It was the first time he had ever mentioned his son to her, and she started. She supposed Ranulph’s storytelling had recalled Jean to his father. She looked up and found the old man’s eyes fixed on her. They were desolate. She made a little gesture of compassion towards him with her hand, but he ignored it.
“Often wondered if the fellow’s dead or alive,” he said gruffly.
“I think he must be dead,” said Rachell gently. “If he had lived surely he would have come home again.”
“Never expected him to do that,” said grandpapa. “Hated me. Thought I’d killed his mother or some such damn nonsense. Bitter against me because I wouldn’t let him be a sailor. Young fool! The young don’t know what’s good for them.”
Abruptly he put his handkerchief over his head again and folded his hands across his stomach. Rachell dared say no more. The clock ticked on and there was perfect silence in the room. Grandpapa was quite still, but Rachell knew he was not asleep. His mind was voyaging savagely over the past, justifying all his actions for the thousandth time.
Rachell wished she could sleep a little before tea. There was a long evening of festivity to be got through first and she was very tired, but her arms and back were aching with Colette’s weight and the pain kept her awake. She felt depressed. She distrusted for the hundredth time that “seeing” that had made her bring Ranulph to Bon Repos. She owed Jacqueline’s happiness at the Convent to him, but except for that she could not see what good he had brought them. They were no nearer financial salvation. Faithful to their six months’ compact, André had not so much as mentioned the word “money” to her, but she knew it was the five letters of that abominable word that were robbing him of his sleep and making him thinner and more bowed than ever. She looked at him as he sat in his chair. He looked ten years older than he was. Why, oh why, had she added to his burdens the continual friction of Ranulph’s presence in his home? . . . She was weighed down by many things as she sat in her chair that afternoon, but the heaviest was the as yet unacknowledged fact that Ranulph loved her. . . . What would be the end of it all? She saw all their lives as a lot of strands hopelessly knotted and could see no way to unravel them. She looked round her pretty room for comfort. She looked at her French carpet, its pinks and blues faded to the colour of a dove’s breast, at the miniatures over the mantelpiece and the French gilt mirror, at her tea-set patterned in blue and scarlet and gold, and at the stiff backed chairs that her grandfather had given her grandmother, and all these things stretched out fingers and touched her, whispering “wait.” She was comforted. In spite of her aching arms she began to nod a little. The blue butterflies and the scarlet dragons, and the blue and yellow flames of the tronquet de Noel closed round her and began to pull her gently down and down, through depths of tranquil light that grew cooler and sweeter the farther she sank, until she found herself resting serenely against something, drawing in strength and peace through every fibre of her being.
VII
She was awakened by Peronelle, vibrating with excitement, rushing in to announce that tea was ready in the kitchen. Sophie had gone out to spend a blissful afternoon and evening with Jacquemin Gossilin and the refreshment of the inner man was now in the hands of Peronelle and Michelle. They had prepared a tea of a sumptuousness passing description. It was a proper Island tea, such as they indulged in on festival days, served at twilight and combining tea and supper, and the food of both. There were tea and coffee, ham and eggs, jams and jellies, and bread and biscuits, and, in the middle of the table the stupendous, mountainous, snow-white Christmas cake.
The major part of the tronquet de Noel blazed in the grate, and all the holly berries were awink, and the lamps were lighted. In front of the dresser stood the Christmas tree, glimmering with candles and golden and scarlet balls, and round its feet were piled the presents. The windows were uncurtained so that as night deepened they would be able to see the stars.
Tea till bedtime was to the children the best part of Christmas Day, and to grandpapa, Ranulph, Rachell, and André, vicariously young again, the hours passed with a chiming of bells that drowned the mutter of life surging past and towards them. Tea and presents and carol singing and games filled their evening brimful of delight. The sparkling kitchen shone like a glow-worm in the darkness of the world all round them. Out through the windows poured the laughter, and the singing, and the light, conquering a little and no more of the silence and the blackness.
