§ 1
Daniel and Rose did not go to the bottom, but, not very surprisingly,
the _Baleine_ did. She went aground long before it was light, on some
outlying rocks half a mile from the Paternosters, and for three hours he
and his companion sat drenched and silent watching the dawn break behind
the eastward mystery of France. Rose saw that her deliverer’s mood had
changed, that he no longer gloried in his championship, that
apprehension and regret had taken the place of daring and indignation.
But she would not complain. She crouched beside him on the inhospitable
seaweed, her arms thrown over his knees--a drenched, draggled, exhausted
Andromeda still unreproachful of her Perseus. He did not speak to her or
look at her, but sat gazing down the violet paths of the sea towards the
Ecrehos as their cliffs came slowly out of the webs that trailed
between water and sky.
At about eight o’clock they were taken off by a steam yacht on her way
to Guernsey. The yacht gave them breakfast and the almost terrifying
luxury of a hot bath. It dried their clothes and overwhelmed them with
amiable inquiries. It was apologetic for its ruthlessness in taking them
on to Guernsey when they wanted to go to Sark, and paid their fare home
by the steamer from St Peter Port.
Rose was delighted with the yacht and its motherly behaviour. Her native
hardiness recovered quickly from endurances that would have smashed an
English girl--on the voyage across to Sark in the little paddle-steamer,
she laughed and chattered gaily. She was no longer the terrified victim
of the dancing hall or the collapsed heroine of the wreck of the
_Baleine_. She was a joyful and prattling child with queer little
adorable gleams of womanliness. He saw that she must be even younger
than he had first imagined, probably not more than eighteen. Her skin
had the living freshness of youth, her eyes its emptiness, her mouth its
expectation. As he realized her youth, he lost the consciousness of his
own and began to feel himself old. He was clear-headed and he saw that
for better or for worse he had appointed himself this girl’s protector,
and from the decision made when he was drunk there was no appeal now
that he was sober. He would have to see her through.... Whatever
happened she must not go back to Jersey and to the inevitable life that
awaited her there. Somehow he would have to persuade his uncles to keep
her, though his chances, already poor enough had been almost finally
ruined by the loss of the _Baleine_, a catastrophe which he knew the
families at the Pêche à Agneau would not accept in the spirit of
resignation. There was no good asking himself how he should manage to
stand up to Uncle Eugene and Uncle Philip. He must just make up his mind
to do so.
No wonder that Rose Falla found him a glum companion; but she was still
undismayed. Restored in mind and body, it did not occur to her to fret
or even wonder about the future. She did not imagine that this masterful
being who had torn her from the dance room at La Folle, swept her out to
sea, and had been at least instrumental in bringing about her two hours
of fairyland on the yacht, should not be omnipotent in his own domain.
“I love to go to Sark. I love to see Sark. It is my father’s place. You
know where he was born? It is called La Moinerie.”
They were sailing close under the red cliffs of Saignie, and he showed
her the jut of Tintageu between Port du Moulin and Pégâne Bay, and
beyond it he told her was the Pêche à Agneau where he lived.
“Oh, how lovely--you look out over the sea. Oh, I shall be happy, and I
shall learn to talk in my father’s way. We will talk together.”
He wondered if his cousins would already be home. Probably they would,
if they had not wasted too much time at Gorey looking about for him and
the _Baleine_. As the _Helper_ chugged into the Creux Harbour, he saw
the _Allouette_ and the _Kitty Hamon_ anchored under Les Lâches. So they
were back.... He looked anxiously round on landing, but saw only two De
Cartarets who had come down to fetch stores for La Fregondée. He felt
inclined to ask them about his cousins, but on consideration refrained.
They stared after him and his companion, and their merriment told him
that they foresaw his discomfiture.
Rose was no longer tired on this second walk together. She was delighted
with the flowery heart of the island, richer and wilder than the heart
of Jersey. She pulled handfuls of bluebells from the banks, laughing and
singing to herself in the spring warmth of the afternoon. As they
walked over the Coupée into Little Sark, Dan found himself wondering if
even his cousins could be harsh to this beautiful singing thing with her
hands full of flowers.
§ 2
He need not have worried. There was but one thought in the Le Couteur
mind, one reproach on the Le Couteur tongue--for the loss of the
_Baleine_. Dan might have brought the whole female population of St.
Helier in his train without causing half the uproar they considered due
to the disappearance of their smallest motor-boat. The _Baleine_ had
been only an ancient row-boat fitted with a second-hand engine, but the
Le Couteurs talked as if she had been a liner. No more swift, seaworthy,
or luxurious craft had ever sailed the Russell or the Déroute.
