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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, A Loose End and Other Stories, by S.
+Elizabeth Hall
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: A Loose End and Other Stories
+       A Loose End; In a Breton Village; Twice a Child; The Road by the Sea; The Halting Step; Tabitha's Aunt
+
+
+Author: S. Elizabeth Hall
+
+Release Date: May 27, 2005  [eBook #15922]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A LOOSE END AND OTHER STORIES***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Steven Gibbs, Irma Spehar, and the Project Gutenberg
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+A LOOSE END AND OTHER STORIES
+
+by
+
+S. ELIZABETH HALL
+
+Author of _The Interloper_
+
+London:
+Simpkin, Marshall Hamilton, Kent & Co., Ltd.
+London: Truslove and Bray, Printers, West Norwood, S.E.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+   A LOOSE END
+
+   IN A BRETON VILLAGE
+
+   TWICE A CHILD
+
+   THE ROAD BY THE SEA
+
+   THE HALTING STEP
+
+   TABITHA'S AUNT
+
+
+
+
+A LOOSE END.
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+One September morning, many years ago, when the Channel Islands seemed
+further off than they do now, and for some of them communication with
+the outer world hardly existed, some two hours after the sun had risen
+out of the sea, and while the grass and the low-growing bushes were
+still fresh with the morning dew, a young girl tripped lightly along the
+ridge of a headland which formed the south side of a cove on the coast
+of one of the smaller islands in the group. The ridge ascended gradually
+till it reached a point on which stood a ruined building, that was said
+to have been once a mill, and from which on the right-hand side the path
+began to descend to a narrow landing-place in the cove. The girl stood
+still for a moment when she reached the highest point, and shading her
+eyes looked out to sea. On the opposite side of the cove a huge rock,
+formed into an island by a narrow shaft of water, which in the strife of
+ages had cleared its way between it and the rocky coast, frowned dark
+and solemn in the shadow, its steep and clear-cut sides giving it a
+character of power and imperturbability that crowned it a king among
+islands. The sea beyond was glittering in the morning sun, but there was
+deep purple shadow in the cove, and under the rocks of the projecting
+headlands, which in fantastic succession on either side threw out their
+weird arms into the sea; while just around the edge of the shore, where
+the water was shallow over rocks and weed, was a girdle of lightest,
+loveliest green. Guernsey, idealized in the morning mist, lay like a
+dream on the horizon. Here and there a fishing-boat, whose sail flashed
+orange when the sun touched it, was tossing on the waves; nearer in a
+boat with furled sail was cautiously making for the narrow passage--the
+Devil's Drift, as the fishermen called it--between the island and the
+mainland, a passage only traversed with oars, the oarsmen facing
+forwards; while the two occupants of another were just taking down their
+sail preparatory to rowing direct for the landing-place.
+
+The moment the girl caught sight of this last boat she began rapidly to
+descend the 300 feet of cliff which separated her from the cove below.
+The path began in easy zig-zags, which, however, got gradually steeper,
+and the last thirty feet of the descent consisted of a sheer face of
+rock, in which were fixed two or three iron stanchions with a rope
+running from one to the other to serve as a handrail; and the climber
+must depend for other assistance on the natural irregularities of the
+rock, which provided here and there an insecure foothold. The girl,
+however, sprang down the dangerous path, without the slightest
+hesitation, though her skilful balance and dexterity of hand and foot
+showed that her security was the result of practice.
+
+By the time she had reached the narrow strip of beach, one of the few
+and difficult landing-places which the island offered, the two fishermen
+were already out of the boat, which they were mooring to an iron ring
+fastened in the rock. One of the men was young; the other might be, from
+his appearance, between sixty and seventy. A strange jerking gait, which
+was disclosed as soon as he began to move on his own feet, suggested the
+idea that his natural habitat was the sea, and that he was as little at
+ease on land as some kinds of waterfowl appear to be when walking. He
+could not hold himself upright when on one foot, so that his whole
+person turned first to one side and then to the other as he walked.
+
+"Marie!" he called to the girl as she alighted at the bottom of the
+cliff, and he shouted something briefly which the strange jargon in
+which it was spoken and the gruff, wind-roughened voice of the speaker,
+would have made unintelligible to any but a native of the islands.
+
+The girl, without replying, took the basket of fish which he handed her,
+slung it on her back by a rope passed over one shoulder, and stationed
+herself at the foot of the path, waiting for him to begin the ascent:
+the younger man, who was busy with the tackle of the boat, apparently
+intending to stay behind.
+
+When the old man had placed himself in position to begin the ascent,
+with both hands on the rope, and all his weight on one leg, the girl
+stooped down, and placing her lithe hands round his great wet
+fisherman's boot, deftly lifted the other foot and placed it in the
+right position on the first ledge of rock.
+
+"Now, Daddy, hoist away!" she cried in her clear, piping voice, using,
+like her father, the island dialect; and he dragged himself up to the
+first iron hold, wriggling his large, awkward form into strange
+contortions, till he found a secure position and could wait till his
+young assistant was beside him once more. She sprang up like a cat and
+balanced herself safely within reach of him. It was odd to see the
+implicit confidence with which he let her lift and place his feet;
+having now to support herself by the rope she had only one hand to
+spare; but the feat was accomplished each time with the same precision
+and skill, till the precipitous part of the ascent was passed and they
+had commenced the zigzag path.
+
+Then Marie took her daddy's arm under hers, and carefully steadied the
+difficult, ricketty gait, supporting the heavy figure with a practised
+skill which took the place of strength in her slight frame. Her features
+were formed after the same pattern as his, the definite profile, tense
+spreading nostril, and firm lips, being repeated with merely feminine
+modifications; and as her clear, merry eyes, freshened by the
+sea-breeze, flashed with fun at the stumblings and uncertainties of
+their course, they met the same expression of mirth in his hard-set,
+rocky face.
+
+"You've got a rare job, child!" said he, as they stood still for breath
+at a turning in the path, "a basket of fish to lug up, as well as your
+old daddy. He'd ought to have brought them as far as the turning for
+you."
+
+"I'd sooner have their company than his, any day," with a little _moue_
+in the direction of the cove. "I just wish you wouldn't take him out
+fishing with you, Daddy, that I do!"
+
+"Why not, girl?"
+
+"It's he as works for himself and cares for himself and for no one else,
+does Pierre," said the girl. "Comin' a moonin' round and pretending he's
+after courting me, when all he wants, with takin' the fish round and
+that, is to get the custom into his own hands, and tells folks, if _he_
+had the ordering of it, there'd be no fear about them getting their fish
+punctual."
+
+"Tells 'em that, does he?" said the father, his sea-blue eyes suddenly
+clouding over.
+
+"That he does; and says he'd take up the inshore fishing, if he'd the
+money to spend: and they should be supplied regular with crabs and
+shrimps and such; and then drops a word that poor André he's gettin'
+old, and what with being lame, and one thing and another, what can you
+expect, and such blathers!"
+
+"Diable! Do you know that for certain, child?" said André, stopping in
+the path, and turning round upon her with a face ablaze with anger. "I
+should like to hear him sayin' that, I should."
+
+"Now, Daddy," she cried with a sudden change of tone, "don't you be
+getting into one of your tantrums with him. Don't, there's a dear Daddy!
+I only told you, so you shouldn't be putting too much into his hands.
+But he'd be the one that would come best out of a quarrel. He's only
+looking for a chance of doin' you a mischief, it's my belief."
+
+"H'm! 'Poor André a gettin' old,' is he?" grunted her father, somewhat
+calmed. "Poor André won't be takin' _him_ out with him again just yet
+awhile--that's a certain thing. Paul Nevin would suit me a deal better
+in many ways, only I' bin keepin' Pierre on out o' charity, his pore
+father havin' bin a pal o' mine. But he's a deal stronger in the arms,
+is Paul."
+
+They reached the cottage, which stood on the first piece of level ground
+on the way to the mainland. There was no other building within sight;
+and with its bleak boulders and rocks of strangest form, in perpetual
+death-struggle with the mighty force of ocean, resounding night and day
+with the rush and tramp of the wild sea-horses, as they flung themselves
+in despair on their rocky adversary, and with the many voices of the
+winds, which scarcely ever ceased blowing in that exposed spot, while
+the weird notes of the sea-fowl floated in the air, like the cries of
+wandering spirits, the solitary headland seemed indeed as if it might be
+the world's end.
+
+The cottage consisted of one room, and a lean-to. Nearly half the room
+was taken up with a big bed, and on the other side were the fire-place
+and cooking utensils. Opposite the door was a box-sofa, on which Marie
+had slept since she was a child, and which with a small table, two
+chairs and a stool, completed the furniture of the room; the only light
+was that admitted by the doorway, the door nearly always standing open;
+the lean-to was little more than a dog-kennel, being formed in fact out
+of a great heap of stones and rubbish, which had been piled up as a
+protection to the cottage on the windward side; and three dogs and two
+hens were enjoying themselves in front of the fire.
+
+It was here that Marie had lived, ever since she could remember, in
+close and contented companionship with her father: whom indeed,
+especially since he had the fever which crippled him three years before,
+she had fed, clothed, nursed and guarded with a care almost more
+motherly than filial.
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+Marie was leaning over the low wall of a cottage garden in the
+'village,' as a clump of small houses at the meeting of four cross-roads
+was called, and waiting for the kail which she had come to buy for the
+evening's soup from Mrs. Nevin, who cultivated a little plot of ground
+with fruit and vegetables. The back-door of the cottage, which opened on
+the garden, was ajar, and she could hear some one enter from the front
+with a heavy tread, and call out in a big, jovial voice, "Hullo, Mother,
+we're in luck to-day! You'd never guess who's goin' to take me on. Lame
+André, he's goin' to give Pierre the sack, and says he'll have me for a
+time or two to try. Says I'm strong in the shoulders, and he guesses I
+can do him more good than Pierre. I should think I easy could too, a
+pinch-faced whipper-snapper like that!"
+
+"And high time it is too that André had his eyes opened," rejoined Mrs.
+Nevin; "often it is I've told Marie, as there she stands, that her
+father don't ought to trust the fish-sellin' too much to that Pierre: a
+lad as could rob his own grandmother the moment the life was out o' her
+body."
+
+"Well, Mother, you've often told me about that five franc piece, but
+nobody can't say that she hadn't given it him before she died, as he
+said--"
+
+"Given it him, I should think so, when she never would have aught to say
+to him for all his wheedling ways, and his brother Jacques was her
+favourite; and poor old lady if she'd a known that Pierre was goin' to
+be alone with her, when she went off suddint in a fit, I guess she'd a
+locked up her purse first, I do."
+
+"Well, I must say he turned a queer colour when he heard André say he
+didn't want him no more: and you should have seen the look he gave him,
+sort of squintin' out of his eyes at him, when he went away. He ain't a
+man I would like to meet unawares in a dark lane, if I'd a quarrel with
+him."
+
+"Hullo, where's Marie?" cried Mrs. Nevin, coming out of the door with
+the kail ready washed in her hand. "She never took offence at what we
+was sayin', think you? Folks did say, to be sure, that she and Pierre
+was sweet on one another some time since. Well, she's gone, any way,"
+and the good woman stood for a few minutes in some dismay, shading her
+eyes as she looked down the road.
+
+Marie's slight, girlish figure vanished quickly round the turning in the
+lane, and Mrs. Nevin could not see her pass swiftly by her own cottage,
+and up the ridge to the old mill. When she reached the point at which
+the path began to descend to the cove, she paused and looked down. The
+keen glance and alert figure, poised on guard, suggested the idea of a
+mother bird watching her nest from afar. The tide had gone out
+sufficiently for the boats to be drawn up on the eight or ten feet of
+the shelving shore, which was thus laid bare, and the glowing light of
+the sunset touched in slanting rays the head and hands of an old man
+seated on a rock and bending over some fishing tackle, which he seemed
+to be repairing.
+
+Round the extreme point of the headland, which in a succession of
+uncouth shapes dropped its rocky outline into the shadowy purple sea,
+there was visible, hastily clambering across pathless boulders, another
+man, of a young and lithe figure, and with something in the eager,
+forward thrust of the head, crouching gait, and swift, deft footing that
+resembled an animal of the cat species when about to leap on its prey.
+He was evidently making for the cove, but would have to take the rope
+path in order to reach it, as there was no way of approaching it on that
+side except over the sheer face of rock. Marie was further from the
+rope than he was, but her path was easier. The moment her eye caught
+sight of the crouching, creeping figure, she sped like a hare down the
+path, till she reached a point at which she was on a level with the man,
+at a distance of about a hundred feet. There she stood, uncertain a
+moment, then turned to meet him. He seemed too intent on his object in
+the cove to notice her advance, till she was within speaking distance,
+when she suddenly called to him "Pierre!"
+
+Her clear, defiant tone put the meaning of a whole discourse into the
+word. The man turned sharply round with an expression of vindictive
+malice in his fox-like face.
+
+"Well, what do you want?"
+
+"What are you doing here, please?"
+
+"What's that to you, I should like to know?"
+
+"Come nearer, then I can hear what you say."
+
+"I sha'n't come no nearer than I choose."
+
+"Don't be afraid. I ain't a-goin' to hurt you!"
+
+The taunt seemed to have effect, for he leaped hurriedly along over the
+rocky path, with an angry, threatening air that would have frightened
+some girls. Marie stood like the rock beneath her.
+
+"Now, Miss, I'll teach you to come interfering with business that's none
+o' yourn. What, you thought you'd come after me, did yer? because you
+was tired o' waitin' for me to come after you again, I suppose."
+
+"What is that you're carryin' in your belt?" she demanded calmly. A
+handle was seen sticking up under his fisherman's blouse. "You believe
+its safer to climb the rocks with a butcher's knife in your pocket, do
+you? You think in case of an accident it would make you fall a bit
+softer, hey?"
+
+"It don't matter to you what I've got in my pocket," he rejoined, but
+his tone was uncertain. "I brought it to cut the tackle--we've got a job
+of mending to do."
+
+"I don't know whether you think me an idiot," she replied; "but if you
+want me to believe your stories you'd better invent 'em more reasonable.
+Now, Pierre, this is what you've got to do before you leave this spot.
+You've got to promise me solemnly not to go near Daddy, nor threaten him
+as you once threatened me on a day you may remember, nor try to
+intimidate him into takin' you back. Neither down in the cove, nor
+anything else: neither now, nor at any other time."
+
+Her girlish figure as she stood with one arm clasping the rock beside
+her, looked a slight enough obstacle in the path.
+
+"Intimidate him! A parcel o' rubbish; who's goin' to intimidate him as
+you call it. Get out o' the way, and don't go meddling in men's concerns
+that you know nothing about."
+
+He seized her wrist roughly, and with her precarious footing the
+position was dangerous enough: but she clung with her other arm like a
+limpit to the rock. He attempted to dislodge her, when she suddenly
+turned and fled back on her own accord. He hastened after her, and it
+was not till he had gone some yards that, putting his hand to his belt,
+he found that the knife had gone.
+
+"The jade," he muttered, "she did it on purpose," and even with his
+hatred and malice was mingled a gleam of admiration at the cleverness
+that had outwitted him. He hurried on towards the cliff path, but the
+sunset light was already fading into dusk, and he had to choose his
+footing more carefully. When he reached the point where the rope began,
+Marie had already gone down and was leaning on the rock beside her
+father. Had he been near he might have noticed a strange expression in
+her eyes, as she furtively watched the precipitous descent. The purple
+shadows now filled both sky and sea, and the island opposite reared its
+grand outline solemnly in the twilight depths, as though sitting in
+eternal judgment on the transient ways of men. The evening star shone
+softly above the sea. Suddenly a crash, followed by one sharp cry, was
+heard; then all was still.
+
+"Good God! That's some one fallen down the path--why don't you go and
+see, child?" but Marie seemed as if she could not stir. Old André slowly
+dragged himself on to his feet, and took her arm, and they went
+together. At the foot of the path they found the body of Pierre, dead,
+his head having struck against a rock.
+
+"He must have missed his footing in the dark," said André, when they had
+rowed round to the fishing village to carry the news, and the solitary
+constable had bustled forth, and was endeavouring to collect information
+about the accident from the only two witnesses, of whom the girl seemed
+to have lost the power of speech.
+
+"He must have missed his footing in the dark; and then the rope broke
+with his weight and the clutch he give it. It lies there all loose on
+the ground."
+
+"It shouldn't have broken," said the constable. "But I always did say
+we'd ought to have an iron chain down there."
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+Fifty years had passed, with all their seasons' changes, and the
+changing life of nature both by land and sea, and had made as little
+impression on the island as the ceaseless dashing of the waves against
+its coast. The cliffs, the caves and the sea-beaten boulders were the
+same; the colours of the bracken on the September hills, and of the sea
+anemones in their green, pellucid pools, were the same, and the
+fishermen's path down to the cove was the same. No iron chain had been
+put there, but the rope had never broken again.
+
+A violent south-west gale was blowing, driving scud and sea-foam before
+it, while ever new armies of rain-clouds advanced threateningly across
+the shadowy waters--mighty, moving mists, whose grey-winged squadrons,
+swift and irresistible, enveloped and almost blotted from sight the
+little rock-bound island, against which the forces of nature seemed to
+be for ever spending themselves in vain. From time to time through a gap
+in the shifting cloud-ranks there shone a sudden dazzling gleam of
+sunlight on the white crests of the sea-horses far away.
+
+The good French pastor, who struggled to discharge the offices of
+religion in that impoverished and for the most part socially abandoned
+spot, had just allowed himself to be persuaded by his wife that it was
+unnecessary to visit his sick parishioner at the other end of the island
+that afternoon, when a loud rat-tat was heard in the midst of a shriek
+of wind, through a grudged inch of open door-way. The hurricane burst
+into the house while a dripping, breathless girl panted forth her
+message, that "old Marie" had been suddenly taken bad, and was dying,
+and wanted but one thing in the world, to see the Vicar.
+
+"I wonder what it is she has got to say," said the Vicar, as his wife
+buttoned his mackintosh up to his throat. "I always did think there was
+something strange about old Marie."
+
+A mile of bitter, breathless battling with the storm, then a close
+cottage-room, with rain-flooded floor, the one small window carefully
+darkened, and on a pillow in the furthest corner, shaded by heavy
+bed-curtains, a wrinkled old woman's face, pinched and colourless, on
+which the hand of Death lay visibly.
+
+But in the eagerness with which she signed to the pastor to come close,
+and in the keen glance she cast round the room to see that no one else
+was near, the vigour of life still asserted itself.
+
+"I've somewhat to tell you, Father," she began in a rapid undertone, in
+the island dialect. "I can't carry it to the grave with me, tho' I've
+borne it in my conscience all my life. When I was a young lass it
+happened, when things was different, and the men were rougher than now,
+and strange deeds might be done from time to time, and never come under
+the eye o' the law. And you must judge me, Father, by the way things was
+then, for that was what I had to think of when it all happened.
+
+"There was a young man that used to come a' courting me when I was a
+lass o' nineteen, and he had a black heart for all he spoke so fair; but
+I didn't see it at the first, and he was that cliver and insinuatin',
+and had such a way o' talkin', and made so much o' me, I couldn't but
+listen to him for a while. And he used to go out fishin' wi' my father,
+and Daddy, he was lame, so Pierre used to take the fish round and do
+jobs with the boats for him, and this and that, so as Daddy thought a
+rare lot o' him; and when he seed we was thinkin' o' each other, he sort
+o' thought he'd leave the business to him and me, and we'd be able to
+keep him when he got too old to go out any more. And all was goin'
+right, when one day Pierre says to me, would I go out in the boat and
+row with him to the village, as he'd got a creel of crabs to take round,
+so I got in and we rowed: and we went through the Devil's Drift, and he
+says to me sudden like, 'When we're man and wife, Marie, what'll your
+father do to keep hisself?' 'Keep hisself,' I said, 'why ain't we agoin'
+to keep him?' And then he began such a palaver about a man bein' bound
+to keep his wife but not his father-in-law, and it not bein' fit for
+three grown people to live in one room, as if my father and mother and
+his father afore him and all his brothers and sisters hadn't lived in
+this very room that now I lie a-dyin' in; and I said 'well, as I see it,
+if you take Daddy's custom off of him, you're bound to keep Daddy.' And
+he said that wasn't his way o' lookin' at it, and I went into a sudden
+anger, and declared I wouldn't have nought to do with a man that could
+treat my Daddy so, and he was just turning the boat round to go into the
+Drift, and there came such an evil look in his eyes so as it seemed to
+go through my bones like a knife, and he said 'You shall repent this one
+day--you and your daddy too,' and I said not another word and he began
+to row forwards through the Devil's Drift. And somehow bein' there alone
+with him in that fearsome place, when a foot's error one side or the
+other may mean instant death, as he sat facin' me I seemed to see the
+black heart of him, as I'd never seen it before, and there was summat
+came over me and made me feel my life was in his hands, in the hands of
+my enemy.
+
+"Well, I said no more to him, not one word good or bad, the rest of that
+evenin's row, and I never went out with him no more. But now, Father,
+this is what I want to say--for my breath is a goin' from me every
+minute--my Daddy, he was like my child to me, me that have never had a
+child of my own. I had watched him and cared for him as if I was his
+mother, 'stead of his bein' my father, and a hurt to him was like a hurt
+to me: and when that man talked o' leavin' him to fend for himself in
+his old age, the thought seemed as if it would break my heart: and now
+I knew he had an enemy, and a pitiless enemy: and I tried to stop him
+goin' out alone with Pierre, and I wanted him to get rid o' him out of
+the fishing business altogether, and father he took it up so, when I
+told him Pierre said he was gettin' too old to manage for hisself, that
+he up and dismissed him that very day: and then I heard Lisette Nevin
+and Paul talkin' and savin' how ill Pierre had taken it, and I seemed to
+see his face with the evil look on it; and something seemed to say in my
+heart that Daddy was in danger, and I couldn't stop a moment; I went
+flying to the cove where I knew he'd gone by hisself, and there from the
+top of the path I saw the other one creeping, closer and closer, like a
+cruel beast of prey as he was: and I went down and I met him, and he'd a
+knife in his belt, and of one thing I was certain, he might have been
+only goin' to frighten Daddy, but he meant him no good."
+
+She lowered her voice, and spoke in a hoarse whisper.
+
+"Father, do you understand? Here was a man without ruth or pity, and
+with a sore grudge in his black heart. Was I to trust my Daddy to his
+hands, and him old and lame?" She paused another moment, then drew the
+Vicar close to her and whispered in his ear, "I cut the rope. I knew he
+was followin' me. I let myself halfway down, then clung to the iron hold
+and cut the rope, with the knife I'd taken from him. It was at the risk
+of my life I did it. And he followed me, and he fell and was killed.
+Father, will God punish me for it? It has blighted my life. I have
+never been like other women. I never was wed, for how could I tend
+little children with blood on my hands? And the children shrank from me,
+or I thought they did. But it was for Daddy's sake. He had a happy old
+age, and he gave me his blessing when he died. Father"--her voice became
+almost inaudible--"when I stand before God's throne--will God
+remember--it was for Daddy's sake?"
+
+The failing eye was fixed on the pastor's face, as if it would search
+his soul for the truth. The fellow-being, on whom she laid so great a
+burden, for one moment, quailed: then spoke assuring words of the mercy
+of that God to whom all hearts are open: but already the ebbing
+strength, too severely strained in the effort of disclosure, was passing
+away, and the words of comfort were spoken to ears that were closed in
+death.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Under the South wall of the island burying-ground is a nameless grave:
+where in the summer days fragments of toys and nose-gays are often to be
+seen scattered about; for the sunny corner is a favourite play-place,
+and the voices of children sound there; and they trample with their
+little feet the grass above Marie's grave, and strew wild flowers on it.
+
+
+
+
+IN A BRETON VILLAGE.
+
+PART I.
+
+
+In a wild and little-known part of the coast of Brittany, where, in
+place of sandy beach or cliff, huge granite boulders lie strewn along
+the shore, like the ruins of some Titan city, and assuming, here the
+features of some uncouth monster, there the outline of some gigantic
+fortress, present an aspect of mingled farce and solemnity, and give the
+whole region the air of some connection with the under-world,--on this
+coast, and low down among the boulders out to sea, stands a little
+fishing village.
+
+The granite cottages with their thatched roofs--bits of warm colour
+among the bare rocks--lie on a tongue of land between the two inlets of
+the sea, which, when the tides run high, nearly cut them off from the
+mainland. Opposite the village on the other side of the little inland
+sea, is a second cluster of piled-up rocks thrust forth, like the fist
+of a giant, to defy the onslaught of Neptune, and on a plateau near the
+summit, is the skeleton of a house, built for a summer residence by a
+Russian Prince, who had a fancy for solitude and sea air, but abandoned
+for some reason before the interior was completed. Solitary and
+lifeless, summer and winter, it looks silently down like a wall-eyed
+ghost over the waste of rocks and sea.
+
+Below the house and close down by the seashore, is a low, thatched
+cottage, built against the rock, which forms its back wall, and on to
+which the rough granite blocks of which the cottage is constructed are
+rudely cemented with earth and clay; the floor also consists of the
+living rock, not levelled, but just as the foot of the wanderer had
+trodden it under the winds of heaven for ages before the cottage was
+built. In this primitive dwelling--which was not, however, more rude
+than many of the fishermen's cottages along the coast--there lived, a
+few years since, three persons: old Aimée Kaudren, aged seventy, who
+with her snow-white cap and sabots, and her keen clear-cut face, might
+have been seen any day in or near the cottage, cutting the gorse-bushes
+that grew about the rocks for firing, leading the cow home from her
+scanty bit of grazing, kneeling on the stone edge of the pond by the
+well, to wash the clothes, or within doors cooking the soup in the huge
+cauldron that stood on the granite hearth. A sight indeed it was to see
+the aged dame bending over the tripod, with the dried gorse blazing
+beneath it, while its glow illumined the dark, cavernous chimney above,
+was flashed back from the polished doors of the great oak chest, with
+its burnished brass handles, and from the spotless copper saucepans
+hanging on the walls; and brightened the red curtains of the cosy
+box-bedstead in the corner by the fire.
+
+The second inhabitant of the cottage was Aimée's son, Jean, the
+fisherman, with his blue blouse, and his swarthy, rough-hewn face,
+beaten by wind and weather into an odd sort of resemblance to the rocks
+among which he passed his life--the hardy and primitive life to which he
+had been born, and to which all his ideas were limited, a life of
+continual struggle with the elements for the satisfaction of primary
+needs, and which was directed by the movements of nature, by the tides,
+the winds, and the rising and setting of the sun and the moon.
+
+And thirdly there was Jean's nephew, Antoine.
+
+The day before Antoine was born, his father had been drowned in a storm
+which had wrecked many of the fishing-boats along the coast, and his
+mother, from the shock of the news, gave premature birth to her babe,
+and died a few hours after. His grandmother had brought up the child,
+and his silent, rough-handed uncle had adopted him, and worked for him,
+as if he were his own. So the little Antoine, with his blond head, and
+his little bare feet, grew up in the rock-hewn cottage, like a bright
+gorse-flower among the boulders, and spent an untaught childhood,
+pattering about the granite floor, or clambering over the rough rocks,
+and dabbling in the salt water, where he would watch the beautiful green
+anemones, that had so many fingers but no hands, and which he never
+touched, because, if he did, they spoilt themselves directly, packing
+their fingers up very quickly, so that they went into nowhere: or the
+prawns, that he always thought were the spirits of the other fish, for
+they looked as if they were made of nothing, and they lay so still under
+a stone, as if they were not there, and then darted so quickly across
+the pool that you could not see them go.
+
+Antoine knew a great deal about the spirits: how there were evil ones,
+such as that which dwelt in the great mushroom stone out yonder to sea,
+which was very powerful and wicked, so that the stone, being in fear,
+always trembled, yet could not fall, because the evil spirit would not
+let it: and then there were others which haunted the little valley
+beyond Esquinel Point, where you must not go after dark, for the spirits
+took the form of Little Men, who had the power to send astray the wits
+of any that met them. Antoine feared those spirits more than any of the
+others: they were so cunning and wanted to do you harm on purpose: and
+when he went with his grandmother to pray in the little chapel on the
+shore, he used to trot away from her side, as she knelt on her chair
+with clasped hands and devoutly murmuring lips; and he would wander over
+the rugged stone floor, till he found the niche in the wall where St.
+Nicholas stood, wearing a blue cloak with a pink border, and having such
+lovely pink cheeks: the kind St. Nicholas that took care of little
+children, and that had three little boys without any clothes on always
+with him, in the kind of little boat he stood in. And Antoine would
+pray a childish prayer to St. Nicholas to protect him from the evil
+spirits of the valley.
+
+Antoine grew up very tall and strong. He accompanied Jean on his fishing
+expeditions from the time he was twelve years old, and his uncle used to
+say that he was of more use than many a grown man. He knew every rock
+and even-current along that dangerous coast: he could trim the boat to
+the wind through narrow channels in weather in which Jean would hardly
+venture to do it himself: and the way in which the fish took his bait
+made Jean sometimes cross himself, as he counted over the shining
+boat-load of bream and cod, and mutter in his guttural Breton speech,
+"'Tis the blessed St. Yvon aids him." Everybody liked him in the
+village, and he took a kind of lead among the other lads, but, whether
+it was the grave gaze of his blue eyes, or his earnest, outright speech,
+or some other quality about him less easy to define, they all had the
+same kind of feeling in regard to him that his uncle had. He was
+different from themselves. There were indeed some among them in whom
+this acknowledged superiority inspired envy and ill-will, and one in
+particular, a lad that went lame with a club foot, but who had a
+beautiful countenance, with dark, glowing eyes and finely-cut features,
+never lost an opportunity of saying an ill word of, or doing an ill turn
+to Antoine. Geoffroi Le Cocq seemed never far off, wherever Antoine
+might be. He would lounge in the doorway of the café, watching for him,
+and sing a mocking song as he passed down the road. He would mimic his
+sayings among the other lads, who were not, however, very ready to join
+in deriding him. And once he contrived to poison the Kaudrens' bait,
+just when weather and season were at their best for fishing, so that
+Antoine brought not a single fish home. Jean, with the quick-blazing
+anger of his race, declared that if he could find the man who had done
+it, he would "break his skull." But Antoine, though he knew well enough
+who had done it, held his peace. Geoffroi was quicker of speech than
+Antoine, and on the Sunday, when the whole village trooped out of the
+little chapel after mass, and streamed down the winding village road,
+the women in their white coiffes and black shawls, and the men in their
+round Breton hats with buckles and streaming ribbons, while knots began
+to collect about the doors of the village cafés, and laughter, gossip
+and the sound of the fiddle arose on the sunny air, Geoffroi would
+gather a circle round him to hear his quips and odd stories, and to join
+in the fun that he would mercilessly make of others less quick than
+himself at repartee. It was extraordinary on these occasions how
+Geoffroi, like a spider in his web on the watch for a fly, would
+contrive to draw Antoine into his circle, sometimes as though it were
+merely to show off his cleverness before him, at other times adroitly
+lighting on some quaint habit or saying of Antoine's, holding it up to
+ridicule, now in one light, now in another, with a versatility that
+would have made his fortune as a comedian, and returning to the charge
+again and again, in the hope, as it seemed, of provoking Antoine's
+seldom-stirred anger: but in this entirely failing, for Antoine would
+generally join heartily in the laugh himself. Only once did a convulsion
+of anger seize him, and he strode forward in the throng and gave
+Geoffroi the lie to his face, when the latter had said that Marie
+Pierrés kissed him in the Valley of Dwarfs, the evening before. He knew
+that Geoffroi only said it to spite him; for Marie--the daughter of
+Jean's partner--was his fiancée, and was as true as gold: but the image
+the words called up convulsed his brain; a blind impulse sprang up
+within him to strike and crush that beautiful face of Geoffroi's. He
+clenched his fist and dared him to repeat the words. Geoffroi would only
+reply, in his venomous way, "Come to-night to the Valley and see if I
+lie." And the same instant the keen, strident voice was silenced by one
+straight blow from Antoine's fist.
+
+In the confused clamour of harsh Breton speech that arose, as neighbours
+rushed to separate the two and friends took one side or the other,
+Antoine strode away with a brain on fire and a mind intent on one
+object--to prove the lie at once.
+
+To go to the Valley of Dwarfs in order to spy on Marie and Geoffroi was
+impossible to him. But he marched straight off to Marie's cottage. He
+knew she would deny the charge, and her word was as good as the Blessed
+Gospel: but he longed to hear the denial from her lips. He pictured her
+as she would look when she spoke: the hurt, innocent expression of her
+candid eyes: her rosy cheeks flushing a deeper red under her demure
+snow-white cap: her child-like lips uttering earnest and indignant
+protestation. When he reached the cottage, he found the door locked; no
+one was about; he leaned his elbows on the low, stone wall in front and
+waited.
+
+Presently clattering sabots were heard coming down the road, and he
+perceived old Jeanne Le Gall trudging along, her back nearly bent double
+under a large bundle of dried sea-weed. She and her goat lived in the
+low, rubble-built hovel, that adjoined the Pierrés' cottage, and from
+her lonely, eccentric habits, and uncanny appearance, she had the
+reputation of being a sorceress. Antoine called to her to know where
+Marie was.
+
+"Gone to the widow Conan's," mumbled the old woman, her strange eyes
+gleaming under the sprays of sea-weed, "she and her father and mother,
+all of them."
+
+She deposited her load, and hobbled off again, fixing her eyes on
+Antoine as she turned away, but saying nothing more.
+
+Antoine strolled a little down the lane, seated himself on the steps of
+the cross at the corner, and waited--evening was drawing on and they
+were sure to return before dark.
+
+Presently the cluck, cluck of the sabots was heard again, and old Jeanne
+slowly approached him from behind. She said something in her toothless,
+mumbling way, and held out a crumpled bit of paper in her shaking hand.
+He opened it and read, scrawled as if in haste, in ill-spelt Breton:
+
+"I go to a baptism at St. Jean-du-Pied, and cannot return before
+sun-down. Meet me at the cross on the hill-side at six o'clock, as I
+fear to pass through the valley alone in the dark. Marie."
+
+As he studied the writing, the old woman's mumblings became more
+articulate. She was saying, "'Twas the child Conan should have brought
+it an hour ago. But he is ever good-for-nothing, and forgot it."
+
+Antoine looked at the sun, which was already westering, and perceived
+that he must set out to meet Marie in half-an-hour. He got up and walked
+slowly towards the sandy shore of the little inlet, wide and wet at low
+tide, on the other side of which lay his own home. He walked slowly, but
+he felt as if he were hurrying at a headlong pace. The thought kept
+going round and round in his brain like a little torturing wheel, which
+nothing would stop, that after all Marie _was_ going to the Dwarf's
+Valley this evening, just as Geoffroi had said. Geoffroi's words were
+still sounding in his ears, and his right hand was clenched, as he had
+clenched it when the whirlwind of anger first convulsed him.
+
+He entered his own cottage, hardly knowing what he did.
+
+Old Aimée was bending over the cauldron, cutting up cabbage for the
+soup.
+
+"Good-bye, Grandmother," he said. "I am going to the Dwarf's Valley."
+
+Aimée looked up at him out of her keen old eyes.
+
+"And why are you going there in the dark?" she said, "'Tis an evil
+meeting place after the sun has set."
+
+"Why do you say meeting place, Grandmother Whom do you think I am going
+to meet there?"
+
+"The blessed Saints protect you," she replied, "less you should meet
+Whom you would not."
+
+Antoine strode out again, without saying more. He fancied he was in the
+Valley of Dwarfs already, about to meet Marie. He saw the weird, gnarled
+trunks of trees on either hand, that grew among--sometimes writhed
+around--the huge fantastic boulders: the dark cave-like recesses, formed
+strangely between and under them where the dwarfs lay hidden to emerge
+at dusk: the sides of the ravine towering up stern and gloomy on either
+hand: and high above all against the sky, the grey stone cross at which
+he was to meet Marie. He saw it all as if he were there, and the ground
+beneath him, as he tramped on, seemed unreal. Twilight was already
+falling over the rocks and the grey sea: there were no lights in the
+village, except such as shone here and there in a cottage window: the
+distant roar of the sea was heard, as it dashed over a long line of
+rocks two or three miles out, but there was hardly any other sound: the
+place indeed seemed God-abandoned, like some long-forgotten strand of a
+dead world, with the skeleton house on the rock above for its forsaken
+citadel.
+
+It was already dark in the ravine when Antoine arrived there, and anyone
+not knowing how instinctive is the feeling for the ways of his mother
+earth in a son of the soil, would have thought his straightforward
+stride, in such a chaos of rocks and pitfalls, reckless, till they
+observed with what certainty each step was taken where alone it was
+possible and safe. He was making his way through the valley to the cross
+above, where the light still lingered, and it yet wanted some fifteen
+minutes to the time of _rendez-vous_, when he suddenly stopped in a
+listening attitude; he had reached a part of the valley to which
+superstition had attached the most dangerous character. A particular
+rock called "The Black Stone," which towered over him on the left, and
+slightly bending towards the centre of the valley, seemed like some
+threatening monster about to swoop upon the traveller, was especially
+regarded as the haunt of evil spirits. It was in this direction that he
+now heard a slight sound, which his practised ear discerned at once as
+not being one of the sounds of nature. Immediately afterwards the shadow
+of the rock beside him seemed to move and enlarge, and out of it there
+sprang the figure of a man, and stood straight in Antoine's path.
+Antoine's whole frame became rigid, like that of a beast of prey on the
+point of springing, even before the shadow revealed its limping foot.
+
+Geoffroi was the first to speak.
+
+"You gave me the lie this afternoon. Take it back now and see what you
+think of the taste of it. Would you like to see Marie?"
+
+"What are you saying? What is it to you when I see Marie?"
+
+"It is this--that I have arranged a nice little meeting for you. Hein?
+Are you not obliged to me?"
+
+Antoine's voice sounded hollow and muffled as he replied, "Stand out of
+the path. You have nought to do between her and me."
+
+"You think so? Then you shall learn what I have to do. You think you are
+going to meet her at the cross at six o'clock. But you will not, you
+will meet her sooner than that. It was I that sent you that message, and
+I have advanced the time by half an hour. Am I not kind?"
+
+Antoine's hand was on his collar like an iron vice.
+
+"What have you done with her? Where is she?"
+
+Geoffroi writhed himself free with movements lithe like those of a
+panther. "Will you take back the lie," he said, "or will you see the
+proof with your own eyes?"
+
+He was turning with a mocking sign to Antoine to follow, when from the
+left of the rock beside which they stood, there darted forward the
+white-coiffed figure of a girl, who with extended arms and agonized
+face, rushed up to Geoffroi, crying, "Take me away--I have seen Them!
+Take me away."
+
+She clung to Geoffroi's arm, and screamed when Antoine would have
+touched her. Antoine stood for a moment as if turned to stone. Marie
+seemed half fainting and clung hysterically to Geoffroi, apparently
+hardly conscious of what she was doing. Geoffroi took her in his arms
+and kissed her. The act was so loathsome in its deliberate effrontery,
+that Antoine felt as if he was merely crushing a serpent when he struck
+him to the ground and tore Marie from his hold. But he was dealing with
+something which he did not understand for Marie, finding herself in his
+grasp, opened her eyes on his face with a look of speechless terror, and
+breaking from him, fled down the ravine, springing from rock to rock
+with the security of recklessness.
+
+Antoine followed her, stumbling through the darkness, but his speed was
+no match for the madness of fear, and his steps were still to be heard
+crashing through the furze bushes and loose stones, when the white
+coiffe had flitted, like some bird of night, round the projecting
+boulders of the sea-coast, and disappeared.
+
+
+PART II.
+
+Old Jeanne Le Gall was leaning on her stick in her solitary way beside
+the arched wellhead at the top of the lane, when she heard flying steps
+along the pathway of rock that bordered the sea, and peered through the
+twilight with her cunning old eyes, alert for something uncanny, or
+perchance out of which she could make some profit for herself. Already
+that day, she had earned a sou by carrying a bit of a letter, and
+telling one or two little lies. As the steps came nearer, a kind of
+moaning and sobbing was heard, and the old woman, muttering to
+herself--"It is the voice of Marie. What has the devil's imp been doing
+to her?"--hobbled as fast as she could to the turning that led to the
+sea, and just as the flying figure appeared, put out her skinny hand to
+arrest it. There was a sudden scream, a fall, and Marie lay in the road,
+like one dead.
+
+The cry brought to their doors, one after another, the occupants of the
+neighbouring cottages; and as the dark-shawled, free-stepping Breton
+women gathered round, for the clattering of sabots and of tongues, it
+might have been a group of black sea-fowl clamouring over some
+'trouvaille' of the sea, thrown up among their rocks.
+
+They raised her painfully, with kind but ungentle hands, wept and called
+on the saints, availing little in any way, till the heavy tramp of a
+fisherman's nailed boots was heard on the rocks, and Antoine thrust the
+throng aside, and bending over, took her up in his arms, as a mother
+might her child, and without a word bore her along the road towards her
+home.
+
+But he had scarcely placed her on the settle beside the bed, when her
+eyes opened, and as they rested on him, again the look of terror came
+into them: she flung herself away from him with a scream, and sobbing
+and uttering strange sounds of fear and aversion, was hardly to be held
+by the other women.
+
+"She has lost her wits!" they cried. "Our Blessed Lady help her!"
+
+White with fear themselves, and half believing it to be some
+supernatural visitation, they clung round her, supporting her till the
+fit had passed, and she lay back on the bed exhausted and half
+unconscious: her fresh, young lips drawn with an unnatural expression of
+suffering, and her frank, blue eyes heavy and lifeless. Antoine was
+turned out of the cottage, lest the sight of him should excite her
+again, and he marched away across the low rocks to his own home on the
+solitary foreland. As he passed the chapel on the shore, he saw through
+the open door, a single taper burning before the shrine of St. Nicholas,
+and just serving to show the gloom and emptiness of the place; and it
+seemed to him as though the Saints had deserted it.
+
+He never saw Marie again. Once during her illness, the kind, clever old
+Aimée, wrung by the sight of her boy's haggard face, as he went to and
+fro about the boats, without food or sleep, took her way to the Pierrés'
+cottage, with the present of a fine fresh "dorade" for the invalid; and
+when she had stood for a minute by the bedside leaning on her stick, and
+looking on the face of the half-unconscious girl, she began with her
+natty old hand to pat Marie's shoulder, and with coaxing words to get
+her to say that she would see Antoine. But at the first sound of the
+name, the limp figure started up from the pillows, and from the
+innocent, childish lips came a stream of strange, eager speech, as she
+poured forth her conviction, like a cherished secret, that Antoine was
+possessed of the Evil One: for Jeanne, the sorceress, had told her so:
+that he was one of _Them_, and by night in the valley you could see him
+in his own shape. Then she grew more wild, crying out that Antoine
+would kill her: that he had bewitched her, and she must die.
+
+Anyone unaware of the hold which superstition has over the Breton mind,
+would perhaps hardly believe that the women stood round awe-struck at
+this revelation, seeing nothing improbable in it. In spite of her
+dangerous state of excitement, they eagerly pressed her with questions
+as to what she had seen, and what Jeanne had said, but she had become
+too incoherent to satisfy them, and only flung herself wildly about,
+crying, "Let me go--he will kill me--let me go:" till she suddenly sank
+down motionless on the pillow, was silent for a few moments, and then
+began to murmur over and over in an awe-struck, eager whisper, "Go to
+the Black Stone this night, and you shall see. Go to the Black Stone
+this night, and you shall see."
+
+While the old cronies shook their heads, muttering that it was true,
+there had always been something uncanny about Antoine: and see the way
+he would draw the fish into his net, against their own better sense: it
+was plain there was something in Antoine they dared not resist:--old
+Aimée hobbled out with her stick and sabots, without saying a word, went
+round to the open door of the next cottage, and peered round the rough
+wooden partition that screened off the inner half of the room. On a
+settle beside the hearth, where a cauldron was boiling, sat Jeanne, the
+sorceress, with her absorbed, concentrated air, as though her thoughts
+were fixed on something which she could communicate to no one: she
+turned her strange, bright eyes on the figure in the entrance, without
+change of expression, and waited for Aimée to speak.
+
+Aimée's face was like a cut diamond, so keen and bright was it, as
+leaning on her stick, which she struck on the floor from time to time
+with the emphasis of her speech, she said in her shrill Breton tones:--
+
+"Mademoiselle Jeanne, I have come to ask of you what evil lie it is that
+you have told to the child Marie, that lies on her death-bed yonder.
+Come. You have been bribed by Geoffroi, that I know, and a son will
+purchase snuff, and for that you will sell your soul. Good--It is for
+you to do what you will with your own affairs: but when you cause an
+injury to my belle-fille, so that she becomes like a mad woman and dies,
+I come to ask you for an account of what you have done, Mademoiselle:
+that you may undo what you have done, while there is yet time,
+Mademoiselle."
+
+Jeanne's thin, stern lips trembled, almost as if in fear, as she
+listened to Aimée. She turned her shaking head slowly towards her, then
+fixed her deep eyes on hers, and said:
+
+"I have warned your belle-fille, that she may be saved. It was my love
+for her. Let her have nought to do with Them that dwell in the rocks and
+the trunks of the great trees."
+
+Old Aimée shook her stick on the floor with rage.
+
+"Impious and wicked woman! Confess, I say, or I will tell the good curé,
+who knows your tricks, and he will not give you absolution; and then
+the Evil Ones will have their way with you yourself, for what shall
+save you from them?"
+
+The thin lips in the strange face trembled more. "The old sorceress
+dwells alone, abandoned of all," she murmured. "If she take not a sou
+when one or another will give it her, how shall she contrive to live?"
+
+"What is it," demanded Aimée, with increasing shrillness, "that you have
+told the child Marie about my grandson?"
+
+A look of cunning suddenly drove away the expression of conscious guilt
+in Jeanne's face. She dropped her eyes on the floor, mumbled
+inarticulately a moment, and then said shiftily, "You have perhaps a few
+sous in your pocket, Madame, to show good-will to the sorceress; for
+without good-will she cannot tell you what you seek to know."
+
+Aimée's keen eyes flashed, as drawing forth two sous from her pocket,
+she said in a tone of incisive contempt, "You shall have these,
+Mademoiselle, but not till you have told me the whole truth, as you
+would to the curé at confession. Come then--say."
+
+The sorceress began with shuffling tones and glances, which grew more
+sure as she went on:
+
+"I watched for the little one returning on the afternoon of Sunday--_he_
+told me to do so. I was to give her the message that Antoine desired to
+meet with her at the entrance of the Dwarf's Valley: I had but to give
+the message: it was not my fault. I am but a poor old woman that does
+the bidding of others."
+
+"Well, well," said Aimée, impatiently, "what else did you tell her?"
+
+Jeanne looked at her interlocutor again, and a strange expression grew
+in her eyes.
+
+"It is Jeanne that knows the Evil Ones, that knows their shape and their
+speech. She knows them when they walk among men, and she knows them in
+their homes in the dark valley."
+
+"Chut, chut," cried Aimée, the more irritably that her maternal feelings
+had to overcome her natural inclination to superstition. "It is only one
+thing you have to tell--how did you frighten Marie so that she is ready
+to go out of her wits at the sight of Antoine?"
+
+"Nay, it was Geoffroi that frightened her, as they went up the ravine
+together. I had but told her not to go alone, for that They were abroad
+that night." The old woman broke into a curious chuckle. "How she
+shivered, like a chicken in the wind! H'ch, h'ch! Then _he_ took hold of
+her arm and led her away, for I had told her _he_ was a safe protector
+against the spirits, not like some that wear the face of man and go up
+and down in the village, saying that the people should not believe in
+Jeanne the sorceress, for that she tells that which is untrue--while
+they themselves have dealings such as none can know with the Evil Ones."
+
+Aimée looked at her keenly for some moments with a curious expression on
+her tightly-folded lips.
+
+"You would have me believe that Marie went into the ravine when she knew
+the spirits were about, and went on the arm of Geoffroi?"
+
+"I tell you, Grandmère, that she did so. It was Jeanne that compelled
+her. For Jeanne knows when a man is in league with Them, and she said to
+Marie, 'Thou wilt wed Antoine, but thou knowest not what he is; go to
+the Black Stone to-night, and thou shalt see.' H'ch! Jeanne knows
+nothing, does she? But Marie went, for she knew that Jeanne was wise.
+And what she saw, she saw."
+
+It was strange to see the conflict between superstition and natural
+affection in the face of Aimée. Her thoughts seemed to be rapidly
+scanning the past, and there was fear as well as anger in her look.
+Could it be that this child, flung into her arms, as it were, from the
+shipwreck, born before his time of sorrow, the very offspring of
+death,--that had always lived apart from the other lads, with strange,
+quiet ways of his own--that had astonished her by his wise sayings as a
+child--and that, growing up had brought unnatural prosperity to the
+home, as though some higher hand were upon him--could it be that there
+was something in him more than of this earth? Her hand trembled so that
+it shook the stick on which she leant: she made one or two attempts to
+speak, then dropped the two halfpence on the table, as if they burnt
+her, and went out.
+
+When Marie was a little better, they sent her away to her married
+sister's at Cherbourg, for the doctor said that the only chance of
+recovering her balance of mind, lay in removing her from everything that
+would remind her of her fright, or of Antoine. News travels slowly in
+those parts, especially among the poor and illiterate, and for months
+Antoine heard nothing of her, except for an occasional message brought
+by some chance traveller from Cherbourg, to the effect that she was
+still ill: while his own troubles at home grew and gathered as time went
+on. For since that night in the ravine everything seemed to have gone
+wrong. A superstitious fear had associated itself with the idea of
+Antoine in the minds of the other villagers. The Kaudrens' cottage was
+more and more avoided, and the fishing business was injured, for people
+chose rather to buy their fish of those of whom no evil things were
+hinted. The Pierrés themselves were infected with this feeling, and
+Marie's father would go partner with Jean no longer. Jean could not
+support a fishing smack by himself, and gave up the distant voyages,
+confining himself to the long-shore fishing, and disposing of his
+oysters, crayfish and prawns as best he could in the more remote
+villages. Meanwhile, old Aimée, getting older and more feeble, would sit
+knitting in the cottage by a cheerless hearth, and as the supply of
+potatoes, chestnuts and black bread grew scantier and scantier, would
+furtively watch Antoine, with anxious, awe-struck glances, and then
+would sometimes cross herself, and wipe a tear away unseen.
+
+It was on a wild, stormy morning of January, that a letter at length
+arrived for Antoine from Cherbourg. The news was blurted out with
+tactless plainness. 'La pauvre petite' was no more. In proportion as she
+grew calmer in mind, it appeared, Marie had grown weaker in body: and a
+cold she had contracted soon after her arrival in Cherbourg, had settled
+on her lungs, which were always delicate. For weeks she had not risen
+from her bed, but had gradually pined away. There was a message for
+Antoine. "Tell him," she had said, in one of her last intervals of
+consciousness, "that I cannot bear to think of how I acted towards him.
+Tell him I did not know what I was doing. Ask him to come--to come
+quick. For I cannot die in peace, unless he forgives me." But she had
+died before the message could be sent.
