PART II THE ISLAND (continued 2)

He strolled across the back of Little Sark, down to the granite fierceness of its south-west coast, where the old mines stick their broken chimneys through the bushes above Rouge Terrier. For two or three hours he lounged among the buttercups, sucking an empty pipe, staring from the golden ground into the fiery blue of the sea, with its white slobber at the baveuses and the foot of Bretagne Uset. His eyes were full of blue and gold and white, and his ears of the groan of the sea, and his mouth of the acrid taste of stale tobacco, but his mind registered none of these things, for it was full of its own colours and tastes and sounds. He was angry with his cousins, angry with Rose Falla, angry with himself. In the last lay the sting of it all—he knew that everything was his own fault. Because he had forgotten his good English ways, he had landed himself and this poor little girl in a proper muddle. Not that she would have been much better off if he had left her where she was or if he’d never met her at all, but at least she wouldn’t have been hurt so badly as she must be hurt now when he told her she would have to go back to all he had made her flee from. He could see that she liked him, was a bit gone on him, in fact—also that she liked being at the Pêche à Agneau, with the children and the big cousins. It would be dreadful to have to tell her that she must leave it all.... What a fool he had been! He might have realized that the last thing in the world his cousins would understand was an act of disinterested kindness.... No, no—hang it all! He must be honest with himself, and confess that he would never have brought her over if his head had not been full of their horrible French drinks. He had acted foolishly rather than disinterestedly, and now, like so many foolish men, he would have to pay when he was sober the bill he had charged against himself when he was drunk. So help him, he would never drink again! But that good resolution wouldn’t do much for him now—nor for poor little Rose, either.

For one dreadful moment it struck him that it was his plain duty to marry her in order to save her from a wicked life. But immediately he remembered that her situation in this respect was not of his making, but of her own. After all, he could not forget that she had deliberately consented to go with her friend to the dance and “find a boy.” She had not had the moral strength to stand up to so monstrous a suggestion. That wasn’t the sort of woman he should care for as a wife. Then he remembered Belle, with all her passions and follies. Many men would not have cared for Belle as a wife. But Belle was Belle—he loved her, so could forgive all. He did not love Rose Falla. He could not contemplate the idea of marrying without love. Therefore it was not likely that he would ever marry, for he would never be in love again. He was not sure that he wanted to, either—it had hurt him too much, that love which Belle and Ernley had considered so quiet and comfortable and easy-going. After all, even the kitchen fire can burn you, for all it boils a pot....

It suddenly struck him as a possible solution of his difficulty that the Falles at the Moinerie might consent to treat Rose as a relation and take her in. The family consisted of a young husband and wife, a grandfather and a baby, some sort of cousins, he understood, of Rose’s father. He did not think they had much to live on, but he found it hard to realize that here he could not expect the tender liberality of the English poor. He resolved to ask them, anyhow, and tramped over to the Moinerie before going home. Another thing that had struck him was that the Le Couteurs might actually put poor Rose on the Guernsey boat if he wasn’t back in time to stop them.

The Moinerie proved as inhospitable as the Pêche à Agneau. Helier Falle was nothing but a name to the present occupiers, as the old man was the wife’s father, and came from Alderney. After all, it was rather a lot to ask of them—to receive a wholly unknown young woman into their house at the request of a half-unknown young man. Only his desperation could have made the idea seem possible, he realized as he walked away.

The afternoon was now well advanced, and Dan knew that he must walk quickly if he was to be home in time to counter any plot of his cousins with regard to the Guernsey boat. Leaving the Moinerie lane he plunged cross-country to the mill, and soon found himself on the Coupée road, facing the dipping sun. He had come nearly as far as La Belle Hautgarde, when he noticed a dark figure swimming in the sun’s rays. It swam towards him up the golden river of the road, and then suddenly was clinging to him with little panting sobs of relief and fear.

§ 4

“Oh, at last you come! At last you come!”

The flower of her face was wilted with crying, and the little hands that clung to him clutched and trembled, the fingers digging into his flesh like thorns.

“Oh, at last you come and save me! You won’t let them send me away.”

“Rose, my dear, don’t cry so—tell me what’s happened.”

Fearing either interruption or observation from La Belle Hautgarde, he led her into a field, down towards Les Petites Côtes. She poured out her tale, but he scarcely listened, for he knew what it must be. His cousins had told her she could not stay, that she must go back to Jersey ... then he suddenly wondered if they had told her of the alternative he had refused. At the same moment he heard her say:

“They say you will not marry me. But you will marry me if it is to let me stay. I will not believe that you bring me over here and then let me go back again. Oh, I will make you a good wife. I will keep your house clean, and I will cook and sew. I will never ask you for anything. You cannot bring me here and then let me go back. For I love you! I love you!”

She threw her arms round him as they stood in the tall buttercups above Les Petites Côtes, and he felt her warmth and sweetness, like the sun on grass. Her face was hidden in his neck and her hair flowered golden round his lips—he knew that his arms were holding her and that he was hugging her close in protective pity. How in God’s name was he to send this poor little soul back to the hideous life that awaited her in Jersey? In spite of the slackness, or rather helplessness, which had made her drift towards evil, she was as innocent as a baby. If she went to the bad, her guilt would be on his head. He had a hateful vision of her on the streets of St. Helier, down at the port with the sailors.... Oh, it was horrible! It was unthinkable—and the guilt would be his. There was no use kidding himself with the argument that she had made the first bad choice. The only fact that concerned him now was that he had the power to help her and would not use it. No! No! He could not. He could not marry a woman who was not Belle—he could not bind himself to the Norman island, as he inevitably must bind himself if he married under such conditions. And yet ... the quivering of her heart against his made him almost sick with tenderness, and his flesh had not so long lost its memory of Belle that he could remain unmoved by the softness of her face against his throat, the softness of her hair against his mouth.

“Oh, you won’t let them send me away. I love you so! You are so kind to me! I will make you so happy—you cannot imagine.”

No, he couldn’t. Yet was his happiness anything that mattered very much now? If he sent her away he would not be happy either—and she, she would be in the double hell of destitution and disappointment. Over his own happiness or unhappiness he had not much power either way—only Belle had that—or rather, even Belle had not that now. Only God had that.... Dan thought of God. He felt ashamed. Since he had come to Sark he had left undone so many things that he ought to have done and done so many things he ought not to have done—“Nous n’avons pas fait les choses que nous aurions dû faire; et nous avons fait celles que nous n’aurions pas dû faire”—that was how it went, really—in Helier de Cartaret’s Prayer Book—and how it would always go from this day forward and for ever and ever if he married Rose.... But perhaps God wanted it to go that way for him—perhaps God was giving him a chance to make up for his neglect of the good ways he had learned at Bullockdean, and at the same time was punishing him for it by depriving him of them for ever. Standing there among the buttercups, with Rose in his arms, Dan felt an almost passionate desire to do the right thing as he had been taught. After all, to put himself first and let everyone else go to pot was just being like his cousins—“duty” was a word he had learned in the army. He would be more of an Englishman in binding himself to Sark by marrying Rose than if he had refused to bind himself and let her suffer for his freedom. And they would not be bound for ever—when he had put by a little money, they could go home.... After all, it was a poor prospect, never to marry. All men should marry, and if they can’t get the girl they want they must marry the girl they can get—that’s all.

Meanwhile Rose stood motionless in his embrace, waiting for her lord’s word, while his thoughts wandered from Sark to Bullockdean, from earth to heaven, from heaven to the British army, from duty to comfort, from the abstract to the practical, and finally back to her straits. He looked down at her, but could see nothing beyond the flying anthers of her hair and the curve of her ear as she hid her face. Dragged by an uncontrollable impulse in which pity, though dominant, was not alone, he stooped and put his lips to her ear, just under the teasing hair.

With a little shudder she drew herself upright, and he saw her face, tear-stained and full of joy.

“Oh,” she murmured—“tu m’aimes.”

