Carette of Sark
by John Oxenham · English · Gutenberg #16666 · 586,478 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Carette of Sark
Author: John Oxenham
Release date: September 6, 2005 [eBook #16666]
Most recently updated: December 12, 2020
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/16666
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CARETTE OF SARK ***
Produced by Steven Gibbs, Melissa Er-Raqabi and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net.
CARETTE OF SARK
BY JOHN OXENHAM
AUTHOR OF "WHITE FIRE" "HEARTS IN EXILE" "BARBE OF GRAND BAYOU"
"JOHN OF GERISAU" ETC.
WITH SIXTEEN ILLUSTRATIONS, FROM PHOTOGRAPHS
OF SARK, SPECIALLY TAKEN FOR THIS BOOK
HODDER AND STOUGHTON
LONDON MCMVII
WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR
GOD'S PRISONER
RISING FORTUNES
A PRINCESS OF VASCOVY
BONDMAN FREE
OUR LADY OF DELIVERANCE
JOHN OF GERISAU
UNDER THE IRON FLAIL
BARBE OF GRAND BAYOU
HEARTS IN EXILE
JOSEPH SCORER
A WEAVER OF WEBS
WHITE FIRE
THE GATE OF THE DESERT
GIANT CIRCUMSTANCE
PROFIT AND LOSS
THE LONG ROAD
TO
WILLIAM FREDERICK COLLINGS, ESQ.
Seigneur of Sark
AND
JOHN LINWOOD PITTS, ESQ., F.S.A. (Normandy)
Managing Director
of the Guille-Allès Library, Guernsey
AND ALL THOSE GOOD FRIENDS IN THE ISLANDS
WHO HAVE SHOWN SO GREAT AN INTEREST IN THIS BOOK
I INSCRIBE THE SAME
IN HEARTY RECOGNITION OF MANY KINDNESSES
_FOREWORD_
_Sercq is a small exclusive land where the forty farm holdings to-day are
almost identical with those fixed by Helier de Carteret in the time of
Queen Elizabeth; where feudal observances which date back to the time of
Rollo, Duke of Normandy, are still the law of the land; and where family
names and records in some cases run back unbroken for very many
generations._
_To obviate any personal feeling, I desire to state that, to the best of my
belief, no present inhabitant of Sercq is in any way connected with any of
the principal characters named in this book._
_The name Carré is still an honoured one in the Island. It is pronounced
Caury._
_The numbers on the map refer to the farms and tenants in the year
1800--the approximate date of the story. As this map has been specially
compiled, and is, I believe, the only one of its kind in existence, it may
be of interest to some to find at the end of this volume a list of the
holdings and holders in Sercq about one hundred years ago._
* * * * *
_The photographs from which this book is illustrated were specially taken
for me at considerable expenditure of time and trouble by various good
friends in Sark and elsewhere. If, in one or two cases, we have permitted
ourselves some little license in the adaptation of the present to the past,
it is only for the purpose of presenting to the reader as nearly as
possible what was in the writer's mind when working on the story._
* * * * *
_The map and list of the Forty Men of Sark and their properties in the year
1800 were compiled for me from the old Island records, by my friend Mr.
W.A. Toplis, over twenty years resident in Sark, and for all the time and
labour he expended upon them I here make most grateful acknowledgment._
* * * * *
_The length of the Coupée depends upon--one's feelings, one's temperament,
and the exact spots where it really begins and ends. To the nervous it
seems endless, and some have found themselves unable to cross it under any
conditions whatever. So high an authority as Ansted gives it as 600 feet,
others say 300; the simple fact being that, unless one goes for the express
methodic purpose of measuring it (which no one ever does), all thought,
save that of wonder and admiration, is lost the moment one's foot falls
upon it. The span from cliff to cliff is probably something over 300 feet,
while, from the dip of the path in Sark to the clearing of the rise in
Little Sark, it is probably twice as much._
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I PAGE
HOW PAUL MARTEL FELL OUT WITH SERCQ 1
CHAPTER II
HOW RACHEL CARRÉ WENT BACK TO HER FATHER 14
CHAPTER III
HOW TWO FOUGHT IN THE DARK 19
CHAPTER IV
HOW MARTEL RAISED THE CLAMEUR BUT FOUND NO RELIEF 24
CHAPTER V
HOW CARETTE AND I WERE GIRL AND BOY TOGETHER 31
CHAPTER VI
HOW CARETTE CAME BY HER GOLDEN BRIDGE 43
CHAPTER VII
HOW I SHOWED ONE THE WAY TO THE BOUTIQUES 53
CHAPTER VIII
HOW I WENT THE FIRST TIME TO BRECQHOU 65
CHAPTER IX
HOW WE BEGAN TO SPREAD OUR WINGS 77
CHAPTER X
HOW I BEARDED LIONS IN THEIR DENS 85
CHAPTER XI
HOW WE GREW, AND GROWING, GREW APART 94
CHAPTER XII
HOW AUNT JEANNE GAVE A PARTY 100
CHAPTER XIII
HOW WE RODE GRAY ROBIN 117
CHAPTER XIV
HOW YOUNG TORODE TOOK THE DEVIL OUT OF BLACK BOY 130
CHAPTER XV
HOW I FELT THE GOLDEN SPUR 142
CHAPTER XVI
HOW I WENT TO SEE TORODE OF HERM 156
CHAPTER XVII
HOW I WENT OUT WITH JOHN OZANNE 167
CHAPTER XVIII
HOW WE CAME ACROSS MAIN ROUGE 172
CHAPTER XIX
HOW I FELL INTO THE _RED HAND_ 184
CHAPTER XX
HOW I LAY IN THE CLEFT OF A ROCK 197
CHAPTER XXI
HOW I FACED DEATHS AND LIVED 202
CHAPTER XXII
HOW THE _JOSÉPHINE_ CAME HOME 214
CHAPTER XXIII
HOW I LAY AMONG LOST SOULS 222
CHAPTER XXIV
HOW I CAME ACROSS ONE AT AMPERDOO 230
CHAPTER XXV
HOW WE SAID GOOD-BYE TO AMPERDOO 237
CHAPTER XXVI
HOW WE FOUND A FRIEND IN NEED 246
CHAPTER XXVII
HOW WE CAME UPON A WHITED SEPULCHRE AND FELL INTO THE FIRE 253
CHAPTER XXVIII
HOW WE WALKED INTO THE TIGER'S MOUTH 264
CHAPTER XXIX
HOW THE HAWK SWOOPED DOWN ON BRECQHOU 277
CHAPTER XXX
HOW I FOUND MY LOVE IN THE CLEFT 283
CHAPTER XXXI
HOW I HELD THE NARROW WAY 294
CHAPTER XXXII
HOW WE WENT TO EARTH 307
CHAPTER XXXIII
HOW LOVE COULD SEE IN THE DARK 312
CHAPTER XXXIV
HOW LOVE FOUGHT DEATH IN THE DARK 324
CHAPTER XXXV
HOW WE HEARD STRANGE NEWS 332
CHAPTER XXXVI
HOW A STORM CAME OUT OF THE WEST 338
CHAPTER XXXVII
HOW WE HELD OUR HOMES 348
CHAPTER XXXVIII
HOW WE RAN AGAINST THE LAW FOR THE SAKE OF A WOMAN 357
CHAPTER XXXIX
HOW I CAME INTO RICH TREASURE 373
ILLUSTRATIONS
THE WEST COAST OF SARK AND BRECQHOU _Frontispiece_
THE CREUX ROAD _Facing Page_ 5
HAVRE GOSSELIN 19
TINTAGEU 47
THE LADY GROTTO 65
A QUIET LANE 117
THE EPERQUERIE 132
IN THE CLEFT OF A ROCK 197
BELOW BEAUMANOIR 226
BRECQHOU FROM THE SOUTH 273
THE COUPÉE 297
THE CHASM OF THE BOUTIQUES 308
THE WATER CAVE 321
EPERQUERIE BAY 349
DIXCART BAY 352
CREUX TUNNEL 355
CHAPTER I
HOW PAUL MARTEL FELL OUT WITH SERCQ
To give you a clear understanding of matters I must begin at the beginning
and set things down in their proper order, though, as you will see, that
was not by any means the way in which I myself came to learn them.
For my mother and my grandfather were not given to overmuch talk at the
best of times, and all my boyish questionings concerning my father left me
only the bare knowledge that, like many another Island man in those
times--ay, and in all times--he had gone down to the sea and had never
returned therefrom.
That was too common a thing to require any explanation, and it was not till
long afterwards, when I was a grown man, and so many other strange things
had happened that it was necessary, or at all events seemly, that I should
know all about my father, that George Hamon, under the compulsion of a very
strange and unexpected happening, told me all he knew of the matter.
This, then, that I tell you now is the picture wrought into my own mind by
what I gathered from him and from others, regarding events which took place
when I was close upon three years old.
And first, let me say that I hold myself a Sercq man born and bred, in
spite of the fact that--well, you will come to that presently. And I count
our little isle of Sercq the very fairest spot on earth, and in that I am
not alone. The three years I spent on ships trading legitimately to the
West Indies and Canada and the Mediterranean made me familiar with many
notable places, but never have I seen one to equal this little pearl of all
islands.
You will say that, being a Sercq man, that is quite how I ought to feel
about my own Island. And that is true, but, apart from the fact that I have
lived there the greater part of my life, and loved there, and suffered
there, and enjoyed there greater happiness than comes to all men, and that
therefore Sercq is to me what no other land ever could be,--apart from all
that, I hold, and always shall hold, that in the matter of natural beauty,
visible to all seeing eyes, our little Island holds her own against the
world.
My grandfather, who had voyaged even more widely than myself, always said
the same, and he was not a man given to windy talk, nor, indeed, as I have
said, to overmuch talk of any kind.
And for the opening of my eyes to the rare delight and full enjoyment of
the simple things of Nature, just as God has fashioned them with His
wonderful tools, the wind, the wave, and the weather, I have to thank my
mother, Rachel Carré, and my grandfather, Philip Carré,--for that and very
much more.
It has occurred to me at times, when I have been thinking over their lives
as I knew them,--the solitariness, the quietness, the seeming grayness and
dead levelness of them,--that possibly their enjoyment and apprehension of
the beauty of all things about them, the small things as well as the
great, were given to them to make up, as it were, for the loss of other
things, which, however, they did not seem to miss, and I am quite sure
would not have greatly valued. If they had been richer, more in the
world,--busier they hardly could have been, for the farm was but a small
one and not very profitable, and had to be helped by the fishing,--perhaps
they might not have found time to see and understand and enjoy those
simpler, larger matters. But some may look upon that as mere foolishness,
and may quote against me M. La Fontaine's fable about the fox and the
grapes. I do not mind. Their grapes ripened and were gathered, and mine are
in the ripening.
Sercq, in the distance, looks like a great whale basking on the surface of
the sea and nuzzling its young. That is a feature very common to our
Islands; for time, and the weather, and the ever-restless sea wear through
the softer veins, which run through all our Island rocks, just as
unexpected streaks of tenderness may be found in the rough natures of our
Island men. And so, from every outstanding point, great pieces become
detached and form separate islets, between which and the parent isles the
currents run like mill-races and take toll of the unwary and the stranger.
So, Sercq nuzzles Le Tas, and Jethou Crevichon, and Guernsey Lihou and the
Hanois, and even Brecqhou has its whelp in La Givaude. Herm alone, with its
long white spear of sand and shells, is like a sword-fish among the nursing
whales.
In the distance the long ridge of Sercq looks as bare and uninteresting as
would the actual back of a basking whale. It is only when you come to a
more intimate acquaintance that all her charms become visible. Just as I
have seen high-born women, in our great capital city of London, turn cold
unmoved faces to the crowd but smile sweetly and graciously on their
friends and acquaintances.
As you draw in to the coast across the blue-ribbed sea, which, for three
parts of the year, is all alive with dancing sunflakes, the smooth bold
ridge resolves itself into deep rents and chasms. The great granite cliffs
stand out like the frowning heads of giants, seamed and furrowed with ages
of conflict. The rocks are wrought into a thousand fantastic shapes. The
whole coast is honeycombed with caves and bays, with chapelles and arches
and flying buttresses, among which are wonders such as you will find
nowhere else in the world. And the rocks are coloured most wondrously by
that which is in them and upon them, and perhaps the last are the most
beautiful, for their lichen robes are woven of silver, and gold, and gray,
and green, and orange. When the evening sun shines full upon the Autelets,
and sets them all aflame with golden fire, they become veritable altars and
lift one's soul to worship. He would be a bold man who would say he knew a
nobler sight, and I should doubt his word at that, until I had seen it with
my own eyes.
The great seamed rocks of the headlands are black, and white, and red, and
pink, and purple, and yellow; while up above, the short green herbage is
soft and smooth as velvet, and the waving bracken is like a dark green robe
of coarser stuff lined delicately with russet gold.
Now I have told you all this because I have met people whose only idea of
Sercq was of a storm-beaten rock, standing grim and stark among the
thousand other rocks that bite up through the sea thereabouts. Whereas, in
reality, our Island is a little paradise, gay with flowers all the year
round. For the gorse at all events is always aflame, even in the
winter--and then in truth most of all, both inside the houses and out; for,
inside, the dried bushes flame merrily in the wide hearthplaces, while,
outside, the prickly points still gleam like gold against the wintry gray.
And the land is fruitful too in trees and shrubs, though, in the more
exposed places, it is true, the trees suffer somewhat from the lichen,
which blows in from the sea, and clings to their windward sides, and slowly
eats their lives away.
And now to tell you of that which happened when I was three years old, and
I will make it all as clear as I can, from all that I have been able to
pick up, and from my knowledge of the places which are still very much as
they were then.
The front door of our Island is the tunnel in the rock cut by old Helier de
Carteret nearly three hundred years ago. Standing in the tunnel, you see on
one side the shingle of the beach where the boats lie but poorly sheltered
from the winter storms, though we are hoping before long to have a
breakwater capable of affording better shelter than the present one. You
see also the row of great capstans at the foot of the cliff by which the
boats are hauled as far out of reach of the waves as possible, though
sometimes not far enough. Through the other end of the tunnel you look into
the Creux Road, which leads straight up to the life and centre of the
Island.
Facing due east and sloping sharply to the sea, this narrow way between the
hills gets all the sun, and on a fine summer's morning grows drowsy with
the heat. The crimson and creamy-gold of the opening honeysuckle swings
heavy with its own sweetness. The hart's-tongue ferns, matted all over the
steep banks, hang down like the tongues of thirsty dogs. The bees blunder
sleepily from flower to flower. The black and crimson butterflies take
short flights and long panting rests. Even the late wild roses seem less
saucily cheerful than usual, and the branching ferns on the hillsides look
as though they were cast in bronze.
I have seen it all just so a thousand times, and have passed down from the
sweet blowing wind above to the crisp breath of the sea below, without
wakening the little valley from its sleep.
But on one such day it had a very rude awakening. For, without a moment's
warning, half the population of the Island came pouring down the steep way
towards the sea. First came four burly fishermen in blue guernseys and
stocking caps, carrying between them, in a sling of ropes, a fifth man,
whose arms and legs were tightly bound. His dark face was bruised and
discoloured, and darker still with the anger that was in him. He was a
powerful man and looked dangerous even in his bonds.
Behind these came Pierre Le Masurier, the Sénéchal, and I can imagine how
tight and grim his face would be set to a job which he did not like. For,
though he was the magistrate of the Island, and held the law in his own
hands, with the assistance of his two connétables, Elie Guille and Jean
Vaudin, they were all just farmers like the rest. M. le Sénéchal was,
indeed, a man of substance, and had acquired some learning, and perhaps
even a little knowledge of legal matters, but he trusted chiefly to his
good common-sense in deciding the disputes which now and again sprang up
among his neighbours. And as for Elie Guille and Jean Vaudin, they had very
little to do as officers of the law, but had their hands very full with the
farming and fishing and care of their families, and when they had to turn
constable it was somewhat against the grain, and they did it very mildly,
and gave as little offence as possible.
And behind M. le Sénéchal came two or three more men and half the women and
children of the Island, the women all agog with excitement, the children
dodging in and out to get a glimpse of the bound man. And none of them said
a word. The only sound was the grinding of the heavy boots in front, and
the bustle of the passage of such a crowd along so narrow a way. There had
been words and to spare up above. This was the end of the matter and of the
man in bonds, so far as the Island was concerned,--at least that was the
intention. There was no exultation fever the prisoner, no jibes and jeers
such as might have been elsewhere. They were simply interested to see the
end.
Behind them all, slowly, and as though against his will yet determined to
see it out, came a tall man of middle age, like the rest half farmer, half
fisherman, but of a finer--and sadder--countenance than any there. When all
the rest poured noisily through the tunnel and spread out along the
shingle, he stood back among the capstans under the cliff and watched
quietly.
The bearers placed their burden in one of the boats drawn up on the beach,
and straightened their backs gratefully. They ran the boat rasping over the
stones into the water, and two of them sprang in and rowed steadily out to
sea. The others stood, hands on hips, watching them silently till the boat
turned the corner of Les Lâches and passed out of sight, and then their
tongues were loosed.
"So!" said one. "That's the end of Monsieur Martel."
"Nom de Gyu! We'll hope so," said the other. "But I'd sooner seen him dead
and buried."
"'Crais b'en!" said the other with a knowing nod. For all the world knew
that if Paul Martel had never come to Sercq, Rachel Carré might have become
Mistress Hamon instead of Madame Martel--and very much better for her if
she had.
For Martel, in spite of his taking ways and the polished manners of his
courting days, had proved anything but a good husband, and he had wound up
a long period of indifference and neglect with a grievous bodily assault
which had stirred the clan spirit of the Islanders into active reprisal.
They would make of it an object-lesson to the other Island girls which
would be likely to further the wooings of the Island lads for a long time
to come.
Martel, you see, came from Guernsey, but he was only half a Guernsey man at
that. His father was a Manche man from Cherbourg, who happened to get
wrecked on the Hanois, and settled and married in Peter Port. Paul Martel
had grown up to the sea. He had sailed to foreign parts and seen much of
the world. He was an excellent sailor, and when he tired of a roving life
turned his abilities to account in those peculiar channels of trade which
the situation of the Islands and their ancient privileges particularly
fitted them for. The Government in London had, indeed, tried, time after
time, to suppress the free-trading, and passed many laws and ordinances
against it, but these attempts had so far only added zest to the business,
and seemed rather to stimulate that which they were intended to suppress.
Martel was successful as a smuggler, and might in time have come to own his
own boat and run his own cargoes if he had kept steady.
The Government now and again had harsh fits which made things difficult for
the time being in Guernsey, and at such times the smaller islands were
turned to account, and the goods were stored and shipped from there. And
that is how he came to frequent Sercq and made the acquaintance of Rachel
Carré.
George Hamon, I know, never to his dying day forgave himself for having
been the means of bringing Martel to Sercq, and truly he got paid for it as
bitterly as man could.
Martel might, indeed, have found his way there in any case, but that, to
Hamon, did not in any degree lessen the weight of the fact that it was he
brought him there to assist in some of his free-trading schemes. And if he
had guessed what was to come of it, he would never have handled keg or bale
as long as he lived rather than, with his own hand, spoil his life as he
did.
For a time they were very intimate, he and Martel. Then Martel made up to
Rachel Carré, and their friendship turned to hatred, the more venomous for
what had gone before.
But even George Hamon admits that Paul Martel was an unusually good-looking
fellow, with very attractive manners when he chose, and a knowledge of the
world and its ways, and of men and women, beyond the ordinary, and he won
Rachel Carré's heart against her head and in the teeth of her father's
opposition.
Perhaps if her mother had been alive things might have been different. But
she died when Rachel was eight years old, and her father was much away at
the fishing, for the farm was poorer then than it became afterwards, and
Martel found his opportunities and turned them to account.
I do not pretend to understand fully how it came about--beyond the fact
that the little god of love goes about his work blindfold, and that women
do the most unaccountable things at times. Even in the most momentous
matters they are capable of the most grievous mistakes, though, on the
other hand, that same heart instinct also leads them at times to wisdom
beyond the gauging of man's intelligence. A man reasons and keeps tight
hand on his feelings; a woman feels and knows; and sometimes a leap in the
dark lands one safely, and sometimes not.
To make a long story short, however, Paul Martel and Rachel Carré were
married, to the great surprise of all Rachel's friends and to the great
grief of her father.
Martel built a little cottage at the head of the chasm which drops into
Havre Gosselin, and her father, Philip Carré, lived lonely on his little
farm of Belfontaine, by Port à la Jument, with no companion but his dumb
man Krok.
Rachel seemed quite happy in her marriage. There had been many predictions
among the gossips as to its outcome, and sharp eyes were not lacking to
detect the first signs of the fulfilment of prophecy, nor reasons for
visits to the cottage at La Frégondée with a view to discovering them. And
perhaps Rachel understood all that perfectly well. She was her father's
daughter, and Philip Carré was one of the most intelligent and
deep-thinking men I have ever met.
