From The Four Winds/The Capitulation of Jean Jacques

'Sacre! these walls are high! lift me, Pierre.'

A very small lean man raised himself with the agility of a cat from his perch in the uplifted grasp of the giant below, and was through a window twelve feet from the ground, and crouching in the shadow of the white curtains without a sound stirring the silence of the night air.

Jean Jacques, Frenchman, man of genius, man of diminutive stature, man of sun-baked countenance, political convict, crouched in the shadow of the curtains and reflected. His reflections were the résumé of a carefully matured plan,—in fine, his reflections were these:

'I, Jean Jacques, am at large; I have not been at large for some time; certainly, then, I wish to remain at large; I wish also my friend Pierre below to remain at large. Que faire?' The reasoning unconsciously took the form of Ollendorf.

'I am in the room of the four-year-old daughter of the Governor. How do I know this? Because I can see her little socks hanging over the end of the bed. Is not the four-year-old daughter of the Governor the apple of the Governor's eye? Certainly, she is the apple of the eye of the Governor. Given, then, Jean Jacques, the apple of the eye of the Governor, and the desire to remain at large, what happens? P—s—s—t, it is apparent, any child can see what must happen!'

Jean Jacques rose to the height of his five feet two, his lean, dark face glowing, and his crisp black hair curling with the greatness of his ideas, and advancing, drew aside the curtains of the little bed.

A small figure in a wisp of a nightgown stretched her limbs thereon in childish abandon, and turned her elf's face up to her nocturnal visitor in the unconscious serenity of sleep. That Jean Jacques was a humane man was evidenced by the thoughtful way in which he bestowed dress, socks, slippers, dolls, and sun-bonnet within the capacious folds of his convict's blouse; that he was a man of energy and action, by the manner in which he enveloped the child's head in a soft shawl, and her little body in a discarded blanket, and, before she had time or breath to wake and scream, passed himself and her into the upstretched arms of Pierre, and regained the ground.

Then two dim figures, with a hostage to liberty, flitted through the deserted streets, and the night swallowed them up.

Noumea was looking its best; what that means one must have been there to know. Not yet astir with the day, the town and harbour were pretending an innocence of the twin spirits of despair and misery throbbing and raging within their boundaries. Out of the blue Pacific, also pretending a non-existent innocence, the sun was rising, and causing the ruddy copper tints of the island rocks to shine with a morning glory, the foam of the reefs to sparkle, and the green and red of leaf and flower to glint and glow with a tender and dewy freshness. The native market was already beginning to stir with the busy sellers of most conceivable, and some inconceivable, fruits and vegetables. Soon, above the everyday droning hum of the vending of merchandise, rose and swelled an ever-increasing buzz, like the tuning of an orchestra, in dozens of discordant quirks and twitters, till, hushing every sound, as does the uplifting of the conductor's baton, there boomed forth once and twice over the stillness of the harbour the deep angry tone of the convict escape-gun. Then the buzz broke out again, but this time with the unanimity of knowledge and conviction. Not that a convict's escape was any rare occurrence in a community boasting the possession of some nine thousand such, in a greater or less degree of captivity; the buzz had a deeper and a wider meaning; there were nine thousand convicts; there was but one Governor, and to that Governor was but one daughter. The 'buzz,' with an intelligence which did it credit, connected the two disappearances, it was even whispered—that is to say, it was bewailed and lamented at the top of the shrill native voice—that there was a third disappearance, of knives and ropes, and good food-stuff, to wit; this formed a tail to the comet in the opinion of the buzz. The buzz was immensely tickled and interested, it was even compelled to open its mouth—which was bad for it—when from the barracks issued patrols armed to the teeth, and from the quay departed snowily-breeched officials to the various ships lying at anchor. Grievously agape was the mouth of the buzz when from Government House marched the Governor, grey-headed and of soldierly bearing. The Governor was a widowed man, and had but one child; it amused the buzz and affected it to tears to see what he had suffered. In spite of his soldier's pride, suffering had lined his face during the last hour, and the furrows deepened. as he marched on with head up into the middle of the Place, and spoke to the buzz with wingéd words, that hushed it completely, distending its mouth and stimulating its stomach by the liberality of the promised reward.

