A Maid of the Silver Sea Part 15

CHAPTER XIII

HOW GARD REFUSED AN OFFER AND MADE AN ENEMY

They had been most gratefully and graciously free from Tom since his father's death, but he reappeared a day or two before the end of the six weeks, and brought with him a wife from Guernsey--not even a Guernsey woman, however, but a Frenchwoman from the Cotentin--black-haired, black-eyed, good-looking, after the type that would please such an one as Tom Hamon--somewhat over-bold of face and manner for the rest of the family.

Philip Tanquerel had had to bring all his sagacity to bear on his difficult task of apportioning the lots, and Tom, who knew every inch of the ground and all its capacities, grinned viciously now and again at the ac.u.men displayed in the divisions.

The allotment of the house-room had presented difficulties.

The great kitchen at La Closerie occupied the whole centre third of the ground floor, the remaining thirds of the s.p.a.ce on each side being taken up with the rarely-used best room and three bedrooms, all pretty much of a size, and all opening into the kitchen. Up above, under the sloping thatch was the great solie or loft, entered from the outside through the door-window in the gable by means of a short wooden ladder.

Grannie's dower rights, when Tom's grandfather died, had obtained for her the two rooms const.i.tuting one-third of the house on the south side of the kitchen, and certain rights of use of the kitchen itself. As she needed only one room, she had bartered off the other and her kitchen rights to her son and his wife in exchange for food and attendance, and the arrangement had worked excellently.

But, on her first glimpse of young Tom's quick-eyed, bold-faced Frenchwoman, she had vowed she would have none of her; and in the end, as the result of some chaffering, it was arranged that Tom and his wife should have the kitchen and all the rooms north of it, while Mrs. Hamon and Nance and Bernel had the room next Grannie's for a kitchen, and the great loft for bedrooms, all the necessary and duly specified alterations to be made at Tom's expense, and Mr. Tanquerel to see them carried out at once. Grannie's other room was to become their sitting-room also and they were to provide for her as. .h.i.therto. By boarding up the doors leading to the kitchen, and making a new entrance to their own rooms, the families were therefore entirely separated, to every one's complete satisfaction.

The division of the furniture and kitchen utensils gave Mrs. Hamon all she needed. Tom, of course, took as _droit d'ainesse_, before the division, the family clock--which still bore signs of strife, and had refused to go since that night when Gard's buffet had sent him headlong into it; and the farm-ladders and the pilotins--the stone props on which the haystacks were built; and in addition to his own full share, as between himself and Nance and Bernel, he exacted from them to the uttermost farthing the extra seventh part of the value of all they received--an Island right, but honoured more in the breach than in the observance, and one which, in its exercise, tended to label the exerciser as unduly mean and grasping.

Beyond that, everything was so fairly well balanced that Tom found himself unable to secure all he had hoped, and so deemed himself ill-used, and did not hesitate to express himself in his usual forcible manner.

To obtain some of the things he specially wanted, Tanquerel had so arranged the lots that he must sacrifice others, and these little matters rankled in his mind and obscured his purview.

There was a good deal of unhappy wrangling, but in the end Mrs. Hamon and Nance found themselves with a large cornfield, one for pasture, and one for mixed crops, potatoes, beans and so on, besides rights of grazing and gorse-cutting on a certain stretch of cliff common.

They had also a pony and two cows, and two pigs and a couple of dozen hens and a c.o.c.k--quite enough to keep Nance busy; and to them also fell an adequate share of the byres and barns, and the free use of the well.

Tom, however, still looked upon them as interlopers, and grudged them every stick and stone, and hoof and claw. If they had never come into the family all would have been his. Whatever they had they had s.n.a.t.c.hed out of his mouth.

If it had not been for Philip Tanquerel the alterations agreed on would never have been completed. He got down the carpenter and mason from Sark, stood over them, day by day, till the work was done, and then referred them to Tom for payment--and a pleasant and lively time they had in getting it.

The conditions resulting from all this were just such as have prevailed in hundreds of similar cases, such as are almost inevitable from the minute divisions and sub-divisions of small properties. When ill-feeling has prevailed beforehand it is by no means likely to be lessened by the unavoidable friction of such a distribution.

The open ill-feeling was, however, all on Tom's side. The others had suffered him at closer quarters the greater part of their lives. It was to them a mighty relief to be boarded off from him, and to feel free at last from his unwelcome incursions.

He never spoke to any of them, and when they pa.s.sed one another on their various farm duties a black look and a muttered curse was his only greeting.

By means of what fairy tales concerning himself, or his position, or Sark, he had induced the lively-eyed Julie to marry him, we may not know. But Mrs. Tom very soon let it be known that she considered herself woefully misled, and quite thrown away upon such a place as Sark, and still more so upon this _ultima thule_ of Little Sark, which she volubly a.s.serted was the very last place le bon Dieu had made, and the condition in which it was left did Him little credit.

