“They say Sophie Lihou is to wed.” The voice out of the storm was small and shaking. Peronelle was completely mystified.
“Yes, but why have you come? Who are you?” She stretched out a hand and pulled the figure towards her so that the light shone on it. An incredibly thin girl-child stood in front of her, wrapped in a dripping wet cloak. The face was almost unearthly in its haggard pallor, the hollows in the cheeks and round the eyes showed against the whiteness of the face like black patches and the eyes, black too, seemed without light or movement. Peronelle was almost frightened again. This creature was more like a goblin than a human being.
“They turned me out from Le Paradis t’ree weeks ago, Mamzelle,” quavered the voice again. “I wasn’t quick enough at my work. I’ve been near starvin.’ Then I heard Sophie was to wed an’ leave you, an’ I thought you might ’ave m. . . . I’m strong.” These last two words, so obviously untrue, were thrown out to the night like a challenge. Peronelle gaped.
“The little Mamzelle Colette was good to me,” went on the voice. “I’d like to be with ’er. She’d say a word for me.”
The mention of Colette, sending a throb of anguish through her, restored Peronelle to action. She seized the girl again and dragged her into the scullery. The candle light revealed the most pitiable object ever beheld. Peronelle’s eyes travelled from the white goblin face, with stringy hair strained back and secured behind with three hairpins like kitchen skewers, to the bony scarred hands clutching the dripping cloak, the broken shoes and the stockings, three sizes too large, coiled in rolls round the thin ankles. Pity stirred in her. With characteristic energy she thrust her own trouble away out of sight and devoted herself to the matter in hand.
“Tell me all about it,” she demanded. “How do you know my little sister?”
Falteringly Toinette told of the day when Colette came to Le Paradis and of the gift of the coral necklace. “M’dame Gaboreau turned me out, Mamzelle,” she finished, “I thought per’aps you’d ’ave me. I can work ’ard if I’m not beaten. . . . I want to be with Mamzelle Colette.”
“She’s dying!” Peronelle shot out the words fiercely and her lips set in a hard line.
For a moment Toinette stared, then she shrank back as though she had been struck, and a pitiable little sound, like an animal’s whine, came from her. She turned blindly towards the door and the storm again. Peronelle seized her arm. “Where are you going?”
Toinette wrenched her arm free, hit out at Peronelle savagely and blindly, and began stumbling away into the dark.
Obeying an impulse that came to her from she knew not where, Peronelle ran out after her, slipping and stumbling on the wet stones, the wind and rain lashing at her face and tearing at her hair. She caught up with Toinette at the farmyard gate. “Come back,” she gasped.
The shock and her crazy run across the yard seemed to have exhausted Toinette. She came back dully and meekly. Peronelle, her face a mask of determination, banged the scullery door and pulled Toinette’s cloak off her. “You must come up and see Colette,” she said fiercely, “you must make her come back. She’ll come back for you.”
Questioned about it afterwards Peronelle could never explain what it was that made her think Toinette could save Colette. She would say that she thought it must be the likeness in their names that had made her link them together in her mind, then she would say that she felt Toinette had some compelling power in her, then she would say she didn’t know why she did it. Rachell would smile and say it was a “seeing.” She had always known Peronelle had the two sights. She had in her eyes the little black specks that are the sign of its presence. Anyhow, Peronelle did it. She seized Toinette’s cold hand in hers and marched her through the scullery, through the kitchen, across the hall, and up the stairs, Grandpapa and André and the others, sunk in their sorrow, had hardly realized her determined entrance before she had disappeared again. Ranulph half rose in his seat, but the others did not seem to take it in.
Peronelle knocked sharply and loudly on Colette’s door. Rachell opened it. Her eyes, sunk in dark purple shadows, blazed in her white face.
“How dare you come knocking here!” she said to Peronelle. Her voice was harsh and rasping, stripped of all beauty.
