The Trespasser, Complete - Gilbert Parker
The watchman had fallen asleep again. In the early morning he remembered.
The greyish golden dawn was creeping in, when he found her with two lions
protecting, keeping guard over her, while another crouched snarling in a
corner. There was no mark on her face.
The point of the stiletto which she had carried in her cloak had pierced
her when she fell.
In a hotel near the Arc de Triomphe Alice Wingfield read the news. It was
she who tenderly prepared the body for burial, who telegraphed to Gaston
at Audierne, getting a reply from Jacques that he was not yet back from
London. The next day Andree was found a quiet place in the cemetery at
Montmartre.
In the evening Alice and her relative started for Audierne.
.........................
On board the Fleur d'Orange Gaston struggled with the problem. There was
one thought ever coming. He shut it out at this point, and it crept in at
that. He remembered when two men, old friends, discovered that one,
unknowingly, had been living with the wife of the other. There was one
too many--the situation was impossible. The men played a game of cards to
see which should die. But they did not reckon with the other factor. It
was the woman who died.
Was not his own situation far worse? With his uncle living--but no, no,
it was out of the question! Yet Ian Belward had been shameless, a
sensualist, who had wrecked the girl's happiness and his. He himself had
done a mad thing in the eyes of the world, but it was more mad than
wicked. Had this happened in the North with another man, how easily would
the problem have been solved!
Go to his uncle and tell him that he must remove himself for ever from
the situation? Demand it, force it? Impossible--this was Europe.
They arrived at Douarnenez. The diligence had gone. A fishing-boat was
starting for Audierne. He decided to go by it. Breton fishermen are
usually shy of storm to foolishness, and one or two of the crew urged the
drunken skipper not to start, for there were signs of a south-west wind,
too friendly to the Bay des Trepasses. The skipper was, however,
cheerfully reckless, and growled down objection.
The boat came on with a sweet wind off the land for a time. Suddenly,
when in the neighbourhood of Point du Raz, the wind drew ahead very
squally, with rain in gusts out of the south-west. The skipper put the
boat on the starboard tack, close-hauled and close-reefed the sails,
keeping as near the wind as possible, with the hope of weathering the
rocky point at the western extremity of the Bay des Trepasses. By that
time there was a heavy sea running; night came on, and the weather grew
very thick. They heard the breakers presently, but they could not make
out the Point. Old sailor as he was, and knowing as well as any man the
perilous ground, the skipper lost his drunken head this time, and
presently lost his way also in the dark and murk of the storm.
At eight o'clock she struck. She was thrown on her side, a heavy sea
broke over her, and they were all washed off. No one raised a cry. They
were busy fighting Death.
Gaston was a strong swimmer. It did not occur to him that perhaps this
was the easiest way out of the maze. He had ever been a fighter. The seas
tossed him here and there. He saw faces about him for an instant--shaggy
wild Breton faces--but they dropped away, he knew not where. The current
kept driving him inshore. As in a dream, he could hear the breakers--the
pumas on their tread-mill of death. How long would it last? How long
before he would be beaten upon that tread-mill--fondled to death by those
mad paws? Presently dreams came-kind, vague, distant dreams. His brain
flew like a drunken dove to far points of the world and back again. A
moment it rested. Andree! He had made no provision for her, none at all.
He must live, he must fight on for her, the homeless girl, his wife.
He fought on and on. No longer in the water, as it seemed to him. He had
travelled very far. He heard the clash of sabres, the distant roar of
cannon, the beating of horses' hoofs--the thud-thud, tread-tread of an
army. How reckless and wild it was! He stretched up his arm to
strike-what was it? Something hard that bruised: then his whole body was
dashed against the thing. He was back again, awake. With a last effort he
drew himself up on a huge rock that stands lonely in the wash of the bay.
Then he cried out, "Andree!" and fell senseless--safe.
The storm went down. The cold, fast-travelling moon came out, saw the one
living thing in that wild bay, and hurried on into the dark again; but
came and went so till morning, playing hide-and-seek with the man and his
Ararat.
Daylight saw him, wet, haggard, broken, looking out over the waste of
shaken water. Upon the shore glared the stone of the vanished City of Ys
in the warm sun, and the fierce pumas trod their grumbling way. Sea-gulls
flew about the quiet set figure, in whose brooding eyes there were at
once despair and salvation.
He was standing between two worlds. He had had his great crisis, and his
wounded soul rested for a moment ere he ventured out upon the highways
again. He knew not how it was, but there had passed into him the dignity
of sorrow and the joy of deliverance at the same time. He saw life's
responsibilities clearer, duties swam grandly before him. It was a large
dream, in which, for the time, he was not conscious of those troubles
which, yesterday, had clenched his hands and knotted his forehead. He had
come a step higher in the way of life, and into his spirit had flowed a
new and sobered power. His heart was sore, but his mind was lifted up.
The fatal wrangle of the pumas there below, the sound of it, would be in
his ears for ever, but he had come above it; the searching vigour of the
sun entered into his bones.
He knew that he was going back to England--to ample work and strong days,
but he did not know that he was going alone. He did not know that Andree
was gone forever; that she had found her true place: in his undying
memory.
So intent was he, that at first he did not see a boat making into the bay
towards him.
ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
Clever men are trying
He had no instinct for vice in the name of amusement
What a nice mob you press fellows are--wholesale scavengers
ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS FOR ENTIRE "THE TRESPASSER":
Clever men are trying
Down in her heart, loves to be mastered
He had no instinct for vice in the name of amusement
He was strong enough to admit ignorance
I don't wish to fit in; things must fit me
Imagination is at the root of much that passes for love
Live and let live is doing good
Not to show surprise at anything
Truth waits long, but whips hard
What a nice mob you press fellows are--wholesale scavengers