Gabrielle d'Estrées

“ He has told me of the esteem which the French have for Gabrielle d'Estrees, and, like that of Gabrielle, my heart has let itself be captured, not by a great king, but by the most honest man of his realm.
To France, Gabrielle gave the Vendome, to-day our support. The princes, my sons, give promise of virtues as excellent, and will be worthy to aspire to destinies as noble. It is my desire and my duty to give no thought to my private griefs begotten of an ill-assorted marriage. May the King ever be adored by his people; may my children ever be beloved and cherished by the King ”

“ He returned without effecting a settlement.
1563. The city of Goa in India introduced printing.
1599. Gabrielle d'Estrees, a mistress of Henry IV, died. She was descended from an illustrious house, and was 20 years of age when her beauty captivated the king. He procured a divorce from Margaret of Valois, in order to raise Gabrielle to the throne; but her sudden death, probably by poison, frustrated the plan, and plunged him in excessive grief. ”

“ His voice seemed tender as a woman’s as he poured forth his semi-Mohammedanistic vers libre. Again he knelt before her, as a bigot heathen might kneel before an idol, and stared into her blue, frightened eyes.
Gabrielle, as though in a trance, felt his caressing hands; they seemed shadow hands as his burning words crept into her ears. She heard the winds sigh outside in the mountain palms. She and he were alone.
“Gabri-ar-le! thou art more than life itself; the moon, the stars, thou art; and like unto the stars shall our children be!” ”

“ It seemed as if the lofty spirit of Ernestine was stung by the strange avowal of poor Gabrielle, and she wept with her; but her tears were those of pride and mortification.
Lovers never dream that others can discern their passion; and thin though the disguise may be that usually veils it, so admirably had Gabrielle concealed her secret thoughts, that none could have suspected them, and honest Ian least of all. ”

“ Not an atom of passion come to ruffle the poetry of his feelings. For the young apprentice was really in love. Her hair touched his face. It thrilled him as music thrills dreaming men. “Gabrielle, you are very beautiful How strange that no man has claimed you before. For that, at least, I thank God.”
The girl was silent. “Don’t you believe me?” he added. He glanced swiftly at her face. It was deathly white. Hillary thought it was the rats scampering across the deck that had brought that startled look. Then Gabrielle burst into tears. ”

“ All around was so sunny and bright and clear--and yet in this hour of her betrothal a shade fell on Gabrielle. Was there magic in the air about her? Faint rumours reached her ears, whispered messages telling of a moonlight night, and borne over from a distance, there came to her the even sound of flowing water, the low rippling murmur of a spring.
For a moment all the golden sunshine vanished, blotted out by a tear.
Gabrielle felt that life and love were given back to her, but, remembering the price paid, she felt too that love, life, and happiness were dearly bought! ”

“ Gabrielle is dressed in a white robe; the long folds trail upon the ground. Her auburn hair, drawn off her face, is gathered into a coronet of gold; rich lace covers her bosom, and a high ruff rises from her shoulders; on her neck is a string of pearls, to which is attached a miniature of the King. With the years that have passed the bloom of youth is gone; the joyous expression of early days has died out of those soft pleading eyes. Lovely she is still; her complexion is delicately fair, and the pensive look in her face is touching to the last degree. ”

“ One aged priest who was grovelling on his stomach before the dwarf taboo idols that were receiving the sacred slanting moonbeams through the palms prostrated himself at Gabrielle’s feet. The white girl looked round her like one who stared in a dream, then she gave a merry peal of laughter. The handsome, tattooed braves who stood leaning on the palm stems gave a hushed cry of admiration as they saw the girl standing, bathed in moonbeams, her hair wildly dishevelled, her eyes like stars, her arms as white as coral as she made mystical movements in a dance they did not know. ”

“ She knew that the Rajah’s mate was laid up with fever in the deckhouse amidships, and so she was quite alone with the Rajah.
“I know that I am only Pa-ooan. You no’ like me ’cause I dark man, eh? Wilt lover me, canst thou deny me, O maid of mine heart?”
Gabrielle knew by his lapse into Biblical pidgin-English that he was in an excited, treacherous state of mind; she also realised that it was wiser for her to attempt to mollify him.
“I don’t dislike the people of your race at all; it’s the wicked way that you kidnapped me that makes me hate you. Won’t you take me back to my people?” ”

