In the afternoon, when the rain slackened a very little, Ranulph struggled out to the cliffs above La Baie des Mouettes. It seemed a crazy thing to do for the force of the wind was terrific at the cliff’s edge and he could hardly stand, but life indoors to-day was intolerable. In the farmhouse he was pressed upon by the bewildered and, he felt, rather forced ecstasy of the family to whom he had declared himself uncle and brother, and in his own room he was a prey to fears and forebodings. Only outside, where every thought and nerve were needed to fight the storm, could he find relief. Clinging to a rock above the bay he looked down through flying spray to the scene beneath him. The water boiled and seethed as though a great cauldron had been set on hell fires and the gulls, tossed along on the wind, screamed despairingly. Beyond the bay the great waves came riding in with the majesty of a cavalry charge, curled themselves to the height of a man’s head and crashed sickeningly on to the jagged rocks, whose javelins, destroying their huge curves, made of them a welter of spent foam and sent them back screaming over the shingle. Les Barbées, the reef of rocks beyond La Baie des Mouettes, was almost lost to sight in towers and pinnacles of hissing spray. For a long time Ranulph clung there, with the wind snarling and tearing at him like a pack of wolves and the rain and the spray dashing against his oilskins and running down him in rivulets. He was happier than he had been all day. Indoors the noise of the storm, setting his nerves on edge, had seemed to make other things weigh more heavily on him, but out here in the thick of it the fury was so majestic that it filled his whole consciousness. He stayed clinging to his rock until dusk came and his hands were so cold that they had lost all feeling, then he struggled reluctantly back to Bon Repos. The lights were lighted in the kitchen and they were having tea, he could see the children’s bright heads through the window. He stood outside in the courtyard looking at them, then he turned away. He did not want to go in to them. He had said he would have supper in his own room. Standing on the stone steps leading up to it he turned back and looked again. He could no longer see the children but he could see the light shining out from the window. It did not reach far to-night, splintered by the rain it only made little blurred mirrors of the cobbles in the courtyard, but in his imagination he made of it a great light that lit up the whole world of Bon Repos; the old house with the passion flowers and the fuchsias growing against it, the courtyard with the strutting doves, the garden full of wallflowers and hyacinths, the orchard and the twisting oak trees, the farmyard and the byres and the meadow where the ladies-smocks and bluebells grew. Inwardly he looked round upon them all and then went into his room and shut the door.
He lit the lamp and poked up the fire and drew the curtains, got into dry clothes, lit his pipe and sat down in front of the fire. Then, with his usual courage, he looked events straight in the face. A dead man had come back to life and, as usual, the resurrection could hardly be called an unqualified success. He looked back over the happenings of last night and this morning. Last night he and André had gone to Rachell and told her. At least André had told her and Ranulph had watched her as shock, incredulity, bewilderment, dismay, and finally a marvellously simulated delight chased over her face. Then Ranulph’s plans for future partnership in the farm were revealed to her—not the history and hope of André’s writing, that, almost too precious to be spoken of, he kept for the four-poster—and her delight was so wonderfully natural that only Ranulph’s keen eye could have detected simulation. They talked far into the night, a loving, joyous, excited talk, with an undercurrent of strain that was like a distant menace of thunder on a summer evening. The grandfather clock had struck twelve gloomily when Rachell began to tell Ranulph about her “seeing.”
“I was right,” she said, “you see, you have saved Bon Repos.” She turned to smile at André. “I was right. You see? You have only to trust me. And I’m not saying ‘I told you so.’ ”
They sat for a little longer laughing and talking, but the undercurrent of strain was still there, and both men were secretly glad when Rachell kissed them and went up to bed. They smoked in front of the fire till one o’clock, but they were tired, and the talk halted. Their silences were filled by the wind thudding at the window and the sound, they knew not why, depressed them. At last André got up and knocked his pipe out.
“I’ll go up,” he said, “the writing; I want to tell her.”
His voice, as they discussed plans for the farm, had been dragging wearily, but now it thrilled. Ranulph, getting up, smiled. Here at least, in this liberation of André, was a certain fount of joy. The two men gripped hands.
