A Loose End and Other Stories by S. Elizabeth Hall

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A LOOSE END AND OTHER STORIES

by

S. ELIZABETH HALL

Author of _The Interloper_

London:
Simpkin, Marshall Hamilton, Kent & Co., Ltd.
London: Truslove and Bray, Printers, West Norwood, S.E.

CONTENTS.

A LOOSE END

IN A BRETON VILLAGE

TWICE A CHILD

THE ROAD BY THE SEA

THE HALTING STEP

TABITHA'S AUNT

A LOOSE END.

CHAPTER I.

One September morning, many years ago, when the Channel Islands seemed
further off than they do now, and for some of them communication with
the outer world hardly existed, some two hours after the sun had risen
out of the sea, and while the grass and the low-growing bushes were
still fresh with the morning dew, a young girl tripped lightly along the
ridge of a headland which formed the south side of a cove on the coast
of one of the smaller islands in the group. The ridge ascended gradually
till it reached a point on which stood a ruined building, that was said
to have been once a mill, and from which on the right-hand side the path
began to descend to a narrow landing-place in the cove. The girl stood
still for a moment when she reached the highest point, and shading her
eyes looked out to sea. On the opposite side of the cove a huge rock,
formed into an island by a narrow shaft of water, which in the strife of
ages had cleared its way between it and the rocky coast, frowned dark
and solemn in the shadow, its steep and clear-cut sides giving it a
character of power and imperturbability that crowned it a king among
islands. The sea beyond was glittering in the morning sun, but there was
deep purple shadow in the cove, and under the rocks of the projecting
headlands, which in fantastic succession on either side threw out their
weird arms into the sea; while just around the edge of the shore, where
the water was shallow over rocks and weed, was a girdle of lightest,
loveliest green. Guernsey, idealized in the morning mist, lay like a
dream on the horizon. Here and there a fishing-boat, whose sail flashed
orange when the sun touched it, was tossing on the waves; nearer in a
boat with furled sail was cautiously making for the narrow passage--the
Devil's Drift, as the fishermen called it--between the island and the
mainland, a passage only traversed with oars, the oarsmen facing
forwards; while the two occupants of another were just taking down their
sail preparatory to rowing direct for the landing-place.

The moment the girl caught sight of this last boat she began rapidly to
descend the 300 feet of cliff which separated her from the cove below.
The path began in easy zig-zags, which, however, got gradually steeper,
and the last thirty feet of the descent consisted of a sheer face of
rock, in which were fixed two or three iron stanchions with a rope
running from one to the other to serve as a handrail; and the climber
must depend for other assistance on the natural irregularities of the
rock, which provided here and there an insecure foothold. The girl,
however, sprang down the dangerous path, without the slightest
hesitation, though her skilful balance and dexterity of hand and foot
showed that her security was the result of practice.

By the time she had reached the narrow strip of beach, one of the few
and difficult landing-places which the island offered, the two fishermen
were already out of the boat, which they were mooring to an iron ring
fastened in the rock. One of the men was young; the other might be, from
his appearance, between sixty and seventy. A strange jerking gait, which
was disclosed as soon as he began to move on his own feet, suggested the
idea that his natural habitat was the sea, and that he was as little at
ease on land as some kinds of waterfowl appear to be when walking. He
could not hold himself upright when on one foot, so that his whole
person turned first to one side and then to the other as he walked.

"Marie!" he called to the girl as she alighted at the bottom of the
cliff, and he shouted something briefly which the strange jargon in
which it was spoken and the gruff, wind-roughened voice of the speaker,
would have made unintelligible to any but a native of the islands.

The girl, without replying, took the basket of fish which he handed her,
slung it on her back by a rope passed over one shoulder, and stationed
herself at the foot of the path, waiting for him to begin the ascent:
the younger man, who was busy with the tackle of the boat, apparently
intending to stay behind.

When the old man had placed himself in position to begin the ascent,
with both hands on the rope, and all his weight on one leg, the girl
stooped down, and placing her lithe hands round his great wet
fisherman's boot, deftly lifted the other foot and placed it in the
right position on the first ledge of rock.

"Now, Daddy, hoist away!" she cried in her clear, piping voice, using,
like her father, the island dialect; and he dragged himself up to the
first iron hold, wriggling his large, awkward form into strange
contortions, till he found a secure position and could wait till his
young assistant was beside him once more. She sprang up like a cat and
balanced herself safely within reach of him. It was odd to see the
implicit confidence with which he let her lift and place his feet;
having now to support herself by the rope she had only one hand to
spare; but the feat was accomplished each time with the same precision
and skill, till the precipitous part of the ascent was passed and they
had commenced the zigzag path.

