André did not mince matters.
“For sixteen years, my dear, I’ve been making a fool of myself at Bon Repos, and now things have come to such a pass that we must clear out.”
“Clear out?” Not until this moment had she realized how her life had twisted itself round Bon Repos. Torn from it she would surely die. Her feeling for it, hatred transmuted by endurance into love, had kept the same intensity all through. She could not speak, and for a full two minutes the ticking clock was the only sound in the room. Then André continued.
“We must sell. Bon Repos ought to fetch a good price.”
“And then?” To Rachell her voice seemed to come from very far away, to come from that maimed woman of the future whose life had been torn from its resting place.
André moistened his lips and spoke in a voice devoid of all expression. It was one of the worst moments of his life. He knew himself to be pronouncing a death sentence, both on his own manhood and on Rachell’s happiness.
“My father, foreseeing this, long ago offered to take us all in. While we stay here he will never help us, but once we own ourselves beaten he will be charitable . . . it amuses him to be charitable. . . . He would support us, I as his bottle-washer, you as his housekeeper. . . . He’s fond of the children. . . . We’ll accept that offer to-morrow.”
It was said. He had pronounced himself a failure, a failure as man, husband and father. Mixed with the agony of bitterness that possessed him was a curious sense of relief that his sentence was past. From henceforth he would be known for what he was, a failure. The endurance of the world’s eyes upon him would be a new test of his courage. It struck him suddenly that however low we sink we can never escape from that testing. Life pursues us, probing with his sword, testing in this way and that, hoping always to strike mettle. Would it ever be his fate to hear at last in his own life that ring of steel on steel? He was suddenly recalled to the kitchen of Bon Repos by Rachell, who had got the better of her stupefaction and fear, and was emptying the vials of her wrath upon him.
“Indeed, André, we will do nothing of the sort. Nothing will induce me to live with your father. I’d sooner we took to the roads with our worldly goods in the perambulator and the children in the workhouse!”
Rachell’s eyes were blazing. She never had been able to do with her father-in-law. He was selfish and she loathed selfishness, he did not appreciate André and she hated those who did not appreciate André, he was an autocrat, and being something of an autocrat herself she disliked autocrats.
André steeled himself for argument.
“There is no help for it, my dearest. We are more or less ruined.”
“There must be help for it. I’m not going to live with your father. How much have we left?”
“Only enough to carry us on for one more year.”
“André!” Rachell was superb in her rage. “How dare you frighten me like this? If we’ve enough to carry us on for one more year then why move out now?”
“Would you not rather go now, with something in hand, than wait till we are destitute?”
“No, I would not. I’d rather be destitute in Bon Repos than luxurious anywhere else upon earth.”
“I don’t think you understand what destitution means.”
“André, I ask you, is it sense to leave a home one loves for a home one will hate until one is driven to it? No, it’s not, and I won’t do it.”
“It is common sense, Rachell, to look ahead and plan for the future.”
“You are planning for a future of calamity, and that may be common sense, I daresay it is, mean, paltry, everyday sense; but there’s such a thing as uncommon sense, a thing that plans for success and won’t admit defeat.”
“Not to admit defeat when it is upon you brings needless suffering on others. I am thinking of my creditors.”
André twisted his hands together. Argument with Rachell was always extraordinarily difficult. He was unpractical enough, God knew, but she was even worse, and never, never, could she be made to see that she was wrong. The only things she could ever see were the appalling disasters that would result if her advice was not taken.
“Believe me, André, I am right. Am I not always right?”
There was triumph in her tone and André smiled. It was true that, unpractical as she was, she was more often right than not. Her decisions, made with the flashing of insight, seemed to pounce upon situations with such swiftness that they were twisted to her will.
“You are nearly always right, my dear, but once you made a disastrous mistake. You married me. You have got to face the consequences of that blunder.”
Though he neither looked at her nor touched her Rachell was aware that inwardly he was agonizing over her. She pulled him fiercely to her.
“You dare say that, you dare, you dare!” she scolded. “Mistaken? Look at the riches my mistake has given me! Was ever woman so rich as I!”
She tried to hold him. Experience had taught her that with her arms round him she could generally do what she liked with him, but André quietly withdrew. He was extraordinarily obstinate to-night.
“What we are discussing is not your riches but your poverty,” he reminded her, “sentiment won’t help us now. We are faced with ruin if we stay here. We must think of the children.”
“I am thinking of the children. If we leave Bon Repos their growth will be stunted. Let me explain, André—”
“It will be certainly stunted if we stay here and they have no bread and butter,” interrupted André grimly.
Rachell raised her hands in a gesture lovely even in its impatience. “Be quiet, André, let me explain!”
André was despairingly silent while the clock ticked on inexorably and Rachell gathered her forces for what she felt was the greatest campaign of her life. It was always important to her to have her own way but never, she felt, so vital as now, when the foundations of their whole life seemed threatened.
“André, you can’t create something and then destroy it. To abandon a lovely thing that is just beginning to flower out of suffering is sheer lunacy. Think back over our sixteen years at Bon Repos. Think of all the years of struggle and misery we had and then think of the lovely peaceful home that has come out of them. If we leave Bon Repos of what use were those years? Sheer waste.”
