HOW CARETTE CAME BY HER GOLDEN BRIDGE
And Carette--
I recall her in those days in a thousand different circumstances, and
always like the sunlight or the lightning, gleaming, sparkling, flashing.
For she could be as steadily radiant as the one and as unexpectedly fickle
as the other, and I do not know that I liked her any the less on that
account, though truly it made her none too easy to deal with at times. Her
quick changes and childish vagaries kept one, at all events, very much
alive and in a state of constant expectation. And whenever I think of her I
thank God for Jeanne Falla, and all that that wisest and sharpest and
tenderest of women was able to do for her.
For, you see, Carette was peculiarly circumstanced, and might have gone to
waste but for her aunt Jeanne.
Her mother died when she was six years old, after four years' life on
Brecqhou, and Carette was left to be utterly spoiled by her father and six
big brothers, wild and reckless men all of them, but all, I am sure, with
tender spots in their hearts for the lovely child who seemed so out of
place among them, though for anyone outside they had little thought or
care.
My own thoughts delight to linger back among these earlier scenes before
the more trying times came. If you will let me, I will try to picture
Carette to you as I see her in my mind's eye, and I can see her as she was
then as clearly as though it were yesterday.
I see a girl of ten, of slight, graceful figure, and of so active a nature
that if you found her quite still you feared at once that something was
wrong with her.
Her face was very charming, browned richly with the kiss of sun and wind,
and without a freckle, yet not so brown as to hide the rich colour of her
feelings, which swept across her face as quickly as the cloud-shadows
across the sparkling face of the sea.
Her eyes were large and dark--all alight with the joy of life; sparkling
with fun and mischief; blazing forked lightnings at some offence, fancied
as often as not; big with entreaty that none could refuse; more rarely--in
those days--deep with sober thought; but always--shining, sparkling,
blazing, entreating--the most wonderful and fascinating eyes in the world
to the boy at her side, on whom they shone and sparkled and blazed and
entreated, and moulded always to her imperious little will.
A sturdy boy of twelve, short if anything for his age at that time, though
later he grew to full Sercq height and something over; but strong and
healthy, with a pair of keen blue eyes, and nothing whatever distinctive
about his brown face, unless it was a touch of the inflexible honesty which
had been diligently instilled into him from the time he was three years
old. Perhaps also some little indication of the stubborn determination
which must surely have come from his grandfather, and which some people
called obstinacy.
Anyway the girl trusted him implicitly, ruled him imperiously, quarrelled
with him at times but never beyond reason, and always quickly made it up
again, and in so delightful a fashion that one remembered the quarrel no
more but only the making-up,--beamed upon him then more graciously than
before, and looked to him for certain help in every time of need.
Inseparables these two, except when the Gouliot waters were in an evil
humour and rendered the passage impossible, for her home was on Brecqhou
and his was on Sercq. Fortunately for their friendship, Aunt Jeanne Falla
lived on Sercq also, and Carette was as often to be found at Beaumanoir as
at her father's house on Brecqhou, and it was to her father's liking that
it should be so. For he and the boys were often all away for days at a
time, and on such occasions, as they started, they would drop Carette on
the rough shore of Havre Gosselin, or set her hands and feet in the iron
rings that scaled the bald face of the rock, and up she would go like a
goat, and away to the welcome of the house that was her second and better
home. What Carette would have been without Aunt Jeanne I cannot imagine;
and so--all thanks to the sweet, sharp soul who took her mother's place.
See these two, then, as they lay in the sweet short herbage of Tintageu or
Moie de Mouton, chins on fist, crisp light hair close up alongside floating
brown curls, caps or hats scorned impediments to rapid motion, bare heels
kicking up emotionally behind, as they surveyed their little world, and
watched the distant ships, and dreamed dreams and saw visions.
Very clear in my memory is one such day, by reason of the fact that it was
the beginning of a new and highly satisfactory state of matters between the
boy and the girl.
Carette, you understand, was practically prisoner on Brecqhou except at
such times as the higher powers, for good reasons of their own, put her
ashore on Sercq. And, often as this happened, there were still many times
when she would have been there but could not.
