Island Magic Page 2
As Mère Tangrouille watched his slender little figure darting in and out through the crowd, his sleek dark head so beautifully and fearlessly poised, his brown legs twinkling, tears filled her eyes. Sweets, crabs, stalls, cobbles, crooked houses, all became blurred to her, a rainbow background for that little creature, who was hers only for one short second once a week. She sighed gustily and wiped her eyes with the red woollen muffler. She wondered if his mother fed him right. A child like that needed a lobster to his tea, and a glass of stout now and again wouldn’t do him any harm. . . . Someone barged into the stall and sent a few sweets flying. . . . Mère Tangrouille swore volubly and felt better.
La Rue Clubin ended abruptly in a flight of steps. The town of St. Pierre was built upon sheer rock, and so steep were the precipices that every now and then the streets found it impossible to climb them, gave up the struggle and turned into steps. There were only three streets in the whole town which were possible for a carriage, and even then it went up pushed by the whole populace and came down with the horse sitting on his tail.
The steps at the end of La Rue Clubin had steep, grey, granite walls on each side, and on top of the walls were the back gardens of more tumbledown houses. Every Islander was a passionate gardener and these gardens, full though they were of old tin cans and brickbats, yet had a wealth of flowers as well. Colin, as he climbed the steps, looked up to see madonna lilies shining through the gloom. The smell of honeysuckle mingled with the smell of fish from the street below, and scarlet nasturtiums hung down the grey walls like little hanging lamps. At the top of the steps Colin sat down to wait for Maximilian. He knew it was no use hurrying him. Though normally an obedient dog Maximilian in La Rue Clubin became completely demoralized. When every cat had been chased, and every smell had been smelt, he would condescend to return to his duties, but until that moment of repletion arrived Maximilian was as a creature let loose in the primeval jungle.
While he waited Colin took the little pink bag from his pocket, opened it and surveyed the sweets. . . . His mouth watered. . . . They were for his mother, but was he entitled to eat the two reds and the green which were extra, not purchased by his penny but by his courage in winning the friendship of Mère Tangrouille? Colin’s conscience was a curious organ. In most directions it entirely failed to function at all, in other directions it was abnormally sensitive. It was so in all things relating to property. Colin had a very strong sense of what was his and what was not his. Now he pondered long and deeply. Were the three sweets his or his mother’s? He gazed inside the bag and his mouth watered so violently that he had to swallow three times. Suddenly, abandoning the argument, he seized a red sweet and popped it into his mouth. As he sucked it he gazed upwards at the strip of sky framed by the old red roofs. It was a lovely shade of green, the colour of a robin’s egg and clear as sea water in a pool. Three lilies nodded against it, and in its cool depths burnt a silver star. Again he felt a little stirring of pain, and quite suddenly it seemed to him that his mother was looking down at him from the strip of sky, his pretty mother with her white skin like the lilies, night-black hair and twinkling starlike smile. A rush of love surged up in him. He put his finger in his mouth, disentangled the red sweet from a back tooth, wiped it carefully on his knickerbockers and put it back in the bag. His darling, darling mother, she should have everything he had to give her, always and always. . . . The little star twinkled with approbation, the lilies bent gently towards him, and Maximilian came charging up the steps.
Maximilian’s ear was torn and bleeding, his nose was scratched, and portions of garbage adhered to his paws, but he was happy, though fearful of the heavy hand of justice. He sat down, hung out his tongue in a way that was meant to suggest pathos, and wagged his tail fast and furiously to create that atmosphere of happiness in which punishment would seem out of place. He was successful. Colin, disarmed, wiped his bloody face tenderly and assisted his ascent up the steps with the very gentlest of kicks.
III
For the next twenty minutes the boy and the dog climbed upwards through steep cobbled alleys and up flights of worn stone steps, twisting and turning between grey, old, red-roofed houses and lichened garden walls. The orange glow from lighted doorways shone out on them as they climbed. In and out of the light and the dusk they went, emerging suddenly into the lamplight like little moths and disappearing in the shadows again like forgotten dreams. Once out of the town, with the steep climb over and more level ground reached, Colin took to his heels and ran, Maximilian lolloping after. He had three miles to go and night was coming.
