Jacqueline looked enviously at Michelle eating slowly and thoughtfully whatever was placed before her, quite unconscious of what it was. There was a smut on the side of her nose, and her frock had come undone at the neck, so that her underclothes showed. She did not hear a word that anyone said and her dark, shining eyes, gazing out of the window, saw not the sea fog pressing up against it like a muffling pall but a little town built of white marble, pillared and beautiful, its slender columns fluted against a sky of deep dazzling blue. A wine-dark sea lay on one side of the little town, its waves slapping gently against white marble steps. On the other side was a forest of dark cypress trees, purple-black against the sky. The little town was completely empty, not a soul was in it. The stillness was deep and cool like a sea cavern, the emptiness thrilled with a sense of space and freedom. . . . This was one of the greatest days of Michelle’s life . . . she had discovered Keats. Lovely phrases had lit candles in her mind, one after the other, till she felt intoxicated with the brightness. “And, little town, thy streets for evermore will silent be; and not a soul to tell why thou art desolate, can e’er return” . . . “She stood in tears amid the alien corn” . . . “Cooled a long age in the deep-delved earth” . . . “Beauty is truth, truth beauty. . . .”
“Michelle,” roared Colin, “pass the cream, you greedy pig!” It was the first remark he had made since the meal started, but then it was the first time he had been unable to reach the cream.
Michelle started and found that she was gripping the cream jug in her right hand.
“Michelle,” said Rachell, “if you want some cream take it, but don’t sit there holding it like that.”
“Your frock’s undone,” said Peronelle, wrinkling her nose with disgust, for she hated slovenliness, “I can see your combies.”
The blood rushed in a wave to Michelle’s forehead. She felt hot with fury. Their remarks, forcing themselves in on her exaltation, were like a horde of stinging insects. She gave the cream jug an angry push and it emptied itself across the tablecloth into Peronelle’s lap, making a nasty slimy river all down the front of her dainty pink cotton frock. Peronelle, always exquisitely fastidious, leaped to her feet in a rage, her cheeks as pink as her frock, every single curl standing straight up on end with exasperation.
“You pig! You pig!” she stormed, stamping her feet, “you’ve ruined my frock! I hate you! I hate you!”
Rachell rose to her feet, her eyes blazing, looking like Mrs. Siddons as the tragic muse.
“If there are any children on this Island worse behaved than mine I’ve yet to meet them,” she thundered.
Jacqueline, the tension of her misery broken by the sudden storm, burst into floods of tears, and for a few moments the du Frocq temper was in full blast, rolling backwards and forwards, an unseen force, from wall to wall. Then as quickly as the tumult had arisen it subsided, and the habitual peace of Bon Repos flowed back. The cream was wiped off the tablecloth and Peronelle, the tears off Jacqueline. Everybody kissed everybody else. Michelle apologized to Peronelle, Peronelle apologized to Michelle. Colin finished what was left of the cream while they both apologized to Rachell.
But the storm had left its mark. The years, one by one, had rolled back on top of André. His worries returned too, the pigs, the cows, the diseased tomatoes, his five children, his fear that he would not be able to start them properly in life. His shoulders bent again beneath the weight. . . . And outside the window the little town had suffered earthquake and fallen into ruins. Michelle could not see it any more. Tears pricked her eyelids and she felt suddenly forlorn and outcast. How hateful was this world of everyday things that was always impinging itself upon the world of her lovely dreams, always blotting out the interior vision.
“What a fuss it all is,” she said suddenly.
“It’s you that started the fuss, upsetting the cream jug,” Peronelle reminded her.
“I didn’t mean that, I meant life. I wish there wasn’t so much eating and drinking in it.”
Her father looked at her with his sudden smile. “Magic casements, opening on the foam of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn,” he said, “they are dangerous to cream jugs, Michelle. Keep a hold of practicality. To be a well balanced woman you must eat and drink at the proper times.”
Michelle looked at him long and lovingly. “You’re a thought-reader, Daddie. How did you know I’d just found Keats?”
“Your idiotic expression as you looked at a vision beyond the window, and your equally idiotic lack of interest in your supper,” he smiled back.
“Which reminds me,” said Peronelle, “no one’s fed the cat.”
Maximilian and Marmalade the yellow cat were fed, supper cleared away and the dishes piled in the scullery ready for Sophie to wash next morning. Then André went out of doors to inspect the fog while Rachell coaxed her family up to bed.
VI
Peronelle and Jacqueline shared a room, Michelle and little Colette. Colin had a minute apartment to himself, so tiny that there was no room to swing a cat in it; but, as he said, having no wish to swing Marmalade it didn’t matter.
Rachell deposited her daughters with kisses in their rooms, bent for a moment over the cot where slept the fat yellow-headed Colette, and then went to Colin. She loved all her children, but Colin seemed as much a part of her as though he still lay beneath her heart. She would cheerfully have sent all the rest of her family to the bottom of the sea to insure a perfect life for Colin. She repeatedly said that she had no favourites among her children; favouritism was abhorrent to her. On these occasions André was seen to smile.
