DURANDE AND DÉRUCHETTE
I
PRATTLE AND SMOKE
The human body might well be regarded as a mere simulacrum; but it
envelopes our reality, it darkens our light, and broadens the shadow in
which we live. The soul is the reality of our existence. Strictly
speaking, the human visage is a mask. The true man is that which exists
under what is called man. If that being, which thus exists sheltered and
secreted behind that illusion which we call the flesh, could be
approached, more than one strange revelation would be made. The vulgar
error is to mistake the outward husk for the living spirit. Yonder
maiden, for example, if we could see her as she really is, might she not
figure as some bird of the air?
A bird transmuted into a young maiden, what could be more exquisite?
Picture it in your own home, and call it Déruchette. Delicious creature!
One might be almost tempted to say, "Good-morning, Mademoiselle
Goldfinch." The wings are invisible, but the chirping may still be
heard. Sometimes, too, she pipes a clear, loud song. In her childlike
prattle, the creature is, perhaps, inferior; but in her song, how
superior to humanity! When womanhood dawns, this angel flies away; but
sometimes returns, bringing back a little one to a mother. Meanwhile,
she who is one day to be a mother is for a long while a child; the girl
becomes a maiden, fresh and joyous as the lark. Noting her movements, we
feel as if it was good of her not to fly away. The dear familiar
companion moves at her own sweet will about the house; flits from branch
to branch, or rather from room to room; goes to and fro; approaches and
retires; plumes her wings, or rather combs her hair, and makes all kinds
of gentle noises--murmurings of unspeakable delight to certain ears. She
asks a question, and is answered; is asked something in return, and
chirps a reply. It is delightful to chat with her when tired of serious
talk; for this creature carries with her something of her skyey element.
She is, as it were, a thread of gold interwoven with your sombre
thoughts; you feel almost grateful to her for her kindness in not making
herself invisible, when it would be so easy for her to be even
impalpable; for the beautiful is a necessary of life. There is, in this
world, no function more important than that of being charming. The
forest-glade would be incomplete without the humming-bird. To shed joy
around, to radiate happiness, to cast light upon dark days, to be the
golden thread of our destiny, and the very spirit of grace and harmony,
is not this to render a service? Does not beauty confer a benefit upon
us, even by the simple fact of being beautiful? Here and there we meet
with one who possesses that fairy-like power of enchanting all about
her; sometimes she is ignorant herself of this magical influence, which
is, however, for that reason, only the more perfect. Her presence lights
up the home; her approach is like a cheerful warmth; she passes by; and
we are content; she stays awhile, and we are happy. To behold her is to
live: she is the Aurora with a human face. She has no need to do more
than simply to be: she makes an Eden of the house; Paradise breathes
from her; and she communicates this delight to all, without taking any
greater trouble than that of existing beside them. Is it not a thing
divine to have a smile which, none know how, has the power to lighten
the weight of that enormous chain which all the living, in common, drag
behind them? Déruchette possessed this smile: we may even say that this
smile was Déruchette herself. There is one thing which has more
resemblance to ourselves than even our face, and that is our expression:
but there is yet another thing which more resembles us than this, and
that is our smile. Déruchette smiling was simply Déruchette.
There is something peculiarly attractive in the Jersey and Guernsey
race. The women, particularly the young, are remarkable for a pure and
exquisite beauty. Their complexion is a combination of the Saxon
fairness, with the proverbial ruddiness of the Norman people--rosy
cheeks and blue eyes; but the eyes want brilliancy. The English training
dulls them. Their liquid glances will be irresistible whenever the
secret is found of giving them that depth which is the glory of the
Parisienne. Happily Englishwomen are not yet quite transformed into the
Parisian type. Déruchette was not a Parisian; yet she was certainly not
a Guernesiaise. Lethierry had brought her up to be neat and delicate and
pretty; and so she was.
Déruchette had, at times, an air of bewitching langour, and a certain
mischief in the eye, which were altogether involuntary. She scarcely
knew, perhaps, the meaning of the word love, and yet not unwillingly
ensnared those about her in the toils. But all this in her was innocent.
She never thought of marrying.
Déruchette had the prettiest little hands in the world, and little feet
to match them. Sweetness and goodness reigned throughout her person; her
family and fortune were her uncle Mess Lethierry; her occupation was
only to live her daily life; her accomplishments were the knowledge of a
few songs; her intellectual gifts were summed up in her simple
innocence; she had the graceful repose of the West Indian woman, mingled
at times with giddiness and vivacity, with the teasing playfulness of a
child, yet with a dash of melancholy. Her dress was somewhat rustic, and
like that peculiar to her country--elegant, though not in accordance
with the fashions of great cities; for she wore flowers in her bonnet
all the year round. Add to all this an open brow, a neck supple and
graceful, chestnut hair, a fair skin slightly freckled with exposure to
the sun, a mouth somewhat large, but well-defined, and visited from time
to time by a dangerous smile. This was Déruchette.
Sometimes in the evening, a little after sunset, at the moment when the
dusk of the sky mingles with the dusk of the sea, and twilight invests
the waves with a mysterious awe, the people beheld, entering the harbour
of St. Sampson, upon the dark rolling waters, a strange, undefined
thing, a monstrous form which puffed and blew; a horrid machine which
roared like a wild beast, and smoked like a volcano; a species of Hydra
foaming among the breakers, and leaving behind it a dense cloud, as it
rushed on towards the town with a frightful beating of its fins, and a
throat belching forth flame. This was Durande.
II
THE OLD STORY OF UTOPIA
A steamboat was a prodigious novelty in the waters of the Channel in
182-. The whole coast of Normandy was long strangely excited by it.
Now-a-days, ten or a dozen steam vessels, crossing and recrossing within
the bounds of the horizon, scarcely attract a glance from loiterers on
the shore. At the most, some persons, whose interest or business it is
to note such things, will observe the indications in their smoke of
whether they burn Welsh or Newcastle coal. They pass, and that is all.
"Welcome," if coming home; "a pleasant passage," if outward bound.
Folks were less calm on the subject of these wonderful inventions in the
first quarter of the present century; and the new and strange machines,
and their long lines of smoke regarded with no good-will by the Channel
Islanders. In that Puritanical Archipelago, where the Queen of England
has been censured for violating the Scriptures[2] by using chloroform
during her accouchments, the first steam-vessel which made its
appearance received the name of the "Devil Boat." In the eyes of these
worthy fishermen, once Catholics, now Calvinists, but always bigots, it
seemed to be a portion of the infernal regions which had been somehow
set afloat. A local preacher selected for his discourse the question of
"Whether man has the right to make fire and water work together when God
had divided them.[3] This beast, composed of iron and fire, did it not
resemble Leviathan? Was it not an attempt to bring chaos again into the
universe? This is not the only occasion on which the progress of
civilisation has been stigmatised as a return to chaos.
"A mad notion--a gross delusion--an absurdity!" Such was the verdict of
the Academy of Sciences when consulted by Napoleon on the subject of
steamboats, early in the present century. The poor fishermen of St.
Sampson may be excused for not being, in scientific matters, any wiser
than the mathematicians of Paris; and in religious matters, a little
island like Guernsey is not bound to be more enlightened than a great
continent like America. In the year 1807, when the first steamboat of
Fulton, commanded by Livingston, furnished with one of Watt's engines,
sent from England, and manoeuvred, besides her ordinary crew, by two
Frenchmen only, André Michaux and another, made her first voyage from
New York to Albany, it happened that she set sail on the 17th of August.