Then suddenly at those words his mother’s tongue was in his mouth, and he was gabbling words of love in his mother’s language—rough, salt-sounding words between which his kisses flowed like the tide between rocks.

CHAPTER SIX

§ 1

After that there remained only his humiliation when he had to tell his cousins he had changed his mind. But this was less painful than he would have thought. He felt a new, changed Daniel, facing life from a different angle. It was as if up till then he had faced life from Bullockdean in spite of his being in Sark, whereas now definitely he faced it from Sark, and the Bullockdean angle seemed distant and unreal.

He wrote to his mother and told her he was going to be married, though he did not tell her the circumstances of his meeting his bride. His mother, of course, would tell Belle and Ernley—he need not worry about that. Not that he felt inclined to worry—even the shadow of Belle was gone now, for he had stepped outside the room of memory, and stood facing the islands and the sea without a glass between.

The days that followed were so full of preparations that he had little time for thought. The Le Couteurs were anxious both to bind their cousin and get rid of the stranger as quickly as possible, so it was decided that the marriage should take place as soon as the necessary formalities would allow. There was some difficulty about finding a house, either at La Colinette or at La Ville Roussel. Dan inspected one or two cottages at the Dos d’Ane, the Jaspellerie and Moie Fano, and finally decided on the last, in spite of its lonely position on the cliff-top, looking down on the teeth of Brenière. It was larger than the other two, though it contained but three rooms, and seemed firmly built for the weather, with a roof of thatch and tiles instead of the usual corrugated iron. The rent was only four livres tournois a week, under four shillings, and during the season he would probably earn from thirty shillings to two pounds. At least ten shillings a week would have to be put by for the unprofitable winter, but even then he might be able to earn something by helping his uncles on the farm—a service they would no longer expect for nothing. He felt rather disconsolate at the thought of being unable to help his mother, but, he reflected practically, a mother has no right to keep a man from his wife, and his mother had her own husband to support her, and two other sons.

On the whole he was not unhappy; he now had roots again, though in strange earth. At first he had half thought of taking Rose over to England and trying to find a job there, but he shrank from facing the struggle of the employment market with her dependent on him, and he saw more clearly the consequences of bringing her to the George than he had seen them in the case of Belle. With Belle such dependence had been his only chance of speedy marriage, and his craving for her had blinded him to its inevitable miseries, but now that he had the alternative of an independent and self-supporting home, he would be a fool to give it up merely to escape from Sark. Since it was his only hope of married comfort, the Le Couteurs must have their wish and get his mother back again.

Sometimes there were moments—generally in the middle of the night—when he wondered if he wasn’t mad to be acting so—to be marrying this unknown girl without loving her, indeed while he loved another woman, and settling down in this unfriendly island, where in spite of his blood he was still a stranger. But he ended his qualms invariably with the question: “What does it matter, anyway?”—also the old army spirit of fatalism was still upon him, the kismet of the trenches. He watched his approaching marriage as he used to watch the German shell-fire. If it was due to smash him it would, and if it wasn’t it wouldn’t. There was nothing he could do about it.

The day before the May day fixed for the wedding he had three letters from England, one from his mother, one from Jess Harman, and one—at last—from Ernley Munk. His mother was a little inclined to reproach; she saw her son and her son’s money alienated together. “But then you never really care for me like Christopher”—Christopher who, Dan reflected angrily, had never earned a shilling for her in his life. “No doubt my brothers Eugene and Philip are glad, for so they get us back”—evidently his mother’s mind worked that way too. “Your father send his love and kind regards and best wishes for a bright and prosperous wedding.”

Jess Harman had her expected string of news, a little shorter than usual to allow room for congratulations. “I’m sure I wish you happy, Daniel, as this leaves me at present. You deserve to be happy if anyone did, and I reckon you could make a girl happy easier than most. I always say most men don’t know how to treat a girl, and when I have boy babies to take out I smack them harder than I smack the girls, for I say if maybe they don’t deserve it now they will when they grow up, and then there will be no one to do it. Maudie talks of leaving the Crown, for she says young Mr. Munk is not so pleasant to work under as his father.”

Daniel wondered if these two sentences had anything more than a haphazard connexion. The thought made him tear open Ernley’s letter without waiting to finish Jess’s. It ran:

“Dear Daniel,—I expect you’re thinking all sorts of bad things about me for not having written for so long—or I might even say for not having written at all. But it was difficult to write at first, wasn’t it? And afterwards it wasn’t much easier, as there didn’t seem to be any reason for starting suddenly. Now I’ve got a reason and I’m glad, for I want to hear more of you except just that you’re going to get married, which isn’t very original. I hope she’s worthy of you—you’re rather a damn fool about women, you know, and yet you deserve the best, so I hope you’ve got her. Now I suppose you will settle down in Sark for good. Well, you might do worse. I’m getting a bit sick myself of the land fit for heroes to live in. You’d think my job was to sell poison, to judge by the fuss they make and the restrictions they put on. But I’m better off than your dad, who does sell poison, if I may say so. Still, I think he’s a fool to try on all the games he does—I was sorry about his being so heavily fined last sessions, but I’d warned him, and being a racing neighbourhood, I suppose they’re extra strict. If I were you I’d write and tell him to be careful, but I expect you have.

“I’ve built an extra wing on to the Crown, in spite of all, so I’ve nothing to complain about really. However, I can’t help thinking our best times were in the army, in spite of all the noise and blood. Life wasn’t so deuced complicated, somehow; one knew what one wanted and wanted the sort of things one could get. I’m to be a proud father again next autumn; the other kid’s a regular Shackford; I hope this will be a Munk—to look at, I mean, for I don’t wish him so ill as to hope he’ll inherit my devil. Do write soon and tell me about Miss Falla—rollicking sound to the name, somehow.—Ever yours,

Ernley.”

Daniel paused. Ernley sounded bad. How well he knew his devil—that queer, bitter, angry, unhappy, rather common devil, who at times made Ernley so difficult to love. He wondered what Belle was feeling—not a single reference to her, except indirectly. It might be caution, but it didn’t sound like that. He wished Ernley hadn’t written—worrying him like this just before his wedding day. And about his father, too. He was worried about his father. “Heavily fined last sessions”—he’d never heard of that—they’d kept that from him. The old life was suddenly and painfully reasserting itself, just as he was going to cut it off for ever. Well, he mustn’t think of it any more—he could do nothing about it. His responsibilities were no longer the old ones of Ernley and Belle and the George, but the new ones of marriage, home, and children. Yes, he supposed the day would come when he, too, would be a “proud father.” Well, he wouldn’t sneer about it like Ernley—he’d be glad—and he knew that already his allegiance belonged to the unborn.

§ 2

The wedding of Daniel Sheather and Rose Falla took place in the afternoon, in the midst of a high wind stroking the back of Sark, and rippling the buttercup-thickened hay. The sun shone gaily in spite of the small white clouds that blew over the sky, and the general air was one of brightness and freshness and laughter, a rollicking sort of air, like the bride’s name.

Bride and bridegroom drove together to church with their relations. Into the big mule-cart were packed, besides themselves, Uncle Eugene and Uncle Philip, one or two cousin Eugenes and cousin Philips, Helier, William and Alice. The rest, including the children, came on foot, and as it was impossible for the mules to go at more than a foot pace most of the way, they trod round the wheels, talking and staring.

Rose wore a new blue dress, for which her measurements had been sent to Guernsey. Without her sophisticated work-girl’s clothes she looked more of a child than ever and more of an islander. Stealing a secret glance at her now and then, Dan found her sweet and appealing in her laughter and her shyness. He was glad that she was fair and round-faced, and would never look like Alice Hamon, who had already a witchy air about her, with her sharp nose and black locks. She was facing her future without a qualm, without a thought of the life and friends she had left in Jersey, accepting trustfully the life and friends she had found in Sark. She trusted Dan as absolutely as she had trusted him when at his word she had faced without question the perils of La Déroute. Well, he hoped her trust would be better justified this time, that her matrimonial craft would not go to the bottom like the Baleine ... he clenched his hands upon his knees as he vowed to himself that, come what might, this little thing should not suffer for the risks he had taken ... he would strive for her happiness as he would have striven for Belle Shackford’s—she should be given no less than he would have given Belle.

