The Battle Of The Strong, Complete - Gilbert Parker
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"Nonsense-nonsense!" he answered. "Poor little wood-bird, you're
frightened at nothing at all. Come and sit by me." He drew her close to
him.
Her trembling presently grew less. Hundreds of glow-worms were shimmering
in the hedge. The grass-hoppers were whirring in the mielles beyond; a
flutter of wings went by overhead. The leaves were rustling gently; a
fresh wind was coming up from the sea upon the soft, fragrant dusk.
They talked a little while in whispers, her hands in his, his voice
soothing her, his low, hurried words giving her no time to think. But
presently she shivered again, though her heart was throbbing hotly.
"Come into the summer-house, Guida; you are cold, you are shivering." He
rose, with his arm round her waist, raising her gently at the same time.
"Oh no, Philip dear," she said, "I'm not really cold--I don't know what
it is--"
"But indeed you are cold," he answered. "There's a stiff south-easter
rising, and your hands are like ice. Come into the arbour for a minute.
It's warm there, and then--then we'll say good-bye, sweetheart."
His arm round her, he drew her with him to the summer-house, talking to
her tenderly all the time. There was reassurance, comfort, loving care in
his very tones.
How brightly the stars shone, how clearly the music of the stream came
over the hedge! With what lazy restfulness the distant All's well floated
across the mielles from a ship at anchor in the tide-way, how like a
slumber-song the wash of the sea rolled drowsily along the wind! How
gracious the smell of the earth, drinking up the dew of the affluent air,
which the sun, on the morrow, should turn into life-blood for the grass
and trees and flowers!
CHAPTER XVII
Philip was gone. Before breakfast was set upon the table, Guida saw the
Narcissus sail round Noirmont Point and disappear.
Her face had taken on a new expression since yesterday. An old touch of
dreaminess, of vague anticipation was gone--that look which belongs to
youth, which feels the confident charm of the unknown future. Life was
revealed; but, together with joy, wonder and pain informed the
revelation.
A marvel was upon her. Her life was linked to another's, she was a wife.
She was no longer sole captain of herself. Philip would signal, and she
must come until either he or she should die. He had taken her hand, and
she must never let it go; the breath of his being must henceforth give
her new and healthy life, or inbreed a fever which should corrode the
heart and burn away the spirit. Young though she was, she realised
it--but without defining it. The new-found knowledge was diffused in her
character, expressed in her face.
Seldom had a day of Guida's life been so busy. It seemed to her that
people came and went far more than usual. She talked, she laughed a
little, she answered back the pleasantries of the seafaring folk who
passed her doorway or her garden. She was attentive to her grandfather;
exact with her household duties. But all the time she was
thinking--thinking--thinking. Now and again she smiled, but at times too
tears sprang to her eyes, to be quickly dried. More than once she drew in
her breath with a quick, sibilant sound, as though some thought wounded
her; and she flushed suddenly, then turned pale, then came to her natural
colour again.
Among those who chanced to visit the cottage was Maitresse Aimable. She
came to ask Guida to go with her and Jean to the island of Sark, twelve
miles away, where Guida had never been. They would only be gone one
night, and, as Maitresse Aimable said, the Sieur de Mauprat could very
well make shift for once.
The invitation came to Guida like water to thirsty ground. She longed to
get away from the town, to be where she could breathe; for all this day
the earth seemed too small for breath: she gasped for the sea, to be
alone there. To sail with Jean Touzel was practically to be alone, for
Maitresse Aimable never talked; and Jean knew Guida's ways, knew when she
wished to be quiet. In Jersey phrase, he saw beyond his spectacles--great
brass-rimmed things, giving a droll, childlike kind of wisdom to his red
rotund face.
Having issued her invitation, Maitresse Aimable smiled placidly and
seemed about to leave, when, all at once, without any warning, she
lowered herself like a vast crate upon the veille, and sat there looking
at Guida.
At first the grave inquiry of her look startled Guida. She was beginning
to know that sensitive fear assailing those tortured by a secret. How she
loathed this secrecy! How guilty she now felt, where, indeed, no guilt
was! She longed to call aloud her name, her new name, from the housetops.
The voice of Maitresse Aimable roused her. Her ponderous visitor had made
a discovery which had yet been made by no other human being. Her own
absurd romance, her ancient illusion, had taught her to know when love
lay behind another woman's face. And after her fashion, Maitresse Aimable
loved Jean Touzel as it is given to few to love.
