Carette of Sark Part 44

Carette crept to my side, and I held the lantern up and out, but we could see only a rough, black-arched roof and ragged rock walls, and a welter of black waves which broke sullenly against the shelving path on which we stood, as though driven in there against their will.

"This is the water-cave Uncle George spoke of, but I don't see any light."

"Perhaps it's night outside," said Carette in a whisper. "Let us get back, Phil. I don't like this place. The waves look as if they were dead."

So we went back the way we had come, and she pressed still closer to me as we pa.s.sed the little hollow in which the spring churned on, noiseless, and ceaseless, and untiring, and seemed to look up at us with a knowing eye as our lantern set the yellow gleams writhing and twisting in it. We watched it for a time, it looked so like breaking into sound every next moment. But no sound came, and we picked up our can and went on.

"I do wish I knew if it is to-day or to-morrow," said Carette.

"Without doubt it is to-day."

"I don't believe it, Phil. It's either to-morrow or the day after, or the day after that."

"But that milk would never have kept sweet."

"It would keep sweet a very long time here. The air is so fresh and cool."

"Well, even if it's to-morrow it's still to-day," I argued.

"I know. But what I want to know is--how long we've been in here, and it feels to me like days and days."

But it was impossible to say how long we had slept, and until we got some outside light on the matter we could not decide it.

So we gathered our beds into cushions and sat there side by side, and since our supply of candles was not a very large one, and I could feel her in the dark quite as well as in the light, I lit my pipe and put the lantern out.

And bit by bit she began to tell me of the dreary days when they waited for news of me, and hope grew sick in them, but they would not let it die.

"Your mother was an angel and a saint, and a strong tower, Phil,--so sweet and good. How she made me long for a mother of my own!"

"You shall have a share of mine!"

"I've made sure of my share already. It made the ache easier just to be with her, and so I went often to Belfontaine, and she never failed me. She was always full of hope and confidence. 'He will come back to us, my dear,'

she would say. 'And when we get him back we must try to keep him, though that is not easy in Sercq.'"

"But you know why I went, Carette."

"Don't go again, Phil. It is very hard on the women to have their men-folk go. All the fear and the heartache are ours."

"But it is for you we go--to win what we can for you."

"Ah, what is it all worth?--Just nothing at all. It's not what you bring in your hands, but what is in your hearts for us, Phil. Better a cottage on Sercq with our hearts together like this,"--and I could feel her sweet heart beating through as she nestled up against me with my right arm round her neck,--than all the plunder of Herm."

"Then I will never leave you again, my sweet," and I sealed that pledge in kisses. "But how we are to live--"

"Aunt Jeanne will tell you, and I will tell you now. We are to live at Beaumanoir. She says she is getting too old for the fanning, and must have help, and so--"

"So you have arranged it all among you, though for all you knew it was a dead man you were planning for."

"It kept our hearts alive to plan it, and, besides, we knew you were not dead. I think we would have felt it if you had been."

"A woman's heart is the most wonderful thing in the world and the most precious. But it may deceive itself. It believes a thing is because it wishes it to be sometimes, I think, and it won't believe a thing because it wishes it not to be."

"Well, that is as it should be, and you are talking like one of your grandfather's books, Phil," she said lightly, not guessing what was in my mind. For it had seemed to me that I ought to tell her of her brother's death, lest it should come upon her in a heap outside.

"Your father and brothers now," I asked. "Did you look to see them back?"

"Surely! Until my father and Martin came alone telling us the rest were gone. It was sore news indeed."

"Unless they saw them lying dead they may still live. You have thought them dead. But, dear, Helier was with me in the prison in England. He came there sorely wounded, and I helped to nurse him back to life. We escaped together and got home together--" Her hands had clasped in her excitement, and the white glimmer of her face was lifted hopefully to mine, and I hurried on to crush her hope before it grew of size to die hard.

"We got home together that morning they carried you off. He went to Aunt Jeanne's and I went home. When Krok burst in with the news about you, I hurried across to Brecqhou. On the sh.o.r.e of the bay was a boat, and in it Helier lay dead with a bullet through his head."

