HOW LOVE COULD SEE IN THE DARK
Carette says I slept through three days and nights, but that is only one of her little humours. When I woke, however, I was in infinitely better case than before, and as she herself was fast asleep she may have been so all the time.
It was quite dark. The candle had either burned out or she had extinguished it. But in the extraordinary silence of that still place I could hear her soft breathing not far away, and I lay a long time listening to it. It was so calm and regular and trustful, as though no harmful and threatening things were in the world, that it woke a new spirit of confident hope in me, and I lay and listened, and thought sweet warm thoughts of her.
It seemed a long time, and yet not one whit too long, before the soft breathing lost its evenness, and at last I could not hear it at all, and knew she was waking. And presently she stirred, and after a time she said softly—
"Phil ... are you awake?"
"Yes, my dear," I said, sitting up, and feeling first for her, for love of the feel of her, and then in my pockets for my flint and steel.
"How still it is, and how very dark!" she whispered.
"I'll soon see how you're looking;" and my sparks caught in the tinder and I lit a candle.
"You slept very sound," said she, blinking at the light.
"I had not slept for nearly ninety hours, and they had held more for me than any ninety weeks before. But it was rude of me to go off like that and leave you all alone."
"You could no more help it than I can help being very hungry. You have slept three days and three nights, I believe. I wonder George Hamon is not back for us."
"Let's look at the milk," I said, and tasted it and found it sweet.
"That's because the air here is so cool and even," said Carette.
"Well, I feel all the better, anyway, and so do you, I'll be bound. I'm beginning to think, you know, that we were over fearful perhaps, and that we need not have come hiding here at all."
"We'll know better when we hear what's going on outside. Your grandfather and George Hamon are not men to be over fearful, and they thought it well."
"That is so," I said, feeling better at that.
"I wonder if it is day or night, and how long we've really been in here?"
"Long enough to be hungry, anyway," I said, heartily ready to eat. And we fell to on Aunt Jeanne's ham and rabbit pie, Carette cutting Tip all I ate into small pieces with my knife, since we had forgotten to bring any other. We drank up the milk out of the big-bellied tin can, and never was there sweeter milk or sweeter can, for Carette had first drink. And then, lest it should get foul, we started off to find the fresh water to wash it out and bring back a supply.
There was no mistaking the hollow place where the fresh water was. The light of the lantern fell on many a narrow rift in the walls of rock on either side, all sharp cracks and fissures, with rough-toothed edges, as though the solid granite had been split with mighty hammer-strokes. The seams were all awry, and the lines and cracks were all sharp and straight, though running into one another and across in great confusion. And, of a sudden, in the midst of this tangle of straight clefts and sharp-pointed angles, we came on a little rounded niche where the wall was scooped out in a graceful curve from about our own height to the ground. It was all as smooth and softly rounded as if wrought by a mason's chisel, and as we stood looking at it with surprise, because it was so different from all the rest, a movement of the lantern showed us a greater wonder still. At our feet, in a smooth round basin, bubbled the spring, and looked so like a great dark eye looking up at us in a dumb fury that we both stood stark still staring back at it.
The dark water rushed up from below in coils and writhings like the up-leap of the tide in the Gouliot Pass, and our lantern set golden rings in it which floated brokenly from the centre to the sides, and gave to it a strange look of life and understanding. So strong was the pressure from below that the centre of the little pool seemed higher than the sides. It looked as though the pent-up force within was striving all the time to shoot up to the roof and any moment might succeed.
But the strangest thing of all was that with all this look of hidden power there was no sound, and no drop of water overflowed the hollow basin. The ground we stood on was a slab of solid rock and dry as bone,—no splash, no sound, no drop outside,—only the silent and powerful up-thrust of the water from below, the silent golden rings that tumbled to the sides of the basin, and the constant expectation of something more which never came.
It was Carette's quick understanding that named it.
"It is like Krok," she whispered, and the word was said. It was all as like Krok—not the outside man, but the inner Krok, dumb and powerful, silently doing his appointed work—as anything that could be imagined.
"Yes," I said. "It is like Krok. It is very wonderful—running like that all through, the ages—since the cave was made anyway—very wonderful."
She stooped to dip her hand and taste it, and then drew back.
"It looks as if it would bite," she said, and I took off the lid of the can and scooped up a draught and drank it.
"The sweetest water I ever tasted, and cold as ice. It is as good as the water at La Tour."
Then she drank also, and then she washed out the milk-can, but would not pour the dirty water back into the basin. "It would be an offence," she said simply, and I felt the same.
Then we left our can there and went on along the cleft, which grew narrower and narrower till we could only go singly. And so we came at last into a sound of waters in front, and going cautiously, found ourselves in a somewhat wider place, with dull waves tumbling hollowly at our feet.
Carette crept to my side, and I held the lantern up and out, but we could see only a rough, black-arched roof and ragged rock walls, and a welter of black waves which broke sullenly against the shelving path on which we stood, as though driven in there against their will.
