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Page 20
PART II.
When Annette brought the fallen man (who was already recovering
consciousness when she reached him) safe back in the cart to the
auberge, she found a little crowd of peasants, men and women, gathered
there, talking loud and eagerly over the news, who looked at her with a
reverent curiosity as she entered. The injured man was assisted to a
bed, but none spoke to Annette: only silent, awe-struck glances were
turned on her: for they had gradually realized the fact that a voice had
been given to the dumb girl, and Annette's quiet, familiar presence had
become charged with mystery for them. They had no doubt that the
blessed St. Yvon, the patron saint of mariners, had himself uttered the
warning through her, at the moment when the safety of the fishing fleet
depended on a spoken word: and the miracle now occupied their attention
almost to the exclusion of the false lights and the return of the boats.
But Annette observed their whisperings and glances with a slight touch
of contempt: she knew that her own voice had been restored to her, and
that she was now like any of the other women in the village; which, in
her own simple presentment of things, must be interpreted as meaning
that she might look to have a husband and a home of her own. It was as
though she had for the first time become a real woman. She saddled the
horse and rode off to fetch a doctor to attend to the sick man, thinking
all the while that the fleet would be in before morning, that Paul would
come home, and that he would hear her voice. She made little childish
plans of pretending to be still dumb when she first saw him, so that she
might surprise him the more when she should speak.
Darkness was fast gathering now, but the old horse knew every stone in
the road: he carried her with his steady jog-trot safely enough over the
two miles that lay between the auberge and the fishing village where the
doctor lived, in a house overlooking the _rade_ and the harbour. As she
passed along, the dark quays were full of moving lights and figures;
active women with short skirts and sabots, mingling in the groups of
fishermen; while a buzz of harsh Breton speech resounded on all sides.
She caught words about a gang of wreckers that had lately infested the
coast: and the names of one or two "_mauvais sujets_" in the village,
who were supposed to be their confederates. She saw a moving light at
the mouth of the harbour, and from a low-breathed murmur that ran below
the noisier speech of the crowd, she gathered that it was a boat's crew
going out in the darkness, to scale the precipitous rock, and extinguish
the light.
All her faculties seemed quickened, and she kept repeating aloud to
herself the words she heard in the crowd, to make sure that she could
articulate as clearly as she had done in the first moment that her voice
was given to her.
When she arrived at the doctor's gate, and dismounted to pull the great
iron bell-rope that hung outside, she was trembling violently, and could
hardly steady her hands to tie up the horse. Jeanne, the cook's sister,
took her into the kitchen, while some one fetched the doctor, and she
was so anxious that her speech should seem plain to them, that for the
few first moments, from sheer nervousness, she could not utter a word.
Then the doctor entered, a tall, well-built man, with stiff, iron-grey
hair and imperial, and an expression of genial contentment with himself
and the rest of the world.
"Mais, Mademoiselle Annette," he exclaimed the moment he saw her, "What
are you doing then? You must return home and go to bed at once. Why did
you not send me word before, instead of putting it off till you got so
ill?"
He did not wait for her to reply, believing her to be speechless as
usual, but placed her in a chair and began to feel her pulse. She was
trying to speak all the time, but from excitement and a strange
dizziness that had come over her, she could not at once use her new
faculty. At last she got out the words, that it was not for herself she
had come; that a _fermier_ who had ridden fast from the village of St.
Jean, further up the coast, to bring the news of the false light on the
G�ant, had been thrown from his horse--but before she had finished the
sentence, the doctor, still absorbed in the contemplation of her own
case, interrupted her, exclaiming with astonishment at her new power of
speech, and demanding to know by what means it had come, and how long
she had possessed it.
But to recall the experience of that moment on the hill, when at the
thought of the danger menacing the fishing boats, her tongue had been
loosened, and the unaccustomed words had come forth, was too much for
Annette. She trembled so, and made such painful efforts to speak, that
it seemed as though she were again losing the power of utterance; and
the doctor bade her remain perfectly quiet, gave her some soothing
medicine, and directed a bed to be prepared for her in the kitchen, as
he said she was not fit to return home that night: then he himself took
the old horse from the gate where he stood, and set off for the auberge
with what haste he might.
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