Those last words, Marianne had thought, as they burned themselves deeply into her memory, had been addressed to William only.
And so now, two days later, as she rearranged the parlor for the fiftieth time, she was beside herself. For she could see no way of arriving at the truth, and yet arrive at it she must, for uncertainty was a thing that she had never been able to endure—above all in this vital matter of her possession of William. Beside it her other intense preoccupation, the remodeling of No. 3 Le Paradis, seemed now of little importance. Yet she would bend all her will to it this afternoon, she decided, just to keep herself upon an even keel.
For weeks now she had been laboring at the transformation of No. 3 into a home that from attic to cellar should have upon it the stamp of Marianne Ozanne, and it was an extraordinary thing, but she could not do it. In old days she had succeeded in making her bedroom the mirror of her personality; but that had been only one room; the whole house was another matter. And almost she felt that it was alive and fighting her. She imagined that she had done what she wanted with the farmhouse at the Green Pastures, and the house at the settlement, but they had been new houses. This one was very old—far older than its eighteenth-century columns and stucco front—as old as any house in St. Pierre. At what age did old houses come alive and take to themselves this fighting power? It was not that the house could not take impressions, for the stamp of the convent had been strong upon it, and below that had been Sophie’s gentle image, and below that, when she was trying to eradicate it, she had distinctly found the old sea captain from whom Octavius had bought the house upon his marriage, and beyond him again there were ghosts in the shadows of the house whose presence she resented quite intensely, but it took them as though they were the petals of a flower and incorporated them into the living whole that was itself. That was all she could hope to be, she was beginning to realize, one small and unimportant petal. Struggling with the obstinate house, she was reminded of a remark of Captain O’Hara’s: “There’s much that goes to the makin’ of a man or woman into somethin’ better than a brute beast, but there’s three things in chief, an’ they’re the places where life sets us down, an’ the folk life knocks us up against, an’—not the things ye get, but the things ye don’t get.” As regarded herself and places, she had always imagined that it was she who did the making. But perhaps she had been wrong. Certainly this old house of Le Paradis was doing the making this time—it was turning her into a defeated woman. And fighting it was taking up so much of her time that she had not even begun yet to see about establishing social ascendancy in Island society. People had called and given her and William a warm welcome, and William had embarked already upon the beginnings of several pleasant friendships, but so absorbed with the house had she been that she had, she realized suddenly, taken a back seat.
It would not do. It simply would not do. She was not going to be beaten like this in her old age. She stood in the center of the parlor and glared about her. What had induced her to buy those curtains? This wretched convent influence must have been upon her when she did it, for they were Madonna blue and far too plain. Blue was not her color. It was Marguerite’s. She would do away with them and get some others—green or cherry red. Sophie’s escritoire hit her in the eye and she could almost see her mother’s lovely fair head bent over her correspondence. The escritoire was in too prominent a position; she pushed it to a shadowed corner. It was not that she had not loved her mother, she said to herself defensively, but this was her house now, not Sophie’s. Where had that old Dutch plate, hung below her sampler, come from? She remembered now. Several things that had belonged to the old sea captain had been bought by Octavius when he bought the house, and that was one of them. It was a thing of value, and she would find a place for it somewhere, but it must not hang there below her sampler, for it detracted attention from her exquisite embroidery. She lifted it down. For the time being she would put it in the cupboard where Sophie had been used to store surplus china—the one beside the fireplace.
But the cupboard was locked.
She rang the bell for Charlotte, who appeared instantly, her hands still floury from her cake making, for she had learned years ago to answer Marianne’s bells at once, lest worse befall.
“Charlotte, where is the key of this cupboard? And how did it come to be locked? I don’t like locked cupboards in my house.”
Charlotte looked vague. This vagueness was the only indication of old age that she gave, but Marianne found it a most annoying one.
“I believe, M’dame, that I locked that cupboard when the orphans moved in. There was a cedarwood box of your mother’s inside that I did not want the children to meddle with. Now what could I have done with the key?”
“Fetch me that box of keys from the hall drawer,” commanded Marianne. “I expect we’ll find another that fits.”
They found one quite easily, and the inside of the cupboard was revealed—quite empty except for the cedarwood box. Marianne pulled it out and opened it.
“There it is!” ejaculated Charlotte.
“Where is what?” demanded Marianne.
“Miss Marguerite’s sampler. When she was having your sampler framed, M’dame, she said she wished she could find her own. But she could not remember what she had done with it when she left Le Paradis for the convent.”
“It was not worth framing,” snapped Marianne, and then, ashamed of having spoken so bitterly before a servant, she said gently, “Thank you, Charlotte. That will do. Now go back to your cake making.”
