FLOWER OF THE FOAM
La Vireville did not go into the little Clos-ajonc with his lady.
He waited for her outside, leaning upon its low, whitewashed wall,
over which the tamarisk whispered with its feathery foliage. Breaths
of the gorse came to him even here, and the whole warm air was
vibrating with the lark's ecstasy. And Fortuné could hardly believe
his happiness, so strange a thing to him. Old dreams, long put away,
came back to him, merged in the new. Had he not yearned sometimes,
despite himself, to have, in what remained of this hard and shifting
existence of his, brief enough in its pleasures but endless in its
unceasing fatigue and peril and anxiety--the life that was often no
better than a hunted animal's--to have one place that was home, and
shrine, and star? Well, he had his desire now; he had won that place,
that heart, at last.
Yet even as he leant there, absorbed in contemplation, his mind was
suddenly pierced with a most evil arrow of a thought. What if Raymonde
had taken him out of pity, as a woman sometimes will . . . or worse,
out of a sense of gratitude?
The idea assailed him so unexpectedly, and so much from without his
own consciousness, that La Vireville dropped the strand of tamarisk
which he was idly fingering, and started up, straightening himself
as under an actual physical blow. Good God, it was impossible!
"_No,_" said a tiny derisive voice in his heart, "_far from it! It
is very possible. Even as to you yourself she is but a makeshift--you
told her so with your own lips--so to her you are only a man for whom
she is sorry, and to whom she is under an obligation. So much the
better for you! And what else did you expect?_"
And part of this two-sided onslaught La Vireville instantly and
furiously repelled. No, no, it was a lie--she was not a makeshift!
If he had spilt the best years of his life before another, a barren
altar, he knew better now. He loved Raymonde deeply and sincerely,
with a better love than he had given to that other. But Raymonde's
own motive in accepting him--how should he answer for that? Now that
it had once occurred to him, he saw that it was only too likely--she
had taken him out of pity.
He leant upon the wall again and covered his eyes with his hand. The
scene of his brief wooing, scarce concluded, passed once more before
him. Again he saw her studying the gorse blossom, weighing what
she should do. Yes, she had taken and returned his kisses--but had
he not read compassion in her very eyes at her first sight of him,
with that hateful empty sleeve? Yes, she had said that she was proud
to bear his name--but that might well be an act of atonement for the
past. She had spoken of helping him, of being by his side. Well,
there was such a thing--curse it!--as gratitude; and she owed him
her freedom, if not her life. But for him she had not stood on Sark
to-day. That he had a claim on her had never, till this moment, come
into his thoughts. Now his past knight-errantry stared at him like
a crime. Her accepted lover . . . from pity and a sense of obligation!
Could it really be so? Alas! who was to answer that it was not?
Fortuné uncovered his eyes, and, catching at a sprig of tamarisk,
tore at it moodily with his teeth. The lark's song had ceased; even
the sunlight seemed dimmed and unreal, as in time of eclipse. Yes,
now that the exhilaration was over, he saw that he had been a fool.
He glanced at his sleeve, thought of his lean purse, his blackened
home. Of course she had accepted him because she was sorry for him,
and because she thought that she owed him a debt and must pay it
somehow! How could he have come to her expecting anything else, for
what had he in the world--except his love--to lay at her feet?
And perhaps, after all, that love was not so strong nor so worthy
as he had thought. Fortuné was very little used to introspection,
and the thought shook him how easy it was, evidently, to delude
oneself. Ought he not, at any rate, to put an end to the situation
before it went farther, and, as a man of honour, offer to release
Raymonde from the promise which a moment of compassion had wrung
from her? . . . The idea was agony, but the wound to his pride was
agony too. . . .
And at that very moment Raymonde came along the pebbled path that
led from the door of the farmhouse. Her cloak was over her arm, a
little basket in her hand; she turned her head and smiled at the
old woman and the two children who watched her from the low doorway.
And at the sight of her, at the movement of her head, her smile, the
thought of releasing her left him as swiftly as it had come to
him. He could not do it; he wanted her too much. If she had taken
him out of pity or gratitude, so be it!--on whatever terms, so only
she were his!
Something of the sudden conflict that had rent him must have been
visible in his air, for as he held the gate open for her, and she
had thanked him by a smile, she said quickly:
"Qu'avez-vous, mon ami? Was the sun too hot here?"
"I have been thinking over my good fortune," said her lover gravely.
"Give me your cloak."
"I am glad that I have it with me," she remarked, as she complied.
"I think there is a storm coming up."
La Vireville looked round. She was right; and he, used as he was to
scanning the horizon in sailor fashion, had been too much absorbed
to notice it. A continent of cloud was rising out of the sea to the
north-east.
"I think it will pass over," pronounced the Chouan, looking at it.
"But in any case we ought to hasten."
