For Marianne had become now the chic, petite, vivacious brunette that in her youth her mother had been striving after. Sophie’s strivings had had no effect whatever, but as the years passed, Marianne had seen for herself that she must study her looks and curb her temper and cultivate feminine graces if she was to achieve any sort of social popularity and importance; and what Marianne saw for herself that she must do, that she did with competence and success.
She was in demand everywhere; in far greater demand than was Marguerite. Hostesses delighted in the brilliance of the conversation at their dinner tables if Marianne was present, and men of distinction liked to be seen with her smartly dressed little figure strutting beside them. No important social function seemed quite right if she was not there.
But she was not loved. Hostesses invited her to their parties because she was of use to them, not because they liked her, and the men who thronged about her, delighting in her wit, were the older married men, not the young ones. Young men were frightened of her brilliance, and girls of her own age were repelled by the scorn for their stupidity that, try as she would, she could never quite hide. But her conscious mind had as yet refused to face the fact that she was not loved. . . . She was as certain of William as Marguerite was. . . . Yet perhaps not quite as certain, for Marguerite spread no net to ensnare the man whom she believed to be already a part of her being, while Marianne the huntress spread all the nets she had.
She took an hour over her toilette, refusing peremptorily the call to breakfast that came in the middle of it. What was breakfast compared to her appearance? Just nothing at all. She had a constitution of iron and the digestion of an ostrich. She could starve, or eat roast duck followed by stewed gooseberries, with equal impunity.
When she was dressed, she stood for a long time before the long mirror, turning herself this way and that, and she did not, like Marguerite, suffer from astonishment at the radiance of her own reflection. For she had expected to look like that. The credit was not God’s, but her own, after an hour of hard labor. She was not beautiful, she knew, but she was immensely chic.
Her tiny figure, encased in stays of iron, was so upright and so dignified that one was scarcely aware of her lack of height, and her waist, reduced to wasplike proportions by dint of hooking her stay laces to the bedpost and then pulling, was the smallest on the Island, and accentuated by the scarlet ribbon that she wore twisted around it. With her sallow skin she did not look her best in the white muslins that were the vogue for unmarried young women, and so her dress was of her favorite green, a deep, rich silk, very full in the skirt, with a low boat-shaped neck, and beneath the skirt she wore one of the new hoops that were now all the rage in London. The boat-shaped neck in the daytime, and the new kind of hoop, were daring innovations, and she hoped they would be the first of their kind to be seen on the Island. She had a lace scarf for her neck, and a huge green poke bonnet and a green parasol to match. She wore no jewels except the earrings of mysterious green stone that Captain O’Hara had given her six years ago; but the rosebud craze being now at its height, she wore scarlet rosebuds round her face inside her bonnet, against her stiff artificial dark ringlets, and a posy of them on her tight bodice and another tucked in at her waistband. Make-up was not fashionable at this period, but Marianne always rubbed geranium petals on her sallow checks to give them color, and kept a pot of scarlet geraniums on her windowsill for this purpose. She no longer used lavender to scent her clothes. Her perfume was a highly provocative one from Paris. . . . Altogether the vision that looked back at her from her mirror was arresting. There was no youthful charm about it, but there was color and animation and a rather disturbing challenge.
She took her gloves and scented handkerchief from her drawer, pulled on the gloves, and went out of her room and down the beautiful old twisting staircase to the hall, her high-heeled little scarlet shoes going tap-tap on the bare polished boards, her silks rustling, her earrings swinging, and the very air about her electrified by her vitality.
Sophie and Marguerite, standing in the hall, looked up at her as she came down the stairs, one tiny gloved hand laid on the bannister, the other holding her green parasol. Marianne, now that she was twenty-two, permitted no interference in the choice of her clothes, and neither of them had seen the outfit in which she was now arrayed. . . . They gasped.
“The neckline!” cried Sophie in distress. “It is much too low for the daytime, Marianne! It is scarcely modest!”
