CHAPTER IXThe door was shut, and cobwebbed too.Across the dusty panels grewThick tendrils of Regret and Pain,When Love unbarred, and glancing through,Smiled sadly once, then closed it to,And footfalls died away again.
The door was shut, and cobwebbed too.Across the dusty panels grewThick tendrils of Regret and Pain,When Love unbarred, and glancing through,Smiled sadly once, then closed it to,And footfalls died away again.
The door was shut, and cobwebbed too.Across the dusty panels grewThick tendrils of Regret and Pain,When Love unbarred, and glancing through,Smiled sadly once, then closed it to,And footfalls died away again.
It was a wonderful morning, all aglow with sunbeams as yet unchequered by shadows, for the trees of the Bois and the Champs-Élysées were but just beginning to star their naked branches with gauze-like shreds of tiniest leaf. Even the famous “Marronier-du-vingt-Mars” had scarcely disenveloped its fan-shaped foliage, and its burgeons for the most part still glistened in their smart brown rubber corselets. The sky was blue as forget-me-nots, and some venturesome white butterflies flitted by on gossamer wings as Basil turned his horses’ noses toward the left bank of the Seine, after some hours spent in the Bois de Vincennes, alone, as it were, with awakening Nature.
“I shall go and see how they are,” he mused, flicking a disgracefully inexperienced baby fly from his off leader’s ear with the end of his long four-in-hand whip. “Surely there can be no harm in that, I trust!” He smiled a little bitterly, and, gathering the ribbons more firmly into his hands, slowed down to take a difficult turning with his customary skill.
The river glittered bravely as he crossed the bridge, clothing itself all over with steel and silver when a fleecylittle flock of cloudlets that had followed him from the “Arc-de-Triomphe” interposed their diaphanousness between him and the sun; but as soon as they had sailed on resuming its gallant armor of golden scales again; and when at last he reached the Noble Faubourg he found that the clouds had let themselves be distanced and that Spring reigned supreme.
Topping the garden walls of the Hôtel de Plenhöel the dainty trails of centenarian ivies were overtoned by the first shoots of snugly protected climbing rose-vines, that formed a triumphant garland of crimson-tipped green along the ancient granite coping.
With a curious beating of the heart Basil drove into the stone-paved courtyard and stopped his beautiful team of bays at the foot of the steps.
“Yes, Monsieur le Marquis and mademoiselle were within,” theSuisseadmitted, with as near an approach to a welcoming smile as his dignified functions would allow (for Basil was cherished by inferiors, whether they belonged to his household or to those of other people), and with no decorum at all he ran into the hall, smiling gaily at that splendid official.
“How do you do?” he was calling a second later from the foot of the great stairs, where he stood beside the servant who had taken his coat. Holding lightly to the banisters, Marguerite was coming down almost at a run, and there was a freshness, a delicacy, a something pure and untouched about her, that made his heart, his very soul, warm with infinite tenderness. Contrary to her habit, she was not in white, but wore a linen frock of clear azure, and on her bright hair a floppy garden-hat woven of pliant straw, around which a wide loose-knottedbleu-de-cielribbon made her eyes bluer yet by sympathy.
“How are you, you rarity!” she cried, taking the two last steps at a bound and stretching out both hands to him.
The footman had disappeared, and, still holding his hands playfully, she drew him into a little salon opening straight from the hall.
“Sit down, monseigneur!” she laughed, pointing to an arm-chair beside the sofa, on the edge of which she settled herself like a bird, her fingers interlaced, her delicious head cocked on one side, sparrow-wise.
On a tabouret near by, and also between the two windows giving on the garden, stood big “buckets” of blue Sèvres, filled with blue hortensias—the exact blue of that negligently tied ribbon that seemed somehow to fascinate him. A ray of mote-laden sunshine gilded the Mazarine carpet about her tiny feet incased in silver-buckled white suède, and he smiled appreciatively.
“New shoes?” he queried, glancing down at them.
“Yes—isn’t that strange?” she smiled. “Old ones would scarcely suit this glorious weather. But how nice of you to come.... It has been an age....”
Her lips were smiling, but her eyes had an unusual under-depth of seriousness, and he came to earth rather flatly.
“Yes,” he said, brusquely, resuming the queer stiffness of attitude that had so deeply puzzled her when he had first adopted it. “It is quite a while since I came.” And for the second time he said, “How are you?”
“So-so,” she answered, all liveliness of tone and gesture momentarily eclipsed. “One is always so-so, is one not, in this good old Paris?”
“You should be far better than so-so, even here,” he stated, with astonishing severity, “you, whom the gods have showered with all blessings.”
