Time to go. Humming a tune, swinging his goldheaded stick, he strolled along the cliff toward the sandy lane that wound through the laurel bushes to the convent door.
After he had been inspected through the grille, the door was opened to him by a lay sister, an immense and very aged peasant woman with large flat feet and little black eyes that twinkled with kindliness in her round, red, foolish, good-humored face. Her bosom was like a large black sofa cushion and had an astonishing number of safety pins skewered into it.
“Bonjour, ma sœur,” said William, smiling at her. He loved the comical old porteress. He loved the massive old door with its iron grille, like the door of a dungeon in a fairy tale. He loved the faint scent of incense that drifted to him from the interior of the convent. He loved the September sunshine hot on his back and the sound of the sea, and the feel of the gold knob of the stick Marianne had given him smooth and warm in the palm of his hand. He savored every sight and sound that his senses gave him with the eager enjoyment of a boy. . . . Only, in the fairyland of boyhood one had enjoyed unconsciously, while in the return to it one knew that one was blessed and bowed one’s head and praised God. . . . He took off his hat and with bent head followed Sœur Angélique down the stone-floored passage.
But instead of conducting him to the visitors’ room she turned aside at the end of the passage toward a spiral stone staircase. “Reverend Mother will receive you in her study today, M’sieur,” she said in an impressive whisper, pausing at the foot of the stairs to hitch up her black skirts. “There are workmen in the visitors’ room. There has been an accident there. All the wallpaper fell off the walls quite suddenly. It was the damp, you understand, M’sieur.”
“I understand, ma sœur,” said William gravely, and followed her up the spiral staircase. Round and round the two old people labored, panting and blowing, Sœur Angélique lifting her black skirts higher and higher above her black button boots as though to aid her ascent, William clutching hat and stick and hard put to it to control the loud, schoolboyish guffaw that was always bursting from him nowadays for no adequate reason.
But all desire to laugh left him at the door of Marguerite’s study. This was where the woman he loved lived and prayed, and a gush of glorious sentimentality broke right over him like a rainbow wave. He was announced, and entered with sight obscured by its blissful mist.
“Good afternoon, William. Put your hat down. Where’s Marianne?”
Marguerite’s gay, matter-of-fact voice dispelled the mist, and while he explained about Marianne’s headache he looked about him delightedly. Nothing gloomy about this room. There was no vraic fire today to color the whitewashed walls, but the warm sunlight colored them, and the reflection of the blue summer sea beyond the windows rippled over the ceiling in waves of light.
“It’s like the inside of a sea shell,” he said.
“That’s what I’ve always thought,” said Marguerite. “I love this room. I’m glad to show it to you. Sit down, William. Put your watch on the window ledge, for my clock has stopped.”
He sat in one of the straight-backed chairs of old oak, Marguerite in the other, both of them looking out through the open window to the sea. His watch ticked inexorably, and he was conscious of a slight sensation of panic. . . . So much to say and so short a time in which to say it. . . . But Marguerite, going straight to the point as she had learned to do in a life where words had to be used so sparingly that they must be used with skill, set him at ease again. She knew how to use these forty minutes. He only had to follow where she led.
“Véronique,” she said. “Tell me all you can about her. And tell me how it came about that you could bear to leave her.”
Véronique. Yes, Véronique was the central point. Not only had his life always revolved about her, but his love for Marguerite had been caught up into his love for Véronique and had revolved about her too, giving her a nimbus of glory that she might have lacked had Marguerite never lived and been loved by him. But how could he explain this to Marguerite? He could not even tell her he had wanted to marry her. Loyalty to Marianne forbade it. . . . Besides, one did not say these things to nuns.
He told her all he could about Véronique, and then said simply, “I came home because Marianne wished it. Véronique was safe. For her I had done all I could. But I had not done all I could for Marianne.”
“You’ve not quite saved her yet?” asked Marguerite.
He looked at her, startled.
“I was thinking, William,” she said, “of the bitter, frustrated woman Marianne was when your letter came asking her to marry you. That began her salvation, you know, for she’d always loved you. But marriage is a very long process, William, isn’t it? You’ve not finished with each other yet.” Her eyes were shining with amusement, and William had the sense that she knew more than had ever been told her of the ups and downs of his life with Marianne. . . . But she had gone back again to the central point.
“That was the most unselfish act of your life, perhaps—leaving Véronique. But you’ll not really be separated, William. ‘My soul, there is a country.’ A door opens into it from the Country of the Green Pastures and a door opens into it from the Island Country.”
William, hands on knees, was silent. There were so many things that he wanted to say, without knowledge of how to say them, that he felt himself gaping for words as a landed fish for water. “When Véronique was only a little thing,” he said at last, making an effort, “she said to me, ‘Maybe lots of different countries make up Paradise, like lots of different countries make up the world. Maybe it’s just the place where your spirit can go without your body.’ ”
“Did she?” said Marguerite. “She was a wise child, but she hadn’t found her way then to the central country of all, the inner Paradise. But if she’s just such another lover as her father, she’s found it now. She’s turned the key and gone in.”
