"Well, my son," said little Mme. de la Vireville, coming in with a smile a few minutes after the visitor had gone. "Did not our guest bring excellent news, both for you and for the little boy?"
"Yes, indeed," replied the invalid. "René's escape was nearly as miraculous as mine. And," he added slowly, "a miracle to more purpose."
There was something so unusual in his voice that she stood with all her gladness—that was mostly for his sake—turning cold.
"Anne will not come and stay with us in Jersey now," said Fortuné, looking out of the window. "There will be no need; thank God again for that."
Was it as strong as that then? Something that was half-hope, half-anguish, leapt up in Mme. de la Vireville's heart. She knelt down beside her son's chair, and looked at his averted profile.
"Fortuné," she began, in a voice that shook, "if only you could put that . . . memory . . . away! My dear, my dear, what is the use of keeping it all these years? You have only to stretch out your hand to grasp what you want. . . ."
"What is it that I want?" asked her son, turning his head and looking at her. He was even paler than Mr. Tollemache had seen him. "There is nothing left for a cripple and a failure like me to want, except rest, and you, ma mère. I have both—too much, God knows, of the first—but of you I can never have too much. There is nothing else that I need." He bent his head and kissed her.
But from the day of the good news which Mr. Tollemache had brought him, he began perceptibly to go downhill again.
He was always, on the surface, his old jesting, courageous, disillusioned self, but underneath was a listlessness which Mme. de la Vireville had never known in him. It terrified her. He had previously looked forward to walking a little with her in the garden one day; now it was enough for him to sit apathetically in the window. Sometimes he seemed to have neither strength nor inclination even for that. The surgeon talked, as he had talked before, of the effects of suffering and exposure on an exceptionally strong and vigorous constitution; the Bishop said to the Grand Vicar that he thought it was something that came very near to being a broken heart—broken, like so much else, at Quiberon; and Mme. de la Vireville, despairing, bewildered, and sometimes even a little wounded, carried her knowledge of the past like a heap of ashes amid her slowly dying hopes for the future. Had Fortuné, who had recked so little of blows and hardships and disappointments, come through so much to end like this?
CHAPTER XXXVI
Anne-Hilarion makes a Plan, and the Bishop a Revelation
(1)
"Always elephants," observed the Comte de Flavigny with interest, holding up the little brass bowl of Indian workmanship which contained the sugar. "Always elephants—and monkeys!"
"The Baba-sahib is spilling it," whispered Lal Khan, bending his turbaned head to the little boy's level, the while he tendered the tray with the coffee-cups to his master.
He had just brought the coffee into the library, and it pleased the Baba-sahib, who had accompanied him, to offer the sugar to the two gentlemen. He was, however, dressed for out-of-doors.
"You are going for a walk, Anne?" asked his father, as he helped himself. He was lying back in a great chair on one side of the fire. A wonderful January sun shone in upon Mr. Elphinstone's books.
"Yes, Papa, with Baptiste. I am going to buy a new money-box, because since M. de Soucy opened my old one for me in the summer—when I thought to go to France—it has sometimes come open of itself."
"Very unsatisfactory for a thrifty bairn," observed Mr. Elphinstone, who was sitting on the other side of the fire with a pile of manuscript on his knee. "Then you will transfer your money, I suppose, from the old to the new box?"
"What is 'transfer'?" inquired Anne. "Oh, I understand. No, Grandpapa," and he shook his head mysteriously. "I am going to spend it."
"Dear me!" said his grandfather. "And on what, pray?"
"Well, first I thought," said Anne-Hilarion, "that I would give all the money in my money-box to M. le Lieutenant Tollemache for saving Papa, for since M. Tollemache is not poor, like M. de Soucy, it is permitted to offer him money—is it not? But Papa said . . . What was it you said, Papa?"
The Marquis smiled at his small and earnest son, and put his arm round him. "I believe I told you to keep it for yourself, Anne."
"But I did not save you, Papa!" exclaimed the child, almost indignantly.
René de Flavigny's eyes sought the fire. "I would not be too sure of that," he said. "On whose account, do you suppose, Anne, did Mr. Tollemache take all that trouble and risk for me?"
"I suppose," replied the little boy, wrinkling his forehead, "for St. Michel, because I asked him very particularly to take care of you."
"Yes," repeated René, "as I say, it was you who saved me, my son. But not, perhaps, quite in the way you think," he added to himself.
There was a moment's pause, during which Anne apparently resolved not to pursue this question, for he went on with a business-like air: "I have now quite resolved what I will do with my money, which is now a great sum, with what Grandpapa gave me at Christmas. I shall not give it to M. le Lieutenant."
"Well?" queried Mr. Elphinstone, looking at him over his spectacles. "This suspense is very hard to bear, Anne."
"I shall spend it on going to Portsmouth to see M. le Chevalier."
The two men looked at each other at this announcement. "What next?" asked the Marquis, amused.
"After that I shall begin to save for the new box," responded his son, taking the inquiry literally. "For though to go to Portsmouth will not cost as much as going to France would have done, I expect it will quite empty the old one."
"And a very good thing too," remarked his grandfather, "if you are going to employ your savings to such ends. We have had enough, in this house, of your jaunts, my bairn."
"But it was you, Grandpapa, that sent me to Canterbury!" said Anne, turning an accusing gaze on the old gentleman. Mr. Elphinstone collapsed.
"True, only too true!" he murmured. "But, child, your father is going down to Portsmouth to see M. de la Vireville directly he is able to travel. He has already written to him to that effect."
"But that will be quite a long time yet, I know," returned the Comte wisely. "I heard Dr. Collins say so."
"You could write M. de la Vireville a letter," suggested his grandfather.
"But I want to see him!" repeated Anne. "One does not see a person by writing him a letter."
"This child's arguments are difficult to controvert," remarked Mr. Elphinstone to his son-in-law. "I do not see any reply to that."
"Except perhaps this," suggested the Marquis. "Are you sure, Anne, that on his side M. de la Vireville wants to see you just now? He is rather ill, you know."
Anne-Hilarion gave this due consideration. "But if I were ill, Papa, I should want to see you and Grandpapa. It would make me feel better—as when I had whooping-cough last year."
"And you think that your presence would have a similar good effect on M. de la Vireville? You are not wanting in assurance, my son!"
Anne smiled, because he knew that he was being teased, and, the clock striking at that moment, he slipped out of his father's arm. "Will you please to think about it, Papa, while I have my walk?" he said coaxingly.
After he had gone Mr. Elphinstone turned over his manuscripts for a minute or two. Then he looked across at his son-in-law, who was staring again into the fire.
"I could take the child to Portsmouth, René, if you wish him to go—and can trust him to me," he said. "I do not know what you feel, but it seems to me that it might be some slight attempt to repay that great debt which we owe on Anne's behalf—and M. de la Vireville was so fond of the child that he might really be glad to see him."
René de Flavigny looked up and smiled. "How well you read my thoughts, sir!"
(2)
On that same remarkably sunny day in late January the old Bishop, in a long black cloak, was walking up and down the little walled garden at Portsmouth under a sky as blue as May's. The forerunners of spring had arrived, and the sight of that vanguard evidently gave him a lively pleasure. He was standing looking at the border when he heard a step, and observed Mme. de la Vireville approaching him. She had come to the house earlier in the day, but he had not seen her.
