5
John did not take Véronique to William and Mrs. Ogilvie. He drove her slowly through the streets of Dunedin, answering gently all her eager questions about her flowers and her dogs, the hoggets and the farm, until they reached a quiet, tree-bordered road, where he drew up. The tired horse drooped between the shafts, thankful to stay still.
“Véronique,” said John, “I want to talk to you.”
“Yes?” said Véronique, lifting her face to the sunlight that fell through the green leaves overhead. It was fresh and cool here, and John’s familiar presence was infinitely restful.
“Are you happy, Véronique?” he asked.
She looked at him, startled.
“You see, Véronique, I have a right to know, because I have loved you ever since you were a little girl. I have never loved anyone but you, and I never shall.”
He paused, and Véronique bent her head. To be the first woman—the only woman—that was the gift of queenship that every woman wanted, and she had seen enough of life now to know that the gift was seldom granted and that a lover who could give it was a rare phenomenon.
“If you love this man you’re betrothed to,” went on John, “if you think you will be happy with him, then I’ll take myself off and we’ll forget we ever had this conversation; but if you’re unhappy, Véronique, then my mother and I will take you straight home to the Green Pastures tomorrow. You need not even see Mr. Ackroyd again if you don’t want to. Your father will deal with all that.”
“Does Papa know you are saying this to me?” she asked. She had drooped her head so low that he could not see her face beneath the shade of her hat, but he saw that she was gripping her hands together so tightly that the knuckles were white. “Yes,” he replied.
“Papa does not like Frederick,” she said in a small voice.
“No,” said John. “Not that that is particularly important. What matters is—do you like him? You fell in love with him, I know, but do you like him—like the kind of man that he is?”
“I have given my word.” replied Véronique to this.
“I know you have,” said John. “And you’re a woman of your word. But there’s another sort of loyalty that has to be considered too—to the kind of life where you belong. Generally speaking, we only make a success of the kind of life that suits us. . . . I found that out when I tried to be a city dominie to please my father, and made such a mess of it that I had to go back to the Green Pastures and be a shepherd after all. . . . Could you make a success of Ackroyd’s kind of life, or he of yours? One must make a success of life, you know. That’s one’s first duty. I don’t mean worldly success; I mean—being happy.”
“Perhaps I could change the sort of person that I am—grow a stronger sort of woman—so as to belong to Frederick’s world,” whispered Véronique.
“No, you can’t do that. And neither can he. We cannot change the sort of person that we are.”
There was a long silence. Tense with anxiety and hope, and shaken by his great love so long held in check, John fought to keep himself steady to her need.
“No need to make up your mind now, Véronique,” he said gently. “I’ll wait in Dunedin for your answer for as long as you like.”
“John,” she whispered, still with her face hidden, “why didn’t you tell me before that you loved me?”
“Because it did not seem right to tell you. You see, until just lately you weren’t grown-up.”
“Was it hard to wait?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said, “it was hard.”
She was silent again, and he wondered agonizedly if she was antagonized by his past control, his present reserve. He need not have worried. She was pondering on the nature of his love, that, like Papa’s, put the other person first. That was a thing that Frederick had never done.
Then she asked irrelevantly, “How did you know that Papa and I called our valley the Country of the Green Pastures?”
“Your father told me. But long ago, when I was a little boy, I called it that myself.”
“The Twenty-third Psalm was the first I learned to say by heart,” said Véronique. “Uncle Samuel taught it to me.”
“The first that I learned, too,” said John. “And it’s still my favorite.”
“Mine too,” said Véronique. “We think alike about lots of things, don’t we?”
“Naturally,” mumbled John. “ ‘For we were nurst upon the self-same hill, fed the same flock . . .’ ”
Suddenly she turned to him, lifting a transfigured face, and slipped her arms round his neck. “Your country is my country,” she said.
Regardless of who might be passing by in the street he flung his arms about her, while old familiar words sprang to his lips as the pledge of faith. “ ‘The Lord do so to me, and more also, if aught but death part thee and me.’ ”
6
It was the evening of the next day and Marianne, alone in their lodgings, wept bitterly. It was almost dark, but she had not bothered to light the lamp. She was too wretched. She could not remember when she had been so wretched, or felt so utterly forsaken. She had been deceived and frustrated by her husband and child, and played like a fish on a string by that dreadful man John Ogilvie. . . . Ah, there lay the humiliation of it! Played like a fish on a string by John Ogilvie, whom she had always patronized. . . . And deceived by Véronique, who, with her poor mother working her fingers to the bone over her trousseau, had been planning all the while to throw over poor dear Frederick. . . . And frustrated by William, who knew how she ached to see her darling Véronique safely established in a life of ease, and how for herself also she longed for the hard-won leisure that was surely now her right. . . . And played like a fish on a string by that rough, common man who was now to be Véronique’s husband. . . . That man husband to her darling, delicate, beautiful child for whom she had dreamed such soaring dreams and laid such ambitious, glowing plans. . . . That man, with his wicked, deep-laid schemes dragging them all back to that dreadful valley where they would now live among the bleating sheep, toiling and moiling in the snow and the rain, until they died. . . . And once back in that wretched valley, she wouldn’t care how soon she did die, either. . . . She was an old woman now, broken and frustrated, utterly forsaken, and she did not care how soon she was dead; dead like dear old Nat, the only creature who had ever really loved her. . . . Heavens above, had there ever been such an ill-used woman?