There was a scattering and a hurrying, such as the official methodism of the town had not known since the French and English blue-jacket fight—a tussle of unquenchable memory and much friendly shedding of gore.

The hours rolled on, the sun blazed, the world forgot its siesta, while the shadow on the Governor's face deepened with the waning of the day. He sat in the Place and waited—round him a staff of messengers coming and going, as fresh thoughts and possibilities thronged his anxious mind. Presently, as hope faded and grew wan, he said—

'I can bear it no more here, I will go up and wait in the Cathedral—perchance God will send me inspiration,' and he took his way thither....

Now, if one desires to see the most perfect picture in the world, one may look upon it—if one goes in the evening to the Cathedral at Noumea, and, standing at the eastern end, looks down the aisle to the west. There, framed in the grey walls, hangs a picture as of heaven—not, indeed, of canvas and paint, but of the sea and the air and the earth, as a man sees them when the glow of a setting sun is flooding and filling all with an unearthly glory of light. So the Governor, even in his great grief, saw the vision of heaven, and bowing his head upon his hands, sat gazing thereon—silent and alone. As the sun dipped he fell, worn out, into a sort of trance, rousing himself with a start as the rim of the fiery globe rested lightly on the horizon, seeming to poise itself before sinking to rest, while the grey shadows of the twilight crept out, as if eager before their time to whelm the last hopes of the day in a filmy maze. Out of the West, before the eyes of the Governor—far away in a reverie of pain—floated a white cloud, and dimly his mind became conscious of it. 'Very odd cloud,' he thought abstractedly, 'that comes so suddenly and close;' then he sprang up as though he had been shot. 'Was it a cloud? No, assuredly it was not.' It floated, it quivered, it waggled with the breeze, it was—bathos—it was a nightgown.

Suspended between sky and earth in the middle of that picture of heaven, fading already with the growing darkness, waved a child's nightgown. Instinctively the answer to the whole problem of the day's disappearance flashed before the Governor's mind, and what he saw when he had hurried through the door under the folds of that flag of truce came as no surprise. He stood and gazed upwards. Down below in the streets of the town, in all the country round, the buzz was still actively engaged in pursuing the promised satisfaction of its stomach.

Now this was what the Governor saw on the roof of the Cathedral, thirty feet above him. Over the stone parapet a lean, dark face surmounting a bare brown arm and hand, from which hung the rope of the flag of truce; behind, what seemed to him a vast blue statue, astride the neck of which sat a little figure in a cotton blouse, dangling two bare legs, and patting the statue's head with one hand, while with the other it blew kisses to the amazed and horrified Governor. His hand caught the butt of his revolver. Escaped convicts were wild beasts—and his child sat on the shoulders of one and played with what was left of its hair! The Governor's aristocratic and sporting instincts were aroused.

Jean Jacques, leaning over the parapet, smiled genially, and his other hand, in which glistened the long blade of a knife, rested for a moment on the parapet. Only for a second, but the Governor let fall the pistol, and covered his face in his hands with a shrinking gesture of physical pain and fear.

''' Bien! Monsieur'','—Jean Jacques took the word in courteous tones, and with a caressing upward wave of the hand that no longer held the knife to the little white atom on his comrade's shoulders. 'Bien! decidedly Monsieur and I shall understand one another. I have the honour of addressing Monsieur le Gouverneur? Good.' Jean Jacques made a polite bow with what could be seen of him in response to the Governor's sign of assent.

'Monsieur, I will be brief. I am Jean Jacques. My friend Monsieur Pierre Legros—Monsieur le Gouverneur!'

He indicated the silent Pierre with a backward and airy wave.

'My friend and I were bored—it was not your fault, Monsieur, do not be distressed—we were in want of distraction, we were also in want of being free—ah! Free'

Jean Jacques looked up with a sigh that spoke volumes even to the Governor, pre-occupied as he was with dread anxiety.

