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Page 22
Women's voices called upon Paul and his mate Jean, and the name of the
'Annette' (the vessel that had been christened after his foster-father's
dumb child) was passed from mouth to mouth, while the fishermen silently
got out the boat that was to carry the mooring cable to the shore.
Annette clung convulsively to her father during the few minutes' delay,
and once, as he saw the light flash on her face, he suddenly remembered
something Victorine had said about the doctor. He watched her with a
pang of alarm, and at the same time felt that she was stringing herself
up for some effort. Everyone was greeting Jean, the first of the boat's
crew that appeared, as he clambered up the quay-side, but Annette did
not stir; then the second dark, sea-beaten figure emerged from below,
and Annette darted forward. She clasped both Paul's hands and gazed into
his face, while she seemed to be struggling with herself for something a
spasm passed over her face, which was as white as her coiffe: her father
and the others gathered round, but some instinct bade them be silent.
Annette's lips opened more than once as if she were about to speak, but
no sound came forth: then she turned to her father with a look of
despairing entreaty, and at the same moment tottered and would have
fallen, had he not darted forward and caught her in his arms.
"She is dead! God help me," he cried.
"Chut! Chut!" said the voice of Victorine in the crowd. "It is but the
nerves. Did not you see she was striving to say the word of greeting,
and it was a cruel blow to find her speech had gone from her again.
Surely it is but a crisis of the nerves."
But Jules, bending his tangled beard over her, groaned "The hand of God
is heavy on me."
He and Paul raised her between them, and carried her to the doctor's,
stepping softly for fear of doing her a mischief: while the story of her
recovered speech, and the danger which had threatened the fleet, was
told to the returned fisherman in breathless, awe-struck accents. He
listened, full of wonder, and as he saw her safely tucked into her
box-bed in the doctor's kitchen, said in his light-hearted Celtic way,
that it was not for nothing she had got her voice back, and no fear but
she would soon be well, and would speak to him in the morning.
But her father, who sat watching her unconscious face, and holding her
hand in both his, as though he feared she would slip away from him,
shook his head and said, "She will not see another dawn."
They tried their utmost to restore her consciousness, but with that
ignorance of the simplest remedies which is sometimes found among the
Breton peasants, they had so far failed: and though someone had been
sent to fetch back the doctor from the auberge, Victorine and the other
women shook their heads, as Jules had done, and said to each other, "It
is in vain; she will never waken more."
But when the fainting fit had lasted nearly an hour, and in the wild
eyes of Paul, who stood leaning on the foot of the bed, a gleam of fear
was beginning to show itself; there was a stir in the lifeless form, a
struggle of the breath, a flicker of the eyelids: they opened, and a
glance, in which all Annette's pure and loving spirit seemed to shine
forth, fell direct on Paul's face at the end of the bed. She smiled
brightly, and said distinctly "Au revoir:" then turned on her side, and
died.
Jules and Paul, in their simple peasant fashion, went about seeing to
what had to be done before morning; but Annette's father spoke not a
word. Paul, to cheer him, told him of the wife he had wedded on the
other side of the sea, and who would come home to be a daughter to him:
and Jules nodded silently, without betraying a shadow of surprise:
having art enough, in the midst of his grief, to keep Annette's secret
loyally.
Along the straight, white road there came, in the early dawn, a little
silent procession: the silent road, that was ever bringing tidings, good
or evil, to the auberge: though now no white-coiffed girl with a patient
face was waiting at the door. All the road was deserted, for the
villagers were still asleep, as the little procession wound its way
along: wrapped in the same silence in which Annette's own young life had
been passed. A cart with a plain coffin in it, was drawn by the old
horse that had carried Annette to the harbour the night before, and who
stepped as though he knew what burden he was bringing: Paul led the
horse; and beside the cart, with his head bowed on his breast, walked
Annette's father.
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