And it had all happened with such dreadful speed. . . . Véronique and that man coming back from their drive and telling her they were going to be married. . . . William coming in and taking their part. . . . All of them kissing her, and trying to comfort her, and saying they hadn’t deceived her when of course they had, and it only made things worse to say they hadn’t. . . . Véronique packing, and sitting up most of the night to write a letter to poor dear Frederick. . . . Breakfast, and no one able to eat anything. . . . Véronique driving off with John and Mrs. Ogilvie, driving away out of her mother’s life and choosing that hateful woman Mrs. Ogilvie to be her mother instead of her own dear Mamma who adored her so. . . . William going off to see Frederick, to see the lawyer, to countermand the wedding cake, to say they wouldn’t want the wedding dress, going off all day long to do this, that, and the other and leaving her alone in her misery and pain. . . . William off at this moment doing goodness knew what (drinking probably, with that wicked old man Obadiah Trimble, who had been the cause of all the trouble) and leaving her utterly alone. . . .
“Oh, my!” said Old Nick.
. . . Alone except for that hateful parrot. For the rest of her life now she would have no companion except Old Nick. William would spend all his time riding about in the mountains with Véronique and John, and she would be left all alone in that storm-battered farmhouse with Old Nick.
She was weeping so desperately that she did not hear William’s step on the stairs, nor the opening of the door. She did
not know he was there until he knelt down beside her and took her in his arms. “There, there, my girl,” he said tenderly, “you’ll make yourself ill with all this weeping. Stop it, Marianne. We’ve got each other, my girl, we’ve got each other.”
She tried to push him away from her, but he would not let her go. He caressed her as though he were a young and ardent lover, kissing her forehead and her wet eyelids, her lips and her hair. He had never kissed her like this before, and in spite of her bitter anger she yielded at last to the sweetness of it, leaning back against him and putting up her hand to hold his face against hers. “Where have you been, William?” she whispered. “You had no right to leave me alone like this. Where have you been all this while?”
“With Tom Anderson,” said William.
“Tom Anderson!” ejaculated Marianne. “Oh, poor Mr. Anderson! He must have been furious!”
“No,” said William. “He took it well. I think he knew all the while, in his heart, that Frederick was no fit husband for Véronique.”
“He was,” said Marianne passionately. “You all misjudged poor Frederick! He only wanted a wife like Véronique to be the best husband in the world.”
“As a matter of fact,” said William, “Tom didn’t waste much time over Frederick. It’s the Union Steamship Company, not Frederick, that is the darling of Tom’s heart. And he likes your old husband, Marianne. What’s happened seems to have made no difference to his liking. He renewed that offer, my dear, and I accepted it. From henceforth, Mrs. Ozanne, you will live in that fine house in the street next the Andersons’ that you want so much, and watch your husband propelled higher and higher up the social ladder by the power of steam. If you’re not the leader of society in this city in another three years, my dear, I’ll eat my hat.”
“William!” She leaned back in his arms, gazing up into his face, and she scarcely could believe it. “William! But the farm?”
He smiled back at her. “It’s John’s,” he said. “My wedding present to him and Véronique. Your daughter won’t be the wife of a poor shepherd, Marianne, she’ll be the wife of a well-to-do sheep farmer. And she’ll be happy. All is well with your child, Marianne. Believe me, Marianne, that all is well with your child.”
Shock, delight, incredulity, were all struggling for the mastery in Marianne, so that she scarcely knew what she felt. “But William,” she gasped, “how will you bear to live away from her? How will you bear it?”
William met her eyes steadily. “I shall have you, my girl,” he said. “Remember what you said to me, not so long ago? ‘Sensible fathers and mothers, when their children marry, go back to the old days and renew their youth.’ I’ll have you, my girl, and you are all I want.”
She was in his arms and crying again, but crying now from sheer joy. A moment ago she had seemed to have nothing left, and now, quite suddenly, she had everything. William was hers as he had never been, and the new magic city on the horizon was drawing nearer and nearer. Already, even, she seemed entering the pearly gates and treading the streets of gold.
