Read Ebook: Madame Margot: A grotesque legend of old Charleston by Bennett John

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Ebook has 142 lines and 11926 words, and 3 pages

and high pride.

Gabrielle, startled and terrified, shrank back against the magnolia's black bole, one trembling, hesitant hand extended in doubt. Speechless she stared at that bright, boyish face with its nimbus of sunlit, yellow hair, until her dry eyes gushed tears, dimming her sight,--stared in wonder and adoration.

His eyes were audaciously bright as wild stars, incessantly roving, and alight with golden fire. He was tall, well-set and slender, with a beautiful, straight body; there was something godlike in his air as he leaned through the matted hedge, eagerly scanning her,--her pale rose cheeks, snowy gown, moth-green kerchief, her lips, her neck matching the ivory of the blossoms in her hair,--half-veiled by a screen of leafy green, dull gold and pomegranate flowers.

She had bound her hair with a bit of gold braid which shone like an aureole round her brow, and in it had thrust two butterfly lilies, whiter than ivory; her eyes were wide open, round and unwinking, their frightened depths full of tears; her lips had fallen slightly apart to free her fluttering breath; she sighed, a little, shuddering sigh, and crossed her hands upon her breast. Her beauty startled him: delicate-frail, almost translucent in the golden sun, she seemed a being not of flesh and gross mortality, but a spirit by enchantment made visible, a dryad out of the ancient wood, a maiden saint stepped out of a missal or fled from a chapel window, with a halo around her brow. With her head poised like a flower; her little, perfect hands and feet; her ankles slim and beautiful; each line aristocratic; everything proclaiming patrician blood; nothing asserting a baser thing: saint, maid, dryad, nymph, or sprite, who could tell which?

Silently drinking her loveliness he leaned through the hedge. Among the fire-colored flowers and green, her color was exquisite as the violet sky is, seen through yellow leaves.

Again she sighed softly; stared at his face, and shivered a little. Was it a god or a man in the hedge? Had he sprouted out of the boxwood, or fallen from the clouds?

The perfect beauty of her figure, outlined on green by her thin white gown, charmed and enchanted him. He stared at her, trying to focus her face more clearly upon his sight; her loveliness struck him dumb. She seemed a statue of ivory, hung with garlands of gold, crimson and green, half-hidden by a rood-screen of shimmering emerald. It seemed to him that he looked on more than mortal beauty.

Leaning forward a little, one hand outstretched, one clasping her throat, she watched his face with its golden hair aglow in the last red sunlight. How could she tell if it were a god or a man,--that face with its shimmering locks like living fire around it, a gleaming nimbus whose dancing flames were fashioned of burnished gold, a face like a blazing seraph's, or Ariel's? She looked at that proud young countenance in wordless adoration.

Her own face was now intensely bright with the sunset's declining glory. Into the crevice between her lips the sunshine had slipped; her lips were translucent; her mouth was aglow as if she breathed ethereal fire.

Suddenly he drew his breath with a sharply audible sound; for, as he gazed, longing seized the boy's heart and wrung it bitterly.

The flame which blazed in his bright eyes put an answering glow in her own. She was aware that her beauty had startled him. For the first time in her life she was awake to her own loveliness, a sense wonderful and sweet. A delicate, throbbing fire came fluttering up through her breast; a flush stole into her cheeks and warmed their ashy pallor. Her eyes met his: in his eyes were joy, surprise, and longing. His eyes met hers: and all her doubts went out in wordless joy. For, when she perceived that look in his face, she, too, was thrilled with longing; the silence sang; fire thrilled her heart; suddenly neck and cheeks flamed red.

She answered his look with glorious eyes, humid, terrified, alight. Then her frightened eyes fell and her shy face. But, like a wave which breaks along a beach in a passionate surge, her heart rushed out to greet him.

He saw her neck and her cheeks flame red; passion struck him to the heart. With a gesture of haughty but boyish humility he pushed through the hedge, seized the sheltering pomegranate branches, and swept them aside. She stood uncurtained before him. He gazed at her. "St. Jacques!" he cried. "Are you a living creature?"

She regarded him for an instant with a look of undisguised terror, catching her breath with a sobbing sound right pitiful to hear; then her quivering, piteous face was made exquisite by tears.

A back-wash of timidity held him silently staring at her,--a boy, hot and hasty, sure of himself, impulsively bold, but abashed,--admiration and longing ablaze in his eyes. Gabrielle stammered, but could not find words; her breast heaved and sank; she could not control it. Overwhelmed by the sudden strange rush of emotion, she swayed giddily, dizzily put out one hand to steady herself, and laid it upon his arm: a tremulous smile came over her face; her tears, like an April shower, were gone.

His hand sought her other hand; found it; held it; thus their hands met. Half a step timidly they approached each other; then stood at a halt as if turned to stone. Her frightened breath was the only sound save the stirring of the night-wind in the dark boughs overhead.

His voice, too, was trembling. "That you should love me a little, for pity's sake, ... and quite forget to fear!"

His voice seemed to Gabrielle godlike.

"See, then ... I fear nothing.... I should as soon think of fearing the air we breathe!" she said, adoring her slender young demigod out of the hedge. Then suddenly she raised her hand and laid it caressingly on his cheek; her trembling fingers felt like flowers trailed across his face.