"I was sixteen when I fell in love; you're seventeen--you," she said. "Ah
bah, so it goes!"
Guida's face crimsoned. What--how much did Maitresse Aimable know? By
what necromancy had this fat, silent fisher-wife learned the secret which
was the heart of her life, the soul of her being--which was Philip? She
was frightened, but danger made her cautious.
"Can you guess who it is?" she asked, without replying directly to the
oblique charge.
"It is not Maitre Ranulph," answered her friendly inquisitor; "it is not
that M'sieu' Detricand, the vaurien." Guida flushed with annoyance. "It
is not that farmer Blampied, with fifty vergees, all potatoes; it is not
M'sieu' Janvrin, that bat'd'lagoule of an ecrivain. Ah bah, so it goes!"
"Who is it, then?" persisted Guida. "Eh ben, that is the thing!"
"How can you tell that one is in love, Maitresse Aimable?" persisted
Guida.
The other smiled with a torturing placidity, then opened her mouth; but
nothing came of it. She watched Guida moving about the kitchen
abstractedly. Her eye wandered to the racllyi, with its flitches of
bacon, to the dreschiaux and the sanded floor, to the great Elizabethan
oak chair, and at last back to Guida, as though through her the lost
voice might be charmed up again.
The eyes of the two met now, fairly, firmly; and Guida was conscious of a
look in the other's face which she had never seen before. Had then a new
sight been given to herself? She saw and understood the look in Maitresse
Aimable's face, and instantly knew it to be the same that was in her own.
With a sudden impulse she dropped the bashin she was polishing, and,
going over quickly, she silently laid her cheek against her old friend's.
She could feel the huge breast heave, she felt the vast face turn hot,
she was conscious of a voice struggling back to life, and she heard it
say at last:
"Gatd'en'ale, rosemary tea cures a cough, but nothing cures the love--ah
bah, so it goes!"
"Do you love Jean?" whispered Guida, not showing her face, but longing to
hear the experience of another who suffered that joy called love.
Maitresse Aimable's face grew hotter; she did not speak, but patted
Guida's back with her heavy hand and nodded complacently.
"Have you always loved him?" asked Guida again, with an eager
inquisition, akin to that of a wayside sinner turned chapel-going saint,
hungry to hear what chanced to others when treading the primrose path.
Maitresse Aimable again nodded, and her arm drew closer about Guida.
There was a slight pause, then came an unsophisticated question:
"Has Jean always loved you?"
A short silence, and then the voice said with the deliberate prudence of
an unwilling witness:
"It is not the man who wears the wedding-ring." Then, as if she had been
disloyal in even suggesting that Jean might hold her lightly, she added,
almost eagerly--an enthusiasm tempered by the pathos of a half-truth:
"But my Jean always sleeps at home."
This larger excursion into speech gave her courage, and she said more;
and even as Guida listened hungrily--so soon had come upon her the
apprehensions and wavering moods of loving woman!--she was wondering to
hear this creature, considered so dull by all, speak as though out of a
watchful and capable mind. What further Maitresse Aimable said was proof
that if she knew little and spake little, she knew that little well; and
if she had gathered meagrely from life, she had at least winnowed out
some small handfuls of grain from the straw and chaff. At last her
sagacity impelled her to say:
"If a man's eyes won't see, elder-water can't make him; if he will--ah
bah, glad and good!" Both arms went round Guida, and hugged her
awkwardly.
Her voice came up but once more that morning. As she left Guida in the
doorway, she said with a last effort:
"I will have one bead to pray for you, trejous." She showed her rosary,
and, Huguenot though she was, Guida touched the bead reverently. "And if
there is war, I will have two beads, trejous. A bi'tot--good-bye!"
Guida stood watching her from the doorway, and the last words of the
fisher-wife kept repeating themselves through her brain: "And if there is
war, I will have two beads, trejous."
So, Maitresse Aimable knew she loved Philip! How strange it was that one
should read so truly without words spoken, or through seeing acts which
reveal. She herself seemed to read Maitresse Aimable all at once--read
her by virtue, and in the light, of true love, the primitive and
consuming feeling in the breast of each for a man. Were not words
necessary for speech after all? But here she stopped short suddenly; for
if love might find and read love, why was it she needed speech of Philip?
Why was it her spirit kept beating up against the hedge beyond which his
inner self was, and, unable to see that beyond, needed reassurance by
words, by promises and protestations?
