A Loose End | Page 8

born, his father had been drowned in a storm which had wrecked many of the fishing-boats along the coast, and his mother, from the shock of the news, gave premature birth to her babe, and died a few hours after. His grandmother had brought up the child, and his silent, rough-handed uncle had adopted him, and worked for him, as if he were his own. So the little Antoine, with his blond head, and his little bare feet, grew up in the rock-hewn cottage, like a bright gorse-flower among the boulders, and spent an untaught childhood, pattering about the granite floor, or clambering over the rough rocks, and dabbling in the salt water, where he would watch the beautiful green anemones, that had so many fingers but no hands, and which he never touched, because, if he did, they spoilt themselves directly, packing their fingers up very quickly, so that they went into nowhere: or the prawns, that he always thought were the spirits of the other fish, for they looked as if they were made of nothing, and they lay so still under a stone, as if they were not there, and then darted so quickly across the pool that you could not see them go.
Antoine knew a great deal about the spirits: how there were evil ones, such as that which dwelt in the great mushroom stone out yonder to sea, which was very powerful and wicked, so that the stone, being in fear, always trembled, yet could not fall, because the evil spirit would not let it: and then there were others which haunted the little valley beyond Esquinel Point, where you must not go after dark, for the spirits took the form of Little Men, who had the power to send astray the wits of any that met them. Antoine feared those spirits more than any of the others: they were so cunning and wanted to do you harm on purpose: and when he went with his grandmother to pray in the little chapel on the shore, he used to trot away from her side, as she knelt on her chair with clasped hands and devoutly murmuring lips; and he would wander over the rugged stone floor, till he found the niche in the wall where St. Nicholas stood, wearing a blue cloak with a pink border, and having such lovely pink cheeks: the kind St. Nicholas that took care of little children, and that had three little boys without any clothes on always with him, in the kind of little boat he stood in. And Antoine would pray a childish prayer to St. Nicholas to protect him from the evil spirits of the valley.
Antoine grew up very tall and strong. He accompanied Jean on his fishing expeditions from the time he was twelve years old, and his uncle used to say that he was of more use than many a grown man. He knew every rock and even-current along that dangerous coast: he could trim the boat to the wind through narrow channels in weather in which Jean would hardly venture to do it himself: and the way in which the fish took his bait made Jean sometimes cross himself, as he counted over the shining boat-load of bream and cod, and mutter in his guttural Breton speech, "'Tis the blessed St. Yvon aids him." Everybody liked him in the village, and he took a kind of lead among the other lads, but, whether it was the grave gaze of his blue eyes, or his earnest, outright speech, or some other quality about him less easy to define, they all had the same kind of feeling in regard to him that his uncle had. He was different from themselves. There were indeed some among them in whom this acknowledged superiority inspired envy and ill-will, and one in particular, a lad that went lame with a club foot, but who had a beautiful countenance, with dark, glowing eyes and finely-cut features, never lost an opportunity of saying an ill word of, or doing an ill turn to Antoine. Geoffroi Le Cocq seemed never far off, wherever Antoine might be. He would lounge in the doorway of the caf��, watching for him, and sing a mocking song as he passed down the road. He would mimic his sayings among the other lads, who were not, however, very ready to join in deriding him. And once he contrived to poison the Kaudrens' bait, just when weather and season were at their best for fishing, so that Antoine brought not a single fish home. Jean, with the quick-blazing anger of his race, declared that if he could find the man who had done it, he would "break his skull." But Antoine, though he knew well enough who had done