The Battle Of The Strong: Chapter 24

Chapter 24

Since the day of his secret marriage with Guida, Philip had been carried
along in the gale of naval preparation and incidents of war as a leaf is
borne onward by a storm--no looking back, to-morrow always the goal. But
as a wounded traveller nursing carefully his hurt seeks shelter from the
scorching sun and the dank air, and travels by little stages lest he
never come at all to friendly hostel, so Guida made her way slowly
through the months of winter and of spring.

In the past, it had been February to Guida because the yellow Lenten
lilies grew on all the sheltered cotils; March because the periwinkle and
the lords-and-ladies came; May when the cliffs were a blaze of golden
gorse and the perfume thereof made all the land sweet as a honeycomb.

Then came the other months, with hawthorn trees and hedges all in blow;
the honeysuckle gladdening the doorways, the lilac in bloomy thickets;
the ox-eyed daisy of Whitsuntide; the yellow rose of St. Brelade that
lies down in the sand and stands up in the hedges; the "mergots" which,
like good soldiers, are first in the field and last out of it; the
unscented dog-violets, orchises and celandines; the osier beds, the ivy
on every barn; the purple thrift in masses on the cliff; the sea-thistle
in its glaucous green--"the laughter of the fields whose laugh was gold."
And all was summer.

Came a time thereafter, when the children of the poor gathered
blackberries for preserves and home made wine; when the wild stock
flowered in St. Ouen's Bay; when the bracken fern was gathered from every
cotil, and dried for apple-storing, for bedding for the cherished cow,
for back-rests for the veilles, and seats round the winter fire; when
peaches, apricots, and nectarines made the walls sumptuous red and gold;
when the wild plum and crab-apple flourished in secluded roadways, and
the tamarisk dropped its brown pods upon the earth. And all this was
autumn.

At last, when the birds of passage swept aloft, snipe and teal and
barnacle geese, and the rains began; when the green lizard with its
turquoise-blue throat vanished; when the Jersey crapaud was heard
croaking no longer in the valleys and the ponds; and the cows were well
blanketed--then winter had come again.

Such was the association of seasons in Guida's mind until one day of a
certain year, when for a few hours a man had called her his wife, and
then had sailed away. There was no log that might thereafter record the
days and weeks unwinding the coils of an endless chain into that sea
whither Philip had gone.

Letters she had had, two letters, one in January, one in March. How many
times, when a Channel-packet came in, did she go to the doorway and watch
for old Mere Rossignol, making the rounds with her hand basket, chanting
the names of those for whom she had letters; and how many times did she
go back to the kitchen, choking down a sob!

The first letter from Philip was at once a blessing and a blow; it was a
reassurance and it was a misery. It spoke of bread, as it were, yet
offered a stone. It eloquently, passionately told of his love; but it
also told, with a torturing ease, that the Araminta was commissioned with
sealed orders, and he did not know when he should see her nor when he
should be able to write again. War had been declared against France, and
they might not touch a port nor have chance to send a letter by a
homeward vessel for weeks, and maybe months. This was painful, of course,
but it was fate, it was his profession, and it could not be helped. Of
course--she must understand--he would write constantly, telling her, as
through a kind of diary, what he was doing every day, and then when the
chance came the big budget should go to her.

A pain came to Guida's heart as she read the flowing tale of his buoyant
love. Had she been the man and he the woman, she could never have written
so smoothly of "fate," and "profession," nor told of this separation with
so complaisant a sorrow. With her the words would have been wrenched
forth from her heart, scarred into the paper with the bitterness of a
spirit tried beyond enduring.

With what enthusiasm did Philip, immediately after his heart-breaking
news, write of what the war might do for him; what avenues of advancement
it might open up, what splendid chances it would offer for success in his
career! Did he mean that to comfort her, she asked herself. Did he mean
it to divert her from the pain of the separation, to give her something
to hope for? She read the letter over and over again--yet no, she could
not, though her heart was so willing, find that meaning in it. It was all
Philip, Philip full of hope, purpose, prowess, ambition. Did he
think--did he think that that could ease the pain, could lighten the dark
day settling down on her? Could he imagine that anything might compensate
for his absence in the coming months, in this year of all years in her
life? His lengthened absence might be inevitable, it might be fate, but
could he not see the bitter cruelty of it? He had said that he would be
back with her again in two months; and now--ah, did he not know!

As the weeks came and went again she felt that indeed he did not know--or
care, maybe.

Some natures cling to beliefs long after conviction has been shattered.
These are they of the limited imagination, the loyal, the pertinacious,
and the affectionate, the single-hearted children of habit; blind where
they do not wish to see, stubborn where their inclinations lie,
unamenable to reason, wholly held by legitimate obligations.

