The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 07, No. 39, January, 1861. Various
which her mother had brought from the swamps, caught her eye; she threw down the pearls, and broke off rapid dusters of the queenly flowers, touching the backward-curling hyacinthine petals, and caressingly passing her finger down the pale purple shadow of the snowy folds. Directly afterward she hung them in her breezy hair, from which, by natural tenure, they were not likely to fall, bound them over her shoulders and in her waist.
"See! I stand like Summer," she said, "wrapped in perfume; it is intoxicating."
Just then two hands touched her, and her father bent his face over her. She flung her arms round him, careless of their fragile array, kissed him on both cheeks, laughed, and kissed him again. She did not speak, for he disliked French, and English sometimes failed her.
"Here is Mr. Heath," her father said.
She partly turned, touched that gentleman's hand with the ends of her fingers, and nodded. Her father whispered a brief sentence in her ear.
"Jamais, Monsieur, jamais!" she exclaimed; then, with a quick gesture of deprecation, moved again toward him; but Mr. Laudersdale had coldly passed to make his compliments to Mrs. Heath.
"You are not in toilet?" said Marguerite, following him, but speaking with Mr. Raleigh.
"No,—Mrs. Purcell has been playing for me a little thing I always liked,—that sweet, tuneful afternoon chiding of the Miller and the Torrent."
She glanced at Mrs. Purcell, saw that her dress remained unaltered, and commenced pulling out the azaleas from her own.
"I do not want to go," she murmured. "I need not! Mamma and Mrs. McLean have already gone in the other carriage."
"Come, Marguerite," said Mr. Laudersdale, approaching her, as Mr. Heath and his mother disappeared.
"I am not going," she replied, quickly.
"Not going? I beg your pardon, my dear, but you are!" and he took her hand.
She half endeavored to withdraw it, threw a backward glance over her shoulder at the remaining pair, and, led by her father, went out.
Marguerite did her best to forget the vexation, was very affable with her father, and took no notice of any of Mr. Heath's prolonged remarks. The drive was at best a tiresome one, and she was already half-asleep when the carriage stopped. The noise and light, and the little vanities of the dressing-room, awakened her, and she descended prepared for conquest. But, after a few moments, it all became weariness, the air was close, the flowers faded, the music piercing. The toilets did not attract nor the faces interest her. She danced along absent and spiritless, when her eye, raised dreamily, fell on an object among the curtains and lay fascinated there. It was certainly Mr. Raleigh: but so little likely did that seem, that she again circled the room, with her eyes bent upon that point, expecting it to vanish. He must have come in the saddle, unless a coach had returned for him and Mrs. Purcell,—yes, there was Mrs. Purcell,—and she wore that sweet-brier fresh-blossoming in the light. With what ease she moved!—it must always have been the same grace;—how brilliant she was! There,—she was going to dance with Mr. Raleigh. No? Where, then? Into the music-room!
The music-room lay beyond an anteroom of flowers and prints, and was closed against the murmur of the parlors by great glass doors. Marguerite, from her position, could see Mr. Raleigh seated at the piano, and Mrs. Purcell standing by his side; now she turned a leaf, now she stooped, and their hands touched upon the keys. Marguerite slipped alone through the dancers, and drew nearer. There were others in the music-room, but they were at a distance from the piano. She entered the anteroom and sat shadowed among the great fragrant shrubs. A group already stood there, eating ices and gayly gossiping. Mr. Laudersdale and Mr. Manton sauntered in, their heads together, and muttering occult matters of business, whose tally was kept with forefinger on palm.
"Where is Raleigh?" asked Mr. Manton, looking up. "He can tell us."
"At his old occupation," answered a gentleman from beside Mrs. Laudersdale, "flirting with forbidden fruit."
"An alliterative amusement," said Mrs. Laudersdale.
"You did not know the original Raleigh?" continued the gentleman. "But he always took pleasure in female society; yet, singularly enough, though fastidious in choice, it was only upon the married ladies that he bestowed his platonisms. I observe the old Adam still clings to him."
"He probably found more liberty with them," remarked Mrs. Laudersdale, when no one else replied.
"Without doubt he took it."
"I mean, that, where attentions are known to intend nothing, one is not obliged to measure them, or to calculate upon effects."
"Of the latter no one can accuse Mr. Raleigh!" said Mr. Laudersdale, hotly, forgetting himself for once.
Mrs. Laudersdale lifted her large eyes and laid them on her husband's face.
"Excuse me! excuse me!" said the gentleman, with natural misconception. "I was not aware that he was a friend of yours." And taking a lady on his arm, he withdrew.
"Nor is he!" said Mr. Laudersdale, in lowest tones, replying to his wife's gaze, and for the first time intimating his feeling. "Never, never, can I repair the ruin he has made me!"
Mrs. Laudersdale rose and stretched out her arm, blindly.
"The room is quite dark," she murmured; "the flowers must soil the air.
Will you take me up-stairs?"
Meanwhile, the unconscious object of their remark was turning over a pile of pages with one hand, while the other trifled along the gleaming keys.
"Here it is," said he, drawing one from the others, and arranging it before him,—a gondel-lied.
There stole from his fingers the soft, slow sound of lapsing waters, the rocking on the tide, the long sway of some idle weed. Here a jet of tune was flung out from a distant bark, here a high octave flashed like a passing torch through night-shadows, and lofty arching darkness told in clustering chords. Now the boat fled through melancholy narrow ways of pillared pomp and stately beauty, now floated off on the wide lagoons alone with the stars and sea. Into this broke the passion of the gliding lovers, deep and strong, giving a soul to the whole, and fading away again, behind its wild beating,—with the silence of lapping ripple and dipping oar.
Mrs. Purcell, standing beside the player, laid a careless arm across the instrument, and bent her face above him like a flower languid with the sun's rays. Suddenly the former smile suffused it, and, as the gondel-lied fell into a slow floating accompaniment, she sang with a swift, impetuous grace, and in a sweet, yet thrilling voice, the Moth Song. The shrill music and murmur from the parlors burst all at once in muffled volume upon the melody, and, turning, they both saw Marguerite standing in the doorway, like an angry wraith, and flitting back again. Mrs. Purcell laughed, but took up the thread of her song again where it was broken, and carried it through to the end. Then Mr. Raleigh tossed the gondel-lied aside, and rising, they continued their stroll.
"You have more than your share of the good things of life, Raleigh," said Mr. McLean, as the person addressed poured out wine for Mrs. Purcell. "Two affairs on hand at once? You drink deep. Light and sparkling,—thin and tart,—isn't it Solomon who forbids mixed drink?"
"I was never the worse for claret," replied Mr. Raleigh, bearing away the glittering glass.
The party from the Lake had not arrived at an early hour, and it was quite late when Mr. Raleigh made his way through ranks of tireless dancers, toward Marguerite. She had been dancing with a spirit that would have resembled joyousness but for its reckless abandon. She seemed to him then like a flame, as full of wilful sinuous caprice. At the first he scarcely liked it, but directly the artistic side of his nature recognized the extreme grace and beauty that flowed through every curve of movement. Standing now, the corn-silk hair slightly disordered and still blown about by the fan of some one near her, her eyes sparkling like stars in the dewdrops of wild wood-violets, warm, yet weary, and a flush deepening her cheek with color, while the flowers hung dead around her, she held a glass of wine and watched the bead swim to the brim. Mr. Raleigh approached unaware, and startled her as he spoke.
"It is au gré du vent, indeed," he said,—"just the