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MAJOR VIGOUREUX
NOVELS AND STORIES BY "Q"
Published by CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
Major Vigoureux $1.50
Poison Island $1.50
Sir John Constantine $1.50
The Mayor of Troy $1.50
Shining Ferry $1.50
The Adventures of Harry Revel $1.50
The White Wolf and Other Tales $1.50
The Laird's Luck and Other Tales $1.50
Fort Amity $1.50
Two Sides of the Face: Midwinter Tales $1.50
Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts $1.50
The Ship of Stars $1.50
Historical Tales from Shakespeare $1.50
MAJOR VIGOUREUX
BY
A. T. QUILLER-COUCH
("Q")
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
NEW YORK 1907
Copyright, 1907, by
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
Published September, 1907
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. IN THE GARRISON GARDEN 1
II. SERGEANT ARCHELAUS IS RE-FITTED 12
III. THE COMMANDANT FINESSES A KNAVE 28
IV. THE GUN IN THE GREAT FOG 44
V. THE S.S. MILO 56
VI. HOW VASHTI CAME TO THE ISLANDS 71
VII. TRIBULATIONS OF MRS. POPE AND MISS GABRIEL 84
VIII. A BRIEF REVENGE 97
IX. THE SALVING OF S.S. MILO 106
X. THE ADVENTURES OF FOUR SHILLINGS 125
XI. PLAN OF CAMPAIGN 142
XII. SAARON ISLAND 158
XIII. THE LADY FROM THE SEA 174
XIV. AFTER SERVICE 190
XV. BREFAR CHURCH 205
XVI. THE LORD PROPRIETOR'S AUDIENCE 221
XVII. THE LORD PROPRIETOR RECEIVES A DOUBLE SHOCK 232
XVIII. VASHTI PLEADS FOR SAARON 243
XIX. THE COMMANDANT'S CONSCIENCE 262
XX. THE GUITAR AND THE CASEMENT 277
XXI. SUSPICIONS 293
XXII. PIPER'S HOLE 306
XXIII. THE LORD PROPRIETOR HEARS A SIREN SONG 320
XXIV. LINNET SEES A MERMAID 337
XXV. MISSING! 344
XXVI. THE SEARCH 356
XXVII. ENTER THE COMMISSIONER 373
XXVIII. THE FINDING 387
XXIX. CONCLUSION 399
MAJOR VIGOUREUX
CHAPTER I
IN THE GARRISON GARDEN
"Archelaus," said the Commandant, "where did you get those trousers?"
Sergeant Archelaus, who, as he dug in the neglected garden, had been
exposing a great quantity of back-view (for he was a long man),
straightened himself up, faced about, and, grounding his long-handled
spade as it were a musket, stood with palms crossed over the top of it.
"Off the Lord Proprietor," he answered.
The Commandant, seated on a bench under the veronica hedge, a few yards
higher up the slope, laid down his book, took off his spectacles, wiped
them, and replaced them very deliberately.
"The Lord Proprietor? I do not understand--" His face had reddened a
little, as it usually did at mention of the Lord Proprietor.
"Made me a present of 'em," explained Sergeant Archelaus, curtly. "You
don't mean to say you haven't noticed 'em till this minute?"
The Commandant put the question aside. "The Lord Proprietor has no
right to be offering presents to my men--least of all, presents of
clothes."
"If the Government won't send over stores, nor you write for any, I
don't see how the man can help himself. 'Tisn't regulation pattern for
the R'yal Artillery, I'll grant you: not the sort of things you'd wear
on the right of the line. In fact, he told me 'tis an old pair he used
to carry when he went deer-stalkin'."
"They are hideous, Archelaus; not to mention that they don't fit you in
the least."
"They don't look so bad when I'm sitting down," said Archelaus, after a
moment's thought, and with an air of forced cheerfulness.
"If that's all you can say in extenuation!----"
"Well, 'twas kindly meant, any way; for the old ones were a
scandal--yes, be sure. What with sea-water and scrambling after gulls'
eggs, they was becoming a byword all over the Islands."
The Commandant winced, not for the first time in this conversation.
"Treacher makes his clothes last," he objected.
"Sam Treacher's a married man, and gets his bad luck different."
"But--but couldn't you ask Mrs. Treacher to take your old ones in hand
and put in a patch or two? That might carry you on for a few months,
and if you grudge the expense, I don't mind subscribing a shilling or
so."
Sergeant Archelaus shook his head. "What's the use?" he asked. "'Tis
but puttin' off the evil day. If Her Majesty won't send us clothes, we
must fall back on Providence. Besides which, I've taken the edge off
these things, and don't want to begin over again. Last Wednesday I wore
'em over to the Off Islands, to practise 'em on the sea-birds; and last
evening after dusk I walked through the town with 'em--yes, sir, right
out past the church and back again, my blood being up, and came home
and cut a square out of the old ones to wrap round the bung of the
water-butt."
