Page:Once a Week Jun to Dec 1864.pdf/381

 366 skin, towering: above the smaller race of Frenchmen: she, with little trim figure, fresh, and clean in blue woollen skirt and starched cap, with great black eyes that were always meeting the grey ones of the perfidious Briton, and never said anything but "I trust you." He also remembered how once, when Carter's ship was expected in the port, Annette would watch on the quay for hours; and how, when the good brig was really within a few yards of land, and but for some almost miraculous mishap would in a few moments be safely moored in still water, she ran to her home, and hid herself in the inner room in maiden bashfulness. And now Carter was mate of the brig, and gave his word that when he should next come to Dieppe he must return with Annette as his wife to his own land, and that she should be taken to see his mother and his home, as well as the wonders of London, and that then the locality of their future abode might be decided upon. In three weeks he might be expected in Dieppe again.

Old Pochon affirmed, quite confidently, "That is a man in whom we may put trust: that face cannot be the face of a liar. He says, 'Annette, do you love me with all your heart?' She says, 'Robert, what shall I do to prove my love?' 'When I come to fetch you, shall you be very happy, and shall you be ready to come to me directly?' 'When you come to fetch me, whenever it may be, I will spring forward to meet you, and no one shall ever make me distrust you.

If her own father had confidence, what availed the fears of the neighbours? The old guide had never liked that Carreterre, but what was he but a grumbler? Things must take their course without interference. And, in truth, nobody had anything very valid to urge against the match. The bridegroom was English, and Annette ought to have been the mother as well the child of good Dieppois. But everybody does not see things in the same light as his neighbour.

It is not difficult to imagine the excited eagerness with which Annette looked forward to the expiration of the allotted period. Never was there a more joyous bride. No letters passed between the parties; indeed it was improbable that either of them could write. At the end of the third week, the collier by which Carter was to have travelled as a passenger appeared in the port, but no Carter was on board; nor had the collier's skipper had any dealings with any man answering to the faithless mate's description. After the first shock, Annette refused to allow that she was in the least degree doubtful. Of course he would come: of course some unforeseen hindrance had kept him from coming as he had proposed. Her friends were not sanguine, but she would permit no questioning. A week went by: Annette began to look a little sad. Another week: blue lines rose round her dark eyes. A third: and Annette moved and spoke and looked in such a miserable, apathetic, lack-lustre way, that all her friends grew seriously frightened for her health. She would stray up and down the beach and the port for hours and hours together, always declaring that she was looking for her Robert—always quite sure that he would come—only let them give him time: she trusted him. So two months went by. And though, indeed, on the one subject of her faithless lover's return she was then already crazed, no one regarded her state as being worse than one of fresh and unhealed grief—a state remediable by lapse of time and new associations. "Poor girl!" said the neighbours; and Annette received their pity very kindly and very impassibly, only saying, "I know he will come to fetch me; and when I see him I shall go to him." And of course Carter never came: he was never seen or heard of at Dieppe again. And now more than four months had gone by. Annette's wanderings became longer and more dreamy. Nothing done by her father or her friends availed to break her sorrowful stupor. Backwards and forwards on the shore of the much sounding sea she walked, waiting for the vainly-expected summons of her lover. At first a little cousin was sent to accompany her, for it was supposed that she might harm herself; but when it was found that she walked always to and fro, gazing out to sea, and men began to know the poor sad figure and its unhappy story, she was allowed to wander pretty much when and where she liked.

Up to this time she could not be said to be mad; she was only very sorrowful, and very fond of solitude. But now came the remarkable part of the story.

"Messieurs probably know the environs of Dieppe?" said the narrator.

"Never in the place till last night."

"Ah, truly. But you can imagine to yourselves the appearance of the coast which I am about to describe. Along to the west, down there, the beach is shelving shingle and slimy masses of chalk under the cliffs. At low tide, long tracks of rock are discovered stretching out to sea, divided in all directions by wide ragged fissures. Very green and very slippery are those tracks of rock. One day I had occasion to go a little journey in that direction, and, as the tide would serve, I determined to go along the beach. It was a bleak day in December; the sky was very