Long nights of nervous terror were followed by long days of weary exhaustion, and Jacqueline grew so thin that her waistband had to be taken in again. Neither the sisters nor Rachell could discover what was the matter. They administered tonics and cream and kisses, and worried dreadfully, but nothing did any good. Only the kitten could have explained but the kitten, with the lowest opinion possible of the morals of the parlour, had stalked out of it forever and become a kitchen cat.
Only one gleam of hope lit up the darkness of Jacqueline’s nights and days—the hope that she might be taken very ill before the awful day arrived. But, alas, on the day before the day—the day before Colette went to see grandpapa—she was perfectly well, without even a cold in the head. There was no hope now. No hope unless she did something really terrible, such as refusing to make her Confession with the others, or running away, or drowning herself. But somehow she did not want to do any of these things. Deep down in her was the conviction that if she could only go through with this thing it would be well with her. She was like the patient who shrinks in agony from the surgeon’s knife yet knows that not to go through with the operation would be worse than to go through with it.
So, on this day before the day she stood at the parlour window looking out on a slate-grey sea speckled with feathery wisps of white waves, and knew that she would go through with it. Three other girls were in like case with her, yet they appeared quite unmoved. Rosy-cheeked and placid, they did their morning’s work of sewing and copying as usual, and chattered as usual about their clothes, and their hair, and their relations. Only Jacqueline was silent, with a band of iron clamped round her throat and her fingers paralysed as though by cramp.
In the afternoon they had to go down to the Chapel where Father Lefevre, the priest who served St. Raphael’s, was waiting to help them with their preparation.
Father Lefevre was very old and very wise, and very experienced in the handling of children. He spoke to them sweetly and simply. “God sees you as you are,” he told them. “God knows all the secrets of your hearts already. Then why should you fear to tell them out loud to Him? Forget the priest sitting in the confessional. While he sits there he is no longer a man. He is but the channel of God’s forgiveness flowing to you.” The other girls were touched and encouraged, but Jacqueline thought it was all very well, it wasn’t quite as simple as that. Certainly, Father Lefevre the priest would be the channel of God’s forgiveness, but on the other hand, Father Lefevre the man, whom she loved and whose affection she prized, would by this time to-morrow know all about the Birmingham vase. . . . At the thought of to-morrow she gripped her hands together, and the perspiration trickled down her back.
Father Lefevre blessed them and left them in the Chapel with their pencils and paper. The other girls sucked the points of their pencils, pondered and searched their memories, every now and then brightening and scribbling, as they pounced gleefully on yet another peccadillo to add to the list, but Jacqueline wrote slowly and steadily with her cramped fingers. There was no need for her to search for her sins. During the last month they had been burning themselves upon her memory as though etched with a point of red hot steel. Her mind felt sore and full of pain. For the last month she had been looking steadily at Jacqueline du Frocq, and the humiliation of the sight was almost more than she could bear. Last upon her list was the sin of the Birmingham vase. There had come a terrible moment when she had been tempted to leave it out, but she had not yielded. . . . That would have been to damn her soul in hell indeed.
She went through the rest of the day’s work mechanically, went home mechanically, went to bed mechanically, raising a cold cheek for the kisses of her solicitous family, and lay awake most of the night. She got up the next morning white and heavy eyed, but calm with the calmness that visits the condemned criminal on the day of execution. She felt like a sleepwalker, dazed and dreamy. Merciful nature had given her a draught of poppies.
It was, perhaps, fitting that this day of crisis in Jacqueline’s life should be a day of storm. In the road where grandpapa lived it was comparatively sheltered, but as she climbed the steep steps to the Convent and the Church, the wind came screaming down to meet her, and she could hear the thundering of the waves on the rocks beyond the old grey walls. Usually wind terrified her but to-day, though it knocked all the breath out of her body and flung her reeling against the wall, she did not mind it. The thing she faced was so big to her that it dwarfed all minor trials.
