§ 1
The crisis came sooner than he had expected--forced by that outer world
which had left him untroubled for so long. He had written to his family
to tell them of Rose’s death and the baby’s birth, but had heard nothing
from them, a fact surprising even from their indifference. Then at the
beginning of September he received a letter from his brother Len. This
was a fresh surprise, as Len had written only once since he had left
home, but when he read the letter he realized that it contained matter
too deep for his mother’s scholarship.
Indeed, it recorded nothing less than the wreck of the George. Tom
Sheather had been finally deprived of his licence for allowing betting
on his premises. It appeared that he had already been fined twice--once
besides the occasion recorded by Ernley, and now his offence was too
great to be passed over. His licence had been withdrawn, whereupon his
brewers had swooped down on him for long-owed arrears, and all the
furniture, the pony and fowls would have to be sold to pay them. The
family smash was absolute. Daniel was shocked and upset, but not deeply
surprised. He had known the ways of the George too long, and had guessed
how much worse they must have grown now that he was no longer there to
control them in a small way. His mother’s voice was shrill, but it could
not persuade her husband out of his courses, and Christopher was
thoughtless and indifferent. No, now that he came to think it over, he
was not surprised.
There was only one unexpected element in the situation, and that was his
father’s behaviour. Len could hardly write coherently when he told
Daniel that the captain of the sinking ship had abandoned her. Tom
Sheather had disappeared, leaving a message behind him to say that he
had signed on a coaster going to Wales. He expressed no regret--indeed,
so Len recorded in horror, he seemed actually pleased at the prospect.
The innkeeper had shaken his shoulders and gone back to his first love.
At twenty, Tom Sheather had left the land for adventure and freedom on
the sea, and now at fifty he left it again, with evidently the same
youthful expectation. Daniel had a brief moment of sympathy, though he
was indignant at his father’s callous desertion of his wife in the
extremity to which his folly had brought her. He remembered certain
talks and confidences--his parent’s reckless wishes, his own
persuasions. He had never really taken the older man’s sea-fever
seriously, but evidently through all those years it had been gathering
temperature. Nevertheless he was shocked and ashamed, and angrily put
aside any extenuating reflections on the probable sharpness of his
mother’s tongue during the last days at the George.
“I’m taking mother and Chris to live with me,” wrote Len at the end of
his long letter. “Chris will help me on the farm, where there is plenty
of work for him. The farm has been doing better since last fall, but I
don’t know what will happen this harvest with the guaranteed prices off.
It’s just like the government to get us on a bit and then leave us
stranded. Now things are altered with you perhaps you might manage to
send mother something from time to time like you did before you married.
I am very sorry to hear of your trouble, but we have nothing but trouble
seemingly in our family. There are debts to settle up even after we have
paid Hobday and Hitch. I won’t take a penny from Ernley Munk, though he
offered me a loan, as well he might, seeing what he has made out of the
Crown. He has been a swine, saying it was what he had expected all
along, and speaking against us for not stopping father. I had a regular
shine with him on Tuesday, and told him pretty well what I thought of
him.”
Dan frowned. That was a pity. But Len had always been like that--too
proud to take a favour from anyone, except the government. He had been
furious with Dan because he wore Ernley’s old clothes ... now, as usual,
they would all have to pay for his pride, and Dan had never been able to
see that pride was worth even half what it usually cost....
Well, this settled it--he’d better go home. He might be able to do
something to help them--get some sort of a job somewhere. He couldn’t do
anything for them as he was now. All that he had earned that season,
which had not been so good as last year, had gone towards the support of
himself and his child. If he went back to England, he might be able to
get work on the land, or at the docks at Newhaven. Besides, he couldn’t
bear the thought of his mother penniless and abandoned. Of course she
had Len, and the cherished Christopher, but he thought of her as
abandoned all the same.
Yes, he would go home--he was fed up with this ghastly island, which
still treated him as a stranger though he had lived in it more than two
years, and had married in it and begotten a child. It would be good to
find himself a son of the house once more, even though that house was
scattered and disgraced. He had nothing really to hold him to Sark, now
that Rose was gone and that even her resting-place might not be
marked.... He would serve out the Le Couteurs by taking himself and his
son back to England. It was curious how he suddenly found himself
desiring England, with its long roads and friendly people.... He’d
manage somehow for himself and his boy, and he would be back once more
in his own country, among his own folk. He would turn his back on the
sea and islands, and they in their turn should become shadows on glass.
