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The Battle of the Strong: A Romance of Two Kingdoms — Complete

by Gilbert Parker · English · Gutenberg #6236 · 721,467 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Battle of the Strong: A Romance of Two Kingdoms — Complete

Author: Gilbert Parker


        
Release date: November 17, 2004 [eBook #6236]
                Most recently updated: December 29, 2020

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/6236

Credits: Produced by David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BATTLE OF THE STRONG: A ROMANCE OF TWO KINGDOMS — COMPLETE ***



Produced by David Widger





THE BATTLE OF THE STRONG, Complete

[A ROMANCE OF TWO KINGDOMS]

By Gilbert Parker



CONTENTS:

     THE INVASION

     ELEVEN YEARS AFTER ELEVEN YEARS AFTER

     IN FRANCE--NEAR FIVE MONTHS AFTER

     IN JERSEY FIVE YEARS LATER IN JERSEY FIVE YEARS LATER

     DURING ONE YEAR LATER DURING ONE YEAR LATER

     IN JERSEY--A YEAR LATER




INTRODUCTION

This book is a protest and a deliverance. For seven years I had written
continuously of Canada, though some short stories of South Sea life, and
the novel Mrs. Falchion, had, during that time, issued from my pen.
It looked as though I should be writing of the Far North all my life.
Editors had begun to take that view; but from the start it had never
been my view. Even when writing Pierre and His People I was determined
that I should not be cabined, cribbed, and confined in one field; that
I should not, as some other men have done, wind in upon myself, until
at last each succeeding book would be but a variation of some previous
book, and I should end by imitating myself, become the sacrifice to the
god of the pin-hole.

I was warned not to break away from Canada; but all my life I had been
warned, and all my life I had followed my own convictions. I would
rather not have written another word than be corralled, bitted, saddled,
and ridden by that heartless broncho-buster, the public, which wants a
man who has once pleased it, to do the same thing under the fret of whip
and spur for ever. When I went to the Island of Jersey, in 1897, it was
to shake myself free of what might become a mere obsession. I determined
that, as wide as my experiences had been in life, so would my writing
be, whether it pleased the public or not. I was determined to fulfil
myself; and in doing so to take no instructions except those of my own
conscience, impulse, and conviction. Even then I saw fields of work
which would occupy my mind, and such skill as I had, for many a year to
come. I saw the Channel Islands, Egypt, South Africa, and India. In all
these fields save India, I have given my Pegasus its bridle-rein, and,
so far, I have no reason to feel that my convictions were false. I
write of Canada still, but I have written of the Channel Islands, I have
written of Egypt, I have written of England and South Africa, and my
public--that is, those who read my books--have accepted me in all these
fields without demur. I believe I have justified myself in not accepting
imprisonment in the field where I first essayed to turn my observation
of life to account.

I went to Jersey, therefore, with my teeth set, in a way; yet happily
and confidently. I had been dealing with French Canada for some years,
and a step from Quebec, which was French, to Jersey, which was Norman
French, was but short. It was a question of atmosphere solely. Whatever
may be thought of The ‘Battle of the Strong’ I have not yet met a
Jerseyman who denies to it the atmosphere of the place. It could hardly
have lacked it, for there were twenty people, deeply intelligent,
immensely interested in my design, and they were of Jersey families
which had been there for centuries. They helped me, they fed me with
dialect, with local details, with memories, with old letters, with
diaries of their forebears, until, if I had gone wrong, it would have
been through lack of skill in handling my material. I do not think
I went wrong, though I believe that I could construct the book more
effectively if I had to do it again. Yet there is something in looseness
of construction which gives an air of naturalness; and it may be that
this very looseness which I notice in ‘The Battle of the Strong’ has had
something to do with giving it such a great circle of readers; though
this may appear paradoxical. When it first appeared, it did not make the
appeal which ‘The Right of Way’ or ‘The Seats of the Mighty’ made, but
it justified itself, it forced its way, it assured me that I had done
right in shaking myself free from the control of my own best work.
The book has gone on increasing its readers year by year, and when
it appeared in Nelson’s delightful cheap edition in England it had an
immediate success, and has sold by the hundred thousand in the last four
years.

One of the first and most eager friends of ‘The Battle of the Strong’
was Mrs. Langtry, now Lady de Bathe, who, born in Jersey, and come of
an old Jersey family, was well able to judge of the fidelity of the life
and scene which it depicted. She greatly desired the novel to be turned
into a play, and so it was. The adaptation, however, was lacking in
much, and though Miss Marie Burroughs and Maurice Barrymore played in
it, success did not attend its dramatic life.

‘The Battle of the Strong’ was called an historical novel by many
critics, but the disclaimer which I made in the first edition I make
again. ‘The Seats of the Mighty’ came nearer to what might properly
be called an historical novel than any other book which I have written
save, perhaps, ‘A Ladder of Swords’. ‘The Battle of the Strong’ is not
without faithful historical elements, but the book is essentially a
romance, in which character was not meant to be submerged by incident;
and I do not think that in this particular the book falls short of the
design of its author. There was this enormous difference between life
in the Island of Jersey and life in French Canada, that in Jersey,
tradition is heaped upon tradition, custom upon custom, precept upon
precept, until every citizen of the place is bound by innumerable cords
of a code from which he cannot free himself. It is a little island, and
that it is an island is evidence of a contracted life, though, in this
case, a life which has real power and force. The life in French Canada
was also traditional, and custom was also somewhat tyrannous, but it
was part of a great continent in which the expansion of the man and of
a people was inevitable. Tradition gets somewhat battered in a new land,
and even where, as in French Canada, the priest and the Church have such
supervision, and can bring such pressure to bear that every man must
feel its influence; yet there is a happiness, a blitheness, and an
exhilaration even in the most obscure quarter of French Canada which
cannot be observed in the Island of Jersey. In Jersey the custom of five
hundred years ago still reaches out and binds; and so small is the place
that every square foot of it almost--even where the potato sprouts,
and the potato is Jersey’s greatest friend--is identified with some
odd incident, some naive circumstance, some big, vivid, and striking
historical fact. Behind its rugged coasts a little people proudly hold
by their own and to their own, and even a Jersey criminal has more
friends in his own environment than probably any other criminal anywhere
save in Corsica; while friendship is a passion even with the pettiness
by which it is perforated.

Reading this book again now after all these years, I feel convinced that
the book is truly Jersiais, and I am grateful to it for having brought
me out from the tyranny of the field in which I first sought for a
hearing.




NOTE

A list of Jersey words and phrases used herein, with their English or
French equivalents, will be found at the end of the book. The Norman and
patois words are printed as though they were English, some of them being
quite Anglicised in Jersey. For the sake of brevity I have spoken of the
Lieutenant-Bailly throughout as Bailly; and, in truth, he performed all
the duties of Bailly in those days when this chief of the Jurats of the
Island usually lived in England.




PROEM

There is no man living to-day who could tell you how the morning broke
and the sun rose on the first day of January 1800; who walked in the
Mall, who sauntered in the Park with the Prince: none lives who heard
and remembers the gossip of the moment, or can give you the exact
flavour of the speech and accent of the time. Down the long aisle of
years echoes the air but not the tone; the trick of form comes to us but
never the inflection. The lilt of the sensations, the idiosyncrasy of
voice, emotion, and mind of the first hour of our century must now pass
from the printed page to us, imperfectly realised; we may not know
them through actual retrospection. The more distant the scene, the more
uncertain the reflection; and so it must needs be with this tale, which
will take you back to even twenty years before the century began.

Then, as now, England was a great power outside these small islands.
She had her foot firmly planted in Australia, in Asia, and in
America--though, in bitterness, the American colonies had broken free,
and only Canada was left to her in that northern hemisphere. She has
had, in her day, to strike hard blows even for Scotland, Ireland, and
Wales. But among her possessions is one which, from the hour its
charter was granted it by King John, has been loyal, unwavering, and
unpurchasable. Until the beginning of the century the language of this
province was not our language, nor is English its official language
to-day; and with a pretty pride oblivious of contrasts, and a simplicity
unconscious of mirth, its people say: “We are the conquering race; we
conquered England, England did not conquer us.”

A little island lying in the wash of St. Michael’s Basin off the coast
of France, Norman in its foundations and in its racial growth, it has
been as the keeper of the gate to England; though so near to France
is it, that from its shores on a fine day may be seen the spires of
Coutances, from which its spiritual welfare was ruled long after
England lost Normandy. A province of British people, speaking still the
Norman-French that the Conqueror spoke; such is the island of Jersey,
which, with Guernsey, Alderney, Sark, Herm, and Jethou, form what we
call the Channel Isles, and the French call the Iles de la Manche.




CHAPTER I

In all the world there is no coast like the coast of Jersey; so
treacherous, so snarling; serrated with rocks seen and unseen, tortured
by currents maliciously whimsical, encircled by tides that sweep up
from the Antarctic world with the devouring force of a monstrous
serpent projecting itself towards its prey. The captain of these tides,
travelling up through the Atlantic at a thousand miles an hour, enters
the English Channel, and drives on to the Thames. Presently retreating,
it meets another pursuing Antarctic wave, which, thus opposed in its
straightforward course, recoils into St. Michael’s Bay, then plunges, as
it were, upon a terrible foe. They twine and strive in mystic conflict,
and, in rage of equal power, neither vanquished nor conquering, circle,
mad and desperate, round the Channel Isles. Impeded, impounded as they
riot through the flumes of sea, they turn furiously, and smite the
cliffs and rocks and walls of their prison-house. With the frenzied
winds helping them, the island coasts and Norman shores are battered by
their hopeless onset: and in that channel between Alderney and Cap de la
Hague man or ship must well beware, for the Race of Alderney is one of
the death-shoots of the tides. Before they find their way to the main
again, these harridans of nature bring forth a brood of currents which
ceaselessly fret the boundaries of the isles.

Always, always the white foam beats the rocks, and always must man go
warily along these coasts. The swimmer plunges into a quiet pool, the
snowy froth that masks the reefs seeming only the pretty fringe of
sentient life to a sleeping sea; but presently an invisible hand reaches
up and grasps him, an unseen power drags him exultingly out to the
main--and he returns no more. Many a Jersey boatman, many a fisherman
who has lived his whole life in sight of the Paternosters on the north,
the Ecrehos on the east, the Dog’s Nest on the south, or the Corbiere
on the west, has in some helpless moment been caught by the unsleeping
currents which harry his peaceful borders, or the rocks that have eluded
the hunters of the sea, and has yielded up his life within sight of his
own doorway, an involuntary sacrifice to the navigator’s knowledge and
to the calm perfection of an admiralty chart.

Yet within the circle of danger bounding this green isle the love of
home and country is stubbornly, almost pathetically, strong. Isolation,
pride of lineage, independence of government, antiquity of law and
custom, and jealousy of imperial influence or action have combined to
make a race self-reliant even to perverseness, proud and maybe vain,
sincere almost to commonplaceness, unimaginative and reserved, with
the melancholy born of monotony--for the life of the little country has
coiled in upon itself, and the people have drooped to see but just their
own selves reflected in all the dwellers of the land, whichever way they
turn. A hundred years ago, however, there was a greater and more general
lightness of heart and vivacity of spirit than now. Then the song of the
harvester and the fisherman, the boat-builder and the stocking-knitter,
was heard on a summer afternoon, or from the veille of a winter night
when the dim crasset hung from the roof and the seaweed burned in the
chimney. Then the gathering of the vraic was a fete, and the lads
and lasses footed it on the green or on the hard sand, to the chance
flageolets of sportive seamen home from the war. This simple gaiety was
heartiest at Christmastide, when the yearly reunion of families took
place; and because nearly everybody in Jersey was “couzain” to his
neighbour these gatherings were as patriarchal as they were festive.

       ..........................

The new year of seventeen hundred and eighty-one had been ushered in
by the last impulse of such festivities. The English cruisers lately in
port had vanished up the Channel; and at Elizabeth Castle, Mont Orgueil,
the Blue Barracks and the Hospital, three British regiments had taken
up the dull round of duty again; so that by the fourth day a general
lethargy, akin to content, had settled on the whole island.

On the morning of the fifth day a little snow was lying upon the ground,
but the sun rose strong and unclouded, the whiteness vanished, and
there remained only a pleasant dampness which made sod and sand firm
yet springy to the foot. As the day wore on, the air became more amiable
still, and a delicate haze settled over the water and over the land,
making softer to the eye house and hill and rock and sea.

There was little life in the town of St. Heliers, there were few people
upon the beach; though now and then some one who had been praying beside
a grave in the parish churchyard came to the railings and looked out
upon the calm sea almost washing its foundations, and over the dark
range of rocks, which, when the tide was out, showed like a vast
gridiron blackened by fires. Near by, some loitering sailors watched
the yawl-rigged fishing craft from Holland, and the codfish-smelling
cul-de-poule schooners of the great fishing company which exploited the
far-off fields of Gaspe in Canada.

St. Heliers lay in St. Aubin’s Bay, which, shaped like a horseshoe, had
Noirmont Point for one end of the segment and the lofty Town Hill for
another. At the foot of this hill, hugging it close, straggled the town.
From the bare green promontory above might be seen two-thirds of the
south coast of the island--to the right St. Aubin’s Bay, to the left
Greve d’Azette, with its fields of volcanic-looking rocks, and St.
Clement’s Bay beyond. Than this no better place for a watchtower could
be found; a perfect spot for the reflective idler and for the sailorman
who, on land, must still be within smell and sound of the sea, and loves
that place best which gives him widest prospect.

This day a solitary figure was pacing backwards and forwards upon the
cliff edge, stopping now to turn a telescope upon the water and now
upon the town. It was a lad of not more than sixteen years, erect,
well-poised, having an air of self-reliance, even of command. Yet it
was a boyish figure too, and the face was very young, save for the eyes;
these were frank but still sophisticated.

The first time he looked towards the town he laughed outright, freely,
spontaneously; threw his head back with merriment, and then glued his
eye to the glass again. What he had seen was a girl of about five years
of age with a man, in La Rue d’Egypte, near the old prison, even then
called the Vier Prison. Stooping, the man had kissed the child, and
she, indignant, snatching the cap from his head, had thrown it into the
stream running through the street. Small wonder that the lad on the hill
grinned, for the man who ran to rescue his hat from the stream was
none other than the Bailly of the island, next in importance to the
Lieutenant-Governor.

The lad could almost see the face of the child, its humorous anger, its
wilful triumph, and also the enraged look of the Bailly as he raked
the stream with his long stick, tied with a sort of tassel of office.
Presently he saw the child turn at the call of a woman in the Place du
Vier Prison, who appeared to apologise to the Bailly, busy now drying
his recovered hat by whipping it through the air. The lad on the hill
recognised the woman as the child’s mother.

This little episode over, he turned once more towards the sea, watching
the sun of late afternoon fall upon the towers of Elizabeth Castle and
the great rock out of which St. Helier the hermit once chiselled his
lofty home. He breathed deep and strong, and the carriage of his body
was light, for he had a healthy enjoyment of all physical sensations and
all the obvious drolleries of life. A broad sort of humour was written
upon every feature; in the full, quizzical eye, in the width of
cheek-bone, in the broad mouth, and in the depth of the laugh, which,
however, often ended in a sort of chuckle not entirely pleasant. It
suggested a selfish enjoyment of the odd or the melodramatic side of
other people’s difficulties.

At last the youth encased his telescope, and turned to descend the hill
to the town. As he did so, a bell began to ring. From where he was he
could look down into the Vier Marchi, or market-place, where stood
the Cohue Royale and house of legislature. In the belfry of this
court-house, the bell was ringing to call the Jurats together for a
meeting of the States. A monstrous tin pan would have yielded as much
assonance. Walking down towards the Vier Marchi the lad gleefully
recalled the humour of a wag who, some days before, had imitated the
sound of the bell with the words:

“Chicane--chicane! Chicane--chicane!”

The native had, as he thought, suffered somewhat at the hands of the
twelve Jurats of the Royal Court, whom his vote had helped to elect, and
this was his revenge--so successful that, for generations, when the bell
called the States or the Royal Court together, it said in the ears of
the Jersey people--thus insistent is apt metaphor:

“Chicane--chicane! Chicane--chicane!”

As the lad came down to the town, trades-people whom he met touched
their hats to him, and sailors and soldiers saluted respectfully. In
this regard the Bailly himself could not have fared better. It was not
due to the fact that the youth came of an old Jersey family, nor by
reason that he was genial and handsome, but because he was a midshipman
of the King’s navy home on leave; and these were the days when England’s
sailors were more popular than her soldiers.

He came out of the Vier Marchi into La Grande Rue, along the stream
called the Fauxbie flowing through it, till he passed under the archway
of the Vier Prison, making towards the place where the child had
snatched the hat from the head of the Bailly.

Presently the door of a cottage opened, and the child came out, followed
by her mother.

The young gentleman touched his cap politely, for though the woman was
not fashionably dressed, she was distinguished in appearance, with an
air of remoteness which gave her a kind of agreeable mystery.

“Madame Landresse--” said the young gentleman with deference.

“Monsieur d’Avranche--” responded the lady softly, pausing.

“Did the Bailly make a stir? I saw the affair from the hill, through my
telescope,” said young d’Avranche, smiling.

“My little daughter must have better manners,” responded the lady,
looking down at her child reprovingly yet lovingly.

“Or the Bailly must--eh, Madame?” replied d’Avranche, and, stooping, he
offered his hand to the child. Glancing up inquiringly at her mother,
she took it. He held hers in a clasp of good nature. The child was so
demure, one could scarcely think her capable of tossing the Bailly’s hat
into the stream; yet looking closely, there might be seen in her eyes a
slumberous sort of fire, a touch of mystery. They were neither blue nor
grey, but a mingling of both, growing to the most tender, greyish sort
of violet. Down through generations of Huguenot refugees had passed
sorrow and fighting and piety and love and occasional joy, until in
the eyes of this child they all met, delicately vague, and with the
wistfulness of the early morning of life.

“What is your name, little lady?” asked d’Avranche of the child.

“Guida, sir,” she answered simply.

“Mine is Philip. Won’t you call me Philip?”

She flashed a look at her mother, regarded him again, and then answered:

“Yes, Philip--sir.”

D’Avranche wanted to laugh, but the face of the child was sensitive and
serious, and he only smiled. “Say ‘Yes, Philip’, won’t you?” he asked.

“Yes, Philip,” came the reply obediently.

After a moment of speech with Madame Landresse, Philip stooped to say
good-bye to the child. “Good-bye, Guida.”

A queer, mischievous little smile flitted over her face--a second, and
it was gone.

“Good-bye, sir--Philip,” she said, and they parted. Her last words
kept ringing in his ears as he made his way homeward. “Good-bye,
sir--Philip”--the child’s arrangement of words was odd and amusing, and
at the same time suggested something more. “Good-bye, Sir Philip,” had a
different meaning, though the words were the same.

“Sir Philip--eh?” he said to himself, with a jerk of the head--“I’ll be
more than that some day.”




CHAPTER II

The night came down with leisurely gloom. A dim starlight pervaded
rather than shone in the sky; Nature seemed somnolent and gravely
meditative. It brooded as broods a man who is seeking his way through
a labyrinth of ideas to a conclusion still evading him. This sense of
cogitation enveloped land and sea, and was as tangible to feeling as
human presence.

At last the night seemed to wake from reverie. A movement, a thrill, ran
through the spangled vault of dusk and sleep, and seemed to pass over
the world, rousing the sea and the earth. There was no wind, apparently
no breath of air, yet the leaves of the trees moved, the weather-vanes
turned slightly, the animals in the byres roused themselves, and
slumbering folk opening their eyes, turned over in their beds, and
dropped into a troubled doze again.

Presently there came a long moaning sound from the tide, not loud but
rather mysterious and distant--a plaint, a threatening, a warning, a
prelude?

A dull labourer, returning from late toil, felt it, and raised his head
in a perturbed way, as though some one had brought him news of a far-off
disaster. A midwife, hurrying to a lowly birth-chamber, shivered and
gathered her mantle more closely about her. She looked up at the sky,
she looked out over the sea, then she bent her head and said to herself
that this would not be a good night, that ill-luck was in the air. “The
mother or the child will die,” she said to herself. A ‘longshoreman,
reeling home from deep potations, was conscious of it, and, turning
round to the sea, snarled at it and said yah! in swaggering defiance.
A young lad, wandering along the deserted street, heard it, began
to tremble, and sat down on a block of stone beside the doorway of a
baker’s shop. He dropped his head on his arms and his chin on his knees,
shutting out the sound and sobbing quietly.

Yesterday his mother had been buried; to-night his father’s door had
been closed in his face. He scarcely knew whether his being locked out
was an accident or whether it was intended. He thought of the time when
his father had ill-treated his mother and himself. That, however, had
stopped at last, for the woman had threatened the Royal Court, and
the man, having no wish to face its summary convictions, thereafter
conducted himself towards them both with a morose indifference.

The boy was called Ranulph, a name which had passed to him through
several generations of Jersey forebears--Ranulph Delagarde. He was being
taught the trade of ship-building in St. Aubin’s Bay. He was not beyond
fourteen years of age, though he looked more, so tall and straight and
self-possessed was he.

His tears having ceased soon, he began to think of what he was to do
in the future. He would never go back to his father’s house, or be
dependent on him for aught. Many plans came to his mind. He would learn
his trade of ship-building, he would become a master-builder, then a
shipowner, with fishing-vessels like the great company sending fleets to
Gaspe.

At the moment when these ambitious plans had reached the highest point
of imagination, the upper half of the door beside him opened suddenly,
and he heard men’s voices. He was about to rise and disappear, but the
words of the men arrested him, and he cowered down beside the stone. One
of the men was leaning on the half-door, speaking in French.