The moment came quite early in the morning. The girls went, with Soeur Monique clucking beside them to give them courage, to St. Raphael’s and knelt down in a pew near the confessional. The other girls, giggling a little, pushed Jacqueline to the end of the line so that she should be first. She submitted.
The old Church was very dark. The candles burning before the statue of the Virgin glimmered like fireflies in a dark forest and the flowers were dim and sweet in the shadows. Beyond the thick wall the gale was growling and snarling, but not a tremor shook the Church, not a flicker of draught touched the candle flames or the flower petals. Inside these walls was a peace and safety that nothing could shake.
Jacqueline knelt in her pew cold and rigid, with that band of iron clasped round her throat. As in a dream she saw Father Lefevre come in. As in a dream she got up, walked to the confessional and knelt down. Father Lefevre murmured some words she did not even hear and then waited for her to speak. But, horror of horrors, she could not. The band of iron was drawing tighter and tighter, constricting her throat so that no sound could come. For what seemed hours she struggled with it and then, quite suddenly, it was gone and she heard herself speaking fluently, calmly, with no effort. She seemed to be standing outside herself, marvelling at her own ease. And then she found it was over. Even the confession of the Birmingham vase incident was over, all in a few minutes, this dreadful ordeal that she had been dreading for months. It was over in the time it takes to tell one’s beads and Father Lefevre was talking to her, quite calm and apparently unshattered by the recitation of her sins.
He was the perfect child’s confessor, realizing children’s acute power of suffering and aware of the, to them, enormous gravity of the little molehills that to their tiny stature seem such mountains, treating nothing lightly yet instilling courage and confidence into them. To-day Jacqueline heard hardly a word that he said, but in days to come she listened greedily.
Now she got up and groped her way back to her seat, dazed and unable to realize anything except that it was over, and ready to laugh hysterically that what she had dreaded for so long should be over so soon—and yet not quite over. Something commanded her, yet remained to be done and must be done at once while this new ease was yet with her. She got up from her knees, went out through the Church porch and in through the Convent door, and ran along to the pantry where Soeur Ursule was doing the flowers—that very same pantry where the crime had occurred.
Standing in the middle of the pantry floor she poured out the whole story to Soeur Ursule, and then watched in agony to see hatred and loathing spread themselves over Soeur Ursule’s face. But they did not. Dismay and bewilderment were apparent upon the poor lady’s countenance as she groped her way through this confusing narrative of kittens and chrysanthemums and vases and sinks, but when it was finished and the matter clear to her nothing was to be seen gleaming behind her spectacles but love. She clasped Jacqueline to her.
“Ah, my little cabbage,” she crooned, “how glad I am that you have told me. How brave of you to tell me.”
“I shouldn’t have if Father Lefevre hadn’t said I was to,” said Jacqueline, determined now to be truthful or perish in the attempt.
“Ah, the so sweet little cabbage!” murmured Soeur Ursule, and renewed the kisses.
Her last trial over Jacqueline began to sob with relief. Soeur Ursule, sympathetic to a fault, began to sob also. Clasped in each other’s arms they both sobbed. The kitten appeared in the doorway, surveyed them
cynically, moved its whiskers contemptuously, sat down on the floor, stuck up one hind leg like the mast of a ship, and attended to the more personal parts of its toilet. Then it arose, moved its whiskers again with a further exhibition of contempt and departed, its tail stiffly raised and slightly twitching with the amused tolerance of an unbeliever.
