It was that same night, as they were sauntering home from a starlight
ramble, that they came on Johnnie Vautrin crouched in the hedge with
Marielihou, and Marielihou had her hind leg bound up in a piece of
white rag.
"Hello, Johnnie! What's the matter with Marielihou?" asked Graeme. And
Marielihou turned her malevolent yellow-green eyes on him and looked
curses.
"Goderabetin! She've got hurt."
"Oh! How was that?"
"I d'n know. Wisht I knowed who done it;" and just then, as luck would
have it, old Tom Hamon came sauntering along in the gloaming, smoking
a contemplative pipe with long slow puffs.
And at sight of him Marielihou ruffled and swelled to twice her size,
and raked up most horrible and blood-curdling oaths from away down in
her inside into her black throat, and spat them out at him, as he came
up, in a fusillade that sounded like ripraps, and her eyes flamed
baleful fires.
"Cuss away, y'ould witch!" said old Tom, with a grin through his
pipe-stem. "How's the leg?" and Marielihou with a final volley
disappeared among the bushes, and Johnnie crawled after her.
"What on earth does he mean?" whispered Meg.
"Mr. Hamon has an idea that Marielihou and old Mme. Vautrin have
something in common. In fact I believe he goes so far as to say that
they are one and the same. Black magic, you know,--witchcraft, and all
that kind of thing."
"How horrid!"
"B'en!" chuckled old Tom again. "You find out how 'tis with th' old
witch. We know how 'tis with Marrlyou. 'Twere the silver bullet did
it. If sh' 'adn't jumped 'twould ha' gone through 'er 'ead," and he
went off chuckling through his pipe-stem.
And the next evening, as they were sauntering slowly through the
darkening lanes to the windmill, to see the life-lights flash out all
round the horizon, it happened that they met the doctor just turning
out of his gate.
"Hello, doctor! How's old Mme. Vautrin to-day?" asked Graeme.
"She's going on all right," said the doctor, with a touch of surprise.
"There seems a quite unusual amount of interest in that old lady all
of a sudden. How is it?"
"What is it's wrong with her?"
And the doctor eyed him curiously for a moment, and then said, "Well,
she says she hurt her leg ormering, slipped on a rock and got the hook
in it. But--Well, it's a bad leg anyway, and she won't go ormering or
anything else for a good long time to come."
Which matter, in the light of old Tom Hamon's silver bullets and
evident knowledge of Marielihou's injury, left them all very much
puzzled, though, as Graeme acknowledged, there might be nothing in it
after all.
V
It was just after the second lesson, the following Sunday, that the
Vicar stood up, tall and stately, his youthful face below the gray
hair all alight with the enjoyment of this unusual break in the even
tenour of his way, and soared into unaccustomed and very carefully
enunciated English.
"I pub-lish thee Banns of Marrr-i-ache between John Cor-rie Graeme of
Lonn-donn and Mar-garet Brandt of Lonn-donn. If any of you know cause,
or just im-ped-i-ment, why these two pair-sons should not be joined
to-gether in holy matri-mony, ye are to de-clare it. This is thee
first time of as-king."
Margaret and Miss Penny and Graeme heard it from their back seat
among the school-children, and found it good.
There were not very many visitors there. Such as there were felt a
momentary surprise at two English people choosing to get married in
Sark, though, if it had been put to them, they must have confessed
that there was no lovelier place in the world to be married in. They
also wondered what kind of people they were.
Some few of the habitants knew them and turned and grinned
encouragingly, though even they were not quite certain in their own
minds as to which of the two ladies was the one who was to be married.
The children all smiled as a matter of course and of nature.
And Margaret felt no shadow of regret at thought of the gauds and
fripperies of a fashionable wedding which would not be hers. In John
Graeme's true love she had the kernel. The rest was of small account
to her.
And that little church of Sark, plain walled and bare of ornament,
always exerted upon her a most profoundly deepening and uplifting
influence. It epitomised the life of the remote little island. Here
its people were baptized, confirmed, married, buried.
And here and there, on the otherwise naked walls, was a white marble
tablet to the memory of some who had gone down to the sea and never
returned. And these she had studied and mused upon with emotion the
first time she went there, for surely none could read them without
being deeply touched.
"A la memoire de John William Falle, âgé de 37 ans, et de son
fils William Slowley Falle, âgé de 17 ans, Fils et petit fils de
William Falle, Ecr. de Beau Regard, Sercq. Qui furent noyés
20'eme jour d'Avril 1903, durant la traversée de Guernsey a
Sercq. 'Ta voie a été par la mer et tes sentiers dans les
grosses eaux.'"
"A la memoire de Pierre Le Pelley, Ecuyer, Seigneur de Serk,
noyé près la Pointe du Nez, dans une Tempête, le 13 Mars, 1839,
âgé de 40 ans. Son corps n'a pas été retrouvé; mais la mer
rendra ses morts."
"In memory of Eugène Grut Victor Cachemaille, second son of the
Revd. J.L.V. Cachemaille, Vicar of Sark. Born Jan. 14, 1840, and
lost at sea in command of the _Ariel_, which left London for
Sydney, Feby. 1872, and was heard of no more. 'He was not, for
God took him.'"
Yes, she would sooner be married in that solemn little church than in
Westminster Abbey, for there there would be mighty distractions, while
here there would be nought to come between her and God and the true
man to whom she was giving herself with a full heart.