Green Dolphin Street Read online

  Green Dolphin Street (eBook edition)

  Hendrickson Publishers Marketing, LLC

  P. O. Box 3473

  Peabody, Massachusetts 01961-3473

  eISBN 978-1-61970-716-0

  GREEN DOLPHIN COUNTRY © 1944 by Elizabeth Goudge. Copyright renewed 1971 by Elizabeth Goudge.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Due to technical issues, this eBook may not contain all of the images or diagrams in the original print edition of the work. In addition, adapting the print edition to the eBook format may require some other layout and feature changes to be made.

  First eBook edition — July 2015

  Contents

  COPYRIGHT

  NOTES

  EPIGRAPH

  DEDICATION

  THE AUTHOR

  BOOK I: The First Island

  Part 1 Marianne

  Chapter I

  Chapter II

  Chapter III

  Part 2 Marguerite

  Chapter I

  Chapter II

  Part 3 William

  Chapter I

  Chapter II

  Chapter III

  BOOK II: The Second Island

  Part 1 The Sailor

  Chapter I

  Chapter II

  Chapter III

  Part 2 The Green Dolphin

  Chapter I

  Chapter II

  Chapter III

  Part 3 The Wife

  Chapter I

  Chapter II

  Chapter III

  Chapter IV

  Part 4 The Nun

  Chapter I

  Chapter II

  BOOK III: The World’s End

  Part 1 Véronique

  Chapter I

  Chapter II

  Chapter III

  Chapter IV

  Part 2 Knights of God

  Chapter I

  Chapter II

  Chapter III

  Chapter IV

  Chapter V

  Chapter VI

  BOOK IV: The Country of the Green Pastures

  Part 1 Arcadia

  Chapter I

  Chapter II

  Chapter III

  Chapter IV

  Part 2 Fairyland

  Chapter I

  Chapter II

  Chapter III

  AUTHOR’S NOTE (1944)

  Though this book is fiction, and the characters are not portraits, it is based on fact. That a man who had emigrated to the New World should after the lapse of years write home for a bride, and then get the wrong one because he had confused her name with that of her sister, may seem to the reader highly improbable; yet it happened. And in real life also the man held his tongue about his mistake and made a good job of his marriage.

  The Convent of Notre Dame du Castel has no existence in actual fact, though it is true that monks from Mont-Saint-Michel crossed the sea in their frail little boat and founded a hermitage on the island of Guernsey. Le Creux des Fâïes exists today, and the footprints of the fairy Abbesses are still to be found imprinted on the rock, and Marie-Tape-Tout still guides fishermen home.

  To all lovers of New Zealand it will be immediately obvious that the writer has never been there, and I most humbly ask their pardon for the many mistakes I must have made.

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE (2015)

  Elizabeth Goudge’s novels present us with many rich fictional worlds. The way in which these stories are told gives us insight into Elizabeth Goudge’s own life and the culture in which she wrote. Green Dolphin Street includes many passages that display oppressive attitudes in matters of race relations and the exercise of colonial power. We believe that offering this book to readers as Elizabeth Goudge wrote it allows us to see English literary culture in 1944 in a way that would be obscured were we to alter the text. Justice must be built on truth. We are sensitive to the fact that English colonial history is a subject more difficult to approach for some than for others, and trust that readers will appreciate the chance to encounter both the fictional world of Green Dolphin Street and the voice of the novel in its original form.

  Three deep cravings of the self, three great expressions of man’s restlessness, which only mystic truth can fully satisfy. The first is the craving which makes him a pilgrim and a wanderer. It is the longing to go out from his normal world in search of a lost home, a “better country”; an Eldorado, a Sarras, a Heavenly Syon. The next is the craving of heart for heart, of the Soul for its perfect mate, which makes him a lover. The third is the craving for inward purity and perfection, which makes him an ascetic, and in the last resort a saint.

  EVELYN UNDERHILL.