"It is almost spring already, Madame," he remarked to her. "Look at that patch of aconites!"
Mme. de la Vireville did not obey him. She came up, kissed his ring, and said with the directness of a child, "It is not spring in my heart, Monseigneur. Your Grandeur knows why."
The Bishop may have had the eyes of a mystic, but they were by no means blind to mundane affairs. He looked at her now. "Yes, I know, my daughter. I have been wishing for some time to speak with you of this. You will not feel cold if we walk up and down a little in the sun?"
She shook her head and turned with him. At their feet the snowdrops stood smiling and shivering behind little rows of box. "I have just come down from Fortuné's room, Monseigneur. He is no better, this morning—not so well, I think."
They took a turn in silence. "Forgive me if I am impertinent," said the Bishop, rather suddenly. "I have been wondering of late why your son has never married. How old is he—forty?"
Mme. de la Vireville shook her head with a sad little smile. "Only thirty-five, Monseigneur. As for his marrying, I have long greatly desired it, but he will not look at a woman. He has good reason, perhaps." She hesitated, then went on. "There was one, ten years ago . . . he loved her only too well. She too seemed to love him dearly, and became his affianced wife. On the very day before their marriage she fled from her home with another man, whom she had only known for a week or two. That man was Fortuné's intimate friend."
"And then?" asked the Bishop.
"Fortuné called him out—he could hardly do less. The scar which you may have remarked on his face, Monseigneur, is a memorial of their encounter. It is where his false friend's bullet wounded him—he can never look in a glass without seeing that reminder. They used pistols, not swords—I do not know why—and drew lots for the order of firing. And though my son, since he fired second, had this man who had so deeply injured him absolutely at his mercy, though he was half beside himself with grief and rage, he spared him, for her sake, and fired in the air."
"That was well done," said the Bishop.
Mme. de la Vireville laughed. "Was it not, Monseigneur! It was not easily done, either, that I know. Can you guess what Fortuné's reward was? After a year she left this man, to whom she was not wedded, and married another."
The Bishop looked very grave. "And your son, Madame, after so bitter a betrayal, has conceived a hatred of all women?"
"Hardly that, Monseigneur. It is more hopeless even than that—for such an aversion might change. No, I am almost sure that against his will he loves her still. That is the tragedy."
"She is still living—her husband also?"
"I believe so."
"Perhaps M. de la Vireville hopes to marry her in the end, if—as may so easily happen in these sad days—she should be suddenly left a widow?"
"No, Monseigneur, he would never do that. He has never forgiven her. But he will not look at another woman. I think it would make no difference to him if he were to hear of her death to-morrow. For him she has long been dead . . . and yet she is alive. Would God she were not! Her lover was killed by his side at Quiberon; he told me the other day." She paused a moment, looking into the distance, and resumed, with a little gesture: "Do not imagine, Monseigneur, that Fortuné is always thinking of this. He is not a dreamer; he has always been a man of action, and a reckless one at that. It is but a scar now, I think, not a wound—but it is a scar with poison in it. And over there in Jersey, when I saw him with the little boy . . ." She stopped, and the tears came into her eyes. "Monseigneur, I believe that in his heart of hearts Fortuné desires as much to have a son as I desire to see him with one."
"But," said the Bishop, "there is nothing to prevent his marrying some day, if he could cut himself loose from this memory. If he could so cut himself loose, the rest—you must pardon an old man, my daughter—the rest would not be difficult, would it?"
"Monseigneur, a man who will not look at women is always attractive to them."
The Bishop smiled. "I suppose that is true. Now would you be astounded to learn that, before you came, he used sometimes, in sleep or delirium, to repeat a woman's name? I suppose it was hers who betrayed him."
"I do not think that likely, Monseigneur," said Mme. de la Vireville. "He has not mentioned her name for years. And that it should have been any other woman's is impossible."
"Then perhaps my ears deceived me," replied the Bishop, looking as if he were pretty sure that they had not. "In that case I shall perhaps not be indiscreet if I tell you the name—admitting frankly that some of the context puzzled me. It was—'Anne.'"
It may be seen what bond of error united the old French Bishop and the middy of the Pomone.
Mme. de la Vireville clasped her little hands together. "But, Monseigneur, that exactly bears out what I said about his desiring a son. Anne is the name of the little boy I was referring to just now—Anne-Hilarion de Flavigny, his friend's son—the friend about whose fate, as Your Grandeur knows, Fortuné was anxious, but who proves, after all, to have been saved at Quiberon. Fortuné had promised the Marquis de Flavigny to look after the child if he—the Marquis—were killed."
"But now, as the Marquis escaped, he will not be called upon to undertake this charge?"
"No, Monseigneur."
"That is a pity," said the Bishop, looking down reflectively at the radiant face of a little beruffed aconite at his feet. "There are all sorts of doors which only a child's hands can unlock." And, still looking at the aconite, he went on gently: "Madame, I should be doing wrong were I to disguise from you that the doctor does not think well of the lethargy which seems latterly to have taken possession of your son, and which appears to have so much connection with his physical condition."
"I know it," said the poor mother, all the delicate colour gone from her cheeks. "But what more can I do, Monseigneur? I know that Fortuné loves me dearly, but I am old, and represent the past to him, not the future, and it is the past that he needs to forget. . . . He is ill, it is true—he has been very ill—but never have I seen him like this. Always, in whatever vicissitudes—and he has been severely wounded before, and I nursed him in Jersey—always he has been full of gaiety and courage. Now all that seems to have deserted him, as if he did not care to live."
"Madame, is that, after all, so much to be wondered at?" asked the Bishop gravely. "If you or I had fought at Quiberon, and had seen nearly all our comrades massacred in cold blood, might we not be tempted to feel the same? There is much buried on that shore which engulfed so many hopes. I think M. de la Vireville has left his there, as others their lives. There is not, I fancy, any great difference between the two losses. . . . Still, as I said, a child's hand holds many keys, to shut or to open." He stooped at last, a little painfully, and picked the aconite, and added to himself, "As we say to the Child who was Himself the Key . . . O Clavis David, qui aperis et nemo claudit; claudis et nemo aperit, veni et educ vinctum de domo carceris, sedentem in umbra mortis. . . . I wish your son could have had the care of this child you speak of."
Mme. de la Vireville could not reply. She had hidden her face in her hands, and the tears were trickling through them. The little old man, holding the golden flower in his fingers, stood and looked at her with a great pity in his eyes.
Suddenly, however, something else came into them—a gleam of recollection. He looked half doubtfully upon the weeping woman before him, compressed his lips, then appeared to make up his mind.
"My daughter," he said, "it has only just come back to my memory, strangely enough, that one night . . . now this, I fear, really is betraying an involuntary confidence, but for your sake I am going to do it . . . one night I heard your son murmuring to himself a name which can only have been a woman's. But perhaps, again, it was hers. . . ."
Mme. de la Vireville raised her tear-stained face from her hands. "What was the name, Monseigneur?"
"'Raymonde,'" said the Bishop.
It was no coup manqué this time. The little mother gazed at him thunderstruck, amazement, incredulity, and something that might almost have been a strangled joy chasing each other over her fragile countenance.
"'Raymonde'?" she repeated. "I . . . it cannot be . . . I know no one of that name!"
