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!”
A year later the “Gamin” and Piotr were returning from a delightful
prawn-fishing expedition in the deep rock pools that offer at low tide,
especially on granite shores such as those of Plenhöel, miraculous
chances for that kind of sport. _Haveneaux_ on shoulder, they stepped
briskly along the cliff path, she looking like a little girl in her
short striped petticoat and _tricot_ made and worn _à la manière des
marins_, her red _béret_ and rope-soled _éspadrilles_; he enormously
tall and strong for his age, browned by salt water and salt breezes to a
very becoming brownness. Behind them Garrassime--who seemed to have
stopped getting old during the past twelve months--and Madame Hortense,
always placid and comely, carried between them a great square basket
fragrant of brine and seaweed, that was quite full of big, frisky
_bouquins_.
“We’ve got a lot!” Piotr remarked, gleefully. “And all of them as long
as my hand, aren’t they, little darling Malou?”
“Oh, every bit,” laughed Marguerite. “I’m not going to argue, Piotr.”
“But you don’t seem convinced!”
“Not convinced! You do me an injustice, young man!” remonstrated
Marguerite.
“We can eat them for the second breakfast, can’t we?”
“Not can; _must_!” she corrected, gravely. “They’re good only when
fresh off the farm, you know, _Moussaillon_.”
“I like it when you call me _Moussaillon_, little darling Malou,” the
boy said, proudly. “Don’t you think I am a wonderful sailor already?
And as to swimming and fishing!” He smacked his rosy lips ecstatically,
glancing up at her for confirmation of these tall words.
“A wonderful sailor--a swimmer of extraordinary power--and as to a
fisherman!” she mimicked, her lovely face crinkling into a grimace that
well suited her name of “Gamin.”
“You’re laughing at me! But I handle the _avirons_ almost as well as
_Boustifaille_. You know I do.”
“Boustifaille” was Piotr’s _canot_ boy, a wide-awake lad of fourteen,
who was to ship next May on a “Banker,” and Marguerite smiled at the
boastfulness of Master Piotr; although, to do him justice, the child was
a born seaman, fearless as a porpoise, and inclined to be utterly
reckless of any danger.
For these particular traits she knew herself to be responsible. She had
been and was his constant companion and instructor in the arts of
natation, rowing, sailing, and fishing, and never tired of encouraging
him to display further prowess. The life of Piotr at Plenhöel was
ideal, between “Antinoüs,” who had come to love the boy almost as if he
were his own, and Marguerite, his best and most devoted comrade. In
return, nothing could be more touching than Piotr’s fealty to his
lady. There were times, it is true--during his less and less frequent
fits of rage--when even she could not manage him. But usually for a mere
touch of her hand, a slightly sterner glance from her blue eyes, he
really tried to calm himself--with more or less success, it is true, but
still with extraordinary determination for one so young.
The chief difficulty with him was to conquer his ever-present jealousy.
Perhaps Laurence had only partly assumed the rôle of a jealous woman.
Probably she was really inclined that way, and had needed only a
trifling exaggeration to serve her purpose, for her son was,
unfortunately for him and for others, abnormally provided with that sad
faculty for making every being dear to one entirely miserable. Let
Marguerite display the least bit of enthusiasm, or flattering
appreciation, toward anyone, a puppy-dog even, and Piotr would be at
once convulsed with fury. He did not sulk; he stormed whole-souledly; he
threw himself on the ground and he rolled over and over, shrieking
aloud, beating his head on the floor, tearing his hair, actually foaming
at the mouth; and so painful were these outbreaks that they were
considered at Plenhöel as visitations to be avoided by every possible
means.
“If he were mine,” the village doctor, a retired surgeon-major of the
navy, often said, “I’d make him acquainted with a rope’s end, and
that without delay. Is it possible to see a youngster get himself into
such states and remain neutral? Only mademoiselle is capable of it, but
she’s an angel of God. Besides, she’d crawl through a knothole to
please him.”
Perchance the doctor was right, perhaps he was wrong, in his particular
choice of a remedy, but, be it as it may, Marguerite would not hear of
drastic measures; in which opinion her father bore her out, for, as he
sagely remarked, with such an organization it was impossible to know
what brute force might produce.