  Dedicated to

  T. E. D.

  THE AUTHOR

  ELIZABETH Goudge, born at the turn of the 20th century in England, was a gifted writer whose own life is reflected in most of the stories she wrote. Her father was an Anglican rector who taught theological courses in various cathedral cities across the country, eventually accepting a Professorship of Divinity at Oxford. The many moves during her growing-up years provided settings and characters that she developed and described with great care and insight.

  Elizabeth’s maternal grandparents lived in the Channel Islands, and she loved her visits there. Eventually several of her novels were set in that charming locale. Her mother, a semi-invalid for much of her life, urged Elizabeth to attend The Art College for training as a teacher, and she appreciated the various crafts she learned. She said it gave her the ability to observe things in minute detail and stimulated her imagination.

  Elizabeth’s first writing attempts were three screenplays which were performed in London as a charity fund-raiser. She submitted them to a publisher who told her to go away and write a novel. “We are forever in his debt,” writes one of her biographers.

  BOOK I: The First Island

  Part 1 Marianne

  Strangers and pilgrims on the earth . . . seek a country. And truly, if they had been mindful of that country from whence they came out, they might have had opportunity to have returned. But now they desire a better country, that is, an heavenly: wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God: for he hath prepared for them a city.

  EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS.

  Chapter I

  1

  Sophie Le Patourel was reading aloud to her two daughters from the Book of Ruth, as they lay upon their backboards digesting their dinners and improving their deportment. This spending of the after-dinner hour upon their backboards instead of in the parlor was as a matter of fact a punishment for insubordination during the morning; but their Papa being from home, Sophie was softening the punishment by reading aloud. She was an indulgent mother, adoring her children, anxious to keep them with her as long as possible, afraid of what might be done to them by the great world outside the schoolroom window, the great world that in this mid-nineteenth century horrified her with its bustle and vulgarity and noise, its terrible steam engine of George Stephenson hurtling people to destruction at twenty-five miles an hour, its dreadful balloons in which man in his profanity was daring the heavens in which it was never the intention of his Creator that he should disport himself, its restless young people with thoughts forever straining toward new countries and new ways, and its insubordinate children like her daughter Marianne.

  Not that Sophie had
ever seen a steam engine or a balloon, for she lived in a remote island in the stormiest part of the English Channel to which as yet by the mercy of heaven such modern horrors had not penetrated, but she had read about them, and she experienced what might be called the backwash of modernity in the person of her elder child Marianne, before her at this moment on her backboard, her hungry black eyes gazing out of the window at the wild tossing of the autumn sea, her lips set in a hard, thin line and her mind somewhere far away, in the far place where her longings were; and where that was exactly, neither she nor her mother knew.

  “Et Horpa prit congé de sa belle-mère; mais Ruth demeuru avec elle,” read Sophie in her slow, beautiful French. “Alors Naomi dit: Voici, ta belle-soeur s’en est retournée vers son peuple et vers ses dieux; retournet’en après ta belle-soeur.” Sensible Naomi! That was the advice she would have given, herself, she thought. She liked people to stick to the old homes and the old ways, she didn’t hold with all this dashing off to new countries; even though in Ruth’s case it had turned out quite satisfactory. If only these restless young people could see it, all that they longed for was close beside them in the homes that had given them birth. But they couldn’t see it. They were old before their eyes were opened. “Retournée vers son peuple et vers ses dieux,” she repeated, savoring the words. She always read the Bible to the children in French even though she talked to them in English. In this bilingual island, English by conquest but French in spirit, English was coming slowly to the fore as the medium of intercourse among the élite, but French had been the language of her own childhood, and she turned back to it instinctively when she prayed or read God’s word. “Mais Ruth répondit: Ne me prie point de te laisser, pour m’éloigner de toi; car j’irai où tu iras, et je demeurerai où tu demeureras; ton peuple sera mon peuple, et ton Dieu sera mon Dieu; je mourrai où tu mourras, et j’y serai ensevelie. Que l’Eternel me traite avec la dernière rigueur, si jamais rien te sépare de moi que la mort.”