“I tell you it can’t go wrong. The pilot knows every crack in the coast.
I left Granville at three; Rulle cour left Chaussey at nine. If he lands
safe, and the English troops ain’t roused, he’ll take the town and hold
the island easy enough.”

“But the pilot, is he certain safe?” asked another voice. Ranulph
recognised it as that of the baker Carcaud, who owned the shop. “Olivier
Delagarde isn’t so sure of him.”

Olivier Delagarde! The lad started. That was his father’s name. He
shrank as from a blow--his father was betraying Jersey to the French!

“Of course, the pilot, he’s all right,” the Frenchman answered the
baker. “He was to have been hung here for murder. He got away, and
now he’s having his turn by fetching Rullecour’s wolves to eat up your
green-bellies. By to-morrow at seven Jersey ‘ll belong to King Louis.”

“I’ve done my promise,” rejoined Carcaud the baker; “I’ve been to three
of the guard-houses on St. Clement’s and Grouville. In two the men are
drunk as donkeys; in another they sleep like squids. Rullecour he can
march straight to the town and seize it--if he land safe. But will he
stand by ‘s word to we? You know the saying: ‘Cadet Roussel has
two sons; one’s a thief, t’other’s a rogue.’ There’s two
Rullecours--Rullecour before the catch and Rullecour after!”

“He’ll be honest to us, man, or he’ll be dead inside a week, that’s
all.”

“I’m to be Connetable of St. Heliers, and you’re to be
harbour-master--eh?”

“Naught else: you don’t catch flies with vinegar. Give us your
hand--why, man, it’s doggish cold.”

“Cold hand, healthy heart. How many men will Rullecour bring?”

“Two thousand; mostly conscripts and devil’s beauties from Granville and
St. Malo gaols.”

“Any signals yet?”

“Two--from Chaussey at five o’clock. Rullecour ‘ll try to land at Gorey.
Come, let’s be off. Delagarde’s there now.”

The boy stiffened with horror--his father was a traitor! The thought
pierced his brain like a hot iron. He must prevent this crime, and warn
the Governor. He prepared to steal away. Fortunately the back of the
man’s head was towards him.

Carcaud laughed a low, malicious laugh as he replied to the Frenchman.

“Trust the quiet Delagarde! There’s nothing worse nor still waters.
He’ll do his trick, and he’ll have his share if the rest suck their
thumbs. He doesn’t wait for roasted larks to drop into his mouth--what’s
that!” It was Ranulph stealing away.

In an instant the two men were on him, and a hand was clapped to his
mouth. In another minute he was bound, thrown onto the stone floor of
the bakehouse, his head striking, and he lost consciousness.

When he came to himself, there was absolute silence round him-deathly,
oppressive silence. At first he was dazed, but at length all that had
happened came back to him.

Where was he now? His feet were free; he began to move them about. He
remembered that he had been flung on the stone floor of the bakeroom.
This place sounded hollow underneath--it certainly was not the bakeroom.
He rolled over and over. Presently he touched a wall--it was stone. He
drew himself up to a sitting posture, but his head struck a curved
stone ceiling. Then he swung round and moved his foot along the wall--it
touched iron. He felt farther with his foot-something clicked. Now he
understood; he was in the oven of the bakehouse, with his hands bound.
He began to think of means of escape. The iron door had no inside latch.
There was a small damper covering a barred hole, through which perhaps
he might be able to get a hand, if only it were free. He turned round so
that his fingers might feel the grated opening. The edge of the little
bars was sharp. He placed the strap binding his wrists against these
sharp edges, and drew his arms up and down, a difficult and painful
business. The iron cut his hands and wrists at first, so awkward was the
movement. But, steeling himself, he kept on steadily.

At last the straps fell apart, and his hands were free. With difficulty
he thrust one through the bars. His fingers could just lift the latch.
Now the door creaked on its hinges, and in a moment he was out on the
stone flags of the bakeroom. Hurrying through an unlocked passage
into the shop, he felt his way to the street door, but it was securely
fastened. The windows? He tried them both, one on either side, but while
he could free the stout wooden shutters on the inside, a heavy iron bar
secured them without, and it was impossible to open them.

Feverish with anxiety, he sat down on the low counter, with his
hands between his knees, and tried to think what to do. In the numb
hopelessness of the moment he became very quiet. His mind was confused,
but his senses were alert; he was in a kind of dream, yet he was acutely
conscious of the smell of new-made bread. It pervaded the air of the
place; it somehow crept into his brain and his being, so that, as long
as he might live, the smell of new-made bread would fetch back upon him
the nervous shiver and numbness of this hour of danger.

As he waited, he heard a noise outside, a clac-clac! clac-clac! which
seemed to be echoed back from the wood and stone of the houses in the
street, and then to be lifted up and carried away over the roofs and
out to sea---clac-clac! clac-clac! It was not the tap of a blind man’s
staff--at first he thought it might be; it was not a donkey’s foot on
the cobbles; it was not the broom-sticks of the witches of St. Clement’s
Bay, for the rattle was below in the street, and the broom-stick rattle
is heard only on the roofs as the witches fly across country from
Rocbert to Bonne Nuit Bay.

This clac-clac came from the sabots of some nightfarer. Should he make a
noise and attract the attention of the passer-by? No, that would not
do. It might be some one who would wish to know whys and wherefores. He
must, of course, do his duty to his country, but he must save his
father too. Bad as the man was, he must save him, though, no matter what
happened, he must give the alarm. His reflections tortured him. Why had
he not stopped the nightfarer?

Even as these thoughts passed through the lad’s mind, the clac-clac had
faded away into the murmur of the stream flowing by the Rue d’Egypte
to the sea, and almost beneath his feet. There flashed on him at that
instant what little Guida Landresse had said a few days before as she
lay down beside this very stream, and watched the water wimpling by.
Trailing her fingers through it dreamily, the child had said to him:

“Ro, won’t it never come back?” She always called him “Ro,” because when
beginning to talk she could not say Ranulph.

Ro, won’t it never come back? But while yet he recalled the words,
another sound mingled again with the stream-clac-clac! clac-clac!
Suddenly it came to him who was the wearer of the sabots making this
peculiar clatter in the night. It was Dormy Jamais, the man who never
slept. For two years the clac-clac of Dormy Jamais’s sabots had not been
heard in the streets of St. Heliers--he had been wandering in France,
a daft pilgrim. Ranulph remembered how these sabots used to pass and
repass the doorway of his own home. It was said that while Dormy Jamais
paced the streets there was no need of guard or watchman. Many a time
had Ranulph shared his supper with the poor beganne whose origin no one
knew, whose real name had long since dropped into oblivion.

The rattle of the sabots came nearer, the footsteps were now in front
of the window. Even as Ranulph was about to knock and call the poor
vagrant’s name, the clac-clac stopped, and then there came a sniffing
at the shutters as a dog sniffs at the door of a larder. Following the
sniffing came a guttural noise of emptiness and desire. Now there was
no mistake; it was the half-witted fellow beyond all doubt, and he
could help him--Dormy Jamais should help him: he should go and warn the
Governor and the soldiers at the Hospital, while he himself would speed
to Gorey in search of his father. He would alarm the regiment there at
the same time.

He knocked and shouted. Dormy Jamais, frightened, jumped back into
the street. Ranulph called again, and yet again, and now at last Dormy
recognised the voice.

With a growl of mingled reassurance and hunger, he lifted down the iron
bar from the shutters. In a moment Ranulph was outside with two loaves
of bread, which he put into Dormy Jamais’s arms. The daft one whinnied
with delight.

“What’s o’clock, bread-man?” he asked with a chuckle.

Ranulph gripped his shoulders. “See, Dormy Jamais, I want you to go
to the Governor’s house at La Motte, and tell them that the French are
coming, that they’re landing at Gorey now. Then to the Hospital and tell
the sentry there. Go, Dormy--allez kedainne!”

Dormy Jamais tore at a loaf with his teeth, and crammed a huge crust
into his mouth.

“Come, tell me, will you go, Dormy?” the lad asked impatiently.

Dormy Jamais nodded his head, grunted, and, turning on his heel with
Ranulph, clattered up the street. The lad sprang ahead of him, and ran
swiftly up the Rue d’Egypte, into the Vier Marchi, and on over the Town
Hill along the road to Grouville.




CHAPTER III

Since the days of Henry III of England the hawk of war that broods in
France has hovered along that narrow strip of sea dividing the island
of Jersey from the duchy of Normandy. Eight times has it descended,
and eight times has it hurried back with broken pinion. Among these
truculent invasions two stand out boldly: the spirited and gallant
attack by Bertrand du Guesclin, Constable of France; and the freebooting
adventure of Rullecour, with his motley following of gentlemen and
criminals. Rullecour it was, soldier of fortune, gambler, ruffian, and
embezzler, to whom the King of France had secretly given the mission to
conquer the unconquerable little island.

From the Chaussey Isles the filibuster saw the signal light which the
traitor Olivier Delagarde had set upon the heights of Le Couperon,
where, ages ago, Caesar built fires to summon from Gaul his devouring
legions.

All was propitious for the attack. There was no moon--only a meagre
starlight when they set forth from Chaussey. The journey was made in
little more than an hour, and Rullecour himself was among the first
to see the shores of Jersey loom darkly in front. Beside him stood the
murderous pilot who was leading in the expedition, the colleague of
Olivier Delagarde.

Presently the pilot gave an exclamation of surprise and anxiety--the
tides and currents were bearing them away from the intended
landing-place. It was now almost low water, and instead of an immediate
shore, there lay before them a vast field of scarred rocks, dimly seen.
He gave the signal to lay-to, and himself took the bearings. The tide
was going out rapidly, disclosing reefs on either hand. He drew in
carefully to the right of the rock known as L’Echiquelez, up through
a passage scarce wide enough for canoes, and to Roque Platte, the
south-eastern projection of the island.

You may range the seas from the Yugon Strait to the Erebus volcano, and
you will find no such landing-place for imps or men as that field of
rocks on the southeast corner of Jersey called, with a malicious irony,
the Bane des Violets. The great rocks La Coniere, La Longy, Le Gros
Etac, Le Teton, and the Petite Sambiere, rise up like volcanic monuments
from a floor of lava and trailing vraic, which at half-tide makes the
sea a tender mauve and violet. The passages of safety between these
ranges of reef are but narrow at high tide; at half-tide, when the
currents are changing most, the violet field becomes the floor of a vast
mortuary chapel for unknowing mariners.

A battery of four guns defended the post on the landward side of this
bank of the heavenly name. Its guards were asleep or in their cups. They
yielded, without resistance, to the foremost of the invaders. But here
Rullecour and his pilot, looking back upon the way they had come,
saw the currents driving the transport boats hither and thither in
confusion. Jersey was not to be conquered without opposition--no army
of defence was abroad, but the elements roused themselves and furiously
attacked the fleet. Battalions unable to land drifted back with the
tides to Granville, whence they had come. Boats containing the heavy
ammunition and a regiment of conscripts were battered upon the rocks,
and hundreds of the invaders found an unquiet grave upon the Banc des
Violets.

Presently the traitor Delagarde arrived and was welcomed warmly by
Rullecour. The night wore on, and at last the remaining legions were
landed. A force was left behind to guard La Roque Platte, and then the
journey across country to the sleeping town began.

With silent, drowsing batteries in front and on either side of them,
the French troops advanced, the marshes of Samares and the sea on their
left, churches and manor houses on their right, all silent. Not yet had
a blow been struck for the honour of this land and of the Kingdom.

But a blind injustice was, in its own way, doing the work of justice.
On the march, Delagarde, suspecting treachery to himself, not without
reason, required of Rullecour guarantee for the fulfilment of his
pledge to make him Vicomte of the Island when victory should be theirs.
Rullecour, however, had also promised the post to a reckless young
officer, the Comte de Tournay, of the House of Vaufontaine, who,
under the assumed name of Yves Savary dit Detricand, marched with him.
Rullecour answered Delagarde churlishly, and would say nothing till the
town was taken--the ecrivain must wait. But Delagarde had been drinking,
he was in a mood to be reckless; he would not wait, he demanded an
immediate pledge.

“By and by, my doubting Thomas,” said Rullecour. “No, now, by the blood
of Peter!” answered Delagarde, laying a hand upon his sword.

The French leader called a sergeant to arrest him. Delagarde instantly
drew his sword and attacked Rullecour, but was cut down from behind
by the scimitar of a swaggering Turk, who had joined the expedition as
aide-de-camp to the filibustering general, tempted thereto by promises
of a harem of the choicest Jersey ladies, well worthy of this cousin of
the Emperor of Morocco.

The invaders left Delagarde lying where he fell. What followed this
oblique retribution could satisfy no ordinary logic, nor did it meet the
demands of poetic justice. For, as a company of soldiers from Grouville,
alarmed out of sleep by a distracted youth, hurried towards St. Heliers,
they found Delagarde lying by the roadside, and they misunderstood what
had happened. Stooping over him an officer said pityingly:

“See--he got this wound fighting the French!” With the soldiers was the
youth who had warned them. He ran forward with a cry, and knelt beside
the wounded man. He had no tears, he had no sorrow. He was only sick and
dumb, and he trembled with misery as he lifted up his father’s head. The
eyes of Olivier Delagarde opened.

“Ranulph--they’ve killed--me,” gasped the stricken man feebly, and his
head fell back.

An officer touched the youth’s arm. “He is gone,” said he. “Don’t fret,
lad, he died fighting for his country.”

The lad made no reply, and the soldiers hurried on towards the town.

He died fighting for his country! So that was to be the legend, Ranulph
meditated: his father was to have a glorious memory, while he himself
knew how vile the man was. One thing however: he was glad that Olivier
Delagarde was dead. How strangely had things happened! He had come to
stay a traitor in his crime, and here he found a martyr. But was not he
himself likewise a traitor? Ought not he to have alarmed the town
first before he tried to find his father? Had Dormy Jamais warned
the Governor? Clearly not, or the town bells would be ringing and the
islanders giving battle. What would the world think of him!

Well, what was the use of fretting here? He would go on to the town,
help to fight the French, and die that would be the best thing. He
knelt, and unclasped his father’s fingers from the handle of the sword.
The steel was cold, it made him shiver. He had no farewell to make. He
looked out to sea. The tide would come and carry his father’s body out,
perhaps-far out, and sink it in the deepest depths. If not that, then
the people would bury Olivier Delagarde as a patriot. He determined that
he himself would not live to see such mockery.

As he sped along towards the town he asked himself why nobody suspected
the traitor. One reason for it occurred to him: his father, as the whole
island knew, had a fishing-hut at Gorey. They would imagine him on the
way to it when he met the French, for he often spent the night there.
He himself had told his tale to the soldiers: how he had heard the baker
and the Frenchman talking at the shop in the Rue d’Egypte. Yes, but
suppose the French were driven out, and the baker taken prisoner and
should reveal his father’s complicity! And suppose people asked why he
himself did not go at once to the Hospital Barracks in the town and to
the Governor, and afterwards to Gorey?

These were direful imaginings. He felt that it was no use; that the lie
could not go on concerning his father. The world would know; the one
thing left for him was to die. He was only a boy, but he could fight.
Had not young Philip d’Avranche; the midshipman, been in deadly action
many times? He was nearly as old as Philip d’Avranche--yes, he would
fight, and, fighting, he would die. To live as the son of such a father
was too pitiless a shame.

He ran forward, but a weakness was on him; he was very hungry and
thirsty-and the sword was heavy. Presently, as he went, he saw a stone
well near a cottage by the roadside. On a ledge of the well stood a
bucket of water. He tilted the bucket and drank. He would have liked to
ask for bread at the cottage-door, but he said to himself, Why should he
eat, for was he not going to die? Yet why should he not eat, even if he
were going to die? He turned his head wistfully, he was so faint with
hunger. The force driving him on, however, was greater than hunger--he
ran harder.... But undoubtedly the sword was heavy!




CHAPTER IV

In the Vier Marchi the French flag was flying, French troops occupied
it, French sentries guarded the five streets entering into it.
Rullecour, the French adventurer, held the Lieutenant-Governor of the
isle captive in the Cohue Royale; and by threats of fire and pillage
thought to force capitulation. For his final argument he took the
Governor to the doorway, and showed him two hundred soldiers with
lighted torches ready to fire the town.

When the French soldiers first entered the Vier Marchi there was Dormy
Jamais on the roof of the Cohue Royale, calmly munching his bread. When
he saw Rullecour and the Governor appear, he chuckled to himself, and
said, in Jersey patois: “I vaut mux alouonyi l’bras que l’co,” which
is to say: It is better to stretch the arm than the neck. The Governor
would have done more wisely, he thought, to believe the poor beganne,
and to have risen earlier. Dormy Jamais had a poor opinion of a governor
who slept. He himself was not a governor, yet was he not always awake?
He had gone before dawn to the Governor’s house, had knocked, had given
Ranulph Delagarde’s message, had been called a dirty buzard, and been
sent away by the crusty, incredulous servant. Then he had gone to the
Hospital Barracks, was there iniquitously called a lousy toad, and had
been driven off with his quartern loaf, muttering through the dough the
island proverb “While the mariner swigs the tide rises.”

Had the Governor remained as cool as the poor vagrant, he would not have
shrunk at the sight of the incendiaries, yielded to threats, and signed
the capitulation of the island. But that capitulation being signed, and
notice of it sent to the British troops, with orders to surrender and
bring their arms to the Cohue Royale, it was not cordially received by
the officers in command.

“Je ne comprends pas le francais,” said Captain Mulcaster, at Elizabeth
Castle, as he put the letter into his pocket unread.

“The English Governor will be hanged, and the French will burn the
town,” responded the envoy. “Let them begin to hang and burn and be
damned, for I’ll not surrender the castle or the British flag so long as
I’ve a man to defend it, to please anybody!” answered Mulcaster.

“We shall return in numbers,” said the Frenchman, threateningly.

“I shall be delighted: we shall have the more to kill,” Mulcaster
replied.

Then the captive Lieutenant-Governor was sent to Major Peirson at the
head of his troops on the Mont es Pendus, with counsel to surrender.

“Sir,” said he, “this has been a very sudden surprise, for I was made
prisoner before I was out of my bed this morning.”

“Sir,” replied Peirson, the young hero of twenty-four, who achieved
death and glory between a sunrise and a noontide, “give me leave to tell
you that the 78th Regiment has not yet been the least surprised.”

From Elizabeth Castle came defiance and cannonade, driving back
Rullecour and his filibusters to the Cohue Royale: from Mont Orgueil,
from the Hospital, from St. Peter’s came the English regiments; from the
other parishes swarmed the militia, all eager to recover their beloved
Vier Marchi. Two companies of light infantry, leaving the Mont es
Pendus, stole round the town and placed themselves behind the invaders
on the Town Hill; the rest marched direct upon the enemy. Part went by
the Grande Rue, and part by the Rue d’Driere, converging to the point of
attack; and as the light infantry came down from the hill by the Rue des
Tres Pigeons, Peirson entered the Vier Marchi by the Route es Couochons.
On one side of the square, where the Cohue Royale made a wall to fight
against, were the French. Radiating from this were five streets and
passages like the spokes of a wheel, and from these now poured the
defenders of the isle.

A volley came from the Cohue Royale, then another, and another. The
place was small: friend and foe were crowded upon each other. The
fighting became at once a hand-to-hand encounter. Cannon were useless,
gun-carriages overturned. Here a drummer fell wounded, but continued
beating his drum to the last; there a Glasgow soldier struggled with
a French officer for the flag of the invaders; yonder a handful of
Malouins doggedly held the foot of La Pyramide, until every one was cut
down by overpowering numbers of British and Jersiais. The British
leader was conspicuous upon his horse. Shot after shot was fired at
him. Suddenly he gave a cry, reeled in his saddle, and sank, mortally
wounded, into the arms of a brother officer.

For a moment his men fell back.

In the midst of the deadly turmoil a youth ran forward from a group
of combatants, caught the bridle of the horse from which Peirson
had fallen, mounted, and, brandishing a short sword, called upon his
dismayed and wavering followers to advance; which they instantly did
with fury and courage. It was Midshipman Philip d’Avranche. Twenty
muskets were discharged at him. One bullet cut the coat on his shoulder,
another grazed the back of his hand, a third scarred the pommel of the
saddle, and still another wounded his horse. Again and again the English
called upon him to dismount, for he was made a target, but he refused,
until at last the horse was shot under him. Then once more he joined in
the hand-to-hand encounter.

Windows near the ground, such as were not shattered, were broken by
bullets. Cannon-balls embedded themselves in the masonry and the heavy
doorways. The upper windows were safe, however: the shots did not range
so high. At one of these, over a watchmaker’s shop, a little girl was to
be seen, looking down with eager interest. Presently an old man came in
view and led her away. A few minutes of fierce struggle passed, and then
at another window on the floor below the child appeared again. She saw a
youth with a sword hurrying towards the Cohue Royale from a tangled mass
of combatants. As he ran, a British soldier fell in front of him. The
youth dropped the sword and grasped the dead man’s musket.

The child clapped her hands on the window.

“It’s Ro--it’s Ro!” she cried, and disappeared again.

“Ro,” with white face, hatless, coatless, pushed on through the melee.
Rullecour, the now disheartened French general, stood on the steps of
the Cohue Royale. With a vulgar cruelty and cowardice he was holding the
Governor by the arm, hoping thereby to protect his own person from the
British fire.

