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+The Project Gutenberg EBook The Battle Of The Strong, by G. Parker, v5
+#61 in our series by Gilbert Parker
+
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+Title: The Battle Of The Strong [A Romance of Two Kingdoms], Volume 5.
+
+Author: Gilbert Parker
+
+Release Date: August, 2004  [EBook #6234]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on October 10, 2002]
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+Edition: 10
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+Language: English
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+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BATTLE OF THE STRONG, PARKER, V5 ***
+
+
+
+This eBook was produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+THE BATTLE OF THE STRONG
+
+[A ROMANCE OF TWO KINGDOMS]
+
+By Gilbert Parker
+
+
+Volume 5.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+When Ranulph returned to his little house at St. Aubin's Bay night had
+fallen.  Approaching he saw there was no light in the windows.  The
+blinds were not drawn, and no glimmer of fire came from the chimney.  He
+hesitated at the door, for he instinctively felt that something must have
+happened to his father.  He was just about to enter, however, when some
+one came hurriedly round the corner of the house.
+
+"Whist, boy," said a voice; "I've news for you."  Ranulph recognised the
+voice as that of Dormy Jamais.  Dormy plucked at his sleeve.  "Come with
+me, boy," said he.
+
+"Come inside if you want to tell me something," answered Ranulph.
+
+"Ah bah, not for me!  Stone walls have ears.  I'll tell only you and the
+wind that hears and runs away."
+
+"I must speak to my father first," answered Ranulph.
+
+"Come with me, I've got him safe," Dormy chuckled to himself.
+
+Ranulph's heavy hand dropped on his shoulder.  "What's that you're
+saying--my father with you!  What's the matter?"
+
+As though oblivious of Ranulph's hand Dormy went on chuckling.
+
+"Whoever burns me for a fool 'll lose their ashes.  Des monz a fous--I
+have a head!  Come with me."  Ranulph saw that he must humour the shrewd
+natural, so he said:
+
+"Et ben, put your four shirts in five bundles and come along."  He was a
+true Jerseyman at heart, and speaking to such as Dormy Jamais he used the
+homely patois phrases.  He knew there was no use hurrying the little man,
+he would take his own time.
+
+"There's been the devil to pay," said Dormy as he ran towards the shore,
+his sabots going clac--clac, clac--clac.  "There's been the devil to pay
+in St. Heliers, boy."  He spoke scarcely above a whisper.
+
+"Tcheche--what's that?" said Ranulph.  But Dormy was not to uncover his
+pot of roses till his own time.  "That connetable's got no more wit than
+a square bladed knife," he rattled on.  "But gache-a-penn, I'm hungry!"
+And as he ran he began munching a lump of bread he took from his pocket.
+
+For the next five minutes they went on in silence.  It was quite dark,
+and as they passed up Market Hill--called Ghost Lane because of the Good
+Little People who made it their highway--Dormy caught hold of Ranulph's
+coat and trotted along beside him.  As they went, tokens of the life
+within came out to them through doorway and window.  Now it was the voice
+of a laughing young mother:
+
+                        "Si tu as faim
+                         Manges ta main
+                         Et gardes l'autre pour demain;
+                         Et ta tete
+                         Pour le jour de fete;
+                         Et ton gros ortee
+                         Pour le Jour Saint Norbe"
+
+And again:
+
+                   "Let us pluck the bill of the lark,
+                    The lark from head to tail--"
+
+He knew the voice.  It was that of a young wife of the parish of St.
+Saviour: married happily, living simply, given a frugal board, after the
+manner of her kind, and a comradeship for life.  For the moment he felt
+little but sorrow for himself.  The world seemed to be conspiring against
+him: the chorus of Fate was singing behind the scenes, singing of the
+happiness of others in sardonic comment on his own final unhappiness.
+Yet despite the pain of finality there was on him something of the apathy
+of despair.
+
+From another doorway came fragments of a song sung at a veille.  The door
+was open, and he could see within the happy gathering of lads and lassies
+in the light of the crasset.  There was the spacious kitchen, its beams
+and rafters dark with age, adorned with flitches of bacon, huge loaves
+resting in the racllyi beneath the centre beam, the broad open hearth,
+the flaming fire of logs, and the great brass pan shining like fresh-
+coined gold, on its iron tripod over the logs.  Lassies in their short
+woollen petticoats, and bedgones of blue and lilac, with boisterous lads,
+were stirring the contents of the vast bashin--many cabots of apples,
+together with sugar, lemon-peel, and cider; the old ladies in mob-caps
+tied under the chin, measuring out the nutmeg and cinnamon to complete
+the making of the black butter: a jocund recreation for all, and at all
+times.
+
+In one corner was a fiddler, and on the veille, flourished for the
+occasion with satinettes and fern, sat two centeniers and the prevot,
+singing an old song in the patois of three parishes.
+
+Ranulph looked at the scene lingeringly.  Here he was, with mystery and
+peril to hasten his steps, loitering at the spot where the light of home
+streamed out upon the roadway.  But though he lingered, somehow he seemed
+withdrawn from all these things; they were to him now as pictures of a
+distant past.
+
+Dormy plucked at his coat.  "Come, come, lift your feet, lift your feet,"
+said he; "it's no time to walk in slippers.  The old man will be getting
+scared, oui-gia!"  Ranulph roused himself.  Yes, yes, he must hurry on.
+He had not forgotten his father, but something held him here; as though
+Fate were whispering in his ear.  What does it matter now?  While yet you
+may, feed on the sight of happiness.  So the prisoner going to execution
+seizes one of the few moments left to him for prayer, to look lingeringly
+upon what he leaves, as though to carry into the dark a clear remembrance
+of it all.
+
+Moving on quietly in a kind of dream, Ranulph was roused again by Dormy's
+voice: "On Sunday I saw three magpies, and there was a wedding that day.
+Tuesday I saw two--that's for joy--and fifty Jersey prisoners of the
+French comes back on Jersey that day.  This morning one I saw.  One
+magpie is for trouble, and trouble's here.  One doesn't have eyes for
+naught--no, bidemme!"
+
+Ranulph's patience was exhausted.
+
+"Bachouar," he exclaimed roughly, "you make elephants out of fleas!
+You've got no more news than a conch-shell has music.  A minute and
+you'll have a back-hander that'll put you to sleep, Maitre Dormy."
+
+If he had been asked his news politely Dormy would have been still more
+cunningly reticent.  To abuse him in his own argot was to make him loose
+his bag of mice in a flash.
+
+"Bachouar yourself, Maitre Ranulph!  You'll find out soon.  No news--no
+trouble--eh!  Par made, Mattingley's gone to the Vier Prison--he!  The
+baker's come back, and the Connetable's after Olivier Delagarde.  No
+trouble, pardingue, if no trouble, Dormy Jamais's a batd'lagoule and no
+need for father of you to hide in a place that only Dormy knows--my
+good!"
+
+So at last the blow had fallen; after all these years of silence,
+sacrifice, and misery.  The futility of all that he had done and suffered
+for his father's sake came home to Ranulph.  Yet his brain was instantly
+alive.  He questioned Dormy rapidly and adroitly, and got the story from
+him in patches.
+
+The baker Carcaud, who, with Olivier Delagarde, betrayed the country into
+the hands of Rullecour years ago, had, with a French confederate of
+Mattingley's, been captured in attempting to steal Jean Touzel's boat,
+the Hardi Biaou.  At the capture the confederate had been shot.  Before
+dying he implicated Mattingley in several robberies, and a notorious case
+of piracy of three months before, committed within gunshot of the men-of-
+war lying in the tide-way.  Carcaud, seriously wounded, to save his life
+turned King's evidence, and disclosed to the Royal Court in private his
+own guilt and Olivier Delagarde's treason.
+
+Hidden behind the great chair of the Bailly himself, Dormy Jamais had
+heard the whole business.  This had brought him hot-foot to St. Aubin's
+Bay, whence he had hurried Olivier Delagarde to a hiding-place in the
+hills above the bay of St. Brelade.  The fool had travelled more swiftly
+than Jersey justice, whose feet are heavy.  Elie Mattingley was now in
+the Vier Prison.  There was the whole story.
+
+The mask had fallen, the game was up.  Well, at least there would be no
+more lying, no more brutalising inward shame.  All at once it appeared to
+Ranulph madness that he had not taken his father away from Jersey long
+ago.  Yet too he knew that as things had been with Guida he could never
+have stayed away.
+
+Nothing was left but action.  He must get his father clear of the island
+and that soon.  But how?  and where should they go?  He had a boat in St.
+Aubin's Bay: getting there under cover of darkness he might embark with
+his father and set sail--whither?  To Sark--there was no safety there.
+To Guernsey--that was no better.  To France--yes, that was it, to the war
+of the Vendee, to join Detricand.  No need to find the scrap of paper
+once given him in the Vier Marchi.  Wherever Detricand might be, his fame
+was the highway to him.  All France knew of the companion of de la
+Rochejaquelein, the fearless Comte de Tournay.  Ranulph made his
+decision.  Shamed and dishonoured in Jersey, in that holy war of the
+Vendee he would find something to kill memory, to take him out of life
+without disgrace.  His father must go with him to France, and bide his
+fate there also.
+
+By the time his mind was thus made up, they had reached the lonely
+headland dividing Portelet Bay from St. Brelade's.  Dark things were said
+of this spot, and the country folk of the island were wont to avoid it.
+Beneath the cliffs in the sea was a rocky islet called Janvrin's Tomb.
+One Janvrin, ill of a fell disease, and with his fellows forbidden by the
+Royal Court to land, had taken refuge here, and died wholly neglected and
+without burial.  Afterwards his body lay exposed till the ravens and
+vultures devoured it, and at last a great storm swept his bones off into
+the sea.  Strange lights were to be seen about this rock, and though wise
+men guessed them mortal glimmerings, easily explained, they sufficed to
+give the headland immunity from invasion.
+
+To a cave at this point Dormy Jamais had brought the trembling Olivier
+Delagarde, unrepenting and peevish, but with a craven fear of the Royal
+Court and a furious populace quickening his footsteps.  This hiding-place
+was entered at low tide by a passage from a larger cave.  It was like a
+little vaulted chapel floored with sand and shingle.  A crevice through
+rock and earth to the world above let in the light and out the smoke.
+
+Here Olivier Delagarde sat crouched over a tiny fire, with some bread and
+a jar of water at his hand, gesticulating and talking to himself.  The
+long white hair and beard, with the benevolent forehead, gave him the
+look of some latter-day St. Helier, grieving for the sins and praying for
+the sorrows of mankind; but from the hateful mouth came profanity fit
+only for the dreadful communion of a Witches' Sabbath.
+
+Hearing the footsteps of Ranulph and Dormy, he crouched and shivered in
+terror, but Ranulph, who knew too well his revolting cowardice, called to
+him reassuringly.  On their approach he stretched out his talon-like
+fingers in a gesture of entreaty.
