On the outskirts of St. Pierre, just before the lane turned into a street and plunged frantically downhill, they stopped at a little inn and deposited Lupin and the landau in the stable. The task of getting Lupin up and down the steep streets of St. Pierre was never attempted by André. Here Lupin would remain, enjoying an excellent repast, until church and the weekly penance of Sunday dinner with grandpapa were at an end.
And now began the wonder and beauty of the Sunday Parade. André’s top hat, which he could not wear in the landau for fear it should be dislodged by the bumps, and which had been reverently held by Colin throughout the drive, was adjusted upon his head. Rachell, having shaken out her skirts and inspected the children, took her husband’s arm and erected the parasol, holding it well to the left, so that it gave her no shade whatever, but was safe from doing any injury to the top hat. The children fell into line behind them and the procession started down the street.
Owing to the extraordinary steepness of the hill and the way it had of turning into steps at unexpected moments, and the consequent necessity of climbing down rather than walking down, the procession was perhaps not as dignified as it might have been, but that was the fault of those who built St. Pierre up the side of a rocky cliff, and not of the du Frocqs.
At the bottom of the street they turned to the right, took a deep breath and proceeded to climb a long twisting flight of steps that wound up and up between grey walls. Right at the top was an old iron gate leading on to a flat rocky ledge and here were the little old Church of St. Raphael, and the Convent, built on the edge of a sheer precipice, with nothing below them but rocks and sea water.
So old and so weather-beaten were the Church and Convent that they looked like rocks themselves. It was hard to realize they had been built by man with blocks of stone, rather it seemed that unseen divine hands had hollowed out chambers in the solid cliff and that men, exhausted by the fury of winds and waves, had crept into them, had lit their little flickering candles in the dark corners and put their bunches of flowers where the shafts of sunlight fell, had said their prayers and swung their censers in trembling gratitude for safety and succour.
“I’m sure I don’t know what we’re to do about church when we’re old, André,” panted Rachell, clinging to the iron gate, “we’ll never be able to get up these steps.”
“We’ll have to sit at home,” said André, trying not to sound too jubilant. “I shan’t have to wear my top hat,” he added. This thought lit a sudden little candle in the dreary bleakness of old age.
The children, Colin in the rear, had now reached the iron gate.
“Mother, look at Colin,” said Jacqueline, “he’s simply filthy.”
The whole of the front of Colin’s white sailor suit, as well as his hands and face, were covered with dirt. All the way up the steps he had, in company with Joan of Arc, been scaling the walls of Rouen. The others had gone on ahead but Colin, his front pressed against the wall beside the steps, his fingers clinging to its grimy surface, had fought his way up, step by step, with Joan of Arc only just behind. The enemy were raining boiling lead on him from above, his scaling ladder was in imminent danger of giving way, he had a sword wound in his leg and an arrow in his shoulder, but still he fought on, up and up, bloody but undefeated, joyously facing death itself for the lilies of France and for the Maid.
“Good gracious, Colin,” cried poor Rachell, “what on earth have you been doing?”
Colin smiled the sweet faint smile of an exhausted hero, weak from loss of blood.
“I fell, mother,” he said, “six steps from the bottom I fell. Right down into the street again. On my front.”
“Darling, you might have killed yourself!” Rachell, distracted, produced her handkerchief and rubbed his hands tenderly, “your poor little hands! André, brush him down the front.”
“It hardly hurts at all now,” said Colin bravely, as his parents ministered to his needs, “though it did at the time. I didn’t call out for fear of frightening you.”
“Good boy,” said his father.
“Well, I didn’t see all that dirt in the street,” muttered Jacqueline, “he rubbed against the wall on purpose.” Rachell and André did not hear, but Colin glared savagely.
“Come along now,” said André. He offered his arm once more to Rachell, removed the top hat and led the way up the three worn steps, through the old porch and into the fragrant interior of the church. The children followed, Colin pausing to kick Jacqueline.
“Sneak,” he said.
