The Toilers of the Sea (47 page)

V

THE GREAT TOMB

Gilliatt took the path along the shore, passed quickly through St. Peter Port and then turned toward St. Sampson along the coast, and, anxious to avoid meeting anyone, kept off the roads, which were crowded with people on his account.

He had long had his own way of moving about the countryside in all directions without being seen. He knew all the footpaths and had worked out solitary, winding routes for himself. He had the retiring habits of a man who felt himself to be unloved, and remained a being apart. While still a child, seeing few welcoming looks in people's faces, he had developed this habit of isolating himself that had now become instinctive.

He passed the Esplanade, and then the Salerie. From time to time he turned around and looked back to see the
Cashmere
in the roads, now beginning to set sail. There was very little wind, and Gilliatt made faster progress than the
Cashmere,
walking with bent head on the rocks at the water's edge. The tide was beginning to come in.

At one point he stopped and, turning his back on the sea, looked for some minutes at a clump of oak trees beyond some rocks that concealed the road to the Vale. These were the oaks at the Basses Maisons. There, under these trees, Déruchette had once written Gilliatt's name in the snow—snow that had long since melted.

He continued on his way.

It was a beautiful day—the finest that year so far. The morning had something of a nuptial air. It was one of those spring days when May pours forth all its profusion, when the creation seems to have no other thought than to rejoice and be happy. Under all the sounds of forest and village, of sea and air, could be heard a murmur like the cooing of doves. The first butterflies were settling on the first roses. Everything in nature was new—the grass, the moss, the leaves, the perfumes, the rays of light. The sun shone as if it had never shone before. The very pebbles were freshly washed. The deep song in the trees was sung by birds born only yesterday. Probably their shells, broken by their little beaks, were still lying in the nest. Amid the quivering of the branches was the fluttering of their newfound wings. They were singing their first songs and launching on their first flights. It was a sweet jargoning, all together, of hoopoes, tits, woodpeckers, goldfinches, bullfinches, sparrows, and thrushes. Lilacs, lily-of-the-valley, daphnes, and wisterias made a varied show of color in the thickets. A very pretty kind of duckweed that grows in Guernsey covered ponds and pools with emerald green. Wagtails and tree-creepers, which make such graceful little nests, came down to bathe in them. Through all the interstices in the vegetation could be seen the blue of the sky. A few wanton clouds pursued one another in the azure depths with the undulating movements of nymphs. There was a feeling of kisses from invisible mouths passing through the air. No old wall but had, like a bridegroom, its bouquet of wallflowers. The plum trees and the laburnums were in blossom, their white and yellow masses gleaming through the interlacing branches. Spring showered all its silver and gold into the immense openwork basket of the woods. The new shoots were green and fresh. Cries of welcome could be heard in the air. Summer was hospitably opening its doors to birds from afar. It was the swallows' time of arrival. The banks edging sunk lanes were lined by the inflorescences of the furze, to be followed soon by those of the hawthorn. The beautiful and the merely pretty rubbed shoulders; grandeur and grace complemented each other; small things were not put out of countenance by large ones. Not a note in the great concert was lost; microscopic splendors had their place in the vast universal beauty; and everything could be clearly distinguished as in a pool of limpid water. Everywhere a divine fullness and a mysterious swelling betokened the panic
²¹⁶
and sacred working of the sap. What shone, shone more brightly; who loved, loved more tenderly. There was something of the quality of a hymn in a flower, something of brilliance in a noise. The great diffuse harmony of nature was manifest everywhere. What was beginning to shoot provoked what was ready to burst forth. Hearts, vulnerable to the scattered subterranean influences of germinating seeds, were troubled by a vague feeling of unsettlement, coming from below but also from above. Flowers gave promise of the coming fruit; maidens dreamed; the reproduction of life, premeditated by the immense soul of the shadow world, was being accomplished in the irradiation of things. There were betrothals everywhere, marriages without end. Life, which is the female, was coupling with the infinite, which is the male. It was fine, it was bright, it was warm. In the fields, through the hedges, could be seen laughing children. Some of them were playing at hopscotch. The apple trees, peach trees, cherry trees, and pear trees were covering the orchards with their tufts of white and pink blossom. In the grass were primroses, periwinkles, yarrow, daisies, amaryllis, bluebells, violets, and speedwells. There was a profusion of blue borage, yellow irises, and the beautiful little pink stars that always flower in great masses and are accordingly known as companions. Little creatures, all golden, scurried between the stones. Thatched roofs were gay with flowering houseleeks. The women working with the hives were out and about, and the bees were foraging. Everywhere there was the murmur of the sea and the buzzing of flies. All nature, lying open to permeation by spring, was moist with desire.

