1
The autumn wind and rain were battering at the window of the old schoolroom, that was now Marguerite’s bedroom, and she was restlessly aware of the tumult as she sat before her dressing table, turning out its drawers so as to give her restless body and chaotic mind something to do. It was so unlike her to be either restless or chaotic that the very unfamiliarity of her state in itself frightened her.
“Who am I?” she asked, and looking up she unexpectedly saw herself in the glass and did not know who this woman was who looked back at her. Who was it? She was not beautiful with her thin face, her slack, exhausted mouth, her frightened eyes and greying hair. The beautiful young Marguerite did not know who she was until, as she leaned forward to look more closely, she saw a familiar black dress, and the gold locket that she was herself wearing hanging about the neck of this other woman. Then terror gripped her. How many more people was she becoming? Who was she, of all these different fragments into which her personality seemed fraying away? Would she soon have frayed away into nothingness, and not exist any more? Nothingness. It was the old nightmare back again, that had never quite left her since that night five years ago when she had lost all the treasure of her life; her sense of the immanent presence of God, her blessed quietude, her sense of oneness with William, her delight and pride in her own power to comfort, her faith that her life was a complete and timeless thing rooted in eternity; every single thing, in fact, that had once made life worth living. Except one thing. It had only been at the blackest hour of that dark night that she had ceased to believe that God is. When He had given back to her night and morning, bird song and the scent of earth, she had believed in Him again; with no joy, no adoration, just a blind reliance upon the fact of Him, that same blind reliance that was hers when she got out of bed in the morning and knew that some solid surface would support her feet. That was all. For the rest, her own life and the universe seemed just a tumbling chaos.
It had been worse these last two weeks, for a fortnight ago Octavius had died. She had been thankful to see his misery ended, thankful that he had not had to linger too long without Sophie, but their need of her had given some sort of cohesion to her life, and now that they had both gone, its disintegration seemed complete; and all the greater because their need had been so great.
Desperately she went on with the tidying of her drawers, finding in this outward order some sort of bulwark against the terrifying chaos of her mind. And all the while that she was tidying, she was wondering in a panic what on earth she was to do now with the rest of her life. She had been lucky that all through this period of darkness she had had no time on her hands. There had been the bustle of Marianne’s departure, and then there had been her mother’s illness and her father’s blindness. Now there was nothing. Except for Charlotte and the children she was alone in this big house, and not a single soul in all the world had need of her.
There was a knock at the door, and mechanically she straightened herself, turning to the door with smiling lips as Charlotte entered.
“The packet is in harbor, M’selle, and there is a package and a letter from New Zealand,” said Charlotte, smilingly broadly. “It is, of course, too early for us to have news of the birth of the little one—but there is the letter as well as the package.”
“Wait while I open them, Charlotte,” said Marguerite. “Then I can give you news of Madame Ozanne.”
Charlotte waited eagerly, for though it was Marguerite whom she loved the best of the two sisters, she was nevertheless deeply attached to Marianne and eternally grateful to her.
Marguerite opened the package, where a bulky letter was folded about something knobbly wrapped in moss, and then opened the second letter. The dates of the two were separated by several weeks, but that was nothing unusual, for a letter waiting at Wellington for a homeward-bound ship was often joined by a second package before the ship arrived; but what was unusual was that both letters were written by William, who usually contented himself with a few scrawled lines at the end of Marianne’s epistles. The first one was so long that after one glance she set it aside, looked at the second and then read it aloud to Charlotte.
“My dear Sister,
“I hasten to tell you of the arrival of our infant daughter, and to assure you of the safety and well-being of my beloved wife. I am sitting beside Marianne as I write, and she wishes me to tell you that both she and the child are doing excellently, that our daughter is a fair-haired, blue-eyed infant of exceptional beauty and intelligence, and that she is to be named Marguerite Véronique after both her mother and her aunt. As you will immediately realize, upon seeing the date at the head of this letter, the birth of the child was premature, caused by the shock experienced by Marianne as the result of a severe earthquake that has done great damage to the settlement, to our office at Wellington, and to the sheds and jetty at the coast of which we have told you. But these material losses are nothing in comparison to the happy fact that Marianne and her child are safe and well. For this fact we give most humble and heartfelt thanks to Almighty God. No more at present, my dear Sister, and I ask you to forgive the hurriedness of this note. We have just heard that a neighbor is leaving for Wellington this very hour, and we wish the happy news to reach you at the first possible moment. Your next letter will be from Marianne herself, and will contain all those domestic details for which you must long, but to which the pen of a mere male is incapable of doing justice. Marianne sends her love to you, and I remain always, my dear Marguerite, your affectionate brother William Ozanne.”