' Nous voila! distracted and free—do you think we will again return to the other state?' An accent of menace crept into his voice, but passed as quickly as it came.

'No, we shall remain free; it rests with Monsieur to decide how and on what terms. Providence has kindly sent Monsieur to us alone; my friend and I do not wish that anyone should see Monsieur talking with us—it might compromise him as affairs will turn out. Therefore, if Monsieur will give to us his ears, my friend and I will briefly explain to him how things stand, and what we have the honour to desire at the hands of Monsieur.'

He paused for a moment, and turned to Pierre, standing in the shadow behind him; the latter made a sign of acquiescence, and Jacques went on:

'Mademoiselle Cecile is very happy with us; it is a new game we are playing,'—he turned again and smiled at the child, who waved her hand and laughed back at him,—'and we are very fond of Mademoiselle. But we have thought it may be best for everyone that we should continue to be free in another land—across the seas. Monsieur le Gouverneur will therefore cause to be prepared for us, in the little bay of Pontet to the east, a good seaworthy cutter of not less than ten tons, with provisions and water for twenty days; also he will in his kindness see that the road is clear for us to embark at midnight to-morrow, and he will give us—will he not?—his word of honour that he will not cause us to be pursued. Monsieur's word of honour is his bond. If Monsieur will come to the little bay of Pontet at twelve on that night he will find Mademoiselle in the little cave close by the bay. Should Monsieur not see his way to accept these terms, he will do as he pleases, always remembering that Mademoiselle is with us, and that what happens to Jean Jacques or his friend Pierre, happens, unfortunately, to Mademoiselle also.'

So ending, Jean Jacques bared his teeth again in a genial smile.

The Governor groaned—his situation dawned slowly on him in the fulness of its horror—he clenched his teeth and groaned. His duty drew him one way, his feelings (and he was conscious then how overpoweringly) dragged him the other. He bowed his head, and pondered painfully. Jean Jacques waited some time in silent politeness, then he said:

'Monsieur will understand that to my friend and myself our liberty is as dear as to Monsieur is Monsieur's daughter: also Monsieur shall, if he pleases, have the night and the day in which to reflect and prepare; and in order that there may be no mistake as to the preparations, it will be best if Monsieur will return himself and give us his answer at two hours before midnight to-morrow.'

The Governor was conscious, with a feeling of rage and shame, that the convict knew only too surely that the game was in his hands; he raised his head with a jerk, and said, sharply and sternly:

'It shall be so—at ten to-morrow night you shall have my answer.'

Then with one look at his little daughter calling merrily, and blowing kisses to him, and a muttered 'Good-night, my darling, be a good brave child,' he stepped firmly away, turning for a moment to say fiercely, 'Be careful of her, men; if but one hair of her head be harmed, woe betide you.' Then he marched heroically down the hill, and hastened to his home to hide his deadly agony of doubt and fear.

The buzz was hushed—hushed until the day should come again to lend it zeal and courage. It was one thing to hunt for escaped convicts, in packs, under the smiling sun, it was another to seek desperate men in the blue-black of the Southern night. The buzz was of opinion that its stomach might wait a little. Inland among the hills tired parties of soldiery still pursued their weary search, but to no purpose. That buttress on the Cathedral was a full fifteen feet from the ground—its combination with a giant, a man of genius, and a rope had occurred to no one's mind; furthermore, the side of the Cathedral roof overlooked by the coastguard station was protected by a parapet, and this fact had also been unobserved.

Underneath the parapet the child lay tossing between her two captors. Even in her restlessness she seemed to have complete faith in them; one hand lay in Pierre's monstrous paw, with the other she kept throwing off the clothing that Jean Jacques carefully replaced. Neither man slept; they watched their little prisoner anxiously, and every now and then Jacques spoke a word or two of soothing to the restless little mortal. In the middle watches of the night, Cecile waked suddenly from her dreams, and sat up, shaking her dark straight locks back from her hot little head, and looking wildly about her. Then she screamed, a child's scream of terror, and the look of fright that the two men had been waiting for so painfully and anxiously shone in her black eyes. That, which only Jacques' wonderful, almost mesmeric, power with children and the giant Pierre's gentleness had restrained so far, was come at last.

