CHAPTER XXIIITo draw the sting, withouten failEndeth the evil; and this tale.
To draw the sting, withouten failEndeth the evil; and this tale.
To draw the sting, withouten failEndeth the evil; and this tale.
“Isn’t he a beauty?” the “Gamin” asked, lifting her baby from the great white blanket upon which he was crawling about, and flourishing him in her extended arms toward Pavlo, who had arrived an hour before from Salvières.
“Man or woman?” the young officer demanded, somewhat peremptorily. “I can never remember the sex of a thing not old enough to wear trousers.”
“Awfully stupid of you!” Marguerite contemptuously commented. “Especially since he bears your name, and you were his proxy-godfather,mon ami!”
“That’s true, too!” admitted Pavlo, more meekly. “Proxy-godfather—not godfather by proxy. There’s a difference.”
“A very seriousnuance,” Marguerite reprehended; “you had the honor of proxyfying (Lord! I wonder if that’s the right way to put it?) His Majesty the Autocrat of All the Russias, and came loaded down with offerings like the Magi. Whew! You mind that golden christening-goblet studded with clear-set rubies and diamonds as big as haricot beans? It was a sore temptation not to have them strung into a necklace for myself.”
“As if your jewel-coffers were not teeming and running over already,” he scoffed. “Don’t forget your own littlecadeau-de-relevaillesfrom the same Imperial source, Madame la Princesse Palitzin. Pearls the size of hazelnuts—largehazelnuts at that—are not picked up in the hoof-prints of a pack-mule.” And he pointed to the strands coiled about her white neck beneath the sheer ananas-batiste of her corsage. “Why, they reveal their orient, smoored as they are by this stuff you wear.”
“Smoored,” she shrugged. “Who ever heard of speaking so insolently of autocratic pearls?”
Marguerite, though transformed by the plenitude of her happiness, was never more than now deserving of her nickname of “Moonglade.” Standing there on the broad terrace ofLa Tour du Chevalier, she looked every bit as young as she had done when Basil had visited her at the Hôtel de Plenhöel just after his marriage with Laurence Seton. Slender, erect, ethereal as ever, and dainty with the daintiness of a flower, there was nothing full-blown as yet aboutthisMarguerite of Marguerites, and her father, walking up from the plaisance, smiled with pride as he saw her.
“Oh!” she cried. “Here is Grandpapa—such a venerable Grandpapa! Pull his mustache, Pavlo, junior—a corn-colored mustache, too, as silky as your hair, baby mine! Isn’t it a scandal to look so indecently youthful, my father dear?”
Régis laughed. He certainly did not give a very grandfatherly impression, for he stubbornly refused to become even middle-aged, and was still thebeau-sabreurand passionate sportsman he had always been. His daughter’s ideal existence with Basil was an everlasting joy to him, and now he beamed upon the little group on the terrace. Suddenly his smile disappeared.
“Look out,Chevalier!” he said, precipitately; and to Pavlo’s immense astonishment Marguerite hastily put his small namesake down on the blanket, looking almost fearfully over her shoulder.
“Don’t praise the baby before Piotr!” she whispered to him. “I’ll explain later.”
His mouth wide open with astonishment, the youngGarde-à-Chevalsaw Piotr emerge at a lively trot from the long flight of stone steps leading up from a lower terrace and fly like a dart toward him—Piotr transformed into a big boy in long sailor-trousers, a nautical blouse, and abéret, with the wordsLa Mauvein gold gleaming on its ribbon, thrust well to the back of his head.
“Hallo, Cousin Pavlo!” the boy cried. “They told me you had come, so I ran as fast as I could!” And doffing hisbéretin right gallant fashion, he held out his brown hand in greeting.
“Saperlipopette!” exclaimed Pavlo. “The heir of the House of Palitzin leaves nothing to be desired, it seems to me.”
With an amusing tilt of his eminently patrician nose Piotr looked his cousin up and down, and, preternaturally solemn, declared, “Neither does the heir of the House of Salvières!”
There was a general burst of merriment.
“This comes,” Régis gravely pronounced, as soon as he could speak, “of being brought up entirely among grown people. One knows one’s ropes early.”
“Are you going to stay long with us, Cousin Pavlo?” demanded the undismayed Piotr.
“Fairly so, if you’ll permit it, my dear cousin.”
“I do! But it’s only because you are too old now to be a playmate that I like your being here.”
“You surprise me, Monsieur Piotr!” said Pavlo, who was quite genuinely amazed. “Might I so far venture as to ask what set objection you have against playmates?”