All at once she was angry with herself for thinking thus concerning
Philip. Of course Philip loved her deeply. Had she not seen the light of
true love in his eyes, and felt the arms of love about her? Suddenly she
shuddered and grew bitter, and a strange rebellion broke loose in her.
Why had Philip failed to keep his promise not to see her again after the
marriage, till he should return from Portsmouth? It was selfish,
painfully, terribly selfish of him. Why, even though she had been foolish
in her request--why had he not done as she wished? Was that love--was it
love to break the first promise he had ever made to his wife?
Yet she excused him to herself. Men were different from women, and men
did not understand what troubled a woman's heart and spirit; they were
not shaken by the same gusts of emotion; they--they were not so fine;
they did not think so deeply on what a woman, when she loves, thinks
always, and acts upon according to her thought. If Philip were only here
to resolve these fears, these perplexities, to quiet the storm in her!
And yet, could he--could he? For now she felt that this storm was rooting
up something very deep and radical in her. It frightened her, but for the
moment she fought it passionately.
She went into her garden; and here among her animals and her flowers it
seemed easier to be gay of heart; and she laughed a little, and was most
tender and pretty with her grandfather when he came home from spending
the afternoon with the Chevalier.
In this manner the first day of her marriage passed--in happy
reminiscence and in vague foreboding; in affection yet in reproach as the
secret wife; and still as the loving, distracted girl, frightened at her
own bitterness, but knowing it to be justified.
The late evening was spent in gaiety with her grandfather and the
Chevalier; but at night when she went to bed she could not sleep. She
tossed from side to side; a hundred thoughts came and went. She grew
feverish, her breath choked her, and she got up and opened the window. It
was clear, bright moonlight, and from where she was she could see the
mielles and the ocean and the star-sown sky above and beyond. There she
sat and thought and thought till morning.
CHAPTER XVIII
At precisely the same moment in the morning two boats set sail from the
south coast of Jersey: one from Grouville Bay, and one from the harbour
of St. Heliers. Both were bound for the same point; but the first was to
sail round the east coast of the island, and the second round the west
coast.
The boat leaving Grouville Bay would have on her right the Ecrehos and
the coast of France, with the Dirouilles in her course; the other would
have the wide Atlantic on her left, and the Paternosters in her course.
The two converging lines should meet at the island of Sark.
The boat leaving Grouville Bay was a yacht carrying twelve swivel-guns,
bringing Admiralty despatches to the Channel Islands. The boat leaving
St. Heliers harbour was a new yawl-rigged craft owned by Jean Touzel. It
was the fruit of ten years' labour, and he called her the Hardi Biaou,
which, in plain English, means "very beautiful." This was the third time
she had sailed under Jean's hand. She carried two carronades, for war
with France was in the air, and it was Jean's whim to make a show of
preparation, for, as he said: "If the war-dogs come, my pups can bark
too. If they don't, why, glad and good, the Hardi Biaou is big enough to
hold the cough-drops."
The business of the yacht Dorset was important that was why so small a
boat was sent on the Admiralty's affairs. Had she been a sloop she might
have attracted the attention of a French frigate or privateer wandering
the seas in the interests of Vive la Nation! The business of the yawl was
quite unimportant. Jean Touzel was going to Sark with kegs of wine and
tobacco for the seigneur, and to bring over whatever small cargo might be
waiting for Jersey. The yacht Dorset had aboard her the Reverend Lorenzo
Dow, an old friend of her commander. He was to be dropped at Sark, and
was to come back with Jean Touzel in the Hardi Biaou, the matter having
been arranged the evening before in the Vier Marchi. The saucy yawl had
aboard Maitresse Aimable, Guida, and a lad to assist Jean in working the
sails. Guida counted as one of the crew, for there was little in the
handling of a boat she did not know.
As the Hardi Biaou was leaving the harbour of St. Heliers, Jean told
Guida that Mr. Dow was to join them on the return journey. She had a
thrill of excitement, for this man was privy to her secret, he was
connected with her life history. But before the little boat passed St.
Brelade's Bay she was lost in other thoughts: in picturing Philip on the
Narcissus, in inwardly conning the ambitious designs of his career. What
he might yet be, who could tell? She had read more than a little of the
doings of great naval commanders, both French and British. She knew how
simple midshipmen had sometimes become admirals, and afterwards peers of
the realm.
Suddenly a new thought came to her. Suppose that Philip should rise to
high places, would she be able to follow? What had she seen--what did she
know--what social opportunities had been hers? How would she fit with an
exalted station?