“The writing,” said André haltingly. “I can hardly realize it, the more I realize it the fewer words shall I have with which to thank you—a dumb fool—you cannot possibly understand what you have done for me.”
But Ranulph thought he could. André, all other things for the moment forgotten, looked a new man. As the prison doors swung open the fresh air of the mountains that he would scale seemed already blowing upon him. Breathing it he looked taller, younger, stronger. Here, at least, thought Ranulph again, was success. He returned André’s almost painful grip and was nearer to him than he had ever been, so near that their union was somehow exhausting. Words seemed stupid. They smiled in silence and André left the room and went upstairs. Ranulph dropped into a chair. He felt, after that moment with André, drained of strength. It struck him that he was going to find domestic bliss exhausting. His spirit, used to loneliness, was not going to find union easy. He and André, for one short moment, had achieved the sort of unity about which he had been holding forth so tediously to Michelle, and it had done him up. . . . He felt depressed. . . . Loneliness was easy, any fool could put out his tongue at his fellow man and turn his back, but worthwhile union was, he could see, hard work. . . . He sighed. . . . Overhead came a murmur of voices. . . . He could imagine the scene in the four-poster. Rachell, when she discovered exactly how much had been kept from her by both André and Ranulph, would hold forth at some length and her righteous indignation would be very stimulating—Ranulph wished he was there to see it—but gradually her love for André would get the better of her rage, and her joy and pride would mount so high that it was unlikely either she or André would get a wink of sleep that night. . . . Ranulph smiled to himself and leant back in his chair. . . . How he had come to love them both. . . . But could he, out of practice as he was, live with them successfully till the end of his days? And could he keep his love for Rachell within reasonable proportions? And why had the resurrection of Jean du Frocq been, somehow, not quite successful? . . . He leant forward again and looked at the fire, frowning. He sat tortured by these questions until the flames died to grey ash and he grew cold. Then he got up, went out into the courtyard and across to his room. But in bed the questions chased round and round in his mind and assumed the proportions of a nightmare. Such sleep as he got was more tiring than wakefulness. He got up the next morning so tired that he felt quite unprepared to be the uncle of five brats.
And the children, told by Rachell before breakfast that Uncle Ranulph was really and truly Uncle Jean, were decidedly odd. They were wildly excited. They yelled and shouted and hopped and bounced, till Ranulph’s already aching head seemed splitting, but they one and all seemed anxious not to be left alone with him. Behind the excitement they were shy, a thing they had never before been with him. He supposed that by turning himself into a real uncle he had robbed himself of some of his fairy tale quality. He was no longer a shipwrecked romantic stranger, he was that dull thing, an uncle. By turning himself into a relation he had ceased to be an exciting rebel, like themselves, and had allied himself with the armies of law and order. Was that it? He didn’t know. He only knew that there was something wrong with this resurrection of an uncle this morning just as there had been something wrong with the resurrection of a brother the night before.
Now, this stormy night of Holy Saturday, sitting in front of his fire, he tried to turn conjecture and confused feeling
into certainty. He tried to discover exactly why it was that he was oppressed by this sense of failure. He had the whole evening before him. He had said that he would not have supper with them. Surely that in itself was significant? Why did he feel that Jean du Frocq, who had just been resuscitated, must be removed from his family for a little? His family! It was there, he saw suddenly, that the difficulty lay. They were his family and yet not his family. He had in his youth deliberately cut himself adrift from them, he had died, and the ranks had closed behind him, how could he expect now that they should open naturally and take him in? . . . The dead, he knew, should not return. . . . True, when Colette was ill they had taken him to the very centre of their life, but that was under stress of great emotion, they would have done the same to any kind doctor or nurse who had helped them. It was a state of affairs that could not last. And then the family was the father and mother and the children, a trinity, and the admitting of a fourth to that three was, he knew, in nine cases out of ten, disastrous. . . . No. . . . As Ranulph Mabier, a temporary paying guest, he was all very well, though André had found him excessively tiresome, but as Jean du Frocq, a rather disreputable relation forcing himself in upon them, he saw that he would not do. . . . And then there was André. Would even a liberated André, intent on his own work, like seeing Ranulph succeeding on the farm where he had failed? Would he not be happier with a paid bailiff? . . . And then there was Rachell. . . . He loved her. . . . He had told her that love could die of a little neglect, but his had not done so. That moment on the cliff edge had set a flame burning that he could not put out. . . . And the children. . . . He loved them as though they were his own, but they were not his own. He wanted this woman and these children for his and André, he thought, knew that he did. That would be between them always.