For the rest of the morning Jacqueline felt nothing but a sense of exquisite relief and overwhelming fatigue. After dinner, while the others sat chatting round the refectory fire, she curled herself up in a corner of the armchair and fell deeply asleep. She slept for what seemed centuries, right down at the bottom of an ocean of sleep, with depth upon depth of cool peace around and above her. Very slowly at last she rose to the surface, floating up as though borne upon strong arms. Very gently the light pierced through the water and she opened her eyes. Good heavens! She was to have fetched Colette at half-past four and now it must be midnight! She glanced at the clock. It was three. She had only slept for an hour and a half. She sat up and rubbed her eyes. She was quite alone in the refectory but from the parlour overhead came a subdued hum. The others were having their sewing lesson, but good Soeur Monique must have left her to have her sleep out. She sat quite still. There was slowly growing within her a radiant happiness that was like a warm flame burning. She felt exhausted and yet alight. She almost expected to see the radiance that was within her lighting up the walls of the refectory, creeping over them as the crocus glow of March steals out over the winter turf. She looked out through the window and saw the tormented sea whipped to a white fury by the wind and the grey sky storm-twisted. Warm and glowing herself she felt sorry for them—all their blue glory eclipsed. Outside the refectory windows was a little narrow rock garden planted on a ledge of rock and protected by a wall. Jacqueline ran out of the refectory into the passage and out through the little door into the ledge of garden. The rain had left off for the moment and the sou’wester, wild and rough, was not cold. Jacqueline went to the wall, which reached nearly to her armpits, and clung there. As, this morning, the storm had had no terrors for her in her misery so now it had none for her in her happiness. Her joy was so huge that it bathed everything around her in its glory.
She clung to the wall and shut her eyes. The wind that buffeted her was so strong that she gasped for breath, yet so soft in its touch that it was like rose petals falling on her cheeks. Its roar in her ears was no longer terrible, but like a great organ swell of praise and triumph. And all the time that flame of happiness in her was glowing. Behind her closed eyelids she thought she could see its little crocus flames on the crest of each tortured wave, comforting the sea for its grey turmoil. Out from her streamed that lovely flame of comfort, into her streamed the touch and the sound of the wind. She and the storm were one and round them, uniting them, was a ring of pure and endless light, of a depth and height and breadth inconceivable, the same light that had lit the glow in her and set rolling the prelude of the storm. Clinging to her wall, her eyes tight shut, she slipped back again for a moment, as a child may, into the glory from which she had come, knew what cannot be held in the meshes of the mind and saw from behind closed lids what would have blinded open eyes. The gates of heaven were to shut again and bar her out but who that has seen ever forgets their opening, or ceases to watch for the crack of light under the door?
IV
Jacqueline and Colette, when grandpapa’s door closed behind them, were caught by the wind and tossed up the street as though they were creatures borne upon wings. And, indeed, they felt like it. Ecstasy possessed them both. Jacqueline was still trailing clouds of glory and all Colette’s fears were forgotten in the joy of escape. The storm that indoors had seemed part of the evil world she had just discovered seemed now to be a beautiful thing, one with Jacqueline and the lovely warmth she had brought with her. The feet of the rain, running along beside them, were the feet of a lover and the shouting gale that lifted and carried them was a gay and boisterous friend upon the way.
Running, bouncing, clinging together they blew up the hill, panting, chuckling, and laughing. It was not until they butted into her that they saw Rachell coming to meet them.
“Mother!” they shrieked, and clutched her wet black cloak.
Rachell, her slender figure swaying beneath the blows of the wind, her breath coming in gasps, seemed less able to stand up against the storm than her thistledown daughters, but she had come, it appeared, to their rescue.
“I came with Brovard in the cart to fetch you all,” she panted, “the wind is getting worse and worse. I thought I could help you up the hill. You poor little darlings, blowing about in this!”
A huge gust nearly took her off her feet, and Jacqueline and Colette fastened themselves on to her, one on each side, to keep her down.
“Get under my cloak,” she said.
They crept underneath and held it down round them. It was tremendous fun. The two little girls, reacting from fear and ecstasy, chortled and giggled as at the hugest joke. Rachell ached with love for them. Nestling under her cloak they seemed closer to her than they had seemed since she had carried them within her.
They got up the hill, blew round a corner into shelter and stood waiting under a lamp-post for the arrival of the cart with the other three.
