CHAPTER XIV
Cæsarea the Green
(1)
The port of St. Helier, reached at last after such vicissitudes of seafaring, was ringing with Jersey-French and English, and here and there with the genuine tongue of Gaul, for the place was full of Royalist refugees. As the tall Frenchman with the bandaged head, holding by the hand the little boy in the dishevelled English clothes, made his way between fishermen, loiterers, and an occasional man-of-war's man from the English frigate in the roads, he nodded to an acquaintance or two, not staying, however, to satisfy the curiosity of any.
It happened that their road from the harbour led through some stalls of market produce. Anne was chattering gaily as they passed between heaps of apples and onions, when the course of his legs was suddenly checked, and, through surprise, that of his tongue also, by the fact that his conductor had stopped. He looked up, and followed the direction of his friend's eyes to where, by a stall a little farther on, two women had paused. The one was an upstanding Jersey peasant girl with a basket on her arm, the other a little elderly lady in black. At the moment one of her diminutive hands was resting on a robust cabbage, where it looked like a belated butterfly.
"No, this is larger than I require," she was saying, in the prettiest broken English.
La Vireville, followed by Anne, went up behind her and stooped over her.
"Reconsider your decision, petite maman, I pray you," he said softly. "A man is hungry after the sea, and there are two of us——"
The reticule in the lady's other hand went to earth as she turned and grasped his arm. "Fortuné! Mon fils! Dieu soit loué! But I expected you days ago! I have been in torment that you came not. Where have you been—and ah, my God, what have you done to your head?"
The little white hands went fluttering over him as if they must assure themselves that he was really there. He was so much taller than she that to meet her upturned face with its delicate cheeks and young eyes he had to stoop a long way. The kiss was given and returned among the stalls with that candour of the Latin races, the testimony of whose emotions is not confined to withindoors, and it is probable that for Mme. de la Vireville at that moment, if not for her son, the market-place did not exist. And being half French itself, it looked on with sympathy.
But the man at least remembered the existence of someone else, and while those fingers were still stroking his arm and the soft voice was yet asking him questions, he caught hold of his mother's hand.