They walked into the church on either side of old Eugene Le Couteur—Rose in her blue dress, Daniel in his blue jersey and wide-bottomed trousers. The church was packed, for weddings were a rare excitement, and at the end of the aisle by the little bare altar, le ministre stood already waiting, holding open in his hand the Prayer Book of Helier de Cartaret, which was Dan’s Prayer Book now.

“Bien-aimes, nous sommes réunis ici sous le regard de Dieu....”

The service had begun. Daniel and Rose stood alone together, hand in hand before the minister, for Uncle Eugene had withdrawn from publicity into a pew, from which he did not emerge till the question “Qui est-ce qui donne cette femme en mariage à cet homme?” when he shouted “C’est moi!” as if across seven miles of sea. Then Daniel found himself saying after the priest:

“Moi Daniel, je te prends Rose, pour ma femme et mon épouse, afin de t’avoir et de te garder, dès ce jour à l’avenir que tu sois meilleure ou pire, plus riche ou plus pauvre, en maladie et en santé, pour t’aimer et te chérir, jusqu’à ce que la mort nous sépare, selon la sainte institution de Dieu, et sur cela je t’engage ma foi.”

Well, he meant it all, anyway. The strange language didn’t make any difference. He knew that he’d promised just the same as he would have promised in English to Belle, and having promised no less he could give no less. Standing there with all the brown and blue eyes of the island fixed upon him, he knew that his mind was clear of its last doubt. This second part of his adventure with Rose would not end in shipwreck like the first. If he only did what he had promised ... and he would. Now he was putting the ring on her finger, and was worshipping her with his body—now their hands were joined and le ministre was saying:

“Puisque Daniel et Rose ont consenti à s’unir en saint mariage. Je declare qu’ils sont entre eux mari et femme, au nom du Père et du Fils et du Saint Esprit.”

The harmonium gave a sigh, preliminary to shaking the marriage psalm out of its heart. Dan and Rose scrambled to their feet and followed the clergyman into the chancel. They held hands almost convulsively during the rest of the service, which they scarcely felt concerned them, their own personal part being now over. They were married. They were husband and wife, whom man could not put asunder. They who had not known each other a month ago would from henceforward know only each other. Daniel would belong to Rose and Rose would belong to Daniel till their eyes were dim and their hair was grey—they would build up a new life together in a new home—they would love beings as yet unborn, whose very names they did not know as yet. Passionate love was waiting in their hearts for those who were not yet alive. All the years that they had lived before, he with his parents at Bullockdean, and she with her father in Jersey, were only a sort of preparation to the main business of life. His love for Belle was only an episode. This was the centre and heart and reality of his life. This was marriage. Daniel felt almost afraid, when he saw what marriage meant—when he saw how it could brush aside all the fire and glory and anguish of love, and murmur its blessing over a few stones which forthwith became bread ... water which became wine.... “And there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee”.... A poor little affair of stones and water, which had somehow become bread and wine. That was his marriage with Rose.

They had turned from the altar and were writing their names in the vestry. Uncle Eugene made his mark as a witness after he had been satisfied that he was not committing himself in any way. The cousins signed, but no one offered to kiss Rose—kissing at weddings was an English custom, Daniel supposed, like wedding-cake and bridesmaids and flowers and confetti and all the other things that would have been so important at Bullockdean. All that was English on this occasion was the music. There had been an Anglican chant for the psalm, and now Mendelssohn’s “Wedding March” burst forth, as Dan and Rose walked down the aisle of the empty church and out into the churchyard, whither all the congregation had rushed in a body before them.

§ 3

There was a feast at the Pêche à Agneau—a feast of lobsters and gâche and armagniac, to which came Hamons and Carrés and Falles and de Cartarets from all parts of the island. Somehow Daniel and Rose seemed almost a minor part of the occasion. They sat silently side by side, while round them flowed the island French, which is to the French of Paris what cider is to wine. As yet it was not quite the language of either, since Rose had not spoken it for a year and Daniel had spoken it only for a year. If they did not listen the words came only in scattered drops, without meaning. Dan could take for granted that his relations and friends were not discussing the marriage, but the prospects of next season, or the politics of Sark’s most parochial pump.

He was free to look at Rose, and think how pretty she was with her golden hair and her blue dress, like buttercups by the sea. The line of her chin and neck was somehow helpless and innocent, like a child’s, yet her little mouth and nose had a funny, decided air about them, as if, though she would rely on him in all big matters of life, in the small she would know her business, what to eat and drink and wear. In the blue pools of her eyes swam a queer flame, which he had not noticed till to-day. When her eyes met his, the flame brightened, and when she turned them away he could see it shining, as one can see the sunshine in hidden water reflected on a rock.

They seldom spoke to each other. Once—“Are you tired?” he whispered, and she answered “Yes.”

“I must take you home.”

Under the table her hand crept out on his knee and lay over it. He looked round at all the Hamons and Carrés and Falles and De Cartarets and Le Couteurs, eating and drinking and arguing, entirely forgetting the little married pair in whose honour the feast was given.

“Uncle Philip,” said Dan.

“Yes,” Uncle Philip roared down the table to Ernest Hamon—“the King of England will think it a fine thing when he comes to Guernsey, and the Forty Tenants are not there to receive him.”

“Uncle Philip, would you mind——”

“He will see nothing but Le Marchants and De Jerseys, and he will say—where is the aristocracy?”

“Would you mind if Rose and I went home now?”

“Of course I do not mind. Go. We are the aristocracy of this island, I say, and the parish will not allow us ten shillings to go over to Guernsey to see the King and Queen.”

“Ha! Ha! It is a fine thing if the aristocracy of this island cannot go to see the King without ten shillings from the parish.”

“Who should pay but the parish? I will not pay ten shillings to go to Guernsey, even to see the King. None of the Forty Tenants will go over unless the parish pay. You are a fool, Ernest Hamon.”

Dan and Rose crept out under cover of Ernest Hamon’s retort, and the next minute stood in the sunshine of the May evening, which trailed golden banners over the sea. Their belongings had already been taken to Moie Fano, so all they had to do was to walk there themselves, through the buttercups and the long grass, with their shadows moving before them.

“Look at us,” said Rose—“how big we are.”

Daniel put his arm round her.

“There aren’t two of us any more,” said Rose.

He stopped her with a sudden check of his arm and drew her up against him, kissing her darling face on which he seemed to taste the sunshine.

“Oh, Rose, my little Rose—you are so sweet! And it’s so wonderful! I never thought it would be like this.”

She did not trouble about his words, but eagerly returned his kisses.

“Oh, my beautiful boy—my beautiful boy,” she murmured, holding his face to hers. “Daniel—your eyes are so dark and big—I see myself in them. Can you see yourself in mine?”

“No—not quite. Yes—now I can.”

“That means you live in my heart.”

“And you in mine.”

They walked on, across the road, past La Belle Hautgarde, out on to the wildness of Rouge Terrier. Under their feet were the first little wild dwarf roses, and before them lay spread the dazzled blue of Baleine Bay, with all the rocks standing out of it, pink in the sunset, like castles. The tide was low, and the demies of l’Etac showed above the water and all the rocks round Sercul. The bay was streaked with currents, strange, smooth paths of rose and violet and grey winding amidst the chopped blue water. They walked farther down the hill to the cliff edge, and the sun was lost, while a cool air ruffled up from the sea. They were above the terrible cliffs of Brenière, and though there was scarcely any tide, the eastern wall of Sark was dreadful in the dusk, like a dead face with its white gleam, the gleam of the blind white rock above Pot Bay. Towards the north the Point du Derrible was like some horned beast kneeling down to drink in the water. Daniel felt the strangeness and terror of Sark very near him, and the dreadfulness of those secrets below him in the bays, in that strange no-man’s land between the tides. His arm drew Rose a little closer as he led her along the cliff-top, through the dusk, to where he could see the jut of Moie Fano.

