Part 3

There was a queer shuffling sound as of footsteps in the entry. The candles sank to dull blue sparks devoid of radiance; yet, instead of darkness there was light. Outside was darkness, vast, pitmirk; inside, appalling light. All the place was stunned and blinded by an overwhelming light which cast no shadows anywhere, but, vehemently streaming, searched crack and cranny; not a crevice escaped. It lapped and flowed like waves, and penetrated everything; even the gross material of the walls, saturated by that flame, gave back a superfluous glow, a white excess of light, and every pointed thing within the room was peaked and capped with flame. Round and round the room a bewildered host of moths in little wavering flights and drops went fluttering, with a light rustle of powdery wings, and, among them, bats splashed through the light with a low, continuous whirr. Round and round, like froth-clots on flood-water swinging around a vortex, whirled slantbat and moth in a dizzy, irregular ring, in the midst of which, crouched in a high-backed chair, sat a shriveled, dead-alive, mummy-like figure, as thin and fleshless as a skeleton,--an apparition, sinister, white, and wasted as a corpse new-risen from the grave.

Its chin upon its folded hands, its hands about one knee, the knee upheld by the heel crooked at the chair-seat’s edge, the other gaunt leg dangling across the upraised foot, the specter smiled on Margot a bleak, Saturnine smile. Its face was greatly wasted; all the life of it seemed gathered into the brilliant, terrible eyes, which blazed with infernal light, in splendid scorn, without remorse, sardonical; a countenance such as God alone endures to look upon unmoved; a figure terrible.... Deity, deformed, might look like this, grotesquely majestical, hideous, baleful, glorious, accursed, malign; an archangel, fallen, outcast, depraved: Satan, god of the discontent.

A twisted smile wreathing his evil lips, with his chin hooked over his hands,--a smile of cool confidence mingled with nonchalance, “Why not try me?” he said.

* * * * *

Staring into the abyss of blinding terror and light which encircled that thunder-scarred visage, with its thin, sleepless eyelids and twisted, ironic smile, Margot shrank against the wall, shivering as with cold; one hand shielding her blinded eyes, one groping along the wall, she listened, breathlessly.

In a voice whose deep and hollow sound seemed part of the midnight storm, Satan spoke.

“God has forgotten you; that is plain,” he said. “Then why not pray unto me? I remember when God forgets.

“What did ye hope? That He who left Jesus to die on the cross, would stoop to succor you? Nay, then; you have been cajoled. He has never so much as kept one man from the withering breath of time, but leaves a thousand ills on earth to work their wills upon him. Yet you thought He would harken to you? _Fi donc!_ Neither for life nor death, nor angels, nor principalities, nor for all the powers that ever were, or shall forever be, will He alter for you, or for any, one iota of His law.

“Nay, though your heart break with its burden, not a jot of His law shall be altered to ease your load.

“I have seen all the piety under the sun; and its wages are vanity. What profit have you of all your labor; what recompense of your toil? Heaven hath sent you sorrow; it hath not sent a cure, nor had compassion upon you.

“If this be loving-kindness, why not try damnation awhile; not forfeit riches, power, and place, for a fool’s hope of treasures in heaven?

“Doubtless the priest hath said unto you, ‘What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?’ Faw! I say unto you, ‘What profit hath a man, though he save his own soul, if he lose his heart’s desire?’

“When you are dead and done for, and lie sleeping in the dust; when worms destroy your body, when your days upon earth are become as shadows, and you have no more a portion forever in anything under the sun, what shall it profit you to have saved your soul at the cost of your heart’s desire? Nay; ye have been cajoled! Your way is without hope.

“But come unto me, ye anxious, whose hearts are bowed with care, and I will give you your hearts’ desire! No man calls on me in vain; I turn none empty away; the world is full of my mercies upon those who trust in me; and my benefits fall like the summer rain on all who covenant with me. Ask, and ye shall receive, whatsoever your hearts may wish; yea, though it lie at the ends of the earth it shall be given unto you; your house shall be full of good things, riches, and place, and power; ye shall heap up gold like dust from the streets; ye shall have your hearts’ desire!