+
+Antoine read the letter, crushed it in his great, trembling hand, and
+looked round him as though searching blankly for the hostile power, that
+had thus entangled, baffled and overthrown him. That voice from the
+grave seemed to call on him to claim again the rights that had been
+snatched from him. She was his, and he would see her face once more: he
+would go to Cherbourg, and look on her dead face, that he might know it,
+for she was his.
+
+He would be in time, if he caught the night train (the funeral was the
+following day). He would have to walk to St. Jean-du-Pied, the next
+village along the coast, from which a _diligence_ started in the
+afternoon to the nearest railway station. Old Aimée did up a little
+packet of necessaries for him, and borrowed money for the journey,
+saying nothing as she watched his face, full of the inarticulate
+suffering of the untaught. Antoine scarcely said farewell, as he walked
+straight out of the cottage door towards the sea, to take the shortest
+route to St. Jean-du-Pied by the coast. The rocks were white from the
+sea-foam, as if with driven snow, and the black sea was lashed to
+madness by a gale from the North East. The bitter wind tore across the
+bleak country-side, scourging every rock, tree and living thing that
+attempted to resist it, like the desolation of God descending in
+judgment on the land. Wild, torn clouds chased each other across the
+sky, and the deep roar of the sea among the rocks could be heard far
+inland.
+
+Antoine's thoughts meanwhile were whirling tumultuously round and round
+one object--an object that had hovered fitfully before his mind for many
+weeks--pressing closer and closer on it, till at length with triumphant
+realization, they seized on it and made it the imperious necessity of
+his will.
+
+Ever since the night in the ravine, Antoine had been living in a strange
+world: he had not known himself: his hand had seemed against every
+man's, and every man's hand against his. He never went to mass, for he
+felt that the good God had abandoned him.
+
+Now he suddenly realised what it was he needed--the just punishment of
+Geoffroi. The path of life would be straight again, and God on His
+Throne in heaven, when Justice had been vindicated, and he had visited
+his crime on the evil-doer. That he must do it himself, was plain to him.
+
+He marched on, possessed with a feeling that it was Geoffroi whom he
+was going to seek, towards the projecting foreland that shut in the
+village on the east. He was drenched by the waves, as they dashed madly
+against the walls of rock, and to get round the boulders under such
+circumstances was a dangerous task even for a skilled climber: but
+Antoine seemed borne forward by a force stronger than himself, and went
+on without pause, or doubt, till in a small inlet on the other side of
+the foreland, he discerned a figure clinging to a narrow ledge of rock,
+usually out of reach of the tide, but towards which the mighty waves
+were now rolling up more and more threateningly each moment. There was
+no mistaking the lithe, cringing movements, the particular turn of the
+head looking backward over the shoulder in terror at the menacing
+waters: even if Antoine had not known beforehand that he must find
+Geoffroi on that path, and that he had come to meet him.
+
+Geoffroi's position was (for him) extremely dangerous. A bold climber
+might have extricated himself; but for a lame man to reach safety across
+the sea-scourged rocks was almost impossible. Could he hold on long
+enough and the sea rose no higher, he might be saved: but there would
+yet be an hour before the turn of the tide, and already the waves were
+racing over the ledge on which he stood. Antoine sprang over the
+intervening rocks, scrambling and wading through the water, as if not
+seeing what he did, till he set foot on the ledge, and stood face to
+face with his enemy.
+
+Geoffroi's face was white with fear. He knew his hour was come. In the
+mighty strife of the elements, within an inch of death on every side, he
+was at Antoine's mercy.
+
+"Don't kill me," he cried abjectly. "Have mercy, for the love of God."
+
+Antoine grasped the writhing creature by the shoulder. The white face of
+Marie rose up before him. Geoffroi shrieked. A huge, heaving billow
+advanced, swept round the feet of both and sank boiling in the gulf
+beneath. The next that came would leave neither of them there. Antoine
+stood with his hand on Geoffroi's shoulder, as if he would crush it.
+Somewhat higher, but within reach, was a narrow projection in the rock,
+to which there was room for one to cling, and only for one: and Geoffroi
+with his lame foot could not reach it alone.
+
+"Let me go," he shrieked. "I will confess all: but save me, save me!"
+
+Suddenly another wave of feeling surged up in the soul of Antoine. He
+seemed to see the cross on the hill side, as it stood in light that
+evening when he was to have met Marie there. He saw the good God on the
+cross again, as he used to see Him in the chapel. He had a strange, deep
+feeling that he was God, or that God was he. He seemed to be on that
+cross himself. The great, green wave towered above them twenty feet in
+air. He grasped Geoffroi by both shoulders, and flung him up to the
+ledge above with a kind of scorn. The next moment the rolling sea
+descended. Antoine clung with all his force to the rock, but he knew
+that he should never see the light again.
+
+So was he drawn out into the great deep, in whose arms his father lay:
+and the fisher-folk, when they knew it, looked for no sign of him more,
+for they said he had gone back to the sea, from whence he came. For,
+though they never knew the true story of his death, they felt that a
+spirit of a different mould from theirs had passed from among them in
+his own way.
+
+
+[Illustration:]
+
+
+
+
+TWICE A CHILD.
+
+
+Halfway up the mountain-side, overlooking a ravine, through which a
+streamlet flowed to the lake, stood a woodman's cottage. In the room on
+which the front door opened were two persons--an infant in a wooden
+cradle, in the corner between the fire-place and the window; and, seated
+on a stool in the flood of sunlight that streamed through the doorway,
+an old man. His lips were moving slightly, and his face had the look of
+one whose thoughts were far away. On the patch of floor in front of him
+lay cross-bars of sunlight, which flowed in through the casement window.
+The sky overhead was cloudless, while the murky belt on the horizon was
+not visible from the cottage door. In the windless calm no leaf seemed
+to stir in the forest around. The cottage clock in the corner ticked the
+passing moments; the wild cry of the "curry fowl" was heard now and
+again from the lake; there was no other sound in the summer afternoon,
+and the deep heart of nature seemed at rest.
+
+The old man's eyes rested on the bars of sunlight, but he saw another
+scene. On his face, in which the simplicity of childhood seemed to have
+reappeared, was a knowing, amused look, expressing infinite relish of
+some inward thought, the simple essence of mischief. Bars of sunlight,
+just like those, used to lie on the schoolroom floor when he was a
+little boy, and was sent to Dame Gartney's school to be kept out of
+harm's way, and to learn what he might. He saw himself, an urchin of
+five or six years, seated on a stool beside the Dame's great arm-chair.
+She was slowly, with dim eyes, threading a needle for the tiny maiden
+standing before her, clutching in her hot little hand the unhemmed
+duster on which she was to learn to sew. The thread approached the
+needle's eye; it was nearly in, when the arm-chair gave a very little
+shake, apparently of its own accord; the old lady missed her aim, and
+the needle and the thread were as far apart as ever, while the small imp
+sitting quiet at her side was unsuspected. Not once nor twice only was
+this little game successfully played. It used to enliven the hot, sleepy
+afternoon, while the bars of light were crawling slowly--oh! so
+slowly--across the floor. He knew school would be over when the outer
+edge of sunlight touched the corner of the box-bed against the wall,
+where the little girl that lived there and called the dame "Granny" was
+put to sleep of a night.
+
+His school experience was short, consisting, indeed, of but six bright
+summer weeks, after which it had become his business to mind the baby,
+while his mother went out to work. But the most vivid of the impressions
+of his childhood were connected with that brief school career. Distinct
+above the rest stood out the memory of one afternoon, when sitting on
+his low stool he had seen dark smudges of shadow come straying, curling,
+whirling across the squares of sunlight; when shouts had arisen in the
+yard, and just as the dame had made Effie May hold out her hand for
+dropping her thimble the third time, the back-door was burst open by
+Ebenezer, the milkman, who cried out that the Dame's cow-house was on
+fire. He could see the old lady now, with the child's shrinking fingers
+firmly gripped in hers, her horny old hand arrested in the act of
+descending on the little pink palm (which escaped scot-free in the
+confusion) while she gazed for a moment, open-mouthed, at the speaker,
+as though she had come to a word which _she_ couldn't spell, then jumped
+up with surprising quickness and hobbled across the floor without her
+stick, the point of her mob-cap nodding to every part of the room, while
+she moved the whole of herself first to one side and then to the other
+as she walked, like one of the geese waddling across the common.
+
+"Goo back and mind yerr book!" cried the old lady to the sharp-eyed
+little boy, who was peeping round her skirts. But he did not go back.
+Who could, when they saw those tongues of flame shooting up, and the
+volumes of smoke darkening the summer sky, as the wooden shed and the
+palings near it caught and smoked and crackled, and heard the cries of
+men and boys shouting for water and more water, which old Jack Foster,
+and idiot Tom, and some women, with baskets hastily deposited by the
+roadside, and even boys not much bigger than himself, were toiling to
+bring as fast as possible in pails from the brook, before the flames
+should spread to the row of cottages so perilously near? No earthly
+power could have kept the mite out of the fray. Before the old dame knew
+where he was, his little hands were clenched round the handle of a heavy
+iron pail, and he was struggling up the yard to where the men were
+tearing down the connecting fences, in a desperate endeavour to stay the
+onrush, of the flames. To and fro, to and fro, the child toiled,
+begrimed by falling blacks, scorched by the blaze, his whole mind intent
+on one thing--to stop the burning of that charred and tottering mass.
+
+It was done at last, and the cottages were saved. The rescue party
+dispersed, and the dirty, tired boy strayed slowly homeward down the
+village street. He could see himself now arriving soot-covered, and
+well-nigh speechless with fatigue, at his mother's door, could hear the
+cries and exclamations that arose at the sight of him, could feel the
+tender hands that removed the clothes from his hot little body, and
+washed him, and put him to bed. It took him several days to recover from
+the fever into which he had put himself, and it was then he had begun to
+mind the baby instead of going to school. Praise was liberally bestowed
+in the county paper on Mr. Ebenezer Rooke and his assistants, who by
+their energy and forethought had saved the village from destruction but
+no one had noticed the efforts of the tiny child, working beyond his
+strength; and, indeed, he himself had had no idea of being noticed.
+
+As he sat now on the stool in the sunny doorway, and looked up the
+mountain-valley, to which he had been brought in his declining years to
+share his married daughter's home, the detail in that tragedy of his
+childhood, which pictured itself in his mind's eye more clearly than any
+other, was the shadow of the spreading, coiling puffs of smoke, which
+had first caught his childish attention, blurring the bars of sunlight
+on the floor of the Dame's kitchen. Perhaps it was on account of the
+likeness to the pattern now made by the sun, as it shone through the
+casement between him and the baby's cradle. For the gentle, domestic old
+man was often now, as in his docile childhood, charged to "mind the
+baby," and one of the quiet pleasures of his latter days was the sight
+of the little floweret, that grew so sweetly beside his sere and
+withered life. An uncultured sense of beauty within him was appealed to
+by the rounded limbs, the silent, dimpled laugh, the tottering feet
+feeling their unknown way, and all the sweet curves and softnesses, the
+innocent surprises and _naïve_ desires, which made up for him the image
+of "the baby." He would have said she was "prutty," implying much by the
+word.
+
+As he gazed at his precious charge, and watched the sunlight pattern
+slowly but surely creeping towards the foot of the cradle, he had an odd
+feeling that school would soon be over. A moment after he rubbed his
+eyes and looked again. Was it true, or was he dreaming? Were those
+shadowy whirls of smoke, dimming the sunshine, a vision of the past, or
+did he actually see them before him, as of old, coiling about and around
+the bars of light on the floor? It was certainly there, the shadow of
+smoke, and came he could not tell whence; for in all the unpeopled
+valley there were, of human beings, as far as he knew at that moment,
+only himself and the baby. To his mind, so full of the past, it seemed
+the herald of another danger.
+
+He raised himself with difficulty from his stool, and moved his stiff
+limbs to the threshold. As he did so, he noticed that the smoke was
+within the room as well as without; it was festooning about the baby's
+cradle, it was filling the place, there was scarcely air to breathe. His
+first idea, as he smelt the soot, and saw the blacks showering on the
+hearth, was that the chimney was on fire. He went straight to the baby
+in its cradle, and, his limbs forgetting their stiffness, lifted her in
+his arms to carry her to a place of safety; when that was done he would
+take off the embers from the grate, and sprinkle salt on the hearth to
+quench the fire.
+
+Not till he reached the door did he notice a sound that filled the
+valley. A strange, high-pitched note, like a hundred curry-fowl crying
+at once--a wail, as of spirits in hell. Now from one direction, now from
+another; now rising, now falling, the weird, unearthly shriek seemed
+everywhere at once, increasing each moment in force and shrillness. As
+the old man, holding the baby close to him, looked up and listened, fear
+struck his lips with a sudden trembling. Opposite to him he saw a
+strange sight. Halfway up the mountain, on the other side of the valley,
+not a leaf on the trees was stirring: the lower slopes lay basking in
+the sunshine, and the shadows of fleeting clouds only added to the
+peaceful beauty of the scene; while the trees above were raging
+bacchanals, whirling, swaying, tossing their long arms in futile agony,
+as though possessed by some unseen demoniacal power.
+
+In a moment the old man knew what had befallen him. The bewitched smoke,
+the shrieking spirits of the air, the motionless valley, and the
+maddened trees, of all these he had heard before, for he had listened to
+tales of the tornado in the valley, and knew what it meant to the
+defenceless dwellers on the upper slopes. The skirts of the fury were
+touching him even now; a sudden gust swept by; to draw breath for the
+moment was impossible, and his unsteady balance would soon have been
+overthrown; he was forced to cling to the doorpost, still holding the
+baby close. But the quiet, comprehending expression never left his face;
+he knew what was to be done, and he meant to do it; there might be time.
+
+He set down the baby in the cradle, took off his coat, grasped a spade
+in his shaking hand, and hobbled across the patch of open ground to a
+spot as far distant as possible both from the cottage and from the
+borders of the wood; the maddened wind was wailing itself away in the
+distance, and happily for a few minutes there was a lull in the air. He
+could hear the baby crying, left alone in the cottage. He never looked
+off from his work, but went on digging a hole in the form of a little
+grave. The surface of the ground was hard, and the old man was
+short-winded; he could hardly gather enough force to drive the spade in.
+Before long, however, a few inches of the upper crust were removed from
+a space about three feet in length. The digging in the softer earth
+would now be easier and more rapid. As he worked on, a few heavy drops
+of rain fell. He looked up and saw the whole sky, lately full of
+sunlight, a mass of driving, ink-black clouds, while the shriek of the
+hurricane was heard again in the distance. The baby's cry was drowned by
+it. The hole was as yet only half a foot deep. At the next thrust the
+spade struck on a slanting ledge of slaty rock. No further progress
+could be made there; the trench must be dug in a different direction.
+Once more the old man, panting heavily, drove the spade into the hard
+ground, and in two or three minutes had so far altered the position of
+the hole that the rock was avoided. The gale was increasing every
+moment, and at times he could hardly keep his feet.
+
+Suddenly, through the roar of the wind, was heard another sound, a
+rattling and rushing, as of loosened stones and of earth. All his senses
+on the alert, the old man glanced swiftly up, and saw a row of four tall
+fir trees, which stood out like sentinels, on a ridge of the mountain,
+in the very path of the storm, turn over like nine-pins, one after the
+other, and tearing up the soil with their roots, slip down the
+mountain-side, dragging with them an avalanche of earth. His eye darted
+to the cottage with a sudden fear. Even as he looked, the wind was
+lifting some of the slates on the roof, rattling them, loosening them,
+and in a few moments would scatter them around like chaff, chaff that
+would bring death to any on whom it should chance to light. With an odd,
+calculating look, the old man turned again to his digging, and,
+breathless as before, shovelled out the earth from the hole, with a
+speed of which his stiff and feeble frame would have been thought
+incapable; while now and again, without ceasing his work, he darted a
+backward glance at the doomed cottage. It ought to stand until the hole
+was dug; and at least in the digging there was a chance of safety: in
+going back to fetch the baby now, there was none.
+
+After about five minutes, with a hideous yell, the demon tore in such
+fury across the mountain-side, that the old man would have been carried
+off his feet in a moment, and swept with the rest of the _débris_ into
+the valley, but that he threw himself on the ground, clutching tightly
+with his fingers the edge of the hole he had dug. In the bottom of the
+hole a thistle-down lay unmoved. When the lull came, and he could raise
+his head, having escaped injury or death from falling stocks and stones,
+he darted over his shoulder a glance of awful anxiety at the cottage--of
+such anxiety as a strong man may reach to the depths of but once or
+twice in his prime. The roof of the cottage was gone; there were no
+fragments, for the wind was a clean sweeper; it had bodily vanished. The
+walls stood. He dragged himself unsteadily to his feet, and looked
+about for his spade. It was nowhere to be seen; the besom of the gale
+had whirled it to some unknown limbo.
+
+The hole was still not quite a foot and a half deep, and would not
+preserve the cradle, if placed therein, from the destroyer. He shuffled
+back to the cottage with awkward, hasty steps. The baby had cried itself
+to sleep, and lay in its cradle in the corner, unconscious of the ruin
+of its home. The old man went to the hearth, on which the fire had been
+blown out, and from under the ashes dragged out a battered fire-shovel,
+its edge worn away, its handle loose. It was the nearest approach to a
+spade that was left him. Just as he got back to the hole another blast
+carried him off his feet, and he fell prostrate, this time clutching his
+substitute spade beneath him. He rose again, stepped into the hole,
+crouching down as low as possible, and rapidly raised out of it one
+shovelful of earth after another; it was no sooner on the surface than
+it was whisked away like dust. In the wood, a furlong to the right, some
+dozen trees were prostrated between one thrust of the shovel and the
+next; dark straight firs and silver birches, that slipped downwards to
+the valley like stiff, gleaming snakes.
+
+Meanwhile the shovel had struck on a layer of stones, the remains of
+some past landslip, since buried under flowering earth. With its
+turned-back edge, it was hard to insert it below them, and again and
+again it came up having raised nothing but a little gravel; but the old
+man worked on still with his docile, child-like look, intent upon his
+task. Presently the infirm handle came off, and the shovel dropped into
+the bottom of the hole. At the same moment, with a wilder shriek and a
+fiercer on-rush, the fury came tearing again along the mountain side;
+the whole of the trees that yet remained in the patch of forest nearest
+to the cottage were swept away at once, and the slope was left bare. The
+old man crouched down in his hole, with his anxious eye fixed on the
+four walls within which the baby was sheltered; they still stood, the
+only object which the demon had not yet swept from his path. And even as
+the old man looked, he saw the upper part of the back wall begin to
+loosen, to totter, and give way. The baby was in the front room, but was
+under the windward wall. In the teeth of the gale the old man crawled
+out of the hole, extended his length on the ground, and began to drag
+his stiff and trembling frame, with hands, elbows and knees, across the
+fifty feet or so of barren soil that lay between the hole and the
+cottage. He heard the crash of bricks before he had accomplished half
+the distance; without pausing to look he crawled rapidly on till he
+crossed the threshold, and saw the babe still sleeping safely in its
+wooden cradle. There were two large iron dogs in the grate; he drew them
+out and placed them--panting painfully with the effort, for they were
+almost beyond his strength to lift--in the cradle, under the little
+mattress, one at each end. The baby, disturbed in its slumber, stretched
+its little limbs, smiled at him, and went to sleep again. He doubled a
+sack over the coverlet, tied a rope round the cradle, fastened it by a
+slip-knot underneath, pulled out the end at the back, and tightened it
+till it dragged against the hood. The cradle went on its wheels well
+enough to the door. Then the old man summoned his remaining strength,
+and having knotted the rope round his waist, threw himself on the ground
+again, and emerged with his precious charge into the roaring hurricane.
+Across the barren mountain slope, far above the ken of any fellow-being,
+in the teeth of death, the old man crept with the sleeping babe. Another
+threatening of the deluge of rain, which would surely accompany the
+tornado, added to the misery of the painful journey; the sudden downpour
+of heavy drops drenched the grandfather to the skin, but the grandchild
+was protected under the sacking.
+
+They reached the hole at length, and raising himself to his knees, the
+wind being somewhat less boisterous while the rain was falling, the old
+man clutched the heavily-weighted cradle in both arms, and attempted to
+force it into the haven of safety he had spent his strength in forming.
+Alas! there was not room. The cradle was wider across than he had
+calculated. To take the child out and place it with the bedding in the
+hole would be leaving it to drown. Should the expected deluge descend,
+the trench he had dug would but form a reservoir for water. He seized
+the shovel, working it as well as he could without a handle, and
+attempted to break down and widen the edges. Pushing, stamping, driving
+with his make-shift spade, now clutching at the edges with his fingers
+and loosening the stones, now forcing them in with his heel, he
+succeeded in working through the hard upper surface; then breathless,
+dizzy, spent, with hands that could scarce grasp the shovel, and
+stumbling feet that each moment threatened to fail him, he spaded out
+the softer earth below and scraped and tore at the sides, till the hole
+was wide enough to contain the cradle, and deep enough to ensure its
+safety.
+
+The last shovelful was raised, and the old man was stooping down to lift
+the cradle in, when the wildest war-cry yet uttered by the raging
+elements rang round the mountain side; all the former blasts seemed to
+have been but forerunners or skirmishers heralding the approach of the
+elemental forces; but now with awful ferocity and determination advanced
+the very centre of the fiendish host; while the horns were blown from
+mountain to mountain, announcing utter destruction to whatsoever should
+venture to obstruct the path of the army of the winds. In the shrieking
+solitude it seemed as if chaos and the end of the world were come. The
+poor old man crouched down, keeping his body between the gale and the
+baby's cradle, while the last remaining wall of the cottage fell flat
+before his eyes. But he felt himself being urged slowly but surely away
+from the refuge of the trench, downwards, downwards. The cradle, in
+spite of its iron ballast, was just overturning, when, with the strength
+of despair, he threw his body across it, digging his feet into the
+ground, and once more knotted the loose end of rope around his waist.
+The downward slip was stayed. Pushing the cradle with knees and arms,
+clutching the soil with hands and feet, he crept with his precious
+charge nearer and nearer the widened hole. Once over the edge the baby
+would be safe. The windy fiend seemed to be pursuing him with vindictive
+hate. It shrieked and tore around that bare strip of mountain side, as
+though the whole purpose of its fury was to destroy the old man and the
+babe. With a superhuman effort he grasped the cradle in both arms and
+lifted it in, then fell senseless across the opening.
+
+Gradually the demon horns ceased to blow, the great guns died into
+silence, and the army of the air dispersed. The rain fell in torrents,
+but the old man never moved.
+
+When the storm was over, and anxious steps hastened up the mountain
+path, and horror-stricken faces gazed at the ruined home and the havoc
+all around, there was broken-hearted lamentation for the old man and the
+child, supposed to have perished in the tornado. At last the mother's
+searching eye discerned in the sunshine that lay across the still
+mountain-side an unfamiliar object; and hastening towards it with the
+lingering hope of learning some news of her darling, she perceived the
+old man lying in his last sleep, with the eternal Peace in his
+child-like face, still stretched as if in protection across a trench, in
+which the baby lay safe in its cradle, sleeping as peacefully as he.
+
+
+
+
+THE ROAD BY THE SEA.
+
+PART I.
+
+
+From East to West there stretched a long, straight road, glimmering
+white across the grey evening landscape: silently conscious, it seemed,
+of the countless human feet, that for ages had trodden it and gone their
+way--their way for good, or their way for evil, while the road remained.
+Coming as an alien from unknown scenes, the one thing in the country
+that spoke of change, yet itself more lasting than any, it seemed to be
+ever pursuing some secret purpose: persistent, relentless: a very
+Nemesis of a road.
+
+On either side of it were barren "dunes," grudgingly covered by
+straggling heather and gorse, and to the South, at a little distance,
+rolled the dark-blue sea.
+
+On the edge of the dune, near to a cluster of sweet-scented pines, stood
+two or three cottages built of grey stone, after the Breton manner, with
+high-pitched roofs of dove-coloured slate, and arched stone doorways,
+around which scratched pigs and hens, on equal terms with barefooted
+children. One of the cottages had "Buvette" inscribed over it in large,
+white letters, and a bench outside under a little awning; and opposite
+to this, a rough pathway led out of the road over the waste land to a
+hamlet on the dune, of which the grey, clustering cottages, crowning a
+rising ground about half a mile off, stood distinct against the opal sky
+of early evening.
+
+Framed in the stone doorway of the Buvette, was the figure of a girl in
+a snow-white coiffe, of which the lappets waved in the wind, a short
+blue skirt, and sabots. She had a curious, inexpressive face, with the
+patient look of a dumb creature, and an odd little curl in her upper
+lip, which, with her mute expression, made her seem to be continually
+deprecating disapproval. She stood shading her eyes from the slanting
+sunbeams, as she looked up the road to the West. A little before her,
+out on the road, stood two other women, elderly, both white-capped, one
+leaning on a stick: they addressed brief sentences to one another now
+and again, in the disconnected manner of those who are expecting
+something: and they also stood looking up the road to the West.
+
+And not they only, but a group of peasants belonging to the hamlet on
+the hill; free-stepping, strong-limbed Breton women, returning from the
+cliffs with bundles of dried sea-weed on their backs: a woman and two
+young lads from the furthermost cottage, with hoes in their hands, who
+had stepped out on to the road from their work of weeding the sorry
+piece of ground they had fenced in from the dune, and which yielded, at
+the best, more stones than vegetables: a couple of fishermen, who were
+tramping along the road with a basket of mackerel: and even old lame
+Jacques, who had risen from the bench on which he usually sat as though
+he had taken root there, and leant tottering on his stick, as he
+strained his blear eyes against the sunbeams: all stopped as if by one
+impulse: all seemed absorbed by one expectation, and stood gazing up the
+long, white road to the West.
+
+The road was like a sensitive thing to ears long familiar with its
+various sounds, and vibrated at a mile's distance with the gallop of
+unwonted hoofs, or the haste of a rider that told of strange news.
+Moreover, all hearts were open to the touch of fear that October
+evening, when at any hour word might be brought of the fishing fleet
+that should now be returning from its long absence in distant seas: and
+one dare hardly think whether Jean and Pierre and little André would all
+be restored safely to the vacant places around the cottage fire: one
+dared not think: one could only pray to the Saints, and wait.
+
+The girl with the mute, patient face had been the first to catch the
+sounds of galloping hoofs. She had from birth been almost speechless,
+with a paralysed tongue, but as if to compensate for this, her senses of
+touch and hearing were extraordinarily acute. The daughter of the
+aubergiste, she knew all who came and went along the road: the sights
+and sounds of the road were her interest the life of it was her life.
+She had heard in the faint, faint distance the galloping hoofs to the
+West: off the great rocks to the West the fleet should first be
+sighted: towards the West all one's senses seemed strained, on the alert
+for signals of danger, or hope: and at the sound, the heart within
+Annette's breast leaped with a sudden certainty of disaster.
+
+Annette had never thought of love and marriage as possible for herself,
+but Paul Gignol had gone with the fleet for the first time this summer,
+and, for Annette, danger to the fleet meant danger to Paul. Paul and
+Annette were kin on her mother's side, and he being an orphan and
+adopted by her father, they had been brought up together like brother
+and sister. This summer had separated them for the first time, and when
+he bade her good-bye and sailed away, Annette felt like an uprooted
+piece of heather cast loose on the roadside, and belonging nowhere. And
+the first faint sounds of the hoofs on the road had struck on her ear as
+a signal from Paul. She made no sign, only stood still with a beating
+heart. And when the neighbours saw the dumb girl listening, they too
+came out into the road, and heard the galloping, now growing more and
+more distinct; and waited for the rider to appear on the ridge of the
+hill, which, some half mile off, raised its purple outline against the
+western sky.
+
+They came out when they saw the dumb girl listening: for the keenness of
+the perceptions with which her fragile body was endowed, was well known
+among them, and was attributed to the direct agency of the unseen
+powers; with whom indeed she had been acknowledged from her birth to
+have closer relations than is the lot of ordinary mortals. For there
+could be no doubt that Annette's mother had received an intimation of
+some sort from the other world, the night before her child was born. She
+had been found lying senseless in the moonlight on the hill-top, and had
+never spoken from that hour till her death a week afterwards. As to what
+she had met or seen, there were various rumours: some of the shrewder
+gossips declaring that it was nothing but old Marie Gourdon, the
+sorceress, who had frightened her by predicting in her mysterious
+wisdom, which not the shrewdest of them dared altogether disregard, that
+some strange calamity would attend the life of the child she was about
+to bring forth; a child that had indeed turned out speechless, and of so
+sickly a constitution that from year to year one hardly expected her to
+live. Moreover, was it not the ill-omened figure of the old witch-woman,
+that had hobbled into the auberge with the news that Christine Leroux
+was lying like one dead by the roadside? On the other hand, however, it
+was asserted with equal assurance, that she had seen in the moonlight,
+with her own eyes, the evil spirit of the dunes: him of whom all
+travellers by night must beware; for it was his pleasure to delude them
+by showing lights as if of cottage windows on the waste land, where no
+cottage was: while twice within living memory, he had kindled false
+fires on the great rock out at sea, which they called Le Géant, luring
+mariners to their death: and woe betide the solitary wayfarer whose path
+he crossed!
+
+Annette's father knew what his wife had seen: and one winter evening
+beside the peat-fire, as Annette was busy with her distaff, and he sat
+smoking and watching the glowing embers, he told her her mother's story.
+She and Paul's father, the elder Paul Gignol, had been betrothed in
+their youth; but his fishing-smack had struck on the rocks one foggy
+night, and gone down, and with it all his worldly wealth. And
+Christine's father had broken off the match; for he had never been
+favourable to it, and how was Paul to keep her now with nothing to look
+to, but what might be picked up in the harbour? And Paul was like one
+mad, and threatened to do her a bodily mischief, so that she was afraid
+to walk out at night by herself: and her father offered him money to go
+away: and he refused the money: but he went off at last, hiring himself
+out on a cargo-boat, and declaring as he went, that one day yet, he
+would meet Christine in the way, and have his revenge. And he was abroad
+for years, and wedded some English woman in one of the British sea-port
+towns, and at last was lost at sea on the very night on which Annette
+was born.
+
+"And his spirit it was, Annette, that appeared to your mother in the
+road that night, the very hour that he died. For it was borne in on me
+that he had met her in the way, as he had said, and I asked her, as she
+lay a-dying, if it was Paul that she had seen; and she looked at me with
+eyes that spoke as plain as the speech that she had lost: and said that
+it was he."
+
+Jules was ordinarily a silent man: he told the story slowly, with long
+pauses between the sentences: and when he had once told it, he never
+spoke of it again.
+
+Now Annette thought of many things in her quiet, clear-sighted way. She
+knew that her mother had been found senseless at the foot of the menhir,
+which they called Jean of Kerdual, just beyond the crest of the hill:
+and she had often noticed the shadow which the great, weird stone threw
+across the road, and thought how like it was (especially by moonlight)
+to the figure of a fisherman with his peaked cap and blouse. She
+believed there was more in this than a chance resemblance; for to a
+Breton girl the supernatural world is very real: and she had no doubt
+that the spirit of Paul's father haunted the stone that was so like his
+bodily form, and that on the night when he was drowned, the dumb menhir
+had found voice, and had spoken to her mother in his name. Annette
+always avoided Jean of Kerdual, if it was possible to do so, and would
+never let his shadow fall upon her. She felt that the solemn, world-old
+stone was in some way hostile to her, and attributed her dumbness to its
+influence.
+
+She often wished that she and her father did not live so near the stone.
+It had come to be like a nightmare to her. She would dream that it stood
+threateningly over her, enveloping her in its shadow: that she was
+struggling to speak, and that it reached forth a hand, heavy as stone,
+and laid it on her mouth, stifling utterance. Then the paralysis that
+had fettered her tongue from her birth, would creep over the rest of her
+senses and over all her limbs, till she lay motionless and helpless
+under the hand of the menhir, like a stone herself, only alive and
+conscious. This dream had come more frequently since Paul had been away,
+and Annette would often look up and down the road--that road which was
+her only link with the world beyond--in the vague hope that it might one
+day bring her some deliverance.
+
+And now, as she stood listening to the galloping hoofs, she had an odd
+feeling that Jean of Kerdual was threatening once more to render her
+powerless, but that this time he would not prevail: for that something
+was coming along the road, nearer--nearer--with every gallop, to free
+her from him for ever. Then suddenly the sounds changed: the horseman
+was ascending the hill on the other side, and the galloping grew
+laboured and slower. Would he never come into sight? It seemed to
+Annette that she could bear it no longer: she set off and ran along the
+road and up the hill, to meet the unseen rider. The slow-thoughted,
+simple-minded peasants looked after her, wondering. She had nearly
+reached the top, when, silhouetted against the sky on the crest of the
+hill, appeared the figure of a man on horse-back, his Breton tunic and
+long hat-ribbons flying loose in the wind, as he reined in his chafing
+steed. He rose a moment in his stirrups, pointed out to sea with his
+whip, and shouted something inaudible: at the same instant his horse
+shied violently, as it seemed, at some object by the roadside, and
+threw his rider to the ground.
+
+The man, the bringer of tidings, lay motionless in the road, the horse
+galloped wildly on: the dumb girl stood, half way up the hill: the dumb
+girl, who alone had heard the message. The next moment she threw her
+arms convulsively above her head, turned towards the group below, and
+cried in a loud, clear voice, "Le Géant brûle!"
+
+The words fell on the ears of the listening crowd as if with an electric
+shock. As they repeated them to each other with fear and amazement, and
+scattered hither and thither to saddle a horse, or to catch the runaway
+steed, that they might carry the news in time over the two miles that
+lay between them and the harbour, the fact that the dumb had spoken,
+seemed for the moment hardly noticed by them. For might not the
+fishing-fleet even now be rounding the point, with darkness coming on,
+and the misleading light burning on the giant rock to lure them to
+destruction? A light which, as they knew too well, was not visible from
+the harbour, and which might be shewing its fatal signal unguessed the
+whole night through, unless as now, by favour of the saints, and
+doubtless by the quick eyes of some fisherman of the neighbouring
+village, who had chanced to be far enough out to sea at the time, it
+were perceived before darkness should fall.
+
+The girl turned back again, and went up to the top of the hill to tend
+the fallen rider. The sun was sinking, and threw the shadow of the
+menhir, enlarged to a monstrous size, across her path. A few yards
+further on lay the senseless form of the Breton horseman, and it was
+clear to Annette that Jean of Kerdual had purposely stayed the rider by
+throwing the shadow across the road to startle his horse.
+
+But a new exhilaration had taken possession of Annette's whole body and
+mind. She feared the menhir no longer: its power over her was gone. She
+kept repeating the words that had come to her at the crisis, the first
+she had spoken articulately all her life, "Le Géant brûle--Le Géant
+brûle," with a confidence in herself and the future, which was like new
+wine to her. The fleet would come safe home now, and by her means: for
+the Saints had helped her: the Saints were on her side.
+
+
+PART II.
+
+When Annette brought the fallen man (who was already recovering
+consciousness when she reached him) safe back in the cart to the
+auberge, she found a little crowd of peasants, men and women, gathered
+there, talking loud and eagerly over the news, who looked at her with a
+reverent curiosity as she entered. The injured man was assisted to a
+bed, but none spoke to Annette: only silent, awe-struck glances were
+turned on her: for they had gradually realized the fact that a voice had
+been given to the dumb girl, and Annette's quiet, familiar presence had
+become charged with mystery for them. They had no doubt that the
+blessed St. Yvon, the patron saint of mariners, had himself uttered the
+warning through her, at the moment when the safety of the fishing fleet
+depended on a spoken word: and the miracle now occupied their attention
+almost to the exclusion of the false lights and the return of the boats.
+
+But Annette observed their whisperings and glances with a slight touch
+of contempt: she knew that her own voice had been restored to her, and
+that she was now like any of the other women in the village; which, in
+her own simple presentment of things, must be interpreted as meaning
+that she might look to have a husband and a home of her own. It was as
+though she had for the first time become a real woman. She saddled the
+horse and rode off to fetch a doctor to attend to the sick man, thinking
+all the while that the fleet would be in before morning, that Paul would
+come home, and that he would hear her voice. She made little childish
+plans of pretending to be still dumb when she first saw him, so that she
+might surprise him the more when she should speak.
+
+Darkness was fast gathering now, but the old horse knew every stone in
+the road: he carried her with his steady jog-trot safely enough over the
+two miles that lay between the auberge and the fishing village where the
+doctor lived, in a house overlooking the _rade_ and the harbour. As she
+passed along, the dark quays were full of moving lights and figures;
+active women with short skirts and sabots, mingling in the groups of
+fishermen; while a buzz of harsh Breton speech resounded on all sides.
+She caught words about a gang of wreckers that had lately infested the
+coast: and the names of one or two "_mauvais sujets_" in the village,
+who were supposed to be their confederates. She saw a moving light at
+the mouth of the harbour, and from a low-breathed murmur that ran below
+the noisier speech of the crowd, she gathered that it was a boat's crew
+going out in the darkness, to scale the precipitous rock, and extinguish
+the light.
+
+All her faculties seemed quickened, and she kept repeating aloud to
+herself the words she heard in the crowd, to make sure that she could
+articulate as clearly as she had done in the first moment that her voice
+was given to her.
+
+When she arrived at the doctor's gate, and dismounted to pull the great
+iron bell-rope that hung outside, she was trembling violently, and could
+hardly steady her hands to tie up the horse. Jeanne, the cook's sister,
+took her into the kitchen, while some one fetched the doctor, and she
+was so anxious that her speech should seem plain to them, that for the
+few first moments, from sheer nervousness, she could not utter a word.
+Then the doctor entered, a tall, well-built man, with stiff, iron-grey
+hair and imperial, and an expression of genial contentment with himself
+and the rest of the world.
+
+"Mais, Mademoiselle Annette," he exclaimed the moment he saw her, "What
+are you doing then? You must return home and go to bed at once. Why did
+you not send me word before, instead of putting it off till you got so
+ill?"
+
+He did not wait for her to reply, believing her to be speechless as
+usual, but placed her in a chair and began to feel her pulse. She was
+trying to speak all the time, but from excitement and a strange
+dizziness that had come over her, she could not at once use her new
+faculty. At last she got out the words, that it was not for herself she
+had come; that a _fermier_ who had ridden fast from the village of St.
+Jean, further up the coast, to bring the news of the false light on the
+Géant, had been thrown from his horse--but before she had finished the
+sentence, the doctor, still absorbed in the contemplation of her own
+case, interrupted her, exclaiming with astonishment at her new power of
+speech, and demanding to know by what means it had come, and how long
+she had possessed it.
+
+But to recall the experience of that moment on the hill, when at the
+thought of the danger menacing the fishing boats, her tongue had been
+loosened, and the unaccustomed words had come forth, was too much for
+Annette. She trembled so, and made such painful efforts to speak, that
+it seemed as though she were again losing the power of utterance; and
+the doctor bade her remain perfectly quiet, gave her some soothing
+medicine, and directed a bed to be prepared for her in the kitchen, as
+he said she was not fit to return home that night: then he himself took
+the old horse from the gate where he stood, and set off for the auberge
+with what haste he might.
+
+For three or four minutes after he was gone, Annette remained
+motionless in her seat, wearing her patient, deprecatory expression,
+while her eyes rested on the window, without apparently seeing the
+lights and dimly outlined figures that were visible on the _rade_
+outside. Then her glance seemed to concentrate itself on something: the
+nervous, trembling lips closed rigidly, and before they saw what she was
+about to do, she had risen from her chair, and darted from the room and
+out into the night.
+
+"Our Lady guard her! It was the boats she caught sight of," said
+Victorine, the cook. "There are the lights off the bay. Go, stop her,
+Jeanne! Monsieur will be angry with us if anything befall her."
+
+"Dame! I will not go," said her sister. "Can you not see that Annette is
+bewitched? If she must go, she must. I will have nought to do with it."
+
+Victorine, however, scouted her younger sister's reasoning, and hurried
+out across the small court-yard, through the gate and on to the road.
+
+The whole village seemed gathered at the harbour-side; children and old
+men, lads and women, eager, yet with the patient quietness that is the
+way with the Breton folk. Here a demure group of white-coiffed girls
+stood waiting with scarce a word passing among them, waiting at the
+quay-side for the fathers, brothers, or sweethearts, that for months had
+been facing the perils of the northern seas. There a dark-eyed,
+loose-limbed Breton peasant, the wildness of whose look bewrayed the
+gentleness of his nature, was arguing with a white-haired patriarch
+about the probable value of this year's haul: while quaint-looking
+children in little tight-fitting bonnets and clattering sabots clung
+patiently to their mother's skirts, their mothers, who could remember
+many a home-coming of the boats, and knew that it would be well if to
+some of those now waiting at the harbour, grief were not brought instead
+of joy.
+
+The vanguard of the fleet had been sighted some half-hour ago, and the
+two or three boats whose lights could now be seen approaching, one of
+which was recognized as Paul Gignol's "Annette," would, if all was well,
+anchor in the harbour that night: for the tide was high, so that the
+harbour basin was full; and the light of the torches and lanterns that
+were carried to and fro among the crowd, was reflected from its surface
+in distorted and broken flashes; while the regular plashing of the water
+against the quay-side accompanied the low murmur of the crowd.
+
+Victorine sought in vain for Annette in the darkness, dressed, as she
+was, like all the other peasant girls; but her eye lighted on the tall,
+powerful figure of Jules Leroux, Annette's father, standing at the door
+of the _bureau du port_, where he and some others were discussing the
+signals.
+
+Victorine approached the group, and announced in her emphatic way that
+Annette was ill, very ill, and had gone out alone into the crowd, when
+the doctor had bidden her not leave her bed. Jules, who had been down at
+the harbour since midday, and had heard nothing of Annette's recovered
+voice, or of her riding to the village, started off without waiting for
+more, along the quay and on to the very end of the mole, where the light
+guarded the entrance to the harbour, saying to himself, "It is there she
+will be--if she have feet to carry her--it is there she will be--when
+the boat comes in."
+
+Victorine looked after him, murmuring, "Surely the child Annette is the
+apple of her father's eye."
+
+The outline of the foremost fishing-smack was growing more and more
+distinct on the water, as he reached the end of the quay. Moving figures
+on board flashed into uncertain light for a moment, then disappeared
+into darkness again. A girl darted out from the crowd as he approached,
+and clung to his arm. "Annette, my little one," said Jules, "never fear.
+The Saints will bring him safe home."
+
+"He is there: it is the 'Annette' that comes. I have seen him!" she
+cried.
+
+Her father drew back almost in alarm. "What! Thy tongue is loosened, my
+child?"
+
+She drew down his head, and whispered eagerly in his ear. "The blessed
+St. Yvon made me speak. I will tell you afterwards: it was to save Paul.
+Is it not true now that he is mine?"
+
+At that moment a clamour of welcome ran along the quay-side, as the boat
+glided silently through the harbour mouth, and into the light of the
+torches that flashed from the quay.
+
+Women's voices called upon Paul and his mate Jean, and the name of the
+'Annette' (the vessel that had been christened after his foster-father's
+dumb child) was passed from mouth to mouth, while the fishermen silently
+got out the boat that was to carry the mooring cable to the shore.
+
+Annette clung convulsively to her father during the few minutes' delay,
+and once, as he saw the light flash on her face, he suddenly remembered
+something Victorine had said about the doctor. He watched her with a
+pang of alarm, and at the same time felt that she was stringing herself
+up for some effort. Everyone was greeting Jean, the first of the boat's
+crew that appeared, as he clambered up the quay-side, but Annette did
+not stir; then the second dark, sea-beaten figure emerged from below,
+and Annette darted forward. She clasped both Paul's hands and gazed into
+his face, while she seemed to be struggling with herself for something a
+spasm passed over her face, which was as white as her coiffe: her father
+and the others gathered round, but some instinct bade them be silent.
+Annette's lips opened more than once as if she were about to speak, but
+no sound came forth: then she turned to her father with a look of
+despairing entreaty, and at the same moment tottered and would have
+fallen, had he not darted forward and caught her in his arms.
+
+"She is dead! God help me," he cried.
+
+"Chut! Chut!" said the voice of Victorine in the crowd. "It is but the
+nerves. Did not you see she was striving to say the word of greeting,
+and it was a cruel blow to find her speech had gone from her again.
+Surely it is but a crisis of the nerves."
+
+But Jules, bending his tangled beard over her, groaned "The hand of God
+is heavy on me."
+
+He and Paul raised her between them, and carried her to the doctor's,
+stepping softly for fear of doing her a mischief: while the story of her
+recovered speech, and the danger which had threatened the fleet, was
+told to the returned fisherman in breathless, awe-struck accents. He
+listened, full of wonder, and as he saw her safely tucked into her
+box-bed in the doctor's kitchen, said in his light-hearted Celtic way,
+that it was not for nothing she had got her voice back, and no fear but
+she would soon be well, and would speak to him in the morning.
+
+But her father, who sat watching her unconscious face, and holding her
+hand in both his, as though he feared she would slip away from him,
+shook his head and said, "She will not see another dawn."
+
+They tried their utmost to restore her consciousness, but with that
+ignorance of the simplest remedies which is sometimes found among the
+Breton peasants, they had so far failed: and though someone had been
+sent to fetch back the doctor from the auberge, Victorine and the other
+women shook their heads, as Jules had done, and said to each other, "It
+is in vain; she will never waken more."
+
+But when the fainting fit had lasted nearly an hour, and in the wild
+eyes of Paul, who stood leaning on the foot of the bed, a gleam of fear
+was beginning to show itself; there was a stir in the lifeless form, a
+struggle of the breath, a flicker of the eyelids: they opened, and a
+glance, in which all Annette's pure and loving spirit seemed to shine
+forth, fell direct on Paul's face at the end of the bed. She smiled
+brightly, and said distinctly "Au revoir:" then turned on her side, and
+died.
+
+Jules and Paul, in their simple peasant fashion, went about seeing to
+what had to be done before morning; but Annette's father spoke not a
+word. Paul, to cheer him, told him of the wife he had wedded on the
+other side of the sea, and who would come home to be a daughter to him:
+and Jules nodded silently, without betraying a shadow of surprise:
+having art enough, in the midst of his grief, to keep Annette's secret
+loyally.
+
+Along the straight, white road there came, in the early dawn, a little
+silent procession: the silent road, that was ever bringing tidings, good
+or evil, to the auberge: though now no white-coiffed girl with a patient
+face was waiting at the door. All the road was deserted, for the
+villagers were still asleep, as the little procession wound its way
+along: wrapped in the same silence in which Annette's own young life had
+been passed. A cart with a plain coffin in it, was drawn by the old
+horse that had carried Annette to the harbour the night before, and who
+stepped as though he knew what burden he was bringing: Paul led the
+horse; and beside the cart, with his head bowed on his breast, walked
+Annette's father.
+
+After the funeral rites were over, the smooth current of existence by
+the roadside and the harbour flowed on, apparently in complete oblivion
+of the fragile blossom of a girl's life, that had appeared for a little
+while on its surface, and then been swept away for ever.
+
+
+[Illustration:]
+
+
+
+
+THE HALTING STEP.
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+On the Western coast of one of the islands in the Channel group is a
+level reach of salt marshes, to which the sea rises only at the highest
+spring tides, and which at other times extends as far as the eye can
+see, a dreary waste of salt pools, low rocks, and stretches of sand,
+yielding its meagre product of shell-fish, samphire, and sea-weed to the
+patient toil of the fisher-folk that dwell in scattered huts along the
+shore. One arm of the bay, at the time of which I am writing, extended
+inland to the left, being nearly cut off from the sea by a rocky
+headland, behind which it had spread itself, so as almost to present the
+appearance of an isolated pond or lake, encircled by low black rocks,
+within which the water rose and sank at regular intervals, as if under
+the influence of some strange, unknown power. On the borders of the lake
+stood a low, one-roomed cabin, such as the island fishermen in the
+wilder districts inhabit; and in the plot of ground beside the cabin,
+one September evening, in the mellow, westering light, a woman might
+have been seen busying herself by tying up into bundles the sea-weed
+that had been spread out to dry in the sun. She wore a shade bonnet with
+a large projecting peak and an enveloping curtain round the neck, quite
+concealing her face, as she bent over her work. Presently, although no
+sound had been heard, she looked up, with that apparently intuitive
+sense of what is happening at sea, which sea-folk seem to possess, and
+perceived an orange-sailed fishing boat just rounding the headland and
+making for the open sea. The face that appeared under the bonnet, as she
+looked up, had the colourless and haggard look frequently seen among
+fisher-women, and which is perhaps due to too much sea-air, added to
+hard living. But one was prevented from noticing the rest of the face by
+the expression of the two grey eyes, peering out from under the shade of
+the bonnet-peak; they were eyes that seemed always expecting: they
+seemed to have nothing to do with the pallid face, and the sea-weed, and
+the hut: they belonged to a different life. As she looked out over the
+sea, their glance was almost stern, as though demanding something which
+the sea did not give. But she only remarked to herself, in the island
+patois:--"I suppose the fish have gone over to the south-west again, and
+he'll make a night of it. Mackerel is such an aggravating fish, one day
+here, t'other there--you never know where you'll find them."
+
+Presently, as it grew dark, she warmed up some herb-broth for her
+supper, and when she had finished it, and had fastened up the dog and
+the donkey, knowing that her husband would not return till the morning,
+she put out the glimmering oil-lamp, and was just going to bed, when a
+sound struck her ear. For two miles round the cabin not another
+human-being lived, and it was the rarest thing for any one to come in
+that direction after dark, as the rocks were slippery and dangerous, and
+a solitary bit of open country had to be crossed between the cabin and
+the nearest houses inland. Yet this sound was distinctly that of a human
+footstep, which halted in its gait.
+
+The woman started up and listened: there was silence for a minute: then
+the limping step was heard again: again it ceased. The woman went to the
+door and looked out. Over the sandy, wind-swept common to the left the
+darkness brooded, the outlines of a broken bit of sea-wall, and of some
+giant boulders, said to be remains of a dolmen, emerging dimly therefrom
+like threatening phantoms; to the right moaned the long, grey sea, and
+in front was the waste of salt marshes and rocks, with the windlass of a
+ship once wrecked in the bay, projecting its huge outline among the
+uncertain shadows. Not a living thing was visible. She stood for several
+minutes peering out into the darkness and listening; no sound was to be
+heard but the lapping of the waves, and the sigh of the wind through the
+bent-grass on the common.
+
+Suddenly Josef, the dog, started up in his corner, and barked. He was a
+large mastiff, with a dangerous temper, who was chained up at night in
+the rough lean-to that was built against the side of the cabin. He
+barked again furiously, dragging at his chain with all his might, and
+quivering in every nerve of his body. The woman lighted a torch at the
+dying embers on the hearth, and unfastening the dog, waited to see what
+would happen. He dashed forward furiously a few steps, then suddenly
+stopped, sniffed the air, made one or two uncertain darts hither and
+thither, and stood still, evidently puzzled. She called to him to
+encourage him, but he dropped his tail and returned to his shed, where
+he curled himself up in a comfortable corner, like a dog that was not
+going to be troubled by womanish fancies. The woman went round the
+cabin, and the pig-stye, and the patch of meagre gooseberry-bushes,
+throwing the uncertain torch-light on every dark hole or corner; but no
+one was to be seen. She was none the less convinced that someone had
+approached the cottage, for the dog was not likely to have been deceived
+as well as herself; so she kept the light burning, called Josef to lie
+down at the foot of the bed, barred the door, and went to sleep.