She had startled her companion more than once by wild threats of swimming
the Gouliot, which is a foolhardy feat even for a man, for the dark passage
is rarely free from coiling undercurrents, which play with a man as though
he were no more than a piece of seaweed, and try even a strong swimmer's
nerve and strength. And when she spoke so, the boy took her sharply to
task, and drew most horrible pictures of her dead white body tumbling about
among the Autelets, or being left stranded in the rock pools by Port du
Moulin, nibbled by crabs and lobsters and pecked by hungry gulls; or,
maybe, lugged into a sea-cave by a giant devil-fish and ripped into pieces
by his pitiless hooked beak.
At all of which the silvery little voice would say "Pooh!" But all the same
the slim little figure would shiver in the hot sunshine inside its short
blue linsey-woolsey frock, and the dark eyes would grow larger than ever at
the prospect, especially at the ripping by the giant pieuvre, in which they
both believed devoutly, and eventually she would promise not to throw her
young life away.
"But all the same, Phil, I do feel like trying it when I want over and they
won't let me."
And--"Don't be a silly," the boy would say. "If you go and get yourself
drowned, in any stupid way like that, Carette, I'll never speak to you
again as long as I live."
They were lying so one day on the altar rock behind Tintageu, the boy
gazing dreamily into the vast void past the distant Casquets, where,
somewhere beyond and beyond, lay England, the land of many
wonders,--England, where the mighty folks had lived of whom he had read in
his grandfather's great book of plays,--and strange, wild notions he had
got of the land and the people; England, where they used to burn men and
women at the stake, and pinch them with hot irons, and sting them to death
with bees, and break them in pieces on wheels--a process he did not quite
understand, though it seemed satisfactorily horrible; England, which was
always at war with France, and was constantly winning great fights upon the
sea; England, of whom they were proud to be a part, though--somewhat
confusingly to twelve years old--their own ordinary speech was French; a
wonderful place that England, bigger even than Guernsey, his grandfather
said, and so it must be true. And sometime, maybe, he would sail across the
sea and see it all for himself, and the great city of London, which was
bigger even than Peter Port, though that, indeed, seemed almost past belief
and the boy had his doubts.
He told Carette of England and London at times, and drew so wildly on his
imagination--yet came so very far from the reality--that Carette flatly
denied the possibilities of such things, and looked upon him as a romancer
of parts, though she put it more briefly.
She herself lay facing west, gazing longingly at Herm and Jethou, with the
long line of Guernsey behind. Guernsey bounded her aspirations. Sometime
she was to go with Aunt Jeanne to Guernsey, and then she would be level
with Phil, and be able to take him down when he boasted too wildly of its
wonderful streets and houses and shops.
Suddenly she stiffened, as a cat does at distant sight of a mouse, gazed
hard, sat up, jumped to her feet and began to dance excitedly as was her
way.
"Phil! Phil!" and the boy's eyes were on the object at which her dancing
finger pointed vaguely.
"A boat!" said he, jumping with excitement also, for the boat Carette had
sighted was evidently astray, and, moreover, it was, as they could easily
see even at that distance, no Island boat, but a stranger, a waif, and so
lawful prey and treasure-trove if they could secure it.
"Oh, Phil! Get it! I want it! It's just what I've been wanting all my
life!"
It was a mere yellow cockleshell of a thing, almost round, and progressing,
with wind and tide, equally well bow or stern foremost, its holding
capacity a man and a half maybe, or say two children.
It came joggling slowly along, like a floating patch of sunlight, among the
sun-glints, and every joggle brought it nearer to the grip of the current
that was swirling south through the Gouliot. Once caught in the foaming
Race, ten chances to one it would be smashed like an eggshell on some black
outreaching fang of the rocks.
The boy took in all the chances at a glance, and sped off across the narrow
neck to the mainland, tore along the cliff round Pegane and Port à la
Jument, then away past the head of Saut de Juan, and down the cliff-side
to where the black shelves overhang the backwater of the Gouliot.
He shed his guernsey during the safe passage between Jument and Saut de
Juan. The rest of his clothing, one garment all told, he thoughtfully
dropped at the top of the cliff before he took to the shelves. The girl
gathered his things as she ran, and danced excitedly with them in her arms
as she saw his white body launch out from the lowest shelf far away below
her, and go wrestling through the water like a tiny white frog.
They had travelled quicker than the careless boat, and he was well out
among the first writhings of the Race before it came bobbing merrily
towards him. She saw his white arm flash up over the yellow side, and he
hung there panting. Then slowly he worked round to the fat stern, and
hauled himself cautiously on board, and stood and waved a cheerful hand to
her.
