HOW GARD FOUGHT GALES AND TOM
So far the discussion as to the sale of the farm had been confined to
the elders.
Young Tom had viewed John Guille’s visits to the place with the lowering
suspicion of a bull at a stranger’s invasion of his field. He wondered
what was going on and surmised that it was nothing to his advantage.
Words had been rare between him and his father since his refusal to lend
himself to a loan on the farm, but his suspicion got the better of his
obstinacy at last.
“What’s John Guille want coming about here so much?” he demanded
bluntly.
“I suppose he can come if he wants to. He’s going to buy the farm.”
“Going--to--buy--the--farm!... You--going--to--sell--the--farm--away--
from--me?” roared young Tom, like the bull wounded to the quick.
“Ouaie, pardi! And why not? You had the chance of saving it and you
wouldn’t.”
“If you do it, I’ll--”
“Ouaie! You’ll--”
“I’ll--Go’zammin, I’ll--I’ll--”
“Unless you’re a fool, mon gars, you’ll be careful what you say or do.
It’ll all come back from the mines and you’ll have your share if you
behave yourself.”
“---- you and your mines!” was Tom’s valedictory, and he flung away in
mortal anger; anger, too, which, from a Sark point of view, was by no
means unjustified. Selling the estate away from the rightful heir was
disinheritance, a blow below the belt which most testators reserve until
they are safe from reach of bodily harm.
Tom left the house and cut all connection with his family. He drifted
away like a threatening cloud, and the sun shone out, and Stephen Gard,
with the rest, found greater comfort in his room than they had ever
found in his company.
So gracious, indeed, did the atmosphere of the house become, purged of
Tom, that Gard, to his great joy, found even Nance not impossible of
approach.
He had always treated her with extremest deference and courtesy,
respecting, as far as he was able, her evident wish for nothing but the
most distant intercourse.
But he was such a very great change from Tom!
She caught his dark eyes fixed on her at times with a look that reminded
her of Helier Baker’s black spaniel’s, who was a very close friend of
hers. They had neither dog nor cat at present at La Closerie, both
having been scrimped by the silver mines, when old Tom’s first bad
attack of economy came on.
Then, at table, Gard was always quietly on the look-out to anticipate
her wants. That was a refreshing novelty. Even Bernel, her special
crony, thought only of his own requirements when food stood before him.
Now and again Gard began to venture on a question direct to her,
generally concerning some bit of the coast he had been scrambling about,
and she found it rather pleasant to be able to give information about
things he did not know to this undoubtedly clever mine captain.
So, little by little, he grew into her barest toleration but apparently
nothing more, and was puzzled at her aloofness and reserve, not
understanding at all her bitter feeling against the mines and everything
connected with them.
The first time he went to church with her and Bernel was a great
white-stone day to him.
He had gone by himself once every Sunday, and done his best to follow
the service in French, which he was endeavouring to pick up as best he
could. And, if he could only now and again come across a word he
understood, still the being in church and worshipping with others--even
though it was in an unknown tongue--the sound of the chants and hymns
and responses, and the mild austerity and reverent intonation of the
good old Vicar, all induced a Sabbath feeling in him, and made a welcome
change from the rougher routine of the week, which he would have missed
most sorely.
On that special afternoon, he had been lying on the green wall of the
old French fort, enjoying that most wonderful view over the shimmering
blue sea, with Herm and Jethou resting on it like great green velvet
cushions, and Guernsey gleaming softly in the distance, and Brecqhou and
the Gouliot Head, and all the black outlying rocks fringed with creamy
foam, till it should be time to go along to church.
When he heard voices in the road below and saw Nance and Bernel, he
jumped up on the spur of the moment, and pushed through the gorse and
bracken, and stood waiting for them.
“Will you let me join you?” he asked, as they came up, fallen shyly
silent.
“We don’t mind,” said Bernel, and they went along together.
“This always strikes me afresh, each time I see it, as one of the most
extraordinary places I’ve come across,” said Gard, as they dipped down
towards the Coupée.