“It is the mode,” said Marianne briefly.
“Isn’t Marianne odd?” said Marguerite. “She is shocked because I lean out of the window in a nightgown that buttons right up to my chin, yet she goes out in full daylight so décolleté, that if it wasn’t for the scarf, she’d catch her death of cold. But I like it, Marianne. And I like the hoop. As usual, all the women will be mad with envy when they see you, and the men will be round you like a swarm of bees.”
Marguerite was not jealous, for elaborate clothes only bothered her. She was perfectly contented in her crisp white muslin with the blue ribbons, and her white chip bonnet with the pink rosebuds framing her face.
“I don’t know what your Papa will say when he sees you, Marianne,” sighed Sophie, but she knew it was no good arguing, and she led the way out to the chariot with resignation. She herself in dove-grey silk, with white ostrich plumes in her bonnet, was as beautiful as ever, though six years had added considerably both to her weight and to her dignity.
“I should say we were all three dignified women,” said Marguerite meditatively, as they drove off up the hill. “I because I’m so tall, Mamma because she is plump, and Marianne because of her stays. Your waist is small today, Marianne. No wonder you didn’t want any breakfast. Your inside must be squeezed out of existence. What will you do about lunch?”
“For heaven’s sake, Marguerite!” cried Sophie in anguish. “Do be careful with your conversation. I live in perpetual dread as to what you will say next.”
“I’m always careful before gentlemen, Mamma,” Marguerite consoled her. “But I really am worried about Marianne’s lunch. It’s such an extra good one, and it will spoil it all if she can’t have any. There are lobster sandwiches. I made them while Marianne was getting dressed. William is so fond of lobster.”
The eyes of the two girls met, but there was no animosity in their glance. Though each knew that the other loved William, each felt so secure of him that she felt only compassion for her sister. And they loved each other. Marianne had never forgotten that moment when she had held her little sister in her arms and experienced through her beauty one of the best moments of her life, and Marguerite never ceased being sorry for Marianne because she had not been born enjoying life. Her sister’s surface animation never deceived Marguerite for a single moment. She knew that the real Marianne was revealed by the somber eyes and the mouth that had to be held by will power in its smiling curves.
Through every twisting street of St. Pierre chariots and phaetons and britskas full of gaily dressed women and children were climbing up toward the clifftop of Les Tuzes above the town, where the Review was to be held, and through the lanes from the villages wound the farm carts decorated with garlands and piled high with peasants in their festival clothes. The very poor came on foot, but no matter how poor they were, each woman had a scarlet petticoat to wear and each child carried a posy.
There were few open spaces on the rocky Island, but Les Tuzes was one of the few, a wide, flat stretch of turf and heather upon the clifftop high above the sea. From it one could look down on the town of St. Pierre below, with the harbor and the fort, and far away across the sea was the coast of France. Today the scene was as gay as it could be. The sky and the sea were a peerless blue, and the air so clear that one could see the sun glinting on the guns of the warships, the white ensigns stirring in the breeze, and the host of brightly colored little fishing craft anchored within the harbor. The Militia in their scarlet and gold, drawn
up in long lines on the green grass, were a goodly sight, the flower of the Island’s manhood, descendants of courageous forbears and fathers of fighting generations yet to be. As the officers spurred their horses up and down the long lines, as the bugles sounded and the guns thundered again from the fort, the watching crowds behind the barriers had hearts that beat high with pride and pulses throbbing with excitement. These gaily clad men were merely their husbands and lovers and brothers and friends, mundane creatures who would be scolded and humored and liked and disliked as usual when tomorrow morning they were back again in their familiar clothes, busy at their familiar tasks. But today in their scarlet and gold they were heroes.