"But evidently your son does, Madame," suggested His Grandeur, unable to restrain the phantom of a smile. "It was the only time I ever heard him mention it. He seemed to be beseeching this 'Raymonde' to come to him."
Mme. de la Vireville had no words. Nor had she tears now; her astonishment had dried them. She stared at Monseigneur, who stood there with the bright aconite flower in his pale old hands, which were folded across the purple sash showing between the folds of his cloak, and she said nothing.
"Your experience of the world, my daughter," went on the Bishop, "must have taught you that even the most devoted son does not always confide everything to his mother. In this case, doubtless, the time was not ripe."
The time, however, did seem to him ripe to leave this mother to reflect on the information that he had just given her, and, the sound of a clock striking noon issuing most appositely at this moment from the house, he seized the opportunity to add:
"If you will excuse me, Madame, for a few moments? I must say my office."
And pulling out his shabby breviary he went off down the path in a manner more than diplomatic, for he had said Sext before ever Mme. de la Vireville came into the garden. However, one can always get ahead with advantage.
But when a conviction of ten years' growth—one, moreover, which you have just been stoutly affirming with your own lips—is as suddenly felled as was Mme. de la Vireville's about her son, it is natural to find its collapse somewhat devastating. Fortuné's mother, hardly aware that Monseigneur had left her, stood beside the snowdrops, certainly more engrossed than was Monseigneur himself at the other end of the path—and the antiphon to her Hours was a name she had never heard before.
CHAPTER XXXVII
The Child unlocks the Door
(1)
The Chevalier de la Vireville was lying, as he had so often lain, staring at the stuffed trout and the triptych of the Assumption. The adventurous and disappointed spirit which dwelt in him, that had always faced with a jest every blow of circumstance—but one—had indeed ebbed very low. Although the sun which five days ago had opened the aconites in the garden came streaming into the room in a way to rejoice the heart of the room's late owner, who had given it up for that very reason, the present occupant was perfectly indifferent as to whether the sun shone or no. He was back at Quiberon in the rain—back at Auray in the little chapel, emptied of all its victims save him alone—back in front of those levelled muskets which he alone had escaped. . . . Why, in God's name, had fate so marked him out for safety? Why had he put himself to the agony of that derelict voyage to Houat and the long suffering that came after? Mostly because of his promise to his friend, and because he thought Anne wanted him . . . or because he wanted Anne. But he was not needed, neither by the boy nor by anyone. He had built a foolish dream on the assumption of René's death, which to him had seemed a certainty. The dream had proved baseless, like everything else, and all it had done was to plant in his sincere thankfulness for René's escape a thorn of regret which was horrible to him, and made him, who had suffered so bitterly from treachery, feel a traitor himself.
No, he was not needed any more; he had done his work. Or rather, he had not even that consolation, for everything to which he had set his hand at Quiberon had been a failure, even though the fault were not his. His men, whom he had never once led to victory in the Morbihan, were dead or disbanded. There was nothing for him to do henceforward, and even had there been, he was useless—a tool that had never been of much account, and was now blunted for the rest of time.
And further back still. . . . Had he not failed to keep the woman he loved, the woman who had spurned even the difficult sacrifice he had made for her sake, when he had spared her lover? He had no daily perils now to anodyne that ache. But he had another ache to set against it. . . .
Yes, for ironically enough, at the very hour, five days ago, when his mother was protesting in the garden to the Bishop that he could never think of another woman, he was thinking of one. Equally had Mme. de la Vireville, almost incredulous, carried about for five days her half-knowledge, longing for her son to speak that name which meant nothing to her, yet hinted at so much; studying him at odd moments, trying not to feel hurt at his reserve, puzzled, hoping, fearing, and far from guessing that this 'Raymonde,' to Fortuné's mind, was not a subject of which he could ever speak to anyone. For the thought of her warred against that perverted faithfulness to the faithless which had made his torment these ten years.
Yet day after day the vision of Mme. de Guéfontaine had been dwelling more and more constantly with him, and her image, by a volition, so it seemed, of its own, seeking to efface that other. From its beginning in that night of agony and effort at Quiberon, its renewal in the drifting boat, the process had gone on gaining vitality with time. At Houat he had wakened once from fever to fancy that he was lying with his head pillowed on her arm, as he had done that evening when he had stumbled exhausted into the old manoir. That had proved to be but fever also; his aching head had no such support, and the English corporal of marines who sat by him, though kind enough, had very little suggestion of Raymonde about him. Yet the illusion had given the wounded man such extraordinary pleasure, and so surprising a sense of rest and security, that he used, in those barren days, to try to repeat it by a conscious act of the imagination. She had sat by his couch, once, through the night . . . she had walked by his horse's stirrup on a spring evening towards the sea . . . and among the nodding sea-holly she had kissed his hand. It was his last memory of her, almost as startling as his first. . . .
And now in England he thought of her too—fitfully at first, then incessantly. But this had served in no way to lighten his depression. For he was not in love with her, he told himself—how could he be? Was not all his heart seared over with a fatal memory? Those shackles could not be loosed now—and even were they miraculously to be smitten from him, what had he to offer another woman? A maimed body, an empty purse, a ruined home. . . .
And yet oddly, persistently, he would see himself standing with her under the larches in front of a house like Kerdronan, that was perished, and with them stood a little boy like Anne, who did not need him and was gone from him. . . . He was suddenly possessed now by that foolish and torturing vision, and lay there clenching and unclenching his hand, as though in physical pain. No, he and Kerdronan would go into the dust together, and it was no use reflecting on what might have been. They were both broken and done with, he and his home—and no great loss, doubtless, after all.
"Good God!" he exclaimed at last, "what a cowardly fool I am, lying here and moaning like a sick girl because I am short of an arm!"
He shut his eyes on that self-condemnation (which had not helped him), and did not trouble to open them when there came a knock at the door. Nor, as he still kept them closed when he said "Come in!" did he see who opened it, and Mr. Elphinstone's face in the doorway looking at him with a smile that died away to concern. He only heard the door shut again, and supposed that the visitor, his mother, or Monseigneur, had decided after all not to disturb him.
(2)
The treble voice, therefore, that said his name suddenly and softly gave him a violent start. He opened his eyes to see Anne-Hilarion standing by the closed door, carrying in both his hands a large glass bowl wherein there swam an enormously magnified goldfish.
"Anne!" he exclaimed, in a voice of utter incredulity.
And then the sight of him, unchanged, solemn-eyed and engaging as ever, the touching absurdity of his bringing a goldfish all the way from London to cheer a sick Chouan, caused La Vireville to break into a weak laugh that was half something else.
"Oh, M. le Chevalier!" cried Anne, gazing at him. Then he deposited his precious burden with haste on the floor, and, running to the bed, flung himself into the welcome of La Vireville's arm.
"My cabbage, my little comrade!" murmured the émigré, and he kissed the cold, fresh cheek again and again. "You are not changed at all—yes, I suppose you have grown. . . . Then you have not forgotten me after all? Have you come all this way to see your poor bedridden uncle—not by yourself, though, I trust?"
"Oh no," replied Anne-Hilarion, his arms round Fortuné's neck. "Grandpapa brought me. I wanted to see you so much!" He hugged him hard, then, drawing back a little, eyed him with a sudden doubt. La Vireville hastily withdrew his arm and pulled the bedclothes over his left side.