Here was what the lad had been trying for--the sight of this man
Rullecour. There was one small clear space between the English and the
French, where stood a gun-carriage. He ran to it, leaned the musket on
the gun, and, regardless of the shots fired at him, took aim steadily.
A French bullet struck the wooden wheel of the carriage, and a splinter
gashed his cheek. He did not move, but took sight again, and fired.
Rullecour fell, shot through the jaw. A cry of fury and dismay went up
from the French at the loss of their leader, a shout of triumph from the
British.

The Frenchmen had had enough. They broke and ran. Some rushed for
doorways and threw themselves within, many scurried into the Rue des
Tres Pigeons, others madly fought their way into Morier Lane.

At this moment the door of the watchmaker’s shop opened and the little
girl who had been seen at the window ran into the square, calling out:
“Ro! Ro!” It was Guida Landresse.

Among the French flying for refuge was the garish Turk, Rullecour’s
ally. Suddenly the now frightened, crying child got into his path and
tripped him up. Wild with rage he made a stroke at her, but at that
instant his scimitar was struck aside by a youth covered with the smoke
and grime of battle. He caught up the child to his arms, and hurried
with her through the melee to the watchmaker’s doorway. There stood a
terror-stricken woman--Madame Landresse, who had just made her way into
the square. Placing the child, in her arms, Philip d’Avranche staggered
inside the house, faint and bleeding from a wound in the shoulder. The
battle of Jersey was over.

“Ah bah!” said Dormy Jamais from the roof of the Cohue Royale; “now
I’ll toll the bell for that achocre of a Frenchman. Then I’ll finish my
supper.”

Poising a half-loaf of bread on the ledge of the roof, he began to
slowly toll the cracked bell at his hand for Rullecour the filibuster.

The bell clanged out: Chicane-chicane! Chicane-chicane!

Another bell answered from the church by the square, a deep, mournful
note. It was tolling for Peirson and his dead comrades.

Against the statue in the Vier Marchi leaned Ranulph Delagarde. An
officer came up and held out a hand to him. “Your shot ended the
business,” said he. “You’re a brave fellow. What is your name?”

“Ranulph Delagarde, sir.”

“Delagarde--eh? Then well done, Delagardes! They say your father was the
first man killed. We won’t forget that, my lad.”

Sinking down upon the base of the statue, Ranulph did not stir or reply,
and the officer, thinking he was grieving for his father, left him
alone.




ELEVEN YEARS AFTER




CHAPTER V

The King of France was no longer sending adventurers to capture the
outposts of England. He was rather, in despair, beginning to wind in
again the coil of disaster which had spun out through the helpless
fingers of Neckar, Calonne, Brienne and the rest, and was in the end to
bind his own hands for the guillotine.

The Isle of Jersey, like a scout upon the borders of a foeman’s country,
looked out over St. Michael’s Basin to those provinces where the war
of the Vendee was soon to strike France from within, while England, and
presently all Europe, should strike her from without.

War, or the apprehension of war, was in the air. The people of the
little isle, living always within the influence of natural wonder and
the power of the elements, were deeply superstitious; and as news of
dark deeds done in Paris crept across from Carteret or St. Malo, as
men-of-war anchored in the tide-way, and English troops, against the
hour of trouble, came, transport after transport, into the harbour of
St. Heliers, they began to see visions and dream dreams. One peasant
heard the witches singing a chorus of carnage at Rocbert; another saw,
towards the Minquiers, a great army like a mirage upon the sea; others
declared that certain French refugees in the island had the evil eye and
bewitched their cattle; and a woman, wild with grief because her child
had died of a sudden sickness, meeting a little Frenchman, the Chevalier
du Champsavoys, in the Rue des Tres Pigeons, thrust at his face with her
knitting-needle, and then, Protestant though she was, made the sacred
sign, as though to defeat the evil eye.

This superstition and fanaticism so strong in the populace now and then
burst forth in untamable fury and riot. So that when, on the sixteenth
of December 1792, the gay morning was suddenly overcast, and a black
curtain was drawn over the bright sun, the people of Jersey, working in
the fields, vraicking among the rocks, or knitting in their doorways,
stood aghast, and knew not what was upon them.

Some began to say the Lord’s Prayer, some in superstitious terror ran to
the secret hole in the wall, to the chimney, or to the bedstead, or dug
up the earthen floor, to find the stocking full of notes and gold, which
might, perchance, come with them safe through any cataclysm, or start
them again in business in another world. Some began fearfully to sing
hymns, and a few to swear freely. These latter were chiefly carters,
whose salutations to each other were mainly oaths, because of the
extreme narrowness of the island roads, and sailors to whom profanity
was as daily bread.

In St. Heliers, after the first stupefaction, people poured into the
streets. They gathered most where met the Rue d’Driere and the Rue
d’Egypte. Here stood the old prison, and the spot was called the Place
du Vier Prison.

Men and women with breakfast still in their mouths mumbled their terror
to each other. A lobster-woman shrieking that the Day of Judgment was
come, instinctively straightened her cap, smoothed out her dress of
molleton, and put on her sabots. A carpenter, hearing her terrified
exclamations, put on his sabots also, stooped whimpering to the stream
running from the Rue d’Egypte, and began to wash his face. A dozen
of his neighbours did the same. Some of the women, however, went on
knitting hard, as they gabbled prayers and looked at the fast-blackening
sun. Knitting was to Jersey women, like breathing or tale-bearing,
life itself. With their eyes closing upon earth they would have gone on
knitting and dropped no stitches.

A dusk came down like that over Pompeii and Herculaneum. The tragedy of
fear went hand in hand with burlesque commonplace. The grey stone walls
of the houses grew darker and darker, and seemed to close in on the
dumfounded, hysterical crowd. Here some one was shouting command to
imaginary militia; there an aged crone was offering, without price,
simnels and black butter, as a sort of propitiation for an imperfect
past; and from a window a notorious evil-liver was frenziedly crying
that she had heard the devil and his Rocbert witches revelling in the
prison dungeons the night before. Thereupon a long-haired fanatic,
once a barber, with a gift for mad preaching, sprang upon the Pompe des
Brigands, and declaring that the Last Day was come, shrieked:

   “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me! He hath sent me to proclaim
   liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that
   are bound!”

Some one thrust into his hand a torch. He waved it to and fro in his
wild harangue; he threw up his arms towards the ominous gloom, and with
blatant fury ordered open the prison doors. Other torches and candles
appeared, and the mob trembled to and fro in delirium.

“The prison! Open the Vier Prison! Break down the doors!
Gatd’en’ale--drive out the devils! Free the prisoners--the poor
vauriens!” the crowd shouted, rushing forward with sticks and weapons.

The prison arched the street as Temple Bar once spanned the Strand. They
crowded under the archway, overpowered the terror-stricken jailer, and,
battering open the door in frenzy, called the inmates forth.

They looked to see issue some sailor seized for whistling of a Sabbath,
some profane peasant who had presumed to wear pattens in church, some
profaner peasant who had not doffed his hat to the Connetable, or some
slip-shod militiaman who had gone to parade in his sabots, thereby
offending the red-robed dignity of the Royal Court.

Instead, there appeared a little Frenchman of the most refined and
unusual appearance. The blue cloth of his coat set off the extreme
paleness of a small but serene face and high round forehead. The hair, a
beautiful silver grey which time only had powdered, was tied in a queue
behind. The little gentleman’s hand was as thin and fine as a lady’s,
his shoulders were narrow and slightly stooped, his eye was eloquent and
benign. His dress was amazingly neat, but showed constant brushing and
signs of the friendly repairing needle.

The whole impression was that of a man whom a whiff of wind would blow
away; with the body of an ascetic and the simplicity of a child.
The face had some particular sort of wisdom, difficult to define and
impossible to imitate. He held in his hand a tiny cane of the sort
carried at the court of Louis Quinze. Louis Capet himself had given it
to him; and you might have had the life of the little gentleman, but not
this cane with the tiny golden bust of his unhappy monarch.

He stood on the steps of the prison and looked serenely on the
muttering, excited crowd.

“I fear there is a mistake,” said he, coughing a little into his
fingers. “You do not seek me. I--I have no claim upon your kindness; I
am only the Chevalier Orvilliers du Champsavoys de Beaumanoir.”

For a moment the mob had been stayed in amazement by this small, rare
creature stepping from the doorway, like a porcelain coloured figure
from some dusky wood in a painting by Claude. In the instant’s pause the
Chevalier Orvilliers du Champsavoys de Beaumanoir took from his pocket
a timepiece and glanced at it, then looked over the heads of the crowd
towards the hooded sun, which now, a little, was showing its face again.

“It was due at eight, less seven minutes,” said he; “clear sun again was
set for ten minutes past. It is now upon the stroke of the hour.”

He seemed in no way concerned with the swaying crowd before
him--undoubtedly they wanted naught of him, and therefore he did
not take their presence seriously; but, of an inquiring mind, he was
absorbed in the eclipse.

“He’s a French sorcerer! He has the evil eye! Away with him to the sea!”
 shouted the fanatical preacher from the Pompe des Brigands.

“It’s a witch turned into a man!” cried a drunken woman from her window.
“Give him the wheel of fire at the blacksmith’s forge.”

“That’s it! Gad’rabotin--the wheel of fire’ll turn him back to a hag
again!”

The little gentleman protested, but they seized him and dragged him
from the steps. Tossed like a ball, so light was he, he grasped the
gold-headed cane as one might cling to life, and declared that he was
no witch, but a poor French exile, arrested the night before for being
abroad after nine o’clock, against the orders of the Royal Court.

Many of the crowd knew him well enough by sight, but they were too
delirious to act with intelligence now. The dark cloud was lifting a
little from the sun, and dread of the Judgment Day was declining; but
as the pendulum swung back towards normal life again, it carried with it
the one virulent and common prejudice of the country--radical hatred of
the French--which often slumbered but never died.

The wife of an oyster-fisher from Rozel Bay, who lived in hourly enmity
with the oyster-fishers of Carteret, gashed his cheek with the shell of
an ormer. A potato-digger from Grouville parish struck at his head with
a hoe, for the Granvillais had crossed the strait to the island the
year before, to work in the harvest fields for a lesser wage than the
Jersiais, and this little French gentleman must be held responsible for
that. The weapon missed the Chevalier, but laid low a centenier, who,
though a municipal officer, had in the excitement lost his head like his
neighbours. This but increased the rage against the foreigner, and was
another crime to lay to his charge. A smuggler thereupon kicked him in
the side.

At that moment there came a cry of indignation from a girl at an upper
window of the Place. The Chevalier evidently knew her, for even in his
hard case he smiled; and then he heard another voice ring out over the
heads of the crowd, strong, angry, determined.

From the Rue d’Driere a tall athletic man was hurrying. He had on his
shoulders a workman’s hand basket, from which peeped a ship-builder’s
tools. Seeing the Chevalier’s danger, he dropped his tool-basket through
the open window of a house and forced his way through the crowd, roughly
knocking from under them the feet of two or three ruffians who opposed
him. He reproached the crowd, he berated them, he handled them fiercely.
By a dexterous strength he caught the little gentleman up in his arms,
and, driving straight on to the open door of the smithy, placed him
inside, then blocked the passage with his own body.

It was a strange picture: the preacher in an ecstasy haranguing the
foolish rabble, who now realised, with an unbecoming joy, that the Last
Day was yet to face; the gaping, empty prison; the open windows crowded
with excited faces; the church bell from the Vier Marchi ringing an
alarm; Norman lethargy roused to froth and fury: one strong man holding
two hundred back!

Above them all, at a hus in the gable of a thatched cottage, stood the
girl whom the Chevalier had recognised, anxiously watching the affray.
She was leaning across the lower closed half of the door, her hands in
apprehensive excitement clasping her cheeks. The eyes were bewildered,
and, though alive with pain, watched the scene below with unwavering
intensity.

Like all mobs this one had no reason, no sense. They were baulked in
their malign intentions, and this man, Maitre Ranulph Delagarde, was the
cause of it--that was all they knew. A stone was thrown at Delagarde as
he stood in the doorway, but it missed him.

“Oh-oh-oh!” the girl exclaimed, shrinking. “O shame! O you cowards!” she
added, her hands now indignantly beating on the hus. Three or four men
rushed forward on Ranulph. He hurled them back. Others came on with
weapons. The girl fled for an instant, then reappeared with a musket, as
the people were crowding in on Delagarde with threats and execrations.

“Stop! stop!” cried the girl from above, as Ranulph seized a
black-smith’s hammer to meet the onset. “Stop, or I’ll fire!” she called
again, and she aimed her musket at the foremost assailants.

Every face turned in her direction, for her voice had rung out clear
as music. For an instant there was silence--the levelled musket had
a deadly look, and the girl seemed determined. Her fingers, her
whole body, trembled; but there was no mistaking the strong will, the
indignant purpose.

All at once in the pause another sound was heard. It was a quick tramp,
tramp, tramp! and suddenly under the prison archway came running an
officer of the King’s navy with a company of sailors. The officer, with
drawn sword, his men following with cutlasses, drove a way through the
mob, who scattered before them like sheep.

Delagarde threw aside his hammer, and saluted the officer. The little
Chevalier made a formal bow, and hastened to say that he was not at
all hurt. With a droll composure he offered snuff to the officer, who
declined politely. Turning to the window where the girl stood, the
new-comer saluted with confident gallantry.

“Why, it’s little Guida Landresse!” he said under his breath--“I’d know
her anywhere. Death and Beauty, what a face!” Then he turned to Ranulph
in recognition.

“Ranulph Delagarde, eh?” said he good-humouredly. “You’ve forgotten me,
I see. I’m Philip d’Avranche, of the Narcissus.”

Ranulph had forgotten. The slight lad Philip had grown bronzed, and
stouter of frame. In the eleven years since they had been together at
the Battle of Jersey, events, travel, and responsibility had altered him
vastly. Ranulph had changed only in growing very tall and athletic and
strong; the look of him was still that of the Norman lad of the isle,
though the power and intelligence of his face were unusual.

The girl in the cottage doorway had not forgotten at all. The words that
d’Avranche had said to her years before, when she was a child, came to
her mind: “My name is Philip; call me Philip.”

The recollection of that day when she snatched off the Bailly’s hat
brought a smile to her lips now, so quickly were her feelings moved one
way or another. Then she grew suddenly serious, for the memory of the
hour when he saved her from the scimitar of the Turk came to her, and
her heart throbbed hotly. But she smiled again, though more gently and a
little wistfully now.

Philip d’Avranche looked up towards her once more, and returned her
smile. Then he addressed the awed crowd. He did not spare his language;
he unconsciously used an oath or two. He ordered them off to their
homes. When they hesitated (for they were slow to acknowledge any
authority save their own sacred Royal Court) the sailors advanced on
them with drawn cutlasses, and a moment later the Place du Vier Prison
was clear. Leaving a half-dozen sailors on guard till the town corps
should arrive, d’Avranche prepared to march, and turned to Delagarde.

“You’ve done me a good turn, Monsieur d’Avranche,” said Ranulph.

“There was a time you called me Philip,” said d’Avranche, smiling. “We
were lads together.”

“It’s different now,” answered Delagarde.

“Nothing is different at all, of course,” returned d’Avranche
carelessly, yet with the slightest touch of condescension, as he
held out his hand. Turning to the Chevalier, he said: “Monsieur, I
congratulate you on having such a champion”--with a motion towards
Ranulph. “And you, monsieur, on your brave protector”--he again saluted
the girl at the window above.

“I am the obliged and humble servant of monsieur, and monsieur,”
 responded the little gentleman, turning from one to the other with
a courtly bow, the three-cornered hat under his arm, the right foot
forward, the thin fingers making a graceful salutation. “But I--I
think--I really think I must go back to prison. I was not formally set
free. I was out last night beyond the hour set by the Court. I lost my
way, and--”

“Not a bit of it,” d’Avranche interrupted. “The centeniers are too free
with their jailing here. I’ll be guarantee for you, monsieur.” He turned
to go.

The little man shook his head dubiously. “But, as a point of honour, I
really think--”

D’Avranche laughed. “As a point of honour, I think you ought to
breakfast. A la bonne heure, monsieur le chevalier!”

He turned again to the cottage window. The girl was still there. The
darkness over the sun was withdrawn, and now the clear light began to
spread itself abroad. It was like a second dawn after a painful night.
It tinged the face of the girl; it burnished the wonderful red-brown
hair falling loosely and lightly over her forehead; it gave her beauty a
touch of luxuriance. D’Avranche thrilled at the sight of her.

“It’s a beautiful face,” he said to himself as their eyes met and he
saluted once more.

Ranulph had seen the glances passing between the two, and he winced. He
remembered how, eleven years ago, Philip d’Avranche had saved the girl
from death. It galled him that then and now this young gallant should
step in and take the game out of his hands--he was sure that himself
alone could have mastered this crowd.

“Monsieur--monsieur le chevalier!” the girl called down from the window,
“grandpethe says you must breakfast with us. Oh, but come you must,
or we shall be offended!” she added, as Champsavoys shook his head in
hesitation and glanced towards the prison.

“As a point of honour--” the little man still persisted, lightly
touching his breast with the Louis Quinze cane, and taking a step
towards the sombre prison archway. But Ranulph interfered, drew him
gently inside the cottage, and, standing in the doorway, said to some
one within:

“May I come in also, Sieur de Mauprat?”

Above the pleasant welcome of a quavering voice came another, soft and
clear, in pure French:

“Thou art always welcome, without asking, as thou knowest, Ro.”

“Then I’ll go and fetch my tool-basket first,” Ranulph said cheerily,
his heart beating more quickly, and, turning, he walked across the
Place.




CHAPTER VI

The cottage in which Guida lived at the Place du Vier Prison was in
jocund contrast to the dungeon from which the Chevalier Orvilliers
du Champsavoys de Beaumanoir had complacently issued. Even in the hot
summer the prison walls dripped moisture, for the mortar had been made
of wet sea-sand, which never dried, and beneath the gloomy tenement of
crime a dark stream flowed to the sea. But the walls of the cottage were
dry, for, many years before, Guida’s mother had herself seen it built
from cellar-rock to the linked initials over the doorway, stone by
stone, and every corner of it was as free from damp as the mielles
stretching in sandy desolation behind to the Mont es Pendus, where the
law had its way with the necks of criminals.

In early childhood Madame Landresse had come with her father into exile
from the sunniest valley in the hills of Chambery, where flowers and
trees and sunshine had been her life. Here, in the midst of blank and
grim stone houses, her heart travelled back to the chateau where she
lived before the storm of persecution drove her forth; and she spent her
heart and her days in making this cottage, upon the western border of
St. Heliers, a delight to the quiet eye.

The people of the island had been good to her and her dead husband
during the two short years of their married life, and had caused her to
love the land which necessity made her home. Her child was brought up
after the fashion of the better class of Jersey children, wore what
they wore, ate what they ate, lived as they lived. She spoke the country
patois in the daily life, teaching it to Guida at the same time that she
taught her pure French and good English, which she herself had learned
as a child, and cultivated later here. She had done all in her power
to make Guida Jersiaise in instinct and habit, and to beget in her a
contented disposition. There could be no future for her daughter outside
this little green oasis of exile, she thought. Not that she lacked
ambition, but in the circumstances she felt that ambition could yield
but one harvest to her child, which was marriage. She herself had
married a poor man, a master builder of ships, like Maitre Ranulph
Delagarde, but she had been very happy while he lived. Her husband
had come of an ancient Jersey family, who were in Normandy before the
Conqueror was born; a man of genius almost in his craft, but scarcely
a gentleman according to the standard of her father, the distinguished
exile and now retired watchmaker. If Guida should chance to be as
fortunate as herself, she could ask no more.

She had watched the child anxiously, for the impulses of Guida’s
temperament now and then broke forth in indignation as wild as her tears
and in tears as wild as her laughter. As the girl grew in health and
stature, she tried, tenderly, strenuously, to discipline the sensitive
nature, bursting her heart with grief at times because she knew that
these high feelings and delicate powers came through a long line of
ancestral tendencies, as indestructible as perilous and joyous.

Four things were always apparent in the girl’s character: sympathy with
suffering, kindness without partiality, a love of nature, and an intense
candour.

Not a stray cat wandering into the Place du Vier Prison but found an
asylum in the garden behind the cottage. Not a dog hungry for a bone,
stopping at Guida’s door, but was sure of one from a hiding-place in
the hawthorn hedge of the garden. Every morning you might have seen
the birds in fluttering, chirping groups upon the may-tree or the
lilac-bushes, waiting for the tiny snow-storm of bread to fall from
her hand. Was he good or bad, ragged or neat, honest or a thief, not a
deserting sailor or a homeless lad, halting at the cottage, but was fed
from the girl’s private larder behind the straw beehives among the sweet
lavender and the gooseberry-bushes. No matter how rough the vagrant,
the sincerity and pure impulse of the child seemed to throw round him a
sunshine of decency and respect.

The garden behind the house was the girl’s Eden. She had planted upon
the hawthorn hedge the crimson monthly rose, the fuchsia, and the
jonquil, until at last the cottage was hemmed in by a wall of flowers;
and here she was ever as busy as the bees which hung humming on the
sweet scabious.

In this corner was a little hut for rabbits; in that, there was a hole
dug in the bank for a hedgehog; in the middle a little flower-grown
enclosure for cats in various stages of health or convalescence, and a
small pond for frogs; and in the midst of all wandered her faithful dog,
Biribi by name, as master of the ceremonies.