In spite of these two wretched blemishes, Piotr was the most fascinating
boy one could imagine, and Plenhöel paid him homage as to a beloved
Dauphin. Ireland, Monsieur Quentin, François, Madame Hortense, the
coachmen, gardeners, stablemen, _chefs_, footmen, grooms, the aged
housekeeper, the maids, not to mention the farmers, villagers, and
salt-workers, were his willing subjects. As to the crews of the yacht
and sailing-boats, they raised him to the throne of a little sea-god,
pure and simple.
Warm-hearted, hot-headed, plucky as they make ’em, and generous to a
fault, this was Piotr. Also he had the religion of remembrance--a rare
gift--and not a day passed without his speaking of his father. He was
handsome, too, to a surprising, an alarming degree; with features too
classically perfect for a lad of his years, and magnetic eyes, changeful
in shape and hue with every new expression.
“_Quand il aura vingt ans il faudra enfermer les poulettes, par
exemple!_” the doctor was quoted as declaring on repeated occasions, and
this seemed like prophetic talk.
Basil wrote almost regularly to Régis, “from China or India, Mars or
the Moon,” as the Marquis was wont to vaguely explain, and Marguerite
helped Piotr pencil a couple of lines to accompany every one of her
father’s replies to each of those erratic missives.
My dear, dear Papa. When are you coming back? I am very big now. I
love you.
Piotr.
he had written the evening before the prawn-fishing, but, as he
impatiently declared, “I never get a letter from him, little darling
Malou!”
Marguerite cruelly felt this persistent neglect of Piotr. She invented
messages with untiring assiduity, but as a matter of fact, “_Mes
remerciements émus à ma cousine Marguerite_,” was the only allusion
ever made by Basil to Piotr’s existence.
The de Salvières were in Russia, looking after both their own estates
and Basil’s; Pavlo was now a first-lieutenant of great promise; the
peasants of Tverna, trotting easily in firm but light harness, exploded
no longer. As Tatiana once had told Preston Wynne, “_Tout est pour le
mieux dans çe meilleur des mondes._”
It was then that a cloud no bigger than a man’s hand began to float
imperceptibly upward toward the coast of Brittany from the blunt apex of
South Africa, where Basil had been sojourning for a while, as a letter
bore witness:
I am heartily tired of wandering [he wrote confidentially to Régis].
Weary of visiting place after place which holds no interest for me, and
yet I cannot make up my mind to settle down again, either in France or
in Russia. There seems nothing for me to do in either--or, for the
matter of that, anywhere else in the world, alas! Duties I have none
left--or if I have, disgust obstructs my view, and I do not see them. As
soon as Piotr is old enough to be put in a military academy I will know
better what to do. I had a nice surprise some time ago! Imagine that
among the effects and personal possessions left in the Paris house by
the lady who bore my name, and which I had caused to be packed and
stowed away under the supervision of Stepàn-Stepànovitch, my agent, he
found a writing-map I had once given her--a very splendid affair of
Tula-work and turquoises. Well, overstepping my orders, he made an
exhaustive examination of this object, read with a looking-glass from
the reversed writing printed and on the blotting-paper inside, more
convincing proofs yet of her guilty conduct with the young English
captain I had the misfortune to despatch from this world--God knows his
life was too dear a price to pay for her love--and also traces of
equally enlightening letters written to that poor chap who gave me
satisfaction in a way--Heaven is my witness--I will mourn for a long
time to come. I would much rather that Stepàn had let bad enough alone.
It is hard as it is to try and forget a little of all this--if not to
forgive it. But now to come to the real point of my letter: Do you think
I could venture to come and spend a few days near you? Not at Plenhöel,
for I cannot--no, I cannot see Piotr just yet--but in the neighborhood,
so as to be enabled to see _you_ and discuss matters with you. I am
thinking of starting for Canada, or perhaps Mexico, afterward; I
don’t know which, nor do I much care! One thing is certain: I will not
go to the States, and be looked upon from the moment of landing as a
conspirator, a fugitive from justice, a mendicant in gilded guise, or a
wretched fortune-hunter. I don’t blame the people over there for
seeing an intriguer and a scoundrel under every coronet that submits
itself to their criticism--perhaps they should not receive them either
enthusiastically or cringingly; not, at all events, before they have
made a few inquiries as to their wearer’s particular brand of
indignity--for, when one comes to think of the needy and abject
individuals who are continually “crossing the Pond,” as the English say,
to offer to the highest female bidder imitation names, bogus titles, or
genuine ones so tarnished as to have become unrecognizable, how can one
feel surprise at the variegated denunciations which transatlantic
invaders of our shores indulge in? Forgive this vacuous and interminable
missive. I am alone, sad, bad-tempered, and altogether uninhabitable.
