Marguerite set out the magenta gown and searched in the trinket box for the heavy gold bracelets and locket that went with it. “Why, here are your green earrings,” she said. “You’ve not worn them for years.” She was looking at them as they lay in the palm of her left hand, and failed to notice that Marianne was sitting bolt upright again, that once more she had said the wrong thing. “The markings in the stone are so lovely,” she murmured. “Like ferns and fishes. One ought to be able to see things in this stone, as fortunetellers do in crystals. Marianne, I can see a little house by a river, with huge ferns all about it, and behind it are great woods.”
“Give them to me,” commanded Marianne, and Marguerite gave them. Holding her aching head with one hand, she looked at them, and for just a moment, wrought upon by the power of suggestion, she thought she saw the little house. Then it was gone. “Nonsense,” she said, but she hung the earrings in her ears for the first time for years. Marguerite should not touch them again. That little house, whatever it was, was hers, not Marguerite’s.
Then she got off the bed, and while she held herself braced to the bedpost, Marguerite laced her corsets tight again, helped her on with her crinoline and petticoats, and put the magenta tarlatan over her head. It was a magnificent garment, twenty yards of material having gone to the making of it, not counting the frills. As Marguerite hooked it up, silence fell between them, and a sense of awe, as though they were preparing for some great moment in their lives. Marguerite took the little bunch of primroses from her own dress and pinned it into Marianne’s. “For luck,” she said. The packet was at anchor in the harbor now, her masts bare, and the spring voices of wind and rain and bird song sounded about the house.
3
Every evening after dinner the four of them played piquet for the amusement of Octavius, who could still just manage to see the cards. But he played fumblingly, and his slowness drove Marianne almost to desperation, as did Sophie’s gentle sighs and Marguerite’s smiling inexhaustible patience. And she hated the parlor too, that had been the setting for so much deadly boredom for so many years; especially did she hate it when as tonight the dusk was closing in with a storm of sudden heavy rain, the shadows were gathering in the corners of the room, and the lighted candles on the card table lit up their aging faces with a gleam of mockery.
Her usually steady nerves were clamorous tonight. She could have screamed when a log fell in the fire, and a sudden rat-tat at the front door, sounding loudly through the wind, made her drop her cards and press her clenched hands against her aching temples.
“Marianne!” expostulated her mother.
“It’s only the post,” said Marguerite. “Charlotte will bring it in.”
A tall, fair-haired woman entered with letters on a silver salver and handed them to Octavius. She was Charlotte Marquand, whose little boy’s life Edmond Ozanne’s timely surgery and Marianne’s after care had saved to be a thing of boisterous and happy health. Three years ago Charlotte’s good-for-nothing husband had been drowned at sea, and Marianne had immediately announced her intention of bringing the whole family to Le Paradis. Octavius and Sophie had expostulated frantically, for not only was the family young and boisterous but Charlotte was a devout Catholic, and they feared not only for the tympanums of their own ears but for their daughters’ religious convictions as well. But their expostulations had not been attended to by Marianne. She had got her own way as usual, and Charlotte and her family had been installed at Le Paradis. And Octavius and Sophie had now repented of their expostulations, for Charlotte had developed into an excellent housekeeper, had trained her children very carefully to be both invisible and dumb when Monsieur and Madame were in the house, and had kept her religious convictions to herself. Marianne had no more loyal friend in the whole world than Charlotte, yet as she turned to leave the room and her eyes moved from one sister to the other, they rested upon Marguerite with adoration. They did this very often, and when she saw it Marianne would say in her heart, “Et tu, Brute.”
All the cards were laid down now as Octavius lifted his magnifying glass to peer at the envelopes. His letters had to be read aloud to him, but he liked to study the envelopes for himself first before he handed them over to Sophie or Marguerite; the action a little alleviated the bitterness of his dependence. Usually the three ladies waited without speaking until he had done, but today Marguerite’s voice, very quiet and gentle, slid into the silence, parting it, shearing away the smooth continuity of life that lay behind them from the troubled parted years that were to come.