He got up and began tramping the room. He cursed that moment of infatuation under the oak trees. But for it he doubted if Rachell would have realized her own feeling for him, and but for it his own feeling for her might not have grown into this torturing thing, maddening him, threatening to escape his control. It came to him suddenly that in his life he had only loved two women with this tormenting love. Blanche Tangrouille and Rachell du Frocq. He smiled bitterly. What a contrast! But both Island women. The Island again! He felt, as he had felt before, that there was something about the Island that forced feeling upon him. In no other part of the world had he loved and suffered as he had loved and suffered on this Island, both in his boyhood and now in his age. Looking back now over his past life he saw those two periods stand out vividly; all the rest, in spite of the toil and money-getting and sin and horror and boredom that he had known in it, seemed to have faded into insignificance. It was the Island that mattered. Detachment and egotism and hardness of heart had been possible in other parts of the world, but not here. The Island, with her exquisite vivid beauty and the wildness of her storms, had forced joy and pain upon him again, had made the dead man live. . . . Had made the dead man live. . . . Yes, the dead had come back. He had lived again and living he had saved Bon Repos. But now he wished that he could fade out once more. Yet if he went back to the East his wealth would go with him, travel was expensive, and Bon Repos needed his wealth.
Standing by the window he opened it and looked out into the night. The wind was still high, though lessening a little, and the sky covered with cloud. He could see nothing in the rushing, groaning, pitch black darkness but in front of him, he knew, was the meadow with the ladies-smocks and bluebells where he had seen himself. He drew back, slammed down the window and pulled the curtains. . . . The “avertissement.” . . . There were more ways of fading out than one, and the death of his body would solve all difficulties. . . . Suddenly he abandoned all his problems. He would wait and see what the morrow brought forth. Meanwhile, released from thought, he spent a very pleasant evening. He made an excellent supper off the bread and ham and coffee he always kept in his cupboard. Then he lit his pipe and sat in front of his fire reading Undine, which he had stolen from André’s bookshelf in the corn bin. He read it with delight. Undine the water fairy made him think of the water-lanes and sarregousets of the Island. As he read, his beloved Island, personified in the person of Undine, seemed almost present with him in the room. He read right on to the end of the lovely, magical, tragic story and then he sat and smoked and thought. . . . So she had gone back to the water. . . . She had tried to live in a human family but she, the solitary from another world, was not made for human union. Gifts and wealth she could bring from her world to the other for the use of her beloveds, but she herself brought them only jealousy and grief. . . . And she went back to the water.
Ranulph got up and knocked his pipe out. He would find some way by which the gifts and wealth he had brought to Bon Repos should remain while he and jealousy and pain went back to the water.
He went to bed and slept soundly.
VI
His waking dream was one of wings. Hundreds of unseen little fledgelings were rustling and flapping and whispering round him, and far off he was aware of the powerful beat of larger wings, an eagle or swan. Nearer and nearer they came, cleaving the air with a rushing sound that grew into a roar, and Ranulph in his dream ducked and cowered in fear. Still nearer, and he realized in terror that this was no swan but some terrible winged creature of night, some demon of death bent on his destruction. The paralysis of nightmare was on him and he could not move, he could only wait while the sound swelled into the scream of an oncoming wave, and the wind of the beating wings was on his face. Then with a crash the thing was on him, and he shrieked and woke. For a moment he lay still, trembling and sweating and still bound by that dreadful immobility of his dream. Then he realized that he was awake and that the first pale hint of dawn was outside the window. He sat up. The gale had dropped in the night and the sound of the wind in his room was hardly louder than the rustling of little birds’ wings. But the uproar had not left the sea. The waves not half a mile from him were surging in with the rush and roar of the wings of his dream. The room was filled with growing and then receding waves of sound. Ranulph listened. What was the crash or report that had wakened him? The sound of another incoming wave filled the room, and just at the height of its roar the report came again—a shot fired not a mile away. . . . Two shots with three minutes interval. . . . Shipwreck. . . . With a bound Ranulph was on the floor and dragging on his clothes.
