Chapter VII Showing How History Repeats Itself
Engrossed in her own gentle melancholy Madame crossed slowly towards the river. She was sincerely distressed about Marjolaine. What could be the matter with the child? This question had haunted her all the week; but whenever she had tried to speak to her daughter, the latter had evaded her on one pretext or another. In vain Madame racked her brains. Marjolaine was not ill; yet she had no appetite; the colour had faded from her cheeks; the spring had gone out of her step; and the laughter had died from her lips. Madame remembered the time—long ago: twenty years ago and more—when she herself had looked and spoken and moved, just as Marjolaine did now; but there had been a very good reason for that. In Marjolaine’s case there could be no reason. No one had crossed her young life—or, was she mistaken? That young man who had so suddenly appeared: who had so suddenly revived the most poignant memories of her own youth!—Was it conceivable that he and Marjolaine had met? had perhaps met frequently? It was not conceivable. Marjolaine was the soul of truth. Marjolaine had been perfectly happy until a few days ago. Marjolaine had not shown any signs of recognition when the young man stood there. And yet? Was it wise to be too sure? In her own case there had been secrecy, and, now she remembered, she had borne the secrecy unflinchingly; had shown a perfectly calm and happy exterior. The secrets of the young seem to them quite innocent: merely possessions of their own which they keep to themselves, which they cannot understand they are in duty bound to disclose to their elders. And, to be sure, her own father—she had lost her mother in early youth—had never tried to win her confidence. A great entomologist cannot be expected to allow his attention to be distracted by a girl’s sentimental nonsense. But she—had she paid enough attention to her daughter? Had she not allowed herself to be lulled into false security by the remoteness of Pomander Walk? But if the young man—Jack Sayle, of all people in the world!—had won Marjolaine’s heart, why, here were the beginnings of a bitter tragedy: her own tragedy all over again. It must be nipped in the bud. Mercilessly. She must be cruel to be kind. Could she be cruel to Marjolaine? Motherhood had its duties, however, and, now that this great fear was on her, she saw her duty plainly, and would do it.
She was interrupted in her meditations by the sound of weeping, and for the first time, she saw poor Marjolaine sitting under the tree, bending low, with her face in her hands, shaken with great sobs. She hurried across to the weeping girl, placed her arm very tenderly over her shoulders and gently called her by her name.
The touch of her mother’s arm, the sound of her mother’s voice let loose the floodgates. With a cry of “Oh, Maman!” Marjolaine threw her arms round her mother’s waist and buried her face against her. Madame sat down beside her and drew her very close. “Chérie—my darling! What is the matter?”
Marjolaine tried to master herself; tried to put on a brave face; dashed the tears from her eyes, as she answered—“Nothing, Maman. I think—it is so beautiful here!—So peaceful! It made me cry. Let me cry a little on your heart.”
There was a sad smile on Madame’s face. As if you cried because the sun was shining and the Walk was quiet! “Cry, Marjolaine,” she murmured soothingly. “Do you think I have not been watching you all this week? Cry, my darling, and tell me.”
“There is nothing to tell, Maman,” said the girl between her sobs. “Realty and truly there is nothing.” She looked wistfully towards the river. “There was something; but—” and down went her head on her mother’s breast—“there is nothing now.”
Madame stroked the fair head lying on her bosom. “My dear, my dear!—I tried every day to speak to you, but you would not. For the first time in our lives you and I, who should be everything to each other, were parted.”
“Oh, Maman!” cried Marjolaine, looking up into her mother’s face, “that was because I was waiting to tell you a great secret. But the secret no longer exists. It has”—she made one of her quaint little gestures—“it has—evaporated!” And with a new outburst of tears she again hid her face.
Madame looked at her lovingly, and kept silence a moment. So, then, there was a secret? What secret? What but one secret is ever in a young girl’s heart? “Ah, chérie,” she murmured, “you see? The secret exists: it is gnawing at your heart. It will hurt you and hurt you, till you tell me.”
Marjolaine looked up. Her mother was right. Speaking might bring her some relief. She would tell her. She tried to speak; but a look of puzzled amazement came into her eyes. Now that she was willing and anxious to speak, she had nothing to say.
“Tell me,” repeated Madame.
“I can’t, Maman.”
“Why not?”
“I cannot begin alone: I don’t know how.”
