Part 7 (2/2)

Only one man in the whole throng was utterly unmoved by the abandonment around him. Perrin kept his deep set, keen eyes fixed on Dominic and his partner. He watched them leap with perfect skill, across the roaring flame of the bonfire. He saw the master bend down, and once more peer into the white face of the girl. He followed, very stealthily, the two, as they drew apart into a shadowed place, where, nevertheless, the light from the bonfire could reach and bring their faces into relief. He watched the girl unfasten her mask and throw it on the gra.s.s. He drew a deep breath.

Her face was pitifully ugly. It was covered with the pits and dents and scars that small-pox had left. The skin was coa.r.s.e and rough and of a yellowish white. Her eyes were dim and red and bleared. Her eyebrows and lashes were gone. Her expression was like that of a furtive, crouching creature who dreaded the lash.

And it came.

”Who are you, I'd like to know!” cried the master in a towering rage, ”that has dared to choose me only to cheat me. Do you know, woman, that you are as ugly as sin!”

He seized her bonnet and dragged it off. Then he burst into a brutal laugh.

”Almost bald, the old crone! I'll pay you out for this trick. Who the devil are you? Quick, out with it, or else I'll call the other fellows in to help me to find out!”

Perrin moved quite close behind the master, who was too angry to notice him. The girl lifted her eyes to Dominic. She spoke quietly.

”I am Ellenor Cartier.”

”I might have guessed it, fool that I am! And you are a greater to think I would even look at you _now_! You must be quite mad. All I ever cared for in you was your devilry, and your eyes that used to set me all on fire with love. And now you look like a scared rabbit, a white, pinched thing! And your eyes are hideous! And your hair is gone! How dare you cheat me, you ugly creature!”

She had clasped her hands together; and gazed at him in stupefaction.

Suddenly, he turned on his heel and cried in a loud, far-carrying voice--

”Come here, you men, all of you, and help me to throw the witch, Ellenor Cartier, into the bonfire! She's too devilish ugly to live.”

The lower sort of the throng laughed uproariously, and turned to stare at the poor girl. But cries of ”Shame! shame!” rent the air.

Perrin stepped forward, and, with a well-planted blow and a skilful twist of his leg, he threw Dominic to the ground.

”See to the drunken brute!” he cried.

Then he turned to the trembling girl.

”Come, Ellenor,” he said, with tender reverence, ”come with me, I will take you home.”

He led her to his mother, who took her up to her own attic and helped her to get into bed, for the girl s.h.i.+vered with cold one minute and was in a fever the next. Perrin, meanwhile, went off to Les Casquets to tell her people that she was safe; and he gave Jean the story of the evening, for fear he should hear it from strangers. When he came back to the cottage, Mrs. Corbet was in the kitchen.

”She's asleep at last! But she's cried till I thought she would die.

I asked her how it was she made herself in such a state; and then she told me all the tale. Silly girl! the very way to upset any man, and still more, Le Mierre, to show how ugly she is now before all them people. And, besides, it was all like play acting, to my mind!”

”Oh, no, not like that, mother!”

”Wait a bit, wait a bit, till you hears all! It seems, she told me, that she planned she'd do this, there's weeks ago, while Le Mierre was yet to Jersey, and she had heard he was making love to girls there.”

”But why?”

”Well, listen! She's a strange creature, not like others! It's _my_ belief she comes from those fairies that built _Les Casquets_. You remember Perrin?”

”No, tell me.”

”Well, once my great-grandfather was on the beach to Portelet, and he saw, a long, long way off a big s.h.i.+p. It came nearer and nearer, and it was so big that great-grandfather expected to see it smashed on hidden rocks. But, lo and behold, the s.h.i.+p got smaller and at last, bah, it looked like the toy of a child, and it ran in on the sand, close to great-grandfather. Out of the boat stepped a little chap, and would you believe it, the boat was turned into the blade-bone of a sheep, all tangled in sea-weed.”

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