Yet Philip had said that she could take her place anywhere with grace and
dignity; and surely Philip knew. If she were gauche or crude in manners,
he would not have cared for her; if she were not intelligent, he would
scarcely have loved her. Of course she had read French and English to
some purpose; she could speak Spanish--her grandfather had taught her
that; she understood Italian fairly--she had read it aloud on Sunday
evenings with the Chevalier. Then there were Corneille, Shakespeare,
Petrarch, Cervantes--she had read them all; and even Wace, the old Norman
trouvere, whose Roman de Rou she knew almost by heart. Was she so very
ignorant?
There was only one thing to do: she must interest herself in what
interested Philip; she must read what he read; she must study naval
history; she must learn every little thing about a ship of war. Then
Philip would be able to talk with her of all he did at sea, and she would
understand.
When, a few days ago, she had said to him that she did not know how she
was going to be all that his wife ought to be, he had answered her: "All
I ask is that you be your own sweet self, for it is just you that I want,
you with your own thoughts and imaginings, and not a Guida who has
dropped her own way of looking at things to take on some one else's--even
mine. It's the people who try to be clever who never are; the people who
are clever never think of trying to be."
Was Philip right? Was she really, in some way, a little bit clever? She
would like to believe so, for then she would be a better companion for
him. After all, how little she knew of Philip--now, why did that thought
always come up! It made her shudder. They two would really have to begin
with the A B C of understanding. To understand was a passion, it was
breathing and life to her. She would never, could never, be satisfied
with skimming the surface of life as the gulls out there skimmed the
water. . . . Ah, how beautiful the morning was, and how the bracing air
soothed her feverishness! All this sky, and light, and uplifting sea were
hers, they fed her with their strength--they were all so companionable.
Since Philip had gone--and that was but four days ago--she had sat down a
dozen times to write to him, but each time found she could not. She, drew
back from it because she wanted to empty out her heart, and yet, somehow,
she dared not. She wanted to tell Philip all the feelings that possessed
her; but how dared she write just what she felt: love and bitterness, joy
and indignation, exaltation and disappointment, all in one? How was it
these could all exist in a woman's heart at once? Was it because Love was
greater than all, deeper than all, overcame all, forgave all? and was
that what women felt and did always? Was that their lot, their destiny?
Must they begin in blind faith, then be plunged into the darkness of
disillusion, shaken by the storm of emotion, taste the sting in the fruit
of the tree of knowledge--and go on again the same, yet not the same?
More or less incoherently these thoughts flitted through Guida's mind. As
yet her experiences were too new for her to fasten securely upon their
meaning. In a day or two she would write to Philip freely and warmly of
her love and of her hopes; for, maybe, by that time nothing but happiness
would be left in the caldron of feeling. There was a packet going to
England in three days--yes, she would wait for that. And Philip--alas! a
letter from him could not reach her for at least a fortnight yet; and
then in another month after that he would be with her, and she would be
able to tell the whole world that she was the wife of Captain Philip
d'Avranche, of the good ship Araminta--for that he was to be when he came
again.
She was not sad now, indeed she was almost happy, for her thoughts had
brought her so close to Philip that she could feel his blue eyes looking
at her, the strong clasp of his hand. She could almost touch the brown
hair waving back carelessly from the forehead, untouched by powder, in
the fashion of the time; and she could hear his cheery laugh quite
plainly, so complete was the illusion.
St. Ouen's Bay, l'Etacq, Plemont, dropped behind them as they sailed.
They drew on to where the rocks of the Paternosters foamed to the unquiet
sea. Far over between the Nez du Guet and the sprawling granite pack of
the Dirouilles, was the Admiralty yacht winging to the nor'-west. Beyond
it again lay the coast of France, the tall white cliffs, the dark blue
smoky curve ending in Cap de la Hague.
To-day there was something new in this picture of the coast of France.
Against the far-off sands were some little black spots, seemingly no
bigger than a man's hand. Again and again Jean Touzel had eyed these
moving specks with serious interest; and Maitresse Aimable eyed Jean, for
Jean never looked so often at anything without good reason. If,
perchance, he looked three times at her consecutively, she gaped with
expectation, hoping that he would tell her that her face was not so red
to-day as usual--a mark of rare affection.
At last Guida noticed Jean's look. "What is it that you see, Maitre
Jean?" she said.
"Little black wasps, I think, ma'm'selle-little black wasps that sting."