The Methodists took up this important fact, and in numberless chapels,
preachers were heard calling down a malediction on the machine, and
declaring that this number 17 was no other than the total of the ten
horns and seven heads of the beast of the Apocalypse. In America, they
invoked against the steamboats the beast from the book of Revelation; in
Europe, the reptile of the book of Genesis. This was the simple
difference.
The savants had rejected steamboats as impossible; the priests had
anathematised them as impious. Science had condemned, and religion
consigned them to perdition. Fulton was a new incarnation of Lucifer.
The simple people on the coasts and in the villages were confirmed in
their prejudice by the uneasiness which they felt at the outlandish
sight. The religious view of steamboats may be summed up as follows:
Water and fire were divorced at the creation. This divorce was enjoined
by God himself. Man has no right to join what his Maker has put asunder;
to reunite what he has disunited. The peasants' view was simply, "I
don't like the look of this thing."
No one but Mess Lethierry, perhaps, could have been found at that early
period daring enough to dream of such an enterprise as the establishment
of a steam-vessel between Guernsey and St. Malo. He, alone, as an
independent thinker, was capable of conceiving such an idea, or, as a
hardy mariner, of carrying it out. The French part of his nature,
probably, conceived the idea; the English part supplied the energy to
put it in execution.
How and when this was, we are about to inform the reader.
FOOTNOTES:
[2] Genesis, chap. iii. v. 16.
[3] Genesis, chap. i. v. 4.
III
RANTAINE
About forty years before the period of the commencement of our
narrative, there stood in the suburbs of Paris, near the city wall,
between the Fosse-aux-Loups and the Tombe-Issoire, a house of doubtful
reputation. It was a lonely, ruinous building, evidently a place for
dark deeds on an occasion. Here lived, with his wife and child, a
species of town bandit; a man who had been clerk to an attorney
practising at the Châtelet--he figured somewhat later at the Assize
Court; the name of this family was Rantaine. On a mahogany chest of
drawers in the old house were two china cups, ornamented with flowers,
on one of which appeared, in gilt letters, the words, "A souvenir of
friendship;" on the other, "A token of esteem." The child lived in an
atmosphere of vice in this miserable home. The father and mother having
belonged to the lower middle class, the boy had learnt to read, and they
brought it up in a fashion. The mother, pale and almost in rags, gave
"instruction," as she called it, mechanically, to the little one, heard
it spell a few words to her, and interrupted the lesson to accompany
her husband on some criminal expedition, or to earn the wages of
prostitution. Meanwhile, the book remained open on the table as she had
left it, and the boy sat beside it, meditating in his way.
The father and mother, detected one day in one of their criminal
enterprises, suddenly vanished into that obscurity in which the penal
laws envelop convicted malefactors. The child, too, disappeared.
Lethierry, in his wanderings about the world, stumbled, one day, on an
adventurer like himself; helped him out of some scrape; rendered him a
kindly service, and was apparently repaid with gratitude. He took a
fancy to the stranger, picked him up, and brought him to Guernsey,
where, finding him intelligent in learning the duties of a sailor aboard
a coasting vessel, he made him a companion. This stranger was the little
Rantaine, now grown up to manhood.
Rantaine, like Lethierry, had a bull neck, a large and powerful breadth
of shoulders for carrying burdens, and loins like those of the Farnese
Hercules. Lethierry and he had a remarkable similarity of appearance:
Rantaine was the taller. People who saw their forms behind as they were
walking side by side along the port, exclaimed, "There are two
brothers." On looking them in the face the effect was different: all
that was open in the countenance of Lethierry was reserved and cautious
in that of Rantaine. Rantaine was an expert swordsman, played on the
harmonica, could snuff a candle at twenty paces with a pistol-ball,
could strike a tremendous blow with the fist, recite verses from
Voltaire's _Henriade_, and interpret dreams; he knew by heart _Les
Tombeaux de Saint Denis_, by Treneuil. He talked sometimes of having had
relations with the Sultan of Calicut, "whom the Portuguese call the
Zamorin." If any one had seen the little memorandum-book which he
carried about with him, he would have found notes and jottings of this
kind: "At Lyons in a fissure of the wall of one of the cells in the
prison of St. Joseph, a file." He spoke always with a grave
deliberation; he called himself the son of a Chevalier de Saint Louis.
His linen was of a miscellaneous kind, and marked with different
initials. Nobody was ever more tender than he was on the point of
honour; he fought and killed his man. The mother of a pretty actress
could not have an eye more watchful for an insult.
He might have stood for the personification of subtlety under an outer
garb of enormous strength.
It was the power of his fist, applied one day at a fair, upon a _cabeza
de moro_, which had originally taken the fancy of Lethierry. No one in
Guernsey knew anything of his adventures. They were of a chequered kind.
If the great theatre of destiny had a special wardrobe, Rantaine ought
to have taken the dress of harlequin. He had lived, and had seen the
world. He had run through the gamut of possible trades and qualities;
had been a cook at Madagascar, trainer of birds at Honolulu, a religious
journalist at the Galapagos Islands, a poet at Oomrawuttee, a freeman at
Haiti. In this latter character he had delivered at Grand Goave a
funeral oration, of which the local journals have preserved this
fragment: "Farewell, then, noble spirit. In the azure vault of the
heavens, where thou wingest now thy flight, thou wilt, no doubt, rejoin
the good Abbé Leander Crameau, of Little Goave. Tell him that, thanks to
ten years of glorious efforts, thou hast completed the church of the
_Ansa-à-Veau_. Adieu! transcendent genius, model mason!" His freemason's
mask did not prevent him, as we see, wearing a little of the Roman
Catholic. The former won to his side the men of progress, and the latter
the men of order. He declared himself a white of pure caste, and hated
the negroes; though, for all that, he would certainly have been an
admirer of the Emperor Soulouque. In 1815, at Bordeaux, the glow of his
royalist enthusiasm broke forth in the shape of a huge white feather in
his cap. His life had been a series of eclipses--of appearances,
disappearances, and reappearances. He was a sort of revolving light upon
the coasts of scampdom. He knew a little Turkish: instead of
"guillotined," would say "_néboïssé_." He had been a slave in Tripoli,
in the house of a Thaleb, and had learnt Turkish by dint of blows with a
stick. His employment had been to stand at evenings at the doors of the
mosque, there to read aloud to the faithful the Koran inscribed upon
slips of wood, or pieces of camel leather. It is not improbable that he
was a renegade.
He was capable of everything, and something worse.
He had a trick of laughing loud and knitting his brows at the same time.
He used to say, "In politics, I esteem only men inaccessible to
influences;" or, "I am for decency and good morals;" or, "The pyramid
must be replaced upon its base." His manner was rather cheerful and
cordial than otherwise. The expression of his mouth contradicted the
sense of his words. His nostrils had an odd way of distending
themselves. In the corners of his eyes he had a little network of
wrinkles, in which all sorts of dark thoughts seemed to meet together.
It was here alone that the secret of his physiognomy could be thoroughly
studied. His flat foot was a vulture's claw. His skull was low at the
top and large about the temples. His ill-shapen ear, bristled with hair,
seemed to say, "Beware of speaking to the animal in this cave."
One fine day, in Guernsey, Rantaine was suddenly missing.
Lethierry's partner had absconded, leaving the treasury of their
partnership empty.
In this treasury there was some money of Rantaine's, no doubt, but there
were also fifty thousand francs belonging to Lethierry.
By forty years of industry and probity as a coaster and ship carpenter,
Lethierry had saved one hundred thousand francs. Rantaine robbed him of
half the sum.
