Love's Usuries Part 4

The youth was very voluble, despite the irresponsiveness of the audience; he waved his hand indicating the beauties of the island with an air of ownership. Now and then he punctuated his speech by rubbing his fustian arm across his nose in true plebeian fashion. The tourists were delighted, and, before departing, dropped a silver coin into his grimy but exquisitely shaped palm.

When Ralph returned she met him, dancing and rubbing the mud from her cheeks.

"See," she said, tossing the coin in the air, "this is the first wedding present we have had. I will cut Cezambre upon it and wear it for ever.

But first you will come with me."

She took his hand and led the way to a curious cave carved in the rocks, in the centre of which was a cross. The walls were frescoed with common sh.e.l.ls, the offerings, she explained, of poor pilgrims who had been worshippers at this primitive shrine.

With unconscious grace she prostrated herself in prayer.

He watched her in silence, his artist eye greedily tracing the picturesque in every line of this innocent devotion, though his panting heart longed to intrude on the sanct.i.ty of her worship. Presently she lifted her hand to his and drew him to his knees by her side.

Softly, like the sonorous gong from some grand cathedral belfry, she commenced to recite or chant in Latin.

"Speak with me," she whispered, repeating the melodious words with an accent of reverential appreciation.

He did as she bade. The fervour of her devotion communicated itself to him, he followed word for word to the end. The burthen, though not the absolute meaning of the sentences, inspired him--it was the ceremony of marriage they quoted, it was G.o.d's blessing they mutually invoked.

When they had returned to the potato garden, and were plucking herbs for the poultices he had promised to renew during his midnight vigils, he suddenly remarked:--

"We must leave here for the English coast as soon as we can get a fishing smack to take us along."

"Leave here?" she uttered in dismay. "I would remain for ever."

He gave a short gasp, clutched her hands, and looked straight into the transparent blue depths of her eyes. Then he moved away a step or two and shook his head.

"It is inevitable; we must go to England--give ourselves over to law and parson."

"Here it is better," she cooed; "you are king and I am priest." But he dissented.

"I never had much respect for Church or State. I appreciate them as one appreciates steel to sharpen one's blade against."

She did not understand. Only the simplest English formed her vocabulary, but she saw he disagreed with her.

"Here we are everything," she said; "we make laws straight from G.o.d for ourselves."

He shrugged his shoulders and sighed. "Those, I find, are the toughest laws of all! Come, darling, let us ask the boy yonder about the fishing boats."

They were informed that one might possibly pa.s.s on the following night.

He borrowed from the youth a piece of hard chalk that acted in lieu of pencil, and begged Leonie to write with it on some rough paper which had served to wrap stores from the land.

"Tell your mother that we have decided, after three days on this island, to leave for Brighton, on the British coast, there to marry. A year ago we asked her blessing on our love, and she refused it; we pray that she will now be more lenient."

"No good," murmured Leonie, translating, however, what he had dictated.

Below, he scribbled the address of an hotel in England, where a reply might meet them.

"She is sure," he said, folding the note, "to call me a blackguard, and as certain, I hope, to consent."

"My best and dearest," cried the girl in prospective contradiction of anything that might be p.r.o.nounced against him.

Twenty-four hours later, when the fishing smack alluded to hove in sight, the missive was handed to the coastguard's son. He was ordered to take it inland on the morrow, and deliver it without fail, at "La Chaumais."

"But supposing my brother should not write? Supposing he should come?"

"That is what I hope. Le Sieur will support the dignity of the De Quesnes--he will engage with the law and leave us to engage with only love."

So the next evening they put out to sea through the gossamer scarves of moving twilight--the man in his coastguard kit gay to frivolity, the girl in fisher disguise, meditative, half tearful. She breathed not a word while her straining eyes could clutch the outline of the land from the embrace of night; but when all was wrapped in gloom she lifted her gaze to the star-spangled heavens, and murmured with folded hands, "_Cher Royaume de Cezambre, adieu!_"

Trooper Jones of the Light Brigade.

"To get myself in courage--crush out fears; To strive with fate for something more than gold."

A year or two ago I received an envelope containing a lock of flame-red hair wrapped in a soiled linen rag. By this token I knew that old Sergeant Kemp--the name is a pseudonym, for reasons which will be seen--Sergeant Kemp, formerly of the Light Brigade, was dead. This knowledge unseals my lips, and permits me to divulge an extraordinary episode of the charge of Balaclava which was related to me by the veteran, and which, as far as I can judge, has entirely escaped the research of the romanticist and historian.

My original intention in going to see the old hero was to interview him and learn if he could throw any new light on the tragic and immemorial events of '54-5-6, through which, with the exception of a slight wound in the wrist, he had pa.s.sed unscathed.