§ 2
The Le Couteur attitude was mixed. On one hand they were glad to be rid
of the stranger, on the other they were vexed that Kitty Le Couteur
should get her own back again. However, they were pleased that after
thirty years of marriage her husband should have shown himself so
unworthy of a Le Couteur lady.
“Ah, that your poor mother should have married such a vagabond,” said
Uncle Eugene--“my brother Philip and I tell her he is vagabond, but she
would not believe us. Perhaps she believe us now.”
“You go back to England and sell beer,” said Uncle Philip. “Englishmen
like beer.”
The pendulum swung when they found he meant to take his son away with
him.
“He must not go,” cried Uncle Eugene. “He is a Le Couteur--he was born
in this island.”
“If it comes to that,” said Daniel, “so was I.”
“But your mother take you away and you never belong to us any more.”
“And a good job, too--I don’t want my boy to stay here and grow up a
savage.”
“Ho! Savages, are we? Oh, my Gar--we are savages! Mister Englishman is a
gentleman--he is a visitor. That is it.”
“I’ve a right to do what I like with my own child.”
This was obvious even to Uncle Philip and Uncle Eugene. As, twenty-odd
years ago they had let Thomas Sheather depart with his wife and
children, so now they must let his son depart with his child,
reluctantly, yet knowing that none but themselves had driven out the
stranger. However, when he was gone they would put up a splendid
tombstone over his wife’s grave with the text old Eugene had chosen out
of his Bible, two months ago, before there was all the fuss: “_Nous
n’avons rien apporté au monde, et il est évident que nous n’en pouvons
rien emporter_”--a statement which applied with equal truth (if Thomas
Helier were excepted) to her husband’s sojourn in Sark.
Before he went Daniel paid a visit to the narrow green mound under which
Rose lay nameless. He was not inclined to be sentimental over Rose,
nevertheless he brought her his last offering in the shape of a wreath
of the golden daisies that grow in the corn. He knew well that when he
left the new tombstone would go up, lozenge-shaped and white and
French--Protestant against both Rome and England. He knew, too, that he
would be Daniel Le Couteur for ever here in stone. But after all, he did
not much care. Now he was free of them they could do what they liked
with his name. He was taking away all that Sark had given him--the only
thing it had ever given him--his marriage. He was taking away his
marriage, for all that Rose lay here under a French headstone, engraved
with a name that was not his, and that he would never lie beside her
within sound of the sea. His marriage had been the one treasure of those
three summers--indeed, the one treasure of his life. Amidst all the
strangeness and hostility and abasement of his exile, the island had
given him this one great gift, which he could take away. Rose’s body
might remain here under the ilex trees, but he took his marriage with
him in the child.
§ 3
William, Peter, and one of the young Philips went with him when he
walked down to the harbour, with his child on his arm. Once more he wore
his English clothes, which were now a little tight, with Ernley’s
British warm to keep out the winds of the Russell.
“Now you must not go out in the boat alone,” laughed Philip.
“Or you run aground on the Paternosters,” chuckled William.
“Ha-ha-ha!” roared Peter. “Ha-ha-ha-ha!”
“Ha-ha-ha-ha! Ha-ha-ha-ha!”
The farewells of his cousins mingled with voices of the gulls on Les
Lâches.
The sea was calm and hazy. The summer’s heat had baked to a rich gold
the green tops of the Burons, where at last the flowers had dried. The
little paddle-steamer swung into the Goulet race, making her way home by
the east coast.
Daniel sat under the bulwark on the second-class deck, holding Thomas
Helier firmly wedged between his chest and his arm, and already a little
disconcerted by his change from a nominal to a practising father. He
resolved to take advantage of any feminine goodwill that might be shown
him on board either this or the Southampton boat. At present the baby
slept like a chrysalis in his white shawl, and after a time Daniel lost
his preoccupation with him, as the steamer slipped over the deep waters
by Les Abimes, and he looked for the last time on the Grande Moie and
the Petite Moie, on Dodon and Noire Pierre, standing out of the sea like
broken temples on a green plain. Then the steamer drew her wake past the
Eperquerie--Sark’s huge tail, lying out towards Herm, and holding a
deadly sting under the water. The race began--the little waves
fluttering round the _grunes_ at Bec du Nez.... They were out beyond it
now--looking back on all the huge, cragged bulk of that lovely,
unfriendly island, which lay now as when he had first seen it, like a
horned beast asleep upon the sea.
_PART III_