He laughed. There was an infectious sweetness and merriment in his laughter. Then they laughed together, softly,--first love and joy are silent things.

"You are the god of love," she said, with infinite simplicity. "Else, how could you fly over the hedge?"

Her flute-like voice was like the music of a half-awakened song, and exquisitely moving; her words trailed slowly like speech asleep.

"What you will," she said. "You may ask." For the innocent are trustful as doves, helpless as the least creatures, weak as the small birds among the little branches.

He drew a quick breath. "Most of all things on earth I would have a kiss from your mouth. Shall I have it?"

"Yes," she said. "Take it!" and put up her lips. So their mouths met. A thousand tingling darts of fire pierced through her as his lips touched hers.

Her heart was wrung by that first kiss; for an instant it stood still; the blood had left it, and had fled through her like flame; she almost swooned. For first passion is like the wind in the blossoming locust-tree, too sweet to be easily breathed or borne; youth's first caress is almost an agony. Gabrielle gasped; his lips had burned on hers like a celestial fire. Both shook as love's consuming flame rushed through them.

As he to her was first, so she to him; each gave the other life's immaculate gift, the unmeasured, unmeasurable fire of love's first embrace, that passionate anguish of delicate, uncalculated delight, ardent and boundless.

Their lips hurried to the meeting. How could they delay? Youth and love brook no delays. Yet, as she felt his lips upon her own, she regarded him with a writhen countenance of unqualified terror. Love comes to the maiden spirit with sudden tumult, and strikes it, not as a blithe discovery, or an all-Elysian joy, but as a birth and an agony, from which, if the soul survives, comes unspeakable happiness. His lips sought hers and seeking, met; in the meeting her soul flew out at her mouth.

The world seemed suddenly remote, withdrawn into the depths of uncalculated space. There remained but these two young, love-stunned souls, groping to each other in the garden under the shadow of the great magnolia-trees.

The enchantment of love was upon them. The happy girl lay close upon his heart, and all she said was, "Love me! Love me!" and, "If ever I cease to love you perdition take my soul!" he said. With utter confidence her eyes looked up into his, glowing with a passion that knows no change; and all she said, as she lay against his heart, was, "Love me! Only love me!" That is all a woman asks. Her fingers stroked his yellow hair; the mere touch thrilled her with unspeakable happiness.

Night came, and darkness voyaged the uncharted sky. Overhead the blue dome blazed with the innumerable stars and golden planets heaving up heaven's arch; the tremulous green lamps of the fireflies filled the earth with twinkling constellations all around them. But the heavens and the earth were as nothing to them: love was there, and he, and she, and the utterly forgotten starlight. And where youth and love are, life, death, good or ill, the bright stars or the black mould, or better or worse, are nothing, and wisdom is of little worth.

They gazed into each other's eyes with wordless tenderness. Youth has not words, nor waits to find them; age finds words, and nothing else.

Across the city boomed the hour,--at last.

"Oh! I must go!"

"Not yet! Not yet!"

"But I must go. Good-night!"

"Not yet!"

"But I must go! Good-night! Good-night! I pray you, leave me go ... for truly I must go!"

"You'll come again?"

"To-morrow."

"Show me the way into the garden," he said. She showed him the quickest way in, kissed him, and was gone through the garden; for him the night was darkened, and the stars put out. Her breath was still upon his face, the smell of the flowers in his nostrils; and in his ears was the sound of her voice, calling after him, low and sweet, like a half-awakened song,--or was it but a bird which called, that softly-fluting, lonely note.

And when he was gone the garden to Gabrielle was emptied of delight; but all her soul was singing.

Her lips stung; her cheeks were on fire. Into the house she came, one little slipper upon its little foot, one slipper gone,--what became of that lost little slipper God knows!--and her stockinged foot was damp with the dew which had dripped from the leaves overhead. A flame was in her eyes which is in a maiden's eyes but once, when love first lays his hands upon her heart. So transfigured was she, she seemed a winged creature. She loved; she was beloved; inarticulate ecstasy! Hands, feet, neck, and face told but one story. Her eyes shone like blazing stars; the roses had returned to her pale lips, the freshness to her wan cheeks.

Margot watched her with narrowed eyes.

"Mother, I am happy; so happy that I do not want to die; I want to live forever!"

Margot eyed her narrowly. "What has changed your mind?"

"I was walking in the garden," rejoined Gabrielle, "and the god of love was there. He kissed me on my mouth, Mother; and oh, Mother, love is sweet!"

Margot's heart stopped beating. "Are you quite mad?" she said.

Then the truth dawned upon her. She lost all sense of balance in the crossed tides of dismay. She strained her daughter to her heart, then thrust her away; dropped speech unuttered; gave a choked cry of despair, while her face went gray as ashes.

She clutched Gabrielle by the arms, steadying herself, for she could scarcely have stood alone. She blinked like a person purblind, and peered into the girl's wondering eyes. The lines of her face became furrows. "Oh, my God!" she whispered, "I should have known! I should have known!"

Margot cowered as if to avoid a blow; her eyes dilated; yet she seemed incapable of seeing; her mouth fell open, she seemed to scream, yet made no sound but that of the whistling breath through her nostrils, as one who sustains the torture of the rack.

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