Margarita

“ Margarita, white queen of the dusky race whose habitation is the pathless forest, hail! Here, upon the border which limits thy domains, we pledge anew to thee the promise of fealty, of which the crimson star upon our foreheads is the token. By it we swear to thee that thy foes shall be our foes, and that over us, thy slaves, shalt thou have the power of life and death. ”

“ After tea Miss Jencks departed with her knitting and we three were comfortably silent; Margarita dreamy, I all in a maze at her, Roger relishing my wonder. The hyacinths smelled strong in the growing dusk, the Chinese dragons burned against the wall: colour and odour were alike a frame for her beauty and her richness. ”

“ I found that I had insensibly drifted into a state of mind in which we five, Roger, Miss Jencks, Dolledge, Caliban and I seemed to be at home, contented, occupied, attached by every interest domestic and romantic, to the spot that was dearest on earth to us, while Margarita, a brilliant bird of passage, but lingered with us for the moment, before she took up her journey through the world—for that she was destined for the world, who could doubt? ”

“ What was it in Margarita that drew that old, primitive passion, that ancient world-stuff out of its decorous grave, all planted with orchids and maiden-hair, that woke it with a rough shout in us and offered us at the same time its natural gratification—a fierce fight and a certain victory? God knows and knows better, perhaps, than the Devil that Roger's ancestors would have been quick to credit with the exclusive knowledge. ”

“ For Margarita the stately silver-haired figure with immovable features and fixed, withdrawn gaze held some unexpected and inexplicable charm. She kissed Madam Bradley willingly, set the little Mary on her lap and beguiled the child with every graceful wile to laugh and crow and exhibit her tiny vocabulary. She sang by the hour, so that the gloomy house—brightened now, for the baby's health—echoed with her lovely notes. Bradleys and Searses and Wolcotts flocked to meet her and spread her fame and charm abroad; and Roger forgot for a while the load he carried and seemed like himself again. ”

“ As the multitude caught sight of him, a great shout of greeting went up and in the tumult of acclamation was stifled the cry of a woman, who at that moment, as if struck by a thunderbolt, fell fainting into the arms of those who sprang to her aid. It was Margarita, Margarita who had recognized her mysterious lover in that great and dreadful lord, the Count of Gômara, one of the most exalted and powerful feudatories of the Crown of Castile. ”

“ Margarita
Weak in your blood you would say,
How wretched is my case, willing to please ye,
And find you so disable?
Duke of Medina
Believe me Lady.
Margarita
I know you will venture all you have to satisfy me,
Your life I know, but is it fit I spoil ye,
Is it my love do you think?
Cacafogo below
Here's to the Duke.
Duke of Medina
It nam'd me certainly,
I heard it plainly sound.
Margarita
You are hurt mortally,
And fitter for your prayers Sir than pleasure,
What starts you make? I would not kiss you wantonly,
For the world's wealth ”

“ Margarita
I do Sir,
'Tis Estifania, that was once my woman.
Leon
She writes to me here, that one Cacafogo
An usuring Jewellers son (I know the Rascal)
Is mortally faln in love with ye.
Margarita
Is a monster, deliver me from mountains.
Leon
Do you goe a birding for all sorts of people?
And this evening will come to ye and shew ye Jewels,
And offers any thing to get access to ye,
If I can make or sport or profit on him,
(For he is fit for both) she bids me use him,
And so I will, be you conformable, and follow but my will. ”

“ For standing by the piano, one hand with its cloudy, flashing sapphire white among the pale stiff spikes, her deer-like head dark against the fantastic rose and orange of the embroidered dragons, was Margarita, a lovely smile curving her lips and the warm light in her deep slate-coloured eyes burning down, down into my very vitals. In that one rich, welcome smile all my calm English months melted like wax in a furnace, and Oxford was a drab dream and Surrey a stupid sick-bay! ”

“ They were all there, to be sure, the pretty paraphernalia that modern woman (and ancient, too, for the matter of that!) has found necessary to preserve and augment her mystery and charm; ivory and silver and crystal and fluted frills and scented silk. Oh, yes, they were all there, but there was no atmosphere of Margarita amongst them all: she had escaped out of them and given them the slip as effectually as in the old, bare days of the brush and comb and the print gown on a peg in the unscented closet. ”