+
+"You'll not let them hang me, Ranulph--you'll save me," he whimpered.
+
+"Don't be afraid, they shall not hang you," Ranulph replied quietly, and
+began warming his hands at the fire.  "You'll swear it, Ranulph--on the
+Bible?"
+
+"I've told you they shall not hang you.  You ought to know by now whether
+I mean what I say," his son answered more sharply.
+
+Assuredly Ranulph meant that his father should not be hanged.  Whatever
+the law was, whatever wrong the old man had done, it had been atoned for;
+the price had been paid by both.  He himself had drunk the cup of shame
+to the dregs, but now he would not swallow the dregs.  An iron
+determination entered into him.  He had endured all that he would endure
+from man.  He had set out to defend Olivier Delagarde from the worst that
+might happen, and he was ready to do so to the bitter end.  His scheme of
+justice might not be that of the Royal Court, but he would defend it with
+his life.  He had suddenly grown hard--and dangerous.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+The Royal Court was sitting late.  Candles had been brought to light
+the long desk or dais where sat the Bailly in his great chair, and the
+twelve scarlet-robed jurats.  The Attorney-General stood at his desk,
+mechanically scanning the indictment read against prisoners charged with
+capital crimes.  His work was over, and according to his lights he had
+done it well.  Not even the Undertaker's Apprentice could have been less
+sensitive to the struggles of humanity under the heel of fate and death.
+A plaintive complacency, a little righteous austerity, and an agreeable
+expression of hunger made the Attorney-General a figure in godly contrast
+to the prisoner awaiting his doom in the iron cage opposite.
+
+There was a singular stillness in this sombre Royal Court, where only a
+tallow candle or two and a dim lanthorn near the door filled the room
+with flickering shadows-great heads upon the wall drawing close together,
+and vast lips murmuring awful secrets.  Low whisperings came through the
+dusk like mournful nightwinds carrying tales of awe through a heavy
+forest.  Once in the long silence a figure rose up silently, and stealing
+across the room to a door near the jury box, tapped upon it with a
+pencil.  A moment's pause, the door opened slightly, and another shadowy
+figure appeared, whispered, and vanished.  Then the first figure closed
+the door again silently, and came and spoke softly up to the Bailly, who
+yawned in his hand, sat back in his chair, and drummed his fingers upon
+the arm.  Thereupon the other--the greffier of the court--settled down at
+his desk beneath the jurats, and peered into an open book before him, his
+eyes close to the page, reading silently by the meagre light of a candle
+from the great desk behind him.
+
+Now a fat and ponderous avocat rose up and was about to speak, but the
+Bailly, with a peevish gesture, waved him down, and he settled heavily
+into place again.
+
+At last the door at which the greffier had tapped opened, and a gaunt
+figure in a red robe came out.  Standing in the middle of the room he
+motioned towards the great pew opposite the Attorney-General.  Slowly the
+twenty-four men of the grand jury following him filed into place and sat
+themselves down in the shadows.  Then the gaunt figure--the Vicomte or
+high sheriff--bowing to the Bailly and the jurats, went over and took his
+seat beside the Attorney-General.  Whereupon the Bailly leaned forward
+and droned a question to the Grand Enquete in the shadow.  One rose up
+from among the twenty-four, and out of the dusk there came in reply to
+the Judge a squeaking voice:
+
+"We find the Prisoner at the Bar more Guilty than Innocent."
+
+A shudder ran through the court.  But some one not in the room shuddered
+still more violently.  From the gable window of a house in the Rue des
+Tres Pigeons, a girl had sat the livelong day, looking, looking into the
+court-room.  She had watched the day decline, the evening come, and the
+lighting of the crassets and the candles, and had waited to hear the
+words that meant more to her than her own life.  At last the great moment
+came, and she could hear the foreman's voice whining the fateful words,
+"More Guilty than Innocent."
+
+It was Carterette Mattingley, and the prisoner at the bar was her father.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+Mattingley's dungeon was infested with rats and other vermin, he had only
+straw for his bed, and his food and drink were bread and water.  The
+walls were damp with moisture from the Fauxbie running beneath, and a
+mere glimmer of light came through a small barred window.  Superstition
+had surrounded the Vier Prison with horrors.  As carts passed under the
+great archway, its depth multiplied the sounds so powerfully, the echoes
+were so fantastic, that folk believed them the roarings of fiendish
+spirits.  If a mounted guard hurried through, the reverberation of the
+drum-beats and the clatter of hoofs were so uncouth that children stopped
+their ears and fled in terror.  To the ignorant populace the Vier Prison
+was the home of noisome serpents and the rendezvous of the devil and his
+witches of Rocbert.
+
+When therefore the seafaring merchant of the Vier Marchi, whose massive,
+brass-studded bahue had been as a gay bazaar where the gentry of Jersey
+refreshed their wardrobes, with one eye closed--when he was transferred
+to the Vier Prison, little wonder he should become a dreadful being round
+whom played the lightnings of dark fancy.  Elie Mattingley the popular
+sinner, with insolent gold rings in his ears, unchallenged as to how he
+came by his merchandise, was one person; Elie Mattingley, a torch for the
+burning, and housed amid the terrors of the Vier Prison, was another.
+
+Few people in Jersey slept the night before his execution.  Here and
+there kind-hearted women or unimportant men lay awake through pity, and a
+few through a vague sense of loss; for, henceforth, the Vier Marchi would
+lack a familiar interest; but mostly the people of Mattingley's world
+were wakeful through curiosity.  Morbid expectation of the hanging had
+for them a gruesome diversion.  The thing itself would break the daily
+monotony of life and provide hushed gossip for vraic gatherings and
+veilles for a long time to come.  Thus Elie Mattingley would not die in
+vain!
+
+Here was one sensation, but there was still another.  Olivier Delagarde
+had been unmasked, and the whole island had gone tracking him down.  No
+aged toothless tiger was ever sported through the jungle by an army of
+shikarris with hungrier malice than was this broken traitor by the people
+he had betrayed.  Ensued, therefore, a commingling of patriotism with
+lust of man-hunting and eager expectation of to-morrow's sacrifice.
+
+Nothing of this excitement disturbed Mattingley.  He did not sleep, but
+that was because he was still watching for a means of escape.  He felt
+his chances diminish, however, when about midnight an extra guard was put
+round the prison.  Something had gone amiss in the matter of his rescue.
+
+Three things had been planned.
+
+Firstly, he was to try escape by the small window of the dungeon.
+
+Secondly, Carterette was to bring Sebastian Alixandre to the prison
+disguised as a sorrowing aunt of the condemned.  Alixandre was suddenly
+to overpower the jailer, Mattingley was to make a rush for freedom, and a
+few bold spirits without would second his efforts and smuggle him to the
+sea.  The directing mind and hand in the business were Ranulph
+Delagarde's.  He was to have his boat waiting to respond to a signal from
+the shore, and to make sail for France, where he and his father were to
+be landed.  There he was to give Mattingley, Alixandre, and Carterette
+his craft to fare across the seas to the great fishing-ground of Gaspe in
+Canada.
+
+Lastly, if these plans failed, the executioner was to be drugged with
+liquor, his besetting weakness, on the eve of the hanging.
+
+The first plan had been found impossible, the window being too small for
+even Mattingley's head to get through.  The second had failed because the
+righteous Royal Court forbade Carterette the prison, intent that she
+should no longer be contaminated by so vile a wretch as her father.  For
+years this same Christian solicitude had looked down from the windows of
+the Cohue Royale upon this same criminal in the Vier Marchi, with one
+blind eye for himself the sinner and an open one for his merchandise.
+
+Mattingley could hear the hollow sound of the sentinels' steps under the
+archway of the Vier Prison.  He was quite stoical.  If he had to die,
+then he had to die.  Death could only be a little minute of agony; and
+for what came after--well, he had not thought fearfully of that, and he
+had no wish to think of it at all.  The visiting chaplain had talked, and
+he had not listened.  He had his own ideas about life, and death, and the
+beyond, and they were not ungenerous.  The chaplain had found him patient
+but impossible, kindly but unresponsive, sometimes even curious, but
+without remorse.
+
+"You should repent with sorrow and a contrite heart," said the clergyman.
+"You have done many evil things in your life, Mattingley."
+
+Mattingley had replied: "Ma fuifre, I can't remember them!  I know I
+never done them, for I never done anything but good all my life--so much
+for so much."  He had argued it out with himself and he believed he was a
+good man.  He had been open-handed, had stood by his friends, and, up to
+a few days ago, was counted a good citizen; for many had come to profit
+through him.  His trade--a little smuggling, a little piracy?  Was not
+the former hallowed by distinguished patronage, and had it not existed
+from immemorial time?  It was fair fight for gain, an eye for an eye and
+a tooth for a tooth.  If he hadn't robbed others on the high seas, they
+would probably have robbed him--and sometimes they did.  His spirit was
+that of the Elizabethan admirals; he belonged to a century not his own.
+As for the crime for which he was to suffer, it had been the work of
+another hand, and very bad work it was, to try and steal Jean Touzel's
+Hardi Biaou, and then bungle it.  He had had nothing to do with it, for
+he and Jean Touzel were the best of friends, as was proved by the fact
+that while he lay in his dungeon, Jean wandered the shore sorrowing for
+his fate.
+
+Thinking now of the whole business and of his past life, Mattingley
+suddenly had a pang.  Yes, remorse smote him at last.  There was one
+thing on his conscience--only one.  He had respect for the feelings of
+others, and where the Church was concerned this was mingled with a droll
+sort of pity, as of the greater for the lesser, the wise for the
+helpless.  For clergymen he had a half-affectionate contempt.
+He remembered now that when, five years ago, his confederate who had
+turned out so badly--he had trusted him, too! had robbed the church of
+St. Michael's, carrying off the great chest of communion plate,
+offertories, and rents, he had piously left behind in Mattingley's house
+the vestry-books and parish-register; a nice definition in rogues'
+ethics.  Awaiting his end now, it smote Mattingley's soul that these
+stolen records had not been returned to St. Michael's.  Next morning he
+must send word to Carterette to restore the books.  Then his conscience
+would be clear once more.  With this resolve quieting his mind, he turned
+over on his straw and went peacefully to sleep.
+
+Hours afterwards he waked with a yawn.  There was no start, no terror,
+but the appearance of the jailer with the chaplain roused in him disgust
+for the coming function at the Mont es Pendus.  Disgust was his chief
+feeling.  This was no way for a man to die!  With a choice of evils he
+should have preferred walking the plank, or even dying quietly in his
+bed, to being stifled by a rope.  To dangle from a cross-tree like a
+half-filled bag offended all instincts of picturesqueness, and first and
+last he had been picturesque.