“Mother’s gone to Colin,” said Peronelle, as Rachell withdrew after a loving but hurried kiss, “she’s scamped us.” Peronelle spoke with no rancour, she was partial to Colin herself, but Jacqueline knew a stab of jealousy that almost made her forget her approaching end.
Colin, when his mother came to him, was already in a state of nature.
“Hullo, mother,” he said, “feel my biceps.”
Rachell felt them.
“I could knock you silly as easy as easy,” he continued, “need I wash? Peronelle did my top before supper, and I did my own bottom yesterday.”
“Show me your feet,” said Rachell sternly.
Colin showed them, explaining that it was sunburn.
As she washed the filth of days off his toes Rachell knew a moment of exquisite happiness. After all, it was worth while. It was worth the years of struggle and child-bearing to be in this little whitewashed room at evening washing the curly toes of a little son. The candle flame on the magenta chest of drawers gave a sudden little leap, as though in assent, and Colin’s shadow on the wall danced with it. The patchwork quilt was like a gay little flower-bed, and outside the uncurtained window the summer dusk was a deep and wonderful blue. The murmur of the sea was so faint to-night that it made no more sound than the little south wind that was stirring the leaves of the passion flowers.
Into her happiness, like a stone flung into a quiet pond, came suddenly the menacing sound of the distant foghorn. Though peace and homely beauty were in this room danger was on the sea. The happiness was gone. A moment of terror seized Rachell. She got up hastily and went to the window, as though to pull the curtain and shut out something that frightened her. At the window she stood still, looking out, her eyes dark with fear. At times Rachell had what the Scotch call “the two sights” and she had a “seeing” now. She saw Bon Repos as a little ark set in a waste of waters, surrounded by unimaginable dangers, a great darkness around and above it, hideous little waves licking its sides and fog wreathing around it. She knew quite certainly that her home, the cradle of her joys, was threatened. She put up her hand to her throat as she stood there in the safe little room. Then, not far from Bon Repos, she thought she saw through the fog the spars of a wreck, and from the wreck came a little boat with only one man in it. The man came to Bon Repos, and as he reached
it it seemed that the waves licked and menaced it less cruelly, and that light shone through the fog. The light struck the man’s face and she saw it clearly, a rugged ugly face, hard and self-contained, with a great scar across one cheek and an untidy thicket of grey beard emphasizing the look of wildness in the eyes. As his hand touched Bon Repos she knew that it was saved.
“Mother,” said Colin, “what are you doing? I’m only half dry.”
She drew the curtain and turned back from the window with a laugh. “Seeing things,” she said.
The du Frocqs, when they told each other stories, which they did in season and out of season, always prefaced the yarn with the phrase, “I’m seeing things.”
“Oh, mother, tell me,” cried Colin excitedly, “did you see the King of the Auxcriniers? Is he out at sea to-night?”
The King of the Auxcriniers is a dreaded ocean ogre seen at sea only in times of danger.
“No, I didn’t see him,” said Rachell, and she finished Colin’s toes and tucked him up.
“Well, I bet he’s there,” said Colin comfortably, “the fog’s thick as hell and the foghorn going like mad.”
“You mustn’t say hell, Colin.”
“Why not, when it’s what the fog is thick as? Mother, I came home by the water-lane, and it was full of sarregousets[3] going backwards and forwards the way they do when there’s death at sea. Do you think there’ll be wrecks to-night?”
[3]Water fairies.
Rachell kissed him. “There are no sarregousets really, little son, they are only fairy tales.”
“Oh, are they!” said Colin hotly, “then God’s a fairy tale too.”
“Colin!” cried Rachell, scandalized.
“Well, I’ve not seen God or the sarregousets with my outside eyes, but I’ve seen them both with my inside eyes, and if one isn’t real the other isn’t either,” said Colin with finality. “Tell us a story, mother.”
From downstairs came a voice calling “Rachell! Rachell!”
“I’ll tell you the story in the morning,” said Rachell.
“Right you are,” said Colin, “you’d better run. That’s father. I bet you anything he’s jealous. Kiss me again. You did it all wrong before. You must look in at my windows and kiss me with your eyes.”
Her face close to his Rachell looked deep into his eyes and then flickered her eyelashes all over his forehead.
“Rachell!”
Surely there was an unusual urgency in that cry? She got up and went quickly downstairs.
VII
André was standing in the kitchen doorway, his pipe in his mouth, his shoulders more bowed than usual.
“What an unconscionable time you do take putting that boy to bed,” he complained.
Rachell smiled. She loved to hear that note of jealousy in his voice.