Then Marie took her daddy's arm under hers, and carefully steadied the
difficult, ricketty gait, supporting the heavy figure with a practised
skill which took the place of strength in her slight frame. Her features
were formed after the same pattern as his, the definite profile, tense
spreading nostril, and firm lips, being repeated with merely feminine
modifications; and as her clear, merry eyes, freshened by the
sea-breeze, flashed with fun at the stumblings and uncertainties of
their course, they met the same expression of mirth in his hard-set,
rocky face.

"You've got a rare job, child!" said he, as they stood still for breath
at a turning in the path, "a basket of fish to lug up, as well as your
old daddy. He'd ought to have brought them as far as the turning for
you."

"I'd sooner have their company than his, any day," with a little _moue_
in the direction of the cove. "I just wish you wouldn't take him out
fishing with you, Daddy, that I do!"

"Why not, girl?"

"It's he as works for himself and cares for himself and for no one else,
does Pierre," said the girl. "Comin' a moonin' round and pretending he's
after courting me, when all he wants, with takin' the fish round and
that, is to get the custom into his own hands, and tells folks, if _he_
had the ordering of it, there'd be no fear about them getting their fish
punctual."

"Tells 'em that, does he?" said the father, his sea-blue eyes suddenly
clouding over.

"That he does; and says he'd take up the inshore fishing, if he'd the
money to spend: and they should be supplied regular with crabs and
shrimps and such; and then drops a word that poor Andre he's gettin'
old, and what with being lame, and one thing and another, what can you
expect, and such blathers!"

"Diable! Do you know that for certain, child?" said Andre, stopping in
the path, and turning round upon her with a face ablaze with anger. "I
should like to hear him sayin' that, I should."

"Now, Daddy," she cried with a sudden change of tone, "don't you be
getting into one of your tantrums with him. Don't, there's a dear Daddy!
I only told you, so you shouldn't be putting too much into his hands.
But he'd be the one that would come best out of a quarrel. He's only
looking for a chance of doin' you a mischief, it's my belief."

"H'm! 'Poor Andre a gettin' old,' is he?" grunted her father, somewhat
calmed. "Poor Andre won't be takin' _him_ out with him again just yet
awhile--that's a certain thing. Paul Nevin would suit me a deal better
in many ways, only I' bin keepin' Pierre on out o' charity, his pore
father havin' bin a pal o' mine. But he's a deal stronger in the arms,
is Paul."

They reached the cottage, which stood on the first piece of level ground
on the way to the mainland. There was no other building within sight;
and with its bleak boulders and rocks of strangest form, in perpetual
death-struggle with the mighty force of ocean, resounding night and day
with the rush and tramp of the wild sea-horses, as they flung themselves
in despair on their rocky adversary, and with the many voices of the
winds, which scarcely ever ceased blowing in that exposed spot, while
the weird notes of the sea-fowl floated in the air, like the cries of
wandering spirits, the solitary headland seemed indeed as if it might be
the world's end.

The cottage consisted of one room, and a lean-to. Nearly half the room
was taken up with a big bed, and on the other side were the fire-place
and cooking utensils. Opposite the door was a box-sofa, on which Marie
had slept since she was a child, and which with a small table, two
chairs and a stool, completed the furniture of the room; the only light
was that admitted by the doorway, the door nearly always standing open;
the lean-to was little more than a dog-kennel, being formed in fact out
of a great heap of stones and rubbish, which had been piled up as a
protection to the cottage on the windward side; and three dogs and two
hens were enjoying themselves in front of the fire.

It was here that Marie had lived, ever since she could remember, in
close and contented companionship with her father: whom indeed,
especially since he had the fever which crippled him three years before,
she had fed, clothed, nursed and guarded with a care almost more
motherly than filial.

CHAPTER II.

Marie was leaning over the low wall of a cottage garden in the
'village,' as a clump of small houses at the meeting of four cross-roads
was called, and waiting for the kail which she had come to buy for the
evening's soup from Mrs. Nevin, who cultivated a little plot of ground
with fruit and vegetables. The back-door of the cottage, which opened on
the garden, was ajar, and she could hear some one enter from the front
with a heavy tread, and call out in a big, jovial voice, "Hullo, Mother,
we're in luck to-day! You'd never guess who's goin' to take me on. Lame
Andre, he's goin' to give Pierre the sack, and says he'll have me for a
time or two to try. Says I'm strong in the shoulders, and he guesses I
can do him more good than Pierre. I should think I easy could too, a
pinch-faced whipper-snapper like that!"