“There is a letter there in William’s handwriting.”
On the other side of the chasm, stunned as they were, silence held them again for just a moment, and in that moment Marguerite was suddenly vividly conscious of the familiar little scene about her that, unlike Marianne, she had always loved and found more full of beauty than of boredom. . . . The shadowed room, the tall silver candlesticks holding the petals of light that were reflected in the dark polished wood of the table, the beautiful colors of the women’s gowns, magenta, primrose, and blue, Octavius’ handsome grey bent head. . . . She knew, as the little scene suddenly burned up before her eyes like a flame, that it was the last time she would see it so, and that she would remember it until she died.
Then Marianne, the strong-minded, vigorous Marianne, screamed and fell sideways in a dead faint into her mother’s arms.
Thereafter, for a few minutes, all was bustle. She was laid upon the sofa, her gown was unhooked and her corsets unlaced. Marguerite ran for the camphor julep and her sister’s smelling bottle, while Octavius smacked the hands of his firstborn and Sophie held burnt feathers beneath her nose.
She recovered quickly and with determination, sat up, and swung her feet to the floor. “Give me the letter,” she commanded.
“It is addressed to me,” said Octavius obstinately. “And Marguerite shall read it.”
It was a long letter, crossed and recrossed. Marguerite carried it to the table, sat down, and spread out the sheets where the candlelight fell upon them. As her hand lay on the pages she knew with absolute conviction that William had penned them with a heart full of love for her, and she had no doubt that what he had to say was something that would bring them together even in this world. Her face was shining with her love and joy, so that Sophie thought she had never seen her look so beautiful, but her heart was aching for Marianne. “She will have to know now that it is me William loves,” she thought. “What can I do? There is nothing I can do now except read the letter right through in a very steady voice. I must not show what I feel. Whatever the letter says I must read it in a very steady voice.” And she pulled one of the candles a little nearer, and from beginning to end she read the letter in a very steady voice.
William began by saying that since leaving the Navy and emigrating to New Zealand ten years ago he had written to them twice, but had received no answers to his letters. The first he had written soon after his landing, and when he had received no answer to it he had thought that perhaps it had been lost at sea, but his inquiries had brought him no information as to the fate of the schooner that had carried it. The second he had written after the outbreak of the Maori War to tell them, in case they had received his first letter and knew of his whereabouts, not to be anxious because he knew in his heart that he would not die in the conflict. When he had received no answer to that letter either, though of course he knew that in the confusion of the times that also was only too likely to have gone astray, he had nevertheless grown afraid for the Le Patourels themselves. Then he went on to say that only a few weeks before the penning of this present letter, by one of those strange chances that seem like the miraculous intervention of God Himself, a Channel Islander had landed in New Zealand and come to see him. This man was unknown to the Le Patourels but knew of them, and had given him news of them and their circumstances, and he had been happy to know them in good health. Then he wrote briefly of his experiences during t
he ten years since he had left them. Three years of desperate backbreaking work, employed as a lumberman by an Englishman, one Timothy Haslam, who went by the name of Tai Haruru, had ended with the outbreak of a war that was the result of endless land disputes with the Maoris, with whom, William confessed, he had been from first to last in complete sympathy. “They love their native soil as I love the Island,” he wrote. “It was agony to have it wrested from them by the white man. ‘The parent who maintains us is the land,’ they say. ‘Die for the land! Die for the land!’ I do not know what you will think of me, but I went into the bush with my friend Tai Haruru and I lived with the Maoris, and I helped him to care for their wounded and their sick. I did not fight against my own countrymen, of course, but I did not fight for them. I did not fight at all. It was a strange and terrible war, for there were a few white men who sided with the Maoris as I did, and there were Maoris who fought for the white man. At first things went well for the Maoris, for they outnumbered the settlers, but when troops were sent from Australia equipped with more modern weapons than the Maoris had, that was the end of it, for courage is no use against guns, or singleness of mind against a bullet. The weakest in equipment, though not in greatness of heart, went to the wall, and five years ago there was peace upon the surface of things, and Tai Haruru and I went back to the lumber trade.
