HOW NANCE WATCHED FROM AFAR
From the headland above Brenière, Nance had watched the boats go
plunging across to L’Etat.
Very early that morning she had sped across the Coupée and up the long
roads to the Seigneurie, but the Seigneur was away in Guernsey still,
busied on the vital matter of raising still more money for the mines in
which he was a firm believer, mortgaging his Seigneurie for the purpose,
assured in his own mind that all would be well in the end.
Then to the Vicar and the Sénéchal, and these set off at once for the
harbour, but found themselves powerless in the face of public opinion.
Argument and remonstrance alike fell on deaf ears. The Vicar appealed to
their sense of right; the Sénéchal forbade their going. But their minds
were doggedly set on it, and they went.
“I shall hold you to account,” stormed Philip Guille.
“B’en, M. le Sénéchal, we’ll pay it all among us,” and away they went;
and back to her look-out by Brenière went Nance, and the Vicar with her
for comfort in this dark hour.
They watched the boats circling the rock, round and round. They heard
the firing, and Nance flung herself on the ground in an agony of
weeping, sure that the end had come. For they could only be firing at
Gard, and what could one man do against so many?
“They have killed him,” she moaned.
And the Vicar could only tighten his pale lips, and smooth her hair with
his thin white hand, as she writhed on the ground at his side. For he
could but think she was right. They were good shots, the Sark men, and
it needs but one bullet to kill a man.
If Nance had looked a moment longer she might have seen Gard slip down
from the ridge to the wall, but the bombardment of the shelter, which
gave him his chance, made an end of her hopes, and her face was hidden
in the turf.
The Vicar’s sight was not keen enough to see clearly what was passing.
But when the men landed on the rock, and overran it in their search, he
could not fail to see their figures on the ridge against the sky, and an
exclamation of surprise roused Nance.
“What is it?” she jerked.
“They have landed over there. They seem to be searching the rock.”
“Then--” and she sat up suddenly and gazed intently across at L’Etat,
and then sprang to her feet, a new creature. “For, see you, Mr
Cachemaille,” she cried, “if they had killed him they would not be
searching for him, nenni-gia!”
“That is true, child,” said the Vicar hopefully, and then, less
hopefully, “but where shall a man hide on L’Etat?”
“Ah now! I remember. Just as I was leaving him last night, he told me--”
“As you were leaving him--last night?” and the old man gazed at her as
though he doubted his ears or her right senses.
“But yes,” she cried impatiently. “I swam across there last night to see
if Bernel was there and to take him some food. But you are not to tell
that to any one. And he told me--”
“You swam across?--to L’Etat?”
“Yes, yes! We have done it many times, and, besides, I had the
bladders--”
The Vicar shook his head helplessly. She forgot to explain so much that
he did not understand. But he grasped at one thread.
“And Bernel?”
“Ah, my poor Bernel! He is drowned,” she said, with a heave of the
breast, but with her eyes intent on L’Etat. “I wanted him to take the
bladders, but he would not; and it was the first night after the storm,
you see, and the waves were big still, and he never got to L’Etat, and
he never came back; so, you see--”
“Truly, you are being sorely tried, my child. But your brother was a
better swimmer than most. May we not hope--”
But she shook her head, intent on the doings on the rock, and full, for
the moment, of the hope she could draw from Gard’s hint about a
hiding-place of which she knew nothing. For if she and Bernel had never
discovered it, how should these others? And obviously they were
searching, for they prowled about the rock like ants, and poked here and
there, and wandered on and came back. And if they still sought they had
not yet found; and so there was a new spring of hope in her heart.
“Yes, truly, they are searching,” she murmured, and forgot the Vicar
and all else.
He tried to induce her to go back home with him, but she would not move.
For the moment all her hope in life was in peril on the rock, and she
must see all that went on; and finally he had to leave her there, and
she hardly knew that he had gone. She wanted only to be left alone, to
nurse her new-born hope and watch in fear and trembling for any symptom
of its overthrow.
But she was not to be left in peace, for Madame Julie had heard the
firing also, and had come round the headland by the miners’ cottages,
exulting in the fact that her enemy was run to earth at last and was
meeting righteous punishment.
