Kastèllék, behind the crag where still sat
enthroned the contemplative eagle.
Absently, mechanically, almost, Marguerite pulled from the
rock-border of the salt-grass a fat stem of _perce-pierre_, and stuck
it in her mouth. The juice of that briny plant--eatable only when
steeped in vinegar--bit smartly into her tongue, but she did not even
notice it, for she was watching Basil intently; his handsome profile,
the deep-set gray eyes under their energetic brows, the obstinate
chin, and clean-cut mouth by no means concealed by the short, light
mustache which contrasted so happily with the red-brown hair faintly
limned with silver. Her cousin Basil! She was very proud of him. Was
there any other man like him in the whole round world?
“I hesitate to ask you another service,” she heard him say now, and
with praiseworthy energy she roused herself.
“Don’t hesitate, Cousin Basil!” she said, with a hint of shyness.
“Do you think you could manage to sound your friend’s ideas on the
subject?”
“My friend ... the subject!” she echoed, blankly. Whatever doubt and
surprise she might have felt before was transformed into complete
puzzlement. She was coming back from so great a distance!
“Yes--your friend Laurence, of course! You see,” he continued, more
easily now that he had burned his bridges behind him--“you see, my
‘Gamin,’ ridiculous or not, my whole future life is centered upon
her. I fell in love with her the minute I set eyes upon her, and if
she refuses to marry me--”
With a wild scramble that all but threw her headlong over the
precipice the “Gamin” jumped up. She was ashy white, and as he caught
her--as it were in mid-air--he felt that she was shaking, literally
from head to foot.
“Are you crazy?” he demanded, holding her tightly in his arms, as if
afraid that she would try to escape. “Lord! how you startled me. What
do you mean by dancing about like that in such a place!”
She saw that he was badly frightened, for his voice trembled as he
spoke, and she disengaged herself quietly, and in a curiously calm
tone apologized.
“I am very sorry, _mon cousin_. I hope you will forgive the scare I
gave you,” she said, simply.
“_Sacré_...!” The rest of the heartfelt string of objurgations
rising in his throat bumped against his teeth, and he swallowed it
whole, so to speak. She had returned a few paces, and, picking up
her basket, was standing cold and pale as a lily, scanning the
horizon.
“Plenhöel should hire a keeper for you!” Basil cried, with that
vengeful irritation which invariably succeeds great frights. “You are
not fit to be trusted out alone!”
“Thank you very much, _mon bon cousin_!” she said, with a little
courtesy in his direction. “Not you, I hope, however. He might find
you inadequate--and, besides, if you will now take the trouble to
look yonder, behind the _menhir_, you will see Hortense Gervex dozing
over her knitting. _She_ is my keeper.”
“A famous guardian!” Basil deprecated in disgust. “As a matter of
fact you have jumbled my ideas so that I scarcely remember what I was
talking to you about!”
“I do!” responded Marguerite. “I remember it perfectly, and, acting
upon your recent request, I will try to find out what you wish to
know, as soon as possible.”
A quick suspicion, as fleet as the flight of an arrow, shot through
Basil’s heart. What was this in her voice, her manner, that seemed
so queer? He turned and faced her in acute distress; but there she
stood, apparently quite unmoved, in a perfectly natural attitude,
both little hands clasped upon the handle of her mushroom-basket, and
inwardly Basil wrathfully called himself an imbecile. That
child--that mere baby--it seemed almost a desecration to have, even
for a second, believed her capable of “grown-up” feelings. Ah! Yes,
indeed, she was justly named the “Gamin,” with her boyish, reckless
ways, her laughter, her merry pranks. Poor dear little “Gamin.”
They were walking side by side, now, in the direction of the
_menhir_, to retrieve Madame Hortense, who, had they known it, was
far from “dozing over her knitting,” but wide awake indeed, very
watchful, and gleefully imagining that things were going on quite
satisfactorily between those two. Marguerite had refused to
relinquish her basket to Basil, and was swinging it carelessly by
the handle as she advanced toward her governess.
“Wake up! Wake up!” she cried, making a trumpet of both her hands
through the basket handle. “Time to go home, Hortense!”
Madame Hortense rose, methodically folded her work, and, coming on to
meet them, fell in immediately behind on the narrow track. The grass
for yards and yards was now covered with sitting gulls, forming a
great restless carpet of living snow, while hovering above them, a
host of late-comers violently protested against the pre-emption of
what they naturally considered their own particular territory.
Marguerite and Basil, a mere half-head in front of Madame Hortense,
were silent. Once she stumbled over a small stone, and laughed at her
extraordinary clumsiness when Basil caught her by the elbow. But
there must have been something odd in the timbre of that laugh, for
Madame Hortense instantly ranged up alongside and gave her a quick,
searching glance that Marguerite met with eyes as bright and hard as
steel. As to Basil, he was again sunk in his own dreams, and Hortense
resumed her former place with a puzzled sigh.
Leaving him on the _perron_, and Madame Hortense sitting unquietly on
one of the terrace benches, Marguerite ran to the stables, ordered
her favorite horse, “Gavroche,” to be saddled at once, whispered a
few words to the old _piqueux_, who always accompanied her when she
rode without her father, and raced back with nervous speed to put on
her habit.
