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Read Ebook: Moonglade by Cunliffe Owen Marguerite
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Ebook has 1550 lines and 107778 words, and 31 pages
MOONGLADE
A NOVEL
OFFICIER DE L'ORDRE DE L'INSTRUCTION PUBLIQUE DE FRANCE
Books by The Author of
"THE MARTYRDOM OF AN EMPRESS"
MOONGLADE. Illustrated. Post 8vo. A DOFFED CORONET. Illustrated. Crown 8vo. THE CRADLE OF THE ROSE. Illustrated. Crown 8vo. EMERALD AND ERMINE. Crown 8vo. GRAY MIST. Illustrated. Crown 8vo. THE KEYSTONE OF EMPIRE. Illustrated. Crown 8vo. SNOW-FIRE. Illustrated. Crown 8vo. THE TRIBULATIONS OF A PRINCESS. Illustrated. Crown 8vo. THE TRIDENT AND THE NET. Illustrated. Crown 8vo. THE MARTYRDOM OF AN EMPRESS. Illustrated. Crown 8vo.
HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA PUBLISHED FEBRUARY, 1915 C-P
TO A WITH EVERLASTING THOUGHTS
MOONGLADE
Moonglade upon the waters whitely lying; Though the wind, shouting from the western verge, Herdeth the huddled cloud-rack, flying--flying-- Glory still re-emergent, rift-descrying, Spanneth the somber surge. Moonglade, O Moonglade, heavenly calm and still, Throned on the tossing manes unbroke to thill, I know, beholding thee, The storm will pass, and night upon the sea!
Moonglade the dark lanes of the forest keeping, Soundless and silent, hearken as ye list; Lakes of bejewelled vapor lowly sleeping, And the long grasses from the surface peeping Levelled of silver mist. Moonglade, O Moonglade, that your Fates fulfil, In your black forest-prison sweetly still, I know, beholding thee, Lights of the lost world, Faith and Purity!
Moonglade, empearled of flame unearthly, lying Over the crystal plains of snow and light, While the lost wind, of naked cold a-crying, Shudders beneath the half-shut stars espying Down from the steely night. Moonglade, O Moonglade, heavenly calm and still, Moulding to beauty bitterness and ill, I know, beholding thee, Yet is there strength, and truth and constancy!
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"!
MOONGLADE
"Mademoiselle Seton is requested to come down to the parlor."
"Good morning, Laurence. Don't you see me?" The voice was prim, exceedingly correct in enunciation, and high-bred in accent.
"Oh, is that you, Aunt Elizabeth?" the girl said, coming quietly forward, a cool hand outstretched. "When did you land?"
"Two hours ago, at Tr?port. And I am here to take you back with me this evening."
This was delivered much in the manner of a pronunciamiento, and the recipient thereof raised her eyebrows nervously.
"This evening!" she echoed. "Why so much haste, Aunt Elizabeth, pray?"
"Because you have been here four years, which is much longer than we wished you to remain," the elder lady stated, tartly. "You are eighteen, and, being English, it is high time that you should become reaccustomed to British ways and manners."
A quaint little smile drew up the corners of Laurence's lips, but her eyes remained serious. She was a singularly beautiful girl, graceful of figure, dainty-featured, and gifted with an alabaster complexion and a wealth of chestnut hair that would have made even a plain woman attractive.
"Ye-es," hesitated Lady Seton, raising her lorgnette the better to study this "uncomfortable" niece. "Ye-e-s! I am afraid so, but we will soon alter all that!" And she let the lorgnette drop to the very end of its interminable amethyst-and-pearl chain. "You had better get your things ready as quickly as you can, Laurence," she continued, "for neither your uncle nor the tide is wont to wait, and I shall come back for you at six o'clock sharp."
"Why, of course! What else would have landed us at Tr?port?"
"I don't know," the girl indifferently replied.
Lady Seton shrugged one shoulder, not in the acceptedly Gallic way, which she would have condemned, but in a slightly contemptuous fashion.
Laurence laughed, smoothed the straight alpaca folds falling from shoulder to ankle, and glanced at her aunt quizzically.
"I am going to interview the Mother Superior," pronounced the latter again, "and then I shall go, so that you may have an opportunity to take all the hysterical farewells you choose from your beloved friends here."
