Green Dolphin Street by Elizabeth Goudge
Marianne’s long green earrings, with those strange markings as of ferns and fishes in their depths, swayed as she worked, backward and forward, backward and forward, marking the special rhythm of her own especial country. She felt no restlessness today at being bound down in her chair by ropes of colored wool and filaments of silk, for they were dyed with the colors of dreams that were the cargo of a ship that was moving.
Marguerite, sucking a pricked finger, looked at her with an envy untouched by bitterness. Marguerite, a clumsy needlewoman, was still laboring at that accursed sampler that darkened the light for Victorian childhood from the first stitch to the last. Marianne, starting her sampler at the age of six, had finished it in three years; Marguerite, beginning at five and a half, was still at it. Marianne’s sampler, worked upon the finest of fine linen, measured four feet by three, contained thirty different examples of embroidery stitches, representations of twenty different flowers and fruits, exquisitely natural and graceful, interspersed with apocryphal birds and beasts, no two the same. In the center were three verses from the Forty-second Psalm. Comme le cerf soupire après l’eau des fontaines, ainsi mon âme soupire après toi, O Mon Dieu. Au bruit de tes torrents, un abîme appelait un autre abîme: tous tes flots, toutes tes vagues ont passé sur moi. Mon âme a soif de Dieu, du Dieu vivant: quand entrerai-je et me présenterai-je devant la face de Dieu? Below this were her names, Marianne Véronique Le Patourel, and the dates, the whole enclosed in a beautiful border of green vine leaves. The finished work of art was now laid away in lavender and silver paper in the carved chest in Sophie’s bedroom, far too beautiful to be put to any sort of use, or even to be looked at, lest usefulness cause a molting of the feathers of the birds and the eye of the sun fade the colors of the flowers.
Marguerite’s sampler was only two feet by three, for Sophie had realized that the acreage over which Marguerite must plod had better be small, lest she faint by the way. There were no flowers or birds on her sampler, but a geometrical border of gold stars round the edge, then rows of stiff little trees in pots, hung with golden balls. Marguerite’s spirit had failed within her at the thought of embroidering a whole quotation from a Psalm, as Marianne had done, but between the two rows of little trees she had worked in red the words without which no Island peasant ever began a new piece of work, whether it were the spring sowing, or the wearing of a new scarlet petticoat, or the building of a new boat—Au nom de Dieu soit. And below it was a space for her names—Marguerite Félicité Le Patourel—and for the dates of commencement and conclusion of labor when at last the wretched thing should be done. She had quite finished the stiff little trees with the golden balls, but she was still very far from having finished the border. There were so many of the gold stars, and they all had to be filled up inside with minute cross-stitch, and it was so difficult to keep their points clear and bright. It had been her own choice to have a border of stars, but they were very, very difficult. Never mind, they would be finished one day, and the sampler would be folded up in silver paper and lavender, her childhood between the folds, and laid away in Sophie’s chest, and then Marguerite Félicité Le Patourel would be a woman.
The samplers were typical. Marianne’s was full of complexity, vivid imagination, and that fatal facility that left her longing for fresh worlds to conquer; and Marguerite’s shining stars and trim little potted trees hung with happy fruit were typical of her own contentment that would be as well at home in the fields of heaven as in a walled garden. And the Au nom de Dieu soit was of the essence of Marguerite. It had her simple, clear directness. In the name of God she would lay hold of her being in two worlds, and her certainty that the hallmark of happiness that she saw stamped on life was an authentic hallmark would destroy all questioning about its worth.
But meanwhile she was only a little girl and the labor of sewing a sampler was tedious, and she rested from it. While she sucked the finger of one hand she caressed with the other something that she held nestled on her lap.
Marianne was suddenly aware of that something and emerged abruptly from the spinning of her dreams. “What have you got there?” she demanded.
Marguerite never hid anything from anyone. She laughed and produced a wooden mouse from the folds of her soft blue dress. It had ears made of pink sticking plaster, attached to its head with large nails, and a string tail. “William gave it to me for a birthday present,” she said.