Unfortunately they did not realize their blessing while they had it, and
had failed to insure this paragon, considering the premiums they paid on
the _Allouette_ and the _Kitty Hamon_ already over large.
“Vagabond!” shouted Uncle Eugene into the tangle of his beard.
“Vagabond!” shouted Uncle Philip.
“Oh my Gar!--you make all the Carrés laugh at us,” shouted his cousin
Helier.
“You were drunk--vagabond!” shouted Uncle Philip.
In the midst of all this commotion, Rose Falla’s presence passed almost
unnoticed. Alice Hamon gave her some tea and gâche, and she had slunk
away to bed in the children’s room before Dan had had to do more than
give a perfunctory explanation of her.
But the next day the storm had in a measure subsided, and in a clearer
atmosphere the Le Couteurs were able to fix their attention on this
secondary point of folly.
Rose had been very bright and smiling at breakfast, which she had helped
prepare, though she was unable to talk except in English--which Dan knew
would be counted to her for unrighteousness. Afterwards, she had cleared
the cups and plates away, and finally gone off with Alice Hamon to help
her make the beds. Then Uncle Philip turned slowly to Daniel and asked:
“What you bring her here for?”
Young Sheather did his best to explain, glozing the fact that he would
never have brought her at all if he had been sober. At the end of his
harangue, Uncle Philip merely shrugged his shoulders.
“I thought you bring her for a wife.”
“A wife! Good Lord! But I hardly know her.”
“There is no need to know a wife. You get more than enough time to know
her afterwards.”
“But anyhow I’m not in a position to marry. Besides, I don’t want
to--that’s not the way I’d----”
“Then what are you going to do with her?”
“Can’t she stay here? She could help Alice--make herself useful in the
house or on the farm.”
“She cannot stay here.”
“But why not? There’s plenty of room for her.”
“There is no room. We do not want her.”
“But she can’t go back to Jersey. She’s absolutely alone, I tell
you--not got a relation or a friend worth anything. She’d have gone to
the bad if I hadn’t taken her. It would simply mean her ruin if we sent
her back.”
“Then why do you not marry her? I thought you had found a wife in
Jersey.”
Daniel lost his temper.
“That’s not the way we do things where I come from.”
“I’m damned if I’ll marry a woman I picked up at a dance hall--whom I
know nothing about.”
“You say she is a Falle.”
“She says she is the daughter of Helier Falle who used to be at the
Moinerie,” broke in Uncle Eugene. “I remember him going to Jersey in the
year they put the light on Platte Fougère. He married an Ozanne.”
“But, even if--I mean I want to know more about my wife than who her
parents were.”
“You want a lot, as Englishmen always do. You are lucky to have the
chance of marrying a Sark girl. Most girls would say they do not want to
marry an Englishman.”
“She may say so.”
“Oh my Gar! She will not.”
“But I couldn’t keep her anyhow. I’m not in a position to marry.”
“You earned sometimes thirty shillings a week last summer.”
“I sent a pound a week to my mother.”
“Then you must give up sending a pound a week to your mother, who has
her own husband.”
Daniel was exasperated.
“Damn it all! What makes you so anxious for me to get married? It won’t
do you any good.”
“Yes it will,” said Uncle Eugene. “If you marry you will not be an
Englishman any more--you will live here all your life and become one of
us. _So we get your mother back again._”
“The devil you do! Well, I tell you I’m certainly not going to marry if
it means chaining myself down to this damned island. Not that it means
anything of the kind--I could take my wife over to England to-morrow if
I wanted.”
“In the _Baleine_,” said Uncle Philip, and everybody laughed.
“Well, I don’t choose to get married. I brought this girl over here
because I thought you’d be humane enough to take her in and let her have
a chance of a decent life. I never dreamed of marrying her, or dreamed
that you’d want me to.”
“We don’t want you to,” said a young Philip--“but we cannot have her
here. We are already too many in the house.”
“And how many less should we be if I married her?”
“We should be two less. You would go and live at La Colinette, or at La
Ville.”
“Or there is the empty house near Moie Fano,” said a young Peter.
Daniel absolutely failed to understand his uncles’ and cousins’ train of
reasoning. They imagined, no doubt, that if he married they would get
rid of his uncongenial presence in their house and at the same time bind
him irrevocably to their island. He guessed that they were pleased that
he should have found a woman in Jersey instead of Guernsey, and
especially pleased that she had Sark connexions. There were still Falles
at La Moinerie, who would probably acknowledge her as a kinswoman. At
the same time he was lost in the cross-currents of minds so different
from his own. He could not understand whether they really wanted him to
marry, and, in some way patent to their reasoning, bring back his
mother’s family to Sark, or whether they were merely terrifying him with
marriage as an alternative to sending Rose Falla back to Jersey, hoping
thus to get rid of her swiftly and creditably.