“Come unto me, ye weary, whose hearts are bent with trouble; lay down your burden, and follow me; I will give you your heart’s desire!”

Margot’s hand went up the wall a little way toward the crucifix, then slipped back with fumbling fingers.

“Lord ... Lord!” she whispered hoarsely, “give me my heart’s desire!”

“And what is your heart’s desire?”

“That my daughter, Gabrielle, should be white to all eternity! All that I have, and all that I am, will I give, ... yea, for this would I give my soul.”

Satan smiled.

“Then lay down your burden, my daughter; you shall have your heart’s desire!”

Margot, with a sobbing cry, laid down her life’s unbearable burden at the feet of the Prince of the Powers of Darkness.

By his eternal damnation he swore she should have her heart’s desire; by her rejected salvation she swore to abide by the covenant.

“_Consummatum est!_” he said, and was gone on the black blast.

The candles sent up a thin flare of flame and smoke, and went out in utter darkness. Crouched on the floor against the wall Margot still knelt in a stupor. A rat came out of a hole in the wall and gnawed at her rosary. Dawn came in at the windows; the twilit gray grew pink. The walls were blotched and spotted; everything exhaled an odor of mildew; Margot still huddled upon the floor beneath the crucifix; over her head the crucified Christ hung mute in His agony.

* * * * *

The flight of hours, the decline of day, the season’s turn, all things which preface change are presages of parting, and, like the proximity of the tomb, though wreathed in bloomy myrtle, are subtly fraught with sadness and regret. All love’s farewells are so oppressed. Though with absolute confidence in themselves and in each other, sure of the imperishable structure of their love, a nameless apprehension fills the hearts of all who part, and casts a melancholy shade on partings. “Until to-morrow!” Ah, to-morrow! “To-morrow I will come again!” she says. They go, with trembling hands, each, shaken by departure, saying, “Shall we meet again?”

“To-morrow!” Gabrielle had said, as she took her lips away. “To-morrow I will come again!” and was gone.

In the warm heart of the midsummer night he dreamed again among the hedges, a boy’s dream, a dream of joy, a dream of heart’s delight. Her lips were pomegranate blossoms; her cheeks were wild peach flowers; it was a boy’s dream, a dream of joy, a dream of heart’s delight! Her waist was as a willow-withe, her voice a bird in the deep wood calling; her feet danced fantasies in his heart. He came all in the daze of a boy’s dream, a dream of joy, a dream of heart’s desire. With every eager breath he drew in the hyacinthine fragrance of the night.

All day long, like a sullen army, a great cloud heaved and gloomed along the west, with wind-blown vapors streaming around its thunderous heights. All day long, in awe of it, men put off going here and there, gave over plans, and stood oppressed by its tremendous imminence. The day was darkened by the dominion of the cloud. At evening it rolled off across the plain, obliterating leagues of lesser storms, with fire stabbing at its breast, and distant bellowings of tremendous sound. Heaving slowly against the twilight stars, rolling in sullen majesty upon the gale, pale moonlight falling on its peaks, and the gray rain trailing down below, in its heart innumerable lightnings, thunder grumbling in its front, it left the drenched field to the moon. Beyond the edge of the world it hung, gloomily brooding upon the splendor of the night.

In the magic of the moonlight Lilac lane lay ghostly as a dream, hushed, alluring, unfamiliar. The strange, white light of the immense full moon lay dead on everything; the hedge-rows were hung with the shadows and darkness of strange delight; the cicada chittered in the almond tree; the great moths flapped heavily among the wet moon-flowers; a slow, scarcely perceptible wind blew, languid-sweet, hardly moving the heavy leaves of the magnolias; a gray bird pitched a wild song somewhere deep within a hedge.

