This eBook was produced by David Widger <widger@cecomet.net>
THE BATTLE OF THE STRONG
[A ROMANCE OF TWO KINGDOMS]
By Gilbert Parker
CONTENTS:
THE INVASION
ELEVEN YEARS AFTER
IN FRANCE--NEAR FIVE MONTHS AFTER
IN JERSEY FIVE YEARS LATER
DURING ONE YEAR LATER
IN JERSEY--A YEAR LATER
INTRODUCTION
This book is a protest and a deliverance. For seven years I had written
continuously of Canada, though some short stories of South Sea life, and
the novel Mrs. Falchion, had, during that time, issued from my pen. It
looked as though I should be writing of the Far North all my life.
Editors had begun to take that view; but from the start it had never been
my view. Even when writing Pierre and His People I was determined that I
should not be cabined, cribbed, and confined in one field; that I should
not, as some other men have done, wind in upon myself, until at last each
succeeding book would be but a variation of some previous book, and I
should end by imitating myself, become the sacrifice to the god of the
pin-hole.
I was warned not to break away from Canada; but all my life I had been
warned, and all my life I had followed my own convictions. I would
rather not have written another word than be corralled, bitted, saddled,
and ridden by that heartless broncho-buster, the public, which wants a
man who has once pleased it, to do the same thing under the fret of whip
and spur for ever. When I went to the Island of Jersey, in 1897, it was
to shake myself free of what might become a mere obsession. I determined
that, as wide as my experiences had been in life, so would my writing be,
whether it pleased the public or not. I was determined to fulfil myself;
and in doing so to take no instructions except those of my own
conscience, impulse, and conviction. Even then I saw fields of work
which would occupy my mind, and such skill as I had, for many a year to
come. I saw the Channel Islands, Egypt, South Africa, and India. In all
these fields save India, I have given my Pegasus its bridle-rein, and, so
far, I have no reason to feel that my convictions were false. I write of
Canada still, but I have written of the Channel Islands, I have written
of Egypt, I have written of England and South Africa, and my public--that
is, those who read my books--have accepted me in all these fields without
demur. I believe I have justified myself in not accepting imprisonment
in the field where I first essayed to turn my observation of life to
account.
I went to Jersey, therefore, with my teeth set, in a way; yet happily and
confidently. I had been dealing with French Canada for some years, and a
step from Quebec, which was French, to Jersey, which was Norman French,
was but short. It was a question of atmosphere solely. Whatever may be
thought of The 'Battle of the Strong' I have not yet met a Jerseyman who
denies to it the atmosphere of the place. It could hardly have lacked
it, for there were twenty people, deeply intelligent, immensely
interested in my design, and they were of Jersey families which had been
there for centuries. They helped me, they fed me with dialect, with
local details, with memories, with old letters, with diaries of their
forebears, until, if I had gone wrong, it would have been through lack of
skill in handling my material. I do not think I went wrong, though I
believe that I could construct the book more effectively if I had to do
it again. Yet there is something in looseness of construction which
gives an air of naturalness; and it may be that this very looseness which
I notice in 'The Battle of the Strong' has had something to do with
giving it such a great circle of readers; though this may appear
paradoxical. When it first appeared, it did not make the appeal which
'The Right of Way' or 'The Seats of the Mighty' made, but it justified
itself, it forced its way, it assured me that I had done right in shaking
myself free from the control of my own best work. The book has gone on
increasing its readers year by year, and when it appeared in Nelson's
delightful cheap edition in England it had an immediate success, and has
sold by the hundred thousand in the last four years.
One of the first and most eager friends of 'The Battle of the Strong' was
Mrs. Langtry, now Lady de Bathe, who, born in Jersey, and come of an old
Jersey family, was well able to judge of the fidelity of the life and
scene which it depicted. She greatly desired the novel to be turned into
a play, and so it was. The adaptation, however, was lacking in much, and
though Miss Marie Burroughs and Maurice Barrymore played in it, success
did not attend its dramatic life.