"Come and get up on the bed," he suggested, "and we can talk better."
The Comte de Flavigny, needing no second invitation, incontinently scrambled up—not without difficulty, for the bed was high.
"I am not too heavy?" he inquired rather anxiously, as he took a seat on La Vireville's legs. "Papa says I am getting too heavy for him."
And, as a matter of fact, he had planted himself exactly on one of the more painful souvenirs of the Ile de Houat; but La Vireville would not for worlds have asked him to move.
"You are a mere featherweight," he assured him. "And is your father nearly well again, Anne? He has written to me, but he did not say much about himself."
"Papa looks much better than you do, M. le Chevalier," said the little boy critically. "He can walk quite well now. He is coming to see you when he is quite better. Grandpapa is downstairs, you know; he will come up soon, I expect."
La Vireville, in his turn, surveyed the visitor perched on his body. Anne's legs, in their blue pantaloons, stuck out straight in front of him on the bed; the shoes at the end of them looked ridiculously small. His curls, falling on his deep ruffle, seemed heavier and a little longer than of yore, and the sun was busily employed in gilding them. For the first time, therefore, La Vireville was really conscious of the presence of that luminary.
Anne-Hilarion was the first to break the silence. "Did Papa tell you in his letter," he inquired, "that a lady came into the garden to ask for you, M. le Chevalier?"
"A lady!" exclaimed Fortuné. "What garden, child—here?"
"Oh no," replied Anne. "The garden in the Square at home. It is a long time ago now. I was there, and John Simms, and I had leaves in my cart—dead leaves—and she came in, all in black, and she asked if you had come back from France, and I said no, and then I cried, and I think she cried too, and she kissed me, and then Grandpapa came, and——"
"Stop a moment!" cried La Vireville, who was not without experience of the volume of detail Anne could pour forth when once he was embarked on the tide of narration. "What was the lady like? Was she young?"
"She was not so old as Elspeth," pronounced the Comte de Flavigny, after due thought.
La Vireville gave a rather shaken laugh. Had this impossible thing really happened? Anne-Hilarion never lied. But—it must have been someone else!
"You did not learn her name, I suppose, child?" he asked, his heart beginning to thud.
"Yes," responded Anne. "I asked Grandpapa afterwards, because I liked her. She was called the Comtesse de Préfontaine—or perhaps it was Guéfontaine."
La Vireville's heart missed a couple of beats, then pounded harder than ever, seeming to shake his whole body—a humiliating experience. But for his present physical condition, however, no doubt he would not have gasped for breath as he did, nor would the colour have come and gone like a woman's in his hollow cheeks. Nevertheless, as both these things happened, Anne-Hilarion looked at him in a little dismay.
"You are—do you feel ill, M. le Chevalier?" he asked solicitously.
"No—yes," stammered Fortuné, lifting himself on his elbow. "No, child, don't move! It is not that you are . . . too heavy." He drew a long breath, closed his eyes, and dropped back on his pillows. "What did you and Grandpapa tell Mme. de Guéfontaine?" he asked, after a moment.
"Grandpapa told her, I think, that the Republican soldiers had shot you at that place—Quiberon. . . . M. le Chevalier," continued Anne, leaning with very wide-open eyes towards him, and thus still further contributing to the discomfort of the leg on which he was situated, "did they really and truly shoot you?"
"Well," said Fortuné, in a dreamy voice, "they did and they did not. Anyhow, here I am, you see." He reopened his eyes.
"Yes," said Anne, in a tone of great contentment, and bestowed on his friend one of those infrequent smiles of his, sudden and shy, at the same time sliding his hand into the strong, wasted one lying idly near it on the coverlet.
A thrill ran up Fortuné's arm. Ever since he had seen Anne standing by the door he had been conscious of a strange sensation, as if, with the advent of the child who had sailed the seas with him on that wild adventure, there had begun to blow through his hot brain the first whisper of a clean and joyous breath that came from the waves themselves. A moment or two ago, those lips had made him an annunciation the full meaning of which he could hardly grasp. Now, at the little warm touch, his eyes were suddenly opened, and he saw the tainted memory in his heart as only a handful of dead dust, not worth the keeping, fit only to be scattered on that wind of morning. It was the past, useless and done with, a thing long dead. . . . Here, close to him, touching him, smiling at him, enshrined in this child who had no past, shone the future, like something gallant and green with the dew on it, and, blowing over it, that strong, fresh wind. The worthless burden he had carried for years fell from him. He too could have what René de Flavigny had, the air of morning at his gates—nay, morning's self. . . .
In the almost physical sense of deliverance he must have gripped Anne-Hilarion's hand very hard, for the child gave a movement.
"Little pigeon, have I hurt you?" cried La Vireville, instantly penitent, releasing the imprisoned hand. "I am so sorry. . . . I did not know that I was still so strong." At the moment, indeed, he hardly knew anything—scarcely, even, what he was saying.
Anne-Hilarion carried the injured member to his mouth for a second or two, then he put it back in La Vireville's palm. "I am very glad that you are so strong, M. le Chevalier," he said valiantly. "Perhaps you will soon be quite well again. I hope so very much. And then—what are you going to do?"
"What am I going to do, Anne?" A little while ago, under that cloud of lassitude and depression, the question would have seemed a mockery. "Well, you know—or you will soon know—that they had to cut off my other arm, but I can still hold a sword—and hurt a small boy's hand, eh? When I get quite better I shall go back to the heather, and the sea, and perhaps . . ." He broke off and fell silent, staring at his visitor with an air compound of bewilderment and meditation. "Meanwhile, am I not to see the new goldfish?"
Anne-Hilarion slipped promptly from the bed and ran to the corner by the door. Anon, raising himself from his stooping position, and carrying it between his hands with even more than his accustomed care, he came back with his trophy. His eyes were very bright.
"It is my biggest one of all," he observed, as La Vireville propped himself on his elbow to view the captive. "I called it after you, M. le Chevalier . . . you do not mind? And I thought, as you were ill . . . and I heard Papa and Grandpapa say you could never be repaid for coming after me to France . . . you might . . . I mean I brought it to give it to you, if you liked . . . for your own!"
"Oh, my child," said La Vireville, rather breathlessly, "you have given me much more than that!"
BOOK FOUR
THE OLDEST ROAD OF ALL
Sir Patrick Spens.
The Wave's Song.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
Flower of the Gorse
(1)
A brilliant May morning of sun and wind was exulting over the beautiful harbour of St. Peter Port at Guernsey, and over the old town rising steeply like an amphitheatre from its blue waters. But the aged salt who was making his way up one of the narrow streets with a basket of freshly caught lobsters on his arm was not particularly responsive to the sunshine; indeed, the air with which he paused and mopped his red face suggested that an injured "Very hot for the time of year!" would issue from his bearded mouth in response to any greeting.