+
+He asked at once for pencil and paper.  His wishes were obeyed with
+deference.  On the whole he realised by the attentions paid him--the
+brandy and the food offered by the jailer, the fluttering kindness of
+the chaplain--that in the life of a criminal there is one moment when
+he commands the situation.  He refused the brandy, for he was strongly
+against spirits in the early morning, but asked for coffee.  Eating
+seemed superfluous--and a man might die more gaily on an empty stomach.
+He assured the chaplain that he had come to terms with his conscience and
+was now about to perform the last act of a well-intentioned life.
+
+There and then he wrote to Carterette, telling her about the vestry-books
+of St. Michael's, and begging that she should restore them secretly.
+There were no affecting messages; they understood each other.  He knew
+that when it was possible she would never fail to come to the mark where
+he was concerned, and she had equal faith in him.  So the letter was
+sealed, addressed with flourishes, he was proud of his handwriting, and
+handed to the chaplain for Carterette.
+
+He had scarcely drunk his coffee when there was a roll of drums outside.
+Mattingley knew that his hour was come, and yet to his own surprise he
+had no violent sensations.  He had a shock presently, however, for on the
+jailer announcing the executioner, who should be there before him but the
+Undertaker's Apprentice!  In politeness to the chaplain Mattingley
+forbore profanity.  This was the one Jerseyman for whom he had a profound
+hatred, this youth with the slow, cold, watery blue eye, a face that
+never wrinkled either with mirth or misery, the square-set teeth always
+showing a little--an involuntary grimace of cruelty.  Here was insult.
+
+"Devil below us, so you're going to do it--you!" broke out Mattingley.
+
+"The other man was drunk," said the Undertaker's Apprentice.  "He's been
+full as a jug three days.  He got drunk too soon."  The grimace seemed to
+widen.  "O my good!" said Mattingley, and he would say no more.  To him
+words were like nails--of no use unless they were to be driven home by
+acts.
+
+To Mattingley the procession of death was stupidly slow.  As it issued
+from the archway of the Vier Prison between mounted guards, and passed
+through a long lane of moving spectators, he looked round coolly.  One
+or two bold spirits cried out: "Head up to the wind, Maitre Elie!"
+
+"Oui-gia," he replied; "devil a top-sail in!" and turned a look of
+contempt on those who hooted him.  He realised now that there was no
+chance of rescue.  The militia and the town guard were in ominous force,
+and although his respect for the island military was not devout, a bullet
+from the musket of a fool might be as effective as one from Bonapend's--
+as Napoleon Bonaparte was disdainfully called in Jersey.  Yet he could
+not but wonder why all the plans of Alixandre, Carterette, and Ranulph
+had gone for nothing; even the hangman had been got drunk too soon!  He
+had a high opinion of Ranulph, and that he should fail him was a blow to
+his judgment of humanity.
+
+He was thoroughly disgusted.  Also they had compelled him to put on a
+white shirt, he who had never worn linen in his life.  He was ill at ease
+in it.  It made him conspicuous; it looked as though he were aping the
+gentleman at the last.  He tried to resign himself, but resignation was
+hard to learn so late in life.  Somehow he could not feel that this was
+really the day of his death.  Yet how could it be otherwise?  There was
+the Vicomte in his red robe, there was the sinister Undertaker's
+Apprentice, ready to do his hangman's duty.  There, as they crossed the
+mielles, while the sea droned its sing-song on his left, was the parson
+droning his sing-song on the right "In the midst of life we are in
+death," etc.  There were the grumbling drums, and the crowd morbidly
+enjoying their Roman holiday; and there, looming up before him, were the
+four stone pillars on the Mont es Pendus from which he was to swing.  His
+disgust deepened.  He was not dying like a seafarer who had fairly earned
+his reputation.
+
+His feelings found vent even as he came to the foot of the platform where
+he was to make his last stand, and the guards formed a square about the
+great pillars, glooming like Druidic altars.  He burst forth in one
+phrase expressive of his feelings.
+
+"Sacre matin--so damned paltry!" he said, in equal tribute to two races.
+
+The Undertaker's Apprentice, thinking this a reflection upon his
+arrangements, said, with a wave of the hand to the rope:
+
+"Nannin, ch'est tres ship-shape, Maitre!"
+
+The Undertaker's Apprentice was wrong.  He had made everything ship-
+shape, as he thought, but a gin had been set for him.  The rope to be
+used at the hanging had been measured and approved by the Vicomte, and
+the Undertaker's Apprentice had carried it to his room at the top of the
+Cohue Royale.  In the dead of night, however, Dormy Jamais drew it from
+under the mattress whereon the deathman slept, and substituted one a foot
+longer.  This had been Ranulph's idea as a last resort, for he had a grim
+wish to foil the law even at the twelfth hour.
+
+The great moment had come.  The shouts and hootings ceased.  Out of the
+silence there arose only the champing of a horse's bit or the hysterical
+giggle of a woman.  The high painful drone of the chaplain's voice was
+heard.
+
+Then came the fatal "Maintenant!" from the Vicomte, the platform fell,
+and Elie Mattingley dropped the length of the rope.
+
+What was the consternation of the Vicomte and the hangman, and the horror
+of the crowd, to see that Mattingley's toes just touched the ground!  The
+body shook and twisted.  The man was being slowly strangled, not hanged.
+
+The Undertaker's Apprentice was the only person who kept a cool head.
+The solution of the problem of the rope for afterwards, but he had been
+sent there to hang a man, and a man he would hang somehow.  Without more
+ado he jumped upon Mattingley's shoulders and began to drag him down.
+
+That instant Ranulph Delagarde burst through the mounted guard and the
+militia.  Rushing to the Vicomte, he exclaimed:
+
+"Shame!  The man was to be hung, not strangled.  This is murder.  Stop
+it, or I'll cut the rope."  He looked round on the crowd.  "Cowards--
+cowards," he cried, "will you see him murdered?"
+
+He started forward to drag away the deathmann, but the Vicomte,
+thoroughly terrified at Ranulph's onset, himself seized the Undertaker's
+Apprentice, who, drawing off with unruffled malice, watched what followed
+with steely eyes.
+
+Dragged down by the weight of the Apprentice, Mattingley's feet were now
+firmly on the ground.  While the excited crowd tried to break through the
+cordon of mounted guards, Mattingley, by a twist and a jerk, freed his
+corded hands.  Loosing the rope at his neck he opened his eyes and looked
+around him, dazed and dumb.
+
+The Apprentice came forward.  "I'll shorten the rope oui-gia!  Then you
+shall see him swing," he grumbled viciously to the Vicomte.
+
+The gaunt Vicomte was trembling with excitement.  He looked helplessly
+around him.
+
+The Apprentice caught hold of the rope to tie knots in it and so shorten
+it, but Ranulph again appealed to the Vicomte.
+
+"You've hung the man," said he; "you've strangled him and you didn't kill
+him.  You've got no right to put that rope round his neck again."
+
+Two jurats who had waited on the outskirts of the crowd, furtively
+watching the effect of their sentence, burst in, as distracted as the
+Vicomte.
+
+"Hang the man again and the whole world will laugh at you," Ranulph said.
+"If you're not worse than fools or Turks you'll let him go.  He has had
+death already.  Take him back to the prison then, if you're afraid to
+free him."  He turned on the crowd fiercely.  "Have you nothing to say to
+this butchery?" he cried.  "For the love of God, haven't you anything to
+say?"
+
+Half the crowd shouted "Let him go free!" and the other half,
+disappointed in the working out of the gruesome melodrama, groaned and
+hooted.
+
+Meanwhile Mattingley stood as still as ever he had stood by his bahue in
+the Vier Marchi, watching--waiting.
+
+The Vicomte conferred nervously with the jurats for a moment, and then
+turned to the guard.
+
+"Take the prisoner to the Vier Prison," he said.  Mattingley had been
+slowly solving the problem of his salvation.  His eye, like a gimlet, had
+screwed its way through Ranulph's words into what lay behind, and at last
+he understood the whole beautiful scheme.  It pleased him: Carterette had
+been worthy of herself, and of him.  Ranulph had played his game well
+too.  He only failed to do justice to the poor beganne, Dormy Jamais.
+But then the virtue of fools is its own reward.  As the procession
+started back with the Undertaker's Apprentice now following after
+Mattingley, not going before, Mattingley turned to him, and with a smile
+of malice said:
+
+"Ch'est tres ship-shape, Maitre-eh!" and he jerked his head back towards
+the inadequate rope.
+
+He was not greatly troubled about the rest of this grisly farce.  He was
+now ready for breakfast, and his appetite grew as he heard how the crowd
+hooted and snarled yah! at the Undertaker's Apprentice.  He was quite
+easy about the future.  What had been so well done thus far could not
+fail in the end.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV
+
+Events proved Mattingley right.  Three days after, it was announced that
+he had broken prison.  It is probable that the fury of the Royal Court at
+the news was not quite sincere, for it was notable that the night of his
+evasion, suave and uncrestfallen, they dined in state at the Tres
+Pigeons.  The escape gave them happy issue from a quandary.
+
+The Vicomte officially explained that Mattingley had got out by the
+dungeon window.  People came to see the window, and there, ba su, the
+bars were gone!  But that did not prove the case, and the mystery was
+deepened by the fact that Jean Touzel, whose head was too small for
+Elie's hat, could not get that same head through the dungeon window.
+Having proved so much, Jean left the mystery there, and returned to his
+Hardi Biaou.
+
+This happened on the morning after the dark night when Mattingley,
+Carterette, and Alixandre hurried from the Vier Prison, through the Rue
+des Sablons to the sea, and there boarded Ranulph's boat, wherein was
+Olivier Delagarde the traitor.
+
+Accompanying Carterette to the shore was a little figure that moved along
+beside them like a shadow, a little grey figure that carried a gold-
+headed cane.  At the shore this same little grey figure bade Mattingley
+good-bye with a quavering voice.  Whereupon Carterette, her face all wet
+with tears, kissed him upon both cheeks, and sobbed so that she could
+scarcely speak.  For now when it was all done--all the horrible ordeal
+over--the woman in her broke down before the little old gentleman, who
+had been like a benediction in the house where the ten commandments were
+imperfectly upheld.  But she choked down her sobs, and thinking of
+another more than of herself, she said:
+
+"Dear Chevalier, do not forget the book--that register--I gave you
+to-night.  Read it--read the last writing in it, and then you will know--
+ah, bidemme--but you will know that her we love--ah, but you must read it
+and tell nobody till--till the right time comes!  She hasn't held her
+tongue for naught, and it's only fair to do as she's done all along, and
+hold ours.  Pardingue, but my heart hurts me!" she added suddenly, and
+catching the hand that held the little gold cane she kissed it with
+impulsive ardour.  "You have been so good to me--oui-gia!" she said with
+a gulp, and then she dropped the hand and turned and fled to the boat
+rocking in the surf.
+
+The little Chevalier watched the boat glide out into the gloom of night,
+and waited till he knew that they must all be aboard Ranulph's schooner
+and making for the sea.  Then he turned and went back to the empty house
+in the Rue d'Egypte.