“We have prospered since then, for the peace has been maintained and we have a great governor, Sir George Gray, whose mana is the best guarantee of it that we could ask for. With increasing confidence the number of settlers is also increasing. That means new houses and a greater demand for wood here in New Zealand than there has ever been. The export trade is also steadily increasing, as shipping facilities improve and labor is more easily come by. Now I am in partnership with Tai Haruru; my worst years of struggle are behind me, and I am a fairly successful business man. I live in the same settlement, beside a creek that takes one very quickly to the sea, to which Tai Haruru first brought me, but I have bought land to make a garden, and I am building a house of my own. Indeed I have everything a man can wish for, except a wife.
“And now, sir, I come to the purpose of this letter. My Island friend told me, to my great astonishment, that your daughter Marianne is still unmarried. I have loved her all my life. No other woman has ever taken her place in my heart. The thought of her has through many years of trouble and conflict kept me sane. Is it possible that you could permit her, and that she would be willing, to come out to New Zealand and be my wife? I cannot offer her an easy life. My home is several days’ journey from Wellington, and though I am what is termed a well-to-do man in these parts, the life is lonely and rough for a gentlewoman. Moreover there is danger in it. Though most people are confident that peace has come to stay, I do not myself think it impossible that ‘the fire in the fern,’ as we called the Maori War, is merely smoldering and may break out again in years to come. These are the disadvantages, and I feel it only right to set them before you. But on the credit side I can offer your daughter a free and active existence in a country of great beauty. I know she loves winds, and wide spaces, and austerity and truth, and these she will find in pioneer life in this land. The voyage out is, I know, lengthy and arduous, and owing to the unfortunate fact that I left the Service in rather regrettable circumstances, I am unable to return to my native land to fetch her. But since the happy dawning of the days of peace I have once more made the acquaintance of my old benefactor Captain O’Hara, whose clipper the Green Dolphin is now engaged in the wool trade between England and New Zealand. He is racing home to England with a cargo and will carry this letter with him, remaining at the West India Docks for some weeks for refitting. If your daughter can find it in her heart to make me the happiest man on earth, Captain O’Hara will deem it an honor to bring her out to New Zealand on his ship, and will take the most paternal care of her, and it is probable that there will be some other passengers also to provide the female companionship that Madame Le Patourel will no doubt deem necessary for her daughter upon so long a voyage. The Green Dolphin is an old ship now, but seaworthy, and still one of the finest clippers flying the Red Ensign. Meanwhile Captain O’Hara has information that a sister ship, the Good Hope, will be leaving the docks a couple of weeks after his own arrival. A letter sent care of her skipper, Charles Martin, whose address in England I append at the end of this letter, with that of Captain O’Hara, will reach New Zealand some weeks before the Green Dolphin, and will tell me whether or not I may look forward to the exquisite felicity of welcoming your daughter as my wife. I enclose a short note for your daughter, and I send my humble duty to yourself and Madame Le Patourel, and I sign myself with trembling hope and deepest, most grateful affection, your unworthy yet devoted son, William Ozanne.”
Marianne was on her feet, her cheeks on fire and her eyes blazing. “The note!” she cried. “The note he wrote for me myself. Where is it?”
“I must have left it behind in the envelope,” said Marguerite, and her hands groped upon the table as though she, as well as Octavius, were going blind. It was Sophie who picked up the envelope, shook out the little cocked hat of a note inside, and handed it to Marianne, who clutched it as though it were all the treasure of the world, turned away from her family with a passionate froufrou of silken petticoats, carried it to the window, and read it by the last light of the dying day.