Indeed, it would have been far simpler for me to tell you at the outset,
like a man, that I am yearning for a home--anybody’s, since my own is
destroyed, and sign myself,
Your affectionate
Basil.
Régis had not hesitated an instant. To his practical sense--he had a
good deal of that, and very well developed--it appeared only too clearly
that, unless something rather drastic was done, Basil would gradually
let himself drift into positive melancholia, and his warm heart revolted
at the thought; so without losing a minute, he had written and cabled to
his cousin to come at once; ridiculed his distaste for seeing Piotr,
whom he described as a most delicious boy and a true Palitzin; accused
Basil squarely and fairly of giving way too much to his morbid feelings;
and had, indeed, made such good use of an eloquence he rarely lacked
when both his brain and his heart were in accord, that a cable from
Gibraltar had finally announced to him the arrival of Basil in a few
days.
“We will cure him, _mon Chevalier_,” “Antinoüs” said to his daughter
when announcing the news to her. “These fancies of his are simply
absurd--there’s no other word for it.”
Marguerite looked her father suddenly straight in the eyes. She was
sitting on the window-sill of his study, while he stood, a cigarette
between his teeth, both hands stuck deep in his jacket pockets, looking
out at the glancing fountain with its quaint presentations of kneeling
monks and curious, unnatural stone birds--a masterpiece from the same
chisel as had carved the unique doorway of the Castle chapel.
“Papa,” said the “Gamin,” gravely, “you don’t believe it, I know, but
I am no longer a little girl. Don’t you think you could tell me why
Basil has ceased to care for Piotr? There is some reason for it, some
very serious reason, for he is the last man on earth one could accuse of
caprice--a feminine defect, besides! Why can’t you tell me what makes
him feel as he does?”
Régis did not answer at once. He had long been in the habit of treating
Marguerite as a very precious companion and counselor; moreover, she was
right in saying that she was no longer a little girl, for in her country
and in her world girls not yet married at eighteen, even, are supposed
to be determined to remain old maids. Still, it was utterly impossible
to so much as hint at the truth, and he decided to seek an acceptable
alternative.
“What makes you so sure that Basil has really ceased to care for his
son?” he asked, throwing away his cigarette end to light a fresh one.
“What he himself told me,” she replied, unhesitatingly. “Also, his
impossible attitude toward Piotr. Now, Papa, you and I realize that he
is not doing this idly--_pour se donner des airs_.”
“No, certainly not!” admitted Régis, still looking at the marvelous
procession of hooded and unhooded monks mirrored in the limpid water of
the fountain. “But you must not forget that Basil had a terrible shock,
that--”
Marguerite here firmly interrupted him. “If you are going to
tergiversate, my dear Papa,” she said, quietly, “we may as well drop the
subject once and for all. I’d a great deal sooner you’d tell me to
mind my own business, or, in other words, that I am poaching on land
where I have no right to intrude. At least it would show me a straight
road out.”
“_Mon Chevalier_,” Régis retorted, “you and I have managed to be far
more than father and daughter to each other, as this closest of
relationships is generally understood. We have been friends and equals
right through. You are--I don’t want to throw bouquets at you--but you
really are the most perfect gentleman I have ever had the fortune to
encounter, and in all questions of honor there is no one I would rather
consult than you. But you are at the same time my beloved little
daughter and a pearl of extreme purity; therefore I do tell you, in all
amity, not to ask me that question again. As far as I know, moreover,
Basil’s only reason for the coldness he displays toward Piotr--and
that undeniably exists--is that the child reminds him of Laurence, and
of the sorrows Laurence brought into his life. He is one of those
persons who, owing to a singularly uncompromising nature, are apt to
burn fiercely what they once adored, and _vice versa_. I am convinced,
however, that, were the proper influence exerted, he could be won over
to saner and fairer sentiments. Hadn’t you better try to do that
yourself?”
