HOW NANCE CAME TO BE HERSELF
And little Nance?
The most persistent memories of Nance’s childhood were her fear and
hatred of Tom, and her passionate love for her mother,--and Bernel when
he came.
“My own,” she called these two, and regarded even her father as somewhat
outside that special pale; esteemed Grannie as an Olympian, benevolently
inclined, but dwelling on a remote and loftier plane; and feared and
detested Tom as an open enemy.
And she had reasons.
She was a high-strung child, too strong and healthy to be actually
nervous, but with every faculty always at its fullest--not only in
active working order but always actively at work--an admirable subject
therefore for the malevolence of an enemy whose constant proximity
offered him endless opportunity.
Much of his boyish persecution never reached the ears of the higher
powers. Nance very soon came to accept Tom’s rough treatment as natural
from a big fellow of fourteen to a small girl of eight, and she bore it
stoically and hated him the harder.
Her mother taught her carefully to say her prayers, which included
petitions for the welfare of Grannie and father and brother Tom, and for
a time, with the perfunctoriness of childhood, which attaches more
weight to the act than to the meaning of it, she allowed that to pass
with a stickle and a slur. But very soon brother Tom was ruthlessly
dropped out of the ritual, and neither threats nor persuasion could
induce her to re-establish him.
Later on, and in private, she added to her acknowledged petitions an
appendix, unmistakably brief and to the point--“And, O God, please kill
brother Tom!”--and lived in hope.
She was an unusually pretty child, though her prettiness developed
afterwards--as childish prettiness does not always--into something finer
and more lasting.
She had, as a child, large dark blue eyes, which wore as a rule a look
of watchful anxiety--put there by brother Tom. To the end of her life
she carried the mark of a cut over her right eyebrow, which came within
an ace of losing her the sight of that eye. It was brother Tom did that.
She had an abundance of flowing brown hair, by which Tom delighted to
lift her clear off the ground, under threat of additional boxed ears if
she opened her mouth. The wide, firm little mouth always remained
closed, but the blue eyes burned fiercely, and the outraged little
heart, thumping furiously at its impotence, did its best to salve its
wounds with ceaseless repetition of its own private addition to the
prescribed form of morning and evening prayer.
Once, even Tom’s dull wit caught something of meaning in the blaze of
the blue eyes.
“What are you saying, you little devil?” he growled, and released her so
suddenly that she fell on her knees in the mud.
And she put her hands together, as she was in the habit of doing, and
prayed, “O God, please kill brother Tom!”
“Little devil!” said brother Tom, with a startled red face, and made a
dash at her; but she had foreseen that and was gone like a flash.
One might have expected her childish comeliness to exercise something of
a mollifying effect on his brutality. On the contrary, it seemed but to
increase it. She was so sweet; he was so coarse. She was so small and
fragile; he was so big and strong. Her prettiness might work on others.
He would let her see and feel that he was not the kind to be fooled by
such things.
He had the elemental heartlessness of the savage, which recognises no
sufferings but its own, and refuses to be affected even by them.
When Nance’s kitten, presented to her by their neighbour, Mrs. Helier
Baker, solved much speculation as to its sex by becoming a mother, Tom
gladly undertook the task of drowning the superfluous offspring. He got
so much amusement out of it that, for weeks, Nance’s horrified inner
vision saw little blind heads, half-drowned and mewing piteously,
striving with feeble pink claws to climb out of the death-tub and being
ruthlessly set swimming again till they sank.
She hurled herself at Tom as he gloated over his enjoyment, and would
have asked nothing better than to treat him as he was treating the
kittens--righteous retribution in her case, not enjoyment!--but he was
too strong for her. He simply kicked out behind, and before she could
get up had thrust one of his half-drowned victims into the neck of her
frock, and the clammy-dead feel of it and its pitiful screaming set her
shuddering for months whenever she thought of it.
But now and again her tormentor overpassed the bounds and got his
reward--to Nance’s immediate satisfaction but subsequent increased
tribulation. For whenever he got a thrashing on her account he never
failed to pay her out in the smaller change of persecution which never
came to light.
On a pitch-dark, starless night, the high-hedged--and in places
deep-sunk--lanes of Little Sark are as black as the inside of an ebony
ruler.