“Look! Our home!”

She pointed through the twilight, and he could just see the thatched roof grey against the hillside and the faint gleam of the walls.

“You won’t be afraid with me alone out here?”

“Oh, no, I shan’t be alone, with you.”

They came to the little house, sheltering with its strip of garden in a fold of the hillside. The door was unlocked, and he led her into the dark kitchen.

“The lamp’s on the table,” said Rose. “I left out some matches. Can you find them?”

But instead of finding them he shut the door on the last gleam of light, and drawing her close to him in the darkness, lifted her from her feet. The darkness was round them like a caress and a welcome as he held her there, high against his breast. Outside the dead light lay on the sea, and in the light lay all the empty islands and lonely rocks. The light seemed to hold the strange unfriendly spirit of the island, the enmity of sea and rocks, and the ghosts of their deeds; while the darkness held the spirit of the home built in the midst of all that strangeness, and the spirit of man loving and pitying in the midst of the pitiless sea.

§ 4

In the middle of the night Daniel woke out of a deep sleep into a half-dreaming state, in which he lay mysteriously cut off, very quiet of mind and body, and very happy, without quite knowing the causes of his happiness. The darkness lay all round him so heavily that it seemed a tangible thing; it almost seemed to be a body to him, now that he did not feel his own. It was also a friendly, personal thing, for he knew dimly that it was a part of home and that memory already dwelt in it.

He was waking, and two sounds mingled with the darkness, rousing him still more. They were strange, soft, sighing sounds, like each other, and yet astonishingly different. One he knew was a sound of terror, and the other a sound of love, and yet in that half-dreaming moment he could not distinguish them. Then he woke a little more and knew that one was the sound of the sea, sighing round the rocks at the foot of Moie Fano, and that the other was the sound of Rose’s breathing as she lay in the crook of his arm. The two sighs mingled and wove themselves together into a single sweetness and terror which woke him. He was awake now—he knew where he was and all that had happened, he knew that his arm and shoulder were stiff under the weight of little Rose, whom he could hear and feel but could not see in the darkness. He lay motionless, holding her, his heart full of sweetness and terror, which were now both hers. The voice of the sea seemed to have died away—he heard only her breathing.

Then his own breath came short with a new, strange ecstasy. He knew that, all unexpected, all undeserving, he had stumbled upon happiness. This was what life gave you—was meant to give. He was happy—he would always be happy with Rose—he would always feel like this, full of love and joy and pity, when she was near him. She was very near—part of himself, it seemed ... part of his body, of his own flesh and blood. A picture drew itself in the darkness before his eyes—the picture of two country inns facing each other across a village street—it was a very small, far-off picture, such as one sees through the wrong end of a telescope. That was his life at Bullockdean, his love for Belle, set far off and far behind at last. It faded, and the darkness was upon his eyes, kinder than any light. The sea, far below at the foot of the cliffs, drawled another long sigh. He turned his head on his shoulder, till his cheek touched Rose’s hair; then he slept again.

CHAPTER SEVEN

§ 1

The months which followed were summer indeed. To the end of his life Daniel would always see summer as a blue sky vaulting a blue sea, in which pink and purple islands swam under the sun. It was a summer of drought, of the burning of the hayfields, the powdering of the roads, of the kindling of a purple fire of foxgloves at the Orgeries and at Château des Quénévés. The wells dried up, including the shallow well at Moie Fano, and every evening and every morning Dan toiled with buckets on a wooden yoke to the Pêche à Agneau, where the water supply was good and lasted through the summer. It was an irksome task, but he did it gladly as his only domestic duty. Rose proved herself rather unexpectedly a good housewife. After all, she had cooked and kept house for her father at St. André, which meant not only household experience, but experience of a fisherman’s household. She knew how to cook every kind of fish and shellfish, how to bake bread of a heavy sort, how to support the small, island dearths of salt or yeast, and she never expected meat except on Sundays.

Both she and Daniel worked hard enough. She had the three rooms of the little house to care for and keep clean, she had the meals to cook, all the washing to do, and also the husbandry of the tiny garden with its supply of herbs and vegetables. Dan bought her a few hens from La Belle Hautgarde, and taught her how to look after them, which she did very proudly, the eggs being a luxury which few Sark homes of that size could boast.

His own time was spent almost entirely in the boats. The season was a good one, and from the middle of May onwards there were visitors to be taken fishing and rowing and sailing, as well as the care of many lobster pots. The Le Couteurs had forgiven him for the loss of the Baleine, though their sense of humour had flourished embarrassingly on his misadventure long after their sense of outrage had died away. His marriage and establishment had paid off their grudge against his strangerhood, and they were glad of his help in the summer business of making money. They found him generally efficient, always willing, and his English speech and custom, though obnoxious to themselves, were useful when dealing with the visitors.

His duties did not allow him much time with Rose, but he had all the winter to look forward to, and meanwhile he had his Sundays free, for the laws of the island forbade boating and fishing on Sundays. Touched into humility and gratitude by a happiness which he felt to be as undeserved as it was unexpected, he had, on leaving the Pêche à Agneau, gone back to some of the “good ways” he had learned in the Ouse Valley. On early Sunday mornings he would be the island of Sark at the altar, as long months ago he used to be the village of Bullockdean. He knew that by so doing he took away some of the good impression he had made on the Le Couteurs. But in spite of Helier de Cartaret’s Prayer Book he could not quite rid his mind of the idea that English was the proper language for devotion. He taught Rose to say Our Father in English, and they said it together every night, kneeling beside the bed.

Daniel’s happiness in Rose was still as fresh and rich as when he had first met it in the darkness at Moie Fano. Indeed, as familiarity and companionship deepened, if they could not widen, his knowledge of her, his love and joy and satisfaction grew. Her most noticeable quality was her yielding gentleness, which he had saved her from making the instrument of her misfortune, and now under the guiding of his hands was being made the instrument of happiness and goodness for them both. She adapted herself to her new life apparently without effort. She shed from her the life of the town work-girl with its crowds and excitements as easily as she had shed her town clothes—she seemed to have no regrets or even memories. Dan was her whole guidance and concern, and just as she had followed him without a qualm into the dangers of an unknown sea, so without qualm she followed him into an unknown life, as devoid of doubts as she would be devoid of reproaches if he failed her.

He sometimes wondered how he had ever feared that her mind was tainted by her experiences in St. Helier. She had merely been under a bad influence, that was all, yielding herself to the guidance of a stronger mind as she would always do. No doubt his darling little Rose lacked what was called “moral courage,” but that only doubled the sweetness of his protection, since it must be not only of her body but of her soul. She was his in a dependence which few women can have on a man, and that dependence called out of him all that was strongest in love and cherishing.

Nevertheless, as day by day he came to know her better, he discovered that at the bottom of her heart she carried a tiny life of her own—a little seed of personality, the essential Rose. She would make him confidences as to her likes and dislikes and ideas—they would talk together about the big strange things that inwardly perplexed them both, though outwardly they took them for granted. Perhaps they neither of them had much wisdom, nor enough curiosity, but this occasional glimpse of the “separateness” in her served to make the sense of “togetherness” more complete—the more he saw his little Rose standing apart from him in her own soul and life, the more she seemed a part of him, of his being. The more she was herself, the more completely she seemed his, rather than in her gentleness and yielding. So he loved her seed of separate life, and, like the rest of her, it flourished under his care.