'Bon Dieu, but this is terrible,' said Jacques; 'gently, ma chérie, it is all play; see, here are thy two good friends, here is thy horse, the big Pierre who gave thee that good ride on his shoulders; gently, ma chérie, gently.'

He stroked the soft head, and with the tenderness of a mother kissed the hot little cheek. Pierre turned his head away, with the dumb and blind confidence in his comrade in all moments of danger and difficulty that possessed his faithful soul. But scream after scream broke from the child; it was not all play, she was in the dark, where was her little bed and her nurse? and she wanted her daddy. Jean Jacques was the father of children, a man of genius, and kindly, but he was unequal to this situation, perhaps from that very kindliness which forbade him to use the shawl to smother the child's cries.

Now the Cathedral was high above the town, and the buzz in the nearest houses was tired, and only turned in its heavy sleep to say, 'Listen to the wild cats in the mountains—to-morrow we will go and hunt them and the other wild beasts with dogs.' So the paroxysm passed, and the child lay still again in Pierre's arms, but with a dull fever burning in her cheeks and eyes. The night grew old, and the chill air smote the exhausted babe in spite of all the men's care, and morning brought the raging fever that, if it be not stayed, means death to the white child. The men looked at each other with dismay in faces haggard with the strain of sleepless nights and dread anxiety.

'Must we then fail after all?' said Jacques, more to himself than to his comrade. He turned his eyes, gloomy with a bitter resentment at the rising sun.

'Twenty hours—only twenty hours—and three lives hanging in the balance. I will not fail; the child shall live, and so shall we.'

'Water,' said Pierre, and without another word took off his hat and fitted the rope through the brim to make a bucket.

'Yes, water before the people are stirring,' said Jacques.

By the aid of the rope he descended with his extemporised bucket and stole down the hill under shelter of a wall to the nearest cottage—a laundry, as luck would have it—then, filling his bucket, he got back without being seen. Cecile was delirious, and as she raved and tossed, the tears stole down the cheeks of the big convict, and gently he stroked back the dark hair and carefully arranged the blanket so that no ray of the fast rising sun should fall on her. Jacques tore the flag of truce into shreds meet for bandages, and they bound them wet round the fevered head and laid the little frame in Pierre's arms. They had no food left now except a few bananas, which they kept for the child. The fever seemed to abate somewhat, and presently she slept.

The two men sat hour after hour gazing at each other, and at the sun creeping up in the heavens. Now and then Jacques looked away at the sea gleaming brilliant and free, with a yearning look in his eyes that told more than a thousand words, and from it he looked back again at the flushed cheek of the babe in his comrade's arms, weighing and weighing all that the sea meant to him against the pangs of that helpless innocent. Pierre sat immovable; cramp had possession of his limbs, but he sat still for his life; if the child slept through the heat of the day they were saved—what was dearer than life was theirs—if she waked, he dared not think.

Noon came and passed, and the two men sat on—sat on with the same yearning look in their eyes, and the same speechless constraint, and the child still slept. A change seemed to be stealing over the heated face. Jacques watched it anxiously.

'The fever is leaving her,' he said; 'what will come after?'

Hope and despair alternated in his face.

Two o'clock, three o'clock, four o'clock, they counted the chimes with desperate eagerness —never were hours more leaden-footed—and still the child slept. A wan white look had come into her face, and she looked very ethereal and transparent.

'Bon dieu!'  thought Jacques, in agony, 'will she fade away before our very eyes?'

Involuntarily Pierre stirred; a spasm of cramp had shaken him to the soul, and Cecile awoke. Contrition and consternation stilled the cramp in Pierre's vast frame, and he rocked her gently to and fro.

'Give her to me, my friend,' said Jean Jacques, quietly, but the look he bent on the child and the tone of his voice showed that despair had entered into him.

