CHAPTER XXXIX

FLOWER OF THE FOAM

La Vireville did not go into the little Clos-ajonc with his lady. He waited for her outside, leaning upon its low, whitewashed wall, over which the tamarisk whispered with its feathery foliage. Breaths of the gorse came to him even here, and the whole warm air was vibrating with the lark's ecstasy. And Fortuné could hardly believe his happiness, so strange a thing to him. Old dreams, long put away, came back to him, merged in the new. Had he not yearned sometimes, despite himself, to have, in what remained of this hard and shifting existence of his, brief enough in its pleasures but endless in its unceasing fatigue and peril and anxiety--the life that was often no better than a hunted animal's--to have one place that was home, and shrine, and star? Well, he had his desire now; he had won that place, that heart, at last.

Yet even as he leant there, absorbed in contemplation, his mind was suddenly pierced with a most evil arrow of a thought. What if Raymonde had taken him out of pity, as a woman sometimes will . . . or worse, out of a sense of gratitude?

The idea assailed him so unexpectedly, and so much from without his own consciousness, that La Vireville dropped the strand of tamarisk which he was idly fingering, and started up, straightening himself as under an actual physical blow. Good God, it was impossible! "_No,_" said a tiny derisive voice in his heart, "_far from it! It is very possible. Even as to you yourself she is but a makeshift--you told her so with your own lips--so to her you are only a man for whom she is sorry, and to whom she is under an obligation. So much the better for you! And what else did you expect?_"

And part of this two-sided onslaught La Vireville instantly and furiously repelled. No, no, it was a lie--she was not a makeshift! If he had spilt the best years of his life before another, a barren altar, he knew better now. He loved Raymonde deeply and sincerely, with a better love than he had given to that other. But Raymonde's own motive in accepting him--how should he answer for that? Now that it had once occurred to him, he saw that it was only too likely--she had taken him out of pity.

He leant upon the wall again and covered his eyes with his hand. The scene of his brief wooing, scarce concluded, passed once more before him. Again he saw her studying the gorse blossom, weighing what she should do. Yes, she had taken and returned his kisses--but had he not read compassion in her very eyes at her first sight of him, with that hateful empty sleeve? Yes, she had said that she was proud to bear his name--but that might well be an act of atonement for the past. She had spoken of helping him, of being by his side. Well, there was such a thing--curse it!--as gratitude; and she owed him her freedom, if not her life. But for him she had not stood on Sark to-day. That he had a claim on her had never, till this moment, come into his thoughts. Now his past knight-errantry stared at him like a crime. Her accepted lover . . . from pity and a sense of obligation! Could it really be so? Alas! who was to answer that it was not?

Fortuné uncovered his eyes, and, catching at a sprig of tamarisk, tore at it moodily with his teeth. The lark's song had ceased; even the sunlight seemed dimmed and unreal, as in time of eclipse. Yes, now that the exhilaration was over, he saw that he had been a fool. He glanced at his sleeve, thought of his lean purse, his blackened home. Of course she had accepted him because she was sorry for him, and because she thought that she owed him a debt and must pay it somehow! How could he have come to her expecting anything else, for what had he in the world--except his love--to lay at her feet?

And perhaps, after all, that love was not so strong nor so worthy as he had thought. Fortuné was very little used to introspection, and the thought shook him how easy it was, evidently, to delude oneself. Ought he not, at any rate, to put an end to the situation before it went farther, and, as a man of honour, offer to release Raymonde from the promise which a moment of compassion had wrung from her? . . . The idea was agony, but the wound to his pride was agony too. . . .

And at that very moment Raymonde came along the pebbled path that led from the door of the farmhouse. Her cloak was over her arm, a little basket in her hand; she turned her head and smiled at the old woman and the two children who watched her from the low doorway. And at the sight of her, at the movement of her head, her smile, the thought of releasing her left him as swiftly as it had come to him. He could not do it; he wanted her too much. If she had taken him out of pity or gratitude, so be it!--on whatever terms, so only she were his!

Something of the sudden conflict that had rent him must have been visible in his air, for as he held the gate open for her, and she had thanked him by a smile, she said quickly:

"Qu'avez-vous, mon ami? Was the sun too hot here?"

"I have been thinking over my good fortune," said her lover gravely. "Give me your cloak."

"I am glad that I have it with me," she remarked, as she complied. "I think there is a storm coming up."

La Vireville looked round. She was right; and he, used as he was to scanning the horizon in sailor fashion, had been too much absorbed to notice it. A continent of cloud was rising out of the sea to the north-east.

"I think it will pass over," pronounced the Chouan, looking at it. "But in any case we ought to hasten."