“When?” asked Marianne sharply.
“This morning,” said Marguerite. “He rang the bell before breakfast and asked to see me. And I came down and he gave me my mouse. He made it for me. Isn’t he clever?”
Marianne gazed with venom at the mouse. Yes, it was well made. A good deal of acute observation and delight in living things had gone to the shaping of its body. Its bright pink pointed ears were gay, and whether by design or accident there was a ribald look on its painted face that was reminiscent of the dolphin on the inn signboard. No one who knew William could doubt that this was William’s mouse, that had run to the folds of Marguerite’s dress straight out of William’s own country.
“Go on with your sampler,” said Marianne harshly, and with her fat chuckling laugh Marguerite hid her mouse away again and picked up her needle. But Marianne’s delight in her work was destroyed. Restlessness and intense dislike of Marguerite had hold of her again, and she scarcely knew how to sit still in her chair until it was time to start for the picnic. But she did sit still. Marguerite had no notion, as she labored at a golden star, that Marianne’s flying fingers were driven by anything but love of petit point.
2
It was a memorable picnic. All five of them remembered it for years, but no one more vividly than Marguerite. Her birthdays were always important to her; for being a born lover of life, she would always keep the day of her entrance into it as a very great festival indeed; but this one was more important than the others. In after years she looked back upon it as a signpost that showed her the way to her own especial country.
The others remembered that day chiefly because of Marguerite’s outrageous behavior; but also for its great beauty. Even Octavius, as he followed his family out of the front door and stood between the delicate pillars at the top of the steps in his dark blue caped driving coat and curly-brimmed top hat, drawing on his gloves, exclaimed at it. The storms of the equinox had swept the world clean and fresh as crystal. The blue of a happy day seemed not only in the sky but all about them, limpid and innocent, an atmosphere even more than a color, and showers of silvery sunshine fell with blessing. It was cool beneath the warmth, but not cold. The houses of Le Paradis were bathed in the pure light that softened while it intensified the coloring of weathered wall and roof. From a tall tree between two houses golden leaves drifted quietly. There was no sound from a sea lying at rest far down at the foot of the hill, and over their heads a white gull drifted as quietly as the autumn leaves. Sophie beside him, in her cloak the color of a dove’s wing, was a motionless figure in a dream. There was not enough air to sway the small blue flower that was Marguerite, and Marianne’s elfin face was pale and rapt within the deep green shade of her bonnet. By the curb the chariot rested, made of spun glass, and the dappled horses waited without movement. The whole universe was stilled as though listening for a voice. For the space of one heartbeat there was peace on earth. For one fraction of a moment there was no deed of violence wrought on the earth, no hatred, no fire, no whirlwind, no pain, no fear. Existence rested against the heart of God, then sighed and journeyed again.
One of the horses raised his head and shook his jingling harness. William suddenly appeared among them in his bright green suit, and laughing and talking they moved down the steps to the chariot. But in each of them there was an infinitesimal change. A moment that comes perhaps once in a thousand years had touched them in passing, and though the experience of perfection is feather light, it brands like fire.
Only Marguerite spoke of it because only Marguerite knew what
Octavius hastened to restore things to normal. “Autumn weather can be very tricky,” he announced. “Uncanny. Storms and then silences.”
Then they all piled themselves into the Le Patourel chariot, which was one of the most admired upon the Island. It was pulled by two horses, Pierre the coachman riding the left-hand one. It held two inside and three in the dickey. There was space in front for a box when traveling, occupied now by the hampers of food. A second trunk could be stowed on the roof, and behind was a bonnet box. It had four windows, two in front and one on each side, and was beautifully upholstered in a deep mulberry color that looked very smart with the silvery coats of the dappled horses.
They climbed up and up through the narrow twisted lanes of the old town until the houses ended and instead of walls on either side of them they had banks of turf and stones overgrown with brambles and bracken, and over their heads arched nut trees or stunted oaks or tall escallonia trees with clusters of pink blossoms among the glossy leaves. The nut trees and bracken were pure gold, the oak trees tawny above their lichened trunks, and the brambles had red leaves that burned like fire.
