§ 1
Daniel’s marriage ended as it had begun--in a strange language. This
time Helier de Cartaret’s Prayer Book was open at La Sepulture des
Morts, and to a jigging Anglican chant the congregation--much the same
as that which had gathered for the wedding--sang “_Voila, tu as fait la
mesure de mes jours de quelques palmes, et la durée de ma vie est devant
toi comme un rien. Certainement l’homme passe comme une ombre._”
“_Comme une ombre ... comme un rien_”--that was the marriage now which
had filled and changed his life--all the memory of those days: the
summer days when he had toiled on the sea, the winter days when he had
toiled on the land--the summer nights when the moonlight had made the
bed a house of silver, the winter nights when the lamp had made the
kitchen a house of gold--all now were as the shadows ... which sweep out
on the winds to the sea and are lost ... shadows moving under the clouds
over Baleine Bay ... whose footsteps are not known....
“_Ecoute ma prière, O Seigneur, Car je suis étranger et voyageur devant
toi; comme l’ont été tous mes pères._”
As the Le Couteurs belonged to the aristocracy of the island, the first
part of the service was held in Church. A thick rain was falling, and it
was not till the last prayers that the congregation came out and stood
under the dripping ilex trees. No one wore mourning--black was too
difficult to procure, and too short lived in the salt sea air. Daniel
had a black band round the arm of his jersey--that was all.
“_L’homme né de la femme est de courte durée...._” The dreadful rhythm
of the burial hymn rose in incongruous and courtly French, like a Tartar
hermit dressed as a troubadour. The sods of Sark earth rattled on the
coffin lid--plain English that. Dan shuddered. For the first time he
identified Rose with the coffin and its contents--Rose with her hair
like flying anthers, her eyes like the pools in the sea gardens of
Tintageu ... the shy, unwilling tears forced themselves out of his
closed eyes. He had not wept before, and it was punishment to weep like
this before all the island, in the sight of all his cousins, of all the
Carrés, and Falles and Hamons and De Cartarets--but he could not help
it. There was something in this burial service so close to earth that
the anguish of earth was upon him. He saw himself as he saw Rose, as
flesh, and all flesh as grass.
When the dues of earth had been paid, the Le Couteurs walked back in
straggling groups to the Pêche à Agneau. Daniel went with them, for he
was to live there now. The cottage at Moie Fano was too lonely for a man
with a young child, so he came back to the place where Sark had given
him its first unfriendly greeting. As he walked over the brow of Little
Sark, and looking down the slope, saw the still sea, with the currents
wandering over it like dim, mysterious paths, it seemed as if the sea
rather than the land held the presence of his little Rose. Though the
sea had not taken her, as it had taken so many in the island, he thought
of her now as on the first night he had known her, crouching in the
stern of a boat that was putting out into an unknown sea,
embarking--this time solitary--on the strange paths of the sea, where
their footsteps are not known.
§ 2
With curious ease he adapted himself to the new life, almost as if his
year of marriage had not been. He soon became used to the unaccustomed
solitudes, indeed, in a strange way he came to value them--the solitude
before sleeping and after waking, and of idle daylight when he lounged
on the sward above the cliffs. He never went to the south-east coast, to
the cliffs above Gorey and Brenière--in tacit covenant with himself he
refused to see the cold roof of the cottage at Moie Fano, or Balmée
sleeping like a whale on the golden floor of the sea. Instead, he
haunted the western coast, which he had hitherto neglected, except as
conductor of the English. From the eaves of Pégâne Bay he looked across
the purple Autelets towards Saignie and the tail of Sark; over and
beyond, among strange rocks like men-o’-war, lay Herm and haunted Jethou
... and beyond Jethou lay the violet shape of Guernsey--and beyond
Guernsey.... He knew the country that lay in the blue and purple mists
beyond Guernsey, and once more he found himself thinking of it as home.
His brief naturalization was over. At the Pêche à Agneau he was the same
stranger he had been before his marriage. Though he now spoke their
language and followed their customs, he had all his old curious sense of
difference from the Le Couteur clan. He had never felt that difference
between himself and Rose. He and Rose--so different in so many ways--had
essentially been one. But now that he was back at the Pêche à Agneau he
once more felt that half-amused, half-angry bewilderment at the native
mind; he knew that however freely he spoke their tongue, however
naturally he followed their ways, his mind would never work as their
minds.
He had at least two notable outbreaks of Englishry. One was when he
insisted that his son should be baptized Thomas Helier instead of by the
name of his wife’s father alone.
“He shall be called after my father too.”
“There is not one of us has ever been called Thomas,” said Uncle Philip.
“Well, there’s nothing like making a start. You need a few fresh names.”
“The Hamons will laugh at us,” said Cousin Philip.
“They’ll do that whatever we call him.”
“It is an English name.”
“And what are Ernest and Peter and Philip, I’d like to know?”
“They are Sark names. Thomas is English.”
“Well, damn it all, Thomas has an English father.”
He marched off contemptuously. Really, for sheer ignorance his mother’s
family were hard to beat. However, they could not stop him calling his
baby anything he liked. He had half a mind not to call him Helier. Then
he remembered Rose, and the way she had said “_notre Helier_.” ... There
was no help for it--Helier it must be, though it was Thomas too.
His next lapse was more serious. He found that on the tombstone that
was to be put up over Rose’s grave, her name was to stand as “_la chère
épouse de Daniel Le Couteur_.” For more than two years he had been Le
Couteur now, but somehow he could not bear the thought of his Normanhood
carved in stone.
“It shall be Daniel Sheather,” he said.
“Then we do not pay for it,” said Uncle Philip--which settled the
matter, since Daniel could not afford to pay for it himself.
Sore and angry at his relations’ benighted attitude, jealous of his own
rights and honour, he put two pieces of wood together in the shape of a
cross, and carved on them his loving memory of Rose Sheather, wife of
Daniel Sheather, formerly of the parish of Bullockdean, Sussex. It was
his gesture of defiance, and in a moonless midnight he set it up at the
head of Rose’s little mound under the ilex trees.
The result was the ferment of the island. It was an insult to have Rose
remembered under her English name, an insult barbed by the fact that it
was her true one. The whole inscription was in English, too, which was a
challenge, and the cross itself was considered Popish.
That night it disappeared, and Daniel could obtain no redress, since he
had set it up without authority.
“If you are wise you will let it alone,” said the Vicar--“our people
have strong prejudices here.”
So he damped down his wrath and fiery sense of outrage, but he spent
more and more of his free time above the cliffs of the western coast,
looking out towards Guernsey and the country beyond Guernsey....
Sometimes he thought he would just pack up and go home. Why should he
slave to put money into his cousins’ pockets when they didn’t know how
to treat him decently? He was deterred partly by the thought of Thomas
Helier, who was well looked after by Alice Hamon, and partly by his own
pride. He didn’t want these Sarkies to think they could drive him out.
He felt now that most of the Le Couteurs would be glad if he went--they
had his child, and in him they had got his mother back again. Daniel
himself they did not care for--he was useful to them in the boats, but
that was not everything, and they could probably do very well without
him, as they had done before. His assistance with the visitors could not
make up for his alien company in the house, from which they had hoped
his marriage had removed him for ever. Once or twice he was made the
subject of a practical joke with fish--the sure sign of local
unpopularity. Someone put a plaice in his cap when he took it off in
church one Sunday, and on another occasion, creeping into bed tired out
after a day in the boats, he found a cold mess of dabs awaiting his
naked feet.
“Well, if I go,” he said to himself truculently--“I take the kid with
me.”