BY CLO. GRAVES.
The great liner swiftly pushed her homeward way through the rolling
surges of the Atlantic. Other yearning, tender hearts there doubtless
were whose sole freight of hope the steamer carried; but the heart that
beat so anxiously in the little Guernsey cottage had the most at stake.
The ordeal of the past months had not lessened Fenella’s beauty. The
outlines of her features were sharper, their tints less vivid than of
old. The tawny eyes looked wistfully out upon the world from orbits
that were hollowed with grief and watching, the chestnut hair showed
a thread of silver here and there. Would Ronny know his mother again?
Fenella often asked herself that question. Meanwhile, for the child’s
sake, she husbanded her newly-recovered strength with jealous care. She
ate and drank, rose and slept, walked and rested, for Ronny. He must
not find a peevish invalid in place of the old playfellow. None but her
own hands should henceforth minister to the needs of this small idol of
her heart. With these and other fond foolish fancies, she wore away
the tedious hours of waiting.
One of her usual walks led in the direction of the village of St.
Sampson’s. The brown-faced quarrymen and fisher-folk grew accustomed to
the sight of the pale, plainly-dressed lady with the wistful eyes, who
so often paused to rest, or to smile at and speak kindly to the sturdy,
sun-burnt urchins that rolled in the dust by cottage thresholds, and
pulled off their blue knitted caps as they passed her, in rude homage
of her beauty, and respect for her loneliness.
One bright October afternoon she sat upon one of the rough wooden
benches facing the wall of the little harbor, watching the progress
of a child’s game. There were five players, four of them hard-fisted,
mop-headed urchins, with the brown skins and blue eyes that seem
indigenous to the island. The fourth was a girl of nine or ten, a
pale-faced, black-haired little creature, with a shrewd, selfish
manner and a voice of unchildish shrillness. The game had to do with
a wedding, of course--all the Guernsey children’s games deal with
marriages or christenings--and the song that accompanied it was
vocalized with immense vigor and zest by all the performers:
Jean, gros Jean, marryit sa fille,
Grosse et grasse et bie habille.
A un marchand d’sabots;
Radinguette, Radin got!
The verse was repeated with even more shrillness. Then the marriage
procession tailed away round the corner with a clattering of little
wooden shoes, the sallow-faced girl gallantly supported on the tattered
jacket-sleeve of the most bullet-headed of the boys. Fenella laughed,
not with the ringing, careless music of the old days, but still
sweetly and clearly. She lifted her eyes and met the melancholy glance
of a shabby man, a stranger whose attention, like her own, had been
attracted by the children.
The man was poorly dressed. He wore an old greatcoat of gray frieze,
and a peaked cap shadowed a lean, unshaven, sallow face. The fringes of
his ragged trousers fell over broken boots. No scarecrow was ever more
dingily attired than this strange man, who now lifted his cap and bowed
with something of foreign ceremoniousness, and looked at Fenella out of
melancholy, hollow eyes.
“When the heart is heavy, madame, it is good to look at the little
people.” He spoke in English fluently, and with a strong French accent.
“They are so gay always. They know so little of care. To sing and
shout, and jump Gros Jean, that is the business of life. Well! As good
a business as any other when all is said and done.”
He shrugged his shoulders and folded his arms upon his hollow chest,
shivering as the keen sea breeze crept in at the loopholes of his
raggedness, and nipped his gaunt body. He did not beg, or seem about
to. The impulse was self-prompted that stretched Fenella’s hand to him
with a silver coin in it.
“Take this. You look ill or hungry.”
“Hungry, madame,” said the man softly. “A thousand thanks.” He hid the
coin about him furtively, and saluted Lady Onslow again. The lifted cap
revealed a narrow head shaved almost to the skin. Upon the temples was
a livid scar, new-healed and ugly.
“You are a stranger to Guernsey?” Fenella hazarded.
“A stranger, madame. I came from Cherbourg yesterday. A fisherman
brought me in his boat. I am not particular as to my accommodation, as
madame will guess, nor was the boatman extortionate. Yet he took all my
money, and left me without enough to buy a meal.”
“You have friends in the island?”
“No and yes,” the man returned. “The little daughter of one who was
an old comrade of mine lives here in charge of a woman who was her
foster-mother, and has married a foreman of the stone works. Madame has
seen her playing with the children of the good _carrier_. She did not
know who looked at her and questioned of her name just now. When last
I saw her (five years ago), she was but four years old. At four years
old the little Lucille could not be expected to understand--madame is
cold?”