"Poor Mother Superior!" Laurence mused, with piously raised eyes. "Poor Mother Superior! I hope my delightful aunt will have nothing but edifying things to say of me; she is not overburdened with tact, as a rule!"
As she reascended the stairs she was suddenly met by a whirlwind of outstretched arms, flying golden hair, and skirts of alpaca like her own, which flung itself headlong upon her.
"Laurence! Laurence! Have they come for you already?... Oh! Oh, Laurence!" The breathless sentence ended abruptly in a burst of whole-hearted sobs as Marguerite de Plenh?el clung desperately about her comrade's neck.
But the fifteen-year-old evidently was disinclined to listen to reason, at least just then, for she went on choking and gasping, and entreating betweentimes: "Don't go away, Loris. Don't leave me! Don't!"
"Hush! Hush, little one! Hush! Let's slip into the garden. They'll hear you if we stay here!"
"We--ca--n't--can't go in--into ... the garden--with--out--permis--sion," Marguerite convulsively objected.
The sun filtering through the pale leafage made swaying spots of pink copper all over the decorously raked gravel; the heliotropes and old-fashioned verbenas and rose-geraniums filling the borders smelled sweet to heaven, and in a near-by bosquet of laburnum a green finch sang to burst his little throat .
Marguerite--"Gamin" to her intimates--instantly became quieter. With a gesture that was very youthful and very impatient she pushed the tumbled gold out of her big blue eyes, still brimful of tears, and stamped her narrow foot.
"Don't tell me it's true!" she cried. "Don't, Loris! It would be too terrible!"
Miss Seton--the Hon. Laurence Seton--in all the plenitude of her admirably controlled faculties, stared at the delightful tomboy beside her.
"But when--when?" demanded the quivering little creature. "When?"
Laurence hesitated. To tell the "Gamin" that only a few hours remained before her final departure from Bryn would destroy all her chances of making her preparations in peace; for this, alas! was a half-holiday, and Marguerite would be free to follow her about everywhere. To tell a frank fib was out of the question, of course. Laurence always avoided direct lies, so she took refuge in a simple evasion.
"How can I tell exactly? Such queer people as my relatives are apt to be unreliable," she equivocated. "You don't know my uncle Bob and my aunt Elizabeth, luckily for you, 'Gamin.' One can never guess what is going to happen next when they come on the scene!"
"They must be atrocious--abominable!" snapped poor Marguerite, her dark eyebrows meeting in a furious frown above her exquisitely arched little nose.
"N-no, not that; merely very tiresome and authoritative--insular to a terrible extent! He, as I have often told you, is a yachtsman above, before, after, and during everything else; by no means unkind, but as stubborn as a whole troop of mules. She--well, she's Elizabethan; not kindly nor good-looking, but worse! Brick-red morally and physically, without any luster or brilliancy, fond of absolute power, narrow-minded, and--oh, well, quite unendurable."
"O-o-o-o-h!" gasped Marguerite. "Oh ... o ... o ... o ... h!"
"A beggar!" the child said at last. "A beggar!... Then why don't you come and live with me at Plenh?el instead of with them in England?" There was extraordinary contempt in the way she said "them." "I have only another year to stay here," she passionately pleaded, "and every single thing I own will be half yours, Loris darling--every single thing!"
Eyes and hands uplifted, she gazed imploringly at Laurence, and for an instant a softer expression flitted across the latter's somewhat sulky face.
"They would not let me do that--at any rate, not until I come of age," she asserted. "No, decidedly not.... And, what's more, I would not accept charity from your people, who are no relations of mine."
"Mademoiselle de Plenh?el!" a voice expostulated behind her; and Mademoiselle de Plenh?el regained her feet with amazing promptness, crimson with confusion, to face the most dreaded of her educators, Madame Marie-Antoinette, whose rigid manners and severe cast of countenance were the iron mask of a heart unsuspectedly tender.
"What does this behavior mean?" she now demanded, standing like a black statue of reproof within a yard of the culprit, her white hands folded within her wide sleeves.
"Pardon me, Madame Marie-Antoinette," Marguerite stammered, "but you ... you see, Laurence is g-going away ... soon!" Here tears of mingled rage and distress began again to run from beneath the heavy, drooping lashes!
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