+
+Opening the book Carterette had placed in his hands before they left the
+house, he turned up and scanned closely the last written page.  A moment
+after, he started violently, his eyes dilating, first with wonder, then
+with a bewildered joy; and then, Protestant though he was, with the
+instinct of long-gone forefathers, he made the sacred gesture, and said:
+
+"Now I have not lived and loved in vain, thanks be to God!"
+
+Even as joy opened wide the eyes of the Chevalier, who had been sorely
+smitten through the friends of his heart, out at sea Night and Death were
+closing the eyes of another wan old man who had been a traitor to his
+country.
+
+For the boat of the fugitives had scarcely cleared reefs and rocks, and
+reached the open Channel, when Olivier Delagarde, uttering the same cry
+as when Ranulph and the soldiers had found him wounded in the Grouville
+road sixteen years before, suddenly started up from where he had lain
+mumbling, and whispering incoherently, "Ranulph--they've killed me!"
+fell back dead.
+
+True to the instinct which had kept him faithful to one idea for sixteen
+years, and in spite of the protests of Mattingley and Carterette--of the
+despairing Carterette who felt the last thread of her hopes snap with his
+going--Ranulph made ready to leave them.  Bidding them good-bye, he
+placed his father's body in the rowboat, and pulling back to the shore of
+St. Aubin's Bay with his pale freight, carried it on his shoulders up to
+the little house where he had lived so many years.  There he kept the
+death-watch alone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV
+
+Guida knew nothing of the arrest and trial of Mattingley until he had
+been condemned to death.  Nor until then did she know anything of what
+had happened to Olivier Delagarde; for soon after her interview with
+Ranulph she had gone a-marketing to the Island of Sark, with the results
+of half a year's knitting.  Her return had been delayed by ugly gales
+from the south east.  Several times a year she made this journey, landing
+at the Eperquerie Rocks as she had done one day long ago, and selling her
+beautiful wool caps and jackets to the farmers and fisher-folk, getting
+in kind for what she gave.
+
+When she made these excursions to Sark, Dormy Jamais had always remained
+at the little house, milking her cow, feeding her fowls, and keeping all
+in order--as perfect a sentinel as old Biribi, and as faithful.  For the
+first time in his life, however, Dormy Jamais was unfaithful.  On the day
+that Carcaud the baker and Mattingley were arrested, he deserted the hut
+at Plemont to exploit, with Ranulph, the adventure which was at last to
+save Olivier Delagarde and Mattingley from death.  But he had been
+unfaithful only in the letter of his bond.  He had gone to the house of
+Jean Touzel, through whose Hardi Biaou the disaster had come, and had
+told Mattresse Aimable that she must go to Plemont in his stead--for a
+fool must keep his faith whate'er the worldly wise may do.  So the fat
+Femme de Ballast, puffing with every step, trudged across the island to
+Plemont, and installed herself as keeper of the house.
+
+One day Mattresse Aimable's quiet was invaded by two signalmen who kept
+watch, not far from Guida's home, for all sail, friend or foe, bearing in
+sight.  They were now awaiting the new Admiral of the Jersey station and
+his fleet.  With churlish insolence they entered Guida's hut before
+Maitresse Aimable could prevent it.  Looking round, they laughed
+meaningly, and then told her that the commander coming presently to lie
+with his fleet in Grouville Bay was none other than the sometime Jersey
+midshipman, now Admiral Prince Philip d'Avranche, Duc de Bercy.
+Understanding then the meaning of their laughter, and the implied insult
+to Guida, Maitresse Aimable's voice came ravaging out of the silence
+where it lay hid so often and so long, and the signalmen went their ways
+shamefacedly.
+
+She could not make head or tail of her thoughts now, nor see an inch
+before her nose; all she could feel was an aching heart for Guida.  She
+had heard strange tales of how Philip had become Prince Philip
+d'Avranche, and husband of the Comtesse Chantavoine, and afterwards Duc
+de Bercy.  Also she had heard how Philip, just before he became the Duc
+de Bercy, had fought his ship against a French vessel off Ushant, and,
+though she had heavier armament than his own, had destroyed her.  For
+this he had been made an admiral.  Only the other day her Jean had
+brought the Gazette de Jersey in which all these things were related,
+and had spelled them out for her.  And now this same Philip d'Avranche
+with his new name and fame was on his way to defend the Isle of Jersey.
+
+Mattresse Aimable's muddled mind could not get hold of this new Philip.
+For years she had thought him a monster, and here he was, a great and
+valiant gentleman to the world.  He had done a thing that Jean would
+rather have cut off his hand--both hands--than do, and yet here he was,
+an admiral, a prince, and a sovereign duke, and men like Jean were as
+dust beneath his feet.  The real Philip she knew: he was the man who had
+spoiled the life of a woman; this other Philip--she could read about him,
+she could think about him, just as she could think about William and his
+horse' in Boulay Bay, or the Little Bad Folk of Rocbert; but she could
+not realise him as a thing of flesh and blood and actual being.  The more
+she tried to realise him the more mixed she became.
+
+As in her mental maze she sat panting her way to enlightenment, she saw
+Guida's boat entering the little harbour.  Now the truth must be told--
+but how?
+
+After her first exclamation of welcome to mother and child, Maitresse
+Aimable struggled painfully for her voice.  She tried to find words in
+which to tell Guida the truth, but, stopping in despair, she suddenly
+began rocking the child back and forth, saying only: "Prince Admiral he
+--and now to come!  O my good--O my good!"  Guida's sharp intuition found
+the truth.
+
+"Philip d'Avranche!" she said to herself.  Then aloud, in a shaking
+voice--"Philip d'Avranche!"
+
+She could not think clearly for a moment.  It was as if her brain had
+received a blow, and in her head was a singing numbness, obscuring
+eyesight, hearing, speech.
+
+When she had recovered a little she took the child from Maitresse
+Aimable, and pressing him to her bosom placed him in the Sieur de
+Mauprat's great arm-chair.  This action, ordinary as it seemed, was
+significant of what was in her mind.  The child himself realised
+something unusual, and he sat perfectly still, two small hands spread
+out on the big arms.
+
+"You always believed in me, 'tresse Aimable," Guida said at last in a low
+voice.
+
+"Oui-gia, what else?" was the instant reply.  The quick responsiveness
+of her own voice seemed to confound the Femme de Ballast, and her face
+suffused.
+
+Guida stooped quickly and kissed her on the cheek.  "You'll never regret
+that.  And you will have to go on believing still, but you'll not be
+sorry in the end, 'tresse Aimable," she said, and turned away to the
+fireplace.  An hour afterwards Mattresse Aimable was upon her way to St.
+Heliers, but now she carried her weight more easily and panted less.
+Twice within the last month Jean had given her ear a friendly pinch, and
+now Guida had kissed her--surely she had reason to carry her weight more
+lightly.
+
+That afternoon and evening Guida struggled with herself: the woman in her
+shrinking from the ordeal at hand.  But the mother in her pleaded,
+commanded, ruled confused emotions to quiet.  Finality of purpose once
+determined, a kind of peace came over her sick spirit, for with finality
+there is quiescence if not peace.
+
+When she looked at the little Guilbert, refined and strong, curiously
+observant, and sensitive in temperament like herself, her courage
+suddenly leaped to a higher point than it had ever known.  This innocent
+had suffered enough.  What belonged to him he had not had.  He had been
+wronged in much by his father, and maybe--and this was the cruel part of
+it--had been unwittingly wronged, alas! how unwilling, by her!  If she
+gave her own life many times, it still could be no more than was the
+child's due.
+
+A sudden impulse seized her, and with a quick explosion of feeling she
+dropped on her knees, and looking into his eyes, as though hungering for
+the words she so often yearned to hear, she said:
+
+"You love your mother, Guilbert?  You love her, little son?"
+
+With a pretty smile and eyes brimming with affectionate fun, but without
+a word, the child put out a tiny hand and drew the fingers softly down
+his mother's face.
+
+"Speak, little son, tell your mother that you love her."  The tiny hand
+pressed itself over her eyes, and a gay little laugh came from the
+sensitive lips, then both arms ran round her neck.  The child drew her
+head to him impulsively, and kissing her, a little upon the hair and a
+little upon the forehead, so indefinite was the embrace, he said:
+
+"Si, maman, I loves you best of all," then added: "Maman, can't I have
+the sword now?"
+
+"You shall have the sword too some day," she answered, her eyes flashing.
+
+"But, maman, can't I touch it now?"
+
+Without a word she took down the sheathed goldhandled sword and laid it
+across the chair-arms.
+
+"I can't take the sword out, can I, maman?" he asked.
+
+She could not help smiling.  "Not yet, my son, not yet."
+
+"I has to be growed up so the blade doesn't hurt me, hasn't I, maman?"
+
+She nodded and smiled again, and went about her work.
+
+He nodded sagely.  "Maman--" he said.  She turned to him; the little
+figure was erect with a sweet importance.  "Maman, what am I now--with
+the sword?" he asked, with wide-open, amazed eyes.
+
+A strange look passed across her face.  Stooping, she kissed his curly
+hair.
+
+"You are my prince," she said.
+
+A little later the two were standing on that point of land called
+Grosnez--the brow of the Jersey tiger.  Not far from them was a signal-
+staff which telegraphed to another signal-staff inland.  Upon the staff
+now was hoisted a red flag.  Guida knew the signals well.  The red flag
+meant warships in sight.  Then bags were hoisted that told of the number
+of vessels: one, two, three, four, five, six, then one next the upright,
+meaning seven.  Last of all came the signal that a flag-ship was among
+them.
+
+This was a fleet in command of an admiral.  There, not far out, between
+Guernsey and Jersey, was the squadron itself.  Guida watched it for a
+long while, her heart hardening; but seeing that the men by the signal-
+staff were watching her, she took the child and went to a spot where they
+were shielded from any eyes.  Here she watched the fleet draw nearer and
+nearer.
+
+The vessels passed almost within a stone's throw of her.  She could see
+the St. George's Cross flying at the fore of the largest ship.  That was
+the admiral's flag--that was the flag of Admiral Prince Philip
+d'Avranche, Duc de Bercy.
+
+She felt her heart stand still suddenly, and with a tremor, as of fear,
+she gathered her child close to her.  "What is all those ships, maman?"
+asked the child.  "They are ships to defend Jersey," she said, watching
+the Imperturbable and its flotilla range on.
+
+"Will they affend us, maman?"
+
+"Perhaps-at the last," she said.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI
+
+Off Grouville Bay lay the squadron of the Jersey station.  The St.
+George's Cross was flying at the fore of the Imperturbable, and on every
+ship of the fleet the white ensign flapped in the morning wind.  The
+wooden-walled three-decked flag-ship, with her 32-pounders, and six
+hundred men, was not less picturesque and was more important than the
+Castle of Mont Orgueil near by, standing over two hundred feet above the
+level of the sea: the home of Philip d'Avranche, Duc de Bercy, and the
+Comtesse Chantavoine, now known to the world as the Duchesse de Bercy.