Rachell looked down at her two little daughters. How strange their eyes were in the flickering lamp light, how deep and mysterious. Their lips were laughing and childish but their eyes held incommunicable secrets. Where had they been voyaging that day? Into what heights and depths where she could not follow their thought? Jacqueline, she knew, had had a great experience, Colette, perhaps, had had one too. But they would never be able to tell her about it. Children, she thought, with the dew of heaven scarcely dry upon their wings and eyes and ears that still can see and hear, tread sweet wild ways and have no words to tell of them. When they have learnt to pick and choose a telling word and a descriptive phrase the wings have fallen from their shoulders and the old ways are closed. Age has little left to tell of but memories and the trembling hope of returning one day to the old paths.
Chapter 6
I
CHRISTMAS day at Bon Repos was something terrific. The du Frocqs took the whole of December preparing for it and the whole of January recovering from it. From love of old association they kept up all the old Yuletide customs and to be abreast of the times they added to them the modern English customs, and to both they added strenuous religious observances. That they did not all collapse completely must be put down to the sustaining power of the Island air.
At the beginning of December Rachell and Sophie began to be frantically busy making puddings and pies and cakes, while the children, planted out in corners of rooms, behind sheltering barricades of furniture, made each other astounding presents in an atmosphere of secrecy and excitement thick enough to be cut with a knife.
The fever point of preparation was reached on the morning of Christmas Eve. Everyone was amazingly punctual at breakfast and amazingly anxious to get through with it and start decorating. The day before armfuls of holly had been cut from the hedges and put ready in an enormous pile on the hall floor, each smooth leaf and polished berry holding a gay reflection of sunlight in its gleaming little mirror. For the weather was obliging. A clear, sparkling, blue-washed sky and sea, winter trees purple in the shadows and a rosy brown where the sun touched them, tawny winter grass crested with white frost in the early morning and crystal drops at mid-day, and here and there, in sheltered folds of the cliff a few scattered flowers of the golden gorse. The rocks beside the little crisply breaking waves were quite warm to the touch and the rock sparrows, flitting from crimson seaweed-covered boulder to yellow-lichened cliff, were chattering as though it were spring. The robins were everywhere. There were three in the Bon Repos garden; hopping up and down the moss-grown path where the Canterbury bells grew in summer, chirping brazenly at the front door, cheeking the hens at the back door and boldly following Sophie into the kitche
n to demand their Christmas largesse of crumbs and bacon rind. And they got it, for Sophie, like all Islanders, looked upon the robins as sacred birds. It was the robin who first brought fire to the Island. Flying across the sea with a torch in his beak he burnt his breast, but on he flew, undaunted, a little suffering speck of a bird lost between sea and sky. When he arrived at the Island, with his breast feathers burnt and raw and red, all the other birds were so sorry for him that they each gave him a feather, except the owl who, selfish creature, would not, and in consequence no longer dares show his face in the Island by day.
The decorating of the house with greenery and the wrapping up of all the presents kept Bon Repos in a hubbub all the morning. Rachell sailed serenely about her household duties, picking her way through balls of string, streamers of coloured paper, mountains of greenery, pots of paint required by Colin for some mysterious present he was making for his father, Maximilian running round in circles with his tongue out, and all the children tearing up and down stairs half crazy with excitement. Nothing seemed to disturb her tranquillity, but André and Ranulph had long since fled to the comparative peace of the farmyard. Colette, to be out of harm’s way, was shut in the kitchen with Sophie, where she sat in a fat heap on the floor, breathing deeply and making dough babies with currant eyes, and gingerbread animals of no recognizable breed. Marmalade, the pagan creature, had gone mousing in the barn. She had no religious sense and the great festivals of the Church left her quite cold. In this she differed from Maximilian, who was a devout dog. He always went to the stable at midnight on Christmas Eve and knelt side by side in the sweet hay with the cattle and he listened very politely indeed, with his tongue out, when his family sang carols on Christmas Day.