When the moon bathes sea and land in a flood of shimmering silver, or on
a clear night of stars--and the stars in Sark, you must know, shine
infinitely larger and closer and brighter than in most other places--the
darkness below is lifted somewhat by reason of the majestic width and
height of the glittering dome above. But when moon and stars alike are
wanting, then the darkness of a Sark lane is a thing to be felt, and--if
you should happen to be a little girl of eight, with a large imagination
and sharp ears that have picked up fearsome stories of witches and
ghosts and evil spirits--to be mortally feared.
Tom had a wholesome dread of such things himself. But the fear of
fourteen, in a great strong body and no heavenly spark of imagination,
is not to be compared with the fear of eight and a mind that could
quiver like a harp even at its own imaginings. And, to compass his ends,
he would blunt his already dull feelings and turn the darkness to his
account.
When he knew Nance was out on such a night--on some errand, or in at a
neighbour’s--to crouch in the hedge and leap silently out upon her was
huge delight; and it was well worth braving the grim possibilities of
the hedges in order to extort from her the anger in the bleat of terror
which, as a rule, was all that her paralysed heart permitted, as she
turned and fled.
Almost more amusing--as considerably extending the enjoyment--was it to
follow her quietly on such occasions, yet not so quietly but that she
was perfectly aware of footsteps behind, which stopped when she stopped
and went on again when she went on, and so kept her nerves on the quiver
the whole time.
Creeping fearfully along in the blackness, with eyes and ears on the
strain, and both little shoulders humped against the expected apparition
of Tom--or worse, she would become aware of the footsteps behind her.
Then she would stop suddenly to make sure, and stand listening
painfully, and hear nothing but the low hoarse growl of the sea that
rarely ceases, day or night, among the rocks of Little Sark.
Then she would take a tentative step or two and stop again, and then
dash on. And always there behind her were the footsteps that followed in
the dark.
Then she would fumble with her foot for a stone and stoop hastily--for
you are at a disadvantage with ghosts and with Toms when you stoop--and
pick it up and hurl it promiscuously in the direction of the footsteps,
and quaver, in a voice that belied its message, “Go away, Tom Hamon! I
can see you,”--which was a little white fib born of the black urgency of
the situation;--“and I’m not the least bit afraid,”--which was most
decidedly another.
And so the journey would progress fitfully and in spasms, and leave
nightmare recollections for the disturbance of one’s sleep.
But there were variations in the procedure at times.
As when, on one occasion, Nance’s undiscriminating projectile elicited
from the darkness a plaintive “Moo!” which came, she knew, from her
favourite calf Jeanetton, who had broken her tether in the field and
sought companionship in the road, and had followed her doubtfully,
stopping whenever she stopped, and so received the punishment intended
for another.
Nance kissed the bruise on Jeanetton’s ample forehead next day very many
times, and explained the whole matter to her at considerable length, and
Jeanetton accepted it all very placidly and bore no ill-will.
Another time, when Nance had taken a very specially compounded cake over
to her old friend, Mrs. Baker, as a present from her mother, and had
been kept much longer than she wished--for the old lady’s enjoyment of
her pretty ways and entertaining prattle--she set out for home in fear
and trembling.
It was one of the pitch-black nights, and she went along on tiptoes,
hugging the empty plate to her breast, and glancing fearfully over first
one shoulder, then the other, then over both and back and front all at
once.
She was almost home, and very grateful for it, when the dreaded black
figure leaped silently out at her from its crouching place, and she tore
down the lane to the house, Tom’s hoarse guffaws chasing her mockingly.
The open door cleft a solid yellow wedge in the darkness. She was almost
into it, when her foot caught, and she flung head foremost into the
light with a scream, and lay there with the blood pouring down her face
from the broken plate.
A finger’s-breadth lower and she would have gone through life one-eyed,
which would have been a grievous loss to humanity at large, for sweeter
windows to a large sweet soul never shone than those out of which
little Nance Hamon’s looked.
Most houses may be judged by their windows, but these material windows
are not always true gauge of what is within. They may be decked to
deceive, but the clear windows of the soul admit of no disguise. That
little life tenant is always looking out and showing himself in his true
colours--whether he knows it or not.
Nance’s terrified scream took old Tom out at a bound. He had heard the
quick rush of her feet and Tom’s mocking laughter in the distance. He
carried Nance in to her mother, snatched up a stick, and went after the
culprit who had promptly disappeared.