7
A couple of hours later William lay beside his sleeping wife and stared wide-eyed into the darkness. It was too hot to sleep. He’d not get to sleep this night, of that he was certain. Damn this stifling city heat! He would have liked to have got up and flung the window wide, but if he had he would have wakened Marianne, who did not hold with open windows at night; night air, she said, was injurious to the health. He remembered the lovely cool night at the Green Pastures when with his window wide to the stars he had had the fourposter all to himself, and he swore under his breath. The Green Pastures! Separation both from Véronique and the Green Pastures! What an impossible price to pay! Well, impossible or not, it was done now, and he was condemned to the treadmill of city life, a businessman concerned, of all things, with steam, steam, that he had always hated. Money-making out of steam—day after day—just money-making that Marianne might have her fine town house, her carriage and servants, her round of social gaieties in overcrowded, overheated rooms, to which no doubt he would be dragged also, hot and perspiring, knocking things over, treading on people’s toes, out of place, making a fool of himself, he the sailor, lumberman, and farmer who was only happy nowadays in the wilds. What a price! And then there would be married life with Marianne, unsweetened now by the presence of their child. He loved his wife, oh, yes, he loved her, their marriage was on the whole as happy as most, perhaps happier, but he still did not love her as she loved him, and still, after all these years, he shrank from the close intimacy that she still craved with such desperation. Yes, after all these years, she was as ardent as ever. She still wanted the core of his soul that he could not give her. Well, he must do his best. By that bit of play-acting in the parlor just now he had pledged himself to her all over again. It had been a re-enactment of the scene on the Green Dolphin on the morning of their wedding, and as that had set the standard for their life together before Véronique came, this must set it for their life now that she had left them. What had Kelly said? “Wrest your life into conformity with that one moment.” Well, he’d do it. But, God, what a price to pay!
Yet he knew that it was the price that had to be paid for Véronique’s happiness, the price demanded of him. He had begun to know it at the farm, when he had felt the beloved home withdrawing itself from his keeping and passing to John’s, and he had known it quite certainly as soon as they had told the news of Véronique’s broken engagement to Marianne and she had taken it to heart so distressingly. For he and she had had different plans for Véronique’s happiness, and they had fought and he had won, and upon the victor there lies always the obligation for the future welfare of the defeated. Véronique, the great love of his life, had passed from his keeping into that of another man. His responsibility now, as at the beginning, was for Marianne alone.
And then, abruptly, he found himself thinking of the Reverend Mother of the Convent of Notre Dame du Castel. Odd, he thought, how in this life our closest physical companionships are not always with those we love the best. . . . Very odd.
Unable to think any longer of the grim, hard road that lay before him, equally unable, just yet, to think of Véronique finding her happiness in the keeping of another man, even though it was he himself who had given her to him, he lay in the stuffy darkness and thought of Marguerite. Was she happy upon her grey, storm-beaten rock upon the other side of the world? He thought that she was. He imagined that all nuns were happy because they had, in religious parlance, “found God.” Well, that was a thing that as far as he knew he had not done, probably would never do, for he was not a religious sort of fellow. He never had been, he thought, remembering with a smile how long ago, while having little use for either of them, he had yet infinitely preferred Captain O’Hara’s God the Creator of wind and earth and water to the saving, suffering God of Samuel Kelly. He was not sure that he felt the same about it now, for he understood now that love is not love at all until it has paid the price.
And when you have paid, there comes a sort of peace. William, lying completely wretched in the stuffy darkness, yet felt himself lifted by it as though on the long, slow waves of some vast, calm sea. He was lifted up and borne away and set down on a distant shore at the world’s end. And he was a boy again, running with the wind and shouting to the sun, and capering beside him was a small, sunburned, golden-haired girl in a blue frock. . . . Contrary to his expectations, William had fallen asleep.
Part 2 Fairyland
They came out on a lovely pleasance, that dream’d of oasis,
Fortunate isle, the abode o’ the blest, their fair Happy Woodland.
VIRGIL.
Chapter I
1
The slump of the Eighties. That was how the next generation would speak of it, and no doubt it was an exceedingly interesting period of New Zealand history. But Marianne had no opinion of history. Men might like it—they certainly made it with their wars and one thing and
another—but for a woman the word history more often than not merely spelled the destruction of something beautiful that she had made. She would spin a web of fine living, and then along would come history in the shape of a war or a business slump and like a pair of shears would slit the delicate thing to pieces. Marianne, rolling home from a tea party in the autumn dusk in the fine carriage that would soon have to be put down, to the beautiful house that would soon have to be sold because they had lost so much money, meditated upon these things in a curious condition of discouragement for which she could find no adequate reason. It was true that another period of their life together was about to close for herself and William, but there had been other endings in the past and they had not discouraged her. So why was she so discouraged now?
During the earlier part of the last twelve years William, with her expert help, had made a vast amount of money and she had spent it superbly. Their house had been the finest in town, their dinner parties (though always in exquisite taste) the most lavish, while she herself had had the reputation of being the best-dressed woman in Dunedin, the most intelligent, and the most accomplished hostess. To have the entrée to the Ozannes’ house was to have “arrived.” She had even challenged Mrs. Anderson as the leader of Dunedin society, and their friendship had waned considerably in consequence. She had not had many friends. Her chief friends had been among the men who delighted in the brilliance of her talk and the excellence of her cuisine, but the women, though they had never felt their festivities to be complete without the adornment of her presence, had not really liked her. It had been the old story. She had been too successful, and because of her success too arrogant, and so unloved. But she had not, as long ago on the Island, let that upset her, for the sheer overwhelming success of her achievement had been too exhilarating. She had done what she had said she would do. She had begun her life in New Zealand the wife of a poor lumberman and she had made the two of them wealthy, envied, and admired. They could climb no higher in this country than they had climbed. They had reached the top.