Her nearest neighbour and chief friend was Jeanne Falla of Beaumanoir,
widow of Peter Le Marchant, whose brother John lived on Brecqhou and made a
certain reputation there both for himself and the island. She was old
enough to have been Rachel's mother, and Rachel may have confided in her.
If she did so her confidence was never abused, for Jeanne Falla could talk
more and tell less than any woman I ever knew, and that I count a very
great accomplishment.
She was a Guernsey woman by birth, but had lived on Sercq for over twenty
years. Her husband was drowned while vraicking a year after they were
married, and she had taken the farm in hand and made more of it than ever
he would have done if he had lived to be a hundred, for the Le Marchants
always tended more to the sea than to the land, though Jeanne Falla's
Peter, I have been told, was more shore-going than the rest. She had no
child of her own, and that was the only lack in her life. She made up for
it by keeping an open heart to all other children, whereby many gained
through her loss, and her loss turned to gain even for herself.
When Rachel's boy came she made as much of him as if he had been her own.
And the two between them named him Philip Carré after his
grandfather,--instinct, maybe, or possibly simply with the idea of pleasing
the old man, whose heart had never come fully round to the
marriage,--happily done, whatever the reason.
For Martel, outside business matters, which needed a clear head and all a
man's wits about him unless he wanted to run himself and his cargoes into
trouble, soon proved himself unstable as water. The nature of his business
tended to conviviality. Successful runs were celebrated, and fresh ones
planned, and occasional losses consoled, in broached kegs which cost
little. Success or failure found equal satisfaction in the flowing bowl,
and no home happiness ever yet came out of a bung-hole.
Then, too, Rachel Carré had been brought up by her father in a simple,
perhaps somewhat rigorous, faith, which in himself developed into
Quakerism. I have thought it not impossible that in that might be found
some explanation of her action in marrying Paul Martel. Perhaps her father
drew the lines somewhat tightly, and her opening life craved width and
colour, and found the largest possibilities of them in the rollicking young
stranger. Truly he brought colour enough and to spare into the sober gray
of her life. It was when the red blood started under his vicious blows that
their life together ended.
Martel had no beliefs whatever, except in himself and his powers of
outwitting any preventive officer ever born.
Rachel Carré's illusions died one by one. The colours faded, the gray
darkened. Martel was much away on his business; possibly also on his
pleasures.
One night, after a successful run, he returned home very drunk, and
discovered more than usual cause for resentment in his wife's reproachful
silence. He struck her, wounding her to the flowing of blood, and she
picked up her boy and fled along the cliffs to Beaumanoir where Jeanne
Falla lived, with George Hamon not far away at La Vauroque.
Jeanne Falla took her in and comforted her, and as soon as George Hamon
heard the news, he started off with a neighbour or two to Frégondée to
attend to Martel.
In the result, and not without some tough fighting, for Martel was a
powerful man and furious at their invasion, they carried him in bonds to
the house of the Sénéchal, Pierre Le Masurier, for judgment. And M. le
Sénéchal, after due consideration, determined, like a wise man, to rid
himself of a nuisance by flinging it over the hedge, as one does the slugs
that eat one's cabbages. Martel came from Guernsey and was not wanted in
Sercq. To Guernsey therefore he should go, with instructions not to return
to Sercq lest worse should follow. Hence the procession that disturbed the
slumbers of the Creux Road that day.
CHAPTER II
HOW RACHEL CARRÉ WENT BACK TO HER FATHER
"You paid off some of your old score up there, last night, George," said
one of the men who had stood watching the boat which carried Martel back to
Guernsey.
"Just a little bit," said Hamon, as he rubbed his hand gently over a big
bruise on the side of his head. "He's a devil to fight and as strong as an
ox;" and they turned and followed the Sénéchal and Philip Carré through the
tunnel.
"Good riddance!" said a woman in the crowd, taking off her black sun-bonnet
and giving it an angry shake before putting it on again. "We don't want any
of that kind here,"--with a meaning look at the big fishermen behind, which
set them grinning and winking knowingly.
"Aw then, Mistress Guilbert," said one, lurching uncomfortably under her
gaze, with his hands deep in his trouser pockets. "We others know better
than that."
"And a good thing for you, too. That kind of work won't go down in Sercq,
let me tell you. Ma fé, no!" and the crowd dribbled away through the tunnel
to get back to its work again.
The Sénéchal was busy planting late cabbages and time was precious. The
grave-faced fisherman, who had stood behind the crowd, tramped up the
narrow road by his side.
"Well, Carré, you're rid of him. I hope for good," said the Sénéchal.
"Before God, I hope so, M. le Sénéchal! He has a devil."
"How goes it with Mistress Rachel this morning?"
"She says little."
"But thinks the more, no doubt. She has suffered more than we know, I
fear."
"Like enough."
"I never could understand why she threw herself away on a man like that."
"It was not for want of warning."
"I am sure. Well, she has paid. I hope this ends it."
But the other shook his head doubtfully, and as they parted at the
crossways, he said gloomily, "She'll know no peace till he's under the sea
or the sod." And the Sénéchal nodded and strode thoughtfully away towards
Beauregard, while Carré went on to Havre Gosselin.
When he reached the cottage at the head of the chasm, he lifted the latch
and went in. He was confronted by a small boy of three or so, who at sound
of the latch had snatched a stick from the floor, with a frown of vast
determination on his baby face--an odd, meaningful action.
At sight of Philip Carré, however, the crumpled face relaxed instantly, and
the youngster launched himself at him with a shout of welcome.
At sound of the latch, too, a girlish figure had started up from the
lit-de-fouaille in the corner by the hearth--the great square couch built
out into the room and filled with dried bracken, the universal lounge in
the Islands, and generally of a size large enough to accommodate the entire
family.
This was Carré's daughter, Rachel, Martel's wife. Her face was very comely.
She was the Island beauty when Martel married her, and much sought after,
which made her present state the more bitter to contemplate. Her face was
whiter even than of late, at the moment, by reason of the dark circles of
suffering round her eyes and the white cloth bound round her head. She sat
up and looked at her father, with the patient expectancy of one who had
endured much and doubted still what might be in store for her.
Carré gripped the small boy's two hands in his big brown one, and the
youngster with a shout threw back his body and planted his feet on his
grandfather's leg, and walked up him until the strong right arm encircled
him and he was seated triumphantly in the crook of it. Whatever the old man
might have against his son-in-law there was no doubt as to his feeling for
the boy.
"He is gone," he said, with a grave nod, in response to his daughter's
questioning look. "But I misdoubt him. You had much better come with me to
Belfontaine for a time, Rachel."
She shook her head doubtfully.
"He's an angry man, and if he should get back--" said her father.
"In his right mind he would be sorry--"
"I misdoubt him," he said again, with a sombre nod. "I shall have no peace
if you are here all alone...."
But she shook her head dismally, with no sign of yielding.
"It has been very lonely," he said. "You and the boy--"
And she looked up at him, and the hunger of his face seemed to strike her
suddenly. She got up from the fern-bed and said, "Yes, we will come. My
troubles have made me selfish."
"Now, God be praised! You lift a load from my heart, Rachel. You will come
at once? Put together what you will need and we will take it with us."
"And the house?"
"It will be all safe. If you like I will ask George Hamon to give an eye to
it while you are away. Perhaps--" Perhaps she would decide to remain with
him at Belfontaine, but experience had taught him to go one step at a time
rather than risk big leaps when he was not sure of his footing.
So, while she gathered such things as she and the boy would need for a few
days' stay, he strode back down the sunny lane to La Vauroque, to leave
word of his wishes with Hamon's mother.
And Philip Carré's heart was easier than it had been for many a day, as
they wound their way among the great cushions of gorse to his lonely house
at Belfontaine. And the small boy was jumping with joy, and the shadow on
his mother's face was lightened somewhat. For when one's life has broken
down, and untoward circumstances have turned one into a subject for
sympathetic gossip, it is a relief to get away from it all, to dwell for a
time where the clacking of neighbourly tongues cannot be heard, and where
sympathy is all the deeper for finding no expression in words. At
Belfontaine there was little fear of oversight or overhearing, for it lay
somewhat apart, and since his daughter's marriage Philip Carré had lived
there all alone with his dumb man Krok, who assisted him with the farm and
the fishing, and their visitors were few and far between.
Now that jumping small boy was myself, and Rachel Carré was my mother, and
Philip Carré was my grandfather. But what I have been telling you is only
what I learned long afterwards, when I was a grown man, and it had become
necessary for me to know these things in explanation of others.
CHAPTER III
HOW TWO FOUGHT IN THE DARK
When George Hamon told me the next part of the story of those early days,
his enjoyment in the recalling of certain parts of it was undisguised. He
told it with great gusto.
As he lay that night on the fern-bed in the cottage above the chasm, he
thought of Rachel Carré, and what might have been if Martel's father had
only been properly drowned on the Hanois instead of marrying the Guernsey
woman. Rachel and he might have come together, and he would have made her
as happy as the day was long. And now--his life was empty, and Rachel's was
broken,--and all because of this wretched half-Frenchman, with his knowing
ways and foreign beguilements. The girls had held him good-looking. Well,
yes, he was good-looking in a way, but it passed his understanding why any
Sercq girl should want to marry a foreigner while home lads were still to
be had. He did not think there would be much marrying outside the Island
for some time to come, but it was bitter hard that Rachel Carré should have
had to suffer in order to teach them that lesson.
Gr-r-r! but he would like to have Monsieur Martel up before him just for
ten minutes or so, with a clear field and no favour. Martel was strong and
active, it was true, but there--he was a drinker, and a Frenchman at that,
and drink doesn't run to wind, and a Frenchman doesn't run to fists. Very
well--say twenty minutes then, and if he--George Hamon--did not make
Monsieur Martel regret ever having come to Sercq, he would deserve all he
got and would take it without a murmur.
He was full of such imaginings, when at last he fell asleep, and he dreamt
that he and Martel met in a lonely place and fought. And so full of fight
was he that he rolled off the fern-bed and woke with a bump on the floor,
and regretted that it was only a dream. For he had just got Martel's head
comfortably under his left arm, and was paying him out in full for all he
had made Rachel Carré suffer, when the bump of his fall put an end to it.
The following night he fell asleep at once, tired with a long day's work in
the fields. He woke with a start about midnight, with the impression of a
sound in his ears, and lay listening doubtfully. Then he perceived that his
ears had not deceived him. There was someone in the room,--or
something,--and for a moment all the superstitions among which he had been
bred crawled in his back hair and held his breath.
Then a hand dropped out of the darkness and touched his shoulder, and he
sprang at the touch like a coiled spring.
"Diable!"
It was Martel's voice and usual exclamation, and in a moment Hamon had him
by the throat and they were whirling over the floor, upsetting the table
and scattering the chairs, and George Hamon's heart was beating like a
merry drum at feel of his enemy in the flesh.
But wrestling blindly in a dark room did not satisfy him. That which was
in him craved more. He wanted to see what he was doing and the full effects
of it.
He shook himself free.
"Come outside and fight it out like a man--if you are one," he panted. "And
we'll see if you can beat a man as you can a woman."
"Allons!" growled Martel. He was in the humour to rend and tear, and it
mattered little what. For the authorities in Guernsey, after due
deliberation, had decided that what was not good enough for Sercq was not
good enough for Guernsey, and had shipped him back with scant ceremony. He
had been flung out like a sack of rubbish onto the shingle in Havre
Gosselin, half an hour before, had scaled the rough track in the dark, with
his mouth full of curses and his heart full of rage, and George Hamon
thanked God that it was not Rachel and the boy he had found in the cottage
that night.
Hamon slipped on his shoes and tied them carefully, and they passed out and
along the narrow way between the tall hedges. The full moon was just
showing red and sleepy-looking, but she would be white and wide awake in a
few minutes. The grass was thick with dew, and there was not a sound save
the growl of the surf on the rocks below.
Through a gap in the hedge Hamon led the way towards Longue Pointe.
"Here!" he said, as they came on a level piece, and rolled up the sleeves
of his guernsey. "Put away your knife;" and Martel, with a curse at the
implication, drew it from its sheath at his back and flung it among the
bracken.
Then, without a word, they tackled one another. No gripping now, but hard
fell blows straight from the shoulder, warded when possible, or taken in
grim silence. They fought, not as men fight in battle,--for general
principles and with but dim understanding of the rights and wrongs of the
matter; but with the bitter intensity born of personal wrongs and the
desire for personal vengeance. To Hamon, Martel represented the grievous
shadow on Rachel Carré's life. To Martel, Hamon represented Sercq and all
the contumely that had been heaped upon him there.
Their faces were set like rocks. Their teeth were clenched. They breathed
hard and quick--through their noses at first, but presently, and of
necessity, in short sharp gasps from the chest.
It was a great fight, with none to see it but the placid moon, and so
strong was her light that there seemed to be four men fighting, two above
and two below. And at times they all merged into a writhing confusion of
fierce pantings and snortings as of wild beasts, but for the most part they
fought in grim silence, broken only by the whistle of the wind through
their swollen lips, the light thud of their feet on the trampled ground,
and the grisly sound of fist on flesh. And they fought for love of Rachel
Carré, which the one had not been able to win and the other had not been
able to keep.
Martel was the bigger man, but Hamon's legs and arms had springs of hate in
them which more than counterbalanced. He was a temperate man too, and in
fine condition. He played his man with discretion, let him exhaust himself
to his heart's content, took with equanimity such blows as he could not
ward or avoid, and kept the temper of his hatred free from extravagance
till his time came.
Martel lost patience and wind. Unless he could end the matter quickly his
chance would be gone. He did his best to close and finish it, but his
opponent knew better, and avoided him warily. They had both received
punishment. Hamon took it for Rachel's sake, Martel for his sins. His brain
was becoming confused with Hamon's quick turns and shrewd blows, and he
could not see as clearly as at first. At times it seemed to him that there
were two men fighting him. He must end it while he had the strength, and he
bent to the task with desperate fury. Then, as he was rushing on his foe
like a bull, with all his hatred boiling in his head, all went suddenly
dark, and he was lying unconscious with his face on the trodden grass, and
George Hamon stood over him, with his fists still clenched, all battered
and bleeding, and breathing like a spent horse, but happier than he had
been for many a day.
Martel lay so still that a fear began to grow in Hamon that he was dead. He
had caught him deftly on the temple as he came on. He had heard of men
being killed by a blow like that. He knelt and turned the other gingerly
over, and felt his heart beating. And then the black eyes opened on him and
the whites of them gleamed viciously in the moonlight, and Hamon stood up,
and, after a moment's consideration, strode away and kicked about in the
bracken till he found the other's knife. Then he picked up his jacket, and
went back to the cottage with the knife in one hand and his jacket in the
other, and went inside and bolted the door, which was not a custom in
Sercq.
CHAPTER IV
HOW MARTEL RAISED THE CLAMEUR BUT FOUND NO RELIEF
George Hamon slept heavily that night while Nature repaired damages. In the
morning he had his head in a bucket of water from the well, when he heard
footsteps coming up the steep way from the shore, and as he shook the drops
out of his swollen eyes he saw that it was Philip Carré come in from his
fishing.
"Hello, George--!" and Carré stopped and stared at his face, and knew at
once that what he had feared had come to pass.--"He's back then?"
"It feels like it."
"Where did you meet?"
"He came in here in the middle of the night. We fought on Longue Pointe."
"Where is he now?"
"I left him in the grass with his wits out."
"She'll have no peace till he's dead and buried," said Carré gloomily.
Then they heard heavy footsteps in the narrow way between the hedges, and
both turned quickly with the same thought in their minds. But it was only
Philip Tanquerel coming down to see to his lobster pots, and at sight of
Hamon's face he grinned knowingly and drawled, "Bin falling out o' bed,
George?"
"Yes. Fell on top of the Frenchman."
"Fell heavy, seems to me. He's back then? I doubted he'd come if he wanted
to."
Then more steps between the hedges, and Martel himself turned the corner
and came straight for the cottage.
He made as though he would go in without speaking to the others, but George
Hamon planted himself in the doorway with a curt, "No, you don't!"
"You refuse to let me into my own house?"
"Yes, I do."
"By what right?"
"By this!" said Hamon, raising his fist. "If you want any more of it you've
only to say so. You're outcast. You've no rights here. Get away!"
"I claim my rights," said Martel through his teeth, and fell suddenly to
his knees, and cried, "Haro! Haro! Haro! à l'aide mon prince! On me fait
tort."
The three men looked doubtfully at one another for a moment, for this old
final appeal to a higher tribunal, in the name of Rollo, the first old
Norseman Duke, dead though he was this nine hundred years, was still the
law of the Islands and not to be infringed with impunity.
All the same, when the other sprang up and would have passed into the
cottage, Hamon declined to move, and when Martel persisted, he struck at
him with his fist, and it looked as though the fight were to be renewed.
"He makes Clameur, George," said Philip Tanquerel remonstratively.
"He may make fifty Clameurs for me. Let him go to the Sénéchal and the
Greffier and lay the matter before them. He's not coming in here as long as
I've got a fist to lift against him."
"You refuse?" said Martel blackly.
"You had better go to the Greffier," said Philip Carré. "The Court will
have to decide it."
"It is my house."
"I'm in charge of it, and I won't give it up till the Sénéchal tells me to.
So there!" said Hamon.
Martel turned on his heel and walked away, and the three stood looking
after him.
"I'm not sure--" began Tanquerel, in his slow drawling way.
"You're only a witness, anyway, Philip," said Hamon. "I'm the oppressor,
and if he comes again I'll give him some more of what he had last night. He
may Haro till he's hoarse, for me. Till the Sénéchal bids me go, I stop
here;" and Tanquerel shrugged his shoulders and went off down the slope to
his pots.
"More trouble," said Carré gloomily.
"We'll meet it--with our fists," said Hamon cheerfully. "M. le Sénéchal is
not going to be browbeaten by a man he's flung out of the Island."
And so it turned out. The cutter had brought M. Le Masurier a letter from
the authorities in Guernsey which pleased him not at all. It informed him
that Martel, having married into Sercq and settled on Sercq, belonged to
Sercq, and they would have none of him, and were accordingly sending him
home again.
When Martel appeared to lodge his complaint, and claim the old Island right
to cessation of oppression and trial of his cause, M. le Sénéchal was
prepared for him. It was not the man's fault that he was back on their
hands, and he said nothing about that. As to his complaint, however, he
drew a rigid line between the past and the future. In a word, he declined
to interfere in the matter of the cottage until the case should be tried
and the Court should give its judgment.
"Hamon must not, of course, interfere with you any further. But neither
must you interfere with him," said the wise man. "If you should do so he
retains the right that every man has of defending himself, and will
doubtless exercise it."
At which, when he heard it, George smiled crookedly through his swollen
lips and half-closed eyes, and Martel found himself out in the cold.
He reconnoitred at a safe distance several times during the day, but each
time found Hamon smoking his pipe in the doorway, with a show of enjoyment
which his cut lips did not in reality permit.
He stole down in the dark and quietly tried the bolted door, but got only a
sarcastic grunt for his pains.
He tried to get a lodging elsewhere, but no one would receive him.
He begged for food. No one would give him a crust, and everyone he asked
kept a watchful eye on him until he was clear of the premises.
He pulled some green corn, and husked it between his hands, and tried to
satisfy his complaining stomach with that and half-ripe blackberries.
He crept up to a farmsteading after dark, intent on eggs, a chicken, a
pigeon,--anything that might stay the clamour inside. The watch-dogs raised
such a riot that he crept away again in haste.
The hay had been cut in the churchyard. That was No Man's Land, and none
had the right to hunt him out of it. So he made up a bed alongside a great
square tomb, and slept there that night, and scared the children as they
went past to school next morning.
One of the cows at Le Port gave no milk that day, and Dame Vaudin pondered
the matter weightily, and discussed it volubly with her neighbours, but did
not try their remedies.
During the day he went over to Little Sercq in hopes of snaring a rabbit.
But the rabbits understood him and were shy. When he found himself near the
Cromlech it suggested shelter, and creeping in to curl himself up for a
sleep, he came unexpectedly on a baby rabbit paralysed with fear at the
sight of him. It was dead before it understood what was happening. He tore
it in pieces with his fingers and ate it raw. They found its skin and bones
there later on.
Under the stimulus of food his brain worked again. There was no room for
him in Sercq, that was evident. He was alien, and the clan spirit was too
strong for him.
He crept back across the Coupée in the dark, and passed a man there who
bade him good-night, not knowing till afterwards who he was.
Next morning, when Philip Carré came in from his fishing and climbed the
zigzag above Havre Gosselin, he was surprised at the sight of George Hamon
smoking in the doorway of the cottage.
"Why, George, I thought you were off fishing," he said.
"Why then?"