  Marianne suddenly sat up and turned a transfigured face toward her mother. The hunger was gone from her eyes, and her lips curved into the lovely smile that was seen so rarely. She was having what her family called one of her “moments.” Something had touched and pleased her deeply, and for a brief second her hunger was satisfied. Her mother paused in her reading and smiled at her, trying with her sympathy to prolong Marianne’s momentary joy in the stirring words. But it passed quickly, as it always did, and her eyes left her mother’s face and went back to the sea.

  “The mails are in,” she said abruptly. “The packet is coming into harbor.”

  That was just like Marianne, thought her mother in exasperation. The moment one tried to sympathize with her she swerved away from one’s sympathy like a shying horse. Never was there a girl who needed understanding so much, yet it was difficult to come close enough to her to achieve it. She shut herself up in a sort of box. Mon Dieu, but children are difficult, thought Sophie. And now Marguerite was sitting up too, the little, monkey! Why could she never get her children in hand as other mothers did? Was she a weak mother, or were they unusually insubordinate children?

  “I see the packet too!” shrilled Marguerite. “I can see the top of the mast and it’s swaying about like anything. I wonder who’s come on the packet? My, but they must have been seasick!”

  “Lie down, children!” demanded Sophie. “Lie down at once! How many more times am I to tell you that you must not move during your hour upon the backboards? This perpetual popping up and down ruins your deportment. Lie down!”

  But they continued to sit up, both of them gazing spellbound at the distant ship, as though the perfectly commonplace arrival of the packet were of immense importance to them.

  “Children, if you do not lie down I shall be obliged to tell your Papa of your disobedience.”

  They lay down, Marianne looking like an obstinate mule and Marguerite like a naughty kitten. They were always like this when it was blowing up for a storm. The wind seemed to get into their blood. She had no doubt that they would be up to something really naughty before the day was over. She sighed as she recomposed herself and sought for the lost place upon the page.

  “Naomi, voyant donc qu’elle était résolue d’aller avec elle, cessa de lui en parler.” Naomi was as incapable of controlling Ruth, evidently, as she of managing her own daughters. As she read mechanically on, her thoughts were tormentingly busy with Marianne. How this child could be the offspring of herself and Octavius she couldn’t imagine. She herself was a fair-haired, blue-eyed, gently dignified, becomingly rounded creature, affectionate and conventionally minded, and her husband Octavius, handsome, worthy, affable, was in appearance and character exactly suited to the position in life to which it had pleased the Almighty to call him; he was the leading solicitor of the Island, the wholly trustworthy repository of its secrets, its best man of business, the most able speaker in its parliament, the friend of the Bailiff and the Governor, one of its most devout churchmen, highly respected both by himself and others.

  Whence, then, Marianne?

  There was nothing in her immediate ancestry to account for her. There was no explaining her except by the theory that some fierce spark of endeavor, lit by a forgotten pioneer ancestor, had lived on in the contented stuff of succeeding generations until the wind of a new age whipped it into a flame that was called Marianne Le Patourel. . . . Or by the theory propounded by the peasant nurse of her babyhood, who had vowed she was a changeling.

  Her mother, as always, was almost painfully aware of Marianne as she sat very upright in her chair by the wood fire and read aloud from the Book of Ruth. She knew her Bible so well that though her beautifully modulated voice never failed to give appropriate expression to the lines she read, her thoughts could be meanwhile entirely absent, fixed upon Marianne. And though her eyes were upon her book, what they saw was not the printed page but the superimposed image of her elder child.

  Marianne was an elfin creature of sixteen, totally without the beauty that distinguished her parents. She ought now to have been rounding out a little into the contours of womanhood, yet her body remained as thin and brown as it had always been, a boy’s body without grace or softness, its angularities pushing their way even through four cascading lace-trimmed petticoats, lace-trimmed pantaloons, and a wide-skirted frock of stiff corded maroon silk. Her hair was dark and heavy and came out of curl upon the slightest provocation. There might have been beauty in her black eyes had they not been so needle sharp under the heavy black brows that so overweighted her tiny sallow face, and so full of a hunger that disturbed one in the eyes of so young a girl. The small, indomitable chin disturbed one too, and the lips, folded in so mature a repression of her passionate temper, and the brain that was too quick and hard and brilliant for her years and sex.