When Gilliatt arrived at St. Sampson the incoming tide had not yet reached the far end of the harbor, and he was able to walk across it dryshod, unperceived behind the hulls of boats under repair. He was helped by a series of flat stones set at intervals across the harbor bottom.

He was unnoticed. The crowd was at the other end of the harbor, near the entrance, at Les Bravées. There his name was in every mouth. People were talking so much about him that they paid no attention to the man himself. Gilliatt passed on his way—hidden, as it were, by the excitement he was causing.

He caught a distant sight of the paunch, still at the place where he had moored it, the funnel still held by its chains, a group of carpenters at work, the outlines of people coming and going, and he heard the loud and joyous voice of Mess Lethierry, giving orders.

He turned into the lanes behind Les Bravées. There was no one on this side of the house, the general curiosity being concentrated on the front. He took the path running along the low wall of the garden. He stopped at the corner where the wild mallow grew; he saw the stone on which he had once sat; he saw the wooden bench on which Déruchette had been sitting. He looked at the earth of the path on which he had seen two shadows embracing—shadows that had then disappeared.

He continued on his way. He climbed the hill on which stands Vale Castle, went down the other side, and headed for the Bû de la Rue.

Houmet Paradis was in solitude.

His house was just as he had left it that morning after dressing to go to St. Peter Port. One window was open, and through it he could see his bagpipes hanging from a nail on the wall. On the table could be seen the small Bible given to him in token of gratitude by an unknown man who had turned out to be Ebenezer Caudray.

The key was in the door. He went up to it, double-locked the door, put the key in his pocket, and left.

This time he walked not in the direction of the town but toward the sea. He cut across the garden by the shortest route, with little regard for the plants, though he was careful not to trample on the sea kale that he had planted because Déruchette liked it. Then, stepping over the garden wall, he made his way down to the rocks along the shore. Keeping straight ahead, he followed the long, narrow line of reefs that linked the Bû de la Rue with the great granite obelisk, standing erect in the middle of the sea, known as the Beast's Horn. This was where the Seat of Gild-Holm-‘Ur was. He leapt from one rock to another like a giant walking from peak to peak. Stepping from one to another of these jagged rocks was like walking along the ridge of a roof.

A woman fishing with a hand net who was paddling barefoot in the sea pools some distance away and returning toward the shore shouted to him: “Watch out! The tide is coming in.”

He went on, paying no heed.

Reaching the great rock on the point, the Beast's Horn, which rose like a pinnacle above the sea, he paused. The land came to an end here. It was the tip of the little promontory.

He looked around him. Off shore a few boats lay at anchor, fishing. From time to time there was a glitter of silver as the boats hauled in their nets and rivulets of falling water shone in the sun. The
Cashmere
was not yet off St. Sampson; she had now set her main topsail. She was between Herm and Jethou.

Gilliatt turned around the rock and came under the Seat of Gild-Holm-‘Ur, at the foot of the kind of steep staircase down which he had helped Ebenezer Caudray less than three months before. He now climbed up.

Most of the steps were already under water. Only two or three were still dry. He managed to scale them.

These steps led up to the Seat of Gild-Holm-‘Ur. He reached the seat, looked at it for a moment, and passed his hand over his eyes, letting it slip slowly from one eyebrow to the other, in the gesture that seems intended to wipe out the past; then he sat down in the hollow on the rock, with the steep cliff face at his back and the ocean at his feet.