Half ruined, Lethierry did not lose heart, but began at once to think
how to repair his misfortune. A stout heart may be ruined in fortune,
but not in spirit. It was just about that time that people began to talk
of the new kind of boat to be moved by steam-engines. Lethierry
conceived the idea of trying Fulton's invention, so much disputed about;
and by one of these fire-boats to connect the Channel Islands with the
French coast. He staked his all upon this idea; he devoted to it the
wreck of his savings. Accordingly, six months after Rantaine's flight,
the astonished people of St. Sampson beheld, issuing from the port, a
vessel discharging huge volumes of smoke, and looking like a ship a-fire
at sea. This was the first steam-vessel to navigate the Channel.
This vessel, to which the people in their dislike and contempt for
novelty immediately gave the nickname of "Lethierry's Galley," was
announced as intended to maintain a constant communication between
Guernsey and St. Malo.
IV
CONTINUATION OF THE STORY OF UTOPIA
It may be well imagined that the new enterprise did not prosper much at
first. The owners of cutters passing between the Island of Guernsey and
the French coast were loud in their outcries. They denounced this attack
upon the Holy Scriptures and their monopoly. The chapels began to
fulminate against it. One reverend gentleman, named Elihu, stigmatised
the new steam-vessel as an "atheistical construction," and the
sailing-boat was declared the only orthodox craft. The people saw the
horns of the devil among the beasts which the fireship carried to and
fro. This storm of protest continued a considerable time. At last,
however, it began to be perceived that these animals arrived less tired
and sold better, their meat being superior; that the sea risk was less
also for passengers; that this mode of travelling was less expensive,
shorter, and more sure; that they started at a fixed time, and arrived
at a fixed time; that consignments of fish travelling faster arrived
fresher, and that it was now possible to find a sale in the French
markets for the surplus of great takes of fish so common in Guernsey.
The butter, too, from the far-famed Guernsey cows, made the passage
quicker in the "Devil Boat" than in the old sailing vessels, and lost
nothing of its good quality, insomuch that Dinan, in Brittany, began to
become a customer for it, as well as St. Brieuc and Rennes. In short,
thanks to what they called "Lethierry's Galley," the people enjoyed safe
travelling, regular communication, prompt and easy passages to and fro,
an increase of circulation, an extension of markets and of commerce,
and, finally, it was felt that it was necessary to patronise this "Devil
Boat," which flew in the face of the Holy Scriptures, and brought wealth
to the island. Some daring spirits even went so far as to express a
positive satisfaction at it. Sieur Landoys, the registrar, bestowed his
approval upon the vessel--an undoubted piece of impartiality on his
part, as he did not like Lethierry. For, first of all, Lethierry was
entitled to the dignity of "Mess," while Landoys was merely "Sieur
Landoys." Then, although registrar of St. Peter's Port, Landoys was a
parishioner of St. Sampson. Now, there was not in the entire parish
another man besides them devoid of prejudices. It seemed little enough,
therefore, to indulge themselves with a detestation of each other. Two
of a trade, says the proverb, rarely agree.
Sieur Landoys, however, had the honesty to support the steamboat. Others
followed Landoys. By little and little, these facts multiplied. The
growth of opinion is like the rising tide. Time and the continued and
increasing success of the venture, with the evidence of real service
rendered and the improvement in the general welfare, gradually converted
the people; and the day at length arrived when, with the exception of a
few wiseacres, every one admired "Lethierry's Galley."
It would probably win less admiration now-a-days. This steamboat of
forty years since would doubtless provoke a smile among our modern
boat-builders; for this marvel was ill-shaped; this prodigy was clumsy
and infirm.
The distance between our grand Atlantic steam-vessels of the present day
and the boats with wheel-paddles which Denis Papin floated on the Fulda
in 1707, is not greater than that between a three-decker, like the
_Montebello_, 200 feet long, having a mainyard of 115 feet, carrying a
weight of 3000 tons, 1100 men, 120 guns, 10,000 cannon-balls, and 160
packages of canister, belching forth at every broadside, when in action,
3300 pounds of iron, and spreading to the wind, when it moves, 5600
square mètres of canvas, and the old Danish galley of the second
century, discovered, full of stone hatchets, and bows and clubs, in the
mud of the seashore, at Wester-Satrup, and preserved at the Hotel de
Ville at Flensburg.
Exactly one hundred years--from 1707 to 1807--separate the first
paddle-boat of Papin from the first steamboat of Fulton. "Lethierry's
Galley" was assuredly a great improvement upon those two rough sketches;
but it was itself only a sketch. For all that, it was a masterpiece in
its way. Every scientific discovery in embryo presents that double
aspect--a monster in the foetus, a marvel in the germ.
V
THE DEVIL BOAT
"Lethierry's Galley" was not masted with a view to sailing well; a fact
which was not a defect; it is, indeed, one of the laws of naval
construction. Besides, her motive power being steam, her sails were only
accessory. A paddle steamboat, moreover, is almost insensible to sails.
The new steam-vessel was too short, round, and thick-set. She had too
much bow, and too great a breadth of quarter. The daring of inventors
had not yet reached the point of making a steam-vessel light;
Lethierry's boat had some of the defects of Gilliatt's Dutch sloop. She
pitched very little, but she rolled a good deal. Her paddle-boxes were
too high. She had too much beam for her length. The massive machinery
encumbered her, and to make her capable of carrying a heavy cargo, her
constructors had raised her bulwarks to an unusual height, giving to the
vessel the defects of old seventy-fours, a bastard model which would
have to be cut down to render them really seaworthy, or fit to go into
action. Being short, she ought to have been able to veer quickly--the
time employed in a manoeuvre of that kind being in proportion to the
length of the vessel--but her weight deprived her of the advantage of
her shortness. Her midship-frame was too broad, a fact which retarded
her; the resistance of the sea being proportioned to the largest section
below the water-line, and to the square of the speed. Her prow was
vertical, which would not be regarded as a fault at the present day, but
at that period this portion of the construction was invariably sloped at
an angle of forty-five degrees. All the curving lines of the hull agreed
well together, but it was not long enough for oblique sailing, or for
lying parallel with the water displaced, which should always be thrown
off laterally. In rough weather she drew too much water, sometimes fore,
sometimes aft, which showed that her centre of gravity was not rightly
adjusted. Owing to the weight of the engine, the cargo shifted, so that
the centre of gravity was often aft of the mainmast, and then steam
power had to be resorted to, for at such times the mainsail had to be
furled as it only made the vessel fall off. If close to the wind, very
careful manoeuvring was required. The rudder was the old-fashioned
bar-rudder, not the wheeled one of the present time. Two skiffs, a
species of _you-yous_, were suspended to the davits. The vessel had four
anchors; the sheet-anchor, the second or working anchor, and two
bower-anchors. These four anchors, slung by chains, were moved,
according to the occasion, by the great capstan of the poop, or by the
small capstan at the prow. At that period the pump windlass had not
superseded the intermitting efforts of the old handspike. Having only
two bower-anchors, one on the starboard and the other on the larboard
side, the vessel could not move conveniently in certain winds, though
she could aid herself at such times with the second anchor. Her buoys
were normal, and so constructed that they carried the weight of the
buoy-ropes without dipping. The launch was of a useful size, of service
in all cases of need, and able to raise the main anchor. A novelty about
her was that she was rigged with chains, which in no way detracted,
however, from the mobility of the running rigging, or from the firmness
of the standing rigging. The masts, yards, etc., although not of
first-rate quality, were not in any way amiss, and the rigging at the
mast-head was not very noticeable. The ribs were solid, but coarse, less
delicacy of wood being required for steam than for sail. Her speed was
six knots an hour. When lying-to she rode well. Take her as she was,
"Lethierry's Galley" was a good sea boat; but people felt, that in
moments of danger from reefs or waterspouts, she would be hardly
manageable. Unhappily her build made her roll about on the waves, with a
perpetual creaking like that of a new shoe.
