News from the Duchy
S >> Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller Couch >> News from the DuchyHe announced this with a fine roll of the voice.
"Of business," he repeated. "The English are a great nation for
business. But how warm of heart, notwithstanding!"
"That is not always reckoned to us," said I.
"But _I_ reckon it . . . _Tenez_, that will be Ile Vierge--there,
with the lighthouse standing white--as it were, beneath the cliffs;
but the cliffs belong in fact to the mainland. . . . And now in a few
minutes we come abreast of _my_ parish--the Ile Lezan. . . . See,
see!" He caught my arm as the tide raced us down through the Passage
du Four. "My church--how her spire stands up!" He turned to me, his
voice shaking with emotion. "You English are accustomed to travel.
Probably you do not guess, monsieur, with what feelings I see again
Ile Lezan--I, who have never crossed the Channel before nor indeed
have visited any foreign land. But I am glad: it spreads the mind."
Here he put his hands together and drew them apart as though
extending a concertina. "I have seen you English at home.
If monsieur, who is on tour, could only spare the time to visit me on
Ile Lezan!"
Well, the end of it was that before we parted on the quay at Brest I
found myself under half a promise, and a week later, having (as I put
it to myself) nothing better to do, I took the train to a little
wind-swept terminus, whence a ramshackle cart jolted me to Port
Lezan, on the coast, whence again by sail and oar a ferry-boat
conveyed me over to the Island.
My friend the Cure greeted me with something not far short of
ecstasy.
"But this is like you English--you keep your word. . . . You will
hardly believe," he confided, as I shared his admirable dejeuner--
soup, langouste, an incomparable omelet, stuffed veal, and I forget
what beside--"you will hardly believe with what difficulty I bring
myself back to this horizon." He waved a hand to the blue sea-line
beyond his window. "When one has tasted progress--" He broke off.
"But, thanks be to God, we too, on Ile Lezan, are going to progress.
You will visit my church and see how much we have need."
He took me to it: a bleak, decayed building, half ruinated, the
slated pavement uneven as the waves of the sea, the plastered walls
dripping with saline ooze. From the roof depended three or four
rudely carved ships, hung there _ex voto_ by parishioners preserved
from various perils of the deep. He narrated their histories at
length.
"The roof leaks," he said, "but we are to remedy that. At length the
blessed Mary of Lezan will be housed, if not as befits her, at least
not shamefully." He indicated a niched statue of the Virgin, with
daubed red cheeks and a robe of crude blue overspread with blotches
of sea-salt. "Thanks to your England," he added.
"Why 'thanks to England'?"
He chuckled--or perhaps I had better say chirruped.
"Did I not say I had been visiting your country on business? Eh?
You shall hear the story--only I tell no names."
He took snuff.
"We will call them," he said, "only by their Christian names, which
are Lucien and Jeanne. . . . I am to marry them next month, when
Lucien gets his relief from the lighthouse on Ile Ouessant.
"They are an excellent couple. As between them, the wits are with
Lucien, who will doubtless rise in his profession. He has been
through temptation, as you shall hear. For Jeanne, she is _un coeur
simple_, as again you will discover; not clever at all--oh, by no
means!--yet one of the best of my children. It is really to Jeanne
that we owe it all. . . . I have said so to Lucien, and just at the
moment Lucien was trying to say it to me.
"They were betrothed, you understand. Lucien was nineteen, and
Jeanne maybe a year younger. From the beginning, it had been an
understood thing: to this extent understood, that Lucien, instead of
sailing to the fishery (whither go most of the young men of Ile Lezan
and the coast hereabouts) was destined from the first to enter the
lighthouse service under Government. The letters I have written to
Government on his behalf! . . . I am not one of those who quarrel
with the Republic. Still--a priest, and in this out-of-the-way
spot--what is he?
"However, Lucien got his appointment. The pay? Enough to marry on,
for a free couple. But the families were poor on both sides--long
families, too. Folk live long on Ile Lezan--women-folk especially;
accidents at the fishery keep down the men. Still, and allowing for
that, the average is high. Lucien had even a great-grandmother
alive--a most worthy soul--and on Jeanne's side the grandparents
survived on both sides. Where there are grandparents they must be
maintained.
