A Maid of the Silver Sea | Page 3

how to enjoy if he had succeeded in getting it.
So possessed was he with the desire for gain that when young Tom
came home from sea he left the farming to him, and took to the mining
himself, and worked harder than he had ever worked in his life before.
He was a sturdy, middle-sized man, with a grizzled bullet head and
rounded beard, of a dogged and pertinacious disposition, but capable,
when stirred out of his usual phlegm, of fiery outbursts which overbore
all argument and opposition. His wife died when his boy Tom was
three, and after two years of lonely discomfort he married Nancy
Poidestre of Petit Dixcart, whose people looked upon it as something of
a _mésalliance_ that she should marry out of her own country into
Little Sark.
Nancy was eminently good-looking and a notable housewife, and she
went into Tom Hamon's house of La Closerie with every hope and
intention of making him happy.
But, from the very first, little Tom set his face against her.
It would be hard to say why. Nancy racked her brain for reasons, and
could find none, and was miserable over it.
His father thrashed him for his rudeness and insolence, which only
made matters worse.
His own mother had given way to him in everything, and spoiled him
completely. After her death his father out of pity for his forlorn estate,
had equally given way to him, and only realised, too late, when he tried
to bring him to with a round turn, how thoroughly out of hand he had
got.
When little Tom found, as one consequence of the new mother's arrival,

that his father thrashed instead of humouring him, he put it all down to
the new-comer's account, and set himself to her discomfiture in every
way his barbarous little wits could devise.
He never forgot one awful week he passed in his grandmother's care--a
week that terminated in the arrival of still another new-comer, who, in
course of time, developed into little Nance. It is not impossible that the
remembrance of that black week tended to colour his after-treatment of
his little half-sister. In spite of her winsomeness he hated her always,
and did his very best to make life a burden to her.
When, on that memorable occasion, he was hastily flung by his father
into his grandmother's room, as the result of some wickedness which
had sorely upset his stepmother, and the door was, most unusually,
closed behind him, his first natural impulse was to escape as quickly as
possible.
But he became aware of something unusual and discomforting in the
atmosphere, and when his grandmother said sternly, "Sit down!" and he
turned on her to offer his own opinion on the matter, he found the keen
dark eyes gazing out at him from under the shadowy penthouse of the
great black sun-bonnet, with so intent and compelling a stare that his
mouth closed without saying a word. He climbed up on to a chair and
twisted his feet round the legs by way of anchorage.
Then he sat up and stared back at Grannie, and as an exhibition of
nonchalance and high spirit, put out his tongue at her.
Grannie only looked at him.
And, bit by bit, the tongue withdrew, and only the gaping mouth was
left, and above it a pair of frightened green eyes, transmitting to the
perverse little soul within new impressions and vague terrors.
Before long his left arm went up over his face to shut out the sight of
Grannie's dreadful staring eyes, and when, after a sufficient interval, he
ventured a peep at her and found her eyes still fixed on him, he howled,
"Take it off! Take it off!" and slipped his anchors and slid to the floor,

hunching his back at this tormentor who could beat him on his own
ground.
For that week he gave no trouble to any one. But after it he never went
near Grannie's room, and for years he never spoke to her. When he
passed her open door, or in front of her window, he hunched his
shoulder protectively and averted his eyes.
Resenting control in any shape or form, Tom naturally objected to
school.
His stepmother would have had him go--for his own sake as well as
hers. But his father took a not unusual Sark view of the matter.
"What's the odds?" said he. "He'll have the farm. Book-learning will be
no use to him," and in spite of Nancy's protests--which Tom regarded
as simply the natural outcrop of her ill-will towards him--the boy grew
up untaught and uncontrolled, and knowing none but the worst of all
masters--himself.
On occasion, when the tale of provocation reached its limit, his father
thrashed him, until there came