As he put away his bandana and prepared to resume his ascent of the cobbles, he observed two persons coming down, one behind the other—a young man in uniform, and, in front of him, a girl in the old Guernsey costume of chintz-patterned, quilted gown, opening in front over the black stuff petticoat into the pocket-holes of which, after the island fashion, it was tucked. This damsel came tripping down, despite the steepness of the street, happy no doubt in the conviction that the officer behind her was admiring her trim feet and ankles in their blue stockings and buckled black velvet shoes. Unfortunately the officer could not see her pretty face, framed in a close mob cap under an ugly bonnet with enormous bows. Only the ascending fisherman, at the moment, had a sight of that, and yet his gaze was fixed precisely on the soldier behind her, scenting a possible purchaser in him rather than in the native maiden. And the officer, too, seemed to have his eye on the fisherman, and slackened his pace as he came nearer. So Beauty, casting half a glance on the writhing lobsters, passed unheeded.
"I suppose you can't tell me, mon vieux, the name of that vessel just come into harbour?" asked the officer, stopping.
The uniform was English, but the wearer did not look quite English, and he spoke in French. As a native of the Channel Islands the ancient mariner accosted should have understood that tongue, but for purposes of his own he affected not to do so.
"Very fine they are, indeed, sir!" he replied, peering into his basket. "Comes from the rocks over by L'Etac, they do. You wants to now the price? Well, this one——" and he held out a freckled ebony form that slowly waved its spectral antennae at the young officer.
The latter pushed it aside with an impatient cane. "No, no—I don't want one of those things to-day. I wish to know what that vessel down there is—and I am sure you understand me perfectly!"
Having observed with one eye that the officer's other hand was moving in the direction of his waistcoat pocket, the seafarer turned both in the direction of the Frenchman's pointing cane. "Ah, yon, just about to make fast," he said, pointing, too, with the rejected lobster. "She'll likely be the Government sloop Cormorant, bound for Jersey, come in here with despatches. Thank you, sir! And you won't take this beauty home to your good lady?"
But the young officer shook his head with a smile, and continued his downward path to the harbour.
Although to many dwellers in a port, especially in an island port, the mere arrival and identification of a vessel is in itself a matter of interest, this young Frenchman had a particular reason for questioning the fisherman. The major of his regiment was ill; medicaments had been ordered from England, and Lieutenant Henri du Coudrais, finding himself unoccupied after an early parade, had offered, on news of the arrival of a sail, to go down to the harbour, instead of the major's servant, and ascertain if the drugs in question had come.
But the sloop, when he got down to the quayside, had only just finished making fast. Evidently she had a passenger, for he observed among the sailors on her deck a tall man in a grey redingote, whose general appearance seemed, somehow, to be familiar. But he could not see his face, and thought no more about him till in a few moments he came over the gang-plank.
And then, in one and the same instant, Henri du Coudrais saw that the passenger's left sleeve was pinned to his breast, and recognised him. A second later, and he had himself been recognised by those keen eyes.
"M. du Coudrais!" called out the newcomer. "What good fortune brings you here? I was just about to ask my way to your lodging."
The young officer had been stricken dumb for a moment. "M. de la Vireville!" he exclaimed at last. "Is it possible?"
"Why not?" asked La Vireville, holding out his hand. "But I suppose you thought that I was dead?"
"Indeed we did!" confessed his compatriot, grasping the proffered hand warmly. "After many inquiries, we were convinced at last. Then you escaped after all! But I am sorry to see . . ."
"Oh, I left that at Houat," said Fortuné composedly. "An unnecessary luxury, two arms, I assure you, mon ami. I cannot think how I ever found work for both. You are surprised to see me? Well, I am on my way to Jersey; the sloop sails again this afternoon. I came by her because she was touching here, and I wished to wait upon you and Mme. de Guéfontaine."
"For my part, Chevalier, I am delighted to see you," said du Coudrais, with much cordiality, "and I hope you will do me the honour of dining with me; but my sister, I am sorry to say, is not with me for the moment. She is over in Sark."
"In Sark?" repeated Fortuné, surprised, looking instinctively over the intense blue to where, six or seven miles away, the little island floated like a rock-set jewel. "When will she return?"
"Not until to-morrow or the day after, I am afraid," answered her brother. "She has gone over to see a poor émigré family settled in a farm there—that of an old nurse, in fact. She generally spends a night or two with them. I need not tell you, Chevalier, how sorry she will be to miss you. Could you not stay here till her return? The hospitality that I can offer you is not very sumptuous, but I should be deeply honoured by your acceptance of it."
Fortuné bit his lip thoughtfully, still looking over the sea to Sark. Then he shook his head. "I thank you a thousand times, but I cannot stay. I am awaited at Jersey. . . . Will you give me a word in private, M. du Coudrais?—over there, for instance, at the end of the jetty, would serve."
"Willingly," said Raymonde's brother, and followed him.
"You may possibly guess, Monsieur," began La Vireville, still preoccupied with the sight of Sark, "why I wish to wait upon Mme. de Guéfontaine?"
The young officer took on a very discreet air. "You are, perhaps, in need of an agent de la correspondance over there again?"
La Vireville smiled. "Of that—and more," he said. "God knows I have little enough to offer her—probably she won't even look at me—but I should be glad to know that I had your consent to address your sister."
"M. le Chevalier," retorted Henri du Coudrais, "do you suppose that I have forgotten last April? I have not met any man to whom I would sooner commit my sister. As for Raymonde—but she must speak for herself."
"You are very kind, du Coudrais," said La Vireville, but he sighed. "I wish I could think your sister would be as easily pleased. . . . It is only right to point out to you that I have neither money, nor prospects, nor a home, nor even two arms, to offer her——"
"But you asserted just now that one was sufficient," observed Henri du Coudrais, leaning back with a smile against the rail that ran out to the beacon light. "As for fortune or prospects, which of us émigrés has those nowadays? And upon my soul, I don't know a woman on earth who is less set on either than Raymonde."
"I suppose that I ought not to ask if there is any other man?"
"There was the Duc de Pontferrand; she refused him last October—just at the time, Monsieur Augustin, when she was making inquiries about you in London from the old gentleman whose name I cannot remember, who lives with a little boy in Cavendish Square."
"I know she did that, God bless her!" said La Vireville. "I did not, of course, know about the Duc." He fell silent, fingering the rail and still gazing out to sea. It occurred to du Coudrais that though he had the look of one who has weathered a long and trying illness, he yet seemed in some indefinable way a younger man.
"Why should I not hire a boat and sail over to Sark?" asked La Vireville suddenly. "My wooing must in any case be rough and ready. I could be back before the Cormorant sails, if I went at once."
"Ma foi, an excellent idea!" said Raymonde's brother heartily. "That is, of course, the solution. I will procure you a boat, if you wish. You must be sure to take a native with you, even though the distance be not great, for sailing hereabouts is dangerous, if only on account of the hidden rocks—'stones,' as they call them." He looked about him. "There is Tom Le Pelley; he would serve your purpose."
(2)
A quarter of an hour later La Vireville was sailing over that laughing expanse towards the gem of rose and emerald and flame, whose beauty, though his eyes were set upon it all the while, he hardly marked. The boatman spoke of channels and swift tides, of the Anfroques, the Longue Pierre, the Goubinière, but names of reefs and rocks went by La Vireville unheeded. He was going to put to the test what Anne-Hilarion had shown him. He was liberated at last from his servitude of mind, and he wanted Raymonde—wanted her with all his heart. It was very strange to him now that he had not known this when he was with her more than a year ago.
Du Coudrais had given him the name of the farm which Mme. de Guéfontaine had gone to visit, and once landed he found it easily enough, for there were not many of them on that slender strip of an isle, pillared on its rocks and magic caves. But Raymonde was not there, and they told him that she was out on one of the headlands.