Marguerite flushed, but her eyes did not waver from her father’s.
“You are the only person who can,” he emphasized.
“Frankly, Papa, if you don’t mind my saying it, I have no more
influence on Basil than Garrassime has.”
“And to think that she sincerely believes that!” Régis mused, gazing at
the “Gamin” in her dark-gray riding-habit, slim and young, and good to
look at beyond compare. “My own little girl!” he thought, tenderly. “How
I wish she could be happy. And to think that that fool of a Basil
considers himself too smirched and dishonored now to ever ask her to be
his wife!” Aloud he said, simply: “You are entirely mistaken,
_Chevalier_. You have lived a life for more protected and sheltered than
most modern girls, even when they have been strictly brought up. What
you know of men is represented by myself, Jean de Salvières, and some
other relatives of the same stamp. We all and sundry are not a bad sort,
and have the breeding to show our best side to our women. Tatiana and
the other few feminine personalities you come in contact with, including
that excellent creature Hortense, are _hors concours_; delightful as far
as perfection can go, and the only bad un you ever met was that
misguided being, Laurence.”
“Oh, Papa, remember!” Marguerite pleaded, much distressed.
“I remember, my dear, never fear! Nor am I especially harsh in
mentioning the fact that Laurence was a very evil woman. God knows she
was. Basil made a frightful mistake when he married her, and has lived
to regret it. He is sore now; embittered; _refoulé sur lui même_;
restive to any interference coming from his people, from me, from his
best and most intimate friends. But you are different! I am not speaking
from undue pride in you, or because you can always lead me by one thread
of your silken hair, so don’t shake your head. You have to a supreme
degree the _cavata_ necessary to wield power of the only kind that will
work with him--and bear in mind that the warmest corner of his heart has
always been yours.”
Marguerite rose. “I don’t believe that!” she said, with utter
frankness. “At least I never saw any sign of such a thing, Papa.”
“That again is due to your inexperience. Basil is naturally cold,
distant, and self-contained--wooden, if you like--and a bit
introspective. He is also, funny as it may seem to you, a shy man.
Believe me, _Chevalier_, I am anxious to see the ice wall that surrounds
him--how poetically I do speak!--broken through. He has suffered quite
enough already. You, I am absolutely certain, can humanize him again.
Now will you, or will you not, do your little best? Answer me!”
Marguerite had an unbounded confidence in her father. She saw that he
was very much in earnest--a rare thing with him, who to all intents and
purposes generally toyed with life’s difficulties; and her surrender
was quick.
“You really, genuinely, think that I can do something to help?” she
asked. “You really believe that Basil is in danger?”
“I answer yes on both counts, unhesitatingly,” Régis declared. “Basil
is in a bad way, which is a thousand pities, for he is the finest man I
know; also I stick by what I said--you alone, my little witch, can make
him hear reason. I have spoken!”
Later on, when _le Chevalier_ “_Gamin_” was alone in her own apartments
that overlooked the ocean on two sides, she sat for a long while by a
window staring at the waves. She was firmly convinced that the secret
she had so well kept with regard to her personal feelings was still her
only own; Basil could and would never be anything else to her but a dear
and devoted friend. He--she felt certain, too--had given all the love he
had in his power to give to Laurence. Her ingratitude, her hardness of
heart, her lack of sympathy with any and every plan of his, had caused
him a pain and a disappointment from which he would never recover. She
was forced to conclude that on this point he showed himself singularly
unforgiving, not to say unjust, since he carried his rancor to the limit
of the impossible by his disaffection toward his son and hers. Excuses!
She found them for him in what her father had told her an hour before,
and it was a relief in a way. Basil was not himself; he was alone; the
shock had been too severe even for his iron organization. Well then, why
not do what she was asked? Why not try, at least? Perhaps she would
succeed.... Who could tell? And if she could bring father and son
together again, what unspeakable joy that would be!