§ 2

When winter came it was very unlike the winter that had been last year. Or rather its essence was the same, but its effect and influence were altogether different. The storms that battered the cliffs were no longer a distress and a terror, but a mere noise outside, that made the quiet and warmth at home stand out more comfortably by contrast. The fogs, too, were no sad pall weighing upon the island, but a soft white blanket wrapping Daniel and Rose into a loving loneliness. It was just as on the evening after their marriage, when outside had been the dead, blind face of Sark, cold in the haunted twilight, in the light more dreadful than darkness, and inside had been warmth and tenderness and love and the kind spirit of man. During those nights of storm and fog, when the fire burned brightly in the kitchen, and the supper was laid under the lamp, Dan would see the cottage at Moie Fano as a lighthouse on a rock, as the Corbière or the Casquets or Platte Fougère, a house of light set in the midst of darkness.

There were days on which they did not even go so far as the Pêche à Agneau, but they never felt dull in each other’s company, or alone when they were together. Daniel helped Rose with the work of the house, even now and then with the cooking, for he took an unmanly pleasure in messing about with pots and pans. He became cobbler and mended their shoes, he became tinker and mended their kettle, he became plumber and fixed a pipe to drain off the rain-water from the roof into a butt, so that they should be better watered next summer, he became carpenter and delighted Rose’s heart with shelves and brackets.

Sometimes of an evening a Helier or a Philip or a Eugene Le Couteur would call round for him on his way to the Bel-Air. But Daniel no longer cared for the Bel-Air, or for drinks English or Norman. He wanted to stop at home with his wife, to help her lay and clear the supper, and afterwards to sit and watch her while she sewed—garments for her own little Helier who was to be born in the spring.

“We will certainly call him Helier,” she said, “after my father.”

“Helier Sheather doesn’t sound right, somehow.”

“Helier Le Couteur sounds very well,” said Rose.

And Daniel knew that he was not called Sheather any more. Indeed he had never really been Sheather in Sark. Before he married he had just been “the English Le Couteur,” and now he was Le Couteur un-Englished.... Well, it was what he had been prepared for, and when his child was born the Le Couteurs would indeed have his mother back again.

He looked eagerly forward to that day in the spring which would make him a father. Rose was determined that she must have a son, but Daniel would have been equally glad of a daughter—he would have been free to give his daughter an English name, but a son must inevitably add to the mass of Heliers or Philips or Peters in the island. Not that there was any particular reason why he should want an English name. He and Rose no longer spoke English together—it had always been difficult for her, and she soon picked up the native French, which was not so different from the French of Jersey, and which by this time he spoke quite readily. After all, it had been his language as a child, and its sweet roughness seemed the right expression of his love and the concerns of his household.

All that he had of English was his prayers and his books. Daniel had brought Rose to share his taste for reading, and in those long evenings they read together—mild stuff which the vicar lent them. Rose loved the mild stuff, and would weep over what she understood of “Cometh up as a Flower,” or “The Silence of Dean Maitland”; to both of them whatever they read was intensely real, and they took their fiction with a seriousness that would have amazed its authors.

They would read sitting at the table side by side, the book spread under the lamp, while first Daniel would read in the slow plodding English of his custom, and then Rose would read, more quickly and eagerly, but getting herself into sorry tangles over some of the words, and occasionally having to apply to him for the sense. Afterwards, while they were undressing, they would talk over what they had read and pre-cast the next day’s portion. If the story turned out badly Rose would cry, the luxurious tears of the happy, while Dan would comfort and even, on emergency, supply a new end to the tale, in which “they all lived happy ever after” in defiance of the author.

His happiness was beginning to assume an added sweetness of sobriety—the slightly restless quality of the first months was gone, and in its place was a quality of warm stillness, which steeped his whole being. The disquiets of the outer world and of his old life could not reach him. At Christmas he had not been hurt by the neglect of his family, represented only by a card, nor by another of Ernley’s cynical letters, hinting at more indiscretions at the George and disillusions at the Crown. He had all the natural selfishness of the happy man—even the thought of Belle could not stir in him any real anxiety. He had told Rose about Belle and of the earthquake of his love for her—he told Rose everything, dropping the secrets of his heart into the warm shallow pool of her confidence which scarcely eddied round them. She had no jealousy of Belle, and not much interest in her. Daniel, for her, existed almost entirely in the present moment, and unlike so many women she scarcely thought of the years that had been before he met her, nor looked for their scars.

He did not see this attitude as a defect—indeed, coming so simply and naturally as it did, he came to judge it as the only natural attitude. After all, what did it matter, what he had done and suffered before he met her? That part of his life was over, a mere prelude to this. Let him put it out of his mind since he could never put it into hers.

He loved her utterly now, with body and soul. It seemed as if he had always known and loved her—this little stranger whom he had not met a year ago. As she drew near her time, an unexpected weakness developed in her, and the doctor, anxiously summoned, said that she must rest. Still free from the boats, Daniel did all the work of the little house—sweeping, dusting and cooking. In the evenings he made her go to bed early, and brought the lamp to her bedside, to read to her till she slept. When March came with the first mild days of spring, he carried her down the cliff slope into a little sheltered hollow among the rocks of Mont Razeur, and she lay there beside him in the basking warmth, holding his hand among the sweetness of the spring grass, gazing idolatrously at his seaward-turned face, dark between her and the dazzle of the water. One day she waved an arm towards the dim whale-shape of Jersey.

“We come from there together, you and I.”

“You are not sorry you came?”

“No, I never was sorry, except when I thought you would send me back.”

“Perhaps I will send you back some day,” he teased.

“Oh no, you would never send me back. You love me too much.”

“I love you! What an idea!”

“I think you love me very much—I think you would be very unhappy if I die.”

“Die!—Rose! Darling Rose—don’t talk of dying.”

“One must talk of it sometimes.”

“But not to-day—when everything is warm and lovely because spring is here. You are not afraid of dying when the baby comes—are you, little Rose?” he cried anxiously.

“Oh, no—I only talk of it. But I like to think that when I die you will come with me, and we will go out together, as we did in the little boat, and I shall watch your face and know I cannot be afraid.”

“When you die it will not only be me whom you will want in the little boat. There will be others—our children.”

“Yes, there will be Helier—and Helier’s sister—and perhaps others. But I shall always love you best.”

“I wish I felt so sure.”

“You can be sure. I could never love a son or a daughter as I love you.”

“Why?”

“Don’t ask me that. If I should try to tell you I should feel afraid.”

“But why?”

She would not answer, and thinking that perhaps the conversation was growing too tense and disturbing, he began to talk of the coming season and of the things they would do in the boats.

CHAPTER EIGHT

§ 1

It was on an evening towards the end of April that Rose’s time came, and Daniel went out to La Vermandée to fetch the woman who had promised to be with her. That night he slept on the sofa in the kitchen and saw through the uncurtained window a big yellow moon bright above Balmée. The sea was like a golden floor, or a meadow of buttercups, with the dark shapes of the rocks standing out of it—grunes and baveuses and demies, uncovered at the half-tide. There was an utter calm, and the unusual stillness kept him awake and somehow made him afraid. It was months since he had known a quiet like this, for the stillness of the fogs had been pierced by the moan of the sirens—Blanchard, Point Robert and Platte Fougère moaning to each other across the deeps. But to-night there was neither moan nor sigh, without or within. Sometimes through the closed door he heard the sound of voices, but for most of the time there was silence, a silence that oppressed him as the silence of the sea.

He went out early, for the calm would allow him mercifully to spend a day in the boats. Mrs. de Cartaret made him some breakfast, and before he left he had one look at Rose. He was surprised to find her sitting up in an armchair beside the bed, pale but smiling, and anxious to know if the calm weather would allow him to put down some early lobster pots at the Masoline. He kissed her passionately and humbly, and she said:

“Do not worry—it is natural.”

He walked quickly over to the Pêche à Agneau, and found his cousins ready to put out in the boats. Old Eugene and Philip Le Couteur were delighted when they heard what was toward at Moie Fano.

“At last we have our new Helier,” said Uncle Eugene.

“Or our new Kitty Le Couteur—she is better,” said Uncle Philip.

