To Carterette he seemed not the man she had known. With her woman’s instinct she knew that he loved Guida, but she also knew that nothing which might have happened between them could have brought this look of shame and shrinking into his face. As these thoughts flashed through her mind her heart grew warmer. Suppose Ranulph was in some trouble—well, now might be her great chance. She might show him that he could not live without her friendship, and then perhaps, by-and-bye, that he could not live without her love.
Ranulph was about to move on. She stopped him. “When you need me, Maitre Ranulph, you know where to find me,” she said scarce above a whisper. He looked at her sharply, almost fiercely, but again the tenderness of her eyes, the directness of her gaze, convinced him. She might be, as she was, variable with other people; with himself she was invincibly straightforward.
“P’raps you don’t trust me?” she added, for she read his changing expression.
“I’d trust you quick enough,” he said.
“Then do it now—you’re having some bad trouble,” she rejoined.
He leaned over her stall and said to her steadily and with a little moroseness:
“See you, ma garche, if I was in trouble I’d bear it by myself. I’d ask no one to help me. I’m a man, and I can stand alone. Don’t go telling folks I look as if I was in trouble. I’m going to launch to-morrow the biggest ship ever sent from a Jersey building yard—that doesn’t look like trouble, does it? Turn about is fair play, garcon Cart’rette: so when you’re in trouble come to me. You’re not a man, and it’s a man’s place to help a woman, all the more when she’s a fine and good little stand-by like you.”
He forced a smile, turned upon his heel, and threaded his way through the square, keeping a look-out for his father. This he could do easily, for he was the tallest man in the Vier Marchi by at least three inches.
Carterette, oblivious of all else, stood gazing after him. She was only recalled to herself by Dormy Jamais. He was diligently cooking her Jersey wonders, now and then turning his eyes up at her—eyes which were like spots of greyish, yellowish light in a face of putty and flour; without eyelashes, without eyebrows, a little like a fish’s, something like a monkey’s. They were never still. They were set in the face like little round glow worms in a mould of clay. They burned on night and day—no man had ever seen Dormy Jamais asleep.
Carterette did not resent his officiousness. He had a kind of kennel in her father’s boat-house, and he was devoted to her. More than all else, Dormy Jamaas was clean. His clothes were mostly rags, but they were comely, compact rags. When he washed them no one seemed to know, but no languid young gentleman lounging where the sun was warmest in the Vier Marchi was better laundered.