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Updated: June 13, 2025
At first the lugubrious wife of the happy Jean was inclined to resent Guida's gaiety as unseemly, for Jean's story sounded to her as serious statement of fact; which incapacity for humour probably accounted for Jean's occasional lapses from domestic grace. If Jean had said that he had met a periwinkle dancing a hornpipe with an oyster she would have muttered heavily "Think of that!"
He heard Guida's footstep now, and standing up he parted the apple boughs for her entrance. She was dressed all in white, without a touch of colour save in the wild rose at her throat and the pretty red shoes with the broad buckles which the Chevalier had given her. Her face, too, had colour the soft, warm tint of the peach-blossom and her auburn hair was like an aureole. Philip's eyes gleamed.
The same slight, mischievous smile crossed her lips now as eleven years ago in the Rue d'Egypte, and recalling that moment, she replied: "Yes, sir Philip!" At that instant the figure of a man appeared on the shingle beneath, looking up towards them. They did not see him. Guida's hand was still in Philip's. The man looked at them for a moment, then started and turned away. It was Ranulph Delagarde.
"True that her eyes didn't feel the cold," said the Master of Burials with a leer, for to his sight as to that of others, only as boldness had been Guida's bitter courage, the blank, despairing gaze, coming from eyes that turn their agony inward. The apprentice took up the account again, and prepared to read it. The Master, however, had been roused to a genial theme.
Of course she must understand he would write constantly, telling her, as through a kind of diary, what he was doing every day, and then when the chance came the big budget should go to her. A pain came to Guida's heart as she read the flowing tale of his buoyant love.
She longed to get away from the town, to be where she could breathe; for all this day the earth seemed too small for breath: she gasped for the sea, to be alone there. To sail with Jean Touzel was practically to be alone, for Maitresse Aimable never talked; and Jean knew Guida's ways, knew when she wished to be quiet.
Her father, whom she did not remember, had been a ship-builder, and she knew that he had been a notable man; every one had told her that. "She has met her destiny," say the village gossips, when some man in the dusty procession of life sees a woman's face in the pleasant shadow of a home, and drops out of the ranks to enter at her doorway. Was Ranulph to be Guida's destiny?
As Dormy Jamais closed the door, he looked back to where the coffin lay, and in the compassion of fools he repeated Guida's words: "Poor Philip!" he said. Now, during Philip's burial, Dormy Jamais sat upon the roof of the Cohue Royale, as he had done on the day of the Battle of Jersey, looking down on the funeral cortege and the crowd.
She was a Catholic, unlike Jean and most people of her class in Jersey, and ever since that night he kissed her she had told an extra bead on her rosary and said another prayer. These were the reasons why at first she was inclined to resent Guida's laughter. But when she saw that Maitre Ranulph and the curate and Jean himself laughed, she settled down to a grave content until they landed.
The new-found knowledge was diffused in her character, expressed in her face. Seldom had a day of Guida's life been so busy. It seemed to her that people came and went far more than usual. She talked, she laughed a little, she answered back the pleasantries of the seafaring folk who passed her doorway or her garden. She was attentive to her grandfather; exact with her household duties.
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