The Battle Of The Strong: Chapter 25

Chapter 25

Guida was sitting on the veille reading an old London paper she had
bought of the mate of the packet from Southampton. One page contained an
account of the execution of Louis XVI; another reported the fight between
the English thirty-six gun frigate Araminta and the French Niobe. The
engagement had been desperate, the valiant Araminta having been fought,
not alone against odds as to her enemy, but against the irresistible
perils of a coast upon which the Admiralty charts gave cruelly imperfect
information. To the Admiralty we owed the fact, the journal urged, that
the Araminta was now at the bottom of the sea, and its young commander
confined in a French fortress, his brave and distinguished services lost
to the country. Nor had the government yet sought to lessen the injury by
arranging a cartel for the release of the unfortunate commander.

The Araminta! To Guida the letters of the word seemed to stand out from
the paper like shining hieroglyphs on a misty grey curtain. The rest of
the page was resolved into a filmy floating substance, no more tangible
than the ashy skeleton on which writing still lives when the paper itself
has been eaten by flame, and the flame swallowed by the air.

Araminta--this was all her eyes saw, that familiar name in the flaring
handwriting of the Genius of Life, who had scrawled her destiny in that
one word.

Slowly the monstrous ciphers faded from the grey hemisphere of space, and
she saw again the newspaper in her trembling fingers, the kitchen into
which the sunlight streamed from the open window, the dog Biribi basking
in the doorway. That living quiet which descends upon a house when the
midday meal and work are done came suddenly home to her, in contrast to
the turmoil in her mind and being.

So that was why Philip had not written to her! While her heart was daily
growing more bitter against him, he had been fighting his vessel against
great odds, and at last had been shipwrecked and carried off a prisoner.
A strange new understanding took possession of her. Her life suddenly
widened. She realised all at once how the eyes of the whole world might
be fixed upon a single ship, a few cannon, and some scores of men. The
general of a great army leading tens of thousands into the clash of
battle--that had been always within her comprehension; but this was
almost miraculous, this sudden projection of one ship and her commander
upon the canvas of fame. Philip had left her, unknown save to a few. With
the nations turned to see, he had made a gallant and splendid fight, and
now he was a prisoner in a French fortress.

This then was why her grandfather had received no letter from him
concerning the marriage. Well, now she must speak for herself; she must
announce it. Must she show Philip's letters?--No, no, she could not....
Suddenly a new suggestion came to her: there was one remaining proof.
Since no banns had been published, Philip must have obtained a license
from the Dean of the island, and he would have a record of it. All she
had to do now was to get a copy of this record--but no, a license to
marry was no proof of marriage; it was but evidence of intention.

Still, she would go to the Dean this very moment.

It was not right that she should wait longer: indeed, in waiting so long
she had already done great wrong to herself--and to Philip perhaps.

She rose from the veille with a sense of relief. No more of this secrecy,
making her innocence seem guilt; no more painful dreams of punishment for
some intangible crime; no starting if she heard a sudden footstep; no
more hurried walk through the streets, looking neither to right nor to
left; no more inward struggles wearing away her life.

To-morrow--to-morrow--no, this very night, her grandfather and one other,
even Maitresse Aimable, should know all; and she should sleep
quietly--oh, so quietly to-night!

Looking into a mirror on the wall--it had been a gift from her
grandfather--she smiled at herself. Why, how foolish of her it had been
to feel so much and to imagine terrible things! Her eyes were shining
now, and her hair, catching the sunshine from the window, glistened like
burnished copper. She turned to see how it shone on the temple and the
side of her head. Philip had praised her hair. Her look lingered for a
moment placidly on herself-then she started suddenly. A wave of feeling,
a shiver, passed through her, her brow gathered, she flushed deeply.

Turning away from the mirror, she went and sat down again on the edge of
the veille. Her mind had changed. She would go to the Dean's--but not
till it was dark. She suddenly thought it strange that the Dean had never
said anything about the license. Why, again, perhaps he had. How should
she know what gossip was going on in the town! But no, she was quick to
feel, and if there had been gossip she would have felt it in the manner
of her neighbours. Besides, gossip as to a license to marry was all on
the right side. She sighed--she had sighed so often of late--to think
what a tangle it all was, of how it would be smoothed out tomorrow, of
what--

There was a click of the garden-gate, a footstep on the walk, a
half-growl from Biribi, and the face of Carterette Mattingley appeared in
the kitchen doorway. Seeing Guida seated on the veille, she came in
quickly, her dancing dark eyes heralding great news.