+
+The sun was high the next morning when the fisherman returned. He stood
+in the stream of light in the open doorway, in his blue, knitted jersey
+and jack-boots; and with the beaming smile which overspread his whole
+countenance, and his big, powerful limbs, he might well have been taken
+for an impersonation of the sun shining in his strength.
+
+It was as great a pleasure to him to greet his Louise now, as it had
+been in the days of their early courtship; for he had courted her twice,
+his sunny boyhood's lovemaking having been overclouded by the advent of
+a stranger from the mainland, who, with his smooth tongue and
+new-fangled ways, had gained such an influence over Louise during a four
+months' absence of Peter's on a fishing cruise, that she forgot her
+first love, and wedded this new settler; who took her to the town a few
+miles inland, where he carried on a retail fishmonger's business,
+knowing but little of fishing himself, either deep-sea or along-shore.
+But Providence had not blessed their union, for not a child had been
+born to them, and after but three years of married life, when Fauchon,
+the husband, was out one day in a fishing smack, which he had just
+bought to carry on business for himself with men under him, the boat
+capsized in a sudden squall, and neither he nor the two other men were
+ever seen or heard of again. Then to Louise, in her sudden poverty and
+despair (for all the savings had been put into the fishing smack) came
+Peter once more, and with his frank, whole-hearted love, and his
+strength and confidence, fairly carried her off her feet, making her
+happy with or without her own consent, in such shelter and comfort as
+his fisherman's home could supply. They had been married seven years
+now, and had on the whole been happy together; and as she answered his
+"Well, my child, how goes it with thee to-day?" her own face lighted up
+with a reflection of the beam on his.
+
+After she had heard of the haul of mackerel, and had got Peter his
+breakfast, she stood with her arms akimbo looking at him, as he gulped
+down his bouillon with huge satisfaction.
+
+The expectant look had not left her eyes, as, fixing them upon his, she
+said, "I had a fright last night, my friend."
+
+"Hein! How was that?" said he, with the spoon in his mouth.
+
+"I heard a step outside, and Josef heard it too and barked; and we went
+all round with a torch, but there was nobody."
+
+"Ho! ho!" cried Peter, with his hearty laugh, "she will always hear a
+step, or the wing of a sea-swallow flying overhead, or perhaps a crab
+crawling in the bay, if Peter is not at home to take care of her."
+
+"But indeed," said Louise, "it is the truth I am telling thee: it was
+the step of a man, and of one that halted in his gait."
+
+"Did Josef hear it--this step that halted?"
+
+"Yes, he barked till I set him free: then all in a moment he stopped,
+and would not search."
+
+"Pou-ouf," crowed Peter, in jovial scorn. "Surely it was Josef
+that was the wisest." Then, as she still seemed unsatisfied, he
+added, "May-be 'twas the water in the smuggler's cave. Many's
+the time that I've thought somebody was coming along, sort of
+limping--cluck--chu--cluck--chu--when the tide was half-way up in the
+cave over there. And the wind was blowing west last night: 'tis with a
+west wind it sounds the plainest."
+
+"May-be 'twas that, my friend," said the woman, taking up the pail to
+fetch the water from the well across the common. But she kept looking
+around her, with a half-frightened, half-expectant glance, all the way.
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+For several days the halting step was not heard again, and Louise had
+nearly forgotten her fright, when one morning, about six o'clock, when
+Peter was out getting up his lobster pots, Louise, with her head still
+buried in the bed-clothes, suddenly heard--or thought she heard--the
+sound again. She started up and listened: there could be no doubt about
+it; someone was approaching the cottage at the back--some one who was
+lame. She hurried on some clothes and looked out of the door (the cabin
+had no window). In the glittering morning light, the expanse of level
+shore and common was as desolate as ever. She turned the corner of the
+cottage to the left, where Jenny and the pigs were. There was no one
+there; then she went round to the right, and, as she did so, distinctly
+perceived a shadow vanishing swiftly round the corner of the stack of
+sea-weed. She uttered a cry, and for a moment seemed like one paralysed;
+then moved forward hastily a few steps; stopped again, listening with a
+strange expression on her countenance to the sound of the limp, as it
+grew fainter and fainter; then advanced, as if unwillingly, to the back
+of the cottage, whence no one was visible. A corner of rock, round which
+wound the path that ascended to the top of the cliff, projected at no
+great distance from the cottage. She stood and looked at the rock, half
+as if it were a threatening, monster, half as if it were the door of
+hope: then she went slowly back to the cottage.
+
+She did not tell Peter this time about the step.
+
+A week or two afterwards, when Peter Girard was returning from the rocks
+with a basketful of crabs, he was joined on the way by his mate,
+Mesurier.
+
+The two fishermen trudged along in silence for some time, one a little
+in front of the other, after the manner of their kind; then Mesurier
+remarked, "We shall be wanting some new line before we go out for
+mackerel again." (Mackerel are caught by lines in those parts, where the
+sea-bottom is too rocky for trawling).
+
+Peter turned round and stood still to consider the question.
+
+"I've got some strands knotted, if you and I set to work we can plait it
+before night."
+
+"I must go up to Jean's for some bait first; there won't be more than
+three hours left before dark, and how are we to get it done in that
+time? I'd better get some in the village when I'm up there."
+
+"Hout, man! pay eight shillings for a line," said the economical Peter,
+"and a pound of horsehair will make six. I'll send Louise for the bait,
+and you come along with me--we'll soon reckon out the plait."
+
+Mesurier, a thick-set, vigorous-looking man, shorter than Peter, stood
+still a moment, looking at him rather queerly out of his keen, grey
+eyes.
+
+"Been up to Jean's much of late?" he asked, trudging on again.
+
+"No, not I," said Peter. "Hangin' round in the village isn't much after
+my mind."
+
+"Best send Louise instead, hey?"
+
+Peter wheeled his huge frame round in a moment.
+
+"What do you mean, man?" he demanded, in a voice that seemed to come
+from his feet.
+
+Mesurier's face was devoid of expression, as he replied, "Nothing, to be
+sure. Of course Louise will be going to the shop now and again."
+
+Peter laid his hand, like a lion's paw, on Mesurier's shoulder, as if he
+would rend the truth out of him.
+
+"And what's the matter with her going to the shop?" said Peter, so
+rapidly and thickly as to be hardly articulate.
+
+"None that I know of," said the other uneasily, shrugging off Peter's
+hand, with an attempted laugh.
+
+"Now you understand," said Peter, with blazing eyes, "you've either got
+to swear that you've heard nothing at all about Louise which you
+oughtn't to have heard, or else you'll tell me who said it, and let him
+know he's got me to reckon with," and Peter clenched his fist in a way
+that would have made most people swear whatever he might have happened
+to wish.
+
+"Well, mate," said the other man. "You go and see Jean, and ask him what
+company he's had of late." Then seeing Peter's face becoming livid, he
+added briefly, "There's been a queer-looking fish staying with him the
+last three weeks--walks all on one side--and Louise was talking to him
+t'other evening under the church wall. 'Twas my wife saw her. That's the
+truth. Nobody else has said nought about her."
+
+Peter swung round without a word, and marched off in the direction of
+the village. Mesurier watched him a moment, then called after him, "I
+say, mate! mind what you're doing: the man's a poor blighted creature,
+more like a monkey than a Christian."
+
+Peter said something in his throat while he handed the crabs to
+Mesurier: his hand shook so violently as he did so that the basket
+nearly fell to the ground. Then he strode on again. Mesurier had glanced
+at his face, and did not follow.
+
+It took Peter less than an hour, at the pace at which he was walking,
+to reach the next village along the coast where Jean lived. The mellow
+afternoon sunshine was lighting up the cottage wall, and the long strip
+of gaily flowering garden, as he approached. He entered the front room,
+which was fitted up as a sort of shop, in which fishermen's requisites
+were sold. There was no one there. He pushed the door open into the
+inner room: it was also empty. He felt as if he could not breathe within
+the cottage walls, and went out again. The cliff overhung the sea a few
+yards in front of the cottage. He went to the edge and was scanning the
+shore for a sign of Jean, when below, on a narrow, zigzag path which led
+down the cliff to the beach, he perceived his wife. She stood at a turn
+in the path, looking downwards. There was something about her that to
+Peter made her seem different from what she had ever seemed before. He
+looked at Louise, and he saw a woman with a shadow of guilt upon her.
+The path below her was concealed from Peter's sight by an over-hanging
+piece of rock, but she seemed to be watching someone coming slowing up
+it. Then she glanced fearfully round, and saw Peter standing on the top
+of the cliff. She made a hasty sign to the person below, but already a
+man's hand leaning on a stick was visible beyond the edge of the rock.
+Peter strode straight down the face of the cliff to the turning in the
+path. Louise screamed. Peter seized by the collar a puny, crooked
+creature, whom he scarcely stopped to look at, and held him, as one
+might a cat, over the cliff-side.
+
+"Swear you'll quit the island to-night, or I'll drop you," he thundered.
+
+The creature merely screamed for mercy, and seemed unable to articulate
+a sentence; while Louise knelt, clasping Peter's knees in an agony of
+entreaty. Meanwhile, the screaming ceased; the creature had fainted in
+Peter's grasp. He flung him down on the path, said sternly to Louise,
+"Come with me," and they went up the cliff-side together.
+
+They walked home without a word, Louise crying and moaning a little, but
+not daring to speak. When they got inside the cabin, he stood and faced
+her.
+
+"Woman," he said, in a low, shaken voice, "What hast thou done?"
+
+She fell upon her knees, crying. "Forgive me, Peter," she entreated.
+"Thou art such a strong man; forgive me."
+
+"Tell me the whole truth. What is this man to thee?"
+
+She knelt in silence, shaken with sobs.
+
+"Who is he?" said Peter, his voice getting deeper and hoarser.
+
+She only kept moaning, "Forgive me." Presently she said between her
+sobs, "I only went this morning to tell him to go away. I wanted him to
+go away; I have prayed him to go again and again."
+
+"Since when hast thou known him?"
+
+Again she made no answer, but inarticulate moans.
+
+Peter stood looking at her for a few seconds with an indescribable
+expression of sorrow and aversion.
+
+"I loved thee," he said; and turning away, left her.
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+Peter went out in the evening without speaking to Louise again, and was
+not seen till the following afternoon, when he called his mate to go
+mackerel-fishing, and they were absent two days getting a great haul. He
+came back and slept at Mesurier's, and did not go near his own home for
+a week, though he sent money to Louise, when he sold the fish.
+
+At the end of that time he went over to Jean's. The stranger had gone,
+but Peter sat down on a stool opposite Jean, and began to enter into
+conversation with him, with a more settled look in his hollow eyes than
+had been there since the catastrophe of the week before. The meeting on
+the cliff had been seen by more than one passerby, and the report had
+spread that Peter had nearly murdered the stranger for intriguing with
+his wife. Jean told Peter all he knew of the man, but he neither knew
+his business nor whence he came. He said his name was Jacques, and would
+give no other. He had gone to the nearest inland town, where he said
+that a relation of his kept an "auberge." He had gone in a hurry, and
+had left some bottles and things behind, containing the stuff he rubbed
+his leg with, Jean thought; and Jean meant to take them to him when next
+he went to the town.
+
+"By the way," he said, taking a little book from the shelf, "I believe
+this belonged to him too. I remember to have seen him more than once
+poring over it with them close-seeing eyes of his. The man was a rare
+scholar, and no mistake."
+
+Peter took the little book from him, and opened it. Jean, glancing at
+him as he did so, uttered an exclamation. A deadly paleness had
+overspread Peter's face, and he clutched with his hand in the air, as
+though for something to steady himself with. Then he staggered to his
+feet, still tightly grasping the little book, and saying something
+unintelligible, went out.
+
+He went down the cliff to the place where, a week ago, he had found his
+wife and the stranger, and stood under the rock, and looked at the book.
+He looked at it still closed in his hand, as if it were some venomous
+creature, which might, the next moment, dart forth a poisoned fang to
+sting him. From the cover it appeared to be a little, much-worn
+prayer-book. Presently he opened it gingerly, and read something written
+on the fly-leaf. He spelled it out with some difficulty and slowly, and
+yet he looked at it as if the page were a familiar vision to him. Then
+he remained immovable for a long time, gazing out to sea, with the
+little book crunched to a shapeless mass in his huge fist. When at last
+he turned to ascend the cliff again, his face was ashen pale, and his
+step was that of an old man. He trudged heavily across the common and
+along the road inland, five or six miles, till he reached the town,
+inquired for a certain auberge, entered the kitchen, and found himself
+face to face with the man he sought. A spasm of fear passed swiftly over
+the face of Jacques, as he beheld Peter, and he instinctively started up
+from the bench on which he was sitting, and shrank backwards. As he did
+so, he showed himself a disfigured paralytic, one side of his face being
+partly drawn, and one leg crooked. He was an undersized man, with sandy
+hair, quick, intelligent, grey eyes, and a well-cut profile.
+
+"Jacques Fauchon," said Peter, "have no fear of me."
+
+Jacques kept his eyes on him, still distrustfully.
+
+"I did not know," continued Peter, speaking thickly and slowly, "the
+other day, what I know now. I had never seen you but once--and you have
+changed."
+
+"It is not my wish to cause trouble," said Jacques, still glancing
+furtively round. "Things being as they are, to my thinking, there's
+nought for it but to let 'em be."
+
+"I have not said yet," said Peter, "what it is I've come to say. This
+little prayer-book with her name writ in it, and yours below,--'tis the
+one she always took to church, as a girl--has shown me the path I've got
+to take. How you came back from the dead, I don't know: 'twas the hand
+of the Lord. But here you are, and you are her husband, and not I." He
+stopped.
+
+"Well, Mr. Girard, I know my legal rights," began Jacques, "but
+considering--and I've no wish to cause unpleasantness, of that you may
+be sure. 'Tis why I never wrote, not knowing how the land might lie, and
+for four years I was helpless on my back."
+
+"Never mind the past, man," interrupted Peter, "It's the future that's
+to be thought of. What you've got to do is to take her away to a
+distance, and settle in some place where nobody knows what's gone by."
+
+Fauchon considered for a moment, a slight, deprecatory smile stealing
+over his face.
+
+"I suppose," he remarked, "she hasn't got any little purse of her own by
+this time; considering, I mean, that she's been of use with the lines
+and the nets and so on."
+
+"Do you mean," said Peter, "that you can't support her?"
+
+"Well, you see, I worked my passage from New Zealand as cook--that's
+what I waited so long for. If she could pay her passage, the same
+captain would take us again, when he starts to go back next week. And if
+she had a little in hand, when we got there, we could set up a store,
+may-be, and make shift to get on. I only thought, may-be, she having
+been of use--"
+
+"I'll sell the cottage and the bits of things," said Peter, "and there's
+a trifle put by to add to it. But tell me this; when you're out there,
+can you support her, or can't you?"
+
+"Well, there's Mr. Boucher, that took me on as house-servant at first in
+New Zealand, he being in the sailing ship when I was picked up. And when
+the paralytics came on, resulting from the injury I got in the wreck, he
+never let me want for nothing, the four years that I lay helpless. He's
+got money to spare, you see"--with a wink--"he's well off, and he's what
+I call easy-going; and if we could manage to get the right side of
+him"--with another wink--"I reckon he'd help us a bit."
+
+"Man," said Peter, letting his hand fall heavily on Fauchon's shoulder,
+"tell me plain that you've got honest work as'll feed and clothe her out
+there, else, by God, you shan't have her!" and his grip on Fauchon's
+shoulder tightened, so that a flash of terror passed over the man's
+face, and he tried to edge away, saying deprecatingly, "I've no wish,
+Mr. Girard, you understand--I've no wish to offend. In fact, my whole
+intention was not to cause any trouble. On my honour, I was going to
+leave the island to-morrow, when I found how things were--'tis the truth
+I speak."
+
+"You are her husband," said Peter, "and she loves you, and she shall go
+with you. But if you let her want, God do so unto you, and more also!"
+
+And he let go of him, and strode away again.
+
+When he got back it was dark, and he stood at his cottage door and
+looked in. Louise was sitting by the hearth, with her back to him, and
+her hands in her lap, rocking herself gently on her stool, and gazing
+into the glowing ash on the hearthstone. Opposite, on the other side of
+the hearth, Peter's own stool stood empty, and on the shelf beside it
+were the two yellow porringers, out of which he and Louise used always
+to sup together. His jersey, the one she had knitted for him when they
+were married, hung in the corner, with the bright blue patch in it, that
+she had been mending it with the last time he was at home. Louise was so
+absorbed in her thoughts that she did not hear his approach, and
+stepping softly, he passed in and stood before her; she started back,
+and immediately began to whimper a little, putting up her hands to her
+face.
+
+"Louise," said Peter, "wilt thou forgive me?"
+
+She looked up perplexed, only half believing what she heard.
+
+"I know everything. I have seen Jacques. I was harsh to thee, mon
+enfant."
+
+"I meant no harm," said Louise. "I begged him not to come. I knew thou
+wouldest be angered."
+
+"I am not angered. He is thy husband."
+
+She glanced up with an irrepressible start of eagerness.
+
+"Thou meanest--" Her very desire seemed to take away her speech.
+
+Peter laid his hand on her wrist, as gently as a woman.
+
+"Louise," he said, "thou lovest him?"
+
+She gazed at him in silence; the piercing question in her eyes her only
+answer.
+
+"Thou shalt go with him," he said. "I only came to say goodbye."
+
+He went to the door: then stood and looked back, with a world of
+yearning and tenderness in his face. He stretched out his arms. "Kiss
+me, Louise," he said.
+
+She rose, still half frightened, and kissed him as she was told.
+
+He held her tightly in his arms for a minute, then put her silently from
+him, and turned away.
+
+Peter was not seen in those parts again. It was understood that he and
+his wife had emigrated to New Zealand, and the cottage was sold, and the
+furniture and things dispersed.
+
+In a fishing village on the coast of Brittany, there appeared, not long
+afterwards, a tall Englishman, speaking the Channel Island patois, who
+settled down to make a home among the Breton folk, adopting their ways
+and language, and eking out, like them, a livelihood by hard toil early
+and late among the rocks and sand-banks, or by long months of fishing on
+the high seas; a man on whom the simple-minded villagers looked with a
+certain respect, mingled with awe, as on one who seemed to them marked
+out by heaven for some special fate; who lived alone in his cottage,
+attending to his own wants, no woman being ever allowed to enter it; and
+about whose past nothing was known, and no one dared to ask.
+
+
+[Illustration;]
+
+
+
+
+TABITHA'S AUNT.
+
+
+From the very hour that Tabitha set foot in my house, I conceived a
+dislike for her Aunt. In the first place I did not see why she should
+have an Aunt. Tabitha was going to belong to me: and why an old, invalid
+lady, whose sons were scattered over the face of the earth, and who had
+never had a daughter of her own: who had been clever enough to discover
+a distant relationship to Tabitha, and had promptly matured a plan by
+which Tabitha was to remain always with her; to take the vacant chair
+opposite and pour out tea, and be coddled and kissed and looked
+after--why she might not have Tabitha herself for her whole and sole
+property, I could not understand. But this Aunt was always turning up:
+not visibly, I mean, but in conversation. I could never say which way I
+liked Tabitha's veil to be fastened but I was told Aunt Rennie's opinion
+on the matter--(Tabitha always absurdly shortened her Aunt's surname,
+which was Rensworth). I never could mention a book I liked but Aunt
+Rennie had either read it or not read it. It did not matter which to me,
+the least. But the climax came when Aunt Rennie sent Tabitha a bicycle.
+Now I know that young women bicycle nowadays; but that is no reason why
+Tabitha should. I always turn away my eyes when I see a young girl pass
+the window on one of those ugly, muddy, dangerous machines, with her
+knees working like pumps, her skirt I don't know where, and an
+expression of self-satisfied determination on her face. I don't think I
+am old-fashioned, but I am sure my own dear little girl, if she had ever
+come to me, would not have bicycled; and though I had no wish to put any
+unfair restraint on Tabitha, still I did not want her to have a bicycle.
+And that this Aunt Rennie, as Tabitha would call her, without a word of
+warning, should send her one of those hideous things, as if it was _her_
+business to arrange for Tabitha's exercise--I do think it was rather
+uncalled for.
+
+When Tabitha came into the room to tell me about it, with that bright,
+affectionate smile she has, and her dear, plain, pale face--only that
+nobody would think her plain who knew her, for everybody loves her--she
+saw quickly enough that I did not like it: and then she was so sweet,
+looking so disappointed, and yet ready to give up the horrid thing if I
+wished, that I hardly knew what to do. Tabitha works on one in a way
+that I believe nobody else can. She has such a generous, warm heart, and
+is so responsive, and so quick to understand, and then she is so easily
+pleased, and so free from self-consciousness, you seem to know her all
+at once, and you feel as if it would be wicked to hurt her. So I don't
+know how it was exactly, but I began to give in about the bicycle;
+though I could not help mentioning that it was rather unnecessary for
+Aunt Rennie to have taken the trouble: for Tabitha might have told me if
+she wanted a bicycle so much. And Tabitha said that Aunt Rennie thought
+bicycling was good for her, and, when she lived with her, a year ago,
+her Aunt used to take her on her tours round the villages, distributing,
+what she called "political literature." This did make me shudder, I
+confess. Fancy Tabitha turning into one of those canvassing women, with
+their uncivilised energy, their irritating superiority, and their entire
+want of decent respect for you and your own opinions! I knew that Aunt
+Rennie belonged to a Woman Suffrage Committee, but I did think she had
+left the child uncontaminated. It made me more thankful than ever that I
+had rescued her from the hands of such a person. However, as you see, I
+could not refuse to let Tabitha ride that bicycle; but I always knew
+that harm would come of it.
+
+And it came just in the way of which my inner consciousness had warned
+me. Now, of course, I never really expected to have Tabitha with me all
+her life: but I did want just for a little while to make-believe, as it
+were, that I had a daughter, and to feel as if she were happy and
+content with me. So it was rather hard that such a thing should happen,
+only the second time that she went out on that hideous machine. I can
+see her telling me about it now, kneeling down in her affectionate way
+by my sofa, all flushed and dishevelled after her ride, and with quite a
+new expression on her face. It seemed that she had punctured her
+bicycle (whatever that means) and could not get on: and then an "awfully
+nice man" (she will use the modern slang; in my days we should merely
+have said "a gentleman") came up with his tools and things, and put it
+right for her: and ended by claiming acquaintance and proposing to call,
+"Because, Mammy dear," said Tabitha, "isn't it funny, but he knows Aunt
+Rennie!"
+
+Now, kind reader, I must confess that this was a little too much for me.
+To have Aunt Rennie (in spirit) perpetually between me and Tabitha was
+bad enough: to have her demoralising Tabitha by sending her bicycles was
+still worse: but to have her introducing, (I had nearly said intruding)
+young men into the privacy of my home, and into dangerous proximity with
+Tabitha was, for a moment, more than I could stand.
+
+"Well, my child," said I, "No doubt Miss Rensworth and her friends were
+more amusing than your poor sick Mammy. I suppose it was selfish of me
+to want to have you all to myself. If you would like to go back to your
+Aunt Rennie again, dear child." I added, "you have only to say so."
+
+What Tabitha said in reply I shall never forget; but neither, friendly
+reader, shall I tell it to you. So you must be content with knowing that
+we were friends again; and that the end of it was that I gave in about
+John Chambers--as his name turned out to be--just as I had given in
+about the bicycle.
+
+He came in just as we were having tea the next day, and the worst of it
+was, I had to admit at once that he _was_ nice. Of course this proved
+nothing in regard to Aunt Rennie and her friends: and it was just as
+unreasonable that I should be expected to receive whoever happened to
+know her, as if he had turned out to be vulgar or odious. But, as it
+was, he introduced himself in a sensible, straightforward way, looked
+one straight in the face when he spoke, had a deep, hearty laugh that
+sounded manly and true, and evidently entertained the friendliest
+sentiments for Tabitha.
+
+Well, as you will imagine, kind reader, that tea was not the last he had
+with us. He fell into our ways with delightful readiness; indeed, he was
+rather "old-fashioned," as I call it. He would pour out my second cup of
+tea, if Tabitha happened to be out of the room, as nicely as she herself
+could have done, carefully washing the tea-leaves out of the cup first;
+and he would tell Tabitha if a piece of braid were hanging down from her
+skirt, when they were going bicycling together. We got quite used to
+being kept in order by him in all kinds of little ways, and he grew to
+be so associated with the idea of Tabitha in my mind, that my affection
+for her became in a sort of way an affection for them both. The only
+thing was that, as the months went on, I began to wonder why more did
+not come of it. Sometimes I fancied I noted a reflection of my own
+perplexed doubts crossing Tabitha's sweet, expressive face, and I
+questioned within myself whether I ought (like the fathers in books) to
+ask the young man about his "intentions," and imply that he could not
+expect an unlimited supply of my cups of tea, unless they were made
+clear: but I think that my own delicacy as well as common sense
+prevented my taking such a course, and things were still _in statu quo_,
+when one morning, as I was peacefully mending Tabitha's gloves (she
+_will_ go out with holes in them) a ring at the front door bell was
+followed by the advance of someone in rustling silk garments up the
+stairs: the drawing-room door was opened, and there appeared a
+young-looking, fair lady, who advanced brightly to greet me, with a
+finished society manner, and an expression in her kind, blue eyes of
+unmixed pleasure at the meeting. The name murmured at the door had not
+reached my ears, and I was still wondering which of my child-friends had
+developed into this charming and fashionable young lady, when Tabitha
+burst into the room, flung her arms round the new-comer's neck, and
+exclaimed, "You darling, who would have expected you to turn up so
+charmingly, just when we didn't expect you!"
+
+The light slowly dawned on my amazed intelligence. Could _this_--_this_
+be the formidable, grey-haired woman, with whom I had been expecting,
+and somewhat dreading, sooner or later, an encounter? Could _this_ be
+the spectacled Committee-woman--the rampant bicyclist--the corrupter of
+the youth of Tabitha? I looked at her immaculate dress, and pretty, neat
+hair; I noted the winning expression of her eyes, and her sweetness of
+manner; and instead of entrenching myself in the firm, though unspoken
+hostility, which I had secretly cherished towards the idea of Aunt
+Rennie, I felt myself yielding to the charm of a personality, whose
+richness and sweetness were to me like a new experience of life.
+
+I thought I had grasped the outlines of that personality in the first
+interview, as we often do on forming a new acquaintance; but surprises
+were yet in store for me. Aunt Rennie needed but little pressing to stay
+the night, and then to add a second and a third day to her visit: she
+was staying with some friends in the neighbourhood, and, it appeared,
+could easily transfer herself to us. And as the time went on, I began to
+feel that she had some secondary object in coming and in staying: I
+thought I perceived a kind of diplomatic worldliness in Aunt Rennie,
+which jarred with my first impression of her. I felt sure that her
+purpose was in some way connected with Tabitha and John. She had, of
+course, heard of Tabitha's friendship for him from her own letters, and
+John she had known before we did. Well, it was on the fourth day that
+Aunt Rennie, sitting cosily beside me, startled me by suddenly and
+lightly remarking, that if I would consent, she wished to take Tabitha
+back with her, at any rate for a time, to her home in the South of
+England; she was almost necessary to her in her work at the present
+juncture: no one could act as her Secretary so efficiently as Tabitha
+could.
+
+"Besides, to tell you a little secret," she added, with a charming air
+of confidence and humour, "there is someone besides me that wants
+Tabitha back: there is an excellent prospect for her, if she could only
+turn her thoughts in that direction. You have heard of Horace Wetherell,
+my second cousin--a rising barrister? Ah, well, a little bird has
+whispered things to me. His prospects are now very different from what
+they were when she was with me before, or I don't think she would ever
+have come to you, to say the truth! We must not let her get involved in
+anything doubtful. As you know, I have been acquainted with this John
+Chambers and his family all my life. He is a good fellow enough, but
+will never set the Thames on fire. She is exactly suited to my cousin,
+who is a man of the highest and noblest character, and could not fail to
+make her happy. It is only to take her away for a time, and I feel sure
+all will be well. I knew, my dear friend, that a word to you was enough,
+for Tabitha's sake: and so we will settle it between us."
+
+I said little in reply, for I was suffering keenly. I felt as if this
+fair, clever woman had struck a deliberate blow at my happiness, and in
+a way to leave me resistless. I could not deny that it might be for
+Tabitha's good to go away. Certainly John was poor, and in fact I had
+thought lately that that might be the reason the engagement was delayed.
+Tabitha was only twenty-two, and she might change her mind. I murmured
+that I would leave it to Tabitha to decide; and as Aunt Rennie turned
+away, I remember thinking that she was rather young to decide another
+woman's destiny in such a matter. She was only six years older than
+Tabitha.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Tabitha often says that she owes her present happiness to Aunt Rennie,
+for if it had not been for the misery of the approaching separation,
+John, oppressed by the sense of his poverty and humble prospects, would
+never have had courage to tell her of his love. And I have sometimes
+amused myself by reflecting how Aunt Rennie's shrewdness, intelligence
+and determination, instead of working out her own ends, were all the
+time furthering the thing that was most opposed to her wishes.
+
+When, after those few days that followed--days for me of heart-breaking
+conflict of feeling, and for my two children of tears, silent misery and
+struggling passion, culminating at last, when the storm burst, in
+complete mutual understanding, and a joint determination that carried
+all before it--when, I say, Aunt Rennie, defeated, prepared to take her
+leave, she said a word to me which I often thought of afterwards. "She
+is choosing blindfold, tinsel for gold." I thought of it, not on account
+of the expression, but of Aunt Rennie herself. There was something in
+the pallor of her face, and in her tone, that made me ask myself whether
+there could be anything in this matter that concerned Aunt Rennie
+herself more closely than we thought--and, for the moment, a new and
+motherly feeling rose up in my heart towards her.
+
+Well, she has left me my two children, and though John is only "in
+business," and they live on three hundred a year, they are very happy,
+and I am happy in their happiness.
+
+It was a year after their marriage, that the news came that Aunt Rennie
+was engaged to be married to her cousin. Horace Wetherell. And, as I
+pondered on it. I doubted whether I had, after all, quite understood the
+nobility of Aunt Rennie's character.
+
+Horace Wetherell has become an M.P., and he and his wife write books
+together on social problems.
+
+Poor John will never be an M.P., but I am glad that Tabitha loved him.
+
+
+[Illustration:]
+
+
+
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+<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of A Loose End and Other Stories, by S. Elizabeth Hall</title>
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+<h1>The Project Gutenberg eBook, A Loose End and Other Stories, by S.
+Elizabeth Hall</h1>
+<pre>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at <a href = "https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre>
+<p>Title: A Loose End and Other Stories</p>
+<p>       A Loose End; In a Breton Village; Twice a Child; The Road by the Sea; The Halting Step; Tabitha's Aunt</p>
+<p>Author: S. Elizabeth Hall</p>
+<p>Release Date: May 27, 2005  [eBook #15922]</p>
+<p>Language: English</p>
+<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p>
+<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A LOOSE END AND OTHER STORIES***</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>E-text prepared by Steven Gibbs, Irma Spehar,<br />
+    and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team</h3>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h1>A LOOSE END</h1>
+
+<h3><i>AND OTHER STORIES</i></h3>
+
+<h4>BY</h4>
+
+<h2>S. ELIZABETH HALL</h2>
+
+<h3><i>Author of "The Interloper"</i></h3>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h4><b>London:</b></h4>
+
+<h5>SIMPKIN, MARSHALL HAMILTON, KENT &amp; Co., <span class="smcap">Ltd</span>.
+</h5>
+<h5>LONDON: TRUSLOVE AND BRAY, PRINTERS, WEST NORWOOD, S.E.</h5>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS"></a>CONTENTS.</h2>
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" summary="">
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'>PAGE</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">A Loose End</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_1">1</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">In a Breton Village</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_19">19</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Twice a Child</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_45">45</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Road by the Sea</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_59">59</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Halting Step</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_79">79</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Tabitha's Aunt</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_99">99</a></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="A_LOOSE_END" id="A_LOOSE_END"></a><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1"></a>A LOOSE END.</h2>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Chapter I</span>.</h3>
+
+<div class="figleft">
+<img src="images/initial1.jpg" alt="O" title="O" /></div>
+<p>
+ne September morning, many years ago, when the Channel Islands seemed
+further off than they do now, and for some of them communication with
+the outer world hardly existed, some two hours after the sun had risen
+out of the sea, and while the grass and the low-growing bushes were
+still fresh with the morning dew, a young girl tripped lightly along the
+ridge of a headland which formed the south side of a cove on the coast
+of one of the smaller islands in the group. The ridge ascended gradually
+till it reached a point on which stood a ruined building, that was said
+to have been once a mill, and from which on the right-hand side the path
+began to descend to a narrow landing-place in the cove. The girl stood
+still for a moment when she reached the highest point, and shading her
+eyes looked out to sea. On the opposite side of the cove a huge rock,
+formed into an island by a narrow shaft of water, which in the strife of
+ages had cleared its way between it and the rocky coast, frowned dark
+and solemn in the shadow, its steep and clear-cut sides giving it a
+character of power<a name="Page_2" id="Page_2"></a> and imperturbability that crowned it a king among
+islands. The sea beyond was glittering in the morning sun, but there was
+deep purple shadow in the cove, and under the rocks of the projecting
+headlands, which in fantastic succession on either side threw out their
+weird arms into the sea; while just around the edge of the shore, where
+the water was shallow over rocks and weed, was a girdle of lightest,
+loveliest green. Guernsey, idealized in the morning mist, lay like a
+dream on the horizon. Here and there a fishing-boat, whose sail flashed
+orange when the sun touched it, was tossing on the waves; nearer in a
+boat with furled sail was cautiously making for the narrow passage&mdash;the
+Devil's Drift, as the fishermen called it&mdash;between the island and the
+mainland, a passage only traversed with oars, the oarsmen facing
+forwards; while the two occupants of another were just taking down their
+sail preparatory to rowing direct for the landing-place.</p>
+
+<p>The moment the girl caught sight of this last boat she began rapidly to
+descend the 300 feet of cliff which separated her from the cove below.
+The path began in easy zig-zags, which, however, got gradually steeper,
+and the last thirty feet of the descent consisted of a sheer face of
+rock, in which were fixed two or three iron stanchions with a rope
+running from one to the other to serve as a handrail; and the climber
+must depend for other assistance on the natural irregularities of the
+rock, which provided here and there an insecure foothold. The girl,
+however, sprang<a name="Page_3" id="Page_3"></a> down the dangerous path, without the slightest
+hesitation, though her skilful balance and dexterity of hand and foot
+showed that her security was the result of practice.</p>
+
+<p>By the time she had reached the narrow strip of beach, one of the few
+and difficult landing-places which the island offered, the two fishermen
+were already out of the boat, which they were mooring to an iron ring
+fastened in the rock. One of the men was young; the other might be, from
+his appearance, between sixty and seventy. A strange jerking gait, which
+was disclosed as soon as he began to move on his own feet, suggested the
+idea that his natural habitat was the sea, and that he was as little at
+ease on land as some kinds of waterfowl appear to be when walking. He
+could not hold himself upright when on one foot, so that his whole
+person turned first to one side and then to the other as he walked.</p>
+
+<p>"Marie!" he called to the girl as she alighted at the bottom of the
+cliff, and he shouted something briefly which the strange jargon in
+which it was spoken and the gruff, wind-roughened voice of the speaker,
+would have made unintelligible to any but a native of the islands.</p>
+
+<p>The girl, without replying, took the basket of fish which he handed her,
+slung it on her back by a rope passed over one shoulder, and stationed
+herself at the foot of the path, waiting for him to begin the ascent:
+the younger man, who was busy with the tackle of the boat, apparently
+intending to stay behind.</p>
+
+<p>When the old man had placed himself in<a name="Page_4" id="Page_4"></a> position to begin the ascent,
+with both hands on the rope, and all his weight on one leg, the girl
+stooped down, and placing her lithe hands round his great wet
+fisherman's boot, deftly lifted the other foot and placed it in the
+right position on the first ledge of rock.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, Daddy, hoist away!" she cried in her clear, piping voice, using,
+like her father, the island dialect; and he dragged himself up to the
+first iron hold, wriggling his large, awkward form into strange
+contortions, till he found a secure position and could wait till his
+young assistant was beside him once more. She sprang up like a cat and
+balanced herself safely within reach of him. It was odd to see the
+implicit confidence with which he let her lift and place his feet;
+having now to support herself by the rope she had only one hand to
+spare; but the feat was accomplished each time with the same precision
+and skill, till the precipitous part of the ascent was passed and they
+had commenced the zigzag path.</p>
+
+<p>Then Marie took her daddy's arm under hers, and carefully steadied the
+difficult, ricketty gait, supporting the heavy figure with a practised
+skill which took the place of strength in her slight frame. Her features
+were formed after the same pattern as his, the definite profile, tense
+spreading nostril, and firm lips, being repeated with merely feminine
+modifications; and as her clear, merry eyes, freshened by the
+sea-breeze, flashed with fun at the stumblings and uncertainties of
+their course, they met the same expression of mirth in his hard-set,
+rocky face.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5"></a>"You've got a rare job, child!" said he, as they stood still for breath
+at a turning in the path, "a basket of fish to lug up, as well as your
+old daddy. He'd ought to have brought them as far as the turning for
+you."</p>
+
+<p>"I'd sooner have their company than his, any day," with a little <i>moue</i>
+in the direction of the cove. "I just wish you wouldn't take him out
+fishing with you, Daddy, that I do!"</p>
+
+<p>"Why not, girl?"</p>
+
+<p>"It's he as works for himself and cares for himself and for no one else,
+does Pierre," said the girl. "Comin' a moonin' round and pretending he's
+after courting me, when all he wants, with takin' the fish round and
+that, is to get the custom into his own hands, and tells folks, if <i>he</i>
+had the ordering of it, there'd be no fear about them getting their fish
+punctual."</p>
+
+<p>"Tells 'em that, does he?" said the father, his sea-blue eyes suddenly
+clouding over.</p>
+
+<p>"That he does; and says he'd take up the inshore fishing, if he'd the
+money to spend: and they should be supplied regular with crabs and
+shrimps and such; and then drops a word that poor Andr&eacute; he's gettin'
+old, and what with being lame, and one thing and another, what can you
+expect, and such blathers!"</p>
+
+<p>"Diable! Do you know that for certain, child?" said Andr&eacute;, stopping in
+the path, and turning round upon her with a face ablaze with anger. "I
+should like to hear him sayin' that, I should."</p>
+
+<p>"Now, Daddy," she cried with a sudden change<a name="Page_6" id="Page_6"></a> of tone, "don't you be
+getting into one of your tantrums with him. Don't, there's a dear Daddy!
+I only told you, so you shouldn't be putting too much into his hands.
+But he'd be the one that would come best out of a quarrel. He's only
+looking for a chance of doin' you a mischief, it's my belief."</p>
+
+<p>"H'm! 'Poor Andr&eacute; a gettin' old,' is he?" grunted her father, somewhat
+calmed. "Poor Andr&eacute; won't be takin' <i>him</i> out with him again just yet
+awhile&mdash;that's a certain thing. Paul Nevin would suit me a deal better
+in many ways, only I' bin keepin' Pierre on out o' charity, his pore
+father havin' bin a pal o' mine. But he's a deal stronger in the arms,
+is Paul."</p>
+
+<p>They reached the cottage, which stood on the first piece of level ground
+on the way to the mainland. There was no other building within sight;
+and with its bleak boulders and rocks of strangest form, in perpetual
+death-struggle with the mighty force of ocean, resounding night and day
+with the rush and tramp of the wild sea-horses, as they flung themselves
+in despair on their rocky adversary, and with the many voices of the
+winds, which scarcely ever ceased blowing in that exposed spot, while
+the weird notes of the sea-fowl floated in the air, like the cries of
+wandering spirits, the solitary headland seemed indeed as if it might be
+the world's end.</p>
+
+<p>The cottage consisted of one room, and a lean-to. Nearly half the room
+was taken up with a big bed, and on the other side were the fire-place
+and cooking utensils. Opposite the door was a<a name="Page_7" id="Page_7"></a> box-sofa, on which Marie
+had slept since she was a child, and which with a small table, two
+chairs and a stool, completed the furniture of the room; the only light
+was that admitted by the doorway, the door nearly always standing open;
+the lean-to was little more than a dog-kennel, being formed in fact out
+of a great heap of stones and rubbish, which had been piled up as a
+protection to the cottage on the windward side; and three dogs and two
+hens were enjoying themselves in front of the fire.</p>
+
+<p>It was here that Marie had lived, ever since she could remember, in
+close and contented companionship with her father: whom indeed,
+especially since he had the fever which crippled him three years before,
+she had fed, clothed, nursed and guarded with a care almost more
+motherly than filial.</p>
+
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Chapter II</span>.</h3>
+
+<p>Marie was leaning over the low wall of a cottage garden in the
+'village,' as a clump of small houses at the meeting of four cross-roads
+was called, and waiting for the kail which she had come to buy for the
+evening's soup from Mrs. Nevin, who cultivated a little plot of ground
+with fruit and vegetables. The back-door of the cottage, which opened on
+the garden, was ajar, and she could hear some one enter from the front
+with a heavy tread, and call out in a big, jovial voice, "Hullo, Mother,
+we're in luck to-day! You'd never guess who's goin' to take me on. Lame
+Andr&eacute;, he's<a name="Page_8" id="Page_8"></a> goin' to give Pierre the sack, and says he'll have me for a
+time or two to try. Says I'm strong in the shoulders, and he guesses I
+can do him more good than Pierre. I should think I easy could too, a
+pinch-faced whipper-snapper like that!"</p>
+
+<p>"And high time it is too that Andr&eacute; had his eyes opened," rejoined Mrs.
+Nevin; "often it is I've told Marie, as there she stands, that her
+father don't ought to trust the fish-sellin' too much to that Pierre: a
+lad as could rob his own grandmother the moment the life was out o' her
+body."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Mother, you've often told me about that five franc piece, but
+nobody can't say that she hadn't given it him before she died, as he
+said&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Given it him, I should think so, when she never would have aught to say
+to him for all his wheedling ways, and his brother Jacques was her
+favourite; and poor old lady if she'd a known that Pierre was goin' to
+be alone with her, when she went off suddint in a fit, I guess she'd a
+locked up her purse first, I do."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I must say he turned a queer colour when he heard Andr&eacute; say he
+didn't want him no more: and you should have seen the look he gave him,
+sort of squintin' out of his eyes at him, when he went away. He ain't a
+man I would like to meet unawares in a dark lane, if I'd a quarrel with
+him."</p>
+
+<p>"Hullo, where's Marie?" cried Mrs. Nevin, coming out of the door with
+the kail ready washed in her hand. "She never took offence at what we<a name="Page_9" id="Page_9"></a>
+was sayin', think you? Folks did say, to be sure, that she and Pierre
+was sweet on one another some time since. Well, she's gone, any way,"
+and the good woman stood for a few minutes in some dismay, shading her
+eyes as she looked down the road.</p>
+
+<p>Marie's slight, girlish figure vanished quickly round the turning in the
+lane, and Mrs. Nevin could not see her pass swiftly by her own cottage,
+and up the ridge to the old mill. When she reached the point at which
+the path began to descend to the cove, she paused and looked down. The
+keen glance and alert figure, poised on guard, suggested the idea of a
+mother bird watching her nest from afar. The tide had gone out
+sufficiently for the boats to be drawn up on the eight or ten feet of
+the shelving shore, which was thus laid bare, and the glowing light of
+the sunset touched in slanting rays the head and hands of an old man
+seated on a rock and bending over some fishing tackle, which he seemed
+to be repairing.</p>
+
+<p>Round the extreme point of the headland, which in a succession of
+uncouth shapes dropped its rocky outline into the shadowy purple sea,
+there was visible, hastily clambering across pathless boulders, another
+man, of a young and lithe figure, and with something in the eager,
+forward thrust of the head, crouching gait, and swift, deft footing that
+resembled an animal of the cat species when about to leap on its prey.
+He was evidently making for the cove, but would have to take the rope
+path in order to reach it, as there was no way of approaching it on that
+side except over the<a name="Page_10" id="Page_10"></a> sheer face of rock. Marie was further from the
+rope than he was, but her path was easier. The moment her eye caught
+sight of the crouching, creeping figure, she sped like a hare down the
+path, till she reached a point at which she was on a level with the man,
+at a distance of about a hundred feet. There she stood, uncertain a
+moment, then turned to meet him. He seemed too intent on his object in
+the cove to notice her advance, till she was within speaking distance,
+when she suddenly called to him "Pierre!"</p>
+
+<p>Her clear, defiant tone put the meaning of a whole discourse into the
+word. The man turned sharply round with an expression of vindictive
+malice in his fox-like face.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, what do you want?"</p>
+
+<p>"What are you doing here, please?"</p>
+
+<p>"What's that to you, I should like to know?"</p>
+
+<p>"Come nearer, then I can hear what you say."</p>
+
+<p>"I sha'n't come no nearer than I choose."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be afraid. I ain't a-goin' to hurt you!"</p>
+
+<p>The taunt seemed to have effect, for he leaped hurriedly along over the
+rocky path, with an angry, threatening air that would have frightened
+some girls. Marie stood like the rock beneath her.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, Miss, I'll teach you to come interfering with business that's none
+o' yourn. What, you thought you'd come after me, did yer? because you
+was tired o' waitin' for me to come after you again, I suppose."</p>
+
+<p>"What is that you're carryin' in your belt?" she demanded calmly. A
+handle was seen stick<a name="Page_11" id="Page_11"></a>ing up under his fisherman's blouse. "You believe
+its safer to climb the rocks with a butcher's knife in your pocket, do
+you? You think in case of an accident it would make you fall a bit
+softer, hey?"</p>
+
+<p>"It don't matter to you what I've got in my pocket," he rejoined, but
+his tone was uncertain. "I brought it to cut the tackle&mdash;we've got a job
+of mending to do."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know whether you think me an idiot," she replied; "but if you
+want me to believe your stories you'd better invent 'em more reasonable.
+Now, Pierre, this is what you've got to do before you leave this spot.
+You've got to promise me solemnly not to go near Daddy, nor threaten him
+as you once threatened me on a day you may remember, nor try to
+intimidate him into takin' you back. Neither down in the cove, nor
+anything else: neither now, nor at any other time."</p>
+
+<p>Her girlish figure as she stood with one arm clasping the rock beside
+her, looked a slight enough obstacle in the path.</p>
+
+<p>"Intimidate him! A parcel o' rubbish; who's goin' to intimidate him as
+you call it. Get out o' the way, and don't go meddling in men's concerns
+that you know nothing about."</p>
+
+<p>He seized her wrist roughly, and with her precarious footing the
+position was dangerous enough: but she clung with her other arm like a
+limpit to the rock. He attempted to dislodge her, when she suddenly
+turned and fled back on her own accord. He hastened after her, and it
+was not till he had gone some yards that, putting his<a name="Page_12" id="Page_12"></a> hand to his belt,
+he found that the knife had gone.</p>
+
+<p>"The jade," he muttered, "she did it on purpose," and even with his
+hatred and malice was mingled a gleam of admiration at the cleverness
+that had outwitted him. He hurried on towards the cliff path, but the
+sunset light was already fading into dusk, and he had to choose his
+footing more carefully. When he reached the point where the rope began,
+Marie had already gone down and was leaning on the rock beside her
+father. Had he been near he might have noticed a strange expression in
+her eyes, as she furtively watched the precipitous descent. The purple
+shadows now filled both sky and sea, and the island opposite reared its
+grand outline solemnly in the twilight depths, as though sitting in
+eternal judgment on the transient ways of men. The evening star shone
+softly above the sea. Suddenly a crash, followed by one sharp cry, was
+heard; then all was still.</p>
+
+<p>"Good God! That's some one fallen down the path&mdash;why don't you go and
+see, child?" but Marie seemed as if she could not stir. Old Andr&eacute; slowly
+dragged himself on to his feet, and took her arm, and they went
+together. At the foot of the path they found the body of Pierre, dead,
+his head having struck against a rock.</p>
+
+<p>"He must have missed his footing in the dark," said Andr&eacute;, when they had
+rowed round to the fishing village to carry the news, and the solitary
+constable had bustled forth, and was endeavouring to collect information
+about the accident<a name="Page_13" id="Page_13"></a> from the only two witnesses, of whom the girl seemed
+to have lost the power of speech.</p>
+
+<p>"He must have missed his footing in the dark; and then the rope broke
+with his weight and the clutch he give it. It lies there all loose on
+the ground."</p>
+
+<p>"It shouldn't have broken," said the constable. "But I always did say
+we'd ought to have an iron chain down there."</p>
+
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Chapter III</span>.</h3>
+
+<p>Fifty years had passed, with all their seasons' changes, and the
+changing life of nature both by land and sea, and had made as little
+impression on the island as the ceaseless dashing of the waves against
+its coast. The cliffs, the caves and the sea-beaten boulders were the
+same; the colours of the bracken on the September hills, and of the sea
+anemones in their green, pellucid pools, were the same, and the
+fishermen's path down to the cove was the same. No iron chain had been
+put there, but the rope had never broken again.</p>
+
+<p>A violent south-west gale was blowing, driving scud and sea-foam before
+it, while ever new armies of rain-clouds advanced threateningly across
+the shadowy waters&mdash;mighty, moving mists, whose grey-winged squadrons,
+swift and irresistible, enveloped and almost blotted from sight the
+little rock-bound island, against which the forces of nature seemed to
+be for ever spending themselves in vain. From time to time through a gap
+in the shifting cloud-ranks there shone a sudden dazzling<a name="Page_14" id="Page_14"></a> gleam of
+sunlight on the white crests of the sea-horses far away.</p>
+
+<p>The good French pastor, who struggled to discharge the offices of
+religion in that impoverished and for the most part socially abandoned
+spot, had just allowed himself to be persuaded by his wife that it was
+unnecessary to visit his sick parishioner at the other end of the island
+that afternoon, when a loud rat-tat was heard in the midst of a shriek
+of wind, through a grudged inch of open door-way. The hurricane burst
+into the house while a dripping, breathless girl panted forth her
+message, that "old Marie" had been suddenly taken bad, and was dying,
+and wanted but one thing in the world, to see the Vicar.</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder what it is she has got to say," said the Vicar, as his wife
+buttoned his mackintosh up to his throat. "I always did think there was
+something strange about old Marie."</p>
+
+<p>A mile of bitter, breathless battling with the storm, then a close
+cottage-room, with rain-flooded floor, the one small window carefully
+darkened, and on a pillow in the furthest corner, shaded by heavy
+bed-curtains, a wrinkled old woman's face, pinched and colourless, on
+which the hand of Death lay visibly.</p>
+
+<p>But in the eagerness with which she signed to the pastor to come close,
+and in the keen glance she cast round the room to see that no one else
+was near, the vigour of life still asserted itself.</p>
+
+<p>"I've somewhat to tell you, Father," she began in a rapid undertone, in
+the island dialect. "I can't carry it to the grave with me, tho' I've<a name="Page_15" id="Page_15"></a>
+borne it in my conscience all my life. When I was a young lass it
+happened, when things was different, and the men were rougher than now,
+and strange deeds might be done from time to time, and never come under
+the eye o' the law. And you must judge me, Father, by the way things was
+then, for that was what I had to think of when it all happened.</p>
+
+<p>"There was a young man that used to come a' courting me when I was a
+lass o' nineteen, and he had a black heart for all he spoke so fair; but
+I didn't see it at the first, and he was that cliver and insinuatin',
+and had such a way o' talkin', and made so much o' me, I couldn't but
+listen to him for a while. And he used to go out fishin' wi' my father,
+and Daddy, he was lame, so Pierre used to take the fish round and do
+jobs with the boats for him, and this and that, so as Daddy thought a
+rare lot o' him; and when he seed we was thinkin' o' each other, he sort
+o' thought he'd leave the business to him and me, and we'd be able to
+keep him when he got too old to go out any more. And all was goin'
+right, when one day Pierre says to me, would I go out in the boat and
+row with him to the village, as he'd got a creel of crabs to take round,
+so I got in and we rowed: and we went through the Devil's Drift, and he
+says to me sudden like, 'When we're man and wife, Marie, what'll your
+father do to keep hisself?' 'Keep hisself,' I said, 'why ain't we agoin'
+to keep him?' And then he began such a palaver about a man bein' bound
+to keep his wife but not his father-in-law, and it not bein' fit for
+three grown people to<a name="Page_16" id="Page_16"></a> live in one room, as if my father and mother and
+his father afore him and all his brothers and sisters hadn't lived in
+this very room that now I lie a-dyin' in; and I said 'well, as I see it,
+if you take Daddy's custom off of him, you're bound to keep Daddy.' And
+he said that wasn't his way o' lookin' at it, and I went into a sudden
+anger, and declared I wouldn't have nought to do with a man that could
+treat my Daddy so, and he was just turning the boat round to go into the
+Drift, and there came such an evil look in his eyes so as it seemed to
+go through my bones like a knife, and he said 'You shall repent this one
+day&mdash;you and your daddy too,' and I said not another word and he began
+to row forwards through the Devil's Drift. And somehow bein' there alone
+with him in that fearsome place, when a foot's error one side or the
+other may mean instant death, as he sat facin' me I seemed to see the
+black heart of him, as I'd never seen it before, and there was summat
+came over me and made me feel my life was in his hands, in the hands of
+my enemy.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I said no more to him, not one word good or bad, the rest of that
+evenin's row, and I never went out with him no more. But now, Father,
+this is what I want to say&mdash;for my breath is a goin' from me every
+minute&mdash;my Daddy, he was like my child to me, me that have never had a
+child of my own. I had watched him and cared for him as if I was his
+mother, 'stead of his bein' my father, and a hurt to him was like a hurt
+to me: and when that man talked o' leavin' him to fend for himself in
+his old age, the thought seemed<a name="Page_17" id="Page_17"></a> as if it would break my heart: and now
+I knew he had an enemy, and a pitiless enemy: and I tried to stop him
+goin' out alone with Pierre, and I wanted him to get rid o' him out of
+the fishing business altogether, and father he took it up so, when I
+told him Pierre said he was gettin' too old to manage for hisself, that
+he up and dismissed him that very day: and then I heard Lisette Nevin
+and Paul talkin' and savin' how ill Pierre had taken it, and I seemed to
+see his face with the evil look on it; and something seemed to say in my
+heart that Daddy was in danger, and I couldn't stop a moment; I went
+flying to the cove where I knew he'd gone by hisself, and there from the
+top of the path I saw the other one creeping, closer and closer, like a
+cruel beast of prey as he was: and I went down and I met him, and he'd a
+knife in his belt, and of one thing I was certain, he might have been
+only goin' to frighten Daddy, but he meant him no good."</p>
+
+<p>She lowered her voice, and spoke in a hoarse whisper.</p>
+
+<p>"Father, do you understand? Here was a man without ruth or pity, and
+with a sore grudge in his black heart. Was I to trust my Daddy to his
+hands, and him old and lame?" She paused another moment, then drew the
+Vicar close to her and whispered in his ear, "I cut the rope. I knew he
+was followin' me. I let myself halfway down, then clung to the iron hold
+and cut the rope, with the knife I'd taken from him. It was at the risk
+of my life I did it. And he followed me, and he fell and was killed.