“Shall I help you, Marjolaine?”
“Can you?”
Madame could only guess; but even if the guess were mistaken, it might lead to the truth. So she spoke tentatively.
“Let us say, you were sitting here, under the elm? And that stranger, that young man—”
There was no need to go on. Marjolaine had already risen to her feet. Her thoughts were let loose: all the thoughts she had locked in her breast during the past week, the memories that had been tormenting her, the problems she had been struggling with. She saw Jack Sayle as if he were standing before her. “He stood over there, in the sun”—she spoke quietly but intensely—“and he looked at me, and I looked at him; and—” her voice was hushed, and although she addressed her mother she did not turn to her, but kept her eyes on the spot where Jack had stood—“Mother! what happened to me? I felt as if he and I had always known each other, and as if we were alone in the world. No! As if he were alone, and I were a part of him. And we spoke. Nothings. Things that didn’t matter. Silly things; about his being thirsty, and what I could give him. But it was only our voices speaking. I know it was only my voice: it was not I. I was thinking of sunshine and music and flowers. And then we went into the Gazebo; and the foolish talk ran on! And all the time my heart was singing!—He told me his name; and my heart took it and wove music around it, and sang it! and sang it!” Her voice sank to an awed whisper. “And—Mother!—I seemed to step out of childhood suddenly, into—into what, Mother?—What was it?”
“Alas!” sighed Madame. The child’s words had carried her back, so far, so far! Back to her own early youth. Just so had the day been transfigured for her. Just so the sunshine had taken on a new glamour. Just so her own heart had sung its hymns of rapture. Just so she had stepped across the threshold of childhood.
But Marjolaine continued. “When he went, I felt as if he had taken me with him: my heart and my mind. He said he was coming again—but he never came; and every day I have wandered about; looking for what he had taken; looking for my life!” she sank on her knees at her mother’s feet. “He will never come again! He will never bring back what he has carried away!—Oh, mother, what is it?”
Her tears flowed freely now, but silently: tears of relief at having unburdened her heart. Madame looked down at her with such pity as only a mother can feel. “My darling! Is it so serious as that? God help us, poor blind things!” She remembered what she must have been doing while this fateful meeting took place. “While my child was going through the fire, I was matching silks for my embroidery!”
Marjolaine looked up at her with great, innocent eyes. “But it would have been the same if you had been there!”
“I suppose so,” said Madame, sadly. “There is no barrier against it: not even a mother’s arms.”
“But what is it?” asked Marjolaine, wistfully.
Her mother looked at her searchingly, and Marjolaine met her gaze steadfastly, with her clear, truthful eyes. It was patent she did not indeed know what caused this new pain at her heart. Madame looked long. Her daughter seemed, in a way, suddenly to have become a stranger to her. This child was a child no longer, and her mother no longer held the first place in her heart. Yes! and if Marjolaine had suddenly leapt out of childhood, then she, the mother, must begin to face old age: she was the mother of a marriageable girl. She would fight against this while she could; not for unworthy or small motives, but to keep her daughter’s companionship. Who was this Jack Sayle that he should come like a thief in the night and steal Marjolaine’s youth, her happiness and her peace of mind, and tear the girl out of her mother’s arms? “No,” she said, at last, “I will not tell you. If I told you it would grow stronger; and it must not. It shall not. You must win yourself back, as I did. Oh! but sooner, and more completely!”
Marjolaine was amazed. Had her mother gone through what she was going through now? “As you did—?” she cried, in a voice which betrayed her astonishment.
Madame smiled sadly. “My dearest dear, the young never realise they are not beginning the world. Your story is mine.”
With a cry of “Oh, mother!” Marjolaine nestled closer.
“Yes; but mine was longer and therefore left more pain in its track. Chérie, chérie, I am not telling you this to make light of your sorrow, but to show you I know what your pain is: to show you how to fight now, now, with all your might, to win yourself back.” She paused a moment, to gather her thoughts and to gather strength. Then she continued very softly, almost as if she were speaking to herself, “It was years and years ago, in my father’s garden—in the old vicarage garden—that I felt the sun and the song enter my heart. He and I were very young and very happy.” Madame paused. “And then he rode away; and I never saw him again.”
“Maman!” whispered Marjolaine, stroking her mother’s cheek.