Peronelle was not in the least abashed. Pushing her mother aside, and still gripping Toinette’s hand, she marched in.
Colette lay flat under her little patchwork quilt patterned like a flower bed. She had become so thin that its surface was hardly raised at all. Her face was quite white and her eyes were closed. She seemed already in that coma whose awakening is beyond death.
Peronelle pushed Toinette to the bed. “Speak to her,” she commanded, “make her come back.” In her anxiety she twisted Toinette’s fingers fiercely and almost cruelly. Toinette, though she was shaking all over like an aspen leaf, obeyed.
“Colette,” she whispered hoarsely, bending over the bed, “Mamzelle Colette.”
The attraction to each other of two spirits that seem as the poles apart—their coming together and the shaping of the bond between them—these things are as beyond comprehension as the affinity of the moon and the tides or the mating of the birds. With the gift of a coral necklace Toinette and Colette had somehow become a pair and their coming together, the mating of the moon and the tide, had given to one great power over the other. There was no explaining it. It was so. What the whole of Colette’s adoring family could not do was accomplished by Toinette with a few whispered words. Slowly and with immense effort Colette opened her eyes. She looked straight into Toinette’s goblin face, and to Rachell’s fevered fancy it seemed as though ripples of light were passing over her face like waves of returning life. Her lips moved and she spoke for the first time for days. “Toinette,” she said, “must have cream with her apple tart.”
III
It was late on the evening of the next day that grandpapa crawled up the steps of his house and let himself in. He was extraordinarily tired. He had been up all the previous night nursing that tiny flicker of life in Colette. All day, though the flicker had steadied into a flame, he had not dared to leave her, but sat by her bed humphing and staring into the owlish eyes of, forsooth, his own ejected scullery maid. It was an absurd situation and had not grandpapa been so absorbed in Colette he would have been extremely annoyed. The idea of planting a dirty little waif from La Rue Clubin down beside the bed of his grand-daughter and declaring, as Rachell had declared, that she alone had saved the child, was sheer lunacy. What next? Rachell was mad. He’d always said so. Ridiculous woman. Well, no matter. The child was round the corner, thanks to his diagnosis and treatment. Funny little scrap! Grandpapa smiled at the remembrance of Colette as he had seen her last, peacefully asleep with a look of returning health just creeping into her face, and the tip of a pink tongue just showing between her lips. That tongue! If he could have got inside her mouth on the first day he could have found out sooner what was the matter with her. Obstinate little baggage! Just like her mother! He banged the front door and shouted for Barker.
“Mamzelle Colette’s round the corner, Barker,” he said as he flung his hat and stick at his admirable domestic. “I think she’ll do now. Humph. Yes. She’ll do. You can tell them below stairs.”
Barker’s face lit up. “Thank God, sir,” he said, “and dinner is served.”
Grandpapa stumped towards the dining-room. Barker noticed that he dragged his feet a little. He also noticed, as he served the soup, that his master’s eyes were bloodshot.
“I’ll have a bottle of claret,” declared grandpapa. “What’s there to follow?”
“Sole, sir. A bird. Sirloin. Soufflé. Angels on horseback. Dessert.”
“I’ll have the lot,” said Grandpapa, “and bring up a bottle of port.”
He finished his soup, leant back in his chair and sighed. He couldn’t remember when he had felt so tired. He wasn’t as young as he was. The whole affair had t
aken it out of him. That child! He was deuced fond of the snippet. What a kettle of fish if she’d died! He couldn’t have borne it, damn, no! Well, he hoped the whole affair would be a lesson to Rachell. Overeating, that’s what it was. The whole affair brought on by overeating. Barker entered with the fish and grandpapa looked round, his nostrils slightly quivering, to ascertain that the correct sauce was served with it. There was no trusting that fool of a cook. He attacked his sole. It was excellent. He had literally had no food the whole time he had been at Bon Repos, for no sane person could possibly describe the filth they stuffed into their mouths at Bon Repos as food. And as for drink, the whole time he had been there he had had nothing but Rachell’s damned barley water and the soda stuff advocated by that fool André. “I’ll have another glass of claret,” he said to Barker, with his mouth full. By gad, but he was tired! He must get his strength up. By the time he had reached dessert he had eaten what would have sufficed to keep Toinette alive for a week, and drunk enough to drown the Duke of Clarence. Barker looked at him anxiously. The old man’s face was very red and his hand, as he reached for the port for the twentieth time, shook alarmingly. Barker left the room and sought out Madame Gaboreau.
