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Page 24
The sun was high the next morning when the fisherman returned. He stood
in the stream of light in the open doorway, in his blue, knitted jersey
and jack-boots; and with the beaming smile which overspread his whole
countenance, and his big, powerful limbs, he might well have been taken
for an impersonation of the sun shining in his strength.
It was as great a pleasure to him to greet his Louise now, as it had
been in the days of their early courtship; for he had courted her twice,
his sunny boyhood's lovemaking having been overclouded by the advent of
a stranger from the mainland, who, with his smooth tongue and
new-fangled ways, had gained such an influence over Louise during a four
months' absence of Peter's on a fishing cruise, that she forgot her
first love, and wedded this new settler; who took her to the town a few
miles inland, where he carried on a retail fishmonger's business,
knowing but little of fishing himself, either deep-sea or along-shore.
But Providence had not blessed their union, for not a child had been
born to them, and after but three years of married life, when Fauchon,
the husband, was out one day in a fishing smack, which he had just
bought to carry on business for himself with men under him, the boat
capsized in a sudden squall, and neither he nor the two other men were
ever seen or heard of again. Then to Louise, in her sudden poverty and
despair (for all the savings had been put into the fishing smack) came
Peter once more, and with his frank, whole-hearted love, and his
strength and confidence, fairly carried her off her feet, making her
happy with or without her own consent, in such shelter and comfort as
his fisherman's home could supply. They had been married seven years
now, and had on the whole been happy together; and as she answered his
"Well, my child, how goes it with thee to-day?" her own face lighted up
with a reflection of the beam on his.
After she had heard of the haul of mackerel, and had got Peter his
breakfast, she stood with her arms akimbo looking at him, as he gulped
down his bouillon with huge satisfaction.
The expectant look had not left her eyes, as, fixing them upon his, she
said, "I had a fright last night, my friend."
"Hein! How was that?" said he, with the spoon in his mouth.
"I heard a step outside, and Josef heard it too and barked; and we went
all round with a torch, but there was nobody."
"Ho! ho!" cried Peter, with his hearty laugh, "she will always hear a
step, or the wing of a sea-swallow flying overhead, or perhaps a crab
crawling in the bay, if Peter is not at home to take care of her."
"But indeed," said Louise, "it is the truth I am telling thee: it was
the step of a man, and of one that halted in his gait."
"Did Josef hear it--this step that halted?"
"Yes, he barked till I set him free: then all in a moment he stopped,
and would not search."
"Pou-ouf," crowed Peter, in jovial scorn. "Surely it was Josef
that was the wisest." Then, as she still seemed unsatisfied, he
added, "May-be 'twas the water in the smuggler's cave. Many's
the time that I've thought somebody was coming along, sort of
limping--cluck--chu--cluck--chu--when the tide was half-way up in the
cave over there. And the wind was blowing west last night: 'tis with a
west wind it sounds the plainest."
"May-be 'twas that, my friend," said the woman, taking up the pail to
fetch the water from the well across the common. But she kept looking
around her, with a half-frightened, half-expectant glance, all the way.
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.
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