But though he failed to understand theirs, his own mind was made up. He
could not marry this girl whom he scarcely knew, who had attracted him
only by her helplessness. His heart was still loyal to Belle, or rather
to the shadow of Belle. Besides, anyhow, he did not want to marry--not
unless he fell in love again ... which was unthinkable.
§ 3
He rose moodily and went out. He was sick of his mother’s family. They
seemed equally immune from ordinary human decency and ordinary human
motives. Bah! they were savages--a thousand years behind the inhabitants
of the Ouse Valley. He’d half a mind not to stick ’em any longer, but
clear out and go home. His father would be glad to have him back at the
George, and he felt that now he could face Belle at the Crown ... every
day and all day just across the road ... a shadow come to life.... No,
perhaps he was still unready to face Belle; but there were other places
he could go to besides Bullockdean--anything would be better than living
at the Pêche à Agneau.
He strolled across the back of Little Sark, down to the granite
fierceness of its south-west coast, where the old mines stick their
broken chimneys through the bushes above Rouge Terrier. For two or three
hours he lounged among the buttercups, sucking an empty pipe, staring
from the golden ground into the fiery blue of the sea, with its white
slobber at the _baveuses_ and the foot of Bretagne Uset. His eyes were
full of blue and gold and white, and his ears of the groan of the sea,
and his mouth of the acrid taste of stale tobacco, but his mind
registered none of these things, for it was full of its own colours and
tastes and sounds. He was angry with his cousins, angry with Rose Falla,
angry with himself. In the last lay the sting of it all--he knew that
everything was his own fault. Because he had forgotten his good English
ways, he had landed himself and this poor little girl in a proper
muddle. Not that she would have been much better off if he had left her
where she was or if he’d never met her at all, but at least she wouldn’t
have been hurt so badly as she must be hurt now when he told her she
would have to go back to all he had made her flee from. He could see
that she liked him, was a bit gone on him, in fact--also that she liked
being at the Pêche à Agneau, with the children and the big cousins. It
would be dreadful to have to tell her that she must leave it all....
What a fool he had been! He might have realized that the last thing in
the world his cousins would understand was an act of disinterested
kindness.... No, no--hang it all! He must be honest with himself, and
confess that he would never have brought her over if his head had not
been full of their horrible French drinks. He had acted foolishly rather
than disinterestedly, and now, like so many foolish men, he would have
to pay when he was sober the bill he had charged against himself when he
was drunk. So help him, he would never drink again! But that good
resolution wouldn’t do much for him now--nor for poor little Rose,
either.
For one dreadful moment it struck him that it was his plain duty to
marry her in order to save her from a wicked life. But immediately he
remembered that her situation in this respect was not of his making,
but of her own. After all, he could not forget that she had deliberately
consented to go with her friend to the dance and “find a boy.” She had
not had the moral strength to stand up to so monstrous a suggestion.
That wasn’t the sort of woman he should care for as a wife. Then he
remembered Belle, with all her passions and follies. Many men would not
have cared for Belle as a wife. But Belle was Belle--he loved her, so
could forgive all. He did not love Rose Falla. He could not contemplate
the idea of marrying without love. Therefore it was not likely that he
would ever marry, for he would never be in love again. He was not sure
that he wanted to, either--it had hurt him too much, that love which
Belle and Ernley had considered so quiet and comfortable and easy-going.
After all, even the kitchen fire can burn you, for all it boils a
pot....
It suddenly struck him as a possible solution of his difficulty that
the Falles at the Moinerie might consent to treat Rose as a relation and
take her in. The family consisted of a young husband and wife, a
grandfather and a baby, some sort of cousins, he understood, of Rose’s
father. He did not think they had much to live on, but he found it hard
to realize that here he could not expect the tender liberality of the
English poor. He resolved to ask them, anyhow, and tramped over to the
Moinerie before going home. Another thing that had struck him was that
the Le Couteurs might actually put poor Rose on the Guernsey boat if he
wasn’t back in time to stop them.
The Moinerie proved as inhospitable as the Pêche à Agneau. Helier Falle
was nothing but a name to the present occupiers, as the old man was the
wife’s father, and came from Alderney. After all, it was rather a lot to
ask of them--to receive a wholly unknown young woman into their house at
the request of a half-unknown young man. Only his desperation could have
made the idea seem possible, he realized as he walked away.
The afternoon was now well advanced, and Dan knew that he must walk
quickly if he was to be home in time to counter any plot of his cousins
with regard to the Guernsey boat. Leaving the Moinerie lane he plunged
cross-country to the mill, and soon found himself on the Coupée road,
facing the dipping sun. He had come nearly as far as La Belle Hautgarde,
when he noticed a dark figure swimming in the sun’s rays. It swam
towards him up the golden river of the road, and then suddenly was
clinging to him with little panting sobs of relief and fear.
