Chapter 8

For a moment he was mystified, then his eye fell on Margaret's face, full of glorious confusion at this base betrayal by her bosom friend.

"The Sark air does get into people's heads like that at times," he said diplomatically. "It's just in the first few days. But you soon get used to it. I felt just the same myself--losing faith in things and thinking ill of my friends, and so on. You'll be quite all right in a day or two, Miss Penny,"--with a touch of sympathetic commiseration in his voice.

"Oh, I'm quite all right now," said Miss Penny enjoyably. "I thought it only right and proper to let you know where you stand. At the present moment you are as likely as not aiding and abetting a breaker of the British laws and her accomplice. You may become involved in serious complications, you see."

"If that means that I can be of any service in the matter I shall be only too delighted,--if you will not look upon me as an intruder." He spoke to Miss Penny but looked at Margaret.

"Ah-ha! Qualms of conscience----"

"Hennie is a little raised, Mr. Graeme," broke in Margaret. "Please excuse her. A good night's rest will make her all right."

"Never felt better in my life," sparkled Miss Penny. "But seriously, Mr. Graeme, it is only right you should understand, for we don't quite know where we are ourselves, and I'm going to tell you even though Margaret kicks all the skin off my leg in the process. In a word,--we've bolted."

"Bolted?" he echoed, all aglow with hopeful interest.

"Yes--from Mr. Pixley and all his works. And as he had been threatening to make us a Ward of Court, you see--well, there you are, don't you know."

"I see," he said, and there was a new light in his eyes as he looked at Margaret, and his soul danced within him again as David's before the Ark.

"For reasons which seemed adequate to myself, Mr. Graeme,"--began Margaret, in more sober explanation.

"They were, they were. I am sure of it," sang his heart. And his brain asked eagerly, "Had Charles Svendt anything to do with it, I wonder?"

"--I thought it well to remove myself from the care of my guardian Mr. Pixley----"

"Splendid girl! Splendid girl!" sang his heart.

"--And as I have still some of my time to serve----"

"How long, O Lord, how long?" chaunted his heart, with no sense of impropriety, for it was sounding pæans of joyful hope.

"--You see----" said Margaret.

"I see."

"Do you think they could make me go back to him?" she asked anxiously.

"To Mr. Pixley? Certainly not--that is if your reasons for leaving him seemed adequate to the Court, as I am sure they would."

She offered no explanation on this point. All that she left unsaid, and that he would have given much to hear, seemed dancing just inside Miss Penny's sparkling eyes, and as like as not to come dancing out at any moment.

"You see," said Graeme, "I happen to have been making some enquiries from a legal friend on that very point----"

"Oh!" said Margaret, and Miss Penny's eyes danced carmagnoles.

"In connection with a story, you know. One likes to get one's legal points all right. In any case, as I was just about to tell Miss Penny for the benefit of her criminal friend, there would be lots of red tape to unwind before they could do anything, and this little isle of Sark is the quaintest place in the world in the matter of its own old observances and their integrity, and the rejection of new ideas. Mr. Pixley does not know you are here, of course?"

"Not much, or he'd have been over by special boat long since," said Miss Penny. "We managed it splendidly."

"And how long?" began Graeme, in pursuance of his train of thought, but stopped short at sound of the words, since they bore distant resemblance to a curiosity which seemed to himself impertinent.

But Miss Penny knew no such compunctions. She did not want to miss one jot or tittle of her enjoyment of the situation.

"About six months," said she quickly.

"Well, I should think we"--how delightful to him that "we," and how Miss Penny rejoiced in it!--"could hold them at bay for that length of time. The machinery of the law is slow and cumbersome at best, and in this case, I imagine, it would not be difficult to put a few additional spokes in its wheels."

If his face was anything to go by there were many more questions he would have liked to put--judicial questions, you understand, for a fuller comprehension of the case. But he would not venture them yet. He had got ample food for reflection for the moment, and his hopes stood high.

Never for him had there been a dinner equal to that one. Better ones he had partaken of in plenty. But the full board and the quality of the faring are not the only things, nor by any means the chief things, that go to the making of a feast.

The nearest approach to it had been that dinner with the Whitefriars, at which he first met Margaret Brandt, and that did not come within measurable distance of this one.

