A Loose End | Page 6

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