There are moments when a kind of curtain seems dropped over the brain,
covering it, smothering it, while yet the body and its nerves are
tingling with sensation. It is like the fire-curtain of a theatre let
down between the stage and the audience, a merciful intervention between
the mind and the disaster which would consume it.
As the years had gone on Maitre Ranulph’s nature had grown more
powerful, and his outdoor occupation had enlarged and steadied his
physical forces. His trouble now was in proportion to the force of
his character. The sight of Guida and Philip hand in hand, the tender
attitude, the light in their faces, was overwhelming and unaccountable.
Yesterday these two were strangers--to-day it was plain to be seen
they were lovers, and lovers who had reached a point of confidence and
revelation. Nothing in the situation tallied with Ranulph’s ideas of
Guida and his knowledge of life. He had, as one might say, been eye to
eye with this girl for fifteen years: he had told his love for her in
a thousand little ways, as the ant builds its heap to a pyramid that
becomes a thousand times greater than itself. He had followed her
footsteps, he had fetched and carried, he had served afar off, he had
ministered within the gates. He had, unknown to her, watched like the
keeper of the house over all who came and went, neither envious nor
over-zealous, neither intrusive nor neglectful; leaving here a word
and there an act to prove himself, above all, the friend whom she could
trust, and, in all, the lover whom she might wake to know and reward. He
had waited with patience, hoping stubbornly that she might come to put
her hand in his one day.
Long ago he would have left the island to widen his knowledge, earn
experience in his craft, or follow a career in the army--he had been an
expert gunner when he served in the artillery four years ago--and hammer
out fame upon the anvils of fortune in England or in France; but he had
stayed here that he might be near her. His love had been simple, it
had been direct, and wise in its consistent reserve. He had been
self-obliterating. His love desired only to make her happy: most lovers
desire that they themselves shall be made happy. Because of the crime
his father committed years ago--because of the shame of that hidden
crime--he had tried the more to make himself a good citizen, and had
formed the modest ambition of making one human being happy. Always
keeping this near him in past years, a supreme cheerfulness of heart had
welled up out of his early sufferings and his innate honesty. Hope had
beckoned him on from year to year, until it seemed at last that the time
had almost come when he might speak, might tell her all--his father’s
crime and the manner of his father’s death; of his own devoted purpose
in trying to expiate that crime by his own uprightness; and of his love
for her.
Now, all in a minute, his horizon was blackened. This adventurous
gallant, this squire of dames, had done in a day what he had worked,
step by step, to do through all these years. This skipping seafarer,
with his powder and lace, his cocked hat and gold-handled sword, had
whistled at the gates which he had guarded and by which he had prayed,
and all in a minute every defence had been thrown down, and Guida--his
own Guida--had welcomed the invader with shameless eagerness.
He crossed the islet slowly. It seemed to him--and for a moment it was
the only thing of which he was conscious--that the heels of his boots
shrieked in the shingle, and with every step he was raising an immense
weight. He paused behind the chapel. After a little the smother lifted
slowly from his brain.
“I’ll believe in her still,” he said aloud. “It’s all his cursed tongue.
As a boy he could make every other boy do what he wanted because his
tongue knows how to twist words. She’s been used to honest people; he’s
talked a new language to her--tricks caught in his travels. But she
shall know the truth. She shall find out what sort of a man he is. I’ll
make her see under his pretty foolings.”
He turned, and leaned against the wall of the chapel. “Guida, Guida,” he
said, speaking as if she were there before him, “you won’t--you won’t
go to him, and spoil your life, and mine too. Guida, ma couzaine, you’ll
stay here, in the land of your birth. You’ll make your home here--here
with me, ma chere couzaine. Ah, but then you shall be my wife in spite
of him, in spite of a thousand Philip d’Avranches!”
He drew himself up firmly, for a great resolve was made. His path
was clear. It was a fair fight, he thought; the odds were not so much
against him after all, for his birth was as good as Philip d’Avranche’s,
his energy was greater, and he was as capable and as clever in his own
way.
He walked quickly down the shingle towards the wreck on the other side
of the islet. As he passed the hut where the sick man lay, he heard a
querulous voice. It was not that of the Reverend Lorenzo Dow.
Where had he heard that voice before? A shiver of fear ran through him.
Every sense and emotion in him was arrested. His life seemed to reel
backward. Curtain after curtain of the past unfolded.
He hurried to the door of the hut and looked in.
A man with long white hair and straggling grey beard turned to him a
haggard face, on which were written suffering, outlawry, and evil.
“Great God--my father!” Ranulph said.
He drew back slowly like a man who gazes upon some horrible fascinating
thing, and then turned heavily towards the sea, his face set, his senses
paralysed.
“My father not dead! My father--the traitor!” he groaned.