HOW TOM WENT TO SCHOOL FOR THE LAST TIME
Mrs. Tom had had a troubled night. Anxiety at her husband’s continued
absence had in due time given way to anger, and anger in its turn to
anxiety again.
In a state of mind compounded of these wearing emotions, she had set out
in the early morning to find out what had become of him; if he was
sleeping off a drunken debauch at Peter Mauger’s, to give them both a
vigorous piece of her mind; if he was not there, to find out where he
was; in any case to vent on some one the pent-up feelings of the night.
Vigorous hammering on Peter Mauger’s door produced first his old
housekeeper, and presently himself, heavy-eyed, dull-witted, and in
flagrant dishabille, since Mrs. Guille had but a moment ago shaken him
out of the sleep of those who drink not wisely over-night, with the
information that a crazy woman wanted him at the door.
“Where’s Tom?” demanded Julie, ready to empty the vials of her wrath on
the delinquent as soon as he was produced.
But Peter’s manner at once dissipated that expectation.
“Tom?” he said vaguely, and gazed at her with a bovine stupidity that
jarred her strained nerves like a blow.
“Yes, Tom--my husband, fool! Where is he?” she asked sharply.
“Where is he?” scratching his tousled head to quicken his wits. “I d’n
know.”
“You don’t know? What did you do with him last night, you drunken
fool?”--by this time the neighbours had come out to learn the news.
Peter gaped at her in astonishment, his muddled wits and aching head
beginning dimly to realize that something was wrong.
“Tom left here ... last night ... t’go home,” he nodded emphatically.
“Well, he never got home,” snapped Julie. “And you’d best get your
clothes on and help me find him. You were both as drunk as pigs, I
suppose. If he’s lying dead in a ditch it’s you that’ll have the blame.”
“Aw now, Julie!”
“Don’t Julie me, you fool! Get dressed and do something.”
“I’ll come. You wait,” and he went inside, and put his head into a basin
of water, and threw on his clothes, and came out presently looking
anxious and disturbed now that his sluggish brain had begun to work.
“Where you been looking?” he asked.
“Nowhere. I expected to find him here.”
“We had a glass or two and then he started off home. He could walk all
right.... Did you.... You didn’t see anything wrong ... anything ... at
the Coupée?” he asked, with a quick anxious look at her.
“No, I didn’t. What do you mean? Oh, mon Dieu!” and she started down the
road at a run, with Peter lumbering after her and the neighbours in a
buzzing tail behind.
The cold douche had cooled Peter’s hot head, the running quickened his
blood and his thoughts, a sudden grim fear braced his brain to quite
unusual activity.
As he ran he recalled the events of the night before; their meeting with
Gard and Nance; Tom’s scurrilous insults.
If Tom and Gard had met again--Gard would be sure to see Nance home. Had
he met Tom on his way back? And if so--if so--and ill had come to
Tom--why, Gard might get the blame. And--and--in short, though by
zig-zag jerks as he ran--if Gard were out of the way for good and all,
Nance’s thoughts might turn to one nearer home. He would be sorry if ill
had come to Tom, of course. But if Gard could be got rid of he would be
most uncommonly glad.
And as he panted after Julie, head down with the burden of much
thinking, just before he reached the sunk way to the Coupée, his eye
lighted on something in the road that caused him to stop and bend--a
button with a scrap of blue cloth attached. He picked it up hastily and
put it in his pocket. On a white stone just by it there were some
red-brown spots. He pushed it with his foot to the side of the road and
was down into the cutting before the heavy-footed neighbours came up.
Julie was ranging up and down the narrow pathway, searching the depths
with a face like a hawk, hanging on to the rough sides of the pinnacles,
and bending over in a way that elicited warning cries from the others as
they came streaming down.
But keenest search of the western slope revealed nothing amid its tangle
of gorse and blackberry bushes, and the eastern cliff fell so sheer, and
had so many projecting lumps and underfalls, that it was impossible to
see close in to the foot.
And then one, nimbler witted than the rest, climbed out along the common
above the northern cliff, whereby, when he had come to the great slope,
he took the Coupée cliff in flank, and could spy along its base.
And suddenly he stopped, and stiffened like a pointer sighting his bird,
peered intently for a moment, and gave tongue.
The chase was ended. That they had sought, and feared to find, was
found.
They came hurrying up, and clustered like cormorants on the slope, Julie
among them, her face grim and livid in its black setting, her eyes
blazing fiercely.
The finder pointed it out. They all saw it--a huddled black heap close
in under the cliff.
Elevated by his discovery, the finder maintained his reputation by doing
the only thing that could be done. He left them talking and sped away
across the downs, across the fields, towards Creux harbour.