"Your boat's away." And Hamon was leaping down the zigzag before he had
finished, while Carré followed more slowly. But no amount of anxious
staring across empty waters will bring back a boat that is not there. The
boat was gone and Paul Martel with it, and neither was seen again in Sercq.
For many months Rachel Carré lived in instant fear of his unexpectedly
turning up again. But he never came, and in time her mind found rest. The
peace and aloofness of Belfontaine appealed to her, and at her father's
urgent desire she stayed on there, and gave herself wholly to the care of
the house and the training of her boy. The name of Martel, with its
unpleasant memories, was quietly dropped, and in time came to be almost
forgotten. The small boy grew up as Phil Carré, and knew no other name.
I am assured that he was a fine, sturdy little fellow, and that he took
after his grandfather in looks and disposition. And his grandfather and
Krok delighted in him, and fed his hungry little mind from their own
hard-won experiences, and taught him all their craft as he grew able for
it, so that few boys of his age could handle boat and nets and lines as he
could. And Philip the elder, being of an open mind through his early
travels, and believing that God was more like to help them that helped
themselves than otherwise, made him a fearless swimmer, whereby the boy
gained mighty enjoyment and sturdy health, and later on larger things
still.
But it was his mother who led him gently towards the higher things, and
opened the eyes of his understanding and the doors of his heart. She taught
him more than ever the schoolmaster could, and more than most boys of his
day knew. So that in time he came to see in the storms and calms, more than
simply bad times and good; and in the clear blue sky and starry dome, in
the magical unfoldings of the dawn and the matchless pageants of the
sunset, more than mere indications of the weather.
Yet, withal, he was a very boy, full of life and the joy of it, and in
their loving watchfulness over his development his mother and grandfather
lost sight almost of the darker times out of which he had come, and looked
only to that which he might in time come to be.
CHAPTER V
HOW CARETTE AND I WERE GIRL AND BOY TOGETHER
I suppose I could fill a great book with my recollections of those
wonderful days when I was a boy of twelve and Carette Le Marchant was a
girl of ten, and far and away the prettiest girl in Sercq,--or in Guernsey
or Jersey either, for that matter, I'll wager. And at that time I would
have fought on the spot any boy not too visibly beyond me who dared to hold
any other opinion.
My mother and my grandfather did not by any means approve my endless
battles, I am bound to say, and I do not think I was by nature of a
quarrelsome disposition, but it seems to me now that a good deal of my time
was spent in boyish warfare, and as often as not Carette was in one way or
another accountable for it.
Not that herself or her looks could be called in question. These spoke for
themselves, though I grant you she was a fiery little person and easily
provoked. If any attack was made on her looks or her doings it was usually
only for my provocation, as the knights in olden times flung down their
gauntlets by way of challenge. But there were other matters relating to
Carette, or rather to her family, which I could defend only with my fists,
and not at all with my judgment even at twelve years old, and only for her
sake who had, of herself, nothing whatever to do with them.
For the Le Marchants of Brecqhou were known and held in a somewhat
wholesome respect of fear, by all grown-up dwellers in the Islands, from
Alderney to Jersey.
It was not simply that they were bold and successful free-traders.
Free-trade--or, as some would call it, smuggling--was the natural commerce
of the Islands, and there were not very many whose fingers were not in the
golden pie. My grandfather, Philip Carré, was one, however, and he would
have starved sooner than live by any means which did not commend themselves
to his own very clear views of right and wrong. The Le Marchants had made
themselves a name for reckless daring, and carelessness of other people's
well-being when it ran counter to their own, which gave them right of way
among their fellows, but won comment harsh enough behind their backs. Many
a strange story was told of them, and as a rule the stories lost nothing in
the telling.
But my boyish recollections of Carette,--Carterette in full, but shortened
by everyone to Carette, unless it was Aunt Jeanne Falla under very great
provocation, which did not, indeed, happen often but was not absolutely
unknown,--my recollections of Carette, and of my mother, and my
grandfather, and Krok, and George Hamon, and Jeanne Falla, are as bright
and rosy as the dawns and sunsets of those earlier days.
All these seem to have been with me from the very beginning. They made up
my little world, and Carette was the sunlight,--and occasionally the
lightning,--and the moonlight was my mother, and the bright stars were
Jeanne Falla and George Hamon, while my grandfather was a benevolent power,
always kind but rather far above me, and Krok was a mystery man, dearly
loved, but held in something of awe by reason of his strange affliction.
For Krok could hear and understand all that was said to him, even in our
Island tongue which was not native to him, but he had no speech. The story
ran that he had been picked off a piece of wreckage, somewhere off the
North African coast, by the ship in which my grandfather made his last
voyage, very many years ago. He was very intelligent and quick of hearing,
but dumb, and it was said that he had been captured by Algerine pirates
when a boy and had his tongue cut out by them. This, however, I was in a
position to contradict, for I had once got a glimpse of Krok's tongue and
so knew that he had one, though his face was so covered with hair that one
might have doubted almost if he even had a mouth.
He was said to be Spanish. He was said to be Scotch. Wherever he was born,
he was by nature an honest man and faithful as a dog. My grandfather had
taken a liking to him, and when he quitted the sea Krok followed him, and
became his man and served him faithfully. He could neither read nor write
at that time, and his only vocal expression was a hoarse croak like the
cawing of a crow, and this, combined with ample play of head and hand and
facial expression and hieroglyphic gesture, formed his only means of
communication with his surroundings.
The sailors called him Krok, from the sound he made when he tried to speak,
and Krok he remained. In moments of intense excitement he was said to have
delivered himself of the word "Gug" also, but doubts were cast upon this.
He was of a placid and obliging nature, a diligent and trustworthy worker,
and on the whole a cheerful companion with whom one could never fall
out--by word of mouth, at all events.
He was short and broad but very powerful, and his face, where it was not
covered with hair, was seamed and meshed with little wrinkles, maybe from
pinching it up in the glare of the sun as a boy. His eyes were brown and
very like a dog's, and that was perhaps because he could not speak and
tried to tell you things with them. At times, when he could not make you
understand, they were full of a straining anxiety, the painful striving of
a dumb soul for utterance, which was very pitiful.
I remember very well quite breaking down once, when I was a very little
fellow and was doing my best to explain something I wanted and could not
make him understand. In my haste I had probably begun in the middle and
left him to guess the beginning. Something I had certainly left out, for
all I could get from Krok was puzzled shakes of the head and anxious
snappings of the bewildered brown eyes.
"Oh, Krok, what a stupid, stupid man you are!" I cried at last, and I can
see now the sudden pained pinching of the hairy face and the welling tears
in the troubled brown eyes.
I flung my little arms half round his big neck and hugged myself tight to
him, crying, "Oh, Krok, I love you!" and he fondled me and patted me and
soothed me, and our discussion was forgotten. And after that, boy as I
was, and as wild and thoughtless as most, I do not think I ever wounded
Krok's soul again, for it was like striking a faithful dog or a horse that
was doing his best.
But better times came--to Krok, at all events--when my mother began to
teach me my letters.
That was in the short winter days and long evenings, when all the west was
a shrieking black fury, out of which hurtled blasts so overpowering that
you could lean up against them as against a wall, and with no more fear of
falling, and the roar of great waters was never out of our ears.
In the daytime I would creep to the edge of the cliff, and lie flat behind
a boulder, and watch by the hour the huge white waves as they swept round
the Moie de Batarde and came ripping along the ragged side of Brecqhou like
furious white comets, and hurled themselves in thunder on our Moie de
Mouton and Tintageu. Then the great granite cliffs and our house up above
shook with their pounding, and Port à la Jument and Pegane Bay were all
aboil with beaten froth, and the salt spume came flying over my head in
great sticky gouts, and whirled away among the seagulls feeding in the
fields behind. When gale and tide played the same way, the mighty strife
between the incoming waves and the Race of the Gouliot passage was a thing
to be seen. For the waves that had raced over a thousand miles of sea split
on the point of Brecqhou, and those that took the south side piled
themselves high in the great basin formed by Brecqhou and the Gouliot rocks
and Havre Gosselin, and finding an outlet through the Gouliot Pass, they
came leaping and roaring through, the narrow black channel in a very fury
of madness, and hurled themselves against their fellows who had taken the
north side of the Island, and there below me they fought like giants, and I
was never tired of watching.
But in the evenings, when the lamp was lit, and the fire of dried gorse and
driftwood burnt with coloured flames and lightning forks, my grandfather
would get out his books with a sigh of great content, and Krok would settle
silently to his work on net or lobster pot, and my mother took to teaching
me my letters, which was not at all to my liking.
At first I was but a dull scholar, and the letters had to be dinned into my
careless little head many times before they stuck there, and anything was
sufficient to draw me from my task,--a louder blast outside than usual, or
the sight of Krok's nimble fingers, or of my grandfather's deep absorption,
which at that time I could not at all understand, and which seemed to me
extraordinary, and made me think of old Mother Mauger, who was said to be a
witch, and who lost herself staring into her fire just as my grandfather
did into his books.
My wits were always busy with anything and everything rather than their
proper business, but my mother was patience itself and drilled things into
me till perforce I had to learn them, and, either through this constant
repetition, or from a friendly feeling for myself in trouble, Krok began to
take an intelligent interest in my lessons.
He would bring his work alongside, and listen intently, and watch the book,
and at times would drop his work and by main force would turn my head away
from himself to that which was of more consequence, when my mother would
nod and smile her thanks.
And so, as I slowly learned, Krok learned also, and very much more
quickly, for he had more time than I had to think over things, because he
wasted none of it in talking, and he was more used to thinking than I was.
And then, to me it was still only drudgery, while to him it was the opening
of a new window to his soul.
Why, in all these years, he had never learned to read and write--why my
grandfather had never thought to teach him--I cannot tell. Perhaps because
my mother had learned at the school; perhaps because Krok himself had shown
no inclination to learn; perhaps because, in the earlier days, the scanty
little farm and the fishing which eked it out took up all the men's time
and attention.
However that might be, now that he had begun to learn Krok learned quickly,
and the signs of his knowledge were all over the place.
He knew all that wonderful west coast of our Island as well as he knew the
fingers of his hand, and before long the ground all round the house was
strewn about with smooth flat stones on which were scratched the letters of
the alphabet, which presently, according to the pace of my studies indoors,
began to arrange themselves into words, and so I was encompassed with
learning, inside and out, as it were, and sucked it in whether I would or
no.
Well do I remember the puzzlement in old Krok's face when the mischief that
dwells in every boy set me to changing the proper order of his stones, and
the eagerness with which he awaited the evening lesson to compare the new
wrong order of things with his recollections of the original correct one,
and then the mild look of reproachful enquiry he would turn upon me.
But my mother, catching me at it one day, sharply forbade me meddling with
Krok's studies, and showed me the smallness of it, and I never touched one
of his stones again.
Both my mother and my grandfather could read and speak English, in addition
to the Norman-French which was the root of our Island tongue, and that was
something of a distinction in those days. He had learned it, perforce,
during his early voyagings. He had been twice round the world, both times
on English ships, and he was the kind of man, steady, quiet, thoughtful, to
miss no opportunities of self-improvement, though I do not think there ever
can have been a man less desirous of gain. His wants were very few, and so
long as the farm and the fishing provided us all with a sufficient living,
he was satisfied and grateful. He saw his neighbours waxing fat all about
him, in pursuits which he would have starved sooner than set his hand to.
To them, and according to Island standards, these things might be right or
wrong, but to him, and for himself, he had no doubts whatever in the
matter.
You see, long ago, in Guernsey, he had come across Master Claude Gray, the
Quaker preacher, and had been greatly drawn to him and the simple high-life
he proclaimed. Frequently, on still Sabbath mornings, he would put off in
his boat, and, if the wind did not serve, would pull all the way to Peter
Port, a good fourteen miles there and back, for the purpose of meeting his
friend, and looked on it as a high privilege.
When, at times, he took me with him, I, too, looked on it as a mighty
privilege; for Peter Port, even on a Sabbath morning, was, to a boy whose
life was spent within the shadow of the Autelets, so to speak, a great and
bustling city, full of people and houses and mysteries, and of course of
wickedness, all of which excited my liveliest imaginings.
In the evening we would pull back, or run before the west wind if it
served, and my grandfather would thoughtfully con over the gains of the day
as another might tell the profits of his trading. Master Claude Gray was a
man of parts, well read, an Englishman, and it was doubtless from him that
my grandfather drew some of that love of books which distinguished him
above any man I ever knew on Sercq, not excepting even the Seigneur, or the
Sénéchal, or the Schoolmaster, or the Parson.
His library consisted of five books which he valued beyond anything he
possessed, chiefly on account of what was in them and what he got out of
them; to some extent also, in the case of three of them, for what they
represented to him.
The first was a very large Bible bound in massive leather-covered boards, a
present from Master Claude Gray to his friend, and brother in Christ,
Philip Carré, and so stated in a very fine round-hand on the front page. It
contained a number of large pictures drawn on wood which, under strict
injunctions as to carefulness and clean hands and no wet fingers, I was
occasionally allowed to look at on a winter's Sabbath evening, and which
always sent me to bed in a melancholy frame of mind, yet drew me to their
inspection with a most curious fascination when the next chance offered.
Another was Mr. John Bunyan's _Pilgrim's Progress_, also with woodcuts of a
somewhat terrifying aspect, yet not devoid of lively fillips to the
imagination.
Then there was a truly awful volume, _Foxe's Book of Martyrs_, with
pictures which wrought so upon me that I used to wake up in the night
shrieking with terror, and my mother forbade any further study of it;
though Krok, when he came to be able to read, would hang over it by the
hour, spelling out all the dreadful stories with his big forefinger and
noting every smallest detail of the pictured tortures.
These two my grandfather had bought in Peter Port at a sale, together with
a copy of Jean de la Fontaine's _Fables Choisies_ in French, with
delightful pictures of all the talking beasts.
And--crowning glory from the purely literary point of view--a massive
volume of Plays by William Shakespeare, and to this was attached a history
and an inscription of which my grandfather, in his quiet way, was not a
little proud.
When the _Valentine_, East Indiaman, went ashore on Brecqhou in the great
autumn gale, the year before I was born,--that was before the Le Marchants
set themselves down there,--my grandfather was among the first to put out
to the rescue of the crew and passengers. He got across to Brecqhou at risk
of his life, and, from his knowledge of that ragged coast and its currents,
managed to float a line down to the sinking ship by means of which every
man got safe ashore. There was among them a rich merchant of London, a Mr.
Peter Mulholland, and he would have done much for the man who had saved all
their lives.
"I have done naught more than my duty," said my grandfather, and would
accept nothing.
But Mr. Mulholland stopped with him for some days, while such of the cargo
as had floated was being gathered from the shores--and, truth to tell, from
the houses--of Sercq, that is to say some portion of it, for some went
down with the ship, and in some of the houses there are silken hangings to
this day. And the rich Englishman came to know what manner of man my
grandfather was and his tastes, and some time after he had gone there came
one day a great parcel by the Guernsey cutter, addressed to my grandfather,
and in it was that splendid book of Shakespeare's Plays which, after his
Bible, became his greatest delight. An inscription, too, which he read
religiously every time he opened the book, though he must have known every
curl of every letter by heart.
It was a wonderful book, even to look at. When I grew learned enough to
read it aloud to him and my mother and Krok of a winter's night, I came by
degrees, though not by any means at first, to understand what a very
wonderful book it was.
When one's reading is limited to four books it is well that they should be
good books. Every one of those books I read through aloud from beginning to
end, not once, but many times, except indeed the long lists of names in the
Bible, which my grandfather said were of no profit to us, and some other
portions which he said were beyond me, and which I therefore made a point
of reading to myself, but got little benefit from.
But to these books, and to the habit of reading them aloud, which impressed
them greatly on my memory, and to my own observation of men and things and
places through the eyes which these books helped to open, and to the wise
words of my grandfather, and the quiet faithful teaching of my mother, and
to all that old Krok taught me without ever speaking one word--I know that
I owe everything, and that is why it was necessary to tell you so much
about them.
If the telling has wearied you, I am sorry. For myself, I like to think
back upon it all, and to trace the beginnings of some things of which I
have seen the endings, and of some which are not ended yet, thank God!--and
to find, in all that lies between, the signs of a Power that is beyond any
power of man's, and is, indeed, and rightly I think, beyond even the power
of any man's full understanding.
CHAPTER VI
HOW CARETTE CAME BY HER GOLDEN BRIDGE
And Carette--
I recall her in those days in a thousand different circumstances, and
always like the sunlight or the lightning, gleaming, sparkling, flashing.
For she could be as steadily radiant as the one and as unexpectedly fickle
as the other, and I do not know that I liked her any the less on that
account, though truly it made her none too easy to deal with at times. Her
quick changes and childish vagaries kept one, at all events, very much
alive and in a state of constant expectation. And whenever I think of her I
thank God for Jeanne Falla, and all that that wisest and sharpest and
tenderest of women was able to do for her.
For, you see, Carette was peculiarly circumstanced, and might have gone to
waste but for her aunt Jeanne.
Her mother died when she was six years old, after four years' life on
Brecqhou, and Carette was left to be utterly spoiled by her father and six
big brothers, wild and reckless men all of them, but all, I am sure, with
tender spots in their hearts for the lovely child who seemed so out of
place among them, though for anyone outside they had little thought or
care.
My own thoughts delight to linger back among these earlier scenes before
the more trying times came. If you will let me, I will try to picture
Carette to you as I see her in my mind's eye, and I can see her as she was
then as clearly as though it were yesterday.
I see a girl of ten, of slight, graceful figure, and of so active a nature
that if you found her quite still you feared at once that something was
wrong with her.
Her face was very charming, browned richly with the kiss of sun and wind,
and without a freckle, yet not so brown as to hide the rich colour of her
feelings, which swept across her face as quickly as the cloud-shadows
across the sparkling face of the sea.
Her eyes were large and dark--all alight with the joy of life; sparkling
with fun and mischief; blazing forked lightnings at some offence, fancied
as often as not; big with entreaty that none could refuse; more rarely--in
those days--deep with sober thought; but always--shining, sparkling,
blazing, entreating--the most wonderful and fascinating eyes in the world
to the boy at her side, on whom they shone and sparkled and blazed and
entreated, and moulded always to her imperious little will.
A sturdy boy of twelve, short if anything for his age at that time, though
later he grew to full Sercq height and something over; but strong and
healthy, with a pair of keen blue eyes, and nothing whatever distinctive
about his brown face, unless it was a touch of the inflexible honesty which
had been diligently instilled into him from the time he was three years
old. Perhaps also some little indication of the stubborn determination
which must surely have come from his grandfather, and which some people
called obstinacy.
Anyway the girl trusted him implicitly, ruled him imperiously, quarrelled
with him at times but never beyond reason, and always quickly made it up
again, and in so delightful a fashion that one remembered the quarrel no
more but only the making-up,--beamed upon him then more graciously than
before, and looked to him for certain help in every time of need.
Inseparables these two, except when the Gouliot waters were in an evil
humour and rendered the passage impossible, for her home was on Brecqhou
and his was on Sercq. Fortunately for their friendship, Aunt Jeanne Falla
lived on Sercq also, and Carette was as often to be found at Beaumanoir as
at her father's house on Brecqhou, and it was to her father's liking that
it should be so. For he and the boys were often all away for days at a
time, and on such occasions, as they started, they would drop Carette on
the rough shore of Havre Gosselin, or set her hands and feet in the iron
rings that scaled the bald face of the rock, and up she would go like a
goat, and away to the welcome of the house that was her second and better
home. What Carette would have been without Aunt Jeanne I cannot imagine;
and so--all thanks to the sweet, sharp soul who took her mother's place.
See these two, then, as they lay in the sweet short herbage of Tintageu or
Moie de Mouton, chins on fist, crisp light hair close up alongside floating
brown curls, caps or hats scorned impediments to rapid motion, bare heels
kicking up emotionally behind, as they surveyed their little world, and
watched the distant ships, and dreamed dreams and saw visions.
Very clear in my memory is one such day, by reason of the fact that it was
the beginning of a new and highly satisfactory state of matters between the
boy and the girl.
Carette, you understand, was practically prisoner on Brecqhou except at
such times as the higher powers, for good reasons of their own, put her
ashore on Sercq. And, often as this happened, there were still many times
when she would have been there but could not.
She had startled her companion more than once by wild threats of swimming
the Gouliot, which is a foolhardy feat even for a man, for the dark passage
is rarely free from coiling undercurrents, which play with a man as though
he were no more than a piece of seaweed, and try even a strong swimmer's
nerve and strength. And when she spoke so, the boy took her sharply to
task, and drew most horrible pictures of her dead white body tumbling about
among the Autelets, or being left stranded in the rock pools by Port du
Moulin, nibbled by crabs and lobsters and pecked by hungry gulls; or,
maybe, lugged into a sea-cave by a giant devil-fish and ripped into pieces
by his pitiless hooked beak.