And soon they were making their way over the short turf of the down
that runs to the head of the tiny Baie des Eperqueries, where Fortuné
had left his boat, the only one riding in that small and solitary
harbourage. A rusty culverin of Elizabethan days lay embedded in the
short grass at the top. It was nearly low tide; down beneath the
cove was tapestried with seaweed, green and purple and spotted,
fan-shaped or ribbon-fashioned, and a pair of puffins, from their
breeding-place at the other side of the island, sat solemnly side
by side, like parrots, on a crag.
"I told the boatman to wait for me here," remarked La Vireville,
as they made their way down the zigzag path. "I do not see him
anywhere; ah, there he is!"
A jerseyed figure was, in fact, lying on its face about half-way
down the slope.
"Come, wake up!" said the émigré, bending over him when they reached
him. There being no response to this invitation, he shook the sleeper
vigorously.
"Ma foi, this is a very sound sleep!" He stooped and picked up
something. "And this is its cause!" He held out to Raymonde an empty
brandy flask. "Cognac from our native land! He is dead drunk. What
are we to do? Sail without him?"
"Yes," said she, without hesitation.
La Vireville weighed the thought. It was what he wished. Their time
together was already so brief, that to put to sea together without
a third, even for that short voyage, was a great temptation. "I do
not know the channel," he said reflectively, "but the wind will not
serve us ill for Guernsey."
"But I have sailed the channel, the Great Russel, several times,"
said Raymonde quickly. "The mark for the mid-channel, till you get
within a mile from the islet of Jethou, is St. Martin's Tower in
Guernsey. I can point it out to you. If we put out at once we can
get back before the storm comes up--if it is coming up at all--whereas
if we go round to the other side of the island, to Creux Harbour, to
find a pilot, we shall be indefinitely delayed."
"You are quite right," said her lover, gazing at her where she stood
a little below him on the sunlit slope. "But I do not like the look
of the weather. Yet I must get back to St. Peter Port and catch the
sloop before she sails--I have given my word. The best is for you
to stay here, and I will go alone."
"No, no!" she cried vehemently. "That is not safe! You are not
familiar with the sunken rocks. I am, and I know something of
handling a boat. You will have more than you can do alone."
Yes, he was a one-armed man now! Through his gladness at her decision
to accompany him pierced for a second the point of that assailing
thought of compassion. But it did not stay with him; he beat it
off as one would a vampire, and followed her down the path.
The gulls were screaming overhead, and the waves lopped half-playfully,
half-menacingly against the sides of the sailing-boat as he pulled
her in from her moorings. As if the two puffins had only waited to
know his decision, they now left their perch, and fluttered off with
their absurd, ineffectual, mothlike flight.
"I wish you would not come, Raymonde," he said half-heartedly, as
he helped her aboard.
"Since when have you become a fairweather sailor, Monsieur Augustin?"
she retorted.
"At any rate we will take a reef in the mainsail before we start,"
said Monsieur Augustin, and together they did it. The small mizen
over the stern was still standing, and he left it so. Forward he
set the jib only. And as they moved out of the little spellbound
harbourage, so painted with the hues of the seaweed, they did not,
despite the ruffled, slaty-blue water, appear to be doing anything
very foolhardy.
Raymonde steered, because she knew the whereabouts of the 'stones,'
and he sat facing her on the thwart, the end of the mainsheet in his
hand. Neither spoke much at first; to him, at least, as he gazed at
her the hour was sacred. Yes, on whatever terms, so only she were his!
So, almost in silence, they rounded the Pointe de Nez, the extreme
northern corner of Sark, and set the course for Guernsey.
"And now," said Raymonde de Guéfontaine, "it is time to tell me how
you escaped at Quiberon."
So, as the little boat held on, with a freshening wind, under a
sky growing overcast, Fortuné told her. He had not foreseen the
exquisite pleasure that it would be to him to make that recital to
this, of all listeners.
"It is incredible--miraculous!" she exclaimed at the end, drawing
a long breath. "You must have had some talisman, some charm!"
"On the contrary, I refused one," said her lover, laughing, and he
told her of Grain d'Orge's consecrated cow's tail. The episode led
her to ask news of that unwilling squire of hers, and Fortuné told
her that a few weeks ago he had had the satisfaction of receiving,
by way of Jersey, a grimy and ill-spelt letter from Kerdronan, in
which the veteran campaigner, availing himself of the services of
the most cultivated of the band (for he could not even sign his name
himself) informed his leader, on the chance of the latter's being
alive, that he and various others had escaped to the mainland as
indicated, and had made their way up to the Côtes-du-Nord, and that
he was reorganising the parishes round Kerdronan against such time
as M. Augustin should come back to them. Le Goffic, he added, had
been hidden by some peasants at Quiberon till he was sufficiently
recovered to sail across to Sarzeau, in the peninsula of Rhuis, and
thence he had joined the forces of Charette in Vendée. But since
Charette's capture and execution last March he also, thought Grain
d'Orge, was probably on his way to Kerdronan.
