He had been vaguely aware of Colin’s clinging hands at the harbour, and of Rachell’s urgent voice, but he had seen nothing but a darkness shot with sparks until he had emerged angrily on the other side of a welter of whisky and blankets and rubbings, and a ceaseless flood of the Island patois he had so wanted to hear again. He had been almost too enraged to speak—enraged with himself, with fate, with the rough kindly hands that ministered to him and forced on him that human contact he hated. His silence was misinterpreted by the kindly ones who continued to rub and dose and croon under the impression that full consciousness had not returned to him. When he suddenly threw them off with a fierce gesture of both arms their astonishment had been pitiful. . . . He had been sorry then, and thanked them, but afterwards he had fallen into a sort of sullen stupor and let them do what they liked with him. Fate had saved him against his wish—had flung him ashore like a bit of driftwood—very well, then, let it fling him now where it would—he would be passive. . . . It had flung him into Bon Repos.
Marvelling, he had been led by Hélier across the familiar courtyard, under that French inscription over the door that he had so well by heart that he did not need even to glance up at it, into the old tiled kitchen and across to the hearth where stood Rachell and André.
Hélier had gone and he had looked long at Rachell, looked at her with an attention he had not condescended to bestow upon any human being for a great number of years. He had looked at her dark eyes under the strongly marked brows, the lids faintly shadowed with purple, at the coiled crown of her dark hair, at her tall figure, slender yet commanding. He noticed that she was dressed in black and that there was a maiden’s blush rose tucked into her belt. Then she began to speak and her voice, low and vibrating, seemed to him in perfect keeping with her face.
She spoke slowly and charmingly, and with dignity, yet he was aware of a certain bewilderment and shrinking in her, and at the same time a desperate urgency. She was so sorry for him, she said, he was perhaps a visitor to the Island? . . . He nodded. . . . Ah, then she must offer him hospitality. She could not bear that he should go to common lodgings after the treatment he had received in their waters. La Catian Roque had done him a great injury, but the Island should make amends. He should not find the Island inhospitable. She had, unfortunately, no room in her house, but there was a room over the stable, intended for use in harvest time, when accommodation at the farmhouse was strained. . . . It was clean and comfortable. . . . She had already prepared it. . . . Here she flushed, though her eyes, fixed on him, did not waver. He smiled rather unpleasantly. It struck him that the common lodgings might have been more comfortable. It struck him also that she was a past mistress of the great art of prevarication. The hospitable reason she gave was not her true reason for desiring his company with such urgency. He wondered what it was. She could not know who he was. He had never, to the best of his knowledge, seen her before. He did not even know that André had married. Why did she so desperately require him? His curiosity was more piqued than it had been for years. He gave an abrupt, rough little bow, with a slight memory of forgotten courtesy in it, and accepted her hospitable offer.
All this time he had not dared to look full at André, yet one fleeting glance had given him a very clear impression of this man whom he had last seen as a small boy. Yes, he had thought André would grow into just that sort of melancholy, sentimental idiot. The humble, hesitating manner, the sensitive mouth, the dreaming yet observant eyes, the kind rather apologetic smile, yes, they were all what he would have expected. The man looked too old for his years and his face had an exhausted look. . . . Did the old man stamp on him? Or was this beautiful woman too autocratic with him? Obviously André was completely in subjection to his wife. . . . He would be. . . . Weak fool.
“I am delighted. . . . Your name, monsieur?”
Rachell had quite recovered from her momentary embarrassment and was now the perfect hostess.
“Ranulph Mabier. I was born in Normandy, madame, but have spent all my life out East.”
He jerked out the information in an abrupt way that forbade further questioning.
“You do not know the Island?”
“No, madame. I had heard of its beauties and intended to spend a short holiday here.”
He shut his mouth like a trap and his queer light eyes seemed to Rachell to be boring right through her. . . . She felt that he could see right into that inner sanctuary where not even André might enter. . . . No, more, that he had come right into it, sullied its whiteness with his footprints and disturbed its harmony with his harsh voice. . . . In the midst of her triumph she felt suddenly terrified. . . . She swung round to André and he was astonished to find her fingers gripping him tensely, vibrating as though something discordant were jangling within her.
“André, take Monsieur Mabier to his room.” Her voice was trembling a little. Having taken such infinite pains to secure the fellow she now seemed positively anxious to get rid of him.
As André led him across the courtyard towards the stable Ranulph was conscious that behind his polite gentleness his host was seething with a perfect whirlpool of dislike, dismay, bewilderment, anxiety and intense annoyance and resentment. . . . He smiled his rather nasty smile—an arrangement of the features that might have twisted the face of some Olympian god watching the sufferings of pigmy men from a far, far distance. The situation was intriguing in the extreme. A beautiful woman urgently desiring his presence for no known reason—a resentful and indignant host—a twist of fate flinging the prodigal son back to a home that did not remember him. . . . As Ranulph drifted into exhausted sleep that night he dreamed he could feel the filaments of a spell twisting around and around him, binding him, grappling him, lashing him irrevocably to Bon Repos.
