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Page 26
"Swear you'll quit the island to-night, or I'll drop you," he thundered.
The creature merely screamed for mercy, and seemed unable to articulate
a sentence; while Louise knelt, clasping Peter's knees in an agony of
entreaty. Meanwhile, the screaming ceased; the creature had fainted in
Peter's grasp. He flung him down on the path, said sternly to Louise,
"Come with me," and they went up the cliff-side together.
They walked home without a word, Louise crying and moaning a little, but
not daring to speak. When they got inside the cabin, he stood and faced
her.
"Woman," he said, in a low, shaken voice, "What hast thou done?"
She fell upon her knees, crying. "Forgive me, Peter," she entreated.
"Thou art such a strong man; forgive me."
"Tell me the whole truth. What is this man to thee?"
She knelt in silence, shaken with sobs.
"Who is he?" said Peter, his voice getting deeper and hoarser.
She only kept moaning, "Forgive me." Presently she said between her
sobs, "I only went this morning to tell him to go away. I wanted him to
go away; I have prayed him to go again and again."
"Since when hast thou known him?"
Again she made no answer, but inarticulate moans.
Peter stood looking at her for a few seconds with an indescribable
expression of sorrow and aversion.
"I loved thee," he said; and turning away, left her.
CHAPTER III.
Peter went out in the evening without speaking to Louise again, and was
not seen till the following afternoon, when he called his mate to go
mackerel-fishing, and they were absent two days getting a great haul. He
came back and slept at Mesurier's, and did not go near his own home for
a week, though he sent money to Louise, when he sold the fish.
At the end of that time he went over to Jean's. The stranger had gone,
but Peter sat down on a stool opposite Jean, and began to enter into
conversation with him, with a more settled look in his hollow eyes than
had been there since the catastrophe of the week before. The meeting on
the cliff had been seen by more than one passerby, and the report had
spread that Peter had nearly murdered the stranger for intriguing with
his wife. Jean told Peter all he knew of the man, but he neither knew
his business nor whence he came. He said his name was Jacques, and would
give no other. He had gone to the nearest inland town, where he said
that a relation of his kept an "auberge." He had gone in a hurry, and
had left some bottles and things behind, containing the stuff he rubbed
his leg with, Jean thought; and Jean meant to take them to him when next
he went to the town.
"By the way," he said, taking a little book from the shelf, "I believe
this belonged to him too. I remember to have seen him more than once
poring over it with them close-seeing eyes of his. The man was a rare
scholar, and no mistake."
Peter took the little book from him, and opened it. Jean, glancing at
him as he did so, uttered an exclamation. A deadly paleness had
overspread Peter's face, and he clutched with his hand in the air, as
though for something to steady himself with. Then he staggered to his
feet, still tightly grasping the little book, and saying something
unintelligible, went out.
He went down the cliff to the place where, a week ago, he had found his
wife and the stranger, and stood under the rock, and looked at the book.
He looked at it still closed in his hand, as if it were some venomous
creature, which might, the next moment, dart forth a poisoned fang to
sting him. From the cover it appeared to be a little, much-worn
prayer-book. Presently he opened it gingerly, and read something written
on the fly-leaf. He spelled it out with some difficulty and slowly, and
yet he looked at it as if the page were a familiar vision to him. Then
he remained immovable for a long time, gazing out to sea, with the
little book crunched to a shapeless mass in his huge fist. When at last
he turned to ascend the cliff again, his face was ashen pale, and his
step was that of an old man. He trudged heavily across the common and
along the road inland, five or six miles, till he reached the town,
inquired for a certain auberge, entered the kitchen, and found himself
face to face with the man he sought. A spasm of fear passed swiftly over
the face of Jacques, as he beheld Peter, and he instinctively started up
from the bench on which he was sitting, and shrank backwards. As he did
so, he showed himself a disfigured paralytic, one side of his face being
partly drawn, and one leg crooked. He was an undersized man, with sandy
hair, quick, intelligent, grey eyes, and a well-cut profile.
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