The Battle Of The Strong, Complete - Gilbert Parker
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Now, all in a minute, his horizon was blackened. This adventurous
gallant, this squire of dames, had done in a day what he had worked, step
by step, to do through all these years. This skipping seafarer, with his
powder and lace, his cocked hat and gold-handled sword, had whistled at
the gates which he had guarded and by which he had prayed, and all in a
minute every defence had been thrown down, and Guida--his own Guida--had
welcomed the invader with shameless eagerness.
He crossed the islet slowly. It seemed to him--and for a moment it was
the only thing of which he was conscious--that the heels of his boots
shrieked in the shingle, and with every step he was raising an immense
weight. He paused behind the chapel. After a little the smother lifted
slowly from his brain.
"I'll believe in her still," he said aloud. "It's all his cursed tongue.
As a boy he could make every other boy do what he wanted because his
tongue knows how to twist words. She's been used to honest people; he's
talked a new language to her--tricks caught in his travels. But she shall
know the truth. She shall find out what sort of a man he is. I'll make
her see under his pretty foolings."
He turned, and leaned against the wall of the chapel. "Guida, Guida," he
said, speaking as if she were there before him, "you won't--you won't go
to him, and spoil your life, and mine too. Guida, ma couzaine, you'll
stay here, in the land of your birth. You'll make your home here--here
with me, ma chere couzaine. Ah, but then you shall be my wife in spite of
him, in spite of a thousand Philip d'Avranches!"
He drew himself up firmly, for a great resolve was made. His path was
clear. It was a fair fight, he thought; the odds were not so much against
him after all, for his birth was as good as Philip d'Avranche's, his
energy was greater, and he was as capable and as clever in his own way.
He walked quickly down the shingle towards the wreck on the other side of
the islet. As he passed the hut where the sick man lay, he heard a
querulous voice. It was not that of the Reverend Lorenzo Dow.
Where had he heard that voice before? A shiver of fear ran through him.
Every sense and emotion in him was arrested. His life seemed to reel
backward. Curtain after curtain of the past unfolded.
He hurried to the door of the hut and looked in.
A man with long white hair and straggling grey beard turned to him a
haggard face, on which were written suffering, outlawry, and evil.
"Great God--my father!" Ranulph said.
He drew back slowly like a man who gazes upon some horrible fascinating
thing, and then turned heavily towards the sea, his face set, his senses
paralysed.
"My father not dead! My father--the traitor!" he groaned.
CHAPTER XII
Philip d'Avranche sauntered slowly through the Vier Marchi, nodding right
and left to people who greeted him. It was Saturday and market day in
Jersey. The square was crowded with people. All was a cheerful babel;
there was movement, colour everywhere. Here were the high and the humble,
hardi vlon and hardi biaou--the ugly and the beautiful, the dwarfed and
the tall, the dandy and the dowdy, the miser and the spendthrift; young
ladies gay in silks, laces, and scarfs from Spain, and gentlemen with
powdered wigs from Paris; sailors with red tunics from the Mediterranean,
and fishermen with blue and purple blouses from Brazil; man-o'-war's-men
with Greek petticoats, Turkish fezzes, and Portuguese espadras. Jersey
housewives, in bedgones and white caps, with molleton dresses rolled up
to the knees, pushed their way through the crowd, jars of black butter,
or jugs of cinnamon brandy on their heads. From La Pyramide--the
hospitable base of the statue of King George II--fishwives called the
merits of their conger-eels and ormers; and the clatter of a thousand
sabots made the Vier Marchi sound like a ship-builder's yard.
In this square Philip had loitered and played as a child. Down there,
leaning against a pillar of the Corn Market piazza was Elie Mattingley,
the grizzly-haired seller of foreign silks and droll odds and ends, who
had given him a silver flageolet when he was a little lad. There were the
same swaggering manners, the big gold rings in his ears; there was the
same red sash about the waist, the loose unbuttoned shirt, the truculent
knifebelt; there were the same keen brown eyes looking you through and
through, and the mouth with a middle tooth in both jaws gone. Elie
Mattingley, pirate, smuggler, and sometime master of a privateer, had had
dealings with people high and low in the island, and they had not always,
nor often, been conducted in the open Vier Marchi.
Fifteen years ago he used to have his little daughter Carterette always
beside him when he sold his wares. Philip wondered what had become of
her. He glanced round. . . . Ah, there she was, not far from her father,
over in front of the guard-house, selling, at a little counter with a
canopy of yellow silk (brought by her father from that distant land
called Piracy), mogues of hot soupe a la graisse, simnels, curds, coffee,
and Jersey wonders, which last she made on the spot by dipping the little
rings of dough in a bashin of lard on a charcoal fire at her side.
