Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories Part 11

And clambering down, he stumbled on with a reckless haste that contrasted strangely with his speech. For, whatever our words may be, a human life must ever command respect. Any may (as some have done) die laughing, but his last sight must necessarily be of grave faces.

"This one is not dead," said the priest, when they had turned the man over and dragged him to dry land. Belfort cut away the life-belt, examining it as he did so.

"No name," he said. "They will have to wait over there in London, till he can tell them what ship it was. See, he has been struck on the head.

But he is alive--a marvel."

He looked up, meeting the priest's eyes, and, remembering his words spoken under the lee of the wall of the Hotel de la Plage, he laughed as a fencer may laugh who has been touched beyond doubt by a skilful adversary.

"He is a small-made man and light enough to carry--some town mouse this, my father--who has never had a wet jacket before--see his face how white it is, and his little arms and hands. We can carry him, turn and turn about, and shall reach the sea-wall before the tide is up, provided we find no more."

It was full daylight when they at length reached the weed-grown steps at the side of the sea-wall, and the smoke was already beginning to rise from the chimneys of Yport. The gale was waning as the day came, but the sea was at its highest, and all the houses facing northward had their wooden shutters up. The waves were breaking over the sea-wall, but the two men with their senseless burden took no heed of it. They were all past thinking of salt water.

In answer to their summons, the Mother Senneville came hastily enough to the back door of the Hotel de la Plage--a small inn of no great promise.

The Mother Senneville was a great woman, six feet high, with the carriage of a Grenadier, the calm eye of some ruminating animal, the soft, deep voice, and perhaps the soft heart, of a giant.

"Already!" she said simply, as she held the door back for them to pa.s.s in. "I thought there would likely be some this morning without the money in their pockets."

"This one will not call too loud for his coffee," replied Belfort, with a cynicism specially a.s.sumed for the benefit of the cure. "And now," he added, as they laid their burden on the wine-stained table, "if he has papers that will tell us the name of the ship, I will walk to Fecamp, to Lloyds' agents there, with the news. It will be a five-franc piece in my pocket."

They hastily searched the dripping clothing, and found a crumpled envelope, which, however, told them all they desired to know. It was addressed to Mr. Albert Robinson, steamship Ocean Waif, Southampton.

"That will suffice," said Belfort. "I take this and leave the rest to you and Mother Senneville."

"Send the doctor from Fecamp," said the woman--"the new one in the Rue du Bac. It is the young ones that work best for nothing, and here is no payment for any of us."

"Not now," said the priest.

"Ah!" cried Belfort, tossing off the brandy, which the Mother Senneville had poured out for him. "You--you expect so much in the Hereafter, Mr.

the Cure."

"And you--you expect so much in the present, Mr. the one-armed malcontent," replied the priest, with his comfortable little laugh.

"Come, Madame Senneville. Let me get this man to bed."

"It is an Englishman, of course," said the Mother Senneville, examining the placid white face. "They throw their dead about the world like cigar-ends."

By midday the news was in the London streets, and the talk was all of storms and wrecks and gallant rescues. And a few whose concern it was noted the fact that the Ocean Waif, of London, on a voyage from Antwerp and Southampton to the River Plate, had supposedly been wrecked off the north coast of France. Sole survivor, Albert Robinson, apparently a fireman or a steward, who lay at the Hotel de la Plage at Yport, unconscious, and suffering from a severe concussion of the brain. By midday, also, the cure was established as sick nurse in the back bedroom of the little hotel with an English conversation-book, borrowed from the schoolmaster, protruding from the pocket of his soutane, awaiting the return of Albert Robinson's inner consciousness.

"Are you feeling better?" the cure had all ready to fire off at him as soon as he awoke. To which the conversation-book made reply: "Yes, but I have caught a severe chill on the mountain," which also the cure had made ready to understand--with modifications.

But the day pa.s.sed away without any use having been found for the conversation-book. And sundry persons, whose business it was, came and looked at Albert Robinson, and talked to the priest and to Jean Belfort--who, to tell the truth, made much capital and a number of free gla.s.ses of red wine out of the incident--and went away again.

The cure pa.s.sed that night on the second bed of the back bedroom of the Hotel de la Plage, and awoke only at daylight, full of self-reproach, to find his charge still unconscious, still placid like a statue, with cheeks a little hollower, and lips a little whiter. The young doctor came and shook his head, and discoursed of other cases of a similar nature which he had read up since the previous day, and pretended now to have remembered among his experiences. He also went away again, and Yport seemed to drop out of the world once more into that oblivion to which a village with such a poor sea front and no railway station, or lodging houses, or hotels where there are waiters, must expect to be consigned.