“It’s little darling Malou’s fault,” imperturbably explained Piotr. “Fancy, Cousin Pavlo, that some months ago she threatened to give me one—a playmate who would take her place and Papa’s, and toss thepaumewith me.”
“Well?” inquired Pavlo. “Was there anything offensive about that?”
Piotr’s face had turned a little pale, his eyes narrowing almost to slits.
“No,” he grumbled, “not as it turned out at last. But you see, Cousin Pavlo, it might have been different.”
“Whatmight have been different?” insisted Pavlo. “Can’t you explain better than that, Piotr?”
“No!” the boy replied, his frank and open expression suddenly transformed into sulkiness. “I don’t like to talk about it. Come and see my soldiers, Cousin Pavlo; it will be much more pleasant. They are,” he continued, resuming his ordinary tone and mien, “Gardes-à-Chevallike yourself. And just think, Papa gave me a real, big, splendid camp, with a mess-tent and littleisbasexactly like those atyourcamp—the soldiers are five inches tall, and the horses all in proportion.”
“What sort of a playroom have you got, my friend, to hold such an outfit?” asked Pavlo, smiling.
“Oh, the whole floor of a tower!” cried Piotr, triumphantly. “My little darling Malou arranged it all for me. She thinks of nobody but me. Don’t you, little darling Malou?” And with the most tender and winning smile imaginable, the boy clasped Marguerite’s waist in both arms and looked adoringly up at her.
“Voyez vous ça!There’s cheek for you!” cried Pavlo. “And what about your father and little Pavlo here? Doesn’t she think of them sometimes?”
The smile vanished from Piotr’s face. “Papa knew her long before she knew me,” he said. “Also he is an old gentleman with gray hair—so he doesn’t count; and as to that rubber bath-doll there,” and he contemptuously pointed at his little brother, “how could she love it? It only saysYoum-youmandGaga-gaga. It’s an idiot!”
As ill-luck would have it, the baby, wholly unconscious of the anathema pronounced against him, selected that risky moment for acoup-de-théâtreof immense magnitude. Sitting up on his blanket, he suddenly raised his head,opened his rosebud of a mouth, and in the rather heart-shaking fashion of the first word ever pronounced, clearly uttered, “Mayou!”
Marguerite, flushing with delight, started forward to catch him in her arms, but Régis, quicker than she, interposed himself, and, lifting the little fellow, began tossing him up and down as if nothing out of the common had taken place.
“What!” Piotr asked in a queer, trembling voice—“what did it say?”
Pavlo was on the point of translating his godson’s loyal effort to say “Malou” like Piotr himself, but a glance at Marguerite’s distressed face stopped him, and with a presence of mind quite above praise explained, instead: “Why, didn’t you hear, Piotr? He saidGou-gouorMou-mou, or some other ununderstandable thing of the kind. He is too little to talk yet.”
“That’s good!” came from Piotr. “I thought he had said ‘Malou.’ And no one has a right to say that excepting me. Malou ismylittle darling Malou!”
“Oh, come, you’re getting to be a bore with your ridiculous ideas!” Pavlo interrupted, rather sharply, for, uninitiated into the risks of the situation, he was amazed at the extraordinary tolerance of Marguerite and Régis, as well as at the appalled glances exchanged between the nurse—a superb Bretonne in her gorgeous costume—and Garrassime, who had been standing behind Piotr, a silent witness of this curious scene.
Fortunately at that moment Basil came striding along the terrace, creating a much-needed diversion, and Garrassime, seizing the occasion, suggested to Piotr to come and arrange his camp for Lieutenant Pavlo’s inspection.
As soon as they had disappeared Pavlo irritably turned to Marguerite and asked her, with some military brusqueness, “What the dickens was up?” at which simple remark Marguerite, to everybody’s distress, suddenlybroke into a passion of tears. Marguerite—the “Gamin,” Knight of the Golden Spur, weeping, was something unheard, undreamed of! Basil took her in his arms, looking savagely at poor Pavlo, who, in utter consternation, was gazing helplessly at Régis.
“Here!” the latter cried. “Take your boy. He deserves a reward, and so do you.” And he put little Pavlo hastily on his mother’s lap. “Meanwhile,” he continued, “I’ll go and keep Master Piotr away. Come with me, Pavlo, and I’ll tell you what’s amiss.”