"Don't get up, ma couzaine," she said, "please no. Sit just there, and
I'll sit beside you. Ah, but I have the most wonderfuls!"

Carterette was out of breath. She had hurried here from her home. As she
said herself, her two feet weren't in one shoe on the way, and that with
her news made her quiver with excitement.

At first, bursting with mystery, she could do no more than sit and look
in Guida's face. Carterette was quick of instinct in her way, but yet she
had not seen any marked change in her friend during the past few months.
She had been so busy thinking of her own particular secret that she was
not observant of others. At times she met Ranulph, and then she was
uplifted, to be at once cast down again; for she saw that his old
cheerfulness was gone, that a sombreness had settled on him. She
flattered herself, however, that she could lighten his gravity if she had
the right and the good opportunity; the more so that he no longer visited
the cottage in the Place du Vier Prison.

This drew her closer to Guida also, for, in truth, Carterette had no
loftiness of nature. Like most people, she was selfish enough to hold a
person a little dearer for not standing in her own especial light. Long
ago she had shrewdly guessed that Guida's interest lay elsewhere than
with Ranulph, and a few months back she had fastened upon Philip as the
object of her favour. That seemed no weighty matter, for many sailors had
made love to Carterette in her time, and knowing it was here to-day and
away to-morrow with them, her heart had remained untouched. Why then
should she think Guida would take the officer seriously where she herself
held the sailor lightly? But at the same time she felt sure that what
concerned Philip must interest Guida, she herself always cared to hear
the fate of an old admirer, and this was what had brought her to the
cottage to-day.

"Guess who's wrote me a letter?" she asked of Guida, who had taken up
some sewing, and was now industriously regarding the stitches.

At Carterette's question, Guida looked up and said with a smile, "Some
one you like, I see."

Carterette laughed gaily. "Ba su, I should think I did--in a way. But
what's his name? Come, guess, Ma'm'selle Dignity."

"Eh ben, the fairy godmother," answered Guida, trying not to show an
interest she felt all too keenly; for nowadays it seemed to her that all
news should be about Philip. Besides, she was gaining time and preparing
herself for--she knew not what.

"O my grief!" responded the brown-eyed elf, kicking off a red slipper,
and thrusting her foot into it again, "never a fairy godmother had I,
unless it's old Manon Moignard the witch:

"'Sas, son, bileton,
My grand'methe a-fishing has gone:
She'll gather the fins to scrape my jowl,
And ride back home on a barnyard fowl!'

"Nannin, ma'm'selle, 'tis plain to be seen you can't guess what a
cornfield grows besides red poppies." Laughing in sheer delight at the
mystery she was making, she broke off again into a whimsical nursery
rhyme:

"'Coquelicot, j'ai mal au de
Coquelicot, qu'est qui l'a fait?
Coquelicot, ch'tai mon valet.'"

She kicked off the red slipper again. Flying half-way across the room, it
alighted on the table, and a little mud from the heel dropped on the
clean scoured surface. With a little moue of mockery, she got slowly up
and tiptoed across the floor, like a child afraid of being scolded.
Gathering the dust carefully, and looking demurely askance at Guida the
while, she tiptoed over again to the fireplace and threw it into the
chimney.

"Naughty Carterette," she said at herself with admiring reproach, as she
looked in Guida's mirror, and added, glancing with farcical approval
round the room, "and it all shines like peacock's feather, too!"

Guida longed to snatch the letter from Carterette's hand and read it, but
she only said calmly, though the words fluttered in her throat:

"You're as gay as a chaffinch, Garcon Carterette." Garcon Carterette!
Instantly Carterette sobered down. No one save Ranulph ever called her
Garcon Carterette. Guida used Ranulph's name for Carterette, knowing that
it would change the madcap's mood. Carterette, to hide a sudden flush,
stooped and slowly put on her slipper. Then she came back to the veille,
and sat down again beside Guida, saying as she did so:

"Yes, I'm gay as a chaffinch--me."

She unfolded the letter slowly, and Guida stopped sewing, but
mechanically began to prick the linen lying on her knee with the point of
the needle.

"Well," said Carterette deliberately, "this letter's from a pend'loque of
a fellow--at least, we used to call him that--though if you come to
think, he was always polite as mended porringer. Often he hadn't two sous
to rub against each other. And--and not enough buttons for his clothes."

Guida smiled. She guessed whom Carterette meant. "Has Monsieur Detricand
more buttons now?" she asked with a little whimsical lift of the
eyebrows.