At all of which the silvery little voice would say "Pooh!" But all the same
the slim little figure would shiver in the hot sunshine inside its short
blue linsey-woolsey frock, and the dark eyes would grow larger than ever at
the prospect, especially at the ripping by the giant pieuvre, in which they
both believed devoutly, and eventually she would promise not to throw her
young life away.
"But all the same, Phil, I do feel like trying it when I want over and they
won't let me."
And--"Don't be a silly," the boy would say. "If you go and get yourself
drowned, in any stupid way like that, Carette, I'll never speak to you
again as long as I live."
They were lying so one day on the altar rock behind Tintageu, the boy
gazing dreamily into the vast void past the distant Casquets, where,
somewhere beyond and beyond, lay England, the land of many
wonders,--England, where the mighty folks had lived of whom he had read in
his grandfather's great book of plays,--and strange, wild notions he had
got of the land and the people; England, where they used to burn men and
women at the stake, and pinch them with hot irons, and sting them to death
with bees, and break them in pieces on wheels--a process he did not quite
understand, though it seemed satisfactorily horrible; England, which was
always at war with France, and was constantly winning great fights upon the
sea; England, of whom they were proud to be a part, though--somewhat
confusingly to twelve years old--their own ordinary speech was French; a
wonderful place that England, bigger even than Guernsey, his grandfather
said, and so it must be true. And sometime, maybe, he would sail across the
sea and see it all for himself, and the great city of London, which was
bigger even than Peter Port, though that, indeed, seemed almost past belief
and the boy had his doubts.
He told Carette of England and London at times, and drew so wildly on his
imagination--yet came so very far from the reality--that Carette flatly
denied the possibilities of such things, and looked upon him as a romancer
of parts, though she put it more briefly.
She herself lay facing west, gazing longingly at Herm and Jethou, with the
long line of Guernsey behind. Guernsey bounded her aspirations. Sometime
she was to go with Aunt Jeanne to Guernsey, and then she would be level
with Phil, and be able to take him down when he boasted too wildly of its
wonderful streets and houses and shops.
Suddenly she stiffened, as a cat does at distant sight of a mouse, gazed
hard, sat up, jumped to her feet and began to dance excitedly as was her
way.
"Phil! Phil!" and the boy's eyes were on the object at which her dancing
finger pointed vaguely.
"A boat!" said he, jumping with excitement also, for the boat Carette had
sighted was evidently astray, and, moreover, it was, as they could easily
see even at that distance, no Island boat, but a stranger, a waif, and so
lawful prey and treasure-trove if they could secure it.
"Oh, Phil! Get it! I want it! It's just what I've been wanting all my
life!"
It was a mere yellow cockleshell of a thing, almost round, and progressing,
with wind and tide, equally well bow or stern foremost, its holding
capacity a man and a half maybe, or say two children.
It came joggling slowly along, like a floating patch of sunlight, among the
sun-glints, and every joggle brought it nearer to the grip of the current
that was swirling south through the Gouliot. Once caught in the foaming
Race, ten chances to one it would be smashed like an eggshell on some black
outreaching fang of the rocks.
The boy took in all the chances at a glance, and sped off across the narrow
neck to the mainland, tore along the cliff round Pegane and Port à la
Jument, then away past the head of Saut de Juan, and down the cliff-side
to where the black shelves overhang the backwater of the Gouliot.
He shed his guernsey during the safe passage between Jument and Saut de
Juan. The rest of his clothing, one garment all told, he thoughtfully
dropped at the top of the cliff before he took to the shelves. The girl
gathered his things as she ran, and danced excitedly with them in her arms
as she saw his white body launch out from the lowest shelf far away below
her, and go wrestling through the water like a tiny white frog.
They had travelled quicker than the careless boat, and he was well out
among the first writhings of the Race before it came bobbing merrily
towards him. She saw his white arm flash up over the yellow side, and he
hung there panting. Then slowly he worked round to the fat stern, and
hauled himself cautiously on board, and stood and waved a cheerful hand to
her.
Then she saw him pick up a small piece of board from the flooring of the
boat and try to paddle back into the slack water. And she saw, too, that it
was too late. The Race had got hold of the cockleshell, and a piece of
board would never make it let go. Oars might, but there were no oars.
She danced wildly, saw him give up that attempt and paddle boldly out,
instead, into the middle of the coiling waters, saw him turn the
cockleshell's blunt nose straight for the Pass, and stand watchfully
amidships with his board poised to keep her to a true course if that might
be.
The passage of the Race is no easy matter even with oars and strong men's
hands upon them. A cockleshell and a board were but feeble things, and the
girl knew it, and, dancing wildly all the time because she could not stand
still, looked each second to see the tiny craft flung aside and cracked on
the jagged rocks.
But, with a great raking pull here, and a mighty sweep there, kneeling now,
and now standing with one foot braced against the side for leverage, the
boy managed in some marvellous way to keep his cockleshell in midstream.
The girl watched them go rocking down the dark way, and then sped off
across the headland towards Havre Gosselin. She got there just in time to
see a boat with two strong rowers plunging out into the Race past Pierre au
Norman, and knew that the boy was safe, and then she slipped and tumbled
down the zigzag to meet them when they came in. The boy would want his
clothes, and she wanted to see her boat. For of course it would be hers,
and now she would be able to come across from Brecqhou whenever she wished.
The matter was not settled quite so easily as that, however.
She was dancing eagerly among the big round stones on the shore of Havre
Gosselin, when the boat came in, with the cockleshell in tow and the small
boy sitting in it, with his chin on his knees and shaking still with
excitement and chills.
"All the same, mon gars, it was foolishness, for you might have been
drowned," said the older man of the two, as they drew in to the shore, and
the other man nodded agreement.
"I--w-w-wanted it for C-C-Carette," chittered the boy.
"Yes, yes, we know. But--And then there is M. le Seigneur, you understand."
"But, Monsieur Carré," cried the small girl remonstratively, "it would
never have come in if Phil had not gone for it. It would have got smashed
in the Gouliot or gone right past and been lost. And, besides, I do so want
it."
"All the same, little one, the Seigneur's rights must be respected. You'd
better go and tell him about it and ask him--"
"I will, mon Gyu!" and she was off up the zigzag before he had finished.
And it would have been a very different man from Peter le Pelley who could
refuse the beguilement of Carette's wistful dark eyes, when her heart was
set on her own way, as it generally was.
The Seigneur, indeed, had no special liking for the Le Marchants, who had
sat themselves down in his island of Brecqhou without so much as a
by-your-leave or thank you. Still, the island was of little use to him, and
to oust them would have been to incur the ill-will of men notorious for the
payment of scores in kind, so he suffered them without opposition.
Carette told us afterwards that the Seigneur stroked her hair, when she had
told all her story and proffered her request, assuring him at the same time
that the little boat would be of no use to him whatever, as it could not
possibly hold him.
"And what do you want with it, little one?" he asked.
"To come over from Brecqhou whenever I want, M. le Seigneur, if you
please."
"My faith, I think you will be better on Sercq than on Brecqhou. But you
will be getting yourself drowned in the Gouliot, and that would be a sad
pity," said the Seigneur.
"But I can swim, M. le Seigneur, and I will be very, very careful."
"Well, well! You can have the boat, child. But if any ill comes of it,
remember, I shall feel myself to blame. So be careful for my sake also."
And so the yellow cockleshell became Carette's golden bridge, and
thereafter her comings and goings knew no bounds but her own wilful will
and the states of the tides and the weather.
Krok's ideas in the matter of seigneurial rights of flotsam and jetsam were
by no means as strict as his master's, especially where Carette was
concerned. In his mute, dog-like way he worshipped Carette. In case of
need, he would, I believe, have given his left hand in her service; and the
right, I think he would have kept for himself and me. He procured from
somewhere a great beam of ship's timber, and with infinite labour fixed it
securely in a crevice of the rocks, high up by the Galé de Jacob, with one
end projecting over the shelving rocks below. Then, with rope and pulley
from the same ample storehouse, he showed Carette how she could, with her
own unaided strength, hitch on her cockleshell and haul it up the cliff
side out of reach of the hungriest wave. He made her a pair of tiny sculls
too, and thenceforth she was free of the seas, and she flitted to and fro,
and up and down that rugged western coast, till it was all an open book to
her. But so venturesome was she, and so utterly heedless of danger, that we
all went in fear for her, and she laughed all our fears to scorn.
CHAPTER VII
HOW I SHOWED ONE THE WAY TO THE BOUTIQUES
Another scene stands out very sharply in my recollection of the boy and
girl of those early days, from the fact that it gave our Island folk a
saying which lasted a generation, and whenever I heard the saying it
brought the whole matter back to me.
"Show him the way to the Boutiques," became, in those days, equivalent to
"mislead him--trick him--deceive him"--and this was how it came about.
I can see the boy creeping slowly along the south side of Brecqhou in a
boat which was big enough to make him look very small. It was the smaller
of the two boats belonging to the farm, but it was heavily laden with
vraic. There had been two days of storm, the port at Brecqhou was full of
the floating seaweed, and the fields at Belfontaine hungered for it. Philip
Carré and Krok and the small boy had been busy with it since the early
morning, and many boat-loads had been carried to Port à la Jument as long
as the flood served for the passage of the Gouliot, and since then, into
Havre Gosselin for further transport when the tide turned.
The weather was close and heavy still, sulky-looking, as though it
contemplated another outbreak before settling to its usual humour. There
was no sun, and now and again drifts of ghostly haze trailed over the long
sullen waves.
But the small boy knew every rock on the shore of Brecqhou, and the more
deadly ones that lay in the tideway outside, just below the surface, and
whuffed and growled at him as he passed. His course shaped itself like that
of bird or fish, without apparent observation.
The boat was heavy, but his bare brown arms worked the single oar over the
stern like tireless little machines, and his body swung rhythmically from
side to side to add its weight to his impulse.
He kept well out round Pente-à-Fouille with its jagged teeth and circles of
sweltering foam. The tide was rushing south through the Gouliot Pass like a
mill-race. It drove a bold furrow into the comparatively calm waters
beyond, a furrow which leaped and writhed and spat like a tortured snake
with the agonies of the narrow passage. And presently it sank into twisting
coils, all spattered and marbled with foam, and came weltering up from
conflict with the rocks below, and then hurried on to further torment along
the teeth of Little Sark.
At the first lick of the Race on his boat's nose, the small boy drew in his
oar without ever looking round, dropped it into the rowlock, fitted the
other oar, and bent his sturdy back to the fight.
The twisting waters carried him away in a long swirling slant. He pulled
steadily on and paid no heed, and in due course was spat out on the other
side of the Race into the smooth water under lee of Longue Pointe. Then he
turned his boat's nose to the north, and pulled through the slack in the
direction of Havre Gosselin.
He was edging slowly round Pierre au Norman, where a whip of the current
caught him for a moment, when a merry shout carried his chin to his
shoulder in time to see, out of the corner of his eye, a small white body
flash from a black ledge above the surf into the coiling waters beyond. He
stood up facing the bows and held the boat, till a brown head bobbed up
among the writhing coils. Then a slim white arm with a little brown hand
swept the long hair away from a pair of dancing eyes, and the swimmer came
slipping through the water like a seal.
But suddenly, some stronger coil of the waters below caught the glancing
white limbs. They sprawled awry from their stroke, a startled look dimmed
the dancing eyes with a strain of fear.
"Phil!"
And in a moment the boy in the boat had drawn in his oars, and kicked off
his shoes, and was ploughing sturdily through the belching coils.
"You're all right, Carette," he cried, as he drove up alongside, and the
swimmer grasped hurriedly at his extended arm. "We've done stiffer bits
than this. Now--rest a minute!--All right?--Come on then for the boat. Here
you are!--Hang on till I get in!"
He drew himself up slowly, and hung for a moment while the water poured out
of his clothes. Then, with a heave and a wild kick in the air, he was
aboard, and turned to assist his companion. He grasped the little brown
hands and braced his foot against the gunwale. "Now!" and she came up over
the side like a lovely white elf, and sank panting among the golden-brown
coils of vraic.
"It was silly of you to jump in there, you know," said the boy over his
shoulder, as he sat down to his oars and headed for Pierre au Norman again.
"The Race is too strong for you. I've told you so before."
"You do it yourself," she panted.
"I'm a boy and I'm stronger than you."
"I can swim as fast as you."
"But I can last longer, and the Race is too strong for me sometimes."
"B'en! I knew you'd pick me up."
"Well, don't you ever do it when I'm not here, or some day the black snake
will get you and you'll never come up again."
He was pulling steadily now through the backwater of Havre Gosselin;--past
the iron clamps let into the face of the rock, up and down which the
fishermen climbed like flies;--past the moored boats;--avoiding hidden
rocks by the instinct of constant usage, till his boat slid up among the
weed-cushioned boulders of the shore, and he drew in his oars and laid them
methodically along the thwarts.
The small girl jumped out and wallowed in the warm lip of the tide, and
finally squatted in it with her brown hands clasped round her pink-white
knees,--unabashed, unashamed, absolutely innocent of any possible necessity
for either,--as lovely a picture as all those coasts could show.
Her long hair, dark with the water, hung in wet rats' tails on her slim
white shoulders, which were just flushed with the nip of the sea. The clear
drops sparkled on her pretty brown face like pearls and diamonds, and
seemed loth to fall. Her little pink toes curled up out of the creamy wash
to look at her.
"Where are your things?" asked the boy.
"In the cave yonder."
"Go and get dressed," he said, looking down at her with as little thought
of unseemliness as she herself.
"Not at all. I'm quite warm."
"Well, I'm going to dry my things," and he began to wriggle out of his
knitted blue guernsey. "Also," he said, following up a previous train of
thought, "let me tell you there are devil-fish about here. One came up with
one of our pots yesterday."
"Pooh! I killed one with a stick this morning. They're only baby ones;
comme ça," and she measured about two inches between her little pink palms.
"This one was so big," and he indicated a yard or so, between the flapping
sleeves of the guernsey in which his head was still involved.
"I don't believe you, Phil Carré," she said with wide eyes. "You're just
trying to frighten me."
"All right! Just you wait till one catches hold of your leg when you're out
swimming all by yourself. If I'd known you'd be so silly I'd never have
taught you."
"You didn't teach me. You only dared me in and showed me how."
"Well then! And if I hadn't you'd never have learnt."
"Maybe I would. Someone else would have taught me."
"Who then?"
And to that she had no answer. For if the good God intends a man to drown
it is going against His will to try to thwart him by learning to
swim,--such, at all events, was the very prevalent belief in those parts,
and is to this day.
As soon as the boy was free of his clothes, he spread them neatly to the
sun on a big boulder, and with a whoop went skipping over the stones into
the water, till he fell full length with a splash and began swimming
vigorously seawards. The small girl sat watching him for a minute and then
skipped in after him, and the cormorants ceased their diving and the
seagulls their wheelings and mewings, and all gathered agitatedly on a rock
at the farther side of the bay, and wondered what such shouts and laughter
might portend.
But suddenly the boy broke off short in his sporting, and paddled
noiselessly, with his face straining seawards.
"What is it then, Phil? Has the big pieuvre got hold of your leg?" cried
the girl, as she splashed up towards him.
He raised a dripping hand to silence her, and while the dark eyes were
still widening with surprise, a dull boom came rolling along the wind over
the cliffs of Brecqhou.
"A gun," said the boy, and turned and headed swiftly for the shore.
"Wait for me, Phil!" cried the girl, as she skipped over the stones like a
sunbeam and disappeared into the black mouth of the cave.
"Quick then!" as he wrestled with his half-dried clothes, still sticky with
the sea-water.
He was fixing the iron bar, which served as anchor for his boat, under a
big boulder, when she joined him, still buttoning her skirt, and they sped
together up the hazardous path which led up to La Frégondée. He gave her a
helping hand now and again over difficult bits, but they had no breath for
words. They reached the top panting like hounds, but the boy turned at once
through the fields to the left and never stopped till he dropped spent on
the short turf of the headland by Saut de Juan.
"Ah!" he gasped, and sighed with vast enjoyment, and the girl stared
wide-eyed.
Down Great Russel, between them and Herm, two great ships were driving
furiously, with every sail at fullest stretch and the white waves boiling
under their bows. Farther out, beyond the bristle of reefs and islets which
stretch in a menacing line to the north of Herm, another stately vessel was
manoeuvring in advance of--
"One--two--three--four--five--six," counted the boy, "and each one as big
as herself."
Every now and again came the sullen boom of her guns and answering booms
from her pursuers.
"Six to one!" breathed the boy, quivering like a pointer. "And she's
terrible near the rocks. Bon Gyu! but she'll be on them! She'll be on them
sure," and he jumped up and danced in his excitement. "You can't get her
through there!--Ay-ee!" and he funnelled his hands to shout a warning
across three miles of sea in the teeth of a westerly breeze.
"Silly!" said the girl from the turf where she sat with her hands round her
knees. "They can't hear you!"
"Oh, guyabble! Oh, bon Gyu!" and he stood stiff and stark, as the great
ship narrowed as she turned towards them suddenly, and came threading her
way through the bristling rocks, in a way that passed belief and set the
hair in the nape of the boy's neck crawling with apprehension.
"Platte Boue!" he gasped, as she came safely past that danger. "Grand
Amfroque!" and he began to dance.
"Founiais!" and she came out into Great Russel with a glorious sweep, shook
herself proudly to the other tack, and went foaming past the Equêtelées and
the Grands Bouillons, swept round the south of Jethou, and began short
tacking for Peter Port in wake of her consorts.
Since the guns, the drama out there had unfolded itself in silence, and
silence was unnatural when such goings-on were toward. The small boy danced
and waved his arms and cheered frantically. The ships beyond the reefs were
streaming away discomfited to the north-east, in the direction of La Hague.
The small girl nursed her knees, and watched, with only partial
understanding of it all in her looks.
"Why are you so crazy about it?" she asked.
"Because we've won, you silly!"
"Of course! We're English. But all the same we ran away."
"We're English"--and there was a touch of the true insular pride in her
voice, but they spoke in French, and not very good French at that, and
scarce a word of English had one of them at that time.
"Pooh! Three little corvettes from two men-o'-war and four big frigates!
And let me tell you there's not many men could have brought that ship
through those rocks like that. I wonder who it is? A Guernsey man for
sure!" [A very similar story is told of Sir James Saumarez in the
_Crescent_ off Vazin Bay in Guernsey. His pilot was Jean Breton, who
received a large gold medal for the feat.]
His war-dance came to a sudden stop with the fall of a heavy hand on his
shoulder, and he jerked round in surprise. It was a stout, heavily-built
man in blue cloth jacket and trousers, and a cap such as no Island man ever
wore in his life, and a sharp ratty face such as no Island man would have
cared to wear.
"Now, little corbin, what is it you are dancing at?" he asked, in a tongue
that was neither English nor French nor Norman, but an uncouth mixture of
all three, and in a tone which was meant to imply joviality but carried no
conviction to the boy's mind.
But the boy had weighed him up in a moment and with one glance, and he was
too busy thinking to speak.
"Come then! Art dumb?" and he shook the boy roughly.
"Mon dou donc, yes, that is it!" said Carette, dancing round them with
apprehension for her companion. "He's dumb."
"He was shouting loud enough a minute ago," and he pinched the boy's ear
smartly between his big thumb and finger.
"It's only sometimes," said Carette lamely. "You let him go and maybe he'll
speak."
"See, my lad," said the burly one, letting go the boy's ear but keeping a
grip on his shoulder. "I'm not going to harm you. All I want to know is
whether you've seen any sizable ships banging about here lately.--You know
what I mean!"
The small boy knew perfectly what he meant, and his lip curled at thought
of being mistaken for the kind of boy who would open his mouth to a
preventive man. He shook his head, however.
"Not, eh? Well, you know the neighbourhood anyway. Take me to the
Boutiques."
"The Boutiques?" cried Carette.
"Ah! The Boutiques. You know where the Boutiques are, I can see."
They both knew the Boutiques. It would be a very small child on Sercq who
did not know that much. The small boy knew, too, that both the Boutiques
and the Gouliot caves had nooks and niches in their higher ranges, boarded
off and secured with stout padlocked doors, where goods were stored for
transfer to the cutters and chasse-marées as occasion offered, just as they
were in the great warehouses of the Guernsey merchants. He had vague ideas
that so long as the goods were on dry land the preventive men could not
touch them, but of that he was not perfectly certain. These troublesome
Customs' officers were constantly having new powers conferred on them. He
had overheard the men discussing them many a time, and the very fact of
this man trying to find the Boutiques was in itself suspicious. But the man
was a stranger. That was evident from his uncouth talk and foolish ways,
and the small boy's mind was made up in a moment.
Carette was watching anxiously, with a wild idea in her mind that if she
flung herself at the preventive man's feet and held them tightly, the boy
might wriggle away and escape.
But the boy had a brighter scheme than that. He turned and led the way
inland, and dropped a wink to Carette as he did so, and her anxious little
brain jumped to the fact that the stranger was to be misled.
