A Maid of the Silver Sea Part 44

He lay there, laxed with the over-strain of all this upsetting, but rejoicing placidly in this one more day of life.

He felt like one granted a day's respite as he stands on the scaffold with the rope round his neck.

Never had the sun shone so brightly. Never had the silver sea danced so merrily. It might be the last he would see of them.

And the sun wheeled on towards Guernsey, and made his deliberate preparations for a setting beyond the ordinary; for the sun, you must know, takes a very special pride in showing the great cliffs of Sark what he can do in the way of transformation scenes and most transcendent colouring.

And Stephen Gard lay there under the ridge on L'Etat, with the wonder and beauty of it all in his face and in his heart, and said to himself that it was probably the last sunset he would ever see, and he was glad to have seen it at its best.

He had a vague idea that heaven would be something like that--tenderly soft and beautiful, and glowing with radiances of unearthly splendour, which whispered to weary hearts of the peace and joy that lay beyond, and gently called them home to rest.

His theology was, without doubt, of the most elemental and objective, and would not have carried him any great lengths in these days; but, for the time being, at all events, it lifted its possessor to a plane of thought above his usual, and tended to quietness and peace of mind.

The sky right away into the east was glowing softly with the wonders of the sunset, and there the delicate tones changed almost momentarily. As his eye followed the tender grace of their transformations, with a delight which he could neither have expressed nor explained, it once more lighted suddenly upon that which he had been looking for so anxiously all day long, and brought him to earth like a broken bird.

Once more a boat had come round the point of Les Laches, and this time it was speeding towards him as fast as a sail that was as flat almost as a board, and looked to him no more than a thin white cone, could bring it.

So they were coming, after all, and this wonderful sunset might be his last indeed;--and all the tender beauty of the fleecy clouds thinned and paled, and the glory faded as though it had all been but a glorious bubble, and that sharp point of white, speeding across the darkening sea, had p.r.i.c.ked it.

But why on earth were they coming now? They had missed the ebb, and it was hours yet to next half-ebb, and they could not hope to land. The white waves were boiling all along the ledges, and the sea for twenty feet out was a surging dapple of foam laced with seething white bubbles.

It would be more than any man's life was worth to try and get ash.o.r.e on L'Etat for many an hour yet.

And there was only one boat! What had become of all the others--of the threatened invasion in force? He sat and watched it in gloomy wonder.

The boat came racing on. As she cleared Breniere her white sail turned to red gold, and the sea below grew purple. There was something white in her bows. He got up heavily, doggedly, forced to it against his will, and walked along the ridge to the eastern point which commanded the landing-place on that side.

There was, without doubt, something white in the bows of the boat, and as he stood gazing at it, it took, to his dazed imagination, the strange form of Nance waving joyful hands to him.

He drew his hands across his eyes. The storm had been sore on them.

The bristling waves of the Race burst in sheets of spray under the glancing bows, but the white spray and the white figure and the pointed white sail were all ablaze in the last rays of the sun, and they all swam before him as if his head was going round.

She came round Quette d'Amont with a fine sweep, like one bound on business of which she had no reason to be ashamed, and dropped her sail and lay in the shelter of the rock.

And the white figure in the bows was truly Nance, and she was standing and waving and calling to him. And the grey-headed man aft was surely Philip Guille, the Senechal, and the faces of the rest were all friendly.

He stumbled hastily down to the lower ledges, but the rush and the roar there drowned their voices.

What were they trying to tell him? What could they want of him?

The Senechal was standing, hands to mouth, waiting his chance. The restless waters below drew back for a moment to gather for a leap, and the big voice came booming across the tumult--

"Jump! We'll pick you up! All is well!"

And Gard, without a moment's hesitation, sprang out into the marbled foam, and struck out for the boat.

They were all friendly hands that gripped him and hauled him over the side, and patted him on the back to get the water out of him--all friendly faces that were turned to him; and the dearest face of all, lighted with a heavenly gladness, was to him as the face of an angel.

"Tell me!" he gasped, still all astream, wits and clothes alike. And it was the Senechal who told him.

"Peter Mauger was killed last night, at the same place as Tom Hamon, and in the same way. So these hot-blooded thickheads are convinced at last that it wasn't your work."

"Peter Mauger!" he said, gazing vaguely at them all. "But who--"

"We haven't found out yet. But even the thickest of the thickheads can't put it down to you"--and the thickheads present grinned in friendly fashion, and they ran up the sail with a will, and turned her nose, and went racing back to the Creux quicker than they had come.

And Gard sat still with his hand in Nance's two, feeling very weak and shaky, and looked vaguely back at L'Etat as it faded and dwindled into a dim black triangle of rock.

CHAPTER x.x.xVI

HOW HE CAME HOME FROM L'ETAT

This is what had happened.

Since Tom Hamon's death, his friend Peter and his widow Julie had, as we know, found themselves drawn together by a common detestation of Stephen Gard and a common desire for his extinction.

For Peter considered he had been supplanted in Nance's regards, though Nance had never regarded him as anything but a nuisance and a boor. And Julie considered herself scorned and slighted, though Gard had never considered her save as Tom Hamon's wife.

It was they who had stirred up the Sark men against Gard, and they missed no opportunity of keeping their ill brew on the boil.

Their offensive alliance brought them much together. Peter was often at La Closerie. He was like wax in the hands of the fiery Frenchwoman, and she moulded him to her will. The neighbours might have begun to talk, but that it was obvious to all that the only bond between them at present was their ill-will towards Gard, and in that feeling many shared and found nothing strange in Tom's wife and Tom's chief friend joining hands to make some one pay for his death.

In time, if it had gone on, the neighbours would doubtless have had plenty to say on the subject, for old wives' tongues rattled fast of a winter's evening, when they all gathered in this house or that, and sat on the sides of the green bed with their feet in the dry fern inside, and the oil cra.s.set hanging down in the midst, and plied their needles and their tongues and wits all at once, and wrought scandalously good guernseys and stockings in spite of it all.

But these were summer evenings yet, and the _veilles_ had not begun, and reputations were out at gra.s.s till the time came round for their inspection and judgment.

And so, when Peter Mauger never reached home the night before this day of which we are telling, his old housekeeper, whatever she thought about it at the time, only said afterwards that she supposed he had stopped somewhere and would turn up all right in the morning, though she admitted that he was not in the habit of staying out of a night. Anyway, she was an old woman and all alone, and she was not going out to look for him at that time of night.

The morning surprised her by his continued absence. Never in his life, so far as she knew, had he behaved like this before. Vituperation of him gave place to anxiety about him.

She questioned the neighbours. All they knew was that he had been seen going down to Little Sark soon after sunset.

"That black Frenchwoman of Tom Hamon's twists him round her finger,"

said one.

"You tie him up, Mrs. Guille," chuckled another, "or sure as beans she'll steal him from you and leave you in the cold."

And then, who should they see coming striding along the road but Madame Julie herself, and evidently in a hurry;--in a state of red-hot excitement, too, as she drew near. And they waited, hands on hips, to hear what she was up to now.

"Where's Peter?" she demanded, a long way in advance. "Tell him I want him. That man Gard is still on L'Etat, though those fools who went across for him couldn't find him. Cre nom! What are you all staring at, then?"

"Where's our Peter?" demanded Mrs. Guille shrilly, with the strident note of fear in her voice, as she becked and bobbed towards the Frenchwoman like an aged cormorant.

"Peter? I'm asking you. I want him. Where is he?"