“Better than the old one—ha! ha!”

“Ha! Ha! Oh, my Gar—yes!”

The day passed outwardly tranquil as the night. The boats rode on the calm waters of Havre Gosselin, where even the dreaded pass between Brecquo and the Moie du Gouliet was little more than a spatter of dancing gold. Spring was come, and the gulls were seeking their nesting places. The Moie was covered with them—a flutter of white wings, an outcry of shrill voices, breaking the stillness of the noon. Ha-ha-ha! Ha-ha-ha-ha! Lounging in the boat, waiting for the slow fish, and listening to the Le Couteurs’ laughter and talk among themselves, Daniel thought that the gulls’ voices were like his cousins’—Norman voices, hoarse and rough like the names of the rocks. Ha! Ha! Ha-ha-ha-ha! That was the voice of Sark—of its people, of its gulls, of its rocks. Ha-ha-ha-ha!—laughter for love and laughter for death.

The day dragged on and at last a tinge of rose crept into the mirror of the sea, and a little wind ruffled up from Herm in the west. The Le Couteurs brought their boat round to the Saut de Juan and beached her, and Daniel was given his share of the fish.

“You are glad to go home,” said Cousin Eugene.

“You go to find little Helier,” said Cousin Philip.

“Well, we all be godfathers,” laughed Cousin Peter.

“Ha-ha-ha! Ha-ha-ha-ha!”

Daniel walked slowly from the Saut de Juan. Every now and then he would hurry, then check himself. Perhaps he had better not get back too soon. Then he would tell himself that Rose was different from the women at home—she came of a sturdy breed. Probably the baby had been born hours ago. If it had not been for the last few weeks he would have felt no anxiety. He remembered the words with which she had dismissed him that morning: “Do not worry—it is natural.” Yes, it was natural, and he was a fool to be making such a fuss. Yet, as he looked round him at the toothed and horned rocks and the deadly slaver of the sea over the buried grunes, he distrusted the tender mercies of nature, and felt thankful that his little Rose had not been left to them without the pity and help of man.

§ 2

The smoke of the chimney of Moie Fano rose in a straight column against the sky. There was something in that pillar of smoke which stood to Daniel as a sign. It was the sign of the inn of home—rising from homes in the Ouse Valley as it rose from homes in Sark, and as probably it rose from homes in France, in Germany, in Russia. In every place where there was home there was also that smoke ascending from the hearth, like a prayer towards the sky.... To-night it was the prayer of the cottage at Moie Fano going up to God for the mother and her child.

He was getting fanciful—that day spent amidst the laughter of his cousins and the laughter of the gulls had made him silly. He must pull himself together if he was to be any help and comfort to Rose. As he crossed the threshold, he heard voices coming from the inner room, and recognized a man’s among them. The doctor must be there....

He knocked at the door.

It opened, and the doctor looked out. He started at the sight of Daniel. Then he came through into the kitchen, shutting the door behind him.

“I’m glad you’ve come home, Le Couteur.”

“Is—is the child born?”

“Yes—a boy—and he will live,” said the doctor gravely.

Dan was startled. He had never thought of the child not living.

“But how is Rose? Can I see her?”

“No—you can’t see her just yet. I want to talk to you about her. Sit down.”

Daniel felt his knees suddenly weak. He sat down as the doctor bade him, and stared into his face. Afterwards it seemed as if he had read in his face instead of heard from his lips that Rose was very ill and would almost certainly die.

“Can’t—can’t you do anything?”

“I am doing my best.”

But in his face Daniel read that sometimes the pity and help of man are of little avail against what is natural.

“Now, you’d better get yourself some supper,” said the doctor kindly—“Mrs. de Cartaret can’t come to you yet; but you must have something to eat, for you’ll want all your strength—for her.”

“When can I see her?”

“In an hour, perhaps. Now, make yourself some coffee and have a bit of something nourishing.”

He went back into the silent inner room.

Almost automatically, Daniel put the fish he had brought home into a tub of water. Then he set the saucepan on the fire, and some bread and cheese on the table. He was hungry—hungrier than ever, since he had heard the doctor’s news—and he did not know that hunger and sorrow are incompatible. He ate hungrily—strengthening himself for the night. The coffee was good. It cleared his head in a wonderful way, so that it lost the echo of the gulls’ laughter, and was able to think. He did not want to think for himself—he would have been happier in his stupefaction—but he wanted to think for Rose. He did not want to sit beside her dazed and helpless when she would need his help more than she had ever needed it—putting out to sea alone in her little boat, which was to have held the two of them....

He had not thought of lighting the lamp and scarcely noticed the darkness dropping round him, till at last the window square held the only light. His first realization of it was when a golden slant fell into the room from the opening door. The next minute he heard Doctor Pelley’s voice call softly—“Le Couteur,” and then from the bed behind the doctor came Rose’s voice, faintly, yet very much as it had so often come from the inner room when he entered the kitchen at the end of the day:

“Es tu là?”

Without answering he went in and knelt down beside her.

She lay as if sunk into the bed, so relaxed that she seemed to lie scarcely so much on the mattress as in it. Her face was deadly white, but on her lips was a smile and on her arm was pillowed a little dark head.

“Notre Helier,” she whispered, smiling up at him.

Mrs. de Cartaret stooped and lifted away the child.

“She wanted to be holding him when you first saw him—but she is not strong enough. I will take him now and put him in his cradle,” and she laid Helier in the bottom drawer of the chest, which had been made into a cradle for him with shawls and a piece of blanket.

“Oh, Daniel,” whispered Rose—“my feet are so cold.”

She had made her little gesture of motherhood, but could maintain it no longer—she was too tired. She turned to him, as instinctively she used to turn when she was tired.

“My feet are so cold.”

“Mrs. de Cartaret will heat you a brick for them.”

But the midwife shook her head.

“She has a brick already—she does not feel it.”

“It’s because I’m dying,” said Rose, in her weak, indifferent voice.

“My darling, you’re not dying—you mustn’t die.”

“Oh, yes, I must. That’s how it begins—at your feet.”

Daniel hid his face beside hers in the pillow.

He heard the doctor tell the midwife that he was going home now for a bit. He would be back soon, and he did not think there would be any change before morning. Mrs. de Cartaret went into the kitchen and Rose and Daniel were alone together.

They did not speak. Rose was too exhausted and Daniel was too stricken. He had climbed on the bed beside her, and lay with his face close to hers, her hand held between both his. He felt submissive and numb. He meant to be able to help and strengthen her, but now he saw that there was no help he could give, except of the humblest, most homely kind, the help of touch and kiss. They lay motionless side by side, while Mrs. de Cartaret ate her supper in the kitchen. Now and then they opened their eyes and gazed into each other’s, but for the most part they lay with their eyes shut, awake, but as if asleep.

The baby whimpered in his cradle-drawer. Daniel had forgotten all about him.

“Helier,” whispered Rose.

“He is all right.”

“Our Helier,” she murmured—“remember ... he is ours.”

The midwife came in and attended to the baby. Then she came and attended to Rose, giving her something out of a spoon. She took no notice of Daniel—she let him lie just as he was.

The night wore on, and, surprisingly, he fell asleep. He had the sensation that she had fallen asleep, too; and directly he slept they were in a boat together, pushing out, as they had pushed out a year ago, under the shadow of Gorey pier, with the moonlight gleaming through the piles. He heard the wind blowing very loud, as it had not blown then; but the next minute it was still, and they were riding on calm waters steeped in sunshine, under the pink rocks of Balmée. He could not see Rose, but he knew she was in the boat, and suddenly he heard her say: “I am not afraid.” In his dream he had a wonderful sense of the sunshine striking off the pink rocks and dancing on the sea. He was not unhappy, but a little scared ... anxious ... he awoke.

The doctor was in the room, bending over him with the lamp in his hand, the lamp whose flame was an orange isle in the white flood of the dawn.

“Wake up,” said the doctor gently—“it is all over now.”