Madame Landresse’s one ambition had been to live long enough to see her
child’s character formed. She knew that her own years were numbered, for
month by month she felt her strength going. And yet a beautiful tenacity
kept her where she would be until Guida was fifteen years of age. Her
great desire had been to live till the girl was eighteen. Then--well,
then might she not perhaps leave her to the care of a husband? At best,
M. de Mauprat could not live long. He had at last been forced to give
up the little watchmaker’s shop in the Vier Marchi, where for so many
years, in simple independence, he had wrought, always putting by, from
work done after hours, Jersey bank-notes and gold, to give Guida a dot,
if not worthy of her, at least a guarantee against reproach when some
great man should come seeking her in marriage. But at last his hands
trembled among the tiny wheels, and his eyes failed. He had his dark
hour by himself, then he sold the shop to a native, who thenceforward
sat in the ancient exile’s place; and the two brown eyes of the stooped,
brown old man looked out no more from the window in the Vier Marchi: and
then they all made their new home in the Place du Vier Prison.

Until she was fifteen Guida’s life was unclouded. Once or twice her
mother tried to tell her of a place that must soon be empty, but her
heart failed her. So at last the end came like a sudden wind out of
the north; and it was left to Guida Landresse de Landresse to fight the
fight and finish the journey of womanhood alone.

This time was the turning-point in Guida’s life. What her mother had
been to the Sieur de Mauprat, she soon became. They had enough to live
on simply. Every week her grandfather gave her a fixed sum for the
household. Upon this she managed, that the tiny income left by her
mother might not be touched. She shrank from using it yet, and besides,
dark times might come when it would be needed. Death had once surprised
her, but it should bring no more amazement. She knew that M. de
Mauprat’s days were numbered, and when he was gone she would be left
without one near relative in the world. She realised how unprotected her
position would be when death came knocking at the door again. What she
would do she knew not. She thought long and hard. Fifty things occurred
to her, and fifty were set aside. Her mother’s immediate relatives
in France were scattered or dead. There was no longer any interest at
Chambery in the watchmaking exile, who had dropped like a cherry-stone
from the beak of the blackbird of persecution upon one of the Iles de la
Manche.

There remained the alternative more than once hinted by the Sieur de
Mauprat as the months grew into years after the mother died--marriage;
a husband, a notable and wealthy husband. That was the magic destiny de
Mauprat figured for her. It did not elate her, it did not disturb her;
she scarcely realised it. She loved animals, and she saw no reason to
despise a stalwart youth. It had been her fortune to know two or three
in the casual, unconventional manner of villages, and there were few in
the land, great or humble, who did not turn twice to look at her as she
passed through the Vier Marchi, so noble was her carriage, so graceful
and buoyant her walk, so lacking in self-consciousness her beauty. More
than one young gentleman of family had been known to ride through the
Place du Vier Prison, hoping to get sight of her, and to offer the view
of a suggestively empty pillion behind him.

She had, however, never listened to flatterers, and only one youth of
Jersey had footing in the cottage. This was Ranulph Delagarde, who had
gone in and out at his will, but that was casually and not too often,
and he was discreet and spoke no word of love. Sometimes she talked to
him of things concerning the daily life with which she did not care to
trouble Sieur de Mauprat. In ways quite unknown to her he had made her
life easier for her. She knew that her mother had thought of Ranulph for
her husband, although she blushed whenever--but it was not often--the
idea came to her. She remembered how her mother had said that Ranulph
would be a great man in the island some day; that he had a mind above
all the youths in St. Heliers; that she would rather see Ranulph
a master ship-builder than a babbling ecrivain in the Rue des Tres
Pigeons, a smirking leech, or a penniless seigneur with neither trade
nor talent. Guida was attracted to Ranulph through his occupation, for
she loved strength, she loved all clean and wholesome trades; that
of the mason, of the carpenter, of the blacksmith, and most of the
ship-builder. Her father, whom she did not remember, had been a
ship-builder, and she knew that he had been a notable man; every one had
told her that.

       .........................

“She has met her destiny,” say the village gossips, when some man in the
dusty procession of life sees a woman’s face in the pleasant shadow of a
home, and drops out of the ranks to enter at her doorway.

Was Ranulph to be Guida’s destiny?

Handsome and stalwart though he looked as he entered the cottage in the
Place du Vier Prison, on that September morning after the rescue of the
chevalier, his tool-basket on his shoulder, and his brown face enlivened
by one simple sentiment, she was far from sure that he was--far from
sure.




CHAPTER VII

The little hall-way into which Ranulph stepped from the street led
through to the kitchen. Guida stood holding back the door for him to
enter this real living-room of the house, which opened directly upon
the garden behind. It was so cheerful and secluded, looking out from
the garden over the wide space beyond to the changeful sea, that
since Madame Landresse’s death the Sieur de Mauprat had made it
reception-room, dining-room, and kitchen all in one. He would willingly
have slept there too, but noblesse oblige and the thought of what the
Chevalier Orvilliers du Champsavoys de Beaumanoir might think prevented
him. Moreover, there was something patriarchal in a kitchen as a
reception-room; and both he and the chevalier loved to watch Guida busy
with her household duties: at one moment her arms in the dough of the
kneading trough; at another picking cherries for a jelly, or casting up
her weekly accounts with a little smiling and a little sighing.

If, by chance, it had been proposed by the sieur to adjourn to the small
sitting-room which looked out upon the Place du Vier Prison, a gloom
would instantly have settled upon them both; though in this little front
room there was an ancient arm-chair, over which hung the sword that
the Comte Guilbert Mauprat de Chambery had used at Fontenoy against the
English.

So it was that this spacious kitchen, with its huge chimney, and paved
with square flagstones and sanded, became like one of those ancient
corners of camaraderie in some exclusive inn where gentlemen of quality
were wont to meet. At the left of the chimney was the great settle, or
veille, covered with baize, “flourished” with satinettes, and spread
with ferns and rushes, and above it a little shelf of old china worth
the ransom of a prince at least. Opposite the doorway were two great
armchairs, one for the sieur and the other for the Chevalier, who made
his home in the house of one Elie Mattingley, a fisherman by trade and
by practice a practical smuggler, with a daughter Carterette whom he
loved passing well.

These, with a few constant visitors, formed a coterie: the huge,
grizzly-bearded boatman, Jean Touzel, who wore spectacles, befriended
smugglers, was approved of all men, and secretly worshipped by his wife;
Amice Ingouville, the fat avocat with a stomach of gigantic proportions,
the biggest heart and the tiniest brain in the world; Maitre Ranulph
Delagarde, and lastly M. Yves Savary dit Detricand, that officer of
Rullecour’s who, being released from the prison hospital, when the hour
came for him to leave the country was too drunk to find the shore. By
some whim of negligence the Royal Court was afterwards too lethargic to
remove him, and he stayed on, vainly making efforts to leave between one
carousal and another. In sober hours, none too frequent, he was rather
sorrowfully welcomed by the sieur and the chevalier.

When Ranulph entered the kitchen his greeting to the sieur and the
chevalier was in French, but to Guida he said, rather stupidly in the
patois--for late events had embarrassed him--“Ah bah! es-tu gentiment?”

“Gentiment,” she answered, with a queer little smile. “You’ll have
breakfast?” she said in English.

“Et ben!” Ranulph repeated, still embarrassed, “a mouthful, that’s all.”

He laid aside his tool-basket, shook hands with the sieur, and seated
himself at the table. Looking at du Champsavoys, he said:

“I’ve just met the connetable. He regrets the riot, chevalier, and says
the Royal Court extends its mercy to you.”

“I prefer to accept no favours,” answered the chevalier. “As a point of
honour, I had thought that, after breakfast, I should return to prison,
and--”

“The connetable said it was cheaper to let the chevalier go free than to
feed him in the Vier Prison,” dryly explained Ranulph, helping himself
to roasted conger eel and eyeing hungrily the freshly-made black butter
Guida was taking from a wooden trencher. “The Royal Court is stingy,”
 he added. “‘It’s nearer than Jean Noe, who got married in his red
queminzolle,’ as we say on Jersey--”

But he got no further at the moment, for shots rang out suddenly before
the house. They all started to their feet, and Ranulph, running to the
front door, threw it open. As he did so a young man, with blood flowing
from a cut on the temple, stepped inside.




CHAPTER VIII

It was M. Savary dit Detricand.

“Whew--what fools there are in the world! Pish, you silly apes!” the
young man said, glancing through the open doorway again to where the
connetable’s men were dragging two vile-looking ruffians into the Vier
Prison.

“What’s happened, monsieur?” said Ranulph, closing the door and bolting
it.

“What was it, monsieur?” asked Guida anxiously, for painful events had
crowded too fast that morning. Detricand was stanching the blood at his
temple with the scarf from his neck.

“Get him some cordial, Guida--he’s wounded!” said de Mauprat.

Detricand waved a hand almost impatiently, and dropped upon the veille,
swinging a leg backwards and forwards.

“It’s nothing, I protest--nothing whatever, and I’ll have no cordial,
not a drop. A drink of water--a mouthful of that, if I must drink.”

Guida caught up a hanap of water from the dresser, and passed it to him.
Her fingers trembled a little. His were steady enough as he took the
hanap and drank off the water at a gulp. Again she filled it and again
he drank. The blood was running in a tiny little stream down his cheek.
She caught her handkerchief from her girdle impulsively, and gently
wiped it away.

“Let me bandage the wound,” she said eagerly. Her eyes were alight with
compassion, certainly not because it was the dissipated French invader,
M. Savary dit Detricand,--no one knew that he was the young Comte
de Tournay of the House of Vaufontaine, but because he was a wounded
fellow-creature. She would have done the same for the poor beganne,
Dormy Jamais, who still prowled the purlieus of St. Heliers.

It was clear, however, that Detricand felt differently. The moment she
touched him he became suddenly still. He permitted her to wash the
blood from his temple and forehead, to stanch it first with brandied
jeru-leaves, then with cobwebs, and afterwards to bind it with her own
kerchief.

Detricand thrilled at the touch of the warm, tremulous fingers. He had
never been quite so near her before. His face was not far from hers. Now
her breath fanned him. As he bent his head for the bandaging, he could
see the soft pulsing of her bosom, and hear the beating of her heart.
Her neck was so full and round and soft, and her voice--surely he had
never heard a voice so sweet and strong, a tone so well poised, so
resonantly pleasant.

When she had finished, he had an impulse to catch the hand as it dropped
away from his forehead, and kiss it; not as he had kissed many a hand,
hotly one hour and coldly the next, but with an unpurchasable kind of
gratitude characteristic of this especial sort of sinner. He was just
young enough, and there was still enough natural health in him, to know
the healing touch of a perfect decency, a pure truth of spirit. Yet
he had been drunk the night before, drunk with three noncommissioned
officers--and he a gentleman, in spite of all, as could be plainly seen.

He turned his head away from the girl quickly, and looked straight into
the eyes of her grandfather.

“I’ll tell you how it was, Sieur de Mauprat,” said he. “I was crossing
the Place du Vier Prison when a rascal threw a cleaver at me from a
window. If it had struck me on the head--well, the Royal Court would
have buried me, and without a slab to my grave like Rullecour. I burst
open the door of the house, ran up the stairs, gripped the ruffian, and
threw him through the window into the street. As I did so a door opened
behind, and another cut-throat came at me with a pistol. He fired--fired
wide. I ran in on him, and before he had time to think he was out of the
window too. Then the other brute below fired up at me. The bullet gashed
my temple, as you see. After that, it was an affair of the connetable
and his men. I had had enough fighting before breakfast. I saw your open
door, and here I am--monsieur, monsieur, monsieur, mademoiselle!” He
bowed to each of them and glanced towards the table hungrily.

Ranulph placed a seat for him. He viewed the conger eel and limpets with
an avid eye, but waited for the chevalier and de Mauprat to sit. He
had no sooner taken a mouthful, however, and thrown a piece of bread to
Biribi the dog, than, starting again to his feet, he said:

“Your pardon, monsieur le chevalier, that brute in the Place has knocked
all sense from my head! I’ve a letter for you, brought from Rouen by one
of the refugees who came yesterday.” He drew from his breast a packet
and handed it over. “I went out to their ship last night.”

The chevalier looked with surprise and satisfaction at the seal on
the letter, and, breaking it, spread open the paper, fumbled for the
eye-glass which he always carried in his waistcoat, and began reading
diligently.

Meanwhile Ranulph turned to Guida. “To-morrow Jean Touzel and his wife
and I go to the Ecrehos Rocks in Jean’s boat,” said he. “A vessel was
driven ashore there three days ago, and my carpenters are at work on
her. If you can go and the wind holds fair, you shall be brought back
safe by sundown--Jean says so too.”

Of all boatmen and fishermen on the coast, Jean Touzel was most to be
trusted. No man had saved so many shipwrecked folk, none risked his life
so often; and he had never had a serious accident. To go to sea with
Jean Touzel, folk said, was safer than living on land. Guida loved the
sea; and she could sail a boat, and knew the tides and currents of the
south coast as well as most fishermen.

M. de Mauprat met her inquiring glance and nodded assent. She then said
gaily to Ranulph: “I shall sail her, shall I not?”

“Every foot of the way,” he answered.

She laughed and clapped her hands. Suddenly the little chevalier broke
in. “By the head of John the Baptist!” said he.

Detricand put down his knife and fork in amazement, and Guida coloured,
for the words sounded almost profane upon the chevalier’s lips.

Du Champsavoys held up his eye-glass, and, turning from one to the
other, looked at each of them imperatively yet abstractedly too. Then,
pursing up his lower lip, and with a growing amazement which carried him
to distant heights of reckless language, he said again:

“By the head of John the Baptist on a charger!” He looked at Detricand
with a fierceness which was merely the tension of his thought. If he had
looked at a wall it would have been the same. But Detricand, who had an
almost whimsical sense of humour, felt his neck in affected concern as
though to be quite sure of it. “Chevalier,” said he, “you shock us--you
shock us, dear chevalier.”

“The most painful things, and the most wonderful too,” said the
chevalier, tapping the letter with his eye-glass; “the most terrible and
yet the most romantic things are here. A drop of cider, if you please,
mademoiselle, before I begin to read it to you, if I may--if I may--eh?”

They all nodded eagerly. Guida handed him a mogue of cider. The little
grey thrush of a man sipped it, and in a voice no bigger than a bird’s
began:

   “From Lucillien du Champsavoys, Comte de Chanier, by the hand of a
   faithful friend, who goeth hence from among divers dangers, unto my
   cousin, the Chevalier du Champsavoys de Beaumanoir, late Gentleman
   of the Bedchamber to the best of monarchs, Louis XV, this writing:

   “MY DEAR AND HONOURED Cousin”--The chevalier paused, frowned a
   trifle, and tapped his lips with his finger in a little lyrical
   emotion--“My dear and honoured cousin, all is lost. The France we
   loved is no more. The twentieth of June saw the last vestige of
   Louis’s power pass for ever. That day ten thousand of the
   sans-culottes forced their way into the palace to kill him. A faithful
   few surrounded him. In the mad turmoil, we were fearful, he was
   serene. ‘Feel,’ said Louis, placing his hand on his bosom, ‘feel
   whether this is the beating of a heart shaken by fear.’ Ah, my
   friend, your heart would have clamped in misery to hear the Queen
   cry: ‘What have I to fear? Death? it is as well to-day as
   to-morrow; they can do no more!’ Their lives were saved, the day
   passed, but worse came after.

   “The tenth of August came. With it too, the end-the dark and bloody
   end-of the Swiss Guard. The Jacobins had their way at last. The
   Swiss Guard died in the Court of the Carrousel as they marched to
   the Assembly to save the King. Thus the last circle of defence
   round the throne was broken. The palace was given over to flame and
   the sword. Of twenty nobles of the court I alone escaped. France
   is become a slaughter-house. The people cried out for more liberty,
   and their liberators gave them the freedom of death. A fortnight
   ago, Danton, the incomparable fiend, let loose his assassins upon
   the priests of God. Now Paris is made a theatre where the people
   whom Louis and his nobles would have died to save have turned every
   street into a stable of carnage, every prison and hospital into a
   vast charnel-house. One last revolting thing alone remains to be
   done--the murder of the King; then this France that we have loved
   will have no name and no place in our generation. She will rise
   again, but we shall not see her, for our eyes have been blinded with
   blood, for ever darkened by disaster. Like a mistress upon whom we
   have lavished the days of our youth and the strength of our days,
   she has deceived us; she has stricken us while we slept. Behold a
   Caliban now for her paramour!

   “Weep with me, for France despoils me. One by one my friends have
   fallen beneath the axe. Of my four sons but one remains. Henri was
   stabbed by Danton’s ruffians at the Hotel de Ville; Gaston fought
   and died with the Swiss Guard, whose hacked and severed limbs were
   broiled and eaten in the streets by these monsters who mutilate the
   land. Isidore, the youngest, defied a hundred of Robespierre’s
   cowards on the steps of the Assembly, and was torn to pieces by the
   mob. Etienne alone is left. But for him and for the honour of my
   house I too would find a place beside the King and die with him.
   Etienne is with de la Rochejaquelein in Brittany. I am here at
   Rouen.

   “Brittany and Normandy still stand for the King. In these two
   provinces begins the regeneration of France: we call it the War of
   the Vendee. On that Isle of Jersey there you should almost hear the
   voice of de la Rochejaquelein and the marching cries of our loyal
   legions. If there be justice in God we shall conquer. But there
   will be joy no more for such as you or me, nor hope, nor any peace.
   We live only for those who come after. Our duty remains, all else
   is dead. You did well to go, and I do well to stay.

   “By all these piteous relations you shall know the importance of the
   request I now set forth.

   “My cousin by marriage of the House of Vaufontaine has lost all his
   sons. With the death of the Prince of Vaufontaine, there is in
   France no direct heir to the house, nor can it, by the law, revert
   to my house or my heirs. Now of late the Prince hath urged me to
   write to you--for he is here in seclusion with me--and to unfold to
   you what has hitherto been secret. Eleven years ago the only nephew
   of the Prince, after some naughty escapades, fled from the Court
   with Rullecour the adventurer, who invaded the Isle of Jersey. From
   that hour he has been lost to France. Some of his companions in
   arms returned after a number of years. All with one exception
   declared that he was killed in the battle at St. Heliers. One,
   however, maintains that he was still living and in the prison
   hospital when his comrades were set free.

   “It is of him I write to you. He is--as you will perchance
   remember--the Comte de Tournay. He was then not more than seventeen
   years of age, slight of build, with brownish hair, dark grey eyes,
   and had over the right shoulder a scar from a sword thrust. It
   seemeth little possible that, if living, he should still remain in
   that Isle of Jersey. He may rather have returned to obscurity in
   France or have gone to England to be lost to name and remembrance
   --or even indeed beyond the seas.

   “That you may perchance give me word of him is the object of my
   letter, written in no more hope than I live; and you can well guess
   how faint that is. One young nobleman preserved to France may yet
   be the great unit that will save her.

   “Greet my poor countrymen yonder in the name of one who still waits
   at a desecrated altar; and for myself you must take me as I am, with
   the remembrance of what I was, even

          “Your faithful friend and loving kinsman,

                    “CHANIER.”

   “All this, though in the chances of war you read it not till
   wintertide, was told you at Rouen this first day of September 1792.”

During the reading, broken by feeling and reflective pauses on the
chevalier’s part, the listeners showed emotion after the nature of each.
The Sieur de Mauprat’s fingers clasped and unclasped on the top of his
cane, little explosions of breath came from his compressed lips, his
eyebrows beetled over till the eyes themselves seemed like two glints
of flame. Delagarde dropped a fist heavily upon the table, and held
it there clinched, while his heel beat a tattoo of excitement upon the
floor. Guida’s breath came quick and fast--as Ranulph said afterwards,
she was “blanc comme un linge.” She shuddered painfully when the
slaughter and burning of the Swiss Guards was read. Her brain was so
swimming with the horrors of anarchy that the latter part of the letter
dealing with the vanished Count of Tournay passed by almost unheeded.

But this particular matter greatly interested Ranulph and de Mauprat.
They leaned forward eagerly, seizing every word, and both instinctively
turned towards Detricand when the description of de Tournay was read.

As for Detricand himself, he listened to the first part of the letter
like a man suddenly roused out of a dream. For the first time since
the Revolution had begun, the horror of it and the meaning of it were
brought home to him. He had been so long expatriated, had loitered so
long in the primrose path of daily sleep and nightly revel, had fallen
so far, that he little realised how the fiery wheels of Death were
spinning in France, or how black was the torment of her people. His face
turned scarlet as the thing came home to him now. He dropped his head in
his hand as if to listen more attentively, but it was in truth to
hide his emotion. When the names of Vaufontaine and de Tournay were
mentioned, he gave a little start, then suddenly ruled himself to a
strange stillness. His face seemed presently to clear; he even smiled
a little. Conscious that de Mauprat and Delagarde were watching him, he
appeared to listen with a keen but impersonal interest, not without its
effect upon his scrutinisers. He nodded his head as though he understood
the situation. He acted very well; he bewildered the onlookers. They
might think he tallied with the description of the Comte de Tournay,
yet he gave the impression that the matter was not vital to himself. But
when the little Chevalier stopped and turned his eye-glass upon him with
sudden startled inquiry, he found it harder to keep composure.

“Singular--singular!” said the old man, and returned to the reading of
the letter.

When he ended there was absolute silence for a moment. Then the
chevalier lifted his eye-glass again and looked at Detricand intently.

“Pardon me, monsieur,” he said, “but you were with Rullecour--as I was
saying.”

Detricand nodded with a droll sort of helplessness, and answered: “In
Jersey I never have chance to forget it, Chevalier.”

Du Champsavoys, with a naive and obvious attempt at playing counsel,
fixed him again with the glass, pursed his lips, and with the importance
of a greffier at the ancient Cour d’Heritage, came one step nearer to
his goal.

“Have you knowledge of the Comte de Tournay, monsieur?”