II
But all that was a month ago and Ranulph Mabier was now an established fact in the du Frocq household. He had arranged his little room over the stables to his entire satisfaction and regularly paid André rent for it. The Islanders were of opinion that considering the deplorable state of their finances the du Frocqs were lucky to have grabbed a reliable paying guest out of the confusion of the wreck, even though the guest in question was one of the queerest devils ever spewed up out of the nether regions. He had become Uncle Ranulph to the children who all, rather surprisingly, adored him. Rachell regarded him with a mixture of intense attraction, fear and trembling hope. . . . André simply hated him. . . . Maximilian and Marmalade had been seen to lick his boots in a passion of affection. It was all very queer and Ranulph, walking home to breakfast from La Baie des Mouettes, felt its queerness as much as anybody.
Behind a gorse bush beside the path he came upon Peronelle. It was Monday, and she was clothed in her dark blue school frock, a garment which she had long ago outgrown, but which even in its best days had not been designed to encourage grace in the female form. Her hair had been confined with such fierce determination in its Monday plait that it stuck out from her little head at an acute angle. Her long greeny-black stockings, from which her skimpy skirt withdrew in horror, were a marvellous example of the darner’s art. Yet Peronelle, who all her life was to rise gaily above every misfortune, entirely transcended these disadvantages. Not even darned stockings and shrunken dresses could quench her magic.
She lay on her back, her legs kicking, a book held open upon her chest. Her face was pale and tense, her lips moving eagerly as she muttered to herself. Ranulph, his hands on his hips, looked down at her with amusement. She flickered an eyelash in his direction and, quite unembarrassed, continued to mutter. Ranulph laughed. He liked her. If he had admitted to himself that he was beginning, after years of aloofness, to take interest in human beings again, he might have admitted to himself that he loved the child. He bent down and callously twisted the book out of her grasp. . . . He loved rousing the du Frocq temper.
In a moment she was up and at him like a young fury. Lowering her head she butted at him with such pass
ion that he staggered back, laughing and gasping. The young she-devil! But she had nearly winded him . . . her small head was as hard as a young goat’s. He sat down on the grass to get his breath. . . . He looked quite white.
Peronelle was seized with one of the passions of remorse that attended her outbursts of anger like a shower upon a thunderclap. How could she have done such a thing! She had behaved exactly like Ebenezer the goat! And Uncle Ranulph was old. Much older than father even. She flung herself down beside him, threw her arm round him and began to scold him passionately. She always scolded people she loved when they were hurt and those who knew her never resented it. They understood perfectly that her fury was not against them but against the pain that had dared to touch anything she cherished. . . . Her railing was far more comforting than other people’s sentimental cooings.
“Ridiculous to be bowled over like that!” she stormed, “why didn’t you get out of my way? . . . You’re sure it doesn’t hurt? . . . Ridiculous not to get out of my way! Of all the silly. . . . Oh, you’re sure it doesn’t hurt? . . . You’re sure your ribs haven’t gone into your lungs like Sophie’s aunt’s husband’s when he fell off the hayrick?”
She continued to scold and hold him fiercely against her thin shoulder until sufficient breath returned to him to assure her that all his organs were in their proper places. Then they sat back, looked at each other and laughed. . . . Her eyes were like amber seen beneath clear brightly running water pierced with sunlight. Warm they were, and fresh, and of an entrancing purity. His eyes were faded and yellow, with the penetration of great experience yet dull with jaded appetite. Yet it might have been that once his eyes were exactly like hers. Looking at her he seemed to see his own boyhood in them, and the smile died from his face. . . . Her life must not go the way that his had gone. . . . It must not. . . . His thoughts twisted painfully, and turning abruptly from her he picked up the book that lay on the grass between them.
“Browning,” he said, turning the leaves, “poetry, by gad! The perfect Robert. Such a good husband. Admirable in every way. Phew!”
There was mockery in his tone and Peronelle turned pink and pressed her palms together. If he laughed at Robert Browning she would have all the trouble in the world not to box his ears. She must remember that he was very, very old and that she loved him and that one did not, at least one did but one ought not, to box the ears of those one loved. Her eyes flashed dangerously, and raising herself slightly she slipped her hands beneath her and sat on them for safety.
She had quite lately gone down with a dreadful attack of Robert Browning which, with Michelle scarcely convalescent from Keats, her family found trying. The courageous optimism of that hale and bearded gentleman was completely in tune with Peronelle’s mind, and his discovery was to her as soul-shattering as had been the discovery of the languorous beauty of Keats to Michelle. The book she had was an abridged copy of the poems out of the school library and she had read it over and over again, not cudgelling her mind over the passages she could not understand but fastening passionately upon those that were clear to her. The music of words meant nothing to her, what she cared for was the wisdom in them that could be put to practical use, and this she found in the shabby little book and absorbed hungrily into her vigorous mind.
This, she felt, was the way to love, this was the way to think. No shrinking away from things but a greeting of the unseen with a cheer. No useless wailing over suffering but a deliberate placing of it as the black background of white joy so that the shining was intensified. She had been reading that bit when Uncle Ranulph came upon her.
