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Page 10
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
Aim�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�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 _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
Aim�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 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�e to speak.
Aim�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:--
"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."
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