She was, above all, a merchandise boat, and, like all ships built more
for commerce than for fighting, was constructed exclusively with a view
to stowage. She carried few passengers. The transport of cattle rendered
stowage difficult and very peculiar. Vessels carried bullocks at that
time in the hold, which was a complication of the difficulty. At the
present day they are stowed on the fore-deck. The paddle-boxes of
Lethierry's "Devil Boat" were painted white, the hull, down to the
water-line, red, and all the rest of the vessel black, according to the
somewhat ugly fashion of this century. When empty she drew seven feet of
water, and when laden fourteen.
With regard to the engine, it was of considerable power. To speak
exactly, its power was equal to that of one horse to every three tons
burden, which is almost equal to that of a tugboat. The paddles were
well placed, a little in advance of the centre of gravity of the vessel.
The maximum pressure of the engine was equal to two atmospheres. It
consumed a great deal of coal, although it was constructed on the
condensation and expansion principles. It had no fly-wheel on account of
the instability of the point of support, but this was then, as now,
compensated for by two cranks at the extremities of the revolving shaft,
so arranged that one was always at right angles when the other was at
dead-point. The whole rested on a single sheet of cast-iron, so that
even in case of any serious damage, no shock of the waves could upset
its equilibrium, and even if the hull were injured the engine would
remain intact. To render it stronger still, the connecting-rod had been
placed near the steam-cylinders, so that the centre of oscillation of
the working-beam was transferred from the middle to the end. Since then
oscillating cylinders have been invented which do away with the
necessity of connecting-rods, but in those days the placing of the
connecting-rod near the cylinder was thought a triumph of engineering.
The boiler was in sections and provided with a salt-water pump. The
wheels were very large, which lessened the loss of power; the
smoke-stack was lofty, which increased the draught. On the other hand,
the size of the wheels exposed them to the force of the waves, and the
height of the smoke-stack to the violence of the wind. Wooden
paddle-floats, iron clamps, bosses of cast-iron--such were the wheels,
which, well constructed, could, strange though it may seem, be taken to
pieces. Three floats were always under water. The speed of the centre of
the floats only exceeded by a sixth the speed of the vessel itself; this
was the chief defect of the wheels. Moreover, the cranks were too long,
and the slide-valve caused too much friction in the admission of steam
into the cylinder. For that period the engine seemed, and indeed was,
admirable. It had been constructed in France, at the works at Bercy.
Mess Lethierry had roughly sketched it: the engineer who had constructed
it in accordance with his diagram was dead, so that the engine was
unique, and probably could not have been replaced. The designer still
lived, but the constructor was no more.
The engine had cost forty thousand francs.
Lethierry had himself constructed the "Devil Boat" upon the great
covered stocks by the side of the first tower between St. Peter's Port
and St. Sampson. He had been to Brême to buy the wood. All his skill as
a shipwright was exhausted in its construction; his ingenuity might be
seen in the planks, the seams of which were straight and even, and
covered with sarangousti, an Indian mastic, better than resin. The
sheathing was well beaten. To remedy the roundness of the hull,
Lethierry had fitted out a boom at the bowsprit, which allowed him to
add a false spritsail to the regular one. On the day of the launch, he
cried aloud, "At last I am afloat!" The vessel was successful, in fact,
as the reader has already learnt.
Either by chance or design she had been launched on the 14th of July,
the anniversary of the taking of the Bastille. On that day, mounted upon
the bridge between the two paddle-boxes, looked Lethierry upon the sea,
and exclaimed, "It is your turn now! The Parisians took the Bastille,
now science takes the sea."
Lethierry's boat made the voyage from Guernsey to St. Malo once a week.
She started on the Tuesday morning, and returned on the Friday evening,
in time for the Saturday market. She was a stronger craft than any of
the largest coasting sloops in all the Archipelago, and her capacity
being in proportion to her dimensions, one of her voyages was equal to
four voyages of an ordinary boat in the same trade; hence they were very
profitable. The reputation of a vessel depends on its stowage, and
Lethierry was an admirable stower of cargo. When he was no longer able
to work himself, he trained up a sailor to undertake this duty. At the
end of two years, the steamboat brought in a clear seven hundred and
fifty pounds sterling a year, or eighteen thousand francs. The pound
sterling of Guernsey is worth twenty-four francs only, that of England
twenty-five, and that of Jersey twenty-six. These differences are less
unimportant than they seem: the banks, at all events, know how to turn
them to advantage.
VI
LETHIERRY'S EXALTATION
The "Devil Boat" prospered. Mess Lethierry began to look forward to the
time when he should be called "Monsieur." At Guernsey, people do not
become "Monsieurs" at one bound. Between the plain man and the
gentleman, there is quite a scale to climb. To begin with, we have the
simple name, plain "Peter," let us suppose; the second step is
"Neighbour Peter;" the third, "Father Peter;" the fourth, "Sieur Peter;"
the fifth, "Mess Peter;" and then we reach the summit in "Monsieur
Peter."
This scale ascending thus from the ground is carried to still greater
heights. All the upper classes of England join on and continue it. Here
are the various steps, becoming more and more glorious. Above the
Monsieur, or "Mr.," there is the "Esquire;" above the squire, the
knight; above the knight, still rising, we have the baronet, the Scotch
laird, the baron, the viscount, the earl (called count in France, and
jarl in Norway); the marquis, the duke, the prince of the blood royal,
and the king: so, by degrees, we ascend from the people to the middle
class, from the middle class to the baronetage, from the baronetage to
the peerage, from the peerage to royalty.
Thanks to his successful ingenuity, thanks to steam, and his engines,
and the "Devil Boat," Mess Lethierry was fast becoming an important
personage. When building his vessel he had been compelled to borrow
money. He had become indebted at Brême, he had become indebted at St.
Malo; but every year he diminished his obligations.
He had, moreover, purchased on credit, at the very entrance to the port
of St. Sampson, a pretty stone-built house, entirely new, situate
between the sea and a garden. On the corner of this house was inscribed
the name of the "Bravées." Its front formed a part of the wall of the
port itself, and it was remarkable for a double row of windows: on the
north, alongside a little enclosure filled with flowers, and on the
south commanding a view of the ocean. It had thus two _façades_, one
open to the tempest and the sea, the other looking into a garden filled
with roses.
These two frontages seemed made for the two inmates of the house--Mess
Lethierry and Déruchette.
The "Bravées" was popular at St. Sampson, for Mess Lethierry had at
length become a popular man. This popularity was due partly to his good
nature, his devotedness, and his courage; partly to the number of lives
he had saved; and a great deal to his success, and to the fact that he
had awarded to St. Sampson the honour of being the port of the departure
and arrival of the new steamboat. Having made the discovery that the
"Devil Boat" was decidedly a success, St. Peter's, the capital, desired
to obtain it for that port, but Lethierry held fast to St. Sampson. It
was his native town. "It was there that I was first pitched into the
water," he used to say; hence his great local popularity. His position
as a small landed proprietor paying land-tax, made him, what they call
in Guernsey, an _unhabitant_. He was chosen douzenier. The poor sailor
had mounted five out of six steps of the Guernsey social scale; he had
attained the dignity of "Mess"; he was rapidly approaching the Monsieur;
and who could predict whether he might not even rise higher than that?
who could say that they might not one day find in the almanack of
Guernsey, under the heading of "Nobility and Gentry," the astonishing
and superb inscription,--_Lethierry, Esq._?