+
+The Comtesse had arrived in the island almost simultaneously with Philip,
+although he had urged her to remain at the ducal palace of Bercy.  But
+the duchy of Bercy was in hard case.  When the imbecile Duke Leopold John
+died and Philip succeeded, the neutrality of Bercy had been proclaimed,
+but this neutrality had since been violated, and there was danger at once
+from the incursions of the Austrians and the ravages of the French
+troops.  In Philip's absence the valiant governor-general of the duchy,
+aided by the influence and courage of the Comtesse Chantavoine, had thus
+far saved it from dismemberment, in spite of attempted betrayals by
+Damour the Intendant, who still remained Philip's enemy.
+
+But when the Marquis Grandjon-Larisse, the uncle of the Comtesse, died,
+her cousin, General Grandjon-Larisse of the Republican army--whose word
+with Dalbarade had secured Philip's release years before for her own
+safety, first urged and then commanded her temporary absence from the
+duchy.  So far he had been able to protect it from the fury of the
+Republicans and the secret treachery of the Jacobins.  But a time of
+great peril was now at hand.  Under these anxieties and the lack of other
+inspiration than duty, her health had failed, and at last she obeyed her
+cousin, joining Philip at the Castle of Mont Orgueil.
+
+More than a year had passed since she had seen him, but there was no
+emotion, no ardour in their present greeting.  From the first there had
+been nothing to link them together.  She had married, hoping that she
+might love thereafter; he in choler and bitterness, and in the stress of
+a desperate ambition.  He had avoided the marriage so long as he might,
+in hope of preventing it until the Duke should die, but with the irony of
+fate the expected death had come two hours after the ceremony.  Then,
+shortly afterwards, came the death of the imbecile Leopold John; and
+Philip found himself the Duc de Bercy, and within a year, by reason of a
+splendid victory for the Imperturbable, an admiral.
+
+Truth to tell, in this battle he had fought for victory for his ship and
+a fall for himself: for the fruit he had plucked was turning to dust and
+ashes.  He was haunted by the memory of a wronged woman, as she herself
+had foretold.  Death, with the burial of private dishonour under the
+roses of public victory--that had come to be his desire.  But he had
+found that Death is wilful and chooseth her own time; that she may be
+lured, but she will not come with shouting.  So he had stoically accepted
+his fate, and could even smile with a bitter cynicism when ordered to
+proceed to the coast of Jersey, where collision with a French squadron
+was deemed certain.
+
+Now, he was again brought face to face with his past; with the imminent
+memory of Guida Landresse de Landresse.  Where was Guida now?  What had
+happened to her?  He dared not ask, and none told him.  Whichever way he
+turned--night or day--her face haunted him.  Looking out from the windows
+of Mont Orgueil Castle, or from the deck of the Imperturbable, he could
+see--and he could scarce choose but see--the lonely Ecrehos.  There, with
+a wild eloquence, he had made a girl believe he loved her, and had taken
+the first step in the path which should have led to true happiness and
+honour.  From this good path he had violently swerved--and now?
+
+From all that could be seen, however, the world went very well with him.
+He was the centre of authority.  Almost any morning one might have seen a
+boat shoot out from below the Castle wall, carrying a flag with the blue
+ball of a Vice-Admiral of the White in the canton, and as the Admiral
+himself stepped upon the deck of the Imperturbable between saluting
+guards, across the water came a gay march played in his honour.
+
+Jersey herself was elate, eager to welcome one of her own sons risen to
+such high estate.  When, the very day after his arrival, he passed
+through the Vier Marchi on his way to visit the Lieutenant-Governor, the
+redrobed jurats impulsively turned out to greet him.  They were ready to
+prove that memory is a matter of will and cultivation.  There is no
+curtain so opaque as that which drops between the mind of man and the
+thing it is advantageous to forget.  But how closely does the ear of
+self-service listen for the footfall of a most distant memory, when to do
+so is to share even a reflected glory!
+
+A week had gone since Philip had landed on the island.  Memories pursued
+him.  If he came by the shore of St. Clement's Bay, he saw the spot where
+he had stood with her the evening he married her, and she said to him:
+"Philip, I wonder what we will think of this day a year from now!......
+To-day is everything to you, but to-morrow is very much to me."  He
+remembered Shoreham sitting upon the cromlech above singing the legend of
+the gui-l'annee--and Shoreham was lying now a hundred fathoms deep.
+
+As he walked through the Vier Marchi with his officers, there flashed
+before his eyes the scene of sixteen years ago, when, through the grime
+and havoc of battle, he had run to save Guida from the scimitar of the
+garish Turk.  Walking through the Place du Vier Prison, he recalled the
+morning when he had rescued Ranulph from the hands of the mob.  Where was
+Ranulph now?
+
+If he had but known it, that very morning as he passed Mattingley's house
+Ranulph had looked down at him with infinite scorn and loathing--but with
+triumph too, for the Chevalier had just shown him a certain page in a
+certain parish-register long lost, left with him by Carterette
+Mattingley.  Philip knew naught of Ranulph save the story babbled by
+the islanders.  He cared to hear of no one but Guida, and who was now to
+mention her name to him?  It was long--so long since he had seen her
+face.  How many years ago was it?  Only five, and yet it seemed twenty.
+
+He was a boy then; now his hair was streaked with grey.  He was light-
+hearted then, and he was still buoyant with his fellows, still alert and
+vigorous, quick of speech and keen of humour--but only before the world.
+In his own home he was fitful of mood, impatient of the grave, meditative
+look of his wife, of her resolute tenacity of thought and purpose, of her
+unvarying evenness of mood, through which no warmth played.  It seemed
+to him that if she had defied him--given him petulance for petulance,
+impatience for impatience, it would have been easier to bear.  If--if he
+could only read behind those passionless eyes, that clear, unwrinkled
+forehead!  But he knew her no better now than he did the day he married
+her.  Unwittingly she chilled him, and he felt he had no right to
+complain, for he had done her the greatest wrong which can be done a
+woman.  Whatever chanced, Guida was still his wife; and there was in him
+yet the strain of Calvinistic morality of the island race that bred him.
+He had shrunk from coming here, but it had been far worse than he had
+looked for.
+
+One day, in a nervous, bitter moment, after an impatient hour with the
+Comtesse, he had said: "Can you--can you not speak?  Can you not tell me
+what you think?" She had answered quietly:
+
+"It would do no good.  You would not understand.  I know you in some ways
+better than you know yourself.  I cannot tell what it is, but there is
+something wrong in your nature, something that poisons your life.  And
+not myself only has felt that.  I never told you--but you remember the
+day the old Duke died, the day we were married?  You had gone from the
+room a moment.  The Duke beckoned me to him, and whispered 'Don't be
+afraid--don't be afraid--' and then he died.  That meant that he was
+afraid, that death had cleared his sight as to you in some way.  He was
+afraid--of what?  And I have been afraid--of what?  I do not know.
+Things have not gone well somehow.  You are strong, you are brave,
+and I come of a family that have been strong and brave.  We ought to be
+near: yet, yet we are lonely and far apart, and we shall never be nearer
+or less lonely.  That I know."
+
+To this he had made no reply and this anger vanished.  Something in her
+words had ruled him to her own calmness, and at that moment he had the
+first flash of understanding of her nature and its true relation to his
+own.
+
+Passing through the Rue d'Egypte this day he met Dormy Jamais.  Forgetful
+of everything save that this quaint foolish figure had interested him
+when a boy, he called him by name; but Dormy Jamais swerved away, eyeing
+him askance.
+
+At that instant he saw Jean Touzel standing in the doorway of his house.
+A wave of remorseful feeling rushed over him.  He could wait no longer:
+he would ask Jean Touzel and his wife about Guida.  He instantly
+bethought him of an excuse for the visit.  His squadron needed another
+pilot; he would approach Jean in the matter.
+
+Bidding his flag-lieutenant go on to Elizabeth Castle whither they were
+bound, and await him there, he crossed over to Jean.  By the time he
+reached the doorway, however, Jean had retreated to the veille by the
+chimney behind Maitresse Aimable, who sat in a great stave-chair mending
+a net.
+
+Philip knocked and stepped inside.  When Mattresse Aimable saw who it was
+she was so startled that she dropped her work, and made vague clutches to
+recover it.  Stooping, however, was a great effort for her.  Philip
+instantly stepped forward and picked up the net.  Politely handing it to
+her, he said:
+
+"Ah, Maitresse Aimable, it is as if you had never stirred all these
+years!"  Then turning to her husband "I have come looking for a good
+pilot, Jean."  Mattresse Aimable had at first flushed to a purple, had
+afterwards gone pale, then recovered herself, and now returned Philip's
+look with a downright steadiness.  Like Jean, she knew well enough he
+had not come for a pilot--that was not the business of a Prince Admiral.
+
+She did not even rise.  Philip might be whatever the world chose to call
+him, but her house was her own, and he had come uninvited, and he was
+unwelcome.
+
+She kept her seat, but her fat head inclined once in greeting, and she
+waited for him to speak again.  She knew why he had come; and somehow the
+steady look in these slow, brown eyes, and the blinking glance behind
+Jean's brass-rimmed spectacles, disconcerted Philip.  Here were people
+who knew the truth about him, knew the sort of man he really was.  These
+poor folk who had had nothing of the world but what they earned, they
+would never hang on any prince's favours.
+
+He read the situation rightly.  The penalties of his life were teaching
+him a discernment which could never have come to him through good fortune
+alone.  Having at last discovered his real self a little, he was in the
+way of knowing others.
+
+"May I shut the door?" he asked quietly.  Jean nodded.  Closing it he
+turned to them again.  "Since my return I have heard naught concerning
+Mademoiselle Landresse," he said.  "I want to ask you about her now.
+Does she still live in the Place du Vier Prison?"
+
+Both Jean and Aimable shook their heads.  They had spoken no word since
+his entrance.
+
+"She--she is not dead?" he asked.  They shook their heads again.
+
+"Her grandfather"--he paused--"is he living?" Once more they shook their
+heads in negation.  "Where is mademoiselle?" he asked, sick at heart.
+
+Jean looked at his wife; neither moved nor answered.  "Where does she
+live?" urged Philip.  Still there was no motion, no reply.  "You might
+as well tell me."  His tone was half pleading, half angry--little like a
+sovereign duke, very like a man in trouble.  "You must know I shall find
+out from some one else, then," he continued.  "But it is better for you
+to tell me.  I mean her no harm, and I would rather know about her from
+her friends."
+
+He took off his hat now.  Something in the dignity of these two honest
+folk rebuked the pride of place and spirit in him.  As plainly as though
+heralds had proclaimed it, he understood that these two knew the
+abatements on the shield of his honour-argent, a plain point tenne, due
+to him "that tells lyes to his Prince or General," and argent, a gore
+sinister tenne, due for flying from his colours.