Marianne and Marguerite sat one on each side of William, swaying to the motion of the chariot, sniffing the special Island scent made up of the smell of the sea and the sandy road, wet bracken, and the delicious scent of the escallonia flowers. Marianne had forgotten her jealousy and was lost in the joy of showing William the land of his inheritance, and Marguerite was excited because William was sharing her birthday with her. Though Marianne did not know it, his right hand and her left hand were both together in the pocket of his coat, clutching the mouse.
“Now we’re nearly at the top of the hill,” said Marianne. “Look, William.”
Up above them, framed in golden leaves, was a patch of blue sky the shape of an arched doorway. The hill was so steep that they mounted to it very slowly.
“When we get to the top you’ll see nearly the whole of the Island,” whispered Marguerite.
They passed through the blue door under the archway of golden leaves and stopped to rest the horses on the crest of the hill. Octavius thrust his head out of the chariot window. “Stand up and look, William,” he said.
But William was already standing up, Marguerite pulled up beside him because he was still holding her hand and the mouse inside his pocket. He did not speak as he looked at the little land of his fathers, but his cheeks flamed and his eyes shone and his bare curly head looked like a flame under the sun. The group of islands was so small that it was like a handful of flowers thrown down upon the immensity of sea, with all the thousand scattered rocks floating about them like torn petals. William could see the other islands round about shining through the autumn haze, each with its special shape and its special virtue: one a floating fairy castle of fretted ivory; one squat and green with a bowed grey head, like an old man in an emerald cloak praising God; one distant and far away, colored like an amethyst, shaped like some lovely bird just poised for flight; one near at hand, a gaunt pinnacle of blue-grey rock with seabirds sailing round it.
“That’s Marie-Tape-Tout, Marie Watch-All,” Marguerite told him. “They say it is shaped like a woman standing with a child in her arms. When the fishing boats sail past it, the fishermen lower their topsails in greeting to her.”
“You’ll see it better presently,” said Marianne, “when we get to La Baie des Saints. It is just opposite the bay and the convent of La Dame du Castel. All those rocks have names, William. There is Le Petit Aiguillon, Le Gros Aiguillon and L’Aiguillon d’Andrelot.”
But William, his eyes withdrawn now from what Marianne had called “the archipelago,” was examining his own Island. He could see very nearly the whole of it from the great granite cliffs of the southern end to St. Pierre and the long level stretch of the sea marshes to the north, from the islands of the west to the belt of woodland that cut off his view to the east, and it amazed him that such a small space could hold so much. There were rocky bays and stretches of golden sand, old farms of grey granite braving the winds upon the cliffs or sheltering in the lee of stunted oak woods or green hills crowned with windmills. There were fishing hamlets where the cottages were thatched and whitewashed and fuchsia bushes and tamarisk grew about the doors, and inland villages where old church towers showed above the trees. There were holy wells embowered in ferns and old grey cromlechs upon windswept hillocks to tell of the length of life in this holy isle. There were fields where flowers were grown for the English market and others of bright green grass where small, beautiful dun-colored cattle were browsing, and bright, fresh streams that ran swiftly through the waterlanes to the sea below. . . . It was surely Paradise.
“In spring,” said Marianne, “you can hardly see the earth for flowers.”
“Drive on now, Pierre,” said Octavius.
As they drove along the winding sandy road, every fresh turn of it revealing fresh angles of loveliness, Marianne and Marguerite told William some of the Island tales. Every holy well, every village and cromlech, almost every patch of earth had its legend. Marianne showed him the cliffs where in the Napoleonic Wars, when a French man-of-war menaced the Island, the peasant women in their scarlet petticoats and jackets gathered in a long line facing the enemy guns; and the enemy thought they were a regiment of soldiers and sailed away. And Marguerite told him about the sarregousets, the water fairies, who ride with the wind over the spume of the waves. And she told him how the seals love music, and how they will come and lie upon the rocks and listen to you if you stand on the shore and sing to them . . . only you must sing perfectly in tune . . . and how the mermaids come too sometimes, but not very often, and how they weep because they have no souls.