The autumn seemed to turn to spring, and the wind and rain to sunshine, as the two women exclaimed and ejaculated and read and reread the letter. That jubilance that seizes every human being at the news of a birth had hold of them. There must be some great worth-whileness in human existence, thought Marguerite, or why this instinctive joy? “Marguerite Véronique.” The letter had been five months coming from New Zealand, and though it was autumn on this Island, on that Island it was spring, and Marguerite Véronique was five months old. She had learned to laugh by this time, to open her blue eyes wide when she saw bright colors, to know her father’s voice and her mother’s arms. “Marguerite Véronique.” Two dead childhoods lived again, and as the rain spattered on the window, Marguerite remembered another autumn storm, and two small girls lying on their backboards in this very room and wondering what the packet had brought. So vivid was the recollection that it was not a recollection at all but a present experience. She was no longer the exhausted, frightened, and unlovely woman whom she had been ten minutes ago, but the golden-haired, blue-eyed, happy little girl who had sat bolt upright on her backboard to watch the packet come in. It was the same little girl who cried out now to Charlotte, “We’ll all have tea together in the dining parlor, Charlotte, you and I and the children. We’ll put on our best frocks, and it shall be a birthday party for Marguerite Véronique. Light all the candles, Charlotte, and see that there is lots to eat.”
Charlotte looked at the French clock on the mantelpiece, noted the time and laughed. “I have two hours,” she said. “I and the children, we have two hours to prepare. Do not come down, M’selle. We will prepare a surprise for you. Do not come down until I ring the bell.”
The ghost of a dimple showed in Marguerite’s thin cheek. “Will there be gâche à corinthes, Charlotte?” she asked. “And anglicé currant cake?”
“There will be all the good things that you like, M’selle,” Charlotte assured her. “I have two hours.” And she left the room still laughing. Was it possible that her beloved M’selle was going to recapture her love of life and her delight in little things? Was she once again to see good days? Always the good days come back, just when we think they have gone forever, said Charlotte to herself as she hurried downstairs. If it were not so, we should not be able to rejoice when a child is born.
Marguerite spent a curious two hours. For a moment or two she sat at her dressing table, laughing and cryin
g together, aware that she was crying because Sophie and Octavius had not lived to know of the birth of their grandchild, but unaware, even though a transfigured face looked back at her from the mirror, that she was laughing because the little girl she had once been had come alive again; and with her that belief she thought she had lost, that certainty that one’s life is a complete, rounded, timeless thing rooted in eternity, that what we once had is ours forever, that what we will have is already present with us, that at no time in our lives are we ever anything but immeasurably and inconceivably rich and blessed.
Then she dried her eyes and opened the package that had been wrapped in the long letter from William that she had not read yet. “A rosary!” she cried at first sight of it. And then she held it up and saw the wonderful carvings of flowers and birds and butterflies, monkeys and gods and men, and smiling little Lung-mu hanging at the bottom. It was a perfect thing, and the little girl she had once been, and who had come back to her once more, laughed aloud at its beauty, and then the woman she was stopped laughing and looked at it very gravely. Though it was not a rosary, it was shaped like one. As she looked at it, and fingered its exquisite diversity, all the created loveliness of the whole world seemed flowing in to her, without barrier of time or space, and as the tide of it lifted her, she felt again that glorious upward movement of speechless adoration that she had been accustomed to think of in old days as the reward of persistent and persevering prayer. It had not come now as a reward, for she had not prayed for years, it had come simply as an unasked, unexpected gift to a woman so astonished that this should come again to her unworthiness that she could only recoil from the joy with a sort of dismay, just as she had recoiled when the clay of her spirit had been picked up and used as though it were gold.
Trembling all over, still holding the necklace, she picked up the letter. Slowly and deliberately she read it right through, then turned back to the beginning and read it again. Why had he written of his life in such detail? It seemed to her as she read that she could hear the rasping of saws in the forest, the shouted orders, the ripple of water against the sides of the barges, the rustle of Marianne’s dress as she went about her work. And she could smell the kauri trees, see the mountains, hear the chiming of bird song. Why did he want her to know all this? Why had he sent her across half the world, garlanding the goddess of protection, these exquisite little carvings that had suddenly given back to her for a moment the power of prayer? Out of her childhood came a picture that she had not thought of for years, the white gull flying backward and forward over La Baie des Petits Fleurs, weaving a pattern of protection in the air. Did he want help? Had this necklace come to her with a command? It had banished space for her; had she to answer with a similar reaching out of power across the world? I’m crazy, she thought. William would never think about things in this way; or if he did, it would only be vaguely and fumblingly, not knowing quite what it was that he wanted. Then she read the concluding words of his letter over again.
“Marianne is waiting now for her child. It is to be a boy, but I think I would have liked a little girl with fair hair and blue eyes. Marianne will be an excellent mother, as she is an excellent wife and housekeeper and businesswoman. I try to live only to make her happy. Her welfare and that of her child is the reason for existence. She would send her love did she know that I was writing to you. Though you are so far away, the bond between us is very strong. There is a saying I have heard somewhere, ‘A threefold cord shall not be broken.’ You have my love and devotion always. I think of you day and night. William.”
