Gilbert Parker

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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?" ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”