In Margot’s garden everything was wrapped in night’s singular fantasy. In the pallor of the moonlight the garden lay like an enchanted realm of goblin loveliness. The lilies stood as pale and chill as flowers carved of marble; among the drowsy poppies hung garlands of nocturnal vine whose folded blooms in chaplets clustered colorless in the pallid moonshine. The whole place trembled in a pale, strange beauty which the silence made lovelier still. Like an island in a silvery mist Margot’s house stood blind asleep, its little windows curtained deep with shadows, dim, blue, and dark, and on the woodwork of the door, like petals of dismantled flowers, wax-wet, wind-blown, walked moths thrown there by the whining wind, slowly blowing across leagues of lonely marsh; and, among the moths, the glow-worms, faintly lighted and phosphor-green, crawled up and down, up and down, to nowhere: it looked like the door of the way to oblivion, so lonely it seemed and so still. The garden was utterly empty; the house yard was deserted.

He looked; he listened; and his heart stood still; save for the glow-worm and the moth there was nothing alive there but him. Like the chill which creeps across the matted grass of evening in the last fair days of autumn, full of the faded fragrance and haunted dusk of fall, a wordless dread stole over him. The moonlight gleamed on the cottage-wall with a singular, mournful splendor; a heavy wind began to stir the trees; immensely mournful, faint and far-away, there came a boom of thunder from beyond the rim of the world; joy all at once was gone from the midsummer night; the haunting strangeness crept into his heart. The place was full of the heavy fragrance of dead flowers. Here and there a palsied rose, its faded leaves relaxed, broke, and fell without a sound.

Under the fig-trees he paused a moment, undecided,--to listen, shivering a little, and peering along the wall. There was no sound of human life. Though the wind had set the great leaves stirring, all was ghostly as a dream. One white star above the roof-peak sailed among the broken clouds; the moon, desolate, splendid, hung in the magnolia, mournfully gleaming through the black boughs; in the still air the moonlight stood; the shadows lay like solid things upon the cottage wall.

At the corner of the house he paused and listened again. In the strange, unanswering silence a sense of disaster gripped him. There was no sound anywhere; his heart almost ceased beating.

With premonition of catastrophe he ran along the wall:--nothing, but windows, battened or curtained, blank as a blindman’s eyes; not a sign of humanity.

Where he had dreamed to stand speechless with happiness, he stood shaken by nameless fear.

Deep within the house he heard a relaxed beam “pung” with a sound like a viol string softly struck by a hand in passing: the deep, slow sound reverberated through the hollow house, and died away in vacant whispering.

Through the crevice of the shutter he saw the cold moonlight fall along the deserted floor. The house was absolutely empty.

* * * * *

There is a convent-school for orphaned girls kept by the nuns in New Orleans. The loveliest girl seen there in years was Gabrielle Lagoux, carried there between two nights, lest young love, like death, insist.

Dawn and departure. She had trembled like a leaf, half comprehending only; her mother kissed her twice, in feverish haste, with lips like dry leaves: that was their parting. Some one called “Gabrielle!” at the door. The coach was at the gate. She stopped at the wicket, looked down the lane, said a few words to the coachboy who guarded her gown from the wheels: “Tell him,” she said, “that I love him. Tell him remember me.” She paused again at the door of the coach, her foot on the step, a dazed look in her eyes, saying, “Tell him not to forget me. I love him!” The wheels rumbled over the cobbles. She never came back. When she entered the coach young love was done for forever: she never saw her golden lad again. Love beat his rose-red wings in vain; he could not overtake the coach; for the coach was fate; all was over; his dusty feet halted in the heat of the dusty road; “Good-by!... Good-by, forever!”

Days became weeks, weeks months, months grew into years; she never came again. She passed through the convent’s sheltering door, was safe from mischance and folly; passed into a world remote of unfamiliar faces, and forgot.

God made memory cruel, that men might know remorse; but the Devil devised forgetfulness, anodyne of regret.

Reputed heiress to vast estates, provided with boundless means and gifted with great beauty, coming to marriageable age in all the freshness of her youthful loveliness, she was wedded to a wealthy planter’s only son whose love for her was very great.

