Qui etait si belle qu'elle passait pour telle
Dans le regiment.
Mess Lethierry used to say: "She has a cable of hair."
She had been a charmer since her earliest days. There had been concern for many years about her nose, but the little girl--probably determined to be pretty--had held on her course. The process of growth had done her no harm; her nose had become neither too long or too short; and as she grew up she remained charming.
She always referred to her uncle as "my father."
Lethierry allowed her to develop some skill as a gardener and even as a housewife. She personally watered her beds of hollyhocks, purple mulleins, perennial phlox, and scarlet herb bennet; she grew pink hawk's-beard and pink oxalis; and took full advantage of the Guernsey climate, so hospitable to flowers. Like everyone else, she had aloes growing in the open, and--what is much more difficult--she successfully grew Nepalese cranesbill. Her little kitchen garden was well organized; she had spinach in succession to radishes and peas in succession to spinach; she sowed Dutch cauliflowers and brussels sprouts, planting them out in July, turnips for August, curly endive for September, round parsnips for the autumn, and rampion for the winter. Mess Lethierry did not interfere with these activities, provided that she did not do too much digging or raking and, above all, that she did not apply the fertilizer herself. He had given her two maids, one called Grace and the other Douce--common Guernsey names. They worked in the garden as well as in the house, and were allowed to have red hands.
Mess Lethierry's bedroom was a small room looking onto the harbor and adjoining the large low room on the ground floor in which were the main doorway of the house and its various staircases. In this room were his hammock, his chronometer, and his pipe. There were also a table and a chair. The ceiling, with exposed beams, was whitewashed, as were the four walls. Nailed to the wall on the right of the door was the Archipelago of the Channel, a handsome chart bearing the inscription W. FADEN, 5 CHARING CROSS. GEOGRAPHER TO HIS MAJESTY. To the left of the door, also suspended on nails, was one of those large cotton handkerchiefs displaying in color the naval signals used all over the globe, with the flags of France, Russia, Spain, and the United States in the four corners and the Union Jack of England in the center.
Douce and Grace were two quite ordinary girls, in the best sense of the term. Douce was not ill natured and Grace was not plain. The dangerous names they bore had not brought them to any harm. Douce was not married but had a "gallant": the term is used in the Channel Islands, and the thing exists. The two girls provided what might be called a Creole type of service, with a slowness characteristic of Norman domesticity in the archipelago. Grace, a pretty and coquettish girl, kept scanning the horizon with the watchfulness of a cat: like Douce, she had a gallant, but also, it was said, a husband, a seaman whose return she dreaded. But that is none of our business. The difference between Grace and Douce was that, in a house less austere and less innocent, Douce would have remained a servant and Grace would have become a soubrette. Grace's potential talents were lost on an ingenuous girl like Deruchette. In any case, the love affairs of Douce and Grace were kept secret. Mess Lethierry knew nothing of them, and no word of them had reached Deruchette.
The room on the ground floor, a spacious hall with a fireplace and benches and tables around the walls, had been the meeting place in the last century of a conventicle of French Protestant refugees. The only form of decoration on the bare stone walls was a frame of black wood displaying a parchment notice recording the achievements of Benigne Bossuet, bishop of Meaux, which some poor Protestant refugees from the diocese of this ecclesiastical eagle, who had been persecuted by him after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes and had found refuge on Guernsey, had hung up to bear witness to their trials. On this you might read, if you could decipher the awkward writing and the yellowed ink, the following little known facts: "October 29, 1685, demolition of the Protestant churches of Morcef and Nanteuil on the orders of the king at the request of the bishop of Meaux."--"April 2, 1686, arrest of the Cochards, father and son, on account of their religion, at the request of the bishop of Meaux. Released, the Cochards having abjured their faith."--"October 28, 1699, the bishop of Meaux sends Monsieur de Pontchartrain a memorandum advising him that it would be necessary to consign the Demoiselles de Chalandes and de Neuville, who are of the reformed religion, to the house of the New Catholics in Paris."--"July 7, 1703, execution of the king's order, at the request of the bishop of Meaux, to have the individual named Baudouin and his wife, bad Catholics of Fublaine, confined in a hospital." At the far end of the room, near the door into Mess Lethierry's bedroom, was a small wooden structure that had been the Huguenot pulpit and with the addition of a grille with an opening in it had become the office of the steamship company; that is, the office of the Durande, manned by Mess Lethierry in person. On the old oak reading-desk, replacing the Bible, was a ledger with pages headed "Debit" and "Credit."