“And the key?” asked William.
“You know what it is as well as I do, William.”
He nodded. It was a special kind of love. He’d made a blundering attempt to practice it when he’d paid the price for Marianne’s happiness. He’d practiced it as perfectly as a man can when he’d paid the price for Véronique’s. He saw now that the man he’d been after that had not been quite the same fellow as before.
“Yes, she’s paid,” he said. “And—you’re right—somehow or other we’re together here. I don’t miss her as I thought I would. I don’t mind telling you, Marguerite, I thought life would be intolerable on this island without Véronique, and instead of that I’m enjoying myself to the top of my bent—feel like a boy again—”
He paused, scarlet in the face, breathing heavily, without the ghost of an idea as to how to say what he must say.
Marguerite said it for him. “And sometimes does she seem like a little girl again? The same little girl that I was once? That I still am? The child in us is always there, you know, and it’s the best part of us, the winged part that travels farthest.”
His jaw dropped and Marguerite laughed. “I’ve always felt very close to Véronique,” she explained. “Almost, sometimes, as though we were the same child. You’ve been a good brother to me, William. There’s always been a special bond between us, and of late years I’ve called the bond Marguerite-Véronique. Have you called it that too? You look startled, William. Have I said anything very odd?”
“No,” said William. “You’ve only said it—all.”
“The all is never said, William.”
William looked at her out of the corner of his eye, thinking of the proposal of marriage in that letter of his that she had spoken of, and of the slip of the pen in it. No, it certainly was not. Would that it could be.
She got up abruptly. She had found out what she had longed to know—he was happy—all was well with Véronique—he was aware of the bond between them—when she had tried to reach him through the child, she had been
successful. Legitimate curiosity being now satisfied, it was not fitting that a conversation of such extreme sensibility should be allowed to continue in the study of a nun. “I’m going to show you all that I can of the convent, William,” she said. “It is of great historical interest, and the chapel is very lovely. Bring your watch. We must be careful of the time.”
Damn the time, thought William, damn the historical interest of the convent, but he followed her obediently down the winding staircase to gaze benevolently at the Norman vaulting of the refectory and the beautiful carved corbels of the library. And the chapel really impressed him. Its rare, brave colors burning in the gloom expressed so very perfectly its atmosphere of worship and mystery and touched him deeply. This place, he realized, was at the heart of Marguerite’s life. And it was a brave life. Standing in the chapel, he realized for the first time just how brave it was. Not easy, surely, to renounce all worldly certainty just to worship something which, when all was said and done, must remain until the end of life an impenetrable mystery.
“Has it been worth while?” he asked Marguerite in a hoarse whisper.
“Yes,” she answered. “I doubt if we nuns are really as self-sacrificing as we must seem to be to you who live in the world. We don’t give everything for nothing, you know. The mystery plays fair.”
“Yes,” said William. “I’ve found that out. It plays fair.”
Marguerite opened the heavy west door, and they stepped out into the sunshine of the rocky ledge outside. “This is where I climbed up when I was a child,” she said.
“Bless my soul!” gasped William, and then gazed around him, stunned by the beauty of what he saw. Over his head was the glorious statue of the Madonna, her tall figure battered but undaunted by centuries of storm, her hood pulled over her watching eyes to shield them from the sun, her strong arm carrying with superb ease the bareheaded, unprotected child with hand raised in blessing for those who traveled homeward over the sea. And over her head was the window where at night shone the light that guided them, and from her feet the granite cliff fell away to La Baie des Petits Fleurs far down below, where Marguerite had gathered the shells that were now playthings of Véronique’s children. They could see the floor of the bay covered with silver sand, and the rocks draped with purple brown weed, and the anemone pools.
“It seemed to me a fairy place when I was a child,” said Marguerite. “I saw the pebbles with fat, smiling faces and the anemones with mad, bright eyes. I wish I could see them that way now.”
“You will,” said William with conviction.
Then he looked far out across the sparkling sea, and there again were the three islands: the fairy castle, the old man who praised God, and the bird poised for flight. He pointed them out to Marguerite. “I don’t know why,” he said, “but as I came along today they reminded me of the three of us, you and myself and Marianne.”
“That was natural,” said Marguerite. “The restless traveler, always journeying on to the fairy city on the horizon. And the lover in his gay green cloak who loves so many and comes in the end to worship God alone. And the one who has sought detachment from place and person for love of the winged state of prayer. Not long before I took my vows, William, I came out here to this ledge and thought of that trinity of search that is the same search, and I thought of the three of us, and I repeated to myself what you had said in your letter to me—‘A threefold cord shall not be broken.’ You remember that letter you wrote to me? I have it still, and I obeyed it.”
“I know you did,” said William. “I know, because taking everything by and large, Marianne and I have had a good life together. We’ve been happy.”
Thankfulness surged over Marguerite, followed by a quick, painful humility. For she could not know what part she had had in that good life, and she acknowledged herself unworthy to have had any—but they had had it. “What’s the time, William?” she ejaculated suddenly.