“I knew him--as you were saying, Chevalier,” answered Detricand lightly.

Then the Chevalier struck home. He dropped his fingers upon the table,
stood up, and, looking straight into Detricand’s eyes, said:

“Monsieur, you are the Comte de Tournay!”

The Chevalier involuntarily held the silence for an instant. Nobody
stirred. De Mauprat dropped his chin upon his hands, and his eyebrows
drew down in excitement. Guida gave a little cry of astonishment. But
Detricand answered the Chevalier with a look of blank surprise and a
shrug of the shoulder, which had the effect desired.

“Thank you, Chevalier,” said he with quizzical humour. “Now I know who I
am, and if it isn’t too soon to levy upon the kinship, I shall dine with
you today, chevalier. I paid my debts yesterday, and sous are scarce,
but since we are distant cousins I may claim grist at the family mill,
eh?”

The Chevalier sat, or rather dropped into his chair again.

“Then you are not the Comte de Tournay, monsieur,” said he hopelessly.

“Then I shall not dine with you to-day,” retorted Detricand gaily.

“You fit the tale,” said de Mauprat dubiously, touching the letter with
his finger.

“Let me see,” rejoined Detricand. “I’ve been a donkey farmer, a
shipmaster’s assistant, a tobacco pedlar, a quarryman, a wood merchant,
an interpreter, a fisherman--that’s very like the Comte de Tournay! On
Monday night I supped with a smuggler; on Tuesday I breakfasted on soupe
a la graisse with Manon Moignard the witch; on Wednesday I dined with
Dormy Jamais and an avocat disbarred for writing lewd songs for a
chocolate-house; on Thursday I went oyster-fishing with a native who
has three wives, and a butcher who has been banished four times for
not keeping holy the Sabbath Day; and I drank from eleven o’clock till
sunrise this morning with three Scotch sergeants of the line--which is
very like the Comte de Tournay, as you were saying, Chevalier! I am five
feet eleven, and the Comte de Tournay was five feet ten--which is no
lie,” he added under his breath. “I have a scar, but it’s over my left
shoulder and not over my right--which is also no lie,” he added under
his breath. “De Tournay’s hair was brown, and mine, you see, is almost
a dead black--fever did that,” he added under his breath. “De Tournay
escaped the day after the Battle of Jersey from the prison hospital, I
was left, and here I’ve been ever since--Yves Savary dit Detricand at
your service, chevalier.”

A pained expression crossed over the Chevalier’s face. “I am most sorry;
I am most sorry,” he said hesitatingly. “I had no wish to wound your
feelings.”

“Ah, it is de Tournay to whom you must apologise,” said Detricand
musingly, with a droll look.

“It is a pity,” continued the Chevalier, “for somehow all at once I
recalled a resemblance. I saw de Tournay when he was fourteen--yes, I
think it was fourteen--and when I looked at you, monsieur, his face came
back to me. It would have made my cousin so happy if you had been the
Comte de Tournay and I had found you here.” The old man’s voice trembled
a little. “We are growing fewer every day, we Frenchmen of the ancient
families. And it would have made my cousin so happy, as I was saying,
monsieur.”

Detricand’s manner changed; he became serious. The devil-may-care,
irresponsible shamelessness of his face dropped away like a mask.
Something had touched him. His voice changed too.

“De Tournay was a much better fellow than I am, chevalier,” said
he--“and that’s no lie,” he added under his breath. “De Tournay was a
fiery, ambitious, youngster with bad companions. De Tournay told me
he repented of coming with Rullecour, and he felt he had spoilt his
life--that he could never return to France again or to his people.”

The old Chevalier shook his head sadly. “Is he dead?” he asked.

There was a slight pause, and then Detricand answered: “No, still
living.”

“Where is he?”

“I promised de Tournay that I would never reveal that.”

“Might I not write to him?” asked the old man. “Assuredly, Chevalier.”

“Could you--will you--despatch a letter to him from me, monsieur?”

“Upon my honour, yes.”

“I thank you--I thank you, monsieur; I will write it to-day.”

“As you will, Chevalier. I will ask you for the letter to-night,”
 rejoined Detricand. “It may take time to reach de Tournay; but he shall
receive it into his own hands.”

De Mauprat trembled to his feet to put the question he knew the
Chevalier dreaded to ask:

“Do you think that monsieur le comte will return to France?”

“I think he will,” answered Detricand slowly.

“It will make my cousin so happy--so happy,” quavered the little
Chevalier. “Will you take snuff with me, monsieur?” He offered his
silver snuff-box to his vagrant countryman. This was a mark of favour he
showed to few.

Detricand bowed, accepted, and took a pinch. “I must be going,” he said.




CHAPTER IX

At eight o’clock the next morning, Guida and her fellow-voyagers, bound
for the Ecrehos Rocks, had caught the first ebb of the tide, and with a
fair wind from the sou’-west had skirted the coast, ridden lightly over
the Banc des Violets, and shaped their course nor’-east. Guida kept the
helm all the way, as she had been promised by Ranulph. It was still
more than half tide when they approached the rocks, and with a fair wind
there should be ease in landing.

No more desolate spot might be imagined. To the left, as you faced
towards Jersey, was a long sand-bank. Between the rocks and the
sand-bank shot up a tall, lonely shaft of granite with an evil history.
It had been chosen as the last refuge of safety for the women and
children of a shipwrecked vessel, in the belief that high tide would
not reach them. But the wave rose up maliciously, foot by foot, till
it drowned their cries for ever in the storm. The sand-bank was called
“Ecriviere,” and the rock was afterwards known as the “Pierre des
Femmes.”

Other rocks less prominent, but no less treacherous, flanked it--the
Noir Sabloniere and the Grande Galere. To the right of the main island
were a group of others, all reef and shingle, intersected by treacherous
channels; in calm lapped by water with the colours of a prism of
crystal, in storm by a leaden surf and flying foam. These were known as
the Colombiere, the Grosse Tete, Tas de Pois, and the Marmotiers; each
with its retinue of sunken reefs and needles of granitic gneiss lying
low in menace. Happy the sailor caught in a storm and making for the
shelter the little curves in the island afford, who escapes a twist
of the current, a sweep of the tide, and the impaling fingers of the
submarine palisades.

Beyond these rocks lay Maitre Ile, all gneiss and shingle, a desert in
the sea. The holy men of the early Church, beholding it from the shore
of Normandy, had marked it for a refuge from the storms of war and the
follies of the world. So it came to pass, for the honour of God and the
Virgin Mary, the Abbe of Val Richer builded a priory there: and there
now lie in peace the bones of the monks of Val Richer beside
the skeletons of unfortunate gentlemen of the sea of later
centuries--pirates from France, buccaneers from England, and smugglers
from Jersey, who kept their trysts in the precincts of the ancient
chapel.

The brisk air of early autumn made the blood tingle in Guida’s cheeks.
Her eyes were big with light and enjoyment. Her hair was caught close
by a gay cap of her own knitting, but a little of it escaped, making a
pretty setting to her face.

The boat rode under all her courses, until, as Jean said, they had put
the last lace on her bonnet. Guida’s hands were on the tiller firmly,
doing Jean’s bidding promptly. In all they were five. Besides Guida and
Ranulph, Jean and Jean’s wife, there was a young English clergyman of
the parish of St. Michael’s, who had come from England to fill the place
of the rector for a few months. Word had been brought to him that a man
was dying on the Ecrehos. He had heard that the boat was going, he had
found Jean Touzel, and here he was with a biscuit in his hand and a
black-jack of French wine within easy reach. Not always in secret the
Reverend Lorenzo Dow loved the good things of this world.

The most notable characteristic of the young clergyman’s appearance was
his outer guilelessness and the oddness of his face. His head was rather
big for his body; he had a large mouth which laughed easily, a noble
forehead, and big, short-sighted eyes. He knew French well, but could
speak almost no Jersey patois, so, in compliment to him, Jean Touzel,
Ranulph, and Guida spoke in English. This ability to speak English--his
own English--was the pride of Jean’s life. He babbled it all the way,
and chiefly about a mythical Uncle Elias, who was the text for many a
sermon.

“Times past,” said he, as they neared Maitre Ile, “mon onc’ ‘Lias he
knows these Ecrehoses better as all the peoples of the world--respe d’la
compagnie. Mon onc’ ‘Lias he was a fine man. Once when there is a fight
between de Henglish and de hopping Johnnies,” he pointed towards France,
“dere is seven French ship, dere is two Henglish ship--gentlemen-of-war
dey are call. Eh ben, one of de Henglish ships he is not a
gentleman-of-war, he is what you call go-on-your-own-hook--privator. But
it is all de same--tres-ba, all right! What you t’ink coum to pass? De
big Henglish ship she is hit ver’ bad, she is all break-up. Efin,
dat leetle privator he stan’ round on de fighting side of de
gentleman-of-war and take de fire by her loneliness. Say, then, wherever
dere is troub’ mon onc’ ‘Lias he is there, he stan’ outside de troub’
an’ look on--dat is his hobby. You call it hombog? Oh, nannin-gia!
Suppose two peoples goes to fight, ah bah, somebody must pick up de
pieces--dat is mon onc’ ‘Lias! He have his boat full of hoysters; so he
sit dere all alone and watch dat great fight, an’ heat de hoyster an’
drink de cider vine.

“Ah, bah! mon onc’ ‘Lias he is standin’ hin de door dat day. Dat is what
we say on Jersey--when a man have some ver’ great luck we say he stan’
hin de door. I t’ink it is from de Bible or from de helmanac--sacre moi,
I not know.... If I talk too much you give me dat black-jack.”

They gave him the black-jack. After he had drunk and wiped his mouth on
his sleeve, he went on:

“O my good-ma’m’selle, a leetle more to de wind. Ah, dat is
right--trejous!... Dat fight it go like two bulls on a vergee--respe
d’la compagnie. Mon onc’ ‘Lias he have been to Hengland, he have sing
‘God save our greshus King’; so he t’ink a leetle--Ef he go to de
French, likely dey will hang him. Mon onc’ ‘Lias, he is what you call
patreeteesm. He say, ‘Hengland, she is mine--trejous.’ Efin, he sail
straight for de Henglish ships. Dat is de greates’ man, mon onc’
‘Lias--respe d’la compagnie! he coum on de side which is not fighting.
Ah bah, he tell dem dat he go to save de gentleman-of-war. He see a
hofficier all bloodiness and he call hup: ‘Es-tu gentiment?’ he say.
‘Gentiment,’ say de hofficier; ‘han’ you?’ ‘Naicely, yank you!’ mon onc’
‘Lias he say. ‘I will save you,’ say mon onc’ ‘Lias--‘I will save de
ship of God save our greshus King.’ De hofficier wipe de tears out of
his face. ‘De King will reward you, man alive,’ he say. Mon onc’
‘Lias he touch his breast and speak out. ‘Mon hofficier, my reward is
here--trejous. I will take you into de Ecrehoses.’ ‘Coum up and save de
King’s ships,’ says de hofficier. ‘I will take no reward,’ say mon onc’
‘Lias, ‘but, for a leetle pourboire, you will give me de privator--eh?’
‘Milles sacres’--say de hofficier, ‘mines saeres--de privator!’ he
say, ver’ surprise’. ‘Man doux d’la vie--I am damned!’ ‘You are damned
trulee, if you do not get into de Ecrehoses,’ say mon onc’ ‘Lias--‘A
bi’tot, good-bye!’ he say. De hofficier call down to him: ‘Is dere
nosing else you will take?’ ‘Nannin, do not tempt me,’ say mon onc’
‘Lias. ‘I am not a gourman’. I will take de privator--dat is my hobby.’
All de time de cannons grand--dey brow-brou! boum-boum!--what you call
discomfortable. Time is de great t’ing, so de hofficier wipe de tears
out of his face again. ‘Coum up,’ he say; ‘de privator is yours.’

“Away dey go. You see dat spot where we coum to land, Ma’m’selle
Landresse--where de shingle look white, de leetle green grass above?
Dat is where mon onc’ ‘Lias he bring in de King’s ship and de privator.
Gatd’en’ale--it is a journee awful! He twist to de right, he shape to
de left trough de teeth of de rocks--all safe--vera happee--to dis nice
leetle bay of de Maitre Ile dey coum. De Frenchies dey grind dere teeth
and spit de fire. But de Henglish laugh at demdey are safe. ‘Frien’ of
my heart,’ say de hofficier to mon onc’ ‘Lias, ‘pilot of pilots,’ he
say, ‘in de name of our greshus King I t’ank you--A bi’tot, good-bye!’
he say. ‘Tres-ba,’ mon onc’ ‘Lias he say den, ‘I will go to my
privator.’ ‘You will go to de shore,’ say de hofficier. ‘You will wait
on de shore till de captain and his men of de privator coum to you. When
dey coum, de ship is yours--de privator is for you.’ Mon onc’ ‘Lias he
is like a child--he believe. He ‘bout ship and go shore. Misery me,
he sit on dat rocking-stone you see tipping on de wind. But if he wait
until de men of de privator coum to him, he will wait till we see him
sitting there now. Gache-a-penn, you say patriote? Mon onc’ ‘Lias he has
de patreeteesm, and what happen? He save de ship of de greshus King God
save--and dey eat up his hoysters! He get nosing. Gad’rabotin--respe
d’la compagnie--if dere is a ship of de King coum to de Ecrehoses, and
de hofficier say to me”--he tapped his breast--“‘Jean Touzel, tak de
ships of de King trough de rocks,’--ah bah, I would rememb’ mon onc’
‘Lias. I would say, ‘A bi’tot-good-bye.’... Slowlee--slowlee! We are at
de place. Bear wif de land, ma’m’selle! Steadee! As you go! V’la! hitch
now, Maitre Ranulph.”

The keel of the boat grated on the shingle.

The air of the morning, the sport of using the elements for one’s
pleasure, had given Guida an elfish sprightliness of spirits. Twenty
times during Jean’s recital she had laughed gaily, and never sat a laugh
better on any one’s countenance than on hers. Her teeth were strong,
white, and regular; in themselves they gave off a sort of shining mirth.

At first the lugubrious wife of the happy Jean was inclined to resent
Guida’s gaiety as unseemly, for Jean’s story sounded to her as serious
statement of fact; which incapacity for humour probably accounted for
Jean’s occasional lapses from domestic grace. If Jean had said that he
had met a periwinkle dancing a hornpipe with an oyster she would have
muttered heavily “Think of that!” The most she could say to any one
was: “I believe you, ma couzaine.” Some time in her life her voice had
dropped into that great well she called her body, and it came up only
now and then like an echo. There never was anything quite so fat as she.
She was found weeping one day on the veille because she was no longer
able to get her shoulders out of the window to use the clothes-lines
stretching to her neighbour’s over the way. If she sat down in your
presence, it was impossible to do aught but speculate as to whether she
could get up alone. Yet she went abroad on the water a great deal with
Jean. At first the neighbours gave out sinister suspicions as to Jean’s
intentions, for sea-going with your own wife was uncommon among the
sailors of the coast. But at last these dark suggestions settled down
into a belief that Jean took her chiefly for ballast; and thereafter she
was familiarly called “Femme de Ballast.”

Talking was no virtue in her eyes. What was going on in her mind no one
ever knew. She was more phlegmatic than an Indian; but the tails of the
sheep on the Town Hill did not better show the quarter of the wind than
the changing colour of Aimable’s face indicated Jean’s coming or going.
For Mattresse Aimable had one eternal secret, an unwavering passion for
Jean Touzel. If he patted her on the back on a day when the fishing was
extra fine, her heart pumped so hard she had to sit down; if, passing
her lonely bed of a morning, he shook her great toe to wake her, she
blushed, and turned her face to the wall in placid happiness. She was so
credulous and matter-of-fact that if Jean had told her she must die on
the spot, she would have said “Think of that!” or “Je te crais,” and
died. If in the vague dusk of her brain the thought glimmered that she
was ballast for Jean on sea and anchor on land, she still was content.
For twenty years the massive, straight-limbed Jean had stood to her for
all things since the heavens and the earth were created. Once, when she
had burnt her hand in cooking supper for him, his arm made a trial of
her girth, and he kissed her. The kiss was nearer her ear than her lips,
but to her mind it was the most solemn proof of her connubial happiness
and of Jean’s devotion. She was a Catholic, unlike Jean and most people
of her class in Jersey, and ever since that night he kissed her she had
told an extra bead on her rosary and said another prayer.

These were the reasons why at first she was inclined to resent Guida’s
laughter. But when she saw that Maitre Ranulph and the curate and Jean
himself laughed, she settled down to a grave content until they landed.

They had scarce reached the deserted chapel where their dinner was to be
cooked by Maitresse Aimable, when Ranulph called them to note a vessel
bearing in their direction.

“She’s not a coasting craft,” said Jean.

“She doesn’t look like a merchant vessel,” said Ranulph, eyeing her
through his telescope. “Why, she’s a warship!” he added.

Jean thought she was not, but Maitre Ranulph said “Pardi, I ought to
know, Jean. Ship-building is my trade, to say nothing of guns--I wasn’t
two years in the artillery for nothing. See the low bowsprit and the
high poop. She’s bearing this way. She’ll be Narcissus!” he said slowly.

That was Philip d’Avranche’s ship.

Guida’s face lighted, her heart beat faster. Ranulph turned on his heel.

“Where are you going, Ro?” Guida said, taking a step after him.

“On the other side, to my men and the wreck,” he said, pointing.

Guida glanced once more towards the man-o’-war: and then, with mischief
in her eye, turned towards Jean. “Suppose,” she said to him archly,
“suppose the ship should want to come in, of course you’d remember your
onc’ ‘Lias, and say, ‘A bi’tot, good-bye!”’

An evasive “Ah bah!” was the only reply Jean vouchsafed.

Ranulph joined his men at the wreck, and the Reverend Lorenzo Dow went
about the Lord’s business in the little lean-to of sail-cloth and ship’s
lumber which had been set up near to the toil of the carpenters. When
the curate entered the but the sick man was in a doze. He turned his
head from side to side restlessly and mumbled to himself. The curate,
sitting on the ground beside the man, took from his pocket a book, and
began writing in a strange, cramped hand. This book was his journal.
When a youth he had been a stutterer, and had taken refuge from talk
in writing, and the habit stayed even as his affliction grew less. The
important events of the day or the week, the weather, the wind, the
tides, were recorded, together with sundry meditations of the Reverend
Lorenzo Dow. The pages were not large, and brevity was Mr. Dow’s
journalistic virtue. Beyond the diligent keeping of this record, he
had no habits, certainly no precision, no remembrance, no system: the
business of his life ended there. He had quietly vacated two curacies
because there had been bitter complaints that the records of certain
baptisms, marriages, and burials might only be found in the chequered
journal of his life, sandwiched between fantastic reflections and
remarks upon the rubric. The records had been exact enough, but the
system was not canonical, and it rested too largely upon the personal
ubiquity of the itinerary priest, and the safety of his journal--and of
his life.

Guida, after the instincts of her nature, had at once sought the highest
point on the rocky islet, and there she drank in the joy of sight and
sound and feeling. She could see--so perfect was the day--the line
marking the Minquiers far on the southern horizon, the dark and perfect
green of the Jersey slopes, and the white flags of foam which beat
against the Dirouilles and the far-off Paternosters, dissolving as
they flew, their place taken by others, succeeding and succeeding, as
a soldier steps into a gap in the line of battle. Something in these
rocks, something in the Paternosters--perhaps their distance, perhaps
their remoteness from all other rocks--fascinated her. As she looked
at them, she suddenly felt a chill, a premonition, a half-spiritual,
half-material telegraphy of the inanimate to the animate: not from
off cold stone to sentient life; but from that atmosphere about the
inanimate thing, where the life of man has spent itself and been
dissolved, leaving--who can tell what? Something which speaks but yet
has no sound.

The feeling which possessed Guida as she looked at the Paternosters was
almost like blank fear. Yet physical fear she had never felt, not since
that day when the battle raged in the Vier Marchi, and Philip d’Avranche
had saved her from the destroying scimitar of the Turk. Now that scene
all came back to her in a flash, as it were; and she saw again the dark
snarling face of the Mussulman, the blue-and-white silk of his turban,
the black and white of his waistcoat, the red of the long robe, and the
glint of his uplifted sword. Then in contrast, the warmth, brightness,
and bravery on the face of the lad in blue and gold who struck aside
the descending blade and caught her up in his arms; and she had nestled
there--in those arms of Philip d’Avranche. She remembered how he had
kissed her, and how she had kissed him--he a lad and she a little
child--as he left her with her mother in the watchmaker’s shop in
the Vier Marchi that day.... And she had never seen him again until
yesterday.

She looked from the rocks to the approaching frigate. Was it the
Narcissus coming--coming to this very island? She recalled Philip--how
gallant he was yesterday, how cool, with what an air of command! How
light he had made of the riot! Ranulph’s strength and courage she
accepted as a matter of course, and was glad that he was brave,
generous, and good; but the glamour of distance and mystery were
around d’Avranche. Remembrance, like a comet, went circling through the
firmament of eleven years, from the Vier Marchi to the Place du Vier
Prison.

She watched the ship slowly bearing with the land. The Jack was flying
from the mizzen. They were now taking in her topsails. She was so near
that Guida could see the anchor a-cockbell, and the poop lanthorns.
She could count the guns like long black horns shooting out from a
rhinoceros hide: she could discern the figurehead lion snarling into the
spritsail. Presently the ship came up to the wind and lay to. Then she
signalled for a pilot, and Guida ran towards the ruined chapel, calling
for Jean Touzel.