Now and again, as the hours passed, there would come a knocking at the hall door and André would open it and find a little group of peasants standing outside, their figures grimly black against the stars. “Monsieur, alms in the name of Noel.” Sometimes they asked it in halting English, sometimes in patois that sighed in the night like music. And André, though he had little to give, and had no business to give that little, never refused them.
This house to house begging was an old and reverenced custom, and he was glad too, this night of all nights, that the Bon Repos hospitality should shine far. . . . For it might be the last time.
As he bade God speed to one little group he stood for a moment in the darkness outside listening to the laughter and singing, and watching the long beam of light from the kitchen window stretching a caressing finger out across the courtyard, over the winter-bound garden, across the cliff almost to the cliff’s edge. It seemed like a living thing, the radiance of something that he and Rachell had brought to life at Bon Repos. He turned abruptly on his heel and walked in. . . . The thought of that light quenched was intolerable.
VIII
Grandpapa had gone. The clip-clop of his horses’ hooves had died away in the frosty night. Ranulph had gone. The children were in bed and asleep. The little lights on the Christmas tree had died with Christmas Day, and the lamps were turned low. Only the tronquet de Noel sent out a warm crimson glow from its falling ash. Rachell and André, moving with the slowness of exhaustion, were trying to bring a little order into the untidy room before they went to bed. Now that the children had gone they could hear again the mutter of life surging past and towards them, and the mutter was ominous. Where would they be next Christmas? They neither of them spoke, but the question was there in the room with them, pressing upon them intolerably. They finished their tidying, put out the lamps and crossed the room arm in arm, wearily. At the door Rachell paused. Through the windows she could see the light still shining in Ranulph’s room, and at the sight of it her heart felt unaccountably lightened. She glanced round the room. The willow pattern china and the warming-pans, those incurable optimists, had each of them a little twinkling reflection of the tronquet de Noel. To Rachell’s lightened heart each little friendly gleam seemed a promise of yet another Christmas to come, yet another Christmas at Bon Repos. In the doorway, under the mistletoe so thoughtfully placed there by Ranulph for the purpose, she turned and flung her arms round André.
“It will be all right, darling,” she whispered, “it will be all right.”
André, too, felt his heart lightened by what he considered her quite unreasonable optimism. They went upstairs hand in hand, undressed in their candle-lit bedroom under the picture of the Last Judgment, climbed into their big four-poster, and drew the crimson curtains. The last sound they heard as they fell asleep was the murmur of the sea.
Chapter 7
I
IT was only a fortnight or so after Christmas that Colette could not eat her breakfast. Everyone was astonished. Men might come and men might go, but Colette’s appetite had always seemed one of the eternal verities. No one was more astonished than Colette herself. She gazed at her lovely brown egg and her eyes filled with tears. “I can’t eat it,” she said, in the tone of the great financier who says “I am bankrupt.” Rachell put her to bed and sent for grandpapa. In startlingly quick time his horses were heard careering up the road. They arrived all in a lather, with the coachman crimson in the face, and grandpapa behind swearing at the whole turn-out for its abomi
nable slowness.
“Eh, what? What’s all this?” he demanded of Rachell as he stamped into the hall, casting his hat and coat from him, and hurling his bag on to the table. Rachell looked at it with dismay. It was large and black, and bulged, and struck terror to her heart. It was apparently chock full of instruments for cutting Colette in little pieces.
“It’s nothing much. Just a little temperature and no appetite,” she said soothingly, more to comfort herself than him, “she couldn’t eat her breakfast.”
Grandpapa was astounded. “What? Colette? Not eat her breakfast?” He hurried to the stairs. “Overeating, that’s what it is,” he said, as he stumped up them. “Giving the child plum pudding on Christmas Day! Ridiculous! I said so at the time. You must not overfill a child’s stomach. If I’ve said so once I’ve said so a hundred times.” He turned round and shot out a finger at Rachell. “Damp and overeating. That’s what it is. Damp and overeating. I’ve told you so. You’ll kill the lot before you’ve done.” He turned and stumped on again, Rachell following with unreasoning terror clutching at her. How many times, when the three dead children had been ill, had she climbed these stairs behind Grandpapa’s forbidding back. Looking up and seeing his broad shoulders outlined against the light from above, as she had seen them so many times, she swayed a little and clutched at the banisters.
