MADAME MARGOT MADAME MARGOT _A Grotesque Legend of Old Charleston_ BY JOHN BENNETT [Illustration] NEW YORK THE CENTURY CO. 1921 Copyright, 1921, by JOHN BENNETT Printed in U. S. A. TO ... You, and you, and you, ... who have gone greatly here In friendship, making some delight, some true Song in the dark, some story against fear. ... Lovers yet shall tell the nightingale Sometimes a song that we of old time made, And gossips gathered at the twilight ale Shall say, “Those two were friends,” or “Unafraid Of bitter thoughts were those because they loved Better than most.” ... There in the midst of all those words shall be Our names, our ghosts, our immortality. --JOHN DRINKWATER. _The above is reprinted by permission of the publishers._ MADAME MARGOT MADAME MARGOT In an age so glorious, so rich and fine, and so be-starred with splendor that one almost forgets the bottomless abyss into which it plunged at last, there lived a woman in Charleston of whom a very odd story is told. The languid, lovely, tired old town was then a city brave and gay, with Mediterranean manners and Caribbean ways. The perfume of ten thousand flowers drifted upon the winds, which came and went over a thousand gardens, ebbing and flowing like the tide. Clouds of snowy gold and roses rolled across the sky, like the vast rotundas of a city builded of colored ivory. Slowly rising overhead, in windy and ethereal masses, they stood, carvings of pale porphyry upon a turquoise wall. The earth was transfigured with beauty. It was a golden age, when all things were fair; nothing had grown old; even the tragic and the terrible were comely then. Wonder lay on everything. Merely to exist was to be happy. It was a world of unextinguished youth; life was brimful to the lips with delight. In the gardens rare flowers bloomed, and rare fruits ripened,--pomegranates, oranges, medlars, figs, jujubes, and the purple Indian peach; and among the flowers, like winged flames, small and bright, sped the harlequins, the painted nonpareils, delicately beating the soft wind with their pied wings; while in the pomegranate-tree, among the dull bronze fruit, the mocking-bird sang his love and rapture. Through the green-hedged close, women, beautiful and stately, paced the shade, with men beside them, slender and straight, passionate and haughty, with fierce, bright eyes as ardent as the goshawk’s and as bold; and lovely girls, with dark hair and skins of alabaster, as graceful and as timid as fawns, and with fawn’s eyes, slipped among the green leaves like flowers alive.