“Over.... She is dead?”

“She died in her sleep.”

She had left him ... so quietly.

CHAPTER NINE

§ 1

Daniel’s marriage ended as it had begun—in a strange language. This time Helier de Cartaret’s Prayer Book was open at La Sepulture des Morts, and to a jigging Anglican chant the congregation—much the same as that which had gathered for the wedding—sang “Voila, tu as fait la mesure de mes jours de quelques palmes, et la durée de ma vie est devant toi comme un rien. Certainement l’homme passe comme une ombre.”

“Comme une ombre ... comme un rien”—that was the marriage now which had filled and changed his life—all the memory of those days: the summer days when he had toiled on the sea, the winter days when he had toiled on the land—the summer nights when the moonlight had made the bed a house of silver, the winter nights when the lamp had made the kitchen a house of gold—all now were as the shadows ... which sweep out on the winds to the sea and are lost ... shadows moving under the clouds over Baleine Bay ... whose footsteps are not known....

“Ecoute ma prière, O Seigneur, Car je suis étranger et voyageur devant toi; comme l’ont été tous mes pères.”

As the Le Couteurs belonged to the aristocracy of the island, the first part of the service was held in Church. A thick rain was falling, and it was not till the last prayers that the congregation came out and stood under the dripping ilex trees. No one wore mourning—black was too difficult to procure, and too short lived in the salt sea air. Daniel had a black band round the arm of his jersey—that was all.

“L’homme né de la femme est de courte durée....” The dreadful rhythm of the burial hymn rose in incongruous and courtly French, like a Tartar hermit dressed as a troubadour. The sods of Sark earth rattled on the coffin lid—plain English that. Dan shuddered. For the first time he identified Rose with the coffin and its contents—Rose with her hair like flying anthers, her eyes like the pools in the sea gardens of Tintageu ... the shy, unwilling tears forced themselves out of his closed eyes. He had not wept before, and it was punishment to weep like this before all the island, in the sight of all his cousins, of all the Carrés, and Falles and Hamons and De Cartarets—but he could not help it. There was something in this burial service so close to earth that the anguish of earth was upon him. He saw himself as he saw Rose, as flesh, and all flesh as grass.

When the dues of earth had been paid, the Le Couteurs walked back in straggling groups to the Pêche à Agneau. Daniel went with them, for he was to live there now. The cottage at Moie Fano was too lonely for a man with a young child, so he came back to the place where Sark had given him its first unfriendly greeting. As he walked over the brow of Little Sark, and looking down the slope, saw the still sea, with the currents wandering over it like dim, mysterious paths, it seemed as if the sea rather than the land held the presence of his little Rose. Though the sea had not taken her, as it had taken so many in the island, he thought of her now as on the first night he had known her, crouching in the stern of a boat that was putting out into an unknown sea, embarking—this time solitary—on the strange paths of the sea, where their footsteps are not known.

§ 2

With curious ease he adapted himself to the new life, almost as if his year of marriage had not been. He soon became used to the unaccustomed solitudes, indeed, in a strange way he came to value them—the solitude before sleeping and after waking, and of idle daylight when he lounged on the sward above the cliffs. He never went to the south-east coast, to the cliffs above Gorey and Brenière—in tacit covenant with himself he refused to see the cold roof of the cottage at Moie Fano, or Balmée sleeping like a whale on the golden floor of the sea. Instead, he haunted the western coast, which he had hitherto neglected, except as conductor of the English. From the eaves of Pégâne Bay he looked across the purple Autelets towards Saignie and the tail of Sark; over and beyond, among strange rocks like men-o’-war, lay Herm and haunted Jethou ... and beyond Jethou lay the violet shape of Guernsey—and beyond Guernsey.... He knew the country that lay in the blue and purple mists beyond Guernsey, and once more he found himself thinking of it as home.

His brief naturalization was over. At the Pêche à Agneau he was the same stranger he had been before his marriage. Though he now spoke their language and followed their customs, he had all his old curious sense of difference from the Le Couteur clan. He had never felt that difference between himself and Rose. He and Rose—so different in so many ways—had essentially been one. But now that he was back at the Pêche à Agneau he once more felt that half-amused, half-angry bewilderment at the native mind; he knew that however freely he spoke their tongue, however naturally he followed their ways, his mind would never work as their minds.

He had at least two notable outbreaks of Englishry. One was when he insisted that his son should be baptized Thomas Helier instead of by the name of his wife’s father alone.

“He shall be called after my father too.”

“There is not one of us has ever been called Thomas,” said Uncle Philip.

“Well, there’s nothing like making a start. You need a few fresh names.”

“The Hamons will laugh at us,” said Cousin Philip.

“They’ll do that whatever we call him.”

“It is an English name.”

“And what are Ernest and Peter and Philip, I’d like to know?”

“They are Sark names. Thomas is English.”

“Well, damn it all, Thomas has an English father.”

He marched off contemptuously. Really, for sheer ignorance his mother’s family were hard to beat. However, they could not stop him calling his baby anything he liked. He had half a mind not to call him Helier. Then he remembered Rose, and the way she had said “notre Helier.” ... There was no help for it—Helier it must be, though it was Thomas too.

His next lapse was more serious. He found that on the tombstone that was to be put up over Rose’s grave, her name was to stand as “la chère épouse de Daniel Le Couteur.” For more than two years he had been Le Couteur now, but somehow he could not bear the thought of his Normanhood carved in stone.

“It shall be Daniel Sheather,” he said.

“Then we do not pay for it,” said Uncle Philip—which settled the matter, since Daniel could not afford to pay for it himself.

Sore and angry at his relations’ benighted attitude, jealous of his own rights and honour, he put two pieces of wood together in the shape of a cross, and carved on them his loving memory of Rose Sheather, wife of Daniel Sheather, formerly of the parish of Bullockdean, Sussex. It was his gesture of defiance, and in a moonless midnight he set it up at the head of Rose’s little mound under the ilex trees.

The result was the ferment of the island. It was an insult to have Rose remembered under her English name, an insult barbed by the fact that it was her true one. The whole inscription was in English, too, which was a challenge, and the cross itself was considered Popish.

That night it disappeared, and Daniel could obtain no redress, since he had set it up without authority.

“If you are wise you will let it alone,” said the Vicar—“our people have strong prejudices here.”

So he damped down his wrath and fiery sense of outrage, but he spent more and more of his free time above the cliffs of the western coast, looking out towards Guernsey and the country beyond Guernsey....

Sometimes he thought he would just pack up and go home. Why should he slave to put money into his cousins’ pockets when they didn’t know how to treat him decently? He was deterred partly by the thought of Thomas Helier, who was well looked after by Alice Hamon, and partly by his own pride. He didn’t want these Sarkies to think they could drive him out. He felt now that most of the Le Couteurs would be glad if he went—they had his child, and in him they had got his mother back again. Daniel himself they did not care for—he was useful to them in the boats, but that was not everything, and they could probably do very well without him, as they had done before. His assistance with the visitors could not make up for his alien company in the house, from which they had hoped his marriage had removed him for ever. Once or twice he was made the subject of a practical joke with fish—the sure sign of local unpopularity. Someone put a plaice in his cap when he took it off in church one Sunday, and on another occasion, creeping into bed tired out after a day in the boats, he found a cold mess of dabs awaiting his naked feet.

“Well, if I go,” he said to himself truculently—“I take the kid with me.”

CHAPTER TEN

§ 1

The crisis came sooner than he had expected—forced by that outer world which had left him untroubled for so long. He had written to his family to tell them of Rose’s death and the baby’s birth, but had heard nothing from them, a fact surprising even from their indifference. Then at the beginning of September he received a letter from his brother Len. This was a fresh surprise, as Len had written only once since he had left home, but when he read the letter he realized that it contained matter too deep for his mother’s scholarship.