But Mess Lethierry had nothing of vanity in his nature, or he had no
sense of it; or if he had, disdained it: to know that he was useful was
his greatest pleasure; to be popular touched him less than being
necessary; he had, as we have already said, only two objects of delight,
and consequently only two ambitions: the Durande and Déruchette.
However this may have been, he had embarked in the lottery of the sea,
and had gained the chief prize.
This chief prize was the Durande steaming away in all her pride.
VII
THE SAME GODFATHER AND THE SAME PATRON SAINT
Having created his steamboat, Lethierry had christened it: he had called
it Durande--"La Durande." We will speak of her henceforth by no other
name; we will claim the liberty, also, in spite of typographical usage,
of not italicising this name Durande; conforming in this to the notion
of Mess Lethierry, in whose eyes La Durande was almost a living person.
Durande and Déruchette are the same name. Déruchette is the diminutive.
This diminutive is very common in France.
In the country the names of saints are endowed with all these
diminutives as well as all their augmentatives. One might suppose there
were several persons when there is, in fact, only one. This system of
patrons and patronesses under different names is by no means rare. Lise,
Lisette, Lisa, Elisa, Isabelle, Lisbeth, Betsy, all these are simply
Elizabeth. It is probable that Mahout, Maclou, Malo, and Magloire are
the same saint: this, however, we do not vouch for.
Saint Durande is a saint of l'Angoumois, and of the Charente; whether
she is an orthodox member of the calendar is a question for the
Bollandists: orthodox or not, she has been made the patron saint of
numerous chapels.
It was while Lethierry was a young sailor at Rochefort that he had made
the acquaintance of this saint, probably in the person of some pretty
Charantaise, perhaps in that of the grisette with the white nails. The
saint had remained sufficiently in his memory for him to give the name
to the two things which he loved most--Durande to the steamboat,
Déruchette to the girl.
Of one he was the father, of the other the uncle.
Déruchette was the daughter of a brother who had died: she was an orphan
child: he had adopted her, and had taken the place both of father and
mother.
Déruchette was not only his niece, she was his godchild; he had held her
in his arms at the baptismal font; it was he who had chosen her patron
saint, Durande, and her Christian name, Déruchette.
Déruchette, as we have said, was born at St. Peter's Port. Her name was
inscribed at its date on the register of the parish.
As long as the niece was a child, and the uncle poor, nobody took heed
of her appellation of Déruchette; but when the little girl became a
miss, and the sailor a gentleman, the name of Déruchette shocked the
feelings of Guernsey society. The uncouthness of the sound astonished
every one. Folks asked Mess Lethierry "why Déruchette?" He answered, "It
is a very good name in its way." Several attempts were made to get him
to obtain a change in the baptismal name, but he would be no party to
them. One day, a fine lady of the upper circle of society in St.
Sampson, the wife of a rich retired ironfounder, said to Mess Lethierry,
"In future, I shall call your daughter Nancy."
"If names of country towns are in fashion," said he, "why not Lons le
Saulnier?" The fine lady did not yield her point, and on the morrow
said, "We are determined not to have it Déruchette; I have found for
your daughter a pretty name--_Marianne_." "A very pretty name, indeed,"
replied Mess Lethierry, "composed of two words which signify--a husband
and an ass."[4] He held fast to Déruchette.
It would be a mistake to infer from Lethierry's pun that he had no wish
to see his niece married. He desired to see her married, certainly; but
in his own way: he intended her to have a husband after his own heart,
one who would work hard, and whose wife would have little to do. He
liked rough hands in a man, and delicate ones in a woman. To prevent
Déruchette spoiling her pretty hands he had always brought her up like a
young lady; he had provided her with a music-master, a piano, a little
library, and a few needles and threads in a pretty work-basket. She was,
indeed, more often reading than stitching; more often playing than
reading. This was as Mess Lethierry wished it. To be charming was all
that he expected of her. He had reared the young girl like a flower.
Whoever has studied the character of sailors will understand this: rude
and hard in their nature, they have an odd partiality for grace and
delicacy. To realise the idea of the uncle, the niece ought to have been
rich; so indeed felt Mess Lethierry. His steamboat voyaged for this end.
The mission of Durande was to provide a marriage portion for Déruchette.
FOOTNOTES:
[4] A play upon the French words, _mari_ and _âne_.
VIII
"BONNIE DUNDEE"
Déruchette occupied the prettiest room at the Bravées. It had two
windows, was furnished with various articles made of fine-grained
mahogany, had a bed with four curtains, green and white, and looked out
upon the garden, and beyond it towards the high hill, on which stands
the Vale Castle. Gilliatt's house, the Bû de la Rue, was on the other
side of this hill.
Déruchette had her music and piano in this chamber; she accompanied
herself on the instrument when singing the melody which she
preferred--the melancholy Scottish air of "Bonnie Dundee." The very
spirit of night breathes in this melody; but her voice was full of the
freshness of dawn. The contrast was quaint and pleasing; people said,
"Miss Déruchette is at her piano."
The passers-by at the foot of the hill stopped sometimes before the wall
of the garden of the Bravées to listen to that sweet voice and plaintive
song.
Déruchette was the very embodiment of joy as she went to and fro in the
house. She brought with her a perpetual spring. She was beautiful, but
more pretty than beautiful; and still more graceful than pretty. She
reminded the good old pilots, friends of Mess Lethierry, of that
princess in the song which the soldiers and sailors sing, who was so
beautiful:
"Qu'elle passait pour telle dans le regiment."
Mess Lethierry used to say, "She has a head of hair like a ship's
cable."
From her infancy she had been remarkable for beauty. The learned in such
matters had grave doubts about her nose, but the little one having
probably determined to be pretty, had finally satisfied their
requirements. She grew to girlhood without any serious loss of beauty;
her nose became neither too long nor too short; and when grown up, her
critics admitted her to be charming.
She never addressed her uncle otherwise than as father.
Lethierry allowed her to soil her fingers a little in gardening, and
even in some kind of household duties: she watered her beds of pink
hollyhocks, purple foxgloves, perennial phloxes, and scarlet herb
bennets. She took good advantage of the climate of Guernsey, so
favourable to flowers. She had, like many other persons there, aloes in
the open ground, and, what is more difficult, she succeeded in
cultivating the Nepaulese cinquefoil. Her little kitchen-garden was
scientifically arranged; she was able to produce from it several kinds
of rare vegetables. She sowed Dutch cauliflower and Brussels cabbages,
which she thinned out in July, turnips for August, endive for September,
short parsnip for the autumn, and rampions for winter. Mess Lethierry
did not interfere with her in this, so long as she did not handle the
spade and rake too much, or meddle with the coarser kinds of garden
labour. He had provided her with two servants, one named Grace, and the
other Douce, which are favourite names in Guernsey. Grace and Douce did
the hard work of the house and garden, and they had the right to have
red hands.
With regard to Mess Lethierry, his room was a little retreat with a view
over the harbour, and communicating with the great lower room of the
ground floor, on which was situated the door of the house, near which
the various staircases met.
His room was furnished with his hammock, his chronometer, and his pipe:
there were also a table and a chair. The ceiling had been whitewashed,
as well as the four walls. A fine marine map, bearing the inscription
_W. Faden_, 5 Charing Cross, Geographer to His Majesty, and representing
the Channel Islands, was nailed up at the side of the door, and on the
left, stretched out and fastened with other nails, appeared one of those
large cotton handkerchiefs on which are printed, in colours, the signals
of all countries in the world, having at the four corners the standards
of France, Russia, Spain, and the United States, and in the centre the
union-jack of England.