Carterette was short and spare, with soft yet snapping eyes as black as
night--or her hair; with a warm, dusky skin, a tongue which clattered
pleasantly, and very often wisely. She had a hand as small and plump as a
baby's, and a pretty foot which, to the disgust of some mothers and
maidens of greater degree, was encased in a red French slipper, instead
of the wooden sabot stuffed with straw, while her ankles were nicely
dressed in soft black stockings, in place of the woolen native hose, as
became her station.
Philip watched Carterette now for a moment, a dozen laughing memories
coming back to him; for he had teased her and played with her when she
was a child, had even called her his little sweetheart. Looking at her he
wondered what her fate would be: To marry one of these fishermen or
carters? No, she would look beyond that. Perhaps it would be one of those
adventurers in bearskin cap and buckskin vest, home from Gaspe, where
they had toiled in the great fisheries, some as common fishermen, some as
mates and maybe one or two as masters. No, she would look beyond that.
Perhaps she would be carried off by one of those well-to-do,
black-bearded young farmers in the red knitted queminzolle, blue
breeches, and black cocked hat, with his kegs of cider and bunches of
parsley.
That was more likely, for among the people there was every prejudice in
her favour. She was Jersey born, her father was reputed to have laid by a
goodly sum of money--not all got in this Vier Marchi; and that he was a
smuggler and pirate roused a sentiment in their bosoms nearer to envy
than aught else. Go away naked and come back clothed, empty and come back
filled, simple and come back with a wink of knowledge, penniless and come
back with the price of numerous vergees of land, and you might answer the
island catechism without fear. Be lambs in Jersey, but harry the rest of
the world with a lion's tooth, was the eleventh commandment in the Vier
Marchi.
Yes, thought Philip idly now, as he left the square, the girl would
probably marry a rich farmer, and when he came again he should find her
stout of body, and maybe shrewish of face, crying up the virtues of her
black butter and her knitted stockings, having made the yellow silk
canopy above her there into a gorgeous quilt for the nuptial bed.
Yet the young farmers who hovered near her now, buying a glass of cider
or a mogue of soup, received but scant notice. She laughed with them,
treated them lightly, and went about her business again with a toss of
the head. Not once did she show a moment's real interest, not until a
fine upstanding fellow came round the corner from the Rue des Vignes, and
passed her booth.
She was dipping a doughnut into the boiling lard, but she paused with it
suspended. The little dark face took on a warm glow, the eyes glistened.
"Maitre Ranulph!" called the girl softly. Then as the tall fellow turned
to her and lifted his cap she added briskly: "Where away so fast with
face hard as hatchet?"
"Garcon Cart'rette!" he said abstractedly--he had always called her that.
He was about to move on. She frowned in vexation, yet she saw that he was
pale and heavy-eyed, and she beckoned him to come to her.
"What's gone wrong, big wood-worm?" she said, eyeing him closely, and
striving anxiously to read his face. He looked at her sharply, but the
softness in her black eyes somehow reassured him, and he said quite
kindly:
"Nannin, 'tite garcon, nothing's matter."
"I thought you'd be blithe as a sparrow with your father back from the
grave!" Then as Ranulph's face seemed to darken, she added: "He's not
worse--he's not worse?"
"No, no, he's well enough now," he said, forcing a smile.
She was not satisfied, but she went on talking, intent to find the cause
of his abstraction. "Only to think," she said--"only to think that he
wasn't killed at all at the Battle of Jersey, and was a prisoner in
France, and comes back here--and we all thought him dead, didn't we?"
"I left him for dead that morning on the Grouville road," he answered.
Then, as if with a great effort, and after the manner of one who has
learned a part, he went on: "As the French ran away mad, paw of one on
tail of other, they found him trying to drag himself along. They nabbed
him, and carried him aboard their boats to pilot them out from the Rocque
Platte, and over to France. Then because they hadn't gobbled us up here,
what did the French Gover'ment do? They clapped a lot of 'em in irons and
sent 'em away to South America, and my father with 'em. That's why we
heard neither click nor clack of him all this time. He broke free a year
ago. Then he fell sick. When he got well he set sail for Jersey, was
wrecked off the Ecrehos, and everybody knows the rest. Diantre, he's had
a hard time!"
