HOW I BEARDED LIONS IN THEIR DENS
That first night in Peter Port, when my grandfather had wrung my hand for the last time, looking at me with prayers in his eyes, and bidding me do my duty and keep clean, and had put off for home in his boat, and work was over for the day and I my own master, I decided on making a call which was much in my heart, and to which I had been looking forward for days past.
I cleaned myself up, and made myself as smart as possible, and set off for the Miss Maugers' school in George Road.
It was not until I saw the house that doubts began to trouble me as to the fitness of my intention. It was a much larger house than any I had ever been in, and there was a straightness and primness about it which somehow did not suggest any very warm welcome to a young sailorman, whose pride in his first appointment and in the spreading of his wings for his first flight underwent sudden shrinkage.
It took me a good half-hour's tramping to and fro, past the house and back again, eyeing it carefully each time as though I was trying to discover the best way to break into it, to screw my courage up to the point. There were two windows on each side of the door and two rows of five above, fourteen in all, and every window had its little curtains rigged up exactly alike to a hair's-breadth. If any one of them had been an inch awry I should have known it, and would have felt less of an intruder.
I had not seen Carette for over six months, and the last time she was home most of my time, when we met, had been spent in discovering and puzzling over the changes that had come over her. These ran chiefly towards a sobriety of behaviour which was not natural to her, and which seemed to me assumed for my special benefit and tantalisation, and I was expecting every minute to see the sober cloak cast aside and the laughing Carette of earlier days dance out into the sunshine of our old camaraderie.
Aunt Jeanne Falla's twinkling eyes furthered the hope. But it was not realised. Carette unbent, indeed, and we were good friends as ever, but there was always about her that new cloak of staidness and ladylike polish which became her prettily enough indeed, but which I could very well have done without. For, you see, in all our doings hitherto, she had always looked up to me as leader, even when she twirled my boyish strength about her finger and made me do her will. And now, though I was bigger and stronger than ever, she had, in some ways, gone beyond me. She was, in fact, seeing the world, such as it was in Guernsey in those days, and it made me feel more than ever how small a place Sercq was, and more than ever determined to see the world also.
I warped myself up to Miss Mauger's green front door at last and gave a valiant rap of the knocker, and hung on to it by sheer force of will to keep myself from running away when I had done it. And when a maid in a prim white cap opened the door, I had lost my tongue, and stood staring at her till she smiled encouragingly, as though she thought I might have come to ask her out for a walk.
"I've come to see Carette—Ma'm'zelle Le Marchant, I mean," I stammered, very red and awkward.
"If you'll come in, I'll tell Miss Mauger," she smiled; and I stepped inside, and was shown into one of the front rooms with the very straight curtains. The room inside was very stiff and straight also. It occurred to me that if all the other rooms were like it Carette must have found them a very great change from Brecqhou. Perhaps it was living among these things that had such an effect upon her that she could not shake it off when she came home for the holidays. The stiff, straight chairs offered me no invitation to be seated, and I stood waiting in the middle of the room. Then the door opened, and a little elderly lady came in, and saluted me very formally with a curtsey bow which rather upset me, for no one had ever done such a thing to me before. It made me feel awkward and ill at ease.
Miss Mauger seemed to me very like her drawing-room, straight and precise and stiff. Her face reminded me somewhat of Aunt Jeanne Falla's, but lacked the kindly twinkle of the eyes which redeemed Aunt Jeanne's shrewdest and sharpest speeches. She had little fiat rows of grey curls, tight to her head, on each side of her face, for all the world like little ormer shells sticking to a stone.
"Monsieur Le Marchant?" she asked.
"No, madame—ma'm'zelle. I am Phil Carré."
"Oh!... You are not then one of Mademoiselle Le Marchant's brothers?"
"No, ma'm'zelle."
"Oh!"
"We have always been friends since we were children," I explained stumblingly, for her bright little eyes were fixed on me, through her gold-rimmed spectacles, like little gimlets, and made me feel as if I was doing something quite wrong in being there.
"Ah!" which seemed to imply that she had suspected something of the kind, and it was a good thing for Carette that she was safely removed from such companionship in the future.
"And I am going off on my first voyage to the West Indies—"
"Ah!" in a tone that seemed to say that as far as she and her house were concerned it was to be hoped I would stop there.
"And I thought I would like to see Carette again before I went—"
"Ah!... And may I ask if you have sought permission from Mademoiselle Le Marchant's relatives before making this call?"
"Permission?—To see Carette? No, madame—ma'm'zelle. I never dreamt of such a thing. Permission to see Carette! Ma fé!"
"Ah!" ... ("What a strangely innocent young man!—or is it impudent boldness?"—That was what was going on in her mind, I think, as she bored at me with the little gimlets. But she said—) "We make it an inflexible rule not to allow our young ladies to see any but their own relations, except, of course, with the special permission of their relatives or guardians."
"If I had known, I would have got a letter from Aunt Jeanne Falla, but such a thing never entered into my head for a moment."
"You know Madame Le Marchant—Miss Jeanne Falla that was?"
"Know Aunt Jeanne?—Well, I should—I mean, yes, madame,—I mean ma'm'zelle. She has known me from the day I was born."
"Ah!... And you think she would have accorded you permission to see mademoiselle?"
"Why, of course she would. She would never dream of me being in Peter Port without calling to see Carette."