It was two days before Tom sneaked in again and took his thrashing
dourly. Little Nance had shut her lips tight when her father questioned
her, and refused to say a word. But he was satisfied as to where the
blame lay and administered justice with a heavy hand.
Bernel--as soon as he grew to persecutable age--provided Tom with
another victim. But time was on the victims’ side, and when Nance got to
be twelve--Bernel being then eight and Tom eighteen--their combined
energies and furies of revolt against his oppressions put matters more
on a level.
Many a pitched battle they had, and sometimes almost won. But, win or
lose, the fact that they had no longer to suffer without lifting a hand
was great gain to them, and the very fact that they had to go about
together for mutual protection knitted still stronger the ties that
bound them one to the other.
But, though little Nance’s earlier years suffered much from the black
shadow of brother Tom, they were very far from being years of darkness.
She was of an unusually bright and enquiring disposition, always
wanting to see and know and understand, interested in everything about
her, and never satisfied till she had got to the bottom of things, or at
all events as far down as it was possible for a small girl to get.
Her lively chatter and ceaseless questions left her mother and Grannie
small chance of stagnation. But, if she asked many questions--and some
of them posers--it was not simply for the sake of asking, but because
she truly wanted to know; and even Grannie, who was not naturally
talkative, never resented her pertinent enquiries, but gave freely of
her accumulated wisdom and enjoyed herself in the giving.
When she got beyond their depth at times, or outside their limits, she
would boldly carry her queries--and strange ones they were at times--to
old Mr. Cachemaille, the Vicar up in Sark, making nothing of the journey
and the Coupée in order to solve some, to her, important problem. And he
not only never refused her but delighted to open to her the stores of a
well-stocked mind and of the kindest and gentlest of hearts.
Often and often the people of Vauroque and Plaisance would see them
pass, hand in hand and full of talk, when the Vicar had wished to see
with his own eyes one or other of Nance’s wonderful discoveries, in the
shape of cave or rock-pool, or deposit of sparkling crystal
fingers--amethyst and topaz--or what not.
For she was ever lighting on odd and beautiful bits of Nature’s
craftsmanship. Books were hardly to be had in those days, and in place
of them she climbed fearlessly about the rough cliff-sides and tumbled
headlands, and looked close at Nature with eyes that missed nothing and
craved everything.
To the neighbours the headlands were places where rabbits were to be
shot for dinner, the lower rocks places where ormers and limpets and
vraie might be found. But to little Nance the rabbits were playfellows
whose sudden deaths she lamented and resented; the cliff-sides were
glorious gardens thick with sweet-scented yellow gorse and honeysuckle
and wild roses, carpeted with primroses and bluebells; and, in their
season, rich and juicy with blackberries beyond the possibilities of
picking.
She was on closest visiting terms with innumerable broods of
newly-hatched birdlings--knew them, indeed, while they were still but
eggs--delighted in them when they were as yet but skin and
mouth--rejoiced in their featherings and flyings. Even baby cuckoos were
a joy to her, though, on their foster-mothers’ accounts she resented the
thriftlessness of their parents, and grew tired each year of their
monotonous call which ceased not day or night. But of the larks never,
for their songs seemed to her of heaven, while the cuckoos were of
earth. The gulls, too, were somewhat difficult from the friendly point
of view, but she lay for hours overlooking their domestic arrangements
and envying the wonders of their matchless flight.
And down below the cliffs what marvels she discovered!--marvels which in
many cases the Vicar was fain to content himself with at second hand,
since closer acquaintance seemed to him to involve undoubted risk to
limb if not to life. Little Nance, indeed, hopped down the seamed cliffs
like a rock pipit, with never a thought of the dangers of the passage,
and he would stand and watch her with his heart in his mouth, and only
shake his grey head at her encouraging assertions that it was truly
truly as easy as easy. For he felt certain that even if he got down he
would never get up again. And so, when the triumphant shout from below
told him she was safely landed, he would wave a grateful hand and get
back from the edge and seat himself securely on a rock, till the rosy
face came laughing up between him and the shimmering sea, with trophy of
weed or shell or crystal quartz, and he would tell her all he knew about
them, and she would try to tell him of all he had missed by not coming
down.
There were wonderful great basins down there, all lined with pink and
green corallines, and full of the loveliest weeds and anemones and other
sea-flowers, and the rivulets that flowed from them to the sea were
lined pink and green, too. And this that she had brought him was the
flaming sea-weed, though truly it did not look it now, but in the water
it was, she assured him, of the loveliest, and there were great bunches
there so that the dark holes under the rocks were all alight with it.