Her sharpened faculties perceived that the best way to second his efforts
was to pretend a vehement objection to his action and so lend colour to it.
"Don't you do it, Phil!" she cried, dancing round them. "Don't you do it,
or I'll never speak to you again as long as I live."
Phil marched steadily on with the heavy hand gripping his shoulder.
"Sensible boy!" said the preventive man.
As everyone knows, the Boutiques lie hid among the northern cliffs by the
Eperquerie. But, once lose sight of the sea, amid the tangle of wooded
lanes which traverse the Island, and, without the guidance of the sun, it
needs a certain amount of familiarity with the district to know exactly
where one will come out.
The small boy stolidly led the way past Beaumanoir, and Carette wailed like
a lost soul alongside. Jeanne Falla looked out as they passed and called
out to know what was happening.
"This wicked man is making Phil show him the way to the Boutiques," cried
Carette, and the wicked man chuckled, and so did Jeanne Falla.
They passed the cottages at La Vauroque. The women and children crowded the
doors.
"What is it then, Carette?" they cried. "Where is he taking him?"
"He is making him show him the way to the Boutiques," cried Carette,
crumpling her pretty face into hideous grimaces by way of explanation.
"Oh, my good!" cried the women, and the procession passed on along the road
that led past Dos d'Ane. The steamy haze lay thicker here. The wind drove
it past in slow coils, but its skirts seemed to cling to the heather and
bracken as though reluctant to loose its hold on the Island.
They passed down a rough rock path with ragged yellow sides, and stood
suddenly looking out, as it seemed, on death.
In front and all around--a fathomless void of mist, which curled slowly
past in thin white whorls. The only solid thing--the raw yellow path on
which they stood. It stretched precariously out into the void and seemed to
rest on nothing. From somewhere down below came the hoarse low growl of sea
on rock. Otherwise the stillness of death.--The Coupée!
Sorely trying to stranger nerves at best of times was that wonderful
narrow bone of a neck which joins Little Sercq to Sercq,--six hundred feet
long, three hundred feet high, four feet wide at its widest at that time,
and in places less, and with nothing between the crumbling edges of the
path and the growling death below but ragged falls of rock, almost sheer on
the one side and little better on the other. On a clear day the
unaccustomed eye swam with the welter of the surf below on both sides at
once; the unaccustomed brain reeled at thought of so precarious a passage;
and the unaccustomed body, unless tenanted by a fool, or possessed of
nerves beyond the ordinary or of no nerves at all, turned as a rule at the
sight and thanked God for the feel of solid rock behind, or else went
humbly down on hands and knees and so crossed in safety with lowered crest.
To the eyes of the rat-faced man the path seemed but a wavering line in the
wavering mist. His hand gripped the boy's shoulder, grateful for something
solid to hang on to. And gripped it the harder when Carette skipped past
them and disappeared along that knife-edge of a dancing path.
"Come on!" said the boy,--the first words he had spoken.
But the preventive man's eyes were still fixed in horror on the place where
the girl had vanished.
"Come on!" said the boy again, and shook himself free, and went on along
the path.
"Aren't you coming?" he asked,--a shadow in the mist.
But the preventive man was feeling cautiously backwards for solid rock.
"Then I can't show you the Boutiques," said the boy, and passed out of
sight into the mist.
CHAPTER VIII
HOW I WENT THE FIRST TIME TO BRECQHOU
Are the later days ever quite as full of the brightness and joy of life as
the earlier ones? Wider, and deeper, and fuller both of joys and sorrows
they are, but the higher lights hold also the darker shadows, and
experience teaches, as Jeanne Falla used to say--"N'y a pas de rue sans
but." Neither lights nor shadows last, and the only thing one may count
upon with absolute certainty is the certainty of change.
But in the earlier days one's horizon is limited, and so long as it is
clear and bright one does not trouble about possible storms;--wherein, I
take it, the spirit of childhood is wiser than the spirit of the grown,
until the latter learn that wisdom which men like my grandfather call
faith, and so draw near again to the trustful simplicity of the earlier
days.
Altogether bright and very clear are my recollections of those days when
Carette and I, and Krok whenever he could manage it, roamed about that
western coast of our little Island, till we knew every rock and stone, and
every nook and cranny of the beetling cliffs, and were on such friendly
terms with the very gulls and cormorants that we knew many of them by
sight, and were on visiting terms, so to speak, though perhaps never very
acceptable visitors, among their homes and families.
Krok knew it all like a book, only better; for actual books were of late
acquaintance with him, and these other things he had studied, in his way,
for half his life.
In the hardest working life there are always off times, and Krok's Sundays,
outside the simple necessities of farm life, had always been his own. His
one enjoyment had been to scramble and poke and peer--without knowledge,
indeed, or even understanding, save such as came of absorbed watchfulness,
but still with the most perfect satisfaction--among the hidden things of
nature which lay in pools, and under stones, and away in dark caves where
none but he had been.
And all these things he introduced us to with very great enjoyment,
revealing to us at a stroke, as it were, the wonders which had taken him
years to find out for himself.
With him we lay gazing into the wonderful rock gardens under the Autelets
when the tide was out;--watching the phosphorescent seaweeds flame in the
darker pools; seeking out the haunts where the sea anemones lay in
thousands, waving their long pale arms hungrily for food and closing them
hopefully on anything that offered, even on one's fingers, which they
presently rejected as unsatisfying.
He would silently point out to us the beauties of the sea ferns and
flowers, and the curious ways and habits of the tiny creeping things and
fishes, and we three would lie by the hour, flat on the rocks, chin in
fist, watching the comedies and tragedies and the strange chancy life of
the pools. And they were absorbing enough to keep even Carette quiet,
although her veins seemed filled with quicksilver and her life went on
springs.
And at times he would take us up the cliffs, to points of vantage from
which we could look down into the sea-birds' nests and watch them tending
their young.
And--greatest wonder of all, and only when we had solemnly promised, finger
on lip, never to disclose the matter under any conditions to anyone
whatsoever--he led us right into the granite cliffs themselves, sometimes
through dark mouths that gaped on the shore, sometimes by narrow clefts
half-way up, sometimes down strange rough chimneys from the heights above.
Hand in hand we would creep, stumbling and slipping, clinging tightly to
one another for protection against ghosts, spirits, and fairies, in all of
which we half believed in spite of all wiser teaching, and never daring to
speak above a whisper for fear of we knew not what, but always in mortal
terror of losing Krok, and so being left to wander till we died, or fell
into some, dark pool and were drowned, or, more horrible still, were caught
by the tide and driven back step by step into far dark corners till the end
came.
I can hear, now as I write, the uncouth croak from which Krok got his name,
but which to us, in those awesome places, was sweeter than music. And I can
hear the beating of his stick on the rocks to guide us in the dark,--one
blow to tell us where he was; two, to look out for difficulties; three,
water. But at times he would bring with him a torch made of tar and grease
and rope, and then we would go in greater comfort and wax almost bold at
times, though never without scared glances over our shoulders at the black
mouths which gaped hungrily for us at every turn and corner.
We were, I believe, the very first--of our time at all events--to penetrate
into some of the caves which have since become a wonder to many, and if we
did not understand how very wonderful they really were, they were to us
treasure-houses of delight and a never-failing enjoyment.
Some of the higher caves were used as secret storehouses for goods which a
far-away Government--with which our people had little to do and which did
not greatly concern them--chose to embargo in various Ways. And it was in
the secret shipment of these to various ports in England and France that
the special--trade of the Islands largely consisted. So absolutely free of
all restrictions had our people always been, indeed so specially privileged
in this way above all other lands, that it took many years to bring them
under what they looked upon as the yoke. And some of them never could, or
would, understand why it should be considered unlawful for them to do what
their fathers had always done without let or hindrance. Whatever the
outside world might say, they saw no wrong, except on the part of those who
tried to stop them, and whom therefore they set themselves to circumvent by
every means in their power, and were mightily successful therein. Moreover,
the Island spirit resented somewhat this interference in their affairs by
what was, after all, a conquered people. For the privileges of the Islands
were granted them originally by the sovereigns of their own race who
captured England from the Saxon kings. We of the Islands never have been
conquered. At Hastings we were on the winning side, and we have been a
race to ourselves ever since, though loyal always to that great nation
which sprang like a giant out of the loins of the struggle.
Foremost among the free-traders were Carette's father and brothers on
Brecqhou, whereby, as I have said, Carette spent much of her time on Sercq
with her aunt Jeanne Falla, which was all for her good, and much to her and
my enjoyment.
When, by rights of flotsam and jetsam and gift and trover, she became the
proud possessor of her little yellow boat, the day rarely passed without
her flitting across to spend part of it at Beaumanoir or Belfontaine,
unless the weather bottled her up on Brecqhou.
One time, however, is very clear in my memory, when two whole days passed,
and fine days too, without any sign of her, and Aunt Jeanne Falla knew
nothing more of her than I did.
My grandfather was out fishing in our smaller boat, and Krok was bringing
home vraic in the larger, but it was not lack of a boat that could keep me
from news of Carette. I scrambled down the rocks by Saut de Juan, strapped
my guernsey and trousers on to my head with my belt, and swam across
through the slack of the tide without much difficulty.
As I drew in to the Galé de Jacob I saw the yellow cockleshell hanging from
its beam, and, between fear and wonder as to what could have taken Carette,
I scrambled in among the boulders and clambered quickly up the back stairs
into Brecqhou.
The Le Marchants discouraged visitors, and I had never been ashore there
except on the outer rocks after vraic. Carette never talked much about her
home affairs, and except that the house was built of wood I knew very
little about it. When I reached the top and stood on Belème cliff, the
sight of Sercq as I had never seen it before filled me with a very great
delight. From Bec du Nez at one end to Moie de Bretagne at the other, every
cleft and chasm in the long line of cliffs was bared to my sight. Some
stood naked, shoulder high; and some were clothed with softest green to
their knees. Here were long green slides almost to the water's edge; and
here grim heaps of black rock flung together and awry in wildest confusion.
Up above was the work of man, the greenery of fields and trees, soft and
beautiful in the sunshine, but these reached only to the cliff edge.
Wherever the land had fallen away, the wind and the sea had worked their
will, and the scarred and bitten rocks bore witness to it. The black
tumbled masses of the Gouliot were right before me, and in the gloomy
channel between, the tide, through which I had come, writhed and rolled
like a wounded snake, even at the slack.
I had seen Sercq from the outside many times before, but only from water
level, which limits one's view, though the towering cliffs are always
wondrous fine, and more striking perhaps from below than from above. But
Brecqhou always cut the view on one side or the other, whereas now, for the
first time, I saw the whole western side of the Island at a glance, and,
boy as I was, it impressed me deeply and made me swell with pride. For, you
see, thanks to my grandfather and my mother and Krok, my eyes were opening,
even then, to the wonders and beauties among which I lived.
I turned at last and tramped through the heather and ferns and the
breast-high golden-rod, stumbling among the rabbit holes with which the
ground was riddled, towards the house which stood in a hollow in the centre
of the Island. And I stared hard at it, for I had never seen the like
before.
It was not like our Sercq houses, granite-built, thick-walled, low in the
sides and high in the roof. It stood facing Sercq--that is, with its back
to the south and west--and the far end of it seemed to start out of the
ground and come sloping up to the front, till, above the doorway, it was
perhaps ten feet high. As a matter of fact cunning advantage had been taken
of a dip in the ground, and the house, built against the inside of the
hollow and sloping very gradually upwards, left nothing for the wild winter
gales from the south-west to lay hold of. The wildest wind that ever blew
leaped off the edge of the hollow and went shrieking up the black sky, but
never struck down at the squat gray house below. It was a good-sized house,
wide-spread, and all on one floor, and though it was only built of wood it
looked very strong and lasting, and to my thinking very comfortable. Coming
towards it from the front, it looked as though a great ship had run head on
into the hollow and sunk partly into the ground, leaving her stern high and
dry. For the front was in fact built up of fragments of an East Indiaman,
and the windows were her bulging stern windows, carved and ornamented,
though now all weathered to an ashen gray, and on each side of the doorway
ran a stout carved wooden railing which had come from a ship's poop.
When I had done staring at all this, I went rather doubtfully to the door,
with my eyes playing about all round, for the Le Marchants, as I have said,
did not favour visitors, and I was not sure of my welcome.
There seemed no one about, however, and at last I summoned courage to
knock gently on the door, which was of thick, heavy wood of a kind quite
new to me, and had once been polished.
"Hello, then! Who's there?" said a voice inside.
I waited, but no one came. It was no good talking through a door, so I
lifted the latch doubtfully and put in my head.
It was a large wide room, larger than Jeanne Falla's kitchen at Beaumanoir,
and though there was no fern-bed--and it was the first living-room I had
seen without one--there was a look of great warmth and comfort about it.
There was a fire of driftwood smouldering in a wide clay chimneyplace, and
a sweet warm smell of wood smoke in the air. There were a number of wooden
chairs, and a table, and several great black oaken chests curiously carved,
and a great rack hanging from the roof, on which I saw hams, and guns, and
tarpaulin hats, and oars, and coils of rope. The far end of the room was
dark to one coming in out of the sunshine, but, in some way, and I can
hardly tell how, it seemed to me that when the winter gales screamed over
Brecqhou that would be a very comfortable room to live in.
I could still see no one, till the voice cried out at sight of me--
"Now, who in the name of Satan are you, and what do you want here?" And
then, in a ship's bunk at the far end of the room, I saw a face lifted up
and scowling at me.
It was the face of a young man, and but for the black scowl on it, and a
white cloth tied round above the scowl, it might have been good-looking,
for all the Le Marchants were that.
"I'm Phil Carré," I faltered. "I've come to look for Carette."
And at that, Carette's voice came, like a silver pipe, from some hidden
place--
"Phil, mon p'tit, is that you? I'm here, but you mustn't come in. I'm in
bed. I've got measles. Father's gone across to see Aunt Jeanne about it."
"I was afraid you'd got drowned, or hurt, or something," I said. "If it's
only measles--"
"Just that--only measles, and it doesn't hurt the least bit."
"How long will it be before you're better?"
"Oh, days and days, they say."
"Oh!... And have you got it too?" I asked of the man in the bunk.
And he looked at me for a minute, and then laughed, and said, "Yes, I've
got it too. Don't you come near me," for I had come into the room at sound
of Carette's voice, and he looked very much nicer when he laughed.
"Oh--Hilaire!" cried the unseen Carette. "What a great big--"
"Ta-ta!" laughed her brother. "Little yellow heels should keep out of
sight,"--which was not meant in rudeness, but only, according to an Island
saying, that little people should not express opinions on matters which
don't concern them.
Before he could say more, the door behind me swung open and a surprised
voice cried--
"Diantre! What is this? And who are you, mon gars?" and I was facing
Carette's father, Jean Le Marchant, of whose doings I had heard many a wild
story on Sercq.
He was a very striking-looking man, tall and straight, and well-built. His
face was keen as a hawk's, and tanned and seamed and very much alive. His
eyes were very sharp and dark, under shaggy white eyebrows. They seemed to
go through me like a knife, and made me wish I had not come. His hair was
quite white, and was cut so short that it bristled all over, and added much
to his fierce wide-awake look, as though he scented dangers all round and
was ready to tackle them with a firm hand. He had a long white moustache
and no other hair on his face.
While I was still staring at him, Carette's voice came from its
hiding-place--
"It is Phil Carré come to look for me, father. He is my good friend. You
will give him welcome."
"Ah-ha! Mademoiselle commands," and the keen face softened somewhat and
broke into a smile, which was still somewhat grim. "Monsieur Phil Carré, I
greet you! I can hardly say you are welcome, as I do not care for visitors.
But since you came to get news of the little one, I promise not to kill and
eat you, as you seem to expect."
"Merci, monsieur!" I faltered. For, from all accounts, he was quite capable
of the first, though the second had not actually suggested itself to me.
"How did you come? I did not see any boat."
"By the Galé de Jacob. I swam across."
"Ma foi! Swam across! You have courage, mon gars;" and I saw that I had
risen in his estimation.
"He swims like a fish and he has no fear," chirped Carette from her
hiding-place.
"All the same, bon Dieu, the Gouliot is no pond," and he looked through me
again. "How old are you, mon gars?"
"Thirteen next year."
"And what are you going to make of yourself when you grow up?"
"I don't know."
"For boys of spirit there are always openings," he said, and I knew very
well what he meant, and shook my head.
"Ah, so! You are not free-traders at Belfontaine," he laughed. At which I
shook my head again, feeling a trifle ashamed of our uncommon virtue, which
could not, I thought, commend itself to so notorious a defier of preventive
law.
"All the same, he is a fine man, your grandfather, and a seaman beyond
most. You will follow the sea?--or are you for the farming?"
"The sea sure, but it will be in the trading, I expect."
"It is larger than the farming, but not very large after all."
"When will I be able to see Carette, m'sieur?"
"Not for ten days or so. As soon as she is well enough I shall carry her
over to Mistress Falla's. Then you can see her."
"Thank you, m'sieur. I think I will go now."
"Going back same way?"
"Yes, sir."
"I'll see you off. Sure you can manage it?"
"Oh yes. Good-bye, Carette!" as he moved towards the door.
"Good-bye, Phil! I'll be at Aunt Jeanne's just as soon as I can," piped
Carette, out of the darkness of her inner room.
And Jean Le Marchant led me back across the Island to the Galé de Jacob,
and stood watching me from Belème till I scrambled in among the rocks at
the foot of Saut de Juan.
That was the first time I visited Carette's home and met her father, though
her brothers I had seen at times on Sercq, viewing them from a distance
with no little awe on account of the many strange stories told about them.
They were not in the habit of mixing much with the Island men, however.
They kept their own counsel and their own ways, and this aloofness did not
make for good comradeship when they did come across.
It was years before I set foot on Brecqhou again.
These brief glimpses of those bright early days I have set down that you
might know us as we were. For myself I delight to recall them, but if I
were to tell you one quarter of all our doings and sayings when we were boy
and girl together, with but one will--and that Carette's--it would make a
volume passing bounds.
And it is possible that my recollection of these things is coloured
somewhat with the knowledge and feeling of the later times, for a man may
no more fully enter again into the thoughts of his childhood than he may
enter full grown into his childhood's clothes. I have told them, however,
just as they are present in my own mind, and they are at all events true.
CHAPTER IX
HOW WE BEGAN TO SPREAD OUR WINGS
Ten years make little change in the aspect of Sercq, nor ten times ten for
that matter, though the learned men tell us that the sea and wind and
weather take daily toll of the little land and are slowly and surely
wearing it away. It has not changed much in my time, however, and I have no
doubt it will still stand firm for those who are to follow.
But ten years in the life of a boy and girl--ten years, which about double
in number those that have gone, and increase experiences tenfold--these
indeed bring mighty changes.
In those ten years I grew from boy to man, and Carette Le Marchant grew
into a gracious and beautiful woman, and--we grew a little apart.
That was inevitable, I suppose, and in the natural course of things, for
even two saplings planted side by side will, as they grow into trees, be
wider apart at the top than they are down below. And perhaps it is right,
for if they grew too close together both would suffer. Growth needs space
for full expansion if it is not to be lop-sided. And boy and girl days
cannot last for ever.
Those ten years taught me much--almost all that I ever learned, until the
bitterer experiences of life brought it all to the test, and sifted out
the chaff, and left me knowledge of the grain.
And once again I would say that to my mother, Rachel Carré, and to my
grandfather and Krok, and to William Shakespeare and John Bunyan and to my
grandfather's great Bible, I owe in the first place all that I know. All
those books he made me read very thoroughly, and parts of them over and
over again, till I knew them almost by heart. And at the time I cannot say
that this was much to my liking, but later, when I came to understand
better what I read, no urging was needed, for they were our only books,
except Foxe's _Martyrs_, in which I never found any very great enjoyment,
though Krok revelled in it. And I suppose that a man might pass through
life, and bear himself well in it, and never feel lonely, with those books
for his companions.
I should not, however, omit mention of M. Rousselot, the schoolmaster, who
took a liking to me because of the diligence which was at first none of my
own, but only the outward showing of my mother's and grandfather's strict
oversight. But, as liking begets liking, I came to diligence for M.
Rousselot's sake also, and finally for the sake of learning itself. And
also I learned no little from Mistress Jeanne Falla, who had the wisest
head and the sharpest tongue and the kindest heart in all Sercq.
But I was never a bookworm, though the love of knowledge and the special
love of those books I have named is with me yet.
"Whatever you come to be, Phil, though it be only a farmer-fisherman, you
will be all the better man and the happier for knowing all you can," my
grandfather would say to me, when we grew into closer fellowship with my
growing years. "It is not what a man is in position but what he is in
himself that makes for his happiness. And I think," he would add
thoughtfully, "that the more a man understands of life and the more he
thinks upon it--in fact, the more he has inside himself--the less he cares
for the smaller things outside." And I believe he was right.
