Carette of Sark Part 46

It was I awoke her after all.

I was pondering whether we should not make our way out by the tunnel, for if we stopped there much longer we should starve. And the idea had struck me all of a heap, that if any ill had befallen George Hamon or my grandfather we might wait in vain for their coming, when a shout came pealing down the long and narrow cleft of the cave--

"Carre! Phil Carre!"

I thought it was George Hamon's voice, and the start I gave woke Carette, and we set off for the rock parlour.

Before we got there the shouts had ceased, and in their place we heard a torrent of amazed oaths and knew that Uncle George had lighted on Torode.

"Dieu-de-dieu--de-dieu-de-dieu-de-dieu!" met us as we drew near. "What in the name of the holy St. Magloire is this?" cried he, as soon as he saw us.

He had lit his lantern, his head was bound round with a b.l.o.o.d.y cloth and he was bending over the bed.

"We had a visitor," I said jauntily, for the sight of him was very cheering, even though he seemed all on his beam-ends, and maybe the sight of a basket he had dropped on the ground went no small way towards uplifting my spirits.

"Thousand devils!" he said furiously,--and I had never in my life seen him so before.--"A visitor!--Here! But it is not possible--"

I pointed to the wounded man. "It is Monsieur Torode from Herm. We had a discussion, and he got hurt."

"Torode!" he said, and knelt hastily, and held his lantern so that the light fell full on the dark face, and peered into it intently, while we stood wondering.

His eyes gleamed like venomous pointed tools. He stared long and hard. Then he did a strange thing. He put his hand under Torode's black moustache and folded it back off his mouth, and drew back himself to arm's length, and stared and stared, and we knew that some strange matter was toward.

And then of a sudden he sprang back with a cry,--great strange cry.

"My G.o.d! My G.o.d! it is he himself!--Rachel!" and he reeled sideways against the wall.

"Who?" I asked. And he looked very strangely at me, and said--

"Your father,--Paul Martel," and I deemed him crazy.

"My poor Rachel!" he groaned. "We must hide it. She must not know. She must never know. My G.o.d! Why did I blab it out?"

"Uncle George!" I said soothingly, and laid my hand on his shoulder, for I made sure his wound had upset his brain.

"Give me time, Phil. I am not crazy. Give me time. Mon Dieu! mon Dieu!" and he sat down heavily with his head in his hands.

And we, not understanding anything of the matter, but still much startled at the strangeness of his words and bearing, nevertheless found the size of our hunger at sight of the basket he had brought, and fell to on its contents, and ate ravenously.

CHAPTER x.x.xV

HOW WE HEARD STRANGE NEWS

"Whatever is it all, Phil?" whispered Carette as we ate.

"There has evidently been fighting outside, and he has got a knock on the head, and his wits are astray." But that strange thing he had said ran in my head, and made such play there that I began to be troubled about it.

You must remember I had never heard the name of Paul Martel, and of my father I knew nothing save that he was dead. So that this strange word of George Hamon's was to me but empty vapouring brought on by that blow on the head. But against that there was the tremendous fact which had so exercised my mind, that this man Torode had spared my life at risk of his own, when every other soul that could have perilled him had been slaughtered in cold blood.

If--the awful import of that little word!--if there was--if there could be, any sense in George Hamon's words, the puzzle of Torode's strange treatment of me was explained. I saw that clearly enough, but yet the whole matter held no sense of reality to me. It was all as obscure and shadowy as the dim cross-lights in which we sat, and ate because we were starving.

Torode lay like a log, breathing slowly, but with no other sign of life.

George Hamon presently knelt beside him again and gazed long into his face, and then examined his wound carefully. Then he stood up and signed to us to follow him, and we went along the cleft to the water-cave, and sat down there in the dim green light that filtered through the water.

"Mon gars," he said very gravely, "I have done you a wrong. I ought to have kept it to myself. It was the suddenness of it that upset me. I told you no living man besides myself knew of this place, and that was because I believed this man dead--dead this twenty years. He was partner with me in the free-trading for a time, until we fell out--"

"You said just now that he was my father," I broke in, and eyed him closely to see if his wits were still astray. "What did you mean?"

"It is true," he said gloomily. "I am sorry. It slipped out."

"But he is Torode, and you called him Martel, and I am Phil Carre."

"All that; but, all the same, it is true, mon gars. He is your father, Paul Martel."

"I have always been told my father was dead."

"We believed so. He went away twenty years ago, and never came back. We believed him dead--we wished him dead. He was better dead than alive."

"I don't understand," I said doggedly, still all in a maze. "You call him Martel, and say he is my father, but I am Phil Carre."

"Yes. We were sick of Martel, and sick of his name. We did not wish you to be weighted with it.... Now see, mon gars, I was in the wrong to slip it out, but--well, there it is--I was wrong. But, since it is done, and we must keep it to ourselves, I will tell you the rest. You are old enough to know. And Carette--eh bien! it is you yourself, and not your father--"

"Ma fe, one does not choose one's father," said Carette, and slipped her hand through my arm, and clung tightly to it through all the telling.

And George Hamon told us briefly that which I have set forth in the beginning of my story. We two talked of it many times afterwards, and it was at such odd times that he told me all the rest. And I think it like enough that you, who have read it all in the order in which I have written it, may long since have guessed that thing which had puzzled me so much--Torode's strange sparing of my life when he murdered all my comrades.

But to me, who had never known anything of my father, and had grown to know myself only as Phil Carre, the whole matter was amazing, and upsetting beyond my power to tell.

"And what are we to do now, Uncle George?" I asked dispiritedly, for the sudden tumbling into one's life of a father whom all honest men must hate and loathe darkened all my sky like a thunder-cloud on a summer day.

"If he dies we will bury him here and in our three hearts, and no other must know. It would only break your mother's life again as it was broken once before."

"And if he lives?" I asked gloomily, and, unseemly though it might be, it was perhaps hardly strange that I could not bring myself to wish anything but that he might die.

"If he lives," said Uncle George, no whit less gloomily--and stopped in the slough.... "I do not know.... His life is forfeit ... and yet--you cannot give him up ... nor can I.... But perhaps he will die ..." he said hopefully.

"And I shall have killed him."

"Mon Dieu, yes!--I forgot.... But you did not know, and if you had not he would certainly have killed you ... and Carette also, without doubt."

"All the same--"

"Yes, I know," he nodded. "Well, we must wait and see. I wonder now what Philip would do,"--meaning my grandfather, in whose wisdom he had implicit faith, as all had who knew him. "I'm inclined to think he would give him up, you know. He would never loose him on the world again.... However, he may die."

"Where is he--my grandfather? And what has been doing outside, and when can we get out?"