“ Although she had dark blood in her veins, she had been a very beautiful woman. Indeed an eerie kind of beauty seems to be the natural heritage of women who are remotely descended from a mixture of the dark and white races. And this striking beauty is most noticeable in those half-castes who are descended from the Malayan types, a superstitious people, of wild, poetic, passionate temperament. There was some mystery concerning Gabrielle’s mother: she had flown from Haiti to Honolulu in some great fear. Everard had met her because it was on his ship that she had stowed away ”

“ She is a Bohemian all over, she has belonged to the Bedouins of civilisation from her youth up, and has run rampant through a labyrinth of low life, and the tastes that go hand in hand with it, but on the principle that all things are good for something, Gabrielle’s hardness and self-reliance, united to acuteness, have served her during her career when a nobler but weaker nature might have sunk beyond redemption. ”

“ He is not worthy of you, child; far, far from it.”
“You have not seen him and spoken with him, or you would not say that.”
“When did he come?”
“But yesterday; or rather, two days past;” and Gabrielle told of the meeting in the market place and after at Malincourt.
“It is a tragedy,” was the Duchess’s comment. “And you love him! Oh, Gabrielle, Gabrielle, what sorrow is there not in store for you!”
“Not through him,” was the confident reply.
“Alas! child, what do you know of men who judge them by a comely face and a fair-speaking tongue? When could a man not speak a maiden fairly? ”

“ The apprentice couldn’t persuade himself to mention the name of the man who had apparently done him this great injury. Hillary had only seen the Papuan Rajah twice, but the man’s face was as vividly before him as if he had known him for a thousand years.
At that moment he did not want Gabrielle’s father to see his eyes. He felt ashamed that they should be dimmed with emotion. He was overcome by the feeling that he was the first to love and have faith in woman; the first to have idealistic views about honour and the ways of men ”

“ And still old Everard looked round with insane eyes and thanked God for a Rajah’s friendship; and still Gabrielle struggled against the fascination of that man of mystery. Though nature has fixed indisputable danger signals in the eyes of voluptuaries, liars, rogues and old roués so that they give themselves away in a thousand acts, women’s blind eyes will not see!
All the old idolatry, the belief in his heathen gods, returned to Rajah Koo Macka that night. His mind was fired with superstition, much as Gabrielle’s was by romance, as he stared upon her. ”

“ Even a wooden leg would seem to have its part to play in the universe: there was something imperative about its tapping voice. That fate-like tapping had smashed up many of Gabrielle’s young dreams; possibly that wooden leg was a soulless agent of the devil.
“Here’s the whisky, Dad,” said she, as the cockatoo looked down from its perch and shrieked: “Gabby-ell! Gabby-ell! Kai-kai-too!”
In a moment that weird symbol in wood, that represented all that was unromantic to her ardent soul, ceased its ominous “tip-e-te-tap-tap” as the old sailor looked up and spied his daughter. ”

“ But now he has gone back to the plan; for there is one, a woman among women, Gabrielle, who would be all that Morvaix could desire as his wife. And the one of all others whom I could best bear to see filling my place.”
She paused for Gabrielle to speak; but no response came.
“Her heart, like mine, is for the people’s weal and her influence would be far greater than mine could ever have been with the citizens; real, powerful, active, where mine is now dead. You have often told me how you love the people, Gabrielle.” ”

“ And so it was that Gabrielle sat in her bunk that night and stared through the port-hole so that she might get a breath of the cool midnight breeze that drifted at intervals across the hot tropic seas.
The stars were shining in their thousands as she sat there watching and crying softly to herself. She could plainly see the bluish, ghost-like gleam of the horizon, far away, as she stared out of the cabin port-hole. It was then that she once more heard a mysterious wail coming from somewhere out in the silence of the night. Her lips went dry with fright as she gazed and listened in her terror. ”

