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“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.
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.
“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 afaithful friend, who goeth hence from among divers dangers, unto mycousin, the Chevalier du Champsavoys de Beaumanoir, late Gentlemanof the Bedchamber to the best of monarchs, Louis XV, this writing:“MY DEAR AND HONOURED Cousin”—The chevalier paused, frowned atrifle, and tapped his lips with his finger in a little lyricalemotion—“My dear and honoured cousin, all is lost. The France weloved is no more. The twentieth of June saw the last vestige ofLouis’s power pass for ever. That day ten thousand of thesans-culottes forced their way into the palace to kill him. A faithfulfew surrounded him. In the mad turmoil, we were fearful, he wasserene. ‘Feel,’ said Louis, placing his hand on his bosom, ‘feelwhether this is the beating of a heart shaken by fear.’ Ah, myfriend, your heart would have clamped in misery to hear the Queencry: ‘What have I to fear? Death? it is as well to-day asto-morrow; they can do no more!’ Their lives were saved, the daypassed, but worse came after.“The tenth of August came. With it too, the end-the dark and bloodyend-of the Swiss Guard. The Jacobins had their way at last. TheSwiss Guard died in the Court of the Carrousel as they marched tothe Assembly to save the King. Thus the last circle of defenceround the throne was broken. The palace was given over to flame andthe sword. Of twenty nobles of the court I alone escaped. Franceis become a slaughter-house. The people cried out for more liberty,and their liberators gave them the freedom of death. A fortnightago, Danton, the incomparable fiend, let loose his assassins uponthe priests of God. Now Paris is made a theatre where the peoplewhom Louis and his nobles would have died to save have turned everystreet into a stable of carnage, every prison and hospital into avast charnel-house. One last revolting thing alone remains to bedone—the murder of the King; then this France that we have lovedwill have no name and no place in our generation. She will riseagain, but we shall not see her, for our eyes have been blinded withblood, for ever darkened by disaster. Like a mistress upon whom wehave lavished the days of our youth and the strength of our days,she has deceived us; she has stricken us while we slept. Behold aCaliban now for her paramour!“Weep with me, for France despoils me. One by one my friends havefallen beneath the axe. Of my four sons but one remains. Henri wasstabbed by Danton’s ruffians at the Hotel de Ville; Gaston foughtand died with the Swiss Guard, whose hacked and severed limbs werebroiled and eaten in the streets by these monsters who mutilate theland. Isidore, the youngest, defied a hundred of Robespierre’scowards on the steps of the Assembly, and was torn to pieces by themob. Etienne alone is left. But for him and for the honour of myhouse I too would find a place beside the King and die with him.Etienne is with de la Rochejaquelein in Brittany. I am here atRouen.“Brittany and Normandy still stand for the King. In these twoprovinces begins the regeneration of France: we call it the War ofthe Vendee. On that Isle of Jersey there you should almost hear thevoice of de la Rochejaquelein and the marching cries of our loyallegions. If there be justice in God we shall conquer. But therewill 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 elseis dead. You did well to go, and I do well to stay.“By all these piteous relations you shall know the importance of therequest I now set forth.“My cousin by marriage of the House of Vaufontaine has lost all hissons. With the death of the Prince of Vaufontaine, there is inFrance no direct heir to the house, nor can it, by the law, revertto my house or my heirs. Now of late the Prince hath urged me towrite to you—for he is here in seclusion with me—and to unfold toyou what has hitherto been secret. Eleven years ago the only nephewof the Prince, after some naughty escapades, fled from the Courtwith Rullecour the adventurer, who invaded the Isle of Jersey. Fromthat hour he has been lost to France. Some of his companions inarms returned after a number of years. All with one exceptiondeclared that he was killed in the battle at St. Heliers. One,however, maintains that he was still living and in the prisonhospital when his comrades were set free.“It is of him I write to you. He is—as you will perchanceremember—the Comte de Tournay. He was then not more than seventeenyears of age, slight of build, with brownish hair, dark grey eyes,and had over the right shoulder a scar from a sword thrust. Itseemeth little possible that, if living, he should still remain inthat Isle of Jersey. He may rather have returned to obscurity inFrance 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 myletter, written in no more hope than I live; and you can well guesshow faint that is. One young nobleman preserved to France may yetbe the great unit that will save her.“Greet my poor countrymen yonder in the name of one who still waitsat a desecrated altar; and for myself you must take me as I am, withthe 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 tillwintertide, 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.
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!’”