  Her parents were much exercised over this brain of Marianne’s and were doing their best to repress it within ladylike proportions. But Marianne wouldn’t be interested in sensible things like crewelwork and water-color painting and duet playing on the pianoforte with her little sister Marguerite, even though she did all these things superlatively well. That was the trouble with Marianne, she did them too well, and her restless intellect reached out beyond them to things like mathematics and the politics of the Island parliament, farming, fishing, and sailing, knowledge that was neither attractive nor necessary in a woman and would add nothing whatever to her chances of attracting a suitable husband; chances that Sophie was already beginning to realize would need all the bolstering that could possibly be given to them by skillful presentation and attractive background if Marianne were not to die an old maid. But would Marianne ever allow herself to be skillfully presented? The chic, petite, vivacious brunette that her mother was perpetually striving to coax forth was perpetually shrugged off again by the tempers and sullen reservations of this appalling child, and the carefully spread background of wealth and gentility seemed to splinter into fragments every time Marianne l
ost her temper. There was no doing anything with so obstinate a creature. Whenever in the night watches Sophie considered her elder daughter’s chances of happiness, her pillow was wet with her tears. She had borne this child in rebellion to a man she did not love, and had endured agonies at her premature and turbulent entry into this world on a night of wind and rain that was the farewell to the stormiest winter the Island had ever known, and like every mother she wanted her pain to be canceled by the joy of her child; but the pain lived on in the realization that Marianne’s stormy, highly strung temperament would be impossible to train in the accustomed ways of joy. . . . And of the other ways, her mother was ignorant.

  She wept no tears over eleven-year-old Marguerite. That dimpled fragment of humanity had been the child of a woman reconciled, and had waited patiently for the correct date before making as modest and graceful an appearance as is possible in the circumstances of human birth. From the beginning she had given little trouble, for her naughtiness was only the normal naughtiness of a healthy child and she had always been more or less explainable. She had taken to herself her mother’s fair beauty and as much—and no more—of her father’s intelligence as it was desirable that a pretty child should have, and to them some good fairy had added something else, the best of all gifts, the power of enjoyment, not just animal enjoyment of good health and good spirits but that authentic love of life that sees good days. “He that would love life and see good days, let him refrain his tongue from evil and his lips that they speak no guile: let him eschew evil, and do good; let him seek peace and ensure it.” Though she didn’t know it, that was the kind of person Marguerite had had the good fortune to be born. She had that transparent honesty and purity and serenity that like clear water flooding over the bed of a stream washes away uncleanness, and makes fresh and divinely lovely all that is seen through its own transparency. We see the world through the medium of our own characters, and Marguerite saw and loved all things through her own bright clarity, and enjoyed them enormously. She had not got this clearness of happy sight from her mother, whose vision was always a little clouded by anxiety, nor from her father, whose sense of the importance of his activities kept his vision strictly limited to them. Perhaps it had come from the sheer happy loveliness of the Island spring and summer through whose months her mother had waited tranquilly for her birth. Wherever it had come from, Sophie had only to cast one glance at her dimpled, happy beauty to have all maternal worries instantly allayed. For just a moment, the face and form of her younger child taking the place of Marianne’s upon the printed page, Sophie saw the little plump figure in voluminous rose-pink tarlatan stretched upon the backboard, the golden hair an aureole about the rosy face, the soft lips parted in eagerness, the shining blue eyes fixed upon her mother’s face as the lovely history of Ruth and Boaz (so carefully edited by Sophie as she read that her children had no idea she was showing more delicacy in narration than the original historian) soaked into her through every pore. No, there was no need to worry about Marguerite. She was absolutely adorable, and throughout life she would be adored.