“Little Pavlo” was undoubtedly breaking from the chrysalis of babyhood. “Il gigotte comme un petit diable,” Divyne, the nurse, proudly stated to Garrassime, whose proficiency in French, and even in Breton, was growing daily more remarkable. “Il va se mettre a marcher tout à l’heure!” declared Divyne, and Garrassime’s face was a study of mingled appreciation for his littlest master’s precocity, and of terror at the thought of the sole and only Palitzin Tyrant left—namely, Prince Piotr-the-Jealous—as Pavlo de Salvières had nicknamed him in an imprudent moment. Nor was Garrassime the only one at theTour du Chevalierwho entertained that mixture of feelings, three parts delight and one part anxiety. Basil, since the day of the baby’s first attempt to talk, was at a loss what to do; Marguerite, continually pulled between her worship of her own beautiful son and her love for Piotr, was growing thin; Régis was continually on the watch; and Pavlo thought within himself that a sound flogging in the right quarter would avoid many difficulties, but, being extremely adaptable, he forebore to say so, having noticed how far more than useless such an observation would be.
One rather rough afternoon, following a storm when the sea was still heaving from its recent stress, and thesky a mass of glorious white and pale-gray clouds tossing about against patches of intermittently revealed azure, Marguerite was changing from her morning gown into her riding-habit, when Divyne knocked at the door of her dressing-room and, being bidden to enter, did so, carrying the baby on her arm. A prettier child it would have been difficult to find. Dimpled like a cherub, his satiny round face crowned by an already thick crop of curls—blonde as his mother’s—and lighted by eyes of blue resembling hers quite startlingly in shape and color, he was bubbling with happy life.
“Madame la Princesse,” quoth Divyne, smiling from one ear to the other, “he has just said it again—Malou—and laugh! Oh,ma doué, he laughed so one could have heard him as far as the semaphore!”
Marguerite, turning away from her maid, who was about to unfasten her lace petticoat, took the boy in her arms and kissed him with the passion she could only indulge when certain of Piotr’s absence. She was in a hurry, for she was to meet Basil, Régis, and Pavlo the Greater, at her old favorite spot, the Carrefour of the Seven Sages, within the hour, and Ireland was already in theCour-d’honneurwith her horse and his, waiting; but, happy to have her darling all to herself for once, she began to pace up and down with him, holding him close and tight and kissing his fat little neck again and again. Suddenly Pavlo minor, as they passed the open door of the adjoining bedroom, caught sight of a portrait of Basil in the scarlet of hislivréeas master of the fox-hounds, surrounded by his dogs. The likeness was vivid, and the baby, with a cry of recognition, said as plain as plain could be: “Papa! Papa!”
Marguerite, hardly believing her ears, ran into the room and, raising the baby high up, exclaimed rapturously: “Yes, my own little son, that’s your Papa! Your dear, dear Papa!”
Pavlo crowed with pleasure, throwing himself back on his mother’s pretty shoulder; then poking a pudgy finger into her soft cheek, opened his mouth and again spoke: “Malou,” he said, “Malou-maman.”
Marguerite sat right down on the carpet and literally rained kisses upon this prodigy.
“My clever baby,” she crooned over him. “Was there ever in the world such a wonder, such a treasure? Wait till Papa hears you say that, you darling, just wait!”
The nurse and the maid, chatting together in whispers by the dressing-room window, were not attending, Marguerite lost in admiration did not hear, and yet at this juncture there was a curious motion of the portières separating Basil’s room from his wife’s, a smothered sob, and then a light scurry of little feet running away. Could any of the three women have seen the livid fury masking the face of Piotr as he fled through corridor after corridor to a back stairs leading upon the terrace, what might not have been spared to all?
Almost immediately Marguerite, remembering Basil, and how absurdly anxious he would be if she was not there on time, reluctantly gave the baby to his nurse, with the hundred recommendations which invariably followed such an act, and, relinquishing herself to her maid’s hands, implored her to hurry, in comic accents of despair.
Divyne, the methodical Bretonne, left the room, slowly descended the main stairs, and went out by theperron. The wind had fallen to a breeze, singing now over the waves, and murmuring in the thick mantle of ivy luxuriantly draping the portion of the walls at the foot of which she generally took her charge for an airing. The baby, vexed, doubtless, at being removed with so little ceremony from his mother’s room, was fretful, and Divyne glanced quickly around to see if the footman specially detailed for that service had disposed the big white rug and the toys in their accustomed place. But, no, this had notbeen done, and she began to call him at the top of her voice.