She, at all events, showed no disinclination to chat with her neighbours. Very much the contrary. None of them could pa.s.s within range of her eyes and tongue without a greeting and an invitation to talk.

"Tiens donc, Nancie, ma pet.i.te!" she would cry, at sight of Nance. "What a hurry you are in. It is hurry and scurry and bustle from morning till night with you over there. The hens? Let them wait, ma garche, 'twill strengthen their legs to scratch a bit, and 'twill enlighten your mind to hear about Guernsey and Granville. Oh the beautiful country! Mon Dieu, if only I were back there!"

They all--except, perhaps, Grannie--felt for her--lonely in a strange land--and were inclined to do what they could to make her more contented. But she desired them chiefly as listeners, and the things she had to tell were little to their taste, and less to her credit from their point of view, though she herself evidently looked upon them as every-day matters, and calculated to inspire these simple island-folk with the respect due to a woman of the greater world outside.

Grannie's views of her grand-daughter-in-law had never altered from the first moment she set eyes on her.

When Mrs. Tom came in to hear herself talk, one afternoon when Tom was away fis.h.i.+ng, the old lady simply sat and stared at her from the depths of her big black sun-bonnet, and never opened her lips or gave any sign of interest or hearing.

"Is she deaf?" asked Mrs. Tom after a while.

"Dear me, no. Grannie hears everything," said Mrs. Hamon, with a smile at thought of all the old lady would have to say presently.

"Nom d'un nom, then why doesn't she speak? Is it dumb she is?"

"Neither deaf nor dumb--nor yet a fool," rapped Grannie, so sharply that the visitor jumped.

And during the remainder of her visit, no matter to whom she was talking or what she was saying, Julie's snapping black eyes would inevitably keep working round to the depths of the big black sun-bonnet, and at times her discourse lost point and trailed to a ragged end.

"It's my belief that old woman next door is a witch," she said to her husband later on.

"She's an old devil," he said bluntly. "She'll put the evil eye on you if you don't take care."

"She ought to be burnt," said Mrs. Tom.

"All the same," said Tom musingly, "she's got money, so you'd best be as civil to her as she'll let you."

"Mon Dieu! My flesh creeps still at the way she looked at me. She has the evil eye without a doubt."

And Grannie?--"Mai grand doux! What does a woman like that want here?"

said she. "A wide mouth and wanton eyes. La Closerie has never had these before--a Frenchwoman too!"--with withering contempt. For, odd as it may seem, among this people originally French, and still speaking a patois based, like their laws and customs, on the old Norman, there is no term of opprobrium more profound than "Frenchman."

Madame Julie flatly refused to subject herself to further peril from Grannie's keen but harmless gaze, and contented herself with such opportunities of enlarging Nance's outlook on life as casual chats about the farm-yard afforded, and found time heavy on her hands.

Ennui, before long, gave place to grumbling, and that to recrimination; and from what the others could not help hearing, through the boarded-up doors and the floor of the loft, Tom and his wife had a cat-and-dog time of it.

Gard had moved over to Plaisance with great regret. But nothing else was possible under the altered circ.u.mstances at La Closerie, so he made the best of it.

It was some consolation to learn that they also missed him.

"Everything's different," grumbled Bernel, one day when they met. "Tom and his wife quarrel so that we can hear them through the walls. And Grannie sits by the hour without opening her mouth. And mother and Nance are as quiet as if they were going to be sick. And I'm getting green-mouldy. Seems as if we'd got to the end of things, and nothing was ever going to happen again. I think I'll go to Guernsey."

"Do you think they'd like--I mean, would they mind if I came in for a chat now and then? It's pretty lonely up at Plaisance too."

"Oh, they'll mind and so will I. When'll you come?"

"I'll look in to-night as I come from the mines--if you're sure--"

"You come and try, and if you don't like it you needn't come again"--with a twinkle of the eye.

Nance did not strike him as looking as though she were going to be sick, when he went in that night, nor did her mother.

Grannie indeed had little to say, but then she was never over-talkative, and when Gard more than once looked at her, and wondered if she had fallen asleep, he always found the keen old eyes wide open, and eyeing him watchfully as ever out of the depths of the big black sun-bonnet.

Mrs. Hamon asked about his new quarters, and his quiet shake of the head and simple--"They're kindly folk, but it's somehow very different"--told its own tale.

"They're a bit short-handed, you see," he added, "and so they're all kept busy, and at times, I'm afraid, they wish me further."

"And you go all that way back for your dinner each day?" asked Mrs.

Hamon thoughtfully.