HOW TOM WANTED TO BUT DIDN’T DARE
Before the six weeks allowed by Sark law for the retraiting of the
property had expired, Grannie and Mrs. Hamon put in their claims, and it
became generally known that they would become the new owners of La
Closerie, in place of John Guille.
When the rumour at length reached Tom’s ears, he, not unnaturally
perhaps, set down the whole matter as a plot to oust him from his
heritage and put Nance and Bernel in his place.
So his anger grew, and he was powerless. And the impotence of an angry
man may lead him into gruesome paths. Smouldering fires burst out at
times into devastating flames, and maddened bulls put down their heads
and charge regardless of consequences.
When Tom Hamon asked Peter Mauger to lend him his gun to go
rabbit-shooting one night, Peter, if he had been a thoughtful man, would
have declined.
But Peter was above all things easy-going, and anything but thoughtful
of such matters as surged gloomily in Tom’s angry head, and he lent him
his gun as a matter of course.
And Tom went off across the Coupée into Little Sark, nursing his black
devil and thinking vaguely and gloomily of the things he would like to
do. For to rob a man of his rights in this fashion was past a man’s
bearing, and if he was to be ruined for the sake of that solemn-faced
slip of a Nance and that young limb of a Bernel, he might as well take
payment for it all, and cut their crowing, and give them something to
remember him by.
He had no very definite intentions. His mind was a chaos of whirling
black furies. He would like to pay somebody out for the wrongs under
which he was suffering--who, or how, was of little moment. He had been
wounded, he wanted to hit back.
He turned off the Coupée to the left and struck down through the gorse
and bracken towards the Pot, and then crept along the cliffs and across
the fields towards La Closerie--still for three days his, in the
reversion; after that, gone from him irrevocably--a galling shame and
not to be borne by any man that called himself a man.
Should he lie in the hedge and shoot down the old man as he came in from
those cursed mines which had started all the trouble? Or should he walk
right into the house and shoot and fell whatever he came across? If he
must suffer it would at all events be some satisfaction to think that he
had made them suffer too.
From where he stood he could look right in through the open door, and
could hear their voices--Nance and Bernel and Mrs. Hamon--the
interlopers, the schemers, the stealers of his rights.
The shaft of light was eclipsed suddenly as Nance came out and tripped
across the yard on some household duty.
He remembered how he used to terrify her by springing out of the
darkness at her. She had helped to bring all this trouble about.
Why should he not--? Why should he not--?
And while his gun still shook in his hands to the wild throbbing of his
pulses, Nance passed out of his sight into the barn.
The deed a man may do on the spur of the moment, when his brain is on
fire, is not so readily done when it has to be thought about.
Then Mrs. Hamon came to the door, and called to Nance to bring with her
a piece or two of wood for the fire.
Here was his chance! Here was the head and front of the offence, past,
present, and future! If she had never come into the family there would
have been no Nance, no Bernel, no selling of the farm, maybe. A movement
of the arms, the crooking of a finger, and things would be even between
them.
But--it would still be he who would have to pay--as always!
All through he had been the sufferer, and if he did this thing he must
suffer still more--always he who must pay.
The man who hesitates is lost, or saved. When the contemplator of evil
deeds begins also to contemplate consequences, reason is beginning to
resume her sway.
Then he heard heavy footsteps and voices. His father and Stephen Gard.
Another chance! Gard he hated. There was a bruise on his right jaw
still. And the old man!--he had cut him out of his inheritance by going
crazy over those cursed mines.
“I’m sorry you have gone so far,” Gard was saying as they passed. “If
you had consulted me I should have advised against it. Mining is always
more or less of a speculation. I would never, if I could help it, let
any man put more into a mine than he can afford to lose.”
“If you know a thing’s a good thing you want all you can get out of
it,” said old Tom stoutly.
“Yes, if--” and they passed into the house, while Tom in the hedge was
considering which of them he would soonest see dead.
Now they were all inside together. A full charge of small shot might do
considerable and satisfactory damage.
But thought of the certain consequences to himself welled coldly up in
him again, and he slunk noiselessly away, cursing himself for leaving
undone the work he had come out to do.
On the common above the Pot, a terrified white scut rose almost under
his feet and sped along in front of him. He blew it into rags, and was
so ashamed of his prowess that he kicked the remnants into the gorse and
went home empty-handed.