"But I _had_ a talisman, Raymonde," said the narrator, breaking off.
"I had the thought of you, as I have told you. That very unpleasant
night at Quiberon, had you not been with me, I should certainly have
lain there on the shore till I was found."
"And you had another also," replied Raymonde, glancing aloft at the
foreleach of the sail. "What of the little boy--the little boy who
cried so for you?"
"Eh bien, cela n'empêchait pas," asseverated La Vireville.--"Yes, it
would be better to luff a little; the wind is undoubtedly getting up,
and I shall be glad when we make the harbour.--You are right, I had
the thought of Anne too, for I had promised his father to look after
him if necessary--I forget if I told you that--but as, mercifully, M.
de Flavigny was saved, you cannot be _Anne's_ mother, Raymonde."
"He is a darling child," said Mme. de Guéfontaine softly, putting
the tiller farther over as she was recommended. Her eyes sparkled,
then fell. Perhaps that same thought at which Fortuné had hinted
was in her mind too at that moment. In Fortuné's at any rate shone
that old dream of his of standing under the larches at Kerdronan
with her--and another. Yet now as he gazed at her, sitting, so
unbelievably, at the helm of his boat, he suddenly saw, behind her,
something else. . . . He gave an exclamation and let go the mainsheet.
"Keep the helm over--hard!" he said. "There is a squall coming; it
will be on us in a moment. We must have this sail down. Don't leave
the tiller!" And without losing a second he began to tug at the
mainsail halyards.
But, the blocks running stiffly, or the ropes being swollen, before
the sail was more than half-way down the squall struck them, with a
howling blast that seemed to issue from some stupendous bellows,
and rain that fell like steel rods. Over, over went the little boat,
staggering under the onset, while Fortuné fought desperately both
to get the sail completely down and to prevent it, as it came, from
flapping into the angry water and pulling them under. It came back
to him, like a demon's laughter, as he wrestled with it one-handed,
how a few short hours ago he had said that two arms were unnecessary.
What a lie!
Yet one terrible question only occupied his mind as he got the
sail under control, and as the struggling boat, preserved from
overturning only by the way which she had on her, began to right
herself--Raymonde! Had she been swept out--for they had been at a
fearful angle? No, she was still at her post, clinging to the tiller,
gasping, and white as death. But she had not lost her head, and that
had saved them. She knew as well as her lover that to keep the helm
down was their one chance of avoiding being swamped by the great
green seas that were all setting in fury towards the island, and
bearing them, half full of water as they were, at each plunge a
little nearer to the rocks. Without a word, except her name, uttered
in something between a sob and a curse, La Vireville threw himself
too on the groaning tiller, and for a few minutes they stood there
side by side, staggering with the oscillations of the maddened craft,
with the strength of both their bodies bent to one end--to keep
that bar of wood, and with it the rudder, as it should be, against
the malignant will of the storm. This was their true betrothal,
handfasted by the tempest, and, as they would never have known it
on the golden and enchanted island, among the gorse, they knew without
the interchange of a word, in the howling wind, the pelting, stinging
rain, with the water they had shipped swirling about their feet, that
they were one indeed.
* * * * *
And presently the boat began to drive forward more violently. They
were abreast of Les Autelets by this time, those fantastic pinnacles
that on a sunset evening were things of wonder, now black and sullen
amid the flying spray. Above them, too near for safety, frowned the
rocky walls of the island, magical no longer (save with an evil
magic), but sinister beyond belief. And soon they would come to
Brechou, the satellite islet, between which and Sark runs a race so
strong that no boat can live in it. And there were the sunken rocks,
impossible to avoid now. At any moment they might be dashed on to one
of them. Moreover, the boat was so full of water that there seemed
almost as much danger of her sinking under them as of her being
swamped or overturned.
"One of us must bale!" shouted Fortune in Raymonde's ear. "You,
I think."
She obeyed him instantly, and abandoning the tiller and his side,
crawled forward through the water, found a baling tin and set to
work. And the man who saw that fine and unquestioning obedience knew
for a moment the most bitter regret that the human heart can hold.
Why had he been so mad as to come, as to bring her? He had risked
his treasure, so newly found, so inexpressibly dear--risked it (and
that was the worst) without need, and was now to lose it. For all
this effort seemed but postponing the inevitable end. . . . But at
least the salt water and the rain had washed him clean of the traces
of that long infatuation--yes, and of the light loves of his youth.
Now he was hers only, and he and no other man would go down with her
under the greedy, hissing waves and share her sleep. . . .
Meanwhile she toiled there, crouched in the bottom of the boat, her
wet hair blown in streaks across her face, while he kept the boat's
head as much to the seas as he dared, only easing the helm on the
approach of a wave that seemed heavy enough to drive her bows under.