There was no answer; the noise of the surf below was too loud to permit a lesser sound to penetrate into the Castle, so the Bretonne retraced her steps and went quickly to a side passage leading to the servants’ hall.
“Louis!” she cried. “Hé! Louis!—Pierre! Jean-Marie!” She tried again, hoping that another of the footmen on duty would hear her, but this collective call remained unanswered, too, and, getting impatient, Divyne placed little Pavlo very carefully on the thick rug and ran to the farther end of the corridor to bawl out at better advantage. At last she heard, from the depths of beyond, manly accents responding, “Présent, Mam’selle Divyne!” It was the recreant Louis coming at full speed, and Divyne went to pick baby up from the rug. And then the footman heard a shriek that lent wings to his feet.
The baby was gone.
“Will you never be through?” Marguerite was telling her maid. “Here, give me my hat and stick! Well! Well! Well! Haven’t I got my boots on yet?” She rushed to a window and, bending out, shouted to Ireland: “Leave my horse with the groom, Irry, and gallop on to theCarrefourto tell monsieur that I am coming. I’ve been delayed, and he’ll be anxious!”
For a second Ireland looked dubiously at the now empty window, but hisChevalier“Gamin’s” orders must be obeyed, and, leaping into the saddle, he was off.
“Poor old chap!” laughed Marguerite as, shortly afterward, she vaulted into her own saddle. “I’m sure he is convinced that I am unable to reach theCarrefourwithout him. I’ll take the short cut and surprise him on the way. He’s gone by the avenue.” With which charitable resolutionshe set her horse going at a rapid trot along the narrow path skirting the old fortifications above the sea.
“Merrythought,” a powerful hunter Basil had given her on her last birthday, was sagely picking his way, and was both shocked and amazed when a sudden violent pull at the reins brought him almost to his haunches just as he was enfilading the broader sandy road along the beach. Marguerite jumped, and as she jumped she tore at the fastenings of her skirt, kicking off her boots and leaving “Merrythought” to shift for himself all at one and the same time. Then she ran—ran as she had never run before, to meet the incoming waves.
Already several cable-lengths from shore, her own canoe—a slight affair of canvas and whalebone—unsinkable, so it was claimed—was tossing violently up and down in the trough, and in the canoe sat Piotr, rigid as a statue, holding in front of him little Pavlo.
“God give me strength!” she prayed, as she flung herself into the water and swam in long, regular strokes, rising to each successive surge, putting out all the force that was in her. “God grant that I can be in time!” she implored, feeling how slowly she was overhauling that fine-weather toy, so buoyant and so light! Piotr, his back to her, had not seen her yet, and while on the top of a long wave she shouted to him to row back, for she guessed that the tiny oars were still fastened inside the little craft, and knew that he could manage it if he were so minded. But he did not hear, and she lost sight of him as she slid down a slope of green water, her hair in her eyes, her arms stiffening in her supreme efforts to be quick, only quick!
The sun between two clouds was—it seemed to her a minute later—winking ironically at her plight. She felt dizzy and sick with the agony she was going through; she, even she, the best swimmer on the coast! She rose again, sparing her breath, and all of a sudden she found herself close to the canoe, balanced on the crest of a wave.With a desperate clutch of her right arm she seized hold of its flimsy gunwale and hung on. Piotr saw the little hand, gave a startled yell and let go of the baby, who tumbled to the bottom of the narrow boat.
How she controlled Piotr at that moment, how she succeeded in piloting the canoe—into which she could not climb for fear of upsetting it and its precious cargo—to the shore, Marguerite never knew. All she remembered was what looked to her like a crowd waist-deep in the foam, pulling her and her boys to dry land, and later, much later, the arms of Basil around her as she lay on some soft couch, trying her best to swallow something strong and hot that the old doctor was holding to her lips.
“Never! Never again! I know you never will, my poor darling!”
It was Marguerite, four days later, speaking to Piotr—a little pale shadow of himself, with big hollows under his eyes—kneeling at her feet.
The lesson had been hard. The reward was great. For now she knew that, come what might, the boy who could suffer as he had done when for a few hours her life had been despaired of, was great enough in heart and mind to be transformed for ever after.
And she was not mistaken; for thenceforth her task was light, her happiness unclouded.
THE END
Transcriber’s note:Some irregularly hyphenated words have been regularized. A small number of typographical errors in the original have been silently corrected.
Transcriber’s note:
Some irregularly hyphenated words have been regularized. A small number of typographical errors in the original have been silently corrected.