+Father, will God<a name="Page_18" id="Page_18"></a> punish me for it? It has blighted my life. I have
+never been like other women. I never was wed, for how could I tend
+little children with blood on my hands? And the children shrank from me,
+or I thought they did. But it was for Daddy's sake. He had a happy old
+age, and he gave me his blessing when he died. Father"&mdash;her voice became
+almost inaudible&mdash;"when I stand before God's throne&mdash;will God
+remember&mdash;it was for Daddy's sake?"</p>
+
+<p>The failing eye was fixed on the pastor's face, as if it would search
+his soul for the truth. The fellow-being, on whom she laid so great a
+burden, for one moment, quailed: then spoke assuring words of the mercy
+of that God to whom all hearts are open: but already the ebbing
+strength, too severely strained in the effort of disclosure, was passing
+away, and the words of comfort were spoken to ears that were closed in
+death.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 50%;' />
+
+<p>Under the South wall of the island burying-ground is a nameless grave:
+where in the summer days fragments of toys and nose-gays are often to be
+seen scattered about; for the sunny corner is a favourite play-place,
+and the voices of children sound there; and they trample with their
+little feet the grass above Marie's grave, and strew wild flowers on it.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="IN_A_BRETON_VILLAGE" id="IN_A_BRETON_VILLAGE"></a><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19"></a>IN A BRETON VILLAGE.</h2>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Part I</span>.</h3>
+
+<div class="figleft">
+<img src="images/initial2.jpg" alt="I" title="I" /></div>
+<p>
+n a wild and little-known part of the coast of Brittany, where, in
+place of sandy beach or cliff, huge granite boulders lie strewn along
+the shore, like the ruins of some Titan city, and assuming, here the
+features of some uncouth monster, there the outline of some gigantic
+fortress, present an aspect of mingled farce and solemnity, and give the
+whole region the air of some connection with the under-world,&mdash;on this
+coast, and low down among the boulders out to sea, stands a little
+fishing village.</p>
+
+<p>The granite cottages with their thatched roofs&mdash;bits of warm colour
+among the bare rocks&mdash;lie on a tongue of land between the two inlets of
+the sea, which, when the tides run high, nearly cut them off from the
+mainland. Opposite the village on the other side of the little inland
+sea, is a second cluster of piled-up rocks thrust forth, like the fist
+of a giant, to defy the onslaught of Neptune, and on a plateau near the
+summit, is the skeleton of a house, built for a summer residence by a
+Russian Prince, who had a fancy for solitude<a name="Page_20" id="Page_20"></a> and sea air, but abandoned
+for some reason before the interior was completed. Solitary and
+lifeless, summer and winter, it looks silently down like a wall-eyed
+ghost over the waste of rocks and sea.</p>
+
+<p>Below the house and close down by the seashore, is a low, thatched
+cottage, built against the rock, which forms its back wall, and on to
+which the rough granite blocks of which the cottage is constructed are
+rudely cemented with earth and clay; the floor also consists of the
+living rock, not levelled, but just as the foot of the wanderer had
+trodden it under the winds of heaven for ages before the cottage was
+built. In this primitive dwelling&mdash;which was not, however, more rude
+than many of the fishermen's cottages along the coast&mdash;there lived, a
+few years since, three persons: old Aim&eacute;e Kaudren, aged seventy, who
+with her snow-white cap and sabots, and her keen clear-cut face, might
+have been seen any day in or near the cottage, cutting the gorse-bushes
+that grew about the rocks for firing, leading the cow home from her
+scanty bit of grazing, kneeling on the stone edge of the pond by the
+well, to wash the clothes, or within doors cooking the soup in the huge
+cauldron that stood on the granite hearth. A sight indeed it was to see
+the aged dame bending over the tripod, with the dried gorse blazing
+beneath it, while its glow illumined the dark, cavernous chimney above,
+was flashed back from the polished doors of the great oak chest, with
+its burnished brass handles, and from the spotless<a name="Page_21" id="Page_21"></a> copper saucepans
+hanging on the walls; and brightened the red curtains of the cosy
+box-bedstead in the corner by the fire.</p>
+
+<p>The second inhabitant of the cottage was Aim&eacute;e's son, Jean, the
+fisherman, with his blue blouse, and his swarthy, rough-hewn face,
+beaten by wind and weather into an odd sort of resemblance to the rocks
+among which he passed his life&mdash;the hardy and primitive life to which he
+had been born, and to which all his ideas were limited, a life of
+continual struggle with the elements for the satisfaction of primary
+needs, and which was directed by the movements of nature, by the tides,
+the winds, and the rising and setting of the sun and the moon.</p>
+
+<p>And thirdly there was Jean's nephew, Antoine.</p>
+
+<p>The day before Antoine was born, his father had been drowned in a storm
+which had wrecked many of the fishing-boats along the coast, and his
+mother, from the shock of the news, gave premature birth to her babe,
+and died a few hours after. His grandmother had brought up the child,
+and his silent, rough-handed uncle had adopted him, and worked for him,
+as if he were his own. So the little Antoine, with his blond head, and
+his little bare feet, grew up in the rock-hewn cottage, like a bright
+gorse-flower among the boulders, and spent an untaught childhood,
+pattering about the granite floor, or clambering over the rough rocks,
+and dabbling in the salt water, where he would watch the beautiful green
+anemones, that had so many fingers but no hands, and which he never
+touched, because, if he did, they spoilt themselves<a name="Page_22" id="Page_22"></a> directly, packing
+their fingers up very quickly, so that they went into nowhere: or the
+prawns, that he always thought were the spirits of the other fish, for
+they looked as if they were made of nothing, and they lay so still under
+a stone, as if they were not there, and then darted so quickly across
+the pool that you could not see them go.</p>
+
+<p>Antoine knew a great deal about the spirits: how there were evil ones,
+such as that which dwelt in the great mushroom stone out yonder to sea,
+which was very powerful and wicked, so that the stone, being in fear,
+always trembled, yet could not fall, because the evil spirit would not
+let it: and then there were others which haunted the little valley
+beyond Esquinel Point, where you must not go after dark, for the spirits
+took the form of Little Men, who had the power to send astray the wits
+of any that met them. Antoine feared those spirits more than any of the
+others: they were so cunning and wanted to do you harm on purpose: and
+when he went with his grandmother to pray in the little chapel on the
+shore, he used to trot away from her side, as she knelt on her chair
+with clasped hands and devoutly murmuring lips; and he would wander over
+the rugged stone floor, till he found the niche in the wall where St.
+Nicholas stood, wearing a blue cloak with a pink border, and having such
+lovely pink cheeks: the kind St. Nicholas that took care of little
+children, and that had three little boys without any clothes on always
+with him, in the kind of little boat he stood in. And Antoine<a name="Page_23" id="Page_23"></a> would
+pray a childish prayer to St. Nicholas to protect him from the evil
+spirits of the valley.</p>
+
+<p>Antoine grew up very tall and strong. He accompanied Jean on his fishing
+expeditions from the time he was twelve years old, and his uncle used to
+say that he was of more use than many a grown man. He knew every rock
+and even-current along that dangerous coast: he could trim the boat to
+the wind through narrow channels in weather in which Jean would hardly
+venture to do it himself: and the way in which the fish took his bait
+made Jean sometimes cross himself, as he counted over the shining
+boat-load of bream and cod, and mutter in his guttural Breton speech,
+"'Tis the blessed St. Yvon aids him." Everybody liked him in the
+village, and he took a kind of lead among the other lads, but, whether
+it was the grave gaze of his blue eyes, or his earnest, outright speech,
+or some other quality about him less easy to define, they all had the
+same kind of feeling in regard to him that his uncle had. He was
+different from themselves. There were indeed some among them in whom
+this acknowledged superiority inspired envy and ill-will, and one in
+particular, a lad that went lame with a club foot, but who had a
+beautiful countenance, with dark, glowing eyes and finely-cut features,
+never lost an opportunity of saying an ill word of, or doing an ill turn
+to Antoine. Geoffroi Le Cocq seemed never far off, wherever Antoine
+might be. He would lounge in the doorway of the caf&eacute;, watching for him,
+and sing a mocking song as he passed down the road. He would mimic his
+sayings<a name="Page_24" id="Page_24"></a> among the other lads, who were not, however, very ready to join
+in deriding him. And once he contrived to poison the Kaudrens' bait,
+just when weather and season were at their best for fishing, so that
+Antoine brought not a single fish home. Jean, with the quick-blazing
+anger of his race, declared that if he could find the man who had done
+it, he would "break his skull." But Antoine, though he knew well enough
+who had done it, held his peace. Geoffroi was quicker of speech than
+Antoine, and on the Sunday, when the whole village trooped out of the
+little chapel after mass, and streamed down the winding village road,
+the women in their white coiffes and black shawls, and the men in their
+round Breton hats with buckles and streaming ribbons, while knots began
+to collect about the doors of the village caf&eacute;s, and laughter, gossip
+and the sound of the fiddle arose on the sunny air, Geoffroi would
+gather a circle round him to hear his quips and odd stories, and to join
+in the fun that he would mercilessly make of others less quick than
+himself at repartee. It was extraordinary on these occasions how
+Geoffroi, like a spider in his web on the watch for a fly, would
+contrive to draw Antoine into his circle, sometimes as though it were
+merely to show off his cleverness before him, at other times adroitly
+lighting on some quaint habit or saying of Antoine's, holding it up to
+ridicule, now in one light, now in another, with a versatility that
+would have made his fortune as a comedian, and returning to the charge
+again and again, in the hope, as it seemed, of provoking Antoine's
+seldom-stirred<a name="Page_25" id="Page_25"></a> anger: but in this entirely failing, for Antoine would
+generally join heartily in the laugh himself. Only once did a convulsion
+of anger seize him, and he strode forward in the throng and gave
+Geoffroi the lie to his face, when the latter had said that Marie
+Pierr&eacute;s kissed him in the Valley of Dwarfs, the evening before. He knew
+that Geoffroi only said it to spite him; for Marie&mdash;the daughter of
+Jean's partner&mdash;was his fianc&eacute;e, and was as true as gold: but the image
+the words called up convulsed his brain; a blind impulse sprang up
+within him to strike and crush that beautiful face of Geoffroi's. He
+clenched his fist and dared him to repeat the words. Geoffroi would only
+reply, in his venomous way, "Come to-night to the Valley and see if I
+lie." And the same instant the keen, strident voice was silenced by one
+straight blow from Antoine's fist.</p>
+
+<p>In the confused clamour of harsh Breton speech that arose, as neighbours
+rushed to separate the two and friends took one side or the other,
+Antoine strode away with a brain on fire and a mind intent on one
+object&mdash;to prove the lie at once.</p>
+
+<p>To go to the Valley of Dwarfs in order to spy on Marie and Geoffroi was
+impossible to him. But he marched straight off to Marie's cottage. He
+knew she would deny the charge, and her word was as good as the Blessed
+Gospel: but he longed to hear the denial from her lips. He pictured her
+as she would look when she spoke: the hurt, innocent expression of her
+candid eyes: her rosy cheeks flushing a deeper red under her demure
+snow-white cap: her child-like lips uttering earnest<a name="Page_26" id="Page_26"></a> and indignant
+protestation. When he reached the cottage, he found the door locked; no
+one was about; he leaned his elbows on the low, stone wall in front and
+waited.</p>
+
+<p>Presently clattering sabots were heard coming down the road, and he
+perceived old Jeanne Le Gall trudging along, her back nearly bent double
+under a large bundle of dried sea-weed. She and her goat lived in the
+low, rubble-built hovel, that adjoined the Pierr&eacute;s' cottage, and from
+her lonely, eccentric habits, and uncanny appearance, she had the
+reputation of being a sorceress. Antoine called to her to know where
+Marie was.</p>
+
+<p>"Gone to the widow Conan's," mumbled the old woman, her strange eyes
+gleaming under the sprays of sea-weed, "she and her father and mother,
+all of them."</p>
+
+<p>She deposited her load, and hobbled off again, fixing her eyes on
+Antoine as she turned away, but saying nothing more.</p>
+
+<p>Antoine strolled a little down the lane, seated himself on the steps of
+the cross at the corner, and waited&mdash;evening was drawing on and they
+were sure to return before dark.</p>
+
+<p>Presently the cluck, cluck of the sabots was heard again, and old Jeanne
+slowly approached him from behind. She said something in her toothless,
+mumbling way, and held out a crumpled bit of paper in her shaking hand.
+He opened it and read, scrawled as if in haste, in ill-spelt Breton:</p>
+
+<p>"I go to a baptism at St. Jean-du-Pied, and cannot return before
+sun-down. Meet me at the<a name="Page_27" id="Page_27"></a> cross on the hill-side at six o'clock, as I
+fear to pass through the valley alone in the dark. Marie."</p>
+
+<p>As he studied the writing, the old woman's mumblings became more
+articulate. She was saying, "'Twas the child Conan should have brought
+it an hour ago. But he is ever good-for-nothing, and forgot it."</p>
+
+<p>Antoine looked at the sun, which was already westering, and perceived
+that he must set out to meet Marie in half-an-hour. He got up and walked
+slowly towards the sandy shore of the little inlet, wide and wet at low
+tide, on the other side of which lay his own home. He walked slowly, but
+he felt as if he were hurrying at a headlong pace. The thought kept
+going round and round in his brain like a little torturing wheel, which
+nothing would stop, that after all Marie <i>was</i> going to the Dwarf's
+Valley this evening, just as Geoffroi had said. Geoffroi's words were
+still sounding in his ears, and his right hand was clenched, as he had
+clenched it when the whirlwind of anger first convulsed him.</p>
+
+<p>He entered his own cottage, hardly knowing what he did.</p>
+
+<p>Old Aim&eacute;e was bending over the cauldron, cutting up cabbage for the
+soup.</p>
+
+<p>"Good-bye, Grandmother," he said. "I am going to the Dwarf's Valley."</p>
+
+<p>Aim&eacute;e looked up at him out of her keen old eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"And why are you going there in the dark?" she said, "'Tis an evil
+meeting place after the sun has set."</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28"></a>"Why do you say meeting place, Grandmother Whom do you think I am going
+to meet there?"</p>
+
+<p>"The blessed Saints protect you," she replied, "less you should meet
+Whom you would not."</p>
+
+<p>Antoine strode out again, without saying more. He fancied he was in the
+Valley of Dwarfs already, about to meet Marie. He saw the weird, gnarled
+trunks of trees on either hand, that grew among&mdash;sometimes writhed
+around&mdash;the huge fantastic boulders: the dark cave-like recesses, formed
+strangely between and under them where the dwarfs lay hidden to emerge
+at dusk: the sides of the ravine towering up stern and gloomy on either
+hand: and high above all against the sky, the grey stone cross at which
+he was to meet Marie. He saw it all as if he were there, and the ground
+beneath him, as he tramped on, seemed unreal. Twilight was already
+falling over the rocks and the grey sea: there were no lights in the
+village, except such as shone here and there in a cottage window: the
+distant roar of the sea was heard, as it dashed over a long line of
+rocks two or three miles out, but there was hardly any other sound: the
+place indeed seemed God-abandoned, like some long-forgotten strand of a
+dead world, with the skeleton house on the rock above for its forsaken
+citadel.</p>
+
+<p>It was already dark in the ravine when Antoine arrived there, and anyone
+not knowing how instinctive is the feeling for the ways of his mother
+earth in a son of the soil, would have thought his<a name="Page_29" id="Page_29"></a> straightforward
+stride, in such a chaos of rocks and pitfalls, reckless, till they
+observed with what certainty each step was taken where alone it was
+possible and safe. He was making his way through the valley to the cross
+above, where the light still lingered, and it yet wanted some fifteen
+minutes to the time of <i>rendez-vous</i>, when he suddenly stopped in a
+listening attitude; he had reached a part of the valley to which
+superstition had attached the most dangerous character. A particular
+rock called "The Black Stone," which towered over him on the left, and
+slightly bending towards the centre of the valley, seemed like some
+threatening monster about to swoop upon the traveller, was especially
+regarded as the haunt of evil spirits. It was in this direction that he
+now heard a slight sound, which his practised ear discerned at once as
+not being one of the sounds of nature. Immediately afterwards the shadow
+of the rock beside him seemed to move and enlarge, and out of it there
+sprang the figure of a man, and stood straight in Antoine's path.
+Antoine's whole frame became rigid, like that of a beast of prey on the
+point of springing, even before the shadow revealed its limping foot.</p>
+
+<p>Geoffroi was the first to speak.</p>
+
+<p>"You gave me the lie this afternoon. Take it back now and see what you
+think of the taste of it. Would you like to see Marie?"</p>
+
+<p>"What are you saying? What is it to you when I see Marie?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is this&mdash;that I have arranged a nice little<a name="Page_30" id="Page_30"></a> meeting for you. Hein?
+Are you not obliged to me?"</p>
+
+<p>Antoine's voice sounded hollow and muffled as he replied, "Stand out of
+the path. You have nought to do between her and me."</p>
+
+<p>"You think so? Then you shall learn what I have to do. You think you are
+going to meet her at the cross at six o'clock. But you will not, you
+will meet her sooner than that. It was I that sent you that message, and
+I have advanced the time by half an hour. Am I not kind?"</p>
+
+<p>Antoine's hand was on his collar like an iron vice.</p>
+
+<p>"What have you done with her? Where is she?"</p>
+
+<p>Geoffroi writhed himself free with movements lithe like those of a
+panther. "Will you take back the lie," he said, "or will you see the
+proof with your own eyes?"</p>
+
+<p>He was turning with a mocking sign to Antoine to follow, when from the
+left of the rock beside which they stood, there darted forward the
+white-coiffed figure of a girl, who with extended arms and agonized
+face, rushed up to Geoffroi, crying, "Take me away&mdash;I have seen Them!
+Take me away."</p>
+
+<p>She clung to Geoffroi's arm, and screamed when Antoine would have
+touched her. Antoine stood for a moment as if turned to stone. Marie
+seemed half fainting and clung hysterically to Geoffroi, apparently
+hardly conscious of what she was doing. Geoffroi took her in his arms
+and kissed her. The act was so loathsome in its deliberate effrontery,
+that Antoine felt as if he was merely<a name="Page_31" id="Page_31"></a> crushing a serpent when he struck
+him to the ground and tore Marie from his hold. But he was dealing with
+something which he did not understand for Marie, finding herself in his
+grasp, opened her eyes on his face with a look of speechless terror, and
+breaking from him, fled down the ravine, springing from rock to rock
+with the security of recklessness.</p>
+
+<p>Antoine followed her, stumbling through the darkness, but his speed was
+no match for the madness of fear, and his steps were still to be heard
+crashing through the furze bushes and loose stones, when the white
+coiffe had flitted, like some bird of night, round the projecting
+boulders of the sea-coast, and disappeared.</p>
+
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Part II</span>.</h3>
+
+<p>Old Jeanne Le Gall was leaning on her stick in her solitary way beside
+the arched wellhead at the top of the lane, when she heard flying steps
+along the pathway of rock that bordered the sea, and peered through the
+twilight with her cunning old eyes, alert for something uncanny, or
+perchance out of which she could make some profit for herself. Already
+that day, she had earned a sou by carrying a bit of a letter, and
+telling one or two little lies. As the steps came nearer, a kind of
+moaning and sobbing was heard, and the old woman, muttering to
+herself&mdash;"It is<a name="Page_32" id="Page_32"></a> the voice of Marie. What has the devil's imp been doing
+to her?"&mdash;hobbled as fast as she could to the turning that led to the
+sea, and just as the flying figure appeared, put out her skinny hand to
+arrest it. There was a sudden scream, a fall, and Marie lay in the road,
+like one dead.</p>
+
+<p>The cry brought to their doors, one after another, the occupants of the
+neighbouring cottages; and as the dark-shawled, free-stepping Breton
+women gathered round, for the clattering of sabots and of tongues, it
+might have been a group of black sea-fowl clamouring over some
+'trouvaille' of the sea, thrown up among their rocks.</p>
+
+<p>They raised her painfully, with kind but ungentle hands, wept and called
+on the saints, availing little in any way, till the heavy tramp of a
+fisherman's nailed boots was heard on the rocks, and Antoine thrust the
+throng aside, and bending over, took her up in his arms, as a mother
+might her child, and without a word bore her along the road towards her
+home.</p>
+
+<p>But he had scarcely placed her on the settle beside the bed, when her
+eyes opened, and as they rested on him, again the look of terror came
+into them: she flung herself away from him with a scream, and sobbing
+and uttering strange sounds of fear and aversion, was hardly to be held
+by the other women.</p>
+
+<p>"She has lost her wits!" they cried. "Our Blessed Lady help her!"</p>
+
+<p>White with fear themselves, and half believing it to be some
+supernatural visitation, they clung<a name="Page_33" id="Page_33"></a> round her, supporting her till the
+fit had passed, and she lay back on the bed exhausted and half
+unconscious: her fresh, young lips drawn with an unnatural expression of
+suffering, and her frank, blue eyes heavy and lifeless. Antoine was
+turned out of the cottage, lest the sight of him should excite her
+again, and he marched away across the low rocks to his own home on the
+solitary foreland. As he passed the chapel on the shore, he saw through
+the open door, a single taper burning before the shrine of St. Nicholas,
+and just serving to show the gloom and emptiness of the place; and it
+seemed to him as though the Saints had deserted it.</p>
+
+<p>He never saw Marie again. Once during her illness, the kind, clever old
+Aim&eacute;e, wrung by the sight of her boy's haggard face, as he went to and
+fro about the boats, without food or sleep, took her way to the Pierr&eacute;s'
+cottage, with the present of a fine fresh "dorade" for the invalid; and
+when she had stood for a minute by the bedside leaning on her stick, and
+looking on the face of the half-unconscious girl, she began with her
+natty old hand to pat Marie's shoulder, and with coaxing words to get
+her to say that she would see Antoine. But at the first sound of the
+name, the limp figure started up from the pillows, and from the
+innocent, childish lips came a stream of strange, eager speech, as she
+poured forth her conviction, like a cherished secret, that Antoine was
+possessed of the Evil One: for Jeanne, the sorceress, had told her so:
+that he was one of <i>Them</i>, and by night in the valley you could see him
+in his own shape.<a name="Page_34" id="Page_34"></a> Then she grew more wild, crying out that Antoine
+would kill her: that he had bewitched her, and she must die.</p>
+
+<p>Anyone unaware of the hold which superstition has over the Breton mind,
+would perhaps hardly believe that the women stood round awe-struck at
+this revelation, seeing nothing improbable in it. In spite of her
+dangerous state of excitement, they eagerly pressed her with questions
+as to what she had seen, and what Jeanne had said, but she had become
+too incoherent to satisfy them, and only flung herself wildly about,
+crying, "Let me go&mdash;he will kill me&mdash;let me go:" till she suddenly sank
+down motionless on the pillow, was silent for a few moments, and then
+began to murmur over and over in an awe-struck, eager whisper, "Go to
+the Black Stone this night, and you shall see. Go to the Black Stone
+this night, and you shall see."</p>
+
+<p>While the old cronies shook their heads, muttering that it was true,
+there had always been something uncanny about Antoine: and see the way
+he would draw the fish into his net, against their own better sense: it
+was plain there was something in Antoine they dared not resist:&mdash;old
+Aim&eacute;e hobbled out with her stick and sabots, without saying a word, went
+round to the open door of the next cottage, and peered round the rough
+wooden partition that screened off the inner half of the room. On a
+settle beside the hearth, where a cauldron was boiling, sat Jeanne, the
+sorceress, with her absorbed, concentrated air, as though her thoughts
+were fixed on something which she<a name="Page_35" id="Page_35"></a> could communicate to no one: she
+turned her strange, bright eyes on the figure in the entrance, without
+change of expression, and waited for Aim&eacute;e to speak.</p>
+
+<p>Aim&eacute;e's face was like a cut diamond, so keen and bright was it, as
+leaning on her stick, which she struck on the floor from time to time
+with the emphasis of her speech, she said in her shrill Breton tones:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Mademoiselle Jeanne, I have come to ask of you what evil lie it is that
+you have told to the child Marie, that lies on her death-bed yonder.
+Come. You have been bribed by Geoffroi, that I know, and a son will
+purchase snuff, and for that you will sell your soul. Good&mdash;It is for
+you to do what you will with your own affairs: but when you cause an
+injury to my belle-fille, so that she becomes like a mad woman and dies,
+I come to ask you for an account of what you have done, Mademoiselle:
+that you may undo what you have done, while there is yet time,
+Mademoiselle."</p>
+
+<p>Jeanne's thin, stern lips trembled, almost as if in fear, as she
+listened to Aim&eacute;e. She turned her shaking head slowly towards her, then
+fixed her deep eyes on hers, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"I have warned your belle-fille, that she may be saved. It was my love
+for her. Let her have nought to do with Them that dwell in the rocks and
+the trunks of the great trees."</p>
+
+<p>Old Aim&eacute;e shook her stick on the floor with rage.</p>
+
+<p>"Impious and wicked woman! Confess, I say, or I will tell the good cur&eacute;,
+who knows your tricks, and he will not give you absolution; and then
+the<a name="Page_36" id="Page_36"></a> Evil Ones will have their way with you yourself, for what shall
+save you from them?"</p>
+
+<p>The thin lips in the strange face trembled more. "The old sorceress
+dwells alone, abandoned of all," she murmured. "If she take not a sou
+when one or another will give it her, how shall she contrive to live?"</p>
+
+<p>"What is it," demanded Aim&eacute;e, with increasing shrillness, "that you have
+told the child Marie about my grandson?"</p>
+
+<p>A look of cunning suddenly drove away the expression of conscious guilt
+in Jeanne's face. She dropped her eyes on the floor, mumbled
+inarticulately a moment, and then said shiftily, "You have perhaps a few
+sous in your pocket, Madame, to show good-will to the sorceress; for
+without good-will she cannot tell you what you seek to know."</p>
+
+<p>Aim&eacute;e's keen eyes flashed, as drawing forth two sous from her pocket,
+she said in a tone of incisive contempt, "You shall have these,
+Mademoiselle, but not till you have told me the whole truth, as you
+would to the cur&eacute; at confession. Come then&mdash;say."</p>
+
+<p>The sorceress began with shuffling tones and glances, which grew more
+sure as she went on:</p>
+
+<p>"I watched for the little one returning on the afternoon of Sunday&mdash;<i>he</i>
+told me to do so. I was to give her the message that Antoine desired to
+meet with her at the entrance of the Dwarf's Valley: I had but to give
+the message: it was not my fault. I am but a poor old woman that does
+the bidding of others."</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37"></a>"Well, well," said Aim&eacute;e, impatiently, "what else did you tell her?"</p>
+
+<p>Jeanne looked at her interlocutor again, and a strange expression grew
+in her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"It is Jeanne that knows the Evil Ones, that knows their shape and their
+speech. She knows them when they walk among men, and she knows them in
+their homes in the dark valley."</p>
+
+<p>"Chut, chut," cried Aim&eacute;e, the more irritably that her maternal feelings
+had to overcome her natural inclination to superstition. "It is only one
+thing you have to tell&mdash;how did you frighten Marie so that she is ready
+to go out of her wits at the sight of Antoine?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, it was Geoffroi that frightened her, as they went up the ravine
+together. I had but told her not to go alone, for that They were abroad
+that night." The old woman broke into a curious chuckle. "How she
+shivered, like a chicken in the wind! H'ch, h'ch! Then <i>he</i> took hold of
+her arm and led her away, for I had told her <i>he</i> was a safe protector
+against the spirits, not like some that wear the face of man and go up
+and down in the village, saying that the people should not believe in
+Jeanne the sorceress, for that she tells that which is untrue&mdash;while
+they themselves have dealings such as none can know with the Evil Ones."</p>
+
+<p>Aim&eacute;e looked at her keenly for some moments with a curious expression on
+her tightly-folded lips.</p>
+
+<p>"You would have me believe that Marie went into the ravine when she knew
+the spirits were about, and went on the arm of Geoffroi?"</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38"></a>"I tell you, Grandm&egrave;re, that she did so. It was Jeanne that compelled
+her. For Jeanne knows when a man is in league with Them, and she said to
+Marie, 'Thou wilt wed Antoine, but thou knowest not what he is; go to
+the Black Stone to-night, and thou shalt see.' H'ch! Jeanne knows
+nothing, does she? But Marie went, for she knew that Jeanne was wise.
+And what she saw, she saw."</p>
+
+<p>It was strange to see the conflict between superstition and natural
+affection in the face of Aim&eacute;e. Her thoughts seemed to be rapidly
+scanning the past, and there was fear as well as anger in her look.
+Could it be that this child, flung into her arms, as it were, from the
+shipwreck, born before his time of sorrow, the very offspring of
+death,&mdash;that had always lived apart from the other lads, with strange,
+quiet ways of his own&mdash;that had astonished her by his wise sayings as a
+child&mdash;and that, growing up had brought unnatural prosperity to the
+home, as though some higher hand were upon him&mdash;could it be that there
+was something in him more than of this earth? Her hand trembled so that
+it shook the stick on which she leant: she made one or two attempts to
+speak, then dropped the two halfpence on the table, as if they burnt
+her, and went out.</p>
+
+<p>When Marie was a little better, they sent her away to her married
+sister's at Cherbourg, for the doctor said that the only chance of
+recovering her balance of mind, lay in removing her from everything that
+would remind her of her fright, or of<a name="Page_39" id="Page_39"></a> Antoine. News travels slowly in
+those parts, especially among the poor and illiterate, and for months
+Antoine heard nothing of her, except for an occasional message brought
+by some chance traveller from Cherbourg, to the effect that she was
+still ill: while his own troubles at home grew and gathered as time went
+on. For since that night in the ravine everything seemed to have gone
+wrong. A superstitious fear had associated itself with the idea of
+Antoine in the minds of the other villagers. The Kaudrens' cottage was
+more and more avoided, and the fishing business was injured, for people
+chose rather to buy their fish of those of whom no evil things were
+hinted. The Pierr&eacute;s themselves were infected with this feeling, and
+Marie's father would go partner with Jean no longer. Jean could not
+support a fishing smack by himself, and gave up the distant voyages,
+confining himself to the long-shore fishing, and disposing of his
+oysters, crayfish and prawns as best he could in the more remote
+villages. Meanwhile, old Aim&eacute;e, getting older and more feeble, would sit
+knitting in the cottage by a cheerless hearth, and as the supply of
+potatoes, chestnuts and black bread grew scantier and scantier, would
+furtively watch Antoine, with anxious, awe-struck glances, and then
+would sometimes cross herself, and wipe a tear away unseen.</p>
+
+<p>It was on a wild, stormy morning of January, that a letter at length
+arrived for Antoine from Cherbourg. The news was blurted out with
+tactless plainness. 'La pauvre petite' was no more. In proportion as she
+grew calmer in mind,<a name="Page_40" id="Page_40"></a> it appeared, Marie had grown weaker in body: and a
+cold she had contracted soon after her arrival in Cherbourg, had settled
+on her lungs, which were always delicate. For weeks she had not risen
+from her bed, but had gradually pined away. There was a message for
+Antoine. "Tell him," she had said, in one of her last intervals of
+consciousness, "that I cannot bear to think of how I acted towards him.
+Tell him I did not know what I was doing. Ask him to come&mdash;to come
+quick. For I cannot die in peace, unless he forgives me." But she had
+died before the message could be sent.</p>
+
+<p>Antoine read the letter, crushed it in his great, trembling hand, and
+looked round him as though searching blankly for the hostile power, that
+had thus entangled, baffled and overthrown him. That voice from the
+grave seemed to call on him to claim again the rights that had been
+snatched from him. She was his, and he would see her face once more: he
+would go to Cherbourg, and look on her dead face, that he might know it,
+for she was his.</p>
+
+<p>He would be in time, if he caught the night train (the funeral was the
+following day). He would have to walk to St. Jean-du-Pied, the next
+village along the coast, from which a <i>diligence</i> started in the
+afternoon to the nearest railway station. Old Aim&eacute;e did up a little
+packet of necessaries for him, and borrowed money for the journey,
+saying nothing as she watched his face, full of the inarticulate
+suffering of the untaught. Antoine scarcely said farewell, as he walked<a name="Page_41" id="Page_41"></a>
+straight out of the cottage door towards the sea, to take the shortest
+route to St. Jean-du-Pied by the coast. The rocks were white from the
+sea-foam, as if with driven snow, and the black sea was lashed to
+madness by a gale from the North East. The bitter wind tore across the
+bleak country-side, scourging every rock, tree and living thing that
+attempted to resist it, like the desolation of God descending in
+judgment on the land. Wild, torn clouds chased each other across the
+sky, and the deep roar of the sea among the rocks could be heard far
+inland.</p>
+
+<p>Antoine's thoughts meanwhile were whirling tumultuously round and round
+one object&mdash;an object that had hovered fitfully before his mind for many
+weeks&mdash;pressing closer and closer on it, till at length with triumphant
+realization, they seized on it and made it the imperious necessity of
+his will.</p>
+
+<p>Ever since the night in the ravine, Antoine had been living in a strange
+world: he had not known himself: his hand had seemed against every
+man's, and every man's hand against his. He never went to mass, for he
+felt that the good God had abandoned him.</p>
+
+<p>Now he suddenly realised what it was he needed&mdash;the just punishment of
+Geoffroi. The path of life would be straight again, and God on His
+Throne in heaven, when Justice had been vindicated, and he had visited
+his crime on the evildoer. That he must do it himself, was plain to him.</p>
+
+<p>He marched on, possessed with a feeling that<a name="Page_42" id="Page_42"></a> it was Geoffroi whom he
+was going to seek, towards the projecting foreland that shut in the
+village on the east. He was drenched by the waves, as they dashed madly
+against the walls of rock, and to get round the boulders under such
+circumstances was a dangerous task even for a skilled climber: but
+Antoine seemed borne forward by a force stronger than himself, and went
+on without pause, or doubt, till in a small inlet on the other side of
+the foreland, he discerned a figure clinging to a narrow ledge of rock,
+usually out of reach of the tide, but towards which the mighty waves
+were now rolling up more and more threateningly each moment. There was
+no mistaking the lithe, cringing movements, the particular turn of the
+head looking backward over the shoulder in terror at the menacing
+waters: even if Antoine had not known beforehand that he must find
+Geoffroi on that path, and that he had come to meet him.</p>
+
+<p>Geoffroi's position was (for him) extremely dangerous. A bold climber
+might have extricated himself; but for a lame man to reach safety across
+the sea-scourged rocks was almost impossible. Could he hold on long
+enough and the sea rose no higher, he might be saved: but there would
+yet be an hour before the turn of the tide, and already the waves were
+racing over the ledge on which he stood. Antoine sprang over the
+intervening rocks, scrambling and wading through the water, as if not
+seeing what he did, till he set foot on the ledge, and stood face to
+face with his enemy.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43"></a>Geoffroi's face was white with fear. He knew his hour was come. In the
+mighty strife of the elements, within an inch of death on every side, he
+was at Antoine's mercy.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't kill me," he cried abjectly. "Have mercy, for the love of God."</p>
+
+<p>Antoine grasped the writhing creature by the shoulder. The white face of
+Marie rose up before him. Geoffroi shrieked. A huge, heaving billow
+advanced, swept round the feet of both and sank boiling in the gulf
+beneath. The next that came would leave neither of them there. Antoine
+stood with his hand on Geoffroi's shoulder, as if he would crush it.
+Somewhat higher, but within reach, was a narrow projection in the rock,
+to which there was room for one to cling, and only for one: and Geoffroi
+with his lame foot could not reach it alone.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me go," he shrieked. "I will confess all: but save me, save me!"</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly another wave of feeling surged up in the soul of Antoine. He
+seemed to see the cross on the hill side, as it stood in light that
+evening when he was to have met Marie there. He saw the good God on the
+cross again, as he used to see Him in the chapel. He had a strange, deep
+feeling that he was God, or that God was he. He seemed to be on that
+cross himself. The great, green wave towered above them twenty feet in
+air. He grasped Geoffroi by both shoulders, and flung him up to the
+ledge above with a kind of scorn. The next moment the rolling sea
+descended. Antoine clung with all his force to the<a name="Page_44" id="Page_44"></a> rock, but he knew
+that he should never see the light again.</p>
+
+<p>So was he drawn out into the great deep, in whose arms his father lay:
+and the fisher-folk, when they knew it, looked for no sign of him more,
+for they said he had gone back to the sea, from whence he came. For,
+though they never knew the true story of his death, they felt that a
+spirit of a different mould from theirs had passed from among them in
+his own way.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 130px;">
+<img src="images/image1.jpg" width="130" height="132" alt="" title="Image 1" />
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<h2><a name="TWICE_A_CHILD" id="TWICE_A_CHILD"></a><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45"></a>TWICE A CHILD.</h2>
+
+<div class="figleft">
+<img src="images/initial3.jpg" alt="H" title="H" /></div>
+<p>
+alfway up the mountain-side, overlooking a ravine, through which a
+streamlet flowed to the lake, stood a woodman's cottage. In the room on
+which the front door opened were two persons&mdash;an infant in a wooden
+cradle, in the corner between the fire-place and the window; and, seated
+on a stool in the flood of sunlight that streamed through the doorway,
+an old man. His lips were moving slightly, and his face had the look of
+one whose thoughts were far away. On the patch of floor in front of him
+lay cross-bars of sunlight, which flowed in through the casement window.
+The sky overhead was cloudless, while the murky belt on the horizon was
+not visible from the cottage door. In the windless calm no leaf seemed
+to stir in the forest around. The cottage clock in the corner ticked the
+passing moments; the wild cry of the "curry fowl" was heard now and
+again from the lake; there was no other sound in the summer afternoon,
+and the deep heart of nature seemed at rest.</p>
+
+<p>The old man's eyes rested on the bars of sunlight, but he saw another
+scene. On his face, in which the simplicity of childhood seemed to have
+reappeared, was a knowing, amused look, express<a name="Page_46" id="Page_46"></a>ing infinite relish of
+some inward thought, the simple essence of mischief. Bars of sunlight,
+just like those, used to lie on the schoolroom floor when he was a
+little boy, and was sent to Dame Gartney's school to be kept out of
+harm's way, and to learn what he might. He saw himself, an urchin of
+five or six years, seated on a stool beside the Dame's great arm-chair.
+She was slowly, with dim eyes, threading a needle for the tiny maiden
+standing before her, clutching in her hot little hand the unhemmed
+duster on which she was to learn to sew. The thread approached the
+needle's eye; it was nearly in, when the arm-chair gave a very little
+shake, apparently of its own accord; the old lady missed her aim, and
+the needle and the thread were as far apart as ever, while the small imp
+sitting quiet at her side was unsuspected. Not once nor twice only was
+this little game successfully played. It used to enliven the hot, sleepy
+afternoon, while the bars of light were crawling slowly&mdash;oh! so
+slowly&mdash;across the floor. He knew school would be over when the outer
+edge of sunlight touched the corner of the box-bed against the wall,
+where the little girl that lived there and called the dame "Granny" was
+put to sleep of a night.</p>
+
+<p>His school experience was short, consisting, indeed, of but six bright
+summer weeks, after which it had become his business to mind the baby,
+while his mother went out to work. But the most vivid of the impressions
+of his childhood were connected with that brief school career. Distinct
+above the rest stood out the memory of<a name="Page_47" id="Page_47"></a> one afternoon, when sitting on
+his low stool he had seen dark smudges of shadow come straying, curling,
+whirling across the squares of sunlight; when shouts had arisen in the
+yard, and just as the dame had made Effie May hold out her hand for
+dropping her thimble the third time, the back-door was burst open by
+Ebenezer, the milkman, who cried out that the Dame's cow-house was on
+fire. He could see the old lady now, with the child's shrinking fingers
+firmly gripped in hers, her horny old hand arrested in the act of
+descending on the little pink palm (which escaped scot-free in the
+confusion) while she gazed for a moment, open-mouthed, at the speaker,
+as though she had come to a word which <i>she</i> couldn't spell, then jumped
+up with surprising quickness and hobbled across the floor without her
+stick, the point of her mob-cap nodding to every part of the room, while
+she moved the whole of herself first to one side and then to the other
+as she walked, like one of the geese waddling across the common.</p>
+
+<p>"Goo back and mind yerr book!" cried the old lady to the sharp-eyed
+little boy, who was peeping round her skirts. But he did not go back.
+Who could, when they saw those tongues of flame shooting up, and the
+volumes of smoke darkening the summer sky, as the wooden shed and the
+palings near it caught and smoked and crackled, and heard the cries of
+men and boys shouting for water and more water, which old Jack Foster,
+and idiot Tom, and some women, with baskets hastily deposited by the
+roadside, and even boys not much bigger than himself, were toiling to
+bring as fast as<a name="Page_48" id="Page_48"></a> possible in pails from the brook, before the flames
+should spread to the row of cottages so perilously near? No earthly
+power could have kept the mite out of the fray. Before the old dame knew
+where he was, his little hands were clenched round the handle of a heavy
+iron pail, and he was struggling up the yard to where the men were
+tearing down the connecting fences, in a desperate endeavour to stay the
+onrush, of the flames. To and fro, to and fro, the child toiled,
+begrimed by falling blacks, scorched by the blaze, his whole mind intent
+on one thing&mdash;to stop the burning of that charred and tottering mass.</p>
+
+<p>It was done at last, and the cottages were saved. The rescue party
+dispersed, and the dirty, tired boy strayed slowly homeward down the
+village street. He could see himself now arriving soot-covered, and
+well-nigh speechless with fatigue, at his mother's door, could hear the
+cries and exclamations that arose at the sight of him, could feel the
+tender hands that removed the clothes from his hot little body, and
+washed him, and put him to bed. It took him several days to recover from
+the fever into which he had put himself, and it was then he had begun to
+mind the baby instead of going to school. Praise was liberally bestowed
+in the county paper on Mr. Ebenezer Rooke and his assistants, who by
+their energy and forethought had saved the village from destruction but
+no one had noticed the efforts of the tiny child, working beyond his
+strength; and, indeed, he himself had had no idea of being noticed.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49"></a>As he sat now on the stool in the sunny doorway, and looked up the
+mountain-valley, to which he had been brought in his declining years to
+share his married daughter's home, the detail in that tragedy of his
+childhood, which pictured itself in his mind's eye more clearly than any
+other, was the shadow of the spreading, coiling puffs of smoke, which
+had first caught his childish attention, blurring the bars of sunlight
+on the floor of the Dame's kitchen. Perhaps it was on account of the
+likeness to the pattern now made by the sun, as it shone through the
+casement between him and the baby's cradle. For the gentle, domestic old
+man was often now, as in his docile childhood, charged to "mind the
+baby," and one of the quiet pleasures of his latter days was the sight
+of the little floweret, that grew so sweetly beside his sere and
+withered life. An uncultured sense of beauty within him was appealed to
+by the rounded limbs, the silent, dimpled laugh, the tottering feet
+feeling their unknown way, and all the sweet curves and softnesses, the
+innocent surprises and <i>na&iuml;ve</i> desires, which made up for him the image
+of "the baby." He would have said she was "prutty," implying much by the
+word.</p>
+
+<p>As he gazed at his precious charge, and watched the sunlight pattern
+slowly but surely creeping towards the foot of the cradle, he had an odd
+feeling that school would soon be over. A moment after he rubbed his
+eyes and looked again. Was it true, or was he dreaming? Were those
+shadowy whirls of smoke, dimming the sunshine, a vision<a name="Page_50" id="Page_50"></a> of the past, or
+did he actually see them before him, as of old, coiling about and around
+the bars of light on the floor? It was certainly there, the shadow of
+smoke, and came he could not tell whence; for in all the unpeopled
+valley there were, of human beings, as far as he knew at that moment,
+only himself and the baby. To his mind, so full of the past, it seemed
+the herald of another danger.</p>
+
+<p>He raised himself with difficulty from his stool, and moved his stiff
+limbs to the threshold. As he did so, he noticed that the smoke was
+within the room as well as without; it was festooning about the baby's
+cradle, it was filling the place, there was scarcely air to breathe. His
+first idea, as he smelt the soot, and saw the blacks showering on the
+hearth, was that the chimney was on fire. He went straight to the baby
+in its cradle, and, his limbs forgetting their stiffness, lifted her in
+his arms to carry her to a place of safety; when that was done he would
+take off the embers from the grate, and sprinkle salt on the hearth to
+quench the fire.</p>
+
+<p>Not till he reached the door did he notice a sound that filled the
+valley. A strange, high-pitched note, like a hundred curry-fowl crying
+at once&mdash;a wail, as of spirits in hell. Now from one direction, now from
+another; now rising, now falling, the weird, unearthly shriek seemed
+everywhere at once, increasing each moment in force and shrillness. As
+the old man, holding the baby close to him, looked up and listened, fear
+struck his lips with a sudden trembling. Opposite to him<a name="Page_51" id="Page_51"></a> he saw a
+strange sight. Halfway up the mountain, on the other side of the valley,
+not a leaf on the trees was stirring: the lower slopes lay basking in
+the sunshine, and the shadows of fleeting clouds only added to the
+peaceful beauty of the scene; while the trees above were raging
+bacchanals, whirling, swaying, tossing their long arms in futile agony,
+as though possessed by some unseen demoniacal power.</p>
+
+<p>In a moment the old man knew what had befallen him. The bewitched smoke,
+the shrieking spirits of the air, the motionless valley, and the
+maddened trees, of all these he had heard before, for he had listened to
+tales of the tornado in the valley, and knew what it meant to the
+defenceless dwellers on the upper slopes. The skirts of the fury were
+touching him even now; a sudden gust swept by; to draw breath for the
+moment was impossible, and his unsteady balance would soon have been
+overthrown; he was forced to cling to the doorpost, still holding the
+baby close. But the quiet, comprehending expression never left his face;
+he knew what was to be done, and he meant to do it; there might be time.</p>
+
+<p>He set down the baby in the cradle, took off his coat, grasped a spade
+in his shaking hand, and hobbled across the patch of open ground to a
+spot as far distant as possible both from the cottage and from the
+borders of the wood; the maddened wind was wailing itself away in the
+distance, and happily for a few minutes there was a lull in the air. He
+could hear the baby crying, left alone in the cottage. He never looked
+off from his work,<a name="Page_52" id="Page_52"></a> but went on digging a hole in the form of a little
+grave. The surface of the ground was hard, and the old man was
+short-winded; he could hardly gather enough force to drive the spade in.
+Before long, however, a few inches of the upper crust were removed from
+a space about three feet in length. The digging in the softer earth
+would now be easier and more rapid. As he worked on, a few heavy drops
+of rain fell. He looked up and saw the whole sky, lately full of
+sunlight, a mass of driving, ink-black clouds, while the shriek of the
+hurricane was heard again in the distance. The baby's cry was drowned by
+it. The hole was as yet only half a foot deep. At the next thrust the
+spade struck on a slanting ledge of slaty rock. No further progress
+could be made there; the trench must be dug in a different direction.