The Commandant eyed the sergeant's legs in silence, choking down
half-a-dozen angry criticisms. No; he could not trust himself to speak;
and, after a minute, cramming his clenched fists into the pockets of
his frayed fatigue-jacket, he swung about on his heel and walked out of
the garden with angry strides.
Was the Lord Proprietor making sport of him?--purposely making him and
his garrison the laughing-stock of the Islands?
The Commandant walked up the road with a hot heart: past the Barracks
and beyond them to the down, where a ruined windmill overlooked the
sea. He wanted to be alone, and up here he could count upon solitude.
He wanted to walk off his ill-humour. But the ascent was steep, and he,
alas! no longer a young man; and at the windmill he was forced to stand
still and draw breath.
At his feet lay the Islands, bathed in the light of a fast-reddening
October sunset. Against such a sunset, if the air be very clear, you
may see them from the cliffs of the mainland--a low, dark cloud out in
the Atlantic; and in old days the Commandant had repined often enough
at the few leagues which then had cut him off from the world, from
active service, from promotion.
Gradually, as time went on, he had grown resigned, and with resignation
he had learnt to be proud of his kingdom--for his kingdom _de facto_
it was. The Islanders had used to speak of him sometimes as The
Commandant, but oftener as The Governor. (They never called him The
Governor nowadays.) His military establishment, to be sure--consisting
of a master-gunner, four other gunners, and two or three aged
sergeants--scarcely accorded with his rank of major; but by way of
compensation he was, as President of the Council of Twelve, the chief
civil magistrate of the Islands.
This requires a word or two of explanation. The Reigning Sovereign of
England retained, as he yet retains, military authority over the
Islands, and from him, through the Commander-in-chief, our friend held
his appointment as military governor. But His Majesty King William III
and his successors, by a lease two or three times renewed, had granted
"all those His Majesty's territories and rocks"--so the wording ran--to
a great and unknown person of whom the Islanders spoke reverentially as
The Duke, "together with all sounds, harbours, and sands within the
circuit of the said Isles; and all lands, tenements, meadows, pastures,
grounds, feedings, fishing places, mines of tin, lead, and coals, and
all profits of the same, and full power to dig, work, and mine in the
premises; and also all the marshes, void grounds, woods, under-woods,
rents, reservoirs, services, and all other profits, rights,
commodities, advantages, and emoluments within the said Isles; and a
moiety of all shipwreck, the other moiety to be received by the Lord
High Admiral; as also all His Majesty's Liberties, Franchises,
Authorities, and Jurisdictions, as had before been used in the said
Islands; with full power to hear, examine, and finally determine all
plaints, suits, matters, actions, controversies, contentions, and
demands whatever, moved and depending between party and party
inhabiting the said Isle (all business, treason, matters touching life
or member of man, or title of land; and also all controversies and
causes touching ships, and other things belonging to the High Court of
Admiralty always excepted)"--all this for an annual rent of Forty
Pounds.
The Duke, in short, was by his lease made Lord Proprietor, with all
civil jurisdiction. But, being far too great a man to reside in the
Islands, or even to visit them, he entrusted his business to a resident
Agent, and deputed his magistracy to an elective Council of Twelve,
over which the Commandant for the time being invariably presided. But
this custom (it should be explained) rested on courtesy and not upon
right. Based upon compromise--for the boundaries between the civil and
military jurisdictions were at some points not precisely determined--it
had been found to work smoothly enough in practice, it had stood the
test of a hundred and fifty years when, in the year after Sevastopol,
Major Narcisse Vigoureux arrived in the Islands to take over the
military command, and the Duke nominated him for the Presidency quite
as a matter of course.
As President, he had power, with the assent of the Court, to inflict
fines, whippings, and imprisonment--this last with the limitation that
he could not commit to any prison on the mainland, but only to the
Island lock-up; and also, if he chose, to prescribe the ducking-stool
for refractory or scolding women. The office carried no salary; but as
Governor under the Lord Proprietor he enjoyed a valuable perquisite in
the harbour dues collected from the shipping. Every vessel visiting the
port or hoisting the Queen's colours was liable, on coming to anchor or
grounding, to pay the sum of two shillings and two pence. All
foreigners paid double. And since, in addition to ships putting in from
abroad, it sometimes happened that two hundred sail of coasters would
be driven by easterly gales to shelter in St. Lide's Harbour, or
roadstead, or in Cromwell's Sound, you may guess that this made a very
pleasant addition to the Commandant's military pay.
