Philip was gone. Before breakfast was set upon the table, Guida saw the
Narcissus sail round Noirmont Point and disappear.
Her face had taken on a new expression since yesterday. An old touch of
dreaminess, of vague anticipation was gone--that look which belongs to
youth, which feels the confident charm of the unknown future. Life
was revealed; but, together with joy, wonder and pain informed the
revelation.
A marvel was upon her. Her life was linked to another’s, she was a wife.
She was no longer sole captain of herself. Philip would signal, and she
must come until either he or she should die. He had taken her hand, and
she must never let it go; the breath of his being must henceforth give
her new and healthy life, or inbreed a fever which should corrode the
heart and burn away the spirit. Young though she was, she realised
it--but without defining it. The new-found knowledge was diffused in her
character, expressed in her face.
Seldom had a day of Guida’s life been so busy. It seemed to her that
people came and went far more than usual. She talked, she laughed a
little, she answered back the pleasantries of the seafaring folk who
passed her doorway or her garden. She was attentive to her
grandfather; exact with her household duties. But all the time she was
thinking--thinking--thinking. Now and again she smiled, but at times too
tears sprang to her eyes, to be quickly dried. More than once she drew
in her breath with a quick, sibilant sound, as though some thought
wounded her; and she flushed suddenly, then turned pale, then came to
her natural colour again.
Among those who chanced to visit the cottage was Maitresse Aimable. She
came to ask Guida to go with her and Jean to the island of Sark, twelve
miles away, where Guida had never been. They would only be gone one
night, and, as Maitresse Aimable said, the Sieur de Mauprat could very
well make shift for once.
The invitation came to Guida like water to thirsty ground. She longed to
get away from the town, to be where she could breathe; for all this day
the earth seemed too small for breath: she gasped for the sea, to be
alone there. To sail with Jean Touzel was practically to be alone, for
Maitresse Aimable never talked; and Jean knew Guida’s ways, knew
when she wished to be quiet. In Jersey phrase, he saw beyond his
spectacles--great brass-rimmed things, giving a droll, childlike kind of
wisdom to his red rotund face.
Having issued her invitation, Maitresse Aimable smiled placidly and
seemed about to leave, when, all at once, without any warning, she
lowered herself like a vast crate upon the veille, and sat there looking
at Guida.
At first the grave inquiry of her look startled Guida. She was beginning
to know that sensitive fear assailing those tortured by a secret. How
she loathed this secrecy! How guilty she now felt, where, indeed, no
guilt was! She longed to call aloud her name, her new name, from the
housetops.
The voice of Maitresse Aimable roused her. Her ponderous visitor had
made a discovery which had yet been made by no other human being. Her
own absurd romance, her ancient illusion, had taught her to know when
love lay behind another woman’s face. And after her fashion, Maitresse
Aimable loved Jean Touzel as it is given to few to love.
“I was sixteen when I fell in love; you’re seventeen--you,” she said.
“Ah bah, so it goes!”
Guida’s face crimsoned. What--how much did Maitresse Aimable know? By
what necromancy had this fat, silent fisher-wife learned the secret
which was the heart of her life, the soul of her being--which was
Philip? She was frightened, but danger made her cautious.
“Can you guess who it is?” she asked, without replying directly to the
oblique charge.
“It is not Maitre Ranulph,” answered her friendly inquisitor; “it is not
that M’sieu’ Detricand, the vaurien.” Guida flushed with annoyance. “It
is not that farmer Blampied, with fifty vergees, all potatoes; it is not
M’sieu’ Janvrin, that bat’d’lagoule of an ecrivain. Ah bah, so it goes!”
“Who is it, then?” persisted Guida. “Eh ben, that is the thing!”
“How can you tell that one is in love, Maitresse Aimable?” persisted
Guida.
The other smiled with a torturing placidity, then opened her mouth;
but nothing came of it. She watched Guida moving about the kitchen
abstractedly. Her eye wandered to the racllyi, with its flitches of
bacon, to the dreschiaux and the sanded floor, to the great Elizabethan
oak chair, and at last back to Guida, as though through her the lost
voice might be charmed up again.
The eyes of the two met now, fairly, firmly; and Guida was conscious of
a look in the other’s face which she had never seen before. Had then
a new sight been given to herself? She saw and understood the look in
Maitresse Aimable’s face, and instantly knew it to be the same that was
in her own.
With a sudden impulse she dropped the bashin she was polishing,
and, going over quickly, she silently laid her cheek against her old
friend’s. She could feel the huge breast heave, she felt the vast face
turn hot, she was conscious of a voice struggling back to life, and she
heard it say at last:
“Gatd’en’ale, rosemary tea cures a cough, but nothing cures the love--ah
bah, so it goes!”