+Once more the old man, panting heavily, drove the spade into the hard
+ground, and in two or three minutes had so far altered the position of
+the hole that the rock was avoided. The gale was increasing every
+moment, and at times he could hardly keep his feet.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly, through the roar of the wind, was heard another sound, a
+rattling and rushing, as of loosened stones and of earth. All his senses
+on the alert, the old man glanced swiftly up, and saw a row of four tall
+fir trees, which stood out like sentinels, on a ridge of the mountain,
+in the very path of the storm, turn over like nine-pins, one after the
+other, and tearing up the soil with their roots, slip down the
+mountain-side, dragging with them an avalanche of earth. His eye darted
+to<a name="Page_53" id="Page_53"></a> the cottage with a sudden fear. Even as he looked, the wind was
+lifting some of the slates on the roof, rattling them, loosening them,
+and in a few moments would scatter them around like chaff, chaff that
+would bring death to any on whom it should chance to light. With an odd,
+calculating look, the old man turned again to his digging, and,
+breathless as before, shovelled out the earth from the hole, with a
+speed of which his stiff and feeble frame would have been thought
+incapable; while now and again, without ceasing his work, he darted a
+backward glance at the doomed cottage. It ought to stand until the hole
+was dug; and at least in the digging there was a chance of safety: in
+going back to fetch the baby now, there was none.</p>
+
+<p>After about five minutes, with a hideous yell, the demon tore in such
+fury across the mountain-side, that the old man would have been carried
+off his feet in a moment, and swept with the rest of the <i>d&eacute;bris</i> into
+the valley, but that he threw himself on the ground, clutching tightly
+with his fingers the edge of the hole he had dug. In the bottom of the
+hole a thistle-down lay unmoved. When the lull came, and he could raise
+his head, having escaped injury or death from falling stocks and stones,
+he darted over his shoulder a glance of awful anxiety at the cottage&mdash;of
+such anxiety as a strong man may reach to the depths of but once or
+twice in his prime. The roof of the cottage was gone; there were no
+fragments, for the wind was a clean sweeper; it had bodily vanished. The
+walls stood. He dragged himself unsteadily to<a name="Page_54" id="Page_54"></a> his feet, and looked
+about for his spade. It was nowhere to be seen; the besom of the gale
+had whirled it to some unknown limbo.</p>
+
+<p>The hole was still not quite a foot and a half deep, and would not
+preserve the cradle, if placed therein, from the destroyer. He shuffled
+back to the cottage with awkward, hasty steps. The baby had cried itself
+to sleep, and lay in its cradle in the corner, unconscious of the ruin
+of its home. The old man went to the hearth, on which the fire had been
+blown out, and from under the ashes dragged out a battered fire-shovel,
+its edge worn away, its handle loose. It was the nearest approach to a
+spade that was left him. Just as he got back to the hole another blast
+carried him off his feet, and he fell prostrate, this time clutching his
+substitute spade beneath him. He rose again, stepped into the hole,
+crouching down as low as possible, and rapidly raised out of it one
+shovelful of earth after another; it was no sooner on the surface than
+it was whisked away like dust. In the wood, a furlong to the right, some
+dozen trees were prostrated between one thrust of the shovel and the
+next; dark straight firs and silver birches, that slipped downwards to
+the valley like stiff, gleaming snakes.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile the shovel had struck
+on a layer of stones, the remains of some past landslip, since buried
+under flowering earth. With its turned-back edge, it was hard to insert
+it below them, and again and again it came up having raised nothing but
+a little gravel; but the old man worked on still with his docile,
+child-like look, intent upon his task. Presently the infirm handle<a name="Page_55" id="Page_55"></a> came
+off, and the shovel dropped into the bottom of the hole. At the same
+moment, with a wilder shriek and a fiercer on-rush, the fury came
+tearing again along the mountain side; the whole of the trees that yet
+remained in the patch of forest nearest to the cottage were swept away
+at once, and the slope was left bare. The old man crouched down in his
+hole, with his anxious eye fixed on the four walls within which the baby
+was sheltered; they still stood, the only object which the demon had not
+yet swept from his path. And even as the old man looked, he saw the
+upper part of the back wall begin to loosen, to totter, and give way.
+The baby was in the front room, but was under the windward wall. In the
+teeth of the gale the old man crawled out of the hole, extended his
+length on the ground, and began to drag his stiff and trembling frame,
+with hands, elbows and knees, across the fifty feet or so of barren soil
+that lay between the hole and the cottage. He heard the crash of bricks
+before he had accomplished half the distance; without pausing to look he
+crawled rapidly on till he crossed the threshold, and saw the babe still
+sleeping safely in its wooden cradle. There were two large iron dogs in
+the grate; he drew them out and placed them&mdash;panting painfully with the
+effort, for they were almost beyond his strength to lift&mdash;in the cradle,
+under the little mattress, one at each end. The baby, disturbed in its
+slumber, stretched its little limbs, smiled at him, and went to sleep
+again. He doubled a sack over the coverlet, tied a rope round the
+cradle, fastened it by a slip-knot<a name="Page_56" id="Page_56"></a> underneath, pulled out the end at
+the back, and tightened it till it dragged against the hood. The cradle
+went on its wheels well enough to the door. Then the old man summoned
+his remaining strength, and having knotted the rope round his waist,
+threw himself on the ground again, and emerged with his precious charge
+into the roaring hurricane. Across the barren mountain slope, far above
+the ken of any fellow-being, in the teeth of death, the old man crept
+with the sleeping babe. Another threatening of the deluge of rain, which
+would surely accompany the tornado, added to the misery of the painful
+journey; the sudden downpour of heavy drops drenched the grandfather to
+the skin, but the grandchild was protected under the sacking.</p>
+
+<p>They reached the hole at length, and raising himself to his knees, the
+wind being somewhat less boisterous while the rain was falling, the old
+man clutched the heavily-weighted cradle in both arms, and attempted to
+force it into the haven of safety he had spent his strength in forming.
+Alas! there was not room. The cradle was wider across than he had
+calculated. To take the child out and place it with the bedding in the
+hole would be leaving it to drown. Should the expected deluge descend,
+the trench he had dug would but form a reservoir for water. He seized
+the shovel, working it as well as he could without a handle, and
+attempted to break down and widen the edges. Pushing, stamping, driving
+with his make-shift spade, now clutching at the edges with his fingers
+and loosening the stones, now forcing<a name="Page_57" id="Page_57"></a> them in with his heel, he
+succeeded in working through the hard upper surface; then breathless,
+dizzy, spent, with hands that could scarce grasp the shovel, and
+stumbling feet that each moment threatened to fail him, he spaded out
+the softer earth below and scraped and tore at the sides, till the hole
+was wide enough to contain the cradle, and deep enough to ensure its
+safety.</p>
+
+<p>The last shovelful was raised, and the old man was stooping down to lift
+the cradle in, when the wildest war-cry yet uttered by the raging
+elements rang round the mountain side; all the former blasts seemed to
+have been but forerunners or skirmishers heralding the approach of the
+elemental forces; but now with awful ferocity and determination advanced
+the very centre of the fiendish host; while the horns were blown from
+mountain to mountain, announcing utter destruction to whatsoever should
+venture to obstruct the path of the army of the winds. In the shrieking
+solitude it seemed as if chaos and the end of the world were come. The
+poor old man crouched down, keeping his body between the gale and the
+baby's cradle, while the last remaining wall of the cottage fell flat
+before his eyes. But he felt himself being urged slowly but surely away
+from the refuge of the trench, downwards, downwards. The cradle, in
+spite of its iron ballast, was just overturning, when, with the strength
+of despair, he threw his body across it, digging his feet into the
+ground, and once more knotted the loose end of rope around his waist.
+The downward slip was stayed. Pushing the<a name="Page_58" id="Page_58"></a> cradle with knees and arms,
+clutching the soil with hands and feet, he crept with his precious
+charge nearer and nearer the widened hole. Once over the edge the baby
+would be safe. The windy fiend seemed to be pursuing him with vindictive
+hate. It shrieked and tore around that bare strip of mountain side, as
+though the whole purpose of its fury was to destroy the old man and the
+babe. With a superhuman effort he grasped the cradle in both arms and
+lifted it in, then fell senseless across the opening.</p>
+
+<p>Gradually the demon horns ceased to blow, the great guns died into
+silence, and the army of the air dispersed. The rain fell in torrents,
+but the old man never moved.</p>
+
+<p>When the storm was over, and anxious steps hastened up the mountain
+path, and horror-stricken faces gazed at the ruined home and the havoc
+all around, there was broken-hearted lamentation for the old man and the
+child, supposed to have perished in the tornado. At last the mother's
+searching eye discerned in the sunshine that lay across the still
+mountain-side an unfamiliar object; and hastening towards it with the
+lingering hope of learning some news of her darling, she perceived the
+old man lying in his last sleep, with the eternal Peace in his
+child-like face, still stretched as if in protection across a trench, in
+which the baby lay safe in its cradle, sleeping as peacefully as he.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THE_ROAD_BY_THE_SEA" id="THE_ROAD_BY_THE_SEA"></a><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59"></a>THE ROAD BY THE SEA.</h2>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Part I</span>.</h3>
+
+
+<div class="figleft">
+<img src="images/initial4.jpg" alt="F" title="F" /></div>
+<p>
+rom East to West there stretched a long, straight road, glimmering
+white across the grey evening landscape: silently conscious, it seemed,
+of the countless human feet, that for ages had trodden it and gone their
+way&mdash;their way for good, or their way for evil, while the road remained.
+Coming as an alien from unknown scenes, the one thing in the country
+that spoke of change, yet itself more lasting than any, it seemed to be
+ever pursuing some secret purpose: persistent, relentless: a very
+Nemesis of a road.</p>
+
+<p>On either side of it were barren "dunes," grudgingly covered by
+straggling heather and gorse, and to the South, at a little distance,
+rolled the dark-blue sea.</p>
+
+<p>On the edge of the dune, near to a cluster of sweet-scented pines, stood
+two or three cottages built of grey stone, after the Breton manner, with
+high-pitched roofs of dove-coloured slate, and arched stone doorways,
+around which scratched pigs and hens, on equal terms with barefooted
+children. One of the cottages had "Buvette"<a name="Page_60" id="Page_60"></a> inscribed over it in large,
+white letters, and a bench outside under a little awning; and opposite
+to this, a rough pathway led out of the road over the waste land to a
+hamlet on the dune, of which the grey, clustering cottages, crowning a
+rising ground about half a mile off, stood distinct against the opal sky
+of early evening.</p>
+
+<p>Framed in the stone doorway of the Buvette, was the figure of a girl in
+a snow-white coiffe, of which the lappets waved in the wind, a short
+blue skirt, and sabots. She had a curious, inexpressive face, with the
+patient look of a dumb creature, and an odd little curl in her upper
+lip, which, with her mute expression, made her seem to be continually
+deprecating disapproval. She stood shading her eyes from the slanting
+sunbeams, as she looked up the road to the West. A little before her,
+out on the road, stood two other women, elderly, both white-capped, one
+leaning on a stick: they addressed brief sentences to one another now
+and again, in the disconnected manner of those who are expecting
+something: and they also stood looking up the road to the West.</p>
+
+<p>And not they only, but a group of peasants belonging to the hamlet on
+the hill; free-stepping, strong-limbed Breton women, returning from the
+cliffs with bundles of dried sea-weed on their backs: a woman and two
+young lads from the furthermost cottage, with hoes in their hands, who
+had stepped out on to the road from their work of weeding the sorry
+piece of ground they had fenced in from the dune, and which yielded, at
+the best, more stones than vegetables: a couple of fisher<a name="Page_61" id="Page_61"></a>men, who were
+tramping along the road with a basket of mackerel: and even old lame
+Jacques, who had risen from the bench on which he usually sat as though
+he had taken root there, and leant tottering on his stick, as he
+strained his blear eyes against the sunbeams: all stopped as if by one
+impulse: all seemed absorbed by one expectation, and stood gazing up the
+long, white road to the West.</p>
+
+<p>The road was like a sensitive thing to ears long familiar with its
+various sounds, and vibrated at a mile's distance with the gallop of
+unwonted hoofs, or the haste of a rider that told of strange news.
+Moreover, all hearts were open to the touch of fear that October
+evening, when at any hour word might be brought of the fishing fleet
+that should now be returning from its long absence in distant seas: and
+one dare hardly think whether Jean and Pierre and little Andr&eacute; would all
+be restored safely to the vacant places around the cottage fire: one
+dared not think: one could only pray to the Saints, and wait.</p>
+
+<p>The girl with the mute, patient face had been the first to catch the
+sounds of galloping hoofs. She had from birth been almost speechless,
+with a paralysed tongue, but as if to compensate for this, her senses of
+touch and hearing were extraordinarily acute. The daughter of the
+aubergiste, she knew all who came and went along the road: the sights
+and sounds of the road were her interest the life of it was her life.
+She had heard in the faint, faint distance the galloping hoofs to the
+West: off the great rocks to the West the fleet<a name="Page_62" id="Page_62"></a> should first be
+sighted: towards the West all one's senses seemed strained, on the alert
+for signals of danger, or hope: and at the sound, the heart within
+Annette's breast leaped with a sudden certainty of disaster.</p>
+
+<p>Annette had never thought of love and marriage as possible for herself,
+but Paul Gignol had gone with the fleet for the first time this summer,
+and, for Annette, danger to the fleet meant danger to Paul. Paul and
+Annette were kin on her mother's side, and he being an orphan and
+adopted by her father, they had been brought up together like brother
+and sister. This summer had separated them for the first time, and when
+he bade her good-bye and sailed away, Annette felt like an uprooted
+piece of heather cast loose on the roadside, and belonging nowhere. And
+the first faint sounds of the hoofs on the road had struck on her ear as
+a signal from Paul. She made no sign, only stood still with a beating
+heart. And when the neighbours saw the dumb girl listening, they too
+came out into the road, and heard the galloping, now growing more and
+more distinct; and waited for the rider to appear on the ridge of the
+hill, which, some half mile off, raised its purple outline against the
+western sky.</p>
+
+<p>They came out when they saw the dumb girl listening: for the keenness of
+the perceptions with which her fragile body was endowed, was well known
+among them, and was attributed to the direct agency of the unseen
+powers; with whom indeed she had been acknowledged from her birth to
+have closer relations than is the lot of<a name="Page_63" id="Page_63"></a> ordinary mortals. For there
+could be no doubt that Annette's mother had received an intimation of
+some sort from the other world, the night before her child was born. She
+had been found lying senseless in the moonlight on the hill-top, and had
+never spoken from that hour till her death a week afterwards. As to what
+she had met or seen, there were various rumours: some of the shrewder
+gossips declaring that it was nothing but old Marie Gourdon, the
+sorceress, who had frightened her by predicting in her mysterious
+wisdom, which not the shrewdest of them dared altogether disregard, that
+some strange calamity would attend the life of the child she was about
+to bring forth; a child that had indeed turned out speechless, and of so
+sickly a constitution that from year to year one hardly expected her to
+live. Moreover, was it not the ill-omened figure of the old witch-woman,
+that had hobbled into the auberge with the news that Christine Leroux
+was lying like one dead by the roadside? On the other hand, however, it
+was asserted with equal assurance, that she had seen in the moonlight,
+with her own eyes, the evil spirit of the dunes: him of whom all
+travellers by night must beware; for it was his pleasure to delude them
+by showing lights as if of cottage windows on the waste land, where no
+cottage was: while twice within living memory, he had kindled false
+fires on the great rock out at sea, which they called Le G&eacute;ant, luring
+mariners to their death: and woe betide the solitary wayfarer whose path
+he crossed!</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64"></a>Annette's father knew what his wife had seen: and one winter evening
+beside the peat-fire, as Annette was busy with her distaff, and he sat
+smoking and watching the glowing embers, he told her her mother's story.
+She and Paul's father, the elder Paul Gignol, had been betrothed in
+their youth; but his fishing-smack had struck on the rocks one foggy
+night, and gone down, and with it all his worldly wealth. And
+Christine's father had broken off the match; for he had never been
+favourable to it, and how was Paul to keep her now with nothing to look
+to, but what might be picked up in the harbour? And Paul was like one
+mad, and threatened to do her a bodily mischief, so that she was afraid
+to walk out at night by herself: and her father offered him money to go
+away: and he refused the money: but he went off at last, hiring himself
+out on a cargo-boat, and declaring as he went, that one day yet, he
+would meet Christine in the way, and have his revenge. And he was abroad
+for years, and wedded some English woman in one of the British sea-port
+towns, and at last was lost at sea on the very night on which Annette
+was born.</p>
+
+<p>"And his spirit it was, Annette, that appeared to your mother in the
+road that night, the very hour that he died. For it was borne in on me
+that he had met her in the way, as he had said, and I asked her, as she
+lay a-dying, if it was Paul that she had seen; and she looked at me with
+eyes that spoke as plain as the speech that she had lost: and said that
+it was he."</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65"></a>Jules was ordinarily a silent man: he told the story slowly, with long
+pauses between the sentences: and when he had once told it, he never
+spoke of it again.</p>
+
+<p>Now Annette thought of many things in her quiet, clear-sighted way. She
+knew that her mother had been found senseless at the foot of the menhir,
+which they called Jean of Kerdual, just beyond the crest of the hill:
+and she had often noticed the shadow which the great, weird stone threw
+across the road, and thought how like it was (especially by moonlight)
+to the figure of a fisherman with his peaked cap and blouse. She
+believed there was more in this than a chance resemblance; for to a
+Breton girl the supernatural world is very real: and she had no doubt
+that the spirit of Paul's father haunted the stone that was so like his
+bodily form, and that on the night when he was drowned, the dumb menhir
+had found voice, and had spoken to her mother in his name. Annette
+always avoided Jean of Kerdual, if it was possible to do so, and would
+never let his shadow fall upon her. She felt that the solemn, world-old
+stone was in some way hostile to her, and attributed her dumbness to its
+influence.</p>
+
+<p>She often wished that she and her father did not live so near the stone.
+It had come to be like a nightmare to her. She would dream that it stood
+threateningly over her, enveloping her in its shadow: that she was
+struggling to speak, and that it reached forth a hand, heavy as stone,
+and laid it on her mouth, stifling utterance. Then<a name="Page_66" id="Page_66"></a> the paralysis that
+had fettered her tongue from her birth, would creep over the rest of her
+senses and over all her limbs, till she lay motionless and helpless
+under the hand of the menhir, like a stone herself, only alive and
+conscious. This dream had come more frequently since Paul had been away,
+and Annette would often look up and down the road&mdash;that road which was
+her only link with the world beyond&mdash;in the vague hope that it might one
+day bring her some deliverance.</p>
+
+<p>And now, as she stood listening to the galloping hoofs, she had an odd
+feeling that Jean of Kerdual was threatening once more to render her
+powerless, but that this time he would not prevail: for that something
+was coming along the road, nearer&mdash;nearer&mdash;with every gallop, to free
+her from him for ever. Then suddenly the sounds changed: the horseman
+was ascending the hill on the other side, and the galloping grew
+laboured and slower. Would he never come into sight? It seemed to
+Annette that she could bear it no longer: she set off and ran along the
+road and up the hill, to meet the unseen rider. The slow-thoughted,
+simple-minded peasants looked after her, wondering. She had nearly
+reached the top, when, silhouetted against the sky on the crest of the
+hill, appeared the figure of a man on horse-back, his Breton tunic and
+long hat-ribbons flying loose in the wind, as he reined in his chafing
+steed. He rose a moment in his stirrups, pointed out to sea with his
+whip, and shouted something inaudible: at the same instant his horse
+shied violently, as it<a name="Page_67" id="Page_67"></a> seemed, at some object by the roadside, and
+threw his rider to the ground.</p>
+
+<p>The man, the bringer of tidings, lay motionless in the road, the horse
+galloped wildly on: the dumb girl stood, half way up the hill: the dumb
+girl, who alone had heard the message. The next moment she threw her
+arms convulsively above her head, turned towards the group below, and
+cried in a loud, clear voice, "Le G&eacute;ant br&ucirc;le!"</p>
+
+<p>The words fell on the ears of the listening crowd as if with an electric
+shock. As they repeated them to each other with fear and amazement, and
+scattered hither and thither to saddle a horse, or to catch the runaway
+steed, that they might carry the news in time over the two miles that
+lay between them and the harbour, the fact that the dumb had spoken,
+seemed for the moment hardly noticed by them. For might not the
+fishing-fleet even now be rounding the point, with darkness coming on,
+and the misleading light burning on the giant rock to lure them to
+destruction? A light which, as they knew too well, was not visible from
+the harbour, and which might be shewing its fatal signal unguessed the
+whole night through, unless as now, by favour of the saints, and
+doubtless by the quick eyes of some fisherman of the neighbouring
+village, who had chanced to be far enough out to sea at the time, it
+were perceived before darkness should fall.</p>
+
+<p>The girl turned back again, and went up to the top of the hill to tend
+the fallen rider. The sun was sinking, and threw the shadow of the
+menhir, enlarged to a monstrous size, across her path. A<a name="Page_68" id="Page_68"></a> few yards
+further on lay the senseless form of the Breton horseman, and it was
+clear to Annette that Jean of Kerdual had purposely stayed the rider by
+throwing the shadow across the road to startle his horse.</p>
+
+<p>But a new exhilaration had taken possession of Annette's whole body and
+mind. She feared the menhir no longer: its power over her was gone. She
+kept repeating the words that had come to her at the crisis, the first
+she had spoken articulately all her life, "Le G&eacute;ant br&ucirc;le&mdash;Le G&eacute;ant
+br&ucirc;le," with a confidence in herself and the future, which was like new
+wine to her. The fleet would come safe home now, and by her means: for
+the Saints had helped her: the Saints were on her side.</p>
+
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Part II</span>.</h3>
+
+<p>When Annette brought the fallen man (who was already recovering
+consciousness when she reached him) safe back in the cart to the
+auberge, she found a little crowd of peasants, men and women, gathered
+there, talking loud and eagerly over the news, who looked at her with a
+reverent curiosity as she entered. The injured man was assisted to a
+bed, but none spoke to Annette: only silent, awe-struck glances were
+turned on her: for they had gradually realized the fact that a voice had
+been given to the dumb girl, and Annette's quiet, familiar presence had
+become<a name="Page_69" id="Page_69"></a> charged with mystery for them. They had no doubt that the
+blessed St. Yvon, the patron saint of mariners, had himself uttered the
+warning through her, at the moment when the safety of the fishing fleet
+depended on a spoken word: and the miracle now occupied their attention
+almost to the exclusion of the false lights and the return of the boats.</p>
+
+<p>But Annette observed their whisperings and glances with a slight touch
+of contempt: she knew that her own voice had been restored to her, and
+that she was now like any of the other women in the village; which, in
+her own simple presentment of things, must be interpreted as meaning
+that she might look to have a husband and a home of her own. It was as
+though she had for the first time become a real woman. She saddled the
+horse and rode off to fetch a doctor to attend to the sick man, thinking
+all the while that the fleet would be in before morning, that Paul would
+come home, and that he would hear her voice. She made little childish
+plans of pretending to be still dumb when she first saw him, so that she
+might surprise him the more when she should speak.</p>
+
+<p>Darkness was fast gathering now, but the old horse knew every stone in
+the road: he carried her with his steady jog-trot safely enough over the
+two miles that lay between the auberge and the fishing village where the
+doctor lived, in a house overlooking the <i>rade</i> and the harbour. As she
+passed along, the dark quays were full of moving lights and figures;
+active women with short skirts<a name="Page_70" id="Page_70"></a> and sabots, mingling in the groups of
+fishermen; while a buzz of harsh Breton speech resounded on all sides.
+She caught words about a gang of wreckers that had lately infested the
+coast: and the names of one or two "<i>mauvais sujets</i>" in the village,
+who were supposed to be their confederates. She saw a moving light at
+the mouth of the harbour, and from a low-breathed murmur that ran below
+the noisier speech of the crowd, she gathered that it was a boat's crew
+going out in the darkness, to scale the precipitous rock, and extinguish
+the light.</p>
+
+<p>All her faculties seemed quickened, and she kept repeating aloud to
+herself the words she heard in the crowd, to make sure that she could
+articulate as clearly as she had done in the first moment that her voice
+was given to her.</p>
+
+<p>When she arrived at the doctor's gate, and dismounted to pull the great
+iron bell-rope that hung outside, she was trembling violently, and could
+hardly steady her hands to tie up the horse. Jeanne, the cook's sister,
+took her into the kitchen, while some one fetched the doctor, and she
+was so anxious that her speech should seem plain to them, that for the
+few first moments, from sheer nervousness, she could not utter a word.
+Then the doctor entered, a tall, well-built man, with stiff, iron-grey
+hair and imperial, and an expression of genial contentment with himself
+and the rest of the world.</p>
+
+<p>"Mais, Mademoiselle Annette," he exclaimed the moment he saw her, "What
+are you doing then? You must return home and go to bed at<a name="Page_71" id="Page_71"></a> once. Why did
+you not send me word before, instead of putting it off till you got so
+ill?"</p>
+
+<p>He did not wait for her to reply, believing her to be speechless as
+usual, but placed her in a chair and began to feel her pulse. She was
+trying to speak all the time, but from excitement and a strange
+dizziness that had come over her, she could not at once use her new
+faculty. At last she got out the words, that it was not for herself she
+had come; that a <i>fermier</i> who had ridden fast from the village of St.
+Jean, further up the coast, to bring the news of the false light on the
+G&eacute;ant, had been thrown from his horse&mdash;but before she had finished the
+sentence, the doctor, still absorbed in the contemplation of her own
+case, interrupted her, exclaiming with astonishment at her new power of
+speech, and demanding to know by what means it had come, and how long
+she had possessed it.</p>
+
+<p>But to recall the experience of that moment on the hill, when at the
+thought of the danger menacing the fishing boats, her tongue had been
+loosened, and the unaccustomed words had come forth, was too much for
+Annette. She trembled so, and made such painful efforts to speak, that
+it seemed as though she were again losing the power of utterance; and
+the doctor bade her remain perfectly quiet, gave her some soothing
+medicine, and directed a bed to be prepared for her in the kitchen, as
+he said she was not fit to return home that night: then he himself took
+the old horse from the gate where he stood, and set off for the auberge
+with what haste he might.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72"></a>For three or four minutes after he was gone, Annette remained
+motionless in her seat, wearing her patient, deprecatory expression,
+while her eyes rested on the window, without apparently seeing the
+lights and dimly outlined figures that were visible on the <i>rade</i>
+outside. Then her glance seemed to concentrate itself on something: the
+nervous, trembling lips closed rigidly, and before they saw what she was
+about to do, she had risen from her chair, and darted from the room and
+out into the night.</p>
+
+<p>"Our Lady guard her! It was the boats she caught sight of," said
+Victorine, the cook. "There are the lights off the bay. Go, stop her,
+Jeanne! Monsieur will be angry with us if anything befall her."</p>
+
+<p>"Dame! I will not go," said her sister. "Can you not see that Annette is
+bewitched? If she must go, she must. I will have nought to do with it."</p>
+
+<p>Victorine, however, scouted her younger sister's reasoning, and hurried
+out across the small court-yard, through the gate and on to the road.</p>
+
+<p>The whole village seemed gathered at the harbour-side; children and old
+men, lads and women, eager, yet with the patient quietness that is the
+way with the Breton folk. Here a demure group of white-coiffed girls
+stood waiting with scarce a word passing among them, waiting at the
+quay-side for the fathers, brothers, or sweethearts, that for months had
+been facing the perils of the northern seas. There a dark-eyed,
+loose-limbed<a name="Page_73" id="Page_73"></a> Breton peasant, the wildness of whose look bewrayed the
+gentleness of his nature, was arguing with a white-haired patriarch
+about the probable value of this year's haul: while quaint-looking
+children in little tight-fitting bonnets and clattering sabots clung
+patiently to their mother's skirts, their mothers, who could remember
+many a home-coming of the boats, and knew that it would be well if to
+some of those now waiting at the harbour, grief were not brought instead
+of joy.</p>
+
+<p>The vanguard of the fleet had been sighted some half-hour ago, and the
+two or three boats whose lights could now be seen approaching, one of
+which was recognized as Paul Gignol's "Annette," would, if all was well,
+anchor in the harbour that night: for the tide was high, so that the
+harbour basin was full; and the light of the torches and lanterns that
+were carried to and fro among the crowd, was reflected from its surface
+in distorted and broken flashes; while the regular plashing of the water
+against the quay-side accompanied the low murmur of the crowd.</p>
+
+<p>Victorine sought in vain for Annette in the darkness, dressed, as she
+was, like all the other peasant girls; but her eye lighted on the tall,
+powerful figure of Jules Leroux, Annette's father, standing at the door
+of the <i>bureau du port</i>, where he and some others were discussing the
+signals.</p>
+
+<p>Victorine approached the group, and announced in her emphatic way that
+Annette was ill, very ill, and had gone out alone into the crowd, when<a name="Page_74" id="Page_74"></a>
+the doctor had bidden her not leave her bed. Jules, who had been down at
+the harbour since midday, and had heard nothing of Annette's recovered
+voice, or of her riding to the village, started off without waiting for
+more, along the quay and on to the very end of the mole, where the light
+guarded the entrance to the harbour, saying to himself, "It is there she
+will be&mdash;if she have feet to carry her&mdash;it is there she will be&mdash;when
+the boat comes in."</p>
+
+<p>Victorine looked after him, murmuring, "Surely the child Annette is the
+apple of her father's eye."</p>
+
+<p>The outline of the foremost fishing-smack was growing more and more
+distinct on the water, as he reached the end of the quay. Moving figures
+on board flashed into uncertain light for a moment, then disappeared
+into darkness again. A girl darted out from the crowd as he approached,
+and clung to his arm. "Annette, my little one," said Jules, "never fear.
+The Saints will bring him safe home."</p>
+
+<p>"He is there: it is the 'Annette' that comes. I have seen him!" she
+cried.</p>
+
+<p>Her father drew back almost in alarm. "What! Thy tongue is loosened, my
+child?"</p>
+
+<p>She drew down his head, and whispered eagerly in his ear. "The blessed
+St. Yvon made me speak. I will tell you afterwards: it was to save Paul.
+Is it not true now that he is mine?"</p>
+
+<p>At that moment a clamour of welcome ran along the quay-side, as the boat
+glided silently through the harbour mouth, and into the light of the
+torches that flashed from the quay.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75"></a>Women's voices called upon Paul and his mate Jean, and the name of the
+'Annette' (the vessel that had been christened after his foster-father's
+dumb child) was passed from mouth to mouth, while the fishermen silently
+got out the boat that was to carry the mooring cable to the shore.</p>
+
+<p>Annette clung convulsively to her father during the few minutes' delay,
+and once, as he saw the light flash on her face, he suddenly remembered
+something Victorine had said about the doctor. He watched her with a
+pang of alarm, and at the same time felt that she was stringing herself
+up for some effort. Everyone was greeting Jean, the first of the boat's
+crew that appeared, as he clambered up the quay-side, but Annette did
+not stir; then the second dark, sea-beaten figure emerged from below,
+and Annette darted forward. She clasped both Paul's hands and gazed into
+his face, while she seemed to be struggling with herself for something a
+spasm passed over her face, which was as white as her coiffe: her father
+and the others gathered round, but some instinct bade them be silent.
+Annette's lips opened more than once as if she were about to speak, but
+no sound came forth: then she turned to her father with a look of
+despairing entreaty, and at the same moment tottered and would have
+fallen, had he not darted forward and caught her in his arms.</p>
+
+<p>"She is dead! God help me," he cried.</p>
+
+<p>"Chut! Chut!" said the voice of Victorine in the crowd. "It is but the
+nerves. Did not you see she was striving to say the word of greeting,<a name="Page_76" id="Page_76"></a>
+and it was a cruel blow to find her speech had gone from her again.
+Surely it is but a crisis of the nerves."</p>
+
+<p>But Jules, bending his tangled beard over her, groaned "The hand of God
+is heavy on me."</p>
+
+<p>He and Paul raised her between them, and carried her to the doctor's,
+stepping softly for fear of doing her a mischief: while the story of her
+recovered speech, and the danger which had threatened the fleet, was
+told to the returned fisherman in breathless, awe-struck accents. He
+listened, full of wonder, and as he saw her safely tucked into her
+box-bed in the doctor's kitchen, said in his light-hearted Celtic way,
+that it was not for nothing she had got her voice back, and no fear but
+she would soon be well, and would speak to him in the morning.</p>
+
+<p>But her father, who sat watching her unconscious face, and holding her
+hand in both his, as though he feared she would slip away from him,
+shook his head and said, "She will not see another dawn."</p>
+
+<p>They tried their utmost to restore her consciousness, but with that
+ignorance of the simplest remedies which is sometimes found among the
+Breton peasants, they had so far failed: and though someone had been
+sent to fetch back the doctor from the auberge, Victorine and the other
+women shook their heads, as Jules had done, and said to each other, "It
+is in vain; she will never waken more."</p>
+
+<p>But when the fainting fit had lasted nearly an hour, and in the wild
+eyes of Paul, who stood<a name="Page_77" id="Page_77"></a> leaning on the foot of the bed, a gleam of fear
+was beginning to show itself; there was a stir in the lifeless form, a
+struggle of the breath, a flicker of the eyelids: they opened, and a
+glance, in which all Annette's pure and loving spirit seemed to shine
+forth, fell direct on Paul's face at the end of the bed. She smiled
+brightly, and said distinctly "Au revoir:" then turned on her side, and
+died.</p>
+
+<p>Jules and Paul, in their simple peasant fashion, went about seeing to
+what had to be done before morning; but Annette's father spoke not a
+word. Paul, to cheer him, told him of the wife he had wedded on the
+other side of the sea, and who would come home to be a daughter to him:
+and Jules nodded silently, without betraying a shadow of surprise:
+having art enough, in the midst of his grief, to keep Annette's secret
+loyally.</p>
+
+<p>Along the straight, white road there came, in the early dawn, a little
+silent procession: the silent road, that was ever bringing tidings, good
+or evil, to the auberge: though now no white-coiffed girl with a patient
+face was waiting at the door. All the road was deserted, for the
+villagers were still asleep, as the little procession wound its way
+along: wrapped in the same silence in which Annette's own young life had
+been passed. A cart with a plain coffin in it, was drawn by the old
+horse that had carried Annette to the harbour the night before, and who
+stepped as though he knew what burden he was bringing: Paul led the
+horse; and beside the cart, with his head bowed on his breast, walked
+Annette's father.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78"></a>After the funeral rites were over, the smooth current of existence by
+the roadside and the harbour flowed on, apparently in complete oblivion
+of the fragile blossom of a girl's life, that had appeared for a little
+while on its surface, and then been swept away for ever.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 150px;">
+<img src="images/image2.jpg" width="150" height="117" alt="" title="Image 2" />
+</div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THE_HALTING_STEP" id="THE_HALTING_STEP"></a><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79"></a>THE HALTING STEP.</h2>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Chapter I</span>.</h3>
+
+
+<div class="figleft">
+<img src="images/initial5.jpg" alt="O" title="O" /></div>
+<p>
+n the Western coast of one of the islands in the Channel group is a
+level reach of salt marshes, to which the sea rises only at the highest
+spring tides, and which at other times extends as far as the eye can
+see, a dreary waste of salt pools, low rocks, and stretches of sand,
+yielding its meagre product of shell-fish, samphire, and sea-weed to the
+patient toil of the fisher-folk that dwell in scattered huts along the
+shore. One arm of the bay, at the time of which I am writing, extended
+inland to the left, being nearly cut off from the sea by a rocky
+headland, behind which it had spread itself, so as almost to present the
+appearance of an isolated pond or lake, encircled by low black rocks,
+within which the water rose and sank at regular intervals, as if under
+the influence of some strange, unknown power. On the borders of the lake
+stood a low, one-roomed cabin, such as the island fishermen in the
+wilder districts inhabit; and in the<a name="Page_80" id="Page_80"></a> plot of ground beside the cabin,
+one September evening, in the mellow, westering light, a woman might
+have been seen busying herself by tying up into bundles the sea-weed
+that had been spread out to dry in the sun. She wore a shade bonnet with
+a large projecting peak and an enveloping curtain round the neck, quite
+concealing her face, as she bent over her work. Presently, although no
+sound had been heard, she looked up, with that apparently intuitive
+sense of what is happening at sea, which sea-folk seem to possess, and
+perceived an orange-sailed fishing boat just rounding the headland and
+making for the open sea. The face that appeared under the bonnet, as she
+looked up, had the colourless and haggard look frequently seen among
+fisher-women, and which is perhaps due to too much sea-air, added to
+hard living. But one was prevented from noticing the rest of the face by
+the expression of the two grey eyes, peering out from under the shade of
+the bonnet-peak; they were eyes that seemed always expecting: they
+seemed to have nothing to do with the pallid face, and the sea-weed, and
+the hut: they belonged to a different life. As she looked out over the
+sea, their glance was almost stern, as though demanding something which
+the sea did not give. But she only remarked to herself, in the island
+patois:&mdash;"I suppose the fish have gone over to the south-west again, and
+he'll make a night of it. Mackerel is such an aggravating fish, one day
+here, t'other there&mdash;you never know where you'll find them."</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81"></a>Presently, as it grew dark, she warmed up some herb-broth for her
+supper, and when she had finished it, and had fastened up the dog and
+the donkey, knowing that her husband would not return till the morning,
+she put out the glimmering oil-lamp, and was just going to bed, when a
+sound struck her ear. For two miles round the cabin not another
+human-being lived, and it was the rarest thing for any one to come in
+that direction after dark, as the rocks were slippery and dangerous, and
+a solitary bit of open country had to be crossed between the cabin and
+the nearest houses inland. Yet this sound was distinctly that of a human
+footstep, which halted in its gait.</p>
+
+<p>The woman started up and listened: there was silence for a minute: then
+the limping step was heard again: again it ceased. The woman went to the
+door and looked out. Over the sandy, wind-swept common to the left the
+darkness brooded, the outlines of a broken bit of sea-wall, and of some
+giant boulders, said to be remains of a dolmen, emerging dimly therefrom
+like threatening phantoms; to the right moaned the long, grey sea, and
+in front was the waste of salt marshes and rocks, with the windlass of a
+ship once wrecked in the bay, projecting its huge outline among the
+uncertain shadows. Not a living thing was visible. She stood for several
+minutes peering out into the darkness and listening; no sound was to be
+heard but the lapping of the waves, and the sigh of the wind through the
+bent-grass on the common.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82"></a>Suddenly Josef, the dog, started up in his corner, and barked. He was a
+large mastiff, with a dangerous temper, who was chained up at night in
+the rough lean-to that was built against the side of the cabin. He
+barked again furiously, dragging at his chain with all his might, and
+quivering in every nerve of his body. The woman lighted a torch at the
+dying embers on the hearth, and unfastening the dog, waited to see what
+would happen. He dashed forward furiously a few steps, then suddenly
+stopped, sniffed the air, made one or two uncertain darts hither and
+thither, and stood still, evidently puzzled. She called to him to
+encourage him, but he dropped his tail and returned to his shed, where
+he curled himself up in a comfortable corner, like a dog that was not
+going to be troubled by womanish fancies. The woman went round the
+cabin, and the pig-stye, and the patch of meagre gooseberry-bushes,
+throwing the uncertain torch-light on every dark hole or corner; but no
+one was to be seen. She was none the less convinced that someone had
+approached the cottage, for the dog was not likely to have been deceived
+as well as herself; so she kept the light burning, called Josef to lie
+down at the foot of the bed, barred the door, and went to sleep.</p>
+
+<p>The sun was high the next morning when the fisherman returned. He stood
+in the stream of light in the open doorway, in his blue, knitted jersey
+and jack-boots; and with the beaming smile which overspread his whole
+countenance,<a name="Page_83" id="Page_83"></a> and his big, powerful limbs, he might well have been taken
+for an impersonation of the sun shining in his strength.</p>
+
+<p>It was as great a pleasure to him to greet his Louise now, as it had
+been in the days of their early courtship; for he had courted her twice,
+his sunny boyhood's lovemaking having been overclouded by the advent of
+a stranger from the mainland, who, with his smooth tongue and
+new-fangled ways, had gained such an influence over Louise during a four
+months' absence of Peter's on a fishing cruise, that she forgot her
+first love, and wedded this new settler; who took her to the town a few
+miles inland, where he carried on a retail fishmonger's business,
+knowing but little of fishing himself, either deep-sea or along-shore.
+But Providence had not blessed their union, for not a child had been
+born to them, and after but three years of married life, when Fauchon,
+the husband, was out one day in a fishing smack, which he had just
+bought to carry on business for himself with men under him, the boat
+capsized in a sudden squall, and neither he nor the two other men were
+ever seen or heard of again. Then to Louise, in her sudden poverty and
+despair (for all the savings had been put into the fishing smack) came
+Peter once more, and with his frank, whole-hearted love, and his
+strength and confidence, fairly carried her off her feet, making her
+happy with or without her own consent, in such shelter and comfort as
+his fisherman's home could supply. They had been married seven years
+now, and had<a name="Page_84" id="Page_84"></a> on the whole been happy together; and as she answered his
+"Well, my child, how goes it with thee to-day?" her own face lighted up
+with a reflection of the beam on his.</p>
+
+<p>After she had heard of the haul of mackerel, and had got Peter his
+breakfast, she stood with her arms akimbo looking at him, as he gulped
+down his bouillon with huge satisfaction.</p>
+
+<p>The expectant look had not left her eyes, as, fixing them upon his, she
+said, "I had a fright last night, my friend."</p>
+
+<p>"Hein! How was that?" said he, with the spoon in his mouth.</p>
+
+<p>"I heard a step outside, and Josef heard it too and barked; and we went
+all round with a torch, but there was nobody."</p>
+
+<p>"Ho! ho!" cried Peter, with his hearty laugh, "she will always hear a
+step, or the wing of a sea-swallow flying overhead, or perhaps a crab
+crawling in the bay, if Peter is not at home to take care of her."</p>
+
+<p>"But indeed," said Louise, "it is the truth I am telling thee: it was
+the step of a man, and of one that halted in his gait."</p>
+
+<p>"Did Josef hear it&mdash;this step that halted?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, he barked till I set him free: then all in a moment he stopped,
+and would not search."</p>
+
+<p>"Pou-ouf," crowed Peter, in jovial scorn. "Surely it was Josef that was
+the wisest." Then, as she still seemed unsatisfied, he added, "May-be
+'twas the water in the smuggler's cave. Many's the time that I've
+thought somebody was coming<a name="Page_85" id="Page_85"></a> along, sort of
+limping&mdash;cluck&mdash;chu&mdash;cluck&mdash;chu&mdash;when the tide was half-way up in the
+cave over there. And the wind was blowing west last night: 'tis with a
+west wind it sounds the plainest."</p>
+
+<p>"May-be 'twas that, my friend," said the woman, taking up the pail to
+fetch the water from the well across the common. But she kept looking
+around her, with a half-frightened, half-expectant glance, all the way.</p>
+
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Chapter II</span>.</h3>
+
+<p>For several days the halting step was not heard again, and Louise had
+nearly forgotten her fright, when one morning, about six o'clock, when
+Peter was out getting up his lobster pots, Louise, with her head still
+buried in the bed-clothes, suddenly heard&mdash;or thought she heard&mdash;the
+sound again. She started up and listened: there could be no doubt about
+it; someone was approaching the cottage at the back&mdash;some one who was
+lame. She hurried on some clothes and looked out of the door (the cabin
+had no window). In the glittering morning light, the expanse of level
+shore and common was as desolate as ever. She turned the corner of the
+cottage to the left, where Jenny and the pigs were. There was no one
+there; then she went round to the right, and, as she did so,<a name="Page_86" id="Page_86"></a> distinctly
+perceived a shadow vanishing swiftly round the corner of the stack of
+sea-weed. She uttered a cry, and for a moment seemed like one paralysed;
+then moved forward hastily a few steps; stopped again, listening with a
+strange expression on her countenance to the sound of the limp, as it
+grew fainter and fainter; then advanced, as if unwillingly, to the back
+of the cottage, whence no one was visible. A corner of rock, round which
+wound the path that ascended to the top of the cliff, projected at no
+great distance from the cottage. She stood and looked at the rock, half
+as if it were a threatening, monster, half as if it were the door of
+hope: then she went slowly back to the cottage.</p>
+
+<p>She did not tell Peter this time about the step.</p>
+
+<p>A week or two afterwards, when Peter Girard was returning from the rocks
+with a basketful of crabs, he was joined on the way by his mate,
+Mesurier.</p>
+
+<p>The two fishermen trudged along in silence for some time, one a little
+in front of the other, after the manner of their kind; then Mesurier
+remarked, "We shall be wanting some new line before we go out for
+mackerel again." (Mackerel are caught by lines in those parts, where the
+sea-bottom is too rocky for trawling).</p>
+
+<p>Peter turned round and stood still to consider the question.</p>
+
+<p>"I've got some strands knotted, if you and I set to work we can plait it
+before night."</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87"></a>"I must go up to Jean's for some bait first; there won't be more than
+three hours left before dark, and how are we to get it done in that
+time? I'd better get some in the village when I'm up there."</p>
+
+<p>"Hout, man! pay eight shillings for a line," said the economical Peter,
+"and a pound of horsehair will make six. I'll send Louise for the bait,
+and you come along with me&mdash;we'll soon reckon out the plait."</p>
+
+<p>Mesurier, a thick-set, vigorous-looking man, shorter than Peter, stood
+still a moment, looking at him rather queerly out of his keen, grey
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Been up to Jean's much of late?" he asked, trudging on again.</p>
+
+<p>"No, not I," said Peter. "Hangin' round in the village isn't much after
+my mind."</p>
+
+<p>"Best send Louise instead, hey?"</p>
+
+<p>Peter wheeled his huge frame round in a moment.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean, man?" he demanded, in a voice that seemed to come
+from his feet.</p>
+
+<p>Mesurier's face was devoid of expression, as he replied, "Nothing, to be
+sure. Of course Louise will be going to the shop now and again."</p>
+
+<p>Peter laid his hand, like a lion's paw, on Mesurier's shoulder, as if he
+would rend the truth out of him.</p>
+
+<p>"And what's the matter with her going to the shop?" said Peter, so
+rapidly and thickly as to be hardly articulate.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88"></a>"None that I know of," said the other uneasily, shrugging off Peter's
+hand, with an attempted laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"Now you understand," said Peter, with blazing eyes, "you've either got
+to swear that you've heard nothing at all about Louise which you
+oughtn't to have heard, or else you'll tell me who said it, and let him
+know he's got me to reckon with," and Peter clenched his fist in a way
+that would have made most people swear whatever he might have happened
+to wish.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, mate," said the other man. "You go and see Jean, and ask him what
+company he's had of late." Then seeing Peter's face becoming livid, he
+added briefly, "There's been a queer-looking fish staying with him the
+last three weeks&mdash;walks all on one side&mdash;and Louise was talking to him
+t'other evening under the church wall. 'Twas my wife saw her. That's the
+truth. Nobody else has said nought about her."</p>
+
+<p>Peter swung round without a word, and marched off in the direction of
+the village. Mesurier watched him a moment, then called after him, "I
+say, mate! mind what you're doing: the man's a poor blighted creature,
+more like a monkey than a Christian."</p>
+
+<p>Peter said something in his throat while he handed the crabs to
+Mesurier: his hand shook so violently as he did so that the basket
+nearly fell to the ground. Then he strode on again. Mesurier had glanced
+at his face, and did not follow.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89"></a>It took Peter less than an hour, at the pace at which he was walking,
+to reach the next village along the coast where Jean lived. The mellow
+afternoon sunshine was lighting up the cottage wall, and the long strip
+of gaily flowering garden, as he approached. He entered the front room,
+which was fitted up as a sort of shop, in which fishermen's requisites
+were sold. There was no one there. He pushed the door open into the
+inner room: it was also empty. He felt as if he could not breathe within
+the cottage walls, and went out again. The cliff overhung the sea a few
+yards in front of the cottage. He went to the edge and was scanning the
+shore for a sign of Jean, when below, on a narrow, zigzag path which led
+down the cliff to the beach, he perceived his wife. She stood at a turn
+in the path, looking downwards. There was something about her that to
+Peter made her seem different from what she had ever seemed before. He
+looked at Louise, and he saw a woman with a shadow of guilt upon her.
+The path below her was concealed from Peter's sight by an over-hanging
+piece of rock, but she seemed to be watching someone coming slowing up
+it. Then she glanced fearfully round, and saw Peter standing on the top
+of the cliff. She made a hasty sign to the person below, but already a
+man's hand leaning on a stick was visible beyond the edge of the rock.
+Peter strode straight down the face of the cliff to the turning in the
+path. Louise screamed. Peter seized by the collar a puny, crooked
+creature, whom he scarcely stopped<a name="Page_90" id="Page_90"></a> to look at, and held him, as one
+might a cat, over the cliff-side.</p>
+
+<p>"Swear you'll quit the island to-night, or I'll drop you," he thundered.</p>
+
+<p>The creature merely screamed for mercy, and seemed unable to articulate
+a sentence; while Louise knelt, clasping Peter's knees in an agony of
+entreaty. Meanwhile, the screaming ceased; the creature had fainted in
+Peter's grasp. He flung him down on the path, said sternly to Louise,
+"Come with me," and they went up the cliff-side together.</p>
+
+<p>They walked home without a word, Louise crying and moaning a little, but
+not daring to speak. When they got inside the cabin, he stood and faced
+her.</p>
+
+<p>"Woman," he said, in a low, shaken voice, "What hast thou done?"</p>
+
+<p>She fell upon her knees, crying. "Forgive me, Peter," she entreated.
+"Thou art such a strong man; forgive me."</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me the whole truth. What is this man to thee?"</p>
+
+<p>She knelt in silence, shaken with sobs.</p>
+
+<p>"Who is he?" said Peter, his voice getting deeper and hoarser.</p>
+
+<p>She only kept moaning, "Forgive me." Presently she said between her
+sobs, "I only went this morning to tell him to go away. I wanted him to
+go away; I have prayed him to go again and again."</p>
+
+<p>"Since when hast thou known him?"</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91"></a>Again she made no answer, but inarticulate moans.</p>
+
+<p>Peter stood looking at her for a few seconds with an indescribable
+expression of sorrow and aversion.</p>
+
+<p>"I loved thee," he said; and turning away, left her.</p>
+
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Chapter III</span>.</h3>
+
+<p>Peter went out in the evening without speaking to Louise again, and was
+not seen till the following afternoon, when he called his mate to go
+mackerel-fishing, and they were absent two days getting a great haul. He
+came back and slept at Mesurier's, and did not go near his own home for
+a week, though he sent money to Louise, when he sold the fish.</p>
+
+<p>At the end of that time he went over to Jean's. The stranger had gone,
+but Peter sat down on a stool opposite Jean, and began to enter into
+conversation with him, with a more settled look in his hollow eyes than
+had been there since the catastrophe of the week before. The meeting on
+the cliff had been seen by more than one passerby, and the report had
+spread that Peter had nearly murdered the stranger for intriguing with
+his wife. Jean told Peter all he knew of the man,<a name="Page_92" id="Page_92"></a> but he neither knew
+his business nor whence he came. He said his name was Jacques, and would
+give no other. He had gone to the nearest inland town, where he said
+that a relation of his kept an "auberge." He had gone in a hurry, and
+had left some bottles and things behind, containing the stuff he rubbed
+his leg with, Jean thought; and Jean meant to take them to him when next
+he went to the town.</p>
+
+<p>"By the way," he said, taking a little book from the shelf, "I believe
+this belonged to him too. I remember to have seen him more than once
+poring over it with them close-seeing eyes of his. The man was a rare
+scholar, and no mistake."</p>
+
+<p>Peter took the little book from him, and opened it. Jean, glancing at
+him as he did so, uttered an exclamation. A deadly paleness had
+overspread Peter's face, and he clutched with his hand in the air, as
+though for something to steady himself with. Then he staggered to his
+feet, still tightly grasping the little book, and saying something
+unintelligible, went out.</p>
+
+<p>He went down the cliff to the place where, a week ago, he had found his
+wife and the stranger, and stood under the rock, and looked at the book.