And there, after a space, he found her, among the golden brands of the gorse, looking out to sea in the direction of the coast of France. The wind blew against her; she shaded her eyes with her hand under her little three-cornered hat, as from the lovely land of exile she gazed intently at a dearer shore. She did not see him, nor, from the talk of the wind in her ears, hear his footsteps brushing through the gorse—and Fortuné stopped short, for now that he beheld her again with his bodily eyes he knew that his desire for her was even greater than he had thought, and in proportion the fear swelled in him to conviction that so great a gift could never be meant for him. So he stood there bareheaded in the sunshine, his heart mingled flame and water, aching to see her hidden face, and yet afraid to put his destiny to the touch. But at last, since she was still unconscious of his presence, he was forced to make it known.
"Madame!"
And at that she turned round with a start. Colour swept over her face and was gone again, and in her eyes there was something that was almost fear.
"Monsieur . . . de la Vireville!" she exclaimed, on a sharp catch of the breath.
It was the first time, as he instantly realised, that she had ever called him by his name, that name which was dipped for her in such painful memories.
"Me voici!" said he, and casting his hat on to a gorse bush advanced to kiss her hand.
"I . . . I am not sure . . . that you are not a ghost!" she said, not very steadily, as she surrendered it.
"Indeed I am not!" he unnecessarily assured her, for the kiss he put on it must have convinced her that he was flesh and blood, and perhaps the wave of colour which once more dyed her face derived its temperature from the warmth of that salutation.
"But you . . . M. le Chevalier, but you have returned from the dead! They told me you had been shot!"
"Yes, I have returned from the dead," agreed Fortuné—"for a purpose."
She did not ask what the purpose was; she still seemed shaken, uncertain of herself and of him. But her gaze, swift and compassionate, swept over everything that the sunlight showed so relentlessly—the traces of past suffering on his face, the added grey at his temples, and the pinned-up sleeve.
"Ah, que vous avez dû souffrir!" she said to herself. Then she put her hand to her head, as if she still felt herself in a dream.
"But where have you come from, M. le Chevalier?" she asked. "And why are you here, in Sark?"
He looked at her full, and answered bluntly, "To ask you to marry me!"
But as, giving an exclamation, she turned away, he hastily abandoned this ground.
"I have nothing to offer you, Madame," he went on quickly. "Neither money nor position nor a home, nor even two arms to defend you. The Republic has taken all those. And—for I am determined to be very frank with you—I must tell you that for ten years my heart has not been my own to offer. It was pledged to a memory. It has come back to me now, thank God, but I fear it has the dust of those years on it, and I am no longer very young." He paused a moment, and the sea of Sark, that is for ever booming in its enchanted caverns, gave a dull echo to his words. "It is because you too, Raymonde, have greatly loved and hated—I happen, do I not, to know how much?" he added, with the shadow of a smile—"that I am thus open with you. But my old love and hate are both over and done with now. I have a new, a better love—and it is all yours, as long as I shall live."
Mme. de Guéfontaine was examining a single childish bloom of gorse, just outgrowing its rough yellow-brown pinafore. And she said nothing.
"I have no time to wrap this meagre offer in fair phrases," went on Fortuné. "I doubt if they would improve it, and you are not, I think, the woman to care for them. I can only say this over and over again, that I love you and that I want you. It was you—the thought of you—that saved me at Quiberon; I used to dream of you at Houat. Raymonde!"
Still she did not answer, and stood with her head averted.
"Raymonde," said he, coming a little nearer, mingled command and entreaty in his tone, "for God's sake put down that flower and answer me!—only do not send me back to France with a refusal! If you cannot make up your mind to-day—and I must crave your forgiveness indeed for so blunt and hasty a wooing—at least let me take back with me a glimmer of hope!"
At that she looked up. Her face was transfigured, but he dared not try to interpret its new meaning.
"You are going back to France, in spite of everything, to that old life of peril and hardships?"
"Of course," said he. "But if you would accept it, I should have a home to offer you in Jersey. And when better days come——"
She interrupted him. "You misunderstand me, M. le Chevalier. I should not marry any man who was risking his life over there, to stay behind myself in safety. A wife's place, if she can help him, is with her husband." A smile wove itself into the beautiful radiance. "Shall you not need an agent at Kerdronan?"
For a second the gorse heaved beneath him. "Do you mean what you are saying?" cried La Vireville, seizing her wrist. "Will you really marry a penniless cripple who has nothing but his sword?"
Her smile was brilliant now, and dazzled Fortuné while she faced him, captive, as on a certain morning a year ago. "No, M. de la Vireville, I shall marry a man! As you know, for three years I had hated your name. But, as you wear it, I have long seen that I could not take a nobler."
So the woman he desired lay at last against Fortuné de la Vireville's breast, and up from the sea of gorse in which they stood welled the warm honey-sweet scent that is like no other in the world to steal away the heart. The wind had dropped to a caress; it caught at Raymonde's gown no longer, and out over the illimitable wrinkled blue, from the height on which they stood, the poised gulls looked like slowly drifting flecks of snow.
But out over there was also the long purple line of Jersey, and his pledged word. Time was all too short. As long as he lived the scent of gorse would always bring this hour to him, but the actual hour itself was measured with very few sands.
"Will you come back with me now to Guernsey, to your brother, Raymonde?" he asked softly, stooping his head.
"Yes," she answered, without moving. Her voice sounded like a voice in a dream.
"And I will return from Jersey, and we will be married at once?"
"Yes," she said again.
"My God, I can't believe it!" said Fortuné to himself, and kissed her once more.
So they went together to the little farm, itself named from the gorse, the Clos-ajonc, to tell her pensioners that she was leaving them immediately. And, no doubt to show that she did not consider him so maimed as to be incapable of affording her support, Raymonde leant all the way upon his arm.
CHAPTER XXXIX
Flower of the Foam
La Vireville did not go into the little Clos-ajonc with his lady. He waited for her outside, leaning upon its low, whitewashed wall, over which the tamarisk whispered with its feathery foliage. Breaths of the gorse came to him even here, and the whole warm air was vibrating with the lark's ecstasy. And Fortuné could hardly believe his happiness, so strange a thing to him. Old dreams, long put away, came back to him, merged in the new. Had he not yearned sometimes, despite himself, to have, in what remained of this hard and shifting existence of his, brief enough in its pleasures but endless in its unceasing fatigue and peril and anxiety—the life that was often no better than a hunted animal's—to have one place that was home, and shrine, and star? Well, he had his desire now; he had won that place, that heart, at last.
Yet even as he leant there, absorbed in contemplation, his mind was suddenly pierced with a most evil arrow of a thought. What if Raymonde had taken him out of pity, as a woman sometimes will . . . or worse, out of a sense of gratitude?
The idea assailed him so unexpectedly, and so much from without his own consciousness, that La Vireville dropped the strand of tamarisk which he was idly fingering, and started up, straightening himself as under an actual physical blow. Good God, it was impossible! "No," said a tiny derisive voice in his heart, "far from it! It is very possible. Even as to you yourself she is but a makeshift—you told her so with your own lips—so to her you are only a man for whom she is sorry, and to whom she is under an obligation. So much the better for you! And what else did you expect?"