He taught me all he knew concerning the farm and the land and the crops,
and taught me not by rule of thumb, but showed me the why and wherefore of
things, and opened the eyes of my understanding to notice the little things
of nature as well as the great, which many people, I have found, pass all
through their lives without ever seeing at all.
The same with the fishing. He and Krok gave me all they had to give; and,
without vainglory, but simply as grateful testimony to their goodness, I
think that at two-and-twenty I knew as much as any of my age in Sercq, and
more than most. I knew too that there were things I did not know, and did
not care to know, and for that, and all the higher things, I have to thank
my dear mother and my grandfather.
But growth in its very nature requires a widening sphere. Contentment comes
of experience and satisfaction, and youth, to arrive at that, must needs
have the experience, but craves it as a rule for itself alone.
Sercq is but a dot on the map, and not indeed that on most, and outside it
lay all the great world, teeming with wonders which could only be seen by
seeking them.
Up to the time I was sixteen, and Carette fourteen, we were comrades of the
sea and shore and cliffs, and very great friends. Then Aunt Jeanne Falla
insisted on her being sent to school in Peter Port--a grievous blow to us
both, for which we lived to thank her. For Carette, clever as she was by
nature, and wonderfully sharp at picking things up, had no inducements at
home towards anything beyond bodily growth, except, indeed, when she was at
Beaumanoir with Aunt Jeanne, and those times were spasmodic and were
countered by her returns to the free and easy life on Brecqhou. And Aunt
Jeanne loved her dearly and knew what was best for her, and so she
insisted, and Carette went weeping to Peter Port to the Miss Maugers'
school in George Road.
Her going made a great gap in my life, and the outer things began to call
on me. My ideas respecting them were dim and distorted enough, as I
afterwards found, but their call was all the more insistent for that. Lying
flat on Tintageu, chin on fist, I would watch the white-sailed ships
pushing eagerly to that wonderful outer world and long to be on them. There
were great ships carrying wine and brandy to the West Indies, where the
people were all black, and the most wonderful plants grew, and the palm
trees. And to Canada and Newfoundland, where the great icebergs came down
through the mist. And some carrying fish to the Mediterranean, whose shores
were all alive with wonders, to say nothing of the chances of seeing some
fighting on the way, for England was at war with France and Spain, and
rumours of mighty doings reached us at times. And some taking tea and
tobacco to Hamburg and Emden, where the people were all uncouth foreigners
who spoke neither French nor English and so must offer mighty change from
Sercq.
Then there were multitudes of smaller vessels, sloops and chasse-marées,
bound on shorter and still more profitable, if more dangerous voyages.
Wherever they were going, on whatsoever errand bent, it was into the great
outside world, and they all cried, "Come!"
Those shorter flights to the nearer shores had a special appeal of their
own, and the stories one heard among one's fellows--of the wild midnight
runs into Cornish creeks and Devon and Dorset coves, of encounters now and
again with the revenue men, of exhilarating flights and narrow escapes from
Government cutters--these but added zest to the traffic in one's
imagination which, in actual fact, might possibly have been found wanting.
The moral aspects of the free-trade business did not trouble me in the
slightest in those days. It was the old-established and natural trade of
the Islands, for which they had evidently been set just where they were
with that special end in view. We looked upon it as very much akin to the
running of cargoes into blockaded ports--a large profit for a large risk
and no ill-feeling, though, indeed, at times, human nature would out, and
attempts at the enforcement of laws in the making of which we had no hand,
would result in collisions, and occasionally in the shedding of blood.
Incidents of that kind were, of course, to be regretted, and were certainly
not sought for by our Island men, though doubtless at times the wilder
spirits would seek reprisal for the thwarting of their plans. But when even
one of the great men in England, who made these laws against free-trading,
could tell his fellow-lawmakers that the mind of man never could conceive
of it as at all equalling in turpitude those acts which are breaches of
clear moral virtue--how should it be expected that the parties chiefly
interested should take a stricter view of the matter?
In course of time my longing for the wider life found expression, first in
looks, and at last in words, which, indeed, were not needed, for my mother
had seen and understood long before I spoke.
And when my words found vent she was ready for them, and I learned how
firmly set upon her way may be a woman whom one had always looked upon as
gentlest of the gentle and retiring beyond most.
"Not that, Phil, not that. Anything but that. I would sooner see you in
your grave than a free-trader,"--which seemed to me an extreme view to take
of the matter, but I know now that she had her reasons, and that they were
all-sufficient for her.
My grandfather set his face against it also, though, indeed, my mother's
strong feeling would have been enough for me. He, however, being a man,
understood better, perhaps, what was in me, for he had been that way
himself, and he set himself to further my craving.
The only other openings were in the legitimate trading to foreign parts, or
service on a King's ship, or on a privateer, which latter business had come
to be of very great importance in the Islands. And between those three
there could not be any question which my mother and grandfather would
favour. For the perils of the sea are considerable in themselves, and are
never absent from any mother-heart in the Islands. But add to them the
harshness of the King's service and the possibilities of sudden death at
the hands of the King's enemies, and there was no doubt as to which way the
mother-heart would incline.
For myself, so hungry was I for wider doings, I would have put my neck
under the yoke sooner than not go at all, and when they saw that spread my
wings I must, they consented to my shipping on one of the Guernsey traders
to foreign parts, and my heart was lighter than it had been for many a day.
I was eighteen, tall and strong, and, thanks to my grandfather and Krok, a
capable seaman, so far as the limited opportunities of our little Island
permitted, and the rest would come easily, for all their teaching had given
me a capacity to learn.
That first parting from home and my mother and grandfather and Krok was a
terrible wrench, full as I was of the wonderful world I was going out to
see. I had never been away from them before, and the sight of my mother's
woeful attempts at cheerfulness came near to breaking me down, and remained
with me for many a day. In my eagerness for the wider life I had forgotten
the hole my going must make in hers. And yet I do not think she would have
had me stay, for she was as wise as she was gentle, and she ever set other
people's wishes before her own. She had borne a man-child, and the
inevitable Island penalty of parting with him she bore without a murmur,
though the look on her face told its own tale at times.
"Change of pasture is good for young calves," was Jeanne Falla's
characteristic comment when they were discussing the matter one evening.
And when my mother, in a moment of weakness, urged the likelihood, if not
the absolute certainty, of my never returning alive, Aunt Jeanne's
trenchant retort, "Go where you can, die where you must," put an end to the
discussion and helped me to my wishes.
My grandfather procured me a berth as seaman on the barque _Hirondelle_ of
Peter Port, Nicolle master, and in her I made three voyages--to the West
Indies, then on to Gaspé in the St. Lawrence, and thence to the
Mediterranean. That was our usual round, and what with contrary winds, and
detentions in various ports, and the necessity of waiting and dodging the
enemy's cruisers and privateers, the voyages were long ones, and not
lacking in incident.
My story, however, is not concerned with them, except incidentally, and I
will refer to them as little as possible.
My grandfather went across with me to Peter Port the first time. He had
known George Nicolle many years, and felt me safe in his hands, and his
confidence was well placed. The _Hirondelle_ was a comfortable ship, and I
never heard a real word of complaint aboard of her. Growling and grumbling
there was occasionally, of course, or some of the older hands would never
have been happy, but it amounted to nothing, and there was no real ground
for it.
She was still only loading when we boarded her, and it was three days later
before we cast off and headed up Little Russel for the open sea.
CHAPTER X
HOW I BEARDED LIONS IN THEIR DENS
That first night in Peter Port, when my grandfather had wrung my hand for
the last time, looking at me with prayers in his eyes, and bidding me do my
duty and keep clean, and had put off for home in his boat, and work was
over for the day and I my own master, I decided on making a call which was
much in my heart, and to which I had been looking forward for days past.
I cleaned myself up, and made myself as smart as possible, and set off for
the Miss Maugers' school in George Road.
It was not until I saw the house that doubts began to trouble me as to the
fitness of my intention. It was a much larger house than any I had ever
been in, and there was a straightness and primness about it which somehow
did not suggest any very warm welcome to a young sailorman, whose pride in
his first appointment and in the spreading of his wings for his first
flight underwent sudden shrinkage.
It took me a good half-hour's tramping to and fro, past the house and back
again, eyeing it carefully each time as though I was trying to discover the
best way to break into it, to screw my courage up to the point. There were
two windows on each side of the door and two rows of five above, fourteen
in all, and every window had its little curtains rigged up exactly alike
to a hair's-breadth. If any one of them had been an inch awry I should have
known it, and would have felt less of an intruder.
I had not seen Carette for over six months, and the last time she was home
most of my time, when we met, had been spent in discovering and puzzling
over the changes that had come over her. These ran chiefly towards a
sobriety of behaviour which was not natural to her, and which seemed to me
assumed for my special benefit and tantalisation, and I was expecting every
minute to see the sober cloak cast aside and the laughing Carette of
earlier days dance out into the sunshine of our old camaraderie.
Aunt Jeanne Falla's twinkling eyes furthered the hope. But it was not
realised. Carette unbent, indeed, and we were good friends as ever, but
there was always about her that new cloak of staidness and ladylike polish
which became her prettily enough indeed, but which I could very well have
done without. For, you see, in all our doings hitherto, she had always
looked up to me as leader, even when she twirled my boyish strength about
her finger and made me do her will. And now, though I was bigger and
stronger than ever, she had, in some ways, gone beyond me. She was, in
fact, seeing the world, such as it was in Guernsey in those days, and it
made me feel more than ever how small a place Sercq was, and more than ever
determined to see the world also.
I warped myself up to Miss Mauger's green front door at last and gave a
valiant rap of the knocker, and hung on to it by sheer force of will to
keep myself from running away when I had done it. And when a maid in a prim
white cap opened the door, I had lost my tongue, and stood staring at her
till she smiled encouragingly, as though she thought I might have come to
ask her out for a walk.
"I've come to see Carette--Ma'm'zelle Le Marchant, I mean," I stammered,
very red and awkward.
"If you'll come in, I'll tell Miss Mauger," she smiled; and I stepped
inside, and was shown into one of the front rooms with the very straight
curtains. The room inside was very stiff and straight also. It occurred to
me that if all the other rooms were like it Carette must have found them a
very great change from Brecqhou. Perhaps it was living among these things
that had such an effect upon her that she could not shake it off when she
came home for the holidays. The stiff, straight chairs offered me no
invitation to be seated, and I stood waiting in the middle of the room.
Then the door opened, and a little elderly lady came in, and saluted me
very formally with a curtsey bow which rather upset me, for no one had ever
done such a thing to me before. It made me feel awkward and ill at ease.
Miss Mauger seemed to me very like her drawing-room, straight and precise
and stiff. Her face reminded me somewhat of Aunt Jeanne Falla's, but lacked
the kindly twinkle of the eyes which redeemed Aunt Jeanne's shrewdest and
sharpest speeches. She had little fiat rows of grey curls, tight to her
head, on each side of her face, for all the world like little ormer shells
sticking to a stone.
"Monsieur Le Marchant?" she asked.
"No, madame--ma'm'zelle. I am Phil Carré."
"Oh!... You are not then one of Mademoiselle Le Marchant's brothers?"
"No, ma'm'zelle."
"Oh!"
"We have always been friends since we were children," I explained
stumblingly, for her bright little eyes were fixed on me, through her
gold-rimmed spectacles, like little gimlets, and made me feel as if I was
doing something quite wrong in being there.
"Ah!" which seemed to imply that she had suspected something of the kind,
and it was a good thing for Carette that she was safely removed from such
companionship in the future.
"And I am going off on my first voyage to the West Indies--"
"Ah!" in a tone that seemed to say that as far as she and her house were
concerned it was to be hoped I would stop there.
"And I thought I would like to see Carette again before I went--"
"Ah!... And may I ask if you have sought permission from Mademoiselle Le
Marchant's relatives before making this call?"
"Permission?--To see Carette? No, madame--ma'm'zelle. I never dreamt of
such a thing. Permission to see Carette! Ma fé!"
"Ah!" ... ("What a strangely innocent young man!--or is it impudent
boldness?"--That was what was going on in her mind, I think, as she bored
at me with the little gimlets. But she said--) "We make it an inflexible
rule not to allow our young ladies to see any but their own relations,
except, of course, with the special permission of their relatives or
guardians."
"If I had known, I would have got a letter from Aunt Jeanne Falla, but such
a thing never entered into my head for a moment."
"You know Madame Le Marchant--Miss Jeanne Falla that was?"
"Know Aunt Jeanne?--Well, I should--I mean, yes, madame,--I mean
ma'm'zelle. She has known me from the day I was born."
"Ah!... And you think she would have accorded you permission to see
mademoiselle?"
"Why, of course she would. She would never dream of me being in Peter Port
without calling to see Carette."
She looked me through and through again, and said at last--
"If you will excuse me for a moment, I will consult with my sisters. It is
a matter which concerns them also, and I should wish them to share the
responsibility," and she dropped me another frigid little salute and backed
out of the door.
And I felt very sorry for Carette, and did not wonder so much now at the
little stiffnesses of manner I had noticed in her the last time we met.
And presently the door opened, and the little lady stole in again with the
same little formal greeting, and, after looking at me till I felt cold
about the neck, said, "You wish to see Mademoiselle Le Marchant?" And then
I noticed that the little ormer shell curls about this little lady's face
were not all gray, but mixed gray and brown, and that this little face was,
if anything, still more frigidly ungracious than the last, a regular little
martinet of a face, and I knew that it must be another of the Miss Maugers.
"Yes, ma'm'zelle, with your permission."
"My sister states that you are acquainted with Madame Le Marchant, of
Beaumanoir, whom we used to know intimately--"
"I have known Aunt Jeanne from the day I was born," I said, perhaps a
trifle vehemently, for the absurdity of all these precautions between
myself and Carette began to ruffle me. In fact, I began to feel almost as
though there must be some grounds for their doubts about me which I had
never hitherto recognised in myself, and it made me more decided than ever
to have my own way in the matter.
"My grandfather is Philip Carré, of Belfontaine," I said, with a touch of
the ruffle in my voice, "and he is a great friend of Mr. Claude Gray--"
"The Quaker," she said, with a pinch of the thin little lips.
And then the door opened, and, with the usual curtsey, still another Miss
Mauger joined us, and her little ormer shells were all brown, and she wore
no spectacles, and the corners of her mouth were on a level with the
centre, and looked as if they might on occasion even go up instead of down.
She looked at me half mistrustfully, like a bird which doubts one's
intentions towards its bit of plunder, and then, just like the bird, seemed
to gauge my innocence of evil, and bent and whispered into her sister's
gray and brown ormer shells.
"My sister informs me that Mademoiselle Le Marchant has been apprised of
your visit and has expressed a desire to see you, and so--"
"Under the circumstances," said the other.
"Under the circumstances, we will make an exception from our invariable
rule and permit this interview."
"On the understanding--" began the other.
"On the understanding that it is not to form a precedent--"
"And also," said the younger sister hastily, "that one of us is present."
"Certainly, that one of us is present," said the elder.
"By all means," I said, "and I am very much obliged to you. I really do not
mean to eat Carette, nor even to run away with her."
"We should certainly prevent any attempt of the kind," said the elder
sister severely.
They whispered together for a moment, then she shook out her prim skirts
and dropped me a curtsey, and went away to fetch Carette.
"You see we have to be very strict in such matters," said the younger Miss
Mauger, settling herself very gracefully on a chair so that her skirts
disposed themselves in nice straight lines. "With forty young ladies under
one's charge one cannot be too careful."
"I am quite sure you are very careful of them, ma'm'zelle," I said, at
which she actually smiled a very little bird-like smile. "I will tell Aunt
Jeanne how very careful you are next time I see her, and she will laugh and
say, 'Young maids and young calves thrive best under the eyes of their
mistress.'"
"I do not know much about calves"--and then the door opened and Carette
came in.
She ran up to me with both hands outstretched.
"Oh, Phil, I was so afraid I was not to see you! And you are going away?
How big you're getting! How long will you be away?"
This was very delightful, for I had been fearing that the little touch of
stiffness, which I had experienced the last time I saw her, and which I now
quite understood, might have grown out of knowledge.
"We are going first to the West Indies and then on to Canada. It may be a
long time before I'm back, and I did want to see you once more before I
went. I began to fear I was not going to."
"'Oh, we're very strict here, you know, and we have rules. Oh, heaps of
rules! But I knew dear Miss Maddy would manage it when she knew how I
wanted to see you;" and she ran up to Miss Maddy and kissed the little
brown ormer shells over her ears, and Miss Maddy patted them hastily lest
the tiny kiss should have set them awry.
"And how did you leave them all in Sercq? And when did you see Aunt Jeanne
last? And who's taking care of my boat? And--"
"Wait!" I laughed, "or I shall forget some of them. I saw Aunt Jeanne this
morning just before I left. She thought we sailed at once. She would have
sent you her love, and maybe some gâche, if she had known--"
"Ah, ma fé! How I wish she had known!" sighed Carette longingly, for Aunt
Jeanne Falla's gâche had a name all over Sercq.
"And everybody is well except old Père Guérin, and he is cutting a new
tooth, they say, and it makes him sour in the temper."
"Why, he's over ninety!" exclaimed Carette.
"Ninety-two next January. That's why he's so annoyed about it. And your
boat is safe in the top nook of Port du Moulin, all covered over with
sailcloth and gorse. Krok and I did it, and he will soak it for ten days
before you come home, and have it all ready for you."
"The dear old Krok!"
"Oh, we have taken very great care of it, I assure you. But maybe you will
be too grown-up to care for it by the time you get back."
"Perhaps!" And oddly enough--though indeed it may have been only my own
thought, and without reasonable foundation--thereupon there seemed to fall
between us a slight veil of distance. So that, though we talked of Sercq
and of our friends there, it seemed to me that we were not quite as we had
been, and I could not for the life of me tell why, nor, indeed, for certain
if it were so or not.
When I was leaving, however, Carette put both her hands in mine and gave me
Godspeed as heartily as I could wish, and I made my best bow to Miss Maddy,
and went back to the _Hirondelle_ well pleased at having seen Carette and
at her hearty greeting and farewell, but with a little wonder and doubt at
my heart as to what the final effect of all this schooling might be.
CHAPTER XI
HOW WE GREW, AND GROWING, GREW APART
As I said, I am not going to waste time telling you of my three long
voyages, beyond what is absolutely necessary. These lie for the most part
like level plains in my memory, though not without their out-jutting
points. But the heights and depths lay beyond.
Very clear to me, however, is the fact that it was ever-growing thought of
Carette, more even, I am bound to confess, than thought of my mother and
grandfather, that kept me clear of pitfalls which were not lacking to the
unwary in those days as in these. Thought of Carette, too, that braced me
to the quiet facing of odds on more than one occasion.
Our second voyage was distinguished by a whole day's fierce fighting with a
French privateer off the Caicos Islands, while proceeding peacefully on our
way from the newly acquired island of Trinidad to the St. Lawrence. It was
my first experience of fighting, and a hot one at that. Between killed and
wounded we lost five men, but the Frenchman left ten dead on our deck the
first time he boarded, and eight the second, and after that did not try
again. But he dogged us all the rest of that day and did his best to
cripple us, until a fortunate shot from a carronade, which Master Nicolle
ran out astern, nipped his foremast and set us free. I got a cut from a
cutlass in the left arm, but it healed readily, and Captain Nicolle was
pleased to compliment me on my behaviour. But, to tell the truth, I was so
angry at the Frenchman's insolent interference with us, that I thought of
nothing at the time but taking it out of him with hearty thrust and blow
whenever chance offered.
On our third voyage the _Hirondelle_ went ashore in a gale off Cape
Hatteras, and Captain Nicolle and half our crew were drowned. The rest of
us scrambled ashore _sans_ everything, but were well treated, and as soon
as we could travel were forwarded to New York, and in time found a ship to
take us to London.
So that, on the whole, I had seen a fair amount of life and death and the
larger world outside, and felt my years almost doubled from what they were
when I used to lie on Tintageu and watch the white-sailed ships pressing
out to the great beyond.
But the things that stand out now most clearly in my memory are the
homecomings and the partings and all they meant to me, but more especially
the homecomings--the eager looking forward from the moment our bows pointed
homewards; the joy of seeing my mother and grandfather and dear old Krok
and George Hamon--Uncle George by adoption, failing that closer
relationship which Providence had denied him--sympathetic listener to all
our childish troubles and kindly rescuer from endless scrapes; the biting
intensity of longing to meet Carette again, and to find out how things were
with her and how things were between us, a longing that taught me the
meaning of heartache.
For this was how matters stood between us--at least as I saw them. Each
time I came home I managed, in one way or another, to get a sight, at all
events, of Carette, though in some cases little more. Twice I stormed the
maiden fortress in George Road, and ran the gauntlet of the Miss Maugers
with less discomfiture than on the first occasion, through Miss Maddy's
sympathy and my added weight of years and experience. And once Carette was
making holiday with Aunt Jeanne, and Beaumanoir saw more of me than did
Belfontaine.