A sharp word of command rang out and a burst of cheering came from the spectators, for His Excellency the Lieutenant Governor had arrived. The Island occupied the same proud position in regard to England as was to be held in a later age by the great Dominions. She had her own parliament, the Court of St. Michael, and managed her own affairs, but a Lieutenant Governor from England held a watching brief for the Crown. He lived in style in one of the finest houses on the Island, he was permitted to attend the sessions at the Court House, though not to speak there, and with the Bailiff, an Islander whose position was analogous to that of Prime Minister in the Court of St. Michael, he was the center of the Island’s social life. His Excellency was invariably a fine figure of a man, chosen for his ability to occupy a somewhat ambiguous position with grace and diplomacy, yet perhaps the limelight beat less fiercely upon him than upon his wife; for it was Her Excellency’s business to reveal to Island society the latest trend of fashion in the great world in all matters relating to dress, hospitality, furnishing, cooking, and manners. His Excellency held his appointment for a year only, so that a whole succession of Her Excellencies were perpetually arriving on the Island with the latest mode. The Island, of course, might disapprove of it, and frequently did, in which case it blandly ignored Her Excellency’s way of doing things and continued with its own; but it was Her Excellency’s duty to be the mirror of London fashion, and were she to be by evil fortune a frump or a Puritan, her husband’s mission was doomed to failure from the start.
But Their Excellencies at this date played their part to perfection, especially on this sunlit morning of the Midsummer Day Review. As their carriage, drawn by its fine bay horses, swept down the course, Their Excellencies bowing superbly to right and left, the cheering rose to a roar. His Excellency looked magnificent in a grey chimney-pot top hat and a frogged grey frockcoat with a pink rose in the buttonhole. The ends of his moustache were turned up and waxed to admiration, and his curly iron-grey hair, as dictated by the latest fashion, was worn long enough to cover the ears. Her Excellency was a vision of beauty in sky-blue satin sprinkled all over with rosebuds, almost more rosebud than satin, with the new boat-shaped neck and the new hoop. She and Marianne were the only women present to display the new neckline and the new hoop. . . . But Marianne’s neckline was a shade lower and her hoop a trifle larger than Her Excellency’s, a fact which caused Octavius, who from some distance away had taken in every detail of his elder daughter’s appearance with extreme annoyance, to have his irritability somewhat allayed.
With Their Excellencies were the two senior captains of the visiting battleships, resplendent in gold epaulettes and cocked hats, and behind the leading carriage came six others filled with Their Excellencies’ guests and other naval officers. These last, however, did not drive down the course, but took their place with the spectators.
Marianne and Marguerite instantly lost any interest whatever in the Review, for there was William standing up in one of the carriages with a clinging minx in pink, reported to be Their Excellencies’ niece and an heiress into the bargain, supported affectionately upon his arm.
It was the opinion of Marianne and Marguerite that not a single man in all that colorful crowd could hold a candle to William. Since he had been in the Navy, where his slow brain and sunny good nature and amiable weaknesses had won him instant and lasting popularity, he had developed with amazing swiftness. He looked much older than his nineteen years. He stood six foot in his stocking feet and was correspondingly broad and muscular, yet he held himself so well that he appeared always not quite so large as he was, and the look of breeding and elegance that he had inherited from his mother had been accentuated by the years. His red-gold hair was as curly as ever, and his tawny eyes as merry. His freckled face with its fine bones and full generous mouth was clear-skinned and ruddy with abounding health, and when he laughed, it was like an amiable lion roaring. Those who had only known Dr. Ozanne in these later days of his decline found it hard to believe that this magnificent young man was his son; but those, such as Sophie, who had known Edmond Ozanne in his youth declared that except for the air of elegance William with all his beauty was yet not a patch on his father at his age.
