HOW WE HEARD STRANGE NEWS
"Whatever is it all, Phil?" whispered Carette as we ate.
"There has evidently been fighting outside, and he has got a knock on the head, and his wits are astray." But that strange thing he had said ran in my head, and made such play there that I began to be troubled about it.
You must remember I had never heard the name of Paul Martel, and of my father I knew nothing save that he was dead. So that this strange word of George Hamon's was to me but empty vapouring brought on by that blow on the head. But against that there was the tremendous fact which had so exercised my mind, that this man Torode had spared my life at risk of his own, when every other soul that could have perilled him had been slaughtered in cold blood.
If—the awful import of that little word!—if there was—if there could be, any sense in George Hamon's words, the puzzle of Torode's strange treatment of me was explained. I saw that clearly enough, but yet the whole matter held no sense of reality to me. It was all as obscure and shadowy as the dim cross-lights in which we sat, and ate because we were starving.
Torode lay like a log, breathing slowly, but with no other sign of life. George Hamon presently knelt beside him again and gazed long into his face, and then examined his wound carefully. Then he stood up and signed to us to follow him, and we went along the cleft to the water-cave, and sat down there in the dim green light that filtered through the water.
"Mon gars," he said very gravely, "I have done you a wrong. I ought to have kept it to myself. It was the suddenness of it that upset me. I told you no living man besides myself knew of this place, and that was because I believed this man dead—dead this twenty years. He was partner with me in the free-trading for a time, until we fell out—"
"You said just now that he was my father," I broke in, and eyed him closely to see if his wits were still astray. "What did you mean?"
"It is true," he said gloomily. "I am sorry. It slipped out."
"But he is Torode, and you called him Martel, and I am Phil Carré."
"All that; but, all the same, it is true, mon gars. He is your father, Paul Martel."
"I have always been told my father was dead."
"We believed so. He went away twenty years ago, and never came back. We believed him dead—we wished him dead. He was better dead than alive."
"I don't understand," I said doggedly, still all in a maze. "You call him Martel, and say he is my father, but I am Phil Carré."
"Yes. We were sick of Martel, and sick of his name. We did not wish you to be weighted with it.... Now see, mon gars, I was in the wrong to slip it out, but—well, there it is—I was wrong. But, since it is done, and we must keep it to ourselves, I will tell you the rest. You are old enough to know. And Carette—eh bien! it is you yourself, and not your father—"
"Ma fé, one does not choose one's father," said Carette, and slipped her hand through my arm, and clung tightly to it through all the telling.
And George Hamon told us briefly that which I have set forth in the beginning of my story. We two talked of it many times afterwards, and it was at such odd times that he told me all the rest. And I think it like enough that you, who have read it all in the order in which I have written it, may long since have guessed that thing which had puzzled me so much—Torode's strange sparing of my life when he murdered all my comrades. But to me, who had never known anything of my father, and had grown to know myself only as Phil Carré, the whole matter was amazing, and upsetting beyond my power to tell.
"And what are we to do now, Uncle George?" I asked dispiritedly, for the sudden tumbling into one's life of a father whom all honest men must hate and loathe darkened all my sky like a thunder-cloud on a summer day.
"If he dies we will bury him here and in our three hearts, and no other must know. It would only break your mother's life again as it was broken once before."
"And if he lives?" I asked gloomily, and, unseemly though it might be, it was perhaps hardly strange that I could not bring myself to wish anything but that he might die.
"If he lives," said Uncle George, no whit less gloomily—and stopped in the slough.... "I do not know.... His life is forfeit ... and yet—you cannot give him up ... nor can I.... But perhaps he will die ..." he said hopefully.
"And I shall have killed him."
"Mon Dieu, yes!—I forgot.... But you did not know, and if you had not he would certainly have killed you ... and Carette also, without doubt."
"All the same—"
"Yes, I know," he nodded. "Well, we must wait and see. I wonder now what Philip would do,"—meaning my grandfather, in whose wisdom he had implicit faith, as all had who knew him. "I'm inclined to think he would give him up, you know. He would never loose him on the world again.... However, he may die."
"Where is he—my grandfather? And what has been doing outside, and when can we get out?"
"He is away to Peter Port, but he had to go by way of Jersey, and by night, to avoid their look-out boats. He has got there all right, for there is fighting on Herm. We heard the sound of the guns, and the Herm men are getting back there as fast as they can go."
"What day is this?"
"To-day is Thursday."
"Thursday!" echoed Carette. "And we came in here on Tuesday! Is it Thursday of this week or Thursday of next week, Uncle George?"
"This week," he said with surprise, for he could not possibly understand how completely we had lost count of time. "Torode came across himself with four big boat-loads of rascals, with carronades in their boats, too, and they have turned the Island upside down in search of you. He thought, you see, without doubt, that if he could lay hands on you there was no one else could swear to anything but hearsay. But the Peter Port men will take your grandfather's word for it, as they would take no one else's. And that word concerning John Ozanne and his men would set them in a flame if anything could. He was very loth to go, but he saw it was the surest way of ending the matter. So he slipped away with Krok in the dark, and they were to swim out to a boat off Les Lâches and make their way by Jersey. Now, if you have eaten, we will get out to the light."
"Dieu merci!" said Carette heartfully.
"And what about him?" I asked, nodding towards the wounded man.
"He must wait. Can he eat?"
"I have dropped brandy down his throat two or three times, and he seems to swallow it."
"We will give him some more, and decide afterwards. Mon Dieu! But I wish Philip was here."
"Would you tell him?"
"Surely! But not your mother, Phil," he said anxiously, and I knew again how truly he loved her. "She must not know. She must never know."
"What about Aunt Jeanne?" I asked.
He shook his head. "The fewer that know the better." So we dropped some more brandy and water into the wounded man's mouth, and gathered our few belongings, and crept down the tunnel after Uncle George.
Oh, the blessedness of the sweet salt sunlit air, as we stood in the water-worn chasm and blinked at the light, while Uncle George carefully closed his door. We took long deep draughts of it, and felt uplifted and almost light-headed.
"It is resurrection," said Carette; and as we climbed out of the cleft and took our way quickly among the great gorse cushions along Eperquerie, the dull sound of firing on Herm came to us on the west wind.