“Life is mostly waste.”
André, though he was no egotist, could not help his thoughts straying for a moment to all those unused talents paralysed within him.
“Nonsense!” cried Rachell, “only cowards know waste. Keep straight on along the path you’ve chosen and you’ll not waste one single pang. Turn back and you’ll waste the lot.”
“What of the children?” asked André mildly, “must they suffer the pangs of hunger?”
“I’ll not have the children rooted up from Bon Repos, hunger or no hunger,” said Rachell firmly, “they are growing up in perfect surroundings, beautiful and peaceful, a house that courageous forefathers lived in, a home that you and I have made for them and steeped in our love. We’ve planted them in the right soil and I won’t have the darlings transplanted to that horrid town house of your father’s; stuffy, and basement kitchens with black beetles.”
Rachell’s impassioned eloquence dropped to more mundane misery as she had a sudden vision of the horrors of housekeeping in Grandpapa’s abominable town house. Tears welled into her eyes and for the first time her voice trembled. She so seldom cried that André was terribly upset.
“What do you suggest, my angel?” he asked miserably.
“Stay on here till the last moment,” whispered Rachell, “and something will happen to put everything right.”
She put her handkerchief to her eyes and was distressed to find there were so few tears there. If only she could cry more often and with more water she would never have any trouble with André at all. Men always gave in to tears. . . . They made them feel embarras
sed. . . . Make a man feel embarrassed and you can do what you like with him.
“What will happen to put everything right?” asked André.
“Something—I know it. Let me tell you, André. . . . I’m seeing things.” She put her wet cheek against his and told him what she had seen upstairs in Colin’s room. “Bon Repos was saved,” she whispered when she had done.
André was entirely skeptical about the whole thing, but his wife’s wet cheek moved him horribly. She had not cried since the birth of Colette—not for five years. God! What a cruel thing was love! A man for the sake of the love that he had for a woman took her to wife and thereby inflicted upon her pain after pain. “Alas, that love, so gentle in his view, should be so tyrannous and rough in proof.” He caught Rachell to him.
“We’ll wait another six months and see what happens,” he whispered.
The clock, which always sided in all arguments with André the pessimist, gave a despairing whir—it needed oiling—but the willow pattern china and the warming-pans, optimists all, winked and gleamed at Rachell and she, lifting her head from André’s shoulder, twinkled back at them, the lamplight turning the wet drops on her cheeks to diamonds. Once more in the du Frocq’s kitchen faith had triumphed over caution.
Rachell’s behaviour as a victor was entirely beyond reproach. From long practice she had reduced the graceful acceptance of victory to a fine art. She never triumphed over André. She never remarked that thank heaven he’d seen sense at last. She never even smirked. Instead, with gracefully drooping head and submissive murmurings, she suggested that she was a clinging vine to whose weakness his strength had stooped lest she should fall. His was the strong will, she suggested, not hers. If he yielded to her it was not through weakness but merely to indulge her whims. Sometimes, with consummate skill, she was able to convince him that the decision they had just come to was his, not hers.
“You are quite right, darling,” she murmured low, “as you say, far better to wait another six months before we do anything drastic. By that time we shall know our position.”
“We know that now,” André was heard to remark, but she silenced him with, “You are so good to me, mon ange, I rely completely on your judgment.”
They kissed each other while the clock struck the hour cynically, then put out the lamp, locked the front door and climbed the stone stairs slowly and wearily. They undressed in their candle-lit bedroom, under the picture of the Last Judgment, climbed into their big four-poster, and drew the crimson curtains to keep out the two Victorian ogres, night air and draught.
When she was in her husband’s arms and there was no sound in the room but the sighing of the sea, Rachell whispered, “Promise,” and André answered “Promise.” She sighed happily. The long day with its work and its anxieties was over. One by one she laid down her burdens on the threshold of sleep and running, a little child again, was gathered in and pulled down, down, down, down into the very depths of tranquillity. Her last conscious thought was that Bon Repos for a little while longer—and Rachell, wise woman, never looked beyond the next step—was hers.
Chapter 2
I
IT was still early when Michelle awoke. She had been dreaming. She had dreamed that she lived alone in that little empty town by the sea-shore. All by herself she had paced slowly along a white terrace overlooking the sea; all by herself she had sat and dipped her feet into the cool little waves that creamed like flowers against the marble steps; all by herself she had watched the cypresses sway like an army of spearmen against the sky, and picked bunches of scarlet anemones and pale pink asphodel.
But she had not been lonely for her thoughts had been with her. She had known herself safe in a glorious solitude with them alone. Nothing, she knew, would come between her and them. She did not seem to think her thoughts. They seemed to come from outside her and to troop through her mind one by one, beautiful, true, luminous and satisfying. One by one she greeted them, and they her, one by one she looked at them, understood them and let them pass by, and as each came and went she knew herself the richer for their passing. It was as though each thought was a step that carried her higher up a staircase. She knew, with a quiet exaltation, that when she reached the top she would know something. What? As she floated from her dream towards wakefulness a line of Keats was singing in her mind. “At the tip-top there hangs by unseen film an orbed drop of light, and that is love.” What was love? Was the answer to that question the final knowledge? When her questioning mind was one with that light would she be completely satisfied?
