A Loose End and Other Stories Part 5

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 pa.s.sed from mouth to mouth, while the fishermen silently got out the boat that was to carry the mooring cable to the sh.o.r.e.

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 pa.s.sed 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! G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 pa.s.sed. 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration:]

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 sh.e.l.l-fish, samphire, and sea-weed to the patient toil of the fisher-folk that dwell in scattered huts along the sh.o.r.e. 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 windla.s.s 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-gra.s.s 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. .h.i.ther 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-sh.o.r.e.

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 n.o.body."

"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 sh.o.r.e 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.