HOW WE HEARD STRANGE NEWS
"Whatever is it all, Phil?" whispered Carette as we ate.
"There has evidently been fighting outside, and he has got a knock on the
head, and his wits are astray." But that strange thing he had said ran in
my head, and made such play there that I began to be troubled about it.
You must remember I had never heard the name of Paul Martel, and of my
father I knew nothing save that he was dead. So that this strange word of
George Hamon's was to me but empty vapouring brought on by that blow on the
head. But against that there was the tremendous fact which had so exercised
my mind, that this man Torode had spared my life at risk of his own, when
every other soul that could have perilled him had been slaughtered in cold
blood.
If--the awful import of that little word!--if there was--if there could be,
any sense in George Hamon's words, the puzzle of Torode's strange treatment
of me was explained. I saw that clearly enough, but yet the whole matter
held no sense of reality to me. It was all as obscure and shadowy as the
dim cross-lights in which we sat, and ate because we were starving.
Torode lay like a log, breathing slowly, but with no other sign of life.
George Hamon presently knelt beside him again and gazed long into his face,
and then examined his wound carefully. Then he stood up and signed to us to
follow him, and we went along the cleft to the water-cave, and sat down
there in the dim green light that filtered through the water.
"Mon gars," he said very gravely, "I have done you a wrong. I ought to have
kept it to myself. It was the suddenness of it that upset me. I told you no
living man besides myself knew of this place, and that was because I
believed this man dead--dead this twenty years. He was partner with me in
the free-trading for a time, until we fell out--"
"You said just now that he was my father," I broke in, and eyed him closely
to see if his wits were still astray. "What did you mean?"
"It is true," he said gloomily. "I am sorry. It slipped out."
"But he is Torode, and you called him Martel, and I am Phil Carré."
"All that; but, all the same, it is true, mon gars. He is your father, Paul
Martel."
"I have always been told my father was dead."
"We believed so. He went away twenty years ago, and never came back. We
believed him dead--we wished him dead. He was better dead than alive."
"I don't understand," I said doggedly, still all in a maze. "You call him
Martel, and say he is my father, but I am Phil Carré."
"Yes. We were sick of Martel, and sick of his name. We did not wish you to
be weighted with it.... Now see, mon gars, I was in the wrong to slip it
out, but--well, there it is--I was wrong. But, since it is done, and we
must keep it to ourselves, I will tell you the rest. You are old enough to
know. And Carette--eh bien! it is you yourself, and not your father--"
"Ma fé, one does not choose one's father," said Carette, and slipped her
hand through my arm, and clung tightly to it through all the telling.
And George Hamon told us briefly that which I have set forth in the
beginning of my story. We two talked of it many times afterwards, and it
was at such odd times that he told me all the rest. And I think it like
enough that you, who have read it all in the order in which I have written
it, may long since have guessed that thing which had puzzled me so
much--Torode's strange sparing of my life when he murdered all my comrades.
But to me, who had never known anything of my father, and had grown to know
myself only as Phil Carré, the whole matter was amazing, and upsetting
beyond my power to tell.
"And what are we to do now, Uncle George?" I asked dispiritedly, for the
sudden tumbling into one's life of a father whom all honest men must hate
and loathe darkened all my sky like a thunder-cloud on a summer day.
"If he dies we will bury him here and in our three hearts, and no other
must know. It would only break your mother's life again as it was broken
once before."
"And if he lives?" I asked gloomily, and, unseemly though it might be, it
was perhaps hardly strange that I could not bring myself to wish anything
but that he might die.
"If he lives," said Uncle George, no whit less gloomily--and stopped in
the slough.... "I do not know.... His life is forfeit ... and yet--you
cannot give him up ... nor can I.... But perhaps he will die ..." he said
hopefully.
"And I shall have killed him."
"Mon Dieu, yes!--I forgot.... But you did not know, and if you had not he
would certainly have killed you ... and Carette also, without doubt."
"All the same--"
"Yes, I know," he nodded. "Well, we must wait and see. I wonder now what
Philip would do,"--meaning my grandfather, in whose wisdom he had implicit
faith, as all had who knew him. "I'm inclined to think he would give him
up, you know. He would never loose him on the world again.... However, he
may die."
"Where is he--my grandfather? And what has been doing outside, and when can
we get out?"
"He is away to Peter Port, but he had to go by way of Jersey, and by night,
to avoid their look-out boats. He has got there all right, for there is
fighting on Herm. We heard the sound of the guns, and the Herm men are
getting back there as fast as they can go."
"What day is this?"
"To-day is Thursday."
"Thursday!" echoed Carette. "And we came in here on Tuesday! Is it Thursday
of this week or Thursday of next week, Uncle George?"
"This week," he said with surprise, for he could not possibly understand
how completely we had lost count of time. "Torode came across himself with
four big boat-loads of rascals, with carronades in their boats, too, and
they have turned the Island upside down in search of you. He thought, you
see, without doubt, that if he could lay hands on you there was no one else
could swear to anything but hearsay. But the Peter Port men will take your
grandfather's word for it, as they would take no one else's. And that word
concerning John Ozanne and his men would set them in a flame if anything
could. He was very loth to go, but he saw it was the surest way of ending
the matter. So he slipped away with Krok in the dark, and they were to swim
out to a boat off Les Lâches and make their way by Jersey. Now, if you have
eaten, we will get out to the light."
"Dieu merci!" said Carette heartfully.
"And what about him?" I asked, nodding towards the wounded man.
"He must wait. Can he eat?"
"I have dropped brandy down his throat two or three times, and he seems to
swallow it."
"We will give him some more, and decide afterwards. Mon Dieu! But I wish
Philip was here."
"Would you tell him?"
"Surely! But not your mother, Phil," he said anxiously, and I knew again
how truly he loved her. "She must not know. She must never know."
"What about Aunt Jeanne?" I asked.
He shook his head. "The fewer that know the better." So we dropped some
more brandy and water into the wounded man's mouth, and gathered our few
belongings, and crept down the tunnel after Uncle George.
Oh, the blessedness of the sweet salt sunlit air, as we stood in the
water-worn chasm and blinked at the light, while Uncle George carefully
closed his door. We took long deep draughts of it, and felt uplifted and
almost light-headed.
"It is resurrection," said Carette; and as we climbed out of the cleft and
took our way quickly among the great gorse cushions along Eperquerie, the
dull sound of firing on Herm came to us on the west wind.