“Wait till we’re coming home,” said Bernel hopefully.
“Why?”
“You see those clouds over there? That’s wind--sou’-west--you’ll see
what it’s like after church.”
“Your gales are as extraordinary as all the rest--and your tides and
currents and sea-mists. I suppose one must be born here to understand
them. We have a fine coast in Cornwall, but I think you beat us.”
“Of course. This is Sark.”
“And does no one ever tumble over the Coupée in the dark?”
“N--o, not often, any way. Nance once saw a man blown over.”
“That was a bad thing to see,” said Gard, turning towards her. “How was
it?”
“I was coming from school--”
“All alone?”
“Yes, all alone. The others had gone on; I’d been kept in, and it was
nearly dark. It was blowing hard, and when I got to the first rock here
I thought it was going to blow me over. So I went down on my hands and
knees and was just going to crawl, when old Hirzel Mollet came down the
other side with a great sheaf of wheat on his back. He was taking it to
the Seigneur for his tithes. And then in a moment he gave a shout and I
saw he was gone.”
“That was terrible. What did you do?”
“I screamed and crawled back across the narrow bit to the cutting, and
ran screaming up to the cottages at Plaisance, and Thomas Carré and his
men came running down. But they could do nothing. They went round in a
boat from the Creux, but he was dead.”
“And how did you get home?”
“Thomas Carré took me across and I ran on alone, but it was months
before I could forget poor old Hirzel Mollet.”
“I should think so, indeed. That was a terrible thing to see.”
The opening of the mines, and the influx of the Welsh and Cornishmen and
their wives and children, with their new and up-to-date ideas of living
and dressing, had wrought a great and not altogether wholesome change
upon the original inhabitants.
All the week they were hard at work in their fields or their boats, but
on Sunday the lonely lanes leading to Little Sark were thronged with
sightseers, curious to inspect the mines and the latest odd fashions
among the miners’ wives and daughters.
Odd, and extremely useless little parasols, were then the vogue in
England. The miners’ women-folk flaunted these before the dazzled eyes
of the Sark girls, and Sark forthwith burst into flower of many-coloured
parasols.
The mine ladies dressed in printed cottons of strange and wonderful
patterns. The Sark girls must do the same.
“Tiens!” ejaculated Nance more than once, as they walked. “Here is Judi
Le Masurier with a new pink parasol!--and a straw bonnet with green
strings!--and every day you’ll see her about the fields without so much
as a sun-bonnet on! And Rachel Guille has got a new print dress all red
roses and lilac! Mon Gyu, what are we coming to!”
She had many such comments and still more unspoken ones. But Stephen
Gard, glancing, whenever he could do so unperceived, at the trim but
plainly-dressed little sun-bonneted figure by his side, vowed in his
heart that the whole of these others rolled into one were not to be
compared with her, and that he would give all the silver in the mines of
Sark to win her appreciation and regard.
As they turned the corner at Vauroque, they came suddenly on a number of
men lounging on the low wall, and among them Tom Hamon, pipe in mouth
and hands in pockets.
As they passed he made some jocular remark in the patois which provoked
a guffaw from the rest, and reddened Nance’s face, and caused Bernel to
glance up at Gard and jerk round angrily towards Tom.
“What did he say?” asked Gard, stopping.
But Nance hurried on and he could not but follow.
“What was it?” he asked again, as he caught up with her.
“If you please, do not mind him. It was just one of his rudenesses.”
“They want knocking out of him.”
“He is very rude,” said Nance, and they passed the Vicarage and turned
up the stony lane to the church.
Gard was surprised by the speedy verification of Bernel’s weather
forecast. Before the service was over the wind was howling round the
building with the sounds of unleashed furies, and when they got out it
was almost dark.
They bent to the gale and pressed on, Gard with a discomforting
remembrance that the Coupée lay ahead.
As they passed Vauroque there seemed a still larger crowd of loafers at
the corner, and again Tom’s voice called rudely after them.
