The Battle Of The Strong, Complete - Gilbert Parker
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Looking in at the doorway of this hut on a certain autumn day of the year
1797, the first thing to strike your attention was a dog lying asleep on
the hearth. Then a suit of child's clothes on a chair before the fire of
vraic would have caught the eye. The only thing to distinguish this
particular child's dress from that of a thousand others in the island was
the fineness of the material. Every thread of it had been delicately and
firmly knitted, till it was like perfect soft blue cloth, relieved by a
little red silk ribbon at the collar.
The hut contained as well a child's chair, just so high that when placed
by the windows commanding the Paternosters its occupant might see the
waves, like panthers, beating white paws against the ragged granite
pinnacles; the currents writhing below at the foot of the cliffs, or at
half-tide rushing up to cover the sands of the Greve aux Langons, and
like animals in pain, howling through the caverns in the cliffs; the
great nor'wester of November come battering the rocks, shrieking to the
witches who boiled their caldrons by the ruins of Grosnez Castle that the
hunt of the seas was up.
Just high enough was the little chair that of a certain day in the year
its owner might look out and see mystic fires burning round the
Paternosters, and lighting up the sea with awful radiance. Scarce a rock
to be seen from the hut but had some legend like this: the burning
Russian ship at the Paternosters, the fleet of boats with tall prows and
long oars drifting upon the Dirouilles and going down to the cry of the
Crusaders' Dahindahin! the Roche des Femmes at the Ecrehos, where still
you may hear the cries of women in terror of the engulfing sea.
On this particular day, if you had entered the hut, no one would have
welcomed you; but had you tired of waiting, and followed the indentations
of the coast for a mile or more by a deep bay under tall cliffs, you
would have seen a woman and a child coming quickly up the sands. Slung
upon the woman's shoulders was a small fisherman's basket. The child ran
before, eager to climb the hill and take the homeward path.
A man above was watching them. He had ridden along the cliff, had seen
the woman in her boat making for the shore, had tethered his horse in the
quarries near by, and now awaited her. He chuckled as she came on, for he
had ready a surprise for her. To make it more complete he hid himself
behind some boulders, and as she reached the top sprang out with an ugly
grinning.
The woman looked at him calmly and waited for him to speak. There was no
fear on her face, not even surprise; nothing but steady inquiry and quiet
self-possession. With an air of bluster the man said:
"Aha, my lady, I'm nearer than you thought--me!" The child drew in to its
mother's side and clasped her hand. There was no fear in the little
fellow's look, however; he had something of the same self-possession as
the woman, and his eyes were like hers, clear, unwavering, and with a
frankness that consumed you. They were wells of sincerity; open-eyed, you
would have called the child, wanting a more subtle description.
"I'm not to be fooled-me! Come now, let's have the count," said the man,
as he whipped a greasy leather-covered book from his pocket. "Sapristi,
I'm waiting. Stay yourself!" he added roughly as she moved on, and his
greyish-yellow face had an evil joy at thought of the brutal work in
hand.
"Who are you?" she asked, but taking her time to speak.
"Dame! you know who I am."
"I know what you are," she answered quietly.
He did not quite grasp her meaning, but the tone sounded contemptuous,
and that sorted little with his self-importance.
"I'm the Seigneur's bailiff--that's who I am. Gad'rabotin, don't you put
on airs with me! I'm for the tribute, so off with the bag and let's see
your catch."
"I have never yet paid tribute to the seigneur of the manor."
"Well, you'll begin now. I'm the new bailiff, and if you don't pay your
tale, up you come to the court of the fief to-morrow."
She looked him clearly in the eyes. "If I were a man, I should not pay
the tribute, and I should go to the court of the fief to-morrow, but
being a woman--"
She clasped the hand of the child tightly to her for an instant, then
with a sigh she took the basket from her shoulders and, opening it,
added:
"But being a woman, the fish I caught in the sea that belongs to God and
to all men I must divide with the Seigneur whose bailiff spies on poor
fisher-folk."
The man growled an oath and made a motion as though he would catch her by
the shoulder in anger, but the look in her eyes stopped him. Counting out
the fish, and giving him three out of the eight she had caught, she said:
"It matters not so much to me, but there are others poorer than I, they
suffer."
With a leer the fellow stooped, and, taking up the fish, put them in the
pockets of his queminzolle, all slimy from the sea as they were.
"Ba su, you haven't got much to take care of, have you? It don't take
much to feed two mouths--not so much as it does three, Ma'm'selle."