Fifteen minutes later she was cantering across the heather toward the
forest, with the ease of those who have begun this sport of sports as
soon as they could stand on their feet, but with far from her usual
pleasure. As she reached the first pines standing sentinel-wise at
the limit of the _lande_ the sun was just beginning its downward
course to the ocean-rim, and she realized with a certain joyless
satisfaction that earth and sea would still for many hours be bathed
in that rose-gold light, which, save on very few occasions, on hard
midsummer or midwinter days, is the veiled glory of Brittany.
Nobody at the Castle knew that she had gone out, for she had bidden
Ireland, the _piqueux_, to wait for her in the “yard,” where she had
mounted “Gavroche,” and now Ireland was following fifty paces behind
on “Méssire-Antoine,” the “worst-minded devil at Plenhöel”--as he
was distinguished by his present gray-haired rider from a vast
company of mettlesome thoroughbreds housed on three rides of the
equine “yard,” very much as the hosts of the château were lodged
about the _Cour-d’Honneur_.
Bending her head beneath the sweeping boughs of the vanguard of
trees, Marguerite galloped into a narrow sandy path padded with last
year’s pine-needles. She had adopted a pace that suggested flight
from some imminent danger, some indeterminate presence that must be
avoided at all cost. Her eyes had a fixed, harsh look that certainly
had never sojourned there before, and the ungloved hands, tightened
on the reins, had a grim expression all their own. “Méssire-Antoine,”
fired by the example of “Gavroche,” gave Ireland some trouble to
keep him at the regulation distance, so that this worthy began to
wonder what ailed his young mistress. He, too, was an ancient
servitor, a relic of the late Marquis, who when still a youth had
brought him back from a hunting trip in Queen Victoria’s dominions,
and ever since then the man had remained at Plenhöel, well satisfied
with his lot. It was he, as a matter of fact, who first had put
Marguerite on a pony the size of a Newfoundland dog, settled her
baby form in the little velvet chair on its back, and gradually
taught her how to stick on something less easy. Curbing his
evil-tempered mount, he now watched the little figure ahead in the
gray linen, close-fitting habit, the thick, fair hair clubbed low on
the neck by a flat barret of yellow tortoise-shell, the trim gray
sailor-hat tilted forward, and last, but not least, the absurdly
small foot with its gleaming golden spur poised in the stirrup, _au
ras de la jupe_. He smiled discreetly as he recalled the winning of
that golden spur by “le Chevalier Gamin”--as her father had dubbed
her from that day on. It was at a boar-hunt, when, out of a large
assembly, she alone had arrived at the finish with the Master. She
was only fourteen then, and, as it chanced, on sick-leave from her
convent; but the spirit of all the past and present Plenhöels, their
contempt of pain, their horror of ever being beaten, had flamed up
in her, and the prize of that victory had been the little golden
token of knighthood--not only because she had won, but because
already then she was bent on always winning, on always being on time
to prevent her dogs from being “unsewn” by their fierce quarry, at
the kill.
Almost soundlessly the hoofs of “Gavroche” and of “Méssire-Antoine”
flew along the felted forest-track, and not once did Marguerite
slacken speed until the “_Carrefour_” of the “Seven Sages” was
reached. Why the Seven Sages no one could tell, or had ever known
precisely, but here it was at last, a little break of blue sky among
the crowding tree-tops, a green island underfoot, luxuriously
moss-carpeted all about a lofty throne-like rock indented by seven
curious niches, which formed its exact center. Foxgloves in rich
profusion proudly swung their chimes of pink bells beneath its craggy
sides, and tall ferns of extravagant vigor grew in sturdy clumps
here, there, and everywhere. Its towering grandeur made a new idea
break upon the painful confusion of the young girl’s thoughts, and
she beckoned to Ireland, stopped, and, sliding to earth, stood
holding out the reins to him with averted face.
“I’m going to the top of the rock while you walk them about,” she
said, shortly, and left him gravely alarmed, for he had never yet
seen his gracious lady so very pale, or so abrupt and cold.
The top of the Throne Rock--something of a scramble to reach--was as
flat as one’s hand, and to the eye hard as only black basalt can
look--and be; but Marguerite flung herself down upon it,
nevertheless, and lay flat, her hands crossed behind her head, her
eyes searching the pale-blue gulf above for the answer to her riddle,
the soothing of her stormy reflections. She kept so still that a
robin red-breast adventured himself close to her feet. He bent his
head wisely, cocked a wary brilliant eye upon the shining rowel of
her spur, advanced yet farther--near enough to peck the hem of her
skirt--retreated with an impudent swelling of bright feathers,
advanced again, and then with a comically disappointed mien flew up
to the topmost branch of a slender birch hard by, and clung there,
gazing down at her from that convenient height. Unfortunately, the
wide-open eyes, with the faint azure rings beneath them, had no
vision just then for the picture he made, with his scarlet breast and
fluffy body boldly showing against a trembling spray of purest
yellow, such as sapling trees sometimes bear among their summer
foliage--a dignity beyond their age and strength, like a silver
thread or two amid youthful locks, or a line of pain on a young face;
while the sun went slowly on his way and the transparent shadows
shifted across the fragrant glade.
For a long time Marguerite lay there motionless. She might have been
carved from the rock itself, so little sign of life did she give, and
when at length she rose, all of a piece--as was her wont--there was
no longer any trace of emotion or chagrin on her charming little
face.
“I’ll sound her to-night,” she whispered to the deep heaven above
that apparently had given her the answer she sought; and, climbing
swiftly down, she rejoined Ireland with a “Let’s gallop home,
Irry,” that instantly cheered and comforted her old retainer; for the
voice and the manner were once more those of his “Chevalier-Gamin.”