"No one builds on Ile Lezan. Luden and Jeanne--on either side their
families crowded to the very windows. If only the smallest hovel
might fall vacant! . . . For a week or two it seemed that a cottage
might drop in their way; but it happened to be what you call
picturesque, and a rich man snapped it up. He was a stranger from
Paris, and called himself an artist; but in truth he painted little,
and that poorly--as even _I_ could see. He was fonder of planning
what he would have, and what not, to indulge his mood when it should
be in the key for painting. Happening here just when the cottage
fell empty, he offered a price for it far beyond anything Lucien
could afford, and bought it. For a month or two he played with this
new toy, adding a studio and a veranda, and getting over many large
crates of furniture from the mainland. Then by and by a restlessness
overtook him--that restlessness which is the disease of the rich--and
he left us, yet professing that it delighted him always to keep his
little _pied-a-terre_ in Ile Lezan. He has never been at pains to
visit us since.
"But meanwhile Lucien and Jeanne had no room to marry and set up
house. It was a heavy time for them. They had some talk together of
crossing over and finding a house on the mainland; but it came to
nothing. The parents on both sides would not hear of it, and in
truth Jeanne would have found it lonely on the mainland, away from
her friends and kin; for Lucien, you see, must in any case spend half
his time on the lighthouse on Ile Ouessant. So many weeks on duty,
so many weeks ashore--thus it works, and even so the loneliness wears
them; though our Bretons, being silent men by nature, endure it
better than the rest.
"Lucien and Jeanne must wait--wait for somebody to die. In plain
words it came to that. Ah, monsieur! I have heard well-to-do folk
talk of our poor as unfeeling. That is an untruth. But suppose it
were true. Where would the blame lie in such a story as this?
Like will to like, and young blood is hot. . . . Lucien and Jeanne,
however, were always well conducted. . . . Yes, yes, my story?
Six months passed, and then came word that our rich artist desired to
sell his little _pied-a-terre_; but he demanded the price he had
given for it, and, moreover, what he called compensation for the
buildings he had added. Also he would only sell or let it with the
furniture; he wished, in short, to disencumber himself of his
purchase, and without loss. This meant that Lucien less than ever
could afford to buy; and there are no money-lenders on Ile Lezan.
The letter came as he was on the point of departing for another six
weeks on Ile Ouessant: and that evening the lovers' feet took them to
the nest they had so often dreamed of furnishing. There is no
prettier cottage on the island--I will show it to you on our way
back. Very disconsolately they looked at it, but there was no cure.
Lucien left early next morning.
"That was last autumn, a little before the wreck of your great
English steamship the _Rougemont Castle_. Days after, the tides
carried some of the bodies even here, to Ile Lezan; but not many--
four or five at the most--and we, cut off from shore around this
corner of the coast, were long in hearing the terrible news.
Even the lighthouse-keepers on Ile Ouessant knew nothing of it until
morning, for she struck in the night, you remember, attempting to run
through the Inner Passage and save her time.
"I believe--but on this point will not be certain--that the alarm
first came to Lucien, and in the way I shall tell you. At any rate
he was walking alone in the early morning, and somewhere along the
shore to the south of the lighthouse, when he came on a body lying on
the seaweed in a gully of the rocks.
"It was the body of a woman, clad only in a nightdress. As he
stooped over her, Lucien saw that she was exceeding beautiful; yet
not a girl, but a well-developed woman of thirty or thereabouts, with
heavy coils of dark hair, well-rounded shoulders, and (as he
described it to me later on) a magnificent throat.
"He had reason enough to remark her throat, for as he turned the body
over--it lay on its right side--to place a hand over the heart, if
perchance some life lingered, the nightdress, open at the throat,
disclosed one, two, three superb necklaces of diamonds. There were
rings of diamonds on her fingers, too, and afterwards many fine gems
were found sewn within a short vest or camisole of silk she wore
under her nightdress. But Lucien's eyes were fastened on the three
necklaces.
"Doubtless the poor lady, aroused in her berth as the ship struck,
had clasped these hurriedly about her throat before rushing on deck.
So, might her life be spared, she would save with it many thousands
of pounds. They tell me since that in moments of panic women always
think first of their jewels.
"But here she lay drowned, and the jewels--as I said, Lucien could
not unglue his eyes from them. At first he stared at them stupidly.
Not for some minutes did his mind grasp that they represented great
wealth; and even when the temptation grew, it whispered no more than
that here was money--maybe even a hundred pounds--but enough, at all
events, added to his savings, to purchase the cottage at home, and
make him and Jeanne happy for the rest of their lives.