In spite of Jean’s late protests as to piloting a “gentleman-of-war,”
 this was one of the joyful moments of his life. He could not loosen his
rowboat quick enough; he was away almost before you could have spoken
his name. Excited as Guida was, she could not resist calling after him:

“‘God save our greshus King! A bi’tot--goodbye!’”




CHAPTER X

As Ranulph had surmised, the ship was the Narcissus, and its first
lieutenant was Philip d’Avranche. The night before, orders had reached
the vessel from the Admiralty that soundings were to be taken at the
Ecrehos. The captain had at once made inquiries for a pilot, and Jean
Touzel was commended to him. A messenger sent to Jean found that he had
already gone to the Ecrehos. The captain had then set sail, and now,
under Jean’s skilful pilotage, the Narcissus twisted and crept through
the teeth of the rocks at the entrance, and slowly into the cove, reefs
on either side gaping and girding at her, her keel all but scraping
the serrated granite beneath. She anchored, and boats put off to take
soundings and explore the shores. Philip was rowed in by Jean Touzel.

Stepping out upon the beach of Mattre ‘Ile, Philip slowly made his way
over the shingle to the ruined chapel, in no good humour with himself or
with the world, for exploring these barren rocks seemed a useless whim
of the Admiralty, and he could not conceive of any incident rising from
the monotony of duty to lighten the darkness of this very brilliant
day. His was not the nature to enjoy the stony detail of his profession.
Excitement and adventure were as the breath of life to him, and since
he had played his little part at the Jersey battle in a bandbox eleven
years before, he had touched hands with accidents of flood and field in
many countries.

He had been wrecked on the island of Trinidad in a tornado, losing his
captain and his ship; had seen active service in America and in India;
won distinction off the coast of Arabia in an engagement with Spanish
cruisers; and was now waiting for his papers as commander of a ship
of his own, and fretted because the road of fame and promotion was so
toilsome. Rumours of war with France had set his blood dancing a little,
but for him most things were robbed of half their pleasure because they
did not come at once.

This was a moody day with him, for he had looked to spend it
differently. As he walked up the shingle his thoughts were hanging
about a cottage in the Place du Vier Prison. He had hoped to loiter in
a doorway there, and to empty his sailor’s heart in well-practised
admiration before the altar of village beauty. The sight of Guida’s face
the day before had given a poignant pulse to his emotions, unlike the
broken rhythm of past comedies of sentiment and melodramas of passion.
According to all logic of custom, the acuteness of yesterday’s
impression should have been followed up by today’s attack; yet here he
was, like another Robinson Crusoe, “kicking up the shingle of a cursed
Patmos”--so he grumbled aloud. Patmos was not so wild a shot after all,
for no sooner had he spoken the word than, looking up, he saw in the
doorway of the ruined chapel the gracious figure of a girl: and a book
of revelations was opened and begun.

At first he did not recognise Guida. There was only a picture before him
which, by some fantastic transmission, merged into his reveries. What he
saw was an ancient building--just such a humble pile of stone and rough
mortar as one might see on some lone cliff of the AEgean or on abandoned
isles of the equatorial sea. The gloom of a windowless vault was behind
the girl, but the filtered sunshine of late September fell on her head.
It brightened the white kerchief, and the bodice and skirt of a faint
pink, throwing the face into a pleasing shadow where the hand curved
over the forehead. She stood like some Diana of a ruined temple looking
out into the staring day.

At once his pulses beat faster, for to him a woman was ever the fountain
of adventure, and an unmanageable heart sent him headlong to the oasis
where he might loiter at the spring of feminine vanity, or truth, or
impenitent gaiety, as the case might be. In proportion as his spirits
had sunk into sour reflection, they now shot up rocket-high at the sight
of a girl’s joyous pose of body and the colour and form of the picture
she made. In him the shrewdness of a strong intelligence was mingled
with wild impulse. In most, rashness would be the outcome of such a
marriage of characteristics; but clear-sightedness, decision, and a
little unscrupulousness had carried into success many daring actions of
his life. This very quality of resolute daring saved him from disaster.

Impulse quickened his footsteps now. It quickened them to a run when
the hand was dropped from the girl’s forehead, and he saw again the face
whose image and influence had banished sleep from his eyes the night
before.

“Guida!” broke from his lips.

The man was transfigured. Brightness leaped into his look, and the
greyness of his moody eye became as blue as the sea. The professional
straightness of his figure relaxed into the elastic grace of an athlete.
He was a pipe to be played on: an actor with the ambitious brain of a
diplomatist; as weak as water, and as strong as steel; soft-hearted to
foolishness or unyielding at will.

Now, if the devil had sent a wise imp to have watch and ward of this
man and this maid, and report to him upon the meeting of their ways,
the moment Philip took Guida’s hand, and her eyes met his, monsieur the
reporter of Hades might have clapped-to his book and gone back to his
dark master with the message and the record: “The hour of Destiny is
struck.”

When the tide of life beats high in two mortals, and they meet in
the moment of its apogee, when all the nature is sweeping on without
command, guilelessly, yet thoughtlessly, the mere lilt of existence
lulling to sleep wisdom and tried experience--speculation points all one
way. Many indeed have been caught away by such a conjunction of tides,
and they mostly pay the price.

But paying is part of the game of life: it is the joy of buying that we
crave. Go down into the dark markets of the town. See the long, narrow,
sordid streets lined with the cheap commodities of the poor. Mark
how there is a sort of spangled gaiety, a reckless swing, a grinning
exultation in the grimy, sordid caravanserai. The cheap colours of the
shoddy open-air clothing-house, the blank faded green of the coster’s
cart; the dark bluish-red of the butcher’s stall--they all take on a
value not their own in the garish lights flaring down the markets of
the dusk. Pause to the shrill music of the street musician, hear the
tuneless voice of the grimy troubadour of the alley-ways; and then hark
to the one note that commands them all--the call which lightens up faces
sodden with base vices, eyes bleared with long looking into the dark
caverns of crime:

“Buy--buy--buy--buy--buy!”

That is the tune the piper pipes. We would buy, and behold, we must pay.
Then the lights go out, the voices stop, and only the dark tumultuous
streets surround us, and the grime of life is ours again. Whereupon we
go heavily to hard beds of despair, having eaten the cake we bought, and
now must pay for unto Penalty, the dark inordinate creditor. And anon
the morning comes, and then, at last, the evening when the triste
bazaars open again, and the strong of heart and nerve move not from
their doorways, but sit still in the dusk to watch the grim world go
by. But mostly they hurry out to the bazaars once more, answering to the
fevered call:

“Buy--buy--buy--buy--buy!”

And again they pay the price: and so on to the last foreclosure and the
immitigable end.

One of the two standing in the door of the ruined chapel on the Ecrehos
had the nature of those who buy but once and pay the price but once; the
other was of those who keep open accounts in the markets of life. The
one was the woman and the other was the man.

There was nothing conventional in their greeting. “You remembered me!”
 he said eagerly, in English, thinking of yesterday.

“I shouldn’t deserve to be here if I had forgotten,” she answered
meaningly. “Perhaps you forget the sword of the Turk?” she added.

He laughed a little, his cheek flushed with pleasure. “I shouldn’t
deserve to be here if I remembered--in the way you mean,” he answered.

Her face was full of pleasure. “The worst of it is,” she said, “I never
can pay my debt. I have owed it for eleven years, and if I should live
to be ninety I should still owe it.”

His heart was beating hard and he became daring. “So, thou shalt save
my life,” he said, speaking in French. “We shall be quits then, thou and
I.”

The familiar French thou startled her. To hide the instant’s confusion
she turned her head away, using a hand to gather in her hair, which the
wind was lifting lightly.

“That wouldn’t quite make us quits,” she rejoined; “your life is
important, mine isn’t. You”--she nodded towards the Narcissus--“you
command men.”

“So dost thou,” he answered, persisting in the endearing pronoun.

He meant it to be endearing. As he had sailed up and down the world,
a hundred ports had offered him a hundred adventures, all light in
the scales of purpose, but not all bad. He had gossiped and idled and
coquetted with beauty before; but this was different, because the nature
of the girl was different from all others he had met. It had mostly been
lightly come and lightly go with himself, as with the women it had
been easily won and easily loosed. Conscience had not smitten him
hard, because beauty, as he had known it, though often fair and of good
report, had bloomed for others before he came. But here was a nature
fresh and unspoiled from the hand of the potter Life.

As her head slightly turned from him again, he involuntarily noticed the
pulse beating in her neck, the rise and fall of her bosom. Life--here
was life unpoisoned by one drop of ill thought or light experience.

“Thou dost command men too,” he repeated.

She stepped forward a little from the doorway and beyond him, answering
back at him:

“Oh, no, I only knit, and keep a garden, and command a little home,
that’s all.... Won’t you let me show you the island?” she added quickly,
pointing to a hillock beyond, and moving towards it. He followed,
speaking over her shoulder:

“That’s what you seem to do,” he answered, “not what you do.” Then he
added rhetorically: “I’ve seen a man polishing the buckle of his shoe,
and he was planning to take a city or manoeuvre a fleet.”

She noticed that he had dropped the thou, and, much as its use had
embarrassed her, the gap left when the boldness was withdrawn became
filled with regret, for, though no one had dared to say it to her
before, somehow it seemed not rude on Philip’s lips. Philip? Yes, Philip
she had called him in her childhood, and the name had been carried on
into her girlhood--he had always been Philip to her.

“No, girls don’t think like that, and they don’t do big things,” she
replied. “When I polish the pans”--she laughed--“and when I scour my
buckles, I just think of pans and buckles.” She tossed up her fingers
lightly, with a perfect charm of archness.

He was very close to her now. “But girls have dreams, they have
memories.”

“If women hadn’t memory,” she answered, “they wouldn’t have much, would
they? We can’t take cities and manoeuvre fleets.” She laughed a little
ironically. “I wonder that we think at all or have anything to think
about, except the kitchen and the garden, and baking and scouring and
spinning”--she paused slightly, her voice lowered a little--“and
the sea, and the work that men do round us.... Do you ever go into a
market?” she added suddenly.

Somehow she could talk easily and naturally to him. There had been no
leading up to confidence. She felt a sudden impulse to tell him all
her thoughts. To know things, to understand, was a passion with her. It
seemed to obliterate in her all that was conventional, it removed her
far from sensitive egotism. Already she had begun “to take notice” in
the world, and that is like being born again. As it grows, life ceases
to be cliche; and when the taking notice is supreme we call it genius;
and genius is simple and believing: it has no pride, it is naive, it is
childlike.

Philip seemed to wear no mark of convention, and Guida spoke her
thoughts freely to him. “To go into a market seems to me so wonderful,”
 she continued. “There are the cattle, the fruits, the vegetables, the
flowers, the fish, the wood; the linen from the loom, the clothes that
women’s fingers have knitted. But it isn’t just those things that you
see, it’s all that’s behind them--the houses, the fields, and the boats
at sea, and the men and women working and working, and sleeping and
eating, and breaking their hearts with misery, and wondering what is to
be the end of it all; yet praying a little, it may be, and dreaming a
little--perhaps a very little.” She sighed, and continued: “That’s as
far as I get with thinking. What else can one do in this little island?
Why, on the globe Maitre Damian has at St. Aubin’s, Jersey is no bigger
than the head of a pin. And what should one think of here?”

Her eyes were on the sea. Its mystery was in them, the distance, the ebb
and flow, the light of wonder and of adventure too. “You--you’ve been
everywhere,” she went on. “Do you remember you sent me once from Malta a
tiny silver cross? That was years ago, soon after the Battle of Jersey,
when I was a little bit of a girl. Well, after I got big enough I used
to find Malta and other places on Maitre Damian’s globe. I’ve lived
always there, on that spot”--she pointed towards Jersey--“on that
spot one could walk round in a day. What do I know! You’ve been
everywhere--everywhere. When you look back you’ve got a thousand
pictures in your mind. You’ve seen great cities, temples, palaces, great
armies, fleets; you’ve done things: you’ve fought and you’ve commanded,
though you’re so young, and you’ve learned about men and about many
countries. Look at what you know, and then, if you only think, you’ll
laugh at what I know.”

For a moment he was puzzled what to answer. The revelation of the
girl’s nature had come so quickly upon him. He had looked for freshness,
sweetness, intelligence, and warmth of temperament, but it seemed to
him that here were flashes of power. Yet she was only seventeen. She had
been taught to see things with her own eyes and not another’s, and she
spoke of them as she saw them; that was all. Yet never but to her mother
had Guida said so much to any human being as within these past few
moments to Philip d’Avranche.

The conditions were almost maliciously favourable, and d’Avranche was
simple and easy as a boy, with his sailor’s bonhomie and his naturally
facile spirit. A fateful adaptability was his greatest weapon in life,
and his greatest danger. He saw that Guida herself was unconscious of
the revelation she was making, and he showed no surprise, but he caught
the note of her simplicity, and responded in kind. He flattered her
deftly--not that she was pressed unduly, he was too wise for that. He
took her seriously; and this was not all dissimulation, for her every
word had glamour, and he now exalted her intellect unduly. He had never
met girl or woman who talked just as she did; and straightway, with the
wild eloquence of his nature, he thought he had discovered a new heaven
and a new earth. A spell was upon him. He knew what he wanted when he
saw it. He had always made up his mind suddenly, always acted on the
intelligent impulse of the moment. He felt things, he did not study
them--it was almost a woman’s instinct. He came by a leap to the goal
of purpose, not by the toilsome steps of reason. On the instant his
headlong spirit declared his purpose: this was the one being for him in
all the world: at this altar he would light a lamp of devotion, and keep
it burning forever.

“This is my day,” he said to himself. “I always knew that love would
come down on me like a storm.” Then, aloud, he said to her: “I wish I
knew what you know; but I can’t, because my mind is different, my life
has been different. When you go into the world and see a great deal, and
loosen a little the strings of your principles, and watch how sins and
virtues contradict themselves, you see things after a while in a kind of
mist. But you, Guida, you see them clearly because your heart is clear.
You never make a mistake, you are always right because your mind is
right.”

She interrupted him, a little troubled and a good deal amazed: “Oh, you
mustn’t, mustn’t speak like that. It’s not so. How can one see and learn
unless one sees and knows the world? Surely one can’t think wisely if
one doesn’t see widely?”

He changed his tactics instantly. The world--that was the thing? Well,
then, she should see the world, through him, with him.

“Yes, yes, you’re right,” he answered. “You can’t know things unless you
see widely. You must see the world. This island, what is it? I was born
here, don’t I know! It’s a foothold in the world, but it’s no more; it’s
not afield to walk in, why, it’s not even a garden. No, it’s the little
patch of green we play in in front of a house, behind the railings,
before we go out into the world and learn how to live.”

They had now reached the highest point on the island, where a flagstaff
stood. Guida was looking far beyond Jersey to the horizon line. There
was little haze, the sky was inviolably blue. Far off against the
horizon lay the low black rocks of the Minquiers. They seemed to her,
on the instant, like stepping-stones. Beyond would be other
stepping-stones, and others and others still again, and they would all
mark the way and lead to what Philip called the world. The world! She
felt a sudden little twist of regret at her heart. Here she was like a
cow grazing within the circle of its tether--like a lax caterpillar on
its blade of grass. Yet it had all seemed so good to her in the past;
broken only by little bursts of wonder and wish concerning that outside
world.

“Do we ever learn how to live?” she asked. “Don’t we just go on from one
thing to another, picking our way, but never knowing quite what to do,
because we don’t know what’s ahead? I believe we never do learn how to
live,” she added, half-smiling, yet a little pensive too; “but I am so
very ignorant, and--”

She stopped, for suddenly it flashed upon her: here she was baring
her childish heart--he would think it childish, she was sure he
would--everything she thought, to a man she had never known till to-day.
No, no, she was wrong; she had known him, but it was only as Philip,
the boy who had saved her life. And the Philip of her memory was only a
picture, not a being; something to think about, not something to speak
with, to whom she might show her heart. She flushed hotly and turned her
shoulder on him. Her eyes followed a lizard creeping up the stones. As
long as she lived she remembered that lizard, its colour changing in the
sun. She remembered the hot stones, and how warm the flag-staff was when
she stretched out her hand to it mechanically. But the swift, noiseless
lizard running in and out of the stones, it was ever afterwards like a
coat-of-arms upon the shield of her life.

Philip came close to her. At first he spoke over her shoulder, then he
faced her. His words forced her eyes up to his, and he held them.

“Yes, yes, we learn how to live,” he said. “It’s only when we travel
alone that we don’t see before us. I will teach you how to live--we
will learn the way together! Guida! Guida!”--he reached out his hands
to wards her--“don’t start so! Listen to me. I feel for you what I have
felt for no other being in all my life. It came upon me yesterday when
I saw you in the window at the Vier Prison. I didn’t understand it. All
night I walked the deck thinking of you. To-day as soon as I saw your
face, as soon as I touched your hand, I knew what it was, and--”

He attempted to take her hand now. “Oh, no, no!” she exclaimed, and drew
back as if terrified.

“You need not fear me,” he burst out. “For now I know that I have but
two things to live for: for my work”--he pointed to the Narcissus--“and
for you. You are frightened of me? Why, I want to have the right to
protect you, to drive away all fear from your life. You shall be the
garden and I shall be the wall; you the nest and I the rock; you the
breath of life and I the body that breathes it. Guida, my Guida, I love
you!”

She drew back, leaning against the stones, her eyes riveted upon his,
and she spoke scarcely above a whisper.

“It is not true--it is not true. You’ve known me only for one day--only
for one hour. How can you say it!” There was a tumult in her breast; her
eyes shone and glistened; wonder, embarrassed yet happy wonder, looked
at him from her face, which was touched with an appealing, as of the
heart that dares not believe and yet must believe or suffer.

“It is madness,” she added. “It is not true--how can it be true!”

Yet it all had the look of reality--the voice had the right ring, the
face had truth, the bearing was gallant; the force and power of the man
overwhelmed her.

She reached out her hand tremblingly as though to push him back. “It
cannot be true,” she said. “To think--in one day!”

“It is true,” he answered, “true as that I stand here. One day--it is
not one day. I knew you years ago. The seed was sown then, the flower
springs up to-day, that is all. You think I can’t know that it is love I
feel for you? It is admiration; it is faith; it is desire too; but it is
love. When you see a flower in a garden, do you not know at once if you
like it or no? Don’t you know the moment you look on a landscape, on a
splendid building, whether it is beautiful to you? If, then, with these
things one knows--these that haven’t any speech, no life like yours or
mine--how much more when it is a girl with a face like yours, when it
is a mind noble like yours, when it is a touch that thrills, and a voice
that drowns the heart in music! Guida, believe that I speak the truth.
I know, I swear, that you are the one passion, the one love of my life.
All others would be as nothing, so long as you live, and I live to look
upon you, to be beside you.”

“Beside me!” she broke in, with an incredulous irony fain to be
contradicted, “a girl in a village, poor, knowing nothing, seeing no
farther”--she looked out towards Jersey--“seeing no farther than the
little cottage in the little country where I was born.”

“But you shall see more,” he said, “you shall see all, feel all, if you
will but listen to me. Don’t deny me what is life and breathing and
hope to me. I’ll show you the world; I’ll take you where you may see and
know. We will learn it all together. I shall succeed in life. I shall
go far. I’ve needed one thing to make me do my best for some one’s sake
beside my own; you will make me do it for your sake. Your ancestors
were great people in France; and you know that mine, centuries ago, were
great also--that the d’Avranches were a noble family in France. You and
I will win our place as high as the best of them. In this war that’s
coming between England and France is my chance. Nelson said to me the
other day--you have heard of him, of young Captain Nelson, the man
they’re pointing to in the fleet as the one man of them all?--he said
to me: ‘We shall have our chance now, d’Avranche.’ And we shall. I have
wanted it till to-day for my own selfish ambition--now I want it for
you. When I landed on this islet a half-hour ago, I hated it, I hated my
ship, I hated my duty, I hated everything, because I wanted to go where
you were, to be with you. It was Destiny that brought us both to this
place at one moment. You can’t escape Destiny. It was to be that I
should love you, Guida.”

He reached out to take her hands, but she put them behind her against
the stones, and drew back. The lizard suddenly shot out from a hole and
crossed over her fingers. She started, shivered at the cold touch, and
caught the hand away. A sense of foreboding awaked in her, and her eyes
followed the lizard’s swift travel with a strange fascination. But she
lifted them to Philip’s, and the fear and premonition passed.

“Oh, my brain is in a whirl!” she said. “I do not understand. I know
so little. No one has ever spoken to me as you have done. You would
not dare”--she leaned forward a little, looking into his face with
that unwavering gaze which was the best sign of her straight-forward
mind--“you would not dare to deceive--you would not dare. I have--no
mother,” she added with simple pathos.

The moisture came into his eyes. He must have been stone not to be
touched by the appealing, by the tender inquisition, of that look.

“Guida,” he said impetuously, “if I deceive you, may every fruit of life
turn to dust and ashes in my mouth! If ever I deceive you, may I die a
black, dishonourable death, abandoned and alone! I should deserve that
if I deceived you, Guida.”

For the first time since he had spoken she smiled, yet her eyes filled
with tears too.

“You will let me tell you that I love you, Guida--it is all I ask now:
that you will listen to me?”

She sighed, but did not answer. She kept looking at him, looking as
though she would read his inmost soul. Her face was very young, though
the eyes were so wise in their simplicity.

“You will give me my chance--you will listen to me, Guida, and try to
understand--and be glad?” he asked, leaning closer to her and holding
out his hands.

She drew herself up slightly as with an air of relief and resolve. She
put a hand in his.

“I will try to understand--and be glad,” she answered.