“We had lived in our dream a whole year; so my love—”
Marjolaine started at the word. “Love!” Was this love?—
But her mother did not notice her, and went on; “So my love had time to grow. Its roots were twined round my heart; and when he left me, and tore the roots out of me, I thought he had torn my heart out with them.”
“Like me,” said Marjolaine, below her breath.
Madame drew her closer, and whispered, “Would you like to know his name?”
There was something in her mother’s voice which told Marjolaine her mother had some special reason for asking her. “Yes; what was it?” she asked, hushed, and very tenderly.
Her mother looked straight into her eyes and answered slowly, “Jack—Sayle.”
Marjolaine recoiled in amazement. “Mother!—I don’t understand!”
“The father of the boy you have seen!”
“How wonderful!”
“Much more wonderful things happen every day. It’s much more wonderful that I can tell you this now: that I ever grew out of my love. For I loved him—ah, how deeply!”
There was a long silence.
Here was a curious thing. If any profane eye had lighted on the group—the young girl kneeling at Madame’s feet in the green coolness of the elm; that profane eye would have got the impression that here were a mother and daughter closely linked in some common sorrow, and clinging to each other for mutual consolation. In one sense that impression would have been the right one; but in one sense only. Their thoughts were worlds apart. Madame was remembering the days when she was Lucy Pryor, the daughter of the vicar of Otford. The great Lord Otford was Lord of the Manor, and his son, the Honourable John Sayle, being a delicate lad, was studying desultorily with the Vicar. The Vicar was more interested in butterflies than in Greek roots, and the boy and girl spent most of their time in the great vicarage garden. Thus the lad had grown strong and well set up. He was gazetted into the Army, and sent to America, where the war had just broken out. There he stayed five years. Lucy treasured the dearest memories of her playfellow, and when he came back, a splendid lieutenant, it is hardly necessary to say that they fell seriously in love. Their love was patent to everyone except the vicar and the old Lord. When the latter discovered it, his fury was indescribable. He drove the vicar out of his living, and had him transferred to a miserable parish in the East-end of London, where there was n’t a single butterfly; and he sent his son, who had retired from the army, on the Grand Tour. The lovers parted, vowing to be faithful; but young Sayle very soon forgot his vows in the excitement of travel. At Rome he met the Honourable Mabel Scott, daughter of Lord Polhousie, and, to cut a long story short, he married her, without a thought for poor Lucy, whom the shock nearly killed. Nor did he ever know the blow he had inflicted, nor ever hear from her, or of her, again. She was lost in the wilderness of London. A few years later he had succeeded his father, and was sent as Ambassador to Vienna. In the same year his son John—our Jack—was born, and his birth was closely followed by the mother’s death.
Marjolaine, too, was thinking hard. All sorts of new ideas, new conceptions, were looming on her horizon. They came as angels, certainly, but angels with flaming swords. It seemed that great happiness could be inextricably interwoven with great misery, so that a simple human being could not tell where the one began and the other ended. It seemed that a man could say one thing and mean another: that he could look like the Archangel Michael and yet not mean what he said. It seemed that you could be wounded in all your finest and most sensitive nerves just for looking at a man. It seemed also, that your pride was of no use to you whatever, but deserted you when it was most needed, or, rather, turned against you, and helped to hurt you. This must be enquired into.
“Mère, chérie,” she whispered.
“What, my darling?” asked Madame, coming out of her dream.
Marjolaine pressed her hand to her heart. There was an actual physical pain there, as if an iron band were crushing it. “Is this—is what I feel—love?”
“Ah!” cried Madame, “I have betrayed myself. I did not mean you to know. I am afraid it was going to be—love.”
“Going to be! But it is! Or else, this ache? What is it?”
“Crush it now!” Madame was distressed. She would not allow Marjolaine’s young life to be blighted as her own had been. “Crush it now! Fiercely! ruthlessly! and it will be nothing. You have only seen him once—”
“Does that make any difference?”
What could one answer to such a question? One could only ignore it. “You must be very brave; very determined; and put the thought of him away.”
Marjolaine shook her head sadly. How could she put the thought of him away? It was in her. It filled her. It was she herself. And did she want to put it away? Would she put it away if she could? It seemed to her that if the thought were withdrawn now, she would be left a hollow husk of a thing, with no thought at all.