The girl had listened intently. She had heard all these things in flying
rumours, and she had believed the rumours; but now that Maitre Ranulph
told her--Ranulph, whose word she would have taken quicker than the oath
of a Jurat--she doubted. With the doubt her face flushed as though she
herself had been caught in a lie, had done a mean thing. Somehow her
heart was aching for him, she knew not why.
All this time she had held the doughnut poised; she seemed to have
forgotten her work. Suddenly the wooden fork holding the cake was taken
from her fingers by the daft Dormy Jamais who had crept near.
"Des monz a fou," said he, "to spoil good eating so! What says
fishing-man: When sails flap, owner may whistle for cargo. Tut, tut,
goose Carterette!"
Carterette took no note, but said to Ranulph:
"Of course he had to pilot the Frenchmen back, or they'd have killed him,
and it'd done no good to refuse. He was the first man that fought the
French on the day of the battle, wasn't he? I've always heard that."
Unconsciously she was building up a defence for Olivier Delagarde. She
was, as it were, anticipating insinuation from other quarters. She was
playing Ranulph's game, because she instinctively felt that behind this
story there was gloom in his mind and mystery in the tale itself. She
noticed too that he shrank from her words. She was not very quick of
intellect, so she had to feel her way fumblingly. She must have time to
think, but she said tentatively:
"I suppose it's no secret? I can tell any one at all what happened to
your father?" she asked.
"Oh so--sure so!" he said rather eagerly. "Tell every one about it. He
doesn't mind."
Maitre Ranulph deceived but badly. Bold and convincing in all honest
things, he was, as yet, unconvincing in this grave deception. All these
years he had kept silence, enduring what he thought a buried shame; but
that shame had risen from the dead, a living agony. His father had
betrayed the island to the French: if the truth were known to-day they
would hang him for a traitor on the Mont es Pendus. No mercy and scant
shrift would be shown him.
Whatever came, he must drink this bitter cup to the dregs. He could never
betray his own father. He must consume with inward disgust while Olivier
Delagarde shamelessly babbled his monstrous lies to all who would listen.
And he must tell these lies too, conceal, deceive, and live in hourly
fear of discovery. He must sit opposite his father day by day at table,
talk with him, care for him, shrinking inwardly at every knock at the
door lest it should be an officer come to carry the pitiful traitor off
to prison.
And, more than all, he must give up for ever the thought of Guida. Here
was the acid that ate home, the black hopelessness, the machine of fate
clamping his heart. Never again could he rise in the morning with a song
on his lips; never again his happy meditations go lilting with the
clanging blows of the adze and the singing of the saws.
All these things had vanished when he looked into a tent-door on the
Ecrehos. Now, in spite of himself, whenever he thought upon Guida's face,
this other fateful figure, this Medusan head of a traitor, shot in
between.
Since his return his father had not been strong enough to go abroad; but
to-day he meant to walk to the Vier Marchi. At first Ranulph had decided
to go as usual to his ship-yard at St. Aubin's, but at last in anxious
fear he too had come to the Vier Marchi. There was a horrible fascination
in being where his father was, in listening to his falsehoods, in
watching the turns and twists of his gross hypocrisies.
But yet at times he was moved by a strange pity, for Olivier Delagarde
was, in truth, far older than his years: a thin, shuffling, pallid
invalid, with a face of mingled sanctity and viciousness. If the old man
lied, and had not been in prison all these years, he must have had misery
far worse, for neither vice nor poverty alone could so shatter a human
being. The son's pity seemed to look down from a great height upon the
contemptible figure with the beautiful white hair and the abominable
mouth. This compassion kept him from becoming hard, but it would also
preserve him to hourly sacrifice--Prometheus chained to his rock. In the
short fortnight that had gone since the day upon the Ecrehos, he had
changed as much as do most people in ten years. Since then he had seen
neither Philip nor Guida.
To Carterette he seemed not the man she had known. With her woman's
instinct she knew that he loved Guida, but she also knew that nothing
which might have happened between them could have brought this look of
shame and shrinking into his face. As these thoughts flashed through her
mind her heart grew warmer. Suppose Ranulph was in some trouble--well,
now might be her great chance. She might show him that he could not live
without her friendship, and then perhaps, by-and-bye, that he could not
live without her love.
Ranulph was about to move on. She stopped him. "When you need me, Maitre
Ranulph, you know where to find me," she said scarce above a whisper. He
looked at her sharply, almost fiercely, but again the tenderness of her
eyes, the directness of her gaze, convinced him. She might be, as she
was, variable with other people; with himself she was invincibly
straightforward.