“Won’t you call me Philip?” he said.

The same slight, mischievous smile crossed her lips now as eleven years
ago in the Rue d’Egypte, and recalling that moment, she replied:

“Yes, sir--Philip!”

At that instant the figure of a man appeared on the shingle beneath,
looking up towards them. They did not see him. Guida’s hand was still in
Philip’s.

The man looked at them for a moment, then started and turned away. It
was Ranulph Delagarde.

They heard his feet upon the shingle now. They turned and looked; and
Guida withdrew her hand.




CHAPTER XI

There are moments when a kind of curtain seems dropped over the brain,
covering it, smothering it, while yet the body and its nerves are
tingling with sensation. It is like the fire-curtain of a theatre let
down between the stage and the audience, a merciful intervention between
the mind and the disaster which would consume it.

As the years had gone on Maitre Ranulph’s nature had grown more
powerful, and his outdoor occupation had enlarged and steadied his
physical forces. His trouble now was in proportion to the force of
his character. The sight of Guida and Philip hand in hand, the tender
attitude, the light in their faces, was overwhelming and unaccountable.
Yesterday these two were strangers--to-day it was plain to be seen
they were lovers, and lovers who had reached a point of confidence and
revelation. Nothing in the situation tallied with Ranulph’s ideas of
Guida and his knowledge of life. He had, as one might say, been eye to
eye with this girl for fifteen years: he had told his love for her in
a thousand little ways, as the ant builds its heap to a pyramid that
becomes a thousand times greater than itself. He had followed her
footsteps, he had fetched and carried, he had served afar off, he had
ministered within the gates. He had, unknown to her, watched like the
keeper of the house over all who came and went, neither envious nor
over-zealous, neither intrusive nor neglectful; leaving here a word
and there an act to prove himself, above all, the friend whom she could
trust, and, in all, the lover whom she might wake to know and reward. He
had waited with patience, hoping stubbornly that she might come to put
her hand in his one day.

Long ago he would have left the island to widen his knowledge, earn
experience in his craft, or follow a career in the army--he had been an
expert gunner when he served in the artillery four years ago--and hammer
out fame upon the anvils of fortune in England or in France; but he had
stayed here that he might be near her. His love had been simple, it
had been direct, and wise in its consistent reserve. He had been
self-obliterating. His love desired only to make her happy: most lovers
desire that they themselves shall be made happy. Because of the crime
his father committed years ago--because of the shame of that hidden
crime--he had tried the more to make himself a good citizen, and had
formed the modest ambition of making one human being happy. Always
keeping this near him in past years, a supreme cheerfulness of heart had
welled up out of his early sufferings and his innate honesty. Hope had
beckoned him on from year to year, until it seemed at last that the time
had almost come when he might speak, might tell her all--his father’s
crime and the manner of his father’s death; of his own devoted purpose
in trying to expiate that crime by his own uprightness; and of his love
for her.

Now, all in a minute, his horizon was blackened. This adventurous
gallant, this squire of dames, had done in a day what he had worked,
step by step, to do through all these years. This skipping seafarer,
with his powder and lace, his cocked hat and gold-handled sword, had
whistled at the gates which he had guarded and by which he had prayed,
and all in a minute every defence had been thrown down, and Guida--his
own Guida--had welcomed the invader with shameless eagerness.

He crossed the islet slowly. It seemed to him--and for a moment it was
the only thing of which he was conscious--that the heels of his boots
shrieked in the shingle, and with every step he was raising an immense
weight. He paused behind the chapel. After a little the smother lifted
slowly from his brain.

“I’ll believe in her still,” he said aloud. “It’s all his cursed tongue.
As a boy he could make every other boy do what he wanted because his
tongue knows how to twist words. She’s been used to honest people; he’s
talked a new language to her--tricks caught in his travels. But she
shall know the truth. She shall find out what sort of a man he is. I’ll
make her see under his pretty foolings.”

He turned, and leaned against the wall of the chapel. “Guida, Guida,” he
said, speaking as if she were there before him, “you won’t--you won’t
go to him, and spoil your life, and mine too. Guida, ma couzaine, you’ll
stay here, in the land of your birth. You’ll make your home here--here
with me, ma chere couzaine. Ah, but then you shall be my wife in spite
of him, in spite of a thousand Philip d’Avranches!”

He drew himself up firmly, for a great resolve was made. His path
was clear. It was a fair fight, he thought; the odds were not so much
against him after all, for his birth was as good as Philip d’Avranche’s,
his energy was greater, and he was as capable and as clever in his own
way.

He walked quickly down the shingle towards the wreck on the other side
of the islet. As he passed the hut where the sick man lay, he heard a
querulous voice. It was not that of the Reverend Lorenzo Dow.

Where had he heard that voice before? A shiver of fear ran through him.
Every sense and emotion in him was arrested. His life seemed to reel
backward. Curtain after curtain of the past unfolded.

He hurried to the door of the hut and looked in.

A man with long white hair and straggling grey beard turned to him a
haggard face, on which were written suffering, outlawry, and evil.

“Great God--my father!” Ranulph said.

He drew back slowly like a man who gazes upon some horrible fascinating
thing, and then turned heavily towards the sea, his face set, his senses
paralysed.

“My father not dead! My father--the traitor!” he groaned.




CHAPTER XII

Philip d’Avranche sauntered slowly through the Vier Marchi, nodding
right and left to people who greeted him. It was Saturday and market day
in Jersey. The square was crowded with people. All was a cheerful
babel; there was movement, colour everywhere. Here were the high and
the humble, hardi vlon and hardi biaou--the ugly and the beautiful,
the dwarfed and the tall, the dandy and the dowdy, the miser and the
spendthrift; young ladies gay in silks, laces, and scarfs from Spain,
and gentlemen with powdered wigs from Paris; sailors with red tunics
from the Mediterranean, and fishermen with blue and purple blouses from
Brazil; man-o’-war’s-men with Greek petticoats, Turkish fezzes, and
Portuguese espadras. Jersey housewives, in bedgones and white caps, with
molleton dresses rolled up to the knees, pushed their way through the
crowd, jars of black butter, or jugs of cinnamon brandy on their heads.
From La Pyramide--the hospitable base of the statue of King George
II--fishwives called the merits of their conger-eels and ormers; and
the clatter of a thousand sabots made the Vier Marchi sound like a
ship-builder’s yard.

In this square Philip had loitered and played as a child. Down there,
leaning against a pillar of the Corn Market piazza was Elie Mattingley,
the grizzly-haired seller of foreign silks and droll odds and ends, who
had given him a silver flageolet when he was a little lad. There were
the same swaggering manners, the big gold rings in his ears; there
was the same red sash about the waist, the loose unbuttoned shirt, the
truculent knifebelt; there were the same keen brown eyes looking you
through and through, and the mouth with a middle tooth in both jaws
gone. Elie Mattingley, pirate, smuggler, and sometime master of a
privateer, had had dealings with people high and low in the island, and
they had not always, nor often, been conducted in the open Vier Marchi.

Fifteen years ago he used to have his little daughter Carterette always
beside him when he sold his wares. Philip wondered what had become of
her. He glanced round.... Ah, there she was, not far from her father,
over in front of the guard-house, selling, at a little counter with
a canopy of yellow silk (brought by her father from that distant land
called Piracy), mogues of hot soupe a la graisse, simnels, curds,
coffee, and Jersey wonders, which last she made on the spot by dipping
the little rings of dough in a bashin of lard on a charcoal fire at her
side.

Carterette was short and spare, with soft yet snapping eyes as black as
night--or her hair; with a warm, dusky skin, a tongue which clattered
pleasantly, and very often wisely. She had a hand as small and plump as
a baby’s, and a pretty foot which, to the disgust of some mothers and
maidens of greater degree, was encased in a red French slipper, instead
of the wooden sabot stuffed with straw, while her ankles were nicely
dressed in soft black stockings, in place of the woolen native hose, as
became her station.

Philip watched Carterette now for a moment, a dozen laughing memories
coming back to him; for he had teased her and played with her when she
was a child, had even called her his little sweetheart. Looking at her
he wondered what her fate would be: To marry one of these fishermen
or carters? No, she would look beyond that. Perhaps it would be one of
those adventurers in bearskin cap and buckskin vest, home from Gaspe,
where they had toiled in the great fisheries, some as common fishermen,
some as mates and maybe one or two as masters. No, she would look beyond
that. Perhaps she would be carried off by one of those well-to-do,
black-bearded young farmers in the red knitted queminzolle, blue
breeches, and black cocked hat, with his kegs of cider and bunches of
parsley.

That was more likely, for among the people there was every prejudice in
her favour. She was Jersey born, her father was reputed to have laid by
a goodly sum of money--not all got in this Vier Marchi; and that he was
a smuggler and pirate roused a sentiment in their bosoms nearer to envy
than aught else. Go away naked and come back clothed, empty and come
back filled, simple and come back with a wink of knowledge, penniless
and come back with the price of numerous vergees of land, and you might
answer the island catechism without fear. Be lambs in Jersey, but harry
the rest of the world with a lion’s tooth, was the eleventh commandment
in the Vier Marchi.

Yes, thought Philip idly now, as he left the square, the girl would
probably marry a rich farmer, and when he came again he should find her
stout of body, and maybe shrewish of face, crying up the virtues of
her black butter and her knitted stockings, having made the yellow silk
canopy above her there into a gorgeous quilt for the nuptial bed.

Yet the young farmers who hovered near her now, buying a glass of cider
or a mogue of soup, received but scant notice. She laughed with them,
treated them lightly, and went about her business again with a toss of
the head. Not once did she show a moment’s real interest, not until a
fine upstanding fellow came round the corner from the Rue des Vignes,
and passed her booth.

She was dipping a doughnut into the boiling lard, but she paused with it
suspended. The little dark face took on a warm glow, the eyes glistened.

“Maitre Ranulph!” called the girl softly. Then as the tall fellow turned
to her and lifted his cap she added briskly: “Where away so fast with
face hard as hatchet?”

“Garcon Cart’rette!” he said abstractedly--he had always called her
that.

He was about to move on. She frowned in vexation, yet she saw that he
was pale and heavy-eyed, and she beckoned him to come to her.

“What’s gone wrong, big wood-worm?” she said, eyeing him closely, and
striving anxiously to read his face. He looked at her sharply, but the
softness in her black eyes somehow reassured him, and he said quite
kindly:

“Nannin, ‘tite garcon, nothing’s matter.”

“I thought you’d be blithe as a sparrow with your father back from the
grave!” Then as Ranulph’s face seemed to darken, she added: “He’s not
worse--he’s not worse?”

“No, no, he’s well enough now,” he said, forcing a smile.

She was not satisfied, but she went on talking, intent to find the cause
of his abstraction. “Only to think,” she said--“only to think that he
wasn’t killed at all at the Battle of Jersey, and was a prisoner in
France, and comes back here--and we all thought him dead, didn’t we?”

“I left him for dead that morning on the Grouville road,” he answered.
Then, as if with a great effort, and after the manner of one who has
learned a part, he went on: “As the French ran away mad, paw of one on
tail of other, they found him trying to drag himself along. They nabbed
him, and carried him aboard their boats to pilot them out from the
Rocque Platte, and over to France. Then because they hadn’t gobbled us
up here, what did the French Gover’ment do? They clapped a lot of ‘em in
irons and sent ‘em away to South America, and my father with ‘em. That’s
why we heard neither click nor clack of him all this time. He broke free
a year ago. Then he fell sick. When he got well he set sail for Jersey,
was wrecked off the Ecrehos, and everybody knows the rest. Diantre, he’s
had a hard time!”

The girl had listened intently. She had heard all these things in flying
rumours, and she had believed the rumours; but now that Maitre Ranulph
told her--Ranulph, whose word she would have taken quicker than the oath
of a Jurat--she doubted. With the doubt her face flushed as though she
herself had been caught in a lie, had done a mean thing. Somehow her
heart was aching for him, she knew not why.

All this time she had held the doughnut poised; she seemed to have
forgotten her work. Suddenly the wooden fork holding the cake was taken
from her fingers by the daft Dormy Jamais who had crept near.

“Des monz a fou,” said he, “to spoil good eating so! What says
fishing-man: When sails flap, owner may whistle for cargo. Tut, tut,
goose Carterette!”

Carterette took no note, but said to Ranulph:

“Of course he had to pilot the Frenchmen back, or they’d have killed
him, and it’d done no good to refuse. He was the first man that fought
the French on the day of the battle, wasn’t he? I’ve always heard that.”
 Unconsciously she was building up a defence for Olivier Delagarde. She
was, as it were, anticipating insinuation from other quarters. She was
playing Ranulph’s game, because she instinctively felt that behind this
story there was gloom in his mind and mystery in the tale itself. She
noticed too that he shrank from her words. She was not very quick of
intellect, so she had to feel her way fumblingly. She must have time to
think, but she said tentatively:

“I suppose it’s no secret? I can tell any one at all what happened to
your father?” she asked.

“Oh so--sure so!” he said rather eagerly. “Tell every one about it. He
doesn’t mind.”

Maitre Ranulph deceived but badly. Bold and convincing in all honest
things, he was, as yet, unconvincing in this grave deception. All these
years he had kept silence, enduring what he thought a buried shame;
but that shame had risen from the dead, a living agony. His father had
betrayed the island to the French: if the truth were known to-day they
would hang him for a traitor on the Mont es Pendus. No mercy and scant
shrift would be shown him.

Whatever came, he must drink this bitter cup to the dregs. He could
never betray his own father. He must consume with inward disgust while
Olivier Delagarde shamelessly babbled his monstrous lies to all who
would listen. And he must tell these lies too, conceal, deceive, and
live in hourly fear of discovery. He must sit opposite his father day by
day at table, talk with him, care for him, shrinking inwardly at every
knock at the door lest it should be an officer come to carry the pitiful
traitor off to prison.

And, more than all, he must give up for ever the thought of Guida. Here
was the acid that ate home, the black hopelessness, the machine of fate
clamping his heart. Never again could he rise in the morning with a
song on his lips; never again his happy meditations go lilting with the
clanging blows of the adze and the singing of the saws.

All these things had vanished when he looked into a tent-door on the
Ecrehos. Now, in spite of himself, whenever he thought upon Guida’s
face, this other fateful figure, this Medusan head of a traitor, shot in
between.

Since his return his father had not been strong enough to go abroad; but
to-day he meant to walk to the Vier Marchi. At first Ranulph had decided
to go as usual to his ship-yard at St. Aubin’s, but at last in
anxious fear he too had come to the Vier Marchi. There was a horrible
fascination in being where his father was, in listening to his
falsehoods, in watching the turns and twists of his gross hypocrisies.

But yet at times he was moved by a strange pity, for Olivier Delagarde
was, in truth, far older than his years: a thin, shuffling, pallid
invalid, with a face of mingled sanctity and viciousness. If the old
man lied, and had not been in prison all these years, he must have had
misery far worse, for neither vice nor poverty alone could so shatter a
human being. The son’s pity seemed to look down from a great height upon
the contemptible figure with the beautiful white hair and the abominable
mouth. This compassion kept him from becoming hard, but it would also
preserve him to hourly sacrifice--Prometheus chained to his rock. In
the short fortnight that had gone since the day upon the Ecrehos, he had
changed as much as do most people in ten years. Since then he had seen
neither Philip nor Guida.

To Carterette he seemed not the man she had known. With her woman’s
instinct she knew that he loved Guida, but she also knew that nothing
which might have happened between them could have brought this look of
shame and shrinking into his face. As these thoughts flashed through her
mind her heart grew warmer. Suppose Ranulph was in some trouble--well,
now might be her great chance. She might show him that he could not live
without her friendship, and then perhaps, by-and-bye, that he could not
live without her love.

Ranulph was about to move on. She stopped him. “When you need me, Maitre
Ranulph, you know where to find me,” she said scarce above a whisper. He
looked at her sharply, almost fiercely, but again the tenderness of her
eyes, the directness of her gaze, convinced him. She might be, as
she was, variable with other people; with himself she was invincibly
straightforward.

“P’raps you don’t trust me?” she added, for she read his changing
expression.

“I’d trust you quick enough,” he said.

“Then do it now--you’re having some bad trouble,” she rejoined.

He leaned over her stall and said to her steadily and with a little
moroseness:

“See you, ma garche, if I was in trouble I’d bear it by myself. I’d ask
no one to help me. I’m a man, and I can stand alone. Don’t go telling
folks I look as if I was in trouble. I’m going to launch to-morrow the
biggest ship ever sent from a Jersey building yard--that doesn’t look
like trouble, does it? Turn about is fair play, garcon Cart’rette: so
when you’re in trouble come to me. You’re not a man, and it’s a man’s
place to help a woman, all the more when she’s a fine and good little
stand-by like you.”

He forced a smile, turned upon his heel, and threaded his way through
the square, keeping a look-out for his father. This he could do easily,
for he was the tallest man in the Vier Marchi by at least three inches.

Carterette, oblivious of all else, stood gazing after him. She was
only recalled to herself by Dormy Jamais. He was diligently cooking her
Jersey wonders, now and then turning his eyes up at her--eyes which were
like spots of greyish, yellowish light in a face of putty and flour;
without eyelashes, without eyebrows, a little like a fish’s, something
like a monkey’s. They were never still. They were set in the face like
little round glow worms in a mould of clay. They burned on night and
day--no man had ever seen Dormy Jamais asleep.

Carterette did not resent his officiousness. He had a kind of kennel in
her father’s boat-house, and he was devoted to her. More than all else,
Dormy Jamaas was clean. His clothes were mostly rags, but they were
comely, compact rags. When he washed them no one seemed to know, but no
languid young gentleman lounging where the sun was warmest in the Vier
Marchi was better laundered.

As Carterette turned round to him he was twirling a cake on the wooden
fork, and trolling:

          “Caderoussel he has a coat,
          All lined with paper brown;
          And only when it freezes hard
          He wears it in the town.
          What do you think of Caderoussel?
          Ah, then, but list to me:
          Caderoussel is a bon e’fant--”

“Come, come, dirty-fingers,” she said. “Leave my work alone, and stop
your chatter.”

The daft one held up his fingers, but to do so had to thrust a cake into
his mouth.

“They’re as clean as a ha’pendy,” he said, mumbling through the cake.
Then he emptied his mouth of it, and was about to place it with the
others.

“Black beganne,” she cried; “how dare you! V’la--into your pocket with
it!”

He did as he was bid, humming to himself again:

          “M’sieu’ de la Palisse is dead,
          Dead of a maladie;
          Quart’ of an hour before his death
          He could breathe like you and mel
          Ah bah, the poor M’sieu’
          De la Palisse is dead!”

“Shut up! Man doux d’la vie, you chatter like a monkey!”

“That poor Maitre Ranulph,” said Dormy, “once he was lively as a basket
of mice; but now--”

“Well, now, achocre?” she said irritably, stamping her foot.

“Now the cat’s out of the bag--oui-gia!”

“You’re as cunning as a Norman--you’ve got things in your noddee!” she
cried with angry impatience.

He nodded, grinning. “As thick as haws,” he answered.

She heard behind her a laugh of foolish good-nature, which made her
angry too, for it seemed to be making fun of her. She wheeled to see M.
Savary dit Detricand leaning with both elbows on the little counter, his
chin in his hand, grinning provokingly,

“Oh, it’s you!” she said snappishly; “I hope you’re pleased.”

“Don’t be cross,” he answered, his head swinging unsteadily. “I wasn’t
laughing at you, heaven-born Jersienne. I wasn’t, ‘pon honour! I was
laughing at a thing I saw five minutes ago.” He nodded in gurgling
enjoyment now. “You mustn’t mind me, seraphine,” he added, “I’d a hot
night, and I’m warm as a thrush now. But I saw a thing five minutes
ago!”--he rolled on the stall. “‘Sh!” he added in a loud mock whisper,
“here he comes now. Milles diables, but here’s a tongue for you, and
here’s a royal gentleman speaking truth like a travelling dentist!”

Carterette followed his gesture and saw coming out of the Route es
Couochons, where the brave Peirson issued to his death eleven years
before, Maitre Ranulph’s father.

He walked with the air of a man courting observation. He imagined
himself a hero; he had told his lie so many times now that he almost
believed it himself.

He was soon surrounded. Disliked when he lived in Jersey before the
invasion years ago, that seemed forgotten now; for word had gone abroad
that he was a patriot raised from the dead, an honour to his country.
Many pressed forward to shake hands with him.

“Help of heaven, is that you, m’sieu’?” asked one. “You owed me five
chelins, but I wiped it out, O my good!” cried another generously.

“Shaken,” cried a tall tarter holding out his hand. He had lived in
England, and now easily made English verbs into French.

One after another called on him to tell his story; some tried to hurry
him to La Pyramide, but others placed a cider-keg near, and almost
lifted him on to it.

“Go on, go on, tell us the story,” they cried. “To the devil with the
Frenchies!”

“Here--here’s a dish of Adam’s ale,” cried an old woman, handing him a
bowl of water.

They cheered him lustily. The pallor of his face changed to a warmth. He
had the fatuousness of those who deceive with impunity. With confidence
he unreeled the dark line out to the end. When he had told his
story, still hungry for applause, he repeated the account of how the
tatterdemalion brigade of Frenchmen came down upon him out of the night,
and how he should have killed Rullecour himself had it not been for an
officer who struck him down from behind.

During the recital Ranulph had drawn near. He watched the enthusiasm
with which the crowd received every little detail of the egregious
history. Everybody believed the old man, who was safe, no matter
what happened to himself, Ranulph Delagarde, ex-artilleryman,
ship-builder--and son of a criminal. At any rate the worst was over now,
the first public statement of the lifelong lie. He drew a sigh of relief
and misery in one. At that instant he caught sight of the flushed
face of Detricand, who broke into a laugh of tipsy mirth when Olivier
Delagarde told how the French officer had stricken him down as he was
about finishing off Rullecour.