"And high time it is too that Andre had his eyes opened," rejoined Mrs.
Nevin; "often it is I've told Marie, as there she stands, that her
father don't ought to trust the fish-sellin' too much to that Pierre: a
lad as could rob his own grandmother the moment the life was out o' her
body."

"Well, Mother, you've often told me about that five franc piece, but
nobody can't say that she hadn't given it him before she died, as he
said--"

"Given it him, I should think so, when she never would have aught to say
to him for all his wheedling ways, and his brother Jacques was her
favourite; and poor old lady if she'd a known that Pierre was goin' to
be alone with her, when she went off suddint in a fit, I guess she'd a
locked up her purse first, I do."

"Well, I must say he turned a queer colour when he heard Andre say he
didn't want him no more: and you should have seen the look he gave him,
sort of squintin' out of his eyes at him, when he went away. He ain't a
man I would like to meet unawares in a dark lane, if I'd a quarrel with
him."

"Hullo, where's Marie?" cried Mrs. Nevin, coming out of the door with
the kail ready washed in her hand. "She never took offence at what we
was sayin', think you? Folks did say, to be sure, that she and Pierre
was sweet on one another some time since. Well, she's gone, any way,"
and the good woman stood for a few minutes in some dismay, shading her
eyes as she looked down the road.

Marie's slight, girlish figure vanished quickly round the turning in the
lane, and Mrs. Nevin could not see her pass swiftly by her own cottage,
and up the ridge to the old mill. When she reached the point at which
the path began to descend to the cove, she paused and looked down. The
keen glance and alert figure, poised on guard, suggested the idea of a
mother bird watching her nest from afar. The tide had gone out
sufficiently for the boats to be drawn up on the eight or ten feet of
the shelving shore, which was thus laid bare, and the glowing light of
the sunset touched in slanting rays the head and hands of an old man
seated on a rock and bending over some fishing tackle, which he seemed
to be repairing.

Round the extreme point of the headland, which in a succession of
uncouth shapes dropped its rocky outline into the shadowy purple sea,
there was visible, hastily clambering across pathless boulders, another
man, of a young and lithe figure, and with something in the eager,
forward thrust of the head, crouching gait, and swift, deft footing that
resembled an animal of the cat species when about to leap on its prey.
He was evidently making for the cove, but would have to take the rope
path in order to reach it, as there was no way of approaching it on that
side except over the sheer face of rock. Marie was further from the
rope than he was, but her path was easier. The moment her eye caught
sight of the crouching, creeping figure, she sped like a hare down the
path, till she reached a point at which she was on a level with the man,
at a distance of about a hundred feet. There she stood, uncertain a
moment, then turned to meet him. He seemed too intent on his object in
the cove to notice her advance, till she was within speaking distance,
when she suddenly called to him "Pierre!"

Her clear, defiant tone put the meaning of a whole discourse into the
word. The man turned sharply round with an expression of vindictive
malice in his fox-like face.

"Well, what do you want?"

"What are you doing here, please?"

"What's that to you, I should like to know?"

"Come nearer, then I can hear what you say."

"I sha'n't come no nearer than I choose."

"Don't be afraid. I ain't a-goin' to hurt you!"

The taunt seemed to have effect, for he leaped hurriedly along over the
rocky path, with an angry, threatening air that would have frightened
some girls. Marie stood like the rock beneath her.

"Now, Miss, I'll teach you to come interfering with business that's none
o' yourn. What, you thought you'd come after me, did yer? because you
was tired o' waitin' for me to come after you again, I suppose."

"What is that you're carryin' in your belt?" she demanded calmly. A
handle was seen sticking up under his fisherman's blouse. "You believe
its safer to climb the rocks with a butcher's knife in your pocket, do
you? You think in case of an accident it would make you fall a bit
softer, hey?"

"It don't matter to you what I've got in my pocket," he rejoined, but
his tone was uncertain. "I brought it to cut the tackle--we've got a job
of mending to do."

"I don't know whether you think me an idiot," she replied; "but if you
want me to believe your stories you'd better invent 'em more reasonable.
Now, Pierre, this is what you've got to do before you leave this spot.
You've got to promise me solemnly not to go near Daddy, nor threaten him
as you once threatened me on a day you may remember, nor try to
intimidate him into takin' you back. Neither down in the cove, nor
anything else: neither now, nor at any other time."