“Have a cigarette!” she shrugged, pushing from beneath the hortensias a silver box and match-stand.
“No, thanks. I don’t care to smoke here. Your father says it oxidizes the ermines.”
“Papa? Nonsense! He never dreamt of caring forthe ermines’ health. Besides, they are old enough to look after themselves. They are pretty, though!” she added, pointing to the heraldic ermines of Brittany embroidered in silver relief all over the pale satin of walls and hangings. “Pretty and antique,” she concluded, meditatively.
“Like most of your ideas,” he stated, leaning back and contemplating the intenseness of the hortensias.
She glanced at him between half-closed lashes, an imperceptible frown wrinkling her eyebrows.
“You find me too old-fashioned?” she questioned, drumming softly on the lid of the cigarette-box with the fingers of her left hand.
“N-no—yes. I don’t know; and, moreover, it’s none of my business.”
“None of your—business?” She stared. “None of your—” Her fingers abruptly ceased drumming, and she turned toward him a face of real bewilderment. “Aren’t we friends—relatives?”
He stirred uneasily, his eyes fixed on the carpet, as if desirous of counting the convolutions of its intricate pattern.
“Friends? Why, certainly friends! Of course ... we are friends! But what’s that got to do with it? You have other friends, and so—so have I, of course.”
Marguerite’s little ears were getting pink. What ailed the man, anyhow? Quick-tempered as she was soft-hearted, she felt oddly angry all at once.
“Other friends!” she exclaimed. “Friends like me? You mean to tell me that you have lots of friends like me?”
“Well,” Basil murmured, lamely, “not precisely like you. Nobody’s quite like you, but, nevertheless....”
“But—nothing at all!” she cried, truculently. “What has come over you lately, Basil Palitzin? You did not use to pose and posture in the old days. You were sucha good comrade, such a trump. Tell me,what—is—the—matter—with—you?”
Again Basil twisted as if on pins and needles, twice he clasped and unclasped his hands, and the string of derogatory epithets he inwardly applied to himself would have made a trooper blush.
“You women are incredible,” he attempted to explain. “Young, old, or very young, you are all the same with your extraordinary imaginings. Whatshouldbe the matter with me, pray? Do you notice any signs of incipient decrepitude?”
“I notice,” Marguerite cut in, “that you are changed, and in no way to your advantage,CousinBasil. Once you used to be pleased at my liking you so much, but now you have become as repellant as possible. You pull faces a yard long; you are always in a bad humor, and if it were not so preposterous I would almost begin to think that you do not care for us any more, and that you have made up your mind to see as little of us as you decently can.”
“Oh, Innocence!” Basil thought, sadly. “Thank God she does not know what tortures she puts me through!” Aloud he said: “You are talking rank heresy, my dear Marguerite. Your father and—yourself are among those I am most attached to—you can never doubt that!”
“Thank you!” she scoffed, with a derisive inclination of her big floppy hat. “That’s kind of you to mention iten passant, but let me urge you to realize that you give no sign of it.”
“You cannot expect to have a monopoly of my affections!” muttered Basil, driven to desperation.
Marguerite bent forward and looked straight at him. “What did you say ... a monopoly?” Her voice was now very cool and nonchalant. Basil caught the look and his breath at one and the same time. Where had this child learned to speak like that? Atavism? The Marquise of the bird-suite at Plenhöel could not have donebetter if talking to the canaille at the foot of the guillotine; and not for the life of him could he utter a word in self-defense.
“A monopoly!” the “Gamin” repeated. “You use funny expressions sometimes, my cousin, and I must say that you amuse me very much.”
“You don’t amuse me!” he interposed, hotly. “I don’t know, moreover, why you take my words so greatly amiss. What I am trying to make you understand is that if I do not come here as—well, as often as I could wish, it is because I have other calls upon—er—my time; imperative demands upon—my attention. My duty—you understand, is to—”
She did not let him finish. “You are the best judge of your conduct and the employment of your time, and I regret having—twitted you about it. I am afraid it was very silly of me, but you see I am still very much the mere child you used to laugh with at Plenhöel. You may remember, perhaps, our last little encounter on that subject?”
She laughed, rose, and in a slightly constrained tone added: “Hadn’t you better go and see papa? He is at the top of the house, grubbing in the dust of a wonderful garret, full of delightfulvieilleries, together with some workmen who are supposed to repair pipes, or leaders—I don’t exactly know which. Papa is extremely proud of his fifteenth-century garrets, let me tell you! One never knows where vanity is going to take root!”