Alone again, she sat down on the sofa, bright with its new honeysuckle chintz, and took out the contents of the cedarwood box. . . . Marguerite’s absurd little sampler, with its stiff little potted trees hung with golden fruit, the border of the stars of Paradise and “Au nom de Dieu soit” worked in crooked scarlet cross-stitch; the wooden mouse with the sticking-plaster ears and the ribald expression that William had given Marguerite upon her twelfth birthday; and an exquisite carved Chinese necklace that she had never seen before. . . . Obviously three treasures of Marguerite’s that she had not been able to bring herself to destroy when she left her home for the convent. How like Marguerite’s sentimentality to cherish such rubbish, and how like her unpracticality to have no better idea as to what to do with it than shoving it away at the back of a dark cupboard! Marianne folded up the sampler again and dropped the silly little mouse on her lap as though it were burning her fingers. She had always hated that mouse, and the thought that even in her middle age Marguerite had cared so much for the creature that she had not been able to consign it to the flames was not pleasant. It was confirmation of the unwelcome idea that Marguerite had never got over her love for William.
Remained the necklace. Had that, too, been a present from William? She examined it carefully. It was a lovely thing, like a rosary, each separate bead an exquisite carving of some bird or beast or butterfly. “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. You have my love and devotion always. I think of you day and night.” Yes, he had sent this exquisite thing to Marguerite, and in that wicked, deceitful letter of hers, pretending to be for the two of them but in reality addressed only to William, she had thanked him for it. All their lives, evidently, these two had been carrying on some sort of clandestine love affair behind her back. And Marguerite a nun! Her lifelong jealousy of that wicked woman had evidently not been unreasonable. But why had William married her? Why? Why? Why? Her small jeweled hands clutching the necklace and the mouse, she sat there rigid on the sofa, suffering as surely not even she had suffered yet. Her sampler hung there on the wall looking at her. “Au bruit de tes torrents, un abîme appelait un autre abîme: tous tes flots, toutes tes vagues ont passé sur moi.” The noise of a great flood was in her ears, drawing nearer and nearer, and her soul shrank within her with fear, knowing that very soon she would be overw
helmed.
Not even a glimmering of self-control or common sense had returned to her when a happy stumping and a cheery caroling of song in the hall told her that William had returned—from Marguerite. Sentimental ballads were very popular just now, and William was very partial to them. The sea chanties he had caroled in his youth, “What Shall We Do with the Drunken Sailor?” and “Blow the Man Down,” had been superseded in his affections by “Oft in the Stilly Night” and “O Red, Red Rose.” There were times when Marianne felt that if she was given any more information (a semitone flat) about the cheerful hearts now broken, or alternatively (two semitones flat) about the melody that’s sweetly played in tune, she would surely go demented. And the happier William was, the louder and flatter he sang.
“As fair art thou, my bonnie lass,” he boomed now, banging the front door shut,
“So deep in luve am I;
And I will luve thee, still, my dear,
Till a’ the seas gang dry.”
There was a pause while he flung his walking stick clattering into the hall stand.
“Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear,
And the rocks melt wi’ the sun;
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
While the sands o’ life shall run.”
He wiped his feet on the hall mat.
“And fare thee well, my only luve,
And fare thee well awhile!
And I will come again, my luve,
Tho’ it were ten thousand mile.”
And so he had. And Marianne herself had assisted him upon the journey.
Upon the last triumphant note the parlor door flew open and William entered upon his wife, his round red face beaming with the deep and satisfying happiness that his interview with Marguerite had brought him. Had it not been for the joy in his face, perhaps Marianne might have been able to regain possession of her senses, but the joy finished her. She could scarcely breathe as William came stumping cheerily over to her, his attention caught by the treasures on her lap.
“Eh?” he ejaculated, fumbling for his glasses on their black satin ribbon. “What’s that, Marianne? What have you found? Eh?”
He perched his glasses on his nose and verified them. “Bless my soul!” he ejaculated, completely off his guard. “Bless my soul, if it’s not that mouse I made for Marguerite! And the necklace I sent her! And her funny little sampler, bless her! Where’d you find ’em, Marianne?”
She flung them on the sofa and got up and faced him. “Hidden away,” she said. “Hidden—like all that has been between you and my sister all these years. Why did you marry me, William, when you loved her best all the while? Why? Why?”
She had come close to him and she was holding his arms, shaking him, watching his face, with an agonized intentness. Caught in a relaxed mood, completely bemused by the summer sunshine, his long walk, and the bliss of his afternoon, William’s common sense also was at a low ebb. “Eh?” he ejaculated stupidly, and his red face went beetroot and his jaw dropped. Looking at him Marianne thought she had never seen such a picture of guilt.
“You’ve never loved me,” she whispered. “You’ve been a liar always. You expressed such devotion to me in the letter you wrote to my father—that letter—” She paused, gasping. “That letter to my father—you lied—I know now—”
William, too, was gasping. “No lie,” he said, “just a slip of the pen, my dear. And how the dickens did you find out, Marianne? Did I blab in my sleep? Must have. Always thought I should. For I never told a soul. I never told a living soul.”
“What did you never tell a living soul?”
