I
Six o'clock next morning found Graeme on the deck of the _Ibex_ as she
threaded her way swiftly among the bristling black rocks that guard
the coast of Guernsey.
Herm and Jethou lay sleeping in the eye of the sun. Beyond them lay a
filmy blue whaleback of an island which he was told was Sark, and it
was to Sark he was bound.
And wherefore Sark, when, within reasonable limits, all the wide world
lay open to him?
Truly, it might not be easy to say. But this I know,--having so far
learned the lesson of life, though missing much else--that at times,
perhaps at all times, when we think our choice of ways our very
own,--when we stand in doubt at the crossroads of life, and then
decide on this path or that, and pride ourselves on the exercise of
our high prerogative as free agents,--the result, when we look back,
bears in upon our hearts the mighty fact that a higher mind than our
own has been quietly at work, shaping our ends and moulding and
rounding our lives. We may doubt it at times. We may take all the
credit to ourselves for dangers passed and tiny victories won, but in
due time the eyes of our understanding are opened--and we know.
Possibly it was the rapt eulogiums of his friend Black--who had spent
the previous summer in Sark, and had ever since been seeking words
strong enough in which to paint its charms--that forced its name to
the front when he stood facing the wide world, that lacked, for him at
all events, a Margaret Brandt, and was therefore void and desolate.
"If ever you seek perfect peace, relief from your fellows, and the
simple life, try Sark--and see that you live in a cottage!" he
remembered Adam Black murmuring softly, as they sat smoking at the
Travellers' one night, shortly after that memorable dinner of the
Whitefriars'. And then he had heaved a sigh of regret at thought of
being where he was when he might have been in Sark.
Graeme knew nothing whatever of Sark save what his friend had let fall
at times. "Jersey, Guernsey, Alderney, and Sark," recalled his
short-jacket and broad-collar days, and the last of the quartette had
always somehow conjured up in his mind the image of a bleak,
inaccessible rock set in a stormy sea, where no one lived if he could
possibly find shelter elsewhere,--an Ultima Thule, difficult of access
and still more difficult of exit, a weather-bound little spot into
which you scrambled precariously by means of boats and ladders, and
out of which you might not be able to get for weeks on end.
But Sark was to hold a very different place in his mind henceforth.
The name of Calais burnt itself into the heart of Queen Mary by reason
of loss. Surely on John Graeme's heart the name of Sark may hope to
find itself in living letters, for in Sark he was to find more than he
had lost--new grace and charm in life, new hopes, new life itself.
He had gone straight home from Lincoln's Inn, and packed his
portmanteau, knowing only that he was going away somewhere out of
things, caring little where, so long as it was remote and lonely.
Fellow-man--and especially woman--was distasteful to him at the
moment. He craved only Solitude the Soother, and Nature the Healer.
He packed all he thought he might need for a couple of months' stay,
and among other things the manuscript he had been at work upon until
more pressing matters intervened. He felt, indeed, no slightest
inclination towards it, or anything else, at present. But that might
come, for Work and he were tried friends.
He wrote briefly to Lady Elspeth telling her how things were with him,
and that he was going away for a time. He did not tell her where, for
the simple reason that at the moment of writing he did not know
himself. Sark came into his mind later.
He told his landlady that he was going away for a change, and she
remarked in motherly fashion that she was glad to hear it, and it was
high time too. He told her to keep all his letters till he sent for
them. He had no importunate correspondents, his next book was as good
as placed, and all he desired at the moment was to cut the painter,
and drift into some quiet backwater where he could lie up till life
should wear a more cheerful face.
And so no single soul knew where he had gone, and he said to himself,
somewhat bitterly, and quite untruthfully, that no single soul cared.
He had paced the deck all night. The swift smooth motion of the boat,
with a slight slow roll in it, was very soothing; and the first
tremulous hints of the dawn, and the wonder of its slow unfolding, and
the coming of the sun were things to be remembered.
The cold gaunt aloofness, and weltering loneliness of the Casquets
appealed to him strongly. Just the kind of place, he said to himself,
for a heart-sick traveller to crawl into and grizzle until he found
himself again.
As they turned and swung in straight between the little lighthouse on
White Rock and Castle Cornet, the bright early sunshine was bathing
all the rising terraces of St. Peter Port in a golden haze. Such a
quaint medley of gray weathered walls and mellowed red roofs, from
which the thin blue smoke of early fires crept lazily up to mingle
with the haze above! Such restful banks of greenery! Such a startling
blaze of windows flashing back unconscious greetings to the sun! This
too was a sight worth remembering. For a wounded soul he was somewhat
surprised at the enjoyment these things afforded him.
A further surprise was the pleasure he found in the reduction of a
hearty appetite at an hotel on the front. Come! He was not as hard hit
as he had thought! There was life in the young dog yet.
But these encouraging symptoms were doubtless due to the temporary
exhilaration of the journey. The workaday bustle of the quays renewed
his desire for the solitary places, and he set out to find means of
transport to the little whalebacked island out there in the golden
shimmer of the sun.
There was no steamer till the following day, he learned, and delay was
not to his mind. So presently he came to an arrangement with an
elderly party in blue, with a red-weathered face and grizzled hair, to
put him and his two portmanteaux across to Sark for the sum of five
shillings English.
"To Havver Gosslin," said the aged mariner, with much emphasis, and a
canny look which conveyed to Graeme nothing more than a simple and
praiseworthy desire on his part to avoid any possibility of mistake.
"To Sark," said Graeme, with equal emphasis.
"Ay, ay!" said the other; and so it came that the new-comer's initial
experience of the little island went far towards the confirmation of
the vague ideas of his childhood as to its inaccessibility.
The ancient called to a younger man, and they strolled away along the
harbour wall to get the baggage.