“Do you love Jean?” whispered Guida, not showing her face, but longing
to hear the experience of another who suffered that joy called love.
Maitresse Aimable’s face grew hotter; she did not speak, but patted
Guida’s back with her heavy hand and nodded complacently.
“Have you always loved him?” asked Guida again, with an eager
inquisition, akin to that of a wayside sinner turned chapel-going saint,
hungry to hear what chanced to others when treading the primrose path.
Maitresse Aimable again nodded, and her arm drew closer about Guida.
There was a slight pause, then came an unsophisticated question:
“Has Jean always loved you?”
A short silence, and then the voice said with the deliberate prudence of
an unwilling witness:
“It is not the man who wears the wedding-ring.” Then, as if she had been
disloyal in even suggesting that Jean might hold her lightly, she added,
almost eagerly--an enthusiasm tempered by the pathos of a half-truth:
“But my Jean always sleeps at home.”
This larger excursion into speech gave her courage, and she said more;
and even as Guida listened hungrily--so soon had come upon her the
apprehensions and wavering moods of loving woman!--she was wondering to
hear this creature, considered so dull by all, speak as though out of a
watchful and capable mind. What further Maitresse Aimable said was proof
that if she knew little and spake little, she knew that little well; and
if she had gathered meagrely from life, she had at least winnowed out
some small handfuls of grain from the straw and chaff. At last her
sagacity impelled her to say:
“If a man’s eyes won’t see, elder-water can’t make him; if he will--ah
bah, glad and good!” Both arms went round Guida, and hugged her
awkwardly.
Her voice came up but once more that morning. As she left Guida in the
doorway, she said with a last effort:
“I will have one bead to pray for you, trejous.” She showed her rosary,
and, Huguenot though she was, Guida touched the bead reverently. “And if
there is war, I will have two beads, trejous. A bi’tot--good-bye!”
Guida stood watching her from the doorway, and the last words of the
fisher-wife kept repeating themselves through her brain: “And if there
is war, I will have two beads, trejous.”
So, Maitresse Aimable knew she loved Philip! How strange it was that one
should read so truly without words spoken, or through seeing acts which
reveal. She herself seemed to read Maitresse Aimable all at once--read
her by virtue, and in the light, of true love, the primitive and
consuming feeling in the breast of each for a man. Were not words
necessary for speech after all? But here she stopped short suddenly;
for if love might find and read love, why was it she needed speech of
Philip? Why was it her spirit kept beating up against the hedge beyond
which his inner self was, and, unable to see that beyond, needed
reassurance by words, by promises and protestations?
All at once she was angry with herself for thinking thus concerning
Philip. Of course Philip loved her deeply. Had she not seen the light of
true love in his eyes, and felt the arms of love about her? Suddenly she
shuddered and grew bitter, and a strange rebellion broke loose in her.
Why had Philip failed to keep his promise not to see her again after
the marriage, till he should return from Portsmouth? It was selfish,
painfully, terribly selfish of him. Why, even though she had been
foolish in her request--why had he not done as she wished? Was that
love--was it love to break the first promise he had ever made to his
wife?
Yet she excused him to herself. Men were different from women, and men
did not understand what troubled a woman’s heart and spirit; they were
not shaken by the same gusts of emotion; they--they were not so fine;
they did not think so deeply on what a woman, when she loves, thinks
always, and acts upon according to her thought. If Philip were only here
to resolve these fears, these perplexities, to quiet the storm in
her! And yet, could he--could he? For now she felt that this storm was
rooting up something very deep and radical in her. It frightened her,
but for the moment she fought it passionately.
She went into her garden; and here among her animals and her flowers it
seemed easier to be gay of heart; and she laughed a little, and was most
tender and pretty with her grandfather when he came home from spending
the afternoon with the Chevalier.
In this manner the first day of her marriage passed--in happy
reminiscence and in vague foreboding; in affection yet in reproach as
the secret wife; and still as the loving, distracted girl, frightened at
her own bitterness, but knowing it to be justified.
The late evening was spent in gaiety with her grandfather and the
Chevalier; but at night when she went to bed she could not sleep. She
tossed from side to side; a hundred thoughts came and went. She grew
feverish, her breath choked her, and she got up and opened the window.
It was clear, bright moonlight, and from where she was she could see the
mielles and the ocean and the star-sown sky above and beyond. There she
sat and thought and thought till morning.