HOW THEY THANKED GOD FOR HIS MERCIES
Vast was the wonder of the Sark folk when they heard next day of that
night’s doings, and learned who the murderer of the Coupée was, and how
and by whom he had been laid by the heels.
The whole Island breathed freely once more, and was outspokenly grateful
to the courage and pertinacity which had lifted from it the cloud and
the reproach.
Some of them even had the grace to be not a little ashamed of their
previous doings, but ascribed the greater part of the blame to Tom’s
widow and Peter Mauger.
But it was days before Stephen Gard took any interest in the matter,
past or present, or in anything whatsoever.
The Doctor’s pad undoubtedly saved his life, but no amount of padding
could avert entirely the fiendish malignity of those merciless iron
flails.
He lay unconscious for eight-and-forty hours; and the Doctor--though he
never breathed a word of it, and prophesied complete recovery with the
utmost cheerfulness and apparent sincerity--had his own grim fears as to
what the effect of the whole hideous event might be on one who had
already suffered such undue strain of mind and body.
Fortunately, his fears proved groundless. On the third day, Gard
quietly opened his eyes on Nance, who had barely left his bedside since
the Sénéchal went down to La Closerie himself and brought her back with
him to Plaisance.
“I’ve been asleep,” he said drowsily. “Anything wrong, Nance dear?” and
he tried to sit up, but found his head heavy with cold water bandages,
and a pain about his neck and left shoulder, and his left arm in
splints, and all the rest of him one great aching bruise.
“Why--” he murmured, in vast surprise.
“You’re to lie quite still,” said Nance dictatorially, with lifted
finger. “And you’re not to talk or think till the Doctor comes.”
“Give me a kiss, then!”--good prima facie evidence, this, that his brain
had suffered no permanent injury.
“Well, he didn’t say anything about that,” and she bent over him and
kissed him with a brimming flood of gratitude in her blue eyes, and he
lay quiet for a time.
“Is it dead?” he asked suddenly, with a reminiscent shudder which set
all his bruises aching.
“The white horse? Yes, Dieu merci, it’s dead! But you’re not to talk or
think.”
“Give me another kiss, then!”--from which it was apparent that he knew
very well what kind of medicine was best adapted to his ailments.
The Doctor came down to see him the very first thing every morning, and
now he came quietly in, just as Nance had been administering her latest
dose.
“Ah--ha, nurse! What are you doing to my patient!”
“I’m only keeping him quiet, sir, as you told me to,” said Nance, with a
rosy face.
“It’s the doctor you ought to pay, not the patient. Well, my boy, how
are we this morning? Head aching yet?”
“It does feel a bit queer. Tell me all about last night, Doctor!”
“Ah--ha, yes--last night! Well, you caught the murderer with a
vengeance, my boy--or he caught you,”--and then, seeing the puzzlement
in the tired eyes, he briefly explained the whole matter.
“And do you mean it was that awful beast killed the others?”
“Without a doubt--and would have killed you in exactly the same way, and
exactly the same place, but for my pads and the Sénéchal’s bullets.
Queer thing--they found the brute lying all in a heap in Coupée Bay on
the very spot where Tom Hamon and Peter Mauger were found.”
“Ay-y-y-y-y!” breathed Gard, with a long sigh of relief and a shiver. “I
shall never forget him.”
“Oh yes, you will--in time. Think of little Nance here. She’s a sight
better worth thinking of. And now, Miss Nancy, how much good news can
you stand all at once, if you try your very hardest?” he asked, with a
sparkle in his eyes that somehow seemed to set hers sparkling too.
“Oh madé, Doctor!” and the little hands clasped up on her breast, as was
her way when greatly moved. “Not----?”
She dared not hope for so much--the wish of her heart--just an inch or
so behind the desire for Gard’s recovery.
“The cutter this morning brought over one we had feared was lost----”
“Not--not Bernel?”
“Yes, my child, Bernel, by God’s good mercy! He was picked up by a
Granville trawler, and lay there ill for some days, and could only get
back by Jersey and Guernsey. He was to come along with the Sénéchal in a
quarter of an hour--”
But Nance had fallen on her knees and buried her face in the
bed-clothes, lest any but God should see it in the rapture of its
breaking.
“Dieu merci! Dieu merci! Dieu merci!” she was crying, though none of
them heard it.
And “Thank God!” said Stephen Gard with fervour--for Bernel, and for
himself, but most of all for Nance.
NOTE.--The names used in this book are necessarily the names
still current in Sark. None of the characters presented,
however, are in any way connected with any persons now living
in the Island.