+
+Maitresse Aimable turned and looked towards Jean, but Jean turned away
+his head.  Then she did not hesitate.  The voice so oft eluding her will
+responded readily now.  Anger--plain primitive rage-possessed her.  She
+had had no child, but as the years had passed all the love that might
+have been given to her own was bestowed upon Guida, and in that mind she
+spoke.
+
+"O my grief, to think you have come here-you!" she burst forth.  "You
+steal the best heart in the world--there is none like her, nannin-gia.
+You promise her, you break her life, you spoil her, and then you fly away
+--ah coward you!  Man pethe benin, was there ever such a man like you!
+If my Jean there had done a thing as that I would sink him in the sea--
+he would sink himself, je me crais!  But you come back here, O my Mother
+of God, you come back here with your sword, with your crown-ugh, it is
+like a black cat in heaven--you!"
+
+She got to her feet more nimbly than she had ever done in her life, and
+the floor seemed to heave as she came towards Philip.  "You speak to me
+with soft words," she said harshly--"but you shall have the good hard
+truth from me.  You want to know now where she is--I ask where you have
+been these five years?  Your voice it tremble when you speak of her now.
+Oh ho! it has been nice and quiet these five years.  The grand pethe of
+her drop dead in his chair when he know.  The world turn against her,
+make light of her, when they know.  All alone--she is all alone, but for
+one fat old fool like me.  She bear all the shame, all the pain, for
+the crime of you.  All alone she take her child and go on to the rock of
+Plemont to live these five years.  But you, you go and get a crown and be
+Amiral and marry a grande comtesse--marry, oh, je crais ben!  This is no
+world for such men like you.  You come to my house, to the house of Jean
+Touzel, to ask this and that--well, you have the truth of God, ba su!
+No good will come to you in the end, nannin-gia!  When you go to die,
+you will think and think and think of that beautiful Guida Landresse;
+you will think and think of the heart you kill, and you will call,
+and she will not come.  You will call till your throat rattle, but she
+will not come, and the child of sorrow you give her will not come--no,
+bidemme!  E'fin, the door you shut you can open now, and you can go from
+the house of Jean Touzel.  It belong to the wife of an honest man--
+maint'nant!"
+
+In the moment's silence that ensued, Jean took a step forward.
+"Ma femme, ma bonne femme!" he said with a shaking voice.  Then he
+pointed to the door.  Humiliated, overwhelmed by the words of the woman,
+Philip turned mechanically towards the door without a word, and his
+fingers fumbled for the latch, for a mist was before his eyes.  With a
+great effort he recovered himself, and passed slowly out into the Rue
+d'Egypte.
+
+"A child--a child!" he said brokenly.  "Guida's child--my God!  And I
+--have never--known.  Plemont--Plemont, she is at Plemont!"  He
+shuddered.  "Guida's child--and mine," he kept saying to himself, as in a
+painful dream he passed on to the shore.
+
+In the little fisherman's cottage he had left, a fat old woman sat
+sobbing in the great chair made of barrel-staves, and a man, stooping,
+kissed her twice on the cheek--the first time in fifteen years.
+And then she both laughed and cried.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII
+
+Guida sat by the fire sewing, Biribi the dog at her feet.  A little
+distance away, to the right of the chimney, lay Guilbert asleep.  Twice
+she lowered the work to her lap to look at the child, the reflected light
+of the fire playing on his face.  Stretching out her hand, she touched
+him, and then she smiled.  Hers was an all-devouring love; the child was
+her whole life; her own present or future was as nothing; she was but
+fuel for the fire of his existence.
+
+A storm was raging outside.  The sea roared in upon Plemont and Grosnez,
+battering the rocks in futile agony.  A hoarse nor'-easter ranged across
+the tiger's head in helpless fury: a night of awe to inland folk, and of
+danger to seafarers.  To Guida, who was both of the sea and of the land,
+fearless as to either, it was neither terrible nor desolate to be alone
+with the storm.  Storm was but power unshackled, and power she loved and
+understood.  She had lived so long in close commerce with storm and sea
+that something of their keen force had entered into her, and she was kin
+with them.  Each wind to her was intimate as a friend, each rock and cave
+familiar as her hearthstone; and the ungoverned ocean spoke in terms
+intelligible.  So heavy was the surf that now and then the spray of some
+foiled wave broke on the roof, but she only nodded at that, as though the
+sea were calling her to come forth, tapping on her rooftree in joyous
+greeting.
+
+But suddenly she started and bent her head.  It seemed as if her whole
+body were hearkening.  Now she rose quickly to her feet, dropped her work
+upon the table near by, and rested herself against it, still listening.
+She was sure she heard a horse's hoofs.  Turning swiftly, she drew the
+curtain of the bed before her sleeping child, and then stood quiet
+waiting--waiting.  Her hand went to her heart once as though its fierce
+throbbing hurt her.  Plainly as though she could look through these stone
+walls into clear sunlight, she saw some one dismount, and she heard a
+voice.
+
+The door of the but was unlocked and unbarred.  If she feared, it was
+easy to shoot the bolt and lock the door, to drop the bar across the
+little window, and be safe and secure.  But no bodily fear possessed her-
+-only that terror of the spirit when its great trial comes suddenly and
+it shrinks back, though the mind be of faultless courage.
+
+She waited.  There came a knocking at the door.  She did not move from
+where she stood.
+
+"Come in," she said.  She was composed and resolute now.
+
+The latch clicked, the door opened, and a cloaked figure entered, the
+shriek of the storm behind.  The door closed again.  The intruder took a
+step forward, his hat came off, the cloak was loosed and dropped upon the
+floor.  Guida's premonition had been right: It was Philip.
+
+She did not speak.  A stone could have been no colder as she stood in the
+light of the fire, her face still and strong, the eyes darkling,
+luminous.  There was on her the dignity of the fearless, the pure in
+heart.
+
+"Guida!" Philip said, and took a step nearer, and paused.
+
+He was haggard, he had the look of one who had come upon a desperate
+errand.  When she did not answer he said pleadingly:
+
+"Guida, won't you speak to me?"
+
+"The Duc de Bercy chooses a strange hour for his visit," she said
+quietly.
+
+"But see," he answered hurriedly; "what I have to say to you--"
+he paused, as though to choose the thing he should say first.
+
+"You can say nothing I need hear," she answered, looking him steadily in
+the eyes.
+
+"Ah, Guida," he cried, disconcerted by her cold composure, "for God's
+sake listen to me!  To-night we have to face our fate.  To-night you have
+to say--"
+
+"Fate was faced long ago.  I have nothing to say."
+
+"Guida, I have repented of all.  I have come now only to speak honestly
+of the wrong I did you.  I have come to--"
+
+Scorn sharpened her words, though she spoke calmly: "You have forced
+yourself upon a woman's presence--and at this hour!"
+
+"I chose the only hour possible," he answered quickly.  "Guida, the past
+cannot be changed, but we have the present and the future still.  I have
+not come to justify myself, but to find a way to atone."
+
+"No atonement is possible."
+
+"You cannot deny me the right to confess to you that--"
+
+"To you denial should not seem hard usage," she answered slowly, "and
+confession should have witnesses--"
+
+She paused suggestively.  The imputation that he of all men had the least
+right to resent denial; that, dishonest still, he was willing to justify
+her privately though not publicly; that repentance should have been open
+to the world--it all stung him.
+
+He threw out his hands in a gesture of protest.  "As many witnesses as
+you will, but not now, not this hour, after all these years.  Will you
+not at least listen to me, and then judge and act?  Will you not hear me,
+Guida?"
+
+She had not yet even stirred.  Now that it had come, this scene was all
+so different from what she might have imagined.  But she spoke out of a
+merciless understanding, an unchangeable honesty.  Her words came clear
+and pitiless:
+
+"If you will speak to the point and without a useless emotion, I will try
+to listen.  Common kindness should have prevented this intrusion--
+by you!"
+
+Every word she said was like a whip-lash across his face.  A devilish
+light leapt into his eye, but it faded as quickly as it came.
+
+"After to-night, to the public what you will," he repeated with dogged
+persistence, "but it was right we should speak alone to each other at
+least this once before the open end.  I did you wrong, yet I did not mean
+to ruin your life, and you should know that.  I ought not to have married
+you secretly; I acknowledge that.  But I loved you--"
+
+She shook her head, and with a smile of pitying disdain--he could so
+little see the real truth, his real misdemeanour--she said: "Oh no,
+never--never!  You were not capable of love; you never knew what it
+means.  From the first you were too untrue ever to love a woman.  There
+was a great fire of emotion, you saw shadows on the wall, and you fell in
+love with them.  That was all."
+
+"I tell you that I loved you," he answered with passionate energy.  "But
+as you will.  Let it be that it was not real love: at least it was all
+there was in me to give.  I never meant to desert you.  I never meant to
+disavow our marriage.  I denied you, you will say.  I did.  In the light
+of what came after, it was dishonourable--I grant that; but I did it at a
+crisis and for the fulfilment of a great ambition--and as much for you as
+for me."
+
+"That was the least of your evil work.  But how little you know what true
+people think or feel!" she answered with a kind of pain in her voice,
+for she felt that such a nature could never even realise its own
+enormities.  Well, since it had gone so far she would speak openly,
+though it hurt her sense of self-respect.
+
+"For that matter, do you think that I or any good woman would have had
+place or power, been princess or duchess, at the price?  What sort of
+mind have you?" She looked him straight in the eyes.  "Put it in the
+clear light of right and wrong, it was knavery.  You--you talk of not
+meaning to do me harm.  You were never capable of doing me good.  It was
+not in you.  From first to last you are untrue.  Were it otherwise, were
+you not from first to last unworthy, would you have--but no, your worst
+crime need not be judged here.  Yet had you one spark of worthiness would
+you have made a mock marriage--it is no more--with the Comtesse
+Chantavoine?  No matter what I said or what I did in anger, or contempt
+of you, had you been an honest man you would not have so ruined another
+life.  Marriage, alas!  You have wronged the Comtesse worse than you have
+wronged me.  One day I shall be righted, but what can you say or do to
+right her wrongs?"
+
+Her voice had now a piercing indignation and force.  "Yes, Philip
+d'Avranche, it is as I say, justice will come to me.  The world turned
+against me because of you; I have been shamed and disgraced.  For years
+I have suffered in silence.  But I have waited without fear for the end.
+God is with me.  He is stronger than fortune or fate.  He has brought you
+to Jersey once more, to right my wrongs, mine and my child's."
+
+She saw his eyes flash to the little curtained bed.  They both stood
+silent and still.  He could hear the child breathing.  His blood
+quickened.  An impulse seized him.  He took a step towards the bed, as
+though to draw the curtain, but she quickly moved between.