“ Margarita asked pleasantly. "When I am hungry I do that very often. If you will come now, we will have our breakfast."
She sprang to her feet with the lithe ease of a boy and held out her hand to me. I took it and we walked thus across the beach to the cottage, and during that walk, with her firm, warm hand fast in mine and her clean, elastic step beside me, I swore to myself that neither she nor Roger should ever regret what she had done to me, nor know it, if I could keep the knowledge from them. ”

“ Margarita would reply; "'Like master, like servant,' is a good proverb sometimes, but not always. But there's a deal going on, on the veranda yonder, besides fiddling!" and Margarita's lips would purse themselves up in an expression of concentrated mystery and secret knowledge, well fitted to draw from everybody a fire of questions, none of which, however, would she answer. She knew better than to slander the Señorita Ramona, or to say a word even reflecting upon her unfavorably. Not a man or a woman there would have borne it. ”

“ Margarita was given to the practice of life, not its theory. I never tired of watching the extraordinary effect of her downright mental processes upon the mass of perfunctory, inherited ideas whose edges, once sharp-milled and fresh from some startling Mint, we have dulled and misshapen with generations of unthinking, accustomed barter. ”

“ I think no woman's name is so purely sweet to the ear, so grateful on the tongue. My Margarita! Alas, alas....
As to that walk by the sea, I have never been able to get any satisfactory account of it. Any, that is, which could hope to prove satisfactory to one who did not know Roger. Such an one might be incredulous, in face of all that had gone before, when assured that Roger paced back and forth on the firm sand, filling his lungs in the clean sea air, puffing his cigar in perfect silence, Margarita at his heels as silent as he, and the big Danish hound at hers, more silent than either. ”

“ Every one became primitive in talking with Margarita and fell, more or less, into her style of discourse.
"Have you been married?" she asked placidly, her grave, lovely eyes full on mine. She sat quite motionless, her hands loose in her lap, neither twiddling them aimlessly nor pretending to employ them in the hundred nervous ways common to her sex.
"No."
"Neither have I. Neither has Roger. But many people have. It cannot be hard." ”

“ I too have been in conflict, real physical conflict, with Margarita. I too have felt that old unpitying frenzy, that unreasonable delight in vanquishing her furious strength. Something in Roger—I know how suddenly, how amazingly—strained and snapped; the old bonds of civilisation (which with the Anglo-Saxon has always been feminisation) burst and dropped away, and the lust of physical ascendency caught him and swept the pretty legends of moral control and chivalrous forbearing into the dust bins and kitchen middens of nature's great domestic economy. ”

“ Margarita
Why where's your Husband?
Estifania
Gone Madam.
When you come to your own he must give place Lady.
Margarita
Well, send you joy, you would not let me know't,
Yet I shall not forget ye.
Estifania
Thank your Ladyship. ”

“ There was a certain languor and then occasional fiery carelessness in Margarita that must have come to her with the blood of the old heyduc of Palenka, and his bride—some odalisque, perhaps, won by the edge of his sabre amid the plunder of a pasha's household, and hers was the disposition, the passion and the situation, that so often lead to blind and bitter hatred, ending in crime and sorrow.
She knew the power of her beauty over all men, and she knew also the claim for special gratitude over this loyal, dauntless, and grateful heart, and hoped that she knew how to use both ”

“ I will not, alas I never knew my self sufficiently.
Margarita
Nor must not now.
Leon
I'le be a Dog to please ye.
Margarita
Indeed you must fetch and carry as I appoint ye.
Leon
I were to blame else.
Margarita
Kiss me again; a strong fellow,
There is a vigor in his lips: if you see me
Kiss any other, twenty in an hour Sir,
You must not start, nor be offended.
Leon
No, if you kiss a thousand I shall be contented,
It will the better teach me how to please ye.
Altea
I told ye Madam.
Margarita
'Tis the man I wisht for; the less you speak. ”

