The George and the Crown

Tom had come to Guernsey in a coaster from Deal, a tramp which had butted her way along the coasts of Kent, Sussex, Hampshire and Dorset, and then adventured south in the tomato season. There had been a longish wait for repairs at St. Sampsons; the Queen of the May had been built for coasting, and the coasts of England, even at Land’s End, have no weather like the weather of the Casquets and the Burhous. Tom had spent a great deal of his time ashore, exploring this new island of forts and greenhouses, and he had met Kitty le Couteur at the home of her cousins, the le Cheminants, who kept an eating-house in St. Peter Port.

Kitty was small and slim and dark, with big black eyes burning in her pointed face. She wore little dark modest garments with long tight sleeves, and demure aprons of which she was not ashamed. She had never seen a railway, and was afraid to go in a tramcar. She was quite unlike the girls at home, and her voice was unlike their voices, with its pretty Frenchy accent like the twitter of a bird. She called him Mister Sheeter very sedately, and it was quite three days before he could persuade her to come with him for a walk, and then nothing would make her go out of Town. But she told him more about herself this time, about her home in Sark, right away at the Pêche à Agneau, beyond the road’s end; about her father, who kept the farm, and her brothers Eugene and Philip, who sailed the cutter; about her own life, lived between sea and sky, in which this visit to Guernsey was the first adventure.

“My father he not mind me come before, but my brother Eugene and my brother Philip say, ‘If you go to Guernsey you meet strangers, and perhaps you marry a stranger, or even an Englishman.’”

Tom cared nothing for brother Eugene nor for brother Philip. Kitty’s pale face and dark eyes now held the magic which the sea was beginning to lose. When the Queen of the May started north with pounding paddle-boxes and a cargo of tomatoes she left Tom Sheather behind in the island of forts and greenhouses, taking in his stead a Cornishman, who wanted to see his home after ten years of gathering vraic. Tom stayed behind as an extra hand for the tomato-picking. He worked on an estate near Torteval, and once a week he crossed over to Sark in the Saturday excursion steamer, and walked along Sark’s high backbone to its granite horns, to where Helier le Couteur’s house looks over the sloping bracken to Rouge Caneau and Moie de la Bretagne.

He was well received by the old man himself, a kindly, simple creature, who loved his daughter and was proud of the admiration she had kindled in the stranger’s breast. He could speak very little English, so their intercourse consisted chiefly of bowings and smiles. The brothers were, unfortunately, more fluent, as a part of their business was to take visitors fishing and sailing, and they were not slow to let Tom hear their disapproval of his courtship.

“Our sister never marry a Guernseyman or an Englishman,” said Philip.

“Oh, my gar! she do not,” said Eugene.

But she did.

Old Helier was ruler of his household, and when he saw that not only did the stranger love Kitty, but that Kitty loved the stranger, he refused to let the island prejudices against England and Guernsey stand in her light. Besides, it was not true, he told his sons, that the stranger was vagabond. His parents lived in a comfortable house near the big town of Sussex, and had written the bride’s father a very aristocratic letter, which le ministre had read to him, and in which they told him of their intention to do well for the young couple. Then why did he go to sea in a dirty coaster and turn tomato-picker? says Eugene. Why, because there are horse-races in England, just as there are in Guernsey, and the young man lost his money at them, just as they do in Guernsey, and ran away to sea rather than face his father afterwards--which shows he had been well brought up. But his father was now ready to forgive him, and was delighted that he should be marrying a good, pretty girl like Kitty, whose photograph, taken by a lady visitor, had been sent over for him to see.

So Tom and Kitty were married, in spite of the grumblings of Eugene and Philip, and settled down in one of the outlying cottages of La Belle Hautgarde. Tom helped the old man on his farm, living once more, there in the midst of the sea, a landsman’s life; for the brothers would never let him come into their boat.

Time passed and two children were born, both boys, and both with their mother’s black eyes. Tom created ill-feeling by the names he chose for them--first Leonard, then Daniel. They were English names; no such names had ever been given to babies in Sark. There every boy was either Peter or William or John if he was not Philip or Eugene or Helier--large clumps of Peters and Williams existing bewilderingly among swarms of Hamons and Carrés. The Sheathers already had a foreign surname by the misfortune of their birth, and now their father had doubled their strangerhood at the font.

Then, after five years, Helier le Couteur died, and his farm became the property of Eugene, who had lately married a Hamon and begotten a Peter. Tom Sheather found his position untenable. In his own words, he was fed up. It was all very well to be on your guard with strangers--at home in the farms between Lewes and Newhaven foreigners were generally on trial for a year or two before being absorbed into the local life--but these Sarkies were just about the limit ... when it came to making foreigners of your own kin.... Ever since his marriage Eugene and Philip had mysteriously forgotten the English language; and as he couldn’t learn their outlandish speech, it was impossible even to have a good quarrel. They refused to take him out in the cutter, though everyone knew he was handier with a sail than anyone in this island of toy-boats--they had persisted in treating him, their sister’s husband for five years, as an outsider and interloper; and now when the old man, his only friend, was dead he confessed himself sick of it. Life wasn’t worth living in these damned islands.... He asked Kitty if she would go home with him to England, and she agreed--for she loved her stranger.

Nevertheless, she would have liked her third child to be born like the others in the little room whose windows were full of the sea; and when he came it was hard to persuade her that he had not taken his fair hair and blue eyes from the new pale country instead of from his father. She could never quite get used to the pale, clear colours of the Downs, to the white cliffs by Newhaven, and the grey, calm sea. But she said she would never go back to Sark. “I never go back now. It is not my country any more.” Perhaps this was because--or perhaps it was why--she loved the flaxen child better than either of the black-eyed children born in her father’s house.

The old Sheathers had a farm in the parish of Piddinghoe, almost in the suburbs of Newhaven. The backward growth of the port into the Ouse Valley had greatly improved the value of their land, and they were able to do well for their prodigal, whose return they welcomed. They offered to set him up on a small farm; but Tom had grown tired of farming, just as he had grown tired of the sea; he thought he would like to be an innkeeper for a change. Since his parents were anxious to provide for him, wouldn’t they put him into a nice pub? He would like the Crown, at Bullockdean, for choice. The landlord had just died.

But the price of the Crown, which was a free house with a substantial piece of land attached to it, was too high even for a farmer whose fields are being turned into streets. Another place must be found, and after a time the George Inn, the other public-house in Bullockdean, came into the market. It stood almost opposite the Crown, which was certainly a superior concern in every way. Still, the old George wasn’t so bad. It was a tied house, of course, but some people said it was none the worse for that. Tom thought it would be rather fun to see if he couldn’t bust the Crown. Also he had set his heart on establishing himself near Lewes, for he had once again begun to frequent the races, the dim first cause of his romance. Bullockdean was almost midway between Lewes and Newhaven, and Tom saw the George becoming famous as a house of call for sailors and racing men. After all, the Crown was much too high-class for him--too much like a country hotel instead of an honest pub. He liked something livelier.

So after six years beyond the sea Tom Sheather settled down as landlord of the George at Bullockdean, and had soon forgotten the islands between England and France. The mists of the Ouse Valley blotted out the cliffs of Sark. He never thought of the unfriendly island, of Rouge Terrier or Moie Fans, of the sunset red and black behind Brecqhou, or of Eugene and Philip le Couteur mending their nets and talking to each other in their throaty foreign tongue.