"His fingers felt around to the clasps. One by one he detached the
necklaces and slipped them into his trousers' pocket.
"He also managed to pull off one of the rings; but found this a more
difficult matter, because the fingers were swollen somewhat with the
salt water. So he contented himself with one, and ran back to the
lighthouse to give the alarm to his comrades.
"When his comrades saw the body there was great outcry upon the
jewels on its fingers; but none attempted to disturb them, and Lucien
kept his own counsel. They carried the poor thing to a store-chamber
at the base of the lighthouse, and there before nightfall they had
collected close upon thirty bodies. There was much talk in the
newspapers afterwards concerning the honesty of our poor Bretons, who
pillaged none of the dead, but gave up whatever they found.
The relatives and the great shipping company subscribed a fund, of
which a certain small portion came even to Ile Lezan to be
administered by me.
"The poor lady with the necklaces? If you read the accounts in the
newspapers, as no doubt you did, you will already have guessed her
name. Yes, in truth, she was your great soprano, whom they called
Madame Chiara, or La Chiara: so modest are you English, at least in
all that concerns the arts, that when an incomparable singer is born
to you she must go to Italy to borrow a name. She was returning from
South Africa, where the finest of the three necklaces had been
presented to her by subscription amongst her admirers. They say her
voice so ravished the audiences at Johannesburg and Pretoria that she
might almost, had she willed, have carried home the great diamond
they are sending to your King. But that, no doubt, was an invention
of the newspapers.
"For certain, at any rate, the necklace was a superb one; nor do I
speak without knowledge, as you shall hear. Twenty-seven large
stones--between each a lesser stone--and all of the purest water!
The other two were scarcely less magnificent. It was a brother who
came over and certified the body; for her husband she had divorced in
America, and her father was an English clergyman, old and infirm,
seldom travelling beyond the parish where he lives in a chateau and
reigns as a king. It seems that these things happen in England.
At first he was only a younger son, and dwelt in the rectory as a
plain parish priest, and there he married and brought up his family;
but his elder brother dying, he became seigneur of the parish too,
and moved into a great house, yet with little money to support it
until his only daughter came back from studying at Milan and
conquered London. The old gentleman speaks very modestly about it.
Oh, yes, I have seen and talked with him. And what a garden!
The azaleas! the rhododendrons! But he is old, and his senses
somewhat blunted. He lives in the past--not his own, but his
family's rather. He spoke to me of his daughter without emotion, and
said that her voice was undoubtedly derived from three generations
back, when an ancestor--a baronet--had married with an opera-singer.
"But we were talking of the necklaces and of the ring which Lucien
had taken. . . . He told his secret to nobody, but kept them ever in
his trousers' pocket. Only, when he could escape away from his
comrades to some corner of the shore, he would draw the gems forth
and feast his eyes on them. I believe it weighed on him very little
that he had committed a crime or a sin. Longshore folk have great
ease of conscience respecting all property cast up to them by the
sea. They regard all such as their rightful harvest: the feeling is
in their blood, and I have many times argued in vain against it.
Once while I argued, here in Ile Lezan, an old man asked me, 'But,
Father, if it were not for such chances, why should any man choose to
dwell by the sea?' If, monsieur, you lived among them and knew their
hardships, you would see some rude sense in that question.
"To Lucien, feasting his eyes by stealth on the diamonds and counting
the days to his relief, the stones meant that Jeanne and happiness
were now close within his grasp. There would be difficulty, to be
sure, in disposing of them; but with Jeanne's advice--she had a
practical mind--and perhaps with Jeanne's help, the way would not be
hard to find. He was inclined to plume himself on the ease with
which, so far, it had been managed. His leaving the rings, and the
gems sewn within the camisole--though to be sure these were not
discovered for many hours--had been a masterstroke. He and his
comrades had been complimented together upon their honesty.
"The relief came duly; and in this frame of mind--a little sly,
but more than three parts triumphant--he returned to Ile Lezan and
was made welcome as something of a hero. (To do him credit, he had
worked hard in recovering the bodies from the wreck.) At all times
it is good to arrive home after a spell on the lighthouse.