“ Is she?” wailed old Everard, as the artful heathen gent shaded his eyes archwise with one dusky hand and, staring unabashed with a long, reflective glance at Gabrielle, murmured in holiest tones: “Virginity! Virginity! O blessed word!”
Gabrielle certainly did look beautiful: the dying flowers in her bronze-golden hair and her negligé attire (a much-renovated, washed-out blue robe and scarlet sash) added to the mystery of that sordid bungalow, as the dim candles and oil lamp burnt humbly before the unfathomable eyes of sapphire-blue. ”

“ A woman guilty as she could never hope to build a spiritual house.
Such an explanation of Gabrielle’s lack of enthusiasm is at first glance somewhat superficial. The Gabrielle of the poem who has moved us so profoundly is not the woman Penn-Raven describes in this manner. Gabrielle was not motivated by selfishness and cowardice. She did not die because she feared her husband. [263] Yet, however one interpret Gabrielle, this judgment of her, which Penn-Raven voiced, remains partially correct. Gabrielle was essentially “flower and weed together”. ”

“ CHAPTER VI—THE DERELICT Hillary was impatient during the interminable hours that passed ere he saw Gabrielle again. “Don’t worry me, Mango,” he said, as the pretty native girl stood on the verandah and blew kisses from her coral-red lips.
“He go mad soon; man who no get drunk am no gooder at all!” murmured Mango Pango as she ran off to obey the orders of her mistress.
It was the next night when Hillary was to reach the zenith of his dreams and happiness. Gabrielle had promised to meet him at sunset and go off in a canoe for a paddle round the coral reefs off Felisi beach. ”

“ I knew that I could not enter into the depths of her feelings, but I comprehended her haughty bearing and scornful glances; for the neighbors looked at us pitifully, and Gabrielle writhed beneath it: child as she was, there was something awful and grand in her lonely majesty of demeanor. Her self-denying, constant devotion toward me—often ailing and pining as I was—I repaid by an affection which I am sure is quite different from that entertained by sisters happily placed for each other: Gabrielle was as mother and sister, and friend and nurse, and playmate, all in one to me. ”

“ She had the Norman blue eyes and a fair complexion, which the white wrappings about her face seemed to heighten and irradiate. Is it the white lawn, or is it a beauty that the self-denying life lends to them which makes the faces of so many of those women look so lovely? I called Sister Gabrielle an angel just now, but you must not fancy there was any cold saintliness about her ”

“ His brain teemed with the thoughts of all he would say to Gabrielle when he declared his love. He determined to act his part well and be a worthy lover. She should not be disappointed in him. “I’ll paddle her out to that derelict three-masted ship; that old wreck’s the very place. ”

“ It amused me to 'make a pretty history to myself,' with Sister Gabrielle for the heroine. A woman with a voice like hers, and such a smile, was bound to have loved deeply. Sometimes, when she was not speaking, her eyes had a sad far-away look. I can only compare it to the look that an emigrant who was toiling along a hot, dusty high-road to embark for a new country, might turn and give to the dear spot that he had said a long goodbye to. But that look never lasted more than a minute on Sister Gabrielle's face. ”

“ Her eyes shone like living fire. She lifted her dusky face till her chin stuck out. One hand held the goblet slightly aloft, with the other hand she pulled the wrinkled skin of her shrunken bosom and let it go back, click! and looked sideways at Gabrielle’s full white throat in a meaning way. The venom of her hatred for the man before her made her appear terribly old.
Ulysses stepped backwards. He instinctively knew that that weird-looking woman had the prior right to deal with the Rajah at that particular moment. Step by step she approached, putting her knees far forward in a peculiar way. ”

“ After the young apprentice had waved his farewell to Gabrielle he strolled away under the palms. “Well, she’s a beautiful creature. Who’d have thought of meeting her in this wild place? She’s ethereal, too beautiful to make love to,” he sighed.
Possibly the contrast between Gabrielle Everard and the Solomon Island mop-headed girls etherealised her natural beauty in his eyes. This was a fatal outlook for Hillary, considering the girl’s impulsive nature and his chances in the love affair that he had unknowingly embarked upon. ”