XII

"Will you be pleased to tek your dinner with the leddies again to-night?" asked Mrs. Carré, as she gave Graeme his breakfast next morning.

"I would be delighted," he said doubtfully. "But are you quite sure they would wish it, Mrs. Carré."

"But you did get on all right with them," she said, eyeing him wonderingly. "They are very nice leddies, I am sure."

"Oh, we got on first rate. We didn't quarrel over the food or fall out in any way. But----"

"Well then?"

"Will it be any easier for you?" he asked thoughtfully.

"Well, of course, it will be once setting instead of twice, and that iss easier----"

"Then suppose you put it to them on that ground, Mrs. Carré, solely on that ground, you understand. And if they are agreeable, I--well, I shall not raise any objections."

And so, presently, Mrs. Carré said to the ladies, "You did get on all right with the gentleman last night, yes?"

"Oh, quite, Mrs. Carré," sparkled Miss Penny.

"I wass wondering if it would please you to dine all at once together again each night. You see, it would save me the trouble of setting twice. I did ask him and he said he didn't mind if you didn't. He iss a very nice quiet gentleman, I am sure."

"I'm sure it's very good of him," said Miss Penny. "By all means serve us all at once together, Mrs. Carré. I guess we can stand it if he can."

"That iss all right then," said Mrs. Carré, and the common evening meal became an institution--to Graeme's vast enjoyment.

XIII

When the girls went into their room after breakfast to put on their hats and scrambling shoes, they saw Graeme sitting on the low stone wall, as usual, smoking his after-breakfast pipe, and they caught a part of the conversation in progress between him and Johnny Vautrin.

"I see five crows 's mawnin'," they heard in Johnnie's sepulchral voice.

"Really, now! Catch any?"

"There wuss five crows."

"Ah--five? That's an odd number! And what special ill-luck do you infer from five crows, Johnnie?"

"Someone's goan to be sick," said Johnnie, with joyous anticipation.

"Dear me! That's what five crows mean, is it?"

"Ouaie!"

"They didn't go into particulars, I suppose,--as to who it is likely to be, for instance, and the exact nature of the seizure?"

"They flew over to church there and settled in black trees."

"Vicar, maybe, since they went that way."

"Mebbe!"--hopefully.

"Well, well! Perhaps if we gave him a hint he might take some precautions."

"Couldn' tek nauthen 'd be any use 'gainst crows. Go'zamin, they knows!"

"You're just a confirmed old croaker, Johnnie."

"A'n't!" said Johnnie.

"Where's our old friend Marielihou?"

"She's a-busy," said Johnnie, wriggling uncomfortably.

"Ah,--killing something, I presume. Is it going to keep fine for the next three or four weeks?"

"I don' think."

"You don't, you little rascal?"

"You might do your best for us, Johnnie," said Miss Penny, as they came through the gap in the wall. "And if it keeps fine all the time I'll give you--let me see, I'll give you a shilling when we go away."

Johnnie's avidious little claw reached out eagerly.

"Godzamin!" said he. "Gimme it now, an' I'll do my best."

"Earn it, my child," said Miss Penny, and they went on up the road, leaving Johnnie scowling in the hedge.

"Well, where would you like to go to-day?" asked Graeme. "Will you leave yourselves in my hands again?"

"I'm sure we can't do better," said Miss Penny heartily. "Yesterday was a day of days. What do you say, Meg?"

"It looks as though we were going to occupy a great deal of Mr. Graeme's time," said Meg non-committally.

"It could not possibly be better occupied," he said exuberantly.

"And how about your story, Mr. Graeme? Is it at a standstill?" asked Miss Penny.

"Not at all. It's getting on capitally."

"Why, when do you work at it?"

"Oh,--between times, and when the spirit moves me and I've got nothing better to do."

"Is that how one writes books?"

"Sometimes. How do you feel about caves?"

"Ripping! If there's one thing we revel in it's caves, principally because we know nothing about them."

"Then we'll break you in on Grève de la Ville. They're comparatively easy, and another day we'll do the Boutiques and the Gouliots. Then we can get a whole day full of caves by going round the island in a boat--red caves and green caves and black caves and barking-dog caves--all sorts and conditions of caves--caves studded all round with anemones, and caves bristling with tiny jewelled sponges. Sark is just a honeycomb of caves."