"Ah bidemme, yes, and gold too, all over him--like that!" She made a
quick sweeping gesture which would seem to make Detricand a very spangle
of buttons. "Come, what do you think--he's a general now.

"A general!" Instantly Guida thought of Philip and a kind of envy shot
into her heart that this idler Detricand should mount so high in a few
months--a man whose past had held nothing to warrant such success. "A
general--where?" she asked.

"In the Vendee army, fighting for the new King of France--you know the
rebels cut off the last King's head."

At another time Guida's heart would have throbbed with elation, for the
romance of that Vendee union of aristocrat and peasant fired her
imagination; but she only said in the tongue of the people: "Ma fuifre,
yes, I know!"

Carterette was delighted to thus dole out her news, and get due reward of
astonishment. "And he's another name," she added. "At least it's not
another, he always had it, but he didn't call himself by it. Pardi, he's
more than the Chevalier; he's the Comte Detricand de Tournay--ah, then,
believe me if you choose, there it is!"

She pointed to the signature of the letter, and with a gush of eloquence
explained how it all was about Detricand the vaurien and Detricand the
Comte de Tournay.

"Good riddance to Monsieur Savary dit Detricand, and good welcome to the
Comte de Tournay," answered Guida, trying hard to humour Carterette, that
she should sooner hear the news yet withheld. "And what follows after?"

Carterette was half sorry that her great moment had come. She wished she
could have linked out the suspense longer. But she let herself be
comforted by the anticipated effect of her "wonderfuls."

"I'll tell you what comes after--ah, but see then what a news I have for
you! You know that Monsieur d'Avranche--well, what do you think has come
to him?"

Guida felt as if a monstrous hand had her heart in its grasp, crushing
it. Presentiment seized her. Carterette was busy running over the pages
of the letter, and did not notice her colourless face. She had no thought
that Guida had any vital interest in Philip, and ruthlessly, though
unconsciously, she began to torture the young wife as few are tortured in
this world.

She read aloud Detricand's description of his visit to the Castle of
Bercy, and of the meeting with Philip. "'See what comes of a name!'"
wrote Detricand. "'Here was a poor prisoner whose ancestor, hundreds of
years ago, may or mayn't have been a relative of the d'Avranches of
Clermont, when a disappointed duke, with an eye open for heirs, takes a
fancy to the good-looking face of the poor prisoner, and voila! you have
him whisked off to a palace, fed on milk and honey, and adopted into the
family. Then a pedigree is nicely grown on a summer day, and this fine
young Jersey adventurer is found to be a green branch from the old root;
and there's a great blare of trumpets, and the States of the duchy are
called together to make this English officer a prince--and that's the
Thousand and One Nights in Arabia, Ma'm'selle Carterette.'"

Guida was sitting rigid and still. In the slight pause Carterette made, a
hundred confused torturing thoughts swam through her mind and presently
floated into the succeeding sentences of the letter:

"'As for me, I'm like Rabot's mare, I haven't time to laugh at my own
foolishness. I'm either up to my knees in grass or clay fighting
Revolutionists, or I'm riding hard day and night till I'm round-backed
like a wood-louse, to make up for all the good time I so badly lost in
your little island. You wouldn't have expected that, my friend with the
tongue that stings, would you? But then, Ma'm'selle of the red slippers,
one is never butted save by a dishorned cow--as your father used to
say."'

Carterette paused again, saying in an aside: "That is M'sieu' all over,
all so gay. But who knows? For he says, too, that the other day
a-fighting Fontenay, five thousand of his men come across a cavalry as
they run to take the guns that eat them up like cabbages, and they drop
on their knees, and he drops with them, and they all pray to God to help
them, while the cannon balls whiz-whiz over their heads. And God did hear
them, for they fell down flat when the guns was fired and the cannon
balls never touched 'em."

During this interlude, Guida, sick with anxiety, could scarcely sit
still. She began sewing again, though her fingers trembled so she could
hardly make a stitch. But Carterette, the little egoist, did not notice
her agitation; her own flurry dimmed her sight.

She began reading again. The first few words had little or no
significance for Guida, but presently she was held as by the fascination
of a serpent.

"'And Ma'm'selle Carterette, what do you think this young captain, now
Prince Philip d'Avranche, heir to the title of Bercy--what do you think
he is next to do? Even to marry a countess of great family the old Duke
has chosen for him; so that the name of d'Avranche may not die out in the
land. And that is the way that love begins. . . . Wherefore, I want you
to write and tell me--'"

What he wanted Carterette to tell him Guida never heard, though it
concerned herself, for she gave a moan like a dumb animal in agony, and
sat rigid and blanched, the needle she had been using embedded in her
finger to the bone, but not a motion, not a sign of animation in face or
figure.