"This is the water-cave Uncle George spoke of, but I don't see any light."
"Perhaps it's night outside," said Carette in a whisper. "Let us get back, Phil. I don't like this place. The waves look as if they were dead."
So we went back the way we had come, and she pressed still closer to me as we passed the little hollow in which the spring churned on, noiseless, and ceaseless, and untiring, and seemed to look up at us with a knowing eye as our lantern set the yellow gleams writhing and twisting in it. We watched it for a time, it looked so like breaking into sound every next moment. But no sound came, and we picked up our can and went on.
"I do wish I knew if it is to-day or to-morrow," said Carette.
"Without doubt it is to-day."
"I don't believe it, Phil. It's either to-morrow or the day after, or the day after that."
"But that milk would never have kept sweet."
"It would keep sweet a very long time here. The air is so fresh and cool."
"Well, even if it's to-morrow it's still to-day," I argued.
"I know. But what I want to know is—how long we've been in here, and it feels to me like days and days."
But it was impossible to say how long we had slept, and until we got some outside light on the matter we could not decide it.
So we gathered our beds into cushions and sat there side by side, and since our supply of candles was not a very large one, and I could feel her in the dark quite as well as in the light, I lit my pipe and put the lantern out. And bit by bit she began to tell me of the dreary days when they waited for news of me, and hope grew sick in them, but they would not let it die.
"Your mother was an angel and a saint, and a strong tower, Phil,—so sweet and good. How she made me long for a mother of my own!"
"You shall have a share of mine!"
"I've made sure of my share already. It made the ache easier just to be with her, and so I went often to Belfontaine, and she never failed me. She was always full of hope and confidence. 'He will come back to us, my dear,' she would say. 'And when we get him back we must try to keep him, though that is not easy in Sercq.'"
"But you know why I went, Carette."
"Don't go again, Phil. It is very hard on the women to have their men-folk go. All the fear and the heartache are ours."
"But it is for you we go—to win what we can for you."
"Ah, what is it all worth?—Just nothing at all. It's not what you bring in your hands, but what is in your hearts for us, Phil. Better a cottage on Sercq with our hearts together like this,"—and I could feel her sweet heart beating through as she nestled up against me with my right arm round her neck,—than all the plunder of Herm."
"Then I will never leave you again, my sweet," and I sealed that pledge in kisses. "But how we are to live—"
"Aunt Jeanne will tell you, and I will tell you now. We are to live at Beaumanoir. She says she is getting too old for the fanning, and must have help, and so—"
"So you have arranged it all among you, though for all you knew it was a dead man you were planning for."
"It kept our hearts alive to plan it, and, besides, we knew you were not dead. I think we would have felt it if you had been."
"A woman's heart is the most wonderful thing in the world and the most precious. But it may deceive itself. It believes a thing is because it wishes it to be sometimes, I think, and it won't believe a thing because it wishes it not to be."
"Well, that is as it should be, and you are talking like one of your grandfather's books, Phil," she said lightly, not guessing what was in my mind. For it had seemed to me that I ought to tell her of her brother's death, lest it should come upon her in a heap outside.
"Your father and brothers now," I asked. "Did you look to see them back?"
"Surely! Until my father and Martin came alone telling us the rest were gone. It was sore news indeed."
"Unless they saw them lying dead they may still live. You have thought them dead. But, dear, Helier was with me in the prison in England. He came there sorely wounded, and I helped to nurse him back to life. We escaped together and got home together—" Her hands had clasped in her excitement, and the white glimmer of her face was lifted hopefully to mine, and I hurried on to crush her hope before it grew of size to die hard.
"We got home together that morning they carried you off. He went to Aunt Jeanne's and I went home. When Krok burst in with the news about you, I hurried across to Brecqhou. On the shore of the bay was a boat, and in it Helier lay dead with a bullet through his head."
"Oh, Phil!" in a voice of anguish, for Helier had been her favourite.... "And who—?"
"Those who took you without doubt."
"Ah, the wretches! I wish—" And I was of the same mind.
"I could do nothing, for he was dead. So I took his boat and followed you to Herm. Those who followed me to Brecqhou buried him there. But if he had not come I could not have got to Herm before they set their watch boats. So he helped, you see, though he did not know it."
"My poor Helier!... They had muffled my head in a cloak so that I could neither hear nor see. I had just gone outside—"
"Your father and Martin were in a great state about you, but I could not wait to explain. Anything I could have said would only have added to their anxiety, and that was not as great as my own, for I had my own fears of what had happened and they knew nothing."
"Yes, yes. You could have done no other," and she fell silent for a time, refitting her thoughts of Helier, no doubt.
So far, the most striking things in our rock parlour had been the silence and the darkness, but before long we had noise and to spare.