Just beyond La Baie des Mouettes was a little sandy cove, Breton Bay, with a little village of fishermen’s cottages nestling in a hollow of the cliffs just above it. Here lived Sophie with her Jacquemin, and Hélier Falliot and Guilbert Herode and their wives. Down in the little cove were their fishing boats, drawn up high and dry on the beach in dirty weather, but left floating on the sheltered water of the bay when the sea was calm. Accidents were frequent at Breton Bay, for just outside was the terrible reef of rocks, Les Barbées, and the currents ran swiftly around it. Bathers were always getting into trouble, and those double-dyed imbeciles, the visitors from England, though always told not to sail a boat anywhere near Les Barbées, always thought they knew better, did it and came to grief. A gun was kept on the cliffs above the bay and fired twice as a signal for the rescue of fools in distress.
Ranulph, hurling himself into his clothes, wondered what was up this time. It was no mere sailing boat in trouble. At dawn after a night of severe wind it could only mean a wreck. He pulled on his boots, raced to the door and dragged at the handle. Then a sudden thought struck him. He turned back, went to his writing table and rummaged in its drawer. He pulled out a long envelope and laid it on the table in a conspicuous position. It was his will, leaving a small legacy to Blanche Tangrouille, and all the rest that he died possessed of to André du Frocq. Then he went out, closed the door softly behind him and ran down the steps into the courtyard and across to the house. As he expected, Bon Repos was up and doing. As he got to the hall door André came running downstairs struggling into his coat, which had somehow got inside out in
the process of dressing. On his right foot he had one of his farm boots and on his left foot was one of his Sunday ones. The girls were running about upstairs in their nightgowns squeaking, and Rachell in the kitchen, calm and dignified, was poking up the fire and putting kettles on. Whatever went wrong, whether it was birth, or death, or shipwreck, Rachell put on kettles. Hot water, she was apt to say ghoulishly, both to wash the dead and make tea for the living, was the chief necessity in all distress. Ranulph had just time to notice and love her calm competence before the incompetent André joined him. Rachell in the kitchen turned round, and her eyes, dark with fear, went to her husband. “For heaven’s sake be careful,” she said hoarsely, “don’t run into danger needlessly,” and her eyes seemed to bore right through him as though trying to impress every detail of him upon her mind. For Ranulph in the doorway she had not a glance or a thought. It was as though he were not there. . . . He felt a sudden terrible pang. . . . Then André seized his arm and they were running together across the courtyard, down the lane and along the cliffs towards Breton Bay.
VII
A little figure clothed in a blue jersey and knickers thrust on pell-mell over his nightshirt, so that his stern bulged like a balloon, had slipped down the stairs behind André. Like a wraith he crossed the hall, well in his father’s shadow. If Rachell had not turned round at that moment he would have got out and away. But she did turn round, and like a tiger she pounced. “Colin!” she said, and grabbed him by the slack of his jersey as he whisked out of the door. Colin twisted and turned, but Rachell seemed for once to have a man’s strength. With one hand she dragged him backwards, and with the other she slammed the front door. “Not yet, Colin,” she said fiercely, “not yet,” and Colin, for the first and last time in his life, kicked his mother. Rachell gave a little cry and staggered, but she had the presence of mind to stagger between Colin and the door handle. Colin rushed upstairs to his room and slammed the door. From behind it he could be heard roaring like a hundred bulls.