Carette of Sark

by John Oxenham

For when the young man offered to pay for Black Boy, Uncle George gave him the sharpest edge of his tongue in rough Norman French, and turned him out of his house, and would take nothing from him.

"You pledged me your word and you broke it," said he, "and you think to redeem it with money. Get out of this and never speak to me again! We are honest men in Sercq, and you—you French scum, you don't know what honour means." And Torode was forced to go with the unpayable debt about his neck, and the certain knowledge that all Sercq thought with his angry creditor and ill of himself. And to such a man that was bitterness itself.

During the ten days that followed Riding Day, my mind was very busy settling, as it supposed, the future,—mine and Carette's. For, whether she desired me in hers or not, I had no doubts whatever as to what I wanted myself. My only doubts were as to the possibilities of winning such a prize.

The effect of the Miss Maugers' teaching on Carette herself had been to lift her above her old companions, and indeed above her apparent station in life, though on that point my ideas had no solid standing ground. For, as I have said, the Le Marchants of Brecqhou were more or less of mysteries to us all, and there had been such upsettings just across the water there, such upraisings and downcastings, that a man's present state was no indication of what he might have been. The surer sign was in the man himself, and much pondering of the matter led me to think that Jean Le Marchant might well be something more than simply the successful smuggler he seemed, and that Carette's dainty lady ways might well be the result of natural growth and not simply of the Miss Maugers' polishing.

I would not have had it otherwise. I wanted the very best for her; and if she were by birth a lady, let the lady in her out to the full. Far better that the best that was in her should out and shine than be battened under hatches and kept out of sight. Better for herself, if it was her nature; and better for the rest of us who could look up and admire. For myself, I would sooner look up than down, and none knew as I did—unless it were Jeanne Falla—how sweet and generous a nature lay behind the graces that set her above us. For none had known her as I had, during all those years of the camaraderie of the coast.

But, while I wished her every good, I could not close my eyes to several things, since they pressed me hard. That, for instance, we were no longer boy and girl together. And that, whereas Carette used to look up to me, now the looking up was very much the other way. What her feelings might be towards me, as I say, I could not be sure; for, little as I knew of girls, I had picked up enough scraps of knowledge to be quite sure in my own mind that they were strangely unaccountable creatures, and that you could not judge either them or a good many other things entirely by outside appearances. And again, it was borne in upon me very strongly, and as never before, that, where two start fairly level, if one goes ahead, the other must exert himself or be left behind. Carette was going ahead in marvellous fashion. I felt myself in danger of being left behind, and that set my brain to very active working.

I had a better education, in the truest sense of the word, than most of my fellows, thanks to my mother and grandfather and Krok and M. Rousselot, the schoolmaster. That gave me the use of my brains. I had in addition a good sound body, and I had travelled and seen something of the world. Of worldly possessions I had just the small savings of my pay and nothing more, and common-sense told me that if I wanted to win Carette Le Marchant I must be up and doing, and must turn myself to more profitable account.

I do not think there was in me any mercenary motive in this matter. I am quite sure that in so thinking of things I attributed none to Carette. It seemed to me that if a man wanted a wife he ought to be able to keep her, and I considered the girl who married a man of precarious livelihood—as I saw some of them do—very much of a fool. I have since come to know, however, that that is only one way of looking at it, and that to some women the wholehearted love of a true man counts for very much more than anything else he can bring her.

For money, simply as money, I had no craving whatever. For the wife it might help me to, and the security and comfort it might bring to her, I desired it ardently, and my thoughts were much exercised as to how to arrive at it in sufficiency. I found myself at one of the great cross-roads of life, where, I suppose, most men find themselves at one time or another. I knew that much—to me, perhaps, everything—must depend on how I chose now, and I spent much time wandering in lonely places, and lying among the gorse cushions or in the short grass of the headlands, thinking of Carette and trying to see my way to her.

There were open to us all, in those days, four ways of life—more, maybe, if one had gone seeking them, but these four right to our hands.