“You’d better go and see to the old man,” he said, “I’ve never seen him get outside such a meal, and as for drink, I’ve been up and down the cellar stairs till my legs ache. It’s my opinion the old boy’s too tired to know what he’s doing.”
Madame Gaboreau, presuming on her years of service, knocked at the dining-room and entered. She was never frightened of grandpapa. She considered herself a match for him any day.
“You’ve had enough to drink, m’sieur,” she told him, and dared to lay her hand on the decanter.
Grandpapa, already inflamed by his drinking, blazed out into such a fury that even Madame Gaboreau was taken aback. He swore at her like a trooper and his fury lit up an answering rage in her. For a few moments they blazed at each other, then Madame Gaboreau shrugged her shoulders and turned towards the door.
“You’ll kill yourself, m’sieur,” she warned him.
“Get out,” said grandpapa. Madame Gaboreau got.
When she had gone grandpapa reached for the port for the last time. Had Madame Gaboreau let him alone he would have let it alone, but her interference had infuriated him. A pretty pass things were coming to if he could not be master in his own house. What? What? He had great difficulty this time in gripping the decanter—his fingers felt numb. Then he found it difficult to lift his glass to his lips. But he was not to be beaten either by Madame Gaboreau or his own weakness. Using every atom of strength and will power that he possessed he lifted his glass and drank. Then he leaned back in his chair and his thoughts slipped round again to Colette. The little baggage! He’d saved her. Rachell might babble nonsense about that little bitch of a scullery maid, but without his days and nights of care an army of scullery maids could not have saved that child. Yes, he had saved her. God, he was tired! A sudden vertigo seized him, and something between a groan and a cry broke from him. The whole world had turned red. He could see nothing but red. Red everywhere. A red world whirling round him. He pitched forward and clutched wildly at the tablecloth. He heard a crash of breaking glass before he fell sideways to the floor.
IV
Next morning Bon Repos was lapped in its habitual peace. The storm had cleared away in the night and great grey clouds, silver at their edges, were sailing across a sky of an intense and burning blue. Heavy with rain they sailed very near to the earth so that it and the sky seemed to be stretching towards each other like two friends who have quarrelled and then held out arms of reconciliation. For days the sky had pelted the earth pitilessly while the earth lay sullen beneath the blows, grey and dour, all her beauty quenched. Now the earth, yearning towards the sky, reflected its blue and silver in her pools, and the clouds reached down towards the tree tops. On every blade of beaten grass and every stripped twig the sky had hung rows of diamonds and the larks, dipping and soaring between earth and heaven, spun filaments of song between the two. There was a hint of spring in the air, a promise of renewal of life. Indoors, too, life surged joyously back and dawn and birdsong were noticed again. Those of the family who were not busy with Colette sat about in chairs and smiled weakly and stupidly at each other, immensely tired, but immensely happy, for had not Colette that morning absorbed an egg? A brown egg, laid for her on purpose with a great deal of fuss and clucking by an old hen who had not condescended to lay an egg for weeks. Colette had enjoyed the egg and asked for more.
Into the midst of this peace the news that grandpapa had had a seizure fell like a bombshell. It was a terrible shock to everyone but Sophie, who declared she’d known it all along.
“It’s always the same, m’dame,” she said to Rachell. “Again and again have I seen it. If death gives back one he takes another. So often have I seen it.”