Indeed, it recorded nothing less than the wreck of the George. Tom Sheather had been finally deprived of his licence for allowing betting on his premises. It appeared that he had already been fined twice—once besides the occasion recorded by Ernley, and now his offence was too great to be passed over. His licence had been withdrawn, whereupon his brewers had swooped down on him for long-owed arrears, and all the furniture, the pony and fowls would have to be sold to pay them. The family smash was absolute. Daniel was shocked and upset, but not deeply surprised. He had known the ways of the George too long, and had guessed how much worse they must have grown now that he was no longer there to control them in a small way. His mother’s voice was shrill, but it could not persuade her husband out of his courses, and Christopher was thoughtless and indifferent. No, now that he came to think it over, he was not surprised.

There was only one unexpected element in the situation, and that was his father’s behaviour. Len could hardly write coherently when he told Daniel that the captain of the sinking ship had abandoned her. Tom Sheather had disappeared, leaving a message behind him to say that he had signed on a coaster going to Wales. He expressed no regret—indeed, so Len recorded in horror, he seemed actually pleased at the prospect. The innkeeper had shaken his shoulders and gone back to his first love. At twenty, Tom Sheather had left the land for adventure and freedom on the sea, and now at fifty he left it again, with evidently the same youthful expectation. Daniel had a brief moment of sympathy, though he was indignant at his father’s callous desertion of his wife in the extremity to which his folly had brought her. He remembered certain talks and confidences—his parent’s reckless wishes, his own persuasions. He had never really taken the older man’s sea-fever seriously, but evidently through all those years it had been gathering temperature. Nevertheless he was shocked and ashamed, and angrily put aside any extenuating reflections on the probable sharpness of his mother’s tongue during the last days at the George.

“I’m taking mother and Chris to live with me,” wrote Len at the end of his long letter. “Chris will help me on the farm, where there is plenty of work for him. The farm has been doing better since last fall, but I don’t know what will happen this harvest with the guaranteed prices off. It’s just like the government to get us on a bit and then leave us stranded. Now things are altered with you perhaps you might manage to send mother something from time to time like you did before you married. I am very sorry to hear of your trouble, but we have nothing but trouble seemingly in our family. There are debts to settle up even after we have paid Hobday and Hitch. I won’t take a penny from Ernley Munk, though he offered me a loan, as well he might, seeing what he has made out of the Crown. He has been a swine, saying it was what he had expected all along, and speaking against us for not stopping father. I had a regular shine with him on Tuesday, and told him pretty well what I thought of him.”

Dan frowned. That was a pity. But Len had always been like that—too proud to take a favour from anyone, except the government. He had been furious with Dan because he wore Ernley’s old clothes ... now, as usual, they would all have to pay for his pride, and Dan had never been able to see that pride was worth even half what it usually cost....

Well, this settled it—he’d better go home. He might be able to do something to help them—get some sort of a job somewhere. He couldn’t do anything for them as he was now. All that he had earned that season, which had not been so good as last year, had gone towards the support of himself and his child. If he went back to England, he might be able to get work on the land, or at the docks at Newhaven. Besides, he couldn’t bear the thought of his mother penniless and abandoned. Of course she had Len, and the cherished Christopher, but he thought of her as abandoned all the same.

Yes, he would go home—he was fed up with this ghastly island, which still treated him as a stranger though he had lived in it more than two years, and had married in it and begotten a child. It would be good to find himself a son of the house once more, even though that house was scattered and disgraced. He had nothing really to hold him to Sark, now that Rose was gone and that even her resting-place might not be marked.... He would serve out the Le Couteurs by taking himself and his son back to England. It was curious how he suddenly found himself desiring England, with its long roads and friendly people.... He’d manage somehow for himself and his boy, and he would be back once more in his own country, among his own folk. He would turn his back on the sea and islands, and they in their turn should become shadows on glass.

§ 2

The Le Couteur attitude was mixed. On one hand they were glad to be rid of the stranger, on the other they were vexed that Kitty Le Couteur should get her own back again. However, they were pleased that after thirty years of marriage her husband should have shown himself so unworthy of a Le Couteur lady.

“Ah, that your poor mother should have married such a vagabond,” said Uncle Eugene—“my brother Philip and I tell her he is vagabond, but she would not believe us. Perhaps she believe us now.”

“You go back to England and sell beer,” said Uncle Philip. “Englishmen like beer.”

The pendulum swung when they found he meant to take his son away with him.

“He must not go,” cried Uncle Eugene. “He is a Le Couteur—he was born in this island.”

“If it comes to that,” said Daniel, “so was I.”

“But your mother take you away and you never belong to us any more.”

“And a good job, too—I don’t want my boy to stay here and grow up a savage.”

“Ho! Savages, are we? Oh, my Gar—we are savages! Mister Englishman is a gentleman—he is a visitor. That is it.”

“I’ve a right to do what I like with my own child.”

This was obvious even to Uncle Philip and Uncle Eugene. As, twenty-odd years ago they had let Thomas Sheather depart with his wife and children, so now they must let his son depart with his child, reluctantly, yet knowing that none but themselves had driven out the stranger. However, when he was gone they would put up a splendid tombstone over his wife’s grave with the text old Eugene had chosen out of his Bible, two months ago, before there was all the fuss: “Nous n’avons rien apporté au monde, et il est évident que nous n’en pouvons rien emporter”—a statement which applied with equal truth (if Thomas Helier were excepted) to her husband’s sojourn in Sark.

Before he went Daniel paid a visit to the narrow green mound under which Rose lay nameless. He was not inclined to be sentimental over Rose, nevertheless he brought her his last offering in the shape of a wreath of the golden daisies that grow in the corn. He knew well that when he left the new tombstone would go up, lozenge-shaped and white and French—Protestant against both Rome and England. He knew, too, that he would be Daniel Le Couteur for ever here in stone. But after all, he did not much care. Now he was free of them they could do what they liked with his name. He was taking away all that Sark had given him—the only thing it had ever given him—his marriage. He was taking away his marriage, for all that Rose lay here under a French headstone, engraved with a name that was not his, and that he would never lie beside her within sound of the sea. His marriage had been the one treasure of those three summers—indeed, the one treasure of his life. Amidst all the strangeness and hostility and abasement of his exile, the island had given him this one great gift, which he could take away. Rose’s body might remain here under the ilex trees, but he took his marriage with him in the child.

§ 3

William, Peter, and one of the young Philips went with him when he walked down to the harbour, with his child on his arm. Once more he wore his English clothes, which were now a little tight, with Ernley’s British warm to keep out the winds of the Russell.

“Now you must not go out in the boat alone,” laughed Philip.

“Or you run aground on the Paternosters,” chuckled William.

“Ha-ha-ha!” roared Peter. “Ha-ha-ha-ha!”

“Ha-ha-ha-ha! Ha-ha-ha-ha!”

The farewells of his cousins mingled with voices of the gulls on Les Lâches.

The sea was calm and hazy. The summer’s heat had baked to a rich gold the green tops of the Burons, where at last the flowers had dried. The little paddle-steamer swung into the Goulet race, making her way home by the east coast.

Daniel sat under the bulwark on the second-class deck, holding Thomas Helier firmly wedged between his chest and his arm, and already a little disconcerted by his change from a nominal to a practising father. He resolved to take advantage of any feminine goodwill that might be shown him on board either this or the Southampton boat. At present the baby slept like a chrysalis in his white shawl, and after a time Daniel lost his preoccupation with him, as the steamer slipped over the deep waters by Les Abimes, and he looked for the last time on the Grande Moie and the Petite Moie, on Dodon and Noire Pierre, standing out of the sea like broken temples on a green plain. Then the steamer drew her wake past the Eperquerie—Sark’s huge tail, lying out towards Herm, and holding a deadly sting under the water. The race began—the little waves fluttering round the grunes at Bec du Nez.... They were out beyond it now—looking back on all the huge, cragged bulk of that lovely, unfriendly island, which lay now as when he had first seen it, like a horned beast asleep upon the sea.