With a little sigh of anticipation, half dread and half hope, she got
out of her chair and, opening the window, stepped upon the balcony. The
evening was all gray and silver, streaked with rose where the sun had
just disappeared. The mews were hurrying home to their rock-nests in the
cliff, skimming over the surface of the spangled sea, winging their way
athwart the salt-marshes on the right, where the tent-like heaps of salt
gleamed whitely, and the shallow waters--cross-barred by thin banks of
clay--were now squares of pink crystal, leaded into a broad prostrate
window of afterglow. A little sail of surprising whiteness and
daintiness punctuated the offing with its swallow-winged silhouette, and
on the horizon a clear-cut band of incredible apple-green lay along the
sky. It seemed as if it would have been soft to the touch--a length of
pure velvet, the color of Hope.
“Oh, Basil!” Marguerite gently called. “You will listen, won’t you?”
Her white arms outstretched to the immensity opening before her, she
suddenly gave a little laugh of triumph. “He will!” she thought. “I know
he will now! I mean to try so well!”
Strong in her resolution, Marguerite went about her hundred and one
duties during the following week with a quaint little conquering air
that made Régis’s eyes follow her amusedly, and a little wistfully,
too. Could he ever resign himself to give her up, even partly, even to
Basil? He had reflected over the matter in the deeps of his heart, and
well did he know that this queer little _Chevalier_ of his would go
bravely through life alone, unwed, yearning assuredly for a home and
children of her own, but cheerful always, and uncomplaining. So much
beauty and love wasted on him, “Antinoüs”--an aging “Antinoüs” in
spite of his youthful looks--since this very morning he had found one
silver thread among the gold above his temple. What an everlasting and
beastly pity that would be! Basil was only a very little his junior; but
since she liked him so--and that he never doubted for an instant. Well,
parents had to make sacrifices, sometimes much more bitter than this--if
it ever came to pass--and Heaven knew it would be bitter enough. Still,
he knew that the “Gamin” would always be his, and that she would suffer
no permanent separation from him, which was an immense consolation.
Thus devised Régis, riding home from a horse-fair in the dim
neighborhood--dim in two ways, for in Brittany distances over waste
places are great, and, moreover, night was falling rapidly.
Indeed, the moon was already shining hazily when he dismounted.
Marguerite was, as always, standing on the broad shallow _perron_
waiting for him, and he waved his hand to her with a positively
lover-like gesture as he gave his horse to the groom. But whose was the
tall, dark silhouette towering behind her?
With a view-halloo of astounding fervor Régis sprang up the steps, and
in another instant he was pounding Basil most heartily on the back.
“Welcome! and welcome! and a thousand welcomes! old fellow!” he cried,
beaming with pleasure. “That’s right. When did you come?”
“Half an hour ago, and Marguerite has spent every second of it assuring
me that I have not aged. What do you think of your daughter’s veracity
now?”
“The highest possible thinks!” Régis cried, whirling his cousin around.
“Let’s look at you here under the luster! Why, you’re more bronzed
and more soldierly, that’s all I can discover. A fine figure of a
man, as Quentin once said when I showed him the famous statue of Roland
I had just brought home from Paris.”
They laughed, all three, quite immoderately at this exuberant joke, and
walked into the dining-room arm in arm, the “Gamin” in the middle, as
befitted her smaller size. The evening that followed was an enchanting
one. Where was Basil’s melancholy? The two others had not even leisure
to ask themselves that; and as to him, he had so much to tell about his
peregrinations half around the globe and back again, so much to listen
to as told by them, that in the excitement of recital he forgot his woes
for the first time in months and months.
Midnight had long chimed solemnly from the Castle clock when they at
last left the library where they had spent the _veillée_, and marched
side by side down the immense second-floor gallery upon which all the
bedrooms opened. Basil and Régis took Marguerite to her door, and were
about to say good-night, when she suddenly swerved to the right and,
noiselessly opening another, beckoned them to follow, one finger on her
lips commanding silence. Régis understood, and fell back to let Basil
pass, while he, thinking of some joke to be perpetrated upon him,
obeyed, on tiptoe, assuming a portentous mien.