'The Battle of the Strong' was called an historical novel by many
critics, but the disclaimer which I made in the first edition I make
again. 'The Seats of the Mighty' came nearer to what might properly be
called an historical novel than any other book which I have written save,
perhaps, 'A Ladder of Swords'. 'The Battle of the Strong' is not without
faithful historical elements, but the book is essentially a romance, in
which character was not meant to be submerged by incident; and I do not
think that in this particular the book falls short of the design of its
author. There was this enormous difference between life in the Island of
Jersey and life in French Canada, that in Jersey, tradition is heaped
upon tradition, custom upon custom, precept upon precept, until every
citizen of the place is bound by innumerable cords of a code from which
he cannot free himself. It is a little island, and that it is an island
is evidence of a contracted life, though, in this case, a life which has
real power and force. The life in French Canada was also traditional,
and custom was also somewhat tyrannous, but it was part of a great
continent in which the expansion of the man and of a people was
inevitable. Tradition gets somewhat battered in a new land, and
even where, as in French Canada, the priest and the Church have such
supervision, and can bring such pressure to bear that every man must
feel its influence; yet there is a happiness, a blitheness, and an
exhilaration even in the most obscure quarter of French Canada which
cannot be observed in the Island of Jersey. In Jersey the custom of five
hundred years ago still reaches out and binds; and so small is the place
that every square foot of it almost--even where the potato sprouts, and
the potato is Jersey's greatest friend--is identified with some odd
incident, some naive circumstance, some big, vivid, and striking
historical fact. Behind its rugged coasts a little people proudly hold
by their own and to their own, and even a Jersey criminal has more
friends in his own environment than probably any other criminal anywhere
save in Corsica; while friendship is a passion even with the pettiness
by which it is perforated.
Reading this book again now after all these years, I feel convinced that
the book is truly Jersiais, and I am grateful to it for having brought me
out from the tyranny of the field in which I first sought for a hearing.
NOTE
A list of Jersey words and phrases used herein, with their English or
French equivalents, will be found at the end of the book. The Norman and
patois words are printed as though they were English, some of them being
quite Anglicised in Jersey. For the sake of brevity I have spoken of the
Lieutenant-Bailly throughout as Bailly; and, in truth, he performed all
the duties of Bailly in those days when this chief of the Jurats of the
Island usually lived in England.
PROEM
There is no man living to-day who could tell you how the morning broke
and the sun rose on the first day of January 1800; who walked in the
Mall, who sauntered in the Park with the Prince: none lives who heard and
remembers the gossip of the moment, or can give you the exact flavour of
the speech and accent of the time. Down the long aisle of years echoes
the air but not the tone; the trick of form comes to us but never the
inflection. The lilt of the sensations, the idiosyncrasy of voice,
emotion, and mind of the first hour of our century must now pass from the
printed page to us, imperfectly realised; we may not know them through
actual retrospection. The more distant the scene, the more uncertain the
reflection; and so it must needs be with this tale, which will take you
back to even twenty years before the century began.
Then, as now, England was a great power outside these small islands.
She had her foot firmly planted in Australia, in Asia, and in America--
though, in bitterness, the American colonies had broken free, and only
Canada was left to her in that northern hemisphere. She has had, in her
day, to strike hard blows even for Scotland, Ireland, and Wales. But
among her possessions is one which, from the hour its charter was granted
it by King John, has been loyal, unwavering, and unpurchasable. Until
the beginning of the century the language of this province was not our
language, nor is English its official language to-day; and with a pretty
pride oblivious of contrasts, and a simplicity unconscious of mirth, its
people say: "We are the conquering race; we conquered England, England
did not conquer us."
A little island lying in the wash of St. Michael's Basin off the coast of
France, Norman in its foundations and in its racial growth, it has been
as the keeper of the gate to England; though so near to France is it,
that from its shores on a fine day may be seen the spires of Coutances,
from which its spiritual welfare was ruled long after England lost
Normandy. A province of British people, speaking still the Norman-French
that the Conqueror spoke; such is the island of Jersey, which, with
Guernsey, Alderney, Sark, Herm, and Jethou, form what we call the Channel
Isles, and the French call the Iles de la Manche.
Volume 1.
CHAPTER I
In all the world there is no coast like the coast of Jersey; so
treacherous, so snarling; serrated with rocks seen and unseen, tortured
by currents maliciously whimsical, encircled by tides that sweep up from
the Antarctic world with the devouring force of a monstrous serpent
projecting itself towards its prey. The captain of these tides,
travelling up through the Atlantic at a thousand miles an hour, enters
the English Channel, and drives on to the Thames. Presently retreating,
it meets another pursuing Antarctic wave, which, thus opposed in its
straightforward course, recoils into St. Michael's Bay, then plunges, as
it were, upon a terrible foe. They twine and strive in mystic conflict,
and, in rage of equal power, neither vanquished nor conquering, circle,
mad and desperate, round the Channel Isles. Impeded, impounded as they
riot through the flumes of sea, they turn furiously, and smite the cliffs
and rocks and walls of their prison-house. With the frenzied winds
helping them, the island coasts and Norman shores are battered by their
hopeless onset: and in that channel between Alderney and Cap de la Hague
man or ship must well beware, for the Race of Alderney is one of the
death-shoots of the tides. Before they find their way to the main again,
these harridans of nature bring forth a brood of currents which
ceaselessly fret the boundaries of the isles.