§ 4
“Oh, at last you come! At last you come!”
The flower of her face was wilted with crying, and the little hands that
clung to him clutched and trembled, the fingers digging into his flesh
like thorns.
“Oh, at last you come and save me! You won’t let them send me away.”
“Rose, my dear, don’t cry so--tell me what’s happened.”
Fearing either interruption or observation from La Belle Hautgarde, he
led her into a field, down towards Les Petites Côtes. She poured out her
tale, but he scarcely listened, for he knew what it must be. His cousins
had told her she could not stay, that she must go back to Jersey ...
then he suddenly wondered if they had told her of the alternative he had
refused. At the same moment he heard her say:
“They say you will not marry me. But you will marry me if it is to let
me stay. I will not believe that you bring me over here and then let me
go back again. Oh, I will make you a good wife. I will keep your house
clean, and I will cook and sew. I will never ask you for anything. You
cannot bring me here and then let me go back. For I love you! I love
you!”
She threw her arms round him as they stood in the tall buttercups above
Les Petites Côtes, and he felt her warmth and sweetness, like the sun on
grass. Her face was hidden in his neck and her hair flowered golden
round his lips--he knew that his arms were holding her and that he was
hugging her close in protective pity. How in God’s name was he to send
this poor little soul back to the hideous life that awaited her in
Jersey? In spite of the slackness, or rather helplessness, which had
made her drift towards evil, she was as innocent as a baby. If she went
to the bad, her guilt would be on his head. He had a hateful vision of
her on the streets of St. Helier, down at the port with the sailors....
Oh, it was horrible! It was unthinkable--and the guilt would be his.
There was no use kidding himself with the argument that she had made the
first bad choice. The only fact that concerned him now was that he had
the power to help her and would not use it. No! No! He could not. He
could not marry a woman who was not Belle--he could not bind himself to
the Norman island, as he inevitably must bind himself if he married
under such conditions. And yet ... the quivering of her heart against
his made him almost sick with tenderness, and his flesh had not so long
lost its memory of Belle that he could remain unmoved by the softness of
her face against his throat, the softness of her hair against his mouth.
“Oh, you won’t let them send me away. I love you so! You are so kind to
me! I will make you so happy--you cannot imagine.”
No, he couldn’t. Yet was his happiness anything that mattered very much
now? If he sent her away he would not be happy either--and she, she
would be in the double hell of destitution and disappointment. Over his
own happiness or unhappiness he had not much power either way--only
Belle had that--or rather, even Belle had not that now. Only God had
that.... Dan thought of God. He felt ashamed. Since he had come to Sark
he had left undone so many things that he ought to have done and done so
many things he ought not to have done--“_Nous n’avons pas fait les
choses que nous aurions dû faire; et nous avons fait celles que nous
n’aurions pas dû faire_”--that was how it went, really--in Helier de
Cartaret’s Prayer Book--and how it would always go from this day forward
and for ever and ever if he married Rose.... But perhaps God wanted it
to go that way for him--perhaps God was giving him a chance to make up
for his neglect of the good ways he had learned at Bullockdean, and at
the same time was punishing him for it by depriving him of them for
ever. Standing there among the buttercups, with Rose in his arms, Dan
felt an almost passionate desire to do the right thing as he had been
taught. After all, to put himself first and let everyone else go to pot
was just being like his cousins--“duty” was a word he had learned in the
army. He would be more of an Englishman in binding himself to Sark by
marrying Rose than if he had refused to bind himself and let her suffer
for his freedom. And they would not be bound for ever--when he had put
by a little money, they could go home.... After all, it was a poor
prospect, never to marry. All men should marry, and if they can’t get
the girl they want they must marry the girl they can get--that’s all.
Meanwhile Rose stood motionless in his embrace, waiting for her lord’s
word, while his thoughts wandered from Sark to Bullockdean, from earth
to heaven, from heaven to the British army, from duty to comfort, from
the abstract to the practical, and finally back to her straits. He
looked down at her, but could see nothing beyond the flying anthers of
her hair and the curve of her ear as she hid her face. Dragged by an
uncontrollable impulse in which pity, though dominant, was not alone, he
stooped and put his lips to her ear, just under the teasing hair.
With a little shudder she drew herself upright, and he saw her face,
tear-stained and full of joy.
“Oh,” she murmured--“_tu m’aimes_.”
Then suddenly at those words his mother’s tongue was in his mouth, and
he was gabbling words of love in his mother’s language--rough,
salt-sounding words between which his kisses flowed like the tide
between rocks.