The smell of nets drying and of flowers in the gardens, the faces on
the quay, and the handshakes, and the first church-going--they all
count. But to Lucien these things were for once as little compared
with the secret he carried. His marriage now was assured, and that
first evening--the Eve of Noel--he walked with Jeanne up the road to
the cottage, and facing it, told her his secret. They could be
married now. He promised it, and indicated the house with a wave of
the hand almost proprietary.
"But Jeanne looked at him as one scared, and said: 'Shall I marry a
thief?'
"Then, very quietly, she asked for a look at the jewels, and he
handed them to her. She had never set eyes on diamonds before, but
all women have an instinct for jewels, and these made her gasp.
'Yes,' she owned, 'I could not have believed that the world contained
such beautiful things. I am sorry thou hast done this wickedness,
but I understand how they tempted thee.'
"'What is this you are chanting?' demanded Lucien. 'The stones were
nothing to me. I thought only that by selling them we two could set
up house as man and wife.'
"'My dear one,' said Jeanne, 'what happiness could we have known with
this between us?' What with the diamonds in her hand and the little
cottage there facing her, so long desired, she was forced to shut her
eyes for a moment; but when she opened them again her voice was quite
firm. 'We must restore them where they belong. It may be that Pere
Thomas can help us; but I must think of a way. Give them to me, and
let me keep them while I think of a way.'
"'You do not love me as I love you,' said Lucien in his anger and
disappointment; but he knew, all the same, that he spoke an untruth.
"Jeanne took the diamonds home with her, to her bedroom, and sat for
some time on the edge of her bed, thinking out a way. In the midst
of her thinking she stood up, walked over to the glass, and clasped
the finest of the necklaces about her throat. . . . I suppose no
woman of this country ever wore the like of it--no, not in the days
when there were kings and queens of Leon. . . . Jeanne was not
beautiful, but she gazed at herself with eyes like those of a patient
in a fever. . . . Then of a sudden she felt the stones burning her as
though they had been red-hot coals. She plucked them off, and cast
herself on her knees beside the bed."
"You will remember that this was the Eve of Noel, when the children
of the parish help me to deck the _creche_ for the infant Christ. We
take down the images--see, there is St. Joseph, and there yonder Our
Lady, in the side chapel; the two oxen and a sheep are put away in
the vestry, in a cupboard full of camphor. We have the Three Kings
too. . . . In short, we put our hearts into the dressing-up.
By nightfall all is completed, and I turn the children out, reserving
some few last touches which I invent to surprise them when they come
again on Christmas morning. Afterwards I celebrate the Mass for the
Vigil, and then always I follow what has been a custom in this
parish, I believe, ever since the church was built. I blow out all
the candles but two, and remain here, seated, until the day breaks,
and the folk assemble to celebrate the first Mass of Noel. Eh?
It is discipline, but I bring rugs, and I will not say that all the
time my eyes are wide open.
"Certainly I closed them on this night of which I am telling. For I
woke up with a start, and almost, you might say, in trepidation, for
it seemed to me that someone was moving in the church. My first
thought was that some mischievous child had crept in, and was playing
pranks with my _creche_, and to that first I made my way. Beyond the
window above it rode the flying moon, and in the rays of it what did
I see?
"The figures stood as I had left them. But above the manger, over
the shoulders of the Virgin, blazed a rope of light--of diamonds such
as I have never seen nor shall see again--all flashing green and blue
and fieriest scarlet and piercing white. Of the Three Kings, also
each bore a gift, two of them a necklace apiece, and the third a
ring. I stood before the miracle, and my tongue clave to the roof of
my mouth, and then a figure crept out of the shadows and knelt in the
pool of moonlight at my feet. It was Jeanne. She caught at the
skirt of my soutane, and broke into sobbing.
"'My father, let the Blessed One wear them ever, or else help me to
give them back!'
"You will now guess, monsieur, on what business I have been visiting
England. It is a great country. The old clergyman sat among his
azaleas and rhododendrons and listened to all my story. Then he took
the box that held his daughter's jewels, and, emptying it upon the
table, chose out one necklace and set it aside. 'This one,' said he,
'shall be sold, my friend, and with the money you shall, after giving
this girl a marriage portion, re-adorn your church on Ile Lezan to
the greater glory of God!'"
On our way back to his lodging the little Cure halted me before the
cottage. Gay curtains hung in the windows, and the veranda had been
freshly painted.