IX
THE MAN WHO HAD SEEN THROUGH RANTAINE
As long as Mess Lethierry had been able to sail, he had commanded the Durande and had no other pilot or captain than himself. But, as we have said, a time had come when he had to find someone to replace him. He had chosen Sieur Clubin of Torteval, a man of few words who was reputed along the whole coast for his absolute integrity. He had now become Lethierry's alter ego and deputy.
Although Sieur Clubin looked more like a lawyer than a mariner, he was an excellent and very competent seaman. He had all the skills necessary to deal with the risks of seafaring and come safely through. He was a good stevedore, a meticulous topman, a careful and knowledgeable boatswain, a sturdy helmsman, a skilled pilot, and a bold captain. He was prudent, and sometimes carried prudence so far as to be daring, which is a great quality at sea. His fear of what was probable was tempered by his instinct for what was possible. He was one of those seamen who face danger in a proportion known to them and are able to wrest success from any adventure. He had all the certainty that the sea allows to any man.
On top of all this Sieur Clubin was a renowned swimmer; he was one of those men who are at home in the gymnastics of the waves, who can stay in the water as long as they wish, and who, on Jersey, set out from the Havre des Pas, round the Collette, continue past the Hermitage Rock and Elizabeth Castle, and return to their starting point after a two-hour swim. He came from Torteval, and was reputed to have swum several times through the dangerous waters between the Hanois and Pleinmont Point.
One of the things that had most strongly recommended him to Mess Lethierry was that, knowing or discovering what Rantaine was like, he had warned Lethierry about his dishonesty, saying, "Rantaine will rob you." And so it had turned out. More than once, though admittedly in matters of no great importance, Mess Lethierry had tested Sieur Clubin's own scrupulous honesty, and he now relied on him in his retirement. He used to say: "An honest man should be given your full confidence."
X
A MARINER'S TALES
Mess Lethierry always wore his seagoing clothes--he would have been uncomfortable in anything else--and preferred his seaman's pea jacket to his pilot's jacket. Deruchette wrinkled her little nose at this. Nothing is more charming than the face a pretty woman makes when she is displeased. She would scold him, laughing. "Father," she would say, "Ugh! You smell of tar," and she would give him a little tap on his broad shoulder.
This good old hero of the sea had brought back some surprising tales from his voyages. In Madagascar he had seen birds' feathers so large that only three were needed to roof a house. In India he had seen sorrel growing nine feet high. In New Holland he had seen flocks of turkeys and geese rounded up and guarded by a sheepdog in the form of a bird known as the agami. He had seen elephant graveyards. In Africa he had seen gorillas--half men, half tigers--seven feet tall. He knew the ways of all kinds of monkeys, from the wild macaque, which he called macaco bravo, to the howling macaque, which he called macaco barbado. In Chile he had seen a female monkey softening the hea
rts of her hunters by showing them her young one. In California he had seen the hollow trunk of a fallen tree through which a horseman could ride a distance of 150 paces. In Morocco he had seen Mozabites and Biskris fighting with clubs and iron bars--the Biskris because they had been called kelb, which means dogs, and the Mozabites because they had been called khamsi, which means people of the fifth sect. In China he had seen a pirate named Chanhthong-quan-larh-Quoi being cut into pieces for murdering the ap of a village. At Thu-dan-mot he had seen a lion carrying off an old woman from the middle of the town market. He had watched the arrival in Saigon of the great serpent from Canton to take part in the celebrations of the festival of Quan-nam, goddess of seamen, in the Cho-len pagoda. Among the Moi he had seen the great Quan-Su. In Rio de Janeiro he had seen Brazilian ladies putting little balls of gauze in their hair in the evening, each containing a vagalumes, a beautiful firefly, so as to give them a headdress of stars. In Uruguay he had fought with anthills, and in Paraguay with bird spiders, hairy creatures the size of a child's head, covering a diameter of a third of an ell with their feet, and attacking men by firing bristles that pierce their skin like arrows and raise blisters. On the river Arinos, a tributary of the Tocantins, in the virgin forests to the north of Diamantina, he had encountered the fearsome bat men, the murdagos, who are born with white hair and red eyes, who live in the gloom of the woods, sleeping by day, waking at night, and fishing and hunting in the darkness, seeing better when there is no moon. Near Beirut, in the encampment of an expedition in which he had taken part, after a rain gauge was stolen from a tent, a witch doctor wearing only a few strips of leather, and looking like a man clad in his braces, had rung a bell attached to a horn with such vigor that a hyena had brought back the rain gauge. The hyena had been the thief. These true stories were so like romantic tales that they amused Deruchette.