“Well, young lady,” said grandpapa, pushing his way into the little whitewashed room like a fat bumble-bee into a flower too small for it. “What’s the matter with you? Overeating? Overeating on Christmas Day, that’s what it is. Put your tongue out.”
Colette lay under her patchwork quilt and looked at him with large bewildered eyes. She had never been in bed in the day before, and she didn’t like it. It confused her. Her cheeks were very flushed, and her yellow curls were a little damp. Her head felt too big and her throat hurt her.
Grandpapa sat down on the bed and put his hand on her forehead. “Put your tongue out,” he said. Colette, reassured by the touch of his hand, smiled sweetly, but kept her mouth shut.
“Put your tongue out, darling,” prompted Rachell. Colette turned her limpid gaze upon her mother and folded her sweet lips firmly and tightly. She was not going to put her tongue out. Her pride was wounded. She had not overeaten on Christmas Day, and she was not going to show grandpapa a coated tongue and give him the opportunity of convicting her of greediness. She was not greedy. Coated her tongue might be but not through overeating. Anyhow, she was not going to put her tongue out.
“Open your mouth,” said grandpapa. The corners of Colette’s mouth turned upwards in the sweetest smile, but not a glimpse of pearly teeth was seen between her lips.
“Darling,” pleaded Rachell.
“Get a spoon to hold her tongue down with,” said grandpapa. “I want to look at her throat. I’ll have that mouth open by the time you come back.”
Rachell went. When she returned Colette was still smiling sweetly, but grandpapa’s eyes were snapping angrily. He humphed.
“Might as well try and get a d—er—humph—dashed limpet off a rock,” he growled, “a crowbar’s what’s needed here.”
Rachell knelt by the bed and tried love and persuasion and explanation for ten minutes with no result whatsoever. Colette, her eyes on the silver spoon, refused to open her mouth. Rachell was puzzled. Colette had always been such a good child. This vein of obstinacy was as unexpected as it was disconcerting. Grandpapa stood at the bottom of the bed, his hands in his pockets, and blew out his cheeks.
“You go away,” he said to Rachell, “leave the child to me. You’re no use whatsoever. Not firm enough. She’ll open her mouth for her old grandfather. Firmness is what’s needed. That’s what it is. Firmness.”
Rachell went down to the hall and waited. A quarter of an hour later grandpapa reappeared, very red in the face, and with beads of perspiration on his forehead. He stumped down the stairs, across the hall, and out to his carriage without pausing for a moment in his irritated stride. Rachell had to run after him to hear the orders that he flung behind him as he stumped.
“Feverish attack of some sort. Can’t get the mouth open, but probably due to overeating. Keep her quiet. I’ll send up a bottle of medicine—though goodness knows how you’re to get it down her throat. Never seen such damned obstinacy.”
This brought him to his carriage, and the coachman heaved him in.
“It’s nothing to worry about?” asked Rachell anxiously.
“How am I to know?” stormed grandpapa. “I can’t get the child’s mouth open. Why you can’t control your children I don’t know. Discipline is what’s needed. Discipline. You’re too weak.”
“It’s the du Frocq obstinacy coming out,” said Rachell.
“Eh?” said grandpapa, “obstinacy? She don’t get that from my side of the family, let me tell you. She gets it from yours. You’re a hard, unyielding woman. I’ve had occasion to tell you so before.”
“You’ve just accused me of weakness,” murmured Rachell.
“Eh? What?” Grandpapa drew his fur rug over his knees and scowled at her. “Well, I can’t sit here all the morning arguing over the characteristics of your fatiguing family. . . . Drive on, Lebrun.”
The coachman whipped up the horses, and grandpapa, muttering to himself, departed to inspect more obedient tongues. Rachell went back to Colette. The first thing she saw, when she opened the bedroom door, was Colette’s pink tongue hung out over her chin for all the world like a rug over a window sill. She gave her mother the benefit of it for some moments and then withdrew it.
“Darling, why wouldn’t you let grandpapa see it?” asked Rachell.
