Pierston—for the man in the lane was he—would look from lightship to cottage window; then back again, as he waited there between the travail of the sea without, and the travail of the woman within. Soon an infant’s wail of the very feeblest was also audible in the house. He started from his easy pacing, and went again westward, standing at the elbow of the lane a long time. Then the peace of the sleeping village which lay that way was broken by light wheels and the trot of a horse. Pierston went back to the cottage gate and awaited the arrival of the vehicle.
It was a light cart, and a man jumped down as it stopped. He was in a broad-brimmed hat, under which no more of him could be perceived than that he wore a black beard clipped like a yew fence—a typical aspect in the island.
‘You are Avice’s husband?’ asked the sculptor quickly.
The man replied that he was, in the local accent. ‘I’ve just come in by to-day’s boat,’ he added. ‘I couldn’t git here avore. I had contracted for the job at Peter-Port, and had to see to’t to the end.’
‘Well,’ said Pierston, ‘your coming means that you are willing to make it up with her?’
‘Ay, I don’t know but I be,’ said the man. ‘Mid so well do that as anything else!’
‘If you do, thoroughly, a good business in your old line awaits you here in the island.’
‘Wi’ all my heart, then,’ said the man. His voice was energetic, and, though slightly touchy, it showed, on the whole, a disposition to set things right.
The driver of the trap was paid off, and Jocelyn and Isaac Pierston—undoubtedly scions of a common stock in this isle of intermarriages, though they had no proof of it—entered the house. Nobody was in the ground-floor room, in the centre of which stood a square table, in the centre of the table a little wool mat, and in the centre of the mat a lamp, the apartment having the appearance of being rigidly swept and set in order for an event of interest.
The woman who lived in the house with Avice now came downstairs, and to the inquiry of the comers she replied that matters were progressing favourably, but that nobody could be allowed to go upstairs just then. After placing chairs and viands for them she retreated, and they sat down, the lamp between them—the lover of the sufferer above, who had no right to her, and the man who had every right to her, but did not love her. Engaging in desultory and fragmentary conversation they listened to the trampling of feet on the floor-boards overhead—Pierston full of anxiety and attentiveness, Ike awaiting the course of nature calmly.