“Really, Marguerite,” said Marianne severely, “you are the most astonishing woman I ever met. I expected your reproaches—I deserve them—but what you can find to laugh at in our situation, I do not know.”
Marguerite stopped laughing and put her hand on her sister’s. “Forgive me,” she said. “I always thought the phrase ‘drunk with joy’ such a silly one. But that’s how I feel, Marianne—just drunk. And not only with joy. With admiration, too.”
“For William?”
“For you.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Marguerite!” said Marianne testily.
“I’m not being ridiculous. When a humble soul humbles herself, she has not got far to fall, but when a proud soul humbles herself, it’s like jumping off the top of a cathedral tower. I don’t know how you had the courage to do it, Marianne. But you were always brave. And always a traveler. We’ve all come a long way, you and William and I, but you’ve made the longest journey of the three. It’s my belief, Marianne, that of the three of us you are the strongest and the best.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Marguerite!” repeated Marianne. And then she turned to her sister, her resolute old face crumpling beneath the absurd green hat like that of a child who is going to cry. “I can never forgive myself,” she said, “but if you can forgive me, it will be very sweet.”
“There isn’t any question of forgiveness,” said Marguerite. “If I once was unhappy because of what you did, the joy of today outweighs it a hundredfold.”
Beneath the shadow of Le Petit Aiguillon they kissed.
5
Half an hour later Marguerite stood watching the tiny green fairylike figure of her sister bobbing away into the distance. They had talked of many things after that kiss, of William and Véronique and their parents, and of the childhood’s years that now in old age seemed more vivid to both of them than any of the years that lay between. And Marguerite, too, had asked for forgiveness for that bitterness that had tinged her thoughts of her sister for years past, and for perhaps a too great intimacy in her talk with William the other day, for which she now reproached herself. “Then reproach yourself no longer,” Marianne had retorted to this. “Surely, now, between the three of us, there cannot be too great an intimacy. I am going home at once to tell William that you know you have always been his love.”
“One of them,” had corrected Marguerite.
“Yes, one of them,” Marianne had agreed. “He loves me. He is quite crazy about Véronique. He is an idiotically doting grandfather. Never was there such a lover as William. Good-by, Marguerite, I have never loved you so well. You’d better go straight home and get breakfast and go to sleep.”
And now she was disappearing into the distance and Marguerite was watching her. Now the little green figure had disappeared altogether among the tamarisk trees of the village.
Go straight home? It was good advice, as well as her duty. Yet when she left Le Petit Aiguillon it was toward La Baie des Petits Fleurs that her feet took her, for this singing happiness that possessed her was the happiness that children feel, and she was back again in her childhood. Quickly she crossed the golden sand and went in between the two great rocks that guarded the entrance to the little bay. She had visited it many times since her childhood, but always burdened with adult preoccupations, never in this childlike mood. What had happened to the little bay this morning? It was peopled with fairy creatures whom she could not see but of whom she was as vividly aware as she was aware of the sunshine and the fresh air. She stood entranced, listening and watching. The sand was silver here, not golden as it was in the larger bay, and was studded with opal-tinted, jewel-like pebbles, and rock pools full of frilly anemones. And all the pebbles had fat, smiling faces and the anemones had mad, bright eyes above their frills. And the little shell beach beyond was carpeted with flowers in springtime, and all the shells had mouths and all of them were singing, their myriad tiny voices making a music that one could hear and not hear, like the sound of bells that the wind is always catching away. She caught her breath in delight. When the gates of fairyland had clanged shut behind her in her childhood, she did not know that they would open again when she was old. She looked up and a seagull was flying slowly backward and forward, seeming to gather all the light of the place with his shining wings and to trail it in long threads of silver after him, as though weaving a pattern in the air over her head, like one of those canopies powdered with stars that one sees in old pictures over the heads of queens. She looked up at him, loving him. He was a symbol of prayer, of the prayer that went on day and night in the great convent that was towering up above her, the convent that was home.