Madame saw she had gone too far too quickly. “Dear, I know. It took me a long time, because I had been happy so long; but at last, when your father came, I was able to put my hand in his, and look straight into his eyes.”
Here was a new mystery for Marjolaine. So good and beautiful a woman as her mother could love twice, then?
“Mother,” said she, with grave enquiry, “did you love my father as much as you had loved Jack?”
However good and blameless we may be, it is a very uncomfortable experience to be cross-examined by utter, single-minded innocence.
“Listen,” said Madame, “life is long, and nature merciful. I recovered very slowly; but I tried to be brave; I tried to take an interest in the life around me: the sordid, sunless life of the very poor, so much sadder than my own. Then Jules Lachesnais came to live with us—with my father and me—in order to study the English language and our political institutions. A great friendship sprang up between us. When my father died, Jules urged me to marry him. I was utterly alone in the world; I felt a deep affection for him; and I consented.”
She waited for Marjolaine to say something; but Marjolaine was silent.
“He took me to France, where you were born. We went through the horrors of the Revolution side by side. He played an active part in those horrible days; always on the side of justice and moderation. The aim of his life was to see his country under a constitutional government, such as he had learnt to admire during his stay in England. The excesses he was forced to witness disgusted him, and he resisted them with all his might.” Madame was lost in her reminiscences. “Ah, yes! You were too young to know; but we all ran grave risks of falling victims to the guillotine. Your father hailed Napoleon as a deliverer; but when Napoleon began to usurp power, he foresaw the dawning tyranny; still more when Napoleon was made consul for life. He retired more and more from public affairs, thereby incurring the tyrant’s anger and again endangering his life. When Napoleon was proclaimed Emperor your father protested publicly—think of the courage! He was expelled, and he died disappointed and heartbroken. He was a brave, true man, faithful to his ideals. I was very proud of him; very happy and contented. And I am very happy and contented now,” she added defiantly,—“or I shall be, when I see you have won the victory!”
But Marjolaine was merciless. This was all very well, as far as her mother was concerned. “But what became of poor Jack?” she asked.
“Poor Jack!” Madame laughed bitterly. “Poor Jack had married some great lady!”
At once poor Jack had lost all Marjolaine’s sympathy. She muttered between her teeth, “Caroline Thring.”
“I tell you,” protested Madame—and perhaps she protested just a shade too strongly—“I ceased to think of him. I forgot him.”
Marjolaine’s brow was puckered in thought. Could one forget? “But, mother,” she said, very simply, “if you had forgotten him, why did you swoon when you heard his name?”
Down went the cloak of self-deception Madame had so carefully wrapped round herself. She took her daughter’s face in both her hands and looked at her sadly. “Ah! my little girl is become a woman indeed! The innocence of the dove, and the guile of the serpent!—Well! Think over what I have told you. Come, now, chérie, you promise to fight?”
“Yes,” said Marjolaine, without conviction.
“You promise to conquer?”
“I promise to try.”
“At least you see there can be nothing between Lord Otford’s son and my daughter?”
“Yes.” Oh, what a hesitating yes!
Madame folded her in her arms. “Try to lighten someone else’s sorrow,” she said, kissing her tenderly, “then you will forget your own, and the roses will bloom in your cheeks again.”
The Walk was beginning to show signs of life. The Eyesore came slouching back, and resumed his fishing with a lack-lustre eye. The early housekeeping having got itself done, the ladies of the Walk were showing themselves at their windows, tending their flowers or dusting their ornaments. Miss Ruth Pennymint came bustling out of her door, with needlework. She looked up at the overcast sky and held up the back of her hand.
“Ah,” said Madame, catching sight of her. “Coming into the fresh air to work, Miss Ruth?”
Miss Ruth was evidently not in the best of tempers. “Of course it’s going to rain,” she snapped.
“Oh, not yet,” said Madame, conciliatorily.
“Do you mind if I sew here?” said Miss Ruth. “It’s so lonesome in the house, when Barbara’s locked up with that precious bird!”
What could be the matter? The word “precious” was uttered in a manner which conveyed an exactly opposite meaning. Madame said soothingly, “That is so touching!” And Ruth snorted. There is no other word. She snorted. Madame and Marjolaine glanced at each other, and both moved towards the house. But Miss Ruth had no intention of being left alone. “Marjory!” she called. Marjolaine came back; and Madame went into Number Four alone.