All at once, some conception of the truth burst upon the affrighted
Carterette. The real truth she imagined as little as had Detricand.

But now when she saw the blanched face, the filmy eyes and stark look,
the finger pierced by the needle, she knew that a human heart had been
pierced too, with a pain worse than death--truly it was worse, for she
had seen death, and she had never seen anything like this in its dire
misery and horror. She caught the needle quickly from the finger, wrapped
her kerchief round the wound, threw away the sewing from Guida's lap, and
running an arm about her waist, made as if to lay a hot cheek against the
cold brow of her friend. Suddenly, however, with a new and painful
knowledge piercing her intelligence, and a face as white and scared as
Guida's own, she ran to the dresser, caught up a hanap, and brought some
water. Guida still sat as though life had fled, and the body, arrested in
its activity, would presently collapse.

Carterette, with all her seeming lightsomeness, had sense and
self-possession. She tenderly put the water to Guida's lips, with
comforting words, though her own brain was in a whirl, and dark
forebodings flashed through her mind.

"Ah, man gui, man pethe!" she said in the homely patois. "There, drink,
drink, dear, dear couzaine." Guida's lips opened, and she drank slowly,
putting her hand to her heart with a gesture of pain. Carterette put down
the hanap and caught her hands. "Come, come, these cold hands--pergui,
but we must stop that! They are so cold." She rubbed them hard. "The poor
child of heaven--what has come over you? Speak to me . . . ah, but see,
everything will come all right by and by! God is good. Nothing's as bad
as what it seems. There was never a grey wind but there's a greyer.
Nanningia, take it not so to heart, my couzaine; thou shalt have love
enough in the world.... Ah, grand doux d'la vie, but I could kill him!"
she added under her breath, and she rubbed Guida's hands still, and
looked frankly, generously into her eyes.

Yet, try as she would in that supreme moment, Carterette could not feel
all she once felt concerning Guida. There is something humiliating in
even an undeserved injury, something which, to the human eye, lessens the
worthiness of its victim. To this hour Carterette had looked upon her
friend as a being far above her own companionship. All in a moment, in
this new office of comforter the relative status was altered. The plane
on which Guida had moved was lowered. Pity, while it deepened
Carterette's tenderness, lessened the gap between them.

Perhaps something of this passed through Guida's mind, and the deep pride
and courage of her nature came to her assistance. She withdrew her hands
and mechanically smoothed back her hair, then, as Carterette sat watching
her, folded up the sewing and put it in the work-basket hanging on the
wall.

There was something unnatural in her governance of herself now. She
seemed as if doing things in a dream, but she did them accurately and
with apparent purpose. She looked at the clock, then went to the fire to
light it, for it was almost time to get her grandfather's tea. She did
not seem conscious of the presence of Carterette, who still sat on the
veille, not knowing quite what to do. At last, as the flame flashed up in
the chimney, she came over to her friend, and said:

"Carterette, I am going to the Dean's. Will you run and ask Maitresse
Aimable to come here to me soon?" Her voice had the steadiness of
despair--that steadiness coming to those upon whose nerves has fallen a
great numbness, upon whose sensibilities has settled a cloud that stills
them as the thick mist stills the ripples on the waters of a fen.

All the glamour of Guida's youth had dropped away. She had deemed life
good, and behold, it was not good; she had thought her dayspring was on
high, and happiness had burnt into darkness like quick-consuming flax.
But all was strangely quiet in her heart and mind. Nothing more that she
feared could happen to her; the worst had fallen, and now there came down
on her the impermeable calm of the doomed.

Carterette was awed by her face, and saying that she would go at once to
Maitresse Aimable, she started towards the door, but as quickly stopped
and came back to Guida. With none of the impulse that usually marked her
actions, she put her arms round Guida's neck and kissed her, saying with
a subdued intensity:

"I'd go through fire and water for you. I want to help you every way I
can--me."

Guida did not say a word, but she kissed the hot cheek of the
smuggler-pirate's daughter, as in dying one might kiss the face of a
friend seen with filmy eyes.

When she had gone Guida drew herself up with a shiver. She was conscious
that new senses and instincts were born in her, or were now first
awakened to life. They were not yet under control, but she felt them, and
in so far as she had power to think, she used them.

Leaving the house and stepping into the Place du Vier Prison, she walked
quietly and steadily up the Rue d'Driere. She did not notice that people
she met glanced at her curiously, and turned to look after her as she
hurried on.

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