Before he had ended, the woman, without reply to the insult, took the
child by the hand and moved along her homeward path towards Plemont.
"A bi'tot, good-bye!" the bailiff laughed brutally. Standing with his
legs apart and his hands fastened on the fish in the pockets of his long
queminzolle, he called after her in sneering comment: "Ma fistre, your
pride didn't fall--ba su!" Then he turned on his heel.
"Eh ben, here's mackerel for supper," he added as he mounted his horse.
The woman was Guida Landresse, the child was her child, and they lived in
the little house upon the cliff at Plemont. They were hastening thither
now.
CHAPTER XXX
A visitor was awaiting Guida and the child: a man who, first knocking at
the door, then looking in and seeing the room empty, save for the dog
lying asleep by the fire, had turned slowly away, and going to the cliff
edge, looked out over the sea. His movements were deliberate, his body
moved slowly; the whole appearance was of great strength and nervous
power. The face was preoccupied, the eyes were watchful, dark,
penetrating. They seemed not only to watch but to weigh, to meditate,
even to listen--as it were, to do the duty of all the senses at once. In
them worked the whole forces of his nature; they were crucibles wherein
every thought and emotion were fused. The jaw was set and strong, yet it
was not hard. The face contradicted itself. While not gloomy it had lines
like scars telling of past wounds. It was not despairing, it was not
morbid, and it was not resentful; it had the look of one both credulous
and indomitable. Belief was stamped upon it; not expectation or ambition,
but faith and fidelity. You would have said he was a man of one set idea,
though the head had a breadth sorting little with narrowness of purpose.
The body was too healthy to belong to a fanatic, too powerful to be that
of a dreamer alone, too firm for other than a man of action.
Several times he turned to look towards the house and up the pathway
leading from the hillock to the doorway. Though he waited long he did not
seem impatient; patience was part of him, and not the least part. At last
he sat down on a boulder between the house and the shore, and scarcely
moved, as minute after minute passed, and then an hour and more, and no
one came. Presently there was a soft footstep beside him, and he turned.
A dog's nose thrust itself into his hand.
"Biribi, Biribi!" he said, patting its head with his big hand. "Watching
and waiting, eh, old Biribi?" The dog looked into his eyes as if he knew
what was said, and would speak--or, indeed, was speaking in his own
language. "That's the way of life, Biribi--watching and waiting, and
watching--always watching."
Suddenly the dog caught its head away from his hand, gave a short joyful
bark, and ran slowly up the hillock.
"Guida and the child," the man said aloud, moving towards the
house--"Guida and the child!"
He saw her and the little one before they saw him. Presently the child
said: "See, maman," and pointed. Guida started. A swift flush passed over
her face, then she smiled and made a step forward to meet her visitor.
"Maitre Ranulph--Ranulph!" she said, holding out her hand. "It's a long
time since we met."
"A year," he answered simply, "just a year." He looked down at the child,
then stooped, caught him up in his arms and said: "He's grown. Es-tu
gentiment?" he added to the child--"es-tu gentiment, m'sieu'?"
The child did not quite understand. "Please?" it said in true Jersey
fashion--at which the mother was troubled.
"O Guilbert, is that what you should say?" she asked. The child looked up
quaintly at her, and with the same whimsical smile which Guida had given
to another so many years ago, he looked at Ranulph and said: "Pardon,
monsieur."
"Coum est qu'on etes, m'sieu'?" said Ranulph in another patois greeting.
Guida shook her head reprovingly. The child glanced swiftly at his mother
as though asking permission to reply as he wished, then back at Ranulph,
and was about to speak, when Guida said: "I have not taught him the
Jersey patois, Ranulph; only English and French."
Her eyes met his clearly, meaningly. Her look said to him as plainly as
words, The child's destiny is not here in Jersey. But as if he knew that
in this she was blinding herself, and that no one can escape the
influences of surroundings, he held the child back from him, and said
with a smile: "Coum est qu'on vos portest?"
Now the child with elfish sense of the situation replied in Jersey
English: "Naicely, thenk you."
"You see," said Ranulph to Guida, "there are things in us stronger than
we are. The wind, the sea, and people we live with, they make us sing
their song one way or another. It's in our bones."
A look of pain passed over Guida's face, and she did not reply to his
remark, but turned almost abruptly to the doorway, saying, with just the
slightest hesitation: "You will come in?"
There was no hesitation on his part. "Oui-gia!" he said, and stepped
inside.