It struck her suddenly that this was not the letter of a man who was happy in his marriage. Her sister’s character seemed to leap up at her from the careful phrases. “It is to be a boy.” But for once Marianne’s strong will had failed to get her her wish, and Marguerite only hoped she had not taken a dislike to the poor babe in consequence. “An excellent housekeeper and businesswoman.” Surely there was something rueful about the easygoing William’s description of his efficient wife? “I try to live only to make her happy.” Yes, it had always been hard to make Marianne happy. No doubt William was finding it a stiff job, as she had too in the old days. But why had he written her this long letter without his wife’s knowledge? “I would have liked a little girl with fair hair and blue eyes. . . . Though you are so far away, the bond between us is very strong. You have my love and devotion always. I think of you day and night.” No, the jealous Marianne would not have liked him to write in that way to her sister.
She sat there staring at the letter. Had she, after all, not deceived herself when she had imagined that there was a special union between herself and William? Evidently not. He said that she had his love and devotion always. He had chosen Marianne for his wife, and perhaps he had shown good sense there, for Marguerite acknowledged frankly that Marianne’s adventurous spirit was more suited to pioneer existence than her own, but it seemed that he had a special love for her too, and that he needed her still. He was asking that she should hold him and Marianne day by day in her consciousness and help him to make a fine thing of his marriage.
But it’s no good, William, she thought, as she locked away the letter and the necklace; in the old arrogant days I would have felt sure that I could help you, but now I know that I am useless . . . nothing . . . nothing at all.
She stood up to take off her heavy black dress that was most unsuitable for a birthday party, and then suddenly the arms she had lifted to unhook her dress fell again to her side, and she stood still, thinking hard. On that dark night five years ago, when everything in which she had believed had seemed to fall away from her, she had thought herself arrogantly self-deceived alike in her faith in an earthly and a heavenly union. In this last hour, in the matter of the earthly union, as well as in the matter of the wholeness and completeness of her life, she had been proved self-deceived the other way round. Had she, when she imagined herself cast out from the presence of God, also deceived herself? Was it possible that in these last five years of darkness she had after all lost nothing whatever except her pride?
The mere possibility of such joy was too much for her to face just at present. She had to push it away from her, hold it off like some dazzling dream that she must not think of yet. Now, there was the birthday party to consider. Now, the happiness of Charlotte and her children was what she must think of. Yet as she unhooked her dress and took it off, the blood was tingling through her body, her cold hands and feet were suddenly warm and glowing. The dark night was over, and the sun was rising in the east.
She did her hair in festive ringlets and put on a frock of sky blue. Tomorrow the proprieties would demand that she wear black again, but she could not wear black for Marguerite Véronique’s birthday party. Marguerite Véronique was herself, she felt. As she hunted through her drawers for a blue ribbon to tie round her hair, she was seeing a picture of a little girl in a blue frock kneeling on the sand at La Baie des Petits Fleurs, laughing in delight as she picked up handfuls of the exquisite shells and let them fall again in drops of brightness through her fingers. A second visit to La Baie des Petits Fleurs had been forbidden by her parents after her childhood’s escapade, and she had not been there again. Until today she had almost forgotten about it. But on the first fine day she would go there at low tide and gather shells for Marguerite Véronique.
She found the ribbon at last, and under it, pushed away forgotten at the back of the drawer, that little book by the French barefoot Carmelite that had first started her on the path of spiritual discipline, and that had been the cause of so much torment and so much joy. She opened it and turned the pages at random. “I always thought that He would reduce you to extremity. He will come in His own time, and when you least expect it. . . . But those who have the gale of the Holy Spirit go forward even in sleep. If the vessel of our soul is still tossed with winds and storms let us awake the Lord who reposes in it, and he will quickly calm the sea.”
She put the book back, and sm
iled. Even in sleep, even through the night, the vessel had been carried forward by no virtue of her own; and God had been within it all the time.
She ran downstairs lightfooted and flung open the door of the dining parlor. All round the room the candles were blazing, and the table was loaded with the full, astounding, indigestible munificence of an Island high tea, with nothing forgotten, neither the crab nor the gâche à corinthes, nor the curds nor the strawberry jam. The children stood in their places with laughing faces and shining with soap and water, dressed in their best, and Charlotte wore her scarlet festival petticoat and a flowered chintz gown that had belonged to her great-great-grandmother. She had sprinkled white sugar over the cake, and on top of it burned one scarlet candle.
2
I was the greatest idiot ever made, thought Marguerite, not to have come here before. She was sitting in La Baie des Petits Fleurs, her lap full of shells, looking out across the exquisite little bay toward the distant, shining line of sea. She was keeping a wary eye upon it, for it was just such another perfect autumn day as it had been on that first visit of her childhood; it was as though the occasion were repeating itself, and she did not mean to be caught by the tide again. She had forgotten how lovely it was here. She ought to have come before. My mind was always so full of other things, she thought, and until now I have had no little niece for whom to gather shells.
She began to put the prettiest of the shells on her lap into the box full of wadding that she had brought with her. She laughed at herself as she did it, for Marguerite Véronique was far too young at present to be given shells as playthings. When they arrived, Marianne would have to put them out of her reach lest she swallow them. It would be another five years before she would appreciate their exquisite fairy shapes, and would pick them up and let them run through her fingers, as long ago her aunt had done. But it had been fun to come here and gather them, and it had given her something to do.