HOW GARD FOUGHT GALES AND TOM
So far the discussion as to the sale of the farm had been confined to the elders.
Young Tom had viewed John Guille's visits to the place with the lowering suspicion of a bull at a stranger's invasion of his field. He wondered what was going on and surmised that it was nothing to his advantage.
Words had been rare between him and his father since his refusal to lend himself to a loan on the farm, but his suspicion got the better of his obstinacy at last.
"What's John Guille want coming about here so much?" he demanded bluntly.
"I suppose he can come if he wants to. He's going to buy the farm."
"Going—to—buy—the—farm!... You—going—to—sell—the—farm—away—from—me?" roared young Tom, like the bull wounded to the quick.
"Ouaie, pardi! And why not? You had the chance of saving it and you wouldn't."
"If you do it, I'll—"
"Ouaie! You'll—"
"I'll—Go'zammin, I'll—I'll—"
"Unless you're a fool, mon gars, you'll be careful what you say or do. It'll all come back from the mines and you'll have your share if you behave yourself."
"—— you and your mines!" was Tom's valedictory, and he flung away in mortal anger; anger, too, which, from a Sark point of view, was by no means unjustified. Selling the estate away from the rightful heir was disinheritance, a blow below the belt which most testators reserve until they are safe from reach of bodily harm.
Tom left the house and cut all connection with his family. He drifted away like a threatening cloud, and the sun shone out, and Stephen Gard, with the rest, found greater comfort in his room than they had ever found in his company.
So gracious, indeed, did the atmosphere of the house become, purged of Tom, that Gard, to his great joy, found even Nance not impossible of approach.
He had always treated her with extremest deference and courtesy, respecting, as far as he was able, her evident wish for nothing but the most distant intercourse.
But he was such a very great change from Tom!
She caught his dark eyes fixed on her at times with a look that reminded her of Helier Baker's black spaniel's, who was a very close friend of hers. They had neither dog nor cat at present at La Closerie, both having been scrimped by the silver mines, when old Tom's first bad attack of economy came on.
Then, at table, Gard was always quietly on the look-out to anticipate her wants. That was a refreshing novelty. Even Bernel, her special crony, thought only of his own requirements when food stood before him.
Now and again Gard began to venture on a question direct to her, generally concerning some bit of the coast he had been scrambling about, and she found it rather pleasant to be able to give information about things he did not know to this undoubtedly clever mine captain.
So, little by little, he grew into her barest toleration but apparently nothing more, and was puzzled at her aloofness and reserve, not understanding at all her bitter feeling against the mines and everything connected with them.
The first time he went to church with her and Bernel was a great white-stone day to him.
He had gone by himself once every Sunday, and done his best to follow the service in French, which he was endeavouring to pick up as best he could. And, if he could only now and again come across a word he understood, still the being in church and worshipping with others—even though it was in an unknown tongue—the sound of the chants and hymns and responses, and the mild austerity and reverent intonation of the good old Vicar, all induced a Sabbath feeling in him, and made a welcome change from the rougher routine of the week, which he would have missed most sorely.
On that special afternoon, he had been lying on the green wall of the old French fort, enjoying that most wonderful view over the shimmering blue sea, with Herm and Jethou resting on it like great green velvet cushions, and Guernsey gleaming softly in the distance, and Brecqhou and the Gouliot Head, and all the black outlying rocks fringed with creamy foam, till it should be time to go along to church.
When he heard voices in the road below and saw Nance and Bernel, he jumped up on the spur of the moment, and pushed through the gorse and bracken, and stood waiting for them.
"Will you let me join you?" he asked, as they came up, fallen shyly silent.
"We don't mind," said Bernel, and they went along together.
"This always strikes me afresh, each time I see it, as one of the most extraordinary places I've come across," said Gard, as they dipped down towards the Coupée.
"Wait till we're coming home," said Bernel hopefully.
"Why?"
"You see those clouds over there? That's wind—sou'-west—you'll see what it's like after church."
"Your gales are as extraordinary as all the rest—and your tides and currents and sea-mists. I suppose one must be born here to understand them. We have a fine coast in Cornwall, but I think you beat us."
"Of course. This is Sark."
"And does no one ever tumble over the Coupée in the dark?"
"N—o, not often, any way. Nance once saw a man blown over."
"That was a bad thing to see," said Gard, turning towards her. "How was it?"
"I was coming from school—"
"All alone?"
"Yes, all alone. The others had gone on; I'd been kept in, and it was nearly dark. It was blowing hard, and when I got to the first rock here I thought it was going to blow me over. So I went down on my hands and knees and was just going to crawl, when old Hirzel Mollet came down the other side with a great sheaf of wheat on his back. He was taking it to the Seigneur for his tithes. And then in a moment he gave a shout and I saw he was gone."
"That was terrible. What did you do?"
"I screamed and crawled back across the narrow bit to the cutting, and ran screaming up to the cottages at Plaisance, and Thomas Carré and his men came running down. But they could do nothing. They went round in a boat from the Creux, but he was dead."
"And how did you get home?"
"Thomas Carré took me across and I ran on alone, but it was months before I could forget poor old Hirzel Mollet."
"I should think so, indeed. That was a terrible thing to see."
The opening of the mines, and the influx of the Welsh and Cornishmen and their wives and children, with their new and up-to-date ideas of living and dressing, had wrought a great and not altogether wholesome change upon the original inhabitants.
All the week they were hard at work in their fields or their boats, but on Sunday the lonely lanes leading to Little Sark were thronged with sightseers, curious to inspect the mines and the latest odd fashions among the miners' wives and daughters.