She hastily hung up the child's cap and her own, and as she gathered in
the soft, waving hair, Ranulph noticed how the years had only burnished
it more deeply and strengthened the beauty of the head. She had made the
gesture unconsciously, but catching the look in his eye a sudden thrill
of anxiety ran through her. Recovering herself, however, and with an air
of bright friendliness, she laid a hand upon the great arm-chair, above
which hung the ancient sword of her ancestor, the Comte Guilbert Mauprat
de Chambery, and said: "Sit here, Ranulph."
Seating himself he gave a heavy sigh--one of those passing breaths of
content which come to the hardest lives now and then: as though the
Spirit of Life itself, in ironical apology for human existence, gives
moments of respite from which hope is born again. Not for over four long
years had Ranulph sat thus quietly in the presence of Guida. At first,
when Maitresse Aimable had told him that Guida was leaving the Place du
Vier Prison to live in this lonely place with her newborn child, he had
gone to entreat her to remain; but Maitresse Aimable had been present
then, and all that he could say--all that he might speak out of his
friendship, out of the old love, now deep pity and sorrow--was of no
avail. It had been borne in upon him then that she was not morbid, but
that her mind had a sane, fixed purpose which she was intent to fulfil.
It was as though she had made some strange covenant with a little
helpless life, with a little face that was all her face; and that
covenant she would keep.
So he had left her, and so to do her service had been granted elsewhere.
The Chevalier, with perfect wisdom and nobility, insisted on being to
Guida what he had always been, accepting what was as though it had always
been, and speaking as naturally of her and the child as though there had
always been a Guida and the child. Thus it was that he counted himself
her protector, though he sat far away in the upper room of Elie
Mattingley's house in the Rue d'Egypte, thinking his own thoughts, biding
the time when she should come back to the world, and mystery be over, and
happiness come once more; hoping only that he might live to see it.
Under his directions, Jean Touzel had removed the few things that Guida
took with her to Plemont; and instructed by him, Elie Mattingley sold her
furniture. Thus Guida had settled at Plemont, and there over four years
of her life were passed.
"Your father--how is he?" she asked presently. "Feeble," replied Ranulph;
"he goes abroad but little now."
"It was said the Royal Court was to make him a gift, in remembrance of
the Battle of Jersey." Ranulph turned his head away from her to the
child, and beckoned him over. The child came instantly.
As Ranulph lifted him on his knee he answered Guida: "My father did not
take it."
"Then they said you were to be constable--the grand monsieur." She
smiled at him in a friendly way.
"They said wrong," replied Ranulph.
"Most people would be glad of it," rejoined Guida. "My mother used to say
you would be Bailly one day."
"Who knows--perhaps I might have been!"
She looked at him half sadly, half curiously. "You--you haven't any
ambitions now, Maitre Ranulph?" It suddenly struck her that perhaps she
was responsible for the maiming of this man's life--for clearly it was
maimed. More than once she had thought of it, but it came home to her
to-day with force. Years ago Ranulph Delagarde had been spoken of as one
who might do great things, even to becoming Bailly. In the eyes of a
Jerseyman to be Bailly was to be great, with jurats sitting in a row on
either side of him and more important than any judge in the Kingdom.
Looking back now Guida realised that Ranulph had never been the same
since that day on the Ecrehos when his father had returned and Philip had
told his wild tale of love.
A great bitterness suddenly welled up in her. Without intention, without
blame, she had brought suffering upon others. The untoward happenings of
her life had killed her grandfather, had bowed and aged the old
Chevalier, had forced her to reject the friendship of Carterette
Mattingley, for the girl's own sake; had made the heart of one fat old
woman heavy within her; and, it would seem, had taken hope and ambition
from the life of this man before her. Love in itself is but a bitter
pleasure; when it is given to the unworthy it becomes a torture--and so
far as Ranulph and the world knew she was wholly unworthy. Of late she
had sometimes wondered if, after all, she had had the right to do as she
had done in accepting the public shame, and in not proclaiming the truth:
if to act for one's own heart, feelings, and life alone, no matter how
perfect the honesty, is not a sort of noble cruelty, or cruel nobility;
an egotism which obeys but its own commandments, finding its own straight
and narrow path by first disbarring the feelings and lives of others. Had
she done what was best for the child? Misgiving upon this point made her
heart ache bitterly. Was life then but a series of trist condonings at
the best, of humiliating compromises at the worst?
She repeated her question to Ranulph now. "You haven't ambition any
longer?"