"Spiffing!" said Miss Penny. "If Mr. Pixley gets on our track we'll play hide-and-seek in them with him."

"Then we ought to spend a day on Brecqhou--"

"A day on Brecqhou without a doubt!"

"And if we can get the boat from Guernsey to call for us at the Eperquerie, and can get a boat there to put us aboard, we might manage Alderney."

"Sounds a bit if-fy, but tempting thereby. Margaret, my dear, our work is cut out for us."

"And Mr. Graeme's cut out from him, I'm afraid."

"Oh, not at all, I assure you. It's going ahead like steam," and they began to descend into Grève de la Ville, the dogs as usual ranging the cliff-sides after rabbits, disappearing altogether at times and then flashing suddenly into view half a mile away among the gorse and bracken.

Sark scrambling requires caution and constant asistance from the practised to the unpractised hand, and Graeme omitted none of the necessary precautions. Whereby Margaret's throbbing hand was much in his,--so, indeed, was Miss Penny's, but that was quite another matter,--and every convulsive grip of the little hand, though it was caused by nothing more than the uncertainties of the way, set his heart dancing and riveted the golden chains still more firmly round it.

There are difficult bits in those caves in the Grève de la Ville,--steep ascents, and black drops in sheer faith into unknown depths, and tight squeezes past sloping shelves which seem on the point of closing and cracking one like a nut; and when they crawled out at last into a boulder-strewn plateau, open to the sea on one side only, they sighed gratefully at the ample height and breadth of things, and sank down on the shingle to breathe the free air and sunshine.

He amused them by telling them how, the last time he was there, he found an elderly gentleman sitting with his head in his hands, on that exact spot. And how, at sight of the new-comer, he had come running to him and fallen sobbing on his neck. He had been there for over an hour seeking the way out, and not being able to find it, had got into a panic.

"I wonder if you could find the place we came in, now?" said Graeme. "Scamp, lie down, sir, and don't give me away!"

"Why, certainly, it's just there," said Miss Penny, jumping up energetically and marching across, while the dogs grinned open-mouthed at her lack of perception. For it wasn't there at all, and she searched without avail, and at last sat down again saying, "Well, I sympathise with your old gentleman, Mr. Graeme. If I was all alone here, and unable to find that hole, I should go into hysterics, though it's not a thing I'm given to. I suppose we did get in somehow."

"Obviously! And that's where the advantage of a guide comes in, you see."

"I, for one, appreciate him highly, I can assure you. Where is that wretched hole?"

"Here it is, you see. It's a tricky place. I shall never forget the look of relief on that old fellow's face at sight of me. I believe he thinks to this day that I saved his life. He stuck to me like a leech all the way through the further caves and till we got back to the entrance."

"We're not through them yet then?"

"Through? Bless me no, we're only just starting, but there's no use hurrying. Tide's right, and we have plenty of time."

"I feel as if I'd been lost and found again," said Miss Penny. "If Mr. Pixley comes along we'll induce him in here and leave him to find his way out."

"It would take more than you to get Mr. Pixley in here, Hennie," said Margaret quietly. "He'd never venture off the roads, even if he risked his life in reaching Sark. He's much too careful of himself."

"He thinks a good deal more of himself than I do," said Miss Penny. "With all deference to you, Meg, since he's a relative, I consider him a jolly old humbug."

XIV

The days were packed with enjoyment for Graeme; not less for Miss Penny; nor--illuminated and titillated with a conposed expectancy as to whither all this might be leading her--for Margaret herself.

Graeme took the joyful burden of their proper entertainment entirely on his own shoulders. He reaped in full now the harvest of his lonely wanderings, and compared those former gloomy days with these golden ones with a heart so jubilant that the light of it shone in his eyes and in his face, and made him fairly radiant.

"That young man grows handsomer every day," was Miss Penny's appreciative comment, in the privacy of hair-brushing.

Margaret expressed no opinion.

"I thought him uncommonly good-looking as soon as I set eyes on him, but he's growing upon me. I do hope, for his sake, that I shan't fall in love with him."

And at that a tiny gleam of a smile hovered for a moment in the curves of Margaret's lips, behind the silken screen of her hair.