I propitiated him with gifts of tobacco, and, having found the "open sesame" to the cave of his reminiscences, visited him often. My object was to filch, surrept.i.tiously as it were, the treasures I coveted, before their valuable crudity could suffer the unconscious adulteration to which such goods are liable at the hands of the professional story-monger. But I found, when the strings of his tongue were unloosed, he had very little more to relate about the events of the campaign than is already recorded. In fact, like many an actor in the drama of life, he really knew less about the general _mise-en-scene_ than I, who had only reviewed it through the lorgnon of Tennyson and other contemporary writers. Seeing, however, that a shade of disappointment was cast by the fogginess of his disclosures, the old fellow one day abruptly asked if I could keep a secret were he to tell it me. I vowed my complete trustworthiness, but at the same time remonstrated that confidences so hampered would be of absolutely no use to the work I had on hand. He rose laboriously from his chair--lumbago had almost crippled him--and produced from a tin box a soiled rag containing the curl of red hair which is now in my possession.

"This 'air," he explained in mumbling tones, "was cut off the 'ead of Trooper Jones of ours--in times of war one 'asn't much truck with the barber," he parenthesised. "We called 'im 'Carrots,' as bein' most convenient and discriptive like. And that there bit of shirt belonged to my pal Jenkins, as good a chap as ever wore shako. It's the 'istory of 'em both as I've 'alf a mind to tell you, but you must be mum as old bones about it--at all events till this 'ere bloke's a-carried out feet foremost."

"And then?" I said, with unbecoming eagerness.

"Then you can jest do what ye darn please; the 'ole three of us 'll be orf dooty together."

So he related to me in a fragmentary manner, halting now and again and blowing clouds from his pipe as if to a.s.sist his ruminations, the strange history of Trooper Jones, almost word for word as I have set it down. He began:--

"It was in May that we got orders to embark.... I can remember turning out at four in the mornin' to march to the dockyard, and 'ow the green lanes was all a-sproutin' and a-shinin', and 'ow the sky was that pink and streaky, for all the world like a prime rasher. But that's neither 'ere nor there.... We 'ad been billeted in the villages nigh Portsmouth for several days, and my comrade, James Jenkins, and I 'ad been quartered at an inn kept by Jones' father and 'is sister--a strappin'

girl, and as like her brother as one bullet's like another. They was twins, them two--with top-knots the colour o' carrots, mouths as wide as oyster-sh.e.l.ls, allus grinnin', and a power of freckles that made their faces as yeller as speckled eggs. But Jenny Jones was a stunner, she was; she served at the bar, and gave the boys as good as they gave--'ot sauce for the cheeky and a clout o' the 'ead if need be when mi lady's blood was up. Woman-like, she was that contrary, wi' a tongue as sharp as a razor for some o' us, and all b.u.t.ter and honey and eyes like a sucking-calf whenever Jenkins so much as showed 'is nose. And 'e, 'e was that sweet on 'er as though she'd been a Wenus cast in sugar."

The old fellow blew a mighty whiff from his pipe, a whiff that was akin to a sigh, and for a few moments he became apparently fogged by the retrospective haze that surrounded him. He seemed disinclined to relate more, but as I remained silent he presently resumed:--

"I won't tell you of all the 'arrowin' sights of that there mornin', the women--mothers and wives and sweethearts--a-snivellin' and a-sobbin', the men lookin' all awry, as though they'd swallered a chemist shop and couldn't get the taste out o' their mouths. All this wi' shoutin' of orders, and noise of the 'orses bein' slung up the ship's side and let down the main 'atchway into the 'old, and the playin' of the band, and the cheerin' of the crowd in the dockyard, and the crews in the 'arbour, and the youngsters on the _Victory_--old fellers they must be now--a-roarin' fit to split 'emselves from the yards and riggin' so long as we 'ad ears to 'ear.

"I, bein' som'at of a bachelor by instink, 'ad no gal to wish me G.o.d-speed; but Jenkins, poor chap, was in the same boat. Jenny Jones 'ad not put 'erself about to see 'im nor 'er brother orf, and as they stood alongside one another looking that solemn and glum, I couldn't 'elp thinkin' o' the 'eartlessness of wenches in general and that there in pertikilar.

"But soon I thought no more on the subjec', for there was other things to mind. There was dinner, and givin' out of sea kit and gettin' our ration of grog--three parts water it was to one o' rum then, but it grew to 'alf a gill and a gill a day later on."

"About Jenkins?" I reminded, seeing that his brain reeled with the reminiscence of bygone potations.

"Oh, I didn't see 'im at that time. We went below to the stable; our beasts was stood wi' heels to the ship's sides and their sorry 'eads a-facin' of each other. They was awful bad, and mighty funky of the lurchin's of the ship. I found Jones down there--'e was a-bathin' of 'is 'orse's nose with water and vinegar, and a-cheerin' of 'im up to eat, which he wouldn't do for all the coaxin'. 'Carrots' spent all 'is spare time at that there game, givin' short answers and cursin' freely now and agin. But 'e did 'is work right enough--cleaned stalls, polished and burnished 'is saddle and accoutrements like the best of us--though whenever I looked at 'im there was some'at shifty in his eye and an odd turn o' the 'ead, as though 'e'd been a-sneakin' rum, or a-doin'

somethin' as was contrary to regilations. And one day he turns on me savage like:--