Douce and Grace were two faithful creatures within certain limits. Douce
was good-natured enough, and Grace was probably good-looking. Douce was
unmarried, and had secretly "a gallant." In the Channel Islands the word
is common, as indeed is the fact itself. The two girl's regarded as
servants had something of the Creole in their character, a sort of
slowness in their movements, not out of keeping with the Norman spirit
pervading the relations of servant and master in the Channel Islands.
Grace, coquettish and good-looking, was always scanning the future with
a nervous anxiety. This arose from the fact of her not only having, like
Douce, "a gallant," but also, as the scandal-loving averred, a sailor
husband, whose return one day was a thing she dreaded. This, however,
does not concern us. In a household less austere and less innocent,
Douce would have continued to be the servant, but Grace would have
become the _soubrette_. The dangerous talents of Grace were lost upon a
young mistress so pure and good as Déruchette. For the rest, the
intrigues of Douce and Grace were cautiously concealed. Mess Lethierry
knew nothing of such matters, and no token of them had ever reached
Déruchette.
The lower room of the ground floor, a hall with a large fireplace and
surrounded with benches and tables, had served in the last century as a
meeting-place for a conventicle of French Protestant refugees. The sole
ornament of the bare stone wall was a sheet of parchment, set in a frame
of black wood, on which were represented some of the charitable deeds of
the great Bossuet, Bishop of Meaux. Some poor diocesans of this famous
orator, surnamed the "Eagle," persecuted by him at the time of the
Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and driven to take shelter at
Guernsey, had hung this picture on the wall to preserve the remembrance
of those facts. The spectator who had the patience to decipher a rude
handwriting in faded ink might have learnt the following facts, which
are but little known:--"29th October, 1685, Monsieur the Bishop of
Meaux, appeals to the king to destroy the temples of Morcef and
Nanteuil"--"2nd April, 1686, Arrest of Cochard, father and son, for
their religious opinions, at the request of Monsieur the Bishop of
Meaux. Released: the Cochards having recanted."--"28th October, 1699,
Monsieur the Bishop of Meaux sent to Mde. Pontchartrain a petition of
remonstrance, pointing out that it will be necessary to place the young
ladies named Chalandes and de Neuville, who are of the reformed
religion, in the House of the 'New Catholics' at Paris."--"7th July,
1703, the king's order executed as requested by Monsieur the Bishop of
Meaux, for shutting up in an asylum Baudouin and his wife, two bad
Catholics of Fublaines."
At the end of the hall, near the door of Mess Lethierry's room, was a
little corner with a wooden partition, which had been the Huguenot's
sanctum, and had become, thanks to its row of rails and a small hole to
pass paper or money through, the steamboat office; that is to say, the
office of the Durande, kept by Mess Lethierry in person. Upon the old
oaken reading-desk, where once rested the Holy Bible, lay a great ledger
with its alternate pages headed Dr. and Cr.
IX
THE MAN WHO DISCOVERED RANTAINE'S CHARACTER
As long as Mess Lethierry had been able to do duty, he had commanded the
Durande, and had had no other pilot or captain but himself; but a time
had come, as we have said, when he had been compelled to find a
successor. He had chosen for that purpose Sieur Clubin, of Torteval, a
taciturn man. Sieur Clubin had a character upon the coast for strict
probity. He became the _alter ego_, the double, of Mess Lethierry.
Sieur Clubin, although he had rather the look of a notary than of a
sailor, was a mariner of rare skill. He had all the talents which are
required to meet dangers of every kind. He was a skilful stower, a safe
man aloft, an able and careful boatswain, a powerful steersman, an
experienced pilot, and a bold captain. He was prudent, and he carried
his prudence sometimes to the point of daring, which is a great quality
at sea. His natural apprehensiveness of danger was tempered by a strong
instinct of what was possible in an emergency. He was one of those
mariners who will face risks to a point perfectly well known to
themselves, and who generally manage to come successfully out of every
peril. Every certainty which a man can command, dealing with so fickle
an element as the sea, he possessed. Sieur Clubin, moreover, was a
renowned swimmer; he was one of that race of men broken into the
buffeting of the waves, who can remain as long as they please in the
water--who can start from the Havre-des-Pas at Jersey, double the
Colettes, swim round the Hermitage and Castle Elizabeth, and return in
two hours to the point from which they started. He came from Torteval,
where he had the reputation of often having swum across the passage so
much dreaded, from the Hanway rocks to the point of Pleinmont.
One circumstance which had recommended Sieur Clubin to Mess Lethierry
more than any other, was his having judged correctly the character of
Rantaine. He had pointed out to Lethierry the dishonesty of the man, and
had said "Rantaine will rob you." His prediction was verified. More than
once--in matters, it is true, not very important--Mess Lethierry had put
his ever-scrupulous honesty to the proof; and he freely communicated
with him on the subject of his affairs. Mess Lethierry used to say, "A
good conscience expects to be treated with perfect confidence."
X
LONG YARNS
Mess Lethierry, for the sake of his own ease, always wore his seafaring
clothes, and preferred his tarpaulin overcoat to his pilot jacket.
Déruchette felt vexed, occasionally, about this peculiarity. Nothing is
prettier than a pouting beauty. She laughed and scolded. "My dear
father," she would say, "what a smell of pitch!" and she would give him
a gentle tap upon his broad shoulders.
This good old seaman had gathered from his voyages many wonderful
stories. He had seen at Madagascar birds' feathers, three of which
sufficed to make a roof of a house. He had seen in India, field sorrel,
the stalks of which were nine inches high. In New Holland he had seen
troops of turkeys and geese led about and guarded by a bird, like a
flock by a shepherd's dog; this bird was called the Agami. He had
visited elephants' cemeteries. In Africa, he had encountered gorillas, a
terrible species of man-monkey. He knew the ways of all the ape tribe,
from the wild dog-faced monkey, which he called the Macaco-bravo, to the
howling monkey or _Macaco-barbado_. In Chili, he had seen a pouched
monkey move the compassion of the huntsman by showing its little one. He
had seen in California a hollow trunk of a tree fall to the ground, so
vast that a man on horseback could ride one hundred paces inside. In
Morocco, he had seen the Mozabites and the Bisskris fighting with
matraks and bars of iron--the Bisskris, because they had been called
_kelbs_, which means dogs; and the Mozabites, because they had been
treated as _khamsi_, which means people of the fifth sect. He had seen
in China the pirate Chanh-thong-quan-larh-Quoi cut to pieces for having
assassinated the Ap of a village. At Thu-dan-mot, he had seen a lion
carry off an old woman in the open market-place. He was present at the
arrival of the Great Serpent brought from Canton to Saigon to celebrate
in the pagoda of Cho-len the fête of Quan-nam, the goddess of
navigators. He had beheld the great Quan-Sû among the Moi. At Rio de
Janeiro, he had seen the Brazilian ladies in the evening put little
balls of gauze into their hair, each containing a beautiful kind of
firefly; and the whole forming a head-dress of little twinkling lights.