But Guida was not of these. Her brain and imagination were as strong as
her affections. Her incurable honesty was the deepest thing in her; she
did not know even how to deceive herself. As her experience deepened
under the influence of a sorrow which still was joy, and a joy that still
was sorrow, her vision became acute and piercing. Her mind was like some
kaleidoscope. Pictures of things, little and big, which had happened to
her in her life, flashed by her inner vision in furious procession. It
was as if, in the photographic machinery of the brain, some shutter had
slipped from its place, and a hundred orderless and ungoverned pictures,
loosed from natural restraint, rushed by.

Five months had gone since Philip had left her: two months since she had
received his second letter, months of complexity of feeling; of
tremulousness of discovery; of hungry eagerness for news of the war; of
sudden little outbursts of temper in her household life--a new thing in
her experience; of passionate touches of tenderness towards her
grandfather; of occasional biting comments in the conversations between
the Sieur and the Chevalier, causing both gentlemen to look at each other
in silent amaze; of as marked lapses into listless disregard of any talk
going on around her.

She had been used often to sit still, doing nothing, in a sort of
physical content, as the Sieur and his visitors talked; now her hands
were always busy, knitting, sewing, or spinning, the steady gaze upon the
work showing that her thoughts were far away. Though the Chevalier and
her grandfather vaguely noted these changes, they as vaguely set them
down to her growing womanhood. In any case, they held it was not for them
to comment upon a woman or upon a woman's ways. And a girl like Guida was
an incomprehensible being, with an orbit and a system all her own; whose
sayings and doings were as little to be reduced to their understandings
as the vagaries of any star in the Milky Way or the currents in St.
Michael's Basin.

One evening she sat before the fire thinking of Philip. Her grandfather
had retired earlier than usual. Biribi lay asleep on the veille. There
was no sound save the ticking of the clock on the mantel above her head,
the dog's slow breathing, the snapping of the log on the fire, and a soft
rush of heat up the chimney. The words of Philip's letters, from which
she had extracted every atom of tenderness they held, were always in her
ears. At last one phrase kept repeating itself to her like some plaintive
refrain, torturing in its mournful suggestion. It was this: "But you see,
beloved, though I am absent from you I shall have such splendid chances
to get on. There's no limit to what this war may do for me."

Suddenly Guida realised how different was her love from Philip's, how
different her place in his life from his place in her life. She reasoned
with herself, because she knew that a man's life was work in the world,
and that work and ambition were in his bones and in his blood, had been
carried down to him through centuries of industrious, ambitious
generations of men: that men were one race and women were another. A man
was bound by the conditions governing the profession by which he earned
his bread and butter and played his part in the world, while striving to
reach the seats of honour in high places. He must either live by the law,
fulfil to the letter his daily duties in the business of life, or drop
out of the race; while a woman, in the presence of man's immoderate
ambition, with bitterness and tears, must learn to pray, "O Lord, have
mercy upon us, and incline our hearts to keep this law."

Suddenly the whole thing resolved itself in Guida's mind, and her
thinking came to a full stop. She understood now what was the right and
what the wrong; and, child as she was in years, woman in thought and
experience, yielding to the impulse of the moment, she buried her face in
her hands and burst into tears.

"O Philip, Philip, Philip," she sobbed aloud, "it was not right of you to
marry me; it was wicked of you to leave me!" Then in her mind she carried
on the impeachment and reproach. If he had married her openly and left
her at once, it would have been hard to bear, but in the circumstances it
might have been right. If he had married her secretly and left her at the
altar, so keeping the vow he had made her when she promised to become his
wife, that might have been pardonable. But to marry her as he did, and
then, breaking his solemn pledge, leave her--it was not right in her
eyes; and if not right in the eyes of her who loved him, in whose would
it be right?

To these definitions she had come at last.

It is an eventful moment, a crucial ordeal for a woman, when she forces
herself to see the naked truth concerning the man she has loved, yet the
man who has wronged her. She is born anew in that moment: it may be to
love on, to blind herself, and condone and defend, so lowering her own
moral tone; or to congeal in heart, become keener in intellect, scornful
and bitter with her own sex and merciless towards the other, indifferent
to blame and careless of praise, intolerant, judging all the world by her
own experience, incredulous of any true thing. Or again she may become
stronger, sadder, wiser; condoning nothing, minimising nothing, deceiving
herself in nothing, and still never forgiving at least one thing--the
destruction of an innocent faith and a noble credulity; seeing clearly
the whole wrong; with a strong intelligence measuring perfectly the
iniquity; but out of a largeness of nature and by virtue of a high sense
of duty, devoting her days to the salvation of a man's honour, to the
betterment of one weak or wicked nature.

Of these last would have been Guida.

"O Philip, Philip, you have been wicked to me!" she sobbed.

Her tears fell upon the stone hearth, and the fire dried them. Every
teardrop was one girlish feeling and emotion gone, one bright fancy, one
tender hope vanished. She was no longer a girl. There were troubles and
dangers ahead of her, but she must now face them dry-eyed and alone.

In his second letter Philip had told her to announce the marriage, and
said that he would write to her grandfather explaining all, and also to
the Rev. Lorenzo Dow. She had waited and watched for that letter to her
grandfather, but it had not come. As for Mr. Dow, he was a prisoner with
the French; and he had never given her the marriage certificate.