And part of this two-sided onslaught La Vireville instantly and furiously repelled. No, no, it was a lie—she was not a makeshift! If he had spilt the best years of his life before another, a barren altar, he knew better now. He loved Raymonde deeply and sincerely, with a better love than he had given to that other. But Raymonde's own motive in accepting him—how should he answer for that? Now that it had once occurred to him, he saw that it was only too likely—she had taken him out of pity.
He leant upon the wall again and covered his eyes with his hand. The scene of his brief wooing, scarce concluded, passed once more before him. Again he saw her studying the gorse blossom, weighing what she should do. Yes, she had taken and returned his kisses—but had he not read compassion in her very eyes at her first sight of him, with that hateful empty sleeve? Yes, she had said that she was proud to bear his name—but that might well be an act of atonement for the past. She had spoken of helping him, of being by his side. Well, there was such a thing—curse it!—as gratitude; and she owed him her freedom, if not her life. But for him she had not stood on Sark to-day. That he had a claim on her had never, till this moment, come into his thoughts. Now his past knight-errantry stared at him like a crime. Her accepted lover . . . from pity and a sense of obligation! Could it really be so? Alas! who was to answer that it was not?
Fortuné uncovered his eyes, and, catching at a sprig of tamarisk, tore at it moodily with his teeth. The lark's song had ceased; even the sunlight seemed dimmed and unreal, as in time of eclipse. Yes, now that the exhilaration was over, he saw that he had been a fool. He glanced at his sleeve, thought of his lean purse, his blackened home. Of course she had accepted him because she was sorry for him, and because she thought that she owed him a debt and must pay it somehow! How could he have come to her expecting anything else, for what had he in the world—except his love—to lay at her feet?
And perhaps, after all, that love was not so strong nor so worthy as he had thought. Fortuné was very little used to introspection, and the thought shook him how easy it was, evidently, to delude oneself. Ought he not, at any rate, to put an end to the situation before it went farther, and, as a man of honour, offer to release Raymonde from the promise which a moment of compassion had wrung from her? . . . The idea was agony, but the wound to his pride was agony too. . . .
And at that very moment Raymonde came along the pebbled path that led from the door of the farmhouse. Her cloak was over her arm, a little basket in her hand; she turned her head and smiled at the old woman and the two children who watched her from the low doorway. And at the sight of her, at the movement of her head, her smile, the thought of releasing her left him as swiftly as it had come to him. He could not do it; he wanted her too much. If she had taken him out of pity or gratitude, so be it!—on whatever terms, so only she were his!
Something of the sudden conflict that had rent him must have been visible in his air, for as he held the gate open for her, and she had thanked him by a smile, she said quickly:
"Qu'avez-vous, mon ami? Was the sun too hot here?"
"I have been thinking over my good fortune," said her lover gravely. "Give me your cloak."
"I am glad that I have it with me," she remarked, as she complied. "I think there is a storm coming up."
La Vireville looked round. She was right; and he, used as he was to scanning the horizon in sailor fashion, had been too much absorbed to notice it. A continent of cloud was rising out of the sea to the north-east.
"I think it will pass over," pronounced the Chouan, looking at it. "But in any case we ought to hasten."
And soon they were making their way over the short turf of the down that runs to the head of the tiny Baie des Eperqueries, where Fortuné had left his boat, the only one riding in that small and solitary harbourage. A rusty culverin of Elizabethan days lay embedded in the short grass at the top. It was nearly low tide; down beneath the cove was tapestried with seaweed, green and purple and spotted, fan-shaped or ribbon-fashioned, and a pair of puffins, from their breeding-place at the other side of the island, sat solemnly side by side, like parrots, on a crag.
"I told the boatman to wait for me here," remarked La Vireville, as they made their way down the zigzag path. "I do not see him anywhere; ah, there he is!"
A jerseyed figure was, in fact, lying on its face about half-way down the slope.
"Come, wake up!" said the émigré, bending over him when they reached him. There being no response to this invitation, he shook the sleeper vigorously.
"Ma foi, this is a very sound sleep!" He stooped and picked up something. "And this is its cause!" He held out to Raymonde an empty brandy flask. "Cognac from our native land! He is dead drunk. What are we to do? Sail without him?"
"Yes," said she, without hesitation.
La Vireville weighed the thought. It was what he wished. Their time together was already so brief, that to put to sea together without a third, even for that short voyage, was a great temptation. "I do not know the channel," he said reflectively, "but the wind will not serve us ill for Guernsey."
"But I have sailed the channel, the Great Russel, several times," said Raymonde quickly. "The mark for the mid-channel, till you get within a mile from the islet of Jethou, is St. Martin's Tower in Guernsey. I can point it out to you. If we put out at once we can get back before the storm comes up—if it is coming up at all—whereas if we go round to the other side of the island, to Creux Harbour, to find a pilot, we shall be indefinitely delayed."
"You are quite right," said her lover, gazing at her where she stood a little below him on the sunlit slope. "But I do not like the look of the weather. Yet I must get back to St. Peter Port and catch the sloop before she sails—I have given my word. The best is for you to stay here, and I will go alone."
"No, no!" she cried vehemently. "That is not safe! You are not familiar with the sunken rocks. I am, and I know something of handling a boat. You will have more than you can do alone."
Yes, he was a one-armed man now! Through his gladness at her decision to accompany him pierced for a second the point of that assailing thought of compassion. But it did not stay with him; he beat it off as one would a vampire, and followed her down the path.
The gulls were screaming overhead, and the waves lopped half-playfully, half-menacingly against the sides of the sailing-boat as he pulled her in from her moorings. As if the two puffins had only waited to know his decision, they now left their perch, and fluttered off with their absurd, ineffectual, mothlike flight.
"I wish you would not come, Raymonde," he said half-heartedly, as he helped her aboard.
"Since when have you become a fairweather sailor, Monsieur Augustin?" she retorted.
"At any rate we will take a reef in the mainsail before we start," said Monsieur Augustin, and together they did it. The small mizen over the stern was still standing, and he left it so. Forward he set the jib only. And as they moved out of the little spellbound harbourage, so painted with the hues of the seaweed, they did not, despite the ruffled, slaty-blue water, appear to be doing anything very foolhardy.
Raymonde steered, because she knew the whereabouts of the 'stones,' and he sat facing her on the thwart, the end of the mainsheet in his hand. Neither spoke much at first; to him, at least, as he gazed at her the hour was sacred. Yes, on whatever terms, so only she were his!
So, almost in silence, they rounded the Pointe de Nez, the extreme northern corner of Sark, and set the course for Guernsey.
"And now," said Raymonde de Guéfontaine, "it is time to tell me how you escaped at Quiberon."
So, as the little boat held on, with a freshening wind, under a sky growing overcast, Fortuné told her. He had not foreseen the exquisite pleasure that it would be to him to make that recital to this, of all listeners.
"It is incredible—miraculous!" she exclaimed at the end, drawing a long breath. "You must have had some talisman, some charm!"