+He looked at it still closed in his hand, as if it were some venomous
+creature, which might, the next moment, dart forth a poisoned fang to
+sting him. From the cover it appeared to be a little, much-worn
+prayer-book. Presently he opened it gingerly, and read something written
+on the fly-<a name="Page_93" id="Page_93"></a>leaf. He spelled it out with some difficulty and slowly, and
+yet he looked at it as if the page were a familiar vision to him. Then
+he remained immovable for a long time, gazing out to sea, with the
+little book crunched to a shapeless mass in his huge fist. When at last
+he turned to ascend the cliff again, his face was ashen pale, and his
+step was that of an old man. He trudged heavily across the common and
+along the road inland, five or six miles, till he reached the town,
+inquired for a certain auberge, entered the kitchen, and found himself
+face to face with the man he sought. A spasm of fear passed swiftly over
+the face of Jacques, as he beheld Peter, and he instinctively started up
+from the bench on which he was sitting, and shrank backwards. As he did
+so, he showed himself a disfigured paralytic, one side of his face being
+partly drawn, and one leg crooked. He was an undersized man, with sandy
+hair, quick, intelligent, grey eyes, and a well-cut profile.</p>
+
+<p>"Jacques Fauchon," said Peter, "have no fear of me."</p>
+
+<p>Jacques kept his eyes on him, still distrustfully.</p>
+
+<p>"I did not know," continued Peter, speaking thickly and slowly, "the
+other day, what I know now. I had never seen you but once&mdash;and you have
+changed."</p>
+
+<p>"It is not my wish to cause trouble," said Jacques, still glancing
+furtively round. "Things being as they are, to my thinking, there's
+nought for it but to let 'em be."</p>
+
+<p>"I have not said yet," said Peter, "what it is<a name="Page_94" id="Page_94"></a> I've come to say. This
+little prayer-book with her name writ in it, and yours below,&mdash;'tis the
+one she always took to church, as a girl&mdash;has shown me the path I've got
+to take. How you came back from the dead, I don't know: 'twas the hand
+of the Lord. But here you are, and you are her husband, and not I." He
+stopped.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Mr. Girard, I know my legal rights," began Jacques, "but
+considering&mdash;and I've no wish to cause unpleasantness, of that you may
+be sure. 'Tis why I never wrote, not knowing how the land might lie, and
+for four years I was helpless on my back."</p>
+
+<p>"Never mind the past, man," interrupted Peter, "It's the future that's
+to be thought of. What you've got to do is to take her away to a
+distance, and settle in some place where nobody knows what's gone by."</p>
+
+<p>Fauchon considered for a moment, a slight, deprecatory smile stealing
+over his face.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose," he remarked, "she hasn't got any little purse of her own by
+this time; considering, I mean, that she's been of use with the lines
+and the nets and so on."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean," said Peter, "that you can't support her?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you see, I worked my passage from New Zealand as cook&mdash;that's
+what I waited so long for. If she could pay her passage, the same
+captain would take us again, when he starts to go back next week. And if
+she had a little in hand, when we got there, we could set up a store,
+may-<a name="Page_95" id="Page_95"></a>be, and make shift to get on. I only thought, may-be, she having
+been of use&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I'll sell the cottage and the bits of things," said Peter, "and there's
+a trifle put by to add to it. But tell me this; when you're out there,
+can you support her, or can't you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, there's Mr. Boucher, that took me on as house-servant at first in
+New Zealand, he being in the sailing ship when I was picked up. And when
+the paralytics came on, resulting from the injury I got in the wreck, he
+never let me want for nothing, the four years that I lay helpless. He's
+got money to spare, you see"&mdash;with a wink&mdash;"he's well off, and he's what
+I call easy-going; and if we could manage to get the right side of
+him"&mdash;with another wink&mdash;"I reckon he'd help us a bit."</p>
+
+<p>"Man," said Peter, letting his hand fall heavily on Fauchon's shoulder,
+"tell me plain that you've got honest work as'll feed and clothe her out
+there, else, by God, you shan't have her!" and his grip on Fauchon's
+shoulder tightened, so that a flash of terror passed over the man's
+face, and he tried to edge away, saying deprecatingly, "I've no wish,
+Mr. Girard, you understand&mdash;I've no wish to offend. In fact, my whole
+intention was not to cause any trouble. On my honour, I was going to
+leave the island to-morrow, when I found how things were&mdash;'tis the truth
+I speak."</p>
+
+<p>"You are her husband," said Peter, "and she loves you, and she shall go
+with you. But if you<a name="Page_96" id="Page_96"></a> let her want, God do so unto you, and more also!"</p>
+
+<p>And he let go of him, and strode away again.</p>
+
+<p>When he got back it was dark, and he stood at his cottage door and
+looked in. Louise was sitting by the hearth, with her back to him, and
+her hands in her lap, rocking herself gently on her stool, and gazing
+into the glowing ash on the hearthstone. Opposite, on the other side of
+the hearth, Peter's own stool stood empty, and on the shelf beside it
+were the two yellow porringers, out of which he and Louise used always
+to sup together. His jersey, the one she had knitted for him when they
+were married, hung in the corner, with the bright blue patch in it, that
+she had been mending it with the last time he was at home. Louise was so
+absorbed in her thoughts that she did not hear his approach, and
+stepping softly, he passed in and stood before her; she started back,
+and immediately began to whimper a little, putting up her hands to her
+face.</p>
+
+<p>"Louise," said Peter, "wilt thou forgive me?"</p>
+
+<p>She looked up perplexed, only half believing what she heard.</p>
+
+<p>"I know everything. I have seen Jacques. I was harsh to thee, mon
+enfant."</p>
+
+<p>"I meant no harm," said Louise. "I begged him not to come. I knew thou
+wouldest be angered."</p>
+
+<p>"I am not angered. He is thy husband."</p>
+
+<p>She glanced up with an irrepressible start of eagerness.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97"></a>"Thou meanest&mdash;" Her very desire seemed to take away her speech.</p>
+
+<p>Peter laid his hand on her wrist, as gently as a woman.</p>
+
+<p>"Louise," he said, "thou lovest him?"</p>
+
+<p>She gazed at him in silence; the piercing question in her eyes her only
+answer.</p>
+
+<p>"Thou shalt go with him," he said. "I only came to say goodbye."</p>
+
+<p>He went to the door: then stood and looked back, with a world of
+yearning and tenderness in his face. He stretched out his arms. "Kiss
+me, Louise," he said.</p>
+
+<p>She rose, still half frightened, and kissed him as she was told.</p>
+
+<p>He held her tightly in his arms for a minute, then put her silently from
+him, and turned away.</p>
+
+<p>Peter was not seen in those parts again. It was understood that he and
+his wife had emigrated to New Zealand, and the cottage was sold, and the
+furniture and things dispersed.</p>
+
+<p>In a fishing village on the coast of Brittany, there appeared, not long
+afterwards, a tall Englishman, speaking the Channel Island patois, who
+settled down to make a home among the Breton folk, adopting their ways
+and language, and eking out, like them, a livelihood by hard toil early
+and late among the rocks and sand-banks, or by long months of fishing on
+the high seas; a man on whom the simple-minded villagers looked with a
+certain respect, mingled with awe, as on one who seemed to them marked
+out by heaven<a name="Page_98" id="Page_98"></a> for some special fate; who lived alone in his cottage,
+attending to his own wants, no woman being ever allowed to enter it; and
+about whose past nothing was known, and no one dared to ask.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 150px;">
+<img src="images/image3.jpg" width="150" height="144" alt="" title="Image 3" />
+</div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="TABITHAS_AUNT" id="TABITHAS_AUNT"></a><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99"></a>TABITHA'S AUNT.</h2>
+
+
+<div class="figleft">
+<img src="images/initial6.jpg" alt="F" title="F" /></div>
+<p>
+rom the very hour that Tabitha set foot in my house, I conceived a
+dislike for her Aunt. In the first place I did not see why she should
+have an Aunt. Tabitha was going to belong to me: and why an old, invalid
+lady, whose sons were scattered over the face of the earth, and who had
+never had a daughter of her own: who had been clever enough to discover
+a distant relationship to Tabitha, and had promptly matured a plan by
+which Tabitha was to remain always with her; to take the vacant chair
+opposite and pour out tea, and be coddled and kissed and looked
+after&mdash;why she might not have Tabitha herself for her whole and sole
+property, I could not understand. But this Aunt was always turning up:
+not visibly, I mean, but in conversation. I could never say which way I
+liked Tabitha's veil to be fastened but I was told Aunt Rennie's opinion
+on the matter&mdash;(Tabitha always absurdly shortened her Aunt's surname,
+which was Rensworth). I never could mention a book I liked but Aunt
+Rennie had either read it or not read it. It did not matter which to me,
+the least. But the climax came when Aunt Rennie sent Tabitha a bicycle.
+Now I know that young women bicycle<a name="Page_100" id="Page_100"></a> nowadays; but that is no reason why
+Tabitha should. I always turn away my eyes when I see a young girl pass
+the window on one of those ugly, muddy, dangerous machines, with her
+knees working like pumps, her skirt I don't know where, and an
+expression of self-satisfied determination on her face. I don't think I
+am old-fashioned, but I am sure my own dear little girl, if she had ever
+come to me, would not have bicycled; and though I had no wish to put any
+unfair restraint on Tabitha, still I did not want her to have a bicycle.
+And that this Aunt Rennie, as Tabitha would call her, without a word of
+warning, should send her one of those hideous things, as if it was <i>her</i>
+business to arrange for Tabitha's exercise&mdash;I do think it was rather
+uncalled for.</p>
+
+<p>When Tabitha came into the room to tell me about it, with that bright,
+affectionate smile she has, and her dear, plain, pale face&mdash;only that
+nobody would think her plain who knew her, for everybody loves her&mdash;she
+saw quickly enough that I did not like it: and then she was so sweet,
+looking so disappointed, and yet ready to give up the horrid thing if I
+wished, that I hardly knew what to do. Tabitha works on one in a way
+that I believe nobody else can. She has such a generous, warm heart, and
+is so responsive, and so quick to understand, and then she is so easily
+pleased, and so free from self-consciousness, you seem to know her all
+at once, and you feel as if it would be wicked to hurt her. So I don't
+know how it was exactly, but I began to give in about the bicycle;
+though I could not help mentioning<a name="Page_101" id="Page_101"></a> that it was rather unnecessary for
+Aunt Rennie to have taken the trouble: for Tabitha might have told me if
+she wanted a bicycle so much. And Tabitha said that Aunt Rennie thought
+bicycling was good for her, and, when she lived with her, a year ago,
+her Aunt used to take her on her tours round the villages, distributing,
+what she called "political literature." This did make me shudder, I
+confess. Fancy Tabitha turning into one of those canvassing women, with
+their uncivilised energy, their irritating superiority, and their entire
+want of decent respect for you and your own opinions! I knew that Aunt
+Rennie belonged to a Woman Suffrage Committee, but I did think she had
+left the child uncontaminated. It made me more thankful than ever that I
+had rescued her from the hands of such a person. However, as you see, I
+could not refuse to let Tabitha ride that bicycle; but I always knew
+that harm would come of it.</p>
+
+<p>And it came just in the way of which my inner consciousness had warned
+me. Now, of course, I never really expected to have Tabitha with me all
+her life: but I did want just for a little while to make-believe, as it
+were, that I had a daughter, and to feel as if she were happy and
+content with me. So it was rather hard that such a thing should happen,
+only the second time that she went out on that hideous machine. I can
+see her telling me about it now, kneeling down in her affectionate way
+by my sofa, all flushed and dishevelled after her ride, and with quite a
+new expression on her face. It seemed that she had<a name="Page_102" id="Page_102"></a> punctured her
+bicycle (whatever that means) and could not get on: and then an "awfully
+nice man" (she will use the modern slang; in my days we should merely
+have said "a gentleman") came up with his tools and things, and put it
+right for her: and ended by claiming acquaintance and proposing to call,
+"Because, Mammy dear," said Tabitha, "isn't it funny, but he knows Aunt
+Rennie!"</p>
+
+<p>Now, kind reader, I must confess that this was a little too much for me.
+To have Aunt Rennie (in spirit) perpetually between me and Tabitha was
+bad enough: to have her demoralising Tabitha by sending her bicycles was
+still worse: but to have her introducing, (I had nearly said intruding)
+young men into the privacy of my home, and into dangerous proximity with
+Tabitha was, for a moment, more than I could stand.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, my child," said I, "No doubt Miss Rensworth and her friends were
+more amusing than your poor sick Mammy. I suppose it was selfish of me
+to want to have you all to myself. If you would like to go back to your
+Aunt Rennie again, dear child." I added, "you have only to say so."</p>
+
+<p>What Tabitha said in reply I shall never forget; but neither, friendly
+reader, shall I tell it to you. So you must be content with knowing that
+we were friends again; and that the end of it was that I gave in about
+John Chambers&mdash;as his name turned out to be&mdash;just as I had given in
+about the bicycle.</p>
+
+<p>He came in just as we were having tea the next<a name="Page_103" id="Page_103"></a> day, and the worst of it
+was, I had to admit at once that he <i>was</i> nice. Of course this proved
+nothing in regard to Aunt Rennie and her friends: and it was just as
+unreasonable that I should be expected to receive whoever happened to
+know her, as if he had turned out to be vulgar or odious. But, as it
+was, he introduced himself in a sensible, straightforward way, looked
+one straight in the face when he spoke, had a deep, hearty laugh that
+sounded manly and true, and evidently entertained the friendliest
+sentiments for Tabitha.</p>
+
+<p>Well, as you will imagine, kind reader, that tea was not the last he had
+with us. He fell into our ways with delightful readiness; indeed, he was
+rather "old-fashioned," as I call it. He would pour out my second cup of
+tea, if Tabitha happened to be out of the room, as nicely as she herself
+could have done, carefully washing the tea-leaves out of the cup first;
+and he would tell Tabitha if a piece of braid were hanging down from her
+skirt, when they were going bicycling together. We got quite used to
+being kept in order by him in all kinds of little ways, and he grew to
+be so associated with the idea of Tabitha in my mind, that my affection
+for her became in a sort of way an affection for them both. The only
+thing was that, as the months went on, I began to wonder why more did
+not come of it. Sometimes I fancied I noted a reflection of my own
+perplexed doubts crossing Tabitha's sweet, expressive face, and I
+questioned within myself whether I ought (like the fathers in books) to
+ask the young man about his "intentions," and imply that he could<a name="Page_104" id="Page_104"></a> not
+expect an unlimited supply of my cups of tea, unless they were made
+clear: but I think that my own delicacy as well as common sense
+prevented my taking such a course, and things were still <i>in statu quo</i>,
+when one morning, as I was peacefully mending Tabitha's gloves (she
+<i>will</i> go out with holes in them) a ring at the front door bell was
+followed by the advance of someone in rustling silk garments up the
+stairs: the drawing-room door was opened, and there appeared a
+young-looking, fair lady, who advanced brightly to greet me, with a
+finished society manner, and an expression in her kind, blue eyes of
+unmixed pleasure at the meeting. The name murmured at the door had not
+reached my ears, and I was still wondering which of my child-friends had
+developed into this charming and fashionable young lady, when Tabitha
+burst into the room, flung her arms round the new-comer's neck, and
+exclaimed, "You darling, who would have expected you to turn up so
+charmingly, just when we didn't expect you!"</p>
+
+<p>The light slowly dawned on my amazed intelligence. Could <i>this</i>&mdash;<i>this</i>
+be the formidable, grey-haired woman, with whom I had been expecting,
+and somewhat dreading, sooner or later, an encounter? Could <i>this</i> be
+the spectacled Committee-woman&mdash;the rampant bicyclist&mdash;the corrupter of
+the youth of Tabitha? I looked at her immaculate dress, and pretty, neat
+hair; I noted the winning expression of her eyes, and her sweetness of
+manner; and instead of entrenching myself in the firm, though unspoken
+hostility, which I had secretly cherished towards the idea<a name="Page_105" id="Page_105"></a> of Aunt
+Rennie, I felt myself yielding to the charm of a personality, whose
+richness and sweetness were to me like a new experience of life.</p>
+
+<p>I thought I had grasped the outlines of that personality in the first
+interview, as we often do on forming a new acquaintance; but surprises
+were yet in store for me. Aunt Rennie needed but little pressing to stay
+the night, and then to add a second and a third day to her visit: she
+was staying with some friends in the neighbourhood, and, it appeared,
+could easily transfer herself to us. And as the time went on, I began to
+feel that she had some secondary object in coming and in staying: I
+thought I perceived a kind of diplomatic worldliness in Aunt Rennie,
+which jarred with my first impression of her. I felt sure that her
+purpose was in some way connected with Tabitha and John. She had, of
+course, heard of Tabitha's friendship for him from her own letters, and
+John she had known before we did. Well, it was on the fourth day that
+Aunt Rennie, sitting cosily beside me, startled me by suddenly and
+lightly remarking, that if I would consent, she wished to take Tabitha
+back with her, at any rate for a time, to her home in the South of
+England; she was almost necessary to her in her work at the present
+juncture: no one could act as her Secretary so efficiently as Tabitha
+could.</p>
+
+<p>"Besides, to tell you a little secret," she added, with a charming air
+of confidence and humour, "there is someone besides me that wants
+Tabitha back: there is an excellent prospect for her, if she<a name="Page_106" id="Page_106"></a> could only
+turn her thoughts in that direction. You have heard of Horace Wetherell,
+my second cousin&mdash;a rising barrister? Ah, well, a little bird has
+whispered things to me. His prospects are now very different from what
+they were when she was with me before, or I don't think she would ever
+have come to you, to say the truth! We must not let her get involved in
+anything doubtful. As you know, I have been acquainted with this John
+Chambers and his family all my life. He is a good fellow enough, but
+will never set the Thames on fire. She is exactly suited to my cousin,
+who is a man of the highest and noblest character, and could not fail to
+make her happy. It is only to take her away for a time, and I feel sure
+all will be well. I knew, my dear friend, that a word to you was enough,
+for Tabitha's sake: and so we will settle it between us."</p>
+
+<p>I said little in reply, for I was suffering keenly. I felt as if this
+fair, clever woman had struck a deliberate blow at my happiness, and in
+a way to leave me resistless. I could not deny that it might be for
+Tabitha's good to go away. Certainly John was poor, and in fact I had
+thought lately that that might be the reason the engagement was delayed.
+Tabitha was only twenty-two, and she might change her mind. I murmured
+that I would leave it to Tabitha to decide; and as Aunt Rennie turned
+away, I remember thinking that she was rather young to decide another
+woman's destiny in such a matter. She was only six years older than
+Tabitha.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107"></a>Tabitha often says that she owes her present happiness to Aunt Rennie,
+for if it had not been for the misery of the approaching separation,
+John, oppressed by the sense of his poverty and humble prospects, would
+never have had courage to tell her of his love. And I have sometimes
+amused myself by reflecting how Aunt Rennie's shrewdness, intelligence
+and determination, instead of working out her own ends, were all the
+time furthering the thing that was most opposed to her wishes.</p>
+
+<p>When, after those few days that followed&mdash;days for me of heart-breaking
+conflict of feeling, and for my two children of tears, silent misery and
+struggling passion, culminating at last, when the storm burst, in
+complete mutual understanding, and a joint determination that carried
+all before it&mdash;when, I say, Aunt Rennie, defeated, prepared to take her
+leave, she said a word to me which I often thought of afterwards. "She
+is choosing blindfold, tinsel for gold." I thought of it, not on account
+of the expression, but of Aunt Rennie herself. There was something in
+the pallor of her face, and in her tone, that made me ask myself whether
+there could be anything in this matter that concerned Aunt Rennie
+herself more closely than we thought&mdash;and, for the moment, a new and
+motherly feeling rose up in my heart towards her.</p>
+
+<p>Well, she has left me my two children, and though John is only "in
+business," and they live on three hundred a year, they are very happy,
+and I am happy in their happiness.</p>
+
+<p>It was a year after their marriage, that the news<a name="Page_108" id="Page_108"></a> came that Aunt Rennie
+was engaged to be married to her cousin. Horace Wetherell. And, as I
+pondered on it. I doubted whether I had, after all, quite understood the
+nobility of Aunt Rennie's character.</p>
+
+<p>Horace Wetherell has become an M.P., and he and his wife write books
+together on social problems.</p>
+
+<p>Poor John will never be an M.P., but I am glad that Tabitha loved him.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 150px;">
+<img src="images/image4.jpg" width="150" height="157" alt="" title="Image 4" />
+</div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, A Loose End and Other Stories, by S.
+Elizabeth Hall
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: A Loose End and Other Stories
+       A Loose End; In a Breton Village; Twice a Child; The Road by the Sea; The Halting Step; Tabitha's Aunt
+
+
+Author: S. Elizabeth Hall
+
+Release Date: May 27, 2005  [eBook #15922]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A LOOSE END AND OTHER STORIES***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Steven Gibbs, Irma Spehar, and the Project Gutenberg
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+A LOOSE END AND OTHER STORIES
+
+by
+
+S. ELIZABETH HALL
+
+Author of _The Interloper_
+
+London:
+Simpkin, Marshall Hamilton, Kent & Co., Ltd.
+London: Truslove and Bray, Printers, West Norwood, S.E.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+   A LOOSE END
+
+   IN A BRETON VILLAGE
+
+   TWICE A CHILD
+
+   THE ROAD BY THE SEA
+
+   THE HALTING STEP
+
+   TABITHA'S AUNT
+
+
+
+
+A LOOSE END.
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+One September morning, many years ago, when the Channel Islands seemed
+further off than they do now, and for some of them communication with
+the outer world hardly existed, some two hours after the sun had risen
+out of the sea, and while the grass and the low-growing bushes were
+still fresh with the morning dew, a young girl tripped lightly along the
+ridge of a headland which formed the south side of a cove on the coast
+of one of the smaller islands in the group. The ridge ascended gradually
+till it reached a point on which stood a ruined building, that was said
+to have been once a mill, and from which on the right-hand side the path
+began to descend to a narrow landing-place in the cove. The girl stood
+still for a moment when she reached the highest point, and shading her
+eyes looked out to sea. On the opposite side of the cove a huge rock,
+formed into an island by a narrow shaft of water, which in the strife of
+ages had cleared its way between it and the rocky coast, frowned dark
+and solemn in the shadow, its steep and clear-cut sides giving it a
+character of power and imperturbability that crowned it a king among
+islands. The sea beyond was glittering in the morning sun, but there was
+deep purple shadow in the cove, and under the rocks of the projecting
+headlands, which in fantastic succession on either side threw out their
+weird arms into the sea; while just around the edge of the shore, where
+the water was shallow over rocks and weed, was a girdle of lightest,
+loveliest green. Guernsey, idealized in the morning mist, lay like a
+dream on the horizon. Here and there a fishing-boat, whose sail flashed
+orange when the sun touched it, was tossing on the waves; nearer in a
+boat with furled sail was cautiously making for the narrow passage--the
+Devil's Drift, as the fishermen called it--between the island and the
+mainland, a passage only traversed with oars, the oarsmen facing
+forwards; while the two occupants of another were just taking down their
+sail preparatory to rowing direct for the landing-place.
+
+The moment the girl caught sight of this last boat she began rapidly to
+descend the 300 feet of cliff which separated her from the cove below.
+The path began in easy zig-zags, which, however, got gradually steeper,
+and the last thirty feet of the descent consisted of a sheer face of
+rock, in which were fixed two or three iron stanchions with a rope
+running from one to the other to serve as a handrail; and the climber
+must depend for other assistance on the natural irregularities of the
+rock, which provided here and there an insecure foothold. The girl,
+however, sprang down the dangerous path, without the slightest
+hesitation, though her skilful balance and dexterity of hand and foot
+showed that her security was the result of practice.
+
+By the time she had reached the narrow strip of beach, one of the few
+and difficult landing-places which the island offered, the two fishermen
+were already out of the boat, which they were mooring to an iron ring
+fastened in the rock. One of the men was young; the other might be, from
+his appearance, between sixty and seventy. A strange jerking gait, which
+was disclosed as soon as he began to move on his own feet, suggested the
+idea that his natural habitat was the sea, and that he was as little at
+ease on land as some kinds of waterfowl appear to be when walking. He
+could not hold himself upright when on one foot, so that his whole
+person turned first to one side and then to the other as he walked.
+
+"Marie!" he called to the girl as she alighted at the bottom of the
+cliff, and he shouted something briefly which the strange jargon in
+which it was spoken and the gruff, wind-roughened voice of the speaker,
+would have made unintelligible to any but a native of the islands.
+
+The girl, without replying, took the basket of fish which he handed her,
+slung it on her back by a rope passed over one shoulder, and stationed
+herself at the foot of the path, waiting for him to begin the ascent:
+the younger man, who was busy with the tackle of the boat, apparently
+intending to stay behind.
+
+When the old man had placed himself in position to begin the ascent,
+with both hands on the rope, and all his weight on one leg, the girl
+stooped down, and placing her lithe hands round his great wet
+fisherman's boot, deftly lifted the other foot and placed it in the
+right position on the first ledge of rock.
+
+"Now, Daddy, hoist away!" she cried in her clear, piping voice, using,
+like her father, the island dialect; and he dragged himself up to the
+first iron hold, wriggling his large, awkward form into strange
+contortions, till he found a secure position and could wait till his
+young assistant was beside him once more. She sprang up like a cat and
+balanced herself safely within reach of him. It was odd to see the
+implicit confidence with which he let her lift and place his feet;
+having now to support herself by the rope she had only one hand to
+spare; but the feat was accomplished each time with the same precision
+and skill, till the precipitous part of the ascent was passed and they
+had commenced the zigzag path.
+
+Then Marie took her daddy's arm under hers, and carefully steadied the
+difficult, ricketty gait, supporting the heavy figure with a practised
+skill which took the place of strength in her slight frame. Her features
+were formed after the same pattern as his, the definite profile, tense
+spreading nostril, and firm lips, being repeated with merely feminine
+modifications; and as her clear, merry eyes, freshened by the
+sea-breeze, flashed with fun at the stumblings and uncertainties of
+their course, they met the same expression of mirth in his hard-set,
+rocky face.
+
+"You've got a rare job, child!" said he, as they stood still for breath
+at a turning in the path, "a basket of fish to lug up, as well as your
+old daddy. He'd ought to have brought them as far as the turning for
+you."
+
+"I'd sooner have their company than his, any day," with a little _moue_
+in the direction of the cove. "I just wish you wouldn't take him out
+fishing with you, Daddy, that I do!"
+
+"Why not, girl?"
+
+"It's he as works for himself and cares for himself and for no one else,
+does Pierre," said the girl. "Comin' a moonin' round and pretending he's
+after courting me, when all he wants, with takin' the fish round and
+that, is to get the custom into his own hands, and tells folks, if _he_
+had the ordering of it, there'd be no fear about them getting their fish
+punctual."
+
+"Tells 'em that, does he?" said the father, his sea-blue eyes suddenly
+clouding over.
+
+"That he does; and says he'd take up the inshore fishing, if he'd the
+money to spend: and they should be supplied regular with crabs and
+shrimps and such; and then drops a word that poor Andre he's gettin'
+old, and what with being lame, and one thing and another, what can you
+expect, and such blathers!"
+
+"Diable! Do you know that for certain, child?" said Andre, stopping in
+the path, and turning round upon her with a face ablaze with anger. "I
+should like to hear him sayin' that, I should."
+
+"Now, Daddy," she cried with a sudden change of tone, "don't you be
+getting into one of your tantrums with him. Don't, there's a dear Daddy!
+I only told you, so you shouldn't be putting too much into his hands.
+But he'd be the one that would come best out of a quarrel. He's only
+looking for a chance of doin' you a mischief, it's my belief."
+
+"H'm! 'Poor Andre a gettin' old,' is he?" grunted her father, somewhat
+calmed. "Poor Andre won't be takin' _him_ out with him again just yet
+awhile--that's a certain thing. Paul Nevin would suit me a deal better
+in many ways, only I' bin keepin' Pierre on out o' charity, his pore
+father havin' bin a pal o' mine. But he's a deal stronger in the arms,
+is Paul."
+
+They reached the cottage, which stood on the first piece of level ground
+on the way to the mainland. There was no other building within sight;
+and with its bleak boulders and rocks of strangest form, in perpetual
+death-struggle with the mighty force of ocean, resounding night and day
+with the rush and tramp of the wild sea-horses, as they flung themselves
+in despair on their rocky adversary, and with the many voices of the
+winds, which scarcely ever ceased blowing in that exposed spot, while
+the weird notes of the sea-fowl floated in the air, like the cries of
+wandering spirits, the solitary headland seemed indeed as if it might be
+the world's end.
+
+The cottage consisted of one room, and a lean-to. Nearly half the room
+was taken up with a big bed, and on the other side were the fire-place
+and cooking utensils. Opposite the door was a box-sofa, on which Marie
+had slept since she was a child, and which with a small table, two
+chairs and a stool, completed the furniture of the room; the only light
+was that admitted by the doorway, the door nearly always standing open;
+the lean-to was little more than a dog-kennel, being formed in fact out
+of a great heap of stones and rubbish, which had been piled up as a
+protection to the cottage on the windward side; and three dogs and two
+hens were enjoying themselves in front of the fire.
+
+It was here that Marie had lived, ever since she could remember, in
+close and contented companionship with her father: whom indeed,
+especially since he had the fever which crippled him three years before,
+she had fed, clothed, nursed and guarded with a care almost more
+motherly than filial.
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+Marie was leaning over the low wall of a cottage garden in the
+'village,' as a clump of small houses at the meeting of four cross-roads
+was called, and waiting for the kail which she had come to buy for the
+evening's soup from Mrs. Nevin, who cultivated a little plot of ground
+with fruit and vegetables. The back-door of the cottage, which opened on
+the garden, was ajar, and she could hear some one enter from the front
+with a heavy tread, and call out in a big, jovial voice, "Hullo, Mother,
+we're in luck to-day! You'd never guess who's goin' to take me on. Lame
+Andre, he's goin' to give Pierre the sack, and says he'll have me for a
+time or two to try. Says I'm strong in the shoulders, and he guesses I
+can do him more good than Pierre. I should think I easy could too, a
+pinch-faced whipper-snapper like that!"
+
+"And high time it is too that Andre had his eyes opened," rejoined Mrs.
+Nevin; "often it is I've told Marie, as there she stands, that her
+father don't ought to trust the fish-sellin' too much to that Pierre: a
+lad as could rob his own grandmother the moment the life was out o' her
+body."
+
+"Well, Mother, you've often told me about that five franc piece, but
+nobody can't say that she hadn't given it him before she died, as he
+said--"
+
+"Given it him, I should think so, when she never would have aught to say
+to him for all his wheedling ways, and his brother Jacques was her
+favourite; and poor old lady if she'd a known that Pierre was goin' to
+be alone with her, when she went off suddint in a fit, I guess she'd a
+locked up her purse first, I do."
+
+"Well, I must say he turned a queer colour when he heard Andre say he
+didn't want him no more: and you should have seen the look he gave him,
+sort of squintin' out of his eyes at him, when he went away. He ain't a
+man I would like to meet unawares in a dark lane, if I'd a quarrel with
+him."
+
+"Hullo, where's Marie?" cried Mrs. Nevin, coming out of the door with
+the kail ready washed in her hand. "She never took offence at what we
+was sayin', think you? Folks did say, to be sure, that she and Pierre
+was sweet on one another some time since. Well, she's gone, any way,"
+and the good woman stood for a few minutes in some dismay, shading her
+eyes as she looked down the road.
+
+Marie's slight, girlish figure vanished quickly round the turning in the
+lane, and Mrs. Nevin could not see her pass swiftly by her own cottage,
+and up the ridge to the old mill. When she reached the point at which
+the path began to descend to the cove, she paused and looked down. The
+keen glance and alert figure, poised on guard, suggested the idea of a
+mother bird watching her nest from afar. The tide had gone out
+sufficiently for the boats to be drawn up on the eight or ten feet of
+the shelving shore, which was thus laid bare, and the glowing light of
+the sunset touched in slanting rays the head and hands of an old man
+seated on a rock and bending over some fishing tackle, which he seemed
+to be repairing.
+
+Round the extreme point of the headland, which in a succession of
+uncouth shapes dropped its rocky outline into the shadowy purple sea,
+there was visible, hastily clambering across pathless boulders, another
+man, of a young and lithe figure, and with something in the eager,
+forward thrust of the head, crouching gait, and swift, deft footing that
+resembled an animal of the cat species when about to leap on its prey.
+He was evidently making for the cove, but would have to take the rope
+path in order to reach it, as there was no way of approaching it on that
+side except over the sheer face of rock. Marie was further from the
+rope than he was, but her path was easier. The moment her eye caught
+sight of the crouching, creeping figure, she sped like a hare down the
+path, till she reached a point at which she was on a level with the man,
+at a distance of about a hundred feet. There she stood, uncertain a
+moment, then turned to meet him. He seemed too intent on his object in
+the cove to notice her advance, till she was within speaking distance,
+when she suddenly called to him "Pierre!"
+
+Her clear, defiant tone put the meaning of a whole discourse into the
+word. The man turned sharply round with an expression of vindictive
+malice in his fox-like face.
+
+"Well, what do you want?"
+
+"What are you doing here, please?"
+
+"What's that to you, I should like to know?"
+
+"Come nearer, then I can hear what you say."
+
+"I sha'n't come no nearer than I choose."
+
+"Don't be afraid. I ain't a-goin' to hurt you!"
+
+The taunt seemed to have effect, for he leaped hurriedly along over the
+rocky path, with an angry, threatening air that would have frightened
+some girls. Marie stood like the rock beneath her.
+
+"Now, Miss, I'll teach you to come interfering with business that's none
+o' yourn. What, you thought you'd come after me, did yer? because you
+was tired o' waitin' for me to come after you again, I suppose."
+
+"What is that you're carryin' in your belt?" she demanded calmly. A
+handle was seen sticking up under his fisherman's blouse. "You believe
+its safer to climb the rocks with a butcher's knife in your pocket, do
+you? You think in case of an accident it would make you fall a bit
+softer, hey?"
+
+"It don't matter to you what I've got in my pocket," he rejoined, but
+his tone was uncertain. "I brought it to cut the tackle--we've got a job
+of mending to do."
+
+"I don't know whether you think me an idiot," she replied; "but if you
+want me to believe your stories you'd better invent 'em more reasonable.
+Now, Pierre, this is what you've got to do before you leave this spot.
+You've got to promise me solemnly not to go near Daddy, nor threaten him
+as you once threatened me on a day you may remember, nor try to
+intimidate him into takin' you back. Neither down in the cove, nor
+anything else: neither now, nor at any other time."
+
+Her girlish figure as she stood with one arm clasping the rock beside
+her, looked a slight enough obstacle in the path.
+
+"Intimidate him! A parcel o' rubbish; who's goin' to intimidate him as
+you call it. Get out o' the way, and don't go meddling in men's concerns
+that you know nothing about."
+
+He seized her wrist roughly, and with her precarious footing the
+position was dangerous enough: but she clung with her other arm like a
+limpit to the rock. He attempted to dislodge her, when she suddenly
+turned and fled back on her own accord. He hastened after her, and it
+was not till he had gone some yards that, putting his hand to his belt,
+he found that the knife had gone.
+
+"The jade," he muttered, "she did it on purpose," and even with his
+hatred and malice was mingled a gleam of admiration at the cleverness
+that had outwitted him. He hurried on towards the cliff path, but the
+sunset light was already fading into dusk, and he had to choose his
+footing more carefully. When he reached the point where the rope began,
+Marie had already gone down and was leaning on the rock beside her
+father. Had he been near he might have noticed a strange expression in
+her eyes, as she furtively watched the precipitous descent. The purple
+shadows now filled both sky and sea, and the island opposite reared its
+grand outline solemnly in the twilight depths, as though sitting in
+eternal judgment on the transient ways of men. The evening star shone
+softly above the sea. Suddenly a crash, followed by one sharp cry, was
+heard; then all was still.
+
+"Good God! That's some one fallen down the path--why don't you go and
+see, child?" but Marie seemed as if she could not stir. Old Andre slowly
+dragged himself on to his feet, and took her arm, and they went
+together. At the foot of the path they found the body of Pierre, dead,
+his head having struck against a rock.
+
+"He must have missed his footing in the dark," said Andre, when they had
+rowed round to the fishing village to carry the news, and the solitary
+constable had bustled forth, and was endeavouring to collect information
+about the accident from the only two witnesses, of whom the girl seemed
+to have lost the power of speech.
+
+"He must have missed his footing in the dark; and then the rope broke
+with his weight and the clutch he give it. It lies there all loose on
+the ground."
+
+"It shouldn't have broken," said the constable. "But I always did say
+we'd ought to have an iron chain down there."
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+Fifty years had passed, with all their seasons' changes, and the
+changing life of nature both by land and sea, and had made as little
+impression on the island as the ceaseless dashing of the waves against
+its coast. The cliffs, the caves and the sea-beaten boulders were the
+same; the colours of the bracken on the September hills, and of the sea
+anemones in their green, pellucid pools, were the same, and the
+fishermen's path down to the cove was the same. No iron chain had been
+put there, but the rope had never broken again.
+
+A violent south-west gale was blowing, driving scud and sea-foam before
+it, while ever new armies of rain-clouds advanced threateningly across
+the shadowy waters--mighty, moving mists, whose grey-winged squadrons,
+swift and irresistible, enveloped and almost blotted from sight the
+little rock-bound island, against which the forces of nature seemed to
+be for ever spending themselves in vain. From time to time through a gap
+in the shifting cloud-ranks there shone a sudden dazzling gleam of
+sunlight on the white crests of the sea-horses far away.
+
+The good French pastor, who struggled to discharge the offices of
+religion in that impoverished and for the most part socially abandoned
+spot, had just allowed himself to be persuaded by his wife that it was
+unnecessary to visit his sick parishioner at the other end of the island
+that afternoon, when a loud rat-tat was heard in the midst of a shriek
+of wind, through a grudged inch of open door-way. The hurricane burst
+into the house while a dripping, breathless girl panted forth her
+message, that "old Marie" had been suddenly taken bad, and was dying,
+and wanted but one thing in the world, to see the Vicar.
+
+"I wonder what it is she has got to say," said the Vicar, as his wife
+buttoned his mackintosh up to his throat. "I always did think there was
+something strange about old Marie."
+
+A mile of bitter, breathless battling with the storm, then a close
+cottage-room, with rain-flooded floor, the one small window carefully
+darkened, and on a pillow in the furthest corner, shaded by heavy
+bed-curtains, a wrinkled old woman's face, pinched and colourless, on
+which the hand of Death lay visibly.
+
+But in the eagerness with which she signed to the pastor to come close,
+and in the keen glance she cast round the room to see that no one else
+was near, the vigour of life still asserted itself.
+
+"I've somewhat to tell you, Father," she began in a rapid undertone, in
+the island dialect. "I can't carry it to the grave with me, tho' I've
+borne it in my conscience all my life. When I was a young lass it
+happened, when things was different, and the men were rougher than now,
+and strange deeds might be done from time to time, and never come under
+the eye o' the law. And you must judge me, Father, by the way things was
+then, for that was what I had to think of when it all happened.
+
+"There was a young man that used to come a' courting me when I was a
+lass o' nineteen, and he had a black heart for all he spoke so fair; but
+I didn't see it at the first, and he was that cliver and insinuatin',
+and had such a way o' talkin', and made so much o' me, I couldn't but
+listen to him for a while. And he used to go out fishin' wi' my father,
+and Daddy, he was lame, so Pierre used to take the fish round and do
+jobs with the boats for him, and this and that, so as Daddy thought a
+rare lot o' him; and when he seed we was thinkin' o' each other, he sort
+o' thought he'd leave the business to him and me, and we'd be able to
+keep him when he got too old to go out any more. And all was goin'
+right, when one day Pierre says to me, would I go out in the boat and
+row with him to the village, as he'd got a creel of crabs to take round,
+so I got in and we rowed: and we went through the Devil's Drift, and he
+says to me sudden like, 'When we're man and wife, Marie, what'll your
+father do to keep hisself?' 'Keep hisself,' I said, 'why ain't we agoin'
+to keep him?' And then he began such a palaver about a man bein' bound
+to keep his wife but not his father-in-law, and it not bein' fit for
+three grown people to live in one room, as if my father and mother and
+his father afore him and all his brothers and sisters hadn't lived in
+this very room that now I lie a-dyin' in; and I said 'well, as I see it,
+if you take Daddy's custom off of him, you're bound to keep Daddy.' And
+he said that wasn't his way o' lookin' at it, and I went into a sudden
+anger, and declared I wouldn't have nought to do with a man that could
+treat my Daddy so, and he was just turning the boat round to go into the
+Drift, and there came such an evil look in his eyes so as it seemed to
+go through my bones like a knife, and he said 'You shall repent this one
+day--you and your daddy too,' and I said not another word and he began
+to row forwards through the Devil's Drift. And somehow bein' there alone
+with him in that fearsome place, when a foot's error one side or the
+other may mean instant death, as he sat facin' me I seemed to see the
+black heart of him, as I'd never seen it before, and there was summat
+came over me and made me feel my life was in his hands, in the hands of
+my enemy.
+
+"Well, I said no more to him, not one word good or bad, the rest of that
+evenin's row, and I never went out with him no more. But now, Father,
+this is what I want to say--for my breath is a goin' from me every
+minute--my Daddy, he was like my child to me, me that have never had a
+child of my own. I had watched him and cared for him as if I was his
+mother, 'stead of his bein' my father, and a hurt to him was like a hurt
+to me: and when that man talked o' leavin' him to fend for himself in
+his old age, the thought seemed as if it would break my heart: and now
+I knew he had an enemy, and a pitiless enemy: and I tried to stop him
+goin' out alone with Pierre, and I wanted him to get rid o' him out of
+the fishing business altogether, and father he took it up so, when I
+told him Pierre said he was gettin' too old to manage for hisself, that
+he up and dismissed him that very day: and then I heard Lisette Nevin
+and Paul talkin' and savin' how ill Pierre had taken it, and I seemed to
+see his face with the evil look on it; and something seemed to say in my
+heart that Daddy was in danger, and I couldn't stop a moment; I went
+flying to the cove where I knew he'd gone by hisself, and there from the
+top of the path I saw the other one creeping, closer and closer, like a
+cruel beast of prey as he was: and I went down and I met him, and he'd a
+knife in his belt, and of one thing I was certain, he might have been
+only goin' to frighten Daddy, but he meant him no good."
+
+She lowered her voice, and spoke in a hoarse whisper.
+
+"Father, do you understand? Here was a man without ruth or pity, and
+with a sore grudge in his black heart. Was I to trust my Daddy to his
+hands, and him old and lame?" She paused another moment, then drew the
+Vicar close to her and whispered in his ear, "I cut the rope. I knew he
+was followin' me. I let myself halfway down, then clung to the iron hold
+and cut the rope, with the knife I'd taken from him. It was at the risk
+of my life I did it. And he followed me, and he fell and was killed.
+Father, will God punish me for it? It has blighted my life. I have
+never been like other women. I never was wed, for how could I tend
+little children with blood on my hands? And the children shrank from me,
+or I thought they did. But it was for Daddy's sake. He had a happy old
+age, and he gave me his blessing when he died. Father"--her voice became
+almost inaudible--"when I stand before God's throne--will God
+remember--it was for Daddy's sake?"
+
+The failing eye was fixed on the pastor's face, as if it would search
+his soul for the truth. The fellow-being, on whom she laid so great a
+burden, for one moment, quailed: then spoke assuring words of the mercy
+of that God to whom all hearts are open: but already the ebbing
+strength, too severely strained in the effort of disclosure, was passing
+away, and the words of comfort were spoken to ears that were closed in
+death.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Under the South wall of the island burying-ground is a nameless grave:
+where in the summer days fragments of toys and nose-gays are often to be
+seen scattered about; for the sunny corner is a favourite play-place,
+and the voices of children sound there; and they trample with their
+little feet the grass above Marie's grave, and strew wild flowers on it.
+
+
+
+
+IN A BRETON VILLAGE.
+
+PART I.
+
+
+In a wild and little-known part of the coast of Brittany, where, in
+place of sandy beach or cliff, huge granite boulders lie strewn along
+the shore, like the ruins of some Titan city, and assuming, here the
+features of some uncouth monster, there the outline of some gigantic
+fortress, present an aspect of mingled farce and solemnity, and give the
+whole region the air of some connection with the under-world,--on this
+coast, and low down among the boulders out to sea, stands a little
+fishing village.
+
+The granite cottages with their thatched roofs--bits of warm colour
+among the bare rocks--lie on a tongue of land between the two inlets of
+the sea, which, when the tides run high, nearly cut them off from the
+mainland. Opposite the village on the other side of the little inland
+sea, is a second cluster of piled-up rocks thrust forth, like the fist
+of a giant, to defy the onslaught of Neptune, and on a plateau near the
+summit, is the skeleton of a house, built for a summer residence by a
+Russian Prince, who had a fancy for solitude and sea air, but abandoned
+for some reason before the interior was completed. Solitary and
+lifeless, summer and winter, it looks silently down like a wall-eyed
+ghost over the waste of rocks and sea.
+
+Below the house and close down by the seashore, is a low, thatched
+cottage, built against the rock, which forms its back wall, and on to
+which the rough granite blocks of which the cottage is constructed are
+rudely cemented with earth and clay; the floor also consists of the
+living rock, not levelled, but just as the foot of the wanderer had
+trodden it under the winds of heaven for ages before the cottage was
+built. In this primitive dwelling--which was not, however, more rude
+than many of the fishermen's cottages along the coast--there lived, a
+few years since, three persons: old Aimee Kaudren, aged seventy, who
+with her snow-white cap and sabots, and her keen clear-cut face, might
+have been seen any day in or near the cottage, cutting the gorse-bushes
+that grew about the rocks for firing, leading the cow home from her
+scanty bit of grazing, kneeling on the stone edge of the pond by the
+well, to wash the clothes, or within doors cooking the soup in the huge
+cauldron that stood on the granite hearth. A sight indeed it was to see
+the aged dame bending over the tripod, with the dried gorse blazing
+beneath it, while its glow illumined the dark, cavernous chimney above,
+was flashed back from the polished doors of the great oak chest, with
+its burnished brass handles, and from the spotless copper saucepans
+hanging on the walls; and brightened the red curtains of the cosy
+box-bedstead in the corner by the fire.
+
+The second inhabitant of the cottage was Aimee's son, Jean, the
+fisherman, with his blue blouse, and his swarthy, rough-hewn face,
+beaten by wind and weather into an odd sort of resemblance to the rocks
+among which he passed his life--the hardy and primitive life to which he
+had been born, and to which all his ideas were limited, a life of
+continual struggle with the elements for the satisfaction of primary
+needs, and which was directed by the movements of nature, by the tides,
+the winds, and the rising and setting of the sun and the moon.
+
+And thirdly there was Jean's nephew, Antoine.
+
+The day before Antoine was born, his father had been drowned in a storm
+which had wrecked many of the fishing-boats along the coast, and his
+mother, from the shock of the news, gave premature birth to her babe,
+and died a few hours after. His grandmother had brought up the child,
+and his silent, rough-handed uncle had adopted him, and worked for him,
+as if he were his own. So the little Antoine, with his blond head, and
+his little bare feet, grew up in the rock-hewn cottage, like a bright
+gorse-flower among the boulders, and spent an untaught childhood,
+pattering about the granite floor, or clambering over the rough rocks,
+and dabbling in the salt water, where he would watch the beautiful green
+anemones, that had so many fingers but no hands, and which he never
+touched, because, if he did, they spoilt themselves directly, packing
+their fingers up very quickly, so that they went into nowhere: or the
+prawns, that he always thought were the spirits of the other fish, for
+they looked as if they were made of nothing, and they lay so still under
+a stone, as if they were not there, and then darted so quickly across
+the pool that you could not see them go.
+
+Antoine knew a great deal about the spirits: how there were evil ones,
+such as that which dwelt in the great mushroom stone out yonder to sea,
+which was very powerful and wicked, so that the stone, being in fear,
+always trembled, yet could not fall, because the evil spirit would not
+let it: and then there were others which haunted the little valley
+beyond Esquinel Point, where you must not go after dark, for the spirits
+took the form of Little Men, who had the power to send astray the wits
+of any that met them. Antoine feared those spirits more than any of the
+others: they were so cunning and wanted to do you harm on purpose: and
+when he went with his grandmother to pray in the little chapel on the
+shore, he used to trot away from her side, as she knelt on her chair
+with clasped hands and devoutly murmuring lips; and he would wander over
+the rugged stone floor, till he found the niche in the wall where St.
+Nicholas stood, wearing a blue cloak with a pink border, and having such
+lovely pink cheeks: the kind St. Nicholas that took care of little
+children, and that had three little boys without any clothes on always
+with him, in the kind of little boat he stood in. And Antoine would
+pray a childish prayer to St. Nicholas to protect him from the evil
+spirits of the valley.
+
+Antoine grew up very tall and strong. He accompanied Jean on his fishing
+expeditions from the time he was twelve years old, and his uncle used to
+say that he was of more use than many a grown man. He knew every rock
+and even-current along that dangerous coast: he could trim the boat to
+the wind through narrow channels in weather in which Jean would hardly
+venture to do it himself: and the way in which the fish took his bait
+made Jean sometimes cross himself, as he counted over the shining
+boat-load of bream and cod, and mutter in his guttural Breton speech,
+"'Tis the blessed St. Yvon aids him." Everybody liked him in the
+village, and he took a kind of lead among the other lads, but, whether
+it was the grave gaze of his blue eyes, or his earnest, outright speech,
+or some other quality about him less easy to define, they all had the
+same kind of feeling in regard to him that his uncle had. He was
+different from themselves. There were indeed some among them in whom
+this acknowledged superiority inspired envy and ill-will, and one in
+particular, a lad that went lame with a club foot, but who had a
+beautiful countenance, with dark, glowing eyes and finely-cut features,
+never lost an opportunity of saying an ill word of, or doing an ill turn
+to Antoine. Geoffroi Le Cocq seemed never far off, wherever Antoine
+might be. He would lounge in the doorway of the cafe, watching for him,
+and sing a mocking song as he passed down the road. He would mimic his
+sayings among the other lads, who were not, however, very ready to join
+in deriding him. And once he contrived to poison the Kaudrens' bait,
+just when weather and season were at their best for fishing, so that
+Antoine brought not a single fish home. Jean, with the quick-blazing
+anger of his race, declared that if he could find the man who had done
+it, he would "break his skull." But Antoine, though he knew well enough
+who had done it, held his peace. Geoffroi was quicker of speech than
+Antoine, and on the Sunday, when the whole village trooped out of the
+little chapel after mass, and streamed down the winding village road,
+the women in their white coiffes and black shawls, and the men in their
+round Breton hats with buckles and streaming ribbons, while knots began
+to collect about the doors of the village cafes, and laughter, gossip
+and the sound of the fiddle arose on the sunny air, Geoffroi would
+gather a circle round him to hear his quips and odd stories, and to join
+in the fun that he would mercilessly make of others less quick than
+himself at repartee. It was extraordinary on these occasions how
+Geoffroi, like a spider in his web on the watch for a fly, would
+contrive to draw Antoine into his circle, sometimes as though it were
+merely to show off his cleverness before him, at other times adroitly
+lighting on some quaint habit or saying of Antoine's, holding it up to
+ridicule, now in one light, now in another, with a versatility that
+would have made his fortune as a comedian, and returning to the charge
+again and again, in the hope, as it seemed, of provoking Antoine's
+seldom-stirred anger: but in this entirely failing, for Antoine would
+generally join heartily in the laugh himself. Only once did a convulsion
+of anger seize him, and he strode forward in the throng and gave
+Geoffroi the lie to his face, when the latter had said that Marie
+Pierres kissed him in the Valley of Dwarfs, the evening before. He knew
+that Geoffroi only said it to spite him; for Marie--the daughter of
+Jean's partner--was his fiancee, and was as true as gold: but the image
+the words called up convulsed his brain; a blind impulse sprang up
+within him to strike and crush that beautiful face of Geoffroi's. He
+clenched his fist and dared him to repeat the words. Geoffroi would only
+reply, in his venomous way, "Come to-night to the Valley and see if I
+lie." And the same instant the keen, strident voice was silenced by one
+straight blow from Antoine's fist.