Immediately behind Marguerite he entered a room of truly enormous
dimensions, high-ceiled, and hung with gay cretonne, upon which, as far
as he could see, fairy-like birds disported themselves around
dream-flowers. The furniture was all of white lacquer, and the thick
carpet underfoot of similar snowiness, with here and there an ice-bear
skin flung across its stainless surface. A tall screen of carven wood
was curved before the cretonne-curtained windows, and to this recess
Marguerite led the way, still on the points of her slippers. The rosy
globe hanging from the ceiling did not give very much light, but quite
sufficient to bring Basil suddenly to a stop, for there, on a narrow
brass bed, the silken coverings thrown back from his sturdy little form,
lay, fast asleep, the handsomest boy it was possible to see. The
shapely, strong limbs, the tanned, slightly flushed cheeks, the soft
curling hair and thickly fringed eyelids, made a picture vigorous and
beautiful, to which Marguerite, her fingers on Basil’s sleeve, pointed
proudly.
“Behold your son!” she murmured, laughingly; and Basil suddenly shivered
from head to foot.
“Your son!” she repeated, in a fragrant whisper, leaning closer to him.
“Your son, and your second self. Look!”
Above the bed hung a portrait of Basil when yet a lad, and given to
Régis’s mother at the time. The diffused glow from the night-lamp
somehow seemed to concentrate upon the lifelike painting before which it
was hung, and it would have taken a purposely obtuse eye not to be
struck by the amazing resemblance between it and the little sleeper
beneath. In her innocent endeavor to reconquer Basil’s love for Piotr,
Marguerite could not have designed a more Machiavelian plan. “_Aux
innocents les mains pleines_,” says the old proverb, and who can call it
untrue?
Without a word Basil was staring, first at the picture, then at the
living, breathing miniature thereof on the pillow; and Marguerite,
watching him with all the intentness of her blue eyes, saw the rigid
features slowly relax, soften, hesitate as it were in their expression
of dawning ecstasy.
“What is it?” she breathed faintly, more to herself than to him.
Big drops of sweat were trickling down Basil’s ashen face, and she
leaned toward him, her heart literally in her mouth. What had she done?
she asked herself in terror. And then a stranger thing yet happened; for
Piotr, as if touched by some magnetic ray, opened wide his eyes, and
with a cry of delight, one agile boyish bound, launched himself like an
arrow into his father’s arms.
“Papa!”
Marguerite fell back, appalled. Would Basil repulse that appeal? But no!
his arms closed upon the quivering boy, and Marguerite, turning, ran to
the door and fell upon Régis’s shoulder.
“He loves him still! He loves him still!” she gasped, laughing and
crying at the same time.
And in a little while they were all in the room together, Basil with
Piotr on his knee, Régis and Marguerite and Garrassime--in his long
linen _kaftán_--one tear after another coursing down the middle of his
nose in a fashion most comical had it not been so pathetic, everybody
speaking at once of the most variegated things, so that nobody could
understand a word that was said.
Later--was it an hour, a minute, a year?--none there could have
told--Piotr was induced to return to his slumbers, and Garrassime to his
side of the screen, for what little was left of the night. Dame Luna was
sliding down the ultramarine slope of the sky at a rapid rate. On the
edge of the shingle left bare by the tide sea-larks were beginning to
move restlessly in the clusters of glass thistles and sand-poppies where
they adventure their sleep, and from the mysterious east transparent
scarfs of faintest nacre heralded the coming of the dawn. The air was so
pure, so fresh, so exquisitely briny, that as they passed the open bay
of the gallery they could not resist the temptation of breathing it in.
They were silent, now, all three, quite silent, and stood facing the sea
in a sort of reverence for its beauty that found no expression in words.
Marguerite--a slender white shadow silvered by that unearthly light so
few have the fortune to catch--leaned over the balustrade, her heart
beating with gentle triumph.
“Moonglade!” murmured Régis, indicating the graceful silhouette
outlined so tenderly against the still, moonlit water. “You were right!”
Basil turned and looked at his friend and kinsman. “Will you give her to
me?” he said, very low.
Régis raised both shoulders and eyes to Heaven in a gesture of complex,
almost amusing resignation.
“Go and ask her!” he said in the same tone, and went inside to wait for
them.