"At the end of the month Lucien gets his relief, and then they are to
be married," said the little Cure.
THE WREN.
A LEGEND.
Early on St. Stephen's Day--which is the day after Christmas--young
John Cara, son of old John Cara, the smith of Porthennis, took down
his gun and went forth to kill small birds. He was not a sportsman;
it hurt him to kill any living creature. But all the young men in
the parish went slaughtering birds on St. Stephen's Day; and the
Parson allowed there was warrant for it, because, when St. Stephen
had almost escaped from prison, a small bird (by tradition a wren)
had chirped, and awakened his gaolers.
Strange to say, John Cara's dislike of gunning went with a singular
aptitude for it. He had a quick sense with birds; could guess their
next movements just as though he read their minds; and rarely missed
his aim if he took it without giving himself time to think.
Now the rest of youths, that day, chose the valley bottoms as a
matter of course, and trooped about in parties, with much whacking of
bushes. But John went up to Balmain--which is a high stony moor
overlooking the sea--because he preferred to be alone, and also
because, having studied their ways, he knew this to be the favourite
winter haunt of the small birds, especially of the wrens and the
titlarks.
His mother had set her heart on making a large wranny-pie (that is,
wren-pie, but actually it includes all manner of birdlings). It was
to be the largest in the parish. She was vain of young John's
prowess, and would quote it when old John grumbled that the lad was
slow as a smith. "And yet," said old John, "backward isn't the word
so much as foolish. Up to a point he understands iron 'most so well
as I understand it myself. Then some notion takes him, and my back's
no sooner turned than he spoils his job. Always trying to make iron
do what iron won't do--that's how you may put it." The wife, who was
a silly woman, and (like many another such) looked down on her
husband's trade, maintained that her boy ought to have been born a
squire, with game of his own.
Young John went up to Balmain; and there, sure enough, he found
wrens and titlarks flitting about everywhere, cheeping amid the
furze-bushes on the low stone hedges and the granite boulders,
where the winter rains had hollowed out little basins for themselves,
little by little, working patiently for hundreds of years.
The weather was cold, but still and sunny. As he climbed, the sea at
first made a blue strip beyond the cliff's edge on his right, then
spread into a wide blue floor, three hundred feet below him, and all
the width of it twinkling. Ahead and on his left all the moorland
twinkled too, with the comings and goings of the birds. The wrens
mostly went about their business--whatever that might be--in a sharp,
practical way, keeping silence; but the frail note of the titlarks
sounded here, there, everywhere.
Young John might have shot scores of them. But, as he headed for the
old mine-house of Balmain and the cromlech, or Main-Stone, which
stands close beside it--and these are the only landmarks--he did not
even trouble to charge his gun. For the miracle was happening
already.
It began--as perhaps most miracles do--very slowly and gently,
without his perceiving it; quite trivially, too, and even absurdly.
It started within him, upon a thought that wren-pie was a foolish
dish after all! His mother, who prided herself upon making it, did
but pretend to enjoy it after it was cooked. His father did not even
pretend: the mass of little bones in it cheated his appetite and
spoiled his temper. From this, young John went on to consider.
"Was it worth while to go on killing wrens and shamming an appetite
for them, only because a wren had once informed against St. Stephen?
How were _these_ wrens guilty? And, anyway, how were the titlarks
guilty?" Young John reasoned it out in this simple fashion. He came
to the Main-Stone, and seating himself on the turf, leaned his back
against one of the blocks which support the huge monolith. He sat
there for a long while, puckering his brows, his gun idle beside him.
At last he said to himself, but firmly and aloud:
"Parson and the rest say 'tis true. But I can't believe it, and
something inside says 'tis wrong. . . . There! I won't shoot another
bird--and that settles it!"
"Halleluia!" said a tiny voice somewhere above him.
The voice, though' tiny, was shrill and positive. Young John
recognised, and yet did not recognise it. He stared up at the wall
of the old mine-house from which it had seemed to speak, but he could
see no one. Next he thought that the word must have come from his
own heart, answering a sudden gush of warmth and happiness that set
his whole body glowing. It was as if winter had changed to summer,
within him and without, and all in a moment. He blinked in the
stronger sunshine, and felt it warm upon his eyelids.
"Halleluia!" said the voice again. It certainly came from the wall.
He looked again, and, scanning it in this strange, new light, was
aware of a wren in one of the crevices.