Basil had risen slowly, and was gazing at her as she made her way to the bay leading through to the next salon, and his lips were not very steady when he spoke again:
“You are not angry, Marguerite?” This timidly, almost in a whisper. She turned back with a queer little laugh.
“Angry?” she asked. “Not a bit of it. It isn’t worthwhile. But hark you, Cousin Basil, don’t make any mistake. The ‘Gamin’ is a better friend of yours than you think. I may not yet be a young lady with grand manners. I am a good little chap, however—a tomboy, if you like; but try me if you ever need a real, genuine, bona-fide, faithful-to-the-end friend, and you’ll see!”
She pirouetted and, beckoning to him to follow, raced up the long flight of secondary stairs which led to the very roof.
Half-way to the top she suddenly paused on the threshold of a domed and glassed-in gallery that projected from the side of the house over the inclosed garden. It was filled with palms and plants and blossoming creepers, with here and there the fairy plume of a bamboo aspiring to the transparent curves above. The upper end of this miniature Vale of Kashmir was crossed by a broad span of almost invisible wire, behind which birds of a tropical splendor of feather flitted hither and yon. The liquid counterpart of this delightful unstill life was afforded by a long crystal panel revealing the musical spirt of a fountain, and a background of gorgeous aquatic plants, crisscrossed by the alert dartings of the prettiest collection of highly painted fishes possible to imagine. Moving jewels they seemed, as they quadrilled in the dear element of their birth, and not unhappy at all, as most aquarium-dwellers seem to be, for their perfect comfort had been studiously considered, and they appeared very much in love with existence as it was made for them there.
Basil had come to a standstill behind the ‘Gamin,’ and as she turned to speak he thought: “Her breath is as meadowsweet, her face like a flower, her hair was assuredly spun by elves, and her eyes—” Here comparison failed him, and with bent head he listened to the end of a sentence he had not been conscious of her beginning.
“—you might as well tell me, after all,” the low, dear voice was saying, and he looked helplessly at her.
“Didn’t you hear what I asked?” she petulantly exclaimed. “I am speaking plain French, am I not?”
Plain French! Could anything be plain that was connected with her?
“What were you asking?” he found himself forced to answer to those indignant eyes.
“Oh, you don’t even listen any more!” she reproached.
“I am an idiot!” he humbly confessed. “An idiot and a boor!”
Her soft, ringing laugh suddenly rippled out beneath the opulent foliage.
“My poor Basil!” she sympathized. “That’s what comes of being in love! Hortense Gervex used to tell me, when I was a baby, that Cupid is the silliest of all the gods, because he takes a malicious pleasure in stupefying all his subjects.”
“Comes from being in love?” Basil said, slowly. “Oh, of course that would be an explanation.”
“It is!” she triumphed. “Why, ever since you met Laurence you have been so different, so unlike your old self. Still, you should not carry your absence-of-mind too far; it is dreadfully impolite, you know.”
“I know,” he assented, apparently quite absorbed in the fantastic beauty of a bird-of-paradise blossom he had disengaged from amid its long, lance-like leaves.
“Well, if you know, and are properly contrite for your sins, do you mind if I now repeat my question?”
“Mind? Repeat it by all means, if you find me still worthy of the slightest attention.”
She had walked farther into the perfumed bower, and was now standing in the searching noonday light that was powerless to reveal a single flaw in her loveliness. She looked like one of the faintly-rose camellias on a near-by bush—surely made from the same cool velvet as her little face.
She inclined her head graciously—the “Gamin” was certainly growing up in the social amenities.
“You will not think me altogether indiscreet—I hope,” she questioned, in a suddenly crisp-cut voice he had never heard her use before, and there was a quaint little assumption of solicitude as she went on, “if I reask where you intend to spend the summer?”
Basil’s spirit was by this time in sad confusion, but he must answer her, and yet he could not bring himself to admit that it would be in a place far removed from their beloved haunts. An automatic second-self, doubtless summoned by the puzzling emergency, spoke for him.
“I think,” he said, slowly, “I might safely assert that I do not know as yet.”
She gave a light little laugh, and appeared to ponder for a moment.
“I”—there was the briefest suspension—“I am very glad you do not know as yet. Because it may turn out to be in Brittany!”
“That was a near thing,” Basil thought, drawing a profound but silent sigh of momentary relief.
“Still, are youquitesure that you do not know—as yet?” she resumed, taking a step in the direction of a sort of Dresden-china hod hanging between two pomegranate-bushes, that grew luxuriantly from old Spanish oil-jars of that green earthenware which makes one’s mouth water to look at, and plunging her hand into one of its cunningly devised compartments, extracted therefrom a little fistful of bird-seed.