"P'raps you don't trust me?" she added, for she read his changing
expression.
"I'd trust you quick enough," he said.
"Then do it now--you're having some bad trouble," she rejoined.
He leaned over her stall and said to her steadily and with a little
moroseness:
"See you, ma garche, if I was in trouble I'd bear it by myself. I'd ask
no one to help me. I'm a man, and I can stand alone. Don't go telling
folks I look as if I was in trouble. I'm going to launch to-morrow the
biggest ship ever sent from a Jersey building yard--that doesn't look
like trouble, does it? Turn about is fair play, garcon Cart'rette: so
when you're in trouble come to me. You're not a man, and it's a man's
place to help a woman, all the more when she's a fine and good little
stand-by like you."
He forced a smile, turned upon his heel, and threaded his way through the
square, keeping a look-out for his father. This he could do easily, for
he was the tallest man in the Vier Marchi by at least three inches.
Carterette, oblivious of all else, stood gazing after him. She was only
recalled to herself by Dormy Jamais. He was diligently cooking her Jersey
wonders, now and then turning his eyes up at her--eyes which were like
spots of greyish, yellowish light in a face of putty and flour; without
eyelashes, without eyebrows, a little like a fish's, something like a
monkey's. They were never still. They were set in the face like little
round glow worms in a mould of clay. They burned on night and day--no man
had ever seen Dormy Jamais asleep.
Carterette did not resent his officiousness. He had a kind of kennel in
her father's boat-house, and he was devoted to her. More than all else,
Dormy Jamaas was clean. His clothes were mostly rags, but they were
comely, compact rags. When he washed them no one seemed to know, but no
languid young gentleman lounging where the sun was warmest in the Vier
Marchi was better laundered.
As Carterette turned round to him he was twirling a cake on the wooden
fork, and trolling:
"Caderoussel he has a coat,
All lined with paper brown;
And only when it freezes hard
He wears it in the town.
What do you think of Caderoussel?
Ah, then, but list to me:
Caderoussel is a bon e'fant--"
"Come, come, dirty-fingers," she said. "Leave my work alone, and stop
your chatter."
The daft one held up his fingers, but to do so had to thrust a cake into
his mouth.
"They're as clean as a ha'pendy," he said, mumbling through the cake.
Then he emptied his mouth of it, and was about to place it with the
others.
"Black beganne," she cried; "how dare you! V'la--into your pocket with
it!"
He did as he was bid, humming to himself again:
"M'sieu' de la Palisse is dead,
Dead of a maladie;
Quart' of an hour before his death
He could breathe like you and mel
Ah bah, the poor M'sieu'
De la Palisse is dead!"
"Shut up! Man doux d'la vie, you chatter like a monkey!"
"That poor Maitre Ranulph," said Dormy, "once he was lively as a basket
of mice; but now--"
"Well, now, achocre?" she said irritably, stamping her foot.
"Now the cat's out of the bag--oui-gia!"
"You're as cunning as a Norman--you've got things in your noddee!" she
cried with angry impatience.
He nodded, grinning. "As thick as haws," he answered.
She heard behind her a laugh of foolish good-nature, which made her angry
too, for it seemed to be making fun of her. She wheeled to see M. Savary
dit Detricand leaning with both elbows on the little counter, his chin in
his hand, grinning provokingly,
"Oh, it's you!" she said snappishly; "I hope you're pleased."
"Don't be cross," he answered, his head swinging unsteadily. "I wasn't
laughing at you, heaven-born Jersienne. I wasn't, 'pon honour! I was
laughing at a thing I saw five minutes ago." He nodded in gurgling
enjoyment now. "You mustn't mind me, seraphine," he added, "I'd a hot
night, and I'm warm as a thrush now. But I saw a thing five minutes
ago!"--he rolled on the stall. "'Sh!" he added in a loud mock whisper,
"here he comes now. Milles diables, but here's a tongue for you, and
here's a royal gentleman speaking truth like a travelling dentist!"
Carterette followed his gesture and saw coming out of the Route es
Couochons, where the brave Peirson issued to his death eleven years
before, Maitre Ranulph's father.
He walked with the air of a man courting observation. He imagined himself
a hero; he had told his lie so many times now that he almost believed it
himself.
He was soon surrounded. Disliked when he lived in Jersey before the
invasion years ago, that seemed forgotten now; for word had gone abroad
that he was a patriot raised from the dead, an honour to his country.