But immediately afterwards he would luff right into the crest of the
wave, and then as their labouring progress was thereby checked, must
put the helm up again for a second, to get the sails full once more,
lest the boat should roll over into the trough. It was a task calling
for a stout heart and the nicest judgment, and never by a word, nor
even by a look, did Raymonde de Guéfontaine, unceasingly working
also, distract him or show a sign of fear.
In such tension time scarcely exists, and it would have been hard
for Fortuné to say how long he had battled with the immense hostility
so suddenly arrayed against them, nor how much water Raymonde's
aching arms had, with almost mechanical action, thrown overboard,
before it began to seem to him that the smoother sea which followed
every three vehement waves or so was of longer duration. Was it
possible that the wind was abating? Only then, with the dawn of the
first real ray of hope in his heart, did Fortuné become conscious
too that with the lessening of the squall the island on their lee
had disappeared, blotted out by the pall of mingled mist and rain
which enshrouded them also. Perhaps they were still near it for all
that? But since the roar of the breaking surf was no longer audible,
it struck him that they must be drifting away from Sark, borne by
one of those currents, perhaps, of which the boatman had spoken.
"The worst is over, I think," he shouted to Raymonde. She nodded,
stopping her baling for a moment to put back her dripping hair, and
smiled--it was like a star coming out in a wet sky.
And even as Fortuné shouted he realised that an ordinary tone would
have carried to her ear. The uproar had ceased--nay, the wind had
dropped almost dead; he could hardly get the jib to draw. They seemed
to be motionless in a white silence, though doubtless they were
moving faster than they knew. For an instant he thought of hoisting
the mainsail again, then decided against it. Of what use advancing
when they could see nothing and had no idea of direction? The sea
was still agitated, lifting up countless plucking hands in uneasy
bravado, but there was no danger in that. So he left the tiller
and stooped over Raymonde.
"That is enough. You have the better of it now, brave heart! My
darling, my darling, how wet you are, and how cold!" He pulled her
to him, and opening the breast of his soaked redingote made her
pillow her head there. She shivered a little and clung to him, and
a strange, cold, remote happiness descended upon them both as they
drifted on, physically and mentally spent, in a sort of limbo between
death and life--neither ghosts nor yet fully sentient, floating in a
dream that was not a dream, and a reality that counterfeited illusion.
All at once the pall of mist was rent in front of them with dramatic
suddenness, and Fortuné had a momentary glimpse of something that
looked like a great white wing.
"Was that a sail?" asked Raymonde quietly, who had seen it too.
"The sloop, as I live!" cried her lover, starting up. "Pray God she
does not run us down!" He shouted lustily, then threw himself again
on the tiller.
But the damp white veil enclosed them once more. His shouts seemed
to return upon themselves. Raymonde sat, her chin on her hand, on
a thwart. He had never seen anyone so calm.
And then, gradually, the curtain of mist began to part a little on
their left, and to draw upwards like the curtain of a theatre. And
slowly, as on a stage, there came into sight the rock front of
Guernsey, with its fall to sea-level, the sun catching the windows
of St. Peter Port, and the white sails of the _Cormorant_, close
reefed, about half a mile away.
Steadying the tiller against his body, Fortuné pulled out a sodden
handkerchief and waved vigorously. Raymonde watched, not the plunging
progress of the sloop, but her lover. And, as the mist melted in all
directions from about them, the lovely, treacherous, baffled sea
of the Channel Islands began to be blue again with the beguiling
laughter that hides a hundred graves.
"She is putting about--she has seen us!" said La Vireville, lowering
his arm.
Then, and then only, did Raymonde de Guéfontaine show the whole of
her heart. For she cast herself sobbing on her lover's breast,
clinging to him as she had not clung during all the stress of their
hour of anguish.
"Fortuné, Fortuné, God is good! I could not have borne to die
to-day--to lose you so soon! I love you better than my soul. . . . I
have always loved you--always, always. . . ."
He strained her closer to him, seeing nothing but her wet eyes that
looked into his at last.
"You are the woman I have waited for all my life! I knew it before,
but now . . . a thousand times more clearly!"
And as the sloop, shaking out her canvas, bore gallantly towards
them, his lips, salt with the brine of the just-weathered death,
sealed on hers the knowledge of a happiness whose full security
those very waves had taught them, never to be in question again.
THE END
PRINTED BY MORRISON AND GIBS LTD., EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES
Printing errors have been corrected as follows: "rythmical" changed
to "rhythmical" on p. 69; "everyone brought conviction" changed to
"every one brought conviction" on p. 164; inverted commas added
after "fivepence" on p. 279 and after "to sleep a little" on p. 289.
Otherwise, inconsistencies and possible errors have been preserved.