Volume VII - Modernist Magazines Project

By Ella D'Arcy 293hear nothing but the strange complaining cry of the sea-gull, asit floats above your head on wide-spreading motionless wings, anddraws, as by an invisible string, a swift-flying shadow far behindit, over the sunny turf.Here, at the very end of Le Tas, facing the sea, stands thefifth house, a low squalid cottage, or rather a row of cottages, builtof wood, and tarred over, with a long, unbroken, shed-like roof ofslate. It has no garden, no yard, nor any sort of enclosure, butstands set down barely there upon the grass, as a child sets downa toy-house upon a table.It was built to lodge the miners, when, forty years since, greathopes were entertained of extracting silver from the granite of LeTas. Shafts were sunk, a plant imported, a row of half-a-dozenone-roomed cottages run up on the summit of the rock. But thelittle silver that was found never paid the expenses of working.The mines were long ago abandoned, though the stone chimneysof their shafts still raise their heads among the bracken, and, whitewashedover, serve as extra landmarks to the boatmen out at sea.The cottages had been long disused, or only intermittently inhabited,until, one day, Philip Le Mesurier, of Jersey, called uponthe Seigneur, and offered to rent them for himself. It was justafter Le Mesurier's six years of unhappy married life had come toan end. Mrs. Le Mesurier had, one night, without any warning,left Rozaine Manor, taking her little son with her, and she hadabsolutely refused to go back, or to live with her husband again.There had been a great scandal. The noise of it had spreadthrough the islands. It had even reached Saint Maclou. Womensaid that Le Mesurier had ill-used his wife shamefully, had beatenher before the servants, had habitually permitted himself the mostdisgusting language. He was known to have the Le Mesurierviolent temper ; he was suspected of having the Le Mesurier tastefor