Part 2 — 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.

"Jacques Fauchon," said Peter, "have no fear of me."

Jacques kept his eyes on him, still distrustfully.

"I did not know," continued Peter, speaking thickly and slowly, "the other day, what I know now. I had never seen you but once—and you have changed."

"It is not my wish to cause trouble," said Jacques, still glancing furtively round. "Things being as they are, to my thinking, there's nought for it but to let 'em be."

"I have not said yet," said Peter, "what it is I've come to say. This little prayer-book with her name writ in it, and yours below,—'tis the one she always took to church, as a girl—has shown me the path I've got to take. How you came back from the dead, I don't know: 'twas the hand of the Lord. But here you are, and you are her husband, and not I." He stopped.

"Well, Mr. Girard, I know my legal rights," began Jacques, "but considering—and I've no wish to cause unpleasantness, of that you may be sure. 'Tis why I never wrote, not knowing how the land might lie, and for four years I was helpless on my back."

"Never mind the past, man," interrupted Peter, "It's the future that's to be thought of. What you've got to do is to take her away to a distance, and settle in some place where nobody knows what's gone by."

Fauchon considered for a moment, a slight, deprecatory smile stealing over his face.

"I suppose," he remarked, "she hasn't got any little purse of her own by this time; considering, I mean, that she's been of use with the lines and the nets and so on."

"Do you mean," said Peter, "that you can't support her?"

"Well, you see, I worked my passage from New Zealand as cook—that's what I waited so long for. If she could pay her passage, the same captain would take us again, when he starts to go back next week. And if she had a little in hand, when we got there, we could set up a store, may-be, and make shift to get on. I only thought, may-be, she having been of use—"

"I'll sell the cottage and the bits of things," said Peter, "and there's a trifle put by to add to it. But tell me this; when you're out there, can you support her, or can't you?"

"Well, there's Mr. Boucher, that took me on as house-servant at first in New Zealand, he being in the sailing ship when I was picked up. And when the paralytics came on, resulting from the injury I got in the wreck, he never let me want for nothing, the four years that I lay helpless. He's got money to spare, you see"—with a wink—"he's well off, and he's what I call easy-going; and if we could manage to get the right side of him"—with another wink—"I reckon he'd help us a bit."

"Man," said Peter, letting his hand fall heavily on Fauchon's shoulder, "tell me plain that you've got honest work as'll feed and clothe her out there, else, by God, you shan't have her!" and his grip on Fauchon's shoulder tightened, so that a flash of terror passed over the man's face, and he tried to edge away, saying deprecatingly, "I've no wish, Mr. Girard, you understand—I've no wish to offend. In fact, my whole intention was not to cause any trouble. On my honour, I was going to leave the island to-morrow, when I found how things were—'tis the truth I speak."

"You are her husband," said Peter, "and she loves you, and she shall go with you. But if you let her want, God do so unto you, and more also!"

And he let go of him, and strode away again.

When he got back it was dark, and he stood at his cottage door and looked in. Louise was sitting by the hearth, with her back to him, and her hands in her lap, rocking herself gently on her stool, and gazing into the glowing ash on the hearthstone. Opposite, on the other side of the hearth, Peter's own stool stood empty, and on the shelf beside it were the two yellow porringers, out of which he and Louise used always to sup together. His jersey, the one she had knitted for him when they were married, hung in the corner, with the bright blue patch in it, that she had been mending it with the last time he was at home. Louise was so absorbed in her thoughts that she did not hear his approach, and stepping softly, he passed in and stood before her; she started back, and immediately began to whimper a little, putting up her hands to her face.

"Louise," said Peter, "wilt thou forgive me?"

She looked up perplexed, only half believing what she heard.

"I know everything. I have seen Jacques. I was harsh to thee, mon enfant."

"I meant no harm," said Louise. "I begged him not to come. I knew thou wouldest be angered."

"I am not angered. He is thy husband."

She glanced up with an irrepressible start of eagerness.

"Thou meanest—" Her very desire seemed to take away her speech.

Peter laid his hand on her wrist, as gently as a woman.

"Louise," he said, "thou lovest him?"

She gazed at him in silence; the piercing question in her eyes her only answer.

"Thou shalt go with him," he said. "I only came to say goodbye."

He went to the door: then stood and looked back, with a world of yearning and tenderness in his face. He stretched out his arms. "Kiss me, Louise," he said.

She rose, still half frightened, and kissed him as she was told.

He held her tightly in his arms for a minute, then put her silently from him, and turned away.

Peter was not seen in those parts again. It was understood that he and his wife had emigrated to New Zealand, and the cottage was sold, and the furniture and things dispersed.

In a fishing village on the coast of Brittany, there appeared, not long afterwards, a tall Englishman, speaking the Channel Island patois, who settled down to make a home among the Breton folk, adopting their ways and language, and eking out, like them, a livelihood by hard toil early and late among the rocks and sand-banks, or by long months of fishing on the high seas; a man on whom the simple-minded villagers looked with a certain respect, mingled with awe, as on one who seemed to them marked out by heaven for some special fate; who lived alone in his cottage, attending to his own wants, no woman being ever allowed to enter it; and about whose past nothing was known, and no one dared to ask.