Many pressed forward to shake hands with him.
"Help of heaven, is that you, m'sieu'?" asked one. "You owed me five
chelins, but I wiped it out, O my good!" cried another generously.
"Shaken," cried a tall tarter holding out his hand. He had lived in
England, and now easily made English verbs into French.
One after another called on him to tell his story; some tried to hurry
him to La Pyramide, but others placed a cider-keg near, and almost lifted
him on to it.
"Go on, go on, tell us the story," they cried. "To the devil with the
Frenchies!"
"Here--here's a dish of Adam's ale," cried an old woman, handing him a
bowl of water.
They cheered him lustily. The pallor of his face changed to a warmth. He
had the fatuousness of those who deceive with impunity. With confidence
he unreeled the dark line out to the end. When he had told his story,
still hungry for applause, he repeated the account of how the
tatterdemalion brigade of Frenchmen came down upon him out of the night,
and how he should have killed Rullecour himself had it not been for an
officer who struck him down from behind.
During the recital Ranulph had drawn near. He watched the enthusiasm with
which the crowd received every little detail of the egregious history.
Everybody believed the old man, who was safe, no matter what happened to
himself, Ranulph Delagarde, ex-artilleryman, ship-builder--and son of a
criminal. At any rate the worst was over now, the first public statement
of the lifelong lie. He drew a sigh of relief and misery in one. At that
instant he caught sight of the flushed face of Detricand, who broke into
a laugh of tipsy mirth when Olivier Delagarde told how the French officer
had stricken him down as he was about finishing off Rullecour.
All at once the whole thing rushed upon Ranulph. What a fool he had been!
He had met this officer of Rullecour's these ten years past, and never
once had the Frenchman, by so much as a hint, suggested that he knew the
truth about his father. Here and now the contemptuous mirth upon the
Frenchman's face told the whole story. The danger and horror of the
situation descended on him. Instantly he started towards Detricand.
At that moment his father caught sight of Detricand also, saw the laugh,
the sneer, and recognised him. Halting short in his speech he turned pale
and trembled, staring as at a ghost. He had never counted on this. His
breath almost stopped as he saw Ranulph approach Detricand.
Now the end was come. His fabric of lies would be torn down; he would be
tried and hanged on the Mont es Pendus, or even be torn to pieces by this
crowd. Yet he could not have moved a foot from where he was if he had
been given a million pounds.
The sight of Ranulph's face revealed to Detricand the true meaning of
this farce and how easily it might become a tragedy. He read the story of
the son's torture, of his sacrifice; and his decision was instantly made:
he would befriend him. Looking straight into his eyes, his own said he
had resolved to know nothing whatever about this criminal on the
cider-cask. The two men telegraphed to each other a perfect
understanding, and then Detricand turned on his heel, and walked away
into the crowd.
The sudden change in the old man's appearance had not been lost on the
spectators, but they set it down to weakness or a sudden sickness. One
ran for a glass of brandy, another for cider, and an old woman handed up
to him a mogue of cinnamon drops.
The old man tremblingly drank the brandy. When he looked again Detricand
had disappeared. A dark, sinister expression crossed his face, an evil
thought pulled down the corners of his mouth as he stepped from the cask.
His son went to him and taking his arm, said: "Come, you've done enough
for to-day."
The old man made no reply, but submissively walked away into the Coin &
Anes. Once however he turned and looked the way Detricand had gone,
muttering.
The peasants cheered him as he passed. Presently, free of the crowd and
entering the Rue d'Egypte, he said to Ranulph:
"I'm going alone; I don't need you."
"Where are you going?" asked Ranulph.
"Home," answered the old man gloomily.
Ranulph stopped. "All right; better not come out again to-day."
"You're not going to let that Frenchman hurt me?" suddenly asked
Delagarde with morose anxiety. "You're going to stop that? They'd put me
in prison."
Ranulph stooped over his father, his eyes alive with anger, his face
blurred with disgust.
"Go home," said he, "and never mention this again while you live, or I'll
take you to prison myself." Ranulph watched his father disappear down the
Rue d'Egypte, then he retraced his steps to the Vier Marchi. With a
new-formed determination he quickened his walk, ruling his face to a sort
of forced gaiety, lest any one should think his moodiness strange. One
person after another accosted him. He listened eagerly, to see if
anything were said which might show suspicion of his father. But the
gossip was all in old Delagarde's favour. From group to group he went,
answering greetings cheerily and steeling himself to the whole disgusting
business.