"Oh, Phil!" in a voice of anguish, for Helier had been her favourite....

"And who--?"

"Those who took you without doubt."

"Ah, the wretches! I wish--" And I was of the same mind.

"I could do nothing, for he was dead. So I took his boat and followed you to Herm. Those who followed me to Brecqhou buried him there. But if he had not come I could not have got to Herm before they set their watch boats. So he helped, you see, though he did not know it."

"My poor Helier!... They had m.u.f.fled my head in a cloak so that I could neither hear nor see. I had just gone outside--"

"Your father and Martin were in a great state about you, but I could not wait to explain. Anything I could have said would only have added to their anxiety, and that was not as great as my own, for I had my own fears of what had happened and they knew nothing."

"Yes, yes. You could have done no other," and she fell silent for a time, refitting her thoughts of Helier, no doubt.

So far, the most striking things in our rock parlour had been the silence and the darkness, but before long we had noise and to spare.

First, a low harsh growling from the tunnel by which we had entered, and that was the returning tide churning among the shingle and boulders in the rock channels outside. Then it grew into a roar which rose and fell as the long western waves plunged into the Boutiques, and swelled and foamed along its echoing sides, and then sank back with a long weltering sob, and rose again higher than before, and knew no rest. We could hear it all so clearly that none could doubt the existence of pa.s.sages between the two caves.

We sat and listened to it, and ate at times, but could not talk much for the uproar. But for me it was enough to sit with Carette inside my arm and close against my heart, and there was something in that long swelling roar and sighing sob which, after a while, set weights on the eyelids and the senses and disposed one to sleep. For a time we counted the coming of the larger wave, and then the countings grew confused and we fell asleep.

As a matter of fact we lost all count of time in that dark place. When we woke we ate again by lantern light, and though either one of us alone must have fallen into melancholy as black as the place, being together, and having that within us which made for glad hearts, we were very well content, though still hoping soon to be out again in the free air and sunshine.

My arm gave me little pain. Aunt Jeanne's simples had taken the fire out of the wound, and kept the muscles of an even temper. And whenever the bandages got dry and stiff Carette soaked them in fresh water and tied me up again, and seemed to like the doing of it.

Mindful of Uncle George's saying that the water-cave held light at times, we visited it again, and yet again, until coming down the sloping path one time, we saw the narrow roof above us and the rough walls on either side tinged with a faint soft light, and hastening down like children into a forbidden room, we found ourselves in a curious place.

The tide was very far out, and the black cave, in which we had hitherto seen only sulky waves tumbling unhappily, had become a wonder equal to those Krok used to open to us in the Gouliots.

We could now go quite a long way down the shelving side of the rock, and the water that lay below was no longer black but a beautiful living green, from the light which stole up through it by means of an archway at the farther end. The arch was under water, but the light streamed through it, soft and mellow and glowing, so that the whole place seemed to throb with gentle life. Outside I judged it was early morning, with the sun shining full on the sea above the archway.

And here we found what Krok had shown us in the Gouliots as their chiefest beauties,--the roof and walls were studded with anemones of every size and colour, green and crimson, and brown and pink, and lavender and white and orange; so completely was the rock clothed with them that it was not rock we saw, but ma.s.ses and sheets and banks of the lovely clinging things, all closed up within themselves till the water should return, and shining like polished gems in the ghostly green light.

The boulders that strewed the sloping sides of the cave-floor were covered with them also, and in the glowing green water they were all in full bloom and waving their arms merrily to and fro in search of food.

There, too, a leprous thing with treacherous, gliding arms crawled after prey, and at sight of it Carette gripped my arm and murmured "Pieuvre," as though she feared it might hear her. She had always a very great horror of those creatures, though in speaking of them when they were not present she had at times a.s.sumed a boldness which she did not really feel. This, however, was a very small monster, and indeed they do not grow to any very great size with us.

This softly glowing place was very pleasant to us after the darkness and lantern light of the other cave. We sat for a long time, till the glow faded somewhat and the water began whuffling against the rock walls, and climbed them slowly till at last all the cave was dark again, and we groped back along the cleft to our sleeping-place with the sounds of great waters in our ears from the Boutiques.