Always, always the white foam beats the rocks, and always must man go
warily along these coasts. The swimmer plunges into a quiet pool, the
snowy froth that masks the reefs seeming only the pretty fringe of
sentient life to a sleeping sea; but presently an invisible hand reaches
up and grasps him, an unseen power drags him exultingly out to the main--
and he returns no more. Many a Jersey boatman, many a fisherman who has
lived his whole life in sight of the Paternosters on the north, the
Ecrehos on the east, the Dog's Nest on the south, or the Corbiere on the
west, has in some helpless moment been caught by the unsleeping currents
which harry his peaceful borders, or the rocks that have eluded the
hunters of the sea, and has yielded up his life within sight of his own
doorway, an involuntary sacrifice to the navigator's knowledge and to the
calm perfection of an admiralty chart.
Yet within the circle of danger bounding this green isle the love of home
and country is stubbornly, almost pathetically, strong. Isolation, pride
of lineage, independence of government, antiquity of law and custom, and
jealousy of imperial influence or action have combined to make a race
self-reliant even to perverseness, proud and maybe vain, sincere almost
to commonplaceness, unimaginative and reserved, with the melancholy born
of monotony--for the life of the little country has coiled in upon
itself, and the people have drooped to see but just their own selves
reflected in all the dwellers of the land, whichever way they turn.
A hundred years ago, however, there was a greater and more general
lightness of heart and vivacity of spirit than now. Then the song of the
harvester and the fisherman, the boat-builder and the stocking-knitter,
was heard on a summer afternoon, or from the veille of a winter night
when the dim crasset hung from the roof and the seaweed burned in the
chimney. Then the gathering of the vraic was a fete, and the lads and
lasses footed it on the green or on the hard sand, to the chance
flageolets of sportive seamen home from the war. This simple gaiety was
heartiest at Christmastide, when the yearly reunion of families took
place; and because nearly everybody in Jersey was "couzain" to his
neighbour these gatherings were as patriarchal as they were festive.
..........................
The new year of seventeen hundred and eighty-one had been ushered in by
the last impulse of such festivities. The English cruisers lately in
port had vanished up the Channel; and at Elizabeth Castle, Mont Orgueil,
the Blue Barracks and the Hospital, three British regiments had taken up
the dull round of duty again; so that by the fourth day a general
lethargy, akin to content, had settled on the whole island.
On the morning of the fifth day a little snow was lying upon the ground,
but the sun rose strong and unclouded, the whiteness vanished, and there
remained only a pleasant dampness which made sod and sand firm yet
springy to the foot. As the day wore on, the air became more amiable
still, and a delicate haze settled over the water and over the land,
making softer to the eye house and hill and rock and sea.
There was little life in the town of St. Heliers, there were few people
upon the beach; though now and then some one who had been praying beside
a grave in the parish churchyard came to the railings and looked out upon
the calm sea almost washing its foundations, and over the dark range of
rocks, which, when the tide was out, showed like a vast gridiron
blackened by fires. Near by, some loitering sailors watched the yawl-
rigged fishing craft from Holland, and the codfish-smelling cul-de-poule
schooners of the great fishing company which exploited the far-off fields
of Gaspe in Canada.
St. Heliers lay in St. Aubin's Bay, which, shaped like a horseshoe, had
Noirmont Point for one end of the segment and the lofty Town Hill for
another. At the foot of this hill, hugging it close, straggled the town.
From the bare green promontory above might be seen two-thirds of the
south coast of the island--to the right St. Aubin's Bay, to the left
Greve d'Azette, with its fields of volcanic-looking rocks, and St.
Clement's Bay beyond. Than this no better place for a watchtower could
be found; a perfect spot for the reflective idler and for the sailorman
who, on land, must still be within smell and sound of the sea, and loves
that place best which gives him widest prospect.
This day a solitary figure was pacing backwards and forwards upon the
cliff edge, stopping now to turn a telescope upon the water and now upon
the town. It was a lad of not more than sixteen years, erect, well-
poised, having an air of self-reliance, even of command. Yet it was a
boyish figure too, and the face was very young, save for the eyes; these
were frank but still sophisticated.
The first time he looked towards the town he laughed outright, freely,
spontaneously; threw his head back with merriment, and then glued his eye
to the glass again. What he had seen was a girl of about five years of
age with a man, in La Rue d'Egypte, near the old prison, even then called
the Vier Prison. Stooping, the man had kissed the child, and she,
indignant, snatching the cap from his head, had thrown it into the stream
running through the street. Small wonder that the lad on the hill
grinned, for the man who ran to rescue his hat from the stream was none
other than the Bailly of the island, next in importance to the
Lieutenant-Governor.