She coaxed him doubtfully to the descent of the rounded headland facing
L’Etat, picking out an easy circuitous way for him, and so got him
safely down to her own special pool, hollowed out of the solid granite
by centuries of patient grinding on the part of the great boulders
within.
It was there, peering down at the fishes below, that she expressed a
wish to imitate them; and he agreeing, she ran up to the farm for a bit
of rope and was back before he had half comprehended all the beauties of
the pool. And he had no sooner explained the necessary movements to her
and she had tried them, than she cast off the rope, shouting, “I can
swim! I can swim!” and to his amazement swam across the pool and back--a
good fifty feet each way--chirping with delight in this new-found
faculty and the tonic kiss of the finest water in the world. But after
all it was not so very amazing, for she was absolutely without fear, and
in that water it is difficult to sink.
They were often down there together after that, for close alongside were
wonderful channels and basins whorled out of the rock in the most
fantastic ways, and to sit and watch the tide rush up them was a
never-failing entertainment.
And not far away was a blow-hole of the most extraordinary which shot
its spray a hundred feet into the air, and if you didn’t mind getting
wet you could sit quite alongside it, so close that you could put your
hand into it as it came rocketing out of the hole, and then, if the sun
was right, you sat in the midst of rainbows--a thing Nance had always
longed to do since she clapped her baby hands at her first one. But the
Vicar never did that.
And once, in quest of the how and the why, Nance swam into the
blow-hole’s cave at a very low tide, and its size and the dome of its
roof, compared with the narrowness of its entrance, amazed her, but she
did not stay long for it gave her the creeps.
These were some of the ways by which little Nance grew to a larger
estate than most of her fellows, and all these things helped to make her
what she came to be.
When she grew old enough to assist in the farm, new realms of delight
opened to her. Chickens, calves, lambs, piglets--she foster-mothered
them all and knew no weariness in all such duties which were rather
pleasures.
It was a wounded rabbit, limping into cover under a tangle of gorse and
blackberry bushes, that discovered to her the entrance to the series of
little chambers and passages that led right through the headland to the
side looking into Port Gorey. Which most satisfactory hiding-place she
and Bernel turned to good account on many an occasion when brother Tom’s
oppression passed endurance.
It had taken time, and much screwing up of childish courage, to explore
the whole of that extraordinary little burrow, and it was not the work
of a day.
When Nance crept along the little run made by many generations of
rabbits, she found that it led finally into a dark crack in the rock,
and, squeezing through that, she was in a small dark chamber which smelt
strongly of her friends.
As soon as her eyes recovered from the sudden change from blazing
sunlight to almost pitch darkness, she perceived a small black opening
at the far end, and looking through it she saw a lightening of the
darkness still farther in which tempted her on.
It was a tough scramble even for her, and the closeness of the rocks and
the loneliness weighed upon her somewhat. But there was that glimmer of
light ahead and she must know what it was, and so she climbed and
wriggled over and under the huge splintered rocks till she came to the
light, like a tiny slit of a window far above her head, and still there
were passages leading on.
Next day, with Bernel and a tiny crasset lamp for company, she explored
the burrow to its utmost limits and adopted it at once as their refuge
and stronghold. And thereafter they spent much time there, especially in
the end chamber where a tiny slit gave on to Port Gorey, and they could
lie and watch all that went on down below.
There they solemnly concocted plans for brother Tom’s discomfiture, and
thither they retreated after defeat or victory, while he hunted high
and low for them and never could make out where they had got to.
Then Tom went off to sea, and life, for those at home, became a joy
without a flaw--except the thought that he would sometime come
back--unless he got drowned.
When he returned he was past the boyish bullying and teasing stage, and
his stunts and twists developed themselves along other lines. Moreover,
sailor-fashion, he wore a knife in a sheath at the back of his belt.
He found Nance a tall slim girl of sixteen, her childish prettiness just
beginning to fashion itself into the strength and comeliness of form and
feature which distinguished her later on.
He swore, with strange oaths, that she was the prettiest bit of goods
he’d set eyes on since he left home, and he’d seen a many. And he
wondered to himself if this could really be the Nance he used to hate
and persecute.
But Nance detested him and all his ways as of old.