He had combated in Paraguay with swarms of enormous ants and spiders,
big and downy as an infant's head, and compassing with their long legs
a third of a yard, and attacking men by pricking them with their
bristles, which enter the skin as sharp as arrows, and raise painful
blisters. On the river Arinos, a tributary of the Tocantins, in the
virgin forests to the north of Diamantina, he had determined the
existence of the famous bat-shaped people, the Murcilagos, or men who
are born with white hair and red eyes, who live in the shady solitudes
of the woods, sleep by day, awake by night, and fish and hunt in the
dark, seeing better then than by the light of the moon. He told how,
near Beyrout, once in an encampment of an expedition of which he formed
part, a rain gauge belonging to one of the party happened to be stolen
from a tent. A wizard, wearing two or three strips of leather only, and
looking like a man having nothing on but his braces, thereupon rang a
bell at the end of a horn so violently, that a hyena finally answered
the summons by bringing back the missing instrument. The hyena was, in
fact, the thief. These veritable histories bore a strong resemblance to
fictions; but they amused Déruchette.
The _poupée_ or "doll" of the Durande, as the people of the Channel
Islands call the figure-head of a ship, was the connecting link between
the vessel and Lethierry's niece. In the Norman Islands the figure-head
of a ship, a roughly-carved wooden statue, is called the Poupée. Hence
the local saying, meaning to sail, "_être entre poupe et poupée_."
The _poupée_ of the Durande was particularly dear to Mess Lethierry. He
had instructed the carver to make it resemble Déruchette. It looked like
a rude attempt to cut out a face with a hatchet; or like a clumsy log
trying hard to look like a girl.
This unshapely block produced a great effect upon Mess Lethierry's
imagination. He looked upon it with an almost superstitious admiration.
His faith in it was complete. He was able to trace in it an excellent
resemblance to Déruchette. Thus the dogma resembles the truth, and the
idol the deity.
Mess Lethierry had two grand fête days in every week; one was Tuesday,
the other Friday. His first delight consisted in seeing the Durande
weigh anchor; his second in seeing her enter the port again. He leaned
upon his elbows at the window contemplating his work, and was happy.
On Fridays, the presence of Mess Lethierry at his window was a signal.
When people passing the Bravées saw him lighting his pipe, they said,
"Ay! the steamboat is in sight." One kind of smoke was the herald of the
other.
The Durande, when she entered the port, made her cable fast to a huge
iron ring under Mess Lethierry's window, and fixed in the basement of
the house. On those nights Lethierry slept soundly in his hammock, with
a soothing consciousness of the presence of Déruchette asleep in her
room near him, and of the Durande moored opposite.
The moorings of the Durande were close to the great bell of the port. A
little strip of quay passed thence before the door of the Bravées.
The quay, the Bravées and its house, the garden, the alleys bordered
with edges, and the greater part even of the surrounding houses, no
longer exist. The demand for Guernsey granite has invaded these too. The
whole of this part of the town is now occupied by stone-cutters' yards.
XI
MATRIMONIAL PROSPECTS
Déruchette was approaching womanhood, and was still unmarried.
Mess Lethierry in bringing her up to have white hands had also rendered
her somewhat fastidious. A training of that kind has its disadvantages;
but Lethierry was himself still more fastidious. He would have liked to
have provided at the same time for both his idols; to have found in the
guide and companion of the one a commander for the other. What is a
husband but the pilot on the voyage of matrimony? Why not then the same
conductor for the vessel and for the girl? The affairs of a household
have their tides, their ebbs and flows, and he who knows how to steer a
bark, ought to know how to guide a woman's destiny, subject as both are
to the influences of the moon and the wind. Sieur Clubin being only
fifteen years younger than Lethierry, would necessarily be only a
provisional master for the Durande. It would be necessary to find a
young captain, a permanent master, a true successor of the founder,
inventor, and creator of the first channel steamboat. A captain for the
Durande who should come up to his ideal, would have been, already,
almost a son-in-law in Lethierry's eyes. Why not make him son-in-law in
a double sense? The idea pleased him. The husband _in posse_ of
Déruchette haunted his dreams. His ideal was a powerful seaman, tanned
and browned by weather, a sea athlete. This, however, was not exactly
the ideal of Déruchette. Her dreams, if dreams they could even be
called, were of a more ethereal character.
The uncle and the niece were at all events agreed in not being in haste
to seek a solution of these problems. When Déruchette began to be
regarded as a probable heiress, a crowd of suitors had presented
themselves. Attentions under these circumstances are not generally worth
much. Mess Lethierry felt this. He would grumble out the old French
proverb, "_A maiden of gold, a suitor of brass_." He politely showed the
fortune-seekers to the door. He was content to wait, and so was
Déruchette.
It was, perhaps, a singular fact, that he had little inclination for the
local aristocracy. In that respect Mess Lethierry showed himself not
entirely English. It will hardly be believed that he even refused for
Déruchette a Ganduel of Jersey, and a Bugnet Nicolin of Sark. People
were bold enough to affirm, although we doubt if this were possible,
that he had even declined the proposals of a member of the family of
Edou, which is evidently descended from "Edou-ard" (Anglicè Edward) the
Confessor.
XII
AN ANOMALY IN THE CHARACTER OF LETHIERRY
Mess Lethierry had a failing, and a serious one. He detested a priest;
though not as an individual, but as an institution. Reading one day--for
he used to read--in a work of Voltaire--for he would even read
Voltaire--the remark, that priests "have something cat-like in their
nature," he laid down the book and was heard to mutter, "Then, I
suppose, I have something dog-like in mine."
It must be remembered that the priests--Lutheran and Calvinist, as well
as Catholic--had vigorously combated the new "Devil Boat," and had
persecuted its inventor. To be a sort of revolutionist in the art of
navigation, to introduce a spirit of progress in the Norman Archipelago,
to disturb the peace of the poor little island of Guernsey with a new
invention, was in their eyes, as we have not concealed from the reader,
an abominable and most condemnable rashness. Nor had they omitted to
condemn it pretty loudly. It must not be forgotten that we are now
speaking of the Guernsey clergy of a bygone generation, very different
from that of the present time, who in almost all the local places of
worship display a laudable sympathy with progress. They had embarrassed
Lethierry in a hundred ways; every sort of resisting force which can be
found in sermons and discourses had been employed against him. Detested
by the churchmen, he naturally came to detest them in his turn. Their
hatred was the extenuating circumstance to be taken into account in
judging of his.
But it must be confessed that his dislike for priests was, in some
degree, in his very nature. It was hardly necessary for them to hate him
in order to inspire him with aversion. As he said, he moved among them
like the dog among cats. He had an antipathy to them, not only in idea,
but in what is more difficult to analyse, his instincts. He felt their
secret claws, and showed his teeth; sometimes, it must be confessed, a
little at random and out of season. It is a mistake to make no
distinctions: a dislike in the mass is a prejudice. The good Savoyard
curé would have found no favour in his eyes. It is not certain that a
worthy priest was even a possible thing in Lethierry's mind. His
philosophy was carried so far that his good sense sometimes abandoned
him. There is such a thing as the intolerance of tolerants, as well as
the violence of moderates. But Lethierry was at bottom too good-natured
to be a thorough hater. He did not attack so much as avoid. He kept the
church people at a distance. He suffered evil at their hands; but he
confined himself to not wishing them any good. The shade of difference,
in fact, between his aversion and theirs, lay in the fact that they bore
animosity, while he had only a strong antipathy. Small as is the island
of Guernsey, it has, unfortunately, plenty of room for differences of
religion; there, to take the broad distinction, is the Catholic faith
and the Protestant faith; every form of worship has its temple or
chapel. In Germany, at Heidelberg, for example, people are not so
particular; they divide a church in two, one half for St. Peter, the
other half for Calvin, and between the two is a partition to prevent
religious variances terminating in fisticuffs. The shares are equal; the
Catholics have three altars, the Huguenots three altars. As the services
are at the same hours, one bell summonses both denominations to prayers;
it rings, in fact, both for God and for Satan, according as each pleases
to regard it. Nothing can be more simple.