Gard turned promptly and strode back to where he was sitting on the
wall, dangling his feet in devil-may-care fashion. Tom jumped down to
meet him.
“Say that again in English, will you?” said Gard angrily.
“Go to--!” said Tom.
Then Gard’s left fist caught him on the hinge of the right jaw, and he
reeled back among the others who had jumped down to back him up.
“Well--? Want any more?” asked Gard stormily.
“You wait,” growled Tom, nursing his jaw, “I’ll talk to you one of these
days.”
“Whenever you like, you cur. What you need is a sound thrashing and a
kick over the Coupée.”
To his surprise none of the others joined in. But he did not know them.
They might guffaw at Tom’s unseemly pleasantries, but they held him in
no high esteem--either for himself or for his position, since word of
the sale of La Closerie had got about.
Then they were a hardy crew and held personal courage and prowess in
high respect. And in this matter there could be no possible doubt as to
where the credit lay.
“Goin’ to fight him, Tom?” drawled one, in the patois.
“---- him!” growled Tom, but made no move that way.
And Gard turned and went over to Nance and Bernel, who were sheltering
from the storm in lee of one of the cottages.
If he could have seen it, there was a warmer feeling in her heart for
him than had ever been there before--a novel feeling, too, of respect
and confidence such as she had never entertained towards any other man
in all her life.
For that quick blow had been struck on her behalf, she knew; and it was
vastly strange, and somehow good, to feel that a great strong man was
ready to stand up for her and, if necessary, to fight for her.
She pressed silently on against the gale, with an odd little glow in her
heart, and a feeling as though something new had suddenly come into her
life.
The gale caught them at the Coupée, and the crossing seemed to Gard not
without its risks.
Bernel bent and ran on through the darkness without a thought of danger.
Gard hesitated one moment and Nance stretched a hand to him, and he took
it and went steadily across.
And, oh, the thrill of that first living touch of her! The feel of the
warm nervous little hand sent a tingling glow through him such as he had
never in his life experienced before. Verily, a white-stone day this, in
spite of winds and darkness!
The gale howled like ten thousand demons, and the noise of the waves in
Grande Grève came up to them in a ceaseless savage roar. Gard confessed
to himself that, alone, he would never have dared to face that perilous
storm-swept bridge. But the small hand of a girl made all the difference
and he stepped alongside her without a tremor.
“B’en, Monsieur Gard, was I right?” shouted Bernel in his ear, as they
stepped within the shelter of the cutting on the farther side.
“You were right. It’s a terrible place in a gale.”
“You wait,” shouted Bernel. “We’re not home yet.”
“No more Coupées, any way,” and they bent again into the storm.
They had not gone more than a hundred yards when, through some freakish
funnelling of the tumbled headlands, the gale gripped them like a giant
playing with pigmies, caught them up, flung them bodily across the road
and held Gard and Bernel pinned and panting against the green bank,
while Nance disappeared over it into the shrieking darkness.
“Good heavens!” gasped Gard, fearful lest she should have been blown
over the cliffs, and wriggled himself up under the ceaseless thrashing
of the gale and was whirled off the top into the field beyond.
There the pressure was less, and, getting on to his hands and knees to
crawl in search of Nance, he found her close beside him crouching in the
lee of the grassy dyke.
He crept into shelter beside her, and presently, in the lull after a
fiercer blast than usual, she set off, bent almost double, and in a
moment they were in comparative quiet. Nance crawled through a gap into
the road and they found Bernel waiting for them.
“Knew you’d come through there. That’s what that gap’s made for,” he
shouted.
“I’ve been in many a storm but I never felt wind like that before,” said
Gard, as soon as his breath came back.
“If you’d stopped with me you’d have been all right,” said Bernel.
“There was no need for you to go after Nance. We’ve been through that
lots of times, haven’t we, Nance?”
“Lots.”
“I shall know next time,” said Gard, and to Nance it was a fresh
experience to think of some one going out of his way to be of possible
service to her.