Pure happiness was theirs prolonged far beyond the honeymoon. Surrounded by every creature comfort wealth could procure or affection devise, secure in a faithful man’s unaltering love, she dwelt serene, in a country where the fruits of the earth and the flowers of the forest spread natural loveliness about fields of unsurpassed fertility.

She never knew winter, want, nor war; her years were filled with peace; her estates increased to vast proportions; a thousand slaves were happy, being hers. Admired for her beauty, greatly loved, she returned an adoring husband’s devotion, and bore him children with eyes like the morning and hair like wreathed flames. Her daughters married and were fruitful, bearing children fair as an April day, with eyes like the sky of the morning. For them, for her, the world rolled on in unperturbed peace.

But she never saw her golden lad again.

* * * * *

Something inscrutable, deeper than whim, had come over Margot Lagoux. Her work was oddly altered: it had more air, less ease; more spell, less charm; more force, and less dexterity. The stuffs she chose no longer were notable for the exquisite, wan delicacy which so becomes the pallor of high-bred beauty; she took an incomprehensible joy in vivid color; but what was gained in vividness was lost in harmony. Her work retained distinction, but of a queer sort; reserve gave way to novelty; simple beauty was replaced by meretricious charm; her taste, which had been perfect, seemed suffering gradual corruption; her craft was marred by crudities. Her turbans began to look as if there were only barbaric plumes in the world, of parrakeets and cockatoos, trogons and flamingos, gay toucan wings, and extraordinary quills; florid colors and distempered stains were mingled in inharmonious contrast; mango-yellow, peacock-green, Egyptian blue, and Congo scarlet, flaunted their discordant tones together.

Style she had; but it was style _malade du rouvieux_; her trade-mark had become gaucherie, her art artifice; good taste had departed. Her work no more was garnished, but bedizened with excess, nowhere restrained, but having unrestricted vent in tawdry fripperies. Her handicraft was stamped by power and energy misapplied; the sole distinction it had left was whimsical device. Everything she did was like sweet wine soured, the worse for having been so much better. Her bonnets were like songs in forced falsetto, every line slurred by subtle default, every sweet note out; always too much or too little, never the happy mean. Even the pearls or marguerites, which she had formerly employed in bordures as trade-marks of her craft, had become cheap beads of colored pottery and glass. In tarnished bowls, in corners of obscure pawnshop windows, among the dead flies and the dust, are still occasionally to be found beads, often called “margots” or “margotons,” like those employed by Margot Lagoux in her practice of millinery, but said to be thread-plummets employed by makers of lace. One, a Greek dealer in old gold and stolen silver, tells the enquiring traveler that these are Dead Sea pebbles, worn to their peculiar shapes by the ceaseless fret of that gloomy sea. But beads like them, grotesques, baroques, were laced on toques and turbans of her make, and now and then were found among the laces on bonnets which had no need of them: men, seeing them, narrowed their glances, and took new note of the wearer. Those aware permitted none near or dear to adorn her person with them.

A queerly degenerated taste marked everything that Margot did. With singular obliquity she set everything awry; from rich goods produced unspeakably poor results; and with cheap cunning vexed priceless stuffs beyond recovery or repair.

Her custom fell from _vendre cher_ to _bon marché_. With the diminishing stream of patronage the material in her shop went down from _velours ras, velours façonné_, and _velours de soie_, to _velours de coton_ and _coton croisé_, from velvet to velveteens. The air of distinction which attracted gentility utterly faded away; the coarse, crude stuffs and rude handiwork repelled the aristocratic. Calls for her work became infrequent; more infrequent; came no more. One morning the milliner’s shop was shut. It never was opened again. The stuffs on the dusty shelves grew faded, discolored, and stained; cobwebs hung from the mouldy walls; the trade which had known and frequented the place knew it no more.

* * * * *

But out of this end, like a paradox, above the apparent wreck Margot arose in prosperity: the Devil was good as his word.