Truly it was pitiful—the babe was strengthless and voiceless, she only made a little imploring gesture, and looked with eyes big and dark-shadowed in helpless appeal. The two men gazed at each other in silent accord, then Jacques said:

'She will die, if she meets again the chill night air—it is all over, my friend; with the first shadows we must take her back.'

He gave one burning look at the sea that mocked him in long blue ripples of laughter, then turned to the babe in his arms with a smile in his eyes and soothing words.

Pierre groaned, and turning over lay on his face motionless. Jacques' watch had begun. How terrible those next three hours were—waiting for the pitiless sun to go down and the ending, ah!—such an ending of the Day of Hope. If they took her back at sunset, the child would live—yes, he knew that, he was sure of it—but at what a cost! Freedom to him was the all of life, the air he breathed; in the cause of freedom, or what he deemed such, had he not already endured two years of torment—must he go back to heaven knew how many more? Stay, could he not harden his heart? After all, who knows, the child might live anyway; it was only to keep her another four hours. A silent and bitter rage filled his heart, his own brilliant idea had cut from them their last chance; so near to freedom and yet how far; not even a run for their money, as the English say. Then his glance fell again on those appealing eyes that seemed to ask so much and yet so little—only to be taken back to her own little bed. A terrible dread and horror welled up in the convict's heart, and quenched the flames of rage; the shame of his deed was casting its shadow before, and with anxious, desperate eyes, he watched the sun's departure from the heavens with an agonising hope that the remorse of the murderer of an innocent might be spared him.

Slowly, slowly, the sun went down. With the lengthening of the shadows Jacques made his preparations for the return. He formed a cradle of the blanket by passing a piece of the rope through the four corners, and then made the end of the rope fast to the roof. When the lights began to twinkle from the town through the fast gathering dusk, and the strains of the convict band playing in the Place came to their ears, they journeyed—and it was time indeed.

Pierre went first down the rope, then Jacques lowered the child in her blanket cradle into his arms and followed, flinging the rope back again on to the roof, that no sign of their hiding should be left for the buzz to make mock of. They took a narrow upper path that led above the town to the back of the Governor's house.

A sneering fate kept that procession as secret as the former one—not a creature came nigh them. The buzz was recruiting its disappointed energies with gossip to the strains of Faust. Jean Jacques, a former distinguished member of that orchestra, even now, as he walked in Pierre's wake, jaded with hunger and fatigue, and racked with the pangs of despair, cursed his successor under his breath for a wrong note in the solo of the Devil's serenade, the strains of which were wafted to him on an unfriendly breeze.

'Hurry, Pierre,' he said between his teeth.

Rapidly and noiselessly they skirted the outer wall, passed through a wicket gate, and crossed the garden to the long white house. It seemed deserted, save for a light streaming into the outside darkness from a window on the ground floor. Creeping quietly forward, Jacques saw through the open casement the figure of the Governor seated at a table in a long low room that did duty as a library. His head was bowed upon his two outstretched arms, a hat, cloak, and pistol were laid on the table in front of him.

So the preparations had been made!...

Jean Jacques withdrew, and making a sign to Pierre they moved back along the verandah until once again they were below the window of their little prisoner's room. Noiselessly as she had been taken from it Cecile was restored to the little bed that lay ready for her. With a deep sigh she turned her eyes gratefully on Jacques as he placed her softly amongst the pillows, and then closed them in an exhaustion, deep as the grave. After listening a moment to make certain from her breathing that all was well, he drew the clothes gently over her, closed the mosquito-curtains, and slid to the ground.

'Allons!'  said he to Pierre, and linked his arm in his comrade's.

So they passed through the open window and stood before the Governor. He raised his grey head slowly from his arms, and sat staring in amaze at the two figures in front of him.

'Monsieur le Gouverneur,' said Jean Jacques, simply, 'we are here, my friend and I, to render ourselves; you may do to us what you please—we have failed.'

He raised his head, and confronted the Governor, with calm and haggard face. The latter sprang to his feet with the cry:

'My child! my child! Cowards, miscreants, what have you done to my child?'