Colin was a magnificent runner. His habit of being late for everything kept him in excellent practice. On and on he padded, through deep dark lanes scented with honeysuckle, past meadows still smelling of hay, past cottage gardens whose wealth of colour burned in the dusk against whitewashed walls, past lonely farms with their green treacherous ponds waiting for the moon and the dancing feet of the water fairies.
He rounded a corner guarded by a battalion of foxgloves and entered a little lane that plunged downhill like a round green tunnel. On either side of it were stone walls covered with green ferns and crowned with tall bushes of escallonia, their little pink sticky flowers shining against dark green, glossy leaves. Behind the hedge of escallonia nut trees grew, stretching out their branches to make a roof over the lane and guard its secrets. For this lane was no ordinary one, it was a water-lane, and therefore fairy haunted. Hidden by the foxgloves was a little well of very clear water, and down one side of the lane a little stream, fed by the well, ran tinkling and gurgling on its way to the sea. Somewhere down below the lane, out of sight, was the sea itself. The low murmur of waves dragging lazily over shingle was a background to the song of the stream. The little lane was the meeting place of these two voices, even as the running stream linked the mysteries of the waters that lie in the dark of the earth to the greater mysteries of the sea.
When he came into the lane Colin stopped. He never entered that leafy tunnel without a shiver of expectancy, but he felt no fear. He was not afraid of the Things that lived in the depth of the earth or of the Things that lived in the sea. Whenever he entered a water-lane at dusk he trod softly and forbore to sing and whistle lest he should disturb the Things in Their journeyings backwards and forwards, but he was not afraid of Them and he longed passionately to see Them. They did not frighten him any more than did the evil spirit that sometimes possessed Mère Tangrouille. He confronted Them with the same cheerful courage and both let him by unharmed. Now he knelt down, parted the foxgloves, and looked at the water that welled up framed by forget-me-nots and hart’s-tongue ferns. It was very clear, very cold, and came from who knew what unimaginable depths. It was a wishing well, one of the most powerful on the Island, and held in great veneration by the Islanders. Colin shut his eyes very reverently and had three wishes, one that he might lick de Putron minor next time he fought him, two that he might one day be able to give his mother a pearl necklace, and three, that he might become a sailor. This last was more in the nature of a prayer than a wish, the most fervent he ever prayed. It floated out from Colin’s soul and went with the stream down the lane, across the beach and into the sea, and there it was hidden away in a seashell for safety until the time came for it to be taken out and granted.
He got up and walked down the lane very slowly. Maximilian, with the hair on his back slightly raised and his tail lowered, padded after, puffing and blowing like a steam-engine and looking wistfully at the stream. But though the tip of his tail twitched with desire he did not drink. He knew better than to lap from the stream that linked the waters of the earth to the waters of the sea—they were sacred.
The hot sweet smell of the escallonia was like incense swung into the air in welcome, and the nut trees whispered to Those who passed beneath their branches, but yet Colin, silent and attentive as he was, could not see Them. He could feel Their passing, but yet he could not see so much as the shadow of a wraith glide up
the stream, not even poor Undine, though she alone of all the water spirits possessed a suffering human soul.
Halfway down the water-lane another one, waterless, sloped steeply to the right. Turning up it Colin broke immediately into song of the most vulgar type and Maximilian, following him, became another dog. The hairs on his head sank into place, his tail was erected once more like the plume on a skittish horse, and he sprang from side to side snapping light-heartedly at flies. This lane was identical with the other, but yet completely different. The trees talked of quite everyday things and the scent of the escallonia suggested no mystery but that of the budding and unfolding of the flowers of the earth.
