HOW WE GREW, AND GROWING, GREW APART
As I said, I am not going to waste time telling you of my three long
voyages, beyond what is absolutely necessary. These lie for the most part
like level plains in my memory, though not without their out-jutting
points. But the heights and depths lay beyond.
Very clear to me, however, is the fact that it was ever-growing thought of
Carette, more even, I am bound to confess, than thought of my mother and
grandfather, that kept me clear of pitfalls which were not lacking to the
unwary in those days as in these. Thought of Carette, too, that braced me
to the quiet facing of odds on more than one occasion.
Our second voyage was distinguished by a whole day's fierce fighting with a
French privateer off the Caicos Islands, while proceeding peacefully on our
way from the newly acquired island of Trinidad to the St. Lawrence. It was
my first experience of fighting, and a hot one at that. Between killed and
wounded we lost five men, but the Frenchman left ten dead on our deck the
first time he boarded, and eight the second, and after that did not try
again. But he dogged us all the rest of that day and did his best to
cripple us, until a fortunate shot from a carronade, which Master Nicolle
ran out astern, nipped his foremast and set us free. I got a cut from a
cutlass in the left arm, but it healed readily, and Captain Nicolle was
pleased to compliment me on my behaviour. But, to tell the truth, I was so
angry at the Frenchman's insolent interference with us, that I thought of
nothing at the time but taking it out of him with hearty thrust and blow
whenever chance offered.
On our third voyage the _Hirondelle_ went ashore in a gale off Cape
Hatteras, and Captain Nicolle and half our crew were drowned. The rest of
us scrambled ashore _sans_ everything, but were well treated, and as soon
as we could travel were forwarded to New York, and in time found a ship to
take us to London.
So that, on the whole, I had seen a fair amount of life and death and the
larger world outside, and felt my years almost doubled from what they were
when I used to lie on Tintageu and watch the white-sailed ships pressing
out to the great beyond.
But the things that stand out now most clearly in my memory are the
homecomings and the partings and all they meant to me, but more especially
the homecomings--the eager looking forward from the moment our bows pointed
homewards; the joy of seeing my mother and grandfather and dear old Krok
and George Hamon--Uncle George by adoption, failing that closer
relationship which Providence had denied him--sympathetic listener to all
our childish troubles and kindly rescuer from endless scrapes; the biting
intensity of longing to meet Carette again, and to find out how things were
with her and how things were between us, a longing that taught me the
meaning of heartache.
For this was how matters stood between us--at least as I saw them. Each
time I came home I managed, in one way or another, to get a sight, at all
events, of Carette, though in some cases little more. Twice I stormed the
maiden fortress in George Road, and ran the gauntlet of the Miss Maugers
with less discomfiture than on the first occasion, through Miss Maddy's
sympathy and my added weight of years and experience. And once Carette was
making holiday with Aunt Jeanne, and Beaumanoir saw more of me than did
Belfontaine.
And my very vivid recollection of all those times is this--that Carette
grew more beautiful each time I saw her, both in mind and body; that my
feeling for her grew in me beyond all other growth, though the years were
building me solidly; and that a fear sprang up in me at last that she was
perhaps going to grow out of my reach, as she certainly was growing out of
my understanding.
Each time we met her greeting was of the warmest, and had in it the
recollection of those earlier days. That, I said to myself, was the real
Carette.
And then there would gradually come upon us that thin veil of distance, as
though the years and the growth and the experiences of life were setting us
a little apart. And that, I said, was the Miss Maugers.
For my part I would have had Carette as satisfied with my sole
companionship as in the days when we romped bare-legged among the pools and
rocks, and woke the basking gulls and cormorants with our shouts, and dared
the twisting currents with unfettered limbs and no thought of wrong. These
things in all their fulness of delight were, of course, no longer possible
to us. But the joyous spirit of them I would fain have retained, and I
found it slipping elusively away.
We were, in fact, and inevitably, putting away the things of our childhood
and becoming man and woman, with all the wider and deeper feelings incident
thereto. The changes were inevitable and--Carette grew in some ways more
quickly than I did. So that, whereas I had always been undisputed leader in
all things, even when it was the accomplishing of her wishes, now I found
myself looking up to her as something above me, possibly beyond me,
something certainly to strive after with all that was in me, and without
which everything else would be nothing.
Perhaps I had been inclined to take things somewhat for granted. Jeanne
Falla did not fail, in due course, to tell me so, and she was a very shrewd
woman and understood her kind better than any man that ever was born. Now,
taking things for granted is always, and under any circumstances, but most
especially where the unknown is in question, a most unwise thing to do. And
what can equal for unfathomableness the workings of a woman's heart?
I had never given a thought to any other girl than Carette, unless by way
of unfavourable comparison. It is true I had never come across any girl so
well worth thinking about. The merry dark eyes with their deepening depths;
the sweet wide mouth that flashed so readily into laughter, and set one
thinking of the glad little waves and little white shells on Herm beach;
the mane of dark brown hair--she wore it primly braided at the Miss
Maugers'--in which gleams of sunshine seemed to have become entangled and
never been able to find their way out,--these went with me through the soft
seductions of the Antilles, and the more experienced beguilements of the
Mediterranean, and armed me sufficiently against them all;--these also that
filled with rosy light many a long hour that for my comrades was dark and
tedious, and kept my heart high and strong when the times were hard and
bitter.
I had wondered at times, but always pleasurably, at the very unusual amount
of education Carette was getting, for it was unusual at that time and under
the circumstances, so far as I understood them. But I rejoiced at it,
remembering my grandfather's saying in my own case; and even when the
results of it seemed to drop little veils between us, I am certain I never
wished things otherwise so far as Carette was concerned, though perhaps for
my own sake I might.
Jean Le Marchant of Brecqhou had prospered in his business, I knew. His six
stalwart sons had been too busy contributing to that prosperity to acquire
any great book-learning. They were all excellent sailors, bold
free-traders, and somewhat overbearing to their fellows. It was only slowly
that the idea came to me that the blood that was in them might be of a
different shade and kind from that which flowed so temperately in our cool
Sercq veins.
It was much thinking of Carette and her ever-growing beauty and
accomplishments which brought me to that. Truly there was no girl in all
Sercq like her, nor on Guernsey I would wager, and her father and brothers
also were very different from the other Island men. As likely as not they
were French, come over to escape the troubles. That would account for many
things, and the idea, once in my mind, took firm root there. Sometime, when
opportunity offered, I would ask Jeanne Falla. She would certainly know
all about her own husband's family. Whether she would tell me was quite
another matter.
Up to now, you see, Carette, as Carette, had sufficed, but now Carette was
growing out of herself and her surroundings, and it was the why and
wherefore of this that my thoughts went in search of. For if Carette grew
out of her surroundings she might grow beyond me, and it behoved me to see
to it, for she had grown to be a part of my life, and life without her
would be a poor thing indeed.
And all these things I used to turn over and over in my heart during the
sultry night-watches in the West Indies, when the heat lightnings gleamed
incessantly all round the horizon, and it was too hot to sleep even when
off duty; and during the grimmer watches round about Newfoundland, with the
fog as thick as wool inside and outside one, and the smell of the floating
bergs in the air; and most of all when we were plunging homeward as fast as
we could make it, and the call of Carette drew my heart faster than my
body, till my body fairly ached for sight and sound of her.