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That was only a hint. Who are you, and what do you want here?" "I'm Phil Carré, of Belfontaine. I want to see Monsieur Le Marchant and Ma'm'zelle Carette." "Oh, you do, do you? And what do you want with them?" "I'll tell them when I see them. Do you always wish your friends good-morning with a musket on Brecqhou?" "Our friends don't come till they're asked."
"He is gone," he said, with a grave nod, in response to his daughter's questioning look. "But I misdoubt him. You had much better come with me to Belfontaine for a time, Rachel." She shook her head doubtfully. "He's an angry man, and if he should get back " said her father. "In his right mind he would be sorry " "I misdoubt him," he said again, with a sombre nod.
I can see the boy creeping slowly along the south side of Brecqhou in a boat which was big enough to make him look very small. It was the smaller of the two boats belonging to the farm, but it was heavily laden with vraic. There had been two days of storm, the port at Brecqhou was full of the floating seaweed, and the fields at Belfontaine hungered for it. Philip Carré and Krok and the small boy had been busy with it since the early morning, and many boat-loads had been carried to Port
Twice I stormed the maiden fortress in George Road, and ran the gauntlet of the Miss Maugers with less discomfiture than on the first occasion, through Miss Maddy's sympathy and my added weight of years and experience. And once Carette was making holiday with Aunt Jeanne, and Beaumanoir saw more of me than did Belfontaine.
"For boys of spirit there are always openings," he said, and I knew very well what he meant, and shook my head. "Ah, so! You are not free-traders at Belfontaine," he laughed. At which I shook my head again, feeling a trifle ashamed of our uncommon virtue, which could not, I thought, commend itself to so notorious a defier of preventive law.
"Well, come along, and let's get it over," and we went across the fields to Belfontaine. My mother met us at the door, and it was borne in upon me suddenly that as a girl she must have been very good-looking. There was more colour than usual in her face, and the quiet eyes shone brightly.
"Monsieur Torode?" I asked, and after another staring pause, he said gruffly "B'en! I am Torode. What is it you want?" "A berth on your ship there." "And why? Who are you, then?" "Your son knows me. My name is Carré, Phil Carré. I come from Sercq." "Where there?" "Belfontaine." "Does your father live there?" "He's dead these twenty years. I live with my mother and my grandfather."
And Philip Carré's heart was easier than it had been for many a day, as they wound their way among the great cushions of gorse to his lonely house at Belfontaine. And the small boy was jumping with joy, and the shadow on his mother's face was lightened somewhat.
The deepest that was in us never found very full vent at Belfontaine, and that, I think, was due very largely to the quiet and kindly, but somewhat rigid, Quakerism of my grandfather. We felt and knew without babbling into words. So all that day my mother hovered about me with a quiet face and hungry eyes, but never one word that might have darkened my going.
At Belfontaine there was little fear of oversight or overhearing, for it lay somewhat apart, and since his daughter's marriage Philip Carré had lived there all alone with his dumb man Krok, who assisted him with the farm and the fishing, and their visitors were few and far between. Now that jumping small boy was myself, and Rachel Carré was my mother, and Philip Carré was my grandfather.
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