And soon they were making their way over the short turf of the down that runs to the head of the tiny Baie des Eperqueries, where Fortuné had left his boat, the only one riding in that small and solitary harbourage. A rusty culverin of Elizabethan days lay embedded in the short grass at the top. It was nearly low tide; down beneath the cove was tapestried with seaweed, green and purple and spotted, fan-shaped or ribbon-fashioned, and a pair of puffins, from their breeding-place at the other side of the island, sat solemnly side by side, like parrots, on a crag.

"I told the boatman to wait for me here," remarked La Vireville, as they made their way down the zigzag path. "I do not see him anywhere; ah, there he is!"

A jerseyed figure was, in fact, lying on its face about half-way down the slope.

"Come, wake up!" said the émigré, bending over him when they reached him. There being no response to this invitation, he shook the sleeper vigorously.

"Ma foi, this is a very sound sleep!" He stooped and picked up something. "And this is its cause!" He held out to Raymonde an empty brandy flask. "Cognac from our native land! He is dead drunk. What are we to do? Sail without him?"

"Yes," said she, without hesitation.

La Vireville weighed the thought. It was what he wished. Their time together was already so brief, that to put to sea together without a third, even for that short voyage, was a great temptation. "I do not know the channel," he said reflectively, "but the wind will not serve us ill for Guernsey."

"But I have sailed the channel, the Great Russel, several times," said Raymonde quickly. "The mark for the mid-channel, till you get within a mile from the islet of Jethou, is St. Martin's Tower in Guernsey. I can point it out to you. If we put out at once we can get back before the storm comes up--if it is coming up at all--whereas if we go round to the other side of the island, to Creux Harbour, to find a pilot, we shall be indefinitely delayed."

"You are quite right," said her lover, gazing at her where she stood a little below him on the sunlit slope. "But I do not like the look of the weather. Yet I must get back to St. Peter Port and catch the sloop before she sails--I have given my word. The best is for you to stay here, and I will go alone."

"No, no!" she cried vehemently. "That is not safe! You are not familiar with the sunken rocks. I am, and I know something of handling a boat. You will have more than you can do alone."

Yes, he was a one-armed man now! Through his gladness at her decision to accompany him pierced for a second the point of that assailing thought of compassion. But it did not stay with him; he beat it off as one would a vampire, and followed her down the path.

The gulls were screaming overhead, and the waves lopped half-playfully, half-menacingly against the sides of the sailing-boat as he pulled her in from her moorings. As if the two puffins had only waited to know his decision, they now left their perch, and fluttered off with their absurd, ineffectual, mothlike flight.

"I wish you would not come, Raymonde," he said half-heartedly, as he helped her aboard.

"Since when have you become a fairweather sailor, Monsieur Augustin?" she retorted.

"At any rate we will take a reef in the mainsail before we start," said Monsieur Augustin, and together they did it. The small mizen over the stern was still standing, and he left it so. Forward he set the jib only. And as they moved out of the little spellbound harbourage, so painted with the hues of the seaweed, they did not, despite the ruffled, slaty-blue water, appear to be doing anything very foolhardy.

Raymonde steered, because she knew the whereabouts of the 'stones,' and he sat facing her on the thwart, the end of the mainsheet in his hand. Neither spoke much at first; to him, at least, as he gazed at her the hour was sacred. Yes, on whatever terms, so only she were his!

So, almost in silence, they rounded the Pointe de Nez, the extreme northern corner of Sark, and set the course for Guernsey.

"And now," said Raymonde de Guéfontaine, "it is time to tell me how you escaped at Quiberon."

So, as the little boat held on, with a freshening wind, under a sky growing overcast, Fortuné told her. He had not foreseen the exquisite pleasure that it would be to him to make that recital to this, of all listeners.

"It is incredible--miraculous!" she exclaimed at the end, drawing a long breath. "You must have had some talisman, some charm!"

"On the contrary, I refused one," said her lover, laughing, and he told her of Grain d'Orge's consecrated cow's tail. The episode led her to ask news of that unwilling squire of hers, and Fortuné told her that a few weeks ago he had had the satisfaction of receiving, by way of Jersey, a grimy and ill-spelt letter from Kerdronan, in which the veteran campaigner, availing himself of the services of the most cultivated of the band (for he could not even sign his name himself) informed his leader, on the chance of the latter's being alive, that he and various others had escaped to the mainland as indicated, and had made their way up to the Côtes-du-Nord, and that he was reorganising the parishes round Kerdronan against such time as M. Augustin should come back to them. Le Goffic, he added, had been hidden by some peasants at Quiberon till he was sufficiently recovered to sail across to Sarzeau, in the peninsula of Rhuis, and thence he had joined the forces of Charette in Vendée. But since Charette's capture and execution last March he also, thought Grain d'Orge, was probably on his way to Kerdronan.