“But Dr. du Frocq is not dead, Sophie,” said Rachell, “he may recover.”
Sophie shook her head. “Between Christmas and Easter,” she declared, “there is always one taken from every family. Death must be fed.”
Rachell wondered for a moment from what old heathen cult, demanding its yearly sacrifice, this peasant superstition had survived. But she could not wonder for long about anything except the marvel of Colette restored to her. She could not even think very much about grandpapa, and André went off without her to see his father.
Ranulph seemed strangely moved by the news of grandpapa’s illness. The family were surprised for what, after all, had it got to do with him? But though he was moved he seemed to entertain no doubts as to grandpapa’s recovery.
“Tough old bird,” he said as he went off to do André’s work on the farm. “Nothing’ll do for him. Selfishness is extremely strengthening, it’s thought for others that’s so fatiguing. . . . He’s a permanency.”
But Ranulph for once was wrong. Grandpapa’s thought for Colette—the first piece of unselfishness in a lifetime—cost him dear. Three mornings later a message came from the agitated Blenkinsop that Monsieur and Madame du Frocq must come at once. André rushed out to harness Lupin and Rachell ran upstairs to find her bonnet. Colette was now so far on the high road to recovery that she could let her thoughts fly tenderly to the old man who had worked so hard to save her. When she came downstairs again to join André, Ranulph, hat in hand, came towards them from the stable.
“May I come with you?” he asked.
André and Rachell stared, astonished.
“I should like to come with you,” he said. His request had the tone of a command and his queer light eyes, fixed on them, backed it compellingly.
“Certainly,” said André.
Barker opened the door to them and Madame Gaboreau hovered behind him. Both had put on the correct expression and deportment of woe, but behind the assumed grief there was the hint of real regret. With the exception of Colette these two cared far more for grandpapa than his own family.
“The man Blenkinsop thinks he’ll last out the night,” Madame Gaboreau told them. “But I don’t. He’ll die this evening at the turn of the tide.”
Barker took them to the library, where he had indicated grandpapa’s condition by drawing the blinds half-way down, but not the whole way down, gave them the daily papers and left them. The three sat silent, Rachell and André grieving desperately because they were not grieving more, and Ranulph astonished to find himself sorry. Madame Gaboreau returned.
“Dr. du Frocq will see Madame du Frocq only,” she announced.
Rachell was astonished. The old man had never liked her. Why this desire for her company? She followed Madame Gaboreau upstairs.
Grandpapa’s room was over the library and looked seawards but the windows, double ones, were never opened. It was crowded with heavy and very valuable mahogany furniture, and had red velvet curtains. The four-poster was perfectly immense. Rachell, as she came in, thought
suddenly of her mother-in-law. How awful to have to sleep with grandpapa in that great catafalque of a bed. How awful to have to die in this heavy, stuffy, oppressive room. Poor, poor woman! With a start of shame she recalled her thoughts to the one who had to die in this room now.
Grandpapa in the enormous bed looked almost small. He seemed to have shrunk since she saw him last. His eyes were bloodshot and his hands, lying on the quilt, were already the numbed useless hands of a dead man. Yet he defied pity. Pity in his extremity he would have considered an insult, and some lingering strength in him warded it off. Rachell did not kiss him—she knew better.
“Sit down,” he said. His voice was thick and a little uncertain, but charged with more than its usual authority. Rachell sat.
“Colette,” he said, “describe her condition.”
Rachell smiled. So that was why he wanted her! Not for her own sake but that he might hear the latest news of Colette. She loved him for it. She untied her bonnet strings and embarked on a detailed account of Colette’s food and drink, sleeping and waking, remarks and movements during the last four days. Grandpapa lay with his eyes shut but she knew that he heard every word.
“She laughed this morning,” she finished, “the real old soda-water syphon kind.”
“Humph,” said grandpapa, “she’ll do. Be careful with her convalescence. Don’t be more of a fool than you can help. Don’t overfeed her.”