"On the contrary, I refused one," said her lover, laughing, and he told her of Grain d'Orge's consecrated cow's tail. The episode led her to ask news of that unwilling squire of hers, and Fortuné told her that a few weeks ago he had had the satisfaction of receiving, by way of Jersey, a grimy and ill-spelt letter from Kerdronan, in which the veteran campaigner, availing himself of the services of the most cultivated of the band (for he could not even sign his name himself) informed his leader, on the chance of the latter's being alive, that he and various others had escaped to the mainland as indicated, and had made their way up to the Côtes-du-Nord, and that he was reorganising the parishes round Kerdronan against such time as M. Augustin should come back to them. Le Goffic, he added, had been hidden by some peasants at Quiberon till he was sufficiently recovered to sail across to Sarzeau, in the peninsula of Rhuis, and thence he had joined the forces of Charette in Vendée. But since Charette's capture and execution last March he also, thought Grain d'Orge, was probably on his way to Kerdronan.
"But I had a talisman, Raymonde," said the narrator, breaking off. "I had the thought of you, as I have told you. That very unpleasant night at Quiberon, had you not been with me, I should certainly have lain there on the shore till I was found."
"And you had another also," replied Raymonde, glancing aloft at the foreleach of the sail. "What of the little boy—the little boy who cried so for you?"
"Eh bien, cela n'empêchait pas," asseverated La Vireville.—"Yes, it would be better to luff a little; the wind is undoubtedly getting up, and I shall be glad when we make the harbour.—You are right, I had the thought of Anne too, for I had promised his father to look after him if necessary—I forget if I told you that—but as, mercifully, M. de Flavigny was saved, you cannot be Anne's mother, Raymonde."
"He is a darling child," said Mme. de Guéfontaine softly, putting the tiller farther over as she was recommended. Her eyes sparkled, then fell. Perhaps that same thought at which Fortuné had hinted was in her mind too at that moment. In Fortuné's at any rate shone that old dream of his of standing under the larches at Kerdronan with her—and another. Yet now as he gazed at her, sitting, so unbelievably, at the helm of his boat, he suddenly saw, behind her, something else. . . . He gave an exclamation and let go the mainsheet.
"Keep the helm over—hard!" he said. "There is a squall coming; it will be on us in a moment. We must have this sail down. Don't leave the tiller!" And without losing a second he began to tug at the mainsail halyards.
But, the blocks running stiffly, or the ropes being swollen, before the sail was more than half-way down the squall struck them, with a howling blast that seemed to issue from some stupendous bellows, and rain that fell like steel rods. Over, over went the little boat, staggering under the onset, while Fortuné fought desperately both to get the sail completely down and to prevent it, as it came, from flapping into the angry water and pulling them under. It came back to him, like a demon's laughter, as he wrestled with it one-handed, how a few short hours ago he had said that two arms were unnecessary. What a lie!
Yet one terrible question only occupied his mind as he got the sail under control, and as the struggling boat, preserved from overturning only by the way which she had on her, began to right herself—Raymonde! Had she been swept out—for they had been at a fearful angle? No, she was still at her post, clinging to the tiller, gasping, and white as death. But she had not lost her head, and that had saved them. She knew as well as her lover that to keep the helm down was their one chance of avoiding being swamped by the great green seas that were all setting in fury towards the island, and bearing them, half full of water as they were, at each plunge a little nearer to the rocks. Without a word, except her name, uttered in something between a sob and a curse, La Vireville threw himself too on the groaning tiller, and for a few minutes they stood there side by side, staggering with the oscillations of the maddened craft, with the strength of both their bodies bent to one end—to keep that bar of wood, and with it the rudder, as it should be, against the malignant will of the storm. This was their true betrothal, handfasted by the tempest, and, as they would never have known it on the golden and enchanted island, among the gorse, they knew without the interchange of a word, in the howling wind, the pelting, stinging rain, with the water they had shipped swirling about their feet, that they were one indeed.
And presently the boat began to drive forward more violently. They were abreast of Les Autelets by this time, those fantastic pinnacles that on a sunset evening were things of wonder, now black and sullen amid the flying spray. Above them, too near for safety, frowned the rocky walls of the island, magical no longer (save with an evil magic), but sinister beyond belief. And soon they would come to Brechou, the satellite islet, between which and Sark runs a race so strong that no boat can live in it. And there were the sunken rocks, impossible to avoid now. At any moment they might be dashed on to one of them. Moreover, the boat was so full of water that there seemed almost as much danger of her sinking under them as of her being swamped or overturned.
"One of us must bale!" shouted Fortune in Raymonde's ear. "You, I think."
She obeyed him instantly, and abandoning the tiller and his side, crawled forward through the water, found a baling tin and set to work. And the man who saw that fine and unquestioning obedience knew for a moment the most bitter regret that the human heart can hold. Why had he been so mad as to come, as to bring her? He had risked his treasure, so newly found, so inexpressibly dear—risked it (and that was the worst) without need, and was now to lose it. For all this effort seemed but postponing the inevitable end. . . . But at least the salt water and the rain had washed him clean of the traces of that long infatuation—yes, and of the light loves of his youth. Now he was hers only, and he and no other man would go down with her under the greedy, hissing waves and share her sleep. . . .
Meanwhile she toiled there, crouched in the bottom of the boat, her wet hair blown in streaks across her face, while he kept the boat's head as much to the seas as he dared, only easing the helm on the approach of a wave that seemed heavy enough to drive her bows under. But immediately afterwards he would luff right into the crest of the wave, and then as their labouring progress was thereby checked, must put the helm up again for a second, to get the sails full once more, lest the boat should roll over into the trough. It was a task calling for a stout heart and the nicest judgment, and never by a word, nor even by a look, did Raymonde de Guéfontaine, unceasingly working also, distract him or show a sign of fear.
In such tension time scarcely exists, and it would have been hard for Fortuné to say how long he had battled with the immense hostility so suddenly arrayed against them, nor how much water Raymonde's aching arms had, with almost mechanical action, thrown overboard, before it began to seem to him that the smoother sea which followed every three vehement waves or so was of longer duration. Was it possible that the wind was abating? Only then, with the dawn of the first real ray of hope in his heart, did Fortuné become conscious too that with the lessening of the squall the island on their lee had disappeared, blotted out by the pall of mingled mist and rain which enshrouded them also. Perhaps they were still near it for all that? But since the roar of the breaking surf was no longer audible, it struck him that they must be drifting away from Sark, borne by one of those currents, perhaps, of which the boatman had spoken.
"The worst is over, I think," he shouted to Raymonde. She nodded, stopping her baling for a moment to put back her dripping hair, and smiled—it was like a star coming out in a wet sky.
And even as Fortuné shouted he realised that an ordinary tone would have carried to her ear. The uproar had ceased—nay, the wind had dropped almost dead; he could hardly get the jib to draw. They seemed to be motionless in a white silence, though doubtless they were moving faster than they knew. For an instant he thought of hoisting the mainsail again, then decided against it. Of what use advancing when they could see nothing and had no idea of direction? The sea was still agitated, lifting up countless plucking hands in uneasy bravado, but there was no danger in that. So he left the tiller and stooped over Raymonde.
"That is enough. You have the better of it now, brave heart! My darling, my darling, how wet you are, and how cold!" He pulled her to him, and opening the breast of his soaked redingote made her pillow her head there. She shivered a little and clung to him, and a strange, cold, remote happiness descended upon them both as they drifted on, physically and mentally spent, in a sort of limbo between death and life—neither ghosts nor yet fully sentient, floating in a dream that was not a dream, and a reality that counterfeited illusion.