This second lane led out into a wider one lined with the stunted Island oaks, all of them twisted one way by the winter gales and covered with lichen on the side nearest the sea. It was much darker now, the road was dim white and the trunks of the trees a ghostly grey. A fog was floating in from the coast, trailing scarves of mist in and out of the branches and lying like a soft white blanket on the fields beyond. Far out at sea a foghorn sounded very softly. Colin ceased singing about his mother-in-law, stood still and listened, every sailor’s instinct in him wide awake. It would be a bad night at sea. Sudden August fogs were more dreaded by ships than lightning and tempest. With its jagged coast and “banques” of treacherous rocks veiled by fog the Island was a death trap. That afternoon, as Guilbert’s boat came in sight of it, the Island had looked like a sleeping animal crouched on the water, to-night it would be awake with claws unsheathed. Listening, Colin heard the foghorn again and a faint sucking sound which was the sea surging round Les Barbées, a reef of dangerous rocks only half a mile from where he stood. Yes, it would be bad to-night.
Faintly visible down the road was a pile of farm buildings. An orange square of light patched their darkness, and as Colin looked a second and third sprang out. . . . Father was lighting the lamps at Bon Repos. . . . A fourth light challenged the dusk. . . . That was the kitchen. . . . For supper there would be bowls of bread and milk with crunchy brown sugar on the top, eggs laid by his own bantam hens and baked apples with cream. . . . Colin kicked up his heels and raced down the road towards his home.
IV
The farmhouse of Bon Repos was separated from the road by a high grey wall, immensely thick, built to withstand the onslaughts of gales and enemies. Lichen and yellow stonecrop flushed its hoary old surface with warm colour, and on its summit scarlet snapdragons nodded defiance to intruders and welcome to friends. A wide doorway was set in the wall, crowned by an immense lintel of solid stone, but the door had long since disappeared. Within was the cobbled courtyard, used long ago as a sanctuary where in times of trouble peasants and cattle could be gathered for safety, now a parade ground for Mrs. du Frocq’s pigeons and a sun parlour for the cat.
Coming through the door the farmhouse was on the right, taking up the whole of one side of the square. It was built of grey granite, with small diamond-paned windows and an arched doorway with the date 1560 on the central stone of the arch. Let into the wall above the door was a stone of much later date, bearing the inscription in French “Harbour and good rest to those who enter here, courage to those who go forth. Let those who go and those who stay forget not God.”
The roof, that had originally been thatched, was now covered with old red tiles stained by sea wind, fog, and rain.
At right angles to the house, opposite the entrance from the road, was a great barn converted now into stables and storerooms, old as the house and built, too, of granite. Behind it, but out of sight, were the more modern farm buildings, the pigsties, cow byres and outhouses. Another wall separated the courtyard from the flower garden and a little orchard of stunted fruit trees. Beyond that again a great rampart of earth and stones, covered with turf and crowned with old storm-twisted oak trees, had been raised by some long-dead determined farmer as a protection for the house and garden; for beyond the rampart were the cliff and the fury of the sea.
But no winds that ever blew could shake Bon Repos. Very old and very grim, low and solid, like a grey rock, it squatted on the ground as though it were part of it. But though its structure was unshaken its surface was scarred and ravaged by time and storm, and Rachell du Frocq, Colin’s mother, in pity for tarnished beauty, had trained a passion flower over the windows and planted scarlet fuchsias on either side of the door.
So small were the windows that the interior of Bon Repos was very dark, but that did not worry Islanders like the du Frocqs. Out of doors was their natural habitation. Their house was not so much a place to live in as a place to take refuge in. They went to it, as the cave men went to their caves, when storm and darkness were upon them; for the rest they liked to be out in the sun and the wind. Even Mrs. du Frocq and her maid Sophie, whose work kept them more or less tethered to the house, peeled the potatoes in the courtyard, and did the washing in the vegetable garden at the back.
The front door gave entrance to the stone-floored hall, always, even on the hottest days, cool and dark as a sea-cavern. An oak table, so old that it had become black as ebony, had stood in the centre of the hall as long as anyone could remember. On its polished surface, black and shining like a mountain tarn, Rachell kept a bowl of old French china, patterned in red and scarlet and gold, and always full of fresh flowers. Primroses, cowslips, mignonette, roses, clove carnations, asters, and Michaelmas daisies followed each other in succession as the changing seasons spread their glowing tapestries, each in such a hurry that spring had barely time to draw back her cream and blue and gold before summer’s weave of scarlet and rose pink was flung over the garden. The scent of the flowers floating out into the dim coolness of the hall was the first thing to welcome visitors to Bon Repos. Rachell believed passionately in the value of beauty. If she was pressed for time she considered the filling of her bowl with flowers more important for her family’s welfare than the making of a cake for tea. On this point her family entirely disagreed with her.