Tears welled into Jacqueline’s eyes and her throat swelled. Before breakfast she had been happy but now she was miserable. She had done it again. She had sneaked. She was always sneaking. And yet she didn’t want to or mean to. Why did she do it? The truth suddenly popped up its head out of her inside self and told her. She told tales of the others because telling them made her feel superior, and she adored feeling superior. But this her outside self would not admit for a moment. Jacqueline, the perfect Jacqueline, would never wish to feel superior. She smacked the truth on the head and sent it squirming back into her inside self. No, she had not sneaked. She never sneaked. She simply drew her mother’s attention to truths about the others which it was desirable she should know. After all, what an awful thing it would have been if Colin had walked into church looking like Landoys the sweep. Of course, she was right. She was always right. As she knelt in the du Frocq pew, with her head bent, she furtively wiped the tears out of her eyes with her white cotton gloves. When she sat back on the seat there were no signs of them and her face wore its usual smug expression of self-satisfaction, although her heart was swelling with misery. . . . Colin, sitting beside her, positively hated her.
What with one thing and another they were late for church, but so superb was the dignity with which Rachell sailed up the aisle that no one thought the worse of her for it. In fact, when Rachell was late, being late seemed to other people the perfect thing to be. It was impossible to put her in the wrong. If you put her in it it immediately became the right. The shimmer of her personality over hard facts took all the lateness out of being late and all the wrongness out of being wrong.
The little church, with its great walls four feet thick, and its little slats of windows, was dim and cool and musty. . . . The smell of incense and lilies and candle grease made one feel rather sleepy. . . . The Virgin on her pedestal, with the Babe in her arms and the candles flowering at her feet, seemed to be dreaming as she stood there so still in her blue cloak. . . . The Latin words sung by the nuns in their sweet treble voices sounded like a lullaby. . . . Perhaps all the du Frocqs except Rachell and Colette drowsed a little.
Rachell never drowsed in church. A woman with a husband and five children and cows and pigs and chickens and no money had far too much to pray about to waste any time in drowsing. It wasn’t as though she had a great deal of time to spend in prayer when she wasn’t in church. She had very little. She must make the most of that short time once a week when she knelt at the feet of the Virgin Mother on her pedestal.
To-day, after she had prayed for André and the children and even, with a great effort, for her father-in-law, she began to pray urgently that that decision of last night might be the right decision. . . . She had forced André to it. . . . She was responsible. . . . Desperately she prayed that their home might be saved. . . . Bon Repos. . . . “Harbour and good rest to those who enter here, courage to those who go forth. Let those who go and those who stay forget not God . . .” Trying to yield up her own will she prayed that she might have courage if she had to go forth. . . . Then all over again began to pray that she might stay in that restful harbour. . . . She could not go forth. . . . She could not. . . . The sanctus bell rang out very clear and sweet and she bowed her head as though a wind had swept the church, then lifted it again, conscious of some intense experience going on beside her. Her eyes were drawn irresistibly to Colette.
The church doo
r had opened—Colin, the last to come in, had perhaps latched it carelessly—and Colette was gazing at the patch of sunshine on the threshold with an expression of such amazing welcoming beauty on her podgy little face that Rachell was positively scared. What in the world had the child seen? Colette withdrew her eyes from the door and began to laugh. Good heavens! That awful soda-water syphon laugh of Colette’s! Just at the most sacred part of the service! Rachell stretched out a hand in alarm. But she need not have worried, the laugh did not develop as far as the squeaking stage, it was merely a bubble of delight ending in a smile at the Virgin, as though she and the Virgin shared some secret, before Colette buried her face in her starfish hands and began to pray. Rachell looked at her in increasing consternation. What on earth did the child pray about? Surely her behaviour was abnormal in so young a creature? An awful fear smote Rachell. What if the child should become a contemplative nun? How awful! How terrible! Her little Colette in a black habit with all her yellow curls shaved off! Hastily she prayed that Colette might not become a nun and then, ashamed of herself, hastily prayed a second prayer for forgiveness for the first, and then hastily prayed the first prayer over again.
