The Battle of the Strong. Gilbert Parker
for he had a healthy enjoyment of all physical sensations and all the obvious drolleries of life. A broad sort of humour was written upon every feature; in the full, quizzical eye, in the width of cheek-bone, in the broad mouth, and in the depth of the laugh, which, however, often ended in a sort of chuckle not entirely pleasant. It suggested a selfish enjoyment of the odd or the melodramatic side of other people’s difficulties.
At last the youth encased his telescope, and turned to descend the hill to the town. As he did so, a bell began to ring. From where he was he could look down into the Vier Marchi, or market-place, where stood the Cohue Royale and house of legislature. In the belfry of this court-house, the bell was ringing to call the Jurats together for a meeting of the States. A monstrous tin pan would have yielded as much assonance. Walking down towards the Vier Marchi the lad gleefully recalled the humour of a wag who, some days before, had imitated the sound of the bell with the words:
“Chicane—chicane! Chicane—chicane!”
The native had, as he thought, suffered somewhat at the hands of the twelve Jurats of the Royal Court, whom his vote had helped to elect, and this was his revenge—so successful that, for generations, when the bell called the States or the Royal Court together, it said in the ears of the Jersey people—thus insistent is apt metaphor:
“Chicane—chicane! Chicane—chicane!”
As the lad came down to the town, trades-people whom he met touched their hats to him, and sailors and soldiers saluted respectfully. In this regard the Bailly himself could not have fared better. It was not due to the fact that the youth came of an old Jersey family, nor by reason that he was genial and handsome, but because he was a midshipman of the King’s navy home on leave; and these were the days when England’s sailors were more popular than her soldiers.
He came out of the Vier Marchi into La Grande Rue, along the stream called the Fauxbie flowing through it, till he passed under the archway of the Vier Prison, making towards the place where the child had snatched the hat from the head of the Bailly.
Presently the door of a cottage opened, and the child came out, followed by her mother.
The young gentleman touched his cap politely, for though the woman was not fashionably dressed, she was distinguished in appearance, with an air of remoteness which gave her a kind of agreeable mystery.
“Madame Landresse—” said the young gentleman with deference.
“Monsieur d’Avranche—” responded the lady softly, pausing.
“Did the Bailly make a stir? I saw the affair from the hill, through my telescope,” said young d’Avranche, smiling.
“My little daughter must have better manners,” responded the lady, looking down at her child reprovingly yet lovingly.
“Or the Bailly must—eh, Madame?” replied d’Avranche, and, stooping, he offered his hand to the child. Glancing up inquiringly at her mother, she took it. He held hers in a clasp of good nature. The child was so demure, one could scarcely think her capable of tossing the Bailly’s hat into the stream; yet looking closely, there might be seen in her eyes a slumberous sort of fire, a touch of mystery. They were neither blue nor grey, but a mingling of both, growing to the most tender, greyish sort of violet. Down through generations of Huguenot refugees had passed sorrow and fighting and piety and love and occasional joy, until in the eyes of this child they all met, delicately vague, and with the wistfulness of the early morning of life.
“What is your name, little lady?” asked d’Avranche of the child.
“Guida, sir,” she answered simply.
“Mine is Philip. Won’t you call me Philip?”
She flashed a look at her mother, regarded him again, and then answered:
“Yes, Philip—sir.”
D’Avranche wanted to laugh, but the face of the child was sensitive and serious, and he only smiled. “Say ‘Yes, Philip’, won’t you?” he asked.
“Yes, Philip,” came the reply obediently.
After a moment of speech with Madame Landresse, Philip stooped to say good-bye to the child. “Good-bye, Guida.”
A queer, mischievous little smile flitted over her face—a second, and it was gone.
“Good-bye, sir—Philip,” she said, and they parted. Her last words kept ringing in his ears as he made his way homeward. “Good-bye, sir—Philip”—the child’s arrangement of words was odd and amusing, and at the same time suggested something more. “Good-bye, Sir Philip,” had a different meaning, though the words were the same.
“Sir Philip—eh?” he said to himself, with a jerk of the head—“I’ll be more than that some day.”
CHAPTER II
The night came down with leisurely gloom. A dim starlight pervaded rather than shone in the sky; Nature seemed somnolent and gravely meditative. It brooded as broods a man who is seeking his way through a labyrinth of ideas to a conclusion still evading him. This sense of cogitation enveloped land and sea, and was as tangible to feeling as human presence.
At last the night seemed to wake from reverie. A movement, a thrill, ran through the spangled vault of dusk and sleep, and seemed to pass over the world, rousing the sea and the earth. There was no wind, apparently no breath of air, yet the leaves of the trees moved, the weather-vanes turned slightly, the animals in the byres roused themselves, and slumbering folk opening their eyes, turned over in their beds, and dropped into a troubled doze again.
Presently there came a long moaning sound from the tide, not loud but rather mysterious and distant—a plaint, a threatening, a warning, a prelude?
A dull labourer, returning from late toil, felt it, and raised his head in a perturbed way, as though some one had brought him news of a far-off disaster. A midwife, hurrying to a lowly birth-chamber, shivered and gathered her mantle more closely about her. She looked up at the sky, she looked out over the sea, then she bent her head and said to herself that this would not be a good night, that ill-luck was in the air. “The mother or the child will die,” she said to herself. A ‘longshoreman, reeling home from deep potations, was conscious of it, and, turning round to the sea, snarled at it and said yah! in swaggering defiance. A young lad, wandering along the deserted street, heard it, began to tremble, and sat down on a block of stone beside the doorway of a baker’s shop. He dropped his head on his arms and his chin on his knees, shutting out the sound and sobbing quietly.
Yesterday his mother had been buried; to-night his father’s door had been closed in his face. He scarcely knew whether his being locked out was an accident or whether it was intended. He thought of the time when his father had ill-treated his mother and himself. That, however, had stopped at last, for the woman had threatened the Royal Court, and the man, having no wish to face its summary convictions, thereafter conducted himself towards them both with a morose indifference.
The boy was called Ranulph, a name which had passed to him through several generations of Jersey forebears—Ranulph Delagarde. He was being taught the trade of ship-building in St. Aubin’s Bay. He was not beyond fourteen years of age, though he looked more, so tall and straight and self-possessed was he.
His tears having ceased soon, he began to think of what he was to do in the future. He would never go back to his father’s house, or be dependent on him for aught. Many plans came to his mind. He would learn his trade of ship-building, he would become a master-builder, then a shipowner, with fishing-vessels like the great company sending fleets to Gaspe.
At the moment when these ambitious plans had reached the highest point of imagination, the upper half of the door beside him opened suddenly, and he heard men’s voices. He was about to rise and disappear,