To the left of the hall was the kitchen and living room, a large raftered room, whitewashed, with a red tiled floor. The huge chimney had carved upon it the du Frocq arms, an ermine with the motto “Plutôt la morte que la souille.” The original low hearthstone, with its fire of vraic,[1] had been replaced by a more modern grate, but the old stone seats were still inside the chimney enclosure, with the bread oven built in the thickness of the wall and the hook whereon to hang the “cräset” lamp. The “jonquière,” stuffed with dried fern and covered with chintz, stood under the window; a species of day-bed wide enough and long enough to accommodate the whole family sitting together in a heap. The great oak table, with chairs to match, stood in the centre of the room, and against the wall stood an eight-day clock by Lenfestey, and a dresser bright with willow-pattern china. On the walls were copper warming-pans and sporting prints, the delight of Colin’s soul, depicting stout gentlemen in red coats being thrown into ponds by triumphantly prancing steeds. A door from the kitchen led to the modern sculleries and dairies.
[1]Seaweed.
On the other side of the hall was the parlour. Rachell’s female neighbours, revelling at that period in fruit under glass cases, wool antimacassars and albums full of whiskered male relations, considered this parlour shamefully and disgracefully old-fashioned, but to Rachell it was as the inmost shrine of her being. There was a French carpet on the floor, so old that its pinks and blues had faded to the soft colours of a dove’s breast. At the windows with their deep window-seats—there were two, looking south and east, so that the room was brighter than the kitchen—were primrose-coloured brocade curtains with a pattern of gillyflowers and forget-me-nots embroidered by Rachell’s grandmother. The stiff-backed chairs, covered with brocade that was fraying a little, had been a wedding gift to this same grandmother from her grandfather. It was a marvel that their delicate frailty had succeeded in supporting the hoops and panniers and silken petticoats of this same lady and her wedding callers. Over the mantelpiec
e hung little miniatures of departed du Frocqs, painted on ivory and framed in oval gilt frames. Below them a fire of driftwood was often burning, for the room was damp, and even in summer Rachell, fearful for her treasures, would set green and orange flames flowering in the grate. Against one wall stood an inlaid cabinet with glass doors containing Rachell’s two best tea-sets, one of French china matching the bowl in the hall, richly patterned in scarlet and blue and gold, and the other of delicate fluted white Worcester with handleless cups. On the other wall hung a lovely French gilt mirror, with slender columns on each side, and a panel of dancing cupids above. On either side of it exquisite strips of Chinese embroidery, sent home by a sailor du Frocq, splashed a perfect riot of blue butterflies and golden dragons with crimson tongues against the pale blue wallpaper. There was one rosewood table with a bowl of flowers and pots of pot-pourri upon it, but there was not a single whatnot, knick-knack, album, or occasional table. The whole room, according to the neighbours, was in execrable taste, and marked Rachell as being clearly no lady. Good taste or no, this room with its soft colours, its sweet musty smell of pot-pourri, damp, and burning logs, its dancing shadows and sliding sunbeams touching here a piece of glowing china, there a gilt frame, remained with Rachell’s children all their lives as one of the most vivid of their memories.
At the far end of the hall, opposite the front door, a flight of winding stone steps, built in a curve beyond the straight wall of the house, led to what was originally a “ch’nas” or loft. This had now been partitioned off into bedrooms. The rooms were whitewashed, with sloping ceilings and dormer windows and odd nooks and crannies, difficult to keep clean, that delighted the children and broke the heart of Sophie, the maid. The big front bedroom, the property of Rachell and her husband, André, contained a four-poster with crimson curtains, a mahogany chest of drawers with a bow front, a dressing table with a petticoat of flowered chintz, a terrifying French print of the Day of Judgment, and similar glories. The children’s rooms had nothing in them but little beds covered with patchwork quilts, and wooden washstands and chests of drawers painted a startling shade of magenta.