Guida did not understand.
Jean gave a curious cackle, and continued: "Ah, those wasps--they have a
sting so nasty!" He paused an instant, then he added in a lower voice,
and not quite so gaily: "Yon is the way that war begins."
Guida's fingers suddenly clinched rigidly upon the tiller. "War? Do--do
you think that's a French fleet, Maitre Jean?"
"Steadee--steadee-keep her head up, ma'm'selle," he answered, for Guida
had steered unsteadily for the instant. "Steadee--shale ben! that's
right--I remember twenty years ago the black wasps they fly on the coast
of France like that. Who can tell now?" He shrugged his shoulders.
"P'rhaps they are coum out to play, but see you, when there is trouble in
the nest it is my notion that wasps come out to sting. Look at France
now, they all fight each other there, ma fuifre! When folks begin to slap
faces at home, look out when they get into the street. That is when the
devil have a grand fete."
Guida's face grew paler as he spoke. The eyes of Maitresse Aimable were
fixed on her now, and unconsciously the ponderous good-wife felt in that
warehouse she called her pocket for her rosary. An extra bead was there
for Guida, and one for another than Guida. But Maltresse Aimable did
more: she dived into the well of silence for her voice; and for the first
time in her life she showed anger with Jean. As her voice came forth she
coloured, her cheeks expanded, and the words sallied out in puffs:
"Nannin, Jean, you smell shark when it is but herring. You cry wasp when
the critchett sing. I will believe war when I see the splinters fly--me!"
Jean looked at his wife in astonishment. That was the longest speech he
had ever heard her make. It was also the first time that her rasp of
criticism had ever been applied to him, and with such asperity too. He
could not make it out. He looked from his wife to Guida; then, suddenly
arrested by the look in her face, he scratched his shaggy head in
despair, and moved about in his seat.
"Sit you still, Jean," said his wife sharply; "you're like peas on a hot
griddle."
This confused Jean beyond recovery, for never in his life had Aimable
spoken to him like that. He saw there was something wrong, and he did not
know whether to speak or hold his tongue; or, as he said to himself, he
"didn't know which eye to wink." He adjusted his spectacles, and, pulling
himself together, muttered: "Smoke of thunder, what's all this?"
Guida wasn't a wisp of quality to shiver with terror at the mere mention
of war with France; but ba su, thought Jean, there was now in her face a
sharp, fixed look of pain, in her eyes a bewildered anxiety.
Jean scratched his head still more. Nothing particular came of that.
There was no good trying to work the thing out suddenly, he wasn't clever
enough. Then out of an habitual good-nature he tried to bring better
weather fore and aft.
"Eh ben," said he, "in the dark you can't tell a wasp from a honey-bee
till he lights on you; and that's too far off there"--he jerked a finger
towards the French shore--"to be certain sure. But if the wasp nip, you
make him pay for it, the head and the tail--yes, I think-me. . . .
There's the Eperquerie," he added quickly, nodding in front of him.
The island of Sark lifted a green bosom above her perpendicular cliffs,
with the pride of an affluent mother among her brood. Dowered by sun and
softened by a delicate haze like an exquisite veil of modesty, this
youngest daughter of the isles clustered with her kinsfolk in the emerald
archipelago between the great seas.
The outlines of the coast grew plainer as the Hardi Biaou drew nearer and
nearer. From end to end there was no harbour upon this southern side.
There was no roadway, as it seemed no pathway at all up the overhanging
cliffs-ridges of granite and grey and green rock, belted with mist,
crowned by sun, and fretted by the milky, upcasting surf. Little islands,
like outworks before it, crouched slumberously to the sea, as a dog lays
its head in its paws and hugs the ground close, with vague, soft-blinking
eyes.
By the shore the air was white with sea-gulls flying and circling, rising
and descending, shooting up straight into the air; their bodies smooth
and long like the body of a babe in white samite, their feathering tails
spread like a fan, their wings expanding on the ambient air. In the tall
cliffs were the nests of dried seaweed, fastened to the edge of a rocky
bracket on lofty ledges, the little ones within piping to the little ones
without. Every point of rock had its sentinel gull, looking-looking out
to sea like some watchful defender of a mystic city. Piercing might be
the cries of pain or of joy from the earth, more piercing were their
cries; dark and dreadful might be the woe of those who went down to the
sea in ships, but they shrilled on unheeding, their yellow beaks still
yellowing in the sun, keeping their everlasting watch and ward.