6
Marianne, too, as she drove home through the perfect summer morning, was absurdly happy. The catharsis of the last few days had left her feeling dead tired, yet it was a pleasant, tranquil sort of fatigue, the kind of tiredness that a traveler feels who is home at last after a long and wearisome journey. And deep inside her she was not tired at all, but younger and stronger than she had ever been, nourished as never before. “Comme le cerf soupire après l’eau des fontaines, ainsi mon âme soupire après toi, O mon Dieu,” she had embroidered on her sampler long ago. “Mon âme a soif de Dieu, du Dieu vivant: quand entrerai-je et me présenterai-je devant la face de Dieu?” In those days she had not been able to understand her own insatiable hunger for experience. She understood it now. It had just been the old, agelong hunger for le Dieu vivant. In her childhood she had pictured le Dieu vivant as an old man with a long white beard so distantly removed from her that it was really not possible to take an overwhelming interest in him; but now she took the phrase as being descriptive of an indescribable something from which the soul breathed in her life when she was home at last, home in that country on the other side of the locked door. She gave no name to that country. Others might call it what they liked, but for herself she preferred to leave nameless a thing so far beyond her power to comprehend. Yet the analogy of the thirsty hart was precious to her. She saw the trembling creature, exhausted by the storms of the long day of travel, coming at last in the cool of the evening to the water brook flowing beneath the green fern. Standing in the lush green grass of that country, sucking in the life-giving water, he was herself.
Yet he was not at the source of the water, and perhaps it was like her arrogance to dare to call this happiness of hers a coming home. Humbly she acknowledged that there was no permanence about it. By this time next week, such was her selfishness and pride, she might find herself once more a changeling, strayed again from home, with the door to unlock all over again. Yet once you had been home, surely it was easier to get home again, and each fresh fight to get back to the water brook would bring one nearer to its source, and that final coming home that would be the satisfaction of every longing and the healing of every pain.
Meanwhile the small, recurrent, shadow homecomings of this life were the best things in it, the physical returns as well as the spiritual ones. Would she ever forget the delight of coming back to the Island with William? Later she had shadowed their joy with her jealousy and striving, but for a few hours it had been perfect happiness. And so it would be again.
“I’ll keep those blue curtains,” she thought, falling suddenly to mundane affairs again. Yes, she’d keep them, and the old Dutch plate too. What an idiot she had been to try and make Le Paradis wholly her own. It was of the essence of home that it should hold out its arms to diverse personalities and gather them together into a harmonious whole. A house stamped with one personality only was surely more like the cell of a prisoner condemned to solitary confinement than a home. Yes, they should all live together at Le Paradis now, herself and William, Marguerite and Charlotte, the little convent orphans, Sophie and Octavius, the old sea captain, and all the other happy ghosts whose presence in the shadows of her home she had so much resented.
She leaned back against the cushions of the little carriage and looked about her. How lov
ely the Island was. For years she had been too busy to have much attention to spare for beauty, but now she felt carefree as a child again and had a child’s clear sight. The islands lying on the blue sea stabbed her with their beauty, and the scent of the escallonia flowers, drifting to her now and again on the wind, moved her to just the same sudden ecstatic surprise that she had known in her childhood when her “moments” had fallen upon her like snowflakes out of a clear sky. The whole drive seemed to her heightened awareness a succession of these lovely moments. She could have cried aloud with delight at the sight of the windmills on their green knolls and the old church towers showing above the green trees, at the sight of the dun-colored cattle browsing in the fresh green grass and the small streams flowing swiftly through the water lanes down to the sea. And then they reached St. Pierre and were driving through sunlit streets whose familiarity was so veiled by a new enchantment that the cobbles might all have turned to gold and the walls to mother-of-pearl. And then they had reached Le Paradis and the front door stood wide open between the hydrangeas, with the paneled hall cool and welcoming beyond, and she was running up the steps to find William.
He was in the parlor, striding up and down in a great state of agitation, and she went straight into his arms like a child.
“I am sorry I am so late for breakfast,” she said. “I went out to the convent to see Marguerite and to tell her about the mistake you made in your letter.”
“Eh?” asked William stupidly.
“I have been with Marguerite, William. I told her it was she whom you had really wanted to marry. I told her the whole story.”
“You—told—Marguerite?” ejaculated William.
“Yes. You don’t mind, William, do you?”
“Mind?”
She was a little scared, for he was holding her so tightly and bellowing so loudly over her head. She peeped up at him under the brim of her absurd tall green hat. No, he was not angry. His face was shining like the rising sun.
“Now there’s absolute truth between the three of us, William. And as perfect love as there can be on this earth. And forgiveness. For you have forgiven me, haven’t you, William?”
“Forgiven you?” bellowed William.
Again she peeped up at him and saw his tawny eyes blazing with love . . . for her.
She had got him at last. The triumph of it! Oh, the triumph of it! Now at last they were going to experience together the fairyland of mutual love that she had always longed for. Oh, the triumph of it!
“And I’ll never be proud again, William,” she whispered brokenly yet proudly in his arms. “Never, never again.”
There was a derisive squawk from the bird cage hanging in the window.
“Oh, my!” ejaculated Old Nick in mocking tones. And then, very doubtfully indeed, “Oh, my?”
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