The Battle of the Strong. Gilbert Parker

was anything quite so fat as she. She was found weeping one day on the veille because she was no longer able to get her shoulders out of the window to use the clothes-lines stretching to her neighbour’s over the way. If she sat down in your presence, it was impossible to do aught but speculate as to whether she could get up alone. Yet she went abroad on the water a great deal with Jean. At first the neighbours gave out sinister suspicions as to Jean’s intentions, for sea-going with your own wife was uncommon among the sailors of the coast. But at last these dark suggestions settled down into a belief that Jean took her chiefly for ballast; and thereafter she was familiarly called “Femme de Ballast.”

      Talking was no virtue in her eyes. What was going on in her mind no one ever knew. She was more phlegmatic than an Indian; but the tails of the sheep on the Town Hill did not better show the quarter of the wind than the changing colour of Aimable’s face indicated Jean’s coming or going. For Mattresse Aimable had one eternal secret, an unwavering passion for Jean Touzel. If he patted her on the back on a day when the fishing was extra fine, her heart pumped so hard she had to sit down; if, passing her lonely bed of a morning, he shook her great toe to wake her, she blushed, and turned her face to the wall in placid happiness. She was so credulous and matter-of-fact that if Jean had told her she must die on the spot, she would have said “Think of that!” or “Je te crais,” and died. If in the vague dusk of her brain the thought glimmered that she was ballast for Jean on sea and anchor on land, she still was content. For twenty years the massive, straight-limbed Jean had stood to her for all things since the heavens and the earth were created. Once, when she had burnt her hand in cooking supper for him, his arm made a trial of her girth, and he kissed her. The kiss was nearer her ear than her lips, but to her mind it was the most solemn proof of her connubial happiness and of Jean’s devotion. She was a Catholic, unlike Jean and most people of her class in Jersey, and ever since that night he kissed her she had told an extra bead on her rosary and said another prayer.

      These were the reasons why at first she was inclined to resent Guida’s laughter. But when she saw that Maitre Ranulph and the curate and Jean himself laughed, she settled down to a grave content until they landed.

      They had scarce reached the deserted chapel where their dinner was to be cooked by Maitresse Aimable, when Ranulph called them to note a vessel bearing in their direction.

      “She’s not a coasting craft,” said Jean.

      “She doesn’t look like a merchant vessel,” said Ranulph, eyeing her through his telescope. “Why, she’s a warship!” he added.

      Jean thought she was not, but Maitre Ranulph said “Pardi, I ought to know, Jean. Ship-building is my trade, to say nothing of guns—I wasn’t two years in the artillery for nothing. See the low bowsprit and the high poop. She’s bearing this way. She’ll be Narcissus!” he said slowly.

      That was Philip d’Avranche’s ship.

      Guida’s face lighted, her heart beat faster. Ranulph turned on his heel.

      “Where are you going, Ro?” Guida said, taking a step after him.

      “On the other side, to my men and the wreck,” he said, pointing.

      Guida glanced once more towards the man-o’-war: and then, with mischief in her eye, turned towards Jean. “Suppose,” she said to him archly, “suppose the ship should want to come in, of course you’d remember your onc’ ‘Lias, and say, ‘A bi’tot, good-bye!” ’

      An evasive “Ah bah!” was the only reply Jean vouchsafed.

      Ranulph joined his men at the wreck, and the Reverend Lorenzo Dow went about the Lord’s business in the little lean-to of sail-cloth and ship’s lumber which had been set up near to the toil of the carpenters. When the curate entered the but the sick man was in a doze. He turned his head from side to side restlessly and mumbled to himself. The curate, sitting on the ground beside the man, took from his pocket a book, and began writing in a strange, cramped hand. This book was his journal. When a youth he had been a stutterer, and had taken refuge from talk in writing, and the habit stayed even as his affliction grew less. The important events of the day or the week, the weather, the wind, the tides, were recorded, together with sundry meditations of the Reverend Lorenzo Dow. The pages were not large, and brevity was Mr. Dow’s journalistic virtue. Beyond the diligent keeping of this record, he had no habits, certainly no precision, no remembrance, no system: the business of his life ended there. He had quietly vacated two curacies because there had been bitter complaints that the records of certain baptisms, marriages, and burials might only be found in the chequered journal of his life, sandwiched between fantastic reflections and remarks upon the rubric. The records had been exact enough, but the system was not canonical, and it rested too largely upon the personal ubiquity of the itinerary priest, and the safety of his journal—and of his life.

      Guida, after the instincts of her nature, had at once sought the highest point on the rocky islet, and there she drank in the joy of sight and sound and feeling. She could see—so perfect was the day—the line marking the Minquiers far on the southern horizon, the dark and perfect green of the Jersey slopes, and the white flags of foam which beat against the Dirouilles and the far-off Paternosters, dissolving as they flew, their place taken by others, succeeding and succeeding, as a soldier steps into a gap in the line of battle. Something in these rocks, something in the Paternosters—perhaps their distance, perhaps their remoteness from all other rocks—fascinated her. As she looked at them, she suddenly felt a chill, a premonition, a half-spiritual, half-material telegraphy of the inanimate to the animate: not from off cold stone to sentient life; but from that atmosphere about the inanimate thing, where the life of man has spent itself and been dissolved, leaving—who can tell what? Something which speaks but yet has no sound.

      The feeling which possessed Guida as she looked at the Paternosters was almost like blank fear. Yet physical fear she had never felt, not since that day when the battle raged in the Vier Marchi, and Philip d’Avranche had saved her from the destroying scimitar of the Turk. Now that scene all came back to her in a flash, as it were; and she saw again the dark snarling face of the Mussulman, the blue-and-white silk of his turban, the black and white of his waistcoat, the red of the long robe, and the glint of his uplifted sword. Then in contrast, the warmth, brightness, and bravery on the face of the lad in blue and gold who struck aside the descending blade and caught her up in his arms; and she had nestled there—in those arms of Philip d’Avranche. She remembered how he had kissed her, and how she had kissed him—he a lad and she a little child—as he left her with her mother in the watchmaker’s shop in the Vier Marchi that day. … And she had never seen him again until yesterday.

      She looked from the rocks to the approaching frigate. Was it the Narcissus coming—coming to this very island? She recalled Philip—how gallant he was yesterday, how cool, with what an air of command! How light he had made of the riot! Ranulph’s strength and courage she accepted as a matter of course, and was glad that he was brave, generous, and good; but the glamour of distance and mystery were around d’Avranche. Remembrance, like a comet, went circling through the firmament of eleven years, from the Vier Marchi to the Place du Vier Prison.

      She watched the ship slowly bearing with the land. The Jack was flying from the mizzen. They were now taking in her topsails. She was so near that Guida could see the anchor a-cockbell, and the poop lanthorns. She could count the guns like long black horns shooting out from a rhinoceros hide: she could discern the figurehead lion snarling into the spritsail. Presently the ship came up to the wind and lay to. Then she signalled for a pilot, and Guida ran towards the ruined chapel, calling for Jean Touzel.

      In spite of Jean’s late protests as to piloting a “gentleman-of-war,” this was one of the joyful moments of his life. He could not loosen his rowboat quick enough; he was away almost before you could have spoken his name. Excited as Guida was, she could not resist calling after him:

      “ ‘God save our greshus King! A bi’tot—goodbye!’ ”