No trouble was too great for him if it added to their pleasure. He provisioned their expeditions with lavish discrimination. He forgot nothing,--not even the salt. He carried burdens and kindled fires for the boiling of kettles, and saw to their comfort and more, in every possible way. He assisted them up and down steep places, and Margaret's hand grew accustomed to the steady strength of his. She came to look for the helping hand whenever the ways grew difficult. At times she--yes, actually, she caught herself grudging Hennie-Penny what seemed to her too long an appropriation of it.

Never surely were the beauties of Sark seen under happier auspices, or through eyes attuned to more lively appreciation. For love-lit eyes see all things lovely, and no more perfect loveliness of sea and rock and flower and sky may be found than such as go to the making of this little isle of Sark.

He guided their more active energies through the anemone-studded and sponge-fringed caves under the Gouliots; through the long rough-polished, sea-scoured passages of the Boutiques; down the seamed cliffs at Les Fontaines and Grande Grève; along the precarious tracks and iron rings into Derrible; with the assistance of a rope, into Le Pot. And for rest-times they spent long delightful afternoons sitting among the blazing gorse cushions of the Eperquerie, and on that great rock that elbows Tintageu into the waves, and looks down on the one side on Port du Moulin and the Autelets, and on the other into Pegane Bay and Port á la Jument.

This high perch had a peculiar fascination for Margaret. She could have sat there day after day with perfect enjoyment. She never tired of it all--the crisp green waters below, with their dazzling fringe of foam round every gray rock and headland; the gold-tipped pinnacles of the Autelets, with their fluttering halos of gulls and sea-pies and cormorants, and their ridi-fringe of tawny seaweed and foamy lace; the rounded slopes of the Eperquerie; the bold cliffs behind, with their sprawling gray feet in the emerald sea, and their green and gold shoulders humping up into the blue sky; beyond them the black Gouliot rocks and foaming Race, and the long soft bulk of Brecqhou with its seamy sides and black-mouthed caves.

And here one day they had a novel experience, and Margaret learned something--got fullest proof, at all events, of something her heart had already told her.

They were sitting in the sea-ward cleft of this great rock behind Tintageu, one afternoon, and Graeme had just succeeded in getting the kettle to boil by means of an armful of old gorse bushes, when, straightening up for a rest, he said suddenly,--"Hello! Look at that now!" and pointed out towards Guernsey.

And there they saw a low white cloud, lying on the sea as though it had just dropped solidly out of the sky. Sea and sky were vivid vital blue, the sun shone brilliantly, Guernsey, Jethou, and Herm gleamed like jewels, and the white cloud lay between the upper and the nether blue like the white ghost of a new-born island not yet invested with the attributes of earth.

And, as they watched, it crept quickly along the blue-enamelled plain. It swallowed up the southern cliffs of Guernsey. Its creeping nose was level with the tall Doyle column. It crept on and on, till Castle Cornet disappeared and Peter Port was lost to sight. On and on--Jethou was gone, and bit by bit the long green and gold slopes of Herm were conquered, and its long white spear of sand ran out of the low white cloud. And still on, till all the outlying rocks and islands vanished, and where had been the glow and colour of life was nothing now but that strange pall-like cloud.

The blue of the sea in front had whitened, and suddenly the sentinel rocks at the tail of Brecqhou disappeared, and the white cloud came sweeping towards the watchers on the rock by Tintageu.

"We're in for it too," said Graeme, hastily emptying his kettle and packing up the tea-things. "Seems to me we'd better get ashore."

But the cloud was on them, soft films of gauzy mist with the sun still bright overhead. Then quickly-rolling folds of dense white cloud blotted out everything but the path on which they stood. The gorse and blue-bells and sea-pinks at their feet drooped suddenly wan and colourless, as though stricken with mortal sickness, and wept sad tears. They stood bewildered, while the pallid folds grew thicker and thicker, lit from above with a strange spectral glare, and coiling about them like the trailing garments of an army of ghosts. From the unseen abysses all round came the growl and wash of wave on rock and shingle, from the cliff above Pegane came the frightened bleat of a lamb, and an invisible gull went squawking over their heads on his way inland.

With an instinct for safer quarters, Miss Penny had started off towards the path which led precariously across the narrow neck to the mainland. The neck itself, with white clouds of mist billowing on either side, and streaming raggedly across the path, looked fearsome enough. She gave a startled cry and stood still.