The phlegmatic character of the Germans favours, I suppose, this
peculiar arrangement, but in Guernsey every religion has its own
domicile; there is the orthodox parish and the heretic parish; the
individual may choose. "Neither one nor the other" was the choice of
Mess Lethierry.
This sailor, workman, philosopher, and parvenu trader, though a simple
man in appearance, was by no means simple at bottom. He had his opinions
and his prejudices. On the subject of the priests he was immovable; he
would have entered the lists with Montlosier.
Occasionally he indulged in rather disrespectful jokes upon this
subject. He had certain odd expressions thereupon peculiar to himself,
but significant enough. Going to confession he called "combing one's
conscience." The little learning that he had--a certain amount of
reading picked up here and there between the squalls at sea--did not
prevent his making blunders in spelling. He made also mistakes in
pronunciation, some of which, however, gave a double sense to his words,
which might have been suspected of a sly intention. After peace had been
brought about by Waterloo between the France of Louis XVIII. and the
England of Wellington, Mess Lethierry was heard to say, "Bour mont a été
le traître d'union entre les deux camps." On one occasion he wrote _pape
ôté_ for _papauté_. We do not think these puns were intentional.
Though he was a strong anti-papist, that circumstance was far from
conciliating the Anglicans. He was no more liked by the Protestant
rectors than by the Catholic curés. The enunciation of the greatest
dogmas did not prevent his anti-theological temper bursting forth.
Accident, for example, having once brought him to hear a sermon on
eternal punishment, by the Reverend Jaquemin Hérode--a magnificent
discourse, filled from one end to the other with sacred texts, proving
the everlasting pains, the tortures, the torments, the perditions, the
inexorable chastisements, the burnings without end, the inextinguishable
maledictions, the wrath of the Almighty, the celestial fury, the divine
vengeance, and other incontestable realities--he was heard to say as he
was going out in the midst of the faithful flock, "You see, I have an
odd notion of my own on this matter; I imagine God as a merciful being."
This leaven of atheism was doubtless due to his sojourn in France.
Although a Guernsey man of pure extraction, he was called in the island
"the Frenchman;" but chiefly on account of his "improper" manner of
speaking. He did not indeed conceal the truth from himself. He was
impregnated with ideas subversive of established institutions. His
obstinacy in constructing the "Devil Boat" had proved that. He used to
say, "I was suckled by the '89"--a bad sort of nurse. These were not his
only indiscretions. In France "to preserve appearances," in England "to
be respectable," is the chief condition of a quiet life. To be
respectable implies a multitude of little observances, from the strict
keeping of Sunday down to the careful tying of a cravat. "To act so that
nobody may point at you;" this is the terrible social law. To be pointed
at with the finger is almost the same thing as an anathematisation.
Little towns, always hotbeds of gossip, are remarkable for that
isolating malignancy, which is like the tremendous malediction of the
Church seen through the wrong end of the telescope. The bravest are
afraid of this ordeal. They are ready to confront the storm, the fire of
cannon, but they shrink at the glance of "Mrs. Grundy." Mess Lethierry
was more obstinate than logical; but under pressure even his obstinacy
would bend. He put--to use another of his phrases, eminently suggestive
of latent compromises, not always pleasant to avow--"a little water in
his wine." He kept aloof from the clergy, but he did not absolutely
close his door against them. On official occasions, and at the customary
epochs of pastoral visits, he received with sufficiently good grace both
the Lutheran rector and the Papist chaplain. He had even, though at
distant intervals, accompanied Déruchette to the Anglican parish church,
to which Déruchette herself, as we have said, only went on the four
great festivals of the year.
On the whole, these little concessions, which always cost him a pang,
irritated him; and far from inclining him towards the Church people,
only increased his inward disinclination to them. He compensated himself
by more raillery. His nature, in general so devoid of bitterness, had no
uncharitable side except this. To alter him, however, was impossible.
In fact, this was in his very temperament, and was beyond his own power
to control.
Every sort of priest or clergyman was distasteful to him. He had a
little of the old revolutionary want of reverence. He did not
distinguish between one form of worship and another. He did not do
justice to that great step in the progress of ideas, the denial of the
real presence. His shortsightedness in these matters even prevented his
perceiving any essential difference between a minister and an abbé. A
reverend doctor and a reverend father were pretty nearly the same to
him. He used to say, "Wesley is not more to my taste than Loyola." When
he saw a reverend pastor walking with his wife, he would turn to look at
them, and mutter, "a married priest," in a tone which brought out all
the absurdity which those words had in the ears of Frenchmen at that
time. He used to relate how, on his last voyage to England, he had seen
the "Bishop_ess_" of London. His dislike for marriages of that sort
amounted almost to disgust. "Gown and gown do not mate well," he would
say. The sacerdotal function was to him in the nature of a distinct sex.
It would have been natural to him to have said, "Neither a man nor a
woman, only a priest;" and he had the bad taste to apply to the Anglican
and the Roman Catholic clergy the same disdainful epithets. He
confounded the two cassocks in the same phraseology. He did not take the
trouble to vary in favour of Catholics or Lutherans, or whatever they
might be, the figures of speech common among military men of that
period. He would say to Déruchette, "Marry whom you please, provided you
do not marry a parson."
XIII
THOUGHTLESSNESS ADDS A GRACE TO BEAUTY
A word once said, Mess Lethierry remembered it: a word once said,
Déruchette soon forgot it. Here was another difference between the uncle
and the niece.
Brought up in the peculiar way already described, Déruchette was little
accustomed to responsibility. There is a latent danger in an education
not sufficiently serious, which cannot be too much insisted on. It is
perhaps unwise to endeavour to make a child happy too soon.
So long as she was happy, Déruchette thought all was well. She knew,
too, that it was always a pleasure to her uncle to see her pleased. The
religious sentiment in her nature was satisfied with going to the parish
church four times in the year. We have seen her in her Christmas-day
toilet. Of life, she was entirely ignorant. She had a disposition which
one day might lead her to love passionately. Meanwhile she was
contented.
She sang by fits and starts, chatted by fits and starts, enjoyed the
hour as it passed, fulfilled some little duty, and was gone again, and
was delightful in all. Add to all this the English sort of liberty which
she enjoyed. In England the very infants go alone, girls are their own
mistresses, and adolescence is almost wholly unrestrained. Such are the
differences of manners. Later, how many of these free maidens become
female slaves? I use the word in its least odious sense; I mean that
they are free in the development of their nature, but slaves to duty.
Déruchette awoke every morning with little thought of her actions of the
day before. It would have troubled her a good deal to have had to give
an account of how she had spent her time the previous week. All this,
however, did not prevent her having certain hours of strange
disquietude; times when some dark cloud seemed to pass over the
brightness of her joy. Those azure depths are subject to such shadows!
But clouds like these soon passed away. She quickly shook off such moods
with a cheerful laugh, knowing neither why she had been sad, nor why she
had regained her serenity. She was always at play. As a child, she would
take delight in teasing the passers-by. She played practical jokes upon
the boys. If the fiend himself had passed that way, she would hardly
have spared him some ingenious trick. She was pretty and innocent; and
she could abuse the immunity accorded to such qualities. She was ready
with a smile, as a cat with a stroke of her claws. So much the worse for
the victim of her scratches. She thought no more of them. Yesterday had
no existence for her. She lived in the fullness of to-day. Such it is to
have too much happiness fall to one's lot! With Déruchette impressions
vanished like the melted snow.