“What’s love, what’s faith without a worst to dread?
Lack-lustre jewelry! but faith and love
With death behind them bidding do or die—
Put such a foil at back, the sparkle’s born!”
“I have read the fellow,” said Uncle Ranulph, “and I can remember one line of his verse, it comes in The Ring and the Book I think, that entirely expressed my own feelings and has given me undying pleasure all through my life.”
“Something lovely that has helped you? What is it?” breathed Peronelle, her eyes shining. Really, there was more hope for Uncle Ranulph than she had thought.
He eyed her solemnly.
“Matrimony, the profound mistake.”
Peronelle was so angry that her hands shot out from underneath her and Ranulph’s ears were in more danger than he knew. She jumped to her feet, seized her precious Browning out of his sacrilegious hands and marched towards Bon Repos, moving with that jerky motion which her family knew from painful experience denoted a mind seething with rage. . . . Ranulph followed humbly behind.
In the lane she paused and shot out a question at him.
“Have you ever been married, Uncle Ranulph?”
“Yes,” replied Ranulph, “a profound mistake.”
She turned with a swish of her skimpy skirt and marched on again, but gradually the jerkiness went out of her walk and its graceful gliding motion, so like her mother’s, returned. Ranulph judged that gentler thoughts were coming to her. At the entrance to the courtyard she turned again and he saw, as he expected, that her eyes were melting with tenderness. He prepared himself to receive her sympathy.
“Well,” she said, “I am sorry for your poor wife!”
III
Breakfast at Bon Repos on school days was at an appallingly early hour and much hurried, for the same farm cart that took Michelle, Peronelle, Jacqueline, and Colin to school had to take in the butter and eggs and vegetables to the market in St. Pierre.
They did not use the landau on weekdays, but a light cart with boards placed across it for seats on which the children sat, carefully tucking their feet under them so as not to bruise the vegetables beneath. Lupin was not used on weekdays either, or they would never have got to school in time, but a young ungainly coal-black creature called Gertrais, who pounded along the lanes as though he were himself in danger of being punished for unpunctuality.
Brovard, the farm-man, drove them, and Rachell always stood in the lane to wave to them till they were out of sight. . . . She hated seeing them go. . . . Those four frail little creatures bobbing about in the rough cart, entirely at the mercy of a rough peasant and a horse with legs like great ebony rolling-pins, one blow of whose hoofs, if they happened to get in the way, could maim them for life.
Particularly in the winter did she hate seeing them go, for on foggy mornings they started while it was still almost dark, bunched up to the eyes in coats and mufflers, their poor little noses scarlet with cold, their eyes still wistful and cloudy with sleep. When she saw them lurching off into the frosty mist, the hurricane lamp on the cart giving their faces a sickly pallor and accentuating the hollows round their eyes, she felt as though she had cast a shipload of loveless orphans out on to the great deep. . . . The moments when the darkness swallowed them up were the only moments when she wondered what right she and André had to launch these little bundles of shrinking nerves and trembling flesh on to the waves of a dark world. . . . She would run upstairs quickly and pray as she made the beds. “Calm the waters for them, oh God, all their lives long. Let no bitter waters overwhelm them,” she whispered as she turned the mattresses. When she punched the pillows she said “Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners.” When she pulled the counterpanes up she felt better and said, “Goodness, I’m getting as silly as André.”
But to-day the cart disappeared not into a lowering darkness but into a sunshine mellow with autumn richness and golden with warmth. The children, as they rolled off, were chattering like a nestful of wicked starlings. So radiant and safe seemed the morning that Rachell sang a naughty little French song as she made the beds and never prayed a single prayer.
Michelle, Peronelle, and Colin were as radiant as the morning, and talked at the tops of their voices the whole way into St. Pierre without pausing for a single instant and without hearing a s
ingle word that each other said. Their conversation surged backwards and forwards against Brovard’s broad back like the sea against a rock and with no more effect upon its solidity.
St. Peter’s College, the boys’ school, and St. Mary’s College, the girls’ school, were on the outskirts of St. Pierre at the top of the hill, so Brovard could drop the children there before he dismounted and, clinging wildly to Gertrais’s head, took the precious eggs and butter and vegetables skating down the cobbled streets to the market.
Colin was put down at some distance from St. Peter’s and departed thither on foot. Nothing, he said, would induce him to arrive at his place of learning jumbled up in a cart with a lot of eggs and girls. Michelle, Peronelle, and Jacqueline were less particular, they let Brovard take them right up to the green painted door in the red brick wall that led into the day girls’ cloakroom.
The turbulent din of that cloakroom, seething with blue-clad pig-tailed girls all shouting and yelling and hurling their shoes across the asphalt floor, was music in the ears of Michelle and Peronelle, and its smell of shoe polish and Windsor soap and yesterday’s boiled cabbage was as incense in their nostrils. . . . Even fastidious Peronelle sniffed appreciatively as she entered. For Michelle and Peronelle adored school.
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