"I'm busy building ships," he answered evasively. "I build good ships,
they tell me, and I am strong and healthy. As for being connetable, I'd
rather help prisoners free than hale them before the Royal Court. For
somehow when you get at the bottom of most crimes--the small ones
leastways--you find they weren't quite meant. I expect--I expect," he
added gravely, "that half the crimes oughtn't to be punished at all; for
it's queer that things which hurt most can't be punished by law."
"Perhaps it evens up in the long end," answered Guida, turning away from
him to the fire, and feeling her heart beat faster as she saw how the
child nestled in Ranulph's arms--her child which had no father. "You
see," she added, "if some are punished who oughtn't to be, there are
others who ought to be that aren't, and the worst of it is, we care so
little for real justice that we often wouldn't punish if we could. I have
come to feel that. Sometimes if you do exactly what's right, you hurt
some one you don't wish to hurt, and if you don't do exactly what's
right, perhaps that some one else hurts you. So, often, we would rather
be hurt than hurt."
With the last words she turned from the fire and involuntarily faced him.
Their eyes met. In hers were only the pity of life, the sadness, the
cruelty of misfortune, and friendliness for him. In his eyes was purpose
definite, strong.
He went over and put the child in its high chair. Then coming a little
nearer to Guida, he said:
"There's only one thing in life that really hurts--playing false."
Her heart suddenly stopped beating. What was Ranulph going to say? After
all these years was he going to speak of Philip? But she did not reply
according to her thought.
"Have people played false in your life--ever?" she asked.
"If you'll listen to me I'll tell you how," he answered. "Wait, wait,"
she said in trepidation. "It--it has nothing to do with me?"
He shook his head. "It has only to do with my father and myself. When
I've told you, then you must say whether you will have anything to do
with it, or with me.... You remember," he continued, without waiting for
her to speak, "you remember that day upon the Ecrehos--five years ago?
Well, that day I had made up my mind to tell you in so many words what I
hoped you had always known, Guida. I didn't--why? Not because of another
man--no, no, I don't mean to hurt you, but I must tell you the truth
now--not because of another man, for I should have bided my chance with
him."
"Ranulph, Ranulph," she broke in, "you must not speak of this now! Do you
not see it hurts me? It is not like you. It is not right of you--"
A sudden emotion seized him, and his voice shook. "Not right! You should
know that I'd never say one word to hurt you, or do one thing to wrong
you. But I must speak to-day-I must tell you everything. I've thought of
it for four long years, and I know now that what I mean to do is right."
She sat down in the great arm-chair. A sudden weakness came upon her: she
was being brought face to face with days of which she had never allowed
herself to think, for she lived always in the future now.
"Go on," she said helplessly. "What have you to say, Ranulph?"
"I will tell you why I didn't speak of my love to you that day we went to
the Ecrehos. My father came back that day."
"Yes, yes," she said; "of course you had to think of him."
"Yes, I had to think of him, but not in the way you mean. Be patient a
little while," he added.
Then in a few words he told her the whole story of his father's treachery
and crime, from the night before the Battle of Jersey up to their meeting
again upon the Ecrehos.
Guida was amazed and moved. Her heart filled with pity. "Ranulph--poor
Ranulph!" she said, half rising in her seat.
"No, no--wait," he rejoined. "Sit where you are till I tell you all.
Guida, you don't know what a life it has been for me these four years. I
used to be able to look every man in the face without caring whether he
liked me or hated me, for then I had never lied, I had never done a mean
thing to any man; I had never deceived--nannin-gia, never! But when my
father came back, then I had to play a false game. He had lied, and to
save him I either had to hold my peace or tell his story. Speaking was
lying or being silent was lying. Mind you, I'm not complaining, I'm not
saying it because I want any pity. No, I'm saying it because it's the
truth, and I want you to know the truth. You understand what it means to
feel right in your own mind--if you feel that way, the rest of life is
easy. Eh ben, what a thing it is to get up in the morning, build your
fire, make your breakfast, and sit down facing a man whose whole life's a
lie, and that man your own father! Some morning perhaps you forget, and
you go out into the sun, and it all seems good; and you take your tools
and go to work, and the sea comes washing up the shingle, and you think
that the shir-r-r-r of the water on the pebbles and the singing of the
saw and the clang of the hammer are the best music in the world. But all
at once you remember--and then you work harder, not because you love work
now for its own sake, but because it uses up your misery and makes you
tired; and being tired you can sleep, and in sleep you can forget. Yet
nearly all the time you're awake it fairly kills you, for you feel some
one always at your elbow whispering, 'you'll never be happy again, you'll
never be happy again!' And when you tell the truth about anything, that
some one at your elbow laughs and says: 'Nobody believes--your whole
life's a lie!' And if the worst man you know passes you by, that some one
at your elbow says: 'You can wear a mask, but you're no better than he,
no better, no--"'
While Ranulph spoke Guida's face showed a pity and a kindness as deep as
the sorrow which had deepened her nature. She shook her head once or
twice as though to say, Surely, what suffering! and now this seemed to
strike Ranulph, to convict him of selfishness, for he suddenly stopped.
