A Maid of the Silver Sea Part 4

"You'll be wanting your supper," said Hamon.

"At your own time, please," said the young man, looking towards Mrs.

Hamon. "I am really not very hungry"--though truth to tell he well might have been, for the food on the brig had left much to be desired even to one who had been a sailorman himself.

"It is our usual time," said Mrs. Hamon, "and it is all ready. Will you please to sit there."

At the sound of the chairs a boy of fourteen came quietly in and slipped into his seat.

His sister had gone off with a portion on a plate through the open door.

Gard was surprised to find himself hoping it was not her custom to take her meals in private, and was relieved when she came back presently without the plate and sat down by her brother.

"Ah, you, Bernel, as soon as you've done your supper run over and tell Mr. Le Pelley that his white stallion is on our common, and he'd better send for him."

"I'll ride him home," said the boy exultingly.

"No you won't, Bern," said his sister quickly. "He's not safe. You know what an awkward beast he is at times, and you could never get him across the Coupee."

"Pooh! I'd ride him across any day."

"Promise me you won't," she said, with a hand on his arm.

"Oh, well, if you say so," he grumbled. "I could manage him all right though."

Just then the doorway darkened and two young men entered, and threw their caps on the green bed, and sat down with an awkward nod of greeting to the company in general.

"My son Tom," said Mr. Hamon, and Tom jerked another awkward nod towards the stranger. "And Peter Mauger"--Peter repeated the performance, more shyly and awkwardly even than Tom, from a variety of reasons.

Tom was at home, and he had not even been invited--except by Tom. And strangers always made him shy. And then there was Nance, with her great eyes fixed on him, he knew, though he had not dared to look straight at her.

And then the stranger had an air about him--it was hard to say of what, but it made Peter Mauger and Tom conscious of personal uncouthness, and of a desire to get up and go out and wash their hands and have a shave.

Gard, they knew, was the new captain of the mine, chosen by the managers of the company for his experience with men, and he looked as if he had been accustomed to order them about.

His eyes were dark and keen, his face full of energy. Being clean-shaven his age was doubtful. He might be twenty-five or forty. Nance, in her first quick comprehensive glance, had wondered which.

He stood close upon six feet and was broad-chested and square-shouldered. A good figure of a man, clean and upstanding, and with no nonsense about him. A capable-looking man in every respect, and if his manner was quiet and retiring, there was that about him which suggested the possibility of explosion if occasion arose.

Not that the Hamon family as a whole, or any member of it, would have put the matter quite in that way to itself, or herself. But that, vaguely, was the impression produced upon them--an impression of uprightness, intelligence, and reserved strength--and the more strongly, perhaps, because of late these characteristics had been somewhat overshadowed in the Island by the greed of gain and love of display engendered by the opening of the mines.

To old Tom Hamon his coming was wholly welcome. It foreshadowed a strong and more energetic development of the mines and the speedier realization of his most earnest desires.

To Mrs. Hamon it meant some extra household work, which she would gladly undertake since it was her husband's wish to have the stranger live with them, though in his absorption by the mines she had no sympathy whatever.

Nance looked upon him merely as a part of the mines, and therefore to be detested along with the noisy engine-house, the pumps, the damp and dirty miners, and all the rest of it--the coming of which had so completely spoiled her much-loved Sark.

Tom disliked him because he made him feel small and boorish, and of a commoner make. And feelings such as that inevitably try to disprove themselves by noisy self-a.s.sertion.

Accordingly Tom--after various jocular remarks in patois to Peter, who would have laughed at them had he dared, but, knowing Nance's feelings towards her brother was not sure how she would take it--loudly and provocatively to Gard--

"Expect to make them mines pay, monsieur?"

"Well, I hope so. But it's too soon to express an opinion till I've seen them."

"They put a lot of money in, and they get a lot of dirt out, but one does not hear much of any silver."

"Sometimes the deepest mines prove the best in the end."

"And as long as there's anybody to pay for it I suppose you go on digging."

"If I thought the mines had petered out--"

"Eh?" said Peter, and then coughed to hide his confusion when they all looked at him.

"I should of course advise the owners to stop work and sink no more money."

"It'll be a bad day for Sark when that happens," said old Tom. "But it's not going to happen. The silver's there all right. It only wants getting out."

"If it's there we'll certainly get it out," said Gard, and although he said it quietly enough, old Tom felt much better about things in general.

"You're the man for us," he said heartily. "We'll all be rich before we die yet."

"Depends when we die," growled Tom--in which observation--obvious as it was--there was undoubtedly much truth. And then, his little suggestion of provocation having broken like ripples on Gard's imperturbability, he turned on Peter and tried to stir him up.

"You don't get on any too fast with your making up to la garche, mon gars," he said in the patois again.

"Aw--Tom!" remonstrated Peter, very red in the face at this ruthless laying bare of his approaches.

"Get ahead, man! Put your arm round her neck and give her a kiss. That's the way to fetch 'em."

At which Nance jumped up with fiery face and sparks in her eyes and left the room, and Gard, who understood no word of what had pa.s.sed, yet understood without possibility of doubt that Tom's speech had been mortally offensive to his sister, and set him down in his own mind as of low esteem and boorish disposition.

As for Peter, to whom such advice was as useless as the act would have been impossible at that stage of the proceedings, he was almost as much upset as Nance herself. He got up with a shamefaced--

"Aw, Tom, boy, that was not good of you," and made for his hat, while Tom sat with a broad grin at the result of his delicate diplomacy, and Gard's great regret was that it was not possible for him to take the hulking fellow by the neck and bundle him out of doors.

Old Tom made some sharp remark to his son, who replied in kind; Mrs.

Hamon sat quietly aloof, as she always did when Tom and his father got to words, and Bernel made play with his supper, as though such matters were of too common occurrence to call for any special attention on his part.

Then Nance's face framed in a black sun-bonnet gleamed in at the outer door.

"Come along, Bern, and we'll go and tell the Seigneur where his white horse is," and she disappeared, and Bernel, having polished off everything within reach, got up and followed her.

"Will you please to take a look at the mines to-night?" asked old Tom of his guest, anxious to interest him in the work as speedily as possible.

"We might take a bit of a walk, and you can tell me all you will about things. But I don't take hold till the first of the month, and I don't want to interfere until I have a right to. I suppose my baggage will be coming up?"

"Ach, yes! Tom, you take the cart and bring Mr. Gard's things up. They are lying on the quay down there. Then we will go along, if you please!"