First, a low harsh growling from the tunnel by which we had entered, and that was the returning tide churning among the shingle and boulders in the rock channels outside. Then it grew into a roar which rose and fell as the long western waves plunged into the Boutiques, and swelled and foamed along its echoing sides, and then sank back with a long weltering sob, and rose again higher than before, and knew no rest. We could hear it all so clearly that none could doubt the existence of passages between the two caves.
We sat and listened to it, and ate at times, but could not talk much for the uproar. But for me it was enough to sit with Carette inside my arm and close against my heart, and there was something in that long swelling roar and sighing sob which, after a while, set weights on the eyelids and the senses and disposed one to sleep. For a time we counted the coming of the larger wave, and then the countings grew confused and we fell asleep.
As a matter of fact we lost all count of time in that dark place. When we woke we ate again by lantern light, and though either one of us alone must have fallen into melancholy as black as the place, being together, and having that within us which made for glad hearts, we were very well content, though still hoping soon to be out again in the free air and sunshine.
THE WATER CAVE. "The roof and walls were studded with anemones of every size and colour."
My arm gave me little pain. Aunt Jeanne's simples had taken the fire out of the wound, and kept the muscles of an even temper. And whenever the bandages got dry and stiff Carette soaked them in fresh water and tied me up again, and seemed to like the doing of it.
Mindful of Uncle George's saying that the water-cave held light at times, we visited it again, and yet again, until coming down the sloping path one time, we saw the narrow roof above us and the rough walls on either side tinged with a faint soft light, and hastening down like children into a forbidden room, we found ourselves in a curious place.
The tide was very far out, and the black cave, in which we had hitherto seen only sulky waves tumbling unhappily, had become a wonder equal to those Krok used to open to us in the Gouliots.
We could now go quite a long way down the shelving side of the rock, and the water that lay below was no longer black but a beautiful living green, from the light which stole up through it by means of an archway at the farther end. The arch was under water, but the light streamed through it, soft and mellow and glowing, so that the whole place seemed to throb with gentle life. Outside I judged it was early morning, with the sun shining full on the sea above the archway.
And here we found what Krok had shown us in the Gouliots as their chiefest beauties,—the roof and walls were studded with anemones of every size and colour, green and crimson, and brown and pink, and lavender and white and orange; so completely was the rock clothed with them that it was not rock we saw, but masses and sheets and banks of the lovely clinging things, all closed up within themselves till the water should return, and shining like polished gems in the ghostly green light.
The boulders that strewed the sloping sides of the cave-floor were covered with them also, and in the glowing green water they were all in full bloom and waving their arms merrily to and fro in search of food.
There, too, a leprous thing with treacherous, gliding arms crawled after prey, and at sight of it Carette gripped my arm and murmured "Pieuvre," as though she feared it might hear her. She had always a very great horror of those creatures, though in speaking of them when they were not present she had at times assumed a boldness which she did not really feel. This, however, was a very small monster, and indeed they do not grow to any very great size with us.
This softly glowing place was very pleasant to us after the darkness and lantern light of the other cave. We sat for a long time, till the glow faded somewhat and the water began whuffling against the rock walls, and climbed them slowly till at last all the cave was dark again, and we groped back along the cleft to our sleeping-place with the sounds of great waters in our ears from the Boutiques.
After that we sought the sea-cave each time we woke, and whenever the light was in it we sat there, and ate, and talked of all we had done, and thought, and feared, and hoped, during those long months when we were apart. And once and again Carette fell on earlier times still, and we were boy and girl together under the Autelets and Tintageu, or swimming in Havre Gosselin, and trembling through the Gouliot caves behind Krok's tapping stick. And we talked of Aunt Jeanne's party, and our Riding Day, and Black Boy, and Gray Robin. And she told me much of the Miss Maugers, and their school, and her school-fellows. And at times she fell silent, and I knew she had sudden thought of her brother Helier. But, you see, she had so long thought of him as dead, that the fact that he had died later than she had supposed had not the power to cloud her greatly. And perhaps the fact that we were together, and going to part no more, was not without its effect on her spirits.
And I told her more fully than I had done of all that had happened to me on Herm, and on the French ship in the West Indies, and at Amperdoo, and of our escape into France in the preventive officers' boat, and of that last desperate pull across from Surtainville.
"But, mon Gyu, Phil, what a strange man!" she said of Torode. "Why should he let you live one time, and try his hardest to kill you another?"
"I do not know. I have puzzled over it to no purpose. Now I have given it up."
"He is perhaps mad," she suggested.
"He did not seem so, except in not making an end of me when he had the chance, and that truly was madness on his part."
The time was never long with us, for we were strangely set apart from time and its passage. We ate and slept, and talked and walked, just whenever the inclination came, and measurements of time we had none. But Aunt Jeanne's pie was finished and we were down to the ham bone, and what little bread and gâche we had left was growing hard, and by that Carette said we had been there at least three days, and we looked for George Hamon's coming at any moment, except when the tunnel was growling and the Boutiques roaring and sobbing.