Meanwhile Sophie gently pulled William’s letter toward her and turned back the sheets to the place, the only place, where the name of the lady whom William desired to marry had been set down in black and white. “Marianne.” Yes, it was Marianne. William’s boyish handwriting was unmistakably clear. She laid the sheet down again and looked at Marguerite, who sat with her head held high and a smile on her lips and a face the color of ashes. Sophie did not even dare to touch her hand beneath the table. She saw that for the moment she must be left alone. If she was touched she would break.
“The young blackguard!” said Octavius angrily. “ ‘Left the Navy in regrettable circumstances.’ That means he deserted. After all the money I spent on him, he deserted. The blackguard!”
Marianne, her high heels tapping, left the window and came back into the light. She stood there looking for the first time in her life utterly beautiful. Her mouth was passionate and trembling, her eyes hungry and bright. She was oblivious of the tears on her face or of the fact that both hands were clasping her letter on her breast; until they lifted it that she might kiss it before she pushed it away inside her dress. She did not know what she did. She was un-self-conscious and lovely, transfigured and made anew.
“The damned cheek of it!” raged Octavius, who could see the face of neither daughter clearly. “The overweening, outrageous conceit of the man. That he should imagine that a daughter of mine, delicately nurtured, well trained in all the Christian virtues, could for one single moment consent to ally herself with such a man as he is, a deserter and a common lumberman, the companion of thieves and murderers and worse in a savage country fit only for convicts to live, in, brands the man as a fool as well as a knave. Marguerite, fetch pen and ink and take a letter down at my dictation. There is no time to waste, for the packet leaves in the morning and I run no risk of the Good Hope sailing for New Zealand without a letter aboard bearing to William Ozanne my exact opinion of his arrogant presumption.”
“What an absurd to-do about nothing, Papa,” said Marianne gaily but with something of her old hardness showing again in the timbre of her voice. “You speak as though I had been insulted, whereas I have had the honor of a proposal of marriage from a very fine gentleman. It was courteous of William to write to you, Papa, for as I am of age there was really no necessity.”
Octavius glared at her. “No daughter of mine shall marry a deserter, a common lumberman, a fellow no better than a convict,” he announced.
“I am sorry, Papa, but that is exactly what your daughter intends to do,” said Marianne.
And now she was angry too. Standing there in
her magenta frock, ablaze with her joy and rage, she was like a vivid flame in the room. One could have warmed one’s hands at her, Marguerite thought, and her own soul seemed to catch alight and blaze up too, so that for the moment it was almost easy to say the proper things.
“Well done, Marianne,” she cried. “You’re brave and you’ll be happy. Papa, why should you be angry? And you are unjust to William. He has written you a fine and straightforward letter. However foolish he may have been in the past, he has paid for it, and now he is a man of means and quality, a fit husband even for Marianne. We must be glad for them, Papa. And you too, Mamma. A pioneering life won’t hurt Marianne. Look at the terrible things she sees, the dreadful places she goes into, when she is working for the poor. She likes adventure, you know. She likes new experiences. We must all be glad for her.”
“Glad for her?” ejaculated Octavius, responding as he never failed to respond to his younger daughter’s clear vision and good sense, but still slightly acerbated in temper. “Glad for my daughter to go down on her knees and scrub floors, and cook the dinner, as though she were the wife of a common working man?”
“And the children?” sobbed Sophie. “She’ll have babies with perhaps no doctor and no nurse, and her mother not able to be with her!”
Marianne’s head went up. “I’m not afraid,” she said.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about!” wept poor Sophie, brandishing her tear-soaked handkerchief. “I’ve had two and I know. Even with all the doctors for miles round gathered about one’s bed, one wishes one had never been born!”
“Marianne won’t,” said Marguerite. “She won’t mind about the scrubbing or the cooking or the babies or anything. She will live to the full and be glad.”