|
Main
- books.jibble.org
My Books
- IRC Hacks
Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare
External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd
|
books.jibble.org
Previous Page
| Next Page
Page 5
"I wonder what it is she has got to say," said the Vicar, as his wife
buttoned his mackintosh up to his throat. "I always did think there was
something strange about old Marie."
A mile of bitter, breathless battling with the storm, then a close
cottage-room, with rain-flooded floor, the one small window carefully
darkened, and on a pillow in the furthest corner, shaded by heavy
bed-curtains, a wrinkled old woman's face, pinched and colourless, on
which the hand of Death lay visibly.
But in the eagerness with which she signed to the pastor to come close,
and in the keen glance she cast round the room to see that no one else
was near, the vigour of life still asserted itself.
"I've somewhat to tell you, Father," she began in a rapid undertone, in
the island dialect. "I can't carry it to the grave with me, tho' I've
borne it in my conscience all my life. When I was a young lass it
happened, when things was different, and the men were rougher than now,
and strange deeds might be done from time to time, and never come under
the eye o' the law. And you must judge me, Father, by the way things was
then, for that was what I had to think of when it all happened.
"There was a young man that used to come a' courting me when I was a
lass o' nineteen, and he had a black heart for all he spoke so fair; but
I didn't see it at the first, and he was that cliver and insinuatin',
and had such a way o' talkin', and made so much o' me, I couldn't but
listen to him for a while. And he used to go out fishin' wi' my father,
and Daddy, he was lame, so Pierre used to take the fish round and do
jobs with the boats for him, and this and that, so as Daddy thought a
rare lot o' him; and when he seed we was thinkin' o' each other, he sort
o' thought he'd leave the business to him and me, and we'd be able to
keep him when he got too old to go out any more. And all was goin'
right, when one day Pierre says to me, would I go out in the boat and
row with him to the village, as he'd got a creel of crabs to take round,
so I got in and we rowed: and we went through the Devil's Drift, and he
says to me sudden like, 'When we're man and wife, Marie, what'll your
father do to keep hisself?' 'Keep hisself,' I said, 'why ain't we agoin'
to keep him?' And then he began such a palaver about a man bein' bound
to keep his wife but not his father-in-law, and it not bein' fit for
three grown people to live in one room, as if my father and mother and
his father afore him and all his brothers and sisters hadn't lived in
this very room that now I lie a-dyin' in; and I said 'well, as I see it,
if you take Daddy's custom off of him, you're bound to keep Daddy.' And
he said that wasn't his way o' lookin' at it, and I went into a sudden
anger, and declared I wouldn't have nought to do with a man that could
treat my Daddy so, and he was just turning the boat round to go into the
Drift, and there came such an evil look in his eyes so as it seemed to
go through my bones like a knife, and he said 'You shall repent this one
day--you and your daddy too,' and I said not another word and he began
to row forwards through the Devil's Drift. And somehow bein' there alone
with him in that fearsome place, when a foot's error one side or the
other may mean instant death, as he sat facin' me I seemed to see the
black heart of him, as I'd never seen it before, and there was summat
came over me and made me feel my life was in his hands, in the hands of
my enemy.
"Well, I said no more to him, not one word good or bad, the rest of that
evenin's row, and I never went out with him no more. But now, Father,
this is what I want to say--for my breath is a goin' from me every
minute--my Daddy, he was like my child to me, me that have never had a
child of my own. I had watched him and cared for him as if I was his
mother, 'stead of his bein' my father, and a hurt to him was like a hurt
to me: and when that man talked o' leavin' him to fend for himself in
his old age, the thought seemed as if it would break my heart: and now
I knew he had an enemy, and a pitiless enemy: and I tried to stop him
goin' out alone with Pierre, and I wanted him to get rid o' him out of
the fishing business altogether, and father he took it up so, when I
told him Pierre said he was gettin' too old to manage for hisself, that
he up and dismissed him that very day: and then I heard Lisette Nevin
and Paul talkin' and savin' how ill Pierre had taken it, and I seemed to
see his face with the evil look on it; and something seemed to say in my
heart that Daddy was in danger, and I couldn't stop a moment; I went
flying to the cove where I knew he'd gone by hisself, and there from the
top of the path I saw the other one creeping, closer and closer, like a
cruel beast of prey as he was: and I went down and I met him, and he'd a
knife in his belt, and of one thing I was certain, he might have been
only goin' to frighten Daddy, but he meant him no good."
She lowered her voice, and spoke in a hoarse whisper.
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|