His face cleared, and, smiling with a little of his old-time
cheerfulness, he said:
"Yet one gets used to it and works on because one knows it will all come
right sometime. I'm of the kind that waits."
She looked up at him with her old wide-eyed steadfastness and replied:
"You are a good man, Ranulph." He stood gazing at her a moment without
remark, then he said:
"No, ba su, no! but it's like you to say I am." Then he added suddenly:
"I've told you the whole truth about myself and about my father. He did a
bad thing, and I've stood by him. At first, I nursed my troubles and my
shame. I used to think I couldn't live it out, that I had no right to any
happiness. But I've changed my mind about that-oui-gia! As I hammered
away at my ships month in month out, year in year out, the truth came
home to me at last. What right had I to sit down and brood over my
miseries? I didn't love my father, but I've done wrong for him, and I've
stuck to him. Well, I did love--and I do love--some one else, and I
should only be doing right to tell her, and to ask her to let me stand
with her against the world."
He was looking down at her with all his story in his face. She put out
her hand quickly as if in protest and said:
"Ranulph--ah no, Ranulph--"
"But yes, Guida," he replied with stubborn tenderness, "it is you I
mean--it is you I've always meant. You have always been a hundred times
more to me than my father, but I let you fight your fight alone. I've
waked up now to my mistake. But I tell you true that though I love you
better than anything in the world, if things had gone well with you I'd
never have come to you. I never came, because of my father, and I'd never
have come because you are too far above me always--too fine, too noble
for me. I only come now because we're both apart from the world and
lonely beyond telling; because we need each other. I have just one thing
to say: that we two should stand together. There's none ever can be so
near as those that have had hard troubles, that have had bitter wrongs.
And when there's love too, what can break the bond! You and I are apart
from the world, a black loneliness no one understands. Let us be lonely
no longer. Let us live our lives together. What shall we care for the
rest of the world if we know we mean to do good and no wrong? So I've
come to ask you to let me care for you and the child, to ask you to make
my home your home. My father hasn't long to live, and when he is gone we
could leave this island for ever. Will you come, Guida?"
She had never taken her eyes from his face, and as his story grew her
face lighted with emotion, the glow of a moment's content, of a fleeting
joy. In spite of all, this man loved her, he wanted to marry her--in
spite of all. Glad to know that such men lived--and with how dark
memories contrasting with this bright experience-she said to him once
again: "You are a good man, Ranulph."
Coming near to her, he said in a voice husky with feeling: "Will you be
my wife, Guida?"
She stood up, one hand resting on the arm of the great chair, the other
half held out in pitying deprecation.
"No, Ranulph, no; I can never, never be your wife--never in this world."
For an instant he looked at her dumfounded, then turned away to the
fireplace slowly and heavily. "I suppose it was too much to hope for," he
said bitterly. He realised now how much she was above him, even in her
sorrow and shame.
"You forget," she answered quietly, and her hand went out suddenly to the
soft curls of the child, "you forget what the world says about me."
There was a kind of fierceness in his look as he turned to her again.
"Me--I have always forgotten--everything," he answered. "Have you thought
that for all these years I've believed one word? Secours d'la vie, of
what use is faith, what use to trust, if you thought I believed! I do not
know the truth, for you have not told me; but I do know, as I know I have
a heart in me--I do know that there never was any wrong in you. It is you
who forget," he added quickly--"it is you who forget. I tried to tell you
all this before; three years ago I tried to tell you. You stopped me, you
would not listen. Perhaps you've thought I did not know what has happened
to you every week, almost every day of your life? A hundred times I have
walked here and you haven't seen me--when you were asleep, when you were
fishing, when you were working like a man in the fields and the garden;
you who ought to be cared for by a man, working like a slave at man's
work. But, no, no, you have not thought well of me, or you would have
known that every day I cared, every day I watched, and waited, and
hoped--and believed!"