All at once the whole thing rushed upon Ranulph. What a fool he had
been! He had met this officer of Rullecour’s these ten years past, and
never once had the Frenchman, by so much as a hint, suggested that he
knew the truth about his father. Here and now the contemptuous mirth
upon the Frenchman’s face told the whole story. The danger and horror of
the situation descended on him. Instantly he started towards Detricand.

At that moment his father caught sight of Detricand also, saw the laugh,
the sneer, and recognised him. Halting short in his speech he turned
pale and trembled, staring as at a ghost. He had never counted on this.
His breath almost stopped as he saw Ranulph approach Detricand.

Now the end was come. His fabric of lies would be torn down; he would
be tried and hanged on the Mont es Pendus, or even be torn to pieces by
this crowd. Yet he could not have moved a foot from where he was if he
had been given a million pounds.

The sight of Ranulph’s face revealed to Detricand the true meaning of
this farce and how easily it might become a tragedy. He read the story
of the son’s torture, of his sacrifice; and his decision was instantly
made: he would befriend him. Looking straight into his eyes, his own
said he had resolved to know nothing whatever about this criminal on
the cider-cask. The two men telegraphed to each other a perfect
understanding, and then Detricand turned on his heel, and walked away
into the crowd.

The sudden change in the old man’s appearance had not been lost on the
spectators, but they set it down to weakness or a sudden sickness. One
ran for a glass of brandy, another for cider, and an old woman handed up
to him a mogue of cinnamon drops.

The old man tremblingly drank the brandy. When he looked again Detricand
had disappeared. A dark, sinister expression crossed his face, an evil
thought pulled down the corners of his mouth as he stepped from the
cask. His son went to him and taking his arm, said: “Come, you’ve done
enough for to-day.”

The old man made no reply, but submissively walked away into the Coin
& Anes. Once however he turned and looked the way Detricand had gone,
muttering.

The peasants cheered him as he passed. Presently, free of the crowd and
entering the Rue d’Egypte, he said to Ranulph:

“I’m going alone; I don’t need you.”

“Where are you going?” asked Ranulph.

“Home,” answered the old man gloomily.

Ranulph stopped. “All right; better not come out again to-day.”

“You’re not going to let that Frenchman hurt me?” suddenly asked
Delagarde with morose anxiety. “You’re going to stop that? They’d put me
in prison.”

Ranulph stooped over his father, his eyes alive with anger, his face
blurred with disgust.

“Go home,” said he, “and never mention this again while you live, or
I’ll take you to prison myself.” Ranulph watched his father disappear
down the Rue d’Egypte, then he retraced his steps to the Vier Marchi.
With a new-formed determination he quickened his walk, ruling his face
to a sort of forced gaiety, lest any one should think his moodiness
strange. One person after another accosted him. He listened eagerly, to
see if anything were said which might show suspicion of his father. But
the gossip was all in old Delagarde’s favour. From group to group he
went, answering greetings cheerily and steeling himself to the whole
disgusting business.

Presently he saw the Chevalier du Champsavoys with the Sieur de Mauprat.
This was the first public appearance of the chevalier since the sad
business at the Vier Prison a fortnight before. The simple folk had
forgotten their insane treatment of him then, and they saluted him
now with a chirping: “Es-tu biaou, chevalier?” and “Es-tu gentiment,
m’sieu’?” to which he responded with amiable forgiveness. To his idea
they were only naughty children, their minds reasoning no more
clearly than they saw the streets through the tiny little squares of
bottle-glass in the windows of their homes.

All at once they came face to face with Detricand. The chevalier stopped
short with pleased yet wistful surprise. His brow knitted when he saw
that his compatriot had been drinking again, and his eyes had a pained
look as he said eagerly:

“Have you heard from the Comte de Tournay, monsieur? I have not seen you
these days past. You said you would not disappoint me.”

Detricand drew from his pocket a letter and handed it over, saying:
“This comes from the comte.”

The old gentleman took the letter, nervously opened it, and read it
slowly, saying each sentence over twice as though to get the full
meaning.

“Ah,” he exclaimed, “he is going back to France to fight for the King!”

Then he looked at Detricand sadly, benevolently. “Mon cher,” said he,
“if I could but persuade you to abjure the wine-cup and follow his
example!”

Detricand drew himself up with a jerk. “You can persuade me, chevalier,”
 said he. “This is my last bout. I had sworn to have it with--with a
soldier I knew, and I’ve kept my word. But it’s the last, the very last
in my life, on the honour of--the Detricands. And I am going with the
Comte de Tournay to fight for the King.”

The little chevalier’s lips trembled, and taking the young man by the
collar of his coat, he stood tiptoed, and kissed him on both cheeks.

“Will you accept something from me?” asked M. de Mauprat, joining in his
friend’s enthusiasm. He took from his pocket a timepiece he had worn
for fifty years. “It is a little gift to my France, which I shall see
no more,” he added. “May no time be ill spent that it records for you,
monsieur.”

Detricand laughed in his careless way, but the face, seamed with
dissipation, took on a new and better look, as with a hand-grasp of
gratitude he put the timepiece in his pocket.

“I’ll do my best,” he said simply. “I’ll be with de la Rochejaquelein
and the army of the Vendee to-morrow night.”

Then he shook hands with both little gentlemen and moved away towards
the Rue des Tres Pigeons. Presently some one touched his arm. He looked
round. It was Ranulph.

“I stood near,” said Ranulph; “I chanced to hear what you said to them.
You’ve been a friend to me today--and these eleven years past. You knew
about my father, all the time.”

Before replying Detricand glanced round to see that no one was
listening.

“Look you, monsieur, a man must keep some decencies in his life, or cut
his own throat. What a ruffian I’d be to do you or your father harm! I’m
silent, of course. Let your mind rest about me. But there’s the baker
Carcaud--”

“The baker?” asked Ranulph dumfounded. “I thought he was tied to a rock
and left to drown, by Rullecour’s orders.”

“I had him set free after Rullecour had gone on to the town. He got away
to France.”

Ranulph’s anxiety deepened. “He might come back, and then if anything
happened to him--”

“He’d try and make things happen to others, eh? But there’s little
danger of his coming back. They know he’s a traitor, and he knows he’d
be hung. If he’s alive he’ll stay where he is. Cheer up! Take my word,
Olivier Delagarde has only himself to fear.” He put out his hand.
“Good-bye. If ever I can do anything for you, if you ever want to
find me, come or send to--no, I’ll write it,” he suddenly added, and
scribbling something on a piece of paper he handed it over.

They parted with another handshake, Detricand making his way into the
Rue d’Egypte, and towards the Place du Vier Prison.

Ranulph stood looking dazedly at the crowd before him, misery, revolt,
and bitterness in his heart. This French adventurer, Detricand, after
years of riotous living, could pick up the threads of life again with a
laugh and no shame, while he felt himself going down, down, down, with
no hope of ever rising again.

As he stood buried in his reflections the town crier entered the Vier
Marchi, and, going to La Pyramide, took his place upon the steps, and in
a loud voice began reading a proclamation.

It was to the effect that the great Fishing Company trading to Gaspe
needed twenty Jersiais to go out and replace a number of the company’s
officers and men who had been drowned in a gale off the rock called
Perch. To these twenty, if they went at once, good pay would be
given. But they must be men of intelligence and vigour, of well-known
character.

The critical moment in Maitre Ranulph’s life came now. Here he was
penned up in a little island, chained to a criminal having the fame of a
martyr. It was not to be borne. Why not leave it all behind? Why not let
his father shift for himself, abide his own fate? Why not leave him the
home, what money he had laid by, and go-go-go where he could forget,
go where he could breathe. Surely self-preservation, that was the first
law; surely no known code of human practice called upon him to share the
daily crimes of any living soul--it was a daily repetition of his crime
for this traitor to carry on the atrocious lie of patriotism.

He would go. It was his right.

Taking a few steps towards the officer of the company standing by the
crier, he was about to speak. Some one touched him.

He turned and saw Carterette. She had divined his intention, and though
she was in the dark as to the motive, she saw that he meant to go to
Gaspe. Her heart seemed to contract till the pain of it hurt her; then,
as a new thought flashed into her mind, it was freed again and began
pounding hard against her breast. She must prevent him from leaving
Jersey, from leaving her. What she might feel personally would have no
effect upon him; she would appeal to him from a different stand-point.

“You must not go,” she said. “You must not leave your father alone,
Maitre Ranulph.”

For a minute he did not reply. Through his dark wretchedness one thought
pierced its way: this girl was his good friend.

“Then I’ll take him with me,” he said.

“He would die in the awful cold,” she answered. “Nannin-gia, you must
stay.”

“Eh ben, I will think!” he said presently, with an air of heavy
resignation, and, turning, walked away. Her eyes followed him. As she
went back to her booth she smiled: he had come one step her way. He
would not go.




CHAPTER XIII

When Detricand left the Vier Marchi he made his way along the Rue
d’Egypte to the house of M. de Mauprat. The front door was open, and a
nice savour of boiling fruit came from within. He knocked, and instantly
Guida appeared, her sleeves rolled back to her elbows, her fingers
stained with the rich red of the blackberries on the fire.

A curious shade of disappointment came into her face when she saw who it
was. It was clear to Detricand that she expected some one else; it was
also clear that his coming gave no especial pleasure to her, though she
looked at him with interest. She had thought of him more than once since
that day when the famous letter from France to the chevalier was read.
She had instinctively compared him, this roystering, notorious fellow,
with Philip d’Avranche, Philip the brave, the ambitious, the conquering.
She was sure that Philip had never over-drunk himself in his life; and
now, looking into the face of Detricand, she could tell that he had been
drinking again. One thing was apparent, however: he was better dressed
than she ever remembered seeing him, better pulled together, and bearing
himself with an air of purpose.

“I’ve fetched back your handkerchief--you tied up my head with it, you
know,” he said, taking it from his pocket. “I’m going away, and I wanted
to thank you.”

“Will you not come in, monsieur?” she said.

He readily entered the kitchen, still holding the handkerchief in his
hand, but he did not give it to her. “Where will you sit?” she said,
looking round. “I’m very busy. You mustn’t mind my working,” she added,
going to the brass bashin at the fire. “This preserve will spoil if I
don’t watch it.”

He seated himself on the veille, and nodded his head. “I like this,” he
said. “I’m fond of kitchens. I always was. When I was fifteen I was sent
away from home because I liked the stables and the kitchen too well.
Also I fell in love with the cook.”

Guida flushed, frowned, her lips tightened, then presently a look of
amusement broke over her face, and she burst out laughing.

“Why do you tell me these things?” she said. “Excuse me, monsieur, but
why do you always tell unpleasant things about yourself? People think
ill of you, and otherwise they might think--better.”

“I don’t want them to think better till I am better,” he answered. “The
only way I can prevent myself becoming a sneak is by blabbing my faults.
Now, I was drunk last night--very, very drunk.”

A look of disgust came into her face.

“Why do you relate this sort of thing to me, monsieur? Do--do I remind
you of the cook at home, or of an oyster-girl in Jersey?”

She was flushing, but her voice was clear and vibrant, the look of the
eyes direct and fearless. How dared he hold her handkerchief like that!

“I tell you them,” he answered slowly, looking at the handkerchief in
his hand, then raising his eyes to hers with whimsical gravity, “because
I want you to ask me never to drink again.”

She looked at him scarce comprehending, yet feeling a deep compliment
somewhere, for this man was a gentleman by birth, and his manner was
respectful, and had always been respectful to her.

“Why do you want me to ask you that?” she said. “Because I’m going to
France to join the war of the Vendee, and--”

“With the Comte de Tournay?” she interrupted. He nodded his head. “And
if I thought I was keeping a promise to--to you, I’d not break it. Will
you ask me to promise?” he persisted, watching her intently.

“Why, of course,” she answered kindly, almost gently; the compliment was
so real, he could not be all bad.

“Then say my name, and ask me,” he said.

“Monsieur--”

“Leave out the monsieur,” he interrupted.

“Yves Savary dit Detricand, will you promise me, Guida Landresse--”

“De Landresse,” he interposed courteously.

“--Guida Landresse de Landresse, that you will never again drink wine to
excess, and that you will never do anything that”--she paused confused.
“That you would not wish me to do,” he said in a low voice.

“That I should not wish you to do,” she repeated in a half-embarrassed
way.

“On my honour I promise,” he said slowly.

A strange feeling came over her. She had suddenly, in some indirect,
allusive way, become interested in a man’s life. Yet she had done
nothing, and in truth she cared nothing. They stood looking at each
other, she slightly embarrassed, he hopeful and eager, when suddenly a
step sounded without, a voice called “Guida!” and as Guida coloured
and Detricand turned towards the door, Philip d’Avranche entered
impetuously.

He stopped short on seeing Detricand. They knew each other slightly, and
they bowed. Philip frowned. He saw that something had occurred between
the two. Detricand on his part realised the significance of that
familiar “Guida!” called from outside. He took up his cap.

“It is greeting and good-bye, I am just off for France,” he said.

Philip eyed him coldly, and not a little maliciously, for he knew
Detricand’s reputation well, the signs of a hard life were thick on him,
and he did not like to think of Guida being alone with him.

“France should offer a wide field for your talents just now,” he
answered drily; “they seem wasted here.” Detricand’s eye flashed, but
he answered coolly: “It wasn’t talent that brought me here, but a boy’s
folly; it’s not talent that’s kept me from starving here, I’m afraid,
but the ingenuity of the desperate.”

“Why stay here? The world was wide, and France but a step away. You
would not have needed talents there. You would no doubt have been
rewarded by the Court which sent you and Rullecour to ravage Jersey--”

“The proper order is Rullecour and me, monsieur.” Detricand seemed
suddenly to have got back a manner to which he had been long a stranger.
His temper became imperturbable, and this was not lost on Philip; his
manner had a balanced serenity, while Philip himself had no such perfect
control; which made him the more impatient. Presently Detricand added in
a composed and nonchalant tone:

“I’ve no doubt there were those at Court who’d have clothed me in purple
and fine linen, and given me wine and milk, but it was my whim to work
in the galleys here, as it were.”

“Then I trust you’ve enjoyed your Botany Bay,” answered Philip
mockingly. “You’ve been your own jailer, you could lay the strokes on
heavy or light.” He moved to the veille, and sat down. Guida busied
herself at the fireplace, but listened intently.

“I’ve certainly been my own enemy, whether the strokes were heavy or
light,” replied Detricand, lifting a shoulder ironically.

“And a friend to Jersey at the same time, eh?” was the sneering reply.

Detricand was in the humour to tell the truth even to this man who
hated him. He was giving himself the luxury of auricular confession.
But Philip did not see that when once such a man has stood in his own
pillory, sat in his own stocks, voluntarily paid the piper, he will take
no after insult.

Detricand still would not be tempted out of his composure. “No,” he
answered, “I’ve been an enemy to Jersey too, both by act and example;
but people here have been kind enough to forget the act, and the example
I set is not unique.”

“You’ve never thought that you’ve outstayed your welcome, eh?”

“As to that, every country is free to whoever wills, if one cares to
pay the entrance fee and can endure the entertainment. One hasn’t to
apologise for living in a country. You probably get no better treatment
than you deserve, and no worse. One thing balances another.”

The man’s cool impeachment and defence of himself irritated Philip, the
more so because Guida was present, and this gentlemanly vagrant had him
at advantage.

“You paid no entrance fee here; you stole in through a hole in the wall.
You should have been hanged.”

“Monsieur d’Avranche!” said Guida reproachfully, turning round from the
fire.

Detricand’s answer came biting and dry. “You are an officer of your
King, as was I. You should know that hanging the invaders of Jersey
would have been butchery. We were soldiers of France; we had the
distinction of being prisoners of war, monsieur.”

This shot went home. Philip had been touched in that nerve called
military honour. He got to his feet. “You are right,” he answered
with reluctant frankness. “Our grudge is not individual, it is against
France, and we’ll pay it soon with good interest, monsieur.”

“The individual grudge will not be lost sight of in the general, I
hope?” rejoined Detricand with cool suggestion, his clear, persistent
grey eye looking straight into Philip’s.

“I shall do you that honour,” said Philip with mistaken disdain.

Detricand bowed low. “You will always find me in the suite of the Prince
of Vaufontaine, monsieur, and ready to be so distinguished by you.”
 Turning to Guida, he added: “Mademoiselle will perhaps do me the honour
to notice me again one day?” then, with a mocking nod to Philip, he left
the house.

Guida and Philip stood looking after him in silence for a minute.
Suddenly Guida said to herself: “My handkerchief--why did he take my
handkerchief? He put it in his pocket again.”

Philip turned on her impatiently.

“What was that adventurer saying to you, Guida? In the suite of the
Prince of Vaufontaine, my faith! What did he come here for?”

Guida looked at him in surprise. She scarcely grasped the significance
of the question. Before she had time to consider, he pressed it again,
and without hesitation she told him all that had happened--it was so
very little, of course--between Detricand and herself. She omitted
nothing save that Detricand had carried off the handkerchief, and she
could not have told, if she had been asked, why she did not speak of it.

Philip raged inwardly. He saw the meaning of the whole situation from
Detricand’s stand-point, but he was wise enough from his own stand-point
to keep it to himself; and so both of them reserved something, she from
no motive that she knew, he from an ulterior one. He was angry too:
angry at Detricand, angry at Guida for her very innocence, and because
she had caught and held even the slight line of association Detricand
had thrown.

In any case, Detricand was going to-morrow, and to-day-to-day should
decide all between Guida and himself. Used to bold moves, in this affair
of love he was living up to his custom; and the encounter with Detricand
here added the last touch to his resolution, nerved him to follow his
strong impulse to set all upon one hazard. A month ago he had told Guida
that he loved her; to-day there should be a still more daring venture.
A thing not captured by a forlorn hope seemed not worth having. The girl
had seized his emotions from the first moment, and had held them. To him
she was the most original creature he had ever met, the most natural,
the most humorous of temper, the most sincere. She had no duplicity, no
guile, no arts.

He said to himself that he knew his own mind always. He believed in
inspirations, and he would back his knowledge, his inspiration, by an
irretrievable move. Yesterday had come an important message from his
commander. That had decided him. To-day Guida should hear a message
beyond all others in importance.

“Won’t you come into the garden?” he said presently.

“A moment--a moment,” she answered him lightly, for the frown had passed
from his face, and he was his old buoyant self again. “I’m to make an
end to this bashin of berries first,” she added. So saying, she waved
him away with a little air of tyranny; and he perched himself boyishly
on the big chair in the corner, and with idle impatience began playing
with the flax on the spinning-wheel near by. Then he took to humming
a ditty the Jersey housewife used to sing as she spun, while Guida
disposed of the sweet-smelling fruit. Suddenly she stopped and stamped
her foot.

“No, no, that’s not right, stupid sailor-man,” she said, and she sang a
verse at him over the last details of her work:

       “Spin, spin, belle Mergaton!
         The moon wheels full, and the tide flows high,
        And your wedding-gown you must put it on
         Ere the night hath no moon in the sky--
            Gigoton Mergaton, spin!”

She paused. He was entranced. He had never heard her sing, and the full,
beautiful notes of her contralto voice thrilled him like organ music.
His look devoured her, her song captured him.

“Please go on,” he said, “I never heard it that way.” She was
embarrassed yet delighted by his praise, and she threw into the next
verse a deep weirdness:

       “Spin, spin, belle Mergaton!
         Your gown shall be stitched ere the old moon fade:
        The age of a moon shall your hands spin on,
         Or a wife in her shroud shall be laid--
              Gigoton Mergaton, spin!”

“Yes, yes, that’s it!” he exclaimed with gay ardour. “That’s it. Sing
on. There are two more verses.”

“I’ll only sing one,” she answered, with a little air of wilfulness.

       “Spin, spin, belle Mergaton!
         The Little Good Folk the spell they have cast;
        By your work well done while the moon hath shone,
         Ye shall cleave unto joy at last--
            Gigoton Mergaton, spin!”

As she sang the last verse she seemed in a dream, and her rich voice,
rising with the spirit of the concluding lines, poured out the notes
like a bird drunk with the air of spring.

“Guida,” he cried, springing to his feet, “when you sing like that it
seems to me I live in a world that has nothing to do with the sordid
business of life, with my dull trade--with getting the weather-gauge or
sailing in triple line. You’re a planet all by yourself, Mistress Guida!
Are you ready to come into the garden?”

“Yes, yes, in a minute,” she answered. “You go out to the big
apple-tree, and I’ll come in a minute.” The apple-tree was in the
farthest corner of the large garden. Near it was the summer-house where
Guida and her mother used to sit and read, Guida on the three-legged
stool, her mother on the low, wide seat covered with ferns. This spot
Guida used to “flourish” with flowers. The vines, too, crept through the
rough latticework, and all together made the place a bower, secluded and
serene. The water of the little stream outside the hedge made music too.

Philip placed himself on the bench beneath the appletree. What a change
was all this, he thought to himself, from the staring hot stones of
Malta, the squalor of Constantinople, the frigid cliffs of Spitzbergen,
the noisome tropical forests of the Indies! This was Arcady. It was
peace, it was content. His life was sure to be varied and perhaps
stormy--here would be the true change, the spirit of all this. Of course
he would have two sides to his life like most men: that lived before the
world, and that of the home. He would have the fight for fame. He would
have to use, not duplicity, but diplomacy, to play a kind of game;
b

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