+
+"Never," she said in a low stern tone; "no touch of yours for my
+Guilbert--for my son!  Every minute of his life has been mine.  He is
+mine--all mine--and so he shall remain.  You who gambled with the name,
+the fame, the very soul of your wife, you shall not have one breath of
+her child's life."
+
+It was as if the outward action of life was suspended in them for a
+moment, and then came the battle of two strong spirits: the struggle of
+fretful and indulged egotism, the impulse of a vigorous temperament,
+against a deep moral force, a high purity of mind and conscience, and the
+invincible love of the mother for the child.  Time, bitterness, and power
+had hardened Philip's mind, and his long-restrained emotions, breaking
+loose now, made him a passionate and wilful figure.  His force lay in the
+very unruliness of his spirit, hers in the perfect command of her moods
+and emotions.  Well equipped by the thoughts and sufferings of five long
+years, her spirit was trained to meet this onset with fiery wisdom.  They
+were like two armies watching each other across a narrow stream, between
+one conflict and another.
+
+For a minute they stood at gaze.  The only sounds in the room were the
+whirring of the fire in the chimney and the child's breathing.  At last
+Philip's intemperate self-will gave way.  There was no withstanding that
+cold, still face, that unwavering eye.  Only brutality could go further.
+The nobility of her nature, her inflexible straight-forwardness came upon
+him with overwhelming force.  Dressed in molleton, with no adornment save
+the glow of a perfect health, she seemed at this moment, as on the
+Ecrehos, the one being on earth worth living and caring for.  What had he
+got for all the wrong he had done her?  Nothing.  Come what might, there
+was one thing that he could yet do, and even as the thought possessed him
+he spoke.
+
+"Guida," he said with rushing emotion, "it is not too late.  Forgive the
+past-the wrong of it, the shame of it.  You are my wife; nothing can undo
+that.  The other woman--she is nothing to me.  If we part and never meet
+again she will suffer no more than she suffers to go on with me.  She has
+never loved me, nor I her.  Ambition did it all, and of ambition God
+knows I have had enough!  Let me proclaim our marriage, let me come back
+to you.  Then, happen what will, for the rest of our lives I will try to
+atone for the wrong I did you.  I want you, I want our child.  I want to
+win your love again.  I can't wipe out what I have done, but I can put
+you right before the world, I can prove to you that I set you above place
+and ambition.  If you shrink from doing it for me, do it"--he glanced
+towards the bed--"do it for our child.  To-morrow--to-morrow it shall be,
+if you will forgive.  To-morrow let us start again--Guida--Guida!"
+
+She did not answer at once; but at last she said "Giving up place and
+ambition would prove nothing now.  It is easy to repent when our
+pleasures have palled.  I told you in a letter four years ago that your
+protests came too late.  They are always too late.  With a nature like
+yours nothing is sure or lasting.  Everything changes with the mood.
+It is different with me: I speak only what I truly mean.  Believe me,
+for I tell you the truth, you are a man that a woman could forget but
+could never forgive.  As a prince you are much better than as a plain
+man, for princes may do what other men may not.  It is their way to take
+all and give nothing.  You should have been born a prince, then all your
+actions would have seemed natural.  Yet now you must remain a prince, for
+what you got at such a price to others you must pay for.  You say you
+would come down from your high place, you would give up your worldly
+honours, for me.  What madness!  You are not the kind of man with whom a
+woman could trust herself in the troubles and changes of life.  Laying
+all else aside, if I would have had naught of your honours and your duchy
+long ago, do you think I would now share a disgrace from which you could
+never rise?  For in my heart I feel that this remorse is but caprice.
+It is to-day; it may not--will not--be tomorrow."
+
+"You are wrong, you are wrong.  I am honest with you now," he broke in.
+
+"No," she answered coldly, "it is not in you to be honest.  Your words
+have no ring of truth in my ears, for the note is the same as I heard
+once upon the Ecrehos.  I was a young girl then and I believed; I am a
+woman now, and I should still disbelieve though all the world were on
+your side to declare me wrong.  I tell you"--her voice rose again, it
+seemed to catch the note of freedom and strength of the storm without--
+"I tell you, I will still live as my heart and conscience prompt me.
+The course I have set for myself I will follow; the life I entered upon
+when my child was born I will not leave.  No word you have said has made
+my heart beat faster.  You and I can never have anything to say to each
+other in this life, beyond"--her voice changed, she paused--"beyond one
+thing--"
+
+Going to the bed where the child lay, she drew the curtain softly, and
+pointing, she said:
+
+"There is my child.  I have set my life to the one task, to keep him to
+myself, and yet to win for him the heritage of the dukedom of Bercy.
+You shall yet pay to him the price of your wrong-doing."
+
+She drew back slightly so that he could see the child lying with its rosy
+face half buried in its pillow, the little hand lying like a flower upon
+the coverlet.
+
+Once more with a passionate exclamation he moved nearer to the child.
+
+"No farther!" she said, stepping before him.
+
+When she saw the wild impulse in his face to thrust her aside, she added:
+"It is only the shameless coward that strikes the dead.  You had a wife--
+Guida d'Avranche, but Guida d'Avranche is dead.  There only lives the
+mother of this child, Guida Landresse de Landresse."
+
+She looked at him with scorn, almost with hatred.  Had he touched her--
+but she would rather pity than loathe!
+
+Her words roused all the devilry in him.  The face of the child had sent
+him mad.
+
+"By Heaven, I will have the child--I will have the child!" he broke out
+harshly.  "You shall not treat me like a dog.  You know well I would have
+kept you as my wife, but your narrow pride, your unjust anger threw me
+over.  You have wronged me.  I tell you you have wronged me, for you held
+the secret of the child from me all these years."
+
+"The whole world knew!" she exclaimed indignantly.  "I will break your
+pride," he said, incensed and unable to command himself.  "Mark you, I
+will break your pride.  And I will have my child too!"
+
+"Establish to the world your right to him," she answered keenly.  "You
+have the right to acknowledge him, but the possession shall be mine."
+
+He was the picture of impotent anger and despair.  It was the irony of
+penalty that the one person in the world who could really sting him was
+this unacknowledged, almost unknown woman.  She was the only human being
+that had power to shatter his egotism and resolve him into the common
+elements of a base manhood.  Of little avail his eloquence now!  He had
+cajoled a sovereign dukedom out of an aged and fatuous prince; he had
+cajoled a wife, who yet was no wife, from among the highest of a royal
+court; he had cajoled success from Fate by a valour informed with vanity
+and ambition; years ago, with eloquent arts he had cajoled a young girl
+into a secret marriage--but he could no longer cajole the woman who was
+his one true wife.  She knew him through and through.
+
+He was so wild with rage he could almost have killed her as she stood
+there, one hand stretched out to protect the child, the other pointing to
+the door.
+
+He seized his hat and cloak and laid his hand upon the latch, then
+suddenly turned to her.  A dark project came to him.  He himself could
+not prevail with her; but he would reach her yet, through the child.  If
+the child were in his hands, she would come to him.
+
+"Remember, I will have the child," he said, his face black with evil
+purpose.
+
+She did not deign reply, but stood fearless and still, as, throwing open
+the door, he rushed out into the night.  She listened until she heard his
+horse's hoofs upon the rocky upland.  Then she went to the door, locked
+it, and barred it.  Turning, she ran with a cry as of hungry love to the
+little bed.  Crushing the child to her bosom, she buried her face in his
+brown curls.
+
+"My son, my own, own son!" she said.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII
+
+If at times it would seem that Nature's disposition of the events of a
+life or a series of lives is illogical, at others she would seem to play
+them with an irresistible logic--loosing them, as it were, in a trackless
+forest of experience, and in some dramatic hour, by an inevitable
+attraction, drawing them back again to a destiny fulfilled.  In this
+latter way did she seem to lay her hand upon the lives of Philip
+d'Avranche and Guida Landresse.
+
+At the time that Elie Mattingley, in Jersey, was awaiting hanging on
+the Mont es Pendus, and writing his letter to Carterette concerning the
+stolen book of church records, in a town of Brittany the Reverend Lorenzo
+Dow lay dying.  The army of the Vendee, under Detricand Comte de Tournay,
+had made a last dash at a small town held by a section of the Republican
+army, and captured it.  On the prisons being opened, Detricand had
+discovered in a vile dungeon the sometime curate of St. Michael's Church
+in Jersey.  When they entered on him, wasted and ragged he lay asleep on
+his bed of rotten straw, his fingers between the leaves of a book of
+meditations.  Captured five years before and forgotten alike by the
+English and French Governments, he had apathetically pined and starved to
+these last days of his life.
+
+Recognising him, Detricand carried him in his strong arms to his own
+tent.  For many hours the helpless man lay insensible, but at last the
+flickering spirit struggled back to light for a little space.  When first
+conscious of his surroundings, the poor captive felt tremblingly in the
+pocket of his tattered vest.  Not finding what he searched for, he half
+started up.  Detricand hastened forward with a black leather-covered book
+in his hand.  Mr. Dow's thin trembling fingers clutched eagerly--it was
+his only passion--at this journal of his life.  As his grasp closed on
+it, he recognised Detricand, and at the same time he saw the cross and
+heart of the Vendee on his coat.
+
+A victorious little laugh struggled in his throat.  "The Lord hath
+triumphed gloriously--I could drink some wine, monsieur," he added in the
+same quaint clerical monotone.
+
+Having drunk the wine he lay back murmuring thanks and satisfaction, his
+eyes closed.  Presently they opened.  He nodded at Detricand.
+
+"I have not tasted wine these five years," he said; then added, "You--you
+took too much wine in Jersey, did you not, monsieur?  I used to say an
+office for you every Litany day, which was of a Friday."
+
+His eyes again caught the cross and heart on Detricand's coat, and they
+lighted up a little.  "The Lord hath triumphed gloriously," he repeated,
+and added irrelevantly, "I suppose you are almost a captain now?"
+
+"A general--almost," said Detricand with gentle humour.
+
+At that moment an orderly appeared at the tent-door, bearing a letter for
+Detricand.
+
+"From General Grandjon-Larisse of the Republican army, your highness,"
+said the orderly, handing the letter.  "The messenger awaits an answer."
+
+As Detricand hastily read, a look of astonishment crossed over his face,
+and his brows gathered in perplexity.  After a minute's silence he said
+to the orderly:
+
+"I will send a reply to-morrow."
+
+"Yes, your highness."  The orderly saluted and retired.
+
+Mr. Dow half raised himself on his couch, and the fevered eyes swallowed
+Detricand.
+
+"You--you are a prince, monsieur?" he said.  Detricand glanced up from
+the letter he was reading again, a grave and troubled look on his face.
+
+"Prince of Vaufontaine they call me, but, as you know, I am only a
+vagabond turned soldier," he said.  The dying man smiled to himself,--
+a smile of the sweetest vanity this side of death,--for it seemed to him
+that the Lord had granted him this brand from the burning, and in supreme
+satisfaction, he whispered: "I used to say an office for you every
+Litany--which was a Friday, and twice, I remember, on two Saints' days."