Oh, damn the time, thought William. He pulled out his turnip watch and looked at it “It’s up,” he said hoarsely. “Forty minutes is just no time at all.”
“It’s been long enough for the retwisting of the cord,” said Marguerite. “Next time it must be Marianne who comes alone. Tell her that, please, William. Things don’t seem quite right between us, and they must be right. Give her my love and tell her to come and see me without you.”
2
Meanwhile, at home at Le Paradis, Marianne was rearranging the parlor furniture for the fiftieth time and wishing to goodness she had not let William go to the convent without her. The fact of the matter was that just two days ago she had made a discovery that had filled her with such jealousy of Marguerite that she simply had not felt today that she could face her sister and be civil to her. And so, on an impulse, she had sent William off alone. But it had been a crazy impulse, for heaven only knew what those two were saying to each other in her absence. She did not trust these nuns. They were as sentimental as women are made. . . . And Marguerite had loved William.
That she had always known, but what she did not know, and what she felt now that she must discover, or have no peace of mind until the end of her days, was the exact truth about William’s feelings for Marguerite. Long ago he had had a boy’s love for Marguerite, yet he had chosen Marianne for his wife, and she had always told herself that she was secure in the possession of the love of his manhood. Had it been a false security? Certainly it was odd that she had had to assure herself of it so persistently. Was it the awful truth that that something in William that she had been pursuing all her life long could never be hers because he had given it to another woman? To Marguerite?
She would not have been asking herself these tormenting questions if she had not found that letter in William’s desk.
Two days ago she had sent William off for a walk that she might be alone to deal with some business correspondence regarding their investments, that she had refused to let him cope with himself lest he make a mess of it, and she had not been able to find a certain paper that she wanted. It might be in William’s desk, she had thought, for he did sometimes carry off business papers to his own domain, even though he knew perfectly well that he lacked the intelligence to deal with them satisfactorily. No good waiting till he came back from his walk, she had said to herself, for the post would be gone by then. Tomorrow’s post would perhaps be in time, but she hated delay in business matters. She must search his desk.
Yet even though the necessity for the search had been quite clear to her, she had felt a little uncomfortable when she had rustled into the room that had once been Octavius’ library and was now William’s smoking room and private sanctum, and had sat down before the big old mahogany desk to rifle his papers. . . . He never opened a single drawer in her bedroom without her permission. . . . Well, she had said to herself, he shouldn’t have gone off enjoying himself and left her alone to do all the work as usual. And how disgracefully untidy he was! They had only been in the house a few months, and yet already his pigeonholes were a welter of tangled string and crumpled envelopes and tobacco ash and absurd bits of pebbles picked up on the beach.
The paper she wanted had not been in the pigeonholes, but there had been a small, locked cupboard in the center of the desk and she had thought it might be there. William’s keys, of course, had not been in his pocket, where they should have been, but dropped carelessly on the floor beside the desk, so she had had no difficulty in opening the cupboard.
But there had been no business papers in the little cupboard, only a collection of treasures such as a child would have made. What a sentimental old thing her husband was, she had thought. Would he never grow up? With a beating heart she had looked through his little hoard, wondering if it would contain anything to remind him of his wife and their love.
Her bitter disappointment, as she pulled out first the Maori knife that Captain O’Hara had given William, and then a huge packet of Véronique’s letters, and then one of Véroniq
ue’s baby curls folded in silver paper, and the curls of all the grandchildren, and then some absurd little oddments made for him by Jane Anne, and still nothing connected with herself, had been only a little eased by the recollection that she had never been the kind of woman who gave ridiculous little gifts for no reason whatever. Her gifts to William had always been sensible things—nightshirts and socks that she had made for him, and books of the type that she had hoped would give a higher tone to his mind. But still, she had been wounded. Surely he had kept one or two of her letters? They had been parted so seldom that she had written him very few, but he had been away from her sometimes on business trips, and then she had never failed to write him sheet upon sheet of instructions. Surely he had kept a few of them? And surely he had kept the little love letter she had sent him before their marriage, enclosing the bunch of primroses? Yes! Her exploring fingers had met the crackle of thin paper, and her eyes had been so dimmed by tears of delight that it had been quite a moment or two before she had realized that it was in Marguerite’s handwriting.
She had wiped away her tears, controlled herself, and read it through with icy calm. It was nothing that she had not seen before—only that old letter that Marguerite had written to the two of them, announcing her decision to become a Roman Catholic and a nun. . . . But William had distinctly told her, long ago at the settlement, that he had lost it in the forest. She remembered the circumstances perfectly. But he hadn’t lost it. He had lied to her, for he had treasured the letter all these years. . . . She had read it again, and this time the last words of it had seemed to stand out from the paper as though the faded ink were not yet dry. “I picture you in every detail of your daily living and think of you surrounded by strange birds and beasts and butterflies that make a necklace of beauty about your day. I shall pray fervently for your happiness. Though you are so far away, the bond between us is very strong, and a threefold cord shall not be broken. You have my love and devotion always. I think of you day and night. Marguerite.”