"But I _had_ a talisman, Raymonde," said the narrator, breaking off. "I had the thought of you, as I have told you. That very unpleasant night at Quiberon, had you not been with me, I should certainly have lain there on the shore till I was found."

"And you had another also," replied Raymonde, glancing aloft at the foreleach of the sail. "What of the little boy--the little boy who cried so for you?"

"Eh bien, cela n'empêchait pas," asseverated La Vireville.--"Yes, it would be better to luff a little; the wind is undoubtedly getting up, and I shall be glad when we make the harbour.--You are right, I had the thought of Anne too, for I had promised his father to look after him if necessary--I forget if I told you that--but as, mercifully, M. de Flavigny was saved, you cannot be _Anne's_ mother, Raymonde."

"He is a darling child," said Mme. de Guéfontaine softly, putting the tiller farther over as she was recommended. Her eyes sparkled, then fell. Perhaps that same thought at which Fortuné had hinted was in her mind too at that moment. In Fortuné's at any rate shone that old dream of his of standing under the larches at Kerdronan with her--and another. Yet now as he gazed at her, sitting, so unbelievably, at the helm of his boat, he suddenly saw, behind her, something else. . . . He gave an exclamation and let go the mainsheet.

"Keep the helm over--hard!" he said. "There is a squall coming; it will be on us in a moment. We must have this sail down. Don't leave the tiller!" And without losing a second he began to tug at the mainsail halyards.

But, the blocks running stiffly, or the ropes being swollen, before the sail was more than half-way down the squall struck them, with a howling blast that seemed to issue from some stupendous bellows, and rain that fell like steel rods. Over, over went the little boat, staggering under the onset, while Fortuné fought desperately both to get the sail completely down and to prevent it, as it came, from flapping into the angry water and pulling them under. It came back to him, like a demon's laughter, as he wrestled with it one-handed, how a few short hours ago he had said that two arms were unnecessary. What a lie!

Yet one terrible question only occupied his mind as he got the sail under control, and as the struggling boat, preserved from overturning only by the way which she had on her, began to right herself--Raymonde! Had she been swept out--for they had been at a fearful angle? No, she was still at her post, clinging to the tiller, gasping, and white as death. But she had not lost her head, and that had saved them. She knew as well as her lover that to keep the helm down was their one chance of avoiding being swamped by the great green seas that were all setting in fury towards the island, and bearing them, half full of water as they were, at each plunge a little nearer to the rocks. Without a word, except her name, uttered in something between a sob and a curse, La Vireville threw himself too on the groaning tiller, and for a few minutes they stood there side by side, staggering with the oscillations of the maddened craft, with the strength of both their bodies bent to one end--to keep that bar of wood, and with it the rudder, as it should be, against the malignant will of the storm. This was their true betrothal, handfasted by the tempest, and, as they would never have known it on the golden and enchanted island, among the gorse, they knew without the interchange of a word, in the howling wind, the pelting, stinging rain, with the water they had shipped swirling about their feet, that they were one indeed.

* * * * *

And presently the boat began to drive forward more violently. They were abreast of Les Autelets by this time, those fantastic pinnacles that on a sunset evening were things of wonder, now black and sullen amid the flying spray. Above them, too near for safety, frowned the rocky walls of the island, magical no longer (save with an evil magic), but sinister beyond belief. And soon they would come to Brechou, the satellite islet, between which and Sark runs a race so strong that no boat can live in it. And there were the sunken rocks, impossible to avoid now. At any moment they might be dashed on to one of them. Moreover, the boat was so full of water that there seemed almost as much danger of her sinking under them as of her being swamped or overturned.

"One of us must bale!" shouted Fortune in Raymonde's ear. "You, I think."

She obeyed him instantly, and abandoning the tiller and his side, crawled forward through the water, found a baling tin and set to work. And the man who saw that fine and unquestioning obedience knew for a moment the most bitter regret that the human heart can hold. Why had he been so mad as to come, as to bring her? He had risked his treasure, so newly found, so inexpressibly dear--risked it (and that was the worst) without need, and was now to lose it. For all this effort seemed but postponing the inevitable end. . . . But at least the salt water and the rain had washed him clean of the traces of that long infatuation--yes, and of the light loves of his youth. Now he was hers only, and he and no other man would go down with her under the greedy, hissing waves and share her sleep. . . .