And as she prowled about there, chafing at the delay in the return of
the boats, she came suddenly on Nance gazing out at L’Etat with a
face--not, as Julie would have expected, downcast and woe-begone, but
full of eager expectancy. And the sight of her, and in such case,
stirred Julie to venom.
“Ah then--there you are, mademoiselle, listening to the end of your
fancy gentleman! And the right end, too, ma foi! A man that goes
knocking his neighbours on the head--it’s right he should be shot like a
rabbit--”
Nance’s face quivered, but she did not even look round.
“You’ll see them coming back presently, and they’ll bring his body back
with them in the boat, all full of holes. And then I’ll feel that my
Tom’s paid for--”
“Do you hear?” she cried, planting herself in front of Nance, and
jerking her hands up and down in her excitement and the exaspeiation of
receiving no response. “Do you hear me--you? Or are you gone crazy for
love of your murderer?”--and she made as though to lay wild hands on the
girl.
“You are wicked! You are evil! You are a devil!” said Nance through her
little white teeth, and looked so as though she might fly at her that
Julie drew off.
“Aha--spitfire!--wildcat!--you would bite?”
Nance, all ashake with disgust, stooped suddenly and picked up a lump of
rock.
“Go!” she said, in a voice of such concentrated fury that it was little
more than a whisper. “Go!--before I do you ill;” and she looked so like
it that Julie turned and fled, expecting the rock between her shoulders
at every step.
But the rock was on the ground, and Nance was intent again on L’Etat.
She stood there watching, until she saw the boats put off, and then she
turned and sped like a rabbit--across the waste lands--across the
Coupée--over Clos Bourel fields into Dixcart--over Hog’s Back to the
Creux.
She ran through the tunnel just as the boats came up, and her eyes were
wide with expectant fear, as they swept them hungrily.
“What have you done then, out there, Philip Vaudin?” she cried, as his
boat’s nose grated on the shingle.
“Pardi, ma garche, we have done nothing.”
“But the shooting?”
“Some one shot at the shelter to see if he was inside, and the rest shot
because they thought there must be something to shoot at.”
“And you have not got him?” asked another disappointedly.
“Never even seen him.”
“Ah ba!”
“Either he’s gone or he’s under cover, though, ma fé, I don’t know where
he’d find it on L’Etat,” and Nance’s heart beat hopefully. “However,
John Drillot and Peter Vaudin are stopping the night in case he is still
there and ventures out of his hole,” and her heart sank again, and
kicked rebelliously that a man should be hunted thus, like a rabbit.
She spent a night of misery, wondering what was happening on L’Etat, and
was at her post above Brenière as soon as it was light.
She saw Philip Vaudin come round from the Creux in his boat and run
across to the rock, and almost as soon as he had disappeared round
Quette d’Amont, he came speeding back, alone, and not to the harbour,
but straight to the fishermen’s rough landing-place inside Brenière.
“What is it then, Philip?” she asked anxiously, as he hauled himself up
the rocks on to the turf.
“I’ve come for two miners,” he panted, for he had come quickly. “They’ve
run him to earth in a hole, but they won’t either of them go in after
him, and they want some one who will.”
“Ah, then!”
“Yes. He came out in the night, and they chased him, but he got into his
hole, and they’re sitting on it ever since,” and he hurried away through
the waste of gorse and bracken to the miners’ cottages.
Volunteers were evidently not over plentiful. It was a considerable time
before he came back with a Welshman, Evan Morgan, and a young
Cornishman, John Trevna, and neither of them seemed over eager for the
job.
“For, see you,” had been Morgan’s view, “coing in a hole after a man
what hass a gun iss not a nice pissness, no inteet!” and the Cornishman
agreed with him.
However, they put off, and Nance crouched in the bracken and watched all
their doings.
She had long since caught sight of John Drillot and Peter Vaudin sitting
on the rock wall, and wondered what kind of a hiding-place Gard could
possibly have found therein. A poor one, she feared, and that the end
would be quick.
The boat disappeared round the corner, and presently she saw the three
men join the others at the wall, and they all clustered there and
talked, and then one by one they disappeared into the wall itself, and
she sat watching in fear and trembling.