A Fisher Girl of France and The Scarab Murder Case: A Philo Vance Story
9781465537508
418 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
To-morrow at daybreak they will go aboard together, Elise Hénin and her little brother Firmin. They have put on their Sunday clothes to say farewell to their mother, who sleeps on the slope of the dune in a corner of the old graveyard. Nine years has the poor woman lain there in the peace of her last sleep—deaf forever to the noise of the tempests which roused her so often, of old, to the vigil of anxious nights. She went from the cares of life a long time before her husband. He was swallowed up by the sea, which never gave back his body. One night, when the wind was not high—one hardly knows how it came about—he was caught in a fatal current and was lost, with his boat and six companions, in the wild eddies of the most dangerous shoal on that coast. In some shelter for shipwrecked sailors, beneath the wave, he is waiting for a day, perhaps not distant, when a mighty tempest shall stir the depths and, opening his prison of sand, return his body to earth again. His death brought ruin to his family. Although he was a skipper, yet his boat was all he owned. Earning more or less at the risk of the tides, he was returning from a profitable cruise with a happy heart and a full purse, for he had sold his fish at a good price at the market of Boulogne. The sea had all in its grip—man, boat, and earnings. From the road that climbed the dune one could see the spot beneath one on the horizon. The color of the sea was lighter there than over the depths, and the rays of the sun made it glisten with a silvery sheen. It seemed so smiling that one would have declared it harmless. Elise stopped as her thoughts wandered to that accursed gulf. She pressed more closely the hand of her little brother, as a mother who fears for her child’s safety. For it was she who had brought him up, this twelve-year-old brother, whom she loves for his sturdy figure and his robust health. She has had one idea only, that of making him a good sailor. It was she who sang him sailors’ songs to put him to sleep when little; it was she who carried him, hardly awake, along the dune crests to show him the far-off ships and to direct his first look to what was going on at sea. It was she, too, who took him to the harbor that he might play among the rigging. Then, when they were old enough, they had gone with their father on his boat, learning to handle it. Elise knew as much about fishing as a sailor. Her father was very proud of her. He had her always aboard, and it was a miracle that she had not been lost with him. But that week she had been kept at home, because Firmin was ill. She wished to take care of him herself, and would not trust him to strange hands. And so they had become orphans, sister and brother, without protection and without bread. But to-day their fortune seemed assured. They had been engaged on a sloop for the coming herring fishery. Elise had persuaded the skipper, her cousin and godfather, to take them on his boat notwithstanding the prejudice which sailors in petticoats generally inspire. She was as strong as a man and asked less wages, and this was so much in her favor. For herself it was enough that she was to be with her brother, apart from whom she would have been too unhappy to live. “I am proud of you,” she said gayly, “you will make a fine ship’s boy. I was afraid to remain at home alone. Come, make haste, we have still many things to arrange for our departure.” And with a lengthened step she hurried the boy along the sandy dune road. It was high noon. The strong June sun, directly overhead, darted down its burning rays, but the young girl did not appear to feel them. Lithe and alert, she moved along, with figure erect and back slightly arched, in all the vigor of her nineteen years. Her graceful contour stood out distinctly against the sky. It had little of that masculine strength that marks savage beauties, but under her brown corset and gray skirt one could divine the clear-cut outline which distinguishes the purer races.
