The Battle Of The Strong: Chapter 11

Chapter 11

There are moments when a kind of curtain seems dropped over the brain,
covering it, smothering it, while yet the body and its nerves are
tingling with sensation. It is like the fire-curtain of a theatre let
down between the stage and the audience, a merciful intervention between
the mind and the disaster which would consume it.

As the years had gone on Maitre Ranulph's nature had grown more powerful,
and his outdoor occupation had enlarged and steadied his physical forces.
His trouble now was in proportion to the force of his character. The
sight of Guida and Philip hand in hand, the tender attitude, the light in
their faces, was overwhelming and unaccountable. Yesterday these two were
strangers--to-day it was plain to be seen they were lovers, and lovers
who had reached a point of confidence and revelation. Nothing in the
situation tallied with Ranulph's ideas of Guida and his knowledge of
life. He had, as one might say, been eye to eye with this girl for
fifteen years: he had told his love for her in a thousand little ways, as
the ant builds its heap to a pyramid that becomes a thousand times
greater than itself. He had followed her footsteps, he had fetched and
carried, he had served afar off, he had ministered within the gates. He
had, unknown to her, watched like the keeper of the house over all who
came and went, neither envious nor over-zealous, neither intrusive nor
neglectful; leaving here a word and there an act to prove himself, above
all, the friend whom she could trust, and, in all, the lover whom she
might wake to know and reward. He had waited with patience, hoping
stubbornly that she might come to put her hand in his one day.

Long ago he would have left the island to widen his knowledge, earn
experience in his craft, or follow a career in the army--he had been an
expert gunner when he served in the artillery four years ago--and hammer
out fame upon the anvils of fortune in England or in France; but he had
stayed here that he might be near her. His love had been simple, it had
been direct, and wise in its consistent reserve. He had been
self-obliterating. His love desired only to make her happy: most lovers
desire that they themselves shall be made happy. Because of the crime his
father committed years ago--because of the shame of that hidden crime--he
had tried the more to make himself a good citizen, and had formed the
modest ambition of making one human being happy. Always keeping this near
him in past years, a supreme cheerfulness of heart had welled up out of
his early sufferings and his innate honesty. Hope had beckoned him on
from year to year, until it seemed at last that the time had almost come
when he might speak, might tell her all--his father's crime and the
manner of his father's death; of his own devoted purpose in trying to
expiate that crime by his own uprightness; and of his love for her.

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.

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