“He said I ate too much on Christmas Day,” said Colette. “I didn’t. . . . Mummie, I’m thirsty.’’
II
Colette was very ill. For three weeks grandpapa came every day, and those three weeks aged him more than the ten years that had gone before. Rachell measured the seriousness of Colette’s illness, and the depth of his love for her, by the rapid change in him.
The lovely Christmas weather had broken and outside the rain streamed down and the wind raced in from the sea, hurling itself against the house and breaking into whirling eddies that screamed and moaned round eaves and chimneys. Inside it seemed to be always night. The weight and gloom of darkness brooded over everything and dawns came and went unnoticed. No one slept very much or ate very much and only the wind and the rain seemed to have any strength or vigour. The life of the house halted, and its radiance seemed slowly dying.
Rachell spent all her time in Colette’s room. For the moment her whole world was centred in Colette, and no one and nothing else mattered to her. Even Colin was forgotten. Desperate and tight-lipped she watched and fought, holding death at arm’s length day after day, and night after night. Ranulph and Peronelle, the only ones who kept their heads, struggled valiantly to keep some sort of order in Bon Repos, the others either did no work at all or else did someone else’s by mistake. Sophie could do nothing but cry, Michelle, Jacqueline, and Colin alternately cried and flew at each other’s throats, and André, struggling about the farm, weak with grief and the violence of the weather, gave the pig wash to the hens and the horses’ oats to the cows. Ranulph, striding after him in his tarpaulin and top boots, corrected his mistakes, paid the farm men, did the accounts, collected the eggs, and in the evening sat before the fire in the kitchen and told the children stories. Without him Peronelle, shouldering in the house the burdens he shouldered on the farm, would surely have collapsed, but with him she yoked herself to Bon Repos and, sharing the weight together, they pulled it through. It was during these terrible weeks that Ranulph, hitherto a stranger, intimate and beloved yet living always a little on the fringe of the family life, came right into its centre. They could none of them believe that there had ever been a time when they had not known him. He seemed one of them. They radiated from him as the spokes from the hub of the wheel.
And he was the only one of the household who ever seemed to get through to Rachell. Though she seemed unaware of him he could yet make her eat or rest when necessity demanded, and afterwards she remembered that when he was with her strength had seemed to pour from his will into hers and courage to radiate from him.
The crisis came on a Saturday night. Grandpapa, abandoning all his other patients to the unfortunate Blenkinsop, had been at Bon Repos all day. There was not much he could do, but he hated to leave Colette for a moment. It was misery to him to look at her, once so fat and rosy, now thin and transparent as a little white moth, but the misery of going away and not looking at her was worse. It was tea time when he left Rachell with Colette and rambled down to the kitchen for tea. He didn’t stump now, there was no more stump left in him, and he dragged his feet like a very old man. He sat down heavily in his chair and humphed feebly. Peronelle poured out his tea, and Ranulph cut him some bread and butter. All tension between him and Ranulph seemed gone and the jealousy that had once existed between Ranulph and André was as though it had never been. Grandpapa stirred his tea, and they all waited.
“Won’t live through the night,” he said at last, “she’s unconscious now. We can’t rouse her.”
No one said anything. There didn’t seem to be anything to say. André leant back in his chair for a moment and then crouched forward again as though the movement had hurt him. Something in the desolation of his attitude seemed to express what they all felt.
It was at this moment that Peronelle became aware of an insistent tapping sounding through the wind and the rain. Someone was knocking at the back door. Sophie had been sent out with Jacquemin Gossilin in the hopes that he might be able to quench her tears and instil a little sense into her. Peronelle, numb with misery, realized that she must go to the door. She got up and groped her way through the dim candle-lit scullery to the back door and opened it. At first, as the light shone out on the storm, she could see nothing but the silver spears of the rain streaking the whirling darkness, then she saw a hooded figure crouching against the wall. At first she had a moment of terror—Sophie had done nothing else for the last two days but see goblins, sarregousets and crows, forerunners of death, hopping round the house. Then her common sense came to the rescue, and she peered out into the darkness. “Who are you?” she asked.