Carette of Sark. John Oxenham
grief of her father.
Martel built a little cottage at the head of the chasm which drops into Havre Gosselin, and her father, Philip Carré, lived lonely on his little farm of Belfontaine, by Port à la Jument, with no companion but his dumb man Krok.
Rachel seemed quite happy in her marriage. There had been many predictions among the gossips as to its outcome, and sharp eyes were not lacking to detect the first signs of the fulfilment of prophecy, nor reasons for visits to the cottage at La Frégondée with a view to discovering them. And perhaps Rachel understood all that perfectly well. She was her father's daughter, and Philip Carré was one of the most intelligent and deep-thinking men I have ever met.
Her nearest neighbour and chief friend was Jeanne Falla of Beaumanoir, widow of Peter Le Marchant, whose brother John lived on Brecqhou and made a certain reputation there both for himself and the island. She was old enough to have been Rachel's mother, and Rachel may have confided in her. If she did so her confidence was never abused, for Jeanne Falla could talk more and tell less than any woman I ever knew, and that I count a very great accomplishment.
She was a Guernsey woman by birth, but had lived on Sercq for over twenty years. Her husband was drowned while vraicking a year after they were married, and she had taken the farm in hand and made more of it than ever he would have done if he had lived to be a hundred, for the Le Marchants always tended more to the sea than to the land, though Jeanne Falla's Peter, I have been told, was more shore-going than the rest. She had no child of her own, and that was the only lack in her life. She made up for it by keeping an open heart to all other children, whereby many gained through her loss, and her loss turned to gain even for herself.
When Rachel's boy came she made as much of him as if he had been her own. And the two between them named him Philip Carré after his grandfather—instinct, maybe, or possibly simply with the idea of pleasing the old man, whose heart had never come fully round to the marriage—happily done, whatever the reason.
For Martel, outside business matters, which needed a clear head and all a man's wits about him unless he wanted to run himself and his cargoes into trouble, soon proved himself unstable as water. The nature of his business tended to conviviality. Successful runs were celebrated, and fresh ones planned, and occasional losses consoled, in broached kegs which cost little. Success or failure found equal satisfaction in the flowing bowl, and no home happiness ever yet came out of a bung-hole.
Then, too, Rachel Carré had been brought up by her father in a simple, perhaps somewhat rigorous, faith, which in himself developed into Quakerism. I have thought it not impossible that in that might be found some explanation of her action in marrying Paul Martel. Perhaps her father drew the lines somewhat tightly, and her opening life craved width and colour, and found the largest possibilities of them in the rollicking young stranger. Truly he brought colour enough and to spare into the sober gray of her life. It was when the red blood started under his vicious blows that their life together ended.
Martel had no beliefs whatever, except in himself and his powers of outwitting any preventive officer ever born.
Rachel Carré's illusions died one by one. The colours faded, the gray darkened. Martel was much away on his business; possibly also on his pleasures.
One night, after a successful run, he returned home very drunk, and discovered more than usual cause for resentment in his wife's reproachful silence. He struck her, wounding her to the flowing of blood, and she picked up her boy and fled along the cliffs to Beaumanoir where Jeanne Falla lived, with George Hamon not far away at La Vauroque.
Jeanne Falla took her in and comforted her, and as soon as George Hamon heard the news, he started off with a neighbour or two to Frégondée to attend to Martel.
In the result, and not without some tough fighting, for Martel was a powerful man and furious at their invasion, they carried him in bonds to the house of the Sénéchal, Pierre Le Masurier, for judgment. And M. le Sénéchal, after due consideration, determined, like a wise man, to rid himself of a nuisance by flinging it over the hedge, as one does the slugs that eat one's cabbages. Martel came from Guernsey and was not wanted in Sercq. To Guernsey therefore he should go, with instructions not to return to Sercq lest worse should follow. Hence the procession that disturbed the slumbers of the Creux Road that day.
CHAPTER II
HOW RACHEL CARRÉ WENT BACK TO HER FATHER
"You paid off some of your old score up there, last night, George," said one of the men who had stood watching the boat which carried Martel back to Guernsey.
"Just a little bit," said Hamon, as he rubbed his hand gently over a big bruise on the side of his head. "He's a devil to fight and as strong as an ox;" and they turned and followed the Sénéchal and Philip Carré through the tunnel.
"Good riddance!" said a woman in the crowd, taking off her black sun-bonnet and giving it an angry shake before putting it on again. "We don't want any of that kind here,"—with a meaning look at the big fishermen behind, which set them grinning and winking knowingly.
"Aw then, Mistress Guilbert," said one, lurching uncomfortably under her gaze, with his hands deep in his trouser pockets. "We others know better than that."
"And a good thing for you, too. That kind of work won't go down in Sercq, let me tell you. Ma fé, no!" and the crowd dribbled away through the tunnel to get back to its work again.
The Sénéchal was busy planting late cabbages and time was precious. The grave-faced fisherman, who had stood behind the crowd, tramped up the narrow road by his side.
"Well, Carré, you're rid of him. I hope for good," said the Sénéchal.
"Before God, I hope so, M. le Sénéchal! He has a devil."
"How goes it with Mistress Rachel this morning?"
"She says little."
"But thinks the more, no doubt. She has suffered more than we know, I fear."
"Like enough."
"I never could understand why she threw herself away on a man like that."
"It was not for want of warning."
"I am sure. Well, she has paid. I hope this ends it."
But the other shook his head doubtfully, and as they parted at the crossways, he said gloomily, "She'll know no peace till he's under the sea or the sod." And the Sénéchal nodded and strode thoughtfully away towards Beauregard, while Carré went on to Havre Gosselin.
When he reached the cottage at the head of the chasm, he lifted the latch and went in. He was confronted by a small boy of three or so, who at sound of the latch had snatched a stick from the floor, with a frown of vast determination on his baby face—an odd, meaningful action.
At sight of Philip Carré, however, the crumpled face relaxed instantly, and the youngster launched himself at him with a shout of welcome.
At sound of the latch, too, a girlish figure had started up from the lit-de-fouaille in the corner by the hearth—the great square couch built out into the room and filled with dried bracken, the universal lounge in the Islands, and generally of a size large enough to accommodate the entire family.
This was Carré's daughter, Rachel, Martel's wife. Her face was very comely. She was the Island beauty when Martel married her, and much sought after, which made her present state the more bitter to contemplate. Her face was whiter even than of late, at the moment, by reason of the dark circles of suffering round her eyes and the white cloth bound round her head. She sat up and looked at her father, with the patient expectancy of one who had endured much and doubted still what might be in store for her.