Her girlish figure as she stood with one arm clasping the rock beside
her, looked a slight enough obstacle in the path.

"Intimidate him! A parcel o' rubbish; who's goin' to intimidate him as
you call it. Get out o' the way, and don't go meddling in men's concerns
that you know nothing about."

He seized her wrist roughly, and with her precarious footing the
position was dangerous enough: but she clung with her other arm like a
limpit to the rock. He attempted to dislodge her, when she suddenly
turned and fled back on her own accord. He hastened after her, and it
was not till he had gone some yards that, putting his hand to his belt,
he found that the knife had gone.

"The jade," he muttered, "she did it on purpose," and even with his
hatred and malice was mingled a gleam of admiration at the cleverness
that had outwitted him. He hurried on towards the cliff path, but the
sunset light was already fading into dusk, and he had to choose his
footing more carefully. When he reached the point where the rope began,
Marie had already gone down and was leaning on the rock beside her
father. Had he been near he might have noticed a strange expression in
her eyes, as she furtively watched the precipitous descent. The purple
shadows now filled both sky and sea, and the island opposite reared its
grand outline solemnly in the twilight depths, as though sitting in
eternal judgment on the transient ways of men. The evening star shone
softly above the sea. Suddenly a crash, followed by one sharp cry, was
heard; then all was still.

"Good God! That's some one fallen down the path--why don't you go and
see, child?" but Marie seemed as if she could not stir. Old Andre slowly
dragged himself on to his feet, and took her arm, and they went
together. At the foot of the path they found the body of Pierre, dead,
his head having struck against a rock.

"He must have missed his footing in the dark," said Andre, when they had
rowed round to the fishing village to carry the news, and the solitary
constable had bustled forth, and was endeavouring to collect information
about the accident from the only two witnesses, of whom the girl seemed
to have lost the power of speech.

"He must have missed his footing in the dark; and then the rope broke
with his weight and the clutch he give it. It lies there all loose on
the ground."

"It shouldn't have broken," said the constable. "But I always did say
we'd ought to have an iron chain down there."

CHAPTER III.

Fifty years had passed, with all their seasons' changes, and the
changing life of nature both by land and sea, and had made as little
impression on the island as the ceaseless dashing of the waves against
its coast. The cliffs, the caves and the sea-beaten boulders were the
same; the colours of the bracken on the September hills, and of the sea
anemones in their green, pellucid pools, were the same, and the
fishermen's path down to the cove was the same. No iron chain had been
put there, but the rope had never broken again.

A violent south-west gale was blowing, driving scud and sea-foam before
it, while ever new armies of rain-clouds advanced threateningly across
the shadowy waters--mighty, moving mists, whose grey-winged squadrons,
swift and irresistible, enveloped and almost blotted from sight the
little rock-bound island, against which the forces of nature seemed to
be for ever spending themselves in vain. From time to time through a gap
in the shifting cloud-ranks there shone a sudden dazzling gleam of
sunlight on the white crests of the sea-horses far away.

The good French pastor, who struggled to discharge the offices of
religion in that impoverished and for the most part socially abandoned
spot, had just allowed himself to be persuaded by his wife that it was
unnecessary to visit his sick parishioner at the other end of the island
that afternoon, when a loud rat-tat was heard in the midst of a shriek
of wind, through a grudged inch of open door-way. The hurricane burst
into the house while a dripping, breathless girl panted forth her
message, that "old Marie" had been suddenly taken bad, and was dying,
and wanted but one thing in the world, to see the Vicar.

"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.

"Father, do you understand? Here was a man without ruth or pity, and
with a sore grudge in his black heart. Was I to trust my Daddy to his
hands, and him old and lame?" She paused another moment, then drew the
Vicar close to her and whispered in his ear, "I cut the rope. I knew he
was followin' me. I let myself halfway down, then clung to the iron hold
and cut the rope, with the knife I'd taken from him. It was at the risk
of my life I did it. And he followed me, and he fell and was killed.
Father, will God punish me for it? It has blighted my life. I have
never been like other women. I never was wed, for how could I tend
little children with blood on my hands? And the children shrank from me,
or I thought they did. But it was for Daddy's sake. He had a happy old
age, and he gave me his blessing when he died. Father"--her voice became
almost inaudible--"when I stand before God's throne--will God
remember--it was for Daddy's sake?"

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