“He’s always so dirty,” she said, and slipping her arm through her husband’s she drew him into the kitchen. They sat down together on the “jonquière.” The oil lamp, burning low on the table, was reflected in the copper warming-pans and the dark oak of the table. All the willow pattern plates held a friendly gleam of light, and the old clock ticked companionably. The room was used to these two sitting there on the “jonquière” and talking, sometimes late into the night. It welcomed them and endeavoured to be helpful, the clock remarking monotonously that the nibbling seconds make an end of all things, even life, and the reflected lights replying warmly that there are certain things, seemingly unsubstantial, that cannot die, since their reflector is eternal. So full of ups and downs had the married life of André and Rachell been that this argument had gone on in their hearts and on their lips and in the room around them continually. The “jonquière” was quite dented by their nocturnal sittings.
André and Rachell had become engaged to each other at an age when they should still have been engrossed in the multiplication table, and they had married early, with a sublime contempt for ways and means that had cost them dear.
André was the second son of the chief doctor of the Island, a gentleman whose enormous opinion of himself had so impressed the Islanders that they had unhesitatingly laid their livers and lungs at his feet. The practice being so well established it had been decided that Jean, the eldest son, should also become a doctor, and have undisputed sway over those livers which his father could not find the time to grapple with. But Jean, though possessed of all those attributes desirable in a doctor, a warm heart, strong nerves, charming manners and an unshakeable faith in his own judgment, had suddenly and for no apparent reason gone to the bad, flung his stethoscope in his father’s face and decamped to Australia, where he had completely disappeared.
André, many years younger, had been abruptly told on leaving school to pick up the fallen stethoscope and annex the livers originally destined for Jean. But André, always so gentle and pliable, refused. Dr. du Frocq ranted and stormed but still André refused. On being pressed to give reasons for his abominable obstinacy he replied that he did not like the human body. When in health it seemed to him ridiculous, sticking out in the wrong place and hampering the life of the soul at every turn, but in illness, when its works, badly arranged at the best of times in his opinion, went wrong, the thing became simply an unpleasant nuisance. Asked what the deuce he did like, he said he liked the earth and the corn that grew upon it, and the changing seasons that died and renewed themselves in beauty and dignity without making any fuss and bother. He further demanded that the old du Frocq farm of Bon Repos, which had been let for many years, should be given to him. He wanted to be a farmer, he said. Dr. du Frocq cursed and swore but André continued to say, gently but with obstinacy, that he wanted to be a farmer. So Bon Repos was given to him, along with a promise from Dr. du Frocq that as long as he was such a damn fool as to stay there he need expect no help from him.
It was at this point that André married Rachell, and the swearing of Dr. du Frocq when André decided to be a farmer was as nothing to the swearing of Rachell’s father when Rachell decided to be a farmer’s wife. At first he forbade the marriage, but Rachell made herself so consistently unpleasant in the home when thwarted that for the sake of peace he capitulated, stifling qualms of anxiety as to his daughter’s future by giving her a handsome jointure and reflecting that Dr. du Frocq, the old scoundrel, was a warm man.
It could not be said that André as a farmer was a success. Filled with the artist’s deep reverence for the earth he had, like all those who know nothing about it, romanticized the farmer’s life, but when it came to the point he found that what he really wanted to do was to write about the earth, not grub in it. In his few odd moments he wrote, unknown even to Rachell, little essays and poems that were miracles of observation and beauty, but meanwhile the farm ceased to pay.
Nor could it be said, at first, that Rachell was a success on a farm either. She who had been the beauty of the Island, taking all ease and softness as her right, had been at first astonished and then outraged at the duties expected of her. For the first few weeks, in summer weather, in love with André, she had been upheld by her sense of her own nobility in marrying a poor farmer when she might have married the Lieutenant-Governor. But later, when she and André got up in the pitch-dark winter mornings and toiled all day in wet and cold, while the gales raged round Bon Repos and the sea thundered ceaselessly, Rachell was seized with black despair. André, this first winter, was so exhausted by unfamiliar toil that he never spoke, and Rachell was so exhausted that she never ceased speaking. . . . They came near to hating each other.
Then came the producing of children, which Rachell considered perfectly detestable from first to last. She agreed with André that the human body was badly arranged. She loved her babies but she wished she could hatch them out of eggs.
Somehow they battled through, they never quite knew why or how. It was as though they had entered into a whirlwind and after hideous battling had found themselves standing
serenely in the core of peace at its centre. Rachell learnt the lesson of withdrawal into her own innermost tranquillity, André learnt that monotonous toil can be so used that it becomes the rhythm of thought, the pulsing background of the accompaniment that sets the notes of the violin winging to height beyond height. And both of them learnt that peace that is not threatened has no value, and thought that is not bought by pain no depth. There had flowered, too, as they clung together before the storm, a love for each other and their children and Bon Repos that almost terrified them by its intensity.
But meanwhile André, though his thoughts as he toiled were rare thoughts, did not become a more practical farmer, and Rachell, increasing in dignity and wisdom, saw her jointure grow less.
Rachell’s father was dead now but Dr. du Frocq was still very much alive, though, owing to his passion for horse racing, reputed to be less warm.
“What is it, André?” said Rachell as they sat down together. Remembering her vision fear clutched at her.