Whilst chattering agreeably to the clinging minx in pink, William yet had a roving eye beneath his gold-braided cocked hat, and presently it found the Le Patourels’ carriage. Thereafter it was an education in manners to watch with what grace he slowly but surely detached himself from his new friends to seek the company of the old ones to whom his faithful heart inclined him. His progress toward them was of necessity slow, for everyone he greeted wanted to detain him, and Marianne and Marguerite watched in an agony of impatience. In Marianne this impatience was scarcely discernible. She seemed entirely occupied in flirting with the men who as usual had crowded about her, and only a slight tightening of her small gloved hands on the stick of her parasol betrayed her. But Marguerite watched William’s approach with the frank absorption of a child, her lips a little parted in her eagerness and her blue eyes shining.
At last he arrived and joined the group of men standing by one of the opened doors of the chariot. Marianne gave him one quick, appraising, possessive glance and continued her conversation with the man nearest her, but Marguerite held out her hand and took William’s and squeezed it happily. “There are lobster sandwiches, William,” she whispered.
“That’s why I came,” he whispered back. “I could smell them from Their Excellencies’ carriage.”
It was twelve o’clock. The guns boomed again from the fort, and the long scarlet lines broke into happy disorder as each man slung his musket over his shoulder, doffed his shako, and made tracks for his family and food.
“Why, the Review is over!” cried Marguerite. “And I never even looked at it!”
They all laughed at her, but she did not care. William had neglected to let go of her hand again, and she knew that it was not really because of the lobster sandwiches that he had come; he could not possibly have smelled them all that way away, because they were so very fresh. The lobster had been boiled only yesterday, and it had been alive and kicking when put into the pot.
Yet though lacking in aroma, the lobster tasted delicious when eaten between fresh lettuce leaves and slices of spongy homemade galette. The anglicé cake was good too, and the strawberries, and the champagne was as the nectar of the gods.
These picnic parties were now scattered all over the cliff, the well-to-do eating in their carriages, the poorer folk sitting on the grass. When they could all eat no more, they strolled about in laughing groups, appraising each others clothes and hair and jewelry, laughing at the peasant children as they chased each other in and out of the gorse bushes, watching the ships in the harbor and the white gulls circling overhead.
“What do they all do now?” asked a charming middle-aged Irishman, a guest of the Lieutenant Governor who had been introduced by William. To her hidden fury he had monopolized Marianne and was walking with her at the edge of the cliff. Had William not been there today she would have been delighted, for he was a man of obvious distinction and had singled her out for attention very markedly, but with William present it taxed her to the uttermost to keep her attention upon the worthless person and to reply adequately to the futile conversation of another man. In every
fiber of her body she was aware of William and Marguerite walking quickly away together. . . . Where were they going? What were they going to do? . . . Mamma should not permit them to go about together in the way they did; especially with their best clothes on. They were grown up now, and it was not seemly. She must speak to Mamma about it.
“I gather that this is a whole holiday upon the Island?” continued the Irishman.
Marianne pulled herself together. “It’s the most riotous day in the year,” she told him. “Down in St. Pierre there will be crowds in the streets all day, and the taverns will be full, and everyone will be gloriously merry by nightfall. And in the country each village will be busy with all the old Midsummer customs. In every cottage the jonquière, a sort of couch where the women sit to do their knitting, will be spread with fresh fern and decorated with flowers, and when they have decided which jonquière in the village is the best decorated, they will make some pretty girl sit on it like a queen, and call her ‘La Môme’ and do her homage; and if she has a lover, he will be allowed to kiss her. And then they will dance out of doors until it is time to light the bonfires on the cliffs. We call these bonfires les feux de la Saint Jean.”
“And in Ireland we call them ‘Beltane,’ ” said the Irishman. “They are a relic of sun worship. And this homage of ‘La Môme’ enthroned upon the jonquière, that must be a relic of heathen worship too. Who is she, this girl? Persephone? Demeter? Both, I think. Persephone the girl becomes Demeter the woman. April grown to June and ready for her lover’s kiss.” He paused and looked at Marianne. “I would dearly love a drive round the Island and a glimpse of these same festivities. I have a curricle here. Will you do me the honor of accompanying me?”