She looked me through and through again, and said at last—
"If you will excuse me for a moment, I will consult with my sisters. It is a matter which concerns them also, and I should wish them to share the responsibility," and she dropped me another frigid little salute and backed out of the door.
And I felt very sorry for Carette, and did not wonder so much now at the little stiffnesses of manner I had noticed in her the last time we met.
And presently the door opened, and the little lady stole in again with the same little formal greeting, and, after looking at me till I felt cold about the neck, said, "You wish to see Mademoiselle Le Marchant?" And then I noticed that the little ormer shell curls about this little lady's face were not all gray, but mixed gray and brown, and that this little face was, if anything, still more frigidly ungracious than the last, a regular little martinet of a face, and I knew that it must be another of the Miss Maugers.
"Yes, ma'm'zelle, with your permission."
"My sister states that you are acquainted with Madame Le Marchant, of Beaumanoir, whom we used to know intimately—"
"I have known Aunt Jeanne from the day I was born," I said, perhaps a trifle vehemently, for the absurdity of all these precautions between myself and Carette began to ruffle me. In fact, I began to feel almost as though there must be some grounds for their doubts about me which I had never hitherto recognised in myself, and it made me more decided than ever to have my own way in the matter.
"My grandfather is Philip Carré, of Belfontaine," I said, with a touch of the ruffle in my voice, "and he is a great friend of Mr. Claude Gray—"
"The Quaker," she said, with a pinch of the thin little lips.
And then the door opened, and, with the usual curtsey, still another Miss Mauger joined us, and her little ormer shells were all brown, and she wore no spectacles, and the corners of her mouth were on a level with the centre, and looked as if they might on occasion even go up instead of down. She looked at me half mistrustfully, like a bird which doubts one's intentions towards its bit of plunder, and then, just like the bird, seemed to gauge my innocence of evil, and bent and whispered into her sister's gray and brown ormer shells.
"My sister informs me that Mademoiselle Le Marchant has been apprised of your visit and has expressed a desire to see you, and so—"
"Under the circumstances," said the other.
"Under the circumstances, we will make an exception from our invariable rule and permit this interview."
"On the understanding—" began the other.
"On the understanding that it is not to form a precedent—"
"And also," said the younger sister hastily, "that one of us is present."
"Certainly, that one of us is present," said the elder.
"By all means," I said, "and I am very much obliged to you. I really do not mean to eat Carette, nor even to run away with her."
"We should certainly prevent any attempt of the kind," said the elder sister severely.
They whispered together for a moment, then she shook out her prim skirts and dropped me a curtsey, and went away to fetch Carette.
"You see we have to be very strict in such matters," said the younger Miss Mauger, settling herself very gracefully on a chair so that her skirts disposed themselves in nice straight lines. "With forty young ladies under one's charge one cannot be too careful."
"I am quite sure you are very careful of them, ma'm'zelle," I said, at which she actually smiled a very little bird-like smile. "I will tell Aunt Jeanne how very careful you are next time I see her, and she will laugh and say, 'Young maids and young calves thrive best under the eyes of their mistress.'"
"I do not know much about calves"—and then the door opened and Carette came in.
She ran up to me with both hands outstretched.
"Oh, Phil, I was so afraid I was not to see you! And you are going away? How big you're getting! How long will you be away?"
This was very delightful, for I had been fearing that the little touch of stiffness, which I had experienced the last time I saw her, and which I now quite understood, might have grown out of knowledge.
"We are going first to the West Indies and then on to Canada. It may be a long time before I'm back, and I did want to see you once more before I went. I began to fear I was not going to."
"'Oh, we're very strict here, you know, and we have rules. Oh, heaps of rules! But I knew dear Miss Maddy would manage it when she knew how I wanted to see you;" and she ran up to Miss Maddy and kissed the little brown ormer shells over her ears, and Miss Maddy patted them hastily lest the tiny kiss should have set them awry.
"And how did you leave them all in Sercq? And when did you see Aunt Jeanne last? And who's taking care of my boat? And—"
"Wait!" I laughed, "or I shall forget some of them. I saw Aunt Jeanne this morning just before I left. She thought we sailed at once. She would have sent you her love, and maybe some gâche, if she had known—"
"Ah, ma fé! How I wish she had known!" sighed Carette longingly, for Aunt Jeanne Falla's gâche had a name all over Sercq.
"And everybody is well except old Père Guérin, and he is cutting a new tooth, they say, and it makes him sour in the temper."
"Why, he's over ninety!" exclaimed Carette.
"Ninety-two next January. That's why he's so annoyed about it. And your boat is safe in the top nook of Port du Moulin, all covered over with sailcloth and gorse. Krok and I did it, and he will soak it for ten days before you come home, and have it all ready for you."
"The dear old Krok!"
"Oh, we have taken very great care of it, I assure you. But maybe you will be too grown-up to care for it by the time you get back."
"Perhaps!" And oddly enough—though indeed it may have been only my own thought, and without reasonable foundation—thereupon there seemed to fall between us a slight veil of distance. So that, though we talked of Sercq and of our friends there, it seemed to me that we were not quite as we had been, and I could not for the life of me tell why, nor, indeed, for certain if it were so or not.
When I was leaving, however, Carette put both her hands in mine and gave me Godspeed as heartily as I could wish, and I made my best bow to Miss Maddy, and went back to the Hirondelle well pleased at having seen Carette and at her hearty greeting and farewell, but with a little wonder and doubt at my heart as to what the final effect of all this schooling might be.