“ I stood there, lost in a maze of Cairo streets, and the babel of the shrieking, blue-clad donkey-boys was the scream of gulls to my ears and the sun on the swaying brass platters was the reflection of a polished sun-dial. The turquoises on the scarab-seller's tray were turquoises about Margarita's waist, the lemonade was borne by Caliban, and the child that rode astride those strong shoulders had hair like corn-silk burned in the sun and eyes as blue as any turquoise! ”

“ The haunting melancholy, the youth, the purity of that face have become so associated with Margarita and her home and that part of my life that I can never separate them, though it has been more than once pointed out to me, and fairly, I dare say, that the picture does not resemble her so much as I think, that her type of beauty is larger, less conventional, infinitely richer, and that, aside from the really unusually suggestive accident of her likeness, it is only a general effect. ”

“ That was what cut so, [264] and Margarita, dark and slim like a plain brown nightingale, who leaves plumage to the raucous peacock because it matters so little what she, the real queen of us all, wears—Margarita spelled it out remorselessly, to the tune of a mess-room waltz, and told us that youth is only once and so sweet and for so little time! And the boy beside her smiled with pleasure and embroidered her rich, clear-cut phrasing and annotated it and threw jewels and flowers of unexpected chords through it and mocked the sad, charming fatalism of it as only spendthrift youth can. ”

“ It was as much a part of her enchanting personality, and as little a defect in my indulgent eyes, as the three tiny moles under her chin (true grains de beauté) or her utter refusal to affect an interest in people's affairs or to eat the insides of her rolls and bread-slices. All faults, doubtless—but who would have or love a faultless woman? Not I, at any rate, for I loved her and love her and shall love her till my heart is a handful of dust, and she was far from faultless, my Margarita. ”

“ I can see the circle now—they form in the classic amphitheatre that knows no century nor country; a humpback pushing a barrow of something before him stops near us; a woman, coughing frightfully, leans on it, muttering to herself, staring at Margarita's scarf-wrapped head.
The cockney's address begins, "O my brothers ..." but I do not attend: I want to get Margarita out of the growing crowd, listless, but lifted for a moment from their sordid treadmill of existence by the light and the muffled, rhythmic crush and the high-pitched sing-song. ”

“ At high tide these would not show, but they were there, always guarding, always bare-toothed, and as far again beyond them a bell-buoy mounted on a similar ledge seemed to point to the existence of a double barrier. It was a great lonesome bay of the Atlantic that he looked at, its arms on either side desolate, scrubby and forbidding, with not a hint of life. Suddenly, as he stared, wondering, and Margarita stood quiet beside him, a long, quavering bellow came from behind him.
"It is the cow," said Margarita reassuringly, as he whirled around, "she is calling Caliban to milk her, I suppose." ”

“ Her long braids were bound around her beautiful round head, and this fashion of hair-dressing, with its classic parting, brought out the purity of her features and the coin-like regularity of them. I saw at once that she was older than I had thought her on the beach: I had not given her twenty then.
Roger took her hand and led her into the room.
"This is Margarita," he said simply, but his face told all he did not say, and I thanked heaven that neither Elder nor I had been foolish enough to attempt what we should probably have called reasoning with him.
"Is this the man that will marry us?" ”

“ Nature had given her long dark lashes with perfect verisimilitude, but had at the last moment capriciously decided against man's peace and hidden behind them, set deep behind them under flexible Italian brows, those curious slate-blue eyes that fixed her face in your mind inalterably. You could not forget her. I know, because I have been trying for twenty years.
"You are not, I take it, accustomed to dining out, Miss Margarita?" said Roger, amused, contented, ignorant of the cause of his sudden sense of absolute bien être, or attributing it, man like, to his good dinner. ”

“ She belonged, properly speaking, to the advance guard of the natural method, the school of intelligence and subtle dramatic skill. I cannot imagine Margarita a stout, tightly laced, high-heeled creature, advancing to the footlights, jewelled finger-tips on massive chest, emitting a series of staccato fireworks interspersed with trills and scales apropos of nothing in this world or the next.
Such performances constituted Roger's main objection to the opera, and though he was considered Philistine once, it is amusing to see how the tide of even popular opinion is setting his way, now. ”