Then she saw him pick up a small piece of board from the flooring of the
boat and try to paddle back into the slack water. And she saw, too, that it
was too late. The Race had got hold of the cockleshell, and a piece of
board would never make it let go. Oars might, but there were no oars.
She danced wildly, saw him give up that attempt and paddle boldly out,
instead, into the middle of the coiling waters, saw him turn the
cockleshell's blunt nose straight for the Pass, and stand watchfully
amidships with his board poised to keep her to a true course if that might
be.
The passage of the Race is no easy matter even with oars and strong men's
hands upon them. A cockleshell and a board were but feeble things, and the
girl knew it, and, dancing wildly all the time because she could not stand
still, looked each second to see the tiny craft flung aside and cracked on
the jagged rocks.
But, with a great raking pull here, and a mighty sweep there, kneeling now,
and now standing with one foot braced against the side for leverage, the
boy managed in some marvellous way to keep his cockleshell in midstream.
The girl watched them go rocking down the dark way, and then sped off
across the headland towards Havre Gosselin. She got there just in time to
see a boat with two strong rowers plunging out into the Race past Pierre au
Norman, and knew that the boy was safe, and then she slipped and tumbled
down the zigzag to meet them when they came in. The boy would want his
clothes, and she wanted to see her boat. For of course it would be hers,
and now she would be able to come across from Brecqhou whenever she wished.
The matter was not settled quite so easily as that, however.
She was dancing eagerly among the big round stones on the shore of Havre
Gosselin, when the boat came in, with the cockleshell in tow and the small
boy sitting in it, with his chin on his knees and shaking still with
excitement and chills.
"All the same, mon gars, it was foolishness, for you might have been
drowned," said the older man of the two, as they drew in to the shore, and
the other man nodded agreement.
"I--w-w-wanted it for C-C-Carette," chittered the boy.
"Yes, yes, we know. But--And then there is M. le Seigneur, you understand."
"But, Monsieur Carré," cried the small girl remonstratively, "it would
never have come in if Phil had not gone for it. It would have got smashed
in the Gouliot or gone right past and been lost. And, besides, I do so want
it."
"All the same, little one, the Seigneur's rights must be respected. You'd
better go and tell him about it and ask him--"
"I will, mon Gyu!" and she was off up the zigzag before he had finished.
And it would have been a very different man from Peter le Pelley who could
refuse the beguilement of Carette's wistful dark eyes, when her heart was
set on her own way, as it generally was.
The Seigneur, indeed, had no special liking for the Le Marchants, who had
sat themselves down in his island of Brecqhou without so much as a
by-your-leave or thank you. Still, the island was of little use to him, and
to oust them would have been to incur the ill-will of men notorious for the
payment of scores in kind, so he suffered them without opposition.
Carette told us afterwards that the Seigneur stroked her hair, when she had
told all her story and proffered her request, assuring him at the same time
that the little boat would be of no use to him whatever, as it could not
possibly hold him.
"And what do you want with it, little one?" he asked.
"To come over from Brecqhou whenever I want, M. le Seigneur, if you
please."
"My faith, I think you will be better on Sercq than on Brecqhou. But you
will be getting yourself drowned in the Gouliot, and that would be a sad
pity," said the Seigneur.
"But I can swim, M. le Seigneur, and I will be very, very careful."
"Well, well! You can have the boat, child. But if any ill comes of it,
remember, I shall feel myself to blame. So be careful for my sake also."
And so the yellow cockleshell became Carette's golden bridge, and
thereafter her comings and goings knew no bounds but her own wilful will
and the states of the tides and the weather.
Krok's ideas in the matter of seigneurial rights of flotsam and jetsam were
by no means as strict as his master's, especially where Carette was
concerned. In his mute, dog-like way he worshipped Carette. In case of
need, he would, I believe, have given his left hand in her service; and the
right, I think he would have kept for himself and me. He procured from
somewhere a great beam of ship's timber, and with infinite labour fixed it
securely in a crevice of the rocks, high up by the Galé de Jacob, with one
end projecting over the shelving rocks below. Then, with rope and pulley
from the same ample storehouse, he showed Carette how she could, with her
own unaided strength, hitch on her cockleshell and haul it up the cliff
side out of reach of the hungriest wave. He made her a pair of tiny sculls
too, and thenceforth she was free of the seas, and she flitted to and fro,
and up and down that rugged western coast, till it was all an open book to
her. But so venturesome was she, and so utterly heedless of danger, that we
all went in fear for her, and she laughed all our fears to scorn.