"Stay here!" said Graeme to Margaret. "Don't move an inch!" and he felt his way, foot by foot, towards the causeway.

And Margaret, who had been regarding it all simply as a curious experience, felt suddenly very lonely and not very safe.

She heard him speak to Miss Penny, but she could not see two feet in front of her.

Then, after what seemed a long time, she heard above her--

"Miss Brandt? Margaret? Oh, good God!"--and there was in his voice a note that was new to her. Sharp and strident with keenest anxiety, it set a sudden fire in her heart, for it was for her.

"I am here, Mr. Graeme," she cried, and he came plunging down to her through the dripping gorse and bracken.

"Thank God!" he said fervently. "Why ever did you move?"

"I have not stirred."

"I must have got wrong. It is blinding. It will be safest to wait here, I think. Will you hold on to my arm?"

And as she slipped her hand through it she felt it trembling--the arm that had always been so strong and steadfast in her service--and she knew that this too was for her.

"Where is Hennie?" she asked.

"She's all right. I made her sit down among the bushes and told her she'd surely get smashed if she moved."

It was a good half-hour before the cloud drew off and they saw Guernsey, Herm, and Jethou sparkling in the sun once more.

Then they crossed the narrow path over the neck, and Margaret was glad they had not attempted it in the fog.

They picked up Miss Penny, damp but cheerful, and went home. For everything was dripping, and the pleasures of camping out were over for that day, but there were fires about that all the fogs that ever had been could not begin to extinguish.

XV

As the girls sat basking in the window-seat for a few minutes after breakfast one morning, they surprised a private conversation between their cavalier and Master Johnnie Vautrin. Graeme, with his back to them, sat smoking on the low stone wall. Johnnie was, as usual, bunched up in the hedge opposite.

"Well, Johnnie?" they heard. "Seen any crows this morning?"

"Ouaie!"

"How many then, you wretched little croaker?"

"J'annéveu deu et j'annéveu troy."

"Ah now, it's not polite--as I've told you before--to talk to an uneducated foreigner, in a language he does not understand. How many, in such English as you have attained to, and what did they mean according to your wizardry?"

"Pergui, you, too, are not polite! Your words are like this"--measuring off an expanding half yard in the air,--"they are all wind."

"Smart boy! How many crows did you see this morning?"

"First I saw two and then I saw three."

"Two and three make five. Croaker! Five crows mean someone's going to be sick. And which way did they go this time?"

"Noh, noh! First it wass two, and when they had gone then it wass three more."

"I see. And two black crows--what might they mean now?"

"Two crows they mean good luck."

"Clever boy! Continue! Three black crows mean----?"

"Three crows--they mean a marrying,--ouaie, Dame!"

"Ah, a marrying! That's better! That is very much better. It strikes me, Johnnie, that two lucky crows are worth twopence, and three marrying crows are worth threepence. And as luck would have it I've got exactly five pennies in my pocket. Catch, bearer of good tidings! Here you are--one, two, three, four, five! Well caught! Is it going to keep fine?" and Marielihou stopped licking herself to look at Graeme, and then went on again with an air of,--"I could tell you things if I would, but it's not worth while,"--in her ugly green eyes.

"I don' think," said Johnnie, jumping at the chance of ill news.

"You don't, you little rascal? Here, give me back my hard-earned pence! You're a little humbug."

"What's Johnnie been up to now?" asked Miss Penny, as she came out into the open.

"He's giving me lessons in necromancy and the black art of crows. He declines to pledge his honour on the continued brightness of the day."

"Oh, Johnnie! And we're going to Brecqhou!"

"I cann'd help."

"But you might send us on our way rejoicing."

"Gimme six pennies an' I will say it will be fine."

"I'm beginning to think you're of a grasping disposition, Johnnie. If you don't take care you'll die rich."

"Go'zamin, I wu'n't mind."

Then Graeme came out again, with the hamper he had had packed in the kitchen under his own supervision, and their cloaks, which, thanks to Johnnie, he had picked off the nails in the passage, and they set off for Havre Gosselin and Brecqhou.

XVI

"You'll not forget to come back for us about eight," Graeme shouted to the boatmen, as they pushed off from the fretted black rock on which their passengers had just made precarious landing.

"Nossir!" and they pulled away to their fishing.