In short, for a dozen years Major Narcisse Vigoureux had been, for an
unmarried man, an exceedingly happy one. If you ask me how an officer
bearing such a name happened in command of a British garrison, I answer
that he was not a Frenchman, but a Channel Islander of good Jersey
descent; and this again helped him to understand the folk over whom he
ruled. The wrong-doers feared him; but they were few. By the rest of
the population, including his soldiers, he was beloved, respected, not
a little envied. For a bachelor he mingled with zest in the small
social amusements of Garland Town, the capital of the Islands. He shone
at picnics and water-parties. He played a fair hand at whist. His
manner towards ladies was deferential; towards men, dignified without a
trace of patronage or self-conceit. All voted him a good fellow. At
first, indeed--for he practised small economies, and his linen, though
clean, was frayed--they suspected him of stinginess, until by accident
the Vicar discovered that a great part of his pay went to support his
dead brother's family--a widow and two girls who lived at Notting Hill,
London, in far from affluent circumstances.
In spite of this the Commandant's lot might fairly have been called
enviable until the day which terminated the ninety-nine years' lease
upon which the Duke held the Islands. Everyone took it for granted that
he would apply, as his predecessors had twice applied, for a renewal.
But, no; like a bolt from the blue came news that the Duke, an old man,
had waived his application in favour of an unknown purchaser--unknown,
that is to say, in the Islands--a London banker, recently created a
baronet, by name Sir Cæsar Hutchins.
In general, all Garland Town relied for information about persons of
rank and title upon Miss Elizabeth Gabriel, a well-to-do spinster lady,
daughter of a former agent of the Duke's. But Miss Gabriel's copy of
"The Peerage and Baronetage of Great Britain and Ireland" dated from
1845, and Sir Cæsar's title being of more recent--or, as she put it, of
mushroom--creation, the curious had to wait until a newer volume
arrived from the mainland. Meanwhile, at their whist parties twice a
week, the gentry of Garland Town indulged in a hundred brisk surmises,
but without alarm--"unconscious of their doom, the little victims
played." It was agreed, of course, that the new Lord Proprietor would
not take up his abode in the Islands. For where was a suitable
residence? On the whole the Commandant had little doubt that things
would go on as before, but he felt some uneasiness for Mr. Pope, the
Duke's agent.
Within a fortnight, however, came two fresh announcements, of which the
first--a letter from Sir Cæsar, continuing Mr. Pope in his
office--gratified everyone. But the second was terrible indeed. The War
Office had decided to disband the garrison and remove its guns!
Major Vigoureux' face had whitened as he read that letter, five years
ago. It whitened yet at the remembrance of it. As for his hair, it had
been whitening ever since.
For dreadful things had happened in those five years. To begin with,
the new Lord Proprietor had upset prophecy by coming into residence,
and had reared himself a handsome house on the near island of
Inniscaw.... But here for a while let us forbear to retrace those five
years with their humiliating memories. It is enough that the Commandant
now walked with a stoop; that he wore not only his linen frayed but a
frayed coat also; and that he who of old had so often wished that
England would take note of his Islands against the western sun, now
prayed rather that the fogs would cover them and cut them off from
sight forever. He had practical reasons, too, for such a prayer; but of
these he was not thinking as he turned there by the windmill, and spied
Sergeant Treacher approaching along the ridge, and trundling a
wheel-barrow full of manure. The level sun-rays, painting the turf to a
green almost unnaturally vivid, and gilding the straw of the manure,
passed on to flame upon Sergeant Treacher's breast as though beneath
his unbuttoned tunic he wore a corslet of burnished brass. The
Commandant blinked, again removed his glasses, and, having repolished,
resumed them.
"Treacher, what are you wearing?"
"Meanin' the weskit, sir?" asked Treacher.
"Is it a waistcoat?"
"Well, sir, it used to be an antimacassar; but Miss Gabriel had it made
up for me, all the shirts in store bein' used up, so to speak."
Too well the Commandant recognised it; an abomination of crochet work
in stripes, four inches wide, of scarlet, green, orange-yellow, and
violet. For years--in fact ever since he remembered Miss Gabriel's
front parlour--it had decorated the back of Miss Gabriel's sofa.
"She said, sir, that with the autumn drawing on, and the winter coming,
it would cut up nicely for a weskit," Treacher explained.
"Miss Gabriel," began the Commandant, "Miss Gabriel has no business----"
"No, sir?" suggested Treacher, after a pause.
"You will take it off. You will take it off this instant, and hand it
to me."
"Yes, sir." Treacher obediently slipped off his tunic. "I don't like
the thing myself; it's too noticeable, though warming. Miss Gabriel
called it a Chesterfield."
"It's a conspiracy!" said the Commandant.