The figurehead of the Durande was the link between the ship and the girl. In the Channel Islands the figurehead is called the poupee, the doll. Hence the local expression that means "being at sea," etre entre poupe et poupee ("being between the poop and the puppet").
The Durande's figurehead was particularly dear to Mess Lethierry. He had had it made by a carpenter to resemble Deruchette. The resemblance was achieved with strokes of an ax. It was a block of wood trying to be a pretty girl.
Mess Lethierry saw this slightly misshapen block of wood with the eyes of illusion. He looked on it with the reverence of a believer. He sincerely believed that it was a perfect likeness of Deruchette--in much the same way as a dogma resembles a truth and an idol resembles God.
Mess Lethierry had two great joys during the week, one on Tuesday and the other on Friday. The first joy was seeing the Durande leaving harbor; the second, seeing it return. He leaned on his windowsill, looked on what he had created, and was content. It was something like the verse in Genesis, Et vidit quod esset bonum.109
On Friday the sight of Mess Lethierry at his window was as good as a signal. When people saw him lighting his pipe at the window of Les Bravees they said, "Ah! The steamship is on the horizon." One puff of smoke heralded another.
Entering the harbor, the Durande tied up to a large ring in the basement of Les Bravees, under Mess Lethierry's windows. On the nights after the vessel's return Lethierry slept soundly in his hammock, knowing that on one side Deruchette was asleep and on the other Durande was moored.
The Durande's mooring was close to the harbor bell. Here, too, in front of the entrance to Les Bravees, was a short stretch of quay.
This quay, Les Bravees, the house and garden, the lanes lined by hedges, and most of the surrounding houses are no longer there. The working of Guernsey's granite has led to the sale of the land in this area, and the whole site is now occupied by stone breakers' yards.
XI
CONSIDERATION OF POSSIBLE HUSBANDS
Deruchette was growing up, but was showing no sign of marrying.
Mess Lethierry, in making her a girl with white hands, had made her difficult to please. Educations of that kind later turn against you.
But he himself was even more difficult to please. The husband he wanted for her was also to some extent to be a husband for Durande. He would have liked to provide for both his daughters at once. He would have liked the master of the one to be the pilot of the other. What is a husband? He is the captain in charge of a voyage. Why should the girl and the boat not have the same master? A household is subject to the tides. If you can manage a boat you can manage a woman. They are both ruled by the moon and the wind. Sieur Clubin, being only fifteen years younger than Mess Lethierry, could be no more than a temporary master for Durande: what was wanted was a young pilot, a longtime master, a true successor to the founder, the inventor, the creator. The pilot finally chosen to be the pilot of Durande would be like a son-in-law for Mess Lethierry. Why should the two sons-in-law not be combined? He cherished this idea. He too saw a bridegroom in his dreams. A sturdy topman, rough and weather-beaten, an athlete of the sea: this was his ideal. This was not quite Deruchette's ideal. She had a rosier dream.