There was yet another factor in the affair. While the island was agog
over Mr. Dow's misfortune, there had been a bold robbery at St. Michael's
Rectory of the strong-box containing the communion plate, the parish
taxes for the year, and--what was of great moment to at least one
person--the parish register of deaths, baptisms, and marriages. Thus it
was that now no human being in Jersey could vouch that Guida had been
married.

Yet these things troubled her little. How easily could Philip set all
right! If he would but come back--that at first was her only thought; for
what matter a ring, or any proof or proclamation without Philip!

It did not occur to her at first that all these things were needed to
save her from shame in the eyes of the world. If she had thought of them
apprehensively, she would have said to herself, how easy to set all right
by simply announcing the marriage! And indeed she would have done so when
war was declared and Philip received his new command, but that she had
wished the announcement to come from him. Well, that would come in any
case when his letter to her grandfather arrived. No doubt it had missed
the packet by which hers came, she thought.

But another packet and yet another arrived; and still there was no letter
from Philip for the Sieur de Mauprat. Winter had come, and spring had
gone, and now summer was at hand. Haymaking was beginning, the wild
strawberries were reddening among the clover, and in her garden, apples
had followed the buds on the trees beneath which Philip had told his
fateful tale of love.

At last a third letter arrived, but it brought little joy to her heart.
It was extravagant in terms of affection, but somehow it fell short of
the true thing, for its ardour was that of a mind preoccupied, and
underneath all ran a current of inherent selfishness. It delighted in the
activity of his life, it was full of hope, of promise of happiness for
them both in the future, but it had no solicitude for Guida in the
present. It chilled her heart--so warm but a short season ago--that
Philip to whom she had once ascribed strength, tenderness, profound
thoughtfulness, should concern himself so little in the details of her
life. For the most part, his letters seemed those of an ardent lover who
knew his duty and did it gladly, but with a self-conscious and flowing
eloquence, costing but small strain of feeling.

In this letter he was curious to know what the people in Jersey said
about their marriage. He had written to Lorenzo Dow and her grandfather,
he said, but had heard afterwards that the vessel carrying the letters
had been taken by a French privateer; and so they had not arrived in
Jersey. But of course she had told her grandfather and all the island of
the ceremony performed at St. Michael's. He was sending her fifty pounds,
his first contribution to their home; and, the war over, a pretty new
home she certainly should have. He would write to her grandfather again,
though this day there was no time to do so.

Guida realised now that she must announce the marriage at once. But what
proofs of it had she? There was the ring Philip had given her, inscribed
with their names; but she was sophisticated enough to know that this
would not be adequate evidence in the eyes of her Jersey neighbours. The
marriage register of St. Michael's, with its record, was stolen, and that
proof was gone. Lastly, there were Philip's letters; but no--a thousand
times no!--she would not show Philip's letters to any human being; even
the thought of it hurt her delicacy, her self-respect. Her heart burned
with fresh bitterness to think that there had been a secret marriage. How
hard it was at this distance of time to tell the world the tale, and to
be forced to prove it by Philip's letters. No, no, in spite of all, she
could not do it--not yet. She would still wait the arrival of his letter
to her grandfather. If it did not come soon, then she must be brave and
tell her story.

She went to the Vier Marchi less now. Also fewer folk stood gossiping
with her grandfather in the Place du Vier Prison, or by the well at the
front door--so far he had not wondered why. To be sure, Maitresse Aimable
came oftener; but, since that notable day at Sark, Guida had resolutely
avoided reference, however oblique, to Philip and herself. In her dark
days the one tenderly watchful eye upon her was that of the egregiously
fat old woman called the "Femme de Ballast," whose thick tongue clave to
the roof of her mouth, whose outer attractions were so meagre that even
her husband's chief sign of affection was to pull her great toe, passing
her bed of a morning to light the fire.

Carterette Mattingley also came, but another friend who had watched over
Guida for years before Philip appeared in the Place du Vier Prison never
entered her doorway now. Only once or twice since that day on the
Ecrehos, so fateful to them both, had Guida seen Ranulph. He had
withdrawn to St. Aubin's Bay, where his trade of ship-building was
carried on, and having fitted up a small cottage, lived a secluded life
with his father there. Neither of them appeared often in St. Heliers, and
they were seldom or never seen in the Vier Marchi.

Carterette saw Ranulph little oftener than did Guida, but she knew what
he was doing, being anxious to know, and every one's business being every
one else's business in Jersey. In the same way Ranulph knew of Guida.
What Carterette was doing Ranulph was not concerned to know, and so knew
little; and Guida knew and thought little of how Ranulph fared: which was
part of the selfishness of love.

But one day Carterette received a letter from France which excited her
greatly, and sent her off hot-foot to Guida. In the same hour Ranulph
heard a piece of hateful gossip which made him fell to the ground the man
who told him, and sent him with white face, and sick, yet indignant
heart, to the cottage in the Place du Vier Prison.

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