She dwelt in a massive great house, a mansion, handsome, stately, and somber, by a courtyard paved in marble, approached through a vaulted tunnel lit by a dull-flaming torch and closed by an iron gate. From the side of the court a staircase of marble rose to her private door, ornate as a public office’s entry and massively carved in flowers; stairs within, of blue-veined marble, went up through wide corridors heavily panelled in dark Spanish wood. Beneath the house vast cellars boomed and echoed; the chimneys rose like turrets grouped against the darkling sky. The house throughout was furnished with every luxury befitting persons of circumstance: broad hearths for the burning of long wood in winter, vaulted corridors, burnished fittings of latten, and jalousies of saffron-wood with retaining rosettes of porcelain; mahogany tables of rare design, deep-carved, and adorned with brass. Curtains of saffron-colored silk cinctured with gold braid hung from the ceiling to the floor in heavy golden folds. Day was made night, night day by many subterfuges, with blinds and saffron jalousies ironed fast against the noon. By night the light shone out to the red stars, and the house was full of the swift, rich sweeping of heavy silk curtains waved by the wind, and the glow of the wax candles chequered the courtyard below with gold. In the middle of the courtyard, at the foot of the staircase, a fountain played in a yellow basin, with a pleasant, incessant noise of whispering green water, falling perpetually with a delicate patter over seven brown stone dolphins, spouting from whose pouted mouths went up contending streams; the waters gushed, white-laced, babbling, from the green-coppered vents in the dolphins’ mouths, and descended in spray to the bowl below; and under the bowl the drain-pipe murmured subterranean cool. About the courtyard stood a row of crimson-flowered pomegranate-trees: through the split brown rinds the garnet pulp and silver seeds showed, clotted thick as crystals in a stone; and purple fruits in heavy clusters, of myriad, uncounted drupes, hung from the superior privets ranged along the courtyard wall, dropping green shadows, like vast laces, over the blind-arched bricks below. A garden lay beyond the court, its gate hung thick and deep with yellow roses, clinging to the iron lantern, drooping and swaying in unconstrained festoons. Beyond the garden the place debouched into a forgotten graveyard.

By night alive, by day the place was sunk in dreams, with lavish beauty everywhere composed to sleep in sunlit sloth, luxurious and deep. The place seemed fallen in a trance. The pigeons dozed along the eaves; and on the grass below, where the garden stretched, the peacock slowly danced his stiff and stately dance, an iris feather bubble, green as jade, purple as wine, blue as lazuli. The courtyard seemed the very home of sleep. The sun lay stupid on the silent walls and drowsily beat on the blue-doored cellars shut with cautious bars, closed fast and locked beneath the arcaded porch; the shadows of the slim pillars slept in the graceful galleries. All was hushed but the peacock’s cry, while that iridescent bubble, on toes black as ebony, danced, here and there, there and here, his slow “pavone” among the yellow roses.

By night beneath the windows ancient tombs bared their sculptured breasts to the stars and stared up at the golden arches; and dank, black, cracked sarcophagi, chequered with light, laid broad their time-worn, sculptured emblems and tragical inscriptions,--skulls with wings, and urns, and hour-glasses whose un-refluent, palsied sands meet measure of eternity kept with motionless registry, and stony garlands of stone flowers which never bloomed, nor ever were sweet, as that beneath them had been sweet to man’s all quivering sense. Here lay the long dead, day and night, communicant in death; and wraiths of old unhappiness rose sighing with regret, or dreamed, beneath the stones, of love as futile as regret. The wind among the tombstones, like a stream from a windy fountain, murmured among the pomegranate-trees, stirred the shadows under the privets, rustled between the silken curtains, whispering, much as dead men do, chill, wordless, fluttering breaths of unsolved mystery. And when the wind from the graveyard whispered, all the place stood listening, hushed. The wind from the graveyard whispered among the saffron curtains; the ceaseless fountain waters fell; else all was still but the peacock’s wild night-cry, sounding through the unfathomable silence like the rending of an illusion,--deep and singular and strange,--by a harsh trumpet’s blast. Heh! The Devil keeps his promises in the way that suits him best.

* * * * *