The cure had just finished his dejeuner of fish and an omelette--the day being Friday--when a carriage rattled down the village street, leaving behind it doorways suddenly occupied by the female population of Yport wiping its hands upon its ap.r.o.n.

"It is Francois Morin's carriage from Fecamp," said the Mother Senneville, "with a Parisienne, who has a parasol, if you please."

"No," corrected the cure; "that is an Englishwoman. I saw several last year in Rouen."

And he hurried out, hatless, conversation-book in hand. He was rather taken aback--never having spoken to a person so well-dressed as this English girl, who nodded quickly in answer to his salutation.

"Is this the hotel? Is he here? Is he conscious yet?" she asked in tolerable French.

"Yes--madam. He is here, but he is not conscious yet. The doctor--"

"I am not madam--I am mademoiselle. I am his sister," said the girl, quickly descending from the carriage and frankly accepting the a.s.sistance of the cure's rather timid hand.

He followed her meekly, wondering at her complete self-possession--at an utter lack of ceremony--at a certain blunt frankness which was new to Yport. She nodded to Madame Senneville.

"Where is he?" she asked.

"Monsieur le Cure will show you. It is he who has saved his life."

The young lady turned and looked into the priest's pink face, which grew pinker. This was not the material of which gallant rescuers are usually made.

"Thank you, Monsieur le Cure," she said, with a sudden gentleness.

"Thank you. It is so difficult--is it not?--to thank any one."

"There is not the necessity," murmured the little cure, rather confusedly; and he led the way upstairs.

Once in the sick-room he found his tongue again, and explained matters volubly enough. Besides, she made it easy. She was so marvellously natural, so free from a certain constraint which in some French circles is mistaken for good manners. She asked every detail, and made particular inquiry as to who had seen the patient.

"No one must be allowed to see him," she said, in her decisive way. "He must be kept quite quiet. No one must approach this room, only you and I, Monsieur le Cure."

"Yes, mademoiselle," he said slowly. "Yes."

"You have been so good--you have done such wonders, that I rely upon you to help me;" and a sudden, sharp look of anxiety swept across her face.

"We shall be good friends--n'est ce pas?" she said, turning to look at him as he stood near the door.

"It will be easy, I think, mademoiselle."

Then he turned to Madame Senneville, who was carrying the baggage upstairs.

"It is his sister, Madame Senneville," he said. "She will, of course, stay in the hotel."

"Yes, and I have no room ready," replied the huge woman, pessimistically. "One never knows what a summer storm may bring to one."

"No, Mother Senneville, no; one never knows," he said rather absently, and went out into the street. He was thinking of the strange young person upstairs, who was unlike any woman he had met or imagined. Those in her station in life whom he had seen during his short thirty years were mostly dressed-up dolls, to whom one made ba.n.a.l remarks without meaning. The rest were almost men, doing men's work, leading a man's life.

That same evening the injured man recovered consciousness, and it was the cure who sent off the telegram to the doctor at Fecamp. For the wire had been repaired with the practical rapidity with which they manage such affairs in France.

Through the slow recovery it was the cure who was ever at the beck and call of the two strangers, divining their desires, making quite easy a situation which otherwise might have been difficult enough. Not only the cure, but the whole village soon became quite reconciled to the hitherto unheard-of position a.s.sumed by this young girl, without a guardian or a chaperon, who lived a frank, fearless life among them, making every day terrible a.s.saults upon that code of feminine behaviour which hedges Frenchwomen about like a wall.

In the intimacy of the sick-room the little priest soon learnt to talk with the Englishwoman and her brother quite freely, as man to man, as he had talked to his bosom friend by selection at St. Omer. And there was in his heart that ever-abiding wonder that a woman may thus be a companion to a man, sharing his thoughts, nay, divining them before he had shaped them in his own mind. It was all very wonderful and new to this little priest, who had walked, as it were, on one side of the street of life since boyhood without a thought of crossing the road.

When the three were together they were merry enough; indeed, the Englishman's mistakes in French were sufficient to cause laughter in themselves without that re-action which lightens the atmosphere of a sick-room when the danger is past. But while he was talking to the Mother Senneville downstairs, or waiting a summons to come up, the cure never heard laughter in the back bedroom. There seemed to be some shadow there which fled before his cheery smile when he went upstairs. When he and the girl were together when she walked on the sea-wall with him for a breath of air, she was grave enough too, as if now that she knew him better she no longer considered it necessary to a.s.sume a light-heartedness she did not feel.

"Are you sure there is nothing I can do to make your life easier here?"