“This is the pantry,” she explained, holding a fold of her skirt up to catch the surplus filtering through her fingers. “Would you like to feed them?”
“Whom?”
“Again?” she laughed. “Wool-gathering again! Why, naturally, I meant the elephants in theJardin des Plantes. How did you fail to guess that?”
“I am sorry.... I was trying to solve ... a problem ... concerning the ... er ... social question.”
“Dear me! Poor old Basil! If you keep such lofty ideals always before you you’ll soon cease being a social success. Besides,” she glibly continued, “it is not in your line to ponder and reflect like a fuzzy old owl; you are a man of action,par excellence, and when one tries to force one’s talents one does nothing with grace.”
“Are you turning philosopher?” he tried to taunt her.
“Philosophy is becoming part of my day’s work,” she airily replied. “But now do look at Bolingbroke; he is awfully jealous!”
“Bolingbroke! May I be pardoned for hazarding another question? Who is Bolingbroke?”
Marguerite looked at Basil, and again her glance held a subtle mixture of mirth and gravity.
“You—as I remarked before—are getting into the sad habit of forgetting your most faithful friends and honest admirers. Why this is Bolingbroke!” And she pointed with an upward toss of her obstinate little chin to a gilded swing whereon reposed, in magnificent dignity, a great white cockatoo, crested and tailed with brilliant orange. Some subterranean disturbance was agitating his snowy breast feathers, and his round eyes, dilated with greed, watched Marguerite’s every move as she fed the lesser luminaries below.
“Oh, you wretched usurper!” She addressed him grandiloquently. “This form of food would neither suit nor please you, and yet you covet it! Isn’t that very human?” she tragically demanded of Basil, who had at last managed to summon an apology for a laugh to his assistance. “Remind yourself,” she went on flippantly, “that, unlike some others of his kind, he cannot express his desires by word of beak. Repressed inclinations are hard to bear, but the impossibility of ever giving them voice, excepting by shrieks of distress, must be awful indeed!”
Basil was watching her intently, trying in vain to discover whether she was quite as joyful as she seemed.
“Would you oblige me by making a long arm—you are so agreeably tall—and presenting this token of our joint regard to yonder regicide?” she resumed, indicating a majolica wooden shoe on a table close by. “No, not the whole thing;oneof the therein-contained biscuits ...please!”
And while complying with her request Basil was thinking, thinking, thinking! “What a coward I am! Why not tell her the truth? What’s the use of shirking the task because it hurts me to do the right thing? And what would she really care, this heavenly baby, with her toys, her exquisite amusements, her deadly simplicity? She will not miss me a moment of all those years to come.”
“Poverino!” Marguerite was meanwhile apostrophizing the ill-tempered bird. “Here, you! Accept this offering gently if you can. It is well meant, and the biscuit is good and sweet!Mille grazie, eccellenze,” she added to Basil. “I am in an Italian mood to-day, as you may perceive. This gracious retreat looks Italian, I think; so do the camellias, and the blue sky over our crystalline dome; so do these little pet vassals of mine; feeding from the hand, as all properly self-respecting vassals should do.”
She tossed the rest of her fistful of seeds to the Bengalis, the gold and green finches, the slim Holland canaries, the redcaps, and twenty other chiefs of tribe whirling around on the sanded floor of their palatial abode to snatch the tempting breakfast from one another.
“Theyarehuman,” he harshly commented while following their airy gyrations, “hence quarrelsome and envious, just like Bolingbroke. Too bad that such innocent-looking creatures should have such beastly faults!”
Marguerite seemed suddenly troubled. “Why are youbitter even about trifles?” she queried. “Is that yet another departure from the old state of affairs?”
“Perhaps,” he replied, in a tone that strove in vain to be light. “I must be unlearning fast the art of life as it should be lived. I suppose that with the years one passes from disenchantment to disenchantment. Isn’t that the rule of all down-slope walkers?”
With a quick intake of breath Marguerite swung round toward him, and his heart contracted horribly as he saw that her eyes were wet.
“Thereissomething amiss,” she whispered, bending ever so slightly forward, and stretching her little palms downward as if in swift renunciation of all that she had ever held. “Thereissomething. I knew it. I felt it.... Tell me, Basil ... tell me!”
He had not bargained for this, and he was now dully doubting his own ears. Could this be Marguerite speaking?
“Something amiss?” he repeated after her with would-be emphasis. “Oh, now look here, my dear child, be reasonable, please, and do cease to imagine that I am trying to conceal some catastrophe from you.”
But Marguerite would no longer accept equivocation of any sort.