And Marianne told him how the Island peasants had always loved fine clothes, scarlet petticoats, ruffs fastened with golden hooks beneath the chin, muslin caps beneath black silk bonnets, blue coats with brass buttons and flowered waistcoats. She told him how the farmers would barter their corn with the Spanish merchants of St. Malo for fur-bordered cloaks with Spanish hoods. And she told him of their festivals and merrymakings that flowered in the dun earth of their daily toil upon every possible occasion.
“For the Island is like the Green Dolphin, it has always liked to laugh,” she said, her great dark eyes upon him. “The Islanders like being gay, and making ordinary events like people being born and getting married, and sowing the corn and reaping the harvest, very unordinary and exciting with songs and processions and dances and feasts. You’re a proper Islander, William, and so is Marguerite. But I don’t think I am, for I am not gay.” She dropped her voice to a whisper. “My nurse told me once that I was a changeling, and changelings are never gay.”
“Mon petit chou, you’re not a changeling!” cried Marguerite in powerful indignation. “You don’t laugh as much as I do because you’re so clever, and the weight of all that’s in your head makes you feel heavy. You have to feel light to laugh.”
“Nonsense,” scoffed Marianne. “Brains don’t make you heavy.”
“They do,” said Marguerite. “Why, the Abbess of Notre Dame du Castel and the Abbess of Marie-Tape-Tout were so heavy with brains that when they stood and talked on Le Petit Aiguillon their feet sank right into the rock and you can see the footprints till this day. I’ll show you, William, when we get to La Baie des Saints. The tide will be out and we can go across the sand to Le Petit Aiguillon.”
“Who were those ladies?” asked William. He was not usually interested in abbesses, but such very heavy abbesses excited his curiosity.
“They were two very clever sisters,” said Marguerite, “and they both loved the same man, and as they couldn’t both marry him they thought it would be best for neither of them to marry him, and so they took the veil and spent the rest of their lives praying for him instead of quarreling over him.”
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“How very wrong of you, William,” said Marianne severely. “Why?”
“I like to be let alone,” said William with quite unnecessary heat. “I should hate to be made good by somebody’s prayers when all the time I was wanting to be bad. One isn’t happy being made to be good. Papa wasn’t a bit happy when Mamma prayed that he shouldn’t drink any more whiskey, because it made him try not to drink whiskey in case she should be disappointed in God if her prayer wasn’t answered, and not drinking whiskey made him very depressed.”
“But it was good for him,” said Marianne firmly. “It is very often necessary for women to depress men for their good.”
“It isn’t good for people not to be happy,” said William obstinately.
“Oh, yes, it is,” said Marianne.
“No, it isn’t,” said Marguerite. “And if I were a nun I’d pray all the time for people to be happy. I’d pray all day and all night for everyone, birds and animals and people and the whole world, just to be happy. Then they wouldn’t want whiskey. They’d be jolly without.”
“Oh, that’s too easy, Marguerite!” said Marianne impatiently. Marguerite’s simplicity always annoyed her. Marguerite would never be aware, as she was, of the awful complexities of human existence.
“Go on about the two sisters,” said William.
“Just at the time when they decided to take the veil, the monks of Mont-Saint-Michel left Notre Dame du Castel,” said Marianne, “and so the two sisters went there and founded a nunnery. But they still went on quarreling about the man because each wanted to be the one to help him most, and they used different methods of saying their prayers and couldn’t decide which of them was the better. And so the elder sister left Notre Dame du Castel and went to Marie-Tape-Tout, just a mile away across the sea, though you can walk from one to the other when the tide is out, and founded a second nunnery there, and she prayed her way on Marie-Tape-Tout and the younger sister prayed her way at Notre Dame du Castel. And they prayed for years and years, until they were old ladies, and then the man died—”