Fenella shrunk and shivered at the sound of that hated name. She
recovered herself in another instant. She looked at the forlorn
creature, who tried to interest her in his little story, with
compassionate gentleness.
“Can the father not come himself to see his child?” she asked. “Is he
an invalid or----?”
The man answered her shortly and harshly.
“The father is in prison.”
He laughed a grating laugh, and ground the heel of his broken boot upon
the pavement.
“Has madame patience to hear his story? Common enough, common enough.
The father of the little black-haired one was once a clerk in a bank
at Lille. He had assured prospects, enough for present wants; a
charming--oh! yes, a charming wife--and a child. Charming women are apt
to be vain; vain ones are apt to be extravagant, madame. She wanted
money--always money. Her husband was like wax in her hands. _Hein!_
She molded her wax well--so well. She made of an honest man a rogue,
madame, a forger, and a thief.”
He broke off to wipe away the leaden drops that had gathered on his
face, with a miserable rag of a tattered handkerchief. His gaunt figure
quivered, and the sinews started out like cords on the backs of his
wasted hands.
Fenella spoke to him gently. “It distresses you to speak of it,” she
said.
“It relieves me to speak of it. Figure to yourself, madame, how this
man must have loved that wretch to sin so at her bidding. And she--she
had not even the merit of being faithful to him. He found that out
before the trial--for the frauds were discovered, and he was arrested.
He denounced her as his accomplice. She fled before the law could lay
hands on her--with one who had been, for long, her secret lover.”
His face was frightful as he said the words. If he had been himself the
wretched dupe, whose dreadful story he had upon his lips, he could not
have looked and spoken with greater rancor. But he went on:
“So my friend--always my friend, madame will remember--is found guilty
and sentenced to imprisonment for eight years. He is sent to the
‘Maison Centrale’ at Clairvaux. Compulsory labor, absolute silence;
silence in the dormitory, silence in the workshop, silence in the
yard, silence in bed, from half-past six until six the next morning is
the Clairvaux routine. Madame would never imagine how many cries of
execration and despair, how many sobs of anguish, how many oaths of
vengeance can be packed into the space of one human breast, that has
the padlock of the Law upon it.”
He struck his own breast as he spoke fiercely, and shook his clenched
hand in the air.
“I have been a prisoner myself,” he went on; “madame is not afraid
of me? I knew that man at Clairvaux. Prisoners have methods of
communication in spite of rules and punishments. I knew his sorrow
as he my own. I promised him, when my hour of liberation came, I
would visit the island to which his child had been taken, see her
without speaking to her, and send him word. The last two years of his
sentence have yet to expire before my friend can speak, unless he grows
desperate, as a man does when the end is near, and escapes from prison.
Clairvaux is a strong place, but there is a way out of it. He has told
me so. Chut! Here are the little ones returning. You are going, madame?
Accept my thanks, the gratitude of a poor man whom you have helped upon
his way. I have not wearied you with the story of my friend? A common
criminal, no more. And once having been in prison, as philanthropic
people say, it is twenty to one that he will eventually return there. I
myself also; but the next crime of which that man is found guilty will
not be forgery.”
Fenella yielded to an uncontrollable impulse. She looked full into the
hollow, glistening eyes. She put a question to the ragged creature.
“Not forgery?” she said, repeating his words. “What then?”
The man bent toward her. She recoiled from the contact of his foul and
ragged garments. She shuddered as his hot breath scorched her cheek. In
a single word he gave the answer to her question:
“Murder!”
A dizziness came over her; she reeled, and put out her hands to save
herself from falling. They touched the cold stone of the harbor wall.
Her drooping lids lifted, she looked round vacantly. The man was gone.
“The dreadful word!” she whispered--“oh, the cruel word! It blights the
present, it blackens the future. What can the future hold for Frank--or
for me? What does it promise to our child? A stained title, a heritage
of guilt and shame--a heavy, heavy weight for my innocent love to bear.
Oh, my heart! My heart is breaking!”
Tears came to her relief. She pulled down her veil hastily, and
hurried home, as the dusk October evening closed in. Late that night
she knelt by the open window of her bedroom, and looked out upon the
stormy heavens, upon the quiet sea. Herm loomed near the horizon, a
dark and shapeless mass upon the sleeping ocean. The restless eye of
the lightship opened and shut; a bat flittered noiselessly past, and
vanished in the velvet darkness.
“Three days more,” Fenella said, “only three days. Oh, my son, my
little son! Does the time seem as long to you as it does to your
mother?”
