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.