The service was over at last and the little congregation filed out blinking into the sun. In the porch the du Frocqs squared their shoulders and prepared to face grandpapa.
Dr. du Frocq did not sit with his descendants in the family pew, he sat by himself in solitary glory on the other side of the aisle. He did not, he said, like being cluttered up with a lot of ill-behaved children. In reality, the children, excellently trained by Rachell, behaved a great deal better than grandpapa, whose demeanour left much to be desired. He never knelt down, he merely bent over, as has been stated, and blew into his top hat. He said “humph” loudly in the middle of all the prayers and always sat down three minutes before he had any business to and got up three minutes too late. At the beginning of the sermon he got out his watch, opened it, and placed it on the ledge in front of him. At the end of ten minutes—he considered ten minutes the utmost limit of length for a sermon—he shut it up with a snap and then opened it again, muttering under his breath “Fellow ought to be shot!” If the sermon continued in spite of his hints he spent the rest of it muttering and snapping his watch open and shut and blowing out his cheeks with a faint hissing sound. As soon as the priest had pronounced the last word of the final blessing he got up and stalked out, banging with his walking stick on the stone floor and eyeing the bowed heads of the congregation with profound distaste. Ridiculous bonnets the women wore! Damned ridiculous! And all the men bald. Ate too much, that’s what it was. Dyspepsia. Made the hair come out. He’d told ’em so. He’d tell ’em again. Wouldn’t listen, the damn fools. In the porch he stood and waited for his relations. An amazingly handsome old man; very upright, very tall, fine curly iron grey hair, a fierce projecting grey beard, choleric blue eyes snapping under beetling brows, a hard selfish mouth, wonderfully cut clothes, a silver-topped ebony walking stick and a top hat of exquisite beauty.
“Good morning, father.” Rachell faced him with the coldly distant smile she kept for bestowal upon her parent-in-law only. Her eyes flickered in dislike from his choleric blue eyes to his selfish mouth. How could he be the father of André! How could he! André, of course, was like his poor mother. Rachell had never known her mother-in-law. Grandmamma had died many years ago.
“Good morning, Rachell.” Grandpapa’s voice was rich and deep, making one think of plum cake and port wine, and purple velvet smoking caps. “Those children fidget in the sermon. You should control ’em. André, you look yellow. Stomach. A bad business about this wreck. What? Bad business. A d-er-humph—bad business.”
It should be said in grandpapa’s favour that he tried really hard not to swear in front of the children.
“Any news?” asked André. “Have any boats come back yet?”
“Not a sign of ’em. Wreck’s miles out, you know. Inferior seamanship, that’s what it is. Never had all these wrecks when I was a boy. What? Steam, that’s the trouble. A man was a sailor when he had to sail the seas in a windjammer. It took some skill to trim those sails, I can tell you. But now they stick a steam-engine in the hold, wind the damn thing up an’ go an’ drink whisky in the saloon. What can you expect? On the rocks in a twinkling and serve ’em right. What? In my young days ships were manned by sailors, now they’re cluttered up by a lot of b-er-humph-ignorant mechanics.”
He extended a hand each to Peronelle and Colette and led the way down the steps. Only for these two among his grandchildren did he feel any affection. Peronelle he liked for the simple reason that she had what a later and more decadent age calls sex appeal. In 1888 it was referred to as attraction for the opposite sex. Grandpapa considered that Peronelle was likely to Marry Well and do Credit to the Family. Marrying Well was the only way, in his opinion, in which a woman could do Credit to her Family. Colette he liked because she was stout. Grandpapa liked a well-covered woman and had the lowest opinion of Rachell’s slender grace. He liked a bosom, and plenty of it, well upholstered.