He might, if he had known it, have found a boat nearer at hand, Rouge
Terrier way or in Brenière Bay. But he was a Sark man, and a farmer at
that, and knew little and cared less, of the habits of Little Sark.
And the rest, falling to his idea, streamed after him, for that which
lay under the cliff could only be gotten out by boat.
So to the Creux, panting the news as he went. And there, willing hands
dragged a boat rasping down the shingle, and lusty arms, four men rowing
and one astern sculling and steering at the same time, sent her bounding
over the water as though it were life she sought, not death. For, though
no man among them had any smallest hope of finding life in that which
lay under the cliff, yet must they strain every muscle, till the
labouring boat seemed to share their anxiety to get there and learn the
worst.
So, out past the Lâches, with the tide boiling round the point; past
Derrible, with its yawning black mouths; past Dixcart with its patch of
sand; under the grim bastions of the Cagnon; the clean grey cliffs and
green downs above, all smiling in the morning sun; the clear green water
creaming among the black boulders, hissing among their girdles of tawny
sea-weeds, cascading merrily down their rifted sides; round the
Convanche corner, so deftly close that the beauty of the water cave is
bared to them, if they had eye or thought for anything but that which
lies under the cliff in Coupée Bay. And not a word said all the way--not
one word. Jokes and laughter go with the boat as a rule, and
high-pitched nasal patois talk; but here--not a word.
The prow runs grating up the shingle, the heavy feet grind through it
all in a line, for none of them has any desire to be first. Together
they bend over that which had been Tom Hamon, and their faces are grim
and hard as the rocks about them. Not that they are indifferent, but
that any show of feeling would be looked upon as a sign of weakness.
Under such circumstances men at times give vent to jocularities which
sound coarse and shocking. But they are not meant so--simply the protest
of the rough spirit at being thought capable of such unmanly weakness as
feeling.
But these men were elementally silent. One look had shown them there was
nothing to be done but that which they had come to do--to carry what
they had found back to the waiting crowd at the Creux.
They had none of them cared much for this man. He was not a man to make
close friends. But death had given him a new dignity among them, and the
rough hands lifted him, and bore him to the boat as tenderly as though a
jar or a stumble might add to his pains.
And so, but with slower strokes now, as though that slight additional
burden, that single passenger, weighed them to the water’s edge, they
crawl slowly back the way they came, logged, not with water, but with
the presence of death.
The narrow beach between the tawny headlands is black with people. Up
above, on the edge of the cliff, another crowd peers curiously down.
The Sénéchal is there at the water’s edge, Philip Guille of La Ville,
and the Greffier, William Robert, who is also the schoolmaster, and
Thomas Le Masurier the Prévôt, and Elie Guille the Constable, and Dr.
Stradling from Dixcart, and the dark-faced, fierce-eyed woman who cannot
keep still, but ranges to and fro in the lip of the tide, and whom they
all know now as the wife--the Frenchwoman, though some of them have
never seen her before.
A buzz runs round as the boat comes slowly past the point of the Lâches.
The woman stops her caged-beast walk and stands gazing fiercely at it,
as if she would tear its secret out of it before it touched the shore.
The watchers on the cliff have the advantage. Something like a thrill
runs through them, something between a sigh and a groan breaks from
them.
The woman wades out to meet the boat. She sees and screams, and chokes.
The wives on the beach groan in sympathy.
The body is lifted carefully out and laid on the cool grey stones, and
the woman stands looking at it as a tiger may look at her slaughtered
mate.
“Stand back! Stand back!” cries the Sénéchal to the thronging crowd; and
to the Constable, “Keep them back, you, Elie Guille!” to which Elie
Guille growls, “Par madé, but that’s not easy, see you!”
The Doctor straightens up from his brief examination, and says a word to
the Sénéchal, and to the men about him.
A rough stretcher is made out of a couple of oars and a sail, and the
sombre procession passes through the gloomy old tunnel into the Creux
Road, and wends its way up to the school-house for proper inquiry to be
made as to how Tom Hamon came by his death.
And close behind the stretcher walks the dark-faced woman, with her eyes
like coals of fire, and her dress dragged open as though to stop her
from choking.
“Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu!” she says in perpetual
iteration, through her clenched teeth. But to look at her face and eyes
you might think it was rather the devil she was calling on.
For, ungracious as their lives had been in many respects, yet this
violent breaking of the yoke has left the survivor sore and wounded, and
furious to vent her rage on whom at present she knows not.
She is not allowed inside the school-house--hastily cleared of its usual
occupants, who dodge about among the crowd outside, enjoying the
unlooked-for holiday with gusto in spite of its gruesome origin--and so
she prowls about outside, and the neighbours talk and she hears this,
that, and the other, and presently, with bitter, black face and rage in
her heart, she goes off home to find out Stephen Gard if she can, and
accuse him to his face of the murder of her husband.