'Pardon, Monsieur, we are not cowards—we should not be here else. Go and look for your child in her own bed; we wait for your return.'

The Governor, without a word, turned and fled out of the room and up the stairs.

The two stood immovable and waited; Pierre indeed made a gesture towards the pistol, but Jacques, into whose eyes had crept a look almost of hope, shook his head, and the giant, faithful in his confidence to the last, left it untouched. The Governor returned, grave and stern, but his eye was bright and he walked with a firm step.

'My child is ill,' he said.

'Monsieur,' said Jacques, with dignity, 'we were afraid for her, so we brought her home; had we kept her till midnight she would have died; but have no fear—I know the fever; she will be well again in a short time.'

The Governor shivered—the shock and strain of the last two days had unnerved him. He sat down again, and leant back, thinking. A flame shot into his eyes.

'And you would have killed my child!' he said, with a menacing gesture at the two figures in front of him.

'No, Monsieur, we would not, and the proof is in that we have brought her back rather than that she should be harmed.' Jacques looked fearlessly back into the searching and resentful eyes. The Governor fell back in his chair, and it seemed to them an eternity before he spoke again. When he did it was slowly and measuredly, and his words were those of a judge:

'Men, I, the Governor of this great island, and a French gentleman, had sacrificed my duty and my honour to my love. What you required has been done—the boat is provisioned and ready, the way will be clear from eleven o'clock till twelve. At your bidding, yours, had I done this; you had put me to this shame, but Fate has delivered you into my hands, and saved me what, as God be my witness, was necessity. Why should I spare you? Yet,' he paused, and the sombre calm of Jacques' face was pierced again for an instant by that gleam of hope, 'you have made a sacrifice. I know that to such as you, liberty is sweeter than life,—I cannot doubt the sacrifice,—and I will grant you one chance. If that chance favour you, you will find in that chest what I have prepared for you—disguises and some papers, signed by me, assuring you a passport; hide in this room till eleven o'clock, then go, and may fortune speed you—the boat is at the little bay; but if the chance favour you not—look for no mercy from me, for by heaven, you shall have none. Wait for me here.'

Again he left the room and ascended the stairs.

'Go, go!' said Pierre, 'there is still time.'

'No,' said Jacques, and they waited—for nearly an hour they waited, so worn that they no longer felt the strain,—there is a limit to suffering, bodily and mental, beyond which feeling is not.

The Governor returned; his eyes softened somewhat when he saw them, and he took the pistol in his hand.

'Mademoiselle is awake; this is your chance. Follow me upstairs and into her room. If, when her eyes fall upon you, there pass but a shadow over her beloved face, there is no mercy for you.'

So saying, he went out. Jean Jacques turned to Pierre and gripped his hand.

Courage,' he said, jouons bon jeu,' and the indomitable spirit shone out of his black eyes into his comrade's.

The Governor mounted the stairs. Jean Jacques whistled under his breath, Pierre wiped the cold sweat from his brow, and they followed. The Governor passed into the room through the open door; as they paused for one second, they could see Cecile's eyes turned lovingly on him and her hands stretched out; her old nurse was sitting at the head of the bed on one side, and a doctor was on the other. A lamp, turned low, gave a fitful light; the Governor reached forward and turned it up.

'Dieu merci, nous avons de la chance,' thought Jacques, 'at all events she will not take us for ghosts or bogies;' then, with head up, and a smile on his lips and in his eyes, he marched boldly into the room, Pierre following like a dog.

The Governor, standing back in the shadow, his head bowed, stood watching his little daughter with eyes that burned like coals of fire in the hollows of his wasted cheeks.

No one spoke.

As Jacques moved forward, the child turned her eyes from her father towards him; when they lighted upon him, a look of curiosity, but not of fear, dwelt in them for a moment, then a smile dimpled up in the brave little face, her hand moved, and her lips parted as if to blow a kiss to her guests.

Jacques advanced to the bed and stroked the little head—Pierre stood at the foot and grinned with sympathy.

'It is enough,' said the Governor, 'you are men; go, and God save you.'