+
+In the confused clamour of harsh Breton speech that arose, as neighbours
+rushed to separate the two and friends took one side or the other,
+Antoine strode away with a brain on fire and a mind intent on one
+object--to prove the lie at once.
+
+To go to the Valley of Dwarfs in order to spy on Marie and Geoffroi was
+impossible to him. But he marched straight off to Marie's cottage. He
+knew she would deny the charge, and her word was as good as the Blessed
+Gospel: but he longed to hear the denial from her lips. He pictured her
+as she would look when she spoke: the hurt, innocent expression of her
+candid eyes: her rosy cheeks flushing a deeper red under her demure
+snow-white cap: her child-like lips uttering earnest and indignant
+protestation. When he reached the cottage, he found the door locked; no
+one was about; he leaned his elbows on the low, stone wall in front and
+waited.
+
+Presently clattering sabots were heard coming down the road, and he
+perceived old Jeanne Le Gall trudging along, her back nearly bent double
+under a large bundle of dried sea-weed. She and her goat lived in the
+low, rubble-built hovel, that adjoined the Pierres' cottage, and from
+her lonely, eccentric habits, and uncanny appearance, she had the
+reputation of being a sorceress. Antoine called to her to know where
+Marie was.
+
+"Gone to the widow Conan's," mumbled the old woman, her strange eyes
+gleaming under the sprays of sea-weed, "she and her father and mother,
+all of them."
+
+She deposited her load, and hobbled off again, fixing her eyes on
+Antoine as she turned away, but saying nothing more.
+
+Antoine strolled a little down the lane, seated himself on the steps of
+the cross at the corner, and waited--evening was drawing on and they
+were sure to return before dark.
+
+Presently the cluck, cluck of the sabots was heard again, and old Jeanne
+slowly approached him from behind. She said something in her toothless,
+mumbling way, and held out a crumpled bit of paper in her shaking hand.
+He opened it and read, scrawled as if in haste, in ill-spelt Breton:
+
+"I go to a baptism at St. Jean-du-Pied, and cannot return before
+sun-down. Meet me at the cross on the hill-side at six o'clock, as I
+fear to pass through the valley alone in the dark. Marie."
+
+As he studied the writing, the old woman's mumblings became more
+articulate. She was saying, "'Twas the child Conan should have brought
+it an hour ago. But he is ever good-for-nothing, and forgot it."
+
+Antoine looked at the sun, which was already westering, and perceived
+that he must set out to meet Marie in half-an-hour. He got up and walked
+slowly towards the sandy shore of the little inlet, wide and wet at low
+tide, on the other side of which lay his own home. He walked slowly, but
+he felt as if he were hurrying at a headlong pace. The thought kept
+going round and round in his brain like a little torturing wheel, which
+nothing would stop, that after all Marie _was_ going to the Dwarf's
+Valley this evening, just as Geoffroi had said. Geoffroi's words were
+still sounding in his ears, and his right hand was clenched, as he had
+clenched it when the whirlwind of anger first convulsed him.
+
+He entered his own cottage, hardly knowing what he did.
+
+Old Aimee was bending over the cauldron, cutting up cabbage for the
+soup.
+
+"Good-bye, Grandmother," he said. "I am going to the Dwarf's Valley."
+
+Aimee looked up at him out of her keen old eyes.
+
+"And why are you going there in the dark?" she said, "'Tis an evil
+meeting place after the sun has set."
+
+"Why do you say meeting place, Grandmother Whom do you think I am going
+to meet there?"
+
+"The blessed Saints protect you," she replied, "less you should meet
+Whom you would not."
+
+Antoine strode out again, without saying more. He fancied he was in the
+Valley of Dwarfs already, about to meet Marie. He saw the weird, gnarled
+trunks of trees on either hand, that grew among--sometimes writhed
+around--the huge fantastic boulders: the dark cave-like recesses, formed
+strangely between and under them where the dwarfs lay hidden to emerge
+at dusk: the sides of the ravine towering up stern and gloomy on either
+hand: and high above all against the sky, the grey stone cross at which
+he was to meet Marie. He saw it all as if he were there, and the ground
+beneath him, as he tramped on, seemed unreal. Twilight was already
+falling over the rocks and the grey sea: there were no lights in the
+village, except such as shone here and there in a cottage window: the
+distant roar of the sea was heard, as it dashed over a long line of
+rocks two or three miles out, but there was hardly any other sound: the
+place indeed seemed God-abandoned, like some long-forgotten strand of a
+dead world, with the skeleton house on the rock above for its forsaken
+citadel.
+
+It was already dark in the ravine when Antoine arrived there, and anyone
+not knowing how instinctive is the feeling for the ways of his mother
+earth in a son of the soil, would have thought his straightforward
+stride, in such a chaos of rocks and pitfalls, reckless, till they
+observed with what certainty each step was taken where alone it was
+possible and safe. He was making his way through the valley to the cross
+above, where the light still lingered, and it yet wanted some fifteen
+minutes to the time of _rendez-vous_, when he suddenly stopped in a
+listening attitude; he had reached a part of the valley to which
+superstition had attached the most dangerous character. A particular
+rock called "The Black Stone," which towered over him on the left, and
+slightly bending towards the centre of the valley, seemed like some
+threatening monster about to swoop upon the traveller, was especially
+regarded as the haunt of evil spirits. It was in this direction that he
+now heard a slight sound, which his practised ear discerned at once as
+not being one of the sounds of nature. Immediately afterwards the shadow
+of the rock beside him seemed to move and enlarge, and out of it there
+sprang the figure of a man, and stood straight in Antoine's path.
+Antoine's whole frame became rigid, like that of a beast of prey on the
+point of springing, even before the shadow revealed its limping foot.
+
+Geoffroi was the first to speak.
+
+"You gave me the lie this afternoon. Take it back now and see what you
+think of the taste of it. Would you like to see Marie?"
+
+"What are you saying? What is it to you when I see Marie?"
+
+"It is this--that I have arranged a nice little meeting for you. Hein?
+Are you not obliged to me?"
+
+Antoine's voice sounded hollow and muffled as he replied, "Stand out of
+the path. You have nought to do between her and me."
+
+"You think so? Then you shall learn what I have to do. You think you are
+going to meet her at the cross at six o'clock. But you will not, you
+will meet her sooner than that. It was I that sent you that message, and
+I have advanced the time by half an hour. Am I not kind?"
+
+Antoine's hand was on his collar like an iron vice.
+
+"What have you done with her? Where is she?"
+
+Geoffroi writhed himself free with movements lithe like those of a
+panther. "Will you take back the lie," he said, "or will you see the
+proof with your own eyes?"
+
+He was turning with a mocking sign to Antoine to follow, when from the
+left of the rock beside which they stood, there darted forward the
+white-coiffed figure of a girl, who with extended arms and agonized
+face, rushed up to Geoffroi, crying, "Take me away--I have seen Them!
+Take me away."
+
+She clung to Geoffroi's arm, and screamed when Antoine would have
+touched her. Antoine stood for a moment as if turned to stone. Marie
+seemed half fainting and clung hysterically to Geoffroi, apparently
+hardly conscious of what she was doing. Geoffroi took her in his arms
+and kissed her. The act was so loathsome in its deliberate effrontery,
+that Antoine felt as if he was merely crushing a serpent when he struck
+him to the ground and tore Marie from his hold. But he was dealing with
+something which he did not understand for Marie, finding herself in his
+grasp, opened her eyes on his face with a look of speechless terror, and
+breaking from him, fled down the ravine, springing from rock to rock
+with the security of recklessness.
+
+Antoine followed her, stumbling through the darkness, but his speed was
+no match for the madness of fear, and his steps were still to be heard
+crashing through the furze bushes and loose stones, when the white
+coiffe had flitted, like some bird of night, round the projecting
+boulders of the sea-coast, and disappeared.
+
+
+PART II.
+
+Old Jeanne Le Gall was leaning on her stick in her solitary way beside
+the arched wellhead at the top of the lane, when she heard flying steps
+along the pathway of rock that bordered the sea, and peered through the
+twilight with her cunning old eyes, alert for something uncanny, or
+perchance out of which she could make some profit for herself. Already
+that day, she had earned a sou by carrying a bit of a letter, and
+telling one or two little lies. As the steps came nearer, a kind of
+moaning and sobbing was heard, and the old woman, muttering to
+herself--"It is the voice of Marie. What has the devil's imp been doing
+to her?"--hobbled as fast as she could to the turning that led to the
+sea, and just as the flying figure appeared, put out her skinny hand to
+arrest it. There was a sudden scream, a fall, and Marie lay in the road,
+like one dead.
+
+The cry brought to their doors, one after another, the occupants of the
+neighbouring cottages; and as the dark-shawled, free-stepping Breton
+women gathered round, for the clattering of sabots and of tongues, it
+might have been a group of black sea-fowl clamouring over some
+'trouvaille' of the sea, thrown up among their rocks.
+
+They raised her painfully, with kind but ungentle hands, wept and called
+on the saints, availing little in any way, till the heavy tramp of a
+fisherman's nailed boots was heard on the rocks, and Antoine thrust the
+throng aside, and bending over, took her up in his arms, as a mother
+might her child, and without a word bore her along the road towards her
+home.
+
+But he had scarcely placed her on the settle beside the bed, when her
+eyes opened, and as they rested on him, again the look of terror came
+into them: she flung herself away from him with a scream, and sobbing
+and uttering strange sounds of fear and aversion, was hardly to be held
+by the other women.
+
+"She has lost her wits!" they cried. "Our Blessed Lady help her!"
+
+White with fear themselves, and half believing it to be some
+supernatural visitation, they clung round her, supporting her till the
+fit had passed, and she lay back on the bed exhausted and half
+unconscious: her fresh, young lips drawn with an unnatural expression of
+suffering, and her frank, blue eyes heavy and lifeless. Antoine was
+turned out of the cottage, lest the sight of him should excite her
+again, and he marched away across the low rocks to his own home on the
+solitary foreland. As he passed the chapel on the shore, he saw through
+the open door, a single taper burning before the shrine of St. Nicholas,
+and just serving to show the gloom and emptiness of the place; and it
+seemed to him as though the Saints had deserted it.
+
+He never saw Marie again. Once during her illness, the kind, clever old
+Aimee, wrung by the sight of her boy's haggard face, as he went to and
+fro about the boats, without food or sleep, took her way to the Pierres'
+cottage, with the present of a fine fresh "dorade" for the invalid; and
+when she had stood for a minute by the bedside leaning on her stick, and
+looking on the face of the half-unconscious girl, she began with her
+natty old hand to pat Marie's shoulder, and with coaxing words to get
+her to say that she would see Antoine. But at the first sound of the
+name, the limp figure started up from the pillows, and from the
+innocent, childish lips came a stream of strange, eager speech, as she
+poured forth her conviction, like a cherished secret, that Antoine was
+possessed of the Evil One: for Jeanne, the sorceress, had told her so:
+that he was one of _Them_, and by night in the valley you could see him
+in his own shape. Then she grew more wild, crying out that Antoine
+would kill her: that he had bewitched her, and she must die.
+
+Anyone unaware of the hold which superstition has over the Breton mind,
+would perhaps hardly believe that the women stood round awe-struck at
+this revelation, seeing nothing improbable in it. In spite of her
+dangerous state of excitement, they eagerly pressed her with questions
+as to what she had seen, and what Jeanne had said, but she had become
+too incoherent to satisfy them, and only flung herself wildly about,
+crying, "Let me go--he will kill me--let me go:" till she suddenly sank
+down motionless on the pillow, was silent for a few moments, and then
+began to murmur over and over in an awe-struck, eager whisper, "Go to
+the Black Stone this night, and you shall see. Go to the Black Stone
+this night, and you shall see."
+
+While the old cronies shook their heads, muttering that it was true,
+there had always been something uncanny about Antoine: and see the way
+he would draw the fish into his net, against their own better sense: it
+was plain there was something in Antoine they dared not resist:--old
+Aimee hobbled out with her stick and sabots, without saying a word, went
+round to the open door of the next cottage, and peered round the rough
+wooden partition that screened off the inner half of the room. On a
+settle beside the hearth, where a cauldron was boiling, sat Jeanne, the
+sorceress, with her absorbed, concentrated air, as though her thoughts
+were fixed on something which she could communicate to no one: she
+turned her strange, bright eyes on the figure in the entrance, without
+change of expression, and waited for Aimee to speak.
+
+Aimee's face was like a cut diamond, so keen and bright was it, as
+leaning on her stick, which she struck on the floor from time to time
+with the emphasis of her speech, she said in her shrill Breton tones:--
+
+"Mademoiselle Jeanne, I have come to ask of you what evil lie it is that
+you have told to the child Marie, that lies on her death-bed yonder.
+Come. You have been bribed by Geoffroi, that I know, and a son will
+purchase snuff, and for that you will sell your soul. Good--It is for
+you to do what you will with your own affairs: but when you cause an
+injury to my belle-fille, so that she becomes like a mad woman and dies,
+I come to ask you for an account of what you have done, Mademoiselle:
+that you may undo what you have done, while there is yet time,
+Mademoiselle."
+
+Jeanne's thin, stern lips trembled, almost as if in fear, as she
+listened to Aimee. She turned her shaking head slowly towards her, then
+fixed her deep eyes on hers, and said:
+
+"I have warned your belle-fille, that she may be saved. It was my love
+for her. Let her have nought to do with Them that dwell in the rocks and
+the trunks of the great trees."
+
+Old Aimee shook her stick on the floor with rage.
+
+"Impious and wicked woman! Confess, I say, or I will tell the good cure,
+who knows your tricks, and he will not give you absolution; and then
+the Evil Ones will have their way with you yourself, for what shall
+save you from them?"
+
+The thin lips in the strange face trembled more. "The old sorceress
+dwells alone, abandoned of all," she murmured. "If she take not a sou
+when one or another will give it her, how shall she contrive to live?"
+
+"What is it," demanded Aimee, with increasing shrillness, "that you have
+told the child Marie about my grandson?"
+
+A look of cunning suddenly drove away the expression of conscious guilt
+in Jeanne's face. She dropped her eyes on the floor, mumbled
+inarticulately a moment, and then said shiftily, "You have perhaps a few
+sous in your pocket, Madame, to show good-will to the sorceress; for
+without good-will she cannot tell you what you seek to know."
+
+Aimee's keen eyes flashed, as drawing forth two sous from her pocket,
+she said in a tone of incisive contempt, "You shall have these,
+Mademoiselle, but not till you have told me the whole truth, as you
+would to the cure at confession. Come then--say."
+
+The sorceress began with shuffling tones and glances, which grew more
+sure as she went on:
+
+"I watched for the little one returning on the afternoon of Sunday--_he_
+told me to do so. I was to give her the message that Antoine desired to
+meet with her at the entrance of the Dwarf's Valley: I had but to give
+the message: it was not my fault. I am but a poor old woman that does
+the bidding of others."
+
+"Well, well," said Aimee, impatiently, "what else did you tell her?"
+
+Jeanne looked at her interlocutor again, and a strange expression grew
+in her eyes.
+
+"It is Jeanne that knows the Evil Ones, that knows their shape and their
+speech. She knows them when they walk among men, and she knows them in
+their homes in the dark valley."
+
+"Chut, chut," cried Aimee, the more irritably that her maternal feelings
+had to overcome her natural inclination to superstition. "It is only one
+thing you have to tell--how did you frighten Marie so that she is ready
+to go out of her wits at the sight of Antoine?"
+
+"Nay, it was Geoffroi that frightened her, as they went up the ravine
+together. I had but told her not to go alone, for that They were abroad
+that night." The old woman broke into a curious chuckle. "How she
+shivered, like a chicken in the wind! H'ch, h'ch! Then _he_ took hold of
+her arm and led her away, for I had told her _he_ was a safe protector
+against the spirits, not like some that wear the face of man and go up
+and down in the village, saying that the people should not believe in
+Jeanne the sorceress, for that she tells that which is untrue--while
+they themselves have dealings such as none can know with the Evil Ones."
+
+Aimee looked at her keenly for some moments with a curious expression on
+her tightly-folded lips.
+
+"You would have me believe that Marie went into the ravine when she knew
+the spirits were about, and went on the arm of Geoffroi?"
+
+"I tell you, Grandmere, that she did so. It was Jeanne that compelled
+her. For Jeanne knows when a man is in league with Them, and she said to
+Marie, 'Thou wilt wed Antoine, but thou knowest not what he is; go to
+the Black Stone to-night, and thou shalt see.' H'ch! Jeanne knows
+nothing, does she? But Marie went, for she knew that Jeanne was wise.
+And what she saw, she saw."
+
+It was strange to see the conflict between superstition and natural
+affection in the face of Aimee. Her thoughts seemed to be rapidly
+scanning the past, and there was fear as well as anger in her look.
+Could it be that this child, flung into her arms, as it were, from the
+shipwreck, born before his time of sorrow, the very offspring of
+death,--that had always lived apart from the other lads, with strange,
+quiet ways of his own--that had astonished her by his wise sayings as a
+child--and that, growing up had brought unnatural prosperity to the
+home, as though some higher hand were upon him--could it be that there
+was something in him more than of this earth? Her hand trembled so that
+it shook the stick on which she leant: she made one or two attempts to
+speak, then dropped the two halfpence on the table, as if they burnt
+her, and went out.
+
+When Marie was a little better, they sent her away to her married
+sister's at Cherbourg, for the doctor said that the only chance of
+recovering her balance of mind, lay in removing her from everything that
+would remind her of her fright, or of Antoine. News travels slowly in
+those parts, especially among the poor and illiterate, and for months
+Antoine heard nothing of her, except for an occasional message brought
+by some chance traveller from Cherbourg, to the effect that she was
+still ill: while his own troubles at home grew and gathered as time went
+on. For since that night in the ravine everything seemed to have gone
+wrong. A superstitious fear had associated itself with the idea of
+Antoine in the minds of the other villagers. The Kaudrens' cottage was
+more and more avoided, and the fishing business was injured, for people
+chose rather to buy their fish of those of whom no evil things were
+hinted. The Pierres themselves were infected with this feeling, and
+Marie's father would go partner with Jean no longer. Jean could not
+support a fishing smack by himself, and gave up the distant voyages,
+confining himself to the long-shore fishing, and disposing of his
+oysters, crayfish and prawns as best he could in the more remote
+villages. Meanwhile, old Aimee, getting older and more feeble, would sit
+knitting in the cottage by a cheerless hearth, and as the supply of
+potatoes, chestnuts and black bread grew scantier and scantier, would
+furtively watch Antoine, with anxious, awe-struck glances, and then
+would sometimes cross herself, and wipe a tear away unseen.
+
+It was on a wild, stormy morning of January, that a letter at length
+arrived for Antoine from Cherbourg. The news was blurted out with
+tactless plainness. 'La pauvre petite' was no more. In proportion as she
+grew calmer in mind, it appeared, Marie had grown weaker in body: and a
+cold she had contracted soon after her arrival in Cherbourg, had settled
+on her lungs, which were always delicate. For weeks she had not risen
+from her bed, but had gradually pined away. There was a message for
+Antoine. "Tell him," she had said, in one of her last intervals of
+consciousness, "that I cannot bear to think of how I acted towards him.
+Tell him I did not know what I was doing. Ask him to come--to come
+quick. For I cannot die in peace, unless he forgives me." But she had
+died before the message could be sent.
+
+Antoine read the letter, crushed it in his great, trembling hand, and
+looked round him as though searching blankly for the hostile power, that
+had thus entangled, baffled and overthrown him. That voice from the
+grave seemed to call on him to claim again the rights that had been
+snatched from him. She was his, and he would see her face once more: he
+would go to Cherbourg, and look on her dead face, that he might know it,
+for she was his.
+
+He would be in time, if he caught the night train (the funeral was the
+following day). He would have to walk to St. Jean-du-Pied, the next
+village along the coast, from which a _diligence_ started in the
+afternoon to the nearest railway station. Old Aimee did up a little
+packet of necessaries for him, and borrowed money for the journey,
+saying nothing as she watched his face, full of the inarticulate
+suffering of the untaught. Antoine scarcely said farewell, as he walked
+straight out of the cottage door towards the sea, to take the shortest
+route to St. Jean-du-Pied by the coast. The rocks were white from the
+sea-foam, as if with driven snow, and the black sea was lashed to
+madness by a gale from the North East. The bitter wind tore across the
+bleak country-side, scourging every rock, tree and living thing that
+attempted to resist it, like the desolation of God descending in
+judgment on the land. Wild, torn clouds chased each other across the
+sky, and the deep roar of the sea among the rocks could be heard far
+inland.
+
+Antoine's thoughts meanwhile were whirling tumultuously round and round
+one object--an object that had hovered fitfully before his mind for many
+weeks--pressing closer and closer on it, till at length with triumphant
+realization, they seized on it and made it the imperious necessity of
+his will.
+
+Ever since the night in the ravine, Antoine had been living in a strange
+world: he had not known himself: his hand had seemed against every
+man's, and every man's hand against his. He never went to mass, for he
+felt that the good God had abandoned him.
+
+Now he suddenly realised what it was he needed--the just punishment of
+Geoffroi. The path of life would be straight again, and God on His
+Throne in heaven, when Justice had been vindicated, and he had visited
+his crime on the evil-doer. That he must do it himself, was plain to him.
+
+He marched on, possessed with a feeling that it was Geoffroi whom he
+was going to seek, towards the projecting foreland that shut in the
+village on the east. He was drenched by the waves, as they dashed madly
+against the walls of rock, and to get round the boulders under such
+circumstances was a dangerous task even for a skilled climber: but
+Antoine seemed borne forward by a force stronger than himself, and went
+on without pause, or doubt, till in a small inlet on the other side of
+the foreland, he discerned a figure clinging to a narrow ledge of rock,
+usually out of reach of the tide, but towards which the mighty waves
+were now rolling up more and more threateningly each moment. There was
+no mistaking the lithe, cringing movements, the particular turn of the
+head looking backward over the shoulder in terror at the menacing
+waters: even if Antoine had not known beforehand that he must find
+Geoffroi on that path, and that he had come to meet him.
+
+Geoffroi's position was (for him) extremely dangerous. A bold climber
+might have extricated himself; but for a lame man to reach safety across
+the sea-scourged rocks was almost impossible. Could he hold on long
+enough and the sea rose no higher, he might be saved: but there would
+yet be an hour before the turn of the tide, and already the waves were
+racing over the ledge on which he stood. Antoine sprang over the
+intervening rocks, scrambling and wading through the water, as if not
+seeing what he did, till he set foot on the ledge, and stood face to
+face with his enemy.
+
+Geoffroi's face was white with fear. He knew his hour was come. In the
+mighty strife of the elements, within an inch of death on every side, he
+was at Antoine's mercy.
+
+"Don't kill me," he cried abjectly. "Have mercy, for the love of God."
+
+Antoine grasped the writhing creature by the shoulder. The white face of
+Marie rose up before him. Geoffroi shrieked. A huge, heaving billow
+advanced, swept round the feet of both and sank boiling in the gulf
+beneath. The next that came would leave neither of them there. Antoine
+stood with his hand on Geoffroi's shoulder, as if he would crush it.
+Somewhat higher, but within reach, was a narrow projection in the rock,
+to which there was room for one to cling, and only for one: and Geoffroi
+with his lame foot could not reach it alone.
+
+"Let me go," he shrieked. "I will confess all: but save me, save me!"
+
+Suddenly another wave of feeling surged up in the soul of Antoine. He
+seemed to see the cross on the hill side, as it stood in light that
+evening when he was to have met Marie there. He saw the good God on the
+cross again, as he used to see Him in the chapel. He had a strange, deep
+feeling that he was God, or that God was he. He seemed to be on that
+cross himself. The great, green wave towered above them twenty feet in
+air. He grasped Geoffroi by both shoulders, and flung him up to the
+ledge above with a kind of scorn. The next moment the rolling sea
+descended. Antoine clung with all his force to the rock, but he knew
+that he should never see the light again.
+
+So was he drawn out into the great deep, in whose arms his father lay:
+and the fisher-folk, when they knew it, looked for no sign of him more,
+for they said he had gone back to the sea, from whence he came. For,
+though they never knew the true story of his death, they felt that a
+spirit of a different mould from theirs had passed from among them in
+his own way.
+
+
+[Illustration:]
+
+
+
+
+TWICE A CHILD.
+
+
+Halfway up the mountain-side, overlooking a ravine, through which a
+streamlet flowed to the lake, stood a woodman's cottage. In the room on
+which the front door opened were two persons--an infant in a wooden
+cradle, in the corner between the fire-place and the window; and, seated
+on a stool in the flood of sunlight that streamed through the doorway,
+an old man. His lips were moving slightly, and his face had the look of
+one whose thoughts were far away. On the patch of floor in front of him
+lay cross-bars of sunlight, which flowed in through the casement window.
+The sky overhead was cloudless, while the murky belt on the horizon was
+not visible from the cottage door. In the windless calm no leaf seemed
+to stir in the forest around. The cottage clock in the corner ticked the
+passing moments; the wild cry of the "curry fowl" was heard now and
+again from the lake; there was no other sound in the summer afternoon,
+and the deep heart of nature seemed at rest.
+
+The old man's eyes rested on the bars of sunlight, but he saw another
+scene. On his face, in which the simplicity of childhood seemed to have
+reappeared, was a knowing, amused look, expressing infinite relish of
+some inward thought, the simple essence of mischief. Bars of sunlight,
+just like those, used to lie on the schoolroom floor when he was a
+little boy, and was sent to Dame Gartney's school to be kept out of
+harm's way, and to learn what he might. He saw himself, an urchin of
+five or six years, seated on a stool beside the Dame's great arm-chair.
+She was slowly, with dim eyes, threading a needle for the tiny maiden
+standing before her, clutching in her hot little hand the unhemmed
+duster on which she was to learn to sew. The thread approached the
+needle's eye; it was nearly in, when the arm-chair gave a very little
+shake, apparently of its own accord; the old lady missed her aim, and
+the needle and the thread were as far apart as ever, while the small imp
+sitting quiet at her side was unsuspected. Not once nor twice only was
+this little game successfully played. It used to enliven the hot, sleepy
+afternoon, while the bars of light were crawling slowly--oh! so
+slowly--across the floor. He knew school would be over when the outer
+edge of sunlight touched the corner of the box-bed against the wall,
+where the little girl that lived there and called the dame "Granny" was
+put to sleep of a night.
+
+His school experience was short, consisting, indeed, of but six bright
+summer weeks, after which it had become his business to mind the baby,
+while his mother went out to work. But the most vivid of the impressions
+of his childhood were connected with that brief school career. Distinct
+above the rest stood out the memory of one afternoon, when sitting on
+his low stool he had seen dark smudges of shadow come straying, curling,
+whirling across the squares of sunlight; when shouts had arisen in the
+yard, and just as the dame had made Effie May hold out her hand for
+dropping her thimble the third time, the back-door was burst open by
+Ebenezer, the milkman, who cried out that the Dame's cow-house was on
+fire. He could see the old lady now, with the child's shrinking fingers
+firmly gripped in hers, her horny old hand arrested in the act of
+descending on the little pink palm (which escaped scot-free in the
+confusion) while she gazed for a moment, open-mouthed, at the speaker,
+as though she had come to a word which _she_ couldn't spell, then jumped
+up with surprising quickness and hobbled across the floor without her
+stick, the point of her mob-cap nodding to every part of the room, while
+she moved the whole of herself first to one side and then to the other
+as she walked, like one of the geese waddling across the common.
+
+"Goo back and mind yerr book!" cried the old lady to the sharp-eyed
+little boy, who was peeping round her skirts. But he did not go back.
+Who could, when they saw those tongues of flame shooting up, and the
+volumes of smoke darkening the summer sky, as the wooden shed and the
+palings near it caught and smoked and crackled, and heard the cries of
+men and boys shouting for water and more water, which old Jack Foster,
+and idiot Tom, and some women, with baskets hastily deposited by the
+roadside, and even boys not much bigger than himself, were toiling to
+bring as fast as possible in pails from the brook, before the flames
+should spread to the row of cottages so perilously near? No earthly
+power could have kept the mite out of the fray. Before the old dame knew
+where he was, his little hands were clenched round the handle of a heavy
+iron pail, and he was struggling up the yard to where the men were
+tearing down the connecting fences, in a desperate endeavour to stay the
+onrush, of the flames. To and fro, to and fro, the child toiled,
+begrimed by falling blacks, scorched by the blaze, his whole mind intent
+on one thing--to stop the burning of that charred and tottering mass.
+
+It was done at last, and the cottages were saved. The rescue party
+dispersed, and the dirty, tired boy strayed slowly homeward down the
+village street. He could see himself now arriving soot-covered, and
+well-nigh speechless with fatigue, at his mother's door, could hear the
+cries and exclamations that arose at the sight of him, could feel the
+tender hands that removed the clothes from his hot little body, and
+washed him, and put him to bed. It took him several days to recover from
+the fever into which he had put himself, and it was then he had begun to
+mind the baby instead of going to school. Praise was liberally bestowed
+in the county paper on Mr. Ebenezer Rooke and his assistants, who by
+their energy and forethought had saved the village from destruction but
+no one had noticed the efforts of the tiny child, working beyond his
+strength; and, indeed, he himself had had no idea of being noticed.
+
+As he sat now on the stool in the sunny doorway, and looked up the
+mountain-valley, to which he had been brought in his declining years to
+share his married daughter's home, the detail in that tragedy of his
+childhood, which pictured itself in his mind's eye more clearly than any
+other, was the shadow of the spreading, coiling puffs of smoke, which
+had first caught his childish attention, blurring the bars of sunlight
+on the floor of the Dame's kitchen. Perhaps it was on account of the
+likeness to the pattern now made by the sun, as it shone through the
+casement between him and the baby's cradle. For the gentle, domestic old
+man was often now, as in his docile childhood, charged to "mind the
+baby," and one of the quiet pleasures of his latter days was the sight
+of the little floweret, that grew so sweetly beside his sere and
+withered life. An uncultured sense of beauty within him was appealed to
+by the rounded limbs, the silent, dimpled laugh, the tottering feet
+feeling their unknown way, and all the sweet curves and softnesses, the
+innocent surprises and _naive_ desires, which made up for him the image
+of "the baby." He would have said she was "prutty," implying much by the
+word.
+
+As he gazed at his precious charge, and watched the sunlight pattern
+slowly but surely creeping towards the foot of the cradle, he had an odd
+feeling that school would soon be over. A moment after he rubbed his
+eyes and looked again. Was it true, or was he dreaming? Were those
+shadowy whirls of smoke, dimming the sunshine, a vision of the past, or
+did he actually see them before him, as of old, coiling about and around
+the bars of light on the floor? It was certainly there, the shadow of
+smoke, and came he could not tell whence; for in all the unpeopled
+valley there were, of human beings, as far as he knew at that moment,
+only himself and the baby. To his mind, so full of the past, it seemed
+the herald of another danger.
+
+He raised himself with difficulty from his stool, and moved his stiff
+limbs to the threshold. As he did so, he noticed that the smoke was
+within the room as well as without; it was festooning about the baby's
+cradle, it was filling the place, there was scarcely air to breathe. His
+first idea, as he smelt the soot, and saw the blacks showering on the
+hearth, was that the chimney was on fire. He went straight to the baby
+in its cradle, and, his limbs forgetting their stiffness, lifted her in
+his arms to carry her to a place of safety; when that was done he would
+take off the embers from the grate, and sprinkle salt on the hearth to
+quench the fire.
+
+Not till he reached the door did he notice a sound that filled the
+valley. A strange, high-pitched note, like a hundred curry-fowl crying
+at once--a wail, as of spirits in hell. Now from one direction, now from
+another; now rising, now falling, the weird, unearthly shriek seemed
+everywhere at once, increasing each moment in force and shrillness. As
+the old man, holding the baby close to him, looked up and listened, fear
+struck his lips with a sudden trembling. Opposite to him he saw a
+strange sight. Halfway up the mountain, on the other side of the valley,
+not a leaf on the trees was stirring: the lower slopes lay basking in
+the sunshine, and the shadows of fleeting clouds only added to the
+peaceful beauty of the scene; while the trees above were raging
+bacchanals, whirling, swaying, tossing their long arms in futile agony,
+as though possessed by some unseen demoniacal power.
+
+In a moment the old man knew what had befallen him. The bewitched smoke,
+the shrieking spirits of the air, the motionless valley, and the
+maddened trees, of all these he had heard before, for he had listened to
+tales of the tornado in the valley, and knew what it meant to the
+defenceless dwellers on the upper slopes. The skirts of the fury were
+touching him even now; a sudden gust swept by; to draw breath for the
+moment was impossible, and his unsteady balance would soon have been
+overthrown; he was forced to cling to the doorpost, still holding the
+baby close. But the quiet, comprehending expression never left his face;
+he knew what was to be done, and he meant to do it; there might be time.
+
+He set down the baby in the cradle, took off his coat, grasped a spade
+in his shaking hand, and hobbled across the patch of open ground to a
+spot as far distant as possible both from the cottage and from the
+borders of the wood; the maddened wind was wailing itself away in the
+distance, and happily for a few minutes there was a lull in the air. He
+could hear the baby crying, left alone in the cottage. He never looked
+off from his work, but went on digging a hole in the form of a little
+grave. The surface of the ground was hard, and the old man was
+short-winded; he could hardly gather enough force to drive the spade in.
+Before long, however, a few inches of the upper crust were removed from
+a space about three feet in length. The digging in the softer earth
+would now be easier and more rapid. As he worked on, a few heavy drops
+of rain fell. He looked up and saw the whole sky, lately full of
+sunlight, a mass of driving, ink-black clouds, while the shriek of the
+hurricane was heard again in the distance. The baby's cry was drowned by
+it. The hole was as yet only half a foot deep. At the next thrust the
+spade struck on a slanting ledge of slaty rock. No further progress
+could be made there; the trench must be dug in a different direction.
+Once more the old man, panting heavily, drove the spade into the hard
+ground, and in two or three minutes had so far altered the position of
+the hole that the rock was avoided. The gale was increasing every
+moment, and at times he could hardly keep his feet.
+
+Suddenly, through the roar of the wind, was heard another sound, a
+rattling and rushing, as of loosened stones and of earth. All his senses
+on the alert, the old man glanced swiftly up, and saw a row of four tall
+fir trees, which stood out like sentinels, on a ridge of the mountain,
+in the very path of the storm, turn over like nine-pins, one after the
+other, and tearing up the soil with their roots, slip down the
+mountain-side, dragging with them an avalanche of earth. His eye darted
+to the cottage with a sudden fear. Even as he looked, the wind was
+lifting some of the slates on the roof, rattling them, loosening them,
+and in a few moments would scatter them around like chaff, chaff that
+would bring death to any on whom it should chance to light. With an odd,
+calculating look, the old man turned again to his digging, and,
+breathless as before, shovelled out the earth from the hole, with a
+speed of which his stiff and feeble frame would have been thought
+incapable; while now and again, without ceasing his work, he darted a
+backward glance at the doomed cottage. It ought to stand until the hole
+was dug; and at least in the digging there was a chance of safety: in
+going back to fetch the baby now, there was none.
+
+After about five minutes, with a hideous yell, the demon tore in such
+fury across the mountain-side, that the old man would have been carried
+off his feet in a moment, and swept with the rest of the _debris_ into
+the valley, but that he threw himself on the ground, clutching tightly
+with his fingers the edge of the hole he had dug. In the bottom of the
+hole a thistle-down lay unmoved. When the lull came, and he could raise
+his head, having escaped injury or death from falling stocks and stones,
+he darted over his shoulder a glance of awful anxiety at the cottage--of
+such anxiety as a strong man may reach to the depths of but once or
+twice in his prime. The roof of the cottage was gone; there were no
+fragments, for the wind was a clean sweeper; it had bodily vanished. The
+walls stood. He dragged himself unsteadily to his feet, and looked
+about for his spade. It was nowhere to be seen; the besom of the gale
+had whirled it to some unknown limbo.
+
+The hole was still not quite a foot and a half deep, and would not
+preserve the cradle, if placed therein, from the destroyer. He shuffled
+back to the cottage with awkward, hasty steps. The baby had cried itself
+to sleep, and lay in its cradle in the corner, unconscious of the ruin
+of its home. The old man went to the hearth, on which the fire had been
+blown out, and from under the ashes dragged out a battered fire-shovel,
+its edge worn away, its handle loose. It was the nearest approach to a
+spade that was left him. Just as he got back to the hole another blast
+carried him off his feet, and he fell prostrate, this time clutching his
+substitute spade beneath him. He rose again, stepped into the hole,
+crouching down as low as possible, and rapidly raised out of it one
+shovelful of earth after another; it was no sooner on the surface than
+it was whisked away like dust. In the wood, a furlong to the right, some
+dozen trees were prostrated between one thrust of the shovel and the
+next; dark straight firs and silver birches, that slipped downwards to
+the valley like stiff, gleaming snakes.
+
+Meanwhile the shovel had struck on a layer of stones, the remains of
+some past landslip, since buried under flowering earth. With its
+turned-back edge, it was hard to insert it below them, and again and
+again it came up having raised nothing but a little gravel; but the old
+man worked on still with his docile, child-like look, intent upon his
+task. Presently the infirm handle came off, and the shovel dropped into
+the bottom of the hole. At the same moment, with a wilder shriek and a
+fiercer on-rush, the fury came tearing again along the mountain side;
+the whole of the trees that yet remained in the patch of forest nearest
+to the cottage were swept away at once, and the slope was left bare. The
+old man crouched down in his hole, with his anxious eye fixed on the
+four walls within which the baby was sheltered; they still stood, the
+only object which the demon had not yet swept from his path. And even as
+the old man looked, he saw the upper part of the back wall begin to
+loosen, to totter, and give way. The baby was in the front room, but was
+under the windward wall. In the teeth of the gale the old man crawled
+out of the hole, extended his length on the ground, and began to drag
+his stiff and trembling frame, with hands, elbows and knees, across the
+fifty feet or so of barren soil that lay between the hole and the
+cottage. He heard the crash of bricks before he had accomplished half
+the distance; without pausing to look he crawled rapidly on till he
+crossed the threshold, and saw the babe still sleeping safely in its
+wooden cradle. There were two large iron dogs in the grate; he drew them
+out and placed them--panting painfully with the effort, for they were
+almost beyond his strength to lift--in the cradle, under the little
+mattress, one at each end. The baby, disturbed in its slumber, stretched
+its little limbs, smiled at him, and went to sleep again. He doubled a
+sack over the coverlet, tied a rope round the cradle, fastened it by a
+slip-knot underneath, pulled out the end at the back, and tightened it
+till it dragged against the hood. The cradle went on its wheels well
+enough to the door. Then the old man summoned his remaining strength,
+and having knotted the rope round his waist, threw himself on the ground
+again, and emerged with his precious charge into the roaring hurricane.
+Across the barren mountain slope, far above the ken of any fellow-being,
+in the teeth of death, the old man crept with the sleeping babe. Another
+threatening of the deluge of rain, which would surely accompany the
+tornado, added to the misery of the painful journey; the sudden downpour
+of heavy drops drenched the grandfather to the skin, but the grandchild
+was protected under the sacking.
+
+They reached the hole at length, and raising himself to his knees, the
+wind being somewhat less boisterous while the rain was falling, the old
+man clutched the heavily-weighted cradle in both arms, and attempted to
+force it into the haven of safety he had spent his strength in forming.
+Alas! there was not room. The cradle was wider across than he had
+calculated. To take the child out and place it with the bedding in the
+hole would be leaving it to drown. Should the expected deluge descend,
+the trench he had dug would but form a reservoir for water. He seized
+the shovel, working it as well as he could without a handle, and
+attempted to break down and widen the edges. Pushing, stamping, driving
+with his make-shift spade, now clutching at the edges with his fingers
+and loosening the stones, now forcing them in with his heel, he
+succeeded in working through the hard upper surface; then breathless,
+dizzy, spent, with hands that could scarce grasp the shovel, and
+stumbling feet that each moment threatened to fail him, he spaded out
+the softer earth below and scraped and tore at the sides, till the hole
+was wide enough to contain the cradle, and deep enough to ensure its
+safety.
+
+The last shovelful was raised, and the old man was stooping down to lift
+the cradle in, when the wildest war-cry yet uttered by the raging
+elements rang round the mountain side; all the former blasts seemed to
+have been but forerunners or skirmishers heralding the approach of the
+elemental forces; but now with awful ferocity and determination advanced
+the very centre of the fiendish host; while the horns were blown from
+mountain to mountain, announcing utter destruction to whatsoever should
+venture to obstruct the path of the army of the winds. In the shrieking
+solitude it seemed as if chaos and the end of the world were come. The
+poor old man crouched down, keeping his body between the gale and the
+baby's cradle, while the last remaining wall of the cottage fell flat
+before his eyes. But he felt himself being urged slowly but surely away
+from the refuge of the trench, downwards, downwards. The cradle, in
+spite of its iron ballast, was just overturning, when, with the strength
+of despair, he threw his body across it, digging his feet into the
+ground, and once more knotted the loose end of rope around his waist.
+The downward slip was stayed. Pushing the cradle with knees and arms,
+clutching the soil with hands and feet, he crept with his precious
+charge nearer and nearer the widened hole. Once over the edge the baby
+would be safe. The windy fiend seemed to be pursuing him with vindictive
+hate. It shrieked and tore around that bare strip of mountain side, as
+though the whole purpose of its fury was to destroy the old man and the
+babe. With a superhuman effort he grasped the cradle in both arms and
+lifted it in, then fell senseless across the opening.
+
+Gradually the demon horns ceased to blow, the great guns died into
+silence, and the army of the air dispersed. The rain fell in torrents,
+but the old man never moved.
+
+When the storm was over, and anxious steps hastened up the mountain
+path, and horror-stricken faces gazed at the ruined home and the havoc
+all around, there was broken-hearted lamentation for the old man and the
+child, supposed to have perished in the tornado. At last the mother's
+searching eye discerned in the sunshine that lay across the still
+mountain-side an unfamiliar object; and hastening towards it with the
+lingering hope of learning some news of her darling, she perceived the
+old man lying in his last sleep, with the eternal Peace in his
+child-like face, still stretched as if in protection across a trench, in
+which the baby lay safe in its cradle, sleeping as peacefully as he.
+
+
+
+
+THE ROAD BY THE SEA.
+
+PART I.
+
+
+From East to West there stretched a long, straight road, glimmering
+white across the grey evening landscape: silently conscious, it seemed,
+of the countless human feet, that for ages had trodden it and gone their
+way--their way for good, or their way for evil, while the road remained.
+Coming as an alien from unknown scenes, the one thing in the country
+that spoke of change, yet itself more lasting than any, it seemed to be
+ever pursuing some secret purpose: persistent, relentless: a very
+Nemesis of a road.
+
+On either side of it were barren "dunes," grudgingly covered by
+straggling heather and gorse, and to the South, at a little distance,
+rolled the dark-blue sea.
+
+On the edge of the dune, near to a cluster of sweet-scented pines, stood
+two or three cottages built of grey stone, after the Breton manner, with
+high-pitched roofs of dove-coloured slate, and arched stone doorways,
+around which scratched pigs and hens, on equal terms with barefooted
+children. One of the cottages had "Buvette" inscribed over it in large,
+white letters, and a bench outside under a little awning; and opposite
+to this, a rough pathway led out of the road over the waste land to a
+hamlet on the dune, of which the grey, clustering cottages, crowning a
+rising ground about half a mile off, stood distinct against the opal sky
+of early evening.
+
+Framed in the stone doorway of the Buvette, was the figure of a girl in
+a snow-white coiffe, of which the lappets waved in the wind, a short
+blue skirt, and sabots. She had a curious, inexpressive face, with the
+patient look of a dumb creature, and an odd little curl in her upper
+lip, which, with her mute expression, made her seem to be continually
+deprecating disapproval. She stood shading her eyes from the slanting
+sunbeams, as she looked up the road to the West. A little before her,
+out on the road, stood two other women, elderly, both white-capped, one
+leaning on a stick: they addressed brief sentences to one another now
+and again, in the disconnected manner of those who are expecting
+something: and they also stood looking up the road to the West.
+
+And not they only, but a group of peasants belonging to the hamlet on
+the hill; free-stepping, strong-limbed Breton women, returning from the
+cliffs with bundles of dried sea-weed on their backs: a woman and two
+young lads from the furthermost cottage, with hoes in their hands, who
+had stepped out on to the road from their work of weeding the sorry
+piece of ground they had fenced in from the dune, and which yielded, at
+the best, more stones than vegetables: a couple of fishermen, who were
+tramping along the road with a basket of mackerel: and even old lame
+Jacques, who had risen from the bench on which he usually sat as though
+he had taken root there, and leant tottering on his stick, as he
+strained his blear eyes against the sunbeams: all stopped as if by one
+impulse: all seemed absorbed by one expectation, and stood gazing up the
+long, white road to the West.
+
+The road was like a sensitive thing to ears long familiar with its
+various sounds, and vibrated at a mile's distance with the gallop of
+unwonted hoofs, or the haste of a rider that told of strange news.
+Moreover, all hearts were open to the touch of fear that October
+evening, when at any hour word might be brought of the fishing fleet
+that should now be returning from its long absence in distant seas: and
+one dare hardly think whether Jean and Pierre and little Andre would all
+be restored safely to the vacant places around the cottage fire: one
+dared not think: one could only pray to the Saints, and wait.
+
+The girl with the mute, patient face had been the first to catch the
+sounds of galloping hoofs. She had from birth been almost speechless,
+with a paralysed tongue, but as if to compensate for this, her senses of
+touch and hearing were extraordinarily acute. The daughter of the
+aubergiste, she knew all who came and went along the road: the sights
+and sounds of the road were her interest the life of it was her life.
+She had heard in the faint, faint distance the galloping hoofs to the
+West: off the great rocks to the West the fleet should first be
+sighted: towards the West all one's senses seemed strained, on the alert
+for signals of danger, or hope: and at the sound, the heart within
+Annette's breast leaped with a sudden certainty of disaster.
+
+Annette had never thought of love and marriage as possible for herself,
+but Paul Gignol had gone with the fleet for the first time this summer,
+and, for Annette, danger to the fleet meant danger to Paul. Paul and
+Annette were kin on her mother's side, and he being an orphan and
+adopted by her father, they had been brought up together like brother
+and sister. This summer had separated them for the first time, and when
+he bade her good-bye and sailed away, Annette felt like an uprooted
+piece of heather cast loose on the roadside, and belonging nowhere. And
+the first faint sounds of the hoofs on the road had struck on her ear as
+a signal from Paul. She made no sign, only stood still with a beating
+heart. And when the neighbours saw the dumb girl listening, they too
+came out into the road, and heard the galloping, now growing more and
+more distinct; and waited for the rider to appear on the ridge of the
+hill, which, some half mile off, raised its purple outline against the
+western sky.
+
+They came out when they saw the dumb girl listening: for the keenness of
+the perceptions with which her fragile body was endowed, was well known
+among them, and was attributed to the direct agency of the unseen
+powers; with whom indeed she had been acknowledged from her birth to
+have closer relations than is the lot of ordinary mortals. For there
+could be no doubt that Annette's mother had received an intimation of
+some sort from the other world, the night before her child was born. She
+had been found lying senseless in the moonlight on the hill-top, and had
+never spoken from that hour till her death a week afterwards. As to what
+she had met or seen, there were various rumours: some of the shrewder
+gossips declaring that it was nothing but old Marie Gourdon, the
+sorceress, who had frightened her by predicting in her mysterious
+wisdom, which not the shrewdest of them dared altogether disregard, that
+some strange calamity would attend the life of the child she was about
+to bring forth; a child that had indeed turned out speechless, and of so
+sickly a constitution that from year to year one hardly expected her to
+live. Moreover, was it not the ill-omened figure of the old witch-woman,
+that had hobbled into the auberge with the news that Christine Leroux
+was lying like one dead by the roadside? On the other hand, however, it
+was asserted with equal assurance, that she had seen in the moonlight,
+with her own eyes, the evil spirit of the dunes: him of whom all
+travellers by night must beware; for it was his pleasure to delude them
+by showing lights as if of cottage windows on the waste land, where no
+cottage was: while twice within living memory, he had kindled false
+fires on the great rock out at sea, which they called Le Geant, luring
+mariners to their death: and woe betide the solitary wayfarer whose path
+he crossed!
+
+Annette's father knew what his wife had seen: and one winter evening
+beside the peat-fire, as Annette was busy with her distaff, and he sat
+smoking and watching the glowing embers, he told her her mother's story.
+She and Paul's father, the elder Paul Gignol, had been betrothed in
+their youth; but his fishing-smack had struck on the rocks one foggy
+night, and gone down, and with it all his worldly wealth. And
+Christine's father had broken off the match; for he had never been
+favourable to it, and how was Paul to keep her now with nothing to look
+to, but what might be picked up in the harbour? And Paul was like one
+mad, and threatened to do her a bodily mischief, so that she was afraid
+to walk out at night by herself: and her father offered him money to go
+away: and he refused the money: but he went off at last, hiring himself
+out on a cargo-boat, and declaring as he went, that one day yet, he
+would meet Christine in the way, and have his revenge. And he was abroad
+for years, and wedded some English woman in one of the British sea-port
+towns, and at last was lost at sea on the very night on which Annette
+was born.
+
+"And his spirit it was, Annette, that appeared to your mother in the
+road that night, the very hour that he died. For it was borne in on me
+that he had met her in the way, as he had said, and I asked her, as she
+lay a-dying, if it was Paul that she had seen; and she looked at me with
+eyes that spoke as plain as the speech that she had lost: and said that
+it was he."
+
+Jules was ordinarily a silent man: he told the story slowly, with long
+pauses between the sentences: and when he had once told it, he never
+spoke of it again.