Peronelle walked along in a silence that would have cast a chill on anyone but grandpapa, whose self-esteem was impervious to all the shafts of other people’s dislike. Her hand in his was cold and unresponsive as a dead fish. She hated him. How dared he say that father was yellow! He wasn’t. He was white because he had a headache. She knew he had a headache. And stomach! It was disgustingly insulting. As if father ate too much. The trouble was to get him to eat anything at all. He had a headache because he was tired. He was always tired. She wrenched her hand out of grandpapa’s and ran back to her father. Her hand, that had been so cold, lay in her father’s like a warm, pulsing little bird. In the shadows at the bottom of the steps, before they turned into the street, she pulled his hand up to her face and kissed it. Her face was white with rage. André, slightly embarrassed, patted her on the back and looked at her anxiously. What a passionate creature she was! How hot-tempered and how loving—and how thin! Would her body ever stand the strain of her personality? . . . He began to worry again.
Grandpapa bore the loss of Peronelle with equanimity. A pretty woman was allowed her whims. An impulsive child. Well, men liked that sort of thing. Should Marry Well. He smiled benignly on Colette, who beamed up at him. Colette loved him. Like a little dog she was quick to feel when other people liked her and responded with the gift of her whole heart, quite regardless of the moral character of the recipient.
At the bottom of the steps, slowly and with incomparable dignity, the Sunday Parade was continued.
V
Grandpapa, as was consistent with his dignity and his position as the only doctor worth calling a doctor on the Island—there were a few inferior persons who dealt with the diseases of the lower orders—lived in the principal street of St. Pierre. This street, called Le Paradis, was frequently referred to by grandpapa, with a wave of his ebony stick, as “the Park Lane of the Island.” It was really no more like Park Lane than it was like Paradise, being a steep cobbled street twisting between tall dignified houses flanked by lovely gardens. It resembled Park Lane and Paradise only because the Best People lived there.
Grandpapa’s house was halfway down. It was very imposing indeed, with a pink stucco front, an area leading down to the basements and lace curtains drawn across all the windows to hide the glories within from the inquisitive gaze of the vulgar populace. At the back of the house the curtains were drawn aside a little, so that you could see the garden and the glorious view of the harbour beyond.
Inside grandpapa’s house was very magnificent and impressive, with thick carpets that stifled all sound, gilt-framed family portraits, mahogany furniture, luscious wax fruits under glass cases, shining damask and silver, and always a very great deal to eat and drink. Grandpapa, though frequently complaining that everyone ate too much, ate enormously himself. But his meals never seemed to do him any harm. It seemed that every portion of him, his interior o
rgans as well as his heart and his soul, were made of hard, tough leather.
Grandpapa’s material well-being was presided over by his English butler, Barker, and his housekeeper, Madame Gaboreau, a purple lady with an auburn front and sequins all over her chest. . . . She was simply horrid. She had under her iron hand several wretched underlings who led a scurrying life below stairs with the black beetles, and kept the house shining all over like polished glass.
“Fine day. What?” said grandpapa, plunging the knife into the sirloin. There was a squelching sound and a thin pink stream trickled out. . . . Grandpapa liked his beef underdone . . . Peronelle shuddered.
“It is one of the loveliest summers we have ever had,” said Rachell, lifting her veil and wishing they could have a little window open. She began to talk charmingly about the weather. She always did her very best at grandpapa’s. She felt it to be her duty.
André, whose headache made him feel a little sick, averted his eyes from the roast beef and smiled the patient smile that always exasperated his father beyond all words. His sons were a bitter humiliation to Dr. du Frocq. Jean, a wastrel, gone to the bad and lost sight of in Australia, and André, a stupid sentimental failure without even the ability to make the du Frocq farm pay. God knows where he’d be without his wife’s money, and the devil alone knew how much there was left of that by this time. Well, he’d warned ’em. They needn’t come whining to him for money—not unless they gave up that damned farm.
“Farm going well? What?” he asked pleasantly.
A steely glitter appeared in Rachell’s eyes. Grandpapa, she knew, asked this question simply for the pleasure of thrusting a dagger into his son.