The lad could almost see the face of the child, its humorous anger, its
wilful triumph, and also the enraged look of the Bailly as he raked the
stream with his long stick, tied with a sort of tassel of office.
Presently he saw the child turn at the call of a woman in the Place du
Vier Prison, who appeared to apologise to the Bailly, busy now drying his
recovered hat by whipping it through the air. The lad on the hill
recognised the woman as the child's mother.
This little episode over, he turned once more towards the sea, watching
the sun of late afternoon fall upon the towers of Elizabeth Castle and
the great rock out of which St. Helier the hermit once chiselled his
lofty home. He breathed deep and strong, and the carriage of his body
was light, for he had a healthy enjoyment of all physical sensations and
all the obvious drolleries of life. A broad sort of humour was written
upon every feature; in the full, quizzical eye, in the width of cheek-
bone, in the broad mouth, and in the depth of the laugh, which, however,
often ended in a sort of chuckle not entirely pleasant. It suggested a
selfish enjoyment of the odd or the melodramatic side of other people's
difficulties.
At last the youth encased his telescope, and turned to descend the hill
to the town. As he did so, a bell began to ring. From where he was he
could look down into the Vier Marchi, or market-place, where stood the
Cohue Royale and house of legislature. In the belfry of this court-
house, the bell was ringing to call the Jurats together for a meeting of
the States. A monstrous tin pan would have yielded as much assonance.
Walking down towards the Vier Marchi the lad gleefully recalled the
humour of a wag who, some days before, had imitated the sound of the bell
with the words:
"Chicane--chicane! Chicane--chicane!"
The native had, as he thought, suffered somewhat at the hands of the
twelve Jurats of the Royal Court, whom his vote had helped to elect, and
this was his revenge--so successful that, for generations, when the bell
called the States or the Royal Court together, it said in the ears of the
Jersey people--thus insistent is apt metaphor:
"Chicane--chicane! Chicane--chicane!"
As the lad came down to the town, trades-people whom he met touched their
hats to him, and sailors and soldiers saluted respectfully. In this
regard the Bailly himself could not have fared better. It was not due to
the fact that the youth came of an old Jersey family, nor by reason that
he was genial and handsome, but because he was a midshipman of the King's
navy home on leave; and these were the days when England's sailors were
more popular than her soldiers.
He came out of the Vier Marchi into La Grande Rue, along the stream
called the Fauxbie flowing through it, till he passed under the archway
of the Vier Prison, making towards the place where the child had snatched
the hat from the head of the Bailly.
Presently the door of a cottage opened, and the child came out, followed
by her mother.
The young gentleman touched his cap politely, for though the woman was
not fashionably dressed, she was distinguished in appearance, with an air
of remoteness which gave her a kind of agreeable mystery.
"Madame Landresse--" said the young gentleman with deference.
"Monsieur d'Avranche--" responded the lady softly, pausing.
"Did the Bailly make a stir? I saw the affair from the hill, through my
telescope," said young d'Avranche, smiling.
"My little daughter must have better manners," responded the lady,
looking down at her child reprovingly yet lovingly.
"Or the Bailly must--eh, Madame?" replied d'Avranche, and, stooping, he
offered his hand to the child. Glancing up inquiringly at her mother,
she took it. He held hers in a clasp of good nature. The child was so
demure, one could scarcely think her capable of tossing the Bailly's hat
into the stream; yet looking closely, there might be seen in her eyes a
slumberous sort of fire, a touch of mystery. They were neither blue nor
grey, but a mingling of both, growing to the most tender, greyish sort of
violet. Down through generations of Huguenot refugees had passed sorrow
and fighting and piety and love and occasional joy, until in the eyes of
this child they all met, delicately vague, and with the wistfulness of
the early morning of life.
"What is your name, little lady?" asked d'Avranche of the child.
"Guida, sir," she answered simply.
"Mine is Philip. Won't you call me Philip?"
She flashed a look at her mother, regarded him again, and then answered:
"Yes, Philip--sir."
D'Avranche wanted to laugh, but the face of the child was sensitive and
serious, and he only smiled. "Say 'Yes, Philip', won't you?" he asked.
"Yes, Philip," came the reply obediently.
After a moment of speech with Madame Landresse, Philip stooped to say
good-bye to the child. "Good-bye, Guida."
A queer, mischievous little smile flitted over her face--a second, and it
was gone.
"Good-bye, sir--Philip," she said, and they parted. Her last words kept
ringing in his ears as he made his way homeward. "Good-bye, sir--Philip"
--the child's arrangement of words was odd and amusing, and at the same
time suggested something more. "Good-bye, Sir Philip," had a different
meaning, though the words were the same.
"Sir Philip--eh?" he said to himself, with a jerk of the head--"I'll be
more than that some day."