“. . . . . . . . . . . . . . In the end
Melting into its radiance, we blend,
Mingle, and so become a part of it,—
Nor with aught else can our souls interknit
So wingedly: when we combine therewith
Life’s self is nourished by its proper pith,
And we are nurtured like a pelican brood.”
Soon, soon, she would be one with it, only a few more steps and she would know what would satisfy her for ever—only a few more steps. . . . Her eyes unclosed and she saw her little pink washstand, her sponge squatting beside it like a hedgehog and her clothes in an untidy heap on the floor. . . . She was awake. . . . The little town had gone again. . . . She would never reach the top of the steps. . . . The knowledge that had been so near had been caught away from her. . . . Her feet, that had been cool with sea water, were sticky and hot with perspiration, her arms, that had held a bunch of asphodel, were clutching a sodden mass of nightgown. There were no cypresses to look at, only a sponge that looked like a hedgehog, there were no lovely clear thoughts trooping through her mind, leading her up step by step to a great light, only a confused mass of vague stupid speculations that led nowhere. In the bitterness of her spirit she rolled over and buried her face in her pillow. She must come back to the hateful life of the earth, the ugly life of the body. Ugly, that’s what it was. Vulgar. She squirmed. There was a nasty taste in her mouth and her hair was a vile tangle over her eyes. Her abominable body could not even lie in bed for eight hours without getting hot and sticky and tangled. And now she must get up and wash it. Every day for years and years and years she would have to get up and wash the thing, and every year it would get uglier and uglier and nastier and nastier and require more and more attention, till she had none to spare at all for her mind, for that life of the little town. What, in that case, was the use of living at all?
She flung back the clothes, jumped out of bed and poured water savagely into her basin. As she sponged herself with the sponge that looked like a hedgehog she was suddenly cheered up by the thought that she was an extraordinarily original girl. She had not thought of this before and she found the idea pleasing. She smiled. She was sure no one else found the body such a nuisance and longed so passionately to live only in the mind. No. More ordinary people cared for the body. Peronelle, for instance, so fastidious over her clothes, and her mother with her black draperies and her rose in the belt—so stupid to want a rose in her belt at her age! She was quite sure they none of them thought the thoughts that she thought. Her mind must be quite original. Could she at this moment have seen into the mind of her father thirty years ago and seen how identical were his thoughts then with hers now she would have been astonished and slightly humiliated.
She dragged on her underclothes and her everyday dark blue cotton frock, pulling two buttons off her petticoat and tearing one of her stockings right across the knee. They were new stockings, and Rachell had given them to her. Rachell would be upset. She sighed and her self-satisfaction leaked away. Perhaps she wasn’t original after all. Perhaps she was only a nasty, untidy little prig who couldn’t think properly, or live an everyday life properly, a nasty hybrid creature, making the worst of two worlds. Much chastened, and carrying her shoes in her hand so as not to wake Colette, she tiptoed out of the room and down the stairs and into the garden.
Once outside she forgot h
erself in the strangeness of the morning. The sea fog was still there, but it was thinning, and an August sun, blazing behind it, gave it a strange luminous quality. There seemed to be colour and light in the white vapour, as though the sunshine and flowers hidden in it were bit by bit coming back to their own again, were calling out through the muffling pall that they were still unconquered.
“It’s like mother’s opal ring,” Michelle thought delightedly.
Rachell had an opal ring that André had given her, and its misted colours always fascinated Michelle; she thought its reds and blues and greens, half hidden, half revealed, were more alluring than when they blazed out in the hard glory of rubies and sapphires and emeralds. Michelle had a mind that loved simile, and it struck her now that the world of her little town was like the colours in the opal and in the fog, all the more precious because of the mist that now and again hid it from her.
“If I had it always I shouldn’t love it so much,” she thought, and she went happily through the courtyard out into the lane. She was going to La Baie des Mouettes, the gulls’ breeding place, an exciting place at all times, but most exciting of all in a sea fog.
The little lane ran seawards, getting narrower and narrower, until its stony surface turned into a sandy path and its stunted oak trees gave way to the gorse bushes of the cliff.
Michelle could hardly see the bushes in the fog but as she pushed by them they gave out little puffs of scent like hot peaches. She made her way through wet gorse, honeysuckle, foxgloves and tall grasses until she reached the cliff edge, when she dropped cautiously to her hands and knees. Here the cliff sloped steeply downwards to the sea and short turf and wild thyme took the place of the long grass and honeysuckle. On hot days this slope was as slippery as ice and the unwary one who lost his foothold was in danger of being dashed to pieces on the rocks below. Even to-day, when the turf was soaking wet and each regal head of purple thyme held a coronet of diamonds, Michelle crept downwards with the utmost caution, digging her toes firmly into crannies and searching with her fingertips for firm bits of rock to cling to.