+
+Suddenly another thought came to him, and his lips moved--he was
+murmuring to himself.  He would leave a goodly legacy to the captive of
+his prayers.
+
+Taking the leather-covered journal of his life in both hands, he held it
+out.
+
+"Highness, highness--" said he.  Death was breaking the voice in his
+throat.
+
+Detricand stooped and ran an arm round his shoulder, but raising himself
+up Mr. Dow gently pushed him back.  The strength of his supreme hour was
+on him.
+
+"Highness," said he, "I give you the book of five years of my life--not
+of its every day, but of its moments, its great days.  Read it," he
+added, "read it wisely.  Your own name is in it--with the first time I
+said an office for you."  His breath failed him, he fell back, and lay
+quiet for several minutes.
+
+"You used to take too much wine," he said half wildly, starting up again.
+"Permit me your hand, highness."
+
+Detricand dropped on his knee and took the wasted hand.  Mr. Dow's eyes
+were glazing fast.  With a last effort he spoke--his voice like a
+squeaking wind in a pipe:
+
+"The Lord hath triumphed gloriously--" and he leaned forward to kiss
+Detricand's hand.
+
+But Death intervened, and his lips fell instead upon the red cross on
+Detricand's breast, as he sank forward lifeless.
+
+That night, after Lorenzo Dow was laid in his grave, Detricand read the
+little black leather-covered journal bequeathed to him.  Of the years of
+his captivity the records were few; the book was chiefly concerned with
+his career in Jersey.  Detricand read page after page, more often with a
+smile than not; yet it was the smile of one who knew life and would
+scarce misunderstand the eccentric and honest soul of the Reverend
+Lorenzo Dow.
+
+Suddenly, however, he started, for he came upon these lines:
+
+     I have, in great privacy and with halting of spirit, married, this
+     twenty-third of January, Mr. Philip d'Avranche of His Majesty's ship
+     "Narcissus," and Mistress Guida Landresse de Landresse, both of this
+     Island of Jersey; by special license of the Bishop of Winchester.
+
+To this was added in comment:
+
+     Unchurchmanlike, and most irregular.  But the young gentleman's
+     tongue is gifted, and he pressed his cause heartily.  Also Mr.
+     Shoreham of the Narcissus--"Mad Shoreham of Galway" his father was
+     called--I knew him--added his voice to the request also.  Troubled
+     in conscience thereby, yet I did marry the twain gladly, for I think
+     a worthier maid never lived than this same Mistress Guida Landresse
+     de Landresse, of the ancient family of the de Mauprats.  Yet I like
+     not secrecy, though it be but for a month or two months--on my vow,
+     I like it not for one hour.
+
+     Note: At leisure read of the family history of the de Mauprats and
+     the d'Avranches.
+
+     N.: No more secret marriages nor special licenses--most uncanonical
+     privileges!
+
+     N.: For ease of conscience write to His Grace at Lambeth upon the
+     point.
+
+Detricand sprang to his feet.  So this was the truth about Philip
+d'Avranche, about Guida, alas!
+
+He paced the tent, his brain in a whirl.  Stopping at last, he took from
+his pocket the letter received that afternoon from General Grandjon-
+Larisse, and read it through again hurriedly.  It proposed a truce, and a
+meeting with himself at a village near, for conference upon the surrender
+of Detricand's small army.
+
+"A bitter end to all our fighting," said Detricand aloud at last.  "But
+he is right.  It is now a mere waste of life.  I know my course.  .  .  .
+Even to-night," he added, "it shall be to-night."
+
+Two hours later Detricand, Prince of Vaufontaine, was closeted with
+General Grandjon-Larisse at a village half-way between the Republican
+army and the broken bands of the Vendee.
+
+As lads Detricand and Grandjon-Larisse had known each other well.  But
+since the war began Grandjon-Larisse had gone one way, and he had gone
+the other, bitter enemies in principle but friendly enough at heart.
+
+They had not seen each other since the year before Rullecour's invasion
+of Jersey.
+
+"I had hoped to see you by sunset, monseigneur," said Grandjon-Larisse
+after they had exchanged greetings.
+
+"It is through a melancholy chance you see me at all," replied Detricand
+heavily.
+
+"To what piteous accident am I indebted?" Grandjon-Larisse replied in an
+acid tone, for war had given his temper an edge.  "Were not my reasons
+for surrender sound?  I eschewed eloquence--I gave you facts."
+
+Detricand shook his head, but did not reply at once.  His brow was
+clouded.
+
+"Let me speak fully and bluntly now," Grandjon-Larisse went on.  "You
+will not shrink from plain truths, I know.  We were friends ere you went
+adventuring with Rullecour.  We are soldiers too; and you will understand
+I meant no bragging in my letter."
+
+He raised his brows inquiringly, and Detricand inclined his head in
+assent.
+
+Without more ado, Grandjon-Larisse laid a map on the table.  "This will
+help us," he said briefly, then added: "Look you, Prince, when war began
+the game was all with you.  At Thouars here"--his words followed his
+finger--"at Fontenay, at Saumur, at Torfou, at Coron, at Chateau-
+Gonthier, at Pontorson, at Dol, at Antrain, you had us by the heels.
+Victory was ours once to your thrice.  Your blood was up.  You had great
+men--great men," he repeated politely.
+
+Detricand bowed.  "But see how all is changed," continued the other.
+"See: by this forest of Vesins de la Rochejaquelein fell.  At Chollet"--
+his finger touched another point--"Bonchamp died, and here d'Elbee and
+Lescure were mortally wounded.  At Angers Stofflet was sent to his
+account, and Charette paid the price at Nantes."  He held up his fingers.
+"One--two--three--four--five--six great men gone!"
+
+He paused, took a step away from the table, and came back again.
+
+Once more he dropped his finger on the map.  "Tinteniac is gone, and at
+Quiberon Peninsula your friend Sombreuil was slain.  And look you here,"
+he added in a lower voice, "at Laval my old friend the Prince of Talmont
+was executed at his own chateau, where I had spent many an hour with
+him."
+
+Detricand's eyes flashed fire.  "Why then permit the murder, monsieur le
+general?"
+
+Grandjon-Larisse started, his voice became hard at once.  "It is not a
+question of Talmont, or of you, or of me, monseigneur.  It is not a
+question of friendship, not even of father, or brother, or son--but of
+France."
+
+"And of God and the King," said Detricand quickly.
+
+Grandjon-Larisse shrugged his shoulders.  "We see with different eyes.
+We think with different minds," and he stooped over the map again.
+
+"We feel with different hearts," said Detricand.  "There is the
+difference between us--between your cause and mine.  You are all for
+logic and perfection in government, and to get it you go mad, and France
+is made a shambles--"
+
+"War is cruelty, and none can make it gentle," interrupted Grandjon-
+Larisse.  He turned to the map once more.  "And see, monseigneur, here at
+La Vie your uncle the Prince of Vaufontaine died, leaving you his
+name and a burden of hopeless war.  Now count them all over--de la
+Rochejaquelein, Bonchamp, d'Elbee, Lescure, Stofflet, Charette, Talmont,
+Tinteniac, Sombreuil, Vaufontaine--they are all gone, your great men.
+And who of chieftains and armies are left?  Detricand of Vaufontaine and
+a few brave men--no more.  Believe me, monseigneur, your game is
+hopeless--by your grace, one moment still," he added, as Detricand made
+an impatient gesture.  "Hoche destroyed your army and subdued the country
+two years ago.  You broke out again, and Hoche and I have beaten you
+again.  Fight on, with your doomed followers--brave men I admit--and
+Hoche will have no mercy.  I can save your peasants if you will yield
+now.
+
+"We have had enough of blood.  Let us have peace.  To proceed is certain
+death to all, and your cause worse lost.  On my honour, monseigneur, I do
+this at some risk, in memory of old days.  I have lost too many friends,"
+he added in a lower voice.
+
+Detricand was moved.  "I thank you for this honest courtesy.  I had
+almost misread your letter," he answered.  "Now I will speak freely.
+I had hoped to leave my bones in Brittany.  It was my will to fight to
+the last, with my doomed followers as you call them--comrades and lovers
+of France I say.  And it was their wish to die with me.  Till this
+afternoon I had no other purpose.  Willing deaths ours, for I am
+persuaded, for every one of us that dies, a hundred men will rise up
+again and take revenge upon this red debauch of government!"
+
+"Have a care," said Grandjon-Larisse with sudden anger, his hand dropping
+upon the handle of his sword.
+
+"I ask leave for plain beliefs as you asked leave for plain words.  I
+must speak my mind, and I will say now that it has changed in this matter
+of fighting and surrender.  I will tell you what has changed it," and
+Detricand drew from his pocket Lorenzo Dow's journal.  "It concerns both
+you and me."
+
+Grandjon-Larisse flashed a look of inquiry at him.  "It concerns your
+cousin the Comtesse Chantavoine and Philip d'Avranche, who calls himself
+her husband and Duc de Bercy."
+
+He opened the journal, and handed it to Grandjon-Larisse.  "Read," he
+said.
+
+As Grandjon-Larisse read, an oath broke from him.  "Is this authentic,
+monseigneur?" he said in blank astonishment "and the woman still lives?"
+
+Detricand told him all he knew, and added:
+
+"A plain duty awaits us both, monsieur le general.  You are concerned for
+the Comtesse Chantavoine; I am concerned for the Duchy of Bercy and for
+this poor lady--this poor lady in Jersey," he added.
+
+Grandjon-Larisse was white with rage.  "The upstart!  The English
+brigand!" he said between his teeth.
+
+"You see now," said Detricand, "that though it was my will to die
+fighting your army in the last trench--"
+
+"Alone, I fear," interjected Grandjon-Larisse with curt admiration.
+
+"My duty and my purpose go elsewhere," continued Detricand.  "They take
+me to Jersey.  And yours, monsieur?"
+
+Grandjon-Larisse beat his foot impatiently on the floor.  "For the moment
+I cannot stir in this, though I would give my life to do so," he answered
+bitterly.  "I am but now recalled to Paris by the Directory."
+
+He stopped short in his restless pacing and held out his hand.
+
+"We are at one," he said--"friends in this at least.  Command me when and
+how you will.  Whatever I can I will do, even at risk and peril.  The
+English brigand!" he added bitterly.  "But for this insult to my blood,
+to the noble Chantavoine, he shall pay the price to me--yes, by the heel
+of God!"
+
+"I hope to be in Jersey three days hence," said Detricand.
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+It is easy to repent when our pleasures have palled
+Kissed her twice on the cheek--the first time in fifteen years
+No news--no trouble
+War is cruelty, and none can make it gentle
+
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BATTLE OF THE STRONG, PARKER, V5 ***
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