Odd, and extremely useless little parasols, were then the vogue in England. The miners' women-folk flaunted these before the dazzled eyes of the Sark girls, and Sark forthwith burst into flower of many-coloured parasols.
The mine ladies dressed in printed cottons of strange and wonderful patterns. The Sark girls must do the same.
"Tiens!" ejaculated Nance more than once, as they walked. "Here is Judi Le Masurier with a new pink parasol!—and a straw bonnet with green strings!—and every day you'll see her about the fields without so much as a sun-bonnet on! And Rachel Guille has got a new print dress all red roses and lilac! Mon Gyu, what are we coming to!"
She had many such comments and still more unspoken ones. But Stephen Gard, glancing, whenever he could do so unperceived, at the trim but plainly-dressed little sun-bonneted figure by his side, vowed in his heart that the whole of these others rolled into one were not to be compared with her, and that he would give all the silver in the mines of Sark to win her appreciation and regard.
As they turned the corner at Vauroque, they came suddenly on a number of men lounging on the low wall, and among them Tom Hamon, pipe in mouth and hands in pockets.
As they passed he made some jocular remark in the patois which provoked a guffaw from the rest, and reddened Nance's face, and caused Bernel to glance up at Gard and jerk round angrily towards Tom.
"What did he say?" asked Gard, stopping.
But Nance hurried on and he could not but follow.
"What was it?" he asked again, as he caught up with her.
"If you please, do not mind him. It was just one of his rudenesses."
"They want knocking out of him."
"He is very rude," said Nance, and they passed the Vicarage and turned up the stony lane to the church.
Gard was surprised by the speedy verification of Bernel's weather forecast. Before the service was over the wind was howling round the building with the sounds of unleashed furies, and when they got out it was almost dark.
They bent to the gale and pressed on, Gard with a discomforting remembrance that the Coupée lay ahead.
As they passed Vauroque there seemed a still larger crowd of loafers at the corner, and again Tom's voice called rudely after them.
Gard turned promptly and strode back to where he was sitting on the wall, dangling his feet in devil-may-care fashion. Tom jumped down to meet him.
"Say that again in English, will you?" said Gard angrily.
"Go to—!" said Tom.
Then Gard's left fist caught him on the hinge of the right jaw, and he reeled back among the others who had jumped down to back him up.
"Well—? Want any more?" asked Gard stormily.
"You wait," growled Tom, nursing his jaw, "I'll talk to you one of these days."
"Whenever you like, you cur. What you need is a sound thrashing and a kick over the Coupée."
To his surprise none of the others joined in. But he did not know them.
They might guffaw at Tom's unseemly pleasantries, but they held him in no high esteem—either for himself or for his position, since word of the sale of La Closerie had got about.
Then they were a hardy crew and held personal courage and prowess in high respect. And in this matter there could be no possible doubt as to where the credit lay.
"Goin' to fight him, Tom?" drawled one, in the patois.
"—him!" growled Tom, but made no move that way.
And Gard turned and went over to Nance and Bernel, who were sheltering from the storm in lee of one of the cottages.
If he could have seen it, there was a warmer feeling in her heart for him than had ever been there before—a novel feeling, too, of respect and confidence such as she had never entertained towards any other man in all her life.
For that quick blow had been struck on her behalf, she knew; and it was vastly strange, and somehow good, to feel that a great strong man was ready to stand up for her and, if necessary, to fight for her.
She pressed silently on against the gale, with an odd little glow in her heart, and a feeling as though something new had suddenly come into her life.
The gale caught them at the Coupée, and the crossing seemed to Gard not without its risks.
Bernel bent and ran on through the darkness without a thought of danger.
Gard hesitated one moment and Nance stretched a hand to him, and he took it and went steadily across.
And, oh, the thrill of that first living touch of her! The feel of the warm nervous little hand sent a tingling glow through him such as he had never in his life experienced before. Verily, a white-stone day this, in spite of winds and darkness!
The gale howled like ten thousand demons, and the noise of the waves in Grande Grève came up to them in a ceaseless savage roar. Gard confessed to himself that, alone, he would never have dared to face that perilous storm-swept bridge. But the small hand of a girl made all the difference and he stepped alongside her without a tremor.
"B'en, Monsieur Gard, was I right?" shouted Bernel in his ear, as they stepped within the shelter of the cutting on the farther side.
"You were right. It's a terrible place in a gale."
"You wait," shouted Bernel. "We're not home yet."
"No more Coupées, any way," and they bent again into the storm.
They had not gone more than a hundred yards when, through some freakish funnelling of the tumbled headlands, the gale gripped them like a giant playing with pigmies, caught them up, flung them bodily across the road and held Gard and Bernel pinned and panting against the green bank, while Nance disappeared over it into the shrieking darkness.
"Good heavens!" gasped Gard, fearful lest she should have been blown over the cliffs, and wriggled himself up under the ceaseless thrashing of the gale and was whirled off the top into the field beyond.
There the pressure was less, and, getting on to his hands and knees to crawl in search of Nance, he found her close beside him crouching in the lee of the grassy dyke.
He crept into shelter beside her, and presently, in the lull after a fiercer blast than usual, she set off, bent almost double, and in a moment they were in comparative quiet. Nance crawled through a gap into the road and they found Bernel waiting for them.
"Knew you'd come through there. That's what that gap's made for," he shouted.
"I've been in many a storm but I never felt wind like that before," said Gard, as soon as his breath came back.
"If you'd stopped with me you'd have been all right," said Bernel. "There was no need for you to go after Nance. We've been through that lots of times, haven't we, Nance?"
"Lots."
"I shall know next time," said Gard, and to Nance it was a fresh experience to think of some one going out of his way to be of possible service to her.