Meanwhile she toiled there, crouched in the bottom of the boat, her wet hair blown in streaks across her face, while he kept the boat's head as much to the seas as he dared, only easing the helm on the approach of a wave that seemed heavy enough to drive her bows under. But immediately afterwards he would luff right into the crest of the wave, and then as their labouring progress was thereby checked, must put the helm up again for a second, to get the sails full once more, lest the boat should roll over into the trough. It was a task calling for a stout heart and the nicest judgment, and never by a word, nor even by a look, did Raymonde de Guéfontaine, unceasingly working also, distract him or show a sign of fear.

In such tension time scarcely exists, and it would have been hard for Fortuné to say how long he had battled with the immense hostility so suddenly arrayed against them, nor how much water Raymonde's aching arms had, with almost mechanical action, thrown overboard, before it began to seem to him that the smoother sea which followed every three vehement waves or so was of longer duration. Was it possible that the wind was abating? Only then, with the dawn of the first real ray of hope in his heart, did Fortuné become conscious too that with the lessening of the squall the island on their lee had disappeared, blotted out by the pall of mingled mist and rain which enshrouded them also. Perhaps they were still near it for all that? But since the roar of the breaking surf was no longer audible, it struck him that they must be drifting away from Sark, borne by one of those currents, perhaps, of which the boatman had spoken.

"The worst is over, I think," he shouted to Raymonde. She nodded, stopping her baling for a moment to put back her dripping hair, and smiled--it was like a star coming out in a wet sky.

And even as Fortuné shouted he realised that an ordinary tone would have carried to her ear. The uproar had ceased--nay, the wind had dropped almost dead; he could hardly get the jib to draw. They seemed to be motionless in a white silence, though doubtless they were moving faster than they knew. For an instant he thought of hoisting the mainsail again, then decided against it. Of what use advancing when they could see nothing and had no idea of direction? The sea was still agitated, lifting up countless plucking hands in uneasy bravado, but there was no danger in that. So he left the tiller and stooped over Raymonde.

"That is enough. You have the better of it now, brave heart! My darling, my darling, how wet you are, and how cold!" He pulled her to him, and opening the breast of his soaked redingote made her pillow her head there. She shivered a little and clung to him, and a strange, cold, remote happiness descended upon them both as they drifted on, physically and mentally spent, in a sort of limbo between death and life--neither ghosts nor yet fully sentient, floating in a dream that was not a dream, and a reality that counterfeited illusion.

All at once the pall of mist was rent in front of them with dramatic suddenness, and Fortuné had a momentary glimpse of something that looked like a great white wing.

"Was that a sail?" asked Raymonde quietly, who had seen it too.

"The sloop, as I live!" cried her lover, starting up. "Pray God she does not run us down!" He shouted lustily, then threw himself again on the tiller.

But the damp white veil enclosed them once more. His shouts seemed to return upon themselves. Raymonde sat, her chin on her hand, on a thwart. He had never seen anyone so calm.

And then, gradually, the curtain of mist began to part a little on their left, and to draw upwards like the curtain of a theatre. And slowly, as on a stage, there came into sight the rock front of Guernsey, with its fall to sea-level, the sun catching the windows of St. Peter Port, and the white sails of the _Cormorant_, close reefed, about half a mile away.

Steadying the tiller against his body, Fortuné pulled out a sodden handkerchief and waved vigorously. Raymonde watched, not the plunging progress of the sloop, but her lover. And, as the mist melted in all directions from about them, the lovely, treacherous, baffled sea of the Channel Islands began to be blue again with the beguiling laughter that hides a hundred graves.

"She is putting about--she has seen us!" said La Vireville, lowering his arm.

Then, and then only, did Raymonde de Guéfontaine show the whole of her heart. For she cast herself sobbing on her lover's breast, clinging to him as she had not clung during all the stress of their hour of anguish.

"Fortuné, Fortuné, God is good! I could not have borne to die to-day--to lose you so soon! I love you better than my soul. . . . I have always loved you--always, always. . . ."

He strained her closer to him, seeing nothing but her wet eyes that looked into his at last.

"You are the woman I have waited for all my life! I knew it before, but now . . . a thousand times more clearly!"

And as the sloop, shaking out her canvas, bore gallantly towards them, his lips, salt with the brine of the just-weathered death, sealed on hers the knowledge of a happiness whose full security those very waves had taught them, never to be in question again.

THE END

PRINTED BY MORRISON AND GIBS LTD., EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND

TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES

Printing errors have been corrected as follows: "rythmical" changed to "rhythmical" on p. 69; "everyone brought conviction" changed to "every one brought conviction" on p. 164; inverted commas added after "fivepence" on p. 279 and after "to sleep a little" on p. 289. Otherwise, inconsistencies and possible errors have been preserved.