And my very vivid recollection of all those times is this--that Carette
grew more beautiful each time I saw her, both in mind and body; that my
feeling for her grew in me beyond all other growth, though the years were
building me solidly; and that a fear sprang up in me at last that she was
perhaps going to grow out of my reach, as she certainly was growing out of
my understanding.
Each time we met her greeting was of the warmest, and had in it the
recollection of those earlier days. That, I said to myself, was the real
Carette.
And then there would gradually come upon us that thin veil of distance, as
though the years and the growth and the experiences of life were setting us
a little apart. And that, I said, was the Miss Maugers.
For my part I would have had Carette as satisfied with my sole
companionship as in the days when we romped bare-legged among the pools and
rocks, and woke the basking gulls and cormorants with our shouts, and dared
the twisting currents with unfettered limbs and no thought of wrong. These
things in all their fulness of delight were, of course, no longer possible
to us. But the joyous spirit of them I would fain have retained, and I
found it slipping elusively away.
We were, in fact, and inevitably, putting away the things of our childhood
and becoming man and woman, with all the wider and deeper feelings incident
thereto. The changes were inevitable and--Carette grew in some ways more
quickly than I did. So that, whereas I had always been undisputed leader in
all things, even when it was the accomplishing of her wishes, now I found
myself looking up to her as something above me, possibly beyond me,
something certainly to strive after with all that was in me, and without
which everything else would be nothing.
Perhaps I had been inclined to take things somewhat for granted. Jeanne
Falla did not fail, in due course, to tell me so, and she was a very shrewd
woman and understood her kind better than any man that ever was born. Now,
taking things for granted is always, and under any circumstances, but most
especially where the unknown is in question, a most unwise thing to do. And
what can equal for unfathomableness the workings of a woman's heart?
I had never given a thought to any other girl than Carette, unless by way
of unfavourable comparison. It is true I had never come across any girl so
well worth thinking about. The merry dark eyes with their deepening depths;
the sweet wide mouth that flashed so readily into laughter, and set one
thinking of the glad little waves and little white shells on Herm beach;
the mane of dark brown hair--she wore it primly braided at the Miss
Maugers'--in which gleams of sunshine seemed to have become entangled and
never been able to find their way out,--these went with me through the soft
seductions of the Antilles, and the more experienced beguilements of the
Mediterranean, and armed me sufficiently against them all;--these also that
filled with rosy light many a long hour that for my comrades was dark and
tedious, and kept my heart high and strong when the times were hard and
bitter.
I had wondered at times, but always pleasurably, at the very unusual amount
of education Carette was getting, for it was unusual at that time and under
the circumstances, so far as I understood them. But I rejoiced at it,
remembering my grandfather's saying in my own case; and even when the
results of it seemed to drop little veils between us, I am certain I never
wished things otherwise so far as Carette was concerned, though perhaps for
my own sake I might.
Jean Le Marchant of Brecqhou had prospered in his business, I knew. His six
stalwart sons had been too busy contributing to that prosperity to acquire
any great book-learning. They were all excellent sailors, bold
free-traders, and somewhat overbearing to their fellows. It was only slowly
that the idea came to me that the blood that was in them might be of a
different shade and kind from that which flowed so temperately in our cool
Sercq veins.
It was much thinking of Carette and her ever-growing beauty and
accomplishments which brought me to that. Truly there was no girl in all
Sercq like her, nor on Guernsey I would wager, and her father and brothers
also were very different from the other Island men. As likely as not they
were French, come over to escape the troubles. That would account for many
things, and the idea, once in my mind, took firm root there. Sometime, when
opportunity offered, I would ask Jeanne Falla. She would certainly know
all about her own husband's family. Whether she would tell me was quite
another matter.
Up to now, you see, Carette, as Carette, had sufficed, but now Carette was
growing out of herself and her surroundings, and it was the why and
wherefore of this that my thoughts went in search of. For if Carette grew
out of her surroundings she might grow beyond me, and it behoved me to see
to it, for she had grown to be a part of my life, and life without her
would be a poor thing indeed.
And all these things I used to turn over and over in my heart during the
sultry night-watches in the West Indies, when the heat lightnings gleamed
incessantly all round the horizon, and it was too hot to sleep even when
off duty; and during the grimmer watches round about Newfoundland, with the
fog as thick as wool inside and outside one, and the smell of the floating
bergs in the air; and most of all when we were plunging homeward as fast as
we could make it, and the call of Carette drew my heart faster than my
body, till my body fairly ached for sight and sound of her.
CHAPTER XII
HOW AUNT JEANNE GAVE A PARTY
It was on my return from my fourth voyage--in the brig _Sarnia_--that
things began to happen.
The voyage had been a disastrous one all through. We had bad weather right
across to the Indies, and had to patch up there as best we could. It was
when we were slowly making our way north that a hurricane, such as those
seas know, caught us among the Bahamas and brought us to a sudden end.
The ship had been badly strained already on the voyage out, and the repairs
had been none too well done. Our masts went like carrots and we were
rolling helplessly in the grip of the storm, pumping doggedly but without
hope against seams that gaped like a sieve, when the Providence that rules
even hurricanes flung us high on a sandy coast and left us there to help
ourselves.
Of our blind wanderings in that gruesome land of swamps and sand, which,
when we at last escaped from it, we learned was Florida, I must not write
here. It was months before such of us as were left crawled through into
civilisation, and it is not too much to say that every day of the time
after we parted from the wreck we carried our lives in our hands. It was
sixteen months almost to a day before I set foot once more on Peter Port
quay. For beggars cannot be choosers, and for the very clothes we stood in
we were indebted to the kind hearts who took pity on us in the American
States. We had had to wait at every point till means of forwarding us could
be found, and we were welcomed in Peter Port as men returned from the dead.
Within two hours I was scrambling up through the ferns and gorse above Port
à la Jument to the welcome that awaited me at home.
I peeped through the window before going in, and saw the table laid for
supper and my mother busy at the hearth. She turned when I entered,
supposing it was my grandfather and Krok, and then with a cry she was on my
neck.
Ah, how good it was to feel her there, and to find her unbroken by all the
terrible waiting! She had hoped and hoped, and refused to give up hoping
long after the others had done so. She told me, between smiles and tears,
that each time I went she had felt that she had probably seen me for the
last time. "But," she said quietly, "I left you in the good God's hands,
and I believed that however it was with you it would be well."
Then my grandfather and Krok came in, and my grandfather said very
fervently, "Now God be praised!" and wrung my right hand as if he could
never wring it enough, while Krok wrung the other, with eyes that stood out
of his head like marbles and yet were full of tears.
During supper I told them shortly what had befallen us, and I had so much
to tell, and they so much to hear, that we none of us supped over well, yet
none of us had probably ever enjoyed a supper like it.
Then in turn I was hungry for news, and began asking about this one and
that, intending so to come presently to Carette without baring my heart.
But my dear mother, guessing perhaps what was in me, gave me full measure.
"Jeanne Falla has a party to-night, my boy, and Carette is stopping with
her. You should go down and give them a surprise."
"I will go," I said, and jumped up at once to see if, among the things I
had left behind when I went away, I could find enough to rig myself out
suitably to the occasion.
My mother had a new blue guernsey just finished for me, a wonderful
guernsey, when you think of it. She had, I think, gone on working at it,
after the others had given me up, just to show her trust in Providence, and
her dear eyes shone when she saw me in it. Loans from my grandfather, whose
full stature I had now attained, and whose contribution was of importance,
and from Krok, who would have given me one of his eyes if I had needed it,
filled all my requirements, and I set off for Beaumanoir about nine o'clock
as glad a man as any in Sercq that night.
And oh, the sweetness of the night and all things in it. The solemn pulse
of the great sea in Saut de Juan; the voices of many waters in the Gouliot
Pass; the great dusky cushions of gorse studded with blooms that looked
white under the moon; the mingling in the soft salt air of the scent of
hedge-roses and honeysuckle, of dewy, trodden grass and the sweet breath of
cows--ay, even the smell of the pigsties was good that night, and mightily
refreshing after the dark Everglades of Florida.
Aunt Jeanne's hospitable door stood wide. She kept open house that night,
for the old observances were dear to her ever-young heart. I walked right
into her kitchen, and she met me with a cry of amazement and delight, and
every wrinkle in the weather-browned face creased into a smile.
"Why, Phil, mon gars! Is it possible?" she cried. "You are welcome as one
from the dead. Though, ma fé, I hoped all along, as your mother did. And,
my good! what a big fellow it is! And not bad-looking either! I used to
think you'd grow up square. You were the squarest boy I ever saw. But
foreign parts have drawn you out like a ship's mast."
She was dragging me by the hand all the time, and now halted me in front of
the great square fern-bed in the corner between the window and the hearth,
and stood looking up into my face with the air of an artist awaiting
approval of her latest masterpiece. A dear old face, sharp-featured,
clever, all alive with the brightness of that which was in her, and with
two bright dark eyes sparkling like a robin's under the black silk
sun-bonnet which the gossips said she wore day and night.
I knew she looked just all that, but no eyes or thought had I for Aunt
Jeanne or anyone else just then.
For here in front of me was the great green fern-bed, green no longer but
transformed into a radiant shrine of flowers. Nine feet long it was, and
not much less in width, and its solid oaken sides rose some two feet from
the floor. It was heaped indeed with the bronze-green fronds and
russet-gold stalks of fresh-cut bracken, but this was only the ordinary
workaday foundation, and was almost hidden beneath a coverlet of
roses--roses of every hue from damask-red to saffron-yellow and purest
white, heaped and strewn in richest profusion and filling the room with
perfume. From somewhere in the roof above, long sprays of creeping geranium
and half-opened honeysuckle and branches of tree fuchsia hung down to the
sides of the couch and formed a canopy, the most beautiful one could
imagine. For the flowers of the honeysuckle looked like tiny baby-fingers
reaching down for something below, and the red and purple fuchsias looked
like a rain of falling stars. And beneath it sat the Queen of the Revels
dressed all in white, her unbound hair rippling about her like a dark
sunset cloud, till it lost itself among the creamy many-coloured petals
below,--Carette, the loveliest flower of all.
She had shaken her hair over her face to veil her modesty at the very
outspoken admiration of some of the earlier comers, but I caught the
sparkle of her dark eyes as she looked up at me through the silken mesh,
and the sweet slim figure set the flowery canopy shaking with its
restrained eagerness. And my heart jumped within me at the lovely sight.
Disregardful of custom, I was stooping to speak to her, when Aunt Jeanne
dragged me away with a gratified laugh, and a quick "Nenni, nenni! She may
not speak till the time comes, or dear knows what will happen to us! Come
away, mon gars, and tell me where you have been and what you have been
doing," and she sat me down in a corner at the far end of the big dresser,
and herself beside me so that I should not get away, and made me talk, but
I could not take my eyes fora moment off the slim white figure on the
radiant bed of roses.
A most delightful place at all times was that great kitchen at Beaumanoir,
with its huge fireplace like a smaller room opening off the larger, and put
to many other uses besides simply that of cooking;--its black oak presses
and dressers and shelves all aglow with much polishing, and bright with
crockery and pewter; its great hanging rack under the ceiling, laden with
hams and sides of bacon and a hundred and one odds and ends of household
use; and the great table in the corner weighted now with piles of
currant-cake--Aunt Jeanne's gâche had a name in Sercq--and more substantial
faring still.
There were about a score of young men and girls there, with a sprinkling of
older folk, and every minute brought fresh arrivals to add to the talk and
laughter. Each new-comer on entering paid homage to the silent figure on
the green bed, and gave me boisterous welcome home as they came to receive
a word of greeting from the mistress of the house.
Everyone knew everyone else most intimately. Scarce one but was related to
half the people in the room. And all were in the gayest of spirits, for
there, in a far corner, old Nicholas Grut every now and again gave the
strings of his fiddle an impatient twang, as an intimation that all this
was sheer waste of time, and that the only proper business in life was
dancing. And presently they would begin, and they would dance until the sun
rose, and then--well, the new day had its own rites and ceremonies, and
eyes were bright and pulses leaping, and hearts were all a-flutter with
hopes and fears of what the day might bring.
"And who is this, Jeanne Falla?" I asked, as one came in whom I had never
seen before--a young man, dark and well-looking, and very handsomely
dressed compared with the rest of us. And he stood so long before the
green-bed, gazing at Carette, that there sprang up in me a sudden desire to
take him by the neck and drag him away, or, better still, to hurl him
through the open door into outer darkness.
"Tiens!" said Aunt Jeanne softly, "it is the young Torode--"
"Torode? I do not know him. Who is he?"
"C'est ça. It is since you left. His father has settled himself on Herm. He
is a great man in these parts nowadays. They do say--"
"They do say--?" I asked, as she stopped short.
"Bon dou! They say many strange things about M. Torode. But you know how
folks talk," she murmured.
"And what kind of things do they say, Aunt Jeanne?"
"Oh, all kinds of things. He's making a fine streak of fat--"
"So much the better for him."
"Maybe! But, mon dou, when a man gets along too quickly, the others will
talk, you know. They say he has the devil's own luck in all he undertakes.
He has three of the fastest chasse-marées in the Islands, and they say he's
never lost a cargo yet. And they say he has dealings with the devil and
Bonaparte and all the big merchants in Havre and Cherbourg. But of late
he's gone in for privateering, and the streak's growing a fat one, I can
tell you. He's got the finest schooner in these waters, and, ma fé, broth
and soup are both alike to him, I trow! Oh yes, he can see through a fog,
can Monsieur Torode."
"And what does Peter Port say to it all?"
"Pergui! Peter Port didn't like having its bread taken out of its
mouth,--not that it's bread contents Monsieur Torode, not by a very long
way. Fine doings there are on Herm, they say, when they're all at home
there. But he's too big and bold a man to interfere with. He pays for the
island, they say, and a good price too. Some say he's a wealthy emigre
turning his talents to account. For myself--" and the black sun-bonnet
nodded knowingly.
"You don't care for him over much, Aunt Jeanne?" and I felt unreasonably
glad that it was so.
"Ma fé, I've never set eyes on the man and never wish to! But such luck is
not too natural, you understand. The devil's flour has a way of turning to
bran, and what comes with the flood goes out with the ebb sometimes."
"All the same you invite the young one here."
"The door of Beaumanoir is wide to-night, and everyone who chooses to come
is welcome. Though I wouldn't say but what some are more welcome than
others.... Brecqhou and Herm have dealings together, you understand," she
murmured presently. "That is how this youngster finds himself here--Bernel,
they call him. The old one is much away and the young one does his business
hereabouts. And see the airs he puts on! One would think the Island
belonged to him, and he hasn't had the grace to come and say how d'ye do to
me yet. For myself--"
"For yourself, Aunt Jeanne?"
"Eh b'en!" with a twinkle. "One likes one's own calves best, oui gia!" and
I felt like kissing the little old brown hand.
Young Torode had joined the others, and was laughing and joking with the
girls, though it seemed to me that the men received him somewhat coldly.
Then some remark among them directed his attention to Jeanne Falla and
myself in the corner behind the dresser, and he came over at once.
"Pardon, Mistress Falla!" he said,--I think I have said before that Aunt
Jeanne was more generally called by her maiden name of Falla than by her
married one of Le Marchant, and she preferred it so,--"I was wondering
where you were. You have given us a most charming surprise,"--with a nod
towards the flower-decked green-bed. "But why is the goddess condemned to
silence?"
"Because it's the rule. And, ma fé, it is good for a girl's tongue to be
tied at times." Then, in answer to the enquiring looks he was casting at
me, she said, "This is Phil Carré of Belfontaine, whom some folks thought
dead. But I never did, and he's come back to show I was right. This is M.
Bernel Torode of Herm, Phil, mon gars."
And young Torode and I looked into one another's eyes and knew that we were
not to be friends. What he saw amiss in me I do not know, but to me there
was about him something overmasterful which roused in me a keen desire to
master it, or thwart it.
"You are but just home, then, M. Carré?" he asked.
"This evening."
"From--?"
"From Florida last by way of New York."
"Ah! Many ships about?"
"Not many but our own."
"There will be no bones left to pick soon," he laughed, "and the appetite
grows. And what with the preventive men and their new powers it will soon
be difficult to pick up an honest living."
"From all accounts M. Torode manages it one way or another," I said.
"All the same it gets more difficult. It's a case of too many pots and not
enough lobsters."
And then Jeanne Falla, who had gone across to the others, suddenly clapped
her hands, and Nicholas Grut's hungry bow dashed into a quick step that set
feet dancing in spite of themselves.
And Carette sprang up from her seat and stepped out of her bower, and her
face, radiant at her release, had in it all the loveliness of all the
flowers from among which she came. The roses clung to her white gown as
though loth to let her go, and strewed the ground as she passed, and no
man's heart but must have jumped the quicker at sight of her coming towards
him with welcomes in her eyes and hands.
She came straight across to us, and the other girls watched eagerly to see
which of us she would speak to first--for Midsummer Eve is as full of signs
and omens as Aunt Jeanne's gâche of currants.
She gave a hand to each of us, the left to me and the right to young
Torode, and the left is nearer the heart, said I to myself.
"Phil, mon cher," she cried joyously. "It is good to see you alive and home
again. And some foolish ones said you were gone for good! And you are
bigger and browner than ever--" and she held me off at arm's length for
inspection. "And when did you arrive?"
"I reached home just in time for supper."
"Ah, how glad your mother would be! She and Aunt Jeanne and I were the only
ones who hoped still, I do believe."
"May I beg the first dance, mademoiselle?" broke in young Torode, for the
couples were whirling past us and he had waited impatiently while we
talked.
"I must go and tie up my hair first. It looks like a tangle of vraic," she
laughed, and slipped away by the sides of the room and disappeared through
the doorway. And young Torode immediately took up his post there to claim
his dance as soon as she returned.
I was vexed with myself for giving him first chance. But truly my thoughts
had not been on the dancing, but only on Carette herself, and I would have
been content to look at her and listen to her all the evening without a
thought of anything more.
Young Torode's visible intention of keeping to himself as much of her
company as possible put me on my mettle, however, and when he dropped her
into a seat after that dance, I immediately claimed the next.
I could dance as well, I think, as any man in Sercq at that time, but I
felt myself but a clumsy sailorman after watching young Torode. For his
easy grace and confidence put us all into the shade, and did not, I am
afraid, tend to goodwill and fellowship on our part.
The other men, I noticed, had but little to say to him or he to them. He
danced now and then with one or other of the girls, and they seemed to
regard it more as an honourable experience than as matter of great
enjoyment. And the man with whose special belle-amie he was dancing would
sit and eye the pair gloomily the while, and remain silent and sulky for a
time afterwards.
But, except for such little matters as that, we had a right merry time of
it. Aunt Jeanne saw to that as energetically as though the hospitality of
Beaumanoir had had doubts cast upon it, a thing that never could have
happened. But Aunt Jeanne was energetic in all things, and this was her own
special yearly feast. And, ma fé, one may surely do what one likes with
one's own, and though one cannot recover one's youth one can at all events
live young again with those who are young.
The lively spirits of the younger folk worked so upon their elders, that
Uncle Henry Vaudin, who was seventy if he was a day, actually caught hold
of Aunt Jeanne, as she was flitting to and fro, and tried to dance her into
the whirling circle. But the result was only many collisions and much
laughter, as the youngsters nearly galloped over them, and Aunt Jeanne and
her partner stood in the centre laughing, till that dance was over.
Then she immediately challenged him to the hat dance, as being less trying
to the legs and requiring more brain, and calling on Carette to make their
third, they danced between three caps laid on the floor, in a way that
earned a storm of applause.
Then two of the men danced the broom dance--each holding one end of the
broom and passing it neatly under their arms, and over their heads, and
under their legs, as they danced in quick step to the music.
And, in the intervals of such hard work, we ate--cold meats, cunningly
cooked, and of excellent quality because Aunt Jeanne had bred them herself;
and the best made bread and the sweetest butter in Sercq, and heaps of
spicy gâche, all of Aunt Jeanne's own making. And we drank cider of Aunt
Jeanne's own pressing, and equal to anything you could get in Guernsey. And
now and again the men-folk smoked in the doorway, and if the very excellent
tobacco she provided for them was not of her own growing, it was only
because she had not so far undertaken its cultivation, and because tobacco
could be got very cheap when you knew how to get it.
And then we danced again till the walls spun round quicker than ourselves,
and even Uncle Nico's seasoned arms began to feel the strain. And
still--"Faster! Faster!" cried the men, and the girls would not be beaten.
And the ropes of flowers above the green-bed swung as though in a summer
gale, and the roses leaped out and joined in the dance, till the smell of
them, as they were trampled by the flying feet, filled all the room.
Then, while we lay spent and panting, the men mopping themselves with their
kerchiefs, and the girls fanning themselves with theirs, Aunt Jeanne, who
had had time to recover from her unwonted exertions with Uncle Henry
Vaudin, recited some of the old-time poems, of which she managed to carry a
string in her head in addition to all the other odds and ends which it
contained.