The
Cashmere
was now passing the large, half-submerged round tower, guarded by a sergeant and one cannon, which marks the halfway point in the roads between Herm and St. Peter Port.

Above Gilliatt's head, in crevices in the rock, a few rock plants quivered. The water was blue as far as the eye could reach. The wind being in the east, there was very little surf around Sark, only the west coast of which is visible from Guernsey. In the distance could be seen the coast of France, marked by a line of mist and the long yellow strip of sand around Carteret. Now and then a white butterfly fluttered past. Butterflies like flying over the sea.

There was a very light breeze. All the expanse of blue, both above and below, was motionless. Not a tremor disturbed those snakelike markings of a lighter or darker blue that reflect on the surface of the sea the latent torsions in the depths.

The
Cashmere,
receiving little impulsion from the wind, had set her studding sails to catch the breeze. All her canvas was now spread, but, with a contrary wind, the effect of the studding sails forced her to hug the coast of Guernsey. She had passed the St. Sampson beacon and was just coming to the hill on which Vale Castle stands. She would shortly be rounding the point at the Bû de la Rue.

Gilliatt watched her approach.

The wind and the waves seemed to have been lulled to sleep. The tide was coming in, not in breakers but in a gentle swell. The water level was rising, but without any palpitation. The muffled sound of the open sea was like a child's breath.

From the direction of St. Sampson harbor could be heard dull knocking sounds—the strokes of hammers. It was probably the carpenters erecting the tackle and gear for hoisting the Durande's engines out of the paunch. The sounds barely reached Gilliatt because of the mass of granite at his back.

The
Cashmere
was approaching with the slowness of a phantom.

Gilliatt waited.

Suddenly a plashing sound and a sensation of cold made him look down. The sea was touching his feet. He looked up again.

The
Cashmere
was quite close.

The rock face from which rain had carved the Seat of Gild-Holm‘Ur was so sheer and there was such a depth of water that in calm weather ships could safely pass within a few cable lengths.

The
Cashmere
now came abreast of the rock. She reared up; she seemed to grow in the water. It was like a shadow increasing in size. The rigging stood out in black against the sky in the magnificent swaying motion of the sea. The long sails, passing for a moment in front of the sun, seemed almost pink, with an ineffable transparency. There was an indistinct murmuring from the sea. Not a sound disturbed the majestic passage of this silhouette. The deck could be seen as clearly as if you were on it.

The
Cashmere
almost grazed the rock.

The helmsman was at the tiller, a boy was aloft on the shrouds, a few passengers were leaning on the bulwarks enjoying the fine weather, the captain was smoking. But Gilliatt saw none of all this.

There was one spot on the deck that was bathed in sunshine, and it was this he was looking at. In this patch of sunlight were Ebenezer and Déruchette. They were sitting side by side, nestling close together, like two birds warming themselves in the noonday sun, on one of those benches sheltered under a tarpaulin awning that well-equipped vessels provide for their passengers, labeled, in the case of an English vessel, FOR LADIES ONLY. Déruchette's head was on Ebenezer's shoulder and his arm was around her waist; they held each other's hands, the fingers intertwined. The difference between one angel and the other was reflected in these two exquisite faces informed by innocence. One was more virginal, the other more astral. Their chaste embrace was expressive: it held all the closeness of marriage, and all its modesty. The bench they were sitting on was a private nook, almost a nest. It was, too, a glory: the gentle glory of love fleeing in a cloud.

The silence was celestial.

Ebenezer's eye was giving thanks and contemplating, Déruchette's lips were moving; and in this charming silence, since the wind was blowing onshore, Gilliatt heard, in the fleeting moment when the sloop was slipping past the Seat of Gild-Holm-‘Ur only a few fathoms away, Déruchette's tender, delicate voice saying:

“Look: isn't there a man on the rock?”

The apparition passed.

The
Cashmere
left the point at the Bû de la Rue behind her and plunged into the deep, rolling waves. In less than a quarter of an hour her masts and sails were no more than a kind of white obelisk on the sea, gradually diminishing on the horizon. The water was now up to Gilliatt's knees.