+
+Now Annette thought of many things in her quiet, clear-sighted way. She
+knew that her mother had been found senseless at the foot of the menhir,
+which they called Jean of Kerdual, just beyond the crest of the hill:
+and she had often noticed the shadow which the great, weird stone threw
+across the road, and thought how like it was (especially by moonlight)
+to the figure of a fisherman with his peaked cap and blouse. She
+believed there was more in this than a chance resemblance; for to a
+Breton girl the supernatural world is very real: and she had no doubt
+that the spirit of Paul's father haunted the stone that was so like his
+bodily form, and that on the night when he was drowned, the dumb menhir
+had found voice, and had spoken to her mother in his name. Annette
+always avoided Jean of Kerdual, if it was possible to do so, and would
+never let his shadow fall upon her. She felt that the solemn, world-old
+stone was in some way hostile to her, and attributed her dumbness to its
+influence.
+
+She often wished that she and her father did not live so near the stone.
+It had come to be like a nightmare to her. She would dream that it stood
+threateningly over her, enveloping her in its shadow: that she was
+struggling to speak, and that it reached forth a hand, heavy as stone,
+and laid it on her mouth, stifling utterance. Then the paralysis that
+had fettered her tongue from her birth, would creep over the rest of her
+senses and over all her limbs, till she lay motionless and helpless
+under the hand of the menhir, like a stone herself, only alive and
+conscious. This dream had come more frequently since Paul had been away,
+and Annette would often look up and down the road--that road which was
+her only link with the world beyond--in the vague hope that it might one
+day bring her some deliverance.
+
+And now, as she stood listening to the galloping hoofs, she had an odd
+feeling that Jean of Kerdual was threatening once more to render her
+powerless, but that this time he would not prevail: for that something
+was coming along the road, nearer--nearer--with every gallop, to free
+her from him for ever. Then suddenly the sounds changed: the horseman
+was ascending the hill on the other side, and the galloping grew
+laboured and slower. Would he never come into sight? It seemed to
+Annette that she could bear it no longer: she set off and ran along the
+road and up the hill, to meet the unseen rider. The slow-thoughted,
+simple-minded peasants looked after her, wondering. She had nearly
+reached the top, when, silhouetted against the sky on the crest of the
+hill, appeared the figure of a man on horse-back, his Breton tunic and
+long hat-ribbons flying loose in the wind, as he reined in his chafing
+steed. He rose a moment in his stirrups, pointed out to sea with his
+whip, and shouted something inaudible: at the same instant his horse
+shied violently, as it seemed, at some object by the roadside, and
+threw his rider to the ground.
+
+The man, the bringer of tidings, lay motionless in the road, the horse
+galloped wildly on: the dumb girl stood, half way up the hill: the dumb
+girl, who alone had heard the message. The next moment she threw her
+arms convulsively above her head, turned towards the group below, and
+cried in a loud, clear voice, "Le Geant brule!"
+
+The words fell on the ears of the listening crowd as if with an electric
+shock. As they repeated them to each other with fear and amazement, and
+scattered hither and thither to saddle a horse, or to catch the runaway
+steed, that they might carry the news in time over the two miles that
+lay between them and the harbour, the fact that the dumb had spoken,
+seemed for the moment hardly noticed by them. For might not the
+fishing-fleet even now be rounding the point, with darkness coming on,
+and the misleading light burning on the giant rock to lure them to
+destruction? A light which, as they knew too well, was not visible from
+the harbour, and which might be shewing its fatal signal unguessed the
+whole night through, unless as now, by favour of the saints, and
+doubtless by the quick eyes of some fisherman of the neighbouring
+village, who had chanced to be far enough out to sea at the time, it
+were perceived before darkness should fall.
+
+The girl turned back again, and went up to the top of the hill to tend
+the fallen rider. The sun was sinking, and threw the shadow of the
+menhir, enlarged to a monstrous size, across her path. A few yards
+further on lay the senseless form of the Breton horseman, and it was
+clear to Annette that Jean of Kerdual had purposely stayed the rider by
+throwing the shadow across the road to startle his horse.
+
+But a new exhilaration had taken possession of Annette's whole body and
+mind. She feared the menhir no longer: its power over her was gone. She
+kept repeating the words that had come to her at the crisis, the first
+she had spoken articulately all her life, "Le Geant brule--Le Geant
+brule," with a confidence in herself and the future, which was like new
+wine to her. The fleet would come safe home now, and by her means: for
+the Saints had helped her: the Saints were on her side.
+
+
+PART II.
+
+When Annette brought the fallen man (who was already recovering
+consciousness when she reached him) safe back in the cart to the
+auberge, she found a little crowd of peasants, men and women, gathered
+there, talking loud and eagerly over the news, who looked at her with a
+reverent curiosity as she entered. The injured man was assisted to a
+bed, but none spoke to Annette: only silent, awe-struck glances were
+turned on her: for they had gradually realized the fact that a voice had
+been given to the dumb girl, and Annette's quiet, familiar presence had
+become charged with mystery for them. They had no doubt that the
+blessed St. Yvon, the patron saint of mariners, had himself uttered the
+warning through her, at the moment when the safety of the fishing fleet
+depended on a spoken word: and the miracle now occupied their attention
+almost to the exclusion of the false lights and the return of the boats.
+
+But Annette observed their whisperings and glances with a slight touch
+of contempt: she knew that her own voice had been restored to her, and
+that she was now like any of the other women in the village; which, in
+her own simple presentment of things, must be interpreted as meaning
+that she might look to have a husband and a home of her own. It was as
+though she had for the first time become a real woman. She saddled the
+horse and rode off to fetch a doctor to attend to the sick man, thinking
+all the while that the fleet would be in before morning, that Paul would
+come home, and that he would hear her voice. She made little childish
+plans of pretending to be still dumb when she first saw him, so that she
+might surprise him the more when she should speak.
+
+Darkness was fast gathering now, but the old horse knew every stone in
+the road: he carried her with his steady jog-trot safely enough over the
+two miles that lay between the auberge and the fishing village where the
+doctor lived, in a house overlooking the _rade_ and the harbour. As she
+passed along, the dark quays were full of moving lights and figures;
+active women with short skirts and sabots, mingling in the groups of
+fishermen; while a buzz of harsh Breton speech resounded on all sides.
+She caught words about a gang of wreckers that had lately infested the
+coast: and the names of one or two "_mauvais sujets_" in the village,
+who were supposed to be their confederates. She saw a moving light at
+the mouth of the harbour, and from a low-breathed murmur that ran below
+the noisier speech of the crowd, she gathered that it was a boat's crew
+going out in the darkness, to scale the precipitous rock, and extinguish
+the light.
+
+All her faculties seemed quickened, and she kept repeating aloud to
+herself the words she heard in the crowd, to make sure that she could
+articulate as clearly as she had done in the first moment that her voice
+was given to her.
+
+When she arrived at the doctor's gate, and dismounted to pull the great
+iron bell-rope that hung outside, she was trembling violently, and could
+hardly steady her hands to tie up the horse. Jeanne, the cook's sister,
+took her into the kitchen, while some one fetched the doctor, and she
+was so anxious that her speech should seem plain to them, that for the
+few first moments, from sheer nervousness, she could not utter a word.
+Then the doctor entered, a tall, well-built man, with stiff, iron-grey
+hair and imperial, and an expression of genial contentment with himself
+and the rest of the world.
+
+"Mais, Mademoiselle Annette," he exclaimed the moment he saw her, "What
+are you doing then? You must return home and go to bed at once. Why did
+you not send me word before, instead of putting it off till you got so
+ill?"
+
+He did not wait for her to reply, believing her to be speechless as
+usual, but placed her in a chair and began to feel her pulse. She was
+trying to speak all the time, but from excitement and a strange
+dizziness that had come over her, she could not at once use her new
+faculty. At last she got out the words, that it was not for herself she
+had come; that a _fermier_ who had ridden fast from the village of St.
+Jean, further up the coast, to bring the news of the false light on the
+Geant, had been thrown from his horse--but before she had finished the
+sentence, the doctor, still absorbed in the contemplation of her own
+case, interrupted her, exclaiming with astonishment at her new power of
+speech, and demanding to know by what means it had come, and how long
+she had possessed it.
+
+But to recall the experience of that moment on the hill, when at the
+thought of the danger menacing the fishing boats, her tongue had been
+loosened, and the unaccustomed words had come forth, was too much for
+Annette. She trembled so, and made such painful efforts to speak, that
+it seemed as though she were again losing the power of utterance; and
+the doctor bade her remain perfectly quiet, gave her some soothing
+medicine, and directed a bed to be prepared for her in the kitchen, as
+he said she was not fit to return home that night: then he himself took
+the old horse from the gate where he stood, and set off for the auberge
+with what haste he might.
+
+For three or four minutes after he was gone, Annette remained
+motionless in her seat, wearing her patient, deprecatory expression,
+while her eyes rested on the window, without apparently seeing the
+lights and dimly outlined figures that were visible on the _rade_
+outside. Then her glance seemed to concentrate itself on something: the
+nervous, trembling lips closed rigidly, and before they saw what she was
+about to do, she had risen from her chair, and darted from the room and
+out into the night.
+
+"Our Lady guard her! It was the boats she caught sight of," said
+Victorine, the cook. "There are the lights off the bay. Go, stop her,
+Jeanne! Monsieur will be angry with us if anything befall her."
+
+"Dame! I will not go," said her sister. "Can you not see that Annette is
+bewitched? If she must go, she must. I will have nought to do with it."
+
+Victorine, however, scouted her younger sister's reasoning, and hurried
+out across the small court-yard, through the gate and on to the road.
+
+The whole village seemed gathered at the harbour-side; children and old
+men, lads and women, eager, yet with the patient quietness that is the
+way with the Breton folk. Here a demure group of white-coiffed girls
+stood waiting with scarce a word passing among them, waiting at the
+quay-side for the fathers, brothers, or sweethearts, that for months had
+been facing the perils of the northern seas. There a dark-eyed,
+loose-limbed Breton peasant, the wildness of whose look bewrayed the
+gentleness of his nature, was arguing with a white-haired patriarch
+about the probable value of this year's haul: while quaint-looking
+children in little tight-fitting bonnets and clattering sabots clung
+patiently to their mother's skirts, their mothers, who could remember
+many a home-coming of the boats, and knew that it would be well if to
+some of those now waiting at the harbour, grief were not brought instead
+of joy.
+
+The vanguard of the fleet had been sighted some half-hour ago, and the
+two or three boats whose lights could now be seen approaching, one of
+which was recognized as Paul Gignol's "Annette," would, if all was well,
+anchor in the harbour that night: for the tide was high, so that the
+harbour basin was full; and the light of the torches and lanterns that
+were carried to and fro among the crowd, was reflected from its surface
+in distorted and broken flashes; while the regular plashing of the water
+against the quay-side accompanied the low murmur of the crowd.
+
+Victorine sought in vain for Annette in the darkness, dressed, as she
+was, like all the other peasant girls; but her eye lighted on the tall,
+powerful figure of Jules Leroux, Annette's father, standing at the door
+of the _bureau du port_, where he and some others were discussing the
+signals.
+
+Victorine approached the group, and announced in her emphatic way that
+Annette was ill, very ill, and had gone out alone into the crowd, when
+the doctor had bidden her not leave her bed. Jules, who had been down at
+the harbour since midday, and had heard nothing of Annette's recovered
+voice, or of her riding to the village, started off without waiting for
+more, along the quay and on to the very end of the mole, where the light
+guarded the entrance to the harbour, saying to himself, "It is there she
+will be--if she have feet to carry her--it is there she will be--when
+the boat comes in."
+
+Victorine looked after him, murmuring, "Surely the child Annette is the
+apple of her father's eye."
+
+The outline of the foremost fishing-smack was growing more and more
+distinct on the water, as he reached the end of the quay. Moving figures
+on board flashed into uncertain light for a moment, then disappeared
+into darkness again. A girl darted out from the crowd as he approached,
+and clung to his arm. "Annette, my little one," said Jules, "never fear.
+The Saints will bring him safe home."
+
+"He is there: it is the 'Annette' that comes. I have seen him!" she
+cried.
+
+Her father drew back almost in alarm. "What! Thy tongue is loosened, my
+child?"
+
+She drew down his head, and whispered eagerly in his ear. "The blessed
+St. Yvon made me speak. I will tell you afterwards: it was to save Paul.
+Is it not true now that he is mine?"
+
+At that moment a clamour of welcome ran along the quay-side, as the boat
+glided silently through the harbour mouth, and into the light of the
+torches that flashed from the quay.
+
+Women's voices called upon Paul and his mate Jean, and the name of the
+'Annette' (the vessel that had been christened after his foster-father's
+dumb child) was passed from mouth to mouth, while the fishermen silently
+got out the boat that was to carry the mooring cable to the shore.
+
+Annette clung convulsively to her father during the few minutes' delay,
+and once, as he saw the light flash on her face, he suddenly remembered
+something Victorine had said about the doctor. He watched her with a
+pang of alarm, and at the same time felt that she was stringing herself
+up for some effort. Everyone was greeting Jean, the first of the boat's
+crew that appeared, as he clambered up the quay-side, but Annette did
+not stir; then the second dark, sea-beaten figure emerged from below,
+and Annette darted forward. She clasped both Paul's hands and gazed into
+his face, while she seemed to be struggling with herself for something a
+spasm passed over her face, which was as white as her coiffe: her father
+and the others gathered round, but some instinct bade them be silent.
+Annette's lips opened more than once as if she were about to speak, but
+no sound came forth: then she turned to her father with a look of
+despairing entreaty, and at the same moment tottered and would have
+fallen, had he not darted forward and caught her in his arms.
+
+"She is dead! God help me," he cried.
+
+"Chut! Chut!" said the voice of Victorine in the crowd. "It is but the
+nerves. Did not you see she was striving to say the word of greeting,
+and it was a cruel blow to find her speech had gone from her again.
+Surely it is but a crisis of the nerves."
+
+But Jules, bending his tangled beard over her, groaned "The hand of God
+is heavy on me."
+
+He and Paul raised her between them, and carried her to the doctor's,
+stepping softly for fear of doing her a mischief: while the story of her
+recovered speech, and the danger which had threatened the fleet, was
+told to the returned fisherman in breathless, awe-struck accents. He
+listened, full of wonder, and as he saw her safely tucked into her
+box-bed in the doctor's kitchen, said in his light-hearted Celtic way,
+that it was not for nothing she had got her voice back, and no fear but
+she would soon be well, and would speak to him in the morning.
+
+But her father, who sat watching her unconscious face, and holding her
+hand in both his, as though he feared she would slip away from him,
+shook his head and said, "She will not see another dawn."
+
+They tried their utmost to restore her consciousness, but with that
+ignorance of the simplest remedies which is sometimes found among the
+Breton peasants, they had so far failed: and though someone had been
+sent to fetch back the doctor from the auberge, Victorine and the other
+women shook their heads, as Jules had done, and said to each other, "It
+is in vain; she will never waken more."
+
+But when the fainting fit had lasted nearly an hour, and in the wild
+eyes of Paul, who stood leaning on the foot of the bed, a gleam of fear
+was beginning to show itself; there was a stir in the lifeless form, a
+struggle of the breath, a flicker of the eyelids: they opened, and a
+glance, in which all Annette's pure and loving spirit seemed to shine
+forth, fell direct on Paul's face at the end of the bed. She smiled
+brightly, and said distinctly "Au revoir:" then turned on her side, and
+died.
+
+Jules and Paul, in their simple peasant fashion, went about seeing to
+what had to be done before morning; but Annette's father spoke not a
+word. Paul, to cheer him, told him of the wife he had wedded on the
+other side of the sea, and who would come home to be a daughter to him:
+and Jules nodded silently, without betraying a shadow of surprise:
+having art enough, in the midst of his grief, to keep Annette's secret
+loyally.
+
+Along the straight, white road there came, in the early dawn, a little
+silent procession: the silent road, that was ever bringing tidings, good
+or evil, to the auberge: though now no white-coiffed girl with a patient
+face was waiting at the door. All the road was deserted, for the
+villagers were still asleep, as the little procession wound its way
+along: wrapped in the same silence in which Annette's own young life had
+been passed. A cart with a plain coffin in it, was drawn by the old
+horse that had carried Annette to the harbour the night before, and who
+stepped as though he knew what burden he was bringing: Paul led the
+horse; and beside the cart, with his head bowed on his breast, walked
+Annette's father.
+
+After the funeral rites were over, the smooth current of existence by
+the roadside and the harbour flowed on, apparently in complete oblivion
+of the fragile blossom of a girl's life, that had appeared for a little
+while on its surface, and then been swept away for ever.
+
+
+[Illustration:]
+
+
+
+
+THE HALTING STEP.
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+On the Western coast of one of the islands in the Channel group is a
+level reach of salt marshes, to which the sea rises only at the highest
+spring tides, and which at other times extends as far as the eye can
+see, a dreary waste of salt pools, low rocks, and stretches of sand,
+yielding its meagre product of shell-fish, samphire, and sea-weed to the
+patient toil of the fisher-folk that dwell in scattered huts along the
+shore. One arm of the bay, at the time of which I am writing, extended
+inland to the left, being nearly cut off from the sea by a rocky
+headland, behind which it had spread itself, so as almost to present the
+appearance of an isolated pond or lake, encircled by low black rocks,
+within which the water rose and sank at regular intervals, as if under
+the influence of some strange, unknown power. On the borders of the lake
+stood a low, one-roomed cabin, such as the island fishermen in the
+wilder districts inhabit; and in the plot of ground beside the cabin,
+one September evening, in the mellow, westering light, a woman might
+have been seen busying herself by tying up into bundles the sea-weed
+that had been spread out to dry in the sun. She wore a shade bonnet with
+a large projecting peak and an enveloping curtain round the neck, quite
+concealing her face, as she bent over her work. Presently, although no
+sound had been heard, she looked up, with that apparently intuitive
+sense of what is happening at sea, which sea-folk seem to possess, and
+perceived an orange-sailed fishing boat just rounding the headland and
+making for the open sea. The face that appeared under the bonnet, as she
+looked up, had the colourless and haggard look frequently seen among
+fisher-women, and which is perhaps due to too much sea-air, added to
+hard living. But one was prevented from noticing the rest of the face by
+the expression of the two grey eyes, peering out from under the shade of
+the bonnet-peak; they were eyes that seemed always expecting: they
+seemed to have nothing to do with the pallid face, and the sea-weed, and
+the hut: they belonged to a different life. As she looked out over the
+sea, their glance was almost stern, as though demanding something which
+the sea did not give. But she only remarked to herself, in the island
+patois:--"I suppose the fish have gone over to the south-west again, and
+he'll make a night of it. Mackerel is such an aggravating fish, one day
+here, t'other there--you never know where you'll find them."
+
+Presently, as it grew dark, she warmed up some herb-broth for her
+supper, and when she had finished it, and had fastened up the dog and
+the donkey, knowing that her husband would not return till the morning,
+she put out the glimmering oil-lamp, and was just going to bed, when a
+sound struck her ear. For two miles round the cabin not another
+human-being lived, and it was the rarest thing for any one to come in
+that direction after dark, as the rocks were slippery and dangerous, and
+a solitary bit of open country had to be crossed between the cabin and
+the nearest houses inland. Yet this sound was distinctly that of a human
+footstep, which halted in its gait.
+
+The woman started up and listened: there was silence for a minute: then
+the limping step was heard again: again it ceased. The woman went to the
+door and looked out. Over the sandy, wind-swept common to the left the
+darkness brooded, the outlines of a broken bit of sea-wall, and of some
+giant boulders, said to be remains of a dolmen, emerging dimly therefrom
+like threatening phantoms; to the right moaned the long, grey sea, and
+in front was the waste of salt marshes and rocks, with the windlass of a
+ship once wrecked in the bay, projecting its huge outline among the
+uncertain shadows. Not a living thing was visible. She stood for several
+minutes peering out into the darkness and listening; no sound was to be
+heard but the lapping of the waves, and the sigh of the wind through the
+bent-grass on the common.
+
+Suddenly Josef, the dog, started up in his corner, and barked. He was a
+large mastiff, with a dangerous temper, who was chained up at night in
+the rough lean-to that was built against the side of the cabin. He
+barked again furiously, dragging at his chain with all his might, and
+quivering in every nerve of his body. The woman lighted a torch at the
+dying embers on the hearth, and unfastening the dog, waited to see what
+would happen. He dashed forward furiously a few steps, then suddenly
+stopped, sniffed the air, made one or two uncertain darts hither and
+thither, and stood still, evidently puzzled. She called to him to
+encourage him, but he dropped his tail and returned to his shed, where
+he curled himself up in a comfortable corner, like a dog that was not
+going to be troubled by womanish fancies. The woman went round the
+cabin, and the pig-stye, and the patch of meagre gooseberry-bushes,
+throwing the uncertain torch-light on every dark hole or corner; but no
+one was to be seen. She was none the less convinced that someone had
+approached the cottage, for the dog was not likely to have been deceived
+as well as herself; so she kept the light burning, called Josef to lie
+down at the foot of the bed, barred the door, and went to sleep.
+
+The sun was high the next morning when the fisherman returned. He stood
+in the stream of light in the open doorway, in his blue, knitted jersey
+and jack-boots; and with the beaming smile which overspread his whole
+countenance, and his big, powerful limbs, he might well have been taken
+for an impersonation of the sun shining in his strength.
+
+It was as great a pleasure to him to greet his Louise now, as it had
+been in the days of their early courtship; for he had courted her twice,
+his sunny boyhood's lovemaking having been overclouded by the advent of
+a stranger from the mainland, who, with his smooth tongue and
+new-fangled ways, had gained such an influence over Louise during a four
+months' absence of Peter's on a fishing cruise, that she forgot her
+first love, and wedded this new settler; who took her to the town a few
+miles inland, where he carried on a retail fishmonger's business,
+knowing but little of fishing himself, either deep-sea or along-shore.
+But Providence had not blessed their union, for not a child had been
+born to them, and after but three years of married life, when Fauchon,
+the husband, was out one day in a fishing smack, which he had just
+bought to carry on business for himself with men under him, the boat
+capsized in a sudden squall, and neither he nor the two other men were
+ever seen or heard of again. Then to Louise, in her sudden poverty and
+despair (for all the savings had been put into the fishing smack) came
+Peter once more, and with his frank, whole-hearted love, and his
+strength and confidence, fairly carried her off her feet, making her
+happy with or without her own consent, in such shelter and comfort as
+his fisherman's home could supply. They had been married seven years
+now, and had on the whole been happy together; and as she answered his
+"Well, my child, how goes it with thee to-day?" her own face lighted up
+with a reflection of the beam on his.
+
+After she had heard of the haul of mackerel, and had got Peter his
+breakfast, she stood with her arms akimbo looking at him, as he gulped
+down his bouillon with huge satisfaction.
+
+The expectant look had not left her eyes, as, fixing them upon his, she
+said, "I had a fright last night, my friend."
+
+"Hein! How was that?" said he, with the spoon in his mouth.
+
+"I heard a step outside, and Josef heard it too and barked; and we went
+all round with a torch, but there was nobody."
+
+"Ho! ho!" cried Peter, with his hearty laugh, "she will always hear a
+step, or the wing of a sea-swallow flying overhead, or perhaps a crab
+crawling in the bay, if Peter is not at home to take care of her."
+
+"But indeed," said Louise, "it is the truth I am telling thee: it was
+the step of a man, and of one that halted in his gait."
+
+"Did Josef hear it--this step that halted?"
+
+"Yes, he barked till I set him free: then all in a moment he stopped,
+and would not search."
+
+"Pou-ouf," crowed Peter, in jovial scorn. "Surely it was Josef
+that was the wisest." Then, as she still seemed unsatisfied, he
+added, "May-be 'twas the water in the smuggler's cave. Many's
+the time that I've thought somebody was coming along, sort of
+limping--cluck--chu--cluck--chu--when the tide was half-way up in the
+cave over there. And the wind was blowing west last night: 'tis with a
+west wind it sounds the plainest."
+
+"May-be 'twas that, my friend," said the woman, taking up the pail to
+fetch the water from the well across the common. But she kept looking
+around her, with a half-frightened, half-expectant glance, all the way.
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+For several days the halting step was not heard again, and Louise had
+nearly forgotten her fright, when one morning, about six o'clock, when
+Peter was out getting up his lobster pots, Louise, with her head still
+buried in the bed-clothes, suddenly heard--or thought she heard--the
+sound again. She started up and listened: there could be no doubt about
+it; someone was approaching the cottage at the back--some one who was
+lame. She hurried on some clothes and looked out of the door (the cabin
+had no window). In the glittering morning light, the expanse of level
+shore and common was as desolate as ever. She turned the corner of the
+cottage to the left, where Jenny and the pigs were. There was no one
+there; then she went round to the right, and, as she did so, distinctly
+perceived a shadow vanishing swiftly round the corner of the stack of
+sea-weed. She uttered a cry, and for a moment seemed like one paralysed;
+then moved forward hastily a few steps; stopped again, listening with a
+strange expression on her countenance to the sound of the limp, as it
+grew fainter and fainter; then advanced, as if unwillingly, to the back
+of the cottage, whence no one was visible. A corner of rock, round which
+wound the path that ascended to the top of the cliff, projected at no
+great distance from the cottage. She stood and looked at the rock, half
+as if it were a threatening, monster, half as if it were the door of
+hope: then she went slowly back to the cottage.
+
+She did not tell Peter this time about the step.
+
+A week or two afterwards, when Peter Girard was returning from the rocks
+with a basketful of crabs, he was joined on the way by his mate,
+Mesurier.
+
+The two fishermen trudged along in silence for some time, one a little
+in front of the other, after the manner of their kind; then Mesurier
+remarked, "We shall be wanting some new line before we go out for
+mackerel again." (Mackerel are caught by lines in those parts, where the
+sea-bottom is too rocky for trawling).
+
+Peter turned round and stood still to consider the question.
+
+"I've got some strands knotted, if you and I set to work we can plait it
+before night."
+
+"I must go up to Jean's for some bait first; there won't be more than
+three hours left before dark, and how are we to get it done in that
+time? I'd better get some in the village when I'm up there."
+
+"Hout, man! pay eight shillings for a line," said the economical Peter,
+"and a pound of horsehair will make six. I'll send Louise for the bait,
+and you come along with me--we'll soon reckon out the plait."
+
+Mesurier, a thick-set, vigorous-looking man, shorter than Peter, stood
+still a moment, looking at him rather queerly out of his keen, grey
+eyes.
+
+"Been up to Jean's much of late?" he asked, trudging on again.
+
+"No, not I," said Peter. "Hangin' round in the village isn't much after
+my mind."
+
+"Best send Louise instead, hey?"
+
+Peter wheeled his huge frame round in a moment.
+
+"What do you mean, man?" he demanded, in a voice that seemed to come
+from his feet.
+
+Mesurier's face was devoid of expression, as he replied, "Nothing, to be
+sure. Of course Louise will be going to the shop now and again."
+
+Peter laid his hand, like a lion's paw, on Mesurier's shoulder, as if he
+would rend the truth out of him.
+
+"And what's the matter with her going to the shop?" said Peter, so
+rapidly and thickly as to be hardly articulate.
+
+"None that I know of," said the other uneasily, shrugging off Peter's
+hand, with an attempted laugh.
+
+"Now you understand," said Peter, with blazing eyes, "you've either got
+to swear that you've heard nothing at all about Louise which you
+oughtn't to have heard, or else you'll tell me who said it, and let him
+know he's got me to reckon with," and Peter clenched his fist in a way
+that would have made most people swear whatever he might have happened
+to wish.
+
+"Well, mate," said the other man. "You go and see Jean, and ask him what
+company he's had of late." Then seeing Peter's face becoming livid, he
+added briefly, "There's been a queer-looking fish staying with him the
+last three weeks--walks all on one side--and Louise was talking to him
+t'other evening under the church wall. 'Twas my wife saw her. That's the
+truth. Nobody else has said nought about her."
+
+Peter swung round without a word, and marched off in the direction of
+the village. Mesurier watched him a moment, then called after him, "I
+say, mate! mind what you're doing: the man's a poor blighted creature,
+more like a monkey than a Christian."
+
+Peter said something in his throat while he handed the crabs to
+Mesurier: his hand shook so violently as he did so that the basket
+nearly fell to the ground. Then he strode on again. Mesurier had glanced
+at his face, and did not follow.
+
+It took Peter less than an hour, at the pace at which he was walking,
+to reach the next village along the coast where Jean lived. The mellow
+afternoon sunshine was lighting up the cottage wall, and the long strip
+of gaily flowering garden, as he approached. He entered the front room,
+which was fitted up as a sort of shop, in which fishermen's requisites
+were sold. There was no one there. He pushed the door open into the
+inner room: it was also empty. He felt as if he could not breathe within
+the cottage walls, and went out again. The cliff overhung the sea a few
+yards in front of the cottage. He went to the edge and was scanning the
+shore for a sign of Jean, when below, on a narrow, zigzag path which led
+down the cliff to the beach, he perceived his wife. She stood at a turn
+in the path, looking downwards. There was something about her that to
+Peter made her seem different from what she had ever seemed before. He
+looked at Louise, and he saw a woman with a shadow of guilt upon her.
+The path below her was concealed from Peter's sight by an over-hanging
+piece of rock, but she seemed to be watching someone coming slowing up
+it. Then she glanced fearfully round, and saw Peter standing on the top
+of the cliff. She made a hasty sign to the person below, but already a
+man's hand leaning on a stick was visible beyond the edge of the rock.
+Peter strode straight down the face of the cliff to the turning in the
+path. Louise screamed. Peter seized by the collar a puny, crooked
+creature, whom he scarcely stopped to look at, and held him, as one
+might a cat, over the cliff-side.
+
+"Swear you'll quit the island to-night, or I'll drop you," he thundered.
+
+The creature merely screamed for mercy, and seemed unable to articulate
+a sentence; while Louise knelt, clasping Peter's knees in an agony of
+entreaty. Meanwhile, the screaming ceased; the creature had fainted in
+Peter's grasp. He flung him down on the path, said sternly to Louise,
+"Come with me," and they went up the cliff-side together.
+
+They walked home without a word, Louise crying and moaning a little, but
+not daring to speak. When they got inside the cabin, he stood and faced
+her.
+
+"Woman," he said, in a low, shaken voice, "What hast thou done?"
+
+She fell upon her knees, crying. "Forgive me, Peter," she entreated.
+"Thou art such a strong man; forgive me."
+
+"Tell me the whole truth. What is this man to thee?"
+
+She knelt in silence, shaken with sobs.
+
+"Who is he?" said Peter, his voice getting deeper and hoarser.
+
+She only kept moaning, "Forgive me." Presently she said between her
+sobs, "I only went this morning to tell him to go away. I wanted him to
+go away; I have prayed him to go again and again."
+
+"Since when hast thou known him?"
+
+Again she made no answer, but inarticulate moans.
+
+Peter stood looking at her for a few seconds with an indescribable
+expression of sorrow and aversion.
+
+"I loved thee," he said; and turning away, left her.
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+Peter went out in the evening without speaking to Louise again, and was
+not seen till the following afternoon, when he called his mate to go
+mackerel-fishing, and they were absent two days getting a great haul. He
+came back and slept at Mesurier's, and did not go near his own home for
+a week, though he sent money to Louise, when he sold the fish.
+
+At the end of that time he went over to Jean's. The stranger had gone,
+but Peter sat down on a stool opposite Jean, and began to enter into
+conversation with him, with a more settled look in his hollow eyes than
+had been there since the catastrophe of the week before. The meeting on
+the cliff had been seen by more than one passerby, and the report had
+spread that Peter had nearly murdered the stranger for intriguing with
+his wife. Jean told Peter all he knew of the man, but he neither knew
+his business nor whence he came. He said his name was Jacques, and would
+give no other. He had gone to the nearest inland town, where he said
+that a relation of his kept an "auberge." He had gone in a hurry, and
+had left some bottles and things behind, containing the stuff he rubbed
+his leg with, Jean thought; and Jean meant to take them to him when next
+he went to the town.
+
+"By the way," he said, taking a little book from the shelf, "I believe
+this belonged to him too. I remember to have seen him more than once
+poring over it with them close-seeing eyes of his. The man was a rare
+scholar, and no mistake."
+
+Peter took the little book from him, and opened it. Jean, glancing at
+him as he did so, uttered an exclamation. A deadly paleness had
+overspread Peter's face, and he clutched with his hand in the air, as
+though for something to steady himself with. Then he staggered to his
+feet, still tightly grasping the little book, and saying something
+unintelligible, went out.
+
+He went down the cliff to the place where, a week ago, he had found his
+wife and the stranger, and stood under the rock, and looked at the book.
+He looked at it still closed in his hand, as if it were some venomous
+creature, which might, the next moment, dart forth a poisoned fang to
+sting him. From the cover it appeared to be a little, much-worn
+prayer-book. Presently he opened it gingerly, and read something written
+on the fly-leaf. He spelled it out with some difficulty and slowly, and
+yet he looked at it as if the page were a familiar vision to him. Then
+he remained immovable for a long time, gazing out to sea, with the
+little book crunched to a shapeless mass in his huge fist. When at last
+he turned to ascend the cliff again, his face was ashen pale, and his
+step was that of an old man. He trudged heavily across the common and
+along the road inland, five or six miles, till he reached the town,
+inquired for a certain auberge, entered the kitchen, and found himself
+face to face with the man he sought. A spasm of fear passed swiftly over
+the face of Jacques, as he beheld Peter, and he instinctively started up
+from the bench on which he was sitting, and shrank backwards. As he did
+so, he showed himself a disfigured paralytic, one side of his face being
+partly drawn, and one leg crooked. He was an undersized man, with sandy
+hair, quick, intelligent, grey eyes, and a well-cut profile.
+
+"Jacques Fauchon," said Peter, "have no fear of me."
+
+Jacques kept his eyes on him, still distrustfully.
+
+"I did not know," continued Peter, speaking thickly and slowly, "the
+other day, what I know now. I had never seen you but once--and you have
+changed."
+
+"It is not my wish to cause trouble," said Jacques, still glancing
+furtively round. "Things being as they are, to my thinking, there's
+nought for it but to let 'em be."
+
+"I have not said yet," said Peter, "what it is I've come to say. This
+little prayer-book with her name writ in it, and yours below,--'tis the
+one she always took to church, as a girl--has shown me the path I've got
+to take. How you came back from the dead, I don't know: 'twas the hand
+of the Lord. But here you are, and you are her husband, and not I." He
+stopped.
+
+"Well, Mr. Girard, I know my legal rights," began Jacques, "but
+considering--and I've no wish to cause unpleasantness, of that you may
+be sure. 'Tis why I never wrote, not knowing how the land might lie, and
+for four years I was helpless on my back."
+
+"Never mind the past, man," interrupted Peter, "It's the future that's
+to be thought of. What you've got to do is to take her away to a
+distance, and settle in some place where nobody knows what's gone by."
+
+Fauchon considered for a moment, a slight, deprecatory smile stealing
+over his face.
+
+"I suppose," he remarked, "she hasn't got any little purse of her own by
+this time; considering, I mean, that she's been of use with the lines
+and the nets and so on."
+
+"Do you mean," said Peter, "that you can't support her?"
+
+"Well, you see, I worked my passage from New Zealand as cook--that's
+what I waited so long for. If she could pay her passage, the same
+captain would take us again, when he starts to go back next week. And if
+she had a little in hand, when we got there, we could set up a store,
+may-be, and make shift to get on. I only thought, may-be, she having
+been of use--"
+
+"I'll sell the cottage and the bits of things," said Peter, "and there's
+a trifle put by to add to it. But tell me this; when you're out there,
+can you support her, or can't you?"
+
+"Well, there's Mr. Boucher, that took me on as house-servant at first in
+New Zealand, he being in the sailing ship when I was picked up. And when
+the paralytics came on, resulting from the injury I got in the wreck, he
+never let me want for nothing, the four years that I lay helpless. He's
+got money to spare, you see"--with a wink--"he's well off, and he's what
+I call easy-going; and if we could manage to get the right side of
+him"--with another wink--"I reckon he'd help us a bit."
+
+"Man," said Peter, letting his hand fall heavily on Fauchon's shoulder,
+"tell me plain that you've got honest work as'll feed and clothe her out
+there, else, by God, you shan't have her!" and his grip on Fauchon's
+shoulder tightened, so that a flash of terror passed over the man's
+face, and he tried to edge away, saying deprecatingly, "I've no wish,
+Mr. Girard, you understand--I've no wish to offend. In fact, my whole
+intention was not to cause any trouble. On my honour, I was going to
+leave the island to-morrow, when I found how things were--'tis the truth
+I speak."
+
+"You are her husband," said Peter, "and she loves you, and she shall go
+with you. But if you let her want, God do so unto you, and more also!"
+
+And he let go of him, and strode away again.
+
+When he got back it was dark, and he stood at his cottage door and
+looked in. Louise was sitting by the hearth, with her back to him, and
+her hands in her lap, rocking herself gently on her stool, and gazing
+into the glowing ash on the hearthstone. Opposite, on the other side of
+the hearth, Peter's own stool stood empty, and on the shelf beside it
+were the two yellow porringers, out of which he and Louise used always
+to sup together. His jersey, the one she had knitted for him when they
+were married, hung in the corner, with the bright blue patch in it, that
+she had been mending it with the last time he was at home. Louise was so
+absorbed in her thoughts that she did not hear his approach, and
+stepping softly, he passed in and stood before her; she started back,
+and immediately began to whimper a little, putting up her hands to her
+face.
+
+"Louise," said Peter, "wilt thou forgive me?"
+
+She looked up perplexed, only half believing what she heard.
+
+"I know everything. I have seen Jacques. I was harsh to thee, mon
+enfant."
+
+"I meant no harm," said Louise. "I begged him not to come. I knew thou
+wouldest be angered."
+
+"I am not angered. He is thy husband."
+
+She glanced up with an irrepressible start of eagerness.
+
+"Thou meanest--" Her very desire seemed to take away her speech.
+
+Peter laid his hand on her wrist, as gently as a woman.
+
+"Louise," he said, "thou lovest him?"
+
+She gazed at him in silence; the piercing question in her eyes her only
+answer.
+
+"Thou shalt go with him," he said. "I only came to say goodbye."
+
+He went to the door: then stood and looked back, with a world of
+yearning and tenderness in his face. He stretched out his arms. "Kiss
+me, Louise," he said.
+
+She rose, still half frightened, and kissed him as she was told.
+
+He held her tightly in his arms for a minute, then put her silently from
+him, and turned away.
+
+Peter was not seen in those parts again. It was understood that he and
+his wife had emigrated to New Zealand, and the cottage was sold, and the
+furniture and things dispersed.
+
+In a fishing village on the coast of Brittany, there appeared, not long
+afterwards, a tall Englishman, speaking the Channel Island patois, who
+settled down to make a home among the Breton folk, adopting their ways
+and language, and eking out, like them, a livelihood by hard toil early
+and late among the rocks and sand-banks, or by long months of fishing on
+the high seas; a man on whom the simple-minded villagers looked with a
+certain respect, mingled with awe, as on one who seemed to them marked
+out by heaven for some special fate; who lived alone in his cottage,
+attending to his own wants, no woman being ever allowed to enter it; and
+about whose past nothing was known, and no one dared to ask.
+
+
+[Illustration;]
+
+
+
+
+TABITHA'S AUNT.
+
+
+From the very hour that Tabitha set foot in my house, I conceived a
+dislike for her Aunt. In the first place I did not see why she should
+have an Aunt. Tabitha was going to belong to me: and why an old, invalid
+lady, whose sons were scattered over the face of the earth, and who had
+never had a daughter of her own: who had been clever enough to discover
+a distant relationship to Tabitha, and had promptly matured a plan by
+which Tabitha was to remain always with her; to take the vacant chair
+opposite and pour out tea, and be coddled and kissed and looked
+after--why she might not have Tabitha herself for her whole and sole
+property, I could not understand. But this Aunt was always turning up:
+not visibly, I mean, but in conversation. I could never say which way I
+liked Tabitha's veil to be fastened but I was told Aunt Rennie's opinion
+on the matter--(Tabitha always absurdly shortened her Aunt's surname,
+which was Rensworth). I never could mention a book I liked but Aunt
+Rennie had either read it or not read it. It did not matter which to me,
+the least. But the climax came when Aunt Rennie sent Tabitha a bicycle.
+Now I know that young women bicycle nowadays; but that is no reason why
+Tabitha should. I always turn away my eyes when I see a young girl pass
+the window on one of those ugly, muddy, dangerous machines, with her
+knees working like pumps, her skirt I don't know where, and an
+expression of self-satisfied determination on her face. I don't think I
+am old-fashioned, but I am sure my own dear little girl, if she had ever
+come to me, would not have bicycled; and though I had no wish to put any
+unfair restraint on Tabitha, still I did not want her to have a bicycle.
+And that this Aunt Rennie, as Tabitha would call her, without a word of
+warning, should send her one of those hideous things, as if it was _her_
+business to arrange for Tabitha's exercise--I do think it was rather
+uncalled for.
+
+When Tabitha came into the room to tell me about it, with that bright,
+affectionate smile she has, and her dear, plain, pale face--only that
+nobody would think her plain who knew her, for everybody loves her--she
+saw quickly enough that I did not like it: and then she was so sweet,
+looking so disappointed, and yet ready to give up the horrid thing if I
+wished, that I hardly knew what to do. Tabitha works on one in a way
+that I believe nobody else can. She has such a generous, warm heart, and
+is so responsive, and so quick to understand, and then she is so easily
+pleased, and so free from self-consciousness, you seem to know her all
+at once, and you feel as if it would be wicked to hurt her. So I don't
+know how it was exactly, but I began to give in about the bicycle;
+though I could not help mentioning that it was rather unnecessary for
+Aunt Rennie to have taken the trouble: for Tabitha might have told me if
+she wanted a bicycle so much. And Tabitha said that Aunt Rennie thought
+bicycling was good for her, and, when she lived with her, a year ago,
+her Aunt used to take her on her tours round the villages, distributing,
+what she called "political literature." This did make me shudder, I
+confess. Fancy Tabitha turning into one of those canvassing women, with
+their uncivilised energy, their irritating superiority, and their entire
+want of decent respect for you and your own opinions! I knew that Aunt
+Rennie belonged to a Woman Suffrage Committee, but I did think she had
+left the child uncontaminated. It made me more thankful than ever that I
+had rescued her from the hands of such a person. However, as you see, I
+could not refuse to let Tabitha ride that bicycle; but I always knew
+that harm would come of it.
+
+And it came just in the way of which my inner consciousness had warned
+me. Now, of course, I never really expected to have Tabitha with me all
+her life: but I did want just for a little while to make-believe, as it
+were, that I had a daughter, and to feel as if she were happy and
+content with me. So it was rather hard that such a thing should happen,
+only the second time that she went out on that hideous machine. I can
+see her telling me about it now, kneeling down in her affectionate way
+by my sofa, all flushed and dishevelled after her ride, and with quite a
+new expression on her face. It seemed that she had punctured her
+bicycle (whatever that means) and could not get on: and then an "awfully
+nice man" (she will use the modern slang; in my days we should merely
+have said "a gentleman") came up with his tools and things, and put it
+right for her: and ended by claiming acquaintance and proposing to call,
+"Because, Mammy dear," said Tabitha, "isn't it funny, but he knows Aunt
+Rennie!"
+
+Now, kind reader, I must confess that this was a little too much for me.
+To have Aunt Rennie (in spirit) perpetually between me and Tabitha was
+bad enough: to have her demoralising Tabitha by sending her bicycles was
+still worse: but to have her introducing, (I had nearly said intruding)
+young men into the privacy of my home, and into dangerous proximity with
+Tabitha was, for a moment, more than I could stand.
+
+"Well, my child," said I, "No doubt Miss Rensworth and her friends were
+more amusing than your poor sick Mammy. I suppose it was selfish of me
+to want to have you all to myself. If you would like to go back to your
+Aunt Rennie again, dear child." I added, "you have only to say so."
+
+What Tabitha said in reply I shall never forget; but neither, friendly
+reader, shall I tell it to you. So you must be content with knowing that
+we were friends again; and that the end of it was that I gave in about
+John Chambers--as his name turned out to be--just as I had given in
+about the bicycle.
+
+He came in just as we were having tea the next day, and the worst of it
+was, I had to admit at once that he _was_ nice. Of course this proved
+nothing in regard to Aunt Rennie and her friends: and it was just as
+unreasonable that I should be expected to receive whoever happened to
+know her, as if he had turned out to be vulgar or odious. But, as it
+was, he introduced himself in a sensible, straightforward way, looked
+one straight in the face when he spoke, had a deep, hearty laugh that
+sounded manly and true, and evidently entertained the friendliest
+sentiments for Tabitha.
+
+Well, as you will imagine, kind reader, that tea was not the last he had
+with us. He fell into our ways with delightful readiness; indeed, he was
+rather "old-fashioned," as I call it. He would pour out my second cup of
+tea, if Tabitha happened to be out of the room, as nicely as she herself
+could have done, carefully washing the tea-leaves out of the cup first;
+and he would tell Tabitha if a piece of braid were hanging down from her
+skirt, when they were going bicycling together. We got quite used to
+being kept in order by him in all kinds of little ways, and he grew to
+be so associated with the idea of Tabitha in my mind, that my affection
+for her became in a sort of way an affection for them both. The only
+thing was that, as the months went on, I began to wonder why more did
+not come of it. Sometimes I fancied I noted a reflection of my own
+perplexed doubts crossing Tabitha's sweet, expressive face, and I
+questioned within myself whether I ought (like the fathers in books) to
+ask the young man about his "intentions," and imply that he could not
+expect an unlimited supply of my cups of tea, unless they were made
+clear: but I think that my own delicacy as well as common sense
+prevented my taking such a course, and things were still _in statu quo_,
+when one morning, as I was peacefully mending Tabitha's gloves (she
+_will_ go out with holes in them) a ring at the front door bell was
+followed by the advance of someone in rustling silk garments up the
+stairs: the drawing-room door was opened, and there appeared a
+young-looking, fair lady, who advanced brightly to greet me, with a
+finished society manner, and an expression in her kind, blue eyes of
+unmixed pleasure at the meeting. The name murmured at the door had not
+reached my ears, and I was still wondering which of my child-friends had
+developed into this charming and fashionable young lady, when Tabitha
+burst into the room, flung her arms round the new-comer's neck, and
+exclaimed, "You darling, who would have expected you to turn up so
+charmingly, just when we didn't expect you!"
+
+The light slowly dawned on my amazed intelligence. Could _this_--_this_
+be the formidable, grey-haired woman, with whom I had been expecting,
+and somewhat dreading, sooner or later, an encounter? Could _this_ be
+the spectacled Committee-woman--the rampant bicyclist--the corrupter of
+the youth of Tabitha? I looked at her immaculate dress, and pretty, neat
+hair; I noted the winning expression of her eyes, and her sweetness of
+manner; and instead of entrenching myself in the firm, though unspoken
+hostility, which I had secretly cherished towards the idea of Aunt
+Rennie, I felt myself yielding to the charm of a personality, whose
+richness and sweetness were to me like a new experience of life.
+
+I thought I had grasped the outlines of that personality in the first
+interview, as we often do on forming a new acquaintance; but surprises
+were yet in store for me. Aunt Rennie needed but little pressing to stay
+the night, and then to add a second and a third day to her visit: she
+was staying with some friends in the neighbourhood, and, it appeared,
+could easily transfer herself to us. And as the time went on, I began to
+feel that she had some secondary object in coming and in staying: I
+thought I perceived a kind of diplomatic worldliness in Aunt Rennie,
+which jarred with my first impression of her. I felt sure that her
+purpose was in some way connected with Tabitha and John. She had, of
+course, heard of Tabitha's friendship for him from her own letters, and
+John she had known before we did. Well, it was on the fourth day that
+Aunt Rennie, sitting cosily beside me, startled me by suddenly and
+lightly remarking, that if I would consent, she wished to take Tabitha
+back with her, at any rate for a time, to her home in the South of
+England; she was almost necessary to her in her work at the present
+juncture: no one could act as her Secretary so efficiently as Tabitha
+could.
+
+"Besides, to tell you a little secret," she added, with a charming air
+of confidence and humour, "there is someone besides me that wants
+Tabitha back: there is an excellent prospect for her, if she could only
+turn her thoughts in that direction. You have heard of Horace Wetherell,
+my second cousin--a rising barrister? Ah, well, a little bird has
+whispered things to me. His prospects are now very different from what
+they were when she was with me before, or I don't think she would ever
+have come to you, to say the truth! We must not let her get involved in
+anything doubtful. As you know, I have been acquainted with this John
+Chambers and his family all my life. He is a good fellow enough, but
+will never set the Thames on fire. She is exactly suited to my cousin,
+who is a man of the highest and noblest character, and could not fail to
+make her happy. It is only to take her away for a time, and I feel sure
+all will be well. I knew, my dear friend, that a word to you was enough,
+for Tabitha's sake: and so we will settle it between us."
+
+I said little in reply, for I was suffering keenly. I felt as if this
+fair, clever woman had struck a deliberate blow at my happiness, and in
+a way to leave me resistless. I could not deny that it might be for
+Tabitha's good to go away. Certainly John was poor, and in fact I had
+thought lately that that might be the reason the engagement was delayed.
+Tabitha was only twenty-two, and she might change her mind. I murmured
+that I would leave it to Tabitha to decide; and as Aunt Rennie turned
+away, I remember thinking that she was rather young to decide another
+woman's destiny in such a matter. She was only six years older than
+Tabitha.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Tabitha often says that she owes her present happiness to Aunt Rennie,
+for if it had not been for the misery of the approaching separation,
+John, oppressed by the sense of his poverty and humble prospects, would
+never have had courage to tell her of his love. And I have sometimes
+amused myself by reflecting how Aunt Rennie's shrewdness, intelligence
+and determination, instead of working out her own ends, were all the
+time furthering the thing that was most opposed to her wishes.
+
+When, after those few days that followed--days for me of heart-breaking
+conflict of feeling, and for my two children of tears, silent misery and
+struggling passion, culminating at last, when the storm burst, in
+complete mutual understanding, and a joint determination that carried
+all before it--when, I say, Aunt Rennie, defeated, prepared to take her
+leave, she said a word to me which I often thought of afterwards. "She
+is choosing blindfold, tinsel for gold." I thought of it, not on account
+of the expression, but of Aunt Rennie herself. There was something in
+the pallor of her face, and in her tone, that made me ask myself whether
+there could be anything in this matter that concerned Aunt Rennie
+herself more closely than we thought--and, for the moment, a new and
+motherly feeling rose up in my heart towards her.
+
+Well, she has left me my two children, and though John is only "in
+business," and they live on three hundred a year, they are very happy,
+and I am happy in their happiness.
+
+It was a year after their marriage, that the news came that Aunt Rennie
+was engaged to be married to her cousin. Horace Wetherell. And, as I
+pondered on it. I doubted whether I had, after all, quite understood the
+nobility of Aunt Rennie's character.
+
+Horace Wetherell has become an M.P., and he and his wife write books
+together on social problems.
+
+Poor John will never be an M.P., but I am glad that Tabitha loved him.
+
+
+[Illustration:]
+
+
+
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