A Loose End and Other Stories Part 6

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. n.o.body 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 sh.o.r.e 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 hoa.r.s.er.

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 pa.s.serby, 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 ma.s.s 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 pa.s.sed 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 n.o.body 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 pa.s.sage from New Zealand as cook--that's what I waited so long for. If she could pay her pa.s.sage, 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 G.o.d, you shan't have her!" and his grip on Fauchon's shoulder tightened, so that a flash of terror pa.s.sed 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, G.o.d 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 pa.s.sed 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.