HOW YOUNG TOM FOUND HIS MATCH
The news spread quickly.
Tom Hamon heard it as he sat brooding over his wrongs and cursing the
chicken-heartedness and fear of consequences which had robbed him of his
revenge.
He started up with an incredulous curse and tore across the Coupée to
the mines to make sure.
But there was no doubt about it. Old Tom was dead: the six weeks were
still two days short of their fulfilment; the property was his; his day
had come.
He walked straight to La Closerie, and stalked grimly into the kitchen,
where, as it happened, they were sitting over a doleful and long-delayed
meal.
Mrs. Hamon had been too overwhelmed by the unexpected blow to consider
all its bearings. Grannie, looking beyond, had foreseen consequences and
trouble with Tom, and had sent for Stephen Gard and given him some
elementary instruction relative to the laws of succession in Sark.
Tom stalked in upon them with malevolent triumph. They had tried their
best to oust him from his inheritance and the act of God had spoiled
them. He felt almost virtuous.
But his natural truculence, and his not altogether unnatural exultation
at the frustration of these plans for his own upsetting, overcame all
else. Of regret for their personal loss and his own he had none.
“Oh--ho! Mighty fine, aren’t we, feasting on the best,” he began. “Let
me tell you all this is mine now, spite of all your dirty tricks, and
you can get out, all of you, and the sooner the better. Eating my best
butter, too! Ma fé, fat is good enough for the likes of you,” and he
stretched a long arm and lifted the dish of golden butter from the
board--butter, too, which Nance and her mother had made themselves after
also milking the cows.
“Put that down!” said Gard, in a voice like the taps of a hammer.
“You get out--bravache! Bretteur! I’m master here.”
“In six weeks--if you live that long. Until things are properly divided
you’ll keep out of this, if you’re well advised.”
“I will, will I? We’ll see about that, Mister Bully. I know what you’re
up to, trying to fool our Nance with your foreign ways, and I won’t have
it. She’s not for the likes of you or any other man that’s got a wife
and children over in England--”
This was the suddenly-thought-of burden of a discussion over the cups
one night at the canteen, soon after Gard’s arrival, when the
possibility of his being a married man had been mooted and had remained
in Tom’s turgid brain as a fact.
“By the Lord!” cried Gard, starting up in black fury, “if you can’t
behave yourself I’ll break every bone in your body.”
And Nance’s face, which had unconsciously stiffened at Tom’s words,
glowed again at Gard’s revelation of the natural man in him, and her
eyes shone with various emotions--doubts, hopes, fears, and a keen
interest in what would follow.
The first thing that followed was the dish of butter, which hurtled past
Gard’s head and crashed into the face of the clock, and then fell with a
flop to the earthen floor.
The next was Tom’s lowered head and cumbrous body, as he charged like a
bull into Gard and both rolled to the ground, the table escaping
catastrophe by a hair’s-breadth.
Mrs. Hamon had sprung up with clasped hands and piteous face. Nance and
Bernel had sprung up also, with distress in their faces but still more
of interest. They had come to a certain reliance on Gard’s powers, and
how many and many a time had they longed to be able to give Tom a
well-deserved thrashing!
Through the open door of her room came Grannie’s hard little voice, “Now
then! Now then! What are you about there?” but no one had time to tell
her.
Gard was up in a moment, panting hard, for Tom’s bull-head had caught
him in the wind.
“If you want ... to fight ... come outside!” he jerked.
“---- you!” shouted Tom, as he struggled to his knees and then to his
feet. “I’ll smash you!” and he lowered his head and made another blind
rush.
But this time Gard was ready for him, and a stout buffet on the ear as
he passed sent him crashing in a heap into the bowels of the clock,
which had witnessed no such doings since Tom’s great-grandfather brought
it home and stood it in its place, and it testified to its amazement at
them by standing with hands uplifted at ten minutes to two until it was
repaired many months afterwards.
Tom got up rather dazedly, and Gard took him by the shoulders and ran
him outside before he had time to pull himself together.
“Now,” said Gard, shaking him as a bull-dog might a calf. “See here!
You’re not wanted here at present, and if you make any more trouble
you’ll suffer for it,” and he gave him a final whirl away from the house
and went in and closed the door.
Tom stood gazing at it in dull fury, thought of smashing the window,
picked up a stone, remembered just in time that it would be his window,
so flung the stone and a curse against the door and departed.
“I’m sorry,” said Gard, looking deprecatingly at Nance. “I’m afraid I
lost my temper.”
“It was all his fault,” said Nance. “Did he hurt you?”
“Only my feelings. He had no right to say such things or do what he
did.”
“It’s always good to see him licked,” said Bernel with gusto. “Nance and
I used to try, but he was too big for us.”
Mrs. Hamon had gone in with a white face to explain things to Grannie.
She came back presently and said briefly to Gard, “She wants you,” and
he went in to the old lady.
“You did well, Stephen Gard,” she chirped. “Stand by them, for they’ll
need it. He’s a bad lot is Tom, and he’ll make things uncomfortable when
he comes here to live. When Nancy takes her third of what’s left of the
house, that’ll be only two rooms, so you’ll have to look out for
another, and maybe you’ll not find it easy to get one in Little Sark. If
you take my advice you’ll try Charles Guille at Clos Bourel, or Thomas
Carré at the Plaisance Cottages by the Coupée, they’re kindly folk
both. I’ve told Nancy to get Philip Tanquerel of Val Creux to help her
portion the lots, and it’ll be no easy job, for Tom will choose the best
and get all he can.”
They were agreeably surprised to hear no more of Tom, but learned before
long that, on the strength of his unexpected good fortune, he had gone
over to Guernsey to pass, in ways that most appealed to him, the six
weeks allowed by the law for the settlement of his father’s affairs.
Within that six weeks Philip Tanquerel of Val Creux had, on Mrs. Hamon’s
behalf, to allot all old Tom’s estate, house, fields, cattle,
implements, furniture, into three as equal portions as he could contrive
with his most careful balancing of pros and cons. For, with Solomon-like
wisdom, Sark law entails upon the widow the apportionment of the three
lots into which everything is divided, but allows the heir first choice
of any two of them, the remaining lot becoming the widow’s dower.
No light undertaking, therefore, the apportionment of those lots, or the
widow may be left with only bedrooms to live in, and an ill proportion
of grazing ground for her cattle and herself to live upon. For, be sure
that when it comes to the picking of these lots, even the best of sons
will pick the plums, and when such an one as Tom Hamon is in question it
is as well to mingle the plums and the sloes with an exactitude of
proportionment that will allow of no advantage either way.