She closed the window and went to her bed. Sleep would not come at
first. But toward the time of the flood tide she slept and dreamed. She
dreamed that she saw a great ship--an ocean steamer--plowing homeward
through a waste of waters. She knew that the vessel carried those three
lives that were so dear to her. Friend, husband, child lay sleeping in
the cabins, lulled by the throbbing of the incessant screw. All peace,
all security apparently. And yet a voice kept whispering in her ear,
“Watch, watch! Danger!”
It seemed to the dreaming woman then that she stood upon the vessel’s
quiet deck. Not a sound broke the quiet except that throbbing of the
screw. Not a sign of life appeared, until from the dark companion-hatch
of the steerage deckhouse a solitary figure crept--the figure of a
woman. And the white face it turned upon her, illumined by the pale
rays of the moon, was the face of Mme. de Vigny.
And the voice kept whispering, “Watch, watch! Danger!” She strove to
shriek aloud and warn those on board, but her lips were sealed. She
followed the creeping figure aft. Followed it down a narrow brass-bound
stairway, with no conscious movement of her feet. Followed it through
dusky passages, lighted by dim, swinging lanterns, and down stairways
narrower still. Then it came to a halt and she stood behind it,
listening and watching.
A faint rasping sound. The striking of a match. A flickering light that
revealed the place in which they stood together to be a place used for
the keeping of ship’s stores. Oil and tallow, firewood and candles,
coils of dry rope, bundles of matches and other inflammable articles
were gathered there. And then she knew, as another match struck and
fired, and the pale blue flame lighted that evil face, the deadly
purpose of her enemy. And even as she strove to burst the bonds of
silence that held her, darkness fell upon the scene.
When she opened her eyes, still dreaming, the stately vessel was still
gliding through the waters, herself removed from it by a distance that
seemed impassable. But still the throbbing of the screw mingled with
the whisper that warned her of danger to come. She strained her eyes
and held her breath, and watched as she was bidden.
Then a little smoke began to curl upward from one of the aft hatchways.
Thin and white, a narrow column of vapor slanting in the freshening
breeze. Then a forked tongue of yellow flame shot out menacingly. And
then a great bell began to clang furiously. And mingled with other
sounds came the sound of voices shouting together. Only one word they
kept repeating, and that word “Fire.”
Fire! fire! fire!
The darkness was banished now by the fierce red glare that came from
the burning vessel. Her deck was alive with orderly gangs of men who
came and went with hose and buckets, pouring water down the hatchways
upon the roaring flames. Forward the passengers crowded together. And
among those white faces which the quiet stars shone down upon, and the
leaping flames illuminated with their own fierce glare, the dreaming
woman saw the face of her child.
He was held, not in his father’s arms, but in those of Jacynth. Frank
was standing with his hand upon the shoulder of that true friend and
stanch companion. The men spoke together with stern, grave looks; the
child laughed and clapped his hands as the hissing tons of sea water
fought with the fire that gnawed at the vitals of the brave vessel,
deep below the water-line. And as the mother stretched her arms toward
her boy the whole picture faded for the second time.
Another followed. Still the wide gray sea. No burning vessel on it now.
Only a line of boats upon the waters, black against the background of
a lurid, stormy dawn. The boats advanced toward the dreamer slowly.
In the first only one familiar face--the face of Lord Castleton. In
the second, none but strangers. In the third, strangers again. In
the fourth and last, a woman bound with cords lying at the bottom of
the boat amidships, a grave, stern man keeping close watch and ward
over the prisoner. In the stern-sheets, rough-handed, pitying men,
disheveled, compassionate women, gathered round a little group of two.
One of these in the uniform of an officer of the ship; the surgeon,
perhaps, from the skillful way in which he supported the convulsed and
trembling figure of the other on his arm, and held a restorative to
the lips and seemed to speak vain words of comfort. And the desolate
creature, to whose misery that kindly ministrance brought no relief,
lifted his head and looked at Fenella with eyes that were the eyes of
her husband.
In her sudden agony of dread it seemed to her that she cried out the
names of the two who were missing. “Frank, where is Jacynth. Where is
Ronny? What have you done with my boy? Tell me, for God’s sake?”
And it seemed that her husband heard. He turned despairing eyes on her.
He shook his head and pointed to the sea.
She cried out then, and awoke as the first faint rays of daylight
pierced through the blinds of her bedroom in the cottage at Guernsey.
And the woman who waited on her, roused by that piercing cry, came
running in.