Her fingers were nipping into his arms like pincers, and her little disfigured face, so near his own, terrified him by its fury. There was not a single grain of sense left in his head. He did not know what he was saying.
“That I mixed up your name and Marguerite’s. That I asked your father for the wrong girl.”
3
Marianne was alone in her fourposter, in the big bedroom looking toward the sea that had once been occupied by Sophie and Octavius. She was secure in her loneliness, for she had locked both the bedroom door and William’s dressing room door. The bed was made up in his dressing room, and he could sleep there if he came upstairs. He had not come upstairs yet, though it was long after midnight. She supposed he was still in his little smoking room, to which he had gone when that long, ghastly after-dinner explanation was at last over. That dinner! She did not know how they got through it, keeping up a conversation before Charlotte’s daughter, their parlormaid, forcing food down their throats that they could not taste. She suspected that William had managed better than she had. But then he was used to deception. His performance at dinner had been just one more lie in the lifetime of deception that he had lived at her side. Had ever any woman in the whole course of the world been so shamefully deceived?
Oh, the shame of it! The shame of it! She could get no further than that. In this abysmal hour she seemed lying at the bottom of a great pit and the waters were closing over her head. “All thy waves and storms are gone over me.” She was drowned in the depth of her shame. There was nothing left in her life at all—only her shame. Her faith that William had loved her and desired her, that she had been, was, always would be, first in his life, a faith that she saw now had existed always with an undercurrent of unacknowledged suspicion, was shattered, and because it had been the most important thing in her life it seemed that everything else had gone too. Everything had hinged upon her pride in having been loved and chosen by William. That pride had justified her self-confidence and been the mainspring of every effort that she had made, and now the breaking of it had turned every achievement of her life to dust and ashes. There was nothing left at all. It was useless for William to tell her, as he had told her over and over again during the long hours of their dreadful evening together, that he loved her, that she had been the making of him, that without her, heaven knew what might have become of him out there in New Zealand, that he owed everything to her—success, the respect of friends and neighbors, his child, his grandchildren, everything—that she was his loving and beloved wife, and that he shared with her the closest tie on earth. It was all no good. He had neither desired nor chosen her. Whatever love he might now feel for her had not been spontaneously given but deliberately manufactured. When she had thrown this at his head, he had not denied it but had said—what that strange little girl of her dreams had also said to her inattentive ear—that there are more sorts of love than one, and that the love he had given to her was just as worth having as the love he had given to Marguerite. This she had denied, and was still denying, as she lay alone in the darkness, with passion. The sort of love that he had given her, deliberately created, not drawn irresistibly forth by the loveliness of the beloved, implied no merit in the object of it and was not worth having. No, she had nothing—nothing.
Another hour passed, and she heard William come up to bed. He tried the door, with a gentleness that implied that he was wanting to comfort her, but when he found it locked, he made no further effort to come to her, and presently she heard the bed in his dressing room creaking. But the creaks were not followed by his usual cheerful snoring. . . . He was not sleeping. . . . At first she rejoiced cruelly in his sleeplessness. Then she forgot about him. The adoring husband of her imagination had never had any existence in actual fact. He did not exist. Nothing existed. Nothing . . . except the dark night.
But there was the dark night. Very slowly she became conscious of it, and then she found that she was hugging it to her in her misery, rejoicing in it as something given back to her out of the nothingness, a cloak to hide her in this hour of her humiliation. . . . Something. . . . For a long while the night was all that she had, and then suddenly she was aware of a bright beam of light that pierced through the drawn curtains of her fourposter and lay like a sword across the foot of her bed. . . . Moonlight. . . . She put o
ut a hand and drew the curtains aside, and with a stunning sense of shock saw all the stars of heaven blazing in the night sky. Charlotte had forgotten to draw her window curtains that evening, and when she undressed she had been too much absorbed in her misery to notice the omission. Now she lay and looked at the stars. They were unusually bright. The warm, still day had ended with wind, and it was as though the wind had burnished the stars to flame. They were like New Zealand stars, like the stars that had shone down upon the Parsonage garden at Wellington when Tai Haruru had taken her in his arms and told her that he loved her. . . . That he loved her. . . . Then he loved the child in her, the lost, lonely, passionate changeling child. He had not wanted to love her, he had not tried to do it, his love had been called forth without his volition simply by the fact of what she was. As benignant as the moonlight, like a salve pouring over a wound, came the knowledge that Tai Haruru had loved her exactly as William had loved Marguerite. Unloved? Possessing nothing? She had been loved by two men, who had loved her quite differently but with equal selflessness; Tai Haruru just for the fact of what she was, and William for what he could give her. She was rich. She was rich beyond measure, yet aware now that it was through no merit of her own. Something that Tai Haruru had said to her that night under the stars came back to her now. He had said that the breaking of her conviction that William utterly belonged to her would be the only thing that would ever really humble her. Perhaps he was right. She didn’t know. She was too humiliated just at present to dare to think that the virtue of humility might one day be her own.