She gave us "L' R'tou du Terre-Neuvi oprès San Prumi Viage"--
"Mais en es-tu bain seu, ma fille?
Not' Jean est-i don bain r'v'nu?
Tu dis qué nou l'a veu en ville,
I m'étonn' qu'i n'sait déjà v'nu"--
eighteen long verses, full of tender little touches telling of the
hysterical upsetting in the mother's heart at the safe return of her boy
from the perils of the sea.
And to me, who had just seen it all in my own mother's heart, it struck
right home, and came near to making me foolish in the matter of wet eyes.
And, besides, Aunt Jeanne would keep looking at me, as she reeled it off in
her sharp little voice, which was softer than I had ever heard it before,
and that made Carette and all the other girls look at me also, till I was
glad when she was done, I was getting so uncomfortable.
Then, when at last the poor sailor-boy in the story was so full that he
could not take another bite--not even a bite of pancake on which his mother
in her upsetting had sprinkled salt instead of sugar--that poem came to an
end, and by way of a change Aunt Jeanne plunged headlong into--
"Ma Tante est une mênagère
Coum je cré qu'i gn'y'en à pouit"--
hitting off in another twenty long verses the strong and weak points of an
old and very managing Auntie, not unlike herself in her good points, and
very unlike her in her bad ones. And we joyfully pointed them all back at
the managing Auntie in front of us, good and bad points alike, and laughed
ourselves almost black in the face at the most telling strokes; all except
young Torode, who laughed, indeed, but not heartily like the rest,--rather
as though he thought us an uncommonly childish set of people for our ages.
And so we were that night, and enjoyed ourselves mightily.
Then young Torode sang "Jean Graïn d'orge," in a fine big voice, and
Carette sang "Nico v'nait m' faire l'amour," in a very sweet one, and I was
sorely troubled that I had never learned to sing.
Then to dancing again, and it was only then, as I leaned against the
door-post watching Carette go round and round with young Torode, in a way
that I could not help but feel was smoother and neater than when my arm was
round her, that a chance word between two girls sitting near me startled me
into the knowledge that I had been guilty of another foolishness, and had
overlooked another most important matter that night. You see, I had been in
a flutter ever since I reached home, and one cannot think of everything.
"Oh, Father Guille has promised him his horse, and so--" said the girl,
between giggles and whispers, and it hit me like a stone to think how
stupid I had been. And after a moment's thought I slipped away and ran
quickly down the lane to La Vauroque, calling myself all manner of names
through my teeth, and thumped lustily on George Hamon's door.
He was in bed and fast asleep, and it took much thumping before I heard a
sleepy growl in the upper room, and at last the window rattled open and
Uncle George's towsled head came out with a rough--
"Eh b'en, below there? What's afire? Can't you let a man--"
"It's me, Uncle George--Phil Carré. I'm sorry--"
"Phil!... Bon dou! Phil come back alive!" in a tone of very great surprise.
And then very sternly--
"Tiens donc, you down there! You're not a ghost, are you?"
"Not a bit of a ghost, Uncle George. I got home this evening. I'm up at
Jeanne Falla's party at Beaumanoir, and I've only just remembered that I
haven't got a horse for to-morrow."
"Aw, then--a horse for to-morrow! Yes--of course!" and he began to gurgle
inside, though bits of it would come out--"A horse! Of course you want a
horse! And who--?"
"Can you let me have Black Boy--if you've got him yet?"
"I'll come down, mon gars. Wait you one minute;" and very soon the door
opened, and he dragged me in, gripping my hand as if it were a rudder in a
gale, so that it ached for an hour after.
"And you're all safe and sound, mon gars?--"
"As safe and sound as Sercq, Uncle George. Can you let me have Black Boy?"
"Pergui! But it's a happy woman your mother will be this night. She never
would give you up, Phil. It's just wonderful--"
"'Tis, sure! Can you spare me Black Boy?"
"Aw now, my dear, but I'm sorry! You see, I'd no idea of you coming, and
the young Torode came along this very afternoon and begged me to lend him
Black Boy, and I promised, not knowing--But there's Gray Robin. You can
have him. He's a bit heavy, maybe, but he's safe as a cart, and Black Boy's
got more than a bit of the devil in him still. Will you be crossing the
Coupée?"
"I suppose so."
"Well, take my advice, and get down and lead over. It's more than a bit
crumbly in places. I've made young Torode promise not to ride Black Boy
across."
"All right! When can I have Gray Robin?"
"Now if you like."
"I'll be back at four. May I have some of your roses, Uncle George?"
"All of them, if you like, mon gars. Bon dou, but I'm glad to see you home
again!"
"I'd like a few to trim Robin up with."
"I'll see to it. It's good to see you back, Phil. Your mother didn't say
much, but she was sore at heart, _I_ know, though she did put a bold face
on it."
"I know.... You won't mind my running away now, Uncle George? You see--"
"Aw, I know! Gallop away back, my boy. And--say, Phil, mon gars,--don't let
that young cub from Herm get ahead of you. He's been making fine play while
you've been away." And I waved my hand and sped back to the merrymaking.
CHAPTER XIII
HOW WE RODE GRAY ROBIN
It was close upon the dawn before Jeanne Falla's party broke up, and as I
jogged soberly down the lane from La Vauroque on Gray Robin, I met the
jovial ones all streaming homewards.
A moment before, the quiet gray lane, with its fern-covered banks and
hedges of roses and honeysuckle all asleep and drenched with dew, was all
in keeping with my spirits, which were gray also, partly with the weariness
of such unaccustomed merriment, and still more at thought of my various
stupidities.
They all gathered round me and broke out into fresh laughter.
"Ma fé, Phil, but you're going to make a day of it! We wondered where you'd
got to."
"Bon dou donc, you're in your pontificals, mon gars!"
"Is it a bank of roses you're riding, then?" and Gray Robin hotched
uncomfortably though still half asleep.
"The early bird gets the nicest worm. Keep ahead of the Frenchman, Phil,
and good luck to you!"
"Good luck to you all!" and their laughing voices died away along the
lanes, and I woke up Gray Robin and went on to Beaumanoir.
I hitched the bridle over the gatepost, and lighted my pipe, and strolled
to and fro with my hands deep in the pockets of my grandfather's best blue
pilot-cloth jacket, for there was a chill in the air as though the night
must die outright before the new day came.
Now, sunrise is small novelty to a sailorman. But there is a mighty
difference between watching it across the welter of tumbling waves from the
sloppy deck of a ship, and watching it from the top of the knoll outside
Beaumanoir, with Carette fast asleep behind the white curtains of the gray
stone house there.
Little matter that it might be hours before she came--since Jeanne Falla
knew that rest was as necessary to a girl as food, if she was to keep her
health and good looks. I could wait all day for Carette if needs be, and
Gray Robin was already fast asleep on three legs, with the fourth crooked
comfortably beneath him.
I can live that morning over again, though the years have passed.
... All the west was dark and dim. The sea was the colour of lead. Brecqhou
was a long black shadow. Herm and Jethou were darker spots on the dimness
beyond, and Guernsey was not to be seen. The sky up above me was thin and
vague. But away in the east over France, behind long banks of soft dark
cloud, it was thinner and rarer still, and seemed to throb with a little
pulse of life. And behind the white curtains in the gray stone house,
Carette lay sleeping.
... At midnight the girls had melted lead in an iron spoon, and dropped it
into buckets of water, amid bubbles of laughter, to see what the
occupations of their future husbands would be. They fished out the results
with eager faces, and twisted them to suit their hopes. Carette's piece
came out a something which Jeanne Falla at once pronounced an anchor, but
which young Torode said was a sword, and made it so by a skilful touch of
the finger.
... The air had been very still, as though asleep like all things else
except the sea. And the sea still lay like lead out there, but I began to
catch the gleam of white teeth along the sides of Brecqhou, and down below
in Havre Gosselin I could hear the long waves growling among the rocks. And
now there came a stir in the air like the waking breaths of a sleeper. The
shadows behind Herm and Jethou thickened and darkened. The little throb of
life behind the banks of cloud in the east quickened and grew. The sky
there looked thin and bright and empty, as if it had been swept bare and
cleansed for that which was to come. Up above me soft little gray clouds
showed suddenly, all touched with pink on their eastern sides, while the
sky behind them warmed with a faint dun glow. A cock in the Beaumanoir yard
woke suddenly and crowed, and the challenge was answered from La Vauroque.
Jeanne Falla's pigs grunted sleepily at the disturbance. The pigeons
rumbled in their cote, and the birds began to twitter in the trees about
the house. And behind the white curtains there, Carette lay sleeping.
... I had asked her, the first chance that offered, after I got back from
seeing George Hamon. We were spinning round in a double quickstep which
tried even Uncle Nico's seasoned arm.
"Carette," I whispered into the little pink shell of an ear, so near my
lips that it was hard to keep from kissing it, "will you ride with me
to-morrow?" and my heart went faster than my feet and set me tumbling over
them. For Midsummer Day is Riding Day in Sercq, and he who asks a maid to
share his horse that day is understood to desire her company on a longer
journey still, and her consent to the one is generally taken to mean that
she agrees to the other as well. So my little question held a mighty
meaning, and no wonder my heart went quicker than my feet and set me
stumbling over them as I waited for her answer.
"Not to-morrow, Phil," she whispered, and my heart stood still. Then it
went on its way like a wave out of the west, when she murmured, "It's
to-day we ride, not to-morrow," meaning that we had danced the night out.
"Then you will, Carette? You will?"
"You're late in the day, you know," she said, teasing still, as maids will
when they know a man's heart is under their feet.
"But I only got home this evening--"
"Monsieur Torode asked me hours ago."
"But you haven't promised him, Carette?" and I felt as though all my life
depended on her answer.
"I said I'd see. But--"
"Then you'll come with me, Carette," and I felt like kissing her there
before them all.
"I'll tell you what I'll do, Phil. I'll go with one of you and come back
with the other."
"But--Carette!--"
"You should not have left it so late, you see."
And with that I had to be content, though it was not at all to my mind,
since I had looked for more.
... The eastern sky was filled to overflowing with pure thin light. The
edges of the long dark banks of cloud that lay in front of it were rimmed
with crimson fire. And from every quarter where the shadows lay gray clouds
streamed up to greet the sun. They crept up the heavens, slow and gray and
heavy, but as they climbed they lightened. They changed from gray to white.
Their fronts were touched with the crimson fire. They spread wide wings and
set me thinking of angels worshipping, and all the waiting clouds below
threw out long streamers towards the day, like soft white arms in prayer.
And behind the white curtains there, Carette lay sleeping.
... Gray Robin fell suddenly off one leg on to the other in his sleep, and
woke with a discontented snuffle. Down in Havre Gosselin the seagulls were
calling, "Miawk, miawk, miawk, miawk, miawk,--mink, mink, mink,
mink,--kawk, kawk, kawk, kawk,--keo, keo, keo, keo, keo."
... The sky up above was thin and blue. The soft white clouds were like a
mackerel's back, and every scale was rimmed with red gold. The east was all
a-throb. The long bands of cloud were silver above and glowing gold below.
The sun rose in a silence that seemed to me wonderful. If all the world had
broken out into the song that filled my heart it would have seemed but
right. Every cloud in all the sky seemed to bow in homage before him.
I had seen many and many a sunrise, but never before one like this. For
there, behind the curtains, Carette lay sleeping. And I was waiting for
her. And it was Riding Day, and she was going to ride with me on Gray
Robin.
And gay beyond his wont or knowledge was Gray Robin that day, though I
think myself he had his own suspicions of it even in his dreams. For when
he got fully awake, and took to looking at himself, and found out by
degrees how very fine he was, he felt shy and awkward, and shook himself so
vigorously that bits of his finery fell off. For, you see, Uncle George,
knowing what was right and proper under the circumstances, and throwing
himself into the matter because it was for me, had brought all his skill
into play. He had fished out a length of old net from his stores, and
turned it to great account. He had draped it in folds over Gray Robin's
broad flanks, and brought it round his chest, and wherever the threads
would hold a stem he had stuck in red and white and yellow roses, and had
tied bunches of them at his ears and along his bridle, so that the steady
old horse looked like an ancient charger in his armour.
And as I watched him examining into all these things I could see his wonder
grow, and he asked himself what, in the name of Hay, his friends and
acquaintances would think of it all when they saw him, and he snuffled with
disgust.
It was close upon six o'clock when Gray Robin pricked up his ears at sound
of hoofs in the lane between the high hedges, and young Torode rode up on
Black Boy. He drew rein sharply at sight of me, and a curse jerked out of
him. And at sight of Gray Robin in his gay trappings, Black Boy danced on
his hind legs and pretended to be frightened out of his wits.
Torode brought him to reason with a violent hand, and flung himself off
with a black face.
"How then, Carré?" he broke out. "Mademoiselle promised to ride with me
to-day."
"And with me also. So she said she would ride half the day with each of
us."
"But, nom-de-dieu, what is the good of that? There is no sense in it."
"It is her wish."
He flogged a gorse bush angrily with a switch he had cut for Black Boy's
benefit, and looked more than half inclined to fling himself back on to his
horse and ride away, which would have been quite to my taste. Black Boy
watched him viciously, with white gleams in his eyes, and winced at sound
of the switch.
But before Torode had made up his mind, Jeanne Falla's sharp voice called
from the gate, "Now then, you two, the coffee's getting cold. Come in and
eat while you have the chance."
Coffee never tastes so good as just after morning watch, and I turned in at
once, while young Torode proceeded to make sure that Black Boy should not
make off while he was inside.
Aunt Jeanne's brown old face creased up into something like a very large
wink as we went up the path, and she said softly, "First pig in trough gets
first bite. You'll enjoy a cup of coffee at all events, mon gars. Seems to
me there are two Black Boys out there, n'es c' pas?"
And if such coffee as Jeanne Falla made, with milk warm from the cow, could
have been curdled by sour looks, young Torode had surely not found his cup
to his liking.
His ill-humour was not simply ill-concealed, it was barely kept within
bounds, and was, to say the least of it, but poor return for Aunt Jeanne's
double hospitality. But Aunt Jeanne, far from resenting it, seemed
actually to enjoy the sight, and as a matter of fact, I believe she was
hoping eagerly that Carette would come down in time to partake of it also.
She chatted gaily about her party, and plumed herself on its success.
"We did it all our own two selves, the little one and I. Nothing like
washing your own shirt, if you want it well done," brimmed she.
"It couldn't have been better, Aunt Jeanne. And as for the gâche--it was
simply delicious."
"Crais b'en! If there's one thing I can do, it's make gâche. And it's not
all finished yet," and she went to the press and brought out a cake like a
cartwheel, and cut it into spokes.
"There are not many things you can't do, it seems to me, Aunt Jeanne," I
said. "That cider was uncommonly good too."
"Ma fé, when you've learned to make cider for the Guernsey men you can make
it for most folks, I trow.... It's a tired man you'll be to-night, Phil,
mon gars. We were just turning in, the little one and I, when we heard a
horse snuffle outside, and nothing would satisfy her but she must up and
peep out of the window, and she said, 'Why, there's Phil Carré standing on
the knoll. Mon Gyu, what does he want there at this time of day?' And I
said, 'Come away into bed, child, and don't catch your death of cold.
You're half asleep and dreaming. There's no one out there.' 'Yes, there
is,' said she, 'and it's Phil Carré. I know his shape.' But I was sleepy,
and I said, 'Well, he'll keep till morning anyway, and if you don't get
some sleep you'll look like a boiled owl, and there'll be no riding for
you, miss, Phil Carré or no Phil Carré.'" All of which was gall and
wormwood to young Torode, as Jeanne Falla quite well knew and intended.
And presently Carette came down, looking like a half-opened rose after a
stormy night, and with just as much energy in her as might be expected in a
girl who had danced miles of quicksteps but a few hours before, and at a
pace which Uncle Nico's arm had not forgotten yet.
There was to me something almost sacred in the look of her with the maiden
sleep still in her eyes, which set her apart from us and above us, and I
could have sat and looked at her for a long time, and required no more.
She was all in white again, and Aunt Jeanne, when she had given her coffee
and a slice of gâche, and had coaxed her to eat, slipped out into the
garden, and came back presently with an apronful of red roses, all wet with
dew, and proceeded to pin them round her hat, and on her shoulder, and at
her breast, and in her waistband.
"V'là!" said the dear old soul, standing off and eyeing her handiwork with
her head on one side, like a robin. "There's not another in the Island will
come within a mile of you, ma garche!" and it was easy to see the love that
lay deep in the sharp old eyes.
We had hardly spoken a word since Carette came down, beyond wishing her
good-day, and she herself seemed in no humour for talk. And for myself, I
know I felt very common clay beside her, and I would, as I have said, been
well content simply to sit and watch her.
Aunt Jeanne continued to talk of the party, a subject that would not fail
her for many a week to come, for those sharp eyes of hers saw more than
most people's, and she never forgot what they told her.
It was only when Carette had finished her pretence of eating, and it was
time to be starting, that young Torode asked politely, "With whom do you
ride first, mademoiselle,--since we are two?"
And Carette said sweetly, "Since Phil was here first I will ride first with
him, monsieur, and afterwards with you."
"Do you cross the Coupée?" asked Aunt Jeanne anxiously.
"But, of course!" said Torode. "That is where the fun comes in."
"Bon Gyu, but that kind of fun does not please me! Some of you will find
yourselves at the bottom some day, and that will end the riding in Sercq."
"It's safe enough if you have a firm hand--that is, if you know how to ride
at all,"--a shot aimed at me, but which failed to wound.
"I don't like it," said Aunt Jeanne again, with a foreboding shake of the
head and a meaning look at me.
"Well, we won't be the first to cross," I said, to satisfy her. "We'll see
how the others get on, and no harm shall come to Carette, I promise you."
Gray Robin was dozing again, but I woke him up with a poke, and climbed up
on to his broad back with as little damage to his rose-armour as I could
manage, and Aunt Jeanne carried out a chair, so that Carette could get up
behind me without disarranging herself.
And a happy man was I when the soft arms clasped me firmly round the waist,
although I knew well enough that it was the correct thing for them to do,
and that there was nothing more in it than a strong desire on the rear
rider's part not to fall off. But for that troublesome young Torode, and
all that was implied in the fact that Carette's arms would be round him on
the homeward journey, I would have been the happiest man in Sercq that day.
As it was, it was in my mind to make the most of my half of it.
Young Torode sprang on Black Boy with a leap that put our more cautious
methods very much, into the shade, and also stirred up all Black Boy's
never-too-well-concealed evil temper. A horse of spirit ever objects to the
double burden of man and man's master, and, through thigh and heel and
hand, he can tell in the most wonderful fashion if the devil's aboard as
well.
We left them settling their little differences and jogged away down the
lane, and the last we saw of Aunt Jeanne she was leaning over the gate,
looking hopefully at the fight before her. But presently we heard the quick
beat of hoofs behind, and they went past us with a rush--Black Boy's chin
drawn tight to his chest, which was splashed with white foam flecks, his
neck like a bow, and the wicked white of his port eye glaring back at us
like a danger signal.
"Monsieur Torode has got his hands full, I think," I said.
"And Monsieur Black Boy carries more than he likes."
"I'm glad you're not on board there, Carette."
"I think I am too--just now," she laughed quietly.
We took the north road at La Vauroque, where we came on George Hamon,
gazing gloomily after Black Boy and his rider, who were flying along the
road to Colinette, and judging from his face there was a curse on his lips
as he turned to us, which was very unusual with him. He brightened,
however, when he saw us.
"B'en! That's all right," he said very heartily. "Gray Robin is a proud
horse this day, ma'm'zelle, with the prettiest maid in the Island on his
back--and the best man," he added meaningly. "I'm just hoping that crazy
Frenchman will bring my Black Boy back all safe and sound. He's got more
than a bit of the devil in him at times--the horse, I mean. The other, too,
maybe. And he's more used to harness than the saddle. However--luck to
you!"
He waved his hand, and we jogged on past the Cemetery, and so by La
Rondellerie and La Moinerie, where the holy Maglorius once lived--as you
may see by the ruins of his house and the cells of his disciples--to
Belfontaine, where my mother came out with full eyes to give us greeting.
And to prevent any mistake which might put Carette to confusion, I did my
clumsy best to make a joke of the matter.
"Your stupid was nearly too late, mother, and so Carette rides out with me
and back with Monsieur Torode."
"Under the circumstances it was good of Carette to give you a share, mon
gars."
"Oh, I'm grateful. One's sheaf is never quite as one would have it, and one
takes the good that comes."
"How glad you must have been to see him back, Mrs. Carré!" said Carette.
"You never gave him up, I know."
"No, I never gave him up," said my mother quietly.
"I think he ought to have stopped with you all day to-day," said Carette.
"I feel as if I were stealing h
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