At any rate the uncle and the niece seemed to agree on one thing: that there was no hurry. When Deruchette had been seen to become a probable heiress there was no lack of suitors. But eager contenders of this kind are not always of good quality. Mess Lethierry realized this. He would mutter, "A girl of gold, a lover of copper." And he dismissed the suitors. He was prepared to wait; and so was she.
Strangely enough, he thought little of the aristocracy. In this respect Mess Lethierry was an unlikely Englishman. It may be difficult to believe, but he had actually turned down offers from a Ganduel of Jersey and a Bugnet-Nicolin of Sark. Some have even claimed--but we doubt whether it can be true--that he had not accepted an approach from the aristocracy of Alderney and had rejected proposals from a scion of the Edou family, which is clearly descended from Edward the Confessor.110
XII
AN ANOMALY IN LETHIERRY'S CHARACTER
Mess Lethierry had one fault; a serious one. He hated, not someone, but something--the priesthood. One day, reading--for he was a reader--Voltaire--for he read Voltaire--the words, "Priests are cats," he put down the book and could be heard muttering under his breath, "Then I'm a dog."
It must be remembered that while he was creating the local devil boat he had suffered lively opposition and mild persecution from priests, Lutheran and Calvinist as well as Catholic. To be a revolutionary in seafaring matters, to try to bring progress to the Norman archipelago, to impose on the poor little island of Guernsey the disturbance of a new invention: this--we are obliged to admit--was an act of damnable rashness. And it had, more or less, been damned. It should not be forgotten that we are here talking of the old clergy, very different from the clergy of the present day, who in almost all the local churches have a liberal attitude to progress. Every possible obstacle had been put in Lethierry's way, and he had encountered the great mass of objections that can be contained in preachings and sermons. He was hated by the men of the cloth, and hated them in return. Their hatred served as a mitigating circumstance in favor of his.
But it must be said that his aversion to priests was idiosyncratic. He did not need to be hated by them to hate them. As he said, he was the dog to these cats. He was against them as an idea, and--the most invincible ground--by instinct. He felt their hidden claws, and showed his teeth. Rather wildly, it must be admitted, and not always with reason. It is wrong not to make distinctions. Hatred should not be applied en bloc. Lethierry would not have agreed with the Savoyard vicar.111 It is doubtful whether he would have admitted that there were any good priests. His position as a philosopher112 brought a diminution of wisdom. Tolerant people are sometimes intolerant, as moderate people are sometimes violent in their opinions. But Lethierry was too good-natured to be a good hater. He thrust his enemies to one side rather than attacking them. He kept the churchmen at a distance. They had done him harm; he was content not to wish them any good. The difference between their hatred and his was that
theirs was animosity, while his was antipathy.
Guernsey, small island as it is, has room for two religions. It accommodates both the Catholic religion and the Protestant religion. It does not, however, house both religions in the same church: each form of worship has its own church or chapel. In Germany, for example in Heidelberg, they make less fuss: they cut the church in two, one half for St. Peter and the other for Calvin, with a partition between them to prevent any quarrels. They have equal shares: three altars for the Catholics and three altars for the Huguenots; and since they have services at the same times one bell rings for both, summoning worshipers to God and the Devil at the same time. It is certainly a simplification.
German phlegm can tolerate a proximity of this kind. But on Guernsey each religion has its own home. There is the orthodox parish church and the heretical one. Everyone can choose for himself. Neither one nor the other: that had been Mess Lethierry's choice.
This seaman, this worker, this philosopher, this self-made man was simple in appearance but at bottom was not at all simple. He had his contradictions and his stubbornnesses. On priests he was unshakeable. He could have given points to Montlosier.113
On occasion he made jokes that were quite out of place, and he had some odd turns of phrase that nevertheless had some meaning. He called going to confession "combing one's conscience." The little learning he had--very little indeed, gleaned from books he had picked up between two squalls at sea--was subject to spelling mistakes. He also mispronounced words, not always unintentionally. When Waterloo brought peace between Louis XVIII's France and Wellington's England Mess Lethierry remarked, "Bourmont was the link between the two camps." Once he spelled papaute (papacy) pape ote (pope removed). We do not think it was done on purpose.114