“Reasonable?” she said, more calmly. “I am reasonable enough—at least for my age. And if you only reflect you will admit that I have some small reason to ask what I do—some infinitesimal right,as a friend, if you prefer it so.”
“Oh yes—she too has rights!” flashed keenly through his mind. “And better ones than any other human being, if she but knew it.” “Certainly,” he said aloud, “you have all possible rights as my friend—as any of my friends have—to know what concerns me; but there is nothing—nothing worth telling, I assure you.”
“Nothing?” she exclaimed. “When you are as dull asditch-water—when you seem as blue as—” Her eyes went to the transparent vaulting scarcely veiling the sky, as if searching for a fitting comparison, and he grasped at his last chance of repairing his previous mistake.
“I am blue, and a little sad; perhaps you are right.” He hesitated. “Just as any one else would be who contemplates a certain change in existing circumstances.”
She was looking at him steadily, unswervingly, waitingly.
“When I told you a little while ago that I didn’t know as yet exactly where I would spend the summer, I was speaking the truth. As a matter of fact, I do not know yetexactlywhere, but it will be somewhere in Russia, probably at Tverna, and just ... on account of this indecision on my part I was afraid you’d laugh at me as you so often do!”
“The Russian conception of what is laughable differs by the whole span of heaven from mine,” she said, with suspicious quietness. “The point of interest is, however, whether you are going there a-Maying in the mud, or ... whether ... well, whether you will be gone long.... I mean after the Maying and the summering are both done with.”
Reassured by her deceiving calm, he thought himself clever to seize the moment when truth might be quite truthfully conveyed.
“That depends upon so many circumstances,” he explained. “It is impossible to be precise, but I should say ... yes, I should certainly say that it may take ... er ... a year, or even more, to bring matters requiring my presence at home to a satisfactory conclusion.”
Her pitiful little face had slowly whitened as he spoke, and suddenly he felt her fingers desperately clutching his arm.
“A year or more ... oh! what shall I do without—!”
The rest was strangled by a will-power fifty years olderthan herself. But for a second she stood shaking from head to foot, trying vainly to master feelings too complex and difficult for her young soul to understand; and he—well, he remained frozen to his place, not daring to move, to say a word; absolutely terrified for the first time in his brave, straight life.
From his high perch Bolingbroke watched the scene, half of his biscuit still held firmly in one sharp claw, his brilliant head inclined to one side critically, cynically—one would have sworn. “What fools these mortals be!” he seemed to say, and doubtless to create a diversion he dropped the remainder of his tidbit upon Basil’s shoulder, and burst into a demoniacal yell, like that of a Comanche Indian on the war-path.
The “Gamin” gave a little laugh so queer that it made its hearer ready to cry, and she let go of his arm. “You wicked old witch-bird!” she scolded. “What a fright you gave me!”
“He is a bit startling!” Basil assented, endeavoring to get control of his voice.
“Yes, he makes one’s head ache,” she corroborated. “But just think of it! Poor papa is still in the dust. Let’s go and sweep the cobwebs off him. He must be covered with them!”
She made a swift move toward the flower-gallery’s jessamine-draped doorway, and paused, holding lightly to a drooping branch.
“By the way,” she said, over her shoulder, “when do you go?”
“When do I—go? In a few days, but ... I’ll certainly come and say farewell before I do,” he lamely replied.
“Thanks so much! Yes, I think it will be right to remember us on such an occasion. Papa is so very punctilious about matters of etiquette, you know!”
She again gave that queer little laugh that dismayed him, and disappeared into the hall.
“Marguerite!” he called, hurriedly. “Next time it will be official, and I will not be alone. Can’t you sayau revoirproperly now?” He knew he should not have said that as soon as he had done so.
Counting her steps mechanically, she came back, and here at last was the doorway within which he stood. Sweet and serene she reached his side. A little color had come back to her face.
“Of course I can,” she assented. “Au revoir, Cousin Basil!Au revoirand good-luck to you!”
Could he stand much more of this? His handsome features looked suddenly wooden beneath their extreme pallor, but she was no longer looking at him. For the fraction of a second he hesitated. Could he venture to take her in his arms, just this once, like a child one has known and cherished all one’s life? A shiver ran all over him. The pause had been too short to attract her notice, but it had served its turn. Summoning to his aid his last remnants of self-respect, he held out both his hands, in which she put her own.
“Au revoir, and God keep you in His care!” he said, very low; then, hastily, almost brusquely, he pressed his lips into the rosy hollow of each little palm and dropped them.
“God bless you and keep you,” she whispered, and, turning quickly on her pointed heels, she preceded him up-stairs to the dusty regions where “Antinoüs” was so usefully occupied.